Topics in Talmudic Logic, Lecture 22

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She is disqualified from marrying a kohen. The woman for whom I wrote the bill of divorce in this way—or not specifically for her, rather, the woman for whom I wrote the bill of divorce under one of these four mechanisms—I gave her the bill of divorce, she is not divorced, but she is forbidden to a kohen. Why? Because there is such a thing called the “scent of a bill of divorce.” The “scent of a bill of divorce” is a situation where the bill of divorce itself doesn’t actually take effect, but since a bill of divorce was given, the rabbis forbade the woman to a kohen, so people won’t get confused and things of that sort. The woman can’t marry a kohen even though she isn’t really divorced. So Rav claims that all four bills of divorce that appear in the Mishnah disqualify her from a kohen except for the first one. Why not the first? Because the first one, if you remember, is where he heard scribes reading aloud. The first one wasn’t written for divorce at all—it was just a practice draft—so it doesn’t disqualify her from a kohen. Okay? But any bill of divorce that was written for the sake of divorce, even though it isn’t valid because it wasn’t written for the sake of the specific woman or things like that, still, it was written for divorce, and if it was given to the woman, then the woman becomes forbidden to a kohen. And Shmuel said: even the first one also disqualifies. Shmuel claims that even the first one disqualifies. Fine, he brings some proof for that. Ze’iri said… yes, I’m skipping those proofs because they aren’t important for our purposes. Ze’iri said: none of them disqualify except for the last one. He claims that the first three cases do not disqualify her from a kohen. So one says they all disqualify her from a kohen, one says all except the first, and one says only the last disqualifies her from a kohen. That’s Ze’iri. And Rav Assi says the same thing. And Rabbi Yohanan says that none of them disqualify. Okay? So there are four amoraic positions here on this issue. Ze’iri said: none of them disqualify except the last one. The last one is the case of retroactive clarification, yes. And so too Rav Assi said: none of them disqualify except the last one. And Rabbi Yohanan said: even the last one also does not disqualify.

The Talmud says: and Rabbi Yohanan follows his own reasoning. What’s the dispute between Ze’iri and Rav Assi, who say that the last one does disqualify, and Rabbi Yohanan, who says the last one does not disqualify? On the face of it, the dispute is about whether or not there is retroactive clarification, right? Because Ze’iri and Rav Assi, who say that the last one disqualifies—they apparently understand that only the last one disqualifies, yes? They apparently understand that it is simply a valid bill of divorce. Meaning that they hold there is retroactive clarification, so it’s not just that it disqualifies her, but the woman is actually divorced as well. Okay? Rabbi Yohanan says there is no retroactive clarification, as we saw above, so the bill of divorce is not a bill of divorce, and therefore it also doesn’t disqualify her from a kohen. Okay, on the face of it that’s the dispute.

And Rabbi Yohanan follows his own reasoning, for Rav Assi said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: brothers who divided an inheritance are considered buyers from one another, and they return the property to each other in the Jubilee year. What does that mean? Two brothers divide their father’s inheritance. The usual conception is—and I’ll explain this in the simple way for now—the usual conception is that at first all the property falls under a legal domain called “the estate.” Yes, the inheritance. The father has already died, and now who legally owns the assets? The estate. Some legal institution like that. Okay. Now the two brothers come and have to determine between themselves—how they divide it. Which land one takes, which land the other takes. So they make an agreement, a division agreement. Okay. The question is how to view that division agreement. Brothers who divided—are they buyers, or are they heirs? That’s a dispute. What’s the difference? The practical difference is whether they return property to each other in the Jubilee year. What does that mean? If we say they are heirs, the meaning is that after they divided the inheritance, it turns out retroactively that the portion divided to me had already been inherited by me from the time my father died, and likewise by my brother. The division only clarifies retroactively that all along each of us inherited exactly that half. Okay? Basically a mechanism of retroactive clarification. That’s if we say that brothers who divided are heirs. And then in fact the concept of “the estate” doesn’t really exist; it’s only an interim state that later gets erased—erased retroactively.

After they—say there are two fields, and Reuven and Shimon are the sons of Yaakov, and he left them two fields, field A and field B. Now Reuven and Shimon discuss it and decide that Reuven will get field A and Shimon will get field B. So according to the view that brothers who divided are heirs, that means Reuven got field A from his father, not from the estate. And Shimon got field B from his father. So where is the estate that stood in between? A fiction. It was there and disappeared. The division revealed retroactively which field each one got from the father, directly from the father. That’s why it’s called “brothers who divided are heirs”—they are in fact heirs.

