Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
We are joined by Rabbi Haim Eisen.
Rabbi Eisen is the founder and Dean of Yeshiva Charashim Zion
Bible Studies, a web-based educational venture to engage
users worldwide in the deepening understanding of the Hebrew
Bible and other religious classics through live, recorded
and written content. An acclaimed speaker, he's been
stimulating audiences throughout Israel, North America, and
Europe for over 40 years. For nearly all his career, he's
been involved in adult education, principally as senior
Rabbinical lecturer of the Orthodox Union Jerusalem Center,
where he taught for more than 36 years.
For over 20 years he also taught Talmud and Midrash, Biblical
commentary, and especially Jewish thought and philosophy at
various ishivolt in Israel. In addition, he served as a
Torah lecturer in the IDF Rabbin at Torah Lecture Corps for over
16 years and continued to volunteer there after his
retirement. Besides teaching, he was also
founding editor of the OU journal Jewish Thought, a
journal of Torah scholarship, and has written and edited
numerous essays in this field. He's been teaching, editing, and
publishing Judaica for more than 4 decades.
In particular, he feels passionately that to pave the
way for gods to quote Yoel and Malachi.
Great and awesome day. There's a burning urgency now to
enunciate the Torah's message in the global marketplace of ideas,
where all too often it's so sincerely sought and so sorely
missing. Tragically, nowadays few who
value the Torah's message appreciate the global
marketplace of ideas, and vice versa.
Most of all, he's committed to harnessing a lifetime of Torah
study and teaching to address and redress this absence by the
Torah's light, this is his mission and the raison d'etre of
Yeshivat Sharashim Zion Bible studies.
Without further ado, Rabekheim Eisen, thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. We are joined by Arav Kheim
Eisen, the host of Jewish Philosophy Matters on YouTube.
Check out that Channel. It's unbelievable.
I've actually got I was turned on to this channel by Rabbi
Joshua Maroof, my rabbi, years ago.
When I asked him, I said I want who, who are some rabbis you
recommend to bring on? And he said, oh, Rahim Eisen, it
was one of the first names that came up.
So thank you for joining us really.
Thank you. And I just want to get into it
because we recently David Highe and myself, we were listening to
the Free Will series and we wanted to do a podcast about
this. So I'll just start off with the
first question. Science has broadly in the
modern era made famous particularly by Sam Harris and
Robert Sapolsky reached a consensus that we are determined
to act the way we do. This has been shown in a few
real life scenarios and experiments, such as experiment
performed by Checking the association between the verdict
of hungry versus satiated judges, where the hungry judge
would more often incarcerate than a judge who just had lunch.
Additionally, the case of Phineas Gage, who was seemingly
robbed of choice after surviving a large iron rod driven through
his head. However, in part four of your
Free will series in JPM you state unequivocally that free
will is a miracle. This seems to agree with the
scientific consensus of determinism.
Given this observation, would you say that faith is required
for free will and that science would be unable to prove free
will materially? The paraphrase Sapolsky, the
burden of proof is on those who advocate free will, because they
would have to prove that etceteris paribus, the person
observed would have been able to act differently.
OK. Obviously there are a lot of
components in this question and I think the first Verity that I
should affirm here is by no means anyone claim that free
will is ubiquitous. Certainly we don't regard it as
something that characterizes any non human animals, and the very
realization that this is something that we would claim as
unique endowment of human beings necessarily invites the question
upon what basis do we claim that human beings are, in some
fundamental ontological sense, different from any other living
things? Is that something that lends
itself to rigorous proof? Candidly, I think not, and it
could be very well that the invocation of miracle here may
be germane, except I think we need to find define our terms
more carefully here. That is, While again, we would
certainly agree that not only is free will something unique to
human beings, but something that isn't always to be found in
human beings either, in what vein would we be able to discern
circumstances that from our perspective would dictate the
invocation of free will by way of explanation?
I'd like to begin by invoking a very time worn, even cliched
analogy to the guy who loses his keys on the way home on a dark
night and returns to the lone pool of light beneath the only
St. lamp on the street to look for his keys there.
And of course the inevitably the question is he wise or is he
stupid? And inevitably, the answer, my
favorite two word answer. It depends if he's returned to
that lone street light to look for his keys beneath it, because
that's the only place the keys could possibly be, since it's
the only place that's illuminated.
Obviously he's stupid. On the other hand, if he returns
there because I don't know, I lost my keys, I may have lost
them where the street is completely dark and then I won't
find them. But maybe I dropped out of the
street the street lamp, then That could be a very wise
course. Of course, with the caveat that
number one, I don't know if I'm going to find my keys there.
Number two, I might find a set of keys and it might not have
been nine. Someone else might have dropped
his keys at the same time. The reason I'm invoking this
here is because what I think we would all agree is for him to
presume that because only beneath the street lamp is the
street illuminative, therefore the rest of the street doesn't
exist, is, to be extremely charitable, a leap of faith.
It is no more of a leap of faith to presume that the rest of the
street doesn't exist than to presume that the keys have to be
wherever I choose to look for them.
And of course the analogue to this analogy is, well, when we
speak of who has the burden of proof.
I would be more inclined to raise the question of
altogether. To what extent are matters of
substance in life susceptible to rigorous proofs one way or the
other? And with respect to the
development of Western science, which has unequivocally provided
us with innumerable assets in our being able to conduct the
affairs of life, a major question is the extent to which
science can be seen as establishing a definitive
ontology as opposed to what works.
This, of course, is a much, much longer discussion than one that
pertains to free will. But what I'll state for our
purposes at present is that trying to extrapolate from the
success of a set of experiments to any definitive ontological
statement is unequivocally no less of a leap of faith than any
other. We have to recognize the
limitations of our knowledge. We get into our a lot of trouble
altogether because of our almost inescapable pretensions of
omissions. Now I I don't state that as
something to be condemned because, you know, on some plane
their inclinations try to extrapolate from some limited
set of data to an all-encompassing worldview is
the hallmark of the human outlook on the world.
