Faith – Lesson 3

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Rabbi, a person who says, “I believe because faith gives my life meaning” — what is that? Is that a good claim or is it…? It depends how you interpret it, or how he interprets it. Meaning, if he says, “Look, since it gives me meaning, for me that’s an indication that it’s probably true,” then of course he’s a believer. He arrived at it through the fact that it gives him meaning, but if he understands that something giving him meaning is an indication that the thing is true — because if there were no God then belief in God wouldn’t give me meaning — let’s say someone makes that kind of claim, then he is a believer in every sense.

But if the person says, “Look, I don’t know whether or not there is a God, but behaving as if there is a God gives my life meaning,” then he’s an atheist. He’s an atheist who invented God in order to get meaning, just like Marx said religion is the opium of the masses. He’s absolutely right. There are masses of people for whom religion is opium. Those who look for religion as something that gives your life meaning. True, I agree completely.

I once wrote a column on my website about what meaning is. Quite a few philosophers deal with this question, even though at root it’s a psychological question and not a philosophical one. In any case, people mix up these two planes of meaning a lot; following Viktor Frankl, of course, this also got stirred up. These discussions greatly mix up these two levels of meaning. There is meaning on the psychological plane, if you like, the therapeutic plane. That is, Viktor Frankl — although he himself was apparently a genuine believer, also by the definition I’m speaking about here — but in his logotherapy, in his therapeutic doctrine, from his point of view he tells a person: find meaning for yourself. And in that sense he’s basically suggesting that a person formulate for himself some framework that will give meaning to his life. That doesn’t require that you also believe in that framework in the objective sense, but it will save you psychologically if you manage to pour meaning into your life.

So this concept of meaning is of course a concept of psychological meaning. I’m not talking about that. It doesn’t interest me. Maybe it has therapeutic value, but philosophically it doesn’t interest me. I’m talking about another concept of meaning, and that’s the concept of meaning, say, when I say that certain actions are good and other actions are bad. Now, in my view, if there is no external objective yardstick that determines what is good and what is bad, then this is a subjective psychological hallucination. Meaning, you think this is good and that is bad just because that’s how you’re built.

Therefore, meaning — or a value judgment about my actions, or meaning for anything — has to be given from some objective yardstick that determines what yes and what no, and to what extent yes and to what extent no. Meaning has to be formulated in light of some yardstick. Now if you’re talking about meaning in this philosophical sense that I’ve been speaking about here, then you are a believer. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, as an objective external entity — His existence gives meaning to everything I do, positive or negative, depending on what I do — but this is a source from which meaning can be carved out because there is something here outside me; it isn’t just a subjective matter. Meaning in this sense, not in Viktor Frankl’s sense — meaning in this sense is belief in every respect. Because here, from my point of view, meaning is derived from the fact that God really exists; therefore my actions have meaning.

In a world without God, a person can come and say: so what meaning is there to what you do? You’re just some piece of, I don’t know what, like an animal. You do what you want. You woke up in the morning, you want to do this, then do this; you want to do something else, do something else. There’s no meaning to what you do because there is no external yardstick that determines meanings, good and bad, right and wrong, worthy and unworthy. Someone who sees things that way is certainly a believer, because he thinks there is someone, something from outside, that gives the yardstick for the meanings of what I do.

So the question is what people mean when they say, “I’m religious because it gives me meaning.” A lot of times these are just everyday statements; they’re not precise statements. Meaning, you have to sharpen what exactly they mean. I think I spoke about this in the first class: I’m really not impressed by these surveys that keep revealing to me anew that eighty, ninety percent of the population believe in God. Every time I’m stunned by the results of these surveys, because around me I really don’t see that, and somehow I always live among the ten percent. More precisely, what do they mean? I think I spoke about this in the first class, that I’m really not impressed by these surveys that keep telling me that eighty, ninety percent of the population believe in God. Every time I’m amazed by the results of these surveys, because around me I really don’t see it, and somehow I always live among the ten percent who don’t. For some reason they’re very common around me, I don’t know.

And it seems to me that at least part of this dissonance stems from the definition of what a believer is. They didn’t ask the people answering the surveys, “What do you mean when you say, ‘I believe’?” So a lot of traditional people will say, “Because that’s how I was brought up.” In my eyes he’s an atheist. He belongs to the atheist wing, not to the believers’ wing. So I think that would lower the percentage of believers quite a bit. By the way, also among those who define themselves as religious. Among them too there are quite a few atheists. They’re religious because that’s how they were educated, and they can observe the commandments meticulously even, but they don’t do it because they truly believe in it, but because that’s how they were educated. So they are atheists, commandment-observing atheists.

So in that sense, what I basically want to argue is that the full picture of faith, or of religiosity if you like, is made up of two components. One component is holding the factual claim that there is a God. The second component is living in light of the implications or consequences of the fact that there is a God — namely, religious commitment. Deism plus the move to theism.

What does this bear on? Look, when I speak about subjectivism — after all, I came out against subjectivism and against emotionalism — so a comment on this and a comment on that. Subjectivism, it seems to me, its clearest expression is in things Rabbi Shagar writes in various places. He’s become very popular in recent years, mainly since he passed away. He speaks in his books about Tablets and Broken Tablets, yes, the books that deal with postmodernism, and he talks about “dancing in the circle of differences.” A phrase I’m very fond of; I use it quite a bit in order to slander him, of course.

