Belief, Doubt, and the Open Path of Torah

Over time, I have come to believe that one of the greatest challenges facing observant Judaism is the false choice we are so often asked to make. We are told that we must choose between fidelity to Torah and openness toward other Jews. We must either defend traditional Jewish belief and practice so rigidly that we push away anyone who struggles, or we must weaken the claims of Torah so thoroughly that observance becomes little more than a personal preference.

I no longer accept that choice.

The approach to Judaism that I call Derekh HaTorah—the Way of the Torah—begins with a firm commitment to the Written Torah and the authoritative Oral Torah as codified by the Rambam in the Mishneh Torah. I believe in God, in the covenant between God and Israel, in the enduring obligation of the commandments, and in the responsibility of the Jewish people to live lives shaped by holiness, justice, discipline, compassion, and worship.

At the same time, I believe that Torah must never become a weapon with which one Jew humiliates another. Observance should produce humility rather than arrogance. Knowledge should produce responsibility rather than superiority. Faith should lead us to serve others, not to stand over them in judgment.

Derekh HaTorah therefore does not treat belief as meaningless. Belief matters. What we understand about God, Torah, covenant, and human responsibility shapes the way we live. Yet neither does Derekh HaTorah treat the person who doubts as an enemy, an outsider, or a failed Jew. A Jew who questions God remains a Jew. A Jew who struggles with faith remains part of Israel. A Jew who presently describes themselves as an agnostic, an atheist, a humanist, a rationalist, or simply uncertain remains someone whom I am called to serve.

My responsibility as a rabbi is not limited to Jews who already agree with me. I am not called only to teach those who already possess traditional beliefs, observe the commandments, understand Hebrew, attend synagogue, or fit comfortably into Orthodox communal life. I am called to help all Jews draw closer to Torah, to one another, and to the covenantal responsibilities that have shaped our people.

That work must begin with honesty. Traditional Judaism cannot say that belief in God is irrelevant. It cannot pretend that Torah is merely a collection of cultural memories or optional ethical suggestions. Yet it also cannot forget that Israel has always been a people of struggle. Our Scriptures are filled with questions, arguments, grief, protest, uncertainty, and human beings trying to understand the ways of God.

The faithful Jew and the struggling Jew are not two different peoples. They are members of the same family.

Torah as the Foundation

Derekh HaTorah begins with Torah.

The Written Torah provides the foundation of Jewish belief, worship, ethics, and practice. The authoritative rulings of the Oral Torah, especially as systematically preserved in the Mishneh Torah of the Rambam, guide the practical observance of the commandments. The Prophets and Writings illuminate, reinforce, challenge, and inspire us, but they do not replace or overturn the Torah upon which the covenant rests.

This foundation is important because an open Judaism cannot be a Judaism without substance. Welcoming people does not require us to surrender our convictions. Compassion does not require doctrinal confusion. Respecting someone who disagrees with me does not require me to pretend that our disagreements are insignificant.

I believe that God is real. I believe that Israel stands within a covenant. I believe that the commandments are obligations rather than merely customs. I believe that Jewish life should be ordered around prayer, study, ethical conduct, Shabbat, festivals, dietary discipline, communal responsibility, and the sanctification of ordinary life.

These beliefs form the theological structure of Derekh HaTorah. They are not hidden, minimized, or apologized for.

Nevertheless, the Torah I seek to uphold is also the Torah that commands us to love our neighbor, protect the vulnerable, pursue justice, care for the stranger, speak honestly, avoid humiliation, and judge others with fairness. It is impossible to defend Torah faithfully while violating its moral demands in the way we treat other people.

Orthodoxy cannot mean possessing correct beliefs while behaving cruelly. Observance cannot mean punctilious ritual combined with contempt for less observant Jews. Fidelity to Torah cannot be measured solely by what we refuse to eat, how we pray, or which customs we follow. It must also be visible in our patience, generosity, honesty, compassion, and restraint.

Torah is not only something we defend. It is something we must embody.

Belief Matters, but Belief Is Not a Weapon

My present understanding differs from the idea that Judaism is concerned only with behavior and not with belief. The Torah does make claims about God, creation, covenant, revelation, worship, and human responsibility. Jewish theology is not meaningless, and the difference between worshipping God and denying God cannot simply be erased.

Yet acknowledging the importance of belief does not give us permission to interrogate every Jew’s inner life or to turn theology into a test of human worth.

Belief is often more complicated than the labels people use. A person may say that they are an atheist while still feeling a deep attachment to prayer, Jewish history, Torah, or the rhythms of Shabbat. Another may call themselves a believer while rarely considering what that belief requires of them. One person may speak confidently about God but live without compassion. Another may be unable to affirm God’s existence while devoting their life to justice, kindness, and the welfare of others.

These differences matter, but they should make us humble.