We strive to interpret reality rather than merely assimilate
data as data gatherers. And far be it for me to indict
what is of course the the essence of the philosophical
quest with which I wholly identify.
But it's important for us to recognize that it is a quest.
It's not a certainty. Interpretation, by definition is
not what I observe but what I impose upon my observations.
So proofs. We don't have any proofs of free
will. There isn't any proof of the
absence of free will. Again, I'm going to reiterate,
can we prove that human beings are ontologically distinct from
the rest of the animal Kingdom? I think not.
Do I believe that human beings are distinct from the rest of
the animal Kingdom? I think yes, but not because I
can prove it. If you ask me, on what grounds
do I assert it all together? So you know, you mentioned in a
different context in our discussion, Descartes, Coquito,
it goes on. How do we relate that statement?
Is it some kind of syllogism that proves existence?
I think, therefore I am. Descartes definitely didn't
intend it as a syllogism personally.
My inclination, although I admit this may not square with
Descartes's own understanding, is it is a subjective
conviction. I have a subjective experience
of engaging in thought that convinces me that I, as a
thinker, exist. Sentience imposes upon me an
inescapable sense of selfhood. When I say imposes upon me, I'm
really speaking exclusively in subjective terms.
I've got it. If someone were to come to me
and say, well, I'm not convinced by that argument, I don't know
if I exist. My response, of course, would be
if you're not convinced you exist, why should I be convinced
that you exist? You may just be a figment of my
imagination, but I have this subjective conviction.
And likewise, in the same vein, I have a subjective conviction
that I am distinct from the rest of the animal Kingdom, that I am
endowed with something that of course neuroscientists described
as a hard problem. Consciousness.
I am endowed with it. What is it?
I couldn't tell you. I certainly don't subscribe to
attempts, however well meaning, of people like for example
Penrose, to try to understand consciousness as something that
would somehow derive from the quantum effects taking place in
microtubules and neurons. I don't think there's going to
be a physical explanation that'll be found.
So in this vein, while using the word miracle may seem awfully
hackneyed, a platitude of cliches, I'm going to use it in
the more rigorous sense of something that I don't believe I
will be able to rigorously demonstrate on any definitive
play. But it doesn't make me any less
convinced that it exists. Ultimately, if I ask myself upon
what basis altogether do I posit the existence of spirituality, I
would have a hard time providing any kind of rigorous answer,
even though it's definitely conviction.
And honestly, I think that's any that's true of anyone who posits
that spirituality is real. I've told generations of
Talmadim that if anyone, in response to the question Why do
you believe in God says anything other than because I believe I
experienced him, that you know he's a fraud or he doesn't
understand the question. Experience is something that is
irreducible and irreducibly subjective, but that doesn't
mean it's in any way less real. I must concede on a personal
plane I feel more than to anyone else beholden in my Veldenshan
to Rabihu, Dalevi, etcetera, Kuzeri.
I certainly feel very much beholden to the other luminaries
among the Rishonim as well. But in in this regard, what
Rabihu Dalevi teaches me more than anything else is the
centrality of the subjective experience.
And that subjective experience, again, is the basis for my
conviction that consciousness is real.
It is a basis for the unprovable contention that life is
intrinsically meaningful. You know, I I always like to
gravitate to that question of meaning in life as a good way of
characterizing the distinction between theism and atheism
without invoking the name of God.
I I prefer to avoid invoking the name of God because, let's face
it, we don't really don't understand what we mean when we
talk about God anyway, do we? But we have some kind of
intuitive sense of what we mean when we speak of meaning in
life. Well, from the perspective of
the atheist, he can undoubtedly dedicate his life to any number
of lofty causes. But in as much as his very
existence is a consequence of pure chance, there obviously
cannot be any intrinsic meaning. And again, of course, in much
the same vein as everything we've discussed until now, can
we prove that life is intrinsically meaningful?
I don't believe we can. Am I convinced that my life is
meaningful? Yes, I am.
Could that be a delusion? It could be a delusion.
Everyone ultimately is going to have to decide for himself if he
regards that conviction, which I believe is a veritable universal
one. That's my impression so far.
If that conviction that life is meaningful is a consequence of
delusion or a reflection of reality, that's not something
that can be proven one way or the other.
But does that place the burden of proof on one camp or the
other? I don't see how it could
possibly construe it to be that way.
So I'm going to say the same thing here.
That is to be more specific. Returning to the specific
context of the question, we definitely recognize and, and
this is of course not merely some kind of Judaic abstraction.
This is halakha. We recognize their circumstances
of each individual does not have free will.
I'm not merely talking about singular individuals.
If you will like pag O according to the Madras, as punishment for
what he had done beforehand, that he was denied free will
either in all the plagues or in the last five plagues, And and
speaking more universally about a phenomenon that is
unequivocally recognized in halakha of a chote.
Now, exactly where we will pin down the halakhic quantity chote
on a procedural plane is an excellent question.
We're not going to discuss that right now.
But someone who is deemed a shota in a state of derangement,
indeed is adjudged to not have free will.
And it doesn't only mean that he isn't held responsible for any
crimes he may commit. You know in the lead up to
Pesach, someone who is Itim Khalim.
Itim Shota has belts of derangement of insanity and Lel
Hassader. He is in a state of derangement
and he eats matzo and before the night is out he returns to a
state of sanity. So what do we tell him?
I mean assuming it's not going to cause any endangerment for
him because obviously it's pikuak nephesh here, but go eat
matzo again. He eat matzo already if he eat
matzo and he wasn't obligated to do meat slot.
He ate matzo when he was acting under compulsion and not as one
with free will. And as a result, not only is he
not held accountable for crimes that he may have committed, he
also doesn't get any credit for me.
It's not that he may have committed, so he comes to eat
matzo now. In other words, we recognize
that the circumstances of free will may indeed be for certain
individuals, non existent, for others, occasional for all of
us, perhaps also fleeting. But that doesn't in any way
negate the Verity that a human being can be a responsible
being. And that ultimately, I'm going
to say, is the foundation of the whole discussion of free will.
