Q&A: Having trouble with a certain rabbi’s position? No problem—just say he doesn’t really believe the position he presents
Having trouble with a certain rabbi’s position? No problem—just say he doesn’t really believe the position he presents
Question
Rabbi Michi,
On this occasion, let me wish you a happy holiday 🙂 and share with you my Facebook post from Saturday night, which stirred up some controversy with a few conservatives:
There are religious people who have a very hard time with certain positions taken by certain rabbis, so they completely reverse what those rabbis said so that it will fit their own worldview.
Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda did this with Maimonides. Maimonides did not believe in demons and denied their existence. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda tried to say that Maimonides did believe in demons, but merely refrained from publicizing this out of responsibility for the Jewish people as a whole (interesting that the editors of the Talmud, Ravina and Rav Ashi, did not feel such responsibility…). Here is a quotation from his words:
“Maimonides … felt within himself a responsibility … to all of Israel … It was clear to him that, as an educator of the entire Jewish people, he was obligated to omit mysterious matters or things on the border of the mysterious. Obscure matters are a danger to the broad public, and therefore Maimonides saw it as his duty to omit them … Maimonides did not mention demons and the evil eye not because he denied their existence, but because he was cautious and refrained from publicizing them among all Israel” (Conversations of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, Genesis, p. 259, quoted by Rabbi Aviner)
These things are simply intellectual dishonesty, and also attempts by later circles to present Maimonides as a kabbalist and as someone who acknowledged mystical forces. Just because it is hard for them that Maimonides thought some of the beliefs that many of our people believe in (including quite a few sages of Israel) are nonsense and foolishness. But that’s the reality: this is Maimonides, and that was his view. You can disagree with him, and that’s legitimate, but trying to turn his view into its opposite… it’s ridiculous.
Kookniks in general have this tendency. Once I was at an Independence Day sermon in a Kooknik community, and the community rabbi (a Torah scholar) there said: “There is no such thing as a secular unbeliever, there is no such thing as a Jew who does not believe; everyone believes, you just need to peel away their shells and the faith will burst out.”
I really didn’t like that statement, and I also think it is fundamentally mistaken. Of course there are Jews who do not believe; there are heretics, apostates, and deniers, and the Sages even assigned them specific laws. The presumption of representing people who do not think like you and speaking in their name about things they do not believe at all is both patronizing and euphoric.
When I heard the sermon, I was reminded of the words of my teacher Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein—how right his words were:
“There is also a meaning to the expression ‘captured infants’ that I find not דווקא among the people of the Hazon Ish, but among the people of Rabbi Kook. I mean an attitude toward this public that says to them: You think you are such-and-such, but we know that within you there is another world. A world that in the end is your true inner being. The day will come when this hidden world will be revealed. When you remove one layer of shells, then a second layer of shells—this is how they relate to it, like the peel of an onion, which has one peel and then another peel. There is something patronizing in such an attitude. I would not want people to relate to me that way. And I do not think one should relate to them that way.”
(Those Who Seek Your Presence, Our Brothers, the Entire House of Israel—On the Attitude Toward Secular Jews, p. 1455)
Regards,
N'
Answer
N’, joyful festival days.
Thank you very much for these remarks. Two comments:
1. Maimonides himself writes in his commentary to the Mishnah on Rosh Hashanah, regarding the words of Rav Saadia Gaon, that he wrote them as an answer to the heretics but did not actually hold that way himself. I also do not like this interpretation, but sometimes it can be correct (with Maimonides regarding demons this is not plausible).
I’ll just say that although such an interpretation can be correct, in my opinion there is no need for it. Even if Maimonides held something that seems absurd to me, then I simply disagree with him. Why do I need to recruit him to my side? Sometimes the things are so implausible that it is hard to believe that a wise man like him held them, and that itself is the reason to interpret that he did not really hold them. Similar to the common consideration that it is better to force the wording than to force the reasoning.
2. As for inner faith, I would raise the same objection. In many cases, people are not aware of the faith that exists within them, but they really do believe. Take, for example, a person who becomes convinced by a logical proof that God exists. By the nature of a logical proof, the conclusion is already contained within the premises, and if he was convinced, then it is proven that the premises were already acceptable to him, and the conclusion was included within them. That is, from the very beginning he was a hidden believer without knowing it. The proof merely brought this to his awareness.
I am even inclined to think that most people have such an implicit faith, because otherwise what basis would there be to demand that they believe?
You are right, however, that such faith is not worth much. What exists deep within us, not out of choice and decision and not in conscious awareness, has no value in the world. Therefore the statement that because of this inner faith every Jew is something of higher value is indeed unfounded, in my humble opinion.
Discussion on Answer
In my opinion you are too hasty in your criticism.
Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda’s words were not said (as I understand it) out of an inability to accept that Maimonides did not believe what he believed, but out of a genuine difficulty in reconciling Maimonides’ words with Talmudic passages and midrashim. Add to that the fact that Maimonides himself advocated the approach that deep matters should not be revealed to the masses (introduction to Guide for the Perplexed).
Even though I also do not agree with Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, there is no need to go so far as to call it intellectual dishonesty.
As for Rabbi Kook’s words about the pioneers, I always understood them as Rabbi Michi wrote above: that Rabbi Kook thought that in their intuition there was faith in them, even though they themselves did not acknowledge it.
Rabbi Kook’s words were said out of his admiration for the comradeship, self-sacrifice, and love of the Jewish people that existed among the pioneers.
Rabbi Kook did see religious value in the deeds of the pioneers, and on that I disagree with him. Commandments performed unintentionally and without awareness have no religious value, as he writes at the end of Chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings.
Rabbi Kook appreciated the character of the pioneers and their qualities. His words about their inner point were apparently directed to what you wrote regarding intuitions a person has, even though he is not aware of them.
Rabbi Kook did not say there is religious value in that inner point, only that it gives hope for change.
That was not my impression, because for that you do not need any inner point at all. You can appreciate them for their conscious actions without assuming anything about their subconscious. Moreover, if their actions stem from a secular national decision, as in any other people, how can one infer from their actions the existence of such an inner point? Perhaps they sacrifice themselves just as Belgians sacrifice themselves for Belgium. But of course one needs to look at the actual texts, and I do not remember them at the moment.
At least from Guide for the Perplexed, Part I, Chapter 2, it emerges that Maimonides definitely believed in demons—mobsters, murderers, and the like.