I find it a real challenge to write the weekly divrei Torah for FrumSatire because I sense the audience has exceedingly high demands. This is not some lame yeshiva day school weekend packet for which unevocative Torah insights are all but sought out. Initially, it sometimes troubles me greatly when readers question my assumptions — but I then suddenly find myself privileged with new appreciation for how perspectives of reality are all too often, if not invariably, substituted for reality.
I can hardly write a single idea without someone asking, “why would you say such a thing?” And my response is frequently, “Well, to write divrei Torah, there has to be a few ground rules — if we don’t assume there’s a God and the Torah is of divine origin, why are we bothering to expound on these ideas? As Dr. Gary Greenstein, one of my favorite professors, is apt to say: “If I don’t agree with your premises, I can’t very well agree with your conclusions.”
Judaism has had a difficult time over the years, theologically speaking. We now live in a generation that is too far removed from the events at Sinai to know objectively anything about what happened there. It used to be recognized as a given that Moses received the Torah from God in 1312 BCE, but that’s been all but reduced to faith — and the problem with faith is that you can’t very well direct someone else to have faith; it’s sort of acquired, like a taste for Mountain Dew.
But I expect that, if we are to assume that the traditions of historicity of Judaism actually transpired, we are left with a difficult task interpreting the midrashic literature when it contradicts reason, logic, science or anything else we hold near and dear as tenets of reality. There’s a verse in this weeks parsha that depicts the introduction to national revelation at Sinai, describing the Israelites as having “stood at the base of the mountain.” (Exodus 19:17) Chazal jumps at the opportunity of spinning what would appear to be a simple metaphor, taking liberty with the word b’tachtis (at the base or foot [of the mountain]) and, as Rashi quotes the Talmud in Shabbos 88a, it’s explained that Mount Sinai was uprooted from the crust of the Earth and suspended over the nation “like a barrel” as an ultimatum — “Accept this Torah or die!” and it would have been the original Mount Sinai Cemetery. Not only is this contrary to the tenets of reality I described above, but it’s also contrary to multiple tenets of Judaism — forced conversion is hardly acceptable, so what’s going on? Moreover, what has this got to do with a barrel? I’ve never understood that! I’d think a hovering mountain is alarming enough, but perhaps it’s just something lost in the translation.
Fortunately, we are not bidden to submit to absurdism like the other religions of the world are, in that our claims, while potentially questionable, are much more thoroughly substantiated than that of anyone else — but how does that help? Isn’t it like saying, “my giant squid is more likely real than your chupacabra?” I suppose, though, that, among other things, the fortitude of trusted rebbeim allows me the fortitude to hold out for another 80 years.
For this freedom to take midrashic liberalism at something less than face value we can look to Maimonides, who provides us with an extensive worldview in his peirush hamishnayos in Sanhedrin 10. There, he lists 3 groups of people, and categorizes the first as those who “interpret the words of Chazal literally” and as a result, “do not grasp their intended message.” In other words, he decries those that swallow midrashic liberalism hook, line and sinker without concern for the ramifications.
In this vein, the Meshech Chochma provides a truly fascinating explanation of the incident — there was no hovering mountain, and there was certainly no barrel. The Israelites were faced with such an exceedingly extraordinary challenge — accept the word of God from God himself… try to imagine that for just a few seconds. I mean, assuming again that it could happen, that’s like the absolute ultimate psychosocial constraint possible, if it did happen.
The Talmud continues on with Rava suggesting that the words kimu v’kiblu (“established and took upon themselves”) in the Megillah (Esther 9:27) refer to the Jews affirming their uncoerced acceptance of God’s rule. That’s a beautiful explanation, because Purim was all about the concealed nature of God’s miraculous intervention — very subtle and very unimposing — yet the Jews looked at that and were able to make a less pressured decision to accept God’s rule.
So perhaps there’s no real way to substantiate our Torah, but perhaps there are a bunch of compelling bits of evidence that, if strung together, can suffice.
The most compelling explanation I heard was the one that says it doesnt mean they would die there, it means that without Torah their lives would be lifeless and meaningless, and therefore like death.
How is life without Torah “lifeless and meaningless” — that’s nothing more than clear rhetoric, something you’d likely hear from a common ignorant practitioner of yeshivish fundamentalism.
That argument is defective because it is cyclic. One will only propose that a Torah-less life is worthless if one supposes the existence of an afterlife according to the Torah is true, and one will only suppose that if someone accepts the Torah as truth — thus, informing a non-acceptor of the truth of Torah that he or she is wasting his life by not subscribing to Torah values that he or she doesn’t accept as true is begging the question. Your premises are doubted, so your conclusions cannot be accepted.
He is clearly not Orthodox, because an Orthodox Jew would never say such outright heresy. And by using obvious non-Torah logic it is pointless to adress him. Life without Torah is equal to death, and thats the be and end all of it all. The whole point is that they did accept it as truth.
Nate, I am pretty sure that what you said is an example of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.
They did accept it, so why the need to convince them? And if they didn’t accept it, how is this argument going to help…it supposed the truth of Torah to advance an argument to accept the truth of Torah?
Like I said, formally valid because the conclusion follows from the premise, but validity is merely a technical requirement for soundness of an argument. The fact that the premise relies on the conclusion to be true makes for a defective, unsound argument — one that is way less compelling of an explanation for kafeh aleihem har k’gigis than the one I presented.
Nate,
You do realize you’re talking to the author himself..
Dale, may I ask you a weird question? Please don’t be offended though.
If you were to go through the first five books of the Bible with highlighters, and mark everything that you, as an Orthodox Jew, absolutely believe literally happened in green … and mark everything you believe to be metaphorical, allegorical, symbolic or just impossible or dubious in pink … what percentage would be green and what would be pink?
No offense taken — I think that’s a great question.
I cannot answer your question, though, in a way that would suit you for 2 reasons:
1) The Torah itself is not a stand alone text — it is completely worthless without the Oral law. We cannot understand any laws because only mere snippets or off-hand comments are made about the vast majority of them. And what we do have in the text often speaks in what I could call “biblical poetry” — grandiose, sweeping generalization using the types of words and references that, if used today, would be met with responses like, “wow, that sounds so biblical.” Hebrew is a tremendously euphemistic language, and the Torah is written in Hebrew. Moreover, we can’t read it without a necessarily extrinsic tradition because Hebrew has no vowelization — it’s a language of consonants. So those who deny the existence of an oral accompaniment are kidding themselves when they, whether they be Christian, Muslim, Karaite or other, say something like, “well, we reject the need to comply with prohibitions of milk and meat.” Chalav only means “milk” if you read it with the rabbinically accepted vowelization. It can just as validly be read as cheilev, “fat.” So they’ll accept our version of how to read it but then reject our version of how to keep it — doesn’t make much sense to me. Anyway, there are things that all of Judaism maintains is metaphorical: like the verse that seemingly calls for the offspring of Levirate marriage to be named after the deceased husband (Deuteronomy 25:6) — no one claims that that was done or supposed to be done; it’s symbolic, in that the offspring of the Levirate marriage will carry on the legacy of the dead guy. Then there’s midrashic literature regarding things that obviously didn’t happen — like the moon complaining that the sun was cramping his style, and God punishes the moon by shrinking him down but giving him stars as a constellation…er…consolation prize. Does anyone actually say that that actually happened? Or that the various mountains of the Sinai wilderness fought over who should be graced with the giving of the Torah.
2) Even after we get through what I wrote in #1 above, there come more precise attacks on the historicity of the Torah’s biblical stories, and I refer here to everything from Adam+Eve to Noah to the Patriarchs to the bondage in Egypt to Jonah to Job. If Adam never existed, it doesn’t have any fundamental ramifications in the life of an Orthodox Jew — he must still wear tefillin, she must still go to the mikvah prior to resuming physical intimacy with her husband and we’ve still got to sit in a succah. R’ Jeremy Wieder points this out in a lecture he gave a few years back, and I think it’s a crucial point to bring out. Lots of questions are introduced if you look at things in this light, but one thing it does do is portion off the Torah into 2 separate albeit parallel and even concurrent texts: one telling us how to and how not to live our life and another giving us what appears to be historical documentation for the purpose of teaching us lessons relating to the merits of displaying zrizus (alacrity) for doing God’s will and having proper appreciation for the things other people do for us.
So it’s not just highlighting what’s true and what’s not true. If I say that the prohibition of placing a stumbling block before a blind man (Leviticus 19:14) actually means — in biblical euphemistic poetry — not to mislead people who are unaware of potential dangers, such as telling someone how great an idea it is to break up with this great girl they’re dating because I want to marry her, or telling them to buy into the bond market because I see it’s going to tank but this guy let’s his dog run on my property all the time and I’d like to punish him — but that there is no actual biblical prohibition of putting a trip-overalbe obstacle into the path of a blind man, does that get green or does that get pink? When we say there’s a prohibition of eating blood, but we eat blood all the time because the Talmud modifies the prohibition to not include blood that is subsumed within a piece of meat, does that get green or pink? In essence, what I’m trying to say is that almost nothing that appears in the Torah is to be taken literally. We do not poke people’s eyes out when they poke another person’s eyes out, and we do not require women to wear tzitzis, even though you’d never know that by reading the text.
But if you leave all that alone and want to know if I take things that most people say happened as not actually happening — personally, I’d say that Abraham is the first historically accurate thing in the time frame. And as R’ Wieder asserts, he’d be surprised if we have to cast that as allegory, but it certainly doesn’t undermine the basis for Judaism, because we don’t do the Judaism because of Abraham. I just don’t know yet how everything falls into the categories of literal or figurative because I haven’t lived long enough and don’t know enough about the world to decide upon everything.
