Q&A: Freedom of Speech – the podcast with Jeremy Fogel
Freedom of Speech – the podcast with Jeremy Fogel
Question
Several points came up where I really couldn’t help agreeing with Jeremy on the issue of freedom of speech — in your view, if the Nazis had been forbidden from expressing their views in public, wouldn’t that have choked off the Nazi idea and caused fewer people to be exposed to it? This was still in a period without social media. As he kept arguing to you — on the practical level, those same extreme views lead to disasters.
Also, on the issue of the Haredim: first of all, I think you gave a selective interpretation there. Secularization began because of the Haskalah movement, not because of the Haredim. On the contrary, it was only in response to that that the Haredi community was created, and it managed to preserve millions of religious Jews, and seemingly without it the situation would have deteriorated even further. Also, the rate of leaving religion in that sector really is dozens of times lower than in the most devout wing of the Religious Zionist camp, where people speak about a minimum of twenty percent, and that graph is in constant ascent. In the Haredi sector it may be about a tenth of that. As for the point you raised about the hidden nonbelievers in Haredi society, first of all the burden of proof is on you; it’s hard for me to believe those are the numbers. But second, that is the essence of Haredism, for all its drawbacks: creating a communal framework that serves as a shell for religiosity. Those hidden nonbelievers raise a Haredi family, educate in Haredi institutions, and one of the parents is thoroughly Haredi, so leaving religion becomes a private case and not the cutting off of an entire generation.
As for Torah from Sinai, you keep saying that a broad tradition was transmitted. The question is whether that person who supposedly invented the Torah couldn’t also have invented the claim that a tradition had been passed down with it. And regarding David Hume — I think you disagree with his principle but agree with him completely… what’s called “he held like him, but not for his reasons.” After all, the whole refutation of Hume is: who told you there were no miracles in the past? But you didn’t accept those testimonies about miracles because of the very same claim that there are no miracles — in other words, he begs the question. But on the other hand, you also agree with that assumption, that there is no divine intervention in the world, for your own reasons, so as far as you’re concerned that claim is correct. Someone who wants to prove that there were miracles and that the regular laws of the world were broken needs evidence that can overturn the “presumption”; the question is whether a broad tradition is sufficient evidence for that. It’s not like a solar eclipse that we saw with our own eyes and know happened. Rare, but it happens. Here we have never seen it happen — according to you.
Answer
If you couldn’t help agreeing, then why aren’t you doing so? 🙂
I said that where there is a danger of harm to others, there is room to prohibit it, in accordance with the law that already exists today.
Secularization also began because of the breakfast they ate. Without that, they wouldn’t have had the strength to become secular. It was also created because of the marital relations through which Moses Mendelssohn was conceived. Without that, perhaps there would have been no Haskalah movement. When I talk about causes of secularization, obviously I’m not listing all the conditions (which also include breakfast). The Haskalah movement arose, and that is a fact. The question we need to ask is how we dealt with it. And to that, in my view, there is a pretty clear answer.
I won’t get into the worn-out argument about comparisons with Religious Zionism. My view is known, and I’ve said and written it more than once. Your view is also known, and in my opinion you are greatly mistaken and strongly biased.
I explained the matter of tradition. A person does not invent a tradition. A tradition is transmitted across a broad front of people. If you think someone can plant an entire tradition into such a broad front, that’s another matter. In my opinion that isn’t plausible (under the conditions I mentioned). But it is still clear that this is a broad front.
Hume’s arguments are the topic of the next column.
Discussion on Answer
The basic conceptions that prevailed before the Haskalah were Haredi. Therefore they responded to it as they did. I don’t see where this discussion is going.
On the issue of “its beginning was in wrongdoing,” I’ve written several times exactly about that.
You said there that everyone used to be Haredi and today 80 percent are secular, without presenting the fact that Haredism arose against the secularization movement. Hope I understood the breakfast point… I once suggested dividing, in the issue of “its beginning was in wrongdoing and its end in coercion,” between an act of wrongdoing that led to the coercion and coercion that would not have happened but for the wrongdoing, where the connection there is not direct. Here too one has to distinguish between indirect causes and direct causes.