There was a time when Judaism produced giants who saw no contradiction between Torah and reason. The greatest example remains Maimonides, the Rambam, who was simultaneously a rabbi, physician, philosopher, scientist, and legal scholar. He believed that the human mind was one of God’s greatest gifts and that ignorance was not a virtue. To know God required study, observation, and intellectual honesty. Judaism, in his view, demanded rigorous thinking.

Yet somewhere along the way, large segments of the ultra-Orthodox world abandoned that tradition. Reason slowly became suspect. Critical thinking became dangerous. Questions became acts of rebellion. Intellectual curiosity became something to suppress rather than cultivate. Entire communities increasingly defined piety not by wisdom but by obedience.

The tragedy is not merely educational. It is civilizational. When children are taught that secular knowledge is worthless, when science is treated as a threat, when history is rewritten to fit ideological needs, and when independent thought is discouraged, a culture inevitably begins to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)