Dale, thank you so much for your detailed answer. I totally see what you’re saying.
All sounds good. Except that there are millions who believe, myself included, that Midrash is to be taken literally too. So yes, the moon argued, yes we cover the challah so that its not insulted, all that. With perfect faith. Just becuz it makes no rational sense to us, doesnt make it impossible. There are many different realms and plains of thought and existence. But like you say, some things are not relevant to know if they are literal or not, unless you’re one of Slifkin’s cronies, in which case everything is open to debate.
DovBear on his blog argues that R’ Shimon bar Yochai couldnt have written the Zohar, becasue among other reasons, there are people, places, and events that are mentioned that didn’t exist at his time. So? He could have mentioned Boro Park in the Zohar, it wouldn’t make it any less possible that he still wrote it, in my view. Some things don’t need investigations to make them true, they are true because our God and our Mesorah say they are true.
Well, Nate, like you said above, it’s pointless to address someone like you.
For example, as R’ Mordechai Becher likes to point out, religious pluralism is a delusion. If Judaism demands that we accept Jesus as nothing special and Christianity demands that we accept him as the Lord and Messiah, the beliefs are mutually exclusive and so incompatible. I’d like to think that Judaism is true and Christianity is false, and Christianity doesn’t really give any convincing responses to the issues raised by Judaism, but we still have Christians who will debate their faith — and that’s because you can’t catch them is they won’t actually debate. They say incoherent things like, “God is love,” and “Jesus is the light,” that don’t really mean anything, but they pretend that these serve as valid responses to questions like “how can you say that Jesus is the Messiah when none of the criteria are sufficiently met and any that are are met by hundreds of others as well?”
No one says that challah is embarrassed or insulted — there’s a concept of kadima (precedence) when reciting brachos and bread preceded wine. Gefilte fish, olive dip and guacamole also precede wine, which is why R’ Schachter is often quoted that these too should be covered or not present on the table during kiddush. Insulting the challah is a way of explaining the principle of kadima to children who are too immature to comprehend the realities of life. So in the same way that my daughter came home this week with a poster presentation of a thermometer and tells me that 32 degrees is freezing, but she quite evidently had no idea that that’s only on the Fahrenheit scale and only for water and only at standard pressure, I let it slide because she wouldn’t be able to grasp the details. The moon is an inanimate object and so are mountains and the moral of the stories are so blatantly obvious that it’s beyond the threshold of reasonableness to even suggest that they were meant as anything but stories — but we can’t speak about it unless you’re willing to think. Your position is not indefensible, it’s not actually defended by anyone other than yourself and others who don’t understand that they’re not meant to reflect reality. Even though I mentioned the Maimonidean approach above, there are heavy hitters (like the Vilna Gaon) who disagree — that’s fine, no one said there’s a uniform approach in Judaism. But even the Vilna Gaon covered his challah because of kadima and not because he’s afraid the challah would be embarrassed.
They are totally reality. Lemme guess, you dont believe Bilaam’s donkey spoke just like a person speaks. You don’t believe that fire came from heaven every single day in the Temple and consumed the sacrifices. You don’t believe that Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish and spoke to Hashem from inside it. It’s all childrens stories for you. Kefira mamash.
And frankly, there is no evidence that Jesus even existed, so to heck with that entire discussion. Had he existed, surely the Talmud would have addressed it, but it doesnt make any mention of him at all. (I already know all the so-called mentions, and they are tiflus. The entire Jesus persona is the result of a pagan myth).
Torah requires no proof, no investigations. It stands on its own merits.
Yes, the Jesus story is based on mythology. So is the Davis story.
Davis?
Perhaps he meant David story.
And there are different levels of disbelief. So to say that a snake talked and wanted to sleep with Eve, R’ Schachter agreed that that’s an allegory. Bilaam’s donkey, it either did happen and was a miracle, or didn’t happen, and it was all a dream. It doesn’t bother me because the potential for it to be a dream doesn’t undermine Judaism. Neither does the actual vs. allegorical existence of Adam + Eve. But a fire coming down in the mikdash…what’s the problem with that? Very well contained, very specific, very regular and very easy to understand as a stand-alone miracle. And sort of problematic if it didn’t happen, because the entire Temple service is disrupted if you say parts of it didn’t occur.
Jonah and the whale? Seems very dubious. Could it happen? Sure — it’s not an absolute contradiction? Did it happen? I don’t know, but it does seem very questionable. Jonah living 3 days inside a large sea creature. So let’s say it’s a whale, because there is no halachic differentiation between cetaceans and fish. Jonah was where, in the whale’s mouth? In it’s stomach? In the intestines? I don’t know if whales have sphincters like horses and so cannot vomit, so let’s say Jonah remained in the mouth. He was surrounded by water for minutes on end, but didn’t drown? Was this a baleen whale…probably because toothed whales aren’t really large enough to hold a full grown adult in the gastrointestinal tract. Baleen whales feed by ramming through the water and then closing their mouths and pushing all the water out through the baleen, trapping the microorganisms and macroorganisms against the baleen combs, and then wiping it all off with their tongues and swallowing. How did Jonah avoid this? And how did he breath? Whales live underwater and their mouths are full of water — they breath through their blowhole.
My point is that there is lots of troubling issues that are all but ignored if one is very childish in their approach to things and you just say, “the man was swallowed by a fish.” He wasn’t even swallowed…because we said he’s still in the mouth. If he descended deeper into the GI tract, he’d have to deal with stomach acid, and even less oxygen and even less room. What’s the diameter of a whale’s duodenum? If I say it’s allegorical, it’s only because I’m suggesting that it was meant to be allegorical. And if it’s miraculous, how many apparent violations of nature have to occur for it to have happened? Loads. Again, I question not if God could do it but if God did it. Like Noah’s Ark and somehow kangaroos are transported to contiguous land mass and afterward transported back — children don’t stop to think about that, and neither have you or most other people. So could it happen is not the question…it’s did it happen. I doubt it, but I could be wrong, but either way it doesn’t make a bit of a difference in terms of my obligation to make kiddush tonight, assuming the God of Moses exists. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t have to make kiddush, but that’s not my argument.
If God wishes a whale to have a man in his mouth or in his tuchus, it happens. Thats all I really care about. God is not bound by “natural” laws, He made them and can break or bend them at will. Obviously He did or He wouldn’t have said so.
You’re obviously missing the point.
Maimonides states clearly that midrashim are not to be taken literally almost all the time, and makes reference to biblical textual verses not being literal. R’ Saadia Goan states clearly that there are many times when biblical textual verses are not to be taken literally. That’s from whence this all derives.
Nate — you are championing a fight that you sense is necessarily the Orthodox Jewish position. All I’m saying is that it is an Orthodox position, not the Orthodox position, so understand two things: we can agree to disagree and you ought not lose your cool, shouting down those who disagree with your sliver of the mesorah.
Several mistakes in one sentence.
First, we are bidden to submit to absurdism like other religions. In fact, we’re required to on pain of cherem, death and eternal punishment. Start with the 13 Principles and work out. Belief is required even when it contradicts mountains of evidence.
Second, Judaism is like many other religions. The relationship of the Orthodox to his Scriptures mirrors that of the conservative Muslim, the Evangelical Christian or the Vedic Hindu. We revere the texts and make them central to belief. We found our view of the world on their inerrancy and immutability.
Third, our beliefs are in no way “thoroughly substantiated”. The fables of Genesis from the Creations to Adam and Eve to the Flood may be pretty stories. But they aren’t true. They didn’t happen. They’ve been knocked down so thoroughly in so many ways. The only way to preserve emunah in them is increasingly desperate, shrill denials. It’s gotten to the point where science is forbidden, period because it consistently tears down these Bronze Age fairy tales. History has to be constantly rewritten or simply ignored.
Even the Exodus – the central narrative of our people – crumbles under the archeologist’s hammer and the historian’s books. The destruction of the Pharaoh and all his armies in the Red Sea? The records don’t show it. It’s not anywhere in the fairly extensive record of the times.
The plagues? Nothing. The escape of a huge captive nation of slaves in a single night? Silence. The strange things that were supposed to have happened from pillars of fire to the Earth opening up and swallowing evildoers to the golden mice and hemmeroids? We only have the one text which we are forced to believe at gunpoint because the text says it’s true. “The Napkin Religion is the one true religion because it says so right here on this napkin.”
Did Moses wear a shtreimel like the Satmar claim as an article of faith? Don’t be absurd. Did Sinai get picked up to hover over the Earth like Don Corleone’s contract in The Godfather? Not even. Did the Earth stop rotating on its axis and revolving around the Sun and then start up again for Joshua’s personal benefit? Of course not.
And all those intricate stories the Ancients made up to fill in the gaps, satisfy their reification or make the text square with their own preconceptions? If it were anyone else’s religion you’d point and laugh. But it’s the one you were raised in. You are emotionally (and financially) invested in it. You hold it to an infinitely lower standard.
Fourth, many religions don’t require belief in absurd things like we do. Many Hindus don’t believe in the importance of the Vedas. Millions of them are atheists. Quite a few other religions acknowledge that their stories are metaphors and should not be taken literally. Still others have conceptions of truth which work well practically and have nothing to do with our conceptions of them. There’s a whole wide world out there with millions of years of human history.
There is no evidence whatsoever that contradicts a single word of Torah. If the “evidence” is presented by a Non-Jew or a Non-Frum Jew, it is meaningless.
You are a kofer, and as such are dead, so it is not permitted to reply any further.
Nate: you won’t win arguments by presenting childish rhetoric. “If evidence is presented by a non-practicing Jewish person, it is meaningless?” Where does that come from? Apparently no where, because you just made it up.
