So how does the Torah obligate us to believe several beliefs?

Such as?

1. That the world was created.
2. That God is one.
3. That there was a revelation at Mount Sinai.
So?

I think Michi’s position here misses an important nuance regarding the concept of an obligation to believe. The duty to believe something (religious or otherwise) is not evaluated only through its “implementation,” that is, through a person’s transition from not believing something to believing it. Before that there is a necessary condition in which a hierarchy of beliefs is formed in the mind of the one commanded to believe. For example, when a person is exposed to the obligation to believe that the Torah is from Heaven, he learns in this way that this belief is more important from Judaism’s perspective than the competing belief (that the Torah is not from Heaven). So even if he has not become convinced that the Torah really is of superhuman origin, he will still understand very well that becoming convinced of this is required of him (as opposed to other matters where there is no such requirement).
At a superficial glance my claim sounds tautological (one is obligated to believe what one is told one is obligated to believe…), but in practice that is not so. The correct formulation is: one is obligated to understand the specific hierarchies in which a person is required to give priority to one value over another.

There is no obligation to believe anything. The Torah tells us that the world was created, and now we know it. Where do you see an obligation here?

“I am the Lord your God.” Several medieval authorities explain that this is a commandment. So there you have it: we find an obligation regarding belief.

If that is your position, then in my opinion you will not be able to explain, and certainly not justify, details that the Torah takes pains to place at the center (for example, the existence of God or the very giving of the Torah). Do you think the Giver of the Torah reports all this to us incidentally? Do you assume He did not understand—what you and I understand—that these facts are a necessary condition for the commitment He wants from us? And since they are a condition for commitment, there is a sense in which these facts themselves are obligations.
Of course, if you insist on holding the position of the skeptical naïve positivist and demand an explicit verbal proof-text (that it should say something like “you are obligated to believe such-and-such”), you can always say there is no “obligation” here at all… But nobody really lives like that, and nobody consistently believes that.

*What I meant in that last sentence is that nobody relies only on positive facts and explicit verses. Reasoning necessarily carries weight.

Anna, I think you’re not new here on the site. What do you want from me? I’ve written here more than once what my opinion is about the commandment of faith, and the fact that Maimonides wrote that means nothing to me. It is hard to believe that he himself thought so, and one can perhaps raise conjectures as to why he nevertheless counted this commandment. But even if he meant it literally, I disagree. And it’s not only that I disagree—the logic disagrees.

Were you responding to me? I didn’t write anything about Maimonides…

I wrote that I was responding to Anna.

And as for you, Doron,
who said the Torah writes this incidentally? It wants to bring this information to our knowledge so that we will know it. But it is impossible to define an obligation to know.

I explained in what sense it is possible to define an obligation to believe (and not an “obligation to know,” as you wrote in your last response).
In any case, in my view your position on this matter does not depart from the standard skeptic’s position (with all the accompanying costs that necessarily come with it). What surprises me is that you do not recognize in your argument that same skeptical pattern of thought (one that looks for fully positive smoking guns) that you yourself so often warn against.
Think, for example, of all the long discussions in which you argued, even recently, about the improbability of a law without a lawgiver. There too you did not require the claim that all the laws of our world must be accompanied by an explicit “stamp” of the lawgiver; rather, you simply showed that it is reasonable to infer that such a lawgiver exists (and that is what we do in everyday life as well).

You lost me. If you are talking about an obligation to investigate, there is no problem at all. An obligation to believe and an obligation to know are the same thing, and both are absurd.

So you agree that the act of “investigation” that appears in the Torah is an obligation from God, an obligation imposed on the Jewish person?
As for your second claim, that believing and knowing are the same thing—that is really a strange claim. Forgive me, but every native Hebrew speaker knows there is a difference, even if it is not always easy to explain what it is (and sometimes it is very easy…).

I didn’t write that I agree there is an obligation to investigate. I wrote that such an obligation is not logically problematic.
In my native Hebrew they are exactly the same thing. I’ve already made that point more than once. This is not a question of Hebrew (semantics) but of essence.

I would be very glad if one of the readers who understands Michi (and maybe even agrees with him) would help me understand his position. I don’t understand it. And since this is an interesting and even important topic for the “natural” audience of this site, maybe someone will volunteer for the task…

Doron, it would be good to clarify what you don’t understand. Otherwise even someone who wants to explain won’t know what exactly he is supposed to explain. Maybe even your humble servant can help somewhat…

What part isn’t clear, Doron? Rabbi Michi explained himself well.

The obligation to believe in the fundamental principles of the Torah, which carry on their backs the obligation also to the small details and the commandments, is not in the person himself or in the explicit verses in the text. It exists objectively in God or in His intentions. Therefore, even if a person turns his back on those principles, they do not cease to exist. Why think otherwise? Or is Michi perhaps claiming that they are not an “obligation” from God but merely a “recommendation”? That’s what I didn’t understand.

They are neither an obligation nor a recommendation, but information. Assuming I accept it, an obligation is created for me. If I do not accept it, then one cannot obligate me to accept it, because there is no authority over belief in facts (= acceptance of facts).
Suppose that if someone is shot in the head, he dies, and one thereby violates the prohibition of murder. If I do not accept the fact that a gunshot to the head kills, one cannot obligate me to accept that. At most, one can punish me for the murder without my accepting it (and even that is not simple).

