Question: I’ve read that Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers were observing and studying the Torah. Wasn’t the Torah given to Moses after their time?

Answer: Excellent question. The source of this  is the Talmud (Tractate Yoma 28b) that writes that Abraham kept the entire Torah. This includes both the Written Law and the Oral Law. The Five Books of Moses that we have is the Written Law, and the explanations of how to carry out that Written Law is the Oral Law. Both parts of the Torah were received at Sinai, and the Talmud tells us that Abraham kept both of these parts before it was received.

The Medrash (Beraishis Rabba 95:3) tells us that Jacob studied Torah just as his fathers had, and that he sent Judah to Egypt to establish a House of Study before Jacob’s family arrived to settle there. Apparently they had the Torah, in some form or another, as well.

You are asking how they could have the Torah if it was given to us much later at Mt. Sinai. I’ve seen various explanations for this. The Medrash itself, referred to above, says that Abraham knew the Torah on his own. Rabbi Shlomo Ibn Aderes, the “Rashba” (Spain, 1235-1310) in his classic Responsa (Responsa #94) explains this idea: The Torah is not merely a book. It is an abbreviation of the entire mass of spiritual wisdom. Because of our own inability to grasp these concepts in their totality, let alone to figure them out on our own, we were given the Torah at Sinai with 613 commandments instructing us to do, or abstain from, particular physical actions. Additionally, the Torah has practically infinite textual references to the concepts of spiritual wisdom. The Torah, as we were given it, is our key to these concepts. In our time we’ve seen the great discoveries that mankind has made in medicine, technology, the arts, and other areas of the physical world. Our forefathers, in their tremendous wisdom, were able to tap into the discoveries of the spiritual world. They didn’t need to be given the Torah to discover it; they discovered it on their own.

The Medrash (Beraishis Rabba, 1:2) states, “He looked at the Torah and created the world.” First of all, this means that the Torah preceded G-d’s creation of the world. This suggests that it is not merely a book – it is a body of wisdom. It also means that G-d used the Torah as a type of blueprint for the universe. We now can understand how the Patriarchs could tap into the knowledge of the Torah. With their intense level of consciousness they could see the principles of the Torah in the world around them; in the world that was built following the Torah’s blueprint.

I hope this helped, and if you have any further questions feel free to write back.

Best Wishes,
Rabbi Mordechai Dixler