What’s Wrong with Ideologies? (Column 565)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

This past Shabbat (Behar–Bechukotai) I took part in a panel where each of us was asked to speak about what ought to be dropped from our vision in light of the events and disputes of recent months. I chose to make two comments that I consider important, and therefore—although I have already addressed them here on the site more than once—I thought it appropriate to present them again in an orderly fashion.

The meaning of the task itself: “What should we drop”

I opened by noting that the tone accompanying the definition of the task made me uncomfortable. The implicit assumption is that all the participants there (almost all of them rabbis) share some common vision, and therefore we should jointly discuss whether and what to drop from that vision. As if this were an internal discussion of a group with a shared vision. I generally do not feel a sense of belonging to collectives, certainly not when it comes to ideas and visions. Phrases like “we believe in _” or “we believe that _” raise my temperature. Beliefs and opinions are a private matter. Each individual must formulate them, decide what they espouse and believe, and where they aspire to go. Collective aspirations and values testify to a lack of thinking and to a herd that acts collectively.

Therefore I began by saying that I do not think there is necessarily a shared vision among all the participants, and thus the task could perhaps be defined more personally: what each of us should drop from their own vision. But that is already a somewhat problematic discussion, for I do not see why it concerns everyone present what I drop from my vision—just as it is not my business what each of them drops from theirs. This is an accounting I should make with myself. There may be room to clarify the visions themselves, since one can hear arguments from those with other visions that will help me formulate my own (Eruvin 13b explains that the law was decided like Beit Hillel because they would present Beit Shammai’s words before their own). That concerns the very process of formulating a vision and a position. But the deletions from each person’s vision and the compromises one is prepared to make for others are more personal matters for each individual—what one is willing to compromise on, tactically or strategically. Of course one can also discuss that, and it can indeed be interesting to hear what others think about my deletions and non-deletions, but that was neither the goal of the discussion nor the way it was conducted.

Ultimately, because of this difficulty I chose to engage a topic that can indeed be common to everyone, because it touches methodology and meta-ideology rather than the contents and values themselves. When one deals with our attitude toward visions in general, the way they are formulated, and the way we debate them, then we can discuss it detached from the specific content of each person’s vision. There I made two methodological and meta-ideological remarks that are related to each other, which I now present: 1. A complex look at ideological conduct. 2. A simple look at complex thinking.

1. A complex look at ideological conduct

Sociological and ideological inertia

A few years ago I attended the funeral of a dear man (my brother-in-law’s father) who was among the founders of Yad Hannah, the (only) communist kibbutz in Israel. The atmosphere was very somber; beyond his passing there was a sense that this was a funeral for the communist movement in Israel (Maki). From the eulogies one could gather that almost everyone who belonged to it was there—and there weren’t that many. Later I spoke with a professor of economics, a member of the communist movement, and tried to understand what exactly he espoused, and especially what his/their utopia was. He said, with admirable candor, that they have no utopia and are not striving toward any ideal state, because they themselves do not know how to define that ideal. They understand very well that today we cannot do without a free market economy, but they try to correct injustices locally. I wondered in what sense they are still communist. Many try to correct injustices; if there is no specific, comprehensive utopian vision before them, what exactly differentiates them from other reformers of society? He did not really have an answer. This is the phenomenon of ideological inertia. One continues to hold on to some ideology, but detached from its original contents. Seemingly only the headline remains while everything beneath it has changed or vanished.

I then thought that many people of various ideological stripes act similarly. I meet quite a few people who grew up in the Haredi community and whose present views contain nothing of Harediness. They espouse Zionism and full partnership with broader Israeli society, working for their livelihood, the importance of general education, openness to the wider world and its values, a more liberal and flexible approach to halakha, equality for women, and more. When I ask such people in what sense they are still Haredi, they don’t really know how to answer. They feel belonging to the Haredi society but share none of its ideas or values. This is sociological or ideological inertia similar to what I described above.

