How fortuitous it is that I can use last week’s lengthy disagreement with Yoreh K’chetz as a springboard for this week’s Dvar Torah.
Last week, Yoreh K’chetz (henceforth abbreviated YK) accused me of possessing a “mind [that] is too limited to understand what they [Chazal] are trying to say” and “need[ing] to go back to school if [I] actually believe Chazal make silly or ridiculous statements.” He then dismissed my objective here at FrumSatire, wondering “what [I am] doing writing so called Dvar Torahs on this blog.”
I responded to everything YK said, but he refused to budge from his position — and he is likely upset that I do not budge from mine. After discussing these events with a rabbinical adviser of mine, I have come to the following conclusion: I was wrong to think that I would convince YK of anything by attacking his position in a purely intellectual form. I am abnormal, in that I am able to think devoid of any emotional component — most people do not do this. On the simplest level, perhaps a basketball fan can serve as a good analogy; if he or she roots for the same team since adolescence, it doesn’t matter how bad the team is — this person will focus on the unlikely existence of some potential, even if everyone else know that this team stinks. In the same way, YK maintains the Lubavitcher Rebbe as sacred and places him on a pedestal, and if someone says something to violate his majesty, it cannot be tolerated.
I’ll admit to baiting YK during last week’s debate, and because I did so, no matter how much sense I was making and how little sense he was making, it didn’t matter, because someone arguing from emotion doesn’t regard sense as relevant; the basketball fan doesn’t care how many times his team has lost — all that matters is that this year might be the year. So quoting him statistics won’t change his mind — his team is the best and he’s not even listening to your argument.
Which brings me to YK’s overall challenge: how can I call the Lubavitcher Rebbe ignorant? In defense, I responded that it was because he was ignorant. And that was the end of our discussion, really — because if you review it, you’ll see that YK no longer responds to what I’m saying. He merely continues to put words into my mouth and denounce those words, rather than the ones that actually came out of my mouth. He did this because he had nothing to respond — my point was solid, and he knew that, but that wasn’t what he was arguing, as he even later pointed out himself. He merely took issue with my indifference to the Rebbe’s stature. Had I been nicer, he would have agreed. Personally, I think that’s silly. “Hear the truth from whomever says it,” asserts Maimonides in the introduction to his commentary on Ethics of the Fathers. But I’m not calling YK silly ( I know he wouldn’t approve of that) — I just think that the emes (truth) should beat out shalom (peace) with the objective that people should be able to know the emes without it being hidden by shalom, because too often, that’s what happens. So that’s what I was doing, and YK didn’t like it.
To address YK’s accusations: I do assert with complete confidence that the rabbis of not only this century, but also those of the Talmud, can and in a very many bunch of places said things that would now be considered silly. Let me first explain this statement, and then we’ll look at some examples. I can’t recall the quotee, but there is some famous guy in the field of computers who is quoted as having said something like, “home computers will never be a reality, because a computer will never be small enough to fit in anything smaller than an entire room.” If we evaluate that statement now, all will agree it’s pretty funny — in fact, that’s why anyone will bother quoting it. But when it was said, it was probably accepted as self-evident. At the time, just the thought of trying to fit the coils and transistor mainframes and heat sinks and fans and all the other stuff that I’m obviously unaware of because of my ignorance when it comes to computers into anything smaller than a large room would be classified as ridiculous! And everyone knew it. But with time and new technology, everyone knew something else, and that continued until everyone now knows that computers can fit in the palm of your hand and memory cards smaller than a dime can hold 32 GB. Who would have thought?!
So the rabbis of the Talmud said some really strange things. And so did the people after them, and the people after them, all the way up until yesterday. But that’s because we know something today that we didn’t know yesterday. Was was Aristotle ignorant when he denied the potential existence of magnetism? I’d say no, only because no one knew about magnetism at the time — so if you like, you can call everyone ignorant, but if everyone is ignorant, is anyone ignorant? Let’s say there’s absolute ignorance and relative ignorance. Because the level of technology was where it was when Aristotle walked the earth, there was an absolute ignorance about many things. People thought that life could come from dirt, in what was called the spontaneous generation, and everybody thought that — even the rabbis. Later, people realized that such an idea derived from a poor understanding of the universe, and so it was rejected — not by some people, not by the majority, but by everyone. So, barring a miracle (which we’re not discussing here), life comes from life comes from life, and anyone who says otherwise is just being ridiculous, no matter how many letters they have after their name or how long their beard is.
Tazria opens with the halachic significance of childbirth, moves onto some discussion related to ritual purity and impurity that arises from different states of pregnancy and immediate post-pregnancy and then shifts into a discussion of tzara’as that continues into next week’s parsha. The topic of niddah is a very odd one, and one that is intricately tied into human anatomy and physiology. But if we say that the rabbis knew nothing more of reality than what everyone knew at the time, how can we reconcile the odd things they say with what we now know to be untrue?
In Niddah (57b), Rashi explains that a woman who urinates while standing (supposedly because she is in such dire need to urinate and cannot even wait to sit down first) will be impure because the urine will enter her uterus and will come out again, with uterine blood (which is impure). While human males possess a unified genitourinary tract at the orifice to the external world (in that the male urethra carries both urine and seminal fluid), human females do not — the female genital tract does not empty through the urethra (through which urine flows), but through the vaginal opening. So what does that mean? Well, no one other than Rashi and his immediate pupils can know, but we can suppose that he was mistaken in his understanding of anatomy and physiology because Ibn Zuhr (1091–1161), a contemporary of Rashi (1040-1105), was the earliest known physician to perform human autopsy and dissection, and it was only Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) who was later credited with discrediting so many of the erroneous theories of physiology and anatomy of the human organs. There’s a lot more that can be talked about, such as blood somehow getting from the oviducts to the cervix by passing through some non-existent passageway around the uterus, uterine blood becoming milk, and lots of other stuff. YK claims that the remedies mentioned in the 7th perek of Gittin were probably the best remedies available at the time — yet there are numerous examples of non-sequitur remedies given, such as that given for night blindness or nosebleeds. Utter nonsense, which is fine, because doctors knew almost nothing back then, and the rabbis who quoted them can be held no more liable for not understanding the universe as we do now. But don’t pretend, in 2011, that these were ever worthwhile remedies.
So what does this say about Rashi? He was no greater a fool than Galen or Aristotle for not knowing these things, because no one knew these things — that’s the level of sophistication people had attained Medieval times. Everybody tried their best and there was always going to be someone else making a breakthrough.
But to pretend that rabbis never made mistakes when it’s so clear that they did…that’s criminal. R’ Zvi Pesach Frank might not have been a good basketball player, and he might not have even owned a pair of sneakers, but that didn’t detract from his saintliness. And if he were to walk into a lab and say, “I just finished Bava Kamma, so I think I’ll mix some of these chemicals together…” — he was no scientist. When he had to answer a halachic question that depended on a medical reality, he would probably call the top doctor at Sha’arei Zedek Medical Center. So if he answered a question that related to a pathogen (a disease causing entity), he would have said that there are no pathogens that do not contain a nucleic acid — either DNA, RNA or both. And he would have been wrong, because prions don’t contain nucleic acid, but they weren’t discovered until well after he died in 1960. And it would have no bearing on his saintliness or his righteousness or his insight or his scholarship — but to pretend that it would…that’s ridiculous. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe: he was not a scientist and his stature as a community leader and great scion of Torah scholarship does not lend itself to him knowing everything about everything and always being right.
Haredi Jewry basically takes the position that YK took last week (or, more precisely, vice versa) — they don’t argue the facts necessarily, they just shout “slippery slope” and ignore the meat of the debate. But what about the slippery slope down which they descend — that all rabbis are completely correct all of the time. Wasn’t that YK’s argument last week?
I’ll close with my mission statement, just to clear up why I do what I do here. I think Judaism suffers from a terrible lack of self-reflection. People do things and say things and may go through their entire life without ever thinking about things — it’s sad, but it’s true. And these people are urged to continue on this path and to raise their children along the same path, all in the name of Judaism. But Judaism is reality and truth, so why fear anything, if we’ve got the truth? Why is apikorsus dangerous…it should be welcomed! Let’s hear all the stupid things there are to hear so we can show how stupid they are and continue on our path, knowing that what we do is true. The common man, however — he’s the problem. The common man doesn’t think. The common man can’t think. That’s why he’s so common (in that he lacks any special status), but unfortunately, he’s very common (in that he’s very widespread). Apikorsus is dangerous for the unthinking common man because he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to separate right from wrong, good from evil or sense from nonsense. So to protect us all, one approach is to, well, protect us all. No one may know anything, because then someone will fall into the trap.
That works great in the shtetl. Well, maybe that works great in the shtetl. But it doesn’t work in NYC, or most other placed in the world in 2011. People hear things, people read things and people find things out. And when they ask their rabbi and their rabbi says, “That doesn’t matter, go learn and stop asking such questions. Don’t you know that scientists are heretics?” — that’s a tremendous problem. So I write the way I do for anyone who’s ever gotten such a response, to show them that it’s not that there’s no answer to your question — it’s just that you asked the wrong person. You asked one of the people who think they still live in the shtetl and think that you do too. Maybe they do, but you certainly don’t, and neither do I.
This is a problem that’s only getting to get worse with time, not better, because knowledge continues to develop at a increasing pace as does access to knowledge. The conflict between religion and science — the idea that science negates religion and therefore a religious person must deny science — is going to be deadly to religion (it already has been) unless religion finds a way to avoid falling into this trap.
Catholicism (which has been pretty successful as religions go) has avoided this problem in two ways:
1. Ever since the Galileo disaster, the Church has stopped making any proclamations whatsoever on what is or isn’t scientific truth. For this reason, the Church does not teach against evolution or any other scientific theory. [Both the “Big Bang” and evolution are taught in Catholic schools.] Its position is “we’re not scientists. This is a different domain and we’re not getting involved in it.” Meanwhile you’ve got Protestant fundamentalists twisting themselves in knots explaining that God hid fake dinosaur bones for us to discover that make it look like the earth is billions of years old when it’s really only 6,000 years old. [I never got exactly why he would do that.]
2. The Church has used the concept of “infallible when teaching ex cathedra” to essentially allow it to back out of its more untenable statements. People think that the doctrine of infallibility increases the authority of the Pope and the magisterium but actually it decreases it — or at least it very sharply narrows it. In the rabbinic scenario described in this post, a great scholar and sage of past ages makes a ruling or statement based on his misunderstanding of the natural world. Now we find out that he was clearly wrong. But this opens up a huge can of worms. If he was wrong on this, couldn’t he have been wrong on other things? Anarchy now reigns as there is no reliable authority about anything. So you end up with people defending clearly indefensible ideas just like the fundamentalists and their trick dinosaur bones. Instead, the Church says “the magesterium is infallibly correct when it teaches about these kinds of things in these kinds of ways under these kinds of circumstance.” And these are very limited indeed. That allows it to back down and say “we were wrong about Galileo” without saying “we could be wrong about the whole Transubstantiation thing too.” The problem with Orthodox Judaism is that it lack a definitive single authority and it has no mechanism for backing down. So once it points in a certain direction, it can only go farther and farther down that route, no matter how problematic that becomes.
catholic mom, you have interesting points, but in applying them to judaism you are missing some points. first, we believe that all truth in the world, in every domain, can be found in the torah. this includes science as well. so it is difficult (for some) to accept that the giant rabbi’s could have been wrong even about science. (drosenbach answered this best: in their time that was the accepted science) for the example of dinasour bones that you give, its funny but some orthodox jews say the same thing; although most consider this the most simlistic and childish understanding, and there are more realistic ways to understand these findings. Third, you state that orthodox judaism lacks a single definitive authority, which is absolutely true, however, it is not the problem it is the BEAUTY of torah, it keeps our religion alive. G-d put it into the hands of the people to delve into the books and decipher its meaning and apply its lessons to our world in which we live. we do not blindly follow a single authority; we constantly learn and grow and have questions and find the answers and get inspired. i think the problem with judaism is that some orthodox jews have tried to adopt the philosophy of other religions, where “followers” follow and “leaders” lead, and this is sucking the life out of Torah Judaism.
