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CAN A RATIONAL PERSON
BELIEVE We are faced with the question of who wrote the Bible, the Five Books of Moses. Somebody wrote it. Either a human being wrote it or God wrote it. One or the other. Well, let's say that it was written by a human. Who was he? A Jew? Very clearly not. It is impossible to conclude that a Jew wrote the book because if a Jew wrote it, it would say something complementary about Jews. This book doesn't have a nice word for any member of the Jewish People. Whether it is Abraham or Isaac or Jacob. They're fooled or they fool others. The Tribes sold their brother into slavery. Our ancestors are described as slaves who left slavery and kept kvetching that they want to go back to slavery. Why couldn't this Jewish author find somewhere, something nice to say about Jews. From the beginning of Genesis until the end Deuteronomy there is one complementary passage. In the passage there the Jews said, "Na'ase V'nishma" to God's offer to accept the Torah they did commit themselves to Jewish living. You would think that after the historical period of the Chumash ended and they settled the land and began to build the Temple in Jerusalem and win wars, then maybe they would edit their story and someone would slip a kind word. Nothing doing! You mostly will find nothing but criticism and complaints. How about the heroes. David, King of Israel, described as lustful, King Solomon, insensitive to the needs of the people. Somebody, somewhere, sometime had to do something nice. Even the self haters who have been rewriting American History lately can find somebody they can praise. It is very important to remember that this written in a time when the glory of MY COUNTRY is paramount. Read Egyptian history. They never lost a war. The same with Babylonian history. They never lost a war. In all annals of their own history they are all the epitomize success and brilliance. If you want to find where the Egyptians failed you must read the other history. So it is a clear psychological impossibility to consider that a Jew wrote the Chumash. This leaves us with two choices, either God or it was written by a vicious anti-Semite. One or the other. The truly remarkable thing is that this Jew basher who wrote the Chumash persuaded the Jews to accept it. This is truly a remarkable miracle. So we've got to face up to the fact that if the Chumash was not written by God, it requires some heavy explaining as to how it became the Book of the Jews. Let us approach this issue of authorship seriously. Let us talk about books. There is no such thing as a unique story. If there is a fairytale told in South America, the equivalent fairytale is told by the Eskimos. If there is a story of poor Cinderella here in America, that same Cinderella is to be found in India and in Africa. The names change, yes, but the concept remains the same. Now look at historical stories, the histories of different peoples. A pattern of sameness emerges. We discover that all histories follow an algorithm. A people rise from the ashes, Phoenix like, with a divine mandate, grow in glory, sustain their position for a time and then fade into dream stuff. But there are two exceptional stories. These are exceptional in their impact and longevity, glory genius. These are the Greek story and the Jewish story. Greece is unique because it was an outpouring of magnificence of mind and of beauty that has never been duplicated, not before it and not since. Greece was an intense, incredible richness that flourished for many centuries in a way that affected the reality of all mankind for all subsequent times. But still in all, the Greek's also got into the line and followed the pattern of all historical stories. They were unique for their centuries and then faded away forever. And the Jew is unique. I wish to present to you with illustrations of Jewish Uniqueness. Uniqueness that indicates an existence not of this world, that indicates the Divine. You will see uniqueness in every facet of Jewish existence. # 1. Here in American we have a vaunted educational system. How old is it? We have had public education, supported by tax money for less than two centuries. We Jews have had this for 2,500 years. Isn't it fantastic. The Jew 2,500 years, and the non-Jew 200 years. For 2,500 years we have understood the absolute necessity of providing an educational institution for our children, and it took mankind as a whole another 2300 years before they discovered this truth. # 2. There is a very remarkable fact for which I can offer you a theory. I don't know that this is true, but please consider it. While you do so, you will hear another uniqueness that belongs to the Jew. There is an incunabula. This term refers to those books printed before the Gutenberg's moveable print, approximately in the year 1500. Among the general population of mankind, incunabula are in the tens of thousands. Then, when movable print was invented there was a printing explosion. Books were published by the thousands. It is interesting to note however that with the advent of movable print, the Jews published next to nothing. We Jews, the people of the book, did not have a Talmud printed until many years after printing came into being. This is the puzzling fact that I want you to ponder. Today in Israel they publish proportionately ten times more books than any other country in the world. On a global level, Jewish publication is an incredible business. In America alone, seforim (Jewish text books) are published by the hundreds of thousands for a relatively small segment of the population. The number of Jewish bookstores are in the hundreds. And yet when printing began, there were so few Jewish books printed. What happened? Here is a theory. It makes sense to me. Perhaps what happened was as follows: You see, among the non-Jews, they