“Have We Truly Lost the Spirit?” – A Response to Rabbi Inbal’s Critique (Column 568)
A few days ago, the website posted a response featuring Rabbi Inbal’s critique of my book, No One Rules the Spirit, under the title “Have We Truly Lost Control of the Spirit?” He has since suffered the loss of his wife, of blessed memory; I felt it would be inappropriate to respond in real time. I begin with condolences and the hope that he know sorrow no more.
Now I would like nevertheless to present my comments on his critique. I must say that I have read quite a few beautiful and insightful things he has written, and I greatly appreciate his talents and his extensive knowledge in Torah and beyond. I therefore approached his critique of my book with considerable curiosity. At times, however, I have sensed in the past that apologetics tends to deflect him from a straight path of reasoning, and in my view that is also what happens in this critique. Rabbi Inbal writes at the outset that he has not read other relevant materials and thus qualifies his review, but from several of his arguments it seems that relevant parts of the very book under review escaped him.
Preliminary Background
First, let me note that the book in question—the subject of his critique—is the second in a trilogy whose aim is to present a “lean” Judaism, that is, stripped of the (in my view) unreasonable accretions appended to it over the generations.
In the trilogy’s second book I carry out the main “diet” in Jewish theology. My core claim there is that there is no such animal as “Machshevet Yisrael” (“Jewish Thought”) as a binding field. There are reflections by various thinkers whose mothers happened to be Jewish; usually it’s a collection of their own speculations lacking clear sources, and thus there is no obligation to place trust in them (see for example here the question whether the Messiah can be a period rather than a person—how can anyone answer that seriously?! From where does he know?!). Underpinning the claim is the assumption that philosophies and ideas are to be judged by whether they are true or not; it is quite irrelevant whether their origin is Jewish or whether the person who said them carries any authority.
To clarify, I will devote the first part of this column to briefly laying out my positions on these points. In the column’s second part I will discuss Inbal’s criticisms. There, in the course of that discussion, I will complete further parts of the picture described in the first part. I will usually avoid links and references here, since everything is presented in my book in detail and systematically. My aim here is only to clarify matters and explain why the book addresses most of the difficulties raised in the critique.
Two Kinds of Authority
I distinguish between two kinds of authority: formal authority and substantive authority. Formal authority is granted to a person or institution simply by virtue of what it is. For example, the Knesset possesses legal authority and therefore one must obey its directives. This obligation is not based on the great wisdom of its members, nor on their always being correct. One must obey simply because they are members of the Knesset. That is, the institution’s authority arises from what it is.
Substantive authority is altogether different. A doctor instructs me to take a certain pill. I have no obligation to take it, but because I trust his knowledge I will likely take it. A physician has no formal authority by virtue of being a physician; there is no duty to obey doctors. But he does have substantive (expert) authority, for he is a professional who knows more than I do. That means I heed him because he is likely correct—unlike compliance with the Knesset’s laws, which is a formal duty unrelated to the correctness of what is said. To heed the doctor, unlike the legal example, I must be persuaded that he is right; that is not formal authority.
The Realm of Thought Usually Concerns Facts
We can now see why notions of authority in the realm of “Jewish Thought” are problematic, both formally and substantively. To explain this, a further preface: questions and principles in this realm generally concern facts. Consider questions like: Will the Messiah come or not? Is there providence—over whom and how? Is there a special “segulah” in the people of Israel? Was the entire Torah given from Heaven? Does God exist? Was Moses a prophet? Was he the greatest of them? And so on. All these are factual questions, even if the answers are not necessarily based on observation. A fact is either true or it is not; it is not a matter of opinions or perspectives.
This has two implications for our discussion: (A) Formal authority with respect to matters of thought (facts) is not even logically definable. (B) A person claiming in the realm of thought is usually offering mere conjectures (at least where the facts are not based on observation; the sources and their interpretation here are highly dubious). I will elaborate briefly.
Formal Authority About the Realm of Thought
Regarding formal authority, it is easy to see that with respect to facts it cannot exist. A simple logical-conceptual analysis shows that it cannot even be defined: formal authority about facts is an oxymoron.
We saw that formal authority means I must obey a directive regardless of what I think about its correctness. Such a demand can be raised about a halakhic directive: even if you think sorting is permitted on Shabbat, you must refrain because the Sanhedrin ruled it forbidden. Here I am not required to think it is permissible; I must carry out the Sanhedrin’s directive. There is no conceptual problem here—even if someone rejects this authority, that is a substantive dispute but not a conceptual problem in its definition. By contrast, regarding facts this cannot be conceptually defined. Consider a person who has concluded he does not believe the Messiah will come. How can one demand of him to believe this merely because some authoritative person or body said the Messiah will come? What is expected of him—that he recite it without believing it in his heart? That is of course possible, but that is not belief in the coming of the Messiah; it is lip movement, mumbling “I believe in the coming of the Messiah.” At most one can try to persuade him he is mistaken; if persuaded, he will of course accept that conclusion. One can even rely on the wisdom or supposed hidden sources of certain people or institutions to convince me they likely know what they are saying. But this is still acceptance by persuasion—and thus not formal authority. A formal-authority demand expects a person to accept even without being persuaded, and that is impossible vis-à-vis facts. One can command me to do something I think should not be done; one cannot command me to think what I do not think (unless I am persuaded I am mistaken). It is like demanding of someone sitting down to think that he is standing, or to think that a circle is a triangle. Here, by all accounts, one cannot say I must accept an order that “right is left.”
Note that this analysis applies even with respect to God Himself, and certainly with respect to the Torah, the Sages, or the Talmuds. If God or Rabbi Akiva command me to believe in the coming of the Messiah, that is an oxymoronic demand that cannot be fulfilled. Even if God knows everything and even if I assume He does not lie, that can at most persuade me that the Messiah will indeed come (i.e., that I am mistaken), and then I will accept it because I have been persuaded. But formal authority about facts means accepting it although I do not believe it—such a demand cannot issue even from God Himself, and of course not from Hazal or any other source.
Substantive Authority About the Realm of Thought
We have seen that formal authority cannot exist regarding thought (because it deals with facts). I would add that, given the picture above, it is also hard to accept substantive authority regarding matters of thought. Suppose an institution or a person makes a claim of thought. On what could it be based? We saw that this is a factual claim. I would therefore expect an observational basis. But as we have seen, while these are factual claims, they are not based on observation. Observation does not yield that God exists or supervises, nor that the Messiah will arrive.
The question of Israel’s “segulah” may seem an exception, for one might try to observe whether there are essential differences between Israel and the nations. But in my book I argued this too is impossible for three main reasons: (1) the concept is ill-defined (what difference would count as a “segulah” difference? There are differences between any two peoples, two persons, or two groups); (2) even if the concept were defined, empirically such a difference does not appear to exist—there are good and bad in every group and nation, and nothing seems essentially different about us; (3) even if we did discover an essential difference, there is no need to attribute it to “segulah” (an essential, genetic, or spiritual genetics). It could just as well be a cultural difference formed by baggage accumulated over generations.
Thus, in most matters of “Jewish Thought” we are dealing with factual claims that cannot be grounded in empirical observation, and therefore it is difficult to accept substantive (expert) authority about them. Of course there remains the possibility of adducing evidence for such a claim from the sources or from philosophical reasoning (itself based on non-sensory apprehension; see the series 155–160). By “sources” here I mean biblical sources, not Hazal; with respect to Hazal it is unclear whence they have information different from what I have. They were not prophets and drew their (sometimes mistaken) conclusions from their own reasoning—just like you and me. As for Scripture, that is of course possible, but in practice grounding theological principles in the Bible is generally quite dubious: people read out of the sources what they already thought beforehand. If one encounters a source that says the opposite of his prior view, he will interpret creatively and stick with his view. I will not re-enter this; I know it will annoy many readers, but the matter has been thoroughly hashed out on the site and, despite emphatic declarations from many, I have yet to encounter even a single genuine counterexample.
To preempt the usual claims that always arise here, I must clarify that I am not speaking about basic, broadly accepted points, such as the existence of God, of Abraham our father, the events of the Exodus and Sinai, and the like. Beyond the fact that even in these issues one can find different interpretations (and propose more, even if we have not yet found them), these are straightforward points, and at least today it is fairly clear that sources are not needed to teach them to us. In any case, my claim here does not concern such basic principles, but rather non-consensual, unknown, and non-obvious insights. Moreover, if we have been persuaded of God’s existence, then our conclusion is that this is a true fact for the nations as well—there are no “Jewish facts” versus non-Jewish ones.
I stress that my words also apply to Maimonides’ Principles of Faith. These are far from self-evident in my view, and their basis in the Torah is shaky. Even if one finds a basis in Hazal, for me that does not suffice. I ask about Hazal what I ask about any sage: how do they know this? If it is a tradition from Sinai—fine; I will accept it by virtue of the substantive authority of God or a prophet (for even they have no formal authority about facts). But if it is not a Sinaitic tradition but rather an interpretation of texts or a sevara (reasoned inference), I can do that too, and I do not see Hazal’s advantage over me. In halakhah I accept their interpretations, like those of the Sanhedrin, for there is substantive authority defined regarding norms (not necessarily because they are correct). But in matters of thought we are dealing with facts; here I do not accept their authority—neither substantive (because I do not think they possess expertise) nor formal (because it is undefined). As far as I can tell, they are not more expert in metaphysics than I or you (in many cases, I would say less), and therefore I do not see any substantive authority of theirs over such questions.
Interim Summary: From Lean Theology to Lean Judaism
Thus, the domain called “Machshevet Yisrael” does not truly exist. There is a collection of musings by different people; I may adopt from it what seems right to me and add ideas of my own—like anyone else. But the fact that something came from this or that sage is meaningless, and certainly irrelevant whether he was Jewish or not. Moreover, if it is true, then every non-Jew should accept it; if it is false, then even a Jew should not. There is the domain of philosophy and of science (facts), where claims are assessed by a true/false prism; there is no place for a domain like “Jewish Thought” (a field judged by who the thinker’s mother was).
It follows that what remains of Judaism after this pruning is halakhah, which deals with norms rather than facts. There is space for authority there, and there one also finds particularity (Jewish distinctiveness). Facts, if true, are true for everyone in the world, Jew or not (a non-Jew, too, should accept that the Messiah will come if that claim is true; and a Jew should reject it if it is not). Norms address those upon whom they are imposed, and halakhah addresses only Jews. A non-Jew can understand that according to halakhah one must redeem a firstborn donkey, but he himself is not obligated to redeem it, for the norm does not command him. Moral norms, of course, obligate all humanity, and facts by definition bind everyone, but religious norms need not. Thus, for example, some opinions hold that a Noahide is not warned against “shittuf” (association). Does that mean that if a gentile believes in shittuf he is correct? Certainly not. The fact is that God is one and has no partners; if that is a true fact, it is true for gentiles as well. Those views merely say that a gentile does not transgress a prohibition by holding such a view (to the extent that prohibitions regarding holding views exist at all—see below).
Finally, even halakhah undergoes a diet and flexibilization in the trilogy’s third book. There I point to non-binding elements that were added to it and to many possibilities for interpreting and changing it. Thus, having excised “Jewish Thought” and then slimmed and loosened halakhah as well, what remains is indeed rather limited—yet flexible and open to interpretation and change. This is the core of my position that Rabbi Inbal attacks. The halakhic “diet” is only in the background. His critique focuses on the second book—i.e., on “Jewish Thought”—and a bit on the seam between it and halakhah.
The Critique’s Claims: What Is “Judaism”?
He opens with the question driving his critique: can one dispense with Maimonides’ Principles and still be considered Orthodox? He immediately proceeds to ask: whence the need to be Orthodox? Anyone can define those who disagree with him as non-Orthodox, and it is difficult to reach consensus on the framework’s definition. In this context he brings my “swimsuit” parable. Suppose we have a tradition from our forefathers that one must go about in swimsuits; they lived in hot Africa, while we live in cold Scandinavia. One can speak of “literalist conservatism,” which holds that even in Scandinavia one must go about in swimsuits; but one can also define “midrashic conservatism,” according to which the preserved rule is that one must dress according to the climate, and therefore in Scandinavia the tradition obligates us to wear warm clothing. Inbal uses this parable to show that one can always define someone as Orthodox by a rule he constructs; therefore there is no agreed definition of Orthodoxy and, consequently, it is difficult to speak of an obligation to be Orthodox.
From here he argues that my creature has risen up against its maker: it follows that Judaism obligates nothing, and therefore there is no definition of who is a Jew or who is obligated by halakhah.[1] If every step can count as faithful to halakhah, then what is “faithfulness to halakhah” at all? Is it not an empty phrase?
Let me say at the outset that I have no intention of engaging the semantic-sociological question, “What is Orthodoxy?” For my part, everyone may define Orthodoxy as he wishes and exclude whomever he pleases. The substantive question is: what is obligation to halakhah and what ought to be included in it—i.e., who is acceptable in God’s eyes and who is not. I am not asking “what is Orthodoxy” but “what is Judaism.” That is not a semantic question—even though one can, of course, always redefine terms. As we will see, this question does not even coincide with who is right and who is wrong. We will now see why Inbal conflates categories and errs philosophically and logically.
The Conflation
Inbal fails to distinguish between facts and norms—surprising, since I devoted much effort to showing this is the basic foundation for all the claims he attacks.
