בהדי כבשי דרחמנא למה לך

In our last post we discussed one the first responses I received to the letters I wrote to various prominent תלמידי חכמים. Another prominent rabbi (who shall remain unnamed) responded to me in a very terse letter with the following phrase borrowed from the literature of חזל (ברכות י.):

בהדי כבשי דרחמנא למה לך?

This means that I was being criticized for contemplating the mysterious ways of God, instead of simply minding my own business.

While I did not actually respond to the rabbi in question, as I did not gauge him to be looking for an answer but rather only asking rhetorically, I will yet take the liberty of responding here, as some of my readers may be wondering the same thing. Additionally, I believe it is generally wise to think through why I am taking a particular intellectual path, and what objections may potentially be raised against my thought process.

The brief answer is that I am not simply engaging in lofty theoretical speculation as to the nature of God and his Divine ways; rather, there is a מצוה to be done. Yet, at the same time, there were those who were Divinely prevented from carrying out said מצוה. Our goal is only to try figuring out what said prevention depends on. Once we figure out what said prevention depends on, we can then figure out under what circumstances the מצוה can indeed be performed.

Additionally, the original context of that statement is ישעיה criticizing חזקיה for not getting married because חזקיה saw (through רוה"ק) that his offspring would be wicked (as indeed his son מנשה turned out to be). ישעיה was telling חזקיה that what sort of offspring he would or would not have were not necessarily his business; rather, there is a מצוה to be done, namely that of having children, and חשבונות, however valid they may be, should be not be allowed in the way.

We see from this episode that contemplating the mysterious ways of Heaven should not get in the way of doing a מצוה. Here, however, the exact opposite would be true! If we successfully figure out a satisfactory answer to our puzzle, then we could potentially figure out how to actually perform a מצוה!

Now, normally I hesitate to outright disagree with a scholar of higher rank than myself (as this rabbi is). The most I would do, under ordinary circumstances, is respectfully point out any difficulties I had with halachic reasoning they offered. Here, however, I feel safe to disagree considering of the dozens (literally) of rabbis with whom I have discussed this issue (some of whom actually had an answer to my question; but even those who didn't), not a single one of them besides for this one criticized me for thinking about such matters in the first place (which perhaps would even make this rabbi a דעת יחיד whom I can freely and in good conscience choose not to follow).