I once said something that caused a stir... Strike that. I once said something that was regarded as controversial and therefore caused a stir... Strike that. One of the times I said something that was regarded as controversial that caused a stir... Strike that. One of the many times I specifically said something to stir up a controversy (ok; that's accurate), I ended up embroiled in a a controversy that I didn't expect.
It started off innocently enough. The bachur home on break from yeshiva wanted to say a very nice thought he had learned in yeshiva. These young 20 something bachurim are so cute in their passion that I usually don't nitpick. As it happened, though, he brought up a topic about which I am passionate: free will. Again, I might have let it go, except the "set up" question made a much bigger point about the free will (or, rather, obvious lack thereof) of inanimate objects. (As is often the case, the set up questions were overboard to make the concluding vort more exciting. The concluding vort was just fine... sigh.)
At the conclusion, I gently asked, "So how do you know that inanimate objects don't have free will? To be concrete: How would you distinguish between lack of free will vs always doing precisely and without deviation the Will of HaShem?" Of course the correct answer is, "Hmm... you can't. That's so interesting!" As I said, it was a side issue to his main point, and we could/should have gone on to discuss either the interesting dichotomy of free will versus the omniscience of the Creator or how good the cholent was. Of course, because of his youth, he got defensive and prepared to defend a false premise. I, being socially awkward, decided to engage him in his folly.
(Just to be as clear here as I was there: I am not taking a position on whether or not inanimate objects have free will, nor the meaning of the various medrashim that seem to imply they do. My position is only that there is not experiment one can devise that would allow one to distinguish between lack of free will vs always doing precisely and without deviation the Will of HaShem.)
He said he had a proof from a Rambam. I don't know a lot of Rambam's, but I do know what the Rambam has to say about free will. As usual when presented someone's memory of a source, I asked that he show me this proof. No problem, he said... he ran to his room and hurried back with... Guide for the Perplexed.
That's when the trouble started, because I said, "No, you said the Rambam, not the Guide for the Perplexed. The Guide for the Perplexed certainly was written by R' Moshe ben Maimon, but it was written to address the crisis in faith that one of his students was facing when he started learning Aristotle." Are you saying he wrote something false in here?! "Not at all," I replied, "simply that I do not have the breadth of knowledge to explain everything in the Guide for the Perplexed that seems to contradict the mainstream sources; including, of course, the Rambam -- in Mishna Torah -- himself." That's where it ended; I have enough social skills to happily end an argument by declaring ignorance.
But just since I recently heard a shiur that discusses one of the contradictions, I thought I'd share. When discussing the Torah system of animal sacrifices, the Guide for the Perplexed says that it was because of the extant pagan practice of animal sacrifices. (Of course, the Reform Jewish Religion loves to twist that into "wean us away from animal sacrifices"; then use that as proof that we don't need nor even desire -- chas v'shalom -- a rebuilding of Jerusalem and our Holy Temple; may they be rebuilt swiftly and in our lifetime.)
On face value, this Guide for the Perplexed is difficult, since Adam, his children, and Noah all brought animal sacrifices; clearly none of them were pagan. Much, much more difficult, though -- the Rambam himself (in Mishna Torah) says that the system of animal sacrifices is a חוק/Divine decree that supersedes human logic. How to understand that Guide for the Perplexed, then? The easiest way is to say that R' Moshe ben Maimon was telling his student that there is an innate and inexplicable human desire to offer animal sacrifices -- as we see was a common pagan practice.
Why didn't he follow that with, "moreover, we understand that desire, because the Torah prescribes this practice"? Because he was writing to a student suffering a crisis in faith. The Guide for the Perplexed, in short, is a wonderful text to study to learn how to address a crisis in faith. It's just not the Rambam and it certainly is not a work you can learn to understand Jewish/Torah philosophy.
It started off innocently enough. The bachur home on break from yeshiva wanted to say a very nice thought he had learned in yeshiva. These young 20 something bachurim are so cute in their passion that I usually don't nitpick. As it happened, though, he brought up a topic about which I am passionate: free will. Again, I might have let it go, except the "set up" question made a much bigger point about the free will (or, rather, obvious lack thereof) of inanimate objects. (As is often the case, the set up questions were overboard to make the concluding vort more exciting. The concluding vort was just fine... sigh.)
At the conclusion, I gently asked, "So how do you know that inanimate objects don't have free will? To be concrete: How would you distinguish between lack of free will vs always doing precisely and without deviation the Will of HaShem?" Of course the correct answer is, "Hmm... you can't. That's so interesting!" As I said, it was a side issue to his main point, and we could/should have gone on to discuss either the interesting dichotomy of free will versus the omniscience of the Creator or how good the cholent was. Of course, because of his youth, he got defensive and prepared to defend a false premise. I, being socially awkward, decided to engage him in his folly.
(Just to be as clear here as I was there: I am not taking a position on whether or not inanimate objects have free will, nor the meaning of the various medrashim that seem to imply they do. My position is only that there is not experiment one can devise that would allow one to distinguish between lack of free will vs always doing precisely and without deviation the Will of HaShem.)
He said he had a proof from a Rambam. I don't know a lot of Rambam's, but I do know what the Rambam has to say about free will. As usual when presented someone's memory of a source, I asked that he show me this proof. No problem, he said... he ran to his room and hurried back with... Guide for the Perplexed.
That's when the trouble started, because I said, "No, you said the Rambam, not the Guide for the Perplexed. The Guide for the Perplexed certainly was written by R' Moshe ben Maimon, but it was written to address the crisis in faith that one of his students was facing when he started learning Aristotle." Are you saying he wrote something false in here?! "Not at all," I replied, "simply that I do not have the breadth of knowledge to explain everything in the Guide for the Perplexed that seems to contradict the mainstream sources; including, of course, the Rambam -- in Mishna Torah -- himself." That's where it ended; I have enough social skills to happily end an argument by declaring ignorance.
But just since I recently heard a shiur that discusses one of the contradictions, I thought I'd share. When discussing the Torah system of animal sacrifices, the Guide for the Perplexed says that it was because of the extant pagan practice of animal sacrifices. (Of course, the Reform Jewish Religion loves to twist that into "wean us away from animal sacrifices"; then use that as proof that we don't need nor even desire -- chas v'shalom -- a rebuilding of Jerusalem and our Holy Temple; may they be rebuilt swiftly and in our lifetime.)
On face value, this Guide for the Perplexed is difficult, since Adam, his children, and Noah all brought animal sacrifices; clearly none of them were pagan. Much, much more difficult, though -- the Rambam himself (in Mishna Torah) says that the system of animal sacrifices is a חוק/Divine decree that supersedes human logic. How to understand that Guide for the Perplexed, then? The easiest way is to say that R' Moshe ben Maimon was telling his student that there is an innate and inexplicable human desire to offer animal sacrifices -- as we see was a common pagan practice.
Why didn't he follow that with, "moreover, we understand that desire, because the Torah prescribes this practice"? Because he was writing to a student suffering a crisis in faith. The Guide for the Perplexed, in short, is a wonderful text to study to learn how to address a crisis in faith. It's just not the Rambam and it certainly is not a work you can learn to understand Jewish/Torah philosophy.
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