Why (Orthodox) Jews Don't "Believe In The Bible"
Jews do not 'believe in a book'.We believe in God. And God revealed the Torah to us at Sinai.
The soul of every Jewish person - including us nowadays - was there. Years before we received the written version, we knew via Moses the inner teachings of the Torah, as taught to him by God, and as we understood via the high degree of prophecy we all had at Sinai.
Every word in the Five Books of Moses was dictated by God to Moses, and is Holy. However.....
(Orthodox) Judaism is not based on the Bible!
It is based on the Tradition handed down from Abraham, via Isaac and then Jacob etc, and upon the revelation at Sinai which we all experienced (all Jewish souls of those living in later generations were present), it is NOT based on the printed books recording the words of the Holy Book which was written some time after the revelation at Sinai (via word for word dictation by God to Moses), and which is a recrod of PART of the Tradition.
To understand the relationship of the Jewish People to the book which various peoples know as 'the Bible', one must realize that it is a book they themselves received from God, and that long before the Jewish People received it (from God via Moses) they knew much of what is recorded there, and a lot more than what is recorded there.
The souls of all Jews alive today were present at Sinai, and heard much of the full-Torah directly from God, encoded in the first words of the "ten commandments", and as part of our prophetic experiences there and before that at the crossing of the sea, and did';t need a written book to teach it to them. Andat God's behest, Moses taught a tremendous amount to the Jewish people before the record of all that was written into the Torah, and all that was passed on as part of our Tradition separately from the book/scroll called the written Torah, and we would know of it via our Oral Tradition even if it wasn't in the written Torah. However, iIncluded in that Tradition is the teaching that the book/scroll called the written Torah is a record of God's direct words to Moses, and so the Written Torah is accepted only since the Oral Torah/Tradition enfranchises it as authoritative.
Indeed, there are various levels of meaning which must accompany the words of the written Torah in order for it to be understood as it was meant, and the words in the written Torah are in some sense mnemonics hinting at all the teachings in the Oral Tradition.
And when the five books were dictated by God to Moses, God inserted spiritual hyperlinks in every passage, every word, every letter, even every aspect of the shape of the letters, links to a vast treasure of hidden meanings and deeper understandings, accessible to those immersed in the Torah Way.
"The Oral Tradition": When the Jewish People followed Moses out of Egypt - before receiving the Torah's Book of Genesis with the stories about the Patriarchs etc - they already knew in great detail the stories of their ancestors Abraham Isaac and Jacob as part of a rich "Oral Tradition" (and even had written scrolls about all that, see source at bottom). In other words, though other nations may have first learned of Abraham from the Book of Genesis, the Jewish People knew of him long before he book because he was their revered grandfather who had passed on to them a deep and rich Tradition including accounts of his encounters with God.
When they stood at Sinai and heard God’s voice, it was the continuation of a 'religion' already long-established, and the book that Moses wrote at God’s dictation following the revelation at Sinai was not the REASON that Jews believed in God or in Judaism, it was a book ABOUT what they believed, and ABOUT what had happened to THEM.
Jews accepted the Torah because of the revelation at Sinai and because of the Tradition handed down from Abraham, not because they read the book written after the revelation at Sinai.
And God revealed to Moses the inner and outer levels of meaning encoded in the words of the book, and this was conveyed to the people. In any case, much of its inner meaning was already known, and sometimes the rituals the Torah refers to are mentioned in extreme brevity because the elders already knew all the details, since the ritual had been practiced for a long time already, with the details passed down the generations from Abraham, as part of an oral tradition, with some written here and there; as a result, if someone reads the book about that ritual without this context they may certainly come to a very different understanding of its meaning, but the above-mentioned "oral tradition" - which is alive and accessible still today - provides the Bible's only meaning of relevance to Orthodox Jews.
'The Torah' is not a book: The Torah is holy, and so is the printed book Orthodox Jews refer to as 'the chumash' ('chamesh' = five, so 'Chumash = 'the five books of Moses').
