This is an edited transcript of a tape of a lecture
provided by the Aish Hatorah Audio Center. We have smoothed
it out for written publication, but have not removed the
sound and feel of the talk on which it is based. That is how
most of his many talmidim remember HaRav Weinberg, zt"l.
We can assume right away that there is
something about what happened at Sinai that a reasonable
person can believe because reasonable people believe
anything. There is literally nothing that intelligent
reasonable people have not bought (which is not an
inconsiderable problem).
Obviously, reason is subject to wanting as well. It is not a
pure act. Will has something to do with reason.
We have to identify that which is nonsense. It will be
necessary if we are to talk intelligently at all, to make a
statement very bluntly that all religions except for the
Jewish religion are clearly nonsense. No intelligent,
reasonable person who is using his reason has ever decided
that he wants to be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim. I will
explain why this is the case.
I will tell you a story that goes back several hundred years
among Jews. The joke goes as follows. A Rebbe died without
leaving instructions as to which of his two surviving sons he
wanted the community to install as his heir. There were those
who favored the older son and those who favored the younger
son. It was an unhappy situation.
One day, one of the two sons called together the congregation
and said: "Last night in my sleep my father appeared to me in
a dream and he said: `I want you to call together the elders
of the congregation and say to them in my name that it is my
wish that they appoint you as my successor.'"
Everybody was silent. One person got up, however, and said:
"If your father wanted us to appoint you, he should have come
to us in our dreams not to you."
If G-d had wanted Mohammed to be his prophet he should have
come to the people to say "Mohammed is my prophet." He can't
have talked just to Mohammed and told him to tell everyone
that he is G-d's prophet.
How do you believe someone like that? What reasonable human
being can buy it? There are liars, there are well-meaning
deceivers, there are scoundrels, there are true visionaries.
How can one know? Why believe a person who comes to you and
says that G-d spoke to him and said that you should believe
that he is a prophet? It is obviously nonsense.
No human being who wants to follow reason and has not made a
leap of faith, an a priori decision to accept, can
possibly believe it when a human being comes and says, "I am
a prophet."
This applies to all of them. If people take them seriously,
it is because they want, they need to fulfill something. They
are looking for something. It is a leap of faith.
People believe anything. The people who say they believe are
really telling the truth -- they give their lives for it. But
people even give their life for lies. Once they put their
reputation on the line, people will die for a lie. Also for
something that gave them position, strength, prestige, and
power -- they may also die for it.
There is no way that a reasonable person who is using his
reason and subjecting his beliefs to the thorough scrutiny of
reason can possibly accept the big, popular faiths. All of
them depend on an individual or small number of people who
received some sort of experience or revelation and then
spread the word.
This is not the logical way to begin a system based on
reason, and consequently it is not the way we would expect
Hashem to do it.
The only system that we can discuss in a reasonable way is
the Jewish faith because the Jewish faith claims that G-d
didn't say to Moses go to speak to the people of Israel and
tell them that he is His prophet. Judaism claims that G-d
spoke directly to the people and said that Moses is His
prophet.
That's the difference. Such a claim can be evaulated on the
basis of reason. Reasonable people can now ask, "Should we
believe this happened?" because at least the claim is one
that a reasonable person can -- and has to -- deal with.
The claim isn't to believe Moses. That is nonsense. The claim
isn't to believe the Rabbis. That is foolish. The claim is to
believe G-d because G-d said Moses is My prophet.
This is something that a reasonable person must deal with.
Why? Why of all the thousands of religions which we have
recorded has there never been any that a reasonable person
can deal with? No religion has ever built itself on a claim
that does not reduce to: "Believe me, my heart is pure. I do
not lie to you. Believe me when I tell you that the angel
came and gave me books."
Can a reasonable person believe that the claim of Joseph
Smith, who founded the Mormon faith, is one that we should
use to build our lives on? Smith came with a story that an
angel came and gave him golden tablets that included the Book
of Mormon, and of course the Book of Mormon got lost after he
saw it and read it. Is that serious; is that something one
must deal with?
No one else, ever, in the history in mankind has made the
claim that G-d told the whole nation, that one man is His
prophet.
Parents don't lie to their children. They tell them the
truth. A Christian father doesn't say to his son and a
Christian mother to her daughter, I saw J. They say to him,
"Your great-grandfather was a barbarian who worshipped stones
and wooden idols. There came a man in a ship and this man
brought them a message of the coming of J.C. and your
grandfather believed him, and that is why we believe him
today."
The Moslems don't tell their children other than the truth.
