As a continuation of Samuel’s question:
Does authentic Judaism (which, according to you, is Judaism of Jewish law grounded in the Torah) not ascribe a unique essence (a special nature) to the people of Israel? If you think not, how would you explain God’s choice to conduct such a stormy “romance” with this people across the pages of the Torah? In other words: if this were only a “unique mission,” why did God insist in the past (and in the present?) on placing it specifically on a chosen group? That seems a bit arbitrary to me on His part.

But it says explicitly, for example, in the Amidah on Saturday night, “who distinguishes between light and darkness,” etc., which hints that Israel is the holy and the light.
Even if this is about a mission and not a nature, there is still a matter of ranking relative to the level of the mission. Why should we specifically have this important mission?
Also, what does the Rabbi think about the astonishing history of our people—whether it’s survival, attachment to life, genius relative to our demography (Nobel Prizes), prophecy.
Is it rational to ignore these data and not let them speak?

Doron, someone had to be chosen, and the Holy One, blessed be He, decided on the seed of Abraham. Maybe because of Abraham’s own deeds. That doesn’t mean we have an inherently different nature from the rest of the nations. And in fact, in practice, I don’t think there is such a thing (beyond the differences that exist between any two nations or groups, of course).

Samuel, Israel is holy by virtue of fulfilling the mission, not by virtue of spiritual or physical genes.
I’m not ignoring those data, but I don’t attribute them to genes; I attribute them to our biography and our culture (which stem, among other things, from the mission we received).

And what right do we have to this mission? Who are we to receive this primary mission? Why do we deserve it?

I wrote that perhaps it is because of Abraham’s deeds, that he was chosen together with his descendants. Beyond that, even if there is no reason whatsoever, in any case someone had to be chosen, no? Similar to Maimonides’ explanation in the Guide for the Perplexed about the details of the commandments (some of which are arbitrary simply because the boundaries of the commandment have to be set in some way).
But that really should be asked of the chooser Himself. He’ll surely know how to give you the answer.

A. Is it reasonable that because of one ancient person, great as he may have been, an entire people for generations upon generations would be chosen? It seems a bit disproportionate.
B. I don’t think the claim that someone had to be chosen justifies this arbitrary decision.
For example, if there is person X and person Y and there is a prize—would it be moral to say: I had to give the prize, so I gave it to X? Even more so if this is the Creator of the world, who seems to me to have absolute freedom of choice.
Why not divide it?
What I don’t understand is: whether it’s a mission or a nature, where does this justified sense of superiority come from?

I’m unable to see here even the slightest trace of a problem (especially since I’m not at all sure the gentiles are so eager to be chosen in our place, and many Jews aren’t exactly thrilled with this choice either). But I’ve explained what I had to explain, and I don’t see any point in continuing the discussion.

I completely agree with Samuel. Common sense determines, in my opinion, that you don’t impose such an important mission on a factor that is not qualified for it in advance (or at least not perceived as such).

By the way, Michi, note that if Samuel and I are right (and I think we are), then this connects very well to our previous discussions, in which I argued that Judaism—as long as it rests on the myth of “Torah from Heaven”—is “actualist” (or “analytic” in your terminology).
The heart of the actualist approach is the denial of dualism; in the theological case that means denying God’s separateness from man.
The Jewish people is “holy” a priori, and therefore only it is chosen to receive the holy factor (= the Torah) that mediates between God and man.
According to this claim, the Torah and the Jewish people are not contingent to one another but necessarily dependent on one another. They cannot be separated.
As you may recall, I argued that the actual history of the world (to which the Torah refers already at the time it was given) is not really separate from the text. And that is according to the text itself. The text indeed sends us to seek extra-textual evidence (outside the Torah) in order to ground its metaphysical uniqueness. But that very move is based on the assumption that there cannot be an “alternative history” in which some other people would be so “holy” as to be worthy of receiving a holy mediator like the Torah.
The verdict of history is determined in advance by the Torah—the actual course of history is a priori necessary.
My conclusion: if the whole course of history (carried on the Torah’s shoulders, and necessarily attached to the Jewish people) is necessary, then even God Himself could not have escaped this history.
Therefore, God is contingent upon the Torah (and not the other way around).

The question is what is “straight” in that common sense. That’s the point of disagreement between us, and of course it’s not new.
I’ll only add that I’m especially surprised to hear such emphatic views about Jewish essentialism from someone who has said he leans more toward Christianity than Judaism. God really missed the mark here. Or perhaps this essentialism passed from the Jews to the Christians, in which case the question is in what sense this is an essentialism at all.

With God’s help

Samuel and Doron, why go to the “student”? Go instead to that prophet of the chooser, “the Rabbi”:

“‘For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be His treasured people out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.
It was not because you were more numerous than all the peoples that the Lord desired you and chose you, for you are the fewest of all peoples.
But because of the Lord’s love for you, and because He keeps the oath that He swore to your fathers, the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt’” (Deuteronomy 7:6–8).
So there you have it explicitly: the reasons for the choice of the people of Israel (standing by the covenantal sign and an unexplained love [apparently]).

As for the comparison with “between light and darkness,” the source of the law is in tractate Pesachim (104a):
“Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: One who recites the distinction must mention distinctions similar to those stated in the Torah.”

And on that matter a baraita is brought, as follows:
“How is the order of distinctions? He says: ‘who distinguishes between holy and profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six days of action, between impure and pure, (between the sea and the dry land), between the upper waters and the lower waters, between priests, Levites, and Israelites.’”

That is, there is no essential comparison between the choice of Israel from among the nations—or at least the comparison is not of the sort one could make with the separation of the waters below from the waters above the firmament, or with the separation of an impure animal from a pure animal. According to the words of the Sages, the verse on which that distinction is based (“to distinguish between the impure and the pure” [Leviticus 11:47]) means:
“Between what is impure for you and what is pure for you; between one whose windpipe was mostly slaughtered and one whose windpipe was half slaughtered.” (Sifra there)
It seems more likely that one should simply mention the places where the root b-d-l (“separate/distinguish”) appears in the Torah, without any principled comparison.

(And in my humble opinion it is also worth looking at Sifra later on Leviticus 20:26, specifically at the end of its words, which are a bit less well known: “‘The verse says: “And I have separated you from the peoples to be Mine”’—thus one who separates himself from transgression accepts upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven,” and that is the root of the distinction and its content.)

The best proof that Israel is different in its nature from the other nations is the words of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi in the Kuzari, that all the prophets came from Israel and not even from converts (Essay One, 115), and regarding that the Sages already said: “Obadiah was an Edomite convert” (Sanhedrin 39b), and the answers are many.

So it seems to me.

