Torah and Science, Lecture 3
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
Table of Contents
- Uncertainty in science, generalization, and reasoning
- The distinction between the natural sciences and the social sciences and humanities, and the force of the clash
- Trust in the scientific method and the example of Dan Shechtman
- Scientific theory as a semantic term
- What Torah is: categories, authority, and the interpretation of the sages
- The possibility of error even in Torah-level law, and Maimonides’ example in the Book of Commandments
- Derashot: supporting derash versus creating derash, and the status of authority
- The authority of the Talmud as binding acceptance rather than infallibility
- Points of difficulty: the Written Torah, faith, and tradition
- Maimonides on the authority of the sages versus truth in matters of fact
- Practical Jewish law versus factual infrastructure: the example of lice
- Maimonides on interpreting the Written Torah in the face of a proven view: corporeality and eternity
- A continuum of decision, not an algorithm: the cost to tradition versus the strength of the evidence
- Subjectivity, faith, and logical contradiction
Summary
General Overview
The text places modern science between rationalism and empiricism and argues that even when observational facts are accepted, scientific theory rests on uncertain generalizations; therefore clashes between Torah and science cannot be solved by dismissing science wholesale. It also assigns binding value to reasoning and places scientific theory at least at that standard, then calls for distinguishing between different scientific fields according to their degree of certainty. It goes on to define “Torah” as a multi-layered system in which many Torah-level areas also depend on the sages’ interpretation and knowledge, so possible errors are not limited to rabbinic law alone; on the other hand, it sharpens the point that things written explicitly in the Torah pose a different kind of difficulty. Finally, it brings two principles from Maimonides: the authority of the sages applies in the realm of Torah interpretation, not in matters of fact; and in the Written Torah one may interpret verses creatively in the face of a proven position, while weighing the strength of the evidence, the interpretive cost, and the price paid in terms of tradition and foundations of faith.
Uncertainty in science, generalization, and reasoning
The text states that scientific theory is the result of generalizing from facts, and no generalization is certain; from this it follows that science is not a discipline that leads to certain results. It argues that no information about the world is obtained with absolute certainty, and formulates a principle according to which the product of certainty and the amount of information is constant, so the more information is accumulated, the lower the level of certainty. It rejects the move of solving all Torah-science clashes by saying, “It isn’t certain, so it’s probably not true,” and places scientific theory at least at the level of reasoning, just as reasoning in Jewish law receives binding standing of “Why do I need a verse? It is reasoning.”
The distinction between the natural sciences and the social sciences and humanities, and the force of the clash
The text states that the degree of reliability and certainty differs among fields of science, and physics reaches a higher level of certainty than psychology, sociology, and history. It suggests that the difference is not only methodological but also due to the nature of the field, which makes it harder to reach decisive conclusions, and therefore there is room to distinguish between the sciences when examining clashes with Torah. It argues that clashes with physics create a harder situation, whereas with the human sciences and humanities things are generally easier because the generalizations are looser; but it qualifies this by noting that in those fields there are sometimes observations close to hard facts, such as archaeology and historical documents, where the clash becomes more troubling.
Trust in the scientific method and the example of Dan Shechtman
The text brings the story of Professor Dan Shechtman, who received the Nobel Prize after insisting despite the opposition of the scientific community, and concludes that the example illustrates uncertainty in science but does not justify general indifference. It warns against concluding that “there are dogmas there and dogmas here too, so there’s no reason to get worked up,” and declares a basic trust in the scientific method, because in the end someone who persists with evidence succeeds. It describes human failings, whether malicious or accidental, but argues that the scientific system is “bigger than the individual human beings,” and therefore it is right to trust it and not build on exceptions as a solution to difficulties.
Scientific theory as a semantic term
The text argues that the creationist use of the word “theory” to imply an unserious hypothesis is a semantic mistake. It defines “scientific theory” as the theoretical structure and paradigm through which facts and findings are explained and interpreted, not as a weak position in the everyday sense of “maybe yes, maybe no.” It concludes that because theory is the accepted interpretation of the facts, it has a status that must be taken seriously when it clashes with Torah.
What Torah is: categories, authority, and the interpretation of the sages
The text distinguishes between the Written Torah, the Oral Torah, Torah-level law, rabbinic law, a law given to Moses at Sinai, enactments, and decrees, and emphasizes that the distinction between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah does not overlap with the distinction between Torah-level and rabbinic law. It states that the Oral Torah is interpretation of verses, midrashim on verses, and laws given to Moses at Sinai within the world of Torah-level law, whereas rabbinic enactments and decrees are a different framework. It argues that willingness to attribute errors to the sages does not exempt Torah-level law from the problem, because in the realm of Torah-level law many interpretive acts of the sages are involved, and “a matter the Sadducees agree with” is very little; even what is written explicitly is not always clear.
The possibility of error even in Torah-level law, and Maimonides’ example in the Book of Commandments
The text argues that if the sages can err in enactments and decrees, they can also err in interpreting the Torah on which Torah-level law rests. It brings an example from Maimonides’ Book of Commandments about a unique prohibition concerning “worms generated from decay,” and argues that according to what is known today there are no such creatures, so apparently this is a Torah-level prohibition resting on a mistaken conception of nature. It concludes that part of the 613 commandments as counted by those who enumerate the commandments may be the product of reasoning and views of reality, and therefore the tradition of 613 does not necessarily bind us to that exact list if it turns out that its basis is scientific error.
Derashot: supporting derash versus creating derash, and the status of authority
The text presents an apologetic approach according to which all derashot are “supporting derashot” that anchor a tradition from Sinai, but argues in opposition that there is evidence from the Talmud that new laws were created through derashot, and therefore not everything is from Sinai. It cites Ralbag in the introduction to his Torah commentary as comforting himself with the idea that the laws are traditional and the derashot are only an anchor, but states that this cannot be true across the board. It gives the example in which “the fruit of a beautiful tree” always leads to the etrog through many derashot, so it appears there is an earlier tradition; from this it follows that there are cases of supporting derash alongside other cases where the derash creates. It argues that the ability to err is not canceled by authority, and compares Talmudic authority to legislative authority, which binds even if it is not always correct.
The authority of the Talmud as binding acceptance rather than infallibility
The text cites Kesef Mishneh at the beginning of the laws of rebels, explaining why one does not dispute the Talmud: because “we accepted it upon ourselves” as a binding code, not because “we are not on that level.” It argues that stories that elevate the sages to prophetic heights weaken their authority, because then they ought not to have made mistakes about reality. It presents “My children have defeated Me” and the case of sanctifying the new month to show that sages can err and yet their authority remains binding, and concludes that the distinction between factual truth and halakhic obligation is a condition for preserving a stable framework of commitment.
Points of difficulty: the Written Torah, faith, and tradition
The text defines the “Achilles’ heel” as those areas written explicitly in the Torah, where it is hard to say there is an error because the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote the Torah, even if there is an argument that the Torah was written for the people of its own time. It adds two other sensitive areas: faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, as the foundation on which “the whole building” stands, and tradition itself—that is, the reliability of the transmission of what was given at Sinai and what counts as “a law given to Moses at Sinai.” It argues that historical, textual, and archaeological claims may undermine the reliability of transmission, yet on the other hand concludes that traditions can become corrupted, and the Talmud records corruptions, including discussion of disputes over a law given to Moses at Sinai in contrast to Maimonides’ ruling that no dispute ever arose regarding it, as the author of Havot Yair discusses at length.
Maimonides on the authority of the sages versus truth in matters of fact
The text cites Maimonides and Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides on the dispute over whether “the sphere stands still and the constellations revolve,” where the sages of Israel conceded to the sages of the nations, and concludes from this that one should accept truth from whoever says it, based on evidence. It states that the sages have no authority in scientific and medical fields, and gives as an example that “today nobody uses the medical remedies of the Talmud,” while halakhic authority remains. It emphasizes that the commandment “do not veer” makes the words of the sages binding, but cannot turn an error into truth, and therefore the factual question and the practical-halakhic question are two separate questions.
