Chapter 9: Michael Abraham, Who Exactly Are You Praying To? [Three Books – Hosted by Shmuel Rosner]

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

Opening and introduction of the podcast and the guest
New books from “The Hedgehog and the Fox” and the partnership with “Ivrit”
Titles and identity: “Rabbi Doctor” and the attitude toward authority
C. S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man”: education, relativism, and postmodernism
Judaism as Jewish law and meta-Jewish law: universality versus commitment
The existence of God, proof, assumptions, certainty, and a decisive writing style
Morality, the “spinach test,” and theodicy versus a non-pragmatist argument
Different religions, theism versus deism, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai as the basis of command
Religious life under conditions of uncertainty, moral cost, and limited pluralism
The High Holidays, prayer, and divine judgment
“Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter: loops, consciousness, and criticism of materialism
Mind-body dualism, cogito, and the existence of spirit as logically prior to matter
Animals, consciousness, and Hofstadter’s jump from logic to metaphysics
Futurism, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, and moral rights
“Sha’arei Yosher” by Shimon Shkop: Talmudic logic, jurisprudence, and halakhic loops
The paradox of a condition in a bill of divorce: “Any legal effect that takes effect, does not take effect”
Modern interpretation of old texts and the question, “Why not just do philosophy directly?”
Choosing a figure to meet and one’s personal role: critical thinking and a “lean” rational Judaism
Updating Judaism: cleaning out “Jewish thought,” changing Jewish law, authority, and psychology
The price of conservatism, truth versus “holy lies,” and commitment that is not about “a better world”
Closing the podcast and the project’s call to action
Weekly Torah portion, Behar: the Sabbatical year, Mount Sinai, faith, and interpersonal ethics

Summary

General Overview

The text presents an episode of the podcast “The Hedgehog and the Fox” in which Shmuel Rosner hosts Rabbi Michael Abraham for a conversation about three books he chose. From that, a rational and firm worldview unfolds, one that distinguishes between universal arguments and religious frameworks, between philosophy and Jewish law, and between absolute certainty and committed positions under conditions of uncertainty. Rabbi Abraham argues that binding morality and truth are not matters of taste, that the existence of God is for him a rational conclusion, and that the Revelation at Mount Sinai is important as the binding basis for halakhic command, even though certainty about it is lower. Throughout the conversation he presents mind-body dualism, criticism of materialism and postmodernism, appreciation for logic and critical thinking, and a desire for a “lean and updated Judaism” that removes excess intellectual baggage and allows halakhic change through internal mechanisms. At the end of the text there is a section titled “Weekly Torah Portion, Behar,” which explains Rashi’s comment on “What does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai,” presents the Sabbatical year as an expression of faith and trust in God, and emphasizes the centrality of interpersonal obligations.

Opening and introduction of the podcast and the guest

The text opens with the declaration that “We speak Hebrew” and with the presentation of “The Hedgehog and the Fox” as a project of “a shelf of books and ideas for the curious,” hosted by Shmuel Rosner. Shmuel Rosner introduces Rabbi Michael Abraham as a rabbi and a doctor of theoretical physics who teaches at the Beit Midrash of Bar-Ilan University and writes articles on the website “mikyab.net, M-I-K-Y-A-B dot net,” and describes him as someone who takes a rational approach and has not despaired of truth. Shmuel Rosner lists books by Rabbi Abraham that he has read, including “God Plays Dice,” “The Science of Freedom,” and the thought trilogy: “The First Existent,” “No Man Rules the Spirit,” and “Walking Among the Standing,” and explains that the conversation will also include God, loops, paradoxes, the Revelation at Mount Sinai, body and soul, Gödel’s theorems, truth and falsehood.

New books from “The Hedgehog and the Fox” and the partnership with “Ivrit”

The text includes a promotional reminder about the publication of two new books: “She Will Not Fall Again” by Yishai Jessi Perez, about Israel’s survival in the reality of a nuclear Middle East, and “Ten Caesars” by Professor Barry Strauss, about ten central emperors of Rome. Shmuel Rosner points listeners to the website “kipshu.com, K-I-P-S-H-U dot com” and presents the podcast series as being produced in partnership with “Ivrit,” “the largest literary content site in Israel,” which offers digital, audio, and printed books, and he also lists previous books: “Does the World Really Exist?” and “The Shortest History of China.”

Titles and identity: “Rabbi Doctor” and the attitude toward authority

Rabbi Abraham says that he does not like titles and that “titles only distract the discussion,” so that people speak to the titles rather than to the person, and explains that he sometimes asks people not to use them, even though others sometimes attach them to him for their own purposes. The conversation shifts to using the name “Miki” and sets the stage for a discussion about frameworks, language, and content.

C. S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man”: education, relativism, and postmodernism

Rabbi Abraham chooses “The Abolition of Man” and presents C. S. Lewis as a philosopher and thinker who is clear and sharp, a Christian thinker who operates within a Christian conceptual framework but speaks about religiosity in general and about universal arguments. Rabbi Abraham compares that to himself and argues that most of what he says is universal and that Jewish language is sometimes only the language he comes from, and he connects this to his claim that “there is no such thing as Jewish thought,” only “correct thought and incorrect thought.” Rabbi Abraham says that the religious framework itself has “no significance whatsoever” philosophically, and gives the example that he analyzes Christian texts such as Saint Anselm of Canterbury in his books on Judaism, and emphasizes that one has to examine arguments on their own merits and not according to the speaker’s identity.

Judaism as Jewish law and meta-Jewish law: universality versus commitment

Rabbi Abraham defines Judaism mainly as Jewish law and as identity, and argues that “outside of Jewish law there is nothing in Judaism,” and that everything beyond that consists of universal matters, if they are true. He places a meta-halakhic foundation of belief in a God who commanded commandments, and argues that the questions whether God exists and whether there was a revelation at Mount Sinai are facts that are either true or not true, and are not “Jewish” in themselves, even though Jewish law binds Jews and does not address non-Jews. He emphasizes that his intellectual and philosophical world is completely universal even if the language is Jewish.

The existence of God, proof, assumptions, certainty, and a decisive writing style

Rabbi Abraham explains that the concept of “proof” depends on assumptions, so even a proven conclusion does not bind someone who does not accept the assumptions. He says that someone who does not believe in the existence of God is, in his view, “confused or philosophically unskilled,” and explains that the fact that there are great scientists who do not believe does not shake him, because smart people make mistakes and judgment has to be based on arguments, not authority. He adds that he has met scientists who talk “nonsense” in philosophical and meta-scientific contexts, and so he examines arguments rather than titles, even if the speaker is “a cobbler in the marketplace.” Shmuel Rosner points to the gap between Rabbi Abraham’s declared skepticism and his forceful writing style, and Rabbi Abraham argues that lack of certainty is not doubt, and that one can hold firm positions without absolute certainty, while criticizing the postmodern identification of uncertainty with doubt.

Morality, the “spinach test,” and theodicy versus a non-pragmatist argument

Rabbi Abraham explains that “The Abolition of Man” begins with a criticism of the teaching of literature that presents aesthetic and ethical judgment as merely a matter of taste, and he emphasizes that the relativist claim presents value disagreement as though it were merely a difference in personality and not a real argument. He brings David Enoch’s “spinach test” to distinguish between subjective and objective theses, and argues that people do not really believe that morality is relative in the way they claim, because moral statements are not perceived as funny in the same way personal taste is. He says that Lewis goes one step further and argues that without objectivity there is no reason to live or die for anything, and he appreciates Lewis’s caution in not being satisfied with describing grim consequences but pointing to internal flaws in the thesis itself. Rabbi Abraham distinguishes between theodicy/pragmatism and an argument that begins from a binding intuition, and presents an argument from morality to the existence of God that is based on the intuitive premise that valid morality exists and the conclusion that without God valid morality is impossible, while stressing that the argument applies only to someone who accepts the premise.

Different religions, theism versus deism, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai as the basis of command

Rabbi Abraham says that for the philosophical discussion about God it does not matter whether the speaker is Christian or Jewish, and he describes the philosophical God as a “deistic” God and not necessarily a commanding theistic one. He says that on the religious plane one can argue for exclusivity, but he finds it hard to accept a view according to which a God-fearing Christian would be “plunged straight into boiling excrement,” and he sees room for several religions to be worshipping God. He says that certainty about the Revelation at Mount Sinai is lower than certainty about the existence of God because it is a historical-traditional question and not a philosophical one, but he sees it as uniquely important factually because from it comes the command that makes Jewish law binding. He criticizes a position that disconnects faith from any factual platform and is prepared to give up many figures and events except for the Revelation at Mount Sinai, because without command there is no reason for halakhic commitment.

Religious life under conditions of uncertainty, moral cost, and limited pluralism

Rabbi Abraham rejects Pascal’s wager and explains that he keeps the commandments because he thinks that is right and binding even though there is no certainty, and he compares this to other human decisions in which people act and even sacrifice themselves without certainty. He says he has no sharp criterion for how much certainty is required for each commitment, and that the absence of certainty has practical influence up to the point where the moral price becomes too high for him to accept. He gives a hypothetical example in which he would not commit a “massacre” on the basis of only partial confidence, and accepts as legitimate the decision of someone whose threshold for certainty is higher and therefore does not put on tefillin. He argues that if he is right then those who disagree with him are mistaken, but error does not make a person wicked, and someone who acts according to the best of his understanding is “perfectly fine.”

The High Holidays, prayer, and divine judgment

Rabbi Abraham says that he is not sure the framework of a “Day of Judgment” during the High Holidays really takes place as described in the Sages and in the prayers, and he points to a difficulty with the second day of Rosh Hashanah, which is rabbinic and yet becomes “another Day of Judgment.” He describes the High Holidays as an opportunity for introspection and self-improvement without dependence on certainty about what is happening “in heaven,” and says that he does not speak to the Holy One, blessed be He, within the framework of “defense attorney versus prosecutor,” but rather conducts self-examination and hopes to do what is required if judgment indeed exists.

“Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter: loops, consciousness, and criticism of materialism

Rabbi Abraham says that he read “Gödel, Escher, Bach” in English and appreciates its popular style of writing that does not compromise on precision, and argues that many people own the book but do not really get through it or read only the dialogues. He compares this to reading “A Brief History of Time” and expresses philosophical criticism of Hawking even though he appreciates the man and his achievements. He explains that Hofstadter tried to show “how a human being emerges from an axiomatic system” and how human complexity grows out of a mechanical system, but in his opinion he does not succeed, because mental phenomena such as desire, emotions, and free choice cannot be derived from a calculating machine alone. He argues that there is a widespread view in neuroscience and in AI that the brain is a sophisticated calculating machine and that the mental is a byproduct of the physical, and he opposes that and connects it to his book “The Science of Freedom.”

Mind-body dualism, cogito, and the existence of spirit as logically prior to matter

Rabbi Abraham declares that he is an interactionist dualist and argues that there is a spiritual substance alongside a material substance and that they influence one another. He says that the question of the soul’s survival is possible but not clear to him in terms of its meaning, and emphasizes that the existence of spirit is logically prior to knowledge of the existence of matter, because awareness and thought are a condition for accepting the existence of matter. He describes materialism as “absurd” and explains that thinking is not identical with neural currents, but that the brain is a tool, like legs for walking, whereas “to think is to weigh ideas.”

Animals, consciousness, and Hofstadter’s jump from logic to metaphysics

Rabbi Abraham says that he has no sharp position regarding animals but tends to think that there is in them a dimension that is not material, and he raises doubt as to whether they possess consciousness and judgment of the human kind. He argues that Hofstadter mixes together a logical question of a system relating to itself with a metaphysical question of consciousness, and therefore makes too quick a leap from the Gödelian aspect to an explanation of consciousness. He presents the possibility that a formal system can generate “Gödelian” processes even without consciousness, and concludes that the mathematical model is not an explanation of consciousness.

Futurism, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, and moral rights

Rabbi Abraham says that apocalyptic computer scenarios and futurism in the style of Kurzweil do not speak to him, and he does not think the vision of machines making human beings obsolete will be realized in the sense of their becoming human beings. He argues that autonomous cars can be realistic and useful because they may reduce accidents, and he sees the fear of transferring decisions to a machine as more psychological than logical. He says that even if machines do tasks better and pass the Turing test, that will not turn them into human beings with a soul, and therefore they do not have moral rights like a person does. He adds that feelings of guilt are a means of reducing harm and not a value in themselves, so their absence in a machine does not trouble him if the result is better.

“Sha’arei Yosher” by Shimon Shkop: Talmudic logic, jurisprudence, and halakhic loops

Rabbi Abraham presents Rabbi Shimon Shkop as the head of the Grodno yeshiva and as a figure of intellectual grandeur, and explains that he chose him also because many listeners are probably unfamiliar with him. He argues that “Sha’arei Yosher” is a technical yeshiva-style book but full of deep philosophical intuitions even without formal philosophical education, and says that his series of books on Talmudic logic is based to a large extent on ideas originating there that were then given logical formalization. He gives the example of certainty versus uncertainty and the difficulty concerning possible theft versus the rule that “the burden of proof rests on the claimant,” and presents Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s answer as a distinction within “jurisprudence” as a prior layer that binds and explains the law. He emphasizes the question, “Why keep something the Torah did not command?” and Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s answer that returns the question: “And why keep what the Torah did command?” leading to the conclusion that reason is prior to the Torah in the sense that reason is what leads one to accept the Torah and therefore also obligates outside the verse.