Michi, regarding the comparison to Christianity and the matter of essentialism—I didn’t understand what you meant. Do you find essentialism in my position? Why? Is that good? Bad?
As for the issue Samuel raised: well, it has already been said—the claim that God imposed a mission on an entire people for generations without thinking there was some special quality distinguishing that people seems arbitrary to me. God simply gambled on a certain people, just like that, and in the end it worked out. Your answer (“maybe because of Abraham”—I assume you meant our forefather, not Michael) also doesn’t seem sufficient to me.
I of course do not rule out in advance (nor certainly do I require) that there is something special in Jewish history that shaped our collective soul. But that is no longer a theological or philosophical discussion but a “scientific” one.

As for what you said, our friend with the long name (Please prove me wrong if I am mistaken): it seems to me that if you rely on the words of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, you are drifting away from our discussion. The discussion is based on trying to understand the foundational text of Judaism (the Torah), not later interpretations of it.

With God’s help

If I understood correctly, the Rabbi meant the essentialism that you and Samuel—and, as I understood it, I as well—are applying to the fact/claim that the people of Israel was separated from the rest of the nations. That is, one can provide for this fact/claim arbitrary reasons or reasons not connected to the people itself (as the Rabbi and I argue, and as I also showed from the Torah), and one can provide essentialist reasons (as you and Samuel insist on forcing in the name of “common sense”). The Rabbi challenged this by noting that a Christian approach gets tangled up with such an essentialist view, since it claims that God changed His choice during the first century CE; and if the choice from the outset relied on some essential difference (“some quality that distinguishes that people” [Doron]), it is hard to see why it changed—unless, and I think that is what the Rabbi meant, the special qualities of that people suddenly passed over to all who were baptized into Paul’s religion.

What I brought from Rabbi Yehuda Halevi was not support for my claim but the opposite: the first source in Jewish history (that I, a very small person [truly], found) that supports your and Samuel’s path, and says that the people of Israel indeed bears “some special quality,” or in his words: “fit for the divine matter.” In fact, if you didn’t notice, I brought the central proof against Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s central claim, namely that this quality prevents gentiles, and even converts, from being prophets: namely, that Obadiah, at least according to the words of the Sages (which you of course do not accept, but Rabbi Yehuda Halevi does, and therefore it matters when discussing his claim), was an Edomite convert.

All success.

I’m not trying to claim that the people of Israel is special and therefore has some special divine essence (I have quite a few doubts about that too); I’m simply saying that we have a special history in many respects, and as thinking people it seems important to me to ask about this phenomenon.
As for the Rabbi’s claim, “I attribute them to our biography and our culture,” I’m a bit doubtful. You can’t ask about A and answer “because of A”—it’s precisely our biography and culture that raise the question for me.

But my main question is about the ranking from a moral standpoint.
And I think the question is very relevant, because jealousy regarding this choice certainly knew how to express itself throughout history… (against what the Rabbi argues, that people aren’t so eager for it).

I understood what you said about essentialism. But I think Paul understood them not badly either, and that’s why he spoke (I think it was he) about the transition from “Israel according to the flesh” to “Israel according to the spirit.” I understand him this way: there is a true “Israel,” and there was such from the outset; but if that Israel was embodied in an earlier period with the aid of the Torah (= God’s preferred channel of mediation), then as history passes and hearts are prepared, Israel receives a new channel from above (“the Son of God”).
In my opinion there is no philosophical problem or contradiction here.
On the contrary, rational philosophical discourse (the potentialist-synthetic one) fits very well with the distinction between the mediating channel and the God who created it. The Torah is contingent upon God (even though, as I argue, it is implicit in it itself that this is not so…), and at a later historical stage the Son of God appears (who is also contingent upon God because of his half-human nature). In any case, the Son-of-God model is philosophically more successful, in my view, than the Jewish model of the Torah.

Quite apart from this question, it is still not clear to me why God would in the first place impose such a holy mission on a people chosen at random. It is as if we were saying that God sort of slipped up in His choice. In that regard I argued that this is an arbitrary determination. At this stage I still haven’t understood from you and Michi on what basis you rescue God from this arbitrariness.
??

One more thing I forgot to write: essential “Israeliness” is not an inherent part of history, though of course it has certain expressions within history. In fact, the more it becomes refined, the more it distances itself (at least in important respects) from that same history. In a nutshell, that is the entire Christian model, and that is what gives it the dualistic character that Michi himself values so much (and rightly so).

With God’s help

I admit I didn’t understand, and it may be because I entered the discussion late, your claims, and therefore I’m trying to respond now one last time, and I’ll leave the rest to the Rabbi, who understood the discussion better than I did.

What I didn’t understand is this: if “Israel” is embodied with the aid of the Torah, and can therefore in an instant move to being embodied in anyone who accepts upon himself that piece of flesh as God—Heaven forbid—that means there is no uniqueness in the group of people I call Israel beyond other people, for otherwise the embodiment of Israeliness in them would not be an essential factor found within them themselves but something dependent on an external factor (the Torah / the “Son of God”). That is exactly what you yourself said very nicely—that Israeliness is not part of history. If so, your excellent question about the arbitrariness of the Holy One, blessed be He, comes back at you almost exactly as it comes back at me and at the Rabbi.

In other words: either Israel is this group of people because of some characteristic/quality of theirs, or Israel is a status imposed on this group because of the Torah / the “Son of God.” I don’t understand how you do not see the dichotomy between these two approaches.

In any case, here my words will end for the time being.

“Please prove me wrong if I am mistaken,” don’t worry, this is already the third thread in which no one understands Doron’s strange arguments (in my opinion). It’s very hard to answer such long-winded writing with so many hints and winks and overly lofty words in an exaggerated dose (“the potentialist model is more philosophical than Israel according to the flesh” blah blah blah).

With God’s help

And to Samuel: I’m not sure I understood your words either. If you are discussing some quality of the people of Israel by virtue of which it is worthy to receive the mission (as you mentioned in several of your comments), then if you are not talking about a divine quality (as you just wrote), but about cultural and biographical characteristics, then we are speaking of things that happened to the people of Israel long, long, long after the giving of the Torah. To connect Nobel Prizes to the reason why God chose Israel would be possible in only one way: to view the cultural and biographical characteristics that led, according to the Rabbi, to those Nobel Prizes, as a “sign” that the people of Israel has always been more intelligent than other peoples, and therefore worthy of receiving the Torah.

If you indeed think so, I don’t understand what objection you have to the culture and biography of the Jewish people; and if not, then you can, like the Rabbi, think that these are things acquired over the years, among other things because of the mission and not as the cause of receiving it.

The same applies to moral ranking: if the people of Israel is indeed more gifted and intelligent than other peoples, and for some reason you think this gives it superiority over other peoples (that is a value question and not so much a factual one, in the spirit of the words of Rabbi Yeshayahu Leibowitz), then what is the question? If you think this was acquired, like the Rabbi does, then why should that grant superiority?