Practical Jewish law versus factual infrastructure: the example of lice
The text distinguishes between clarifying scientific truth about the factual basis and practical decision-making, and presents the example of lice as a field in which it is claimed that the sages erred, and therefore some halakhic decisors argue that the law has changed. It describes decisors who refuse to be lenient for two main reasons: either there is doubt whether science truly matches or contradicts the sages’ determinations, or they argue that there is no authority to change the law because this is like “when the reason is nullified, the enactment is not nullified,” alongside those who claim that science is mistaken. It raises as a separate question whether “an error from the outset” counts as “nullification of the reason,” and declares a personal inclination not to see it that way.
Maimonides on interpreting the Written Torah in the face of a proven view: corporeality and eternity
The text cites Guide for the Perplexed, Part II, chapter 25, where Maimonides does not reject the eternity of the world merely because of the verses of the Torah, since the verses of creation are no more numerous than the verses implying God’s corporeality. It describes how Maimonides interprets verses of corporeality metaphorically because God’s incorporeality “has been proven by demonstrative proof,” and declares that if the eternity of the world had likewise been proven demonstratively, he would also have interpreted the verses of Genesis accordingly. It adds a second reason: denying corporeality does not destroy the foundations of the Torah, whereas Aristotelian eternity “destroys the Torah at its root,” denies miracles, and would lead to “delusion” if everything were reinterpreted anew. From this it presents a model of weighing the strength of the evidence, the availability of a reasonable interpretation, and the cost to the foundations of tradition.
A continuum of decision, not an algorithm: the cost to tradition versus the strength of the evidence
The text argues that there is no one-or-zero algorithm, but rather a continuum of cases in which one maneuvers among three factors: the degree of conviction in the scientific position, the interpretive price of reading the texts creatively, and the cost to tradition and to foundations of faith such as the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Mount Sinai. It states that mistakes in the sages’ conceptions of reality are not troubling from the outset, but contradiction to the Written Torah is more severe, and undermining foundations of faith requires especially strong evidence before one even considers change. It also presents a tactical claim, namely that willingness to recognize the possibility of errors and corruptions in tradition may actually preserve commitment better than totalizing approaches that claim there is no error whatsoever, because collapse of the all-encompassing claim may drag commitment down with it.
Subjectivity, faith, and logical contradiction
The text argues that such decisions ultimately rest on personal reasoning and not only on authority, and declares that even if Maimonides had not said these principles, he would have said them himself. It states that all faith and commitment to tradition are the result of a person’s subjective decisions, and “no one will make your decisions for you.” It concludes with a discussion of logical contradiction, arguing that a person cannot simultaneously believe in “X” and “not X” if he understands that there is a contradiction and does not resolve it, because belief in “not X” means non-belief in “X”; from this it follows that the claim “I believe in both despite the contradiction” is incoherent as long as the contradiction remains in place.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re really at the seam, between the two sides of the equation. I tried to give some kind of description, in context, of what modern science is—on the axis between rationalism and empiricism, it’s basically somewhere in the middle. The meaning of that, bottom line, is that even if I accept absolutely the facts that I observe directly, the scientific theory behind them is still the result of a generalization, and every generalization carries doubt in its wake. In other words, there is no generalization that is certain. And I’ve already mentioned more than once, I think, that many of those who deal with this issue of Torah and science lean on the uncertainty of science in order to solve all the problems sweeping them away. Anywhere there’s a clash, they say: well, that means the scientists are the ones who were wrong. I think I mentioned what Wolf writes in his book—he opens his book with “Science is false and our Torah is true.” So these things are really based on the description I’ve given until now, that this really is not a discipline that leads to certain results. More than that, I said there’s no such thing as information about the world that is obtained with certainty. That’s the uncertainty principle: the product of certainty and the amount of information is constant. Meaning, if there’s a lot of information, the level of certainty gets smaller; if there’s absolute certainty, there’s no information. Therefore, everywhere we accumulate information—and that’s the role of science—we cannot have absolute certainty. On the other hand, I don’t intend to use this convenient method to solve all the problems, and not only because of the introduction I gave the first time about the status of reasoning. And I said there that reasoning, even in Jewish law, has some kind of status like Torah-level law: “Why do I need a verse? It is reasoning.” We brought several sources and proofs for that. And I think that scientific theory—not just the facts, the facts certainly, but even the theory built on the generalization from those facts—meets at least the standard of reasoning. True, it’s not certain, but reasoning isn’t certain either, and still reasoning has a status like Torah-level law. And if that’s the case, it seems to me you can’t get rid of these contradictions so easily and say, well, this isn’t certain, so it probably isn’t true. There’s reasoning here. Once there’s reasoning here, then we can at least be in a clash. You can’t solve it so simply. Another point I haven’t yet gone into in what I’ve described so far is all sorts of relatively new creatures called the social sciences and the humanities. I’m not going to go too deeply into the distinction between these different types. There are methodological distinctions, but much more important than that—and that’s just philosophical hairsplitting—the methodological differences can all be put on the same methodological platform. In the end, what’s clear is that the degree of reliability and certainty is different. Physics has reached a higher level of certainty than psychology, sociology, or even history. And so, without getting into why that is and whether there’s a methodological difference, that’s the bottom-line fact. And I assume part of it is not just because people are more foolish there or because the method is different, but because the field itself doesn’t allow one to reach conclusions with the same level of decisiveness as physics. So for our purposes, what matters, without getting into all that hairsplitting, is that we should at least distinguish between the different sciences when we examine clashes and the relationship between science and elements of Torah, or Torah in general. Because if it’s a clash with physics, we’re in a tougher spot. If it’s a clash with the human sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, then I think—again, this is a very broad and basic generalization—but in general the situation is easier, because there the status of the generalizations seems flimsier. Now, it’s true that in those fields too—society and spirit, though in the last generation this has really moved to center stage. The natural sciences haven’t interested anyone for a long time now. Not that they don’t necessarily care to study them—though even that is happening a bit—but they don’t interest people in the sense of clashes with Torah. Meaning, the clashes traditionally started in the natural sciences, but today we’re already long past that. Today almost everything revolves around the social sciences and the humanities.
[Speaker B] Professor Harshfi was here, and Professor Shechtman was here about a month ago, and he mentioned the story of Dan Shechtman—Professor Shechtman, who got the Nobel Prize because he was stubborn. Nobody in the scientific world believed him. He was alone in the club, and that’s how the others in the club saw it, but he was the only one who insisted and everyone said—even the greatest ones said—nonsense. Okay, so what does that prove?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it mean?
