Showing posts with label the rav. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the rav. Show all posts

Friday, March 27, 2009

How Smart Intellectuals Believe In Orthodox Judaism

Chana has a bizarre post today that I think explains one of the most confounding questions for us OTDers: how could smart, intellectually curious adults possibly believe that stuff?

The answer can be found in a paragraph she quotes from every Modern Orthodox intellectual's favorite rabbi, "the Rav," Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik:
The religious Jew accepts the entire Torah as a hok, both in regard to its immutability and also its unintellegibility... To be a loyal Jew is to be heroic, and heroes commit themselves without intellectual reservations. Only one who lacks the courage of commitment will belabor the "why"...


Do you see that? It's "heroic" to commit oneself to something admittedly unintelligible without intellectual reservations.

This is related to, but slightly different from the other technique I've identified that intellectual Orthodox Jews use to believe: compartmentalization. In compartmentalization, the intellectual simply chooses not to apply his/her full range of intellectual techniques to certain religious questions. (An example of compartmentalism is applying the techniques of textual criticism to the Talmud but not to the Bible, or using skepticism during one's day job as a scientist but not applying it to religion.) I've always understood compartmentalization as a technique people use when they are too scared to question their foundational beliefs.

But this is something different. This isn't turning away from the truth in fear, but rather turning away with pride. Somehow the Rav and many like him convince themselves that there is something noble ("heroic") about believing the unbelievable.

What should we call this technique? "Heroic denial?"