However as a book, a collection of printed pages bound together sold by a publisher, it only authoritatively says what Tradition tells us that is says; Othodox Jews do not "believe in a Book" we believe in Tradition and we were all at Sinai - the soul of every Jew who would ever live was present there - so we all heard the whole Torah, so for us the meaning of the words of the book are given by tradition, with very deep secret meanings encoded in each letter. To us therefore in this sense it doesn't matter what the printed book (or even the scribe's handwritten scroll in the ark in the synagogue) says in its surface literal translation into English or contemporary Hebrew - we don't "believe" in words in a printed book (or even words in a scroll), we believe in 'the Torah'.
[There are many midrashim and kabalistic and other Traditional teachings about the words in the chumash which contradict each other (or seem to, at a certain level of interpretation: there are many books and articles explaining how that could be). All of it together, plus more, is "what we believe in", not a book.]
In some sense, the Oral Tradition is not a subset of the Biblical teachings but rather it is the reverse, the Bible is part of the Oral Tradition: In other words, the Oral Tradition tells of the assembly at Sinai and the writing by Moses via God's dictation of the Book; the custodians of the oral tradition in each generation point to a book and tell the children "this is the book we were referring to; come and we'll teach it to you with the interpretation taught to us by Moses as taught to him by God, who is its Author", and so Jewish children receive the book as part of the Oral Tradition.
There was a revelation to all those assembled at Sinai after the exodus from Egypt. And that revelation, and others received by Moses are recorded in the Bible. Part of the revelations involved the divine perspective on what happened to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but the events themselves were of course already well known to those hearing the revelation. The only reason Jews today accept the Bible is because there is a Tradition which tells of the events themselves, and of the revelation at Sinai, and that the Bible is a faithful record of the revelation.
So Jews don’t ‘believe in the Bible’, they believe in their Tradition, a Tradition which tells that the Bible is a record of divine revelation. But that Traditions also specifies what is the intended meaning of the material recorded in the Bible. So Judaism does NOT really ‘believe in the Bible’, it “believes in the traditional meanings associated to the Biblical text”. The same tradition which teaches that the Bible was divinely communicated specifies what its intended meaning is, so traditional Jews do not see any logic in accepting the Bible as divinely inspired but rejecting the associated meanings taught by that very tradition.
The spiritual teachings in the Oral Tradition: Abraham had a very special relationship with God. And one product of that relationship was a closeness to God, and another was insight, as well as revelation about the creation of the universe, the nature of humanity, and the goal and meaning of life.
Also, special practices as mentioned in the Torah in the context of Abraham such as as circumcision of males, hospitality for strangers, and also the deeper understanding of ‘philosophical aspects’ such as why it might seem that God is acting in a seemingly unjust way (in the story of Sdom).
Abraham thought very deeply into what he learned from all this, and deepened his insights over time, and passed them on to his son Isaac, who himself had a deep special relationship with God, including various revelations, and there was a special relationship between God and Jacob, who was the beneficiary also of the insights and teachings from his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac and so on, and all that transpired to Abraham and to his descendants was handed down the generations for hundreds of years until the time of Moses, when there was a revelation to all those assembled at Sinai after the exodus from Egypt.
The mystical experiences of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, resulted in deep transformations within them, and this cannot really be written down, certainly not in a way that is comprehensible to someone who did not develop themselves spiritually, and who is not connected to the path outlined by God to these great spiritual teachers. Instead, the understandings obtained are part of the mystical path which accompanies the Oral Tradition, and which was embedded by God into the written Torah via the spiritual 'hyperlinks'.
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There are various levels of meaning which must accompany the words of the written Torah in order for it to be understood as it was meant, and the words in the written Torah are in some sense mnemonics hinting at all the teachings in the Oral Tradition.
