Why Boiling Matters
Steven Goldfarb
being "melacha" was a contributing factor to my decision to leave O. Let
me take this opportunity to explain why.
The fundamental question is "why Judaism?" and more specifically "why O?"
I can think of four reasons. Two are specific to O Judaism, and two
aren't.
Reason 1: Tradition. This is what your fathers and grandfathers did from
time immemorial.
-- Although this is probably the strongest reason IMO for following O, it
is not specific to Judaism. Pretty much all religions can and do make this
same claim.
Reason 2: Personal Revelation. Your soul knows that it's true.
-- I'm sure this is the reason why most people who aren't FFB or the
equivalent follow a religion. However, once again most if not all
religions use this plank as well.
The Two "Jewish-Specific" Reasons:
Reason 3: Documentation: We wrote ours down.
-- This has always been taught to me as a strong claim for why Judaism has
more validity than other religions. They have their traditions, but we
wrote ours down. We have documentation that this is what we always
believed. This would be a very strong plank, except it has been clearly
demonstrated here in this NG that the "documentation" doesn't document
anything. That if there's a discrepancy between the Tradition and the
Documentation, then the Tradition is used. Thus, this plank reduces down
to the Tradition plank, which as I've said can certainly be valid but it's
not a differentiator from any other religion. They all have traditions
too.
Reason 4: Logic. Accept these basic principles on faith, and everything
else follows.
-- This too has always been taught to me as evidence for the validity of
Judaism over other religions. That halacha, specifically, follows a logic
that can only have been given by God, thus it's of an entirely different
character than the rituals and superstitions that other religions might
follow. This is my point about boiling water being melacha -- it's not
logical, it's "by definition." If halacha is simply "by definition," then
once again it reduces down to Plank One, Tradition, and is no longer a
differentiator against other religions.
So that's why I fight to see if you can keep my reasons 3 and 4 intact --
why I object to making things "by definition" and erasing words with a
simple "we understand that x actually means not x." Because it reduces out
the differentiating factors, and you're left with "In Judaism, we believe
stuff" which is no different from what a Christian, Buddhist, or Incan
would be able to say.
Obviously you can still say "well, regardless of what anyone else might
think, I have to give weight to my own ancestor's beliefs and not those of
anyone else." And that's fine - it's a valid point, it's just
substantially weaker than the reasons above.
--sg
--
---------------------------------------
Steve Goldfarb Eppur si muove
s...@stevegoldfarb.com (and still, it moves)
http://stevegoldfarb.com/ - Galileo
Chano
"Steven Goldfarb" <s...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:bhr51k$28q$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> In the "boiling water" thread, I mentioned that the issue of boiling water
> being "melacha" was a contributing factor to my decision to leave O.
[snip]
> Steve Goldfarb
Steve left Yiddishkeit because of "boiling water, and got himself into...
"boiling water"!
Chano
Micha Berger
:>Your contension is denied by the fact under discussion. Heating water
:>is not a persistent state change, and yet is prohibited. It's your
:>definition that is at fault, not the law.
: Understood. There isn't a logical basis -- I get it. It is what it is,
: because that's what it is. Like Tevye said, "Tradition!!"
: Fine. Not satisfactory to me intellectually, spiritually, or emotionally,
: but fine for anyone who wishes to partake.
Your problem, IMHO, is that you're putting the cart ahead of the horse.
(Perhaps that's because in Tevye's case, the horse died!)
The Torah has the Jews accepting the mitzvos with the declaration "na'aseh
venishmah" -- we will do, and we will hear. First comes doing. Then one
experiences and understands.
OT1H, this is a consequence of the origin of Torah, it is based on truths
people can't understand. To require understanding beforehand would limit
religion to inculcating into the heart things the mind already knows. A
wrthy goal, but a far more limited one. While no one can understand the
Divine Thought behind it all, the act of Torah observance itself teaches
one the perspective with which to understand.
OTOH, it's also part of the nature of religious debate even if all
sides were equal. The postulates and philosophy are arguable either
way. People's minds will simply go in whatever direction their hearts
want them to. Religious change is initiated by experience, not reason.
Which is why the typical BT didn't turn his life around in response to a
philosophical argument, but to the experience of a Shabbbos. You might
question what is a melakhah, or why heating water would qualify. But
someone who experienced it can't question the sense of sanctity, of
purpose, the effectiveness, of traditional Shabbos observance.
Questioning ones own experiences is the path to madness.
Two hours earlier, at 18:22:51 +0000 (UTC), Steven wrote:
: Reason 1: Tradition. This is what your fathers and grandfathers did from
: time immemorial.
: -- Although this is probably the strongest reason IMO for following O, it
: is not specific to Judaism. Pretty much all religions can and do make this
: same claim.
: Reason 2: Personal Revelation. Your soul knows that it's true.
: -- I'm sure this is the reason why most people who aren't FFB or the
: equivalent follow a religion. However, once again most if not all
: religions use this plank as well.
Continuing the same argument:
I'm not sure why this should bother me. People out there make some pretty
weird claims. Does that mean I should question my own tradition, or my own
revelation?
Would you question your own senses because someone else in the room claims
to see otherwise? As you later write:
: Obviously you can still say "well, regardless of what anyone else might
: think, I have to give weight to my own ancestor's beliefs and not those of
: anyone else." And that's fine - it's a valid point, it's just
: substantially weaker than the reasons above.
It's only weaker in the eyes of a third party, someone who wants the
nishmah without the na'aseh. But I don't need to be able to convince
others in order for me to be convinced myself.
...
: Reason 4: Logic. Accept these basic principles on faith, and everything
: else follows.
: -- This too has always been taught to me as evidence for the validity of
: Judaism over other religions. That halacha, specifically, follows a logic
: that can only have been given by God, thus it's of an entirely different
: character than the rituals and superstitions that other religions might
: follow. This is my point about boiling water being melacha -- it's not
: logical, it's "by definition." If halacha is simply "by definition," then
: once again it reduces down to Plank One, Tradition, and is no longer a
: differentiator against other religions.
I would argue something akin to both 2 and 4:
Accept these basic principles on faith, and the actions and experiences that
ensue will be revelatory.
-mi
--
Micha Berger Time flies...
mi...@aishdas.org ... but you're the pilot.
http://www.aishdas.org - R' Zelig Pliskin
Fax: (413) 403-9905
Micha Berger
: In the "boiling water" thread, I mentioned that the issue of boiling water
: me take this opportunity to explain why.
I don't see how a "proof" turning out to be weaker than you thought would
qualify as a counterargument.
Let me spell out a consequence of my longer post. I'm arguing that
despite my use of arguments in this thread, and your claim that the
a-logic was a contributing factor, both of us have the positions we
have today because of differences in our experiences. Not because of
philosophical realizations.
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>Reason 1: Tradition. This is what your fathers and grandfathers did from
>time immemorial.
As you point out, tradition by itself doesn't have inherent validity,
since we might have any tradition --- traditions of cannibalism, e.g.
Judaism does have a stronger claim than this, though.
First, Judaism wasn't just the tradition of our ancestors --- it was accepted
as a tradition by those surrounding it. Even if you neglect the
Biblical period and remain agnostic about whether the surrounding
peoples know about Sinai, in the Christian era, non-Jews accepted
Judaism's historical truth claims as true. That still doesn't prove
that they happened --- until recently, people believed Bede's History of
the English People (iirc) was history, and now it seems that it's not.
Nonetheless, it gives a much stronger claim than just that your and my
great great grandparents believed something was true --- it's them, and
two billion Xtians and Muslims.
Further, Judaism makes a stronger claim than most traditions: not only
did this happen, but your ancestors were there and they accepted an
enormous set of regulations as a consequence. Archaeological evidence
implies that it's very unlikely that the tradition could have been invented
any time after 100 BCE, which is 1200 years after the alleged revelation ---
certainly many individual families have traditions that go back to 800 CE.
I don't personally, but I do have family traditions going back 370 years
that I've been able to verify in libraries that I know my family had no
access to.
That's still not proof, since certainly Jewish society was in turmoil at
various points in the 1300--100 BCE interval. The elaborate tuma laws could
have been in place just as many societies had elaborate systems of taboos.
Amidst turmoil (say, the destruction of the First Temple), an evil
genius came to power, and created a backstory to explain the taboos and
justify their absolute rule. (I say he's evil because he would be
responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews and for ruining the lives
of millions of others.) That's certainly a plausible story, and it
could be shaped to fit the details that it needs to account for, but
there's no evidence for it either.
Third, Jewish tradition managed to survive as a unified whole for 2000--2600
years without a state, among Jews dispersed from China to Ethiopia to
England. I say 2600 because Ethopians have much of Jewish tradition and
yet they didn't know about Chanukah, Purim, or even the destruction of the
second Temple when they came to Israel. Yemenites also have a tradition
that some of them came to Yemen even before the destruction of the First
Temple, as traders, and many others came at the destruction of the First
Temple, but they stayed in contact with the other Jews. In all of this
diaspora, the Torah varied only by 7 letters, and these were all
yuds/vavs (although I'm not sure about the Ethiopian Torah); by comparison,
in only 1300 years of Christian scribal tradition, there were hundreds of
errors in the Bible among monks whose main task was to copy texts. You
might say that Judaism puts more emphasis at the level of the letter, but
that begs the question of the origin of this difference in emphasis and
how part-time Jewish sofers were able to uphold standards that the
full-time monks were not. Further, in millennia of diaspora, Jews
maintained nearly identical laws that differ only on minor details, and
even agreed on which details could be considered minor. It's possible
that an evil genius could create a system of laws and a discipline that
was sufficiently coherent so as to be able to be maintained with such
consistency and under such harsh conditions for 2000-2600 years, but if
so, it's a unique case.
Fourth, Jews maintained themselves as an oppressed minority, despite the
oppression. Certainly the existence of martyrs doesn't imply the truth of
an argument --- people are clearly willing to die for stupid causes.
The existence of a martyred nation is somewhat different. For millennia,
to be Jewish was to be homeless, reviled, and ridiculed, with sufficiently
few exceptions that this reality was Church doctrine until Vatican II.
The ability of Jews to go from this downtrodden state to becoming
disproportionately successful is unprecedented --- soon after emancipation,
Jews comprised a huge % of the doctors, professors, etc. in W Europe,
despite discrimination. They built a state that was able to defeat armies
ten times as big as it in 20 years, and a state that is today the leader
of many fields. Any secular theory that attempts to account for the
Jews' success is definitionally racist: even the enlightened theory
that Jewish culture puts more emphasis on literacy and persistence
implicitly says that other cultures just aren't up to snuff even when it
comes to building peaceful prosperous states. Religious Jews continue to
be the exceptions --- even the poorest religious communities have rates of
crime, family break up, and domestic violence well below those of
traditional societies of even much higher SES.
Certainly, an evil genius could create a system which would produce a
society with all of the above characteristics, but her genius would have
to be well beyond that of any leader the world has ever known.
>Reason 2: Personal Revelation. Your soul knows that it's true.
Bleh. See footnote 4, Halachic Man.
>Reason 3: Documentation: We wrote ours down.
Bleh. People write down lots of stupid things.
Nonetheless, I feel compelled to note that what we wrote down is pretty
impressively extensible --- that a rabbi in the 12th c could conclude from
a verse of King David that the universe is 5 billion years old and be
right is nearly fantastical. Likewise, Judaism had marital rape laws
>2000 years before the US did.
>Reason 4: Logic. Accept these basic principles on faith, and everything
>else follows.
That's sort-of kind-of true, but I don't think it's a reason to accept a
religion. I can accept the Axiom of Choice on faith, but that doesn't mean
that I should try to disassemble an orange into infinitely many pieces and
reassemble it into two oranges.
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
[snip]
>Which is why the typical BT didn't turn his life around in response to a
>philosophical argument, but to the experience of a Shabbbos. You might
>question what is a melakhah, or why heating water would qualify. But
>someone who experienced it can't question the sense of sanctity, of
>purpose, the effectiveness, of traditional Shabbos observance.
Right - I have experienced that, and yes - that's why I became BT too. But
ultimately it wasn't enough to sustain me.
I have absolutely no doubt that Catholics experience a sense of sancitity,
purpose, and effectiveness at a traditional Mass, too -- as did the
Egyptians, and whoever else. Emotional response is simply not enough for
me.
>Questioning ones own experiences is the path to madness.
I don't follow. I don't deny the experience - I just came to question
whether it was a result of some sort of "truth," or simply an emotional
response to a strong community, good people, and a ritual. And that any
ritual would cause the same response -- it was the experience and the
people that caused it, not the specifics of the ritual.
>Two hours earlier, at 18:22:51 +0000 (UTC), Steven wrote:
>: Reason 1: Tradition. This is what your fathers and grandfathers did from
>: time immemorial.
>: -- Although this is probably the strongest reason IMO for following O, it
>: is not specific to Judaism. Pretty much all religions can and do make this
>: same claim.
>: Reason 2: Personal Revelation. Your soul knows that it's true.
>: -- I'm sure this is the reason why most people who aren't FFB or the
>: equivalent follow a religion. However, once again most if not all
>: religions use this plank as well.
>Continuing the same argument:
>I'm not sure why this should bother me. People out there make some pretty
>weird claims. Does that mean I should question my own tradition, or my own
>revelation?
No, not at all -- I'm not saying it should bother you. Obviously yours is
different because it's yours.
If someone says "what should I do, theirs or mine?" it makes absolute
sense to do yours, rather than theirs, because it is yours. OTOH, if the
question is "why should I do anything?" it's harder to answer.
>Would you question your own senses because someone else in the room claims
>to see otherwise? As you later write:
I'm not sure of where this is coming from, but yes -- of course I would
question my senses if I'm in a room with someone who claims to sense
something different. If someone says "wait, I hear something," and I don't
hear anything, I can't conclude that there was no sound, in fact I'd
presume that the other person did indeed hear something.
>: Obviously you can still say "well, regardless of what anyone else might
>: think, I have to give weight to my own ancestor's beliefs and not those of
>: anyone else." And that's fine - it's a valid point, it's just
>: substantially weaker than the reasons above.
>It's only weaker in the eyes of a third party, someone who wants the
>nishmah without the na'aseh. But I don't need to be able to convince
>others in order for me to be convinced myself.
I don't need to actually convince others, but I need to have a convincing
argument. Maybe I'm still 3 years old at heart - in some ways I certainly
hope so - but I still ask "why?" and I'm still unsatisfied with the answer
"Because I said so."
>...
>: Reason 4: Logic. Accept these basic principles on faith, and everything
>: else follows.
>: -- This too has always been taught to me as evidence for the validity of
>: Judaism over other religions. That halacha, specifically, follows a logic
>: that can only have been given by God, thus it's of an entirely different
>: character than the rituals and superstitions that other religions might
>: follow. This is my point about boiling water being melacha -- it's not
>: logical, it's "by definition." If halacha is simply "by definition," then
>: once again it reduces down to Plank One, Tradition, and is no longer a
>: differentiator against other religions.
>I would argue something akin to both 2 and 4:
>Accept these basic principles on faith, and the actions and experiences that
>ensue will be revelatory.
That's fine, but it's not distinct. Any religion can (and does) say that.
It doesn't give me any reason to believe that ours is right and theirs is
wrong.
Obviously I'd LIKE to believe that, and even if I were to think that
pretty much everyone the world over believes from a religious perspective
is sheer nonsense, (not saying I do, just if I did) I would still give
some weight to ideas of Judaism simply because my ancestors have been
doing it for so long.
Steven Goldfarb
>On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 18:22:51 +0000 (UTC), Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> wrote:
>: In the "boiling water" thread, I mentioned that the issue of boiling water
>: being "melacha" was a contributing factor to my decision to leave O. Let
>: me take this opportunity to explain why.
>I don't see how a "proof" turning out to be weaker than you thought would
>qualify as a counterargument.
Because I was taught that halacha was a living system of logic that could
be thought about independent of revelation and belief, and only the
initial principles on which it is based depended on revelation and belief.
This is clearly not the case, and the "cooking water" phenomenon helped me
understand that.
>Let me spell out a consequence of my longer post. I'm arguing that
>despite my use of arguments in this thread, and your claim that the
>a-logic was a contributing factor, both of us have the positions we
>have today because of differences in our experiences. Not because of
>philosophical realizations.
No, I feel completely the opposite. Well, almost completely. I enjoyed
many of the experiences -- I liked the sense of community, of identity, of
ritual, etc. But it's a tripod - heart, mind, and soul. I was drawn in
initially through emotion - "heart" and "soul" stuff, all that NCSY
sleep-deprivation hunger-induced religious ferver, shabbos at the kollel
sensing the spirituality flowing out of Rabbi Irons and some of the other
folk -- that was real and sincere, and led me further into it. When we got
into the "mind" part I lept at it, I learned with some brilliant people
and really thought it was stimulating and wonderful, through my brief
yeshiva stay and then subsequent classes through college taught by a guy I
respected immensely who came out to campus to teach us, but then I kept
asking questions and began to realize that intellectually it wasn't
holding up.
Once my mind saw the "holes," then philosophically I could no longer
justify it. One morning I was completely frum, cooking kosher meals in my
dorm room, keeping shabbos, etc., and by that evening after deciding that
this new philosophical stance was correct that was it -- boom. Went out
to eat at a treif restaurant that night, and was immediately entirely
non-religious.
