Is belief in the Torah's divinity irrational?

By Rabbi Professor Sam Lebens

“Do you really believe in all of that Judaism stuff? But you’re so clever!” I’m never quite sure if this is a compliment or an insult. But it’s a question I’ve been asked. To save me from the accusation of lying to others, people must think that I’m engaged in some sort of compartmentalization.

The religious scientist, when in the laboratory, puts nothing down to super-natural causes. Every phenomenon requires a natural explanation. And yet, the same religious scientist, when outside of the laboratory is willing to believe in miracles. Once again, the only explanation is that the religious intellectual must have erected an internal iron curtain between their religious persona, which they occupy in the synagogue and at home, and their worldly persona, which they occupy the rest of the time.

Professor Solomon Schimmel writes (https://www.thetorah.com/.../my-personal-struggle-with...):

For years, I have been studying Orthodox Judaism and exploring the question of how it is that modern, highly educated people can make unreasonable faith claims. Specifically, how is it that Modern Orthodox Jews, in the face of overwhelming evidence and logical arguments, believe that God revealed the entirety of the Pentateuch, word for word, to Moses at Sinai and/or in the wilderness?

Let’s examine his example: belief that God revealed the entirety of the Pentateuch to Moses. James Kugel, a leading contemporary Biblical scholar, claims that his discipline stands upon a number of assumptions; assumptions which are owed to Spinoza. According to these assumptions:

1. Scripture is to be understood on its own terms, rather than through the interpretative lenses of any particular church or religious tradition.

2. We have to make efforts to understand the language of the Bible and its own world of ideas, without imposing later conceptions upon it.

3. Consequently, we should assume that scripture means just what scripture says, even when its plain meaning contradicts contemporary values, mores, and conceptions, unless internal textual considerations force upon us a figurative interpretation.

4. To understand the meaning of scripture, we first of all have to investigate how the books were put together. We have to construct biographies for the authors, based upon knowledge of their writings and their historical context, and understand their words in light of these biographies.

5. In considering the words of the prophets, one must recognize that they frequently contradict one another. Hermeneutics of reconciliation are to be eschewed in favor of recognizing the multiple conflicting voices beneath the surface

But Orthodox Judaism rejects many of these assumptions. We think that the Torah is properly interpreted by the Rabbinic tradition; that God speaks to us through these texts; that God may have meant to communicate things to this generation through the same words that communicated other things to earlier generations; and that the words of the prophets are all true. It follows that their words must admit of a reconciliatory reading.

As Kugel sees it, what separates Orthodox interpretations of the Bible and contemporary academic scholarship is just:

the set of unwritten instructions that guide them in reading the biblical text. Accept the one’s, and the other’s interpretations appear irrelevant at best, at worst a willful and foolish hiding from the obvious. It is thanks to this crucial difference in assumptions that these two groups can read exactly the same words and perceive two quite different messages.

Perhaps an analogy will be helpful.

Meticulous scholarship has led some theorists to suggest that ‘William Shakespeare’ was merely a pseudonym for Sir Henry Neville. Detailed study of Neville’s biography renders his life a compelling fit for having authored the works attributed to Shakespeare. Neville’s handwritten notes, found in the books of his extensive library match exactly what we’d expect to be find in the books of a playwright conducting research so as to write Shakespeare’s plays. Notwithstanding this evidence, and this meticulous scholarship, the vast majority of Shakespeare scholars remain resolutely unconvinced.

A key proponent of the Neville theory, John Casson, told the Guardian newspaper: “There are no letters from William of Stratford. His parents were illiterate, his daughters were illiterate: how do you become the greatest writer ever when your family are illiterate?”

Can you hear the prejudice in those words? The son of illiterate parents simply couldn’t have authored such majestic work. Accordingly, noted Shakespeare expert, Brian Vickers put the theory down to:

snobbery, and ignorance… They are unaware that the Elizabethan grammar school was an intense crash course in reading and writing Latin verse, prose, and plays – the bigger schools often acted plays by Terence in the original … Above all, he had a great imagination, and didn’t need to have been to Venice to write The Merchant of Venice, or Othello. What’s most dispiriting about these anti-Stratfordians is their denial of Shakespeare’s creative imagination.