Maimonides’ Principles belong to the realm of thought and thus deal with facts. Regarding those, I argued there is no need for any “midrashic conservatism,” since Maimonides, like anyone else, has no authority in such domains. Authority regarding facts is an oxymoron. What I think is what I think. “Jewish Thought” is what Jews think—i.e., the empty set. I will not enter the question how Inbal would treat disputes among the Rishonim about Maimonides’ Principles and whether, in his view, they fall within his non-empty Orthodox/Jewish framework. As noted, halakhic “rulings” in this area do not exist and are not even definable; thus one cannot claim that halakhah has been decided on such matters.
From what has been said, I indeed conclude that Judaism is defined by norms (halakhah) and not by facts (beliefs). Of course, there is a factual-theological substrate—God’s existence and the giving of the Torah—without which the commandments and their observance are meaningless. But someone who does not accept that substrate does not enter the Jewish framework because he cannot fulfill commandments (and even if he performs them, they are not commandments: commandments are instructions given to us by a commanding source). Such a person is not a “transgressor,” for failing to accept facts is not and cannot be an offense; but his “commandments” are not commandments. In this sense, he does not belong to the Jewish framework. The beliefs here function not as necessarily correct or binding by authority, but as necessary conditions for the very possibility of obeying the norms (the commandments). Below I will address the supposed halakhic obligation to hold certain beliefs, which seemingly turns factual beliefs into a halakhic duty.
So much for beliefs and facts. By contrast, the “swimsuit” parable speaks about norms—halakhah and only halakhah. That parable presupposes commitment to prior principles (something one can assume only regarding norms, not facts), for “midrashic conservatism” comes to justify a proposed new practice (wearing a coat) in the terms of that commitment. The parable shows that such commitment tolerates several interpretations—all deserving the title “conservative” (for our purposes: “committed to halakhah”). In short, Maimonides’ Principles are the subject of the trilogy’s second book, whereas the swimsuit parable belongs entirely to the third. Never the twain shall meet; conflating them mixes categories. Since our topic here is thought, not halakhah (remember, his critique addresses the second book), I will briefly explain why he is also mistaken in his criticism of halakhah—and then return to his main critique.
The Error
I never claimed that every argument and every proposal are legitimate, nor even that they deserve the title “conservative” (= committed to halakhah). Consider someone who says he will go naked in Scandinavia because, in his view, the principle to preserve is that one must wear a covering whose initial letter follows the place one lives: our forefathers in Africa (aleph) wore a bathing suit (beged-yam, bet), hence we in Scandinavia (samekh) must go ‘erom (ayin). This nonsense is not “midrashic conservatism” but muddle. It is devoid of logic; to equate it with the reasonable interpretation (even if one insists on distancing oneself from reason) of “clothing appropriate to the climate” is mere demagoguery. You see that, even on my view, there is a framework to Judaism and there are those who do not fall within it. Inbal’s inference from my words that there is no framework and Judaism is emptied of content simply assumes that every logically valid argument is acceptable.
Incidentally, what I am saying is self-evident, and I cannot see how one can argue otherwise unless he insists on ignoring halakhic facts. The history of halakhah up to our day is full of “midrashic-conservative” arguments like mine, from the greatest decisors. One who rejects such arguments creates a Judaism that never existed and does not exist today. My sole claim is that the gates of interpretation have not been locked—that there are quite a few possible readings and all may count as conservative. I did not say, nor do I think, that every crazy proposal and every foolishness qualify as an interpretation. If someone engages in deception or simply errs in a matter explicitly ruled, he cannot be considered a “midrashic conservative.” He is a heretic or a Reformist in disguise. I expanded on this in my series (475–480) on Modern Orthodoxy; see especially the discussion of the difference between “midrashic conservative” and “Reformist” in column 478.
Ironically, Inbal’s ostensibly conservative claim adopts precisely the childish logic of postmodernism. Those folks, too, claim that every coherent argument is equivalent to every other coherent argument; therefore, there is no way to determine truth and falsehood or to prefer one position or value over another. For them, the aleph-bet argument for going naked in Scandinavia is equivalent to the argument for wearing a coat there, since both rely on (formally) valid reasoning. Their mistake is that even if there is no way to prove to someone that he is wrong—as long as he presents a coherent argument—that does not mean he is right. It may only mean that he is locked in error and cannot be persuaded otherwise. In my example, I assume even the person who offered that argument understands it is wrong and is merely babbling. In other words, there is a difference between the claim that nothing can be proved (except on the basis of assumptions that themselves are unprovable), and the claim that no statement is any truer than its negation.
As I have often explained (my books Shtei Agalot and Emet ve-Lo Yatziv are devoted to this point), the proper Zionist response to postmodern critique is the synthetic stance, not dogmatism. The way to respond is not to bring a proof that my position is certain; that plays on the postmodern field that identifies truth/acceptability with provability. One must point out the critic’s error and explain that I can adopt positions that are not certain if they are reasonable. Even if something is only 90% likely, for me it is acceptable or “true” (not with certainty) until shown otherwise.
Similarly, the alternative I propose to Inbal’s postmodernish critique is that anyone who advances a reasonable argument showing that the norm he proposes preserves the traditional value merits the honorable title “conservative.” That does not mean he is right, but it does mean he belongs to the legitimate domain. Whether he is right—that each of us will determine by his own reasoning. Exactly as we are accustomed to do in every halakhic dispute.
So we have a mistaken conservative and a correct conservative. But there are also those who are not conservative at all. Recall the example of going naked in Scandinavia: there, no conservative argument was made, only a pseudo-argument. In my view, anyone who advances a reasonable case for his proposal can be considered conservative. One who does not is Reformist or a heretic—even if he hides behind a pseudo-argument like the “naked in Scandinavia” one. Again, see column 478.
The Logical Error
To conclude this point: suppose my arguments do in fact entail that there is no agreed framework for religious, theological, or halakhic commitment. Why is that an argument against me? If my premises are correct and the conclusion indeed follows, then the conclusion is that Judaism is in fact empty (on that understanding). Unless you show which premise is wrong, I do not see your point as a critique of my position. At most you have pointed out that my arguments show Judaism to be empty. In other words, Inbal—even if he tries—will not succeed in presenting an Orthodox framework meeting his stringent demands (as we saw). Thus, his attack on me boomerangs back on him. He refuses to distinguish between arguments that hold water and pseudo-arguments that do not. He assumes that once one accepts an argument for changing halakhah, one must accept every argument or pseudo-argument. Yet the annals of halakhah are filled with such arguments. On his own terms, there is and cannot be a definable Orthodox framework—Judaism remains empty.
In the past he wrote me that, for him, the framework is “the words of earlier generations’ sages.” I will not enter the absurdity in that definition and its lack of logical basis. But what does “commitment to the sages of earlier generations” mean? Everything written before the 18th century? Or the 10th? There are disputes among sages. Does history decide who is wiser than whom and who has authority over whom? On what is that based? Where in the Torah—or anywhere—do we find such a criterion? Moreover, does Inbal not know of arguments by Aharonim who disputed Rishonim or interpretations that changed halakhah in light of changed circumstances? Is he a Karaite? Note: by his logic, if there are any such arguments at all, then every such argument is legitimate.
One More Puzzlement to End the First Part
At the end of his critique’s first section, Inbal concludes with this surprising paragraph:
Even if we grant that there is no formal argument that refutes “lean Judaism,” that does not make it legitimate (as we supposedly assume: if a certain view is not “heresy,” then it is legitimate). For by the same token, there is no formal argument refuting Conservative Judaism, or the Christianity of Jesus. “Lean Judaism” itself aspires to claim legitimacy—but if there is no formal argument by which one can invalidate anything at all, what meaning has that aspiration? It is not on the formal plane. “Lean Judaism” wants to be legitimate in Orthodoxy’s consciousness, to be no less equal, no less correct, no less consonant with the sincere will of the tradition-observant believer.
We have seen that Inbal’s weapons against me are mainly empty formalistic pilpul. And here, suddenly, I become the formalist and he attacks me in the name of common sense. Strange indeed. I must remind again that my claim was not “there is no formal argument refuting ‘lean Judaism.’” On the contrary, for me the entire discussion is about whether it is true, not about whether there is an argument that refutes it. The discussion is conducted wholly in the domain of common sense, not in the logical-formalist realm. Precisely for this reason I accept the “coat” argument but not the “nakedness” argument—even though formally both are valid and you will not be able to refute both. We saw above that he attacked me that, if one accepts my form of argument, Judaism is emptied of content; I explained that he is assuming formalism (that all formally valid arguments possess the same standing). It is odd that in this paragraph everything flips. An upside-down world I have seen.
Finally, I never claimed that my views are not “heresy,” if only because I do not accept that criterion. Labeling a position as “heresy” is, to me, a cheap substitute where arguments have run out. When there are no arguments, one pulls labels from a sleeve. I seek what is true, not what is “not heresy.” It is certainly possible that I am mistaken and have not hit upon the truth, but I do not see how anyone could understand from my words that my aim is to be considered “not a heretic.” I am not engaged in sociological classifications; I am not discussing whether my positions are Christianity, heresy, Orthodox Judaism, Reform, or Zen Buddhism. I claim one thing only: that my positions are true. That, and only that, I seek to show—whether or not I have succeeded.
Moreover, my “lean Judaism” does not seek to be “equally worthy,” nor “legitimate in the Orthodox’s consciousness” (which does not interest me in the least), nor even “consonant with the sincere will of the tradition-observant believer” (which interests me equally little). I surmise and understand that this is what Inbal’s Judaism seeks (he himself testifies so, hence he attacks me in the name of convention). The Judaism I speak of seeks to be consonant with the will of the Almighty—even if that does not accord with the views of any of its believers. That is all. I have never sought ratings, nor do I hang on the coattails of popularity and imagined authorities, but on common sense and conceptual, logical analysis. One can, of course, disagree about whether I have succeeded—but as to my aims, the picture seems quite clear. If my goal were to flatter certain believers’ views, the last thing I would do is deny the authority of every power in the universe and his wife, and certainly not go against convention. An upside-down world I have seen.
The Meaning of a Purpose-Driven Discussion
Having “proven” the absurdity of my outlook on the merits, Rabbi Inbal moves on to a teleological question:
In the end, the question is whether we desire the legitimacy and spread of the “lean” outlook, or not?
Before entering that discussion, I must say that the question does not interest me. Not only because I do not know who “we” are and why there is a collective voice here; perhaps So-and-so desires it and So-and-so does not. The phrasing smells of speaking in the name of the nation or the congregation of all believers—perhaps in the name of God Himself. I feel bound to contribute at least my two cents: at least I desire nothing. Neither to promote nor to impede the promotion of the “lean” outlook. Why? That brings me to the second point: because a teleological, interest-based discussion is irrelevant; it is a matter of taste.
For me, the only thing that matters here is whether the outlook is true or not. If it is true, it should be advanced even if you do not desire it; if not, it should not be advanced even if you do. Shifting to a teleological, outcome-oriented discussion is a move to an unprincipled plane—especially when it follows arguments as flimsy and confused on the principled plane as I have described.
But since in the second part of his critique—which ostensibly should be teleological—there also appear arguments on the merits, I will address those and ignore teleological and outcome-oriented questions.
The Question of Authority Regarding Facts: What Is “Minut”?
Inbal opens with an accurate summary of my view about the absence of authority regarding facts. He cites two main reasons I give: (1) authority was granted only for halakhic determinations (there is no authority in Aggadah); (2) authority about facts is a logical contradiction. I explained this in the first part of the column.
I am impressed that he is careful here to be precise—and that is good. He does not find in me a view that denies the existence of true beliefs. I too think there are true beliefs and untrue ones. My claim is that there are no binding beliefs—that is, there is no place for demanding that a person believe something factual (and hence no sanction for holding certain beliefs). More broadly, I argue there are no “Jewish beliefs.” True beliefs should be accepted even if their source is a non-Jew; false beliefs should be rejected even if they come from Moses our teacher. One can, in principle, define a conceptual framework: a “Jewish believer” is only one who believes in some set of facts {X, Y, Z…}, and anyone who deviates is not holding “Jewish belief.” But in my view that definition is not very interesting. One should still not impose sanctions on a person for his beliefs—even if they are, in your eyes, “non-Jewish,” and even if, in your eyes, they are false.
Still, it is clear that sometimes one must take beliefs into account when determining our relation to a person. Take, for example, the question whether to count in a minyan a Jew who does not believe in God or in the giving of the Torah and in prayer. I too agree there is no point in counting him—not as a sanction, but because the concept of prayer simply does not apply to him (in my view he is like a potted plant in the synagogue). Thus, beliefs can have consequences, but not punitive ones; and certainly there is no duty to believe. This is a definition that can also have halakhic ramifications (like inclusion in a minyan).
Inbal begins his critique by saying that these claims clash with Hazal’s halakhic rulings regarding a min and an apikoros, or one who separates himself from the community—for example, that such a person is not counted in a minyan, or the rule of moridin ve-lo ma’alin (“we bring him down and do not raise him”). He claims that Maimonides’ Principles are an interpretation of those halakhic rulings; thus we are dealing with rejection of halakhic authority, not merely of factual authority. He adds that although Maimonides’ Principles are disputed (both in substance and in how far from the “correct” beliefs one must be to be deemed an apikoros), the principle that there are correct beliefs and that one who deviates is a min is agreed upon. And, he says, that is a halakhic determination.
