The Emperor’s New Clothes: Releasing Repressed Beliefs (Column 575)
With God’s help.
To my firstborn son Nahman and to my first grandchild Uriya (who is not his daughter),
whose conversation prompted me to understand myself and my project better.
For a long time I’ve noticed phenomena of cognitive doubleness: a person who, deep inside, thinks one thing, while on the conscious level thinks something else—and certainly acts as if he thinks something else. In this column I wish to describe this strange phenomenon in its varieties. As I will explain, this discussion also helped me better understand the goal I’ve set for myself on this site and beyond.
Deceiving the Mind on High
In Genesis 4 the Torah describes Cain’s murder of Abel, the punishment of exile decreed upon him, his fear that whoever finds him will kill him, and God’s promise to protect him. Then, in verse 16, the Torah writes:
“And Cain went out from before the LORD and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”
On this verse, Midrash Aggadah (Buber) on Genesis states:
“‘And Cain went out from before the LORD…’—as one who deceives the Mind on high. ‘And he dwelt in the land of Nod.’ Since he acted deceitfully, saying, ‘My sin is too great to bear,’ therefore He forgave him only half the sin, as He said to him: ‘A fugitive and a wanderer shall you be in the earth.’”
In effect he deceived the Holy One, for his repentance was not sincere and complete.
Rashi there writes:
“‘And Cain went out’—he went out submissively, like one who deceives the Mind on high.”
By the very manner of his leaving he “stole the mind” of the Holy One.
Already in verse 9 such a deception is described:
“‘Where is Abel your brother?’—to engage him with gentle words, perhaps he would admit and say, ‘I killed him, and I have sinned to You.’ ‘I do not know’—he acted as one who deceives the Mind on high.”
He was deceiving the Holy One already there. It seems that what happens in verse 16 is just a continuation of that move.
Did Cain not understand that the Holy One knows? Whom is he fooling? I assume Cain understood this very well, and yet he tries to deceive the Holy One. A person can know something in his heart and at the same time act the opposite. It is not clear how tangible it is for him that he is acting under an assumption contrary to the truth, but he apparently convinces himself in some way that the Holy One does not know. Cain deceived himself first of all, and that is what enabled him to think he could deceive the Holy One. Perhaps the prophet Jonah, who flees from before the LORD, also deceived himself. Can one flee from before the LORD? We’re talking about a prophet, not a little child. But he managed to deceive himself and create within himself a consciousness as if one could deceive the Holy One. I suppose that deep inside they both knew all along that this was a false consciousness, but it didn’t stop them from living within that consciousness and acting by it through self-persuasion.
Examples
Years ago I saw an essay by Rabbi Shach in a book his grandson published collecting his essays on the weekly portions, in which he described the phenomenon of cognitive doubleness and used this midrash about “deceiving the Mind on high.” Rabbi Shach explains that this is a widespread human phenomenon: people can lie to someone who knows they are lying—and they too know that he knows—and yet they lie. They are in fact lying first and foremost to themselves. I think we all know such agreed-upon lies. By way of example, he describes a situation in which a yeshiva student strolls on Shabbat by the eruv wire and his hat flies out beyond it. He looks this way and that to make sure the Holy One is not watching (not people—the point is truly the Holy One), then slips out, grabs the hat, and rushes back in humming a jaunty tune. Does he think the Holy One does not know and does not see? He knows quite well that the Holy One sees, but in his conscious awareness he convinces himself that He does not see and slips past Him.[1]
This reminds me of a story I have told here before. As a child my father took me with him to his work at the Technion, where he let me play chess with a master. Needless to say, in all our games I was utterly trounced. At some point that master suggested I play against myself and said it is an excellent technique to improve. In such a situation I know all the plans of the other side and therefore cannot rely on mistakes or lack of attention on his (that is, my) part. I have to play optimally in every given position and force a win objectively (not rely on errors). I tried it, and I must tell you it’s as hard as the splitting of the Sea. Try it and enjoy. Again and again I found myself cheating (myself). I found myself playing as if I hadn’t noticed what the “other” would do (though of course I knew it by my spirit of prophecy), and—what a wonder!—“he” didn’t notice my trick (or I didn’t notice “his”), and I beat “him” (or “he” beat me). Incidentally, there was always one side I identified with: the color on the side where I was sitting. The other side, in my consciousness, was the opponent. In the terms of Column 81, one could say that the other side was “I,” whereas the first side was my “self.” In short, my “self” deceived me.
I described a similar phenomenon in the past regarding Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav’s story of the Rooster-Prince. I showed that there too it is a person living and acting with a cognitive doubleness. In Column 199 I applied this analysis to idolatry. A person can know there is nothing to it and yet his inclination compels him to serve it. But when he does so it’s not merely practical behavior; he constructs within himself a consciousness that there is substance to it and that it can help or harm him (see Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry 3:6), even as at the same time, deep inside, he knows there is nothing to it. Is this conscious or unconscious? Hard to tell. There I also extended this to the law of “we coerce him until he says ‘I desire [to comply].’” The understanding that sin is generally accompanied by cognitive doubleness greatly helps to understand that puzzling law.
The story about Terah and our father Abraham (alluded to there in the column) is a superb example of this. The midrash (Genesis Rabbah 38:13) relates:
“Rabbi Ḥiyya, son of the son of Rav Adda of Difo: Terah was an idol-seller. One time he went out to a place and seated Abraham to sell in his stead… One time a woman came with a bowl of fine flour in her hand. She said to him, ‘Here, offer it before them.’ He took a stick in his hand, smashed all the idols, and put the stick in the hand of the largest among them. When his father came, he said to him, ‘Who did this to them?’ He said to him, ‘What can I hide from you? A certain woman came with a bowl of fine flour and said to me, “Here, offer it before them.” I offered it before them. This one said, “I shall eat first,” and that one said, “I shall eat first.” The large one among them arose, took the stick, and smashed them.’ He said to him, ‘Why do you mock me? Do they know anything?’ He said to him, ‘Let your ears hear what your mouth is saying…’”
Terah returns and finds all the idols in his shop broken. When Abraham tells him a splendid tale about a quarrel among the idols over the bowl of flour the woman brought—resulting in the largest smashing all the others in his wrath—Terah doesn’t buy it: Do they have the power to smash one another? Surely you haven’t forgotten that Terah the elder was a veteran idolater, and from this story it is clear he understood perfectly well that an idol can do nothing. So how did he serve them? What was he expecting? The correct understanding that was buried deep inside him does not contradict his conscious thought as an idol worshiper who expects results. He lives and acts out of a consciousness that he himself, deep inside, knows is nonsense. This is a wonderful example of cognitive doubleness.
Why is it so hard for us to understand this midrash about Terah? Why do we all laugh? Because our nature and the culture within which we operate have changed. Today we are incapable of understanding the thought that attributes reality to idolatry; and even if we hear about someone who worshiped idols, it’s clear that he truly believed in it. We cannot grasp that he lived with a cognitive doubleness—and that is precisely what the midrash about Terah comes to teach. This is what the Sages in Aggadah (Yoma 69b) call “the nullification of the urge for idolatry.” To understand this better, think about the sexual urge, which still exists among us (at least regarding a married woman, even if not regarding close relatives; see the gemara there). Unlike idolatry, in the context of sexual matters this phenomenon is familiar to us. People commit a forbidden act, and many of them are aware even at the time that it is not proper and not right. But I am certain that in the midst of the act many tell themselves stories that it is legitimate and not harmful (so long as no one finds out), and they act within a consciousness that, deep inside, they know is vain. The urge fashions for us a false consciousness, while within we in fact know it is false. Is this conscious or unconscious? I don’t know; probably something in the middle.
This same matter arises almost every time I speak about the modern shift in consciousness that prevents us from understanding how people used to think. My claim is that the halakhic attitude toward heretics and deniers should be directed only at those who are heretics due to their inclinations, not those who truly believe so. I argued that once upon a time this was the case, for belief in God was clear to all, and even one who did not believe in the depths of his heart still did believe. His sin and idolatry stemmed from inclination, and he acted in a false consciousness as if this were truly what he believed—but inside he understood it was not true. By contrast, today a person who does not believe typically has truly reached a different conclusion. Inside as well he has no other thought. Because of this change, we struggle today to understand the ancient state of affairs. We’re dealing with cognitive doubleness in a domain foreign to us. A person may believe in the Holy One deep inside but construct for himself a theory of unbelief—even of idolatry—and then live and act by it. This is not an absurd state. Indeed, this is what happens for many of us when we commit a one-off sin. The urge overcomes us, but in the very midst of the act we operate within a consciousness (we deceive ourselves) that this is really the proper act and permitted, although already at the time of the act it is clear to us deep inside that it is not so. The human being is a complicated creature (see also Columns 172–173 for the discussion of weakness of will).
