Q&A: What Is Hardest for the Rabbi?
What Is Hardest for the Rabbi?
Question
A question out of curiosity:
Could the Rabbi please share with us what topic is the most difficult for him in the area of Jewish thought? Meaning, a topic that is itself hard for him and that he does not manage to reconcile intellectually or within Jewish sources.
For example: evolution and the Torah? Free choice? Errors in the Talmud? The issue of individual providence, and so on?
Answer
The hardest topic for me is answering the question of what the hardest topic is.
Discussion on Answer
Heaven forbid that Abba bar Abba should stumble in what is called humor, and all the more so may the Master of the whole world save me from having followers, God forbid.
All these questions have been dealt with here, and the reader can feast his eyes on them. Therefore the question only concerns the difficulty I felt at the initial stage of thought. And regarding that, I fulfilled in myself: teach your tongue to say, “I do not know.” But this teaching of “I do not know” was very hard on my tongue indeed (for by Talmudic law they add two judges and they would outvote me by quantity against quality), so I chose another available path, and thus was fulfilled in me: “the words of the wise and their riddles”…
Rabbi,
Your devoted followers may yet go searching after their own hearts and conclude that our master the Rebbe, may he live long and well, has—heaven forbid—a sense of humor…
What is the secret of your profound words?