The Echo of Sinai

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Author: Yehuda Halevi

Composed: c.1120 - c.1140 CE

The Kuzari [The Kuzari, full title Book of Refutation and Proof on Behalf of the Despised Religion] was written by Yehuda Halevi (Spain, 1075 – 1141). Originally written in Arabic, it describes how the king of the Khazars (an Asian tribe that converted to Judaism in the eighth century), in an attempt to determine which is the true religion, invites representatives of each of the three major religions to come and explain his beliefs. The group includes a Muslim imam, a Christian priest and a rabbi. The king is won over by the rabbi's arguments, and during the ensuing dialogue, the rabbi demonstrates the superiority of his faith by bringing clear proof to the biblical account of the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and explaining the commandments in rational terms. Instead of using complicated philosophical ideas, he bases his arguments on history, tradition, and common sense. In the introduction, the author states that the purpose of his work is to reply to the attacks of those who wish to denigrate Judaism. The Kuzari is considered one of the most important works of Jewish apologetica and has been reprinted many times in several languages. Sefaria Intro to The Kuzari

"The fact of revelation, recongnized in ancient times and in their own day, is the proof of the belief in God."

"This historical phenomenom of religion"

"A religious lifew is to be regarded in the first place as a fact of experience..."

"The testiomony of History"

Jehuda Halevi: Kuzari. Abridged edition with an introduction and a commentary by Isaak Heinemann Hardcover – January 1, 1947

The Kuzari Principle famously argues that the revelation at Sinai had to have happened, since it would have been too difficult to spread such a story, after the fact, if it hadn’t really happened.^[4] How does a story about a mass revelation, a story which includes the claim that the memory of the event was transmitted from generation to generation without break, come to be accepted if it wasn’t true?

See: Modern Faith in Sinai, Dr. Rabbi Samuel Lebens https://www.thetorah.com/article/modern-faith-in-sinai

St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury first set forth the Ontological Argument in the eleventh century.

A. If God is a being greater than which none can be conceived
B. And since it is greater to exist in the mind and in reality than in the mind alone
C. Then God must exist both in the mind and in reality;
D. In short, God must be. God is not merely an intra-mental concept but an extra-mental reality as well.

Rene Descartes, 1596 - 1650, is also credited with formulating a version of the ontological argument. One possible presentation of the Cartesian argument is as follows:

1. If there is a God it is a perfect being;

2. A perfect being possesses all possible perfections;

3. Existence is a perfection;

4.Therefore, God necessarily possesses the quality of existence. Simply, God exists.

Cogito Ergo Sum - I Think Therefor I am

Emanual Kant: The categorical imperative (German: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it is a way of evaluating motivations for action. It is best known in its original formulation:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Escaping Judaism - Harry Austryn Wolfson (November 2, 1887 – September 19, 1974)

It is perhaps quite true that we all come into the physical world with a mind as blank as a tabula rasa, endowed only with potentialities which are vague and formless; but by the time we awaken to conscious membership in the world of men and society we discover that our blank mind is already impregnated with definite thoughts and ideas, that our vague potentialities are already charged with definite tendencies; and all this has come to pass through the medium of the very environment which sustains our life and by the agency of the same individuals who are responsible for our physical existence and our well-being. We can no more strip ourselves of our social inheritance than we can of our physical inheritance.

I imagine that the Jewish religious problem could be solved at once, for all Jews, and for all time, if we could start on a given day with a new generation of Jews and raise them in absolute freedom from all traces of Jewish influence.

But we cannot rid ourselves of our past without destroying our present and ruining our future. It is the crux of our Jewish as well as our general problems that to continue to be whatever we happen to be makes in the long run for the greatest human happiness—that our devotion and duties are as much an integral part of ourselves as our very life—that man does no more voluntarily change his mode of living than he takes his life—and that if wars to destroy life are unjustifiable then social revolutions to destroy established forms are likewise unjustifiable.

The solution of the religious problem for Jews to whom the problem is real, lies not in the complete elimination of this disturbing element or in impoverishing the content of that element by depriving it of any of its essential characteristics, but rather in the discovery of a new and more satisfactory means of adjustment of this religious interest to all the other interests.

All men are not born equal. Some are born blind, some deaf, some lame, and some are born Jews. The blind , the deaf, the lame all have to forego many a good thing of life. To be isolated, to be deprived of many social goods and advantages, is our common lot as Jews. Are we willing to submit to Fate, or shall we foolishly struggle against it?

Escaping Judaism, By Harry Austryn Wolfson · 1923

Emil Ludwig Fackenheim (22 June 1916 – 18 September 2003) God's Presence in History

The 614th Commandment:

Emil Fackenheim created this concept of the "614th commandment" (or "614th mitzvah.") The "614th Commandment" can be interpreted as a moral imperative that Jews not use the facts of the Holocaust to give up on God, Judaism or—in the case of secular Jews as well—on the continuing survival of the Jewish people, thereby giving Hitler a "posthumous victory". see

Auschwitz will forever resist religious explanations as well. … No purpose, religious or non-religious, will ever be found in Auschwitz. The very attempt to find one is blasphemous.

I confess that it took me twenty years until I was able to look at this scandal, but when at length I did, I made what to me was, and still is, a momentous discovery: that while religious thinkers were vainly struggling for a response to Auschwitz, Jews throughout the world— rich and poor, learned and ignorant, religious and non-religious—had to some degree been responding all along. For twelve long years Jews had been exposed to a murderous hate which was as groundless as it was implacable. For twelve long years the world had been lukewarm or indifferent, unconcerned over the prospect of a world without Jews. For twelve long years the whole world had conspired to make Jews wish to cease to be Jews wherever, whenever, and in whatever way they could. Yet to this unprecedented invitation to group-suicide Jews responded with an unexpected will-to-live—with, under the circumstances, an incredible commitment to Jewish group survival.

For in the age of Auschwitz a Jewish commitment to Jewish survival is in itself a monumental act of faithfulness, as well as a monumental, albeit as yet fragmentary, act of faith. ... the Jew after Auschwitz has a second Shema Yisrael:

What accounts for this commitment to Jewish existence when there might have been, and by every rule of human logic should have been, a terrified and demoralized flight from Jewish existence? Why, since Auschwitz, have all previous distinctions among Jews—between religious and secularist, Orthodox and liberal—diminished in importance, to be replaced by a new major distinction between Jews committed to Jewish survival, willing to be singled out and counted, and Jews in flight, who rationalize this flight as a rise to humanity-in[1]general? In my view, nothing less will do than to say that a commanding Voice speaks from Auschwitz, and that there are Jews who hear it and Jews who stop their ears.

Jewish Faith and the Holocaust: A Fragment, by Emil L. Fackenheim, AUGUST 1968 Commentary Magazine