Interesting—the old links no longer work, and I also couldn’t find it on his site.

https://ozbluman.wordpress.com/

I couldn’t find it either..
I have it as a PDF file.. I can send it to the Rabbi by email if he wants

If you can, I’d be happy to take a look.
mikyab@gmail.com

Thanks

I sent it… Rabbi, please confirm you received it

Thanks. It’s a long master’s thesis. I’ll try to take a look.

Judah,
Could you send it to me too?
godorpor818@gmail.com
Thanks

Sent happily 🙂

I already managed to receive it, thank him respectfully, read it, extract the essence of Rabbi Tau’s position (that’s not hard; the author presented it briefly in the summary), and find what I think is the main weak point in the background of Tauism.
I’ll post it here soon.
Many thanks

This is, in my opinion, the key paragraph for approaching Tau’s doctrine (if because of haste I identified it incorrectly, I invite anyone well-versed in Tauism to correct me):

“While tracing the ‘holy perspective’ and the concepts of ‘holiness’ and ‘consciousness,’ the second chapter unfolded an entire metaphysical canvas concerning the ‘person-as-he-ought-to-be’: how he is capable of recognizing additional layers of reality that are not revealed to him in his current state; how these layers relate, among other things, to spiritual impulses acting in the socio-cultural space around him and even within his own soul; how recognition of these layers depends entirely on the ‘holy writings’—both because the ‘holy writings’ contain the precise conceptual system required to describe them, and because study of the ‘holy writings’ leads to an overall change in the structure of cognition, which is required in order to become acquainted with them; and how in the end this person will be more moral and more sensitive, alongside being more Israeli and more Jewish.”

Subject to the limitations of an initial skimming, Tau’s basic assumption can be summarized as follows:

Holiness—a concept that, as I understand it, roughly parallels a kind of metaphysical alertness that a person is called upon to cultivate—is the main category for a person’s spiritual perfection, especially a Jew’s.

The difficulty: recognition of these layers of holiness “depends entirely on the holy writings.” Presumably the intention is the Jewish holy writings, but even if Rabbi Tau insisted that he meant the Vedas or the Quran, the problem would be the same problem.

From a philosophical point of view, this position expresses an anti-dualist (“analytic”) stance, because it presents only one “royal road” for bringing us closer to that “holiness.” If Tau acknowledges other ways, they are necessarily less important for him. In this he effectively denies the very idea that intuition alone in a person can serve as that “royal road.”

What seemingly supports the interpretation I’ve offered is the author’s comparison between Tau and Heschel. The latter is not content with a “search for metaphysics,” but from the outset aims higher, for a “search for God.” Tau, by contrast, hobbles himself from the start and binds his actions to the search for holiness. As noted, for him this is identified with an actual text.

Of course, nothing in what was written above expresses any position on the totality of Tau’s doctrine or its details, let alone on the man himself. From what I’ve heard about him from other sources, it seems to me that a not-simple problematic is hidden here…

You said that according to Tau the most important way to draw close to holiness is (also) through the Jewish holy writings and not (only) through intuitive capacity. Where exactly is the “problematic” here?

You didn’t quote me precisely.
I said that according to Tau, drawing close to holiness, or recognizing it, can first of all be done through the holy writings (and only afterward perhaps also in other ways).
Tau establishes here a mistaken hierarchy, one that is not in line with what Michi calls a “synthetic” position. A person’s intuitive faculty comes first, cognitively, before all other ways. Certainly before the holy writings.

