[Avodah] R' Angel & Geirus Redux

[Michael Makovi]

> This
> is why people who do not feel comfortable with this implication [that a TsN knows absolutely nothing, and so too any nonreligious today labeled as TsN must know absolutely nothing], try to
> argue that the terminology of tinuk shenisbha is being misused (as in the
> gemora it is only used to describe somebody who really knows absolutely
> nothing).
>
> The problem with that argument is that you end up accusing some modern day
> heavy weights - starting with the Binyan Tzion and including Rav Ovadia
> Yosef of misusing the terminology - as it is quite clear that they are using
> it to describe people who are aware of the existence of Orthodoxy and quite
> a lot of the basics.  That, to my mind, is untenable.
>
> So what people like RDE are doing is arguing from within various teshuvos to
> try and show that the way these heavyweights are using the terminology it is
> so far and definitely no further. Whereas your argument would be that they
> don't need to go further for the purposes of the teshuvos, but that the
> implication remains (as evidenced by the common understanding).  I suspect
> it is a bit of the one and a bit of the other, which is the approach that
> RMB took to the sources that RDE  brought.
>
> R' Chana

Therefore, what I am trying to suggest is perhaps the Gemara's case of
TsN, viz. knows absolutely nothing, is lav davka. Perhaps we can say
that while a baby literally taken captive by gentiles will know
absolutely nothing, we can just as well say that the paradigm fits for
someone who *does* know something of the Torah, but his perspective is
skewed and warped, and he doesn't really get it, doesn't really
understand it, and his general perspective on it is wrong, regardless
of his level of pure knowledge. He was kidnapped and given a faulty
introduction and foundation to Torah, irrespective of how much pure
knowledge of pratim he has.

If you take a Jewish child (i.e. "kidnap" him), and teach him the
entire Gemara, but all under the presumption that it is all obsolete
and ridiculous (perhaps = HUC, JTS), I am arguing that perhaps this is
TsN too - he is shogeg in the Torah's **entire** foundation, even if
he knows many pratim.

If this is all valid, then I can say that today's nonreligious are not
merely mumar l'teiavon, but rather they are mamash shogeg and TsN - as
I said, if shogeg mean the person is ignorant of something that had he
known he wouldn't have sinned, we can say that these people are
ignorant of the Torah's truth and Sinaiticity, and had they
known...etc.

If so, then the terminology of TsN in these teshuvot is very
deliberate and correct and davka, and I don't have to resort to saying
that TsN does in fact mean knows-nothing (as per RDE) but today's
nonreligious are not exactly TsN but merely something similar. Rather,
I can say that Gemara-TsN includes (theoretically/potentially) someone
who DOES know something. And so I don't have to accuse these teshuvot
of error or imprecision in using "TsN" incorrectly for someone who
does know something whereas TsN properly means only know-nothing.

And IMHO, this fits very well with Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan that even when
they learn more, they are still captive children. I can say that RAK
means davka TsN, and he means that even when they learn pratim of
Torah, they are *still* true Gemara TsN, because they haven't yet
learned (inconclusively with proofs, etc.) that Torah is m'Sinai.

This then all fits for today's nonreligious. But what of those in the
first days of Reform? Many of them were meizid/mumar l'hachit, many
were mumar l'teiavon, and I'd say that many would have been TsN (or at
least regular shogeg in the individual lavim) if they were ignorant
enough to be truly won over by smooth-talking reformers with clever
misappropriations of Torah knowledge.

Mikha'el Makovi