Page 33 - HaMizrachi #8 Pesach

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The Necessity of Asking Questions

earth’s foundation? … Can you catch Tennyson’s verse, “Theirs not to reason moment to your children, says Moses.
Leviathan with a hook? … Will it make why, theirs but to do or die,” is as far from But do not do so in an authoritarian
an agreement with you and let you take a Jewish mindset as it is possible to be. way. Encourage your children to ask,
it as your slave for life?” question, probe, investigate, analyze,
Why? Because we believe that explore. Liberty means freedom of
In yeshiva the highest accolade is to ask intelligence is G-d’s greatest gift to the mind, not just of the body. Those
a good question: du fregst a gutte kashe. humanity. Rashi understands the phrase who are confident of their faith need
Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a deeply that G-d made man “in His image, after fear no question. It is only those who
religious psychiatrist, tells of how His likeness,” to mean that G-d gave us lack confidence, who have secret and
when he was young, his teacher would the ability “to understand and discern.” suppressed doubts, who are afraid.
relish challenges to his arguments. In The very first of our requests in the
his broken English, he would say, “You weekday Amidah is for “knowledge, However, the one essential is to know
right! You 100 prozent right! Now I understanding and discernment.” One and to teach this to our children, that
show you where you wrong.” of the most breathtakingly bold of not every question has an answer we
the rabbis’ institutions was to coin a can immediately understand. There are
Isadore Rabi, winner of a Nobel Prize in blessing to be said on seeing a great ideas we will only fully comprehend
physics, was once asked why he became non-Jewish scholar. Not only did they through age and experience, others
a scientist. He replied, “My mother made see wisdom in cultures other than their that take great intellectual preparation,
me a scientist without ever knowing own, they thanked G-d for it. How far and yet others that may be beyond our
it. Every other child would come back this is from the narrow-mindedness than collective comprehension at this stage
from school and be asked, ‘What did has so often demeaned and diminished of the human quest. Darwin never knew
you learn today?’ But my mother used religions past and present. what a gene was. Even the great Newton,
to ask: ‘Izzy, did you ask a good question founder of modern science, understood
today?’ That made the difference. Asking The historian Paul Johnson once wrote how little he understood, and put it
good questions made me a scientist.” that rabbinic Judaism was “an ancient beautifully: “I do not know what I may
and highly efficient social machine for appear to the world, but to myself I seem
Judaism is not a religion of blind the production of intellectuals.” Much
obedience. Indeed, astonishingly in a of that had, and still has, to do with to have been only a boy playing on the
religion of 613 commandments, there is the absolute priority Jews have always seashore, and diverting myself in now
no Hebrew word that means “to obey.” placed on education, schools, the beit and then finding a smoother pebble or
prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the
When Hebrew was revived as a living midrash, religious study as an act even
language in the 19th century, and there higher than prayer, learning as a life-long great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered
was need for a verb meaning “to obey,” engagement, and teaching as the highest before me.”
it had to be borrowed from the Aramaic: vocation of the religious life. In teaching its children to ask and
le-tsayet. Instead of a word meaning “to keep asking, Judaism honored what
obey,” the Torah uses the verb shema, But much too has to do with how one Maimonides called the “active intellect”
untranslatable into English because it studies and how we teach our children. and saw it as the gift of G-d. No faith has
means [1] to listen, [2] to hear, [3] to The Torah indicates this at the most honored human intelligence more.
understand, [4] to internalize, and [5] to powerful and poignant juncture in
respond. Written into the very structure Jewish history – just as the Israelites are Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is Emeritus
of Hebraic consciousness is the idea that about to leave Egypt and begin their life Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew
our highest duty is to seek to understand as a free people under the sovereignty Congregations of the Commonwealth
.
the will of G-d, not just to blindly obey. of G-d. Hand on the memory of this @RabbiSacks www.RabbiSacks.org

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