Q&A: On the Rabbi’s Worldview Position
On the Rabbi’s Worldview Position
Question
Hello Rabbi. Recently I came across several of the Rabbi’s articles about faith, divine providence, prayer, and so on, and I was very surprised to hear these statements. On the one hand, I see courage and boldness on your part in going against the grain, rejecting the “false” and “unproven” claims, and putting that on paper. But on the other hand, I’m afraid that statements like these could cause more harm than benefit. After all, most of the public does not think this way, and the average believer builds his faith based on his rabbis and on statements of the Sages, which he believes with all his heart were given to Moses at Sinai, and therefore there is no point even in examining them, because surely they are true. And now, when someone publicly champions personal positions on faith the like of which no one has heard before (from a believing person, that is. From secular people, we’ve definitely heard such things), I think it is more likely that he will go off the path entirely and become secular than that he will join the Rabbi in his positions. Simply because his whole world has collapsed. The entire Haredi and, in part, the religious public begin to look to him like primitives groping in the dark because they deliberately close their eyes in broad daylight. It breaks a person and shatters him.
So basically my question is: how is it that all the Jews are wrong except for the Rabbi? (A question equivalent to: how is the whole world wrong with its various religions except for the Jews? After all, we are so small…) I learned in civics that we follow the majority because the majority is right. Was I fooled?
And if he is mistaken, how is it that so many people are blind and do not see the truth? Maybe it is more reasonable to say that there are several truths (like the postmodernists think)?
Sorry if this sounds a bit confrontational. Thank you, and good evening.
Answer
You are mixing together several arguments here, and I do not agree with any of them. All of them have already been addressed here on the site several times in the past. I’ll answer briefly.
1. I oppose “holy lies,” lying in order to bring about benefit. A lie does not stand, and if people build beliefs on falsehood and error, there is no obligation whatsoever to preserve their mistakes. See Maimonides’ parable of the elephant. By the way, claims like these were raised against quite a few sages throughout the generations, such as Maimonides, Gersonides, and others. So I’m in good company.
2. These beliefs have indeed been heard before. Just not by the ears of laymen.
3. The “so” is unnecessary. You’ve raised a completely different question here. I do not relate to questions of who thought what, but to arguments. Therefore, if I reached a conclusion that runs contrary to the majority opinion, I state my view. At most, the majority can cause me to reconsider, but in the end a person has to formulate a position for himself.
4. If you learned in civics that the majority is right, your teacher should be fired. The majority decides, but is not necessarily right. And even that is only in questions that are subject to a democratic vote, and certainly not regarding facts. Questions of thought are questions of fact. I have elaborated on this in several places, and you can search for it (authority regarding facts).
5. If there are several truths, then God both exists and does not exist, and there both is divine providence and is not. In short, we are just moving our lips without saying anything.
Thank you, Rabbi, for the response.