[Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux

[Michael Makovi]

I had said:

> [Rabbi Eidensohn,] you're now asking how they're still TsN even after they learn a smidgen > of Torah.

>  Rabbi Eidensohn, please excuse me for my impudence, but I'm going to
>  ask you for a source that tries to give a sevara to establish that a
>  person is no longer a TsN once he has some knowledge, but does not yet
>  know that he is chayav b'Torah u'mitzvot. You've given a source that
>  holds by this sevara - viz. Reb Moshe. What I'm asking for, is proof
>  of the validity of this sevara itself. Because the evidence of nature
>  seems to hold otherwise.

I'll add a remark: Unless I am mistaken, Chazon Ish and Rav Kook, et.
al., the shita that today's nonreligious are TsN, in contradistinction
to Reb Moshe - these former poskim all seem to hold that they are TsN
even though (and I am willing to bet a billion dollars) every single
one of Israel's nonreligious Jews knows that Orthodox Jews don't eat
pork chops and don't drive cars on Shabbat. Now, there are a LOT of
things they don't know (my friend at yeshiva told me that many
Israelis honestly think that a kippa seruga indicates a Reform Jew),
but of these two facts, I am SURE that ALL Israelis knows them.

In the Talmudic TsN, it is very possible (though not necessarily the
case) that the TsN knows NOTHING of Judaism; it is likely that he
knows Jews don't eat pork, but it is all the same very possible that
he doesn't know; the Greek historians did in fact show a staggering
amount of ignorance of Judaism (thinking the kodesh ha-kodashim
contained an idol, etc.). So if someone wants to make a case that the
Talmudic TsN knew NOTHING, I could not attempt to prove him wrong.

But in today's non-religious Jew, it is absolutely positively known
that they know that Orthodox Jews don't eat pork or drive cars on
Shabbat. They also know that Orthodox women don't dress provocatively.
So Chazon Ish and Rav Kook, et. al., when they described today's
nonreligious as TsN, were implicitly saying that one can be a TsN even
if he knows something of Torah - I can only suppose that they presumed
that "knowledge of Torah" to disqualify someone as TsN, includes
enough knowledge to conceivably gain a conviction that the Torah was
given at Sinai, etc., and not merely enough knowledge to know a few
random halachot, or even to know that Jews hold that Sinai happened.
Rather, they must have enough knowledge for these laws and this
conviction of Sinaicity to bear weight in their eyes. And if we were
to hold like Rabbi Kaplan, we'd go even further: then one is a TsN
even if he were to become a BT. But at least, according to Chazon Ish
and Rav Kook, it seems that one is a TsN even when he knows something,
as long as he hasn't yet been convinced that Torah is true.

Mikha'el Makovi