It was entirely philosophical - once I concluded that O wasn't
satisfactory, I had to reject it in its entirety. Subsequently I've been
working on how to bring some yiddishkeit back into my life, because I
think it's important to maintain a cultural connection, but I don't
believe in it as a way of life for me anymore.
--sg
>-mi
>--
>Micha Berger Time flies...
>mi...@aishdas.org ... but you're the pilot.
>http://www.aishdas.org - R' Zelig Pliskin
>Fax: (413) 403-9905
Ron Aaron
<jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> As you point out, tradition by itself doesn't have inherent validity,
> since we might have any tradition --- traditions of cannibalism, e.g.
> Judaism does have a stronger claim than this, though.
Yasher koach, Janet -- an excellent post.
thanks!
Ron
Brett Weiss
say that.
> It doesn't give me any reason to believe that ours is right and
theirs is
> wrong.
Why is it necessarily a zero sum game, with us "right" and others
"wrong"? Why not view it as what is right for *you* or for *us*
(depending on your viewpoint)? In one sense, Judaism recognizes
this through the Noahide standards.
Perhaps this is one reason why Judaism is not a prostelyzing
religion.
--
Brett
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>When we got
>into the "mind" part I lept at it, I learned with some brilliant people
>and really thought it was stimulating and wonderful, through my brief
>yeshiva stay and then subsequent classes through college taught by a guy I
>respected immensely who came out to campus to teach us, but then I kept
>asking questions and began to realize that intellectually it wasn't
>holding up.
Did it ever occur to you that the holes weren't actually holes, but were
only questions that this guy who came to campus or NCSY people couldn't
answer?
I'm not claiming that there is a satisfactory answer to every question,
but it seems a bit much to say that the lack of a satisfactory answer
means that one should abandon an entire system. By analogy, the
Standard Model in particle physics hasn't yet answered basic questions
like what causes mass or created a workable quantum theory of gravity;
we have predicted the existence of the Higgs boson and proton decay, but
we've seen neither. There are a zillion basic questions that we can't
answer, and yet the Standard Model is the best we have. If that's in
physics, kal vachomer for Judaism.
Janet
Micha Berger
: I have absolutely no doubt that Catholics experience a sense of sancitity,
: Egyptians, and whoever else. Emotional response is simply not enough for
: me.
There are two distinct entities under discussion. The emotional response,
and the thing one is responding to. I've been calling it "experience".
To give an easier example of the distinction: A mathemetician may lavel
some proof as "beautiful". The beauty itself is in the eye of the beholder.
However, the conceptual elegence that causes that judgement is not.
:>Questioning ones own experiences is the path to madness.
: I don't follow. I don't deny the experience - I just came to question
: whether it was a result of some sort of "truth," or simply an emotional
: response to a strong community, good people, and a ritual....
However, a belief system's ability to engender a strong community, good
people, and ritual that inspires such a response is an indication that
the system does contain "higher truths".
Halachah's ability to maintain this setting and invoke this response
despite the diverse contexts of 2 millenia of diaspora (to limit the claim
to the period not under debate) is akin to the conceptual elegence of
a beautiful math proof. An intangible part of human experience, but yet
still an objective existance.
And the results of the system argue for its premises.
...
: If someone says "what should I do, theirs or mine?" it makes absolute
: sense to do yours, rather than theirs, because it is yours. OTOH, if the
: question is "why should I do anything?" it's harder to answer.
:>Would you question your own senses because someone else in the room claims
:>to see otherwise? As you later write:
: I'm not sure of where this is coming from, but yes -- of course I would
: question my senses if I'm in a room with someone who claims to sense
: something different. If someone says "wait, I hear something," and I don't
: hear anything, I can't conclude that there was no sound, in fact I'd
: presume that the other person did indeed hear something.
That's an absence of proof issue. His evidence trumps your lack.
If, however, he insisted a tree fell, and you see it standing there right
before you?
As for "where this is coming from"... You site the fact that other religions
make similar claims as a reason not to believe our version. However, as
you already noted, ours is ours.
: I don't need to actually convince others, but I need to have a convincing
: argument. Maybe I'm still 3 years old at heart - in some ways I certainly
: hope so - but I still ask "why?" and I'm still unsatisfied with the answer
: "Because I said so."
You're asking religion to stand on first principles. As though anything
so complex could be provable to all unbiased parties. That agenda went
out the window with the empiricists, and finally with Kant's "Critique of
Pure Reason". I'm working with an entirely different epistomology. I'm
accepting Judaism's first principles because they are used to justify
results I can directly experience.
I don't keep Shabbos because it was commanded on Sinai, I believe it
was commanded on Sinai because all those weird rules about Shabbos (even
heating water) manage to create something that more straightforward days
of rest lack.
Steven Goldfarb
>Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
>>When we got
>>into the "mind" part I lept at it, I learned with some brilliant people
>>and really thought it was stimulating and wonderful, through my brief
>>yeshiva stay and then subsequent classes through college taught by a guy I
>>respected immensely who came out to campus to teach us, but then I kept
>>asking questions and began to realize that intellectually it wasn't
>>holding up.
>Did it ever occur to you that the holes weren't actually holes, but were
>only questions that this guy who came to campus or NCSY people couldn't
>answer?
I'm not talking about "holes," I'm talking about a breakdown of the entire
logical underpinnings. That it's a system of Tradition, not a system of
Logic, as it was originally described to me.
>I'm not claiming that there is a satisfactory answer to every question,
>but it seems a bit much to say that the lack of a satisfactory answer
>means that one should abandon an entire system. By analogy, the
>Standard Model in particle physics hasn't yet answered basic questions
>like what causes mass or created a workable quantum theory of gravity;
>we have predicted the existence of the Higgs boson and proton decay, but
>we've seen neither. There are a zillion basic questions that we can't
>answer, and yet the Standard Model is the best we have. If that's in
>physics, kal vachomer for Judaism.
Right, but the Standard Model predicts what it predicts, and works as far
as it goes. No one's basing every action in their entire lives on the
predictions of the Standard Model. Every O Jew is basing every action in
his or her entire life on the predictions of the Halachic Model.
I'm not saying that the Halachic System is failing to predict this or that
- I'm saying that to me, it's shown itself to be unable to "predict"
anything. It's not a "system," it's a set of "I said so"s. This is not
satisfactory to me, for me.
Why is heating water to 114 degrees prohibited on Shabbos? Because I said
so.
Why is it OK to charge interest as long as you sign a certain document?
Because I said so.
Why is it prohibited to put a steak on a plate that once held milk?
Because I said so.
Yes, there are countless pages and hours of discussion regarding each of
these issues, but what finally struck me was that it's all entirely and
completely irrelevant -- ultimately it doesn't matter "why," it's all
about the "what." Despite what you read, despite what you learn, despite
what your brain might tell you, it all comes down to "I said so" as the
bottom line.
First comes the conclusion, then you can discuss how one might get to that
conclusion to your hearts content. But you can't challenge the conclusion
itself -- the law's the law. And that's doesn't fly for me. Your mileage
may vary, and more power to you. I'm only speaking for myself here.
--sg
>Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>There are two distinct entities under discussion. The emotional response,
>and the thing one is responding to. I've been calling it "experience".
>To give an easier example of the distinction: A mathemetician may lavel
>some proof as "beautiful". The beauty itself is in the eye of the beholder.
>However, the conceptual elegence that causes that judgement is not.
Agreed, I think.
>:>Questioning ones own experiences is the path to madness.
>: I don't follow. I don't deny the experience - I just came to question
>: whether it was a result of some sort of "truth," or simply an emotional
>: response to a strong community, good people, and a ritual....
>However, a belief system's ability to engender a strong community, good
>people, and ritual that inspires such a response is an indication that
>the system does contain "higher truths".
So the Christians don't have a strong community? The Maya weren't able to
promote a civilization? Hey, remnants of the Roman civilization persist to
this day -- does that mean their truths are higher than ours?
I'm not buying this argument.
>Halachah's ability to maintain this setting and invoke this response
>despite the diverse contexts of 2 millenia of diaspora (to limit the claim
>to the period not under debate) is akin to the conceptual elegence of
>a beautiful math proof. An intangible part of human experience, but yet
>still an objective existance.
I agree that it carries some weight, in the same way that Chinese medicine
carries some weight because people have been finding value in it for so
long. However, even agreeing with what you say, that doesn't support the
"it is what it is" school too strongly.
>And the results of the system argue for its premises.
Unless you're mistaken in the cause and effect. Which I concluded that you
are. My counter-evidence to the point you're making is that while many O
Jews are wonderful, warm, spiritual people, many others aren't. Any many
non-O Jews are. So IMO it has more to do with who the people are than what
specific traditions they follow.
>: I'm not sure of where this is coming from, but yes -- of course I would
>: question my senses if I'm in a room with someone who claims to sense
>: something different. If someone says "wait, I hear something," and I don't
>: hear anything, I can't conclude that there was no sound, in fact I'd
>: presume that the other person did indeed hear something.
>That's an absence of proof issue. His evidence trumps your lack.
>If, however, he insisted a tree fell, and you see it standing there right
>before you?
>As for "where this is coming from"... You site the fact that other religions
>make similar claims as a reason not to believe our version. However, as
>you already noted, ours is ours.
Well, exactly. You are the one claiming the tree has fallen when I can see
it before me. You're the one asking me to believe something other than my
own eyes. So why should I question my senses?
>You're asking religion to stand on first principles. As though anything
>so complex could be provable to all unbiased parties. That agenda went
>out the window with the empiricists, and finally with Kant's "Critique of
>Pure Reason". I'm working with an entirely different epistomology. I'm
>accepting Judaism's first principles because they are used to justify
>results I can directly experience.
>I don't keep Shabbos because it was commanded on Sinai, I believe it
>was commanded on Sinai because all those weird rules about Shabbos (even
>heating water) manage to create something that more straightforward days
>of rest lack.
Would it still be Shabbos if you could heat water? Would it still create
that special something if the bracha on the challa were phrased
differently? Halacha has locked in on the specifics, but I suggest that
those specifics aren't what's making it special. Perhaps ANY specifics
would make it special.
That's why people become C, or R.
I hear what you're saying, and I agree that it's a very valid reason for
doing what you do. Perhaps the only valid reason. But it doesn't work for
me, and it doesn't work for a lot of other people. It doesn't work for
most Jews, in fact, come to think of it.
QandA
> Reason 3: Documentation: We wrote ours down.
> -- This has always been taught to me as a strong claim for why Judaism has
> more validity than other religions. They have their traditions, but we
> wrote ours down. We have documentation that this is what we always
> believed. This would be a very strong plank, except it has been clearly
> demonstrated here in this NG that the "documentation" doesn't document
> anything. That if there's a discrepancy between the Tradition and the
> Documentation, then the Tradition is used.
This is what O believe. You don't have to do as they believe. If you
think that Documentation should trump Tradition... go for it. >:)
> Reason 4: Logic. Accept these basic principles on faith, and everything
> else follows.
> -- This too has always been taught to me as evidence for the validity of
> Judaism over other religions. That halacha, specifically, follows a logic
> that can only have been given by God, thus it's of an entirely different
> character than the rituals and superstitions that other religions might
> follow. This is my point about boiling water being melacha -- it's not
> logical, it's "by definition." If halacha is simply "by definition," then
Again. If you think that there are illogical inconsistencies in the
Tradition, and you don't like them, you don't have to follow them.
> So that's why I fight to see if you can keep my reasons 3 and 4 intact --
You can. But then you will not be O.
> Obviously you can still say "well, regardless of what anyone else might
> think, I have to give weight to my own ancestor's beliefs and not those of
> anyone else." And that's fine - it's a valid point, it's just
> substantially weaker than the reasons above.
It's a very weak point. At many times in our history, our ancestors
worshipped idols. If you're saying that you want to do what your
ancestors did, then you would have to "pick and choose" from among
their actions. Because they did so many different things, in the end,
you end up doing whatever you like.
QandA
> > That's fine, but it's not distinct. Any religion can (and does)
> say that.
> > It doesn't give me any reason to believe that ours is right and
> theirs is
> > wrong.
>
> Why is it necessarily a zero sum game, with us "right" and others
> "wrong"? Why not view it as what is right for *you* or for *us*
> (depending on your viewpoint)? In one sense, Judaism recognizes
> this through the Noahide standards.
Most people are not Noahides. IMO, Steve was not talking about
Noahides at all but about the major world religions, right? Their
actions contradict the Noahide standard.
> Perhaps this is one reason why Judaism is not a prostelyzing
> religion.
The reason why Judaism is not a proselyting religion is that when Jews
where under Roman rule, Romans forbade proselyting. This then became a
part of Tradition. Once something is part of Tradition, it stays a
part of Tradition. (A body in motion tends to stay in motion...)
QandA
> sensing the spirituality flowing out of Rabbi Irons and some of the other
> folk -- that was real and sincere, and led me further into it. When we got
> into the "mind" part I lept at it, I learned with some brilliant people
> and really thought it was stimulating and wonderful, through my brief
Ahh. So the problem must be that you are an ignoramus. :^) How is it
that your teachers did not see the holes but you did? How dare you
question them? You probably did not learn enough. Back to the yeshiva
for you. :^) >:)
> It was entirely philosophical - once I concluded that O wasn't
> satisfactory, I had to reject it in its entirety. Subsequently I've been
> working on how to bring some yiddishkeit back into my life, because I
> think it's important to maintain a cultural connection, but I don't
> believe in it as a way of life for me anymore.
What cultural connection? Do you mean the Eastern-European ghetto
customs? (Or, as Ray likes to say, Franco-German.)
Eating latkes and singing Hava Nagila is not exactly Judaism. The only
Jewish culture at this point is a religious culture. And also perhaps
the culture from the time when all Jews were a part of the same
community (Biblical period).
Steven Goldfarb
>This is what O believe. You don't have to do as they believe. If you
>think that Documentation should trump Tradition... go for it. >:)
You're right, of course, and this is why people become C, R,
Reconstructionist, whatever. That attempt to figure out what to keep and
what to discard...
>> Obviously you can still say "well, regardless of what anyone else might
>> think, I have to give weight to my own ancestor's beliefs and not those of
>> anyone else." And that's fine - it's a valid point, it's just
>> substantially weaker than the reasons above.
>It's a very weak point. At many times in our history, our ancestors
>worshipped idols. If you're saying that you want to do what your
>ancestors did, then you would have to "pick and choose" from among
>their actions. Because they did so many different things, in the end,
>you end up doing whatever you like.
I suppose that's true. What I'm going with is that I actually do believe
that "we were slaves to pharoah in Egypt." That seems to make sense to me
-- I think it's been clearly shown that oral histories can be preserved,
and why would anyone want to preserve that unless there was something to
it?
So I'm starting from the place that we really are a people, and we really
have done... something... for quite a number of years. That's what
prevents me from just walking away from the whole thing.
But then -- what?
Steven Goldfarb
>> Why is it necessarily a zero sum game, with us "right" and others
>> "wrong"? Why not view it as what is right for *you* or for *us*
>> (depending on your viewpoint)? In one sense, Judaism recognizes
>> this through the Noahide standards.
>Most people are not Noahides. IMO, Steve was not talking about
>Noahides at all but about the major world religions, right? Their
>actions contradict the Noahide standard.
Yes, exactly. Our "right" says that theirs is "wrong," so in that sense it
is a zero-sum game.
>> Perhaps this is one reason why Judaism is not a prostelyzing
>> religion.
>The reason why Judaism is not a proselyting religion is that when Jews
>where under Roman rule, Romans forbade proselyting. This then became a
>part of Tradition. Once something is part of Tradition, it stays a
>part of Tradition. (A body in motion tends to stay in motion...)
Good point.
Steven Goldfarb
>What cultural connection? Do you mean the Eastern-European ghetto
>customs? (Or, as Ray likes to say, Franco-German.)
>Eating latkes and singing Hava Nagila is not exactly Judaism. The only
>Jewish culture at this point is a religious culture. And also perhaps
>the culture from the time when all Jews were a part of the same
>community (Biblical period).
Agreed - I actually mean something closer to what Micha was talking about.
There definitely is something to be gained, I think, from teaching your
children to do certain actions that your ancestors did.
This is why I feel more of a connection with C than with R -- at least as
I understand them, not necessarily as "movements" but just as things that
people do.
I used to think that C was "hypocritical" -- if you know the "right way"
to do something, you ought to do it! But I've come to realize that Micha
has a point -- and that, say, saying kiddush and having a challah on a
Friday night (which C people typically do) does begin to create something,
especially if you've got kids.
OTOH, the R thing doesn't work for me at all -- I can see discarding
things that don't fit and just keeping what you want to, but I have a
problem with making stuff up.
Once again I'm just speaking for myself -- but I think there's some
"spiritual weight" gained from doing something, like Kiddish, say, or
lighting Shabbos candles, and being able to say "I don't know anything
about this other than our ancestors have been doing this for thousands of
years." Even that is enough for something.
The ritual has some meaning in and of itself, to me -- the "religion"
part, the "God stuff," not necessarily. Yet that seems to be what R does -
discard the ritual and invent new "God stuff," which is the opposite of
where I'd go with it. I actually felt more comfortable in a
Reconstructionist synagogue, which seems to do the opposite - keep the
ritual, discard the "God stuff."
