Modern men and women like to pretend that we have a direct pipeline into reality that we know, in an absolute and ultimate way, about ourselves, about the world around us, about true wisdom. Forgetting that previous generations were equally sure about the truths they “knew”, that the earth was flat, that the universe was a few thousand years old, that women were inferior to men, and that we now view their certainties with scorn, we presume that our most cherished verities will last forever. We confuse our grasp of reality with reality itself, our understandings of humanity with humanity, our arrogant self-confidence with truth.
Take, for example, the recent book, The Bell Curve, which claims that general intelligence corresponds to income levels and to race. By assuming that IQ and other standardized tests accurately measure some innate ability called “intelligence”, this book confuses test results with creativity, insight, memory, and control. That one can train for an SAT proves the lie of that equation, but based on this blithe (and demonstrably false assumption), the authors then claim that blacks are less intelligent than whites, that Ashkenazi Jews are the brightest of all. Confusing the map with the territory, the authors’ lack of self-doubt, their absolute certainty reveals insolence at once false and dangerous.
Confusing our grasp of reality with reality itself isn’t unique to modern men and women, nor is it unique to the West. But its pernicious effects are heightened by our secularity, a general assertion that humanity is the measure of all things and the ultimate arbiter of good and evil, right and wrong. Such superficial smugness is directly challenged by Jewish religious sources, particularly by today’s Torah portion.
Parashat Metzora speaks of a variety of afflictions that mar the skin, as well as a home. This illness produces a state of ritual impurity, with dire consequences for both the sufferer and the community at large. Hence, declaring the tzara’at to have officially commenced was a religious obligation of the highest significance, and was assigned to the local Kohen.
God instructs Moses and Aaron, “When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come and tell the Kohen, saying, “Something like a plague has appeared upon my house.”
The ancient rabbis noticed the reticence of the individual to make a definitive claim. “Something like a plague” is pretty tentative language, striking for a culture in which such epidemics were events of great moment and consequence. Notice also that the Torah mandates this line, regardless of the knowledge of the afflicted homeowner. As the Mishnah notes, “Even if he is a Torah scholar and knows for certainty that it is a plague-spot, he shall not declare outright, “It is a plague-spot,” but “Something like a plague-spot.”
This tentative phrasing is particularly noteworthy because the Torah doesn’t hesitate to make definitive statements when it can. Pure and impure, kosher and treif, permitted and prohibited are the lofty standards that any lover of the Bible integrates as a way of seeing the world and of navigating a path of righteousness along life’s byways. So why the hesitation here? Why this modest circumlocution?
I think that the Torah is teaching a kind of religious/intellectual humility to its followers. We are not God, and we are far from perfect. The way we acquire knowledge and wisdom is limited by our own five senses, our own life experiences, and our own subjective intuition. We do not observe from some neutral or privileged place. Instead, each one of us can only see what our eyes will see, can only understand by building upon the analogies of what we already know. Human wisdom and judgment is, of necessity, limited, imperfect, and provisional.
As we continue in life, we learn new facts, new ways of thinking, new experiences, all of which allow us to revisit our own convictions and beliefs, to challenge our own insights and dogmas. While we continue to assert our own understandings, the Torah is suggesting that we do so with the humility borne of knowing that we might be wrong, that our most passionate conviction may be erroneous, or based on something we will come to reject later on. This religious humility, and the consequent courage to fashion a life of meaning based on a provisional fix on timeless truth, is the highest form of saintliness—blending as it does the courage of one’s convictions with the recognition that good people may not share those convictions and they may not be wrong. In fact, because of our limited vision, we may all have only a partial truth, so that different and conflicting perceptions may each be partially true and partially distorted by our finitude.
As the ancient midrash, Otiot de-Rebbi Akiva notes, “truth has legs.” Scurrying as it does, truth eludes final capture or complete possession. We are all seekers along the way, all wandering in the wilderness, never quite making it into the Promised Land, but struggling to come closer to our sacred home.
Out of our Torah-mandated religious humility can emerge the recognition that we need each other’s insights, even where we disagree strongly, to come to know God and God’s will in the fullest way possible.
Can we help each other on the journey?
Shabbat shalom.