Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
We are joined by Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin.
Ravis Slifkin is the director of the Biblical Museum of Natural
History in Beit Shemesh, Israel. Born in Manchester, England, he
spent many years of study at yeshivot in Israel.
He then taught Talmud and Jewish philosophy at Orsamayor
institutions, where he received Rabbinic ordination.
Ravis Slifkin also has an MA in Jewish Studies from the Lander
Institute in Jerusalem, where he graduated summa cum laude, and
he is currently pursuing a PhD in Jewish history at Bar Ilan
University, writing a dissertation on rabbinic
encounters with zoology in the 19th century.
The rabbi also taught extensively on Judaism, science
and zoology at Yeshivat Levhatora, in Ramat Pehchemesh,
and at numerous synagogues worldwide.
He is also on many educational programs at zoos and Natural
History museums, as well as serving as Scholar in residence
on African Safaris Avis Slifkin has written numerous books on
the topic of Judaism and the natural sciences, and he has
also written extensively for the Dafyomi Advancement Forum, as
well As for many newspapers, websites and journals.
He also maintains a popular blog, rationalistjudaism.com.
Avis Slifkin lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh with his wife and five
children. Without further ado, Rabbis
Slifkin. Thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. It's an honor and pleasure to
have Rabbi Dr. Nathan Slifkin on the podcast.
It's a long time coming. We are big fans.
And before we begin on the topic, which is your book,
Rationalism versus Mysticism, we want the audience who maybe
don't know you to know a little bit about you.
If you could tell us about yourself a little bit.
Sure. Firstly, it's a pleasure to be
on the show. There's basically 2 aspects to
my work. Some people know me better for
one, some people for the other. By day.
I am the director of the Biblical Museum of Natural
History near Bet Shemesh Museum, all about the animal world of
the Torah, featuring a combination of live and
taxidermy exhibits. And I've also written some books
on that topic, such as The Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal
Kingdom. But by Night, I've also known as
the in some circles as a controversial figure for my
writings about conflicts between terror and science leading to
rationalism versus mysticism. And my and my blog,
rationalistjudaism.com. Fascinating.
And the your book, The Challenge of Creation, your other book to
me which is very eye opening and remarkable that I feel like that
doesn't get the attention deserves because it's, you know,
it's an old book by now. But maybe you could also tell us
about your experience with that, you know, coming out with a book
on evolution, right, That how that affected you and how that
you know what that experience was like?
Right. So I was always fascinated by
the natural world, you know, especially the animal Kingdom.
So when I started the Yeshiva many, many years ago, so I was
interested in in topics that came up relating to that.
So I was interested in dinosaurs and how we reconcile that.
I was interested in the zoological phenomenon mentioned
in the Gemara and things that don't seem to be scientifically
true and what to how to make sense of those.
And gradually I was fortunate enough to meet some of the
people of Arya Carmel and others who guided me in approach and
other approaches which I found very helpful and which I wanted
to share with us. So I wrote some books on these
topics which as you know, were were considered to be very
slightly controversial or absolutely heretical by two or
three or three dozen or so leading rabbinical authorities
in the FOR 80 world. So that led to the very
prominent and controversial ban on my books in 2000 and four
2005, where, you know, three dozen of any authorities
attested that my books are heretical.
And actually I prefer to. I like to refer to the ban that
is controversial rather than my books, because the truth is, my
books has already been out for a few years by that point without
any fuss. But when they were banned, now
that was controversial. That's when a lot of people got
very upset. Right.
And you know I have read that book and many other books and
like you say there's your your style has always been a style of
sticking to the mafortium, sticking to you know Rishonim,
sticking to you know what what what our great leaders and
rabbis of the past have always, you know have always put out and
to and for them to ban the book. In my eyes after reading the
books there's almost not even that much of your opinion in any
of them. It's really just and this is
actually we're going to it's kind of a segue into the book
itself that we want to talk about today.
The book that we're, we're going to talk about today, rationalism
versus mysticism, is that I believe that's your latest book.
Correct. Yeah.
And that's a book that really emerges.
I mean, the research for that book emerges out of me trying to
understand the ban in my books. You know, it's when, when the
ban happened, it was very hard to understand.
You know, how could it be For the ideas, which for myself, for
my own rubber name, for the people, you know, my community,
The things about books were A true and B not even especially
controversial now radical. And yet there's always some
ideas were to with whole other group of people, you know, so
false and a nonsense and absolutely heretical.
You know, how can there be such a gulf?
So a lot of the work I did for my, for my masters and for my
doctorate was trying to to understand that.
And that's when I really understood that really, you
know, beneath the issues of Torah and science, it was a
difference in the whole underlying worldview between the
rationalist and the mystical perspective.
And once I discovered that, I'll be able to see so many other
applications of that difference. And that's how this book
emerged. That is so fascinating.
Awesome. OK, so let's get right into it,
and let's start with a very fascinating chapter.
The chapter of the Sages versus science.
The Sun's Path at Night, which is a lengthy chapter, so we
don't expect you to, you know, go through all of it.
But if you can give us a synopsis of that.
Chapter, Right. So that was an interesting topic
in that if there was one big mistake I made in the whole
controversy of the over my books, it was not realizing how
crucial this one topic was to it and and kind of forcing people
to address it. Because with the with the, with
my position that I quoted in the books that as great as Khazal,
the sages were in their knowledge of Torah.
