Erring for the sake of heaven

Why we need to get things wrong, over and over

But if a person only has the traditions that he received from his teacher, why would he experience stumbling? Rather we must conclude that the student has received a tradition from his teacher and desires to investigate the inner sanctum. When doing so there is no doubt that he will occasionally stumble, as is written: “Let this stumbling be under your hand.” Even so, the verse teaches: “With its love you shall always err.” From everything that I have said we can conclude that it is permissible to investigate and expound in order to reach the wondrous things and those things that are hidden.

(Rabbi Nehemiah Hiyya Hayon, from the Oz le-Elohim)

We often assume, hypothetical reader, that faith and intellect are opposed. This idea is, in the grand scheme of religious history, a recent idea, and one that has damaged our notion of faith and our character immeasurably.

I mentioned a while ago that the author of 4 Maccabees “does not distinguish reason from religion, which may be unintuitive for modern readers.” I specified modern readers for a reason. A consequence of the Enlightenment has been a steep decline in the idea that faith should be intellectually virtuous.

Sometimes, in laughable ways, apparently unquestioning faith ends up replaced by an attempt at intellect. Pseudoscientific grifts abound among certain religious communities. The need for science to back up faith indicates weak faith, at best.

What I’m aiming for in discussing intellect in faith is not to show that quantum physics somehow proves kabbalah (they’re irrelevant to one another) or that our poor understanding of the human brain indicates that only G-d could make it. As everyone knows, the G-d of “G-d in the gaps” grows ever smaller as science closes those gaps. The real G-d cannot grow smaller.

In my context, heterodox Judaism, we often end up ditching faith in favour of a faith-free intellect. We adopt wholeheartedly the Wissenschaft des Judentums as our non-foundation and thus flop around willy-nilly in the tides of time.

That’s not to say that I dislike modernising Judaism to even a large degree - I mean, otherwise I’d not be at a Reform shul would I? - nor do I mean that most of heterodox Judaism acts this way in its positions of knowledgeable authority. But it’s something a lot of people do, if not rabbis or the CCAR or other rabbinic governing bodies, whom I’m not nearly arrogant enough to rail against. So, keep in mind I’m referring to an extreme that is rarely supported from the bimah.

The idea that intellect and faith cannot coexist is new.

The very fact that it seems necessary that archaeology prove the Exodus story’s veracity is a symptom of what I’m referring to, the post-Enlightenment evisceration of faith and intellect.

What I’m about to advocate for is a lot harder to define than the use of (pseudo)science and New Age silliness to try to back up faith. It’s not apologetics, either. It requires faith in one’s faith, because it can only take place within a faith. I’m referring to what might, in theoretical terms, be called immanent: thinking or critiquing a system from within it. So, I have little desire to prove the truth of Judaism to non-Jews. Conversion doesn’t work rationally, so that would be fruitless even if I did decide to be among the first Jewish missionaries.

That’s enough of a preamble, or too much of one. I just want to be abundantly clear about the limited domain I’m mapping.

On the normal framework for reading Torah

When we read something from Jewish tradition, we need to realise that the rabbinic tradition operates from the usual Jewish notion that Torah is without flaw. I brought up the Wissenschaft des Judentums for a reason. For those who don’t know neeeeeerd terms, this jargony German refers to the Science of Judaism - in more usual English parlance, Jewish studies. Jewish studies is to be strongly distinguished from the rabbinic tradition, although I don’t want to pretend there isn’t overlap.

Jewish studies is an academic discipline that, among other things, asks questions about the historical development of Torah. Despite the fact that many scholars of Jewish studies are Jewish, Jewish studies adopts an outsider’s approach to Judaism, viewing Jewish tradition not as an authority but as something to scrutinise from a scientific standpoint. I’m taking a traditional approach, here, not a Jewish studies one.

A key difference between rabbinic tradition and Jewish studies that I’ve already mentioned is that the rabbinic tradition is based on the idea that Torah is without flaw and divine, while Jewish studies takes an approach that views Torah as being authored by humans and developing across many years and stages.

These two ways of approaching Torah aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, they don’t even have to be reconciled. They’re operating from totally different frameworks. Some thinkers pose this distinction as truth versus Truth: in truth, the story of the Exodus is at best unproven as a historic situation. In Truth, though, the Exodus story is far more than something that can be verified by rocks in dirt; archaeology is simply irrelevant to what Exodus tells us as Truth.