You act as though you are a belligerent boor — how can anyone take you seriously? You declare that it is impermissible to reply to others, but your loose tongue implies to all that you are undeserving of response.
Please keep your posts civil — no one appreciates a demagogue.
That is correct, it is not rhetoric. If a goy “proves” something, it means nothing, because he doesn’t have Torah. He can present his theory to be verified by a Gadol. If the Gadol says its correct, then it is. If not, not. You think if Stephen Hawking says the world is 10 bazillion years old that makes it so? Ha! In a pig’s eye. When Rav Kanievsky says it, give me a call.
You’re confusing siman and sibah, Nate. A siman is an indicator, while a sibah is a trigger. So when you read a thermometer, that’s just telling you what the temperature is, but it’s not making the temperature what it is. When your microwave says 2 minutes left, I don’t think the display is the trigger for when the microwave will finish — rather, it’s merely telling you what the internal mechanism is prepared to do. If the display was broken, the microwave would still work, it’s just that you wouldn’t know when it will finish.
Stephen Hawking’s deductions doesn’t make anything so — he’s merely reading the evidence. He may misread or misinterpret the evidence, but even if he doesn’t and he says something like, “The light is red,” it’s red independent of Hawking — he’s just interpreting his perceptions.
Why do you think a gadol necessarily has all the answers? Was R’ Moshe Feinstein a gadol? What about R’ SZ Auerbach? But if they ever disagreed, wouldn’t that mean that one of them doesn’t have the answer? All a gadol is doing is infusing what he perceives as the Torah’s sentiments, and since he knows lots of Torah, we assume that what he says is a Torah-backed notion.
And what do you think will happen when R’ Kanievsky says that the world is over 6000 years old…most yeshivish people live in an insular world devoid of science to protect them from going off the derech, and they don’t even know what carbon is, let alone carbon dating. What are they supposed to do with that information? So R’ Kanievsky will never say such a thing, because he has nothing to gain. The yeshivish people speak like Nate — they are not interested in truth, only in rabbinically-backed validity. It’s sort of like Wikipedia — as long as you quote me a source, that’s good enough, even if times have changed and we know that to be false.
And there’s no such thing as a “bazillion” — that’s just being cynical, Nate. Very telling, indeed.
Well I happen to believe in Wikipedia too, for most things that dont contradict Torah anyway.
It’s all semantics and precise wording for you guys in the scientific and rationalist world, isn’t it? We dont care about siman sibah or wtf-ever. Hawking says red, blue, green, it means nothing, just a goy spouting gibberish. A Rav Kanievsky singing a nursery rhyme has more weight than an entire treatise by a Harvard PhD ever will.
I don’t value education, so Harvard PhD or no, I’m going to weigh arguments by the merit of the argument, not by the number of fancy papers that have the argument maker’s name written in calligraphy on them.
Sorry…you’ve become a bit to understand…I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Without the education, you cant understand the arguments, so your statement is inherently silly. The merit of the argument in the Torah world is not based on your understanding of it, but the understanding that the Gedolei Yisroel have of it. Then you find out what they say, and you start marching lock-step behind them. That’s how the Torah world operates.
Gedolei Yisroel are not infallible. And they are entrusted to keep the peace among those who are uneducated, uninformed and sometimes quite ignorant, so they take lots of liberties relating to things that don’t matter to them.
About 10 years ago, I was at a friend for shabbos and his superbly yeshivish brother-in-law was eating a meal with us. The discussion turned to cloning because it was in the news that week, and without even knowing what a cell is, this yeshivah guy shouted out, “cloning is assur.” Surprisingly, he thought he would end the discussion with that. That was my first encounter with the somewhat ubiquitous yeshivish attitude that is a mix of ignorance and intolerance towards science and the world at large.
And my comment relating to my lack of respect for education per se was meant to counter your Harvard PhD comment, that’s all. Just because someone went to Harvard doesn’t mean anything. For instance, Harvard has one of the worst dental schools in the country in terms of clinical experience, yet the public would never know that. They spend so little time with patients that it’s a wonder they let them graduate with a degree recognized by state boards of dentistry.
I kind of like Nate’s argument style. It’s much more intellectually honest than someone who has to square belief that kofrim deserve to die with not wanting to sound like a small-minded nut.
I think you like it for a much better reason.
Seeing it makes it easier for you to think that anyone who shares his basic ideology, shares his way of thinking as well, thereby allowing you that feeling of relief, because “I guess that guilty feeling pulling at me is just my imagination after all”.
Your argument runs on for much more than your content does. Although I am entirely unfamiliar with Hinduism because I find it so complex that any attempt to discover its essence leads me confused, Christianity and Islam are Judaism knock-offs and whatever they say that’s true isn’t new and whatever they say that’s new isn’t true, so they can serve as no evidence against Judaism.
What in the 13 principles is irrational? Other than a belief in God, which is purported to derive from a national revelation, everything else is rational following such a purported event. If God revealed himself, are we to deny his requests or his promises, or those said over by trusted messengers in his name? Assuming we can establish the existence of the God of Moses, everything follows very nicely.
I reject the assertions you make in paragraphs 3, 6 and 7 as either not reflecting Judaism’s stance. Funny how you pick on these. Yes, science was weak when the Torah was given and everyone of the time might have believed crazy and unfounded things about the world, like the idea of geocentrism. But as we find out more about the world, we see that the Torah makes no inconsistent statements. Sure, rabbis argued about uterine blood forming milk, but that’s because Michelangelo thought about it as well — people were really backward thinkers by today’s standards. But they are not to be judged by today’s standards, are they?
We laugh when we read quotes from the 1960s that computers will be like this or be like that in the future, and we see that that’s totally not the way things developed — we laugh because we find it funny that people were so mistaken in their foresight. But we don’t call them dumb. So I don’t really see how you can condemn rabbis (who we do not say are the sons of God) for saying ridiculous things about the world when that’s what people used to think back then.
To say there’s no evidence for the Exodus from Egypt, alright…that’s at least a valid point. I’m no historian, but it’s apparently not as troubling and one-sided as you make it, because I’m good friends with a historian who I trust to be reasonable, and as G*3 brought up apparent historical inconsistencies in the past, I’ve received counter-evidence of equal caliber to defend Judaism. If you have specific issues, such as us not finding evidence of certain events, well, it was a long time ago and we don’t really know where this purported Red Sea incident occurred and documentation is not the greatest from way back when — these are among the defenses that I’ve come across.
But do you actually think that complaining that some Satmer chassidim claim that Moses wore a streimel is relevant at all to Judaism, other than suggesting that there are ignorant people who are Jewish? No one doubts that there are silly and stupid people among blacks, Hispanics, Italians, Australians, dentists, politicians — every group of people will exhibit at least a small sub-population of idiots, and that’s just the reality. So I’m surprised that you’d reduce the credibility of your argument so easily that it forces me to rethink everything you say for possible bias to the ridiculous.
But your main point is valid — everyone is a hypocrite, because everyone is “hypo” (only nominally and that’s the opposite of “hyper”, exceedingly) critical about things that are near and dear. So do Jews argue against Judaism less than they would attack Christianity for the same things? Yes, and I’ve seen the likes of R’ Jonathan Rietti and R’ Mordechai Becher do it. But when you get them behind closed doors and discuss these things without cynicism, you get them to say what they really want to say but can’t because they’re not on the defense. But when you attack with “Judaism is just as irrational as all other religions because some people of the faith make irrational claims,” that’s not really an argument that anyone has to defend, now is it?
What’s irrational?
Let’s start with a few of the wowzers…
1) The Mishnah came direct and unedited from Sinai
2) The lawyers and politicians at the Great Assembly were motivated by nothing more than the purest motives. No politics. No accretions. Nothing.
3) The oral traditions were completely accurate and unchanged over hundreds of years
4) The descriptions of the physical world attested to by various religious authorities are an accurate account of how the world works and its history
5) That there was a single Oral Law given at Sinai – the historicity of which is dubious at best – not mentioned in the written Torah, not universal in pre-Talmudic Judaism.
6) The further back you go the wiser people were.
That’s just to start.
You’ll notice I’m not addressing belief in a God or gods here. I have beliefs on this matter, but the evidence is subjective and personal. It would be dishonest for me to offer them to anyone else on that basis.
The assertions that I make in paragraphs 3, 6 and 7 are important because they address fundamental concerns about knowledge, dogma and the ability of inerrantists to even approach contradictory information. If they can’t see it, can’t hear it and can’t address it they are outside the realm of reason and evidence.
The Satmar example illustrates how errors can creep in when faith in authority becomes an end in itself and challenges are sanctioned. It’s a trivial thing. But the fact that it gained and increases its traction despite how trivial it is to refute is a useful example. So are things like “and it’s that way because all Israel agreed”. We have ample evidence as to just how inaccurate oral traditions and accepted wisdom can be. That our religious traditions are the one exception strains credulity.
Let’s take the real bugaboo, Science. As I’ve said before, Science and Revealed Religion are fundamentally incompatible. Much as it pains me to say so, that includes the Social Sciences when they’re behaving well. I can rehash that if you want, but it’s been addressed many times.
Science changes. In time everything we learn from it will be superseded by something better whether in a revolutionary way or the more prosaic “Lay one more brick in the shining Temple of Knowledge”. We will certainly be surprised by the future. But that does not remove the burden of proof from the pious – any pious – to marshal evidence at least as good for their positions. Simply claiming “Next week we might discover the Ark, and the Angel with the flaming sword might come down with all the secrets,” doesn’t work. When those data arrive we’ll address them. In the meantime deal with what we have.
