Q&A -Unanswerable Questions, Proselytization, & Chasidism (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

this is q a yeah in other words science tells us how the heavens go and religion tells us how to get to heaven and I was wondering if uh if Judy is in the Harris to such a princess the Noma principle of Stephen J Gould yeah none of a laughing might just smashed cereal um he's coming for a gigantic amount of critique for that and it's a good example of someone who's stepping outside of this field and of course two Fields about with respect to which you don't have to be trained you don't have to think about it you never have already read any books about it and you become a pundit because of your expertise in other areas one of them is philosophy the other one's religion um but the idea that of religion and science are not overlapping is absurd first of all this is in his religion their religions and these religions have their statements about what they believe and some may not have any commitments as to the way in which the physical world runs but some do Jews and famously says that the world is not infinitely old science used to believe trumpet celebrate the lack of a beginning to the universe up to 1965. and then they change their minds uh because of the big bang and the background radiation we've been saying that the world has no beginning has a beginning for thousands of years that definitely is an overlap if you thought that a human being is nothing but a machine running I'm blind causal mechanical principles and therefore what you do is completely caused by prior circumstances then you couldn't have any free will and Jason celebrates free will and yes I don't believe that soft determinism is correct so uh one wants to debate that philosophical to the school because we could do that so I think it's just uh it's a grand pronouncement in this peace speaking in the peacemaking spirit but um it doesn't fit the facts it's just not a competency have you look it up you'll find many people who criticized it as uh totally unreasonable yeah I've been learning um when you're learning the Hebrew whichever variant for what you're learning I guess this is true of learning languages generally but I'm trying to fasten on to either like the part of a letter or a word that is it's the best way forward to memorizing it or to like incorporating it and also I'm trying to understand what part of that word is the most valuable because you can't direct your attention to all of it at once you can't look at the sound of it and the actual shape of the word and the arrangement of the letters at the page you only have so much time and I'm finding like I don't know what to prioritize when I'm trying to pick up these words okay I'm not a linguist I did I did very badly at languages it was always a week a week part of my education the only way I became competent in Hebrew I was subjected to the Synchro swim method I was here in 1964 at my castle of cook on a Jewish agency program there were 10 of us from America and for the moment we worked with Yeshiva nothing was in English nothing period we're in room with each other rooms with with Israeli boys and all this year were given in Hebrew understand fine don't understand too bad it was total immersion in three months I was speaking Hebrew for me it was the biggest gift in the world and I said learn out of books and take exams and memorize yourself and so on it was I never would have I don't think I would ever achieved it in three months I was speaking the language it's a gigantic gift to me so I can't I can't uh help you with that I think you have to look into at the books that that are designed by linguists teachers of language to help you do that but the examples that you give Santa real non-starters the shapes of the letters you know the sound of the word I mean it's the sequence of letters and there's a certain structure you've certainly have heard about the idea of ashorish the root some people think that there are three letter roots of her said that there are two letter roots and uh there are systematic ways in which a word's meaning is built out of the root plus the rest of it which imposes a construction on the root um you have to master the root system and you have to master the basic ways in which roots are transformed into full words whether they're nouns or or verbs or adjectives Hebrew is a highly structured language and if you pay attention to classical Hebrew words it probably has the smallest vocabulary of any any language in the world don't tell me about telephone and encyclopedia you know they spell them in Hebrew you know you look up on a wall and you see a words you're recognize is probably Greek spelled it in Hebrew letters um so it's not that difficult a language to learn there are nuances of course and their exceptions of course but the basic structure is common and I think every book on Hebrew has it but what how to prioritize the more nuanced matters how many of the of the seven constructions you should learn can you skip some of them at the beginning yes you can which one should you Skip and actually skip these are things that I can't help you with I just I struggled with it myself yeah um um created the concept of the uh the bread of Shame my question today is what can I do to get rid of this curiosity and this voice that keeps asking you these unanswerable questions well I mean the the question is is he has a a an Impulse to ads unanswerable questions how can we get rid of this this uh impulse to ask unanswerable questions first of all unanswerable wow that's a big one impossible to answer how would you know that a question is impossible to answer how would you know that even if you were 83 I would ask you that question you're not near that I don't think um so this is giant literature out there and the chances are that the question has been asked two dozen times in various further and discussions exists first thing you do is research it let me go to people who are fairly knowledgeable and who could let you in on