All right, I don’t see this leading anywhere. Thanks for the attempt.

I see that this is a dialogue of the deaf. It seems that each person here understands the concept of “obligation” (and perhaps other concepts too) differently.
The Sages inculcated in us (and this is also explained in the verses) that there are several basic approaches to the service of God: love of God, fear of God, and “habitual rote practice.”
A person who operates מתוך the system of “habitual rote practice” puts on tefillin (because everyone puts them on), keeps the Sabbath (because his father kept the Sabbath), and in general observes all the commandments only as norms. Now, when someone comes along (the Sages, for example) and instructs him to behave differently, then naturally the question arises: what is the authority behind the command (formal or substantive), because the discussion here is about establishing and changing norms. Naturally one can conclude that there is no authority regarding facts, and therefore the idea of commanding belief does not apply.

Why won’t it let me upload the rest of my comment?
Someone needs to check this site technically. If it has a problem with my comment, I would expect an error message.

But a person who acts out of fear of God will not understand this discussion at all. For example, there is the well-known parable of Rabbi Israel Salanter: if I am thirsty, and here is a cup of water that I want to drink, and a fool comes and tells me that there is poison in the water, then it is obvious that no rational person would drink the cup before a thorough investigation. And it is equally obvious that the fool has neither formal nor substantive authority, but nevertheless he caused me to obey him (not to drink, at least for the time being).

Why is it cutting off my comments?

The person of “habitual rote practice” will argue that this is not an “obligation” and not a “command” in the sense in which he understands those terms (and therefore this is quite a different discussion), but even he can understand that the result is the same (obedience to the command), and an onlooker will not always be able to distinguish whether the obedience stems from acceptance of authority or from some other reason.

I’ll try another example. Nachmanides’ view is well known: the obligation to obey the Sages is not Torah-level / of biblical origin (it does not come from “do not deviate,” and the like). That is, they have no formal authority. Needless to say, substantive authority (even if they have it) does not create an “obligation” to obey. Obeying an expert may be rational, but not obligatory. And nevertheless, according to Nachmanides, there is a fully halakhic obligation to obey the Sages, and that obligation does not derive from any authority whatsoever. I assume the person of “habitual rote practice” will manage with this somehow, but it is more natural to conclude that Nachmanides’ conceptual system was different. He did not think in terms of one kind of authority or another.

In the conceptual system of fear, it seems to me that Doron is right (if I understood him correctly). Suppose a religious person tells me, “There is a God, and He wants you to keep the Sabbath.” It is clear to me that God can benefit me or harm me (if He exists), and therefore it is clear that keeping the Sabbath is significant for me (if indeed God commanded it), and therefore it is clear that I will go and investigate these points thoroughly, just as I would investigate whether there is poison in Rabbi Israel Salanter’s cup. The person of “habitual rote practice” will not relate to this as an “obligation,” and certainly not as an “obligation to believe,” but the result is the same. In effect I have a necessity to investigate the matter, even though that necessity did not arise from the authority of the said religious person (because he has none).
(There is another issue here—if I investigated the matter and reached the wrong conclusion. But that is another topic, “coercion in matters of belief/opinion,” and the Rabbi has already elaborated on it enough. I have not merited to understand the Rabbi’s words on that either, but that is another topic.)
And of course, one who operates from a conceptual system of love of God or awe of God’s exaltedness will not understand either of these two discussions at all. “Authority” is not relevant for him at all, nor is the fear of being harmed. But I’ve already gone on long enough.

Ariel, thank you for your response.
In my opinion Michi ignored the main point of what I said.
Your formulation appears in an internal religious language that is somewhat foreign to me, so I have difficulty decoding it. What I can say on the matter is a number of simple points:
1. I was engaged in a philosophical-conceptual analysis of the concept of obligation, and for that purpose recourse to sources and to “history” neither helps nor hurts.
2. My central claim is that the concept of obligation necessarily includes not only the person who is obligated (or who is expected to obligate himself, even if he refuses to do so in practice), but also an obligating factor.
3. Regarding obligation of belief: I completely agree with Michi that it cannot be forced on a person if he refuses to accept it upon himself. I only claim that such an act on the part of the person still does not nullify the obligation.
4. Regarding the obligation to believe in the Torah: one must distinguish between primary and secondary matters. Here it does not seem reasonable to interpret all the information in the Torah (say, in how many days the world was created) as something the Giver of the Torah sees as an “obligation” to believe. In the case of the days of creation, it is reasonable that this is only a metaphor or something like that, and their exact number will not help buttress a person’s commitment to the text. By contrast, the belief that there is a God and that He is the one who gave the Torah certainly grants it a higher a priori status. This is just plain common sense, and there is no reason to assume the Giver of the Torah did not think of it Himself (and therefore wove it into the text). Therefore it is reasonable that the Giver of the Torah would impose on the person an obligation to believe in this principle, even though He fully understands that the person may turn his back on this command.