Bottom line: the culture and biography, according to you, raise the question. If the question is how the Jewish people has cultural and biographical superiority over other peoples, then either assume it is more gifted (whether you call that a divine quality or not is really not important terminology), and if the question is whether these grant the people of Israel superiority over other peoples, that is a value question which you are welcome to decide according to your own understanding.

And here, with God’s help, my words to you will also end.

And as for the discussion itself, it’s clear in the Torah that the people of Israel is simply the natural continuation of our forefather Abraham. If anything, one should ask about the choice of Abraham himself (and there it is really clear that it was not arbitrary. His righteousness is mentioned dozens and hundreds of times even after his death, and the Torah tells of the trials with which God tested him).

A few points:
A. The Kuzari contradicts itself. It begins with prophecy to a gentile (the dream of an angel) and claims there is no prophecy to gentiles…
B. Beyond that, according to the Kuzari the kernel of the divine matter is supposed to become a tree that encompasses all of humanity.
C. The requirement that a prophet be only Jewish is not from the Kuzari. An explicit verse in Parashat Shoftim requires it: “I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brothers like you” (Deuteronomy 18:18). Gil will no doubt argue that this requirement is late, and that only after it appeared was there no room for a convert prophet.
D. To Doron—the Christianity assumes a division between the spiritual and the material. If we do not assume such a division, as happened with secularism and materialism, all Christianity collapses. Judaism, by contrast, does not collapse because it does not assume that there exists an Israel of the spirit separate from an Israel of the flesh.

As I said at the beginning of the discussion, the question that concerns me here is whether Judaism (insofar as it is anchored in the idea of Torah from Heaven) assumes that the idea of a “treasured people” is essential or “mission-oriented” (a role).
I focused less on the question whether the Jewish people “really”—not according to the Torah—possesses an actual metaphysical uniqueness. Maybe yes and maybe no.
My conclusion was that according to the internal logic of this myth, we should reach the conclusion that according to its own view, the concept of a “treasured people” does indeed denote a unique metaphysical nature.

Now you’re asking me about the truth (that is, about the question: should one “buy” what the Torah assumes, namely that there is such a thing as Israel’s special quality?). Here my answer tends toward both.

The important part is indeed metaphysical in character: the people of Israel was not chosen arbitrarily (I still haven’t managed to understand why God would behave with such arbitrariness). Apparently there really is something metaphysical in this people (and therefore it makes sense to me that the Torah would say so as well).
But at the same time there is a second level to the question, according to which the Jewish people also received a role or destiny. In the end, it is likely that God understands perfectly well that He is imposing a very heavy mission on flesh-and-blood people. The metaphysical “implant” that He planted in them from the outset may perhaps enable them at times to rise above their human limitations, but when those limitations prevail, the “divine matter” is pushed aside.

Common sense—in my opinion, of course—says that this is also how everyday reality works. We impose tasks on a person or a group whom we think has the suitable traits (teacher, driver, doctor, plumber…), but we also assign them a “role.” All this because we know that it is not enough for a person merely to have the requisite abilities in advance. Those people are also required to have commitment, not just reliance on their innate capacities.

Therefore, in my opinion, contrary to what you said, there is no place for an excluding dichotomy regarding this question.

On this occasion I want to thank from the depths of my heart D’, who is here to help a cumbersome, confused, and pretentious writer like me improve his writing. How fortunate we are to have such generous support.

Y.D.,
A. The dream story is a framing story and not a factual description. Therefore one should not infer from it that there is prophecy to gentiles. Beyond that, there is such prophecy with Balaam, Pharaoh, and Abimelech in the Torah.
B. As for the vision of the Kuzari, perhaps in the future prophecy will also exist for all the rest. Repair of the world.
C. As for the verse, one can say: “I will raise up for them” a prophet from among their brothers. For them, the prophet must be Jewish, but it is possible that there is a non-Jewish prophet intended for gentiles (like Balaam).

In your place, Doron (if I understand you… D claims he doesn’t), I would phrase the answer to Rabbi Michi like this:

“I do indeed agree that the people of Israel has an essential quality, but I claim it is only a potential, and the mission that this potential created was imposed on other people because the first ones did not live up to it.”

But here Rabbi Michi will ask, as he indeed asked: why didn’t God choose from the outset the group with the better potential in the first place? Why did He suddenly choose type B and then later remember that actually type A was preferable? The only way out of this, Rabbi Michi wrote, is to say that this amazing potential passed over the course of history from the original group that bore it to a new group—in effect to claim that Christianity changed the actual capacities of the people themselves: yesterday they had immense potential, loftier than all humankind, and today they are an empty vessel fashioned by a craftsman, while others have inherited this potential.

One claim is that the mission was granted via the Torah to group X and afterward via Jesus to group Y. But a far more extreme claim—and this is what Rabbi Michi is saying—is that the metaphysical potential itself that you are talking about was granted to group X and afterward to group Y. For if so, God Himself is the one who grants the potential to those groups, the fact being that He can transfer it between them. If so, it follows that from the outset He granted the Torah to the group to which He chose to grant the potential, and now that you’ve come to this, it turns out again that God did not grant the Torah to that group because of a metaphysical reason—because He Himself created that reason—but arbitrarily, and again you have nothing to rely on.

And on this matter of gentile prophecy according to the Kuzari (and Maimonides), see Rabbi Shilat’s article here: http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/kitveyet/maaliyot/sgulat-2.htm

I remember an article by Aryeh Stern in Tzohar about Israel’s special quality according to the Kuzari and Maimonides, with polemics that followed it:

Click to access 25_16.pdf

As for me, it doesn’t really matter what their positions were. The question is what is correct, and in that, in my humble opinion, I’m about as qualified as they are.

By the way, according to the Kuzari’s view that the divine matter passes from father to son and thus came from Adam to the people of Israel, statistically the “divine matter” must long since have leaked into the gentiles. A son of a gentile mother and a Jewish father is a gentile with “divine matter,” while a Jew with a gentile father (or a convert, of whom there were hundreds of thousands throughout history) does not have it. Since the Jews are a negligible minority, statistically the gentiles are currently the main treasured people.

On the matter itself, it seems to me that the question lacks the Popperian falsifiability test. Neither side presents any aspect of its claim that would allow it to be tested empirically. Rabbi Michi argues that empirically he sees no difference between us and the gentiles. In my opinion, empirically there is a difference between us and the gentiles. That does not prove much regarding the matter itself. A person can think that essentially there is a difference, but for various reasons today there is no difference; and conversely, that today there is a difference but it exists for historical reasons and not for an essential reason. It seems to me that even those perceived as holding an essentialist view, such as Rabbi Yehuda Halevi and the Maharal, can be interpreted somewhat more complexly than the simplistic interpretation with which they are usually read.

