Question:
Is the Torah the complete truth? I'm not asking if the Torah is completely
true, in the sense that there's nothing untrue in it; but is it the complete
truth, in the sense that no other source has anything true that's not in the
Torah? Does the Torah contain all we need to know, and it's just a question of
understanding/internalizing the information? Or is it possible that some other
source of wisdom could have another part of the truth that would appear
different but would actually be complementary and not be mutually exclusive?
(I'm thinking of the parable of the blind men and the elephant, all with a
complete and true understanding of their part of the elephant).
So, what do you think? Is the Torah a truth or the truth?
Answer:
This is one of those questions that really gets to the bottom of things. You
can tell when you're getting to the bottom of things because it's usually pretty
murky down there. And in this case I've already dug up some murk for you:
On the one hand, I can cite you the unequivocal, got-a-problem-with-that?
statements like, "The Torah of G-d is complete"1 or, "There isn't the
smallest thing that is not alluded to in the Torah"2 or, "Every
wisdom and every event that will ever happen are all included somehow in the
Five Books of Moses."3 Including some heavy-duty exclusivity: "There is no truth other than Torah."4
Then, while you condemn me as a close-minded, ethnocentric chauvinist, I'll
whip out a nice, liberal, universalistic statement of the Talmud: "If they tell
you there is wisdom amongst the other nations, believe them. If they tell you
there is Torah among the nations, don't believe them." (Midrash Rabbah, Eichah
17)
But then you've caught me: The Talmud is saying that there is wisdom that is
not Torah. But we just said that Torah is the exclusive truth! So if Torah has
exclusive rights on truth, what type of wisdom is there that is not truth?
Maimonides took that last statement of the Talmud quite practically.
Concerning studying astronomy from the writings of idolatrous Greeks, he writes,
"Accept the truth from wherever it comes."5
Okay, so he qualifies himself by saying that this wisdom was originally among
the Tribe of Issachar but was lost from the Jews, so now we have to restore it
by learning from the Greeks. So too, others write about all the sciences we have
learned from Greeks, Persians and whoever else -- that they all originated from
Abraham and later Solomon, but were then lost, only for us to regain it from
other nations.
Nevertheless, what does that say for the exclusive, comprehensive claim of
Torah over Truth? If "Torah is complete" and there is "no truth other than
Torah" then why does Maimonides need to study Ptolemy (and Aristotle and Galen
and Averroes)?
Would the Real Truth Please Stand Up
While you're busy answering that one, I'll throw another, bigger wrench in
the works: How many truths are there?
You know what they say, "Put two Jews together and you'll have three
opinions." Well, it didn't start yesterday. There's hardly an issue in Torah
that doesn't come bundled with debate -- and the sides often take extreme poles.
We're not just talking about which shoelace to tie first (actually, that's
something they wondrously agree upon). We're talking about debates like those of
the schools of Hillel and Shammai: Which came first, heaven or earth?6 Is it better for man to be created or are we the losers in this
game?7
This is not about academic hair-splitting and fairies dancing on needles --
these are serious issues that concern the nitty-gritty of daily life. Look into
what's behind all these arguments, and you'll find a common theme: "Should we be
idealists or pragmatists?" Now if you still can't make up your mind on an issue
like that, how do you set claim to exclusive, comprehensive rights to Truth?
The idealist/pragmatist debate leaves a long, unbroken trail through the
battlefields of Torah, from Moses to Solomon to the Talmud to Maimonides to the
Kabbalists to the present day: Is asceticism a good path or does G-d want us to
enjoy His world? Which takes priority, study or good deeds? Who is higher, the
pure, untainted tzaddik or the penitent sinner? How do we receive the ultimate
reward, as a soul without a body, or as a soul within a body?
There are even more fundamental issues that come under contention -- such as,
what are the basic principles of Jewish Faith? Maimonides counts thirteen. Rabbi
Yosef Albo in his Sefer Ha-Ikrim argues that there are really only three.
Others say the whole notion of counting principles is untenable.
Maimonides, for example, counts belief that G-d is non-corporeal as a basic
principle. In his Mishnah Torah, he writes that one who believes that G-d
has a body forfeits his portion in the world to come. Rabbi Abraham ibn David
("The Raavad") attacks his statement, saying that many Jews who are better than
him -- Maimonides --(!) read the scriptures and naively understood that G-d has
a body. So we write something, you read it and take it literally and then we
boot you out of the party -- and this is fair?
True, nobody is arguing whether G-d has a body or not. Neither are they
arguing over the veracity of anything else that Maimonides chooses to label as
principles. Just that one says Judaism is this, the other says, no, it's this
and another says it's none of the above. But the fact that there can be
contention over the very definition of Jewish belief is nothing less than
stunning. If we can't define our belief system, how do we lay claim to "The
Truth"?