If you resolutely assume from the outset that x is false, then you’re almost bound to find ‘compelling evidence’ that x is false. Likewise: if you assume that God wasn’t the principle author of the Pentateuch, then certain textual anomalies are bound to take on a different light than they would if you assumed that God was the author. But the anomalies in question really don’t serve as compelling evidence that God was not the author, unless you’re already assuming that God was not the author (just as the evidence for Neville only becomes salient on the assumption that it couldn’t have been Shakespeare who wrote those plays).

Spinoza’s assumptions are attractive to Biblical Scholars. They want their discipline to approximate the standards of a natural science. Even the most religious of scientists tend to adopt a stance that is sometimes called methodological naturalism. According to this stance, it is always inappropriate to appeal to the acts of God in coming to a scientific theory. Even if God exists, we should keep him out of the laboratory.

Methodological naturalism is not compartmentalization. God created a world that abides by natural laws. Science progresses as we try to discover what those laws and regularities are without any appeal to super-natural processes beyond the empirical data. But why come to this chaotic world with the assumption that its many varied phenomena should yield to one set of laws? Why think that the basic principles that govern the development of a fetus should govern also the birth of distance galaxies? Science operates in the hope that unifying laws will be found. But that faith is blind, unless you believe that the universe itself, with all of its varied phenomena, is the creation of a law loving God. In this way, theism can serve as excellent scaffolding for making sense of the sciences. But, scaffolding holds a building up from the outside. God is not welcome in the laboratory itself.

That’s well and good for the sciences. But if the question is whether or not God was involved in writing the Torah, then using a discipline that adopts a methodological naturalism is to beg the question. Methodological naturalism rules out any theories that use God to explain phenomena. So you can guarantee, before you start your investigation into who wrote the Bible, that methodological naturalism won’t discover a Divine author. But its failure to find a Divine author is not evidence that God wasn’t involved. It’s not a finding. It’s not a conclusion. It’s just an assumption. You don’t need to be a fundamentalist, or manifest a pathological compartmentalization, or show disrespect to the academy, to recognize the logical fallacy of petitio principia (i.e., of begging the question). If anything, it is the scholars who raise these accusations who show a basic disregard for the philosophy of science.

Samuel Lebens is associate Professor in the philosophy department at the University of Haifa, he is also an Orthodox Rabbi and Jewish educator. He is the author of The Principles of Judaism (Oxford University Press), and has a forthcoming book, The Guide to the Jewish Undecided, which is set to be published by Maggid in 2022.

First posted to Facebook 19 December 2021, here.

A half-baked proof for an elusive truth

One important lesson that I’ve learned from the last few years of vigorous Facebook discussion is that a weak argument can often end up inflicting significant damage on the position that it is trying to advance.

A few weeks ago I received my copy of Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai, a collection of essays which examines how modern Judaism grapples with and addresses questions of faith and doubt. While the philosopher, Leo Strauss, sought to rationally rescue Orthodox Judaism from those who considered its beliefs untenable, the nature of his arguments leaves religious thinkers questioning whether he has indeed strengthened their position.

In short, Strauss argued that neither Orthodoxy nor its opponents could claim to be able to refute the claims of the other concerning crucial principles such as the nature of God and revelation. Each camp can choose to believe its own claims but there is no way to objectively evaluate the validity of either side in this debate. Orthodox Judaism, he considers, cannot possess any knowledgeof its core principles – it can merely adhere to belief of unknowable claims.

As I slowly make my way slowly through this fascinating book, the essay by Rabbi Shalom Carmy has really got me thinking. Carmy writes of Strauss’s argument:

“it is not an argument for the truth or likelihood of belief in revelation…One does not worship God as a hypothesis that might improbably turn out to be true. And revealed religion requires much more than acts of worship. It demands thorough commitment and, when necessary, sacrifice and suffering. Real people do not live and die for a remote hypothesis.”

This response very much resonates with my reaction to those who argue for religious observance on the basis of practical probabilities such as Pascal’s Wager (that the potential consequence of being wrong regarding religion is far more severe for one who chooses to be non-religious).

