I thought we didn't have such talent amongst us any more, but you hit the nail on the head, with beautiful twists of speech, a clear logic and eloquent turns of phrase.
Slifkin is wrong not because rationalism is wrong, but because he’s not a rationalist. The first and main premise of a rationalist Judaism is that God is provable, as Rambam says in his opening line to Mishne Torah. If that can’t be proven (as Slifkin says explicitly), then rationalism in religion doesn’t start. So according to his terms, rambam is incorrect at the first step in his thought, so bringing other points from rambam is superfluous.
Any serious Jew must think that God is provable, making rationalism a serious option. Although modern philosophy thinks that God isn’t provable, from the beginning of our nation, we were called ivri, on the other side of the whole world, and today is no different in that we disagree with most of the world. Of course Slifkin has no backbone so we can’t expect him to actually take a stand that isn’t popular in the greater world.
Rambams version of taking a stand that was unpopular is his complete acceptance of the creation of the world. This was scorned upon by the entire philosophical world until recently, when the rest of the world came around to the fact that the world has a beginning.
" The first and main premise of a rationalist Judaism is that God is provable, as Rambam says in his opening line to Mishne Torah. If that can’t be proven (as Slifkin says explicitly), then rationalism in religion doesn’t start."
VERY IMPORTANT POINT you brought out!!!! And furthermore, Rambam's entire approach of mixing philosophy with the Torah is predicated on this leading to a deeper understanding of Hashem. Once you take teaching about Hashem out of the picture and make it knowledge for the sake of knowledge (oh yes, you'll utter a token comment about how amazing Hashem's world is), you have utterly subverted that approach. If you find that Aristotelian philosophy is obsolete, then the replacement is NOT a physics textbook, as you will find nothing about Hashem in there! The most natural replacement would be Kabbalah.
The other possibility is to actually learn Rambam to see if his basic ideas (not his science) are correct and the world who generally thinks he is obsolete (not necessarily all philosophers) is wrong. Of course some basic material things we know about the world are different than the rishonim held, but structurally, their main ideas still are correct.
The underlying message of Slifkin's 'benefits of religion' series must be exposed.
Judaism teaches many things, but a central part of it is the rejection of other religions. Imagine a thought experiment - let us imagine that we could prove the truth of Judaism. We could test a large group of people and measure the quantity, and (more importantly) the quality of their Mitzvos and compare their lives and its circumstances. If we could show clearly that the better the Jew, the better his life is, that would, in the world of Slifkin, prove that Judaism is true. (Of course, this experiment is impossible, because there is no way to measure a person's Mitzvos, as the Rambam writes in Hilchos Teshuva ואין שוקלין אלא בדעתו של אל דעות והוא היודע היאך עורכין הזכיות כנגד העונות)
Imagine the same experiment would be made on Buddhists, and the same results would emerge. The better the Buddhist, the better his life is.
To a believing Jew, that would be a problem. Judaism isn't a religion that we can extrapolate from there to other religions. Judaism is true, Buddhism is false, and if Judaism could be proven, it would have to prove that Buddhism is equally wrong.
But Slifkin does not care, because there is an underlying message here, one that he seems to believe without saying. Eventually, when he stops keeping Mitzvos and pretending to be frum, we will all realize what he believed all along. Torah and Mitzvos are, to him, psychological crutches, methods of making order in a difficult world. They aren't obligatory, they aren't G-d's words, they aren't the method of bringing ruchniyus and living truthfully. They are rituals to provide solace and comfort to people searching for rituals, and Shabbos Seudos are essentially Thanksgiving/Yom Ha'atzmaut parties with different menus.
Sorry, mate! Torah is true, and Shabbos is avodas Hashem, not self-help. Kwanza isn't Rosh Hashana, and Yom Ha'atzmaut is not just another Shavuos. Nisu'in isn't marriage, and kosher isn't a diet.
Well said. In truth he doesn't even really claim to be proving religion with these benefits but rather demonstrating its benefits whether you believe in it or not. Which he hilariously assumes should be an effective kiruv method, see the first post.
What's funny is that in a burst of mystic fervor he also quotes kriyas shema as promising a long life for religious observance. And then quotes statistics that any religious lifestyle - regardless of the religion - has higher life expectancy.
He does not appear to have noticed that kriyas shema pegs its assurances specifically to NOT whoring after other gods...
May I put it this way? - Rationalism is subjective. What seems reasonable to *you* is what is rational to *you*. If the idea of experimentation make sense to you, anything that follows it will be, by definition, rational - be it particles moving in quantized bits, or time slowing down because of speed. If Yiddishkeit is irrational to you, no proof will be enough to make it rational (every proof is only as conclusive as the rationality behind the proof). The real question, what is "true", is the only one that really matters. If something is true, than it should automatically be rational.
