Q&A: The Questions That Make Them Leave Religion
The Questions That Make Them Leave Religion
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
There is an issue that has been bothering me for a long time. Naturally, since this is criticism, and I value and owe you quite a lot in my personal development, I haven't felt comfortable raising it directly. But from time to time I get reminders of it, as below, and today, following another reminder, I finally decided to share it with you.
The reminders are your students at Magal (and others who aren’t from Magal) who become formerly religious *because of your classes*.
From my personal acquaintance with some of them, I know that at least some of them left religion really because of this and not for ulterior motives.
The process is like this: a religious-Orthodox-open-minded-regular guy comes to Magal with the obvious goal of learning Torah/Judaism and so on.
With you he hears about a much thinner Judaism than the one he knows, together with a *rapid and sharp* shattering of the dogmas he grew up on, some of which are very basic in his eyes (the World to Come, prayer, etc.).
You don’t need to be a great expert in human psychology to understand that people tend to get rid of dogmas package by package. If there’s no World to Come, then there’s no Torah from Heaven either; if this isn’t true, then that isn’t true either.
This seems obvious to me.
I know your position (and I don’t disagree with it) about “holy lies” and so on, and that if a person denies things because of what he heard then he was already an atheist before that, etc. But there’s a point here that I think is being missed.
Even someone who isn’t interested in holy lies in general (like me) doesn’t necessarily have to pull people out of their errors *immediately*. There are people at different stages of life who aren’t built to hear the whole truth (in your view) all at once. And hearing it like that causes a strong psychological tendency to throw out everything else as well. Not everyone is a computer with a powerful processor that simply analyzes what you say and weighs it carefully; there’s a lot of psychology here in how things are said and with what degree of dismissal the new authority (= your honor) relates to his old dogmas.
Did you know that one of your close students (at least in his eyes; I don’t know how personal your relationship actually is) deteriorated spiritually very badly this past summer?
I knew him before, and I know him now. In my opinion (and in his own opinion too!), this happened purely because of your classes, according to the process described above.
Before writing to you, I spoke with my friends, some of them former Magal students and some not (all of them know and appreciate your teaching), and they agreed with me that this is a problem.
I don’t know what the solution is (= how to convey your views without making yeshiva guys leave religion), but I felt obligated to put the problem on the table.
Today I heard about yet another formerly religious Magal graduate, so I couldn’t hold back from sending this 🙁
I would very much like to hear your opinion,
Thank you,
Answer
Hello Y.,
Indeed, you’ve asked a difficult question, and it was good of you to raise it. It’s important to me as well to know the facts as they really are.
Even apart from the information you brought, I struggle with the principle of openness. It has obvious disadvantages, but it also has advantages. Some use it as an aid in becoming formerly religious, but others find in it an answer to the distress that would otherwise have caused them to become formerly religious (and I know quite a few such cases). So what am I supposed to do now? Take those into account, or these? My basic claim is that since there are drawbacks and benefits on both sides, I should do what truth (to my knowledge and understanding) dictates. If “holy lies” were only beneficial and speaking the truth (in my view) were only harmful, then there would be a dilemma: truth versus utility. But if truth also has benefit and harm, and “holy lies” also have benefit and harm, then it doesn’t seem reasonable to me to prefer falsehood over truth. Passive omission is preferable: one should do what is true.
Let me formulate it differently. The approach of those who speak in the accepted way has led to masses of people leaving religion, without any doubt. I assume you know no fewer people who abandoned the path through the conventional route. Would you also suggest to them that they consider speaking differently because of what happens to their students and listeners? It seems to me that conventional religious talk leads to far more secularization than my own words do (how many students have we brought in from standard yeshivot? Not a few). In a certain sense, all the secularization around us today is a result of the traditional religious approach and outlook, which caused masses of people to abandon religion (since the Enlightenment period). In most cases I speak with people who are refugees from the regular path and try to save them. With such people, it is certainly not right to speak in the usual discourse, and perhaps my discourse can help. I assume that many times I don’t succeed in saving them (I meet and correspond with masses of such people), and then it looks as though I caused them to leave religion, but perhaps I only failed to prevent it.
The conclusion is that there is no safe path. Therefore one should do what is true and not seek the useful path at the expense of the truth (because there is no such path).