My impression of the attitude toward the Haredi “great men of the generation” is always similar. I find that yeshiva men and scholars are generally very clear-headed and down-to-earth (I think to a greater extent than you’ll find in other communities). The jokes in the Haredi street about “the gri’sh Efrati,” and the like, testify a thousand testimonies that everyone knows how Rabbi Elyashiv (R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv) arrived at his positions regarding reality (which he usually did not know directly). Rabbi Efrati, his faithful aide, spoon-fed him, and thus various directives and rulings were formulated and issued. And notwithstanding all this, Rabbi Elyashiv’s directives were regarded by the public—including by most of the cynics and mockers—as binding, as if they issued from the mouth of Heaven. The same holds for Rabbi Kanievsky, and others. Such people live with a magnificent doubleness: deep inside they understand how these directives are formed, yet at the same time it is clear to them as if they came from the Chamber of Hewn Stone and from the mouth of Heaven and fall under “you shall not deviate,” and therefore of course they obey with valor and devotion. Everyone knows who appoints the “great man of the generation,” but that does not prevent them from treating him and his words with sanctity and awe.
There are plenty of clips online showing how fixers enter the presence of the “great man of the generation,” typically someone around age 100 who can barely breathe, and they put into his mouth various statements and positions. If he insists on not approving them (and we have seen clips where he shows annoying lucidity and refuses), they continue and return again and again until they extract from him some version of the desired position. This immediately goes up on walls and bulletin boards and becomes an article of faith that issued from the mouth of the high priest in sanctity and purity (unless it is disqualified by the politruks, in which case it is fated to be archived—like the statements of Rabbi Edelstein discussed in Column 490). I assume it is no accident that Yated Ne’eman is careful to appoint “great men of the generation” at age 100 (ever rising), lest they, God forbid, be capable of forming positions independently (the poor souls—biology works against them. Once 70 or 80 sufficed, but cursed medicine serves the hands of the scoundrels and deniers by lengthening life expectancy). These are not merely lives in falsehood. This is doubleness. Inside, most Haredim know they are being played and that this is the situation; but in day-to-day conduct they truly live in the consciousness that it is not so. Fascinating indeed.
After the fact, one can offer justifications such as “the spirit of the LORD rests upon His holy servants,” etc., but in my assessment these are excuses. This is a clear example of cognitive doubleness.
Cognitive Doubleness in the Religious World
This brings me to an important point. The phenomenon of cognitive doubleness largely characterizes the religious world and even more so the Haredi world. A religious person is required to hold beliefs, some of which strike him as bizarre and incompatible with reality and common sense. He is told about providence and divine involvement in the world; about a tithe that always yields a response, and about tithing that enriches; about the goodness and righteousness of Jews and their special quality over gentiles; about saints who were killed for their Judaism (what is called “mistaken sanctifications”—see Column 215); about the idea that “everything is in the Torah” (though somehow we never actually see it); about there being no substance to the claims of biblical criticism—everything is the counsel of the evil inclination; about the sanctity of the Amoraim and Tannaim and of course the Rishonim, who can never err and could revive the dead; and so on and so forth—folk legends we got used to treating as pure truth and articles of faith, while deep inside our natural feeling is that there is nothing to it.
The Haredim broaden the phenomenon because among them there are additional fabricated articles of faith beyond those we got used to. They speak of the holy spirit resting on rabbis and “great men of the generation,” and of their wondrous familiarity with worldly matters. There are miracle tales about Haredi continuity (Moses walked with a gartel and shtreimel and spoke Yiddish. “They did not change their dress”), for as is known, “everything that a seasoned student will one day innovate was shown by the Holy One to Moses at Sinai.” Every junior yeshiva fellow is clear about the parameters of “you shall not deviate,” but that doesn’t stop anyone from wildly expanding them without any basis. They, of course, contribute marvelously to society and it is perfectly clear that society must carry them on its back and exempt them from all civic obligations. Anyone who says otherwise is an anti-Semite and a denier. Within many of them there nests a natural and healthy feeling that all this is wicked nonsense—but that, of course, is the counsel of the evil inclination.
We all know everything and yet continue to obey and declaim these slogans with zeal and determination. The reason is that denial of these articles of faith (both the original ones, like Maimonides’ principles, and the fabricated ones that sprout anew in the religious world, even more so in the Haredi one) is a deviation from the path of our rabbis and forefathers. We’re told that common sense (= our inner consciousness and beliefs) is the counsel of the evil inclination to be overcome. So we all overcome—namely, we develop a different outer consciousness that we really(!?) believe in and live by. As is well known, where philosophy and reason end, faith begins. But all that time, the “heretical” thoughts of common sense peck within. That is the challenge, the mashgiach will tell us. We are engaged in an unceasing struggle between the religious consciousness shaped by tradition and society and common sense—what we feel within. We are repeatedly sold that reason is the counsel of the inclination, and that lack of reason is an ideal and not merely a necessary evil (a Christian conception of the unity of opposites, as Tertullian wrote: I believe because it is absurd).
Attitude toward Gentiles
As noted, this phenomenon is not unique to the Haredim. But it is rather surprising to discover it also regarding matters that need not be considered articles of faith (e.g., Maimonides’ principles). It turns out that in the broader religious public there are fabricated articles of faith as well—such as “the special quality of Israel” in its essentialist sense.
In my essay “A Gentile Whom Halakhah Did Not Recognize” I recounted an incident at the Hesder Yeshiva in Yeruham. A discussion developed in the dining hall in the presence of the students, the ramim, and the rosh yeshiva, and many students voiced a sweeping position regarding the nature of gentiles (with, needless to say, a sweeping generalization). They said there is no morality among them, and even if it seems you’ll find moral behavior there, it is like a pig that stretches out its hooves and says, “See, I am pure” (Yalkut Shimoni, Psalms 80:14). Once I recovered from the shock, I asked them: How many gentiles have you met in your lives? On what exactly are your words based? I told them I haven’t met many gentiles in my life, but among those I have met or seen in films or books, my impression is that among gentiles the distribution is very similar to ours. There are good and bad among them, smart and foolish, beautiful and less so—just like among us. The signs the Beit Yosef brings at the beginning of Even ha-Ezer to identify Jewishness—according to which Jews are compassionate, and therefore one who is cruel is known not to be of Israel—do not really stand the test of reality. Yet these students insisted and were certain that gentiles are wicked and that there is no truly moral behavior there. Why? Because it is explicit in the Sages, and as is known they possessed the holy spirit and their words must be eternal and correct in every situation in every time and place. After all, this is part of the eternity of the Torah (“This Torah will not be replaced”).
This was a formative experience for me. We were not at Vizhnitz or Ponevezh, but at the Hesder Yeshiva in Yeruham. These are young men who grew up within Western culture, well attuned to everything going on in it, watching films and reading books (not only the hagiographies of Sofer: “Even a child is known by his deeds…”), and yet they live clinging to slogans written thousands of years ago and see reality through them with total blindness to the facts. Perhaps it is only a desire to judge favorably, but I tend to think that deep inside they understood this is nonsense that stands no empirical test. Perhaps the typical gentile in the time of the Sages was like that (I doubt it, but I didn’t live then and cannot say for certain), but among us this is certainly not the case. Anyone who meets gentiles outside the pages of books and not through quotes in Rashi script can see this very clearly.
I tend to think that when these young men see a gentile they understand he can be a good person. But they grew up and were educated in the light of sacred books, whose authors possessed the holy spirit, and one who deviates from them is a heretic and a reformer—Heaven forfend. Therefore, together with a good understanding of reality, they continue to maintain a imagined and false consciousness as if all good gentiles are pigs stretching their hooves. The alternative is to conclude that there are statements in the Talmud that are not necessarily correct—and certainly not eternal. That’s plain heresy, Heaven forfend. To escape this, it’s better to repress; best of all is to live with doubleness. I believe, and am fairly sure, that if and when they arrive in a gentile environment they will act as good people who understand well the reality around them. These slogans won’t even occur to them. But if you force them to say something explicit, perhaps even then they won’t let a statement pass their lips that the Talmud errs or is not relevant to our times. That would be heresy, Heaven forfend. So the sayings about the pig and its hooves will surface.