They say, "Mohammed came and claimed that G-d spoke to him
and some didn't believe him so he slaughtered all of those
who didn't accept him. Therefore, we accept him."
No people make a claim to their children other than the one
they accept in fact: you should believe because we were
persuaded. "Father, mother, why should I believe that
grandfather's decision was a good one? Because he was
persuaded I should direct my life and build it on that kind
of a base? Does that make sense? Yes, it makes good sense. I
will have a nice social life, comfortable, security, and in
the end, heaven on a platter. I am offered the world to come
and the world that is on a platter. Why should I reject
it?"
The Jew tells a different story altogether. He says we were
there and we heard G-d speak. He said to us that Moses is His
prophet. It was a unique event in the history of mankind.
Is there a fairy tale you have seen that hasn't been
duplicated? There is only one unique story that mankind tells
-- that G-d spoke to all the people.
Don't we have to deal with that? Why of all the stories that
the world has told, has there never been a duplicate of this
claim that G-d spoke to the People of Israel and said to them
Moses is My prophet, believe him.
Any person seeking the truth wherever it may lead will have
to deal with this, will have to confront it. If it is a lie,
why didn't anyone else claim such a gorgeous lie? It sounds
contagious. Why not make it up?
In fact, this is a story that you cannot tell unless it is
true, because in the very telling of the story you proclaim
yourself a liar if it isn't true. Whom are you talking to
when you say G-d spoke to all of us? You are talking to all
of the Jewish people. Everyone has to know about it,
including the neighbor down the street. You said all of
us.
How do you tell this story if it isn't true? If you can
proclaim this kind of story without it being true, why didn't
someone else make it up? Why was it made up once -- and once
only -- in the whole history of mankind? And it is the only
such story that was made up once and only once in the whole
history of mankind!
Now be reasonable. It is unreasonable to believe that these
people made it up and got away with it and nobody else was
even able to try. That is unreasonable. Reasonable people
cannot make such a claim.
What about a different objection? Maybe it was some kind of
fake. That itself is a fantastic thing.
The Christians say maybe what we believe happened. The
Moslems say maybe what we believe happened. The Jews have to
say maybe such and such happened to explain it away.
Do you hear the difference? All the other religions have to
explain why you should believe them, but to the Jewish
religion you have to explain why you needn't believe it. But
you have to come up with a lot of "maybes" to explain it
away. For every other religion you have to explain why you
should believe it and for this one you have to explain why
not.
There are a lot of things that must be explained away. There
is a Bible. It was written by someone. If it was not written
by G- d, then it must be that a man wrote it. Which human
being? Not a Jew. No way. Do you believe that a Jew wrote
that his ancestors were liars? That his ancestors kidnapped a
brother and sold him into slavery? That these people
preferred slavery to freedom, or that Jacob was a thief and a
liar?
Why would they write unfavorable reports about their
ancestors? It never happened elsewhere. You can't read about
a single defeat in Egyptian recorded history. If you want to
find out something bad about the Egyptians you have to read
Syrian history. If you want to find out something
uncomplimentary about the Syrians you have to read Babylonian
history.
Even today with our modern, scientific historians, the
difference between an American historian and a Canadian
historian is amazing when they tell the story of the same
Revolutionary War. In olden times there was no such thing as
writing something unpleasant, uncomplimentary about my own
people.
The funny thing about the Jewish Bible is not that it has
some unpleasant things, but it doesn't have any nice things.
There is nothing nice about the Jewish People. Nothing. From
the beginning to the end it is a series of disasters. Who
wrote it? It seems like it was an antisemite, who somehow
persuaded the Jews to accept it. And of all the people who
might have been persuaded to accept a fanciful history they
are the least likely. They are an am keshei oref who,
even when they see something with their own eyes, they still
don't want to believe it.
One finds it difficult to assume that it is anything but the
truth. The only way such a book could have been written and
accepted is if it is the truth.
Therefore it is all true except for one
little thing -- except for G-d. That part maybe they made up.
All the rest has to be true. There is no other way it could
have been written.
This book is stark and straight. I remember reading a report
of a sermon given by a priest in a Reform temple. The sermon
went as follows: Do not despair, never give up hope. If Jacob
could make it, anyone can. A robber, a thief -- he fooled his
brother, his father- in-law. If Jacob could make it, anyone
can -- it means that G-d is open to anyone.
He is right. He read the Bible and that's his picture of
Jacob.
It is really very embarrassing. We try to explain it away,
but who wrote it? Who wrote this book? It is hard to escape
that G-d wrote it and gave it to us and we had to accept it
whether we wanted to or not, whether we liked it or not --
and we didn't like it. We twist and squirm because we don't
want to have to live with it -- but we have to live with it.
