Conclusion: what remains, and why that is good

Four kinds of questions

The central claim of this article is that most of what is called “Jewish thought” is a creation of thinkers, without authority, and sometimes without clear content. In this field many vague concepts are used, and so illusory debates arise, and a “catalogue” of positions without real clarification. The questions in it can be sorted into four kinds. Important questions, which belong to the thin skeleton. Less important questions, which do not belong to the skeleton, but can be discussed and perhaps decided, like the question of the text of the Bible. Questions that have only one side, because the other side contradicts itself. And questions without meaning.

Why is this so? Because people have no authority in this field: it deals mainly with facts, and its principles were not handed down at Sinai. “Jewish thought” is defined mainly by who thought it, Jews, and not by content. And not everything Jews thought is true. Sometimes it is precisely among others that the truth is found.

The “Eve effect”

And there is a practical lesson to all this, perhaps the most important of all. According to the midrash Rashi brings, Eve told the serpent that it was forbidden even to touch the tree of knowledge, although God had forbidden only eating it. The serpent pushed her until she touched it, and nothing happened. Then he said: “Just as there is no death in touching, so there is no death in eating.” And from this: “Whoever adds, subtracts.”

So too with tradition. Whoever defends it as a “package deal,” both the core and all the additions, widens the front. And when a marginal part falls, everything falls. How many young people left religion because they discovered that something they were taught as a “principle” was not well founded, and concluded that nothing was well founded? Whoever is willing to distinguish between the core and the additions protects the tradition better. So the message to someone who is wrestling is simple: if you do not believe in something that is an addition, throw it away. There is no reason at all to abandon the whole system because of it.

The full picture

And one can sum up the two articles together. There is a God. He created the world, its laws and us. He is the source of knowledge and morality, he commands, and there is a duty to obey him. The world is separate from him. He probably knows what happens here, but in our day hardly intervenes. We have free choice, and God does not know our choices in advance, because that is a logical constraint. Nature runs according to laws. There are no miracles and no prophecy in our time. Evil is the result of human choices and of the laws of nature. And the bottom line: we, by our choices, together with the laws of nature, run and lead the world.

From this the consequences: requests in prayer are probably not answered, and thanksgiving is an opportunity to give thanks for life itself. History has no divine message that can be decoded. And no social or economic system can be extracted from the Torah. And what remains at the center: halakha. Its study and its observance. Jewish identity is determined by halakha, and not by principles of thought. And that is the subject of another article.

Appendix: the attitude to Zionism, a “third way”

To conclude, one topical consequence. Religious identity in Israel is built of ideological “packages.” If you are a religious Zionist, you are supposed to be lenient on conversion, support army enlistment, and see the state as “the beginning of redemption.” If you are Haredi, you are supposed to oppose enlistment, be strict on conversion, and see the state as rebellion against the decree of exile. Both packages rest on a theological interpretation of history: on the assumption that one can know what God is “doing” in this state. And that assumption we have rejected.

And if so, the packages can be taken apart. One can be a Zionist and be strict on conversion like Haredim. One can support enlistment and still be Haredi. One can support separation of religion and state and still hope that Jews will keep the commandments. One can see halakha as the essence of Judaism, and still oppose religious coercion and making halakha the law of the state. And one can discuss conversion and the sale of land during the sabbatical year (heter mechirah) on their merits, without saying “they are uprooting the foundations of religion” and without seeing them as a simple permission. When the metaphysics is neutralized, the disputes become practical questions, which can be discussed with common sense. And most people, in both camps, can find themselves in this “third way” naturally. It is not a giving up of faith. It is a result of it.