Q&A: Do I Count Toward a Minyan?
Do I Count Toward a Minyan?
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi.
I am an Orthodox religious person (at least sociologically). I am convinced of the existence of a philosophical God. At the same time, I spend quite a bit of time dealing with biblical criticism, and I tend to be very doubtful that the source of the Five Books of the Torah is divine (the rabbinic interpretation of the Sages I am entirely willing to accept, at least as a conclusion that follows from adopting its axioms), or that prophecy existed in the past (at least in the accepted sense). Nevertheless, I am committed to Jewish law in practice, though not in the sense that I see myself as being under obligation. You have written more than once that someone who does not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He—his commandments have no value. You gave an amusing example about a person who put on tefillin at a Chabad stand and later that same day repented, and that he is obligated to put on tefillin, because there was no value to the commandment he fulfilled earlier while in his denial.
If I do not believe that the Torah is from Heaven (certainly not all of it, and perhaps not even part of it), do I count toward a minyan? If not, and there are ten of us praying together, do I need to separate from them / tell them that I do not count toward the minyan?
Answer
The details here matter. If you believe in the Revelation at Mount Sinai and are only uncertain about what was given there and what was not, I do not see a problem. If you think no Torah and no commandments were given, then you are not someone who can fulfill commandments. But if you believe in God even without belief in the Revelation at Mount Sinai, and you pray to Him, then in my opinion you can count toward a minyan.
Discussion on Answer
To Rabbi Abraham, thank you. Is there a practical difference here between prayer and other commandments? That is, do I count toward a minyan even without belief in a commanding God who gave the Torah, because there is some special rule regarding prayer, or is the same true for other commandments as well?
As for the point itself, I am certainly willing to accept the rabbinic interpretation of the Sages, assuming I were to adopt the claim of the Torah’s divine origin. It makes sense, for example, to strive for harmonization of the biblical text if “they were all given by one shepherd.” By contrast, if I think the text was written and edited over a long period by quite a number of people, it is more reasonable to read it in a deconstructionist way (that is, to break it down into its different components, or at least to aspire to do so).
What I meant was to clarify that I am not claiming that the development of the Oral Torah is problematic, because in my view it is entirely legitimate (relative to its starting assumptions). My doubt is mainly with regard to the Written Torah.
I wrote that these remarks of mine apply only with regard to prayer. You would not be fulfilling the commandment of prayer, because you are not doing it out of obligation (you do not recognize the obligation), but in practice you are praying. Like the Patriarchs, who prayed without being commanded. So you can be seen as one of ten people praying.
But he can’t blow the shofar or read from the Torah for others, right?
Right, because he is not someone who can fulfill commandments.
Michael, could you please explain: “the rabbinic interpretation of the Sages I am entirely willing to accept”?
Why, if you don’t believe either in the text or in the source of authority of its axioms…