Dear Avira,
“Also, in your mind, what gave chazal the ability to codify “articles of faith”? And where would we even receive the idea of distinguishing between halacha and drashos, if not from chazal themselves – and if so, where is that stated? The truth is that everything is mesorah.”
Excellent starting point!
Please walk me through how you get from this to your aggressive stance on these issues.
Obviously, the Mesores was not universally preserved. So, how can you make a statement based on anything? Even if you are one thousand percent correct about the issue at hand, it won’t be of use to your opponent because you saying so doesn’t make it mesorah. It being found in claasic source also doesn’t make it mesorah.
Because at some point things become unclear enough that the majority of Jews in all parts of the Diaspora walked out on Judaism. Something must have broken down. Even a unanimity of sources doesn’t help because it still can’t self assert it’s own truth. So even if you and would agree on something being true and universal it wouldn’t have any impact to those whom we disagree with. If they didn’t receive what we did, there is no mechanism to force them of it being so.
Again, what are you fighting about? That you were taught or decided something that the other party doesn’t want to entertain as true. That has no relevance to our shared received knowledge. What you were taught does not mean that your teacher knew it to be true. We could only authenticate our knowledge when we see it echoing itself throughout the generations. There have been many who thought they received better than anyone else, but history and our destiny has shown them to be detached from both the past and the future. One more time. Just the fact that you were taught something has no relevance to our shared received knowledge. If it did, it would be paramount to saying that all our revealed knowledge was contrived throughout time ch”v.