Yayin, I partly accept your reformulation of what I said.
As stated, my answer is that the potential (in your words) of the chosen group is not the whole story. There is also the matter of a people’s history, its actual moral choices, etc. Both explanations are correct and do not contradict one another.
Michi himself believes only in the second explanation (that the principle of a “treasured people” is a historical and moral mission), and that forces him to make what seems to me a very problematic claim—namely, that such a dramatic choice in the history of the cosmos and human history was made on arbitrary grounds.
I gave simple examples from everyday life to illustrate that normally none of us assumes such arbitrariness in reality, all the more so when dealing with such an enormous cosmic drama.

Now there are a number of possible answers to the question: why did God “get confused” and choose an unsuitable group of people?
One possible answer is that the Jews still have a cosmic role in the divine plan. But that role is very different from what Orthodox Judaism (and perhaps even some of its opponents: secularists, Reform, etc.) claims. Such a solution leaves intact the metaphysical quality with which the Jews were endowed, but subordinates it dialectically to a broader process.
Another possible answer is, as you argued in Michi’s name, that God “confiscated” from the Jews the metaphysical quality He had planted in them. Such an answer does not undermine the metaphysical consideration in the background of the argument, as someone might say; it merely subordinates a certain metaphysical trait (the quality of chosenness of a certain people) to the factor that created it in the first place. If someone is already bold enough to believe in a divine being that granted metaphysical status to a certain group, then from there to the idea that that same factor can revoke that trait is not a great distance.

There may perhaps be other possible answers.

I close my remarks by returning to the methodological question in the background of this whole discussion. The most important point in my opinion concerns the nature of the mediating channel God chose through which to address man. Since according to the model of “Torah from Heaven” the linguistic medium is itself the channel of mediation God chose in order to address man, there arises from the outset the philosophical and theological problem I spoke about (that the chosen channel—in effect the Torah—tries to take God’s place). As I tried to show, the model of “the chosen people” is necessarily attached in a way that cannot be separated from the Torah itself, and therefore this model too is connected to that same problematic issue.

With God’s help, 12 Elul 5778

To Doron—greetings,

According to your argument, God’s speaking to humanity by means of His Torah is not an efficient mediating channel. By this logic, even our comments on the site are not an “efficient mediating channel”; your comments do not properly express your opinion and other people’s comments do not properly express their opinions and wishes. So what, then, is the proper mediating channel for discourse that seeks to convey opinions efficiently to people?

With blessings,
Datzach the speaker

Datzach, I’m not sure your question is connected to the discussion taking place here.
Besides, my claim is that the mediating channel God chose (the linguistic medium—the Torah) is a very successful channel. History supports that too.
The problem with this channel begins in the context of our philosophical and theological discussion. When one tries to argue that a text (and a particular text at that) is the main tool of mediation between us and God, and at the same time we discover that this very text itself testifies to that, the text is as though trying to “inherit” the one who wrote it.
It would not be a very great provocation to say of Jews (the authentic ones, not fake secularists like me) that they believe in Torah from Heaven but reject Heaven itself.

With God’s help, 13 Elul 5778

To Doron—greetings,

The text does not replace its author, but faithfully represents his opinion and will, as the Sages said that “Anochi” is an acronym for “I Myself wrote and gave My soul.”

For when one approaches the Torah with the internalization that this is not a “dead letter,” but the revelation of the wisdom and will of the Creator—who “He and His wisdom and His will are one”—then the more one delves into the Torah and understands it better, the more one understands the wisdom and will of the Creator, and thereby comes closer to Him and cleaves to Him.

And that is why I brought the analogy of discourse between people: the more we delve and try to understand what the other person says or writes, the greater our understanding between us.

With blessings,
Shatz Lewinger (= Datzach the speaker)

Dear Datzach, as our host in his pleasant inn likes to say: your claim operates on the psychological plane (as you wrote: “when one approaches the Torah with the internalization…”), not on the philosophical-value plane.
There is nothing here to “internalize”; this is a rational philosophical discussion (or at least we are trying for it) about basic facts known to all and apparently accepted by all of us.
The main question (and perhaps the only one) that I raise in this context concerns the logical structure of the Torah-from-Heaven model.
In that sense your last claim does not seem relevant to me.

Beyond that, the problem with the Torah is not that it is a dead letter, but precisely the opposite. The Torah is a “Torah of life.” That is the secret of its great power, a power that in my claim spills beyond its proper bounds.

Doron,
This is an old Hasidic claim. “What is the difference between a Hasid and a Mitnaged? The Hasid fears God, the Mitnaged fears the Shulchan Arukh,” and similar lines. I don’t know how much that reflects reality.
From my point of view, God cannot cross the boundary between Himself and the world without destroying the world, and therefore all that remains is to make do with His signs or representations—the Torah and Israel. Without them, the connection to the Master of the Universe is severed and the world slides into idolatry.

Y.D., in my opinion your last response misses the point.

Indeed, we both probably agree that “God cannot cross the boundary between Himself and the world without destroying the world, and therefore all that remains is to make do with His signs or representations.”

We also both agree that therefore He needs a mediating channel.

But my claim concerned the a priori conditions required of that channel.
The channel chosen according to Judaism (the Torah) is a great channel. The problem with it is that it is too “strong” vis-à-vis God (in philosophical language: it is not contingent upon God).
Therefore, even if it somehow still does stand in the conditions (apparently it does), one can still conceive of more successful channels—namely, channels whose acceptance can be philosophically defended better.

By the way, if you follow what Michi writes in his various publications (and also in Bächler), you see that he emphasizes again and again the solution of direct intellectual contemplation of the “essences” beyond the empirical world.
This position—which I fully accept—fits very well with what I said above: although a limited creature such as man can never completely give up mediating means (for example language, the senses, etc.), it does not follow that man is wholly imprisoned within those means. He has a very successful way of transcending them.
In my opinion, the Torah-from-Heaven model contains the opposite (and mistaken) thesis: once the Torah has been given (and perhaps even before that), man can no longer carry out this transcendence.

Doron, do you really think that by “contemplation of essences” (= intuition) one can know the will of God? Maybe morality, yes—but suppose God wants to command the laying of square black tefillin in such-and-such a way, etc. That can’t be known without the Torah even if you contemplate ideas all day.
In fact, without the Torah we wouldn’t even know that God commands anything at all.

With God’s help, eve of the holy Sabbath, “so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands,” 5778

Contemplation of the essence of man, as a creature who on the one hand possesses reason, basic intuition, and the capacity to develop it and to “understand one thing from another.” And on the other hand, he is limited in his capacity for knowledge and understanding, and sees only a small part of the infinite “puzzle.”

So there is no shame, after we have activated our human capacity for thought, in making use of the guidance of the Creator of the world, who alone knows the depth of the “system” He created and He alone knows where exactly it is meant to lead.

Making use of the divine wisdom and will embodied in the Torah our Creator gave us does not exempt us from the need to use our own thinking. On the contrary, we are commanded to study the Torah with our reason in order to understand deeply its aims and ways. And from understanding the logic of the Torah that was given to us, we can “understand one thing from another” and infer what God’s will is regarding new questions for which there is no explicit reference in the Torah that was handed down to us.