--sg
Micha Berger
: So the Christians don't have a strong community? The Maya weren't able to
: this day -- does that mean their truths are higher than ours?
: I'm not buying this argument.
Despite the fact that you already said that ours ought get primacy in your
own evaluation because it's ours?
:>Halachah's ability to maintain this setting and invoke this response
:>despite the diverse contexts of 2 millenia of diaspora (to limit the claim
:>to the period not under debate) is akin to the conceptual elegence of
:>a beautiful math proof. An intangible part of human experience, but yet
:>still an objective existance.
: I agree that it carries some weight, in the same way that Chinese medicine
: carries some weight because people have been finding value in it for so
: long. However, even agreeing with what you say, that doesn't support the
: "it is what it is" school too strongly.
Only because you choose an epistomology that puts too much weight on
proofs from first principles without dealing with the question of where
one ought get those assumptions.
This isn't particular to you, it's part of the west's general love affair
with science. Scientific methodology can only prove things to the extent that
we trust our observations of the falsity of its opposite.
Which places The burden of proof in this sphere in the real of
observation, not reasoning. It's the assumptions that are hardest to
come by.
:>And the results of the system argue for its premises.
: Unless you're mistaken in the cause and effect...
Yes, it's in the opposite direction than you're used to. That's why
Kant called his thought "trancandental".
But this isn't an issue of which causes which, but which causes belief
in which.
: are. My counter-evidence to the point you're making is that while many O
: Jews are wonderful, warm, spiritual people, many others aren't. Any many
: non-O Jews are. So IMO it has more to do with who the people are than what
: specific traditions they follow.
This isn't some experiment on external phenomena. It's a question of
first-hnd experience. What does obeying halachah do for you personally.
:>As for "where this is coming from"... You site the fact that other religions
:>make similar claims as a reason not to believe our version. However, as
:>you already noted, ours is ours.
: Well, exactly. You are the one claiming the tree has fallen when I can see
: it before me. You're the one asking me to believe something other than my
: own eyes. So why should I question my senses?
You did not say you rejected O because you tried Shabbos and it didn't
"work". You said you rejected it because a bunch of kiruv workers
(college kids, if we're talking NCSY) told you that O is a logical
system without telling you that more often than not you can't see the
logic personally and therefore must rely on faith.
Or, as R JB Soloveitchik put it, every mitzvah has an element of choq
(statute too subtle for comprehension). Of course something like the
red heifer does. But even "thou shalt not murder". What is murder
as opposed to justifiable killing? Is abortion murder? What about
euthenasia? Assisted suicide? The abortion debate in the US is largely
a definitional issue. If we could decide how to define "life" and how
to define "human life", the question wouldn't be "choice" vs "life".
You said why you didn't believe, I said why I did. My position is inherently
experiential. It's not a philosophical argument that I can hope to impose
on others. It was you who seems to have problems believing something that
only you alone have reason to side with over another.
:>I don't keep Shabbos because it was commanded on Sinai, I believe it
:>was commanded on Sinai because all those weird rules about Shabbos (even
:>heating water) manage to create something that more straightforward days
:>of rest lack.
: Would it still be Shabbos if you could heat water? Would it still create
: that special something if the bracha on the challa were phrased
: differently? Halacha has locked in on the specifics, but I suggest that
: those specifics aren't what's making it special. Perhaps ANY specifics
: would make it special.
Did you try the experiment? Perhaps different specifics make it "almost"
as special. Or perhaps you've touched on why the Torah allows for debate
and human interaction in producing halachah; perhaps some rituals are
of equal value to other variants, and it's only the standardization across
communities and time that gends up making one more important.
: That's why people become C, or R.
By and large, that's not true. People change over emotional, not
intellectual, issues. (You agreed to that assertion two days ago.)
: I hear what you're saying, and I agree that it's a very valid reason for
: doing what you do. Perhaps the only valid reason. But it doesn't work for
: me, and it doesn't work for a lot of other people. It doesn't work for
: most Jews, in fact, come to think of it.
Most Jews have rejected O without trying it. Including the generations that
originally founded R and C.
If you never look at the tree, you can't know if it stands.
Steven Goldfarb
>On Tue, 19 Aug 2003 13:32:47 +0000 (UTC), Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> wrote:
>: So the Christians don't have a strong community? The Maya weren't able to
>: promote a civilization? Hey, remnants of the Roman civilization persist to
>: this day -- does that mean their truths are higher than ours?
>: I'm not buying this argument.
>Despite the fact that you already said that ours ought get primacy in your
>own evaluation because it's ours?
Primacy, but not supremacy. That is I'd believe ours before theirs, but
that doesn't require me to believe ours at all.
>: I agree that it carries some weight, in the same way that Chinese medicine
>: carries some weight because people have been finding value in it for so
>: long. However, even agreeing with what you say, that doesn't support the
>: "it is what it is" school too strongly.
>Only because you choose an epistomology that puts too much weight on
>proofs from first principles without dealing with the question of where
>one ought get those assumptions.
>This isn't particular to you, it's part of the west's general love affair
>with science. Scientific methodology can only prove things to the extent that
>we trust our observations of the falsity of its opposite.
>Which places The burden of proof in this sphere in the real of
>observation, not reasoning. It's the assumptions that are hardest to
>come by.
OK. I'll need to cogitate on this.
>:>And the results of the system argue for its premises.
>: Unless you're mistaken in the cause and effect...
>Yes, it's in the opposite direction than you're used to. That's why
>Kant called his thought "trancandental".
>But this isn't an issue of which causes which, but which causes belief
>in which.
OK.
>: are. My counter-evidence to the point you're making is that while many O
>: Jews are wonderful, warm, spiritual people, many others aren't. Any many
>: non-O Jews are. So IMO it has more to do with who the people are than what
>: specific traditions they follow.
>This isn't some experiment on external phenomena. It's a question of
>first-hnd experience. What does obeying halachah do for you personally.
Not enough. That's the bottom line -- it did something for me, but not
enough.
>You did not say you rejected O because you tried Shabbos and it didn't
>"work". You said you rejected it because a bunch of kiruv workers
>(college kids, if we're talking NCSY) told you that O is a logical
>system without telling you that more often than not you can't see the
>logic personally and therefore must rely on faith.
No, no, no -- not NCSY college kids. I was spending a considerable amount
of time among the yeshiva and kollel people in Detroit -- hardly NCSY
college kids. These were people from educated at the best "black hat"
yeshivas in the US and Israel. The kollel was based out of Lakewood, I
believe. I ALSO spent some time in NCSY, but that was ancillary. Also I
learned with the Lubavitch rabbi, who had the closest (only?) O shul to my
neighborhood. I'm talking about a period of over 7 years here, not an
afternoon. And, as I've mentioned, I spent 3 months after high school at
Ner Israel in Baltimore -- but this was after years of O afternoon school
(3 days per week), a number of shiurim at the kollel, various other bits
of study, etc. I was in the "outsider transfer" program with other
high-school kids, that's true, but I'm not saying this to brag, but just
so you know -- I got 100% on every test they gave me. So I was "getting
it," and I was hardly studying with NCSY kiruv college kids.
I believe that I made an informed decision.
>Or, as R JB Soloveitchik put it, every mitzvah has an element of choq
>(statute too subtle for comprehension). Of course something like the
>red heifer does. But even "thou shalt not murder". What is murder
>as opposed to justifiable killing? Is abortion murder? What about
>euthenasia? Assisted suicide? The abortion debate in the US is largely
>a definitional issue. If we could decide how to define "life" and how
>to define "human life", the question wouldn't be "choice" vs "life".
>You said why you didn't believe, I said why I did. My position is inherently
>experiential. It's not a philosophical argument that I can hope to impose
>on others. It was you who seems to have problems believing something that
>only you alone have reason to side with over another.
I understand your position - I don't follow what you're saying my position
is.
>: Would it still be Shabbos if you could heat water? Would it still create
>: that special something if the bracha on the challa were phrased
>: differently? Halacha has locked in on the specifics, but I suggest that
>: those specifics aren't what's making it special. Perhaps ANY specifics
>: would make it special.
>Did you try the experiment? Perhaps different specifics make it "almost"
>as special. Or perhaps you've touched on why the Torah allows for debate
>and human interaction in producing halachah; perhaps some rituals are
>of equal value to other variants, and it's only the standardization across
>communities and time that gends up making one more important.
>: That's why people become C, or R.
>By and large, that's not true. People change over emotional, not
>intellectual, issues. (You agreed to that assertion two days ago.)
We're talking about emotional issues, though, aren't we? If the Shabbos
experiences "works" emotionally for someone.
Obviously this is not a straight emotional versus intellectual thing -- it
simply "wasn't working" for me -- spiritually, emotionally, and
intellectually. Then I had to ask -- is it "not working" because I'm not
doing enough, or because I'm doing too much? I concluded that adding
"more" wouldn't make it better, and that I was in fact doing too much.
>: I hear what you're saying, and I agree that it's a very valid reason for
>: doing what you do. Perhaps the only valid reason. But it doesn't work for
>: me, and it doesn't work for a lot of other people. It doesn't work for
>: most Jews, in fact, come to think of it.
>Most Jews have rejected O without trying it. Including the generations that
>originally founded R and C.
I don't know if that's true or not. But speaking only for myself -- I
tried it, I experienced it, I did indeed feel what you're talking about,
but ultimately I felt/realized/decided that it wasn't enough/correct.
>If you never look at the tree, you can't know if it stands.
Well, that argument can be reversed as well -- surely you aren't
suggesting that O Jews should be like the Amish, and spend a couple of
years experiencing the secular world prior to choosing Torah. But that
would be the equivalent of what you're saying -- you only know what you
know -- perhaps you're the one not looking at the tree.
Of course I am not in any way suggesting that you do look to "the other
side" - not that you would anyway. I'm just saying it's consistent with
what you're asking of others.
Steven Goldfarb
>>You did not say you rejected O because you tried Shabbos and it didn't
>>"work". You said you rejected it because a bunch of kiruv workers
>>(college kids, if we're talking NCSY) told you that O is a logical
>>system without telling you that more often than not you can't see the
>>logic personally and therefore must rely on faith.
I missed something -- yes, part of the reason I rejected O was because I
tried Shabbos and it didn't "work." At least, it didn't work sufficiently.
THEN, once I realized it wasn't working, I started looking at the
underpinnings, and realized there was no floor.
I even recall the specific precipitator -- it was a 2-day yom tov, I
forget which one, and it was one of those scenarios where the yom tov
abutted Shabbos, so it was three days of no showers. And I realized then
that I just wasn't satisfied -- it wasn't making me happy / fulfilled to
be living like this. So I gave it up.
I'd always used to think -- and I remember telling people this -- that if
I wasn't frum I'd have no reason not to be an entirely amoral person. If I
was the sort of guy who'd bathe on a Saturday, then there was nothing
holding me back from being a mass murderer. But you know what? There was.
Joel Shurkin
<qand...@yahoo.com> wrote:
[This is a wonderful discussion. Thank you Steve and Micha especially.
We ought to change the subject line]
Yes, that¹s true. The point that the non-Orthodox make is that
sometimes, perhaps even often, inertia in tradition becomes
debilitating, irrelevant, illogical and sometimes even silly. Modern
life changes and the rabbis try to accommodate the rules of the past
and the reality of the present, and sometimes they do not do a very
good job. Often, that¹s what drives us away. That¹s why the statement
that ³the past gets a vote, not a veto² appeals to so many.
J
--
"I have nothing in the world but the hour in which I am. It pauses for a
moment, and then, like a cloud, moves on.²
Samuel a¹Nagid 10th century Spain
Joel Shurkin
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Baltimore
Micha Berger
: The reason why Judaism is not a proselyting religion is that when Jews
: where under Roman rule, Romans forbade proselyting. This then became a
: part of Tradition. Once something is part of Tradition, it stays a
: part of Tradition. (A body in motion tends to stay in motion...)
OTOH, Jay Lapidus's mentor, JD (Shaye) Cohen, claims there is no evidence
of a concept of conversion in Judaism until the Roman period! He believes
we got the idea from them.
Obviously I disagree with his conclusion. However, it does make it
hard to argue that Pharasees (or any law-based Judaism) ever engaged in
active proselytization. That would be going from a paucity of evidence
to a claim of ubiquity!
Micha Berger
: I missed something -- yes, part of the reason I rejected O was because I
: THEN, once I realized it wasn't working, I started looking at the
: underpinnings, and realized there was no floor.
One of the truisms I use in my signature-file generator reads:
The mind is a wonderful organ
for justifying decisions
the heart already reached.
All I've been saying on this thread is that had the experience been
satistfying, the question wouldn't bother you, and since it hadn't no
answer would.
I like my comparison to complaining that your understanding of particle
physics didn't help you deduce how the brain works. Yes, one does explain
the other -- but there is so much in between, there is no practical consequence
to that fact. You still have to learn neurology directly.
: I even recall the specific precipitator -- it was a 2-day yom tov, I
: forget which one, and it was one of those scenarios where the yom tov
: abutted Shabbos, so it was three days of no showers...
Why no showers on Friday? Did you ask your LOR, or simply listen to the
rumor mill?
Steven Goldfarb
>One of the truisms I use in my signature-file generator reads:
> The mind is a wonderful organ
> for justifying decisions
> the heart already reached.
>All I've been saying on this thread is that had the experience been
>satistfying, the question wouldn't bother you, and since it hadn't no
>answer would.
I don't accept your distinction between "heart" and "mind." It's all
"brain" -- and the two elements go hand in hand. It's all one.
>I like my comparison to complaining that your understanding of particle
>physics didn't help you deduce how the brain works. Yes, one does explain
>the other -- but there is so much in between, there is no practical consequence
>to that fact. You still have to learn neurology directly.
OK - but I'm not sure of how this fits in. I did learn O directly. I did
experience O directly. I also learned non-O directly, and experienced
non-O directly. I find non-O to be more fulfilling in almost every level
(yes, I said almost) and therefore I can't be O. But that's just me.
>: I even recall the specific precipitator -- it was a 2-day yom tov, I
>: forget which one, and it was one of those scenarios where the yom tov
>: abutted Shabbos, so it was three days of no showers...
>Why no showers on Friday? Did you ask your LOR, or simply listen to the
>rumor mill?
What "rumor mill?" I was taught you couldn't take a shower on yom tov --
no one ever told me if there was some sort of exemption if the Yom Tov was
a Friday. Perhaps there is -- that wasn't the only reason, of course, not
even the most important reason. It was just the "last straw" so to speak -
the element that made me realize I wasn't comfortable physically,
spiritually, emotionally, or intellectually with the decisions I had made.
Listen, I understand that I was involved with a "black hat" community and
that other communities vary. The guy I studied with insisted that there
were no dinosaurs. I was a fanatic at that point, to be frank, and so I
accepted that despite the cognitive dissonace that it created.
Sure, when I hit my "tipping point" I might have said "perhaps there's
some other form of O that would work for me." But that's when the
intellectual part kicked in, and I realized that wouldn't work for me.
Perhaps things would have been different if I'd been with an MO crowd. Or
perhaps I would have left O sooner, because the fire of fanaticism
wouldn't have been as great in the MO community and so it would have
expired sooner in me. Who can say?
--sg
>-mi
>--
>Micha Berger Time flies...
>mi...@aishdas.org ... but you're the pilot.
>http://www.aishdas.org - R' Zelig Pliskin
>Fax: (413) 403-9905
Sheldon Ackerman
113975.news.uni-berlin.de:
> All I've been saying on this thread is that had the experience been
> satistfying, the question wouldn't bother you, and since it hadn't no
> answer would.
>
Einer vus gleibt hut nisht kein kashos, einer vus gleibt nisht hut nisht
kein teretz.
translated from the Yiddish:One who believes has no questions; one who does
not believe has no answer.
Steven Goldfarb
So anyone who asks questions doesn't really believe?
Didn't think that was the Jewish attitude.
Sheldon Ackerman
> OK - but I'm not sure of how this fits in. I did learn O directly. I did
> experience O directly. I also learned non-O directly, and experienced
> non-O directly. I find non-O to be more fulfilling in almost every level
> (yes, I said almost) and therefore I can't be O. But that's just me.
Not just you. There are lots like you.
Steven Goldfarb
I know - what I mean is that just because this is how I feel, doesn't mean
it's how anyone else ought to feel. Although as you say, "lots" do.
--sg
Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)
Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
> In <Xns93DC905D4D266...@129.250.170.83> Sheldon Ackerman <acke...@dorsai.org> writes:
>
> >Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> wrote in news:bhtl1h$32r0k$1@ID-
> >113975.news.uni-berlin.de:
>
> >> All I've been saying on this thread is that had the experience been
> >> satistfying, the question wouldn't bother you, and since it hadn't no
> >> answer would.
> >>
> >Einer vus gleibt hut nisht kein kashos, einer vus gleibt nisht hut nisht
> >kein teretz.
> >translated from the Yiddish:One who believes has no questions; one who does
> >not believe has no answer.
>
> So anyone who asks questions doesn't really believe?
>
> Didn't think that was the Jewish attitude.
Non-sequitur sed relevant: Asking questions is womderful, but one
should never mistake a question for an answer...
-Shlomo-
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>First comes the conclusion, then you can discuss how one might get to that
>conclusion to your hearts content. But you can't challenge the conclusion
>itself -- the law's the law.
Yes and no.