Where Does He Err?
In several places. First, Inbal notes that I already answered these questions in the book. I wrote there that even if he is right, I have no way to fulfill such a halakhah. If I have concluded that the Messiah will not come, I cannot accept a demand to believe in his coming because there is a halakhic duty to do so. That is a logical conclusion and cannot be overridden by a thousand conclusive proofs from Hazal. Therefore arguments from Hazal are irrelevant when dealing with logic (as with facts).
Indeed, as he writes, in my view even if the laws of “minim” existed (and I do not think they do in the form he paints—see below), they are null, because they are based on false factual assumptions. Exactly as the laws permitting killing lice on Shabbat are null, being based on Hazal’s mistaken factual premise. I see no difference. Translating facts into the halakhic sphere does not change the underlying situation: there is not and cannot be authority regarding facts.
But beyond that, Inbal is simply wrong in claiming that the Talmud imposes halakhic sanctions on minim and apikorsim as people who hold certain beliefs because those are their reasoned conclusions. I am speaking of a min who holds certain views because that is where his inquiry led him. Such a person cannot be demanded anything, nor can sanctions be imposed upon him. I do not see how one can dispute this (I also cited halakhic sources that there is “coercion” in matters of belief, such as the well-known responsum of Radbaz). Hazal spoke of the “minim” they encountered, who adopted other beliefs due to desire. The “minim” we encounter today are usually different: they are people who reached different conclusions—usually wrong in my opinion too—but they are their conclusions. Toward such people there is and can be no claim, and I think Hazal—had they known this phenomenon (at least in its current magnitude)—would not have said such things about them. Certainly not the rule of moridin, which all contemporary poskim agree does not apply to such cases (tinok shenishba, no one who knows how to rebuke, etc.), and not even exclusion from a minyan. If a person knows to Whom we pray and believes in prayer, he is counted. Anything beyond that is sanction; but there are no sanctions upon a person for the beliefs he holds (unless he does not actually hold them, and adopts them only due to desire—le-ta’avon—or to provoke—le-hakh’is). I pointed out this distinction briefly here.
Not for nothing are the main categories in the Talmud here: le-ta’avon (out of appetite) or le-hakh’is (out of spite). Beyond that, we find tinok shenishba, who certainly is counted and upon whom there is no sanction—so long as he meets necessary requirements. Moreover, I have often written that for Hazal even a tinok shenishba is someone who, if he knew Torah and halakhah, would surely admit to everything and be fully obligated; he merely grew up in a different world and thus the truth is hidden from him—his deficiency is ignorance. In their world there is no such thing as a person who knows everything and, without desire, reaches other conclusions. In their Talmudic world every person understands that one must be a believer and fulfill mitzvot, but he sometimes grows up in a world where belief and mitzvot are different (Christianity, paganism, etc.). In our world there truly are people who simply do not believe—and that is their genuine conclusion. Even if they knew everything, they would not admit. Therefore, the modern atheist—i.e., a “transgressor” due to ideological/theological coercion—is far more distant from Hazal’s tinok shenishba than they imagined.
Inbal himself presents my explanation that these halakhot are null because their factual and logical basis is absent. That too is correct—but he ignores another claim of mine: that these halakhot are not null but simply do not exist regarding a person who holds different beliefs (erroneous in his inquiry). A person who understands what the truth is is not indicted for an intellectual mistake but for denying a truth he himself knows. Thus, the Talmud does not speak of minim and apikorsim who hold erroneous positions; it speaks of those who adopted such positions out of appetite or spite. They are not judged for holding wrong positions but for failing to hold right ones—or, more precisely, for denying truths they themselves know.
Therefore I am not only saying that these halakhot are null even if I accept Hazal’s authority in halakhah; I am saying they do not exist. Inbal simply errs in halakhah: there is no halakhic sanction upon one who holds erroneous beliefs. My words therefore do not contradict Hazal’s halakhic rulings (even though, as noted, even if they did, it would not matter—halakhot based on false facts are null).
What Is Judaism: Does It Have a Spiritual Message for the World?
After presenting the possibility that these halakhot are null due to their factual/logical basis (a correct but, for me, unnecessary claim), he rejects it because of a further difficulty. In his words:
But there is a much deeper problem. Hazal’s definition of “minut” is something opposed to Judaism; minim are as gentiles, a Sefer Torah they write must be burned. Abolishing all of this validates not only a specific “lean Judaism,” but all heresy. It abolishes Hazal’s principle that the Torah and Judaism have some spiritual statement about the world. A Torah that tells one to do a series of actions is meaningless—mere instructions for hand movements. The Torah is supposed to be the divine message to man about what happens in the world, what will happen, and man’s role in all this.
This does not validate all heresy. It merely says there is no way to demand someone return from it or to impose sanctions upon him. I do indeed agree that, on my approach, Judaism has no particularistic message for the world. Perhaps in the past it did—and even then very minimal: moral principles not then self-evident, belief in God, and the like. But not “principles of faith.” If these are true, then they are true for all humanity, not only Jews.
A Torah that instructs us in a series of actions is not at all meaningless—primarily because those actions bring about spiritual benefit of some kind. My claim that there are no binding theological principles does not mean there are no true principles; nor does it mean that halakhic actions lack a theological substrate. I only claim that we need not understand those meanings and benefits for the actions to have value. Indeed, in halakhah we do not require ta’ama de-kra; according to most interpreters, that means we are to perform these practices independently of their theological “explanation” (not because it is false, but because it is unnecessary for the spiritual ends). I also claim that all of Hazal’s and later sages’ proposals to understand the theological substrate of the commandments never rose above speculation (for they have no way of knowing). I see no problem with this stance, and certainly found none in Rabbi Inbal’s critique.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz always claimed the exact opposite of Inbal: that groups and individuals were not ejected from the legitimate framework because of beliefs, but only when they began to harm their halakhic commitment. His picture is somewhat extreme—as always—but there is certainly truth in it. It is nothing like Inbal’s opposite picture, according to which halakhic disputes do not trouble Hazal as much as disputes about belief. He makes an improper comparison. Lack of halakhic commitment troubles them far more than lack of theological commitment. Disputes do not greatly trouble them—neither here nor there. Even his example of Rabbi Hillel—who, ostensibly, denied the coming of the Messiah (Sanhedrin 99a)—if anything proves the opposite of what he seeks to prove. The Gemara says “May his Master forgive Rabbi Hillel,” but he is still called “Rabbi Hillel,” and his words are brought and discussed—unlike one who abandons halakhic commitment (such as Elisha ben Avuyah, “Aher”), who is treated far more severely. (Recall that the Sefer ha-Ikkarim learns from Rabbi Hillel precisely the lack of importance of “principles of faith.”)
Authority Regarding Facts
His critique of my stance on authority about facts shows that he writes without having read my words:
As for the claim that there is no authority regarding factual questions—it is entirely erroneous. Clearly, when a person is present to a fact, authority is meaningless. But when we do not know the facts, what we always do is turn to authority. The physician is an authority on the factual question of how to cure a disease; the engineer is an authority on the factual question of how much concrete is needed so the column will not collapse on our heads. The authority can err, and when it is clear that he errs we dismiss him. But certainly there is authority regarding factual questions. The judge in court determines whether So-and-so stole or murdered, and we act according to his determination of the facts, even though his determination derives from his authority; the judge did not necessarily bring definitive forensic proof. The reason is that this is the maximum we can do to ascertain the facts, and thus we rely on the one empowered to examine them.
After what we saw at the beginning of the column, it is unnecessary to say that he is speaking here about substantive authority, while I was speaking of formal authority. There is indeed substantive authority even about facts—but I explained above that this is not “authority” in the usual sense; certainly there is no demand upon a person to adopt facts from an expert by virtue of his status unless the person is persuaded the expert is right. This is a simple misunderstanding. It is strange and careless to miss so central a point, elaborated at length in my book, when writing a critique of it.
Conclusion
In three closing paragraphs, Inbal concludes. The first reads:
I am not troubled by the formal side; one can patch together a formula that will sustain “lean Judaism” without internal contradiction, let us say. But if so, why is it not selfish? What is the point of weaving a non-authentic Judaism that walks between the raindrops of obligation by flexible definitions? Just as the book’s preface describes young people who raise questions about religion’s logic and rationality and their rabbis have no answers—used as a push to institute “lean Judaism”—so now, no fewer young people from the “lean Judaism” community will face questions about the logic of accepting halakhot founded on a theology with no guarantee of truth, and of excising the central halakhah that defines the religion. Or at all whether it is a sincere and authentic interpretation to say that providence and prayer, which are central in the Bible, were once a reality but the Creator decided to stop them? And what will the rabbis of ‘lean Judaism’ answer them? Will they appease them with incoherent excuses? Or declare them wicked for having questions?
Here the mistake I explained above returns. I do not claim there are no ideas or theological substrate underlying the halakhot. I only claim that any statement about that substrate is an unbinding speculation and we have no way of knowing what it is. That is all. Moreover, at least in my sample, people are willing to accept positions for which they have no explanation, as long as it is clear that this is what is required of them and what God wants of them because it was given at Sinai. But they are unwilling to accept things that are untrue, unfounded, and patently illogical. If someone reaches the conclusion that he has no explanation for what he does and has no trust in it, offering belly-born speculations—by a wiser or less wise person—as principles of faith will not improve his condition. You must persuade him that it is true. Therefore, my not offering an explanation does not mean that a thesis offering crooked, unfounded “explanations” is preferable. As yeshiva students say, better to leave it be-tzerikh iyyun. What matters is that I be persuaded that these are indeed the acts God requires of me. That suffices for me to feel obligated to perform them. Lame and unpersuasive “explanations” as a basis for these acts will not change this one whit.
In the following paragraphs he concludes:
The idea of principles of faith is basic and necessary to every religion and every group. So long as people are in the gray zone, abstract principles are unnecessary; but when there is discussion of “what is Judaism,” or “what is Christianity,” or anything else, one must reach a definition. Just as it is clear that someone who accepts nothing of Judaism is not part of the Jewish religion, so it is clear that if he accepts one thing—say, refrains from eating pork—he will not be defined as faithful to the Jewish religion. Likewise, it is clear that one must set some minimal boundary. There is no meaning to a religion without a critical mass with a defined minimum—at least in Judaism, which is a religion of demands and not merely a source of inspiration. And this is exemplified by the claim that in theory one can take Judaism itself only as a source of inspiration, as the Reform do—and hence the counter-claim is understandable.
I am not here to determine exactly what Hazal’s “minut” is, and one can certainly debate details. What I am saying (if two of the generation’s greats will agree with me) is that there is such a thing as “minut,” and ‘lean Judaism’ must test itself accordingly: is it “minut” or not? And the claim that in the absence of a formal definition of heresy everything is legitimate licenses heresy and is therefore to be rejected.
You may, of course, define a conceptual framework as you wish. Above I explained that this is possible. I simply argue that it lacks content and meaning. The need for self-definition does not justify the acceptability or correctness of any definition. Moreover, my claim is that there is such a framework—halakhah. The theological contents are products of human minds; it is not fitting to use them to define the framework—certainly not if you wish to derive halakhic and practical conclusions, rather than merely a conceptual definition.
[1] For some reason, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem was thrown in here; it has nothing to do with the issue.
Discussion
Thank you for your enriching and uplifting words, rich in theological arguments and rich in content. More power to you.
No, because writing a book of hundreds of pages whose bottom line is “I don’t see it” — that, apparently, is philosophical and profound.
Ah, and of course with the knockout illustrations of:
“Lots of people read pamphlets in synagogue during prayer”
and –
“We all follow scientific studies even though it’s obvious they contain no providence parameter”
These illustrations are a real knockout blow to the devotees of providence.
What originality, daring, and creativity. I am amazed.
Truly philosophy, wisdom, and depth at their best.
How fortunate we are to have merited that you continue to enrich us. More power to you. Keep shattering the arms and legs of the heretics and fools of the world.
From me, the least of your thousands of admirers: Michi
Hi,
For a long time now I’ve been trying to understand your claim that there is no such thing as Jewish thought. A defined philosophical field, as I understand it, is first of all defined by its contents. Just as there is feminist philosophy (sometimes very bad), philosophy of science, or philosophy of existence, there is also philosophy of Judaism — especially the kind that comes from within and aims to explain and defend Judaism.
What is wrong with the picture I described?
I have a feeling that Rabbi Inbal and others like him understand the obligation to believe in certain principles of faith as a religious-spiritual duty — a kind of stance of the soul, something that must exist, and that need not correspond to the factual test.
I’m not saying this is a reasonable or correct logical move, only that in my opinion there is a different language here.
I don’t think that if you sat down with Rabbi Inbal and asked him whether the Messiah must necessarily arrive within, at most, the next 240 years, or whether there is necessarily some special virtue in the people of Israel, he would simply answer yes, or that he is one hundred percent sure that the Holy One, blessed be He, transmitted that information to Hazal. Rather, it is a kind of spiritual content and proper outlook to maintain in light of the words of Scripture, the prophets, and Hazal, who, say, speak about the redemption of the world and resurrection of the dead, and about the disgrace of the nations and the praise of the people of Israel — in the sense that one who denies these things, or is skeptical about the very possibility of the Holy One, blessed be He, carrying them out after it is explained in many places that this is His will, does not really believe fully in the possibility of the Holy One, blessed be He, as all-powerful, or as someone who can intervene in the world and give the Torah. Or in the brief wording of Rabbi Ashkenazi: “Anyone who lacks humility will be revealed as a heretic.”