It’s an exaggeration, and one perpetuates by normative Orthodox Judaism, that all truth can be found in the Torah. Now, assuming again that there is a god, that He is the God of Moses, everything follows from that to establish Judaism as real — but the Torah doesn’t make any statements about most things. The Torah has no information about radio waves and doesn’t make any assertions regarding so many other things that attempting to list them here would be a futile endeavor. I sense that what is meant by “the Torah contains all truth” is that nothing will ever come to bear that conflicts with the Torah because, if the Torah reflects reality, it will necessary be in accordance with reality, both then and now and forever.
The question is not whether the Torah contains “all truth” but whether or not everything it says is true. Because (the inerrantists say) if you prove one point wrong, then all points can be wrong.
This results in the following logical absurdity: “The Bible says that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and it did. Therefore, the sun must go around the earth. Therefore, to say the earth goes around the sun denies the inerrancy of the Bible and is heresy.” The Church fell into this exact error until it realized that there had to be another way of understanding the Bible that did not treat it as a scientific discourse nor assume that its writers knew anything more about the natural world than their contemporaries.
The reason you need a teaching authority is because it is NOT inherently obvious what everything in the Bible means nor what are the logical deductions from what it says. The Protestants thought it was but you’ll notice they now have 36,000 sects all in disagreement. As do the Jews. And some of them no doubt do believe that the sun goes around the earth. Or close to it. Because their whole faith would topple if they didn’t. And they have no centralized authority they can trust to tell them it won’t.
PS Drosenbach — Judaism is in no way more “objectively” true than Christianity or any other religion. I understand you believe it is true– that’s why you’re a Jew and not a Catholic. Likewise I believe Catholicism to be true. But I don’t delude myself that this is something that can be proven in this world with empirical evidence.
Also (see below) no Christian on earth teaches that Nazis are in heaven and Jewish children in hell. Can you find a single non-Nazi source to attribute this to? You can always get top debating points when you make stuff up and there is nobody to call you on it. Leaving aside the first 1,000 reasons for the absurdity of this statement, if nothing else it might be pointed that never in 2,000 years did the Church teach that unbaptized children went to hell.
The fact that an intelligent person like yourself backs up an institution like the Catholic Church- and even argues for it’s moral superiority – shows how much religion controls a person through fear.
And that’s the problem here too. Objective truth can never be the ultimate goal when you have an eternity of damnation lying in wait for you should you ever reach a conclusion that contradicts the Big Punisher. Because honestly, how damn important is it if the sun goes around the earth or vice versa after the holy fathers give you a tour of the torture room?
Fear? Uh…I don’t think so. The Inquisition has been out of business for a couple years now. And hell has been pretty much down the toilet in the Catholic Church for quite some time. Although now that I’m a parent I’m seriously starting to see its merits. Given that pretty much whatever I threaten my kids with their answer is “I don’t care.” [I might mention that my children are all male if that tells you anything.] “OK smartbutt — you’re going to burn in hell for all eternity for that.” Yeah, I like it. 🙂
Motivation works according to the pleasure principle, ie avoid pain, get pleasure. So, people who obviously enjoy thinking, and can do so very logically with all subjects besides for religion, (or anything else for that matter), are obviously afraid of something. Am I missing something?
Read George Orwell on liberals and Communism in the 50’s. http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Prevention_of_Literature/0.html
Motivation works according to the pleasure principle, ie avoid pain, get pleasure. So, people who obviously enjoy thinking, and can do so very logically with all subjects besides for religion, (or anything else for that matter), are obviously afraid of something. Am I missing something?
Read George Orwell on liberals and Communism in the 50?s. http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Prevention_of_Literature/0.html
Huh??? There are so many assumptions here (not to mention grand canyon leaps of logic) I can’t even begin to parse it.
Lol Me or Orwell? Why don’t you start with one problem- or am I on the naughty list now?
Just think about it. There’s a reason you’re still a frum Catholic, even though you’re clearly struggling with it. What is it? That’s a question a person struggling with faith should ask him/herself honestly at least once in their life.
I mean, there’s a reason I’m religious- because I was brought up that way. That’s it. Do I know if it’s right or wrong? No. It could be totally false, or totally true. But I’m not willing to give it up because of the stakes invloved. And that’s pretty sad.
I’m not struggling with it at all! I love Catholicism. Always have! Maybe “real” frum Jews don’t make saracastic/critical/analytic comments about Judaism (although this entire blog would seem to refute that) but real Catholics do all the time. Doesn’t remotely mean they’re “struggling” with it.
Catholicism is a very beautiful and very rich religion that gives profound meaning to my life. Plus its a place to go on Sunday morning and see guys dressed up in really cool costumes with great music.
Well, I guess if you’re generally happy with what you do, that’s the correct barometer for a healthy lifestyle.
But there’s a ‘happiness’ that comes from relief of guilt after doing your duty, and real happiness, like when you do something you look forward to doing. People get this mixed up all the time. And in the vernacular, the first ‘happiness’ comes from fear, the second from love.
Religion, by raising the stakes to an infinite level, has the power to amp up either emotion endlessly. It depends on which one you go into it with initially. That’s why the question is very important for people struggling with faith to ask themselves. Because you could be making yourself more and more neurotic, and throwing your life in the toilet. (Not you, btw, I’m speaking about the issue in general terms. If you feel excited about your religion, good for you. What more can a person ask for spiritually?)
It may not be possible to reveal Judaism as more true than Christianity, but Christianity may be shown to be less true than Judaism. Christianity is inherently flawed because it attributes a Jewish concept (the messiah) to a man in complete disregard of Jewish law. The Messiah is to come from the Jews, for the Jews and his existence and the criteria that define him exist in Jewish law — but Christianity does not follow those rules. I’ll check if you have an email address and I’d like to hear what you have to say to oppose directly what R’ Becher says. I will then present your arguments to him, and we shall see.
Does not Christianity teach that one must believe in Jesus to make it to heaven?
It teaches that “I am the way and the truth and the light. No man comes to the Father except through me.”
However, historically there have been diverse opinions on the exactly what that means. I would say that most Christian churches now teach a “universalist” approach to this — Jesus is the channel by which the divine becomes manifest in the physical world, the intersection of the eternal and the temporal. Through him, heaven breaks in on earth and divine love is encountered face to face. “I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly.” Those who believe in him most fully experience this life and love in this world, but this does not preclude the extension of divine grace and redemption to the whole world.
(John 3)
(16) For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.
(17) For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
(18) Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but *whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God*.
(John 8)
(37) I know that you are descendants of Abraham. But you are trying to kill me, because my word has no room among you.
(38) I tell you what I have seen in the Father’s presence; then do what you have heard from the Father.”
(39) They answered and said to him, “Our father is Abraham.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham.
(40) But now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God; Abraham did not do this.
(41) You are doing the works of your father!” (So) they said to him, “We are not illegitimate. We have one Father, God.”
(42) Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and am here; I did not come on my own, but he sent me.
(43) Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot bear to hear my word.
(44) *You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires.* He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.
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To be fair, there has been a progressive trend in some corners of Christendom with regard to the salvation of non-Christians, but it isn’t that hard to find sources (both of these came from the same text as the way, truth, life formulation) that (1) condemn people who don’t believe in J and/or (2) are ripe for anti-Semitic use.
I should also add that Catholic Mom is correct that for most of Christianity faith has an action component and that mere mental profession isn’t the end-all-be-all regarding “salvation.” Which is to say that while it’s only recently (i.e., post-Holocaust) become unfashionable to maintain that Jews who reject J are going to hell, I doubt that most Christians of the time would have said that the Nazis were going to heaven on the basis of their claim to faith in J.
Also (see below) no Christian on earth teaches that Nazis are in heaven and Jewish children in hell.
I would say that the majority of Christians would find the idea that Nazis are in heaven while the Jews they murdered are in hell repugnant. That does not change the fact that there are [many] Christian sects who teach precisely this, though obviously not in those words.
Theologically conservative Christianity teaches that the only way to enter heaven is to believe that Jesus was the son of God, that he is one’s personal savior, etc. As a corollary, it teaches that not having this belief gets you put in hell [forever].
There were many Christian Nazis (and actually a few Jewish ones, but that’s not the point) – that is to say, Nazis who accepted Jesus as their savior and whatnot. The vast majority of the Jews they murdered did not believe this. It is not an enormous logical leap to conclude, then, that at least in theory theologically conservative Christians believe that [many] Nazis are in heaven and [the majority of] the Jews they murdered are in hell.
Even among a certain stripe of theologically conservative Protestants, believe in Jesus is a necessary but not sufficient condition for salvation. “Does not the devil himself believe?” There must be not only belief but the fruits of belief. And Jesus spells this out extremely clearly (and repeatedly). In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the criterion for going to heaven vs going to hell is: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.” If the Jews in concentration camps were not the least of his brothers, who is? Therefore (speaking as much like a conservative Protestant as a Catholic can do) the Nazis who persecuted Jews are in hell.
As far as the children — even the most conservative fundamentalists do not teach and never have taught that unbaptized children go to hell. Therefore, the Jewish children killed by the Nazis are not in hell.
You clearly do not live in the American South. Or, if you do, you live in some liberal Christian enclave.
Everything you just said is great in theory. It is not what is taught around here.
This may be limited to Catholics, but the first principle in the Athanasian Creed states: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith…Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation; that he also believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Essence of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Essence of his Mother, born in the world.”
And why were communists denied communion, but not the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trial?
I will not turn this into an anti-Christian post today, but please post with your email and I’ll send you the audio file so you can let me know where I am misinformed.
They have communion at trials?? And there were communists at Nuremberg who went up and tried to receive being as they were good Christians but they were denied?? Gee, I must have missed all that.
Re: The Athanasian Creed. Yes, of course, for hundreds of years the Church taught “extra ecclesia nulla salus” but bear in mind they were busy ex-communicating other Christians who differed with them on points of doctrine. (The Arians, the Pelagians, etc.) Then of course half the Church ex-communicated the other half a thousand years ago in the Great Schism. Then they did it all over again during the Reformation.
But note Paul in Romans 11: “All Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
Re: emailing you my email. How??
If you insert your email when you post, I can read it because I’m an admin.
And from the passage in Romans 11:
(22) See, then, the kindness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but God’s kindness to you, provided you remain in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off.
(23) And they also,
**if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in**,
for God is able to graft them in again.
(24) For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree.
(25) I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers, so that you will not become wise (in) your own estimation:
**a hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles comes in,**
(26) and thus all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The deliverer will come out of Zion, he will turn away godlessness from Jacob[.]”
(From http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/romans/romans11.htm)
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Paul’s notion of the salvation of all Israel is based on the idea that Israel’s “hardening” (i.e., rejection of J) will be remedied at some future date. He clearly states that the Jews would be saved (grafted back in) contingent on belief (in J). As the footnotes on the linked page put it: “[Paul] hastens to fill the entire Mediterranean world with the gospel. Once all the Gentile nations have heard the gospel, **Israel as a whole is expected to embrace it.**”
Paul also compared the covenant at Sinai to Hagar/Yishma’el (i.e., the rejected) and proto-Christianity to Sara/Yishaq (the true heirs) in Galatians 4:21-31 and accused the Jews of being killers of J and deserving of divine wrath in 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16.
So it’s inaccurate to depict Paul as believing in some kind of Jewish universalism independent of Jews coming around to the J program.
