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How to answer my students if there is no other way to say it from the sources

שו”תCategory: generalHow to answer my students if there is no other way to say it from the sources
asked 3 years ago

Peace and blessings, Rabbi,
I am a rabbi at one of the highest yeshivahs in the Torah community.
For 10 years now, I have been following your content with pleasure. May God continue your good work.
I will present to you my problem. Many of my students turn to me to answer their questions about faith, and they are at a very high philosophical level, and I cannot give them any other answers than the ones you give. The problem is that these answers do not align with the currently accepted concepts in the religious community, and if I say them, I will be fired from the yeshiva. I also live in the town where the yeshiva is located with my wife, and the entire environment where I live is very Torah-oriented, and I am open to solutions of your kind.
So what will I do?
Should I leave my students with doubts or take a risk?
 
 


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0 Answers
מיכי Staff answered 3 years ago
First of all, it’s very interesting that students in a higher yeshiva are dealing with such questions. It’s actually encouraging. In many cases, the closure is received peacefully. To be honest, in most cases, things can be presented in a moderate and not pointed way like I do. You can refer them to other RAMs, and only if that doesn’t satisfy them, offer them another direction. You can refer them to me, to my book or website, or to other people who can give them different answers. And of course there are two more radical options: 1. You can direct the questions yourself to the team that works with you and see if they have reasonable answers, and only then ask what they think of your answer. 2. You can also realize that you don’t belong there and look for another direction, but this is of course difficult and has some serious costs.

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מיכי Staff replied 3 years ago

By the way, the term "Torah" here means closed and conservative. I don't like this negative use of such a positive term.

חשש גזל replied 3 years ago

On the 12th of Kislev, 1999

No, my dear,

Since you receive a salary from the yeshiva to teach the Torah accepted in Rabbinic Judaism, whose worldview is based on the Mekorot, the Bible, and the words of the sages, the first and the last, then if you take advantage of your position to offer Torah that is not subject to Mekorot, then you are doing your job fraudulently. You should establish a network of institutions that will declare that they are not subject to Mekorot (except, of course, the Trilogy 🙂 and start raising funds and students.

With best wishes, Shatsenimus the Levengardi

והפתרון המקורי replied 3 years ago

When there are questions that you don't know how to deal with, it is permissible to say, "I don't know." You can refer yourself and your students to websites such as "Ratio" by "Values" or "Knowing to Believe" by "Yedaiah Institute," or to books such as "Our Generation in Front of Eternal Questions" by Dr. Aharon Barrett, etc.

Best regards, Menashe Barkai Buch-Terger

שכל ישר replied 3 years ago

For Shatznimus.
It is possible that the students' right to truth and knowledge
precedes these calculations

Indeed, the mind is the mediator between man and God, we learned from Ibn Ezra
and to kill it is to kill the basis for the worship of God

Without it, one can be Bibiists instead of worshipers of God

The Ramban also in ‘And you did what is right and good’ says that it is not appropriate to command everything because there are many variables in reality

Therefore, the basis:
Give your opinion

That is:
Give your opinion = worshiper of God

Remove your opinion = not worshiping God.
(But an idolater/common Bibiist)

To the owner of the original solution.
I don't know all the sites you referred.
I heard from lecturers who worked in an organization called ‘Values’. And according to my impression, and also a large group of Haredim we spoke to on the subject, the understanding that this is not a serious place that deserves to be addressed. Certainly not referring there anyone who has any sense or even’ just a simple and basic ability to search for sources to check what is being sold to him there.
Referring would be ridicule, contempt and scorn in the eyes of the questioner and rightly so.
I don't know about the other sites you mentioned, whether they are committed to the truth and whether they don't spread nonsense with straw and hay.

Dr. Aharon Barrett was the CEO of Bank Leumi in the 1950s. Due to illness, he took an extended vacation during which he studied the subject, and as a result of his concentrated study, he wrote his book, Our Generation Versus the Questions of Eternity.

As an educator, you are probably entitled to a sabbatical year during which you can clarify your questions from books and writers, questions that are not new and have been widely discussed in the literature of interpretation and thought, old and new.

Best regards, M.B.

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