Q&A: On Thin Theology and Loneliness
On Thin Theology and Loneliness
Question
Hello Rabbi,
As part of my struggle with the Torah world I grew up in, over the years I developed for myself—just as you described so beautifully in your article—a thin theology, in which on the one hand I continue to study Torah and keep the tradition (observing Jewish law), and on the other hand I do not feel committed to the ideological parts that seem to me incorrect / imaginary / false. Seemingly, very nice. But in truth, I feel there is nowhere for me to run—wherever I go I am surrounded by words of Torah and outlooks that seem to me simply ridiculous and diminishing of God. I have reached a point where every visit to a synagogue weakens me and fills me with despair. This is not arrogance. I do not feel smarter than everyone else (that is an obvious fact), but I feel that at some stage I had a bit more courage and intellectual honesty to step outside the bubble of axioms and slogans and admit that everything I learned did not bring me even the slightest bit closer to understanding the world or attaining even a tiny fraction of the blessed Infinite—quite the opposite—chaos and lack of understanding are what rule among those who study them. I feel that there is some basic mistake here, or some falsehood connected to concretizing God and diminishing Him, and I cannot live with that peacefully. It is clear to me that an entirely unhealthy situation has developed here, in which I am entrenching myself in my loneliness, and I do not know how to deal with it. Maybe this is a question for a psychologist, and maybe the Rabbi has some experience or advice on the subject… In any case, thank you very much for the opportunity to ask and to formulate this for myself.
Answer
Hello Anonymous.
First of all, I very much identify with your feelings. They point to inner honesty.
Second, the assumption that if you disagree with your surroundings then there must necessarily be arrogance here (as if you are smarter than everyone else) is incorrect. I remember once seeing this argument in the book Chayei Olam by the Steipler: Are you really smarter than Rabbi Akiva Eger or the Chafetz Chaim?! They surely also thought about all your difficulties. Well, not really. Most people, even if they are very smart, do not seriously weigh fundamental difficulties about their way of life and their mode of thought, especially if these are presented to them as the product of an all-powerful and all-knowing divine source.
As for your actual point, I am not sure I understood what the difficulty is. If you do not agree with this or that principle accepted in your environment—then do not accept it. I also think you should not expect a full understanding of the world and the dispersal of chaos, as your words seem to imply. That is not supposed to come from the Torah. A person is condemned to live within misunderstanding and uncertainty. That is what we are, and there is no point being misled by the illusions spread by all sorts of know-it-alls.
I think you need to work in an orderly way on your beliefs, to see what you accept and what you do not, and to try to live accordingly as much as you can (no one can fully realize his beliefs, for all sorts of reasons). If the confusion and distress you described stems from your disagreement with your surroundings, I do not see why that should cause distress. You disagree and think differently. So what?
In a few months, I hope my trilogy will come out, which is supposed to present a thin theology (the notebooks on the site are a preliminary version of the first of the three books), but that is the worldview I arrived at. You need to build your own. Maybe that will help you develop something of your own. If you would like to talk, I would be very happy. Set up a meeting with me: 052-3320543.
Discussion on Answer
Thank you so, so much for the answer and for your willingness to meet and help! Maybe I’ll manage to overcome my shyness and set up a meeting 🙂 In any case, I’ll keep thinking in the direction your answer laid out.
Many thanks again
To Chaim-
Why are you getting so worked up over a delay of a few months? The first 'trilogy' that laid the foundations of Jewish faith—Torah, Prophets, Writings—took more than a thousand years until it was sealed, and on top of it arose a second 'trilogy'—Bible, Mishnah, Talmud—which explains and applies it, and that too took about a thousand years until it was sealed, and many questions remained open that the medieval authorities and later authorities grappled with; and you expect one human being to solve all the problems in 'a few days'?
And if he succeeds in the 'impossible mission'—that would be decisive proof that even today there is miraculous divine intervention in our world 🙂
Regards, Slowly, slowly
For two years already the Rabbi has been promising to finish within a few months.
