Notebook 5 — From Deism to Theism

With God’s help

From Deism to Theism

From the Philosophical God to Religious Commitment

Michael Abraham

In this notebook I try to conclude the discussion that has been conducted in the first four notebooks. Up to this point I have tried to examine the types of arguments that were advanced in order to prove the existence of an abstract philosophical God. I will now try to continue the path and show how one moves from deism to theism, that is, from philosophy to faith and religious commitment, and in particular to Jewish commitment.

This notebook attempts to present in an orderly way a discussion that is not, in its essence, philosophical. The considerations underlying it are more those of common sense and history. Even so, the discussion rests on general patterns of thought that it is important to organize and to render as systematic as possible. Most discussions of these topics suffer from a lack of system, and that is what I have come here to try to correct.

The discussion in this notebook is composed link by link, and the overall picture emerges from the whole. It is therefore highly advisable for the reader not to form a position at any stage in the middle of the process, but to wait until the reading is complete. One of the claims I will lay out explicitly toward the end of the notebook is that even in a case where each consideration by itself appears to someone relatively weak, the totality of the considerations can still achieve a force that exceeds the simple sum of the strengths of the individual arguments. The chapters in this notebook therefore complement one another, and questions that arise regarding one of them may be answered in one of the chapters that follow it. The reader should be patient and finish the reading before forming his own position.

It is also important to note that my aim here is not to arrive at certainty, but to present plausible arguments of common sense. For me, the test is whether the arguments I have raised hold water, that is, whether they are reasonable, and not whether they are certain or necessary. They are not.

The discussion in this notebook is divided into three parts. The first deals with defining the topic: what religious faith is (as distinct from philosophical belief), and with defining the proper tools for dealing with it. The second part deals with a question that is factual in essence: how reliable the tradition of revelation is. And the third part deals with a normative question: even if there was a revelation and commandments were given, to what extent is there an obligation to obey the commands of God.

Contents

Part I: Faith and Revelation

Chapter 1: What Is Religious Faith?

Chapter 2: The Meaning of Revelation: The Metaphysical Glass Ceiling

Part II: The Factual Discussion: The Reliability of the Tradition of Revelation

Chapter 3: The Significance of Deism within the Theistic View

Chapter 4: On Tradition: The Witness Argument

Chapter 5: Biblical Testimonies to Gaps in the Tradition

Chapter 6: Combining the Considerations into an Overall Picture

Part III: The Normative Discussion: The Validity of Revelation

Chapter 7: On the Duty to Obey the Divine Command and on Normative Grounding in General

Chapter 8: Gratitude as a Basis for the Service of God

Chapter 9: "For Its Own Sake"

Part One

Faith and Revelation

1. What Is Religious Faith?

Introduction

Time and again surveys are published reporting a growing percentage of the population who believe in God. I tend to regard these surveys (as I do surveys generally) with great skepticism. So long as we have not defined what that belief is, it is difficult to draw any conclusion from such general data. Are we speaking of a philosophical belief in a higher power that created the world, and perhaps also guides it? Are we speaking of genuine religious-legal commitment? Or perhaps of someone who observes commandments but does so out of a subjective feeling, identifying with the heritage of the generations (according to which one ought to keep the Sabbath or observe commandments, without any reference to theological and metaphysical questions about God, commands, and revelations)?

To justify these surveys, we are constantly told that this is a complex subject, that "everyone has his own God," and so on and so forth. These too are empty words, since as long as we have not defined what is being discussed, such surveys do not say very much. They do not point to religiosity in the substantial senses relevant to our discussion. At most they provide indications of moods and fashions, or of folklore. These surveys lump together people who identify with their grandmother who lit Sabbath candles or their grandfather who was a ritual slaughterer (preferably one who perished for that in the Holocaust), with people seeking thrills and esoterica and despairing of the empty postmodern world, together with charlatans who exploit all of these for their own pockets.

But religious faith, in my view, is none of these things. Faith and religious commitment mean commitment to full observance of commandments (not necessarily Jewish ones) on the basis of a rational decision. This does not mean that a committed person never fails from time to time, perhaps even many times. A believer is a human being, and sometimes he is inconsistent or gives in to his impulses. Even so, if he understands that in principle he is obligated, and sees his transgressions as failures, he is fully a believer.

Up to this point, this is a universal claim regarding all monotheistic religions (at least in my view). In the previous notebook I noted an implication in the Jewish context. I argued there that in the process of conversion it makes no difference whether the convert will in fact observe commandments after the conversion. What matters is what was in his consciousness when he converted: did he understand and accept that he is obligated to observe commandments? That is what is required in the conversion process, not actual observance.^[1] He can observe all the commandments and still be regarded as a complete gentile (if he did not accept the principled obligation upon himself at the time of conversion), and by the same token he can fail in practice to observe even a single commandment after his conversion and still be regarded as a Jew in every respect (if at the time of conversion he accepted the principled obligation upon himself).

The Meaning of Command in Jewish Religiosity

For the moment we are dealing only with the definition of religiosity and have not yet reached specifically Jewish religiosity, and so there is a difficulty at this stage in appealing to Jewish legal sources. Even so, since our ultimate goal is to ground Jewish religious commitment, I use the definition and the legal sources in order to define religious commitment.

In chapter 10 of the previous notebook we discussed the centrality of command in Jewish religiosity, and the fact that those who interpret religiosity differently (mainly around religious experience and morality) are influenced by Christian conceptions. The essence of Jewish religiosity is commitment to command. But as we saw there, commitment to command does not float in the air either. It is a commitment not conditioned on any other interest. In Maimonides’ language, in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, one must "do the truth because it is truth." As we saw there, even observance of commandments out of love and fear is not observance "for its own sake," but out of ancillary motives or motivations. We will now see another dimension that we did not discuss there.^[2]

A Source from Maimonides in the Laws of Kings

Maimonides, in chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings, deals with the laws of the resident alien. In the final law there he writes:

Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is among the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the world to come—provided that he accepts and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had previously been commanded concerning them. But if he does them because reason inclines him to do so, he is not a resident alien and is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but rather^[3] one of their sages.

A person who performs the commandments because of "the inclination of reason," that is, because it seems to him by his own reasoning that this is the proper way to act, has not fulfilled a commandment (he is not among the pious, a servant of God), but at most has performed a good deed (he is among the sages). The religious meaning of a commandment exists only if it is performed in response to a command. His commentators there note that although his words are stated regarding a resident alien, they are also true regarding Jews. The service of God has meaning if it is done מתוך a sense of duty, not out of rational inclination. In this sense there appears, at least on the face of it, to be a frontal contradiction to the Kantian conception of morality that we discussed there. But as I explained there as well, this opposition is illusory. The autonomous decision of which Kant speaks concerns only commitment as such. The content of the commitment is necessarily determined by some external factor, both in the moral context and in the religious one.

Maimonides here too speaks of a person whose commitment arises from his own decision, except that the content of the commitment is subjugation to command. As we saw there, in his words in the Laws of Idolatry 3:6 as well, Maimonides rejects commitment that comes from alien motives (such as love and fear), which are not "acceptance of God." Acceptance of God is a commitment not conditioned on anything at all. By virtue of the very fact that God commands, I am obligated to obey.

But this law adds another dimension, and it is the one important for us in the present notebook. Maimonides here does not suffice with a divine command in general, but specifically: "because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher…" This is the contrast Maimonides sets here against action grounded in "the inclination of reason." It is not enough for us to have acceptance of God in some general sense; rather, this is God who revealed Himself at Sinai through Moses our teacher and through the Torah given there. It follows that one who observes all the commandments because he sees the Holy One, blessed be He, as his God and feels obligated to Him, but in his view the commandments are a human intuition (his own or others’), that is, he denies the revelation at Mount Sinai, his commandments have no religious value.^[4]

In my article^[5] I pointed out that there is here an expansion of the rule that "commandments require intention." According to all opinions, fulfilling a commandment requires the intention to discharge one’s obligation. In the Talmud and later among the decisors there is a dispute whether this intention is indispensable to the commandment or not, but according to everyone it is required. Here Maimonides adds that, quite apart from that dispute, commandments require faith. A person who does not believe in the giving of the Torah to Moses at Sinai is not someone whose performance can count as commandment-fulfillment.^[6] In that article I added that, in my view, he is also not someone whose acts count as transgressions. A person who performs commandments like Ahad Ha’am did (out of cultural-national value or for any other reason) has not thereby fulfilled a commandment.

The Relation to Maimonides’ Words in the Commentary on the Mishnah to Hullin: The Basic Norm

These points apparently recur in Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah to tractate Hullin. Chapter 7 deals with the prohibition of the sciatic nerve. Its source is in the Torah, where after the description of Jacob’s struggle with the angel the following verse appears (Genesis 32:33):

Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve that is on the hip socket to this day, because he touched Jacob’s hip socket at the sciatic nerve.

Although this appears on its face to be a description of a custom, the tradition establishes a Torah prohibition in Jewish law against eating the sciatic nerve and sees this verse as its source.

Now the Mishnah in Hullin (7:6) brings a dispute among the tannaim regarding the prohibition of the sciatic nerve:

It applies to clean animals and does not apply to unclean animals. Rabbi Judah says: It applies even to unclean animals. Rabbi Judah said: Was not the sciatic nerve forbidden to the sons of Jacob, while unclean animals were still permitted to them? They said to him: It was stated at Sinai, but written in its place.

The tannaim disagreed over whether the prohibition of the sciatic nerve applies also to unclean animals (Rabbi Judah) or only to clean ones (the Sages). Rabbi Judah raises a historical argument against the Sages, for this prohibition was introduced in the days of our father Jacob, before the giving of the Torah at Sinai, when there was as yet no distinction between clean and unclean animals. To this the Sages reply that in fact the prohibition was introduced at Sinai, not in the time of our father Jacob.

At first glance the intention is that, contrary to what is described in the Torah, as though the prohibition began in the time of Jacob and his sons, the historical reality was different: the prohibition began only at the giving of the Torah. What, then, does one do with the plain sense of the verse, which describes the prohibition in the time of Jacob and his sons? One could explain that at that period it was only a custom (which is indeed the plain implication of the verse), and from Mount Sinai onward it became a legal prohibition. But Maimonides, in his commentary to this Mishnah, explains it differently:

Set your heart on this great principle brought in this Mishnah, namely, their statement: "It was forbidden from Sinai." You must know that everything from which we abstain or which we do today, we do only because of God’s command through Moses, not because God commanded it to earlier prophets. For example: we do not eat a limb torn from a living animal not because God forbade a limb from a living animal to the descendants of Noah, but because Moses forbade it to us in what he was commanded at Sinai, namely, that a limb from a living animal remain forbidden. Likewise, we do not circumcise because Abraham circumcised himself and the members of his household, but because God commanded us through Moses to circumcise just as Abraham, peace be upon him, circumcised. And likewise with the sciatic nerve: we do not follow the prohibition of our father Jacob, but the command of Moses our teacher. Do you not see that they said that 613 commandments were said to Moses at Sinai, and all of these are included among the commandments?

Here Maimonides sharpens even further what he writes also in the Laws of Kings. The obligation to the commands of Jewish law (and the sciatic nerve is only an example) exists only because of the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses our teacher, and not because of any prophets or any other source. He adduces proof for his claim from the Gemara (Makkot 23), which says that 613 commandments were said to Moses at Sinai, implying that the sciatic nerve too was said there. That is, he explains that the claim of the Sages is not a historical claim. The prohibition did in fact begin in the days of Jacob and his sons, but from our standpoint the binding legal command is only the one given at Sinai.

I will only note that this source is not completely parallel to what we saw above in the Laws of Kings. As I explained there, in the Laws of Kings Maimonides speaks about the manner in which a person fulfills the commandment: what motivation we ought to have when we come to observe commandments. The motivation is the command at Sinai. When a person fulfills the commandment, he must do so מתוך commitment to the command given to Moses at Sinai. That is a claim about the person’s manner of observing commandments. But here Maimonides makes a meta-legal claim that speaks about the system of commandments itself, not about the person or his mode of action and motivation. Maimonides’ claim is that the source and validity of the obligation to the commandments is the command at Sinai. This is the basic norm (Grundnorm) underlying our obligation to Torah and commandments. There is no discussion here of whether, when one actually fulfills the commandment, one’s personal motivation should be the command at Sinai.

Take, for example, a similar distinction regarding secular law. When a person pays taxes or fulfills some other legal duty, there is no requirement whatsoever that he intend to do so because of the law. So long as he did what was incumbent upon him, he has discharged his obligation. Therefore Maimonides’ words in the Laws of Kings, which speak about the motivation a person observing commandments ought to have, are not relevant to secular legal systems. He is speaking about the way a person should fulfill a religious commandment, and the secular legislator does not demand that. On the other hand, his words in the Commentary on the Mishnah are certainly relevant to a secular system as well. The Austrian legal scholar Hans Kelsen argued that every legal system has a basic norm (Grundnorm) from which the obligation of the entire system is derived. This is the norm by virtue of which the person is required to obey the law, and by virtue of which claims are made against someone who violated it. In Israeli law, for example, this is the duty to obey the laws of the Knesset as the sovereign and authorized institution. The basic norm is a claim about the legal system and the source of its authority, and it is directed to the police and the court. By virtue of the basic norm, all these parties make claims against a person and obligate him judicially. There is no statement here about the motivation a person ought to have when obeying or violating the law.

Summary

Maimonides’ words imply that legal-religious obligation must be based on belief in God, but not merely general belief; it must be based on belief in the command given to Moses at Sinai. As we have seen, this is also the basic norm by virtue of which Jewish law binds us, but it is also supposed to be the motivation by virtue of which we ought to observe the laws and commandments. The question that arises here is how all this can be grounded. What is the basis for saying that there was indeed a command at Sinai, and what is the source of our obligation regarding it? That is what we will deal with in this notebook. In the last chapter we will return to the question of the commands and the motivation for fulfilling them that was discussed here.

1. The Meaning of Revelation: The Metaphysical Glass Ceiling

Introduction

In this chapter we will begin to examine how one advances from philosophical belief to faith and religious commitment in the sense defined in the previous chapter.

A Summary of the Previous Notebooks and Their Significance in the Overall Discussion

In the previous four notebooks we dealt with various arguments in favor of belief in God. The first three were discussed in Kant’s great critique, Critique of Pure Reason: the ontological argument, the cosmological argument, and the physico-theological argument, and they were of a "philosophical" character. In contrast, in the fourth notebook we dealt with two additional arguments: a "theological" formulation of the physico-theological argument, and the proof from morality, which as we saw is also of a "theological" character (it appears in Kant’s books dealing with ethics).

Throughout I stressed that every argument proving the existence of God presupposes a different God, or rather a different definition of God. The ontological argument presupposes a God who is a perfect being (than which nothing greater can be conceived). The cosmological argument presupposes a God who is the source of creation (the creator of the world). The physico-theological argument presupposes a God who is the engineer and architect of the world in all its complexity and laws. The two "theological" arguments proved the existence of a God who cares that we be able to apprehend reality correctly and think correctly, and who cares about our moral obligation.

We saw that it is enough for one of the proofs to be accepted by us in order to reach the conclusion that there is a God (of the kind with which that proof deals). But it is important to understand that even if one accepts all the arguments, one need not assume that these are different beings. It is entirely possible that this is one and the same being, who is also perfect, also the creator of the world and its architect, and also concerned for us and for our morality. One may even say that this assumption is simpler than the possibility that there are three different beings, and therefore, according to Ockham’s razor, it is preferable to the assumption that there are three beings. I will end by noting that even if one of the proofs does not seem valid to some of you, it can still be seen as an argument with a certain persuasive force, and its conclusion can still be adopted. The fact that the argument is not valid only tells us that it is not necessary to adopt the conclusion, but it does not mean that it is unreasonable to adopt it.

From Deism to Theism

In the final chapter of the previous notebook we saw that the first three arguments describe for us a God who is not connected to the world, nor to us. This is a deistic God, that is, a philosophical being whose relevance to us and to our lives is very limited, if it exists at all. Even the God of the laws described in the third notebook is a God who created laws for the purpose of producing a world like ours, and within it of course also life and human beings, but once they were created, they are what carry the world forward. His involvement is no longer required. Does this God want anything from these human beings? Is He interested in them at all? We saw that the last two arguments already move us one step further, that is, to a God who cares about us (and therefore gives us reliable tools for knowing the world) and about our morality. We saw there that the meaning of this is that they teach us something about God Himself: that He is interested in the good and in us.

But the religious God, and at least the Jewish one, is something beyond that. He demands from us the observance of many detailed commandments, far beyond moral obligation. Indeed, one may say that He also demands from us religious-cultic commitment, that is, commitment toward Him (and not only that we be good people).

Can philosophical tools and logical arguments be used to reach a conclusion about the existence of such a God? How, if at all, can one move on from deism—that is, the philosophical God whose existence occupied us in all the notebooks up to this point—to theism, which speaks about a religious God, one who demands and commands, a God interested in interaction with His creatures?

In fact, the question can be broadened even further. Even if one accepts the existence of some philosophical God, and even if one accepts the transition to theism, which theism? Can one show that the correct religious faith is the Jewish one, or the Christian, or the Muslim, or perhaps some other faith? Or perhaps it is actually more correct to adopt some polytheistic conception? It is important to understand that the primary connotation of polytheism is idolatrous, but that connection is not necessary. An idol is an inferior sort of god that does not strike us as a real option. But that is true of idols of wood and stone, or the heavenly bodies (which today we know are also stars made of ordinary matter). But what about a plurality of abstract gods? Is such a thesis less reasonable than the monotheistic one (belief in one God)?

But before we continue the discussion, let us note here the unusual significance of the argument from morality in this context.

Is Morality Enough: From Morality to Commandments

The argument from morality that we encountered in the fourth notebook has a different status from its three companions. Those three proved the existence of God, but without connection to the world and to us (although in the "theological" formulation we also saw concern for us). The argument from epistemology had already gone further, showing that God takes us into account, cares for us, and gives us reliable tools for knowing the world and thinking about it. But the argument from morality presents God as the source that gives morality its validity, and that is already a first step on the way to a religious God, one who demands and commands and expects certain behaviors from us. Here we came closest to theism.

I will propose here an argument that may seem somewhat troubling because it involves anthropomorphism, and yet it seems to me to have a measure of plausibility. If the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, it is reasonable to infer that He had some purpose in doing so. In fact, this is an application of the principle of causality: if something was done, it was done for some reason or some end. Moreover, even if there is such a purpose, it is not clear why it should be placed upon us. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, not create the world in such a way that this purpose would be achieved by itself (that is, create us or the world perfect from the outset), and leave it to us? The only possibility is that this purpose is connected precisely to our decisions and our choice, that is, it is important that we achieve it through our own free decision, and that (and only that) could not have been done without us. Any purpose not connected to our free will could have been achieved directly by Him, and there would have been no need for us at all.

On the other hand, that purpose cannot be the improvement of ourselves, for there is always the possibility that He simply would not have created us at all, in which case there would be no one to improve (there would be no lack requiring repair). Therefore that purpose must lie outside the created universe. What might that purpose be? Does morality present us with a sufficient purpose or end? To the best of my judgment, it is not reasonable to say so. Morality is not enough to provide a purpose for creation, because of its instrumental character. The role of morality is to improve creation and the human society that lives and acts within it. That is, morality is a means for the completion of creation and of human society, and therefore it cannot serve as a teleological explanation for their very existence.

