[Avodah] how do you teach emuna?

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

Here is a more complete version of that exchange during R' Steve
Savitsky's interview on OU Radio of R' Moshe Benovitz (13:00 in mp3 at
<http://content.jwplatform.com/previews/VVawzyEB-BMKaoWUn>). The topic
is that Google et al allows students to challenge a lot more statements
than they have in the past. Statements really have to hold water.

   RMB: ... In the kiruv community, for example, they are coming to grips
   with the fact that some of the arguments -- historical arguments,
   philosophical arguments -- that like I said a charismatic educator
   could tell a person off the street and who would know better,
   is checked instantly on a hand held device that's pulled out of a
   pocket. If those arguments do not hold water, then we've done more
   damage than good. We need to adjust to that, and we should adjust
   to that.

   RSS: Do you have an example of that?

   RMB: ... This is probably beyond the scope of this limited
   discussion because there are obviously complexities and layers
   here. But examples like mass revelation at Sinai being the only way
   possible, when you have challenges from other sources, the fact that
   Torah seems to have been forgotten in certain periods explicitly in the
   Navi and the like. The chain of the Mesorah there is certain reason to
   believe that there were times where it was if not broken, but then it
   was down to a precious few; that's a challenge, just to use one example,
   [to that] mass revelation argument of sorts. [Similarly there are
   challenges] in the scientific realm, and in the archaeological realm.

   We need to be able to know that there is information at the fingertips
   of our students that of course we have answers to, and of course we
   have ways of responding to, but to just throw arguments out there,
   they're not going to, nor should they simply accept at face value.

Someone who calls himself "Shades of Gray" posted this transcript snippet
on a number of blogs about 2 years ago. Once in reply to a comment of
mine on Torah Musings, and what I say below is what I concluded then:

The point R' Moshe Benovitz was making in the snippet that was originally
posted here was using "the Kuzari Principle" as an example of such
an argument that won't hold water. The challenge is not that Tanakh
implies a break in or a late start of mesorah (the topic Doros haRishonim
addresses), but that it shows that at times the baalei mesorah were a
minority, pushing a belief the masses did not share and were not being
taught by their parents and grandparents, and yet they still managed to
convince those masses on more than one occasion. Yoshiahu's and Ezra's
revivals are two of the most famous counter-examples of the Kuzari
Principle -- and they're from our own history!

Someone has said the above on-line, so the kid in yeshiva who needs the
chizuq emunah will "pfff" at famous speaker X's invocation of the Kuzari
Principle.

We need to realize we have a much more critical audience -- in the sense
of critical listening, and not just in the sense of being critical of
anything taught -- than ever before.

It is along these lines that I declined in spelling out what I find
problematic in RNWeinberg's approach to teaching emunah. After all,
if it's working for someone, should I be in the business of putting a
pin in the balloon?

However, since RYGB let on in public that I have such problems, and in
light of this discussion that just showing intellectual honesty has more
value than the specific arguments...

RNW heavily engages in equivocation -- getting the listener to agree
to a sentence using the term in one sense, then changes the sense on
you.

He gets you to agree that man is a pleasure seeker before getting down
to how he defines "true pleasure". Man is a pleasure seeker is true
by definition of the word "pleasure"; inherent in seeking is that we
Another example: When it comes to the opening man as pleasure seeker
had them carry through that agreement once he limits "true pleasure"
to that provided by a search for meaning, and more so, a religious meaning.
And thus explicitly excluding from "pleasure" much of his evidence and
examples of "man is pleasure seeker" when he got you to accept the
notion.

And he does this kind of equivocation repeatedly. He even tells the
kiruv worker that the key is to define the terms for them -- or,
more accurately "redefine", getting them to buy into new ideas by
transvaluing terms in ones they already exist to O counterparts.

And in his set of shiurim to Lakewood, he opens by getting them to
admit they lack a systematic approach to hashkafah and need to think about
their own answers for themselves. And that this is one of the goals of
the shiurim. But then RNW spends nearly all his time on marketing tips
like the one above than on actual hashkafah. They don't leave with a
clearer picture of how to relate to the Borei or their tachlis in the
world -- RNW never gets beyond the vertl uncritical-thinking and thus
blind-to-dialectic level on the actual material. Eg On different days
he presumes each side of the hashkafic Fork in the Road without noting
the dialectic between them. Within the little actual teaching of Torah
in the classes, RNW is relying on a lack of critical thought.

Another example of relying on a lack of critical thought to pass
self-contradiction past the audience, rather than teaching dialectically:
When it comes to the opening man as pleasure seeker, transvaluation step,
RNW invokes the Ramchal about real pleasure being only possible in olam
haba. But in a later shiur he points out that death was an onesh, Adam
qodem hacheit wouldn't have needed an olam haba, and that in the ideal
there would be no olam haba. Which is why Yahadus focuses on improving
olam hazeh.