didn't know how to read, so they never read and they had no need for books. When printing began the floodgates opened. It was a new opportunity. They suddenly had the chance to learn how to read and have books in their home. And so, they printed by the thousands and thousands. Among Jews though, things were different. Before print, when a book required an enormous investment of time and effort on the part of a scribe, they had tens of thousands of books. Every Jewish home had its Siddur. Every Jewish home had its Chumash. Every Jewish home had its Rashi. We find clear proof indicating the vast numbers of books that the Jewish communities had. In Paris, Rome and Naples, from the 10th through the 13th centuries, they burned the Talmud. The Talmud was burned by the hundreds of wagon loads. They burned more books than the libraries of Paris and Rome possessed. From eye witness reports we know that on one day in Paris they burned over 100 wagon loads of tomes of the Talmud. Each of these volumes had to be written by hand and took years to complete. So when printing came about, there was no great need for books. It was only gradually, as the books they possessed got worn out and there was a need to replace them, was the print put to use for the Jews. But for the first couple of hundred years, they still used their manuscripts which they had in hundreds of thousands. Tell me something, is that unique? Is that unique that one people of all the peoples of mankind, one out of all the nations, one and only one were universally literate and had books in the thousands, available for all their children to live with and learn from. Does that uniqueness require some explanation? Does that uniqueness inspire some wonder? Of all the peoples of mankind, one and only one people had universal literacy and hundreds of thousands of books laboriously produced. Wherever Jews traveled to escape the murderous hoards, they carried their books with them. # 3. Here is a something so unique it is almost impossible to explain. Mankind has engendered many thousands of religions. And every one of these thousands of different religions have one thing in common. They all have books of custom, catechism and dogma. But none of them say to their adherents, "Thou shall think, thou shall read, thou shall know. Questions are addressed to the priest". There is one religion, only one in all of mankind's religions that demands that it's adherents think, study and know. Only Judaism tells us that it is a religious obligation to think, study and to know. And what is implied by a commandment, a religious obligation to think, study and to know? It is telling us that God said, "My dear children, when I gave you a religion it wasn't to be robot. It was for you to make decisions. It was for you to take upon yourself the burden of knowing what to do and how to do and why to do. It was for you to gain the understanding of the sources of your beliefs and your activities". And to take the implications of this idea further: # 4. What does it mean when they do not obligate their religionists to think? They mean that you must accept the religion on blind faith. This is the deepest and most profound of all that is unique to the Jewish religion. For, and I hesitate to say this because I know how offensive it is to an American to assert what I will now say but, all religions are necessarily false. Here is why. Because all religions depend on a leap of faith. Without a leap of faith, you cannot be a Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Mormon, or a Christian scientist. You've got to make a leap of faith. You have to say I believe...I believe Mary Baker Eddy, when she stood on the hill and told me that God appeared to her with the key to the scriptures. I've got to believe Joseph Smith when he comes and says that the angel Maroni came to him with the Book of Mormon. You have to accept. Why should you accept? Just accept! Accept with your heart. You've got to have faith! Why should I have faith? Because your heart tells you. But can the heart's message be a sound basis of acceptance? Is there anything the human heart won't accept, given the right motives? Whether it is to kill or to love. Whether it is to destroy or to build. The human heart can and will allow all. And where do you leap on your leap of faith? You leap into the fire or frying pan. One or the other. One thing for sure that you don't leap into and that is the source of life. All religions require a leap of faith because all religions are built on the teachings of man. And you cannot believe man without a leap of faith. When he tells you "God has spoken to me and revealed to me his will and his desires and his teachings". You've got to say "But my dear prophet, how can I know that God spoke to you? How can I be sure?" And he must respond, "Accept, have faith with your heart, open your heart and believe that God spoke to me". "Dear Mohammed, you're a wonderful man, but how do we know God spoke to you?" "I'm telling you! I myself am openly testifying to the fact that God spoke to me". "Dear Mohammed, maybe your not telling the truth. Or maybe, you are deluded. Tell me, why in the world should I accept your word just because you tell it to me?" There is only one religion, one and no other in all the history of mankind, that does not accept on faith. We don't HAVE to believe the prophet that he is a prophet. We know that God spoke to the people as a whole and told them Moshe is My prophet. Moshe doesn't come and say, "Believe me that God sent me". They would say to him "are you crazy, why would we believe you? If God wanted us to know that you are His messenger, He would have appeared and told us". But they didn't say that to Moshe. And you know something funny, this Chumash was written 3000 years ago. 3000 years ago everybody knew that miracles occurred. 