Is Judaism a Religion? (Version 2.0)

Two hours into writing this post I realized that I had already written and published this post on this blog in 2014. Since the direction I took this time around is different than the direction I took last time, I decided to finish writing the post to see what would happen. I was happy with the result. Since I think this one is the better version, I decided to remove the other one from the blog.

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Spoiler Alert: My answer to this question is the same as the answer to the question:
"Are both of these figures Betty White?"

Is Judaism a Religion? (Version 2.0)

Three Reasons for this Post

I was motivated to write this post for three reasons - two of which are pet peeves, and the other of which is a national teshuvah-related musing:

Reason / Pet Peeve #1: Throughout my teaching career I've had a number of students who have struggled with their relationship to Judaism. Sometimes these students express themselves by saying things like, "I have problems with religion" or "I have mixed feelings towards religion." 

This irks me. I'm not bothered by the fact that they have problems or mixed feelings, but by their use of the blanket-term "religion." Sometimes I'll ask them, "Really? Which religion?" They look at me with surprise in their eyes and answer, "Um. Judaism?" to which I respond, "So why did you say that you have problems with 'religion' as a whole, rather than with 'Judaism' or 'Torah' or 'being frum'?" The answers they tend to give lead directly into the subject matter of this blog post.

[Just to be clear: I don't blame or judge these students for lumping Judaism into the larger category of "religion." This is merely a symptom of the mistake which will presently be discussed.] 

Reason / Pet Peeve #2: Similarly, I am bothered by the use of the term "Judeo-Christian values." I do not dispute the fact that there are certain political agendas which unite religious Jews and Christians finding themselves on the same side of the aisle. I'm not talking about this kind of thing (i.e. "Judeo-Christian agendas" or "Judeo-Christian political objectives"). I am referring to the persistent myth that Judaism and Christianity share a common value system or a similar core belief system. I even considered entitling this post "The Myth of Judeo-Christian Values."

Reason #3: I am writing this post on the 17th of Tammuz. The Rambam [1] writes: 

"Five tzaros (calamities) occurred on the 17th of Tammuz: (a) the Tablets were broken; (b) in Bayis Rishon (the First Holy Temple) the tamid (continual offering) was discontinued; (c) the walls of Jerusalem were breached [in the war leading up to] the destruction of the second [Temple]; (d) Apostamos, the wicked [Roman general], burned a Sefer Torah; (e) he erected an idol in the Beis ha'Mikdash."

Based on Tuesday's post about national teshuvah gemurah, we must conclude that all five of these events were caused by national chataim (sins), and that these chataim still exist within the Jewish people today. In this vein, I began musing about the last tzarah mentioned by the Rambam. I thought to myself: "If the chataim of the Jews at the time of the Second Beis ha'Mikdash resulted in avodah zarah (idolatry) being erected in our holiest site, what is the parallel that exists today? How have we, as 21st century Jews, enabled avodah zarah to be erected in our holiest sites?" 

Call it speculation, call it drash (homiletics), call it "using symbolism as a rhetorical device" - my mind associated to the contents of today's post. I will explain this association below.

Without further ado, let's tackle the question at hand.

Is Judaism a Religion?

When asked this question by students, I tend to give the following answer: "Either Judaism is not a religion, or Judaism is the only religion." This is just a cheeky way of answering: "No, Judaism is not a religion." My answer is based on three features which place Judaism into its own category, distinct from other religions. In order to sound fancy, let us refer to these as "the three pillars."  

1. Emunah vs. Faith: I have written several posts about the definition of emunah and the primacy of emunah in Judaism. Most, if not all, other religions are based on faith, whereas Judaism is based on emunah. By "faith" I mean conviction without (or in spite of) knowledge, evidence, and reason. By "emunah" I mean conviction based on knowledge, evidence, and reason. 

Faith and emunah are polar opposites. Since other religions demand a leap of faith, whereas Judaism is built upon a foundation of emunah, it doesn't make sense to classify them under the same heading - just as it wouldn't make sense to include a non-fiction book in the fiction section of the library.

2. Regimen: I have also written several posts about the definition of Torah (which, in this context, is interchangeable with "Judaism"). Ralbag defines Torah as "a regimen that brings those who practice it properly to true success." By "true success" the Ralbag means "comprehension of Hashem, to the extent that is [humanly] possible" which is achieved by keeping halacha, by pursuing intellectual and ethical perfection beyond the dictates of halacha - that is, by emulating Hashem's middos (actions) of chesed (kindness), tzedakah (righteousness), and mishpat (justice) - and by striving to comprehend as much science and Torah as possible. This is the Judaism I practice.

I challenge anyone to find a religion whose character and objectives match this description. There are religions which emphasize ethical development but neglect the development of the intellect. There are religions which advocate pursuing a relationship with God, but have nothing to do with chesed, tzedakah, and mishpat. There are systems which may be described as "regimens" which focus on the pursuit of human perfection, but leave God entirely out of the picture. To my knowledge, there is no other religion which presents itself as a divinely authored regimen for perfection as a tzelem Elokim (truth-seeking human being). 

3. Chochmah: Everything in Judaism is based on chochmah (wisdom), exhibits chochmah, and promotes chochmah. Every halacha (Jewish law) is determined by the unique method of scientific thinking which characterizes the study of Torah she'baal Peh (the Oral Torah). Every mitzvah was given for rational reasons that can be grasped by the human intellect - even the chukim (statutes). No element of authentic Judaism was dictated by arbitrary whim, decreed by inexplicable mystical intuition, or prescribed by religious sentiment. Every feature was arrived at through chochmah. With other religions this is simply not the case. 

These three features set Judaism apart from all other religions. This is why I believe that the answer to the question, "Is Judaism a religion?" is a firm: "NO." 