Obviously he believes that “all Israel” will come around to the J program. That’s what the whole end point of the program is. The question is — what happens to individual unbelieving Jews in the meantime. They will be saved because of the promises God made to their forefathers. Listen — this is basic Evangelical teaching. Go look it up.
For the record, my mother is Catholic – oh God, a Mischling! Her parents are quite exceptionally conservative and they do not believe that my Bubby is in hell, nor do they believe that my father, my brother or I will go to hell simply because we were not baptized, believe in the divinity of Jesus, etc.
I am really talking about conservative evangelical Protestants. The ones for whom Jews are merely an eschatological prerequisite.
What a coincidence! My mother is Catholic too!
BTW, speaking of coincidences, I was recently perusing an extremely right-wing evangelical blog site (I never post there because they’re a bunch of Calvinists and I would become overly agitated if I did) and they were exactly debating the question of the salvation of the Jews, and the majority of them took the position I quoted in Romans, above: “All Israel will be saved.” You are wrong to think most Evangelicals think the Jews are going to hell.
many prominent Evangelical leaders such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been very anti-semitic and probably believe(d) that Jews will burn in hell
Personally I believe that Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will burn in hell but I doubt it’s causing them to lose any sleep.
However, I’m not sure I would jump from “anti-semetic” (primarily a racist view) to “probably believe that Jews will burn in hell.” Not because these folks don’t think that non-believers will burn in hell (I’m going to assume they do — after all, they also believe Catholics will burn in hell because the Church teaches a false “works” gospel) but because of multiple statement by Paul (I quoted only one above) that the Jews are Gods chosen people and God does not renege on his promises.
Not to argue against my own point, but there was a time when supersessionist theology in the Catholic Church effectively said “it doesn’t matter what God said in the OT. All bets are off now and it’s a whole new ballgame.” The Evangelicals have alway been way way more into the OT that the Catholics and they take the concept of the Jews as the chosen people of God very seriously.
Yeah, my mom was raised Catholic, too. Whoopdedoo!
I am not wrong.
You should spend some time in Dixie.
I was listening the bob dutko show (a conservative christian radio show) last week and he said excactly that. The jews in the holocaust who did not accept jesus as thier savior before they died are in fact in hell. He did say that he hoped and believed many of them did accept jesus but those that died unsaved did not go to heaven.
Well if Bob Dutko says something than I’d say that settles it.
Catholic Mom~
Please reply and insert your email address at log-in so I can email you the shiur from R’ Becher and you can give me your comments.
All the best!
You got it! 🙂
I’m trying but it seems to be rejecting me. Let’s see if this one works.
Drosenbach,
This might seem irrelevant, but do you believe in the authenticity of the Zohar?
It’s not irrelevant at all — but my rebbe tells me that he’s reserving judgment on that.
your rebbe? he asked u !!!
Why do Jews think that their latter day books (midrash, kabbalah, zohar, tanya) are any more divine (or true) than the Koran, Book of Mormon, Thripitaka or the Bhagavad Gita? They were all written by men who had a spiritual vision of some sort and found people willing to believe them.
Probably because these texts are meant to discuss, debate, suggest, question, answer and altogether elaborate on the Torah, while not undermining it, while the others you mention are either unrelated to it but contradict it, or are related to it and contradict it.
Everything I write here is claimed to be based on the Torah and true, and I am expecting that people of spiritual vision will be willing to accept what I say.
Well, I don’t know about the last two, but the Koran and Book of Mormon claim to be a result of prophecy to one man. Midrash is a book of teachings, kabbalah claims to be another part of the teachings at Sinai that were kept secret, you have a point about the Zohar because part of it is claimed to have come from gilui eliyahu, and Tanya bases everything on the Ari’s Kabbalah (based on the Zohar) so the same comparison to other spiritual books can also be made there.
We can say with reasonable certainty that the words in the Quran were written by Mohammed. Whether he got them from the Almighty and the Angel Gabriel is another question entirely.
We can say with reasonable certainty that the words in the Book of Mormon were NOT written on tablets of gold by the Angel Moroni and translated by Joseph Smith with magical “seer stones”. We can tell from other evidence that there’s a good chance he cribbed it from Solomon Spalding’s unpublished fiction.
We have modern tools of scholarship to investigate the origins of the Zohar. What are the results of those investigations? And anyone who says “It’s authentic because I have faith” or “My rabbi says it’s real, so it must be real” may leave the room until the grownups have finished talking.
Aspiring mekubal http://mekubal.wordpress.com wrote a pretty good rundown of the history of the Zohar in one of his posts (I forgot which one. Maybe if he reads this he’ll help us out.)
Basically, different parts were written at different times. Some have a later (up to 500 years ago) style. Some are from much earlier. Not much help, I know.
Thanks for the link
NP. It was the best I could do. Did you see the Mormon SouthPark? It was great.
Haven’t had a TV in more than twenty years.
Well, perhaps not written by Muhammad himself (who was allegedly illiterate), but transcribed by his followers.
“Why is apikorsus dangerous…it should be welcomed!” – so you’re saying that we can disregard what Chazal say regarding learning Apikorsus?
“I am able to think devoid of any emotional component” – are you able to do that even when considering whether Judaism is the THE truth or whether God even exists? If not, how are you better than anyone else?
Those are two very good and very separate questions.
1) “Why is apikorsus dangerous…it should be welcomed!” – so you’re saying that we can disregard what Chazal say regarding learning Apikorsus?
Let’s say someone is interested on giving a shiur on apikorsus and kefira — what is is, what is it not, how do we know what is included and excluded, what are the limitations, to whom do they apply, etc. Or better yet, let’s say someone is interested in hearing a shiur on it, but there is none available, so that person goes asks his or her rebbe — what sort of response can that person expect?
R’ Slifkin came to YU about 2 months ago and gave a shiur on “The Limits of Heresy in Orthodox Judaism,” and it was a great start, but how much can one really cover in 45 minutes.
Let’s assume Judaism is true. There really is a god, and not just any god, but the God of Moses who not only possesses the means and authority to obligate us, but actually did and does obligate us. Shouldn’t nothing be able to stand up to that?
Christianity makes demands of Jews — Jews must accept Jesus as the Messiah, or face eternal damnation. The Nazis are in heaven and the Jewish children they killed are in hell. Do I care what they say? No. But it’s more than that — it’s not the same “I don’t care” as I would apply to not caring about speed restrictions on the highway, in that they exist but I choose to not recognize them. When I say I don’t care what Christians believe applies to Jews from a Christian perspective, I mean to say that Christianity is false, its laws, traditions and alleged divine mandate are unsubstantiated by truth and, in reality, none of it actually exists. It’s like a club of people who say 2+2=5. They can say whatever they want, but no one else has to agree, and if they ever stop believing in it, it will disappear, because there is no actual god or son or holy ghost supporting it intrinsically. And because of this, Judaism maintains, Christianity is very worried about heresy — it can undermine everything! So in the past, they have battled heresy, and even thinking, with such ordinances as prohibitions on possessing bibles in a language that one understands. Because when people think, they may begin to realize.
But Judaism is not Christianity — that’s what we say, right? Well, it can’t just be because we say it, it must be because it is. Did Maimonides assert that there are the 13 principles of faith, and that everyone must acknowledge them because he said so? No. He did not mean to have it hinged on his spectacular Torah authority? He meant that these things are real, they are true you’ve got to know that — he was just explaining it, revealing it.
In this sense, I like to equate Judaism with science. I’d say religion with science, but there is no religion but Judaism, because there is no god but the God of Moses. Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor doesn’t block angiotensin-converting enzyme because Bristol-Myers Squibb says that it does or thinks that it ought to — it’s just that the scientists who work for that company developed the first drug (captopril) based on research that indicated that it does, and when their drug failed to take off because of secondary reasons, Merck & Co. jumped in with enalopril, and there we have it — an ACE inhibitor. Reality — ACE exists, it can be blocked and we’ve figured out what can do that.
So if Judaism is real, why does it hind behind prohibitions of avodah zarah? I’d say it’s not — they are mere distractions and Judaism wants us focused, so it tells us not to do these things. But people are weak and suggestions don’t go very far, so something more definitive is necessary.
And what about apikorsus? It is necessarily all ridiculous, because if Judaism is true, how can un-Judaism also be true? Or pseudo-Judaism. It’s like this girl I met at school — she’s an Asian gentile married to a Jewish guy she met in college, and she’s telling me about the Passover seder she’s planning. But when I asked her if it’ll be kosher, she tells me that it won’t be. She then tells me that her husband is very strict on Passover about “the leaven thing,” and that she even tries to give him yogurt, but he won’t have any because it has corn syrup. So I asked her why her husband is concerned for rabbinically prohibited corn syrup on Passover when he’s not concerned about biblically prohibited kashrus, driving, intermarriage or anything else — and she tells me it’s because he feels guilty if he eats this stuff on Passover. His dad is Orthodox, she tells me, and he gives him a lot of grief. When I asked her what she thought about that, she admitted that she thought it was silly, and that she bothered him all the time about his inconsistency.
So back to apikorsus…R’ Becher gives this analogy: if some associate professor/chairman of biochemistry and molecular biology at some Ivy League university comes out with a new scientific breakthrough or finding in molecular biology,is he going to publish it in Popular Mechanics or Cell. The latter. But if I’m some guy working out of my basement and I think I’ve developed a cure for cancer that includes the use of vinegar smoothies twice a day for 2 weeks, I’ll be looking to publish it in Popular Mechanics, because I certainly don’t want any real scientists seeing my data, questioning my results and bashing my research.
If Judaism is true, why can’t we engage apikorsus? I’d think we’d embrace it and invite Christian missionaries to our houses for dessert regularly. We don’t, because people can’t handle it. R’ Becher can. He knows enough about Judaism to completely pull the rug out from under their arguments, and if anyone would like, I can send you the hour long audio file of his shiur that covers exactly what happened when they visited his mother-in-law in Philadelphia and he happened to be there for the weekend. But most people won’t know what to say. Alright, so not everyone is a scholar. But it’s also more than that — when I asked my rebbe, he said it’s because people don’t think. The average person doesn’t think, and doesn’t even realize that they don’t think. They are on autopilot all day, whether it’s putting on tefillin, saying a brocha acharona or davening mincha. So when faced with tough questions, they might just say, “wait a second…that’s amazing! I never thought of that. See you honey, I’m going with this guy, and tell your mom I said bye!”
But apikorsus is out there. We don’t live in the shtetl anymore. We live in 2011 and not a day goes by when we won’t read about the Hubble telescope and some new galaxy billions of light years away or a new advancement in virology that takes into account the mechanism of gene transfer or a new find of a vase that bears inscriptions from the time of Jesus — and when people read this and are forced to say, “my rabbi told me that scientists are wrong, and none of this is real, and it’s evil, and maybe I’ll get a flu shot, but everything else they say is heresy…” — well, that’s just a tremendous loss.
But instead of encouraging better thinking, rabbis shut people’s minds off, and tell them to disengage. So is apikorsus for everyone? Well, in the same way that cost accounting is not for everyone, neither is apikorsus. But someone really smart and really funny should come out with Apikorsus for Dummies, because there’s probably a Cost Accounting for Dummies.
2) And to get back to my premise for this entire response, which also happens to be your second question — I have no answer. Unfortunately, I have been unable to obtain an answer yet, but I’m reserving judgment until such time that I can investigate the matter more deeply. I’ve spoken with R’ Schachter, R’ Wieder, R’ Becher and many others about this, and I’m still dissatisfied because I still have to hold out — but I will. So am I inconsistent? Yes, but for as little as I can be without throwing out Judaism. I recognize that my rebbe is one of the deepest thinkers around, and he still does the Judaism, even though he can’t give me an answer, but we’re both looking, and we’ve got each other on speed dial in case anything comes up.