But when it comes to science, they just, you know, knew
whatever other people knew back then which was sometimes
mistaken. So I kind of presented that as,
you know, the view of just a few small number of authorities who
said that, you know, explicitly Rambam, Rambam, Assad of some
sort of fall Hirsch, you know, and I presented it as being a
legitimate minority view, whereas my opponent slammed it
as being an illegitimate minority view.
And it was either they claimed that these authorities never
said any such thing or they said it was, you know, something so
aberrant that it's fallen, you know, beyond the the purview of
what's acceptable. And juries thought today because
it's just one of these weird aberrant views.
But with the sun's path at night.
What I discovered is that how normative this view is and the
discussion really centres around us.
Discussion in the Gemara about where does the sun go at night?
And the Gemara presents a dispute between the sages of
Israel and the non Jewish astronomers where the non Jewish
astronomers say that at night the sun goes on around the other
side of the world, which is true.
Whereas the Jewish astronomers say that at night the sun
circles back and goes above the sky, that the sky is an opaque
Dome and at night the sun goes circles up behind the sky, which
may sound very strange to us, but that was absolutely
normative in Babylonian cosmology.
And the Kamala continues to say that the Huda Hanasi realizes
that the non Jewish astronomers are the ones who are correct and
he concedes that which is also very significant.
And now the the standard view you'll hear when people usually
try to avoid talking about the Kamara, when they do talk about
it, they say, oh, the Kamara is not really speaking about where
the sun goes at night. It's really talking about, you
know some deeper metaphysical phenomena.
When I looked into it thoroughly, what I found was
that among the was shown him right among the great medieval
within the core authorities. So every single one without
exception understood that this was a discussion about
astronomy. Nobody ever, nobody said it was
talking about some deeper metaphysical thing, nobody at
all. There was one of those showed
him about Beinu Tam. He said that that the that the
actually the Jewish astronomers, the Khazal were actually
correct. He believed that they actually
couldn't prove their case. But the sun really does go
behind the sky at night because he still subscribed to the
Babylonian cosmology. But everyone agreed they were
talking about astronomy. There was no, there was no
different dispute about that. And whereas in the beginning of
the 16th century you started to have a few authorities who were
very uncomfortable. And I think the reason why I got
very uncomfortable is that 16th century was a time of the
tremendous advances in astronomy, right with Galileo
and so on. And here were the stages of the
Talmud who were still stuck in the the Babylonian cosmology.
They weren't even up to the Ptolemaic cosmology.
So they provide, they started to present different ways of
learning the Gemara, right. They have to terms actually mean
something different. And then he got to the Malal who
completely says that Khazal were never talking about science,
they were always talking about, you know, metaphysical issues.
But still because the Gamara was so clear and there was such a
strong tradition in the which showed him as how to interpret
it. So there's still many prominent
acronym, many prominent Levitic authorities who interpreted the
Gamara at face value. Yes, the stages of the Talmud
were mistaken about where the sun goes at night.
So that really, you know, cuts down to the core of this whole
issue about terror and science that you have something where
they were showing were perfectly comfortable with it.
Some of the accurate were uncomfortable, others were not.
And but you see it there. You see it clearly there.
And so then in the polemico from my book.
So some people just wanted to say, well, only in that case
were they wrong about science, because they're the Gemma
acknowledged it but but nowhere else.
But doesn't really doesn't make any sense because you know, if
they were, if they could be mistaken on that, then why can't
they be mistaken about more obscure things?
And in that case, by the way, they even thought that they were
able to bring terror proofs to their position, right?
That they and elsewhere they brought Sukim in an attempt to
support their position about the sun going behind the sky at
night. So if even in that case they
could still be mistaken. And the other had Nasi was
himself was perfectly comfortable saying so.
He didn't feel his religious worldview was being threatened
by that, and none of them has shown him felt that their
religion was being threatened by that.
So it's certainly a legitimate approach to take.
Yeah, it's this DAS Tor approach today that people have where
everything is Masaura, right? Everything.
Whatever they said is is Rocha. Kodesh.
Exactly. That's.
Another thing they say, right, Sod Hashemi Reyov, right.
That was a concept that was thrown.
I had a lot of the time the controversy of my book Sod
Hashemi Reyov that, you know, the the, the Khazal have a
supernatural insight into things.
So with all these concepts that come up you have to look into
them properly and that's what I did with that and and it's
amazing. You know, how many times does
Sola Shimlaimov actually appear in Chasse?
You know what what what's your guess?
You know people will think it comes up here 20 * 30 * 40
times. It appears three times, just
three times. And even in those three
occasions, it's just presented as a speculation that that one
of Kazal says something and there's a question, well, how
did he know it? And they present some
possibilities, maybe he was told it, whatever.
And one possibility is, you know, maybe possibly he had
supernatural insight, but it's, you know, it's only three times
as a speculation. Whereas there's many case cases
in the Gamal like this where it's explicit that they they
didn't know something or or they found something out through
empirical investigation or potentially mistaken
investigation. So you know, when you start
looking into all these concepts from the sources all the way
through, you realize that this, this mystical approach was not
the approach that was traditionally taken.
Even by the Rashonim who were not as rational as let's say the
Rambam. Yeah.
Even if you go with like you know Ramban.
Ramban. Yes, the absolutely.
Camp within the Rashonim A lot of times that I'm realizing as I
go through these chapters in the book is there also.
Hold on a second I. Think we have a siren here.
Oh. No, I'll still on.
All OK. Yeah, all OK.