The paradox of a condition in a bill of divorce: “Any legal effect that takes effect, does not take effect”

Rabbi Abraham gives a halakhic example of a conditional bill of divorce on condition that the woman not marry a certain man, which leads to a loop in which marriage to that man retroactively nullifies the divorce and thereby renders the marriage itself invalid, and so on endlessly. He presents Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s solution as a meta-halakhic principle: “Any legal effect that takes effect, does not take effect, so it does not take effect,” meaning that a legal effect that destroys itself does not take effect. He explains that this causes her marriage to that man not to take hold even though she is unmarried, because the legal effect would have annulled itself, and he presents this as an intuition from which one can derive general logical principles.

Modern interpretation of old texts and the question, “Why not just do philosophy directly?”

Rabbi Abraham rejects the assumption that the Talmudic sages were philosophers consciously aware of modern ideas, but argues that they operated intuitively in ways that reflect forms of thought that can be conceptualized in modern language without forcing nonsense onto the text. He argues that it is legitimate to interpret Maimonides and the Sages in modern language and with modern tools because that is “only language,” and that if the analysis is correct and resolves difficulties then it is a “correct interpretation” even if the author was not aware of the tools. He presents a position according to which one can understand a person “better than he understood himself” through analytical tools, and brings anecdotes about Maimonides in the study hall of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk and the story of Moses in the study hall of Rabbi Akiva, and also cites in the name of Rabbi Kook an idea about Rabbi Eliezer who said things “that no ear had ever heard before.”

Choosing a figure to meet and one’s personal role: critical thinking and a “lean” rational Judaism

Rabbi Abraham says that the most interesting meeting for him would have been with Lewis, but the possibility “to renew for them what they themselves said” he would do with Rabbi Shimon Shkop, because there he has more to add through modern tools. He defines his role as someone who presents ideas, ideals, and values in order to persuade people, and declares that people can be persuaded by logical arguments and that critical thinking that is not demagoguery can be taught. He says that his goal is that people “think correctly” and that his website is directed toward that, and at the same time he seeks “to produce a Judaism that is more rational on the one hand and leaner on the other,” without the “excess baggage” added over the generations.

Updating Judaism: cleaning out “Jewish thought,” changing Jewish law, authority, and psychology

Rabbi Abraham gives a central example of intellectual cleaning when he argues that “there is no such thing as Jewish thought,” and that even principles of faith or positions of Maimonides and the Sages are not binding if they do not come from the Holy One, blessed be He, or are not rational and persuasive. He says that within Jewish law there are “a great many possibilities for changing laws” and that there are ways of change that circumvent problems of authority, and argues that the public feels stuck because of “there is no Sanhedrin” and the sense that one cannot disagree. He agrees that there is also a psychological fear that “once you start unraveling it, it will all unravel and nothing will remain,” but insists on discussing arguments on their merits and not “going below the belt” by attributing motives to the questioner, and argues that dismantling halakhic mechanisms that protect conservatism may free the psychology as well.

The price of conservatism, truth versus “holy lies,” and commitment that is not about “a better world”

Rabbi Abraham says that the price of not updating things is “insane,” because people maintain an anachronistic system and a large part of it has “no reason whatsoever to be maintained” in its present form, and he argues that people are lost to it, “specifically the smart and upright ones,” because they are not prepared to commit themselves to “this God.” He rejects the question of “should one or shouldn’t one” as the test, and argues that commitment stems from command and not from the promise that religion “will make the world a better place,” and says that he does not think the religious world looks better than secular worlds and that there is no reason why not eating pork should make the world better. He argues that one should tell the truth and not maintain “holy lies” in order to keep people inside, and says that some told him they left because of him and others told him they stayed because of him, and he accepts the conclusions of those who leave as their own choice.

Closing the podcast and the project’s call to action

The text closes with thanks to Rabbi Michael Abraham and with a renewed presentation of “The Hedgehog and the Fox” as a project, with references to the website, social media, the newsletter, and a discount for subscribers. Shmuel Rosner lists books of the project: “The Bomber Mafia,” “Fear, Regret, and Wishful Thinking,” “Does the World Really Exist?,” “The Shortest History of China,” “She Will Not Fall Again,” and “Ten Caesars,” and notes the frequency of episodes and previous guests, and ends with wishes for a good year ahead of Rosh Hashanah.

Weekly Torah portion, Behar: the Sabbatical year, Mount Sinai, faith, and interpersonal ethics

The text continues with a section, “Good evening everyone, the weekly Torah portion, Parashat Behar,” and quotes, “And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,” and asks with Rashi, “What does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai?” The section brings Rashi’s explanation that the Sabbatical year teaches that just as its general principles, details, and fine points were said at Sinai, so too all the commandments, and suggests that the Sabbatical year was chosen because more than anything it expresses faith and trust in God when a person stops working for a year and relies on the Holy One, blessed be He, for livelihood. The section notes that the parashah continues with the laws of the Jubilee, the redemption of land, the prohibition of interest, and verbal mistreatment, and emphasizes “And you shall not wrong one another, and you shall fear your God” as highlighting interpersonal obligations within the larger system of faith in the Creator of the world, and ends with the blessing, “May we merit, with God’s help, to fulfill the commandments with joy and trust.”

Full Transcript

[Speaker A] We speak Hebrew. A good story of Hebrew.

[Speaker B] Hello to all of you. We are The Hedgehog and the Fox, a shelf of books and ideas for the curious. My name is Shmuel Rosner. Thank you for joining us. How many books has Rabbi Doctor Michael Abraham written? I didn’t ask, but by my count it’s thirty-two books. Maybe I’m a little off, maybe by one or two. That’s my count from Wikipedia. I went back over it several times to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, but I myself have read only five of his books. Only five. Not a small number, but also not all that many when we’re talking about thirty-two. I read “God Plays Dice,” what evolution really tells us. I read “The Science of Freedom,” do we have free choice? Physics, philosophy, and neuroscience. And I read the thought trilogy. Those are three books. The first is “The First Existent,” faith, religious commitment, and rational thinking. The second is “No Man Rules the Spirit,” toward a lean and updated framework for Jewish thought. And the third is “Walking Among the Standing,” on the need and the possibility of refreshing Jewish law. Rabbi Doctor Michael Abraham will be our guest today, and as I said, he is a rabbi and a doctor of theoretical physics, and he teaches at the Beit Midrash of Bar-Ilan University. He deals with science, he deals with philosophy, he deals with thought, including Jewish thought, assuming such a thing exists. He has a website where he regularly publishes his articles, mikyab.net, M-I-K-Y-A-B dot net. And on that site it says this: Rabbi Michael Abraham is a unique rabbinic figure in our time, one who maintains a rational approach on the one hand and has not despaired of the truth on the other. Because of that, many turn to him with difficulties and dilemmas on matters of faith, meaning, values, morality, and more. We didn’t turn to him with questions of morality or dilemmas of faith. We came with a request that he talk with us about three books of his choosing. And he chose these three: “The Abolition of Man,” or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. “Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter, and also “Sha’arei Yosher” by Shimon Shkop. In a moment we’ll talk about those, and we’ll also talk about the reality of God, strange loops, paradoxes, the question of whether the Revelation at Mount Sinai happened or didn’t happen, body and soul, Gödel’s theorems, truth and falsehood, and much more. Before that, a necessary reminder. “The Hedgehog and the Fox” is a project of ideas and also of books, and this month we are publishing two new books. “She Will Not Fall Again,” the critical question of how Israel will survive in the reality of a nuclear Middle East. It’s a very readable, fluent, vital book. Yes, it’s a vital book because Israel absolutely has to start dealing with the question of what will happen and how, if and when. And of course, let’s hope not, let’s hope it won’t happen, but hope is not a work plan, so “She Will Not Fall Again” by Yishai Jessi Perez. And we also published “Ten Caesars.” Who were the ten most important emperors of Rome? Professor Barry Strauss chose the ones he considers the most important. You can of course argue with his choices, and he tells the fascinating story of those ten emperors. More details about “The Hedgehog and the Fox” in general, and about our books in particular, are on our website, kipshu.com, K-I-P-S-H-U dot com. Come visit us, come learn about the books, listen to previous podcasts, read a little about us and our project. The podcast series “The Hedgehog and the Fox” is produced in partnership with Ivrit, Israel’s largest literary content site, offering books in every format: digital, audio, and print. On Ivrit you can also find “She Will Not Fall Again” and “Ten Caesars,” and also “Does the World Really Exist?” and “The Shortest History of China.” Those are our previous books. In short, you can find all our books there. That’s it for “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” and from here to Rabbi Doctor Michael Abraham. Fasten your seatbelts. Rabbi Doctor Michael Abraham, hello. Hello, hello. One of my previous guests was Professor General Yitzhak Ben-Israel, so I asked him which comes first, General or Professor. So maybe that’s an unnecessary question in your case, rabbi or doctor?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I mean, rabbi—I’m not really even a rabbi, although those aren’t formal titles anyway.

[Speaker B] So you’re not a rabbi, and you’re not a doctor.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doctor I actually am, as it happens, but it really doesn’t sound all that meaningful to me.

[Speaker B] In popular perception, doctor means physician. You’re not the physician kind.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The doctor who doesn’t know how to cure anything, as someone once told me. So I don’t like titles. Titles only distract the discussion. Instead of talking to the person, people talk to his titles.

[Speaker B] But everywhere it says Rabbi Doctor, meaning you do make sure to put rabbi before doctor.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t make sure of that at all, on the contrary. I usually ask people not to use titles, but there are people who put them in, and sometimes it matters to them because they want somehow to advance their own interests and show that this is some kind of conversation with important people. I really don’t like these titles—not out of modesty. I think they simply get in the way.

[Speaker B] I understand. All right, then we’ll switch to Miki, right? We’ll switch to Miki. And let’s begin with Narnia. Your assignment was to choose three books. You didn’t choose Narnia. I should immediately warn our listeners, who are already excited that you didn’t choose Narnia, but you know why I’m going in that direction. So, first book—what did you want?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The author of Narnia, Lewis, C. S. Lewis—what’s less well known about him is that he was a philosopher, a thinker, in my view one of the clearest, sharpest, and most brilliant people I know.

[Speaker B] Here in Hebrew we write his name with Hebrew initials, but he’s really C. S. Lewis, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And he has a number of works. Some of them—he had religious periods, non-religious periods. He has a few philosophical works, at least two of which I read, let’s say. I didn’t read all of them. And I was extremely impressed by him.

[Speaker B] He’s very much a Christian thinker, meaning a large part of his thought is deeply Christian thought.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, although some of the things are within a Christian framework, but really he’s talking about religiosity in general.

[Speaker B] The

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] conceptual world and the arguments—and yes, the language, the terminology, is Christian because that’s his world. By the way, in that sense I also feel that way about myself sometimes.

[Speaker B] So that was going to be my next question, because you said you wanted this book, so I went to read it. The book is “The Abolition of Man,” that’s the book we’re talking about. I went and read it and said, ah, I get the principle. This is a Christian thinker talking about general human matters, and Christianity for him is only the framework, and you also in some way operate like that in the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I think that in a certain sense… now that you say it, it just occurred to me now—I hadn’t thought of it—that I also think, at least, that most of the things I say are universal things. Many times I use, and sometimes not, but many times I use Jewish language because that’s the world I come from. But that’s only language. In the end, I’m saying universal things. Especially since I devoted an entire book to the argument that there is no such thing as Jewish thought. There’s correct thought and incorrect thought—why should I care whether it’s from Israel or from Ishmael? It’s really irrelevant. So in light of that, of course that would be the case.

[Speaker B] But under those circumstances, when you look at philosophical thought and the religious framework, whether Jewish or Christian, then what role does the framework play at all? Is it just an example you draw from and it doesn’t matter where from, or does it still have some meaning for you as the speaker?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my opinion, no meaning at all. No meaning at all. I’m completely indifferent to the language and the conceptual framework in which things are presented. I try, at least, to be that way—to deal with things on their own merits. I don’t… and many times when you strip off the particularistic clothing, you discover that these are really universal arguments. In one of my books I open with a very detailed analysis of a text by Saint Anselm of Canterbury, which is a very distinctly Christian composition, much more so than Lewis. And I’m writing that inside a trilogy dealing with Judaism.

[Speaker B] His proof, the proof that there is divinity, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The ontological proof, what Kant called it. And there too people kind of open their eyes a little—like, what is the rabbi doing talking about Christian texts? And I’m also very impressed by him, by the way. So I’m not talking about the Christianity in it, but the fact that he’s Christian doesn’t disqualify what he says. You have to examine it. And the fact that a Jew said something doesn’t validate what he says. In other words, you have to examine the things themselves, not the speaker.