I think this is also why it is easy for them and others like them to accept people who deny basic principles of faith מתוך Yiddishkeit warmth — like Rabbi Tzadok and Mei HaShiloach, who nullified the principle of free choice. Or Rabbi Yosef ben Avtul and other kabbalists who argued for something that sometimes smells like two powers — about an infinite evil that existed within God, disturbed Him, and was therefore separated from Him and made into an independent entity. Talk about faith in the heart being many times more important than actual observance of mitzvot — something that smells like Christianity.
And down to our own day, when we witness very strange phenomena in which rabbis warmly embrace a declared atheist woman married to a gentile — someone who in her private life places herself outside halakhic obligation, both in the sphere of actions and in the basic sphere of consciousness of faith in the Holy One, blessed be He — and in the very same breath they lash out at Torah scholars who observe Torah and mitzvot. And what is the reasoning? That the former has a natural connection to the traditional and religious public and its values, while the latter are cold and connected to the atmosphere of modern culture.
I personally do not agree with this approach; I only came to sharpen the point that the two of you are conducting a deep and piercing discussion, but are starting from different points of departure.
Hello Rabbi,
More power to you; the answer is indeed in place, although it is certainly strange that Rabbi Inbal did not already see this in the book.
I have one question: you wrote, “Beyond that, my ‘thin’ Judaism does not want to be ‘equal no less,’ nor ‘legitimate in the awareness of the Orthodox’ (which does not interest the tip of my little finger), and not even ‘compatible with the sincere will of the tradition-observant believer’ (which interests its other end).”
My question is: what is the other end of the little finger? It only has one tip.
Maimonides, in several places, addresses the obligation to believe a prophet, and he emphasizes that this does not mean the prophet cannot lie. He gives as an example two witnesses, whose testimony we accept even though they may have lied.
According to Maimonides, as is well known, “I am the Lord” is a verse that commands us to believe in God, or “Hear, O Israel” is a verse that commands us to believe in His unity. So too the belief that the Torah will not be replaced: ostensibly the point is to give halakhic force to the transmitted Torah and not to some other Torah.
So there are many theological “rulings” of Maimonides that are halakhot in every sense. Regarding prophecy, which is a specific belief, Maimonides makes a point of emphasizing that it may be false. Regarding the principles of faith, which are general, Maimonides believes this can never be false; but the belief obligates something very pointed and specific, and therefore we are dealing with a norm and not a fact. In other words, my belief that the world was created in six days means: “The Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Torah, and it says there that the world was created in six days, and therefore as far as I am concerned that is the length of time creation took. But the determination concerns my belief, not the facts.”
It is hard for me to elaborate here. I elaborated in my book that is being reviewed here. Of course one can define a field of study or research as Jewish thought, but the accepted definitions do not hold water. You can define any engagement with issues like Messiah, redemption, and providence as Jewish thought. But when you get down to the positions and their standard justifications, if the justifications are that it is written here or there, that is not acceptable to me as a justification. And if the justifications are general philosophical ones, then it is general philosophy and not Jewish thought. There is thought produced by people born to Jewish mothers — an irrelevant and uninteresting category — but in my opinion there is no such thing as Jewish thought.
The end attached to the palm of the hand.
As is well known, I am also shaved underneath the beard.
On the logical level I am willing to accept such demands. For example, I have written more than once that the claim that everything a seasoned student will one day innovate was already said to Moses at Sinai is a normative statement and not a historical one. But that really is not Jewish thought; it is plain halakhah. I have no principled dispute with that (though I will not necessarily agree to such a definition in every case).
Every body of thought takes its name from the nation it comes from, I think. Is there really anything Chinese about Chinese thought? These are ideas thought up by Chinese people. The same applies to Greek philosophy, Taoist philosophy, and other spiritual contents. If a gentile studies the thought of Maimonides, for example, then he is indeed engaged in Jewish thought; and if a Jew studies Greek philosophy, then that is indeed what he is engaged in — and the name of the content does not change because the particular student belongs to a different nation.
Unfortunately I haven’t had time to read everything thoroughly, but before anything else, one question is bothering me.
The impression one gets from Hazal — and one can find echoes of this in Maimonides (end of the Laws of Kings) — is that Judaism functions as bearing a message to the world: the faith of unity. It may be that its historical role ended once idolatry was no longer on the table, and perhaps there are secondary roles, such as “to perfect the world under the kingdom of the Almighty,” to make “a dwelling place below,” and the like.
If we grasp Judaism as an ethos, and Jews as partners in that same ethos, then there is definitely room here for formal authority. Quite apart from facts and what is true or false, there are boundaries of that ethos. Whoever shares it shares in this project of being Jewish (mainly duties and responsibility, rights in the present/the World to Come, etc.); whoever does not, does not.
The sanctions are immediate: not being counted for a minyan (even someone who believes in prayer but does not believe in another principle of faith), prohibition of wine they touched, and so on — but this is not because of the heresy/error, rather it is a form of excommunication and distancing from the community of believers.
Of course one can disagree and argue about who has authority and what the boundaries are, but I find it hard to understand the claim that conceptually formal authority cannot exist. I am quite inclined to assume that there is no such authority in the context of Judaism, but conceptually this is not a fallacy.
Fine, then go and study Belgian or Zimbabwean philosophy. I said that one can define whatever one wants, including the definition that every philosophy of a person born to a Jewish mother is Jewish thought. You can also define the study of bees’ wings as Jewish thought.
You should read it. I answered all this.
Can’t it be said that Hazal imposed sanctions on someone who does not believe in a certain set of beliefs not as punishment but in order to distance false opinions?
Perhaps Hazal reached some kind of consensus.
Regarding sanctions against heretics: I didn’t understand what the problem is. If there is a person I think is mistaken, and his mistake is harmful, why not impose sanctions on him? After all, if I hold that what I think is really true, and I trust that he can arrive at the truth — why not “help him”? And besides helping him, this creates a society in which it is clearer what is true and what is false, and helps people not get confused about that.
For example, wouldn’t you want society to ostracize people who think murder is fine? It is obvious to you that they are wrong, and you understand the gravity of the mistake, so why not try to minimize it?
Maybe it is important for society to be open and allow people to think what they want, but at any price? Won’t there be cases in which you would admit that the advantage of going the right way outweighs the need for a pluralistic society?
In principle it can. And it is certainly possible that they reached a consensus. The question is whether that happened and whether it obligates us today. A few remarks.
From their words it appears that this is not the meaning of those halakhot. They distinguish between one who sins for appetite and one who sins in order to provoke. Clearly they have no category of an ideological apostate (one coerced in his beliefs). There is the category of a captured child, which is a remote category reserved for someone raised among gentiles. Their assumption is that anyone raised among Jews certainly holds the correct conclusions unless his impulse overcame him. That is not the situation today. They were not speaking about a situation like ours. And one indication of this is that even conservative decisors of our time agree that those halakhot do not apply to an atheist or just a secular Jew today. That is, they too agree that Hazal were not speaking about such a model (and apparently did not know it, at least not as a phenomenon).
Of course one can say that this is a “noble lie,” meaning that Hazal knew of the model and ignored it, treating it as though it did not exist. That does not seem likely to me.
I find it difficult to understand the principal methodological distinction you make between “Jewish thought” and other bodies of knowledge within philosophy, for example feminist philosophy. In my view there is no such distinction (though there are here and there differences one can quibble over). In both cases there are no absolute answers, but one should not infer from that the complete opposite — that the justifications are worthless or that the definitions are always entirely arbitrary. For example, the subject of Messiah and redemption is a quintessential subject of Jewish thought even if you find that in certain generations prominent thinkers did not see it that way. It may be that one day we will re-adopt their position. It may be that we will conclude that this is a topic found only on the periphery of Judaism (I tend to think so). Anything is possible. Meanwhile this is an efficient and justified working assumption, and it seems to me that the theoretical price of abandoning it is too high.
As for the principled dispute between you and Inbal:
I think both of you describe your friend’s hump correctly but do not see your own.
Inbal is troubled by the fact that your picture of “thin” Judaism leads to skepticism, and therefore a consistent, honest Jew would have to turn his back on such a religion. I think he is right in this criticism.
What he misses (and you do not) is that this is indeed Judaism.
I did not see that the rabbi addressed Rabbi Inbal’s claim regarding halakhah based on theology (as Rabbi Inbal noted in his response to the rabbi’s response).
In relation to the Torah, one really does not need to know the theology behind it in order to observe the commandments.
But rabbinic halakhah is based on a theology they held, and if in this area they have no authority, what is the meaning of accepting halakhah that derives from Hazal’s mistaken conceptions, so that it turns out we are observing meaningless halakhah?
Two points:
1. You claim that the status of Hazal’s reasoning is like yours, since they were not prophets. But one should remember that concepts like the holy spirit, a heavenly voice, and the like did exist. The transition from prophecy to no prophecy is not abrupt but gradual. More than that: despite the sugya of “It is not in heaven,” there are hints that prophecy does participate to some extent in the creation of the Oral Torah: the fact that the transmitters of the tradition were also prophets (a proof of Rav Kook), and the special status of the Great Court when it sat in the Chamber of Hewn Stone, “in the place that the Lord will choose.” Even among the rishonim there are here and there testimonies to insights that came from heaven. So it does not seem reasonable to compare your own reasoning to the reasoning of Hazal, who were much closer to the tradition and held, at least partially, tools that we do not have.
True, Judaism has no specific message today, since its messages have already become common property and have largely been assimilated into the other religions. But its strength lies mainly in the balances between different values. For example, in other religions the conservatives behaved far less moderately than in Judaism (compare the communities of devout Christians or Muslims, who murdered anyone who crossed their path, with the behavior of conservative Jewish communities, which maintained much more moderate conduct even toward gentiles and heretics. And there is no need to elaborate on the comparison between the measured use of force by the IDF and the way other armies operate).
And while we’re at it, Rabbi Inbal’s response: https://rationalbelief.org.il/%d7%94%d7%90%d7%9e%d7%a0%d7%9d-%d7%90%d7%99%d7%91%d7%93%d7%a0%d7%95-%d7%90%d7%aa-%d7%94%d7%a8%d7%95%d7%97-2/
Exactly. I trust that he can reach the truth. That is precisely what I wrote. But someone who examined the matter and came to different conclusions (a model apparently unknown to Hazal, certainly not as a phenomenon) is certainly coerced. Sanctions can also be imposed on him in order to deter and educate others, but we plainly see that the “captured child” in Hazal is not included in those sanctions — and the atheist of today is far more coerced than their captured child.
Regarding murder, that is not similar. Today we assume that every person understands that murder is forbidden. If I were actually to encounter a person convinced that there is nothing wrong with murder, he really would bear no criminal responsibility. Of course protection against him would be required, but not punishment. Beyond that, here there is my direct self-defense against him. Defending oneself against opinions is far more far-reaching. And finally, murder is a value, whereas we are talking about facts.
As for the price of tolerance and pluralism, I have an article that deals with exactly this. Search here on the site for “The Price of Tolerance.”
Shalom wrote in the responsa: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%a6%d7%99%d7%95%d7%95%d7%95%d7%99-%d7%94%d7%a7%d7%91%d7%94-%d7%9c%d7%97%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%91
In your reply to Inbal you wrote this:
Note that this analysis also exists with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, and certainly with respect to the Torah, Hazal, or the Talmuds. If the Holy One, blessed be He, or Rabbi Akiva were to command me to believe in the coming of the Messiah, that would be an oxymoronic demand that cannot be fulfilled. Even though the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything, and even if I assume He does not lie, this could at most convince me that the Messiah will indeed come (that is, that I am mistaken in my reasoning), and then I would accept it because I was convinced. But formal authority with respect to facts means accepting it despite my not believing it, and such a demand cannot come even from the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, and certainly not from Hazal or any other source.
If the Holy One, blessed be He, can command you to love Him, why can He not command you to know Him, to know the Messiah, and every other truth?
After all, it is obvious that the command “And you shall love…” means that you should do everything incumbent upon you in order to arrive at love. And inherent in that divine command is the simple knowledge that you can get there, and that it depends on your actions, and about that you are commanded.
In the same way, the Holy One, blessed be He, can command you to know quantum theory, or the coming of the Messiah, or even that 2+2=4, since He knows this is within your power and you have a task to do the actions that will bring you to that knowledge/thought.
The claim of yours quoted above seems to me so shallow and superficial that I suspect I have not understood it at all.
I would appreciate it if you could enlighten me as to your meaning.
And this is what I answered:
It is certainly possible to command someone to try to arrive at certain items of knowledge. But that is only in a place where the assumption is that if one works, one will probably arrive at those items of knowledge (as in physics, or science). That is not the case in the theological context.
It is certainly possible that Hazal thought so, and perhaps in their environment it really was so. Clearly their assumption was that this lay within everyone’s reach, and therefore in their view, someone who did not reach it was following the counsel of the evil inclination. And that is precisely what I wrote. But in our time this is not so, and as I wrote, that reality was not familiar to them.
At the end of the day, if I truly was not convinced (not because of the evil inclination), no complaint can be made against me. At most one can presume that it happened because of the evil inclination, and Hazal apparently did presume that. But the reality here is different today, and they were not speaking about such a reality.
And again he answered:
I was addressing your claim that a command of the Holy One, blessed be He, to a person to know/think something is an oxymoron.