“Dancing in the circle of differences” means — a circle is of course the geometric shape in which all the points are at the same distance from the center. That’s the definition of a circle. And that’s actually a disk, it seems to me; a circle I think is also everything inside. I think. I can never remember which is which. Exactly — the circle is the line, the disk is the area inside the circle. The disk is the area and the circle is the line? Okay, that always confuses me. In any case, I’m speaking here only about the line. So the line is the set of points that are all at equal distance from the center. And this is basically a pictorial description of the postmodern view.

Where does it come from? You have very difficult objections to your religious views — objections that come from outside but also objections you feel from within. Rabbi Shagar expressed quite a few such difficulties. Now the “solution,” in quotation marks — it’s not a solution, but for some reason people treat it as one — the solution he proposes is to understand that we are standing on the circle of differences. What does that mean? That all positions are basically at the same distance from the center. The center is the truth, right? And since that’s so, this exempts you from answering objections. No problem. Fine, there are objections to me, there are objections to you, nobody can know what the truth is, we’ll keep dancing, each in his place, on the circle of differences. And everything is wonderful, right?

The postmodern vision basically says that nobody argues with anybody because there is no one who is right and no one who is wrong and there are no arguments and no counterarguments, there’s nothing. And since that’s so, everything is wonderful, and I’m exempt from dealing with all the atheist objections and biblical criticism and science and Torah and science and whatever you want, or morality and Jewish law, or things of that sort — whatever bothers each person. We’re exempt. Why? Because everything is subjective and everything is basically narratives and subjective discourse and so on.

That is of course a completely atheistic worldview. Meaning, if Rabbi Shagar really held that view — I don’t think that’s true — if he held that view, he was an atheist. I don’t count him in the quorum. He doesn’t believe in God. He lives in some kind of subjective feeling like that; as far as the difficulties are concerned, he has no answers, and therefore if you ask him at the factual level, he has no answers and therefore he doesn’t truly believe. But he chooses to make a leap of faith or all kinds of hollow phrases of that kind, and to adopt a worldview that is incorrect but legitimate because we’re all legitimate and there are objections to all of us and everything is fine, and we can all live in peace with that.

But basically, as I said before, this approach says: I do not believe. I simply choose, for some reason, to live the life of a believer. Again, I stress so there won’t be a mistake: I do not think Rabbi Shagar thought that way. I think he simply erred when he described his position. His concepts were not sharp and clear even to himself, and therefore he chose to describe it that way. What I think he did mean to say is that he holds these things despite the fact that he thinks they are true, but there are difficulties he does not know how to answer. That is something entirely different, entirely different.

There is often such an approach in science too, right? Thomas Kuhn already spoke about this. When there is a scientific paradigm — Popper’s view was that a scientific theory cannot be proved, only refuted. Why? You say “all ravens are black.” How will you prove that? You can never know that you have seen all the ravens. But if you see one raven that is purple, then there, you have refuted the theory that all ravens are black. A scientific theory can be refuted and cannot be proved.

Thomas Kuhn says: not true, it also cannot be refuted. Because all in all, when scientific theories encounter cases they cannot explain, an experiment that refuted them, go and see — people don’t throw them out. They prefer to remain with the matter unresolved. If there are enough such difficulties, enough to cross the bounds of good taste, right, then the paradigm breaks and they replace it with another paradigm. But that requires a significant quantity of difficulties, because when you have a strong theory that explains very many facts, you don’t throw it away so quickly. Okay?

Now if you relate to faith that way, that is completely legitimate, then you are certainly a believer. You say, “Look, I have difficulty A, difficulty B, difficulty C. True, these are not simple difficulties, I have no answer to them, but this theory seems to me so strong and so true that I prefer to leave the matter unresolved. I still think it is true; I just have no answers to these questions.” That is a believer in every sense, of course; there’s no problem with that. I’m like that too. I think everyone is. Who has answers to all the questions?

But if you mean to say something that sounds very similar but is entirely different, something that says, “Look, I have no answers, therefore at the objective level I cannot say that this is true, but I live this way because that is what I chose to do, and basically all of us are like this, all human worldviews are like this in the postmodern world,” right? It’s a collection of narratives all dancing on the circle of differences — then you’re an atheist. It sounds similar, but this one is a believer and that one is an atheist.

When you are basically saying that at the objective level you do not really believe there is a God, you do not really believe there is an obligation to Torah and commandments, but you chose to live that way because it gives you meaning, because it’s comfortable for you, because I don’t know what, each with his own definitions, because that’s how I was educated — it doesn’t matter. That is atheism. What difference does it make what you do? It isn’t interesting. It’s like the religiosity of Ahad Ha’am, right? Ahad Ha’am said, “More than the Jewish people kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept the Jewish people,” and therefore he basically called to continue preserving Jewish law — not quite to that degree, but let’s exaggerate it even more — in all its details, strict and light alike, because only that way will we remain with the culture of our forefathers and with cohesion and a clear national identity. That is atheism, of course. Atheism that can be meticulous about every small clause in the Mishnah Berurah. It has nothing to do with it. You do it in order to improve national cohesion, not because of religious obligation, so you are an atheist, an atheist who observes commandments. I don’t think there’s any other meaning to it.