The conclusion is that the very fact that we were created means that we too—our deeds and our choices—serve as means for something beyond us, higher than us. Our deeds are meant to advance other principles, which for now we will call "religious," and not only morality. Moreover, if such other purposes do in fact exist, then morality itself can be better understood as well. The purpose of moral behavior is to improve society, and that improvement is a means by which human society can do what it was truly created for (to achieve the religious ends). There is a well-known Chinese story about a poor man who had two pennies and bought a slice of bread and a flower with them. When asked why he did not buy two slices of bread, he answered that the bread was in order to live, and the flower in order to have something to live for. In that story not only is the flower (the purpose outside us and the world) the main thing, but it is also what gives meaning to the bread (morality and the improvement of society). Bread cannot be an end in itself.

If I summarize the two prongs of this argument, what was at stake before the creation of the world was really three options: 1. Not to create us and the universe at all. 2. To create us and the universe perfect (without any need for free will). 3. To create the universe as it is and us with free will. The Holy One, blessed be He, chose the third option, and that means the purpose depends on our choices (otherwise the second option would have been preferable), and it also means that the purpose lies outside us and the world (otherwise the first option would have sufficed).

At first glance one might claim the same regarding any other system of goals or values. Even if there are "religious" goals rather than moral ones, it may seem that we have gained nothing. But that is not correct. The gain is that morality is meant to improve society, and therefore it cannot constitute a goal outside the world. There must be another kind of goals (which are also achieved only through free will) that are not meant to improve society or the universe.

The meaning of this is that the "religious" goals are in fact meant to improve God Himself (that which exists outside the created universe and prior to it). To be sure, this sounds at first jarring and problematic, for a common assumption is that God is perfect and needs no repairs, certainly not from us. I will expand on this somewhat more in the second book, and here I will only note that something along these lines was written by the Ari at the beginning of Etz Chayim, that the tzimtzum and creation were intended to actualize the names of the Holy One, blessed be He. A similar claim also appears in Orot HaKodesh by Rav Kook, when he discusses the problem of perfection and perfecting.^[7] These matters are connected to what is called in the language of the rishonim "the secret that worship serves a higher need" (that our worship serves the need of the Holy One, blessed be He), about which the Ari cited the verse "Give strength to God" (that we give Him strength and power). And anyone who wants a more accessible and understandable source would do well to look also at Rashba’s famous responsum on the meaning of blessings (vol. 5, no. 51).^[8]

The Need for Revelation

We now move one step further. Morality is planted within us, and the insight that it has validity and is binding is also planted within us. But where will the ultimate purpose of creation come from—the one that is outside us? How shall we know what goal our Creator sets before us? Let us note again that we are dealing with a goal that by its very nature lies beyond what can be extracted from contemplation of our world, since it is the reason for its creation and therefore necessarily lies outside it. This brings us to the next stage of the argument: it is reasonable to infer from this that there must be some revelation that clarifies for us our goals and purposes as created beings, especially the goals that go beyond our duty to create a just society, which as noted is self-evident to us. This is the basis for saying that a revelation in which we are commanded in some religious commandments beyond our moral duties is only to be expected.

Of course, this argument too, taken by itself, is infected by anthropomorphism, and one could reject it by saying that God does not necessarily act the way human beings do. Perhaps He nevertheless wants only morality for some reason. But even so this argument has some weight, and therefore it joins the other arguments that will be presented later. For now, let us return to the transition from deism to theism.

And Yet Morality: Deontology and Teleology

One might ask why the very choice of our moral acts cannot itself be the goal. In the fourth notebook we began from the premise that the moral act is meant to improve society, and that is the teleological approach (telos—end; teleios—perfect) to morality. But we saw there that morality is not exhausted by that. It also has a deontological dimension (of will and decision), without which morality has no meaning at all (without it, even a sheep is moral). It is of crucial importance that the human being choose the moral act by his own free decision; only then can it be seen as a moral act.

If so, morality itself contains something beyond the improvement of society. Perhaps the fact that we choose the moral act is itself the "religious" repair outside us and the universe. Perhaps deontology is the purpose for which we were created. According to this suggestion, the other purpose beyond improving society does not require a different system of values; morality itself can provide it. The moral act is meant to improve society, and our choice of it is the repair that God wanted to achieve (it repairs something in Him Himself).

That is possible, but it still seems that this requires revelation. Without it we would see morality as something teleological, that is, as a system of principles meant only to improve society and nothing more. If so, even if there is no "religious" system beyond morality, the need for revelation remains in force. Beyond that, as we saw in the fourth notebook, even deontological morality is ultimately meant to improve society. We saw there that, ironically, the way to arrive at the corrected state (the complete state, the telos) is דווקא by relating to morality in a deontological rather than teleological way (see there the comparison to the prisoner’s dilemma). If so, morality still cannot answer the argument we saw, namely that human society cannot be an end in itself (for otherwise it could simply have remained uncreated).

What Toolbox Is Relevant Here?

When we discuss the transition from deism to theism, we must ask ourselves what toolbox can be used for this purpose. The philosophical toolbox we have used up to this point will apparently not be able to bring us all the way to putting on phylacteries or to the prohibition against eating pork, nor to going to church and eating communion bread, or making pilgrimage to Mecca. Philosophical tools, by their very nature, can lead us to general philosophical conclusions (that there is a God who created the world, and perhaps supervises it, or legislated the laws of morality), but not to particular religious conclusions, such as why not to eat pork or why to keep the Sabbath, and why Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam. Observational-scientific tools certainly cannot bring us to such conclusions. So how, nevertheless, can religious commitment be grounded?

On Faith and Knowledge

As stated, general logical tools will probably not help in grounding particular commandments or religions. Apparently this is as far as philosophy can take us, and now the well-known maxim comes into play: "Where philosophy ends, faith begins." According to the common religious view reflected in that saying, faith is a substitute for rational deliberation. Some go further and say that if I know, I do not believe (following Tertullian, one of the Church Fathers, who is popularly thought to have said: "I believe because it is absurd"). That is the meaning of the concept of "faith": it renders rational thought superfluous and comes in its place.

Against this conception, my assumption is that faith is not a substitute for rational thought but its product (see the proof from epistemology in the fourth notebook). Moreover, anyone who does not accept the need for rational thought and consideration ought to have abandoned them already in the discussion of belief in God itself (which took place in the previous notebooks). If we have come this far with the aid of logic and rational thought, it is incumbent upon us to examine how one can proceed with rational tools toward theistic faith, which also includes religious commitment and observance of commandments.

Suppose that by rational tools we reach the conclusion that there is no real plausibility to the claim that God demands commandments from us, or that there is no obligation to respond to that demand. Is faith enough nonetheless to persuade us to be committed? If so, in what sense did we reach the conclusion that there is no room for commitment? Do we have any tools besides reason? Is someone who does not believe and therefore is not committed and does not observe thereby culpable? What was he supposed to do? The conception of faith as a substitute for rational thought does not stand the test of plausibility (and perhaps does not even claim to). It sounds like a self-justification for someone too lazy to think or embarrassed by the conclusions of his own thinking. In my view, someone who rationally reaches the conclusion that he does not believe, but then makes a "leap of faith" and decides nevertheless to believe, is a sophisticated atheist. His faith is a collection of empty words, for in his thinking he has reached the conclusion that there is no God, or at least that there is no religious obligation toward Him. Such a person ought to draw the conclusions and abandon his religious commitment. Even if he continues to hold on to it, the continuation of such faith is in any case valueless and empty.

The Status of Revelation

We have seen that even if it is possible to advance further, the tools will be less general and logical, and less abstract, than they were in the previous discussions. From here onward we will have to use tools of common sense, historical plausibility, and the like. In effect, one may say that the major religions, Judaism among them, are based on a revelation of that same God in which He conveys His demands to us.

It is important to understand the role of revelation in the overall process. As I have already said, the prohibition against eating pork or the obligation of pilgrimage to Mecca cannot be justified by universal philosophical reasoning. Therefore the next step after deistic belief in God is revelation. Once we establish it, all the details no longer require independent grounding. In revelation the details of our obligation were transmitted to us, such as eating pork, Sabbath observance, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and if the content of the revelation binds us, then we are exempt from explaining the individual legal details. On the other hand, without revelation there is no real basis for that obligation. Without revelation we are dealing with hallucinations or various human inventions, and as such they have no dimension of religious obligation, which by its very nature is directed toward God.^[9]

Two Planes of Critique of the Revelation Argument

But an argument about revelation is not valid by its own force either. In order to move toward revelation, we must examine two necessary aspects: 1. the factual one—did a revelation indeed occur? 2. the normative one—even if there was a revelation, why does it bind us? Once we clear these two hurdles, the legal-cultic details no longer require justification on their own. God Himself conveys them to us. What remains in order to complete this course is to answer the two questions/criticisms presented here: the historical clarification regarding revelation and the normative basis of our commitment to it.

It is important to note that these two aspects continue to stand in the shadow of the rationalist-faith controversy. Those who are not theists attack theism on both planes: both the historical reliability of the tradition about revelation and the obligation to it even if it occurred. On both planes, claims are raised as though this were non-rational thought. In this notebook I will try to confront those claims. The second part of the notebook is devoted to the first, and the third and final part to the second. At least in this sense, this notebook is a continuation of the previous ones.

In the background also stands the question of parallel traditions. Even if one accepts the traditional argument for revelation, several religions claim several revelations, and from each a different religious obligation is derived. Which of them, then, are we to accept? The discussion of revelation must be conducted regarding the specific revelation and the competition between it and alternative traditions.

Part Two

The Factual Discussion: The Reliability of the Tradition of Revelation

1. The Significance of Deism within the Theistic View

Introduction

We have seen that the transition from deism to theism passes through revelation. According to the theistic conceptions, the same God with whom the deistic stage dealt—and regarding whom we concluded that He exists and created the world and morality, etc.—reveals Himself and gives commandments. A question is often raised: what does the deistic God have to do with a theistic worldview? Why was it so important to traverse the arduous path we traversed in the previous four notebooks if our concern is religious commitment? After all, there is a huge gap between philosophical belief in some abstract god and religious commitment based on revelation. What does the philosophical god have to do with the religious one? How does one move from arguments like Anselm’s or the physico-theological proof, and even the proof from morality, to not eating pork or keeping the Sabbath? In this chapter we will take the first step in that transition, by considering the importance of the deistic conclusion on the road to theism. We will see that the gap between deism and theism is not as significant as people think.

The Celestial Teapot^[10]

Bertrand Russell, one of the well-known atheists of the twentieth century, dismissed claims that there is a God. He argued that there is no need at all to raise counterarguments in order to be an atheist, since the burden of proof lies not on the atheist but on the believer. To illustrate this, Russell offered an analogy that later came to be known as "the celestial teapot."

In 1952 he wrote (in an unpublished article):

If I were to claim that between Earth and Mars there revolves a china teapot in an elliptical orbit around the sun, no one could refute my claim so long as I were careful to point out that the teapot’s dimensions are so small that it cannot be observed even through the most powerful telescope at our disposal. But if I were then to insist on my claim and say that, because it cannot be refuted, it would be impertinent of human reason to doubt it, I would rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were asserted in ancient books, taught as sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of schoolchildren, then doubting such a belief would be considered a sign of deviance, and might lead the doubter to psychiatric treatment in an enlightened age, or to the Inquisition in an earlier age.

Russell is essentially claiming that the assertion that there is a God requires evidence, and that the inability to refute it does not suffice to shift the burden of proof to the atheist.

He returns to this in an article from 1958, where he writes:

I must call myself an agnostic, but for all practical purposes I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God is any more probable than the existence of the Olympian gods or the gods of Valhalla. Another example: no one can prove that between Earth and Mars there is not a china teapot moving in an elliptical orbit, but no one thinks the matter probable enough to attach any importance to the claim. I think the Christian God is equally improbable.

In this formulation he in fact goes one step further, because now he claims not only that the assertion that there is a God is non-decisive, but that such a claim is not even entitled to be treated as doubtful—that is, that the standing of the believer and the atheist with respect to it is equal. This is an unreasonable claim, and the fact that it cannot be refuted cannot place us even in a state of doubt about it. It should simply be dismissed out of hand.

Indeed, in Jewish law, as in every legal system, there are states of presumption, in which some basis is required in order to arouse doubt. Contrary to the common conception that every state of missing information is defined as a state of doubt, in order to arouse doubt about a status that is established in some way, one needs a basis. For example, Reuven comes to Shimon and solemnly informs him that he (that is, Shimon) is a mamzer, the product of sexual relations between Reuven and Shimon’s mother. Shimon has no other information on the matter. Is Shimon supposed to be in doubt? At first glance yes, for he has no information at all, and the two possibilities are evenly balanced.

But in the Gemara in tractate Shabbat 30b two such stories are brought, one about Rabbi and the other about Rabbi Hiyya:

There was a certain man who came before Rabbi and said to him: Your wife is my wife and your children are my children. He said to him: Would you like to drink a cup of wine? He drank and burst. There was another who came before Rabbi Hiyya and said to him: Your mother is my wife and you are my son. He said to him: Would you like to drink a cup of wine? He drank and burst.

Rabbi and Rabbi Hiyya dismiss the claim out of hand, just like Russell’s celestial teapot. It is a baseless claim and therefore does not even arouse doubt for them.^[11] These matters also appear in the discussion in Kiddushin 80a:

For Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: lashes are administered on the basis of presumptions; stoning and burning are imposed on the basis of presumptions…

If there is a state in which the status of a person or an object is presumed to be X, we assume that this is the truth even as a basis for the death penalty and flogging. If Reuven is presumed to be the son of Shimon, then when Reuven strikes Shimon he will be punished as a son, even though we have no specific knowledge that he is indeed his son. That is the presumed state of affairs, and one needs a good reason in order to cast doubt on it. As we saw with Bertrand Russell, in Jewish law too a claim against an established status does not even arouse doubt.

So What, Then, Is the Problem?

Russell’s example does not really reflect the state of affairs in the debate over the existence of God. First, we must ask what the presumed state is before the discussion begins. Russell assumes that in the absence of proof one should assume atheism, that is, that there is no God. The reason is that the existence of any being, at least one that we do not see and for whose existence there are no direct indications, always requires proof. In the absence of proof, it is reasonable to continue assuming that it does not exist.

But that is true when the discussion concerns something for whose existence we have no a priori reason at all to assume. In our case this is not merely some person who comes and claims that there is a God, as Russell presents it. After all, in the previous four notebooks we brought several quite good proofs for His existence. Even if these proofs are not completely necessary, it is hard to say that we are in a vacuum. Russell directs his claim toward a situation in which a person simply comes and says there is a God, without offering evidence. Russell says the burden of proof is on the claimant. But in our case the claimant did not rest content with the bare assertion; he met the burden of proof imposed on him. He brought arguments proving his claim. In the debate conducted after the proofs, the presumed state is no longer atheism at all. If the atheist has counterarguments, he must now produce them, but the burden of proof or argument has by now shifted to him.

From Deism to Theism

To be sure, what we have said עד here concerns the dispute over the philosophical, deistic God. In that dispute proofs were indeed offered, and the debate ought to be conducted with respect to them and not with respect to the burden of proof. But when a religious (theistic) person comes and claims that there is a religious obligation to fulfill God’s commandments, that is, that there was a revelation and that it is binding, this is an entirely different claim. As I already noted above, it is difficult to bring philosophical proofs for this claim, and at first glance Russell’s argument now arises again. Is revelation not a celestial teapot?

Here we must examine the significance of deism in the discussion of theism. If we have indeed reached the conclusion that there is a philosophical God, the perfect being who created the world and its laws and even cared for us and commanded us the moral imperative, then the discussion of His revelation too is no longer conducted in empty space. After all, we are dealing with the same being whose existence we have already come to know, only now we are being told of an encounter with Him. This is not a situation in which someone simply appears out of nowhere and makes a claim about some being for whose existence we have no indication whatsoever. Is the claim that He revealed Himself and gave us various commandments really so baseless?

Think of a person living thirty years ago, and someone tells him that the black president of the United States passed healthcare reform there (the measure known as Obamacare). The listener would surely have ignored such a report rather rudely, both because passage of the law would have seemed implausible to him and even more because, at that time, a black president of the United States would have sounded like an announcement about some three-horned alien. Now, after thirty years, we all know that there is a black president of the United States. How would we now relate to the report that he passed healthcare reform? Even if that move is indeed far-reaching, we would not dismiss the report out of hand. We would examine the reliability of the reporter and his sources of information, and we would seriously consider accepting what he says. What changed? The background fact is now different: that there is a black president of the United States.

Similarly, when in the background we have information that there is a God—that is, there exists a transcendent entity that created the world and us and commanded morality—and now a tradition comes to us that He revealed Himself and gave us a Torah, these things must be weighed much more seriously. This is no longer at all the case of a celestial teapot, as Russell claimed.

So too writes the author of the Kuzari, article 1, sections 19-24:

19. The sage said: If someone were to tell you that the king of India is a man of kindness, worthy of being exalted and of having honor given to his name and his deeds recounted, on the basis of the righteousness of the people of his land and their good qualities, and that their commerce is conducted faithfully—would you be bound by this?

20. The Khazar said: How could I be bound by him, when I am doubtful whether the righteousness of the people of India comes from themselves and they have no king, or whether their righteousness is due to their king, or whether it is due to both together?

21. The sage said: And if his messengers were to come to you with Indian gifts, and you had no doubt that such things are found only in the land of India in the palaces of kings, and with a script well known to be from him, and with medicines that heal you of your illness and preserve your health, and poisons for your enemies and those who fight you, so that you go out against them with these and kill them without weapons of war—would you then be bound to submit to his rule and his service?

22. The Khazar said: Yes. Then my first doubt would depart from me, whether the people of India have a king or not, and I would then believe that his kingship and his word are relevant to me.

The fact that I have evidence that India has a king greatly improves the standing of the argument that he also does this or that. So too the proofs for the existence of God improve the standing of the arguments that He reveals Himself, commands, and so on. At the very least, they can no longer be dismissed out of hand by invoking the celestial teapot.

Of course, this is not to say that we should accept this report. My claim is that now the report should be considered on its own merits and not dismissed out of hand. The decision whether to adopt or reject it will be made in light of the reliability of the reporter and his information sources, and of course also in light of the plausibility of the reported content. One must remember that revelation is not something we have encountered in the past. That is what we will deal with in the following chapters.

1. On Tradition: The Witness Argument^[12]

Introduction

In the discussion so far we have reached the conclusion that revelation is not a fact absurd on its face, that is, that we are not dealing here with a case of a celestial teapot. In light of the philosophical conclusion that God exists, the claim of His revelation is entitled to serious critical consideration and cannot be dismissed out of hand. Still, as stated, the critical attitude obligates us to examine the reliability of the traditional reports.

The Arguments in Favor of Revelation

The arguments in favor of revelation are based on two components: 1. the direct encounter, from the standpoint of those present at the event; 2. the transmission of the message received there to subsequent generations. Each of these two components is open to criticism. Component 1 assumes that those present at such an encounter correctly interpret what they themselves experienced. After all, a person may undergo some transcendental mystical experience and interpret it as an encounter with God. How can he himself know that such an encounter indeed took place? Component 2 involves a different type of problem: there is the possibility that the transmitters themselves lied at some stage, or that somehow stories of revelation slipped into the tradition that have no root in reality. In essence, this is a myth that was somehow implanted within history. We will now address these two questions one after the other.

How Does a Person Who Experienced Revelation Know That He Did?