[Speaker B] So the fact that you speak from a Jewish position is really just a result of your personal autobiography and has no significant meaning in itself?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, but here you need to distinguish between two areas.

[Speaker B] I’m asking because I’ve read—not all your books, since I counted more than thirty, so I haven’t read all of them—but I have read several. You tend to write in a very detached way. That is, you write philosophically, you write very little about yourself. So I say, okay, then wait—where are you in all this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here I really would say: you need to distinguish between two areas. In my view, Judaism is Jewish law. It is identity. In other words, beyond Jewish law there is nothing in Judaism. Meaning, everything there is in so-called Judaism beyond Jewish law is universal matters—the true parts of them. And what isn’t true, why should I care that it exists in Judaism?

[Speaker B] But then people will immediately ask: so why observe this thing at all?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, so I’m saying there is the meta-halakhic foundation, let’s say, that there is a God, and that He commanded us commandments. Certainly I have to get through those stages on the way to religious commitment. But the fact that there is a God, and even the fact that He revealed Himself at Mount Sinai, is either a true fact or an untrue fact. That has nothing to do with Judaism in this respect, except that non-Jews aren’t all that obligated by it. Fine, but if historically I’m right that there was such an event, then even a non-Jew in principle ought to accept it. There’s nothing Jewish here. Jewish law by its essence doesn’t say things that are true, and therefore in that sense it addresses Jews, it obligates Jews, at least those who recognize it, and it has nothing to do with non-Jews, with someone who isn’t Jewish. But that’s only Jewish law. The entire world of thought, philosophy, any other context of mine, is completely universal. The language may be Jewish, but the content is entirely universal.

[Speaker B] And in Jewish and/or Christian language—we haven’t yet gotten to “The Abolition of Man,” we’ll get there in a second—but in Jewish or Christian language, when you read these proofs for the existence of God, is that for you a proven conclusion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, one of the things I often deal with is the question of what exactly counts as a proof. Because after all, a proof is always—even a proof in the strictest rigorous sense—is a conclusion that follows from premises through rules of logical inference. But the premises are always there in the background. So even if I tell you that something is proven, that still doesn’t mean you have to accept the conclusion, because the question is what your relation is to the premises.

[Speaker B] Right, but you wrote, for example, a book that deals with evolution. It seems to me that your conclusion there is yes, evolution, as far as we know how to prove things, is proven, and someone who denies evolution is already in an uncomfortable zone. Are you in the same place with respect to the existence of God? That is, do you think that someone who denies it is a little odd and doesn’t know how to look at proofs? I think so, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I mean, I don’t know if odd, because there are so many of them that to call them all odd would be strange.

[Speaker B] No, people who don’t accept evolutionary theory are looked at as people who just haven’t studied enough.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And in this context I think these are people who either aren’t skilled in thinking or who are mistaken for one reason or another, in my opinion. Of course, it’s always possible that I’m mistaken too. I’m never certain of what I say. But in light of the conclusions I’ve reached, I think that someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of God is a confused person or philosophically unskilled.

[Speaker B] I see. And the fact that, say, there are many great scientists—physicists, biologists—who are skilled in scientific thinking and do not accept this claim, that doesn’t undermine your confidence in it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t undermine it for two reasons. One reason is that people often ask me, wait, but lots of smart people think differently—not only in the area of faith but in general. I say okay, there are smart people who think this and there are smart people who think that, so by definition one of the groups is wrong. So there you have proof that smart people can be mistaken. Now you only have to decide which smart people you go with and which smart people, in your opinion, made the mistake. That’s the point.

[Speaker B] No, theoretically you could also take some middle path and say: and because of that, on this matter I take a skeptical approach. My prior, in percentages—what percentage of confidence, what level of confidence do I have about this—won’t be a hundred percent but sixty percent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I usually don’t discuss questions in light of what people say about them, however wise they may be, and however much I may value them. I discuss questions according to what seems right to me. And my level of confidence in an answer—which is never a hundred percent on any issue, maybe except for the issue that nothing is a hundred percent—my level of confidence is derived from the quality of the arguments I have in favor of the matter. And I’m not at all interested in who says this and who says that, unless we’re dealing with an area of expertise in which I’m not an expert, in which case of course I need to hear what experts say and try to form an opinion without understanding the field. There, of course, it matters who says what and how many people say it. That’s one point. The second point is that I’ve already met so many scientists who talk nonsense in areas that deviate even a little from their area of expertise—even areas adjacent to their expertise, sometimes really within their expertise. And I’m talking about smart people and excellent scientists who are far above me in their league, and still, in philosophical and meta-scientific contexts, you can see smart people saying such nonsense that I’m very unimpressed by a person’s scientific or academic titles. You have to check what he’s saying. If his arguments are good, then fine, even if he’s a cobbler in the marketplace. And if his arguments are bad, then even if he’s the greatest philosopher or physicist, fine—then in this context he’s talking nonsense.

[Speaker B] As someone who reads both your books and the blog you publish—which, for our listeners, anyone who wants it can easily find just by typing your name online—what do you call it? Responsa and articles. Yes, Michael Abraham’s responsa and articles. You say that you’re skeptical regarding certainty about everything, but your writing is not skeptical writing. It’s decisive writing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a good comment. Actually I’ve thought about that a little in the past, but you sharpen it for me, because I have—I’m trying to think—I don’t know whether to call it an impulse or a tendency. I don’t know if it’s an impulse. In my eyes it’s not an illegitimate tendency—to make it clear to people, because this is almost one of my central theses, to make it clear to people that the fact that I don’t hold anything with certainty doesn’t mean I have no positions, and even firm positions. And one of the mistakes, in my view, of the postmodern world is this mistaken identification between lack of certainty and doubt.

[Speaker B] There—you’re taking us into “The Abolition of Man,” the book you chose to talk about. That’s exactly it, right? Yes, so let’s talk about it a little and explain why it matters to you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is that it was written in the middle of World War II, so it’s already a pretty old book. And these themes of postmodernism and the New Criticism, or all sorts of names like that, were themes that at the time were still fairly fresh. They had started to appear, and later they came out much more forcefully. And I think he identified brilliantly where this whole thing was going.

[Speaker B] He’s writing, generally speaking—he calls it Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. Meaning, he found some literature textbook from the education system and says: I see what they’re teaching the youth, and it isn’t good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Earlier we talked about language and content. He doesn’t deal anywhere in this book with teaching eleventh and twelfth grade classes, but he uses a book that teaches literature in eleventh and twelfth grade to express ideas that are much, much broader and more fundamental, not connected to teaching literature and not to eleventh and twelfth grade at all. So here’s a nice example of using language as against the content conveyed through the language. And his claim—he begins the book with some argument that comes up, yes, in some poem by Coleridge, the British poet. And he says that one person is moved by some waterfall and the other remains indifferent to it, some landscape scene or other. And the authors of that book—he gives it the codename The Green Book, apparently because he doesn’t want to offend them—they teach children in school that there really isn’t any actual dispute between these two people, because one is describing his state of mind as he stands before the waterfall and in him a feeling of sublimity, wonder, and so on is aroused. And the other remains indifferent. It’s just personality differences. But personality differences aren’t a dispute. Say if I like so-and-so or so-and-so and you don’t like her, then we don’t have an argument.

[Speaker B] There’s no arguing about taste. That’s exactly this kind of thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I’m built this way, so I like her, and you’re built differently, so you don’t like her. No problem at all, we have no dispute. And their claim is that a judgment of art, or an aesthetic judgment—and by implication of course an ethical judgment as well—is the same thing. Meaning there too it’s all just a matter of taste; that’s how we’re built. You know, once I read—there was some debate panel I had with David Enoch, the philosopher from the Hebrew University in Tel Aviv, around the question whether in the absence of God everything is permitted. I argued that for morality to be valid you need belief in God, and he argued that you don’t. So one of the things I brought from him, from one of his articles, was what he called the spinach test. What’s the spinach test? Think of a child who says this to you: “Look, I’m so glad I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach I’d eat it, but spinach is yuck.” Now why is that funny? Because obviously if you liked spinach there would be no problem with your eating spinach; in other words, you’re looking at it from your present standpoint.

[Speaker B] In a bit, when we get to the next books you chose, this is actually going to connect to the subject of loops that we’ll have to talk about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, yes, although here it’s not really a loop. On the other hand, take someone talking about a scientific fact. Someone who says, “How good it is that I’m alive today and not a thousand years ago. I wouldn’t have known that the earth is a sphere; I would have thought it was a flat plate.” That isn’t funny. Why isn’t it funny? Because the claim that the earth is a sphere and not a flat plate is an objective claim. It hasn’t changed from the tenth century until today; our knowledge of it changed. So now he has this test: when you want to check whether a given thesis is subjective or objective, let’s run it through the spinach test. Now if you ask the authors of The Green Book—Lewis’s Green Book—or people who are ethical relativists about morality, ask them what they think about the following childish so-called statement: “How good it is that I’m alive today and not two hundred years ago, because two hundred years ago I might have enslaved black slaves in the southern United States, or in America generally.” Okay? Now, people who see moral principles as subjective—for them this is like spinach, and you’re supposed to laugh at this point. And it’s obvious to all of us that very few people would laugh on hearing such a thing. All in all, it’s a statement I think most of us would identify with. And it’s a nice test because it sharpens the fact that for all the talk that morality is relative and aesthetics is relative and taste is relative, we don’t really believe that. And we do think morality consists of objective, binding principles. True, things change over time; true, people disagree. But we’re not talking here about things that are merely matters of taste. And in that sense, that is basically Lewis’s thesis.

[Speaker B] Yes, and Lewis actually goes about half a step beyond that when he says that if there are no objective things, then there’s also no objective reason to live, or no objective reason to fight for something, or no objective reason basically…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s nothing at all to die for.

[Speaker B] There’s nothing at all to die for, right, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But really what’s beautiful—and this is exactly a post I just wrote on the site—what’s beautiful in his book is that because he’s so sharp and clear, he doesn’t miss. Meaning, he doesn’t make mistakes, and that’s very impressive to me when you read it carefully. And after he finishes the first chapter—the first chapter is basically a throwing of

[Speaker B] mud at these nice relative literary people…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. But many critics stop there. They say, “Look, if you hold such a position, what kind of world will we have? There’ll be no morality, nothing to live for, no way to make claims against evil people,” and all the standard arguments we know. But as he rightly says at the beginning of the second part of the book, those arguments are not criticism. Because it may really be that the sad truth is that we have no possibility… right. That there’s no reason to live or that there is no valid morality. And then in the second part of the book he begins to explain why, in his view, there are flaws in that thesis too—not only that it leads to problematic consequences, but he argues that he has a critique of, or flaws in, those theses themselves. And that’s another indication of his caution and philosophical precision, which I find very impressive.

[Speaker B] I admit that when I read this kind of argument that starts with, “Look, if we do such-and-such, the results are very problematic,” everything that comes after always seems to me like a kind of theodicy—that is, now we’ll find a way to prove that this probably isn’t the right system, so that we don’t arrive at the gloomy conclusions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. So actually one of the central points in that post I mentioned earlier is precisely this point. Because there’s a very fine distinction between theodicy—between two kinds of theodicy. I call it basically pragmatism, which is almost the same thing. You’re basically looking for arguments in order to reach a conclusion you mainly want.

[Speaker B] You basically know what the conclusion is before

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you started making arguments, and you build the argument that will lead to it. By the way, that’s also a common criticism of Anselm: that he opens with a prayer to the Holy One, blessed be He—to God—and then looks for an argument to prove His existence.

[Speaker B] Yes, basically the prayer proves that he clearly intended from the outset to find His existence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Now I claim that this criticism is incorrect. Because it depends on the question—and this is a very subtle distinction, and I described it in a series of posts—the difference between… Hillel Zeitlin and arguments I give that look very similar, but when you examine them they’re actually opposites.

[Speaker B] Okay, try to demonstrate that for us in language you can understand by listening.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. For example, I’ll give you an example: the argument for God’s existence from morality. I mentioned earlier my claim against David Enoch. So I argue that there is no valid morality without God, therefore there is a God. Now at first glance this is theodicy—theodicy for morality, not for God, yes—but it’s a kind of, you want there to be valid morality, so you build yourself an opium for the masses; yes, you invent God so that He’ll let you speak about valid morality, sustain a moral world. And philosophically that really is flawed in my view; it’s pragmatism. Pragmatism is a dirty word for me—pragmatism as a philosophical approach, not pragmatism in life. But that’s not the argument I mean. I mean an argument that is very similar but completely different when you look at it. I argue that intuitively it’s clear to me that there is valid morality—that’s a premise. Now I know that unless there is a God in the background, there cannot be valid morality.