So what I've been realizing is even the more mystical camp
within there was shown him for the most part, the way they go
about things is very rational, even even, you know, even though
they have their own, you know, whatever, you know what I'm
saying, whether it's. Yeah.
So Ramban, it was, well, you know, pointed out that the
rainbow is appears, has been proven to be in a scientific
phenomenon. Therefore, how do you understand
what's said about the rainbow after the flood and also the
beginning of powership Matsura about the process of conception?
He says, you know, scientists have proved certain things about
this process and therefore we have to reevaluate our
understanding of what the Torah means.
Exactly. It's truly amazing that you both
do see it in the Talmud. You see it in the Rashonim, of
course, you see it in the go. And they were all so science was
always so important to them and a part of how they view Judaism,
it it it informed their views, regardless what their views
were. And we've come away from that
today. You know something?
There was a tremendous insecure. There's reasons why we come away
from that. There was a lot more insecurity
today. And the fact that science does,
you know, pose more of a challenge to using today than it
used to. And in the modern world
especially, I would say even more than science is, you know,
modern society poses A tremendous challenge to Judaism.
And therefore, you know, people circle the wagons.
All right. And let's also go into Ayan
Hara, a fantastic chapter. Yes.
You know, some of my research into these topics was the
conclusions were very surprising even for me.
In other words, it was the the way that the rationalist
mystical breakdown occurred was not always as expected.
And Einhua was a kind of example of that, that people think that
the that the widespread traditional understanding of
Einhua was that it means that when you look at something, you
cause harm to it. When you look at something with
negative intentions, you cause harm to it.
And that was not the mystical approach.
That was the rationalist approach because of a of a
historic understanding of how vision works.
It was how does vision work? How do we see things.
So historically there was a dispute.
The, the majority position was that the way vision works is
that things come out of our eyes like with a flashlight, right
When you go in the dark with a flashlight, a light comes out of
the flashlight. You know it illuminates the area
around you, right, You a candle, right?
The light comes out of the candle and makes it possible to
see what's around. So people are just visioning
kind of the same way that something comes out of your
eyes, right? I guess, you know, maybe similar
to how bats use sonar, right? So vision is the same way.
And if you have negative thoughts, negative energy could
come out of your eyes. That was, that was the
scientific position. Now Rambam who disagreed with
that idea of Einhra, Rambam who saw Einhra as being just a
jealousy, right, that wasn't because he was more scientific
than everyone else. It's just because he had a
different understanding of the science that he happened to
follow this minority view. Vision is something absorbed by
the eye. And therefore I know I can't
possibly be a, you know, a scientific process of things
coming out of the eye. So you were to be jealousy.
But the ones who saw it as vision comes out of the eye that
they were not. Not being rationalist, they just
had a different understanding of the science.
Fascinating. Fascinating.
And when we get into today, in the past few, 100 years, when I
say today, how did Einhora, how is Hein horror view today?
Right. So it's interesting to see how
it developed, you know, header of Yosef Cairo, who was still
going with the idea that it's negative energy coming out of
the eye. And he discussed about whether
we're wearing glasses. Wearing glasses may prevent
Einhora because the glass blocks it.
That was just something very shocking for people to hear
about today. But that was all based on the
view that Einhora is actually, you know, it's a physical
phenomenon that can be blocked with glasses.
You talk about whether Windows also can block Einhora, but see,
nowadays people are would be uncomfortable even to know to
hear that this is how the great rabbinical authorities view the
topic. So nowadays people all all, you
know, go with iron Haw as being some kind of jealousy.
Yeah, jealousy kind of thing, but in the idea that you're
going to put but in a different way than Rambam for Rambam.
Physical consequence of jealousy.
Is that what you think? Yeah, so though is for Rambam.
The idea of stopping Iron Hawa was don't flaunt things for
people to be jealous of you, because that would be bad for
social relationships. Yes.
Right, but the I would say most people today would prefer to
have the idea that you know if you if you speak positively
about something of your own, you know that could cause negative,
you know, metaphysical negative effects to result.
I think one of the things that, you know, has gone really
haywire today is that people are using these segulote and, you
know, magical amulets and so on and so forth to kind of deflect
or avoid it. And that in itself has just
taken on a life of its own that will become like an industry in
itself. And I think it harms, it harms,
you know, Judaism. People, people will see, like
outsiders will look at us. They won't see us as a wise and
understanding people, but look us, look at us as arcane and
superstitious. And I think that you know, it
doesn't do justice to the wisdom of of Torah.
I think that like the Rambam's approach to things is that why
we call ourselves quote UN quote Rambamis.
It's not it's not an accurate term but it's really he
symbolizes you know how we should think is that we should
learn wisdom from everything, not just from from the Torah.
But. And it's OK to say that the
rabbis got things wrong as long as it's not in the realm of
halacha. Halacha is Halacha and that's
where the Rabbis. You know they have, they have
jurisdiction, but when it comes to just any ideas about the
world, it's fair game. Right.
I do want to stress though, in my book about work in general, I
am not out to delegitimize mysticism.
That is not my mission for two reasons.
Number one, I think that rationalism is not a perfect
system and not a fully worked out system.
Still has many unanswered questions.
But the main reason is that there's a reason why mysticism
is more popular than rationalism, which is that for
many people mysticism provides for a much more passionate,
engaging form of Judaism, and one that's psychologically
tremendously beneficial. So it's really a case of
different Stokes strokes for different folks.
