Question

I saw that in the past people asked the Rabbi about Rabbi Shmuel Ariel’s leaving Otniel because of Shalom Tzadik’s views. I also saw that you corresponded on the site about these issues with Shalom Tzadik. Today Rabbi Shmuel Ariel published a Facebook post explaining what Shalom Tzadik’s views were that bothered him and led him to leave. I’d be glad to hear which of those views you think are correct and which are not.
 
The post:
(Clarification: I’m not used to using Facebook and I’m not on it very often, so I’m not committing myself to respond to every note or comment that may come up here.)
 
Since I left Otniel, I’ve been asked several times about the reasons for it. For years I preferred to answer that privately and not publicly. But now the issue has come up again in the public sphere, and it seems that now, with the distance of time and perspective, it is appropriate to present the matter to the public.
 
Brief background:
I studied and taught in Otniel for 30 years. There were things I agreed with and things I didn’t, and over time the things I didn’t agree with increased, but it was still within the legitimate range of differing views in the study hall.
At a certain point, lectures by Prof. Shalom Tzadik began to take place in the yeshiva (a graduate of Yeshivat Otniel, a lecturer in Jewish thought at Ben-Gurion University, who proposed giving classes in the yeshiva on Jewish thought). Over time, I began hearing quotations from those classes from students, and I really did not like them. I spoke about it with Shalom Tzadik and with the yeshiva staff, but things continued.
In Adar 5778, an article of his was published in “Avia” (an internal bulletin of Yeshivat Otniel), and it shook me deeply. I urgently approached the yeshiva staff, and at the same time I began listening to many recordings of Shalom Tzadik’s classes in order to really understand what was involved. As a result, I reached the conclusion that if these contents continued to be heard in the yeshiva, there was no possibility whatsoever of remaining in such a place.
What sort of content are we talking about? There are many problematic things, and I won’t detail all of them here. I’ll briefly present a few of his severe statements in classes and in the article:
 
