I Speak the Truth, and in My View It Saves Many People

Interview Content

”I Speak the Truth, and in My View It Saves Many People”

Three new books now being released by Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham deal with confronting religious conservatism and its consequences.

The books, ‘The First Being,’ ‘No Man Has Power over the Spirit,’ and ‘Walking Among Those Who Stand,’ offer a new, profound, and systematic path in response to what the author defines as ‘a Judaism that has become frozen and needs refreshing, a Jewish thought lacking a foundation, and a Jewish legal mode of thinking that has lost its way and refuses to update itself.’

Abraham explains to Arutz 7 where this writing comes from and why there is a need to enter into issues that others shy away from addressing.

“For quite a few years I have been meeting people, mainly young people but not only them, who raise difficult questions in various aspects of faith. Their feeling—and as a result, mine as well—is that they are not receiving an adequate response from rabbis and educators,” says Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham.

“Very often we feel that we do not need to examine our Torah and tradition, because after all this is a divine creation and therefore necessarily perfect. But perhaps there is something in this framework that requires examination and repair? These difficulties need to be answered not in the technical sense of supplying answers, but by correcting what needs correction. That was my basic motivation for writing these books.”

According to him, there are rabbis who prefer to cope in other ways. “Often, what was said at conferences of rabbis was that we need to give warmth and love to the young people, because that is indeed what they lack, and the difficulties are an expression of something external. My feeling is that this evades the problem, because people do not have the tools to cope with it.”

“We need to examine the very foundations on which we were raised and see whether there may be things that require repair or updating. That is what I am trying to do in these three books.”

He describes some of the dilemmas raised in the trilogy. “The first book deals with the question of what it means to believe and why we should believe. Another question is: assuming that we arrive at belief in God through philosophy, what does that mean in terms of religious commitment? Is there a need to observe commandments and the like?”

“The second book deals with Jewish thought, providence, the meaning of prayer, miracles, and evil in the world. In all these fundamental issues, my feeling is that there are no adequate answers. People continue to turn over the same forms and patterns that are taken to be principles of faith, whereas my feeling is that there is no such thing as a fixed tradition of Jewish thought. There is no tradition in this area, and therefore these matters need to be examined and positions need to be reformulated.”

“In the third book I deal with Jewish law, which is a very sensitive subject and very close to my heart. We do have Jewish law, and it is the essence of Judaism. Very often there is a mistaken conception of Jewish law: what in it is binding, who does or does not have authority, how authentic the law we possess is, how one relates to change, and in general the theory of legal change.”

Naturally, there is no shortage of criticism. Abraham hears the word ‘heresy’ quite often, but is not disturbed by it. “Some of the criticisms are precisely what stirred me to write. I am trying to show that everything I write is in no way heretical. That a willingness to reexamine myself and to place things on foundations that are sometimes completely new is legitimate. This is not Reform Judaism—that is the rabbit people always pull out of the hat in response to claims of this kind.”

“No one has ever precisely defined what ‘Reform’ is. Is everyone who changes Jewish law ‘Reform’? By that approach, quite a few of our earlier and later sages would have been Reform. If you define clearly what a Reform change is—and I do so in the book—you can make changes without being afraid of whether people will say that you are Reform or that you are not Reform.”

“I speak the truth, and in my view it saves many people, myself included, and I do not think it is possible to sacrifice that because perhaps it may hurt someone else. That is also not correct according to Jewish law,” concludes Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham.

Source (Arutz 7): https://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/421750