[Avodah] why believe at all

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 09:30:15PM +0200, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> Perhaps the best we can hope for is weight of evidence, but if we hang our
> hopes on the incredible wisdom of Torah proof, we should be aware that
> there are others selling other incredible wisdom as well. I wish I had a
> better answer, but this is a subset of the "why believe at all" issue. I
> often think about Rav Lichtenstein's piece on the source of faith being
> faith itself...

I find a different source more convincing. The experience of observance
lends credibility to the Torah -- Tanakh, TSBP, everything it took to
get the halakhah I observe and the Torah I learn.

The way learning a halakhah in yerushah can explain something in hilkhos
Pesach's bal yeira'eh ubal yeimatzei.

Or the experience of a Shabbos.

By which I don't mean that this is an aesthetic judgment, a matter
of taste.

When mathemeticians find a proof "elegant" or "beautiful", more often
than not that agree. There is an aesthetic judgement being made, yes, but
before that there is the experience itself. The subject of the judgement.

The fact that one idea can explain something a human author clearly
didn't have in mind when framing it so often and so elegantly... These
are properties we expect from Truth.

The power of halakhah to address this Man's Search for Meaning... I mean,
who would have thought that avoiding a list of 39 activities with some
rigorous and sometimes non-intuitive defining features would be more
effective of a "day of rest" than resting the way I would have chosen
had I not inherited halakhah?

No, that's not a proof. But it's at least as strong of an argument as
any other I base my life on.

(I think ever since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, philosophers in
general have veered away from believing this kind of thing even can
be proven. In parallel to the trends in the general population RJR
writes about.

What can we do for others?

Before I answer that, my own belief isn't dependent on what I can show
others. Even if I couldn't show anyone else that the sky on a clear day
is blue, I still believe it is blue. Not because I could start with first
principles and the math of Raleigh Scattering... I don't prove it. But
because I've seen too many clear days to question my own experience.

And if I were to some day hear that others usually see a green sky, would
I start by assuming it was wrong? Or would I demand a burden of proof that
the report is correct, and that it isn't the others who see things weird?

"Why believe?" and "How can others be brought to belief?" are distinctly
different questions.

And now on to that second question... All we can do is share Shabbos,
teach Torah, show them kashrus, hilkhos tzedaqah, dalet minim, kibbud eim,
and all the rest, and pray they experience them as we do.

And if they do, we wouldn't have proven Yahadus to them, but we would have
given them as much reason to base life choices on it as anything else.

Chodesh Tov!
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life isn't about finding yourself.
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   Life is about creating yourself.
Author: Widen Your Tent               - George Bernard Shaw
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF