The main problem was that the doubt about whether the commandments are true creates depression and a desire to commit suicide, and that part wasn’t answered.

The fact that the commandments have no reason is strange in light of the verse, “For what great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances so righteous.”
The proof the Rabbi brings—that the commandments have no reason because if their purpose were repairing the world then God just shouldn’t create it—I don’t understand, because one could say that the purpose is so that man will observe them, and then there’s no question of not creating the world, or so that there won’t be the bread of shame.
And even if we say “service as a need on high,” still that need on high is people repairing the world. Meaning, there is a process in the commandments, even if not a reason.

As for innocent faith, what bothers me is that I don’t understand what God wants from human beings. Most people don’t know the truth and are incapable of reaching the truth.
In short, following reason sounds convincing, but almost no one is capable of it, so what does He get from a congregation of fools doing what they were brought up to do?

Just checking: there’s no logical reasoning that says that doubt about observing the commandments leads to a desire to commit suicide. It’s simply the result of emotional distress caused by the doubt.
Share your struggles with people close to you. The price of coping alone is much higher than the price of sharing the difficulty.
Very, very many people have gone through the enormous difficulty you’re going through and went on to live good, joyful lives, whether they continued observing commandments or not.

Maybe we’re too small and too foolish to know the truth, but then God will not come to us with complaints.
About people who suffer from obsession, great verse-scholars said to exempt them even from tefillin and more. So apparently, all the more so, in a state of suicidal desire it’s possible to ease the pressure a bit.
It’s not upon us to finish the task of figuring out what is right in this world, but neither are we free to desist from it.
We were placed in the world to do the best we can according to what our eyes can see. If we really don’t know, then we have to navigate through the fog as best we can. That isn’t always easy, but that’s the reality. And it can still be full of goodness and joy, for us and for the world.
Don’t despair! And above all, hold on to the people you love and who love you. Share the difficulty with them.
Good luck, and a good long life.

Even if people don’t know the whole truth, that doesn’t mean they know nothing at all…
There’s a certain continuum of truths.
For example, few people are physicists, and few of the physicists fully understand all the laws of nature that have been discovered.
And no one yet understands 100% of the laws of nature. But does not understanding 100% of the laws of nature mean we aren’t getting closer to a good understanding of them?

And here too, for example, most people believe that life has meaning and that there is morality, there is good and there is evil. They have a lot of correct truths, even if not everything they hold is correct.

And they also say that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not come with excessive demands upon His creatures, and the parable of the occupied territories from Rabbi Dessler is well known, as is the concept of captives among the nations and coercion, etc.

In any case, there’s also the price involved: if you commit suicide, you may reach places in the next world that are not exactly the best….
On the other hand, if you manage to live life joyfully, then according to the pain is the reward 🙂

I think you can recognize that you may be in a state of doubt, but still decide that you accept observance of the commandments / the meaning of life, and live after having chosen to accept that.
Because right now, if the commandments are true, or at the very least life has meaning, and you commit suicide, they’ll really do you in.
And if life has no meaning and you lived, then at worst you “suffered” a bit and wasted some time.
But if you keep living with a constant feeling of doubt, then you’ll suffer a lot.
So leave the doubt and choose the thing with the smallest price (to live life) and the greatest gain (infinite joy).

By the way, if you yourself aren’t experiencing meaning, but most of the people around you are, you can place some trust in them, almost as testimony to that.
It’s possible that this feeling of not experiencing it comes because of the temporary depression.
Also, maybe try medication and psychological treatment?

I think the difficulty is emotional. It’s enough to look at other people in history who dealt with deep issues, but didn’t let them take over their day-to-day lives unless they chose to do so (as with moral questions).
And those who did let them, and suffered from it—it ought to be in a dosage that still allows a person to continue normal life (and if not, it may be a disturbance).