I'll throw you another one: Some Kabbalists write that our Torah teaches that
G-d created an "empty space" within His Being in which to create the world --
meaning that He is not here in our world. Others insist that this constriction (tzimtzum)
is not a literal one, but a one-sided mirror in which the world perceives itself
as inhabiting a space devoid of G-d, but in truth, "the entire existence is
filled with His presence" and "there is no place void of Him." However the
dialectics work out, whether G-d is here or not seems pretty fundamental to me.
So let's say we could go back to those sages of the Talmud who reveled in
this atmosphere of debate and proliferation of opinions and ask them the burning
question: How do you reckon this attitude with Torah being The Truth?
Shouldn't The Truth speak with authority, with certitude and sterilized
of all ambiguities?
Here, finally, there's a consensus -- and it is a resounding "No!"
In the words of the voice from heaven, heard by the students of Hillel and
Shammai after several years of one of their most heated debates: "Both are the
words of the Living G-d."8 A little more poetically, in
the words of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah,
...these are the students of the sages who sit in groups occupied in
Torah. These declare something impure and these declare it pure. These
forbid and these permit. These declare something kosher and these
declare it unfit. Perhaps a person will say, "If so, how can I study
Torah?" This is what we were taught: All were given by a single shepherd
[i.e. Moses]. One G-d gave them, one leader spoke them from the mouth of
the Master of All Things, blessed be He. As it is written, "And G-d
spoke all these things, saying..." You, too, should make your ear like a
grinder and acquire an understanding heart to hear the words of all
these opinions.9
Which means we can't even ask G-d for the truth. In fact, the Talmud tells
us, when the ministering angels come to G-d to ask when is the Festival of the
New Moon, He tells them, "Why do you ask me? Let us go to the earthly court of
the sages and ask them what they've decided."10
And what, then, of the issues they never managed to decide? Does this mean
G-d also cannot decide?
Rethinking Truth
So what is the definition of truth if even G-d can't decide? How do we claim
exclusive rights on The Truth when you can't even agree -- G-d can't even decide
-- what The Truth is?
Obviously, we have to rethink the idea of truth. Maybe there isn't an
ultimate piece of information that is the ultimate truth (like in Douglas Adam's
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where he is told that the ultimate truth
is 46). Maybe truth isn't a fact at all. Maybe truth is more like a process.
So let's take a break for a nice story:
In 1921, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch was subpoenaed by one
of the government offices of the newly established Bolshevik regime in
Rostov-on-Don. He was asked to clarify an issue: Does the Jewish religion
support monarchism or communism? This was not exactly a pleasant tea with
crackers--there was significant danger involved. In typical Schneersonian style,
the rabbi determined that he would tell it as it is, leaving no room for
ambiguity concerning his opinions.
So he told them the following story:
In one of my journeys to Petersburg -- this was in the winter of 1913
-- I traveled in a second class coach and my travel companions were
government employees and spiritualist Christian clergy.
In that year, Russia was celebrating the 300th anniversary of the
rule of the family Romanov. My fellow travelers were involved in a
heated discussion concerning monarchy in general. The central question
was: How does our holy Torah relate to monarchism?
Some said that the Bible supported monarchism. Others argued that the
Bible was socialist. One argued that the Bible is clearly communist.
At first, I took no part in that discussion. But then there entered
some Jewish friends, good acquaintances of mine, and they insisted that
I state my opinion.
So I said as follows: All of you with all your various opinions, all
of you are correct. Every party -- monarchism, socialism, communism --
all have pros and cons. It is a well-known principle of philosophy that
there is nothing good without bad and there is nothing bad without good.
In every good thing you will find some bad mixed in and in everything
bad you will find some good.
But this axiom is only true with man-made ideas. The holy Torah,
however, which the Creator of the world, blessed be He, has given us,
comprises only the positive aspects of every idea. Therefore, each one
of you finds in our holy Torah only the positive aspects of your
party.11
The Rebbe (meaning Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, son-in-law and heir to
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak) referred once to this story and added: But this still is
only the wisdom of Torah. It is not the essence of Torah.12
What is the essence of Torah? The essence of Torah, the Rebbe explained on
many occasions,13 is Halachah -- the power to decide what G-d wants
us to do here and now.
In other words, as long as you are in the realm of wisdom, all wisdom is
relative. Intellect, by its very makeup, cannot determine absolute truth. If
wisdom leaves no room for a differing opinion, you know it is no longer wisdom.
But Torah goes beyond wisdom. Torah is about right and wrong, good and bad --
i.e. what G-d wants us to do in His world and what He does not. Wisdom cannot
determine any of that. Wisdom can only say, "If you do this, this is what will
happen. If you want to achieve that, do this." Only Torah can tell you what it
is that G-d wants you to do and achieve. No other wisdom even lays claim to such
a feat (other than those, of course, that base their authority on Torah).
And the amazing thing about Torah: That determination is made "down here,"
and not "up there."14 Halachah happens here on earth. In other words, G-d invested His will in a human process.