Human beings do not always control what they are able to believe. Faith cannot be produced through intimidation. A person cannot simply command themselves to possess certainty. Doubt may arise from intellectual questions, personal suffering, disappointment with religious institutions, traumatic experiences, unanswered prayers, or the behavior of religious people who claimed to speak for God while acting without mercy.

When a Jew says, “I do not know whether I believe,” the proper response is not condemnation. It is listening.

When a Jew says, “I cannot accept what I was taught about God,” the proper response is not expulsion. It is patient study and honest conversation.

When a Jew says, “I want Jewish life, but I am uncertain about theology,” the proper response is not to close the door. It is to invite them to learn, pray, question, observe, and discover what Torah may yet become in their life.

I can affirm traditional Jewish belief without demanding that every Jew arrive at the same place at the same time. I can teach what I believe to be true without pretending that coercion produces faith. I can encourage belief while recognizing that doubt is often part of the journey.

All Jews Are Jewish

The open approach of Derekh HaTorah begins with a simple conviction: all Jews are Jewish.

A Jew does not cease to be Jewish because they are not observant. A Jew does not lose their place among Israel because they belong to another movement, possess little Jewish education, question traditional teachings, or presently reject religious practice. A Jew who has never attended a synagogue is still a Jew. A Jew who cannot read Hebrew is still a Jew. A Jew who has been alienated by religious institutions is still a Jew.

This does not mean that observance is unimportant. It means that observance is not the source of a Jew’s basic human dignity or their membership in the Jewish people.

I want to encourage every Jew to grow. For one person, that may mean learning to recite a blessing. For another, it may mean beginning to observe Shabbat. Someone else may begin studying Torah, keeping kosher, attending communal prayer, repairing a damaged relationship, giving tzedakah, or becoming more honest in business. Another may simply begin asking questions after years of indifference.

Growth does not always happen in a straight line. It cannot be forced. It is rarely produced by shame.

The task of the rabbi, teacher, or observant Jew is not to stand at the door demanding proof of worthiness. Our task is to open the door, teach clearly, answer honestly, model a life of Torah, and walk beside those who are willing to take even a few steps.

There is a profound difference between teaching that a commandment is binding and treating someone who does not yet observe it with contempt. There is a difference between disagreement and rejection. There is a difference between conviction and gatekeeping.

Derekh HaTorah seeks to preserve those distinctions.

Righteousness in the Midst of Doubt

Although belief matters, a person’s doubts do not erase the goodness of their deeds.

A Jew who feeds the hungry performs an act of righteousness even if they struggle to understand God. A Jew who visits the sick, comforts the grieving, gives generously, speaks truthfully, protects the vulnerable, and seeks justice is doing something of genuine value. We should not dismiss such acts because the person performing them cannot articulate a traditional theology.

At the same time, Derekh HaTorah does not reduce mitzvot to humanistic ethics alone. A mitzvah is more than a useful social practice. It is part of the covenantal life of Israel. The commandments shape our relationship with God, with other human beings, with the Jewish people, and with the world entrusted to us.

The person who gives tzedakah because God commands it and the person who gives because compassion moves them may understand their actions differently. Those differences are real. Yet both have relieved suffering. Both have strengthened another human being. Both may have taken a step toward the moral vision of Torah.

Rather than arguing that intention and theology never matter, I would say that righteous action can become a doorway.

Sometimes we understand before we act. Sometimes we act before we understand. At Sinai, Israel declared, “We will do, and we will hear.” Jewish life has always recognized that practice can educate the heart. A person may begin lighting Shabbat candles because of family memory and later discover holiness in the act. A person may begin studying Torah as literature and eventually hear within it a divine demand. A person may enter a synagogue seeking community and gradually begin to pray.

Not every journey leads to the same destination, but no sincere step toward Torah should be despised.

The Prophetic Demand

The prophets repeatedly warned Israel against the separation of ritual from righteousness. They did not abolish worship or commandments. They condemned the hypocrisy of performing religious acts while oppressing the poor, exploiting the vulnerable, corrupting justice, or ignoring suffering.

Their message remains necessary.

Traditional Judaism must never use ritual observance as a shield against moral accountability. A person cannot mistreat employees, humiliate strangers, abuse family members, deceive business partners, or speak cruelly about other Jews and then imagine that religious observance makes these actions unimportant.

The prophets remind us that God demands integrity.

Justice, mercy, humility, honesty, and compassion are not modern additions to Judaism. They stand near the center of Torah’s moral vision. The commandments governing worship and the commandments governing human relationships belong to the same covenant. We do not honor God by treating other human beings as though they have no dignity.

This prophetic emphasis does not turn the Tanakh into a merely humanist document. The prophets speak in the name of God. Their moral demands arise from the covenant. Their concern for justice is inseparable from their understanding of divine holiness.