Your conclusion is classic but does not make the grade. We have ways of disproving things and separating out truth from error however imperfectly. Even imperfect people can do that under systems which allow for self-correction and the incorporation of unpleasant truths. Sometimes it takes a while, but progress does get made.
The same cannot be said of systems which are based on authority and which value belief and obedience above all else. They may reach convergence on issues. They may happen to have correct answers. But it’s entirely hit or miss and more prone to firing the arrows and drawing circles around them or, worse, firing them at dissenters.
1) The Mishnah came direct and unedited from Sinai — Why would you think that the Mishna came directly and unedited from Sinai — legal opinions people who didn’t yet exist are mentioned throughout the Mishna, so that doesn’t make any sense. When comments like these are made, it’s mere hyperbole.
2) The lawyers and politicians at the Great Assembly were motivated by nothing more than the purest motives. No politics. No accretions. Nothing. — Again, hyperbole. No one has any bias? That’s obviously impossible. But making the cut for the Anshei Knesses Hagedolah, the Sanhedrin and other ruling bodies of great importance and significance was a very difficult task. Those chosen were assumed to be the least involved in dubious activity because such bodies of authority were necessary and the best were chosen.
3) The oral traditions were completely accurate and unchanged over hundreds of years — That’s another misleading statement you make — of course oral traditions changed. People who made statements after time X were obviously changing the tradition that existed prior to time X.
4) The descriptions of the physical world attested to by various religious authorities are an accurate account of how the world works and its history — Chazal’s description of the natural world was not supernaturally granted — thus, they didn’t develop all the neat and helpful things that we use today to save lives, something Chazal would have definitely agreed would be a noble thing to do and a big mitzvah. They didn’t receive a divine tip-off about the existence of x-rays, they didn’t receive secret messages about the fundamentals of germ theory and they didn’t discuss (in any great depth) the nature of death — and by that, I mean cardiac death vs. brain death, because there was no need — they didn’t know CPR, they didn’t have defibrillators and they didn’t know how to do heart transplants. So when someone died, they died, and there was no two ways about it. Now we know more, so we can look back and say, “yeah, that whole bloodletting thing…umm, I’ll pass.”
5) That there was a single Oral Law given at Sinai – the historicity of which is dubious at best – not mentioned in the written Torah, not universal in pre-Talmudic Judaism. — OK…this is a really good one. Although it can be perceived as contrived, I don’t sense it necessarily has to be, and I sense it very fair to say as follows: the Written Law doesn’t need to mention the Oral Law, because it’s existence is implicit in the way the text was written. No details, no vowelization, no explanation — I mean the text of the Torah is an absolute total joke, unless, of course, there is something else. R’ Becher has a great analogy — my mom, or your mom, or let’s pick someone’s mom, who’s not ignorant, but suffice it to say has a poor appreciation for didactic classroom science, so much so that common chemistry shorthand is totally meaningless. So you come home with your lecture notes for the day and there’s all this gibberish about NaCl and arrows and a big “O” with 7 dots around it and, I mean, it’s very quaint when mom picks up your paper and asks you why she’s spending so much money on private school and all you do it doodle. She really can’t imagine that everything on the study sheet is straight from the textbook and comprises everything you need to ace the test tomorrow. Needless to say, there’s more than what’s on this sheet, but you went to class, and you’ve been studying chemistry for 3 years and you don’t need a legend at the top telling you what the diagrams for covalent vs. coordinate covalent bonds are — you have that orally. The Torah is the same way — a literal bunch of gibberish if you don’t have the other, deeper, very pertinent information about how to read it, how to understand it and how to apply it.
And universality? Also a great question. It wasn’t universal. That’s why there are so many opinions mentioned in the written version that came many centuries later. If there was no text, than people told it the way they heard it from their rebbe, and Rebbe X stressed A while Rebbe Y emphasized Y and that’s why many years later, there are disputes and differences of opinion on not only what the halacha is, but what was said and what was said about what was said, and many times, even about what other people were arguing about.
6) The further back you go the wiser people were — I’d say this is a very good one to use as a prototype of current misunderstanding. Of course we know more about the world today than we did yesterday, but that’s not what this idea conveys. So perhaps your choice of the word “wiser” is off, but that’s what people say (it’s true), even though they mean something else.
If we assume the existence of the God of Moses to be true, and everything we say about him, then it’s natural to understand that if he gave over some laws to you last week, and I wasn’t there but I hear about it from you, that means you can appreciate the nuances better because you so to speak saw his eyebrows go up when he said this and you saw him point his finger when he said that. But me, all I can do is see when you point your finger. Then, when you’re no longer around and I’m telling my student about what I heard you say about what happened, my student has got to look at my emphasis of your emphasis of God’s emphasis, so there is a natural yeridas hadoros (decline of the generations).
This is not to say that we say whatever the Rif says beats out what R’ Akiva Eiger says, who beats out what R’ Moshe Feinstein says, who beats out what you and I say. I was listening to a shiur last week by R’ Daniel Z. Feldman (YU) about organ donateion, and he was saying how R’ Moshe Feinstein declared that a heart transplant is a double murder — you murder the donor because we necessarily take a still beating heart from someone who is not dead (because if his heart is beating, he is still alive) and you murder the recipient because, although he may have only “months to live” according to the doctor, we end up shortening that to weeks because heart transplants have such a poor outcome.
But that was his ruling back when we, perhaps, didn’t really know what we’re doing. So I’m not getting into halachic definitions of death here, but my point is that it’s perhaps no longer a double murder, although it might still be a single murder. My point — are we greater than R’ Moshe? But is he missing information? So when the Talmud speaks about the natural world and makes halachic decisions based on it and we know better, we don’t follow them. That’s why you go to the doctor when you’re ill, and not the Jewish shaman who practices based on the 7th perek in Gittin, which is full of put-a-chicken-on-you-head and grind-up-scorpion-with-antimony therapeutics.
I just finished the section on tzitizis in the mishna brurah with my chavrusa and we’re moving on to tefillin — I don’t have a MB with me right now, but on the last page or so, there’s a statement about putting the tzitzis in front of your eyes when you say “u’reisem oso” and you’ll be protected from losing your eyesight. That’s absurd! That’s not Judaism! But it’s not meant to be taken literally. If you think about what you’re saying, and you take stock in following God’s will, symbolized by peering at the tzitzis and feeling their power of spiritual meaning, you will never lose sight of God’s will. It’s so self-referencial that it’s almost meaningless — if you look to God you won’t not look to God — but people tend to forget. We all (I hope) love our wives, but do we ever shout at them? But why would we shout…she is our partner, our best friend, our world, our everything!!! But we are human, and we forget, and so we shout, and then we cool down, and then we think, and then we realize, and then we apologize, and then we reconcile, and then we ponder how we just shouted at our wife who is everything to us, and we laugh and say, “what a dumb thing to do.” But then we go through the whole thing a week or a month later. God knows that, and Chazal, who were deep thinkers, knew that, so they told us to gaze at the tzitzis to prevent us from losing sight of our priorites, not to prevent us from losing actual physical sight…that would be preposterous!
All is meant to be taken just as it says. Stop learning and convert to Xtianity. You are a mockery.
Your comments are at odds with Maimonides (Peirush HaMishna, Sanhedrin 10), R’ Saadia Gaon (Emunah V’Deios 7:1), the Maharal (Be’er Hagolah 51:4), Eruvin (63a).
Please comment no further until you address my rebuttal. Do not make unsubstantiated statements and do not tell me what R’ Kanievsky says unless you’ve spoken to him first hand. I’ve sat with the people I quote, and you can contact them and confirm my reports.
It’s like I’m saying is that if you find cherry pie unfathomably bad, here are some recipes for chocolate cake that you might like instead — and you come here to announce to all that cherry pie is so yummy and demand that everyone agree with you.
Show me where I said that HaRav Kanievsky said anything at all. I didnt. I said IF he were to say. If he says cherry pie is yummy, then it is, and you have no right to disagree.
Why are you using R’ Kanievsky as a source to back up your statements when you’re not intimately familiar with his opinion on matters?
And you still have not responded to my rebuttal.
Having nothing to do with what either one of you is arguing, don’t you have better things to do right before and after Shabbos (like helping your wives)? If not, find someone who needs help and help them get ready/ clean up. Just a point of perspective amid all this arguing.
Sweety, if you want help, just ask. You don’t have to pretend to be some anonymous poster.
I don’t see why your professor says that he cannot agree with my conclusions if he doesn’t agree with my premises. You can give a lousy argument for anything, and that thing can still be true. If we cut the numeral 4 down the middle, it is well-balanced, hence 4 is even.
More specifically, why can’t the Torah be meaningful as the collected stories of my ancestors?
It’s a somewhat subtle distinction between things which are demonstrated and things which simply happen to be true. If we flip a coin we can guess whether it will come up heads or tails. There’s no reason to believe one will happen more than the other. If I look at the coin and see that it George Washington’s face on both sides there is a reason for you to believe me when I say the next throw will come up heads.
As to your specific question, the Torah can certainly be meaningful as the teaching stories, the collected wisdom, the traditions, the metaphors and to a certain degree the history of our ancestors. Absolutely. Nobody could deny that. Accepting it as accurate, complete, perfect and authoritative is a mistake.
That’s only because your argument is actually supported by other evidence — it was sort of implied that if the only evidence for your conclusion is your unfounded premise, the conclusion remains unevoked.
It can be, but that’s not what Judaism maintains. We don’t say, “asher noson lanu Toras beautiful and meaningful” — we say “Toras emes.” Christmas can be family fun, and a baptism can be spiritually uplifting, but it’s all nonsense, derived from misconception.
