Q&A: The Boundaries of Judaism
The Boundaries of Judaism
Question
Hello,
From Occam’s razor we learned that it is preferable to minimize assumptions so long as they suffice to explain the full range of phenomena. I recently read what you wrote “against” Torah interpreters, “against” providence in our time, and against various other phenomena in Judaism. Doesn’t a partial explanation of the phenomenon of Judaism point to a deficiency in the whole theory? One can argue against Rabbi Kook’s harmonistic approach, but he has one very strong point: that no one is ever cast off, and every utterance—even casual Torah chatter—receives meaning and joins the larger whole.
In other words, is your interpretation of the Torah interpretive-aimed, or legislative?
And so as not to leave the email empty: I heard people complaining about your honor that you mention the sages of the nations too much, and I said I’d contribute my share too 🙂
Instead of saying in your lectures that there is a refutation of the a fortiori argument “if a sale of two hundred includes one hundred, then if he sold two liters of beer, three should certainly be permitted,” you could mention the words of the Talmud at the end of Bava Kamma (118b): that it is forbidden to buy two sheep from a shepherd lest they be stolen, but four are permitted, because the owner will notice.
A good and blessed year to all of us
Answer
Hello,
Many thanks for the example. It is indeed nice and well placed (although it seems to me one could distinguish somewhat, but this is not the place).
As for the principle of the razor: once I heard a refutation, by way of Occam’s razor, of dualism—namely that it is a less simple theory than materialism, since it has two components while materialism has only one. Occam’s razor is a principle used to decide between correct theories. Among them, one chooses the simplest. But one should not support an incorrect theory because of its simplicity (and I elaborated on this in my book Stable Truth Is Not). And give to the wise, and he will become wiser still…
And beyond all that, the question is: what is Judaism? Is every opinion stated by a sage or sages, however important they may be, Judaism? Judaism, or Torah, in my view, is the word of God. Therefore my arguments do not harm part of Judaism; they focus on Judaism and try to remove from it what is not Judaism. This reminds me of Kobi Meidan’s regular radio segment (I think it is called “Thus Spoke Our Sages”), where I once heard him quote a saying by Amy Winehouse (one of “our sages”). Note this well.
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Questioner:
Hello, and thank you, but I asked a different question.
There are points on the coordinate plane, and one who does not draw his graph through all the points cannot claim to have formulated a theory.
True, there were great Jews who believed that the Holy One, blessed be He, has a body, but today it is accepted by all that this is not a Jewish view. Why? What does “accepted by all” mean? Fortunate is the people for whom it is “so.”
It is accepted by all that prayer is a central matter in Judaism. Someone who reads pamphlets during prayer may indeed wise up a little and sink a bit further into the swamp of Religious Zionism-with-a-hyphen, but he is “deviating” from the path of Judaism as we believe it to be.
I apologize for the pompous language, but this is how it has been accepted for generations: there is prayer and there is the World to Come.
If you reject the above, then please write me what the points are on the graph of your Judaism such that anyone who does not pass his graph through them may present something true—but not Judaism.
Thank you, and shanah tovah and a good year,
P.S. What you wrote about Peres is also very true of our Sages, who often killed one another and often called each other derogatory names, and in the end created for us an idyll of “love at the end”—that is: judgment is complex.
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Rabbi:
Belief in God, the giving of the Torah (or part of it) to Moses at Sinai, and commitment to what is written in the Torah (including interpretation and exposition). In our day, also commitment to the Talmud (not because it is correct, but because we accepted it upon ourselves). That is all.
What is accepted does not really interest me unless that acceptance indicates that it came from Sinai or from an authoritative source. “Fortunate is the people for whom it is so” means only a “so” that is correct, not an arbitrary “so” (for there are two kinds of “so”).