People are very willing and open to discuss things about individual halachot
that don't make sense, and to concede that different conclusions are
possible. Reaching different conclusions poses pragmatic difficulties
since much of halacha has become part of culture irrespective of whether
it makes sense. For instance, although shabbat candles were once practical
and their purpose has been supplanted by electricity, they have become
an enduring symbol of shabbat with strong cultural significance.
The law and the culture coincide to a great extent, but there's always
going to be an element of "You and your Shulchan Aruch are treifing up
my kitchen" --- and that's just the tension between extant law and culture!
All the moreso for conclusions which make sense and aren't actually law.
The inability of culture to keep up with logic is frustrating for those
of us with a logical bent, but it's hardly unique to Judaism. All cultures
have these elements that insist on cultural mythology over logic ---
nearly all social policies have cases where an American cultural value
has lead to non-optimal, illogical solutions.
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>> >Einer vus gleibt hut nisht kein kashos, einer vus gleibt nisht hut nisht
>> >kein teretz.
>> >translated from the Yiddish:One who believes has no questions; one who does
>> >not believe has no answer.
>>
>> So anyone who asks questions doesn't really believe?
>>
>> Didn't think that was the Jewish attitude.
>Non-sequitur sed relevant: Asking questions is womderful, but one
>should never mistake a question for an answer...
I'm not following. Sheldon wrote "one who believes has no questions." If
this is true, then if someone has a question then you can conclude that he
doesn't believe, right?
Yet you say "asking questions is wonderful." Presumably belief is
wonderful too. Yet asking questions, according to Sheldon's quote,
demonstrates that you don't believe. So how can it be wonderful?
Please tell me that you see the contradiction.
--sg
> -Shlomo-
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>Unless you're mistaken in the cause and effect. Which I concluded that you
>are. My counter-evidence to the point you're making is that while many O
>Jews are wonderful, warm, spiritual people, many others aren't. Any many
>non-O Jews are. So IMO it has more to do with who the people are than what
>specific traditions they follow.
It's not relevant that there exist non-O Jews who are great people.
I'm happy to admit that for all that I try, a non-O friend of mine
is still a far better person than I am in many respects.
Rather, overall, O Jews have low rates of divorce, domestic violence,
drug and alcohol abuse, historically high rates of male and female literacy,
and are more likely to be generous, gracious hosts, attempt to do "the
right thing", etc.
Having a culture in which hospitality is a commandment rather than a
good deed changes the culture, and likewise for any other interpersonal
commandment.
There are certainly other societies with some of these characteristics,
but I don't know any with all. E.g., Muslims are very hospitable, but
historically they have low female literacy and other restrictions on women.
Janet
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>Yes, that=B9s true. The point that the non-Orthodox make is that
>sometimes, perhaps even often, inertia in tradition becomes
>debilitating, irrelevant, illogical and sometimes even silly. Modern
>life changes and the rabbis try to accommodate the rules of the past
>and the reality of the present, and sometimes they do not do a very
You have to give specific examples, and explain why these examples are
sufficiently bad to warrant splitting Judaism.
I don't think it's unusual to disagree with mainstream halacha, but many
people aren't as invested in these small details as they are in the
society as a whole. It's a fairly modern thing that all these people
now write into advice columns noting their particular ideosyncracies in
dress and saying that they can't imagine going to a job interview
dressed in any other way since people should be accepted as they are.
Which is fine, but the obvious response is that it's pretty strange for
someone to feel that their style of dress is such an integral part of
them that they can't compromise for the sake of a career that they've
trained years for.
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>It's not relevant that there exist non-O Jews who are great people.
>I'm happy to admit that for all that I try, a non-O friend of mine
>is still a far better person than I am in many respects.
Of course it's relevant. My understanding of Micha's point is that the act
of following halacha has the effect of making a person "great" --
spiritual, etc. The experience does it. My counter-point is that people
without that experience as still "great," and people with the experience
are not. So there's more to it than just the experience.
I would suggest that the people who were "great" to start with are more
likely, perhaps, to be attracted to and stick with some of the strictures
of religion. But if anything, that means the religion is "great" --
meaning humanistic, pious, "menschlich," etc. only because the adherents
happen to be. Not that the adherents are that way because of their
adherence.
>Rather, overall, O Jews have low rates of divorce, domestic violence,
>drug and alcohol abuse, historically high rates of male and female literacy,
>and are more likely to be generous, gracious hosts, attempt to do "the
>right thing", etc.
Relative to whom? All non-O Jews? Amish? Mormons? Masai?
Also, what happens to drug-abusing illiterate divorced wife-beating O
Jews? Are they still considered O? Or more likely do they leave the ranks
of O (either voluntarily or not) and therefore don't in your statistic?
Anyway, I think Jews as a whole -- not just O Jews -- have lower rates
than the American average of all of those things, including Jews who eat
bacon. So that doesn't support your hypothesis that halacha causes
literacy, temperance, etc., either.
>Having a culture in which hospitality is a commandment rather than a
>good deed changes the culture, and likewise for any other interpersonal
>commandment.
Perhaps. And perhaps having a culture in which hospitality is a good deed
changes the commandments.
>There are certainly other societies with some of these characteristics,
>but I don't know any with all. E.g., Muslims are very hospitable, but
>historically they have low female literacy and other restrictions on women.
I'm not denying that Judaism brings some great benefits to people -- I
think that's our "purpose" here on earth. I'm just not convinced that it's
halacha per se that does it.
--sg
>Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>You have to give specific examples, and explain why these examples are
>sufficiently bad to warrant splitting Judaism.
>I don't think it's unusual to disagree with mainstream halacha, but many
>people aren't as invested in these small details as they are in the
>society as a whole. It's a fairly modern thing that all these people
>now write into advice columns noting their particular ideosyncracies in
>dress and saying that they can't imagine going to a job interview
>dressed in any other way since people should be accepted as they are.
>Which is fine, but the obvious response is that it's pretty strange for
>someone to feel that their style of dress is such an integral part of
>them that they can't compromise for the sake of a career that they've
>trained years for.
Janet - you're clearly thinking of something in particular here, but I'm
not sure of what. I presume you're supporting the O position, but then
again it's the O position that feels that a particular style of dress is
integral to them -- so maybe you AREN'T supporting it. I'm really not sure
- please clarify.
Micha Berger
: Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
:> In <Xns93DC905D4D266...@129.250.170.83> Sheldon Ackerman <acke...@dorsai.org> writes:
:> >Einer vus gleibt hut nisht kein kashos, einer vus gleibt nisht hut nisht
:> >kein teretz.
:> >translated from the Yiddish:One who believes has no questions; one who does
:> >not believe has no answer.
:>
:> So anyone who asks questions doesn't really believe?
:>
:> Didn't think that was the Jewish attitude.
The problem is in the translation. There are two words for "question" in
Yiddish (and Yinglish): A kasha, the thing mentioned here, is a problem
keeping you from fully accepting some idea. It's a question *on* the statement.
A shayla is a request for information, a question *about* the statement.
Someone who believes has no kashes, because he had enough belief that
the answer is out there they don't seem particularly threatening.
The origin of these terms is in the gemara, which asks both qushyos and
she'eilos. It's important to be able to recognize the difference. One calls for
a new understanding of the point in question or of the proof text, the other
for more information. One undoes an assumption, the other not.
: Non-sequitur sed relevant: Asking questions is womderful, but one
: should never mistake a question for an answer...
I believe R' Chaim Brisker said something like this to a fellow in
Brisk who left observance.
Sheldon Ackerman
> I'm not following. Sheldon wrote "one who believes has no questions."
> If this is true, then if someone has a question then you can conclude
> that he doesn't believe, right?
>
> Yet you say "asking questions is wonderful." Presumably belief is
> wonderful too. Yet asking questions, according to Sheldon's quote,
> demonstrates that you don't believe. So how can it be wonderful?
>
> Please tell me that you see the contradiction.
>
The point is why you ask the question. Do you ask the question because you
want to learn or because you want to challenge?
Ron Aaron
wrote:
>
> The problem is in the translation. There are two words for "question" in
> Yiddish (and Yinglish): A kasha, the thing mentioned here, is a problem
> keeping you from fully accepting some idea.
I thought a "kasha" was a food substance which turned to stone in your
intestines...
Brett Weiss
As a sideline to the (wonderful) discussion going on, I would
like to thank you and Micha particularly for carrying on such a
substantive, interesting, informative, stimulation, *nice*
discussion about these issues. It has been a true pleasure to
follow.
--
Brett
Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)
Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
> In <tigvfst...@sunlight.cs.biu.ac.il> arg...@sunlight.cs.biu.ac.il (Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)) writes:
>
> >> >Einer vus gleibt hut nisht kein kashos, einer vus gleibt nisht hut nisht
> >> >kein teretz.
> >> >translated from the Yiddish:One who believes has no questions; one who does
> >> >not believe has no answer.
> >>
> >> So anyone who asks questions doesn't really believe?
> >>
> >> Didn't think that was the Jewish attitude.
>
> >Non-sequitur sed relevant: Asking questions is womderful, but one
> >should never mistake a question for an answer...
>
> I'm not following. Sheldon wrote "one who believes has no questions." If
> this is true, then if someone has a question then you can conclude that he
> doesn't believe, right?
According to what he wrote (with which I disagree). That's why I
introduced my comment by saying that it did not follow from the above
(non sequitur) but was relevant.
> Yet you say "asking questions is wonderful." Presumably belief is
> wonderful too. Yet asking questions, according to Sheldon's quote,
> demonstrates that you don't believe. So how can it be wonderful?
>
> Please tell me that you see the contradiction.
No contradiction, since Sheldon and I are different people, so we need
not agree. Sorry for the confusion... But I wonder, from your posts
on this and related threads, whether you are not taking some of your
questions as answers...
There is an amusing (apocryphal) tale of a man who would learn the
Abarbanel's commentary on the parashah each Friday night. As
background, the Abarbanel writes a set of questions for each parashah,
and then proceeds to answer them (often the answers are connected).
So this fellow would start learning, but would always fall asleep
before getting to the answers - in time he became a non-believer
(R"L).
The relevance? If you did not examine other O communities for the
answers that you sought, clearly there was some extrinsic, non-logical
reason that you were unmotivated to do so. (NB: My only quibble is
with your characterization of your decision to leave O as "logical".)
A dissatisfaction with the answers given you by one O community need
not have led you to chuck the whole thing.
-Shlomo-
Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)
Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org> writes:
Barukh shekivanti! (And thanks for bringing more salvation to the
world. We need it!!)
-Shlomo-
Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)
Ron Aaron <ronaaron@mike_row_soft.com> writes:
Right. Believers follow the halakha of "and you shall guard your
health" and don't eat the stuff...
-Shlomo-
Ron Aaron
<arg...@sunlight.cs.biu.ac.il> wrote:
>> I thought a "kasha" was a food substance which turned to stone in your
>> intestines...
> Right. Believers follow the halakha of "and you shall guard your health"
> and don't eat the stuff...
I understand it does wonders for true repentance.
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>I even recall the specific precipitator -- it was a 2-day yom tov, I
>forget which one, and it was one of those scenarios where the yom tov
>abutted Shabbos, so it was three days of no showers. And I realized then
>that I just wasn't satisfied -- it wasn't making me happy / fulfilled to
>be living like this. So I gave it up.
I'm not sure why you expect first and foremost to be happy/fulfilled
by religion. That isn't to say that religion might not make you happy,
but just that once you've assumed a system of obligations and accepted
some of its truth claims like the exodus from Egypt, giving it up if it
makes you uncomfortable and if you find questions that the people at
kollel can't answer.
Charedi yeshivas like Lakewood and Ner Yisrael are very good in many
areas, but they don't have the answer to all questions --- some questions
don't fit into their assumptions and world view, so aren't questions for
them, and don't need answers. On many issues, they're fine with the
apologetics, but others aren't. Bright people in particular have a hard
time finding satisfactory answers simply because more than 90% of people
are just fine with pat answers. Escaping the system for want of answers
is hardly a solution. There's a big world out there, and a number of
yeshivas with more open minds --- Maalei Gilboa, HaMivtar, Chovovei
Torah, and sometimes YU.
On the aspect of struggle vs fulfillment in religion, the Rav wrote
in footnote 4 of Halachic Man:
"[The] concept of the dialectic, which [Kierkegaard] and Karl Barth
introduced into the analysis of the unfolding of
the religious consciousness, and this view concerning the antinomic
structure of religious experience, which was revised and refined by
Rudolf Otto in his book, The Idea of the Holy, give the lie to the
position that is prevalent nowadays in religious circles, whether in
Protestant groups or in American Reform and Conservative Judaism, that
the religious experience is of a very simple nature --- that is, devoid
of the spiritual tortuousness present in the secular cultural
consciousness, of psychic upheavals, and of the pangs and torments that are
inextricably connected with the development and refinedment of man's
spiritual personality. This popular ideology contends that the
religious experience is tranquil and neatly ordered, tender and
delicate; it is an enchanted stream for embittered souls and still
waters for troubled spirits. The person "who comes in from the field,
weary" (Gen 25:29), from the battlefield and campaigns of life, from the
secular domain which is filled with doubts and fears, contradictions and
refutations, clings to religion as does a baby to its mother and finds
in her lap "a shelter for his head, the nest of his forsaken prayers"
(Bialik) and is there comforted for his
disappointments and tribulations. This ideology is partially embedded
in the most ancient strata of Christianity, partially rooted in modern
pragmatic philosophy; but mainly it stems from practical-utilitarian
considerations. The advocates of religion wish to exploit the
rebellious impulse against knowledge which surges from time to time in
the soul of the man of culture, the yearning to be freed from the bonds
of culture, that daughter of knowledge, which weighs heavy on man with
its questions, doubts, and problems, and the desire to escape from the
turbulence of life to a magical, still, and quiet island and there to
devote oneself to the ideal of naturalness and vitality. The
Rousseauean ideology left its stamp on the entire Romantic movement from
the beginning of its growth until its final (tragic!) manifestations in
the consciousness of contemporary man. Therefore, the representatives
of religions communities are inclines to portray religion, in a wealth
of colors that dazzle the eye, as a poetic Arcadia, a realm of simplicity,
wholeness, and tranquility. Most of the sermons of revivalists are
divided in equal measure between depicting the terrors of hellfire and
describing the utopian tranquillity that religion can bestow upon man.
And that which appears in the sermons of these preachers in a primitive,
garbled form, at times interwoven with a childish naivite and
superficial belief, is refined and purified in the furnace of popular
"philosophy" and "theology" and becomes transformed into a universal
religions ideology which proclaims: If you wish to acquire tranquility
without paying the price of spiritual agonies, turn unto religion! If
you wish to achieve a fine psychic equilibrium without having to first
undergo a slow, gradual personal development, turn unto religion. And
if you wish to achieve an instant spiritual wholeness and simplicity
that need not be forged out of the struggles and forments of
consciousness, turn unto religion! "Get thee out of thy country," which
is filled with anxiety, anguish, and tension, "and from thy birthplace,"
which is so frenzied, raging, and stormy, "to the land" that is
enveloped by the stillness of peace and tranquillity, to the Arcadia
wherein religion reigns supreme. The leap from the secular world to the
religious world could not be simpler and easier. There is no need for a
process of transition with all its torments and upheavals. A person can
acquire spiritual transquillity in a single moment. [..]
It would appear to me that there is no need to explain the self-evident
falsity of this ideology. First, the entire Romantic aspiration to
escape from the domain of knowledge, the rebellion against the authority
of objective, scientific cognition which has found its expression in the
biologistic philosophies of Bergson, Nietzsche, Spengler, Klages, and
their followers and in the phenomenological, existential, and
antiscientific school of Heidegger and his coeterie, and from the midst
of which there arose in various forms the sanctification of vitality and
intuition, the veneration of instinct, the desire for power, the
glorification of subjectivity, the lavishing of extravagant praise on
the Faustian type and the Dionysian personality, etc., etc., have
brought complete chaos and human depravity to the world. And let the
events of the present era [1944] be proof! The individual who frees himself
from the rational principle and who casts off the yoke of objective
thought will in the end turn destructive and lay waste the entire
created order. Therefore, it is preferable that religion should ally
itself with the forces of clear, logical cognition, as uniquely
exemplified in the scientific method, even though at times the two might
clash with one another, rather than pledge its troth to beclouded,
mysterious ideologies that grope in the dark corners of existence,
unaided by the shining light of objective knowledge, and believe that
they have penetrated to the secret core of the world.
And, second, this ideology is intrinsically false and deceptive. That
religious consciousness in man's experience which is most profound and
most elevated, which penetrates to the very depths and ascents to the
very heights, is not that simple and comfortable. On the contrary, it
is exceptionally complex, rigorous, and tortuous. Where you find its
complexity, there you find its greatness. There religious experience,
from beginning to end, is antinomic and antithetic. The consciousness
of homo religiosus ... is in a condition of spiritual
crisis, of psychic ascent and descent, of contradiction arising from
affirmation and negation, self-abnegation and self-appreciation. the
ideas of temporality and eternity, knowledge and choice (necessity and
freedom), love and fear (the yearning for God and the flight from His
glorious splendor), incredible, overbold daring, and an extreme sense of
humility, transcendence and God's closeness, the profane and the holy,
etc., etc., struggle within his religious consciousness, wrestle and
grapple with eachother.