All right. Some people are more suited to
the mystical approach. Some people are more suited to
the rationalist approach, where I see my mission as being
restoring and retaining and developing the rationalist
approach for those who are more attuned to it, as opposed to the
Shiva circles I went through where people didn't even imagine
that such a thing ever existed. Right.
I think it's also the fact that missed more mystical styles of
of Judaism, modes of Judaism. There it tends to be like a
cookie cutter kind of thing where there's an answer for
everything, even if the answer is unsatisfactory the most.
But there is, there is a feeling that, oh, everything has an
answer, whereas, you know, there it's I I think it's a more
humbling to sometimes admit that we don't know.
Just like even the greatest prophet, Moshe Arabenu, you
know, he couldn't see God's face.
There's limitations to human understanding.
So I find myself often pulled and pushed with regard to how
strongly to be to oppose mysticism and that certainly,
you know, difficult times and you know, these are extremely
difficult times we're in right now.
Mystical approaches are again tremendously helpful for people.
On the other hand, they also allow, you know, everything has
its pros and cons. The rationalist approach has
also has its own drawbacks and it can lead people away from
Judaism. But the mystical approach is a
particular drawback, is that it very much enables people to take
be taken advantage of by unscrupulous operators.
And I see a lot of that, and it's very depressing.
Yeah, exactly. It's it's it's it's hard to see
people being taken advantage of and to be silent about it the
the happy medium. I think where the best way is to
is to at least try to try to just I I think that we that it's
there is value in trying to have people just just preaching to
them to be able to you know think think on their own.
You know, not to just, you know not be a like a yes to
everything just to to practice critical thinking.
And if something is too good to be true sometimes there's a
reason you know and I think that's an important thing that
you know for the mystical camp. I don't try personally to get
into like you know the the nitty gritty or technicalities and you
know even you know OK you know Cabella is not Cabella.
But I do think that it's important and he mentioned it
and you mentioned it that you know, people get taken advantage
of and we have to, we have to just a little bit push people to
think and be standing on their own 2 feet.
I think that's very. And there's other cases where I
would say it's not even necessarily people being taken
advantage of, but people just making a basic mistake.
And there was one topic I came on to through all this, which I
discussed in the last chapter, is, is the idea of can you do
mitzvos and then nominate the rewards for those mitzvos to go
to other people? Like, for example, if someone's
passed away, you know, can you say, OK, I'm going to do a
mitzvah and the reward will be for the the summer of that Lily
Nishmat, right. For the benefit of that person
who's passed away or or for someone who's alive.
Right. Can you say I'm going to do a
mitzvah and the reward from my mitzvah will go to that person?
So this is something that's considered completely normative
in Judaism today, right? Completely completely normative.
And yet, when I started looking into it, it was amazing.
If you see that classically, and this is a case where you know
there's aspects of mysticism that go back very long way.
I know it's you can't talk about Khazal being with Khazal,
rationalist or Mystic. Khazal is not a person.
Khazal was a lot of people over a long period and in different
places. And some of Khazal were more
rationalistically inclined, so were more mystically inclined.
But this, this is something where if you look in the Gemara,
you know there's no basis for it, right?
There's no basis. There's an idea that anything
you do is a credit to your parents, right?
There's a Kamara discussing how somebody who who understands
that his parents are suffering in the afterlife.
And he goes to one of Khazal and says what can I do?
And he and he's told that he has to, you know, say Kaddish and so
on. But the point is it's things
that only he can do, right, because he is their descendant.
So depending on how their descendant turns out, you know,
it can be a credit to them or or otherwise.
But you never see in classical Judaism the idea that you can do
a mitzvah and then just nominate somebody else to receive the
reward for that. And the first time that was
discussed, one of the late Akronim, sorry, in the earlier
Akronim, he says, of course not, He says.
It's just no mechanism, right? Everyone that gets we believe in
award and punishment. People get awarded and
punishment according to their deeds.
You can't just suddenly decide that, you know, pay some money
or whatever, and then, you know you're going to nominate the
reward for your mitzvah to go to someone else.
Right? And yet this is something that's
become very widespread, and I think there's two reasons why.
Number one is there's a lot of money to be made from it, right?
There isn't. Why did I first get suspicious
of this whole topic? Because unfortunately, somebody
passed away in my family, and I wasn't sitting in shiver.
Somebody else in my family was sitting in shiver.
And I looked at, they were given this book all about, you know,
what can you do to help the person who's who's, who's passed
away? And the first thing it said, it
said the best thing you can do is lend Torah.
And there's. And if you don't know how to
lend Torah to a high level, you can pay someone else to do it.
And it said the second best thing you can do is give sadaqa.
And what's the best sadaqa you can do, pay someone to lend
Torah. And I started getting, you know,
suspicious, you know, my Spidey scent started tingling.
And I looked at who published the safer.
And lo and behold, it was published by a Colonel that
specializes in taking donations to learn in memory of loved
ones. And that's what's started my
deep dive in this whole thing, where I saw that there's
traditionally no basis for it. But what's the temptation?
You know, you can make money, right?
No one's paying you to learn Tara.
But you can get payment and say that, oh, you're learning Tara
to benefit some other people. Then all of a sudden there's
money to be made. And I think the other reason of
the person giving the money, they want to feel that they're
doing something right. You lost a loved one.
You want to do something for them.
