Anon asked Staff ago Hello.
First of all, I want to praise your wonderful site, which has so much information on a variety of topics related to religion I always wanted to know more about. I always knew that Chazal were just like the sages of all the other nations, but when I was assaulted with questions about Chazal’s scientific knowledge and understanding of nature by friends who had returned to religion, I didn’t know what to answer. So thanks!
Now here’s my problem.
I read your pamphlets and I have to praise them, for they are wonderfully argued. Due to natural curiosity I sought answers to the pamphlets by knowledgeable people, and I found some. This site has all sorts of answers to the pamphlets.
I read most of that site, but what really amazed me was this essay.
Incidentally, every religious Jew should read this essay, to know how the Charedi community sees us, the secular.
I have to say that after I finished reading this essay I was simply amazed that here we are in the 21st century, the year 2004, and there are Jews who see themselves as soldiers in the continual war against all secular, and here’s an article that says exactly what they think about the secular.
Now, my question is: where does this hate for us come from?
According to them we are animals, creatures. What bubble are they living in?
I don’t understand how people, citizens of the State of Israel, see me as a “soldier who has abandoned his post” and that “it would be better were all the secular to die so that the Redemption could be hurried along.” I simply need someone to explain it to me. Why does it bother them that I do my own thing and don’t bother anyone?
I guess hate is blind…
jsadmin Staff answered 20 years ago
Hello.
The essence of religious Jewish faith, as seen by the majority of Orthodox Jews, needs must lead to hatred of the strange and different, to the repression of natural curiosity , to the negation of human emotions and the ignoring of piercing criticism. As a revelatory religion, it rests on the basis of a real, true historic incident which leaves no doubt as to its existence, and so must be a religion of absolute truth. What the “supreme commander” (G-d) wants of his “soldiers” (religious Jews) was “revealed” at Mount Sinai, written in the Torah, and “explained” in the Oral Torah (the Talmud). (“Explained” is in scare quotes because Chazal did not explain the Torah so much as interpret it, turning the Scriptures into a text which can be shaped, distorted, and reorganized as they wished.)
From faith and a deep identification with “the Divine revelation,” hatred forms an integral part of the religious experience as is reflected in the book of Psalms: “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate You? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against You? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them my enemies” (Psalms 139:21-22). Notice that the hatred stems from “love” of G-d and guarding His honor. In their opinion, one who rejects the Revelation is as one who destroys the world. This is what Chazal said: “The Holy One, blessed be He, made a condition with all creation, saying, If Israel will accept the Torah all will be well, but if not, I will turn the world void and without form” (Avodah Zarah 5a). When hatred is ingrained and internalized within the soul of the young child, and when it is taught that hatred stems from “love” and guards the world, hatred has no limits and is not seen as negative; hatred becomes an appropriate and positive force.
Any human society with a different world view or an outlook which is the opposite of “the absolute truth” is immediately given negative significance in the eyes of the believer and will encounter deep hatred. Concepts like “enlightenment,” “Zionist,” “secular” are seen as a real threat to their absolute viewpoint. That is why when they are still infants and toddlers they absorb a negative image of what we, the enlightened, see as lofty.
Curiosity, one of man’s best qualities, is repressed by the religious person lest it lead to the undermining of his faith. He will claim that curiosity is rooted in “the evil inclination,” whose goal it is to bring the believer to apostasy.
This is the case, too, for rational critique. They reject it, decry it, and belittle it so that the believers will not make use of it, lest it lead to a questioning of the fundamentals of the revelation.
The necessary requirement for the “soldiers” to utterly obey the “commander” also requires the rejection of the natural human emotions of pity, love, mercy, assistance, equality, and liberty. All of these are controlled by the religious leaders and they will find expression only when they are used for the sake of “G-d,” and must be rejected when they stem from human emotions. Rashi has explained why one who returns a lost object to a gentile has committed a transgression: “such a person has shown that the return of a lost object is not important to him as the command of his creator, for he even returns lost items to gentiles, about whom he was not commanded” (Sanhedrin 76b).
In other words: It is not hatred that blinds faith, but faith that authorizes the hatred.
Sincerely,
Daat Emet