Why do you believe in Judaism and not other religions?

Are you claiming that a Christian who believes in Christianity will receive a reward for it?

You don't get paid for your faith. You either believe or you don't. You get paid for your work. And yes, I'm sure that if there is a salary, they will get it too.

I didn't understand, but if he doesn't believe in Judaism, he won't keep the 13 commandments.

And therefore? He does what, to the best of his understanding, God requires of him. See post 441 on the intention of an action.

How is the question of who is right not interesting if in order to worship God to the best of your understanding, you must first find out who is right?

So the Torah says that it will punish if you worship other gods? That's how the person believed, right?

So how does the Torah say that it will punish idolatry? That's how the person believed what he was guilty of?

Will an atheist also receive a reward if he acted according to his understanding?

Oren,
The question interests me personally in order to make decisions about me. I don't care if someone else who made a different decision is wrong or not. That's a matter between him and his creator.

Menachem,
The Torah punishes those who do it intentionally. The worshipers of the G-d who truly believed in it are not punished. They are forced into their own minds. I have explained this more than once here on the site.

N,
There is nothing to reward him for. For going to the beach on Shabbat? If he does a moral act, I assume that G-d will reward him, but not as fulfilling a mitzvah or doing his own work. A Christian's mitzvot are doing G-d's work for him.

So wouldn't someone who truly believed in the Beit Din be executed? Wouldn't someone who didn't believe in the Torah and desecrated the Sabbath be stoned?

This is what we see from the prophecy in the law: "They raise and not lower."

The prophet wrote that today we will not do it (I hope no one thinks so), but I asked when there was a Sanhedrin. They asked the person if he really believed in it or if he was just overcome by his instincts? Sounds less logical to me.

Obviously. Anyone who does not believe is a fool in his own opinion. But they did not have to ask, because they inquired about it in advance, and it was also assumed that a Jew believed and if he sinned, it was because of his instinct. The situation of Jews who do not believe as a widespread phenomenon is new.
By the way, they almost never actually executed anyone (perhaps also for my own good), so the question of what they actually did is also quite hypothetical.

Mickey wrote that what is important is that anyone who truly worships their God (Jew/Muslim/Christian) will probably not be punished, and will even benefit from it.
This does leave a question about “religion” (after all, the overlap between faith and religion is really not complete). Will a Christian (worshiper of idolatry) who behaves like a very religious person and slaughters Jews during the Crusades because, from our point of view, it was God's word, not be punished?

But let's leave it at that.

The real question that was asked in my opinion is the question of “hereditary belief”, and this is a very strong question about every religion.
It goes like this:
Mickey believes in the God of Israel and Judaism because he was born a Jew.
It is very reasonable to assume that if Mickey had been born a Muslim, then we would read his words on some Muslim blog that raves about the wisdom of Muslim philosophers (instead of the wisdom of the sages).

I want to say – Mickey, you don't have anything objectively serious about the Jewish religion (regardless of G-d). After all, you believe in it simply because you were born to it.

If a person did what he was obligated to do to the best of his understanding, he will of course not be punished. Will a Jew who slaughtered Amalekites in accordance with the commandments of the Torah and the prophet (Samuel) be punished? All of these are forced (or righteous), and therefore do not owe punishment.

The question of “permissibility” can arise in relation to any position and any opinion. All of these are influenced by our environment. So why are there no right opinions and no right positions? There are columns on this site about that.
In any case, in light of your extreme determination, I would expect somewhat more serious arguments.

Wow
Are you really saying that cruel Christians and Muslims who slaughtered people endlessly and mercilessly will receive a reward from God for it?!! That sounds a bit…

Are you reading what I write or am I going through Babylon, will you ruin the keyboard?
I wrote that they will not be punished. Where did I write that they will receive a reward.
But to your question, it is possible that they will also receive a reward. Their intentions are desirable even if their actions are not, and it is customary to receive a reward for good intentions.

By the way, why does this sound stranger to you than those who brutally slaughtered Amalekites or Canaanites because they were instructed to do so by the prophet or the Torah?

Because I am convinced that I am right and they are wrong. Therefore, I will receive a reward for the command of God and they are wrong and should have thought and therefore will receive a punishment. You, on the other hand, are not sure that you are right and that is why I asked you.
Regarding the reward, that is what I understood from what you wrote at the beginning (and it turned out that I was right).

