Sago Boulevard

I’ve been meaning to purchase Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s recently published prayerbook. So far, I like everything I hear about it (read: what Gil Student writes about it). The conventional translation of the first verse of the Shema begins with “Hear O Israel.” R. Sacks translates it as “Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” Rabbi Gil has been kind enough to quote from R. Sacks’s explanation of the translation choice.

Shema means not only to “hear” but also “to listen, understand, internalise, respond and obey.” It is translated here as “Listen” because listening is active, while hearing is passive. This, the most famous line of Jewish prayer, is a call to action on the part of the mind, emotion and will. It asks us to reflect on, strive to understand, and to affirm the unity of God. God speaks in a “still, small voice”, and to serve Him is to listen with the totality of our being.

Secular terms for understanding are permeated with visual images. We speak of insight, foresight, vision, observation, perspective; when we understand, we say “I see”. Judaism, with its belief in an invisible, transcendent God, is a culture of the ear, not the eye. The patriarchs and prophets did not see God; they heard Him. To emphasie the non-visual nature of Jewish belief, it is our custom to cover our eyes as we say these words.

R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, pp. 74-75:

The emotion of fear, the sense of lowliness, the melancholy so typical of homo religious, self-negation, constant self-appraisal, the consciousness of sin, self-lacerating torments, etc, etc constituted the primary features of the movement’s spiritual profile in its early years. . . . The halakhic men of Brisk and Volozhin sensed that this whole mood posed a profound contradiction to the Halakha and would undermine its very foundations. Halakhic man fears nothing. For he swims in the sea of the Talmud, that life-giving sea to all the living. If a person has sinned, then the Halakhah of repentance will come to his aid. One must not waste time on spiritual self-appraisal, on probing introspections, and on the picking away at the “sense” of sin. Such a psychic analysis brings man neither to fear nor to love of God nor, most fundamental of all, to the knowledge and cognition of the Torah.

R. Hershel Schachter has a great devar Torah on common sense and emunat chachamim at TorahWeb.org (via Hirhurim). According to the Midrash, Korach challenged Moshe’s authority by appealing to “common sense” arguments about tzitzit and mezuzah. (more…)

Halakhically, Jewish identity is determined by matrilineal descent. One is Jewish if the mother is Jewish (save conversion, of course). Whether the father is Jewish is irrelevant as to Jewish identity. R. Meir Soloveitchik explores this controversial and puzzling notion in a 2005 Azure article that I came across recently. (more…)

Via Hirhurim, David Wolpe’s article in this week’s The Jewish Week:

Did the Talmud anticipate city traffic? You might think that since there were no cars, no streetlights, and very few SUVs (some Roman chariots were extravagant, after all) that the Talmud may have missed this subject.

But as Daniel Feldman’s book “The Right and the Good” reminds us, the Talmud and later authorities warn us not only against violence, but also against a threatening gesture. As Rabbi Feldman writes, the Talmud is concerned by such displays — “the civic relationship between human beings is disrupted, lowered to an animalistic conflict…”

Much of our civic interaction, sadly, takes place between people looking out of car windows. Still, the tone matters. People who cut in front of another car on one block scream at those who do the same a block later. Mistakes are seen as acts of aggression and frustration leads to rage. Pedestrians are endangered, children unnerved, drivers debased.

The great chess player Aron Nimzovitch used to say, “The threat is stronger than its execution.” Sometimes the gesture, in a home or in the street, is more powerful and lasting even than a blow. So if we may reformulate the wisdom of our Rabbis in modern terms, it would go like this: Be kind, be forgiving, and drive carefully.

Bear with me as I ramble a little bit.

It’s presumptuous to link 9/11 with Elul in a theological sense or to suggest that the victims were somehow punished for our collective sins. But since 9/11 (both in 2001 and today) is, in fact, in the month of Elul, I think it’s appropriate to use our memory of, and reaction to, such a horrific tragedy as a launchpad for teshuvah.

The Halakhah emphasizes the close relationship between death and repentence. Our fast days, which primarily commemorate national tragedies, are treated as days of teshuvah. It’s important to recognize that tragedy can have this effect even if we don’t see it as a direct punishment for sin. When thousands of ordinary people are suddenly killed while going about their daily routines, it should remind us that death does not wait for us to be ready.

I was thinking about this during davening this morning when the gabbai signaled to the shaliach tzibbbur to skip to Kaddish after Shemoneh Esreh. It’s Monday and skipping the long tachanun is usually appreciated; we all like to finish a few minutes earlier. But then it occured to me, the victims of 9/11 never had a chance to say minhah. If they skipped tachanun on that fateful morning, they never had another chance to say it.

Then another thought occured to me. Maybe the reason that U’netaneh Tokef is such a meaningful part of Yamim Nora’im davening is because, by emphasizing this idea, it further motivates us to do teshuvah. If our fates are sealed for the upcoming year, we may not have another chance to say al chet.

In all likelihood, the attack on the World Trade Center will not be the last tragedy we witness. The library I’m sitting in may collapse and I may not be able to daven minhah this afternoon. But if I do, I’ll have in mind those who didn’t have that luxury five years ago, today.

In an old post, about a year ago, I suggested that Originalism with respect to constitutional interpretation is fundamentally different from an traditional approach to interpreting Halakhah. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

The Torah itself is God’s message to humanity and thus, interpreting the Torah is inextricably tied to interpreting God’s will or intention. Consider an analogy: Somebody writes you a rather vague letter. In trying to make sense of the letter itself, you’re also trying to figure out what the author had in mind while writing it. You can’t separate those two tasks.

The Constitution, on the other hand, is not simply the will of James Madison or of the members of Constitutional Convention. The relationship of Madison’s intention with the text of the Constitution is incidental.

George objects to my distinction. In a recent email (it’s actually not so recent but I procrastinated responding to him), he writes:

how is the constitution not simply the will of the cont[i]nental congress (representing the will of the nation). if it is how it that diffrent from reading and interpreting a letter a friend sent you?

The key difference between the Constitution as “the will of the [C]ont[i]nental [C]ongress” and Halakhah as God’s will is one of justification. The Torah’s authority is justified by God having commanded it. (That’s an oversimplification but I don’t want to get into the Euthyphro dilemma right now.) The goal of interpreting the Torah (and, by extension, Halakhah in general) is to identify what message God intends to convey because what justifies it is God intending to convey it. Interpreting a letter from a friend is similar insofar as the goal is to figure out what my friend wants to tell me. The letter would have no function otherwise.

