Q&A: Do You Have the Authority to Disagree with Great Rabbis?
Do You Have the Authority to Disagree with Great Rabbis?
Question
In a conversation with Nadav Sharav, a thought suddenly came to me that really troubles me. You and Nadav both disagree, without batting an eye, with the leading rabbis of the generation, past and present, on halakhic issues. We are talking about people who have been studying the Talmud and Jewish law every single day for decades, hour after hour. They live a lifestyle completely different from yours, are interested in almost nothing beyond that, and are immersed up to their necks in all the intricacies of Torah and Jewish law.
If there were doctorates and professorships in the field of Torah, there is no doubt they would reach those ranks with ease. (I am speaking about people like the Chazon Ish, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, and many others like them.)
I am asking not only from the halakhic-Jewish-Torah angle, but more from a professional and logical one: do you think it would be appropriate for an outstanding physics student to disagree with you in your field, however talented he may be? That is, one can always produce an argument and reasoning opposite to yours, but at the same time it would be proper for him to understand his place and his lack of knowledge and seniority in the field compared to those who have accumulated extensive mileage in it…
The same applies in our case. We are often talking about people who know the Talmud almost by heart, Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud, who remember hundreds of versions, formulations, lines of reasoning, and thousands of commentators, and when they come to issue a halakhic ruling on one topic, they review long-forgotten tractates in which some point was written that is somehow connected to that topic, and so on and so on.
I think that in any case you have two advantages over them. A. Courage. There is no doubt that their discussion and thought are bound within a very clear framework, with no real possibility of innovating something truly revolutionary.
B. Scientific knowledge, which not infrequently affects various halakhic rulings and laws.
Even so, on issues that concern only the Torah-halakhic side, I wonder whether it would not be proper to take a step back and give the floor to those whose entire lives and very being are Torah study and Jewish law.
Answer
You do not need authority to disagree with anyone. Aside from the Sanhedrin, there is no body or person with formal authority. What remains is only the concern about error, since it is reasonable that great Torah scholars make fewer mistakes. To that I would say that even if this is true, there is a duty of autonomy to rule as you yourself understand, even if you are mistaken. See my article on autonomy:
Discussion on Answer
You are asking: if there is no sensory evidence for free choice and divine providence, then on what basis does one think there is free choice but no divine providence? The objection is trite enough to beat on, but before I reveal the answer, let me ask what your own opinion is on the matter. Do both free choice and divine providence exist even though neither has any indication? What are the arguments for such a view?
In any case, the answer to your childish objection is that regarding free choice there is, for some people, a feeling of direct certainty—like the feeling produced by sensory observation, but one that does not come from sensory observation. If someone has such a feeling also regarding divine providence, or regarding Napoleon’s shoe size—then let him think that way about providence and shoe size too.
I would, however, like to note that you—Ehud—are a remarkably brilliant and amazing genius. What have we simple creatures of flesh on this site done to merit that a rare and wonderful one-time prodigy like you should bother to recommend to us whom to read? A question with no answer. In addition, I should note that you are of course also a person with original and interesting opinions, and absolutely not a stupid child who is unaware of his embarrassing stupidity.
“Principle A: There is no indication of free will in the laboratory. And that is perfectly fine. We have free will.
Principle B: There is no indication of divine will in the laboratory. That is further proof that there is no divine will in reality.”
Is this supposed to make Rabbi Michi look ridiculous? Because all you did was make yourself look stupid.
As for principle A: there really is no indication of free will in the laboratory, but there is intuitive indication that free will exists. Therefore it is perfectly fine that there is no laboratory indication, and we definitely do have free will.
What exactly is the problem here?
As for principle B: this is indeed a ridiculous claim, except that Rabbi Michi does not say it. He says there is no indication of divine will in reality. Divine will is not measured in a laboratory.
To conclude, I will just say that Ben Gra’s closing paragraph is excellent, and every word is spot on.
Hello Ben Gra and Yishai,
A. I personally believe in free will and in divine will.
B. I have no interest in getting into the question of whether it is true or not that there is free/divine choice/will in reality.
The point is the level of Michi’s arguments.
In order to show that there is no contradiction to free choice from the scientific direction, Michi says that it is “perfectly fine” that we do not find free will in the laboratory. Here is what he wrote:
“There is no need to mention that the laws of physics forbid the formation of a field without a physical cause (sources of electric charge) that produces it.” (Taken from the article “A Systematic Look at Free Will”).
Now (and this is especially for you, Yishai), notice what Michi writes in his book regarding divine will (divine intervention in the physical sequence):
“The Holy One, blessed be He, is playing hide-and-seek with us. In fact He runs everything, only every time we check He hides and the illusion is created that things operate mechanically according to laws. In fact, this thesis is not at all plausible… Even when a plane crashes, Heaven forbid, the investigative committee almost always finds a crack in the wing, an engine malfunction, human error… Within the framework of daily conduct, it seems that very few ‘holes’ remain for the Holy One, blessed be He, in which He can appear. Most of the time He ‘hides.'” (No Man Rules the Spirit, p. 210).