Why did you jump to Hazal?
Do you agree that a command of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the realm of thought as well as in the realm of feeling is not an oxymoron?
My answer:
Absolutely not. It is a complete oxymoron. At most there can be a command to try to arrive at the correct conclusions, but in the end either you will get there or you won’t. There is no justification whatsoever for making claims against a person who arrived at an incorrect conclusion. This is exactly how people interpret positive commandment no. 1 in Maimonides (the objections to it reflect exactly my position here).
I wrote that you can define the field that way; definitions can tolerate anything. But referring to Jewish thought as part of Torah means that importance is attached to the question of who wrote it and that there is authority for correct answers, etc. This is not an a priori inquiry that anyone can conduct from his own reasoning and each person can accept or not. It is philosophy (Jewish?) and not Jewish thought. If you want to define philosophy produced by someone born to a Jewish mother as Jewish thought — enjoy. Definitions can tolerate anything.
As for the debate with Inbal, I most certainly do see my hump and do not see it as a hump. You are right: this is indeed Judaism. Facts are not a hump.
I described your Judaism (and in this I am probably aligned with Inbal) as skepticism, something a consistent and honest Jew would have to turn his back on. In response you answered me, “You are right: this is indeed Judaism.”
Do you see Judaism that way? Is it skeptical in your eyes?
I definitely addressed that. I wrote that a halakhah based on an incorrect assumption is null and void, like the louse on Shabbat. But it is not true that one cannot observe the halakhot without understanding the infrastructure underlying them, or even without identifying with it. Moreover, Hazal themselves were usually not aware of that infrastructure. And of course the principles of faith are certainly not the infrastructure underlying the overwhelming majority of halakhot. Most of them do not reflect theological positions at all. The minority that does may be mistaken, and may also be binding in itself without committing us to its underlying infrastructure (see blog post 257, which is devoted to this). Therefore all this is beside the point.
Incidentally, it is certainly possible to be committed to halakhah and at the same time not accept the infrastructure at its base. This is not my position; it is itself halakhah. See in blog post 257 on bottom line versus reasons (a majority in a court based on different reasons is still a majority). The bottom line is the halakhah, not the reasons. A person can observe the whole halakhah even if, in his opinion, it is based on socialist values, while he himself is a capitalist. There is no principled problem in that. Does Inbal think such a person has not observed halakhah? That is absurd. Hazal’s thought is not binding because it is values and theology (facts), not norms. What binds is only the halakhah they ruled (even if based on that thought). See the above-mentioned posts.
I was not aware of his response. I will try to read it when I get a chance.
You are assuming things about the holy spirit that I do not accept. The proofs you brought are very flimsy. See Rabbi Margaliot’s introduction to Responsa from Heaven. The holy spirit of the sages did not help them avoid simple mistakes, so I find it hard to accept that they had it.
The ideas you brought at the end about balances, too, you accept because they seem correct to you and not because this is Judaism. If so, we have again returned to the same point.
Not skeptical, but rather not including concrete theology. Consequently there remains room for doubts and for different positions.
I argued that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded a person to know a certain thing (for example, that there is certainly a Messiah who will come), then that person is certainly capable of it.
And you are essentially answering me that if he did not succeed in knowing it, then it must be that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not command him (that is the sharp point of your words, as I understand them).
I place the Holy One, blessed be He, as the point of reference, and you place yourself as the point of reference.
Is that correct?
And by analogy to forbidden sexual relations: if I did not manage to restrain myself, then perforce it was never forbidden to me?
And in general I did not understand what this has to do with an oxymoron. If a teacher commands a student to know the multiplication table by tomorrow, is that an oxymoron?
The Holy One, blessed be He, commands a person to love Him — is that an oxymoron?
True, in commandment 1 there is something of an oxymoron, and this is not the place to discuss it. But that has no connection whatsoever to other commands of the Holy One, blessed be He, to know His governance in the world.
It seems to me as though you are challenging the ability of the Holy One, blessed be He, to know what a human being is capable of — whether, for example, a person is capable of knowing the multiplication table or not. Strange as it sounds, that is what emerges from your words: “The Holy One, blessed be He, does not have the ability to know whether a person is capable of knowing the multiplication table; therefore He can only command him to try to know it, but He has no claim and will never have any claim if he does not know it.”
In my view, the Holy One, blessed be He, certainly has the ability to know human capacity and to determine that if a person did not attain a certain piece of knowledge, then he must have been negligent in his work. And therefore He certainly can command a person to know, and not merely to try to know.
Regarding your conception of Judaism:
Inbal (and little old me) can tell you that you are missing the point from two opposite directions:
On the one hand, if you propose a “thin theology,” then that too is concrete and has certain principles. That does not fit with your last response to me.
On the other hand, your theology is still too thin and therefore necessarily leads to skepticism. And skepticism not only does not fit with Judaism, it also does not fit with truth in general. And that is what Inbal was complaining about.
Would you relate in the same way to a halakhic ruling written by a gentile?
Of course I mean a gentile Torah scholar expert in Shas and the decisors, etc., and there have been such people. (For example: Rabbi Weissmandl of blessed memory told admiringly about the person in charge of the Jewish department in the British Museum library, a Torah scholar and tremendous expert, and called him “a holy gentile”…).
And if you say that if the ruling itself is correct and well founded you will accept it while disregarding the “decisor,” then halakhah too is not “Jewish.” Maybe you would agree to that. I only wanted to clarify to make sure I understood you.
And while I have entered to comment — the argument over the second book of the trilogy is barren in my opinion, even if all the trees of the forest were quills and all the seas were ink, etc. etc.
But there is another source of authority (perhaps that is not the right word, nu, never mind) that you ignore — testimony. On the basis of investigated and verified testimony, people are even executed. The prophets testify about what they heard from the Holy One, blessed be He. That certainly obligates. It may be that the correct interpretation of their words has been lost to us, and therefore every interpreter offers suggestions. Still, how does that damage the very authority of the Tanakh and prophecy? The claim “everyone interprets as he sees fit” seems to me somewhat childishly evasive, with all due respect.
That is indeed a correct description. But you cannot make the Holy One, blessed be He, your point of reference, because you do not know it. A person takes his own point of reference. If you see that people really believe something else, then from your standpoint that is the situation. The speculation that the Holy One, blessed be He, knows they are all lying or captive to their impulse is speculation — if only because you are not Him.
I am not challenging God’s ability to know everything. I certainly accept that He can know. You are not claiming only that He can know, but are also explaining to me what He knows (that human beings can attain the truth). Our disagreement is about that, not about the first claim. From my impression, I claim that not all people arrive at the correct conclusions. I have no indication that I am mistaken, and therefore the conclusion is that this is probably what the Holy One, blessed be He, knows about human beings as well.
The Holy One, blessed be He, could also have created the world without gravity. But He created it with gravity. A strange argument.
In short, I claim that He did not command people to know a certain thing. You claim that He did, and I do not know on what basis, when this contradicts the information we have about the world. You raise the possibility that perhaps this information is not correct and the Holy One, blessed be He, has different information. Perhaps. That is a possibility. But it is much more sensible to conclude that the information is correct and He truly did not command it. That is all.
The analogy to forbidden sexual relations is irrelevant, though partly correct. Forbidden sexual relations are a value, while beliefs are facts. The effort to arrive at facts is indeed a value (a norm), not a fact. Hence if you cannot restrain yourself and you transgress forbidden sexual relations, then you sinned under compulsion. And likewise, if you have no way to arrive at the truth, then you are coerced in your beliefs and there is no claim against you. But in forbidden sexual relations you know what is right and you yourself understand that you failed. Whereas in beliefs, your beliefs are what you think is true.
The thinness of the theology does not stem from lack of content, but from the fact that the content is not binding and is in no one’s possession. Judaism includes belief in God and revelation of the Torah and commitment to the commandments. That is my theology in a nutshell. Someone who does not believe this is mistaken, but there is no claim against him. I have no authority to compel anyone to believe these principles, but these are the principles I think are correct, and they are what define who is a Jew (or what Judaism is).
You missed an important distinction: the ruling binds if it is correct, not because the gentile said it. But it binds only Jews.
Beyond that, in halakhah there is (formal) authority, while in thought there is not. That does not mean every decisor has authority, but the Sanhedrin and the Talmud do. A ruling of the Sanhedrin would bind even if in my opinion it is incorrect (within the limits of a mistaken application of the command to heed the sages), unlike a gentile or an unauthorized Jew. In thought there is no such thing.
The authority you are talking about is what I called substantive rather than formal authority. Clarify that it is correct, and I elaborated on this at great length here in the post as well.
And regarding the childishness you mentioned at the end: sometimes the child says the simple truth that adults repress and deny. Cf. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (“The king is naked”).
And there is already a part II to R. Inbal’s claim (without a frog).
Apparently I missed something in what you wrote, because I really got lost.
From what I understood at first, your claim was that the Holy One, blessed be He, can command a person to do, but cannot command him to attain some piece of knowledge.
Now it seems to me that your meaning is that it is certainly possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded a person to attain some piece of knowledge (not to try to attain it, but to attain it).
But a person can never know that the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed commanded this. Is that your meaning? It is very strange to say that He commanded and the person has no way of knowing whether He commanded, is it not?
So we are left only with the point that it is possible that He commanded a person to know, and then the person can know. And it is possible that He did not command a person to know, and then it is possible that the person can and possible that he cannot. Agreed?
For some reason, from the way you address the matter it seems as though either the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded man to know everything, or else He did not command him to know at all.
Why can it not be that He commanded you to know that there is a Messiah, but did not command you to know the sefirah of Yesod within Keter?
A thought:
The rabbi claims that “The meaning of this for our purposes is twofold: a. Formal authority with respect to matters of thought (facts) is not even logically defined. b. A person who makes claims in the realm of thought usually offers mere hypotheses, at least when it comes to facts not based on observation.”
While I accept each of these arguments on its own, it seems to me that together they neutralize each other — although formal authority cannot exist with respect to a fact that can be observed, one could say that דווקא when it comes to a fact that cannot be based on observation, such authority can exist — authority deriving from an exclusive observational ability entrusted to the bearer of authority and not to others.
Of course you will argue (and indeed you did) that you do not accept the premise of such an observational ability with respect to any mortal, but if so, that should be the central claim and not the two arguments above, which together sum to zero.
(It also seems to me that this is the root of the dispute and the reason it cannot be decided — belief in the sages’ capacity for observation and hence in their authority to determine matters of thought as facts — like belief in the creation of the world and hence in the existence of the Creator’s command — is hard to decide and prove logically, and therefore cannot obligate one whose conclusion is different.)
In response to “A” (not me) appearing at this link (https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%9e%d7%a9%d7%9e%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%91%d7%9e%d7%a6%d7%95%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%a9%d7%9c-%d7%9b%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%a8) you argued that a person can deceive himself into believing a certain claim (a heretic by negligence). That means that even in your view there is choice in belief. At one point you defined this as a choice in judgment and not in the final result. In any event, once there is some choice, the command is not an oxymoron. It may be utterly unreasonable (in my opinion), but it is possible.
And the theologian grew fat and kicked.
But did not grow wise.
Because of you I discovered I’m bald underneath my hair..
How do you get over that?
mozer, consider Michi’s illustration that religious people deep down also do not believe in providence, since it is known that they use medications whose trials did not take into account the providence parameter together with the person’s spiritual condition.
I think this can be improved even further, so I’ll go along with Michi’s line –
The fact that religious people do not go and jump off a cliff several hundred meters high shows that they do not believe in providence.
For if they really believed in providence, they would jump knowing that God would perform a miracle, grow wings for them, and instantly turn the ground into a huge pleasant landing cushion.
Pathetic.
I do not understand all this pilpul, nor do I understand what is unclear in my words. The Holy One, blessed be He, can command us to learn and think in order to reach the correct conclusion, but He cannot command us to hold the correct conclusion.
I wrote that there are two possibilities: either He did not command us to know because there is no way to carry it out, or He commanded us and there is a way. Since there is no way, it is clear that He did not command it. A command to try, of course, is possible.
That’s it. I’ve completely exhausted this.
You are conflating two types of authority. There is no formal authority regarding facts, even facts that cannot be observed. At most you can convince me that the authority-source knows something I do not know, and then that is substantive authority.
No, because there cannot be, and is not, a command to deceive oneself.
A few points.
1- I wanted to ask whether the rabbi has a way to analyze Maimonides’ position on this issue. On the one hand he explicitly writes in 3 places in his Commentary on the Mishnah that all authority is not over facts but over practical conduct (for example his language in the chapter Helek: “I have already mentioned to you many times that any dispute among the sages that does not lead to practical action, but is only belief in a matter, there is no reason to rule halakhah like one of them.” In the Maor edition they noted the other places where he mentioned this principle in the Commentary on the Mishnah).
On the other hand, in Helek itself he attaches the Thirteen Principles to halakhah?
And in Guide of the Perplexed, Part II, chapter 40: “When you find a law whose whole aim and the whole aim of its giver, as inferred from its acts, is indeed the ordering of the state and its affairs, and the removal of oppression and violence from it, and it pays no attention in any way to speculative matters nor takes care to perfect the rational faculty, nor does it take note whether the opinions are sound or unsound, but its whole purpose is the ordering of human affairs among themselves in whatever way, and that they attain some success according to the view that leader saw fit — know that that law is conventional and man-made — as we mentioned from the members of the third class, namely those perfected only in the imaginative faculty.
