[File Under: "What if...?!']
'All systems have basic premises which cannot be proven, Science too. Mine are the ikkarim'
For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American Chareidi community. But I'm a mere Rabbi: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of Cosmology and Gosse Theory, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American convention of Chareidi Rabbis -- whose rabbinical collective includes such luminaries as Rabbi Mattisyahu Solomon and Rabbi Reuven Feinstein -- allow me to give a speech liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded frum and (b) it flattered the Rabbis' ideological preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my speech, `The Gemara is metziyus: It's also emes veyatziv.' in the Spring/Summer 1995 Agudah Convention.
What's going on here? Could the Rabbis really not have realized that my speech was written as a parody?
In the first paragraph I deride the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Chareidi intellectual outlook'':
…If the Gemara tells us a metziyus, it’s emes veyatziv. There’s nothing to think about. Anything we see with our eyes is less of a reality than something we see in the Gemara. That’s the emunah that a yid has to have.
Is it now dogma in Chareidi Studies that there exists no possibility of Chazal being wrong? Or that there exists an external world but science obtains no knowledge of it?
In the second paragraph I declare, without the slightest evidence or argument, that Chazal don't have to be reconciled with Science:
Unfortunately, I don’t know where or why this is, but recently there’s been a spate of all kinds of publications – I don’t know where they’ve come from – questioning things that have been mekubel midor dor, that every child learns, together with his mother’s milk, al titosh Toras imecha, we learn that every word of Torah is emes, every word of Chazal hakedoshim is emes. We’re coming to hear new kinds of concepts, that we have to figure out a way to make Torah compatible with modern day science – it’s an emunah mezuyefes! There’s a tremendous emunah that these people have for scientists in the outside world – everything they say is kodesh kadoshim! And then we have to figure out according to what they say, how to fit in the Gemara with this newfangled discoveries that the scientists have taught us?!
Throughout the speech, I employ religious and philosophical concepts in ways that few Theologians or Philosophers could possibly take seriously.
These same scientists who tell you with such clarity what happened sixty-five million years ago – ask them what the weather will be like in New York in two weeks’ time! “Possibly, probably, it could be, maybe” – ain itam hadavar, they don’t know. They know everything that happened 65 million years ago, but from their madda, and their wissenschaft, we have to be mispoel?!
In sum, I intentionally wrote the speech so that any competent Theologian or Philosopher would realize that it is a spoof. Evidently the Rabbis of the Agudah felt comfortable listening to a speech on Science and Torah without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject.
[XGH: OK, that's about enough of that! You can read the rest of Sokal's article here. And needless to say, Rav Uren Reich wasn't joking].
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