Rambam's Analogy

One might object, saying: "Fine - I'll accept the fact that Judaism is fundamentally different from other religions, but you can't deny that there are many similarities. For example, consider how many things Judaism and Christianity have in common: monotheism, prayer, reward and punishment, heaven and hell, etc. What do you have to say about that?" 

The best response I have seen to this line of reasoning is the Rambam's analogy in Iggeres Teiman. The Rambam writes:

Our religion differs as much from the other allegedly similar religions as a living man endowed with the faculty of reason differs from a statue which is ever so well carved out of marble, wood, bronze, or silver. When a person ignorant of divine wisdom or of God’s works sees the statue that superficially resembles a man in its contours, form, features, and color, he believes that the structure of the parts of a statue is like the constitution of a man, because he is deficient in his understanding of the inner organization of both. But the informed person who knows the interior of both, is cognizant of the fact that the internal structure of the statue betrays no skillful workmanship at all, whereas the inward parts of a man are truly marvelously made, and testify to the wisdom of the Creator – such as the prolongation of the nerves in the muscles and their ramifications, the branching out of the sinews and their intersections and the network of their ligaments and their manner of growth, the articulations of the bones and the joints, the pulsating and non-pulsating blood vessels and their ramifications, the setting of the limbs into one another, the uncovered and covered parts, every one of these in proportion, in form and proper place.

Likewise, one who is ignorant of the deeper meaning of Scripture and the inner dimension of the Torah would be led to believe that our religion has something in common with a counterfeit religion if he makes a comparison between the two. For he will note that in the Torah there are prohibitions and commandments, just as in counterfeit religions there are permitted and prohibited acts. Both contain a system of religious observances, positive and negative precepts, and reward and punishment. 

If he could only fathom the inner dimensions [of Torah], then he would realize that the essence of the true divine religion lies in the wisdom of its positive and negative precepts, all of which benefit man in his striving after perfection, and which remove every harm that would impede his [pursuit of] this perfection. These commandments enable people to acquire moral and intellectual qualities – the masses according to their ability, and the elite individuals according to their apprehension – so that the community of God becomes pre-eminent, reaching a two-fold perfection: a first perfection, by which I mean man’s spending his life in this world under the best and most agreeable conditions, and a second perfection, by which I mean the apprehension of concepts, each person in accordance with his capacity. 

The other religions which resemble our own have no inner dimension [of wisdom], but are [merely] stories and imitations which are intended for self-glorification, so that people will say that they are similar to so-and-so. However, their counterfeiting is patently clear to the wise. Consequently they become objects of derision and ridicule just as one laughs and smiles at an ape when it imitates the actions of men. 

The Rambam here identifies two qualities which differentiate "the true divine religion" from "counterfeit religions." The first is the chochmah of the Torah, which the Rambam analogizes to the chochmah that is manifest in the design of the human body. The second quality he points out is the essential objective of the Torah's mitzvos, which is to benefit man in his pursuit of human perfection by helping him to acquire moral and intellectual excellence. In contrast, other religions lack an "inner dimension" of chochmah, and are not designed to facilitate man's moral and intellectual development. 

[You might have noticed that these are two out of the three pillars that I mentioned above. At first I wondered why the Rambam left out the fact that other religions are based on faith, whereas Judaism is based on proof. Then I remembered that the Rambam subsequently devotes an entire section of the Iggeres Teiman to this very point, which is why he doesn't mention of it in this analogy.]

All of the apparent similarities listed at the beginning of this section are just that: apparent similarities.

• The Jewish concept of Hashem's Oneness (i.e. that God is Absolutely One, without any parts, qualities, similarities, divisions, multiplicity, or plurality of any kind) is completely different than the so-called monotheism of Christianity - especially the Trinitarian sects of Christianity.
• The Jewish concept of tefilah is utterly different from the infantile Christian concept of prayer, as I wrote about in Jewish Prayer (and Jury Duty).
• The Jewish concept of reward and punishment has nothing in common with the primitive parallel notions in Christianity, as I wrote about in Malbim on Hashgachas Hashem and Human Responsibility.
• The Jewish concept of "heaven" (i.e. Olam ha'ba, or the World to Come) bears no resemblance whatsoever to the childish heaven of Christianity, as I wrote about in Mark Twain: On Olam ha'Ba.

According to the Rambam, the same goes for EVERY seeming similarity between Judaism and Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or all the other religions. If you learn what Judaism actually holds in each case, you will see that the Judaism differs from the other religions as much as a Madame Tussaud wax figure differs from the person it was modeled after. 

Revisiting the Three Reasons

Let's go back to my three motives for writing this post: (1) my annoyance when people say they "have problems with religion" when they really mean they "have problems with Judaism," (2) the myth of "Judeo-Christian values," and (3) the modern-day corollary to Apostamos setting up an idol in the Beis ha'Mikdash.

re: Reason #1: In my experience, if a student characterizes his or her struggles as being "problems with religion," there is a good chance that the characterization is accurate. Every single time this has happened (so far), I quickly discover that the student is unaware of one, two, or all three of the features that Judaism apart from other religions. Once I help bring these students to the realization of what Judaism really is, it eventually dawns on them that many of their problems have nothing to do with authentic Judaism, and that Judaism supports their criticisms of "religion." This doesn't mean that they won't have other problems with Judaism, but I usually find that this "Aha!" moment creates an inroad and helps these students to be more open to hearing what Judaism has to offer. 

re: Reason #2: I think it's pretty clear at this point in the post that my feelings about the notion of "Judeo-Christian values" are well-founded - certainly according to the Rambam. 

re: Reason #3: Does Apostamos's erection of an idol in the Beis ha'Mikdash have anything to do with the subject of this post? Maybe, and maybe not. But I know one thing: the fact that so many Jews are ignorant of these three pillars indicates that Klal Yisrael has allowed Judaism to become defined by the concepts, values, and terminology of other religions. "They mingled with the nations and learned from their actions" (Tehilim 106:35). This undoubtedly qualifies as a national cheit (sin), and this cheit has resulted in innumerable personal and communal tzaros (calamities). 