Rabbi Yohanan says no, brothers who divided are buyers; they are not heirs. What does that mean? The estate is the domain that received both fields from the father. Now the brothers buy their portions from one another. I buy from my brother field A—or his share in field A—and add it to my share, and he buys from me my share in field B and adds it to his. Okay? Then the conception is that brothers who divided are buyers, not heirs. Each of us did not inherit his field from the father. The father transferred it to the estate. We each receive a field from the estate. Okay? What’s the practical difference? That when the Jubilee comes, it has to go back, and they have to divide it again—like buyers, like anyone who buys a field from his fellow. By contrast, an inheritance does not return in the Jubilee year; there is no one to return it to, the father is dead, right? So if brothers who divided are heirs, then the fields do not return in the Jubilee year.

So the Talmud says that Rabbi Yohanan follows his reasoning, that brothers who divided are buyers. What does it mean that brothers who divided are buyers? Does that mean there is retroactive clarification or not? So look: Rabbi Yohanan says even the last one also does not disqualify. Rashi explains: “because there is no retroactive clarification.” It sounds like Ze’iri and Rav Assi, who say that it does disqualify, hold that there is retroactive clarification. Or in other words, in their opinion it is a valid bill of divorce. We have to understand how they reconcile that with the Mishnah, because the Mishnah says it is not a valid bill of divorce. Here we’re talking about amoraim. And that is apparently how they understand it—at least that’s what emerges from Rashi.

Moving on. Why does Rabbi Yohanan follow his reasoning in the dispute about brothers who divided? So Rashi says… Rashi says: they are buyers because there is no retroactive clarification. Why does he say they are buyers and not heirs? Because he holds there is no retroactive clarification. “For there is reason to be concerned”—we’ll see the continuation in a moment. What is he basically saying? That the Talmud ties the dispute between Ze’iri and Rav Assi versus Rabbi Yohanan to the question of whether there is or is not retroactive clarification. Ze’iri and Rav Assi say there is retroactive clarification, and Rabbi Yohanan says there is not. And the practical difference is whether the bill of divorce is valid, and therefore whether the woman is forbidden to a kohen, whether she is a divorced woman forbidden to a kohen. That’s the first point.

And about that we have to ask: how can Ze’iri and Rav Assi say such a thing, that there is retroactive clarification, when the Mishnah itself says there isn’t? The bill of divorce is not valid—the Mishnah says so explicitly. The fact that she becomes forbidden to a kohen, fine, that one can discuss. But that the bill of divorce is not valid is explicit in the Mishnah. What, these amoraim are disagreeing with the Mishnah? That’s the first point we’ll need to examine.

A second point: notice what Rashi writes here. Why are brothers who divided considered buyers? That goes with the position that there is no retroactive clarification. So Rashi says: because there is no retroactive clarification, for there is concern that the portion this one took was really fit for his brother, and they exchanged them, and that is a purchase. It could be, after all, that the one portion—field A—really belonged to Shimon, and field B to Reuven, because you can’t know what the status was at the very moment of the father’s death. When they divide between themselves and decide that field A goes to Reuven and field B to Shimon, it comes out that Reuven may have taken the field from Shimon and Shimon may have taken the field from Reuven. “And they exchanged them, and that is a purchase, and it returns in the Jubilee year to its original state because of the commandment of Jubilee, and then they take again as before.”

Rashi understands—how does Rashi understand the concept of no retroactive clarification? What is the status of the fields before the division? I would have thought: they belong to the estate, right? No connection. They’re not Reuven’s, not Shimon’s, not anybody’s; they belong to the estate.

[Speaker C] But that’s not what it says here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But Rashi writes differently. Rashi says no, they somehow belong to both of them in a mixed-up way. We don’t know what belongs to whom. Once we clarify that field A goes to Reuven and field B to Shimon, the mixture becomes clarified. We are basically—I’m buying from you the part that was yours, and you’re buying from me the part that was mine. In other words, according to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification, that does not mean there is no ownership of the fields at all. There is ownership, only the ownership is undefined. It is possibly Reuven’s, possibly Shimon’s. Or both Reuven’s and Shimon’s. It’s not even a possibility; rather, both Reuven’s and Shimon’s. And then what? When I buy field A from Shimon, I’m really buying his share in field A, and Shimon buys his share in field B. And therefore we are buyers.

So how does Rashi understand the situation before clarification? Before the division. Rashi understands that there was still ownership over each of the fields, only it was joint ownership of Reuven and Shimon, possibly Reuven, possibly Shimon—or both Reuven and Shimon, however you want. Right? Because there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who understand the concept of no retroactive clarification differently. They claim that no retroactive clarification means that neither of the fields belonged to either of the brothers. They belonged to the estate. And the brothers who acquired them basically acquired them from the estate, not from each other. And it returns in the Jubilee year back to the estate, and then they divide again. It’s not that Reuven bought from Shimon; rather, Reuven bought from the estate and Shimon bought from the estate. Then the conception is that when we say there is no retroactive clarification, it means that these fields have no ownership on them at all. Okay? That’s basically the claim.

