The Need for a ‘Thin’ Theology (Column 222)

True, a teaser is a lead-in to a trilogy, but it’s always interesting to read about processes of dieting (and at the moment I’m referring to the spiritual kind). I think that indeed most people can’t manage with a lean Judaism, but as you say it’s important to distinguish between the essence and the additions. Wonderfully defined.
By the way, regarding poor, confused Yuval, without judging him, my feeling on reading his words was that it’s easiest to create a naked God without garments and without “charlatan rabbis.” How is that expressed, that you say He speaks to him? For some reason He also speaks to you, and He has very formal ways of doing so. When a person kicks away, with shocking irresponsibility, from his miserable family, the “ideological” excuse certainly conceals some very base motives behind it. My heart goes out to him, to them, and to all who suffer.

I really love your writing style, but if I may—as someone reading your important message—I hope your lean theology comes out in summary form. A condensed, Michi-edited version. Nowadays people—adults and young people alike—have no patience for long-winded text (even though they’re more willing to put up with rambling).

Unfortunately, you are headed for disappointment on this matter. I’m trying to offer a text for someone to whom these things matter and who wants to conduct a real inquiry. If someone wants to read and get an impression—I’d be happy if you or someone else would write a suitable summary.

Just to note that Uri Zohar is an extremely intelligent man, and today also a Torah scholar. See the interesting film “Uri Zohar Returns.”

It reminds me of an incident from the (Lithuanian) yeshiva where I studied. At the time we read Noa Yaron’s book Mekimi, and after reading it one of the guys said to me: “A nice book, but this isn’t the God we believe in…”

More power to you. Which publisher is the trilogy supposed to be published by?

I think you raise a subtle and correct point, one that I’ve seen more than once in my life—people who leave religion because of inner feelings and then give it a rational justification.
Instead of saying: this system doesn’t suit me, I’m not happy in it, they say: rule X doesn’t suit me, interpretation Y doesn’t suit me = I’m giving up X Y Z A B C and so on.
If you really have a specific problem—then clarify it and solve it specifically.
If every specific problem causes you to leave, and you don’t provide a sensible explanation for why everything bothers you, then admit that you have an emotional problem with the whole system, instead of starting to say “religion makes me obedient with no independent thought” or “it’s all money and politics.” Where? Who? Is all of Judaism really like that? In all its streams?

More power to you for these sharp and clear words, as usual.

Celebrity culture really is a serious disease, in the sense that if you’re not there (across the various social networks), you don’t exist.

I’m not troubled by Yuval and the like (life will go on), but by quite a few young people (some of whom I know very personally) who flocked to hear the musings of the “rabbi” at the center he opened in Tel Aviv, or online.

From my acquaintance with things—there is a genuine thirst among quite a few young people for meaningful content, for spirituality, or whatever other word of that sort.
Some of them, what can you do, do not have high intellectual ability, or they have attention and concentration difficulties for “h

And my question is—someone who has difficulty reading and studying complex, deep texts, and for whom it is almost an impossible task to cope with content like the trilogy (or even with the current post sometimes..)—how is he supposed to build his Jewish worldview?

Was the Torah given only to academics with master’s degrees and above / gifted autodidacts / geniuses by birth?

What should someone do if he simply isn’t capable of dealing with issues in logic / philosophy / modern physics?

Apparently through my own private publishing.

He should make decisions according to the best of his understanding. But not according to his needs and interests. Not everyone needs to be a philosopher. Absolutely not. But one does need to make decisions properly.

By the way, academics with a master’s degree and above are no guarantee of anything. 🙂

A brief comment on what you said about Noa Yaron. You wrote that you read only the first pages. I read the book to the end, and in my opinion it gives an impressive and accurate expression to the falsehood in a world that values externals, celebrity, and fake successes. That, in my eyes, is the book’s value, and the process of her standing before the truth that is gradually revealing itself to her is moving and beautiful. (Even though I too agree with the criticism of it, mainly regarding the schmaltz at the end about those who discovered the one and only truth. That is, “our rabbi.”)

You’re absolutely right. And by the way, her second book, Shira Geulah, already speaks about the next generation, about the generation of doubt; there is no longer certainty, there is a great deal of tearing and a great deal of struggle. I think it surpasses its predecessor by a lot, and it is a “must-read” book for educators and parents.

In my view, the second book is much less powerful than the first.

How does your statement that the Torah is not the pinnacle of morality fit with your comment to Rivka Lubitch that God would not agree to something immoral like ownership-based betrothal?

More power to you.
I wanted to ask: how do you understand the commandment to believe as a continuation of lean theology? Something like R. Chaim of Volozhin’s critique of Maimonides about the logical problem in commanding belief.

From another angle, I understand that you accuse the existentialists that they do not conduct intellectual inquiry (and similarly the kabbalists), and therefore in the end they do not believe in that same God.
But if they are coerced—halakhically, a captive child, etc., or simply not wise—what exactly is the problem with the disillusionment of ex-religious people from religion? They are now closer to the truth than someone who keeps mitzvot like a monkey.

One final note: what do you say about Rabbi Dessler’s theory of free choice, according to which each person needs to struggle toward progress from the point where he finds himself?
As Chayota noted above, the book describes a secular person who woke up from a world of falsehood, so although the arguments throughout the book are existentialist, after all, those people do grasp part of the truth by keeping commandments. Doesn’t that have value? I mean not as education and encouragement but as an equal conclusion, at least for a person who continues to keep commandments and does not listen to the doubting voice. It reminds me of what you wrote about intuition aiming at truth, needing only to be subjected to criticism.

According to your words that you do not believe in miracles, does that include the splitting of the Red Sea? The giving of the Torah?
And if so, what does your Jewish faith amount to?

I don’t know the guy. The post sounds “authentic,” and I hope for his sake that he finds his way. The phenomenon of two celebrities becoming religious, discovering the light, and immediately running to tell the gang strikes me as suspect from the outset. I too tried to read one page of Noa Yaron’s book and understood that the effort was pointless. It really reminded me as well of the arrogance of Uri Zohar and the like who discovered the light and are sure they can prove it to the whole world. From acquaintance with several former celebs, I know that this is a phenomenon of celebs who make a sociological and economic living from displaying the light, while inside them light and darkness function all mixed together.

Baruch asked:

How does your statement that the Torah is not the pinnacle of morality fit with your comment to Rivka Lubitch that God would not agree to something immoral like ownership-based betrothal?

I didn’t see an answer. I’d be glad to know your opinion on the matter too.

Regarding lean theology:
I’ll approach it from the metaphorical direction of dieting—

I greatly appreciate people who insist on eating only healthy food,
and I think eating too much of one thing, or whatever comes to hand without thinking, is harmful,
but I strongly believe that for the overwhelming majority of human beings there is also room to eat cake.

I don’t think it is right to deny parts of life that are not necessary,
just because there are people who take them to a harmful place.
That’s true of food, but also of faith.

Where did you see that he doesn’t believe in some kind of revelation that took place at the Giving of the Torah?!

It says in the post, “and also not in miracles and daily divine involvement as we were educated,” so where does the line pass? The giving of the Torah? Prophets? What is daily divine involvement—particular providence?
What is the definition of Jewish faith? Are you redefining Maimonides’ 13 principles? What is your definition? What is included in lean theology? It says in the post, “In my eyes, Judaism is halakha and nothing else whatsoever”—what is that built on? On what faith?

And I’ll add: I simply looked for the conclusion to all the long verbiage. The post is called “The Need for ‘Lean’ Theology,” and nowhere in the whole post did I find the simple halakhic definition, if we define it as the writer does, of the concept “lean theology.”

God expects us to be moral no less than He expects us to keep the commandments, because besides giving us the Torah He also implanted moral values within us.

The rabbi wrote: “The morality of the Torah does not seem to me superior in any sense whatsoever.”
Do you believe that the Torah (or at least most of it) is the word of God?
If not, there is no difficulty.
But if so, how does that fit with your statement about the morality in the Torah?

I have a question, and in fact it has already been asked here [twice] in a shorter and sharper form, and has not yet received an answer.

You said three things that don’t fit together for me:

A. “Judaism is halakha and nothing else whatsoever.”

B. The Torah [= halakha] does not represent supreme and/or correct morality. “The morality of the Torah is not superior in any sense.”

C. You believe in the God you do believe in [after clarification, etc.], and as part of that you said [regarding betrothal] that it is impossible that God commanded something [= halakha] immoral.

This is where I lost you.

From A+B it follows that in your view God commanded halakhot even if they are not moral.

But that doesn’t fit with C. Because what does that say about the God you believe in? And about His halakhot?

And how do you remain a “religious Jew” even by your own definition [= believing in a God of your own understanding with lean theology, Judaism = halakha], despite the fact that there are halakhot [= parts of Judaism, parts of religion, parts of what God commanded] that contradict your conscience and morality?