The Torah lays the foundations for us, and we use our thinking to develop them.

Sabbath peace,
Shatz Lewinger

D’, you’re right. It’s impossible by means of intuition to know the will of God in the details (what kind of tefillin He wants, etc.).
How is that connected to our discussion? I wasn’t talking about the details at all.

Shatz, same thing… how do your points (which all seem true to me) connect to our specific discussion?
The starting point for our philosophical discussion is not the Torah or the Son of God or Shiva or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The starting point lies in clarifying the a priori conditions for the existence of a mediating channel between us and God. We are trying to formulate for ourselves what could serve as a rational explanatory model for revelation.

In effect, we are preparing for ourselves a kind of set of tools.
Only after the tools are prepared do we come to examine with their help specific models that have appeared in history (Judaism, Christianity, Spinoza’s model, etc.), and then decide about them whether they are plausible or not.

Apparently I didn’t understand what you said. In your previous response you wrote that the Torah prevents us from transcending the mediating means and using contemplation of ideas (essences).
To that I said that even if this is true (in my opinion it isn’t), it doesn’t matter, because the Torah contains far more commandments and details of information than contemplation of essences would give us.

I didn’t understand why, in your opinion, the Torah is a medium that a priori is not good for use.

In addition, Doron, if we return to the original discussion, I think you really did not solve the dichotomy.
Your first answer referred to a broad dialectical process meant to replace a narrow one-dimensional process. But even so, you still didn’t solve the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, at first chose the narrow process and not the sophisticated broader one right away. If He did so, then as Rabbi Michi said, He simply messed up. This is not a very different claim from the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose people X and had to regret His choice and choose group Y; because it is essentially claiming that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose process X and had to regret His choice and choose process Y.
As for your second answer, I don’t see how you solved the problem of arbitrariness in it. If the justification for the choice, so that it not be arbitrary—Heaven forbid—is a metaphysical quality that the chooser himself grants, then that quality derives from the reason the chooser granted it to the chosen one. If you don’t have a good reason why the quality was given to us and not to the Indians or the French or the Uruguayans, then once again you’ve fallen into the trap of arbitrary choice. This is only one logical step away from arbitrary decision—especially if the metaphysical quality was later “taken away,” as you put it, from the one to whom it was initially granted.

As for your discussion, I’m left only wondering what sort of mediation you’re looking for, and indeed it may be that the Torah does not provide it. It isn’t clear to me how you expect it to work and what its goals are.

Yayin, Doron already wrote (not here) that in his opinion the medium that Christianity offers (Jesus, the Son of God) is a better one “a priori” (I have no idea what he means) than the Torah.

Doron,
Even Paul himself apparently understood the problem in your model, which seems to lean toward something akin to idolatry in all messianic sects like Breslov, Chabad, Christianity, and the like, and this is what he writes:

“The first is the Messiah; afterward, at his coming, those who belong to the Messiah. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has abolished every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet… For God has put all things under his feet. But when he says that all things are put under him, it is clear that this does not include the One who put all things under him. And when all things are put under him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the One who put all things under him, so that God may be all in all.” (Romans 15)

“Everything in everything” in the original also means: God will be everything for everyone (as opposed to a partnership of God plus His Honor the Rebbe, note this well).

Copenhagen, I didn’t understand your point. What in the quotation you brought do you think poses a difficulty for my claim?

Yayin, I set myself two questions: the first is why God chose a “narrow process” and did not realize the whole process from the start all the way to its end (that is, why He did not choose from the outset the quality group He wanted)?
My answer: the difficulty you point to is indeed a real one, but it is only a particular case of a much larger question that we have not been discussing.
The larger question is roughly this: why did God need the headache of creating the world in the first place? Why didn’t He remain content with His own self-perfection (like the Aristotelian god)?
Do you want us to deal with that question? I don’t know whether I myself have good answers to it, but in Judaism there are certainly attempts to deal with it (for example the Kookian discussion of perfection and perfecting).
In any case, if you accept the answer that God’s perfection would be greater specifically with the creation of the world and of time (history), then you also accept that the world develops and progresses toward a kind of “happy end.” Presumably, in this development different forces rise and fall upon the stage of history.
If so, it is only logical that in God’s own eyes one “quality group” (a treasured people) would replace another “quality group.”
Your second question is about the arbitrariness in the choice of that quality group.
But here I think you are again drifting away from our discussion: our discussion was not about the question of which people was granted the quality (for the sake of the discussion we already agreed that it was the Jewish people). Nor was our discussion about the question you are now raising, namely: what is the reason God decided to equip a certain people with such a quality?
Rather, the discussion was about only one question: does the model of Torah from Heaven require that the chosen people possess such a quality granted to it by God? I argued yes; you and Michi (and perhaps others) argued no.

D, I return to what I said about the a priori conditions that a medium must meet (so that we can choose it rationally):
Such a medium must be contingent upon the God who created it (secondary to the primary).
The central medium (channel) available to man in order to attain metaphysical “knowledge” is intellectual contemplation (intuition). It is true that in principle a direct revelation to man could occur and would be preferable to intellectual contemplation—but then the requirement is that it actually happen to us, directly. Since that still hasn’t happened (at least not to me), we are left only with intellectual contemplation.

The Torah-from-Heaven model offers us a priori another central medium—the language or the text. In that respect this model aspires to inherit the place of intellectual contemplation. I argued that this is philosophically impossible.

As an example of a more successful model (philosophically), think of the medium Christianity proposed (“the form of a man”—the Son of God).
The human figure is a symbol (= medium) such that direct contemplation of it (thinking about it, believing in it, etc.) makes it easier for us to perform the leap of faith that bridges between us and the infinite God above us. And Jesus, according to this model, stands exactly “halfway” between heaven and earth. Unlike the text in the Jewish version, which was supposed to bridge between us and God but in practice actually interposes between the two, the “Son of God” is determined in advance (a priori) as contingent upon God—just like a child in reality is contingent upon his father.

By the way, the centrality of Jesus’ death in Christian theology also strengthens this direction. Jesus is a medium created from the outset in order to bridge between man and God and then disappears (dies) for the sake of that connection between the two sides. In other words: a medium that was careful from the outset not to become a barrier that would stand between God and man.

With God’s help, 16 Elul 5778

The choice of the people of Israel did not bring it extra rights but extra obligations. While all humanity is required only to have faith and basic morality, the seven Noahide commandments—not to worship idols, not to murder, steal, or commit adultery, and to preserve the order of the world.

From the people of Israel much more is demanded. Not only to be “decent,” but to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” to live with a constant sense of connection with God. A Jew encounters his God at every step in life, accompanied by the detailed guidance of his God. Constantly standing “before the face of the Lord” creates a person whose aspiration is not only to be “decent,” but to be “one who loves God and loves people.”