The Constitution, on the other hand, does not derive its authority from James Madison or the Continental Congress. Had it been written by a 10-year-old who was bored one day during math class and then ratified by the states, it would have the same status that it has today.

From Ki Teitzei (Deut. 21:23):

…[Y]ou must not let his corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury him the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God.

The context here is the death penalty of sekilah (death by stoning). Rashi explains that “all who are put to death by stoning are hanged [afterwards]”. The Torah teaches that we are not to let the hanging body remain overnight, but the reason given (”for an impaled body is an affront to God”) requires explanation. Commenting on this verse, Rashi cites a fascinating drashah from Sanhedrin 46a:

“For an impaled body is an affront to God.” It is a degradation of the King, for man is made in the likeness of His image… This can be compared to identical twin brothers. One became a king while one became ensnared in banditry and was hanged. All who saw him would say “The king is hanging.”

So similar is the human body to God Himself that we’re worried somebody will mistake the former for the latter! The implications of this aggadah seem endless. Every year when I come across this Rashi I’m struck by how lofty a role the Torah accords to humanity. Even the most mundane aspects of life take on additional meaning when we appreciate that we are reflections of God.

Hirhurim’s R. Gil Student links to his front-page article in this week’s Jewish Press. He offers a summary of the controversy surrounding R. Natan (Nosson) Slifkin’s books reconciling recent scientific discoveries with the Torah’s account of creation. (His newest book, The Challenge of Creation, is sitting patiently on my bookshelf but with law school starting next week, it may be awhile before I get to it.)

The article is a good showcase of Gil’s rare ability to deal honestly with both halakhic and hashkafic (ideological) controversies while maintaining the high level of respect required in Torah discourse. This is far more difficult than it looks. On one hand, we’re required to give talmidei hakhamim the benefit of the doubt in all disputes and to refrain from ascribing ulterior motives to them. Yet abuses of power need to be called out if we take ourselves seriously at all. A line must be drawn somewhere but few know where it belongs. Gil, in both his blog posts and articles, toes the invisible-yet-necessary line well. His take on Slifkin is but one good example.

The function of mourning in Halakhah is to guide us in properly channeling the natural emotions that accompany tragedy and despair. Indeed, the customs of Tishah Be’av and the kinot are nothing short of ritualized crying. Rather than rise above our emotions, we are commanded to embrace them and let them guide us to teshuvah (repentence). R. Soloveitchik develops this idea in “Avelut Yeshanah and Avelut Hadashah“:

Judaism does not want man to rationalize evil or to theologize it away. It challenges him to defy evil and, in case of defeat, to give vent to his distress. Both rationalizing and theologizing harden the human heart and make it insensitive to disaster. Man, Judaism says, must act like a human being. He must cry, weep, despair, grieve and mourn as if he could change the cosmic laws by exhibiting those emotions. In times of distress and sorrow, these emotions are noble even though they express the human protest against iniquity in nature and also pose an unanswerable question concerning justice in the world. The Book of Job was not written in vain. Judaism does not tolerate hypocrisy and unnatural behavior which is contrary to human sensitivity. Pain results in moaning, sudden fear and shrieking. The encounter with death must precipitate a showing of protest, a bitter complaint, a sense of existential nausea and complete confusion. I want the sufferer to act as a human being, God says. Let him not suppress his humanity in order to please Me. Let him tear his clothes in frustrating anger and stop observing mitzvot because his whole personality is enveloped by dark despair and finds itself in a trance of the senses and of the faculties. Let him cry and shout, for he must act like a human being.

It clear that Halakhah requires Jews to behave towards non-Jews in a manner consistent with the Torah’s ethical demands. What’s less clear is the reason for this. The Mishnah writes (Gittin 59a-b):

…One does not restrain poor pagans from collecting the gleanings, forgotton pieces and what is left on the corners of fields mipnei darkhei shalom (on account of the ways of peace).

The Gemara, there (61a), expands, based on a beraita:

One supports poor non-Jews together with poor Israelites, and one visits sick non-Jews together with sick Israelites, and one buries dead non-Jews as one buries dead Israelites mipnei darkhei shalom.

What does “mipnei darkhei shalom” mean? (more…)

R. Marvin Fox, in “Heschel, Intuition, and the Halakhah”, is critical of what he considers an over-reliance on intuition in R. Heschel’s philosophy of religion. The common objection to any intuition-based theory, as Fox argues, “is that we have no reliable way to distinguish between those experiences which are genuine perceptions of a higher reality and experiences which are delusions or hallucinations.” Perhaps more important, though, is Fox’s second objection. The kind of awe-inspiring, life-changing experiences that Heschel has in mind are limited to prophets and, at best, the great religious personalities of each generation. “A conception of religion which is rooted in such experiences automatically restricts the realm of faith to a small group of the spiritually elite.”

According to Fox, Heschel offers three ways for achieving such intuition. He paraphrases Heschel as follows: “Man can come to a knowledge of God by sensing His presence in the world, in things… sensing His presence in the Bible… [and] sensing his presence in sacred deeds”. The problem with the first two, as Fox points out (I think, correctly), is that they are only available to the already-believing individual (again, the spiritually elite). (more…)

Dr. Tzvee Zahavy posts about his approach to teaching rabbinic texts in a university setting and links to an article he wrote on the same topic. In describing his course methods, he writes:

I also do not emphasize the notion of the texts as part of “the Halakhah.” This concept is a relatively modern construct, composed of many strata of texts, commentaries and codes. Some would argue it is a tool of those who foster rabbinic authority rather than a purely intellectual asset of our rabbinic heritage.

I think there are a number of problems with this approach. I’m going to assume for now that by “the Halakhah”, he means something to the effect of “a coherent religious-legal tradition, beginning with the written Torah and continuing to this day”. Approaching these texts without recognizing the halakhic role they play is to study them out of context. Firstly, Hazal (the rabbis of the Talmud) saw themselves as part of an ongoing tradition (see the first Mishnah in Avot), beginning with Revelation and continuing past them. Why shouldn’t our study of their work incorporate the hundreds of commentaries and halakhic compilations identified with that tradition?

Secondly, Hazal understood their divrei Torah as having normative implications. Consider a disagreement between two Amora’im (the later rabbis of the Talmud) about how to read a particular mishnah. At stake was not merely the intent of the mishnaic author. The resolution of the disagreement would determine the appropriate behavior for the halakhically-observant Jew.