But when you find a law all of whose ordinances aim, in addition to the improvement of bodily affairs, also at improvement of belief, and which intends to impart correct opinions concerning God, may He be exalted, first, and concerning angels, and strives to make men wise, to give them understanding, and to awaken them until they know all existence in its true form — know that that governance is from Him, may He be exalted, and that law is divine.”
Also regarding prophecy: although he emphasizes three times in Foundations of the Torah that the words of a prophet may be false, nevertheless in his famous letter on astrological decrees he writes: “Know, my masters, that it is not fitting for a person to believe except in one of three things.
The first is a thing for which there is clear proof in a person’s reason, such as arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy.
The second is a thing that a person grasps by one of the five senses, such as knowing and seeing that this is black and that is red, and the like by sight; or tasting that this is bitter and that is sweet; or feeling that this is hot and that is cold; or hearing that this is a clear sound and that is an echoing sound; or smelling that this is a bad smell and that is a pleasant smell, and the like.
And the third is something a person receives from the prophets, peace be upon them, and from the righteous.
And a person who possesses דעת should distinguish in his mind and thought all the things he believes and say:
This I believed because of tradition;
This I believed because of sensation;
And this I believed because of reason.
But whoever believes in something that is not of these three kinds, concerning him it is said, ‘The simple believes every word.’
2- In principle, I identify the difficulty in the very idea that one can determine an interpretive position as a fact with the same difficulty that has stood at the base of science since the days of Plato: one cannot know a law by knowing several particulars (induction). One can put it this way: one can never know the cause itself from the result. Thus one can never infer the reason for a mitzvah from the mitzvah. Similarly, one cannot infer any reality from a previous/other reality.
Aristotle tried to establish “natural categories” and deduce the conclusions from them. It seems that the rabbi also accepts this possibility (defining custom in the bathing-suit example), but limits it to halakhic questions of conduct, not to drawing conclusions about objective reality. It seems that this is how matters are decided by reasoning, since according to Aristotle causes do not exist separately from things but only within them (“heavy” is something that falls downward, but one cannot say that a heavy thing falls downward because of X or Y. It seems to me that the rabbi mentions on the site many different illustrations of this idea). In this sense, interpreters of the spirit give an external cause for the appearance of facts (details of halakhot, for example), but they can never really derive them from the particulars.
The other answers defending science are nothing but apologetics, such as Popper’s principle of falsification and the like. Some are more self-aware (conventionalism, and even more so instrumentalism), and some less so (the empiricism of Bacon, Newton, etc.). So too in the field of Jewish thought.
3- For many years I have been telling friends the idea expressed in this post (I have thought so on my own all my life — surprising as that may be; it seems that the Maharal as well, in Tiferet Yisrael chapter 6, held a similar view), and they always asked me why the Torah, in which Hazal expound every jot, goes on at such length in the narrative sections, and even more than it does in the verses of halakhah. It is a troubling question, but it does not answer the proofs and difficulties involved in deriving a worldview from the Torah.
Not long ago I thought that perhaps in this matter there is a reason for the rule that matters written you may not recite orally, and matters oral you may not write down. One should see the written Torah as the playing field on which the thinkers play and with which they correspond (as some commenters before suggested), and every such proposal is beautiful. And for this very reason, matters oral you may not write down: writing an interpretation of the Torah sanctifies one specific interpretive possibility and neutralizes others. Indeed we truly know how much unnecessary weight was thereby added to the shoulders (admittedly sturdy shoulders) of Judaism.
With self-awareness I add that of course one cannot prove that my interpretation is correct, but still I am no worse than the other interpreters of texts.
How do you answer the claim about taking medicine?
So you are confirming what I assumed; so what did I miss?
As for “authority over facts”: I did not come to argue, because this argument will never end. I will suffice with the remark that this axiom of your honor’s is not at all necessary. The “facts” you are discussing are a kind of Platonic ideas, which indeed require no authorization from any authority in order to exist. But as I recall, Aristotle already, in his criticism of his teacher, wrote that these are not the facts human beings deal with. The question is: from where do we get our knowledge of the facts? The sources of knowledge can be observations, logical inference, revelation, and also the testimony of reliable witnesses.
The basis of our faith in the Torah is revelation. Logical consideration (with all due respect to Anselm of Canterbury, to whom you devoted quite a number of pages in the first book) is not enough. Russell, as I recall, said that it is easier to mock Anselm than to find the flaw in his argument, but in his opinion there was such a flaw. I am not enough of an authority to judge this matter, but Russell was no less a logician than you, and therefore logical consideration requires empirical support — and this came to Abraham and the prophets through revelation, and to us through a one-time revelation in history before the entire people. Note well and do not forget that there is no other religion in the world that dares support its doctrines by revelation before an entire nation — and that is no small matter.
As you wrote, the physician is “substantive authority regarding facts” because he knows more than I do. So too the prophet and Hazal, because the prophet had revelation and Hazal have the tradition of the Oral Torah that we do not. Perhaps they are not “authority over ideal Platonic facts,” but those facts are irrelevant to us. For our purposes, they are certainly authority concerning the facts I am supposed to believe in that lie beyond my capacity for scientific investigation (such as: the World to Come, Messiah, etc.), like the scientist or “expert witness” in court. The court still remains sovereign to decide whether it believes the witness or not, but if the court determined that the witness is credible and expert, it is rather bound to his testimony, and enough said.
- There is an article by David Henshke in Da’at that deals with this difficulty. As I recall, his claim is that with regard to a conceptual principle expressed in halakhah, there is a halakhic ruling. He also shows that in the three places in the Commentary on the Mishnah where Maimonides writes that one does not rule halakhah because it is an aggadic matter, he nevertheless does rule halakhah in his halakhic work (the Mishneh Torah).
I did not understand what the continuation of the paragraphs in this section has to do with anything. - I did not understand what you said, nor what it was meant to say. Is this a question?
- Again I did not understand. It looks like a contradiction. Either what is written is fixed and not open to interpretation, or on the contrary open to too many interpretations.
In short, if you want to say something, write clearly.
You missed the difference regarding the addressee, which is no less important than the difference regarding the source. Because there is no difference in the source, you inferred that halakhah too is not Jewish (on my view), but that is not so. Incidentally, there are other differences as well, but this is not the place.
I explained that there is no difference between observable facts and other facts. If some claim belongs to the category of facts, then necessarily there is no formal authority regarding it (except perhaps substantive authority). This is logically necessary, and there is no way to disagree with it.
I did not understand your claim regarding Anselm and Russell. In any case it contains an amazing number of logical leaps. 1. I too showed that Anselm’s argument is invalid (or at least not ontological). Russell is completely right; I simply went one step further and showed the flaws in the argument. But it is not clear to me how all this is related to our discussion here. 2. Does the fact that Anselm’s argument is invalid mean one needs revelation? There are other arguments. 3. Where did I say that faith is not based on revelation? On the contrary, I explained in the book that it is (including that). 4. How does all this relate to our discussion here?
In the last paragraph you claim that there is substantive authority regarding matters of thought as facts. I do not dispute that. On the contrary, I wrote that if a prophet comes and tells me something factual, I will accept it. How does this relate to our discussion? I was speaking about sages and not prophets — about their reasoning, and even more so about their interpretations of prophets.
I think that both Mordechai and Rabbi Inbal are missing the fact that you do accept the authority of revelation concerning facts — for example, that there is a God and that He gave the Torah. But that authority is relevant only for someone who believes in it. And it applies only to what is written explicitly. For some reason they seem to think that you accept Hazal without accepting the God behind them.
A small correction: I accept revelation as a source of substantive authority, not formal authority (regarding facts). Of course.
As for Hazal, I accept their formal authority, but only regarding norms. And even that, of course, only because, as I understand it, this is God’s will. I do not worship Hazal (nor אצל Hazal).
It seems to me that regarding norms you also accept Hazal’s authority in a substantive way, because they are closer to the revelation at Mount Sinai and therefore their intuitions are better, and not only because this is the will of God.
True, but that is substantive authority and not formal authority.
Can’t conclusions nowadays also be due to the ‘inclination’? Maybe that’s a bit ‘Freudian,’ but still there is the concept of ‘they permitted themselves… only in order to…’! (as the Brisker Rav defined a ‘poor unfortunate apikores’). Why do you assume that every conclusion of unbelief in the 21st century is a sweeping value-neutral factual command and not impulse-driven?
I assume nothing. The reality is that today most secular people are that way because that is how they think, not because of impulse. They grew up without faith and do not imagine that there is anything to it. That was not the situation in the time of Hazal, when faith was self-evident. Therefore the attitude toward a captured child is different, and today most unbelievers fall under the category of a captured child (and in my opinion are even far more coerced than that). This is also what almost all contemporary decisors assume: what was once a marginal and rare number is today the common case. Clearly there are others as well, and I am not assuming it is all of them. But that is the presumption, and according to it we judge even those about whom we are uncertain.
And at the margins of my words, R. Chaim’s statement is not relevant here. Obviously one who does not believe is an apikores even if it happened under compulsion. That is a simple fact. But it does not mean he is liable or guilty. On the contrary, R. Chaim is only saying that although he is not guilty, he is still an apikores. That is a fact.
Rabbi Abraham, in my humble opinion your (beautiful) article contains quite a few errors. Because of limited space, I will mention only two (in two comments).
One of the foundations of Judaism is that the world (everything, absolutely everything) is an expression of His will, may He be blessed (“By His word the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth,” etc. etc.). If so, the terms “fact” and “the will of the Holy One, blessed be He” are identical by definition.
The terms “halakhah” and “the will of the Holy One, blessed be He” are identical by definition, and I do not see at all how one can dispute this.
It follows that your distinction between halakhah and determinations based on “facts” is impossible. To the extent that Hazal were given authority to determine halakhah, they were given authority to determine facts.
There are countless stories about halakhic rulings that changed what is perceived in our eyes as “facts” (whether sensory or intellectual), and even if there were no such stories, the matter is required by simple logic as above. (Of course materialists will have a hard time accepting this. In any event, it is clear that Judaism rejects materialism. From an idealist approach, this conclusion is fairly trivial.)
The second error, in my humble opinion, is your distinction between “halakhah” (in the sense of obligatory actions) and beliefs. For clarity, I will divide the subject into three: action, emotion, and belief.
1) The Holy One, blessed be He: “Put on tefillin!”
A person: “I’m not putting them on. Don’t you see? What do you want, that I should get up and go put them on?!?”
The Holy One, blessed be He: “Yes, that is exactly what I want.”
A person: “But I’m not doing it now. That is a fact.”
The Holy One, blessed be He: “I can force you, but I won’t do so. Still, we will settle accounts in due time.”
(There are capricious people who have no control over their behavior who would identify with this person. Still, most mature people in our world have already developed control over their behavior.)
2) The Holy One, blessed be He: “Love your fellow as yourself!”
A person: “But I don’t love him, what can I do? What, do you want me suddenly to start loving him?!?”
The Holy One, blessed be He: “Yes, that is exactly what I want.”
A person: “But I don’t love him. That is a fact.”
The Holy One, blessed be He: “I can force you, but I won’t do so. Still, we will settle accounts in due time.”
(There are many people who do not control their emotions, and commands like “and you shall love” or “you shall not covet” are absurd for them. Still, normal people have already developed control over their emotions, and with a little emotional awareness it is not hard to understand where every emotion comes from, and to change it as needed.)
3) The Holy One, blessed be He: “Believe in the coming of the Messiah!”
A person: “But I don’t believe. What do you want, that I should suddenly start believing?!?”
The Holy One, blessed be He: “Yes, that is exactly what I want.”
A person: “But I don’t believe. That is a fact. Apparently I am coerced in my beliefs.”
The Holy One, blessed be He: “I can force you, but I won’t do so. Still, we will settle accounts in due time.”
(Many people would probably agree that a command concerning belief is absurd. But one who has attained proper mental control, and knows what causes belief and what causes a person to decide that a certain thing is a “fact,” has no difficulty adjusting and controlling his views. A simple example is the laws of accepting slander. The Torah commands us not to believe it, and of course this applies to someone who by nature tends to believe things he hears, and the Chafetz Chaim (and others) showed that this is very easy if a person is aware of the process by which he makes decisions and forms beliefs.)
I expected you to resolve the contradiction in your words, but unfortunately you explained nothing here other than a mere declaration.
I certainly did resolve it. One only needs to read.
My dear Ariel. I am sorry to say, but your words contain many unfounded assumptions and a blunt disregard for the simple logical analysis I presented. The only thing to their credit is the confidence with which you express them.
Incidentally, this is very characteristic of the nonexistent field called “Jewish thought.” There too one deals with a collection of baseless declarations, some of them meaningless, whose only support is the confidence of the one who holds them.
For example, you challenge the distinction between norm and fact with the strange (and unsupported) claim that the world is an expression of His will. So what? Does that mean that the truth-falsehood relation is identical to the proper-improper relation? If a fact is an expression of His will, does that make the fact a will? For example, I built a table because I want to eat. Does that mean the table is not an object but a desire? This is, of course, only one example of the strangeness of your arguments.
Since you ignore the reasons I gave, I see no point in repeating them again in order to answer your words. My apologies.
Thank you very much.
Regarding the things I wrote unclearly:
In 1 I was only pointing to places I tried to deal with in the past, in which Maimonides holds both positions together.