How we understand the Torah laws regarding the 'rebellious son' is
The Jewish understanding of the meaning of the Torah passages about the 'rebellious/wayward son', is a great example of the Jewish relationship with the written Torah.We can see in it a good example of a many-layered interconnection where the true meaning is given in a multi-layered way, including the family and the community (as outlined in a spearate article).
The experiential communal level of Judaism is an indispensable part of the Torah: Jews are a people not just a religion, and it was at Sinai that we became a people, with the Torah as our constitution, and so it is appropriate that only in the collective of the people, as a civilization, can Judaism, including the meaning of what is written in the Torah, be encoded, and transmitted, and only within the context of how it is observed/practiced can it be"understood". Furthermore, at a mystical level, observance of Torah ways changes us, transforms us, and it is via these progressive transformations occurring as we continue to observe more, that we also thereby deepen our 'understanding' - so that it is actually only via observance and communal life in conjunction with study and inter-generational transmission of the Tradition that we can truly "get" what Judaism is all about.
Jews are a people not just a religion, and it was at Sinai that we became a people, with the Torah as our constitution, and so it is appropriate that only in the collective of the people, as a civilization, can Judaism can be encoded, and transmitted, and only within the context of how it is observed/practiced can it be"understood". Furthermore, at a mystical level, observance of Torah ways changes us, transforms us, and it is via these progressive transformations occurring as we continue to observe more, that we also thereby deepen our 'understanding' - so that it is actually only via observance and communal life in conjunction with study and inter-generational transmission of the Tradition that we can truly "get" what Judaism is all about.
Levels:
written Torah,
Oral torah,
the torah given by your grandparents,
the experiential of doing mitzvot and the communal, especially communal experiential and during shabbat and holiday (including the shabbat meal you are perhaps attending), or at kotel etc.
One cannot understand shabbat from the Written Torah and gemara (Talmud) and shulchan arukh (book of laws), one needs the experiential communal level as guided by the 'grandparents' who are passing it on from their grandparents, passing it on experientially, by arranging shabbat meals, weddings, bris, funerals, shiva, sitting in sukkah and making brocho on lulav and going around the bima etc etc etc.
And similarly regarding teachings in the Written Torah such as about the 'ben sorer', we can't understand what the Torah is getting at without various levels, in my case it meant including my own actual grandfather (see my post on that topic).
The necessity of living a Jewish life as prerequisite to understanding 'Judaism': Of course some part of the revelation to Abraham and his descendants, and the revelation to those assembled at Sinai was recorded in the Bible. But imagine what it would be like to have a written record of all the revelations Abraham had, the entire content of all his conversation with God, and all his musings and insights gained in years of deep study, it would fill a room of encyclopedia, so clearly this was not written - but not only was some transmitted orally but in fact a lot was encoded withing the ‘civilization’ he crafted, so that even today there is much about Judaism which can only be learned and understood by living a fully Jewish life, as part of a community, fulfilling all the laws and celebrating all the holidays and raising a Jewish family and helping establish Jewish communities - no book or set of books or collection of encyclopedias could adequately substitute.
And some of what was passed on was a deeper, almost ‘secret’ knowledge, the kabbalah, taught by master to disciple, via clues and hints, but only understood when the disciple grappled with it for years and lived the life of the Torah which activated the hints, and the 'hyperlinks', transforming them into deep mystical insights.
And so beyond just a tradition that is orally transmitted, there is the Traditional Way of Life, plus what can be accessed via the the Torah - written and oral - by one who lives according to it, and all this together is the Tradition or 'The Torah'.
Conclusion: Given that all the above is the Jewish Tradition, and is what is believed by Orthodox Judaism rather than “belief in a book”, one can understand why the book people call “the Bible” is accepted by Orthodox Jews only inasmuch as it is part of this Tradition, not on its own, devoid of this context.
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May we be blessed to be able to live this connected life, with direct access to this richness, to be able to benefit in our own community from the Traditional structures which were created by our grandparents, for us. May we be blessed to be able to live this connected life, with direct access to this richness.