Maybe I’ll give you an example that will be—actually let’s go straight to the example we already saw; no need for another one. Suppose I wrote a bill of divorce for whichever of the two women I’ll want to divorce tomorrow. The Mishnah’s case, the last case. Suppose according to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification—what the Talmud says, right? That the Mishnah is actually teaching that there is no retroactive clarification. What does it mean that there is no retroactive clarification? For whom was the bill of divorce written?

[Speaker C] For someone undefined.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning: for neither of them. It wasn’t written for a woman at all. It wasn’t written for any woman at all. Neither of the two. According to Rashi, that’s not the case. According to Rashi, it was written for both of them, or possibly for one or the other if you like. Therefore, according to Rashi, if he divorces with this bill of divorce, she would be doubtfully divorced, because there is a doubt—maybe it was written for her and maybe not. And since there is no retroactive clarification, the situation remains doubtful. That is no retroactive clarification according to Rashi.

The way we read it before was not like that. We read it before as: if there is no retroactive clarification, that means this bill of divorce is worth nothing. Even if I gave it to both women, they are not divorced at all, not forbidden to a kohen, nothing. Meaning that when Rashi explains the concept of no retroactive clarification, it already starts getting very close to the concept of retroactive clarification. In other words, there is in fact a woman for whom the bill of divorce was written; I just don’t know which of the two it is. More than that—not only do I not know who it is, maybe nobody knows who it is. Nobody knows who it is, including the Holy One, blessed be He—not know. That itself needs discussion. But there is a woman for whom the bill of divorce was written; she’s just an undefined woman.

The opposite conception, another approach—there are other medieval authorities (Rishonim) who disagree with Rashi and say not so. According to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification, it means it was not written for either of the two women. Not that it was for both or possibly both—for neither one. Because that will only become clarified tomorrow, and tomorrow does not work retroactively on today to define a woman today. So it comes out that if I give the bill of divorce to both women, they simply are not divorced at all. There’s no doubt here. According to Rashi it is a state of doubt; according to the second approach it is not a doubt—they are not divorced at all, because this is a bill of divorce not written for the proper person. Okay?

[Speaker E] Now, this whole issue of the estate is not clear to me at all. The moment the brothers inherit, they simultaneously inherit and step into their father’s shoes. No? So then they’re basically partners.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, your assumption is incorrect. Why not? Because there is another domain called the estate before that. Okay, if you let me explain, maybe I’ll manage. There is a joint domain called the estate, which is legally defined as the owner of all the property, and that allows the sons to divide the property among themselves. Because they want to decide whether field A goes to Reuven and B to Shimon or the opposite. Only once they decide does the inheritance process end. Because if we were to say that from the outset they already inherit from their father, then we get an absurd situation here. Which field did I inherit from my father, A or B?

[Speaker E] They’re partners, they’re just partners in all the fields.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, not partners in anything? The father gave me one field and you another field.

[Speaker E] No, the father left both fields, and together they received the entire inheritance as partners.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. If they received it as partners, then they buy from one another at the time of division. But no—the division clarifies what they inherited. There is another domain called the estate—this is a legal definition, of course. And now it’s like a corporation, and that corporation holds the assets for the children until they decide what goes to whom. That is the accepted halakhic definition. By the way, Rabbi Shabtai does claim that the estate is a partnership. But the accepted approach among the later authorities (Acharonim)—Elchanan Wasserman and others—is that it isn’t. It is a domain unto itself; it isn’t a partnership. It’s like a corporation. It’s a separate third domain, not a partnership of the two together.

In any event, because otherwise—understand—if it really were a partnership, then it would come out that even according to the one who says brothers who divided are buyers, they are really heirs. They inherited as partners, so what? Why call them buyers? They inherited as partners, that’s all. The claim is no, they are not heirs, they are buyers.

[Speaker E] No, but that’s actually clearer, because once they inherited everything, now they can be buyers relative to each other; now somehow they negotiate who gets what.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then it’s unrelated. Then it’s not “brothers who divided”; then it’s just ordinary partners who divided, like any partners. Right. So then is there a question whether they are buyers or not buyers? Obviously they are buyers. What do you mean? They simply bought something from one another. Why can’t they buy? Why should I care that it used to be an inheritance? If you define brothers who divided as a case unto itself, not as a regular partnership division, then your own eyes can see that until now they were not defined as partners. Because if they were defined as partners, then how is this any different from any other division of a partnership? They’re partners, and now they divide. Fine.

[Speaker E] First of all, that operation seems much more logical.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Logical or not logical is one question. The question is what the Torah’s law is.

[Speaker E] The accepted approach among the decisors is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That the Torah’s definition is that there is a legal domain called the estate, and the heirs receive from it. Okay? Until they divide, it is not theirs.

[Speaker E] New to me. Where exactly is this term mentioned in Jewish law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll look it up; I don’t remember right now. But that is the accepted approach.