I applaud you on arguing with Nate, it is a real challenge, sort of like talking to a small child. I can see that you are a respectable person and I advise you to ignore Nate because he is so rooted in blind faith that it goes against his narrow minded brand of Judaism to ask questions. Without questions, we would have no Torah She’bal Torah or halachic guidelines. In short, never argue with someone who cannot and will not be able to see the other side of an argument
You are an interesting person to discuss or argue things with. We disagree but in ways which allow for discourse and respect. Talking to Nate is more in the “pearls before swine” category.
Well, thank you both; coming from you two, that means a lot. I look forward with rapture to further discussion.
I first read it at as “Like a Boss” because HaShem is the Boss.
send plagues
like a boss
free my people
like a boss
split the sea
like a boss
give commandments
like a boss
I could go on,
but I gotta drive to my hosts’,
Shabbat Shalom!
It almost seems like your comment here is referencing a different post and it got placed here, instead. I just don’t get it, sorry. 🙂
No. I misread the title of the post and decided to write a few parody lyrics based on that misreading.
Alright — satire devoid of cynicism is always welcome.
The only problem with your scientific evidence and proofs is that they are yours, collectively. They are not ours, collectively. You think that because it’s right there n front of your eyes, for all to see, that it therefore exists. For me and mine, it does not follow as such. We believe that this world is an illusion, as is taught my many many Gedolim thruout the ages. What you think you see is not what is necessarily so.
So, all the evidence you can muster, from all the genius scientific brains that ever lived or will live, dont count as much as 1 single statement from A Gadol. If a thousand scientists say this fossil is 10 million years old, and it is irrefutable, and Rav Ovadiah Yosef says its only a year old, even having no scioentific knowledge whatsoever, then for us, it is a year old, irrefutably and inarguably.
Any part of science that disputes Chazal is just an illusion created by the yetzer hara to demolish your faith and belief in Torah, thats all.
Your grasp of both religion and reality are thoroughly less than adequate. Again, you seem to be championing a fight — you feel like you’ve got to defend yourself against the onslaught of secularism — but that’s just yeshivish talking. Judaism never said that that’s how Judaism has to take on secularism — I don’t know why you think it does, but perhaps it has something to do with listening to the wrong people.
drosenbach-two things. 1)please see first Bartenurah on mishnayos avos and let me know what you think about it 2) if the oral law or midrashim or chazel may be written not to be taken literally, then why do we act in accordance with chazal? how do we know the ethics the ethics they preach are 100% correct? if its not directly from hashem or the Torah then maybe its wrong. I believe them bec they understand the Torah and what Hashem wants better than me, but what if I want total proof? (eilu v’eilu is very difficult to understand in the ethical arena)
I suppose you ask about his comment: “eleh af eilu ne”emru b’sinai.” That’s a very good question, but perhaps it can be answered by his words a few lines up: “shehamidos v’hamusarim shebzo hamesechta.” Is this to be taken literally, that the actual text of the Mishan was given to Moses, or just that the derech haTorah was given to Moses? And what’s the derech haTorah? Compassion, humility, alacrity for things in group A vs. hesitance for things in group B, meticulousness for things in group A vs. inattentiveness for things in group B, etc.
No one knows exactly what Moses heard on Sinai. R’ Schachter (among others, of course — it’s not his idea) pushes the lecture-note theory of the Torah. There’s not 613 commandments; that’s why there’s a big dispute as to what gets counted in 613, and we have all sorts of odd rejoinders to why one counter’s mitzvah doesn’t get counted by another. So there are thousands of commandments with even more sub-commandments, and there’s for whatever reason this 613 number that was stated somehow and somewhy. But God told Moses his divine will including all 3 biblical prohibitions relating to mixtures of milk and meat, and the written text was an intricately complex labyrinth of textual hints, nuances and subtleties that suggest that which is passed down orally and ultimately becomes canonized as the text of the Mishna, and then further passed down orally to ultimately become canonized as the text of the Gemara. Then there’s always the random — although it’s difficult to refer to it really as random, because it happens on almost every page of the Talmud, so we’ll call it apparently near-random, perhaps — Beraisa that’s quoted just in the nick of time to counter or support something or other. So what the Bartenura is saying is that just like Moses got a lot more than the biblical text — but he didn’t get the actual text “im eino makirin oso, meshalchin imo acher” (RH 22a) — so too, he got the message from God that the Jewish way is to find yourself a teacher and stick with him (and not jump around, perhaps looking for the p’sak you want) and find yourself comrades with which you can create a life/Torah support group (and not live the life of a hermit) — but he didn’t get the text that Yehoshua ben Perachya wrote hundreds of years later in Avos 1:6.
Well, that’s where we look to those who know how to interpret the words of Chazal. We choose from among the nation the most learned people — I’ve certainly not completed all of everything there is to learn or even nearly that, and most probably, you haven’t either, so we both need to latch onto those who are closer to that, and they are latched onto those who are still closer, and on and on and on. I have developed a relationship with my spiritual adviser such that I can almost tell what he’ll say given the introductory information he provides after I ask him a question. He has done the same with R’ Shachter, and I’m confident that he will lead me in the right path. And if he says something I disagree with, I attack it with all the sincerity I possess, and he either deflects my attack with more information that I was unaware of but that he perhaps was not missing, or he rethinks what he said and responds, “Hmm…I never thought of that, let me see.” And then he comes back to me a few days later with either a new bit of information or a new outlook.
100% correct? Well, that’s the journey I’m on now, and it looks like I won’t get there for some time. I’ve a whole list of some great people who I’ve spoken to, and I’m still not there, but I get a little closer each day, so that the only real question I have left is “Why do we do what we do?” if we can’t know there’s a God. So I asked my spiritual adviser if that makes me an agnostic, and he responded, “Well, if it does, then I’m an agnostic, too.”
Respond with your email address inserted, so I can look it up and we’ll speak more on it if you’d like.
Kol tuv.
There is so much kefira and apikorsus being spewed here its scary. u have people like nuran saying that noach and mabul never happened and many other such claims (just because he cant wrap his little brain around it), and then seriuos jews come and debate these claims Hashem yracheim! yes one may ask questions, but if any of them lead to god forbid deny even one letter of the torah, written or oral, that is kefira and he has no chelek in olam habo, chazal say even moshe had questions like taddik vra lo but we as humans dont have to know all answers. Nate, let them call u childish or whatever else but at the end of the day your approach is the safest, when people try to answer all questions and start saying this is allegory etc. they are walking on very thin ice (although some may be true) just because u dont undeerstand it doesnt mean its just a moshol, yes bilams animal spoke why make up that it didnt, and true the moon cant speak but we know every creation has malach governing it so maybe it spok
Help,
Please give me something to work with. Is there a reason to take the stories in the Torah literally? Is there a reason to believe the collectors of the Oral Law and its commentaries are uniquely accurate and have a direct unbroken connection to the putative events at Sinai?
On one hand we’re confronted with mountains of evidence that say it didn’t happen that way from biology, physics, archeology, astronomy, chemistry and more.
On the other we’ve got special pleading, Pascal’s wager in Aramaic, begging the question, “just shut up”, ad hominem, false dichotomy, moving the goalposts, final consequences, appeal to authority and appeal to fear. If you’ve got a basis for these beliefs that doesn’t rely on one of these please let me know. I’m absolutely serious. Please.
Nuran,
What surprises me about you more than anything else, is your indiscriminate accusation of any and all Jewish leaders and Rabbis who passed down the mesorah of being corrupt and having ulterior motives (although this is extremely unlikely taking into account the nature of the Torah system, and it’s rigid line which must be kept to in order to avoid being completely ostracized by the entire Jewish community, as well as the emphasis in Jewish life on developing an altruistic character), while Bible critics, scientists, and archaeologists (who have always made a living by making “discoveries” which are favorable to the public) are viewed by you as filled with 100% truth, having no reason at all to lie or give a one sided thesis. (Notwithstanding vehement anti-Semitism and boundless other incentives to ‘disprove’ the divinity of the Torah).
Virtually every ‘study’ done on archaeological or historical evidence of the events foretold in the Torah, was done with a predisposed notion that “It was completely fabricated, let’s just ‘prove’ it.”
A good example of this was the “Basic knowledge” that everyone had, that Isaiah was written way after the time he supposedly lived (around 800 b.c.).
What was this based on?
The fact that he spoke of Cyrus, who lived at about 500 b.c., and other events which occurred way after his death. In other words, the Bible CAN’T be divine, so THEREFORE it was written later.
(The fact is, the believers of this theory were humiliated in 1947 when the dead sea scrolls were found, 1000 years earlier than any previous copy of Isaiah, proving that the things he foresaw were actually written hundreds of years earlier – beyond any doubt.)
But my point is, don’t you see a problem with all the “Evidence” or lack thereof you keep referring to?
So you’ll say “They can prove their arguments, while the Rabbis make you trust them”.
Unfortunately, neither of the above statements are true. They cannot “prove” their conclusions, they can tell you their methods (which you rely on for some reason) and according to those methods – the conclusions are somewhat sensible.
Likewise, the Rabbis were all forced to explain exactly how they knew every law, and went through rigorous disputes to come out with an accepted result. Open up a Talmud and you’ll see exactly what I mean.
Everything else aside, your basis of “Somebody for sure made things up somewhere down the line” is nothing less than rediculous. You need to prove that someone was dishonest before accusing them, especially considering the people who they were remembered to be.
Never heard of Pascal, and dont care.