Each and every Jew has a sphere of influence. Mine, as a teacher, extends to my students. Yours might be in your shul, or among your coworkers, or with your children. Regardless of how big or small one's sphere of influence is, each of us has a responsibility to practice Torah in a manner which reflects that  “[it is our] wisdom and discernment in the eyes of the nations, who shall hear all these decrees and who shall say, ‘Surely a wise and discerning people is this great nation!’” (Devarim 4:6). 

If you agree with me about these three pillars, then I encourage you to bring awareness to them in your Torah discussions. And if you disagree with me, then I encourage you to speak out against these pillars. The main thing is that you fight to restore authentic Judaism to its previous splendor. The truth will ultimately emerge and be established forever.

My Gemara Rebbi's Advice to the Graduates of 2012

Originally published in May 2012. Click here for a printer-friendly version of this blog post.

Artwork: Divert, by Igor Kieryluk

My Gemara Rebbi's Advice to the Graduates of 2012

I have had the privilege of teaching high school Gemara alongside my own Gemara rebbi from yeshiva, whose shiur I was in for six years. We share the same group of students: I teach Gemara to them in 9th and 10th grade, and he teaches them Gemara in 11th and 12th grade.

Last week was the final week of classes for 12th graders. My rebbi sent them a farewell email, which included some valuable words of advice. I am grateful that he gave me permission to share those words with my readers. Here is the email in its entirety (for the sake of context and flavor), with my underlining for emphasis:

Dear Seniors, 

At our last class I did not have time to adequately formulate my farewell message to you and I would like to use this opportunity to take a second chance to convey my thoughts to you. Although we have only been together for a very short time over a few months it has been my pleasure and honor to be your teacher. You all have impressed me with your intelligence, your sincere interest in learning and your appreciation of Torah and knowledge. I know that you are nervous about leaving the comfort and safety of high school and entering a new uncharted phase of your life but I want you to know that I am sure that each one of you will continue to succeed in your endeavors. I am not saying that it will be easy, or that you won't feel discouraged at times but you should always have confidence in the abilities which I have seen in you. I want to give you one piece of advice. When you see people who seem really smart or have great memories or some other talent, who are very impressive, you should never feel inferior or inadequate. Do not become unduly impressed with appearances and never surrender your right to think for yourself and trust in your own mind. It is often the case that there is a deep wisdom that is not found with the fast mind but resides in the slow, careful, methodical thinker. Please feel free to keep in touch, I would love to hear from you in the future and do not hesitate to ask for anything you think I could help with. Best wishes and I hope to see you at graduation. 

- PC

Very important advice (in my opinion) for high school students and for the rest of us. I am thankful to God for granting me the opportunity to have this lesson instilled in me firsthand by learning from and observing my rebbi throughout my formative years in yeshiva.

Richard Mitchell: The Land of We All

After the terrible slew of shootings last week, I saw many statements on social media saying things like "What have we become?" and "Why are we allowing this to happen?" This chapter from Richard Mitchell's The Gift of Fire kept on coming to mind. I think it expresses a truth that needs to be remembered. Since Mitchell is far better with words than I am, I have decided to post the chapter in its entirety. The entire book is available for free here: http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/gift-of-fire/

Artwork: Hive Mind, by Steve Argyle

Richard Mitchell: The Land of We All

- Chapter 3 of The Gift of Fire

ONE OF THE FIRST FACTS about thinking seems too obvious to be worth mentioning, but, it isn't always obvious, and we often behave as though it weren't a fact. Only a person can think. I don't mean by that to point out that trees and rocks can't think, but to say, rather, that even if trees and rocks could think, only a tree or a rock could think. Thinking can not be done corporately. Nations and committees can't think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no centers, no souls, if you like. Millions and millions of persons may hold the same thought, or conviction or suspicion, but each and every person of those millions must hold it all alone. And that it truly is the same thought in all of them, the very same thought, each must guess of all the others, for into each other's minds we can not get. All I can ever know of what you think is your testimony, which may well be as inexpert or self-interested as mine often is. Every thinker is unique, since every person is unique.

From a certain point of view, thinking is preposterous behavior, and astonishing. If its appearance among us is truly the result of some evolutionary "save-the-species" development, it is clearly one of Nature's great mistakes, for it, and it alone, has made of us the only species not only able to destroy itself, but very likely to destroy itself. Of course, I might have that wrong if it is really in Nature's great plan to save all the other species by planting in the most dangerous one a lethal seed, but that requires in Nature a low cunning which seems beneath her. In any case, however, it is perfectly clear that other creatures do very well indeed without thinking, without seeking the meaning of their deeds, without making and testing propositions, and without reading or writing. All such acts, and countless related ones, from the point of view of all the rest of the universe that we know of, must be accounted nothing but "unnatural."

In thinking about thinking, and in thinking about anything, for that matter, it is always useful to think about something else instead. Give some thought to the playing of the violin. Imagine that some great team of skilled researchers has given itself to, and at last accomplished, a study of violin-playing, a detailed and comprehensive description of absolutely everything that is happening in a human being who is playing the violin. Their work has been tremendous, and their findings occupy a whole shelf, maybe a whole wing, for their considerations begin at least at the submolecular level of neural signals, and reach, at the far end of some unimaginably long line, all those things that we vaguely point to when we talk about the imagination and understanding of the artist. And all such things the researchers have weighed and measure and counted.