[Speaker E] Because this is literally the first time I’ve heard this term at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so there’s always a first time. That’s good.

[Speaker E] There are innovations, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. In any event, for our purposes, I just want to sharpen what Rashi is explaining. Rashi is basically claiming something a bit like what David said. What is Rashi basically claiming? According to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification, what is the status until they divided? I would say the land belongs to the estate, not to them at all. Rashi says no, it belongs to them in partnership or in doubt—not exactly partnership, apparently, some kind of “possibly this one, possibly that one,” however we define it, but they are still in the picture. It isn’t some other institution.

[Speaker E] For that alone it was already worth coming to the lecture. What? For that alone it was already worth coming to the lecture, since I have support from Rashi that somehow I didn’t totally miss it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, yes, so that’s apparently how Rashi understands it. Those who say that according to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification there is no ownership at all by the heirs over the land—they understand that as the estate. The practical difference will be in the bill of divorce. Here there isn’t really much practical difference. Maybe… here there isn’t much practical difference. But in the bill of divorce there will be a practical difference, because according to Rashi even according to the view that there is no retroactive clarification, there is still doubtful divorce here. Because perhaps the bill of divorce was in fact written for her, since it’s either for her or for the other one—doubtful. According to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who disagree with Rashi—say the Tur disagrees with Rashi—then according to the Tur there is no doubt of a bill of divorce here at all, nothing. This bill of divorce wasn’t written for either one, and divorcing with this bill of divorce is like… it’s nothing, just empty words. Okay? We’ll see that later too.

Rashi writes… wait. One of the well-known baraitot about retroactive clarification is this baraita: as it was taught, “One who buys wine from among the Cutheans says: the two log that I will in the future separate shall be heave-offering, ten shall be the first tithe, nine shall be the second tithe; and he redeems the second tithe and drinks immediately.” These are the words of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Shimon prohibit it. I’m leaving aside the context for now. There is a tannaitic dispute here. When I take… I take a jug of wine, I buy it from non-Jews. It has not been tithed. Okay? It’s sealed, it’s not libation wine, it’s fine, one can buy it. Okay? But it hasn’t been tithed. Now I’m on the Sabbath. I can’t tithe. Okay? So what do I say? I say: from this jug, which I want to drink from on the Sabbath, and I can’t separate tithes, let’s say I’ll separate the tithes after the Sabbath from whatever remains. And I want to determine that those two log that I separate after the Sabbath will already from now be considered the heave-offering.

[Speaker B] If there is retroactive clarification. If there is retroactive clarification.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it’s a tannaitic dispute, a tannaitic dispute. Rabbi Meir says “he redeems and drinks immediately,” meaning it works; you can redeem it and drink immediately even though—

[Speaker C] Even though he’ll only separate it after the Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says there is retroactive clarification. And Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Shimon prohibit it. They do not regard this as a valid separation of heave-offering.

[Speaker C] They hold there is no retroactive clarification, yes. Just a second—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second. Wait… yes.

[Speaker H] Here—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This Rashi doesn’t appear here, but it appears in many places. It appears in Arakhin and elsewhere. This Talmudic discussion appears in many places; here I don’t see the Rashi. In any case, Rashi writes elsewhere—in Arakhin and in other places—Rashi writes that according to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification, suppose I drink the wine: what prohibition have I violated? Tevel. Rashi says: doubtful heave-offering. Because maybe what you drank was the heave-offering.

[Speaker C] Because maybe—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are two log inside the wine that are the heave-offering.

[Speaker C] And it could be those were the ones you drank.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe those two log, maybe two other log—and what happens after the Sabbath cannot clarify retroactively which two log are the heave-offering. But according to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification… it’s not that there is no heave-offering in the mixture. There is heave-offering in the mixture. It’s just not the two log that will be separated after the Sabbath; rather, there is doubt regarding every pair of log in the mixture that maybe they are the heave-offering. Consequently, when you drank, you violated a doubtful prohibition of heave-offering, not the prohibition of tevel.

By contrast, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who disagree with Rashi say: if there is no retroactive clarification, that means you did not separate any heave-offering at all. It’s not that there is doubt about which two log are the heave-offering. Once there is doubt, there is no heave-offering here at all,

[Speaker C] And then it’s tevel.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and then you violate the prohibition of tevel. According to Rashi you violate a doubtful prohibition of heave-offering; in practice it’s not really a doubt, because those two log are mixed in, so in a sense all of it is heave-offering, but you violate the prohibition of heave-offering and not the prohibition of tevel.

By the way, now I remember: in Atvan De’oraita he brings a dispute between Rashi and Tosafot in tractate Pesachim—I no longer remember who says what—but one of them says that the prohibition of tevel is not some separate prohibition beyond the heave-offering hidden inside the tevel. The prohibition of eating or drinking tevel is because heave-offering is mixed into it. That’s why tevel is prohibited. It isn’t some different prohibition. According to that, there’s not much difference here between the prohibition of tevel and the prohibition of heave-offering. But in the accepted understanding, of course, that’s not so.