[Speaker B] That premise is based on what? Is that an observational premise?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning intuitively. You can call it observation with the eyes of conscience; it’s not our optical eyes. But my intuition…

[Speaker B] But what does “I know because I know” mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. How do you know the axioms of geometry? That two parallel lines don’t meet? Intuitively it’s clear to you that that’s how it is. And then you ask yourself, okay, what could justify such a thing? And my claim is that you have to assume the existence of God, because without that there is no valid morality. Now that’s a very subtle difference from the previous theodicy. Because when I say, “I want there to be valid morality because it’s convenient for me, because it matters to me,” something like that, therefore there is a God—that’s flawed. So what if you want it? I’m saying no: I start not from the point that I want it, but that I know it exists. Now I ask myself, wait a second, but how can it exist? Since without God it can’t, therefore there is a God.

[Speaker B] And if my axiom… if my feeling is that there is no valid morality, then the proof is void? Right, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The proof, like any proof, speaks to those who accept the premises.

[Speaker B] So maybe the whole difference between people like you and people like, I don’t know, Richard Dawkins, who denies the existence of God, is that your intuitive feeling is that there is valid morality, and his intuitive feeling is that there isn’t valid morality, and therefore you reach different conclusions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. But beyond analyzing the disagreement—which is the stance of a researcher, you look at what he thinks and what he thinks—I, as someone involved in the dispute, because after all I wrote a book against him, I as someone involved in the dispute have a critique of his arguments, and therefore I don’t accept it in some neutral calm way: okay, he has a different intuition and therefore he reaches the conclusion that there isn’t. I claim that I can show him, by his own method, that he should believe in God. Or maybe he even believes implicitly, but isn’t aware of it.

[Speaker B] Why by his own method? If by his own method—say not Dawkins—suppose someone comes and says, “My intuition is that there is no valid morality,” and I appoint you as my lawyer, then you would succeed in proving that therefore God’s existence also isn’t real.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. And on that route I won’t be able to prove God’s existence to him. Because every argument is built on accepting the premises. If you don’t accept the premises, I can’t. But there are other arguments. And other arguments can still bring you to the conclusion that there is a God, even if from morality I won’t be able to take you there.

[Speaker B] Now why is this premise binding at all? I mean, why is it compelling in itself? Why shouldn’t we say: okay, then there is no morality and there’s no God either?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The example I can give for that is this: look, I see a picture in front of me. Now the skeptic asks me, okay, you see it, so what? Maybe you’re imagining it. Descartes’ deceiving demon, yes. Maybe you’re imagining it. What do I answer him? I can’t answer him anything except that I see it and I trust what I see. Right? I don’t have a better answer than that. Even though I’m pretty convinced I’m right without having some explicit argument to justify it. It’s clear to me; it’s a simple premise; it’s a clear intuition. Maybe I’m mistaken—nothing is certain—but presumably I’m not mistaken in this context. I give the same answer regarding morality. Since I have a very clear feeling—for me it’s like seeing, only not seeing with my eyes but seeing with my moral intuition, with my conscience or whatever—that it’s obvious that moral principles are binding principles. I demand this of others, and I don’t see it as just my whim, or as something that’s simply the way I happen to be built. It’s not arbitrary, because otherwise there’s no justification for demanding it of other people. If I demand it of other people and I don’t see it as a whim, that means I see that there really is something binding here. So from my point of view I don’t need to justify to you why I think this is true, just as I won’t justify to you why the picture is here. I simply see it. Now if you show me that this appearance deceives me, fine—I need to be open to comments about what I see. And I hope I really am open to that. But the burden of proof, as far as I’m concerned, is on you. In other words, my assumption is that if I see…

[Speaker B] and that’s how it is, and certainly that’s how it is if I come to you with a moral demand—if I say, “You ought to be a moral person”—then you say, if so, you accept the premise that there is morality, and therefore you should accept the logical claim I infer from it, that there is also some presence, some source of validity, a source of validity for morality, which in your eyes is God. Now, does the fact that Lewis’s God and your God split into different religions have any implication?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it has no philosophical implication, and the discussion here is philosophical—whether there is or isn’t a God. So what difference does it make whether you’re Christian or Jewish? I’m speaking about God in a very, very abstract and thin sense, I’d even say. After that—what did He command, if He commanded, whom did He command—that can be debated.

[Speaker B] As a Jew, do you have a need to convince Lewis that your God, in quotation marks, or the commandments you received from your God, are more correct than the commandments he received from his God, who is the same God of his?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So on the philosophical plane, no. On the religious plane—and therefore it isn’t connected to the previous discussion—someone could come and say yes, I take an exclusive approach in the religious world. Meaning, if I’m right, then you’re wrong.

[Speaker B] Someone could come and say that—meaning that’s not what you’re saying?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. I’m saying—I simply wanted to say that this is a similar claim but different from the previous one of mine. Okay. Because on the religious plane there would indeed be room to come to Lewis and say, “Listen, you’re mistaken. God was revealed at Sinai and not to Jesus,” and yes, Christianity wasn’t invented afterward. But I also tend to think—I don’t know if I accept all the Christian stories, and I don’t accept all the Jewish stories either, not all of them—but I do think there is room for several religions that worship God. And let’s say, at least on the moral-ethical level, it’s hard for me to see how a Christian who grew up in some Polish village and does God’s will as he understands it as best he can—the priest told him, that’s how he was taught, he’s God-fearing and everything’s fine—will get to the next world and they’ll immediately dunk him in boiling excrement while I stand on the side clapping. That doesn’t sound reasonable to me; it doesn’t sound fitting to God, at least as I understand His goodness, and therefore it’s hard for me to believe that that’s His attitude.

[Speaker B] Earlier I asked you whether your level of certainty regarding God’s existence is similar to your level of certainty regarding evolution. Now I’ll ask a similar question: is your level of certainty regarding the Sinai revelation similar to your level of certainty regarding God’s existence?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A bit less.

[Speaker B] Okay. Explain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] God’s existence—I have philosophical arguments that I think are strong, at least in my eyes. Meaning, I think it’s a rationally necessary conclusion. The Sinai revelation doesn’t lie on the philosophical plane at all, but rather on what we might call the historical, traditional plane. Meaning, you have to get an impression whether such an event happened or didn’t happen. Here there are no philosophical arguments that can prove the Sinai revelation happened; that isn’t a philosophical question.

[Speaker B] By the way, is it important at all whether it happened or not? In your eyes yes. Why is it important?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have a friend named Rabbi Amit Kula, and he wrote a book called “It Happened or Didn’t Happen.” An interesting person—just by the way, maybe you should interview him sometime too. He wrote a book called “It Happened or Didn’t Happen,” and there he wants to completely disconnect Jewish faith from any factual platform. Meaning, I’m not committed to any factual claim in the world. A bit like Leibowitz. And I told him that I go with him almost all the way except for the Sinai revelation. Meaning, if the Sinai revelation didn’t happen, but was some kind of

[Speaker B] myth—meaning the First Temple, King David, Solomon, Samson, Abraham—you give up on all of them except the Sinai revelation? Right. And Moses? Are you willing to give up on Moses? On all of them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand. I’m saying I’m willing, because it’s not that I’ve given them up; I just don’t have indications one way or the other. But it doesn’t sound to me like something foundational. Meaning, I can manage in faith without that.

[Speaker B] And how is the Sinai revelation different?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sinai revelation is the place where the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us. Meaning, if there was no command, there is no reason in the world to do all these strange things that I occupy myself with. Meaning, why do them? So when I asked him, he said, “Look, maybe there was some sort of drizzling revelation over the generations through people with spiritual charisma of one kind or another.” I told him, look, I have no tendency to believe those sorts of things, and therefore I see no reason in the world why such things would bring me to believe that I’m obligated to observe. So that point, I think, is maybe the one point I think is necessary on the factual level.

[Speaker B] But—but you took upon yourself all the commandments and this whole way of life, even though you told me three minutes ago that your level of certainty regarding the Sinai revelation is lower than your level of certainty regarding God’s existence. So you took a great deal upon yourself for a lower level of certainty. Why? Is this Pascal? Pascal’s wager—just to be on the safe side I do it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ve already written about Pascal. What’s surprising in Pascal, beyond all the bugs in his argument, is that the basic bug in his argument—and by the way I haven’t seen people point this out; I wrote it in the book against Dawkins—is a statistical bug. Now Pascal is one of the fathers of statistics. And he has a statistical mistake in his argument. So I’m really not Pascalian.

[Speaker B] At that time mathematics still wasn’t developed enough.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there it’s an interpretation of statistics, but in my opinion it really is a basic mistake. So I’m not Pascal at all. I observe it because I think it’s true. But “I think it’s true”—or I think it’s binding, right, appropriate, however you want to put it. But thinking it’s true doesn’t mean certainty. I have certainty about nothing. Now what level of certainty is required for me to act accordingly? Listen, people sacrifice their lives here in the army, or for a communist revolution, or I don’t know what, anywhere whatsoever, for all kinds of ideas they believe in. If you corner them and ask them, tell me, are you sure it’s true? That it will bring salvation? Honest people ought to say no. But it seems that way to me. Meaning, I’m not sure, but that’s what it seems to me. So we make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, and in this context too I make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. It’s not a gamble. It’s not a gamble.

[Speaker B] But it does impose on you a whole life under certain restrictions, within a certain framework. That’s not an easy thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But my level of certainty on this matter is enough for me to be willing, for its sake, to undertake those obligations. But I don’t have some sharp criterion: what level of certainty is needed for what intensity of obligation. By the way, this does somewhat affect my religious worldview in practice too, not only in the general statement that it isn’t certain for me. Because there really are certain things I might not be willing to do if the price is very, very high, because I’m not sure it’s correct. Even a moral price.

[Speaker B] Such as? Can you give an example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—if I had some Amalekites here, I don’t know exactly what, and I had to kill all the babies, and let’s say I couldn’t find all the solutions.

[Speaker B] Then you’d say: for seventy percent certainty, putting on phylacteries every day, yes; killing Amalekites, not sure?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wouldn’t carry out genocide for that seventy percent. I understand. Yes. Meaning there are—and I’m saying this openly—I think this is kind of an unexpected statement from someone called a rabbi, but that’s the bitter truth.

[Speaker B] Now if someone comes and says: I have the same seventy percent you have regarding the Sinai revelation, but in my view seventy percent isn’t enough even to put on phylacteries.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, then he’s not with us. I understand. In my view that’s a legitimate decision.

[Speaker B] And his argument overall—you accept it as a claim with internal logic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely. Yes, yes. I don’t agree with him, but fine. Meaning, I also think in general, beyond the question of what the threshold is—the threshold of certainty required—there are people who reach different conclusions from mine. I’m far from being a pluralist; I think they’re mistaken. If I’m right, then whoever says the opposite is wrong. But that doesn’t mean they’re wicked, or that one should call them to account for what they… If they do what they think, then they’re perfectly fine, just like me, in the sense of what is required of them. And when the Holy One, blessed be He, judges them, I don’t know what happens there, but say for the sake of discussion: if he acted according to the best of his understanding, then he’s perfectly fine. Meaning, the fact that he erred—fine, he erred, what can you do.

[Speaker B] By the way, is the God whose existence is proven in your eyes also a God who judges you one day in some way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not—not really. Meaning, the God whose existence is proven is a philosophical God. That’s deism, not theism. When you move to theism—that is, to religious obligations, to religious conceptions, to judgment, which by the way I’m not even sure will really happen—those things I’m not one hundred percent certain about. I don’t know exactly what their source is. Things that developed in ways not entirely clear to me, all kinds of principles of faith in the Jewish world where it isn’t clear to me whether they really have a convincing source. But even if, say, they do, I would accept it by force of tradition. And I already spoke earlier about the fact that tradition is not something I arrive at by philosophical tools. It’s not a philosophical statement.

[Speaker B] No, but when you stand—we’re getting a little closer, we’re beginning to get closer to the month of Elul and the High Holy Days—when you stand on Yom Kippur and speak to whoever is supposed to judge you, then what does that mean? Are we playing a game of let’s pretend that He’s supposed to judge me?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think that on the High Holy Days He judges me at all. I don’t know where the Sages got that from. I wrote that on my blog too.

[Speaker B] That means—the prayers say so, I mean, you recite the same prayer text I do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mishnahs and Talmudic passages and prayers, all true, all familiar to me, and I don’t know the source of these things. I’m absolutely not convinced that that’s really what’s going on there. But certainly not on the second day of the holiday, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, which is entirely rabbinic, and it suddenly becomes another day of judgment and once again we plead. No, all right, now you’re already

[Speaker B] moving to an issue that really is a secondary issue.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, but through it I’m showing the whole point. Because on the second day people speak to the Holy One, blessed be He, asking Him to forgive them to the same degree. Now that day didn’t exist until they decided to make two days on a rabbinic basis.