what what the uh what the resources are number one uh number two even if questions unanswerable that doesn't that's at the end of the story I have a whole Shear called living with questions you can't answer what do you do about the question that you can't answer well I'm not going to go through that here now it's on it's recorded it's the rest of my brain but uh one thing you do is you say well if there were an answer where would it come from you know what kind of areas are what dimensions are available to search in and then you ask them how well do we know those areas what's the probability of covering those areas and then if there's the possibility of an answer coming from that area we don't know the area well then Reserve judgment you see well maybe there is an answer I mean questions are linked to one another so sometimes you discover connections which enable you to make progress I I would I would hate I would counsel you not to make the judgments unanswerable unless you the sources said so but you shouldn't make that that uh that and then register it and it plays a role in your overall picture of the world here are principles here's how they work here's how they interact with here's how they apply and here are holes which will have to be acknowledged as old and they're not going to be filled and then it gives uh a certain overall complexion to your picture of the world to have certain things filled in and have certain things that are holes if you if there are let's say six holes you might ask do they have anything in common what I'm supposed to learn about the fact that these six are unanswerable and the other ones aren't unanswerable you know that now so I I think that uh to stifle an Impulse to ask a question we would almost never want to stifle those kinds of impulses yeah this is certain areas that you don't ask about but you don't know what they are you've heard of them and they're hard to Define in the meantime I wouldn't I would not look for a way to stifle an Impulse to ask questions might be rough letting it run yeah certain findings it's uh like this they claim something regarding the moon and recording NASA and I want to ask her these kind of things true I don't know I don't fully understand them I'm wondering the certain scientific findings uh that that are that are like show show that so that's all I guess the so I guess that we're beyond that we couldn't have come up with by ourselves that like that science prove that Torah was was that that certain rabbinic statements showed immature over time well there are people who take a look at some things that are found in our sources and those speculate as to how it would be possible to know it if they weren't told it they didn't have it from from a Divine Source um there is some discussion about these things it's usually vague and complete and uh it's hard to make a case what resources were available to people 2 600 years ago they were not running and chasing rabbits in the forest they had armies of tens of thousands of soldiers which went on campaigns when you have to feed them and you have to give them weapons you have to have a coordinated strategy the tens of thousands of soldiers without SMS to send signals with and somehow they managed to do that uh three thousand years ago there were um four thousand years ago there were uh tablets multi multilingual dictionaries found at ebla because the trading Town people had to communicate with one another so multilingual dictionaries they had a lot of resources that uh that people think of them as just primitive and superstitious and simply not true they were very sophisticated you say well ah we know that they couldn't have known it unless it's very speculative I I don't deal on those things I don't deal on those things why don't we prosthetize to a certain extent to a certain extent okay so now you you put it well proselytize can be in our case give me one of two things that is try to convince people become Jewish or try to convince non-jews to live up to the Jewish laws for non-jews which is does that mean we got any Jewish no we don't proselytize to become Jewish because there's no obligation on an angel to become a Jew even though it would be very good for him but no obligation so I can't come to him and say the creator of the universe wants you to become Jewish I cannot say that to you number one number two between you and me I'm sure this is not being recorded um it's dangerous you know if if you go after people and make them Jewish typically they're coming from some other religion well the other reasons don't like that um we're tolerated all over the world because we're very small and we're not even threatening anybody um but if we were to actively go out and challenge the major religions and try to pull people away from them and although the verse in the book of Isaiah says we're supposed to be an oral language a light into the Nations you don't have to risk your life for that so typically we try to keep a low profile um if someone wants so was interested so you probably know the policy of responsible Jewish authorities and that does exclude some um is to discourage them as much as possible it makes things difficult for them not to show them any special sympathy if they then overcome that negative reception because you know the ones who want to become Jewish are they know this already they've learned this they've been told this expect a rough time for the first few months you know because they're but the whole and then in responsible circles it takes at least a year and many places three to five years before you'll be accepted for conversion uh and the point of that is to discern their motivation to make sure that the motivation really is to take part in the historical place of the Jewish people and the spiritual place of the Jewish people um but we're certainly not going to go out and try to convince people to do that now the same thing holds true to a great extent for convincing them to live up to the Jewish laws of non-jews because typically that will