Beyond all this, I’m somewhat doubtful how accurately those who are becoming formerly religious, and claim it is because of what they heard from me, are actually describing the situation. I don’t mean they are necessarily lying, but it is convenient for them to hang things on that, even unconsciously. I believe that most of them already had doubts and misgivings beforehand, and this could have happened even without me. My words may have been a catalyst or an aid (I’m not belittling that, of course), or at least something that did not prevent it (as above). The interpretation they give it after the fact is that the step was taken because of what they heard from me. As you already mentioned, if they agree with what I say, then they were secretly formerly religious already beforehand; and if they don’t agree, then my words shouldn’t affect them.
By the way, I think I know whom you meant regarding this past summer. If so, then the influence on him didn’t come from things I said recently (after I had already become a complete heretic), but from reading my earlier books (Two Carts, etc.). But there I really did say fairly basic things, and being careful about that would simply mean shutting one’s mouth and one’s mind. The study of philosophy and general thought is always dangerous, because when people think, they may also reach conclusions, Heaven forbid. But regarding the demand not to open the mind at all and to shut down thought, I have no hesitation whatsoever. As for the question of how far to open up and expose, that is something one can indeed struggle over, and that is what I discussed above.
Still, I am very sorry about all this, but I do not see another way that would be more correct.
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Y.:
Hello Rabbi Michi,
Thank you for your reply.
First of all, it is completely clear to me beyond any doubt that openness saves a great many people (and especially the better ones). That is a fact, and I do not disagree with it either.
In my yeshiva they used to joke that “Rabbi Michi is a red heifer—he purifies the impure and renders the pure impure.” Those “impure” people (the ones who think independently) are without a doubt saved, at least in part, through your books and your thought. And for that you deserve a great deal of thanks.
But in my opinion that was true only as long as you defended traditional Judaism (the “quadrilogy”), not beyond that (and not only because I don’t agree with the reforms). Within traditional Judaism, it is better to avoid “holy lies” and to open things up (for those who ask anyway), even at the cost of people leaving religion, for the reasons you wrote.
I’ll try to present my position:
As long as your teaching was identified, more or less, with traditional Judaism (Two Carts, the hermeneutics of canonical texts, etc.), the situation was that someone who became open-minded (= started asking questions) would read your books. If he accepted them—great. If not—this was still the best we could offer (for skeptical-type questions).
The problem, in my opinion, began when you changed course and started putting Judaism on a diet.
I don’t mean to dissuade you from that—both because that isn’t the subject here and because I don’t think I could—but now people who open themselves to your teaching are required to accept a much thinner Torah, to give up many dogmas, etc., with all that entails (as I wrote in the first letter). Of course they can reject what you say, but again, as I wrote, people are not robots, and they sometimes assign great weight to your opinion. So in the past, people who opened up could receive an answer that psychologically was much easier for them to accept (Judaism as they knew it, just with reasoning). Now they are required to move from Orthodoxy to a kind of strange Judaism (“alienated,” “Leibowitzian,” “purposeless”—these are expressions I heard from others, one formerly religious and one not, though he definitely cooled off). So they throw everything off, either because it seems unreasonable (“if this isn’t true, then that isn’t true either”) or because it is too strange to remain religious while holding such highly unusual views about religion.
Regarding the motivation of those leaving religion—there is no doubt that there are many reasons for going off the religious path, and it is hard to diagnose or enumerate them. That is why I tried to focus on people I know personally and on what they think about themselves.
That person from this past summer was not someone who had previously read your books (not B., if that’s who you meant), but someone who came to Magal as a reasonably religious student, went to hear Rabbi Michi because “he heard he was interesting,” and as he was gradually exposed, he settled first for less and then for much less (I spoke with him during the process and witnessed it), and in the end he abandoned everything. I’ll note again that he (and I assume others too) esteems your opinion *very* highly, and in my impression alone, of course, this was a significant catalyst.
There’s one point that I really want to linger on. You wrote:
“As you already mentioned, if they agree with what I say, then they were secretly formerly religious already beforehand; and if they don’t agree, then my words shouldn’t affect them.”
That dichotomy is, in my opinion, very inaccurate. People are influenced psychologically to a great extent. If they admire you, then they accept your words more than they would have otherwise. For them, you are a very intelligent person with broad mastery of Torah, philosophy, and science, and therefore your assertions carry great significance. When those assertions shatter many of their dogmas and/or lead them to a thinner and, in their eyes, strange Judaism, psychology inclines them to throw out the baby with the bathwater (whether because people get rid of dogmas package by package, or because it is very hard for them to believe in such a thin Judaism as above, even if you do manage to persuade them).
This is not a situation where they weighed the matter carefully and discovered through your arguments that they had always been heretics, as the dichotomy assumes.