Help~
Anyone looking at your post can easily see it’s a rant. And in case you’d rather read it here than check my link, a rant can be described as “a speech that not present a calm argument, but rather one that is replete with enthusiasm, and although you may have meaningful intentions, your text quickly turns to poor grammar, run-on sentences, choppy thought structure — all evidence that what you say is not only ill-conceived but ill-generated. Your post is all emotion and provides little fodder for civil discourse, because, frankly, it’s obvious that you’re not open to discussion when you’re so heated that you can’t stop to temper the flaring of your nostrils and the rampage of your fingers to find the shift key (for capitalization, when appropriate) or the key with the little dot and greater than sign (for sentence ending, also when appropriate).
DR,
His argument – however poor the grammar – is quite clear. It’s pretty low of you to straw man away what he’s saying all because you had the privilege of getting a normal education. (“Privilege” figuratively speaking of course. Since it seems to have been at the cost of the most basic Jewish values and understandings.)
In very short, logic itself was created by G-d. Assuming you believe in the Torah, how can you use logic to undermine G-d’s own words?
And yes, when you assume by default, that anything which humans cannot find a logical explanation for, cannot be meant to be taken literally – even if said by G-d himself, you undermine the Torah and it’s giver.
His argument may be clear, but his presentation underscores his attitude — he cannot be debated, because he will hear but not listen. When he types so fast that he can’t bother to stop and end a sentence, it means that he’s not interested in discourse — why is this any different than a televised debate? If I state my premises and counter his, and then he goes on to shout me down by speaking nearly without breathing, and he is emphatic and throwing his words rather than presenting them clearly and well-thoughout-ly, everyone will see that he lacks a refined argument. He is full of passion and seemingly devoid of interest in resolving the point — he is rather more intent is calling people out on charges of heresy, divine defamation, etc.
I am also full of passion, but I sense that I can get a lot further in discussion with a calm, cool, civil approach. The only thing “Help” didn’t do was type in all caps — it’s so clear that he’s soapboxing, smearing and attacking in poor form that it’s almost meaningless whatever anyone responds to him. So do I attack? Sure, but I do it with what I feel is tact. I may use sarcasm to undermine a contender, I may mock their position openly, but his argument is not his — it’s a common one. So he has to present it, well, presentably. I’ve heard his arguement already, many times, and I think he knows that. So he has to give me a reason to change the way I think — he can’t expect me to read his run-on sentences that merely recapitulate the exact premise I’m arguing against and presume it is sufficient for stating his position here.
I don’t think his grammar is inherently poor — I think he couldn’t stand to let this discussion go on for a second longer without submitting his fury of a response.
And as to your question about using the facultative tools provided by God to undermine God — that’s a great question and I was trying to find where you had written it because I lost it.
That’s the same argument I use to object to something like Ayn Rand’s objectivism, and I think it’s a good one.
My take on it is that the God of Moses is, for the purpose of this point, pretty well defined in Judaism. He is a benevolent God, and I take it as a given that his purpose is not to trick people by, for instance, placing de novo bones in the substrate for us to find as a nissayon. I take the natural world to be a tremendously intricate puzzle that always seems just beyond our total grasp yet at the same time nearly completely comprehensible.
So I can only imagine that God has to give humans a reason to follow him. In this vein, I take divine national revelation as a necessary event — I don’t think that God could have expected Judaism to survive without it. As I stated in the initial posting above, we can observe how that plan has been undermined by the no longer necessarily accepted divine origin of the Torah — in that it used to be taken for granted as a given premise by all, but it is no longer.
Why would God reveal himself publicly, if not to provide his people with the information they need? Just tell Moses to jump out from behind a bush, or a rock, and tell us what we need to know. But then we can all say, “Moses, we love you, but you’re crazy. You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.” So we’ve lost that, but at the time, I don’t think you could have subverted that argument.
Now, this is just a thought I have today, and it might change tomorrow, but I think it’s a worthy thought process — that God can’t expect us to follow him if we can’t even believe in him because all we have to go on is a Moses. It’s the same with gentiles following the Noachide laws. If I’m Muslim, I don’t believe in Judaism, so why would I listen to what the Jews tell me to do, as a Muslim? I mean, Jews don’t care what Muslims or Christians say we need to do or think, for the same reason.
Dear doc, sorry about grammer im posting on my phone and therefore write shorthand, you call my words a “rant” and therefore they can be discarded, how clever, well youre theory is the pickle juice theory and the pickle juice theory has been discarded long ago so there. You sound like a learned man you must know the words of the novy “S’u eneychem morom u’ru mi boro eleh” lift up your eyes and “see” who created these, obviously one has to be blind not to see, how can you say one cant know if there is a god, every thirteen yr old is required to know that, elokim oso es haodom yoshor vhem bikshu cheshbonos rabbim. now although you may be well learned your approach to emuna is why we end up with peiople like nuran who can deny parts of the torah ever happened, which is kefira now matter how u twist it, thats why i say to nate chazak vematz there is nothing wrong with your approach tamim tihye im hashem, look and see for youself what are the dangers of their approach, to question hashems existence!
There are dangers, but you make it seem like these dangers are surreal. Looking at the heavens and the world at large, I agree, will instill a profound understanding that there can really be no understanding — things are so complex. But, that’s really hyperbole on the part of Isaiah, because seeing complexity in the world can at most provide evidence for God, not the God of Moses.
You point is well taken, and I don’t know what to do about it. But the reality is that once one crosses the boundary, there is no going back. R’ Rietti speaks about emunah as emuna chushis (experiential), but it’s just not there — that was lost years ago, as I stated in the original post above. So I’m still searching, but for those who lose hope along the way, I hope to provide some constructive insights.
I feel like I can no longer blame someone for going off the derech for these reasons of intellectualism, however troubling that may be. And when I ask my yeshivish rebbe about this, he tells me, “it’s because the guy doesn’t have enough emuna.” What does that even mean…that’s the problem, not the rationale? When someone doesn’t have any emunah because he can’t find something to grasp, you can’t say, “just grasp harder.” To me, that’s like the Christian who says, “Jesus is Love.”
This is a great discussion, probably my favorite ever on this site. DR and AN are thoughtful and respectful and it’s a pleasure to watch them go at it. Nate and Help provide comic relief. All I really need now is a beer and another 100 of these comments. Don’t disappoint me, folks!
Nice piece. I was just thinking about something related over Shabbos. The Medrash on Avrohom logically deducing God at age 3, is usually relayed as a history lesson (that we can be proud of).
I think that the real message is a fundamental one. 1)Avrohom took life seriously. He started thinking at an early age and lived his life based on a conviction (God first spoke to him only at age 70) 2) he worked out one God’s existence by being brave enough to seriously consider each possibility. The whole world was polytheistic. But he thought it was foolish, and didn’t fear the possibility of those gods’ wrath to investigate for himself.
He said, “It appears to be that the moon is god. Let’s consider that, etc. Hmm, that’s wrong, next. Next, next. And the most logical he could come up with was the one that he lived and even sacrificed his life for. That’s a man with integrity.
It’s so obvious a tall tale that Abraham recognized God at the age of 3 — but my point is that we are not looking back from 2010 saying, “Man, that doesn’t make any sense, so we’ve got to retcon it.” I’m saying that it was never meant to be taken literally.
There’s a very irreverent but striking YouTube xtranormal video out there with a discussion between the two mouse-bear characters relating to Jacob and Esau and what the proper bracha for lentils is. It soon devolves into a debate over whether or not the Avos knew the Torah, which would entail them knowing the future, which would sort of thoroughly undermine the plot twist of Joseph being suddently discovered alive — Jacob, knowing what the Talmud says about lentils would certainly have had access to the earlier, foundation text of Genesis and he should have been better prepared when his sons appraoched with the bloody multi-colored coat.
So wave your finger and tighten your eyebrows and growl all you want, but then answer the question. To call it irreverent and then walk away is like those associated with the Slifkin ban. “It’s prohibited to read, and prohibited to ask me why it’s prohibited to read, and just for good measure, let’s make it prohibited to think of why it’s prohibited to ask why it’s prhibited to read.”
I ate by my neighber over Shabbos and his kid was going over the parsha sheets and had the following question: “Abba, I learned in yeshiva that God said the first commandment, and then all the Jews died, so they were revived and then he said the second and they died again, and so Moses had to say the rest. But then we also learned that God said all of the 10 Commandments at once, so I’m confused as to what happened.” Now, mind you, this kid is like 7 years old and in 2nd grade — and his father (who happens to be my good friend, as well as my neighbor) had to take a few minutes before he sort of didn’t even answer the question. I asked him why he doesn’t just say, “well, son, neither of those things actually happened in the exact way described; we don’t know or even understand what happened; both of those grand assertions are merely meant to provide a totally majestic and utterly fascinating atmosphere for divine national revelation and, finally; son, just understand that it was awesome (not in the Ninja Turtle way) and scary and amazing and…well…just wow!”
My friend laughed, told me “we’re not going there,” and that was that. But later, when his son was absent, he told me that he doesn’t necessarily disagree with me, but he hasn’t yet necessarily decided to undermine his son’s rebbe so that he doesn’t feel like he can’t believe anything his rebbe says. Alright, that’s fair, I suppose, but that’s one big reason why I send my kids to the other yeshiva in town.
Your friend was right, we dont question Rabbanim. Or Torah. If it says it, it is. God made the laws of nature and can bend or break them at will, or even dissolve them and make new ones. 2 +2 = 5 if He says so.
Nate — you’re not even reading the words coming out of my fingertips. You may be scanning them with your eyes, but I am getting the eerie feeling that it’s only so that you know where I finish so that you can begin.
