Q&A: Prayer Leader and Faith
Prayer Leader and Faith
Question
The situation: a person who is not sure about faith, but leans more toward being an unbeliever (that is, he thinks Judaism is not true), except that he is socially religious (meaning that in general he keeps the commandments, but sloppily, and even what he does keep is not because of truth and obligation but out of a mix of inertia and social belonging).
Is such a person allowed to join a minyan? To serve as prayer leader (they always ask him)? To get an aliyah to the Torah, or to read from the Torah and the haftarah?
True, the members of the minyan might be shocked by his beliefs and would not include him, but on the other hand (a) there are also views, especially today, that pretty much every Jew counts toward a minyan and that it is a commandment to draw people close, etc.; (b) many people do not understand or engage in thought and analysis, and from their perspective, if you do not drive on the Sabbath and more or less eat kosher, you are accepted; (c) in my view, there is no value at all to prayer with a minyan as opposed to without one, or to discharging the congregation's obligation (since there is no such thing as obligation), and I do maintain the appearance of propriety.
Perhaps more precisely: should the criterion here be Jewish law as I understand it (according to which he should not be counted at all), Jewish law as they understand it (in which case you would need some estimate of the view of the average halakhic decisor or community), or the truth (that all this is just a performance and has no value, so it is permissible for me to play along).
Answer
If so, then he does not join a minyan, and certainly not serve as prayer leader. From the standpoint of the prayer he is like a flowerpot. And if someone has a different view, please ask him about it.
The last question I did not understand. Joining a minyan is a matter of Jewish law. Whether you consider yourself bound by Jewish law or not is of course your own business. What estimating the opinion of this or that decisor has to do with it is beyond me.
Discussion on Answer
I am sorry, but I do not understand the question. Are you asking whether to tell people who want to count you for the minyan that you do not believe? I said that in my opinion you are obligated to do so. They are supposed to make their own decisions, not you, and not the average decisor either (who even is that, anyway?).
What I meant was this –
A person who is not bound by Jewish law is indifferent to the religious ritual and its laws. At most (and even that is not certain) he has some moral obligation to make sure that the other people, who do want a halakhic minyan, get one.
But the definition of a "halakhic minyan" for a person who is not bound by Jewish law is not the halakhic truth; rather, it is the truth as understood by the people who observe Jewish law – that is, the opinion of the average decisor (assuming you are not going to conduct a survey in the synagogue every time to find out who follows whom and who does or does not count you).