I infer all this from conversations with them (there aren’t so many, but still) throughout the process and from my own observation. Besides, common sense suggests this would happen:
A common phenomenon is that people gather around a smart person and accept some of what he says without protest. The problem here is that some of what he says can be a significant catalyst for leaving religion, as above.
Therefore, as I wrote, I have no solution, but if one exists, I think it has to lie in the psychological realm (somehow causing people not to throw out everything after throwing out some beliefs, or not to accept your words at all 🙂 ). In any case, the current way of conveying things seems to me very problematic.
May it be God’s will that my words carry enough weight to influence your hesitation, in those final lines, regarding how far to open things up.
Thanks again,
—————————
Rabbi:
Hello Y. I understood your point, and I will definitely think about it.
Discussion on Answer
I’m not inclined to think there is such a thing as “overdrive” when it comes to openness. Openness means discussing every question on its merits and not concealing things. So I don’t see where to draw the line. If there were something I could be convinced was harmful and there was no benefit in publishing it, then perhaps there would be room to discuss it (and even then I’m not sure). But I don’t think that is the situation.
As a rule, I think one must distinguish between three types of criticism:
1. There are questions that should not be raised for discussion.
2. There are answers that should not be written in public (even though they are correct).
3. There are incorrect answers, and therefore it is a shame to write them because they are both harmful and untrue.
Criticism type 3 is merely an argument about my positions, not about openness itself. Criticism type 2 can arise only where the answer causes harm without benefit. Criticism type 1 is relevant only if I am inventing the problems and nobody else is bothered by them (otherwise it is important to discuss them on their merits and not leave people to deal with them alone).
Dear Rabbi Michael Abraham.
At last I found time to write to you what I’ve wanted to write for a long time.
My name is Y., second-year shiur in one of the yeshivot, and I’m the one who published (together with a friend) the article about formerly religious people on the Srugim website and the other sites (the article following which you published the post about those who leave religion). At the time we spoke a bit on the phone.
I’m sending this letter to express immense appreciation for you and your unique work (and of course Oren, the site editor, is included in this praise), the like of which, unfortunately, I do not know anywhere else—not even close.
I regularly enjoy your wonderful site, the classes, and the articles, the intellectual honesty and the way the ideas are presented.
I wrote the article about those who leave religion because of my experiences in high school yeshiva, where I saw with my own eyes how my classmates grew disgusted with the “old Judaism,” and since no alternative was presented, they left religion full of sky-high self-confidence and contempt for their “benighted” religious friends who couldn’t even understand why they had left religion.
Their choice was between a Judaism full of ideas that are unacceptable to the mind (mysticism, “denial” of science, extreme right-wing politics, a supposed “prohibition” on thinking independently, the later generations being necessarily complete fools in comparison to the early ones, the Sages said all the aggadic teachings and Jewish law through divine inspiration so they are certainly true, etc.), and “enlightened” atheism—and without doubt the second wins.
Already during my studies, after being exposed to all the heretical opinions brought by those students, I had to slowly build for myself a more and more “rational” Judaism. I jumped on every rational find, and I had no choice but to clarify things for myself.
One of the difficulties that bothered me (among many others) was the issue of the forced interpretive setups in the Talmud. (True, this is not a severe theological difficulty, but it bothered me that things were being inserted into the Mishnah that are not written there.)
I began to think of an idea to solve this issue, and it resembles what you say in the lecture series on these interpretive setups (though it was still far from the full picture that the Rabbi managed to present in those lectures).
I do not understand why a boy needs to go through 20 years of his life before he encounters your classes on these interpretive setups (if he ever does, since most people will never encounter them at all). I’m taking specifically this as an example because this is not some shocking traditional innovation, like divine foreknowledge and free will, providence, and so on. This is a topic for which I have no explanation why it took us 1,500 years to solve it. My feeling is that we abandoned independent thinking long ago, which on the one hand makes it easier for us to preserve Judaism from generation to generation (which looks good in the short term), but on the other hand prevents us from arriving at deep explanations in many areas (dangerous in the long term), like your explanation of these interpretive setups—areas that have no scent of “reformism” that could explain our lack of progress in them.
I remember how, during the public discussion in Israel about the Chief IDF Rabbi’s remarks concerning the beautiful captive woman, I was left without a decent explanation for myself (and I felt this in others too), even though rabbis sometimes explain this topic here a little and there a little. But I had never seen a systematic, methodical, and consistent treatment of these issues like yours.
