Q&A: The Relationship with the Holy One, Blessed be He, and Judaism
The Relationship with the Holy One, Blessed be He, and Judaism
Question
With God's help,
Hello Rabbi Michi,
A question I was thinking about in anticipation of the giving of the Torah:
Reuven is a Torah- and commandment-observant Jew, careful with every detail, major and minor alike, at age 45.
He asks himself: "If I were to discover that I was a non-Jew (let's say I had been adopted from another country, and they never told me until today), would I choose to convert?"
The questions are:
A) If he answers himself "no," or even if he hesitates and let us say in the end he says yes, does the very fact that he answers himself "no," or even hesitates, mean that there is some flaw in his current relationship (whatever it may be) with the Holy One, Blessed be He, or with Judaism?
What is this comparable to? To a married couple living in peace and friendship, and then after 20 years of marriage it turns out there was a problem with their betrothal and they were never really married. So the wife says to her husband, "Then let's go tomorrow to the person who officiates weddings and get married," and her husband answers, "Wait, not so fast. Let's think about it. Maybe each of us should go our separate way…?" Even if her husband thought about it and in the end decided yes, I think the wife would be very, very deeply hurt by the very hesitation, and it would cast a blemish over the whole relationship.
Maybe according to the Rabbi's approach, which advocates a thin Judaism, there is only Jewish law, and then there isn't all that much difference between a Jew and a non-Jew besides the number of commandments binding on someone who believes, so it is only a quantitative matter. If so, it could be compared to an employee in a company who thought he had 100 tasks to do, and after a few years discovered that he really only had 7 tasks to do. In that case, there is no problem at all if he stops doing the 93 unnecessary tasks and does only the 7, and no one—not the CEO and not the deputy CEO—would be offended by it.
B) What is the correct analogy? Or if the Rabbi has a different analogy?
Thank you very much,
Blessings and success.
Answer
I don't know how to answer questions like these. If there is a flaw or not, decide for yourself, or ask the Holy One, Blessed be He. It seems to me that I was once asked what I would do if I had been born a non-Jew or if it turned out to me that I am a non-Jew. I don't know.
Discussion on Answer
If it turns out that I'm a non-Jew, then I won't be a great man anymore, so everything is fine.
Hello. Thank you very much. And regarding the analogies I gave—how should we analogize a Jew's relationship with his Judaism or with the Holy One, Blessed be He? Based on that, we'll know how to answer, no?
I don't see any point in getting into those analogies. Once you decide what your relationship is, you can also determine your attitude toward the analogies.
I didn't completely understand the answer,
For the Rabbi, the existence of the Holy One, Blessed be He, is a factual claim, and one arrives at it philosophically, and I also understood that the Rabbi takes the revelation at Mount Sinai as a fact, as something given, and approaches these issues as objectively as possible. But when it comes to the relationship, I decide what it is? Has that now become subjective? Where in the world is there a real bond or essential relationship whose character I decide? I do not decide the character and essence of my relationship with my wife, and certainly I would not ask her whether my hesitation about whether to marry her again would cast a blemish on it, because she would be hurt by the very question, and that itself would create the blemish, because the character and essence of that relationship are given. And every relationship is given unless it is a relationship whose character and essence were agreed upon by both sides from the outset. Since I personally never agreed to anything with the Holy One, Blessed be He—at least not consciously—perhaps our forefathers did at Mount Sinai, but still that wasn't me, it follows that the character and essence of this relationship is something given. Therefore, in my humble opinion (unless I'm missing something here), the question stands: what is the relationship with the Holy One, Blessed be He, and Judaism? Personally, it's easier for me to use an analogy, and that is why I asked the Rabbi for his opinion: which analogy seems correct to the Rabbi? Or if there is another analogy, or even just a different simple explanation. Thank you, and sorry for rambling.
I've seen it and I'm done with it.
Thank you very much. More power to you.
And is it not fitting for a great man like you to formulate a position on what he would do if it were discovered in some remote archive that his mother's mother had been adopted from a Christian family?