Dovid Campbell
Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.
~ Vladimir Nabokov[1]
In 2020, the Pew Research Center asked American Jews about the qualities they consider essential to their Judaism.[2] Many of the results were unsurprising. Eighty-three percent of Orthodox Jews considered observing Jewish law to be essential, while just five percent of Reform and unaffiliated Jews agreed. “Eating traditional Jewish foods” ranked relatively low among all groups. But a more interesting result concerned the quality of “being intellectually curious.” Here, Orthodox Jews came in at just thirty-six percent, while Conservative and Reform Jews polled at sixty-three and fifty-nine percent, respectively.
These numbers become more nuanced when we compare this poll with a similar one conducted in 2013.[3] Although intellectually curious Orthodox Jews significantly trailed other denominations that year as well, the 2013 poll qualified this trend by subdividing the Orthodox population into various branches:
The Pew researchers broke down the Orthodox Jewish community into three camps: Modern Orthodox, Yeshivish and Hasidic. The Modern Orthodox enclave outpaced Conservative and Reform Jews on the curiosity meter. On the other hand, just 17% of Hasidic Jews answered that intellectual curiosity was essential. Most interesting, Yeshivish men scored similarly to Hasidic Jews while Yeshivish women resembled the Modern Orthodox tabulation.[4]
An article from the Wexner Foundation attempts to explain these statistics, and I will return to its conclusions later on. But before I consider the modern ambiguities, it is valuable to explore their ancient precedents. A healthy curiosity demands it.
The Curious History of Jewish Curiosity
At first glance, there would seem to be important sources that champion curiosity as a Jewish value. In the Midrash, cited by Maimonides as a sort of preamble to his Laws of Idolatry, Abraham arrives at an awareness of God due to his curiosity about the order and management of the cosmos. Similarly, Moses’ divine mission begins with his decision to inspect the burning bush. In his commentary to Exodus 3:3, Gersonides explains that this episode reveals the essential quality that produced Moses’ spiritual greatness—he was passionately curious about the fundamental nature of things. The Jewish story seems to be grounded in the value of curiosity.
But a certain ambivalence about curiosity can already be detected in the Talmud. In Hulin 57b, R. Shimon ben Halafta is crowned with an unusual title: he was an “investigator of things,” an “experimenter,” whose curiosity drove him to explore the Torah’s teachings through direct observation. When he learned from a verse in Proverbs that the ants have no ruler yet maintain an orderly society, he devised an experiment in order to witness this reality for himself. Received, abstract knowledge was simply insufficient.
But R. Aha bar Abba challenged the soundness of R. Shimon’s experiment, arguing that it would have been preferable to rely on the teachings of Proverbs. The Talmud’s conclusion remains unclear. Is R. Aha merely challenging this particular experiment, or is he rejecting the entire approach? From the commentary of R. Shmuel Eidels (Maharsha), it seems that R. Shimon’s method was fully embraced by later authorities. In his view, it is simply a precursor to what would eventually be codified by R. Bahya ibn Paquda in his Duties of the Heart.[5] We are all required to search for the Divine wisdom in the natural world.
The Mishnah (Hagigah 2:1) seems to impose an even more explicit restraint on our natural curiosity, cautioning that one who delves into certain metaphysical subjects would have been better off never coming into the world. Yet the commentators seem to differ in their explanations of this mishnah. According to R. Yisrael Lipschitz, the mishnah instructs us to avoid certain subjects absolutely, since they are intrinsically beyond our knowledge and likely to lead us astray.[6] But Maimonides disagrees and explains this mishnah simply as a warning against exceeding one’s personal intellectual abilities.[7] For certain individuals, however, it may indeed be appropriate to probe such subjects. According to either explanation, we can acknowledge that most objects of inquiry do not exceed these bounds.
A third source might be considered a denigration of curiosity, specifically when it impinges on Torah study. In Avot 3:7, we are taught that one who is studying while traveling and stops to appreciate the beauty of nature is “as if liable for his soul.” R. Ovadiah Bartenura explains that even though the traveler will pronounce a blessing on this scene, it does not justify his interruption of Torah study.
