If you read the New Testament (NT) before ever studying the Written Torah of Moshe (Moses), how are you suppose to know if Yeshua (Jesus) is actually breaking the Torah when He is frequently accused of doing so? This is why the Gideons do a huge disservice to the Messiah by distributing Bibles without the Torah. The Torah is the original source for prophecies foretelling the Messiah. The Torah is the foundation for everything found in the NT and many Messianic Torah scholars depict Yeshua as "the Living Torah". He was the Torah made alive in flesh! So studying the Torah teaches us about Yeshua even before we meet Him in the NT.
The Pharisee Factor
In truth, Yeshua never broke anything Written in the Torah, but He frequently broke rabbinic innovations (Halakha). If you can't intellectually distinguish between the "Oral Torah" of the Pharisees and the "Written Torah" given to Moshe, you'll inevitably and ignorantly perceive Yeshua as someone who broke and taught others to break the Written commandments, yet He Himself said those who would do such would be considered "the least in the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 5:19). Then He says if your righteousness does not exceed the Pharisees, you'll not even enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 5:20). Yet, before assuming the Pharisees observed the Torah perfectly (in some unworthly assumption), note that Yeshua indicated they, not one of them, kept the Torah of Moshe (John 7:19) and accused them of breaking the commandments with the traditions of their elders (Mark 7:6-7; Matthew 15:8-9).
To be fair, it is true that Yeshua quoted things which appear to have originated in the House of Shammai and/or Hillel, but it is equally probable that Yeshua and the Rabbis repeated honorable oral sayings from even older non-recorded sources? Is that not the basis for "Oral Torah" in the first place, that it goes all the way back to Moshe (according to Rabbinic thought)? There is no doubt that the Pharisees had good things to say and do, but that does not mean they did not have much worthy of criticism also. There are those who argue that Yeshua's critique of the Pharisees was not a wholesale rejection, but more a corrective force from within. Well of course it was, the Pharisaic system made up the vast majority of the population of Judah, the people He came to and chose His disciples from. Yet, it is doubtful that יהוה was/is as concerned for institutional entities as He is for the hearts of those people within the institutions and where they, the people, pay their ultimate allegiance. And clearly the Pharisees of old and the modern Pharisees have gone too far in their claim to authority (see Should the Majority Rule?), especially in the realm of creating new commandments, something expressly forbidden in the Torah Itself (see Laws that set men Free).
In the future, there will be an Elder-based system (similar to the ancient Sanhedrin) which will help in judging Israel in difficult matters (Deut 17:8-13), but it will be a system that judges Righteously and in Truth, unlike what Judah seems to be capable of doing currently. The Rabbinic system would first need to erase all their precedential "innovations" which the Torah forbids, but more importantly, the men of Israel must be born of not just water, but the Spirit (John 3:5). This will be accomplished eventually when both Houses of Israel are united and changed.
Related Content:
