Lecture dated 22 Adar 5767

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We continue the tradition of our ancestors. Just as our ancestors wore clothes suited to the weather they were in, we too will continue to wear clothes suited to the weather we are in. If we wear clothes suited to the weather our ancestors were in, then on the contrary, we’re clashing with those conservatives. We’re saying: the true conservative, the true conservative, has to change clothes now in order to preserve the tradition. In order to. Not only is that not a contradiction, it’s the real preservation of tradition. Because we are the true Agudat Yisrael, as they say. So that’s one way to make this claim, and then basically it turns out that there is a dispute here between two groups of conservatives. Both are conservative. So what’s the dispute? The definition of conservatism. Exactly. The dispute is over the question of what principles must be preserved. The first group says that the principle that must be preserved is to wear summer clothes. That’s the principle that must be preserved. The second group says that the principle that must be preserved is to wear clothes appropriate to the weather. So really it’s just a dispute over what the principle is that we received, but after that dispute, we are both equally conservative. So maybe we can define these two groups as follows: the first group, let’s say, are simple conservatives; they go by the plain meaning without midrash. And the second group are midrashic conservatives; they interpret the principle they received. They say: true, we saw that our ancestors walked around in swimsuits in the desert. But if we use our minds, if we now interpret it, it’s obvious they did that because it was hot. So in fact the heritage we received from them is not to walk around in swimsuits, but to wear clothes suited to the weather. So it’s true that this isn’t the plain meaning. Meaning, what we saw with our eyes was swimsuits. That’s what we saw with our eyes. That’s the plain meaning. But the midrash tells us: fine, use your head. Why did they wear swimsuits? Because it suited the weather. Well then, naturally I understand that the principle they transmitted to us is to preserve wearing clothes suited to the weather. Okay? So here we have what we might call simple conservatism and midrashic conservatism.

[Speaker B] But things get complicated, for example in the case of metzitzah during circumcision. Even if the Talmud, the Torah itself, tells you the reason, a medical reason, yes, over the generations it turns into something that you’re not allowed to change.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a big question. And to this day there are halakhic decisors who say that it’s only because of the medical issue, and if indeed the medical issue doesn’t exist, then…

[Speaker B] Right, that’s an excellent example. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, there are those who will say: we’ll preserve that metzitzah one way or another, regardless of whether medicine today agrees or not.

[Speaker B] But even if the Talmud says explicitly that it’s because of medicine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already an even more extreme shade of that same position. There are many sub-shades here; after all, right now I’m speaking only in schematic terms. Obviously there are sub-shades. Broadly speaking, these are shades of what we’ll call the simple conservatives. Okay? Those are the two types. What distinguishes these two groups? What distinguishes the two groups is that the second group, the one that wants to change the clothes, can also go in two additional directions. The first direction was what I called midrashic conservatism, right? The second direction says: we’re not interested at all in the tradition of our ancestors. So what if they wore summer clothes? I’ll wear winter clothes because that’s what I want to do. Let’s call them the heretics, say. That’s the third group. They’re not in the game at all. They’re not discussing the question of who continues the heritage of the ancestors. They don’t want to continue it, they don’t recognize it as binding, and they’ll do what they think is right. And the fourth group, let’s call them the Reform, the reformists, is a group that says that tradition, the tradition of the ancestors, has weight, but there are other principles in life too, and sometimes those principles will override the importance of preserving tradition. Meaning, they’re not heretics; they do accept tradition as something that carries weight. In the absence of other constraints, they would continue it too. But where there are other values or other constraints or whatever it may be, and they clash with tradition, sometimes that will prevail. It’s a matter of weight. So let’s call them, for the sake of discussion, reformists. Meaning, these are people who give tradition non-absolute weight, but they don’t ignore it; that’s not like the heretics. Now what really characterizes the second approach, midrashic conservatism? It seems to me, maybe I’ll even jump straight to contemporary identifications, sociological ones. It’s fairly clear. It seems to me that broadly speaking, and of course these are all generalizations, simple conservatism is Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) society. Midrashic conservatism is, say, more modern Orthodoxy, Religious Zionism, with various shades, of course. Heretics are heretics. People who accept the system, and Reform are Reform, meaning here these are the three in use. The picture is complex.

[Speaker C] Say simple conservatism means going by what’s written in the Torah, then what happens is that what’s written in the Torah would make Sabbath observance much harder: “you shall not kindle fire in all your dwellings”—without midrash I wouldn’t even have tea in the afternoon.

[Speaker B] Now—

[Speaker C] Whereas with meat and milk, without midrash life is very easy. Now, when I searched by keywords that the Rabbi mentioned, conservatism and so on, I got to articles by the Reform movement. I found there an article, I don’t remember by whom, that I read with interest, and among other things it says: we have a problem, our canonical texts are very ancient, the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). By contrast, our Orthodox opponents actually don’t go back any further in their day-to-day practice than the Shulchan Arukh, and in practice they even go with—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The well-known phenomenon: Orthodoxy is blatantly a modernist movement, unlike academic research and Reform; all of that is a slightly different shade, but overall it sits on similar directions—movements we might call classicist. These are movements that aspire to the past, movements that in a certain sense even sanctify the past, even though it sounds strange to attribute that to Reform, because Reform often comes with a kind of claim—there are other shades too—but I’m saying there are also claims in Reform that say: wait a second, the Torah doesn’t say that, so why should I care about all the inventions that were invented over the years? We’re loyal to the source; we want to go back to what once was, without all the wrappings that were added here or piled up here over the years.

[Speaker C] And that collides head-on with the problem of antiquity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s exactly what you described earlier.

[Speaker C] If Shulamit Aloni said, what, do you want us to live by the Shulchan Arukh, that’s a text from five hundred years ago—then the answer is: I don’t live by the Shulchan Arukh, I live by Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah, that’s a text fifty years old. You live by a text that’s two thousand years old. And then that article by that Reform writer, I don’t remember his name, deals with that question, but he doesn’t take it in that direction.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Among the Reform there are of course—this all comes together, because sociological phenomena really can’t be classified that simply. Obviously lots of arguments of all kinds appear in every sociological camp. But I think that as a general identification this is basically correct. Clearly within Reform arguments you find not only classicist arguments, but also arguments of the type I’ll call the heretical one, which says: wait a second, this is an ancient principle that’s not relevant today—not because let’s go back to the Bible. No, even if it exists in the Bible, we won’t accept it. Meaning, not everything in the Bible binds us either. Obviously there are such arguments there too. It’s a mix of many things. When you try to understand phenomena, you always need simplistic models; otherwise you’ve done nothing. Meaning, trying to understand a complex reality is always done by subsuming it under a few simplistic models that are dichotomous and clearly distinct from one another. Only afterward can you maybe try to combine them and create more complicated things. But broadly speaking, I think there is something to these identifications. You just shouldn’t take them too far, but there is something to them. So now, returning to our topic, I said all this so the context would be clearer. It seems to me that for an Orthodox person, two channels of argument are open—the first two, not the third and not the fourth. What we today call Orthodox, someone who keeps Jewish law, however you define it, then the first two arguments are open to him. Now what is the difference between the first two? The difference is that the first type of argument is not an argument for change, of course; it’s only a first approach, not the first argument. The first approach basically says: I preserve what was there, simply and as it was. So here, it seems to me, no inquiry into what was is required; he doesn’t do midrash. He studies the plain meaning—what was is what he preserves. The argument that tries to change always has to resort to some kind of midrash. That is, to say: why did they go around in swimsuits? Because it was hot. But now it’s cold, so we won’t go around in swimsuits. That’s already midrash. What we saw with our eyes was that they went around in swimsuits. I then interpret that, and I say: wait a second, but why did they go around in swimsuits? Let’s understand the context, how this arose, what it means, and then we can say: well, under other circumstances maybe it can be applied differently. Incidentally, very often this is one of the things—and here we’re already moving to a higher resolution—within what we’ll call modern Orthodoxy, there is a view that’s closer to academia. And academia usually looks for context. Meaning, why did things happen—because of such influences, such trends, such goals, and so on. Traditional yeshiva learning, maybe we’ll talk about this another time, grasps things more synchronically. Meaning, the time axis doesn’t play any role for me. Maimonides sits with Rabbi Shimon Shkop and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi around a round table, and they argue with each other, each one states his view, and afterward I draw a map of the methods, the principles. I’m not interested at all in the fact that they operated under different conditions, responded to different environments, different pressures, different goals, different ideas around them—that doesn’t interest the traditional learner, the yeshiva learner.

[Speaker C] In Brisk maybe it doesn’t interest them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t interest any of the traditional learners in yeshivot. I think that’s one of the things that distinguishes yeshiva learning. Today even within yeshivot there’s a bit of research. Again, reality is always more complicated than the theoretical categories, but what’s called yeshiva learning, I think, is precisely that kind of learning that ignores context. It ignores context—I mean real, historical context—not the context of reasoning. That is, I definitely do ask myself what ideas guided a certain study hall.

[Speaker B] But that’s not the influence of time; that’s the dispute from Rabbi Shach’s side against Rabbi Steinsaltz, whose books did relate to it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, exactly. Rabbi Steinsaltz really does bring research in one form or another into learning, and that’s exactly what the dispute was about. In any case—and again, of course one can, well, we’ll talk about that when we maybe discuss the matter of research—one can do this apologetically and say that all our rabbis were heavenly flames and were influenced by nothing, they all lived only in a world of ideas and ideals. That’s absurd. We see the people around us, even great people—they don’t operate that way, and I don’t think that started twenty years ago. What one certainly can say is that the question is what kind of explanation I’m looking for. All explanations can be correct—not because one is wrong and the other right; in principle they’re all right, at least if someone is working properly. The whole question is what explanation I’m looking for. Am I looking for the contextual explanation, or am I looking for the content-based, explanatory, ideological explanation? And those are two things that can both exist. So once again let me return to the midrashic conservative. What characterizes the Orthodox person who nevertheless wants to make a change—and this is necessarily, by definition, the Orthodox person who wants to make a change must engage in midrash. Must engage in midrash. Unlike the heretic or the reformist, who makes the change without midrash. He says: not because—they wore swimsuits not because it was hot, but because they wanted to wear swimsuits, true. I still won’t do that because I think there is a value that overrides it, or because I don’t believe in that value at all, depending on whether I’m a reformist or a heretic. He does no midrash at all.

[Speaker B] But the attitude is plain—what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The attitude is plain, not halakhic—plain.

[Speaker B] And in that sense the average Religious Zionist can reach the conclusion that Jewish law obligates him, but he won’t do it, and he remains a man of Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s something else. Right now I’m not talking about bent or compromised figures; I’m talking about ideologies. Leave people aside, let’s talk about ideologies. People very often don’t behave exactly according to their own ideologies—that’s true in all groups. But let’s talk about the ideologies; it’s easier for us to classify them. So the claim is that when an Orthodox person, someone loyal to Jewish law—what we earlier called a conservative—wants to make a change, it has to be anchored in midrash. There is no change without midrash. That’s the point I wanted to sharpen with these examples. The reformist and the heretic make change without midrash. They don’t need to interpret why our ancestors wore swimsuits because it was hot. No, they can agree with the simple conservative: they wore swimsuits because in their eyes there was a supreme value in wearing swimsuits in every kind of weather—but I don’t accept that, and therefore I won’t do it. I don’t need to interpret why they wore swimsuits. Only the midrashic conservative, only the modern Orthodox person who is loyal to Jewish law—he remains conservative, in our sense, but still seeks change—must always produce midrash. You always have to understand that what existed in the past stemmed from one reason or another, and therefore now the reasons are different, or the circumstances are different, and so perhaps change is required. So this midrash is essential; it’s not incidental. It’s always essential when a group tries to remain faithful to principles while at the same time applying them differently under different circumstances—it has to come with midrash. And that midrash is the same assumption I spoke about earlier, the one I said you always have to pay attention to as well. It’s not enough to state the facts that the circumstances changed; I have to show that the Jewish law under discussion—say, the disqualification of women from testimony—is a function of those changed circumstances. That’s the midrash. Meaning, why were women disqualified from testimony? Because they weren’t educated. That’s midrash. What I saw with my eyes was that they were disqualified; that’s what I saw. So the Haredi conservative, let’s call him that, leaves them disqualified forever, because if they were disqualified, they’ll remain disqualified forever. The reformist or the heretic says: what are you talking about? There are values that override this, or I’m not loyal at all—women… women are valid, what do you mean they’re disqualified from testimony? No, he doesn’t engage in midrash; he doesn’t accept it. The modern Orthodox person is trapped here in a strait, and the only way out is to engage in midrash. Then I say: why were women disqualified from testimony? It’s not written explicitly. If it were written explicitly, even a Haredi would accept it. So it’s not written explicitly. I engage in midrash and say: why were they disqualified from testimony? Because they were uneducated. Fine. So now that has changed, they are educated, and women can be validated for testimony. But there always has to be midrash in the background, and therefore many times modern Orthodoxy skips the stage of midrash, and in that sense it’s Reform. That’s exactly the difference. Meaning, when someone comes with a claim and says: I want change because the circumstances have changed—he’s a reformist.

[Speaker B] So does that mean that the religious kibbutz back then, the religious kibbutz, was Reform?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, I don’t know; there were arguments in both directions.

[Speaker B] I think behind—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Behind it stood a modernist ideology, not Reform.