"
Sheldon Ackerman
> So anyone who asks questions doesn't really believe?
>
> Didn't think that was the Jewish attitude.
>
>
I think you have just proven the saying.
Sheldon Ackerman
> I find non-O to be more fulfilling in almost every level
>>> (yes, I said almost) and therefore I can't be O. But that's just me.
>
>>Not just you. There are lots like you.
>
> I know - what I mean is that just because this is how I feel, doesn't
> mean it's how anyone else ought to feel. Although as you say, "lots"
> do.
>
>
But you do realize, I hope, that because something is more fulfilling, it
does not necessarily mean that it is better?
Steve G.
> > >Non-sequitur sed relevant: Asking questions is womderful, but one
> > >should never mistake a question for an answer...
> >
> > I'm not following. Sheldon wrote "one who believes has no questions." If
> > this is true, then if someone has a question then you can conclude that he
> > doesn't believe, right?
>
> According to what he wrote (with which I disagree). That's why I
> introduced my comment by saying that it did not follow from the above
> (non sequitur) but was relevant.
My apologies - I thought that you were saying that what I wrote didn't
follow, but I now understand that isn't what "non-sequitur sed
relevant" means.
>
> > Yet you say "asking questions is wonderful." Presumably belief is
> > wonderful too. Yet asking questions, according to Sheldon's quote,
> > demonstrates that you don't believe. So how can it be wonderful?
> >
> > Please tell me that you see the contradiction.
>
> No contradiction, since Sheldon and I are different people, so we need
> not agree. Sorry for the confusion... But I wonder, from your posts
> on this and related threads, whether you are not taking some of your
> questions as answers...
>
I have a "scientific" POV -- I don't believe there are any answers,
just better questions.
> There is an amusing (apocryphal) tale of a man who would learn the
> Abarbanel's commentary on the parashah each Friday night. As
> background, the Abarbanel writes a set of questions for each parashah,
> and then proceeds to answer them (often the answers are connected).
> So this fellow would start learning, but would always fall asleep
> before getting to the answers - in time he became a non-believer
> (R"L).
>
> The relevance? If you did not examine other O communities for the
> answers that you sought, clearly there was some extrinsic, non-logical
> reason that you were unmotivated to do so. (NB: My only quibble is
> with your characterization of your decision to leave O as "logical".)
> A dissatisfaction with the answers given you by one O community need
> not have led you to chuck the whole thing.
I wasn't looking for "answers" per se. In religion, the ultimate
answer was already given -- "God said so."
I suppose there could have been a question -- "Is there a way to
balance my desire for a shower on a yom tov Friday with my O beliefs"
and perhaps an MO community would have had an "answer" to that for me,
but that wasn't really the question.
The only question was "Is this the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth?" and the answer was clearly "no." Perhaps another O
community might have some "different" truth, or more palatable truth,
but my realization was that NO ONE had the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. Further, that no one within O -- or perhaps
within Judaism as a whole -- had a mechanism for sorting out the truth
from the non-truth, they were inextricable at this point. No one was
even working on that problem - it's not an issue to religious folk.
Further still, I realized that it was unrealistic to even expect to
find "the Truth" -- that's when I committed myself to being a
"scientist" as opposed to a "religionist" -- which as I said means to
me the acceptance that there are no answers, only better questions.
--sg
>
> -Shlomo-
Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)
Thanks to Janet Rosenbaum for typing this in! I am reposting under
separate heading so no one misses this:
Janet Rosenbaum From: <jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> writes:
Steven Goldfarb
>Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
>>I even recall the specific precipitator -- it was a 2-day yom tov, I
>>forget which one, and it was one of those scenarios where the yom tov
>>abutted Shabbos, so it was three days of no showers. And I realized then
>>that I just wasn't satisfied -- it wasn't making me happy / fulfilled to
>>be living like this. So I gave it up.
>I'm not sure why you expect first and foremost to be happy/fulfilled
>by religion. That isn't to say that religion might not make you happy,
>but just that once you've assumed a system of obligations and accepted
>some of its truth claims like the exodus from Egypt, giving it up if it
>makes you uncomfortable and if you find questions that the people at
>kollel can't answer.
Why would you do it if it doesn't make you happy / fulfilled? I think you
understand that I'm referring to true inner happiness, not immediate
pleasure or anything like that. It has to be "worth it" somehow. Unless
one is simply operating out of fear -- fear that he'll be "smitten" if he
doesn't obey. But one shouldn't obey halacha out of fear anyway, IMO, so
that's out.
You have to do it because it's "right" -- I didn't feel that it was
"right."
>Charedi yeshivas like Lakewood and Ner Yisrael are very good in many
>areas, but they don't have the answer to all questions --- some questions
>don't fit into their assumptions and world view, so aren't questions for
>them, and don't need answers. On many issues, they're fine with the
>apologetics, but others aren't. Bright people in particular have a hard
>time finding satisfactory answers simply because more than 90% of people
>are just fine with pat answers. Escaping the system for want of answers
>is hardly a solution. There's a big world out there, and a number of
>yeshivas with more open minds --- Maalei Gilboa, HaMivtar, Chovovei
>Torah, and sometimes YU.
It wasn't an issue of answers to any specific questions. My discussions on
this newsgroup have shown me that I didn't appreciate the half of it at
that time. Well, I obviously recognized it emotionally, but I've spent
quite a bit of time over the last 20 years trying to see if there actually
is something there that maybe I missed. That's what I'm doing here.
I'm trying to read the rest of your post - you obviously put quite a bit
of effort into it, and I'm trying to get through it, but frankly I don't
have the philosophic training to really understand what you're saying,
sorry.
--sg
Steve G.
>
> But you do realize, I hope, that because something is more fulfilling, it
> does not necessarily mean that it is better?
I don't realize that, no. Maybe "fulfilling" isn't a sufficient word
-- but there has to be something, some indicator within your soul or
wherever such indicators are kept that what you're doing is "right."
All Jews "know the Torah is True," right? Isn't that really what is
meant by that?
Not that you know any one particular thing, but that if you follow the
path, your soul will say "this is right."
Well, my soul said "this is wrong." For me. Not all of it -- some of
it resonates, sure. But not enough of it. I think all honest O people
will admit there's a certain amount of what you might call "cruft" in
the halacha of today. Decisions that were reached that wouldn't be
reached that way now, or that would even be reversed if we had the
mechanisms to do so. The question then becomes is this "cruft"
outweighing the "meat?"
Obviously you feel that it does not -- that it's still essentially
Truth. I began to feel differently.
So you say it isn't necessarily "better" -- but how would you know? If
you yourself don't feel better, i.e., fulfilled, and there's no
physical evidence that what you're doing is better (i.e., no miracles)
--- well?
I prefer not to make decisions based on things I can't know. It could
be that when I go get my coffee in 30 seconds, that that action will
destroy an entire alternate universe. Could be. But I can't know that
one way or the other. I can't live my life based on things I can't
know. I have to make the best decisions possible based upon what I can
know.
--sg
Dr. Shlomo Argamon (Engelson)
alfief...@yahoo.com (Steve G.) writes:
Well, speaking as a "scientist" who is also a "religionist", I don't
see the conflict. And regarding your position that "there are only
better questions", you should *run*, not walk, to your local Jewish
bookstore, and get a copy of Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith,
both by R. Soloveitchik (and if you have some currency with modern
philosophy, read also Halakhic Mind - it's *amazing*). See what a
serious O thinker has to say on this. True Religion (= Judaism) is
not about easy answers *at all*.
-Shlomo-
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>I'm trying to read the rest of your post - you obviously put quite a bit
>of effort into it, and I'm trying to get through it, but frankly I don't
>have the philosophic training to really understand what you're saying,
>sorry.
:-)
It's not my writing. It's Rabbi Soloveitchik's. His book _Halachic Man_
addresses issues that you raise about tensions within Judaism, such as
that between systematism and religiousness. As he wrote in the
footnote:
That religious consciousness in man's experience which is most profound and
most elevated, which penetrates to the very depths and ascents to the
very heights, is not that simple and comfortable. On the contrary, it
is exceptionally complex, rigorous, and tortuous. Where you find its
complexity, there you find its greatness. There religious experience,
from beginning to end, is antinomic and antithetic.
antinomic= characteristic of fundamental, apparently unresolvable conflict
[anomic= without norms or rules.]
antithetic= characteristic of antithesis (as in Hegel's theory of the
dialectics of history, referred to at the beginning of the footnote.)
You've said that you're willing to accept that you're a Jew, that your
ancestors went out from Egypt, and that you want to take some type of
part in the historical course of Judaism. By the Rav's point of
view, one loses the essence of Judaism by fleeing at the first sight of
tension and uncertainty. Yes, there are many conflicts, many things
which don't seem true, and even some things which probably aren't true,
but it's a central part of Judaism to accept the challenge and struggle
with the angel. You have a lot of questions so "go and learn!" By so
doing, you will join in the long tradition of this struggle of those who
have doubts and questions, from whom you can learn and of whom you can
raise questions.
The only reason not to accept that challenge is if you believe that all
religious Jews have been deluding themselves and engaging in obfuscation
in tackling these issues for all of history --- only now they use the
obfuscation of University of Berlin philosophy PhDs. If there's a
chance that even one or two religious philosophers present the issues
in such a way that you can reach a synthesis or even just find a crucial
test case, how can you not try?
People here are sharp and many raise good questions, but you don't
get the real deal unless you look at the philosophy yourself --- that
is, real philosophy, not Feldheim-Artscroll apologetics or summaries by
folks on the internet. The latter two have their place, but they
are usually not rigorous enough to base one's thought on.
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>> Further still, I realized that it was unrealistic to even expect to
>> find "the Truth" -- that's when I committed myself to being a
>> "scientist" as opposed to a "religionist" -- which as I said means to
>> me the acceptance that there are no answers, only better questions.
>Well, speaking as a "scientist" who is also a "religionist", I don't
>see the conflict. And regarding your position that "there are only
>better questions", you should *run*, not walk, to your local Jewish
>bookstore, and get a copy of Halakhic Man and The Lonely Man of Faith,
>both by R. Soloveitchik (and if you have some currency with modern
>philosophy, read also Halakhic Mind - it's *amazing*). See what a
>serious O thinker has to say on this. True Religion (= Judaism) is
>not about easy answers *at all*.
I'm glad for you that you don't see a conflict - seriously. For me,
though, it is a conflict. It's clear to me from reading Janet's excerpt
that I definitely do NOT have the currency with modern philosphy required
to comprehend Halakhic Mind.
I realize that True Religion isn't about "easy answers" -- but it is about
ultimate answers.
Let me just ask you this: Why? Why should I be O?
I'm not speaking rhetorically -- I would really like to hear your
response, everyone's actually since I suspect there will be significant
differences. It's probably the most important question - I should have
asked it earlier.
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>In <bhu1d2$bea$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu> Janet Rosenbaum From: <jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> writes:
>>You have to give specific examples, and explain why these examples are
>>sufficiently bad to warrant splitting Judaism.
>>I don't think it's unusual to disagree with mainstream halacha, but many
>>people aren't as invested in these small details as they are in the
>>society as a whole. It's a fairly modern thing that all these people
>>now write into advice columns noting their particular ideosyncracies in
>>dress and saying that they can't imagine going to a job interview
>>dressed in any other way since people should be accepted as they are.
>>Which is fine, but the obvious response is that it's pretty strange for
>>someone to feel that their style of dress is such an integral part of
>>them that they can't compromise for the sake of a career that they've
>>trained years for.
>Janet - you're clearly thinking of something in particular here, but I'm
>not sure of what. I presume you're supporting the O position, but then
>again it's the O position that feels that a particular style of dress is
>integral to them -- so maybe you AREN'T supporting it. I'm really not sure
>- please clarify.
There's a tension between individual opinions and group cohesion.
If someone thinks that it's silly that traditional Judaism prohibits
cooking chicken and milk together, they can present this decision as
traditional Judaism being blind to reality since everyone knows that chicken
doesn't look anything like beef or mutton and make a principled decision
to part ways with traditional Judaism for that blindness. People have a
number of pet things that they find silly within traditional Judaism.
Even assuming that they understand the issues correctly --- often, they
don't --- when it comes down to brass tacks, they've decided that
chicken parmesean is a more significant part of their lives than
membership within the historical Jewish community.
This decision is likened to someone who trains for a career and yet goes to
their job interview dressed in a way that might be construed to be
inappropriate on the principle that "if they're not going to accept me
the way I am, I don't want anything to do with them."
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>There's a tension between individual opinions and group cohesion.
>If someone thinks that it's silly that traditional Judaism prohibits
>cooking chicken and milk together, they can present this decision as
>traditional Judaism being blind to reality since everyone knows that chicken
>doesn't look anything like beef or mutton and make a principled decision
>to part ways with traditional Judaism for that blindness. People have a
>number of pet things that they find silly within traditional Judaism.
>Even assuming that they understand the issues correctly --- often, they
>don't --- when it comes down to brass tacks, they've decided that
>chicken parmesean is a more significant part of their lives than
>membership within the historical Jewish community.
I see... but as a nitpick it's not membership within the historical Jewish
community that would be challenged, but membership within the CURRENT
Jewish community. Make that *a* current Jewish community.
>This decision is likened to someone who trains for a career and yet goes to
>their job interview dressed in a way that might be construed to be
>inappropriate on the principle that "if they're not going to accept me
>the way I am, I don't want anything to do with them."
Right, I see what you're saying, but this goes both ways -- if there's
just one guy who says "I insist on my right to wear a furry hat," or to
NOT wear a furry hat, that's one thing. But if there a substantial number
of people who don't want to wear the furry hat, or only wear black suits,
or not put parmesan cheese on their chicken, then it becomes the
community's duty to decide if keeping the tradition which even they might
think is silly is more important than the loss of those people who do not
wish to conform.
You are advocating conformity for conformity's sake. Perhaps there's some
value in that -- it does form a "community" I suppose. And it depends on
the number of things that are "silly" or perceived as silly.
You're making a sort of "pure conservatism" argument, which I don't think
is unusual. We don't know what's right and what's wrong, so let's just
hunker down and keep everything as "the same" as we can until Moshiach
comes and sorts it out.
This is part of the "decay" mentality that traditional Judaism has --
every day we sink further and further away from Sinai, and become more and
more corrupt, and know less and less, and therefore our duty is to keep it
together as much as possible. Out of concern for throwing the baby out
with the bathwater, we'll not only keep the bathwater, we'll keep the tub
and the entire bathroom, just in case it turns out that something was
important. I understand - that point makes a certain amount of sense.
I just happen to firmly disagree with it.
Duck your head as you circle the bimah, because in the previous shul there
was a low beam there.
I think we're here to build, not to hunker down. Even if we're putting
pebbles on top of boulders, that beats sitting in the shade of those
boulders waiting for someone else to build for us, out of fear that we
might build something wrong.
PBP
A more easily digested quote from the Rav:
"The error of modern representatives of religion is that they promise
their congregants the solution to all the problems of life, an
expectation that religion does not fill. Religion, on the contrary,
deepens the problems, but never intends to solve them...The Jewish
ideal of the religious personality is not the harmonious individual,
determined by the principle of equilibrium, but the torn soul and the
shattered spirit, that oscillate between G-d and the world. The
religious man endures constantly, mental upheaval, psychic collision.
Kedusha elevates man, not by vouchsafing him harmony and synthesis,
balance and proportionate thinking, but by revealing to him the
nonrationality and insolubility of the riddle of existence. Kedusha is
not a paradise, but a paradox."
QandA
> I'm not claiming that there is a satisfactory answer to every question,
> but it seems a bit much to say that the lack of a satisfactory answer
> means that one should abandon an entire system. By analogy, the
> Standard Model in particle physics hasn't yet answered basic questions
> like what causes mass or created a workable quantum theory of gravity;
> we have predicted the existence of the Higgs boson and proton decay, but
> we've seen neither. There are a zillion basic questions that we can't
> answer, and yet the Standard Model is the best we have. If that's in
> physics, kal vachomer for Judaism.
True, but
1. No one is claiming that the Standard Model is Truth with a capital
T.
2. Physicists are always searching for better models. When they find a
better model, they will scrap the current one. Is this what you are
doing?
Joel Shurkin
<ronaaron@mike_row_soft.com> wrote:
Also regularity.
J
--
"I have nothing in the world but the hour in which I am. It pauses for a
moment, and then, like a cloud, moves on.²
Samuel a¹Nagid 10th century Spain
Joel Shurkin
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Baltimore
Sheldon Ackerman
news:tigisot...@sunlight.cs.biu.ac.il:
> So this fellow would start learning, but would always fall asleep
> before getting to the answers - in time he became a non-believer
> (R"L).
>
Reminds me of the 2 Jews who ended up complaining to their Rav. One Jew
would come late to shul every day. He'd walk in every day at the same point
and hear: es kol o'havov v'es kol horshoim yashmid (Ha-shem destroys all
who love him and all the evildoers). His friend would leave early every day
at the point of: shomer Ha-shem es kol o'havov v'es kol horshoim (Ha-shem
watches over all who love him and over all evil doers). They finally
approched the Rabbi with their complained that the Tefillah made no sense!
The Rabbi's response was that one has to be here from the beginning to the
end to understand.
We humans are not here from the beginning to the end so we have questions.