mean giving up practicing the religions they're practicing so for the point of view of those religions it doesn't matter then too much whether the person ends up with a six-pointed star around his neck keeping Shabbos or just abandons his church and disbelieves in the tenets of his church and keeps the laws of the children of Noah they lost a member and they from their point of view mean he's eternally damned and you know we caused that so again uh there's no responsibility for us to court danger for the sake of this project on the other hand I will say uh when we had our own state in this part of the world's geography we were responsible to make sure that every person who lives in ours land lives as the way the Torah wants him to live Jewish or a level non-jewish and that meant that if you lived here you had to live up to those laws there's no way that you could avoid it so it's not as if we don't take responsibility for it it's the the place that it has in our in our the practicality of our lives and in the hierarchy of our concerns when there are millions of Jews who aren't living up the responsibility of Jews that's a much more serious spiritual problem for us and for the world than it is that there are billions of non-jews who aren't living up to the Jewish responsibilities for non-jews so in terms of the priority of our efforts we're going to put Priority into other Jews rather than into uh into uh not just yeah we see that the whole oral traditional Foundation is mass Revelation the fact that's been passed down for Generation to generation in a revealed manner that we can easily Trace back to moshad Sinai but when we look at certain things like let's say luriana Kabbalah um and even even certain aspects of cabal in general but specifically Rihanna and Kabbalah you see a lot of it is very very private very very secret and it would a Critic it would be easy for a Critic to say that a lot of the stores told about him could simply be concoctions made by him or made or me along the way that they're not really authentic because they're of how private they're made they and how um what would you respond to such a credit well let's see now let's figure out what the critic is say you introduced three different categories it's not exactly clear how you meant them to be related first of all you have the oral tradition in general which as you pointed out was taught from generation to generation we can trace it back to Moses I mean some of it arose later but it's in layers and going all the way back and then um you mentioned lurianic Kabbalah okay that's based on the Zohar and of the 15 volumes of the writings of the Rizal which is written down by instead of that they moved to stories about the Rizal man that's a different category that's not luriana Kabbalah at all that certainly isn't part of the oral tradition at all and it is folk tales about things that he did I don't know of any obligation to believe them I'm not saying they're false but I don't know of any obligation to believe them someone who rejects Brianna Kabbalah according to the authorities of the last 500 years is a heretic this isn't voluntary this is a piece of the Jewish tradition which has its roots from Moses to Sinai and the same is true with any part of the oral tradition someone who disbelieves some of the stories about the reason he may be making a stupid mistake but he's certainly not violating a Jewish Norm for which he could be punished so they're not it's not a part at all uh one of the great rabbits of 150 years ago I forget which one it was he said he's talking about stories about Hasidic rabies which is in the same class it's anybody who believes that they're all true is a fool and anybody who thinks that any one of them couldn't be true is heretic that was a nice balanced critical attitude you know nobody's pledging allegiance to all the stories stories do change over time and they and uh uh they can't be verified as being completely accurate there are cases where stories are clearly made up and they become part of the folk literature of the of the Jewish people um there was a rabbi from Muncie this goes back it'll be 25 years when I was at used to join camp steak Hamed under of early title bombs great person he spoke at Charlotte Shooters he'd done research on the story about two brothers who had to one one had a lot of children and one had had no children and they were both farmers and each one felt that he would support the other because the one with a lot of children said when I'm old I have my children to support people and he's old no one's going to support him so what he used to do is the middle of the night he used to take some of his stuff and bring it over to his brother's field and the other brother felt he has a lot of children he's got to feed them I have no children so I had to help him so in the middle of the night each one would be bringing some of his produce over to the other one's field and one night they happened to cross paths and they realized what they were doing and they embraced and that's the place where the temple was built and that spot and of course the stands a direct contradiction to the famous myth about the founding of Rome Romulus and Remus who had a fight and they stabbed each other they both bled to death and where their blood soaked the ground that's where Rome was built so yeah these brothers these brothers and the contrast and everything else has all the children's stories everything else it was made up by a 19th century Jewish author I think in Germany it's a you know and and it became popular and the people so he he did the research and he publicized this and he told this to the boys in the camp and to us as and he wrote articles to point out that that's where it actually came from so um and then he made the following Point let's say the story is true or false but your philosophy your values your ideals are expressed in the stories you make up look at the difference between the Roman story and our story made up they made up a story of two brothers killing