Q&A: Haredi Intellectual Abilities
Haredi Intellectual Abilities
Question
I just read your column about the contribution of the Haredim
and in the course of your argument you claim that the Haredi person lacks certain logical abilities, such as systematic and orderly thinking. As a Haredi person who is relatively well-grounded in halakhic analysis, I’d be glad for a more precise explanation of what exactly is missing.
Answer
To answer fully would require thought and conceptualization, and this isn’t the place. So I’ll answer briefly.
I think what is mainly missing there is concept definition and a priori thinking. Before starting the calculations, one should establish logical lines and a sharp definition of the concepts. In yeshivas they usually begin with the calculations and skip those stages. Beyond that, when giving an analytical lesson, they usually don’t begin from the foundations and underlying assumptions and lay out the full picture; rather, they begin from a collection of difficulties and propose resolutions. I mentioned here in the past that when my son considered leaving Grodna Yeshiva in favor of Gush, I spoke by phone with a veteran rosh yeshiva who deals with “dropouts.” My son’s leaving bothered them more than an ordinary dropout, because he hadn’t really dropped out but had chosen a non-Haredi yeshiva, and that of course threatens them much more. In any case, that man told me on the phone that he had heard wonders about Rabbi Lichtenstein, who was then the rosh yeshiva at Gush, and when he looked through his books and articles he found that it was really very basic. Any good kollel fellow says more brilliant things. I answered him that he was talking like a small child. Rabbi Lichtenstein, unlike Haredi kollel men and roshei yeshiva, begins from the foundations and lays out the possibilities and a complete map of the whole topic, and all the questions that get stitched together in the general lecture in Haredi yeshivas and in the articles of those kollel men he mentioned don’t even arise. So yes, it sounds less brilliant, but it is far more serious and professional. Something like the well-known stories about Rabbi Chaim as opposed to Beit HaLevi in Volozhin.
Also from conversations I have with graduates of Haredi yeshivas, I see again and again that they lack the ability for systematic thought. Some of them are truly brilliant and can offer brilliant difficulties, resolutions, and connections, but systematics are utterly absent. When one tries to define concepts, it sounds trivial to them and they don’t engage with it. But that can of course ultimately be damaging. When one properly defines the concepts and the a priori connections, a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears in analytical study is spared.
All this surprises me anew every time, because specifically the kind of analytical yeshiva study should have developed these abilities more than anything else. It’s a matter of habit, not intelligence, of course.
Beyond that, I often notice a lack of common sense. Just yesterday I happened to speak about the Ran, who writes that “the law of the kingdom is law” does not apply in the Land of Israel. And as is well known, Haredim quote him again and again—almost as a main ideological foundation of their worldview. But when you think about it even a little, it’s obvious this can’t be. Were there not kings in the Land of Israel? Did they not have authority? How did they rule? So one has to discuss what exactly the Ran means. But in the Haredi world, even among learned people, they quote him literally and don’t bother applying a bit of common sense to see that this simply cannot be correct.
I also see problems in halakhic rulings. The analogies and comparisons are very superficial and don’t get to the depth of the matter. For example, when people compare the courts in Syria to today’s civil courts, every child immediately declares that there is a great difference. In Syria there were no experts, so they had to appoint laymen. But In our case, there are experts, so there is no permission to appoint laymen.. But that is nonsense, and it points to a failure to use common sense. Is there any possibility today of appointing experts to the civil courts? After all, most of the public would not accept them. The alternative is that there would be no effective legal system for the population as a whole, and that is an intolerable state of affairs. Now you see that this was exactly the situation in Syria. If they had forbidden appointing laymen (for one who appoints an unfit judge is like planting an Asherah tree beside the altar), the alternative would have been that there would be no legal system there. That is why they permitted appointing laymen. But that reason also exists today for us, even though we do have experts. So there is definitely room to compare the law of the courts in Syria to our courts. But superficial comparisons immediately run into the above refutation—that we have experts. There is of course the distinction of the Chazon Ish, that there there was no alternative legal system; rather, they judged each case according to their own opinion. Is there such an option today? Could there be a state without law, where the judges rule in each case according to their own opinion? Again, a correct refutation—but irrelevant.
All right, I wrote this off the cuff. But I hope my point has been clarified.
Discussion on Answer
Are you quoting passages from the Cyrus Declaration or from the Geneva Convention? Actually this looks more like a passage from some pure-hashkafa book. It definitely illustrates my claim about problems in systematic thinking. I’ll just say that the discussion here is about the Ran’s approach and the form of talmudic-analytical thinking, and it would be worth dealing with that—or opening a new thread with declarations about the greatness and holiness of the Chazon Ish.
