I realize that "science and Torah" issues have been discussed to death both on this site and on Jewish blogs, but I had an interesting conversation last night with someone that I wanted to discuss here.

I was talking to a yeshivish friend who is very fundamentalist in his views of what science Chazal knew. To give an example, he told me last night that he thinks that "there is nothing in the world that the Gra did not know", and kal v'chomer Chazal. He has no interest in hearing any counterexamples, and when I show him something indubitably scientifcally incorrect he is at most willing to concede that "perhaps" nishtanu hatevah.

Obviously we disagree on fundamental principles. What sort of irks me is that while I recognize that he is following a tradition that includes the Chazon Ish, the Rama, and likely Rav Elyashiv, and while I recognize that such an approach is Judaically valid (even though I think it is flat out wrong and almost embarrassingly childish) he is of the opinion that my approach is following isolated yechidim and completely Judaically invalid for a person in 2007.

Last night I showed him the famous Rambam in MN:



I assumed that this was enough to prove the point that my approach is as Judaically valid as his.

His response shocked me; he said that this Rambam is "kefirah l'fi mesorasainu" and that no one has any permission to agree with the Rambam.

I pointed out that there has never been a universal "mesorah" on these matters, and that historically some communities like the Teimanim exclusively accepted the Rambam's authority. Furthermore, the Jewish communities of Italy and Germany, which is where today's Modern Orthodoxy finds it's intellectual predecessors, was always open to this sort of interpretation. And the Rambam was not alone - there were plenty of others, starting with his son and on, who championed this approach.

He told me that "no one accepts Rav Avraham ben HaRambam" and that the Teimanim only accepted the Rambam for some historical reasons, but that they were in error in doing so. He also told me that the Mesorah from Italy and Germany is not a valid Mesorah at all. Then he started saying something about the Rambam implying that some of the 13 Ikkarim are not min HaTorah, which he also considers to be kefirah l'fi mesorasainu. I informed him that he was referring to Iggeret Techiyat Hameitim, but i didn't bother pointing out the irony of calling out the Rambam over the origins of the 13 Ikkarim, considering that he actually composed them.

That was basically where we ended the conversation, because there was no way we could move forward at all. I wish I had seen this Michtav M'Eliyahu before today:



because that's a sefer he'd have a really hard time calling kefirah.

My question is this; is there any concept of "keforah l'fi mesoraseinu" in the sense that we can claim that the Rambam is out of bounds? The best I can think of is where the Rambam refers to a corporeal God as kefirah - and the Raavad takes him to task for it, basically saying that you can't call something kefirah if other great Jewish leaders have believed in it. Can one follow the Raavad on this and ascribe to the views of those who believed in a corporeal God? Can one follow the Rambam and assume Techiyat Hameisim is not in the Torah? (That last one is trickier because it depends on a girsa difference between our Gemara and the Rambam's). It seems like the Rambam did ascribe to the notion that one could disqualify a hashkafic position as kefirah (ala corporeal God) even if other's held it, but I wonder if he would have actually considered someone who believes such a kofer or if he merely uses kefirah as a shorthand word for "incorrect notion about God" but would still give the person an aliyah or drink his wine. From the intro to the MN I would suspect the latter - the Rambam basically felt that most Jews, including most Talmidei Chachamim, held totally incorrect views about God, but nowhere does he suggest that this pasels them into real apikorsim - he considers it regrettable ignorance.

Thoughts?

In his peirush al haTorah, the Ramban calls some of Rambam's ideas apikorsus. The Raavad, Baal HaMaor, and Ralbag, for example, were also very aggressive and combative against ideas they thought were false. It was not uncommon between the Rishonim, and I don't see why you should be so shocked about it. You're arguing with someone you claim is Yeshivish and buys into the program, so to speak, so why should you expect he would listen to any of your arguments? He doesn't know his history and you make some really sloppy and over-generalised claims yourself, so what new is being brought to discussion here?

Can you please give the source for that?



But that is an entirely different issue. To strongly disagree with someone, and to hold that their opinion is wrong is not the same as saying it is kefira or apikorsus. The fact that (to the best of my knowledge) the Raavad never calls Rambam an apikoros should be enough to protect him from this charge from anyone else.