Perhaps you’ll hook up with Ignatious Loyola in the world to come. 🙂 You guys will have some fabulous debates. He thought just as you do. “Why is the Inquisition burning heretics at the stake? If we’re right and they’re wrong, shouldn’t we be abe to sit down and argue with them and win? And if we’re not winning, how do we know we’re right? ” So he focused his whole mission on scholarship and study and debate.
As Our Guy said : “Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 🙂
Ah…is that where The Matrix got it from?
Well, it could be that your pshetel is right, but I’d prefer to go with a simpler explanation: that fundamentalist religions operate psychologically like a cult, and one of the ways the cult works and survives is by hiding damaging or “heretical” information. Hence Slifkin, Kefira, college, National Geographic, the internet etc are all threats, and must be banned.
I consider myself a fundamentalist – one cannot even study the Torah properly unless one can take a number of key assumptions for granted (such as the sanctity and importance of every letter).
But your statement is true for the more defensive and insecure among them. Chumras on chumras.
R’ Becher speaks about how Judaism is not fundamentalist — a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is necessarily devoid of all the Judaism contains outside of the written text, and that describes Karaism.
> a fundamentalist reading of the Bible is necessarily devoid of all the Judaism contains outside of the written text
Orthodox Judaism includes in its fundementalism anything labeled as TSBP. So instead of Biblical fundementalism, we have Talmudic fundementalism, kabbalistic fundementalism, and Gadol fundementalism.
One day you need to write us a post on the principles of Atheistic fundamentalism.
I agree with the post almost entirely. I believe that there are answers to all questions, and that the truth is ultimately knowable – even if it can be very difficult to discover. And there are certainly those among chazal (Rambam among them) who would agree.
I’d just like to make one distinction. Science is a path to knowledge, but it is not a path to wisdom. As one wit put it: “Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to include it in a fruit salad.”
In other words, scientists can give us insight into G-d’s creation, which is a path to daas Hashem. That is a beautiful and noble calling. It leads to an abundance of knowledge. But it does NOT give them (or us) wisdom.
If Rabbis are guilty of not knowing when they lack knowledge, scientists are equally (if not even more so) ignorant of when they lack wisdom. And so you end up with Rabbis saying things about science that just come from ignorance, and scientists saying things about religion (or politics or human relations, or frankly anything outside their expertise) that are equally uninformed.
In neither case is there malice involved. And in both cases, defenders fall back on the credentials of the speaker, instead of whether what they are saying is nonsense.
Please understand that the ignorance is not merely one in the past. Rabbis make the wrong decisions based on ignorance of geometry and electricity today (sherried whiskies and escalators on shabbos, respectively). But all of these are correctable; I just hope that Rabbis can be secure enough in themselves that they don’t think changing their minds is a weakness.
Alright — I suppose wisdom is a very misused term.
Wisdom: “deep understanding and realizing of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to choose or act to consistently produce the optimum results with a minimum of time and energy.” (Wikipedia)
I’d say scientists have understanding of things, in that they always put alcohol into their torches rather than water and always put water into their cups (well, alright, not always). But yes, no one can be the winner all the time. I was not disputing R’ Revson’s assertion that Jastrow knows nothing of Judaism, and I don’t think Jastrow disputed it. But for one small second, Jastrow himself forgot that he didn’t know, and decided to pontificate.
That’s why I’m suggesting a unified approach — science and Torah. And I put tomatoes in my guacamole, because they make it taste less bitter even when the avocados are not yet ripe — I’d say that’s very wise of me.
A scientist may or may not become wise through experience and contemplation.
A rabbi who refuses to recognize facts because he doesn’t want to believe them will remain ignorant and has discarded wisdom.
I know more informed rabbis than I know wise scientists. And I know a good many of both.
The problem is that in general, smart people think that they are smart about lots of things, instead of just their area of expertise. It is why scientists (and an older generation of Jews) are predominantly liberal – they are smart, so they think that they should be able to dictate the decisions that others make.
Leaving aside the political stuff where you’re not even wrong I’m afraid you have an enormous blind spot which cuts the legs out from under your entire thesis.
Faith.
A scientist is used to being wrong. Most progress in science comes from trial and error, making mistakes and learning from them. It breeds a humility and a willingness to abandon positions when they are untenable. Built into the very structure of science is the process of refinement, progress and correction of errors.
If you’re a believer in a revealed religion that’s simply impossible. He is forced to swallow huge chunks of “It’s just that way. Believe or we’ll kill you.” He can’t be wrong about anything important and has a lifetime of practice at denying all inconvenient facts. If it doesn’t fit, throw it out or twist things until they seem to agree with what you already believed. It’s irrational, reality-denying and completely based on authority.
That’s why so many clergy and very religious people tend to be conservatives. Their entire worldview is based on obedience or forcing others to their will. Since it cannot survive contact with the tiniest flaw it must exclude any possibility of error and attack the messengers of such bad news by all means and without mercy.
I guess you don’t actually know many scientists, do you? I know a great many – mostly physicists, who are the most “difficult” of them all.
Humility is not a word that comes to mind. Neither is a willingness to change their minds. Have you met any defenders of global warming and challenged them with actual facts? Or tried to discuss the philosophy of science with any of them? Scientists are bissfully unaware of the underpinnings of their own profession; they cannot even begin to consider the nature of knowledge.
I would submit that as much fun as it is to gripe about Rabbis, they are no more intolerant of different ideas than are scientists.
Liberals are for less freedom (they like telling others what to do – that is the very nature of big government). If scientists are predominantly liberal, then is it really the clergy whose worldview is based on obedience or forcing others to do their will?
Not even close unless your mind has been filled with Fox News strawmen. The authoritarian personality is MUCH more common in self-described conservatives, and there’s plenty of replicable data to show it. Liberals have led in every single enlargement of civil liberties with the single exception of the wedge-issue of gun control in the US. Conservatives have fought tooth and nail against every one from civil rights for Black people to Woman’s Suffrage and for the most repressive ones from anti-sodomy laws to warrantless searches, wiretapping, torture and stripping people of their citizenship.
Horseradish. Republicans were much more supportive of the 1964 civil rights bill than were Democrats (Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96) .
Taxes and regulation are both ways of limiting my freedom, and the left promote both. My pocketbook is also my freedom.
Which party wants to tell me what kind of food I can eat, what kind of lightbulb I need to use, what kind of washing machine is legal?
I am authoritarian all right – about my own life. But I want everyone to have the free choice to make their own mistakes – and that includes in all walks of life.
Such an approach makes me staunchly and proudly libertarian.
I was once at a Shabbos table, and a very learned young man explained, with gravitas, that when sharing Torah, it really was not important what a new idea was – the key thing is *who* said it.
As Wiki puts it:
Argument from authority (also known as appeal to authority) is a fallacy of defective induction, where it is argued that a statement is correct because the statement is made by a person or source that is commonly regarded as authoritative.
Source A says that p is true.
Source A is authoritative.
Therefore, p is true.
Sounds familiar?
Painfully familiar
great post, loved it!
Thanx!
Great post!
I can’t remember where, but wouldn’t the Rambam also say that whenever reason/science seems to contradict Torah it means we have misunderstood and Torah needs to be reinterpreted? That is, the complete opposite of “scientists are apikorsim” (although it comes from the same conviction that Torah can’t possibly not be true).
Yes, R’ Wieder quotes him in saying that.
Great writing, folks.
The good news is that if you find religion silly enough or annoying enough or intellectually hollow enough, you can just walk away and do your own thing. Just deal with the guilt. LOL
“hareshus nesuneh“
Flattered to see you take me seriously enough to accord so much “ink space” to our debate.
The Torah syas that man was created from dirt. It also says that all the water in Egypt turned to blood, the sea split to allow Jews to cross and that they saw thunder and heard lightning at matan Torah.
I suppose you’ll now call the Torah silly or foolish because none of the above are possible according to the laws of science. What you’re missing is the first and foremost commandment: Emunah (faith). Without it, everything else is irrelevant.
That is why I questioned you posting so called “dvar Torahs” to a site with frum viewership, as they seem more suited for reform Jews or possibly scientologists.
If your posts were funny like Shwartzie’s, I might understand. I personally find them irrelevent to both frum people and people looking for satire.
The Torah is neither a book of history nor of science, and there is insufficient reason to assume that the Torah is to be taken literally when it a) would prove difficult when read in parallel with works of history and science b) a non-literal approach affords an effective explanation of what the Torah is trying to tell us. Moreover, the principle that “the Torah was written in the language of man” applies, and so it is not difficult to explain how a non-literal interpretation can easily fulfill all of the requirements. So the only thing I will call silly is your approach to the Torah.
It’s debatable whether there is a commandment of emunah. And you’re correct — without it, everything else is irrelevant. So why have emunah if the only thing that can possibly lend itself in support of the obligation is emunah itself? A very difficult situation, indeed, with no good solution. That, among other things, is what we’re exploring here week after week, and if you don’t like it, that’s fine. We vote with our fingers here.
DRosenbach,
So if I’m understanding your opinion, man didn’t literally come from dust, water didn’t literally turn to blood, the sea didn’t literally split and we didn’t literally see thunder or hear lightning. Is that what you’re tying to say?
Look at it this way. In physics, an experiment that does not repeat is a failure. In other words, one-time events *did not happen*. Physics has as one of its presuppositions, the idea that there is a law to nature, and that unless something is repeatable, we cannot really know what happened. There is some sense to this – but it also is a good way to understand miraculous events. To a scientist, a well-documented event that is not repeatable is “outside” science.
That is consistent, to me. The Torah knows that these things are supernatural (or meta-natural), and that is one reason they are mentioned!
But all of this is really a sideshow. Open miracles do not happen today, but most religious people believe that they have witnessed or taken part in hidden miracles. “Coincidence is G-d’s way of maintaining his anonymity”. Today, Hashem’s shechinah is found in the daled amos of a Jew. The miracles that happen in our world are often (or even exclusively) driven by people. *We* achieve what was formerly thought to be impossible or miraculous, throughout human endeavour.Those of us who are devout believe that we achieve these things because of our relationship with G-d.
Human belief in G-d, and the profound way in which it changes our actions and the course of human history is, IMO, greater than all the miracles described in the Torah.
This blog is itself proof of what can be done when people question. See http://midrashicmusings.blogspot.com/2010/03/best-is-yet-to-come.html – especially the end.
Good Shabbos!
Well, yes and no. There are plenty of events which are not repeatable.
For example, at very small scales even under exactly the same conditions the results of one experiment will not be the same as another. The Uncertainty Principle dictates a boundary beyond which you will not able to measure complementary quantities.
Complex systems may behave the same in the aggregate when there’s no way of predicting the state of every component.
That aside, miracles are problematic. The lazy, cowardly and dishonest can use them to ignore any inconvenient facts they come across. The magically minded can rely on them.
Perhaps that’s why God stopped doing them.
To begin, you are confusing miracles and non-miracles. Creation is not presented as a miracle, and so I don’t see any reason to take it to be one. That being said, I see the entire creation story to be allegorical, written in common biblical poetic form, meant to be interpreted non-literally. So there was no Adam, no Eve, no snake — none of it is historical, yet all of it’s true in the sense that the messages are real and that’s what God wanted us to take from this. And anyone who comments on these verses is likewise speaking of it in this fashion.
It’s sort of like watching a clip of Sacha Baron Cohen on YouTube when he’s promoting his film on Letterman. If one is unfamiliar with Cohen, and certainly if someone is unfamiliar with comedy in general, one would watch the interview and wonder what everyone is laughing at — there’s a really smelly man with a terribly overgrown mustache talking to what appears to be a civilized man about how his grandfather was a rapist (or whatever ridiculous things he says), and everyone thinks is funny. What’s so funny about that? Well, it’s all a joke — none of it is real, and so on and so forth.
