The Foundations of Faith
Hello Rabbi,
My name is M.K., I am 20 years old, I am a graduate of religious Zionist educational institutions, and I am currently serving in the army.
After two years at one of the best and most respected pre-military institutions in religious Zionism, I enlisted in the GDSR of one of the brigades. Towards the end of my training, I was injured, and I ended up at the battalion headquarters.
Following the injury and the encounter with the type of guys who are here, I have to deal with problems that I didn't have to deal with before. The reasons for this, in my opinion, are that in the Torah institution where I studied, of course, I didn't have any interaction with such a company, and I had the feeling that I was in the company of the intellectual elite and without noticing, I studied books of faith and thought that all operate "within Judaism," but I didn't work hard enough for my own good to find a reason to enter it in the first place. Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier, but during high school I was at a certain point secular, maintaining a religious lifestyle as expected of someone who lives with his religious parents, and especially because I am the eldest, I didn't think it would be fair to my parents that by leaving religion in a defiant way, I would pave the way for my younger siblings to leave their parents' path. If I hadn't gone to study Torah after high school, it's clear to me that I would be secular today.
The problem I'm facing now is that I'm not sure that the rabbis, whom I truly respect and appreciate as true intellectuals, will look favorably on my questions. Maybe they will, but I'm not sure.
I will describe here the things that, for me, are the foundations of faith. I would be happy if the rabbi could comment, enlighten, add, or refer me to sources of study that I could benefit from in this area.
1. From my perspective, it is very likely that there is a God, since reality, to the best of my knowledge, cannot create itself, and what we can clearly point to through science is that there are processes that are composed of causes and effects, and it cannot be that there have been such processes and causes and effects an infinite number of times in the past, because then that would mean that until today we have gone through an infinite number of such processes, and that does not make sense, because it is not possible to go through infinity (although I am unable to point to a starting point since it is infinity, but half, quarter and eighth of infinity are also infinity, and so on, and in fact, any point in infinity can be chosen and from there to start counting). I've heard atheists argue that human reason cannot be used to think about what was before the Big Bang because it is simply irrelevant, since we have no idea what reality was like then, but human reason, unfortunately, is all I have to determine my beliefs, and it's funny to me that people who insist on using Occam's razor are forced to make the additional assumption that has no logical necessity, as I understand it, that reality worked fundamentally differently (not by cause and effect) before the bang.
Additionally, regarding belief in God; I am not a great scientist, nor even a small one, and I do not know the details of the development of life, biology, physics, etc., but from my impression it seems to me that in order to create reality as it is today, a multitude of conditions and situations had to be created, and the probability of all this is very, very low to say the least. Adding the one detail, that there is a God who creates and directs reality, turns the probability of all these conditions into 1, and quite unlike the atheists' method, this is not an unnecessary assumption at all and there is great benefit from it. From this I understand that you have to be a really great believer to be an atheist, much more than a religious believer.
2. For me, the greatest test of a particular system is its success, or in other words, its adaptation to reality. This is actually circumstantial-historical proof in favor of Judaism, which has had a great influence on humanity, and has survived so many crises and destructions that it is truly a miracle, and similar to the example of the Kuzari, about the man who will come into the fire and not be harmed, which in my understanding is a parable for the people of Israel and not a specific person, even a prophet. Since, to the best of my understanding, reality has a Creator, and in light of the great success of Judaism throughout history, this constitutes proof for me of the truth of the Torah.
3. I want a moral life, and the public that in my opinion lives the most moral life in Israeli society is the religious Zionist public, and I would like to belong to this type of people (although I don't like to define myself, but in the end, decisions have to be made, such as where to live and which educational institutions to send my children to). In addition, my parents are very pleased with the way I am today, and I really like the healthy Jewish family unit with all the Jewish family rituals. This is not a theological argument but a psychological state, which gives me another reason to want to remain religious.
I have no problems with claim #1, and I am quite confident in it. I have a problem with claim #2, because I demand from myself factual evidence, not just circumstantial evidence, for the righteousness of Judaism, and I currently have (and I assume I will always have) questions that require factual answers (I would be happy to ask the rabbi these questions). With the situation described in #3, I have a conflict due to the company I currently serve with as part of being a commando soldier, in many situations of conflict between existential desire and halacha (women's singing, mixed company, grammar in kosher laws, etc.). Since the situation I described in #3 is quite existential in my opinion, it is my desire to belong to a group, to feel valuable, and to have a pleasant family life according to my subjective experience, there is a conflict here with individual existential feelings that contradict this. Of course, my problem with claim #2 works against loyalty to halacha, despite the strength of the claim in my eyes. However, I will point out that I still observe the halacha, I am only describing the mental state that currently has not caused a major behavioral change on my part for the time being.
If in the past I thought I would live close to the Torah institution where I studied, the situation I described at the beginning, about how the Torah incubator caused me not to ask fundamental questions, makes me think exactly the opposite today, out of a desire for my own original faith and loyalty to myself.
I admit that I haven't read your notebooks yet, I'm new to the site (today was the first time I read an entire article, and it's the excellent article on repeating the question) but I definitely want to read them, hoping to find direction and a healthy and rational worldview there.
Apologies for the length,
Michael
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