1. There is no providence at all. God does not intervene in reality in any way whatsoever—not to save a righteous person, not to punish a wicked person, and not even to save the Jewish people.
2. Since God does not intervene in reality, there is also no reward and punishment in the simple sense—for example, that if we keep the commandments, rain will fall, and the like. When the Torah tells us such things (which of course appear in many places in the Torah) it is lying. It says this so that the people will keep the commandments, but it is not really true.
3. Quote: “Maimonides says over and over and over that the Torah does not tell the truth.”
4. Likewise, when the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) recounts various historical events and says they happened through divine providence, that is an educational falsehood for the public. For example (an example he gives), when the prophets say that the destruction of the First Temple happened because the people sinned with idolatry and the like—that is not really so. The destruction and the exile occurred for entirely natural reasons: Nebuchadnezzar wanted to expand his empire. But the prophets needed to explain to the people how such a thing happened, so they said it came because of idolatry and the other sins.
(Let us note the meaning of these statements: most of the Hebrew Bible deals with the unfolding of history and describes it from the perspective of divine providence—this statement presents most of the Hebrew Bible as a lie.)
5. Prayer accomplishes nothing in reality. It only has a psychological effect.
6. Just as God does not intervene in reality, He also does not reveal Himself to human beings. The prophets are simply great philosophers who understand how one ought to act and tell this to the people.
7. The same is true regarding the Torah—Moses our teacher was a great philosopher; in his wisdom he understood what God would want us to do, and that is how he wrote the Torah.
8. Following the previous statement—a student’s question: So what is the Revelation at Mount Sinai?
Answer: It is the event in which Moses our teacher brought the people the book that he wrote.
Question: Then what are the voices and lightning?
Answer: Moses our teacher was a great sage, and just as today meteorologists know how to say that in three days there will be thunder and lightning, so too he knew, and he timed the giving of the Torah for that day.
(That is: a. The Torah is not divine revelation, but Moses’ wisdom. b. Moses our teacher was a liar, who misled the people and timed the giving of the Torah to a situation in which it would appear to the people as divine revelation so that they would agree to accept the Torah that he invented.)
(In a certain sense this is worse than the heresy of biblical criticism. Biblical criticism also denies the divine origin of the Hebrew Bible, but at least it holds that those who wrote the Hebrew Bible believed these things: the people who wrote the books of the Hebrew Bible thought that the miracles really happened and that if the people did not obey God’s voice disaster would come, etc., and therefore they wrote this. Shalom Tzadik presents Moses our teacher and the other prophets as liars, who themselves did not believe these things and lied to the masses.)
9. Judaism does not expect a person to believe anything. A person may believe in nothing at all, not even in the existence of God, and that is fine.
10. The aim of Judaism is only the practical observance of the commandments, not faith. Faith is a means for the sake of observance of the commandments, and not the other way around, that the commandments come to express and realize faith. The purpose of the commandments (even those that seem to be between man and God) is only practical: for the practical improvement of society, creating a proper society with kindness and mutual aid and family stability and the like.
(This last point may not be heresy in itself. If he were claiming that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah only in order to create in us a proper society in matters between one person and another, that would be strange and difficult, but not necessarily heresy. But:
A. It contradicts the plain meaning of many verses in the Torah, which present faith as a supreme goal and the commandments as an expression of faith, such as that the Sabbath is a remembrance of Creation and many commandments are a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, and so forth. Again, this turns many verses in the Torah into an “educational falsehood,” meant to persuade the masses to observe the commandments in practice.
B. There are views that cast doubt on revelation and the giving of the Torah, and nevertheless emphasize the value of observance of the commandments, such as in parts of the Conservative movement and others. This is of course heresy against the foundations of the Torah, but at least those approaches present the commandments as a matter of faith—in their view it is not a divine command that appeared in revelation, but it is the way of the Jewish people to draw near to God and express faith in Him. Whereas Shalom Tzadik empties the Torah and the commandments of their content from both directions—it is not divine revelation, and it is also not an expression of faith and closeness to God. It is only a practical way of life to regulate the social framework, and nothing more.)
 
So much for the facts, that is, presenting data about what took place (and to the best of my knowledge is still taking place) in the study hall in Otniel.
And from here, a bit about the significance of these things:
A. First of all, as emerges from the above: my leaving is not a matter of some personal problem of mine, that personally it does not suit me to be in a place with one outlook or another. These are already outlooks that are outside Judaism, and no God-fearing Jew should make peace with the existence of such messages in the study hall.
B. People ask me: does this reflect the overall approach of Yeshivat Otniel?—definitely not (though I also unfortunately heard some staff members say that they identify with some of these things to one degree or another). But even if this is not the yeshiva’s general path, and even if the heads of the yeshiva and the rabbis who teach there say they do not agree with these things, it is impossible that a yeshiva should allow such things within the study hall. These are not views that lie within the range of words of Torah; these are views that lie outside the Torah. Just as it would be unthinkable for a yeshiva to hold classes that preach Christianity, or to allow non-kosher food to be served in the dining hall, so it is unthinkable for a yeshiva to hold classes that preach heresy. And that is exactly what is happening, to my great sorrow, when these classes are held in Otniel.
C. Another claim that has been made is that Shalom Tzadik’s statements do not reflect his personal opinion. Personally he believes, but thinks there is a legitimate place in Judaism also for a non-believing outlook, as presented above. Well then: I do not know what Shalom Tzadik’s personal opinions are, and from my perspective that is not the relevant point. What is relevant is what content the students hear in the study hall. When Shalom Tzadik repeatedly voices these messages in his classes, then even if in fact this is not his personal opinion, still the main and severe point is this: within the yeshiva, education toward heresy is taking place, and that is something that should be unthinkable. It is similar to a cook in a yeshiva who serves carcasses and non-kosher food to the students in the dining hall (with the knowledge of the heads of the yeshiva and the staff), while people sit around discussing whether personally, in his own home, he keeps kosher or not. Of course that is a completely secondary question.