There’s a disorder that, thank Heaven, people discovered exists. It makes it hard for human beings to live normal lives when there are doubts. One person fixates on whether his hands are clean, and another fixates on other things. That disorder is called OCD, and it can attach itself in various ways. You can read about the form whose symptoms I suspect are quite similar to what you described; its foreign name is Existential OCD. Sometimes it can even develop into depression.

You can ask the question: how do others manage to live normal lives even with doubts? How does a mathematician continue his work knowing that at the root of the matter there are assumptions—that is, there is doubt that they may not be correct?
From this one can understand that apparently they accept it in a “normal” way, one that doesn’t disrupt their daily functioning.

In my opinion this is a phenomenon that happens to many people, and it would be worthwhile to treat it on the emotional plane. After that, if you want, you can deal with it out of interest (so long as it doesn’t bother you, of course).

I don’t know you personally, so this may not necessarily apply to you. In any case, I recommend psychological treatment.

P.S. There’s a site called “Akshivah” run by a Haredi person. You can consult there on various topics (including emotional ones) in general.

Suicide is a declaration: “I don’t care about anyone, only about myself.”
In such a state, Torah and commandments have no meaning for that person.

I don’t think that’s true.
Even if suicide is wrong in every case or almost every case, and it does indeed hurt the people around the person terribly, it can come from a place of “I care very much about all of you, but I just can’t keep suffering this much for you anymore.”
Maybe part of the solution is carrying less of it alone—sharing your struggles with the people around you, opening up to them and getting help from them.

With God’s help, 15 Cheshvan 5782

To the questioner—greetings,

A person often falls into depression because he feels abandoned, feels that nobody cares about him. When the Creator of the world gives a person a “list of tasks” that accompanies him at every step in life, then he constantly feels that the Creator cares about him and gives him continual attention through those tasks.

You get up, you wash your hands and say “Modeh Ani”; you shave—the commandment accompanies you, to shave only in the permitted way and not with a razor; you get dressed—the commandment of fringes and the prohibition of mixing wool and linen accompany you; you sit down to eat—the commandments of kashrut and blessings accompany you; you work—the commandment to do your work honestly and faithfully accompanies you, etc.

In order to attain closeness to God, the way of Torah does not require you to withdraw from worldly activity and concentrate on meditation that will bring you into mystical contact with your Creator. You live and act in the world like any other person, yet even so the feeling of connection to your Creator accompanies you—the continual feeling of connection to your Creator, for at every step in life He left you a “note with a task,” usually a “small” task that doesn’t require you to “turn worlds upside down,” but does require you to pay attention to the will of your Maker that is unique to that moment.

Through the system of commandments that accompanies a person at every step, a person feels in all his ways that he is “walking with his God.”

The feeling of constant connection to the Creator of the world that the commandments provide makes it continuously clear to a person that his God cares very much about him, and that every small action of his is important in God’s eyes. And therefore, “It is a great joy to always be joyful.”

With blessing,
Yaron Fish”l Ordner

Besides the general value of the commandments as a means of constantly strengthening a person’s sense of connection with his God, there is also a specific logic to each and every commandment—a logic we do not always understand, but it is a person’s duty to try to understand as much as possible, for regarding the reasons of Torah it is said: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search out a matter.”

A good summary of the reasons for the commandments proposed by the Sages and by medieval authorities and later authorities can be found in Rabbi Abraham Chill’s book, The Commandments and Their Reasons; and “give to the wise, and he will become wiser still.”

I did answer that. I wrote that there is no reason whatsoever that such a lack of understanding should create a desire to commit suicide. And if such a desire is created anyway—then that is a question for a psychologist, not for me.

The verse “What great nation…” was brought as proof by Maimonides, but it is one of the weaker proofs I know. A. Because as a matter of fact these laws are not understandable. So what good is a general theoretical declaration that they are righteous? Maimonides himself, in his reasons for the commandments (in Part III of Guide of the Perplexed), proposes a rather shaky and not very convincing basis for the commandments. B. They can be righteous in their results (that is, one who observes the commandments as a whole creates a more just society or survives better), and not necessarily in the immediate implications of each commandment taken separately. See below regarding the bread of shame.

