Where is this maintained? By whom is this embraced?
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Only if you drive it there. Or, yosi, you could simply answer the questions to the best of your ability.This is debate material, and also doesn't belong in Judaism DIR but Same Faith Debates.
Masorti Judaism.
Consider the structure of the Talmud: on each page, rabbis argue with each other over points of law, observance, narrative, and thought. If the rabbis of the Talmud believed that Torah was literally given and that its absolute truth could be known absolutely, they would never have created a literature so thoroughly devoted to open debate. That the Talmud so revels in passionate engagement reflects the underlying premise that we cannot know truth absolutely. Only through dialogue, through the expression and analysis of many understandings, can we hope to approach closer to God's truth. The Talmud is a monument to religious pluralism. The Talmud struggles mightily to balance a dual commitment to the authority of the commandments and the reality that those commandments can be understood in radically diverse ways (as Rabbi Akiva recognized, "truth has legs"). That same fruitful tension characterizes Masorti Judaism today.
In his magisterial code of Jewish Law, in the opening chapters, Maimonides stipulates that the Jew must act "as though (ke-ilu) each word of Torah was spoken by God." There is a chasm of difference separating Orthodox fundamentalism (itself assimilated from the theology of Islam and the Church) and Rambam's formulation. Those two key words, "as though" signifies that the statement is literally false yet theologically true. God doesn't literally have a mouth, God's will isn't literally limited to any finite text, certainly not to one authorized understanding of that text. But, insists the Rambam, the Torah is the closest we have to God's express formulation and so we must remain loyal to it as though it were verbally revealed!
Rambam is far from alone in his understanding. Genesis Rabbah proclaims that "Torah is an unripe fruit of divine wisdom," and the poet/philosopher Yehudah Ha-Levi recognizes that "what is plain in the Torah is obscure, all the moreso what is obscure." No less an authority than the Zohar's putative author, Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, insists "if one looks upon Torah as merely a book presenting narratives and everyday matters, alas! Such a teaching, one treating everyday concerns, and indeed a more excellent one, we, too, even we could compile… But the Torah, in all its words, holds supernal truths and sublime secrets…. Just as wine must be in a jar to keep, so the Torah must be contained in an outer garment. The garment is made up of the tales and stories, but we, we are bound to penetrate beyond!"
The Revelation of God is clothed in the garment of Torah, but as much as the words of the Torah make that revelation visible, they also mask it. For that reason, we must engage in an active process of analysis, spiritual contemplation, study and debate to sift through the Torah's words in pursuit of God's will.
Let it be known then: traditional Judaism affirms that God's will is known through the Torah, but it is not reducible to a fundamentalism that requires isolation from the great insights of human thought and scientific evidence. Not each discrete word, but the process of their being read and discussed in spiritual community , is how we grasp at God's revelation. Affirming that the Torah is min ha-Shamayim does not necessitate literalism. Indeed, affirming that God is infinite and irreducible requires its rejection. Masorti Judaism stands for the nuanced and passionate faith embodied in the Talmud, the Zohar, and the Rambam. We claim nothing less than to be the contemporary embodiment of traditional Judaism. [source]
This thread was kindly moved to "Same Faith Debates".
Permit me, therefore, to supplement it with the following ...The entire article is well worth reading. Shameful attempts to use the tref knife of literalism to cut away millions of religious Jews should be militantly rejected and condemned as the worst form of idolatry.
Sorry to quote mine, but this can be said for many sects(how I hate to use that word) within Judaism.As a point of irony I feel inclined to add. Mendelsohn, the person who started Reform Judaism, does not have one single Jewish descendant left. That speaks for itself.
Sorry to quote mine, but this can be said for many sects(how I hate to use that word) within Judaism.
Excellent. Thanks for sharing.And this article proves what? That some opinions in the Gemara are not held. What's the chiddush about that? Judaism has always believed that.
No, them Masorti are just a bunch of ignorant heretics.While we're not extremists, as these Masorti reactionists like to call us, they've clearly never read the Rambam.
Much as your cynical and ignorant ( * ) ad hominem betokens pettiness and bigotry. Dogmatism has an ugly look and feel irrespective of its theological trappings.As a point of irony I feel inclined to add. Mendelsohn, the person who started Reform Judaism, does not have one single Jewish descendant left. That speaks for itself.
Where is this maintained? By whom is this embraced?
Thank God! Were that not the case, more than a few pages of Talmud would have to be burned as heretical.... when it comes to matters of aggadeta (narrative exegesis, theology, philosophy, and everything else), we are by no means clearly bound to accept the ideas of the Rabbis of the Talmud as binding. Many in the tradition have disagreed with non-halachic material in the Talmud: that's hardly new.
This is something that I think is often misunderstood. I do support the halachic idea that, when it comes to matters of halachah l'maa'seh (practical law), we are bound not to directly contradict the Rabbis of the Talmud, and to accept their interpretations as binding halachah. And there are a few core matters of theology which come from the Rabbis of the Talmud that it seems clear we are all bound to accept as Rabbinic Jews.
But when it comes to matters of aggadeta (narrative exegesis, theology, philosophy, and everything else), we are by no means clearly bound to accept the ideas of the Rabbis of the Talmud as binding. Many in the tradition have disagreed with non-halachic material in the Talmud: that's hardly new.
I think the biggest misapplication of critical thinking regarding Talmud people make is that you can just disagree with whatever you want because it doesn't make sense to you. Or because science says otherwise (which is really why Jayhawke made the thread).
I made the thread to respond to demeaning and backward sectarian bigotry.
Quite a piece of distortion. The fact is, I would never dream of denigrating Orthodoxy by holding you up as its exemplar simply because I know better.... I find it ironic too that you'd say that Orthodoxy is demeaning. ..., I don't appreciate what how you're basically saying "Oh here's Orthodoxy, look at them all bigotted and what not."