Q&A: Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Question
It says about you on Wikipedia that in your opinion you would be considered a heretic according to the Sages, and that you have serious reservations about the Written Torah. Is that true, and if so, I’d be glad to know why.
Answer
I don’t think that’s true. My claims are mainly about our own times, and the Sages did not speak about our times. But even if I were considered such, that wouldn’t matter to me at all, because I’ve explained several times that there is no authority regarding facts (and beliefs are facts). What a person thinks is what he thinks—whether the Sages like it or not.
I don’t have any reservations beyond the accepted ones. I only argue that even if the reservations are correct, I’m not afraid to say that there are later additions and edits.
Discussion on Answer
Biblical criticism of various kinds. No.
In the article “What Is Halut” in note 3, the Rabbi refers to Rabbi Moshe Reichenberg as “my teacher.”
Wonderful command of the material 🙂
From him I learned most of my Torah knowledge (the part I didn’t learn from books). But it’s hard to define him as my rabbi in the usual sense, certainly today (I assume he himself would object).
Please don’t forget that the greatest heretic of all generations was none other than our forefather Abraham, who denied idolatry (in foreign terminology: gods).
Maimonides ruled that the leading figures of his time who believed that the Holy One, blessed be He, has a body are heretics; the Raavad had doubts in his time, but today nobody disagrees.
As the wise man, bitter to many people, Mr. Albert Einstein, already said: a new method is not accepted because those who oppose it come to agree with it, but rather when they gradually die off—and the words are fitting for the one who said them.
Well said indeed.
What accepted reservations are there? And an unrelated question: do you have a rabbi?