each other stabbing each other in the blood in the ground that's where their founding city is and here are two brothers who loved each other and gave to each other and then braced in love let's tell you something about the cultures okay so no one is pledging allegiance to to the stories it doesn't compare with the first two categories that you mentioned uh so you know it's a matter of little little uh important yeah how can we trust the validity of Kabbalah when it's been passed down in by by like one teacher to one student but in such small numbers throughout the generation it could very easily upgrade may say be made up somewhere along the line that's something that that cannot be true with or with the revealed aspect of the oral tradition okay well first of all you have references to a hidden Doctrine in the exoteric materials there's a mission the mission was composed I don't know I didn't say written composed by a real Nasi and was memorized by Scholars and it says there are certain things that you teach to only two students at a time and other you teach only one student at a time and you don't teach it you really give them the the only the chapter headings and they have to understand on their own so obviously there was secret material that goes back now 1900 years take out the Book of Ezekiel to read the first few chapters you will not understand a word it's clear there that there's something secret going on there that that's impossible to understand there are verses in the Torah itself which indicate that there are things which were seen and experienced and not described in detail but it actually occurred that goes all the way back to the beginning of Judaism so the idea that everything was public is certainly not true now um how can you verify that it wasn't made up in the middle of all these sources to indicate there was something you're going to say yeah there was something probably it was lost and this was made up later that now sounds like a conspiracy theory that no one no longer has any any evidence whatsoever in its favor the only thing you could you could possibly ask is the the accuracy of transmission one way you test the actual transmission we do now have writings from that material how consistent is it and how much difference of opinion is there in it Jews have never suppressed difference of opinion in all of our literature there's a difference of opinion are there wildly different accounts of the basic principles like for example you have they'll have in the various different bodies of Christianity where they go from one extreme to another extreme of the cons the concepts the principles the practices the significance of the practice the dates of the holidays you know this is all in in conflict in in Christian circles you know in in this which is was held by a tiny minority the basic principles are all the same the basic uh applications are all the same the terminology is almost all the same there are differences of opinion about various details yes there are but um but they're not fundamental in in that way that's an indication that it wasn't just fluid and you know someone made up at this time and somebody else at that time and that this holds the old tradition as well the the continuity of it gives evidence that uh that it was well preserved yeah so this is a two-part question one is first part is when you were deciding your path what what kind of attracted you and like hasidism in so far as that ended up being part of that for you um and the second part is what is like the dis what is like the distinct Genius of like hasidish Torah like today you know in like the highest circles or the modern that could you give like an inkling of that and how it's distinct okay uh as far as my history is concerned it's I I wrote an essay on it it's on my website called coming home so you can you can read it in detail um in one sentence I found in the Hasidic practice a a environment in which the things that are important to me could be expressed um hasidism has a gigantic intellectual component which is quite difficult subtle tricky and and requires a lot of study to be able to master uh I was also once a musician and music to me is is very important the expression of emotion is also important um and certain types of personal interactions which I have with my represents are not all rabbits are like that but my River was created a certain personal Rapport that Drew me to to Hasidic practice but that's uh that's just a matter of my own now um Hasidic I say Torah literature has a certain style and again this is something that requires three hours to do to do justice too but first of all we talk about Kabbalah you could divide Kabbalah if it's 16 different ways into 16 different categories I'm not setting down the debt structure of Kabbalah but you could make the following distinction between pure capitalistic ideas and principles versus the use of Kabbalah to deepen and broaden our understanding of non-capitalistic subjects so you could use capitalistic sources to create an understanding of putting on filling or of saving our life or of eating matzah or a prayer that would enable you to understand more deeply and and and and live more deeply these things which are part of the regular everyday tradition that everybody is working sending through with verses in the Torah there is a a um a uh a scholarly work called Nicholas Azor I think it's seven volumes where they take quotations of the Zohar and attach them to the verses in the Torah about which they are written with no esoteric capitalistic content it's coming from the Zohar but it's called the revealed revealed portions of the Zohar neglos hazohar so here's seven Vibes there and if you understand Hebrew is it translated into Hebrew and it was written in Jerusalem Aramaic and you can understand it and you get an idea of a capitalistic attitude towards something so that's I think one of those very widespread styles of Hasidic literature is to use capitalistic ideas to illuminate and to deepen our understanding of