Let us begin with the question raised by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in his book Fear and Trembling, which deals with Abraham our father and the binding of Isaac.^[13] When the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself to Abraham our father and commands him to bind Isaac, why does Abraham not doubt that this is indeed a command of the Holy One, blessed be He? Perhaps it is some hallucination? This is not mere skepticism, for this command contradicts the moral principles that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself expects us to uphold, and in addition it contradicts an explicit promise of the Holy One, blessed be He, to Abraham: "For through Isaac shall your seed be called." It is neither moral nor rational, and it comes to me in a prophetic vision. In addition, this is a capital case—in particular, the murder of a son by his father—which surely requires absolute certainty before bringing a father to do such a thing. Is all this not sufficient reason to doubt the reliability of that vision? Some have gone so far as to claim that Abraham failed the test of the binding, because the Holy One, blessed be He, expected him to doubt and not to carry out the command. It hardly needs saying that this is certainly a creative interpretation, but one entirely devoid of foundation. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the text. So why indeed did Abraham not doubt the prophetic command he received?

Think of two people: Reuven, blind from birth, and Shimon, sighted. Shimon looks at his watch and reports to Reuven that it is now two o’clock in the afternoon. Reuven claims that perhaps he is mistaken, and perhaps sight deceives him. How can Shimon persuade Reuven that this is indeed the time? But this is a case in which there is no obstacle to thinking that it is indeed two o’clock. There is nothing puzzling about it, and therefore Reuven’s stance is merely skeptical. What about a case in which the two enter a hut in the Bolivian jungle, and Shimon reports to Reuven that there is there a very expensive painting by the painter Marc Chagall. Reuven of course doubts this, and this time the doubt sounds more reasonable. How did such a painting get to the heart of the jungle? And again, how will Shimon be able to convince his blind friend that there is indeed a painting there? In a third case, the two enter a sealed room that has no windows and no doors and no other opening except the one through which they entered, and they ascertain (by sight and touch) that it is full of furniture. They now leave the room, lock the door, and sit in front of the entrance on chairs. About an hour later Shimon reenters the room and reports to Reuven that the room is now completely empty. Reuven of course does not believe him, and now he even has a proof: after all, earlier the room was full. The room has no openings, and therefore there is no possibility that the furniture was removed from the room. Conclusion: the room is still full of furniture. QED. How can Shimon persuade Reuven that the room is empty?^[14]

To the best of my judgment, if I were Shimon, in all these cases I would believe my sight despite Reuven’s claims, which at least in the last two cases raise relevant doubts that ostensibly should have made me wonder whether I was mistaken. Why do I have no such doubts? Because I saw. My blind friend (from birth) does not understand and does not know the sense of sight, because he has never experienced it. Go and explain to him why you place such high trust in your sense of sight. There is no way to explain it to him, and still it is clear to me (=Shimon) that this is merely a problem of explanation. My certainty is not undermined by his arguments. He simply does not understand, that is all.

My claim is that Abraham our father was in a similar position, and his critics, who have not experienced divine revelation and prophecy, are in this respect like "the blind." He cannot explain to them the meaning of the certainty he feels, but that is only a lack in the possibility of explanation, just as the sighted person cannot explain to the blind person the reliability he attributes to his eyes. I will now continue and claim that a person who experiences revelation cannot explain to another person the certainty he feels. Every other person is like a blind man who cannot understand it, and still the blind man’s claims will not move him from his faith. He simply saw God and heard the command and the message conveyed to him, and that is that. Such skeptical questions are the inheritance of the blind.

What remains for a blind person like Reuven is to decide whether to believe his friend Shimon and his report about the reliability of his sense of sight, or not. That is indeed a difficult decision, and it depends on the degree of trust Reuven places in Shimon. If Reuven believes his friend, then if Shimon tells him that he really saw and that sight really is a reliable sense (even though it is unknown to Reuven), Reuven will believe him. So too regarding blind people like us, who have not experienced revelation: if people come and say that they experienced such a revelation, our decision depends on the degree of trust we place in those people. We must not be overly impressed by our blindness, but of course neither should we necessarily accept their words blindly. We must decide according to the trust we place in them. One must remember that in the background stands the philosophical insight that there really is a God who created the world and established morality, etc., and the claim that someone met Him is not so implausible. It is not like the third case described above (the room with the furniture), but resembles more one of the first two cases. Therefore reasonable trust in those present at the revelation suffices for us to accept the fact of its occurrence.

To conclude this stage, we should think what we would say if hundreds of thousands of people were to come to us and report that they had experienced a revelation of the Holy One, blessed be He, who gave them a Torah, and that they had heard with their own ears the voice declaring, "I am the Lord your God…" and had also shown us (or recited to us) the Torah they received. It seems to me entirely reasonable to accept such a report. The question now moves to the continuation of the chain of transmission, that is, how much trust can be placed in its subsequent links? That is what we will now discuss.

The Witness Argument

The next stage in the discussion is the transition from those who experienced the revelation to the generations after them. As noted, if we heard the story from those who experienced it, then it would be reasonable to accept it (see the previous section). But we must remember that we, like our ancestors, were not there. We did not even meet those who were there. We are nourished by a vessel very far removed from the source, and the question is whether some distortion did not arise along the way. After all the transformations that this story underwent (if it existed at all), is it not at least from our perspective correct to decide that the story of revelation is nothing but a myth or historical fabrication, the result of some sort of broken telephone? Perhaps it never happened, and was somehow implanted over the course of our history within the tradition passed from generation to generation.

It is important to understand that in the final analysis the question concerns only what did or did not happen at Mount Sinai. The question is whether there was a revelation there and a Torah was given there or not. The only reason we examine the question through two prisms is that our vantage points are two: what would happen if we heard this from firsthand witnesses (which we discussed in the previous section), and whether that event was not simply invented from nothing by later generations. If the event really occurred, but its description became distorted, or a break occurred in the chain and was later repaired, none of that is relevant. The only question is whether there was then, at Mount Sinai, an event of revelation or not. Any distortion, if such there was, places the occurrence of that event under question.

Here begins the discussion of what later came to be called "the witness argument." Its foundation is already in the Torah itself, which writes (Deuteronomy 4:32-34):

For ask now of the former days, which were before you, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from one end of heaven to the other end of heaven, whether there has ever been anything as great as this thing, or has ever been heard its like: Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and lived? Or has any god ever attempted to come and take for himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

The Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself before the eyes of all Israel, took them out of Egypt by various wonders, and this is verification of His existence and His divinity. But what about distortions in the tradition of the later generations? Perhaps He did not really reveal Himself and did not perform wonders, and this is only a myth or a lie that arose at some stage, was assimilated, and was passed on through the generations.

It is common to attribute to the Kuzari the argument from the reliability of tradition.^[15] To be sure, it appears there in just a few lines, immediately after the lines quoted above (article 1, section 25):

25. The sage said: In this way I answered you when you asked me. And thus Moses began to speak with Pharaoh when he said to him: "The God of the Hebrews has sent me to you," that is, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because Abraham was well known among the nations, and because the word of God attached itself to them, guided them, and performed wonders for them. He did not say, "The God of heaven and earth has sent me to you," nor "My Creator and your Creator." Thus too God opened His words to the multitude of Israel: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt," and did not say: "I am the creator of the world and your creator." And thus I opened my words to you, O King of the Khazars, when you asked me about my belief. I answered you with what I am obliged to believe and with what the whole congregation of Israel is obliged, namely, that event which was verified for them by the sight of their own eyes, and afterwards by the continuing tradition, which is like the sight of the eye.

This is essentially what in the philosophy of religion is called "the argument from miracle," or "the witness argument."^[16] There is a reliable tradition transmitted by trustworthy people (=witnesses) about the occurrence of some historical event. We have no reason to cast doubt on its reliability, and therefore it is reasonable to accept it. Exactly like historical testimony about Napoleon, or Julius Caesar: so long as we have no reason to doubt the reliability of the sources that testify to it, there is no obstacle to accepting them as reliable.

Saadia Gaon develops this argument further, claiming that if there are many witnesses who transmit it to many people (a tradition on a broad front), and there are mechanisms of verification ensuring that there will be no deviations and that no one will invent, add to, or subtract from the Torah transmitted in that tradition (the prohibitions of "do not add" and "do not subtract"), then it is not reasonable that it is a falsehood. If it were a falsehood, contradictions would arise, and then at least some of the people would discover the truth. In the end, a lie has no legs.

Hume’s Critique of the Witness Argument

The argument from tradition is based on continuous and uninterrupted testimonies that convey to us an event of revelation or some other miracle that occurred in the past (such as the splitting of the Red Sea, the plagues of Egypt, and the like). Against this argument the following objection is raised: unlike the case of Napoleon or Julius Caesar, here we are dealing with a miracle or a revelation, that is, an exceptional and implausible event. We do not know from our experience of divine revelations to people and human societies, and therefore it is difficult to accept such a claim solely on the basis of testimony or such a historical tradition. Many attack the traditional argument with claims and examples showing that in various human societies (certainly ancient ones) testimonies may arise about things that probably did not occur. There are examples that, at least according to accepted opinion, are myths that were assimilated into history (everyone, of course, thinks the other’s history is myth). But with respect to quite a few of them, the claim that they are myth is based on the fact that the event is implausible, not on direct evidence. That is, the plausibility of the event is critical in this kind of discussion. It stands over against the reliability of the transmitters who report it.

The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume was probably the first to formulate the critique of the witness argument as a dilemma between the two poles we have described: the reliability of the transmitters versus the implausibility of the event.^[17] In his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, he writes:^[18]

We are required to examine a book… [written] almost certainly long after the series of events described, unsupported by any testimony contemporary with them, and bearing a strong resemblance to those fabulous accounts with which every nation relates its origins… Let any man lay his hand upon his heart and say… whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such evidence, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it narrates.

Hume argues that usually the text that tells the story was composed long after the occurrences. In addition, these events bear a suspicious resemblance to other traditions about other events. Hume therefore casts great doubt on the reliability of this description.

If we formulate it more precisely, Hume’s attack begins by presenting two possibilities for explaining the tradition that has reached us:

1. The testimony about the miracle is reliable, and it indeed occurred.
2. There was no miracle at all, and we are dealing with a distortion (intentional or not) created by the original witnesses or at some stage along the process of transmission down to us.

Possibility A, even if perhaps it cannot be ruled out of hand, is not likely. I have never in my life experienced a supernatural occurrence, such as the sea splitting, the sun standing still at Gibeon, walking on water, or the revelation of a dead person. I assume this is also the case for most human beings. Moreover, a miracle by its very nature contradicts the laws of nature. If so, the content of such testimony is not very plausible in terms of our experience. And what about possibility B? One can certainly debate its degree of plausibility; some would say it is very plausible and others might cast some doubt on it. But one thing is clear: this possibility does not contradict our basic experience, and certainly not the laws of nature. Distortions in tradition, the spontaneous formation of traditions, or even the mistaken perception or interpretation of events people were present at—these are phenomena whose existence is not difficult to accept. In any courtroom today one can see how witnesses who were present at an event do not remember it accurately, or interpret it incorrectly, and sometimes of course lie. Therefore, Hume argues, if we must choose between these two explanations, it seems that explanation B is the more admissible and reasonable one.

Hume’s added assumption, that the composition of the book usually postdates the events it describes, is not necessary in order to construct his attack, but of course it strengthens it. By the same token one may ask what about a miracle we observed directly (not one received by tradition from earlier generations); a similar argument can be made about that as well. It is reasonable to assume that even if we ourselves see a miracle, we would suspect that our minds had gone awry. After all, such distortions are possible (for example, a fata morgana), whereas miracles are against the laws of nature. So what is preferable—to believe that there was a miracle, or to suspect that some distortion occurred in us? It seems that if we treat miracles as events that are blatantly improbable, not to say impossible, then even regarding direct observation or testimony to a miracle it would be preferable to say that it is based on some distortion or misrepresentation. In essence, Hume’s argument is based on a comparison between alternatives. Granted, the suspicion that some testimony was distorted may itself have low probability, but in order to determine that it is not correct we must compare it to the chance that the events described in that testimony actually occurred. In that comparison, the hand of possibility B seems uppermost.

Quite a number of philosophers see Hume’s argument as a death blow to belief in miracles. Hume essentially strips away categorically the possibility of arguing for the existence of a miracle on the basis of any tradition or testimony whatsoever. The philosopher J. H. Randall claimed that Hume dealt the witness argument a death blow, "by proving the matter so clearly that since Hume an intelligent person has only rarely dared to advance this argument."^[19] Randall goes on to say that "in the eighteenth century miracles were the principal supporting explanation for belief; in the nineteenth century [following Hume, M.A.] they became the principal problem requiring explanation."

In essence, Hume’s claim is that people accept one alternative without considering the status of the second alternative. If there is one implausible alternative (that our ancestors lied to us, or erred), they reject it without noticing that the alternative (that they told the truth) is even less plausible.

An Example of the Importance of Comparison: Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

The controversial psychiatric syndrome known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy (= drawing attention by harming another) is another example of the consequences of ignoring an alternative. A woman whose two babies died of crib death was accused of killing them. The argument was presented by Professor Roy Meadow of the University of Leeds, who discovered the syndrome and was considered an expert witness regarding it. Meadow argued in court that the probability of crib death is about 1 in 8,000, and therefore the probability of crib death for two babies is about 1 in 64,000,000. The necessary conclusion, then, is that it is highly improbable that the deaths of the two babies occurred naturally (crib death), and therefore the mother probably murdered both of her children. The mother was sent to prison for double murder. The end of the story is that after a long prison term the mother was released following the testimony of a mathematician, who explained to the judge the problem with this argument. Meadow, who had testified as an expert witness in this case and had won fame and knighthood for discovering the syndrome (Munchausen syndrome by proxy), nearly lost his license to practice medicine.

What was the problem? At first glance the probability that the deaths were natural is indeed very low. A level of plausibility like that (1 in 64,000,000) would be sufficient in any criminal trial. The problem is that the judge and doctor forgot to compare the low probability that two children would die of crib death to the probability of the alternative: that a mother would murder both her children with her own hands. Is that probability higher than 1 in 64,000,000? I do not know. I am not even sure anyone in the world knows. But if it is not higher, then why prefer the first interpretation over the second? And even if the probability of a murderous mother is indeed higher than the probability of crib death, the question is how much higher. Is that difference sufficient to constitute evidence at a level of certainty high enough to convict a person in a criminal trial, and of murder no less? Again, one implausible interpretive possibility was dismissed out of hand, while no one even bothered to compare it with the alternative and examine whether that alternative is more plausible. By that logic, one could in principle send to prison any mother whose one child died of crib death. After all, even a probability of 1 in 8,000 is no small matter.

This can be seen even more simply. True, the probability of double crib death in one household is very low, but precisely because of that, this case occurred in only one household out of tens of millions of households in Britain or in Europe as a whole. So what is surprising about that? In some household this one case was supposed to happen, was it not?^[20]

And Yet, the Critique of the Witness Argument Is Problematic

In cases like the witness argument or Munchausen syndrome by proxy, we must compare the plausibility of two alternatives, when the problem pits two aspects against one another: 1. the reliability of experience (from which we learned that miracles do not occur); 2. the possibility of a revelation or a miracle.

As we shall now see, the problem with Hume’s critique is twofold, and each problem is expressed in one of the two aspects presented above: Hume’s approach is based on intellectual conservatism and leads to excessive conservatism, and this concerns aspect 1 above. His approach also begs the question, and this is expressed in aspect 2 above. We will now examine these two problems one after the other.

1. Hume’s Argument Is Based on Intellectual Conservatism

When I studied at Har Etzion Hesder Yeshiva in Alon Shvut—a liberal, open, and modern yeshiva by any standard—one of the students there fell ill with hepatitis. He was hospitalized and absent from the yeshiva for many long months. One day a mutual friend came to me and told me (he himself saw it) that a kind of sorcerer had come to that fellow in the hospital with doves, laid them on his navel, and they died one after another. Within a few days the sick student recovered and returned to the yeshiva. When I got home and told my parents about it, they began scolding me for the primitiveness and irrationality of those "benighted" people there at the yeshiva. I told them that in my eyes, an important part of a rational approach is not to reject a claim simply because it runs contrary to our experience. That is conservatism (benightedness?) and not rationality. If we have reliable testimony about something, we ought to accept it, and then, if we are rational people, try to understand and explain it. Sometimes the new phenomenon will change what we had thought until then, and that is perfectly fine. Clinging to prior experience leads to conservatism and to rejecting every testimony about something contrary to our experience, and thus we will never learn anything new or become wiser.

To sharpen the point, I will bring here another incident reported by my good friend Amnon Levav, whom from many years of acquaintance I can attest is a reliable and rational person.^[21] For quite a few years Amnon has professionally engaged in creative thinking and cognitive failures, and he is also a highly skilled facilitator of thinking groups in commercial, social, and other areas. Amnon opens by saying that he has not often told this story, because he feels embarrassed by his part in it, and also because many people do not believe him, but he swears that the event occurred exactly as he describes.

The story goes roughly as follows. His company gave pro bono service to some city in the American Midwest. The goal was to find ways of improving relations among the different population groups in the city, which had deteriorated into violence. A group of sixteen people was assembled there by the local organizers as a reasonable representation of all segments of the city’s population (based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and other parameters). It was a very diverse and heterogeneous group, all active and constructive citizens who cooperated well. The first day passed as planned, and at the beginning of the second day all the participants were seated in a circle of chairs except for one person who stood in the center. That person was asked to recall something from the events of the previous day, then to invite someone else from among the participants to stand in the center in his place and say something too about yesterday, and then to sit back down in his chair, and so on. Each person in turn, when he finished speaking, looked around, searched for someone who had not yet spoken, invited him to the center of the circle, and sat down. The process continued in this way until finally the person standing in the center turned to the facilitator (Amnon) and said: "That’s it, we’re done, everyone has spoken." Amnon says that he began summarizing and drawing conclusions from everything that had occurred. His first remark (remember that this was a session in inventive and creative thinking) was: "Why did all of you assume that each participant was supposed to speak only once?"

Suddenly one of the participants, an African-American woman, cut across his words and said: "One moment—none of the black participants were invited to speak." Everyone (including Amnon himself) looked at one another in astonishment, and it turned out she was completely right. There were six black people sitting in that circle, and not one of them had been invited to speak. Until that woman pointed it out, even those six themselves had been silent. It turned out that the participants, who had come to this meeting to create relations of reciprocity and consideration, simply did not see about a third of the participants sitting with them. Amnon concludes by saying that this naturally became the main lesson of those two days: how assumptions and starting points blind us to what stands before our eyes.

When Amnon sent me this story, I replied that it is indeed hard to believe, but that it דווקא led me to a different conclusion. After all, there is also the possibility that it never really happened, and that you (=Amnon) simply do not remember correctly (that is, you are rewriting history, maliciously or innocently, or not noticing details that would change its meaning). Following Hume, I told him, there are really two interpretive possibilities before me with respect to your story: 1. Indeed none of you noticed that about a third of the people in the circle had not spoken. That is, your bizarre story really does describe reality. 2. You reconstructed history in a tendentious way (innocently or deliberately), and the story never happened at all. I now ask myself: why should I believe your present memory? Perhaps this never happened, and you built for yourself such a memory or story because of current ideological and moral fixations. How convenient that we have such an example illustrating so important a moral and human lesson. There is nothing like a good story (which, in the absence of identifying details, also cannot be checked and verified). It is worth a thousand moral sermons.