This guy is either a 'nut case' or has bought into the system completely (and I'm not sure which is worse). How can he say that the Gra knew all of science when he held that the world was flat (because it has four corners)? Does he really think that the Gra understood the theory of relativity? (and does he himself know what that theory is, or its implications?) Furthermore, if the Gra really knew all of modern science then he should have contributed a lot more to society than he did. Think of the cures and vaccines that he could have brought to the world, think of how many lives he could have saved. And he didn't. So either he didn't know, or didn't care. I prefer the first.

Of course Chazal knew everything. Of course the universe has changed since the time of Chazal so that now the earth orbits the sun. (I'm not sure if he means the Bablylonian Chazal who held the world was flat, or the Yerushalmi Chazal who held it was a sphere, but that may have also changed, depending on who was in charge of creating reality that day).

You can't use the R' Dessler in any argument with this guy, because the anti-Slifkin people have already discredited it.

Since it is still Chanukah, the frum message is that all science is from the Greeks anyway, and we have to kill them all and remove science. So happy Luddite day.

Rabbi Sedley

I won't make any remarks on the first half...

1) about G-d being incorporeal, I think almost all commentaries explain the Raavad to be saying that although he agrees with the Rambam in essence that G-d is incorporeal, you still cannot call those who have mistakenly held otherwise* based on their understanding of the verses in the Torah a kofer. the key word here is "mistakenly" for if even after learning the "true" meaning etc. he still persisted in that belief, I believe that even according to the Raavad he would be considered a kofer.

FTR I believe in general (contrary to popular belief) Halacha in this Follows the RAAVAD and NOT the Rambam IOW if one has even a mistaken belief according to the Rambam he would be considered a "Kofer" and according to the Raavad he would not be considered one [this has nothing to do with the belief itself as to whether it is a heretical belief or not, it has to do with whether the person is a heretic or not].


*this is not the place to discuss what exactly people like R' Moshe Taku held.

2) there is a Teshuvah from the Chasam Sofer where he explains that since [for example] most of the Chachamim have not accepted r' Hillels view, one who held like him TODAY would be considered a "kofer" IOW the definition of a "Kofer" evolves, (perhaps you can see this from the Rambam himself when on the one hand the Dor hamidbar (According to him) did not know of Techiyas hameisim, but the later generation did)

He has an Ivy League degree in a scientific discipline, so I think the answer is safely yes. And he told me that he think's its kefirah to suggest that all of physics isn't in Tanach somewhere, and that Chazal didn't know it.

The definition of what is "correct belief" may certainly evolve. Anyone who is a believe in kabbala has to say this, because clearly the Rishonim didn't have Lurianic kabbala, and yet today some people accept it as halacha l'moshe misinai and inviolate. But the question is, just because correct belief has evolved, is someone who disagrees an apikores in the halachic sense?

This statement does much to reconcile some of my difficulties with rabbinic directives. Thank you.

It's not universally accepted. There are those who hold, for example, that it is forbidden to kill lice on Shabbat since the heter to do so was based on the mistaken belief that they are spontaneously generated. (Presumably Rav Dessler held that the science was wrong but nevertheless one can still kill lice for some other reason that we may not now).

(Just an example, of course. Although that's an interesting topic, since the Gemara does talk about lice eggs and then seems to reject their existence. I don't think it's 100% clear what Chazal thought on this.)

So what is this thread about, again? Is it about Chazal and science? The nature of disputes between Rishonim? What is kefira? Or is it just gossip and amateur psychology hour concerning the Jeschiwischeleute?

No need to be snarky. I related a conversation, and then a question, which was very straightforward: is there such a concept that a later group of Rabbis can declare the opinions of an earlier one (such as the Rambam) kefirah, or does the fact that the Rambam says it mean it's muttar to hold that way regardless of what the Chazon Ish or the Gra thought.