In 2 I tried to connect the present issue in the post to the central issue in philosophy of science.
I tried to clarify this (or perhaps merely convey it) by defining the difficulty in philosophy of science: knowing general things from particulars, and more broadly one can say that in philosophy of science one cannot positively prove laws (and in our case “ideas”); one can only rule out certain proposals. And so too in every area of Jewish thought (reasons for the commandments and other matters of “outlook”).
In 3 I tried to suggest that even in the realm of thought the Torah has something to offer, but only in the latter sense of the previous section — namely by way of negation.
Every discussion in the field called “Jewish thought” must correspond with the text. One can say that the text does indeed negate certain ideas (apparently only a tiny fraction of all the possibilities, and specifically those at the ends of the spectrum in the given field), but does not allow an absolute decision between all the possibilities.
I tried to “interpret” that for this reason matters oral you may not write down. The power of things written for generations lies in the fact that they are the “playing field” with which one must interact, but they still allow a broad variety of views.
Oral matters, by contrast, are attempts to pave one path through the whole.
Sanctifying one path and rejecting all the others contradicts the written text itself.
(Only in matters of halakhah is it possible formally to guide according to one interpretive path, and to prefer one possibility over other interpretive paths, thereby establishing truth itself as the chosen path through “the Torah they instruct you.”)
In my humble opinion, the problem of Rabbi Inbal and also Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat in these critiques is that they call you Rabbi Michael Abraham, and you come under the title “Rabbi.”
If you had signed the book with the name Miki Avrahami, they would accept your words.
1) I am not ignoring your reasons. I am simply attacking a basic foundational assumption of yours, and once it is removed, all your reasons fall. You assume that there are “facts,” and that they are stronger even than the Holy One, blessed be He. If the Holy One, blessed be He, tells you to believe in the Messiah, you will believe only because He knows everything and does not lie. But this conception of yours is mistaken (not only because it contradicts Jewish thought, but also because it is logically mistaken).
The following statements are entirely identical:
“The Messiah will come. That is a fact.”
“The Holy One, blessed be He, wants the Messiah to come.”
“The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me to believe in the coming of the Messiah.”
(The last two statements are equivalent in a fairly trivial way. I assume you do not dispute this, but if you do, I would be happy to expand.)
The first two statements are equivalent because God’s will is what we perceive as facts. He wanted there to be light, and that itself “created” the light (in theology there may perhaps be a difference between His will and His utterance, but I will not get into that). What we perceive as light being a fact is only insofar as the will exists. If in an hour He, may He be blessed, stops wanting the light to exist, or your table to exist, then they simply will no longer exist. What you call a “fact” or an “object” exists only insofar as it is His will that it exists.
2) You speak of norms, and you mean (as I understand you) observance of practical halakhot. Putting on tefillin is a norm in your opinion. But you agree that it has spiritual benefit, and therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it (more correctly, He informed us that it has benefit, just as a doctor informs you that there is benefit in stopping smoking. That does not compel you, but if you violate his words, you will be “punished” and harmed). That benefit is a fact deriving from the structure of the soul and the world, just as the harm of smoking is a fact deriving from the structure of the lungs and the laws of nature.
If you agree that in the doctor’s command (to stop smoking) there is no clear distinction between norm and fact, perhaps you will agree to this also regarding halakhah.
3) You claim that Jewish thought is characterized by baseless declarations. I am sorry to tell you, but you have not studied the field seriously. For example, if you know nothing of medicine, you will probably think the doctor’s declaration “Smoke and you’ll die” is baseless and rests only on the doctor’s confidence. I do not have a simple proof against you, nor does the doctor, but serious study may help.
So how can there be an intentional apostate? In the response I linked to, you speak about a person who convinces himself of something but deep down is aware that it is not correct. The question in that context is: is a belief that you are aware is not correct (one in which choice applies according to you) considered belief? If yes — there is a possibility of commanding that belief; if not — there is no such concept as an intentional apostate. It seems that you are trying to innovate a concept of half-belief, which is not well defined.
I also wanted to point to Rabbi Inbal’s second response. I have to note that this is one of the more interesting discussions, since Rabbi Inbal represents the side that disagrees with you in the best possible way. I have to say that this discussion has really enriched me, and both of you are teaching me a great deal. It is an indescribable pleasure to read this discussion, and I wish you would continue it until it is more or less truly exhausted.
Rabbi Inbal already addresses this within his remarks.
He claims that Yeshayahu Leibowitz is irrelevant, just an ignoramus who decided that he knows Torah better than the sages.
But after all, Michi really is a Torah scholar who invests in Torah, and therefore he is relevant to the discussion.
I do not assume that the facts are stronger than the Holy One, blessed be He. What does strength have to do with anything? I claim that no one can command me to accept factual claims unless he convinces me to accept them. That is all. I feel this is a dialogue of the deaf.
An intentional apostate is a person who draws himself into a mistaken worldview because of his impulse. Over time he adopts it and is no longer aware that it is mistaken even by his own standards. I referred you to the discussion about the story of the turkey prince.
One cannot command a person to deceive himself, because if I think X, one cannot command me to enter the illusion that not-X. For before I enter that illusion I know it is mistaken, so why would I bring myself into that illusion? With all due respect, all this is really unnecessary pilpul.
To – H
First, there is a falsehood in Michi’s words, namely that almost all religious people, in the end, do not really believe in providence, even if they are not fully aware of it. Because the fact is that they act as though there were no providence in the world at all.
This is of course nonsense. There is no shortage of examples of believing/religious people (certainly compared to secular people) who act in spiritual ways and prefer crying out to God over yet another medicine, another medical opinion, or psychological treatment.
And in response to Michi’s claim, note my argument:
Most, indeed virtually all, people who drink soft drinks want to end their lives with severe illnesses and suffer not-simple torments.
How do I know?
Very simple — I think like Michi.
It is scientifically known that drinking even a not-large quantity (350 ml a day) of soft drinks leads to severe illness later on.
Almost all adults who drink cola know that “Coca-Cola is poison,” and still they drink it. Conclusion: they want to die in hellish agony and with visits to doctors.
That is how Michi’s mind works.
And now seriously, in order to answer this nonsense of Michi’s:
Most people drink Coca-Cola (or Prigat or Fuse Tea) simply because it is tasty and pleasant for them, despite having heard about the studies.
And in our case:
Most religious people take medicines simply because at the moment they are suffering a great deal, and in fact the medicine can help them.
They never took an interest in, or philosophized about, Michi’s nonsense and absurdities concerning “the parameter of righteousness not found in studies of medications, and therefore for one who believes in providence it is impossible to know absolutely whether the medications help.”
So, what do you say, dear H?
To – mozer
First, there is a falsehood in Michi’s words, namely that almost all religious people, in the end, do not really believe in providence, even if they are not fully aware of it. Because the fact is that they act as though there were no providence in the world at all.
This is of course nonsense. There is no shortage of examples of believing/religious people (certainly compared to secular people) who act in spiritual ways and prefer crying out to God over yet another medicine, another medical opinion, or psychological treatment.
And in response to Michi’s claim, note my argument:
Most, indeed virtually all, people who drink soft drinks want to end their lives with severe illnesses and suffer not-simple torments.
How do I know?
Very simple — I think like Michi.
It is scientifically known that drinking even a not-large quantity (350 ml a day) of soft drinks leads to severe illness later on.
Almost all adults who drink cola know that “Coca-Cola is poison,” and still they drink it. Conclusion: they want to die in hellish agony and with visits to doctors.
That is how Michi’s mind works.
And now seriously, in order to answer this nonsense of Michi’s:
Most people drink Coca-Cola (or Prigat or Fuse Tea) simply because it is tasty and pleasant for them, despite having heard about the studies.
And in our case:
Most religious people take medicines simply because at the moment they are suffering a great deal, and in fact the medicine can help them.
They never took an interest in, or philosophized about, Michi’s nonsense and absurdities concerning “the parameter of righteousness not found in studies of medications, and therefore for one who believes in providence it is impossible to know absolutely whether the medications help.”
So, what do you say, dear mozer?
I only know that R. Elijah Delmedigo argued in his book Examination of Religion that coercion in opinions is called coercion. Where is the responsum of the Radbaz on the subject that you mentioned in your words?
First, this is simple reasoning. Why are sources needed for this? Second, many contemporary decisors, in their attitude toward secular Jews, regard them as coerced (a kind of captured child).
See here: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8-%D7%9E%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA
I found your article on the turkey prince (https://www.sefaria.org.il/sheets/237655?lang=he). I note that there you mainly discuss translating belief into will and action (regarding a get), i.e. behaviorist repression, which is different from our discussion. Unless you are claiming that Hazal understood the apostate for appetite/provocation in a behaviorist way (which seems possible to me). But if so, they can also halakhically obligate behaviorist belief (since choice applies to it).
Forgive my insistence, but in my opinion it is not unnecessary for the following reason:
As I understand it, you recognize in your disputants that they will invent all sorts of excuses against your arguments on this subject, and therefore you are trying hard to turn it into an oxymoron, even though it is not one (with strained pilpul, admittedly). Correct me if I am mistaken. In any case, the importance of this breach requires insistence, lest we sin through pragmatism.
To obligate behaviorist belief is to obligate actions, not to obligate conclusions. That, of course, is logically possible, though it too is very unreasonable and implausible.
I can expand on the matter of facts, but at the moment I am not impressed that you have sufficient background for this. Many philosophers have discussed this subject: what convinces us to accept certain things as fact, and to what extent we can be certain of “facts.” Perhaps I will expand on this later, if you display knowledge of the subject or if I have a lot of free time (prior knowledge of the subject is highly desirable, for as the Malbim already said, one who is first exposed to Kantian philosophy tends to belittle it and ignore it, but one who studies it deeply will certainly be convinced).
So for now let us focus on the second issue: your distinction between the realm of halakhah and the realm of faith. In halakhah you accept the authority of Hazal, but in faith you do not, because faith, in your opinion, concerns facts, and one cannot command the acceptance of facts. Even if we accept your concepts of “facts,” I would still argue that the distinction is wrong for several reasons (beyond what I wrote in my second comment above).
1) Suppose you are studying the issue of the rival wife of one’s daughter, and it becomes clear to you with certainty that the halakhah follows Beit Shammai (after all, they have three hundred convincing answers). Admittedly Beit Hillel also knew these answers and were not persuaded, but that was only because in their short-mindedness they failed to descend to the depth of the logic in them (as is well known, Beit Shammai are sharper). In other words, you are convinced that the will of the Holy One, blessed be He (= halakhah) is to perform yibbum with the rival wife of one’s daughter. On the other hand, it is clear to you that the halakhah (“incline after the majority”) follows Beit Hillel, i.e. the will of the Holy One, blessed be He (= halakhah) is not to perform yibbum with her. That means it is clear to you that God’s will is X, yet God’s will is that you believe God’s will is not X. This is exactly the contradiction that troubled you on the plane of faith, and here we have it existing also on the halakhic plane.
2) The dispute over the rival wife of one’s daughter is itself basically a factual dispute. If it became clear to Beit Hillel that the Holy One, blessed be He, indeed told Moses to perform yibbum with the rival wife of one’s daughter, or that this is indeed how they acted in the wilderness generation [when everything they did was by Moses’ instruction], they certainly would not disagree with Beit Shammai. So what authority do Hazal have to decide such a dispute (or any other halakhic dispute), which is basically a factual dispute?
(It seems to me that Rabbi Inbal already touched on this point, and I did not merit to understand an answer to it from your words.)
3) You of course agree that Hazal have authority in the halakhic realm, including the laws of idolatry. Therefore if a person declares, “I believe in associationism,” or bows in the Temple and says, “I bow to God and to Baal together,” Hazal have the authority to decide whether to stone him or not. Suppose they decide to stone him. Now either you assume he genuinely believes and yet is stoned [in which case the Holy One, blessed be He, comes with complaints against His creatures, which is not a simple logical problem], or he is forbidden to declare his beliefs and is obligated to lie [same problem], or you conclude that Hazal also have authority in matters of belief.
How fortunate we are to have such philosophical elevation among us. When I update myself on more philosophical fundamentals I will try to let you know, and then perhaps you can teach me understanding. I must say that meanwhile, with my fleshly eyes and my grievous lack of understanding, it seems to me that you are unable to connect two meaningful words in the philosophical domain, and like many others assume that confidence is a substitute for arguments.
As for your other remarks, I will address them only because I try to respond substantively to every argument regardless of the person making it:
1. A halakhic dispute is decided according to the rules of halakhah. God’s will, as I understand it, is to observe the halakhah as ruled, and therefore even if the halakhic truth is that one should perform yibbum with the rival wife of one’s daughter, if the halakhah is ruled that one should not, then God’s will is that I should not do it. Hazal express this through the principle of “It is not in heaven.” What does this have to do with our discussion? If I were persuaded that this is not God’s will, I indeed would not observe it, because the formal authority is God’s will, not Hazal. Incidentally, if I did not recognize the formal authority of the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, then I would not observe His will either. What does any of this have to do with the discussion we are having here? There is no problem at all in defining formal authority over norms, and it is impossible to define it over facts. That does not mean everyone must accept every formal authority or any such authority.
Again and again you display a grievous lack of understanding, although I explain this to you again and again. Perhaps this is again that same grievous lack of understanding of mine, but from a philosophical luminary like you I would expect more.