Imagine now the immensely distant future, when we have ceased on the Earth, and when there are no singers, no songs, and no violin-playing. Visitors from another world arrive, and find some few remnants, among them, the great exhaustive study of violin-playing, complete with pictures and charts and tables of figures, to say nothing of ear-witness accounts of the feat itself. Will they not be astonished and reach pretty much the same conclusion that even you and I would reach should we be able to read such a study? Will they not say: This is too much. Any fool can see that the playing of the violin is simply impossible.

When such a task is seen in all of its details, it takes on the look not only of the impossible, but even of the unnatural. To one who considers all of the great and harmonious workings of Nature, the deep and continual principles that inform them, all that might be called not only Order but even The Order, nothing could seem more contrary and unlikely than that a person should bring forth ravishing beauty from a dinky wooden box.

But in fact, as anyone can see, that is only one of countless unlikely things that persons do. And thinking is another such. If the great study of violin-playing would fill a whole wing, the great study of thinking would need a few libraries all to itself. But it can be done. And--an even more startling fact--it can be done by a person who can also play the violin.

Playing the violin or writing a poem are special ways of paying attention. They are acts at once small and great. Although only one person can commit them, they require orderly marshallings of countless and diverse forces, something like the great landing of armies in Normandy, but incalculably bigger and more complicated. And such a comparison leads to another important clue in thinking about thinking. Playing the violin, and thinking, and landing in Normandy are indubitably human accomplishments, for better or worse, in either case. But they are accomplishments very different in nature, for while human beings, and only human beings, can achieve them all, only an individual person can achieve the playing and the thinking, both of which are the more difficult, and complicated, and unlikely. The great study of the invasion can in fact be written, and even read. It was. But the great study of violin-playing will never be done.

It is an obvious but simple distinction--though rarely made--that there are some things that we can do because we are humanity, and some things that we can do because we are persons, and that there is some radical and absolute difference between the two classes of things. They do not overlap. A person can no more invade Normandy than an army can play the violin. Furthermore, while the deeds that pertain to humanity are frequently very large and very visible, so that we can all see just how stupendous they are, and the deeds that pertain to persons seem very small and are often utterly invisible; it takes only a little redirection to conclude that the latter are far greater accomplishments than the former, beggaring description and final analysis, and, at last, unlikely.

But the deeds of humanity are given, in our minds, a superiority over the deeds of persons. By contrast with the waging of war, the playing of the violin seems immensely less important, a trifle, in fact. It is an interesting opinion, for its validity depends entirely on what meaning we are to take from the word "important." It isn't true, of course, that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and I don't know what meaning I would take from the fact if he had, but if Oistrakh had fiddled through the siege of Leningrad, as Dame Myra played Mozart through the Blitz, I would see a person doing one sort of thing and humanity doing another sort of thing, and I would wonder about what I might learn to mean by the word important.

About this I don't have to wonder: Dame Myra, or Oistrakh, or perhaps even Nero, for all I know, could also have wondered about what they might mean by the word important, but humanity could not. Humanity does not wonder. Only a person can wonder. And the list is very long of verbs that can be added to the words "Only a person... ." If you will make yourself such a list of verbs, and then another of the verbs that go with "Only humanity can..." you will discover a lot of things to wonder about, and one of the more important ones will be the meaning that you might learn to assign to the word important.

While it may well be that few persons ever happen to notice and consider the strange and unique powers that they have as persons, and not as humanity, including the power to decide what important should mean, I suspect that we all have some inkling of that strange state of affairs. That is why we are warned in schools--well, maybe in some schools--against what is generally called "generalization." Generalizations often name many minds and then go on to speak as though they were a mind. Right from the start, they speak of what is not, for the Italians can not believe one thing and the Belgians another. Only a person can believe or think--or feel, for that matter. And when we undertake to talk about what is not, we are in danger of falling into nonsense and talking rubbish.

But the warning against generalization is ordinarily provided not for intellectual reasons but for social reasons. It is certainly true that vague generalization provides an easy way to insult lots of people all at once without having to prove anything, but it also provides an easy way to praise or flatter lots of people all at once without having to prove anything. If I say that Jews are stingy, I will be accused first of some social depravity, and only thereafter, and rarely, too, of intellectual disorder. Furthermore, my intellectual disorder, speaking as though Jews were an agent who could be stingy, will be at least partially excused should I back off a bit and say, to what will surely be general assent, Well, some Jews are stingy. Who can deny it? Some Eskimos are also stingy. I will not be required to specify a percentage.

Having corrected myself socially, I will not be required to correct myself intellectually. And I will suffer no correction at all if I say that Jews are diligent and productive. Now, I am OK, and listeners will nod approvingly. Nor will I be required to say, even approximately, how many Jews are diligent and productive, or which ones.

In one of the worlds in which I live, the World of We All, the first assertion is a Bad Thing, and the second a Good Thing. But in another world in which I also live, the world where the mind does its work, the two statements are perfectly equal in value, and their value is zero. They are worthless statements. It is not sufficient to condemn them as generalizations, for that condemnation is really an exoneration as well. The most we require of a generalization is that it be toned down. Come on, now, they can't all be stingy. And when we declaw our generalizations, we suppose that we have come out of the Wrong and into the Right. But we have only come out of one worthlessness and into another.