Becoming a, you know, working on yourself to become a a shining,
you know testimony and and credit to them is not as easy as
as paying as as paying. Writing a check.
So you write a check to smish or whatever and say yes, it's you
know, the money is this. The rewards for that person's
mitzvah will benefit that person.
So you get to feel good about yourself.
So it's an easy way to feel that you're helping someone
spiritually. And I think that's the the
temptation for it, even though, again, I'm a stress, there is no
basis in classical Judaism for this.
And and unfortunately, I think I see the same thing today with
the war. You know, there's a terrible
situation going on in Israel and and there's we have, you know,
we have 500,000 people in uniform right now doing real
Monsieur at nefesh, right? Real genuine, Monsieur at Nefesh
And there's other people working hard at a lower level but
working to help them in various ways.
You know supplies, helping families and so on.
In fact, right now as I speak you know I'm speaking in my
office at the museum. So in the museum we have 80
evacuees from stay up right now who we have someone who
sponsored them getting a tour of the museum getting a break and
you know giving some a bit of a respite more like that what
they've been going through. But there's other people who
think OK I want to help what can I do?
So, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to learn terror, and
there's a host of the soldiers or I'm going to pay someone else
to learn terror, this host of the soldiers.
And it's very nice to be thinking about the soldiers, but
these are not things that are going to help, right?
Yeah that's a tough one for people to yeah handle right.
And we're we're we're probably going to address it at some
point with with another guest. But I actually wanted to discuss
even mysticism and and as a whole, because I think these
phrases that we use, it's just for you know the limitation of
language and the fact that we have to just kind of summarize
things with words that we say rationalism, which is not
entirely it's not an accurate description of of a rabbinic
worldview, even the Rambam, because the Rambam itself was a
Mystic right and depends. How you look.
At it depends. It depends.
How you? Your definite.
We've had episodes. In.
The, the active intellect, and so on.
But right, right, right. But people will consider, you
know, the Rambam, as many in his in that camp will say, well, he
was a mistake. And I think the problem with the
mysticism camp is really that anything kind of goes like we we
wanna kind of, we have to be careful in in terms of
understanding what is mysticism. Because there is definitely true
a true strand of mysticism that's always been there, like
you mentioned. But then there's a lot of stuff
that just attached itself over time and kind of.
Concepts, right, It's a. It's a catch all word for catch
all of. Things exactly so anyway, you
wanted to. Our listeners have always asked
us to talk about demons. It's a it's a topic which I
think people don't have a lot of knowledge about.
I mean, it's just there's not a lot of people want to learn
about, you know, the the Jewish approach to demons.
And you see it in Tanakh, you see it in the Gomorrah, you see
it in the Rishon. So can you talk to us about
demons? Yeah.
So naturally, this was another topic that was right at my
street, which I did a lot of research again.
Again, I was very surprised a lot of these topics.
So there's so much scholarship out there.
There's so many spines that have been written, so much academic
research. And it's amazing that it's all
basic topics that have never been researched.
It's just amazing, astonishing to me.
So it has the only way of I and Hara, you know, all these
things. Nobody had ever done serious,
serious research. And I don't mean polemical
research. There was, you know, you have
people who will find authorities that support their idea of how
this topic should be understood. But I'm talking about research,
where you see the history, you know, the intellectual history
of a topic and how different sources understood it.
So demons was another word that I just couldn't believe it had
never been done. So I did it.
And again, the things I found were surprising.
Firstly, I asked, I think it's fairly well known Rambam did
deny the existence of demons, right?
Rambam did not believe in demons.
Not everyone could come to terms with that, right?
Because again, for many people, if you're embedded in a certain
world, view a religious worldview that it's often very
important for a person to believe that every single great
rabbinic figure in the past also shared the same worldview.
And that's something that you'll see both some Mystics do and
some hyper rationalists do. Also you've got the Mystics who
will believe say that every great Jew in the past was always
a Mystic and they'll do total revisionism and Rambam.
And then you got some hyper rationalists who will say you
know every great Jewish rabbinic figure in the past was a was a
rationalist and they'll do revisionism of the non
rationalist rabbinic authorities.
So there were those who, you know, refused to acknowledge
that Rambam did not believe in demons, but clearly he didn't.
But again, like with Ayn Hare, those who did believe in demons,
which was certainly the majority of rabbinic authorities, it
wasn't necessarily because they weren't rationalist.
It was because for most of history, demons were a perfectly
reasonable thing to believe in. Because there's a lot of
unexplained phenomenon in the world.
And if you don't have the benefit of all the centuries of
scientific discovery to explain why various phenomenon happen,
what's wrong with it makes perfect sense to believe in
demons. You know, Why not?
There's all kinds of weird forces in the world, you know,
there's magnetism. How do you explain magnetism?
You know, for ASPA rash bar, he goes into the discussion of
magnetism and he says, you know, there's people who are, you
know, rationalists and they deny, you know, the supernatural
kind of phenomenon. But look at look at magnetism,
he says, All right, so nowadays we have an understanding of
magnetism as being, you know, a scientific, you know, a
naturalistic force. It's hard to, you know, we can't
see it, we can't feel it, but we understand it in scientific
terms. And we see magnetism as
something completely different from demons.
But you know, but centuries ago that difference was not, was not
clear, was not apparent. You know, there's certain we see
phenomenon that that occur which are not physical.
So why is it any more unreasonable to believe that
when, you know, strange things happen in the world which they
do, that it's that it's demons causing it.