[Speaker B] Meaning, they remained connected to Jewish law, and the ordinary people themselves decided what to change.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, נכון, but still one of the ideologies in the religious kibbutz was that the ordinary people would be Torah scholars, and therefore they didn’t want a rabbi. They didn’t really manage to sustain that, so today they do take rabbis, but I think the ideology there really was definitely a modern Orthodox ideology; it wasn’t a Reform ideology. What happened in practice is something else.

[Speaker B] In practice, in practice I’m saying—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In practice it’s always more complicated. The ideology wasn’t that, I think, to some degree, as far as I understand it at least. And then basically the point is: there always has to be midrash, because if you don’t engage in midrash you’re not conservative. And the only way to make change within a conservative pattern is to base it on midrash. There is no change without midrash. Sorry, Yossi.

[Speaker C] In one religious kibbutz, there was a place there that blessed the rebellion for most of the day—not all day—so at least they agreed on one thing: that it wouldn’t be written into the kibbutz bylaws. Okay? Those opening hours—that wouldn’t be written down.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe there are opposite sides of the same thing. There are people who are always fighting so that in Israeli public life the Sabbath won’t be desecrated, even though all the individuals continue desecrating the Sabbath, but in the bylaws it should be written that desecrating the Sabbath is forbidden.

[Speaker C] And in the bylaws there’s something even worse: that buses shouldn’t run on the Sabbath, when of course according to Jewish law a bus is allowed to travel. A bus is allowed to travel on the Sabbath; the problem is the driver, the mechanic, the passengers. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, fine, I think that’s the other side of the same coin. In any case, back to our matter—I simply have to finish this today. In short, it seems to me that this theoretical introduction, which hasn’t yet entered into the actual issue, basically exhausts the whole thing. Now I can already shorten the whole process. Meiri now makes a revolutionary claim, a revolutionary claim that appears in dozens of places in his writings, and therefore, as I said before, it’s clear that there is a method here. This isn’t some local excuse, something you also find among many other medieval authorities (Rishonim). For example, I’ll read to you from his novellae to Bava Kamma 113: “It follows that even idol worshippers who are not bounded by the ways of religion may not be robbed.” And in the meantime he’s still speaking about the idol worshippers of old. “They may not be robbed, and if a Jew has been sold to him, it is forbidden to leave him in his possession without redemption”—meaning, you can hear certain standards of fairness here. “And likewise one may not evade repaying his loan”—meaning, if he lent me money then I have to repay it. “However, a person is not obligated to go searching for his lost object in order to return it to him.” You don’t have to make an effort to return his lost object, that’s not— And more than that, according to Maimonides it’s even forbidden to return it, and that’s a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). “Furthermore, even one who found his lost object is not obligated to return it, since a find is partially an acquisition, and returning it is an act of piety, and we are not bound to acts of piety toward one who has no moral awareness. And likewise with his error: if he erred on his own, not because of our manipulation and not because of our effort, there is no obligation to correct it. However, if it became known to him”—known, meaning to the gentile—”then in any case one must restore it, so that there not be a desecration of God’s name. And likewise with a lost object, whenever withholding it would cause desecration of God’s name, one returns it.” Up to this point, this is the usual attitude toward gentiles. This is Meiri’s position, which created what we might call a more moral position even toward gentiles, not placing them so quickly in the lower category.

[Speaker B] These are idol worshippers. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now he goes on and says this: “However, anyone among the nations who is bounded by the ways of religion and worships God in some manner, even though his faith is far from ours, is not included in this.” But he says that even regarding complete idol worshippers and all that, it’s forbidden to rob them, forbidden to do things that are our fault, let’s put it that way; not returning a lost object when it was lost by them on their own, or an error they made on their own. But those who are from the nations bounded by the ways of religion and worship God in some manner, even though their faith is far from ours, are not included in this. “They are like a full Jew for these matters, both in lost property and in error and in all other matters, with no distinction whatsoever.” That’s a very strong statement. Meaning, the claim is that regarding those who are bounded by the ways of religion, none of this was said about them; that is, they are really just like a Jew in every respect. That’s a genuine revolution from a halakhic standpoint. Even the first passage is an innovation, because Meiri definitely maintains fairly high moral standards even with respect to idol worshippers of the lower kind. But in the second passage, when he speaks about those who are bounded by the ways of religion and so on, there he says: really like Israel in every respect. Now some of these things are Torah-level laws that he’s changing here. There are other examples too, not only rabbinic laws. There really is something here that is a complete revolution, and therefore it’s clear that he isn’t speaking here about some enactment that he made for purposes of discussion; sages can enact enactments. He’s functioning here as an interpreter. And what he’s doing here is midrash, the same midrash I mentioned before. He’s doing midrash. He says: all these prohibitions that were stated were stated regarding those gentiles who were idol worshippers and corrupt and so on. Today the circumstances have changed, and I claim, says Meiri, that all these prohibitions are a function of those circumstances that have changed, and therefore today this no longer exists. Meaning, this is really a classic pattern of argument, just as we presented earlier, of midrashic conservatism. In that sense Meiri is very unique.