There are several ways by which to detect a worthless statement. One of them is making it into its opposite, and considering the statement and its supposed negation side by side. The opposite of a worthless statement is always worthless. If we test the proposition that fat men are jolly by asserting also that fat men are morose, we do not notice that light has been shed on the ordinarily expectable disposition of fat men. Neither proposition suggests any possibility of verification or of falsification. We can not ask, If the first were true, what else would be true? We can not look for evidence for the support of the one or the other, because we can not find, in the world, the real subject of either sentence, as we could if the subject were something like a cannonball dropped from a leaning tower, or a certain fat man well known to us. We can not find "fat men." At what weight will we set our definition? Will we omit some men who fall short by three ounces? Will we include those who were three ounces too skinny in the morning but somehow manage to satisfy us as fat after lunch? And what will we do about jolly, and morose? Or stingy and productive, for that matter? Where will we set their limits? How closely will we be able to measure them?

Worthless statements can thus be understood as propositions that we simply can not use for thinking. They just don't work. It is not because they are mysteries or concepts that transcend thought, like the nature and substance of the Holy Ghost, or circularity in the absence of circles, but because they do not rise to the level of thought, in which we find that we need to make meaningful statements about meaningful statements.

Worthless statements are a kind of social grace, except, of course, when they are a social disgrace. They have, in the work of the mind, the same value as, Well, it's good to see you. How have you been? But, at their worst, which is where they usually roost, they are dangerous deceptions of the mind. They leave us, if we are not attentive, with the vague impression that we know something, when we don't, thus providing us with the chance of going on to suppose that we know something else as a consequence of something that we don't know. No good is likely to come of that, except by the happiest accident, and for harm to come of it requires no accident at all. This is especially true in that part of life which is social, for it is exactly there, where great masses of people are made into the subjects of propositions, that the worthless statement most flourishes, with predictable consequences.

I have been reading, over and over for a few years now, a piece I tore out of a newspaper. It is a quotation from a book, and it was printed alongside a review of the book, as an example of good work. The reviewer did not like the book. The author seems to be a decent and energetic woman who gave up a successful career as a physician to devote herself to what is perhaps an even higher calling. She is dismayed, as I am too, by the prospect, perhaps the likelihood, of an unimaginably destructive nuclear war. She now devotes her life to arousing others to the danger of the threat, and the book in question is part of her work to that end.

I am on her side. I suspect that I would like her. She is, in principle, saying a very fine thing: Come, let us reason together. This represents exactly that sort of education I think is the only true one, an education in Reason--that work of the mind by which we can, if it can be known, know the Good. And know the evil too, and see it for what it is, and turn away from it. If we can not save ourselves from nuclear destruction by the work of the mind, then our future will be just a matter of luck, and where war is concerned, we seem little likely to be lucky. But if it is the work of the mind that will save us, then the work of the mind badly done will destroy us, unless, again, we are lucky. Read now what she says and consider whether the mind's work in this case be done well or ill:

It is true that we have the secret of atomic energy locked in our brains forever. But this does not mean that we can't alter our behavior. Once we practiced slavery, cannibalism, and dueling; as we became more civilized, we learned that these forms of behavior were antithetical to society, so we stopped. Similarly, we can easily stop making nuclear weapons, and we can also stop fighting and killing each other.

In trying to keep your mind clear, it is always a good idea to be on the lookout for the pronoun "we." If "fat men" make up a category too big and shapeless for us to say anything accurate about, we is clearly much larger, and, unfortunately, not at all shapeless. Except where some defined context limits it to exactly these or those of us, we has to be all of us. Every one. And people who make moral propositions have a way of talking about we, and making thus the same kind of worthless statement that I can make by talking about fat men.

And, because we is everybody, it is nobody. It is simply not a person, not a center of consciousness that can think and feel and do, and is therefore capable of no one of those acts named by the verbs that go with the statement "Only a person can..."

I am a bona fide member of we. So are you. About you I can not speak, but for myself I can say, and not at all to my shame, that I have never given up slavery. I have never even dreamed of it. If you are depending, for the sake of the survival of our species, on the fact that I have learned to alter my behavior and have thus forsworn slavery, then you are leaning on a weak reed, and the future of our species is not bright. Nor do I suspect for a minute that I am just one of the die-hards, still holding fast to the practice of slavery when almost everyone else has learned better. I rather suspect that, among we, there are actually billions like me, who have never given up slavery, having had, like me, no reason to do so, having never, just like me, practiced it in the first place. I suspect, furthermore, and the history of an especially bloody war leads me to that suspicion, that many who did give up slavery, did it not out of some moral reawakening, but under duress--that is to say, not as a result of what a person can do, but as a result of what humanity can do. Their giving up was an outer event, and not an inner act. And I have to wonder about the author of that passage. Did she have some inner reason to give up slavery? And did she proceed, by a conscious and supremely important act of the will, to give it up?

If we now look around at all of our species, and flatter ourselves as persons who have learned at least enough goodness to grant our slaves their freedom, we say what is not so. Somewhere in North Africa or the deep jungles of Borneo, it may be possible to find a chieftain or two who has in fact done exactly that, but I think it unlikely that we can depend on them to save us from war.

I will have to say the same about dueling and cannibalism. I have never given them up. In those respects, I am not the better person implied in that we. And there is very probably hardly anyone who is. Where will we find all of those people who, having learned better how to order society and become better persons, will now be the better persons who stop fighting and killing each other?

Any proposition has two sides. It always says, in its simplest form, that A is B. The A of those propositions simply doesn't exist. There surely have been people who did once give up those wicked practices, but they are gone from us. Could they hear us boasting that we made those decisions, they might be a bit put out. Perlman might do little more than raise an eyebrow if I were to claim that we had learned to play the violin, but the heroes of Marathon might actually turn nasty if I were to boast that we found on that little beach the strength and determination to turn back the stronger force of tyranny. The B's of those propositions, however, do indeed exist. And, if we can understand them not just by their titles but by their principles, it may become clear that practically no one has ever given them up.