There is no way out.
There is another question that you really have to face. What
other religion makes demands of its adherents without
guarantees? "Believe and your place in heaven is assured" --
that's the least you can offer. That's what you buy them
with. You may not have this life but you will have eternal
life. You will go to heaven, and we can guarantee you
heaven.
You come to Judaism and they give you a body of laws that
they say is the truth. They offer you a lifetime of toil, a
lifetime of effort, and after that, hopefully you will make
it to Heaven. If you make proper judgments, make good
decisions, use your mind, use your body, use your G-d-given
free will -- if you do all of these you will go to Heaven.
Believing alone is not going to make it for you. Sorry, it is
not enough. You have to live a good life.
"Can you give me peace of mind rabbi?"
"No, I can only give you work."
Are they crazy? Why should anyone do it unless it is the
truth? Who makes that kind of offers to his customers? If you
are making up a religion, is this the kind of religion you
make up? Is this what you do to sell things?
Paul was a salesman, the supreme, superb salesman of all
times. This was his proposal.
"Listen my friends. You know it was the Jews who taught the
Empire that idol worship is no longer acceptable. G-d is
transcendent. G-d is not man, G-d is not in a body. He is an
infinite spirit."
"Sure, we all know that."
"But you are having trouble with that, aren't you? You are
having trouble with a transcendent G-d -- on how to relate to
him. You can't see him, you can't talk to him, how do you
pray to him?
"Listen. Here he is, transcendent, no limitations, infinite,
no body -- but he is also a man hanging on the wall. So you
can look at him, pray to him, hug him, and carry him around
in your pocket. You can relate to whichever part you
like."
A believing Christian can pray to J., to the man. But maybe
it is hard for them to pray to that man. After all he is not
so attractive a figure, hanging there on a cross, with nails
in his hands and feet. Ok, so pray to his mother. A mother is
a delightful figure -- warm and good hearted, you can relate
to a mother well.
Is there a better sales pitch than that? You have got it
made: a G-d whom you can intellectually accept but at the
same time he can appeal to your emotions. It is a superb
piece of market-driven packaging.
Judaism says that you have got to use your mind as well as
your heart. You have to relate to an abstract G-d, no matter
how hard that is. You have to pray to a G-d that you can't
touch, see, feel, you can't represent -- and you have to love
Him, to revere Him, to relate to Him, to recognize Him and
deal with Him.
Nobody else makes that demand. On the contrary, for most of
the world, the first lesson of religion is: don't think,
don't read, don't bother getting information. If you need to
know something, go to the priest and he will tell you
whatever you need to know. And they said the same thing to
the priest: don't read too much; if you have deeper needs go
to the bishop, he will tell you. For them, knowledge is a
dangerous thing. For what do you need knowledge?
For the Jew, the first and foremost obligation is to study,
to know, because you have to make decisions. No one is going
to tell you what to do, you have to figure out the right
thing. You are responsible. How are you going to do the right
thing unless you study, unless you know, unless you think,
unless you are aware? Do you know of any other religion that
not only allows but demands study and learning as the
foremost obligation?
Now, is it sheer coincidence that we are unique in all these
peculiar ways? Can it really be that just by some crazy
accident the Jews claim:
• that G-d spoke to all of them in a way that you
can't lie about;
• that Moses is a true prophet;
• He gives them a Chumash which shakes them up
and makes them believe;
• They have to swallow their pride to believe all
that it says; but
• it makes demands on them of extraordinary power;
and then
• promises them nothing other than opportunities. No
guarantees, no certainty. And then
• it tells them to learn, study, think.
None of these things is duplicated elsewhere.
Doesn't it require some sort of explanation?
Is it really all pure coincidence?
Let's take it a little further. Do you honestly believe that
a human being will write a law that is inherently impossible
to keep?
For example, every seventh year, take your family and starve
to death. Every seventh year, you cannot work on the land at
all. No plowing, no sowing, no harvesting -- just sit home
and study and learn. And every 49th and 50th year, there are
two years in a row of no planting and no growing. Who is
going to be alive by the end of the 50th year? Why would a
man make such a ridiculous law?
But then he (this supposed human author of the Bible) goes
further. He says that a year in advance he will give you a
double crop, so you don't have to worry. Who talks like that?
He guarantees a double crop every sixth year to a whole
people. The first time it comes around they will see you are
a liar. Why would he do such a thing? Does it make sense?