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Source text re the scolls possessed by the Jewish People while in Egypt, long before receiving the Torah at Sinai:
מדרש רבה, שמות רבה ה (& תנחומא)
https://he.wikisource.org/.../%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%AA...
יח.
"ויצו פרעה ביום ההוא" מלמד על הרשע שלא עכב לעשות עמהן רע וזו היתה גזירה רביעית. "והנוגשים אצים לאמר" אלו המצרים "השוטרים" אלו זקני ישראל. "לא תוסיפון לתת תבן לעם ואת מתכונת הלבנים" מכאן אתה למד שחשבון היה על כל אחד ואחד כמה לבנים יעשו ביום ולכך העביד בהן בתחלה בפה רך כדי שיעשו הלבנים בכל כחם ולראות כל יכולת שלהם ולפי מספר שעשו ביום הראשון גזרו עליהם לעשות כל הימים. "כי נרפים הם" אמר רבי שמעון בן יוחאי התחיל מחרק עליהם שיניו ואומר נרפים אתם לשון טינוף הוא ישתחקו עצמותיו קדושים הם. "על כן הם צועקים לאמר וגו' תכבד העבודה על האנשים" מלמד שהיו בידם מגילות שהיו משתעשעין בהם משבת לשבת לומר שהקדוש ברוך הוא גואלן לפי שהיו נוחין בשבת אמר להן פרעה "תכבד העבודה על האנשים ויעשו בה ואל ישעו וגו'" אל יהו משתעשעין ואל יהו נפישין ביום השבת:
"ויצו פרעה ביום ההוא" מלמד על הרשע שלא עכב לעשות עמהן רע וזו היתה
(In this week's Torah portion, Ki Tetsey):
A lesson in how an appropriately-developed person tempers judgement with wisdom, and uses Tradition to benefit from the composite wisdom of others before them:
The law of killing the 'wayward son' for their rebellious ways is very extreme, but it turns out that it never actually happens, and instead there's a subtle meaning: if you knew that by taking the proper measures you can avert disaster, what's the right thing for you to do: sit back and relax? Or simple honesty: do you tell people not to worry because taking precautions will prevent disaster? Or maybe a more subtle truth that involves misleading people: going around preaching disaster and shaking people up saying it's already too late so that they will be scared and indeed take those precautions?
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Similarly in our case this week: Traditionally, we are told that the Torah introduces the notion of the "ben sorer umoreh/rebellious child" as a deterrence or preventative, to ensure that parents not ignore certain types of behavior, letting it eventually get out of control. Indeed, the rules delineated in the Talmud are extremely stringent, possibly including the stipulation that both parents have to have exactly the same height and same voice! So clearly a guilty verdict on the rebellious son, and the resulting death penalty, was made to be almost impossible for it to ever actually need to be carried out. In other words it is an extreme scenario which is meant to shake people into early awareness to prevent catastrophic development of their child and thus avert disaster.
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In fact, the Talmud reflects a subtle understanding in its discussion of the issue at hand, by quoting a rabbinic authority who stated there never was nor would there ever be such a verdict (ie the death penalty to that young man). Saying that there 'never was' is one thing, but saying 'there never will be' is quite another, it implies that the Torah (as traditionally-understood, via th Oral Torah) deliberately set up conditions that are impossible to fulfil.
However, strangely, the Talmud follows this claim with a seeming rebuttal, by quoting the response of another rabbi, Rabbi Yonatan, who said "I saw a grave of a ben sorer umoreh , and I even sat on it'. This contradicts the Talmud's own notion that there never was such a case!