[Speaker B] But on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, when you ask Him to forgive you, what are you actually asking?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not really asking Him to forgive me. Rather, I’m engaging in self-examination, which needs to be done regardless of the Day of Judgment and what’s happening in heaven. And if He really does judge me on those days—possibly, because I don’t know that He doesn’t, I simply don’t know—then if He judges me, I hope I’m doing what I need to do in order to come out well in that matter. But I’m not speaking to Him within the framework of some trial now being conducted, defense attorney versus prosecutor. Rather, it’s a good opportunity to examine ourselves, improve ourselves, see how we move forward and improve. And that is always true regardless of things happening somewhere in those days. Every year, to examine ourselves—that’s a very correct and proper thing. And that’s what I try to do.

[Speaker B] All right, I promised to skip to loops, so let’s skip to loops. The second book you asked us to talk about—I don’t know, after all we’re not talking about the books; we start with books and talk about whatever we talk about. You asked to talk about Gödel, Escher, Bach. Douglas Hofstadter’s book, which also came out in Hebrew in what I think is a superb translation that people worked on for many years. I admit that my preference is for “I Am a Strange Loop,” Hofstadter’s second book, which is a bit more concrete in my eyes, but let’s talk about the question: what’s interesting about Hofstadter? Why exactly does he interest you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is I read it back in its English phase, before it was translated. I heard about it from a good friend of mine, and it was pretty hard for me—I’m not one of the outstanding English speakers or English readers—but somehow I got through it, even most of it. I’m not sure I really got through all of it.

[Speaker B] It’s long, it should be said.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. And I enjoyed it very, very much. There was something charming there in the style of writing, and in the fact that he doesn’t compromise on level and precision. Meaning, the book is popular, but unlike other popular books that terribly annoy me—we talked a bit about this earlier—here I feel that he is an artist in the sense that he writes in a popular way, but he presents the things the way they ought to be presented.

[Speaker B] And that’s why I always suspect there are lots of people who have Gödel, Escher, Bach on the shelf but never got past page thirty, or second possibility: they read only the dialogues at the beginning of each chapter but not the logical proofs afterward.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It’s like, you know, Hawking’s books. I read his first book, A Brief History of Time. So afterward people asked me what I thought and so on. I said, “Look, I didn’t understand most of the book, and it’s very strange to me that all kinds of people who have less education in physics than I do own this book, read it, and enjoy it.” By the way, I think Hawking was a poor philosopher—from the things I read by him, very weak, lots of philosophical flaws in the argument. It’s not my field, so I can’t judge his physics.

[Speaker B] Look, most of his achievements were in black-hole physics, which is a very specific field.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that isn’t my field, so I can’t judge his scientific work, and a lot of it appears in the book, and so those really were things I didn’t understand. And I don’t quite understand how people read it and enjoy it and so forth. So that’s an excellent example of exactly the phenomenon you were talking about earlier. There’s something—he’s a very impressive person, with the constraints he had to deal with and the achievements he reached, without judging his science, which I’m unable to judge—but it’s unbelievable. Meaning, it deserves every appreciation. I can understand why people appreciate the person, give him credit, and want to read the book—that’s completely clear to me. Why they enjoy it and what they understand from the book, that’s another question. And in this context too I really think the same about Hofstadter. I think most people will take a point from here, a point from there, a connection between scattered points there, from which you can draw out all kinds of little gems.

[Speaker B] One of the claims against this book—and I’m not sure I disagree with it—is that in the end it isn’t clear what exactly he wants. Meaning, you gave me a bit about Bach’s music and a bit about Escher’s paintings and explained what links them—that is, repetition and loopiness—and you connected it to the laws of the mathematician Gödel. But what, so what did I learn from that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is that he himself received that criticism, and he answered it in the introduction to a later celebratory edition of the book that came out twenty years later, and there he argued that those who say that didn’t understand him. And probably he was to blame, because he should have conveyed it. But that’s what he argued. His aim is to try to show how a human being emerges from an axiomatic system. Meaning, how we manage to produce all the complexities we know as human beings out of some system that is overall mechanical, relatively simple—at least in the conceptions. The mathematics may not be so simple, but the conceptions are simple. How does a human being emerge out of all this? I don’t think he succeeds in doing this in the book.

[Speaker B] Maybe in “I Am a Strange Loop” he gets a bit closer to it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m less familiar—not familiar—so I can’t tell you, but in this book he doesn’t manage to do it, and I think not by accident, because it can’t be done. I’m not one of those who believe that from a Turing machine, from a basic mechanical computing machine, you can produce all the complex phenomena we know in ourselves—human beings, in thought, in will, in emotions, in everything we know. And that’s contrary to the very widespread belief in neuroscience, in artificial intelligence, in all these fields, which basically treat our brain or the human being as some sophisticated computing machine.

[Speaker B] Most physicists today too assume that material reality is reality and there is

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] nothing besides it, and that it dictates, as a byproduct, the mental, the psychic—that all these are basically byproducts of physiology or even of physics. That’s exactly what I mean. I completely disagree with that. In another book I wrote, called “The Science of Freedom,” I argue over free choice versus neuroscience.

[Speaker B] And that basically exposes you, to some extent, as a follower of Descartes’ old doctrine—meaning, you’re a dualist.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, completely. But not because Descartes said so; rather because I too think that way. The fact that Descartes said it shouldn’t disqualify it.

[Speaker B] So sharpen for me exactly what you think. Meaning, you think there is a body and you think there is something beyond the body. What is that thing beyond the body?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, when you’re now talking about metaphysics or ontology—the study of being—you ask, “What exists?” That’s not what Hofstadter is dealing with. When you ask what exists, I argue that there is another kind of substance, a spiritual substance in addition to material substance, and there is interaction between them. And mental processes occur within the spiritual substance, but they are of course influenced by and also influence the physical substance.

[Speaker B] But is the spiritual detached from the physical? Meaning, is it not dependent on it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “dependent” mean? There is mutual influence between them. It’s called interactionist dualism.

[Speaker B] Can it exist in the absence of a physical system?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, that’s the question of what in religious language is called the persistence of the soul. So it certainly may be that the soul exists without a body. I have no idea what that means and what such souls do. I don’t think I can grasp such a thing, so it doesn’t interest me all that much.

[Speaker B] I’m still at the more foolish stage. I still haven’t managed to understand what a soul is. Meaning, what is this thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, at the beginning of the book I preface it with a prologue that discusses that statement of Descartes, Descartes’ cogito, “I think, therefore I am.” And people don’t notice, but with Descartes—and in that sense, although of course his argument isn’t valid—there is one thing I think he did show. He showed that people think matter certainly exists, and spirit is debatable. It’s exactly the opposite. In order to assume that matter exists, I need to activate my spirit, which apprehends the existence of matter, and also give it credit for apprehending correctly. Meaning—and that is a condition for that conclusion about the existence of matter. Not that the existence of matter depends on spirit, but my information about the existence of matter is conditioned on the trust I have in my processes of cognition and thought, which are part of spirit. Therefore the existence of spirit, in my eyes, precedes the existence of matter. It logically precedes the existence of matter—not physically, not causally, but it logically precedes the existence of matter. And contrary to what people think, that matter is obvious and spirit—well, let’s debate whether we’re materialists or not—materialism in my eyes is absurd. If anything, I’d talk about idealism: someone who thinks there is only spirit and no matter.

[Speaker B] There are such people too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there are such people too. I don’t agree with that, but I understand that someone stops at the first stage. But how someone builds the second stage and skips the first—that is beyond me. What is this thing that apprehends the existence of matter? What is this thing that analyzes it, thinks about it, constructs laws of nature, I don’t know what, creates art? All these creations.

[Speaker B] Is that thing unique to human beings? Because here, for a moment, we’re talking about spirit and matter in a very concrete context, which is our context, the one we understand as human beings. But what about the spirit of a dog? And the spirit of a chick? And the spirit of a tree?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, the spirit of a tree already takes us

[Speaker B] into the realms of

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hinduism or Zen Buddhism—but I’m not saying that as an accusation. It needs analysis, you’d say. An idea, you’d say. Ideas from other places. Regarding animals, I don’t have a position. Meaning, I assume, I think, that they too have some dimension of soul or spirit or something non-material. How far does that go? They certainly carry out certain brain processes as we do. The question is whether they have a psychic correlate, yes, the psychic counterpart to those physical processes, those neural processes. Because when we think, neuroscientists will tell you: yes, currents are flowing in our neural networks in the brain. But from our point of view, thinking is not causing currents to flow. From our point of view, thinking is weighing ideas, analyzing them, examining them. That this is done by way of—or we rely on—or we do it by means of the brain, just as we walk by means of the legs. But to think is not to activate the brain; thinking is what the activation of the brain produces. It is done in the intellect, not in the brain. Now, in animals, there certainly is a brain and of course they also make decisions, but I don’t know whether that’s the concept of decision-making that exists in us. Meaning, for there to be that kind of decision-making, you need to be aware of the two possibilities before you, exercise judgment—which of course all uses neural currents—but exercise judgment and decide, for one reason or another, on option A and not option B. In animals I don’t know whether that exists. Maybe. I don’t know. I have no way of knowing; they don’t talk.

[Speaker B] Maybe the issue of consciousness really is a very central motif in Gödel, Escher, Bach, and it basically comes out of Gödel’s equations—meaning, can a system be conscious of itself in some way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that brings me back to the remark I made earlier: Hofstadter isn’t dealing with this on the metaphysical level of dualism or materialism, but rather on the conceptual level. Meaning, on the conceptual-mathematical level, the question is whether a system can think about itself. Now, in a certain sense that is only a model for the psycho-physical problem; it isn’t really the psycho-physical problem, because it is a problem that exists entirely within mathematics. And therefore you can treat it as a problem within the world of matter. The question is whether a material system can relate to itself—relate, not in the sense of being conscious of itself. And that, I think, is Hofstadter’s mistake, because he makes that leap; he identifies the two things. But that’s exactly the difference I mentioned earlier between human beings and animals. Meaning, an animal also makes decisions, it runs, flees from the lion, it has to decide whether to flee right or left, so it does some calculation in its head and runs away. People in artificial intelligence treat this as a completely parallel operation to what we do—perhaps less complex, but parallel. I don’t think that’s true. Because in us there is the psychic correlate. Meaning, in us ideas also pass through our heads in parallel to those neural currents. In animals I don’t know whether that exists. And in almost the same sense, I also think Hofstadter jumps too quickly from the Gödelian question—whether a system can refer to itself—to the question of consciousness, which is a question in metaphysics and not a question in logic. He is dealing with logical questions: whether a mathematical system can refer to itself. And his claim is that yes, and Gödel and so on, and therefore this explains consciousness. Not true. Because consciousness is a statement in metaphysics, not in logic. And metaphysics is something else. Logic is perhaps a model for consciousness, a certain aspect of the metaphysical consciousness here—where there is some soul that apprehends itself. How can it be that we do indeed use our intellectual tools to analyze how we think—there, a strange loop.

[Speaker B] Yes, how we look at ourselves, understand ourselves, analyze ourselves.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, and we analyze our thinking, not just—it’s not only about how we function. It’s not self-referential in that simple sense. Rather, with our intellect we learn how the intellect works, which is really a strange loop. But the fact is that this happens in us, with or without Gödel’s proofs. The fact is that it happens. And therefore I don’t think you need Gödel in order to reach the conclusion that, in my view, is unavoidable—that is, dualism. Gödel doesn’t add much to this issue; all in all, he gives some kind of mathematical model, and that mathematical model shows that a formal, mechanical system can refer to itself. Fine, in a certain sense that resembles the question of consciousness, but it’s very far from being a proof, and certainly not an explanation, of consciousness in that sense. Take animals, for example. Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, that they have no consciousness, as Descartes thought, okay? So let’s say they have no consciousness. Would there not be Gödel sentences within them? Their mathematical system inside the mind—the brain, sorry—might well generate Gödelian processes too. And they don’t have consciousness, even if they don’t. I think there’s a leap here. Here’s another example of someone who is a mathematician and physicist, but in philosophy he creaks.

[Speaker B] When you talk about your belief in dualism, or your conclusion that there is dualism, does that also affect your attitude toward current theories—things like the talk about singularity, the talk about moving beyond Homo sapiens? Homo sapiens and then beyond, to a more perfected human being? All those kinds of things that basically connect the mechanics of today’s computer world to what will happen to the human species in the future.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’d split that into two. Meaning, the computer apocalypses don’t really speak to me. Kurzweil and all that futurism—it doesn’t…

[Speaker B] Doesn’t speak to you in what sense? You don’t think it’ll happen?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not overly worried about it.

[Speaker B] No, because there’s “not worried” in the sense of, “Why should I care? It’s after the flood.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not worried that it will happen. I really don’t think it’ll actually happen. I think not. People talk about autonomous weapons and connect that to the same thing, Ray Kurzweil and all that, but I don’t think they’re right about this. I’ve argued about it with people who work in that field too. Or autonomous cars—today that’s already…

[Speaker B] Meaning, you think the vision of autonomous cars is not a realistic vision?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, completely realistic. I’m not afraid of it. I don’t think the terrible fear—that we’re handing over decisions—like today in the IDF, for example, you’re not supposed to say “pilotless aircraft.” You know? Because “pilotless aircraft” means there’s no pilot, and we don’t admit there’s no pilot; there’s a pilot on the ground.