HKB'H made the world where the scientific framework of rationality (this world) differs from the Torah rationality (spiritual worlds and entities). If you make the decision to live by science, you will find Judaism to be "irrational", but don't think that you are Mr. Logic now; all you are is wrong, while using an irrational version of rationality as your guide. While atheists and the like tend to be so proud of their "rationality", they are playing a word game and their attachment to rationality itself is nothing less than irrational. Which, may I say, is quite ironic.
What Rationalist Judaism tries to do is to hold on the the scientific rationality while still not willing to let go of the Judaism, which is actually a contradiction. Though not the worst thing in the world, we can see where it leads...
His blog should really be called "Scientifically Rationalist Judaism".
Science does not find ruchnius to be "irrational". Science doesn't have anything to say at all about ruchnius, it's simply not a tool for measuring ruchnius. You can't listen to the ball game on your thermometer, but that doesn't mean that thermometers consider radio waves "irrational".
I didn't mean science, I meant what science intuits to its students as rational. The human listening to a scientific world view can be misled to a wrong sense of what is rational; a different sense then what a Torah following person will deem rational. And yes, these world of rationality are, to many people, in contradiction. Pharaoh checking stars for reality isn't scientifically "rational". The more you get involved in the world of science, the more prone you are to be taken by what many have found to be their rational world view. This does not mean "science" and "Torah" are in conflict, as the thermometer and the radio are not in conflict; it just means that a world view built around science has been undeniably shown to misguide many - case in point, Rationalist Judaism.
Dr. Slifkin is simply following the extreme rationalists since the days of Bayit Sheni (i.e. the Kewish philosophers of Alexendria expect Philo), through the Tekufat HaGeonim and Tekufat HaRishonim (the philosophers were not Rishonim or Geonim, of course) early Maskilim and Reformers.
All of them presented a similar empty and barren "Judaism".
Very well written!
I thought we didn't have such talent amongst us any more, but you hit the nail on the head, with beautiful twists of speech, a clear logic and eloquent turns of phrase.
כה לחי!
Thank you very much for your kind words.
Slifkin is wrong not because rationalism is wrong, but because he’s not a rationalist. The first and main premise of a rationalist Judaism is that God is provable, as Rambam says in his opening line to Mishne Torah. If that can’t be proven (as Slifkin says explicitly), then rationalism in religion doesn’t start. So according to his terms, rambam is incorrect at the first step in his thought, so bringing other points from rambam is superfluous.
Any serious Jew must think that God is provable, making rationalism a serious option. Although modern philosophy thinks that God isn’t provable, from the beginning of our nation, we were called ivri, on the other side of the whole world, and today is no different in that we disagree with most of the world. Of course Slifkin has no backbone so we can’t expect him to actually take a stand that isn’t popular in the greater world.
Rambams version of taking a stand that was unpopular is his complete acceptance of the creation of the world. This was scorned upon by the entire philosophical world until recently, when the rest of the world came around to the fact that the world has a beginning.
" The first and main premise of a rationalist Judaism is that God is provable, as Rambam says in his opening line to Mishne Torah. If that can’t be proven (as Slifkin says explicitly), then rationalism in religion doesn’t start."
VERY IMPORTANT POINT you brought out!!!! And furthermore, Rambam's entire approach of mixing philosophy with the Torah is predicated on this leading to a deeper understanding of Hashem. Once you take teaching about Hashem out of the picture and make it knowledge for the sake of knowledge (oh yes, you'll utter a token comment about how amazing Hashem's world is), you have utterly subverted that approach. If you find that Aristotelian philosophy is obsolete, then the replacement is NOT a physics textbook, as you will find nothing about Hashem in there! The most natural replacement would be Kabbalah.
The other possibility is to actually learn Rambam to see if his basic ideas (not his science) are correct and the world who generally thinks he is obsolete (not necessarily all philosophers) is wrong. Of course some basic material things we know about the world are different than the rishonim held, but structurally, their main ideas still are correct.
As I wrote before, Dr. Slifkin is a rationalist, not rational.
Yahadut is rational, but not rationalist.
I think we should rename this blog "Rational Judaism", because most posts and even comments come from brains that are actually functioning.
Honestly this post is as rational as it gets.
The underlying message of Slifkin's 'benefits of religion' series must be exposed.
