Q&A: Regarding Lesson 4 in the Series on Faith
Regarding Lesson 4 in the Series on Faith
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
In lesson 4 of your series on faith / belief (again, thanks for the excellent series on YouTube), you address the difficulty of commanding a person to believe a fact, and how that fits with commandment no. 1 according to Maimonides. There you suggest that perhaps the command really is about examination and inquiry, and not about belief itself. According to this, it could be that a person in practice does not believe, but nevertheless has fulfilled the commandment because he investigated and examined; whereas on the other hand, a person who in practice does believe has not fulfilled the commandment, because his belief is not based on independent inquiry and examination, but rather on intuition or trust in tradition and education, and so on. Is that correct? Is a person who already believes in God, but not by virtue of examination and inquiry, obligated to go out and investigate in order to fulfill the commandment?
Answer
If the commandment is to investigate, then whoever investigated fulfilled it. However, it is possible that the commandment is to investigate, but with the condition that you arrive at the correct conclusions (as with being fruitful and multiplying, where there is a commandment to make the effort, with the condition that there be a son and a daughter).
A person who believes without investigating may also have fulfilled the commandment, because the commandment is to investigate as much as necessary until one reaches the correct conclusion. Someone who is already there does not need to investigate further.
But that was just a conjecture I raised in passing regarding the puzzling interpretation of Maimonides, who counts this as a commandment. I do not know how to answer you, because the whole matter is very puzzling.