Once I heard a Haredi educator on the radio responding to Bentzi Gopstein, and he talked about how the state has authority because “the law of the kingdom is law,” and I thought then: so why don’t you enlist? Suddenly, when they need to relate to actual reality, all at once the state gets authority.
I just now ran into a very typical example. In the topic of redeeming captives, and the rule that “captives are not redeemed for more than their value.” When I approach this topic, the first thing I ask myself is: what was the law before this enactment? Did people redeem them at any price? Why? What is the source of this law? Then I go back to the source of the commandment to redeem captives (which everyone quotes from the Shulchan Arukh as the most important commandment—even though there is no such commandment). It turns out there is very little treatment of this question, and mainly by way of incidental remarks. For me, this would open the lesson.
And similarly regarding a positive commandment overriding a prohibition. We learn it from shaatnez in tzitzit. But what would we have said without that derivation—that the positive commandment prevails, or the prohibition? And why? Then one can ask what the derivation added. And why did we decide that shaatnez in tzitzit is an example to generalize from and determine that a positive commandment always overrides a prohibition, rather than an exception that teaches that usually the prohibition overrides? What does the decision depend on—whether to see some source as a paradigm for all of Torah or as an exception that teaches the opposite? These are questions that scholars usually do not ask, and even if they do, it is done only incidentally. They do not begin the analysis from the foundational questions. And I haven’t even spoken about the need to define prohibition and positive commandment (an operative definition or a normative one), which nobody deals with. It is amazing that the most fundamental question in Jewish law is not treated at all. And so it is in countless topics and concepts. There is no systematic and orderly thinking from foundation to rooftop and upward.
Of course, methodological questions (like the one I raised—how to relate to a source) are not dealt with at all. The meaning of the rules of Jewish law, questions of halakhic authority, dispute, and more and more. It is no accident that Maimonides’ Roots are like an abandoned corpse in the world of learning. At most they deal with a halakhic dispute between him and Nachmanides that comes up there, but never with the principle presented there and its meaning.
To my amazement, I discovered long ago that despite the sea of material accumulated over the generations in Jewish law and Talmudic analysis, there is hardly any halakhic topic in which I find in the commentators a reasonable answer to the foundational questions. There is no topic where one can suffice with what has already been written. And it is not that I come up with some interesting novelty in this or that topic. There is no topic where I don’t. And this is not because of my genius or other people’s stupidity. It is a matter of habits of analysis and methodology. What interests you, and what do you ask? Do you begin with definitions of concepts and basic principles, or do you immediately jump to the Ketzot’s difficulty and Rabbi Chaim’s resolutions? Conceptual and a priori analysis makes a large part of those flashes of brilliance unnecessary.
Have you ever thought of writing a column in which you lay out your view of how topics should be studied in a professional and serious way, with good examples?
I think it would really help many people, and especially me.
That’s not a column but a book. I have thought about it, but I don’t know whether the effort is justified. I don’t know how many people would use such a book.
By the way, I also don’t believe very strongly in such books. One simply needs to demonstrate, and people will take from it whatever they want. In my lessons and also in the columns here on the site there are many examples.
In general, introductions are for experts, not for beginners. But introductions still have value, of course.
Rabbi, a point regarding writing a book or some systematic material on how to study a topic analytically:
It’s true that a book in this style definitely can’t teach from scratch how to learn, but in my opinion it would still be important even for people who still don’t know how to learn. I studied at one of the best hesder yeshivas there is (and the analytical learning there is the jewel in the crown), and I can say that the feeling regarding iyun among most people is very sour. It’s not entirely clear what goal one is supposed to reach. A lot of the students flounder in the morning study sessions and don’t really understand what the goal of what they’re doing is or what product they are supposed to arrive at in analytical learning. They have various tools of analysis, but they don’t have a method and order that bring them to some product they understand. This causes people to come away frustrated with iyun, not really to see value in it, and pretty quickly after the army they start drifting toward practical Jewish law. Not to mention that it’s much harder for people to answer for themselves the question “why is analytical study important” if they don’t even understand what it is. I personally dug into this issue of how one is supposed to learn and tried to talk about it a lot with teachers, etc., and they didn’t give me very good answers. I don’t know whether the solution is a thick book, but in general I think there is a great thirst in the yeshivas to understand what iyun is and how one is supposed to do it, and there is a very great lack of systematics on this subject.
