“How can a rabbi not live with doubt? The Bible itself is a book of doubt…The Bible is never about certainty. And a rabbi who has no doubt is not a rabbi.”

-Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg

“Don’t be so sure of yourself!” My father used to say these words to me often as a teenager. After all, I knew everything when I was 16! As the years went on, my surety led me to many successes, but also some disastrous failures, of marriages, jobs, relationships. I began to doubt. Gradually, a chastened, wiser, older man stood in the place of an arrogant young  one. I began to appreciate the healthy voice of doubt.

Not that we should doubt ourselves at every turn. Trusting our intuition and instincts is very useful in many situations. But to never doubt is as foolish as to lack all certainty. The aboriginal people of Australia have been doing their rituals and customs for tens of thousands of years. But they continually ask: “Are we headed in the right direction?” They know that what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow, and the world is always changing, the sand ever shifting beneath  our feet.

As Carl Jung taught, “..what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.” We need to constantly adjust our horizons as we walk our path. A healthy dose of self doubt can help to keep us from stumbling too badly.

What certainty within your self needs a healthy challenge today?

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Arthur Hertzberg (June 9, 1921 – April 17, 2006) was a Conservative rabbi and prominent Jewish-American scholar and activist.

Joe Laur is a father, husband, naturalist, executive, consultant, and a lowly rabbinic student. He can be reached at joe.laur@godsdog.net.