Q&A: Questions
Questions
Question
Hello to the Rabbi, may he live long and well.
1. The story is well known about the Muslim caliph who burned the Library of Alexandria with the claim: “If what was written here is true, then it is already written in the Quran, and if it is not written in the Quran, then apparently it is not true.” Was he right? Is there room for a religious person to take on values beyond the Shulchan Arukh, such as art or modern morality and so on?
2. There is a parable of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov about a madman who is one hundred percent sure that he needs to roll around the streets in torn clothes, etc., and he has several arguments for why he is this way, yet he still needs to obey the truly rational people. This parable, which apparently comes to say that one must listen to the true tzaddik and throw away one’s own intellect, has left me confused. For example, if I learn something and check it several times and am sure that I am right, say in Jewish law, and then a person of the stature of Rabbi Ovadia tells me that I am mistaken, how much can I really rely on my own logic?
3. A few days ago I asked the Rabbi why he does not believe in miracles (sorry, I can’t manage to send comments to the Rabbi, forgive me), and the Rabbi answered me that a miracle is when something happens without a physical force; that is a miracle, and we have never seen that happen. Therefore I have two things to say: a. After all, one can say that every physical force at its root is a miracle, based on the proof of the First Cause. b. Miracles do not necessarily have to be like that—for example, if an inkwell spilled on a page and out came the combination of words, “Repent or I’ll finish you off,” isn’t that a miracle? Even though all the forces of nature operated in their normal way.
4. The Rabbi claims that aside from laws given to Moses at Sinai, no Torah-level Jewish law came down from Sinai, and everything is based on the interpretive methods and reasoning of the sages, which was subject to the outlook of their times. And the Rabbi also sent me to Maimonides, Laws of Rebels, where he says that Torah-level laws can be changed by the Sanhedrin. So I have three questions: a. In any case, Maimonides says that this is only if they erred in the methods of interpretation and not because of other considerations, so it turns out that for us this is not relevant at all. b. Maimonides says in his introduction to the Mishnah that the basis of the Oral Torah is that actual laws were given at Sinai. c. Are the interpretive methods subject to the sages’ considerations, or do they not automatically lead to a certain conclusion, like in mathematics?
P.S. If the Rabbi was offended that I called him extravagant titles such as “the righteous one of the generation” and the like, I am deeply sorry. After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, might become jealous on the Rabbi’s behalf, and then his view that there is no providence would be contradicted and his distress would increase.
Sorry for the length. I try to be brief, but the words of Mark Twain are well known, and this is not the place to elaborate.
Answer
- I didn’t understand the connection to the caliph. Art is not a value, so I do not understand what exactly I am supposed to accept there. There is room for values outside Jewish law (the Shulchan Arukh), but not outside God’s will. To be committed to two sources of authority is essentially idolatry.
- Is there a question here? These things are nonsense, of course, and if you accept them then by that very act you are carrying them out. Think carefully about it. What will you do when two wise people tell you opposite things? And who will decide who the wise person is whom one should obey?
- I have no problem with the view that the laws of nature operate by the power of the Holy One, blessed be He (I think so too), but a miracle means a deviation from the laws of nature. There is no such thing as a miracle within nature. Those are empty words from people who do not understand what they are talking about. If a meaningful inscription appeared when according to the laws of nature it should not have appeared, that is a miracle. But if by chance it spilled in such a way that the laws of nature caused the inscription to form, then there is no miracle here, only a rare event. A solar eclipse is also a rare event, and that does not mean that it is a miracle.
- I did not say such a thing, and I do not understand the question. There are other things that came from Sinai beyond laws given to Moses at Sinai. A law given to Moses at Sinai is a law that came from Sinai and has no anchor in the written text. There are laws that came from Sinai and do have an anchor in the written text (where the interpretive reading merely sustains them). The interpretive methods are not mathematics. It is worth looking at Rabbi Shmuel Ariel’s book, Planted Within Us, on this topic.
- How can the righteous one of the generation be offended by someone?
Nachmanides, at the end of Parashat Bo, chapter 13, verse 16: “A person has no share in the Torah of Moses our teacher until we believe that in all our affairs and all our occurrences, all of them are miracles; there is no nature and no ordinary way of the world in them, whether for the community or for the individual. Rather, if one fulfills the commandments, his reward will make him succeed, and if he transgresses them, his punishment will cut him off—all by the decree of the Most High.”