It reminds me of a story. When I was in Yeruham shortly after the Haredi Nahal (IDF framework) began, the first recruits arrived at the squad-commander course at a base near Yeruham. Someone asked me to give them a class/talk. He gave me background about the phenomenon and the people, and said that most of them observe nothing and in fact do not really believe in God. They have no substantive connection to religion or Harediness, but they feel themselves Haredi (Haredim without faith). This is not the phenomenon of “anusim” (coerced), since these were young men who behaved this way publicly (it was more connected to the phenomenon then dubbed “shababnikes”). He knew I taught at a hesder yeshiva, and as part of his briefing he asked me not to try to speak with them about Rav Kook. They would be insulted by being treated as “Mizrachnikim” (religious Zionists), and I would lose them. You can imagine that this constraint did not much bother me, but the statement greatly amused me. They publicly desecrate Shabbat, hang around with girls in questionable ways, observe nothing, and learn nothing—but heaven forbid that one call them Mizrachnikim or teach them Rav Kook.

“Lite” religiosity in the modern-Orthodox community is also a shade of this phenomenon. At least some of them are not really religious yet continue under a label or tag of religiosity. Certain kinds of traditionalism are also like this; people engaged in “secular Jewish identity” are usually like this (a Jewish heading without value content), and so on.

And here I recall a joke. Yocheved and Berel are Holocaust survivors who, following their harsh experiences, lost their faith in God. One day Berel begins to rail and curse heavenward. Yocheved turns to him, utterly shocked: “Berel, how can you speak to the Holy One like that?!” Berel, bewildered, replies: “Yocheved, did you forget? We no longer believe in Him.” Yocheved answers without hesitation: “Of course not. But the God I don’t believe in is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger. Shame on you! You don’t speak to Him like that.”

By the way, this phenomenon does not necessarily attest to sociological inertia. It can also be interpreted as a deep inner faith that does not reveal itself outwardly (and that even the person himself is not aware of—“the heart does not divulge to the mouth”). Perhaps some members of the other groups I described above may also be classified this way.

In this context one can also mention Max Weber’s Protestant thesis, according to which the characteristics of Western culture are of a distinctly Protestant nature. Success-orientation, neuroticism, and even the psychiatric diagnostics practiced in Western society, he claims, are built on Protestant foundations—despite the fact that many who live in that culture have long ceased to believe in God. The ideas and values have undergone secularization, but remain intact. This phenomenon too is not exactly what I am talking about. Here it is a psychological influence that leaves religious ideas, in a different hue and form, with a person or group that has undergone secularization. It is not the ideological inertia I mean here, for I am talking about those who do not truly believe in the ideology yet remain under its heading for sociological reasons. The West has not truly remained under the Protestant label, but in practice it behaves as such. That is the reverse of the ideological inertia I described.

Ideological conduct is good: a first judgment—with a human reservation alongside it

All these phenomena, for all their differences, (at least to me) merit disdain—and rightly so. These are people who hold incoherent conceptions, who continue out of inertia without giving themselves an account. In truth these are not people who truly hold an ideology, but who merely continue to use a term that for them has outlived its meaning. It is herd behavior—nothing more. The mashgichim used to call this “melumada” (in Lithuanian pronunciation: “melumodo,” short for “mitzvat anashim melumada”—rote observance).

The ideal model implied by this disdain (and in fact underlying it) is people who adhere to a grounded ideology that they adopted through conscious decision and sound arguments, act in devoted accordance with it, and examine all their deeds in its light. I should clarify that this statement is not conditioned on my opinion of that ideology. They deserve admiration for acting to realize what they themselves believe in—even if, in my eyes, it is a crooked or even destructive ideology (see column 372 on judging a person by his own lights).

Up to this point I have touched upon the admiration due to ideological people and the resulting disdain toward those who are not. But there is another side to the coin. In column 240 I offered a critical reading of Susan Wolf’s article on the figure she calls the “moral saint.” There it is described how such an exalted ideological person is usually a difficult person whom it is not pleasant to live near. People who devote themselves to an ideology tend to trample other things along the way—especially things that hinder them from advancing it or that simply demand resources (time, energy, money) that could be dedicated to promoting it. I knew a person who used to say: there is no such thing as “friends,” only “fellow travelers.” To my mind many of the leaders of communism and its adherents were such people.