Anyway, for our purposes, this is another sharpening of those two possible conceptions of the position that there is no retroactive clarification. Does “no retroactive clarification” mean that the legal effect simply never takes hold at all? Because if there isn’t some defined thing on which the legal effect can take hold—a defined woman, a defined two log, a defined field, and so on—then there is no defined object on which the legal effect can rest, so the legal effect doesn’t take hold at all. According to Rashi, that’s not so. Even if there is no defined object, the legal effect does take hold; I just can’t determine on whom it takes hold. It takes hold on all of them together.

An example of this—I think I mentioned it, though I’m not sure anymore—there’s a Talmudic passage in tractate Kiddushin about betrothal that is not fit for intercourse. Suppose I go to a father who has two daughters, and I give him a perutah, and I say to him: “With this perutah I betroth one of your two daughters.” Fine? One of them—I don’t care which, it doesn’t bother me. The father says: very good, it doesn’t matter to me either. What is the law in such a case? There is a dispute between Abaye and Rava as to whether betrothal not fit for intercourse counts as betrothal or not. Why? Because this is betrothal not fit for intercourse. Why? Because whichever one I would want to have relations with, there is the concern that maybe my wife is actually the other one. Because I didn’t define which of the two is my wife. And if my wife is the other one, then this one is my wife’s sister, who is forbidden to me as a prohibited relative, and I may not have relations with her. And vice versa: if I want to have relations with the second one, maybe the first one is my wife and the second is my wife’s sister, and again I may not have relations with her.

[Speaker E] Therefore this is Abaye’s model.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And therefore this betrothal is doubtful betrothal. Therefore, betrothal not fit… it’s betrothal not fit for intercourse. Okay, according to Abaye it is valid betrothal; according to Rava it is not valid betrothal. And the law follows Abaye, that betrothal not fit for intercourse is valid betrothal.

According to Rava—wait. According to Abaye it is valid betrothal. What does it mean that it is valid betrothal? That one of the two women is betrothed to me, but I don’t know which one, right? And therefore I need to give a bill of divorce to both of them. Okay, on the face of it this is basically a state of doubt. I don’t know whether she is my wife and the other is my wife’s sister, or vice versa.

[Speaker C] So according to Rava, maybe there are two legal effects on both of them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait a second. So according to Rava, since that doubt creates a situation where I can’t have relations with either of them, it is betrothal not fit for intercourse, and there is no betrothal at all, nothing. But that’s only because the betrothal is not fit for intercourse. On the conceptual level, even according to Rava there is a betrothal effect on one undefined one among them; it’s just that because of the implications it gets uprooted again. According to Abaye, even though it is not fit for intercourse, that doesn’t bother us; there is no rule that betrothal not fit for intercourse is not betrothal. Therefore the doubtful situation remains.

Now I ask: if this is a case of doubt, then according to Maimonides, for example, it should be treated as a Torah-level doubt leniently—sorry, leniently. Right? You know the dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) about the law of doubtful cases. We know that a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently and a rabbinic-level doubt leniently, but with a Torah-level doubt treated stringently, according to Maimonides that principle itself is only rabbinic. At the Torah level, even a Torah-level doubt is treated leniently. It is the rabbis who were stringent regarding Torah-level doubt. But according to Torah law, all doubts are lenient. If so, then why is the betrothal not fit for intercourse? You should be able to have relations with either one. She is admittedly doubtfully your wife’s sister, but that’s a Torah-level doubt which at the Torah level is treated leniently; only the rabbis were stringent. So why, according to Maimonides—

[Speaker C] Why? Maybe there are two legal effects on both of them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? What do you mean, two legal effects on both of them? Both the legal effect of being a married woman to him and the legal effect of being his wife’s sister.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Because there’s doubt which one is his wife. So I say fine. But since I have doubt which one is his wife, I also have doubt which one is his wife’s sister. So no problem—it should be permitted for me to have relations with her. There is doubt whether she is my wife, in which case there’s no problem, and doubt whether she is my wife’s sister, in which case there is a problem. A Torah-level doubt is treated leniently. I should be allowed to have relations with her. So why is this called betrothal not fit for intercourse?

The answer—this is a question I’m asking. Rabbi Shimon Shkop reaches this answer from a different direction in Sha’arei Yosher, but his claim is that this is not a case of doubt at all. It is not a case of doubt at all. Both of them are betrothed to me with weak betrothal. Why? What is ordinary doubt? Ordinary doubt is when, say, I sent an agent to betroth a woman for me, he betrothed some woman and died. And the father who accepted the betrothal also died. No one knows which woman is betrothed to me. But there is one such woman. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows who she is. I—and maybe the whole world too—don’t know, but the Holy One, blessed be He, knows. Right? That is called doubtful betrothal. Why? Because there is one woman who is betrothed, I just don’t know who she is, so out of doubt I have to be stringent.