Again and again reality proves hard, recalcitrant, and annoying. For some reason it refuses to conform to our theories about it. One way we deal with this is to live in doubleness: to keep selling yourself the “articles of faith” in which you were raised (never mind their source), to declaim them with enthusiasm and firmness, while functioning in the practical world in a manner wholly different from what they assert. I think this is also related to the distinction between theory and practice discussed in Columns 356, 507, 517, and more. Note that in the doubleness described here, actual conduct is in fact the correct conduct, but alongside it there is a false consciousness which, in this case, we do not live by (and good thing too)—we only proclaim it.
Seeing the Future
The penny dropped for me this past Shabbat, when I heard from my son Nahman, who was talking with my granddaughter (the delightful Uriya), that she said she wants the Temple to be rebuilt. When he asked her why, she explained that then all the gentiles would be our slaves. Of course there are supports for this in the Prophets and the Sages, and throughout the religious literature over generations. For example, in Yalkut Shimoni, Remez 499, you will find that every person of Israel will have 2,800 slaves. No less. You’d better start preparing duty rosters and task lists. It’s not easy to employ such a number of slaves.
Is that true? Is that even a proper state of affairs—that each of us would have thousands of slaves? See here for an emphatic “yes,” plus a heartfelt prayer for the swift realization of this thrilling vision. I just picked this poor example, because it’s what I found now. You know as well as I do that there are thousands more. Does anyone among us truly believe this? Does anyone truly think it ought to be so? And if it ought not, will the Holy One create an utopia of an unworthy state? Is this really the utopia we yearn for? I found on the same site a charming attempt by someone named Daniel Vlas to reconcile the matter: they will be our slaves in the way we are “slaves” of the Holy One—not by coercion and bondage. They will simply want it, because they will suddenly understand how much better and loftier we are than they. What fun! See also here. Tasty morsels of “the redeeming Torah.” Well, are you convinced? I’m not really. Could it be that this simply won’t be—that this is a mistake? Is that not an option? There are also sources in prophetic verses, but of course they can be interpreted in many ways, further or closer to the literal sense. We cling to the slogans on which we were raised and proclaim our belief in them, but deep inside I am quite sure troubling doubts peck (the counsel of the inclination, of course).
The Source of It: Frustration and Need Create Consciousness
In my judgment these utopian hopes did not arise because someone was persuaded that this is the correct interpretation of the Prophets or of such-and-such a midrash. We know very well how to propose creative interpretations for verses that do not seem reasonable to us. Therefore, I assess that the source is entirely different. Over generations in which the people of Israel were persecuted by the gentiles and felt small and attacked, it is only natural that they would comfort themselves by nurturing hopes for a utopian state in which their persecutors would be their slaves. This is perfectly natural—but of course unconnected to reality, neither factual nor ethical. I can imagine parents telling their suffering child that all those wicked gentiles who torment them will one day be their slaves. Frustration creates a comforting consciousness that gradually turns into a claim of fact. And even if deep inside we still know there is no real basis to it, the external consciousness has a life of its own. Thus too anyone killed in a terror attack becomes a saint, because—so they say—he was killed for his Judaism (cf. “mistaken sanctifications”). Thus too “the saints of the Holocaust.” Why? Because it is comforting. It is hard to live with a pointless, useless death that benefited no one.
This reminds me of my dear mother’s jokes, may she live and be well, about “swans and quail and fish” in the Sabbath songs. We sing of those pieces of meat as if it were a supreme intellectual and spiritual experience. One who listens from the side might die laughing—or at least tear out their hair in bafflement. She would always claim that poor Jews in exile dreamed for generations of a piece of meat for the Sabbath meal, and in their eyes eating swans became the desire of the soul and a sublime spiritual delight—practically the realization of the vision of redemption and the world to come. It’s a bit like something I once heard the Tur wrote (I don’t know where): that in the world to come every Jew will have a candle and a quill to write. Admit it: that’s a bit different from the world to come imagined by a middle-class Jew today. So who is right? Probably neither. These are all fantasies that develop in response to frustrations of our present condition. Our utopias are reflections of our present. There is no problem with that so long as we do not turn it into factual estimates of the future, or into worthy values and norms—and certainly not into articles of faith that everyone must accept and that anyone who doubts them (and follows common sense, Heaven forfend) is following the counsel of the evil inclination.
Once these comforting delusions are committed to writing and sanctified, they become canonical. Then people forget their source and cling to them as to a great spoil. Thus articles of faith are created ex nihilo (not necessarily all of them, but in my estimation not a few). In such a state, a person may know deep inside that this state will not come to pass and should not come to pass, but he continues to declaim that every Jew will have thousands of gentile slaves—because it is both written and highly comforting. What’s the harm?! Thus my granddaughter is educated on a factual and ethical oddity of a utopia in which she will have thousands of gentile slaves—even as she lives in modern Israel and at the moment those who bother her are mainly Jews (my slaves, incidentally, will be hundreds of thousands of Bibists). Wonders of canonization. Like the general attitude to gentiles, the utopias we build for the time to come are apparently remnants of hopes that developed in ancient times. And so we live today in doubleness: deep inside it is clear to us this will not happen and should not happen, but in the revealed consciousness and on our lips the words are borne as if they had just now descended straight from the mouth of the Almighty at Sinai. Pelginan dibbura (we split the statement—rather than granting credibility), and all is well with the world.
In the same way, if one wishes to cement the halakhic authority of the Talmud, the counsel is to explain to us that the Amoraim possessed the holy spirit and could revive the dead. We’re speaking of Jews in Iraq 1,500 years ago and more—wise and righteous, presumably. But in all likelihood they were human beings like you and me, capable of erring—and unfortunately they exercised that ability more than once. But how shall we create loyalty to what is written in the Talmud? To say that it is a framework accepted by force of public acceptance—that this is probably the truth—is dangerous and not very persuasive. Therefore we need stories about the holy spirit and reviving the dead, about people who cannot err, and the like; then we will all obey with joy and gladness. Before, we saw that frustrations determine facts. In this case need determines the fact—but in both cases the “fact” becomes, with the passage of days, an article of faith. The ought determines the is.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Whatever the source of doubleness—and as we have seen, it can have various sources—the question is how to deal with such doubleness. Is there a way to overcome it? How can a person clarify to himself what he truly believes and thus rid himself of the false consciousnesses that accompany him? Beyond that, is the claim regarding doubleness not paternalistic? I am here diagnosing what people really think deep inside, when externally they assert very different claims, and on what basis do I determine this? It seems to me the answer lies in Andersen’s tale you all surely know, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Without retelling the whole story: a mass psychosis is formed in which the naked emperor is not really naked. He is clothed in splendid garments, and whoever does not see them is a fool. The sages certainly understand that splendid garments befitting a king are there and see them with their eyes. Everyone, of course, aspires to be considered wise and recoils from being identified as foolish, and therefore they praise in chorus the emperor for his wondrous garments. Gradually the consciousness penetrates deep inside, and now it even seems to them true. More time passes and everyone is convinced this is indeed the case; a deep inner conviction is formed that there are splendid garments there—and what is more, I actually see them (at least so it seems to me; or perhaps not? What do you mean?! Of course, of course. Merely the counsel of the inclination). Remember: the alternative is that I am a fool—or a heretic, if you like—and that, of course, cannot be.
So, a good Jew who senses there is no divine involvement in the world, or that the “great men of the generation” do not really express exalted wisdom—what is he to do? If he admits it, he is a heretic or a fool who follows his inclination. Therefore he convinces himself it is not so. After a time he already sees the world through these false glasses, and then he stops noticing that deep inside he does not truly believe it. It is merely the counsel of the inclination (again: vested interests). After all, none of us wants to be a heretic. “Are you wiser than Maimonides or R. Akiva Eiger?” asks the Steipler in his book Hayyei Olam.[2] Granted, there is also a question whether you are wiser than Spinoza and Einstein, or than Dawkins, but it does not really interest us (and even if it does, we are ready with the answer: they followed their inclination—interests).[3] Thus baseless and irrational theories become an unfalsifiable truth and pierce from mouth to heart within.