My understanding of Judaism – which is heavily coloured by Rambam –centres around creating and nurturing a very real two-way relationship with God. On an individual level this consists of a genuine connection which a person’s mind and soul can make with God – a connection which is fortified through prayer and the performance of commandments. Performing an action because one feels that there is a decent chance that there is a God who has commanded it misses the whole point entirely from Rambam’s perspective.

This is because Judaism is not a set of magical boxes to be ticked or dangers to be avoided in one’s journey through life. Rather it is about fulfilling our covenant with God on a national scale – establishing the sort of just and altruistic society that this entails – while forging a very real relationship with God on an individual level. As Rambam emphasises in the third section of the Moreh (3:51), fulfilling the commandments – particularly prayer – without being mindful of this context is simply performing empty actions – it carries no significance at all.

Of what value therefore, is living a notionally religious lifestyle on the basis of a probability, wager or remote hypothesis that might prove to be accurate?

What I will acknowledge however, is that the existence of the Straussian argument – that Orthodox Judaism’s belief in revelation can never be rationally refuted – remains a useful practical safety net to fall back upon.

Our relationship with God is not static. It consists of waves of faith, commitment and enthusiasm which rise and fall through the year – and often even the day. (On a personal note, I know that the tired Shmuli Phillips who has dragged himself out for Shul on a cold morning is far more grumpy and skeptical about EVERTHING than the version of him swaying serenely at an uplifting Kabbalat Shabbat service.) If a Straussian safety net can temporarily assist a person to remain connected at such a low-point, it certainly serves an important role – providing a platform from which they can reforge their real relationship with God once their inspiration returns.

As several of the essays in this book explore, questions of philosophy and theology do not belong to the category of propositions which one can ever hope to objectively prove or disprove. Unlike mathematics with its neat solutions whose correctness can be determined, philosophical and theological arguments which appear persuasive to some will always fail to impress others.

Rabbi Carmy underscores the importance of traditional arguments such as the likelihood of such a finely-tuned world possessing a designer – and that such a designer might well be expected to have communicated his purpose in creating the world to the primary protagonists within this universe. Nevertheless, the merit of such arguments will always contain a subjective element: does one consider it to be the best possible explanation for a set of phenomena among competing explanations?

For many who contemplate existence – creation, humanity and history – the answer will be strongly in the affirmative. They will be sufficiently convinced to develop a relationship with this Creator and live their lives in accordance with his apparently revealed commands. For others who have not achieved this level of clarity, Pascal’s Wager and Strauss’s argument for Orthodoxy may remain an important launching pad for further meditation and exploration from within the world of religious observance.

First posted on Facebook 18 April 2022, here.

Pagans, Greeks and Rabbi Sacks' battle with New Atheism

One chapter of Judaism Reclaimed compares the theological debates between Judaism and its surrounding cultures in different eras, concluding with the arguments advanced by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks against the New Atheism of the twenty-first century. To mark the first anniversary of Rabbi Sacks' passing, the chapter has been adapted for this post (my personal tribute can be read here).

When Aristotle contemplated the multiple “forms” that make up the universe, he understood that there must be a single, simple source from which they all emanate. This source, however, he viewed as being a natural and constant First Cause, eternally bound to its role of producing the physical universe. The most important consequence of Aristotle’s view is that God does not exercise free choice, which is to say that according to the Aristotelian understanding, the world is governed by necessity.

Rambam’s rejection of Aristotle’s belief in an eternal universe thus becomes a matter of fundamental significance. Rambam teaches that the “Prime Mover” is not simply a more refined cog in the ever-turning wheel of nature but rather preceded and transcends the entire physical framework of space and time. This concept of a God who transcends and is not bound by nature is crucial to Jewish belief, as it means that God’s will lies above and beyond nature, rather than being a product of inevitable necessity as the Aristotelian model proposes. Only a transcendental God can freely the design the universe in a way that facilitates miracles and providential interaction with its creatures.

In contrast to Aristotle’s understanding that the world emanated from a single source, pagans looked at the multiplicity of concepts and forces which appear to be in conflict with one another in the natural world. They rationalized these in terms of there being a multiplicity of deities, each with limited powers and spheres of influence, who engage in battle with one another where their interests come into conflict or their limited spheres of influence overlap.