Maybe make the analogy to halachah changing. If halachah were X in gaonic times, and it's Y today, wouldn't a person who wants to go back and hold by X be, maybe not strictly a kofer, but at least someone who wouldn't be considered holding by a legitimate opinion today? Let's say someone want to blow shofar on shabbat like the Rif, or hold that the calendar is like R. Ben Meir [as opposed to R. Saadyah Gaon], wouldn't we look askance on such a person? The Rif certainly has the stature of the Rambam, doesn't he? So wouldn't holding like the Rif in halachah when it's no longer normative, which would be like really odd, be the same as holding like the Rambam in hashkafah?

I don't know. Halacha needs to be normalized because it has practical ramifications, but hashkafah?

So does hashkafah have practical ramifications. That's why some rabbis who don't hold by a "young earth" are no longer acceptable as rabbanim for a conversion beit din and certain rabbis rule that one should not hear R. Slifkin speak.
Click to view attachment

The "hock" from people who attended the EJF was that this was not actually a quote from RE but merely the speaker's extrapolation of what he assumed RE "must" hold.

And that letter is old and the psuedoscientific babble on the second page has been mocked in every corner of the blogosphere already.

ok.

But to paraphrase artscroll [or to put words in his mouth], like gedolim stories that never happened, there's a reason things are said in someone's name.

You mean something like this? : The Evolving Definition Of Heresy, As in “halacha changing”

yes

I don't know from Slifkin to Miller, but I can tell you that if someone is declaring all Rabbis who don't take 6 days as literally 24x6 hours or so, he's mal'ig al divrei Chachomim himself, amongst them the Light of Our Eyes R' Meir Shulom of Kaluszyn zts"l the grandson of the Yehudi haKodosh who wasn't matched in the three thousand years of Yiddishkeit as we know it in his piety, wisdom and Rachvus haSeichel.

But this statement is bogus. What it means is that we cannot go back and start changing settled law because that would distabilize the halachic process (although in a recent discussion of Rabbi Henkin there it has been argued that this is not always true). But to say that even though their reasoning was flawed, the conclusion miraculously still turned out right is just playing games imho.

I think he's probably over-compensating for having gone to college and having studied 
science. Or perhaps some of the yeshivish people he hangs around have tried to 
dumb him down (Make him "ois-illuy" ala R' Elya Svei) and he's internalized it.

Is this guy by any chance a BT who became frum after getting his degree?



Is anything that's said about Your Highnesses either gossip or amateur
psychology? Are we prohibited from ever saying or doing something that might show you up 
for not being the utmost geniuses in the world?

I can handle the rabbanim not having a complete grasp of science but I can't handle them making up their own laws. So when I'm told something that seems incorrect and the reason it seems incorrect is because the science is wrong (e.g., not eating meat and fish together because it causes leprosy), I can accept that perhaps there was a longstanding tradition not to eat meat and fish together and perhaps the leprosy thing was given as a reason because 1) that's what the archaic science of the time said or even 2) that's what the people of the time wanted to hear or maybe some other reason. I have a hard time accepting that God told Moshe not to eat meat and fish together because it causes leprosy and I have a harder time accepting that the rabbis could make up laws based on their understanding of archaic science. But I can handle that the reasons the rabbis gave for certain laws may have, on occasion, been wrong and I have enough blind faith to accept that, notwithstanding their fallibility, the rabbanim had divine inspiration when deducing and transmitting laws.

I think the key here is not to equate Rabbi Yehuda haNosi with Rabbi Shlomo from Toronto.

Yeah, just ask him how he justifies wiping with toilet paper and doesn't it endanger his rectum? (Shabb. 82a)

See the Rama to OC 3:11.




["phuk chazi..." may be a corollary to "where there's a rabbinic will...". Or maybe the former is the bottom-up version of the top-down approach of the latter.]

Before you address whether an idea can be called "kefirah L'fi mesorasainu" you need to identify what belief is and whether one can be responsible for them.

Assuming that you are responsible for the accuracy of things you believe, you must have a plan B in place that will show the possibility of replacing what you actually believe with what you should believe.

Furthermore, since believing something entails thinking it's true*, you must be claiming that not only is what you believe true today, but it always was. So even the Rambam must have been a kofer, because whatever he believed wasn't true then either.