So that is why subjective approaches in our age get such excellent public relations, and the reason is that it’s a convenient solution for lazy people. It’s a convenient solution for lazy people who don’t want to deal with objections, who are not even willing to hear the objections, so they set up some shield smeared with oil, as the Sages say about mockery, right? Mockery is a shield smeared with oil. All the arrows slide off it. If your shield is smeared with oil, then when they shoot an arrow at you, the arrow slides off the shield. Basically, that’s postmodernism — a shield smeared with oil. I can say whatever I want and all the difficulties you raise don’t interest me, I don’t even listen to them, because in any case there is no truth, there is nothing, I can say whatever I want and I’m committed to nothing. So I’m exempt from all the objections, exempt from having to deal with it. I place myself on the same level as you, even though my position is much more difficult and your position less so, but we’re on the circle of differences so everything is wonderful.

Which basically means that you’re an atheist who doesn’t want to deal with the implications of his atheism, or alternatively you’re a believer who can’t deal with the difficulties against his faith. That’s the question whether you’re an atheist or a believer. Okay?

Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi — what the Rabbi explained about Rabbi Shagar, does the Rabbi mean that he believed in that approach but had difficulties? Is that what the Rabbi means? He thought it was correct but still had difficulties. That’s clear; he also said that. I’m only claiming that even that formulation can be understood in two ways. What? And the question is which of those two ways he held. Because what he describes is one form, and that is the form that says, “True, there are difficulties, I have no answer to them, objectively it’s not true, but I adopt it subjectively.” That is atheism.

But what I suspect was really the case with him, and he simply erred in the wording or failed to describe correctly what he actually thought, is that he meant the second meaning. And the second meaning says: I believe in this; there are difficulties I have no answers to — what can I do? Not everyone has answers to every difficulty — but I still believe in it. That is something entirely different; that is a complete believer. And I think he meant the second even though he said the first. Often people just don’t formulate themselves correctly.

You know, there once was — I mention my sins today — when I was young and reckless, I was even more extreme in my expressions than I am today, and even today I’m not one of the great moderates. So I saw an article there by a fairly well-known rabbi, where he discussed the attitude toward secular people as captives raised among non-Jews. He said this attitude is condescending and paternalistic — why should it be? They are intelligent people like you and me who made their decision, and their decision is different from mine. So he wrote a whole article about that; I’m just giving the gist here.

So I wrote a response and said that if so, then all in all I think that the rabbi writing the article is also an atheist. Meaning, because if in his eyes this thing is not true, and someone who says the opposite of him is just as right as he is, then that basically means you don’t believe. You live inside a believing narrative and he lives inside another narrative. Fine. Narratives are not interesting to anyone. The question is whether there is or is not a God. The question is whether you think there is an obligation to fulfill the word of God. If you think not, but rather that everyone should do what he wants, then you are not a believer.

Now, I wrote this in harsher language. I said that as far as I know there are many requirements for rabbinic office — meaning, requirements for a rabbi to be a successful rabbi and carry out his role successfully — atheism is not one of them. And so on, yes, according to my good old talent for invective. In any case, it was good that in the end they didn’t publish that article.

Afterward, a friend of mine in the Yeruham yeshiva — I can mention his name, today he is the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Uriel Eitam — gave me a bit of a scolding, and rightly so. He scolded me because he said to me: listen, you are judging people by their formulations. But when people speak, they do not always describe exactly what they think. There are mistakes. A person, when he describes what he himself thinks, is not always precise. Meaning, a person sometimes doesn’t diagnose himself correctly, or even if he diagnoses himself correctly, he doesn’t know how to describe it correctly or precisely in words.

And therefore what you need to do is relate to the claims, not to the speaker. That’s what he told me, and he was completely right. Since then I’ve definitely taken that with me everywhere. Because many times — and I’m sure this is true of me as well when I formulate various things — you can find mistakes here and there, and those mistakes are not always… sometimes it’s my mistake because I was wrong, but sometimes I simply didn’t formulate precisely what I wanted to say.

And when you relate to written words, you relate to them as though they are an expression of what the author says. And rightly so, because ostensibly that’s what he meant to do: express his positions. But take into account the possibility that sometimes he didn’t diagnose himself correctly, or even if he did diagnose himself correctly, he didn’t describe exactly what he himself thinks. So write arguments against what he claims; leave him aside. And therefore I say the same thing regarding Rabbi Shagar. What Rabbi Shagar writes is atheism. I don’t know what Rabbi Shagar was — I have a suspicion — what Rabbi Shagar the man, the person, was. I do not think he was an atheist. It doesn’t seem to me that an atheist would invest so much intellectual and other energy in his religious worldview. And he was a very smart person. And I think also very God-fearing, as far as I can tell at least; I didn’t know him personally. Therefore it seems quite clear to me that, as a person, it’s the second interpretation I mentioned. A believer who has difficulties he has no answers to — and that is perfectly fine; I think we are all like that. But what he wrote is atheism. So here I made the necessary reservation.

Okay, that’s regarding… I have a somewhat different question. Regarding science. Someone who says: atoms exist, bacteria exist, things like that. I didn’t do the experiment, I have no idea. But the whole world says so, so I believe such things exist. Is that faith or is that atheism? That is completely faith, yes, why not? I mean, I believe there is an atom because I read it in a book. Okay, what’s wrong with that? If you believe the book, that is perfectly fine, you are a believer. Maybe you are mistaken because the book fooled you; that’s not important. But from your point of view, this is a sufficient consideration to decide about reality, so you are a believer. Meaning, everyone has his own ways. People can always be mistaken. I’m not discussing whether you’re mistaken or not. I’m only discussing what you mean to say, what position you yourself hold. If you yourself think there are bacteria, then you think there are bacteria. It may be that you’re mistaken, maybe the book was mistaken and misled you, but you think as a factual claim that there are bacteria. That is called a believer. Okay, that’s what I mean. Whether you’re wrong or not is another discussion. How to make correct decisions — that’s yet another question. First of all I’m discussing what the decision is that you made; afterward I’ll discuss whether it’s correct or not.

