Q&A: Rational… Until the Sages — On the Book “A Lamp in the Pupil of the Night”
Rational… Until the Sages — On the Book “A Lamp in the Pupil of the Night”
Question
Rabbi Michi, good week,
On Saturday night I wrote the following post as a critique of the value of segulot in Rabbi Aviner’s book:
1) Rabbi Aviner wrote a book on superstition and pseudoscience in light of Torah and science (I have to admit that overall it’s a good book…).
2) Throughout the book, the Rabbi slaughters lots of myths about alternative medicine, UFOs, fake diets, unprofessional studies, superstitions, coffee-ground reading, astrology, numerology, etc.
3) He rejects every path, method, and theory that does not meet scientific criteria, and he brings quotations from scientific articles about this and explains the rejection well. He shows contempt for people who believe in things for which there is no experimental proof and no rational basis.
4) Seemingly, this is what it means to follow the truth all the way. Intellectual integrity from a religious person, a rabbi, an educator… until you get to the segulot written in the Talmud, and then something very interesting happens: the Rabbi has to deal with segulot for which no internal logic is known, which look primitive and even harmful… and above all… they simply do not work. See the link to the page on this topic from the book.
5) Seemingly, according to the line he presented throughout the book—that everything must be examined scientifically, empirically, and rationally—he should have written that these segulot are “nonsense,” just as he wrote about someone who opens an umbrella in the house, or knocks on wood, or uses homeopathy, or fears a black cat. But what can you do when these segulot were mentioned in the Talmud, which was sanctified by the Jews? And when some of the segulot were mentioned by the sages of Israel?
6) The Rabbi used the Rashba, one of the greatest medieval Spanish authorities, and two important later rabbis in order to deal with this by using the following argument:
There are forces in nature, like metal being attracted to a magnet, and in their time people did not know how they worked —> but if we do not understand how something works, that does not mean it does not work —> therefore segulot should not be dismissed.
7) The first part of this claim is correct: just because we do not understand the mechanism of some force does not mean that the force does not exist. But the analogy to segulot is plainly incorrect, since segulot do not work, or at least do not work most of the time, whereas the laws of nature work almost all the time (!). So this analogy is crooked from the outset, and even a thirteen-year-old child could spot the logical fallacy.
8) In the end, the Rabbi accepted the segulot only because he believes the words of the Sages. He abandoned rationality in favor of total belief in “the words of our rabbis.”
9) I completely reject such an approach. A rational religious statement would argue that in the Talmud there are various statements on different subjects. On matters connected to Jewish law according to tradition (not according to reasoning), the rational religious believer can accept them [if he thinks that historically, the Talmud represents an authentic halakhic tradition]. But on matters of beliefs far from Torah (pairs, demons, and the like), on matters of science and medicine, and on strange segulot of various kinds, certainly one should not accept such things without thorough examination—and it makes no difference who said them: a Tanna or an Amora.
What do you think of these points? Isn’t the Rashba’s argument very weak?
Best regards,
Answer
I completely agree. The problem with segulot is not that we do not understand how they work, but that there is no indication whatsoever for the claim that they work at all. The Rashba’s arguments can be relevant to proven facts for which we have no understanding of how they happen. There the point is that lack of understanding does not mean the thing is untrue. On the contrary: if we have seen that it works, we should look for an explanation, but not abandon facts just because we do not understand them.
Maimonides already wrote—and his words were brought in a letter by his son Rabbi Abraham (printed at the beginning of volume 1 of Ein Yaakov)—that the sages of the Talmud have no authority in fields that are not Jewish law. Others use the principle of “changes in nature” (see Rabbi Neria Gutel’s book by that name), which in my view is nothing but a polite dismissal of the words of our rabbis (though Gutel forcefully rejects this possibility). The only way a rational person can accept such segulot is if it is clear to us that they were transmitted from Sinai. In that case I could accept far-fetched explanations, such as spiritual harms or harms in the future. I do not know of any source from which it emerges that these segulot were passed down by tradition from Sinai or given by some prophet. So where did the Sages get their truth from? One of two possibilities: either from their own reasoning and experience, or from the scholars of their time (just as halakhic decisors today recommend medical approaches based on expert advice and up-to-date scientific knowledge). But both of those sources are questionable. The science of their time was primitive and mostly mistaken, and the reasoning of sages or learning from their experience is also questionable. The sages of the Talmud are no more qualified than we are to learn from experience or from reasoning. By the way, my impression is that usually even in the Talmud itself it is implied that they related to this as medical knowledge, not as a segulah above nature.
Therefore there is no reason in the world to assume that these segulot really work, just like any other ancient science or subjective experience. On the contrary, reality shows that they do not work, and precisely for that reason those sages quoted by Rabbi Aviner needed far-fetched explanations (maybe it will cause harm in the distant future, or maybe the intention is harm to the soul, and so on). I do not see any room even to be concerned about these segulot. Moreover, in my humble opinion, anyone who studies the passages that deal with them is simply wasting Torah study, in my humble opinion.