Rabbi S. R. Hirsch describes how Judaism firmly rejects this position, emphasizing that God is morally free—above, not part of, the natural world—and, by extension, that He has a free will which is unbound by any rules or constraints of physical necessity. Humanity, by receiving the Divine gift of “tzelem Elokim”, is also granted this ability to transcend and overcome natural forces—most significantly the forces of its own natural tendencies—through the moral freedom of human free will. According to R’ Hirsch, this fundamental principle was one of the key messages of the miraculous Exodus from Egypt (as we examine in other chapters).

What the pagan and Aristotelian conceptions have in common is their view of God(s) as being part of and therefore constrained by His physical creation. In absolute opposition to these positions, both Rambam and R’ Hirsch point out that Judaism interprets these differing features of the physical world as reflecting the absolute free will of a God who transcends His physical Creation. A God who acts as He sees fit and whose will and power is not bound by anyone or anything. Only such a free God can impart similar freedom to humanity, and enable it to transcend physical necessity by exercising its free choice.

The positions adopted by Rambam and R’ Hirsch to battle the determinist ideologies of their respective eras were occupied in our generation by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his efforts to counter the “new Atheism” of modern science and the determinist arguments it puts forward. This school of modern determinist thought, which can be traced back as far as Spinoza through to twentieth-century atheists such as Bertrand Russell, asserts that

[Man’s] origin, his growth, his hope and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve the body beyond the grave…

Humankind’s rich repertoire of thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and hopes seems to arise from electrochemical brain processes, not from an immaterial soul.

As Rabbi Sacks summarizes their position: “We are, on this view, not distinctive at all. We are part of nature, nothing more.”

This scientific form of determinism differs from its predecessors only in detail, replacing irresistible deified natural forces with the assertion that humans are internally restrained by their own atomic and electrochemical processes. However, its underlying challenge to Judaism, and religion in general, is identical: if the universe is nothing more than a naturally evolved complex network of necessary and predetermined collisions of matter, with no genuine element of freedom to choose, then any system premised upon free human choice and responsibility is rendered invalid.

Rabbi Sacks argues, basing himself on a principle first introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, that the true meaning of anything necessarily lies outside of it; therefore, by extension, “the sense of the world must lie outside the world.” This true meaning, Rabbi Sacks continues, relies on the monotheistic conception of God, which understands that He transcends, entirely, all physical existence. In identifying the world’s “sense” and “meaning” with the transcendental God of monotheism and the human free will that He facilitates, Rabbi Sacks is following the well-trodden path of Rambam in his dispute with Aristotle and, more explicitly, the arguments of R’ Hirsch which strenuously oppose all forms of pagan and natural determinism.

A consequence of this proposition is that religion and science are two distinct and quite separate disciplines. If their nature and specific spheres of application are correctly understood, it is to be appreciated that science and religion can never clash or conflict with one another.

R’ Sacks described repeatedly how science examines the physical world on the basis of what is detectable to our five physical senses and develops theories as to how it works. Religion, by contrast, offers meaning as to why the universe exists and operates. This meaning, as stated above, derives from beyond the physical universe, in the metaphysical realm of God and our free-choosing human soul. That these metaphysical elements lie beyond the scope of scientific investigation merely confirms and reinforces their function in providing eternal religious meaning—a meaning which transcends the dynamic and ever-changing process of scientific discovery and theory.

First posted to Facebook 15 November 2020, here.

Rambam and the quest for "objectively true" knowledge

A plague which has increasingly poisoned all forms of political discourse in recent years is the inability for opposing sides to agree on a basic set of facts. Instead of broadly sharing a common understanding of the various problems and challenges facing the country – a foundation which allows for bipartisan cooperation – conflicting parties, fuelled by partisan media and social media, struggle to find any basis for sensible conversation.

In this context, Rambam’s endorsement of a lifelong religious journey in order to train one’s mind towards achieving some degree of objective rational thinking should be warmly welcomed and widely taught. Without this meticulous training of the mind and character, his claim that

“When a man finds himself inclining … towards lusts and pleasures, anger and fury…he shall be at fault and stumble wherever he goes. For he shall seek opinions that will help him believe in whatever his nature inclines towards”

is increasingly played out in the angry and fragmented 21stcentury world.

