no one is born with emuna (Jewish faith) – it doesn’t matter who your parents are. With that in mind, when teaching religious Jewish high school-age children, it is good to regularly raise topics of interest. emuna/ and also encourage all questions. Students should approach their relationship with God as mature people and not spend their entire lives observing Torah lightheartedly but superficially. That sort of thing might work to a point, but they will surely miss out on most of the joy and substance of Torah and if they are ever challenged, the results could be disastrous.
Now there are two kinds of emuna: emuna peshuta (simple faith) and emuna of chakira (faith through analysis). emuna peshuta Isn’t that the faith of “Jewish old women” who sit all day with their psalms because “my father told me that’s the way it is…” If that were all the faith, there would be no qualitative difference if the ” old lady” was Jewish or Hindu. Quite, emuna peshuta it is that clear and intuitive knowledge of God that comes only to people raised from childhood in a pure, uncorrupted world, separated from foreign values and thoughts. The other form of faith, however, comes through an analytical process.
Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible in our world to raise children with this kind of purity: even if you didn’t grow up with a television, the first time you saw an ad that extolled this model of car or that breakfast cereal as the answer to all problems of the world your values diverged from those of the Torah. This consumer lifestyle is what is real and everything else is not. Who is really important? John F. Kennedy or Michael Jordan or the Beatles! How can you believe in God, scientists don’t give it much value, do they? God will have to take a back seat in our consciousness.
So emuna peshuta it is, perhaps, beyond our experience.
emuna through chakira It would therefore be the alternative route. Now, this analytical process can take more than one form: for some people, the very complexity and balance of the Torah itself testifies to its truth (sort of like the reaction a British mathematician had when reading the calculations of a unknown self-taught Indian gentleman). -“Honestly, I can’t say I fully understand what he’s doing, but anything that complex has to be true!”). Every once in a while, it’s worth pausing while learning the Bible or the Talmud and marveling at the completeness and perfection of the Torah: no human being could have invented this.