It's significant to note, you know, when we just consider what
the ranking of free will is in the whole discussion of
foundational beliefs. It is of course, very obviously
glaringly lacking from Ramam's list of 13 foundational creeds,
which is something I discussed this in the podcast, something
that Raviosa, the Albo in Safari, Karim notes as an
ostensible astonishment. Something as basic as free will
isn't on Ramam's list, and ultimately his answer, which I
think is very compelling, is the reason it's not on the list is
because it's too foundational. Because Rambam is giving you a
list of foundational beliefs for dot elokit for a divine system
of belief and conduct and free will is foundation even for dot
nimosit, even for a consensual system that isn't predicated
upon any belief in revelation. So, so something that that is
this fundamental in human affairs indeed is not provable.
But that shouldn't really surprise us, because ultimately,
how much of life is truly susceptible to proofs, you know?
In this regard, I always feel particularly drawn to a
quotation. It's a quotation of Einstein.
He made this statement in a lecture delivered before the
Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin on the 27th of January
1921. As far as the propositions of
mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far
as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
If I can share with you on an utterly pedestrian plane, what I
think Einstein is saying here, if I ask you, is 1 + 1 = 2 an
absolutely true statement? I think we could agree,
certainly in the conventional meanings of the words one plus
equals and two, that that is definitionally true.
OK, but now if I ask you, well, I gave you one apple and I'm
giving you a second apple. Do you have absolutely two
apples? Now is that absolutely true?
I I think this is another opportunity to invoke my
favorite two word answer. It depends.
It depends on what you mean by apples.
If by apples you just mean placeholders, then one apple and
another apple equals what's just the same as 1X.
Plus 1X uses 22X. You just cancel the XS and you
have 1 + 1 = 2. But what if you really mean
apples? If you really mean apples, then
in the parlance of formal logic, we'll say there are a whole host
of auxiliary hypothesis that need to be dragged into the
discussion. Did I really give you an apple
in the 1st place? What happened to the apple?
Did someone eat it on the way? Did I give you a second apple?
Or maybe it was just holding up a mirror to the first one?
Did someone make applesauce? Were you dreaming this entire
affair and it never actually happened in external reality?
All those are germane. When we ask about what apple and
another apple. In other words, in the messy
affairs of actual physical reality, we don't have proofs.
It's only as far as the laws of mathematics are certain that
they don't refer to reality. For the moment that we're
actually referring to reality, they are not certain.
So do we have proofs? No.
Does anyone else? I think not.
Well said, You had a question on this or?
No, I was just. I was just enjoying and writing
down some. So we'll go to the next
question. So additionally to not proving
free will, you say that it is not that we always have free
will. In fact, much of the time we act
on determinism. Rather, you say we are given
brief windows of time where we can act on free will.
This seems intuitively true. In fact, you say that each of us
has a sort of moving frontline of free will, and the way we act
in those moments dictates our determined course of action in
the future. Based on this, how can we
ourselves know when we act on free will?
Is it a Cartesian of free will where I think therefore I have
free will? Or is it something else?
Yeah, so. 1st, to give credit where credit is due.
This essential thesis is one that, as far as I'm aware, was
first articulated by Rabil Yao Dessler.
It appears in Contras Habakira Alef in MKHDAFM Eliahu, and I
personally heard it also from two of my mentors who were both
students above Dessler. But I'll note with respect to
the essential thesis, certainly as I'm integrating it into my
understanding of free will, is it limits the discussion of free
will exclusively to those arenas in which it is a question of
moral choice. And to that extent do we have
the wherewithal to know that we are choosing freely.
If we are aware of our facing a dilemma of moral choice, then we
have the wherewithal to indeed be able to enunciate a clear
understanding of two alternatives.
We're essentially and. And here, if anything, I'm going
to be basing myself most directly upon Rambam in the
second chapter of the guide in considering what the the nature
of the sin of Adam and Chava was.
The realization that the a priori basis of all choice lies
in the distinction between truth and falsity.
Where on the one hand, when might well argue that truth
versus falsity is no choice, Truth is real, falsity is not.
You can't actually choose what doesn't exist.
But in our post free world being endowed with, to employ Rambam's
terminology, imagination, which of course Rambam tells us in the
second unit of the guide in chapter 12, is identical with
the Yeatser Hara. We have the wherewithal to be
creative. That creativity is, on the one
hand, what drives Adam and Khava out of Ghana Eden, because Ghana
Eden is not a creative run close parentheses on that.
What's germane for our purposes is that in as much as that
encumbrance, that the endowment that we receive as result of
eating of the tree of knowing good and evil is imagination,
creativity, we have the wherewithal to create an
alternative reality. So while in the anti tree world
it was truth versus falsity, in the post tree world it becomes
good versus evil and good and evil are both realities.
The symmetry, the asymmetry of truth versus falsity is
sundered. Good and evil strike us as two
alternative realities. There is a pseudo symmetry, and
the challenge for us is on the one hand we have the wherewithal
to be able to see either of these as true if we so choose.
But on the other hand, one of those supposed truths, deep down
we know is a lie because after all, something that we've
concocted at a falsity. So where I am able to see
clearly 2 alternatives that will both be able to present
themselves to me as truths, and simultaneously I have the
wherewithal to be able to distinguish between them and say
this one is true, this one is a lie.
That's precisely where I am choosing as a free agent endowed
with moral choice. And again, that's something that
only applies to a relatively limited number of experiences
that any of us have over the course of our days, arguably
even of course over the course of our lives.
Because in so many domains of life, either I have no allure to
embrace falsity because it's patently clear to me that the
alternative to what I perceive to be the truth is completely
untenable. Or the truth is something that
is so rarefied and lofty that I have no sense of being drawn to
such a level of truth, and I'm living on my own routine in
either of those instances. Though, I'm not choosing freely.
I'm choosing freely where I'm able to see both of those
alternatives. And of course the critical word
that needs to be invoked in Speaking of free moral choice is
responsibility. Because when I have moral
choice, I have responsibility. Now those who will negate the
existence of free will obviously deny human responsibility
altogether. That's self-evident.
And indeed, I think that's part of the agenda.