Okay, so regarding subjectivity. Therefore many times it is a very convenient stance, the subjective stance, because it exempts you from dealing with difficulties. And therefore more and more religious people today, especially in intellectual circles, choose this approach. Because that way all their atheist friends who laugh at their darkness, at their stupidity, can be brushed off: “No, it’s narrative, and everyone has his own narrative and we’re all legitimate and everything is wonderful.” In an intellectual environment this is a very, very good way of coping — or not coping — with difficulties, of fleeing from difficulties.

And therefore many times you can see religious people who belong to certain intellectual strata speaking this language, the narrative language. I think, by the way, that this is the secret of Rabbi Shagar’s appeal in those circles, because he gives them some kind of rabbinic legitimacy for these atheistic conceptions. But although it is convenient, it throws out the baby with the bathwater. Because basically you are supposedly saving your faith at the price of emptying it of content. You are basically not a believer anymore, so then of course there’s no problem. That’s not called defending faith; that’s called throwing away faith in order to defend it. That’s throwing out the baby along with the water. You need to pour out the water in order to protect the baby, but if you pour out the baby too with the water, then you aren’t protecting the baby that way. Okay, so that’s regarding subjectivity.

As for emotionality or emotionalism, here there is indeed another comment. The view that religiosity belongs to the emotional dimension of a person — and notice, emotionality and subjectivity are not exactly the same thing. Before, I spoke about subjectivity in the sense of multiple truths, everyone with his own truth. Emotionality means that I’m not on the plane of intellect but on the emotional plane. Very often emotionality is subjective, but subjectivity is not always emotional. There is also intellectual subjectivity — pluralism, postmodernism — these are subjective intellectual views. And emotionality is emotional subjectivity.

Now I’m speaking about emotionality, which I also opposed. Where does this link between religious faith and emotionality come from? It seems to me it comes from Christianity. In the Christian worldview, being religious means having religious experiences, having religious feeling, and being a moral person. These are basically the two fundamental demands made of the religious Christian. There are a few sacraments for Catholics and some additional ceremonies for Protestants, but broadly speaking the essence of religiosity is morality and religious feeling. Because there really isn’t Jewish law in the Christian world — Jewish law in the sense in which we know it here. In the Muslim world there is more of that, but in the Christian world there isn’t, and therefore religiosity gets linked with morality and emotionality.

That’s why, for example, Immanuel Kant is known for his criticism of Judaism. Basically — it’s not even criticism, it’s diagnosis — he basically claims that Judaism is not a religion. Judaism is some sort of social code. By social he means a normative code, meaning what to do and what not to do. What does that have to do with religion?

Now his students — he had many Jewish students and friends, some of them believers, and also later followers, not only students, Hermann Cohen and others, some of them Jewish thinkers and so on — they were very upset and tried to defend him, saying that he didn’t know enough and so he didn’t understand, but really Judaism is a religion, and so on. And the truth is that in my opinion he understood much better than they did. He understood much better than they did because they tried to present Judaism as a religion still according to Christian standards of religiosity. They tried to show that Judaism also has religious experience and religious feeling and morality and all kinds of things like that. But that is the wrong defense; it is a defense that throws out the baby with the bathwater again. Judaism is a religion in the Jewish sense, not in the Christian sense. And indeed religious feeling and morality have no significant share in Judaism, in Jewish religiosity. A person can be a religious Jew without being moral and without having religious feeling.

Now what does it mean, without being moral? There are parts of the Torah that say “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “Honor your father and your mother,” “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and all kinds of things like that, “You shall not go about as a talebearer among your people,” “And you shall do what is upright and good” — meaning, the Torah expects us to be moral. But morality is not the criterion for Judaism, and never was.

Yes, once I heard someone ask — there were a few who asked — Yigal Amir is a murderer; is he considered a religious Jew who did a bad act? Someone who eats pork is not religious. Why is murder less severe than eating pork? The answer is that murder is not less severe than eating pork, and still both statements are correct. Yigal Amir is a religious person who murdered, and someone who eats pork is not religious. Not because eating pork is more severe than murder, but because Judaism is based neither on emotion nor on morality, but on halakhic commitment, commitment to Jewish law.

Or let’s talk about a convert, right? Very often there are protests against the demands made of converts. Why do they demand of them only ritual laws? What about honoring parents, what about man’s relations with his fellow man — why aren’t they measured in those dimensions? That is really a foolish demand. Why? Because when you examine the convert, you want to see to what extent he is Jewish, right? Now to test his morality is to test to what extent he is a human being, not to what extent he is a Jew. What, is a gentile allowed to murder, steal, harm another? So what does that have to do with anything? Those are demands directed at every person, not only at a Jew. When you want to test to what extent he is Jewish, you have to test him on those aspects that are unique to a Jew. Does he eat pork? Does he observe family purity? Does he keep the Sabbath? Because that can distinguish him from gentiles — not because it is more important than the moral commandments, it isn’t, but because it is more distinctive.