The only solution that currently occurs to me is that you also put halakha [not only theology] on a serious diet, and deleted from it everything that you perceive as immoral. And your statement that “the Torah does not represent supreme morality” is correct only regarding parts of the Torah of the traditional sages, but not regarding your Torah. The Torah/halakha that you personally accept and believe in—it is entirely moral.

In other words: halakhot that are not [today perceived as] moral—you delete?

Did I understand correctly?

And if that is correct, it means that for you human-universal morality [= gentile] is above the commandments [= commandment-observant], because one of your criteria in deciding halakha [= right or not] is whether it is moral or not. But in the article you noted for your position that non-halakhic considerations should not be allowed to influence halakha.

By the way, who determines morality? Gut feeling? Philosophical discussion? The spirit of the times? Something else? After all, there is no uniform and fixed morality in all places and in all generations. And doesn’t the influence of changing morality on halakha [bringing things into or out of halakha according to their fit with current morality] create, according to your method, a contradiction to one of Maimonides’ principles, that the Torah [= halakha according to you] is not replaced?

Perhaps I’ll formulate my question differently:

You are a believing and religious Jew, and for you the Jewish religion = halakha. You presented yourself as “religious in terms of halakha.” My question is: how committed are you to Jewish halakha? Which in your words means: how religious a Jew are you?

You wrote that there is also fat in halakha that needs to be slimmed down. Do you mean things that were added over the generations for various reasons, or also biblical laws about which there is no dispute? Such that you would say they were simply misunderstood throughout the generations. Or similarly, would you say halakha needs to be updated in accordance with the moral updates of the times?

I’ll give an example of a halakha that surely is not morally understandable to us:

The wife of a priest who was raped is obligated to divorce her husband [because he is holy with the sanctity of priesthood and cannot live with a “damaged” woman who had relations with another. Something like the prohibition of a divorcée to a priest, but in another form]. Trauma upon trauma, pain upon pain. Damage upon damage. For the woman and for the man. Against the will of both of them. And no one even thinks about the damage to the children. But that is the halakha.

Do you accept this halakha? Do you admit that it is not moral but in your view the Torah is not supposed to represent correct and/or supreme morality? Or do you have your own moral interpretation of this halakha? Or do you [as of now] delete this halakha?

I know you are a busy and overloaded man, but you are a thorough man. So I hope for an answer. And for an answer that addresses everything I asked and puts your teaching in order for me on this matter.

Best regards,

I join the questions asked above me, and want to focus it—do you believe that the Written Torah was given by God?
Because there, to the best of my understanding, a lot is written about morality, and also—what can we do—“God’s choosing us” “to be a treasured people” (what is that?)

He said that based on his experience, he does not believe that miracles occur nowadays. He did not say that the giving of the Torah did not occur.

With God’s help, 23 Sivan 5779

The Creator’s relationship to His people is likened to betrothal. The God of “lean theology” is strikingly similar to the one who betroths according to Rivka Lubitch—He has “ownership acquisitions” that obligate His “wife” to 613 commandments and 999 clauses of halakha, yet He is utterly alienated; He aspires to be an “objective” being devoid of emotions, who does not listen and does not intervene.

Yuval Dayan’s way is preferable to this: he freed himself from the pose of the “guide who knows everything” and openly declares, “I do not know.” He says to his students: perhaps the truth is this way and perhaps that way. At any rate, I am not the one who will give you the answer. You yourselves should seek…

Even the God of Yuval Dayan in the first part of the trilogy (in the song “Le’esof” / “To Gather”) has trouble with the “mood to change” that it conveys. He “always says that for simple people it’s harder to get tangled up, because they’re not looking for something to get out of, everything calms down, everything flows.” But since she is not one of those simple people for whom “everything calms down and flows,” all that remains for her is to ask Him to wait until “the cold wind passes over me” and promise “that you will come afterward to gather, gather, gather…”

By contrast, in “Libi Er” (“My Heart Is Awake”)—which gave its name to the second trilogy—the fog becomes more focused. The heart’s lack of clarity turns into a search for “the desire to delve, to know, to flip past the beautiful cover on top, to peel away the shell, to go between the lines for a moment, to grasp what keeps passing by me all the time.”

She is aware of the “running and returning” of ups and downs, that there are moments when one feels “how suddenly it conquers me in an instant,” and there are moments when one feels that it “grasps me, deceives me, and leaves,” and then she rests a bit from the search, yet nevertheless “I am asleep but my heart is awake” and continues in the “desire to delve, to know.”

And Rabbi Nachman already taught us that on the one hand one must not fall and despair, and on the other hand one must not fall into the complacency of an “old hasid.” One must “gather” all the insights we have accumulated in our trials and errors, and continue with “my heart is awake” to search, deepen, and find the next parts of the trilogy.

Best regards, Sh.Tz.

I’ve just read the article on the nature of betrothal that Michael refers to above.

First of all, it is a beautiful and powerful article.

And regarding my question [and those of my predecessors] above, he explains there his approach regarding halakhot that do not accord with our morality [without addressing the question of what determines morality], presents the 4 existing possibilities in this matter, and explains when in his opinion each of them should be used.

A very powerful article. Has the trilogy already come out? If not, when will it come out?

To Sh.Tz., did you read the article on betrothal?

If so, you surely saw that there is no need [and it is also not correct in my opinion] to claim that the relationship with Michael Abraham’s God is like betrothal according to Lubitch, a relationship of ownership. It is bad enough if we claim that the relationship with Him is one of betrothal according to Abraham, namely an obligatory contract [of mutual commitments]. A utilitarian agreement for both sides. This is bad because: A. it drains the relationship itself out of the relationship, the emotional and mental connection, and B. after all, Michael Abraham does not accept a relationship with God that is based on needs.

But in truth Michael did not say this at all. He did not say that there is no relationship of involvement and intervention [at least not in the present article, though briefly he did mention that in his opinion God does not intervene most of the time], and he did not remove from the list of 613 commandments the commandment to love God [it would indeed be interesting how he interprets it in his way]. He speaks of the Jewish religion as a “religion—Jewish.” That is: A. specifically the religious obligation. B. specifically the Jewish one. And about that he said that Judaism, i.e. the uniqueness of Jews regarding God and divinity—is halakha. He did not say there is nothing besides that; he only said there is no Judaism besides that.

And that is a big difference. He did say that he is not only a Jew but also a human being. The article defined what Judaism is in his opinion, and it does not include what in his opinion is universal, which of course exists—but not as something specifically Jewish. Jewish [in his opinion] = only what is anchored in the formal framework of halakha.

Powerful feelings toward God are a universal thing. God’s management of the world is universal. Michael was not dealing with that here. Rather only with the special obligation of Jews toward God [which was created because He chose them to command specifically them in all these obligations. Why? That is a question for another discussion]. And about that he argues that this is Judaism.

What will Michael do with the sources in the Bible that speak of a different relationship [and not only different legal obligations] of God toward the Jews and toward the nations of the world? With its consistent message that He intervenes in favor of the people of Israel? I do not know. But as a principled background that I understood from his words [in this article at least], I can suggest that he separates between the “legal contract” between Israel and God—and the relationship between them.

Let us speak in the language of the parable you brought: a couple.

If you press the point, Michael spoke here about betrothal—not about marriage [I do not mean the wedding canopy, but the very bond between the spouses, couplehood, love, shared life].

That is: the bond between spouses is a human bond. Mental. Emotional. What the Torah—as Torah—added, defined, and obligated between spouses are their legal obligations to one another. Woe to anyone who reads the laws of spouses’ obligations to one another and decides that this is the entirety of the concept of couplehood and marriage. He is reading a binding legal document—and mistakenly thinks that this is the whole thing at the human level and others. The fact that within the framework of the relationship there are also legal obligations to one another—does not mean that the reverse is also true: that the whole of the relationship is only legal obligation to one another and nothing more.

So the Bible speaks about the relationship [likens it to spouses], and indeed God has a different relationship with the Jews than with the nations of the world. It seems to me that this is clear even according to Michael’s approach [or because I do not know how this is expressed in his view apart from the giving of the Torah]; after all, the very special contract that God imposed on the Jews proves this, that He has something different with them, and testifies that there is a reason for it, and also a result of it. With someone to whom you give more, who is more obligated to you, who accepted upon himself the obligations you imposed on him and keeps them with self-sacrifice—your relationship is tighter.

But according to Michael these relationships are not “Judaism.” At most they are a cause/result of “Judaism.” What Michael here calls “Judaism” he means the Torah, what is required of Jews in practical terms. In practice. In lifestyle. Not a description of a state [of relationship] which in principle is universal as above [and the difference in relationships also stems, as above, from a universal phenomenon].

That is his view as I understand it. And I can certainly understand someone who thinks otherwise. Someone for whom “Judaism” [= practical Jewish lifestyle] is not only “obligations” [= halakha] but also a lifestyle and practical attitude not formally defined, because we are not a herd of programmed robots, and not everything can be inserted into a specifically formal halakhic framework. According to this approach, the parable of spouses in the Bible speaks specifically about the people of Israel and God, and it has practical consequences, not only emotional ones. Spouses live together and have a special relationship with one another that is expressed in many practical things that are not legally anchored [= that one can extract in court]. Matters of language, of lifestyle, of practical gestures. To say that there is nothing practically unique to Jews beyond the formal halakhic obligations, to say that there is no Jewish “lifestyle” and no “practical Jewish attitude toward God” beyond halakha—really sounds like saying that Judaism is not marriage at all. At most it is betrothal [even of the kind Michael explained in his article above].

