http://www.jewishideas.org/content/faith-reason-not-blind-faith
by Rabbi Marc D. Guardian angel
This week's Torah part, Metsora, begins with a verse that is computerized everyday era in the Torah: "And God strut to Moses, saying." The verse merely may possibly cart said: And God strut to Moses. Why does it add the word "saying" (leimor)?
Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn, an connected rabbinic esteem of the adolescent 20th century, ready a fascinating interpretation. The Torah additional the word "saying" to mark that God did not seek the words of Torah to be pure in an downright fixed form, but if possible to be subject to bring up and explanation. The word "leimor" is, in a cut, an bid to us to dignitary in the behold of the script. Very, the Talmud summary that Moses had asked God for a clearcut halakha, but God responded by divulging him that halakha is to be untiring by the majority reflection of the sages in the Stanch Square, and that exhibit are 49 ways to impart whatever thing unmodified and 49 ways to impart that awfully thing to be contaminated (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:2, 22A). Moderately of annoying blind tameness, God demanded that the sages--and all students of Torah--use their protected faculties to try to uncover truth. (For finer on Rabbi Hirschensohn, see Dr. David Zohar's individual on our website.
A sizeable promoter of reason-based chance was Moses Maimonides. In his Point in the right direction for the Unmitigated, he ready explanations of the Torah's commandments based on the deduction that God had a mind for kindly us these commandments. The mitzvoth are not arbitrary pithy to dragoon us here assent, but are expressions of Heavenly wisdom. Our keep fit is to use our look out faculties to try to understand the mitzvoth as best as we can. Maimonides wrote: "Stage is a group of human beings who chew over it a grievous thing that causes necessitate be pure for any law; what would divert them peak is that the understanding would not find a meaning for the commandments and prohibitions." (Point in the right direction 3:31) He was disgruntled with individuals who tribulation that the Torah's experience necessitate be accepted blindly and carelessly. This liking of human being leads mercilessly to a emerge view of religion, even to superstition. A human being that is qualified to select information not including analyzing and reasoned it, is a human being that can be prearranged by demagogues and shamans.
The greatly of tyranny and dictatorship in religion is a very harsh promotion.
Some years ago, my son Ronda was studying in a yeshiva for girls in Israel. One of her teachers complete a speech, and Ronda asked for an explanation. The college replied: this is what our sages skilled. Ronda asked: but what was their reasoning? The college replied: if our sages held whatever thing, it must be accepted as true. We don't aspiration to anger about explanations. This comeback troubled Ronda, and helped her to position to approval that school. A college who press-gang blind tameness is not the progress to of college she wanted--nor that character necessitate seek. Students cart a healthy and board to ask for reasons; and teachers cart an necessity to help their students bud their intellects, not overpower questions and free interrogate.
A associate of my meeting clearly called me a long time ago attending his father's burial in Israel. He was told by the assets ethos exhibit that he necessitate pay them a fee so that they would give a figure of kaddish each day in overtone of his advantage. The representative of the assets ethos told my congregant that having the kaddish held each day would get his advantage here fantasy. Deficient the newspaper kaddish, the father's self was in harass.
Without doubt it is right for a child to give a figure of kaddish in overtone of a frozen parent. And certainly it is right to approve of decorate in overtone of a parent. Yet, the assets ethos representative was saying finer than this: he was saying that the relating of kaddish was a sine qua non of accomplishment here heaven! If he were asked how he knows this to be true, he would be weak to approve of any protected explanation. He would say: that's what our holy teachers cart skilled, and that is what we select as true.
The kaddish became a "mourner's prayer" only in the Insinuate Ages. Near that, all the devoted men and women who died did not cart kaddish recited on top of them on a newspaper underlying. Does that mean they did not "get here fantasy"? Motionless a long time ago the kaddish became a "mourner's prayer", does doorway here fantasy really depend moderately on kaddish personality recited each day for one's soul? How can this be known with any certainty? Having the status of progress to of God would not let a immediately personage here fantasy equitable being someone did not say kaddish for his/her soul?
The impediment almost isn't with the thinking and earn of saying kaddish: the impediment is with the theological agreed that is ready not including explanation and not including mild argumentation or past performance. So the assets ethos certain thinks it is espousing a righteous belief and practice, it is enactment so in a key in akin to magic and superstition i.e. if a bound to happen document is recited, for that reason the self courage graph fantasy.
Judaism is a storage area of sizeable spiritual and look out possessions. We must use our wits and our look out concentration in order to find obese meaning in Jewish cloth and traditions. The Torah invites us to thinkand to understand to the best of our ability; it does not bear down on hasty, blind tameness. And God strut to Moses "saying"--"saying" is an bid to each of us to join the argument, to share our views, to rummage truth.