To Anonymous,
these feelings are familiar,
it’s not only disagreement with those around you; the environment doesn’t even understand what exactly it is supposed to agree or disagree with.
It seems to me there is no point trying to share, because the disagreement stems from a lack of understanding of your thoughts.
More than that, it seems wrong to share with someone who does not understand.
It seems that a large part of the things that don’t seem right to you were accepted by the public because they do not want, or are not able, to understand what you understand, and for most of the public specifically the ideas that distance you bring them closer.
This is apparently the intent of the Mishnah: "nor the chariot-account to an individual, unless he is wise and understands on his own."
Only one who understands on his own receives chapter headings; someone who does not understand on his own—if we explain everything to him, apparently he will not understand correctly, and what helps one who understands on his own can harm one who does not.
The Steipler’s argument—are you smarter than Rabbi Akiva Eger or the Chafetz Chaim?! They surely also thought about all your arguments.
I agree with half of it: most likely they did think about your arguments, but they did not publish their thoughts publicly for the above reason—they had responsibility. They kept their thoughts to themselves or to students who understood, and the general public received things according to its level.
In the end, you need to educate a generation of children.
You can see this very sharply with Ibn Ezra and other medieval authorities: "and the one who understands will understand," "and the discerning will understand," and so on and so on.
There is nothing new in the world; the hidden righteous always feel lonely. (After all, they are hidden.)
Y.D. "and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her"
With God’s help, 8 Tammuz 5779
The sages of Israel have dealt in every generation with clarifying the foundations of faith and coping with the questions that arise, whether from the sources, from reason, or from scientific knowledge. Rav Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Yehuda Halevi dealt with this, as did Maimonides and Nachmanides
In modern times, beginning with the Renaissance and the development of modern science, educated believing Jews were exposed to new questions, and accordingly the sages of the generations dealt with coping with these questions. Maharal deals with them in his book Be'er HaGolah and in his other books, Ramchal formulated a systematic philosophy in his books The Way of God and Knowing Understanding, and in the last generations this was dealt with extensively by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik.
An important book on the subject is Dr. Aharon Barth’s book, Our Generation Facing the Eternal Questions. Dr. Barth was a brilliant economist who was raised on the teachings of 'Torah with the way of the land' in German Jewry (his father, Professor Yaakov Barth, was a great orientalist and a Torah scholar). Dr. Barth was the CEO of Bank Leumi in the 1950s and 1960s, and following an illness he took a leave of absence that he devoted to a fundamental clarification of questions of faith in light of the achievements of modern science, and he summarized his conclusions in his book Our Generation Facing the Eternal Questions.
Also in our generation there are scholars who deal with clarifying questions of faith and science. I pointed to several books and websites in my comments on post 36 on Atrah De-Dina. Among them are Simply to Believe – A Guide for the Rational Believer by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Rat, and the book Clarifications of Beliefs in Maimonides by Rabbi Chaim Weisman, which deals with the questions of prophecy, free choice, and providence in Maimonides’ thought.
Regards, S.Z. Lewinger
And websites that can help in clarification and coping with questions of faith:
'Ratzio – Faith, Research, and Science' of 'Arachim,' and 'Knowing How to Believe' of the Yedaya Institute.
Regards, S.Z.L.
(By the way,) Rabbi Shimon Tzvi,
do you know Eliead Cohen’s website?
Is he a serious person?
What is the EIP method that he developed (or so he claims)?
www.eip.co.il
With God’s help, 8 Tammuz 5779
To Yisrael – greetings,
From a quick Google search I saw that the aforementioned Eliead Cohen has a book called Being God (originally spelled with the letter heh…). Since there is a family tradition that we are descended, father after son, all the way back to Adam the First and including him, and the founder of the dynasty and his wife were already burned by one who suggested to them, "and you shall be like God," all the more so I will keep away from someone who suggests that I be God even without the "like"…
Regards, S.Z. Lewinger, proprietor of the 'Truthful Simple Man' method
🙂 Thanks.
"In a few months"—Heaven help us!—so many delays! 🙁