So again, this is a case where you can't break down those who
do believe in demons and those who don't as being Mystics
versus rationalists. Nowadays you could perhaps like
people who still believe in demons.
You can. You could say that they are
Mystics rather than rationalists, but you can't
categorize the historic rabbinic authorities that way.
And this is a theme throughout the book is that and and I I
try, I kind of pointed it before that, you see that, you know,
when it comes to the Rashonim, right?
Like they were almost all rational, leaning in the way
they went about how how they went about things, right.
We believe that there's the way. Differences, right?
Obviously those inspired were much more not scientifically
knowledgeable than those in Ashkenaz.
Plus those in Ashkenaz tended to be literalists that you know all
the egaritas, all the strange things in the Gemara.
There was an approach in in Ashkenazi used to understand all
those things literally, whereas in a spar they were much more
open to non literal interpretations.
Yes, but scientifically they kind of all had a scientific
like the Ramban you were kind of more.
Yeah, they tended to be more everyone.
Always show them tended to be more open to things.
That were showed through. To them.
Yeah, like with the Ramban. Ramban was a complicated figure
cuz he was a Mystic, but he was Basin's fad, so that gave him a
more rationalistic bent. Yeah, like for, for example, the
science of necromancy, right. It was a still, he still
categorized it as a science because to him, that's what he
observed. He he thought he was doing
something. Yeah, yeah, So.
So it's a it's very interesting. So, OK, great.
There's two other topics. They're fundamental, the nature
of Torah and the function of mitzvah.
As you would think that, you know, oh, the nature of Torah,
the function of mitzvah, that should be such a given, right?
Basically like, you know, you know what we spend all our day
doing. But as your chapters show, it's
very different today than how it was and if you can break that
down. Yeah, and again these are things
that were just so shocking and eye opening for me.
You know, certain things that I've always understood from all
my years in yeshiva and growing up as a from Jew.
Certain things that I just thought were a total given and
normative and Judaism cannot be any other way.
And then you look at how many things are just not actually
traditionally based and and see how they evolved.
Let's start with with mitzvah. Mitzvah.
What do mitzvah do? What's the purpose of mitzvah in
general? So Rambam says explicitly that
all mitzvah serve one or more of three possible functions.
They they teach you ideas about Judaism, about Torah, they
improve your character or they improve society.
That is what all mitzvot do. With some, it's easier to
understand how they do that. The the Mishpatim with others
hook him. It's harder to understand how
they do that. But that is what mitzvot do.
Whereas according to the mystical approach, yes, Mizvolk
do all those things, but that's a relatively minor aspect of
what Mitzvolk do. The primary function of what
Mitzvolk do is to manipulate various supernatural forces.
All right. So in in the book I show various
different, you know, ways and that plays out, you know what is
Mizzouza? The rationalist views that
Mizzouza is a reminder, a reminder of what's important in
life, whereas the mystical view is that Mizzou's supernatural
protection for the house washing their hands in the morning,
What's that about? According to the earliest we've
shown who discussed it, the mix of washing your hands is
psychological, to put yourself in the frame of mind of being
the Cohen, starting his service in the base, in the base of
Mikdash, and also physical hygiene.
Whereas it goes to the mystical view, it's removing ayen hara,
right? Removing supernaturally harmful
forces. And we see that with many myths.
That's how it plays out that you see different understandings of
this mitzvah going back many, many, many centuries.
Again, our goal is not to argue that one of you is right or one
of you is wrong, but it's to show that there's different
understandings of what mitzvah are all about.
And then when it comes to Torah, the mitzel learning Torah, there
you see that the biggest and most fundamental and difference
of all with enormous ramifications, especially today,
What is the mitzvah of learning Torah all about?
So again, according to the rationalist approach, and in
this case, it's also the classical approach, learning
Torah, you know, you're getting an understanding of Judaism and
you're learning about how to become a better person, how to
build a better society, right? You look at the Commission.
It's all about building a just society comes along the mystical
approach and it says yes Tura does all that, but that's a
relatively minor aspect of what the learning Tura is the the the
major aspect of learning Tura is mystical, is creating positive
spiritual energy in the world. And the one who is responsible
for making that really penetrate in in Litvish circles was Rufjan
Velozhin. Rufjan Velozhin who totally in
his in his effort to combat Khashidim who were negating the
importance of learning Torah. So he decided to play up Torah,
the mystical side of it. He redefined learning Torah
Ishma as being learning Torah for its own sake, for the
positive spiritual energies that result from it, which is not
what Tara ishma historically meant.
Historically, Tara Ishma was like everything.
Like everything. That means lishma as opposed to
shalolishma. Shaloishma is doing something
for nefarious purposes, right? And Li Shma is doing something
for the correct purposes. But I'm Vlaschin he innovative
the site of the entirely shma as only Torah for its own sake.
Just for the sake of learning Torah and all the spiritual
energies that result from that. And then at the midst of
learning Torah, which was always a foundational importance in
Judaism. But the reason why it was
foundationally important was because you've got to know what
to do in order to know how to do it, in order to know what to do,
right? In other words, where the that
has all discussed which is greater or learning or doing and
what the answer was, is that the result of the debate was
learning is greater because learning leads to doing.
In other words, the goal is to do, but if you don't learn,
you're not going to know or be motivated to do so.