It doesn’t make sense to divorce Talmud study from its normative-halakhic context and to ignore the fruit of Torah scholarship that continues that tradition to this day. While historical context should not be ignored and academic impartiality is warranted in a university setting, it seems clear that the rabbinic texts are primary halakhic ones. To approach them any differently is to misrepresent them.

R. Marvin Fox in “The Moral Philosophy of MaHaRal”:

…[W]hatever is divinely commanded through the Torah is intrinsically good. The social utility or wide-spread general acceptance of particular commandments may add to their attractiveness from our limited human perspective. Their ultimate ground, however, is their intrinsic value. Since we are incapable of grasping this fully through our own resources, we submit in modest awareness of our creaturely finitude to the divine wisdom… We have here two poles of a dialectical exposition. On the one hand, virtues are conceived as divine decrees to which man can only submit in faithful self-suppression. On the other hand, virtues are conceived as intrinsically valuable and thus commanding the freely given assent of any intelligent person. Thesis and antithesis are synthesized in the actual situation of man. The very process of submission grants him the illumination which in turn leaves no doubt about the intrinsic worth of the commandments. Thus, the man of true piety will observe the commandments with a combination of loyalty to God’s word and intelligent apprehension of the supreme wisdom implicit in that word.

I finally finished reading the most recent issue of Tradition (subscription required). Maybe it’s just the new spruced-up cover, but the last few issues seem to be improving. R. Shalom Carmy writes about the supposed challenge of science to religion and offers what I think are some good suggestions. He strangely omits Rabbi Slifkin’s name despite clearly refering to him; I’m not sure why. R. Aharon Lichtenstein writes an excellent, nuanced, and refreshingly intellectually honest article about marriage and sexuality in Halakhah. R. Lichtenstein doesn’t need my praise but, suffice it to say, everything he writes is worth reading (if there are exceptions to this, I haven’t found them). A couple articles by Dr. Joel B. Wolowelsky and R. Gidon Rothstein address the growing controversy over women’s participation in Synagogue life. Dr. David Berger reviews R. Yitz Greenberg’s newest book For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity. I haven’t read the book so I’m not really in a position to evaluate the review. Read it and decide for yourself.

In this week’s Jewish Week (via Hirhurim), Marc Shapiro addresses the so-called “Jewish approach” to the immigration debate:

[T]he liberal Jewish establishment has weighed in with strong opposition to any real cracking down on illegal immigration. This pro-immigration stance is not, in and of itself, a “liberal” position. For example, The Wall Street Journal has long advocated abolishing all immigration restrictions. What is significant with regard to many in the Jewish community, however, is that as with a number of other issues its leaders lobby for, they have sought to portray their stand as the “Jewish approach,” the one in line with Jewish tradition and values.

Shapiro is skeptical and he notes a number of sources supporting restrictions on immigration to Jewish communities; in particular, the herem ha-yishuv (“ban on settlement”) that he describes as follows:

In medieval times, an era of real Jewish communal authority, Jewish communities were forced to deal with the issue of wanderers who wished to settle among them. It is understandable that many of the Jewish townspeople endeavored to ban entry to those of their co-religionists who could have provided economic competition. What is relevant today is not the economic wisdom of this step, but rather the response of the leading Jewish scholars who also served as the communal legal authorities.

Throughout virtually all of Europe, these scholars granted communities the right to control settlement. By doing so they established an important principle, namely, that local residents alone should determine who should live with them. This system became known as herem ha-yishuv (“ban on settlement”), and the standard practice in most Jewish communities was a closed-door policy. Strangers could usually stay for a short while, but were not permitted to settle permanently. Generally, the only people given settlement rights were rabbis, students, wealthy people and refugees, the latter two on the proviso that they not engage in business.

Thus, supporting immigration restrictions today would hardly qualify as an un-Jewish position.

Extrapolating to contemporary times, one would certainly be within the realm of Jewish tradition if one instituted a herem ha-yishuv in order to ensure that a nation’s language or culture not be diluted through indiscriminate immigration. (Whether this is smart economic or social policy is another matter irrelevant to this discussion.) What is relevant is that a modern herem ha-yishuv would fall squarely within the Jewish tradition that residents of a place have the right to determine their own self-interest, including who should be allowed in and who should be kept out.

I think Shapiro’s parenthetical statement is the key to unlocking this debate. That residents of a given place have a right to determine who is settles there is a basic principle of self-government. That Jewish communities regulated immigration, presumably with rabbinic permission, merely confirms this. The question facing Americans right now isn’t whether or not we have a right to restrict immigration, but rather whether it’s really in our self-interest to exercise that right.

Chag Shavuot Sameach. Check out the Shavuot Journal 5766 at VBM. Blogging will resume on Sunday.

R. Soloveitchik in Halakhic Man (pp. 108-109):

If a man wishes to attain the rank of holiness, he must become a creator of worlds. If a man never creates, never brings into being anything new, anything original, then he cannot be holy unto his God. That passive type who is derelict in fulfilling his task of creation cannot become holy. Creation is the lowering of transcendence into the midst of our turbid, coarse, material world; and this lowering can take place only through the implementation of the ideal Halakhah in the core of reality (the realization of Halakhah=contraction=holiness=creation).

Over Shabbat, I decided to reread R. Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man. I think it’s been two years or so since I last read it (aside from referencing passages now and then). While The Lonely Man of Faith may still have a special place in my heart, Halakhic Man is an absolutely mind-blowing account of how the religious personality uses the Halakhah as a lens through which to behold the world. In fact, these two seminal essays should probably be read in light of each other and I may explore that possibility in a later post. The essay’s stated aim

is to penetrate deep into the structure of halakhic man’s consciousness and to determine the precise nature of this “strange, singular” being who reveals himself to the world from within his narrow, constricted “four cubits” [Berakhot 8a], his hands soiled by the gritty realia of practical Halakhah [see Berakhot 4a].

Later in Part I, R. Soloveitchik introduces his protaganist more fully:

When halakhic man approaches reality, he comes with his Torah, given to him from Sinai, in hand. He orients himself to the world by means of fixed statutes and firm principles. An entire corpus of precepts and laws guides him along the path leading to existence. Halakhic man, well furnished with rules, judgments, and fundamental principles, draws near the world with an a priori relation. His approach begins with an ideal creation and concludes with a real one. To whom may he be compared. To a mathematician who fashions an ideal world and then uses it for the purpose of establishing a relationship between it and the real world…

R. Gil Student of Hirhurim, laments the lack of Orthodox Jewish intellectuals engaging in the debate over so-called intelligent design. While some rabbis and Orthodox scientists have weighed in on the issue (some much better than others), the issue certainly doesn’t arouse the same interest as it does in Christian circles. In my comment to his post, I wrote:

I think the reason is because there is no Torah position on evolution. That evolution is compatible with Torah has been proven conclusively. But the merits of the theory itself should be left to scientists.

