Anon asked Staff ago Hello,
My friend wants to return to religion and has met with rabbis. I have given him some troubling data about faith and religious practice which I learned from your site, but he always explains that there is interpretation and the plain meaning, and that you don’t truly understand the holy writings, because there is PaRDeS (something like that) and the written words only cover up the Divine spirituality and all sorts of things like that. What do you think I should answer him?
Gila
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Dear Gila,
The process of returning to religion is (mostly) a complex mental process.
The only conversations one can have with others are conversations on the logical and rational (plain meaning) level.
If your friend retains an ounce of independent thought you can encourage him to speak on the level of plain meaning alone. He will himself seek out and clarify which topics and halachot are plain meaning, and those you can discuss with him.
Sincerely,
Daat Emet