I even have a fairly good argument in favor of the superiority of interpretation 2. In possibility 1 there is an event that is utterly implausible. The very fact that all six were not invited to speak, and this in an event meant to make peace among all shades of the population, is completely improbable. In addition, there is a collective blindness here of all the others, every last one of them (including you yourself, the skilled and alert facilitator), who simply did not notice it. Truly inconceivable, almost a miracle. In possibility 2, by contrast, the event itself is entirely plausible (all sixteen did indeed speak, and there was no blindness), except that there is here a phenomenon of forgetfulness or selective coloring of memory (perhaps even an intentional lie), and that only in one person (=you). That can certainly happen to any of us, and it is even documented. So which of these two interpretive possibilities ought I to prefer?

What is the lesson of these two stories? In Hume’s critical argument against the testimony argument, we compare a proposal under discussion (that God revealed Himself) with what we know from our experience (that this usually does not happen). Reasonable assessments (or probabilities) of such interpretive alternatives are often based on experience—that is, on processes of induction (generalization). David Hume argues that miracles are an improbable phenomenon and therefore prefers the second alternative (the embedding of a myth). On what basis does he argue this? On the basis of experience (and the laws of nature, which are themselves a product of experience and of the generalizations we have made from it). The likelihood of crib death is also assessed on the basis of our experience. In comparing the alternatives in the various cases, what matters is our estimate of the weight of learning from experience. As we have seen, excessive attachment to experience leads to conservatism and intellectual ossification.

It can be seen that arguments like Hume’s actually prevent scientific progress and the recognition of unfamiliar phenomena and laws. When a person comes to us and reports a phenomenon that contradicts our experience, that is, the laws of nature as we know them, we will not accept his report. So how will we learn about a new natural phenomenon? How will we discover laws of nature unknown to us? Any report of such a phenomenon or law will be dismissed out of hand. We will say that the reporter is lying or hallucinating, and that possibility will be preferred over the assumption that the events he describes really occurred.

It must be understood that scientific induction—that is, the generalizations we make on the basis of our experience—is very uncertain, and it is very important to doubt it. It is especially interesting to recall that David Hume himself is the father of the problem of induction. He was the first to point out that our inferences from experience are really just a habit of mind, and that we must be careful with them. On his own view, such inference has no genuine validity, yet in his criticism of the testimony argument he somehow places absolute trust in inductive inference.

Overestimating the reliability of induction completely blocks acceptance of testimony about unusual phenomena (relative to what is presently known to us). In my book Truth and Uncertainty I argued that the skeptics who take Hume’s critique of induction too seriously are mistaken. It is an important and fairly reliable tool. On the other hand, it is very important not to take it too seriously. It is not an absolute tool. The assumption of induction is highly useful on the one hand, but very problematic on the other. Learning from past experience must be done with great caution, and the degree of validity we grant it must be limited. Sometimes attachment to experience does not advance us, as we tend to think, but actually pushes us backward.

To conclude this part, let us imagine a situation in which some revelation actually took place. Now someone who was present tries to report it to society at large. According to Hume’s approach, it is impossible for us to accept this report, since we will always prefer the assumption that there was a lie, an illusion, or some other distortion here. If so, according to David Hume, no report of revelation can ever be accepted by us. So now go and consider: is it any wonder that in our experience we do not know of revelations? Revelations could occur thousands of times before thousands of people, and yet, from our point of view, there are no revelations. Every report of a revelation will be rejected out of hand because of Hume’s critical argument. Moreover, even if the revelation occurred to us ourselves, we would prefer the interpretation that it was a hallucination over the possibility that it really happened. If so, Hume’s critical argument is self-validating. It is no better founded than the traditional alternative.

On the other hand, treating a deviation from the laws of nature does indeed seem to all of us to be a strong consideration against accepting such testimony. Perhaps there really was an error or some disruption in the testimony, in the interpretation of the events, or in the process of transmission? How can one decide between these two possibilities? Hume’s argument appears, on its face, to be very strong. As Hume himself wrote: "… let every man lay his hand on his heart and say … whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such evidence, is a more singular and miraculous matter than all the miracles described in it?" After all, we cannot deny that in our eyes a deviation from the laws of nature is plainly improbable. Even if we have no clear argument in favor of the laws of nature, we all still believe in them to a great extent. The principle of induction is one of the foundations of our thought. Does this mean that, a priori, our ability to become aware of extraordinary events is doomed?

In my book Truth and Uncertainty I explained that the problem of induction here takes on a very practical meaning. In a certain sense, dilemmas like these force us to assess quantitatively our trust in the principle of induction, or at least our trust in certain conclusions learned from it. In the examples we saw, experience (?) taught us that it is unlikely that jaundice can be cured by pigeons. At least that is how it seems to us. By the same token, we learned from experience that there are no revelations by people who died or by transcendent beings (God at Mount Sinai), there is no walking on water (the Christian tradition), there is no collective forgetting by part of a group, especially not at assemblies held for the purpose of making peace (Amnon’s story), water does not turn into blood and a sea does not split in two (the miracles of the Exodus), and perhaps that people generally do not commit murder (testimony about a murder). But against the improbability of all these, one must set the reliability of the reporter, otherwise we condemn ourselves to conservatism and intellectual ossification. In the name of rationalism, we will entrench ourselves in our basic assumptions and be unable to escape them.

So far we have dealt with one side of the coin: our learning from experience that revelations usually do not occur. We now turn to begging the question, which is the other side of that same coin.

1. Hume’s critical argument begs the question

We are all prepared to accept testimony, and sometimes even testimony about unusual events. For example, Amnon’s story actually seems to me entirely credible, and I was inclined to accept it despite my learned arguments presented above. Testimony about murder is accepted in court and in life, even though murder is not an everyday event. Even a mother murdering her two children (see the example of Munchausen syndrome mentioned above)—as unlikely as such an event is—almost none of us is prepared to rule it out categorically. Again, there is here a calculation of the event’s probability/possibility as against the reliability of the report about it.

Let us now return to Hume’s argument about miracles. We mentioned that there were thinkers who saw it as a death blow to the possibility of accepting testimony about unusual cases (miracles). By contrast, other thinkers (such as Swinburne, Purtill, and others) rejected Hume’s argument and explained that a miracle should not be seen as an inconceivable event in itself. The assumption that it is an improbable event is itself a case of begging the question. Beyond the problems with induction that we discussed above, there is a background assumption here that there is no indication of the existence of a God who would reveal Himself to us in such an event. Someone who rules out God’s existence from the outset will of course not accept a traditional report of His revelation. On the other hand, a believer who accepts God’s existence—and as we have seen, philosophically there are excellent arguments in favor of that thesis—does not rule out revelation from the outset. For him this is a possible event and not an improbable one, even if it has not happened many times, and therefore this is not a report of an improbable event. I would note that there are very rare natural events as well (such as various eclipses). Does that mean we would not accept a report that reaches us about their occurrence? Revelations are probably rare too, but there is no essential problem in that. We have reached the conclusion that there is a God, and even that He cares about us and expects moral behavior from us. So why is a report about revelation, and about the giving of Torah or His various commands, so improbable?

Hume’s critical argument is really begging the question. It assumes that revelation is improbable because it did not occur in the past. We have already seen that even if it had occurred, Hume would not have accepted the report of it. But even if it really did not occur, that does not mean it is improbable, only that it is rare. But Hume, who assumes (and does not prove) that this is an improbable event, infers (?) from this that it is a myth embedded in the tradition and not an event that really happened.

Summary

Francis Beckwith argued that Hume’s conclusions are based on the logical fallacy of begging the question: if you assume a priori that a miracle is improbable, then your conclusion will be that testimony about it is inadmissible. But if testimony about it is inadmissible, you will never be able to accept any testimony about miracles (because you will always prefer to say there was a distortion in the tradition or in the testimony), and thereby you again confirm your assumption that a miracle is improbable (since after all we have never accepted testimony that miracles occurred), and so on ad infinitum. This is a vicious circle into which you have placed yourself with your own hands, and you have no way out of it. This begging of the question and this vicious loop are nothing but sharp expressions of the problem of conservatism that we saw above.

What stands here face to face is my assessment of the possibility of miracles or revelations against the trust I place in the traditional testimonies about them. My a priori approach is that miracles and revelations are possible, and therefore I do not have automatic doubt about reports of them. Hume’s approach is that these are not possible, and therefore he rejects the credibility of the testimonies. Each person entrenches himself in his starting point, and that determines the result, not any probabilistic calculation or other objective consideration. But, as stated, our starting point is that very strong considerations indicate to us that the philosophical God exists. So now, when a report of His revelation reaches us, there is no reason to assume a priori that this cannot happen and to reject the report.

A well-known story about Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz tells of a priest who comes to the rabbi one bright day and asks him: "Tell me, Rabbi Jonathan, why do you Jews not go and join us (the Christians)? We are the majority, and your Torah says, ‘follow the majority,’ does it not?" Rabbi Jonathan did not lose his composure and chose a different answer: "I follow the majority when I am in doubt," he said, "but regarding my faith I have no doubt at all. I know that it is true, so why should I be dragged along by the majority?!"

At first glance this may seem like nothing more than a nice quip, but on reflection there is a very important, serious, and quite sensible principle here. Let us illustrate it through a question in Jewish law. Moses is walking down the street and finds a piece of meat lying on a bench. Needless to say, Moses is careful to eat only kosher meat. May he eat this meat, or should he be concerned that it is not kosher? Jewish law determines that the ruling depends on what meat shops are in the area. If most of the shops there sell kosher meat, then the piece of meat he found is permitted for eating, since Jewish law presumes that the meat came from a kosher shop. But if most of the shops in that area sell non-kosher meat, the piece that was found is forbidden for eating. This is the legal principle called "following the majority." Now think about what the ruling would be in a place where most of the shops sell non-kosher meat and carrion, but the piece of meat that was found is packaged and sealed with a recognized kosher certification. Would we still rule that it is forbidden to eat? Certainly not. Why? Because when we are not in a state of doubt, there is no reason to follow the majority. Above, we already learned from the teaching of the atheist Bertrand Russell that even to treat a situation as doubtful requires a reason.

At this point it is interesting to note that this principle is applied every day in our courts. If the content of a witness’s testimony in court is an atrocious murder, then the witness’s credibility stands against the improbability of the event. Seemingly, the supreme court before which an appeal is brought should reject the lower court’s decision out of hand. But nevertheless, it is accepted that when an appeal on a judgment is brought to a higher court, the higher court does not reexamine the content of the testimonies and their credibility. It examines only the legal process itself. The impression formed from the content of the testimony is usually left to the judge who met the witnesses. Why? Because one’s impression of a witness is a subjective matter and cannot be examined by objective tools of any kind. The reliability of the reporter is something left to the impression of the one receiving the testimony. The same is true in the case of the tradition about revelation. No consideration or probabilistic calculation changes that, and Hume’s critical argument, which presents an appearance of objective calculation here, is mere sleight of hand.

Assessing the reliability of a person or of testimony is a very complex matter. The impression of whether the person before me is telling the truth is something very hard to mechanize and quantify. Therefore Hume’s argument about miracles, like my own arguments against Amnon, all suffer from preferring calculation over thought, or probability over plausibility—that is, preferring analytical methods over intuition. But we must not be taken captive by this. Mathematical calculation exerts on us the charm of decisive objectivity, and sometimes that itself is the bias in the discussion. Of course, this is not to say that intuitive judgment is some super-tool or that it is necessarily free of errors; not at all. Systematic thinking and statistical thinking are supposed to help us critique and improve it. These are the methods that science developed in order to scrutinize its generalizations systematically. But categorical suspicion toward intuition is unjustified. We must remember that our starting point here is that truth does not mean certainty, but precisely for that reason, trusting intuition (accepting its products as true) does not mean accepting it as an absolute and certain instrument.

From this it follows, of course, that I do not intend to argue that every testimony about miracles or about an unusual event must be accepted by everyone. Hume’s argument is certainly one that must be taken into account, and I myself have many times rejected testimonies about miracles and wonders that were reported to me in one form or another. I did so in cases where I judged that the reliability of the transmission was insufficient to justify accepting the content transmitted. My claim here is mainly on the principled plane. I argue that Hume’s arguments and similar ones, despite the charm that apparently lies in them, are not always correct, and certainly not necessarily correct. Hume made a general and absolute claim, according to which there is a principled barrier to accepting such testimony. As we have seen, many of his successors see his argument as a death blow to "testimony arguments" in general and across the board. What I argue, by contrast, is that there is no principled barrier to accepting testimony about unusual events, even very unusual ones: sometimes yes and sometimes no. We have seen that each of us behaves this way in many cases, in legal and everyday contexts and also in scientific contexts. I explained that this depends on our assessment of the process that brings these events to our knowledge as against the plausibility of the events themselves in our eyes. As we saw, the decision of what to accept and what not to accept—that is, the assessment of the reliability of both sides of this equation—is entrusted to each person’s intuition, not to objective calculations.

I should note that in chapter 27 of my book Truth and Uncertainty I cited Maimonides’ words in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah (chapters 7–8) regarding trust in prophecy and prophets. Maimonides presents there a rational and skeptical approach. He argues that one should not believe in a prophet because of the signs he performs, and certainly not give him absolute trust. He speaks about making decisions according to common sense and argues against the demand for certainty. It turns out that trust in a prophet, too, is not certain, especially when it is based on the performance of wonders.

A few additional considerations in conclusion

I will only briefly mention a few additional considerations that support the reliability of the tradition, against the claim that a myth was embedded in it (through a malicious scheme or by natural development):

1. If the formation of a narrative of mass revelation were indeed a natural occurrence rooted in a process of myth-embedding, we would expect this to happen in other contexts as well. As we shall see below, the parallel traditions about revelation (Christianity and Islam) accept the Jewish tradition about the revelation at Sinai and do not transmit other mass revelations.
2. It should also be added here that if this were indeed an artificial embedding of a myth of revelation, we would expect the content of the revelation to resemble what was customary in that period—that is, to be pagan and polytheistic—and not a monotheistic myth speaking of an abstract God. It is more likely that someone who invents a myth will invent a familiar myth, and that a society that absorbs a myth into itself will find it easier to absorb a familiar kind of myth.
3. If this is indeed an artificial embedding, then the character of the commandments supposedly delivered in the revelation is surprising. Why would anyone embed a myth of revelation that contains commandments from which no one derives any benefit? Our system of commandments does not look like an instrument for instilling moral behavior or serving any other purpose. Taking the lulav, refraining from eating pork or forbidden animal fat—these are commandments in which it is difficult to see any logical motivation. To be sure, if the embedding was not done intentionally but arose as a natural and accidental process, that may perhaps be possible. Still, it is not clear how such commandments would arise naturally.
4. If it is indeed a conspiracy and not a natural process, then I would not expect biblical statements that are open to empirical refutation, such as the blessing in the sixth year before the sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:21), or the promise that when we go up on pilgrimage no man will covet our land (Exodus 34:24), and the like.^[22]

Each of these considerations can of course be rejected, but even so, all of them together join the overall picture I have described so far and will continue to describe below.

1. Biblical evidence for gaps in the tradition

Introduction

In discussions about gaps in the tradition, critics raise several passages that supposedly testify to such gaps. Here we will deal with three such sources: the account in the book of Judges, the finding of the Torah scroll in the days of Josiah, and the reading of the Torah in the days of Ezra.

The first gap: the book of Judges

The first example we will discuss is the verses from chapter 2 of the book of Judges:

And the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to your fathers, and I said, I will never break My covenant with you. And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars. But you have not obeyed My voice. What is this you have done? Therefore I also said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall be at your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” And it came to pass, when the angel of the LORD spoke these words to all the Israelites, that the people lifted up their voices and wept. So they called the name of that place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the LORD. When Joshua sent the people away, the Israelites went each man to his inheritance to possess the land. And the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD that He had done for Israel. And Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of one hundred and ten years. And they buried him within the territory of his inheritance at Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD, nor the work that He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them, and provoked the LORD to anger. They forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He gave them into the hand of plunderers who plundered them, and He sold them into the hand of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had spoken and as the LORD had sworn to them, and they were greatly distressed. Then the LORD raised up judges, and they saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen even to their judges, for they prostituted themselves after other gods and bowed down to them. They quickly turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the LORD; they did not do so. And whenever the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge and saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge, for the LORD relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, they turned back and acted more corruptly than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not give up any of their practices or their stubborn ways. Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and He said, ‘Because this nation has transgressed My covenant that I commanded their fathers and has not obeyed My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the LORD and walk in it as their fathers kept it, or not.’ So the LORD left those nations, without driving them out quickly, and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.”

At first glance this seems to speak of forgetting the Torah—that is, a break in the tradition. This applies mainly to verse 10, which speaks of a generation that did not know the LORD and what He had done for Israel (the Exodus and the entry into the land). Admittedly, the whole background of the passage suggests that the historical events did indeed occur (that is, that such a book had existed in the past), but one might raise the argument that perhaps this is an anachronism. The author writes as though the events occurred, but he himself admits that this is his own position. The people did not receive such a tradition and therefore did not pass it on.

But later in the verses it becomes clear that this is a kind of “forgetting” that is not historical in character. The people of Israel “forget” the LORD and do not know Him every few years, until He is reminded to them again. If this were literally forgetfulness, why the great anger? Why is it described as “turning aside from the way”? Clearly the description here refers to forgetting not in the factual sense (forgetting the facts) but in the sense of abandoning the commitment that follows from those facts.

The highlighted verse uses the expression “they did not know the LORD, nor the work that He had done for Israel.” The biblical root usually rendered as “know” does not always appear in the sense familiar to us (=knowledge). In the Bible, knowledge is connection. This begins already with “And the man knew Eve his wife” (Genesis 4:1), and many other places in Scripture. If so, “knowing the LORD” is not intellectual knowledge but connection to the LORD.

The verses conclude with the demand to test Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD as their fathers did or not. The assumption is that their fathers certainly did keep that way, and they are abandoning it—but not necessarily forgetting it factually.

The finding of the Torah scroll

The clearest passage discussed in connection with gaps in the tradition is the one that appears in 2 Kings 22:

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty-one years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. And he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the way of David his father, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan son of Azaliah, son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the house of the LORD, saying: “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may total the silver that has been brought into the house of the LORD, which the keepers of the threshold have gathered from the people, and let them deliver it into the hand of the workmen who are appointed over the house of the LORD, and let them give it to the workmen who are in the house of the LORD to repair the damage to the house—to the carpenters and the builders and the masons, and for buying timber and hewn stone to repair the house. But no accounting shall be asked of them for the money delivered into their hand, for they deal faithfully.” Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Torah in the house of the LORD.” And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it. And Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought the king word, and said, “Your servants have poured out the money that was found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen who are appointed over the house of the LORD.” Then Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying, “Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.” And Shaphan read it before the king. And when the king heard the words of the Book of the Torah, he tore his clothes. Then the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam son of Shaphan, and Achbor son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying: “Go, inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the LORD that has been kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.” So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asaiah went to Huldah the prophetess, the wife of Shallum son of Tikvah, son of Harhas, keeper of the wardrobe—she lived in Jerusalem in the second quarter—and they spoke with her. And she said to them, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Tell the man who sent you to me, Thus says the LORD: Behold, I am bringing disaster upon this place and upon its inhabitants, all the words of the book that the king of Judah has read, because they have forsaken Me and have burned incense to other gods, in order to provoke Me to anger with all the work of their hands; therefore My wrath will be kindled against this place, and it shall not be quenched. But to the king of Judah who sent you to inquire of the LORD, thus shall you say to him: Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: As for the words that you have heard—because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you, declares the LORD. Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I am bringing upon this place.” And they brought the king back word.

