הרב אברהם אדלשטיין Rabbi Avraham Edelstein

Rabbi Katz has done it again. Only this time it is worse. He has repeated his vile and untrue accusations that it is widespread for Lakewood poskim to pasken that גזל עכו”ם is permissible and hence such גזילה is widespread in the community. He has repeated his wild theory that this is because they are stuck on some psak in the past that says that it is mutar. This is because, in his mind, they have a fossilized approach to halacha. Having found their Rishonim (who say it is assur but still…), they are now impervious to any changes both in their environment and in the halacha that were established at the time of the Rishonim. This is all a figment of his malicious imagination.

To condemn an entire community, as if they are all busy setting up shell companies, funneling money through relatives and the like in the secular press – that is beyond the pale.[1] To do it without substantiation is a malicious, libelous accusation. Yet, he claims in his response to me that, “It was merely the musings of a soul that perpetually searches for divine truth that, on the surface, seems elusive and out of reach.”

To Rabbi Katz, I have this to say:

The reason I am addressing your remarks (now for the second time) is not because of anything personal. We have never met. It is because you did great damage. You attacked an entire Torah community to a secular audience and an audience that includes many non-Jews. In the end of the day, they will not make the fine distinctions you wish to make. They will all be turned against Torah. I am not sure whether that damage can be undone. This is serious stuff.  

I feel constrained to address your remarks in the hopes that you won’t ever do this again. I hope you understand and respond accordingly with your own regret and teshuvah.

Sincerely

Avraham Edelstein

This is now the third time that Rabbi Katz has brought up such issues. In an earlier article, he accused the Torah world of being “small, purist, and exclusionary.” Rabbi Katz felt that this awful indictment needed also to be delivered to a predominantly secular Jewish and non-Jewish readership. (Again in The Times of Israel). And this from a man who can only dream of doing as much outreach to the non-Orthodox world and teach them as much Torah as the “exclusionary” targets of his vile.

But Rabbi Katz’s העזת פנים  is not done. He states further in that article that “My deep love for the Jewish community forces me to cast my lot with the second group (who are open, inclusive, and creative.” So, Rabbi Katz is now the outreach man! Beware of those lovers of the Jewish community whose poisonous pen they direct against just those they should feel the most love for!

Back to Lakewood. Rabbi Katz’s footnote purports to show that the positions of many Rishonim and Achronim are the basis for allowing Lakewood poskim to posit that gezel akum is permissible.  Yet not a single source he quotes says that it is mutar. They all say clearly that it is אסור. How did he get it so wrong? How did he manage to come up with: “The authoritative status of the lenient opinions towards gezel akum has a very strong basis in halakha, it is a view held by many of the classical Rishonim and Achronim”?!  and “An unadulterated read of halakha may in fact permit this kind of cheating. Many poskim assert that gezel akum (stealing from idolaters) is technically mutar.”

To understand how much poor scholarship went into the footnote, you can read the Appendix at the end of this article where I show that R. Katz’s “learned” presentation is at best irresponsible scholarship (especially for a person serving as Chair, Department of Talmud and Director of the Lindenbaum Center for Halakhic Studies at Chovevei.) And at worst, he aggravated and caused a Chillul H’, a most serious transgression.

Rabbi Katz, without retracting anything he wrote in the first Lakewood article, now writes that what he meant by saying stealing is “technically” permitted by many Rishonim and Achronim was that, according to them, this was not the סיבת האיסור. (He doesn’t quite manage to get those words out, but that is his intent.)  Now remember that Rabbi Katz was writing to a secular audience. So, I showed his original sentence to some students of mine and asked them what they thought the author meant. All of them said the same thing. “Technically” permitted means that it is permitted but is not in the spirit of the law. But that is not what those commentators Rabbi Katz quotes in his footnote say! They say it is forbidden because of חילול ד’ – as a Torah prohibition, or מדרבנן, for various reasons. Rabbi Katz, you are being dishonest when you communicate something which clearly means one thing, and then, when you are caught on that, say that it means another. You are being dishonest if you don’t clearly retract the fact that you stated “An unadulterated read of halakha may in fact permit this kind of cheating” and instead try to fudge it. (I have shown in the Appendix how poor this attempt is.)

At the end of his footnote, R Katz writes:

בנוסף לשיטות הנ”ל שמעיקר הדין הוא מותר לגמרי.

Anyone reading this would understand that essentially the איסור is only a חומרא. But Rabbi Katz again means by this that the סיבת האיסור is not לא תגזול or לא תעשוק.  The underlying reason that Rabbi Katz plays with acceptable definitions is beyond exploration right now, but it reflects a part of a radical new approach to Judaism that is not within the consensus. To do this, he needs a new vocabulary. Torah Jews are now branded as “originalists” by R. Katz’s slight of pen that goes a long way to reveal the Open Orthodox movement’s agenda.

But it gets worse. Because, according to Rabbi Katz, if the סיבת האיסור of גזילה is because of חילול ד’ (or if it is דרבנן) then “it is not considered prohibited stealing and therefore one only needs to refrain from doing it for secondary reasons.” The Gra says that the prohibition of stealing from a non-Jew is because of חילול ד’.  Ah! He does not say that it is because of the prohibition of stealing. But actually, חילול ד’ is worse than the prohibition of stealing. Stealing is a straight לאו. The Rambam states that we receive atonement on Yom Kippur for a straight לאו. But for חילול ד’  we only get a final כפרה upon our death.

According to R. Katz the Gra was morally deficient by today’s standards!!

And what, Rabbi Katz, will you do with the Tosefta which says that stealing from a non-Jew is WORSE than stealing from a Jew, because of the חילול ד’ involved!

Rabbeinu Bachaya explains that when one steals from a fellow Jew, his fellow Jew blames only him, not G-d. But when one steals from a non-Jew, the non-Jew questions the entire faith of the Jewish people as well as their Torah. (Similarly, one who does not return a lost article to a non-Jew in a place where the majority population is Jewish will cause the non-Jew to say, אין אמונה בישראל.) “Secondary reasons,” Rabbi Katz?

The ספר חסידים  tells us that the גדולים wrote that they have seen with their own eyes that those people who gained from the mistakes of non-Jews did not succeed and lost their possessions as well.  By contrast, those who were מקדש שם שמים and returned טעות עכו”ם became successful, affluent, and left much wealth to their descendants.

In contrast, according to R. Katz, the license to steal is rooted in a sense of superiority to the non-Jew. How could any honest reading of these sources lead to that conclusion?