Unless we say that within halakha were included [not only legal obligations and commitments but also] those lifestyles and practical gestures between a Jew and God. Such as the commandment to love God and the like. [For example: Nahmanides’ view that the command “You shall be holy” includes everything that cannot be formally imposed in a detailed way but is understood as the spirit that emerges from halakha. And behold, God also commanded this in the Torah with a clear command.] Meaning that halakha includes both the betrothal [legal commitments] and [all the practical parts of] the marriage. In that case one can already say [like Michael] that outside halakha there is no Judaism. Outside halakha—there are only the universal parts, psychological, emotional, etc., which are no longer in the category of command but are a natural result.

That is what I reflected on following your response. We’ll wait for Michael to come and clarify his teaching for us.

Hello Matan.
The commandment to believe cannot be taken literally. And if Maimonides meant it literally, then I disagree with him. I explained this here in the Q&A yesterday or the day before:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%9b%d7%99-%d7%94/

I’m not accusing anyone. Everyone does what appeals to him. Personally it doesn’t really interest me, but that’s a matter of taste. My claim is that existentialism is not philosophy, and existentialist faith (one that comes to fill needs and answer difficulties) is not faith in the full and true sense.
I think that before discussing this you need to define whom you call existentialists. Are these those who do not believe in God but only adopt belief because it meets their needs? Those indeed are not believers. Complete atheists. Their disillusionment with religion is merely self-discovery. They were never really part of it in the first place.

I don’t know which theory of Rabbi Dessler you mean. If you elaborate, we can discuss it.

Rachel, do you want the entire trilogy on one foot? I’ve explained these things here more than once. I do accept Sinai revelation (in some sense), and it is not written here or anywhere else that I do not.

David wrote well. Beyond that, I am claiming this according to her own view. If she thinks God would not agree to such a thing, then apparently that is not His commandment.

Then you didn’t understand what I said. I did not say all the rest should be thrown out, only that it should not be seen as part of the binding framework. Each person can adopt what seems right to him according to what he thinks. Lean theology is not a full theology, but the minimal theology that defines Judaism. Within it you can add as you wish, without pressures and constraints and without stomachaches that you must think this way or that. The comparison to eating cakes is precise. Don’t be troubled by the fact that they contain no vitamins.

The Torah is the word of God—so what? The morality you find in it is the morality you find within yourself, and that every gentile finds within himself. At least today that is the situation. Perhaps in the past there was a need for the Torah and it contributed to the crystallization of contemporary morality. But now morality is morality; there is no Jewish morality and gentile morality, morality of the Torah and some other morality. I have explained this here more than once. On the distinction between halakha and morality, see Column 15.

I understand that you answered yourself. I did not write that there is no immoral commandment. There definitely is. Above, in my reply to Gal, I already explained that the claim was directed at Rivka Lubitch on her own terms. See also Column 15.

I’ve already answered your predecessors, and these things have been detailed on the site several times. The Written Torah instructs (not commands. “And you shall do what is right and good” was not counted among the commandments, and not for nothing. See Column 15) one to be moral. But the content of morality is universal, what every gentile understands (at least today). A treasured people is, in my opinion, not connected to the matter at all. That is a religious purpose, not a moral one.

A few months, God willing.

Admittedly, this isn’t really related to the post, but the comments here drifted into discussing it. I hold (and it seems to me that you do too) that morality obligates by virtue of reason. The very fact that the Holy One implanted reason within us, which reveals moral values—that obligates! And therefore gentiles too are commanded regarding moral matters. If so, why do we need the verse “And you shall do what is right and good”? Just in order to receive an additional religious value (and if so, what is the point of that added value)?

Just a few words regarding Yaron Yadan: from what I understood, he was never actually the head of a kollel, but at most the administrative manager of a kollel—in other words, a managerial role, not a spiritual or scholarly one.

And I also understood that the step he took did not really come from “courage” but from a certain act in which disgrace was discovered and that got him out…

By and large, most if not all of the questions he asks were asked and answered long before him, and he did not “discover America” in this matter. Rather, after he left religion and ultra-Orthodox society he collected those questions…

Rabbi Uri Zohar sat in kollel for 14 years in the Old City before he came out to the public!

First, it is possible that without the Torah morality would not have been accepted the way it is accepted today. Second, it is definitely important to fix a religious value beyond the moral value. Like “Do not murder” and “Do not steal.” Third, the Torah does need to tell people to be moral (as I explained above, this is not a halakhic command). Perhaps not everyone will do so merely because of reason. Therefore they are told that this too is God’s will.

He deliberately invented the name “Da’at Emet” (“Knowing Truth”) as a deception, like all his “pamphlets” intended for the ultra-Orthodox public and distributed like missionary booklets, so as to mislead the reader into thinking at first that this was a standard Torah pamphlet.

I would not suggest citing him as proof of some great and wise man who made a turnaround—he is, in my opinion, not worthy of that crown, and he is described in the article in a way that credits him much more than he really deserves…

He is not worthy at all of that kind of regard (and it’s not that there are no “leavers of religion” who are worthy of regard—there certainly are, but Yadan is not one of them).

I don’t know. I’m also not sure it’s worth believing stories of disgrace that are created after the fact. In many cases they are produced by interested parties who use them to defend themselves. Questions should be dealt with on their own terms and not through personal attacks.
By the way, quite a few questions were asked before him, but many of them were not answered except with excuses.

1. I understand regarding Maimonides, although in my humble opinion the question still stands.

2. Regarding intuition. Indeed I did not think enough about the fact that there is a broad spectrum of existentialists, and we cannot apply the same definitions and generalizations to all of them. But regarding those for whom this is indeed the case according to everyone, don’t you think there is a connection between their practical actions and the intuition that causes them to do so?

I can pretty much see how this discussion reminds me of the columns on rationality. Personally I hold the view of rationality-from-considerations, and therefore I think there is intellectual value in people choosing religion based on experiential considerations.

If so, perhaps Maimonides’ first commandment should also be understood like one of the suggestions you raised there—to deepen understanding. Not in some sense of elevating oneself with those concepts of knowledge or something mystical, but to an understanding of the doctrine of negative attributes, and that’s all.

But returning: does religion ‘only’ answer their needs? Maybe; I’m not sure of that, and note your golden wording: “is not faith in the full and true sense”—meaning there is at least something partial.

I brought Rabbi Dessler to strengthen the assumption about the importance of intuition and according to the view of rationality from considerations of utility.

Rabbi Dessler argues that the point of choice of the thief—whether to murder in the course of theft or only steal and risk being discovered—is equal, in terms of struggle, to that of another person in whatever issue it may be. Without going into too many details, it seems to me that his claim assumes that in practice a person has choice, also regarding intuitions, and that there are considerations of rationality this way and that. And the ‘novelty’ is that a fool and a wise man struggle in roughly the same way (and therefore it is easy to interpret that the commandment differs for each person).

After such an important column, I find myself trying to define all the terms that arose following reading the article.
Does a different picture of intuition emerge from the column than the one you wrote about so much?

2. If we are talking about intuition and not need—then everything is fine.
There is a partial sense because perhaps there is some faith there and not only need-satisfaction. Very true. Not for nothing was I careful with my wording (that is exactly why I wrote it that way).
I did not understand what you wrote about Rabbi Dessler.
I don’t see why there is anything different here regarding intuition.

One final note, with your permission:
If so, why not simply say that in the satisfaction of needs there is something of intuition?

I very much enjoyed reading from you a description of many feelings that I’ve been experiencing for many years…
You wrote: “I very much hope that the trilogy will do at least that. Even if the reader is not persuaded by the whole move, at least I’ll try to convince him to build an alternative move of his own, one behind which he will be willing to stand.”
Unfortunately, and contrary to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s claim, I don’t think you can force people to be free…
More power to you!
Avraham

More power to you; I identify with most of it. In my view there were and are several Torah scholars, even ones considered “greats of Israel,” who live this way (without religious searching, and certainly not grounding all of Judaism on that need). It is enough to mention Rabbi Ovadia Yosef of blessed memory.

Though I do think that in general you tend to be long-winded, still it would have been worth writing a few more lines about the experience of studying Gemara-halakha, which for anyone who has seriously experienced it can build a tangible and solid inner world, even if not a certain one.

As for myself, I also like to study Kabbalah, but as an artistic-religious supplement.

In general, young people need to be educated to distinguish between their emotional needs (let them go to a psychodrama group) and growth through Torah study.

You wrote in your response to me above (for some reason I don’t see the reply button):

“Second, it is definitely important to fix a religious value beyond the moral value. Like ‘Do not murder’ and ‘Do not steal.’” Why? I would be glad for an explanation of why this is important?