That is the process by which it happens. How do we get out of it? Back to the story of the emperor’s new clothes. The end of the story, as of the psychosis, is the cry of a naïve and “foolish” child: “The emperor is naked!” Silence falls over the crowd. Someone dared to voice the words of heresy aloud. Remember: by now everyone is in a state of inner conviction. It is not merely fear of consequences (heresy), but things that seem to all of us a blatant falsehood. And lo and behold, the words actually penetrate. Suddenly everyone understands that the emperor is in fact naked. What happened? Was something new revealed to them? Some fact they had not noticed? Did the child give them therapy and change their consciousness? Not at all. He merely spoke the truth in a clear voice into the world’s air. Suddenly some dormant string—still within—stirred in everyone. It began to vibrate, and suddenly resonance was formed. Those inner strings in everyone began to vibrate at the same frequency. Suddenly a mass sobering occurred, and everyone changed their perceptions at once.
You understand this was not truly a change of perception. Nothing new was created. Rather, what was long hidden inside simply came out. If it were not in there somewhere, the change could not have happened—and certainly not all at once. The child’s cry toppled all the walls of repression, erased the doubleness and the shells, and suddenly everyone lived what they had always known deep inside: the emperor is naked. In the columns mentioned above I explained that a similar process happened to the king’s son in the Rooster-Prince story, and I shall not return to it here.
Here you will find the answer to the two questions I raised at the beginning of this section. How do we know what is true? In a place where a single cry causes a sweeping change, that was probably always inside. This is also the way to bring about the change and clarify what, in truth, we believe: to listen to those cries and examine within ourselves what we truly believe. To try to ignore slogans that common sense is the counsel of the inclination. The secret of the charm in those “heretical,” “mistaken” conceptions is that they are not mistaken. The “inclination” manages to sway us to them and demands such a stubborn and unceasing struggle simply because it is not the inclination. It is what we truly think.
Incidentally, from here you can also understand that the fact we possess a correct inner consciousness does not belong only to the deep unconscious. Otherwise there would be no place to level accusations for sins committed out of cognitive doubleness. A person who acts with the consciousness that this is the truth is ostensibly coerced. But it is a fact that the ancient idolater who acted out of cognitive doubleness is indeed called to account for what he did (in this he differs from one who will worship in his time—apparently the result of a true belief in idolatry). The charge against one who sinned out of a false consciousness stems from the demand upon him to listen to what is within—and if he does not do so, he is not utterly coerced. The doubleness, of course, is a mitigating circumstance regarding punishment, but it is not coercion.
On Faith, Heresy, Change, and Liberation
After I framed my son’s conversation with his niece in these terms, I realized this is a process I myself underwent. For years I accepted claims solely because this is the faith and the tradition, and whoever thinks or says otherwise is mistaken. I accepted them because it cannot be that Maimonides, or Rav Ashi, or Rabbi Ḥaim Kanievsky erred. And again, this was genuine conviction, not from fear—at least not in the simple sense. I truly was convinced by all this—or at least so I thought. In recent years I understood that this is doubleness: people like me who know the truth all along, but “the heart does not reveal to the mouth.” They do not dare admit it to themselves, and certainly not to say it outwardly.
Again and again I write here that people’s behavior indicates what they truly think. Do they think prayer heals, or medicine? Does the Holy One respond to prayers, or not? Do Jews truly have a different constitution than gentiles, or not? Were the sages of the Talmud fiery seraphs who could revive the dead and knew all the wisdoms of the world, or ordinary people? Is all of science contained in the Torah, or… not really? And many more baseless beliefs to which we became accustomed and which turned into articles of faith. What helps greatly to live in this doubleness are the familiar excuses: this is the counsel of the inclination. “Hishtadlut” (effort) is only due to human weakness (or a commandment), but of course it does not have any effect (others have propagated more sophisticated theories: it does have an effect, but only thanks to fulfilling the commandment of hishtadlut, the 613th commandment according to Maimonides). These mantras imprison the truths we all know within and cause us to deny them—truly deny them. Not only in outward speech, but also toward ourselves. We tell ourselves we are simply weak and therefore cannot live by the truth and the proper norms. Thus they push us to declare declarations and internalize them, and to deny what we all knew—and still know—deep inside.
In Column 63 I noted that branding someone a heretic is a substitute used where there are no arguments. This means that in many cases the inclination that captivates us is precisely the inclination to obey tradition and not our inner consciousness (common sense). What is presented to us as “faith,” precisely that is the inclination that clings to us—and from it we must free ourselves. Whereas the “heresy” presented to us as the counsel of the inclination is sometimes precisely the real thing. If it were not the real thing, one who rebukes me ought to use arguments and show me it is an error, rather than scolding me for being a heretic who succumbed to his evil inclination.
At some point I came to the conclusion that we need some child who will say the words out loud and clear, and perhaps that will free in many people the feelings imprisoned within. I thought that perhaps if I serve as that child crying the words aloud, it could release these repressed truths and crumble the shells of authority and tradition that forced them in and do not allow them to come out. It will dissolve the excuses about weakness and inclinations and cause people to understand that these are not “inclinations” but their true beliefs. Faith does not mean living by slogans against common sense, but exactly the opposite. Faith is what is inside, not what is said outside. Faith does not begin where reason and intellect end; it is required by them and bound to them.
I won’t hide that so far the success is very partial. It is hard to release such deep repressions and go against such powerful forces. People entrench themselves in those consciousnesses that to me are false, and they attribute their inner feelings (doubts) to inclinations and weaknesses. Yet I think that in these very years there are indeed processes of liberation (as part of our freer generation, for good and for ill), and I hope this will yet happen more broadly. Authority in such matters is a confining and oppressive thing, not a liberating one (I have often noted that authority regarding matters of fact is a simple oxymoron; see, for example, Column 568). It does not help us overcome inclinations but prevents us from understanding what we truly believe and from acting accordingly.
[1] I assume some will say that this yeshiva fellow did not really believe completely, and therefore perhaps he thinks that the Holy One truly does not see or does not care. For my purposes here it is merely an example.
[2] Incidentally, in my eyes this book is a veritable summit of the Lithuanian wonder that amazes me every time anew. The Lithuanian yeshiva fellow is a clear-headed person, sharp in his halakhic learning. When he arrives at the realms of thought (hashkafah), he becomes a fool who devoutly declaims baseless mantras. Truly at the level of a kindergartener. The gap in people’s intelligence between their work in lomdus and their work in thought is one of the more sublime Lithuanian wonders in my eyes. You should have seen the finest fellows of the “Neot Yosef” community in Bnei Brak, of which I was a member—lions and men of shields. A delight to speak with them in learning. Some are roshei kollel and others ramim in yeshivot, or simply good fellows from the ranks. And all these lions sit on Friday evening at the talk of some visiting mashgiach who chatters nonsense to death, as if they were witnessing the revelation at Sinai. None of those who would not let you utter a learned word without attacking you even considers raising a question or doubt. Each time a silence was cast there such that even at Sinai—when the birds did not chirp—it was a polyphonic cacophony by comparison.
Discussion
Interesting that all the formerly religious adopt liberal positions after leaving. Maybe that teaches us that all our conservative positions suppress our true beliefs.
Here, in my view, it’s different.
When you’re religious you can think (rightly) that, say, LGBT is forbidden. Once you give up halakhic commitment, there is no longer any reason to think that. Presumably the default is liberal, and in order not to be one you need a reason. When there is no reason, you return to the liberal starting point.
However, if you’re talking about the immorality of LGBT, and not the halakhic prohibition, that’s already a better example.
A. You’re so right, you have no idea how much. A few weeks ago I was invited to a santucha [a little party they make in yeshiva for a guy who gets engaged], and it had been a long time since I’d met my friends from yeshiva. One of my friends, a Hazon Ishnik with common sense who is careful not to
read books like the rabbi’s, started explaining to me very lucidly what the rabbi explains at the beginning of the second book: that in Judaism there is no pope, and he explained to me about mistaken kiddushin. Of course I jumped at the opportunity and started discussing divine providence with him, but there he stopped. I saw with my own eyes a split-second hesitation that stemmed from fear of the evil inclination’s counsel. Amazing.
