Questions I - what? vs why? vs silence?

I would like to start a discussion of the nature and validity of questions in the Orthodox world. This is a spin-off of the discussion regarding R' Tropper and R' Slifkin in the comments section. I think it deserves a separate post. Let me start by stating that forty years when I first met Rav Shlomo Freifeld. I asked him some fundamental questions. His response was, "These are good questions, it is important to ask questions. But you should know that probably all of the questions you will ask have already been asked by our sages and discussed. But you need to be patient. We will eventually get to your questions." It is one of the ironies of life that Reb Shlomo never did answer these questions - though we talked for many hours and I spent much time with him. One of the reasons for my sefer Daas Torah has been my own efforts to answer these questions. Reb Shlomo himself had many questions. He would raise questions in discussion or at the Shabbos table - but often there was no answer. He had an extensive library of English books which included philosophy and novels. He even had me take out various philosophy books from the Brooklyn College library for him to read. However he never articulated answers to fundamental questions. He served primarily to validate the enterprise of searching and questioning. Once he approached me for a favor. "I just got a donation of a set of Encyclopedia Judaic on the condition that it be used by the yeshiva. It is full of kefira so I can't let it be used freely. Would you please use it so that I can fulfill the conditions?" He often talked about the freshness of a child's curiosity and the unfortunate stagnation that happens when a person grows up and "knows" the answers A year after his petira, I called up his son-in-law - the present rosh hayeshiva - to ask what Reb Shlomo held regarding asking questions or discussing topics that might cause religious doubt. He responded, "I never discussed these type of hashkofa questions with him. The only one who mights have discussed these type of issues with him was my wife." As far as I know there was no yerusha concerning Reb Shlomo's comfortable open mindedness. There is a very profound statement by one of the most famous heretics - Spinoza. He asked, "What is an answer?" As any parent knows there is a certain age that child ask "why?" to anything and everything. What is an answer? Spinoza said that an answer is simply that which takes away the urge to ask another question! It was not just Rabbi Freifeld and Rav Hutner who had an insatiable curiosity about everything. Soon after the petira of the Lubavitcher Rebbe I was talking with Rav Yaakov Goldberg - the head of the Lubavitch baal teshuva yeshiva Hadar HaTorah - concerning some of these things. He said, "You are too late! All these fundamental questions were of great interest to the Lubavicher Rebbe. There is no one today." Finally let me mention my experience with writing and publishing my sefer Daas Torah. When I first started working on it I consulted a famous rabbi connected with Artscroll. He told me point blank - "you are a danger to klall Yisroel. You are going to cause confusion and doubt by telling people that there are multiple ways of understanding fundamental hashkofa issues." I consulted with Rav Bulman. His response was, "You will never get away with presenting multiple views. The yeshiva world holds that there is one right answer. You are following in the approach of Rav Tzadok and Rav Kook. But I want to buy the first copy. You hear I don't want a present I want to buy the first copy." I talked to Rav Yaakov Weinberg - rosh hayeshiva of Ner Israel in Baltimore. We talked for an hour and he repeatedly said. "We encourage questions from our talmidim in the yeshiva. There is nothing that you can't ask. However regarding writing - you can write about anything except the dispute between the chassidim and the Gra." He was also astonished when I mentioned Rav Dessler's view of eilu v'eilu - that it is simply a manifestation of different perspectives but all competing view of our sages are fundamentally in agreement. "You can't tell me that an intelligent person can think this way! If so words have no meaning." I then went to Rav Eliashiv - he told me simply that there is no problem of raising issues and presenting multiple alternatives - as long as the source material was from mainstream accepted views. He did not see a problem "as long as I did not present sources from the Cairo Geniza." In regards to the issue of confusion - he said simply "let them ask their rebbes and rosh yeshiva." You don't avoid teaching Torah because it raises questions." Rav Solveitchik on the other hand was not an intellectual i.e., he was not an open ended thinker - he was a Brisker. One of his students told me that one winter they were involved in a complex sugya when someone raised a question which was not discussed in any of the commentaries. It greatly upset Rav Solveitchik because "there is no valid question which is not discussed in the meforshim." The students were in the middle of their summer break when they received a call that Rav Soloveitchik wanted them to come to a special shiur. At the shiur he announced that he had found the solution to why no one talked about the question. The question was based on a mistaken girsa. He repeated again, "If it is a valid question you will find it discussed in the meforshim. If it isn't discussed that indicates it is not a valid question." In the next post I will cite some of the fundamental texts dealing with the validity of questions - in particular those that don't have clear definitive answers. One final caution - the issue of asking questions and being open-minded exists in equal measure in the non-Orthodox world - both secular and religious. It would be helpful if you read the classic work "Teaching as a subversive activity." It contrasts the view of secular education as process of socialization versus learning how to think clearly.