Tau may perhaps have an escape from this in another direction that I won’t spell out right now, but in my view that escape too is an illusion

A. What is the difference between “the approach can first of all be made” and “the most important way to draw close”?

B. You write that the intuitive faculty comes first (cognitively) before every other path, whereas Tau says that the holy writings come first. But where is the difficulty here? The intuitive faculty is like our eyes: every interpretation is made through it and on top of it. Tau argues that the way is to activate that faculty in the study of the holy writings, and then one reaches the destination. There is no reason at all to think one can activate the faculty in empty space and still reach that same destination.
Or okay, Tau will tell you that really number 1 is the faculty, and number 2 is the holy writings. Then presumably you’ll ask him what happens if there are contradictions between the two. The answer is that where there is a contradiction between a direct observation of the faculty and a result from the holy writings (which itself, like everything else, rests on interpretation founded in that faculty), the result from the holy writings determines. Is that in fact the claim you’re cooking up for the next stage? (If so, then I’ll make the effort to justify the “answer”)

A. There’s no difference. My main thesis is that Tau reverses the hierarchy and is therefore mistaken.

B. The difficulty stems from the fact that a consistent interpretation of the Taoist thesis necessarily leads, in my opinion, to the conclusion that one cannot really hold intuitions at all. To maintain the position that intuitions do in fact exist and are the foundation (as you yourself admit), one must claim this: there is a minimal requirement of the holy writings that they present themselves—even if only implicitly—as subordinate to our intuitions (and not merely acknowledge their existence, if they indeed do so). If they did so, they would admit that “holiness” is located first of all in God and perhaps also in His direct relationship with man, and from that it would follow that they are not really as necessary as Tau would like to think. The problem is that they don’t do this, and Tau doesn’t claim it either.

C. Note that I am not ruling out a priori any medium as a way of drawing close to holiness, and certainly not ruling out the holy writings. I am only setting what seems to me the correct hierarchy.

Interpretation of the holy writings is indeed subject to our intuitions. Why does it follow from this that “holiness” is found first of all in God and perhaps also in His direct relationship with man?
Please share your opinion about the following analogy. The image of the table in my consciousness is mediated through my eyes, but in my eyes themselves there is no table; and if in the room (the holy writings) there were no table (information about holiness and means of drawing close to it, or holiness itself), then my eyes (the intuitive faculty) could not on their own create in my consciousness the correct image of the table.

One more little note: any theory that wants to “maintain its innocence” against the charge of analyticity must present an a priori condition according to which all our bodies of knowledge (including itself) are contingent upon reality (in fact upon God) and rely on the intuitive faculty (which is in fact the royal road to “acquaintance” with God).

I don’t understand the analogy you made, and in any case I don’t see how it serves you.
If anything, the analogy should be this:
There is a table (God).
There is its image traveling to us (some kind of “holy” acquaintance with God, or at least with His “presence”).
There are eyes that receive it (the intuitive faculty).
Only after that comes the intellect (the holy writings, or really their interpretation) and tries to understand what it saw.
Tau says otherwise: there is an intellect, and it tells us all kinds of things that obligate…!!!! us to believe in them (eyesight, tables, images of tables, etc.). This claim contradicts what we have both already agreed on, namely that intuition precedes intellect / the holy writings

Why are you likening the holy writings to intellect rather than to a certain room in which the possibility of seeing the table is found? One could argue that the holy writings (the room) are the most important means such that if the faculty acts upon them (the eyes look at the room), it will be possible to reach holiness (the image of the table will travel into consciousness through the eyes). If someone says that only in a certain room is there a table and only there can it be seen, has he thereby said that the eyes are not the only means of sight?

I really don’t understand your analogy. Maybe I’m missing something, but to me it just doesn’t fit the discussion at all…

The holy writings convey certain information to us (that there is God, that there is holiness, etc.).
Therefore they are comparable to our cognitive faculties, for example to the intellect. After all, the cognitive faculties perform the same operation.

The image of a room that you are using seems really strange to me… A “room” is comparable to a cognitive faculty…? Does a room—in which there are all kinds of objects (for example tables)—“transmit” to us one kind of information or another about those objects…?

In any case, there’s no need to get tangled up in the image in order to understand the claim: Rabbi Tau needs to decide what comes before what—intuition or the holy writings? In my view he has already decided, contrary to both our opinions, contrary to what reason says. That is the heart of my argument.