[I understand that your third answer (so that people will do it) is another answer to the “second.” If so, I’d be glad for an explanation.]

With God’s help, 24 Sivan 5779

Thus the Holy One created His world: for everything required by reason, there should also be a demand מצד nature and emotion. Thus there are implanted within us the need for air to breathe, the need to eat and drink, the need to love and raise offspring, the need to maintain social life, and on the other hand the need for independence and self-fulfillment.

All those needs are required from the standpoint of reason so that the person and society may live proper lives, but the Creator did us a kindness in that what we are obliged to do, we are also driven to do out of existential and emotional need, which increase our motivation to act properly.

Obviously, the existential bustle that turns the obligatory into the desired requires cautious consideration and judgment by reason, which will discern where we ought to go with the existential urge and when to reject it. And when reason (guided by the Torah) serves as the “judge” that regulates the existential demands, a person can be a “yuval” (a flowing stream) that gushes forth and connects with others into an enduring brook, rather than being led by existential drives without criticism.

Best regards, Sh.Tz.

And therefore the Torah is not “halakha” alone, but devotes broad sections to cultivating the emotions and values that lead to love of God and love of fellow human beings. The Torah cultivates and deepens the motivation for proper beliefs and values, and also constitutes an “order of the world” that regulates among all values and gives each value its proper area and measure in order to build mental and social balance.

Best regards, Sh.Tz.

1. The disparagement of Rabbi Uri Zohar is completely unnecessary. In the book he wrote about his return to religion (“They Didn’t Give a Chance”), he mainly complains that secularism does everything it can to cheapen and disparage Judaism, and does not allow a standard secular person even minimal acquaintance with Judaism (check what the average secular person knows about the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle), so that he can examine it objectively.
This is in addition to a few questions raised in the book that troubled him, such as where the obligation to morality comes from (he describes there that once he stole something and his wife got upset with him, and he started arguing with her that he had no obligation not to steal… proof from morality?), or the question what our purpose/destiny in the world is.

2. Regarding Yuval Dayan, in my opinion Mekimi is a book that does a good job of vividly and authentically describing classic glamorous Tel Aviv life. I didn’t see arrogance there, but mainly a powerful description of how much the “good” life does not fulfill and does not bring happiness—quite the opposite. And also an accurate description of secular ignorance regarding religion.

3. The point troubling Noa and her husband (who, at least according to the book, was the one who dragged her there, with the help of Daniel, a.k.a. Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron) is similar to the point that bothered Uri Zohar—that there must be a purpose to life, and they do not find that purpose in a wild life of pleasure, however much they try and exert themselves for it.
I saw criticism online of the book that it describes an emotional return to religion. In my opinion that is incorrect; the argument that our lives have some purpose or destiny is an entirely intellectual argument. (One can argue and claim that our lives have no purpose at all, but it seems to me that most human beings would not agree to that.) Therefore the question naturally arises: what is the purpose of life? Is it to accumulate money? To enjoy life? To be moral? etc., etc. Of course one also needs to answer the question how it is possible to determine what the correct answer is. But this discussion originates in reason and not in emotion.

4. Regarding Yuval, his post is full of contradictions and inconsistency, and as they say, it is all excuses for his behavior, and there is not one question in it worth discussing. With all due respect. A claim against corrupt rabbis and a corrupt society has nothing to do with Judaism. Judaism does not shackle him in any of the things he describes there. And really, as much as I tried, I could not find one argument on the merits. And I would be glad to confront him with “Ben” from Mekimi, whose approach toward religion in the book is made in a measured and careful way without brainwashing, and who certainly would not be deterred by nonsense of the kind in that post, as they sound in Mekimi from the mouth of Noga the secular girlfriend or Elisha (the rabbi who went off religion in the book).

In any case, Yuval, good luck with the new and young girlfriend (Israel sinned with the calf only because…) and we very much hope you will manage to cope honorably with the borderline personality you have been endowed with.

You have a column on the story of Rabbi Nachman’s turkey prince, on which you build the transition from duality of will to repentance, so the statement in which you announce that you always disparaged their rabbi seems difficult to me. In my opinion, most of us, if not all of us including his Hasidim, do not plumb the depths of his meaning, and therefore the most we have in our hands is to enjoy what we do understand.

In the context of the current column, it seems to me that the point of truth in Yuval Dayan’s words, and in secularism in general, lies in its detachment from all human interest, which turns its acts into ideal acts. I’ve seen this quite a bit among secular people who would not even agree to accept the heading “good deed,” even if what they did was certainly a good deed. Their belief is that things must be done for their own sake in a total way, without any involvement of human interest such as honor or money. It seems to me that in the end his conception is similar to the rabbi’s conception of halakha as a pure ideal act that must not be done under the influence of honor or money, but only for the sake of serving God in purity. In order to preserve the Torah, we religious people are forced to create, opposite hegemonic secularism, a religious counter-culture—but the price derived from this counter-culture is that our deeds are not done for their own sake, but an additional self-interested element gets mixed into them (which in the case of famous people is translated literally into honor or money), and this is what Yuval Dayan is kicking against. I’m not saying that one should give up this counter-culture and all become secular, only that we should remember the price we pay for it.

I read somewhere that Yuval Dayan was a student of Eliezer Berland, and that explains a lot (what a desecration of God’s name that Berland causes, God have mercy…).

It’s true that there is a heavy price to the “fattening” of Judaism, but what about the prices of the crash diet you are proposing??
It seems to me that even the Tannaim and Amoraim would agree that they can make mistakes, but from here to nullifying them from being anything beyond formal authority in matters of halakha—the road is long.
For example, suppose that although you have no proofs, in your opinion it is not correct that God hears prayers, at least not usually; apparently the opinion of the sages of Israel throughout the generations was the opposite. Now there are two possibilities—either to assume there is no reason they are wiser than I am (after all they have no Holy Spirit), and disagree with them even on any grounds whatsoever; or, like Hazal did in relation to the generations before them—when there is no proof against it—to accept the words of their predecessors as truth, both in matters of halakha and in matters of outlook and faith. (For example Maimonides’ words in the Guide and the Kuzari regarding the creation of the world: there is no decisive proof against eternity, yet we believe in creation because of tradition.)
If you adopt the first approach, I’d be glad if you would explain why in your opinion that is the correct approach.
Thank you.

Regarding the wife of a priest, you mixed together a halakha that may cause an unpleasant situation with a halakha that is inherently immoral.
A bit like swearing that one will not eat matzah, versus swearing that one will not eat wheat.
Michi has many posts discussing all these issues
of morality and halakha, and he even referred to one of them in earlier comments.

To put things straight,
I don’t have an ounce of affection for Lizer Berland, but Yuval Dayan belonged to the Na-Nach faction, which despised Leizer with deep hatred,
even before everyone discovered his true nature.

Come on now, honored Satan, creator of hell.
Is that the level you people have descended to there—to attack him personally because he left your party.
With forgiveness from the glory of your lowly lowness.

To Moishe B,

Forgive me, but Michael himself, in the columns where he deals with halakha and morality, brings the wife of a priest who was raped as the first and most prominent example of an immoral halakha. See for example Column 15, to which he referred above.

And even aside from that, I did not understand at all your determination/decision that a command to separate a raped woman from her husband and children etc., as I described [and by the way, in my description I was aiming exactly at Michael’s own words and description there, one-to-one], is only “unpleasant” but not “immoral.”

A wonderful post.

I really like the term lean theology, mainly in the sense of not inserting God where He does not enter. A saying of Hazal is dear to me (Sanhedrin 42?): “If we had merited only to greet the face of our Father in heaven once a month, it would suffice.” God is good in low dosage, at least for most human beings; if you force Him into places where He doesn’t enter, in the end the vessel breaks.

In one of the comments I wrote that the Holy One sends once every few generations someone who will throw into the garbage a few absurdities that have accumulated, and perhaps you are the emissary of providence (indeed a paradox) to do so (it seems to me that since Maimonides no one arose like Moses to do this—except, of course, those who threw out the baby with the bathwater).

It reminds me of a nice story about Mr. Einstein: when he came to take up residence in Princeton, may it be rebuilt and established, his personal secretary asked him what equipment he needed for his office, and he told her mainly a big trash can in order to throw away my mistakes.

And indeed, at such a time Judaism mainly needs a big trash can in order to throw away what God did not command and what never even entered His heart.

We can only conclude with the blessing: Go with this your strength and save Israel.

To Michael,

A. Later in the comments you wrote to someone who asked why the Torah needs to write “And you shall do what is right and good,” and this was your wording:

“First, it is possible that without the Torah morality would not have been accepted the way it is accepted today. Second, it is definitely important to fix a religious value beyond the moral value. Like ‘Do not murder’ and ‘Do not steal.’ Third, the Torah does need to tell people to be moral (as I explained above, this is not a halakhic command). Perhaps not everyone will do so merely because of reason. Therefore they are told that this too is God’s will.”