Yet their words can still reach the Jew who doubts. A person may not be ready to affirm prophecy as revelation, but they can still hear the call to justice. They can still be challenged by the demand to protect the weak, reject corruption, and live with humility.

That response should be encouraged, not belittled. It may be the beginning of a deeper relationship with Torah.

Beyond Humanist and Atheist Labels

I understand why some Jews describe themselves as humanist, atheist, agnostic, secular, cultural, or spiritual but not religious. These labels may express sincere convictions. They may also help people distance themselves from forms of religion they have experienced as irrational, coercive, political, or cruel.

I do not seek to take those convictions away from anyone by force.

Nevertheless, I believe that these labels can sometimes become too small for the fullness of Jewish identity. A Jew is more than their answer to a philosophical question about the existence of God. Jewish identity includes peoplehood, history, family, memory, covenant, language, ethics, ritual, responsibility, suffering, hope, and a shared inheritance extending across generations.

Atheism tells us what a person does not believe. Humanism tells us something about the value they place upon human reason and dignity. Neither term, by itself, can contain the fullness of being a Jew.

A Jew who doubts God is still more than a doubter. A Jew who emphasizes human responsibility is still an heir to Israel. A Jew who rejects supernatural claims may still feel the pull of Torah, the beauty of Shabbat, the grief of Jewish history, and the responsibility to preserve Jewish life.

Derekh HaTorah invites such a person to place their Jewishness before their philosophical label.

You do not have to pretend to believe what you do not believe. Intellectual honesty matters. But neither must you allow a modern ideological category to separate you from your people. You may come to Torah with your questions. You may enter Jewish life without first resolving every metaphysical uncertainty. You may study, observe, pray, serve, and belong while wrestling.

The name Israel has long been understood through the image of struggling with God. That struggle may take the form of devotion, argument, silence, doubt, obedience, anger, longing, or philosophical inquiry. What matters is that we do not walk away from one another.

Let God remain your question when necessary. Let Torah remain open before you. Let the Jewish people remain your family.

Action and Faith Belong Together

The original impulse behind many forms of Humanist Judaism is understandable. They seek to preserve Jewish ethics and community without requiring beliefs that some people cannot honestly affirm. They recognize, correctly, that a person can perform noble deeds without possessing religious certainty.

Yet Derekh HaTorah goes further by refusing to separate ethics from covenant or action from faith.

Judaism is not a religion of belief alone. But neither is it a system of behavior emptied of God. It is a covenantal way of life in which belief, practice, character, community, and responsibility belong together.

Faith should lead to action. Action can deepen faith. Study can challenge both. Doubt can expose shallow assumptions. Prayer can transform understanding. Mitzvot can discipline the body and educate the heart.

These parts of Jewish life should not be set against one another.

The goal is not to decide whether belief or action is more important. The goal is to become whole human beings whose beliefs, practices, and character increasingly reflect the holiness of Torah.

Some people begin with belief and gradually learn to live it. Others begin with practice and gradually discover meaning. Some begin with ethics. Some begin with community. Some begin with grief, curiosity, family memory, or a desire to give their children something more enduring than cultural nostalgia.

Derekh HaTorah welcomes all of these beginnings while continuing to point toward a fuller life of Torah.

A Traditional Judaism Without Sectarianism

I describe Derekh HaTorah as traditional and observant, but I do not believe that fidelity to Torah requires allegiance to every modern Orthodox institution, social convention, political ideology, or denominational conflict.

Orthodoxy, as I understand it, is fidelity to Torah. It is not conformity to a particular subculture.

Later customs may be meaningful. Communal institutions may be valuable. Rabbinic opinions deserve serious study. Yet we must distinguish the binding commandments of Torah from later customs, institutional policies, social expectations, and political ideologies.

When these categories are confused, Judaism can become unnecessarily burdensome and exclusionary. People may be told that they are rejecting Torah when they are merely questioning a local custom. They may be treated as religiously deficient because they do not conform to a community’s political views, clothing standards, cultural preferences, or institutional loyalties.

Derekh HaTorah seeks to return attention to the foundation: the Written Torah and the authoritative Oral Torah.

This return does not produce a weaker Judaism. It produces a clearer one.

It also allows us to treat disagreement with greater honesty. We can distinguish between a violation of Torah law and a difference of custom. We can distinguish between foundational belief and nonbinding speculation. We can distinguish between Jewish obligation and communal habit.

Such distinctions make openness possible without abandoning standards.

The Rabbi as Teacher and Servant

My understanding of the rabbinate has also changed.

A rabbi should not be primarily a gatekeeper. A rabbi is a teacher, guide, pastor, servant, and guardian of Torah. The rabbi should help people live more meaningful, disciplined, ethical, and observant Jewish lives. The rabbi should be present in moments of joy, grief, confusion, conflict, and transition.

This means serving Jews who do not live as I live.