Rabbi Katz’ other major distortion is to try to make the leap from those who say that the איסור of גזל עכו”ם is  דרבנןto saying that it is technically מותר (and hence paskened that way, according to his wild imagination, by Lakewood poskim).  Someone once said in front of the Chazon Ish that Shmittah was only rabbinic in our time. The Chazon Ish got up onto his feet and said, “Almost everything we do is rabbinic today.”  Such mitzvos as  שמיטה, תפילה and most מצוות התלויות בארץ are today דרבנן. R. Chaim Vital says that there is no מצוה to work on your midos, and Rav Saadia Gaon says that there is no מצוה to believe in G-d. Some say that, according to the Rambam there is a מצוה of תשובה, only to do וידוי if you want to do תשובה. According to the Rambam there is no מצוה of ישוב הארץ, and believing in מעמד הר סיני is also not a מצוה. According to most ראשונים, marriage is only a הכשר מצוה of פרו ורבו. Many ראשונים hold that there is no generalחיוב דאורייתא of חינוך בנים. Only the סמ”ק says that there is a מצוה of צניעות. By Rabbi Katz’s twisted logic, we could land up with a Judaism where there is no prayer nor teshuvah nor need to work on character, nor get married, nor educate one’s children!

I suggest that R. Katz go and read the Shaarei Teshuva, beginning of Shaar Gimmel where he talks about the implications of disobeying a rabbinic mitzvah.

The Ramban writes on Chumash about the reasons for the mitzvos in general (to מתקן our own midos, etc.). According to R. Katz, when, this shows a disdain for our fellow Jew, for the סיבת האיסור is not for the intrinsic value of the Jew we are giving to, but rather for our own benefit. Similarly, all the mitzvos relating to צער בעלי חיים. According to the Ramban, it is not because of the intrinsic worth of the animal but rather to develop our sensitivity towards the animal. According to R. Katz, God is introducing a moral insensitivity to the animal world.

Rabbi Katz, let me ask you a question. The Gemorrah cites two לא תעשה’s to prohibit גזילה – לא תגזול and לא תעשוק רעך.  These overlap, though the Gemorrah already discusses their possible differences. There are also potentially two עשה’s involved as well. לא תעשוק רעך prima facie excludes non-Jews because it says רעך. לא תגזול doesn’t. Would we then say that לא תעשוק teaches us that non-Jews are inferior (since there are places where the two don’t overlap) while לא תגזול teaches us the opposite? Clearly, no-one can learn Gemorrah with this kind of philosophizing and come out with the right conclusions. In fact, I could write a whole book on the absurdities that would arise from such an approach.

The distortions emerging from Rabbi Katz’s approach arise because he came with an agenda. He shot an arrow and then proceeded to draw the target by looking for “proofs” that would back him up. This reminds me of the early Conservative writers. They would decide something like, “It is permissible to drive to shul on Shabbat.” Sure enough, someone would then go and write a detailed teshuvah with a lot of sources to show just this. Of course, we know that this was false scholarship; that the conclusions did not emerge from a reading of the sources. But we knew what target they were going to draw in advance!

With that in mind, let’s repeat R. Katz initial assertion: “An unadulterated read of halakha may in fact permit this kind of cheating. Many poskim assert that gezel akum (stealing from idolaters) is technically mutar.”

The problem that R Katz is facing is that no one, not one Rishon, says that such stealing is mutar. And the pashtus of the majority of them is that it is an איסור דאורייתא.  Moreover, the entire  שלשלת ההלכה from the time of the Shulchan Aruch pasken that it is assur – the Mechaber, the Rama,  the Shach, the Nesivos, the Gra, the Sma,  the Chacham Tzvi, the Aruch HaShulchan – all the discussion is only about what this or that Rishon holds the סיבת האיסור is. And it is clear from the Shulchan Aruch, the Gra and others that this is an issur Deoraaisa. (See Appendix for full discussion.)

So, Rabbi Katz is making a fantastic claim about Lakewood rabbis permitting such a thing. He is saying that they made something up – here are his words: “It is also true that the opinions that believe that gezel akum is “technically” mutar have normative status in my native community (the community in which I grew up),” and “The refusal by the poskim to emphatically promote the stringent opinions that prohibit gezel akum is undoubtedly informed, at least partially, by philosophical attitudes about “others” and theological notions about the immutability of halakha.”

According to R. Katz, the Lakewood poskim rely on a  תמיה-dik Rashi, the dochek פשט  of the Kesef Mishneh  on the Rambam, the Bach on the Tur, etc. – all not accepted by the mainstream שלשלת הפסק (see Appendix below). But, even these approaches say that stealing from a non-Jew is prohibited. According to  R. Katz, since they don’t say that such stealing is prohibited as a Torah prohibition of לא תגזול, “and therefore one only needs to refrain from doing it for secondary reasons”, like חילול ד’,  the Lakewood rabbanim are able to take the leap and say thatגזל עכו”ם is מותר altogether!  After all, “There are those who say “technically” gezel akum is mutar, meaning that it is not considered prohibited stealing.” Even Rabbi Katz’s weak scholarship cannot make that leap without a sinister motive.

The tragedy of all this is that I suspect Rabbi Katz is capable of learning up these sugiyas properly. Rabbi Katz wants to get to, “They do not believe that psak is a process whereby nuances are crystalized over the course of many years” as if there is no שלשלת הפסק amongst these poskim.  How sobering to see what happens when someone with an agenda applies that to לימוד התורה!

So far off the edge has this man gone that he claims not to know what I am talking about. “I, therefore, am at a loss when it comes to making sense of your implied critique…” Let’s see, a man claims that “Chareidi poskim,” (no longer just Lakewood poskim) “many of whom are resolutely wedded to an originalist approach to halakha on this matter,” are simply inclined to ignore a clear and undisputed psak of the Shulchan Aruch, because of a new label. They are “originalists!”

This is wild and outrageous!

But Rabbi Katz is not done.

Having failed as a למדן, Rabbi Katz tries his hand at sociology. This is his attempt. He is going to make a vicious claim against an entire community and its poskim – that they widely support גזל עכו”ם. He won’t be able to bring a shred of evidence, because it is all kept oral. But should someone defend them, this will be so baffling to him that it must be that said person doesn’t know the community well enough. All those tens and tens of beautiful families I know in Lakewood, it is all a front. Secretly, they steal from goyim! In his words about me:

“At the same time, I am surprised by your seeming ignorance as to the normative nature … of the opinions that say that gezel akum is “technically” mutar.”

And….“[your] dislike of liberal Orthodoxy made it impossible for you to take my words at face value.”

Rabbi Katz’s evidence? None. Remember what happens to you if you ask for any: You are out of touch and biased. Remember that all this is enough for Rabbi Katz to publically condemn the Lakewood community (and all those of their ilk) to a secular and non-Jewish audience!

A miniscule percentage of a certain tzibur sins. Its poskim and rabbanim publically condemn their behavior. But you, Rabbi Katz, know that what was behind this was a particular approach to psak, an entire approach, backed up by it leaders and thinkers and you go public.

Rabbi, in the social sciences, there is a rule. You can have a hunch and all sorts of theories. But if you want to go public you had better have evidence.  Otherwise, keep your hunches to yourself.

Okay, so Rabbi Katz is not a lamdan. He is certainly not a sociologist. So, perhaps he is a philosopher.