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(I added some punctuation) סנהדרין ע״א א Sanhedrin 71:1
הא דתניא בן סורר ומורה לא היה ולא עתיד להיות. ולמה נכתב? דרוש וקבל שכר. כמאן כרבי יהודה איבעית אימא ר' שמעון היא, דתניא אמר רבי שמעון וכי מפני שאכל זה תרטימר בשר ושתה חצי לוג יין האיטלקי אביו ואמו מוציאין אותו לסקלו . אלא לא היה ולא עתיד להיות. ולמה נכתב? דרוש וקבל שכר. אמר ר' יונתן אני ראיתיו וישבתי על קברו! כמאן אזלא הא דתניא עיר הנדחת לא היתה ולא עתידה להיות ולמה נכתבה דרוש וקבל שכר כמאן כר' אליעזר
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. So what's the truth?
My grandfather (a rabbi and scholar) told me that Rabbi Yonatan was a cohen, and so it was impossible that he would be at a burial site!
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[Some biographical info re Rabb Y: . היה תנא מהדור הרביעי של התקופה - שנות ה-ג'תת"ק. חברו ובר-הפלוגתא של רבי יאשיה, ושניהם למדו אצל רבי ישמעאל. רבי יונתן היה כהן ]
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In any case of course a rabbi - even if not a cohen - would presumably not disrespect a dead person by sitting on their tomb, especially since the execution is meant to serve as atonement so that the person is righteous as they leave this world (the same parsha which speaks of ben sorer umoreh also mandates cutting down a body after a court-execution by hanging during the day, so as not to disrespect the body by having it hang all night).
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So why did he state the untruth "I even sat on a grave of a case like this".
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And what can we conclude from the mixed messages in the Talmud quoted above - telling us somethingand then its opposite?
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I believe the answer is as follows: Given the preventative reason the Torah had for presenting the notion of a ben sorer umoreh, it is obvious that if people heard that it never could actually happen, the deterrence is nullified. Therefore, after one rabbi reveals - in the quoted dialogue - the secret that it never was or will be, the other rabbi had to make up a story claiming that not only COULD it be, but that it WAS a reality. Otherwise the Torah's purpose of crying disaster won't work as a preventative of that disaster.
However, can one so glibly make up a lie and have it inserted into the Talmud?! I think that answer is as follows: He made it up in a story which the other rabbis present would recognize as an obvious fabrication (because they knew he was a cohen, and because it was in any case wrong to sit on someone's grave). And any scholar studying the Talmud would similarly recognize this. And my grandfather knew this meta-level about the story and passed it on to me.
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So my understanding (not all have to agree of course, and there can be various other interpretations) is that:
i. he didn't really sit on such a grave; or:
ii. he did sit on it, but it was empty, it was only a warning-grave stating 'here lies a ben sorer umoreh', but without anyone actually buried there.
And Rabbi Yonatan knew there was noone buried there since there could never be a 'ben sorer umoreh' so he allowed himself to sit on the grave; or at least to tell others that he did, as a subtle way of affirming that he believed the Torah was teaching that there could never be one.
[And it was not really a lie since the other rabbis would immediately understand that the scenario was as one of the above two options, and they would understand why he was making it sound as if there really WAS a case of ben sorer umoreh.
And he felt it was allowable for him to make up this story not only because he was actually supporting the Torahs intent (the Torah said it as a warning, making up a scenario that could not exist, and what he said was meant to reinforce what the Torah was doing, not negate it, and so he made up a scenario that never happened, to give the Torah's scenario support) but also because the Torah itself was showing the way, by making up an impossible scenario to begin with, and so Rabbi Yonatan was simply reinforcing that message with another not-real scenario.
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And then the next 'level' was when the great Rabbis who compiled the Talmud included this dialogue between the scholars. They placed the two statements in juxtaposition, so that those reading the talmud in later years - the scholars , knowing that he was a cohen (and see the advanced notes below: knowing that he espoused 'dibra torah bilshon bnei adam') - would understand the truth, whereas on the other hand the general public would believe it was meant literally and be deterred from undesirable actions.