Others explain this mishnah differently, however. R. Hanoch Zundel Luria, who wrote extensively on Judaism’s relationship with the natural world, explains in the introduction to his Kenaf Renanim that the mishnah only addresses those who do not approach nature through the lens of Perek Shirah, an ancient work presenting the moral lessons of nature. R. Avigdor Miller similarly explains that the mishnah only prohibits abandoning one’s learning for the sake of personal enjoyment:
But if he’s enjoying it in order to see the chochmas Hashem and chesed Hashem, and to express his gratitude to Hakodosh Boruch Hu, that’s not stopping. Suppose a person is learning Bava Kama, and he stops Bava Kama to learn Bava Metziah in the middle, is it a sin? What of it? It’s stopping Torah to learn Torah.[8]
To review, none of the sources we have seen unambiguously or categorically disparage our curiosity about the world in which we live. On the contrary, they may even sanction and encourage it. What is disparaged is poor experimentation, speculation without intellectual preparation, and self-serving distraction. By cautioning against these pitfalls, these sources actually clear the way for a healthy engagement with the moral beauty and philosophical profundity of our world.
But if this is the case, how do we explain the Orthodox community’s relative distaste for intellectual curiosity? We might propose that today’s Orthodoxy has adopted the more anti-curious reading of the above sources. As we saw, there is indeed some ambiguity among the commentators. But if this is so, it becomes difficult to explain the wide gap we discovered between Yeshivish men and women. In this demographic, the rejection of curiosity seems to be a more complex phenomenon, and demands a more nuanced explanation.
Towards a Traditional Curiosity
It is worth noting that curiosity has long been an endangered species among many of America’s children. Professor Susan Engel has detailed the negative effects of a typical classroom education on childhood curiosity.[9] It is by no means a given that Jewish children, whether in public school or yeshiva, are spared from these effects. Nevertheless, what we should consider first is not the actual attainment of curiosity but our perception of its importance. Why do most Orthodox Jews seem to reject curiosity as a Jewish value? Zev Eleff and Ethan Fabes propose the following:
Here, the correlation probably does speak to causation. Starting at the bottom, Hasidic Jews are more cautious about ideas that might threaten their religious status quo. Similarly, there is a prevailing attitude in the so-called Yeshiva World to unequivocally abide by the directions of rabbinic elites – in other words, Daas Torah – and reduce interaction to other intellectual forces. But Yeshivish women, despite the moniker, do not enroll in yeshivot and are not as directly impacted by this ecclesiastical culture as their husbands and brothers. Finally, the Modern Orthodox are more often encouraged to push their intellectual limits and synergize these encounters with their religious experiences. Hence, intellectual curiosity is essential to this subgroup.[10]
This explanation sees a combination of cultural and ideological factors at work. Most central is the question of fidelity to authority. Curiosity can be seen as a rejection of traditional sources of knowledge and a conviction that the individual has a more substantial role to play. Such a conception seems to underlie the quotation with which I began. Nabokov, whose literary work bears the imprint of the totalitarianism he witnessed in Europe, recognized that in curiosity laid the seeds of rebellion. The question we should ponder is whether or not this is a particularly Jewish view.
The question of Da’as Torah—its meaning, sources, and parameters—continues to be a subject of interest and heated debate. It is not my intention to rehash it here. Elsewhere, I have argued on logical and textual grounds that Judaism cannot command belief and is best understood as a system of intellectual and experiential exploration.[11] Here, I would like to proceed by actually assuming the validity of Da’as Torah, at least as a cultural reality, and asking whether curiosity is truly antithetical to such an ideology. My sense is that it is not.
The case of R. Shimon ben Halafta above provides a valuable demonstration. Tosafot (ad loc., s.v. “Eizil ve-ihzei”) compares R. Shimon’s experiment with a similar story regarding a student of R. Yohanan who refused to accept a traditional teaching until he verified its truth empirically. Why was R. Shimon lauded while this student was severely punished? Tosafot’s answer is straightforward and illuminating. R. Shimon ben Halafta never doubted the truth of Proverbs; he merely sought to deepen his understanding and appreciation of that truth. While his experiment may have lacked rigor, Tosafot’s comment indicates that it was not ideologically problematic. On the contrary, it allows us to appreciate curiosity in an entirely new light.