We were chosen as the continuers of Abraham, whose destiny was to establish a nation in which there would be fulfilled: “and through you and your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,” a nation that would sanctify its life through cleaving to God and His good ways, serve as an example to the other nations, and bring them close to the values of the Torah. The best among the nations would join as an inseparable part of the people of Israel, and the rest of humanity would truly adopt the foundational values of the seven Noahide commandments.

This process began about 1,500 years ago, when a considerable part of the cultured world partially accepted some of the Torah’s values, such as monotheism and the Sabbath and the vision of world unity of Israel’s prophets. But instead of being grateful to Judaism, which brought them the message, the students denied their teachers, persecuted them, humiliated them, and filled the world with wars and cruelty. Christianity was worst in this regard: in the name of monotheism it began worshipping an idol, and in the name of “love and grace” it abounded in persecutions and cruelty, until it made religion repulsive to the world. Now Islam too has distorted its way and abounds in violence and terror.

The ray of hope in this process is that little by little people from the nations of the world are discovering that instead of adopting corrupt imitations, it is better to connect to original Judaism and learn from it to observe the seven Noahide commandments, without the distortions of the imitations.

With blessings,
Shatz Lewinger

Doron, I see that in your understanding I deviated from the discussion. Let me explain why, in my humble opinion, I did not.

A. The question is not why God is not directly interested in the result of the process (as you seemed to understand from my words—that is indeed a very big question and I too have neither the desire nor the ability to discuss it), but why He chose a group that in the end does not advance the process, and only afterward chose one that does advance it, if He already knew from the start the abilities of the first group.

B. As for the discussion concerning the granting of the quality: the “new” discussion is closely related to the “old” one, because in the “old” discussion you based your claim on the idea that common sense does not permit an arbitrary choice of some people, but rather compels a reason for choosing specifically it. To that I remarked that you are in effect claiming that God chose a people with a special quality, and thus apparently did not choose arbitrarily; but since He Himself granted the quality, the choice is in fact arbitrary. True, the discussions are not identical, but your claim, which is based on denying arbitrary choice, is connected to the second discussion.
Unless what you have claimed until now is that the arbitrarily chosen people needed tools in order to stand up to the mission, and therefore God granted them those tools. But I do not see how you ground this claim in any logical tool: if the choice is indeed arbitrary (and that is what you assume, since you think God granted the quality in an apparently arbitrary way!), why assume the chosen group received tools more than another group?
One claim is to say that it must be that the chosen group has tools to fulfill the mission relative to other groups, otherwise it would not have been chosen. That indeed is not a bad claim. But if from the start one assumes an arbitrary choice, why assume the chosen group is more qualified for the mission than another group? It is very plausible that it is in fact worthy of the mission exactly like everyone else, but was chosen for a reason unrelated to talent or special quality (and that is what your faithful servant thinks)!
Therefore, your claim is valid, but I did not mean that the discussions are identical, only that they have implications for one another.

Doron, I understood your argument about the medium, but I still don’t understand why you decided it is philosophically impossible to use a text. It seems you are just limiting God for no reason. He wants to give us a text with instructions. What is philosophically impossible about that?

With God’s help, 18 Elul 5778

To “Yayin”—greetings,

The second chosen team Doron proposes is Christianity. The “advancement” he proposes is replacing the Torah with a “symbol” representing God—in plain words: an idol. But Christianity distorted paganism far more than the “original.” When ancient paganism chose as a “symbol” of God figures through which abundance and blessing reach the world, such as the sun or the rain (“Baal”) or the tree (“Asherah”), Christianity chose to worship horror—to reach a “religious experience” through contemplating the figure of a man tortured to death.

Christian worship of sadomasochism came against the background of Roman culture, where the masses had to be supplied with “bread and circuses” of public crucifixions and gladiatorial combats, where the sight of a murdered and torn-apart person entertained the crowd. When the barbarian tribes—the Teutons, Huns, and Vandals—also joined the “celebration,” the worship of cruelty found an excellent background, and the “religion of love and grace” supplied its public with an abundance of sadistic pleasures—Crusades, pogroms, and auto-da-fé pyres, in which the audience delighted and swooned with pleasure. For such mad perversion should the Holy One, blessed be He, replace His Torah and His people?

“The first chosen team,” the people of Israel, proved itself very well. It took us about a thousand years to finally free ourselves from idolatry, and then we began to realize our destiny of influencing the world with faith and values. The fact that throughout the world there were scattered communities who worshipped an abstract God, who lived an intense spiritual life and maintained a society of solidarity and mutual aid by virtue of the Torah, the community, and the Sabbath—this charmed their surroundings and brought about a movement of people drawing close to Judaism at various levels, to the point that Roman historians testify that there was no house in Rome without a Jew in it, in the sense of someone “drawing close to Judaism.”

Christianity came on the background of Judaism’s success, and succeeded by offering a “cheap substitute”: you are not obligated in any commandment, you can even turn the God of Israel into an idol. Mere words, with no substance, about “love and grace,” and you can pat yourself on the back and declare yourself the “true chosen people.” They nailed God with nails, and then did whatever they wanted in His name.

Another thousand years passed until the world tired of the cheap imitation. Meanwhile the “first chosen team,” which seemed to be dying, began to awaken. First it began to free itself from physical subjugation and from the curse of the “eternal wanderer” that Christianity had stuck on it. Then it is increasingly freeing itself from its inferiority complex toward the gentile world. It will take from modernity what is good and beautiful: the aspiration to think and understand, and the freedom to think. Out of intellectual independence it will discover the great treasure that prophets, righteous men, and sages stored away for it. It will develop that treasure, and from it will be saturated with knowledge, and it will teach the whole world how to draw close to the Creator and truly walk in His ways.

With blessings,
Shatz Lewinger

Paragraph 4, line 1:
… and succeeded by offering a “substitute”…

Paragraph 5, line 6:
… and it will teach the whole world…

Doron,
It seems to me that Abraham chose the Holy One, blessed be He, no less than the Master of the Universe chose Abraham. And the important parameter was future-oriented, not some quality in the present or something in the past. Like a Haredi couple on a date who are not interested in the past but in what they will do in the future. So too Abraham and the Master of the Universe were not interested in some quality or something like that. Their main concern was the future. And if you ask what they found in one another, the verse says so explicitly. Abraham found in the Master of the Universe the Judge of all the earth. And the Master of the Universe found in Abraham an elder sitting in the academy who would command his children to do righteousness and justice. Even today there are children of our forefather Abraham among the nations of the world who find their way toward Judaism and convert, and on the other hand, sadly, there are Jews who despite their connection to the Master of the Universe estrange themselves from the path of our forefather Abraham and choose to assimilate among the gentiles. There is nothing mystical here or some spiritual quality granted to one and later transferred to another. What there is is a mutual understanding of the matter on the basis of which one can speak about the future—creating a people that will be a light to the nations, what will happen in exile, whether this people will have a place under the sun, and so on.