Or in other words, Michi thinks that if divine will exists in reality, then it would be reasonable for us to find it there (to arrive at it as a conclusion) among the wreckage of a crashed plane. That is, according to Michi, divine will is something that is at times supposed to be measurable.
C. Yishai, if the intuition that there is free will is evidence that there is free will, then if there is also an intuition that there is a divine will watching over me and that I am not alone, is that also an indication that divine will intervenes in reality?
Maybe we should say that the intuition of “free will” is a more advanced mental illusion than “a divine will watching over me” (as millions, or even billions, of people feel)?
Do not get me wrong—I am not saying that the intuition of free will is not some kind of evidence; in my opinion it is.
But if it is, then do not also dismiss the intuition of divine will that billions of people have experienced!
When I asked Michi in the past what he thought about the intuition of providence that so many people experience, he answered something along the lines of, “Oh, come on, that is not intuition; it is the result of education.”
Sorry, but that is simply hypocrisy.
One last thing: from your responses, it seems that you were offended by how I wrote about Michi. But a few things need to be remembered:
As far as I am concerned, Michi is not a rabbi. The purpose of a rabbi is to bring a person closer to his Creator. Michi does the opposite.
The fact that Michi knows a lot of Torah—he knows an enormous amount, and in an amazing way—and issues halakhic rulings means nothing. Yaron Yadan (Da’at Emet) also knows a lot of Torah, and if people ask him halakhic questions, he will also “rule” for them how they should behave from a halakhic standpoint. So should we also treat Yaron Yadan as a rabbi?
Another thing: I do not think Michi is a stupid person. I believe he is a very smart person.
But I do not take back what I wrote about him—
“a petty provocateur”—he admitted that he is one.
“evil and ugly”—to write that he *understands* that the Jews of Eastern Europe (the Haredim) suffered pogroms because of their own immoral behavior, that is ugliness and sheer disgust. All the more so when you do not have enough historical knowledge to rule that way.
“a cheap hack”—the level of his arguments on certain issues really is cheap hackwork, as I showed above. If he were not a provocateur, nobody would likely even have heard of him.
So I ask both of you to make an effort and maintain a high level of discussion.
The Jewish people have only one greatest sage of the generation: Moses our Rabbi.
All the rest are babblers.
Ehud, you can write as sharply as you like, but your arguments are embarrassingly weak and also extremely trite, and for some reason you think you have something of value to add to the discussion. I suggest you skip the unnecessary stage where you try to show that you deserve a seat at the grown-ups’ table, and move straight to the attacks. Personally, I would be happy if you diversified your repertoire of negative characterizations, but even if you keep repeating yourself, that’s fine. Wishing you lots of success.
The argument is that Michi is a hack. I demonstrated this through three points:
A. Michi claims that he is a “man of truth,” “addicted to truth,” “truth above all,” and so on.
On the other hand, he claims that he understands that gentiles carried out horrifying pogroms against Haredi Jews in Eastern Europe about 150-200 years ago as a response to the fact that the Jews behaved in a horrifying, ugly, and riotous way.
Is that true? Is that what a person who cares about truth writes?
B. Is it okay to demand to see divine will when examining the wings of a crashed plane in a laboratory, while on the other hand not needing to demand seeing human (free) will in the laboratory?
C. If intuition (shared by all of us) that we choose is real, why dismiss out of hand claims of other intuitions that there is divine intervention changing things?
After all, there are many people with claims like, “I really felt how the Holy One, blessed be He, was leading me,” etc.
If you are against intuition when it comes to claims of divine intervention, then also be against intuition when it comes to the claim of free choice.
I have no problem if people take jabs at me and so on, but if someone wants to jab, he is also allowed to add substantive arguments against the “Michi is a hack” argument that I raised.
Let the readers judge.
Here is important information regarding today’s “gedolim”:
And see there in the comments,
from: Hovev
25/01/2011 at 23:01
Michi wrote:
“Sages limit themselves to baseless principles…”
Here are two of Michi’s principles; please think about this:
Principle A: There is no indication of free will in the laboratory. And that is perfectly fine. We have free will.
Principle B: There is no indication of divine will in the laboratory. That is further proof that there is no divine will in reality.
Here is another principle of Michi’s:
“Truth is more important than anything else. I do not suggest denying the truth.”
And afterward he writes, regarding pogroms against Jews who lived in Eastern Europe in the 19th century:
“Suddenly I am beginning to understand how that happened back then (and I do not fully understand how it is not happening today).”
Of course Michi has no serious knowledge of the causes of the pogroms in 19th-century Eastern Europe.
But he wrote what he wrote anyway. “Of course,” as a person committed to the truth.
I appeal to all the readers on this site, those with a critical eye:
Quite apart from the fact that he is a petty, evil, and ugly provocateur—
wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to start looking at Michi’s words critically as well?
The man is a cheap hack, and he is fooling all of you.