Q&A: Give-and-Take in Jewish Thought
Give-and-Take in Jewish Thought
Question
Hello Rabbi,
You say in the third book of the trilogy, in the section on Jewish thought, that “every thinker who uses sources makes use of the flexibility, contradictions, and essentially the ambiguity that is created in order to interpret as he wishes. You will not find classical sources in the realm of thought, or any give-and-take intended to create a complete picture by resolving contradictions and grappling with other doctrines in order to find a teaching that fits all the sources.”
That is also my impression, but I have some reservations about it that I would like to hear your opinion on:
a) Didn’t Maimonides conduct such a give-and-take and arrive at a decision in his books?
b) Can’t one say that within the books of Jewish thought they do respond to the claims of their time, and essentially to one another as well (just implicitly and not unequivocally, as sometimes happens in Jewish law among the medieval authorities)?
Answer
A. I understand that you mean his halakhic books? There he apparently did clarify the sources and reach a ruling. In his philosophical/theological works, in my assessment, absolutely not. He determined his conclusions according to his own reasoning, and was really not troubled by contradictory sources.
B. Maybe you can say that. Bottom line, there is no real give-and-take or clarification there, and everyone can conclude whatever they want.
That’s not true that there’s no give-and-take in Jewish thought. It’s just rarer. I saw, for example, that Rabbi Ashlag claimed that the Rashash was mistaken on some issue in Kabbalah. They just don’t write it so much in books. Usually each person writes his own insights through a full synthesis of what he learned from all his predecessors. So in practice you get books by people who see the same things, just from different angles. And whoever studies all of them on his own will write his own book. Rabbi Sherlo wrote a book about unifying the harmony of Rabbi Kook with the dialectic of Rabbi Soloveitchik, for example.