Q&A: Does the Nation’s Acceptance of the Talmud Also Apply to Secular Jews?
Does the Nation’s Acceptance of the Talmud Also Apply to Secular Jews?
Question
The Rabbi argues that the authority of the Talmud among the Jewish people stems from the nation’s acceptance. And the acceptance of the collective obligates the individuals. Socrates, in the dialogue Crito, argues that the fact that he chose to live in Athens implicitly shows that he accepted the laws of Athens. If he had moved to another Greek city, the authority of Athenian law over him would have lapsed. Only because there is agreement, even if only implicit, do the laws of Athens have a claim against him, even to the point of death.
According to this claim, does the fact that a Jew chooses to be secular remove the authority of the Talmud from him or not? In other words, is the fact that someone is secular similar to moving to another city, or is he simply still remaining in this city, and the Talmud still has authority over him, except that because he is secular the religious commandments have no significance for him?
Answer
This is a question I have wrestled with more than once. In principle, there is no logical necessity here, since not every normative system operates in the same way. One could have a system whose acceptance is permanently binding and forbids abandonment. For example, the system of moral law (the social contract).
In any case, it seems that one should distinguish between someone who abandons it because in his view it is not true and not binding (there is no God, or there was no revelation), in which case he is coerced through no fault of his own regardless of whether one can repudiate a commitment one has accepted (especially since this would be an acceptance made in error), and someone who abandons it despite believing that it is binding, simply because he does not feel like observing it. About him I was speaking above. I have no proof for this beyond the halakhic determination that one cannot convert out of the religion (there were opinions in Jewish law that said one could, but they more or less disappeared around the 16th century, and since then it has been accepted that one cannot). I once heard a saying of the Sages: “Esau was an apostate Israelite” — meaning that he was the only Israelite who managed to become an apostate. The claim of “a great protest” in the Talmudic passage in tractate Shabbat is placed in the mouth of the Jewish people as a whole, not in the mouth of an individual Jew, and even with regard to the collective it is rejected after the days of Ahasuerus and Esther.
Discussion on Answer
Which opinions say that one can convert out of the religion?
See, for example, the Tur, Even HaEzer, section 44, and the commentaries there. There were quite a number of such views among the medieval authorities (Rishonim).
Only now did I notice that you are talking about the Talmud and not about obligation to the Torah in general. A secular Jew usually denies the Torah, not the Talmud. As for the Talmud, if the entire public were to decide to repudiate it — in my opinion there is nothing preventing that. But individuals are bound by the framework of the collective, and it seems to me all the more so if they are committed to Jewish law and only want to abandon the Talmud. If they want to abandon everything — that is what I discussed above.