32 Forbidden Thought and Ending

Forbidden thought?

Lastly, having raised assorted troubling questions I am haunted by the fact that the Halachic system forbids me to so much as think about my queries. Is there some internal insecurity which compelled Chazal to prohibit thoughts which might conflict with their world view?

We know that what distinguishes us as human beings from animals is the capacity for thought and understanding, as Rashi puts it in his comment on Genesis 2:7, "And the man became a living soul": "Animals and beasts also are called 'living soul,' but the human soul has a higher level of living than all of them, for a man also has reason and the power of speech." To be more precise, it is appropriate to say that humanity's uniqueness lies in its capability to understanding abstract concepts -- and this includes mastering language.

On the other hand, we have explicit Rabbinic rulings: "And not only it is forbidden to turn in our thought to idolatry, but about each and every thought that may bring one to abandon one of the Torah foundations we are warned not to let it enter our mind, and we must not pay such a thought any heed, nor think this way, so that we would be lead after our heart's thoughts." (Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry 2:3)

"And they OBM said that not only is the thought of idolatry forbidden, but each and every thought that brings one to abandon anything from the Torah [is forbidden]. And the Scripture warned about it explicitly in another place, where it is written 'And you shall not stray after your heart' (Numbers 15:39)." ("Sefer HaChinuch," commandment 213)

"There are six commandments which we are obligated to fulfill constantly, and one should not abstain from them even for the slightest moment through all his life. But each and every moment and time one thinks about them he fulfills a positive commandment of the Torah, and the reward for fulfilling the commandments is without a limit. Here they are: ... 6) [A commandment] not to follow the thoughts of our heart and the sight of our eyes, as is written, 'Do not stray after your heart...' The Sages said, 'after your heart' -- means heresy... and heresy is all the alien thoughts that are the opposite of the Torah's outlook." (Chafetz Chayim, "Biur Halacha," paragraph 1, s.v. Hu klal)

It follows from the above that Halacha obliges one to deprive himself of thought, the apex of human nature, if a certain thought may undermine "one of the Torah foundations." And so, dear Rabbi, my final question to you is: am I to be prohibited from examining Judaism with a critical eye? Is your answer to me to be a simple, "We mustn't think about such things"?

I came across an interesting analogy, originally about a different subject, that I think would be illustrative to answer this question as well.

Imagine for a moment, that someone would try to construct an exercise routine that would include an exercise where one would jump out of a window from the fourth story of a building, with the argument that he is certain that this exercise would bring great benefit to ones health.

Most people would not be willing to accept that suggestion. For even if it were true, that in certain areas, one would gain great benefit from such an exercise, the reality is that most people would simply not survive such a fall. Further, of those that would survive, it is almost certain that they would incur significant physical injuries; even if not, they would probably suffer from severe internal bleeding; and even those that would truly walk away unscratched, it would be readily recognized that those people constitute the exception, and not the rule.

The same applies here – theoretically speaking, it is a great idea, but from a practical viewpoint, it too often comes with a great cost. And therefore our leaders, who are charged with guiding their respective generations, could not encourage, in good faith, their followers to forage in the study of these subjects.

Summary

To sum it up, it appears that:

1. There are things in the Written Torah which contradict historical and scientific reality: the story of the Great Flood and of the Tower of Babel, for example, or the account of the "ruminant" hyrax and hare. Such a faulty knowledge of reality cannot be ascribed to G-d -- and it follows that the belief in the Divine authorship of the entire Torah is called into grave doubt.

2. The account of the mass exodus (600,000 adult males alone) from Egypt in 15th-11th centuries BCE seems historically fictitious. The same is true for the account of that number of people wandering in the Sinai desert for 40 years after the Exodus, or conquering Canaan after wandering in the desert. That is, the main core of the tradition of Judaism is lacking in any much needed historical verification.

3. There are numerous contradictions and styles in the Torah text, which is very strong evidence that these books were written by different authors, conceivably in different eras.

4. The text of the Torah itself contains phrases and verses reflecting the reality of times after the alleged lifetime of Moses, including the description of mourning after Moses' death. Obviously, these phrases and verses could not have been written down by Moses -- and there are great Jewish sages supporting this view. This being the case, the belief that Moses wrote down the Torah, with or without G-d's dictation, must be revised.