Christianity, as Shatz noted, cannot see itself as the continuation of our forefather Abraham because it has no law and justice. The religion of grace gave up law, and therefore it is not a continuation of our forefather Abraham.

Secular people often complain about the religious and the Haredim—how can they get married without living together and checking their compatibility (including sex) before the wedding? Their mistake is that they focus on the past (sexual experience) and the present (the life of a couple without children and obligations) instead of on the future of building a home. At the moment of truth, when one has to commit, bring children into the world, and remain attached to the relationship, it turns out that the Haredi marriage is far stronger than the secular one. The religious are similar to the Haredim, except that as a result of internalizing the idea of autonomy socially, the couple has to establish itself as a couple and this is not done by the parents (and here one can draw a spectrum from extreme Haredim, where only the parents arrange the match and the husband sees his wife five minutes before the tena’im ceremony, through Lithuanians in the middle, to Religious Zionists where the couple forms the relationship).

Yayin (successful name, it suits you),

A. As I argued earlier, there is a possible philosophical interpretation according to which the first chosen group (the people of Israel) does indeed “advance” the cosmic and historical process that God wants to bring about. According to this interpretation (which even has a solid basis in certain Christian theologies, though my discussion is not about them), the Jewish people will remain relevant to history forever and ever—even today. But as I already explained, its role must be interpreted somewhat more dialectically than authentic Jewish tradition would permit itself to do.

B. If you want to say that God’s decisions are “arbitrary” for us because we do not really understand Him, then you are right. According to that, from our point of view (only), God’s choice to grant a certain metaphysical quality to the people of Israel is indeed “arbitrary.” Still, the subject of the discussion from the outset was not that, but the question whether there is in the people of Israel—according to the Torah-from-Heaven model alone—such a quality or not. I argue that the model logically implies that there is.
To this I of course add what I said before: there is also a historical and psychological element of human choice. This is a parallel element to the metaphysical one and does not come in its place.

I admit that the prolonging of this discussion is exhausting me, so I’ll only hint in reply, so that silence not be taken for agreement, and I’m leaving it (the host, Samuel, Copenhagen, and the guy with the long name haven’t been here in a while, and only Shatz, I, Y.D., and D are still dealing with it).

A. The question is why not begin with a process in which the people of Israel takes the part it takes now, if even today its metaphysical quality is still being used, rather than creating the mistaken picture that it was destined for the mission and then transferring its quality to another group?

B. You argue that the model implies the quality because the choice is not arbitrary, so it is very important whether the granting of the quality is arbitrary or not! You paint a picture of deviation from the discussion, when in fact there is merely a connection between different discussions, as I have already grown weary of explaining above.

And thanks for the compliment about the name… the idea is very similar to Shatz—it’s simply the initials of my full name.

With God’s help, 19 Elul 5778

Indeed, Christian theology assigned an important role to the Jews, who were rejected by the Holy One, blessed be He.

Augustine, one of the “Church Fathers,” determined that the role of the Jews is to suffer and be humiliated, so that by their misery and suffering they would serve as a “control group” proving the truth of the “religion of love and grace.”

At the entrances to cathedrals in the Middle Ages stood statues of two women. One was miserable, bent over, and blindfolded—the defeated “Synagoga”; beside her stood the “Ecclesia,” the victorious Church, proud and upright.

Therefore the revival of the people of Israel in its land poses a severe theological problem for Christians who assigned the Jews eternal wandering and suffering. So when Herzl approached the Pope asking him to help the people of Israel establish a national home in the Land of Israel, the Pope refused to help, and said to Herzl: even if you succeed in establishing a state, we will flood it with missionaries who will convert the Jews returning to their land.

Blessed be God, who did not make us prey to their teeth!

With blessings,
The Jew returning to Zion with joy

Y.D., I have already agreed several times that this is not only a matter of God’s metaphysical choice of man, but at the same time also a moral mission that he must choose again and again. It comes from both directions, and from that perspective there is no problematic issue here (not even for Jewish tradition, which believes both in God and His providence and in man’s freedom of choice).

I agree with your claim that Christianity has no law and justice (or at least has far too little of it). That is already one of its problems, but it is less connected to our discussion. Our discussion focuses first and foremost on the logical and ontological basic conditions of a theology that is acceptable to reason (philosophical reason).

Doron, the only problem with your “theology acceptable to reason” is that you haven’t explained even in one word one reason why the Torah cannot be a good medium for communication with God.

This is what you wrote earlier:
“D, I return to what I said about the a priori conditions that a medium must meet (so that we can choose it rationally):
Such a medium must be contingent upon the God who created it (secondary to the primary).
The central medium (channel) available to man in order to attain ‘metaphysical’ knowledge is intellectual contemplation (intuition). It is true that in principle a direct revelation to man could occur and would be preferable to intellectual contemplation, but then the requirement is that it occur to us actually, directly. Since that has not yet happened (at least not to me), we are left only with intellectual contemplation.
The Torah-from-Heaven model offers us a priori another central medium—the language or the text. In that respect this model aspires to inherit the place of intellectual contemplation. I argued that this is philosophically impossible.

As an example of a more successful model (philosophically), think of the medium that Christianity proposed (‘the form of a man’—the Son of God).
The human figure is a symbol (= medium) such that direct contemplation of it (thinking about it, believing in it, etc.) makes it easier for us to perform the leap of faith that bridges between us and the infinite God above us. Unlike the text in the Jewish version, which was supposed to bridge between us and God but in practice actually interposes between the two, the ‘Son of God’ is determined in advance (a priori) as contingent upon God—just as a child in reality is contingent upon his father.”

That’s it.
Other than praising Christianity, the only thing you said was (in my words) that in your opinion the Torah blocks us from God and forces us to worship it rather than Him, and therefore it doesn’t meet the “philosophical requirements” (which of course you set for God. Nice of you). But that’s just wordplay. The Torah commands us to worship God, and Jesus probably does too. The only difference is that the Torah forces us to worship God only through it and commands us to continue listening to it and not to believe false prophets (to prophets who really do come from God, the Torah actually commands us to listen and even permits them to suspend commandments from the Torah, at least temporarily—I think you ignore that).
I don’t see any problem with that. God is not supposed to change His mind every second, and if He gave us a text with His commandments there is no philosophical problem with that. You describe God as a weak-willed being who wants to give a Torah but then regrets it because the Torah will take over from Him and everyone will stop listening to Him when He suddenly changes His mind and no longer likes the Torah, so it’s much better for Him to send His “son” to impose order.