non-capitalistic matters whether it's texts or or practices um and there are certain themes in terms of the subjects that uh emphasizes one is service of God with the heart like the gemara says God demands the heart and that if you're holy heart your heart is wholly dedicated to God no matter how much you understand now how bright you are how tickle you are now how good you are in some music argument if your heart is totally totally dedicated to God then you are close to God of course a person who's heart is totally dedicated to God will want to learn this all but and understand it of course he will but not everybody is capable and not everybody has circumstances if his question of he and his family starving to death he's not going to be learning the topic he shouldn't be learning the top so that doesn't prevent him from getting close to the Creator also one other and then I'm going to go on to the next question the big enemy and despite what I'm saying now is in common with certain strands of muscle the big enemy is is despair huge so you want to be very careful to teach and to practice a way of self-evaluation even self-criticism that doesn't risk the spirit because the spirit robs you of all your motivations to make any progress at all so that's the big enemy I asked my represents are once about self-evaluation um has been an efficient whether you should do it or not he said yes it's something that's appropriate to do but he said when you think about yourself and you want to evaluate how well you're doing start with something good dwell on it meditate on it this you did well so you understand that you have ability and you and you have goodness in you and then with that generally good feeling about yourself then go and take a look at the things which might need Improvement and and to try to find ways to approve it so that's the second thing but there are many other things that this is just as skimming off the surface yes did Yucca River find out what happened to you yesterday because later on the brothers they would um pretty much after he died they would like say that um you know don't like take revenge on us you know because the sin that we did they seem to almost be um explicit about it and um what else so you're asking whether whether whether Jacob ever found out what they did yeah and even this blessing seems almost allude to you know I'm like in that in antagonistic sort of uh feeling towards uh Joseph from other people I'm not sure if that's from the blessings the blessing that uh yaakov gave to um Yosef yeah that was how kind of alludes to um having like you know like a antagonists like an arrow with like toned men who had like hated him and everything oh okay so there's two things here obviously when the brothers sent the message to Joseph that your father commends you not to take revenge the brothers are saying that Jacob do otherwise he wouldn't have given that command now I chose this he didn't give the command they were lying that's clear she said so and it's clear in logic also but obviously that whole that whole interaction he supposes that he did know number one number two um Jacob would not have to know about the brothers Ellen Joseph in order to know that they were antagonistic to Joseph they were antagonists to Joseph before they saw before he saw they sold it she said Jacob do that without knowing whether about what had happened um I wish because the rabbi Kaplan actually brought up a point that um I'm not sure we ever found the source for it but pretty much that Yosef actually avoided yaakov until pretty much got like the end of his life so that he wouldn't have to like tell him the truth which kind of made it sound like you've never figured it out that I don't know I don't know I remember the source of whether whether he actually found that but it would be to me a little peculiar for the brothers to say black and white that the father knew he didn't know and if Joseph would have reason to think he didn't know then it would be a blatant lie I think it's a blatant lie I think Joseph knew it was a blatant lie anyway but it's a separate issue altogether so I I would take it I would take it that he did know but that he avoided him could be I I don't know he's a mid-russian and nothing in the verses that indicate that one way or the other so I answered your question and I I didn't answer okay yeah okay yeah [Music] the Jewish answer to the trolley problem she was here's the Charlie Pub well I know that I mean Roberts writes about this um because actually asked the Jolly problem and the hazadish was said that uh he he I think he wasn't Doctrine about it because it actually happened it actually happened like someone driving down the caramel Mountain lost control of a cart and close the brakes and he was heading for a crowd and he steered off to the side and killed somebody and then that's set up the debate here this must have been 50 years ago or more and um and uh said it seems to him that uh that what the guy did was right so now to go through all the argumentation it wasn't a child it was it this case it was a car it was a car and the driver of the car turned the car had he not turned it it was plowed into a group of people and by turning it it hit one or a few people rather than a whole bunch um and I just just to let you know I think what the argumentation is just as as Becca ideas like this people are in danger now I'm going to do something to save them of course it happens at these circumstances that if we're going to do this to save them somebody else is going to get hurt but my action is an action of saving them and the proof is that the other guy wasn't there to get hurt I'd have done exactly the same thing the other guy being there to get hurt plays no role in my decision whether he is there isn't there I would do exactly the same thing I would turn the wheel to avoid hitting the crowd so he's getting killed is a secondary effect of my Act of saving them the alternative scenario is where you you stop the vehicle by throwing someone in front of the