Welcome to the alliteratively and delightfully entitled Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah (it’s still pronounced “Controversial” – I just think I’m being clever). Subscribe to continue to receive these and please share with those you think would be interested.
I. The Flawed Discovery
In one of my years at Yeshivat Hakotel we attended Aish’s Discovery Seminar, which the Aish website describes as a “journey through time, exploring the Divine nature of the Torah through a blend of past, present, and future insights.”
As they continue to explain, “the seminar is an evolving collection of reasonable, evidence-based ideas, welcoming everyone – from the curious to the committed – to engage with the Torah in a serious yet approachable way.”
In other words, the entire point of the Aish Discovery Seminar is to prove to you that God exists and that He gave the Torah to the Jewish people – in a nicely-packaged format that will appeal to smart, intellectually-inclined people.
And while you’d think that this would be the perfect kind of program for a group of post-High School guys spending a year or two in a yeshiva, my experience was anything but. Because I spent the entire time sat next to one of my closest friends – whom I still only know by his last name, Schwartz (and he’s a reader of QQotP, hi, Schwartz!) – who punctuated every other sentence the person giving the seminar said with a comment muttered in my ear about how easy it was to counter everything they were saying from within Torah sources.
Take Aish’s most compelling argument – which they didn’t invent themselves (and don’t pretend to). It’s best-known as “the Kuzari proof” because a version of it is espoused by Rabbi Yehudah ha-Levi in his anti-philosophical work, Kuzari (I §25).1
It goes something like this. In many places, the Torah attests to it having been given en masse to the Jewish people as a dramatic event. And even a cursory read of Parashat Yitro this week makes it clear that the Torah is constantly referencing the entire people’s experience at Sinai. So much so, that it bookends the Ten Commandments by stressing this:
And Moshe went down to the people and spoke to them. (Ex. 19:25)
All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. (20:15).
In contrast to most other religions – which hinge on revelation to just one individual – Judaism’s revelation took place before a multitude of people.
And for the Aish Discover Seminar, this is key. Because it asks you to imagine a counterfactual history of Judaism. Thousands of years ago, a religious figure turned up attempting to convince a group of people that they were bound by the laws of the Torah.
But the moment you think about this counterfactual Jewish history, you realize how implausible it could be. Because as soon as the people started reading the Torah, they’d read all of these claims about their own history: how their ancestors had all been present at Sinai and received the Torah from God Himself. How they had experienced all of these miracles.
But, the moment they come across this, how couldn’t they then start asking questions! Because the people would turn to this religious figure incredulously, “What do you mean our ancestors were at Sinai?! They never told us anything about that! It’s all nonsense what you’re telling us. It’s codswallop!”2
And so, the fact that Jews have always believed in the Torah must mean that much, much earlier generations of Jews never disputed the claims of mass revelation because they knew their ancestors had been there.
Hence the Torah must be true because we have always accepted the claims made by our tradition. No one would ever be foolish enough to accept a series of refutable claims unless they were irrefutable.
II. When the People Forgot the Torah
There’s just a teeny tiny problem with this logic: other parts of Tanakh seem to suggest otherwise.
II Kings describes the glorious religious revival of the Kingdom of Judah under its new king, Josiah. Having spent many generations wallowing in idolatry – in worshiping the gods and cult of other nations – Josiah sparks his kingdom to return to the worship of God Himself.
And in describing the start of this revolution, II Kings tells us of a discovery made in the bowels of the Beit ha-Mikdash by the High Priest of the time, Ḥilkiah: “I have found a sefer Torah in the House of God” (II Kgs 22:8).
What happens next is Josiah’s discovery of the Torah. He destroys all the idolatry in the land and forces the people to renew their covenant with God and begin following His laws once again – leading to the following curious verses:
The king commanded all the people, “Offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your God as prescribed in this scroll of the covenant.” Now the Passover sacrifice had not been offered in that manner in the days of the shofṭim who ruled Israel, or during the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah. Only in the eighteenth year of King Josiah was such a Passover sacrifice offered in that manner to God in Jerusalem. (II Kgs. 23:21–23)
Tanakh itself testifies to the complete abandonment of part of Pesaḥ! For centuries – beginning with the era of Shofṭim – they had been lax in this commandment.
