In the beginning of creation. (Bereishis 1:1) The Gemara tells the story of Talmi, the Greek king who called in seventy-two Chachamim and told each one separately to translate the Torah for him into Greek. Hashem placed the same idea in the mind of each chacham, and they each changed the order of the first verse, and wrote בראשית אלקים ברא instead of writing בראשית ברא אלקים. Rashi explains that they made this change so the Greeks won’t say that an entity named “Bereishis” created “Elokim,” who then went and created everything else. This raises a question: why are Jews different, such that they are not prone to this mistake? In our Torah it says בראשית ברא אלקים and it is not considered a problem. But for the non-Jews, it has to be written בראשית אלקים ברא or else they will get it all wrong. What’s the difference between us and them?
The seforim hakedoshim say great things about a simple Jew’s straightforward faith in Hashem and His Torah, and encourage everyone to strive for this emunah peshutah. It is commonly thought that this means we should simply accept, on faith, the Torah’s tenets which we receive from the hand of tradition, and not think about them analytically. But what is so great about just believing everything without even thinking? It is written, “A fool will believe anything.”
It seems the seforim hakedoshim rather meant that a person should believe the truth as his eyes perceive and his intellect understands that such is the simple, straightforward truth, without resorting to far-fetched interpretations and without raising unreasonable questions.
Let’s say two people see a building. The first one says, “Why did they build it this way, and not that way?” The other one replies, “How do you know that anyone built this building? Maybe it grew of its own accord, by chance?” You can raise any possibility at all, if you want to be silly. Maybe I am really a star, and the star really is me. Maybe this and maybe that. but it’s all nonsense. An intelligent person believes simply and straightforwardly in what he sees clearly before his eyes, and he doesn’t veer way off track with all sorts of crazy theories.
So it is when we consider the world at large. A person who thinks straight will accept that which is obvious and evident. He will understand that the world has a Creator. If we see a globe suspended from the ceiling, we understand that someone manufactured it and someone hung it from the ceiling. The sun is an awesome globe of fire, several times bigger than the Earth, and it provides life-giving warmth and light to everything in the world. And it is just suspended up there in space. Someone must have made it and Someone must have placed it there. People who say, “But maybe... but maybe...” are talking nonsense. They simply aren’t thinking straight.
This is emunah peshutah. It means to simply believe that which is obviously true and standing right in front of our eyes. This is actually the highest level: to accept the simple and obvious truth as exactly that.