[Speaker B] Doesn’t it mean exactly what it means—that there’s no certainty in science?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the other hand, I think we have to be careful not to draw the conclusion that if so, then there’s no reason to get excited about anything, since it’s all just dogmas. Dogmas there, dogmas here, so who cares. There are many who will draw that conclusion. I don’t want to draw that conclusion. Meaning, at a basic level I do trust this method, precisely because in the end, someone who insists does succeed. So you see that overall it seems to work. We’re all human beings, we all fail sometimes maliciously and sometimes by mistake, and so there are problems in conduct, but this thing is bigger than individual human beings. Broadly speaking, I think this is a system it is right to trust. So those cases may illustrate the fact that this isn’t something certain, but I wouldn’t build our solution to these problems on them. So the distinction between different kinds of sciences can be relevant both regarding the type of problems and regarding the force of the sides that are clashing. Meaning, when it’s the social sciences and the humanities, on the face of it that seems like a weaker force, even though those are really the questions that trouble people more today. I do have to qualify that on the basis of what I said earlier, because I said that in every scientific field there are the facts we observe directly, and there are the generalizations. There are situations in which even in the social sciences and humanities—or mainly society—we come close to observing facts, directly observing facts. In such a place, the status there is more or less like the natural sciences. I’m not talking about psychoanalytic theory. If I find something there that contradicts Torah, let’s say I’m not dying over it—far from it, I think it strengthens Torah a little. But where we’re talking about facts that we directly observe, like archaeology, like historical documents, things of that sort—then it’s true that there’s almost no scientific claim that doesn’t contain some element of interpretation or generalization; that’s not everything. Facts that are direct observation are very rare. But even here there’s a kind of gradation, it’s not one or zero. Some things are closer to a hard fact, and some are closer to a generalization. And if that’s the case, then even in these fields, although on the face of it the problems seem less troubling, the fact that in the last generation people deal mainly with this is not accidental. Because we really are getting closer and closer to facts that are hard facts, facts that are direct observations or almost direct observations; the element of generalization is relatively small, and then the clash really may be more troubling there too. One final point in this expanded summary: the atheists often get very angry about this in debates around evolution, and I think justifiably so. A lot of times creationists say: well, it’s the theory of evolution—it’s a theory. A theory isn’t, it’s a hypothesis, right? It’s not something serious, so there’s no need to get too worked up over clashes. “Theory,” the term—and this is a semantic note—the term theory does not indicate uncertainty or unreliability in the scientific structure we’re dealing with. Scientific theory is the theoretical structure within which we explain the facts—that’s what it’s called. It’s not like in everyday language, where sometimes you say, well, it’s a theory, maybe it’s true maybe it’s not. Theory in this context means: this is the accepted interpretation, or the accepted theories, the accepted interpretation of the scientific findings. This is our conception; this is the paradigm within which we interpret those scientific facts. And therefore, when we talk about scientific theory, it definitely seems to me that we need to give it—okay, so that’s one player. The second player is Torah, and when we want to examine clashes, first of all we need to talk a bit about the question: what is Torah? I spend quite a bit of time clarifying what this is and what that is, because, as I’ll try to show later, once you really clarify what each one is, you see that a large part of the problems are imaginary. In other words, you don’t need to solve them. As for what Torah is, first of all we have the distinction between different sources in Torah. There is the Written Torah, there is the Oral Torah, Torah-level law, rabbinic law, a law given to Moses at Sinai, enactments, decrees, and so on. And here it’s important to understand a few things. First, the distinction between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah does not overlap with the distinction between Torah-level and rabbinic law. In other words, the distinction between Written Torah and Oral Torah is two subcategories within Torah-level law. Within—sorry—within Torah-level law. Rabbinic enactments or rabbinic decrees are an entirely different matter. The Oral Torah is interpretation of verses, midrashim on verses, meaning all kinds of things that are not written explicitly in the verse, or laws given to Moses at Sinai of course, which are also Oral Torah. Why am I saying this? Because people may be willing to accept that among the sages you can find mistakes. They don’t fall off their chairs, fine—the sages make mistakes, today too unfortunately they make mistakes. That probably happened in the time of the Talmud too; not just probably, certainly. So with that, I think people are prepared to live. But people don’t understand that this does not exempt the whole domain of Torah-level law from examination, because in the domain of Torah-level law there are a great many interpretive acts of the sages involved. The fact that it’s called Torah-level law only indicates the halakhic status of the law we’re dealing with—that it is a Torah-level law. But that doesn’t mean it’s written explicitly in the Torah. In the language of the sages, what is written explicitly in the Torah is called “a matter the Sadducees agree with.” A matter the Sadducees agree with is something explicitly written in the verses, for those who do not accept the Oral Torah. But matters the Sadducees agree with are very few things—there are almost none. Even what is written in the verses is not completely clear as to what it means. And there are many things that are not written at all but are derived one way or another, and all those are Torah-level law. Which means that within the Torah-level world there is a great deal of activity by the sages. Therefore, someone who says that the sages can err in their enactments and decrees—like me, for example—can also understand that errors may occur even in what is Torah-level law, and I don’t fall off my chair because of that either. One example: in Maimonides’ Book of Commandments, negative commandment 177, I think, maybe 178, there’s a special prohibition there devoted to worms generated from decay. Creeping creatures generated from decay, which it is forbidden to eat, and that’s a separate prohibition. Each kind of creeping creature has a different prohibition. Are there such creeping creatures? It seems to me there aren’t. At least as far as I know—it’s not my field—but as far as I know there aren’t such creatures. The next prohibition is worms that are generated inside the fruit. Once they emerge—or don’t emerge—there’s some distinction there. Now, there too it could be that the meaning is that there were eggs there laid by ordinary creeping things, and then they developed inside the fruit—that can happen. But if the meaning is that it was really generated inside the fruit because it came into being out of the fruit, then it seems to me, at least according to what is known today, there’s no such thing. And so here we have two Torah-level prohibitions; this isn’t even a derashah. Maimonides does not count derashot in the counting of the commandments—that’s the second root. Something learned from a derashah does not enter the Book of Commandments. For Maimonides, what enters the Book of Commandments is only what is written in the Torah. Derashot are another whole matter entirely—maybe we’ll talk about that one of the next times. So apparently we have here something that is really written in the Torah, Torah-level law. Where is it written in the Torah? It isn’t written in the Torah anywhere. This is an interpretation of the sages. True, this interpretation is not a derashah, it’s a plain-sense interpretation. This is how the sages understand the verses—what creeps on the ground, what doesn’t creep on the ground, whatever—some interpretation of the sages. But that interpretation relies on their conception of nature, on their scientific understanding. In that sense there’s no difference between Torah-level and rabbinic law. If the sages can make mistakes when they enact an enactment or issue a decree, then they can also make mistakes when they interpret the Torah. They come from within their conceptual world, from within their knowledge, and that’s how they interpret the Torah. Now, part of the 613 commandments may simply be null and void because it is based on a scientific error. And therefore, if there is a tradition that there are 613 commandments—and that’s a question that… well, then we’ll have to find other commandments to take their place. But that doesn’t obligate us to that exact 613 that appears in Maimonides, or that exact 613 that appears in some other enumerator of commandments, because those are definitely the product of a certain conception of reality, of reasoning, even of values—various things of that sort. And therefore, when we are prepared—if we are prepared—to accept the fact that sages can err, that sages are not prophets and not the Holy One, blessed be He, but rather human beings who can make mistakes, that has far-reaching consequences not only in the realm of enactments and decrees, where it’s fairly obvious that sometimes the situation has at least changed, if it wasn’t an error from the outset; but also in Torah-level law, the Oral-Torah part of Torah-level law. Now, there’s another part of Torah-level law, as I said earlier, matters the Sadducees agree with. Matters the Sadducees agree with are things written explicitly in the Torah. And as I said, there are almost no such things. A few isolated things, really. It seems to me that the Talmud in Eruvin says: “The Torah in its minority is written, and in its majority oral.” There it’s a dispute, and in the end it seems to me that is the conclusion in Eruvin 21, I think. Meaning that most of what we have is Oral Torah; it does not mean rabbinic law. Rather, within Torah-level law, the majority is the part that rests on the interpretations and derashot of the sages. As for the derashot too—maybe a note about them, although each such thing deserves its own discussion—also regarding the derashot there is an apologetic approach that tries to claim that all derashot are really supporting derashot. Meaning, that the laws were transmitted from Sinai, everything was given to Moses at Sinai, and the sages throughout the generations anchored the laws that reached them in verses by means of the tools of derash. But they did not create new laws by way of these midrashim.
[Speaker C] Yes, but then what—so there’s a law given to Moses
[Speaker D] at Sinai, that I understand. What about those that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, maybe I’ll say that in another moment, okay? I just want to finish the discussion of the specific categories.
