[Avodah] Source of Emunah

[Micha Berger]

I have long argued that emunah doesn't come from philosophical proofs or
other intellectual arguments. All such proofs are build upon a set of
givens. Therefore no matter how stong a proof may seem to one person,
there will be another person who doesn't find its givens compelling,
or even likely.

As the Chaver says in Kuzari 1:13:
    That which you talk about is religion based on speculation and
    methodolgy, the research of thought, but open to many doubts. Now
    ask the philosophers, and you will find that they do not agree on
    any 1 action or 1 principle, since some doctrines can be established
    by arguments, which are only partially satisfactory, and still much
    less capable of being proved.

So how do people believe? Because what is proven, or at least the givens
on which the argument is based fits the world as the person experiences it.

And so, we never really know for certain if our proofs are solid. If they
read conclusions we already expect, we can miss errors. And if they reach
conclusions that don't fit our experience, we find errors that may or may
not be real.

This is where cynical remarks about kiruv and a good chulent come from.
Because it's the experience of Shabbos that convinces, the acceptance of
the proof follows.


More recently R/Dr Moshe Koppel started a blog, "Judaism without Apologies".
His discussion is in terms of archetypes. The three central ones are:
Shimen: raised a Gerer chassid, his life still revolves around the shteibl
and its gang of regulars.
Heidi: typical "Tikkun Olam" liberal Jew
Amber: the Post-Modern child of a Heidi

And he uses them to contrast where each obtains their ethics, who they
think should be charged with responsitibility, and to explain why Shimen's
system is the more effective. (Hopefully, that will convince you to spend
the time to read the blog.)

R/D MK just started a new section of posts on faith. Of course you know
by this point I'm going to point out how eloquaently he posts a position
much like my own. See <http://j.mp/2qSyET1> or
<https://moshekoppel.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/jewish-belief-round-1>
It begins:

   Jewish Belief: Round 1

   For the past 25 posts, I have been harping on the differences between
   Shimen's and Heidi's respective values and traditions. One frequent
   objection I've gotten is that I should be talking about their beliefs,
   not their lifestyles. After all, aren't the disagreements between
   Shimen and Heidi about how to live merely second-order differences
   that follow inevitably from their irreconcilable beliefs about nature,
   history and theology?

   Well, if you insist, we can talk about these irreconcilable differences
   of belief. But, I've got to tell you right up front that the answer
   to your semi-rhetorical question is (spoiler alert!) no. Young Shimen
   didn't contemplate nature and history and conclude, like our forefather
   Abraham, that there must be a "ruler of the castle". He was raised to
   honor particular values and traditions long before he had the most
   rudimentary ability to contemplate the stuff of belief. And among
   the traditions that he honors is the affirmation of certain claims
   about the world.

   Simply put, the direction of the causality implicit in the question
   above is exactly backwards: in fact, values and traditions are primary
   and beliefs are derivative. This raises lots of obvious questions
   (how can we choose to believe something?) all of which we'll get to
   soon enough. For now, I want to briefly outline, in a perfectly naive
   way, traditional Jewish beliefs about the world. In subsequent posts,
   we'll take a deeper dive and reconsider both the content and nature
   of traditional Jewish belief...

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The same boiling water
micha at aishdas.org        that softens the potato, hardens the egg.
http://www.aishdas.org   It's not about the circumstance,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      but rather what you are made of.