Instead of pressing the question of what comes before what and all sorts of definitions, offer a practical test case in which you think Rabbi Tau would say conclusion A, and you would tell him that’s a mistake and really it should be something else. I’ll try my hand at one: suppose a person directly feels that one can reach holiness by scratching his back. Suppose the holy writings say that the way to reach holiness is by K.T. The intuitive faculty interprets for me that K.T. means nail-biting. Now your argument comes along and says (in that person’s world and according to his view) that scratching one’s back is a good and proper way to reach holiness just like nail-biting, whereas in your opinion Rabbi Tau says only nail-biting. Am I understanding your claim correctly?

Well my friend, you’re drifting farther and farther from the plane of our discussion.
First you brought an analogy that has nothing to do with the matter, and now this…?

Neither Rabbi Tau nor certainly little old me is addressing practical concrete questions, at least not in this discussion.
It’s obvious that Tau is engaging with traditions of thought that try to formulate universal claims about the a priori conditions for attaining holiness. For example, his claim that one must turn to the holy writings. I am claiming that the conditions he formulates fail. If you’re looking for “case studies” or “recipes,” you won’t find them with me. I suspect Tau does in fact have such things, but even with him they come only on the second floor, not in the place you’ve climbed to now…

Read again my opening claim, from before you addressed me, and see for yourself what I’m discussing.

Can you formulate a hypothetical example of a case in which your differing positions (yours and Rabbi Tau’s) would lead to different conclusions? What exactly is the problem with drawing such an example?

It’s not the main thing in my life, but you ask so nicely…
Rabbi Tau will choose as a source of holiness and as its expression the Torah and everything that in his opinion follows from it, normatively in principle and probably historically as well. I will not. More concrete than that? I assume he sees the Land of Israel and the State of Israel as the dwelling place of holiness. That of course has concrete psychological, political, economic, etc. implications. In my eyes, such a position contains not only holiness (maybe that too) but mainly “impurity.”

How is that connected to the question whether the intuitive faculty precedes or does not precede the holy writings

It’s obvious you really are tired…

You tried to challenge my philosophical argument against Rabbi Tau’s position (which is itself philosophical).
You were answered.

After that you turned to ask for a concrete example. Although that wasn’t my topic, I answered you.

Now you challenge: how is the concrete example connected to the philosophical groundwork with which I opened?

Answer anyway: when Tau sets for himself (and for us) a concrete religious norm concerning the concept of holiness, but he does not understand that from the outset he understands neither the topic nor himself because of the matter of intuition and its precedence over Torah, then there is room to doubt the status of the proposed norm.

Doron,
Now I understand you (in the comments on the column about Jewish law you were completely obscure).
It seems to me that the problem is this. We assume that we have no capacity for direct intuition with an infinite God, because otherwise our finite reality would collapse. In Lurianic language, the tzimtzum would collapse. In Aristotelian language, matter would reveal its nothingness. For this reason one cannot truly come into direct contact with God and receive holiness from Him.
On the other hand, God cannot be an object in this world. That would turn Him into idolatry. That is also the problem with the God of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. God is a subject expressing freedom, not an object available for scientific study and technological manipulation.
On the third hand, one cannot do without divine revelation, for moral reasons and perhaps also because of a higher need, as Michi calls it.
What is the solution?
The Torah. On the one hand it reveals God in the world. On the other hand it is not an object that imprisons God within it. If you want, accept it; if not, not. So yes, we have an intuition of the holiness of the Torah that derives from the God beyond the Torah. On the other hand, we have no way to bypass it or the people it creates by the very force of its command, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. So that’s what there is.

Why does this mean there are no further revelations? I don’t know. Once I read in Hanan Porat that there is only one revelation in order to express the uniqueness of God.

That is what I called the theory of God’s signifiers, which you once asked about, but until you explained yourself here (and it took at least 3 years) I didn’t know how to present it.

Three whole years… and then it came. Let me digest the magnitude of the occasion 🙂

Well, obviously your words seem mistaken to me.

First, I’m not sure we have no direct acquaintance with God or with certain “qualities” in Him (the holy spirit, the Divine Presence, I don’t know).

Second, if you really are right and we have no such acquaintance, then the solution is indeed some mediating factor between us and Him.
But as I’ve claimed here countless times, the Torah is a lousy mediating factor. A consistent interpretation of its very existence necessarily leads to what happens with every analytic body of knowledge that takes over—or more precisely tries to take over—reality. In this case, it is the Torah’s attempt to take over God. A coup.
I’ve explained this at length in the past (not only regarding the Torah, as said).

Third, the mediating factor proposed by the Christian model (the Son of God) is more successful philosophically. On the contrary, it relies to a large extent precisely on truths of the Torah.

Of course, it may be that we can conceive of mediating factors that are even more successful.

With God’s help, 9 Tevet 5781

Common sense leads to the conclusion that whoever created a sophisticated machine like the world would attach to it written “operating instructions,” and at the same time would train an authorized “technical staff” of “engineers and technicians” who would receive deep instruction from the manufacturer about its purpose and the proper ways to operate the “machine.”

Human logic not only requires that there be detailed divine guidance; it also serves as a tool for understanding and deepening the “manufacturer’s instructions” in order to understand the principles and rules and thereby make it possible to cope with new situations. But the interpreting logic needs to be grounded in the foundations explicitly set out in the “manufacturer’s instructions.”

From the knowledge given to us in the Written Torah and the transmitted tradition, we can arrive through our reason at insights we would not have reached without the knowledge given to us in the sources. Thus for example, when modernity broke out and many religious people left religion, we might have concluded that “it’s over,” Heaven forbid.

But once Daniel revealed to us that “at the time of the end” there would be hard crises, yet “it is a time of trouble for Jacob, but he shall be saved out of it”; and once the Sages revealed to us that “in the footsteps of the Messiah insolence will increase… the government will turn to heresy and the house of meeting will be for immorality,” yet the spiritual crisis is what will bring redemption—then Rabbi Kook could come and analyze the situation with his reason, and explain (in the essay “The Generation”) that the crisis and rebellion stem from the desire of the generation not to accept things as “the commandment of men learned by rote,” but rather to aspire to understanding and identification, and on the basis of this optimistic insight to build tools for solving the spiritual crisis by constructing a higher level that will translate the faith of the Torah and its values into fuller life for the collective and the individual.

With blessings,
Tao-Te-Ching, man of Le-Wing

Lewinger, are you sure you’re not a poster?

To Doron—

If I were a poster, you would start worshipping me the way you worship the man nailed to the cross 🙂

With blessings,
Judah from Kerioth

And in short:
A person finds before him a sophisticated and well-oiled world and understands that there is a “Master of the mansion.” After lengthy investigation he can know a little about the ways the “machine” works. But in order to know what the purpose of the machine is and what the “operating instructions” are that lead to the purpose set by the “manufacturer”—for that a person needs to receive operating instructions from the manufacturer.

These instructions are given to him both in a written document, in the holy writings, and in detailed and profound directives transmitted to a “technical staff” of “engineers and technicians,” namely the prophets and the sages, who received the foundations of the information through tradition, which they supplement and develop through rational understanding and analysis of the principles—analysis that enables them to draw conclusions even about new situations not explicitly mentioned in the ancient sources, regarding which one must “compare one matter to another.”

It seems that the rational inquiry grounded in the foundations of the Written Torah and the transmitted tradition is the “holy perspective” of which Rabbi Tau speaks.

With blessings,
Yaron Fish”l Ordner

Well, a poster can’t see itself from the outside. As Wittgenstein said, it only “shows itself” (performance). But perhaps the holy writings will someday send you a third dimension (depth). We shall wait patiently.