[Speaker D] The derashot—we’re still not on the level to argue with tannaim and amoraim; that’s beyond our grasp.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From the moment I agree to the “not.” From the moment I agree to the “not,” meaning I agree that we cannot argue with them because we accepted upon ourselves not to argue with them. But that we’re not on their level—that I don’t agree with. There are mistakes there; they were human beings like us, and we can find mistakes. I can show—in reality there can be—
[Speaker D] there are things, fine, in reality—both in reality and in Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They could make mistakes, and the fact that they have authority doesn’t mean they didn’t make mistakes; it only means there is authority. When the Knesset legislates—okay, that too is a topic in its own right—when the Knesset legislates a law, that doesn’t mean it is always right, but it does mean it has authority because legally it is the authorized body. When it sets a law, it binds the citizens. In that sense, the Talmud has authority. No one there was a prophet. Those legends that come to strengthen the authority of the Talmud seem to me to weaken it. Because if they were such great prophets, then in reality too they shouldn’t have made mistakes. So that seems unreasonable to me. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have authority on the halakhic level. Kesef Mishneh writes this at the beginning of the laws of rebels. Kesef Mishneh says—why indeed does Maimonides write there that one needs a court greater in wisdom and number in order to disagree with an earlier court? Maimonides says: only regarding enactments and decrees. But regarding Torah-level laws—maybe you need a court accepted by number, even that he doesn’t really bring explicitly—but you don’t need the second court to be greater in wisdom and number in order to disagree. So Kesef Mishneh comments there: if so, then why don’t amoraim argue with tannaim? Why don’t we argue with the amoraim? So I would have expected immediately the answer: because they all had divine inspiration and we are not on that level. But he doesn’t say that. He says: because we accepted it upon ourselves. We accepted the Talmud upon ourselves as the binding code. We want some framework within which we operate. Especially in a situation where we don’t have an active Sanhedrin, we don’t have some legislative institution that can organize the framework of Torah and commandment observance. We have to establish some framework that will be the constitution, the framework within which we work. That framework was set as the Talmud.
[Speaker F] That’s all. And according to the midrash, even the Holy One, blessed be He, accepted it—He says, “My children have defeated Me.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, with regard to sanctifying the new month, yes. Right, and with regard to the bull for an erroneous communal ruling—I don’t need to elaborate. Meaning, it’s obvious that sages can make mistakes. There’s no question about it. Rather, what? They have authority—fine—because we accepted upon ourselves the authority of the Talmud as the binding halakhic framework. So that’s true, but I don’t think it’s because we’re not on their level. Now, where were we? Ah, yes—regarding midrashim. So with midrashim too, there was an approach—or maybe there still is—an apologetic approach saying that all the midrashim are supporting midrashim. Meaning, that the laws were given to us by tradition, and the midrashim came afterward only to anchor those laws.
[Speaker B] But there’s a midrash that Moses our teacher once explained laws from the Torah, and when he died they forgot them and had to reconstruct them anew.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is whether they reconstructed the midrashic anchor for them, or whether they reconstructed the laws themselves. On the simple understanding, they reconstructed the laws themselves—so that still wouldn’t be supporting derash. In any case, there is Pnei Moshe on the Jerusalem Talmud, where he writes that a sin offering whose owners died—that’s one of the laws, a law given to Moses at Sinai—that’s one of the laws forgotten during the mourning days for Moses. And therefore, the law of a sin offering whose owners died today is rabbinic law, because we forgot it; everything we now say is already from our own reasoning, not from the tradition, so there is no longer here a law given to Moses at Sinai.
[Speaker F] And learning by kal va-homer and the like—that can’t remain Torah-level law? It is Torah-level law, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Except for Maimonides, according to all views other than Maimonides, yes, that’s Torah-level law, obviously. But it’s still Oral Torah.
[Speaker C] Oral Torah, fine—that’s obviously Oral Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which is a creation of the sages, but it’s a Torah-level creation; it’s not new legislation, not a decree or an enactment. Certainly. But you have to notice that for our purposes it is very important that these Torah-level areas are subject to how the sages thought. And if the sages could err, then errors can fall there too—not only in the area of enactments and decrees, but also in Torah-level areas. Now, regarding the derashot, as I said again, there are such approaches that arise—Ralbag, in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah, it seems to me at least hints at this, because he says otherwise it is very hard to understand what they were doing there at all. It looks like some kind of game whose rules are unclear. We fit the result to something we already want to reach in advance. This method of midrash didn’t really persuade him, and therefore he comforts himself by saying that the laws were received by tradition—don’t worry, the laws are correct, and the derashot came afterward only to anchor them. That cannot be right. In quite a few places, Maimonides certainly says explicitly against this, but there are several places with proofs from the Talmud that this simply cannot be true. There is evidence from the Talmud that new laws were created on the basis of derashot; these are not laws received from Sinai. And if so, then the whole world of derash is also exposed to the same problem I talked about before—that it is simply the product of the activity of the sages. And once it is the product of the activity of the sages, then it is subject to the knowledge and understanding of the sages. And if so, then even in the area of Torah-level law we have to take into account that the same kinds of errors can occur as in the area of rabbinic law.
[Speaker E] So what does “the earlier authorities were like angels” mean? What does “the earlier authorities were like angels” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I—
[Speaker E] You’ll talk about that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll talk about that another time, okay? It’s just a subject that will take us somewhere else. If you want, in my book Two Wagons and a Hot Air Balloon, I spoke about it a bit in the third section. In any case, yes—so in the end,
[Speaker G] I don’t think it’s either-or, because there are places where we find that they already knew the law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. There are supporting derashot, that’s clear. Without question there are places where that is clearly the case. For example, with “the fruit of a beautiful tree,” which is the etrog—where did Maimonides get that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai? Because the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah brings a whole series of derashot that lead to the conclusion that “the fruit of a beautiful tree” means the etrog. Each time in a different direction, but it always comes out etrog. It’s not by chance that someone came out with clementine. Right? So what does that mean? It is very reasonable to assume that there is really a tradition here that we received—that it is the etrog. Maimonides writes: this is a law given to Moses at Sinai. And there are different derashot that lead to the same conclusion. There it seems very clear that we are dealing with supporting derash, not creating derash. But part of my claim is that there are also derashot that are not like that. And that’s the point. Now, so that’s the wing that depends on the perceptions and understandings—or knowledge—of the sages. There is the wing of things the Sadducees agree with, meaning things written explicitly in the Torah. There it is very hard to accept the claim that mistakes can occur. The Holy One, blessed be He, wrote the Torah; the Holy One, blessed be He, is not supposed to make mistakes, even in scientific knowledge that did not exist at the time the Torah was given. True, there are claims saying that the Torah was written for the people of its time, and therefore maybe even in the Torah itself there can be things that are not updated to our current knowledge. That is harder to accept, I think. It seems to me that basically we do understand the Torah that way. The products of how we understand the Torah can be different. But did the Holy One Himself insert into the Torah things that are erroneous just because that’s how people of that generation thought? That seems hard to me.
[Speaker D] The question is what appears in the account of creation, in the portion of Genesis—the order of all that. Does that obligate us to say that those things were before—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I’m on the way there. I’m just laying out the scheme for now, okay? So the point—the Achilles’ heel—is really the things written explicitly in the Torah. That’s one Achilles’ heel.
[Speaker C] But the very fact that the Torah tells you to listen to the words of the sages—what do you call that? Fine, but it makes it true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it makes it binding, not true. Obviously. If there are—
[Speaker C] things that the Holy One, blessed be He—I don’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] know. In the Talmud it says—not in the Talmud, Rashbam and Tosafot disagree there in Bava Batra, and both of them are mistaken about the Pythagorean theorem. So because it says “do not veer,” does the Pythagorean theorem now get nullified? Let’s say that mistake entered the Shulchan Arukh—there it’s only calculation so it’s not Jewish law, but never mind, you see the principle. Of course not. Fine, nobody can decree that an error becomes truth just by force of commandment. If it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake. You can say that the sages are the binding body; they have authority. That’s “do not veer.” “Do not veer” does not mean—this is exactly the point—I think that this approach that tries to elevate the sages to very high levels in order to strengthen commitment to their words, first of all is incorrect, but second, tactically it is very problematic. Meaning, if in the end a person reaches the conclusion that it isn’t true, then he says: fine, so why should I listen to them? I’m saying that my “heretical” approach says no—the sages can make mistakes, but the authority is theirs, not because they are always right, but because we accepted that this is our framework. Once I accept that, I think it is a much more tactically sound approach as well. Not only do I think it is truly correct, I also think tactically this is not education toward heresy—it’s the opposite. The other approach creates all kinds of potential heretics. This is an approach where I know quite a few examples of that.