This approach has the upside of allowing even a very heterodox reader to adopt the classically rabbinic mindset toward Torah, on which most of the tradition depends. If the rabbis of old had decided that Serach’s two mentions in Torah were just scribal confusions, they wouldn’t have written the midrashim about her that we’ve come to love over the centuries. If we were to become totally Wissenschaft-y about Torah, we’d just ignore Serach. But we don’t. We’d also lose every bit of Judaism that’s based on the idea that there are no coincidences in Torah, which would include casting away the beauty of gematria.

However, even as we are among the traditionally-inclined or start to understand the traditional mindset, we need to avoid letting our brains flop out and get run over by a Tesla when learning Torah, whether Written or Oral.

A heretic on heterodoxy

I’ve rambled elsewhere about the importance of Jewish education so I won’t go into that here - at least not from the same angle. What I want to discuss here is one of my favourite works on kabbalah, the Oz le-Elohim of Rabbi Nehemia Hiyya Hayon, published in 1713. I want to be abundantly clear that this work is something like Sabbateanism-without-Shabtai, as Pawel Majcieko described it recently. But as I hope I’ve shown elsewhere, in my translation of a passage from Friederika Dembitz Brandeis, it is clear that Sabbatean and adjacent beliefs often led to highly modern, heterodox beliefs. It’s that classic transfiguration of the mystical into the secular that many find so unintelligible in the history of Sabbateanism (but which might seem intuitive to some readers with overlong memories).

The Oz le-Elohim, a translation of which is partly found here, but which I’m quoting from here, makes a compelling case for the necessity of finding one’s own way in studying even such sacrosanct and esoteric works as those of the kabbalistic corpus. Restrictions have typically been placed on the study of kabbalah to avoid misunderstandings among the masses, particularly in light of Sabbateanism’s rise, so Rabbi Hayon’s argument is rather heterodox for its time, even if its point seems banal to modern heterodox readers.

I want to point out firstly that Rabbi Hayon does not make an argument based on information from outside the Jewish tradition. He does not argue that it’s worth casting aside rigour for the sake of outreach, nor does he argue that some veil has lifted because we hit an arbitrary moment in history. His critique of the prevailing notions around kabbalah study is fully immanent, or else it wouldn’t hold any water. If we’re just abandoning traditions however we please, why do… anything Jewish? No, Rabbi Hayon takes the serious and respectable approach of engaging with the tradition.

As hypothetical-you have read in the quote that opens this post, Rabbi Hayon argues that it is allowable for a student to look into the deepest subjects on their own. But what strikes me most about his work is how he goes about justifying his stance in light of the fact that a solo student of kabbalah can go miserably awry. This is a serious concern, one that tends to make traditionally-inclined Jews uncomfortable at best with unconventional methods of studying kabbalah. I’ve seen plenty of people go astray in their interpretation of kabbalah, whether in innocent but silly directions or in more insidious ways.

Let’s look at how Rabbi Hayon justifies allowing solo study of this deep topic. Firstly, he gives the general idea of this crucial component of his argument:

If, however, he does attain the matter by means of investigation, or if he has a deep-seated belief that this is the truth, then even if he is mistaken, as long as the intent of his investigation is to attain its essence, his error is not considered to be an intentional sin, about which is written “unwitting errors are accounted as intentional sin.” On the contrary! This error is one with which God is pleased, as is written: “With its love you shall always err.”

This makes intuitive sense: intent matters. The rabbi explains his point further with an excellent little parable that I will quote in full, at annoying length:

When a king decrees that his subjects serve him, if they make mistakes when fulfilling any of the commands they will be subject to lashes, since the path of service was short and clearly laid out. The subject is blamed for not paying attention to the command and for making a mistake. The king does not desire such service, and the error is accounted as intentional sin. However, if the king decreed that his subjects should comprehend him, and he places himself in the midst of a great ocean, his subjects will come to seek him in order to call on him. Since the subject had never before traveled these waters — as he had no need to do so until he desired to search for the king — and there is no set path in the ocean, for it is water with no end, we can be certain that he will lose his way. Will the king demand to know why he did not come in the most direct path, and went “hither and yon”? Given that there was no established path, will he ask, “[W]hy did you falsify the path?” On the contrary! It is “a path not known to the bird of prey.” The more that the subject toils and searches, the more pain that he suffers in his search for the place, the greater the reward that the king must give him. This is the intention of the verse: “With its love you should always err,” for you will receive a reward for the errors, aside from the reward that you will receive in discovering Him and seeing the King’s face.

So, it’s our very relation to G-d that sanctifies our errors. G-d is imperceptible and does not speak directly to us anymore, and G-d only holds us to account for what we know for certain. However, G-d has chosen to stay far from our ken, so our journey to knowledge of G-d is fraught with difficulty; we have only an echo of an echo to guide us. We’re rewarded for the work of seeking G-d, rather than being punished for not already having all the answers.

