Q&A: Simple Faith and Relying on Our Rabbis Rather Than Michael Abraham’s Brilliant Mind on the Border of Heresy
Simple Faith and Relying on Our Rabbis Rather Than Michael Abraham’s Brilliant Mind on the Border of Heresy
Question
I’ve already seen several times that you strongly argue that someone who is afraid to investigate his faith and confront it so that he won’t stumble and fall is בעצם really a “closet atheist.”
“Someone’s faith, if he doesn’t examine it on the philosophical level so as not to fail—should he even be regarded as a believer?” … “If Shimon the atheist were to present him with this or that logical argument, Reuven would change his view and become an atheist.”
I couldn’t understand you: if when I study a topic and analyze the books of the medieval authorities and the later authorities, I come to see that in many places it seemed to me that there was no possible way to answer the difficulties that arise, and then I see the depth of the medieval authorities—how they resolve the difficulty with wonderful wisdom, such that even if I lived a hundred years I wouldn’t manage to answer even one difficulty that they resolved—
why should I put myself at risk and allow my son not to go with “simple faith” when facing philosophical questions from people who really were wise? Do I have the mind of the Rashba or of the Noda B’Yehuda, or even, for that matter, the mind of Michael Abraham, who himself walks on a thin rope between heresy and faith and he himself doesn’t know whether he really believes or not?
Why shouldn’t I rely simply on my rabbis, many of whom studied philosophy and confronted it, and if they came out safely and continued in their faith, then I too—whose simple intuition is that of course there is a Creator to the world and the Torah of Israel is true—why do I need to put myself in a place where I won’t be able to answer and will fall into the arms of heresy? Isn’t it better for me to rely on them??
Answer
Why not say the same thing about Einstein? He too was wonderfully wise, so why not rely on him? Or on Anselm the Christian? If you rely on wise men, you can’t escape choosing who the wise men are, and in that you’ve already chosen the outcome.
By the way, young students nowadays resolve difficulties that the medieval authorities were perplexed by, in many ways and with considerable ease. In my opinion, we are much better than they were at conceptual Talmudic learning and analytical study.
Discussion on Answer
First you ask for an example of greater scholarship among people of our time, and before the Rabbi even answered you already decided that he’s belittling them. Maybe you should wait for an answer. And if you’re making up your mind before the Rabbi answers, then why ask for an example at all?? Patience suits a wise man—and all the more so someone less than that.
Traditional, that’s the question of an ignoramus. Every beginning student knows dozens of examples of difficulties that were resolved quite straightforwardly by married kollel students and yeshiva boys who are authors of contemporary articles. Just examine Maimonides’ “wonderful point” in his Commentary on the Mishnah in Keritot, and you’ll see how excited he is by a distinction of the sort that today is made by average students. You yourself mentioned Rabbi Chaim of Brisk’s explanations for difficulties in Maimonides (some of which were raised by medieval authorities like the Raavad). Isn’t that an example of a later authority resolving difficulties raised by medieval authorities? In every such place you can open Frankel’s index volume and find many more examples.
But I really see no point in discussing things with someone who doesn’t conduct a conversation but just tosses out slogans and declarations born of ignorance.
By the way, I’m not belittling the medieval authorities at all. I’m elevating the later authorities (and several medieval and later authorities already wrote the parable of the dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant, so your question to me was already answered by them). As an admirer of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, you surely know the story that he is not lenient in the laws of the Sabbath but stringent in the laws of saving a life. The same applies here.
If the medieval authorities were not in the “business” of modern lomdus, what relevance is there to giving flavor to their words that way? Today there are mechanical tools that can lift the stones of the Western Wall and create another like it. But obviously the Wall was not built by means of the technologies familiar to us today.
As for the amateurishness of Maimonides compared to the professionals of our time in matters of study, here is what I once wrote to a friend.
As for Maimonides’ “wonderful point” in his Commentary on the Mishnah in Keritot, which bothers you so much:
See also Avot 4:2 and the end of Makkot and the introduction to Perek Helek: “But this is the wonderful point, I mean the World to Come: very rarely will you find anyone at all in whose mind it arises that he should think or take this principle, or say to what thing this term applies—whether it is the ultimate good, or whether one of the previously mentioned views is the ultimate goal; or that he should distinguish between the goal and the cause that brings one to the goal.”
For him, a “wonderful point” is not some technical, localized legal distinction, but a principled foundation. But that does not rule out his being aware of fine distinctions, or even conceptual ones.
In Keritot, the simplistic explanation of his words is rather puzzling (because in the end there is also a prohibition of benefit added in meat cooked in milk).
I think his intention there is that since the derivations of the Sages from the verse are not the root but branches, they are interpretation and not the text itself (as he explains in Principles 1 and 2 of the Book of Commandments, and regarding betrothal with money as rabbinic), then even if they obligate on the Torah level, since on the level explicitly stated in the Torah there is no addition to the prohibition of meat and milk, this prohibition is not an “additional prohibition,” and that status of the prohibition remains, even if in the interpretation of the Sages (which, incidentally, can be overturned by another Sanhedrin) the prohibition was expanded also to benefit.
The same is true at the beginning of the Emor portion, regarding “for his kin,” when the Sages expounded it as referring to his wife, for whom he is permitted to become impure. And even so, mourning for her is not of Torah origin!
Moshe, what you find puzzling about the wonderful point is itself Maimonides’ question. And what you explain as the wonderful point is stated explicitly by Maimonides himself. I didn’t understand what you are adding to his words: the prohibition of benefit branches off from the prohibition of eating (according to Rabbi Abbahu in tractate Pesachim, that one expression implies both eating and benefit). See Maimonides’ words in commandment 113 (?) on meat cooked in milk. On branches and roots in Maimonides’ second principle, I elaborated in my article in the book He Shall Send Forth His Roots.
The distinction between trunk (the “bare” text) and branches (the Sages’ expositions), and that the exposition applies only to the trunk, is not brilliant casuistry but a fundamental distinction, and that itself is the “wonder.” It is a point on which many disagree. That is what Maimonides “got excited” about.
It has not the slightest connection to the question of exposition. Rabbi Abbahu relies on the plain meaning, and Hizkiyah is the one who expounds the verse, and the law does not follow him. Maimonides himself explains Rabbi Abbahu that way.
When you read his words in the Commentary on the Mishnah in Keritot, you’ll see that the excitement is about the Brisker-style analysis, plain and simple.
I read it. I didn’t see that, and certainly not that it is “plain and simple.”
Something similar appears in the Talmud itself, in the topic of “this one and that one.” I discussed it in a panel at the National Library, “Meeting in the Bavli.”
In order to see what you discussed in the panel, do I need to travel through time, or is it available online?
I think it’s available online (and if so, then also here on the site). If not—then only by traveling through time.
Well, I decided I’d spare you the button-click that you spared yourself, and direct you straight there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfEdtW1kI7g
In the future, I’d appreciate it if you’d devote ten seconds to searching by yourself. That way you’ll save yourself time travel—or me the search on your behalf.
Thank you.
Searching for a few sentences in 90 minutes is like searching the web. Thanks for your willingness. I think I didn’t phrase myself clearly enough, because from skimming the video I didn’t find an answer in your words, so maybe neither of us understands the other.
Minute 39:00 in the video—just hilarious.
Apparently this is the source of all your mistakes and your heresies. Give one example that people of our generation are greater scholars than the medieval authorities.
See how tremendous geniuses like Rabbi Chaim of Brisk and others toiled to explain and understand our rabbis, the medieval authorities. Where does this frivolousness come from, to belittle such world-class geniuses??