[Speaker B] It’s like the story there about sanctifying the new month, on Rosh Hashanah, with—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabban Gamliel, and Rabbi—
[Speaker B] Yehoshua, and that whole mess-up with Rabbi—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Joshua, even if you do it deliberately, even if you do it inadvertently, yes. So that’s why it seems to me that here we really need to make a sharp distinction. Because notice: if I understand it this way, then almost nothing really ought to trouble me, because there’s almost nothing that doesn’t involve the interpretive hands of the Sages, both in Torah-level law and in rabbinic law. And once I’m willing in principle to accept that a mistake could occur there because they acted on the basis of the knowledge they had, the understandings they had, then I’m no longer automatically shaken by a large part of these contradictions between current scientific findings and what exists in the Oral Torah. In the Written Torah the situation is different. If the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote the Written Torah, then presumably it’s also true, and then if we find something there that isn’t true, we really do have a problem. Two additional areas that can be problematic are: first, faith itself, also an issue discussed quite a bit in these contexts. Faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, independent of the Written Torah, independent of the Oral Torah, independent of Jewish law and everything else—the foundations of our tradition. Faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, itself—if it stands in some conflict with scientific findings, if so, then there really could be a problem there. Meaning, what are we going to say about that—that maybe faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, is mistaken, but it’s okay, no big deal? That doesn’t work. Meaning, if we collapse faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, then it seems to me the whole structure collapses, and so that can indeed be a weak point or a sensitive point. And the second place is tradition itself, because in the end it’s true that all the distinctions I made earlier confine the possible mistakes to a fairly limited realm. Meaning, to the realm of things that are written explicitly in the Torah. Or rather, they confine the possible contradictions to areas that are written explicitly in the Torah. But even that is dependent on the reliability of the tradition. Meaning, the question is: what is really written in the Torah, what was given at Sinai, to what extent the tradition we received is reliable. A law given to Moses at Sinai must also have that same force, for example, even though it isn’t written in the Torah, because a law given to Moses at Sinai is from the Holy One, blessed be He; it doesn’t matter that it was transmitted orally. But here too there can already be confrontations with historical claims, textual claims, and the like. Archaeological ones, yes—social sciences and humanities, what I mentioned earlier—that may undermine the reliability of that transmission. The question is what exactly a law given to Moses at Sinai is, how reliable it is, whether it really was given by the Holy One, blessed be He. And that opens the door to additional things. Of course, this can open the door in two directions. It can mean that we nevertheless need to work hard to defend the tradition even in these areas, even though this isn’t the Written Torah in the simple sense. But it can also mean that, yes indeed, sometimes when there is an error in a law given to Moses at Sinai, or in whatever else, in things that depend on tradition, then maybe we really can reach the conclusion that there may have been a mistake here. And there isn’t actually a tradition here; rather, the tradition got corrupted. Traditions do get corrupted, and the Talmud records cases in which traditions became corrupted. Maimonides indeed writes that no dispute ever arose regarding a law given to Moses at Sinai, but the author of Havot Ya’ir devotes two long responsa to going through all the places in the Talmud where we find disputes about a law given to Moses at Sinai. He tries to reconcile a large part of them, but there are places where he doesn’t succeed, so the fact that traditions get corrupted is not some overly heretical claim. It happens. And therefore I think that here one shouldn’t be overly alarmed, and on the contrary, the fact that we’re not alarmed by it means precisely that I don’t have to lose my basic trust in tradition. True, tradition is sometimes corrupted, mistakes can happen, we need to try to weed those things out or correct them, but this is what we have. We don’t have anything better, and this is what we are committed to. So in that sense, many times the more undermining approaches—the supposedly more open approaches to the possibility of error—are דווקא the approaches that are more successful at preserving commitment. As opposed to totalizing approaches that say, what are you talking about, everything is from Sinai, no mistake ever entered the tradition, the hand of God watches over everything, and all sorts of things of that sort, which in some cases, I think, fail to preserve commitment, because people come to the conclusion that this just can’t be true. And if commitment depends on that, then I’m no longer committed. And so even on the tactical level—and that’s often an argument that comes up—it seems to me this coin has at least two sides. Okay, so now what do we do with these mistakes? There are two… two basic arguments, both originating in Maimonides—not surprising, I think—and it’s important to know them in the background. The first concerns the Oral Torah. And Maimonides says in the Guide for the Perplexed—and this also appears, in essence, in a letter of Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides that was printed at the beginning of Ein Yaakov. In the first volume of Ein Yaakov there are several essays there about the aggadot, several interesting essays that really are worth reading for anyone who wants to. And one of them is a letter of Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, and there he cites in his father’s name what already appears in kernel form in the Guide for the Perplexed. He brings the Talmud in tractate Pesachim about ‘the sphere stands still and the constellations revolve.’ The dispute between the Sages of Israel and the Sages of the nations of the world, and in the end the Sages of Israel retracted and acknowledged the Sages of the nations of the world. There was some proof, and they retracted and acknowledged the Sages of the nations of the world. And Maimonides—this is what Maimonides writes, and Rabbi Abraham cites it in his name—Maimonides asks: who cares? Why is this philosophical question important, what stands still and what moves? So he says that it mainly comes to teach us the fact that you should accept the truth from whoever says it. And then Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides adds that the Sages have authority only in the interpretation of the Torah, and not in scientific fields and not in other fields. Today nobody uses the medical remedies of the Talmud. So either they were mistaken from the outset, or nature has changed today, for whoever badly wants to be polite—but in the end the fact is that people don’t use the medical remedies of the Talmud despite its authority. And it has authority. So that means that this authority is really authority granted in the halakhic realm and not in the factual realm, let’s say, not in other realms. So from whom comes authority in the factual realm? That very same Talmudic passage teaches us to whom the authority belongs. The authority belongs to evidence. Whoever brings evidence—science or whatever, it doesn’t have to be a scientist specifically—whoever brings good evidence is the one who is right. Not necessarily what the Sages say is the correct thing in these areas. Even in the context of Jewish law, by the way, I return to a comment I made earlier: the fact that in Jewish law the Sages are right does not necessarily mean that they are right; rather, it means that there their authority applies. Meaning, that I have to accept. It doesn’t mean that this hits exactly what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended when He gave the Torah at Sinai—I have no idea. Maybe yes, maybe no. And when there is a dispute it’s even more problematic, and many have already pointed that out. But it is binding in the sense that they have authority there.
[Speaker B] There’s also that in a broad sense with authority too—you could say they made lots of distortions, and that’s very unfortunate. Meaning, either something strong with authority or something weak. Fine, obviously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s an entire spectrum. I don’t know, I haven’t counted the number of places where it seems a mistake occurred. I don’t know. But the point overall is that this does not have to undermine the whole framework. On the contrary: the fact that I’m willing—you know, like a reed by the shore, or whatever they say—if something is willing to bend, then it’s less likely to break in the wind. But if there’s a cedar that refuses to move, the wind will break it. Very often, standing too rigidly on some principle will in the end bring fracture. And on the contrary, I say: yes, sometimes mistakes can happen. If there’s a place where it’s completely clear, then I’m willing to admit that a mistake happened here. Okay, that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily giving up the framework.
[Speaker D] But sometimes it affects practical Jewish law. Yes, practical Jewish law too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll talk about practical Jewish law too.
[Speaker D] The famous case regarding lice. Right, I’ll also talk about practical Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll talk about practical Jewish law too.