B. A long time ago I rode in a taxi, and we passed through one of the fancy streets of Tel Aviv. That man was angry at the Tel Avivians, who in his view are not Jews [that’s what he claimed], and he explained to me that when the Messiah comes we’ll have 2,000 slaves, etc. First of all I told him: I don’t want slaves, and why should they be slaves? Let everyone have a good life. And why do we need so many slaves? Then I really saw what the rabbi wrote: that because of hardship people comfort themselves with slaves, and it makes them feel good, even if in practice they are poor taxi drivers.
The rabbi wrote that he prayed at the Neot Yosef community. Did the rabbi know my grandfather [through email the rabbi sees my family name]?
I don’t see it.
Thank you very much! Note 2 made me especially happy. If he has come out among us for us to behold this terrible wonder, then at the very least we should share the feeling of amazement/contempt/laughter.
By the way, does the rabbi have any practical advice on how to open other people’s eyes? Is there any tool that can be applied in discussion with those captive to ideological/intellectual conceptions? It really irritates me, especially when I argue about issues that spill over into halakhah, like whether we are “permitted” to disagree with the Shulchan Arukh / the Rishonim and the like. It’s unbelievable how the mind gets sealed shut.
It’s really a shame about people whose entire lives are occupied on a vast scale with the laws of the Torah, yet they are unable to draw a halakhic conclusion from the sugya.
I sent it to the rabbi by email.
Unfortunately not.
You did not logically persuade me that they are wrong, only emotionally. I don’t define myself as Haredi but as Orthodox, someone who tries to accept truth from whoever says it, and I do think like them in the examples you gave, from a deep perspective and also from the sources.
You give the impression that because these are Haredim or Hardalim, you dismiss them in advance and try to bring supporting arguments, and that’s a shame, because you are a very talented person. But it’s also worth being wise, because a wise person is one who walks in the ways of truth. With love.
By the way, I connected to the previous post.
A lot of people think it’s a contradiction to deny providence and continue keeping the commandments, and they do not accept the rabbi’s reinterpretations, may he live long, that once there was providence, etc., and even he does not entirely believe in that.
Michi.
I have to say this is one of your funniest columns.
Why do I say funniest?
Not because of any disrespect, Heaven forbid, for what you wrote. Rather because, in my humble opinion of course, of the excessive credit you give to the human mind. When you seriously ask whether someone really believes such-and-such, you start from the assumption that every person has enough intellectual energy to define things precisely for himself or to lie to himself about certain beliefs—however absurd they may seem to an outside observer—whether belief in supernatural miracles, attitudes toward women, toward gentiles, and so on.
And regarding the attitude to gentiles mentioned in that column, in my opinion this is a broad phenomenon. For here there is not only self-deception or a split consciousness; there is really a triple or quadruple set of certain contradictory consciousnesses that stem, as I see it, from a mixing together of several domains.
What I mean is that with regard to women, to Sephardim and Ethiopians, to the state, to other Orthodox streams that keep the commandments—within the Haredi public there are today very dominant voices that behave with complete rationality: they are freeing themselves from the thesis that the state is an act of Satan; they are willing to say that there are great and mighty Torah scholars in the Religious Zionist public and that not all of them are idol worshipers in partnership with heretics or the mixed multitude; they understand that a woman is not some childbearing tool, nor some lesser soul or delicate or lofty soul that one should relate to patronizingly and with utter contempt, like someone congenitally mentally disabled; they understand there is no innate Ashkenazi superiority and that mixing between Sephardim and Ashkenazim is not, Heaven forbid, some blemish in lineage. Yet with regard to gentiles there is really almost no one willing to be rational (and in other matters too there is self-deception among both the enlightened and the more conservative). In this discussion there are usually only emotions and stormy feelings. And by the way, the enlightened side in this discussion—and I do not mean you, Heaven forbid, but people like Bnei Lau, Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, and the like—also bears a large share of the blame for the intellectual dishonesty here. For the broader public makes no distinction at all between different planes in relating to a gentile: the all-encompassing or optimal attitude one should have toward a decent gentile; the attitude toward foreign peoples who persecuted the people of Israel and toward their descendants as a collective; the halakhic differences between Jews and gentiles, even decent gentiles; and the whole issue of Israel’s chosenness.
It seems to me that in Hazal you almost always find a matter-of-fact attitude toward gentiles. Even if they erred in their judgment of the gentiles around them, on the practical level the harsh expressions, sanctions, and hostility were directed mainly toward haters of Israel. A cold and unsympathetic attitude was directed toward ordinary wise gentiles—philosophers or polite people—whom they were not enthusiastic about and did not see as corrected on the religious plane. But they also did not abhor them or forbid saying any good word about them or relating to them reasonably. And there was a certain affection toward the righteous among the nations. Perhaps I am mistaken, but that is also the general attitude I find in the Rishonim and Aharonim. As for the midrashim about slaves and utopia, I don’t recall that they really moved anyone and caused such great excitement, not even in periods of persecution. There those midrashim were emphasized in order to describe the recognition of Israel’s greatness and divine truth that would come at the end of days. I don’t recall anyone dealing with the number of slaves and their role with such intensity.
The confusion on this issue begins, in my humble opinion, with a double apologetic: from the claim that Israel is above everyone and at the same time benefits everyone and wants to rectify the whole world (how that is logically possible I have no idea). But for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, for example, there was no psychological dissonance when he went to spread the Seven Noahide Commandments, taught nice Christian American students on campuses about “Beloved is man, for he was created in the image,” and at the same time described to his Hasidim in minute detail the utopian difference that according to him existed between the body of a gentile—which in one quote in his name is said literally to become like the appearance of an animal’s body when “its spiritual sparks ascend upward.” Rabbi Tzadok too (and before him, in a more refined style, the Maharal of Prague) had no problem saying that all are the creations of the Holy One, blessed be He, that the Israelite nation is a universal nation connected to the whole world, and at the same time claiming that Adam’s corruption created a base human being who cannot be corrected except through subjugation / drawing sparks / to “the original human form.” (One reason this thesis is so lacking in logic, for example, is the desire always to hold the rope at both ends: to claim that the original life-form was supposed to be universal for everyone, for after all the Holy One, blessed be He, benefits all and no mishap comes from His hand; to create historical Israel at the level of supreme angels forever free of any evil inclination, and all historical gentiles as the equivalent of the righteous intermediates in present-day Israel; and on the other hand the present gentiles are beyond repair because of the mishap the serpent brought upon Eve.)
In any case, all these intensive exactitudes about the number of slaves, the number of sparks of souls from nogah holiness, the number of an optimal quantity of souls of dragged converts, righteous converts (who are always simultaneously more elevated and more inferior), simply point to an inability to make the following simple distinctions:
1. One should not give too much credit to the real historical gentiles who persecuted Israel.
2. There are clear halakhic differences between a Jew and a gentile—any gentile, even a decent one—in prohibitions of marriage and the like.
(The unwillingness to emphasize these two points, by the way, from the enlightened side of the map, in my humble opinion causes people to turn to the other side of intellectual dishonesty.)
And on the interpersonal plane there is no reason to be stricter with decent gentiles in matters like returning lost property, basic kindness, rescue, and the like more than the great halakhic decisors were (none of whom ever forbade a decent and basic attitude toward a resident alien or just an upright gentile—at least not entirely).
3. Spiritual differences are spiritual differences, and there is really no way to test what each person’s role is, except that here there is one more failure that again suffers from dissonance: a slave who becomes a slave willingly and gladly serves his master is not a slave. A gentile who is not inferior to a Jew—or is inferior but at the same time this does not harm him and only benefits him, because “Who is rich? He who rejoices in his portion”—logically is not really inferior. Or else the thing is not to his benefit.
Just as a woman who has a higher soul cannot at the same time be subordinate to her husband. This is just another of the paradoxes of the unity of opposites that you once brought up here.
In any case, intelligent people do and will continue to hold onto dissonance, unfortunately.
Rabbi Daniel Blass is an adolescent baal teshuvah who still has that sparkle in his eyes that there cannot be, in the Haredi world—of a real Haredi, in his words!—hatred of human beings, racism, moral failures, or lack of basic decency. Therefore, from his point of view there is not and cannot be in Judaism, nor among the great sages of the generation, any illogical statement—just as they told him in the Arakhim seminar.