Here is another way in which our language can trick us into imagining that we are thinking. The names of things are not the things, and we have many names that point to no things at all, but to ideas. What is slavery? In one sense, it is easily identified. Where one person is allowed to have, by law, possession of another person, ownership, with all the rights that traditionally go with ownership, that is slavery. In our own nation, that law was changed, but not by those who owned the slaves. As to whether those who made the change sought the moral betterment of those who resisted it, or something else, there is at least room for speculation.

But what is the root of slavery? What is it in principle, rather than in detail? How did such a practice come to be established by humanity, and, apparently, universally established at that? Here, there is room for both speculation and introspection. Which of us can say that he has never used another person as though that person were an object? Which of us has resisted every impulse to control or govern another? Which of us has never deemed himself better and more valuable than another? Which of us has never sought to put some fence around the mind of another? Is there one of us who has not thought what even Plato thought, that there are certain people who are--well, just inferior, by nature, just not capable of living under their own direction, and that we are actually doing them a favor by directing their lives for them, in some way or another?

I will plead guilty to all of those charges, and I would be very eager to meet a person who is innocent of them all, for then I might best study Goodness. But, thinking not in terms of laws and social conventions, which are always changing, and for reasons that have nothing to do with Goodness, but only with Necessity, I will have to admit again, but for a very different reason, that I have not given up slavery, for indeed, I still practice it.

I can be very specific about that. I can, and do, so overpower the minds of my students, those, at least, who want to pay attention, and who have little defense, that they come to believe what I seem to believe, to judge as I judge. When that happens, I have to start contradicting myself, and pointing to the uncertainties of my own reasoning, until they too come around to the new course, and the process begins again. Is the root of slavery not in them as well as in me? Who of us has not sought to be led? Which of us has not, from time to time, abandoned the difficult task of understanding for ourselves, of governing ourselves, even of supporting ourselves? Which of us has not wanted a master, so that we might be as well taken care of as a puppy, fed and watered and cleaned up after? Why is it that my students, when they come to be entirely of my mind, think that that is what they are supposed to do? What taught them that, if not some cultivation and even some encouragement in them of whatever it is in us all that fears the perils of freedom? And the cultivators and encouragers, or even the permitters--have they given up slavery?

Nor have I given up dueling. I still duel. I still seek to avenge my "honor." I still incline to answer fire with fire, and injustice, whatever I mean by that, with justice, whatever I mean by that. That I do not go out at dawn with pistols is not enough to save me from the name of duelist.

On cannibalism, I will make a small concession. While I never did give it up, I have also never knowingly practiced it. It is, in any case, not at all the same sort of "crime" or "depravity" as slavery or dueling, or even as fighting and killing, not rooted in what may well be some permanent and universal facts about human beings. We do know that it was usually practiced only as a religious ritual, and we also know that our supposed innate abhorrence of cannibalism disappears quite readily under the clear and imminent threat of starvation, as survivors of airplane crashes in the high mountains will testify. But cannibalism, too, might well have been "given up" by some person or persons who did indeed come into some new moral understanding. Where are they now? What role will they have to play in the moral reawakening by which we will all escape the coming storm?

If you were to ask the next three persons you meet in the street to give a few reasons for the fact that so many people seem unable to think coherently, consistently, and logically, you would hear some obvious answers. Some of those answers would refer to what is called "intelligence." Well, some people are just smarter than others, and thus naturally capable of more and better thought. You would hear answers about something called "judgment," and very likely accompanied by the complaint that the schools just don't teach judgment anymore, as though they always had, of course, in the good old days when everyone was consistently able to think coherently. Your most sophisticated informant might well point to the notorious difficulty of strict and formal logic, which the schools also don't teach anymore. After all, are there not dozens and dozens of those syllogisms, each with a name of its own, and each indispensable to clear and correct thought? Just think of all those famous fallacies, and how easily the untrained mind will stumble into them. And then, of course, there is ignorance, in this context to be strictly construed not as dullness of mind, but as the simple absence of information, and thus a widespread impediment to clear thinking even in the smartest. And just think how much information there is! Who could have it all, or even any considerable share of it?

There is some usefulness in all of those understandings, but they seem to me quite unable to explain the thinking we have been considering here. The author of those thoughts on slavery remains, whether she practices or not, a skillful physician. She must indeed be what we call "smart," and diligent as well. Her profession requires logical thought, and lots of it, and the drawing of correct inferences from the evidence of knowable facts, a process which must be granted the rank of judgment. I would put the care of my body under her supervision with no misgivings at all, knowing that where she had knowledge she would act effectively, and that where she had not enough knowledge, she would know that she had not enough knowledge, and send me to someone who did.

Nor would I say, of the thoughts we have been thinking about, that she has wandered "out of her field." There are some people who do put themselves forth as experts in the mysteries of the human heart and soul--all sorts, from psychiatrists and economists to preachers and politicians--but those mysteries are, and in fact should be, everybody's field. Who are you, who am I, who is anybody, to be disqualified as to that inquiry? If there is any special expertise to be had in contemplating human mysteries and speaking what truth can be had about them, it might be in our poets and dramatists and novelists, or even in our myths and music, but who surely knows which? No, we are not dealing here with someone who is just out of her depth in a highly technical subject. The impediments to her clear thinking are not to be found in any of the answers given above. They come from pains in her belly.

The Greeks supposed that the belly was the nursery and dwelling place of the appetites and desires, just as they supposed that the head was the home of thought, and the chest the place of right feelings, a reasonable mediation between the two. Their knowledge of anatomy would not have gotten them through our medical schools, but their metaphor provides powers of the mind that are not instilled in our medical schools, or any other. That metaphor has this great virtue, that it gives us the beginning of a way to distinguish internal and invisible events from one another by family, as it were. We can be almost as clear in our minds about the different denizens of the belly, the chest, and the head, as we can about animals, vegetables, and minerals.