The proof that the commandments have no reason in our world is explained in more detail in The First Existent.
The purpose of the commandments is so that a person will observe them? I didn’t understand that sentence.
And if they were given to us so that there should not be the bread of shame, then that is precisely the statement that no commandment has any reason or value in itself; rather, they simply established some rules so that we would receive reward. They could just as well have established the opposite. If so, then you yourself are saying that there is no problem with not understanding the purposes of the laws, since the main thing is that we receive reward for them. So what is the problem?

It is not true that people are incapable of reaching the truth. They are unwilling to reach it. One need not be a genius, and everyone makes decisions according to the best of his understanding. And God does not come with excessive demands upon His creatures (if they tried and erred). The task is to try to strive toward the truth, even if one does not necessarily reach it.
Indeed, the Holy One, blessed be He, has no use for a congregation of fools, except the hope that their descendants will be better than they are. But why do you need to count yourself among the congregation of fools? If you strive for the truth, then you won’t be one of them, and then you will matter to Him. The fact that many people choose to be fools is their problem. Many also choose to sin, so should the question then arise as to why the commandments were given? I don’t understand that logic.

Rabbi, you didn’t answer the main part of the question,
the psychological question.
Maybe His Honor the Rebbe should gird his loins to fight the battle of humanity and solidarity by presenting an orderly doctrine against death as escape.

I said that psychological questions should be directed to a psychologist. An orderly doctrine is a matter of thought, not psychology. Arguments against death as escape are philosophical arguments. Psychological arguments can only claim something like death won’t help you escape (but it will). Good and evil, proper or improper, are not matters for psychology.
My orderly doctrine is that death is bad and therefore should be avoided. Or, in the opposite direction: life has value, and therefore one must not harm the life of one’s fellow, nor one’s own. Someone who does not accept this will not be helped by any orderly doctrine. Someone who does accept it, but tends toward suicide because of psychological difficulties—the relevant treatment for that is with a psychologist.

Where is Camus? Where is Sartre? Where are all our philosophers who would defend the choice of life even under the shadow of the absurd? Meaninglessness and existential relativism?

Where are all the psychologists who would ease the feeling of doubt—standing and placing the foot on the second stone after the Archimedean point of support that Descartes created for us with regard to the first stone—the only thing that perhaps can be proved is that “I” exist.
And who would enable us to go on wagering even under the condition of doubt that human beings are condemned to live in.

Rabbi, this is the call of the hour, this is what the generation needs, in the words of Rabbi Nachman about Satan appearing in doubts and depressions.
And those columns would be holy work, because there aren’t many messengers for writing them.
And therefore the right and sensitive person should write it.
Not only someone who has set his dwelling in the study hall…

You said Camus and Sartre. How are they connected to “philosophers”? Existentialism is a non-empirical branch of psychology.
We have millions of existentialists and psychologists. Far too many. So I’m really not needed for that nonsense.

[
Regarding “righteous statutes and ordinances”:
A. You claimed that in fact they are not understandable. But the proof only says that at the time of the giving of the Torah this all seemed entirely reasonable and natural to them, and they understood the whole Torah the way we understand “Do not steal.” For that claim one can maybe find additional support too, such as parallels between some bodies of Torah law and matters accepted among the surrounding nations (and it is unlikely that even without revelation they would know, to a good degree, how to hit upon things that are metaphysically beneficial without anything tangible), and statements of prophets that present a particular commandment (to which we attach spiritual reasons) as something self-evident to reason.
B. You said the basis Maimonides found is shaky. But the conclusion from that is only that in principle one can dig further and maybe find a firmer basis, not that there is no basis at all.
C. You rejected the possibility that the verse means righteous in results. First of all, factually that also did not happen, and the presumed basis for such a claim is rather shaky. But the main point is, on the contrary: if the laws lead to a righteous result, then you have no greater reason for a commandment, and that itself is the reason one is looking for, and thus the law itself is righteous. After all, everyone agrees that if something leads to a good result then it should be done (and enforced), and if it leads to a negative result then it should be prevented—even if in itself, apart from the result, we would not have seen in it good or evil.
]