So I can give a stirring dvar Torah about how Haman was too tied-up in his power grab that even a single Mordechai destroyed his entire vision of complete and utter power, and tie it in with Adam + Eve and their lack of control when faced with only one tree that they were prohibited from benefiting (as I did for the Purim dvar Torah), and yet still take the entire creation account allegorically (which I do). But someone who doesn’t understand what the Torah is here to do reads the verses and says, “it says here that the snake was keen, and Rashi says that the snake who watched Adam and Eve during intimacy and then he desired Eve sexually, so there must have been a snake who did this.”
As far as the other 3 things you mention, and many others you don’t (staffs turning into snakes, etc.), these things are recorded as miracles — if they were miracles, they are necessarily violations of nature, and if we assume there to be a god that is the God of Moses and he gave us a Torah that is not lying to us or tricking us, then what it says in the form of historical documentation did actually occur. These things (water into blood, splitting seas, snakes and sticks) appear to be recounted as miraculous occurrences rather than allegorical references, and so yes, I’d say they occurred.
That being said, it’s difficult to know exactly what happened in any of the accounts that the Torah recounts, because details are often few and far between. So what exactly does the Torah mean when it says that the Nile turned to blood? I will nearly completely discount the midrashic literature as exaggeration, as explained by those who take the midrashic literature not as a a more detailed account of what actually occurred historically, but as a metaphysical analysis/religious amplification of the message behind what actually did happen. What then are we left with? Well, giant frogs that split into smaller frogs and other such things are midrashic and not peshuto shel mikra.
But let’s focus on blood — there is such a diversity of commentary that it’ll likely raise lots of eyebrows because the vast majority of people will be completely unfamiliar with the vast majority of what is all really part of the mesorah.
Some say that the Nile actually turned to blood: Onkelos, the Maharal, the Sforno, Me’am Loez, Malbim, B’chor Shor.
Others say that it did not turn to actual blood: Targum Yerushalmi, Targum Yonasan, R’Bachya, Netziv, R’ Avigdor Miller, R’ Munk.
On the surface, this presents a pretty big problem — what actually happened, and why are half of these people getting it wrong? None of these people were there, and so everything they are saying is either what they heard from their rebbe or something they thought up themselves that seemed logical and plausible based on the verses and whatever else they used to create their works of biblical commentary. Personally, I don’t think the Nile turned to actual blood because I don’t think Moses knew what blood was, I don’t think anyone prior to the 1600s knew what blood was, seeing how Harvey first described circulation in 1628 and Swammerdam described the RBC in 1658, although Leeuwenhoek described it better in 1674 (not knowing of Swammerdam’s earlier work), and I don’t see how anyone would know it was blood. Even though the Torah says “dam,” there is a set of pretty big hitters (previously named above) that take the verse to mean “not blood.” How is that? Well, that’s Torah study for you — almost nothing appears as it really is, and that’s not to say that the Torah is worthless and drivel, but it is to say that one should realize that what they know is usually nothing near what there is to know. OK — so you might tell me the same thing, but I used to think the way most people do and I found this new way of thinking about 4 years ago because instead of ignoring these questions because rabbis told me to, I found rabbis who didn’t ignore these questions and actually gave me answers.
YK — I do regret that this discussion has perhaps taken on a tone of resentment of the opposing half. That was never actually my intention, even though it might appear that it clearly is, but I like to write, and a I write a lot, and I do not read what I write, and so do not edit it for potential tone issues.
DRosenbach,
I guess if you don’t believe that Adam physically existed and that most of Beraishis isn’t meant to be taken literally, then you’d have no problem discounting or disagreeing with anything written after that.
I disagree with you. It definitely isn’t the mainstream frum view either.
Which leads to the next question:
If you don’t believe that the first part of Torah is to be taken literally, why would you believe any of the rest of it should be? Furthermore, why should you follow rabbinic law? After all, most of it is only human opinion derived from verses that can be interpreted in at least 70 ways.
Those are good questions. If the Torah is from God, and he’s using it as a means of obligating Jews, then the commandments are binding. Non-commandment content has little relevance to that. Whether or not Adam existed or there was really a deluge neither modifies nor undermines the commandment to take a lulav on Succos or eat matzo on Passover, much in the same way that allegorical reference to scales in heaven that measure our merits has no real bearing on whether or not hadlaka or hanocha is the defining point of the mitzvah to light Chanukah candles.
Rabbinical authority stems directly from the Torah (both written and oral), and so questioning their authority is akin to questioning the authority of the Torah itself. The approach to non-mitzvah content in the Torah and aggadic content of the Talmud I follow doesn’t interfere with observance of Torah Judaism.
How can this be the mainstream frum approach when the mainstream frum approach is your approach — that everything said by a rabbi must be true and no questions may be asked if they cause an unsettling of that balance of power? There is 3rd grade science in which teachers say that blood is all over the body, but that’s cleared up later in high school, and even more so in college, and then again in medical school, and then even more so again in the sub-speciality/PhD courses. And then it’s cleared up still more when you read someone’s published data from last week. But what you hear in 3rd grade from your morah is never cleared up. Because mainstream frum Judaism has cut out exactly what they think is necessary to talk about, and most everything else is ignored. And when you bring it up, no one has any clue what you’re talking about! So you either go off the derech or stop thinking. Even worse is you stop thinking and you go off the derech.
You may very well disagree with me; it’s quite obvious that the Vilna Gaon disagreed with the Baal Shem Tov, and Targum Onkelos disagreed with Targum Yonason, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe would have disagreed with R’ Wieder — there is more than one road to God. If you don’t have the questions that I and thousands of others do, you won’t find the answers I’ve found meaningful or necessary. But should you ever find someone who questions how Judaism can be considered seriously if it demands a narrow understanding of the universe in line with the first 12 chapters of Genesis, you should be able to tell them that your perspective is not the only one out there — that’s really what this is all about.
DRosenbach,
So basically, you’re selecting which parts of the Torah are literal and which are allegorical based on your version of what make sense and which ones don’t. It sounds very much like what the reform and reconstructionists do.
Let’s take it one step further. If you believe that Adam and Noah were allegorical, why stop there? You can just as easily apply that to the forefathers and Shevatim as well. Which would mean that there was no slavery in Egypt, therefore no exodus or matan Torah as well.
Just as you discredit Beraishis as allegorical due to your knowledge of scince, so to can a historian discredit the entire “history” written in the Torah.
Since you can’t prove that any of these people actually existed and that open miracles they claim happened don’t fit in with science, why should anyone believe these any more than Cinderella or the big bad wolf?
Rashi clearly addresses this issue in the first verse of his commentary, stating that the Torah should logically have began with parshat hachodesh. The only reason it states the historical background up to that point, is to tell the world that God created and rules the world, and he gave Israel to us.
The Torah is self-referential, in that when it gives us commandments, the justifications for those commandments are found in Bereishis.
The purpose of all of Genesis is to provide the “why” for the halachos given in the rest of the chumash. Recent biblical commentators like Jonathan Sacks have spent a lot of time on this – as have I. For example, the parah adumah is (IMMHO) best explained by referencing the creation of Adam. http://midrashicmusings.blogspot.com/2010/06/explaining-red-heifer.html
And there are hundreds of examples. I am working on writing up an explanation for each of the yomtov korbonos, based on the korbanos offered by the avos.
So to address the issue: the purpose of the Torah is to give us a playbook for life, as well as the justification for that playbook. Whether blood is really blood tends to miss the point.
To the untrained eye, yes, it might very well appear that I am taking the same approach as a Reform Jew. But then again, lots of things appear similar that are actually very different to the untrained eye, so this should not really be any surprise to you at all.
The difference between my approach and the Reform approach is that there there are no parameters for Reform Judaism. They take Judaism but practice a different religion — as such, no rules need apply. They therefore choose to do what they want and choose to omit what they please, without any regard for severity of transgression or rationale for their picking and choosing. From their perspective, it’s all very consistent, for they do not see a god as the source for the Torah, and so why should any significance be given to religious obligations that are deemed boring, uncomfortable or a just an overall general annoyance? For more on this, check out Samuel Holdheim’s views on Wikipedia. The underlying foundation of Reform Judaism is personal autonomy, so they do what they want, when they want it and how they want it.
The approach I am taking may seem, again, as I said, to the untrained eye, very similar, but it’s not at all similar. The Torah is from God and when it’s implausible to suggest that God was speaking metaphorically, we cannot apply a metaphorical approach to the verses.
Let’s take tzara’as. For us, at least, it’s all very strange. We have no clue what it was, and just because we read about it doesn’t really make it any more alive — it’s sort of stuck in the past. But let’s try to allegorize it; like, maybe this never really happened and it’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s an important lesson, let’s say, and it will serve to better guide us in life and morality, but it’s not to be taken literally.
Well, then the Torah stops making sense, because there are so many verses that speak of visiting the kohen, and then the kohen will do this, and say that, and so on and so forth. What can that all mean, if not that the kohen did this and said that?
But when dealing with the non-halachic parts of the Torah, there is a lot more leeway. This leeway is, for example, explained at length by R’ Saadia Gaon. When do we say a verse is not saying what it seems to be saying? Whenever it doesn’t make sense if we explain it literally. God doesn’t have a hand, and so if the verse says he does, it’s not really saying that. God doesn’t have an ear, so when it says he’s listening, it doesn’t really mean that either. Eve was the eim kol chai( “mother of all”), but she certainly was not the mother of elephants and eagles, so that doesn’t mean what it may appear it is saying at first blush. God is not a fire, so when it says that he’s a fire, it doesn’t mean that. All of that was unequivocally understood in the era of R’ Sa’adia Gaon, and those are some of the examples he gives. Later commentatros expand on this, like the Maharetz Chayes.
Why should you believe in any of this more than Cinderella and the BBW? Well, for starters, that’s a story, and the Torah is not a story. There are stories in the Torah, but it’s clear that, in general, it’s meant to be taken as a true account of a string of incidents that happened thousands of years ago, but not necessarily in order and not necessarily understandable at all, unless one has the code to decipher everything — and that’s what we call the oral law. So we say the Christians and anyone else who thinks they can use the Five Books of Moses don’t know what they’re doing when they interpret the verses, because they don’t have the keys to unlock what in the world it says.
But why should we believe in the validity of the Torah at all? Because it’s the word of God and there is a mesorah that such a God exists. If you assume that there is a god, and that this god is the God of Moses (which I take to mean the one who has the means, authority and desire to obligate us), everything necessarily follows from that, thereby invalidating all approaches to religion or even Judaism other than what we can refer to as Torah Judaism (despite this being a bit cyclical).
If you want to know why we should believe in the existence of such a God, well, that’s a very good question and no one I’ve ever met has a good answer to that question.
God did create the world. Who do you think created our perception of chance? From a Jewish perspective, there is no chance. Well, truly, that’s disputed, because there’s a large debate over exactly where and how far hashgocha pratis applies — but assuming for a second that it applies even moderately across the board, then the fact that I impregnate my wife, and we express the fetus in terms of gender as a 50/50 chance of having a boy or a girl — well, that’s just how it looks. There were a lot of sperm, and statistically speaking, half of them will feature half of the possibilities (X or Y) and so we say there is a 50/50 chance. But really, God arranged it that one or the other, for whatever reason, happened to fertilize the egg. When an evil dictator spins some dice to decide whether or not he’ll wipe out an entire Jewish community, I would say that there is also divine control over whether or not the die lands on even or odd. Now what about when we’re playing monopoly and I spin the dice to fulfill a monopoly by landing on Marvin Gardens — is there hashgocha pratis there? Some say yes and some say no. So for those who say no, then there does exist actual chance in some instances, and for those that say yes, there would probably be no chance ever, because what could be more inconsequential than a game of monopoly.