Such an ideology naturally demands sacrifices. Many of those who fought for communism—and certainly those who fought against it, or were merely perceived as doing so—lost their lives or property, or paid heavy prices on the altar of class struggle and ideological combat. They were called “oil on the wheels of the revolution.” In that column I explained that such a person is very worthy of admiration, but in many cases a very unpleasant person. There is something much more agreeable about a person of natural, easygoing goodness who does not measure every action or event by his ideological and value yardsticks (not even moral ones). He is perhaps less worthy of admiration, but he is undoubtedly a more pleasant friend and neighbor (see also column 269 on Sarah Stroud’s article about friendship). Thus far we have seen only one judgment—appreciation of ideological people—with a psychological footnote (how unpleasant it is to live near them). This is not another judgment of the same people. The judgment is that ideological conduct is good, but it carries a human price. Yet it is important to understand that there is also another judgment, in a sense the opposite, regarding ideological conduct.

Ideological conduct is bad: a second judgment

Karl Popper wrote a hefty book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, which offers a sharp critique of communism and the terrible injustices it wrought. The first half is devoted to a very sharp and detailed critique of Plato. Popper sees him as the father of all evil in history, and in particular of communism. I discussed this in column 180 on Platonism and its meanings, and in column 239 on the dark side of Platonism and ideologies (see also column 519). Platonist philosophy speaks of the existence of Ideas—abstract, perfect entities. There is a perfect horse, a perfect state, a perfect regime or economic-social system, and so on. Such Platonism naturally creates a desire to bring into our world the perfect Platonic utopia—our vision of perfection. Platonism leads ideological groups that espouse such a utopia to try to force their utopia upon reality. But reality, as we know, is rather obstinate; when one tries to force upon it something too rigid that does not fit, it kicks back. As a result, ideological groups adopt harsh and cruel methods to overcome reality and squeeze it into the proper utopian mold (as the tank-men say: what doesn’t go with force—goes with even more force). Thus are born many of history’s cruelties. Fanatical faith in an ideology, however good, and in particular the ideological duty to implement it in practice, can lead people to severe distortions along the way (“oil on the wheels of the revolution”).

Note that here we are already making a judgment, and one that stands opposed to the previous judgment—though not necessarily contradicting it. Earlier I wrote that I greatly admire ideological people, but it is hard to live with or near them. Judging by that, ideological conduct is good, even if humanly uncomfortable. Now I claim more: the ideological conduct of individuals or groups is problematic in itself (and not only difficult for those around them). It contains rigidity of thought (and of action), and therefore leads to erroneous conclusions and misguided courses. An ideological person is one who not only holds an ideology but holds it rigidly; when it meets reality, he will never consider changing it. In his view the ideology descended from Sinai and must be implemented in the world—even if the world does not quite want it. Despite resistance and difficulties, ideological people or groups will always leave the ideology as it is and try to force it upon reality. This is already a judgment: ideological conduct is bad.

My claim here is evaluative, not mere discomfort: an ideology that does not fit reality is false, and therefore the attempt to impose it on reality leads to moral and human distortions (not merely inconvenience). One who is unwilling to examine his ideology with pragmatic tools—that is, to round corners and make the ideology itself more flexible (not merely its practical implementation)—holds a problematic ideology and is himself problematic. This is different from what I described earlier. The conclusion is that it is indeed important to hold an ideology, but to drop ideologicalism (rigid ideological stance). The ideology may be a good thing, but the ideologicalism (=ideological conduct) of groups or individuals is itself mistaken and dangerous.

Different aspects of this critique

I have previously cited (see column 277) Rabbi Benny Lau’s observation that in the past the religious-spiritual leadership of communities was vested in rabbis, whereas from the end of the 19th century it passed to roshei yeshiva. This shift is very problematic, because roshei yeshiva face young students. They examine the consistency of the rosh yeshiva’s ideas and his logic, but generally will not tell him that it contradicts common sense or is theoretical and does not fit reality. Those are remarks a community rabbi can receive from older people in his congregation, but a rosh yeshiva usually does not receive such remarks from his students. As a result, leadership by a rosh yeshiva will be theoretical—with vigilant consistency and perfect alignment with principles—but will not always fit reality. A community rabbi is more skilled at applying these principles to reality, and is therefore a more appropriate leader than a rosh yeshiva. The guidance you receive from him will not clash with reality as sharply, and if it does—he will usually be ready to reconsider. Of course, yeshiva students and their heads will disdain such a rabbi, because he thinks and acts like a “balabos” rather than like a ben Torah (properly pronounced: ben Teirah). He compromises and bends the ideology and rounds its corners—and therefore is not worthy of admiration. But that criticism itself stems from the fact that yeshiva folk are sometimes detached from reality and cling to the correct and worthy, but somewhat excessive, valuation of theory and unwavering adherence to it.