Do you think that in your lessons on the Talmud from past years (for example on Bava Kamma) you treat topics in this way?
From what little I’ve sampled, it doesn’t seem so; rather, it looks like a regular lesson (of course in your style and in how you present it), but I didn’t see treatment of methodological questions like what you described above. Am I mistaken? For example, in the lesson on “this one benefits and that one does not lose,” you go straight into the calculations of the topic, and don’t necessarily set up a conceptual analysis of what “benefits” means, what “savings” means, etc.
(Just noting that if you did write such a book as the previous speaker suggested, I would be willing to contribute whatever is needed for it, and it would be the book I’d take with me everywhere. In my opinion it’s extremely essential. Of course nothing can replace the learning itself and the time and experience.)
Indeed, I do not teach all topics that way. But in places where the analysis changes the picture or significantly helps the study, I try to teach them that way.
For example, in the lessons on the chapter HaZahav that I just gave, the first three lessons dealt with conceptual analysis and a framework of thought.
That’s how they learn at Kisse Rahamim.
They’ve never heard the word “methodology,” but their lessons are really like that. Organized but dry. No pilpul. Rabbi Mazuz wrote the book “The Ways of Analysis” on his method of study (and his introduction to the book Arim Nisi on tractate Yevamot is a masterpiece in itself), and he recommends “The Ways of the Gemara” by Rabbi Isaac Campanton.
Rabbi Michi, this whole discussion is a bit funny. As someone who studied in Haredi yeshivas (you) and knows the analytical topics, you understand that the Haredim do this well, and the next generation of the analytical elite will be among the Haredim, and almost certainly in two generations as well.
You can write about the external contribution that people like Rabbi Lichtenstein can bring to learning, you can write about specific problems in talmudic analysis, and you can also write about a thousand problems among the Haredim.
But Haredi yeshiva learning is good. And it is advancing with many new trends like that of Schreiber, and the Haredim enjoy learning, unlike yeshiva boys in the Religious Zionist world.
You don’t agree with that?
It would be worth reading “carefully” what the question at the beginning of the thread was and what Michi answered.
Doron, can you enlighten us? Do you see some problem? A question that wasn’t answered?
In general I see myself as a rather small flashlight (a white lie?). Even so, I can perhaps say that as I understand it, you were asked one thing and answered it well. The questioner, by contrast, responded with something that to little flashlights of my kind seems unrelated.
Substantively on the topic: from my limited experience with Haredim, your description of their intellectual world seems quite accurate to me. In my eyes it is a marvelous oddity, this gap between the tremendous intellectual abilities in such a difficult field as Jewish law and the higher-order thinking in which they simply do not stop failing.
If you read what Rabbi Doron wrote, you understand that he came to needle Rabbi Moti and to help you out. But you turned a friend into an enemy.
Maybe this fulfills “blessed be Haman and cursed be Mordechai.” I don’t know.
Still, I studied among Haredim, and there they did not learn the topic systematically….
I suspect the commenter on my words is Haredi himself. A splendid demonstration of Michi’s answer. I don’t know Rabbi Moti.
Rabbi Mazuz was mentioned here, and I’m really curious whether you know his method, “Tunisian analysis”? Maybe from when you sat in judgment with Rabbi Amsalem, who is a clear disciple of his.
To my shame, I’m not familiar with it.
As long as the candle is burning, it can be fixed. You’d probably especially like the book, with its polemical style against Haredi yeshivas and its many examples of errors in analysis by the great authorities of all generations, early and late. Maybe the root of your soul is Tunisian 🙂
I have now uploaded column 637, which deals with my methods of learning.
I know of a Haredi analytical school that you actually would have been pleased with. I’m referring to Rabbi Chaim Min-Hahar and his students.
So, for example, in the case you gave of a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, and shaatnez in tzitzit—when I learned that topic with him, he dealt a great deal with all the questions you mentioned.
Interesting.
1. The kings in the Land of Israel had power because they ruled by authority of the Torah, meaning the Torah gave them power; unlike if they do not conduct themselves according to Torah (God forbid), then obviously they have none.
2. And in general, the Ran said what he said. The difficulties you have need to be answered, but what he wrote is what he wrote.
3. And by the way, our master, the genius of geniuses, holy of holies, may the memory of the righteous and holy be blessed, the Prince of Torah and pillar of halakhic ruling, our great master the Chazon Ish—who in general did not learn in the style of a Haredi yeshiva—also ruled this way in practice