My friend does not practice Rabbinical Laws unless he fully agrees with the reasoning.
He's totally fine with direct Torah Laws however.
I'm running out of arguments to convince him. Any ideas?
Answer
Here are some thoughts. I'm not familiar with the process of Jewish law (I'm not Jewish), so I'm not writing with authority. These are just answers to questions that I've asked in my own desire to understand where I can hear that God is speaking.
Questioning rabbinical law
In order to find some common ground, it would be helpful to listen to what his real concerns and reasons are. How did he come to this position, and why does he find it important to stay there? I would especially wonder how he knows what reasoning to apply to the written Torah without taking part in the wider rabbinic conversation and its traditions regarding that process. But there may also be some very important issues to consider from his point of view.
Judaism is a revealed religion and the commandments you follow are from God, so you can't just put words or commandments into His mouth. Sometimes your integrity before Him in prayer is directly at stake, as in brachot where you thank Him for giving particular mitzvot. There's also the objection that rabbinic law is much more detailed than the written Torah, so that sometimes a mountain of halacha is hung from a single thread from Torah; and that the Pharisaic approach to Judaism isn't reflected clearly in the earlier records of Tanach. The question arises about how much is new. Historically, why should a Jew believe that much of the oral Torah can be directly traced to the community in Moses' time, or that until the last part of the Second Temple period there was hardly any disagreement between rabbis? And how can you separate the commandments of God from human customs and traditions that are valid but not binding, when the two are presented to you inseparably? What about the issues of social dynamics, controlling attitudes from leadership, and the willingness of some crowds to follow like sheep? Or the fact that some decisions by trusted Jewish leaders are wrong, and it can take a long time for these things to become clearer to the community? How do you keep your personal responsibility in the short term?
Your friend needs to understand that God has preserved His words and a testimony about Himself, and His Law, among all the generations of Israel, but the reality is that not just any group can claim that they uniquely hold such truth and authority. Even among diverse groups who recognise each other's legitimacy but hold carefully to their own rulings, the differences might bring unnecessary divisions. And because of the many fences that have been instituted to protect and preserve both the letter and the spirit of Torah amidst Israel, it needs to be known that every stringency inherently holds a leniency, at least in the ability to be close to the reality of Torah and to have the peace of mind that is needed for following God according to the holiness and blessing of this covenant.
Reasons why rabbinic law is binding
That said, I don't believe that Jews can keep the Torah truly and completely without doing so in accordance with community, honouring the huge conversation of Judaism about how to keep and honour Torah, and submitting to the things that are agreed upon in the Talmud. As one who can't comment too much, I still believe that it's important in light of how God created His relationship with you as a nation, together, and the particular role that you have in His program for humanity. Here are some reasons.
God gave the Torah as a living testimony, to be held by a nation together in all the intricacies of human lives, culture, and conversations. The question is, what method did He put in place to preserve it? The Law given orally was written down, as an authority to keep it in memory and to check against corruption. But this can't be all. Why does anyone believe that those laws and narratives are from God at all, any more than any other book? The people who keep Shabbos and the festivals, kashrut, and other laws of various kinds, and have been shaped by living them, claim to be the ones to whom God said "You are my witnesses" in a unique continuity; that He set aside a nation of priests, so to speak, and promised that His words would never leave the mouths of their descendants. It's they who recognised the prophets, brought together and preserved the canon of Tanach. Belief in the overriding authority of the written Torah is actually an aspect of the tradition as well.
There are many laws given in passing in the Torah, where extra information is needed. Presumably the community had already been taught how to keep them, because you can't give a law in point form or brief allusions on the first occasion when it is communicated. There are also some areas where not enough detail is given in the written Torah to keep some of the laws that it contains. Most significantly with Shabbos: you need to rest from your work, and there is a death penalty for ignoring it. But in what situations should it be said that someone has violated Shabbos and is liable for such a huge penalty? Not only that, but it is given not merely to individuals for obedience, but to a whole community as a collective sign. It matters to keep these commandments together, not alone. These points lead to the fact that some aspects of the oral Law (i.e. the law lived out and passed on) must have come from the time of the writing of the Torah, and that they are considered very important. They also give authority to leaders in the community to keep the observance unified on a collective level.
Tanach mentions the authority of judges, priests, and teachers in applying the Law and making rulings in a community context. Of course it needs to be discussed in what cases the enactments of these authorities remain binding for later generations or for other communities; also, whether rabbis now are in the same category. But among the many references to this in the Torah, Deuteronomy 17:8-13 stands out in giving a death penalty to anyone who is in contempt of decisions brought to the Levitical priests. It's a serious issue, and shows that 'written Torah alone' was not the original intention.
Both the Torah and the realities of everyday life are very complex. A lot of these fences exist to make everyday applications easier for the community, so that there will be no confusion (which can be crippling in itself) about whether the Torah is being guarded as regards the innumerable questions that come up and are important in a legal covenant setting. This allows the community to focus on your commitment to holiness, and ensures the continuity of this observance by making the passing down of living Torah easier and stronger. Even though any unnecessary stringency to rabbinic customs is very damaging, there are also times where experience (perhaps over a few generations) has shown how needed it is.
You can still ask what makes the Orthodox Jewish process of halacha more legitimate than any other group's, and what to do in the case where rabbinic authority is over-stated. But deferring to professionals and to the insight of the larger community is important, because there are always people who have studied the Law in much greater detail, and whose knowledge of God is deeper and closer. As a collective, Israel has passed on many understandings that are relevant to your life today but that you couldn't adequately figure out from scratch in a whole lifetime. Not only in terms of the quantity of knowledge, but also the spirit and application of Torah. The example of Aaron explaining why he seemingly broke a commandment from Moses in Leviticus 10:8-20 shows how the commandments need to be understood in a careful interaction, which demands high integrity, understanding, and even authority. There is no breakaway movement or individual who could build up such complex understanding alone about things that are binding, even just from the written Torah.
So, when the testimony and authority of the community and its appointed leadership is over-emphasised, how to correct that? Because it takes a long time to properly discuss individual matters, there should be direct continuity in Judaism, relying on the conversation that has been bigger than yourself. The constant evaluation and reformation of Orthodox traditions to be closer to Torah has to happen in a community context. Often it does come out of the questions of individual people, but often also it's the individual who can learn from the others around them and is corrected. Only in a case of suspected injustice in the particular application of a judgment would there really be a reason to go against the community. When that relationship is properly understood and lived, it seems to still allow for a lot of diversity and freedom.
In my observation, it seems like the tradition is most commonly ignored when the truth and original intention of the written Torah is doubted as well. It's so clear in Tanach and in our own experiences that God has given a unique kind of witness to Israel as a nation, in collective observance and preserving of the Torah. You are kept by the Torah and you keep pointing back to it, to the knowledge of God in our world. It's true that aspects of Judaism in each generation are wrong and need to be corrected; it's also true that such correction can take time to spread throughout Judaism, and that the discussions, arguments, and decisions can be painfully divided and complex. But in the generations before us and in our own generation, every Jew will find that there are others around them who have so much deeper familiarity with the spirit and details of the Law, and greater love and dedication for the Law, than their own. And finally, there's the quality of being able to make decisions concerning the law on the level of the eternal community, weighing out the ramifications of your decisions across the generations: a quality which each individual alone possesses none of.
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