Here is his poor attempt:

In his first article:

“‘How could people with such high religious standards commit these inexcusable crimes’ we wonder. The jurisprudential philosophy of this community could at least partially explain this conundrum.

“The seemingly blasé attitude towards stealing from the government is partially informed by the belief that halakha is static; that its meaning and application do not at all change through perpetual clarification and constant crystallization.”

In his second article:

The approach to Judaism of the Lakewood world is that: “allowing halakha to accommodate human moral intuition could jeopardize the absoluteness and religious supremacy of halakha.” is “an originalist approach toward halakha.” What happened in Lakewood, “plausibly accentuates the pitfalls of such an approach to psak.”

The solution?  Rabbi Katz wants “halakha to accommodate human moral intuition.”  Rabbi Katz stays clear of uttering anything more than abstract babbling on the subject, his only example seems our case at hand, i.e. that he with his moral intuition was able to understand that the halacha says that גזל עכו”ם is אסור but the Lakewooders, who lack this, couldn’t figure this out!

But we already know of many other instances of Open Orthodoxy, of which R. Katz is a leader, where people use their moral intuition: on intermarriage, on whether the miracles of the Exodus really took place, and many others. For Open Orthodoxy, intuition is a referee for influencing what should or should not be Torah.  In this light, R. Katz’s pathetic attempt to learn a sugiya is directly guided by his moral intuition.

So, Rabbi Katz is not a lamdan. He is no sociologist. And now we see that he is no philosopher. What he is – a spokesman of a dangerous and distorted approach to Judaism – is something outside of the Torah consensus. Rabbi Katz states that I misrepresented his “understanding of the halakhic process” – a view which he maintains is “held by many, perhaps even most, Modern Orthodox thinkers.” This is outrageous. Rabbi Katz, let me be clear. There is no daylight between myself and my Modern Orthodox colleagues on everything that I have written above.

Rabbi Katz has retracted exactly nothing in his second article.

Rabbi Katz, I will end as I have started; with personal words to you:

You have damned the people of Lakewood. You have damned their rabbis. By implication you have damned the great rabbis who guide those rabbis in turn. You have done injustice to an audience that will react by feeling further away from Torah as a result.

Instead of your libelous and condemnatory remarks about the Lakewood community, here are the facts. The community is overall shocked. Their rabbanim condemned the theft. They all adhere to the Shulchan Aruch/Ramah who state unambiguously that it is forbidden to steal from a non-Jew. Those who stole represent a minuscule percentage of the population.

Rabbi Katz, are you with me?

APPENDIX – An Analysis of Rabbi Katz’s Scholarship

“An unadulterated read of halakha may in fact permit this kind of cheating. Many poskim assert that gezel akum (stealing from idolaters) is technically mutar. And almost all of them believe that cheating idolaters is allowed.” (R. Katz, first article)

Rabbi Katz has climbed down from his tree on טעות עכו”ם.  Nor did he mention in his second article his first sentence quoted here, the most problematic one, that “an unadulterated read of halakha may in fact permit this kind of cheating.”  But the whole point of both his first and second articles was that Lakewood poskim pasken that גזל עכו”ם is מותר based on these opinions.

In his second article, Rabbi Katz redefines what he means by “technically mutar” i.e. that if the סיבת האיסור is not because of לא תגזול then it is technically מותר. But what Rabbi Katz has inadvertently done – and he was forced to do so by the halachik facts – is to make his claim even more absurd. Now, the Lakewood poskim, according to him, pasken that גזל עכו”ם is mutar even though all opinions say that it is assur.  In short, Rabbi Katz cannot make any opinion say what he wants them to say.

So much for the big picture.

But I was bothered by something else as well. Despite Rabbi Katz’s impressive bekius, he presents an accumulation of errors – be they of judgment, or proportion, or selectivity – which together misrepresent what the mainstream Torah opinions say.

Here are the details:

1. First, one has to get the sugiya right. The issue is that some Lakewood families are accused of stealing from the government. True, that is an issue of גזל עכו”ם. But it is also an issue of דינא דמלכותא דינא, which he failed to mention at all. And it is much worse than cheating on taxes. The three greatest poskim of our age, Rav Feinstein, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rav Shalom Elyashiv all paskened that it is prohibited to cheat on your taxes in America. The question of permissibility in our case does not begin. Actively soliciting undeserved moneys from the government is much worse than stealing on your taxes. So let me repeat, since R. Katz did not get my comment the first time around: No posek – none – allows what the couples in Lakewood are currently accused of.

So too, he deals with השבת גזילה as if it is the same issue as the איסור גזילה, whereas this requires a separate עשה of והשיב את הגזילה and is hence a separate סוגיא. In other words one can be עובר on an איסור דאורייתא of גזל עכו”ם but still not beחייב  in an  עשה of השבה. This is a machlokes Rishonim. Rabbi Katz’s two-liner at the end of his Hebrew footnote does not show that he understood this distinction.

2. Secondly, one has to quote what is the main highway of the sugiya before one begins quoting unusual pirushim.  There are two main sugiyas in the Bavli on גזל עכו”ם  of which the sugiya in Bava Kama (דף קיג עמא-ב) is the עיקר. We pasken like Rebbe Akiva there who says that גזל עכו”ם is אסור. The vast majority of the Rishonim  say that גזל עכו”ם is Deoraaisa. This was lacking from Rabbi Katz’s presentation.

3. Thirdly, you have to avoid mixing up Rishonim and Achronim and quoting them all as one cholent. The Achronim are responding to the Rishonim and they do not have equal status. Once again, the vast majority of Achronim – the Mechaber, the Rama, the Shach, the Beis Shmuel, the Nesivos, the Gra, the Sma, the Chacham Tzvi, the Aruch HaShulchan and many more – say גזל עכו”ם is Deoraaisa.

4. Fourthly, if a Rishon has a פשטות  of understanding according to the majority but there is also some Acharon who understands this Rishon in an unusual way, then one has to lay out the main way of understanding that Rishon before quoting the unusual פשטים.  One has to know what is a דוחק pshat and what is not. This would apply to the Bach’s understanding of the opinion of the Tur as being only דרבנן – which he only made because otherwise he thought that the Tur contradicts himself. But this is not the normal way we understand the Tur.  And, in any case, the Tur is not talking about the איסור of גזילה there, he is talking about לא תעשו עול במדה ובמשפט.

This would also apply to the Kesef Mishneh’s understanding of the Rambam. Firstly, it is disingenuous of Rabbi Katz to quote the Bach and the Kesef Mishneh as part of the same proof, because it is pashut to the Bach that the Rambam holds that גזל עכו”ם is דאורייתא (which is what forced him to say that the Tur must hold otherwise) whereas the כסף משנה says that the Rambam holds that גזל עכו”ם is דרנבנן.

The Kesef Mishneh we know as Rav Yosef Karo. In his Beis Yosef he seems to hold that the Rambam holds that גזל עכו”ם is מדאוריייתא and he certainly doesn’t give his pshat in the כסף משנה any credence in his psak in the Shulchan Aruch. It does not seem consistent with other places in the Rambam. And it is not consistent with how most other meforshim understand the Rambam.

