Q&A: Education, Competence, and the Right Position
Education, Competence, and the Right Position
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi
This is a somewhat basic and down-to-earth question.
Your books, and your approach in general, which speaks about forming as objective a position as possible—about truth and not instability—about critical thinking alongside fidelity to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, as it appears in Jewish law—are, in my humble opinion, intended only for educated publics.
After all, the average person does not have the ability or the time to sit at home and study a page of Talmud with the commentaries of all the medieval authorities and later authorities, to do a heavy analysis of their views, a numerical calculation of how many opinions go this way or that way, and then decide. And at the same time to read books about the approaches of Orthodoxy throughout the generations regarding the relationship between the Torah and the modern world. So it comes out that, almost as a matter of fate, every person relies on “make for yourself a rabbi” in every field—religion, politics, art, philosophy, and so on. And even that “make for yourself a rabbi” ultimately turns out to be based on gut feeling, and not on a serious examination of the arguments of the various kinds.
In your opinion, is there an objective level of education—of IQ and the like—through which one can measure whether a person is competent to arrive at the correct position?
Answer
Indeed, this is not meant for everyone, but only for those who are competent. I wrote this in my article on autonomy. But a person should aspire to become competent. There is no problem with choosing a rabbi for yourself based on gut feeling. That is the ordinary person’s tool.
In that same article I wrote one criterion for being competent: if you return to the same topic after a year or two and generally arrive at the same conclusions. But clearly there is no absolute mathematical yardstick.