[Speaker D] Regarding lice, we’re bound to what’s in the Talmud, and they say that’s a mistake, therefore the Jewish law changed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll talk about that issue. But in principle, again, we need to distinguish here between two things. The first question is whether it is scientifically correct—the factual basis on which the law about lice was established, yes? The second question is what one should do in practice. As for the first part, it seems to me that I see no reason why I should assume that no mistake occurred there. Fine—if I’m convinced on the scientific level, then it’s a mistake. As for the second part, there are disputes. Most halakhic decisors want to argue that we do not become lenient on that basis; to be stringent, maybe there are some who are willing to be stringent, although even there not everyone is. But to be lenient, halakhic decisors tend not to allow it. And that too for two reasons. Some say that perhaps we don’t know, and perhaps there really is something here that fits the factual determinations of the Sages. And others say that we simply have no authority. There are also those who say that science is mistaken. Fine, but I’m not talking about that. There are those who say we have no authority, because once they established something, then say it’s like an enactment: when the reason lapses, the enactment does not lapse. So one might perhaps treat such a thing as a kind of lapse of the reason, and according to Maimonides even if the reason lapses the enactment does not lapse. The question is whether that is correct. The question is whether in a place where it turns out there was an error from the outset, that is called lapse of the reason. I personally think not, but that’s another discussion. In any event, then, we have one approach of Maimonides, which says that among the Sages mistakes can occur, but they have authority in the halakhic realm, and that answers the Oral Torah side. And there is Maimonides’ second statement in the Guide for the Perplexed. Maimonides writes there famous things, but it’s still important to know them if someone doesn’t. In chapter 25 of part 2, Maimonides writes there: ‘Know that our refraining from affirming the eternity of the world is not because the Torah text states that the world was created anew.’ So the fact that Maimonides opposes Aristotle’s doctrine of eternity—even though overall he does usually follow him—but on this issue he is not willing to follow him. He says: don’t mistakenly think that it is simply because the Torah says otherwise. So up to this point, meaning, here I’m not following Aristotle. He says: no, it is not because the Torah text states that the world was created anew, for the texts indicating the world’s creation are no more numerous than the texts indicating that God is corporeal. He is hinting at another issue he dealt with, and that is the issue of corporeality. When you read the Torah literally—we today are so used to metaphorical reading that it’s hard even to understand what he means. Because when it says ‘the hand of God,’ it’s obvious to all of us that it’s like when a writer says ‘so-and-so’s strong hand’; he doesn’t mean a physical hand, rather it’s a metaphorical expression. But Maimonides sees these things as expressions that, at least on first reading, are read in the straightforward way as literal. And nevertheless, says Maimonides, since it is clear to me on philosophical grounds—or perhaps from tradition too, but mainly on philosophical grounds—that God cannot have a body, therefore it is clear that the verses must be taken away from their literal meaning and interpreted as parable or allegory or metaphor or whatever. That’s what he says there. So he says: the verses about the creation of the world are no stronger than the verses about the corporeality of the Holy One, blessed be He. And if there I was able to handle them interpretively because I was convinced that the plain meaning of the Torah is not correct, then I would do the same here too if I were convinced it was not correct. But I was not convinced. That’s what Maimonides says. On the contrary, he says: ‘And the gates of interpretation regarding the creation of the world are not closed before us, nor are we prevented from doing so’; rather, we could interpret as we did there. And perhaps it would be even easier, and we would have greater ability to interpret those verses and prove the eternity of the world just as we interpreted verses and denied that He, exalted be He, has a body. But two reasons caused us not to do this and not to believe it. The first—and now he’s talking in connection with corporeality, meaning his discussion is about the eternity of the world but he begins with the methodological discussion about corporeality. So why? The first is that God’s being non-corporeal has been demonstrated by conclusive proof. So the fact that God is not corporeal is clear; there is a sharp, unequivocal philosophical proof. Therefore it necessarily became obligatory to interpret everything whose plain meaning stands in contradiction to the conclusive proof, and it is known that it necessarily has an interpretation. Whereas the eternity of the world has not been demonstrated by conclusive proof. Okay? Meaning, if I had truly become convinced that the eternity of the world was a fact that is hard to challenge—impossible to challenge—I would manage with the Torah. That would not be the problem. I would do creative interpretation just as I did with the verses that speak about corporeality. Why did I really do it there? Says Maimonides: because there I became convinced that the Holy One, blessed be He, has no body. So that is clear to me—that is the truth. If that is the truth, then the Torah’s verses can stand there and scream verse after verse; it won’t help them. Maimonides will remove them from their plain meaning. Maimonides interprets them otherwise because that is the truth. In that sense, creative interpretation is actually meant to protect the conception—or in our case, the accepted conception. Regarding Maimonides there are disputes about this, but in order to protect the accepted conception at least from our point of view. But that doesn’t matter; the main thing is that the principle is correct in both directions, as Maimonides says. If I had become convinced that the world is eternal—and this time that would be against our accepted conception, Aristotle’s conception—then I would do the same creative interpretation to the Torah against the things our tradition says. Why? Because I am convinced that it is true. And I do not take the verses of the Torah, the plain meaning of the Torah, as something that clashes with things that have been sufficiently proven. Okay? So I would do creative interpretation. Therefore he says: here I do not. Why didn’t I do that? Because I was not convinced. It was not demonstrated by conclusive proof, and it is therefore not proper to reject the verses and interpret them on the basis of preferring an opinion whose opposite could also be preferred by various preferences. That’s one reason. I simply wasn’t convinced. A second reason is that our belief that God is not corporeal destroys nothing of the foundations of the Torah and denies no prophet’s claim, and in it there is only what the ignorant claim—that there is a contradiction to Scripture in this. And this is not a contradiction to it, as we explained; rather, it is the intention of Scripture. Meaning, after he interpreted the verse, then that is its intention. By contrast, belief in eternity in the way Aristotle sees it—that of necessity and that no nature ever changes and nothing ever departs from its habit—destroys the Torah from the root and necessarily denies every miracle and nullifies everything the Torah promises or threatens with. Unless you also interpret the miracles as the esoteric thinkers among the Muslims did, and so on, and from that there emerges a kind of delusion. Meaning, that goes too far. It’s possible—there’s some strained possibility—but it goes too far. So you basically see that there is an overall balancing here. The balancing we are dealing with here gives the recipe for how to handle a conflict, this time one with the Written Torah. Before, we spoke about conflicts with the Oral Torah. Regarding the Oral Torah he says: fine, the Sages can make mistakes. That’s Rabbi Abraham and the earlier Maimonides quote that I brought. Here he says: what happens with the Written Torah? The Written Torah cannot make mistakes. The Holy One, blessed be He, wrote it. So what happens when there is a contradiction there? He says: there it depends. On the one hand I need to weigh the force of the tradition, or the centrality of this principle for our tradition. On the other hand, the possibility of interpreting by way of homily or allegory, and seeing whether this really is a reasonable interpretation. If the interpretation is not reasonable, then even there Maimonides is not willing to do it—that’s one side. And on the other side, the strength of the opposing view. Meaning, the question is how convinced I am of the opposing view. So for our purposes, say in the most extreme case—there’s a spectrum of cases, but I’ll present both extremes and the middle all at once. One extreme case: there is absolute force—or I don’t know, not absolute, but necessary force—to some position that stands in contradiction to what is accepted by us, to what is written in the Torah. In contradiction to what is written in the Torah. If that is a very strong force, I will go check the possibility of creative interpretation in the Torah. That creative interpretation, of course, is measured first against the question of whether it topples some very basic foundations for us, and second, to what extent I am really willing to fit it into the verses—meaning, to what extent this is really a possible interpretation, because I’m not willing to make a joke of it. The claim is that when I do creative interpretation, the meaning is that as far as I’m concerned, this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote here. That’s what he also says here; he presents it that way. Meaning, I need to take it seriously. I have to see whether such an interpretation is really possible or whether it’s totally far-fetched. Now today, at least if not for him then, but today we know that the metaphorical interpretation of ‘the hand of God’ is definitely not a bad interpretation. At the time, maybe—not sure. Again, some scholar raised this issue in recent years. He wrote an article about it, I think, claiming that for Maimonides this was some revolution that had not been known before his time. I really don’t agree with that. I think even before his time it was quite clear to most Sages—and this is also in Hazal—that the Holy One, blessed be He, has no body. But that’s how he presents it. Now if that really was the situation, then you understand that the straightforward reading of the Torah would of course be that if it says ‘His mighty hand’ or ‘His heart’ or ‘the Lord regretted’ and things like that, then the reading would be literal—that He has a body. Then Maimonides comes and makes some revolutionary interpretation; he turns everything into metaphors. Fine? That’s a very problematic reading. Meaning, it was not the ordinary reading people were used to up to that period. But notice how we—and I assume this happened long before us, not so long after Maimonides—this is how we read the Torah. It doesn’t bother anyone at all. Until one learns that these verses bothered Maimonides, it seems to me that no one even imagines there is anything problematic here. Some will say, okay, because we got used to it. But I don’t think that’s right. Every text also uses allegories. What’s the problem? Once you get used to the idea that these things are in fact allegorical, then fine—what’s the problem? Why not? It’s a perfectly reasonable reading. Now when Maimonides made this interpretive revolution—if it really was an interpretive revolution; I don’t agree, I’m only bringing it as an example, I don’t think it was his revolution—but suppose he did this, then maybe it seemed very far-fetched. But on the other hand, today in retrospect we can see: fine, that’s a possible interpretation, a reasonable interpretation. And since that’s so, when we have a very strong consideration against corporeality and there are Torah verses that indicate corporeality, I will try to do creative interpretation—but even that is not at any price. No, yes.