You bring here as an example “Do not murder” and “Do not steal,” which are full-fledged commandments—about universal moral matters. So you do agree that the Torah does command [not merely “instruct”] concerning a moral matter. In the response I wrote you today on Column 15, I brought that this is also how Rabbi Samuel ben Hofni and Rabbi Nissim Gaon understood it. And indeed they struggled with why the Torah’s command is needed, and answered as they answered; see my comment there.

B. Regarding the list of the 613:

The list of the 613 is entirely arbitrary/criteria-based, as anyone who reads Maimonides’ roots sees. Not to mention the methods of other Rishonim in determining the list.

This count itself appears only in aggadah and not in halakha, and its purpose is aggadic [as appears in the body of the statement in Makkot], not halakhic.

The composition of the list was disputed among the Rishonim to such an extent that almost as many Rishonim as dealt with it, so many lists there are.

And most importantly: there is (almost) no halakhic practical difference from it, and the proof is that the composition of the list did not occupy Hazal at all [although Tannaim did dispute in many places whether a certain thing is obligatory or optional, and Nahmanides already noted this there]. Go see in Maimonides’ introduction to Sefer HaMitzvot what motivated him to deal with it and clarify it. He already knew all the halakhot [from the halakhic midrashim, the Mishnah and Tosefta and Talmud and Geonic literature] and was approaching writing the Mishneh Torah, and he looked for a successful table of contents for the book and chose the list of commandments, and therefore decided [to do what he had wanted for a long time but until then had not stood at the top of his priorities] to clarify what it is. It follows that if the list he arrived at were this way or that way—it changed nothing for him in halakha. The halakhot he already knew beforehand and he had no intention of changing anything if one list or another emerged. If the list had halakhic practical significance, he would have had to clarify it within the framework of his years of studying the halakhot themselves. But he, like Hazal, ignored the list when learning halakha. Simply because it has no practical legal implication. As stated, the count itself is a statement that appears only in aggadah, and there is no greater proof than this that it has no halakhic practical implication.

And if there is no significant legal implication between what is on the list and what is not on the list, then there is no significant difference between “commandment” and “instruction.” Something written explicitly in the Torah and in the language of command/instruction—it is an instruction, it is a command, and it is a full biblical obligation. Whether it is on the list or not. [And not that “halakha/commandment” is an obligation on everyone, whereas “instruction” is optional. If it is God’s will and it was written in the language of command/instruction—it is a full obligation. What is true regarding the details, the mode of fulfilling the obligation, is that “halakha” is cut and determined also in the details, the same set of acts is obligatory on everyone from age 13; whereas an obligation like “You shall be holy” according to Nahmanides is a full obligation on everyone, but one cannot cut it into identical details of fulfillment for everyone; rather each person according to his matter. Therefore it is not on the list. For the same reason a court does not punish for it.]

Here are a few examples of the non-overlap between “613 commandments” and “halakhic obligation.”

1. “Speak to the children of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy.” This is command-language completely identical to the wording of every positive commandment. Only what? It was not included in the list because it is a general commandment [even according to Nahmanides, who explains that the instruction here is about something added beyond the commandments themselves. See also Nahmanides’ gloss to positive commandment 5]. Just because it does not meet the criterion to enter the aggadic list above—does it become any less a commandment? In what other language would you like the Torah to write things in order to say they are commands? Here it is written in language completely identical to all positive commandments.

2. Things that are not in the list of commandments because they were learned through one of the thirteen hermeneutic principles (Maimonides’ second root)—these are complete halakhot, complete commandments, and they are not on the list.

3. When there are several prohibitions on the same thing, e.g. eating creeping creatures. These are complete halakhot; for each prohibition one is flogged a separate set of lashes; one who ate a tiny aquatic creature receives four sets. Two prohibitions for creeping things in general, two prohibitions for water-creatures. And for each one he is flogged. But in terms of the list—the multiplication of prohibitions does not merit multiplication of commandments in the list (the ninth root). It follows that the list and halakha/commandment really do not overlap, and it seems to me a great mistake to see the list of commandments as a criterion for distinguishing between halakha/commandment and “instruction” [even if explicit] as something else that is less binding.

Correction:
In the line beginning “In one of the posts,” it should read “In a comment on one of the posts.”

Beautifully written. I join everything that was said. My teacher and rabbi Michi, if only you succeed!

Michi, does Your Honor perhaps have a grandfather who wrote a book in German?
I recently came across a book by MICHAEL ABRAHAM, apparently printed in Germany around 1930?

Hello Sh.Tz.,
With the title “the need,” etc., I can still agree, but in the content of your words you say that experience, intuition, and instinct are not rational (necessarily) and are not driven by free choice. In my view that is simply not correct according to the definitions of free choice and rationality that I hold, according to which they are necessarily rational.

According to you, what is the boundary between instinct and intuition and a directed act?

My friend… he smears Judaism from ulterior motives. There is not a shred of minimal engagement in his words with the question whether there is a God and what that means. All his claims are false generalizations about ultra-Orthodox society or meaningless feelings he has, whose conclusion he reaches on their basis is groundless.

Therefore I will allow myself also to go after him personally and after his dangerous actions over the years (trance parties, mixed men and women in the synagogue hall he rented, pretending that everything is in the name of Torah/Rabbi Nachman, and much more. And for dessert, spitting with a rainbow arc at Judaism and religious people in general. Disgusting).
He concludes in the post that in the end he does not know whether there is a God. So please—get up and check that in an objective way, raise arguments for and against. Why are you slandering an entire public?? Is that question not important enough to discuss objectively?? After all, you wasted half your life on this way of life—go study. (Michael Abraham’s treatment too is with silk gloves because of his celebrityhood… if these claims had come from a classic Haredi or a national-religious student from the “kav” yeshivot, he would have buried his idiotic claims with far less sensitivity).

You need to read the words of Rabbi Yitzhak Bar Ze’ev
http://www.ch10.co.il/news/515576/#.XRRKMj9vbFg

to understand that Yuval Dayan, the man who used to dress like Khomeini and preach faith in the holiness of the refrain “Na Nach Nachma Nachman MeUman,” is basically a womanizer.

Behind a small man stands a small woman.

Matan, again I didn’t understand.
Intuition is a tool for clarifying the truth. What does that have to do with needs? Perhaps you mean to ask whether one can trust intuition, lest it come to satisfy needs (what the masters of mussar called: negios, biases). There is room for concern, but we have no other tool. One has to pay attention and be careful. And among other things, that is what I am trying to do here (distinguish between intuitions and need-satisfaction).

Inflammatory comments directed at the person are suitable for the master’s own sites (B’Hadrei and his gang). On our site, it is accepted to discuss the substance of the (non-)arguments. When I slander my disputant with all sorts of accusations not related to the matter itself, I lower myself to his level—and then he’ll beat me because of experience.
And by the way, I heard that the subject of the discussion is ugly in appearance; maybe that’s why he left religion…

In order to respond within a certain thread, one has to look for the first message in the thread (the one that is a bit to the right of those beneath it). Clicking “reply” under the first message will add your comment at the end of the thread.
This is important not in order to motivate people to act, but first of all because that is the truth. The Torah says that there is also a religious value here and not only a moral one. There is also a practical difference: in order to fulfill the religious value, intention is required (to do it in order to fulfill God’s will), whereas in order to fulfill the moral value it is enough that I do it for the moral reason (that it is good).
Therefore the Torah writes “Do not murder.” To teach us that there is also a religious value in it and not only a moral one. But this is one of the reasons that sometimes a matter derivable by reason the verse nevertheless took the trouble to write. It is not for nothing, but to say that there is a religious value or command here.

Y.D.,
The fact that I used his story does not mean that in my opinion there are depths in his words that we do not understand. Even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day. I don’t think there are great depths there, and in my opinion if the intellectual powers invested in interpreting his words were invested in a rubber duck they would extract the same pearls from it.
I don’t know the “secular people” you are talking about. That’s a generalization with no basis in my opinion. Maybe there are such people, just as there are religious people like that.

There is no connection between my two claims: 1. They have no formal authority in matters that are not halakha, even if they never made a mistake. Even the Holy One has no formal authority with respect to facts, simply because one cannot define such authority with respect to them. 2. They are not immune from error—even if they did have formal authority (as in halakha).
As for the claims about what I do with the sages of Israel of all generations, I have already explained here more than once. From them I received that one must not deny what is perceptible. From Maimonides I received that sometimes one must go against what is accepted. So here I am walking in the path of our holy rabbis.
In this context I cannot avoid my two favorite examples. Rabbi Noach of Malchovitz inherited Rabbi Mordechai (or vice versa). When he changed from the customs of his holy forefathers, the Hasidim remarked on it. He explained that he was actually continuing very meticulously in the path of his revered father, just as he had changed from the ways of his forefathers, so he was doing as well.
Similarly, I distinguished here between two types of Chazon-Ishniks: A. those who meticulously do everything written in the books of the Hazon Ish; B. those who do what they themselves think, just as the Hazon Ish did (like R. Gedaliah). As the saying goes: two banks to Rashbam Street, ours and also ours.

