Q&A: Intuition and Faith
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Intuition and Faith
Question
- Rabbi Lichtenstein (in his book To Seek Your Presence, I think), when he was asked why he believes in the Torah of Moses, answered something like this: that the most honest answer is because if the Griz and Rabbi Chaim believed, then the Torah is certainly true—and that this is the greatest source of faith-strengthening he has. (I was surprised to read this from him.) What do you think about this argument, and more generally about the intuition many people have that the Torah is true—and that this intuition is based mainly on excitement about the Torah’s content, and especially about the great later authorities, Rabbi Chaim, Rabbi Shimon, etc., whose Torah is so dazzling and deep that it creates in many people the intuition that the Torah is true, and they do not believe that such deep content appears in other religions. Can one build a worldview on the basis of intuitions / arguments like these? And does the Rabbi also have this intuition?
Answer
I do have such a feeling, not with respect to people but with respect to the Torah as a whole. I don’t know about other religions, because I assume I’m biased and not sufficiently familiar with them.
Discussion on Answer
Does this feeling that the Rabbi has serve as a reason and basis for your belief in the Torah?
The overall whole created by all of these together. It is part of my faith. Fit to combine together.
Does the Rabbi define a feeling as an emotion or something like that???
No. Emotion has no standing at all in decision-making (on questions of truth and falsehood). This feeling is intuition.
Is the feeling in relation to the Talmud itself per se (I assume the feeling comes from the Talmud and not from the Hebrew Bible), without the added layer of the medieval authorities and later authorities? Or does the feeling come from the mode of learning of the Talmud established by the later authorities?