God runs nature. That’s how he runs the world, with perceived chance, with viral plasmids and with cancer and with car crashes and with rain and with extinction and with evolution and with hot coffee that spills on your lap, making you miss the bus and then the bus crashes and everyone dies but you, because you missed the bus. That’s how he runs the world. So if we want to know how to act, we don’t need a true recounting of something that happened to show us how to act — I can tell you the story of The Tortoise and the Hare to show you that perseverence wins, even though there never was a hare and there never was a tortoise.
This is a brilliant post – it encapsulates so many important ideas.
I just have 2 comments. You wrote: “If you want to know why we should believe in the existence of such a God, well, that’s a very good question and no one I’ve ever met has a good answer to that question.”
I would pile on to this: Belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The real test is whether one wants to have a relationship with G-d.
Consider: though Avraham clearly chooses Sarah when his wife was alive, after the stress of offering Yitzchak as a sacrifice, and then burying his wife, Avraham essentially announces his retirement from an active relationship with G-d. Living apart from his son, Avraham marries Hagar (called Keturah), and has many children. The rest of Avraham’s life was easy and contented. Having lived a lifetime of hard work and anguish as Hashem’s servant, Avraham chooses to opt out, to keep the Egyptian wife. The Torah does not tell us that Avraham and Hashem ever spoke again. Avraham’s children become nations in their own right, but none of them inherits the mantle of Judaism, which has passed onto Isaac.
We don’t criticize Avraham for this choice. And we don’t criticize the Jews who remained in Egypt, to assimilate to their native land. It is only natural to choose the easier life, and in most people’s minds, it is the rational path as well. Now, thousands of years later, the majority of born Jews continue to walk away from G-d, to choose an uninvolved and safer life. Breeding can only take one so far; we continue to be faced with the same choice that Adam and Chava had, that Avraham Avinu had, and that our forefathers in Egypt had: are we going to choose the safe, Eden/Egyptian life, or are we going to push the envelope, to seek the limits of man’s freedom and capabilities as servants of Hashem?
And that leads me to my second point: I believe that “nature” is entirely statistical for those who do not have a relationship with G-d. Without that relationship to ensure that the dice throws are in G-d’s hand, then we can indeed choose the safe life. Egypt is the ever-present option: it is the easy life, the comfortable life that does not require any relationship with G-d. All one had to do in ancient Egypt was to synchronize with the natural world, and life would be as certain as night and day. Harvests were predictable and food was plentiful. Even as slaves, Egypt brought with it the enormous advantage of not having to make any risky decisions. Or as the Torah links Eden and Egypt explicitly: “like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt.” (13:10).
For those who do not have a relationship with Him, G-d does NOT run the world – he is a distant clockmaker G-d who set up nature and walked away. He is only involved if we seek that connection.
Your historical account of Abraham is not supported by the midrashim — not that that matters, really, but there is discussion of Esau waiting until Abraham died (or that Abraham died 5 years earlier) to sour and turn to the dark side. Notable reference to this idea is that, a) he died 5 years younger than Isaac and b) Jacob was making lentils when Esau came to him and the whole “evil brother wants to kill me” started. But even then, Esau was known as a scoundrel of sorts, so it didn’t really start then, but this is all midrashic pile-on, not biblical verse.
And R’ Jonathan Rietti speaks volumes about those who wax on about hashgocha pratis being proportional to how much you let God into your life. It gets to be very metaphysical the longer you stay on this path of explanation — not that that’s a bad thing.
Thanks!
DRosenbach,
Now you have me confused. You started off by saying you don’t think or believe that Adam, Eve or the snake existed, yet now you say:
“There are stories in the Torah, but it’s clear that, in general, it’s meant to be taken as a true account of a string of incidents that happened thousands of years ago”.
This would imply that we should believe they existed.
That was in reference to Abraham and onward — sorry for the confusion.
DRosenbach,
OK. So to get this all straightened out:
1) The Torah up until Lech Lecha is all allegorical, none of it actually happened as written.
2) From Avraham onwards, all the history is suddenly accurate, even when the stories don’t fit in with science.
3) Somewhere in between, when the Torah makes statements that aren’t in reference to halacha, they aren’t meant to be taken literally unless convenient.
4) All final halachic rulings in the talmud are accurate, while aggadata is a mix of a bunch of silly opinions from rabbis that were ignorant about the topics they chose to comment on, or meant ot be taken allegorically.
The above rules are all based on the opinion and whims of harav hagaon Mr. DRosenbach, the 21 st century illuy who argues with Chazal, whom he feels can be silly at times.
Since you brought up finger voting, I’ll give you either two thumbs down ,or a double “one finger salute” (a la stone cold Steve Austin). Not that it makes a difference, but it seems that comments regarding your topics mainly come from an atheist, an OTD and a christian mom.
What is an OTD?
OTD = Off the derech, aka someone that is no longer observant.
YK, do you think every throwaway comment by chazal is indeed the (pardon me) gospel truth?
I started my own Torah writings in reviewing the belief, which is universal in frum circles, that wine was stronger in the ancient world, which is why it was watered down. This comes from a Rashi – and Rashi, as a vintner, should have known, right?
So I investigated this carefully, drawing on my training in history, and interest in technology (though I don’t care for wine). And what I found astonished me.
http://www.scribd.com/full/16092246?access_key=key-102urk3vapund7x9a553
I would VERY much welcome your thoughts. Please read the paper, and then tell me how Rashi could have been right by thinking wine was stronger in the ancient world than it was in the Middle Ages – and how that would jive with Rambam, writing a hundred years later, who assumed that everyone diluted their wine!
I mean Rashi no offense at all. But clearly, even in his area of expertise, Rashi was a product of his context and environment. I have no doubt that had he been aware of the underlying technology and history, he would have given a different explanation than the one he gave.
I could respond in kind with the following:
The first 12 chapters of Genesis are to be taken literally, along with all the midrashic commentary. Dirt-Man Adam and Rib-Girl Eve engage in intimacy a little too publicly and Talking-Snake Guy wants in, so he hatches a plan to knock off Dirt-Man. Dirt-Man and Rib-Girl are both covered completely with nail-like material, or better yet, their bodies are made of light, or look like light, or something of that nature. Mental gymnastics the likes of which have never been seen are utilized to generate the complex and intricate reconciliation between all creations, such as plants, being created fully formed yet not yet present until rain comes, because hey, plants need rain, that makes sense. So we devise the response that the trees are fully formed but underground and hidden until the rain comes and they pop out.
I could continue for hours on this path, but as I began, I could respond in this way, but I won’t. Your comments open an important, perhaps concluding, side to this discussion, and when I called my rebbe to ask him what he thought, he responded as follows:
“Dale — you can ignore him; it doesn’t matter what he says.” I responded that it appear as though I’m admitting that this position is so faulty that it was just sitting there waiting for someone to find the plot holes, and now it’s all a waste.”
So my rebbe continued: “Well, then there’s 2 ways you can go. You can take his sarcastic, cynical approach to what you’ve built up and turn the tables on him. I don’t know why you’d want to do this, or what you’ll gain from this, and it’ll quickly devolve into a tit-for-tat sequence of ”ad hominem” attacks, each more juvenile than the one previous.”
So I decided that I wouldn’t do that either. I tried it out for just a bit above, just so show to myself, to you and to everyone else watching that there’s really no limit how low someone can go, and if I were so inclined, I could similarly paint your position with such oddity and such outlandishness that both sides need to be considered equally — either both understood, accepted and now there’s a big problem, or both rejected and we begin again from before you entered this last post.
And then my rebbe proposed the final response I could give: “Or, you can take an approach similar to the one Thomas Henry Huxley took in opposition to Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in the famous debate on evolution held at Oxford University in 1840.”
“In this debate,” continued my rebbe, “Wilberforce took the same position that YK is taking here, one of mockery and derision. YK ridicules you, he ridicules your position and he ridicules the entire process of searching for some insight into what is the truth. What he fails to take into account is this: you are doing the best you can with what we have.”
In the search for truth, YK, we must construct and deconstruct and then reconstruct only those pieces we have to work with. Some pieces will seem forced, others will still remain on the ground and there might even still be spaces in the wall, and it’s just that none of the piece on the floor fit into those spaces. But we cannot use other pieces — this is what we have to work with.
If you’ve found truth without doing what I’ve done, then kol hakavod. I’ve tried to accomplish the very same task, but I could not, and many others cannot as well. And furthermore, I (and others, including my rebbe before me) see what others do as way more forced and way more contrived that what we are doing. There is tremendous precedent for accepting all legal rulings as presented by the Talmud, and rejecting that which is taught by the Aggadah. And this is not just Maimonides, of whom I’m sure you and perhaps others are tired of hearing — the Maharetz Chayes also supported such a perception of the Talmudic Aggadah.
There are more ways that one to explain the Torah, and with some of the lesser known and perhaps lesser accepted views, I feel that we can approach a better understanding of Torah, Judaism and what we’re doing here and why we should continue doing it.
Have you found truth? If you have, then you’re certainly a unique one, a fortunate one. Others have not. And, if their search for truth, they do nothing but accept the statements of those who are perhaps less renown (and perhaps for good reasons, over the centuries), and you can find no other appropriate form of comment other than scorn and ridicule, then perhaps you should not comment at all.
Do you think I come with ill-intent? I do not. I come with the earnest desire to help myself and others come to terms with difficulty — tremendous difficulty. Difficulty so tremendous that some see it and run away — run away so far that they cannot find their way back alone. If you don’t have these difficulties, then you can see no reason to talk about it as much as I do. It would be like sitting in with Gell-Mann and Zweig and hearing them fight it out over how we know quarks exist in hadrons — if I were there, I would raise my hand and ask what all the fuss was about. That seems to be what you’re doing here. Understandably so, but then again, perhaps inappropriately so.
Nothing is perfect. We are faced with, as I said, tremendous difficulty and I am trying my best to provide a rational approach, or perhaps as rational approach as may be posited, so as to provide myself and others with a sense of pride and dignity in the observance of Judaism, rather than obscure the questions and sweep away inconsistencies as though no questions may be asked, none will be answered and we are all to just carry on with neither thought nor reason, only because someone told us to.
Huxley is said to have replied to Wilberforce that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth. I cannot sit idly by and watch Judaism preach falsehood and mental trickery to those too dull to realize it. If we cannot trust science — and I here specifically refer to science itself, not scientists — if we cannot trust science, which is observation of our world, then what can we trust? Did we not receive revelation in this world? Did not Moses received the Torah in this world? If the bones in the ground are tricks, maybe the Torah is a trick? Maybe you are a trick? Maybe I am a trick? Maybe this computer I’m typing on is a trick? Maybe the chair I sit on is a trick? Perhaps nothing exists — you would not agree to that, I presume. You would not agree that everything in the Torah be taken literally. You would not be a corporealist like R’ Moshe Taku, the Tosefist, compelled because he read the Torah literally, that God has an ear and hands.
So you may be upset because not only have I taken the position that I am correct, but that you are incorrect. Alright — I am guilty of that. I take this position because my intellectual opponents are usually those that hold their position because that’s what they’ve heard. They have no conviction, really, and you, although you have conviction, I don’t know exactly what it is. I wonder if you do, either. Other than faith, what can possibly be your conviction?
I never debate without first stating, “assuming there is a god, and that God is the God of Moses…” and that’s because I cannot debate that point, and neither can you. So I accept it, and everything seems to follow from that. But if that were open to discussion, which some people might be willing to allow, asserting that bones in the ground are fakes because one has the assumption that he’d like to have faith in regarding the existence of a god who is the God of Moses and 10 steps later there is a bit of a conflict between early Genesis and properly fossilized dinosaur bones (i.e. not over a period of 2 months), well, it’s very disingenuous to suggest that God beats bones, and that’s why people may chose to give this all up — because the rabbi they know insists on God over bones.
