[Avodah] Normal People Don't Care About Those Things

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 01:11:14PM -0500, Meir Shinnar via Avodah wrote:
> Wrt discussion about role of belief in determining Orthodoxy, I know of
> many classics tshuvot discussing status of mechallel shabbat befarhsia..
> There are not that many early tshuvot discussing belief as determining
> status, even though the Rambam clearly believes it does.

I though this discussion was about which things people care about when
making a religious decision.

And so the limits we were discussing were the limits of the Ism, which
ideas are withint the conceptual range we call Orthodoxy.

That is different than judging who is within the Orthodoxy community. You
cite a teshuvas haRadvaz:

> the tshuva of the Radvaz (4:187) ...
>                             argues that any position that we may think
> erroneous, even if violates the 13 ikkarim -- but is reached through
> one's thought, does not render one a kofer -- and does not violate one's
> hezkat kashrut --

But it does not change the limits of O ideas, it just says that there
are people who believe things beyond those limits but are still part of
the Orthodox community.

For that matter, the Radvaz assumes there are limits to belief, and then
pardons someone who gets beyond those limits through honest and unbiased
intellectual explorations. His statement makes no sense if he denied
the concept of iqarei emunah or somesuch.

So if you want to say that it wasn't Reform who first claimed that
Judaism -- again the Ism -- is about behavior to the exclusion of being
about belief, you have to point elsewhere.

The Radvaz, by writing about the status of a Jew who believes the wrong
thing but for the right reasons, presumes that the concept of "believes
the wrong thing" has meaning.


-----

That's may take away point. But I want to discuss this too, if it
doesn't distract attention away from my thesis (above):

> Rav Chaim disagrees (nebbish gofer),

We don't have the phrase from R Chaim directly, but according to R
Velvel (Haggadas Beis Brisk), it's his description of the Rambam's
position. Since the Rambam in his haqdamah to Mishnah Pereq Cheileq (MB:
and in the Moreh) says that correct belief is the cause of nitzchiyus,
not surviving into olam haba is not a function of why one doesn't believe.

It isn't clear that R Chaim holds like the Rambam he was explaining.
All I can say is that the expression being an idiom does make it far
more likely that people repeat it thinking he does.

But let's assume for a moment (*as a hypothetical*) that he did mean he
himself thinks that apiqursus excludes one from gen eden. That still
doesn't mean the same person qualifies as an "apiqoreis" in halachic
halachic rulings about how to treat them. One can accept the Rambam's
hashkafah about yedi'ah about The Nitchi causing nitzchiyus and
still accept the Radvaz's ruling that such a person could still be
part of the community.

R Aharon Soloveitchik doesn't necessarily hold like his grandfather, and
his grandfather doesn't necessarily hold like the Rambam he was explaning.
But RAS did rule that one could count a tinoq shenishba who was raised to
embrace kefirah toward a minyan -- but for reasons specific to minyan,
only if his beliefs leave the concept of tefillah meaningful. I.e.
in principle, the nebich an apiqoreis is are part of the O community in
general. And the Rambam could still say they can't survive in gan eden.

--

But back to reinforce what I intended to be the thesis of this post:

As far as I know, denying that Judaism has mandatory doctorines is
indeed a Reform canard. And actually contradicted, not supported,
by the Radvaz.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The day you were born is the day G-d decided
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   that the world could not exist without you.
Author: Widen Your Tent                  - Rav Nachman of Breslov
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF