Tuesday, October 4, 2011

R' Yaakov Kamenetsky and the Moon

There's a famous story that after R' Yaakov Kamenetsky saw the moon landing, he declared Maimonides wrong. Some people like this story because they think it shows that the gedolim of yesteryear were open to scientific discovery. Others like it because Maimonides, the sage who relied on secular thought for his understanding of the universe, was wrong; therefore, secular studies are worthless and we should rely on the Torah and the gedolim who understand it to tell us about the natural world. R' Yaakov himself begs this line of reasoning: "...we saw men descending from a space ship on a ladder onto the surface of the moon. I thought to myself: 'What would the Rambam, who wrote that the moon has a spiritual form, answer now?' Kabbalah defeated Philosophy, and comforted myself with the words of the Ramban...[Rambam] wrote those four chapters from his deep mind and from his knowledge of secular wisdom, i.e. not from the wisdom of Torah but only from Philosophy." (R' Gil's translation)

Both of these ideas strike me as extremely stupid. With regards to the first line of reasoning: It took R' Yaakov Kamenetsky till they landed on the moon for him to declare Maimonides wrong? Seriously? That's called openness to science? Yeah, sure, it's more open than declaring the moon landing a hoax, but it's still a very fundamentalist mode.

As for the second: Ramban lived in a world where magic was a real historical force. One of my two favorite conscientiousness-raising exercises actually relates to one of Ramban's ideas. Sometimes, with regards to some "controversial" idea or another (e.g. the position of many that Chazal were wrong about science), people wave their hands, laugh, and say, "We don't hold like those rishonim!" I ask them if they believe that astrology has worked at some point (an idea unsurprisingly maintained by many, including Ramban) and they usually answer is in the affirmative. I then ask them about Rambam, who maintained that astrology is "stupidity." They reply, "I'd think it obvious! We don't hold like that Rambam!" I then point out, well, that's fine; but just so they know, the Rambam thinks the position they maintain is idiotic.

I hold like the Rambam on this issue.

21 comments:

  1. I don't get it - who's "we"? And why don't we hold like the Rambam and not hold like the Ramban there?

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  2. In the haredi world, it's a common way of dismissing rishonim and acharonim; you just say "we don't hold like them." Debate over! :p

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  3. Yeah, I know, I know. You know what I mean.

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  4. Daniel, I don't have a clue what you mean.

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  5. "I then ask them about Rambam, who maintained that astrology is "stupidity."
    But believing that the stars were given power over all natural processes and posses a soul is not stupidity? What's the difference?

    From the letter on Astrolgy you linked to:

    All these, then, are the three sects into which the wise men of the world fall, from the earliest antiquity down to now.

    (l ) Those who maintain that the sphere is not a created thing, but that it eternally has been and will be just as it is.

    ( 2 ) Those who maintain that the Deity has created it out of that matter which always exists by Him.

    ( 3 ) Those who maintain—just as all the prophets did—that there is no other thing that is with the Deity, just He Himself, and that when He wished, He brought forth this world out of nothing, in conformity with His will.

    All of these three sects are in accord on the following point. Everything that comes into being in this lower world—namely, every "living soul" (Gen. 1:30) and every tree and every species of grass and every one of the species of minerals—the whole has the Deity as its maker, through a power coming from the spheres and the stars. And they are in accord that the power of the Creator flows first upon the spheres and the stars; from the spheres and the stars it flows and spreads through this (lower) world—everything that is, thereby coming into being. Just as we maintain that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs signs and wonders through the angels, so do these philosophers maintain that all these occurrences in the nature of the world come through the spheres and the stars. They maintain that the spheres and the stars possess souls and knowledge. All these things are true. I myself have already made it clear, with proofs, that all these things involve no damage to religion. And not only this, but what is more I have understood from the sayings of the sages in all of the Midrashim that they maintain as the philosophers maintained. There is no controversy whatever between the sages of Israel and the philosophers on these matters, as I have made clear in those chapters [in the Guide of the Perplexed, a philosophical treatise].


    Yes indeed- The Rambam believed that the stars are the conduit of power over every natural entity that comes into being in our world. And that they are conscious beings possesing souls and knowedge.

    Do you hold of that Rambam?

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  6. "It took R' Yaakov Kamenetsky till they landed on the moon for him to declare Maimonides wrong? "

    He probably never thought about it before that point.

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  7. This is all besides the point. The real question is: How would the Rambam have reacted to the moon landing?
    If he had been a typical "Gadol" he would have banned any references to the moon landing and declared that anyone who believes that it happened is guilty of kefirah.
    I would like to think he would have responded differently. The biggest insult to Chazal and the Rishonim is ascribing to them a close-mindedness that borders on stupidity. Here are the greatest minds in history being accused of a dogged inability to learn new material!
    If our great sages were to return to life today, they would be fascinated with how science has changed over the centuries. They would doubtlessly investigate all the new knowledge and update themselves as quickly as possibly. They would be far more open to concepts like evolution and the ancient age of the Earth than those who claim to be the defenders of their honour are.
    The Rambam would doubtlessly learn all he could about the moon and adjust his philosophy accordingly.

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  8. Dovid, you're right: "judicial astrology" would have been more clear and academic. What I meant by astrology was what people mean when they use the word today (and incidentally the definition in many dictionaries), the planets governing peoples' characters and so forth. The Rambam did indeed hold to some ideas in his day which I regard as silly and which you believe, such as Young Earth Creationism.
    Do you hold of that Rambam?
    I'm going to assume you're being sarcastic, since otherwise that's clearly a silly question. Not that the sarcasm is clever.

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  9. If our great sages were to return to life today, they would be fascinated with how science has changed over the centuries. They would doubtlessly investigate all the new knowledge and update themselves as quickly as possibly. They would be far more open to concepts like evolution and the ancient age of the Earth than those who claim to be the defenders of their honour are.
    I would like to think that they would then become kofrim like me, particularly after looking into Bible criticism and such :p

    Maybe I'll try and draw this thought out more later, but I don't think the gedolim today would have said (or, when they were younger, did say) the moon landing was a conspiracy. Unlike evolution for some reason, they're not willing to cross that line, perhaps because it's so patently obvious even to the casual non-scientific observer (and also because we've landed on the moon several times since!).

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  10. The Rambam did indeed hold to some ideas in his day which I regard as silly

    So then why are you using the Rambam as leverage against this fellow who believes in "Judicial Astrology" when the same letter of the Rambam can be used as leverage against you?

    Are you arguing "leshitaso"? If so, that doesn't work because part of his shitta is that "We don't hold of that Rambam". So what's your point? That he picks and chooses? You are also picking and choosing.

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  11. > I would like to think that they would then become kofrim like me, particularly after looking into Bible criticism and such

    No, I don't think so. Anyone who has learned more than a bit of Gemara and Midrash is well aware that Chazal knew about all the supposed discrepancies, errors and variations in Torah long before the German anti-Semite Wellhausen discovered them. Anyone who has learned Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch and the Ha'Amek Davar knows that every one of the so-called proofs to the DH was dealt with exhaustively by Chazal. So no, they wouldn't become kofrim. Sorry to burst your bubble.

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  12. Garnel, what are you saying? "Silly Mordechai Breuer? If only he'd read Hirsch?"

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  13. I don't know anything about Mordechai Breuer. I do know that it is a principle of Judaism that Torah MiSinai is a historical fact and that the Torah we have today is pretty much the same one Moshe handed over to our ancestors at the end of Sefer Devarim. As a result, it is important that anything the DH raises as a challenge have a legitimate Jewish answer. Non-believers may not like the answers or the underlying assumptions they rely on but that doesn't change their legitimacy in the eyes of believers.
    I am saying that the existence of DH doesn't mean that it is right since alternative answers that are equally scholarly exist.

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  14. GI, you've managed to contradict yourself in only a few small lines. "Non-believers may not like the answers or the underlying assumptions they realy on but that doesn't change their legitimacy in the eyes of believers." Why don't non-believers like them? Because the premises are silly, or simply without evidence, and because the arguments are nonsensical. You then go on, though, to say "...alternative answers that are equally scholarly exist." How are they equally scholarly if they're based on faulty assumptions and don't follow anyway?

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  15. The underlying premise that believers rely on (sorry about the spelling before) is that the Oral Law was given alongside the Written Law. The problem for non-believers is that there is no verse in the Torah where Moses openly says "And by the way, keep in mind all the oral tradition that I'm giving you along with this written stuff". Non-believers also don't like this assumption because it shoots down their DH hypothesis which means there just might be some Divine legitimacy to the Torah which they're against in the first place.
    However, just because there's no obvious verse doesn't mean there's not proof which is why I referred to two specific commentaries on the Chumash and those are the scholarly answers I was referencing.

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  16. > Non-believers also don't like this assumption because it shoots down their DH hypothesis which means there just might be some Divine legitimacy to the Torah

    False dichotomy. The failure of the DH would not make the Torah divine.

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  17. Garnel, what does it mean that the Oral Law was given alongside the Written Law? Five books are possible to give, but do you really think Moses received thousands of books? Does that even pass the sniff test? I never ceased to be amazed by the sheer audacity of the claim that Moses received all this oral shit (as if the "Written stuff" was really written at the time. Did writing even exist 3300 years ago?) I'll never forget crazy rabbis drilling into my head that every chiddush I came up with, every word they managed to squeeze out of their tucheses, was ALL already understood by Mo. It's kind of like saying someone went through a huge reference library in a matter of days. It's obvious FUCKING BULLSHIT.

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  18. Garnel, Torah MiSinai is far from a historical fact, it is only a national myth with no evidence supporting it and much evidence which indicates it never happened, at least not in the way the Torah describes.

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  19. > Did writing even exist 3300 years ago

    The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest extant piece of writing, is about 4000 years old.

    You seem to be forgetting that matan Torah was a nes. There are better arguments against its historicity than the implausibility of someone having a library uploaded to his brain.

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  20. G*3,

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
    "The best known picture writing system of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols are:

    Jiahu Script, symbols on tortoise shells in Jiahu, ca. 6600 BC
    Vinča script (Tărtăria tablets), ca. 5300 BC[6]
    Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC

    ....

    The history of literature begins with the history of writing and the notion of "literature" has different meanings depending on who is using it. Scholars have disagreed concerning when written record-keeping became more like "literature" than anything else and is largely subjective. It could be applied broadly to mean any symbolic record, encompassing everything from images and sculptures to letters. The oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC."

    You are right about the Epic of Gilgamesh being the oldest piece of literature dating over 4000 years old but the oldest piece of writing is much older, over 5000 years old, and the earliest written symbols are 8600 years old.

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