vehicle and the vehicle hits him and and gets killed in stopping the vehicle that's very different that's where you use this person as a means to save the others you engineer that he should die in order to save the others if he weren't there you wouldn't be able to save the others it's only because he's there you throw in front of the car that you save the others that's a different matter altogether most people's moral intuitions block at that you don't kill one person to save another you don't kill one person to save five people you don't do that you don't kill a person to save five but if in Saving five you buy uh by consequence one another one dies that's okay and what that proves is the utilitarianism is wrong because Utah Terrace would say it's one in five either way so saving five is better than saving what so what do I killed he killed me he didn't kill him even the cases one die or five die and our moral tuition say no that's wrong we're disabled true there's one person on the track and you're diverted it and by active diverting it you killed five people with the same logical pie would be it would be permissible since you're you're diverting to save one person even though the result is five people dying from it no because because I I there's a fundamental mistake here when you say utilitarianism is wrong it doesn't mean utility is zero if he's a utility isn't the whole story right utility is important certainly to engineer that five should die instead of one needs a very big justification how is it that you engineered that more people should die that's morally very questionable right so I it's when you say to the Terrace is wrong doesn't mean territorism doesn't count it doesn't count for everything but this shows that in addition to utilitarian concerns there are other concerns as well but certainly uh certainly turning the one to to end up killing five rather than one be very very difficult to justify with the here the difference is that five die and one doesn't that's a difference that there is not being erased utility is not being erased it's just the utility isn't the only consideration but it is an important moral consideration that's the there's a lot of this this sort of thinking of either it's everything or it's nothing this is an Impulse that I find students have had over the last 25 years you know there's no middle ground there's no there's no give and take there's no there's no compromise it's either All or Nothing especially good and evil you know either on the right side of the wrong side if you're on the right side everything about you is right I mean on the wrong says everything about you is wrong and if you say that no there's something that's a little gray no then you're not loyal and you're suspicious and we have to cancel you because you're not really on our side and this you know this all right where is that sound don't throw out the baby with the bathwater I mean that sounds said always said you found a movement and you found a movement with a with a demerit detracting Factor okay register it but then look with an objective I had the rest of the movement I also had a whole movement because it has a mistake or a failure because I don't see Russia addressing um the when when we read that the Jacob kisses uh for hell so how can we understand what is a threatening this with okay so I you're right he didn't he doesn't mention it and and I didn't talk about it that Jacob when he first sees Rachel kisses her um the truth is that the talmud has similar cases brought for example the Tama tells a story of a I think it was a ton it may have been an immortal he was going with his students and there was a wedding going on and he stopped to help in the rejoicing of the wedding and he picked up the bride on his shoulders and danced with her so when they questioned him later about doing that he said if to you she's a piece of wood you could do it also in other words the idea of having having physical contact where there's no um no sexual contact whatsoever it's not for it's not forbidden if he used to kiss his sisters and that's brought down on the Gamora and then says if you were a person like Yakov avinu or you're a person you knew of yourself that would have no no effect on you that it wouldn't be forbidden now the two things to say first of all self-knowledge in this area is very tricky people fool themselves about things like this all the time number one and number two if you do it in public so then you can lead to misunderstandings and and Mis [Music] um misapplications but you have to know that there is such a thing I have a friend who went with a student to one of the Great greatest it was everybody decisors this probably happened 25 years ago uh his problem was this he's about juva his father is the rabbi of a conservative synagogue and he's going home for the summer um what should you do about for example praying in the synagogue with his father he said pray there so he said yeah but after the prayers there's a reception line and the customer would be for me to stand next to my father he said let's stand next to your father yeah but they're all gonna go up and want to shake hands so he said well shake hands he said yeah but some of the women he said the rabbis of Germany permitted it and they were not throwaways they were not failures they were not Renegades so you have cases where I'm not passing any for anybody I'm not opposing I'm telling you these stories to broaden your information base and hopefully that you know what questions to ask are responsible policy but uh one student just assumed that such things are impossible there are cases and circumstances under which it could be possible so in the case of Jacob certainly we have no no doubts that uh he knew what he was he knew what he was doing and what the consequences would be yeah let's say you have um like a like a significant creative impulse but you want to live a religious life and you're sort of moving in that direction you fear that if you try to you know make a living off of that impulse