The
pirke avot reads:
This is Rabbinical Judaism (Talmudic) 101. The third part is justified based off of
Deuteronomy 22:8, regarding the law to build a fence on the roof of a house so that someone will not accidentally fall from your roof and die and you incur bloodguilt.
The purpose of this fence around the Torah, call
khumra in Hebrew, is to protect people from breaking the various inspired laws/commands (
mitzvot) of the Torah by adding to the Word additional guides and instructions.
This practice originated with the Pharisees, who predated Christ by over 150 years. The word Pharisee comes from the Hebrew word
Perushim, meaning the "separated ones". These men believed that they needed to separate themselves from the norms and cultural customs of their day and live holy lives unto God.
It was a noble pursuit. But after several decades, the various guides and instructions, that is, fences, they built around the Torah became first, traditions, then integrated customs, to norms, to laws, to the extent that, for example, not only were you not supposed to work or do servile work on the Sabbath, you couldn't even carry something in your hand farther than a so-called "Sabbath's Day Journey, which was about 2,000 cubits, without grieving God and causing offense in the community. This is shown in
John 9 when the formerly blind man carries his mat at the instruction of Jesus.
And even now, to this day, many religious Jews, devoted to their rabbis and to the Talmud, obey all sorts of strange customs that have no existence in the Holy Scriptures. I worked for years at a high-end resort that hosted a week-long getaway around Passover for a large group of affluent Jewish people.
The resort bent over backward to accommodate this group and their money. The members of the group claimed that because they were on religious holiday, they were prohibited from doing certain things, like turning their own lamps in their rooms on and off, filling and turning on their own cpap devices (I was tasked with that one), pushing their own buttons in an elevator, and if you can believe it, flushing their own toilets.
The hotel staff did all of this for them. We also changed out all the locks to manual locks, surrendered an entire kitchen to their rabbis so it could be made kosher, and etc. The list was endless.
All of these things are nowhere in the Torah, but are merely fences to "help" these folks not break the actual commandments contained within the Law.
Jesus hated this stuff with a passion, so much so, He railed that the Pharisees who practiced such fence building could not go where He was going. They thought He meant He was going to kill Himself, but Jesus meant Heaven. He didn't say they wouldn't go. He said they COULD NOT go, that they were going to die in their sins. Imagine that. The Savior of the World telling a group of people He was going to absolutely refuse to save them (See
John 8:21-22).
Do you see how serious this is? This is eternal life and eternal death. Jesus refused to save people over adding fences (man-made, extra-Biblical standards) to the Word of God.
If you see nothing else, at least see this. If you were a
Perusha and you prohibited the growth of facial hair on your fellow Jews in order to be in good standing with the synagogue, keeping men from standing up to read the Scriptures, from speaking or exhorting their fellow believers, to say, perhaps, not offend the Romans who shaved regularly as a cultural practice, what do you suppose Jesus would say to you about your fence?
And does asking you this make me
self-righteous?
Or does it make me someone who cares about your soul and loves you enough to tell you
the truth?
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