3000 years ago if someone said they were a prophet, people would believe them, especially if he could perform a trick or two. Our Chumash tells us this is not so. The ability to perform miracles doesn't give credibility to prophecy. Our Torah demands from us to think and investigate. It tells us that miracles prove nothing. Is that unique? Our Torah, the source of our religion tells us that miracles are meaningless. Obviously, this is because you can never know what is a miracle or what isn't a miracle. Miracles are defined by perspective. If you want to believe something is miraculous, it is of not, then it isn't. I'll show you. Was it a miracle that the Jews survived in the Gulf War or not? You will say no it wasn't a miracle. It was military prowess. But what were the probabilities of all those Scuds missing their marks and killing nobody after falling into populated areas? One in fifty thousand. Is that a miracle! If you don't want to believe it is a miracle then it's not a miracle. You want to believe a miracle, it's a miracle! Miracles prove nothing. Anyway, back to our topic, the uniqueness of the Jewish acceptance of Moshe the prophet of God. How did we know if he is on the level? Do you know how we Jews knew that Moshe is a prophet of God? God said to us, "V'hame yishmiu b'dabri imach", and they will hear as I speak to you. Only then did the Jews know that Moshe was truly a prophet of God. Because they themselves heard God tell them that Moshe is truly a prophet and that the words that he utters are the words that are put into his mouth by God. We believe God. We do not believe Moshe! We don't say Moshe is such a nice man. He helped us so, performing such tremendous miracles, taking us out of Egypt and setting us free. Let's believe in him. Nothing of the sort. We won't believe a word he says until God tells us, not him, but us. And I want to tell you something, this is the greatest of all the miracles because all other peoples believe anybody who performs a trick or two. All you have to do is pull off a miracle and your set for life. But not among the Jews. This is totally unique. But tell me something. It's an obvious advantage to be able to say God himself appeared and said that Mohammed is a prophet. Why don't they tell that story? Why don't they tell the story that God himself appeared and said Jesus is his son? Why don't they tell that story? Could it be because there is no way to make up such a story. Telling that story would only prove it's being false. What do you mean God said it? Who heard it? Everybody heard it! What do you mean everybody heard it? My parents never heard it. My neighbors never heard it. How can you say that everybody heard it? Well, they weren't there. But you just said that everybody heard it. They can't tell such a story. If they could have told it don't you believe they would have? Obviously it is advantageous to be able to say that God told you that I'm His prophet. Why is it told once and once only? This is the only unique story that mankind possesses. The one unique story is that God appeared to the entire Nation of Israel and in the presence of every one of them proclaimed the reality of Moshe as a true prophet. And the Chumash says more. It says that God offered tell the children of Israel the Torah directly but they couldn't handle it. "Please let Moshe be Your representative. We cannot bear to personally hear your words." It was too much. God's Presence is a booming reality. And God said, "OK, Moshe will be my prophet and I will send My message to you through him". Please understand that I am not saying that the adherents of the other religions are lying. They are telling the truth. I am only focusing you on the power and unique quality of the Jewish claim. The Christian and the Moslem tell their children the truth. What does the Christian says to his child? "My son, your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were pagans who painted themselves blue and danced around the trees when there came a man from across the seas and bore the wonderful message that Jesus was the son of God. And they believed him and became Christians". "Why did they believe him". "They believed him". Can we check the veracity of this story? Is he lying to his children? He tells them the truth. His children tell their children the truth. He relates that this man persuaded them. Then he says, "would they have been persuaded if it wasn't true?" What do you think? Would they have been persuaded if it wasn't true. Have there been any untruths that people have been persuaded to follow? The follower of Mohammed tells his child the truth that Mohammed came forth with the words of God and he told all the people the word of God. And lo and behold, there were those who followed him. Lo and behold, there were those who did not accept this message. And the followers of Mohammed did smite with the sword those who did not believe him. And he won the war And he said to the conquered people after having executed all of their priests and leaders, will you now accept that Allah is God and that I, Mohammed, am his prophet? If you will, fine. If not, then off with your heads. And I'm sure you will all be surprised to learn that the vast majority of the people voted "yes" to believe that Allah was God and Mohammed was his prophet and to keep their heads intact. This is the history of Islam. It is not my hyperbole. Ask them. And the proof of Mohammed's truth is that he won the war. But the Christians won wars and the Chinese won wars. Are they all true? Yes, with a leap of faith. Only the Jew says no to any leaps of faith. The Jew says we are Jews because we encountered God. We are Jews because the story we tell is impossible to make up. It's got to be true or it could not be told. That's why we are Jews. All religions are man made with at most one exception. On this we must agree: If there is