Josiah initiates repair work in the Temple, and in the course of this a Torah scroll is found in the Temple precincts. When Shaphan the scribe and Josiah read the scroll, they apparently are surprised to discover what is written in it. They tear their clothes because they now understand why the wrath of the Holy One, blessed be He, has been kindled against them for not observing the things written in the book.

Many answers have been offered to resolve this difficult passage (see already the classical commentators on the spot). Some biblical critics argued that this is the book of Deuteronomy and not the whole Torah, and then the difficulty does not exist at all.^[23] But it seems to me there is no need to enter into all this, because even a not especially deep reading of the plain meaning of the verses shows that one should not see here a real challenge to the testimony argument.

First, here too the issue is disobedience to what is written in the book, not forgetting. If there had truly been forgetting here, what room would there be for anger, wrath, and punishments that the Holy One, blessed be He, imposes on Israel?! They simply do not know, and therefore do not observe. The existence of a book strengthens the obligation, but the people knew about the commandments and knew that they were violating them and deserved punishment for this (as the commentators there also write).

Moreover, the verses describe that already their fathers had not obeyed this book, implying that in the case of the fathers it certainly existed. The verses say that the fathers “did not listen to the words of the book,” meaning they did not heed the book—not that they had never heard of the book in the modern sense, that is, that they were wholly unaware of it. The anger went out against the fathers because they did not pass it on to their sons, and thus caused their lawlessness.

In fact, this whole chapter says very forcefully that there was indeed a Torah tradition in the people of Israel. The chapter opens by saying that Josiah does what is good and continues in the way of David his father. In that generation there was a Temple and there was a high priest, and apparently there was sacrificial worship. If so, everyone knows that a Torah was given; only the book itself is not in their possession, because at some point it was lost in the Temple precincts. Suddenly they find it, and then everyone understands that this is indeed the very book they once had, and that everyone knew there was such a book.

Moreover, imagine that in the consciousness of that generation there had in fact never been a giving of the Torah and never been a Torah scroll. Now suddenly some book is found in the Temple precincts containing various things. How do they reach the conclusion that this is the Torah of Moses, received from the Holy One, blessed be He, and that the requirements appearing in it obligate them, and that they are punished for not observing them? Why would they not simply throw the book in the trash as mere dead weight?! Is it not obvious that they had a tradition that there had once been a Torah scroll and that it contained various laws, but that it had been lost to them? Now that it is found, it is clear to everyone that this is indeed the ancient book that had once existed and was lost.

If so, this case very powerfully reflects precisely that there was a solid tradition about the giving of the Torah and about the Torah scroll given to Moses at Sinai. It is true that it was hidden away, and at some point they stopped observing some of the laws in it (it is likely that some they did continue to observe), but this gap proves only a local break in the tradition, and I do not see how this passage can be used to ground a claim that the Torah was invented and the myth embedded in our tradition.

Admittedly, it is true that the description here implies that the people did not remember at least some of the commandments written in the scroll, and therefore one may perhaps infer from this that there was no continuous tradition regarding all the details and laws that reached us. But it is clear that there was a tradition about the giving of the Torah and about a book received by Moses, and when they found it everyone understood that it was the original book. Their abandonment of the commandments was the result of the negligence of their fathers, who had not handed the book on to them but had hidden it away in the Temple precincts. As for the details, I will later argue that it is indeed true that we do not have a solid tradition regarding the details, and there is room for critical examination of them. But our discussion here concerns the event at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah, and it seems to me that this chapter is very good evidence for the antiquity of the tradition about the giving of the Torah itself.

The reading of the Torah in the days of Ezra

A third case brought as biblical testimony to gaps in the tradition is the reading of the Torah in the days of Ezra. Here one simply has to read the verses and see that there is not even a hint of a gap in the tradition (Nehemiah 8):

And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate, and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Torah of Moses that the LORD had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Torah. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose, and beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand, and on his left were Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and when he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground. Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites explained the Torah to the people while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the Torah of God, clearly, and they gave the sense so that they understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the Torah. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat rich food and drink sweet drinks and send portions to anyone who has nothing prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” So the Levites quieted all the people, saying, “Be still, for the day is holy; do not be grieved.” And all the people went their way to eat and drink and send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that had been declared to them. On the second day, the heads of the fathers’ houses of all the people, with the priests and the Levites, gathered to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the Torah. And they found written in the Torah that the LORD had commanded by Moses that the Israelites should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, saying, ‘Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.’ So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Joshua son of Nun to that day the Israelites had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Torah of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the ordinance.

They told Ezra to bring the Book of the LORD’s Torah, which clearly means that the book existed and was known. No one is surprised by the discovery of a book somewhere. Ezra simply brings it and reads it before all Israel.

It is true that they seem surprised to discover in the book that they are supposed to dwell in booths, and it is described that they had not done this from the days of Joshua until the days of Ezra. But this is a specific problem regarding the Festival of Booths. The whole chapter shows quite clearly that the Torah scroll was indeed in their possession the entire time. As for the Festival of Booths itself, it is not clear how they knew that they had not observed the commandment of booths from the days of Joshua. After all, if the people were wholly unaware that there was such a commandment in the Torah, then they certainly would not know that in Joshua’s days such a commandment had been observed. From this it appears that the elders knew this (as, for example, the Kuzari writes in Essay Three, paragraphs 54–63), but because of the exile and the dispersion they did not teach the people, and therefore the people did not observe the commandment of the booth. Be that as it may, it clearly appears that there was a tradition about the Torah and even about the Festival of Booths itself, and they even knew that in the days of Joshua they had indeed dwelt in booths.

A note on the details

It is commonly said that all the details of the Torah that reached us were given to Moses at Sinai and transmitted in an unbroken tradition. The picture we encountered here, briefly as it was, is enough to challenge significantly that simplistic and superficial conception. We have seen here that very basic details were dropped, and certainly many laws— including laws of biblical origin—were developed over the generations and were not given to Moses at Sinai. I will deal with this in the third book. Here it is enough for me to conclude that the tradition about an encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He, His revelation to us, and the giving of the Torah at Sinai, is a fairly well-founded tradition. As far as the revelation itself is concerned, whatever its contents may be, it does not appear from the Bible that there are gaps or breaks in the tradition regarding it.

Another note concerns the text of the Bible and its composition (the documentary hypothesis and biblical criticism). I have not dealt with this subject here at all, and it will be discussed in detail in chapter twenty of the second book.

1. Combining the considerations into an overall picture

Introduction

The discussion in this chapter will present the overall picture we have reached. After that we will also compare our tradition with parallel traditions (Christian and Muslim). The underlying question is this: even if one accepts the tradition of revelation, why accept specifically the Jewish one and not one of its sister traditions (Christianity, Islam, or any other tradition)?

I must again remind the reader that, exactly as in the philosophical discussions in the previous notebooks, here too we are not looking for certainty but for plausibility. If I have certainty in anything, it is only in the claim that certainty is impossible in the conclusions of a discussion like this. This is a matter of judgment, plausibility, and common sense—nothing more. Each person must decide whether, in light of the totality of the arguments, he is inclined to accept the traditional argument about revelation or not, and we should not expect more than that from this discussion.

How the arguments presented here should be examined: the significance of the whole

We have already seen that the way to discuss the question of tradition and religious obligation is not through general philosophical considerations. This is one of the reasons such discussions often encounter a barrier, since the weight of the evidence and arguments seems to many people— with some justification—dubious. It is very important to clarify that it is a mistake to examine each argument separately. The picture that emerges from all of them together is stronger than the picture obtained from examining each one on its own. Every one of the arguments presented in this notebook can be rejected in several ways. None of them is necessary. And yet my claim is that the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts.

As an illustration, I will bring the well-known words of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk on the Talmudic discussion of the deranged person in Tractate Chagigah 3b. The Gemara there gives three signs of such a person: he goes out alone at night, sleeps in a cemetery, and tears his clothes. The Gemara then challenges each of these signs: perhaps he tears his clothes because he is absorbed in thought? Perhaps he goes out alone at night because he is gripped by worries or wants to cool off a little. And the fact that he sleeps in a cemetery may be because he wants a spirit of impurity to rest upon him (to communicate with demons). Rabbi Chaim asks: how does this collection of signs indicate derangement if each of them on its own does not? Each can be dismissed, yet all together lead us to diagnose him as deranged. He explains that if there were only one sign, then indeed one could propose another explanation for it (not derangement), but when they all appear, it is not plausible that each has a unique explanation. It is always preferable to propose one overall explanation for all the features together. That is stronger than three different explanations, one for each of them. This is really the principle of Occam’s razor.

This is exactly what I am claiming in this notebook. Each argument on its own can indeed be interpreted in other ways. But it is not plausible to propose a different explanation for each one when we have the option of grounding them all in one explanation. Occam’s razor requires us to adopt the one explanation. This is how we evaluate a scientific theory and any other thesis in our thinking, and there is no reason not to relate to faith in the same way. In this chapter I will detail the significance of this for our discussion.

Summary of what we have seen so far

In the previous notebooks we saw good arguments for the existence of the philosophical God. One of them (the moral argument) also led us a bit further—to the idea that He expects us to be moral. This is already the beginning of a religious God, one who demands things from us and commands us. We noted that moral commands do not seem like a sufficient purpose for creation because of their instrumental character, and we concluded that it would be reasonable to expect a revelation in which additional messages would be delivered beyond morality (religious commandments). We then noted the important role of revelation as the source of divine commandments. We rejected the face-value objection (the teapot argument), since once we reach the conclusion that God exists there is no reason not to take seriously the traditional claim that He revealed Himself. The testimony argument also adds another layer to our tradition about revelation, and we saw that Hume’s objection is fairly weak, and certainly not necessary.

Already here one can see the weight of the whole as greater than the weight of its individual details. Many discuss revelation on its own (the argument of the Kuzari) and cast doubt on the tradition about it (this is the teapot argument and Hume’s arguments). That is what happens when this tradition is discussed in isolation. But as we have seen, belief in the philosophical God that stands in the background of this tradition greatly strengthens it and places it on very reasonable ground. Both the teapot argument and Hume’s arguments, which on their face seem very strong, suddenly look very shaky. Others discuss the claim that if God created the world it is reasonable that He had a purpose, and that morality alone is not sufficient to serve as such a purpose, and therefore it is only to be expected that God would reveal Himself and convey to us His demands and purposes. This argument too can be rejected by the claim of anthropomorphism (who says God acts like human beings?!). But when one adds to this the tradition that reaches us saying that He really did reveal Himself, is it not correct to infer from this that a rational being with a purpose will act to realize it? If it is plausible that He would reveal Himself and there is a tradition that He indeed did reveal Himself, why not conclude that He really does act like a rational being, instead of proposing strained alternatives in place of this plausible and natural conclusion? All these arguments significantly strengthen one another.

In this chapter we will add further aspects, which together with the previous ones present a quite plausible picture regarding revelation. When one joins what we have seen to the broader perspective, the argument is significantly strengthened. As stated, examining each argument by itself raises doubts and hesitations, but once we remember that even in the domain of faith we are not seeking certainties but plausibilities, and when all the channels of argument from the various stages are joined with those we will now see into one overall picture, a quite reasonable conclusion emerges.

And what about the alternatives?

Even if we have become convinced that God is a being who reveals and commands, that is, we are no longer merely deists but theists, it is still not clear why one should be specifically Jewish, and why specifically part of one particular Jewish stream. Every religion or stream presents different conceptions and imposes different commandments and obligations, and in fact almost all of them (at least the monotheistic religions) reject one another, so one cannot be committed to all of them. We must choose which of them sounds most plausible and reasonable, and thus decide what the right direction is in the final analysis. How does one do that? It seems that this is to a large extent entrusted to personal impression.

In principle, we ought now to examine all the options one after another, but obviously that is impossible. My assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, certainly does not demand of us something we are unable to perform. Therefore it is reasonable that, from His point of view too, it is enough for me to investigate and make a decision under conditions of uncertainty: to read and become acquainted in general with as broad a variety as possible, and in the end try to filter out which options are worth deeper examination and focus on them.

Moreover, let us begin by examining the Jewish tradition about the revelation at Sinai. If we find that it is reliable, there is no reason to be overly troubled by other traditions. One can always ask questions such as: perhaps not? Are there not others who present a tradition no less good? There is no end to that. Later in the chapter we will discuss the relationship that this method requires us to adopt toward alternative traditions.

The consideration of priority and various comparisons

First, let us narrow the range of possibilities even further and focus on the monotheistic religions. The other religions do not present alternatives that include serious and reliable reports of revelation.

The revelation at Sinai is the basis of all the monotheistic religions and of the various streams within Judaism (which admittedly interpret it in different ways). All of these include it within their traditions and see it as the point of departure. Therefore, if we have reached the conclusion that there was a revelation, Mount Sinai is the natural candidate. At later stages in history the competing traditions appear—other religions and different streams within Judaism and alongside it—and each offers its own continuation. The question is which of these is the authentic continuation of the original revelation (as is well known, Christianity has an entire theological structure to explain God’s shift in their direction—the “New Covenant”)? Both Christianity and Islam abolished most of the commandments that appear in the Bible, and that itself is problematic. These are significant theological considerations (that God does not change His mind), but beyond all this it seems to me that in any case one can say that the burden of proof lies with the one who claims that this indeed happened. Up to this point our conclusion is that God revealed Himself at Sinai and gave the Torah, and it seems to me that from here onward we are dealing with proposals that are not very substantial.

Beyond that, the revelation at Sinai was mass and public, which cannot be said of the competing proposals. Jesus or Muhammad, according to their claims, experienced personal revelations, and there serious doubts certainly arise as to how reliable this is, or whether it was hallucination, lying, a myth that was embedded, and so forth. In general, the Jewish tradition is relatively reliable and cautious, and is carried on in a fairly critical manner. The details are examined by sages in every generation, and things change when the sages find it proper to change them. There is a prohibition against changes, additions, or subtractions without a clear source. In our tradition there is an obligation to study on a broad front. The commandment of Torah study rests on everyone, not just on a caste of sages who keep the information to themselves. Every law is transmitted together with its source (either a law given to Moses at Sinai, or a verse from which it was derived and who derived it, person from person), and the Talmudic literature contains inquiries into the sources of various laws.

Broader considerations

To the overall picture described so far one can add several more relevant facts that strengthen it. These concern the uniqueness of Judaism and the Jewish people and their relationship to the Torah, which indicates that there is something of exceptional power here compared to other ideas and groups in the history of our world. This may point to a guiding and supporting hand, and to a force in the Torah such that more than we kept it, it kept us (as Ahad Ha’am famously said of the Sabbath). These are well-worn facts, and it is a little unpleasant to repeat them over and over, but it seems to me that we have grown somewhat dull in our attitude toward them.

This begins with the role of Jewish faith in transmitting morality and monotheistic faith and their values to the world at large. One must be careful not to take an anachronistic view that projects the situation today—where the cultured world is relatively enlightened and moral—onto the past. The world in which Jewish faith operated and within which it received its special role was completely different. It was a world of idolatry and child sacrifice, cruelty and corruption, almost bestial. The role we received and also fulfilled was to change that, and our success, which is expressed in our enlightened world today, should not blind us to it.

Even now, when a large part of the world has undergone secularization, there is still use of religious concepts and principles such as the image of God in moral discourse, regarding the value of human life and the like. This is an indication of the special role we received at Sinai, and history shows that we indeed fulfilled it (not always fully, of course). Add to that the very unique survival of the people of Israel and of the Torah and Jewish law despite persecutions and dispersion. I do not think there is a similar example in world history. One should also add monumental creations such as the Bible and the Talmuds, the preservation of Jewish law as an organizing and cohesive framework throughout the Jewish world despite all the dispersion, hardships, and persecutions. The variety of different customs only testifies to the fact that the dispersion did not wreak havoc on the Torah framework itself. Despite the dispersion, these are different interpretations within one framework, while preserving the possibility of discourse, shared conduct, and respect for differing opinions. All this we also bequeathed to the rest of the world, as noted above.

Add to this the realization of the return to the land and the vision of the prophets after thousands of years of exile, the revival of language and nationhood out of nothing, and the creation of the only democracy in the Middle East (I think we are the only democratic state founded in the world since 1948). All these are unique events in the history of the world and of its peoples, and in particular one must remember that all this occurs straight out of a history of mad persecutions lasting thousands of years, culminating in the Holocaust of the twentieth century. In addition, one can see the unique weight Jews have in world culture, art, ideology, and science (even their prominence in measures of intelligence compared to other groups), and so on. All these indicate that there is here a highly unique group playing a leading role in the history and culture of the world. Is it not reasonable to wonder what the root of this uniqueness is?!^[24]

I would add to this also the blatant anti-Semitism that has existed in the world from time immemorial, including in our own day. This includes the countries of today’s liberal Western world, which supposedly recoils from the blatant anti-Semitism of earlier generations. The hypocritical and glaringly discriminatory hostile attitude of this world toward the State of Israel is really incomprehensible. In particular, it reflects unreasonable and unrealistic expectations of a state that lives in such threatened and difficult conditions. Why is it specifically us whom everyone persecutes? Why are we expected to behave like ministering angels, not reacting to the murderous hatred and abyssal enmity from which we have suffered here in this land for more than a hundred years? How does one show such empathy to murderers and terrorists, even while they direct their weapons at the entire Western world as well (and at their own brothers, of course)? How is it possible that the most basic instincts do not lead the Western world to condemn Islam and join Israel in its struggle against the terror that threatens it, a terror that refuses to compromise or accept any reasonable proposal (which it certainly does not deserve)? Why does the UN occupy itself obsessively all the time only with Israel, when even if everything presented there were true (and it certainly is not), there are still, by every standard, places in the world where horrors occur on completely different scales? Why does the liberal press around the world join the terrorists and the corrupt and primitive states and societies around us, which have contributed nothing to human culture apart from terror, howling, and abuse through oil prices? All this against the only democracy in the Middle East.

The common claims are that this is not anti-Semitism but anti-Israelism (anti-Semitism is illegal in most countries). But a simple look with an unprejudiced eye shows that this is simply false. This is an obvious reincarnation of ancient anti-Semitism that in our day has become anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. Otherwise it is hard to explain this baffling attitude. It seems to me that all this testifies that there is something special and different here, and that the world too recognizes this, consciously and even more so unconsciously. It seems to me that one can quite reasonably derive from this the conclusion that there is probably something—or someone—special accompanying this people and guiding it on its path, that it has a role and is fulfilling it, and that the world recognizes this (sometimes unconsciously).

All this also distinguishes Jewish faith from the alternatives (Christianity and Islam). These have not been endowed with the same uniqueness. On the contrary, they have played a very active part in the persecutions I have described here. In Christianity this is part of Christian theology, which assumes that the people of Israel were abandoned by God and will not rise again until they accept the “New Covenant.” This assumption suffered a severe blow with the establishment of the State of Israel and Israel’s restoration in its land.

Back to the significance of the whole

One might argue that all this is merely accidental. After all, it is possible that there should be such an exceptional people that receives a different kind of treatment. Our friend David Hume would ask here: is this not a more plausible option than the option that speaks of metaphysical roles? Is it not possible that all these are the natural result of a unique history without assuming anything about a higher power or revelation and divine providence?

