Can you enlighten me on the whole Jews love to Argue thing? Why was that a thing? Is it still a thing today?
Hehehehe. Yes, we love to argue. We still love to argue. We have been arguing for at least three thousand years and it’s shown no sign of slowing down.
Okay, so to keep this from getting too long, the short joking version is that we argue as a religious mandate. And that’s only half a joke, because the Jewish religion is an orthoprax religion (correct action) as opposed to the Christian religion, which is an orthodox religion (correct belief). We define the correct action as adherence to the mitzvot–which means “commandment/duty/obligation/responsibility”–of which there are 613 given to the Jews by God.
Buuuuut—and here is where the arguing comes in–how do we define “adherence”? How do we define the “mitzvah”–especially in a world very difference from that of our ancestors?
So we end up with a very legalistic view in the fulfillment of these commandments (and despite the common refrain from gentiles, these are not done with the intent of “tricking God”). It’s essentially a mindset of “How can we meaningfully fulfill these rules over time?” And so there’s debate and argument over how to do that.
Let me give an example, but a short one, because this is already getting lengthy.
One of the Commandments is “Keep the Sabbath day holy.”
So what does that mean?
Well, you’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath, among other things.
Now we have to define “work”–and we have. There are 39 categories of forbidden labor on the Sabbath. To do any of these qualifies as “work”.
One of the categories is “transferring between domains”–basically, no carrying loads of stuff between one property and another (there’s more nuance than that, but I’m not getting into the details). Now, an enclosed city, for the purposes of the law, counts as a single space, so you can carry your prayerbooks with you on the Shabbos to and from synagogue, and housekeys and the food you’re bringing with you to lunch at your friend’s house… but that’s in an enclosed city with walls. We don’t have many of those anymore, and not every city has been enclosed in history.
So, in order to keep from violating the commandment about keeping the Shabbos holy, we put up what’s called an eruv, which in modern cities is just a wire strung from telephone poles, as a way to designate a given area as “enclosed” for the purposes of the commandment.
But there’s debate on what qualifies as an eruv. My next door neighbors, when growing up, said that the neighborhood eruv wasn’t sufficient for them, and treated the area as unenclosed.
So we argue with each other over these things. According to our stories, we’ve argued with God, going all the way back to Abraham, who argued with God over saving Sodom and Gomorrah, and Jacob, who wrestled with an angel.
And we’ve continued to argue with God. There’s a story where a group of rabbis were arguing over a new type of oven and its resistance to ritual contamination (a big deal in Judaism). One rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer, was in the minority position, that the oven was resistant, while everyone else said, “no, it gets contaminated like all other ovens”. So R’ Eliezer basically performed miracles to support his argument–the river running backwards, a tree getting up and moving, etc. But the other rabbis basically went, “Yeah, miracles have no standing in a debate on law, only reason.” Finally, Eliezer said, “If I’m right, then let God say so!”
And a voice calls down from Heaven, “Rabbi Eliezer is correct.”
And all of the rabbis basically looked up and said, “You stay out of this! You gave us the responsibility to interpret these laws You gave us, You don’t get to take it back now! The Torah is not in heaven!” (i.e. it’s an earthly document and we do our best to the best of our abilities).
And God basically politely bowed out of the argument, laughing on how they were right.
So when you have a culture that has no problems in arguing with God, and a setup that encourages argument…
Yeah, we relish a good argument. We have the commentaries of the ancient sages where they argued with each other over how to fulfill the laws, we have the commentaries of the slightly-less-ancient sages on those commentaries, we have the historical commentaries on those commentaries, we have the medieval analyses (with commentaries) of those commentaries, and it is still going on, TODAY.
Annnnd that got longer than I had intended. But how was I supposed to do it without supporting examples? :D