Do you know what a rabbi is? It’s someone who completes a thorough review and examination on particular portions of the Shulchan Aruch, and the content is usually related to kashrus (basar b’chalav, melicha [salting meat], etc.). Why do you think that qualifies anyone who takes this course and passes the exam to answer questions about the world, the universe or even Judaism. Have you never met someone who graduated from a professional school but doesn’t really know what he or she is doing? Then there are those that take the information they learned and run with it in weird and wacky directions — do you know of no Reform or Conservative rabbis who studied at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox institution?
Why does someone become a 2nd grade rebbe? It’s not because they are the most erudite Talmudic scholar, I’ll tell you that. But that’s fine — we need 2nd grade rebbes. But they sometimes make mistakes. They sometimes don’t know what they’re talking about, even when it comes to Judaism.
Even high school rebbes sometimes don’t know what to say. I know rebbes at Kushner, JEC, Ramaz + MTA who receive questions from their high school students about the existence of God, the nature of the world, what happens after we die, where we came from, why we’re here, why the Talmud says what appears to be crazy things, why we daven, how we know Judaism is true and Christianity is not…and they don’t always know what to say immediately. It sounds like you’re suggesting that whatever they say must be divinely-inspired, even if they come back tomorrow and say, “well, forget what I said yesterday, because I wasn’t familiar enough with the subject, but I’m having a phone conference tonight with R’ Becher and I’ll get back to you next week.” Now what does that say?
Now you’re just being ridiculous. Well, I’d say you’ve been being ridiculous the whole time, but there are those who agree with some of your premises, and I’m just free to hold like those that disagree — but no one says that if rabbis say 2+2=5 that we listen to them.
Nate — it’s become so blatantly unmistakable that you are attempting to defend what you think you need to defend, but that actually possesses literally no support in Torah Judaism. You go ask R’ Kanievsky if he thinks you should actually think that 2=2.5, and then you can call me and tell me what he said.
I said if God says 2+2=5, not a rabbis.
All I have said is daas Torah. If your kid’s rebbe says dont ask such foolish questions, thats a mark of a good rebbe to me. Not all questions deserve an answer. Nor are they entitled to one. It’s a human failure to think they do.
Do you even understand what you’re saying? In the same way God cannot orchestrate the existence of a married bachelor, he also cannot make 2+2=5. It’s an abstract reality, so no miracle will suffice. And that’s not to say that his power is limited — it’s an absolute definition, so any meddling will not change the definition, it will merely tamper with the fabric of the actual equation, invalidating the premise.
No, I agree. Midrashim usually try to convey a message. Unfortunately, many people think that it’s wrong to “reinterpret” midrashim from their literal meaning. The book “In the footsteps of the prophets” lists a whole slew of major Meforshim who say not to take them literally. R Aharon Feldman, a right-winger, wrote a book called “The Juggler and the King”, which is an explanation of the Gra”s book explaining the allegorical meaning of certain Aggados.
But the idea I was trying to back up was how you said:
“Initially, it sometimes troubles me greatly when readers question my assumptions — but I then suddenly find myself privileged with new appreciation for how perspectives of reality are all too often, if not invariably, substituted for reality.
Many will say we don’t hold like Maimonides — they’ll say the Vilna Gaon closed that book a long time ago.
But R’ Mordechai Becher does not agree — I asked him myself. And partly because of our discussion, his weekly chabura that week was entitled “Midrash + Metaphor,” and focused on the 4 sources I quoted to Nate (above or below, I cannot remember, for these threads are really long). R’ Wieder does not agree either — he goes with Chachmei Sfarad on this. Then you have Slifkin and others.
Oh, and thanx!
OffDWB~
Thanks for the support — I really appreciate it. Sorry if I came across curtly above.
All the best!
No, you didn’t come across curtly. And I really meant just to point out the parallel to Avraham’s mindset. I wasn’t searching for a way to compliment you. That was an added bonus. 🙂
Spirtitual advisors, rationalists, reform baalei teshuva, modern orthodox, YU, logic, all of these are tools of the yetzer hara.
BTW, the Mishna is direct from God. If you look at the first part of every Mishnah, PRIOR to the Tanaim’s opinions, THAT is the part from Sinai. The Tanaim then argued on the interpretations thereof.
Example: Pesachim 1: On the “Ohr of the 14th, we search for the chametz”. That’s the Divine part.
Whatever, bunch of kofrim, apikorsim, and fag loving nigger-lovers. I’m out.
Who would have thought that behind such an erudite scholar was a racist of the basest sort?
Good riddance, Nate.
Gosh I think thats the first comment you have made that didnt take up half a page.
Understanding Torah is just as easy. Try it. Pick up an Artscroll, the harbinger of Torah truth and wisdom for the layman.
I thought you were leaving? Are you back for an encore?
You should all know that there are rules attached to using the brain the same as for everything else. Just because you can think of an argument/proof/logic doesnt mean you should. Naaseh v’nishmah does imply blind faith, and it does not contradict free will. Even free will has limitations, in the Torah world that is. Not so in the secular world, which you so clearly enjoy living in because of all the freedom. There is no freedom other than Torah, “al tikra charus, ela cheirus”.
This is a big part of why so many BT’s have issues with strict Orthodox protocol. In the secualr world they are entitled to read and study anything they want, regardless of age, sex, etc. Not so in the Torah world. God said it, we believe it, and that settles it, and that is what God wants from us. If you come to figure it out on your own like Avraham did, all the better. But even if your very being tells you its wrong, illogical, irrational, unproven, etc. that in no way negates your obligation to do it and believe in it.
I’d even go so far as to say that a Jew who hates God or doesnt even believe in God who keeps Shabbos because he has a gun held to his head is much better than one who drives to shul on Shabbos because he wants some Judaism in his life and wants to feel closer to God. The object is the doing, regardless of how you feel about it. I dislike not watching tv on Shabbos. Too bad for me.
Your argument has no place when attempting to convince a reasonable non-believer to begin complying with halacha. To say that we must believe in God because God commands us to believe in God places the conclusion as a given premise.
Just recognize that your entire argument rests upon having emuna, and when the rationale for having that emuna is questioned, your response is, “have emuna that it is necessary.” How can you possibly presume that such an argument will appear valid before the person who was not raised in a Jewish environment? And don’t respond, “I don’t care if they don’t think it’s valid” — because that’s skirting the issue. You are promoting a dishonest kiruv protocol, just like Aish HaTorah does.
You ought to be able to explain to this non-believer why it makes sense for him to go to a doctor when he’s sick, and not a witch doctor, but for religious belief, he’s supposed to follow along with whatever you say in your comprehensive argument (as presented quite elaborately on this page). And to say things like, “your neshama is crying out for this,” or “the spark of divinity within you will realize that this is the truth,” that’s all presuming that the non-believer standing before you already supposes your position to be correct. I’m not saying it doesn’t work — but there are a lot of flaky BT out there who are taught not to question and not to think and not to realize that they are being misled into greater observance. I’m not questioning the Jewish perspective of Judaism here, mind you — I am merely informing you that your argument is formally unsound because it is cyclical.
don’t blame the scholar, blame his teachers and family. This kind of guy didn’t get support at home or got into trouble at school. He lashes out at minorities using them as scapegoats similarly to how the cossacks and nazis did to the Jews. You should be farshemen zikh, to put it in language you’ll understand.
LOL! I was a straight A student, never got into a fight, never got detention, and had a great childhood, and never wanted to sleep with my mother either. You just can’t fathom that every single word of Torah is true, literally, and that there are greater powers and humans than yourself, and their greatness exist without your understanding it or comprehending it.
Why do you think that course grades matter? And what about responding to my rebuttal above? Do you think that switching to another thread will obviate the need to respond?
There are no rebuttals above, just gibberish.
So Maimonides is gibberish? I think that you’re in way over your head, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t even know from where you’re coming, and you’re noticing that arguments against your position are mounting, yet you are completely unfamiliar with not only my position but even your own.
Cut out the hyperbole and answer my challenge — you state that everything must be taken literally, I present to you nothing less than the Rambam himself, and the only thing you can think of to respond with is, “that’s not valid, because it’s gibberish.”
I’d hate to have to do it Nate…I’d hate to have to call you a clown. Because then I don’t think I will ever respond to any post of yours ever again. So please don’t make me do it, Nate. Just respond to my rebuttal involving the position of the Rambam. I’ve given you the citation, it’s really long and it’s in Hebrew, so in all honesty, if you’d like to ask someone to help you make sure you don’t understand his words (no shame, I R’ Becher to review it with me), please do so.
But don’t call Maimonides gibberish.
I had a great thought. Even if I am totally stupid, ignorant, racist, and a blind robot, I still keep Shabbos and am a Shomer Torah & Mitzvos. So this shows that even a moron like me can be a tzadik gamor. Unlike some of you who know the ins and outs of logic and science and all that narishket, but won’t put on a pair of tefilling until you figure out why, or wont have your wives cover their hair until someone proves to you its required.
So, I’m a racist moron, but I’m still a bigger tzadik.
Too bad about those mitzvos bein adam l’chaveiro, though, Nate.
I keep those, too. I just define what is a deserving person differently than you liberals do. It’s no mitzvah to show respect to apikorsim.
The only problem is that you justify all your hatred and ignorance by saying you are a good torah jew. However after 120 years when you go before god do not be surprised when he smacks the crap out of you for your behavior to his children. All parents know this: they will take a far greater amount of abuse from an individual than they will allow towards their kids. God may be offended by the actions of those who do not follow his torah, but he is far more aggrieved by those that offend his children.
*Offend children of his who ridicule the will and testament given to us by OUR father, to keep as an unwavering way of life for all generations, and who by doing so – endanger other children as well.