I am honoured that my analysis of Rambam’s approach to the search for objective knowledge, has been included in this exciting new collection of essays: Spinoza Strauss and Sinai, published by Kodesh Press.

The book consists of a set of varied responses by modern Orthodox thinkers to Leo Strauss’s argument in defence of Orthodoxy. This argument turns explicitly on the distinction between knowledge and belief: Orthodox Jews can claim to believe that the tenets of Judaism are true, but they cannot claim to know they are true. With this distinction, Strauss attempts to extricate Orthodoxy from the attack of Spinoza and his intellectual heirs. But the usefulness of Strauss’s argument itself depends on the nature of truth and knowledge within Judaism.

In recent centuries, philosophers such as David Hume and John Locke have argued that a person's mind, shaped by subjective sense-data and experience, is wholly incapable of processing an objective rational analysis and that the world, as a "thing-in-itself," is therefore unknowable. Immanuel Kant, who adopted and furthered this theory, claimed to have effected a revolution in philosophy by demonstrating that, rather than our knowledge being shaped by an object (or concept) itself, in truth our perception of the “thing itself” is shaped by our prior knowledge and conditioning.

It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the challenge that this represents to the entire edifice of Maimonidean thought. Rambam emphasises the intellect as humanity’s crowning glory, the rational faculty endowed to it by God through which humanity can be differentiated and distinguished from the mundane physical world and all its inhabiting creatures. Only by developing the intellect to comprehend and absorb objective, universal, divine truths––by perceiving objects and concepts “as they are”––can we form a connection with the divine and thereby earn divine providence, prophecy, and the World to Come.

Crucially, however, Rambam also maintains that a rigorous curriculum of character development and intellectual training can gradually elevate the human mind from the realm of subjectivity, and provide a person with a degree of objective knowledge as to religious and philosophical truths. People whose minds are trained in this way would, in Rambam’s view, be entitled to claim that their religious values belong more to the category of knowledge than belief.

My essay in this book – which is a fuller and more developed version of some of the arguments set forward in Judaism Reclaimed – carefully examines Rambam’s approach. It argues that Rambam took very seriously the arguments which were of such concern to later philosophers, and that the difficulty facing the human intellect when it attempts to comprehend objective truths features strongly in Rambam’s philosophy. It seems to me that this understanding of Rambam’s approach not only defends his thought from the charge that it is outdated, but also bears the potential to enhance the ability of those grappling with his philosophy in the 21st century to enrich their own religious lives.

I look forward to reading and possibly reviewing some of the other essays in this book in the near future.

First posted to Facebook 6 February 2022, here.

Does Judaism encourage difficult questions?

In the upcoming year I will be doing a little teaching in the nearby Amudim program in Jerusalem. Classes will be focused on “Fifty Big Questions” of Judaism. Yet, as I explore in the introduction to Judaism Reclaimed, Jewish tradition contains conflicting voices as to whether such difficult questions should be voiced in the first place.

The conflicting approaches to the legitimacy and importance of addressing key theological and philosophical questions are neatly encapsulated in a debate between Rambam and Ra’avad regarding the nature of God’s knowledge. In the fifth chapter of Hilchot Teshuvah, Rambam grapples with the thorny theological conundrum of how to reconcile God’s absolute and unchanging knowledge with human free will. He probes the extent of God’s knowledge and the limited ability of the human mind to comprehend it before eventually concluding that we must acknowledge that our minds are not equipped fully to fathom the nature of God’s mind.

Commenting on Rambam’s analysis, Ra’avad rejects Rambam’s methodology in its entirety: he states that, since we cannot reach a decisive conclusion, “it would have been preferable to leave it as a matter of simple faith” rather than to open people’s minds to such troubling questions.

Rambam however finds value in pushing the limits of human understanding to comprehend to the greatest possible extent, defining and explaining exactly what can and cannot be understood by the human mind. Even when dealing with concepts which lie beyond the grasp of the human intellect, Rambam still seeks to describe them to the greatest possible extent, and to explain why they cannot be understood. Rambam’s persistence in seeking to probe and understand the inexplicable is consistent with his key understanding that connection to God (and with it providence and the World to Come) is achieved by attaining the greatest possible comprehension of divine matters, including clearly defined parameters of what lies beyond the scope of human understanding. Increasing one’s ability to grasp such matters is a lifelong effort and journey.