Is there such a law anywhere, a law that will expose itself
as being absurd on the very first attempt to keep it? How
could there be such a law?
I will give you another example. Three times a year, every
year, all of you come up to Jerusalem to visit the Holy
Temple in Jerusalem. But wait a minute. The Moabites are
waiting in the east to wipe us out. The Yemenites are waiting
in the south to wipe us out. The Philistines are waiting in
the west to wipe us out. How can I come up?
Don't worry, I will take care of it. While you are in
Jerusalem visiting Me, I will see to it that nothing happens
to your land, to your crops, to your home. Leave it to Me.
Who talks like that? I can hear G-d talking like that, but
can you hear a human being talking like that? Do you expect
them to come a second time? Who would give his own people
such a law, to give the enemies who are waiting to destroy
them such an opportunity? Can a reasonable person accept that
a human being wrote that book?
If G-d wrote it, then it makes sense. He can guarantee that
nothing is going to happen.
Another point: This book has prophecy. It describes in detail
what will overtake the people of Israel when they leave G-d.
It has happened in all its vivid, incredible details.
He said you will come back to Eretz Yisroel and he said you
will be thrown out again. He said that much, much later you
will come back again -- can we call that a self-fulfilling
prophecy, after 2000 years? Do you know a nation that didn't
give up after 100 years, 200, 300 years?
Our tradition is that the nations of the world will have to
approve it. At the same time they hate us, they don't want to
ok it. So what happens? If you read anything about the vote
in the United Nations approving a part of Eretz Yisroel for
the Jewish people, you know the incredible concatenation of
events that brought the Russians and the Americans to vote
for it in spite of everybody fighting against it. They fell
in, they couldn't help themselves, they voted. They wished
they hadn't and then they tried to get out of it but it was
too late. They are stuck with the State of Israel.
But we knew for 2000 years that it would be that way.
Is there another people who survived without a language,
without a land, without a common culture for 2000 years? You
know another case? And we were told in advance what would
happen. We were told that we would be dispersed and punished.
It was written 3000 years ago.
What other nation was dispersed to all the corners of the
earth and retained its identity? Did it ever happen?
So I say to you as follows. How do we explain that reasonable
people, people who are intelligent, face this array of facts
and doubt that G-d spoke to the people of Israel at Mount
Sinai. How can you explain it? How can a reasonable person
possibly doubt this straightforward story given over through
the ages, generation after generation without flaw?
A straightforward story: G-d came and told us that Moses is
His prophet. No other people tell lies, why would we? No
other people make it up, why should we? Explain it away. Why
isn't it true? Why are intelligent, reasonable people still
prepared to doubt so clear and sharp a story, backed by such
enormous weight of evidence, the kind of evidence that you
would risk your life on without a moment's hesitation if it
wasn't a question of religion? Why?
Why, all of a sudden, do they make conditions of proof so
rigorous when it comes to accepting the reality of G-d's
speaking to us, that no one applies to any other question?
Why? The answer has to be: because they do not like the
consequences.
A fantastic story happened to me. In Baltimore, in the 1970s,
there was a group of Jewish psychiatrists, not religious.
They formed a social club. The members and their spouses
would get together at the home of one of the members every
month. The host was responsible for providing a cultural
program. Once I was invited to speak and, about fifteen
minutes into it, one of them got up and said, "Rabbi, I want
you to stop talking."
There is no way that I can describe to you the shock his
objection caused me. It is just not done. I was shocked.
He continued, "Rabbi, if you keep talking I am going to have
to change the way I live and I like the way I live."
The others said to continue. I did a foolish thing and
continued. He got up and walked to the door, got his coat and
left. His left his wife there. He went out without her. He
really did not want to listen.
After I finished I went over to her and asked her for her
name, but she refused to give it to me. I asked the host if
he would tell me their name. He also refused. I was never
able to find out. I would have loved to speak to him.
The fact is that he was one of the few who is straightforward
and honest enough to say, "I don't want to hear it, it upsets
my way of living." The rest manage to listen and somehow or
other let it fly by without letting it settle in.
Because it means that they must change their way of living.
Because if G-d is, if this is real, it is earth-shattering.
It means that everything they believe has to be reexamined
and everything has to be reassessed. How much easier to say
"maybe."
The Russians, during the Cold War, told us that they are
peace-loving and we were war-mongering. We start thinking,
maybe.
They call Israelis imperialistic, expansion-minded. Is there
anyone in the world who doesn't know that if the Arabs don't
attack Israel that not one Arab will be hurt, that not one
inch of land will be annexed? Is there anyone who doubts that
if they had never attacked the Israelis, and had never
threatened to attack them, no attempt would ever have been
made to take one inch of Arab land? Is there anybody who
doubts it?
