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As part of reflections on the first book

שו”תCategory: faithAs part of reflections on the first book
asked 7 years ago

I read a post on Facebook by Ilai Ofran from this week, which touches on our discussion a little.
I wonder what you would say about the rest of his statement, that proving the existence or non-existence of God is not the cause of abandoning religion.
And this is his language:

The biggest religious question in the previous generation was “Where was God in the Holocaust?” – because if God, then what about the Holocaust? And if the Holocaust, then what about God?
This enormous question has shattered the spiritual world of many and caused quite a few Jews to abandon the observance of the Torah and the commandments. I have met several people who testified that their faith in God ascended to heaven in the smoke of the furnaces of accursed Poland. Countless articles, sermons, and lessons have attempted to provide a solution to this question, and like any question that has several answers, a convincing answer has apparently not been found.
Several decades have passed. The question remains, but among my generation of many Jewish students, as well as among my students, I do not know a single person for whom this question is what caused them to lose their faith or stop keeping the commandments. Not because everyone has found a satisfactory answer, but because the question is much less burning for us. The Holocaust has turned from a bleeding wound into a memory from the past. From an existential upheaval into a theoretical intellectual discussion.
This is an important educational insight for me – people usually don’t lose their faith or become atheists primarily because of a “pure” philosophical question, but rather because of a question that touches the very core of their soul and the burning point in their soul. In the previous generation, this was the Holocaust. In our generation, much less so.
The question of faith of our generation, in the knowledge of God and in the greatness of God, is “How is it possible that the Torah prohibits a person from realizing his natural inclination?” For if God abhors homosexuality, why did He create men who are attracted to their own kind, and if God created them this way, how is it possible that He prohibits them from realizing their love or starting a family?
I have been involved in education for quite a few years, and I have not found an ideological question that excites our generation and weakens its faith like this question.
Here too, similar to the previous generation’s question, there are those on both sides who seek to “solve” the problem – to conclude that no one was truly created this way or to conclude that the prohibition is not valid today. Others expand further and from this arrive at a total apostasy from the truth of the Torah, or a complete alienation from the LGBT community.
But as with any fundamental question of faith (and to distinguish a thousand thousand differences between the two questions) – these are questions that cannot be resolved or answered. They are too complex and large to be resolved with a flimsy excuse. The educational debate became sevenfold deeper and more relevant the day educators stopped giving poor, empty, automatic answers, and dared to admit outright that they do not have a definitive answer to such a powerful question.
As with the question of the previous generation, we have no choice but to grasp at both ends. To understand that we do not understand. To give up the nagging attempt to know a higher wisdom. To adhere to the Torah that forbade incest and not to let go of the belief that it is not good for man, any man, to be alone. And just as the Jewish faith survived its previous crises – not thanks to bland answers or forced excuses, but thanks to faithful Jews, who see deeply and investigate, who have a good mind and an understanding heart, who know that there are questions that we must learn to live with and in their shadow.
May God enlighten our eyes…

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מיכי Staff answered 7 years ago

I agree and disagree. First, I do know some who left because of this (naturally they come to me and not to him). By the way, more Haredi than others.
Secondly, I think if people pose philosophical questions it means it’s meaningful to them. Even if people get hung up on questions to anchor a decision that comes from somewhere else, the fact is that they bother to anchor it on the rational plane. So if answers are given it may delay abandonment. This is exactly the debate we had about questions that are answers.
A person who takes a step towards the world can be explained on several levels of reference, especially psychological and philosophical. We tend to explain a step taken against our position on the psychological level and a step taken in favor of our position on the philosophical level. Think of a person who repents, the secularists attribute this to the crises he experienced, meaning they are psychologists, and the religious explain that he discovered the light, meaning they are philosophers. And here, surprisingly, when a person asks a question, the religious explain that he wanted to allow himself to be immoral, meaning they are psychologists, and the secularists explain that the Jewish people understood the foolishness in which they lived, meaning they are philosophers. This just means that everyone is hung up on a level that is convenient for them (after all, it is not convenient to say that a person who decided against my position did so for philosophical reasons. I would prefer to attribute this to a psychological crisis).
So beyond biases, who is really right? Both sides, of course. Every step we take has psychological and philosophical explanations, and probably only the combination of all of them can offer a real explanation for the step taken. Relying on psychology or only on one of the levels is a simplification, and usually it is an avoidance of dealing with the essential questions (because they threaten me personally). Therefore, it is always important to deal with the questions, even if you have a psychological or other explanation for the quitter’s step. No one wants to be an idiot and choose a path because of motives that have no substantive-philosophical justification. And if you lose the ground from under the substantive motives, psychology alone may not be enough.

ב replied 7 years ago

I must say that from personal experience this is absolutely not true. I have no psychological problem with the commandments and the Torah, and yet I almost left the question once for purely philosophical reasons (I didn't use excuses to leave. On the contrary, I "wanted" the Torah to be true). It is possible that the psychological problems are created (not accompanied!) by philosophical distrust.

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