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[Preventing false accusations: Why is it so important for the Talmud that the rabbis understand that it could never happen, and realize that the idea of a grave which said 'here lies a ben sorer umoreh' was a pedagogical fabrication? Perhaps so that they would never come to falsely accuse someone of being a ben sorer umoreh (since we are taught that there never will be one), or of sitting down as a judge in as a court to judge a young man accused of being a 'wayward son'.].
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The various levels here:
1. the written Torah tells of the ben sorer umoreh situation & laws;
2. the oral torah (about 1) teaches all the above including the seeming 'proof' by Rabbi Yonatan that there indeed WAS such a case;
3. the meta-level about Rabbi Yonatan being a cohen, providing the context for 2.
4. the Talmudic teaching in juxtaposition ar emeant to make it clear to the leader sof communities who teach others, that theu need to make sure that the Torah's intended deterrence would have effect.
5. my grandfather made sure to tell me of 3. as part of his transmission of the Oral Torah, and of its depth, wisdom and subtlety revealing the true meaning of the written Torah.
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The higher level message: When we read the written Torah, we cannot expect to understand the true interpretation without the accompanying Oral Tradition; we need to have the humility to understand that there can be multiple levels of meaning, requiring a subtle and sophisticated approach to life-situations, rooted in the Tradition which incorporates the deeper connotation and the meta-level passed by tradition from grandparent to grandchild, all of which is indispensable in understanding the spirit of the Torah.
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Conclusion: May we all be blessed with grandparents who can teach us Torah, passing on the Tradition in the way it is meant to be passed on; and let us all merit to be "grandparents" to others in this sense!
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Advanced side-notes and further explanation:
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Rabbi Yonatan is known also for espousing the teaching of his masters that the Torah speaks in the language of humans, meaning that passages need to be interpreted in accordance: 'dibra torah bilshon bnei adam'רבי יונתן , כתלמיד של רבי ישמעאל, דבק בגישה ש"דיברה תורה כלשון בני אדם", בניגוד לגישתו של רבי עקיבא ] eg in Genesis when it says "the children of elohim" it refers to 'elohim' as 'men of greatness' (elohim can also be used to mean 'judges' and God tells Moshe that Aaron his brother will be like a prophet for him, preaching Moses's words andMoses will be like an elohim for Aahron.] This is in a way consistent with his interpretation of the passage about ben sorer umoreh, that we need to understand it in the context of how it is meant to be understood by people, ie the effect it is meant to have on those who hear the passage.
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A lesson here is that only those sufficiently sophisticated to study the oral torah completely, and so read everything in context of the whole (eg knowing Rabbi Yonatan is a cohen from another discussion) and who understand the subtlety of Talmudic presentation and its philosophy, and who understands the roles of the layers of Tradition, will understand the different layers.
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And there can be different (perhaps even opposite) messages for different hearers: to ordinary parents of a child who - they are warned - could become a ben sorer umoreh and therefore they should take steps now to prevent it from happening, and to potential judges of a child so accused who need to take into account the Talmudic opinion that it is impossible (ie that no-one should be condemned to death for this).
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Of course there are different opinions, some hold that indeed there WAS such a case, but the Talmud records both opinions; this itself is a teaching, that we cannot be so sure, and certainly in such serious cases, we need to understand that there might actually be validity to the other opinion.
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Note: Rabbi Yonatan made a similar statement (see the quote above) about 'ir hanidachat'/'rebellious city' .The Talmud brings an opinion that "ir hanidachat" never existed, and continues to tell of Rabbi Yonatan's response: that he had sat on its ruins, ie it DID exist. Perhaps however in this case too the same holds, ie the logical implication of the seeming absurdity of his first statement (re ben sorer) is meant to apply to the second (re ir hanidachat), ie saying them together was intended by rabbi Yonatan to indicate that the second story too was meant instructively not factually, and for the same pedagogical-preventative purpose (and the indication that it was invented is similar - sitting on the ruins of a city in which all the inhabitants were killed is sitting on a mass-grave, which is patently inappropriate or forbidden, particularly for a cohen.)