Yet, the premise of Pesaḥ is a national experience: our ancestors’ redemption from slavery. But II Kings seems to be saying that the thrust of that experience was forgotten and only upon reading the Torah anew did the people discover their history and accept it as a given.
And an even more striking example of this is found in the events described by Ezra-Neḥemiah, in which, after moving back to Israel, the Jewish people recommit to the service of God. Here, once again, Tanakh describes in detail the rediscovery of the Torah.
And in particular, Neḥemiah 8 details Ezra’s mass Torah-teaching, with many verses making it clear that the Jewish people had forgotten much of what the Torah contained. Indeed, the verses make it clear just how much was lost:
They found written in the Torah that the Lord had commanded Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the festival of the seventh month. (Neh. 8:14)
Apparently, the people had forgotten all about Sukkot – with the continuation of the story describing their re-observance of the festival.
And once again, this means that we have a festival premised on a mass miracle – the Jewish people’s miraculous survival as they traversed the wilderness – that was forgotten but then accepted, nonetheless.
And these facts, among others, were what Schwartz was whispering to me during the Discovery Seminar. Tanakh itself testifies to the fact that, at some point, both Josiah and Ezra turned to the people and said, “all of this happened,” and the people just accepted it along with everything else.3
III. Why It’s Not as Crisis-Inducing As You Think
Now, before going any further, I’ll just say that if you yourself are shocked by this, that’s not Judaism’s fault! It has always expected you to read the entirety of Tanakh – so it was never hiding these things from us. It wanted us to read them.
And, with this in mind, while it’s true that a simple reading of the verses in II Kings and Ezra lead to the conclusion that the people had completely forgotten the Torah and accepted everything Josiah and Ezra told them at face value, there are other ways to read them.
Because there’s a world of difference between “we never knew we had to offer the Pesaḥ sacrifice” or “we never knew we had to sit in sukkot” and “we never knew we’d been freed from slavery in Egypt” or “we never knew our ancestors had traversed the wilderness with the miraculous aid of God.” Because the former speak to some specific ritual applications of national stories, while the latter refer to the national stories themselves.
And a good way to think of this difference is a Jew who did not grow up observant. There is a high likelihood that they are still aware of their “cultural history” – they not only know that Pesaḥ is a thing Jews do but may even celebrate some sort of Seder every year – but they have zero familiarity with the halakhic details of how to fulfill sippur yetzi’at mitzrayim.
But if they then decided to become more observant, as they come to learn the laws of Pesaḥ itself, it’d be fair to characterize their experience with words similar to Nehemiah:
They found written in the Shulḥan Arukh that the Lord had commanded His people to do x, y, and z.
It’s not that they never knew of their national story, it’s that they never knew how to ritually observe it until they actually read the texts themselves.
And it’s probably also worth noting that Ḥazal themselves are very aware of Ezra’s role in the Torah’s transmission – and it shouldn’t surprise us that they knew Tanakh – offering their own interesting ways of understanding it all (Sanhedrin 21b).
IV. When Tanakh Itself Becomes Controversial
But what this all highlights, for me, is the major flaw with the entire Discovery Seminar project. Because its entire purpose is to razzle-dazzle its audience into wanting to become observant (it’s run by a kiruv organization, after all).
But what happens next? If a member of the audience becomes fully observant, they’ll recognize the centrality of Torah learning. Which means they’ll hopefully want to start learning Tanakh as a whole. But then, as they start reading it, they’ll come across the verses in II Kings and Ezra that call into question their original inspirations for becoming more observant.