To Doros—

You’re really improving. After writing an entire comment without mentioning a single Latin word—at last the Latin arrived: “performance,” from Wittgenstein

With the blessing of “Atam piritush knayert… item otan yu prish hedg vizt, yuyi de yu volt,”
Shatzius Liwingerus

I don’t have revelation of the Divine Presence. If you do, then great, but it seems to me that most of us have no way to cross the distance from the finite physical world in which we exist to Him. By the way, I’m not sure the Torah objects to it. Moses our rabbi is the one who says, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets,” and the prophets prophesy about the giving of a heart of flesh and “the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord.”

You assume that the Torah is not a successful mediator. I don’t know, but if that’s what there is, then that’s what there is (and on that see the next section).

“Son of God” in the prophecies of Isaiah originally referred to the people of Israel—so will you now cleave to the nation, as Rabbi Kook proposes, in order to reach God? I am ignoring the pagan aspects of Christianity (accepting Jesus as divine, and so on). The fact that we can think of more successful revelations does not make them true. In the end this is a matter of intuition, as you pointed out. Intuition does not let us cross the gap by our own powers, but it does allow us to identify whether a claim of revelation is true or not. And for now, neither Christianity nor Islam does it for us. As the saying goes, one who has tasted Hungarian wine won’t confuse it with another wine; the Torah is our Hungarian wine, and so far no other wine confuses us.

I agree that certain Jewish laws in the Torah are perceived as taking over thought and therefore over God, but that only points to the problematic of studying Jewish law from the Mishnah and to the superiority of the master of the Talmud over the master of the Mishnah (that is, the superiority of Talmudic understanding over simplistic understanding).
The fact that a Karaite reading, that is a simplistic one, of the Torah presents to us a form of Torah as analytic does not make it so. The prohibition against reading books of heretics does not really prevent us from investigating lines of thought, for the validity of the Torah itself derives from its intuition. The prohibition must be understood differently—perhaps as caution against mechanical materialistic approaches that lead a person to sin (something like the evil spirit that rests upon a person following involvement with the mechanical sides of man, such as haircutting, clipping nails, sleep, sexual relations, and the like, which require hand-washing afterward). And again, this needs analysis. What is certain is that if a person identifies God in other places too, like Kant or Aristotle or perhaps Buddha in his original approach, then there is certainly no prohibition in the matter.

With God’s help, 10 Tevet 5781

To Y.D. — greetings,

All of Doron’s arguments about the need for a “mediator” between man and God, on the basis of which he discusses “which mediator is more successful—the Torah or the crucified one?”, are the offspring of the pagan conception that there is a need for a “mediator.” The Torah believes in a direct connection. The Creator reveals Himself to the prophets, headed by Moses our rabbi, and placed in their hands the “operating instructions” of the world; and since these are the Creator’s instructions, they are eternal, for “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent.”

Any further revelation—whether in prophecy to prophets or in the holy spirit revealed also in the reasonings of sages—will not come to uproot the divine will transmitted in the Torah, but to add guidance on how to strengthen and how to apply the Torah’s eternal principles in new situations.

With blessings,
Amiuz Yaron Schnitzel”r

Right, that’s what should have been said. My tongue stumbled after heresy.

Y.D.,

By your account it took you three years to understand what I want, and whoosh… here it comes. In light of your last words, I’m afraid you still didn’t really understand, anyway.
What are your plans for the next three years?

My claim about a direct (unmediated) connection with God was not the main argument. That is not what I’m building on in the present discussion.
Still, the existence of such a direct connection is a reasonable assumption, though it needs much more serious grounding than I can provide here. If there is such a connection, it will be anchored in the concept of possibility: as human beings in daily life we stand not only before actual entities and events, but also before the possibilities for the realization of all these. Possibilities are indeed “empty” entities, but to deny the relevance of that “emptiness” in our lives would be to play the skeptic’s foolish game.

But as noted, that is not my main argument. The main point is mediation, and I have already explained my claim to exhaustion and brought examples and arguments (for example in the debate with Michi some years ago about the Torah’s view regarding its necessity in parallel possible worlds).