Rabbi Katz does something else here, subtle and manipulative. The opinions that say the Rambam holds that גזל עכו”ם is דאורייתא are not mentioned by name at all, whereas those who hold that the Rambam says that גזל עכו”ם is דרבנן are quoted in detail. This focuses one’s attention on the latter and doesn’t allow one to properly asses the issue.

Then there is Rashi, one of only two Rishonim who say clearly that גזל עכו”ם is דרבנן. (The other is the Ran.( The Gra says that Rashi is a תמיה. The שו”ת חוט המשולש  agrees with the Gra. In fact, the חוט המשולש goes further. He rejects the understanding of the Maharshal on Rashi – and shows that learning like this would lead to this Rashi contradicting himself in Bava Kama. He proves that Rashi in Sanhedrin only meant to say his opinion according to one מאן דאמר.

Moreover, the חוט המשולש shows that Rashi himself in Bava Kama says that according to Rebbe Akiva (according to whom we pasken), even with הפקעת הלואתו, where there is no איסור גזילה, there is still an איסור דאורייתא of חילול השם.

The Maharshal paskens like Rashi. But the words of the Maharshal are seen as תמוהין מאד in the eyes of the חכם צבי, (not just האריך להקשות as Rabbi Katz downplayed it) and he left out the reason that the Maharshal was so difficult to the הר צבי. And yes, the מהרש”ל has his defenders, but once again, the balance of the presentation did not reflect the overall balance of opinions fairly.

5. The custom is, Rabbi, to quote exact sources. Not just the דף but the עמוד. Not just the עמוד but the דברי המתחיל. In an exceptionally long תשובה in particular, you need to cite the דברי המתחיל of the paragraph. If the language of the quoted source is not crystal clear you need to bring it and comment what the דיוק is. Your piece is so full of these problems – sometimes with just the person quoted and no source at all! – that it is not only poor scholarship, but it is designed to make it extremely difficult for anyone to independently verify what you are saying. This approach is not transparent.

6. One also has to understand and explain each quoted source properly.  Rabbi Katz, the Minchas Chinuch is coming to מחדש a distinction between גניבה and גזילה – and hence what he says about גניבה cannot be used for גזילה.

Most notably you were misleading about the Meiri.  The Meiri makes it clear that even the opinion in the Gemorrah which we don’t pasken like, who says that גזל עכו”ם is מותר, would agree that today (in his time and onwards) it is an איסור דאורייתא.  But you wrote “”וכן הוא דעת הר”ן והמאירי שם, i.e. that the Meiri holds that גזל עכו”ם is only דרבנן. The Meiri only held that for עכו”ם mamash, who lived in the time of חז”ל. Astonishingly, he says that we are even חייב in השבת אבידה to non-Jews of our time. He states that:

כל שהוא מעממין הגדורים בדרכי הדת ועובדי האלוקות על איזה צד אע”פ שאמונתם רחוקה מאמונתנו אינם בכלל זה אלא הרי הם כישראל גמור דברים אלו אף באבידה ואף בטעות ולכל שאר דברים בלי שום פקפוק

i.e. that today we are חייב מדאורייתא on גזילה and even השבת אבידה.

It is also disingenuous to say that the תנא דבי אליהו is a support for the idea that, in your words, עקרונית אין סיבה לאסרו. The תנא דבי אליהו is coming to tell us that the meta-principle behind the giving of the Torah to Klal Yisrael is Kiddush HaShem. All חיובים are informed by this. Rabbi, by suggesting that really G-d didn’t mind if we stole from non-Jews according to this source, you have changed the emphasis of the message. That is a subtle manipulation and not acceptable. What you should have said according to the תנא דבי אליהו is that מעקרונות העקרונות אסור לגמרי!

Oh, this just goes on and on. Here are some more:

7. Since we want to get to psak halacha here, we need to stick to the mainstream halachik opinions. Quoting the Minchas Chinuch (which Rabbi Katz does), who specifically does not deal with issues that have been well dealt with, and who is coming to arouse things in lomdus, and not psak, then becomes out of bounds.

8. My dear Rabbi Katz, not every opinion has equal standing. The Shach and the Sma have more standing in halacha than the שער אפרים, for example. The Shluchan Aruch Harav and the Aruch Hashulchan, when they too go like these earlier Achronim create a very high barrier which requires significant force to oppose. If I wanted to, I could take the Nachalas Shiva, and break Shabbos every week to do kiruv. But, that would be dishonest, amongst other things, as it would not represent the mainstream of halacha.  This is too big a subject to discuss here.

In summation, stringing a whole lot of opinions together without contextualizing them is misleading, Rabbi Katz, or else it is just very poor scholarship. Any one of us could have made one or more of the errors that you made and I apologize if I have been wrong in my assessment of any one of them. However, the accumulation of such errors (as I have shown above) just does not make the grade. Your footnote certainly does not lead to the conclusions you wish it to, even though you shot the arrow before drawing the target. If this is what you meant by, “The words of G-d are often ambiguous, cryptic, and open for interpretation,” then we are in a lot of trouble indeed.

_____________________________

וכתב החזון יחזקאל שם: “כאמור בקרא (יחזקאל לו): “ויחללו את שם קדשי באמור להם עם ד’ אלה” והם גוזלים וחומסים.

   ומקור הדברים סוגיא בבא קמא דף קיג. וכתב הרמב”ם הל ‘ גזילה ה יא דהוי איסור דאורייתא, וכן הוא בטור ושו”ע שסט ג, ובשו”ע הרב  הל’ גזילה טו. והאיסור שהוא עובר הוא  לא תגזול

וכן בשו”ת מנחת שלמה ח״ו סרפ”ח, הר אלישיב – שמעתי מפיו.

אבל יש לציין שמקור החיוב של דינא דמלכותא דינא (שהוא כרוך במחלוקת ראשונים ונ”מ כלפי ארצינו הקדושה) היא חיוב בפני עצמו. ולרוב הפוסקים דינא דמלכותא דינא הוי דין דורייתא כן כתב האבני מילואים  כח ב, והשו”ת חתם ופר יו”ד שיד ד”ה אמנם, והדבר אברהם א א ענף ב. ועוד ועוד (אמנם עיין בבית שמואל אבן העזר כח ג). ומסתמא העובר עליו עובר על איסור נוסף מחוץ ללא תגזול. אבל איני יודע איזה לאו בתורה הוא עובר בזה.

וגם כן עובר על חלול ד’.

יוצא שהמריח את המכס עובר על שלושה איסורי דאורייתא – על לא תזול, על דינא דמלכותא (אם זה לאו בנפרד) וכל חלול ד’.