I want to expand on that. As anybody who reads this blog knows, I think the implications, both scientific and philosophical, of evolutionary theory and naturalism in general are incredibly important and I’ve suggested a number of ways to deal with some of the difficulties (see here, here, here, & here). However, I think that the theologian and philosopher of religion should limit himself to dealing with the compatability of scientific ideas with theological ones. Whether or not evolution - or any theory for that matter - is compatible with Torah is very important and I believe, in the case of evolution, the answer is “yes” (as did such Torah giants as R. Soloveitchik, R. Kook, & R. Hirsch). But whether or not evolution itself is scientifically compelling or whether it sufficiently accounts for the empirical evidence are not questions non-scientists are equipt to answer.

R. Soloveitchik in Festival of Freedom (pp. 53-54):

God reveals Himself to man if and when the latter searches for Him. If one does not inquire, if one expects God to reveal Himself without making an all-out effort to find Him, one will never meet God. “But from there you will seek the Lord and you shall find Him, if you search after Him with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut. 4:29).
…
On the first night of Pesah, we tell the story of a long search by man for God, of God responding to the inquisitive search, of God taking man, who longs for Him, into His embrace. At the Seder, we try to stimulate the naive curiosity of the children and thereby make them God-searchers. The quest for God, along with the acceptance of the commandments, is the true spiritual liberation.

In anticipation of the upcoming holiday of Pesach, ADDeRabbi writes about the role of shared memory in the shaping our religious awareness. Judaism, he argues, tells a story. The primary function of our theological commitments, as important as they are in and of themselves, is to

form the ‘plot’ of this story, this ‘meta-narrative’, which is the infrastructure of how I see and understand myself and my world.

Meta-narratives form the very fiber of our perception and identity… All of my relationships – with my kids, my car, my house, my job – are predicated upon the shared memory of certain events. Inside this paramount reality, at present, the truth of the event plays a secondary role to the shared memory of it. The ‘plot’ of each of these stories is very simple. With my car it’s ‘this car rolled off the assembly line in 1998, was purchased by x, who sold it to y, who sold it to me. The story explains my possession and is the basis of my ownership.

In this light, the meaning of the specific mitzvah of recounting the Exodus (sippur yetzi’at mitzrayim) becomes clear. At the Seder tonight, Jews around the world will take special notice of our shared history and retell the theological story that is the foundation of Judaism.

Chag Samaech.

In her review of the Conservative Movement’s Humash, Etz Hayyim, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin makes a point about the Movement’s approach to Halakhah that I’ve been arguing since my days in Schechter (via Hirhurim):

Having publicly identified itself with an interpretation of P’shat which denies the unity of the Torah, the Conservative Movement is now in a serious theological quandary. For as a movement which swears fealty to Halakhah, its rejection of the most fundamental theological assumption of the rabbis who derived that Halakhah from the text is seemingly self-contradictory.
…
Not only are rabbinic claims about the divine nature of P’shat the very raison d’etre of the halakhic system, but as the talmudic dictum “ayn hamikra yotzei midey peshuto” makes clear, these claims have always been an integral part of the halakhic process as well.

As with any review that attempts to tackle such wide-ranging issues, there is room to quibble with some of her arguments. In general though, I think she touches on an important theological dilemna. You may not claim the legitimacy of Halakhic Judaism while simultaneously undermining its most important hermeneutical assumption: the divinity of the Torah.

So says a gemara in Sanhedrin 104b and this article gives it a new meaning (via S & ADDeRabbi). Purim fever is indeed in the air.

In my response to Amba’s essay on “spiritual nomads”, I emphasized the inappropriateness of claiming to extract wisdom from Judaism without also embracing the mitzvot. This point is reinforced by a gemara in M. Shabbat (88b-89a).

At the time of the giving of the Torah, the rabbis explain, the angels appeared before God and asked regarding Moshe, “What business has one born of woman among us?” God replied that he is here to receive the Torah. The angels were outraged. How can God’s greatest gift be given to mere flesh and blood; it should be given to the angels instead. Moshe answered:

Sovereign of the Universe! The Torah which you give me, what is written in it? “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt.” Said he to them [the angels], Did you go down to Egypt; were you enslaved to Pharaoh: why then should the Torah be yours?… “You shall have no other gods” - do you dwell among peoples that engage in idol worship?… “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” - do you then perform work, that you need to rest?… “Honor your father and thy mother” - have you fathers and mothers?… You shall not murder”, “You shall not commit adultery”, “You shall not steal” - is there jealousy among you? Is the Evil Tempter among you? They [the angels] conceded to the Holy One, blessed be He.

On this passage, my rebbe R. Sobolofsky asks an obvious question. What were the angels really asking for? Didn’t they know that, not having physical bodies, the mitzvot would be of no use to them? He offers the following answer: The angels were asking for the wisdom of the Torah, for a way to grow close to God by studying His greatest treasure. Moshe answered them that this is impossible. The Torah’s wisdom is inextricably tied with the specific mitzvot that must be observed here on earth. You cannot have one without the other.

Amba offers a sneak preview of a book she’s writing, tentatively entitled OUTSIDE: Spiritual Nomads and the Way Beyond Religion. She discusses the practical and spiritual advantages of being an outsider of any particular religious tradition while using the tools of religion and modern science to construct faith anew.

Amba tries to straddle a middle ground between denying religion and professing loyalty to a specific tradition. The advantage to this approach is obvious:

When you swear exclusive allegiance to no one tradition, their multiplicity is… a vast resource: the record of over 10,000 years of research, a grand reference library for the study of reality.

But there’s a contradiction here. As Amba notes earlier in her post,

When you live inside a tradition… you agree to view life through its window — an outlook, a way of framing reality, carefully preserved through time.

This point can’t be easily dismissed. Judaism, for example, commands the believer to view the world through a rabbinic lense. Christianity, the lense of the Gospels and Islam, that of the Koran. To step outside, as Amba recommends, is to deny all of them.