[Speaker B] What is Meiri’s midrash?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is his midrash? That’s one of the big problems. Where is it? There are hints in several places; I don’t know if I’ll manage to get to that. Usually he doesn’t address the midrash. But it’s clear that he’s doing it, because he isn’t claiming that this should be changed—the midrash at the most banal level is written there, the midrash is written there. Meaning, since they are bounded by the ways of religion and so on, the Jewish law was not said about them. In other words, he makes the claim that the law is a function of your being bounded by the ways of religion. As for proof why that’s really so, he often doesn’t bring any. In most cases he doesn’t. And that really is a question. It seems self-evident to him somehow. But it’s clear that he did some kind of midrash here; it’s just that the midrash itself has disappeared. Never mind—but he did some sort of midrash here. Now Meiri is usually interpreted as making the claim that the gentiles in his time—these were Christians, those around him—were not idol worshippers. And therefore, basically, what he is claiming is that all these laws that were stated, which he mentioned here and many others that appear elsewhere, all of these were not said about all gentiles but only about those who worship idolatry. And since the Christians around me are not idol worshippers, all these laws don’t apply to them. That’s how Meiri is usually understood. But there are several problems with that view. That’s how Jacob Katz understood him in a very well-known article on Meiri, and that’s also how halakhic decisors understand him—Rabbi Hayim David Halevy also has several articles on this, and others—they generally understand him that way. This view is problematic, problematic from several aspects. The first aspect is that Meiri—and here Jacob Katz himself gets stuck at the end of his article—Meiri does not write that one may benefit from cultic objects. Jacob Katz struggles over why. After all, if he really thinks they’re not idol worshippers, then what’s the problem? So why are their cultic objects forbidden for benefit? And even when he does write something in one place—I think in one place he does write something—he writes it the way all the other medieval authorities (Rishonim) write it, meaning with some local justifications and with additional branches of argument. Still, you see that here he didn’t apply his sweeping principle that says these Christians are something else. And Jacob Katz is left with a “this requires further study,” and he begins to move into psychologizing and explanations; he didn’t dare draw the conclusions from what—

[Speaker B] What is accepted today is specifically that Christians are idol worshippers? What? That what’s accepted today is specifically that Christians are idol worshippers. I’ll get to that in a moment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And who isn’t?

[Speaker C] What? Christians are, so who isn’t?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Muslims. Ah. Maimonides writes that Christians are, and Muslims are not; that’s basically the source, and everyone follows him. But that’s still—maybe I’ll say something about that today. So the first problematic point is that Meiri does not permit benefit from their cultic objects anywhere in all these dozens of places; he does not permit their cultic objects. To benefit from them, I mean. Not to perform the worship itself—that is certainly forbidden.

[Speaker B] He says these are not the same idol worshippers. Even if today they are somewhat idol worshippers, yes, but it’s a different type of humanity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s where I’m headed in a moment. But the accepted interpretation is that he decided they are not idol worshippers, so the problem that arises is: then why doesn’t he permit the cultic objects? A second problem: Maimonides, as is well known, said that Christians are indeed idol worshippers and Muslims are not. Meiri, as is well known, is consistently Maimonidean; he always follows Maimonides. And if Meiri is deviating so frontally from Maimonides, I would expect him to say something, to say: here I disagree with Maimonides. That can happen—but say it. A third point is that a large portion of the laws he is talking about are laws that don’t seem, in the plain sense of the passages, to apply specifically to idol worshippers, but to gentiles in general. And then it won’t help to say that they are not idol worshippers, because even if they are gentiles who are not idol worshippers, those laws are still relevant to them too. And the fourth problem is that he never writes this simple sentence that they are not idol worshippers. He never writes that anywhere. Dozens of places—but that’s not the issue; he simply doesn’t write it. There are very simple words he could have written if that were his point. He keeps repeating “bounded by the ways of religion” and the like. Just say they are not idol worshippers and that’s it, and that’s a very sharp and clear halakhic category. Yes. What’s the problem?

[Speaker C] No, at the beginning he spoke about idol worshippers, and afterward he said that if they are not idol worshippers.