Can we prove that we as human beings are responsible?
Again, I'm going to buzz it that we cannot.
But I will not only argue that we believe that human beings are
responsible, but that we can even sense our being responsible
where we are when we are under the circumstances in which we
are choosing. And to the extent that we make
those choices as responsible human beings, from our
perspective that's the greatest gift that God gave us, gives us
to be responsible human beings. We are aware that that is indeed
what is taking place. We have chosen, and we bear
responsibility, first and foremost to the effect that the
choice will have on us, and second of all, of course, the
effect it will have on the rest of the world.
So that's actually a very fascinating point of view
because I think that sort of implicit in the Jewish well
Tanchung is that there is an idea of objective truths of some
sort because you know of belief in in Hashem.
But it sounds like from the thesis you're putting forth that
actually objective truths in a post tree world is not, is not
really accurate. It's more as though God imbues
us with some sort of sense of what is true and what is false
in our moral choices. But there's no you can't really
say that there is objective truth in a post tree world.
Well, what what I would prefer to say is we do believe
subjectively that there exists an objective truth out there.
Just we can't know that objective truth as long as we
are bounded by our own subjectivity in here.
Which is ultimately, of course, why lawyer Aniha Adan Bakai, why
mankind cannot see God while alive in this world.
Because, you know, we enunciate as a foundation of our belief.
What we read in Yamiyahu chapter 10, verse 10, Hashem Eloquim
Emmet God is absolute truth. As Rambam notes in citing these
words in the first chapter of the Laws of Fundamentals of
Torah. That is, God is unconditional
absolute truth. Everything else is conditional
contingent truth. But we aren't able to connect
with truth on that level, which is why as long as we are alive
in this world, mankind cannot see.
We all understand from Rambam third chapter of the Guide that
seeing in this context means understanding.
We cannot understand God. That's a Verity that
circumscribes us in this world. But there's one critical caveat
that we always need to bring into this discussion, and this
is a principle that is enunciated by the Talmud
Gomorrah in tractate Sotah, page 9.
The context is one that we should at the very least note
the expression in three pity words.
Nicarine de Vere, Emet Words of truth are recognizable now.
The context is downright unseemly.
The the context is So how did Dilila know that Shimshon had
indeed revealed the truth after he had deceived her so many
times? And that's the answer.
Where's the truth are recognizable.
Dila is not exactly in the the the pantheon of people who live
their lives in such ethereal consonants with truth, was she?
But that's exactly the point. Even she could recognize truth
if she wanted to, all the more so all the rest of us.
In other words, the the principle of Nicarim de Veremet
means, if I may express it in in terms of a faith orientation,
No, God did not dump us in on the deep end of the pool and say
sink or swim, because then we would have sunk.
God endowed us with the wherewithal to be able to
perceive truth if we so desired, which of course simultaneously
means that we won't if we don't so desire, because that's part
of responsibility. But we have the wherewithal to
resonate with troops. And I must note it is in this
expansive view of the implications of Nikarim Devre
emit that Rabiyu Dahlevi invokes this line in the 4th Treatise of
Safar Kuzare in Section 17. And that's precisely the
resonance that he's affirming, that we have the wherewithal to
connect with truth when we sew on.
Fantastic. So in an article published to
the OU titled Is Yeshiva Education Accomplishing What It
Should You Write? Even advanced students are often
appallingly ignorant of the axioms of Jewish belief and are
at a total loss to grapple with the theological, philosophical,
and spiritual challenges of contemporary society.
What are the most important topics with which you believe it
is vital for yeshiva students to be familiar with?
If I remember Greg, I think I wrote that article 20 years ago
or so. It's only gotten worse since
then, for sure. Unfortunately, the way I would
express what to me is the most crucial lacuna and on some
plane. Everything we've discussed today
is a subset of this problem is the ability to engage in
rigorous critical thinking, and I'm going to place my primary
emphasis here upon the word rigorous.
That is, if we cannot define our terms in a compelling manner
that enables us to understand just what it is that we're
discussing, then for all intents and purposes we're not
discussing anything. And all too often matters that
indeed pertain to the foundations of our belief
system. The foundations of what
believing into our means. When we talk about God, what are
we talking about? Are left to the kind of hand
waving sloppiness that is an insult to the subjects at hand,
and of greater concern to me, a put off to those sincere, often
gifted, but not necessarily but sincere students who are craving
such a rigorous level of understanding and the greatest
tragedy. Those who crave rigorous
thinking will find it. But if they're not going to find
it in the vape me trash in Torah study, they'll find it someplace
else, whether they will remain formally affiliated with Jewish
beliefs and practices or not, their minds, their hearts, or
someplace else. And those are precisely the
students who should be the spiritual leaders of the next
generation. And this discussion is one that,
put it in very clear terms, is veritably impossible to conduct
without the invocation of the classics of Jewish thought.
In particular, of course, that's Rishonnais Farrad, medieval
Spain, where for a number of historical reasons, that was
very much the the parlance of the time of the society.
It had a lot to do with the accessibility of Arabic
translations of the classics of Greek philosophy that have been
translated between the 8th and 10th centuries and posed a
challenge to theistic systems that existed in the Arabic
speaking world that is both Judaism and Islam.
And there was a need to enunciate a coherent, cogent
response. But in that case the reality is
that there isn't any period with which we bear that one, because
it was a poor society in which the intellectual foment that was
taking place outside was taking place inside, and the challenge
was principally coming from a system that reported to explain
everything through rationalism. Of course, then it was near
Arithelianism. Today it's science, but still a
system that purports to do away with any need for revelation,
any need for a theistic system. And and the Rishonim, these
luminaries of medieval Spain established for us a set, a
corpus that we ignore at our peril, and unfortunately ignore
what we do. So what would you say would be
like a way of kind of fixing the system, right?
The Yeshiva system? What?
What is it? What would you change about the
current setup? Let's just say.
Well, you know, I believe it was roughly 1/4 century ago that
Professor Alan Bloom published his famous transformative The
Closing of the American Mind. And in summation, his essential
thesis was it is ignorance of the classics that provide the
Christ for an intellectual discourse that results in that
closing of the American mind. I feel pained to declare that we
should write a sequel, The Closing of the Jewish Mind.
