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Chabad.org » Ideas & Beliefs » Battle of Minds » Does Everything Have To Make Sense? » Answer #5


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Battle of Minds


Does Everything Have To Make Sense?
And if they don't, how are we supposed to know what to do?

Michael Katzenelson, physicist Nachshon Zohari, psychotherapist Ann Nunes, literature prof Alexander Poltorak, physicist Shmuel Klatzkin, scholar All other answers
 

Shmuel Klatzkin, scholar
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Shmuel Klatzkin, scholar

If we did not believe that things make sense, we would not bother to talk about them. It's not just philosophy—it's plain old talk that is at stake. If we deny sense, we not only have no Posterior or Prior Analytics, we have no talk among friends and neighbors, between husband and wife, between parent and child.

Can we talk about everything? Certainly not at once. And really, not in a lifetime. The things we do not know and have not made sense of—we can't talk about!

As for G-d—when we talk about G-d, we do speak of Him as bringing things to be through speech. So we are saying that He does talk about them and make sense of them. And it would be be fair to our tradition to say that if we really wna to make sense of anything, we must go to how it is in G-d, "foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all knowledge."

Of course, the sense that G-d makes is not necessarily reducible to the terms of our grasp. Which means that we may need to ask Him to do the reducing.

And so the Rebbe said with respect to the Holocaust—it is G-d's job to make it understandable to us. It would take the world of Moshiach for that—and that is what we have to make clear is what we need and require.

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Posted: Jan 25, 2007
the act of speculating, wise or not
I have descovered in my 37th yr BH here that speculation of Emmett is very benificial if both sides of the inner debate are filled with a good deal of knowledge. When one speculates and even says it out loud to a husband for example and he or she does not have enough fact to move the idea a step up from theory to fact it can be detromental and should be held off untill the person in the delemna accumulates enough fact to be sure.
Posted By not quite sure, lindenwold, nj
via theshul.org

 

 
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