Amba suggests that every religious tradition could be a “vital tributary” in the search for “insight and direction as we find our way through a radically reconfigured reality”. But this is impossible. One cannot deny the basic tenent of a particular religious tradition while simultaneously claiming to incorporate it into a new one. And Amba admits to denying religion’s central claim, which is looking at the world through the eyes of prophets (whomever you believe the genuine prophets to be).

Responding to Amba’s post, Seth makes an important observation:

The truly pious are also open enough to be able to explore the world through their own traditions for their entire lives, without running into limits beyond which they may not look. The truly pious don’t fear knowledge.

In “Jerusalem and Athens”, Leo Strauss offers a model of someone standing in Jerusalem, looking outward at Athens (the city representative of philosophy and modernity), studying it, learning from it, and using its methods to illuminate those aspects of his own city that lend themselves to such analysis. Not only is this a legitimate approach but one championed by the giants of Jewish tradition themselves. Amba, though, calls on us to leave Jerusalem and look at both cities from the outside. Leaving Jerusalem, in this model, is denying Judaism. Once having denied it, you have neither the right nor the ability to eat the fruit its wisdom. “Etz hayyim hi lemahazikim bah,” the Torah is a tree of life, not to anybody, but to those to hold onto it. That is, those who keep it.

There’s a common and particularly annoying view often taken in defense of pluralism that sounds like this: There is no one “correct” answer and therefore many legitimate approaches, but here’s what I believe and why I believe it.

Daniel Sieradski of Radical Torah takes a similar position in describing the purpose of his blog.

The challenge of Radical Torah will be to demonstrate that a Left-wing religious Judaism is possible and legitimate as well. There is not one “correct” Judaism. Rather, there are several legitimate Judaisms from which to choose.

The problem is that Sieradski goes on to argue for what he considers to be left-wing religious Judaism. He’s then in the awkward position of supporting one view while conceding that there is no correct view. If there’s no correct view, then clearly his position isn’t correct either. And if it isn’t correct, why in the world is he arguing for it?

A common reply is to note the quotation marks around “correct”. He doesn’t actually mean that there’s no right answer, he might argue. It’s just that there no single “correct” or objectively true answer out there. Instead, there are various legitimate positions for us to choose from. But what criteria should use to decide? If we’re not trying to figure out an objective truth, then what are we doing? Sieradski says he’s choosing the “halakhic framework [that] resonates most strongly with [him].” If I criticize his position, though, I assume he would hold his ground and argue for why he believes it. by doing so, he effectively concedes that he believes his view has some advantage over mine.

He may respond that even granting me this point, he still doesn’t have to maintain that his view is absolutely correct. But that is besides the point. When he says that his view has an advantage over mine, he implies that it is therefore closer to the truth. And the only way for him to argue for his position is to make this kind of claim.

In the halakhic context, Sieradski might throw back at me what he says earlier in the same paragraph:

Between the 12 tribes of Israel and “70 faces of Torah,” there are indeed many “Judaisms.”

That is to say that Judaism itself recognizes some form of pluralism. I think that’s true but not in the way Sieradski means it. Judaism’s celebration of diversity and disagreement among the rabbis doesn’t mean that particular questions of law and ideology have no right answer. Rather, the disagreement itself - the act of deciphering God’s will - has a religious dimension. As long as this motive is present the disagreement is considered leshem shamayim (for the sake of heaven).

Plenty has been written about Pat Robertson’s suggestion that “Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.” Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, guest posting at Cross-Currents, suggests that while Robertson’s comment was “foolish and off base”, it may have a kernal of truth.

In Robertson’s case… it is only his presumptuousness that I find shocking. He pretends to know what G-d is thinking. Prophecy, he forgot, ended with Zechariah some 2,500 years ago.

In another way, though, Robertson utters a simple truth, which his crude logic makes easy to ignore. This truth is a basic one. It is the foundation of the Hebrew Bible and indeed of Judaism: G-d cares about humanity and intervenes in human affairs, of both the individual and the community.

I understand what’s bothering Rabbi Goldberg. He’s right that we assume God is always in charge, and thus the suggestion that our current hardships are the result of our sins is merely presumptuous but not beyong the pale. That said, there may be something additional wrong with such a comment. Consider Zechariah 3:1-4:

He showed me Yehoshua, the High Priest, standing before the angel of God, and Satan standing on his right side, to accuse him. God said to Satan: “God rebukes you, Satan; God – Who has chosen Jerusalem – rebukes you. Is this [man] not a brand plucked from the fire?” Yehoshua was clothed in filthy garments, and he stood before the angel. He answered and said to those standing before him, saying: “Remove the filthy garments from upon him.” And he said to him: “See, I have removed your sin from upon you, and I shall clothe you in festive garments.”

R. Aharon Lichtenstein elaborates:

God silences Satan not because Satan’s claims are untrue - the “garments” are indeed “filthy.” Rather, God tells Satan: Without any connection to the correctness of the actions or to the truth of your words, it is forbidden for you, Satan, to voice this accusation!

Why does God not let Satan voice his accusation? Because the man is question is a “brand plucked from the fire.” A brand plucked from the fire – even if his garments are filthy – must be treated differently. At this moment, although he presents truthful accusations and substantial claims, Satan must keep silent.
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All too often, we hear people claiming, “Why was there a Holocaust? Because their garments were filthy” – i.e., the generation was sinful. These people should be told that it is none of our business to determine the degree of “filth” on the garments. To them we say unequivocally: “God rebukes you, Satan; God – Who chooses Jerusalem – rebukes you!” Such talk is forbidden!

It is forbidden not because it is inconceivable, but because such explanations are in the realm of prophets, and perhaps Chazal – but we? Who gave us the right to speak in such terms?

Every Jew today – and the State of Israel and Jewish People as whole – is, to some extent, a “brand plucked from the fire,” and the Holy One rebukes those who bring accusations against him.

