Does the acceptance of the Talmud by the nation also apply to secular people?
The rabbi claims that the authority of the Talmud in the Jewish people stems from the nation’s acceptance. And acceptance of the general requires the details. Socrates in the dialogue Crito claims that the fact that he chose to live in Athens reveals implicitly that he accepted the laws of Athens. If he had moved to another Greek city, the authority of the laws of Athens would have lapsed from him. Just because there is an agreement, even if implicitly, then the laws of Athens have a claim against him until death.
According to this argument, does the fact that a Jew chooses to be secular deprive him of the authority of the Talmud or not? In other words, is the fact that someone is secular similar to moving to another city or does he simply stay in this city and the Talmud still have authority over him only because because he is secular the religious commandments are meaningless to him?
This is a question I have often pondered. In principle, there is no logical necessity for this, since not every normative system operates in the same way. There may be a system whose acceptance is ultimately binding and prohibits abandonment. For example, a system of moral laws (the social contract).
In any case, it seems that a distinction must be made between someone who abandons because he believes it is not true and not binding (there is no God or He has not been revealed), and then he abandons regardless of the question of whether it is possible to deny the commitment you have received (especially if there is a mistaken acceptance here), and someone who abandons even though he believes it is binding simply because he does not feel like it. I spoke about him above. I have no evidence for this beyond the halakhic determination that it is impossible to convert (there were opinions in halakhic that it is possible, but they ruled out around the 16th century and since then it has been accepted that it is not). I once heard of a statement by Chazal, “Esau Israel was a convert” – which means that he was the only Israelite who succeeded in becoming a convert. The argument of the Mudea Rabba in the Gemara Shabbat is made by the people of Israel and not by an individual Jew, and even with regard to the people it is rejected after the days of Ahasuerus and Esther.
Now I noticed that you are talking about the Talmud and not about commitment to the Torah in general. A secularist usually denies the Torah and not the Talmud. Regarding the Talmud, if the entire public decides to deny it - in my opinion there is no obstacle to that. But individuals are committed to the framework of the whole, and it seems to me that even more so if they are committed to the halakha and only want to abandon the Talmud. If they want to abandon everything - I talked about that above.
What views say that it is possible to convert religion?
See, for example, in the column Abba'ez si'mad and on the subject of tools there. There were several such opinions among the early ones.
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