And it's the same reason, because of ignorance of the
classics upon which any meaningful intellectual
discourse pertaining to Judaism need to be predicated.
That is, study of these classics of the reshoning obviously is a
challenge here, and I'm not in any way minimizing the
challenge. The challenge is one of
translation, and I don't mean linguistic translation, I mean
translating concepts. Obviously the response to the
challenges of Neo Sicilianism is not going to cut it as the exact
same response transposed onto the challenges that we face
today. But that enterprise of
translation is eminently doable. I can testify to that
personally, because I've spent my life doing it, and it's only
by so doing that we have the wherewithal to engage in a
meaningful intellectual discourse.
And we're not. Now, I I need to impose one
additional caveat here, just So what I'm stating here won't be
misunderstood. I I certainly had the experience
of eminent rabaim in yeshiva rebutting what I just said.
I don't give them intellectual rigor.
I told them about Mahoga exos and see those.
That's not intellectual rigor. And far be it from me, Kasma
Khalila, to minimize the intellectual rigor that is
necessary in order to understand a dissension between the exos
Akhoshan and the Mishbat. But that's not what we're
talking about here. We're talking about something
that impinges upon the essence of why I am what I am, my world
view, and that's not being addressed.
Would that there could be a meaningful intellectual
discourse with the same tenor of rigor as pertains to the
Makhlokovsson Zeos, But there isn't, because the mentors what
who have been guiding that discourse, are as ignorant, are
as ignorant of their students as their students are, if not more
so. Would you would you consider it
to be like a, the cause of this being fear maybe that you know,
kind of the there's this idea, I don't agree with it necessarily
but there's this idea that getting too into the quote UN
quote rationalism of the Rishonim will lead people.
Like especially starting with the Rambam will lead people to
enlightenment sort of, you know, secularism and so and so forth.
Whereas the response has been the last few, 100 years since is
Kabbalah is the response. And then you have with like the
Reform and Conservative and and versus the Orthodox you have
this, this the Orthodox moving away from let's say Tanakh
study, our learning our history and going towards just Talmudic
study. So do you find that these are
based in kind of a willful ignorance?
I'm not going to come to offer explanations for the sort of
ignorance I I I identify the phenomenon of ignorance.
What I will also note is, is it possible to misread Rambam on a
level that will fan the flames of such a facile understanding?
Of course it is. And that's precisely the
problem. Because where can you find
ostensibly the serious study of Ramam today?
It's in the Academy. It's not in the Shiva.
This is a phenomenon that isn't new.
Rufkuk derided it 100 years ago. But that's precisely the
challenge, to recognize that the Rishonim, the giants of Jewish
philosophy, weren't interested in abstract philosophy.
They were interested in avodatashem, how we come to
serve God, and the philosophy was the means through which to
be able to come to that avodatashem.
It is perhaps the greatest tragedy, and simultaneously the
most pernicious negation of what they represented that for the
most part nowadays the study of those classics takes place in a
sterile academic environment in which Abedad Hashem isn't at all
on the table. Unfortunately, academic is an
adjective with two meanings, and those two meanings in practice
are inseparable, pertaining to the Academy and being completely
divorced from the realities of life.
And it is a problem that can only be redressed through
placing the study of these classics in the context of
Avatar Tashem in precisely that environment that should be
completely oriented, the cultivation of Avatar Tashem.
Now, with respect to Kabbalah, I I really don't regard myself as
an appropriate address. That's something that is
undoubtedly better discussed with others than with me.
I will distinguish between the Kabbalah of the Richo name and
the Kabbalah of the Akaro name. I think that that bifurcation is
an inescapable 1 But simultaneously, what I will
stress is that, as far as I can tell from the extent to which I
have engaged in that study, Kabbalah is not intended to be a
substitute for theology. It's a form of avodah.
If you take the premises of Kabbalah and understand them as
theological principles, that is liable to lead to heresy because
it's simply appropriating something in the wrong context
and misunderstanding what it's coming to teach.
So that arena that is oriented with respect to Abu Datashem?
OK, fine. So there can be different
courses that can legitimately be in the same field of inquiry.
On the subject of Adatashem and a sheer that I gave on Shabbat
yesterday, I had occasion in response to one of the questions
that was raised by someone in the audience to invoke a a slim
volume that is not just packed with meaning.
But the very agenda of this slim volume, which much to my chagrin
I think is almost unknown, is 1 from which we can all learn so
very much. Sefar Hazikaron of the Ritva,
the Ritva, one of the foremost disciples of the Rashba who was
one of the foremost disciples of Ram Ban, is coming squarely from
the baby drash of Ram Ban and thus very much from the context
of Kabbalah Rishonim. Because after all, Ram Ban is
one of the most important expositors of Kabbalah among the
Rishonim among the medieval sages of Spain.
And the Ritva wrote this volume with one single agenda, And that
is to defend Rambam in God of the Perplexed.
From the attacks of Rambam in his Carpenter in the Torah.
And the Ritva himself writes that you could say that I am,
I'm. I'm replacing the Hebrew idiom
with English idiom, sticking my neck out over something that I
don't even agree with because I'm coming from the Kabbalah of
Ramban. But it's important for us to
appreciate, says the Ritva, that Rambam has a cogent alternative
view of that of Kabalim, and we have to respect them both.
And parenthetically, the Ritva regards Rambam's not basing
himself upon Kabalah as resulting from either he's not
having heard Kabbalah or is having heard it and rejected it,
and he regards both of those possibilities as cogent and
acceptable. You don't have to be in cabal,
you can be a philosopher. That's legitimate as long as you
subordinate is subordinated to Abu Dhabi.
And and ultimately, while I am not in any way coming to oppose
the study of Kabbalah, certainly Kabbalah is your name.
Unfortunately nowadays it seems to me that Ramban is is well
enough incensed in that zone of ignorance of contemporary
students that his Kabbalah as well, but unknown as well.