ועיין שו”ת חוט המשולש יד ד”ה ולפ”ז

וכבר כתב השולחן ערוך הרב  (פ״א הערה ד (עמוד יח שלהוציא ממון  שלא כדין מהמלכות   אפילו בשלטון שאין בו משום דינא דמלבותא אין שום היתר וכ”כ בסוף דבריו “ושמעתי שיש מוריםהיתר בזה ולא ראיתי מקור, וג ם גורם להרגיל עצמו בגניבה”. וכ״כ בשו״ת שבט הלוי וכן כתב הפתחי חושן להר’ בלוי  (פ״א הערה ד (עמוד יח עיין שם דאסור מכמה סיבות. וכתב שם שלא ידוע לו שום צד להתיר. (ויש לציין שהרב בלוי כתב את זה בתור דיין של העדה חרדית!) ולכן פשוט שאפילו הגר״מ קליין בשו״ת משנה הלכות חי״ב סתמ״ה שהתיר הברחת מס באמריקה (אבל המליץ כנגד) לא היה מתיר גניבה כזו. ולכן שבט כתב הלוי ח״ה סימן קעב שאסור לגזול מהשלטון באה״ק (והיינו אפילו לדעות שאין דינא דמלכותא דינא בארצינו הקדושה)

וכתב הרב חיים רפפורט בספרו אור ישראל עמ’ קכט דאין מי שחולק על זה..

הרי”ף    (ב”ק דף קיד:).

המרדכי (קידושין תצא)

והחינוך ) מצוה רכה( והמאירי (ב”ק דף קיג, ד”ה נמצא )(ובהמשך נביא את המאירי בפנים)

והסמ”ג, ל”ת קנב ד”ה “הגוזל”. (ובנוגע למידות ומשקלים, והטעה עיין בל”ת קנב ד”ה “אחד” שגם זה אסור מדאורייתא.)

וכן הוא הפשטות של הטור חו”מ ס’ רלא (ומה שלא כתב כן הב”ח נציין בהמשך) שגזל עכו”ם הוא מדאורייתא.

וכן משמע  בתשו’ הרשב”א ח”א סי’  תתנ”ב שכתב “וקי”ל נמי בפ’ הגוזל בתרא גזל העכו”ם אסור כר”ע … מה לי עכו”ם מה לי ישראל שהרי שניהם תורת גזל נוהג בהם” והיינו מדאורייתא.

וכן שם ברשב”א בשם הריבי”ה.

ובהמשך נביא את הרש”י בסנהדרין וחידושי הר”ן, (שניהם על הגמ’ סנהדרי דף נז.) האומרים שגזל עכו”ם הוי דרבנן. וזה אולי שיטת התוס’ בבא קמא דף קיג לפי הסמ”ע.

ומה שכתב היראים, ס’ קכד שגניבת גוי במקום שאינו יודע העכו”ם הוי טעות ושריא ואפילו איסור דרבנן ליכא עכ”ל אבל אפשר דבמקום שיודע הוי איסור דאורייתא של חלול ד’. וגם בפשטות מדובר רק על טעות עכו”ם ולא על גניבה אחרת. ובס’ קכה באיסור גזילה לא הזכיר עמדתו כלפי גזל עכו”ם.  אבל החתם סופר בחידושיו לסוכה דף ל שגם דעתו בזה לאסור. (ואין כ”כ נ”מ לנידונינו כי הפוסקים האחורנים לא הזכירו היראים להלכה.)

וכן כתב הבית יוסף על הטור ח”מ סי’ שמ”ח שכתב הטור וז”ל אסור לגנוב כו’ וכל הגונב אפילו ש”פ עובר על הלאו דלא תגנבו וחייב לשלם א’ הגונב מישראל בין קטן בין גדול וא’ הגונב מעכו”ם שגניבתו אסורה עכ”ל. והב”י כתב שם שדבריו לקוחים מדברי הרמב”ם והיינו דהוי מדאורייתא. וכבר כתבתי שאין לחלק בין גניבה וגזילה.

וכן כתב המרש”ל בים של שלמה ב”ק פ’ י ס’ כ ששיטת הטור היא שגזל עכו”ם הוי מדאורייתא.

וכן הביא הבאר היטב ס’ שמח ס”‘ ג את הים של שלמה בדעת הטור.

אבל עיין בשו”ת שער אפרים סימן ב ד”ה שכתב “ולכאורה נראה מדברי הטור והרמב”ם” היינו דהוי מדאורייתא. ובהמשך דבריו רצה להוכיח לא כן.

וכן הביא הש”ך ס’ שנט ב והבאר היטב שם ס”ק א ובס’ שמח ס”‘ ג בשם הש”ך והמרש”ל שהרמב”ם נוקט דגזל עכו”ם הוי איסור דאורייתא.

וגם הים של שלמה  )בבא קמא פרק י סימן כ( הבין שדעת הרמב”ם  היא שאוסר באיסור דאורייתא גזילת עכו”ם וחייב להחזיר.

וכן בשו”ת הר צבי,ס’ כו, וכתב שמה שדייק הכסף משנה המרמב”ם שלא כתב בלשון שעובר עליו בלאו אלא כתב סתם “אסור לגוזלו” אין זה ראייה שהרי אפשר שהרמב”ם סובר שעובר עליו בעשה מוחשב אם קונהו או מואכלת את כח העמים.

וכן בשו”ת חוט המשולש ס’ יד בקטע המתחיל “והנה בהפקעת הלואה”  והקטע אחרי זה פשט שהרמב”ם אוחז שגזל עכו”ם ואפילו הפקעת הלואתו הוי איסר דאורייתא. וגם החינוך (ס’ רכה) מביא את הרמב”ם כםשוטו והיינו דהוי מדאורייתא וכמו שברור מהמנחת חינוך (שם) ד”ה או גונב.

אמנם, יש לציין שהחידושי הר”ן, סנהדרין דף נז עמ’ א. ד”ה כותי בכותי. כתב דדעת הרמב”ם הוא שמדרבנן אסור מפני חילול השם וכדאיתא התם ומשמע לי מסתמא דהכי הלכה.

וגם השו”ת שער אפרים סימן ב ד”ה  “אמנם כד מעיינת ברמב”ם” אוחז כמו הכסף משנה. אלא שלדעתו סובר שהרמב”ם אוסר אף במקום שאינו חלול השם. ולסיבת הים של שלמה שלא ירגיל את עצמו בגזילה. ומחמת זה דחק השער אפרים מאד להגיד שגם בריש הל’ גזילה הרבמ”ם ג”כ התכוון רק לאיסור דרבנן.

ויש אומרים שגם התוס’  (ב”ק דף קי”ג) אבל אין זה מוסכם בין המפרשים , ואכמ”ל.

ומשמע מהרשב”א שו”ת סי’ תתצ”ב שג”כ אוחז שרש”י סבירא ליה דגזל עכו”ם הוי ענין דאורייתא.

Reprinted from OLAMI Resources.

Judaism and Science – Conflict or Harmony?