Krum as a bagel has a good post on one of R. Soloveitchik’s most important essays, “Catharsis” (Tradition, Spring 1978). Krum’s particular interest is the implication it has for apparent discrepancies between Torah and science. The Rav writes:

Judaism insisted upon the redeeming of the logos and maintained that there is an unredeemed cognitive gesture, just as there is an unredeemed carnal drive… I do not refer to mythical thinking… but to the most modern system of scientific inquiry. The latter may be considered unredeemed if the scientist does not subject his cognitive act to an extraneous catharsis… I do not mean to suggest that the scientist should conduct his inquiry without thoroughness or inconclusively. On the contrary every scholar is guided intuitively by an ethical norm, which tells him to search the truth assiduously and not to rest until he has it within his reach. Cognitive withdrawal is related, not to the scientific inquiry as a logical operation, but rather to the axiological experience of scientific work. Knowing is not an impersonal performance which can be computerized, emptied of its rich, colorful, experiential content. It is, instead, an integral part of the knower as a living person… Next to the religious experience, knowledge is perhaps the most vibrant and resonant personal experience. It sweeps the whole of the personality, sometimes like a gentle wave infusing the knower with a sense of tranquillity and serenity; at other times like a mighty onrushing tide, arousing the soul to its depth and raising it to a pitch of ecstasy.

This touches on an important recurring theme in R. Soloveitchik’s writings, in particular as it relates to Torah study: the experience of knowledge. In the Rav’s understanding, our encounter with the world has two elements, the quantitative and the qualitative. Much of the Rav’s writing deals with the relationship between these two approaches to knowledge. R. Zeigler elaborates on this point in his notes on “Catharsis“:

In the scientific realm, cognitive catharsis implies recognizing the ultimate mystery of being… [O]nce a certain phenomenon has been assigned a scientific explanation, this does not imply that there is nothing more to be said about it. According to a theory of science subscribed to by the Rav, modern science merely creates an abstract mathematical world which parallels the functioning of nature. This quantitative correlate is useful as far as technology is concerned, but it operates on a wholly different plane than the qualitative world experienced by us. We experience not a world of abstract quantities, but rather one of living qualities, of impressions and sensations. An equation describing the flight of a bird or the wavelength of a red flower cannot elucidate the great mystery of qualitative being, in which we live our lives and to which we react with awe and wonder.

From the Gemara in Berakhot 4b:

The master said: “One should read Keri’at Shema and then pray [the Amida].” This supports Rabbi Yochanan, as Rabbi Yochanan said: “Who will merit the World to Come (Olam Ha-ba)? One who juxtaposes redemption [the blessing of Ga’al Yisra’el] with the evening prayer.”

My rebbe, R. Yitzchak Blau cites the interpretation of the students of Rabbeinu Yonah:

We link redemption and prayer because prayer, often referred to as avoda she-balev (service of the heart), exemplifies service of Hashem. This illustrates the fact that we do not view the exodus from Egypt as a self-sufficient act. No one can deny the joys of freedom, but the question remains what a person will accomplish with such freedom. Therefore, the Exodus from Egypt (Yetzi’at Mitzrayim) was only complete when the Jewish people accepted the Torah at Sinai (Matan Torah). We convey this point each day by following up our prayers about the Exodus with the quintessential avodat Hashem.
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Ultimately, freedom is not meaningful without a vision of how to live a noble existence. Jewish history is significant not because we became free, but because we accepted the divine laws of the Torah.

Freedom, though a noble political value seems slightly out of place in a religious context. In this vein, a professor of mine used to offer the analogy of an orchestra. If musicians in a symphony play whatever please, each according to his own rhythm, that may be freedom. But freedom, in this sense, isn’t the appropriate value for an orchestra, whose function is to create beautiful music. The players should be free but must use that freedom to obey the notes on the page.

Similarly, the Gemara teaches that the freedom granted to Israel in leaving Egypt is of a specific type. The beautiful music is created when that freedom is used to worship God.

I’ve been thinking about a distinction between “‘al pi din’ [according to the law] and ‘metzius’ [physical reality]” cited and partially endorsed by Godol Hador in a post last week. GH already noted the similarities with Brisker study and R. Soloveitchik’s refrain about “halakhic reality”.

While flipping through an old issue of The Torah u-Madda Journal, I reread an article by Mark Steiner, “Philosophizing in Yiddish: Rabbi Reuven Agushewitz on Freedom of the Will”. In it, he describes how R. Soloveitchik used the techniques of contemporary philosophy in articulating the hashfakah for which he is famous. As scientific discovery continues to wreck havoc in the batei midrash of Orthodox Judaism, I believe we will find ourselves, in one way or another, turning to the Rav for support.

[R. Soloveitchik] puts forward the idea that halakhic Judaism involves intrinsically an alternative description of the world to that of natural science.
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By reading the works of R. Soloveitchik, one gets an intuitive insight into the meaning of concepts like “freedom” as applied to halakhic man.

At the end of day, we may not need to work out a consistent understanding of Genesis and the natural sciences. The Torah describes creation in our language but from God’s perspective. As R. Soloveitchik himself writes:

There is a Bereishit-logic which reflects the wisdom of God embedded in nature.

I want to take up a question brought up by lamedzayin in a post at the newly formed (and high recommended) Maven Yavin. He’s asks “Does yahadut [Judaism], if practiced according to the rules, imply morality?” Obviously, this is a very complex issue with far more implications than I could cover in a blog post. That said, I want to suggest what I think is clear from Jewish sources and may thus serve as a starting point.

The closest thing Judaism has to a “definition” or a summary of God, if you will, is the 13 Attributes (Ex. 34:6-7). Hazal and the Rishonim (especially Rambam) understand God’s essential qualities as ethical models. With this in mind, consider that Hazal also understand Torah and mitsvot as either a manifestation or reflection of God’s will. If God is essentially good, then it is reasonable to conclude that His mitsvot reflect this goodness.

Returning to lamedzayin’s question, the answer is that it has too. How exactly this works out is, of course, the subject of centuries of debate. But the basic principle remains. Any imitation of God (which we understand to be a mitsvah) must include an imitation of His attributes of goodness. We are, after all, commanded to imitate He who is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness, and truth”.

In light of my previous post, I want to distinguish between what I identified as “God’s intention” from the so-called originalist theory of constitutional interpretation. I agree with Nephtuli that there are significant differences but I would go even a step further. The Torah itself is God’s message to humanity and thus, interpreting the Torah is inextricably tied to interpreting God’s will or intention. Consider an analogy: Somebody writes you a rather vague letter. In trying to make sense of the letter itself, you’re also trying to figure out what the author had in mind while writing it. You can’t separate those two tasks.

The Constitution, on the other hand, is not simply the will of James Madison or of the members of Constitutional Convention. The relationship of Madison’s intention with the text of the Constitution is incidental. The goal of constitutional interpretation is to interpret the Constitution. Madison’s intention or that of any of the Founding Fathers is useful only insofar as it helps illuminate the text.