Nothing I say is not first discussed with my rebbe, and I offered to let you contact him, but you refused. Perhaps you’re not on a quest for truth — perhaps you are, and you are too busy to humor me. I’ll never really know unless you call him. But I’m certain that if you did, you wouldn’t be as derisive as you are.
**Please respond at the end of the current posts**
Do you believe in the literal one night Exodus?
As a miraculous event, there’s no reason to necessarily deny its occurrence, and as a Torah-observant Jew, I would accept it’s verity based on the account given in the Torah as I do any other miraculous event recounted in the Torah (with some restrictions and limitations applied, such as those we already discussed regarding the Ten Plagues, etc.).
The biggest joke is that the one place the Torah is being metaphorical is taken literally. And by that I mean the verse “And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for forehead ornaments between thine eyes” – the whole idea was to remember the Torah and treasure it…but lo and behold that’s now interpreted literally.
That’s not a joke, really. That may be what the verse appears to be, written in biblical poetry. But if there are the Sinaitic laws of tefillin (8 of them, I believe), where do you think they come from? Even if it’s not from Sinai literally, the mesorah says that tefillin were always worn (until the Karaites).
The Torah is completely worthless without the Talmud — why do you take issue with tefillin and not every other commandment?
If there was a Mesorah for tefillin, why do we have Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam versions – couldn’t they just check what papa wore? Also I think if you ask a Karaite he’ll tell you that Tefillin were never worn, it was something Chazal came up with.
Karaites are a funny bunch — their observance lacks all merit because they follow a most ridiculous, ambiguous and absolutely implausible religious text — The Five Books of Moses devoid of the Oral Law. R’ Rietti discusses this at length and what I say here is derived mostly from what I heard from him. That’s why, as R’ Becher likes to put it, Jews do not follow the Bible, but the Torah (which is much more than the straight FBoM).
One needn’t go further than a cursory review of the Torah to see it’s totally meaningless without some other source of information. No details are provided, no insight into what things mean or how they are to be implements are explained and there is literally no cogent framework within which to express observance.
Perhaps the most well known aspect of Judaism is its monotheism, but certainly, another aspect of Judaism that spread farther and wider than, say, the intricacies of muktza, discarding blood-spot eggs and eglah arufah (and tefillin) are the Jewish holidays. Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Passover (and Chanukah) — these are arguably the facets of Judaism that most represent Judaism to the gentile world. Kosher has entered the race because of the ubiquity of Jews within tight enclaves in the NY and other areas, and so the OU symbol means something to many people, but there are still a lot of gentiles touched by Jews as a result of Manischewitz at Passover and Lubavitch menorahs at Chanukah and nearly everyone at the financial centers on Wall Street and its environs wanting to take off for Rosh Hashana. NYC schools are closed because too many teachers and administrators would be absent.
Anyway, Judaism also puts great emphasis on these holidays — wouldn’t it be nice to know when are they fall in the Jewish year? Odd then, isn’t it, that the Five Books of Moses make no mention about the Jewish calendar other than two comments: one about following the moon (Exodus 12:2) and another about keeping in sync with the solar calendar so that Passover in maintained in the springtime (Deuteronomy 16:1).
Take that and you won’t be able to observe anything, unless there is no significance to following the law as it emanated from God. Karaite rabbis may come and interpret things and they may establish a form of widespread, Karaitic observance regulation, but then that’s no better than the Rabbinic observance regulation that Karaism rejects because of the alleged extrinsic nature of the authority of the rabbis to interpret, outline and derive things from the Torah.
If Karaites can’t see this, the evaluative skill of the entire sect has to be most rigorously called into question, and one can no longer suggest that their evaluation can serve to be persuasive or compelling. It would be like asking some homeless guy descendant into poverty because he thought putting all his funds into a stock he conjured from cloud shapes to be your financial planner.
In continuing to think about your comment on tefillin from before, I was actually discussing this point with someone on the phone last night, and it goes much deeper than just tefillin. How can Rashi and Maimonides dispute whether the Temple menorah exhibited rounded branches (b’iggul) or straight branches (b’alachson), and this is not even a dispute about some abstract concept or prophetic information, like the afterlife — we actually had this menorah, so how can there be a dispute about it. Similarly, there are disputes about how the hides and cloths of the Tabernacle roof were arranged, and how the high priest’s garments appeared and how he wore them and what he did and how high the alter was and how the Tabernacle wall planks appeared, almost ad infinitum.
R’ Becher gives a shiur on this, and he brings up the possibility that Indiana Jones walks into the Mir and he has the menorah — he dug it up and here it is, and it’s got rounded branches. Would such an archeological piece be sufficient enough to discount the opposition?
The possibility exists that there was never any set manner in which the biblical sections had to be arranged — there were multiple ways to do it. Rashi came and established that we will now do it this way, and Rabbeinu Tam (grandson of Rashi) disagreed and said that another of the ways was not only permitted but superior. They also disagreed over the way to post a mezuzah on the doorway (vertically or horizontally), and Ashkenazim follow neither (because we place it diagonally!) — these are all topics that require much greater focus than can be provided here, but suffice it to say that these are all amazing and stunning topics with great questions (and sometimes greater answers) and it’s a shame that the standard Torah education fails to adequately address these topics with as much depth as they deserve.
you should edit 4 tone issues. your tone is arrogant, condescending, defensive, disrespectful , offensive and personal all at once.
Ok, the halacha indeed is that if a woman urinates blood, then she is tamei depending on whether she was sitting or standing, and one of the logics proposed is that in one position, the urine may have backwashed into the cervix and washed out blood.
As opposed to assuming it came from her kidneys.
Now, the question for you is, if that is impossible, then do we now ignore that gemara which says it is assur?
Are you comfortable thinking that rashi or an amorah would have paskined on this without understanding it?
I am not.
When it is clearly erroneous, then we do need some solution, so what is your solution?
I would say that killing lice on Shabbos is prohibited — would you permit it?
Your question is a good one — it requires rabbinical intervention, and I am not a posek. If you ask an informed, thoughtful posek about hilchos niddah, he will admit that there are lots of inaccuracies and troublesome halachos — I was just speaking to someone other than my rebbe about this on Thursday night, and that’s what he told me. He’s the one I show my marehs to, and he actually gave me the idea for this week’s dvar Torah.
One must ask a question regarding halachos like this – is it prohibited and an answer was provided as to why it is prohibited, or was the rationale recognized and the prohibition made subsequent to that? If it’s the former, then revealing the rationale to be baseless doesn’t take away from the foundation of the halacha at all; if it’s the latter, it might, and we should really examine what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
Perhaps standing during urination allows a woman to miss the hargasha sensation more readily, and we are worried that blood exited the uterus together with urine leaving the bladder simultaneously, whereas a woman sitting down wouldn’t have this problem, and Rashi was merely giving his explanation based on what was thought to be the way things work. Of course no one would pasken on something they didn’t understand. But what if everyone thought they understood it — that’s my point. All the scientists in the world used to think that lice come from dirt and maggots came from rotting meat — not that they existed in rotting meat, but that maggots were generated by meat when it rotted. If that would be the case, perhaps responsa similar to the fish worms would have some out, but it didn’t, so we’re not faced with the problem when it comes to beef or veal or lamb or chicken.
My solution is that we stop pretending that the rabbis were infallible. With all due respect to the great rabbis of our time and of before our time, they were tremendous Torah scholars. (I haven’t really said anything, because I’m sort of starting with that as their definition — anyone who was not a tremendous Torah scholar is necessarily not included in the group of “tremendous Torah scholars.”) But anyway, these tremendous Torah scholars were not all polymaths. If you’ll read Feynman’s biography, there’s an interesting section in which it speaks about him discovering the biology postdocs and what they do — he had no clue about biology. He was a physicist and non-applied mathematician, and cells and microbes and microscopes were totally foreign to him. Is that surprising? That wasn’t his field! So one can claim that everything was the rabbis’ field, but then we’ll debate that point, not the one we’re debating up until now. The economic geniuses of our time are not studying implant dentistry and the implant dentistry gurus are not studying telecommunications, and so and and so forth. It’s implausible and unendorsable to assert that studying the super specialized field of Torah makes one an expert in all other fields.
DRosenbach never denied any of these things. He merely stated that the Torah is not a science textbook or work of history. It is meant to teach us how to live our lives and give us a moral compass for life. The sea may very well have split but that is beyond the realm of science, going into the Divine. My only question is, if God wrote the Torah and it is timeless, than why would mistaken scientific ideas of the time e.g. spontaneous generation be put in?
The Catholic answer would be that God wanted these stories written down in a way that would make a point and convey a message and he used people who wrote in their own language and in their own way of thinking to tell these stories.
The extreme right-wing wacko Evangelical viewpoint (not to reveal any bias here) w0uld be that God dictated the entire Bible word for word to the people who wrote it and every word (except for the parts that are clearly intended as metaphors) is literally true. Thus, if someone refers to some life form being spontaneously generated, it was — at least it was then even if it isn’t now. This is not a view that you can run very far with intellectually speaking which is perhaps why Evangelical leaders are rarely noted for being intellectual giants.
Spontaneous generation is not in the Written Torah, it’s in the Oral Torah. And it’s not even really in the Oral Torah — it’s in the Talmud, and not everything in the Talmud is necessarily from Sinai and not everything in the Talmud is necessarily true.
The Torah is not truly timeless, and that’s because the word ‘timeless’ may mean different things to different people, and not all of the definitions would fit with the way in which you just used it.
For example, the Torah was given at a time when quills were used to deposit ink on parchment, and so, all halachic references to ‘writing’ must forever be in that fashion — tefillin, mezuzah, torah and a religious divorce document. Photocopies and computer print outs don’t cut it, because that’s not considered halachic writing.
Similarly, there is a dispute as to what material is considered clothing that would require tzitzis strings should the clothing exhibit 4 corners. Many are of the opinion that only wool or linen suffice — why is that? Because rayon, cotton and plastic were not around at the time, and so the Torah, even though its application is for all time, is stuck in 1312 BCE. Had the Torah been given in 1974 or 2015, things would have been very different.
The Torah is timeless because if we, 3,000 years later can find meaning in it and apply it to our lives, than it transcends time. Your statement that the Talmud is not necessarily true confuses me. If you are saying not scientifically true, than yes, it is correct. But the Talmud is not supposed to be a science textbook so that really is besides the point. To your last point, even though many disputes like the one you bring up are not as important today, we can still learn lessons on how to live our life, which is what the Torah really is i.e. a moral compass for life. So thus, it is timeless.
But it’s not timeless. It was written to be comprehended by people of certain times and places. The rest of us require years of special training and volumes of interpretation to get the context. And so many explanations are full of “Well in those days things were different” or “People weren’t like they are now”.
‘Timeless’ doesn’t have any real meaning unless we explain what we’re trying to say by using it; each of us seems to be using it in a different manner, which is why I say it’s not timeless and by that I mean X, Nuran agrees but means Y, RF says that it is but means Z and someone else is about to post another use of the term (A) and who knows whether it will be yes or no?
I disagree entirely with the last point! The principles of shatnetz would not change if the Torah were given today; the Torah wants us to limit the ways in which we mess with nature, and the way we avoiding bastardizing G-d’s creations.
But I think it is quite clear that it has been our destiny to improve the world by creating new things. Halacha makes this clear: from replacement organs to foodstuffs to fabrics, manmade technology is superior.
Technology is a way of completing the creation of the world, of fulfilling our mission to finish G-d’s work.
Dont’ take in any way other than in the way it is meant — you might disagree, but that doesn’t affect the validity of the assertion. All of the biblical commandments are chukim, which is why instances we can think up of nonapplication of ta’amei hamikra don’t invalidate the laws, unless that’s included within the law. So the reason why shatnes was given might be for that reason, it might not be. The technicalities of shatnes sure mess with the idea that that’s the reason and that’s that.