(I am thinking just now, as many readers may know, about a long essay by C. S. Lewis, "Men Without Chests." It is about what seems to Lewis a general and growing inability either to dethrone or harmonize technical information or prowess and gut feelings. It is good to read. Once a year.)

Consider again that, even in the company of those we call "intellectuals," I would suffer rebuke or disapproval in saying that Jews are stingy, and escape both in saying that Jews are diligent and productive. As thinking, both statements are equal. Both worthless. If I can get away with the second, even in lofty mental company, it is because what I say probably makes every belly in the room purr with satisfaction, while the first makes them all growl with unease.

Of course, it may be a bit more complicated than that. Some belly may be in spasm, truly pleased to hear Jews called stingy, but fearful lest its owner be revealed as bigoted. That owner will very likely permit his belly its secret pleasure and send his head forth to do a little socially acceptable lying. I will still get the rebuke and disapproval. To escape it, and thus get away with an utterly worthless proposition, all I have to do is make the bellies purr. Lots of people know that secret, and live very well by it indeed.

The passage cited earlier will make many bellies purr. There are probably very few people who are looking forward to nuclear war, and thus anxious about all the rest of us who are hoping to find some way to prevent it. Who but a maniac out of an old-fashioned science-fiction novel would contemplate with glee the destruction of all life, or even of lots of it? Who would not lament the destruction of the butterflies, which is actually, and just a little bit unfortunately, one of the hideous possibilities used by the author in her "argument"?

But if it is by reasoning together that we may escape nuclear war, then her thinking may kill us all. In that marvelously pliable land of we all, anybody can get away with anything. Her opponents, and there must be some, for otherwise there could be no threat, can write books claiming that we have learned, through bitter lessons, that force succumbs only to force, and that we have thus given up, or certainly should give up, our childish dreams of perpetual peace. Just as cogently as she, which is to say, not at all, but with just as much hope of making bellies purr, others can say that we have learned that the price of freedom is supreme sacrifice, and thus given up the belief, which might also be called "antithetical to civilization," that we can enjoy its fruits without paying its costs.

There is lots of talk these days about "teaching children to think," a presumed function of the schools, which they are either executing well or ill, depending on which expert speaks. Of what can that teaching of thinking consist, I wonder. What exercises can be done? Are the answers in the back of the book, or only in the teachers' manual? What would I do, if I had to teach children to think?

The first thing I would do, I hope, would be to get out of the land of we all, and recognize that "children" do not constitute an entity capable of thought. So I would set out to discover how to teach a person to think. And, since the task seems formidable, I would prefer, for my first try at such work, to pick the person myself, one who shows some promise. And I would pick, of course, a person who says that we have given up slavery and dueling and cannibalism.

And where would I begin, with a person who is already, as we understand the term, not only "educated," but "highly educated"? With the belly, of course, which in this case has overpowered the head. The greatest failures of thinking do not come from any incapacities of the mind, nor are they prevented by great skills of the mind. They come from the interference emitted by the feelings, which can be both detected and disarmed by the one great power of thought that is the mother of all others, and that is self-knowledge, the beginning of all thoughtfulness.

Descartes' Take on Diversity

Descartes' Take on Diversity

A good friend of mine is currently traveling in East Asia. He made the following observation to me in an email:

As a generality, travelers are the nicest and friendliest people you come across. But once you talk to them, you see that niceness express itself in a standard of no judgement or pursuit of objective truth. In the traveler's culture, everyone's views are equally valid and interesting. Questioning it is rude. No one is interested in pursuing the truth. 

This reminded me of some thoughts I had on the topic of diversity, which - apparently - I had never expressed in a blog post. 

"Diversity" has become an increasingly popular value in the post-modern age. This has its pros and cons. The major benefit that a society which values diversity lends itself to the mentality of, "Eizehu chacham? ha'lomed mi'kol adam - Who is wise? He who learns from everyone" (Avos 4:1). More exposure to diverse ideas and values yields more opportunities for learning new ideas. 

However, Western society's embrace of diversity has also lent strength to the trends of pluralism, subjectivism, moral equivalency, and the like. There are many people who feel that tolerating all views necessitates accepting all views as equally valid. Knowing the regular readers of this blog, I'm sure I don't think I have to elaborate on the falsity of that epistemological stance. Suffice it to say, this is an ugly side effect.

Years ago I started reading Descartes' Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Science. I came across a short excerpt which put a different spin on the value of diversity. Descartes writes about the value of travel, saying:

It is useful to know something of the manners of different nations, that we may be enabled to form a more correct judgment regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything contrary to our customs is ridiculous and irrational, a conclusion usually come to by those whose experience has been limited to their own country.

In other words, we tend to have a supreme confidence in the correctness of our own customs and cultural mores. By default, we view the ways of others as "ridiculous and irrational." Descartes is pointing out that by exposing ourselves to different people from different cultures, we will come to realize that they have exactly the same degree of confidence in the correctness of their lifestyle as we do in ours. This, in turn, will bring us to the realization that this entire feeling of correctness is totally subjective, and provides absolutely no indication about objective truth.

Now, a subjectivist would use this as a jumping-off point to say, "See? We're ALL deluding ourselves! Nobody really knows what's going on!" But Descartes took the opposite approach, saying that this realization of our own self-delusion will "[enable us] to form a more correct judgment regarding our own [way of life]." The first step in clearing away the sanctimonious haze that surrounds us to become aware of it, and a good way to become aware of it is to recognize it in others.

To sum up the main point: not only can diversity help us to learn from others who are right, but it can also help us to appreciate just how many people think they're right about their derech in life, but are actually wrong; hopefully, this will help us to spot this same way of thinking in ourselves, and better enable us to correct our mistaken ways of thinking.