Rabbi Sherki, and other students of the Rav Kook school, are really troubling in their split consciousness: they have a nice thesis for how to solve every difficulty and logical dissonance by making verbal distinctions and adding a new meaning to terms. Only the troubling part is that they are sure the rest of the Kookist public also means that: that when a public figure comes out with an outrageous statement whose shallowness Rav Kook would not have agreed with, that public figure surely intends the deep and profound interpretation of that ancient source being quoted. (That source too, of course, how could it not, fits exactly with Rav Kook’s logical reconciliation of that source.) And so there is no dissonance, no tension between halakhah and natural morality, no tension between religious consciousness and beliefs added to it and modern consciousness. You can simply bring a Jewish thinker, a modern thinker, and Rav Kook who will explain how they complement one another.
And if this is what they had taught us 200 years ago, most likely we would not have survived as a people.
So how did they survive until 200 years ago?
By the way, who taught otherwise 200 years ago? Those who denied providence from then on indeed did not keep the commandments and were entirely consistent.
Before that, reality did not allow Jews to mix in. Once the opportunity arose, it seems common sense would have told most of us to live like all the nations.
Indeed so, many were consistent and assimilated, and they do not consider themselves part of the people. If everyone had conducted themselves that way, and if not for today’s pogroms, it is not certain they would have survived.
And therefore? That means this is the truth. If the truth causes non-survival, then let us not survive.
I wonder what you’ll say about what you currently believe outwardly, a quarter of an hour after you go off the religious path. I estimate that will happen after you retire. By the way, I’m no longer religious—and among other things, that’s also thanks to you…
The beginning is difficult in light of the end.
At the beginning you describe how the penny drops quickly and everyone understands at once, without any psychological inhibitions:
The beginning: “This is the process by which it happens. …He merely spoke the truth in a clear and lucid voice into the world’s space. Suddenly some dormant string woke up in everyone, still existing deep inside them. It began to vibrate, and suddenly a resonance was created. These inner strings in everyone began vibrating at the same frequency. Suddenly a mass awakening took place, and everyone instantly changed their views…
How do we know what the truth is? In a place where a single cry brings about broad change, that was probably inside all along. This is also the way to bring about change and to clarify what the real truth is in our eyes.”
But at the end, the penny encounters psychological inhibitions.
Yet precisely the reality you describe from your “The Emperor Is Naked” call does not meet your criterion above (“How do we know what the truth is? In a place where one call brings broad change”). The call does not bring change. Neither broad change nor immediate change:
The end: “I will not deny that so far the success is very partial. It is hard to release such deep suppressions and go against such strong forces. People entrench themselves in those states of consciousness that in my eyes are false, and attribute their inner feelings (their doubts) to urges and weaknesses.”
It’s amazing how you are so convinced that if you do not believe in prayer and divine intervention, then nobody believes in it and everyone is living in false consciousness—a claim that of course cannot be disproved, because what difference does it make what people testify about themselves, “obviously” they don’t really believe.
And as someone here already wrote to you, it would not be surprising at all if in a few years you declare that in fact the things you now believe in were also part of a false consciousness. And then you’ll be sure that all the religious people think that too.
By the way, it’s Socrates, not Socrat.
That really is interesting. We’ll wait and see. May my merit protect you and all Israel.
It is a sufficient but not a necessary condition. If it happens immediately, then clearly there is here an awakening from suppression. But if not—that does not mean there is no suppression here. In a story it can happen that way. In life the situation is usually different. In the Enlightenment period it happened roughly like that. Even in our day, going off the religious path and shifts in outlook happen fairly broadly and quickly. But the very fact that many people have a constant struggle against these feelings that do not leave them is an indication that that string is there. See how much energy is invested in cultivating these beliefs and how hard people fight against the “evil inclination” that will not leave us.
First, I do not think everyone is like that, only that many are (as happened in my own case. If you deny that this exists among many people, you really are denying facts. After all, many also draw the conclusions and leave. One can argue about how many, but not about the existence of the phenomenon itself). Second, there are various behavioral indications of this, and I have already written about them quite a bit in the past. Just look how much energy the explainers invest in instilling these strange perceptions and fighting against common sense, which denies them. How much they fight against the “urge.” How many people who speak in lofty terms about prayer invest in the commandment of effort. Even in the words of Rabbi Shteinman I showed in column 279 that another perception is hidden there from what he says with his mouth. Many people are depressed when they have no money and have lost their job, and are not really convinced that the Holy One, blessed be He, will find a way to support them, for “effort” is supposedly false. But that does not stop them from talking about effort and comforting themselves with it. If you deny this, then you really are genuinely captive to these ridiculous conceptions.
As for claims that cannot be disproved, I assume you accept the claim that there is a God even though it cannot be disproved. And likewise the claim that there is providence. So why is it specifically the claim that there is no providence that you require to meet the scientific criterion of falsifiability? In my opinion that is probably because that string is vibrating inside you too, and this is your way of fighting against it (see Tzemach Atlas and the battle of the urge—column 330 and more). Best of luck to you.
As for the future, we’ll wait and see. I definitely take that into account, and I do not tend to determine my future views and thoughts in the present. When I get there, I’ll see what I think, and then we’ll know. But I am completely open to whatever the future holds, and I very much hope I will be honest enough not to live in a split consciousness.
Adding one thing to another…
The rabbi, the holy local authority, claims that whoever does not think like him lives in a split consciousness and false consciousness (a term invented by one of the fathers of the Marxist church, if I’m not mistaken Lukács, a Jew—what else?…), but at the same time mocks Haredim who think exactly the same thing about him (the theory of “personal bias”). The only thing by virtue of which he is convinced that the truth is with him is his intuition (Michi “does not sense” signs of God’s providence in the world, and from this it follows that there is none). Other people’s intuition is, of course, nonsense or split consciousness.
To prevent error:
1) I do not deny the possibility that a person lives in false consciousness. On the contrary, every person has a tendency to choose the belief that maximizes his utility. “Belief” is basically an economic “commodity,” and a person chooses the “commodity” that maximizes his utility subject to constraints, as in any standard microeconomic problem. There is extensive literature on this that began with the pioneering articles of Nobel laureate George Akerlof, who in effect scientifically confirmed the theory of “personal bias.” No one is free of this, and everyone without exception lives to some degree in false consciousness (including your humble servant and, what can you do, including Michi). The difference is between one who is willing to apply this rule also to himself, and one who is sure that indeed everyone is like this except for himself, who has merited to look upon the world “from above” with the pure eyes of his intellect. (Once Michi wrote in response to one of my comments that as far as he can judge himself, he is “clean.” I know him only from his writings and not personally, so I cannot deny his claim, but from my teachers in yeshiva and in university alike I learned that this is far-fetched and unlikely.)
2) This does not mean there is no absolute truth, as the postmodern philosophers claim, but that human beings find it difficult to reach because of the human tendency to choose beliefs the way one chooses soaps in the supermarket (roughly…). I have heard quite a few people who err and infer from the difficulty to the nonexistence of truth itself, and that is a clarified mistake. (And generally, it seems to me that some of them use the argument “everyone deceives themselves” as a justification for their own self-deception, but that is a longer discussion.)
3) I do not disparage intuition at all. But it is also a dangerous tool, especially when it operates in cooperation with arrogance and contempt for Torah scholars, for other views, and so on.
Rabbi Mordechai, may he live long, I see one virtue in you: consistency. You consistently continue to put words in my mouth and then attack with irrelevant attacks. Happy are you.
I did not write anywhere that I am free of this. Nor do I assume it. I pointed to the phenomenon and described it. It is entirely possible that you will find it in me too. Moreover, I explicitly wrote that I myself was in such a state in the past, and it is certainly possible that I am still there. My goal was to point to the phenomenon, and now each person should examine himself. I at least try to examine myself.
I will ignore all the rest of your irrelevant “hints” and your misunderstandings.
By the way, I do write a lot and cannot remember everything. But I would be happy for a link to my statement that I am clean. I find it hard to believe that I wrote that (if only because I don’t think so). It also fits your absurd thesis about me a bit too well. So I’m betting that your hidden desire to put imaginary words from your own heart into my mouth caused this here as well. But I’ll wait for the link.
