Question

Hello and blessings, Rabbi!
My name is G., I studied for about two years at Yeshiva M., and I am currently serving in the IDF.
Over the past few years I’ve been exposed to your thought and outlook, especially through the pamphlet on the third identity that you published at the time—and pretty quickly I fell in love with the style and the way you look at and analyze a wide variety of topics.
From time to time I’ve asked questions here on your site (a few days ago I asked in column 624 about the difficulty of accepting the distinction between factuality and normativity; despite the Rabbi’s answer, I admit that the issue still requires further study from my perspective).
I admit that sometimes I can go crazy from the Rabbi’s approaches and statements, and from the simplicity with which you say them (and enjoy it too!), and there are quite a few topics on which I find it hard to accept what the Rabbi says. But in any case—the advantages of rubbing up against, and becoming familiar with, a different approach (as stated in the approach of the dynamic reed 😉), and of having another way to look at things—outweigh the difficulty of accepting them.
 
I wanted to ask and comment on a number of topics:
1. I saw that in the past you were asked on your site whether you are familiar with the thought of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory (you answered no), who was the Chief Rabbi of British Jewry (and some see him as the rabbi of Diaspora Jewry). It seems to me that what led people to ask you about him is that he was unequivocally one of the most outstanding intellectuals our generation has been blessed with. Out of great knowledge, breadth of horizons, and openness to the modern world and to relations with the nations of the world, he knew how to combine and weave together, with a master’s hand, a variety of fields: economics, poetry, art, science, politics, history, religion, the social sciences—something that made his Torah richer and deeper. You can find quite a bit of material about him online and on the site established to preserve his legacy -  https://rabbisacks.org/about-us/
I’m sure the readers and participants on your site would be happy to hear your opinion of his approach and teachings. I can recommend the book The Great Partnership, in which he touches on many areas that you also deal with in your books and on the site (he uses there as a foundational metaphor the idea of the two halves of the brain, which you referred to in The Science of Freedom)—faith, the proper attitude in his view toward proofs for the existence of God, toward science, etc.
 
2. With regard to your approach to studying the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), the widespread phenomenon is well known of people who use the Torah to justify themselves. Miraculously, everything written in the Torah works out perfectly with their cultural worldview—or there is another phenomenon in which people try to explain the Torah through someone else’s worldview. But when you read Rabbi Sacks (most of the time), you can really feel that finally there is someone trying simply to listen to the Torah, to listen to what it is saying. Without deciding in advance, ‘what kind of Torah this is.’ Without deciding in advance whom these verses can justify. The feeling is that here is a person approaching this text with sensitivity, openness, and endless attentiveness. In the context of the weekly Torah portions, I’ll bring an example cited by Yair Agmon: “The Torah ‘wastes’ whole pages in the book of Exodus on feverish descriptions of the planning of the Tabernacle and of the building of the Tabernacle. And I never understood—who cares? Why do we need to read this? The answer Rabbi Sacks gives put things in order for me: ‘The Torah, which devotes only thirty-four verses (!) to the story of the creation of the world, devotes more than five hundred verses (!!!) to the story of building the Tabernacle. And this is why: to the Torah it is self-evident that God can create a house for human beings; the question that troubles it is: how can human beings build a house for God.’”
In addition, Rabbi Ilai Ofran, in his book Torah of the Soul, also addresses this problem in the chapter “The Torah as a Rorschach Test.” Here is a link to the chapter https://musaf-shabbat.com/2015/08/08/%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%9B%D7%9E%D7%91%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%9A-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%90%D7%99-%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%9F/
I’d be happy to hear what you think about his remarks.
 
3. Your well-known student (former?) is Rabbi Dr. Moshe Rat, who in many respects shaped my faith and worldview. One can see in his book Simply to Believe how extensively he relies on your approach.
I’m familiar with the sharp exchange that took place between you at the time. My general understanding was that Rabbi Moshe adopts a very expansive conception, while you adopt a rather restrictive one. But in the end things still weren’t so clear—from your point of view, what are the roots of the disagreement between you that lead to such opposite views?
 
4. In connection with the recent series of columns on tradition and dynamism, I enjoyed very much the thoroughness and breadth of the survey in the columns. I wanted to ask and comment on a number of questions and points about them:
     A. In connection with the dispute between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, the Rabbi presumably knows the saying that in the future the Jewish law will follow Beit Shammai (and true, Ramchal writes in Mesillat Yesharim that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel forever and this will not change, but the approach that in the future the Jewish law will follow Beit Shammai developed more in the writings of Kabbalah and the Arizal, and there were those who relied on it also in halakhic contexts, such as Rabbi Joseph Meir Weiss, author of Imrei Yosef)—how do you reconcile that with your approach? Or from your perspective is it just a homiletic remark?
     B. Does the Rabbi know Professor Shalom Rosenberg’s book It Is Not in Heaven? The book discusses the question of the relationship between the binding tradition given at Sinai and the power of innovation given to the sages (the central subject of the series of columns) there         he systematically surveys the different views formulated by the sages throughout the generations in grappling with this question and the questions that flow from it. In your columns you touched on quite a few points that he addressed in his book, and I’m interested in how much             you agree or disagree with his interpretation.
     C. I wanted to note that someone who strengthens the argument about the necessary dynamism built into the foundations of Jewish law, and about the petrification (unfortunately) that began in recent generations, is Rabbi Professor Joshua Berman (a student of Rabbi Sacks) in his book I Believe (on biblical criticism), quite surprisingly דווקא in the chapter on legal inconsistency in Deuteronomy as compared to the rest of the Torah. Highly recommended.
 
Forgive me if I went on too long, and for all the references to other sources 😅.
Thank you in advance