In a similar vein, Rav Bachye ibn Pekuda (in the third chapter of Sha’ar Yichud of his Chovot Halevovot) strongly urges that a person who is intellectually capable should probe theological questions such as the existence and nature of God, and the authenticity of the Torah.

It is evident therefore that two legitimate schools of thought subsist within Jewish tradition regarding the correct approach to difficult theological matters.

Nevertheless, in a modern era of widespread, uncontrollable and often anonymised discussion of Torah fundamentals through blogs, internet forums and other social media, the option of secluding oneself from troubling questions and viewpoints has become increasingly challenging. In this atmosphere of open debate and inquiry, refusal to engage with such issues is liable to be interpreted by the perplexed of today’s online generation as a sign of weakness — or worse, as a concession that one has nothing to say and that those who propound views that are hostile to the received Jewish tradition are therefore right.

As Rabbeinu Yonah comments in his explanation of the Mishnaic statement: “know what to respond to the heretic”:

“If his [the heretic’s] false claims are not responded to, many will learn from them and will drink evil waters after perceiving that (his claims) were victorious”.

The need to face and openly address difficult questions in the modern era was recognised by Rav Shimon Schwab. Writing in America – even before the advent of the internet and social media – he considered that:

“the temptations of heresy and agnosticism are not lurking mainly inside the colleges. Every library, every bookstore (including Hebrew bookstores!) contains as much Apikorsus as the lecture halls of a university. There are newspapers and magazines…obtainable everywhere which are filled with anti-religious, anti-Torah dynamite. The forbidden fruits sprout everywhere…[T]he bright-eyed student is confronted with overt and covert Kefirah wherever he turns. To ignore this shocking state of affairs does not minimize the acute danger. On the other hand the Torah im Derech Eretz education may forge the intellectual armour to beat the rebellious ideas into submission.”

Recognising and seeking to address such questions is certainly not an easy option and can take people well out of their comfort zone. The introduction to Judaism Reclaimed (linked above) explores how such a journey can best be undertaken within the parameters of Jewish tradition. As Rav Soloveitchik attests, the intellectual search for meaning and understanding can be lonely and troubling, but also exhilarating and ultimately extremely rewarding. Most importantly it offers the intellectual traveller the prospect of a more meaningful and fulfilling connection to Judaism and a more genuine connection to God and His Torah.

In a footnote near the opening of Halakhic Man the Rav writes:

“The pangs of searching and groping, the tortures of spiritual crises and exhausting treks of the soul purify and sanctify man, cleanse his thoughts and purge them of the husks of superficiality and the dross of vulgarity. Out of these torments there emerges a new understanding of the world, a powerful spiritual enthusiasm that shakes the very foundations of man’s existence. He arises from the agonies, purged and refined, possessed of a new heart and spirit. “It is a time of agony unto Jacob, but out of it he shall be saved” (Yirmiyah 30:7) – i.e. from out of the very midst of the agony itself he will attain eternal salvation and redemption. The spiritual stature and countenance of the man of God are chiselled and formed by the pangs of redemption themselves.”

I very much hope that my classes, like my book and online discussions, are able to encourage people to engage positively and openly with Judaism, and enjoy a more mature and meaningful connection to the Torah – within the parameters of Jewish tradition.

First posted on Facebook 24 August 2022, here.

The shifting sands of philosophical certainty

 Shmuli Phillips is with Alec Goldstein and Gil Student.

Many Shabbat tables yesterday are likely to have been entertained by enthusiastic youngsters eagerly regaling us with accounts of how a three-year-old Avram discovered proto-Judaism by means of an intellectual exploration of ultimate theological truths. Armed with his newfound religious certainty, these popular Midrashim continue, Avram proceeded to vanquish the pagan dictator Nimrod in theological debate before being cast into a furnace by the enraged tyrant – and surviving – all this before our parasha has even begun.