*This is the part that most often gets me. Believing stuff carries a price. And that price is thinking that people who don't believe it are wrong wrong wrong.

When exhausted is every appeal,
Catholic Israel.

Which basically means there's no such thing as "kfirah lefi mesoraseinu" since either it's kfirah and it makes you a kofer, or it's not kfirah.

The entire idea of "kfirah lefi mesoraseinu" as used above is that different eidos (Ashkenazim, Sefardim, Teimanim, Mizrachim, etc.) have in fact a slightly different Torah as a function of their mesorah, so the Rambam's views are OK according to his Western Sephardi Mesorah, but are kfirah according to the Ashkenazi mesorah.

Still, in reality, halacha doesn't view ethnic divisions as radically as that, basically afaik you can be somech on a different eidah's mesorah at least bedieved, so even an Ashkenazi holding the views of the Rambam wouldn't make them a kofer. The entire concept sounds like the result of hair-splitting with the intention of at the same time paseling the Rambam hashkafically but still learning the Mishneh Torah as it is the basis for a lot of lomdishe seforim like R' Chaim and the Or Sameach.

Don't even bother. He seems to have a knack for obscure words of which he has an abundant supply--and never misses an opportunity to use them, (perhaps it makes him feel good to use words no one else understands or cares to) but he apparently fell asleep during etiquette class.

Yeshivaleit isn't so obscure.

true, but Jeschiwischeleute is.

Ah, but in his wisdom he realized that if he would bring out all the cures and vaccines, the birth rate would soon balloon out of control compared to the death rate, necessitating some pretty drastic and non-halachic birth control measures, so he decided for the good of mankind and the planet to withhold all those cures. Then those short-sighted, atheistic scientific reshoim, blinded by their own egos and ambitions, short-sightedly developed those cures and vaccines, and now are in the forefront of forced population control programs.

Rabbi Malthus

I finally realized why the computer wasn't invented back then.

They didn't NEED computers, their HEADS were computers....
We need all of this fancy technology because we have a mere fraction of the mental capacity of the Gedolim (even goyim) of generations past.

You actually believe that!?

That's a pretty easily established fact. Just read books written 200-400 years ago and compare them to the rubbish that gets churned out these days.

What's the rubbish churned out these days that wasn't around 400 years ago? That blood flows within the body? That there are many galaxies? That bacteria and not foul smell causes tuberculosis? That depression is not caused by an excess of black bile? That there are more than 5 elements, and they don't include "quintessence"?

http://www.amazon.com/Idiocracy-Luke-Wilso...2600&sr=8-1

people, stop ganging up on the rebbe its not right.

I will just add my two sense. Forgetting technology, science, social progress, life expectancy and overall untilitarian improvement, how about learning?
Open up a nice chasuva Rishon like the Ritva or Rosh, and then open up seforim by roshei yeshiva in europe before the War (R' Naftoli Trop, R' Elchonon Wasserman, not least to mention, R' Chaim..... ) You telling me that really the rishonim meant all that when they were writing their pirush? The understanding, context, depth, and intellectual honesty (while, admittedly sometimes sparse, frequently refreshingly rigorous) that later day rabbonim bring to gemara surpasses that of the rishonim (at least what we see) by so much, that anything short of brainwashing or a full frontal-lobe lobotomy won't allow one to say that the rabbis 400, 600, or maybe even 1,00 years ago surpassed more recent talmudic exploration.

(And don't give me the "of course they understood it but they wanted us to figure it out on our own so we can get more s'char, or bec. they wanted to keep the torah closed as much as possible" party line heap of refuse, bec. then I will answer that I never really typed any of this at all and you are dreaming it to give you a nisayon. Good job, son. You passed. Now go do what you're told.)

Agree with SG.
A lot of more recent literature (century speaking) seems to me to repeat itself way too much and use too many words because of muddled thinking.

I'm not talking about the amount of knowledge amassed over all these years and subsequent modern capabilities to better approximate nature. I'm talking about quality of intellect, depth of thought and reach of inquiry in atmosphere of relative vacuum of both knowledge and peer review.

