000646, you gave me food for thought and I’ve been thinking the last few days if our thinking and coming to conclusions is of no consequense to us if the bottom line is that the truth is the truth, regardless of how we look at it. What if I thought my parents and teachers were hypocrates and I couldn’t take an example of what they taught? Does my analyzing and coming to conclusions mean nothing? Do we only need emunah peshutah and our thinking and analyzing has no value?
Furthermore, if reshoyim have no emunah peshutah in Judaism, which is quite understandable, then why is it their fault if they do evil things? For example, can we blame the Crusaders for killing out whole Jewish communities if their priests goaded these Crusaders to do that because of religious reasons? If the Jews didn’t want to accept their “true religion” then it was the “right” thing for these Crusaders to kill these “unbelievers” . Didn’t they have a right to their belief? Much like Islamic terrorists today, don’t they have a right to their religious belief that according to the Koran “infidels” have to be annihilated?
The answer is that within every human being Hashem gave the instinctive knowledge of the Sheva Mitzvos Bonei Noach which are mitzvos that one insticively knows that one cannot violate. To violate these mitzvos one needs to silence the inner voice that knows instinctively that to do that is wrong. Here is where humans are different than animals: they have the ability to think and come to conclusions. But if they want their conclusions to be the truth, they cannot violate their inborn instincts that a human has to know right from wrong. If we deny this, then Nazis, Hizbollah, murderers, and any evil human cannot be demanded justice of.
The same is with us Jews. We instinctively know that the Torah is true. That’s why simple Jews who had little knowledge of Judaism, gave up their lives al kiddush Hashem throughout the ages. They listened to their inner voices of emunah peshutah, because it was there. Inherent within us Jews is the knowledge that the Torah is divine. We can either use our thinking abilities to silence that belief, or to recognize our belief in the divinity of the Torah.