Judaism teaches many things, but a central part of it is the rejection of other religions. Imagine a thought experiment - let us imagine that we could prove the truth of Judaism. We could test a large group of people and measure the quantity, and (more importantly) the quality of their Mitzvos and compare their lives and its circumstances. If we could show clearly that the better the Jew, the better his life is, that would, in the world of Slifkin, prove that Judaism is true. (Of course, this experiment is impossible, because there is no way to measure a person's Mitzvos, as the Rambam writes in Hilchos Teshuva ואין שוקלין אלא בדעתו של אל דעות והוא היודע היאך עורכין הזכיות כנגד העונות)
Imagine the same experiment would be made on Buddhists, and the same results would emerge. The better the Buddhist, the better his life is.
To a believing Jew, that would be a problem. Judaism isn't a religion that we can extrapolate from there to other religions. Judaism is true, Buddhism is false, and if Judaism could be proven, it would have to prove that Buddhism is equally wrong.
But Slifkin does not care, because there is an underlying message here, one that he seems to believe without saying. Eventually, when he stops keeping Mitzvos and pretending to be frum, we will all realize what he believed all along. Torah and Mitzvos are, to him, psychological crutches, methods of making order in a difficult world. They aren't obligatory, they aren't G-d's words, they aren't the method of bringing ruchniyus and living truthfully. They are rituals to provide solace and comfort to people searching for rituals, and Shabbos Seudos are essentially Thanksgiving/Yom Ha'atzmaut parties with different menus.
Sorry, mate! Torah is true, and Shabbos is avodas Hashem, not self-help. Kwanza isn't Rosh Hashana, and Yom Ha'atzmaut is not just another Shavuos. Nisu'in isn't marriage, and kosher isn't a diet.
Well said. In truth he doesn't even really claim to be proving religion with these benefits but rather demonstrating its benefits whether you believe in it or not. Which he hilariously assumes should be an effective kiruv method, see the first post.
What's funny is that in a burst of mystic fervor he also quotes kriyas shema as promising a long life for religious observance. And then quotes statistics that any religious lifestyle - regardless of the religion - has higher life expectancy.
He does not appear to have noticed that kriyas shema pegs its assurances specifically to NOT whoring after other gods...
Indeed. Judaism doesn't need any adjectives; once you've added one you're doing something else...
May I put it this way? - Rationalism is subjective. What seems reasonable to *you* is what is rational to *you*. If the idea of experimentation make sense to you, anything that follows it will be, by definition, rational - be it particles moving in quantized bits, or time slowing down because of speed. If Yiddishkeit is irrational to you, no proof will be enough to make it rational (every proof is only as conclusive as the rationality behind the proof). The real question, what is "true", is the only one that really matters. If something is true, than it should automatically be rational.
HKB'H made the world where the scientific framework of rationality (this world) differs from the Torah rationality (spiritual worlds and entities). If you make the decision to live by science, you will find Judaism to be "irrational", but don't think that you are Mr. Logic now; all you are is wrong, while using an irrational version of rationality as your guide. While atheists and the like tend to be so proud of their "rationality", they are playing a word game and their attachment to rationality itself is nothing less than irrational. Which, may I say, is quite ironic.
What Rationalist Judaism tries to do is to hold on the the scientific rationality while still not willing to let go of the Judaism, which is actually a contradiction. Though not the worst thing in the world, we can see where it leads...
His blog should really be called "Scientifically Rationalist Judaism".
Science does not find ruchnius to be "irrational". Science doesn't have anything to say at all about ruchnius, it's simply not a tool for measuring ruchnius. You can't listen to the ball game on your thermometer, but that doesn't mean that thermometers consider radio waves "irrational".
I didn't mean science, I meant what science intuits to its students as rational. The human listening to a scientific world view can be misled to a wrong sense of what is rational; a different sense then what a Torah following person will deem rational. And yes, these world of rationality are, to many people, in contradiction. Pharaoh checking stars for reality isn't scientifically "rational". The more you get involved in the world of science, the more prone you are to be taken by what many have found to be their rational world view. This does not mean "science" and "Torah" are in conflict, as the thermometer and the radio are not in conflict; it just means that a world view built around science has been undeniably shown to misguide many - case in point, Rationalist Judaism.
Its not for no reason that most physicists and biologists are atheist....
Dr. Slifkin is simply following the extreme rationalists since the days of Bayit Sheni (i.e. the Kewish philosophers of Alexendria expect Philo), through the Tekufat HaGeonim and Tekufat HaRishonim (the philosophers were not Rishonim or Geonim, of course) early Maskilim and Reformers.
All of them presented a similar empty and barren "Judaism".