While many in today’s Jewish world profess a similar certainty as to the existence of proofs in favour of their religious dispositions, a major theme of Strauss, Spinoza & Sinai: Orthodox Judaism and Modern Questions of Faith is the recognition that prevailing philosophical wisdom considers that such matters can neither be proven nor disproven. In a thoughtful chapter that I was reading over Shabbat, Rabbi Gil Student draws heavily upon the writings of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, a 19th century Prussian rabbi.

Rabbi Kalischer emphasises the importance of a Judaism which is built upon both intellectual inquiry and traditional faith in order to produce an enduring and meaningful engagement with Judaism in the modern world. Devoid of sufficient rational grounding and understanding of Judaism, the bearer of simple faith is likely to be unprepared for any serious challenges that come his or her way. In addition, an intellectual relationship with Judaism, he argues, leads to a stronger and more refined lifestyle and set of priorities: “Someone who views the world with scrutiny will avoid the vanities and foolishnesses of life, the pitfalls of pride and jealousy, the meaningless trivialities that occupy so much time and resources”.

Even more forcefully, however, Rabbi Kalischer insists that rational exploration alone cannot provide a firm enough grounding for a religious life. Modern critiques of long-respected philosophical positions have shown us the limitations of man’s knowledge – the lack of information that we have about the world – which force us to rely upon our personal questionable interpretations of reality. Our only reliable source, concludes, R’ Student, is revelation and tradition.

Examples are offered of Descartes, Kant and Hegel – towering historical figures in philosophy whose theories are now obsolete. “All the great theories have failed, all the great geniuses have been superseded time and again by new geniuses. What certainty lies with today’s geniuses over last century’s and next century’s?”

Significantly, this argument about the “shifting sands” of philosophy is not wielded against the entire philosophic endeavour itself. Instead it is a warning against a tendency among thinkers of any particular era to be overconfident in the fruits of their own rational deliberations. “No argument, no approach can yield conclusive results. The history of philosophy demonstrates that amply”.

The conclusion drawn from this is that intellectual inquiry should be used as a tool to enhance revealed truths which have been faithfully transmitted through the generations:

“We must pursue wisdom, but with the caveat that its conclusions are all tentative. Faith guides us; wisdom deepens the faith. When the two conflict, we view today’s wisdom as tentative, temporary, a step towards an ultimate wisdom that walks lockstep with faith”.

A somewhat similar Midrashic teaching relating to Avram’s early intellectual odyssey forms the basis of the opening chapter of Judaism Reclaimed. Bereishit Rabbah (39:8) explores the comparison of the Jewish nation with a dove. There we are taught that while all other birds rest on a rock or tree when they tire, when a dove is tired, it pushes itself with one of its wings, and flies with the other.

Based on this, Rabbi Shalom Mordechai Schwadron explains that each wing represents a different way that we connect with God. The first, which we may call the philosophical approach, emerges from our own intellectual endeavours to comprehend and connect with the awesomeness of God, while the second - which is a more emotional and spiritual connection - is stimulated by religious and spiritual moments that God sends our way to uplift and inspire us. As I summarise there:

“by developing these complementary aspects of religious endeavour, a person who runs into difficulty with one approach can fall back and rely upon the other (just like when either wing is “tired”, the dove can “fly” with the other). Both intellectual and spiritual-experiential approaches are thus of crucial relevance in every individual’s religious quest, even thought the extent to which each of these two approaches is drawn upon will necessarily vary from person to person” (see more here)

The midrashic accounts of young Avram, it would seem, highlight not only the importance but also the limitations of independent rational inquiry.

First posted to Facebook 6 November 2022, here.

Is God a mind: Rambam and divine knowledge

By Shmuli Phillips with Joshua Maroof.

Human attempts to comprehend and describe God’s knowledge have long led rabbinic thinkers across a theological minefield. The most commonly discussed difficulty relates to attempts to reconcile fundamental doctrines of free will and God’s foreknowledge – a problem which features in several chapters of Judaism Reclaimed. An examination of medieval analyses however show that the very notion of God’s knowledge in its own right is a thorny and troublesome concept. 