It is important to understand that all this joins the picture described so far and must be examined within that framework, not only on its own. After we reached the conclusion that there is a God, that it is plausible He would reveal Himself, and that a tradition has reached us regarding the revelation at Sinai, where a Torah was given to us and with it some role (which in turn again confirms the reasoning that God may indeed be expected to reveal Himself to us, and this is not mere anthropomorphism), we see across history the consequences of that revelation, which again confirm it. This is a very exceptional and unique history, one conducted against the current and from a religious and moral starting point opposite to everything around it. Precisely when one takes the background into account, it is very hard to ignore all this. The traditional claim is that this is the result of the revelation and of the special role imposed on us there. The “natural” and accidental alternatives are nourished by a basic lack of trust in such a revelation. But if one adopts the conclusion that it is plausible there was a revelation, there is no reason to adopt strained alternatives (even if possible) in order to escape this natural and compelling conclusion.

If one sees all these aspects together, even if each of them separately can be challenged, it seems to me that a fairly convincing structure emerges that supports the claim of uniqueness and the essential truth of the revelation and of Jewish faith.^[25]

The attitude toward other beliefs: the meaning and validity of exclusive discourse

The description given so far is fairly subjective. Everything is from my point of view, and I am aware that it is colored by my education and my way of looking at things. As I explained, we are not dealing here with objective philosophical arguments but with impression. One may now raise the claim that if I had been born in a different place and time, as part of a society with a different faith, I would have seen the same charm in another religion (Christian or Muslim). One can argue about how much stronger the impressions I have presented here are than a merely subjective perspective (my sense is that they are). But even if not, I would like to argue here that a conclusion still follows from this about how we should relate to other beliefs and to those who hold them.

It seems reasonable to me that, even if I am right, a reasonable person born and raised in a village in Poland or Ukraine, or in the Sahara, believes with at least the same degree of devotion and sincerity in the faith in which he was educated and that is held by his parents and teachers. It is reasonable that in his eyes too his faith is the most plausible. Moreover, had I been born in a Polish village, it is entirely possible that I would have been a Christian believer following the priest’s instructions and convinced that we were the ones holding pure truth. I am not inclined to skepticism and postmodern relativism, but since my assumption is that God does not come with grievances against His creatures—that is, He does not blame them if they act reasonably and according to the best of their common sense—it is clear to me that that Pole who holds to his beliefs, although in my view he is mistaken, will likely receive fitting treatment from the Holy One, blessed be He, just as I will.

My conclusion is that the exclusive discourse on which we all grew up—as though we are the ones who hold pure truth and there is none besides it, and all the others are mistaken and misleading and will even be punished for their heresy—is a discourse meant for internal purposes. It may even be argued that there is no right and wrong here at all, and that every person and society should act according to their own tradition. But as stated, I do not belong to postmodern discourse, and therefore I make one of two other claims here: (a) It may be that revelation is possible and that it contains different demands for each society and group, with no contradiction at all. Each society has what is right for it and what is expected of it. (b) Even if there is a religious truth, and we are indeed the ones who are right, it is still clear that others deserve reasonable treatment from us and from the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore the exclusive discourse of the right and the wrong is aimed mainly at cultivating the believers’ self-confidence, and it is hard to see it as a discourse that expresses reasonable theological conceptions on the merits. Is it reasonable that the Holy One, blessed be He, determines the fate of a person or a society solely according to the place in which they were born?! After all, their outlook is forced upon them to a great extent, and it is not reasonable to punish a person acting in good faith for something beyond his control.

If God is nevertheless so unjust that He ignores such arguments of compulsion, I doubt to what extent one can trust His standards of justice at all. In any case, it seems to me that this is not the God my tradition presents to me. Therefore the conclusion is that because the whole description up to this point is colored by subjectivity, it does not necessarily reflect the real superiority of the Jewish tradition. And therefore, even if this tradition is indeed true, it is still clear that those who hold other beliefs are entitled to equal, humane, and respectful treatment.

It may be that the rabbinic attitude—which is indeed not egalitarian and is exclusive—was rooted in a world different from ours. There, the other beliefs were repulsive on the human plane, and perhaps there was also a simple assumption that everyone understood that the God of Sinai is the true God and that only the evil inclination led them elsewhere. Thus the Sages developed a disrespectful and unequal attitude toward other beliefs, as also toward Jews who did not believe in the accepted tradition. And throughout the generations, when holders of other beliefs persecuted us, it was only reasonable that the attitude toward them should be accordingly. But today the situation is different. We are dealing with normative people who have no reason whatsoever to think that our faith is the correct one, and it is clear that their adherence to another faith comes from an authentic place (that really is what they think). Such a situation requires a different ideological attitude. I devoted an essay to the proper attitude toward Jewish heretics, and I will return to this at length in the next two books.

Other Jewish streams

We are still left with the question of other Jewish streams, such as Reform, Conservatism, or Karaite Judaism. It is hard to decide among all these, and here only the question of general impression remains. And yet it seems that something more can be said. Reform Judaism does not believe in revelation and the giving of the Torah, and therefore the confrontation with it is tied to the previous chapters. Conservative Judaism is not essentially different from Orthodoxy, since both are committed to Jewish law, except that there is between them a dispute (fairly minor) about its interpretation. In many cases, in my opinion, Conservative Judaism is more correct, but I see no need to enter into that in the context of our discussion here. Karaite Judaism does not recognize the giving of an oral Torah, and in that sense it rejects the tradition of revelation that bound the two Torahs (written and oral) together. Therefore here too, if tradition is what is at issue, anyone who picks and chooses among its different parts bears the burden of proof. In any case, it is clear that a brief discussion like this is not enough to clarify the dilemma among the different streams. But that is not my intention here. For the purposes of our discussion, it is enough for me that each person must choose one of these as the authentic realization of the revelation.

Part Three

The normative discussion: the validity of revelation

1. On the obligation to obey the divine command and on normative grounding in general

Introduction

In chapter 1 we noted that religions of revelation ought to provide rational grounds on two planes of criticism: the factual plane—whether there really was a revelation; and the normative plane—even if there was, why it obligates us. In the previous part we dealt with the first question, and in this part we will deal with the second.

The root of the problem: the naturalistic fallacy

The need for this part is rooted in what philosophy calls the naturalistic fallacy. In the third part of the fourth notebook we briefly described Hume’s distinction between ought and is, that is, between facts and judgments. Hume’s claim is that there is a chasm between the factual plane and the various planes of judgment (the ethical, aesthetic, legal, halakhic, or any other non-factual plane), and no inference can bridge that gap. Therefore, from factual premises one cannot derive an evaluative or judgmental conclusion. If we take an example from the ethical context, from the fact that murder causes pain one cannot derive the conclusion that murder is forbidden. An additional bridging assumption is required, for example that it is forbidden to cause pain. This bridging assumption connects the factual plane (pain) with the judgmental domain (the prohibition). In aesthetic contexts too, one cannot derive from the premise that a given painting contains many colors the conclusion that it is beautiful, since the premise (many colors) is a fact and the conclusion (beauty) is a judgment (an aesthetic one in this case). Here too a bridge principle is needed, that is, an assumption connecting facts to judgments (for example, that what contains many colors is beautiful) and helping us leap over that gap.

If we apply this to religious obligation, then even if we reach the conclusion that there truly was a revelation at Sinai and a Torah was given there, all these are facts. The question is whether and how one can derive from them obligation (religious obligation, in this case). Seemingly there is a naturalistic fallacy here. If so, even if we were convinced by the previous part that there really was a revelation, the obligation to obey its content still needs grounding. Why should we listen to God? And again—not because of the doubt that perhaps He did not reveal Himself, or that this is not exactly what He wants from us, but even if it is clear to us that He did reveal Himself and that this is what He demands, still the obligation to obey Him does not follow from that. The mere fact that there is a command does not mean there is an obligation to obey it. Not in every situation in which someone commands me to do something am I obligated to obey him.

So how are norms grounded at all?

The great question that arises here is how norms can be grounded at all. How can one show someone that he is obligated to obey some normative system? This applies to morality, law, Jewish law, or any other system. The things on which one can build such a basis are facts, since only on the factual plane can one bring solid claims that are not open to argument. But facts can never ground norms. So what does one do?

Let us consider a fundamental question in legal theory: why obey the law?^[26] There is a law in the state’s statute book, and I know this. I now ask why I should be obligated. What is the justification and validity of this law obligating me? Why should I observe it? Here too, the fact that there is such a law is a fact, but the decision about obligation to this law is not a fact but a norm. The naturalistic fallacy says that a norm cannot be grounded in a fact.

On the other hand, when people are asked this question, many of them do not understand it at all. “What do you mean,” they say, “it’s the law!” It is self-evident to them that if there is a law, there is an obligation to obey it. It seems obvious that in their view this requires no justification whatsoever.

So what could be a sufficient justification for obligation to law? Clearly it cannot be a clause in the statute book stating that the law must be obeyed. If it is a clause in the statute book, then the question arises why one is obligated to that clause itself. As noted, we are still before finding the basis of our obligation to the law. That itself is what we are seeking, and it cannot be that the basis is found in the statute book itself. On the other hand, this basis cannot be some fact, because of the naturalistic fallacy. And perhaps it will be another norm, not from the statute book? That too is impossible, because that norm—or the entire normative system to which it belongs—requires justification to the same degree. How will we ground it? Neither from within it nor in a fact outside it.

It appears that we are caught in a loop that essentially has no solution and cannot have one. A justification for normative obligation is a question that, by its very structure, cannot be solved.

A reminder: ethical facts

To indicate the direction of a solution to the problem, let me first recall that in the third part of the fourth notebook, when we discussed the validity of morality, we dealt with a similar question. There too the problem was how one can ground the validity of non-factual claims (ethical claims). One cannot rest them on facts, and any other basis will never be solid in itself.

One possibility is, of course, to deny ethical obligation and see it as merely a subjective feeling. On the other hand, anyone who believes in that obligation and judges those who are not committed to it (almost all of us are like this) must find some way to ground it. He cannot accept the proposal that this is merely a subjective and non-binding feeling. If we judge a person for immoral acts, there must be some objective basis that provides us with the standard. We saw there that God (the God of the moral argument) is the only basis that can bear this burden. On the other hand, we now see that the mere fact that there is a God and that He commanded morality is not enough to ground obligation. Even if He did command it, this is at most a fact. And because of the naturalistic fallacy, the normative question still remains: why obey this command?

Let me sharpen the point: the difficulty is not only that we cannot know what is moral and what is not, but that there is no such thing—and there cannot be such a thing—as morality. Against what shall we compare an ethical claim in order to know whether it is true or not? We saw there that there is no other way out of this difficulty except recognizing that there is another kind of facts: ethical facts. These differ from physical facts in two main respects: 1. Their essence. 2. Our mode of acquaintance with them (how we learn them). We saw there that these are charged facts, unlike physical facts, which are neutral. A physical fact tells us nothing except that this is how things are and not otherwise. It describes some state of affairs in the world. Whether we like it or not, that is the situation. And that situation, by itself, does not obligate us to anything either (that is the naturalistic fallacy: a fact does not entail a norm or any obligation). But an ethical fact is a fact of a different character. It is a fact charged with normative content. Whoever understands it must be moved to action. The naturalistic fallacy does not apply to it. An ethical obligation follows necessarily from an ethical fact. Between these two there is no gap at all.

I explained there that someone who claims he really knows that act X is good and still looks for a justification as to why there is an obligation to do it simply does not really know that this is a good act. The contemplation of the Idea of the Good yields ethical facts, which are charged facts (that produce action and obligation), not physical facts, which are neutral by nature. To understand that a given act is good means to understand that this is what ought to be done.

Here we come to the second difference between ethical facts and physical facts. Physical facts are present to us through sensory observation (or through generalizations based on it). Ethical facts, by contrast, are discerned through another kind of observation. We do not observe ethical facts sensibly; rather, we contemplate ideas. This observation is of course not done with the eyes but with the eyes of the intellect—that is, with our intuition. There are things, such as moral principles and the obligations attached to them, that seem self-evident to us even though they have no observational basis. If we are not relativists who view morality as something relative and subjective, I explained there that in our view these must be the results of “observing” the Idea of the Good, from which we learn what a good act is and what a bad act is. From it also arises the obligation to the good and to the moral, since one who understands an ethical fact necessarily also understands that it must be fulfilled and that one must obey the moral command.

Religious facts

Obligation to the divine command is also a kind of charged fact, not a neutral one. When we stand before God commanding us, it is self-evident to us that there is an obligation to obey Him. True, there are those who do not see this, but one who does not see it is really blind to facts of this kind, and therefore he seeks an explanation. He resembles someone who stands before the moral command and does not understand why he should obey it. One who seeks an explanation as to why we should obey the divine command is like someone who wonders why we should do what is moral and avoid what is not. I do not intend to claim that God’s command is necessarily moral or that there is an identity between the religious command and the moral command. I definitely do not think so, and I will expand on this in the third book. My claim here is only on the methodological plane, the meta-legal plane of Jewish law, and the meta-moral plane. The logic that governs normative obligation requires us to recognize the existence of intuitive observation that yields obligation. This is true in the ethical realm, and so too in the religious realm.

Convincing the convinced

The question now arises: what is to be done by one who does not feel this? We have no way to convince the blind that sight is possible or that sight is a useful and reliable tool. This is true both of physical blindness, and even more of moral blindness, and of course also of religious blindness.

My main purpose in this part is not to convince people that there is an obligation to obey the divine command. Someone who does not understand this is very hard to convince. But my sense is that very many people do understand it, and nevertheless wonder why it is true. I have met many people who asked themselves (and me): even if I have within me a sense of obligation to the divine command, why should I obey it? Is it rational? This leads quite a few to treat that feeling as a subjective emotion, the result of religious education (or conditioning), and, following that conclusion, to abandon their religious commitment.

This notebook is intended mainly for those who find this feeling within themselves. My claim is that there is no necessity whatsoever to say that it is something irrational, or the result of conditioning. That feeling is similar to the moral feeling, which many of them refuse to discard. My claim is that for the same reason there is no need to discard religious obligation. Both obligations, ethical and religious, are the result of intuitive observation. It is not necessarily a subjective emotion.

One must remember that whenever we seek a logical basis for any claim, we will always have to rest it on some foundational assumptions (axioms). By definition, as axioms, these will never have good justification, and yet on them we ground other claims. Why? Because foundational assumptions do not require a logical basis. They are the foundation of any logical basis whatsoever. Seeking a logical basis for axioms is an oxymoron. Seemingly, with respect to every logical argument one may raise the question whether it is rational to rely on unproven and ungrounded claims. But if so, what is rationalism at all? Logical arguments too are exposed to the same criticism of irrationality.

My answer to all these questions is that this is the nature of rationalism. It always begins from foundational assumptions that strike us intuitively as plausible. As long as those assumptions appear true to us, there is no reason to throw them away. To discard a claim that appears true to us merely because we did not find a basis for it—that is the stance of total skepticism. Of course I have no way to convince genuine skeptics. But if they want to be consistent, they must cast doubt on everything, not only on belief in God and religious obligation.

My claim here is addressed only to the convinced. One who is not a skeptic need not start becoming one only in the domain of faith and religious obligation. If it seems plausible to you—go with it. Even if it seems groundless to you, that is because an axiom is always groundless, and without axioms there is no logic. If so, such a process is entirely rational. In my book Truth and Uncertainty I also clarified why following paths that are supposedly beyond the rational does not help in this context. It is nothing but an escape from confronting a difficulty. When we have good intuitions, there is no reason at all to discard them even if we have no basis for them. Talk about a basis beyond the rational is an evasion. The basis is the ideal contemplation described above. This is the basis of every rational consideration, since every such consideration begins from foundational assumptions. This is rationality itself, even though it truly does not yield certainty. We must always suspect and examine ourselves lest intuition be misleading us. But as long as we have not found a plausible basis for that, there is no reason to abandon intuitions. That very abandonment itself rests on other intuitions, and they are no better grounded than those we discarded.

Without understanding this there is no moral obligation, but as I have shown in several of my books, without this there is also no trust in science (which also rests to a large extent on intuitions, and on controlled thinking based on them). Now I am arguing that without this there is also no belief in God. Faith is part of rationality, and like all its other parts it too is based on assumptions rooted in our intuition. One who understands that there is revelation and that a divine command was given in it ought, from that alone, to understand that there is an obligation to fulfill it. Many of us feel this, and there is no reason in the world to attribute it to a subjective emotion—no more than moral obligation or any other obligation.

On truth and the possibility of persuasion

In chapter 4 above we addressed the criticism directed at Abraham our father and his act of the Binding of Isaac. I argued that when Abraham experiences a revelation and a divine command, it is clear to him that this is what he is experiencing. There is no room for doubts that perhaps this is a hallucination or some other deception. I compared the matter there to an argument between a blind person and a sighted one, where the sighted person has no way to convince the blind person of the reliability of sight, but at the same time the blind person’s criticism will not deter him from the trust he places in his own sight. The fact that one cannot persuade, or that persuasion is difficult, is not necessarily related to the question whether the claim under discussion is true or not.

My claim here is that the situation with the sense of religious obligation is very similar. Critics from the outside simply suffer from blindness to this obligation, exactly like those who criticize ethical obligation. There is no way to explain or persuade someone who does not find this within himself, but there are ways to guide the critic so that he may find this sense of obligation within himself (see in the fourth notebook on “theological” arguments. That is exactly what they do). And certainly there is a way to say to someone who does find it within himself that there is no need at all to reject it and treat it as a merely subjective feeling. The fact that the feeling regarding moral obligation is more widespread than the feeling regarding religious obligation only means that on this matter more people are mistaken. It is more delicate. But there is no necessity to infer from this that it is merely a subjective feeling.

Another look at the meaning of religious education

It seems to me worthwhile here to pause over another difficulty that accompanies many wavering people. One of the most common statements in discourse about faith is that there is, as a matter of fact, a very high correlation between home, parents, and religious education, on the one hand, and religious faith, on the other. In a very large majority of cases (although there are of course exceptions), one who is born in a religious home becomes religious, and one who is born in a secular home becomes secular. Many argue that this means that what is involved is programming, or conditioning, and not the genuine formation of a worldview. A person is the landscape of his birthplace. That is all.

First I will say that this claim is directed at secularity no less than at religiosity. For some reason, there is a sense as though this is specifically an attack on the religious worldview. Why is secularity not exposed to a similar attack? I do not understand this. In the final analysis, either there is a God or there is not. Either there was a revelation or there was not. Either there is an obligation to obey the divine command or there is not. Both those who think yes and those who think no may arrive there through educational programming, but that does not tell us which side is right. After all, one of them is certainly right, is it not? So how do we decide?

For the picture I described, according to which there is a correlation between the environment in which one grows up and the ideological product, there can be only two interpretations:^[27]

1. Faith and disbelief are both products of conditioning. We have no way to know who is right.
2. One of them is right and the other is wrong. The error—and it alone—is the product of educational conditioning.

The criticism assumes the first interpretation, whereas I support the second. Moreover, my claim is that religious awareness is the true one, and lack of commitment is the error. The explanation I offer for this is that religious commitment, like moral commitment, is a result of using the tools of intuition. These are delicate tools, far more delicate than our senses, and therefore they require development. Religious education, like moral and legal education (civics), is a process of developing these tools. This is not programming, but the development of tools that enable the perception of something real. It is true that without religious education a person usually does not become religious, but that is not because religious education is necessarily programming. It is because, without this education, a person fails to form within himself the tools for perceiving religious commitment. Without them (and sometimes even with them) he sometimes reaches the conclusion that this is a subjective feeling.

Even understanding mathematics requires education and the guidance of teachers in order to form mathematical tools and modes of thought. So realms as subtle as morality and religious faith certainly require such formation. It is therefore no wonder that faith usually grows in the soil of religious education. The conclusion drawn from this—that it must therefore be programming—is unnecessary and rash. The other interpretation is no less plausible, and in my view much more so.

