חדש באתר: NotebookLM עם כל תכני הרב מיכאל אברהם. דומה למיכי בוט.

Certainty of attack

שו"תCertainty of attack
שאל לפני 7 שנים

Peace and blessings.
For a long time (about three years) I have been trying to understand and present to myself and others some kind of barrier that puts my life in constant turmoil.
I hope that in the following lines I will be able to lay out my thoughts as clearly as possible. And perhaps this is the place to apologize for the slightly convoluted style of things. It takes great genius and talent to recognize the form of the content stored within the recesses of the soul in a conscious and conscious manner and from there translate it into words and sentences. A talent that I apparently lack, so I apologize.
Well-
I don't understand where my rabbis derive this certainty in the righteousness of our ways (in general and their ways in particular)?
More than once I have attended a lesson given to us in a yeshiva in which content was spoken that truly uplifted the soul, instilled in my heart certainty in our faith and sowed in it a joy that comes from the resolution of doubts, but at the same time that these pleasant feelings were emerging from within me and for just a brief moment I was able to savor the general feeling of stability that was afflicting my soul, I saw in my imagination a gathering of extreme left-wing organizations (as an example) from which its members and supporters derive the greatest comfort and identification, a flourishing sense of certainty and a strengthening of the attitude existing in their souls towards those who disagree with them while the reservoirs of eagerness and determination to realize their vision of the end of days become overflowing.
If the truth is one, then how come there are disagreements in the world? Why does everyone recognize a different truth?
And so it is, from where do we derive our certainty in the righteousness of our ways? By what right do we judge everyone to be a liar and our attitude towards them to be critical and demanding?
And if we prove to ourselves with reason – and indeed our reason, as much as any human mind, operates from the fabric of our entire life – then it is certain that it will be said of our method (and of others of their method) that it is the correct one.
What value is there in this feeling of certainty in our hearts if we, like everyone else, say that the truth is embraced in our arms?
This criticism, of course, is not directed only at us, but at anyone who stands up and speaks out on any subject or matter.
What bothers me is the real fact that it is very likely that if I had been born into a family living several hundred kilometers from my area, whose people are currently rioting on the fence and harming my country, my entire structure of thinking about the world and its details would have been completely different, and that everything I say about it today, which is true, I would have condemned and condemned, and certainly destroyed.
When I hear my elders speak and try to mold my soul to look at the world in a certain way, I am trapped inside and unable to receive Torah and love of Israel from them because I tell myself that it is clear that this is how he thinks, since he was raised to speak and think in this way.
If everything is subjective, the postmodern thinkers are right, who believe that everything is legitimate, and that anyone who tries to demand the truth in our lives, if they are honest enough and sharp enough, simply won't be able to say a word. Or think any thoughts at all.
Certainly, one cannot lead a life like this, and indeed it seems that today's culture is no longer interested in truth and absolutes, but rather that everyone should do whatever is right in their own eyes.
But from my current state of mind – I am filled with silence. I really cannot utter a word. I really cannot know what is true and what is fiction. And just because I cannot live like this does not mean that it is not true. (I am aware of the internal contradiction that screams from these words – if I say that the truth is that I cannot find out what the truth is, I have thereby contradicted the beginning of my words. And from here the loop will continue ad infinitum).
As I'm sure you can tell from the tone of things here – I'm very confused and troubled. In fact, the truth is that I'm not alive. I'm standing still and slowly sinking. Please help me understand. Thank you very much.
 


לגלות עוד מהאתר הרב מיכאל אברהם

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

תגיות השאלה:

השאר תגובה

0 Answers
מיכי צוות ענה לפני 7 שנים
Hello Yehuda. I think I understood the problem well, and I have dedicated several books to it. Mainly 'The Two Carts' and 'Truth and Unstable' (you should read the introduction to the second – which touches on this very point). In short, I will tell you this: Indeed, the feeling of certainty has no basis, and anyone who speaks of certainty is deceiving either you or perhaps even himself. A person is a person and as such he can always make mistakes. On the other hand, the postmodern mistake is to jump from here to the conclusion that there is no truth and that everything is relative (narratives, etc.). They mistakenly identify truth with certainty, which it is not. Indeed, there is no certainty, but that does not mean that there is no truth. There is truth, and I have the tools to try and get closer to it and even reach it, although I can never be certain that I am right. As far as I'm concerned, it's precisely those who are aware of the difficulties you described who can get closer to the truth, because they examine their positions and don't automatically follow the group and personal enthusiasms you described. They consider other positions and try to understand what is at their core and whether it is relevant to them. And in the end, they formulate their own position while trying to understand which of their considerations are subjective and which have real validity. And of course, after all, they understand that there is no certainty and don't expect certainty. No Torah was given to the ministering angels. By the way, for this reason I also assume that God is supposed to treat people from different religions and groups and views this way, because He too understands that we have no way to arrive at the truth with certainty and people come to conclusions according to their understanding. Anyone who truly thinks what they think, even if they are wrong, is a slave. As for the question of the influence of education and habitat on our views, it has been discussed here several times before. Here is an example I found now (and there are several other places): https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%A7%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8-%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%AA-%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%91%E2%80%8E

לגלות עוד מהאתר הרב מיכאל אברהם

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

השאר תגובה

Back to top button