Learning takes precedence. Town The Terror Kenegar Coulomb,
which is a phrase I heard endlessly in yeshiva about how
learning terror is more important than everything else
put together. But what nobody realizes is that
that bricer of talmoteric and egged kulov, it's part of a
larger bricer. And in the larger bricer, you
know, after listening all these mitzvahs and saying talmotoric
and egg and kulam, it then goes to a list of a various of sins
and it says lashon hara can egg and kulop.
Now no one's going to say that lashon hara is worse than murder
right now. Rhetorically, you know, speak
that way, lass. So what does that pricer mean?
It means there's certain foundational aspects in these
mitzvahs on the various. And as Rambam says, clearly the
foundational aspect in Talmoterra is that it teaches
you what to do. But the focus is on always on
the, you know, on living Torah, what you're going to be doing,
not on the learning Ryan Veloz. And switch the focus back to the
learning. And then, you know, phrases like
Tamil, Turak and angry color were divorced of their original
meaning. And you have this idea today.
And how did that evolve today? That learning Torah has litvish
circle, certainly has been boosted beyond whatever was in
history, right? And this and this idea that that
and certainly the opposition to to being paid for Torah, which
Rambani himself was very extreme in that aspect.
He didn't even want people to be paid for teaching Torah.
The normative approach of the history was certainly that being
paid for teaching Torah is fine, but learning Torah not.
But that's completely disappeared now, right?
People now have no shame in being paid for learning Tower
for their whole life. So I'm not, I'm not talking
about people who are learning to become rabbis, to become
teachers, to become dionic. We're talking about somebody
who's sitting in kind of, you know, plans to sit there for the
rest of his life and thinks it's perfectly all right to be be
paid. Why?
Because he is mystically bringing positive energy into
the world. He is contributing to society,
contributing to the world. And these are, you know, these
are mystical ideas. And do you find that there is,
like now you're experiencing a, you know, terrible war that's
going on now and I'm seeing a little like maybe they're just
grassroots kind of things that are going on.
But I'm starting to see slightly that the Faradi world is kind of
shifting their view. But you.
Know very, very little. People talk about, you know,
3000 Koreans signed on to join the army.
At the end it was 700. And I've got friends who are
part of that and they they'll be the first to say that they're
not really part of the Khalidi world.
You know, these are the people who are, you know, already past
you, Shiva, already doing other things with their life.
There has not been much of A change.
What what I do see interesting though is again, this is, this
is going to say a very, very painful topic.
Painful topic for people in my community where, you know, in my
shul alone there's 80 young men and women who are in the army,
80 just from my shul and you know, the amount of funerals,
it's just, it's just appalling and horrific.
And you have this whole entire community which is saying, no,
we're exempt from that. That's not going to be us.
So, you know, I understand, you know, the opposition to go into
the army is that going to the army is a tremendous threat to
their lifestyle. They don't feel a tremendous
sense of civic responsibility because they're not a Zionist.
But at the same time, I think now there's a certain
understanding of guilt. So how do you get around that
guilt? Nobody wants to feel that
they're doing something wrong. So I think the mysticism has
played in now and that's why you see a lot more of this idea of
Torah protecting and yes, willing and Torah and that's
going to protect the nation which again is something with
no. You look at the historical basis
for it and it's so it's so not there.
You know it's historically you will find some sources in
Kazelle about terror protecting, but never that that is a
substitute for actual action. You know it says that terror
protects from illness too. You don't see how many towns
saying we don't need hospitals, we don't need Kupat Khol in.
It was never a replacement for the actual doing what you have
to do. And why is it now becoming so
popular? Because people feel guilty, I
would say. I think that's the reason to
rationalize to others outside of their community.
They want to rationalize to themselves, how is it that we're
not involved in this effort? So they'll come up with this
mystical idea that, yes, learning Torah is what's really
providing the protection. I want to just go back to
something you said when we discussed the nature of Torah
and the function of mitzvot. You were mentioning how the
mystical approach when it when it wants to explain the purpose
of Torah, purpose of mitzvah, it agrees with the rational
understanding, but that the rational understanding is a
minor. Those are the words, right?
The a minor point, but the larger point, right, is the
metaphysical contribution or or OK, that to me, I remember
about, I don't know, maybe 8 to 10 years ago, this point was
actually the hardest point for me to adjust with from my own
personal journey. Why?
Because when you are used to thinking that you're learning
Torah or you're performing mitzvahs is making cosmic
changes and you're used to understanding that like you know
there are things you know great things happening beyond what you
can even imagine and you know the whole world.
It's very difficult to go from that to my mitzvah now is good
for society and it's giving me a good opinion and and I'm I'm
just. Absolutely, absolutely.
You expressed it very well. That is a seductive appeal of
mysticism, and it's tremendously empowering.
And that's why it's ultimately, I recognize that rationalism is
not for everyone, and mysticism is.
It's much more, much more powerful and much more
motivating for people. Because you're you're you're
believing that everything you do is invested with this tremendous
cosmic significance. It's literally appealing.
Like it literally took me like a year or two till I was able to
to embrace it right in the way it's properly should be
embraced. It's not an easy idea to come
down, that's. Why haskachapatis, right?
That's why you look at the show name and their views of
haskachapatis. It was very, very limited.
So why did it change to now that everyone thinks that the
slightest thing that happens is Ashkakabatis?
Because it's much easier to live life that way, right?
I missed the bus not because I was late or because, you know
there's a problem with the bus schedule, but because you know,
Hashem wanted me to miss the bus for grand cosmic reasons.