When I need to apologize, I have no problem doing so. Indeed, after a brief Google dig through this holy site I found the following link:
https://mikyab.net/posts/65903
Apparently what came to my memory when I wrote the above comment was the sentence “when I freed myself from them and came clean (to my feeling),” etc. That’s what happens when you write from memory (which itself is not free of “personal bias,” as is known). Here is the full paragraph as you wrote it there:
“I do indeed feel that my anarchistic conclusions arose from a straightforward examination of the matter. On the contrary, my feeling is that I did not believe them as long as I was subject to accepted conceptions. And when I freed myself from them and came clean (to my feeling), these are the required conclusions. That is also why I explain and justify them. But of course there is no one who is not biased, and I can never be sure exactly what brought me to my conclusions. Precisely because of that I think there is no point digging into this. I need to try to be as clean as I can, and from there onward the Torah was not given to ministering angels [we have returned to our agreement in section 2].”
What do we see here? That you really do believe (or “feel”) that you are clean, but do not rule out the possibility that you too nevertheless have biases. I should also have quoted the second half. You are right; I apologize.
And as is customary in our parts—but…! I did not really put in your mouth my “hidden desires” (even from myself…), and are you not aware of what I described above? You “accuse” the Haredim (for the sake of discussion, but not only them) of split consciousness and dismiss as dust of the earth the fact that they think (or at least say) the same thing about you. You are convinced that the truth is with you, so how do you know they are not convinced of their beliefs at least as much as you are? In the end, your final decisor is your intuition, and I still have not understood why it is necessarily preferable to that of your fellow. On the other hand, in the end this is every person’s final decisor—but from there to sharpened sarcasm and insults is a long road. There is always doubt, and the doubt is always reasonable.
From this it also follows that contrary to what you wrote in the quoted paragraph, it is very important “to dig into this,” because no person will ever be able to be sure of the true sources of his conclusions, and perhaps this and perhaps that, etc.
By the way, I vaguely remember that you wrote several other times in response to me that in your feeling you are “clean,” but I have neither the time nor strength to dig around further on this site. It seems to me that this is enough.
If that is an apology, I wouldn’t want to be around when you’re not apologizing. But if even the column/comment you refer to you also do not understand and/or quote correctly, then why should I complain about incorrect and tendentious quotations of my past words? The rest of your nonsense is nothing but like a dog returning to its vomit.
I apologized for quoting from memory. I should have checked.
As for my understanding, etc., let the readers judge.
As for your coarseness when you are pushed into a corner, I already commented on that in the past as well, and there is no point repeating it.
And may we all have a peaceful Sabbath.
No one said this is not a real phenomenon, only that you describe this belief as though it is so absurd and ridiculous that “obviously nobody really believes it”—and that is a serious denial of reality, in which the overwhelming majority of people in the world do believe it.
As for the behavioral indications you brought, it’s simply a joke. You present belief in providence in its most extreme and caricatured form, as though no effort at all is required, etc., and then claim that anyone who has a little more complexity, doubts, or weakness on the issue—that shows he does not believe at all in divine intervention. As if only this extreme version of belief is what is at stake, and as if human beings are only black and white. If someone is depressed because he has no job, does that mean he does not believe in providence? Seriously? That’s like saying that anyone who grieves over a relative who died does not really believe in God, because otherwise he ought to be convinced that “everything is for the best,” and that his relative is in heaven, etc. Except that human beings are not robots, and therefore there are complexities in them, the emotions do not always fall into line with the intellect, etc. That does not mean they are living in false consciousness or that inwardly they do not believe.
And regarding claims that are not falsifiable, I did not mean the existence of providence, but the fact that you allow yourself to ignore people’s testimony about themselves when they claim they believe, and determine for them (on the basis of “deep” psychological analysis as above) that they do not really believe. Like those feminists who for them all religious women are oppressed and living in false consciousness, no matter how much they claim to feel otherwise.
Nice of you to try to apply your psychology to me too and claim that if I disagree with you then apparently I also don’t believe. Maybe it’s you who inwardly knows that you are wrong, and therefore it is important for you to repeat your position again and again with greater bluntness, in order to try to convince yourself?
What “newness of the idea” is there for Michi?
His position on the subject has already been known for quite a few years. And it is as follows: most religious people are fooling themselves, and deep down they know that medicine helps (and not God), etc. etc. etc.
What is new about this?
Indeed, in my eyes it is absurd. But I did not write that this is the reason for my conclusion that others do not believe in it. I also went back and clarified this again, but you keep at it.
You repeat your nonsense, and I already explained this to you in the past. Even if you think the Holy One, blessed be He, does not manage everything but intervenes from time to time, that is not the description of the accepted view. People claim that everything that happens is from His hand, and together with that they behave the opposite way. That is split consciousness. Even if there are others who think differently, that has absolutely nothing to do with my claim about contradictions among many believers. All those who look for explanations for every victim of a terrorist attack and justify the judgment (“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away,” and “we do not understand His ways”) assume that everything is from His hand. And together with that they will do everything to escape the decreed fate and demand commissions of inquiry after every attack, etc. What can you do? The position you present does not really convince them.
I was talking about them.
You complained that my claim is not falsifiable. In response I asked whether you are consistent in that requirement (of course you are not). As for paternalism, interpreting people against their own testimony, I already explained that my claims rely on strong indications (described again above here) and not mere conjecture. But it is convenient for you to ignore the arguments and return again and again to questions that have already been answered. That is precisely the reason for the suspicion I raised about you. A person who does not listen to what is being said to him and returns again and again to claims that have already been answered probably cannot cope with questions about his own conception. That means he is probably beginning to understand that he is wrong and still insists on his own. That is exactly split consciousness. I did not apply any psychology to you. I raised an argument that shows this in your case. But apparently there is no one on the other end of the line in this conversation.
Whether this is indeed someone who went off the religious path or just a troll, a Jew is testifying about himself that he went off the religious path and that you had some part in that. A cynical response is really out of place. Fine, maybe it doesn’t hurt you, but to respond in such a way?
Regarding the psychological arguments Mordechai pointed to, without entering into the substance of the disagreement or the discussion between you:
I thought about the fact that really many people can claim, about a position that seems delusional to them and that the other person holds, that he does not really believe it. Certain leftists who are convinced, for example, that Arabs are not really terrorists and do not commit terror for religious reasons but for economic ones, are sure that Haredim and Mizrahim are weakened people who inwardly are really waiting for some humanitarian savior to share with them the hidden dream they themselves do not know they have—to be enlightened and educated people for whom human rights are principle number one in their religion no less than belief in God, rabbis, or forefathers. Without of course comparing those populations to the Arab population. Religious Zionists and Chabadniks who are convinced of the Jewish point that exists within, or of the spark hidden even in gentiles who secretly envy the Jewish people and its Torah, and so on.
But it seems to me that the issue under discussion connects to a different point. Perhaps to something that I personally would define as holding two parallel consciousnesses without noticing them at all. This is something that can happen among many people, though surely not among everyone. I think that in one of your columns you also gave the example of Haredi returnees to religion who go demonstrate against the lie that Haredim do not enlist. That is probably an example of a duplicity of consciousness that they are not really aware of, or simply do not know how to formulate for themselves what they believe. There are countless examples like this. Just as there is the genre of trying to force a word out of the leading rabbi of the generation, there is another genre, no less puzzling, of people who hear certain radical messages, offensive messages, messages that sometimes point to or claim the inferiority of women, the inferiority of the gentile and the slave, the inferiority of the need to acquire modern education and general culture. But when such things are said by a particular rabbi, preacher, or spiritual guide as religious instruction in an atmosphere of holiness, people listen to him and find nothing wrong in his statements, neither ethically nor religiously, but nod in agreement. Yet suddenly when Haaretz, to take an extreme example, or the media or just a somewhat more liberal or humanistic body gives a simple secular translation of those same words and says: that rabbi said gentiles are monkeys, that rabbi said to cut off contact with secular relatives, that rabbi said a profession for yeshiva students and kollel scholars, and especially a profession for women, God forbid, is forbidden—the most zealous followers of that very rabbi, who absorb these messages day after day and seem to agree with them with all 248 limbs, suddenly erupt in furious outrage: how dare you fabricate such antisemitic libels about our public? How dare you say our rabbi hates people? He is the greatest lover of people! We brought the very recognition of morality into the world! This dissonance always surprised me. For I might perhaps understand anger over taking the statement outside, but anger over attributing to your rabbi a statement you yourself agreed with a moment ago…
Rather, probably all of us find it easy to hear harsh things in a religious context, each at his own level. In the religious context we all logically accept the idea that a father might theoretically need to bind his sons as a sacrifice (see the case of killing children according to halakhah so that they not convert during decrees of forced conversion and the Crusades; see the binding of Isaac; see obligatory war; and in truth why go far—even in secular contexts, an ordinary Jew sends his sons to enlist at age 18 knowing they may, God forbid, return in a coffin). We also logically accept the fact that at times God, according to His will, made selections and cut down entire populations, and so on. But most of us would not want, in day-to-day life, to encounter a person who boasts that he let his sick son die for the sake of a scientific experiment on his body, for example. Even if he explains that the child was born premature and they determined he had no chance of surviving. Most of us would see such a person as a monster devoid of humanity. Most of us would also see a person who puts his sons or daughters into unconscious hypnosis in order to save them from the dangers of the world and give them lives with a nice appearance as a monster and a criminal, even though most of us do hide information from children until they are old enough, whether in religious contexts or others.