Do Babies Have Souls? (Ibn Ezra)

I must preface this post with a disclaimer: I don't understand what a "soul" is. Years ago I used to think I understood the Torah's view on the concept of "soul," but the more I learned, the more I realized the breadth and depth of the topic, and of my own ignorance and metaphysical naiveté. 

Here is what I do know:

1. The word "soul" is used equivocally. It can mean different things in different contexts. Although there are different words for "soul" (e.g. nefesh, ruach, neshamah), even these terms aren't necessarily consistent in their usage, and each must be interpreted based on its context. 
   
   
2. The human soul has something to do with the tzelem Elokim, which has something to do with the human intellect, but I am at a loss to explain how these three things are related.
   
   
3. There is also some relationship between the human soul and free will, and I find free will to be an even more daunting topic than the soul.
   
   
4. There is a lot of machlokes on this topic among the meforshim, and it is very difficult to discern which of the meforshim are working with the same premises and which of them are working with a completely different set of premises.

And that's about it. Beyond these four points, I feel that I am still "groping in darkness and not in light ... staggering like a drunkard" (cf. Iyov 12:24-25) on this topic. 

Thus, I have decided to take the same approach with this subject as I did with Sefer Mishlei: rather than trying to form grand theories and a complete understanding of the topic, I will instead approach the topic step by step, one idea at a time. If I (am zocheh to) do this for a number of decades, perhaps a clearer picture will begin to emerge. 

Having said all of that, I would like to present one idea about the soul from the Ibn Ezra. Please regard this as merely a clue in our investigation of the vast mystery story of the soul.

Do Babies Have Souls? (Ibn Ezra)

That's the question. How would you answer it on a multiple choice quiz with these choices?

          (A) yes
          (B) no
          (C) maybe
          (D) potentially

Let's cut right to the chase. According to the Ibn Ezra, the answer is (D) potentially. Or, to be more precise, babies have potential souls - not actual souls.

The Ibn Ezra states his view in his commentary on Tehilim 8:3. Here is the perek in its entirety:

(1) For the conductor, on the gittis, a psalm by David. (2) Hashem, our Master, how mighty is Your Name throughout the earth, [You] Who places Your majesty on the heavens. (3) Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings You have established strength, because of Your enemies, to silence foe and avenger. (4) When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars that You have set in place, [I think,] (5) "What is frail man that You should remember him, and the son of mortal man that You should be mindful of him?" (6) Yet, You have made him but slightly less than the angels, and crowned him with glory and splendor. (7) You give him dominion over Your handiwork, You placed everything under his feet: (8) sheep and cattle, all of them, even the beasts of the field; (9) the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea; for [man] even traverses the lanes of the sea. (10) Hashem, our Master, how mighty is Your Name throughout the earth!

The question on our pasuk is: How is Hashem's strength established through "the mouths of babes and sucklings"? What does this even mean? 

Ibn Ezra begins by quoting the explanation of R' Moshe ha'Darshan, who learns that the pasuk is referring to the literal mouths of the babies, through which they obtain nourishment:

R' Moshe says that out of the mouth of babes means that the babes themselves will praise You even though they cannot speak, for You sustain them. You make them fruitful and You multiply and increase their body’s height and width.

Rabbi H. Norman Strickman, in his footnotes on the Ibn Ezra's commentary, understands R' Moshe ha'Darshan as follows: "The way children grow bears witness to the existence of a Creator. Thus the babes, as it were, declare that there is a God." 

However, the Ibn Ezra disagrees with this approach, and states his own view:

However, in my opinion Scripture reads, “out of the mouth of babes” because man is the most glorious being created in this world. “Out of the mouth of babes” refers to the time that a child first begins to speak. Its meaning is that the power of the rational soul first appears in the body when the child begins to speak. The rational soul develops to the point where it can learn of the power of its Creator by logical thinking. Indeed the soul grows in strength day by day. This is the meaning of, “has Thou founded strength.”

A baby is born with only the potential for rational thinking, which is what the Ibn Ezra means when he speaks of a "soul." This potential is first actualized when the child begins to speak, and continues to develop from that point forward. In this manner, the child builds and cultivates his own soul, which ultimately brings him to recognize his Creator.

The Ibn Ezra's interpretation is in line with Targum Onkelos's translation of the statement, "[God] blew into [man's] nostrils the breath of life, and man became a nefesh chayah (living soul)" (Bereishis 2:7) as "and man became a ruach memalela (speaking spirit)." The human soul and the ability to speak are inextricably linked, and as one develops, so does the other.

And that, my friends, is all I've got for today. Just one piece of the puzzle of the soul. I don't know where this idea fits into the grand scheme of things. I don't know what bearing it has on such topics as the immortality of the soul, the incorporeality of the soul, Olam ha'Ba (the World to Come), reward and punishment, the relationship between mind and body, etc. etc. etc. Those questions must be left for another time.

This morning I came across a passage in the Sefer ha'Chinuch that made me smile. After expressing great apprehension at the prospect of writing about the mitzvah of Parah Adumah (Red Heifer), the Sefer ha'Chinuch offers a few speculations. Immediately thereafter, he apologizes for his boldness, and downplays what he just wrote, saying:

This is not a clarification to provide any comprehension whatsoever of the matter. It is only the love of holiness and the eagerness to achieve a knowledge of the hidden that moves the quill to write.

That sentiment resonated with me while writing this post. Remember, friends: this blog is nothing more and nothing less than a venue for me to think out loud, and to discuss ideas with others who are interested. If you are looking for certainty, expertise, and "authoritative knowledge," then I would be happy to refer you to other resources.