[Speaker G] Before that there’s the Raavad, that one of the Geonim, I think, said that God has a body.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, I know the well-known sources. But to say that everyone up until Maimonides was like that—there’s Hazal, I think that’s… yes, no, obviously, obviously. How can I say that, when he says there that there were many and greater than he, as the Raavad says there.
[Speaker D] Yes.
[Speaker G] Besides, I don’t know, it’s hard to say the two reasons are completely independent of each other. What, was Maimonides not aware of the fact that an intellectual proof—even when he calls it conclusive in his day—could be replaced in the next generation? How can he say that the grounding of faith—how will he explain the word of God in the world, the way one can say this is what God commanded—is built on a conclusive proof? After all, he knows that it could be that in the next generation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It seems to me there are two answers to that.
[Speaker G] Mainly the second one, not at all? It seems that the second reason is the main one and the decisive one.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have two answers to that, even regarding the first reason. I’ll give you two answers. One answer is that it doesn’t seem Maimonides thought this would change. We today live with a kind of consciousness that views change and shifting opinions as normal, and one has to remember, one has to remember that Maimonides—and not just Maimonides, the whole scholastic world of the Middle Ages, all the Christian monks and Jewish sages, or some of them—related to Aristotle’s statements as something absolutely fixed. Awareness of the changeability of science is a modern awareness; it was not the awareness that existed then.
[Speaker G] But at this very point he disagrees with him. What do you mean? I mean, Aristotle argued for the eternity of the world and he disagrees.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say everything in Aristotle is correct. But the awareness that anything can change, including the things that seem most obvious—that, in my humble opinion, did not exist for Maimonides.
[Speaker G] Not only for Maimonides, also for Hazal it didn’t. But again, in this very case it’s contradicted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? No, it isn’t.
[Speaker G] If he’s willing to say in this specific case that Aristotle was mistaken. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So? Because he says the proofs really aren’t convincing. What’s the problem? What’s the problem? But if there is a convincing proof—no, if there is a convincing proof—
[Speaker G] He didn’t think that that proof too was unconvincing. He didn’t think so, because to him it was obvious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is it logical that he thought this was the only thing that—I don’t know… you can always say it’s something else. No, I think…
[Speaker G] It could be, like Rabbi Kook wants. What? What did Rabbi Kook say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He presents two things here and both have the same standing. I think he means what he writes, and it’s very clear. We know this. We know that the awareness that ideas perceived as clear ideas—I’m not talking about changes on the margins, on the periphery—ideas perceived as something necessary, clear, self-evident, that afterwards they can suddenly change, simply did not exist in consciousness.
[Speaker G] But that is exactly an example of something that once was basic—I mean Aristotle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that Maimonides treats Aristotle as a prophet or on a level just below a prophet is another matter. But Maimonides does not relate to Aristotle as a source of authority. So what if Aristotle was convinced of something? So what? I wasn’t convinced. Maimonides himself was not convinced—not that maybe in later generations it won’t be so; I myself was not convinced.
[Speaker G] According to the introduction, what he says may be unconvincing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be. But once I know—no, why is that different? If what he opposes in Aristotle—then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all, the logical consideration here is certainly correct. But the question is what consciousness you live within. The consciousness you live within says that what is completely clear does not change. It is certainly true; this is a conclusive proof. The very use of the concept ‘conclusive proof’ testifies to that, because we are not really speaking here of proofs in the sense that today we would call pure logic. But exactly there, even Nachmanides in the introduction on the wisdom of astronomy and mathematics—he joins the two, though they are two different things; mathematics is mathematics and astronomy is physics—they saw them as the same thing. And therefore I think that is one point. A second point—and this is the second answer to the same issue—is that it is certainly possible, and I think there is a lot of truth in this even for us, that if this is the truth as far as I’m concerned today, it may change in the next generation. But right now I read the Torah this way. And if I read the Torah this way right now, then as far as I’m concerned this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands me. And that is what I am bound by. If someone else comes and refutes it, changes it, then it will turn out I was mistaken; ‘a judge has only what his eyes see.’ So here, even if I think it may change, there can still be an approach that says: fine, but this is the best I can do; this is how I interpret the Torah. And it seems to me that this is how we are supposed to live today. Because I’m in favor of doing what Maimonides did then—doing it today too—but doing it out of that same awareness that says: true, but I know that in the next generation they’ll do to my ideas exactly what I did to earlier generations. True, but a judge has only what his eyes see.
[Speaker G] Fine, but that means—if this works against Maimonides’ second argument too—then even with God’s name, if I have, say, a conclusive understanding according to what I think in this generation about something, but it contradicts a tradition that is perceived on both sides. After all, according to what the Rabbi just said, the second argument too—after all, I’m aware, I’m aware that it could be the opposite.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s always a question, always a question of the continuum between one and zero. In a place where it would topple the whole tradition, then maybe even if there were some pure logic of no—well, no—even then he would not do that. If it only undermines or removes parts of it, then he’ll be willing to do it even at a lower level of certainty. It’s a whole spectrum of things. I can’t give a clear algorithm for what to do—it’s not one or zero.
