Q&A: How do we know who is a heretic?
How do we know who is a heretic?
Question
You hold that philosophical/intellectual recognition of the Creator is the criterion for not being a heretic.
Someone else holds that a heretic is someone who thinks that not all of the Torah was given from Heaven, but only parts of it.
A third says that emotion is required in order to serve God, and bases his words on explicit verses in the Torah.
Maimonides, after all, wrote 13 principles, while others had fewer.
Today people also talk about how someone who denies Kabbalah is a heretic. There are those who hold the opposite—that someone who believes in Kabbalah is a heretic.
Since there are no “laws of heretics,” and on the other hand it is problematic to accept the words of rabbis / the Sages on non-formal authority,
how can we know who is essentially a heretic?
Answer
Why do you need to know who is a heretic? Do you have plans to go out on jihad to destroy the heretics? It’s none of your business who is a heretic and who isn’t. Beyond that, the fact that there are many opinions doesn’t prove anything. You decide according to your own view.
Discussion on Answer
But if they deny them, then they disagree about it, and it turns out that it is something about which there is a dispute.
In my view, you can define heretics as those who deny things about which there is no dispute, or things that are Torah-level.