Yes, yes, yes and. Then I think one of the issues
with that also is that it takes away personal responsibility.
Yes. Things like Einhara and all
these things are the the the problem with it is that you no
longer look inward and you start thinking that everything that's
going on, all the problems in the world are due to external
factors. And everything that's going
right in the world is due to my. It's such an ego trip.
Yeah, you know, Yeah. It is.
There is aspects of that for sure and yet at the same time
when people are suffering and going through hardship.
This. Isn't a boat, which helps them
so. So I wrestle with this.
So to how much do we want to point out that it's not
necessarily authentic Judaism? I don't know.
It's very, very, very hard. It's interesting because the
ROM, the Rambam also mentions that if someone wants to use an
app, he's against amulets. But if someone's domining and
they request an amulet, you just let him have like this is his
like final final day and let him have it.
You'll comfort him going into the, you know, after life.
But we were we just had a recently an episode on the let
the letters between Shadal Shadal and Ravana Mosaic and
something interesting that came up was that when Shadow's mother
was was very yeah, she was dying his he was only 13 years old or
so, right. Yeah.
His his his father told him to say these magical his father's
into mysticism say this magical formula and he was like, I don't
believe in this. I'm not going to say it.
I think it's nonsensical. And as he matured and as he grew
up, he said I probably should have done it, you know, just to
satisfy him. But right, right.
It's just an interesting you. Know the the this this yeah like
it's we're to the wrestling with what should we do with these
things it's. It's like it's very.
Challenging. It's very challenging.
There's no clear right or wrong. Answers about it.
There's no clear right or wrong answers, and everything has its
benefits and its drawbacks. Look, apparently with
Schlemmer's Aman Orbach, you know, he was endorsed people
going to to what's it called Tuamuka to them for a shooter,
even though he knew that it was baseless, the unit of Venezuela
isn't even there and there but he felt it's you know, people
psychologically helped by it so endorse so we can go along with
it. So yeah, maybe yes, maybe some
people are taken advantage of or or you know, they think that
that replaces that. That's why, you know, people
are, you know, people, singles, people looking to get married or
often tortured with the idea that they have to do this
skiller. They're in the right segulas.
Maybe that's why they're not married and then the right
segulas. And I'm not sure if it's
necessarily so psychologically helpful to wait to play along
with that. I don't know.
These are very tough calls to make.
Yeah, they're tough calls to make and we appreciate so much
that you came on and tackled these topics with us.
We really also wanted to recommend people your website
rationalistjudaism.com 'cause you get into a lot of these and
the book Rationalism versus Mysticism, which we have over
here. I think the
rationalistjudaism.com you tackle a lot of like, like for
example, just things like Swisselhala, right?
And the kind of things that we're kind of discussing this
right now where we have to also set limitations and boundaries
because certain things just, you know, they they take on a life
of its own. And we have to figure out as as
a community where we draw the line, where you know what is
what is now, what is Judaism and what is now something else.
So I think your website actually for me is has been a great
resource because you you bring to light a lot of issues that
are like today's issue, you know, the current event.
Thank. You thank you.
I also want to mention that people do want to buy the book.
The best way for them to do so is from the museum website.
Get the museum website. You can just you do a search
online for the Biblical Museum of Natural History.
The website is Biblical Natural history.org and in the store
there, that's where you can buy my books and it's free shipping
in the US. And and can you also tell people
briefly like what it is about your museum that they can
actually enjoy and see that right.
How is your? Museum doesn't get into any
controversial topics. We have a very strict policy at
the museum, in fact, of not getting into any controversial
topics because we want the museum to be, you know, amenable
to all sectors of the population.
And we do. We get everyone to get dati,
secular, Khaidi, Hasidic, everybody.
And it's learning about the animal world of the Torah, the
the identity of the animals of the Torah, the symbolism, what
they represent, the role they play in historic in Judaism and
Jewish identity. We have holes dedicated to
halacha, the Hall of Cashless, Hall of Chauffeurs, and we have
a lot of whole dedicated to appreciating the wonders of
creation. And the experience itself is
guided, very interactive. Like I said a lot, a lot of live
exotic animals too that you get to meet to handle.
So it's educational and also a lot of fun.
And your book, you had a book on like mythical creatures?
Sacred monsters, yeah. Museum websites.
The Sacred Monsters is about mythical creatures in the in the
Gemara and Midwest and how to understand them.
Unicorns, Dragons, Phoenix's mermaids, spontaneous
generation, right. Salamanders coming from fire to
all the Harry Potter creatures. Now these are all things that
have been part of mythology for a long time and a lot of them
appear in in various Jewish sources.
So that book goes through different approaches on how to
understand them. And last word on the book of the
topic today, rationalism versus mysticism.
I just wanted the viewers to know this book is different than
any other rational versus mystical book for the very
reason that this is not talking from an ideological perspective.
He's not coming at a ideological rationalism versus mysticism.
But what Rabbi Slipkin has done here is essentially just in a
it's a development of these topics and ideas from the
Gomorrah to the Rishonim to the Hironim.
And so the reader himself is able to see the development of
these ideas across 1000 years, if not more, and to be able to
see how these ideas have developed in Judaism.
And the ideas speak for themselves from within the
sources. And I think that that's an
incredible achievement because I have never seen a book like this
before. So I highly recommend it.
And we thank you, Rabbi Slifkin, for your contributions.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure being on the show.
Thank you Shavotov and be safe. Bye.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Bye, bye.
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