Many thanks.

Hello. In light of your words here and in the books and articles you have written, I find a great affinity with my own positions. Recently I published a book that proposes a kind of “lean theology”: Ariel Picard, In Human Language – Foundations for Jewish-Israeli Renewal, published by Carmel. I would be very glad if you would read it, or parts of it, and tell me what you think of it. The introduction and preface can be read here:
https://www.academia.edu/39401040/%D7%91%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%99_%D7%90%D7%93%D7%9D_-_%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%93%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%9C%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%97%D7%93%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA?source=swp_share

If you like, I will send you the printed book or a PDF.

Netanel,
A. You are repeating my words with a question mark? I didn’t understand the question. The Torah commands “Do not murder” because beyond the moral issue there is also a halakhic command (a religious value). Other moral matters on which there is no command are a moral value and not halakha.
B. I didn’t understand the expression arbitrary/criteria-based. Regarding the question of practical difference, R. Yerucham Fischel Perla already addressed it in his introduction to Rav Saadia Gaon’s Sefer HaMitzvot (and my brother the Gaon R. A. noted this and explained on that basis why his brother did not deal with it). R. Perla answers there that the very count has practical implication, because in order to organize the count one has to classify and include various commandments. The reasons why things are included or excluded are often halakhic. And there are hundreds of examples in Nahmanides’ glosses.
Therefore the very common claim that there is no practical implication is baseless. Indeed, there is no practical implication in the mere fact that something is not counted. That can be for many reasons (included in another commandment, not a commandment, not biblical, time-dependent, etc.). But it is clear that sometimes the reason something is not counted is because of a halakhic consideration. Again I refer you to Nahmanides.
Therefore when you see that “And you shall do what is right and good” was not counted, you must ask why. The answer can be of various kinds, and in this case I know no good answer except that this is an expectation and not a command. It is not because it is included in another commandment, nor because it is rabbinic, nor because it is time-dependent. True, there is the Maggid Mishneh in the laws of neighbors (following Nahmanides) who explains that it is because it depends heavily on circumstances (and a well-known article by Rabbi Lichtenstein deals with this), and that is the reason you elaborated on here, but it is very unconvincing. There are other commandments like this and they are counted.
And now all your claims have fallen into the pit, and there is no need to address the rest. But since even aside from my words you are mistaken in all your examples, I will clarify that anyway:
1. I have never seen stranger logic than what you adopted here. It is not counted precisely because one cannot insert what is beyond halakha into halakha. That is: indeed it is less of a command. And according to Maimonides (Root 4) it is a general commandment, so it has nothing to do with our case. On the contrary, the fact that it is written in command language only intensifies the question why it was not included in the enumeration of commandments. And the answer is that the sages understood from the content (the moral content beyond halakha) that it could not be included, because it is an expectation and not a command. In other words, this is an example that disproves your point.
2. These are complete halakhot that are not biblical, and therefore Maimonides in the second root rules that they are not to be counted. Again, proof to the contrary.
3. The ninth root speaks about commands that have the same content. The second part is a general prohibition. Neither this nor that is relevant to us.
On all this, see our book on the roots, Yishlach Sharashav (“He Shall Send Forth His Roots”). There is also a link to it on the site here.

Shimon the Righteous was among the last survivors of the Great Assembly; he used to say: The world stands on three things—on Torah, on service, and on acts of kindness. And the source of this, in my humble opinion, is the prophet Micah, as it appears in Makkot 24a: “Micah came and established them on three, as it is written (Micah 6:8): ‘He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord demands of you: only to do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.’ ‘Do justice’—this is law; ‘love kindness’—this is acts of kindness; ‘walk humbly’—this is accompanying the dead and bringing in the bride.” And immediately the difficulty arises: accompanying the dead and bringing in the bride are also acts of kindness, and there is nothing especially modest about them? Rather Hazal themselves “walk humbly” with their God and conceal their words (as Nahmanides and many after him wrote, that one who understands Hazal’s aggadah literally is a fool), and the intention in “accompanying the dead and bringing in the bride” is service, the service of God—accompanying the dead is the Satan, bad traits, the evil inclination, the angel of death; and bringing in the bride is the Divine Presence, the soul, the woman of valor, good traits in a person, etc., and these are matters of privacy.

That is, Judaism is composed of “Torah”—the normative legal display; “service”—the service of God, including prayer, which is service of the heart, which although also normatively regulated includes a religious, non-rational, non-normative component that is part of the human soul and its connection to God, “bringing in the bride,” while overcoming bad traits and removing them, “accompanying the dead,” and that too can be learned, and this is the wisdom of Kabbalah; and “acts of kindness”—good deeds that one is obligated to do, but there is no normative rule that enforces them, and they are not religious, but they are part of Judaism.

And what does “the world stands” mean? It means that if one of these components disappears, the world collapses. Otherwise the expression “the world stands” has no meaning. That is, the wholeness of the world, its balance, is the combination of all these components.

The aspect hardest to understand rationally is precisely the aspect that itself claims that it is not rational, and this is the “service” mentioned above—“I said: I will be wise, but it is far from me,” which Hazal said was said regarding the red heifer, which is the example of the least rational side of the service of God—because it purifies and defiles, and these things are not understandable r-a-t-i-o-n-a-l-l-y.

And behold, ever since philosophy, that is, rational thought, began to spread in the world, the greats of Judaism fought that it should not take over the sages and nullify the religious component, which is anti-rational by definition. Empirically, just try talking to someone from a philosophy faculty or to a philosopher sitting in Jewish thought about Kabbalah as something non-rational, and he will throw you down the stairs—or throw himself out the window.

The war against philosophy is not, Heaven forbid, its abolition, but its restraint to the place where it is fit to dwell, and preventing it from invading and encroaching upon the world’s domain. That is what Maimonides did in the Guide of the Perplexed, and Hasidism tried to do with everything connected to it.
But what is common to the prophet Micah, the above-mentioned Shimon the Righteous, all the kabbalists, Maimonides (who was a kabbalist too, but let us leave that discussion aside), Hasidism, etc.? That there is no dispute that this religious side mentioned above, for a person to connect to it and understand it—that non-rational understanding—requires one trait: humility.

The celebs and the heretic owner of “Da’at Emet”—all of them lacked this simple and pleasant trait, of walking humbly with your God, humility, the ability to be a little quiet and stop babbling and strutting about in things too great and too wondrous for them, and therefore their world collapsed—and so does that of anyone who tries to stop serving God from the heart, with the powers of feeling that cannot be expressed rationally, but whoever lacks them lacks his soul.

Hello.
I’d be happy to read it. I must say that the subtitle (“Jewish-Israeli renewal”) hints to me at a different direction. In my view every renewal, just like every aging, is not Jewish. Everything beyond the minimal framework is voluntary and also universal (not Jewish), and each person should do with it as he understands. But of course I say this without reading, only based on the title.
By the way, I’m not managing to open the file from the link you sent without sharing all kinds of things they demand.
You can also send a PDF to my email: mikyab@gmail.com
Thank you and much success.

And let us say amen. 🙂

Rabbi, Michi, your distinction is extremely sharp, and indeed one must beware of biases; but once again: if I love sweets, security, etc., and I try to satisfy my desires and my needs, is there not rationality in that?
In my choice to follow my needs and my intuitions, I do this by free choice.
I also asked (and mainly) in the opposite direction. Should we not think it worthwhile to believe that we are beings with needs and try to satisfy them, among other ways through religion (and this would count as a kind of faith at least, even
for rationalists like us)?

We are eagerly awaiting the trilogy, although my guess is that for those who listen to the rabbi’s teachings, there won’t be many innovations.
After all, we’ve already read everything in the posts and the like, and whatever hasn’t yet been said presumably will be.
So the main thing will be a condensation of Judaism for the broader public that has been taken captive by traditions and the spirit of the times, and has already forgotten what Judaism is.

That is very rational, but it has nothing to do with truth. If someone serves God because it benefits him psychologically, then his action is indeed rational. But he is not serving God, only himself. Not every rational action is service of God.

Hello Rabbi,
First of all, thank you for your patience and the clarity of your words. Now I understand how far you are willing to stretch lean theology. For some reason I still think there is in their faith some fulfillment of the first commandment (God wants us to be rational, it seems to me).

I can’t refrain from mentioning the Rishonim’s investigation about fulfilling commandments while merely preoccupied or under coercion.

Best regards,
Matan

Well, I’ll start with the note that a few years ago this book Mekimi caught my eye in my house (I have no idea how it got there at all). I started leafing through it, already reading on the cover what it was about, and when I saw what it was discussing I simply could not read it. So credit to the rabbi for managing to read a few pages.

I may say some somewhat sharp things here, but sitting next to me right now is Rabbi Michi A. (a bit Haredi, but not too bad), and he is nodding his head to every word I write, like Korach (to make a distinction) in the lesson in which the Ari sat.

