May his name be sanctified

יתגדל ויתקדש שמיה רבה

שוכן ממרום עלה ונתעלה

פושט יד לאביונום ונותן להם התקווה

ומקים את עמך אשר בם בחרת

ושרתי עוד ישמע בערי יהודה

וראיתי כל העם צהלה ושמחה

אבל רוצה לשאול איכה

May His name be magnified and sanctified

He dwells upon high, higher and higher

He extends his hand to the destitute and gives to them 'The Hope'

And He establishes his nation that in them He has chosen

And I've sung 'May it be heard in the cities of Judah'

And I saw the whole nation 'Cheerful and Happy'

But I would like to ask, however, 'Where are you?'

I'm not gonna take it, King Koopa!

Finally, my feet are planted.

פסיעות רגלי

סוף סוף מגעיים ארצי

אולי יתמו נדודי

סוף סוף אל השמים אשא כפי

כי עד כאן ניטעו רגלי

ואהלל את אדוני

כי שלם את אשר נשבע לאבותי

The steps of my feet

Are finally reaching my land

Perhaps my wanderings will finish

Finally towards the heavens I will lift my hands

For until now my feet were not planted

And I will praise the Lord

For he has fulfilled what he swore to my fathers

G-d why have you?

אלי אלי למה עזבתני

האם נטרח בעולה תמימה ושכחתני

ענית אבותי ולא עניתני

האם גם כן הלכת

כי איפה השבוע שנשבעת

אוכל נרדם אולי מספר

הרבה ארבה את זרעכם עד לא יסופר

בימי הצורך יגעתי ולא נמצאת

בקשתי אלי נא ענה ושקטת

אולי אמתין עוד מעט ותלמידני

כי חשבתי שחשקתני

כי עכשיו נראה רק שכזבתני

My G-d, my G-d, why have you forsaken me?

Are you too busy with your perfect offering, that you’ve forgotten me?

You answered my fathers, but you did not answer me

Have you also went-

For where is the promise that you made-

Are you eating, sleeping, perhaps talking?

‘I will surely increase your offspring until they cannot be counted’

In the days of need, I strained, but you were not to be found

I pleaded ‘My G-d, please answer me,’ but you were silent

Perhaps I should wait a little more and then you will teach me

For I thought that you want me

Because right now it seems only that you lied to me.

Quick Purim sound bytes, for Purim Party '08

1) Our sages say that when the Messiah comes all holidays will become irrelevant, but Purim will not. Purim is the day of complete ecstatic joy, the only holiday fitting to be retained in the days of joy that the Messiah will bring.

2) The story of Esther, on which this holiday is based, is crouched in confusion, contradiction and mystery. Esther hides her identity, G-d hides himself from the story, and Haman’s plan to defeat us turns on its head. Thus, Purim becomes a day where everything is backwards, the day where we hide ourselves in costume, and where

3) Our sages ask a question: if the Jews had been exiled from their land, did they have any obligation towards G-d? Does a wife have any obligation to a husband that has divorced her? On Purim we realized that though G-d hides his face from us, He has not abandoned us. His hand in history is subtle, but present.

4) On Purim we are told that all who extend their hand- we give to them. Under the King’s decree not only were our lives at risk, but so was our belongings. Faced with the realization that wealth and means are fleeting, we heartily offer our bounty to those who have less

5) The gallows that Haman makes for Mordechai are the very same ones that he is hung upon himself. In his vicious quest for vengeance against Mordechai, Haman failed to realize that his malicious plans had the potential for turning against him. Indeed, Haman’s demise catapults Mordechai political career. What was once evil, is now good- showing us that we don’t really know the story until the end.

6) The name Purim comes from the word Pur, lots. These are the lots that Haman cast to determine his date for his killing-spree. When we get drunk we throw our fate in the wind again. Hopefully it won’t take us too far away from the bar.....

Wonder what the difference is?

There are two 'provactions' going on between the West Bank Palestinian Arabs and the Israelis. They lead to different results in world opinion. I wonder why?

Israel has continued its wretched building the West Bank, with homes approved 8 years ago (and you thought English bureaucracy was bad) but that is sabotaging the peace process.