But here, in the case of betrothal not fit for intercourse, there isn’t any one woman who is definitely betrothed and whose identity the Holy One, blessed be He, knows. We never defined who that woman is. It’s not that there is such a woman and I just don’t know which of the two she is. There is no such one woman at all. Reality itself is vague—not my relation to reality. It’s not that I’m missing information about reality. I’m missing no information at all; I know everything that can be known about the reality. What the Holy One, blessed be He, knows, I also know. I’m missing no information. And still, there is no one defined woman here who is betrothed to me.

So that means this is not a state of doubt. In yeshiva language, this is called a case of “definite doubt,” not “doubt about certainty.” Meaning, there is a kind of doubt where perhaps this woman is definitely betrothed to me or perhaps that woman is definitely betrothed to me—and there is another kind of situation which is not doubt at all, but a definitely indeterminate situation. Meaning, it is definitely the case that both this one and that one are betrothed to me. Of course, each one only with weak betrothal. That’s how Rabbi Shimon Shkop explains it. In other words, this is not a state of doubt at all. It is literally quantum superposition. It’s like Schrödinger’s cat, right? Which is both alive and dead.

[Speaker E] Exactly what you understand. Why what? The situation is totally clear.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What isn’t clear? It—

[Speaker E] No, what isn’t clear is: what do these weak betrothals mean? What kind of creature is that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what kind of creature it is, but that is the result of what he did. It’s clear that that’s the result of what he did. How else can you define it? He betrothed one of two women without defining which, and the father also did not define which. So he says: ask the Holy One, blessed be He, which of the two is betrothed—would He have an answer? No. He doesn’t know either. Right? So this is not a situation where one woman is betrothed and I’m just missing the information as to who she is. That’s the ordinary case of doubt. That’s what one could call epistemic doubt. Meaning: a doubt in my knowledge; epistemology. Meaning, it’s a doubt because I don’t know reality, I lack information about reality.

But the doubt here is ontic, not epistemic. It’s a doubt in reality itself. In reality itself there is no woman who is clearly the one betrothed—not just that I don’t know who she is. Rather, in reality itself there is no one woman who is betrothed at all. That is something completely different from a state of doubt. It is not the same thing. In such a case, according to Maimonides, there is no reason at all to go lenient. More than that: in such a case, even if this were rabbinic law, one would still have to be stringent, regardless of Maimonides. Why? Because this is not a state of doubt. Two women are betrothed to me. Both of them are definitely betrothed to me. Let’s say this were rabbinic betrothal, fine? Then two women are definitely betrothed to me. So what if it’s a rabbinic doubt? A rabbinic doubt is treated leniently only when there is one side yes and one side no. But not here. Here both women are definitely betrothed to me rabbinically. The reason I have to be stringent with both of them is not because of doubt; it’s because she is definitely my wife, and the other one too is definitely my wife. Not because of the doubt that maybe she is my wife—she is definitely my wife. And also definitely my wife’s sister, of course.

Okay? Maybe you can see here what I said—I think I talked about this, right? When I spoke about conditions, I talked about there being contradictory legal effects resting on the same… A woman can be both divorced and married at the same time, right? That’s basically what’s happening here. The woman is both my wife and my wife’s sister at the same time. Even though that is self-contradictory. Because it’s quantum superposition. She is my wife, and then the other is my wife’s sister, and at the same time there is also a state where the other is my wife and this one is my wife’s sister. And both of those states are true. The true state is some combination or joining of those two states.

[Speaker G] Is there any issue here regarding how many sisters are involved? Say if there were twenty sisters, would that change the amount of doubts? No. No.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the point. If this were ordinary doubt law, you could say there’s a majority against it: only one is betrothed, nineteen are not betrothed, let’s follow the majority. The majority are permitted to me. But since I’m saying that all of them are definitely betrothed, there is a prohibition here. True, the prohibition has an intensity of five percent, because there are twenty women and I did one act of betrothal for all of them together, with one perutah. Okay? So the betrothal is somehow divided. It’s not that one woman out of the twenty is betrothed; rather, each woman is one-twentieth betrothed to me.

[Speaker E] This mechanism is exactly like the brothers who divided, in my opinion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly.

[Speaker E] Just like the brothers who divided, you also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and that’s why I’m bringing it.

[Speaker E] I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m bringing this example to explain further how Rashi understands this position of no retroactive clarification. According to Rashi, the view of no retroactive clarification means that the legal effect does take hold on one of the two objects. If there is retroactive clarification, then the future will clarify on which of the two it took hold, retroactively. If there is no retroactive clarification, then it will remain vague forever. Okay? But what does “vague” mean? It means exactly that the state remains as I just described in the case of betrothal not fit for intercourse: that every pair of log is basically weak heave-offering.