By Rabbi Avraham Edelstein

In his book on religion and science, the great paleontologist Stephen J. Gould stated that there was no tension between the two because science and religion exist on two different planes. There is the magisterium of science which deals with the physical world, and there is the magisterium of religion that deals with the spiritual and moral plane.

There is some truth to this. But only some. The Torah is not a book of nature. But it is a book of what happens behind nature.  Behind the physical world of the “what” are reasons of the “why”, the underlying spiritual reality of things.

In fact, Abraham discovered the whole Torah by looking at the physical world and intuiting the underlying spiritual implications of the world around him.  Abraham’s great innovation was that the spiritual and the physical worlds are exact parallels of each other, only on different planes of existence.  But, we can hardly rely on the average man to duplicate Abraham’s unparalleled genius in discovering the moral and spiritual plane from the physical.  Therefore, we needed the Torah to know and have a relationship with God.

The harmony between the physical and the spiritual allows for some dialogue between Torah and science.  The Torah tells us, for example, that the world had a definite beginning.  The 19th century scientific theory of the static universe (claiming that the universe had always existed) was definitely in conflict with the Torah’s view that the world was created from scratch.

Today, the science-Torah dialogue has intensified. This is because, in the 21^st century, the sciences in general, and theoretical physics and cosmology in particular, have captured as theirs for the answering, all the ancient questions of the philosophers: Where does life begin and end? When did the universe begin and when will it end? How is matter created and destroyed? What are the ultimate principles by which the universe runs?   In fact, in 1988, Harvard naturalist Edward Wilson wrote a book attempting to unify all knowledge, including the knowledge of human affairs, under biology.[1]

So, Torah and science do relate and can be in conflict.

Yet, the amazing thing is that while there are definite areas of incompatibility between modern science and Judaism, science has moved very rapidly in the direction of Judaism over the last century. While incompatibilities remain, they are getting smaller over time.  My attitude is not to get frantic over the differences. Science is not a done deal. New discoveries lead to increasing approximations of the truth, and those approximations will lead to increasing reconciliations with what Judaism has been saying all along.

This is quite remarkable. A hundred years ago or more, a Jew would have been faced with huge contradictions between Judaism and science. Until the twentieth century, scientists thought the world to be completely deterministic, i.e. every effect has a clear cause which in turn is the effect of a previous cause, and so on ad infinitum.  Laplace, the nineteenth century Frenchman, went so far as to say that if we could know everything that had happened in the world until now, we could predict everything that would happen in the world from now on.[2] This made belief in Divine Providence as well as freedom of choice very difficult.  But, with the introduction of quantum physics, probability replaced certainty as the accepted idea in science. We can no longer know for sure what reality is; for example, we can no longer say where an atom is. What we can know are the various options of where it might be and the likelihood (probability) that it indeed be somewhere. This is not just because we do not have good measuring instruments or because our measuring instruments are somehow faulty. This is because uncertainty is actually built into the universe.[3] Since the collapse of the scientific world of certainty, there is no longer a contradiction between science and God’s Providence. The laws of science only represent the range of options which God normally uses to run his world. Which specific option He chooses and when He chooses to use the natural order cannot be predetermined.

The same is true of our freedom of choice. If the world is predetermined, then our choices are an illusion. But if the world is indeterminate, then there is a place for choice.

This goes further still…

A fascinating experiment sends one photon of light at a time randomly through one of two slits in a screen to create a pattern on a second screen behind the first one.[4]  This second screen will show a series of dark and light bands where the light seemingly either interfered with or reinforced each other as if there are two or more photons going through each slit simultaneously. The only explanation for this is that each photon must be going through both slits at the same time!

More amazingly, if someone were to try to measure which slit the photon was going through, the photon lands out going through whichever slit was measured. In some way, the measuring of the slit causes the photon to go through that slit, and that slit only. This led scientists to realize that observation actually causes a change in matter.

Many scientists claim that it is the mind itself which causes this change.[5] Hence the concept of an “observer-centered universe” was born.  As a leading physicist, David Deutsch, put it, “The arguments that humans don’t have a fundamental role in the scheme of things, which used to seem so self-evidently true, have all fallen away… One needs to… understand them in order to understand the universe in a fundamental way.”[6]  According to this, we not only have choice, but our choices actually shape the universe – a very Jewish idea.

And here is another remarkable example.  Scientists have been searching for a theory which will combine all of the basic four forces of matter (the strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitation forces[7]) into one force. Now there is nothing in science which says that there has to be one force instead of four. But, apparently, scientists believe in the ultimate unity of the universe. One cannot help noticing that this is highly consistent with a belief in an ultimate Creator. As Timothy Ferris put it, “Science from the beginning incorporated [the] idea that the universe really is a uni-verse, a single system ruled by a single set of laws.  And science got that idea from the belief in one God.”[8]

Few scientists ever stop to think that such a belief would only make sense in a monotheistic world. If there is one God who is the source of everything, then all things ought to be traceable back to a point where they are all one. But if there was no one Creator of everything, what’s wrong with four forces rather than one?

The Big Bang, the idea that the universe had a beginning, was another step towards Torah-Science reconciliation. Prior to that, scientific orthodoxy held that the world has always existed. In fact, for 60 years after it was first discovered in the 1920s, the Big Bang, with its frightening religious implications, was a disputed theory. It was only in the 1980s, when there were more than six proofs for the theory[9], that it was finally accepted.

Most scientists today would also accept some version of the anthropic theory, which states the world seems to have been set up (designed) to produce life.[10]  Nature turns out to be very exactly tuned.  Change any law of nature even slightly, or change the initial conditions, and it becomes impossible for life to have emerged at all.  Water, oxygen, minerals and many other things are perfectly suited in many ways for the tasks they fulfill.  In fact, it is impossible, in each case, to even imagine a theoretical substance which might do a better job. Critics argue that the universe is bound to look as if it were designed for our existence because we could only be here if the universe were adapted for our existence. That would be a good argument if the cosmos was adapted to some degree for life. But it appears that the cosmos are optimally adapted for life – that every constituent of the cell and every law of nature are uniquely and ideally fashioned to that end.[11]

More than that, it is not only this or that variable that makes this argument so impressive. It is the accumulation of all the variables, all being there in exactly the proportion that they need to be, the lack of any one of them rendering life impossible. This has led many leading scientists to claim that the world was “designed” for life, even if they are careful not to say that God was behind that design.[12]  As Conway Morris[13] puts it: if the tape of life were rerun form the Cambrian time, we would get almost exactly the same outcome as we have today.[14]

I would argue that evolution, though still in some tension with Judaism, is a step closer towards Judaism than its Lemarkian predecessor. (And it has a lot more surprising elements of commonality with the major commentators than most people realize.)  Certainly, the theory as such does not suggest a secular interpretation any more than a religious one, and while I do not want to engage in a “God of the gaps” explanation, I do see nothing anti-God about humans using their genetic alterations, social arrangements or anything else to provide a survival advantage.  More importantly, I would expect future discoveries in paleontology and related fields to bring evolution closer to Judaism, not to take it further away.