From what I checked among very famous rabbis who are considered the best in the field of answering faith questions, almost none of them are familiar with the issues that truly bother young people (mass revelations in other tribes, Torah and morality), and they also do not dare to state “innovative” views (such as the view of the Shelah regarding free choice, which almost no one knows, and even one of the rabbis who mentions this opinion rejects it immediately at the beginning of his article). Not to mention “proofs” for God.
Since I studied for years in the company of these friends of mine, I have no doubt whatsoever that had they encountered your personality in earlier stages, they would be in a completely different place today (at least some of them).
I know exactly which subjects bothered them, and those are the subjects you speak about.
Two of the questions I asked on the site were about the Exodus from Egypt in archaeology and mass revelations in other tribes. As the Rabbi can see for himself, those questions are ranked among the first in the “popular responsa.” I knew these were central issues that really disturb people, and that is why I asked them.
Personally, the Rabbi shaped a central part of my faith, and I hardly find anyone else who can quench my thirst (perhaps the Rabbi will be able to introduce me to someone).
I sometimes wander through youth forums and direct people to your site. Quite a few of them have already told me that they changed their minds on matters of faith and so on, aside from people to whom I conveyed just a few individual ideas from your teaching and it helped them. So may the Rabbi’s hands be strengthened in his important work of answering questions on the site.
Your teaching is the only solution for a great many people, and I am sorry that many of them take the step of leaving religion before they encounter it.
In connection with the criticisms raised against your openness, I think there are enough rabbis who are conservative by halves, thirds, and quarters, and we cannot afford to give up on a rabbi who will open up all the hardest issues all the way.
We don’t have anyone else who does this the way the Rabbi does, and despite the price that may perhaps be paid by some people because of it (one can debate whether it is a cause or a catalyst), the benefit outweighs it tenfold, and the Rabbi serves as a very strong rear defense line for many people.
With appreciation and tremendous thanks for your great investment in youth (through the site and the books) and in general, and with great anticipation for the release of the trilogy,
Y.
Thank you very much. Indeed, from my perspective these are important things to hear (and perhaps from others’ perspective as well). I take the criticisms raised here very seriously, but my feeling was that there is still justification for these discussions and for this openness, and that beyond the very value of speaking the truth, its benefit outweighs its harm. Your words definitely strengthen my view. Many thanks.
“The conclusion is that there is no safe path. Therefore one should do what is true and not seek the useful path at the expense of the truth (because there is no such path).”
Maybe the way to get the gains without the risks has to do with style. It may be less interesting to people who are only looking for action. (My sense is that the cynical writing doesn’t come from wanting to make things interesting, but from a cynical temperament—but still, in order to gain without risks, maybe it’s worth making the effort to change the style of presentation.)
Another major gain is that the target audience would become much larger. (I know of many who are eager to read and listen and still refrain, partly for the reasons Y. mentioned, but not only those—also because of the style.)
Rabbi Michi, you wrote:
“I struggle with the principle of openness. It has obvious disadvantages, but it also has advantages. Some use it as an aid in becoming formerly religious, but others find in it an answer to the distress that would otherwise have caused them to become formerly religious (and I know quite a few such cases). So what am I supposed to do now? Take those into account, or these? My basic claim is that since there are drawbacks and benefits on both sides, I should do what truth (to my knowledge and understanding) dictates. If ‘holy lies’ were only beneficial and speaking the truth (in my view) were only harmful, then there would be a dilemma: truth versus utility. But if truth also has benefit and harm, and ‘holy lies’ also have benefit and harm, then it doesn’t seem reasonable to me to prefer falsehood over truth. Passive omission is preferable: one should do what is true.”
It seems that this is a false dichotomy. Y. wasn’t suggesting that you go around reciting holy lies, but that you show a little restraint—not slaughter all the sacred cows, not all at once, and not for everyone in public. If you were to write shallowly like Zamir Cohen, for example (and I apologize in advance for the comparison; it’s just what popped into my head in the first second), then you’d be Zamir Cohen and not Michi, and there are already enough Zamir Cohens.
So the comparison is out of place, and in choosing your balance and restraint, the damage of holy lies is irrelevant, because in any case you wouldn’t use them.
The attacking of everything sacred actually helps ensure that most people for whom this isn’t suitable won’t come to you, but someone who does come to you because of the wisdom and because you are right about some of what you say may be negatively influenced by you when there was no need for you to speak and write so much—and in such a dismissive tone.
Sorry for the delayed comment.
Y. B.
As a reader of the site too, I’m forced to agree very strongly with Y. Of course intellectual openness is the right thing, but in my opinion the Rabbi is already in “overdrive.” This tactic may of course be correct in a personal debate—“even according to your own view”—but it’s not clear that it suits the public.