Look at works of Cantor, Tarski or Dostoevsky - and compare that to Steven King and Dawkins. Ugh.

There was plenty of crud literature written in the past. The classics survive, the junk obviously doesn't. But printing press is dirt-cheap now, anyone can publish a book, and we also have marketing and TV to help promote books regardless of quality. But there are still good works being published now.

Exactly what I was about to say. A case in point is that Don Quijote is a satire of bad books and people who read them.

There was a rishon who had a similar style of learning to that of Achronim (the 
Darkei haTalmud) but musar seforim of the time almost universally condemned "pilpul", so his work never received a lot of attention.

Yes, even if you take the position that WE have a higher level of knowledge, science, technology etc.. (which I also disagree with but that is for another thread), our MINDS are no comparison with theirs.

Look at Rashi... Can any of us even imagine learning Chumash or Gemara w/o Rashi? What about Toesfos?? THEY "knew Shas". We can't even keep up with supercomputers and Bar Ilan CD-Roms.
Chazal had control over nature, they could revive the dead, make rivers split in front of them and turn people into a pile of bones just by looking at them. They could heal the sick without medicine or advanced technology (if and when they chose to do so). They could make it rain just by davening. (and if you don't believe this is so about Chazal, it is written explicitly in the Neviim) R Chayim Vital writes about "kfitzats haderech" and using Shemos to transport himself openly in his seforim. Or the Rambam who managed to do everything in his "spare time" after a long day of being a doctor first for the goyim and then for the Jews...

Forget Jews, the ancients figured out astronomy, astrology, mathematics and science all by themselves WITHOUT any technology or equipment. They build Pyramids that we still have no idea how they managed to do so. Look at Roman irrigation systems and aquifers. What about all the knowledge about natural healing and alternative medicine that was lost because science scoffed at it and came up with new and improved methods to do what others have been doing for millennia. Bedouin trackers today can do what an entire brigade of soldiers with the most advanced technology can't. Or take Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Tzun Tzu, Newton, Euclid or any number of "primitive ancients" whose knowledge and systems are still studied and used today. Or artists like Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Van Gogh?

People today are little more than apes when compared to the great minds of the past. We only manage to fool ourselves that we are so smart because we have all these machines and technology to "think" for us and do our work...

One, I'm not sure this is true. Plenty of people know Shas with Rashi - and all Rashi had to memorize was, well Shas. Two, if Rashi was a genius does that mean his next door neighbor was?


Since I don't believe that any of that is true, I will merely point out that even if it was true, it has nothing to do with intellect.


What does any of it have to do with intellect though?


One day I'll understand why chareidim think that writing something down makes it true.


The Rambam put a lot of time into his sefarim, but more importantly, as one of my Rebbeim said: "The Rambam wasn't the Rambam because he lived 800 years ago. The Rambam was the Rambam because he was one of the most brilliant men ever born." But the average person of the time - and even most exceptional people - were not smarter than the average person today, and there have been brilliant yechidim in every generation.


I'm not sure what that's even supposed to mean. Of course they had equipment - and they only figured things out to the extent of what they had available. You can chart the heavens with primitive technology, but it wasn't until Newton that people really began to understand astronomy in any real sense. And astrology is not even a science - so they came up with hocus pocus. Who cares? Math doesn't need equipment, and the math of the most brilliant of the ancients was roughly at the level of what we teach 8th graders today. And their knowledge of science was mostly observation and incorrect conjecture. Now, this doesn't mean they were stupid but you also have shown nothing that implies that they were particularly more intelligent than we are.


Not really. We were surprised that they knew how to do so, although a good deal of the answer is that they didn't care about human lives or safety and did things with slaves that even Nooch would find unconscionable.


People died really young back then. Women often died in childbirth and infant mortality was ridiculously high. Romanticize it all you like, but your ancient doctor knew pretty much nothing about how the human body worked. Feel like getting a bloodletting?