The famous story of the oven of achnai (Bava Metsia 59b) is one of the important sources demonstrating the significance and theological implications of halakhic deliberations in Judaism. As Rav Soloveitchik writes:

The strange Aggadic stories… about R. Joshua b. Chanania’s rejecting a Divine decision which favored a minority opinion over that of the majority [is] characteristic of the intimate Halakhic-covenantal relationship prevailing between man and God. (The Lonely Man of Faith)

The biblical verse used to justify R. Joshua’s rejection of the bat kol is similarly famous: “Lo Bashamayim Hi” - It is not in heaven. The context of the verse is also important, though:

This commandment that I command you today - it is not hidden from you and it is not distant. It is not in heaven [for you] to say “Who can ascend to the heaven for us and take it for us…” Nor is it across the sea, [for you] to say “Who can cross to the other side of the sea for us…” Rather the matter is very near to you. (Deut. 30:11-14)

Richard Silverstein understands this gemara as saying:

The Talmudic rabbis do not view Jewish law as divine per se. It is not fixed in its meaning as revealed at Sinai. It is alive. Jews may even interpret the law wrongly and God has no power to correct them because the sole interpretive responsibility is theirs.

In his comment to Nephtuli’s post, he writes:

I do not believe that the rabbis in the Talmud story “ignored” God’s “intent.” I believe they prob. took that into acct. in their deliberations & decided against Him nevertheless. After all, doesn’t God make pretty crystal clear that his original intent sides with R. Eliezer?

I think the suggestion that the rabbis somehow overruled divine authority by invoking “lo bashamayim hi” is seriously misguided. On theological grounds, the rabbis’ job is to apply divine law to situations not explicit in the Torah and to make additional provisions to uphold its spirit. The entire corpus of halakhic literature is devoted to identifying and explaining God’s intention in giving the Torah.

On texual grounds, that’s simply not what the gemara is saying. The reason the bat kol is rejected is clear. The rabbis “give no credence to a bat kol”. The heavenly voice is not permitted in the discussion because “lo bashamayim hi”. We don’t rely on prophetic means to interpret the Torah; we use only our faculties of reason.

But this is an epistemological point. The goal of deciding Halakhah is still to identify God’s intention. The rabbis don’t ignore God’s will; they ignore the bat kol because they are called upon to identify God’s will on their own. If we rely on a bat kol, then we indeed require someone to “ascend to the heaven for us”. The Torah tells us that no, “lo bashamayim hi” - it is not in heaven. The bat kol has no weight in the halakhic discussion. We have to figure out what God would say on our own.

Or just a conservative one who tacks on the annoying phrase “Judeo-Christian” to give himself credibility? I’ve already ranted about how much I hate the phrase “Judeo-Christian” so I’ll let you read it for yourself. Aside from that, though, I’m genuinely curiously: Is there a particular Jewish constituency that believes Prager to be speaking for them? I certainly don’t see the left-leaning Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist groups singing his praises. As a conservative, he may appeal to some Orthodox Jews (although not me) but can hardly be compared to the heavy-weights of the Orthodox world in yeshivot and universities. Anybody familiar with rabbinic writing from any time period should notice this immediately: Prager doesn’t cite sources. Just search Prager’s articles for words like “talmud,” “midrash,” “halakhah,” “rambam,” “mitsvah”.

If you want to argue that your position represents a normative (or even minority) Jewish view, don’t you think you should provide at least one or two sources? Instead, Prager just says “Judeo-Christian” and then tells you what he thinks, as if the two have anything to do with each other.

“Poor” in biblical nomenclature were truly destitute, not at all analogous to those classified as “poor” in America. (source)

A verse? A mishnah? Just give me something that indicates that “poor” is absolute rather than relative. Because the poor in the Bible didn’t have indoor plumbing either. I guess that makes us all filthy rich.

The biblical view is that man and woman are entirely distinct beings, and human order in large part rests on preserving that distinctiveness. (source)

Oh, so that’s why the Torah tell us that God created Woman from Man’s “side” (or “rib”). It’s because men and women are “entirely distinct”. Thank you, Rabbi Prager, for enlightening me. I think this is the kicker, though:

Jews opposed to capital punishment cite the Talmud (the second most important religious text to Jews), which is largely opposed to capital punishment… Yet, the notion that a murderer must give up his life is one of the central values in the Old Testament. Indeed, taking the life of a murderer is the only law that is found in all Five Books of Moses. (source)

So the rabbis, the most significant and authoritative interpreters of the Bible, oppose capital punishment. Prager admits this much. But, he argues, the rabbis must have glossed over all those biblical passages that seem to support it. How silly of the rabbis.

In the recent Edah Journal, Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill reviews the three collections of articles and speeches of Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein as a way of evaluating his thought in general and his role as a leader of “modern” or “centrist” Orthodoxy. There’s a lot to say about the article but I’ll defer to close students of R. Lichtenstein for the details of his approach. One point of Dr. Brill’s, though, stood out to me as somebody concerned with the appropriate method of doing philosophy of Judaism:

In the texts cited to prove his social views, we gain a window into R. Lichtenstein’s approach. He avoids the texts of Jewish thought of the last millennium except for those of the Eastern European beit midrash; he does not cite liturgists, midrash, medieval philosophers or kabbalists. Instead, he bases his corporate view of life on the legal texts that discuss the laws of sacrifice, property responsibility, and the four watchmen. His proof text on the need to work is a citation from Maimonides (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Gezeilah 6:11) that a dice player cannot be a witness because his vice places him outside of society. This case is paradigmatic of the way in which R. Lichtenstein takes a particular halakhah and globalizes it into a general idea about society.

It seems obvious that on this point, R. Lichtenstein takes a page from his rebbe and father-in-law. R. Soloveitchik devotes the last section of The Halakhic Mind to advocating the approach which Dr. Brill criticizes:

…There is only a single source from which a Jewish philosophical Weltanschauung could emerge; the objective order - the Halakhah… The halakhic compass would also guide us through the lanes of medieval philosophy and reveal structural standards by which to judge and evaluate the philosophical thought of the golden age… Out of the sources of Halakhah, a new world view awaits formulation.

Personally, I think the shift from medieval philosophical methods to what I’ll call “philosophy via Halakhah” is the most important treasure that R. Soloveitchik bestowed on the Jewish community (at least as far as Jewish philosophy goes). Of course, neither R. Soloveitchik nor R. Lichtenstein exclude biblical references, midrashim, kabbalistic sources, or medieval philosophic ones; but their focus is the normative Halakhah.