Curiosity can be a declaration of faith. It may even be the declaration of faith. Through it, we express a conviction that there is something worth knowing in this world; that beneath life’s strangeness and superficiality lies a deeper meaning that calls to us. It is not a distrust of the Torah’s wisdom that compels such curiosity. Rather, it is a hope that, despite our own lack of wisdom, we might yet discover living expressions of the Torah’s eternal values.
Can it still be called curiosity if we set out with an end already in sight? Certainly, but it requires us to acknowledge that there is more to be discovered in the world than bare facts. Not every explorer sets out in order to know if the world is filled with wonder. Some leave home already certain of it, and their sole desire is to know what it feels like to stand in its presence.
This was the desire that animated R. Shimon ben Halafta, and it remains central to the thought of recent luminaries as well. R. Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv) explains that in the narrative of Genesis, God specifically dubs his creations “good” only after creating them, in order to implant a fundamental reality: seeing is always greater than believing.[12] No matter how fully or faithfully we know something intellectually, there remains a greater level of knowing that is reserved for experience. But we must be curious enough to search for it.
Perhaps we have lost this conception of curiosity. Perhaps the conflicts of the Haskalah monopolized the conversation, rebranding curiosity as a path to dangerous freethinking. But it seems clear that even as the Haskalah continued to smolder and the Reform movement began to gain traction, Orthodox visionaries urged us not to abandon our curiosity. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, sensing the onset of an agoraphobic religiosity, cautioned strongly against it:
I almost believe that all you homebodies will one day have to atone for having stayed indoors, and when you seek entrance to see the marvels of Heaven they will ask you, ‘Did you see the marvels of God on earth?’ Then, ashamed, you will mumble, ‘We missed that opportunity.’ How different were our rabbis in this respect. How they breathed, felt, thought and lived in God’s marvelous nature. How they wanted to awaken our senses for all that is sublime and beautiful in Creation. How they wanted to teach us to fashion a wreath of adoration for God out of the morning’s rays and the evening blush, out of the daylight and the night shadows, out of the star’s glimmer and the flower’s scent, out of the roar of the sea and the rumble of the thunder, the flash of the lightning. How they wanted to demonstrate to us that every creature was a preacher of His power, a monitor of our duties; what a Divine revelation they made of the book of nature.[13]
R. Hirsch emphasizes that a departure from the world is a departure from rabbinic precedent. Like our rabbis, we should recognize that the natural world is not merely beautiful, but a “book,” filled with transformative lessons. How could one leave such a book unopened? Indeed, no less of an authority than R. Moshe Isserles, the illustrious Rema, argued strongly for the value of an education in the sciences.[14] In his Torat Ha-Olah 3:7, after affirming that the Torah brings a Jew to the most profound philosophical truths, Rema adds that “nevertheless, it is better to investigate things and to know them through demonstrations and rational principles, by way of investigation; this is the purpose of man.” In his view, intellectual curiosity and thoughtful investigation are not simply admirable; they are the very essence of our lives. For those truly concerned for Da’as Torah, this is a worthwhile consideration.
A Divine Game
I would like to conclude by highlighting an additional virtue closely associated with intellectual curiosity. Extensive research has established the fascinating connection between curiosity and play. A 2015 study argued that “children structure their play in a way that reduces uncertainty and allows them to discover causal structures in the world,” a position aligned with earlier theories “that asserted that the purpose of curiosity and play was to ‘construct knowledge’ through interactions with the world.”[15] Playfulness is an expression of our curiosity, but it is also a skill that provides the ideal disposition for satisfying it.
My intuition is that “being playful” would have ranked even lower than curiosity had it been included in Pew’s study. But there is abundant reason to consider play an essential aspect of a Jewish worldview.[16] The opening midrash in Bereishit Rabbah refers to the Torah not only as the blueprint of creation but also as God’s “plaything.” Similarly, Avodah Zarah 3b teaches that God spends a quarter of each day playing with the leviathan. On a literal level, the leviathan is said to be a menacing sea monster of apocalyptic proportions, but some kabbalists interpret it as a symbol of God’s relationship with His creation as a whole.[17] God’s orientation to the world is essentially playful, and reality becomes a Divine game.
Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish philosopher, conveys this powerful idea as well:
Not every game is blameworthy… it is said that even the Father and Creator of the universe continually rejoices in His life and plays and is joyful, finding pleasure in play which is in keeping with the divine and in joyfulness. And He has no need of anything nor does He lack anything, but with joy He delights in Himself and in His powers and in the worlds made by Him… Rightly, therefore, and properly does the wise man, believing (his) end (to consist in) likeness to God, strive, so far as possible, to unite the created with the uncreated and the mortal with the immortal, and not to be deficient or wanting in gladness and joyfulness in His likeness.[18]
For Philo, embracing the fundamental playfulness of reality is essential to our human happiness. Far from being an expression of silliness or immaturity, play represents the basic character of the universe—a dynamic unfolding of creative potential. Cultivating this trait is therefore a way of emulating our Creator.[19] And, as the research suggests, it is the orientation that leaves us most attuned to an understanding of God’s world.
The ramifications for Jewish education would seem to be profound. As Martin Buber once observed, “Play is the exultation of the possible.” In play, we allow ourselves to imagine new possibilities and attempt new modes of expression. A playful Judaism would see students exploring novel ways of conveying the Torah’s timeless values, drawing on the examples of some of our greatest teachers. For example, T. Carmi comments on “the art of scriptural insertions” in the poetic tradition of Andalusian Jewry:
At times, an entire poem is chequered with quotations from a specific and relevant biblical passage. In such cases, the strands of quotations and allusions cease to be an ornamental device and become the very fabric of the poem, a sustained metaphorical texture.[20]
Carmi goes on to show how R. Yehudah Alharizi, one of the foremost scholars and poets of the period, playfully uses this device to describe “the exploits of a flea.”[21] In a similar spirit, R. Avraham ibn Ezra uses poetry to humorously explore mundane concerns, such as his torn cloak and the marauding flies that have plundered his home, but pivots to heartfelt devotional sentiments in the poems’ final lines, thanking God or praying for His assistance.[22] The effect of these works, at once playful and profound, owes much to their authors’ willingness to experiment with the interface between Torah and artistic expression.[23]
In the sciences as well, we find great rabbis actively observing and experimenting to discover Divine wisdom in physical reality. The Hasidei Ashkenaz, a medieval pietistic sect that included such luminaries as R. Yehudah He-Hasid and R. Elazar of Worms, developed a theory of “zeikher asah le-nifle’otav” (Psalms 111:4): both marvelous and mundane workings of the natural world serve as “remembrances” for theological truths.[24] From the way that light passes through a pane of glass to the tendency of a liquid to distribute itself evenly throughout a block of cheese, the Hasidei Ashkenaz observed natural phenomena and used them as perceptible metaphors for God’s pervasiveness in the universe, even recommending that their students perform certain experiments for themselves.[25] Personally, I cannot imagine a better example of intellectual playfulness than searching for theological insights in a block of cheese.
For all of these sages, art and science were explored not as supplements to their Torah wisdom but as embodiments of it.[26] To separate the Andalusian rabbis from their poetry, or the Ashkenazi pietists from their theological naturalism, is therefore not innocuous. On the contrary, Torah wisdom that cannot be expressed poetically or experienced in the natural world would have struck these rabbis as tragically shallow and impoverished. To the extent that we have manifested this tragedy, it is only because we have failed to truly study the worldviews of our great Rishonim.
A renewed emphasis on intellectual curiosity and playful creativity grants us an opportunity to reintroduce Torah to the world. It offers us a path back to the Torah of our sages, those who “wanted to awaken our senses for all that is sublime and beautiful in Creation.” At the same time, we need not become Andalusian poets or medieval scientists to follow their example.[27] What is needed is a willingness to carry forward the curious and deeply playful spirit that allowed them to entertain novel possibilities in their pursuit of the Divine. Today, with unprecedented access to knowledge and unparalleled opportunity for creativity, we have our own poetry to write and our own world to explore.