But in Maimonides’ proof there is another general problem: presumably the nations would not descend into the fine details of the laws but would deal with the fundamentals. And the fundamentals are indeed understandable and righteous—not to murder and steal, not to strike slaves too much, release of lands so that inheritance not be transferred away, Sabbath, perhaps also not to eat non-kosher animal carcasses, and the like. That doesn’t mean that mixing wool and linen and the sciatic nerve are also righteous laws. Not long ago I saw in Strauss that a fellow named Nietzsche “greatly appreciated” the Ten Commandments.

It’s worth searching for and finding goals in life.
Small things, big things.
Each person in his own way.

Rabbi,
maybe by means of true dialectic you can manage to make the man under the rolling stone of Sisyphus happy and content.
Something that says that even if there is no purpose and no goal or values or free choice, we still have the ability (which is forced upon us) to be happy and smile. At least in the way that, some say, a dog doesn’t think about its meaning and still lives.
—
Or (and now seriously), explain how one should live with doubts, and that truth does not mean stability or certainty, etc.
Those are already more reasonable things for you.
Or in defense of the chooser / wagerer / Pascalian thesis.

——-
To the questioner,
I wanted to add to what the Last Decisor said, that you can try experimenting with trying to experience meaning,
for instance through volunteering, helping, etc. (And conversely, in understanding that it is forbidden to murder, as the Rabbi brought up, there is embedded the meaning of the other person’s existence—and your own.)

Tirgitz, if you think that in those days everyone understood that Jewish law was perfect light—I have no share in your assumptions. The fact that people find occasional parallels here and there really does not mean what you are writing here.
Beyond that, I wrote that the gentiles don’t know the details, and the light exists only in the general principles. Certainly not in all of them.
Regarding the consequential point, I do not know whether factually it didn’t happen. A society that keeps the laws of the Torah would be a very well-ordered society. If it didn’t happen—then they didn’t keep them.

And to the last commenter: I’ve already written more than once that you are mixing up psychology and philosophy.

In the days of Hezekiah or Josiah it is accepted that the whole nation was meticulous in the commandments, and I never heard that the neighboring Edomites left an inscription expressing admiration for the wise and understanding nation.

I heard in the name of Nachmanides that the verse “What great nation is there that has righteous statutes and ordinances” was fulfilled in us in the fact that Christianity and Islam tried to imitate us and inherit from us.

Many thanks to those who offered encouragement here.
This whole issue—that there is great doubt and it’s very hard to decide—drains life of all taste for me, to the point that I’ve grown sick of it.
But it isn’t a real argument, as several people wrote here, but a psychological reality. So really this isn’t a question for this place. I only thought that maybe there are people here who know this reality and can help. In any case I saw a few important things here. Thank you very much.

Unclear Person, I thought Christians more or less claimed that all the statutes and ordinances of the Jews were unnecessary and void.

With God’s help, 16 Cheshvan 5782

To A.B.—greetings,

Every major groundbreaking inquiry in science began with a big question that bothered the questioner and disturbed his peace of mind. Moses went to investigate “why the bush was not consumed”; Newton went to investigate why the apple fell on his head; and Einstein was troubled by the contradictions in Maxwell’s equations and through investigating them arrived at the “theory of relativity.”

A troubling doubt is not a reason for depression, but for a doctorate 🙂

With blessing,
Hasdai Betzalel Duvdevani Kirshen-Kvas

To Shatzal: your words are wonderful, but I almost never understand the signature of your name. Is it just a joke or are you hinting at something?