As Aristotle teaches us, when we define something, we define it through genus and species. Meaning, the human being is a speaking animal. That is the definition of a human being. What does that mean? His genus is living creatures, as opposed to inanimate objects. Within living creatures there are several species. The speaking species within the genus of living creatures. When you want to define someone, you give the genus to which he belongs and try to distinguish his species from the other species that belong to that genus. That’s how things are defined. Okay?

So the definition of a Jew in this context — to say that a Jew is someone who doesn’t murder — is a logical mistake. A human being is someone who doesn’t murder. Every human being is forbidden to murder. A Jew is someone who, besides being forbidden to murder, is also forbidden to eat pork. So if I want to test whether a certain person is a Jew and not a gentile, it is foolish to test him on whether he doesn’t murder. Not because that’s untrue — one second — not because that’s untrue, not because the prohibition of murder is a light prohibition. The prohibition of murder is the gravest prohibition there is, but it is not a prohibition that distinguishes a Jew from a gentile. Yes, does someone want to comment?

But one of our obligations is to believe. Okay, true, yes. So that means there are two perspectives here. It’s hard to understand because on the one hand you say that a person has to believe in order to be religious or Jewish, but on the other hand we have an obligation to believe. What you’re asking here is a completely different question. It’s the question that is asked about commandment number one in Maimonides’ Book of Commandments, the commandment of faith. And there they ask him: what does that mean? A commandment addresses someone who believes in the commander and is obligated by His command. How can you command someone to believe in the commandment? If he doesn’t believe, he also won’t fulfill this command. If he does believe, then the command is superfluous because he already believes. That is a completely different question, which is a good question on Maimonides, and I really think this thing cannot be a commandment. But it has nothing to do with what I’m saying here. It’s a valid question in any case. Okay, fine.

Rabbi? Yes. Wait — can a person be a Jew without being a human being? I didn’t understand the relationship between them. In principle yes. Again, obviously if he murders, then he violated a severe prohibition in Jewish law. He did not violate Jewish law any less than someone who ate pork, obviously. But if you want to test whether he is Jewish, don’t test him on the plane of murder; test him on the ritual plane, the particular plane. The extra level — meaning the extra level of a Jew? That is what distinguishes him from a gentile. After all, the convert was a gentile, and assuming he was a good gentile then he was also a moral person beforehand. Now you want to ask whether he really accepts the Jewish obligation. So to test this by honoring parents or by murder or by theft is a logical absurdity. You need to test it by eating pork. Okay? Again, I’m not saying — I’m not saying it’s not important, I’m not saying it’s not a halakhic prohibition, murder and the moral prohibitions. Yes, of course it is. Those that are, not all of them. In any event, we had a series in the past on Jewish law and morality, and there I already spoke about the relation between these things.

In any case, what I want to argue is that Kant, in his criticism of Judaism, understood Judaism better than all his Jewish friends, in my opinion. The problem was that his system of concepts was a Christian system of concepts. In a Christian system of concepts, religiosity means religious experience and morality. Now he sees that among the Jews morality is not the criterion — again, it exists, but it is not the criterion for your being Jewish. If you are not moral, then you are a worthless Jew. If you eat pork, you are not Jewish. There are streams in Christianity that believe exactly that. What? That faith is what saves you and it doesn’t matter whether you do a good deed or a bad deed. No, but Kant probably lived in a different environment. It’s precise; that’s exactly what certain streams in Christianity say — Calvinism and things like that. Yes, but Kant probably lived in a different environment. Kant lived in a Protestant environment. In mainstream Protestantism this is what I’m describing here.

And once you look at Judaism from that point of view, the required conclusion is that Judaism is not a religion but a social code. Now, what I would have corrected for him, had I merited to speak with him, is his definition of religiosity. But his Jewish students and friends adopted his definition of religiosity and tried to fit Judaism into it as well. And they tried to show that Judaism too has experiences and emotions and morality and everything — and that is not correct. It’s not correct — again, what does “not correct” mean? It means that’s not the criterion. That’s not the prominent thing that defines your being Jewish. It exists at the margins here and there; emotions in general, in my opinion, are of no importance. Morality is certainly not unimportant, but it is not the measure of your being Jewish.

Very often people say, “I am a secular Jew.” In what way does your secular Judaism express itself? “I am a moral person, I study the Hebrew Bible.” Meaning, you are a believing Christian. Perfectly fine. Every believing Christian is a moral person, studies the Hebrew Bible, everything is fine. In what way are you Jewish? Wait, but what about the Talmud saying that Jews are characterized as merciful, children of the merciful — that’s there, it’s in the Talmud. Those are indications, indications of your being Jewish; they are not definitions of your being Jewish. True, but they are indications. No, they are indications because in the past apparently — at least in the way the Talmud saw it — gentiles did not have that trait. Today that’s not true. And you’re saying the Talmud defines — if that were a definition of Judaism, then today there would be billions of Jews in the world. Billions. It’s not a definition. It was a sign, an indication, because then, at that period, at least as the Sages saw it, Jews were like that and gentiles were not like that.