So who knows what God would have given us in 2011 — there are so many variables and we don’t even know what the variables were in 1312 BCE, so there’s no use in even speculating. I wasn’t referring to shatnes — I was referring to the ever present expression in Judaism that garments are wool and linen and nothing else, so tzitzis might only biblically apply to wool and linen, the garments of the kohen were all wool or linen, tumah only befalls wool or linen, and even though leather is included sometimes, that’s only a function of leather being a garment in 1312 BCE as well. But if you’d like to discuss shatnes, that’s fine — perhaps it would be given in 2011 and perhaps it wouldn’t; we’ll never know. But would there be such a focus on idol worship? It’s tough to say. There Jews are all spread out today, and if we were all concentrated in Chicago, well, there’s not much foreign slaughter of animals going on there, but if the Jews were concentrated in India, perhaps such laws would be incorporated. And if we would all congregate in Israel with a temple, well, there’s not really any idol worship there, is there? It’s just an interesting thing to think about, just like most everything I like to write about.
The idol worship point is excellent – you are right that if the Torah were given today, it would not emphasize the evils of idol worship.
Or maybe it would? We live in a world where people invent new idols, changing their whole lives for sillinesses.
People always find new quasi-religious obsessions to occupy their time. These obsessions are seemingly rational, but if one scratches the surface, they are little different from the ancient methods of bribing the gods. Recycling is one famous example: study after study have demonstrated that almost all recycling is a waste of time and resources, but its advocates don’t care. Recycling is considered a moral good, whether or not it actually achieves anything that is beneficial. And so people are guilt-tripped or legally compelled to stay up late, using valuable time sorting their garbage to appease Mother Earth. And there are countless examples of similar obsessions: macrobiotic diets, hybrid cars, organic foods, etc. The followers don’t care whether or not their obsession makes sense; it makes sense to them on a subconscious level, because it introduces a degree of suffering and guilt – and a means of appeasing Science or Nature — in an otherwise too-perfect world. Is this so different from ancient idol worship?
What is the difference between these obsessions and Jewish sacrifices? Ultimately, the difference is that Jewish sacrifices are about improving ourselves, from the inside out. Sacrifices make us better people, in a truly moral sense. But obsessions such as recycling have an entirely different target – they are about introducing a little inconvenience in order to feel superior without actually achieving any net benefit. And so one ends up with the most nature-obsessed parts of the country becoming, in my wife’s priceless expression, “the land of Sodom and Granola.” As long as one lives a “natural” life, then absolutely any sin is defensible. Recycling does not make us love our neighbor, or follow G-d’s commandments – it just gives us carte blanche to consider ourselves good people even when we are not.
Jews are hardly exempt from these kinds of nutty quasi-religious obsessions; we are not only among the worst practitioners of Earth Worship, but religious Jews go out of our way to add extra religious sacrifices to our daily lives. In direct contradiction to the words of the Torah that we must not add anything to the Law, we insist on taking on additional stringencies (chumras) left right and center. Life is too easy, so we add chumras.
The Torah gives us a way to take on additional sacrifice: we can become a Nazir, with all of its stringencies and obligations. Those of us who absolutely must have more suffering are given the option to take it on, completely within a Torah framework. The Torah does not suggest we take on chumras. But of course we don’t become nazirites anymore.
So as much as I’d like to think that Jews are able to grow and sacrifice solely through prayer, the facts on the ground suggest otherwise. Humans are not happy unless we are suffering, and if it is not imposed externally, then we go out of our way to find some way to impose it on ourselves, even when it is tantamount to idol worship in its own right.
Imagine what would have happened if the Torah had included a complete mathematical treatment of the unification of the electro-weak force. It would certainly put a lot of doubts to rest thousands of years later (and maybe raised a few about flying saucers). But it would have been absolutely incomprehensible and useless to Iron Age sheepherders who didn’t even have the concepts of long division or gravity.
very good points, a nuran and catholic mom. I think a Jewish approach would be very similar to what you are saying. Just so I can argue with A. Nuran, (notice I put the “a” there unlike anyone else who refers to you by your “last name”) I will say that they actually lived in the Bronze Age rather than the Iron Age.
I’m with Phil. What ARE you doing writing Dvar Torahs for a Jewish dirty humor blog?
I was asked to write divrei Torah for this blog, and I contest the assertion that it’s a dirty humor blog.
Since when has discussing God, the Torah and Judaism not been divrei Torah?
Dirty humor blog? You don’t read or listen to much dirty humor, do you?
DRosenbach,
I have no problem accepting Torah based on faith. If my mind is too limited to understand a concept, that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, nor does it mean that I need to find the most “rational” explanation in order to make it fit in with my limited understanding.
You seem to feel that you have to rationlize anything and everything before accepting it. It it floats your boat, good for you. I don’t have any resentment towards you, your view, or your comments.
All I’m saying is that it’s not the mainstream approach to Judaism. Your approach has already lead you to discredit Chazal, and will sooner lead to rejection of the Torah than mine. If one’s mind is arrogant enough to feel that they can decide what was meant literally and what wasn’t based on little experience with the subject matter, you must agree that picking and choosing is a very slippery slope, as we see with the reform movement.
And all I’m saying is that the mainstream approach doesn’t cut it. It ignores questions, diffuses problems with responses like, “because that’s the way it is,” and deals with difficulties and inconsistencies with an altogether flippant approach, as though the questioner must be deluded, the question must be heretical and the answer is, frankly, not worth the time it takes to give.
There’s a rebbe at YU named R’ Baruch Simon, and he’s known at YU for many things — one of them is that he’s a mumcheh (acknowledged authority or superior standing) on mezzuzah. When someone from YU moves into a new house or apartment and there’s some funny doorway or an arch (or half an arch) or a split wall-doorway-entrance or any of these non-straight forward types of areas in which proper placement of the mezzuzah appears to be an issue, many rebbeim will send the guy with this mezzuzah question to R’ Simon, and they don’t feel inadequate or at a loss. He’s pored over the intricate details of these laws to such a greater extent than so many others that there’s no disrespect assumed by the referring rabbi when he sends someone to speak to R’ Simon instead, and rightfully so. Even though rabbis can and usually are learned in most areas of halacha, you get these unique people who just become totally consumed with one area or another, whether it be the laws pertaining to blessings or mezzuzah or niddah or whatever.
So why is there such a hesitation to recognize that the field of hashkafa as it pertains to the interplay between science and Torah as it is expressed in respect to things such as kiruv rechokim (bringing people back into the fold) and kiruv krovim (keeping people in the fold) and other related areas is also a specialized field that many are familiar with but with which only a few are deeply intimate? It appears as though any rabbi will give his opinion on what Judaism states in reply to questions about evolution without stopping to think if he knows anything about a) evolution and b) what Judaism says about it. It becomes a hybrid of Robert Jastrow commenting on Judaism and R’ Revson commenting on science, and it’s a terrible thing for people to have to be a rational person when it comes to counting (we do not skip the number 13 when counting even though some people think it’s evil because we will miss our floor or take the wrong number of pills) but remain irrational when it comes to Torah study and application.
You mention the slippery slope of rationalism, but you fail to mention the slippery slope of fundamentalism — people don’t think, they don’t realize they don’t think and they come to deny reality. Everyone needs a rebbe (even my rebbe) and slippery slopes are out there — that doesn’t mean we stop skiing. It just means that we keep close contact with our skiing advisor, and call him immediately if we think we’re heading for some rocks. The mainstream approach has moved so far away from the edge of the cliff that it has gotten so near to the other edge, and some have already fallen over that side.
DRosenbach,
If the mainstream approach doesn’t cut it for you, and you feel the need to rationalize in order to believe, I’m not going to be the one to stop you from doing so.
The kiruv example isn’t necessarily about doing what is immediately right. Take an example on outreach organizations that invite people to a Shabbat meal or seder knowing good and well that they will drive there. I would think that the prohibition against having someone drive to you on Shabbat would negate the mitzvah of them coming to eat the meal. However, these rabbis have come up with ways to rationalize why they should still invite them, namely “It’s OK for them to drive today, hopefully by the time were done with them, they’ll know better tomorrow”, etc.
To re-iterate my point, you have a set of standards that isn’t defined by anyone but yourself and perhaps a handful of likeminded people. What may seem certain and acceptable to you, may seem outrageous or ridiculous to the next. How can you define a clear line hashkafic for mainstream frum Jews to follow if you’re saying that it’s based on individual belief?
As for a “fundamentalist” view, I’m not 100% sure what that word really means. I may view a certain type of chassid or charedi that way, while they view me as a shaygetz. Yet a liberal M.O may view me as a fundementalist while I view them as a shaygetz. In turn, the conservative guy may view the M.O as a fundamentalist, etc.
Seriously,
I’m no wine expert. I’m guessing that different people had different reactions to to wine (taste, intoxication). Probably had different standards of fermentation as well. As with many talmudic arguments, you can easily Rashi was referring to one region or era and Rambam another.
In general, I believe they drank stronger wine. A Cohen was considered intoxicated and forbidden to serve after drinking a reviit (3.5 – 5 ounces). I can safely say that most grown men today wouldn’t even get a slight buzz from a 13% wine, let alone something like Rashi or Moscato dasti at 5 – 8%. To be considered legally drunk today, and adult male would need to down a reviit of hard alcohol (around 40%).
I’m not sure about this. We’ve gotten wine and beer yeast spores from archeological sites in the Near East. On the whole they were no stronger and in many cases weaker than what we use today. In any case, today’s strongest TurboYeasts – specially genetically engineered – top out at about 18% alcohol. 5 ounces at 18% alcohol means less than an ounce of ethanol or AT MOST what you get in two shots of booze.
And that’s assuming you drink your wine straight. The custom in the Ancient world was to water it.
I’m wondering if you can get it any stronger by double or triple fermenting it. I don’t have an alcohol meter, but I once double fermented a mix of grape and apple juice, stuff must have been close to if not over 20% judging from it’s effect 😉
Anyway, if Rashi’s wine was anything like todays “Rashi wine”, it must have been very watered down, I think it’s like 5 or 6 percent. So in comparison, if people drank “cask strength” wine before his times, it would have been considered quite strong by his standads.
All this is aussming their wine was 100% pure. If they mixed other plants (especially if they had narcotic effects), the higher buzz may have been perceived as being due to the wine being stronger. People that were going to be put to death by Beit Din were given wine with diluted frankincense in it shortly before being killed.
The final strength is determined by the amount of sugar you start with and the concentration of alcohol the yeast can tolerate. I’m not aware of any yeasts which can survive past ~20%, so that’s about the limit for fermentation. If you had a stuck fermentation at near that proof adding some sugar and nutrients and re-pitching the yeast might kick it up a notch.
Good point about the other stuff. We’ve got a pretty good idea of what went into a lot of ancient beers and some wines, but people have taken all kinds of things for fun.
Maybe they just couldn’t hold their liquor.
We know what they added to wine to make it taste better (remember, in a world without an understanding of sulfides and yeasts, winemaking yielded a highly unpredictable and often nasty product).
Quoting from the paper: “Cornels, figs, medlars, roses, cumin, asparagus, parsley, radishes, laurels, absinthium, junipers, cassia, peppers, cinnamon, and saffron, with many other particulars, were also used for flavouring wines. Greeks added grated goat’s milk cheese and white barley before consumption of wine. Discriminating Romans even kept flavor packets with them when they traveled, so they could flavour wines they were served in taverns along the way.”
The reality is not so simple, as is documented in the paper. In ancient Israel (pre-Hellenistic), they only spiced wine – they did not dilute it. And in Roman Gaul, as in Rashi’s time, they always drank wine undiluted.
Interesting that the gemara’s definition of wine dilution for a ben sore umoreh (rebellious son) is identical to the greek legal definition of a barbarian: Dilution of 1:1 or less.
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