a true religion, there can only be one given by God and all others must be given by man. If there is no true religion, all religions are made by man. Is this clear? # 5. One thing we can assume about a man made religion is that it is going to be practical. That is to say, there is no way that a man made religion will have the following law: Every seven years I want you to leave your farms and spend the year studying your Torah. A man made religion just can't demand that. I mean, it's just going to be too funny for words. "Hey God, do you expect us to starve?" No matter what leap of faith you make, they aren't going to do that one. But the Torah tells us exactly that. Every seven years, don't plant, don't grow. Nothing! Sit at home and study and think and learn and discuss. No work! Do you hear that? "But Lord, you know we have children here. They'll get hungry. What can we feed them?" "Don't worry. I'll give you an advance, enough food so that you'll have food for all the years your not working. It will be stored up in advance so that you'll be able to sit and study during that seventh year without working the land". Tell me something! Who says that? Who talks like that? Does a human being make up that kind of a law? Is it acceptable, is it reasonable that a human being will tell an agricultural nation not to do any farming work for one complete year and just sit home and study? Wait. There is another law similar in it's seeming absurdity. God says to the Jews that three times a year I want you to leave your home and your possessions and come up to Jerusalem to the Bais HaMikdash to greet Me. "But you know, we're surrounded by the Syrian in the north and the Jordanian in the east. Listen God, if we do that, when we come home there won't be a thing left. They'll wipe us out. They'll destroy that which they can't take with them. They'll take every moveable thing. God, how can you ask us to abandon our homes and our possessions three times a year surrounded as we are by vicious enemies who are waiting to destroy us?" And God says, "Don't you worry. I'll take care of it. You go up to Jerusalem. When you get back everything will be fine, in order. Nobody will touch a thing, no fires will burn anything, everything will be perfectly well preserved". Tell me. How many times do you think they will try it? Let's say you could persuade them to do it once. Can you convince them to do it again? How can you make such a law? Does a human being make up such a law? Does any religion made by humans have that kind of an impossible to carry out law? But the Jews do. A human being wrote that? Who wrote it and how come the Jews did not discover how absurd this religion was after the first couple of years after seeing that it was all nonsense? It must have been that they saw that it worked. How did it work? # 6. All the nations and religions have prophets. What do these prophets foretell? They prophesize that with the conjunction of this and that there will be prosperity, etc. Have you heard about the Oracle of Greece? It foretold the future and it never made a mistake! In all the years in Greek history, the Oracle was never wrong. The only trouble was that you never knew what they said until after it happened. After it happened they said, "oh that's what the Oracle meant all along!" It is easy to be right all the time when you write history backwards. But let me tell you something that the Chumash did say in advance. Our Torah told us 3500 years ago that we will be thrown out of the land and we will be dispersed among all the nations and they will oppress us. Listen to this. Our Torah told us that we will survive as a people and we will come back to the land. Who gives that kind of prophecy? Who could think of this absurd statement? That we will be dispersed among all the nations of the world but we will preserve our identity. How can one preserve an identity when dispersed among all the nations of the world. How does that happen and how do you make such a prophecy. And I'll bring you back. And you'll be thrown out a second time and you'll be dispersed once more among all the nations of the world, to an even greater degree. But you will retain your identity. You will remain a Jewish people and you will retain the Torah that I have taught you. You won't lose it. Do you hear a prophecy written 3500 years ago? Do you have that anywhere else? Does that happen? Who wrote this? A man wrote this? A man thought of this impossible thing? A mortal thought that the Jewish people will be oppressed and driven, dispersed to all the corners of the earth. A mortal thought that they will survive and keep their Torah with them. Not once but twice? Who does that? Is that prophecy? Is that something Divine? Can it be less than Divine? How could it be that a people dispersed among all the nations of the world held in contempt and despised, oppressed and driven, without a language in common, without a land in common, without customs in common, without a race in common, can survive? We are different in look with blondes, brunettes, blacks, and reds. Yet we are all recognized as Jews. Standing firm in our Jewishness and our acceptance of the reality of being part of a people without anything in common. American Jews and Dutch Jews and African Jews and Yemenite Jews, all Jews looking different, speaking different, thinking different. And all Jews. How did that happen? Is that not a unique miracle? Just to happen is an incredible miracle. But to have it foretold thousands of years in advance must be explained. And that you come back! Listen to that joke. You will come back! Once, talking to a group of Jews about the Moshiach, an elderly gentleman got up and said, "Come on, Rabbi. Do you really believe Moshiach is going to come?" Do you know something, if you would have asked this 52 years ago, the answer would have been difficult. But