First of all I will say that the rabbi’s words here are an evasion. After all, the basic and simple intuition of every yeshiva student (and religious person), and also of the rabbi himself, is that there is an aggadic dimension in the Torah. There are Prophets and Writings, the aggadot of the Talmud, canonical books of Jewish thought. (Granted, one can dismiss later and earlier authorities, but to evade concepts like the Holy Spirit and the lives of the Tannaim and Amoraim, about whom the Gemara testifies that they could revive the dead?) The rabbi simply ignores their existence when he does not understand them or when they contradict his conception of reality and morality. And this is roughly like the Haredi ignoring of science when it raises questions about the Torah tradition (contradictions between Torah and science and the like). Or alternatively, he comes up with far-fetched answers and reconciles things with difficulty (or simply fires off the standard response: they were mistaken, that’s all, without even trying to understand where the mistake lay). Well, this too is a kind of ignorance (like that ignorance discussed in a question here on the site about ignorance among great leaders of the Haredi public, only much less severe than theirs because he is occupied with not denying the evident). If there is a difficulty, then one has to search for good explanations, and until one finds them, remain with the matter unresolved. If the rabbi has no need to hold onto one of the horns of the ox (the horn of aggadah), then good for him, but for the vast majority of the religious public the feeling is and the simple intuition is (and also that of the rabbi himself, as Rabbi Michi A. will testify) that this is not so. The simple feeling is that this part is inseparably connected with the halakhic part of the Torah. The rabbi’s approach is, in my opinion, an unsuccessful excuse for the issue. So the rabbi is basically answering the empty Leibowitzians (that’s how most of the public feels), who in any case didn’t need him.

But for that matter, my opinion on the issue is already known to the rabbi, and I have commented dozens of times here on the site that the rabbi’s approach is worse than mistaken (it is not mistaken). It is empty. Unsatisfying. Meaningless. It cannot be the whole truth. As the rabbi said: if that is the whole truth, then with that truth I am not interested in diplomatic relations. The rabbi sees the need for meaning as some side psychological need, like food and so forth. But meaning itself is something even higher than truth, which the rabbi so loves to talk about (a string of symbols in logic can be false or true, but first of all it must have meaning, that is, it must be a logical proposition; it must say something about some world). The rabbi says this is not real service of God. But those are empty words (again—not wrong, and somehow that is worse), like Kantian morality, which in my opinion is an empty morality. A collection of things that are right to do without taste or smell. Just like that. Because it is derived from philosophical axioms that happen to be true (after all, meaning has no value) through valid philosophical rules of inference (because there is no such thing as truth). That is, one must fulfill God’s commandments because that follows from who He is. Does that seem serious to the rabbi? “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice?” Why should anyone care at all what He wants? Only because it follows from His being the Creator of the world? (The rabbi writes that whoever understands what the Creator of the world is, philosophically, does not ask what value there is in obeying Him. And there has never arisen such a person on earth.)

If the rabbi were a secular person, would this convince him to become religious? I’ve never heard of anyone who became religious because of Leibowitz—and rightly so. Leibowitz too had a very strong need for meaning that played a role in his thought (anti-thought). The meaning of his life was to pester all the other people who were indeed looking for meaning. (And this is the parallel to framework-values in the secular postmodern world.) If he existed alone in the world, then either he would be secular or he would become one of the people he fought against all his life (in a less primitive version, presumably). Has the rabbi’s experience really shown him that philosophers are more moral people? Yes, they are less primitive. But when the moment of truth comes (in my experience and that of most of humanity), they become human beasts like everyone else.

And if the rabbi says that one should separate meaning from the need for it, then science too arose entirely from the need for order and understanding. Does the fact that this need gave rise to science not say something about the greatness of the need? Is what gave rise to science the equivalent of the stomach in our brain? Does the power of science not teach something about the human spirit? And I further claim that the need for meaning is even higher than the need to understand the world (in fact it is the same need. Science is meaning of the lowest kind. It deals with the what. And even the what is a kind of why. A zero-order why.) The need to evade the content of the Torah’s commandments toward the bare command itself feels to me, and to most people (and also to Rabbi Michi A. here beside me), artificial.

In addition, the simple intuition is that indeed a gentile who keeps commandments is something bad. The rabbi can surely understand this. Because the conception is that a gentile is “just” ordinary, and we want precisely to flee from the “just”—we want meaning and uniqueness. Who cares about some philosophical truth about “service of God” that is also a kind of mere ordinariness? I can classify the rabbi’s lean theology together with stock information at the end of the newspaper. What value is there in serving a God who has no value? Because He created a world that itself has no value? No values, no meaning. It’s all stomach pains. Let’s take drugs and discuss the stock index.

A lean summary of your main claim in the article:
When one believes in things that are partly hard to believe, there is a good chance that someday the person will stop believing even in things it is possible and right to believe.

You identify with Yuval Dayan in the process of disillusionment he underwent, but you criticize him for throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
You identify with him because you too underwent a similar process regarding the Lithuanian-Haredi world, only unlike him you say that you remained with what is correct,
(I imagine that he too thinks of himself that he remained with what is correct; he does not say of himself that he returned to heresy, but that he changed certain things in his external markers. It is not clear to me how you know that he threw everything out.)

And here the son asks: (both about Yuval Dayan and about you, R. Michael)
What has changed today from all the 25 years that preceded it—does it really take so long to come to one’s senses?
Really, 25 years for an adult to understand the mistake?
Did he discover a new fact that had been hidden from his eyes?
Answer:
There are two possibilities:
Either he already recognized the falsehood 25 years ago, only he wanted to believe in it for external reasons such as a sense of belonging or other motives belonging more to the emotional world than to the world that deals in truth and falsehood, and today after the motive was lost—for example, they do not accept him in the community as an equal—the motivation to believe in the falsehood has disappeared. (When the thing is gone, the love is gone.)
Option B: he did not recognize the falsehood 25 years ago and he does not recognize the falsehood today either, but rather he has an external motive causing him to say even of truth that it is false—for example, he was hurt on a personal level, they don’t want to accept his children to school, they don’t respect him enough in the community, so regarding everything he says “unclean, unclean.”

Do you see another possibility?

But the common denominator in the two possibilities above is that there is no real disillusionment here; there is only ego, nothing of a serious discussion about truth and falsehood, everything is conditional.
He explicitly states his claims in relation to himself and his children within the community, and here is apparently where the whole issue lies. Now that he has to marry off his children etc., all the non-substantive motivations he had regarding his religiosity have run out.

Apparently the greater risk is not in believing things that may perhaps one day turn out false (for what seems correct today will presumably also seem correct tomorrow).
The risk is when a person can change his beliefs because of non-substantive motives such as feelings of belonging or ego and honor.
In these matters things are very fluid.

With God’s help, 24 Sivan 5779

To Netanel—greetings,

The matter of the betrothal between the Holy One and the people of Israel is explained by the prophet Hosea in a “lean trilogy” of three short and concise verses: “And I will betroth you to Me forever; and I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in kindness and mercy; and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.”

It seems that we are not dealing only with a dry collection of “legal obligations,” but with a system of values—“righteousness and justice” combined with “kindness and mercy,” and with faithfulness and knowledge of the Lord. The integration of faithfulness and knowledge of the Lord with the values of righteousness and justice, kindness and mercy, internalized in the heart of the individual and of the nation, brings about an eternal bond between the nation and its God: “And I will betroth you to Me forever.”

It appears, then, that the 613 commandments and the 999 details of halakha are not a dry collection of legal obligations, but a powerful instrument for internalizing faith, knowledge of God, and the values of righteousness and justice, kindness and mercy in the hearts of the nation and its individuals (as we bless before every commandment, “who has sanctified us with His commandments”), and from them to all humanity.

Best regards, Sh.Tz.

A similar “trilogy” (though an even “leaner” one, compressing everything into a single verse 🙂) is offered by the prophet Micah: “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord demands of you: only to do justice, and love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

To the honorable rabbi,
1. I wanted to know whether what the rabbi wrote at the end about the Torah scholars of all generations having been mistaken in many things, and that they are people like us, etc.—does the rabbi think this because the rabbi understands that within “lean theology” this point is also included, namely that there is no source at all to grant them absolute authority in matters like morality, science, and perhaps even halakha? (And if not—if the rabbi also understands from within halakha that there is such authority, why does the rabbi not regard it?)
2. This opinion that the rabbi presents every time, both about Yaron Yadan and about Yuval Dayan, about the courage being worthy of appreciation, feels very postmodern—as though from the rabbi’s perspective too there is no absolute truth, and every extreme or difficult act a person does is worthy of appreciation; it feels as though it is specifically they to whom the rabbi gives appreciation for courage, but Uri Zohar is just a dark person and not courageous??

With God’s help, “Thus shall you bless the children of Israel,” Sivan 5779

The method we brought from the prophecies of Hosea and Micah, of summarizing the “I believe” in three short statements, is also expressed in the priestly blessing to the children of Israel: “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord lift up His face to you and grant you peace”—in the first verse: material success; in the second: finding favor in the eyes of God and man; and in the third: the vessel that holds all blessings, peace!