With God’s help, eve of Sabbath: “and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice,” 5782

To T.G.—greetings,

The universal influence of “the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice,” which is upheld by the seed of Abraham, is a long-term process, full of ups and downs.

It begins with the trickling influence of exceptional individuals, “the nobles of the peoples,” who discover “the light within the Torah” and yearn to cleave to it. But for every Ruth the Moabite who is ready to make an upheaval in her life and declare, “Your people shall be my people and your God my God,” there are countless Orpahs who feel that there is something wonderful here, but “it’s not for them.” They look with honor and appreciation toward the special people, but return to their own people and their gods…

And sometimes from such an “Orpah” there are born “the sons of Rapha,” whose recognition of Judaism’s spiritual and moral superiority gives rise in them to jealousy and a bottomless hatred against “Jewish slave morality,” which troubles their conscience and does not allow them to realize the urges of the “wild beast” within man.

In the period of the First Temple, Judaism’s universal influence was slight. On the contrary, the people of Israel themselves were drawn after the winds of idolatry and lawlessness around them, and stumbled in idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed. Still, even in the worst days of Ahab, the advisers of the king of Aram recognized that the kings of Israel were “kings of kindness.” Jezebel is astonished by her husband’s inability to run a “normal monarchy” in which a king can simply confiscate his subjects’ inheritance.

The universal influence of Judaism intensified דווקא in the period of the Second Temple, after the people of Israel internalized that the prophecies of the prophets—both the warnings about exile and destruction and the consolations that the people would not be destroyed in exile and would return to their land—are faithful and fulfilled. From that point on, idolatry ceased to be a spiritual threat to the people of Israel.

The people of Israel became proud of their faith and attached to their Torah. In every town and village throughout the world, a community of Jews sprang up whose lives revolved around Torah and the synagogue. And the nations of the world marveled at “temples without idols,” at “a nation of philosophers” in which even ordinary farmers and craftsmen study and analyze their sacred writings and are willing to cease from labor more than a seventh of their lives.

Many received this with interest and appreciation, drew near to Judaism, and even converted, among them royal children and members of “high society,” for example Heleni and her son Monbaz from the royal house of Adiabene, who converted and came up to Jerusalem. Even after the destruction, the strong Jewish influence continued, to the point that Roman writers complained that “there is no house in Rome without a Jew in it.”

This process was halted both by Hadrian’s decrees against circumcision—which, though canceled in the next generation for Jews, remained in force for the general population—and by the trauma the Jews underwent because of the cruel suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, which brought Judaism into internal seclusion.

The “Jewish germ” continued to influence humanity through “substitutes for Judaism”—Christianity and Islam—which took many values from the sacred writings, but “purchased them with a change of form” and adaptation to the urges of idolatry and savagery—one God who is also three; a religion of love that operates torture and burnings; substitutes for the Sabbath and the synagogue; and a burning hatred for the “original religion” that refuses to join its imitators.

Modernity did one good thing in lowering the prestige of Christianity and Islam, but it also harmed Judaism and brought secularization and assimilation. Yet for decades now the people of Israel have begun to recover, begun to return to their land, and begun also to return to their Torah. If in the 1950s people thought that “the religious fanatics” were disappearing, today they already fear that they may become the majority.

The development of the Torah world in Israel, together with the ongoing weakening of Christianity and the rise of postmodernism, which is also willing to listen to ancient cultures, are today increasing the interest of the nations in original Judaism, and those interested in the path of the Noahides are becoming more numerous.

In short: the universal influence of Judaism is a long-term process of thousands of years. We are no longer at its beginning, but still far from its end.

With blessing,
Ami’oz Ron Shantz”r

My name-signatures are careful to preserve the gematria 1148 (= Shimshon Zvi Halevi Levinger), and usually also the initials—Fish”l = Shatz”l, or “Shnitzl”r,” the first and last letters of my name.