Critique is a virtue

I’ll quote Rabbi Hayon one more time:

Someone who refrains from investigation will be unable to attain true understanding of G-d’s holiness. What will such a person respond on the Day of Judgment when he is asked: “Did you engage in the study of My stature?” They do not say “Did you study?” but “Did you engage?” meaning that he should have engaged in dialogue and debate in order to understand the essence of the matter. And if mistakes are made—he will receive a reward even for the errors, as is written: “With its love you shall always err,” as we explained above.

We aren’t merely permitted to study outside the traditional ways of studying - we’re obligated to think for ourselves. That’s our reputation as Jews, isn’t it? That we’re critical gadflies in the face of dogmatism? Rabbi Hayon shows that a properly critical eye begins from our own tradition. We have to check sources for ourselves rather than merely accept whatever it is we’ve been told by one teacher or another.

Antisemites don’t like the Jewish tendency toward independent thought. A notorious passage from T.S. Eliot’s After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy comes to mind here. I had initially picked up the book on the assumption that its subtitle used heresy as a way to refer positively to independent thought, like a proto-Alice Dreger usage. I was quite wrong. Eliot describes his vision for an ideal state, including his notion that:

The population should be homogeneous; where two or more cultures exist in the same place they are likely either to be fiercely self-conscious or both to become adulterate. What is still more important is unity of religious background; and reasons of race and religion combine to make any large number of free-thinking Jews undesirable.

Judaism “as a culture of critique” is thus not a new idea, and Jews have often embraced this perspective on ourselves. As Rabbi Isaac M. Wise wrote before Eliot:

It is certainly true that the Jew opposite all positive religions always was the invincible spirit of negation, a living protest against all dogmas of all creeds; hence he was to them the source and exponent of skepticism, of perpetual doubt. The only question is, Could the human family exist without skepticism? I say, no, no, no. Without skepticism, hence without the Jew, the human family could not advance, as little, indeed, as a planetary body could move in its orbit without the co-operation of the centrifugal and centripetal powers.

I suppose in this planetary system, we’re Saturn. (Talk about a niche reference!)

At any rate, what Rabbi Wise means is not that Jews are negative emotionally or in tone, but rather, that we oppose positive assertions and prefer to pick them apart. It’s a philosophical and not colloquial usage of the term. I don’t think he’s entirely right that we avoid all dogmatism - that’s a rather narrow, if common, notion of Judaism that isn’t historically true. But even those of us who hold to certain dogmata are constantly scrutinising our ideas, as Rabbi Hayon argues we should.

In his essay “Developing Truth Seekers,” philosopher Philip E. Dow writes the following:

[W]hile some level of attraction to truth seems to be a universally human impulse, not everyone with a passing interest in truth can rightfully be called a “truth seeker.” A “truth seeker” is someone whose commitment to pursuing truth is so deeply rooted that it consistently supersedes self-interest.

Truth can seriously hurt. We have a rather authoritative Jewish basis for Dow’s idea of what truth-seeking entails:

For as wisdom grows, vexation grows;
To increase learning is to increase heartache.

Or as Emilie Autumn sings in classic goth fashion,

Intelligent girls are more depressed
Because they know
What the world is really like

I’ll write another time about the pain of truth from a more personal standpoint. For now, I’ll wrap up by noting that, per our tradition, the consequences of not seeking truth are worse than any pain that truth could inflict on us. Wisdom Herself tells us:

Happy is the man who listens to me,
Coming early to my gates each day,
Waiting outside my doors.

For he who finds me finds life
And obtains favor from the LORD.

But he who misses me destroys himself;
All who hate me love death.

Strong words, and harsh, but they strike me as utterly true. What is admirable about unthinking intellect, unthinking faith? What about unthinking partisanship, something that’s historically never helped us? The death drive is, as they say, a conservative drive: it wants to return to the comfortable stasis and safety of the womb. Not pursuing Torah knowledge is comfortable. It’s the route of the death drive. Not pursuing truth in the rest of life is similarly, but perhaps more literally, death-loving.

Pursuing truth requires courage, then - as we know, courage is the most important virtue. And as Aristotle writes, “Socrates also thought that Courage was knowledge.” What we have to wrestle with in Torah or Talmud or kabbalah, as in life, may not be easy for us to either grasp or bear. Yet our ancestors, driven by the virtues of Torah, sacrificed so much to give us the chance to keep learning what is True. So, read.