50.02 Inquiry (pps.39-40)

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more proper is it that we should not disagree with Philosophic Thought when we do not find the Torah disagreeing with it.
—Gersonides¹⁶⁰

The Lord informed us that complete clarification will come to us if we search and reason in every phase of the revelation.
—Saadia¹⁶¹

Support comes as well from an heir to the kabbalistic tradition, the late Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook.

As a result of this moral and intellectual refinement, a preliminary conditioning for the actions of the higher spiritual influence, there developed in the Jewish people the inclination to pursue the study and cultivation of nature, the desire for free inquiry, for a clear and rational ethic. This became the heritage of Israel, which is to be found always among Jewish groups and individuals in each generation.
—A. I. Kook¹⁶²

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¹⁶⁰ See Gersonides, Wars of the Lord, Third Treatise, chaps. 3-6, as quoted in Bleich, With Perfect Faith, p. 463. .

¹⁶¹ Saadia, Beliefs ad Opinions, Introduction.

¹⁶² Kook, The Lights of Penitence, in Bokser, Abraham Isaac Kook, p. 291. Cf. ibid., p. 371.

My soul aspires
For the mysteries,
For the hidden secrets of the universe.
It cannot be content
With much knowledge
That probes
The trivialities of life.

Cf. Kook, Orot ha-Kodesh, as cited in ibid., p. 9. “And as man grows in the scale of perfection, ne draws upon all ideas, his own and those of others, for the kernel of abiding truth. He is made more perfect through them, and they through him.”

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