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Study, explore, seek wisdom to discover truth
Rabbi Arthur Segal
We will continue with Judaism's Derek Eretz, how we are to behave towards one another.
"Love doubtfulness (i.e., everything shall be doubtful to you until you convince yourself of it)."
One of the greatest gifts of God, according to Rabbi Ibn Paquda, 1050 CE, is wisdom. God has given us sophisticated faculties of perception and intelligence. Wisdom is the life of mans' spirit and the light of our intellect. It leads us to be able to discern for ourselves.
Paquda teaches that even blind faith in the existence of God is not Judaic. We must use our intelligence and wisdom, rationally, to come to the conclusion that God exists and of His unity. It is our love of doubtfulness that leads us to the truth.
We were not meant to be spoon-fed data and opinions by television pundits or newspaper editorials today, nor by rabbinic sermons 950 years ago. We are to study, explore, ask why and ask to be shown proof. Again, our love of doubtfulness leads us to truth.
The concept of rabbis giving us all the answers is not Judaic. Our rabbis are to challenge us, to teach us how to study, to teach us to ask and, if we walk out of a class with them more confused than when we entered, all the better. The love of doubtfulness leads us to the love of study.
True dogma doesn't exist in pure Judaism. Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from by the practitioner or believers.
Our Talmudic rabbis disputed, doubted, diverged and disagreed on most everything. When the Rambam in 1166 Morocco wrote his creed for Judaism, listing 13 dogmata, his fellow rabbis rallied against this. These dogmata were effectively ignored by much of the Jewish community for the next few centuries.
Without study, we truly cannot stand for something. And when we don't stand for something, we will fall for anything. So much of what we think is fact is misinformation. And sometimes we make our choices based on that false data.
The Talmud consistently teaches us to study Torah and this can be applied to studying today's politics, science, ethics, etc. We are taught the fable of the Fish and the Fox, in which the latter seeks to entice the former to dry land. The lesson is that Jews cannot live without Torah, as fish cannot live without being in the ocean.
A democracy cannot flourish if its citizens are not well informed by their own intellectual pursuits, and instead are given so-called facts intravenously by being plugged into entertainment-news channels.
So we are to ''love doubtfulness'' as this leads us to truth and undoubting by individual study and development of wisdom, knowledge and understanding.
Rabbi Arthur Segal, international lecturer, author and teacher of Jewish Spiritual Renewal, can be contacted at RabbiSegal@JewishSpiritualRenewal.net. Follow him on Facebook at Arthur L Segal, on Twitter: RabbiASegal, or his blog WWW.rabbiarthursegal.blogspot.com . www.jewishspiritualrenewal.org.
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