[Speaker G] It’s not that he would never contradict tradition. Here too, like here where there’s a tradition about fire—what he says in the second example—the second one too about fire, it’s not a tradition that belongs to the principles of faith.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Maimonides’ eyes, I think—or in the eyes of his generation—it was. Today we relate to it less that way. I think we need to be careful here about anachronism. Meaning, Maimonides in his generation did not see it that way. Again, the awareness of the possibility that things might change did not exist, because the pace of change was not what we know today. People were certain that once you establish some reality—and about this we’ll talk later too—once you establish some reality, that’s it, it’s a reality that will remain forever and ever, because that’s nature; there can’t be anything else. And today even halakhic decisors talk about eggs having gotten smaller and olives having gotten bigger and all kinds of things of that sort, because today there is some awareness—not important right now how correct it is—but there is some awareness that things change. And that didn’t exist in the past; it’s a modern awareness. Therefore I think we need to be careful here about anachronism. Anyway, for our purposes, it’s clear that there is some continuum here, and therefore I set out the two sides. I said I would set out two poles and now I’m getting to the middle; Rabbi Steinberg already brought me to the middle, but I’ll just complete the move. Where do we see this? Okay. So let me just summarize the picture. Meaning, when we have a completely conclusive proof, clear, totally convincing—again, in our own eyes, even with the awareness, and now I’m speaking about us, even with the awareness that it could change in the future—and opposite that stand, say, verses, I’m currently speaking only about the Written Torah because earlier I divided the Torah-world into two parts, then I tend to do creative interpretation. And I said there that even in such a case I do it only when the price in terms of tradition is not critical, not too high, and when the interpretation holds water as an interpretation of the verses—meaning, when this could be the intention of the verses. Because today there is a certain tendency—and this too is a result of the spirit of the times, deconstruction, you see—to say that we can basically interpret anything we want; it all depends on the reader. But I am not intending to reach that nihilism—on the contrary. Meaning, if I interpret the Torah in a certain way, I ought to interpret it in some way that I…
[Speaker C] Or again, over the course of the periods, that this is really our tradition—here there will be, here there will be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, with tradition one has to be very careful. I prefaced all this with a whole introduction. What is tradition? If by tradition you mean that this is what Hazal said, that still doesn’t excite me on the factual level. They could have been mistaken about that, and they were mistaken about that. If the tradition is that this is what is written in the Torah, or that there were miracles—which is also a kind of tradition—then here it isn’t a question of facts; at least in Maimonides’ eyes it’s some kind of factual description. Today we might be willing to consider additional options, but it is some kind of factual description. So here the Torah gives a factual description—there I have…
[Speaker C] But here you have one problem: in everything you’re saying now, apparently you have only one figure you can rely on, and that’s Maimonides. Meaning, in the best-case scenario—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you had nobody, would you say that? I’m bringing him because I found him, that’s all. It doesn’t bother me in the least.
[Speaker C] But no, but you’re contradicting yourself a bit. Why? Because you say that according to Maimonides, if you have a very, very strong tradition, then you cannot oppose science. The tradition is the Torah, it doesn’t matter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then I can’t oppose the Torah because of science? I don’t understand.
[Speaker C] If you have a very, very strong tradition and the Torah says it, then you can have a genuine dispute between science and the Torah as we understand it. But you’re basing yourself—you say this is the principle, and then you base yourself on a lone opinion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not basing myself on a lone opinion. I’m explaining to you: I’m not basing myself on any opinion at all. Even if he didn’t exist, I would say this.
[Speaker C] But that’s a bit audacious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not everything—well, fine, that’s my reasoning. What can I do? Reasoning is Torah-level, as is well known. That’s it. On whom did Maimonides rely? He didn’t have Maimonides. On what he saw with his own eyes, right? So I too—if there were no Maimonides—I would rely on what I see with my own eyes.
[Speaker C] That’s a problem, it’s always a problem, it becomes personal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, obviously this is a personal claim. I’m not saying to you: accept it because I say so. Exactly as I don’t accept what others say just because they said it. I’m presenting an argument to you. If you accept it, fine; and if not, then not.
[Speaker C] That’s exactly how I relate to Maimonides too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are arguments—
[Speaker C] There are other things Maimonides says that I don’t accept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that I quote him doesn’t mean I accept everything he says. But I’m saying that here he preceded me—he said it—so why not cite it in his name? If he weren’t there, I would say it myself. So yes, there’s a problem of subjectivity. All faith, everything, is subjective. Even what you believe about the Torah is subjective. Even what you believe about needing to bring the early authorities and those who transmitted the Torah—that’s subjective. You decided to believe them. Everything is subjective. Nobody else will make your decisions for you—only you decide, and no one else. Okay? So that’s one pole. The second pole: in a place where there is a solid tradition and the scientific facts are not strong enough—fine, then no. Then I say there is no need to change anything here. Certainly if the creative interpretation doesn’t fit well enough into the wording of the text. Because it is all a balancing among those three factors. In every intermediate case—and it’s a whole spectrum of cases, so I say this isn’t an algorithm, just a point of orientation—it means that in every intermediate case I maneuver depending on how convinced I am by the scientific truth, against what interpretive price I pay for the creative interpretation, against the price of what part of tradition gets undermined here and what the source of that part is. If the source of that part is a Hazal conception of reality, I’m not worked up by that. They could have been mistaken about that, and they were mistaken about that. If what is being undermined here is a description in the Torah, that is more problematic. If what is being undermined here is the Exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Mount Sinai, the foundations of faith, I am much more disturbed by that. Then someone would need to provide a very strong proof before I would even begin considering giving up those things, and so on. Still—I’m saying now, still—if I am completely convinced that this is the situation, then this is the situation. Nothing will help. It’s all a result of balancing. Even my trust in the revelation at Mount Sinai and in the Exodus from Egypt is a result of what I understand—I understand that it is true. So if I understand, as I said in the name of Rabbi Shimon Shkop in the first lecture, if I become completely convinced that something here is not true, then no. Sorry, but of course this is not a Torah statement.
[Speaker C] It’s a statement about the Torah. Where is the place of faith in this description?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Faith is what I think—what do you mean?
[Speaker C] That’s faith. My faith—in other places in Maimonides he points to ideological contradictions and says I can’t resolve them, I know this is the truth and I see it in my understanding, but that doesn’t matter at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is what contradiction you’re talking about, and with what intensity of contradiction. If what stands opposite is not absolutely strong, then I too would say such a thing. But if what stands opposite, in my eyes—again, with all the reservations I mentioned earlier—is absolutely strong, then that is my conclusion.
[Speaker C] Maimonides’ example of free choice versus the absolute knowledge of the Holy One, blessed be He—according to my simplest understanding, it seems that the conclusion of one of them is that there is a contradiction here. Maimonides? There is a contradiction here, and what is the conclusion? My reasoning can’t connect them, but this is a faith and that is a faith, and I believe in the existence of both despite…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since you chose that example, that too needs to be discussed separately. If you choose that example, it seems to me that is not Maimonides’ conclusion. Look in the Shelah, in Beit Ha-Bechirah. There, in the introduction among the “houses,” one of them is Beit Ha-Bechirah, and there the Shelah argues that Maimonides’ conclusion is that the Holy One, blessed be He, simply does not know.
[Speaker C] That’s not how it is in the Guide for the Perplexed, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what the Shelah claims at least regarding the Laws of Repentance. I don’t remember the wording; the Guide for the Perplexed isn’t my field, so I know it less well. But that’s what he claims there regarding the Laws of Repentance, and I think he’s right too.
[Speaker C] No, but that’s the answer to the basic question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because that says exactly that in a place where you are convinced there is a logical contradiction here—it’s not an empirical finding or some theory or another, it’s a logical contradiction—it cannot be that both of these exist together. That is a conclusive proof. So the conclusion is that one of the claims has to be given up.
[Speaker C] And there’s no possibility that I just don’t understand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a possibility that I don’t understand, but if I don’t understand, what can I do? It still contradicts.
[Speaker C] I can believe in both, and they contradict.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can’t. Why? Think about it. Okay, this really takes us into other regions. But if you believe in X and you believe in not-X at the same time, and you don’t know how to resolve the contradiction, can you say: I believe both in X and in not-X and I don’t know the resolution of the contradiction? You can’t. Because if you believe in not-X, that means you do not believe in X. Unless… no, not unless.
[Speaker C] That’s the meaning of the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —word.
[Speaker C] Maybe my reasoning that this is X and this is not-X is wrong?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, maybe the reasoning is wrong—that doesn’t matter. Since as far as you are concerned there is a contradiction, then from your standpoint when you say you believe in not-X, you have thereby said that you do not believe in X. That’s what you said. So how can you say, I both believe in X and do not believe in X? If you are mistaken and it later becomes clear to you that you were mistaken, no problem, everything works out. But as long as it hasn’t become clear to you that you were mistaken, how can you believe both of these sides? You can’t. Even if you are mistaken, you can’t. Fine, let’s stop
[Speaker F] here.