But if we're engaging in Abu Dhabi shaman country, we need to
appreciate it. There are different strokes for
different folks and for the rigorous thinkers.
I don't believe Kabbalah will be able to provide the answers in
particular because again, it is not providing you with
theological system, the understanding of Emunot vadeyot
that the luminaries of medieval Spain provided in their works.
You know, from my own personal experience and I'm sure you feel
the same way when I was you go from like you know 4th grade to
5th grade, you know you bear your understanding of God and
and and is is based on Tanakh and on a very childish level
obviously. And then all of a sudden you're
you're studying Mishnah and Gemara and there is really no
discussion. It's not I wouldn't consider it
a quote UN quote spiritual book or books and the you know, the
feeling you get is almost like what are we doing?
What are who are we serving, why are we serving him?
It's that that whole process of education, it feels like it's
just missing. So what you're saying really
resonates a lot. And I will say, you know, part
of the reason why I started this podcast is, you know, as a Proud
to fire D we, we wanted to get people interested in learning
Rambam and the Rishonim. And actually we just started a
series recently called Getting to Know the Rishonim.
We just did one episode on the Ralbag with Rabbi Matt
Schneeweiss and Rabi David Campbell.
So for those who haven't heard that, please check it out.
And I really, really appreciate what what you had to say right
now 'cause there's really just on point.
So thank you for that. And I can just know, with
respect to that transference from 4th grade to 5th grade to
express it, if I may, in contemporary terms of
developmental psychology, Jean Piaget would have described that
in terms of the transference from the concrete operation
stage to the formal operation stage.
In other words, cultivating the ability to abstract, which of
course finds its expression explicitly in the Mishnah, the
end of the fifth chapter of Avot bin Hamesh la Mikya Ben Esse la
Mishnah. That is, in order to be able to
deal with the abstract concepts of Mishnah, you need a level of
maturation, 10 years, roughly the beginning of the the formal
operation stage that goes beyond the concrete thinking of the
five year old, which is adequate for understanding the graph.
And from my perspective, that's precisely the issue.
In other words, the moment that one reaches that capacity to
abstract, the questions become a completely different order of
magnitude. And inevitably, the need for
compelling answers becomes that much greater.
Unfortunately, it pains me to say how many of our brethren go
through life with a nursery school theology.
That's a tragedy, and it's not going to cut it.
That is, if I may invoke Gruffkok again in this regard,
Rav Cooke regarded the hallmark of the contemporary era as one
in which facile platitudes of faith are inadequate even for
Bingo NI even for people at a mediocre level of aptitude.
And he regarded that as a blessing because it forces us to
enunciate our beliefs on a more compelling plane.
And if I may just add here a personal comment from and and
another arena of my own life, I can personally testify the
extent to which the global marketplace of ideas there is
such a profound hunger and thirst for what Toro Judaism has
to say. Not only among Jews, and all too
often that summons those unanswered because we are
denunciating what the Torah has to say, what a tragedy.
And we we just a week ago read Parashat Vaikka and there is a
Midrash at the end of Parashat Vaikkaraba.
Without going into all the nuances of the Midrash, I'll
just cut to the quick The bottom line of this passage in the
Midrash is if you don't make known my divinity to the nations
of the world, I will exact retribution from you.
If we're not doing our job, and I suspect in the saddest of
terms we are not, then that's a summons and an indictment.
And I actually think you brought up Rough Cook.
There's a I'm paraphrasing, but I believe he says atheism
cleanses the the, the dross of petty religion where I feel like
in a way the modern age today is forcing us to re examine how we,
you know, approach Judaism. Because it it has become very,
you know, superficial in many ways.
And you know, people just have this kind of simple faith
attitude and we're not gonna dig any deeper.
So I feel like these these challenges in a way, are are
God's way of telling us, you know, we need to start
reassessing things. You know, inevitably what comes
to mind in this regard is, and I think it's definitely pertains
very directly to the subject of this discussion.
And when one considers the world of the shtetl that has been so
idealized in the various fictional historical accounts
that purport to tell us what the shtetl was like.
And it it should, after all, be self-evident to us that if the
shtetl was indeed the sort of idyllic world that it is
purported to have been, then people's faith would not have
collapsed like a House of Cards the moment they left the shtetl.
And what seems to me perhaps the most apartment analogy to life
in the shtetl, if I may invoke an analogy from very far afield,
is the tragedy of burning down the rainforests.
That is, when sections of the rainforest and the Amazon are
destroyed. The real tragedy isn't the
destruction itself, it's that the rainforest cannot
regenerate. It can't regenerate because
since there's almost constant rain, the nutrients are
constantly being flushed out of the soil and as a result, the
environment that's actually very nutrient poor.
What preserves the rainforest is a whole web of interconnected
interdependencies that keeps everything going as long as
there's no disturbance to. The moment there's disturbance,
everything collapses, and and again everything collapses to an
extent that it's almost impossible to regenerate.
Likewise, the shtetl. The shtetl lasted for centuries.
There could have been instances in which it was on the brink of
collapse, even in its undisturbed state, but it still
kept on going. It kept on going, if I may
invoke a very popular refrain from field around the roof
because of tradition. But you know, tradition can only
take you so far, especially when the level of scholarship is to
invoke another line from Fiddler on the Roof at three.
I started Hebrew school at 10. I learned to trade.
Yiddish Guide is exactly as much as a child is able to absorb
from age 3 to age 10. Period.
So tradition works as long as tradition works, but if there
isn't going to be a deep, satisfactory scholastic
understanding, it's not going to last.
And that's exactly where we are today.
There are still strata in our community that I think are
hoping for tradition to keep things going, and it is as such
that when all is set and done, the paradigm of the yeshiva has
really not changed very much in the last 200 years.
But we're hemorrhaging. It's the the deep, dark secret
that everyone knows but no one likes to talk about.
We're hemorrhaging because we have a problem that we're not
addressing. I pray that we should finally
realise that we need to address it.
That's also part of human responsibility.
Agarach was giving us a job to do.
Beautifully said. Very nice.
Can I just add a few? Yeah, sure.