According to the one who says there is retroactive clarification, then the future event—the two log—after all, I’m going to drink all the log and at the end, after the Sabbath, two log will remain. And those two log I want to designate as the heave-offering. Fine? Now, when I drank in the morning, surely I did not drink the two that would remain after the Sabbath. By definition, what remains is what I didn’t drink, right? So there is no concern that I drank what would remain after the Sabbath. But since at the time I drank, the legal effect of the heave-offering did not rest specifically on those two that would remain at the end—because we hold there is no retroactive clarification—so it is actually spread across all the pairs of log inside the jug. Therefore even what I drank has a weak legal effect of heave-offering on it. That is what Rashi explained. Okay?

[Speaker C] So now—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here we’ve really entered into the actual logic of retroactive clarification, and you’re beginning to see how this connects to our issue of going backward in time and it becoming clarified…

[Speaker C] Wait, with the two brothers, don’t they have parallel legal effects—both as heirs and as buyers?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The two brothers? No, what are you talking about? No. According to Rashi, the two brothers each have the legal status of heirs both for field A and for field B. Not both heirs and buyers. Rather, I am an heir to both field A and field B; each of them is inherited by me in a weak way. And when we divide, you buy my weak share in field A, and I buy your weak share in field B. Okay?

Now, let’s continue the passage for a moment. Rav Hoshaya asked Rabbi Yehuda: if one said to the scribe, “Write it for whichever one will go out first through the doorway,” what is the law? A question. I’m now going—suppose I have two wives, both named Rachel. I go to the scribe and say to him, “Please write me a bill of divorce in the name of Rachel.” Which of the two? “The one who tomorrow morning will be the first to go out through the door.” What is the law? He said to him: you already learned it. Yes, Rabbi Yehuda answers him: you already learned it in the Mishnah. “Even more so, if he said to the scribe, ‘Write it for whichever one I want,’ it is invalid to divorce with it.” Evidently, there is no retroactive clarification. We see in the Mishnah your exact case, and the Mishnah says there is no retroactive clarification and it is invalid to divorce with it, right? So what’s the question? What’s the difference between “whichever one goes out first through the doorway” and that?

[Speaker C] There’s a big difference, a very big difference. One is dependent on, let’s say, a third mechanism—that is, the Holy One, blessed be He, knows who will go out first. Whereas “whichever one I want” depends on his will, which is his free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So there are two ways to interpret this, and both actually come up later in the discussion and in the commentators, in Nachmanides. But I’ll bring it up already here so the overall picture comes out more orderly. One possibility is to say that “whichever one I want to divorce” is basically dependent on human will. Exactly. And since human will involves free choice, the information about whom I will want to divorce tomorrow does not exist today. By contrast, the information about which one of them will first go out through the doorway tomorrow—which is not really an act of choice—could already exist today. I don’t know it, but the Holy One, blessed be He, does know it. So if that’s the case—

[Speaker G] Their choice though—what do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No, because going out the doorway is a mundane event, not some value-laden dilemma. But choosing whom to divorce is a dilemma.

[Speaker G] But it’s still some kind of human choice—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And nobody—

[Speaker G] knows which of them will go out.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the simple level, it isn’t human choice, because—no, I’ll give you an example. This is already going a bit far afield, but never mind, let me give you an example. There were experiments that began in the late 1970s by an American Jewish neurologist named Benjamin Libet. He wanted to check whether people have free choice, but he wanted to test it scientifically. What did he do? He sat a person at a table, and on the table there’s a button. He attached electrodes to the person’s head to measure brain waves. In front of the person there was a clock running fast. He told the person: look at the clock continuously; whenever you decide to press the button, note it to yourself, remember where the clock was at that moment, and press. Okay? That’s what he did.

Now, there was a fact already known before his time—something discovered some twenty years earlier—that before a person decides, there is a readiness potential, an RP. Okay? Some brain-wave spike that tells us: he’s about to press the button. That is measured with EEG. What they did in the experiment was to tell the person: when you decide to press, check when the moment of decision was. When he pressed, we also can see that—we can record where the clock was when he pressed. But when he decided to press, only he knows, right? Because that’s an internal event within him. When he decided to press.

So there are three times here: the time of pressing, the time of deciding, and the time when the readiness potential appears in the brain. Okay? Now clearly the readiness potential appears before the action; that was already known. You don’t perform an action before there is a readiness potential. The question of free choice depends on where the decision appears. Is the decision before the readiness potential—so that the readiness potential is just the expression of the fact that I decided, but the decision is free—or not? Does the readiness potential appear first, then the decision, and then I press the button? If so, that means the decision is a fiction. Because the brain wave really determined the decision. The feeling that I decided is an illusion. Because in fact, the scientist who saw the brain wave a second earlier already knows that I “decided” before I myself know it. In other words, I’m fooling myself into thinking I decided.

