[Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux

[Michael Makovi]

> R' Michael Makovi asked:
>  > Reb Moshe honestly expects these people to realize that
>  > Torah is true just because there are are rational and
>  > intelligent benei Torah? And there aren't rational and
>  > intelligent gentiles? ... If I have been raised in a
>  > non-Torah environment, why should I have any greater
>  > predisposition to Torah than the Christian Bible or the
>  > Koran or Kant or the Bhagavad Gita? Of course they see
>  > rational and intelligent benei Torah! But they have no
>  > reason to think more highly of them and their religion
>  > than they do of all the rational and intelligent
>  > non-benei Torah!
>
>  Thank you for posting this. It is a question which has bothered me for a long time. I hope
> someone will suggest an answer to it.

Well, as I said, I've seen numerous statements that a nonreligious Jew
today is a tinok she'nishba/shogeg, and bears no guilt for what he
does, b'klal. I am having trouble remembering exactly where I have
seen this (too many places; it's like asking where I read that pork is
treif), but I know Einayim Lirot (English translation from Urim: Eyes
to See) has a chapter on this.

I remembered another proof R' Schwarz there brings: Ramban in his
perush to the Chumash says that it could happen someday that people
erroneously think that the Torah was valid once but no longer valid
anymore, and so they are shogeg in "if you violate all these
commandments".

Rav Kook too I think implicitly held like this. His philosophy was
that today, we are seeing people that are bad on the outside but good
on the inside. They have tremendous neshamot yearning to improve the
world (look at all the Jews in left-wing causes), and the Torah had
been made into something so small and parochial (4 cubits of halacha,
all about your own individual self, but nothing anymore about fixing
the whole world, etc.), and so they left Judaism (which to them
appeared to be void of tikkun olam) in favor of left-wing causes, with
their hearts full of the yearning to save and repair the world.
Obviously, they were misguided. But Rav Kook said, their souls and
intentions are fantastically huge, larger than any previous generation
we've seen, and so he had faith that all their sins were innocent
ones.

IMO, Rav Hirsch's 19 Letters seems to suppose a very similar
accounting, because the whole premise of his book is that many of the
young idealists turning to Reform, did so only because the modern
world seemed so progressive and enlightened, and yet Orthodox Judaism
appeared so backward and old and decrepit and had nothing to offer to
change the world. Judaism had become 4 cubits of halacha and had lost
study of Tanach and Aggadah and Hashkafa and was only halacha, without
ta'amim; stam just do it and don't ask questions. But these young
idealists wanted something with purpose, something to change the
world, something to live for. This is virtually the same thing Rav
Kook said.

Rav Kook said to Rabbi Hayim David haLevy (late chief rabbi of Tel
Aviv) that today's youth need not only halacha, but also hashkafa, so
Rabbi haLevy wrote his Mekor Hayim, which is a Kitzur Shulchan Aruch
that includes hashkafic introductions to all the halachot; it is the
standard halachic textbook for Israeli DL schools, much as Rav
Hirsch's Horeb was used as a KSA for German youth.

The parallel is quite astounding, IMO. Also, compare Torah im Derech
Eretz to Rav Kook's view of learning chol, "sanctify the chol by
infusing it with kodesh". Rav Kook and Rav Hirsch say the same thing
on learning chol, but in different language.

Mikha'el Makovi