[Speaker B] Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Today you’re not allowed to say such a thing, because we…

[Speaker B] We don’t want to abandon moral decisions to artificial intelligence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Now, artificial intelligence usually makes those decisions better than we do.

[Speaker B] Kahneman in his last book basically says: let’s hand the whole judicial system over to artificial intelligence; it’ll be better.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And our own personal system is also basically some kind of Kahneman-style artificial intelligence.

[Speaker B] Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying: when you take cars—how many tests do autonomous cars go through? Already today, as far as I know—I’m not an expert in this—an autonomous car reaches results far better than human driving. Meaning, the number of casualties would be much lower. And they won’t approve it until they test the thing to death, because we have some sort of fear of this futurism, of automatic decision-making. I can understand that, but that belongs more to the world of psychology than to the world of logic.

[Speaker B] And in the more essential sense—will the machines become so sophisticated that they’ll make us redundant, and in effect simply be better than us at everything, and there’ll be no need for us?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that they’ll be better, maybe at everything, or at most things, but that still doesn’t mean they’ll have a soul. Now, you can say, okay, so without a soul they’ll manage. What do you need the soul for? What does “need” even mean? It exists. Meaning, I think it has value. We have free choice, we have… but of course that’s a matter of worldview. Now, that doesn’t mean—they could destroy us without choice and without all that, even worse. So it’s not that because of that I’m not concerned. But I don’t think machines are progressing in the direction of becoming human beings in any way whatsoever. Meaning, contrary to the common discourse in the world of artificial intelligence. I think machines are becoming more and more sophisticated computers. They’ll perform our tasks better and better, including tasks we were sure were unique to human beings, like conversation, the Turing test, and so on. And still—even if it passes the Turing test—it’s not a human being. It has no moral rights, and there’s no problem killing it or dismantling it. So in my view there’s a huge confusion here.

[Speaker B] The autonomous car will have fewer accidents because it’ll be faster and smarter, but when it does have an accident, maybe it won’t have a guilty conscience because it has no soul. Does it bother you that it won’t have a guilty conscience? No. Because…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From my perspective, what matters is the result. The result is that there will be fewer traffic accidents, so excellent. A guilty conscience serves us because if we have one, we’ll be more careful, and naturally there’ll be fewer accidents. But I don’t see great value in guilt feelings. Guilty conscience is a means. Now, if this car achieves better results than we do without a guilty conscience, terrific—so why not use it? It’s like a computer: it has no guilty conscience about making a mistake in a math problem, and it does math better than I do. So why should I care? I use it.

[Speaker B] I’ll move you to another kind of loop. Any legal effect such that if it takes effect, it doesn’t take effect—then it doesn’t take effect. That’s the third book, and that takes us to the third book and to Shimon Shkop. So tell us about Shimon Shkop, because presumably some of our listeners haven’t heard of him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Among other things I chose him because of that, as I wrote to you. Rabbi Shimon Shkop is, in my eyes, a majestic figure in the intellectual and Torah sense. I didn’t know him personally, and in the hagiographic stories they say that about all the rabbis—that they were all saints from the womb—so it’s hard to know whom to admire in that sense. But in the intellectual, philosophical sense, it’s astounding. Now, the book is a scholarly book, Sha’arei Yosher, yes, that’s the book.

[Speaker B] I sat down to read that too because of you. Okay. I didn’t get through all the sections; I got through two, just to understand roughly what’s there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, then you’re very fast, apparently.

[Speaker B] No, not really.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Getting through his sections is not easy.

[Speaker B] I didn’t promise I understood every paragraph.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. In any case, Rabbi Shimon Shkop was the head of the yeshiva in Grodno, Lithuania. And he delivered analytic Talmudic lectures that paved a kind of new path. Now it’s hard to define what counts as a new path in Talmudic analysis, because once you start defining things you realize that the early signs of everything already existed before. That’s always a problem. Once I gave a lecture at a conference at Bar-Ilan about Pnei Yehoshua, one of the great later authorities (Acharonim), and I said there’s a difficult problem in intellectual history: every idea you attribute to a person, you can always find earlier phases of it in earlier people. And still, it’s correct to associate it with the person who conceptualized it, defined it, and made it available to us, available to the public.

[Speaker B] Darwin too came along at a certain moment, and alongside him there were quite a few people who had somewhat similar thoughts of various kinds.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They paved a lot of the way for him. Right, exactly. And therefore, in the end—but on the other hand, I don’t want to draw from that the nihilistic conclusion, namely that nobody invents anything.

[Speaker B] Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I do think we need to give people credit for ideas they invented, even if there were earlier stages of them, because they are the ones who conceptualized them, the ones who put them at the service of the public as a concept, so people can also make use of it. And in that sense he really did pave several genuinely new paths. What especially distinguishes him, I think, is that although to the best of my knowledge he had no philosophical education whatsoever, there are so many fascinating and deep philosophical intuitions there—it’s amazing—inside the technical, Talmudic analytic world. And we wrote a series of books on Talmudic logic, a large part of which is basically based on ideas that originate with Rabbi Shimon Shkop, which we developed and gave logical formalization to, and so on. But it begins with some healthy intuition of Rabbi Shimon Shkop.

[Speaker B] So let’s latch onto an example—try to produce an example from which we’ll understand what Rabbi Shkop does that not many before him did.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I’ll even give two, maybe, if you’ll allow me.

[Speaker B] Okay, sure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One example is taken from the beginning of the fifth section of Sha’arei Yosher, where he…

[Speaker B] Good, I didn’t get there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, then I’m playing it safe. There he talks about, say, I sue you for money. Now you’re in doubt. Let’s say I say that you borrowed money from me—give me back a hundred shekels. And I’m certain, meaning you borrowed from me and didn’t return it. And you say, you know what, I don’t remember. Maybe I borrowed, maybe I didn’t. And logic says, well, this is a case of certainty versus doubt.

[Speaker B] You say it with certainty, and I say, “What…”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What in halakhic language is called bari and shema. Now I make a certain claim and you make an uncertain one. Simple logic says: fine, if I’m certain and you’re not certain, then pay. Meaning, why assume I’m lying if even you aren’t claiming I’m lying? You simply don’t remember.

[Speaker B] Fine, but then there’s “the burden of proof is on the claimant,” so you need to bring proof if you want to take from him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s what Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks. Since the burden of proof is on the claimant, therefore in Jewish law even if I sue you with a certain claim and you defend yourself with uncertainty, you’re exempt, because the burden of proof is on the claimant. Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks: how is it that we’re not troubled by a doubt regarding the prohibition of theft? After all, you don’t know whether you borrowed or not. Now, if you don’t repay me the loan, you’ll be violating the prohibition of theft—maybe yes, maybe no—you’re in doubt. And with a Torah-level doubt regarding a prohibition, we must be stringent, so you should be stringent and pay me the money in order not to violate the prohibition of theft.

[Speaker B] Meaning, theft is a Torah prohibition, and I’m uncertain whether I borrowed money, so I’m in doubt regarding theft, and since that’s the case we should be stringent, and therefore I should pay you even though I’m uncertain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why does Jewish law say that you don’t have to pay? That’s basically what he asks. Now, without getting into the technical details of the answer, because it’s a bit wearisome and professional, the point he arrives at is that there are certain principles that precede Jewish law and obligate us by virtue of their very existence. He calls it “the doctrine of law”—meaning, legal reasoning that precedes the specific halakhic contents obligates us simply because it is there. Not because of the Torah; the Torah doesn’t…

[Speaker B] Meaning, there is a legal world, and the halakhic world is one derivative of it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not a derivative; it’s a second floor. It’s a second floor, and it obligates me independently. It doesn’t derive from the second floor because it’s on the first floor. It’s probably universal too, meaning not specifically Jewish—apropos of what we talked about earlier. And he says that this obligates us. Then he asks there an interesting question, unrelated to how we started. He asks an interesting question: wait a second—and people always ask this about him, they already saw some difficulty—why should I fulfill something that the Torah did not command? After all, the Torah didn’t command it. Fine, logic, very nice, but why should I observe it? I am a servant of God. I observe the Torah’s commandments. If it’s not written in the Torah, fine—you’re inventing things for me, saying there are other systems. Let’s say they exist. So what? Why should I obey them?

[Speaker B] Why should I observe them? Meaning, in his view, although Jewish law says I don’t have to pay you, I still do have to pay you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. There, in that case, the doctrine of law is actually the explanation for why you do not have to pay. Because the doctrine of law says that the burden of proof is on the claimant, so if the law is that the money stays with you, then naturally the prohibition of theft also does not apply. Because Jewish law said you may keep the money. So there won’t be any prohibition of theft either. Therefore you can leave it as it is. That’s his answer there. But what interests me is the answer he gives to this question. When they ask him why fulfill something the Torah didn’t command, he answers like a good Jew—with a question on a question. He says: and why fulfill what the Torah did command? Now, this is a technical learning book. These are not questions you find in analytic yeshiva books; these are philosophical books. Why fulfill what the Torah did command? And then he answers: because reason says one must fulfill it. Well then—which comes first, the Torah or reason? After all, I also fulfill the Torah because reason commands me to. So if reason commands me to fulfill the doctrine of law, then I must fulfill that too.

[Speaker B] Meaning, basically there is a claim here that at bottom is easy to understand: since reason is what determines whether I will or will not accept the Torah, that means reason precedes the Torah, and that means that at certain points that, say, the Torah doesn’t cover, I use reason to do what ought to be done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. The Talmud says: “Why do I need a verse? It’s reason.” Because if there’s reason, then you don’t need a verse. Reason is enough for that. You can bring more proofs for this. But the conceptualization of this revolutionary idea—to this day, people in the yeshiva world don’t believe he said it, and they argue with him and fight with him over it.

[Speaker B] And they don’t see this as some act of heresy? Some kind of situation in which you’re saying that human reason precedes the Torah’s instructions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shlomo Fisher, who passed away not long ago, a very, very interesting Jew, writes about this—he doesn’t say “heresy,” but that’s the subtext. He says: what do you mean? Why should I fulfill something the Holy One, blessed be He, did not command? But to my mind his logic is perfectly healthy and sensible, exactly what you said before. And I don’t see… on the contrary, I think this is a wonderful intuition and a fully philosophical conception that appears inside a completely technical discussion of “the burden of proof is on the claimant,” with sources, various decisors, and suddenly you find yourself in some world from which you can sail very far. Because what obligates me to obey the law? Obviously not the fact that the law says you have to obey the law, right? That’s circular. So it has to be some other principle. But then that other principle doesn’t obligate me—after all, only the law obligates me. You see that this is exactly the same question?

[Speaker B] That’s why I said we’re continuing from loop A to a different kind of loop.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. And these questions occupy people who deal with legal theory, legal philosophy. And in Rabbi Shimon Shkop this is some remark of a few sentences inside a discussion of “the burden of proof is on the claimant” and some technical details of one kind or another. That’s one example. A second example is the one you brought earlier, from which we made quite a living. The question again begins with a loop, and loops are something he’s very fond of. I think it really is something that can teach a lot—loops and their solutions and logic. Think about a person who divorces his wife, and you can divorce a woman conditionally. And he makes the condition with her that she is divorced only if she does not marry a certain man. If she marries that man, the divorce is nullified. Okay? Now she goes and marries that man.

[Speaker B] Meaning: I give you a bill of divorce on condition that you do not marry Itzik.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I can attach all kinds of conditions to a bill of divorce I give. Now I stipulate that she not marry Moshe. Now she got divorced, everything is fine.

[Speaker B] There are already listeners jumping on how this can be and where feminism comes in.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We won’t get into feminism and all those things; that’s a different discussion.

[Speaker B] Halakhically, you give a bill of divorce, you give a condition, you say: you can be divorced if you do not marry that person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now she got divorced, everything is fine, she married, even had children, got divorced from the second one or was widowed by him, and now she goes to marry Moshe—

[Speaker B] Who is forbidden to her because of the condition in the first bill of divorce.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—he’s not forbidden to her. Rather, if she marries him, the divorce is nullified. I can’t forbid things to her; I’m not the Holy One, blessed be He. All I can do is make a condition in the bill of divorce that I gave. Now she married Moshe. What happens? The divorce is retroactively nullified, right? That’s what a condition does.

[Speaker B] Which means she’s still married to Haim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She’s still married to Haim. Now that means that when she married the second man in the meantime, and the children she had from him, they’re illegitimate. Right? Because she was a married woman. She was married. Now accordingly, when she comes to marry Moshe, she is still a married woman of the first husband. But if she is a married woman of the first husband, then her marriage to Moshe is not valid.

[Speaker B] Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if her marriage to Moshe is not valid, then she didn’t marry Moshe.

[Speaker B] So the divorce is not nullified.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the divorce is not nullified. So she is actually unmarried. So she can marry Moshe. But if she married… yes, a loop paradox.

[Speaker B] First of all, I think we may have lost a few people somewhere along the way, but yes, there’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s some kind of loop here. The solution Rabbi Shimon Shkop proposes for this, and for loops like this—you can’t really propose a logical solution, because at the level of logic it remains a loop and you can spin until tomorrow and that’s it. But the meta-halakhic solution he proposed is indeed the principle you quoted earlier. In the yeshivas they phrase it like this: any legal effect such that if it takes effect, it does not take effect—then it does not take effect. Meaning, any such legal effect, any legal state that you create which would destroy itself, like sawing off the branch on which you’re trying to sit, simply does not take hold. And therefore the branch remains alive and the legal effect does not take hold.

[Speaker B] And just so we understand what that means in the case of this bill of divorce:

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now she goes to marry Moshe. The divorce was perfectly fine, with no defect in it. The marriage to the second man, the children, everything is fine. She married, was widowed, now she moves on to Moshe. Now she comes to marry Moshe. If she marries him, that will uproot that very marriage itself. Because the moment she marries him, it revokes the divorce, she becomes a married woman, and then it turns out that that very marriage nullifies itself. Something that nullifies itself does not take effect. And that’s where the loop is created.

[Speaker B] Okay, meaning her marriage to Moshe, the third husband, is invalid.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. And she now remains—but this creates a contradiction, because she remains in effect unmarried. She did not marry Moshe, she remains unmarried. And even though she is unmarried, her marriage to Moshe does not take effect. Why? She’s unmarried, why can’t she marry him? It doesn’t take effect because of Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s principle. Because of this principle that such a legal effect, one that would nullify itself, has no halakhic validity. Now this is a brilliant idea, and it can be shown in many places. I did a logical analysis of it, temporal logic and lots and lots of interesting things. But this is an example of a kind of out-of-the-box thinking that you can also take into many legal-philosophical questions. He didn’t do that—he’s a man of Jewish law, he’s not dealing with any of that.

[Speaker B] He remains—at least from what I managed to read, and as I said only part of it—he really remains in very concrete topics and their technical details.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Like all those books with gold letters on the outside, holy books and all that—nothing, just technical discussion. But between the lines there, or within the lines there, are hidden so many gems, so many things from which one can draw conclusions. In every book on Talmudic logic, we extracted a general logical principle, applied it in many very up-to-date fields. And these are new logical principles with new formulations, new formalizations, and much of it is really drawn from those intuitions of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who said it incidentally, in passing, or some…

[Speaker B] There have been quite a few attempts to extract philosophical principles precisely from halakhic discussions or from Talmudic discussions, and then you ask yourself: those guys who sat in Pumbedita—why didn’t they just talk philosophy directly? Why did they busy themselves with the minutiae of halakhic law instead of simply defining philosophical ideas for me in an abstract way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The assumption behind that question—and indeed people assumed this in the past—is that behind these things sat philosophical ideas, perhaps even conscious ones, and because of those ideas Jewish law took the shape it took. Then you ask: okay, so just say the ideas themselves already—why are you hiding them behind the… Our claim is different. No, I don’t claim they were philosophers, the sages of Babylonia of the third, fourth, fifth century or whatever, and I don’t think these logical and philosophical ideas were conscious for them. Some of them are really modern and new ideas; there’s no chance they thought of them. I do think that intuitively they operated in a way that reflects such a mode of thought. I, with modern eyes—again, we’ve come back to language and content—in my modern logical language, when I look at what they did, I can conceptualize it in this way. I’m not claiming this was conscious for them or that this was really the cause, but I do think I’m not just projecting nonsense onto them. That is, I do think this is a real analysis of what stood behind what they…

[Speaker B] Meaning, let’s say there were now a summit meeting between Miki and Shimon Shkop, or Rav Ashi for that matter, and you came and laid out before him his philosophy as you understand it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I claim he would agree.

[Speaker B] He would agree. He wouldn’t look at you in amazement and say you’ve lost your mind.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’d have to explain the language and all that… This is an old and charming debate about Maimonides. You know, Maimonides wrote a book of halakhic rulings, and in the introduction he writes that this will spare us all the Talmudic casuistry—here are the bottom lines, everything’s fine. What have Jews been doing since Maimonides? Making Talmudic casuistry about Maimonides’ rulings. Meaning, he didn’t manage to move us away from…

[Speaker B] Among other things, through an attempt to reconstruct backwards Maimonides’ mode of thought in order to understand why he reached the conclusions he reached and to resolve contradictions and all that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, he didn’t succeed in making casuistry redundant. No one will get casuistry out of the Jews.

[Speaker B] Why do we need it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know whether we need it, but that’s how we’re built, that’s how we… that’s how we think. I also identify with it very much, but of course—I’m a product of my environment, so that’s no great feat. The point is that there is a debate about this in the yeshivas too, and there are many jokes about it. There’s one politically incorrect joke: Maimonides comes to the study hall of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, who built towering edifices on Maimonides based on a very modern analysis for Maimonides’ time. And Maimonides comes there and doesn’t understand a word. Lectures on Maimonides—and he doesn’t understand a word. So he asks, wait, wait, but it doesn’t seem to me that this is what Maimonides wrote—Maimonides says to Rabbi Chaim, the lecturer. So Rabbi Chaim hushes him and says: what does a Frank know about Maimonides? Quiet, quiet—what does a Frank know about Maimonides? What does a Sephardi, an Easterner, know about Maimonides? Maimonides is…

[Speaker B] Well, that’s a reconstruction of the Talmudic story about Moses coming to Rabbi Akiva’s study hall.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, with the twist about the Frank, because Maimonides himself, of course, was an Easterner. But the point is that behind this stands a real issue. There is a great deal of criticism of Rabbi Chaim, claiming that he loads onto Maimonides things Maimonides never dreamed of. Maimonides didn’t think that way; he had the thought patterns of his own time. It’s not the modern analytical, legal, logical thinking that we use today. Not that Rabbi Chaim knew all those fields either, but he too was a product of his environment. And therefore, of course, what you’re saying is not an interpretation of Maimonides. And the counterclaim, with which I very much identify—it was a very interesting debate, and sometimes quite heated, with Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner—not that “I don’t care”; many people say “I don’t care,” that’s the standard apologetics. I claim: no, this is a correct interpretation of Maimonides, I claim. Not that I don’t care— I do care—but I claim that this is the correct interpretation of Maimonides in our language. When we use our language and our analytical tools, if Maimonides were learning together with us the language and those analytical tools, he too would agree that we got to the depth of his intention. And therefore this criticism is unjustified, because I’m allowed to use my language, even if it is seemingly completely foreign to Maimonides’ mode of thought. Fine, because it’s only language. Check the analysis—if the analysis is correct and it resolves Maimonides, then my claim is that behind Maimonides’ consciousness there were things that I conceptualize this way. He was not aware of them and could not have been aware of them, but it is still a correct interpretation of Maimonides. Not that I don’t care; “I don’t care” is the usual apologetics. I want to claim that it’s true—that he hit Maimonides’ meaning, that he understood better than Maimonides what Maimonides was saying. I often have the feeling—you know, I had a lecturer in Bnei Brak, a standard Haredi Ponevezh lecturer, without any sideways glances and none of that. And I often feel…

[Speaker B] We started to talk about what this concept “standard Haredi” even means, but let’s leave that for another opportunity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. So I often use things I learned from him, but in my language and in my mode of thought, and I claim that even if he wouldn’t agree, I am right in understanding what he is saying—understanding him. Because I think I have logical tools, and he is smarter than I am, but not because of intelligence; rather, I have certain logical tools that he did not have, and I think using them can clarify for me better what lies behind his thinking. Meaning, if he were learning together with me those tools and the terminology and all that, I believe he too would agree that I understood him more correctly than he understood himself. This is Rabbi Kook, in the eulogy he sends to the grandchildren of the Sochatchover, the author of Eglei Tal, the rebbe of Sochatchov who passed away. Rabbi Kook says there that there is a contradiction between two Talmudic passages. In one place the Talmud says that Rabbi Eliezer said nothing he had not heard from his teacher. He was a transmitter of tradition, always passing on only what he heard from his teacher. Elsewhere it says that he said things no ear had ever heard before. So Rabbi Kook says that Rabbi Eliezer heard from his teacher things no ear had ever heard before. And I add: he heard from his teacher things no ear had ever heard before, including his teacher’s own ear. Meaning, he succeeded in hearing from his teacher things that his teacher himself was not aware of, but they really were there. I’m not claiming he imposes it on him; rather, I think they really were there. A person doesn’t always succeed in getting to the bottom of his own intuitions; sometimes you need more sophisticated tools of analysis and thought in order to do that. And therefore it’s not absurd to say such a thing.

[Speaker B] If you could go and meet Lewis, Hofstadter, or Rabbi Shimon Shkop and tell them what they really meant, which of the three would you choose, and why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, the most interesting meeting, in my opinion, would be with Lewis. Because the other two, I feel I know them. Fine, I haven’t met them yet, but I know the type, the… I wouldn’t hear anything new there. Lewis I’d be happy to meet. But if the point is to tell them what I think they said, then I think Rabbi Shimon Shkop…

[Speaker B] Why do I understand better what they said?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That I would do with Rabbi Shimon Shkop. Because I think I can add much more for Rabbi Shimon Shkop within what he said than for the other two. The other two are aware, and they had my tools, and I think they more or less understand what they said. You can argue, but I don’t think I have much… much to add to them about what they themselves said. With Rabbi Shimon Shkop I feel I have a lot to add to him about what he himself said.

[Speaker B] I saved for the end a question that isn’t related to one of the three books; it’s a question about you. What are you in the world? Meaning, what do you actually do? What is your work?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I teach at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan.

[Speaker B] No, I know how you earn a living. Okay. What do you do? You take a great many ideas from a great many places, connect them in all sorts of ways, and I’m asking: why? What is this role that you’ve taken upon yourself?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that role breaks down into two things that are really one. I never thought about it that way, but since you ask, it’s a good opportunity. I think it divides into two things that join together.

[Speaker B] What, are you doing soul-searching before the High Holidays? There—I’m giving you the opportunity. Exactly, I’m giving you the opportunity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, I’m trying to present ideas, ideals, values that I believe in, and convince people that I’m right. I want to advance what I believe in.

[Speaker B] And that’s despite the fact that you know all the psychological literature saying you can’t persuade people with rational arguments?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know it and I disagree. You can persuade people with rational arguments. It’s difficult and it doesn’t always work, even on me—it’s not that I’m not… But yes, it’s possible. And from my experience I’m telling you that it’s definitely possible. And it’s especially possible when you manage to find something within the person—apropos of what we just discussed—that he himself was not aware of, and suddenly you manage to show him that he himself thinks this way too. That’s the best way to persuade.

[Speaker B] Now you want to persuade people of the things you believe in—for what purpose? Are you advancing some goal?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Truth, morality, the—I don’t know—the things I care about. Philosophy, even things completely detached from practical concerns. I care that people should be wise, that people should think correctly. My website, for example—its motto in my eyes is simply to know how to think correctly. It doesn’t matter at all whether it’s Judaism or not Judaism or whatever. I also deal with journalism and current events and politics, logic and statistics, Talmud and philosophy and everything.

[Speaker B] I visit your website from time to time, and one of the reasons I do that is that I know I’ll always find there the thing I didn’t expect to find there. Meaning, you write about something that never occurred to me you’d want to write about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that really is my goal, to try. I also taught courses on this, on critical thinking, because very often I have the feeling that people—what you said before, that you can’t persuade people—you can teach this. You can teach people to be persuaded, to persuade, and to be persuaded. And this is not demagoguery, not rhetoric. Rhetoric and demagoguery are not synonyms, contrary to what many people think. Rhetoric is very important; demagoguery is something invalid. You have to teach people to relate coolly to ideas presented to them even while their gut is boiling. Come on, try to think about it for a moment. Try to analyze it, break it down into its components, see what the implications are, and then formulate a position at the end. I did some exercises in the courses I taught. You can teach people. You can persuade people and of course also be persuaded. And that is almost my main goal, alongside which there is some interest in creating a Judaism that is more rational on the one hand and leaner on the other, without all the excess baggage—or the excesses—that have attached themselves to it over the generations, which irritate me so much that I’m not willing to stand behind them, and I have no interest in standing behind them. And therefore, all kinds of people who come to ask me about problems of faith and things of that sort, and expect that I’ll somehow be an apologist, that I’ll defend it, I’ll find the answers—no. I tell them: you’re absolutely right, I’m with you. My conclusion from many of these questions is that Judaism needs updating; we don’t need to find answers to the questioners. Sometimes they have very good questions.