that even if it's not necessarily the case that you create a product or a game that um makes people's lives worse not because there's anything specifically terrible in it but it just absorbs their time so they're not doing things that are more productive but maybe more specifically you're just worried that you're going to have this second interest right your own creative Endeavor as opposed to like fealty and and whatever you're trying to draw close to on the other front how do you you manage that are you just supposed to sacrifice or you know subliminate that creative desire what's you know I I hope I understand what you're saying I'm not quite positive let me try it one way and if I'm not speaking to what's concerning you then you'll you'll tell me and we'll try it again there is something that bothers people and that's purity of motivation am I am I doing what I'm doing in order to serve God in order to draw close to God or do I have secondary motivation I have secondary motivation my motivation isn't pure if it isn't pure then it certainly isn't ideal and that's true it isn't ideal and then I wonder should I try to eliminate those motivations since when I'm doing this thing part of it I'm doing I would do it even if I weren't religious it's something which is just uh I find natural and inspiring and enthusiastic enthusiastic about um so since that motivation isn't what we would call the Shema for the sake of growing closer to God and it's compromising the purity of my of my action should I try to rid myself of that motivation and minimize as much as possible here I think that the question is a logical question but in the context it's uh it's it's very very dangerous yes pure motivation does improve the quality of your service of God right completely pure motivation would be the completely successful service of God but that doesn't mean it's right for you to work on that right now not even peacefield right now because first of all you need to bring your actions in line the choice between doing one actually with period of motivation plus another wrong action versus doing two right actions with improve motivation the second is much better than the first so if the cost of working on your motivation and for one action is that the other action remains wrong so it's it's not worth paying that cost um I think that it gets even worse because the person thinks yeah but I'm really serving myself I'm really very egotistical about this and therefore it's worthless that's dead wrong that's seriously and dangerously wrong God set up a program of rewards and punishments he publicized it to us it's one of the 613 fundamental beliefs of the Jewish religion that this reward and Punishment he didn't do that to us he didn't do that to make sure we're always mediocre and never are never going to achieve uh purity of motivation he did that because that's a natural starting point we do grow up as selfish little brats at least the boys do um and we have to overcome that gradually Through Time rambam writes my oldest son pointed out to me it seems to be absolutely obligatory it's forbidden to have a child to learn to have a child learn Torah without giving him a reward you must give him a reward that's the way Torah is inculcated you start with candies and nuts and then you probably some clothes and you can promise him trips and then you could promise him honor and Glory and then when his mind becomes mature enough to understand the real value of things then you hope you help him to mature to the point where he will study sake of serving God through studying Torah and that and not before that so uh that child is being fed he's being nursed on impure motivation all the way up the ladder to the last step so I think that worrying about the motivation especially when a person's on the Trek to become average performance in terms of living in the Jewish Community is a distraction and it can lead to depression and it's it's very dangerous maybe in minor things you know here and there once or twice a year but not to make it into a uh into a a project where's the exact purpose of the Ten Commandments if we have uh Moses having 613 mixers all these men says why do we need Ten Commandments specifically why do we need I mean yeah who made up the ten how did they get to be special you know the Creator did that right okay he he publicly announced them in some sense or other until all the people in a national Revelation so obviously he thought they were special um but the sources are very very clear that the they are not Holier they're not more important or more valid than the other the other Commandments there used to be a practice Michelle tells us about this you'll be a practice of reading the tech Commandments every day and they stopped it because people said listen the 10th command by the way it's a temper and husband's assigned not Ten Commandments it's 13 or 14 Commandments it's just a misnomer um people who who read this every day they were trained to read it every day thought let's see this is what they heard from God and this is what we're reading every day this is the realtor this is it all the rest is sort of fluff it's extra you know yes or no sort of voluntary don't you're not pay attention to it just the real thing well that ain't so lots of things in the rest of the Torah which uh for which a person will be executed if he violates and he'll be cut off in the world to come if he violates and they're you know they're very very serious so um it's not that there are there is literature in which all of The Commandments the rest of the Commandments can be traced to one of the Ten Commandments 10 10 pronouncements which means it's an organizing principle if you understood these relationships are tracing you would have a snapshot of the Torah as a whole encapsulated in these temper Temperance and indeed there's something I want to say that the first two do that for all the rest as well so then it has a function of um summarizing the whole of the Torah in a certain in a certain way um and there's a