In any case, the model of Torah from Heaven is not really a lousy model, as I put it earlier. It is more accurate to see it as a tragic model. It is a model in which God is contingent upon a text that He Himself created. As they say, the cucumbers rose up against the gardener.
Therefore I also have nothing to do with your claims that neither Christianity nor Islam “does it for us” (with the added Hungarian wine parable). What do I care what one thing or another does for some random person? Why should I care about the believer’s psychological state? My concern is with philosophical claims. Some are more successful and some less so…

Nor do I care whether the Torah (or the insights hidden in it) forbids or does not forbid reading the books of heretics. How is that connected to our discussion? How is your position about the supposed superiority of the master of the Talmud over the tannaim who preceded him connected to the discussion? In the same breath, what use do I have for prophecies appearing in the Hebrew Bible that supposedly refer to Jesus? The historical Jesus is completely marginal to the discussion. And even if you prove to me that there was no such figure—human or “divine”—you have hardly harmed the explanatory power of the model that he represents.

As for the last comment by Schnitzel. Well, it seems his honor insists on denying both himself and the Torah in which he believes. In one sentence he introduces a frontal contradiction of which he is not at all aware: according to him, in Judaism there is both no need for a mechanism of mediation and also the Torah says so… really?

At the margins, I’ll make a remark not really connected to the discussion, but to me it is interesting. There is a common position that sees the essence of Judaism as memory. Beginning from the giving of the Torah, the Jewish people were commanded to remember and to relive this memory over the course of history. I tend to agree with this view, only I think that in Judaism there is something more important than memory, namely forgetfulness—or actually repression. An example of such repression is Schnitzel’s words. In any case, repression has enormous vitality, and therefore Judaism is indeed very vital. The one who pays the price, of course, is truth. “A Torah of life”? Yes. A Torah of truth? Much less so…

With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “And the spirit of Jacob their father revived,” 10 Tevet 5781

Judaism indeed places emphasis on memory. The Torah commands the Sabbath, on which we remember the creation of the world and the Exodus from Egypt. The festivals and fast days also remind us of the troubles and salvations the Jewish people have undergone throughout the generations.

But memory of the past is not an end in itself; rather, it is meant to spur us to action, as it is written, “so that you may remember and do,” for the purpose of the creation of the world is to make man a partner with his Creator in cultivating and developing it, as it is written: “which God created to do.”

Maimonides explains the commandment to fast on days when calamities befell the Jewish people by the need to notice that troubles are not “fate,” but come in the wake of sins, and we must awaken to correct our ways and deeds so as to align our conduct with the will of God as He revealed it to us in His Torah.

The fast of the tenth comes on the day the siege of Jerusalem began at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, but in our generation the day has received an additional meaning as the “general Kaddish day” for the martyrs of the Holocaust. The Kaddish expresses the Jewish way of responding to loss. In Kaddish we do not speak about what was, but about what we hope will be. Loss spurs us to strengthen our expectation for a better future, in which the name of the Creator will be magnified and sanctified in His world.

The memory of the destruction spurs us to strengthen the outline that will bring revival. And so Joseph instructs his brothers, “Do not quarrel on the way.” Do not wallow in the mud of guilt feelings over your past failure—guilt feelings that will lead you to quarrels and mutual accusations. Repair of the sin of hatred among brothers will come through strengthening brotherhood, and when the brothers are united among themselves, then the spirit of their father will revive.

It is worth noting in this context a point that may be more significant in Rabbi Tau’s method than the “holy perspective” on which Rabbi Oz Bluman focused. The distinctive emphasis that characterizes Rabbi Tau’s method is the emphasis on statism,

On the political plane, where Rabbi Tau calls for maintaining alignment with the nation as a whole, so that even if we think the leaders of the state are mistaken in their path, we must work to persuade the rest of the public and not “take the law into our own hands.” And on the Torah plane he calls for preserving “the stateliness of Torah in Israel,” strengthening the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, in which coordination and cooperation were created between representatives of the whole Torah world—Haredi and Zionist, Sephardi and Ashkenazi.