today is different. If in 1943 you would have been told that the Jews will be invited back to Israel by all the nations of the world, and that we will have our own government in the land and it's going to be a Jewish country again wouldn't you have said, "Come on Rabbi, you don't believe that!" Isn't that the truth. Wouldn't you have said that. But it happened. They did come back. Against a whole world they are there. But he was correct, that elderly man. How can you believe such nonsense -- except that there it is. Who wrote it? Who thought it? Has there ever been a person who was able to tell the unfolding of mankind's history? # 7. Another undeniable uniqueness is the impact on humanity that our concepts have made. Our concepts have transformed the face of humanity. Concepts that have taken human beings from the depths of barbarism to the potential heights of Godliness. We have bequeathed ideas that have become the common goals and inheritance of all mankind. Was it not the acceptance of all human beings in all places, in by-gone times that to the strong belong the weak, that the powerful arm who knows how to wield a spear and the sword is the rightful and legitimate ruler, guide, and teacher of mankind. But not to the Jew. Tell me, through all the long, torturous annals of human history, how much blood was shed? How much suffering occurred until little by little the Jew was able to teach mankind that it is not the warrior who is the hero, but the thinker, the doer, the creator, the compassionate one, the responsible one? Who taught mankind the concept of responsibility for my fellow human beings? How long have they had it? When did they buy it? How much blood did we have to spend before we were able to get them to see and recognize that this is truly the mark of a human being? To share the responsibility not just for ourselves and our own families, but for other human beings as well. Was it from anybody else but the Jew that mankind slowly over the centuries came to recognize and accept this truth. People need to be human beings and not animals. Is it not the mark of the Jew, that this sense of kindness and responsibility have finally come to be the common acceptance of mankind. # 8. Tell me something. Of all the religions that mankind has produced, has there ever been one that produced two daughters that lifted mankind from the depths and of paganism, human sacrifices, murder, immorality and death dealing, to the heights of accepting the reality of One God? What other religion has had offshoots that have so uplifted mankind. Aren't the meaningful religions derivatives of the one called Judaism? Today, of course, we are multi-cultural and we must recognize that in the Far East and in Africa they have religions. But those are religions? They pander to the lowest denominator of mankind. Buddhism isn't a religion but a wisdom. It was because they denied God that they were able to develop some semblance of humanity for themselves. Of the religions that have some sense of nobility the only ones that have lifted and ennobled the human race have been the children of Judaism. Is that not unique? Do all these uniqueness' not require that we deal with them, respond to them? How did these happen? If not from God then how? Is it rational? Does asking how do you prove it make a story irrational. It is a rational story. Nobody else has a rational story. How do you make up such a story if it isn't true? How do you sell it? Listen to this difference. In all of mankind, parents have to persuade their children that their religion is true. But among the Jews, the children have to explain it away. Maybe it was a space ship with aliens and microphones who hypnotized everyone? Yes, aliens came to Earth and to whom did they address themselves? Mind you, only to the Jews! One needs to be very desperate to come up with stories like that to wish away something which is very clear and rational. Why do some people get desperate? Because there is a rational story here. It demands attention, to be dealt with. People don't want to deal with it because if they do, they will have to accept the truth and then accept responsibility and then they'll have to change. Nobody wants to change their life. Everybody is comfortable. People might have to face reality. That is unpleasant and they would rather explain it away. If I have to make up a space ship, I'll make up a space ship. I'll explain it away because it's impossible to have to face up to an actual God. Why is this? Because, if God is, then nothing else matters! You have to understand that. If God is, then He is all that matters. There is nothing else that has significance. If God exists, then to relate to him is the only meaningful thing that we can do as human beings. If God is, then He is all that there is. He is life's goal. He is the justification of life and the meaning of existence. If God is then we have a responsibility to think. It means we've got to make decisions. We have got to be responsible. But who wants it if we can get out of it. And we are desperate. Desperate to get out of it. We don't want to hear it. Because it means we've got to be different. We don't want to be different. But it is true and we must be different. So we all have to face up to the need to determine for ourselves, in all honesty, if this is true. Can we explain all these things away? It is reasonable that the Jew and the Jew alone have all these uniqueness, that the Jew and the Jew alone have all this which has to be explained away in one way or another. No equivalent story has ever existed! It this reasonable? Is it rational? So I would like to conclude by posing a question to you. Please, in all honesty, is it rational not to believe in the divinity of the Torah? _____________________________________
HaRav Yaakov Weinberg (Zt”l) SimpleToRemember.com - Judaism Online |