REVIEW: Articles of Faith
Gil Student, Articles of Faith: Traditional Jewish Belief in the Internet Era (Kodesh Press)
Divided as we are, we often no longer agree on how to reach conclusions, let alone the ones to reach. R. Gil Student’s Articles of Faith calls us to approach the world open to whatever is true, to be found by critical reading of relevant sources.
The old chestnut, ascribed to various Orthodox Jewish thinkers and gadflies, “the people I daven with I can’t talk to, and the people I talk to I can’t daven with,” is, thankfully, no longer the case for most intelligent Jews. And yet, many still occupy scarcely populated islands, even if they are not entirely deserted. In Student’s afterword, titled “Helping the Hashkafically Homeless,” we get a better sense of where he sees himself, trying to take the truth from whoever has it, and offers aid to those who would ferret it out, to utilize in the service of God. Articles of Faith introduces readers to a writer who is a striver for truth, an aspirant to God’s service.
Each section of the collection of essays contributes to the lesson. “The Story of Hirhurim” reviews how a hard-working financial executive ended up at the forefront of the Internet’s Torah content and conversation. In the early days of the Internet, Student (initially writing under a nom de plume), was an early adopter, harnessing the new medium to create an online community dedicated to rigorous thought about Torah and contemporary Jewish issues. It started with a blog, became a website, Hirhurim, now the online periodical TorahMusings.org. Articles of Faith celebrates the twentieth anniversary of his digital pulpit. (Full disclosure: For over a decade, TorahMusings has hosted my Torah articles.)
The Power of Reason
While Student is in many ways on Orthodoxy’s ideological and halakhic “right,” he is honest about his viewpoints and biases, and his writings show us his abiding commitment to confronting the new, open to whether and how it can be turned to the cause of spreading Torah. The book’s introduction lays out his preference for debate over polemic, and his hope that we can find our way back to reasoned discussion with those who may not be identical to us in all ways, whether we can or cannot talk to and/or daven with them. Despite his discomfort with many changes that have arisen in the Jewish world, he yearns for civil discourse, shaped by a thorough examination of all relevant information.
He then models this practice in sixteen chapters arranged around the themes of belief, technology, community, sacred texts, and Israel. The section titles alone indicate his major concerns, how to find proper faith in a world of technological change, and with communities buffeted by disputes and a loss of connection to sacred texts. The final section addresses some fundamental questions about Israel, such as whether Religious Zionism has a tenable basis in traditional Jewish sources, given the Satmar Rebbe’s attacks.
In each section, one article stands out for its length (only five in the volume run over twenty pages, together taking up roughly half the book). In those more substantive offerings, he offers thoroughgoing treatments of some important issues. In one, Student responds to Marc B. Shapiro’s The Limits of Orthodox Theology (Littman Library, 2011), and its claim that Maimonides’ Thirteen Principals are not the last word in Jewish theology. Instead, he marshals many medieval authors who clearly agreed with Maimonides’ insistence there are indeed such required beliefs, and adduces examples where faith impacts technical/practical halakha, such as which Jews might not be fit to write a sefer Torah because of lack of faith.
His defense of the authority of local rabbis is part of an overall concern with how technology causes problems. By consulting distant poskim accessed digitally or through “Rabbi Google” and circumventing their local Torah scholar, people abandon the guidance of those who know them best, who could tailor their halakhic advice to their specific circumstances, in the name of finding a way to ask greater authorities, or the Internet.
In another long article, Student returns to the mehitza controversy of old. He concedes it might have paled in importance in our times; for him, it seems to still loom large because he grew up in a non-mehitza synagogue. Showing his continued positive and even nostalgic feelings for his childhood shul, and the impact of its impressive Rav, R. David Feldman z”l, he suggests it was a needed concession to a population who would have stopped attending synagogue had they been forced to sit separate, an amputation to save the whole (to paraphrase Maimonides).Interestingly, he does not suggest the same in the following chapter, in which he stridently rejects women’s ordination. Perhaps a modicum of liberalism in hindsight is acceptable when we know how history unfolded, as opposed to the challenges and crises facing us in the moment.
The final long chapter analyzes forgiving a terrorist. It started out as a defense of an idea articulated by R. Jonathan Sacks z”l concerning the nature of forgiveness; after the terrible events of October 7, 2023, Student updated the essay to include the issue of terrorists. He reviews where and why we forgive others who have wronged us, when they have repented and/or made amends sufficiently for us to be obligated or allowed to forgive, and shows how that might fit even in cases of terrorists.
There’s obviously more, but what I have synopsized here shows the education that awaits readers. They will meet an author whose self-described move to the right has not negated his sympathy for the Judaism of his youth, nor closed him to influences from the “left.” Three of the chapters marked yahrzeits observed since R. Sacks’ passing, and Student tells us he found “great inspiration and insight” in the writings and thought of that late and lamented figure.
The same openness to truth wherever it presents itself seems to me at the root of his original turn to the Internet and blogging two decades ago. He insisted on engaging with a technological platform that others, at the time, saw only as a danger. The mixture of openness and fidelity has paid off, and helped produce the writer that today can author a chapter titled “Helping the Hashkafically Homeless”—he knows; he’s been there.
If we don’t knee-jerk our way through life, we can find ourselves without a clear and obvious ideological home. Articles of Faith reminds us we are not alone, shows examples of how to think through thorny issues of our day, and beckons those who do not yet act this way to remember truth is found by careful and judicious search. It is the long shorter path.
Rabbi Dr. Gidon Rothstein teaches at WebYeshiva.org, blogs at TorahMusings.com, and writes Jewishly-themed fiction and non-fiction.