RNW argues that there must be an absolute truth. Something even more
important now, dealing with millennials, than when RNW first noticed the
relativistic core of modern thought. But not much later talks about
each person having their own world, "bishvili nivra ha'olam" and how
one world could have makas dam while the other has water.

To reduce to three bullet items:

1- Heavy use of equivocation
2- More emphasis on marketing than on teaching
3- Self-contradictory obvious truths

I didn't get to document examples of
4- dismissal by ridicule
because I stopped taking notes by the time that got to me. But he
ridicules subject-matter experts when and their entire field he doesn't
like their conclusion, rather than presenting an actual substantive
argument. He also both tells you to respect the student's intellect
and perspective, and then ridicules how shallow both is. But specific
instances didn't get recorded because by that point I was leaning toward
not replying to RYGB for the above balloon-popping rationale.

If R Moshe Benovitz were more inclined to name names, I have a feeling
R Weinberger and Aish's approach to kiruv is exactly what he is talking
about in terms of techniques that the advance of the information age
rendered useless and even counterproductive.

On Sun, Aug 07, 2016 at 05:00:14PM -0400, Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer via
Avodah wrote:
: > As to the question posed by the subject line - "how do you teach 
: > emuna?" - my own method is "by example". By remarking to those around 
: > me about the Niflaos HaBorei, it is my hope that my emunah will be 
: > contagious.

: If you are looking for "proof" you will not find it.

: Evidence, you will find aplenty.

: You yourself make that point in your last paragraph!

A point RNW makes, but again, I couldn't agree with his version because
he uses equivocation:

a- Get the student to say they'll accept O if we had proofs
b- Tell him we have proofs
c- ... but that "proof" doesn't mean what he thinks it does, it means
   "as strong evidence as you demand for other decisions".
d- And then in other parts of the shiurim talk about the same proofs as
though they are proofs of the sort the student was thinking of in step (a).

I think that most such decisions -- whether to become a BT or go OTD --
are based on experience and emotions, not logical debate. (I think both
R' Yisrael Salanter and every secular psychological theory since would
insist as much.) And the only reason why I wrote "most", because really
I believe it's "all" is because the two categories overlap. Noticing a
rebbe is making statements that don't stand up to scrutiny, or won't
honestly discuss your question, is itself an emotional experience.
Even ideas themselves -- such as a non-O Jews first encounter with
hilkhos eved kenaani or mechiyas Amaleiq -- can evince emotional response.
And frankly I hope they do. We will never reach someone with too much
orlas haleiv for the question to bother him. As long as he has enough
other experiences to motivate his sticking around for an answer.

Which isn't the same thing as what RYGB is saying about evidence.
As far as I can tell, RYGB's evidence includes arguments that are strong,
but not the incontrovertible proof. (Since there are no such things.)
I am talking about experience, from sensory inputs to the kind of math
proof of shitah one would judge to be beautiful (not that judgment,
the features that cause that judgment), to the satisfactions of one's
search for meaning that Shabbos provides.

I think it's the less rational side of people which decides

1- which givens are self-evident and which you question. And no deductive
   proof even starts without its first principles / postulates. Look at the
   intro to Moreh Nevuchim cheileq 2.

2- when you get convinced a question is an upshlug, and when it is just an
   interesting problem to be shelved for later.

So that reason follows the conclusion one's life experience predisposed you
to accept. Or, as one version of my signature file reads:
    The mind is a wonderful organ
    for justifying conclusions
    the heart already reached.

RYGB writes:
: There are no cogent arguments against intelligent design properly 
: understood....

I think this is true, but too much is hidden in "properly understood".
ID started out just being the argument that no matter what science finds
about origins, the evidence of design shows Divine Guidance behind that
science.

The original ID would include evolution with G-d using loaded dice.

But then it got caught up in proving design (such as irreducible
complexity) and became in the hands of Xian Fundamentalism a wedge to
get Young Earth Creationism into science class, and then the atheists took
this as the defining ID, with everything else being a Trojan Horse...

And it's that which will yield 2.5mm hits of disproofs of ID.

On Mon, Aug 08, 2016 at 08:14:45AM +0300, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
: The Ramban in his introduction to the milchamos writes that Torah is not
: mathematics with objective proofs. Rather in Torah you try to find the
: opinion that makes more sense to you based on proofs etc.

: The same principle applies to discussions about emuna. There are no
: absolute proofs and therefore we shouldn't go about claiming there are.

MB here, but the Rambam wouldn't. Moreh ch. 2 is largely just such
a proof. Which is why the Ramban objects. As does the Kuzari, before
either of them. See Kuzari 1:13, 1:62-65. Whatever one philosopher can
"prove" another will just as convincingly prove the opposite. Just working
off different sets of givens, and considering different sets of questions
irrefutable problems vs details to be worked out later. But that is
less "based on proofs", as we would have for halakhah, and more "based
on what fits what I have lived through".

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507