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

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2026 at 09:05:35PM -0500, Meir Shinnar wrote:
> > I happen to think his seeds were far more likely to leed to Reform
> > than not.

> So now whether you are Orthodox depends on your ability to predict
> the future?? RMB is describing the modern issue of”cancel culture”,
> that he s wiolingmto apply to [past major fgures ( as secular culture
> culture applies to Washington and Jefferson)

You still write about the whole bundle as though I only offered one
definition.

According to the definition of O that labels beliefs rather than people
- and thus has nothing to do with "whether you are Orthodox" - and does
so by asking "do they justify being observant?" Mendelssohn's beliefs
do not. It may have been hard to tell at the time, but there were
those who suspected as much. And history proved them right, rather
than the optmists.

Mendelssohn believed that the law alone was revealed. Which means his
line of thought had no way of justifying the idea that even the law was
revealed -- because that too is a belief. And thus Reform.

He didn't have to see the future to know as much, although certainly
that ro'eh es hanolad would have helped.

> > 3- having beliefs that conform to pesaqim about who the rest of us
> >   can accept with regrad to stam yeinam, shechitah, geirus... Which
> >   AFAIK, is a loose defintion of the 13 Iqarim. (Pace R Melech
> >   / Dr Marc Shapiro)

> The Rumbam’s definition of ikkarim, with whatever flaws one may think they have, had two major features.

Nonsequitur. I write about a "loose definition", you reply about the
Rambam's definition. I am talking about requiring belief in something
that can be fit to Ani Maamin or Yigdal, the criteria the typical poseiq
would use for stam yeinam.

> a) they were formulated as actual principles
> b) They were precise. 

c) They would exclude Qabbalists, certainly nearly all of them since
the Ari.

But...

Since when does a din have to have well-defined limits to be a din?
Isn't that where a good deal of machloqesin comes from?

I don't propose this is a "has a place in the community" definition, but
a halachic one based on pesaq. I way of defining O in the sense of "we
only accept candidates for geirus who have O beliefs". Although perhaps
minyan and stam yeinam are better examples, since a BD leGeirus likely
has standards even they themselves don't consider strictly mandatory
lehalakhah.

> Now. I don’t know what a loose definition of the ikkraim means.  I thought that Halacha (and surely Brisker halsach - but not just Brisk insists  on precise definition, so a loose definition of ikkarim is not really halachic.   People need to know what is expected of them

I learned under R Dovid Lifshitz, who learned under R Shimon Shkop.
So don't ask me about "Brisker halakhah".

But in any case, it does seem that R Chaim Brisker knew that lomdus
was good for lehalakhah velo lemaaseh. He wasn't Brisk's poseiq, after
all - the dayan R SZ Regeus was. I had always assumed that's way.
(Or maybe R Rakeffet planted the idea in my head.)

> > 4- not being an actual min, apiqoreis or kofeir because one's beliefs
> >   don't conform (#3, but for reasons that don't make one culpable
> >   for that lack of belief (Radaz)
> >   This definition includes the previous as a criterion, but shifts
> >   from discussing "one who has O beliefs" to one we can actually treat
> >   as O by adding culpability.

> So you agree that Orthodoxy does not mandate beliefs - it mandates that for some beliefs, other actions now become unorthodox

I agree that this 4th definition states that the 3rd definition,
which categoriazed beliefs, can apply to people if the person has
the wrong beliefs for a particular reason.

There are mandatory beliefs by this definition, as apiqursus has meaning.
And in #3 I argued that the consensus appears to be "can be fit into
Yigdal or Ani Maamin", +/- gray area for posqim to disagree about.

Just as there is a halakhah not to wear shaatnez. But we don't exclude
people who accidentally don't wear shaatnez, or find shaatnez testing
to much of a hassle.

