Q&A: A Commandment About Thought
A Commandment About Thought
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently I’ve been exposed a great deal to your broad, well-reasoned, and courageous thought. It’s not that I had never examined my religious faith before, but thanks to you I found the courage to free myself from the parts that I had in fact never believed in, but didn’t dare say so even to myself. You have also helped me a great deal clarify important questions and issues, for which the common “faith studies” in the yeshivot where I studied really offer no adequate answer. Thank you very much!
Regarding the commandment to believe, I understood that you hold that there cannot be such a commandment.
My question is: can this be consistent with belief in Judaism? After all, commands of the form “think that X is true” are common in Judaism, from the prohibition against believing harmful speech, through the various commandments of faith and heresy, and above all, the prohibition of idol worship, which is stated explicitly countless times already in the Written Torah. It is not some marginal commandment that may have been inserted later; it is a truly central theme in Judaism, and if I’m not mistaken, it is the most severe prohibition in Jewish law.
Thank you very much.
Answer
In my view, there is no commandment whose subject is a fact. The prohibition against believing harmful speech refers only to a case where it is possible that the fact is not true. The commandment tells you not to assume that it is true as long as it is possible that it is not. But if you have become convinced, no commandment in the world can dissuade you from your conclusion.
The prohibition of idol worship is a prohibition on worship, not on belief. Someone who truly and sincerely believes in idolatry is indeed mistaken, but coerced. And certainly from his own perspective the commandment has no meaning, since he really believes in it (and probably also does not believe in the monotheistic commandment).
As for the commandment to believe, it has a double difficulty: 1. It is a commandment about a fact. 2. It is a commandment that begs the question (after all, one who does not believe cannot be commanded. Every commandment presupposes belief). Therefore Maimonides, who counted this as a commandment, is indeed very difficult to understand (and this is only Maimonides’ view, not “Judaism”).
Discussion on Answer
That’s really not correct. Idol worship used to be the result of an inclination or urge (which has since been nullified). That means that serving idols was like our sexual immorality—because of an urge—even though it was clear to us that it wasn’t right. As I understand it, the prohibition was said mainly about such a situation.
Look in the Hebrew Bible at the prophets’ preaching, which brings the people back to the Holy One, blessed be He, and then immediately they go back again to idol worship. Clearly, deep down they believed in Him and not in the idols, but their urge overpowered them. Think of a situation where today a prophet would come and preach to us about atheism. Would he bring everyone to repentance? Would anyone even pay attention to him? They’d probably hospitalize him. The fact that the preaching helped shows that in the background there was belief (everyone knew he was right, but the urge overpowered them).
There are many studies showing a common reality of cognitive biases / distortions in perception / memory, etc. If so, what force does self-conviction really have? After all, we know situations where external reality dictates to a person a logic that contradicts his own inner conviction, such as: a pilot in vertigo, a drunk person, and the like. The question kind of reminds me of the popular Haredi populist style, but it seems to me there is some logic to it.
How does the Rabbi explain the Talmudic passage at the end of tractate Makkot about “I am” and “You shall have no other gods” — “we heard them from the mouth of the Almighty”? Seemingly, it implies that these two statements are included in the general count along with the rest of the commandments (“six hundred and eleven”)?
There are several possible explanations. For example, that “I am” parallels “You shall have no other gods.” Both are prohibitions or commands concerning worship (a command to accept the Holy One, blessed be He, as God, and a prohibition against accepting an idol as a god; see the Fifth Notebook), and not about belief itself. Alternatively, it is a commandment to deepen belief, not about belief itself.
What is “accepting the Holy One, blessed be He, as God”?
A decision of commitment to the Holy One, blessed be He, who revealed Himself at Sinai?
Yes. That whatever He commands, we are obligated to do.
Regarding what you wrote about idol worship:
A. Does this also fit with Maimonides’ view?
"One who worships a star or idol out of love, for example because he desired this form due to its exceptionally beautiful craftsmanship, or who worships it out of fear of it, lest it harm him, as its worshippers imagine that it does good and evil—if he accepted it as a god, he is liable to stoning; but if he worshipped it in its usual manner, or by one of the four forms of worship, out of love or fear, he is exempt" (Laws of Idolatry 3:6).
How can there be accepting it as a god if there is no belief behind it? Especially in light of what you wrote about this in the Fourth Notebook.
B. The “experiment” that Elijah conducted on Mount Carmel should be completely useless, if everyone already knows that Baal is worthless.
I didn’t understand. What does “acceptance without belief” mean? Of course there is belief.
Not everyone knows. A person has urges, and he does not always act according to what he himself thinks. There are adulterers who do it even though they themselves also think it is improper.
And not everyone knows that Baal is worthless. Elijah told them to follow him if they believed in him.
According to Maimonides, a person who worshipped idols is liable only on condition that he accepted it as a god, meaning that he believes the idol is a source of authority whose commands must be obeyed and worshipped. It is about him that the prohibition of idol worship is stated. But such a person has to decide the conflict he has between Jewish law and idolatry on the basis of something else external to both. Even if in the end it is clear to him that he must obey Jewish law and not idolatry, it is not Jewish law that caused that decision, because Jewish law is one of the two sides between which the conflict takes place. Therefore there is no point at all in Jewish law commanding him not to worship idols. This command is meaningless for him. He is hesitating between obeying system A and obeying system B. It won’t help for system A to command him to listen דווקא to it and not to B.
He believes in the Holy One, blessed be He, and because of his urge accepts idolatry upon himself as a god—like a person who believes that adultery is forbidden and nevertheless commits adultery.
I didn’t understand your point about the systems.
If he doesn’t believe in idolatry, how can this be considered accepting it as a god?
He does believe because of his urge. A person is a complex creature. He built for himself a picture because of the urge, even though deep inside he knows the truth. Sometimes that knowledge gets pushed away even more over time, and suddenly he really feels like he believes in idolatry.
I don’t understand how this solves the problem. If he has a picture in which the idolatry is real, then how does the Torah’s command help? And if the knowledge that the idolatry is not real still affects him, then he is not really accepting it as a god.
Search: https://mikyab.net/posts/61377
I read it, and it put my mind at ease. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the answer.
Indeed, if the prohibition of idol worship is only about worship, then there is no problem of commanding facts.
But whom is the prohibition addressed to? Someone who does not believe in idolatry does not need it. Someone who does not believe in the Torah will not listen to it. And someone who believes in both is actually caught in a conflict between two parallel sources of authority, and the decision between them must come from somewhere external to both. So what is the Torah accomplishing by commanding him to decide in its favor?