The voice within

Rabbi Elazar ben Arach teaches (Avot 2:19) 

הֱוֵי שָׁקוּד לִלְמוֹד תּוֹרָה. וְדַע מַה שֶּׁתָּשִׁיב לְאֶפִּיקוּרוּס. וְדַע לִפְנֵי מִי אַתָּה עָמֵל, וּמִי הוּא בַּֽעַל מְלַאכְתֶּֽךָ שֶׁיְּשַׁלֶּם לָךְ שְׂכַר פְּעֻלָּתֶֽך

In translation: “Be diligent in the study of Torah. Know what to answer a heretic. And know before whom you toil, and who is your employer who will repay you the reward for your labour”.

The first two parts of this tripartite teaching are often taken together, the idea being that it is only through careful and dedicated study that a believing Jew will be able to handle questions that a non-believer may aim at him in order to undermine his faith.

Rabbi Reuven Melamed, whose Melitz Yosher commentary on Avot I have often cited, makes reference to a sharp observation by the Ponevez mashgiach. We generally assume that the epikuros, the non-believer, poses an external threat to one’s faith in God and His Torah. We should not however discount the danger of the epikuros who lurks within. This is the power which every person possesses to challenge and undermine even a person’s deepest-held convictions. If we do not truly understand and internalise what we believe and our reasons for holding our beliefs, they are always potentially vulnerable to self-doubt.

As several scholars have pointed out, the quality of non-believers and heretics has changed greatly over the past two millennia. In the era of the Tannaim to whom we attribute our mishnayot, religion and religious rites played a far greater role in the lives of Jews and non-Jews alike. Any challenge by an epikuros was therefore far more likely to be made by a person who was knowledgeable and quite familiar with Jewish beliefs and who was therefore able to take issue with an individual’s faith on a detailed, granular level. Nowadays the challenge is more likely to come from those who have neither faith nor knowledge of how faith works, and who argue from more general philosophical or scientific principles. Such an epikuros cannot be impressed or fended off by one’s knowledge of Torah because that knowledge is not relevant to the sort of challenges that the modern epikuros might make. Torah knowledge and understanding will however remain relevant when a person faces his or her own internal doubts and uncertainties.