With blessing,
Feivish Lipa Sosnovitzki Dehari

Unfortunately it seems that in a situation where the problem is “mental,” even the best argument can be undermined. It’s simply a position of obsessiveness searching for support, and even when it finds some, it broods over it, wonders “but what if not?” and suffers. And so it goes round and round.

Again, just as a person may doubt whether his hands are clean, and afterward doubt whether he washed them at all, and if he washed them, whether he did it properly.
And no matter how many testify that they saw him wash them, he may still doubt.

There are people who become anxious from dealing with issues connected, for example, to philosophy and neuroscience. As I understand it, this is related to OCD.

I think that OCD characterized by existential preoccupation is in practice a kind of “existential crisis” on steroids. And depression all the more so.

There is doubt, and there is unhealthy doubt. I don’t know what every kind of doubt includes, but I can make an assumption regarding unhealthy doubt.
Unhealthy doubt occurs when it adversely affects daily functioning (despair, etc.), and in addition when the doubt is almost “forced” on the person—just like in obsession.

Not every doubt contains purely rational thought.
And not every doubt accompanied by pain necessarily indicates “unhealthy doubt.” (The boundary is subjective.)

Man,
why are you dealing with these subjects if they disturb your peace of mind and cause you such great suffering?
Just start by taking a year off from them.
Notice that living in doubt is itself a painful choice, and it’s not the same as choosing not to choose.
As an aside, if you can’t let go of them, it may be that there are medications that would ease what you’re feeling.

In short:

Two barriers stand in the way of Judaism’s universal influence on humanity as a whole:

There is the problem, as in the days of the First Temple and in the period of the Enlightenment, that the Jews themselves are captivated by the charm of the culture of the nations and become influenced themselves. There is a situation in which Jews themselves dilute Judaism in order to increase its influence, as Saul of Tarsus did when he emptied Judaism of the practical commandments.

And there is the problem on the side of those meant to be influenced, only a minority of whom are willing to make a dramatic change in their way of life. Some honor it but from a distance, and some have their admiration turn into a feeling of inferiority, bringing them to hatred of Judaism that causes them pangs of conscience. Mount Sinai, which brought the world faith and morality, also brought hatred from some gentiles who are unwilling that some small and poor people should come educate them.

With blessing,
Chanokh Henekh Feinshmaker-Plati

To A.B.—greetings,

Do we fully understand the laws of nature that the Creator of the world established? We understand even less than that the mysteries of the human soul, and what exactly uplifts or weakens it. The best researchers have been trying for hundreds of years to understand more and more of the secrets of nature and of the soul. They advance and make progress, yet remain very far from complete understanding. So this is no “refuting proof” if we do not always understand “what and why.”

By contrast, there are strong proofs that the Torah is from Heaven. There is no way to persuade millions of opinionated and critical Jews and implant in their minds that millions of their ancestors heard the voice of God at Mount Sinai. Anyone who tried to “sell” such a story would be contradicted both by his own ancestors and by the ancestors of his friends.

Unlike the Torah, which was given in the presence of millions, the “revelations” of the “prophets” of other religions were experienced only by a few. Their beliefs were imposed on hundreds of millions by a central government that ruled mighty empires with a strong hand and imposed its faith by force.

In contrast, the people of Israel were divided in almost every generation, except for a few decades in the days of David and Solomon. Even in the days of the First Temple they were split into two kingdoms, and afterward they were scattered throughout the world. And behold—a wonder: all the diasporas, which never had a supporting central government and, on the contrary, were persecuted for their faith, nevertheless held to the same sacred writings.

Likewise the promises that the people of Israel would go into exile and be scattered, yet would return to their land, were fulfilled and continue to be fulfilled before our eyes. What “inventor” could have predicted these processes thousands of years in advance?

With blessing,
Ami’oz Yaron Shnitzl”r