2. You remind me of the feelings I always had when I was told a common yeshiva saying, that there is no dispute in facts, only in halakhah. Then I thought to myself that halakhah too is facts (what did the Holy One, blessed be He, say, or what does He want), and that the dispute about halakhah is essentially a dispute about facts. In any case, my answer to that is written in the previous section.
3. Not this, not that, and not that. A logical-philosophical wizard like you should have understood that there is a fourth possibility: I would not stone him because Hazal themselves do not say to stone the coerced, and by the way, if they did so, I would oppose it and not accept their authority.
Your most fundamental misunderstanding, in my opinion, is that you are arguing with a necessary logical argument, and doing so by piling up counterexamples. That is like someone trying to argue with the claim that 2+3=5 by means of contrary examples. But one does not refute a logical argument with examples. If you think it is incorrect, you need to point to the flaw in it (in the definitions, the assumptions, or the inference). Since there is apparently no logical flaw in the argument, it is hardly surprising that the examples you bring do not really contradict it. Please accept with understanding this meager contribution of mine, the ignorant one, humbly offered to the exalted dignity of your philosophical greatness.
Why are my comments not being published?
Have I been blocked?
I do not know why my previous comments were not published. Perhaps someone did not like them.
At any rate, I wanted here to stand on a different point. You assume that there is only formal or substantive authority, but there are other types of authority. For example, there is the sugya of “a person is trusted about what is in his hand,” and from the sugya it becomes clear that there are several kinds of “in his hand,” but this is not the place to elaborate. A person’s credibility is of course also by virtue of a simple “what reason would he have to lie,” but also much more than that. He is the “owner” of the fact under discussion, in the sense that the existence of the fact depends on his will, and therefore we must believe him; and this is neither formal nor substantive authority. It is a very simple reasoning. And this is not merely normative guidance; rather we are truly obligated (by logical necessity) to believe him.
Perhaps you will agree that God’s authority with respect to facts is of this type. And perhaps you will agree that Hazal’s authority with respect to facts, insofar as it derives from His authority, is also of this type.
The reasoning of “a captured child” is not exactly “coercion in beliefs” (at least, if I understood you correctly on this point). The assumption is that if a certain opinion is true, then a person will certainly be able to be convinced of it, if only he puts enough effort into it. And if he was not convinced, then he did not put enough effort in, and is not coerced at all. The thing is, there are situations in which even if he exerts himself to the full extent of his ability, he will not reach the truth, because he lacks data. And this is the reasoning of a captured child: in the place where he grew up, he did not have sufficient sources of information.
Therefore R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach said that in our times (that is, in his times) there is no longer a law of “captured child” regarding secular Jews, because ba’alei teshuvah obligate them. As I understand it, his meaning is that there are now available sources of information, and the very existence of the phenomenon of ba’alei teshuvah gives them grounds to doubt whether their way is correct. Now, if they do not trouble themselves to investigate, this is not coercion. And if they investigate but not enough, this is not coercion. And if they investigate enough, they will necessarily arrive at the truth.
There are no other types. There can be several sources for formal authority, like “in his hand.” So what? It does not touch the discussion or my arguments in any way.
I wrote several times that “captured child” is a different, weaker reasoning than the one regarding secular people today. The information is not relevant, because information as such compels no conclusion. Go and see. Am I to understand that in your view the existence of those who leave religion does not prove that the information says nothing at all about the conclusions?!
So do we agree that “captured child” cannot serve as a source for “coercion in beliefs”?
Of course the information is relevant, and of course it is not the only thing that is relevant. One also needs motivation, as I wrote, and one also needs freedom from ulterior interests.
I understand that in your view every husband has the authority to say “I divorced my wife,” simply because he is a husband.
Could you enlighten me as to the source of the authority? That is, who decided that every husband has such authority?
Notice that “in his hand” is not a Scriptural decree. It is a simple reasoning (at least for Hazal).
A captured child is certainly an example of coercion in beliefs. When you lack information, you are coerced in your view, exactly like someone who has the information but thinks it is Indian culture. That is like saying that “the Merciful One exempts one acting under compulsion” applies only if one is coerced by brute force but not under threat of a gun. This is coercion and that is coercion, and no additional source is needed for this.
Moreover, as I wrote, it is even an a fortiori case: because among Hazal the reality was that adding information to the child would usually bring him to the correct conclusions, whereas with us this is not true. So with us the coercion is more severe.
The information is entirely relevant. Necessary, but not sufficient. Therefore you too say here that one can be fully coerced even with all the information in hand. But you mentioned only lack of motivation and freedom from interests. The most important component is missing: the conclusion. All the information may be in my hands, but I do not believe it or I think it does not obligate me. The fact that there is a group of people who think there was a revelation at Mount Sinai and that they were told there to put on tefillin is information, and it is not enough to create obligation. I do not understand what the discussion is about. It is as plain as day.
The husband does not have (formal) authority but rather credibility (something similar to substantive authority, though not entirely the same). What does this have to do with that? You keep insisting on conflating concepts again and again. The credibility here is a legal matter and is unrelated to our issue.
As for “in his hand,” this can be a kind of migo, in which case it is reasoning (“what reason would he have to lie”), or according to the Rosh there is something beyond that in it (the “ownership”). And again, what does this have to do with us?
You cannot “want” something to be true — either it is true or it is not. Therefore a fact is not God’s will, because it fulfills no desire. Therefore the sages also could not determine facts, simply because they do not “bend” to anyone’s will, not even to God’s.
[A reply to your response dated 04/06/2023 at 02:08. I tried several times to respond and the site did not publish it. So I am trying again].
1. You make an interesting distinction between halakhic truth and God’s will. Fine. Let us continue according to your concepts.
You agree that God’s will has spiritual benefit. That is, one who does not perform yibbum with the rival wife of one’s daughter gains benefit, and one who does perform yibbum does not. And this is determined by the Sanhedrin who ruled the halakhah. So we have formal authority (the Sanhedrin) dealing with facts (the benefit). Whoever accepts the authority of the Sanhedrin must believe that there is an objective benefit in not performing yibbum.
This is not merely a common saying but the Ritva. So we have a dispute between him and you regarding the definition of halakhic discussion (to what extent it concerns facts). Perhaps you will agree that he has substantive authority, because maybe he is an expert on the definition of halakhah.
(This is not a fourth possibility, because in the rush of your writing it slipped your mind that I wrote “suppose they decide to stone him”).
So in your opinion Hazal have halakhic authority only regarding one who believes they are right. Too bad the gatherer of sticks and the blasphemer did not know that. Too bad Shimon ben Shetach did not have time to tell his son, “Say that you do not believe this is desecration of Shabbat.” What a pity for those lost.
From Wikipedia (a very authoritative site, used only by important and respectable people), article “Counterexample”: “In logic and mathematics, a counterexample is a method for refuting claims.”
The point is that a true argument cannot have a counterexample. Such an example does not indeed locate the flaw, but it proves there is a flaw.
And if you desire to find the flaw, remember the words of Maimonides, that a “fact” is one of three things: something grasped directly by the senses, something with clear mathematical proof, or something with clear prophecy behind it. And anyone who believes in something not of the above, concerning him it is said, “The simple believes every word.” So now please choose one interesting fact (that caused you to believe Hazal are mistaken, or that there is no authority of God and Hazal over it), and tell me please what convinced you that it is true: sensory perception, rational proof, or perhaps something else. From there we can proceed.
Not true. The authority of the Sanhedrin is only that this is what should be done. It is absolutely not over the fact that it has spiritual benefit. Again and again you conflate the planes. That’s it — I have exhausted these pilpulim to the last drop of blood. If you want, accept it; if you do not want, do not accept it (and remain mistaken).
As remembered, there is no authority even regarding logic, so certainly not regarding facts. One who is persuaded accepts, and one who is not — does not.
Truth be told, I too am a bit tired of the “pilpulim.” Of this it is said: “This deer does not wish to learn.”
But I want to clarify your view on two points (in two separate comments). In fact you have already written it, but I want to be sure I understood correctly. Not in order to open further pilpulim, but only to be sure I understood.
In your opinion, there may be a situation in which there is spiritual benefit in performing yibbum with the rival wife of one’s daughter, but the Torah (“incline after the majority”) obligates me to behave דווקא in a way that lacks benefit. That is, there is not necessarily spiritual benefit in observing the commandments, insofar as observance of the commandments depends on the opinion of Hazal (“after the majority”). Did I understand correctly?
Just to clarify your view:
A person who has been raised from infancy in an idolatrous culture (such as Pharaoh), there is no basis for complaint against him. He knows, of course, that there are groups of monotheists, but in his opinion this is Indian culture. Even if two old men come to him and shout, “Let my people go,” he has no reason to take them seriously, especially since the god in whose name they claim to speak does not appear on any recognized list of gods. True, they can perform wonders, like any apprentice magician, but that is of course far from convincing.
So there is no situation in which one can complain against him.
Did I understand correctly?
And thank you for all the time you devoted to me.
Exactly. These matters are explained in Ran’s homilies (regarding the rebellious elder) and are as plain as day. Perhaps there is benefit in obeying them (as the Ran suggests there), but the benefit of the commandment itself does not necessarily exist. More sharply: halakhah does not necessarily hit upon the truth, and still that is what one is supposed to do.
The criterion is one alone: can that person reasonably understand that he is mistaken or not? Everything else is interpretation of reality and of that person’s condition. So too regarding Pharaoh (whom, for some reason, you assume was coerced, even though the main claim against him was moral in any case — not to enslave people — and not a religious claim to obey God).
And even if complaints can be made against him, that would be by virtue of substantive authority and not formal authority, of course.
Do you mean Ran’s homilies, sermon 12? I did not find this there (though he does speak there about the rebellious elder). Perhaps you mean sermon 11, where he writes that the judgments of the Torah are not complete, and the king’s laws are needed in order to complete political order?
Here is a passage from sermon 7:
But if the majority ruled against Rabbah bar Nachmani, who had declared pure, even though he agrees with the truth more than they do, the majority must not act to declare pure on the basis of the opinion of the individual. Therefore the Torah commanded that the decision of the majority should decide, and the individual is commanded to act according to their agreement, even though he knows that they do not agree with the truth, for thus did the blessed God command him in saying: “You shall not turn aside.”
And in sermon 5 he elaborated more:
[And even if the individual agrees with the truth more than the majority, he must nullify his opinion before them. As they already said in Bava Metzia 59b regarding R. Eliezer: R. Yehoshua stood on his feet and said, “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). What does “It is not in heaven” mean? The Torah was already given to us by Moses at Mount Sinai, and it is written in it, “Incline after the majority.”] Behold, they all saw that R. Eliezer agreed with the truth more than they did, and that all his signs were true and correct, and heaven itself decided according to him. And nevertheless they acted according to their own agreement. For once their reasoning inclined to impurity, even though they knew they agreed contrary to the truth, they did not want to declare pure. And they would have transgressed the words of Torah had they declared pure, since their reasoning required impurity; for the decision was entrusted to the sages of the generations, and whatever they agree upon is what the blessed God commanded.
Thus He gave permission to the sages of the generations to decide among disputes of the sages according to what appears to them, even if those before them were greater and more numerous than they; for we were commanded to follow the agreement of the sages of the generations whether they agree with the truth or its opposite, and this is clear in many places.
For although they knew that on the path of truth the doubtful matter was pure, they would say impure, since the decision of the Torah had been entrusted to them in their lifetime, and their reasoning required impurity. [Therefore] it was fitting that it be impure, even though it was contrary to the truth, for כך requires human reason, and the rest, although true, is not fitting to be acted upon in the ways of the Torah, just as the disputants of R. Eliezer did not declare pure, even though a heavenly voice came forth and said that the halakhah followed him. And they were not in doubt that the matter came from the blessed God, just as those others were not in doubt. Nevertheless R. Yehoshua said, “The Torah is not from heaven.” Therefore they said, “Who shall decide? Rabbah bar Nachmani shall decide.” And the decision did not come to him from pleasure, for they were not in doubt about this, as I wrote, but rather he decided according to what human reason requires according to the Torah and the hermeneutic principles by which it is expounded. And what made them declare impure was only the shortcoming of their intellect compared to human intellect, or their laziness in Torah study during their lives.
I also remember another passage, which I did not find now, where he asks how one can compel a person to do something that is not true, since this harms his soul, and he writes that disobeying the sages harms his soul more.
In the end, “No man has power over the wind” adds nothing new.
The whole book revolves around one thing: saying, “You don’t see providence.”
The explanations for this are unconvincing, of course.
And of course there’s no shortage of secular people who have been saying the same thing for thousands of years: “So where is your God?”
And also: “Don’t tell us stories about reincarnation of souls and accumulation of sins/commandments and hidden heavenly calculations, etc.”
And as is well known, there is no shortage of secular deists who completely believe in the philosophical God.
All the discussions that come after it has supposedly been “proven” that there is no providence, and deal with “So why pray?” are actually pointless, because Michi has in fact neither proven nor renewed anything on the subject of providence, and the truth is that he also hasn’t shown anything especially surprising or thought-provoking.
If so, for a religious person, the whole question of “So why pray?” is like asking, “What would happen if tomorrow morning mice and snails started speaking French and Chinese?”
Completely meaningless.
So there is no novelty at all in Michi’s arguments, and given the very minor attention the book gets anyway, even that is entirely unnecessary.