Similarly, believing heresy (apiqursus, meenus, or kefirah) doesn't
make one a heretic. It requires a certain lack of intellectual
honesty, to reframe the Radvaz to modern terminology. An honest
search that ends up in the wrong place gets you an O Jew who has
non-O ideas. And that last sentence, minuts the label "Orthodox"
is exactly the Radvaz.

There are no unrelated "other actions" in his discussion.

> > 5- according to the Rambam and those who follow him to link olam haba
> >   to belief / knowledge rather than primarily being about ethics /
> >   intended behavior, having beliefs that cause one to reach gan eden.
> >   I think this is best left to (1) people who agree with the Rambam
> >   who are also (2) Hashem's accountants, or looking at themselves
> >   only.

> It is not merely whether one agrees or not with the Rambam.  It is difficult to argue that for the vast majority of am yisrael, the Rambam’s position does not violate your second bullet point - having beliefs that justify being observant.

And that could be. My bullet points are inconsistent definitions in other
ways.

> Of coursed, this was understood early on, and is a major part of the
> Maimonodean controversy in the 13th century - and it seems that logically,
> you would agree with the antiMaimonideans - that the Rambam should be
> banned ...

Where do you get that?

I think the Rambam was objectively wrong, having built his entire path
of Avodas Hashem on a Socratic model of akrasia that has been replaced
by an awareness of the role of non-conscious processes. Right opinions
do play some role in the decisions we make and in our middos. But to
a far far greated extent, our middos and the decisions we want to make
without feeling guilty shape our opinions.

(And this runs through the entire Moreh -- 1:1-2 are about how the
eitz hadaas messed us up by forcing us to have to deal with more than
truth-vs-falsehood. Later in shaar 1 is his idea that it is Yediah that
causes olam haba. He has an overflow of yedi'ah from the Active Intellect
as the cause of nevu'ah. Hashgachah peratis and even a person's humanity
(!) is proportional to yedi'ah (3:18), etc... It is only when you get
to the last chapter do you learn that while perfecting middos is second
best to perfecting intellect, it is the perfect intellect that leads to
chesed, mishpat and tzedaqah.)

But that doesn't mean I think his idea was heretical. Or even unhelpful
for someone pre-Modern who wasn't as aware of the relationship beween
conscious and unconscious, or intellect, imagination and emotion.

And therefore his hashkafah doesn't offer us much, until you go
meta and talk less about its content and more about his striving
to unify Torah with other established wisdom.

I suggested that most of us would think that a person who was as good as
they were capable of but who doesn't have the right beliefs will still
get to heaven.

Whereas the Rambam would conclude that someone who has intellectual
challenges and the generous "nebich an apiqoreis" wouldn't.

And this is a different question than my other definitions of O,
like letting it be defined entirely sociologically, by asking who
do accepted halachic rulings classify as someone we must treat as
a heretic, etc... It is quite a distance from writing people out
in something like Cancel Culture.

> Again I would argue that Mendelsohn was not actually the basis of
> Reform. Mendelsohn argued that the essence of Judaism was practice -
> not theology...

Actually, he at times argued that pratice wasn't just the "essence"
but the entiretly of Judaism. In Jerusalem he says numerous times
that revelation didn't include belief.

I am just pointing out that this includes belief in revelation
itself, and thus undermines the authority of the law as G-d
given law.


As I said, his not insisting that Judaism believes in Torah min haShamayim
made R inevitable. Even if R Hersch, R Hildisheimer, and the Netziv -
or Mendelssohn himself - didn't notice that implication.

We argued in the past whether not believing in Torah miSinai as the
particular means of min haShamayim can still produce a worldview that
justifies O. I still think it cannot. That without dictation to Moshe,
derashos lack the intended authority, Rabbis are then assumed to have
had far more autonomy, and that was bound to produce C.


Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Man can aspire to spiritual-moral greatness
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   which is seldom fully achieved and easily lost
Author: Widen Your Tent      again. Fulfillment lies not in a final goal,
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    but in an eternal striving for perfection. -RSRH