In columns 277 and 501 I addressed the rule that a decree which does not spread among the majority of the public is void. The common interpretation is that this is the Torah’s and halakha’s compromise with the people in the fields who cannot reach a high spiritual-halakhic level. But there I explained that, in my view, the truth is the reverse (listeners this Shabbat pointed out that Rav Kook and R. Moshe Feinstein understood it this way): decisions made in the study hall or court by Torah scholars secluded in their Torah world and detached from reality may be very successful theoretically but wrong and distorted in practical application. Therefore feedback from the field is needed, and that is the role of diffusion among the public. A decree that does not spread is feedback from the field showing the court that it made a decision unfit for practical implementation—and therefore incorrect.

It is important to understand the difference between this interpretation and the common one. Consider a Torah scholar who understands that this is how one ought to act and is able to live up to it. Is there value in his behaving that way himself, even though the decree is void (because the public cannot uphold it)? According to the common view—the answer seems yes. He will be fulfilling something correct, and we waive it for others only due to their lower spiritual level. But according to my view—definitely not. It is not right to behave that way even if you are a Torah scholar who can meet that standard. Halakha does not want you to do so, because a halakha that is not implementable is theory, and halakha by its nature is meant for implementation. As our sages said: “The Torah was not given to the ministering angels.” Many are accustomed to praise a rabbi who is like an angel. A rabbi who is like an angel may be admirable, but he cannot be a rabbi. The Torah was not given to angels—and not by accident.[1]

We can add here what I have previously written (see columns 482, 505, and elsewhere) about the rules of halakha. I explained that halakha itself “disdains” its own rules, and poskim understand that these rules are not rigid. Halakha does not believe in hard deductive positivism. The reason is that the rules are theory—or ideology—and may have internal logic, but reality is always more complex, and therefore you cannot force all practical guidance into a rigid framework of rules.

Summary of the first point: Drop the ideologicalism

From all this we can learn that clinging to ideology, as a mode of conduct, is very problematic. It is important to hold an ideology but to drop ideologicalism (ideological rigidity). I have already noted here (see columns 238, 321, 386, 507, 517, and more) that the Hardal (Haredi-nationalist) sector is highly ideological (to the point of a sect—see column 19), whereas the Haredim are much more flexible. They have an ideology, but they know to compromise on it when needed and appropriate. This is a point against them, but also to their credit. Even if the former are worthy of admiration because they truly believe in their path and act accordingly, ideological rigidity equally leads to distortions and mistakes—not only because of the harm along the way (“oil on the wheels of the revolution”), but also because an ideology that does not fit reality is false. Reality is feedback we are meant to receive in order to update the ideology.

The first point I recommended dropping due to the disputes of recent months is our ideologicalism. When each person is certain he holds the correct and absolute ideology and reality will not change him in the least, his look at reality will be monochromatic (see the next point). Beyond the price he and his surroundings will pay, the ideology he seeks to realize is not correct. If reality kicks you—you should listen to it. The reality in question also includes the arguments and opinions of others; listening to them can lead us to update our utopias (or at least the model we seek to implement) and our rigid striving for them. I must stress: this should not be done as a compromise (“reality isn’t good enough for us”) but as genuine lesson-drawing (“maybe we are ‘too good’ for it”), in the spirit of “the Torah was not given to the ministering angels.”

This brings me to the second point, which—as noted—is connected to the first.

2. A simple look at complex thinking

Spurious correlations

I have often noted here the phenomenon of dishonesty and positionality in disputes. People engaged in a dispute are not prepared to see a complex picture or listen to opposing arguments. A sharp logical expression of this can be seen in what I called “spurious correlations” (see columns 1, 41, 450, and many other places).

In column 41 I brought the example that made the penny drop for me regarding this painful phenomenon. During Rabin’s last government the question of returning the Golan to the Syrians arose again. I rode a bus and saw a car pass by with a bumper sticker: “Rabin has no mandate to return the Golan.” I wondered whether the owner supported or opposed an agreement with the Syrians, and immediately decided I lacked sufficient information to determine. Why? Because two independent questions were at stake: 1) The issue on its merits: Is it right (politically, morally, security-wise, religiously) to make an agreement with the Syrians and return the Golan Heights? 2) A question of political morality: May a prime minister who promised something before elections change his mind afterward (“things you see from here you don’t see from there”), or must he return to the people and hold new elections to obtain legitimacy for his new policy?

To my judgment these are two independent questions, and it seems to me that each has significant pros and cons. Neither side is absurd (test yourself on a case where the change in stance fits your views and on one where it opposes them). Accordingly, we would expect the public to form four classes that hold four different positions: (yes, yes), (yes, no), (no, yes), (no, no). Hence, even if the driver believes that Rabin lacks a mandate to return the Golan because the public did not grant it (the moral question), it remains entirely possible that on the merits (the substantive question) that person is an ardent supporter of returning the Golan as part of an agreement with the Syrians. Therefore that sticker does not really allow us to determine the owner’s political stance.

This is a wonderful theoretical analysis (see above my view on the relation of theories to reality), but precisely for that reason, it of course does not work. Do you think there really were four groups in the population with different positions on those questions? You all understand there were only two: those who answered (yes, yes) and those who answered (no, no). The diagonal groups—that is, the honest people who did not subordinate their moral stance to their political one, the (yes, no) and (no, yes) groups—did not exist. Thus in practice, if you check the owner of a car bearing that sticker, you will find that he opposes returning the Golan. Namely, if he answers “no” to question 2, we can infer he answers “no” to question 1 as well. Like all of us, he likely subordinates his moral positions to his political-security ones.

Another example can be found in a response I sent to Makor Rishon in 2008. I dealt there with the controversy over conversions conducted by the state conversion apparatus. I showed that the positions in dispute depend on many questions, most of them independent of one another, and each with two non-absurd sides. I pointed there to 13 such questions (there are more). In such a case we would expect to find 2¹³ (that is, 8K, 8,192) different positions. How many were there in reality? Exactly 2: those who answered (yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes) and those who answered (no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no). And what of the remaining 8,190 missing positions [such as (yes, yes, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, no, yes, yes)]?[2] None. Why? Because here too everyone subordinated their answers to all the questions to the desired final conclusion. The Haredim answered “no” to everything, and the religious-Zionists “yes” to everything. The common denominator is that first they shoot the arrow and then draw the target.

What is the right thing to do?

That is the situation with almost every disputed question among us: each side supports its conclusion with an impressive set of arguments, all of which point in the same direction, while of course ignoring all the arguments pointing the other way (at most dismissing them with a wave). But the truth is that there are hardly any simple public questions; for almost every question one can offer arguments pro and con. But we are not honest. What we ought to do is discuss each question or specific argument on its merits, and only at the end summarize and weigh all the arguments to reach a formulated, overall position on the bottom line. But that is hard. How are we to decide between conflicting arguments? So we tend to make the task easier and harness all the arguments to the same direction. Thus we spare ourselves the painful and difficult need to decide and formulate a complex stance—and perhaps, God forbid, even to change our mind and admit we erred (worse yet: that the other side was right).

In my favorite chocolate example, Reuven and Shimon argue whether to eat chocolate. The truth is that chocolate is tasty but fattening. Taste considerations lead to the conclusion that one should eat it; health considerations lead to the opposite. That is hard. How shall we decide between these two considerations? It is thus preferable for us to harness all the arguments to the same direction. If we are for chocolate, we will dig up studies from underground showing that chocolate actually slims and is very healthy. Alternatively, if we are against it, we will explain that chocolate is not tasty at all (yuck).

Usually this is done unwittingly. Our stance biases us, and thus naturally our look at all aspects leans one way. But sometimes people do it intentionally, feeling that this strengthens their thesis and persuasive power. This is, of course, propaganda—not the formulation of a stance or a substantive discussion—but sadly that is almost always how it goes.

Talmudic demonstrations

This recommendation for complex thinking appears in several halakhic and Talmudic sources. The first concerns the rule “These and those are the words of the living God.” It appears in two places: in Eruvin 13b, where it is stated without explanation, and in Gittin 6b, regarding the concubine at Gibeah, where we find an explanation:

“And further: it was R. Evyatar, regarding whom his Master agreed—as it is written, ‘and his concubine played the harlot against him.’ R. Evyatar said: He found a fly for her; R. Yonatan said: He found a hair for her. R. Evyatar found Elijah and said to him: What is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing? He said to him: He is engaged with the concubine at Gibeah. And what is He saying? He said to him: ‘My son Evyatar says thus, My son Yonatan says thus.’ He said to him: Heaven forbid! Is there doubt before Heaven? He said to him: ‘These and those are the words of the living God—he found a fly and did not take offense; he found a hair and took offense.’”

The truth regarding the concubine is the conjunction of R. Yonatan’s and R. Evyatar’s positions. The man found both a fly and a hair, and the combination angered him and led him to do what he did. This is an explanation of how we should relate to a halakhic dispute and in general: usually each side speaks reasonably and both are right in their reasons, but the dispute concerns the weighting of the reasons—that is, what bottom line follows when we take them all into account. Each side must consider the reasons on both sides, and only afterwards formulate its own position based on a weighted summary of all the reasons.

This recommendation appears explicitly in the second “these and those” sugya, in Eruvin 13b. The Gemara there describes the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel and the ruling between them (see on this column 563):

“R. Abba said in the name of Shmuel: For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disputed; these said, ‘The law is like us,’ and those said, ‘The law is like us.’ A heavenly voice emerged and said: ‘These and those are the words of the living God, and the law is like Beit Hillel.’ And since both are the words of the living God, why did Beit Hillel merit to have the law fixed like them? Because they were agreeable and forbearing, and they would recite their own words and the words of Beit Shammai, and moreover, they would place the words of Beit Shammai before their own, as we learned …”

There are several explanations of this sugya, which essentially divide into two main directions: monist (there is one halakhic truth, and pesak seeks it) and pluralist (there are many halakhic truths, and pesak is for side reasons—e.g., to ensure uniformity). R. Yosef Karo in his Klaley ha-Gemara explains that the ruling like Beit Hillel is because the truth was with them—that is, he is a monist.

The difference between these two interpretive directions mainly concerns how they read the Gemara’s explanation for the ruling like Beit Hillel (“why did they merit …”). The simple explanation is pluralist: there is no single halakhic truth, and the ruling like Beit Hillel is educational—a reward for good behavior. They treated Beit Shammai nicely, and therefore we rule like them. But R. Yosef Karo argues that the fact that Beit Hillel placed Beit Shammai’s words before their own is a methodology that gives them an advantage with respect to truth. In his view, though Beit Shammai were sharper, Beit Hillel hit the truth more often because of their methodology. And that is precisely our point: one who formulates his own view only after examining his opponents’ reasons will arrive at a more correct conclusion.

This also underlies the Gemara in Sanhedrin 17a:

“Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: We seat in the Sanhedrin only one who knows how to purify the creeping thing from the Torah.”

The Tosafists famously ask (s.v. sheyode’a): why are such “empty pilpulim” a condition for sitting on the Sanhedrin? The Maharal explains that these are not empty pilpulim. Although the Torah deems the creeping thing impure, there are genuine reasons to purify it. One who sits in the Sanhedrin and rules must be able to take into account considerations from all sides and only then reach a conclusion. As for the creeping thing, the Torah tells us that the reasons to deem it impure outweigh the reasons to deem it pure—yet a Sanhedrin judge must understand even the reasons to purify.

These are precisely the words of the Gemara on that very page in Eruvin (13b, a bit earlier):

“R. Abbahu said in the name of R. Yohanan: R. Meir had a student named Sumchus who would give, for every matter of impurity, forty-eight reasons to render it impure, and for every matter of purity, forty-eight reasons to render it pure. It was taught: There was a meticulous student in Yavneh who would purify the creeping thing with one hundred and fifty reasons.”

Let us not err: all the reasons on all sides were genuine. These are not Purim-torah contests of empty pilpul (the Gemara there even brings several such reasons). This is an examination that indeed distinguishes Torah scholars from simplistic thinkers. Only those who formulate a stance after taking into account considerations from all sides are worthy of sitting on the Sanhedrin.

As an aside, if you think about any dispute that comes to mind—if reasonable people are involved—almost always the reasons on each side are sensible. Almost no one is a total villain or a total fool, certainly when a broad public is involved that includes people of different levels. Therefore a genuine dispute exists mainly in the weighting of all the reasons and in formulating a bottom-line stance. But at the level of reasons, truly, “these and those are the words of the living God” (see also my lecture here).

Let us return to the importance of complex thinking in current issues.