In traditional Judaism, the Gemera is authoritative in a unique way. Even biblical episodes are understood by the great rabbis through rabbinic lenses. More importantly, though, basic halakhic categories such as the four shomrim (watchmen) are considered to be unchanging and objective - which makes them suitable as the raw material for philosophy. The realities of space and time influence only the application of such halakhot, not their essence. Poskim may disagree about the status of a particular shomer (watchman) but none would deny the halakhic fact of four distinct kinds and their implications for compensation. The weight that Halakhah carries in governing the life of the traditional Jew, I think, stems from this basic assumption.

Halakhah is the window into the divine mind. In formulating a genuinely Jewish philosophical position, it makes sense to rely primarily on such foundational sources. It is the basic halakhic principles around which traditional Jewish life bases itself. If Jewish philosophy is to be grounded in the Jewish experience, it must focus on what motivates that experience.

I wrote my senior honors thesis on a hypothetical dialoge between Socrates and Hazal, focusing on the philosophical implications of ta’ame ha-mitsvot (rationalizing mitsvot). By the time I finished, I was completely exhausted by the subject matter. While blogging on related Jewish topics, I stayed far away from this one. That said, two bloggers whom I usually enjoy reading (Hirhurim and Not The Godol Hador) have sufficiently tempted me to jump back into the fray.

Any answer to the question “Why do we do mitsvot” short enough to fit on one page is almost certainly insufficient (although not necessarily wrong). Of course, the “because God said so” answer is popular but not enough. It begs the question “Why did God say so?” To answer that question with “just because” or “no reason” renders God’s will arbitrary and thus, lacking justification. In fact, the Mishnah (Makkot 3:16) is quite clear about why God commands mitsvot: “The Holy One, blessed be He, desired to grant merit to Israel.” As Kehati explains: “He multiplied warnings and prohibitions for them, even regarding things from which man naturally keeps apart, for since they stay away from them because the Torah has thus commanded, their merit is increased.” This implies, of course, that such actions had some merit to begin with. They are justified, at least in part, without being accompanied by the divine imperative. The act of God commanding, then, serves to somehow enhance the already righteous deed to a higher level.

Louis Jacobs captures this idea well:

Although God commands them it is not implied that the command is the reason for their observance, so that if God had commanded man to steal or to murder this would have been the right thing to do. On the contrary, the commands are announced in such a way as to suggest that they are already fully comprehensible to man as the basis for living the ethical life… Once God has commanded, however, the command itself is, of course, an additional reason for its observance.

The term “Judeo-Christian” seems a bit redundant. Insofar as Christianity sees itself as the legitimate heir to Jewish religion, to be Christian is to properly understand and carry out the covenant between God and the Jewish People. The term “Judeo-Christian” merely makes this position explicit. When people talk about “Judeo-Christian values”, they mean Christian values and simply wish to add that such Christian values stem from properly understanding Judaism.

As I fully reject that Christian claim, I find the expression annoying. For one thing, Judaism and Christianity have a lot less in common than many seem to believe. Despite sharing a fundemental text, we read it through a very different set of lenses than Christians do. For traditional Jews, at least, the biblical text is understood in the larger context of the rabbinic tradition. (I realize this is a bit of an oversimplification but I don’t want to dwell on it for now). Fundamentalism, as refering to the literal rendering of the biblical text, doesn’t make sense to even the most right-wing of Orthodox Judaism - which advocates reading the Bible in rabbinic perspective.

That said, it boggles my mind when Jews adopt the very Christian jargon that undermines them. In this article by Dennis Prager, “Judeo-Christian” appears 11 times. (He also refers to the Jewish Bible as “Old Testament” - a term that carries connotations of being outdated). He proceeds to quote verses as if they weren’t accompanied by a 2000-year-old rabbinic tradition. I’m picking on Prager somewhat arbitrarily; he’s not alone. It’s become somewhat of a trend for right-wing Jewish thinkers to try to sound Christian. Traditional Jewish treatments of “social conservative” topics marshal in the revelent rabbinic and halakhic material and thus, present a more nuanced and sophisticated view.

When Christians present a Christian view of the Bible, well, that makes sense. I realize that guys like Prager are trying to make themselves credible to a greater religious audience but I still don’t like it.

In the context of a on-going discussion about the believability (for lack of a better word) of Judaism, Orthoprax writes:

I see the world as it is today. I don’t see water splitting into walls, I don’t see chariots of fire in the sky, I don’t see the sun stopping in its movement, I don’t see giants or witches or angels anywhere (well, in movies I suppose). I don’t see any miracles in life.

It’s important to point out here a significant difference of perspective. I’m looking at the world through halakhic lenses so the miraculous means something very different to me. See, for instance, the blessings before and after Shema. In R. Wurzburger’s words, “We must begin with refusing to let familiarity dull our sense of wonder.” Of course, though, this only makes sense if you are looking for God. You won’t find what you’re not looking for. You won’t see what you’re not prepared to believe. Orthoprax paraphrases me as saying: “So, if you believe then you will believe. If you are skeptical then you will be skeptical. Wowzers.” Well, no. If you open yourself up to the possiblity of God in a sincere and diligent way, then you may recognize Him the next time you see the sunrise. If you want a neat logical demonstration of why it is reasonable to believe in God before doing all of the heavy lifting that Halakhah requires, you won’t get it. It is in this light that the rabbis advise: “Do not believe an individual who claims to have found [spiritual treasures] without having toiled for them” (BT Megilah 6b).

Orthoprax expresses some genuine concerns about the so-called proofs for theism. If you’re interested I recommend reading through my comments on his post. I’ve addressed similar issues before (here and here) but I want to share a way of thinking that I personally find helpful:

It’s true that we can explain the complexity of nature without appealing to God. The same is true for moral intuitions, ontology, etc. But positing God’s existence is helpful in understanding how all these things relate to each other. Scientists (generally) aren’t interested in understanding the relationship between the origins of the universe and ethical dilemmas, even if they can explain each one individually. But the Torah is concerned with exactly those kind of issues; for example, the relationship between ethics and ontology. The Torah answers by appealing to God. It’s not deductive to be sure, but it’s very useful. In terms of accounting for the entirety of existence, I think the Torah-theory has tremendous explaining power. You’ll always be able to come up with a cogent naturalist explanation but it strikes me as much less compelling.