And you are also convinced that God is a wicked, evil man who comes in discord with his creatures and does not exempt rapists from punishment. They are convinced of their own minds just like you.
I am indeed not convinced of anything, and I also believe that anyone who is convinced is either working on himself or on me.

Does the rabbi think that the philosopher in Kuzari is right?

A quote from Mickey's words regarding future reward and punishment (can be found on Google):

“I have no position on these issues. I think these are speculations, and it is clear that this cannot be known without a source from above. I am not convinced that they originate from Sinai or from prophecy, and therefore it is possible that these are innovations that were renewed during the history of Halacha (for quite obvious reasons. This resolves quite a few difficulties) and were established as principles of faith, and therefore I do not know what to say about them.”

On the one hand, I do not know what to say about them, on the other hand, you write contradictory things here:
“If a person did what he was obligated to do to the best of his understanding, he will of course not be punished. ”

Mickey, even though you write that you are not convinced of anything, if you do not have a basic position regarding the truth of reward and punishment, it is better not to raise all kinds of guesses and hypotheses. You don't even know if reward and punishment are real in the next world, so how did you come to the conclusion that God works?

Regarding belief in heredity, my determination was not that “Judaism is right” or “Islam is wrong” or “Christianity is definitely right”.
My determination was that someone who grows up in a certain environment, and chooses a religion, will grow up with a probability close to 100% to be a reflection of their environment.

Some of Maimonides”s explanations (or any Christian or Muslim philosopher) are good, some are not convincing.

It may be that a Christian's argument against the possibility of an oral Torah received at Sinai is excellent.
On the other hand, the Jewish religion also has its own beautiful arguments, and if you read the arguments of philosophers from the golden age of Islam, you will also find beautiful things about the Islamic religion.
And vice versa. - Everyone has less good arguments.
One thing is almost certain - no one is objective.
I can show many weak things in your fifth notebook (as far as I remember, the one that shows why the Jewish religion in particular), and it is easy to see that you are not objective and that you are biased.

But that is for another discussion.

Why is it impossible for him to come to terms with his creation? In our reality, we see that a person who puts his hand in fire gets burned even if he doesn't know it. Why is something similar not possible in another world or in a spiritual reality? Why would God separate reality here from metaphysical reality? How does the rabbi conclude this?

Evil is determined in relation to one's state of behavior according to God's laws (at least in classical religious terminology) and therefore God decides what is considered evil and He cannot be evil.
He can also determine in advance who goes to heaven and who goes to hell arbitrarily. This is also what Calvinists claim.
I don't see a logical problem here.

Rabbinic literature also sees those Gentiles as evil (just as many Christians see the Jews as evil) even though they acted in the name of God. Similarly, idolaters apparently believe in their religion. I don't understand how a person can worship idols because of instinct.

Dvir,
On what subject?

Parva,
You are not reading what I write but are entrenched in your own ignorance. There is no point in continuing.

A,
Nature operates according to fixed laws. But reward and punishment, if any, are determined by the decisions of the Almighty. Decisions are supposed to be made with justice. This is how He Himself testifies about Himself (God is faithful and there is no injustice, righteous and upright), and this is how He also demands of us. As for the problems with logic that you mentioned, this is not a question of logic. There is no logical problem in anything. The question is what is true, not what is consistent or contradictory.
Idol worship due to instinct is described in Chazal and the Bible in several places (such as the legend about Menashe and Rav Ashi and many more). And what you fail to understand is described in the legend of the annulment of the Izra Da'z by the people of the Great Knesset. Its meaning is that the desire has been sublimated over the generations, and now we no longer have such an urge, and therefore we do not understand the situation of the desire. But once upon a time, people had an urge to work with the desire even though they knew that it was not real. To understand this, I liken it to the crime of fornication (for example, a man's wife). There you can certainly understand that a person would do this even though it is clear to him that it is wrong, because his urge overpowered him. This was once the case with the desire. Incidentally, in the same legend it is said that even in fornication, honest people abolished the urge, except for a man's wife.

In Kuzari, a Kuzari king meets with a philosopher who explains the religious tenets that as long as a person innocently aims to worship God, there is no change in the path.
Does the rabbi agree with this claim of the Kuzari philosopher?