Just like sort of to add on to the points that were made and I
I very much feel with Benji that and like you said like you know
we sort of stuck with this very primitive theology like very
immature theology in some sense. I I remember like once this
really stuck with me. I was learning philosophy in in
like the in like the shul with the with the sort of Carusa and
sort of connecting it to the parsha and there was a rough
there who said like you know it's us or to learn philosophy
unless you've learned Tanakh. And I sort of found that so
oxymoronic because like this is a Rob who doesn't teach Tanakh
like in high school like you know it's just Talmud.
So like the problem is really there is sort of in in the
culture I grew up in there was sort of a a disdain for a
philosophy in general. And if the mentality is that you
need Tanakh to learn philosophy, but sort of blocking out Tanakh
in order to block out philosophy too is a very, it was very
something that stuck with me, that's that's for sure.
Yeah, unfortunately it it it provides A medically sealed box
from which there's no escape. I I can recall a number of years
ago I was being interviewed on a a live radio program and I
invoked the Rishonim. And one of the callers called in
and said you're not allowed to read the Rishonim except for the
prism of the the current Torah luminaries.
And it struck me as a way of guaranteeing that there will
never be any escape from this mindlessness.
But I I pray that there needs to be a shift and the shift will
come. I just can't committedly pray
that it should happen in a manner that doesn't simply lead
to a horrific falling away on a level that, unfortunately, the
current paradigm of the sheep education is liable to engender.
Totally. That was very well put.
And and like, like you said, there's a thirst for the sort of
Judaism, the sort of Jewish answers in the modern era that
we have in order to share but sort of is not being spread
enough. I think with the like with the
New Atheist movement, I was very drawn to all these debates with
the New Atheists and their opponents.
But it sort of struck me that the New Atheists, as much as
they sort of tried to dig into the Judaism I believe like or
the religion that I believed in, it never stuck with me because
the Jewish answer to these problems is vastly different
than the than other religions answers in some sense.
And it's like there is a very powerful, like Jewish
theological background which is so important to spread nowadays.
And it's like just to add on to what you said there, what I.
What I can just add further to what you just noted is it's of
course very difficult to characterize what that
difference is, but if I I need to invoke one word to
characterize it, it is a realism.
Judaism was never transcendentalist.
It was always focused on living in this world.
For Rabih Udalibi, any spirituality that is
otherworldly spirituality is always suspect of being
counterfeit spirituality. For both Rabih Udalibi and
Rambam, it is axiomatic that the Torah will never demand of you
to believe in something that contravenes your sense of logic.
Because doing so, whether it is impossible for logic to be
contravened, contravened, or not, doing so will necessarily
be unreal to you. And the Torah doesn't want you
to believe in something that will be perpetually at
loggerheads with your sense of what's real.
So that realism in itself engenders that experiential
conviction. I know because I experience, and
experience is real to me. And there's something that is
very healthy. I mean cathartic in being able
to have that sense of a healthy experience.
But you need to engender that. You need to sensitize a person
to it, and above all else, you need to prepare the vessels in
order to be able to connect with it, and we aren't doing that.
If anything, I suspect that nowadays there's much more of a
tendency toward a sort of transcendentalism that
eviscerates this very power of Torah.
Wow, beautifully said. It's very beautiful.
So do you have time for one more question?
Please by all means. OK, so considering Maimonides
emphasis on God's absolute unity and transcendence, how might the
interconnectedness and interdeterminacy found in
quantum mechanics such as the observer effect reflect or
challenge traditional Jewish understanding of divine
Providence and God's interaction with the world?
In the context of Maimonides philosophical framework where
the laws of nature are seen as expressions of God's will, how
might we understand the interdeterminacy and non
locality of quantum mechanics? Is it possible that these
quantum phenomena reveal a more intimate involvement of the
divine and the fabric of reality beyond the fixed laws
traditionally attributed to God's creation?
I I have to admit that I'm going to take a rather circumspect
approach to this, in that while I myself by training I'm a
scientist and I feel a a very robust resonance with study of
science, it it still is important for us to bear in mind
apropos what we noted earlier, the limitations of what science
can or cannot state. I I feel compelled to admit that
I rather circumspect all this all together with the attempt to
wed theological assertions to any particular scientific
system. That is, I I do want to get back
to quantum mechanics. But before I do, I feel very
much beholden to, first of all, David Hume in An Inquiry
Concerning Human Understanding, the Skeptical, Skeptical Doubts
Concerning the Operations of Understanding both Part one and
Part 2, and his skeptical solution of these doubts that
immediately follow thereafter Part One and Part 2 in
appreciating the extent to which altogether that which we
experience on some plane is the experience itself, and the
attempt to impose upon it some causal understanding, is always
going to be presumptive but never definitive.
Essentially, the problem of induction that we already noted
at the outset with respect to a limited corpus of data and and
even more so than Hume Thomas Cohn's The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, which I realize is a work that has been
appropriated far beyond what Kuhn had in mind.
He wasn't saying that science is merely some kind of free for all
that doesn't get anywhere, but simultaneously the realization
that science progresses through a series of paradigms and none
can be taken to be definitive or final as long as there's any
empirical data at all. That doesn't jive with the
currently accepted all accepted paradigm.
And that's pretty much always the case in any science that
continues to be a subject of research.
So for me to invoke science in the sense of a particular system
in understanding the theology of Rambam is something that I will
eschew, and ultimately I'm going to argue that Rambam would
eschew it as well. That is when we consider what
Rambam is doing in the Laws of Fundamentals of Torah chapters 3
and four, where Ramam is explicitly invoking Aristotelian
physics and doing so in order to provide the the tangible
expression of the imperative that he enunciates in chapter 2,
Halakhatu, How do you get the love of God and reverence of
God? By contemplating nature, I
humbly submit that not only would I not think to fulfill
that imperative by studying our civilian physics, but that if
Rahman were alive today, he would completely agree that we
shouldn't be studying our civilian physics.
I often wonder what Rahman would have to say about people who
obsess on his medical statements after medicine has had the
opportunity to develop another 800 years since he made those
statements. We actually just did recently
did a podcast with Doctor Len Goodman on this exact topic.