[1] From Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi.
[2] “Jewish Americans in 2020,” Pew Research Center, last modified May 11, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/.
[3] “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” Pew Research Center, last modified October 1, 2013, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/.
[4] “The Curious Case of Jewish Intellectual Curiosity: What the Data Tells about Making an Impact in American Jewish Life,” The Wexner Foundation, last modified July 1, 2019, https://www.wexnerfoundation.org/the-curious-case-of-jewish-intellectual-curiosity-what-the-data-tells-about-making-an-impact-in-american-jewish-life/.
[5] See Sha’ar Ha-Bekhinah, chapter 2. While the first chapter of this work, which deals with metaphysics and rational arguments for Divine unity, is often ignored in the “yeshiva world,” this second chapter is still widely studied.
[6] Tiferet Yisra’el to Hagigah 2:1. R. Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, in his Tosafot Yom Tov to Avot 3:15, seems to understand our mishnah like R. Lipschitz, but adds an interesting observation. If Hazal’s goal had been to prevent our engagement with insoluble philosophical problems, wouldn’t it have been more expedient to avoid their mention altogether? Citing our mishnah among other sources, R. Heller demonstrates that Hazal were actually quite happy to broach such subjects, even while acknowledging their insolubility. There is a value in openly acknowledging our inherent curiosity about these difficult questions.
[7] “And he said in order to frighten the one who theorizes about the beginnings [of the universe] without proper prefaces, as we explained… And he said in order to humble the one who theorizes about Divine matters with his simple imagination, without an introduction in the sciences…” Commentary on Hagigah 2:1 (emphasis added). All translations from Hebrew are my own. It seems clear that Maimonides reads the mishnah not as a prohibition but as a warning, directed specifically at those who have not prepared themselves intellectually.
[8] “Rav Avigdor Miller on The Torah of the Trees,” Toras Avigdor, accessed January 31, 2023, https://torasavigdor.org/rav-avigdor-miller-on-the-torah-of-the-trees/.
[9] “But while curiosity, the engine of intellectual development, is possibly the most valuable asset a child brings to her education, is there a place for curiosity in school? A systematic look at children’s opportunities to express curiosity in school suggests that rather than waxing once formal education begins, curiosity wanes.” See Susan Engel, “Children’s Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools,” Harvard Educational Review 81:4 (2011), 625-645; citation at 632-633. A more recent 2018 study similarly claims that “there are ample reasons to be concerned that our current education system suppresses rather than promotes students’ natural curiosity” and that “promoting curiosity may be inconsistent with current educational priorities.” See Jamie J. Jirout, Virginia E. Vitiello, Sharon K. Zumbrunn, “Curiosity in Schools,” The New Science of Curiosity, Goren Gordon, ed. (Nova Science Publishers, 2018).
[10] “The Curious Case of Jewish Intellectual Curiosity: What the Data Tells about Making an Impact in American Jewish Life,” The Wexner Foundation, last modified July 1, 2019, https://www.wexnerfoundation.org/the-curious-case-of-jewish-intellectual-curiosity-what-the-data-tells-about-making-an-impact-in-american-jewish-life/.
[11] See my “Endless Exploration: Judaism’s Only ‘Principle of Faith’,” The Lehrhaus, last modified August 9, 2023, https://thelehrhaus.com/jewish-thought-history/endless-exploration-judaisms-only-principle-of-faith/.
[12] Ha’ameik Davar to Genesis 1:4. Netziv substantiates his interpretation with a midrash from Shemot Rabbah 46:1. See also R. Eliyahu HaKohen of Izmir’s Shevet Mussar, chapter 22; R. Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, Tzidkat Ha-Tzaddik §216.
[13] See R. Hirsch, Collected Writings, vol. 8 (Feldheim, 1995), 259.