Which reminds me of another story about this very, very old man who was
asked what his secret of long life is. He answered: I never ask G-d any
questions (complaints). I am afraid he will summon me so he can give me the
answers (explanations).
Joel Shurkin
<jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Joel Shurkin <jo...@nasw.org> writes:
> >Yes, that=B9s true. The point that the non-Orthodox make is that
> >sometimes, perhaps even often, inertia in tradition becomes
> >debilitating, irrelevant, illogical and sometimes even silly. Modern
> >life changes and the rabbis try to accommodate the rules of the past
> >and the reality of the present, and sometimes they do not do a very
> >good job. Often, that=B9s what drives us away.
>
> You have to give specific examples, and explain why these examples are
> sufficiently bad to warrant splitting Judaism.
I can give you the obvious example of driving to schul on shabbos.
Since most Jews, at least in America, chose not to live within walking
distance of a schul, and many cannot because of employment or
aesthetics, a rule about making fire handed down to a Bronze Age people
in the desert, makes very little sense to me, and to many others. (I
lived in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, an entire mountain
range from the nearest synagogue, because it was breathtakingly
beautiful and Who made those redwoods?) They had camels and asses and
could transport themselves without fire. We don¹t. The result is that
American non-O Jewry is becoming more of a synagogue-based religion
than elsewhere. It is evolving because the majority rejected the rule.
Watching rules bent with pious convenience such as a eruv also comes to
mind. The rule on carrying was given to the same people who all lived
together in tented camps, not in Pikesville, Maryland, where you need
to take your baby carriages for a walk. I¹m sure it is possible that
God anticipated Pikesville and Scotts Valley, California, but I
seriously doubt He is concerned with the small stuff.
If 95 percent of a people perceive the rules one way, and 5 percent
another way, it is not the 95 who are the outliers, it is the 5. It
doesn¹t matter who comes first.
>
> I don't think it's unusual to disagree with mainstream halacha, but many
> people aren't as invested in these small details as they are in the
> society as a whole. It's a fairly modern thing that all these people
> now write into advice columns noting their particular ideosyncracies in
> dress and saying that they can't imagine going to a job interview
> dressed in any other way since people should be accepted as they are.
> Which is fine, but the obvious response is that it's pretty strange for
> someone to feel that their style of dress is such an integral part of
> them that they can't compromise for the sake of a career that they've
> trained years for.
It¹s the people who are invested in the small details I¹m talking
about. You see them here discussing the maximum legal heating
temperature of water, 113 degrees or something like that. Why not 114?
97? Who cares? And I have little sympathy for the guys with the garbage
bags over their ill-fitting black homburgs walking lockstep in the
rain. The way they dress has nothing to do with Judaism.
J
>
> Janet
Joel Shurkin
<law...@erols.com> wrote:
Add Janet to that list.
J
QandA
> Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
> >Reason 1: Tradition. This is what your fathers and grandfathers did from
> >time immemorial.
> First, Judaism wasn't just the tradition of our ancestors --- it was accepted
> as a tradition by those surrounding it. Even if you neglect the
Romans accepted the knowledge about Sinai 1500 years after the events
took place. It's meaningless.
> Further, Judaism makes a stronger claim than most traditions: not only
> did this happen, but your ancestors were there and they accepted an
> enormous set of regulations as a consequence. Archaeological evidence
Yes. This reminds me.
First, similar to what you said, Judaism is the only religion that
claims a national revelation. (The famed Kuzari argument.)
Second, God promised thousands of years ago that Jews would always
exist. This would not be such a big deal if Jews were a powerful
nation throughout history. But.. at every point in history, the
"objective" (non-religious) probability that Jews would die out was
very high. And still, Jews exist. When the probability of something is
very low and it still happens, that's impressive. In statistics speak,
there is a very low p-value.
To make the argument complete, we would have to search through all the
other religions, particularly of those nations that are extinct, and
see how many of them have the promise that their people would exist
forever.
Come to think of it.. this is an interesting project..
> Third, Jewish tradition managed to survive as a unified whole for 2000--2600
> years without a state, among Jews dispersed from China to Ethiopia to
> England. I say 2600 because Ethopians have much of Jewish tradition and
> yet they didn't know about Chanukah, Purim, or even the destruction of the
> second Temple when they came to Israel. Yemenites also have a tradition
> that some of them came to Yemen even before the destruction of the First
> Temple, as traders, and many others came at the destruction of the First
> Temple, but they stayed in contact with the other Jews.
Interestingly enough, neither the Ethiopians, nor the Yemenites know
the Oral Torah. Perhaps they lost it.. :-)
> In all of this
> diaspora, the Torah varied only by 7 letters, and these were all
> yuds/vavs (although I'm not sure about the Ethiopian Torah); by comparison,
> in only 1300 years of Christian scribal tradition, there were hundreds of
True. Another low p-value event.
> Fourth, Jews maintained themselves as an oppressed minority, despite the
> oppression. Certainly the existence of martyrs doesn't imply the truth of
> an argument --- people are clearly willing to die for stupid causes.
> The existence of a martyred nation is somewhat different. For millennia,
> to be Jewish was to be homeless, reviled, and ridiculed, with sufficiently
> few exceptions that this reality was Church doctrine until Vatican II.
Yes. This ties in with what I wrote above.
> Nonetheless, I feel compelled to note that what we wrote down is pretty
> impressively extensible --- that a rabbi in the 12th c could conclude from
> a verse of King David that the universe is 5 billion years old and be
> right is nearly fantastical. Likewise, Judaism had marital rape laws
It's 15 billion. This sounds impressive. Then again, many rabbis made
lots of different calculations for the age of the Universe. If you
make lots of random guesses, it is not surprizing if one of them is
close to being correct.
> That's sort-of kind-of true, but I don't think it's a reason to accept a
> religion. I can accept the Axiom of Choice on faith, but that doesn't mean
> that I should try to disassemble an orange into infinitely many pieces and
> reassemble it into two oranges.
Huh? I looked up AC on Wikipedia, but I still don't get it.. :o
QandA
> The Torah has the Jews accepting the mitzvos with the declaration "na'aseh
> venishmah" -- we will do, and we will hear. First comes doing. Then one
> experiences and understands.
Where does it say this? Deut 5:24 says the exact opposite. First hear
then do. Humm..
> OT1H, this is a consequence of the origin of Torah, it is based on truths
> people can't understand. To require understanding beforehand would limit
Deut 30:11: "Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day
is not too baffling for you", etc.
> religion to inculcating into the heart things the mind already knows. A
All religion / systems of thought require certain postulates. No one
is arguing against this.
Sheldon Ackerman
news:210820031123088316%jo...@nasw.org:
> It零 the people who are invested in the small details I雋 talking
> about. You see them here discussing the maximum legal heating
> temperature of water, 113 degrees or something like that. Why not 114?
>
Yep, just like the chemist who says we need a combination of c6 h12 o6. Why
not c7 h12 o6? Or the doctor tells you eat this and you will say I may as
well eat something else.
Yes, I don't expect you to understand this.
Ron Aaron
>
> Interestingly enough, neither the Ethiopians, nor the Yemenites know
> the Oral Torah. Perhaps they lost it.. :-)
Not true: the Yemenites do indeed have the Oral Torah.
> It's 15 billion. This sounds impressive. Then again, many rabbis made
> lots of different calculations for the age of the Universe. If you
> make lots of random guesses, it is not surprizing if one of them is
> close to being correct.
True, but why would someone come up with a value of (IIRC 14 billion) such an
extreme value, when anyone reading the "source text" in bereshit would *maybe*
be able to stretch it to a few tens of thousands?
Ron Aaron
>> OT1H, this is a consequence of the origin of Torah, it is based on truths
>> people can't understand. To require understanding beforehand would limit
>
> Deut 30:11: "Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day
> is not too baffling for you", etc.
Excellent call! But wrong address; that pasuq is referring to the Law itself,
not to the underlying Truth upon which it is ultimately based.
Herman Rubin
Sheldon Ackerman <acke...@dorsai.orgs> wrote:
>Joel Shurkin <jo...@nasw.org> wrote in
>news:210820031123088316%jo...@nasw.org:
>> Its the people who are invested in the small details Im talking
>> about. You see them here discussing the maximum legal heating
>> temperature of water, 113 degrees or something like that. Why not 114?
>Yep, just like the chemist who says we need a combination of c6 h12 o6. Why
>not c7 h12 o6?
The difference is that lots of simple sugars are C6H12O6,
and none of them are C7H12O6. I would be surprised if
some chemist could not produce such a molecule, but what
good would it be? In fact, not all C6H12O6 molecules are
usable biologically.
On the other hand, how hot does water have to be for such a
halakhic consideration does not have any objective criteria.
Or the doctor tells you eat this and you will say I may as
>well eat something else.
If you follow the doctor's suggestions blindly, are you
more than a robot?
>Yes, I don't expect you to understand this.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Brett Weiss
place are what scjm *should* be about.
--
Brett
"Joel Shurkin" <jo...@nasw.org> wrote in message
news:210820031127283948%jo...@nasw.org...
Fiona
"QandA" <qand...@yahoo.com> wrote
> Interestingly enough, neither the Ethiopians, nor the Yemenites know
> the Oral Torah. Perhaps they lost it.. :-)
I assume you are talking about the Yemenite Muslims, 'cos the Yemenite Jews
certainly know the Oral Law.
Fiona
Joel Shurkin
Ackerman <acke...@dorsai.orgs> wrote:
> Joel Shurkin <jo...@nasw.org> wrote in
> news:210820031123088316%jo...@nasw.org:
>
> > It¹s the people who are invested in the small details I¹m talking
> > about. You see them here discussing the maximum legal heating
> > temperature of water, 113 degrees or something like that. Why not 114?
> >
>
> Yep, just like the chemist who says we need a combination of c6 h12 o6. Why
> not c7 h12 o6? Or the doctor tells you eat this and you will say I may as
> well eat something else.
>
> Yes, I don't expect you to understand this.
Good analogy and I do understand. I just don¹t accept it. Let¹s say the
chemist announces that if you mix that compound in space, where there
is no gravity, you could substitute c7 for c6 and it would still work.
How do we know that is true since things have changed ? He says so. But
he can prove it one way or the other: he can go to space. The rabbis
who announced that cars=fire=violation don¹t know that, they are
surmising it, and they, unlike the chemist, can¹t prove it one way or
another. It¹s so because they say it is so. And what if I look at their
logic and say that is interesting, but it doesn¹t work for me or that I
don¹t think that was what was intended? Nothing is demonstrable, and
while the chemical composition of a sugar is not trivial‹it¹s either
sugar or it isn¹t‹whether you heat water to 113 or 114 is. It is still
warm water.
Actually the boring cheeseburger debate is a better one. Banning
cheeseburgers from the text is, to put it kindly, a stretch. And most
of us find that not pertinent. And I do understand the logic and I do
understand that wonderful wall but there is no chance whatsover I will
violate the rule on milk and kids by eating a cheesburger. Put bacon on
it, and we have a problem.
Obviously, what is at the core to our discussion is that you accept the
holiness of the literal oral law and most of us don¹t.
J
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>Of course it's relevant. My understanding of Micha's point is that the act
>of following halacha has the effect of making a person "great" --
>spiritual, etc. The experience does it. My counter-point is that people
>without that experience as still "great," and people with the experience
>are not. So there's more to it than just the experience.
You're ignoring that this is a statistical question. Some people who
get a vaccination end up getting the disease anyway. Your argument is
like saying that because you know unvaccinated people who never got the
disease and vaccinated people who did, the vaccination doesn't work.
And that this case is far more complicated since people have discretion
in what they decide to observe. This isn't Calvinism, after all --- no
one has ever claimed that observance removes one's yetzer hara.
Janet
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>I would suggest that the people who were "great" to start with are more
>likely, perhaps, to be attracted to and stick with some of the strictures
>of religion. But if anything, that means the religion is "great" --
>meaning humanistic, pious, "menschlich," etc. only because the adherents
>happen to be. Not that the adherents are that way because of their
>adherence.
I would suggest that people who were smart to start with are more
likely to be attracted to and stick with the strictures and sacrifices
of pursuing an education. If anything, that means that high schools and
colleges are "great" only because the students happen to be, not that
they learned anything by attending school.
>Also, what happens to drug-abusing illiterate divorced wife-beating O
>Jews? Are they still considered O? Or more likely do they leave the ranks
>of O (either voluntarily or not) and therefore don't in your statistic?
Statistics are population aggregates --- of course, they're in the
statistic. No one has ever claimed that there are no high school graduates
who can't multiply two two-digit numbers, only that they're far more
likely to be able to do that than drop outs.
>Anyway, I think Jews as a whole -- not just O Jews -- have lower rates
>than the American average of all of those things, including Jews who eat
>bacon. So that doesn't support your hypothesis that halacha causes
>literacy, temperance, etc., either.
Actually, there are statistics behind my statement.
Divorce rates of non-O Jews are -higher- than those of the general
American population, while O Jews divorce rates are lower. I saw this
statistic this spring in a set of surveys about religion and family
cohesion.
Literacy is pretty much a non-issue in American society now, but if you
compare traditional societies, there's a marked difference: the
Arab-Israeli woman with 9 kids in East Jerusalem has a similar income,
but a far lower educational level than her Charedi neighbor a few blocks
away in Mea Shaarim with 9 kids, and this difference has always held.
There's no reason why secular Muslims and Jews in the same should have
different literacy levels.
I'm not familiar with rates of substance abuse in O vs. non-O communities,
and don't know where to find the statistics, but looking only at
substance use, it's not uncommon for non-O kids to get drunk or high
at parties, while it is so for O kids.
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
>>Of course it's relevant. My understanding of Micha's point is that the act
>>of following halacha has the effect of making a person "great" --
>>spiritual, etc. The experience does it. My counter-point is that people
>>without that experience as still "great," and people with the experience
>>are not. So there's more to it than just the experience.
>You're ignoring that this is a statistical question. Some people who
>get a vaccination end up getting the disease anyway. Your argument is
>like saying that because you know unvaccinated people who never got the
>disease and vaccinated people who did, the vaccination doesn't work.
I'm not ignoring it at all -- I'm saying that if people who are vaccinated
and people who are not vaccinated get the disease at roughly the same
rate, then the vaccine doesn't work.
You're ignoring cause and effect -- the fact that a certain type of person
is drawn to a certain type of lifestyle doesn't prove that the lifestyle
is the cause of the personality type.
OTOH, there are counterexamples aplenty, in which ostensibly O people who
presumably do live according to halacha are nevertheless truly miserable
people. Ask anyone about NYC landlords, for example. Obviously it's just
statistics - but if halacha is so powerful...?
>And that this case is far more complicated since people have discretion
>in what they decide to observe. This isn't Calvinism, after all --- no
>one has ever claimed that observance removes one's yetzer hara.
Of course not. In fact I'd suggest that psychologically what happens to
some O people (or religious people of any religion) is that they're so
confident in their own religiosity that they can justify their own heinous
acts, on the grounds that since they're so clearly religious, whatever
they're doing must be OK.
It's really got nothing to do with the religion -- everybody's got a story
about how a guy with a beard and payos ripped of someone they know, and
I'm sure everyone also has a story of a wonderful good deed done by a
bacon-eater. And the converse as well, of course.
But of course it's also entirely possible that religious and non-religious
communities generate "tzadikim" and "rashas" at exactly the same rate, but
the religious communities force some percentage of the "rashas" out, and
some percentage of the non-religious "tzadikim" drift over to the
religious side, even though it wasn't the religion that made them that
way. So it gives the appearance that the religion is causing the tzadikim,
when in fact it isn't.
Now, I do agree that there is very likely something within Judaism that
supports "goodness" in a non-religious sense as well. Plus many of the
other benefits you mentioned. However, I DON'T think this "something" has
any relationship to the permitted temperature of water on shabbos - it's
something much more basic and general. I would actually be interested in
investigating the opposite -- if too much focus on the details can cause
one to lose track of the forest. I've seen evidence of that on this NG, in
fact.
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>>If someone thinks that it's silly that traditional Judaism prohibits
>>cooking chicken and milk together, they can present this decision as
>>traditional Judaism being blind to reality since everyone knows that chicken
>>doesn't look anything like beef or mutton and make a principled decision
>>to part ways with traditional Judaism for that blindness. People have a
>>number of pet things that they find silly within traditional Judaism.
>>Even assuming that they understand the issues correctly --- often, they
>>don't --- when it comes down to brass tacks, they've decided that
>>chicken parmesean is a more significant part of their lives than
>>membership within the historical Jewish community.
>I see... but as a nitpick it's not membership within the historical Jewish
>community that would be challenged, but membership within the CURRENT
>Jewish community. Make that *a* current Jewish community.
No, I mean membership within the historical stream of Judaism --- the
Judaism that we can trace directly from the gemara in chullin where it's
decided that we don't eat chicken parmesean until now.
>You're making a sort of "pure conservatism" argument, which I don't think
>is unusual. We don't know what's right and what's wrong, so let's just
>hunker down and keep everything as "the same" as we can until Moshiach
>comes and sorts it out.
That's actually not so at all. I am all for change when it makes a real
difference in the fundamentals of people's lives, and such changes
certainly occur within O. I just want to put issues in perspective.