No. And I didn't write that either. What I wrote is that if a person acts innocently, they won't come to him with complaints and maybe he'll even receive a reward. That doesn't mean there isn't a more or less true way. On the contrary, I wrote that I think it's likely that Judaism is more true.

Mickey, it's really cool that you know the ropes.
How great that in such a weak generation we have been blessed with a man with vast knowledge of the ways of God!

Friends. To all those who are outraged by what Micah writes. It is possible that Christians and Muslims will receive a reward if their intention is for the sake of heaven. They were of the latter, like Rabbi Yaakov Udomin, who believed this - that every Gentile who worshiped for the sake of heaven, even if he was wrong, will receive his reward. And he is *close* to the status of a Righteous Among the Nations. And Rabbi Kook also wrote this. That the wise men of the nations, by rational reasoning, will be rewarded with the preservation of the soul. Which the Torah did not define. And in fact, there are even hints of this in the Scriptures themselves. They emphasize that Balaam and I, Sodomites, for example, have no part in the world to come - and that the wicked Gentiles who tormented the people of Israel are condemned to hell and perdition, which is very likely to be assumed. The other side of the same coin says that Gentiles who are not as wicked as them will not be punished. It is possible that they returned to the preservation of a good soul from the end (and this is how some of the commentators interpreted it). This opinion is really not a huge innovation. And amazing, although of course, the opinion that every Gentile who erred and did not worship the correct religion will be punished and cut off in the end - it also has sources.
So everyone decides according to their own right mind in the end. What's wrong with that?

The point was not about the Righteous Among the Nations and their sages. Of course they will receive a reward.
The question was about Gentiles who did ‘bad’ things in the name of their faith, such as murder and the like. It seems to me that every person has a conscience and basic morality that emanates from it to investigate thoroughly before brutally beheading someone. Every court investigates thoroughly before executing (those who are killed). So to say that there was no malice in this but innocence is absurd in my opinion.
If theoretically a person were truly foolish to do so out of simple faith, then perhaps he would not receive punishment.

“Relatively rational”, it's just wonderful!

It's amazing to discover that suddenly the statements of the sages (which are not related to halakha) are a helpful condition for Mickey's opinion that those who commit crimes innocently will not come to him with claims from heaven.
I was sure that Mickey maintains that it is impossible to really learn anything from the opinions of the sages except halakha.

But it's nice that suddenly they are using this to strengthen his opinion!

Just to emphasize my opinion – I don't care who or what Mickey maintains – that those who killed (innocently) in obedience to God's command will not be punished or will be punished. It may be an interesting discussion for those who are interested in it, but it doesn't matter to me.

What matters to me is that someone at all believes that they know heavenly accounts on these issues, it's charming.
And when it comes to Mickey, who doesn't even know if there is a concept of “reward and punishment” then it's pure pleasure!

Sorry for the sarcasm, but things just don't add up.

Fur.
I don't see a contradiction. Miki wrote several times on the site that it is truly impossible to know the mechanism of reward and punishment and what goes on in the next world. But it is reasonable to assume that there is a reward. And the survival of the soul. And he also wrote that he believed that he assumed that someone who flees in faith - that is, makes a mistake and does not act out of malice - will not be punished. There he also wrote that these were his reasonable hypotheses - and from his point of view, the same is true of reward and punishment among the nations of the world - I did not see in this post any firm statement of his that there is 100% reward or that there is 100% no punishment.

I did not come to defend him and present his position. I was surprised why the statement that there is a reward for Gentiles too surprises so many people. After all, there were already sages who wrote it. I did not write this to claim that if the sages write this way, it is necessarily true. But that this is a logical explanation that is also possible from the perspective of a person who believes in Judaism, a fact. There were believing Jews who wrote this way . Note that I also wrote at the end that there are wise men who break almost the opposite, so everyone decides according to their own understanding. What's the problem with that?.

Menachem Rosenthal

With this opinion presented by Michi about the Fomandalist murderers from the nations of the world, I agree less. I was more concerned with A.'s bewilderment. About the idea of a reward for the wrong gentiles in general. Although. Maybe it really is not unreasonable to think that, as they always say, there are ranks even among the greatest criminals in the Jewish people. Maybe there are also such ranks among the nations of the world. It is not unreasonable to think that there is a difference in heaven between a simple SS soldier or a standard Wehrmacht, for example. Between Eichmann and Hitler. In the magnitude of the punishment ()