certain inner structure to them the first fiber between God and men and second five are between man and man and they correspond to one another on the levels of going up so there are various things in the structure that you can learn from them but um one should not think of them as any Holier uh than than any of the other parts of the Torah maimonides writes about this and the guy you know it was a guy in lowton and he had a assistant named timna that's a versa is that that's as holy those words are as holy as I am the Lord your God it was just the Torah is Holy all the way through there's no variations in the Holiness at all so it was I would say the importance of it is it was chosen for a mass revelation but that doesn't mean that it's content thereafter is is more fundamental was chosen to be the thing that God they want God wanted to hear from him himself yeah I asked the question last week but I don't think I asked that for two weeks ago I should once getting motivation like an understanding behind it too and then yeah there's a lot of misunderstanding about this I have something on my when I put it now I put it on my blog I think um people talk about munap shooter which sometimes could be translated as simple Faith well first of all faith is the wrong word it's a Christian word I think a movie should be translated as rational trust I'm just telling you that because I don't want to be trapped into think people thinking that uh their faith is the right translation but shooter they they take to mean I commit myself to it and I accept it and I uh live it because it inspires me because it makes me feel whole and complete because it helps me climb out of myself because because because because there's a certain psychological effect on me truth it would mean no reason no reason no evidence no justification just because it moves me in a certain way well that's a wrong translation it's a wrong translation uh I think I put this up on my blog also I once had this question proposed to me there's a wonderful collection called aspect Laria it's now online free 30 volumes each volume is about 700 pages long put together by one man one Swiss doctor in the 80s without computers on alphabetized on subjects of Jewish Philosophy from to tough tough tough there's thousands of pages there from 60 sources starting from Taurus Moshe down two of desler including the Zohar and the Jerusalem Dominator The Babylon entombments foreign everyone who mentions means two things by it number one know my Marines no abstract philosophy and number two a belief in the Missouri the tradition that the tradition is accurate and gives us an accurate picture of the facts and that's why you accept it not know why not Norway no reason no thought no justification yes reason yes thought yes justification yes evidence the evidence of the tradition no one says but one I'll tell you who he is no one says but one no reason at all turn your mind off turn off your logic just because of the way it makes you feel them album says that but of all the ones that I saw there I had like 25 different sources he's the only one who said that all the rest of them say you must think you must have reason you must have an answer you must have a why but what why is it it's the why of the accuracy of the tradition now having said that there are many sources which say that you should get more you should get more you should get philosophical understanding and philosophical argumentation and some of them you know the people who have been poisoned by academic foolishness will tell you sure maimonidity said that because he was a medieval Spanish philosopher that's why yeah but the Marshall says also when he was a Polish communist and the Jose Volvos says so in great detail in the first uh first chapter on the existence and and unity of the body and the Shiloh a German Mystic quotes word for word then my beat says it as well so there are uh commentators and authorities who are as Central as anyone could possibly ask who say you should get more sure it's a it's a value it's a value it adds to your Yiddish guy to have more than just a moon of future where maputo means reason and evidence but the reason and evidence of the tradition the only one who celebrates turning your mind off and just accepting it blindly is the model he's the only one that I could find I would say the only one I didn't study all the literature the only one so the idea of turning off your mind and having no reason whatsoever just following because as you feel good that's not a central Jewish idea at all now there's a danger in engaging in the further investigation and not everyone should do that the officer Volvos was put out in a modern Hebrew Edition by uh the name of the essay was called Leif stove it's in two volumes and the First peric with the first Char which he where he talks about the existence of the warrior and all the arguments he doesn't write a translation he doesn't write a commentary instead has a list of 20 response that talk about not doing this kind of study okay there are those but the theme and those responses is it's just too dangerous too dangerous you can't trust yourself to come out whole and kosher so the song is that worth the danger the value in it isn't worth the danger it's not there's no value it's the value that's there isn't worth the danger so don't put yourself in danger but these others tell you that's an important thing to do the quotes are on my on my blog I put them out in Hebrew um uh the sources where they say that it is something that could be done and should be done but of course can I get connected you look at the martial you it's actually it's not she's there uh look at that Marshall it's it's absolutely astonishing every person is appropriate that he should do this so as to have this grasp of the of the fundamentals not just take it on the basis of the tradition okay

Channel: Ohr Somayach

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Length: 56min 54sec (3414 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 10 2023