According to the Torah, one is required to treat every human being with respect and dignity, regardless of his or her beliefs.
You cannot find any valid Jewish source however, where it says that Jews should be treated with respect in regards to their heretical beliefs. There are actually quite specific laws of how to treat a Meshumad, a Mumar, and other categories and levels of non-belief/acceptence.
(Non-Jews are a different story. I have found a few rare sources which imply that non-Jews are to be shown respect for being moral and ethical, and properly observing their religion – regardless of it’s truth. Perhaps idolatry would be an exception though.)
Leave it to god to defend his own honor. He does not need misled, hate filled bigots to do it for him. I am fully confident that god is a big enough boy to defend himself from those that offend him.
Logically I would agree with you. However it seems the attitude of the Torah is not to “Live and let live”, and we find quite a few instances where G-d exacted retribution not only for personal failure to heed his command, but even for remaining silent while others disobey him.
I think the idea is that we Jews are here to ‘present’ G-d in the world. And although he actually takes care of business, we are the “set up crew” if you will, and we are obligated to voice our objection to things we find offensive to G-d.
What we would probably agree on, would be that the method with which to influence others towards respecting G-d, should be out of love and hope, rather than hate and disdain.
But even love and good things have their limits. In Tehillim, Dovid Hamelech even uses the term “Hate” in a few instances. (To describe his loyalty to G-d, and his intolerance of those who oppose G-d’s will.)
Wow…that refers to me!
I didn’t intend to include you…
Which category do you think you fit into?
Those who vandalize Slifkin’s Wikipedia article and change his name to “Nosson HaMumar Slifkin” would call me a mumar, too.
But I do take the genuine Modern Orthodox approach. I don’t think we should delude ourselves into thinking that things we take on total faith are actually well grounded well irrefutable supporting evidence, and I don’t think we should deny ourselves the quest for honest and sincere thinking. To say that any question is off limits — that’s like practicing Christianity.
“In the same way God cannot”
Another clear proof of apikorsis. Any sentence beginning with that is a non sequitor.
So you presume the challenge that God cannot create a rock he cannot lift to be what? An actual challenge to which you merely respond, “no, he can” — you are lost in your own complacency.
It is not a challenge at all. The answer is quite simple. It is a non-question. Why is that you say? Because God can do anything he choses, including creating things you cant comprehend at all. You are limited to human knowledge and understanding, therefore the answer is beyond your ability to understand God.
You must be a god, Nate, because it’s becoming apparent to me now that you are far beyond my comprehension, as well.
Please respond to my rebuttal so I can continue recognizing you among the commenters to this blog.
I dont have any idea what u mean. I dont go up and read back. If you have something new to say do it at the bottom like I do.
Frankly your recognition is unimportant. As is anyone’s who does not follow the letter of the law.
The rebuttal, Nate.
gedolei yisroel, rebbeim, and nate hakodosh shlita himself are also limited by human understanding
RF~
Please post again and include your email in the sign-in data — I would like to ask you something personal. Thanx.
i hope you can find my address from the post below, i dont want to write it here because than people like nate will be sending me requests for donations and offering me to invest in their shady plans
got it!
Wrong. Gedolim have ruach hakodesh, something you rats dont get or believe in.
Is that a universal generalization…all gedolim have ruach hakodesh? Or is that merely to exclude non-gedolim, in that in order to have ruach hakodesh, you must be a gadol.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with the latter.
Nate,
I think you have a lot of ideas which are ‘similar’ to the truth, but are applying them wrongly.
Do you realize R’ Elyashiv testified about himself that he does not have ruach hakodesh?
So if it’s all about ruach hakodesh, why do we still listen to him?
I see it now. Im not calling RamBam gibberish, Im calling your “logic” gibberish. RamBam is not the be all and end all. He is 1 opinion, all by himself, against a plethora of Chazal. Even the text of the Torah itself says we go after the majority when it comes to law, so RamBam is a lost cause. Maybe he let all that Aristotle he rallied against get so far inside his own head that he couldnt cope. Either way, I stick to my guns.
I’m whittling it down for you, Nate. It’s really the majority of Chachmei Sfarad. But since Maimonides is the most famous and the most lengthy and the most direct, we’ll pick on him.
Don’t tell me he’s one guy, Nate. Don’t tell me it’s my logic. Don’t tell me that Maimonides is a lost cause. That’s baseless rhetoric. Because I can just turn it around and say “I don’t like your logic, and you are a lost cause.” Say something meaningful. Read it, and respond. Otherwise, we’re just throwing the same snowball at each other, over and over, back and forth.
I remember right here on frumsatire on a post about what chareidim dont like, the rambam was actually on the list. I guess it makes sense. And by the way, Nate will be mad that you used an untznius word. That’s right, because of its symbolism as a event where there is mixed dancing and the people doing it switch partners every 30 seconds, this word has been BANNED. instead say “we’re just throwing the same sweet sand verbena at each other”
you stick to your guns, I’ll stick to Rambam and we’ll see who comes out better.
Ihave no idea what you’re talking about when u say an “untznius word”. Snowball is not untznius, unless it has some kind of connotation i am unaware of.
The majority of Daas Torah disagrees with Rambam, and since majority rules in Torah law, Rambam loses. Some of his stuff is accepted, not all, and if its not, you cant use it as proof of anything becuz it has lost its validity once it is defeated by a majority. So he gets to walk away, tail between his legs, the same as any defeated opinion.
And please dont bring in goyishe opinions (Ayn Rand). They count even less.
As to your strawman complaint, I was not bringing in Ayn Rand — I was stating that the same argument can be made against objectivism, in case someone approached you and asked you how you’d deal with it.
Your incessant, hollow attacks reveal that you’re struggling, exposing the weakness of your position.
ever heard of eilu ve’eilu? I guess not. go learn and make your kollel stipend worthwhile
DRosenbach: Above you mentioned Rabbi Becher. I like the guy, I like his books and his shiurim online too. But he is not a Gadol B’Yisrael. So if the Gra closed the book on the Rambam issue, and chachmei Yisrael (which does not include Slifkin or any rabbis from YU either), the the book should stay closed. You can denigrate the Ashkenazi Litvishe Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah all you like, but they are THE Gedolim nonetheless.
Chachmei Ashkenaz, as R’ Wieder points out, were not faced with secular wisdom, and so they did not develop responses to it.
You may counter Chachmei Sfarad by saying they are not the majority opinion, but you may not discount them. As a unified bunch, and especially since it’s not so much that Chachmei Ashkenaz disagree (but are merely silent, not having known of any secular opposition to their approach), they cannot be pushed to the side as insignificant, overruled and unsatisfactory from a mesorah standpoint.
And you have not responded to my rebuttal from Eruvin 63a (14th wide line, and the immediately previous account).
I will not add to the discussion going on here – but it is downright fascinating.
I realize I’m late to this discussion, but:
Nate said
> He is clearly not Orthodox, because an Orthodox Jew would never say such outright heresy.
> There is no evidence whatsoever that contradicts a single word of Torah. If the “evidence” is presented by a Non-Jew or a Non-Frum Jew, it is meaningless.
This is a brilliant defense of Nate’s worldview.
1) Any evidence presented by a Non-Jew or a Non-Frum Jew is meaningless.
2) Anyone who presents evidence that contradicts Nate’s worldview is by definition non-frum.
C) All evidence that contradicts Nate’s worldview is meaningless.
Which means that Nate can comfortably ignore anything that might make him doubt that he is absolutely right.
> Except that there are millions who believe, myself included, that Midrash is to be taken literally too.
Um, no. There are approximately 13 -14 million Jews in the world, of whom 1about 1.8 million are Orthodox. Even assuming that half are Chareidim of a mystical bent who take every medrash as literal (and I think that the numbers who take every medrash literally are actually far less), we only have 900,000 who believe as you do.
Not that the number of people who believe something has anything to do with whether it’s true.
Lol G3,
I don’t think you should even try with Nate.
I have a rule, and I think it’s a good one. Any situation where you can confidently and indefinitely predict what a persons reply will be to your argument, don’t bother.
Don’t get me wrong, I like his way of thinking. I mean it’s safe, and at the end of the day he has the correct conclusions (most of the time). Even if the means aren’t intellectually fulfilling.
In a nutshell, it’s a mentality which states: “I am on the bandwagon of those who have the absolute truth, proven and demonstrated long ago. I cannot tell you specifically why you are wrong, but if you disagree with truth – you are inevitably wrong.”
Really, (from a completely logical perspective only, meaning no history or philosophy included), the only significant difference between “the napkin religion” and this mentality, is that there’s a revelation involved.
I think the New Testament translated into Yeshivish is hilarious!
But then, I’m not a Lubavitcher.
As for the rest, I think that Chabad today is very similar to the early Christians. A Jewish sect that differs from other Jewish sects mainly in that they believe their deceased leader is Moshiach and will come back from death to claim his crown. It seems that Chabad (maybe only some?) is even starting to move along to the next step, a belief that the deceased leader is divine.
Now all Chabad needs is for a powerful tyrant to have a dream where he is told that a picture of the Rebbe will help him win an important victory, and we’d have a fourth Abrahamic relgion.
It is so tough to get over someone’s death especially if that someone is so dear to you. There are many decisions that must be made and the quality of the chosen cemetery will have a direct impact on the level of assistance you get during an emotional time of life.
Choosing the right cemetery is one of the most important parts of a burial plan. A cemetery should be a quiet place for contemplation and remembrance. Additionally a cemetery’s location should be in a location that was important in the deceased person’s life and near his or her family. There should be no compromise on any of the things which are involved in these proceedings.