6 The Kuzari Proof

The flaw in the proof from Tzaddikim is that it is not strictly logical. Although somewhat based on logic, it is not a proof that will survive over time (i.e. it will not be relevant in 200 years time, unless at that time there will be other Tzaddikim performing miracles), and it has an emotional element to it. The problem with emotional arguments is that they are inherently not strong arguments – what is one to do when faced with an opposing emotional argument?

Therefore, because of this flaw, there is the next proof, commonly known as the Kuzari proof, which is strictly logical.

The Kuzari Proof

This is a famous proof, which is brought down by almost all of the Rishonim, but is explained more at length specifically by Rambam, in the eighth chapter of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah; the Chinuch, in the introduction to his book; the Abarbanel, in his commentary to Exodus, chapters 19 and 20; and the Kuzari.

Unfortunately, this proof is commonly presented in the wrong way, which gives the impression that we are bringing a proof based on the account of the Torah, which in turn proves the truth of our religion. That doesn’t really work, as it doesn’t explain why we should assume that the Torah is true in the first place.

The correct version starts off with the assumption that the Torah is not true. However, we observe the fact that in our generation, we have hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, who claim that they were told by their parents, who were, in turn, told by their parents, in a chain going all the way back to the beginnings of our nation, that they personally witnessed G-d speaking to Moses and giving him the Torah at Mount Sinai.

Since such a tradition cannot be fabricated, therefore it must be true. So, it is us, the people, who provide the proof that the Torah is true.

Now, I know that this argument may seem flimsy at first glance. However, once one starts trying to fight with it, one realizes just how hard it is to get out of. I have not yet heard a realistic, alternative, explanation for this tradition.

I will list some of the more common arguments I have heard against this proof:

1. One suggestion I have heard, is that maybe it was a misunderstood natural event. Maybe the people had encountered a ferocious thunderstorm, perhaps a volcanic eruption, or something similar, which was then misconstrued to be a Divine revelation. My problem with this suggestion is that I cannot think of a single natural event that can create even a single intelligible sentence in Hebrew, which is what the people heard.

2. Another suggestion I’ve encountered is that although it is true that we have this tradition, it could be that it slowly developed over time.  Perhaps our ancestors witnessed some major event that over time grew into a story of a Divine revelation. The obvious problem with this approach is that if something develops over time among many different people, it does not do so in a uniform fashion. If this suggestion was true, we should have many different traditions that vary wildly; we should not have the tradition we have, where everyone attests to a Divine revelation.

3. A third suggestion, probably the most common one, is that perhaps the people of the original generation were very naïve, to a much greater extent than our generation. Therefore, perhaps the reason for the origin of this tradition stems from our ancestors having a very charismatic leader, who convinced them that they had witnessed a Divine revelation, when in fact they had not. 

There is a significant logical problem with this argument though: if we assume that the original generations were very naïve, and we also observe that our generation is not like that, then that change had to happen at some point in time between the first generation and ours. One can argue that at that point, whenever it was, the chain would be broken, as the children who are more cynical than their parents would come to the logical conclusion that the tradition that they received is probably not true, as their parents are naïve enough to believe anything.

I’m not suggesting that this change, from being naturally naïve to becoming cynical, happened across the entire nation at one time, nor am I even suggesting that the change was a sudden and abrupt one. Even allowing for it to be a gradual process, and happening in different families in different generations, it would seem to be a reasonable conclusion that whenever that point was reached within each family, where the children were able to analyze this tradition from a rational viewpoint, at that point the chain would be broken for that family. 

This argument is further bolstered from the observation of recent generations, where many Jewish people became irreligious, for a variety of factors. Most commonly, they did not continue the chain and pass on this tradition to the children, as they felt that it was not true.

In a similar, though slightly different, fashion, if the people of the original generation were so simple-minded that they could be convinced that they witnessed something, when in fact they did not, the chain of this tradition should not have passed on until our generation. So if nonetheless, the tradition managed to survive until our times, that would be because the above scenario, that the original generation was overly simplistic and naive, never happened.

4. Some people try to compare this tradition to the creation myths that other nations have, and try to infer from them that our tradition is as untrustworthy as theirs. The difference, though, is hard to miss, as the creation myths are not of events that are claimed to have been witnessed by the original people themselves, rather of events that happened long before their times, which is very different from our case. Most importantly, none of these traditions have an unbroken chain of the father telling his son: I saw this personally.

5. A fifth argument is to compare our tradition with other traditions of mass revelation, as is attributed to the Aztecs. Again, there is a major difference between the two cases, as we do not have in our generation thousands of Aztecs who claim that they received this tradition from their parents, in a chain reaching backing to the original generation who were present. Rather, we know of this tradition from documents that were transcribed in previous generations, so we first have to establish the veracity of those documents in the first place.

There are other arguments often made (i.e. Josiah and Ezra, reliability of tradition etc. etc.) but they all do not bear out at the end. I discuss many of them here:

What makes this tradition so unique is a combination of five factors: a) there is a common tradition held by, at least, several hundred thousand people, which is b) specifically told over from parent to child, in a private setting, where the parents claim that c) they were told by their parents that, d) they personally witnessed Mattan Torah themselves, that included e) a clear, understandable message from G-d to Moshe. If any of those factors would be untrue, then that would severely weaken, if not completely invalidate, my entire argument.

Although this proof is quite powerful, it too, contains its own flaws. Firstly, there is always the possibility that at some point in the future, one will learn more information that could cause him to reconsider his conclusion, and secondly, perhaps as a result of the first flaw, there is the additional flaw that this proof generally does not inspire one to keep Halachah beyond its most minimal requirements.

Therefore, there is the additional proof from the miracles performed by Tzaddikim, and I believe that it is a combination of both of these proofs, that creates the certainty that Judaism is true.