The Tanach or The Bible, Book composed by the various Prophets of the people of Israel, serves as a written reference for Oral transmission.
Without this precise and exact transmission which goes back generations, the moral, ethical, social, and spiritual current does not pass.
This is extremely difficult for those who do not know of living oral traditions to understand. African cultures offer the possibility of looking at the complex universe of living oral cultures. Rabbi Nahman in Likutey Moharan (ch. 19) tells us that we must hear the Torah directly from the mouth of the Tzaddik, or from the mouths of his disciples “for there is nothing further from this than learning from ‘a book”.
Indeed when the Bible was translated into Greek to produce the version of the Septuagint, our wise men experienced this event as a disaster.
A Midrash Tanhuma (Vayera) tells us that Moses wanted to write the Mishnah but HaShem refused. The reason this Midrash tells us is that HaShem saw in the future that the written Torah would be translated and that impostors, based on the simple reading of the Book, will come and claim to be its heirs.
But their lie will be revealed by the fact that they will ignore and reject the Oral Torah, for they will not grasp its utmost importance.
The one who has studied Pirkei-Avot knows Judaism better than the one who has learned the Tanakh as a Book, for one will never grasp the very nature of the Tanakh without the Mishnah.
Those who gave us the precise order of the books of the Hebrew Bible are the Masters of the Mishnah.
One day a disbeliever came to ask Hillel to prove to him that the oral Torah was authentic.
Hillel took out a Written Book and asked him to point to the letter Aleph.
When he did, Hillel said to him: from whom did you hear orally that this letter is called an Aleph ?
The Torah must be handwritten by a Sofer scribe according to specific criteria in order to be able to play his dynamic role in the community.
It is the Torah shebeal Peh, the Oral Law, which tells us how to write the Torah she bikhtav, the written Law.
Anyone other than the Jewish people will never be able to understand or adhere to this truth, because only they are directly concerned and defined by it.
The Torah can only be read if one knows the vowels and cantillations (taamim) which are not written on the scrolls.
It is this dimension, learned by heart, which makes the Torah alive.
Etz Hayim hi lamahazikim Bah.