The founder of the Hebrew people was our father Abraham, who stood out for challenging the established norms, going in search of the truth. He was not afraid to consult, ask, answer, debate, analyze and refute idols and conventional ideas.

We recite daily in the morning blessings, the blessing of the Torah. The text says: “Blessed are You, Lord, who gave us Your law (Torah), the true law (Torat Emet)” (Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 11b). The great merit of the law revealed by God is not only being a law revealed to a specific people, but its greatness lies in the fact that it is the true law.

Tradition must be in communion with reason: an insane tradition is an erroneous inheritance. Let us remember that what the Torah transmits is not just another philosophy, it is the truth of life.

Therefore, the value of the Torah does not lie in being an autochthonous good of the Hebrew culture, but in being the truth revealed by God, which can and must be corroborated by us with the intellect that He gave us.

On the other hand, there is no concept of tradition without common sense in the Jewish tradition. Derech eretz kadma l’Torah, common sense comes before Torah (Vayikra Rabbah 9:3).

If a person follows what he thinks is the Torah without heeding common sense, he is liable to commit great transgressions.

God created the human being with the ability to understand, think and analyze, so that he can check the traditions and corroborate which is acceptable and true and which should be rejected as false.

Judaism challenges people who want to do the experiment of discovering the Torah on their own: do it and you will discover the same Torah that exists, unchanged, if you really use common sense, logic and reason.

Truth, paradoxically, is strengthened when the possibility of analyzing and debating is given. If the investigation of truth is restricted, then we lose the possibility of discovering it and it slips out of our hands. Let us always be willing to debate, learn and analyze, and let us never forget what the Talmud says: the seal of the Holy One is truth (Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 55a; Yoma 69b).