Acts 15 from verses 1 to 12. It is there related that certain men of the sect of the Pharisees rose up, and said that the Gentiles could not be saved unless they abided by the law of Moses, and that, upon the delivery of this opinion, the apostles and elders came together to deliberate; and they argued much upon this matter. Peter then settled the dispute by saying, "Why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. But we believe that, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they."
Peter, by this remonstrance, contradicts the opinion held by Jesus, as is shown by the advice given to the rich man, who had consulted him respecting which of the laws he should observe, etc. (See Matthew 19.) We have, moreover, in a former chapter, shown that the law of Jesus, when carried out to the letter, is more rigorous than the Mosaic code, and utterly impracticable in the affairs of social life. We have already pointed out that the suggestion made by Jesus to the rich man, to the effect that he should sell all he had and distribute the money among the poor, was wisely disregarded by all his disciples and followers. Paul also deemed it proper to designate the law of Moses "a yoke of bondage" (Gal. 5:1), and that he would not submit to the passive endurance of the humiliation recommended by Jesus.
For years, I studied under this one Modern Orthodox Rabbi (an apprentice to Rabbi Lichtenstein), who repeatedly criticized Jewish outreach movements for explaining that observance of Jewish Law is how one gets to heaven. As this rabbi argued, such a view has no support, either in the Bible, or in ancient Jewish tradition. He quoted one of the sages, who said that he would give up his entire eternal reward to do one more mitzvah.
N.T. Wright has written extensively on Christian Origins and the Question of God that Second Temple Judaism was not asking the question: "How can I get to heaven?" As the Torah teaches, the purpose of keeping the commandments was that God would bless the nation of Israel for obedience and punish it for disobedience, and that this reward and punishment would be meted out in this world.
Matthew 19 is a different case than Troki assumes. In the story of the Rich Young Ruler, this man came to Jesus with all sorts of false assumptions. He tries to flatter Jesus by calling him "good teacher" and Jesus responds with "no one is good but God alone." The man was right, but did not know what he was saying. He then asked what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus, knowing that this man wanted affirmation for his righteousness, gave the stock answer. "Follow the commands of Moses." When asked to specify commands, Jesus did not mention laws specific to Jews, such as the Sabbath, laws of kashrut, and keeping the festivals. Instead, Jesus mentioned all the moral laws by which both Jews and Gentiles are equally obligated.
After the ruler brags about his piety, Jesus then says that one who is truly righteous will give up everything and become a disciple. This the rich young ruler could not do. He thought himself good, but instead of receiving affirmation from the popular teacher Jesus, he and the entire crowd around him learned that he was not so righteous after all.
Nowhere is this supposed to be a universal moral law. Jesus was giving a prescription to this young, rich, and prideful man, and one that showed that this rich young ruler is not so perfect after all.
Paul would later argue in Romans that no one has been able to keep God's law. One might think that Paul is referring to the 613 mitzvot, but that seems unlikely. Most of the commands given to Jews are not given to Gentiles, yet Paul argues that both Jew and Gentile are equally guilty before God. It is not the Mosaic Law that we cannot keep, but God's moral law.
Troki then refers to how Jesus taught his followers to cut off their feet, tear out their eyes, and turn the other cheek. These are illustrations, and deal with the common method of oral teaching: hyperbole. The imagery of tearing out your eye makes the teaching easy to remember, and the main point is that one's moral status with God must outweigh our physical health. The teachings about turning the other cheek were highly contextual to the culture. Rome had enormous power over conquered territories, and Jesus taught ways of using social norms to embarrass the Roman oppressors without resorting to open defiance.
In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council convened to discuss what aspects of the Mosaic Law must be placed on Gentiles. One who has spent any time with the Orthodox Jewish community knows the restrictions placed by the law. The dietary laws make it virtually impossible for a Jew to eat at the house of a Gentile, or at a restaurant which is not specifically designed to be kosher. Orthodox Jewish groups which tour non-Jewish areas must have their food prepared ahead of time and shipped to their locations. They cannot simply eat of the local food.
The restrictions of the Sabbath, Yom Tov, and the restrictions placed by purity (such as men and women not being allowed physical contact and laws regarding menstruation) also make it hard for Orthodox Jews to affiliate with people outside their community of observance.
Think of what these restrictions would mean for Gentile Christians. Not only would it mean being largely cut off from their families, as converts to Orthodox Judaism have noted, but it would make their mission of preaching to the world extraordinarily difficult. Missions are successful in part because missionaries can live among the native populations. Rigid food and purity restrictions would undermine much of this.
Finally, N.T. Wright argues in Paul and the Faithfulness of God that Jews during the Second Temple era were in a bind. The Torah was supposed to be a glorious gift from God. It was supposed to be good. Yet, the Torah seemed to do nothing but inflict repeated punishment and wrath for most of Israel's history.
One might think that in the Second Temple era that with the loss of idolatry that things would change, but the Second Temple era ended with the scattering of the Jews and the loss of the homeland. One might then think that with the assimilation of secular Jews into the Gentile nations, and with only the observant Rabbinic Jews remaining, that things would change. But things got even worse.
The last 2,000 years of Jewish history has seen the Jews living difficult, persecuted lives. Gentile nations have constantly taken the property of Jews, and expelled Jews from their land. Jewish martyrdom was high, and Jews had to live in constant fear of pogroms.
It was only after the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment), when Jewish observance of Orthodox Jewish Law decreased substantially, that Jewish luck started to change. Jews became more integrated into Gentile society, occupied positions of influence and power. The haven of the United States opened up, and Jews came to a land of religious freedom.
In fact, it was after the Holocaust, which wiped out most of Europe's Orthodox Jewish population, combined with the Communist success in secularizing the Jewish population, that the rebirth of the homeland Israel was possible. The wars which led to the establishment of a Jewish state were led by secular Zionists, not by the ultra-orthodox. Again in 1967, the success of recapturing Jerusalem was brought about by secular Jews, not by the religious.
What if the stipulations laid out by Deuteronomy 28 are in effect, and the Torah is working exactly as it was intended? What does this mean? It means that Jews are more observant of the Law of Sinai the more secular they are! How can this be?
Here is my hypothesis: what if the Karaites were right, and the Mosaic Law has been so corrupted by Rabbinic tradition that the Orthodox are actually less observant of the true Law of Sinai than secular Jews are?
This makes sense once you realize how utterly different the Rabbinic view of Torah is from the plain literal meaning of the commands given by Moses. If the command "do not cook a kid in its mother's milk" only applies to that Canaanite ritual, then any extension of this to prohibiting milk and meat combinations is a violation of God's law of not adding to the Torah. If the rabbis were not given permission to create fences, and did anyway, then each fence that one observes (such as the laws of the eruv) constitutes a breaking of the law.
It might be the case that the true way to follow the law has been lost in history. If so, we must await the return of Messiah to see if, when, and how to return to observing it.