By the way, many Jews are not Jews according to that definition. And many gentiles are Jews according to it. But the Talmud certainly says this is part of being Jewish. No, it does not. No. Okay. It’s an indication, not a definition, a sign. Fine, it’s a sign, but it’s part. So what? Part of being Jewish is also walking around in pants. If all Jews walk around in pants and gentiles walk around in dresses, does that mean there is a commandment to wear pants? No. It means that wearing pants is an indication that you are Jewish. The Talmud didn’t say pants, it said merciful. I know. I’m giving you an example of the logic. What did the Talmud say? I’m giving you an example of the logic. Let’s say Jews used to go with a certain kind of shoelace, okay? The Talmud does say that, right? Jews had black shoelaces and gentiles had colored shoelaces. Now they demand that you wear a different lace, and you have to give your life rather than do it. Why? Is there a commandment to wear black shoelaces? No. But the Jewish custom then was to go with those laces. So is wearing laces a definition of Judaism? Of course not. It’s a sign. But that’s not moral; shoelaces aren’t a moral definition. What difference does that make? Again, what difference does that make? I’m explaining the logic to you. The logic says that the fact that a certain thing exists among Jews does not necessarily define Judaism; sometimes it’s only a sign. That’s it. That’s my claim. I did not equate shoelaces with morality.

Fine, the Rabbi was speaking about morality; I pointed out a moral Talmudic statement. But I said that as for the Talmudic statement you cited, I disagree, because when the Talmud says there what it says, it means it’s a sign of your being Jewish. And then a debate arose: how can that be, after all the Talmud says it? So I said that if the Talmud had said it about shoelaces, you would accept that it’s only a sign — so I claim that here too it is only a sign. Not because there is no obligation to be moral. Go and see: a Jew who doesn’t behave morally, everyone relates to him as a Jew who has failed — if they even see him as someone who has failed — but he is certainly a Jew. But someone who eats pork is not Jewish — not Jewish in the sense of not committed to Judaism. Absolutely. What is this? That’s obviously the case. And rightly so, by the way. I’m not saying this as criticism; that’s the correct picture. It’s correct not because it is more important than morality, but because it is more distinctive than morality.

Okay, let’s return to our topic. What I want to argue is that these conceptions that identify religiosity with religious feeling basically have their source in Christianity. Here I only brought him as an illustration, but their source is in Christianity, and somehow through Hasidism, in my opinion at least, this entered the Jewish world and received a very disproportionate status, so that people demand “the Merciful One wants the heart,” right? There is some terribly great centrality to religious feeling. In my view this is completely marginal. At most it is an expression of how religious you are, if at all, depending on how you are built, but certainly not something of value in itself.

And I think I spoke about this in the past, and also wrote about it, about the emotional commandments. There are various emotional commandments, and I tried to show consistently, commandment by commandment, that I can show — at least according to certain views — that they do not demand from you anything connected to emotion. They demand practical expressions of emotions, and not emotions themselves, because emotions have no value at all.

So in that sense, Hasidism was somehow a kind of conduit through which these Christian ideas or conceptions entered the Jewish world, and today if you ask many Jews — religious Jews and certainly nonreligious Jews — they will tell you that the world of religious Judaism is religious feeling, behaving well. Yes, to the secular Jew this is almost the definition of Judaism: to behave morally. Which is simply a logical absurdity. But these conceptions are basically, at root, Christian conceptions.

And both against the subjectivism that I illustrated through Rabbi Shagar, and against this emotionality that I illustrated here through Hasidism and Christianity and Kant and so on, my counterclaim — and with this I’ll sort of finish this first segment — my counterclaim says that basically faith, Judaism, Jewish religiosity, means factual belief. Meaning, a factual claim, not subjective and not emotional. A factual claim: I believe there is a God, period. It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter if someone else thinks otherwise; from my point of view he is mistaken. I believe there is a God. I may be mistaken, but that is what I believe. If that is what I believe, then I am a believing Jew. Afterward we can discuss whether I am also right, but that is the definition of a believing Jew — not in the emotional sense and not in the subjective sense on the intellectual plane, yes — not intellectual subjectivity and not emotional subjectivity.

What about “And you shall rejoice on your festival”? That’s one of the commandments I discussed in that article. “And you shall rejoice on your festival” — yes, the Talmud says there, since you asked I’ll tell you in one sentence, though it requires more expansion. The Talmud discusses why one does not marry women during the festival, and it says, “And you shall rejoice on your festival — and not with your wife.” That is one of the reasons brought there. You ask yourself how the Talmud read the verse “And you shall rejoice on your festival.” Usually we understand “and you shall rejoice” as a command to rejoice, and “on your festival” as placement on the time axis, namely that that’s the time when you must rejoice. So you need to rejoice when? On the festival.

The Sages did not read it that way. “And you shall rejoice on your festival” means the festival should be the cause of the joy, and not marrying a woman. “On your festival and not with your wife” — “on your festival” does not indicate time, but rather the thing in which you are supposed to rejoice, and not in a woman. Now think about the difference between these two concepts of joy. The first concept of joy is spontaneous joy: you’re happy, you dance, you tell jokes, you eat well, and so on and so on; you only place it on the time axis — on the festival. You are required to throw the party on the festival and not the day before or the day after.

Here you are not being required to hold parties at all. You are basically required to ensure that your joy is joy in the festival. This is a very Platonic sort of joy; it’s not something emotional. It’s an intellectual kind of joy. I say: I understand what the festival is, and this brings me to some kind of joy — not in the simple emotional sense of celebrations, parties, and dancing; it’s basically a kind of spiritual work. This is a non-emotional conception of the commandment of joy. But that’s only in brief; it needs expansion. There’s a column on my site, number 22, and whoever wants can read there too.

