Q&A: Spirituality, Purpose & Major Religions - Rabbi Dovid Gottleib

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Hidabroot - Torah & Judaism’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Okay, floor is open. >> Yeah, started off. >> Fine. >> Does God want everybody to be fully observant or are there some people that are put into this world uh whose purpose it is to reach some level of observance but maybe not to go all the way? >> Oh, what a nice question. Does God want everyone to be fully observant or does God put people into the world and intends for them to just go to a certain degree? >> Right? >> Well, one thing's for sure, he puts people in the world with very different capabilities. Now, if you just measure their capabilities against the zera of the Torah, you would say uh to expect everyone to fully comply with everything in the Torah is just an impossibility. But that judgment would be factoring out divine assistance. So you could have a situation in which the starting resources that a person has aren't sufficient to reach full compliance. But as the person makes an effort, he's given more and more resources to the extent that he will be able to uh to fully comply. [clears throat] I think that that's a much more realistic picture. Um I'm just mentioning this but it's a question of orientation. Um there seems to be perhaps a um contradiction between the idea that the Torah commands a person each commandment and therefore he's responsible to do everything. And on the other hand, you can't hold a person responsible and liable for more than he's able to do, which would make it sound like what you're obligated to do is your best. You're obligated to make your best effort. You're not obligated to actually succeed in doing everything. [snorts] Um, there was a famous philosopher named Emanuel Kant who held that position. Ought implies can. to say that you ought to do something presupposes that you're able to do it.

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00Okay, floor is open. >> Yeah, started off. >> Fine. >> Does God want everybody to…
2. 6:17why why can Hashem tell us? >> Oh, so that's that's a different question. Well, we…
3. 12:37What if you just stand in the door frame? >> I'm not kidding. What? What did…
4. 18:45Golly, you can't sense atoms by touching them. So, I guess that doesn't matter if you're…
5. 24:54left when they were crying okay but there are exceptions there were reasons for the exceptions…
6. 31:01My question is not how could physical actions affect spirituality. The question is how could stuff…
7. 37:07others what your ultimate purpose is until you've had you've tried various things and see how…
8. 43:16matters in great detail and she's studied Tanakh in great detail. She writes regularly on Tanakh…
9. 49:28without some kind of intelligent providence. [snorts] Uh, I'll tell you when I was becoming religious…
10. 55:36But what about his study Torah? He has Mr. Torah also. Now he says every hour…

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