If the destruction of the Second Temple came because of division and hatred, then its rebuilding will come by our returning to function as a united people.

With blessings,
Yaron Fish”l Corinaldi

I pity Rabbi Kook. His doctrine was indeed flawed from the outset (too many sentiments and “harmonies” and too little self-criticism), but despite that, when it entered the world it served as a bold intellectual option and authentic spiritual inspiration. In the years since, Religious Zionist society grew and flourished, and in the process its intellectual world became institutionalized and petrified. Infants captured willingly. Schnitzelian thought is an example of this. A placard—pretty, shiny, but so thin… a poster.
I confront him head-on with a blatant contradiction in his words, at least in my opinion, and instead of addressing it concretely he gives me a fiery speech about the eternity of Israel and similar flourishes. I have no doubt that he will manage to stir the girls at the ulpana near where he lives. On the other hand, that is much more than I will manage to do.

I do not need to repeat the same things endlessly. The Torah is the word of God, the operating instructions of the Manufacturer of the world, which, being divine, are eternal and stable; and from the stable principles one can deal with every new situation. An idol hanging on the wall, like the one you worship, cannot guide us and teach us how to conduct ourselves. What can you do? 🙂

In my last comment I addressed what you mentioned about the emphasis on memory in Judaism, and I connected that to the main point of the discussion here: Rabbi Tau’s school of thought. For the memory of the destruction that came as a result of division and hatred leads to the need for broad cooperation, and from here derives the “statism” for which Rabbi Tau calls.

With blessings,
Yaron Fish”l Corinaldi

First of all, based on your conduct here, apparently you do think you need to repeat the same things again and again. As long as you avoid grappling with the contradictions, you will apparently go on doing so.

For the sake of readers following us, I will again note the contradiction (or at least the paradox) in your words:

“The Torah believes in a direct connection.”

It takes a great deal of faith in a person to think I’ll receive a substantive answer to the problem I raised. I’m not sure a poor soul like me has that

By the way, the main point of the discussion here is not, as you said, Rabbi Tau’s school of thought.
The main point of the discussion is the question whether Tauism rests on a flawed basic assumption or not.
In Victorian England, such sloppy phrasing would have earned you a public flogging. Another exciting component you can add to a possible performance before the lively ulpana girls

You received a letter from the Holy One, blessed be He; you received messages and explanations that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to Moses and the prophets, and they were faithfully transmitted to us by the sages of the generations;

And you received divine instruction: “This book of the Torah shall not depart from your mouth, and you shall meditate on it day and night, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will act wisely”—that is to say: for every dilemma that arises, you will find a solution through deep study of the foundations transmitted to you in the Torah. You received the promise, “For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding”—divine help for one who truly wishes to understand His Torah. And for a case of disagreement, you received the instruction, “Incline after the majority.”

Do you have a more direct connection than that with the Creator of the world?

With blessings,
P. Leket

With God’s help, General Kaddish Day 5781

To Doron — greetings,

I’m happy to hear that the Christian propagandists have advanced and now fantasize only about public floggings for wayward Jews. In Christianity’s better days there were all sorts of torture devices, and at the end of the road the auto-da-fé at the stake.

What can you do? You didn’t succeed, and we are alive and enduring…

With blessings,
The eternal Jew

You’ve dug enough, souls

Compassionate Jews,
Is there anyone here who can help the perplexed of Israel in their distress? The task: explain to them what the discussion is about and what the criticism of their position is.
There is no need to agree with the criticism or accept it, and certainly no need to convince the perplexed that they are mistaken. We’re not there at all, yet.
At the moment, the barrier is reading comprehension.

Sanitation Department, you hinted that you’d be willing to volunteer?

The domain of my sniffing nose is barrages of tomatoes. Discussions of reading comprehension and clear writing are for people more advanced than me.

? Nice look for you.
The tomato field does seem more attractive