And this leads to one of two conclusions. One is that the Aish Discovery Seminar assumes that, as people become more religious, they will intellectually mature and be comfortable grappling with complex ideas within Judaism.
But the other conclusion is that they don’t think people will learn more and intellectually develop. They hope people will just be dazzled by what they were taught, commit to observance, and then move on with their observant lives never really learning enough to question (and anything that might make them question things will just be labeled heresy anyway, so they shouldn’t read it).
And you might think that this a deeply uncharitable and cynical take. But look, I never said I wasn’t a deeply uncharitable and cynical person. But more importantly, the entire premise of the Discovery Seminar is to prove the truth of the Torah in the full knowledge that your audience doesn’t know much Torah.
That’s why it never worked for me. Because Schwartz spent the whole time cutting through the flash and the bangs, pointing out just how intellectually dishonest it was.
But when it does work, it creates Jews who are liable to become shocked by the words of Tanakh itself!
V. My Mission Statement
Part of the original impetus for Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah – when it was envisioned just as a shiur and before I expanded its mandate to cover a lot of broader topics tenuously connected to the parashah – was rooted in a couple of different conversations I had had with people.
One conversation concerned the idea that Rivkah married Yitzḥak as a child – and how that created a deep mistrust in how this person approached many of the Torah’s stories. Hence the very first email in this series.
But the other conversation revolved around someone’s shock upon effectively discovering what Tanakh itself claims. And during that conversation I found myself thinking about the Aish Discover Seminar’s presentation of the Kuzari proof.
Only it wasn’t actually my experience – I was shielded from any unhealthy theological views – but another friend’s experience a year or so later. Because a friend of mine from Manchester who had not grown up religious believed in it so strongly that, not only did he start to become religious, but he started a Facebook group disseminating the Kuzari proof (back in the days when Facebook groups were a thing).
But what happened next was a bunch of random people online pointing out all of the flaws in the logic – leading to his crisis of faith.
And, while this is my most vivid memory of religious growth gone awry, I’ve seen many different people get sucked in by exciting proofs and arguments in favor of being religious – only for them to lose that faith when the flaws are later pointed out.
And I sometimes worry that so much of Judaism assumes people don’t think critically. That people don’t ask questions. And that, if people do ask questions, the answer is to either offer more razzle-dazzle or say, “don’t be a heretic.”
Hence my desire to embrace the controversial questions in Judaism. To pick apart the flaws in how we all too often think. Not because, God-forbid, I want to shake people’s faith or because I believe that I, alone, have all the answers – but because I think it’s important for people to see that intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, philosophical knowledge, and a healthy dose of cynical skepticism are not anathema to religious life.
Judaism doesn’t demand its adherents are stupid. It doesn’t demand that we don’t ask questions. It doesn’t want us to have simple easy faith that falls apart the moment we try to think it through.
It wants us to ask questions. It wants us to think.
And this is why I think the Torah’s description of mass revelation is crucial to our religious lives. Not because I think it proves anything but because it’s an ideological testament: all of us are expected to read a text, learn its details, and plumb its depths.
And it’s only by asking the questions, by trying to think through the logic, and by approaching things with somewhat of a skeptical eye, that we can successfully come to truly know Torah and what God wants from us.
I like to refer to Kuzari as “anti-philosophical” because even though it’s considered a work of Jewish philosophy, R. Yehudah ha-Levi hated philosophy and a major point of Kuzari is to show the flaws with philosophy.
I like to picture this as a Monty Python scene, hence the language.
I should stress that my issue is not with the Kuzari proof per se but with the way it gets presented in flash-bang exciting seminars. Because there are seemingly legitimate philosophically-defensible ways to construct the Kuzari proof. Rabbi Sam Lebens – a top-notch legit philosopher – has a whole book revolving around it (which I started reading recently) and this Shabbat in shul we’re hosting Rabbi Chaim Eisen, who is generally enamored with the ideas of the Kuzari. It’s not the Kuzari per se that’s the problem – it’s how its popularized.