Summary: Preaching to the Converted

Of course, this argument itself, like everything I have said here, is not conclusive. But it is a possible interpretation, and before one adopts as self-evident the interpretation that attributes everything to programming, it is worth considering this one as well. Look within yourselves and decide whether, in your view, this is programming or intuitive insight. And if it is programming, why are moral and civic commitments—which are also the result of educational development—not such cases?! I repeat that my remarks here are aimed mainly at those who find this commitment within themselves, and my purpose is to show them that there is no necessity whatsoever to adopt an interpretation according to which this is programming, an interpretation that leads to abandoning the commitment. The other interpretation is no less compatible with our intuitive feelings, and therefore the burden of proof lies with whoever claims that it is wrong. Anyone who wants to make me abandon my strong and basic intuitions must provide me with very good reasons for doing so.

In the next chapter I will try to draw an analogy between the sense of religious duty to obey God’s command and the sense of duty ingrained in most people to obey their parents. There too one can view it as a subjective emotion implanted in us from birth rather than as a moral duty, and there too one may wonder whether that is really so.

1. Gratitude as a Basis for the Service of God^[28]

Introduction

In this chapter we will examine religious commitment from another angle. We will begin with a discussion of gratitude as a basis for this commitment, and distinguish between two kinds of gratitude: ethical gratitude and philosophical gratitude. We will see that in fact this is the same commitment described in the previous chapter, only from a somewhat different angle.

Gratitude as a Basis for Religious Commitment in Our Time

The author of Duties of the Heart, along with several other thinkers, explains the foundation of the service of God as based on gratitude toward God.^[29] Many find this approach very problematic, especially after the Holocaust. But I will say at the outset that gratitude as a basis for the service of God is a problematic thesis even on its own terms. It is very difficult to base our sweeping commitment to God and His Torah—which in certain circumstances can extend as far as an obligation to give up one’s life—on the moral duty of gratitude. If only because the duty of gratitude is generally perceived as weaker than the duty to serve God (and perhaps even as derived from it).

Rabbi Amital,^[30] raises a piercing challenge to the validity of this approach in our time:

Can a Jew who lost his wife and children really serve God on the basis of gratitude? Can a Jew whose task was to remove burned corpses from the furnaces of Auschwitz serve God when the awareness underlying that service is gratitude? Absolutely not—under no circumstances!^[31]

He then cites the words of Rabbi Joshua ben Levi in the Talmudic passage in Yoma 69b:

For Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: Why were they called the Men of the Great Assembly? Because they restored the crown to its former glory. Moses came and said: “The great, mighty, and awesome God.” Jeremiah came and said: Foreigners are carousing in His Temple—where is His awesomeness? So he did not say “awesome.” Daniel came and said: Foreigners are enslaving His children—where is His might? So he did not say “mighty.” They came and said: On the contrary, this is His mighty power—that He conquers His impulse and gives the wicked time. And this is His awesomeness—for were it not for the fear of the Holy One, blessed be He, how could one nation survive among the nations? But how could the Rabbis do this and uproot the formula established by Moses? Rabbi Elazar said: Since they knew of the Holy One, blessed be He, that He is truthful, therefore they did not speak falsely of Him.

From this he derives the following principle:

The service of God must be built on truth, not on falsehood and flattery. Therefore prophets who did not feel that expressions such as “the great,” “the mighty,” and “the awesome” described God refrained from using those expressions, even though by doing so they departed from the language of the Torah and from the wording established by Moses our Teacher.

So too in our case. We cannot base our service of God on a foundation of gratitude in an age in which the greatest catastrophe in the history of the Jewish people occurred.

The only possible way out for such a person, in Rabbi Amital’s view, is a service based on faith. This foundation too is based on the words of the author of Duties of the Heart:

As was said of one of the pious men, who would rise at night and say: My God, You have made me hungry and left me naked, and You have placed me in the darkness of night, and yet You have shown me Your might and Your greatness. If You burn me in fire, I will only love You more and rejoice in You. This resembles what was said: “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15). And to this matter the sage alluded when he said: “A bundle of myrrh is my beloved unto me; between my breasts he shall lie” (Song of Songs 1:13). And our sages said by way of midrash: “Even though my beloved distresses and embitters me, between my breasts he shall lie” (Shabbat 88b) (Part I, Gate of the Love of God).

However, it is not entirely clear why faith serves as a substitute for service based on gratitude, and in what sense. If gratitude is indeed the ordinary basis for the service of God, then when there is no reason to be grateful, apparently the reason to serve God disappears altogether. Why should faith—which at bottom is an attitude toward a fact (that there is a God, or that He created me and the world)—constitute any reason whatsoever to serve Him? Gratitude is a moral norm, and as such it can serve as a basis for commitment to the service of God. But a fact that I believe is only a fact. How can a fact serve as the basis for a normative obligation?

The Very Obligation of Gratitude?

It seems to be agreed by all that there is an obligation to feel gratitude toward God, even if that is not the sole basis for the service of God (see below). Rabbi Amital’s remarks deny not only the possibility of basing the service of God on gratitude, but even the very possibility of being grateful to God. His argument implies that a person in our generation cannot be grateful to Him at all. This is of course a harder conclusion than the one explicit in his words, and also a far more problematic one. Are we really exempt from the duty of gratitude toward God? Is this duty a time-bound commandment? Is it not part of the eternal nature of the Torah? And further, does this claim apply only to those who themselves passed through that inferno? In other words, it is not clear whether Rabbi Amital means to exempt a person only because of psychological difficulty, or whether there is a principled claim here: in light of these events, God no longer “deserves” our gratitude.

Some have proposed explanations that allow us to continue being grateful to God despite those terrible events. Rabbi Amital himself even recounts a conversation he had with Abba Kovner in which he argues that faith in man suffered a harder blow from these events than faith in God. If we take the point one step further, we can argue that these events were the work of human beings, and that God, who entrusted His world to guardians—that is, to us—is not responsible for what human beings do to one another by their own free choice.^[32]

The Moral Difficulties

There is quite a bit of evil and suffering in the world even in ordinary times. Is it true that every Jew has received more good from God than evil? Is it true that each of us is supposed to thank God for creating him? I am not at all sure that every Jew would answer this question in the affirmative, even if he himself did not go through the Holocaust, and even if the Holocaust had never occurred at all. After all, the schools of Hillel and Shammai already took a vote and concluded (Eruvin 13b) that it would have been better for a person not to have been created than to have been created. Even in ordinary times, the balance sheet of the average person tilts in favor of evil and suffering, and therefore the question of gratitude toward the One who created us is not so simple.

Moreover, the very comparison that the author of Duties of the Heart draws between the duty to thank a human being who has done us good and our duty to thank God is problematic. Does God’s benevolence toward us involve any effort on His part? One might say that even a benefit given without effort still creates some obligation of gratitude, but it would be hard to extract from that a commitment as far-reaching as self-sacrifice for the observance of God’s commandments.

We can press the difficulty even further. All the good that God bestows upon us is necessary for us only because we have deficiencies and needs, which He too created in us. We need air to breathe only because we were created in such a way that without air we cannot live. With regard to being saved from illness, the difficulty is even sharper: it was God who gave us the illness, and only afterward rescued us from it. The same applies to car accidents and other dangers.

The Logical-Philosophical Difficulties

Up to this point we have dealt with difficulties located in the moral sphere. We can now continue with difficulties in the logical-philosophical sphere: can one even define an obligation of gratitude toward One who created us? Had He not created us, we would have had no needs, and consequently the difficulties or benefits we received from Him would have had no significance.^[33] In addition (and again this is in the moral sphere), the very fact that He created us morally obligates Him to care for us. How would we regard someone who creates some creature and does not care for it? Is that not an elementary moral consequence of His being our Creator and we His creatures?^[34]

Can one even speak of an obligation to be grateful for our very creation? The alternative would have been that we did not exist. Gratitude toward a person is generally defined by comparing the difficult state he would have been in without that person’s gift with the better state in which the recipient finds himself after the gift. But creation does not permit such a comparison. Had we not been created, we would simply not have existed. If so, how can one define an obligation of gratitude for creation itself, especially against the backdrop of the Sages’ statement in the passage in Eruvin just mentioned that it would have been better for a person not to have been created than to have been created.^[35]

The Straightforward Obligation: Moral Gratitude

As already mentioned, the author of Duties of the Heart bases the duty to serve God on the duty to thank Him. The gist of his words is that God provides for all our needs, material and spiritual, and He does so intentionally for our sake (and not by chance or casually). Because of this, a moral duty rests upon us to be grateful to Him for it, just as it does toward anyone who does us good. This is a kind of gratitude whose core is reciprocity and commitment toward one who gives us something and acts on our behalf.

Rabbi Dessler also writes:^[36]

The service of God is built on the foundation of gratitude. For it is stated so explicitly in all the holy books that a person must thank the good God for all the good He does for him, and that because of it he must fulfill all the commandments, laws, and teachings.

We may note that Rabbi Dessler’s words can also be read as including the two elements we distinguished above: the duty to be grateful to God, and the fact that this duty is a basis for commitment to the service of God altogether.

In fact, the principle of the duty of gratitude toward God appears in an explicit verse in the Torah (Deut. 32:6): “Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father, who acquired you? He made you and established you.” Moses himself, later in that chapter, details the many good things God did for us (that He bore us on eagles’ wings and the like), as the basis for this demand.^[37] The liturgical poem “The Soul of Every Living Thing” is also devoted almost entirely to this issue: “Even if our mouths were filled with song like the sea, and our tongues with rejoicing like its many waves, we still could not thank You and praise You and laud You.”

Gratitude for Creation Itself: Philosophical Gratitude

Some also see an obligation for a person to feel gratitude toward God for his very creation (and not only for the good that God has bestowed and continues to bestow upon him). In fact, this is explicit in the verse itself: “He made you and established you.” The demand in this verse to be grateful to God is based on two foundations: He made you, and He also established you. Gratitude for the good He has bestowed upon us, and also for the very fact that He created us.

This idea also appears frequently in works of Jewish thought, and I will bring here only two examples. Nahmanides (on that verse) writes:

Is He not God your Father—for He begot you and raised you; and He acquired you—He made you His possession, for He brought you forth from nothingness into being, and every existent has an owner, as in the verse “The Lord acquired me at the beginning of His way” (Prov. 8:22), and likewise “Possessor of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14:19), as I explained there. And “He is the Rock who made you and established you” is like the expression “Did not One fashion us in the womb?” (Job 31:15).

Nahmanides notes that God made us something from nothing as one of the bases for the duty of gratitude toward Him. He even goes so far as to claim that the fact that God made us creates a certain kind of ownership He has in us. We shall see this in more detail below. The author of Toldot Yitzhak (the adoptive uncle of Rabbi Yosef Karo) expands on this even more in his commentary on the verse:^[38]

“Is He not your Father, your Possessor, He who made you”—for the philosopher says that a father is only an accidental cause of the son. Therefore Scripture says: Is He not your essential Father? And since you honor your physical father, who is only accidental, all the more so the Blessed One, who is the essential cause. This is what is meant by “and established you”: the accidental father is not the cause of the son’s continued existence, but only the cause of his emergence into the world, that is, of his birth. But the Holy One, blessed be He, is the cause of his continued existence.

Toldot Yitzhak points out that God is the essential and fundamental cause of our existence, and that this very fact obligates us to be more grateful to Him than to our biological parents.

The Meaning of Philosophical Gratitude

Above we saw difficulties that pertain to gratitude in general (for example, the fact that God expends no effort on it, and the like), but gratitude for creation itself raises a more basic difficulty: why should creation itself be a basis that generates a moral duty? It seems to me that the duty of gratitude for creation itself is an important key to understanding the proposal I would now like to make.

The obligation to feel gratitude for existence itself (“He made you and established you”) means that gratitude is not merely compensation for some investment or effort made on our behalf (for it was not done on our behalf, since we did not yet exist before it was done). There is a duty to be grateful toward the one who created me, or the one from whom I came, even if I received nothing from him. This is philosophical gratitude. Such gratitude is not measured specifically in light of effort or investment. Nor does it require the creator to have bestowed any particular good upon me. Such gratitude is a function of the very ontological bond between the creature (the potential bearer of gratitude) and its creator (God, as well as one’s parents).

Nahmanides, whose words were cited above, spoke of the duty of gratitude toward the one who created us ex nihilo. Above we pointed to the difficulties that arise from understanding the duty of gratitude in the accepted (moral) sense as applying to our very creation. It therefore seems that Nahmanides intended a different kind of gratitude, which I will call here “philosophical gratitude.” This gratitude is not based on a duty of moral “repayment” for benefits given to us, and apparently not on a comparison between a bad state without the gift and a good state created by the gift. Therefore the problematic features we described above do not exist with respect to this kind of gratitude.

We saw that the author of Toldot Yitzhak compares the duty of gratitude toward God with the duty of gratitude toward parents. He argues that the duty toward God is greater because He is the essential cause of our existence, whereas our parents are only the accidental cause. This whole comparison seems absurd from the usual perspective on gratitude. After all, parents must invest far more effort in us. They cared for us devotedly, raised us, and gave to us endlessly despite their limited means. What place is there to compare that effort to what God gives us? Why is the formal philosophical comparison made by Toldot Yitzhak at all relevant to the concepts of gratitude?

It seems that behind his words lies an intuition concerning the duty of philosophical gratitude. As stated, this is not gratitude for effort and giving, but rather the result of an ontological or other bond between us and the object of our gratitude. This gratitude is not a function of gift or effort, nor is it measured by the giver’s contribution to improving our condition (the comparison between states), but only by the degree of the bond between us and the object of this recognition (“every existent has an owner,” in Nahmanides’ formulation cited above). From this the author of Toldot Yitzhak concludes that if the bond is necessary and fundamental it generates more gratitude, and if it is accidental it generates less.

If there really is an obligation of philosophical gratitude, we can understand that the bond between God and us, His creatures, is so essential, and we are so dependent on Him, that it creates a total commitment—even to the point of self-sacrifice, when that is required. This does not stem from the fact that He has bestowed great good upon us, but from the fact that He is the most fundamental cause of our existence. He created us and He sustains us. And as the verse says: He made us, and He also established us. Everything we have is from Him, and therefore everything we have is subject to Him and to the fulfillment of His will. This is the foundation of the intuition about gratitude toward parents or toward the Creator, and it is also the intuition that creates our feeling of duty toward Him and toward them.

Back to Gratitude as a Basis for the Service of God

This proposal not only explains the foundation of the duty of gratitude toward God, but can also be seen as a basis for the commitment to serve Him. Here the problem of proportionality that we raised above does not necessarily arise (how can one derive from the duty of gratitude the duty to serve God, which is stronger than it and even prior to it), nor do the other problems we have described so far.

Of course, even here the question can arise whether this is really an obligation or merely an inbuilt tendency that exists in us and nothing more. Is there an obligation to be grateful to the one who created us, or are we simply built this way, with no normative conclusion following from it? Parents are an interesting test case in this respect. Each of us can ask himself whether, in his opinion, the obligation to honor parents and obey them is merely a subjective feeling, or whether there is here a genuine ethical duty. Do we have ethical criticism of someone who does not honor his parents, or only a negative feeling toward him, nothing more? Whoever answers in the affirmative regarding parents can interpret in the same way the feeling of duty toward the divine command.

In my article there I wrote that this is probably the meaning of Maimonides’ words at the beginning of the Mishneh Torah:

1. The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a First Being, and He brings every existing thing into being. All the beings of heaven and earth and what is between them exist only through the truth of His existence.
2. If it could occur to the mind that He does not exist, no other thing could exist.
3. If it could occur to the mind that none of the beings besides Him exist, He alone would exist, and He would not be nullified by their nonexistence, for all beings need Him, while He, blessed be He, needs neither them nor any one of them. Therefore His truth is not like the truth of any of them.
4. This is what the prophet says: “And the Lord God is truth” — He alone is truth, and no other possesses truth like His. And this is what the Torah says: “There is none else besides Him,” meaning that there is no true being besides Him like Him.
5. This Being is the God of the world, the Lord of all the earth, and He guides the sphere with a power that has no end or limit, a power without interruption; for the sphere turns continually, and it cannot turn without one who causes it to turn, and He, blessed be He, is the one who causes it to turn, without hand and without body.
6. Knowing this matter is a positive commandment, as it is said: “I am the Lord your God.” And anyone who entertains the thought that there is another god besides this one violates a negative commandment, as it is said: “You shall have no other gods before Me,” and denies the fundamental principle, for this is the great principle on which everything depends.

The knowledge that is the foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdom is not merely God’s very existence, but even more than that, His being the one who brings every existent into being, and the fact that everything exists through the truth of His existence. In halakhah 2 this is not just a negative reformulation of the content of halakhah 1. There is an important clarification here: this is a statement of the ontological bond. This halakhah teaches us that the dependence is not merely chronological (that He created us at some point in the past and then we went out from under His power), but synchronic (at every moment we depend on Him, and if one could imagine Him disappearing, we too would disappear). Halakhah 3 clarifies that the dependence is one-sided and not reciprocal; that is, He does not depend on us, only we on Him. Mutual dependence does not obligate the dependent party toward the one on whom he depends.

After a few more sources and clarifications, Maimonides concludes that “this is the great principle on which everything depends.” Why indeed does everything depend on this principle? According to the approach proposed here, the answer is obvious. This ontological bond (dependence) is precisely the basis for everything that follows in the Mishneh Torah. Commitment to halakhah and to the entire service of God depends on this principle. That is why these matters are placed here at the beginning of the book.

Indeed, after the philosophical elaboration of the principle of the knowledge of God, which is presented throughout the first four chapters of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, Maimonides arrives at the following consequence of this picture (Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, chapter 5):

1. The entire House of Israel is commanded concerning the sanctification of this great Name, as it says, “And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel,” and warned not to profane it, as it says, “And you shall not profane My holy Name.” How so? When an idolater rises up and compels an Israelite to transgress one of all the commandments stated in the Torah or be killed, he should transgress and not be killed, as it says regarding the commandments, “which a person shall do and live by them” — and live by them, and not die by them. If he died rather than transgress, he is liable for his own life.
2. When is this said? With regard to all other commandments except idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed. But with these three offenses, if one says to him: transgress one of them or be killed, he must be killed and not transgress. When is this said? When the idolater intends his own benefit, for example, he forced him to build his house on the Sabbath, or cook his food, or forced a woman to have intercourse with him, and the like. But if his intent is solely to make him transgress the commandments, then if it is in private, and there are not ten Israelites present, he should transgress and not be killed; but if he compelled him to transgress in the presence of ten Israelites, he must be killed and not transgress, even if he intended to make him transgress only one of the other commandments.
3. All this applies when it is not a time of religious persecution. But at a time of persecution—namely, when a wicked king like Nebuchadnezzar and his fellows rises and decrees against Israel to annul their religion or one of the commandments—then one must be killed and not transgress even over one of the other commandments, whether he was coerced in the presence of ten or in private among idolaters.

This total demand cannot be only a derivative of the good that God has bestowed upon us. There is a glaring lack of proportionality here. The only way Maimonides sees to base such a commitment is on the basis of the ontological bond he described at the beginning of his remarks.