The Un-Ideology
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchok Kook (one of the most significant Jewish mystics and
thinkers of the 20th century) told it this way:15
How is it (I'm paraphrasing) that authors today attempt to define the soul of
Judaism, saying, "Torah says like this; the ideology of Judaism is
such-and-such"? There is no ideology of Judaism. Rather, Torah contains all the
truths that are out there -- including those that are at odds with one another.
"Everything is embraced in its soul," he writes, "it includes all spiritual
inclinations, the open and the hidden, in a higher generalization, just as
everything is included in the absolute reality of the divine. Every such
definition in Judaism is heresy and is analogous to establishing an idol or a
molten image to explain the character of G-d."
And then Rabbi Kook compares Torah-versus-wisdom to the human versus animals.
There are many animals, he writes, that surpass human beings even in
intellectual tasks (try finding your way home from 500 miles away, orienting
yourself in an aerial view, sewing a symmetrical web...). The advantage of human
intellect is not necessarily in knowing but discerning. In other
words, the ability to generate a plethora of varied perspectives, possibilities,
hypotheses -- and then analyze each one to determine which works best in this
situation.
Whereas a spider weaves its web because that's what spiders do, a bear
catches fish in whatever way he's used to (and eats them when he's hungry), a
(real) human being sits back and reviews several possibilities, determines which
one should work best for him and then grabs that. This is what Benjamin Bloom
calls "evaluation" -- and classes at the apex of his taxonomy of learning.
I'm not sure that animals don't do this at all -- and that's not really Rabbi
Kook's point. The point is that humans are in a whole other league in this
matter. And so is Torah.
Anyone familiar with study of Torah knows that this is what it's all about.
As soon as you begin learning the first line of Genesis, you are told that it
can't be read with a single interpretation. It can't just mean that G-d started
creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing, because there are far more
facile ways of saying that. In your first step of learning Torah you are
introduced to conflict-knots to untie and signposts to interpret.
Torah learning is all about process rather than content -- how to approach a
problem, how to generate lots of perspectives, how to analyze and compare them,
how to determine which one works best as a reading of the text, which works best
as a practical application, which works best as an ethical lesson... it goes on
and on literally without end.16
Torah is not about G-d's ideas. Torah is about how G-d thinks about those
ideas -- but using our human minds. But Torah is particularly about how we come
to a final decision.
Being Truth
Now it becomes easy to see how a Torah that makes an exclusive claim to truth
has no qualms about "taking the truth from whence it comes." The truth of Torah
lies principally in its process of evaluation and discernment between
ideas.17 If someone else has made a
valuable study of those ideas, developing them further and bringing the issues
out into the open -- all the better. Now it's up to the Torah process to
determine whether the axioms upon which this is based are acceptable or not,
whether this is something G-d wants in His world right now or not, how it should
be used and for what.18
This is how Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi describes the truth of Torah in
chapter five of Tanya: When the human mind is absorbed in comprehending
that if Mr. Simon argues like this and Reuven inc. argues like that, then the
halachah will be such and such -- that is Torah and that is Truth. Not that he
is learning about Truth. Rather, he is "thinking with G-d's mind." He is
being Truth. That state of being, that experience, that process, that
itself is Truth.
So when -- after a two hundred or so years -- the halachah is determined to
be according to Maimonides and not his detractors, that is Truth (note the
capital T). That is, the act of us puny human beings, namely the Jewish people,
determining what is the halachah, that is Truth.
Synergistic Torah
This is the explanation behind a very striking phenomenon: It's hard to think
of an issue that's arisen, whether in science or politics or ideology, that we
haven't found some reflection of in Torah. Now it makes sense: In order for the
Torah to empower us to make decisions on every issue, all these ideas are found
-- at least in some abstract, primal state -- within the Torah itself.
As an example, I'll end with another story:
In a private audience, the Rebbe once explained to a professor of chemistry
that every idea of science can be found in the Torah. The professor was not
impressed. So the Rebbe asked him, "What is your current research." It turns out
he was investigating the synergy of chemical bonding. In short, that means that
the strength of a chemical bond is greater than the sum of its parts.
So the Rebbe pulled a book off his shelf -- a book containing responsum of
Rabbi Sadia Gaon, a sage of the 10th century. He showed the professor a passage
where Rabbi Sadia explained the prohibition of eating on Yom Kippur. If a person
is not well enough to fast on Yom Kippur, he should try to eat in small
portions, smaller than a date. Even if he will end up eating the equivalent of a
large meal, this is a less serious violation of the fast, according to the
Talmud, than eating that meal all at once.
Rabbi Sadia continues by explaining. "You see," he writes, "the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts..."
The point of the story is not that we can abandon chemistry and just study
Torah all day and we'll still have Teflon™ and Superglue™. The point is that we
have another piece of evidence among many that Torah contains the kernel of
every truth. But that is not the truth of Torah. The truth of Torah is how we
can discern how these truths are to be used to fulfill the Divine Plan. And that
can only be found in Torah.
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