JNS.org – When it comes to religion, how much is belief, and how much is rational? Is Judaism a rational religion? Does being religious require a leap of faith?

Perhaps other faiths do. I mean, I respect everyone’s right to choose the religion they subscribe to and want to practice, but some religions do require extraordinary leaps of faith from their followers.

Judaism, on the other hand, is based not on any incredulous leaps of faith, but on the shared firsthand experience of an entire nation.

With other faiths, the starting point is a supposed revelation reported to have been experienced by the founder of that faith. You either believe it or you don’t believe it. Your choice.

But Judaism was founded at Mount Sinai where millions of Israelites, fresh out of Egypt, experienced the Revelation at Sinai. Each and every Israelite, personally, heard the Ten Commandments from the voice of God, not Moses! And it wasn’t virtual, it was personal. They were all there, and it was an in-body experience.

That’s not faith. That is fact. Not only Moses and his disciples but the entire nation of men, women and children—a few million in all—were eyewitnesses to that revelation. And this was handed down by father to son, mother to daughter, throughout the generations wherever Jews lived. European Jews and Yemenite Jews have the very same tradition, the very same Torah. Yes, there are differences in custom and variations on a theme, but the basic traditions are identical.

How? Because they all came from the very same source—Almighty God at Mount Sinai!

This week, we read Mishpatim, a Torah portion that deals with civil and social laws that are very logical. Everyone understands and accepts that society needs a code of law and justice to be able to function.

So, if your ox gores your friend’s ox, you will be liable for damages. If you’re making a barbecue and your negligence causes the fire to spread to your neighbor’s property and it burns down his house, you will be liable. And if you’re going on vacation and deposit your pet poodle at the Lords & Ladies Poodle Parlor for safe keeping and when you come back, they tell you they lost your poodle, then they will be responsible for paying you for your poodle. And so on.

But even the logical mitzvot have much more to them than meets the eye. There are layers and layers of depth, meaning, symbolism and profound spirituality behind every single mitzvah, rational or not.

There are only a handful of chukim, statutory decrees that we were not given an explanation of and for which we must take on faith, like kashrut or shatnez, the law of not mixing wool and linen garments together.

But the truth is that every mitzvah needs faith.

Why? Because without faith, we do something only humans are capable of. Do you know what that is? Rationalization.

Everyone understands that you’re not supposed to steal. And yet, studies have shown that no less than 59% of hotel guests steal from their hotel rooms. Now, I don’t think the hotel really minds if you take the shampoo. I imagine if you asked them, they would say it’s fine.

But no hotel will let you take the towels or the robes. And no hotel will let you take the TV. I was shocked to read that some guests even took home a mattress! (Apparently, in the middle of the night, they snuck it into the elevator, went down to the basement garage and stuffed it into the trunk of their car.)

If you ask these people, they will likely give you all kinds of reasons why their actions are justified. The hotel overcharged me. It calculates shrinkage into their price, so I actually paid for it. If I wear the hotel’s towel on the beach, I am advertising for them, so they should pay me.

This is classic rationalization.

So we do need faith after all, even for logical commandments like not stealing. Otherwise, we fail. Badly.

Interestingly, the very same Torah reading of Mishpatim, with its logical, civil laws also has the famous phrase, Na’aseh V’Nishma. These were the words of the Jewish people when asked if they would accept God’s Torah. They replied Na’aseh, “we will do” and only thereafter Nishmah, “we will listen” and understand. It is the core of simple, pure, absolute faith, beyond any logic or understanding.

And this explains why the Ten Commandments, which we read last week, begin with Anochi, “I am God,” the lofty, abstract mitzvah to believe in God. To have faith.

And then the other commandments go on to tell us the most basic laws that every low life knows he should keep. Not to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie or be jealous.

How did we get from the highest, metaphysical commandment of belief to the grossest of the gross in a few short sentences?

Because without faith, a human being is capable of justifying anything.

The accursed Nazis justified the Holocaust. REAL genocide, not make-believe South African genocide. How did they justify it? By saying Jews are scum, sub-human. We are doing the world a service by eliminating them. The world will be a better place for it. Rationalization.

Without the first commandment of faith in God, there can be no adherence to any of the other commandments.

Logic gets you pretty far but not far enough. As logical as Judaism may be, we still need the foundation of faith to do what we must do and avoid that which is tempting but wrong.

May we all embrace Judaism with knowledge and reason and by understanding its philosophy, without losing that pure and simple faith that every one of us possesses.

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