[14] See Teshuvot Ha-Rema §7. Regarding the Vilna Gaon’s position on the study of the sciences and philosophy, see B. Raphael Shuchat, “The Debate Over Secular Studies Among the Disciples of the Vilna Gaon,” The Torah U-Madda Journal, 8 (1998-1999), 283-294. Shuchat presents abundant evidence for the value of scientific study in the Gaon’s view and demonstrates that those students of the Gaon who undermined this view were motivated by concerns for the Haskalah and philosophical rationalism. Other students, such as R. Yaakov Moshe of Slonim, were unwilling to oppose the study of the sciences, even as they acknowledged the dangers of the Haskalah. Regarding the study of philosophy, we find strong opposition to certain aspects of Maimonides’ and R. Isserles’ rationalism in the Gaon’s halakhic writings (see Biur Ha-Gra to Y.D. 179:13; 246:18), but recent research has suggested that he greatly valued the Moreh Nevukhim and was opposed to prohibiting its public study. See Mordecai Plaut, “The Attitude of the Vilna Gaon Towards Moreh Nevuchim,” Torah Musings, published August 16, 2019, https://www.torahmusings.com/2019/08/the-attitude-of-the-vilna-gaon-towards-moreh-nevuchim/. Shuchat calls the Gaon’s attitude toward philosophy “ambivalent” (284).
[15] Celeste Kidd and Benjamin Y. Hayden, “The Psychology and Neuroscience of Curiosity,” Neuron, 88 (2015), 449-460; citation at 455.
[16] I hope to elaborate on this idea in a future publication.
[17] See R. Yehuda Leib Ashlag’s Petikhah Le-Hokhmat Ha-Kabbalah (Birkat Shalom, 2008), 2. I thank my dear friend, Michael Huskey, for sharing this source with me.
[18] Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis, 4,188. Translation from the Loeb Classical Library edition, F.H. Colson, G.H. Whitaker, and Ralph Marcus, eds., Philo (Harvard University Press, 1929-1962). For more on Philo’s enduring relevance for today’s Judaism, see my “Philo of Alexandria and the Soul of the Torah,” The Lehrhaus, last modified February 7, 2024, https://thelehrhaus.com/jewish-thought-history/philo-of-alexandria-and-the-soul-of-the-torah/.
[19] See also Philo, On Planting, 167-168.
[20] T. Carmi, ed., The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse (Penguin Books, 2006), 27-28.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Peter Cole, ed., The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry From Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492 (Princeton University Press, 2007), 175-176.
[23] Professor Menachem Kellner has shown that one may convincingly argue for the value of artistic creativity even from within Maimonides’ strictly intellectualist framework. See Menachem Kellner, “Judaism and Artistic Creativity: Despite Maimonides and Thanks to Him,” Milin Havivin – Beloved Words, 7 (2014), 1-7.
[24] See David I. Shyovitz, A Remembrance of His Wonders (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017); Yaakov Yisrael Stahl’s introduction to his edition of R. Yehudah He-Hasid’s Imrot Tehorot Hitzoniyot U-Penimiyot (Jerusalem, 2006).
[25] Shyovitz, A Remembrance of His Wonders, 27-28, 36.
[26] Avot 3:18, which describes such scientific subjects as parparot le-hokhmah (garnishes for wisdom), could be interpreted as downplaying or subordinating their importance. However, some of our earliest commentators do not interpret the mishnah in this way. R. Menahem Meiri explains that Talmud study culminates in the study of science and philosophy, of which these parparot are the most introductory. Abarbanel cites Meiri’s comment and adds that one of the values of obscure halakhic subjects, such as those mentioned by this mishnah, is that they incorporate knowledge of the “roots of the sciences,” such as astronomy and geometry.
[27] Professor Shyovitz highlights the pitfall of constraining a thinker’s broad intellectual vision to our anachronistic understanding of their subject matter: “When medieval Jews’ writings are analyzed inductively, rather than squashed by the retrojection of anachronistic terminology, it emerges that Ashkenazic interest in werewolves, adjurations, divination, and so on should be seen as markers of intellectual sophistication, and of integration into a broader European culture that was investing unprecedented energy into investigating the scientific workings and spiritual meaning of its natural surroundings.” See Shyovitz, A Remembrance of His Wonders, 3.
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