But, when a Jerusalem Arab kills 8 students (7 of them 18 or under) everyone declares how the peace process must continue.

Which is the bigger provocation?

Forgetting who is right and wrong in this issue (and for now it is important to) why is building housing in already existing settlements (actually more like cities; settlements makes you think of the wild west) worse than violating territorial sovereignty and murdering 8 students within land that is completely undisputed?

Nozick's Knowledge and Skepticism

Nozick’s paper, Knowledge and Skepticism is divided between those two areas:

Section 1, Knowledge:

In Nozick’s account, knowledge is still

1) p

2) Bp

However, the simplest form of the truth tracking replaces Jp with 2 clauses:

3) ¬pà ¬Bp. Where à is subjunctive as opposed to material. Material conditional is satisfied if right now when ¬p then ¬Bp, à is satisfied only if both right now, and in other possible situations ¬p then ¬Bp. This clause is a way of formalizing a casual connection between facts and belief. It shows stipulates that knowledge varies according to the facts.

4) pà(Bp&¬B¬p) (the extra clause to take care of where there are contradictory beliefs) This clause also shows that connection: it shows that knowledge adheres to the facts.

Clause 3) takes care of the Gettier counterexamples, but why 4)?

-Brain in Vat, whose knowledge of BiV is induced by scientist.

-news of dictator’s death by assassination suppressed.

[Would this cover a case of belief instilled by a god? (see next section, but how does it relates to Brain in Vat case as excluded above?)]

However, this is not Nozick’s final formula:

2) Bp via M(ethod), or BMp

3) (¬p & BM’p’)à ¬BMp. Where ‘p’ indicates whether or not p

4) (p&BM’p’)à BMp

The new clauses are to clarify cases where had you not used M you would not have believed P, such as where he only gets information via a book or the grandmother case.

However, what do we do in the case that something is a) over-determined b)situational multiple methods (i.e. p->BM₁p _, ¬p->BM₂p).......?

Section 2, Skepticism:

This section is not aimed at refuting the skeptic, rather showing that knowledge is possible even given what he says. But, he divides the sceptical issue into 4 sections:

A. Denying condition 3

This is the normal sceptical issue: how are we justified in believing p if we may be BiV. Put in Nozick’s terms there is a world in which even if p were not true, I would still believe it. But he objects that we needn’t rule out all possible worlds.

Nozick claims that the skeptic’s aim to say that we do not meet condition 3 (maybe it’s just to deny p?), because even if someone was a BiV they still might believe that they were not. To this Nozick retorts that 3 need not be true in every case that p is false, rather just in the closest cases (again, as all condition 3 needs to do is to show that there is a connection between p’s being true or false, and your believing it)

B. Denying p

But, this is not the skeptic’s only problem: What if we truly don’t know that we are not BiV, then surely we don’t know p either because K(p->q) [closure principle]

Nozick’s answer here is straightforward in content, but tricky in terms of explanation. He denies the closure principle. Why? Because knowledge varies according to facts, and the closure principle does not. When p is in the question the issue is not only if one does believe p, but also if one would believe p. However, we are not asking if one would believe q (i.e.¬BiV) and we are therefore willing to separate knowledge of q from p. This is the case because condition 3 for knowledge is not closed, thereby making knowledge in general unable to be closed.

Shouldn’t the closure principle serve as sort of a litmus test for knowledge at all? But if so, then we are adding another condition to knowledge, and this is exactly Nozick’s objection- that the conditions of K vary according to P..... and closure does not....

C. Denying condition 4

Nozick offers another issue: what if the skeptic’s arguments could sway you at any time? Then surely you don’t fulfil condition 4, as your knowledge ought to be of sterner stuff. Nozick concedes the point that if a person were able to be convinced by such arguments, then right now he does not have K.

D. Questioning the method

How do you know that your method is good? Suppose you want to use a certain method to question that method. You couldn’t do so where trying to fulfil condition 3, as you can’t use a method to know what would happen if you weren’t using that method. As Nozick clarifies, however, this would happen (probably) only with a very broad M. Otherwise, one could simply use another specific m to verify.

Isn’t this problematic though- if we need to verify that we are using M, then surely this triggers another infinite regress...? Why not just say we Know p via M even where we do not ‘know’ in the strong sense that M.