1, that has nothing to do with intellect, 2 Bedouin's of our generation aren't "the ancients" and prove nothing about how intelligent people used to be, and 3, I highly doubt that this is factual in the sense that a trained tracker who also had modern equipment couldn't do a lot better. (If you are comparing a Bedouin tracker to soldiers untrained in tracking, the point is meaningless).


Yechidim do not make an entire generation more intelligent, but did you even notice that every one of the artists you mentioned (plus Newton) lived after the Renaissance began? Shakespeare is a contemporary of the achronim, not of Rashi. Aristotle may have been brilliant (he was also wrong about most of the scientific statements he made) but again, a yachid proves nothing - was he smarter than Einstein? Who knows? Neither one is representative of their generation.

(I can't use any more quotes; stupid software)

People today are little more than apes when compared to the great minds of the past. We only manage to fool ourselves that we are so smart because we have all these machines and technology to "think" for us and do our work...


If that makes you happy, think that way, but you have given no evidence of such. On the contrary, a college educated Westerner today can easily know more about geometry than Euclid, more about Calculus than Newton, more about civil engineering than the ancient Romans or Egyptians, and even more about physics than Einstein. Does that makes us smarter? No, but it certainly doesn't make us dumber than the average person of centuries or millenia ago. And in 200 years will there be any art or literature from today that is considered classic? Quite possibly. Picasso and Salvadore Dali, for example, are likely to make the cut, and in literature Mark Twain seems awfully likely. Moby ###### and the Great Gatsby are likely to be read in a century as well.

I don't have koach to respond to all of this, but my point there is a large difference between KNOWLEDGE and Intelligence or even mental ability. We KNOW more but our mental capacity is a fraction of theirs... I don't have "proof" of this but it seems patently obvious to me and arrogant to think otherwise...

Obviously we are going to know more math than Euclid and more physics than Newton. We have had quite some time to study the subject, but who knows if we ever would have been mechadesh what Euclid and Newton did ourselves, had he not...

And I don't think there is anyone who remotely approaches the Rambam or any number of Rishonim, let alone Chazal in our generation or several generations past... I don't think it is an accident that he was born then and not now...
If Chazal hadn't written the gemara, or the Rishonim their Perushim do you think anyone else would have? Do you think the Achronim would have taken their place?? I don't, they opened the door for everyone after them and that is their gadlus...

Yet precisely none of your examples had to do with intelligence (and some had nothing to do with either intelligence OR knowledge.)



Like I said, believe whatever you want, but you aren't exactly Mr. Convincing here.



Presumably someone would have. Many great scientific discoveries, including Newton's own calculus, were discovered by multiple people who had no contact with each other. Without Newton, there still would have been 100 other great mathematicians afterwards, and presumably one of them could have stood in his shoes. And anyways, Newton is hardly ancient! He was a contemporary of the Gra, not of the Rambam.



In terms of raw intelligence? Who knows. No one has attempted to learn like a Rishon in generations. Rishonim studied the primary texts and drew their own conclusions. Achronim study the Rishonim. It's an entirely different genre. It's like asking why no Shakesperian scholar has ever written a play like Hamlet. That doesn't mean none of them were smarter than Shakespeare (could be, could be not) but that they never attempted to do so! Similarly, of course no Achron wrote a perush like a Rishon - they never tried to do so. Could they have? I don't know, but it wouldn't shock me that in terms of raw brainpower some later Gedolim were equal or greater to some of the Rishonim. That you think this is "obviously" false isn't much of a counterclaim.


It's hard to do historical what-ifs, but I don't think that Chazal wrote the Gemara simply because they were so brilliant, but also because they lived in the right time and place and had access to an oral tradition to codify which we no longer have. If Chazal hadn't written the Talmud, what would have happened to the oral tradition and who could have written it for purely practical reasons of having access to the source material? That doesn't mean that they weren't brilliant, but I see no reason to assume a priori that (in terms of raw brainpower) Abaye was smarter than the Rambam or Rav Yosi was smarter than Einstein. Clearly, they were very intelligent, but that doesn't mean that no one afterwards was intelligent.

Do you really mean this literally? I can believe it if they're math or engineering or physics majors, but otherwise I think this claim is a stretch for the typical college graduate.