Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Nobel prize winner Dr. Daniel Kahneman put it a little differently: “We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to know how little we know.”
Indeed, when asked what he would eliminate in the world if he had a magic wand, Kahneman answered with one word – overconfidence.
Overconfidence has been blamed for the sinking of the Titanic, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the loss of Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, the great recession that followed it, and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, among other things. Overconfidence has brought personal financial disaster, imploded relationships and ruined lives.
One person who understood this was King Solomon, the wisest of all men. In Ecclesiastes, which we read on the Shabbat during Sukkot, he describes his efforts to explore and understand. "I said I will be wise, but it remained elusive to me.” King Solomon confesses that he tried, analyzed, contemplated, but in the end of the day, he came up short, complete understanding was beyond his grasp.
What is he referring to? What did he try to apply wisdom to but was unsuccessful? Most say he is talking about the quintessential Torah statute, the red heifer, whose law is paradoxical. The impure person is purified from its ashes, but the pure person becomes impure. King Solomon tried to understand its mechanics, how and why it worked, but in the end, he concedes, v'hi rechoka mimeni, and it is too distant.
Rav Yosef Shaul Natanson says the word v’hi – "and it" in the verse "and it is too distant" refers to the entire Torah. He understands King Solomon as telling us: After I saw that I could not comprehend the reason for the red heifer, I realize that the reason for everything in the Torah was entirely beyond me.
Someone once challenged the Chazon Ish, a great Torah sage who died in the 1950s, about the challenge of theodicy, how bad and painful things can exist in the world. He was driven to make sense and understand the suffering. The Chazon Ish showed him a Tosfos, a commentary on the Talmud, and asked him to explain it. The man tried but failed to interpret or understand the Tosfos. The Chazon Ish told him, “If you don’t understand a few lines of Tosfos, how do you expect to understand the ways of God which is concealed from all mankind.”
In Psalms, the verse says, "How great are your ways, God. A fool doesn’t understand them...” Rabbi Meilech Biderman wonders why King David, the author of the Psalms, singles out the fool as not understanding them, when even the wise can’t comprehend the ways of God? He explains, what makes someone wise is that they know what they don’t know. The fool suffers from overconfidence, thinks he understands and knows everything. The fool thinks he or she has all the answers.
Our greatest scholars didn’t hesitate to say “I don’t know,” causing us to think more, rather than less of them.
We live in a world that makes us feel if we say “I don’t know” or “I don’t have a strong opinion about that” we are uninformed, weak or unsophisticated. But we come from a tradition that says exactly the opposite. Humility, nuance and admitting we don’t know are not signs of weakness, but strength. They don’t display ignorance; they show we are informed enough to know that we can’t possibly know absolutely.
The Talmud states, "Teach your tongue to say ‘I do not know, lest you become entangled in a web of deceit” (Brachos, 4a). Our greatest scholars didn’t hesitate to say “I don’t know,” causing us to think more, rather than less of them, and to place greater confidence in the things they did purport to know. Rashi, without whom the Talmud would be a closed book, is famous for the several places in which he writes, “eini yodei’ah, I don’t know” regarding the meaning, interpretation, or relevance of a particular verse or statement.
Perhaps this is why we read Ecclesiastes on Sukkot, "the time of our joy". Feeling entitled or capable of understanding everything only sets ourselves up for disappointment, brings about a failure of overconfidence, and leaves us feeling down, incomplete and unfulfilled. Of course, we should pursue understanding, try to gain wisdom, and obtain insight. But we must admit and concede that we can’t have the answers to everything and there are things we just can’t understand.
Listen to the advice of the wisest of all men: If you want to be happier in your marriage, at work, in your relationship with your children and with God, learn to say, I don’t know.
Photo credit: Emily Morter, Unsplash
(3) Nancy, October 5, 2020 11:27 AM
I need to stop feeling embarrassed when I don't know something
About 6 years ago I began learning to read Hebrew. Over these 6 years I have become more skilled, but there is still PLENTY of room for improvement. Alas, I cannot yet read Hebrew in cursive. I grew up in a Secular Jewish home, and AISH has taught me more than you can possibly imagine. I fell embarrassed when my FFB friends know things that I don't, which of course is to be expected. However, I need to remember that there is no shame in not knowing. When I don't know something I immediately go and look for the answer, Rabbi--Thank you for this essay and for your MANY insights!!
(2) Aryeh Siegel, October 4, 2020 1:51 PM
I agree.
I agree completely with this message. We need to learn to say "I don't know." We also need to learn to say "I agree" with no further comment.
(1) Abuelo, October 2, 2020 8:15 AM
Rabbi Efrem shared with everybody a great wisdom. We can see its application today with reference to the Pandemic of Covid 19. There's too many so called geniuses out there who insist they know and apparently they don't know, including our President, who gets my Yashir Koach for Israel but needs to put a zap on the yap when it comes to Covid. Sadly a few of my contemporaries went down for the count and didn't get back up including some of them who insisted they could throw caution to the wind. Our wise Chabad Rabbi came to our apartment before Rosh Hoshana and sounded the Shofar and told me to stay home because my age was way over the limit. On Monday he texted me to tell me one of the guys tested positive. In my youth a long time ago after my father z'l died, I would run into his friends. One in particular was extremely wise. He asked me what I was doing and I told him about a business at high risk with very high returns. He asked me who was involved. I told him. He didn't advise me to stop, but with the voice of authority he told me to stop. At that time I didn't know that youth wasn't smarter than experience. I didnt know then that smart is not the same thing as wisdom. I was going to show the world I was right. It was a costly mistake to say the least. It's hard for a Rocket Ship in his youth, determined to conquer the world, to believe that the older person who still uses an old Blackberry instead of the latest Smart Phone knows more. It's not that he necessarily knows more but he lived more and seen more and did more and experienced more and as a result he might see something that the youthful one doesn't have the eyes to see. No disgrace to say "I'm not sure" and seek the Man of wisdom before acting. Ego, when disciplined, is a good thing. Ego, when it rules the brain, is a destroyer of humanity. Seek Wisdom before taking an important decision. It will short circuit stepping into Quick Sand