Maybe a question? Why exactly? Because if he is an atheist then he doesn’t join a quorum, he doesn’t pray. According to what new rule — how is he Jewish? So what if he’s Jewish? A Jewish flowerpot. What? He’s a Jewish flowerpot. He sits there in the quorum as a flowerpot. There are nine people and a flowerpot. He doesn’t pray. Ten people praying make a quorum. He does pray — he said he goes in that way, he just doesn’t believe. So if he doesn’t believe, that isn’t prayer. What does it mean, he goes in that way? He moves his lips. That isn’t prayer. No, he doesn’t pray, but he completes the quorum because he’s Jewish. Ten people praying complete a quorum, not ten flowerpots. But is that the Jewish law according to Jewish law? Of course that’s the Jewish law.

Again, in my view this is like the claim — many halakhic decisors will tell you, most decisors will tell you, not so. But by the way, most of them will justify it by saying that deep down he does believe. Because every Jew has a Jewish point inside him. So notice that they too are basically saying that if that were not so, they would not count him for a quorum. His ethnic origin is not enough. I also don’t accept that diagnosis, but even in that dispute they accept in principle what I’m saying: that your mere being Jewish is not enough, but rather there is within you some point where you truly believe, only you are not aware of it, and all that nonsense. I don’t accept that, but if that’s the reasoning then it’s not a principled disagreement.

It’s like what they asked me once when I wrote an article on conversion. They asked me: in the Shulchan Arukh it does not say that one must accept the commandments in conversion. So one doesn’t need to — there’s circumcision, immersion, and the offering of a sacrifice. There is no sacrifice today because there are no offerings. So circumcision and immersion. So I told them: in the Shulchan Arukh it also doesn’t say in civil law that one needs intent to acquire. So if someone did not intend to acquire and he lifted the object, did he acquire it or not? Obviously not. Why? Because the Shulchan Arukh in the laws of acquisitions is speaking about someone who wants to acquire. Meaning, to one who wants to acquire, the Shulchan Arukh tells him how to do it. You lift, you perform an act of possession, depending on what you want to acquire and how you acquire it. Someone who doesn’t want to acquire — nobody is talking to him. The need for intent to acquire is not a halakhic condition such that without intent to acquire you do not acquire. The intent to acquire is the basis on which we are speaking. If you want to acquire, this is how it is done. If you don’t want to acquire, fine, be healthy, you don’t need to want to, no problem — you just don’t acquire. It doesn’t have to be written in the Shulchan Arukh that if there is no intent to acquire you do not acquire; that’s obvious. If there is no intent to acquire, you do not acquire because you do not want to acquire. The Shulchan Arukh defines how someone who wants to acquire can do so.

The same thing with conversion. Someone who wants to accept the commandments — meaning to convert, because to convert and to accept the commandments are synonymous terms — someone who wants to convert, meaning to accept the commandments, this is how it is done: circumcision, immersion, and sacrifice. Someone who does not want to accept the commandments, perfectly fine — he is a completely kosher gentile in the most meticulous sense. But it does not need to be written in the Shulchan Arukh that if he does not accept the commandments he has not converted. Obviously, if he does not want to convert he will not convert. Does that need to be written? Someone who does not want to convert will not convert — that is obvious. It does not need to be written.

The same thing here. Obviously it does not need to be written that someone who completes a prayer quorum is someone who prays. Ten people praying are a quorum. If there are nine people praying and a flowerpot, that is not a quorum. It doesn’t have to be written in the Shulchan Arukh. The Shulchan Arukh speaks about what happens if ten people want to pray — how they join into a quorum. Fine, there are these rules and those rules. That’s my opinion. In these matters I do not count such people for a quorum; I do not call them up among the seven Torah readers or anything like that. A secular person, basically, I try not to call him to the Torah and not to count him for a quorum.

What about the idea of nine and a Torah scroll? That’s something else. The claim there is that it nevertheless completes it. So let’s leave aside the tenth. Two, okay? Just because the tenth is nullified, maybe even a flowerpot helps. But let’s talk about two, okay? Two secular people. Again, if the secular person is a believer, I don’t care that he doesn’t observe commandments. If he believes, he counts. Even if he cuts corners in observance, because basically he understands what prayer is and is committed to the matter, and he cuts corners — fine. That’s okay; he counts for the quorum. But a traditional person does not count for a quorum. A traditional person in the sense I defined earlier, not a traditional person who believes. A traditional person in the sense that he does it because that’s how he was educated. If I knew — I don’t know how to read kidneys and heart — if I knew how to examine what is in a person’s heart, if I saw that this is what was in his heart, I would not count him for a quorum. He does not count. He is a flowerpot.

There’s another dimension to being Jewish, and that is that we have a covenant. Someone who keeps the covenant. Covenant or… A covenant of obligation, okay? It’s a covenant of obligation that is not connected to faith, it’s connected to covenant. And my father and grandfather and so on entered into a covenant, so I have an obligation that my family undertook regarding doing something. And that’s probably what you think. In my view that doesn’t exist; there is no such thing. There’s no covenant? No. There is a covenant that everyone is obligated by. There is no covenant that gives you privileges even though you do not fulfill your obligation. No. That’s what… That’s the laws of an apostate. What are the laws of an apostate? People think that the laws of an apostate are a sanction, a punishment for his not being okay. What nonsense. If he is an apostate, then he is basically de facto a gentile. Simply because he chose it. That statement is not judgmental, it is descriptive. So how can I count him for a quorum? It’s not because I want to sanction him, to denounce him, and therefore I don’t count him for a quorum. It’s simply because he doesn’t belong in this act, that’s all.