All of these things reflect the increasing convergence of science and Judaism in all fields of scientific endeavor. The 19^th century Jew would have faced a level of dissonance between the two far higher than that of the 21^st century Jew. He would have lacked Einstein’s insight that time contracts and expands, facilitating resolution of the age of the universe issue, or the idea that matter equals energy, enhancing our appreciating that behind matter lays a more ethereal, spiritual reality.

Having said that, there remains a source of great tension between Judaism and science. Science is based on a very definite world view. Science takes us ever so close to tying up the creation back to the Creator. But just at that point it stops and claims that that is all there is to it. Science separates itself from religion at the very point where it ought to be calling on an understanding of God to complete the explanation which it had begun. As such it is a secular endeavor.

Science discovers the Big Bang, but will then try desperately to avoid saying that that means that God created the world.[15] Scientists uncover the anthropic principle, that nature seems to have direction and purpose towards life, but will not say that some Being therefore designed it that way.

The paradigm of science holds that it is unscientific to bring God into the picture. Even a religious scientist, and there are lots of them, would not dream of talking about God in a scientific paper.

The roots of this God exclusion paradigm go back to the Tower of Babel. The people at that time said: Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make for us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. (Genesis Chap 11, vs. 4)  

A great city with a great tower in the middle to maintain the unity of the human race! What could be wrong with that?

The commentators explain, however, that the tower was being built as an instrument to conquer and bring under the control of man every aspect of the creation. Then they would be able to prevent God from using the heavens as an instrument for implementing His decrees against the earth. “Remove Divine Providence from the equation,” they said, “and we can then use science and medicine to give us a more secure, healthy, wealthy and happy existence.”  They wished to cut off God’s connection with the world in the belief that this would allow them to discover and harness all the scientific forces that would be needed for them to solve every sort of human misery.

Aware of the scope of the job at hand, they realized that only a United Nations far more powerful than the one we have today could hope to bring the necessary resources to bear in resolving the issues of illness, poverty, war and natural disaster. The idea of a world capital with its gigantic tower, a monument to human possibility, etched in every mind was just the solution for this challenge. Of course, a tower of this size was not just meant to be an empty monument. Its multi-purpose structure would serve as a center of science, a giant lightning rod, and a potential launching pad for future lunar expeditions.

The problem was not the desire to know more and to organize accordingly; it was that when God “came down” to look, He saw a rebellion, not a scientific venture. It was a tricky point – for God is surely pro-science. And hence the verses do not explicitly mention any sin. But, man was so desirous to control his environment that God was left out of the equation. They began to develop a scientific worldview that automatically filtered out God. The results were painful.[16]

There are certain parallels to the science of today. The secular bias is, in the main, not deliberate[17]. Rather, it exists as the natural framework with which scientific eyes view the world. What it needs is a paradigm shift, so that the natural filter for information accommodates God. Kuhn points out that the new paradigm may use the same words as the old, but it often means something completely different, making the old and new theories incomparable. A scientist in this new paradigm will see God written in every theory.

Perceptive scientists throughout the ages have achieved this insight at a basic level.  They have marveled, Abraham-like, at how remarkable it is that higher, more abstract forms of thinking are in harmony with the physical world around us. Carl Gustav Jacobi, the 19th Century Prussian mathematician, remarked that “it is a remarkable fact that when man thinks in a pure system of abstract logic such as mathematics, that logic turns out to be consistent with the logic of the world[18].” Or, as Plato put it, “God ever geometrizes.” [19]

These scientists reached the most basic level of a Monotheist. But nowhere do we see that they were able to take these observations and turn them into a personal God who makes moral and spiritual demands of them. At most, this represents what Alfred North Whitehead called a “widespread instinctive conviction in the existence of an order of things”[20]. The God of the scientist is generally some great cosmic being, and the awe scientists feel when they look a little deeper seems to lead nowhere. A scientist can notice that the number Pi, 3.1415 is not only yielded by the division of the circumference of a circle by its diameter, but it turns up in equations that describe subatomic particles, light and other quantities that have no obvious connection to circles. He can then conclude, as John Polkinghorne did, that human-invented mathematics somehow tuned into the truths of the cosmos. But, why don’t scientists then take the next obvious step, which is to say that the reason that there is this harmony between our minds and the world is that they both come from the same Creator-Source – and that this Creator has a plan for us?

Scientific revolutions have happened before. Copernicus and Galileo led one that was rounded off by Newton. Einstein, Plank, Borne and Heisenberg led another one in the early part of this century. But, a scientific revolution which allows science to accommodate God is a revolution of a different order.

When Laplace presented his work to Napoleon, Napoleon reputedly remarked, “Monsieur Laplace, they tell me that you have written this large work on the system of the universe and you did not even mention its Creator.” To this Laplace supposedly responded, “I have no need for that hypothesis.”

But the world has come a long way since Laplace and his Napoleonic encounter.  Recently, there have been many attempts to reconcile religion with science, not so much because of a change in attitude, but because scientific discoveries in the twentieth century seem to point in that direction. Fritjof Capra caused quite a stir when, in “The Tao of Physics”, he showed the basic harmony that exists between modern physics and Eastern religions. Michael Behe[21]  has made a powerful case for showing that biochemistry is leading us toward rather than away from the idea of a designer of the universe. These gentlemen have their point, but they miss the larger issue I wish to make here.

Science is drawing closer to religion in general and Judaism in particular. The idea that matter can turn into pure energy has made it easier to conceive of a purely spiritual world. The indeterminacy of quantum physics allows for freedom of choice and moral responsibility; the Big Bang is a step towards (though not a complete harmonization with) the creation story. But the closeness only consolidates the position of science as the embrace of all reality. It may be, as Robert Jastrow suggests in God and the Astronomers, that the scientist will ultimately get to the top of the cliff and find the theologian sitting there all along. But the scientist has no intention of joining the theologian, sitting side by side. The scientist sees the theologian as an extension of the cliff face which he must climb. He will keep on climbing until he is sitting, as he sees it, on top of the theologian as well. Of course, he is gracious to his cliff, and he smiles kindly down on his theologian as well. All are welcome in the ultimate scheme of things.

But there is a different vision of things – one which we will witness in the Messianic era. In this scenario, science will become the handmaiden of spirituality, not its master. The enormous secrets still held in nature will be revealed to deepen our understanding of the ways of God and the Torah’s message.  In this new dawn, science will not only actively serve spirituality; it will naturally flow from it, and provide yet another way of connecting to God.

[1] Wilson called his book “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”.

[2] The fact that we cannot do this, so it was believed, is a function of the impossibility of our knowing all the variables – a technical problem – rather than something fundamental.

[3] Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle (we can know either the position of an electron or its speed, but not both at the same time) was a precursor to this.

[4] A simplified version of the experiment was first performed by Earnest Young in the seventeenth century.