In Pirkei Avot as well, each generation formulated the essence of its worldview in triple statements: the Men of the Great Assembly: “Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah”; Shimon the Righteous: “On three things the world stands: on Torah, on service, and on acts of kindness” (and Omri Weil already noted the parallel to Micah’s three foundations), and so too throughout the rest of tractate Avot, most of the speakers formulate their words in sets of three.

The “trilogies” of our predecessors are “lean” in quantity, but “fat” in content.
Best regards, Sh.Tz.

Why, in your opinion, is it preferable to formulate an independent but mistaken position, rather than a correct position arrived at מתוך inertia and lack of courage?
At the end of the day, the latter does his role in the world—admittedly out of foolishness and simplicity, but he does it. Whereas the former, the wise and thoughtful one, errs and misses his destiny and role?

With God’s help, ערב שבת קודש “For all the congregation” 5779

Rabbi Elisaf Libi (from the Yedaya Institute) points out in his article “My God—Soul” (on the Arutz 7 website) the problem noted by Yuval Dayan, that he felt he was being asked “to erase his personality,” and he outlines ways in which a person can empower his personality through engagement with Torah.

Also, Sivan Rahav-Meir noted (in her article “The Hard Questions About the Yuval Dayan Affair”) the problematic nature of what she heard in Dayan’s previous incarnation, where he preached to a person to “throw away the intellect,” and she answers him: “You don’t need to throw away your intellect. God wants us to use it. At Sinai we received logic, not madness.” And she quotes the words of Rabbi Nachman (Likkutei Moharan I): “For the intellect is a great light and illuminates for him in all his ways,” and concludes: “A great light is not thrown away.”

On the other hand, she says that even a charismatic leader whose students flock after him and see him as a spiritual authority “needs discretion, a rabbi, a guide, authority, sanity. And professional people are needed too… There are professional counselors in the world. There are psychologists, there are psychiatrists. There are also rabbis. Far less dazzling and eloquent; much wiser and more experienced. They will not speak about mysticism and promise stars, but will direct us toward the three things on which the world stands: Torah, service, and acts of kindness. How boring. How important”… In Judaism, spirituality is not found in a dramatic exit from normal human society—toward magnificent and exciting “solo” journeys. Spirituality is here and now, in the people beside us…

This is what Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi said in his Mishnah: “Which is the straight path that a person should choose for himself? One that brings honor to the one who does it and honor to him from other people” (Avot 2:1). When a person feels he is faithful to himself, yet also connected to others—the sages of his generation and the sages of generations before him—he can trust that he is walking on the straight path.

Best regards, Sh.Tz.

You should read what I wrote and then respond.
As for your claims, this is excessive simplification. It takes a person time to recognize errors or reach the conclusion that he was mistaken. He discovers new facts, internalizes them, digests and analyzes them, gives another chance, and in the end reaches a conclusion. Your entire analysis is tendentious two-cent logic.

1. Indeed there is no reason whatsoever to assume they were not human beings. Whoever claims otherwise bears the burden of proof. Not lean theology—just plain common sense. After all, in non-halakhic fields they certainly made mistakes, so why assume they did not in halakha? If they are human beings and are not fed directly from heaven, they necessarily make mistakes like any human being. In halakha there are categories of authority, and those categories are entirely preserved in what I say. I did not understand the remark about authority within the categories of halakha.
2. Here your words are a concentrated collection of confusions that I cannot understand. Courage is worthy of appreciation, with no connection whatsoever to postmodernity. On the contrary, I wrote again and again that in my opinion he is mistaken. So where do you see postmodernity here? If someone jumps into fire to show he is brave, is he not brave? He is brave and foolish (and mistaken). Regarding Uri Zohar, I did not write that he is not brave. Where did you see that in my words? I wrote that his decisive preachings before he had studied indicate arrogance, not lack of courage. On the contrary, that arrogance is bound up with courage (telling people what is right without having studied, and when they know much more than you do).

First, because in my opinion there is value in autonomy and not only in truth. See my article “Is Halakha Pluralistic?”, especially at the end regarding the Ritva in Sukkah.
Second, because one who has not formed his own opinion and simply acts out of inertia does not truly fulfill his duty and role, but is merely “acting without intent.” That is not foolishness and innocence (as you put it), but inertia and lack of courage and honesty.
If the Holy One wanted robots that do the right thing, He would have created us without choice. If He created us with free will, apparently He wants us to use it. I usually bring two examples for this:
Elijah on Mount Carmel, who says to the people: “How long will you keep hopping between two branches? If the Lord is God, follow Him, and if Baal—follow him.” That is, he calls on them to do what seems right in their eyes, even if the truth is that it is mistaken. Someone who does not choose, even if he does the right thing, is less good than someone who chooses and does the wrong thing.
Rebecca and the joke about the religious-Zionist. She sees that the boy in her womb wants to go out to houses of idolatry and study halls, and she goes to inquire of the Lord. When they tell her there are two twins in her womb, she calms down. This is not one who did not choose, but two who chose (one evil and one good). The second situation is better than the first.

For your information, he was one of the greatest believers in the holy note that descended from heaven: “Na Nach Nachma Nachman MeUman.”
He built whole theories around it.
Does it really take so long to understand that this is a mistake?
I have no other explanation except that he wanted to believe it for some reason, and built an entire idealization around it.

Strange that the issue arouses such strong emotions.
We are talking about a man who believed in a note that fell from heaven to Yisrael Odesser.

In your opinion, someone who fulfills commandments while merely preoccupied and therefore does not truly fulfill his obligation, by your definition—is he like a person who does not keep commandments at all, or does he only fail to fulfill the commandments in a proper and fitting way?

To Michael,

Why assume that in halakha they did not err?—because it is logical and reasonable to assume that the Giver of the Torah would not allow the people to whom He gave the Torah to err in understanding His will and in fulfilling His will. Thus says Nahmanides on the verse “You shall not turn aside” (Deut. 17:11): “The spirit of the Lord is upon the ministers of His sanctuary, and He will not forsake His pious ones; forever they are guarded from error and stumbling.” The promise that they do not err is not because they are extraordinary geniuses, or because they are holy and holiness inherently does not err, but because the Creator, Giver of the Torah, sees to this, and His way of seeing to it is to pour out His spirit upon them and preserve them from error.

[And even if we assume, as in the beginning of Nahmanides’ words there (and this is not a contradiction in Nahmanides from line to line; he explains his intention there very well continuously, see there), that the intention and will of the Giver of the Torah from the outset is to give the Torah according to the understanding of its sages—“Thus the Master who commanded the commandments commanded me: that I should act in all His commandments according to whatever those who stand before Him in the place that He chooses shall instruct me, and according to the meaning of their understanding He gave me the Torah, even if they err”—then in the end it cannot be defined that their error is “error,” because after the Torah was given according to their understanding, there is no absolute objective standard by which to measure whether they are “mistaken” or “correct.” For the intention and will of the Giver of the Torah from the outset is according to the understanding of the sages of Torah—even if they err.

According to the Sefer HaChinukh (commandment 496), the sages of Torah are indeed capable of erring in halakha, and the intention of the Giver of the Torah is not to give it according to their understanding, meaning they are capable of erring in halakha and their error is an actual error—but for this there comes a positive commandment to accept their words even if they are completely mistaken in truth—because of the reason he writes there, that the Torah should not become two Torahs, etc. So according to him as well, in the end we have an explicit positive commandment on precisely this matter: to accept the opinion of the sages of Torah even if they err. This is on the principled level, and I know what there is to discuss and clarify here regarding the parameters of this commandment of “You shall not turn aside”—when it applies, and this is not the place to elaborate].

As for non-halakhic fields, that depends on the question whether they too are instruction and revelation of His will or not. But in halakha it is surely logical that a Creator who wants something specific and fixes it firmly—will also make sure there is no broken telephone in transmitting the instructions. Otherwise He achieved nothing and helped very little by giving the Torah to Moses and Israel with great tumult from heaven.

Certainly he fulfills, according to the opinion that commandments do not require intention.

So according to Nahmanides there is no court that errs. The section on the bull of mistaken ruling is just “study it and receive reward.” The halakha of a judge who erred was taught as part of the prayers. Thank God they returned to rule like Beit Shammai only voluntarily. “On right that it is left” is a textual error. Fine, I’ll stop here.

Rabbi Joseph Albo too formulated the principles of religion in the form of a triad: the existence of the Creator; Torah from heaven; providence and reward.

The Maharal of Prague writes that the three pilgrimage festivals correspond to these three foundations. Passover, which marks the Exodus from Egypt, testifies that there is a Creator to the world; Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah from heaven; and Sukkot—the Creator’s ongoing providence over His world.

Best regards, Sh.Tz.

And perhaps for that reason, the Egyptians will not celebrate the festival of Sukkot, thinking they do not need the Creator’s ongoing providence; and as a “measure for measure” rain will be withheld from them, to teach them that ongoing providence is necessary—the providence that brings “to satiety and not to leanness”…