[Speaker B] So what then—since surely among our listeners there are people unfamiliar with your ideas—give us two examples of things in which Judaism needs to be updated.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, there are many examples. My trilogy is basically devoted to this point, and of course it ties into all the philosophical aspects I spoke about earlier, and it’s one whole. And in the second book, basically, my fundamental claim is that there is no such thing as “Jewish thought,” as I said earlier. There—I’ve cleaned away about ninety percent of the excess baggage, even at the level of Maimonides’ principles of faith. So what if I’m not obligated by them, or not sure they’re correct? So no. Who said yes? Why should that be binding? Because Maimonides thought so? So he thought so. The Sages thought so? So they thought so. We’re all human beings, we can all make mistakes. Let’s see what the source is. If it comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, I’ll accept it; if it’s very logical, I’ll also accept it. If it’s neither this nor that, then people thought that way—so what? However wise they may be—so what? That’s cleaning in the realm of thought; there the cleaning is absolute, almost absolute.

[Speaker B] Meaning, basically you’re saying that in the whole realm of thought that concerns principles—the principles of Judaism—you’re basically saying there’s no such thing, it never existed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are correct principles and incorrect principles; there are not “principles of Judaism” and “principles of Christianity.” If it’s true, then it’s true; if not, then not. Why should I care whether I’m a Jew or a gentile, or whether the one who wrote it is a Jew or a gentile? The same goes for morality. And regarding Jewish law, my claim is that we need to pay attention to what is binding in Jewish law and what is left to us. There are many possibilities to change Jewish laws, and many people feel—the majority of people feel—that things need to change.

[Speaker B] What do you mean there is a possibility to change Jewish laws? All the laws were written by human beings.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s obvious, but even laws written by human beings are not so simple to change—that’s the other side of the coin. I deal with all this at length. But the point is that many people feel there needs to be change, that the whole business doesn’t speak to the world we live in, but the feeling is constantly that we’re stuck because we have no authority. There is no Sanhedrin, or the Sages—you can’t disagree with them, and so on. I try to argue: okay, if that’s how you feel, I’ll solve the technical problems for you. The technical problems I can solve. There are ways of change that can bypass problems of authority, or temporariness, or whatever, all sorts of things like that.

[Speaker B] Do you believe the problem is really a problem of authority, or deep down do you understand that it’s really an emotional, psychological problem, and a fear that once you start unraveling, everything will unravel and nothing will remain?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no doubt that there’s that too, and maybe that’s even the main thing. But I’m faithful to my path, as I said earlier: psychology does not come onto the table of philosophy. Meaning, many times—you know, I was at conferences of rabbis—and they say: a student comes to you with questions and this and that, know that his questions are answers. He’s really looking to leave, and he invents questions. And I protest against such a statement. Not because it’s untrue, but because it’s unfair to treat him that way. You too are driven by all kinds of things. Religion is the opium of the masses, as Marx said. Do I know that I’m not religious because it’s convenient for me? I don’t know. I know I can try to justify my position. Where does it come from psychologically? I don’t know. And therefore with him too, I don’t go below the belt. He asks questions; he deserves an answer. Don’t get into his question of motivation. And I think it’s the same thing here too. And one of the things I try to educate toward—rational thinking and analysis—is, among other things, trying to detach your own psychological dimensions and those of your interlocutor. Don’t relate to his psychology and not to your own. Try to discuss things on their merits. I also believe that in the end this can work. It can work because if I show people that the halakhic mechanisms they developed in order to allow themselves to remain closed off and so that reform won’t happen here, God forbid—if I break those mechanisms for them and show them that there are no such mechanisms, then maybe I can also free their psychology. Because they need those mechanisms to protect the psychology, so let’s smash the mechanisms, and then maybe we’ll also succeed in dealing with the psychology. And therefore I agree that there are conservative instinctive mechanisms like these, where we freeze up in the face of various questions.

[Speaker B] Some of them are also understandable and justified. Meaning, there are processes that the moment you let go, they get out of hand and you lose control.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the other hand, so because of that we shouldn’t change anything? We’re paying a price for that, and it’s worse than if they had changed the things that need changing.

[Speaker B] What price?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what’s the price? The price is insane. First of all, we’re maintaining an anachronistic system, a large part of which there’s simply no reason to maintain, because it’s just outdated. And beyond that, we’re losing a lot of people because of it—specifically the smart and honest ones, usually among the young, though not only today. Because they say: to this God, I do not intend to be committed. It’s a system that… Now, I’m not saying this in order to boost Judaism’s ratings or keep them with us. I simply think they’re right. I would leave this God too.

[Speaker B] Tell me, could it be that in the modern world this whole system—meaning, you see flaws in it and you say let’s change it a bit to fit the modern world—maybe in the modern world we just don’t need it anymore?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think whether we need it or don’t need it is not the parameter by which I evaluate the system. As far as I’m concerned, the system is true not because it’s needed, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, and what He said must be observed. It won’t help me in any way, it won’t create a better world. I don’t believe it creates a better world. I don’t think the religious world looks better than secular worlds.

[Speaker B] Maybe when you say that, you’re causing the most fatal kind of damage, because then young people will say: wait, it doesn’t even make the world a better place, so what’s the point? But that’s the truth—what can you do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A lot of people feel that it doesn’t make the world a better place. Now, if I tell them that it does make the world a better place, then that’s okay? At least I can tell them: listen, you’re seeing this correctly, I agree.

[Speaker B] Maybe if you’re a successful enough liar, you’ll manage to convince them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today we’re not able to lie all that successfully, and that’s a good thing. I’m against what I call holy lies. I think you have to tell them: guys, you’re right. It really doesn’t make the world a better place, and still there is an obligation and there is value in observing it, and that has to be discussed separately. I’ve written about it and spoken about it too. But you have to be honest. If they’re right that it doesn’t make the world a better place, it won’t help if I chant slogans until tomorrow. No, this system is not going to create a wonderful world. That’s how I see it. I see no reason why not eating pork would make the world a better place.

[Speaker B] But the other justification you give is also, let’s say, a difficult justification. You say: why? Because we were commanded.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True, in my view that’s the justification. So if you don’t connect to that, what can I do? Then leave. There’s nothing I can do. I’m not prepared to lie in order to keep you. I’m not doing this to keep you, I’m doing it because it’s the truth. I think that truth can also keep some of the people who struggle with the system as it looks today. There’s experience with that. Now, some people come to me with complaints, and some people have told me themselves that because of me they left the Jewish world, left their religious commitment.

[Speaker B] You convinced them that it doesn’t make the world a better place.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And I’ve had a lot of stomachaches over that. I did—less so today. I had a lot of stomachaches over that. On the other hand, there are no fewer people who told me: listen, you kept us inside. Now I’m speaking to both groups. The first group has enough people who will talk to them, and apparently they don’t succeed anyway. Fine. I’m not willing not to tell the truth because there are people who will draw conclusions. If they drew conclusions, fine. Those are their conclusions, and I respect that too. If those are their conclusions, let them do what they think is right.

[Speaker B] Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, thank you. Hello everyone, this is The Hedgehog and the Fox, and we hope you’re still with us. Thanks for surviving this far. Thanks to Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham, who had the patience to answer all our questions. We’ll remind you that The Hedgehog and the Fox is a project of books and ideas for the curious, men and women alike, and we’ll remind you that we have a website, kipshu.com. K-I-P-S-H-U dot com. We’d be very happy if you came to visit our site. You can find all our books there—six books in total so far. Want us to mention them? The Bomber Mafia, a book by Malcolm Gladwell. Fear, Regret, and Wishful Thinking, a book by Gadi Heyman. Does the World Really Exist?, a book by Yitzhak Ben Israel and Guy Finkelstein. The Shortest History of China, the shortest and most concise book you can read about the history of China. And also the two new books we’ve just published: She Will Not Fall Again by Yishai Jesse Perez, and Ten Caesars by Barry Strauss. We hope you’ll read our books, and we also hope you’ll join our conversation. We come here with this podcast more or less once every two weeks. One solo episode where only I speak, and one episode like today with a guest, male or female. Today we had with us Dr. Rabbi Michael Abraham. Before him we had Anita Shapira, Yitzhak Ben Israel, Yuval Noah Harari, Amit Segal, Micah Goodman, Einat Natan, and many, many other wonderful guests. You can find us on Facebook and be our friends. You can share us or like us, and you can also find us on Twitter and read our short tweets. You can subscribe to our newsletter. We especially recommend that, because whoever is subscribed to the newsletter also gets a special discount on Hedgehog and Fox books. Newsletter signup is on our website. As we said, kipshu.com. Sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get it only once a month, with updates on new podcasts and new articles and new books and all kinds of other things that we include in that letter, which, as we said, we send only once a month and no more. That’s it. As we said, we’re here every two weeks, and it seems to me that at this stage we can already say happy new year, because Rosh Hashanah is almost here, and have a good month, and a good week, and a good holiday, and we hope you had a good hour and that all is well. Talk to you later. Good evening, everyone. This week’s Torah portion is Behar. “And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying.” Holy Rashi asks the famous question: what does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai? Why did the Torah need to point out that the commandment of the Sabbatical year was said specifically at Mount Sinai? After all, all the commandments were given at Sinai. Rashi says: just as the general principles, details, and fine points of the Sabbatical year were stated at Sinai, so too the general principles and fine points of all of them were stated at Sinai. In other words, the Sabbatical year is the example for all the commandments. The Torah wants to teach us that just as the Sabbatical year was given with all its details at Sinai, so too were all the commandments. But why specifically the Sabbatical year? Perhaps because the Sabbatical year is the commandment that more than any other expresses faith and trust in God. A person stops working his land for an entire year; he relies on the Holy One, blessed be He, to provide him with food. And that is the foundation of the entire Torah—faith. The portion goes on to deal with the laws of the Jubilee, redemption of lands, the prohibition of interest, and verbal mistreatment. “And you shall not wrong one another, and you shall fear your God.” The importance of interpersonal conduct within the system of faith in the Creator of the world. May we merit, with God’s help, to observe the commandments with joy and trust.

Chapter 9: Michael Abraham, Who Exactly Are You Praying To? [Three Books – Hosted by Shmuel Rosner]

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Opening and introduction of the podcast and the guest

New books from “The Hedgehog and the Fox” and the partnership with “Ivrit”

Titles and identity: “Rabbi Doctor” and the attitude toward authority

C. S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man”: education, relativism, and postmodernism

Judaism as Jewish law and meta-Jewish law: universality versus commitment

The existence of God, proof, assumptions, certainty, and a decisive writing style

Morality, the “spinach test,” and theodicy versus a non-pragmatist argument

Different religions, theism versus deism, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai as the basis of command

Religious life under conditions of uncertainty, moral cost, and limited pluralism

The High Holidays, prayer, and divine judgment

“Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter: loops, consciousness, and criticism of materialism

Mind-body dualism, cogito, and the existence of spirit as logically prior to matter

Animals, consciousness, and Hofstadter’s jump from logic to metaphysics

Futurism, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, and moral rights

“Sha’arei Yosher” by Shimon Shkop: Talmudic logic, jurisprudence, and halakhic loops

The paradox of a condition in a bill of divorce: “Any legal effect that takes effect, does not take effect”

Modern interpretation of old texts and the question, “Why not just do philosophy directly?”

Choosing a figure to meet and one’s personal role: critical thinking and a “lean” rational Judaism

Updating Judaism: cleaning out “Jewish thought,” changing Jewish law, authority, and psychology

The price of conservatism, truth versus “holy lies,” and commitment that is not about “a better world”

Closing the podcast and the project’s call to action

Weekly Torah portion, Behar: the Sabbatical year, Mount Sinai, faith, and interpersonal ethics

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Opening and introduction of the podcast and the guest

New books from “The Hedgehog and the Fox” and the partnership with “Ivrit”

Titles and identity: “Rabbi Doctor” and the attitude toward authority

C. S. Lewis’s “The Abolition of Man”: education, relativism, and postmodernism

Judaism as Jewish law and meta-Jewish law: universality versus commitment

The existence of God, proof, assumptions, certainty, and a decisive writing style

Morality, the “spinach test,” and theodicy versus a non-pragmatist argument

Different religions, theism versus deism, and the Revelation at Mount Sinai as the basis of command

Religious life under conditions of uncertainty, moral cost, and limited pluralism

The High Holidays, prayer, and divine judgment

“Gödel, Escher, Bach” by Douglas Hofstadter: loops, consciousness, and criticism of materialism

Mind-body dualism, cogito, and the existence of spirit as logically prior to matter

Animals, consciousness, and Hofstadter’s jump from logic to metaphysics

Futurism, artificial intelligence, autonomous cars, and moral rights

“Sha’arei Yosher” by Shimon Shkop: Talmudic logic, jurisprudence, and halakhic loops

The paradox of a condition in a bill of divorce: “Any legal effect that takes effect, does not take effect”

Modern interpretation of old texts and the question, “Why not just do philosophy directly?”

Choosing a figure to meet and one’s personal role: critical thinking and a “lean” rational Judaism

Updating Judaism: cleaning out “Jewish thought,” changing Jewish law, authority, and psychology

The price of conservatism, truth versus “holy lies,” and commitment that is not about “a better world”

Closing the podcast and the project’s call to action

Weekly Torah portion, Behar: the Sabbatical year, Mount Sinai, faith, and interpersonal ethics

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