Philosophical Gratitude as a Basis for the Service of God

Philosophical gratitude is not exposed to all the kinds of difficulties we examined above, whether the moral difficulty or the philosophical one. It seems that if this proposal is correct, it withstands even Rabbi Amital’s piercing objections. This gratitude, and only it, can serve as a possible basis for the commitment to serve God and for the total demand to do so, in some cases up to the point of self-sacrifice. The very soul that God Himself gave us (or created for us), we are obligated to sacrifice for Him when we are required to do so. It is quite possible that this is precisely what Rabbi Amital—and perhaps also the author of Duties of the Heart—meant when they spoke of the duty to serve God out of faith. Above we noted that this thesis is not self-evident. Why should faith, which is nothing more than recognition of a fact, constitute a basis for the obligation to serve God? Is an additional premise not required here, such as gratitude or something parallel to it (that is, a normative premise in addition to the factual one)? We can now understand that if there is faith that He is the Creator of the world, and especially the One who created us ourselves, then an ontological bond is created here that obligates us to be grateful to Him, at least on the philosophical plane.

This surprising and renewed obligation is rooted in our moral intuition. True, the very existence of an ontological bond is a fact, whereas the obligation to be grateful is a norm (that is, a duty of some sort). How can one derive a duty or norm from a fact? Why does the fact that God is the most fundamental cause of our existence lead to the existence of an obligation to be grateful to Him and to serve Him?^[39] It is very difficult to answer questions of this kind. It is easier to point to the existence of such an intuition in various contexts, and to anchor that intuition in observation of the Ideas, as I did above. At the end of my article there I also cited Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, who shows that the halakhic conception of gratitude is also based on a kind of binding subordination created in the obligated party, and not only on a mere moral duty.

I will conclude the chapter with several examples that will clarify a little the meaning of the ontological bond and the gratitude that derives from it.^[40]

Children Who Received Nothing from Their Parents

A good example for testing our intuitions is the case of parents and their children. Here too there is a clear and widely accepted duty of gratitude, and here too there is room to hesitate about its source: is it a duty based on what the parents gave the child, or on the very ontological bond between the child and his parents? The practical implication will concern situations in which the parents do not care for the child properly, whether deliberately or unintentionally, or the extreme case in which they bring a child into the world and abandon him. In such situations, would we recognize that they have rights regarding their child? Is there a duty of gratitude toward them in such cases?

The accepted approach is that even if the parent gave nothing to the child, he still basically has rights regarding him. It is worth discussing this דווקא in a case where the separation occurred against the parents’ will, for if they themselves were at fault there is a tendency to cast blame on them, and some would support taking away the rights due to them as a kind of sanction.

Let us therefore take as an example a case like the Yemenite children. It seems that no one would claim regarding the missing Yemenite children, absent from their parents against the parents’ will, that the parents have no rights regarding them because they did not raise them. The question is what about the children’s duty toward their parents (their gratitude toward them)? It seems to me that many would say that those children too would owe something to their parents, even though they received from them nothing besides their lives. The ontological bond between parents and children is enough to create commitment on some level. For example, with respect to decisions about caring for those parents, or the obligation to look after them—would we relate to these children exactly as we would to any other person? Would I, as a stranger, be obligated to care for these parents and entitled to make decisions regarding them, exactly like their biological children? Apparently not. The conclusion is that there exists an intuition that treats the very ontological bond as significant on the normative-value plane.

Thus we find in the Book of Education, commandment 33:

From the roots of this commandment is that it is fitting for a person to recognize and repay kindness to one who has done him good, and not be base, estranged, and ungrateful, for this is an evil and utterly repulsive trait before God and man. And he should take to heart that his father and mother are the cause of his existence in the world, and therefore it is truly fitting for him to do them every honor and every benefit he can, for they brought him into the world, and they also labored over him with many hardships in his childhood. And when he fixes this trait in his soul, he will rise from it to recognize the goodness of God, blessed be He, who is his cause and the cause of all his ancestors back to Adam the first man, and who brought him into the world and supplied his needs all his days, and placed him upon his proper form and the perfection of his limbs, and gave him a knowing and understanding soul—for were it not for the soul with which God graced him, he would be like a horse or mule without understanding—and he will weigh in his thoughts how very much he ought to be careful in His service, blessed be He.

Creators as Parents

Another surprising example of the meaning of the ontological bond is found in a legal discussion of copyright. Here I will comment only on the aspects relevant to our present topic. In legal thought there are two main ways of understanding copyright:^[41] (1) the utilitarian-social theory; (2) the property theory. The first sees a creator’s rights in his work as a convention whose purpose is to advance social goals and creative processes. By contrast, the second sees the creator’s rights as something due to him as a matter of right, rooted in property law. This is the conception that the work is the property of its creator.

The conception of a work as the property of its creator is fraught with no simple difficulties. From a halakhic perspective, it is generally accepted that a person has no ownership over abstract entities that have no tangible substance (in fact, this is the most basic aspect that gives rise to the main difficulty with respect to copyright in halakhah). Even from a legal perspective, it is difficult to point to a clear basis for proprietary rights of a creator in his work. Out of these difficulties there emerged in both legal thought and halakhic thought conceptions that see the creator’s rights in his work as derived from viewing the work as the offspring of its creator.

The father of the property approach in general jurisprudence is the philosopher John Locke. Locke opens his discussion of what he calls the “labor theory” (from which he derives copyright) with the claim that the earth was given to human beings by God, and that He also granted a person ownership over the products of his body and spirit. This is a different kind of ownership from the usual one. Its basis is the very fact that the work was conceived and born in the creator’s spirit. He did not buy it, and it has no tangible substance, but it is part of him and bone of his bones, and that is enough to define him as its owner. An interesting source for this issue is found in Plato’s Symposium.^[42] There, among other things, he writes as follows about the creator’s “children of the spirit”:^[43]

And every person would prefer such children to children of flesh and blood, for he has Homer and Hesiod and the other good poets before his eyes and envies them for the offspring they leave behind for themselves […] and Solon too is honored among you for the begetting of laws.

We find similar approaches in halakhah as well. For example, in the fourth volume of the Emek Hamishpat series, by Rabbi Yaakov Avraham HaKohen, entitled Copyright, the author argues that the basis of the creator’s right in his work is the work’s birth in the creator’s mind—that is, the very fact that they are “the fruits of his mind and heart.”^[44]

The source of these remarks is in the responsa Tzemach Tzedek (Supplementary Section, part 4, no. 142, sec. 9), which views the novel insights formed in a sage’s mind as produce that grew in his field. From there the author compares this to the law that a person becomes owner of property generated from his property (such as produce that grows in his field or his cow that gives birth), even without any act of acquisition. He goes on to cite many halakhic sources to the effect that a person’s creation belongs to him by the very fact that it was created, or born, through him.

In section 175 there, he cites the author of the responsa Tzafnat Paneach (no. 249), who explained the view of Tosafot in Sanhedrin (68b) that even a minor acquires his creation in this way by Torah law, even though ordinarily a minor has no ability to perform acts of acquisition. It belongs to him by the very fact that it is part of himself, even without any need for an act of acquisition. It is clear that this right is the result of the ontological bond alone. There is no consideration here concerning how hard the creator labored over his creation or how much effort it cost him. The mere fact that these are the products of his spirit or the children of his heart grants him rights regarding them; in Nahmanides’ words cited above: “Every existent has an owner.” The implication for our topic arises naturally. And indeed, in section 174 he himself brings a source for his words from Rashi’s commentary on Genesis, who explains the words “Possessor of heaven and earth” (Gen. 14:19) as follows: “Possessor of heaven and earth—that is, maker of heaven and earth. By making them, He acquired them to be His.”

Thus we see that one who makes or creates a thing has rights in it, or ownership over it. It is interesting that the proof comes from God’s relation to His creation, which is exactly our subject here. If so, God too has rights over us by virtue of the fact that He made us, even if He neither toiled nor exerted any effort for that purpose.^[45] It is important to emphasize that this argument shows that these rights are firmly grounded in ordinary human and legal intuition, and are not some sort of scriptural decree, for there is no canonical halakhic source for this beyond the reasoning of these decisors. This fits very well with the example we saw above regarding parents and their children.

There is, however, one additional important point that must be clarified in this context, for otherwise the argument will remain incomplete. The issue of copyright does not deal with the duties of the creation itself toward its creator, but with the rights of the creator in his creation. These rights are not directed toward the work itself. It is not the work that owes something to its creator, but rather every third party has no right to infringe the creator’s rights in his work. By contrast, our discussion concerns the duty of the created being itself toward its creator. Can one derive the latter from the former, or at least compare them?

Our assumption is that if Reuven has rights in Shimon because he fathered him, then the one obligated to respect those rights is not only a third party but also Shimon himself. The meaning of the statement that Reuven has rights is that Shimon owes something to Reuven (at least the realization of those rights themselves).

Moreover, from the comparison between the two issues one may argue that just as begetting creates rights for the begetter/creator, it also creates an obligation of the begotten toward his begetter. In both cases we are dealing with a normative bond (legal duties, or moral duties) derived from an ontological bond and nothing more. That is, the very fact that one can derive a normative bond from an ontological bond certainly receives support here.

And what about gratitude? Why, in fact, does a begetter have rights over the offspring? In my article I argued that this is because something of the begetter exists in his child (in the language of the Sages: “a child is his father’s limb”),^[46] and something of the creator exists in his creation. If so, the creation owes gratitude to its creator for the fact that something of him is present within it.^[47] In that article I detailed the meaning and implications of this claim, and showed that moral gratitude too is rooted in the same idea and the same conception.

Summary

In this chapter we noted that when people speak of gratitude as a basis for the service of God, they mean gratitude in a somewhat different sense. It is essentially the result of an ontic bond between creator and creation. This sharpens and clarifies our claim from the previous chapter, according to which there is a moral intuition that obligates the created being to obey its creator. God is like parents in this respect. With regard to honoring parents, one can raise doubts as to whether this is a duty or only an inbuilt psychological tendency that is not binding, and there it is commonly thought to be a moral duty. The same applies to the intuition of religious commitment toward our divine Creator.

1. “For Its Own Sake”

Introduction

In this very short chapter we will close the circle that was opened at the beginning of this notebook. Here we will connect the intuitive duty to serve God described in the last two chapters with the basic motivation of “for its own sake,” which is supposed to accompany the observance of the commandments.

Another Look at the Meaning of Command in Jewish Religiosity

In chapter 10 of the previous notebook, we discussed the central significance of command and halakhic commitment in Jewish religiosity (as opposed to Christian religiosity, which places the emphasis on morality and religious feeling). We saw there that the focus of the service of God is unconditional commitment to halakhah and to the divine commands.

If so, the analysis we carried out here, which yielded the intuition of commitment to the commands of our Creator, is not only a philosophical analysis of the validity of the commands. It is also the motivation that ought to accompany us when we perform God’s commandments. In the terms we defined in chapter 1 of this notebook, this is not only the basic norm (which addresses the halakhic system and not the individual person) but also the fundamental motivation that ought to accompany each person in practice at the moment of performance. The intuition of “He made you and established you” is not only a reason that impels us to observe the commandments, but also an intention that ought to accompany the actual observance. We are obligated to fulfill the commandments out of that very intuition and not for any other reason (including love and awe, as we saw in the previous notebook). This is not only the philosophical reason for religious commitment; it is, in fact, the very essence of the service of God altogether.

1. See also my article in Akdamot, “Gates of Conversion: On Violence and Good Intentions,” mentioned there. ↑

2. The points from here on are discussed in greater detail in my book Spirit of the Law, Sixth Gate, chapter 2. ↑

3. Some read “and not from their sages,” but this is probably the more accurate version. ↑

4. I will not enter here into the question of what, from the totality of the commandments, was given at Sinai. I will deal with this in the next two books. ↑

5. “Causing a Secular Jew to Sin,” Tzohar 25, 2006. ↑

6. This is not entirely parallel to the requirement of intention, since intention must actually accompany the performance of the commandment. It is supposed to be present in the mind of the person performing the commandment. Faith, however, is only a principled background condition. I am not claiming that according to Maimonides, a person who performs a commandment must think while doing so that he believes in God. That should be his motivation for observing the commandments, but it does not have to be actively present in his mind at the moment of observance. It is enough that, in principle, he is a believer. ↑

7. See my article, “Zeno’s Arrow and Modern Physics,” Iyyun 46, 1998, p. 425. ↑

8. Why can the very choice embodied in our moral actions not itself be the goal? See the following section but one. ↑

9. See my review of my friend Rabbi Amit Cola’s book, Havaya O Lo Haya, where I pointed out that faith can be stripped of almost all religious content (for example, the whole book of Genesis or the rest of the Torah narratives), aside from the basic revelation. See also the next book in this trilogy. ↑

10. See also the Wikipedia entry “Russell’s teapot.” ↑

11. See Rav Kook’s commentary, Ein Ayah, ad loc. ↑

12. In my book Emet Ve-lo Yatziv, chapters 15–16, there is a more detailed and extensive discussion of the issues addressed in this chapter. ↑

13. I chose this source because of its literary power. The question also arises in rabbinic sources and in Jewish commentators. ↑

14. Of course, Reuven can go back and grope again, but let us assume for the sake of discussion that he has no way to do so. They have already flown back to Australia, or he has lost his sense of touch, or perhaps one cannot grope the absence of furniture (it is always possible that the furniture in the room is located somewhere other than where we are groping). ↑

15. See also Saadia Gaon, Beliefs and Opinions, in the introduction, and likewise in the third treatise, sections 4–6, in the edition of Rabbi Qafih. See also Wikipedia, “Argument from Testimony (Judaism).” ↑

16. See Wikipedia, “Argument from Miracles.” See also the entry “Argument from Testimony (Judaism).” ↑

17. In chapters 15–16 of my book Emet Ve-lo Yatziv I presented a systematic critique of Hume’s argument. My remarks here are taken from there. ↑

18. Chapter ten; and later also in his books Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion. ↑

19. Randall, J. H. (1926). The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 293. ↑

20. See the discussion of the anthropic principle in the third notebook. ↑

21. The story appears, under the title “Blind,” on his company’s website, SIT (dated 27.4.2010): http://www.sitsite.com/blog/2010/04/blind/#more-262 ↑

22. The question whether those predictions were in fact fulfilled is a different question that I will not enter into here. ↑

23. See also chapter twenty of the second volume. ↑

24. I do not necessarily mean to claim that this was a divine hand, since I am very doubtful about the existence of divine interventions in modern history. I will discuss this in the book A New Light on Zion – Theology. Here it is enough for me to point to the significance of this revelation and tradition, which gives its bearers the power to bring about such exceptional events. ↑

25. And again I must emphasize what I wrote in an earlier note: I do not intend to claim divine involvement in history, but rather the power of the tradition that began at Sinai. For me, the one that brought about these events was the people of Israel, not necessarily with direct divine assistance. And yet the revelation that shaped the people and transmitted the tradition through it is what implanted within it these unique powers. ↑

26. See at length in the first and third parts of my book Spirit of the Law. ↑

27. Two remarks to remove possible objections:

    Clearly, for any person, belief or disbelief may come from conditioning or from a decision, true or false. I do not mean to say here that this is always the case, but that for each specific person one of these two interpretations applies.

    Beyond that, it is clear that almost all of us have both conditioning and decision as factors in our worldview. No one is wholly programmed or wholly deciding. But as far as I am concerned, so long as decision also has some weight—that is, so long as conditioning does not completely determine the result—this is a case of decision. None of us is a blank slate. I have expanded on this point in my book The Science of Freedom. ↑

28. The discussion here is based on my article “Gratitude: Between Morality and Ontology,” Talalei Orot 15, 2009, p. 121. For more detail, see there. ↑

29. See the “Gate of Examination” and the beginning of the “Gate of Service,” and below. ↑

30. Rabbi Y. Amital, “Even Though My Beloved Distresses and Embitters Me,” in A World Built, Destroyed, and Rebuilt, M. Miya (ed.), Alon Shevut, 2002, p. 118. ↑

31. In fact, two questions are hidden here. The first is substantive: the person described has no duty of gratitude toward the Creator. The second is psychological: even if theoretically there is such a duty, how can someone who went through events like removing corpses from the furnaces of Auschwitz actually live with such a consciousness? Here I am dealing mainly with the first question, but the implications certainly concern the second as well. ↑

32. See on this my book Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon, Kfar Hasidim, 2007, p. 485. The same also emerges from the words of Rabbenu Hananel on the passage in Chagigah 5a. The Gemara there deals with the question whether there is someone swept away without justice. Rabbenu Hananel explains there that such a situation exists only when one person murders another. That is, such an act is the deed of the human murderer and not a rolling out of events from above. See on this Rabbi Mordechai Goodman, “Is Anyone Swept Away Without Justice?”, Tzohar 11 (2002), p. 39. ↑

33. Note well: this is not the moral difficulty we discussed above. It is a difficulty rooted in logic. ↑

34. This point sharpens the fact that some of these difficulties also arise with respect to children’s duty of gratitude toward their parents. ↑

35. To be sure, this very statement is itself problematic for the same reason. If one cannot compare the state of a person who was created with his state had he not been created, then what does this puzzling assertion mean? In what sense is it preferable not to be created rather than to be created? Note well: the difficulty does not stem from evaluating the suffering against the good in our lives, but from the inability to compare the two states. In my aforementioned article I discussed the analogy to the well-known legal problem of “wrongful life”; I will not enter that point here. ↑

36. A. Dessler, Letter from Elijah, vol. 1, Jerusalem, 1995, p. 50. ↑

37. And see also the commentators on that passage. ↑

38. Toldot Yitzhak, Vagshal edition, Jerusalem, 1994. ↑

39. It should be noted that even the duty of gratitude based on giving and investment (moral gratitude, and not only philosophical gratitude) requires a similar justification. The fact that Reuven invested effort in giving me something is a fact. The duty to be grateful to him for it is a value or norm. How can one ground a norm in a fact? This is the fallacy known in philosophy as ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ (attributed to the Scottish philosopher David Hume). Without entering the analytic thicket of this issue, one can say that there is an intuition that bridges this gap between facts and norms. Accepted moral intuition instructs us that if someone has done us good, we ought to repay him with good. If so, if we see that a similar intuition also exists with respect to philosophical gratitude, that will suffice to ground this renewed obligation. ↑

40. In the previous note we observed that even in the context of moral gratitude there is no persuasive explanation, but there the intuition is self-evident to the ordinary person. My claim here is that such an intuition exists also with respect to philosophical gratitude. In my article I show the existence of such an intuition in legal thought as well through the discussion of the issue of “wrongful life.” ↑

41. See on this my article, “The Meaning of Ownership of Property: Between Halakhah and Law,” Years of Life, Petah Tikva, 2008, pp. 13–38, and the sources cited there; see also my article, “Deception and Intellectual Property,” Tehumin 25 (2005), pp. 350–366. ↑

42. Libes edition, pp. 137–138. ↑

43. My thanks to my friend R. Menachem Teitelbaum for this source and for further references. ↑

44. See there at the end of section 15 and especially throughout section 16. Also in section 23, paragraph 38, and many other places. This is his main thesis in grounding the view that there is ownership of copyright. ↑

45. There he cites the author of the responsa Tov Ta’am va-Da’at, first edition, no. 181, who explains in this way the rule that an artisan acquires the improvement in a vessel. And see there in section 176 as well the words of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, what he brought in his novellae to Gittin, sec. 4, s.v. ‘And if’ (p. 38 in the printed edition), in the name of Rabbi Hayyim of Brisk. ↑

46. A similar principle is “the fetus is the mother’s thigh.” In both cases, however, the point is that the fetus or offspring is part of the parent, and not the other way around. ↑

47. Either because he gave it those things, and for that there is a duty of gratitude; or because of the very fact that something of his, or something of himself, is present in it. ↑