Pathological application: the case of the “reform”

So it would seem in the case of the judicial “reform” as well. Apparently simplicity reigns there too. One side sees only positives in it, refuses to compromise, and refuses to see counter-arguments; opposite them stands a side that sees only negatives and refuses to consider or even hear arguments in its favor. Yet something very interesting occurs here. Polls show that the public is actually not divided. If one does not ask only “Are you for or against the reform?” but also offers intermediate positions and formulations, one discovers that 80% of the public agrees on 80% of the points. In the broader public one can indeed see quite a bit of complex thinking. Perhaps this is because this debate is exceptional in scope, duration, and public involvement. I do not recall another debate in which a significant portion of the public entered the professional considerations, exchanged positions with experts, read reasoned positions from all sides, and participated actively in the street and in the media—especially at such high intensity for nearly four months. It is no wonder that people discover that the situation is more complex than they are being told. As I noted in column 552, even among the signatories (professors, etc.) of petitions for and against the reform there is very broad agreement, and the difference between them is mainly sentiment. These support the reform, while admitting it is too extreme at certain points; those oppose the reform, while agreeing that changes are needed. So what is the difference? They say almost the same thing—except that these say it under the heading “petition in favor of the reform,” and those under “petition against the reform.” I explained there that the supporters support the idea of reform, though they would moderate it; the opponents oppose this reform but concede the need for changes. Mar said one thing, mar said another—and they do not truly disagree.

And despite all this, there is a representation failure: in the main public discourse—Knesset or media—simplistic, all-for or all-against positions dominate, as in the examples above regarding the Golan or conversion. The speakers in this discourse are extremists who do not really represent the public they supposedly lead. Here the public is actually more intelligent than many of its representatives and spokespeople. But as is common in public dynamics, the avant-garde leading the camps is the extreme minority—the 10% on each side (outside the 80% consensus). They lead demonstrations for and against, in which the dominant tone is simplistic absolutism, while the authentic voice of the majority in the middle is hardly heard. Sometimes people do not understand themselves and live under the illusion that they themselves are at one of the extremes, when in fact that is not the case.

Leaders on both sides have a clear interest in maintaining the extremism and simplicity of the discourse: not to listen to other arguments and opinions, and to present a picture that is wholly black or wholly white. As I explained above, this can happen unwittingly (positionality works unconsciously), but at times I feel it is entirely deliberate. Presenting an extreme black-and-white picture—children of light versus children of darkness—strengthens the thesis and seemingly serves as a stronger engine for action (be it protest or legislation). But that is the root of all evil. It prevents the possibility of discussion, precludes the formulation of balanced, sensible positions, and ultimately blocks agreement and resolution. It leads to a futile, unending clash of force between two sides that, at least at this stage, agree with each other almost entirely. Note: the agreement more or less already exists (80% on 80%), but it does not appear in the discourse. There it seems to be a polar dispute. As I wrote: representation failure.

Summary of the second point: Drop the simplism

My conclusion is that we must drop the simplicities of the discussion, and despite pressure and fears, and despite the interest and desire to present a hardline stance, we must be willing to relate to complexity. It is important to listen attentively to arguments from both sides; they are usually not utter nonsense. We must be prepared to hold a complex position, this way or that. It is more important and correct to adopt complex formulations that present arguments for and against, and only on the basis of all of them to formulate a bottom-line stance. Formulations such as: “Yes, reform is needed—but not this one.” Or: “I oppose the extreme reform, but agree that substantial changes are warranted.” In my eyes these formulations are no less strong and persuasive than the frenzied vituperation occurring here on both sides. They also leave us a chance to move forward—and most importantly, as with Beit Hillel, they will lead us to the most correct conclusion.

By the way, the two points presented in this column are, of course, pure truth. Whoever opposes them is among the children of darkness.

[1] Two remarks:

• My words here assume that implementing values and halakhot is, by definition, only broad implementation by the public at large (this is the categorical imperative; see columns 122, 344, and more). What is not fit to be a general law is not an appropriate moral or halakhic rule.
• It is commonly held that behaviors such as midat hasidut (pious stringency) or going beyond the letter of the law are desirable for those who can uphold them, and seemingly this contradicts my proposal. I will not enter into this here.

[2] Does that long vector annoy you? Good. These phenomena annoy me too.