Is the Torah true- if not why be Jewish?

When talking about whether the ‘Torah is true’ we need to realize that this question consists of a few subquestions:

1) Did the events happen the way the Torah describes them? i.e., is the text reliable

2) Did G-d, in any sense, give the Torah to us?

2) What is the reason, if there is any, that I should follow the Torah?

Obviously, some of these questions overlap- if G-d gave us the Torah, that would be a reason to keep it. However, question 2 seems like the most pointed question, and also the most elusive. Attempting to ‘prove that G-d did x’ is almost as hard as proving that ‘because of x, therefore G-d.’

Why almost, and not just? Because Judaism would presuppose that G-d exists. If he does, then he already becomes a materially possible explanation for events, rather than simply a logically possible explanation. However, to assume that an event was caused by G-d one needs more than just the possibility, one needs proof, or at least reference to the best explanation.

Here is a famous ‘proof’

1. The Torah claims that there were 600,000 men between 20-60 at Sinai, so about 2 million people total.

2. We are their direct descendants

3. If 1 happened, then our ancestors would tell us

4. If someone told us 1, and our ancestors had not told us, we would not believe them

5. Therefore, since we do believe it (i.e. it’s at least in the Torah) it could not be made up, because no one would have accepted it.

Coupled with this proof is the assertion that Judaism is the only religion to ever claim mass revelation

1) Other unique claims:

a. Jesus as god- what about Krishna? ( Are we sure he lived?) is it significant that he was an avatar, not ‘god’? what about the pharaohs?

b. Is it significant that we are talking about revelation?

2) Counterexamples:

a. Mahabarata- epic battle with 4 million people fighting. However, only ‘7 survive.’

b. Aztec- their god tells them to call themselves the Mexicana, related to founding of Mexico City, the Aztec capital. Not a founding of religion, also not clear how massive the revelation

But, even if these objections fail, the proof seems to as well:

1) The 600,000/2 mil. claim seems very dubious: world population was only 38 million in 1500 BCE. Population figures in Canaan seem to bear this out: 100,000 people lived there in 1000.

2) 4 seems dubious as well:

a. The myth could have evolved gradually

b. The rest of the Hebrew Bible records many times where Jews ‘forgot’ the religion, and later came back to it.

c. Scrolls were found by Josiah, and by Nehemiah

So, 2 is a difficult question to answer. What about question 1: did things happen the way the Torah claims they did; is it a reliable document?

Within this category there are a few issues:

1) Is the text we have now the original?(lower criticism)

2) Is there any evidence for any of these events independent of the text?

3) Higher criticism: was the Torah even composed by one author?

‘1’ is the least likely to be true, but also the least important. ‘2’ is up for open dispute. However, as we saw a few weeks ago, the story of the exodus is ‘plausible.’ What archeology can mainly do here is give context, not concrete answers. For ‘3’ let’s look in the texts: Genesis 1 and 2.

(see work by mordechai breuer, and by umberto cassuto. also, see the art of biblica narrative by robert altar)

So we see that answering 1 is problematic, but not impossible. Textual criticism, though interesting, seems a bit wrong sided.

But what we need to do now is to understand what exactly the Torah is meant to be, and what it is not meant to be.

What the Torah definitely is: a recording of the religious experience of people of the biblical era. This may be a nice idea, but it does not relate to us. But is it more than that?

The Torah, at the end of the day, is a ‘revolutionary’ document that smashes the idea of idolatry. As such, it is best understood (in ascending order) as a) a polemic against idolatry b) a lesson c) plan for living.

‘A’ is the background theme of the entire Torah. Understanding Genesis by Nachum Sarna is a good start about the way in which the Torah clearly understands pagan culture, yet offers ‘devastating’ critiques.

‘B’ is the way in which the Torah is written. It is written to elicit responses to the text. This relates to Joel’s class on personal revelation: the Torah’s text itself lets you learn from it.

But ‘c’ is the most important point, as Judaism’s ‘take’ on the world isn’t so much about ‘history’ or ‘theology’ or ‘philosophy’ but an integrated worldview based on a foundation of action.

So is Judaism’s take on the world good or not?