[Avodah] Lying to protect the simple of faith

[Michael Makovi]

> Nor could Rambam
> ever have intended to mean, "And Chazal grossly erred when they said
> Yehoshua wrote the last few verses describing Moshe's death."

> R' Toby Katz

I didn't mean this. I simply meant that Rambam rejected this *aggadic*
opinion of Chazal, like we are allowed to do with any aggadah. As Dr.
Shapiro put it, fact is not dogma, and Rambam can assert that there
are no post-Moshe additions, without it declaring the contrary opinion
(Gemara, ibn Ezra, Rabbi Yehuda heChasid) to be heresy.

> It IS heresy to believe that
> all or part of the Torah was written by human beings out of their own heads.

Well, now that you've added "out of their own heads", of course it's
heresy! I meant, suppose G-d inspired Ezra haSofer to add some
narrative and explanation and such (not halacha/mitzva) to the Torah's
discussion of intermarriage. Is that heresy to believe such a thing?

> To call the Rambam himself a liar is the height of arrogance.

I understand that you could disagree. But arrogance? I didn't arrogate
to myself any superiority, nor did I see it as a criticism of Rambam.
All I said was that for the sake of the simple and ignorant, sometimes
you can't tell the truth. You tell something whose nafka mina is true,
but whose substance isn't really all that true. In the essence of the
idea, the Torah we have is the same as given to Moshe - as the rabbi
whose name I cannot remember, the important principle is that "for all
intents and purposes" we have a Torah that is from Moshe. But in the
details, this is wrong, and we really ought to say "from Heaven,
largely if not totally from Moshe, with human error and possibly with
human insertions based on some sort of G-dly command". But the more
schmuks won't get it, and will confuse our admission with the Muslim
claim.