This week’s parashah features an episode in which God judges and punishes the denizens of Sodom for their sinful behaviour. A seemingly innocuous verse describes God declaring “I will descend now and see, whether according to her cry, which has come to Me, they have done; [I will wreak] destruction [upon them]; and if not, I will know."” (Bereishit 18:21). Ibn Ezra comments on this that “the truth is that He knows everything generally, not as a particular” – a comment that Ralbag identifies as a support for his understanding that God only knows broad principles and not particular details which occur.

The reason for this is explained by Rabbi Joshua Maroof in his excellent series of online shiurim on the Moreh Nevuchim (link in first comment). For these rabbinic philosophers, who saw the world through the Aristotelian lens which informed scholarly insight in medieval times, the idea of God gaining new knowledge from cognizing events which occurred in the world presented a severe problem.

According to this way of thinking, when a person gains a new idea, it becomes part of the mind and thereby changes and improves it. For example, a person who has understood and internalised the theory of gravity will never look at the world again in the same way. Instead of “angels” moving objects he will now comprehend this movement by means of scientific principles of mass and force. Whatever is imprinting the physical world with these laws is now also imprinting the human mind – in Maimonidean terms the knowledge and the knower become one. This is unproblematic when we are dealing with steady and eternal rules of nature. These can always have been part of God’s Perfect knowledge with which He created the world.

But what about the particulars of the universe – the specific results of the various and changing manifestations of the laws of nature in the material world? And of course human conduct – the results of our free will? If God is understood to gain new knowledge of these, then He is “changed” and made “more perfect” as a result of receiving this knowledge.

It is against this backdrop that we can begin to appreciate quite how radical Rambam’s position on the matter was, remaining faithful to the clear implications of the biblical texts despite the theological challenges that these created when viewed from the prevalent Aristotelian perspective. Rambam’s conservatism prompted Ralbag to declare that “It seems that Maimonides’ position on this question of Divine cognition is not implied by any philosophical principles; indeed, reason denies this view, as I will show. It seems rather that theological considerations have forced him to this view.” (Milchamot Hashem 3:3).

In short, Rambam concludes – consistent with his broader approach to such matters – that we are entirely unable to describe any properties or attributes of God, including His knowledge. Even using the word “know” in relation to God is a borrowed term; it should not be taken to imply any similarity between God’s knowledge and that of humans (Rabbi Maroof points out that this principle also appears in the kabbalistic Patach Eliyahu prayer).

Notwithstanding our inability to fully fathom the nature of divine knowledge, Rambam offers an example to help us distinguish its nature from that of human knowledge:

“There is a great disparity between the knowledge that a designer has of the object he has designed and the knowledge that someone else has of that object. For if this object was made according to the designer’s plan, it is entirely the product of the designer’s knowledge. For another person observing the object, however, his knowledge derives from the object…The designer of a machine understands its properties not through observing how it operates subsequently…

However this is not the case for someone who looks at this machine, for whenever the onlooker observes the object he gains new knowledge…If you suppose that the motions of this instrument are infinite, the onlooker could never contain them all in his knowledge. In addition, the onlooker is incapable of knowing these motions before they occur, for his knowledge arises exclusively from observing what actually takes place.

So too…everything that we know is only through looking at the Creation, therefore our knowledge does not grasp the future or the infinite. Our insights are therefore renewed and increased according to the knowledge that we are able to acquire. God, however, is not like that, since His knowledge of objects is not derived from them…On the contrary, the objects in question are a result of His knowledge which preceded and established them as they are.” (paraphrased from Moreh 3:21)

Ultimately, while we can attempt to describe divine processes and their results, we are bound by a recognition that “knowing” and “mind” are borrowed terms when applied to God. As Rambam makes clear repeatedly in this context, our thoughts and language are unable to positively grasp or depict any aspect of the infinite. Metaphors and borrowed terms from descriptions of human actions help us relate to God to some degree but we must exercise extreme caution over taking them too literally and thereby ascribing positive features to God.

As Rabbi Maroof concludes, almost all theological problems that people raise are a result of them trying to compare God to His creatures. I believe that it is such flawed comparisons between divine and human existence and knowledge which pave the way for the intrusion of flawed theologies – such as corporealism, tzimzum and restrictions of divine knowledge – into Judaism.

First posted on Facebook 9 November 2022, here.