But someone who doesn’t believe — excuse me, someone who doesn’t believe… An apostate means he’s not part of Israel? Rabbi Soloveitchik says there is Judaism and there are two parts, a covenant of destiny and a covenant of fate, that he is part of Israel but he doesn’t keep the commandments. Covenant of destiny and covenant of fate are nice homiletic ideas in the world of thought, maybe, if at all. In the halakhic world I don’t deal with that. That is my view. Either you have a share in the God of Israel and then you join the quorum, or you have a share in Israel — I don’t recognize such a thing; there is no such creature.

And what about Maimonides, who says that a gentile and also a Jew need to identify with the fate of the Jewish people and be part of the community? I didn’t understand. No, it’s brought in Maimonides, yes, that one must identify with the fate. It’s part of something that… I don’t know which Maimonides you mean and who has to identify with whose fate. Do you have some source or what? Yes, I… I don’t know exactly where it is, but it’s in my notes, so I’ll send it to you. Okay.

Rabbi, a soccer player who plays on the Sabbath and after he scores a goal he says “Hear O Israel” — can he be counted for a quorum? It depends. If that “Hear O Israel” is a folkloristic act, then no. If it expresses belief, then certainly yes. It certainly expresses belief because… No, not certainly. I don’t know. Each case has to be examined on its own. Many times it doesn’t express belief, but rather, you know, that thing where people say “there is a God” and jump into the pool in the city square after Maccabi Tel Aviv wins. Do you really think everyone there shouting “there is a God” is a believing Jew? No, there’s a difference between saying “there is a God” and “Hear O Israel.” That’s only a difference of folklore, depending on what folklore you grew up with. It could be — again — sometimes it does express belief. Each thing on its own. But not necessarily. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Rabbi, can you sharpen the point about there not being one truth, that there are many truths, that everyone has his own truth, that there is nothing true in that… Well, what about it? I didn’t understand. The pluralistic view, for example — what about it? What’s the problem? You basically said it’s… it’s not correct. There is no problem other than the fact that it’s not correct. Why is it not correct? Because there is one truth. What does that mean… if one thing is true, then its opposite is false. Isn’t that just logic? If the claim that there are one hundred thousand ants in the world is true, then the claim that there are one hundred and one thousand ants in the world is not true. I don’t know — those are the rules of logic I know, the ones I was brought up on, as they say. I don’t know, it’s such an obvious thing, what?

Objective truth, subjective truth… this is all nonsense, foolishness, postmodern babble. There’s nothing to it. It’s simply nonsense. Sometimes there is a situation where there is no contradiction between two positions. You can construct from both of them together some broader conception. But again, that is not postmodernism; that is a conception of complex truth. That’s the Talmud in Gittin that brings “These and those are the words of the living God” regarding the concubine in Gibeah. So Rabbi Yonatan and Rabbi Evyatar: one says he found a fly, the other says he found a hair. Then Rabbi Evyatar meets Elijah the prophet and asks… and Elijah the prophet tells him that the Holy One, blessed be He, says: he found a fly and was not upset; he found a hair and was upset. What does that mean? And that’s “these and those are the words of the living God,” that’s what it says there. What does that mean? It means that each of them grasped a certain aspect of the truth. What happened in practice was that he found both a fly and a hair. One of them saw the fly, and that’s true; the other saw the hair, and that too is true. What is the truth? The truth is both the fly and the hair. Which is exactly what I spoke about before. But that is not postmodernism. That is one truth. And whoever says otherwise is mistaken. It’s not that everyone has his own truth. What is this “everyone has his own truth”? It is simply nonsense. It just means there is no truth. So say that in your eyes there is no truth. Fine. I don’t know what that sentence means. But “everyone has his own truth” is an empty slogan. It’s nonsense.

It’s just logic. It’s not a matter of worldview. You think this way — people write books and articles about this and give lectures, and it’s all bullshit from beginning to end. Again, one of my columns on the site, “The law for bringing justice against the French and their helpers,” as they say. Meaning, the French philosophers spill a lot of ink on these empty ideas. Fine, good health to them. It’s a shame about the forests that are cut down for it.

Okay. Goodbye, Sabbath peace. Rabbi? Yes, yes. A short question. I don’t know if it’s exactly connected to this lesson, but basically why… how can I really tell a person, “You must believe,” like the Rabbi asked before, more or less? Meaning, when we say there are people who believe and people who don’t believe, is that simply the result of the situation they are in? Meaning, the conclusion they reached, and basically there are people who are like that and people who are not, and there is no such thing… No, no, there are two different questions here. Meaning, the question whether there is room to demand that a person believe — I think that is logically impossible. What you can demand of him is to examine. Now, if he reaches the conclusion that he believes, then yes; and if he doesn’t reach the conclusion that he believes, there can be no demand made of him. The question whether every person, if he examines to the end, will reach the conclusion that he indeed believes — that is a question I don’t know how to answer. That is a question in the depths of a person’s heart. I don’t know how to answer it. So the answer is: the demand is to examine. That is basically the answer. Obviously. There cannot be a demand to believe; that’s nonsense. On all these things I’ll still speak in the coming lessons. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, Sabbath peace. Goodbye, Sabbath peace.