People name all sorts of issues about why they aren't observant, and
much of the time it reduces to issues like chicken parmesean or driving
on shabbat or trichinosis. I can respect not being observant because
someone is a Holocaust survivor or some other fundamental reason, but
usually it's chicken parmesean.
>This is part of the "decay" mentality that traditional Judaism has --
>every day we sink further and further away from Sinai, and become more and
>more corrupt, and know less and less, and therefore our duty is to keep it
>together as much as possible. Out of concern for throwing the baby out
>with the bathwater, we'll not only keep the bathwater, we'll keep the tub
>and the entire bathroom, just in case it turns out that something was
>important. I understand - that point makes a certain amount of sense.
>I just happen to firmly disagree with it.
This is why you should learn. Torah is not this simple.
I'll give you one case. Chapter two of Mishna Nida "kol ha-yad" says
that a woman who checks often for nida even when she doesn't expect to
find anything is praised. This line makes it into the gemara, the Rosh,
I think the Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch, and yet Artscroll's guide says
the opposite --- that one should not check often. The law apparently
changed about 150 years ago, and I've not had a chance to look into the
sources to find out why.
There are many cases like this.
>I think we're here to build, not to hunker down. Even if we're putting
>pebbles on top of boulders, that beats sitting in the shade of those
>boulders waiting for someone else to build for us, out of fear that we
>might build something wrong.
I agree. I'm sorry that your exposure to Torah was this way.
I certainly aim to build, and go in religious circles in which everyone
does as well.
Janet
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>True, but
>1. No one is claiming that the Standard Model is Truth with a capital
>T.
>2. Physicists are always searching for better models. When they find a
>better model, they will scrap the current one. Is this what you are
>doing?
I only gave the example of particle physics to make people calibrate
their expectations for what "logical" and "systematic" should mean.
Janet
Steven Goldfarb
>Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> writes:
>>I would suggest that the people who were "great" to start with are more
>>likely, perhaps, to be attracted to and stick with some of the strictures
>>of religion. But if anything, that means the religion is "great" --
>>meaning humanistic, pious, "menschlich," etc. only because the adherents
>>happen to be. Not that the adherents are that way because of their
>>adherence.
>I would suggest that people who were smart to start with are more
>likely to be attracted to and stick with the strictures and sacrifices
>of pursuing an education. If anything, that means that high schools and
>colleges are "great" only because the students happen to be, not that
>they learned anything by attending school.
I expect you're trying to be facetious, but I think what you wrote is
exactly correct. Well, except your conclusion -- it's not that they didn't
learn anything, the correct parallel conclusion is that going to a good
high school or college doesn't make someone smart.
>>Also, what happens to drug-abusing illiterate divorced wife-beating O
>>Jews? Are they still considered O? Or more likely do they leave the ranks
>>of O (either voluntarily or not) and therefore don't in your statistic?
>Statistics are population aggregates --- of course, they're in the
>statistic. No one has ever claimed that there are no high school graduates
>who can't multiply two two-digit numbers, only that they're far more
>likely to be able to do that than drop outs.
What do you mean "of course they're in the statistic?" I'm assuming those
people are NOT considered O Jews by the statisticians. THus the statistic
gets skewed.
>>Anyway, I think Jews as a whole -- not just O Jews -- have lower rates
>>than the American average of all of those things, including Jews who eat
>>bacon. So that doesn't support your hypothesis that halacha causes
>>literacy, temperance, etc., either.
>Actually, there are statistics behind my statement.
>Divorce rates of non-O Jews are -higher- than those of the general
>American population, while O Jews divorce rates are lower. I saw this
>statistic this spring in a set of surveys about religion and family
>cohesion.
OK - so O Jews don't get divorced as often as non-O Jews. So what? Does
that mean their marriages are happier? Not necessarily. Does that mean
people who get divorced are "bad people," so therefore O Jews are better
people because they don't get divorced? I don't think so.
Did you adjust your statistic for number of children? I'd suspect that
couples without children get divorced at a higher rate than those with
children. And that those with many children even less often.
>Literacy is pretty much a non-issue in American society now, but if you
>compare traditional societies, there's a marked difference: the
>Arab-Israeli woman with 9 kids in East Jerusalem has a similar income,
>but a far lower educational level than her Charedi neighbor a few blocks
>away in Mea Shaarim with 9 kids, and this difference has always held.
>There's no reason why secular Muslims and Jews in the same should have
>different literacy levels.
That's evidence that JEWS favor literacy, not that ORTHODOXY favors
literacy. If you go beyond literacy and look to advance degrees, I suspect
you're going to find more non-O than O Jews, and the higher the religious
committment the less likely you are to find advanced degrees.
So does that mean non-O or less-O is "better?"
>I'm not familiar with rates of substance abuse in O vs. non-O communities,
>and don't know where to find the statistics, but looking only at
>substance use, it's not uncommon for non-O kids to get drunk or high
>at parties, while it is so for O kids.
How do you know that? One of the first kids to ever hand me a joint was
FFB. I wouldn't be surprised if O Jews smoke at higher levels than non-O
Jews. (don't know, but wouldn't be surprised -- perhaps this has changed
recently)
And anyway, it's a self-fulfilling statistic -- those children of O
parents who decide to engage in parties and substance abuse most likely
cease to be O.
Sheldon Ackerman
news:bi2rfq$3s...@odds.stat.purdue.edu:
> If you follow the doctor's suggestions blindly, are you
> more than a robot?
>
>
We discussed this once already. I don't believe that following a doctor's
suggestions based soley on your trust in that doctor makes you a robot.
And if you belief that following the Torah blindly makes you a robot, then
I guess there is nothing wrong with being a robot.
Janet Rosenbaum From:
Just reposting so people don't have to scroll down.
It's a good quote.
Sheldon Ackerman
> Good analogy and I do understand. I just don靖 accept it. Let零 say the
> chemist announces that if you mix that compound in space, where there
> is no gravity, you could substitute c7 for c6 and it would still work.
> How do we know that is true since things have changed ? He says so. But
> he can prove it one way or the other: he can go to space. The rabbis
> who announced that cars=fire=violation don靖 know that, they are
> surmising it, and they, unlike the chemist, can靖 prove it one way or
> another. It零 so because they say it is so. And what if I look at their
> logic and say that is interesting, but it doesn靖 work for me or that I
> don靖 think that was what was intended? Nothing is demonstrable, and
> while the chemical composition of a sugar is not trivial𤷫t零 either
> sugar or it isn靖𢶤hether you heat water to 113 or 114 is. It is still
> warm water.
OK...I'm glad you understand it. I do understand your point of view as
well. But that is where the Orthodox Jews differ. We take things based on
faith. Yes, it may make things difficult at some times. Many of us did grow
up this way so things are not as difficult as they would seem to someone
looking in from the outside. Much of what the Rabbis have said are "ge-zay-
ros" or gates to keep us from d'orasis (biblical trangressions?). As such
we would rather be safe than sorry.
> Actually the boring cheeseburger debate is a better one. Banning
> cheeseburgers from the text is, to put it kindly, a stretch. And most
> of us find that not pertinent. And I do understand the logic and I do
> understand that wonderful wall but there is no chance whatsover I will
> violate the rule on milk and kids by eating a cheesburger. Put bacon on
> it, and we have a problem.
I don't recall the thread. But the cheeseburger is only a rabbinic
trangression. (BTW the word only is not really correct as the punishment
for a rabinical trangression is harsh to those who believe.) The d'oraisa
is the cooking of milk and meat together. So the rabbis felt that although
they were cooked alone, if you eat them together you may end up cooking
them together as well. So they set up their gate.
>
> Obviously, what is at the core to our discussion is that you accept the
> holiness of the literal oral law and most of us don靖.
>
>
You may as well say all of us :-)
The orthodox Jews accept it and all who are not orthodox do not accept it.
Or am I incorrect in that assumption?
Joel Shurkin
<jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
Wow. I need to go think about this.
Steven Goldfarb
>>I see... but as a nitpick it's not membership within the historical Jewish
>>community that would be challenged, but membership within the CURRENT
>>Jewish community. Make that *a* current Jewish community.
>No, I mean membership within the historical stream of Judaism --- the
>Judaism that we can trace directly from the gemara in chullin where it's
>decided that we don't eat chicken parmesean until now.
Well, then you get into the "sez you" argument. We get into that circular
argument that everything that O Jews today is exactly what O Jews have
always done, and your evidence for that is O Jews today say so.
Even if I concede that we know the actions of O Jews of years gone by, we
don't necessary know the motivations -- we know for sure that there are
cases where people are ducking their heads as they circle the bimah
because in the old shul there was a low beam, but we don't know which
items are like that.
With regards to chicken parm, even if we know that the O Jews 1,000 years
ago didn't eat it, we DON'T know if an O rabbi from 1,000 years ago, if
brought into the present, would rule that chicken parm is prohibited.
We don't know if God MEANT for chicken parm to be prohibited.
>>You're making a sort of "pure conservatism" argument, which I don't think
>>is unusual. We don't know what's right and what's wrong, so let's just
>>hunker down and keep everything as "the same" as we can until Moshiach
>>comes and sorts it out.
>That's actually not so at all. I am all for change when it makes a real
>difference in the fundamentals of people's lives, and such changes
>certainly occur within O. I just want to put issues in perspective.
>People name all sorts of issues about why they aren't observant, and
>much of the time it reduces to issues like chicken parmesean or driving
>on shabbat or trichinosis. I can respect not being observant because
>someone is a Holocaust survivor or some other fundamental reason, but
>usually it's chicken parmesean.
Well, it's more than just chicken parm - it's every aspect of every moment
of your day. Each element is a potential chicken parm.
>>This is part of the "decay" mentality that traditional Judaism has --
>>every day we sink further and further away from Sinai, and become more and
>>more corrupt, and know less and less, and therefore our duty is to keep it
>>together as much as possible. Out of concern for throwing the baby out
>>with the bathwater, we'll not only keep the bathwater, we'll keep the tub
>>and the entire bathroom, just in case it turns out that something was
>>important. I understand - that point makes a certain amount of sense.
>>I just happen to firmly disagree with it.
>This is why you should learn. Torah is not this simple.
>I'll give you one case. Chapter two of Mishna Nida "kol ha-yad" says
>that a woman who checks often for nida even when she doesn't expect to
>find anything is praised. This line makes it into the gemara, the Rosh,
>I think the Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch, and yet Artscroll's guide says
>the opposite --- that one should not check often. The law apparently
>changed about 150 years ago, and I've not had a chance to look into the
>sources to find out why.
>There are many cases like this.
Well, that's a case of inconsistency, not a case of "building," or of the
sort of change I'm talking about.
True or false: the greatest rabbi of today is less great than the greatest
rabbi of 100 years ago, and greater than the greatest rabbi of 100 years
from now.
>>I think we're here to build, not to hunker down. Even if we're putting
>>pebbles on top of boulders, that beats sitting in the shade of those
>>boulders waiting for someone else to build for us, out of fear that we
>>might build something wrong.
>I agree. I'm sorry that your exposure to Torah was this way.
>I certainly aim to build, and go in religious circles in which everyone
>does as well.
I believe you that that's your aim -- but you can't build without the
ability to undo what has already been done, if necessary.
Harry Weiss
> In article <bhu1d2$bea$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>, Janet Rosenbaum From:
> <jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > Joel Shurkin <jo...@nasw.org> writes:
> > >Yes, that=B9s true. The point that the non-Orthodox make is that
> > >sometimes, perhaps even often, inertia in tradition becomes
> > >debilitating, irrelevant, illogical and sometimes even silly. Modern
> > >life changes and the rabbis try to accommodate the rules of the past
> > >and the reality of the present, and sometimes they do not do a very
> > >good job. Often, that=B9s what drives us away.
> >
> > You have to give specific examples, and explain why these examples are
> > sufficiently bad to warrant splitting Judaism.
> I can give you the obvious example of driving to schul on shabbos.
> Since most Jews, at least in America, chose not to live within walking
> distance of a schul, and many cannot because of employment or
> aesthetics, a rule about making fire handed down to a Bronze Age people
> in the desert, makes very little sense to me, and to many others. (I
> lived in the Santa Cruz mountains of California, an entire mountain
> range from the nearest synagogue, because it was breathtakingly
> beautiful and Who made those redwoods?) They had camels and asses and
> could transport themselves without fire. We don?t. The result is that
> American non-O Jewry is becoming more of a synagogue-based religion
> than elsewhere. It is evolving because the majority rejected the rule.
> Watching rules bent with pious convenience such as a eruv also comes to
> mind. The rule on carrying was given to the same people who all lived
> together in tented camps, not in Pikesville, Maryland, where you need
> to take your baby carriages for a walk. I?m sure it is possible that
> God anticipated Pikesville and Scotts Valley, California, but I
> seriously doubt He is concerned with the small stuff.
The Torah is eternal. It does apply equally in Baltimore or Siskyou County. One
also is not supposed to travel on their animal. When one keeps Shabbat, one gets a
feeling that it is Shabbat. It is feeling that takes over ones whole being on that
day. Yes, there are restrictions, but I know Shabbat is my favorite day of the week.
It is because of the restrctions and because of the nicer meals and everything we do
to make Shabbat special.
> If 95 percent of a people perceive the rules one way, and 5 percent
> another way, it is not the 95 who are the outliers, it is the 5. It
> doesn?t matter who comes first.
Sorry that is wrong. If there is an aboslute right and and absolute wrong, it is
irrelvant waht 95 or 5 percent do. What counts is that the Torah is absolute right
and vilations of the Torah is an absolute wrong.
> >
> > I don't think it's unusual to disagree with mainstream halacha, but many
> > people aren't as invested in these small details as they are in the
> > society as a whole. It's a fairly modern thing that all these people
> > now write into advice columns noting their particular ideosyncracies in
> > dress and saying that they can't imagine going to a job interview
> > dressed in any other way since people should be accepted as they are.
> > Which is fine, but the obvious response is that it's pretty strange for
> > someone to feel that their style of dress is such an integral part of
> > them that they can't compromise for the sake of a career that they've
> > trained years for.
> It?s the people who are invested in the small details I?m talking
> about. You see them here discussing the maximum legal heating
> temperature of water, 113 degrees or something like that. Why not 114?
> 97? Who cares? And I have little sympathy for the guys with the garbage
> bags over their ill-fitting black homburgs walking lockstep in the
> rain. The way they dress has nothing to do with Judaism.
> J
> >
> > Janet
> --
> "I have nothing in the world but the hour in which I am. It pauses for a
> moment, and then, like a cloud, moves on.?
> Samuel a?Nagid 10th century Spain
> ?
> Joel Shurkin
> Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
> Baltimore
--
Harry J. Weiss
hjw...@panix.com
QandA
> > It's 15 billion. This sounds impressive. Then again, many rabbis made
> > lots of different calculations for the age of the Universe. If you
> > make lots of random guesses, it is not surprizing if one of them is
> > close to being correct.
> True, but why would someone come up with a value of (IIRC 14 billion) such an
> extreme value, when anyone reading the "source text" in bereshit would *maybe*
> be able to stretch it to a few tens of thousands?
But he used other, more esoteric, texts as well, right? Plus, everyone
agrees that, in Genesis, time passed between the two creation stories.
Thus, in the Jewish view, there is nothing to limit the age of the
Universe to 10,000 years.
My only point is that I don't know if this estimate / guess proves
anything. It might, but at this point, it's not clear. To know that it
proves something, we would have to know all the estimates of the age
of the Universe made by all the rabbis.
bac...@vms.huji.ac.il
That's why R. Yitzchak of Akko, a disciple of the Ramban, wrote 750
years ago that the world was created 15 BILLION years ago. (to be
exact: 15,340,500,000)
That's why the Midrash states that God created universes and destroyed
them.
That's why the gemara in Chagiga 13b states that there were 974
generations BEFORE Adam.
That's why there are many midrashim noting that the first week of
Creation lasted eons of time (see: Anafim on Rabbenu Bachya's Sefer
Ikkarim 2:18; Breshit Rabba 9).
That's why the biblical day is 1000 Divine years which is equivalent
to 365,200 earth years, and the midrash indicates that the world is
42,000 Divine years old.
That's why the Midrash in Breshit Rabba 14 mentions in the name of
Rabbi Yehuda that man was born with a tail.
That's why the Midrash Tanchuma Genesis 6 states that people born
before the time of Noah had webbed fingers.
That's why Breshit Rabba 23 states that in the days of Enosh the faces
of men became APE LIKE.
Josh
Sheldon Ackerman
news:bi35ls$ps7$1...@reader2.panix.com:
> OTOH, there are counterexamples aplenty, in which ostensibly O people
> who presumably do live according to halacha are nevertheless truly
> miserable people. Ask anyone about NYC landlords, for example.
> Obviously it's just statistics - but if halacha is so powerful...?
>
Correct. However they are not really O people, then. They just talk the
talk and wear the garb. There are two parts to the Torah. The "bayn adam
l'mokom" (between man and g-d) and "bayn adam l'chavero (between man and
his fellow man). Both are of equal importance.
BTW that is why the tablets of the 10 commandments are set up side by side
the way they are. But that's another thread.
QandA
> > Interestingly enough, neither the Ethiopians, nor the Yemenites know
> > the Oral Torah. Perhaps they lost it.. :-)
>
> I assume you are talking about the Yemenite Muslims, 'cos the Yemenite Jews
> certainly know the Oral Law.