I may personally observe Shabbat, keep kosher, pray, study Torah, and accept traditional Jewish theology. The person sitting across from me may do none of these things. That difference does not release me from responsibility toward them. In many cases, it increases that responsibility.

They may need a patient teacher rather than a critic. They may need someone willing to answer basic questions without making them feel ignorant. They may need help reconnecting with Jewish life after years of absence. They may need to know that a synagogue will not embarrass them because they cannot follow the service. They may need assurance that disagreement will not lead to humiliation.

Most importantly, they may need to see that Torah observance can produce kindness.

A rabbi who teaches Torah but drives Jews away through arrogance has failed in something essential. A community that protects its boundaries so aggressively that sincere people cannot enter has mistaken isolation for holiness.

We do not preserve Judaism by making Jews afraid of Jewish spaces.

We preserve Judaism by living Torah so faithfully and compassionately that people can see its beauty.

Welcoming the Sincere Seeker

The same openness should be extended to those who sincerely seek to join the Jewish people.

Conversion must be serious because covenant is serious. A prospective convert should learn Jewish belief, practice, history, ethics, worship, and communal responsibility. They should understand that becoming Jewish is not merely adopting private spiritual ideas. It is joining a people and accepting a way of life.

Seriousness, however, is not the same as hostility.

The conversion process should not be intentionally humiliating, arbitrarily expensive, needlessly prolonged, or structured primarily to search for reasons to reject people. Its purpose should be to educate, prepare, support, and welcome the sincere convert.

The Torah repeatedly commands care for the convert. An observant community should therefore be especially cautious not to treat converts as permanent outsiders or lesser Jews. Once a person has sincerely entered the covenant, they should be embraced fully as part of Israel.

An open approach does not mean careless conversion. It means accessible, honest, supportive, and responsible conversion.

We should not coerce anyone to become Jewish. At the same time, we should not be afraid to speak openly about what Judaism offers: ethical monotheism, covenantal responsibility, disciplined practice, sacred community, reverence for life, commitment to justice, and the sanctification of the ordinary.

Judaism has something profound to offer the world. We need not hide it.

A Place for the Believer and the Doubter

In the Jewish life I seek to encourage, there is no examination at the door.

The believer and the doubter may sit beside one another. The observant Jew and the Jew taking their first steps may study together. The person who lights Shabbat candles because God commanded it may stand beside the person who lights them because they remember a grandmother or long for peace in their home.

They may understand the act differently, but they can still share the light.

This does not mean that theological differences disappear. It means that those differences do not have to destroy fellowship.

The traditional Jew should be able to say, without embarrassment, “I believe in God, Torah, and covenant.” The doubting Jew should be able to say, without fear, “I am not certain what I believe.” Both should be able to enter the conversation honestly.

From there, we study. We question. We disagree. We practice. We listen. We remain family.

The goal is not to create a community in which nothing matters. The goal is to create a Jewish life in which truth can be pursued without cruelty and disagreement can exist without exclusion.

The Way of Torah

Derekh HaTorah is my attempt to hold together commitments that should never have been separated.

It is a commitment to traditional Jewish belief without theological arrogance.

It is a commitment to observance without sectarianism.

It is a commitment to Torah without denominational politics.

It is a commitment to ethical seriousness without reducing Judaism to secular humanism.

It is a commitment to Jewish unity without pretending that all interpretations are equally authoritative.

It is a commitment to teaching, invitation, and encouragement rather than condemnation and gatekeeping.

I believe that Jews should be encouraged to become more observant, more knowledgeable, more disciplined, more compassionate, and more deeply connected to God and Torah. Yet I also believe that such growth must be invited rather than forced. Shame may produce outward conformity for a time, but it rarely produces love of Torah.

We must teach clearly and welcome generously.

We must be honest about what Judaism asks while remaining patient with those who are not yet able or willing to accept every obligation.

We must uphold belief without treating doubt as a moral defect.

We must uphold mitzvot without imagining that observance makes us superior.

We must defend the covenant while remembering that every Jew remains part of the people of Israel.

A Judaism that abandons Torah cannot guide us. A Judaism that abandons compassion does not deserve to speak in Torah’s name.

Derekh HaTorah seeks another way: the ancient way of covenant joined with the enduring demand for justice, humility, mercy, and holiness.

Belief can guide us. Doubt can challenge us. Mitzvot can shape us. Study can correct us. Community can sustain us. Compassion can keep us from turning truth into cruelty.

We will not all walk at the same pace. We will not all begin from the same place. We may not all reach the same conclusions. Yet we can still walk together as Jews.

The Torah remains before us.

The covenant remains ours.

And every sincere step toward righteousness, observance, wisdom, and holiness is worthy of encouragement.

This version can also be made more personal and autobiographical, emphasizing how your experiences as a rabbi led you from the earlier humanistic position to Derekh HaTorah.