Like, what would Rambam say today?
I could send you that separate. I think it's you.
You'd really enjoy it. But and.
There are certain things that Rambam stated that are that were
really prescient and have relevance conceivably 4
generations to come. But there's an awful lot that's
based upon gielenic medicine and the presumptions of Aristotle
that are completely obsolete. And Rambam didn't study the
science of some other time. He studied the science of his
time. Granted, the science of his time
was on many levels merely a carryover of the science that
had developed over a Millennium earlier, but but that wasn't
because Rambam was bent upon some kind of reactionary
science. I suppose that was the way
science developed in those days. We've graduated beyond that.
So in fine, you know, with respect to the imperative of
studying science, to me more than anything else, the
imperative that we learned from Rambam is that God orders the
universe. And it is specifically by
studying that order that we're able to cohere, as it were, with
God and what He has revealed to us.
It is of course in this vein that we appreciate very deeply
why for Rambam, this is an idea that he enunciates in his
introduction to Rambam the Shmona Prakim and further in his
commentary on the 5th chapter, Revolt and the greatest length
in the Guide Unit 2, chapter 29, where Rambam emphasizes that
from his perspective, both that which we describe as the miracle
and that which we describe as nature are reflections of the
same system that God creates. Now understanding what Ramam is
standing there is not a trivial enterprise, and I don't know to
what extent we really have the time to go into.
At greater length there's a a a very impassioned, would almost
say diatribe against what Ramam states there in Ababanelle's
commentary on a vote Chapter 5, on the that which was created in
the twilight zone of Creation and Nakalat, a vote where he's
against Ramam, he's also against Robbie Udalevi.
And I think there's a fundamental lacuna in
Ababanelle's understanding of what Robbie Udalevi and Ramam
are both stating. But for our purposes at present,
the enterprise that both of them enunciate with respect to that
which we describe as the miracle on some plane embedded in a
divinely ordained system is so compelling.
Because certainly in the case of Rambam, but to some degree also
for Abu da Levi, it is an imperative for us to strive to
come to God through exercise of our intellect.
When we encounter the enigmatic miracle, the best we can do is
stare at it, a gape with our jaws having dropped and our
intellects being quiescent. Rahman isn't interested in our
intellects being quiescent. He's interested in our
harnessing our intellects as a means through which to come to
the source of everything that takes place in the system in
God. And to that extent, even
regarding the miracle as somehow embedded in nature on a level
that we don't understand, is completely germane from his
perspective. Again, in keeping that intellect
constantly active, I always like to use a a mathematical analogy
here that if the graph has a a sharp corner to it, then the
function is behaving in a discontinuous manner.
There's no way of defining the derivative.
You don't know what's taking place.
And in some plane, again in terms of your bringing to bear
your analytical capabilities, you're forced to be quiescent.
Roman doesn't want you to be quiescent, he wants to be using
your mind constantly. You know from we just Roman
first introduced the centrality of the mind in the guide first
chapter, where it tells you that the essence of God imprinted on
upon man is the intellect. That's Selim and Dmut.
Where does he enunciate that point?
The last time in the guide? The last chapter where he gives
you the four levels of completeness and tells you the
4th and highest level of completeness is intellectual
completeness through which a human being is a human being.
That's precisely the summons. So the study of science is
critical. It's critical in order to be
able to see God as author of system, but so far as the
specific nuances, Rambam, I submit, is somewhat skeptical
with respect to that. There are a number of places in
the guide where I could invoke evidence for that.
Rabiu Dalevi is decidedly so in describing nature.
The study of nature, in the first treatises of Guzare in
section 77 as Shoaash Emunaba, Shoaash Hamevi, The root of
faith and the root of rebelliousness.
Because you can think in any way you want.
So what I am going to invoke from science is as a believer,
something that will enhance my connection with God, as the
author of all that is. But I'm not going to attempt to
establish a theological system through being wedded to a
particular paradigm of physics or any other branch of the
sciences. Now, with respect to quantum
mechanics, what I do feel compelled to emphasize again
hedging, that there are certainly enough problems in the
current paradigm of quantum mechanics to expect that it will
be at some point superseded by another paradigm that will
supplant the currently accepted one.
But it does give us a sense of the extent to which indeed, in
this world, in our perception of reality, there is that
irreducible subjectivity, that is the centrality of the
observer in quantum mechanics. As even to the extent that the
parameters of physical reality may be undefined, not merely
unknown, in the absence of an act of observation.
If you ask me, does that have philosophical implications in my
world view? My response is of course not
because I regarded that as necessarily a final word, and
also not because I am going to become some kind of inveterate
ellipsis. Who doesn't believe that there
is any well defined reality out there?
But again, because as we already noted, we do believe that there
is an objective reality out there, but we also are
circumspect in appreciating our own limitations in the extent to
which we can know it on any plan beyond our own subjectivity in
here. And to that extent, again,
that's something that I can certainly borrow, at the very
least at the level of analogy from quantum mechanics without
being wedded to the particular paradigm.
But it's not going to affect my conviction that on the one hand,
God is indeed the author of the system that I observe in the
world, and as author, he's also sovereign over that system, and
simultaneously that through the order of that system I am able
to trace my way to the orderer. Not a proof, but a direction.
Wow. That was that was amazing.
Thank you. Wow really was an honor to have
you on and my brain is just got a great workout so I I
appreciate that and I if you have anything to plug quickly
please go ahead and definitely your channel we we.
Mentioned At this point I'm just going.
Well, I, I, I, I invite everyone to our YouTube channel, Jewish
Philosophy Matters. It's still very much of A work
in progress. There's sadly not a whole lot of
content on it yet, but it is a platform that we do hope to be
cultivating further and and certainly to connect through
that. So we have some kind of a sense
of where things should continue to develop because I think we
have the same agenda. We need to enhance the extent to
which our Rabat Hashem is something that can indeed be not
only rigorous. But compelling the generations
that lie ahead and us. Absolutely.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
This was amazing and hope we hope to do this again.
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