My mistake. I must have been thinking about just the Ethiopians.
Joel Shurkin
Ackerman <acke...@dorsai.orgs> wrote:
> Joel Shurkin <jo...@nasw.org> wrote in
> news:210820031429215182%jo...@nasw.org:
>
> > Good analogy and I do understand. I just don¹t accept it. Let¹s say the
> > chemist announces that if you mix that compound in space, where there
> > is no gravity, you could substitute c7 for c6 and it would still work.
> > How do we know that is true since things have changed ? He says so. But
> > he can prove it one way or the other: he can go to space. The rabbis
> > who announced that cars=fire=violation don¹t know that, they are
> > surmising it, and they, unlike the chemist, can¹t prove it one way or
> > another. It¹s so because they say it is so. And what if I look at their
> > logic and say that is interesting, but it doesn¹t work for me or that I
> > don¹t think that was what was intended? Nothing is demonstrable, and
> > while the chemical composition of a sugar is not trivial‹it¹s either
> > sugar or it isn¹t‹whether you heat water to 113 or 114 is. It is still
> > warm water.
>
> OK...I'm glad you understand it. I do understand your point of view as
> well. But that is where the Orthodox Jews differ. We take things based on
> faith. Yes, it may make things difficult at some times. Many of us did grow
> up this way so things are not as difficult as they would seem to someone
> looking in from the outside. Much of what the Rabbis have said are "ge-zay-
> ros" or gates to keep us from d'orasis (biblical trangressions?). As such
> we would rather be safe than sorry.
>
> > Actually the boring cheeseburger debate is a better one. Banning
> > cheeseburgers from the text is, to put it kindly, a stretch. And most
> > of us find that not pertinent. And I do understand the logic and I do
> > understand that wonderful wall but there is no chance whatsover I will
> > violate the rule on milk and kids by eating a cheesburger. Put bacon on
> > it, and we have a problem.
>
> I don't recall the thread. But the cheeseburger is only a rabbinic
> trangression. (BTW the word only is not really correct as the punishment
> for a rabinical trangression is harsh to those who believe.) The d'oraisa
> is the cooking of milk and meat together. So the rabbis felt that although
> they were cooked alone, if you eat them together you may end up cooking
> them together as well. So they set up their gate.
>
> >
> > Obviously, what is at the core to our discussion is that you accept the
> > holiness of the literal oral law and most of us don¹t.
> >
> >
> You may as well say all of us :-)
> The orthodox Jews accept it and all who are not orthodox do not accept it.
> Or am I incorrect in that assumption?
>
I think we agree.
J
--
"I have nothing in the world but the hour in which I am. It pauses for a
moment, and then, like a cloud, moves on.²
Samuel a¹Nagid 10th century Spain
Joel Shurkin
Baltimore
Joel Shurkin
<hjw...@panix.com> wrote:
The issue is the interpretation of the Torah. There is more than one
way to make shabbat special. I turn off my computer Friday afternoon,
we have a special meal and do the evening service and we don¹t answer
the phone and I almost never do any work on Saturday. But I live two
miles from my schul and have no qualms about driving there. That is
special even if it does¹t follow the Orthodox intepretation.
>
>
>
>
> > If 95 percent of a people perceive the rules one way, and 5 percent
> > another way, it is not the 95 who are the outliers, it is the 5. It
> > doesn?t matter who comes first.
>
> Sorry that is wrong. If there is an aboslute right and and absolute wrong,
> it is
> irrelvant waht 95 or 5 percent do. What counts is that the Torah is absolute
> right
> and vilations of the Torah is an absolute wrong.
And obviously I don¹t agree.
J
Steven Goldfarb
>Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> wrote in
>news:bi35ls$ps7$1...@reader2.panix.com:
>> OTOH, there are counterexamples aplenty, in which ostensibly O people
>> who presumably do live according to halacha are nevertheless truly
>> miserable people. Ask anyone about NYC landlords, for example.
>> Obviously it's just statistics - but if halacha is so powerful...?
>>
>Correct. However they are not really O people, then. They just talk the
>talk and wear the garb. There are two parts to the Torah. The "bayn adam
>l'mokom" (between man and g-d) and "bayn adam l'chavero (between man and
>his fellow man). Both are of equal importance.
Ah, but that's a total cop-out. I recognize that there are philosophical
differences on this issue, but if you claim that the action of living a
halachic life has the result of making the person "greater," which is what
Micha claimed I believe, then you can't just discount the counter-examples
by claiming they "aren't really O."
You have to start with every single person who's either born O or becomes
O, and trace the outcomes for ALL of these people, in order to get a
meaningful statistic.
--sg
>BTW that is why the tablets of the 10 commandments are set up side by side
>the way they are. But that's another thread.
QandA
> >> > It's 15 billion. This sounds impressive. Then again, many rabbis made
> >> > lots of different calculations for the age of the Universe. If you
> >> > make lots of random guesses, it is not surprizing if one of them is
> >> > close to being correct.
Before I proceed.. I thought religion and science are separate. Right?
Isn't that the O position? That science cannot make statements about
religion and religion does not make statements about science? What's
the point of the following copy and paste then?
> That's why R. Yitzchak of Akko, a disciple of the Ramban, wrote 750
> years ago that the world was created 15 BILLION years ago. (to be
> exact: 15,340,500,000)
Right. That's exactly what we were discussing. It's a nice copy and
paste, but how does it answer my question? ;-)
> That's why the Midrash states that God created universes and destroyed
> them.
Which doesn't prove much since it could be interpreted to fit any
observable data.
> That's why the gemara in Chagiga 13b states that there were 974
> generations BEFORE Adam.
Which means what exactly? Humans have been around for 2 million years.
> That's why there are many midrashim noting that the first week of
> Creation lasted eons of time (see: Anafim on Rabbenu Bachya's Sefer
> Ikkarim 2:18; Breshit Rabba 9).
>
> That's why the biblical day is 1000 Divine years which is equivalent
> to 365,200 earth years, and the midrash indicates that the world is
> 42,000 Divine years old.
So then this is the source of R. Yitzchak's calculation. It only
depends on two numbers: 42,000 and 365,200. While 15 Billion might
seem like a strange number to pick, there is nothing particularly
unusual about the two multipliers. 365.24 is the number of days in a
year; 42 is the number of letters is a mystical name of God.
> That's why the Midrash in Breshit Rabba 14 mentions in the name of
> Rabbi Yehuda that man was born with a tail.
Right. But without knowing what *other* stories it tells, we cannot
gauge the significance of this. That's exactly what the original
discussion what about, if you bothered to read it.
> That's why the Midrash Tanchuma Genesis 6 states that people born
> before the time of Noah had webbed fingers.
Did human anscestors ever have webbed fingers? Sounds like something
out of a sci-fi movie.
> That's why Breshit Rabba 23 states that in the days of Enosh the faces
> of men became APE LIKE.
And? Apes are animals that are very similar to humans. You don't have
to know about evolution to know that. In Hindu mythology, some kings
even had whole armies of apes. So?
Avi Norowitz
commitment and alcohol use among Jews. I have been unable to find any
studies concerning the relationship between the identification as
"Orthodox" and alcohol use, or relevant studies concerning the use of
other drugs. This is what I have found:
"As hypothesized, more frequent religious service attendance related
to lower rates of binge drinking in non-Jews but was not related to
binge drinking in Jews. Within the Jewish sample, individuals who were
religiously affiliated had approximately one third the risk of binge
drinking as those who were secularly affiliated, but identification
with Jewish culture was not related to binge drinking." [1]
"Significantly higher rates of drinking were noted for secular men and
women than for religious respondents in both nationality groups [Jews
and Arabs] ... Findings within the Jewish sample support theories that
suggest religious, not just cultural, Jewish affiliation relates to
lower levels of alcohol behavior." [2]
"[A]cquaintance with alcoholics was reported by religious more than
nonreligious [Jewish] respondents in all the surveys." [3]
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12500100&dopt=Abstract
[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11513222&dopt=Abstract
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2365583&dopt=Abstract
Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> wrote in message news:<bi36b6$q59$1...@reader2.panix.com>...
Steven Goldfarb
>I performed a MEDLINE search on the correlation between religious
>commitment and alcohol use among Jews. I have been unable to find any
>studies concerning the relationship between the identification as
>"Orthodox" and alcohol use, or relevant studies concerning the use of
>other drugs. This is what I have found:
>"As hypothesized, more frequent religious service attendance related
>to lower rates of binge drinking in non-Jews but was not related to
>binge drinking in Jews. Within the Jewish sample, individuals who were
>religiously affiliated had approximately one third the risk of binge
>drinking as those who were secularly affiliated, but identification
>with Jewish culture was not related to binge drinking." [1]
>"Significantly higher rates of drinking were noted for secular men and
>women than for religious respondents in both nationality groups [Jews
>and Arabs] ... Findings within the Jewish sample support theories that
>suggest religious, not just cultural, Jewish affiliation relates to
>lower levels of alcohol behavior." [2]
I'm not entirely sure of what this indicates -- but it doesn't demonstrate
any sort of causality. For the statistic to be meaningful, you'd have to
look at all people who were either born into O families or became O
themselves, and compare their rate of binge drinking with that of people
who were never O. You can't just look at a snapshot.
--sg
>"[A]cquaintance with alcoholics was reported by religious more than
>nonreligious [Jewish] respondents in all the surveys." [3]
>[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12500100&dopt=Abstract
>[2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11513222&dopt=Abstract
>[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2365583&dopt=Abstract
>Steven Goldfarb <s...@panix.com> wrote in message news:<bi36b6$q59$1...@reader2.panix.com>...
>> In <bi34q8$roi$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu> Janet Rosenbaum From: <jero...@frog.hcs.harvard.edu> writes:
>> >I'm not familiar with rates of substance abuse in O vs. non-O communities,
>> >and don't know where to find the statistics, but looking only at
>> >substance use, it's not uncommon for non-O kids to get drunk or high
>> >at parties, while it is so for O kids.
>>
>> How do you know that? One of the first kids to ever hand me a joint was
>> FFB. I wouldn't be surprised if O Jews smoke at higher levels than non-O
>> Jews. (don't know, but wouldn't be surprised -- perhaps this has changed
>> recently)
>>
>> And anyway, it's a self-fulfilling statistic -- those children of O
>> parents who decide to engage in parties and substance abuse most likely
>> cease to be O.
>>
>> --sg
>>
>> >Janet
Sheldon Ackerman
> Ah, but that's a total cop-out. I recognize that there are
> philosophical differences on this issue, but if you claim that the
> action of living a halachic life has the result of making the person
> "greater," which is what Micha claimed I believe, then you can't just
> discount the counter-examples by claiming they "aren't really O."
>
> You have to start with every single person who's either born O or
> becomes O, and trace the outcomes for ALL of these people, in order to
> get a meaningful statistic.
>
>
You'll have to explain why that's a cop out.O individuals are still human.
You may call them O, they may look like O, but if they do not act like O
then they are not really O. I guess it's a matter of definition and not a
cop out. I see no problem with maintaining that living a halachic life
makes a person greater. If they're middos (don't know how to translate that
) are off then they are just fulling themselves and others. Actually if
they understand that their middos are off and they are trying to correct
those particular middos then they are doing what they should be doing.
There was one gadol (don't recall who now...could have been the Ari
HaKodosh) who said that the sole purpose of man on this earth is to work on
perfecting his middos. And the Torah is the aid to help him do so.
Steven Goldfarb
It's a cop-out because you're saying "if you do x, then y will happen."
Sometimes Y happens, sometimes it doesn't. For all the cases where someone
seemed to do X but Y still didn't happen, you just dismiss those
counter-examples by saying "well, they didn't do X correctly."
You're saying "all O Jews are great people. Any seemingly O Jews who
aren't great people, aren't really O Jews." I suppose that would be fine,
except the claim on the table (which you seem to agree with) is that
following halacha CAUSES greatness.
By your definitions, you could say "no Orthodox Jew has ever committed
murder," because after all, anyone who commits murder isn't really O. But
that's not how it works.
--sg
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>I'm not ignoring it at all -- I'm saying that if people who are vaccinated
>and people who are not vaccinated get the disease at roughly the same
>rate, then the vaccine doesn't work.
Good, yet here you acknowledge that it's about rates/proportions, and below
you're discussing anecdotes again.
You are continuing with this vague analysis, not answering my specific
examples, and not providing evidence anywhere. I'm fleshing out this
one example, but I'm not going to bother to answer again if you just
repeat these same arguments.
>You're ignoring cause and effect -- the fact that a certain type of person
>is drawn to a certain type of lifestyle doesn't prove that the lifestyle
>is the cause of the personality type.
Selection bias is certainly a concern, but there are many quasi-experimental
methods that allows you to control for selection. See, e.g., Shadish,
Cook and Campbell, _Quasi Experimental methods_ which has a whole
discussion of the question.
In particular, the case that you ignored is that of female literacy rates in
two adjacent neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Charedi and Muslim families
have comparable (low) income levels, similar numbers of children
(average of 9 for both Ashkenazic Charedi and Muslim; average of 7-8
for Sephardic Charedi), live in similar environments. Charedi women in
Jerusalem have higher literacy levels in their native language than Muslim
women in Jerusalem. Even comparing Charedi women in Israel with Muslim
women in Jordan who again have similarly low income levels, so that you're
comparing majorities within their respective countries, Charedi women
still have far higher literacy levels.
Historically, this comparison also holds --- before the Haskala, Jews were
far poorer than their gentile neighbors and yet women were far more
literate. There are extensive studies documenting these differences.
Another case where selection bias can be minimized is in the case of
children's decisions, since children don't choose their upbringings and
yet do make certain choices. If you can find data on rates of substance
use, age of first intercourse, etc., among O Jews togther with variables
like parents' education level, census tract info, etc., I'm happy to compare
it with overall population data for people of similar SES.
Janet
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>Well, then you get into the "sez you" argument. We get into that circular
>argument that everything that O Jews today is exactly what O Jews have
>always done, and your evidence for that is O Jews today say so.
Well, there goes that straw man!
Now, for reality: there are many laws which are marginal where we might
have some inaccuracies because of lack of use or because cases are rare.
Chicken and milk, however, is not one of these cases. Jews who have
been geographically isolated from eachother in Yemen, China, India,
Turkey, Spain, France for as long as 2000 years all agree that we don't
eat chicken with milk, even those Jews in areas in which it's common to eat
these foods together agree. Exactly why do you say that they're wrong?
>Even if I concede that we know the actions of O Jews of years gone by, we
>don't necessary know the motivations -- we know for sure that there are
>cases where people are ducking their heads as they circle the bimah
>because in the old shul there was a low beam, but we don't know which
>items are like that.
In most cases knowing the "why" doesn't allow you to nullify the law.
>With regards to chicken parm, even if we know that the O Jews 1,000 years
>ago didn't eat it, we DON'T know if an O rabbi from 1,000 years ago, if
>brought into the present, would rule that chicken parm is prohibited.
"Go to the judge in your day".
(We don't know that Chief Justice Marshall would have ruled in favor
of judicial review in 2002 as he did in 1802, but I've never heard
anyone oppose judicial review, much less on these grounds, and judicial
review has made a much larger impact on our lives than chicken
parmesean.)
>We don't know if God MEANT for chicken parm to be prohibited.
See the tanur shel aknai aggadata.
>Well, it's more than just chicken parm - it's every aspect of every moment
>of your day. Each element is a potential chicken parm.
It's not, though.
The parts of Judaism that people find difficult are very limited, and
people are terribly inconsistent --- those who think the chicken parmesean
ban is ridiculous insist on going to synagogue and having apples and honey
on Rosh Hashana, and vigilantly avoid even touching pork.
>Well, that's a case of inconsistency, not a case of "building," or of the
>sort of change I'm talking about.
No, it's precisely a counterexample to your claim that prohibitions
increase monotonically and that no one ever changes the law for the
lenient.
>True or false: the greatest rabbi of today is less great than the greatest
>rabbi of 100 years ago, and greater than the greatest rabbi of 100 years
>from now.
I don't know. Could Mighty Mouse beat up Superman? Was Newton smarter
than Einstein?
Janet
Janet Rosenbaum From:
>My mistake. I must have been thinking about just the Ethiopians.
The Ethiopians didn't have the mishna, but they did follow quite a bit
of halacha, like mikva size.
Janet
Sheldon Ackerman
> It's a cop-out because you're saying "if you do x, then y will
> happen." Sometimes Y happens, sometimes it doesn't. For all the cases
> where someone seemed to do X but Y still didn't happen, you just
> dismiss those counter-examples by saying "well, they didn't do X
> correctly."
But IF they did not do X correctly and we know that they did not do X
correctly, is it still a cop-out?
If a doctor says take two of these capsules and your headache will go away,
and I don't take those two capsules, do I have a right to claim I followed
the doctor's orders?
There are certain codes of behavior for Torah abiding individuals. If they
transgress those precepts can you call them Torah abiding? I don't see it
as a cop-out. I think the problies lies in calling them O.
> You're saying "all O Jews are great people. Any seemingly O Jews who
> aren't great people, aren't really O Jews." I suppose that would be
> fine, except the claim on the table (which you seem to agree with) is
> that following halacha CAUSES greatness.
You are the one using the term O. I have no idea what the term O means to
you. All I am saying is that any Jew who follows the Torah is great. What
does great mean :-)