But Israel is said to be imperialistic. If you want to
believe it, you can persuade yourself of anything. Anything
goes.
Once upon a time they thought that the story of the Emperor
who had no clothes was a remarkable story. We do it all the
time. We don't need a reason to be fooled because we really
fool ourselves. We persuade ourselves that night is day and
day is night -- when it suits our purposes.
There are some people who believe that the Arabs are as
innocent as the Israelis. Facts will never be permitted to
disturb them. That is one thing that you won't catch them on,
a pure ordinary fact. The facts will have to look out for
themselves. That's the way we are.
We need an enormous, determination to be prepared to see the
truth regardless of its consequences. But those who have it
are going to find it hard to push away what the Jews stand
for in the history of mankind. They are going to find it
rough to explain it in any way other than that G-d was there
and made a convenant with us and we entered that
convenant.
A Jew cannot escape it. It determines who he is. It
determines what he is. It determines what will be with him,
it determines where he goes and what happens to him. His
destiny is a part of the people with whom the covenant was
made. It is his fate, his ultimate being.
There is no way we can escape it, there is no way we can get
out of it, there is no way that we can lose our awareness and
consciousness of it.
So I say to you: you all know you are Jewish, what makes you
Jewish? What do you share with each other and with all the
other Jews in the world? Do you share history with them, with
the Indian Jew, the Syrian Jew, the Yemenite Jew, the
Ethiopian Jew? Do you share with them a culture, a race, a
language? What do you share with all the rest of the Jews
around the world which makes you say that we are all
Jewish?
Why are we all Jewish? What do we share? A religion? Can you
tell me that a secular Jew shares religion with an Orthodox
Jew? A Reform Jew shares the same religion as any traditional
Jew?
What makes us all Jews other than the covenant? We all have a
covenant with G-d which we all cannot escape. What else do we
share? Not practices, not thinking, not looks, not race, not
culture. We share the covenant. We are one. The only thing
that makes us one is the covenant.
Is it a covenant that never happened? Did a convenant that
never took place make us one for all the ages, with all of
the vicissitudes that have taken us to all different places,
and all the different experiences we have had and all the
different ways of thinking and different styles of living?
Could a covenant that never happened enable us to stay
together and to identify with each other and to be one?
Could it really be that a covenant that never happened made
us a people? And a people that survived what no other people
in the history of mankind have ever lived through. But we
more than lived through it: we had an impact and influence on
the development of all of mankind to a degree and extent that
much larger nations have not. This people of the "covenant
that doesn't exist" and were almost constantly persecuted and
driven, yet they changed the morals and ethics and purposes
and direction of all humanity.
We taught them that the noblest of all human beings is not
the best killer. So many of the other nations of the earth
idolized the hero who was the most superb killer of all. Who
taught them that this is not the ultimate hero of mankind?
Was it not the Jew? Who taught them that there was a
responsibility that people owe to other human beings? Was it
not the Jew who taught them the concept of justice?
This handful of nonconvenental people with a commitment for
which they died rather all too often -- you want to suggest
that this commitment was something that never happened? You
would rather accept this incredible miracle than the miracle
that G-d spoke to the people at Sinai, that doesn't make
sense? Why not? What do you have against it?
Let me end with this miracle. This miracle is that when G-d
spoke to the Jews at Mount Sinai he said to them: this is the
only revelation I make. Once My revelation is complete, the
duties, responsibilities, and obligations are yours. Never
again will I interfere. Use this truth which I teach you and
I give you the full responsibility for its development and
application. Never again will I ever send to you a message
through a prophet regarding the principles of the Torah that
I give you.
In giving you a Torah, I give you your freedom and
responsibility. I will not inspire your teaching; I will not
direct it. You will be responsible for this Torah all by
yourself. And each one of you can be a learned rabbi. If, G-d
forbid, you don't make the effort, you have to go to one who
did. Ideally each one of you should and can be a learned
rabbi who knows the Torah that I teach and applies it and
takes responsibility for it. Never will I send a prophet with
a message about this Torah.
That, I submit, is the greatest, most incredible miracle of
all. A miracle only G-d can do. All human beings continue to
inspire, to get messages. Only G-d gives it to men and says:
it is now yours. Do not look to Me for guidance. I gave you
the knowledge; I gave you the promise; I gave you the truth.
Use it. That is the deepest, most amazing miracle of all.
Live with that and tell me it wasn't G-d.