[5] The fact that I choose to observe at one point or the other, “collapses” the particle out of its previous state and cause it to go through this hole and not both holes or the other hole exclusively.

[6] Quoted by Filiz Peach in Philosophy Now, (December 2000/January 2001).

[7] Gravity is the only force which works on the macro-world, the world larger than atoms. The other three forces work on a micro-level. Electromagnetism is well known. The Strong Force holds atoms together. The main expression of the weak force is radiation. Scientists have already combined three of the four forces, i.e. the three micro-forces, to form a Grand Unified Theory, at least at a mathematical level. They are now working on combining these three forces with the fourth force, gravity.

[8] Timothy Ferris (author of The Red Limit – The Search for the Edge of the Universe, Bantam, 1981)

[9]1- The Red Shift (the Doppler Effect); 2-Radio waves which showed changes in universe; 3-Cosmic Background Radiation; 4-COBE, the satellite which confirmed much of the above; 5-Entropy, which should have led to increasing disorder in the universe. Since the universe is still highly ordered and was even more ordered in the past, it follows that the universe could not have existed for ever: otherwise it would have reached its state of maximum entropy a long time ago; 6-The composition of the Universe: Atom smashers which push subatomic particles to extremely high energies, produced results that allowed researchers to calculate that the early universe should have been about three-quarters hydrogen and one-quarter helium. When astronomers inspect the oldest stars and nebulae, they find them composed of almost exactly that mix.

[10] The weak anthropic principle states that the world was set up to produce life in general while the strong anthropic principle states that the world was set up to produce human life.

[11] Nature’s Destiny, by Michael Denton

[12] This includes energy levels of the carbon atom; the rate at which the universe is expanding; the four dimensions of space-time, carbon, DNA, proteins, and even the exact distance between stars in our galaxy.

[13] Professor of evolutionary paleobiology at the University of Cambridge and one of the leading evolutionists in his field.

[14] In The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (Oxford University Press, 1998), he states, “I believe it is necessary to argue that within certain limits the outcome of evolutionary processes might be rather predictable.”

[15] See Robert Jastrow’s God and the Astronomers where he writes of the fierce resistance of the scientific community to the discovery of the Big Bang, because of its religious implications. But even those who embraced the Big Bang were careful to avoid spelling out its religious implications.

[16] This whole approach is taken by the Telz Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Yosef Leib Bloch, in his Shiurei Daat.

[17]   For example: Finally the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern the lineaments of the new

religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era.” (Julian Huxley, 1959)

[18] Jacobi commented, “The Great Architect of the Universe now appears as a pure mathematician.”

[19] Quoted in the Time-Life book on mathematics p. 9

[20] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

[21] Darwin’s Black Box

Does Judaism Favor Error?

By Rabbi Avraham Edelstein | March 13, 2013

See how the world turns on two ideas. The first, that there is one God determining the absolute values by which we should live; the other, the seething cauldron of pluralism and multi-culturalism – in its extreme form a flirtation with relativism. Along comes Pesach – philosophically bound by the former approach – and determines that freedom is intricately bound with questioning. Now, wait a minute! Do we accept God’s decree or do we question?

The Hagada – that document of Jewish freedom – says we do both. The Hagada, says Jewish law, must be done in the form of questioning and answering, even if the questioner is a great sage. Even if he is sitting alone, he must question himself (Rambam, Hilchot Chametz U’Matza, Perek Zayin, Halacha Beit).

The four questions we know are four types of sons, each questioning life, God and the Torah from a different angle. This implies that the Jewish father produces children, all of whom are different, all of whom will ask different questions – but, more importantly, all of whom ask questions.

In fact, God Himself asks questions, and in the very holy Torah itself. “Where are you?”, to the first man, “Have eaten from the Tree?” “Where is your brother?”, to Cain. And how can a Torah, Divine wisdom, ever even contain a question – seemingly implying a lack of clarity. But, from this we see that a question, properly posed, is a movement towards knowledge and therefore the Hagada stresses that we must embrace the concept.

One non-hero of the Pesach story is Iyov – Job. Iyov, we are told was asked by Pharoah what to do with the Jews and he ran away. For this, he is punished by God with terrible pain. Iyov’s friends come to console him. They give all kinds of deep explanations as to the meaning of his suffering, but he rejects them all. Right at the end of the book of Iyov, we are told that God praises Iyov and scolds his friends. This does not make sense. Was not Iyov the doubter? Were not his friends the ones who came to explain God’s actions? No, says the Malbim. Iyov was the true believer. But his intellectual honesty was such that he was not willing to accept any explanation that did not ring true. The friends had a shallow faith which they buttressed with tired explanations which they bandied about ideas without understanding. God wants us to question, to explore with intellectual honesty. Our faith is no leap into the irrational dark – rather it  it is a rational extension of  what we know. We come to challenge our assumptions again and again, to deepen our faith and stretch its parameters.

Every question shows a certain expansion of understanding. The questioner is stretching his horizons by taking what he presumes to know and seeing how he can use that to penetrate into the not yet known or understood. The problem (the question) is itself the beginning of the solution, not only because a good question points us in the direction of the answer (שאלת חכם חצי תשובה היא), but also because the very nature of the questioning is a part of the bigger answer we are to seek from life.

But let’s push the envelope a little.  Ironically, the methodology of expansion presumes a failure of understanding of sorts. The question begins an expansion which is defined by a delineation of failure – of what is not understood. The irony is a double irony – because the failure itself is not just a means – it is a part of the ends. In Mishlei (Proverbs) we read, שבע יפול צדיק וקם – Seven times a Tzadik falls and gets up. A Tzadik (righteous man) doesn’t allow adversity and failure to stop him. He picks himself up, dusts himself off and moves on.

But that is not what is meant by this verse, said Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. What is meant is that, in order to become a Tzadik one has to face adversity – one has to have failed again and again. One does not become a Tzadik despite failure; one does so because of failure. For failure is but a part of the collage of options that one must embrace in order to get to the truth.

In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From (Riverhead Books, 2010.), Steven Johnson brings failure as one of the sources of historic good ideas. After describing how the vacuum tube, the heart pace-maker, modern photography, penicillin and other things were discovered through errors, Johnson states, “Error is not simply a phase you have to suffer through on the way to genius. Error often creates a path that leads you out of your comfortable assumptions. De Forest was wrong about the utility of gas as a detector (the vacuum tube proved to be far better), but he kept on probing at the edges of that error until he hit upon something that was genuinely useful. Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore” (Johnson, pg. 137). Being wrong leads you to question – in a way that you might never have before – and questions lead to knowledge.

We don’t fail deliberately of course. We strive for truth. But, in a world where truth is but one, and diversity takes endless forms, we must, perforce, face our own human condition not as a curse, but as part of God’s blessings to us. In Haggadah terms מה נשתנה הלילה הזה – How (or why) is this night (the darkness of our human condition), different from all other nights? And we answer, after much thought, How could it be different?  We joke that Jews answer a question with another question. But it is no joke, is it not?