5. Many of the prophecies of the Holy Writ were actually proven false, and thus, according to the Torah, those who made these prophecies should be considered false prophets. All attempts to explain the failure by imposing various limitations on the prophecies coming true seem to be excuses which either have no basis in the Torah or make the Torah's law of checking a prophet totally haphazard. The whole issue of prophecy then becomes the product of wishful thinking instead of being proof of G-d's supervision over the world and of the Divine inspiration of the Holy Writ.

6. The Mishnah and the Talmud admit explicitly that Chazal themselves determined the canon of the Holy Writ centuries after the books which constitute it were written. Some books written as prophecy were included in the canon by the sages, and some were left out or "filed away." Moreover, Chazal never managed to reach a definite conclusion on whether the book of the Son of Sirach is a part of the Holy Writ or not. Here we find people, flesh and blood, determining on their own will which of the books written long before their time were Divinely inspired and which were not. By what process did they do this?

7. Correspondingly, since one source of Chazal's authority to issue regulations and customs [takanot uminhagim] originates from Ecclesiastes - one of the books sanctified by Chazal themselves, not before some dispute - this authority appears to be not from the Divine, but established by Chazal themselves.

8. Many of the laws of the Oral Torah named "Halacha given to Moses at Sinai" could not really originate from the Sinai Revelation, but were apparently established by Sages at much later dates. This strongly suggests that the term "Halacha given to Moses at Sinai" does not denote laws given actually by G-d to Moses at the Sinai Revelation, but refers to some of the Sages' own rulings that were given a fictitious legal-theological status.

9. The authority of the Sages to issue edicts [gezerot] obligating all Jews, in order to "make a fence around the Torah," appears to have been introduced by Chazal themselves; at least there is no valid and consistent explanation of how this authority may be learned from the Written Torah.

10. There is no reason to suppose that certain homiletic interpretations or ways of Torah exegesis were given to Moses on Sinai, as Maimonides claims them to be. It follows that all the Sages' interpretations of the Torah text and laws derived thereof are their own constructs, built by their human minds.

11. Though Maimonides claims that some rules, laws, and interpretations of the Pentateuch had been given by G-d to Moses to be transmitted orally through the generations, this claim is mitigated by the realization that there is more than a good chance they are corrupt.

12. Certain spiritual leaders of Judaism stated that truth is not necessarily an account of things as they really are, but is something which brings desirable results. If this is the universal Jewish religious concept of truth, one cannot rely on a tradition which is a part of such a religion.

13. In the view of the Talmud itself, hearsay testimony cannot be validated in any matter concerning the Torah's law. This being the case, the tradition of the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation - which can be considered nowadays, at best, hearsay testimony -- cannot be validated as a testimony for the veracity of the Torah itself.

14. The story of mass revelation at Mt. Sinai is not at all unique: reports of "mass revelations" are found even in our time. Unfortunately, the personages which "reveal" themselves to the public in this manner belong to the lore of religions other than ours and the revelations are better explained in terms of mass psychology than of theology.

15. Judaic tradition claims to be outstandingly aware of the history of its transmission; however, traditional accounts of such key persons in the history of Judaism as Ezra and Nehemiah, the Men of the Great Assembly, and Simeon the Righteous are rather corrupt and sometimes utterly fictitious. This greatly undermines any claim for the tradition's historicity.

16. Judaism does not even claim an uninterrupted mass tradition of the Torah and the commandments through the generations - both the Scripture and the commentators admit that for long periods the tradition was forgotten by the vast majority of the Jewish people, save perhaps a few select individuals. Therefore it is equally possible that: a) these select individuals revived what was indeed a genuine ancient tradition, or b) these select individuals created, from scratch, a system of beliefs, stories, and commandments which they presented as an ancient tradition, and which were adopted, for some reasons, by wide circles of the Jewish people.

17. Indeed, despite claims to the contrary, Judaism has no mass tradition of the Exodus and the Sinai revelation. All that we have is the Torah's own account of those events. Obviously, it cannot be trusted a priori when trying to check its veracity. However, the tradition of the contemporary Judaism is based solely on the Torah's account of the events, with its exegesis in later Rabbinic literature. No other account of the Exodus and the Sinai Revelation, whether based on oral stories transmitted from one generation to another or on an independent written source, exists within the framework of the Judaic or any corroborating tradition.