So if this is only one more dissonance and not necessarily split consciousness—perhaps it is the famous ideal Rabbi Soloveitchik speaks about in his book Halakhic Man, who sacrifices his everyday logic for the sake of the divine command?
It seems not, and that the modern religious fundamentalist movement’s weakness lies in the starting point from which it sets out. Whereas, for example, both Kierkegaard and Rabbi Soloveitchik, or Maimonides, or simply any of the Rishonim and Aharonim, often say that one must sacrifice everyday logic for the performance of halakhah, they recognize that many times there are in human consciousness two voices: natural human morality, and a divine command that for a time overrides human thinking in certain cases. But that is only after a person consciously recognizes that God exists and gave the Torah, and from that point in some cases sacrifices his personal logic and his initial personal intuition regarding certain issues. But the Hasidim especially, and after them their Lithuanian brethren, present a completely new line according to which a believing person is not supposed to have any initial intuition of the kind I described above at all. For any spontaneous human thinking that speaks of equality, or at least of the potential value that any human life that is not wicked can have; an initial intuition saying, for example, that broad education can help one understand the world better, and so on—they claim that all of this, absolutely all of it, is a lie of the sitra achra. Therefore those initial intuitions too are all lies. And from there there can arise a split consciousness in a person who lives in an environment of modern ideas and modern thinking but accustoms himself to say that without doubt everything is a lie coming from Satan or from the other side.
An incidental point that occurred to me, not directly related to the discussion but only indirectly.
Here is a quotation from a Lithuanian Haredi who apparently did not live in split consciousness—Rabbi Dov Landau in 5749 [1988–89]—(he was still a “child”).
The full letter is widely available online. Here is its conclusion:
Addition:
I hope that following the above words people will not raise against them the well-known claims in the spirit of accepted and popular notions, such as: “an elder has already ruled,” or, for example: “this is da’at Torah,” or “it is forbidden to oppose even in the slightest the opinion of the great sages of the generation,” or all kinds of novel halakhic rulings that have been introduced recently, and not only recently, in the sugya of “right that is left and left that is right,” and the like. And if in spite of everything they do raise such claims, I will say only this: all those good and pleasant things are very familiar to us and have always been so. With all due respect, we were not born today, and we are not youths and children, neither in age nor in our acquaintance with these matters, not from today and not from yesterday. And certainly it is not now that they will teach us understanding and wisdom in them [and the honor of the teachers remains in its place], regarding matters in which our holy rabbis have built us up very, very well ……..
A good week, wise Michael David.
It has always felt to me that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater, at least regarding divine intervention.
Like you, I do not believe in direct intervention in the normal course of things; sporadically perhaps, certainly, but lucky breaks don’t count.
Nevertheless, on the national level I understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, is around here somewhere. In what sense? Human beings—in our case the Jewish people over the last 150 years—began orienting themselves toward the Land of Israel. Without the Holocaust that probably would not have happened. But bottom line, a state arose, Hebrew is spoken in it, we went from a welfare state to a state with economic capabilities, etc. etc. Human beings did it all, somehow, yet for me and for the masses there is more than just a feeling that someone here is helping us, pushing things so that the story of the Jewish people will be more successful than anything that happened to it in the last 2,000 years. As if there are choices we make that find favor in His eyes, and then the dice roll well. I am not forcing what I wrote.
Also on the personal level, my personal prayers are first of all a strengthening for the soul (without getting into what that even is). After that, there are also various hopes.
The prayers instituted by Hazal are solely for the sake of the higher worlds. I completely accept the assumptions of the kabbalists; I love the story they tell, and it seems to me the most fitting for the gap you write about endlessly.
The main thing I wanted to say is: the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene directly, but I truly do not feel I am living in false consciousness when my feeling is that when I make good choices, then over time there is a sense that I am not alone in this story.
Does this intuition seem unreasonable to you?
You are mixing two planes of discussion. The question whether there is providence (or whether you believe in providence), and the question whether there are people who believe in providence and live in false consciousness, or in a split consciousness. Those are really not the same question.
As for the first question, I can accept your view. True, it can be discussed (and I have already done so), for involvement on the general plane ultimately has to be expressed through involvement via particular people. In the final analysis, individuals act in the world, and collective actions are built from a collection of individual actions. But on that there is certainly room for discussion (I have spoken more than once about the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in chapter 6 of Hilkhot Teshuvah regarding collective influence). Beyond that, the question is what the indication is for the existence of such involvement. Everything appears natural and can be given a natural explanation. But that is another discussion, unrelated to this post. Let us assume for the sake of discussion that I accept your view, and certainly I accept that it is your view. The second question is whether you live in false consciousness. On that too I am willing to accept that it is certainly possible that you do not. But this post is not talking about you. This post is talking about people who live in the consciousness that everything is in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He (and not that He is involved sporadically or only on the collective plane). The claim is that they sometimes live in a split consciousness. Let me emphasize: even regarding those, it is certainly possible that some of them do not live in split consciousness. But my claim is that many do.
I wrote above here in response to several comments that there is no point in bringing examples of people who believe in providence and do not live in split consciousness. Clearly there are such people, certainly among those who do not see providence as something ongoing and sweeping (like you, for example, or like Moshe above). The important question is whether there are others who are not like that. This post is talking about a great many people who do live in split consciousness. People who talk about providence at every step and turn and say that everything is from the Holy One, blessed be He, and in His hands, and together with that do not conduct themselves that way and probably do not really believe it inwardly. These people live in split consciousness, and my claim is that there are quite a few such people.
Whether you are one of them or not is not an important question for me, only for you. I presented here a description of a phenomenon, and from that point on each person should examine himself as to whether he is part of it or not.
I am interested in what his honor thinks about the words of Maimonides in his introduction
“The second group are also many, and they are those who saw the words of the sages or heard them and understood them according to their plain sense, and thought that the sages intended nothing other than what the plain meaning indicates. They come to regard them as fools and to denigrate them, spreading slander about things that are not slanderous, and mocking the words of the sages, while thinking their own intellect purer than theirs. They are simple ignoramuses, poor in intellect, generally fools in existence, to the point that they could not grasp any matter of wisdom in any way.
Most of those who stumble in this confusion are those associated with medical science and those who chatter about astrological decrees, because in their own thought they are understanding and wise in their own eyes and sharp and philosophical, while how far they are from humanity in the eyes of those who are truly wise and philosophical. But they are more foolish than the first group, and many of them are simpletons.
And it is a cursed group, because they answer back against great men and leaders whose wisdom has been established to the wise. If these fools had exerted themselves in the sciences until they knew how it is fitting to arrange and write things in divine wisdom and the like, among the masses and among the wise, and if they understood the practical part of philosophy, then they would understand whether the sages, of blessed memory, are wise or not, and the meaning of their words would become clear to them.”
Especially since the above contradicts his honor’s aspirations to be original and to merit “grant us our portion” (and in case it doesn’t work, perhaps we can take our portion).
And it seems that his honor confuses a split between thought and behavior with superficiality and lack of consistency in thought itself, and the matter is very clear. The clumsy mixing of holding onto faith together with intellectual inquiry brings his honor to absurdities which, if his honor wishes, I would be happy to spell out.
With all this honor and honors, my honor does not understand what you want from him (nor do I). Therefore I suggest that instead of quoting Maimonides and other riddling writings, you raise here a specific and well-formulated question or comment, if you have one.
Oh, and one more thing. Please spare me these fake honorific titles. They do not help the discussion, and it may surprise you to discover that they are not even a form of refined sarcasm.
Thinkers tend to repeat their ideas with new examples each time, whereas your way is to come up with new ideas each time but use the same examples. Just throwing out an observation.