He may be praising Christianity, but one should remember that Christianity is not a religion of actual revelation, but a far-fetched construction built by politicians together with a few bishops who thought they were in a position to determine for God whom He chooses or whether commandments can be canceled. To believe that it has any connection to the Giver of the Torah is no less absurd than believing that Jesus, who instructed people to be meticulous even in rabbinic commandments (Matthew 23:23), would have accepted the invention that the Sabbath moved to Sunday, or that Paul—who would certainly have torn his garments had he heard of the Trinity or of Jesus’ deification, just as he did in Acts 14:14—was basically a Chabad Hasid.

D, I think you went a bit too far when you claimed I did not give reasons for my arguments.
You can claim that I sometimes write unclearly (I’m the first to admit that), or that my reasons are lacking (but then you have to show why). But from there to your claim? I don’t know…

Another attempt at giving reasons:
I propose a loose analogy between the move of the Torah and Wittgenstein’s position in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. For Wittgenstein there is an a priori assumption: language is the be-all and end-all, and therefore we have no way to break through it and supposedly reach an abstract metaphysical world beyond it (it is doubtful whether, on his view, we can even reach empirical atomic facts through language). For him we are “imprisoned in language” and there is no room for the idea of representation (“timun,” in his terminology). In Bächler’s language: what exists is only what is actual for man (language itself), not what it supposedly represents.
Wittgenstein’s conclusion from this assumption is logical and necessary—philosophy (and metaphysics) has no meaning. Therefore it also follows that his own claims themselves are devoid of meaning.
That is the (justified) criticism of Wittgenstein.

The Torah-from-Heaven model shares with that position one central principle: language is a “holy” medium, since it is a medium shared by God and man.
Therefore, from the Torah’s point of view, one cannot break through its own text. And according to the Torah’s view, we have no channels of cognition “higher” than it. Therefore even if it acknowledges the existence of intellectual or mystical intuitions, they are all subordinate to the actual text that appears in it itself—subordinate to the words written, all of them in square Assyrian script (in the Five Books).

Note that I am not saying that metaphysical truths cannot be inferred from the Torah. They certainly can. What I am saying is that if we do so, it is only because we are ignoring the basic structure of the Torah’s model. In other words: the Torah may be trying to come out against metaphysics (in effect against God), but it does not succeed in doing so.

Yayin, it seems to me we are going back to treading in our own footprints.

Shatz, I again find myself agreeing with a large part of your observations and again claiming that they are not all that relevant to our discussion. You are dealing with psychology, anthropology, etc., not philosophy. For example, your claim that Christianity offered a “cheap substitute” for Judaism. What difference does it make whether it is cheap or expensive? Our question is whether it is rational.
By the way, my name is Doron, not “Doron.” Like “Lewinger” (just without the quotation marks).

Copenhagen, I’m not really dealing with historical Christianity, that is, with its textual, ritual, and other manifestations, but with the abstract model I am trying to extract from it. That is the nature of a philosophical discussion.
My main claim is that Christianity provides us with a “cleaner” model philosophically. As a believing person myself, I see no small importance in that.
The historical corruption of religions (Judaism, Christianity, etc.) is indeed an interesting phenomenon, but it is relevant only to the margins of our discussion.

Returning Jew,
The return of the people of Israel to its land is indeed a theological problem for part of the Christian world. For others within that world it is exactly the opposite—a proof of the truth of Christianity.
That is why I propose a principled philosophical discussion and less listening to “official” theologies (of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, etc.).
By the way, Christianity’s phenomenal success is also a theological problem for Judaism. A thinking person should ask himself why God allowed such a false religion as Christianity—a religion that believes in the foundations of Judaism itself (= Torah from Heaven)—to flourish and prosper so greatly. Why did God want specifically the “bad guys” to take the lead in history?

I have no unequivocal answer (or multi-vocal answer) to this question, but it is certainly interesting…

This will probably be my last response because I’ve had enough.
(Warning: this will probably be a long, condescending speech.)
You do indeed give reasons for your arguments, but I feel that at the base of things there always stand puzzling assumptions. I’ll demonstrate using your last comment:

“The Torah-from-Heaven model shares with that position one central principle: language is a ‘holy’ medium, since it is a medium shared by God and man.
Therefore, from the Torah’s point of view, one cannot break through its own text. And according to the Torah’s view, we have no channels of cognition ‘higher’ than it. Therefore even if it acknowledges the existence of intellectual or mystical intuitions, they are all subordinate to the actual text that appears in it itself—subordinate to the words written, all of them in square Assyrian script (in the Five Books).”

You inferred from the fact that the medium between God and man is textual that from the Torah’s point of view one cannot break through its own text. I didn’t understand how that follows from the above fact, but never mind, because I accept the conclusion (that according to the Torah’s view one cannot dispute it / cancel it—if that’s what you meant).
And then comes a completely dogmatic assumption: “And according to the Torah’s view, we have no channels of cognition higher than it.” From where is this “Torah view” known to you? (By the way, I already wrote that this is not true, and that the Torah does command us to listen to prophets and even temporarily suspend commandments from the Torah.)

“Therefore even if it acknowledges intuitions, etc.” I agree. The Torah does indeed place itself above our intuitions. But that absolutely does not entail the conclusions you brought in your next paragraph:

“Note that I am not saying that metaphysical truths cannot be inferred from the Torah. They certainly can. What I am saying is that if we do so, it is only because we are ignoring the basic structure of the Torah’s model. In other words: the Torah may be trying to come out against metaphysics (in effect against God), but it does not succeed in doing so.”

Earlier you wrote that the Torah places itself above our intuitions, and I agree with that completely. In this paragraph you presented a far more extreme view, according to which the Torah opposes every kind of metaphysics, and any use of intuition negates the Torah’s basic model. These are (forgive me) nonsense. They may somehow rest loosely on your assumption in the previous paragraph (“according to the Torah’s view we have no higher channels of cognition”), but I already pointed out that this assumption is not reasoned at all and is not even correct.

To sum up: your words do not contain reasoned arguments but sketches of arguments. All that remains for you is to justify the assumptions and show exactly how they entail the conclusions.

Doron,
“Our discussion focuses first and foremost on the logical and ontological basic conditions of a theology acceptable to reason (philosophical reason).” I’ll settle for a leaner discussion.

Jesus is faith for the weak. People who are incapable of accepting commandments look for substitutes. And the whole claim about a leap of faith is ridiculous. If there is fear of God, there is also faith in God, and there is no need for any leap of faith.

If you want to know Judaism’s attitude to Christianity and Islam, read the Kuzari, the Laws of Kings in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, and Nachmanides’ Disputation (which he won and was awarded a thousand ducats). Judaism is not especially impressed by Christianity’s success, especially since today secularization is killing Christianity and exposing the falsehood within it.

Regarding the “quality” of our forefather Abraham, I look at things empirically. People who embrace justice and righteousness connect to Judaism, and those who don’t, don’t. Here is a link to a blog I found that offers some perspective on the matter:

בני נח ועם ישראל