18. In the past, however, we can find Jewish traditions of the Exodus other than that of the Torah - but they contradict the Torah's account in many important details, and this calls into doubt the notion of a uniform Jewish tradition.

19. There is no definite tradition of things fundamental to our faith such as what exactly the People of Israel heard from G-d during the Sinai Revelation and what the Ten Commandments actually were. Were the Judaic tradition historical, such major details should surely be described in it - and the absence of such agreement is good evidence for the tradition's lack of historicity.

20. There is no definite tradition of even the Torah text itself: we know it has undergone many changes throughout the last 2300 years. Judging from the changes we are aware of, the Torah of the late Second Temple period was significantly different from the Torah we read now in synagogues.

21. There exist millennia-old Halachic traditions contradictory to the traditions of the Rabbinic Oral Torah. This makes any reliance on "Halachic tradition from Sinai" as a part of the Oral Torah quite unreasonable.

22. Judging from the plain reading of the text of the Written Torah, the Sages, even in the Temple period, had no Divine authority to initiate laws based on their own exegesis of the Torah - especially if those laws contradicted the plain meaning of the Torah text.

23. Judging from the plain reading of the text of the Written Torah, Mishnaic and Talmudic laws issued after the Temple's destruction have absolutely no authority to obligate all Israel.

24. The only rationale Maimonides brings for the authority of the Babylonian Talmud is the adoption of the Talmud's laws by the Jewish people. This is overwhelming evidence that the Sages' authority is based on the acceptance of their laws by people, not on any Divine commandment, and in this the Talmud's laws are just like the laws legislated by the people of any country.

25. The Sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud do not necessarily demonstrate "outstanding wisdom and intellect." Not only did they err in matters of factual reality, their whole method of knowing reality was one we now perceive as wrong. They did not hesitate to introduce fantasies as the topic of Torah verses and as proofs of the foundations of faith. They did not base their laws on reality, but distorted reality to make it fit the rulings they had already established. Even provided that the Sages were not infallible (as our sources indeed do admit), such an approach to reality does not seem to be reasonable, at least in the cases they determined practical Halachic rulings which must be applied in reality and therefore must take into consideration reality as it is.

26. Some of Chazal, as well as many Rishonim and Achronim, predicted the Messiah's coming at dates from 490 to 1990 CE. All of these predictions failed. The number of these predictions, the ease with which they were made, and the fact that the predictors generally set the date of the Redemption as after their own lifetime suggest that our rabbis approached this serious matter with an arbitrariness which seems a bit fanciful.

27. Several statements by Chazal give a strong indication they did not consider the Pentateuch to be given word by word by G-d Himself. In this case, the present Orthodox Jewish belief in the Divine origin of each and every word and letter in the Torah appears to be a later doctrine.

28. There seems to be little reason to believe that all of Chazal were outstandingly moral. Some of their statements, as brought in the Talmud, are particularly offensive to many people and certainly cannot testify to their authors' outstanding morality.

29. Many Halachic laws discriminate against non-Jews, secular Jews, and women in a rather brutal and inhuman way. It is highly implausible that the just and perfect G-d would legislate so harshly against the vast majority of human beings.

30. There are Halachic rulings forbidding one to think about certain matters. Are we to conclude that were the Orthodox Jewish belief reasonable, there would be no need to command people to abandon their reason when dealing with the basic principles of this belief?

All of the above, compounded by my fruitless search for positive evidence for the correctness of our basic beliefs and traditions, makes it very hard for me to remain a reasonable and intellectually honest person who believes that G-d gave us the Torah and to continue observing all the Halachic rulings of Chazal. My attempts to get answers to the issues above have so far been unsuccessful and therefore I appeal to you for help. I am sure there are other Jews who have similar questions and who can benefit from your scholarship and wise guidance.

Waiting for your response,

Naftali

I hope that I have managed to provide satisfactory answers to almost all of the questions that you have brought up, and if you believe that I am wrong, or have somehow miscalculated, I would very much welcome you letting me know.

Likewise, if you have other questions that you find bothersome, you can send them to me as well, as perhaps, it just might be possible that I would know of the answers to them as well.

Wishing you all the very best,

Bentzi Lesches