Q&A: I Wanted to Say Thank You
I Wanted to Say Thank You
Question
After a great many questions, discussions, and pestering… I wanted, for once, to thank you and give you credit for the creativity and originality that are very hard to find (if at all) in our society in the area of faith / belief and all that goes with it. It all always sounded to me like a pile of jumbled claims repeating themselves, mainly meant to justify the path those people were already living by.
That isn’t the feeling one gets from you.
Still, I have to comment, if I may, that your use of the word “it seems to me” is a bit too frequent; it’s easier on the reader to see some variety in wording. You could write “it appears to me,” “I get the impression,” even if that’s less literary, it’s more varied.
And on a completely different matter (if I may as well): you argued that when there are a great many questions, it is preferable to resolve them with one answer rather than reject each one separately, and therefore the countless questions about the existence of the Jewish people, the tradition from Sinai, and so on and so forth, lead us to one comprehensive explanation: divine revelation. The question is whether, if we assume that the giving of the Torah was from Heaven, we do not then “create” a great many questions from the other direction—regarding the status of women, the attitude toward human life, and in general everything connected to an old and ancient worldview that characterizes the Torah. So true, there are rebuttals and explanations for each topic separately, but wouldn’t we prefer one explanation for everything instead of rejecting and answering each point one by one? And in this case the explanation would be that the giving of the Torah is a tradition that went through a flawed process, or was absorbed into tradition, etc.
Answer
Hello Y.,
Thank you very much. As for the wording, I accept the comment. Because of the pace of the questions and the amount I am required to write, I don’t have time to be meticulous about stylistic fine points. But I’ll try to keep it in mind.
The collection of questions about the giving of the Torah does not indicate that it was not given, but at most that we do not understand its aims and values. These questions do not touch on the issue of whether it was given or not. In any case, you have certainly read more than once that I do indeed think there are flawed traditions, and even if not—there are traditions that were created by human beings under circumstances different from ours, and therefore there is room to change them.