Question

Rabbi Michael Abraham, greetings and blessings,
 
A few months ago I asked to purchase your book, Walking Among the Standing, and since the trilogy had been published at that time, I decided to buy all three books.
 
I bought the books and received them from Israel Yagel, who lives, as I discovered, very close to where I live, and I very much enjoyed meeting him. He warned me that the first volume is not easy to read.
 
Precisely his words challenged me even more, and under the auspices of the coronavirus, which freed up a great deal of time, I read it—or more precisely, studied it—and finished it just recently.
 
At the outset, I would like to say that I enjoyed reading it very much. It is indeed not easy, but the book is comprehensive, thorough, and deep; it is written clearly, systematically, and profoundly, yet it remains readable for any thoughtful person. I thank you for writing it and bringing it to publication, and for the experience and journey it drew me into.
 
The book brings order to the conceptual framework, organizes the arguments, stimulates thought, and calls one onward to read the other two books.
 
Your words also illuminated new ideas for me that I had been unsure about—for example, regarding the claim that God “gave up certainty that the world would reach its goal” (p. 456) (I understood that you expand on this in the next two books, so perhaps I will return to you after reading them), and regarding members of other religions (p. 528): “Each society received through revelation the demands that are right for it and expected of it.”
 
With your permission, I would like to raise several specific points for thought:

1. Argument skeleton — The book is so long and thorough that I think it would be important to present the points as well (perhaps as an appendix) in a very basic form, as a flowchart of arguments and counterarguments, in a summary of just a few lines for each argument and counterargument. That way, after successfully finishing the book, the reader could return to it and/or locate and find the relevant points, and each matter could be set forth in its proper form. Also, since the book deals with questions and debates, it would be good for the material to be arranged in skeletal form so that the response—and the referral to the fuller discussion in the book—would be convenient and easy.
2. And similarly, as an additional note, it seems to me that even the table of contents is not detailed and thorough enough, and in a book like this it is important that the contents also be detailed. The contents that appear at the front of the book should refer to each and every subheading, and not only to the main headings.
3. The argument concerning recognition of God as obligatory even according to those who hold that commandments do not require intention—this argument is not necessarily connected to the subject of the book, and I would like to ask about it. This argument, which is innovative in itself, draws on two sources you brought on pages 401 (regarding an idol worshiper) and 451 (Maimonides regarding a pious gentile). From there you derived that “one who does not believe in God—his commandments are not commandments, and his transgressions are not transgressions” (p. 405). And so too on p. 452, that recognition of God is not enough, but there is a need for recognition of God as the one who gave the Torah at Sinai. This conclusion/position of yours is a far-reaching one, which of course has legal halakhic implications, and I am sure you know that. However, I would like to argue that the proofs you brought do not compel this far-reaching result. It seems to me that those sources you cited refer only to an idol worshiper—that is, the obligation of recognizing God is a requirement that raises the bar specifically in connection with idolatry, in order to be lenient with him so that he should not incur the death penalty as an idol worshiper. That is to say: only if he accepts God—only then would he be liable as an idol worshiper. Likewise with the pious gentile, a law that refers to a non-Jew—only if he also accepts the God of Israel as God, only then will the non-Jew be considered one of the pious of the nations of the world. Here too, the requirements regarding belief in God were made stricter, up to actual acceptance of Him as God; otherwise, he does not leave his default status as a non-Jew and enter the category of the pious of the nations of the world. But from where do you derive that this is also true regarding a Jew, who was born a Jew, whose feet—or whose ancestors’ feet—stood at Mount Sinai, who was bound by the covenant at that event and by all the covenants thereafter, in the Plains of Moab and at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal—that he too must once again accept God before he can be liable for sins he commits and/or before there can be any value to the commandments imposed upon him and/or that he accepted upon himself? Entry into the covenant does not require further conditions afterward in order to remain a member of the covenant, and one side cannot cast it off once he decides not to recognize God.
4. And one final comment—perhaps one that should have come first. The journey of rationality was truly thrilling. It did indeed reveal more and more how much one can believe מתוך a rational conception. But the further one advances in the reading journey, the more one is exposed to the need for intuitive positions and decisions in order to sustain faith and/or commitment to the divine command. After finishing the book, I went back to the distinction you made between intuition and “emotion” (p. 28). There is a distinction, but I am not sure that this is not simply that same emotion clothed in the mantle of “intuition.” An emotion that awakens, calling from the depths of the heart, is “a subtle tendency among the soul’s tendencies,” and although perhaps it is only “emotion,” it has an important place, like the place of prophetic awakening among the prophets. Be that as it may, emotion should have an important role no less in sustaining faith and obedience, and in the way they are implemented.

Many thanks to you, and more power to you.
 
With many blessings, and with wishes for a peaceful Sabbath,