Benjamin Libet discovered that the readiness potential appears before the decision. In later experiments they found situations where it appears several full seconds before the decision—not even milliseconds, but five seconds before the decision, a very significant amount of time. It’s amazing. Seemingly, this shows very clearly that we have no free choice.

[Speaker G] A deterministic world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To that I say—I—

[Speaker G] Not exactly. I don’t entirely agree with that last statement, because as a scientific experiment setup, at most you can say you proved that when a person is about to press a button, he has an illusion. You can’t derive from that about other cases that he has no free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that have to do with it?

[Speaker G] You can do the—but in that setup or—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that setup too you have the illusion that you’re choosing, and it turns out to be an illusion. Every scientific law is a generalization from particular cases that we observed. There is no scientific law that isn’t like that.

[Speaker G] But specifically what you described is choosing a very, very specific action. Maybe there he showed the action potential or whatever, but to derive from that about other decisions—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re not putting it sharply enough. I agree with what you’re saying, but not with the way you phrased it. Because the way you phrased it—so what if there was just one case? I also saw gravity in one case here, one case there, and I concluded that all objects with mass fall toward the earth. I made a generalization. And electromagnetism, and all the laws of nature. So what? One always generalizes from particular cases until it turns out one was wrong. As long as it hasn’t turned out that I was wrong, then that is the generalization. Obviously it is no more than a scientific generalization, but as a scientific generalization it is perfectly fine.

The point is completely different. Think, for example, of a person now debating whether to press the button or not. Nothing depends on it. What causes him to decide to press now? After all, there’s no consideration this way and no consideration that way, right? It doesn’t matter if I press now or in another two seconds.

[Speaker G] Someone got bored in the experiment and just presses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So obviously, no, more than that. It’s obvious that the moment he has a readiness potential, he’ll press the button. Why not? He has no reason to resist, no reason to choose otherwise, because there are no considerations this way or that way. This is an act of what in scientific language is called picking and not choosing. I’m just doing something arbitrary; I’m not choosing. In that situation it’s obvious that the readiness potential will determine what I do, because how do I determine that I press exactly now and not later? After all, there’s no consideration in favor of this moment as opposed to other moments. So it’s quite reasonable that the readiness potential, when it arises, is probably what causes me to press. Okay? But if I’m now talking about a dilemma that is a value-based dilemma, say that by pressing this button I may kill a person, whom I very much want to kill, but on the other hand I know that it’s also forbidden, so I’m in a dilemma, okay? And now they tell me, press the button or don’t press it, and with the readiness potential I’ll try to check whether I can predict whether you’ll press or not. If they did such an experiment, it would already be much stronger. Because if you can predict an event that depends on free choice, then that really means we have no free choice. Because here my feeling that I’m choosing is a feeling of a real dilemma between conflicting values or conflicting desires. In that situation, if you show me that you can predict it even before I know that I’ve decided, apparently the decision is an illusion. In the case of pressing the button, I would also tell you that the pressing is an illusion, even without your experiment. Because it’s just— the decision, the decision is an illusion, sorry, because in any case this isn’t really a decision. By the way, I wrote this in the book “The Science of Freedom”; I don’t remember what year it came out, but I think a year or two afterward I argued there that if they did such an experiment, I claim they would not discover that the readiness potential precedes the decision. A year or two afterward such an experiment was indeed done, a very major one with scientists from all over the world. I asked one of the women who was involved there; it turns out they didn’t take it from my book—she didn’t know it. Liat Mudrik, well-known, she worked at Army Radio once, today she’s a doctor of neuroscience at Tel Aviv University. And she has a very interesting lecture online about this matter. They did such an experiment, really with a brilliant idea, because it’s not simple to do such an experiment. And they discovered that there is no prediction; the readiness potential does not predict the decision. It really fell like ripe fruit exactly as I said there. In any case, I’m saying all this so you can see the difference between whether I hang it on the question of whom I’ll want to divorce, and the question of which one will come out through the doorway first. Coming out through the doorway first is picking, not choosing. She decides to go out now, go out later—there isn’t some dilemma here. The dilemma of whom to divorce is a dilemma, it has weight, there are sides this way and that way. So there is definitely room to say that even though going out through the doorway is of course a decision in a certain sense, a human action that a person decided about, but it’s a decision of the type of pressing a button; it’s not a decision of a dilemma. In that situation it is certainly possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, in whose hands all the information and computational power rest, could have known in advance who would come out through the doorway first, and then that means that the information about who will come out through the doorway first already exists today; I just don’t know it. Therefore here there could be retroactive clarification, even though in the law of which one I will want to divorce tomorrow, the Mishnah says there is no retroactive clarification, because there the information is created in the future and not in the present. It is not known in the present. So that’s a difference between an event of choice and an event of picking, between picking and choosing. Okay? That’s one possible distinction. A second possibility, which the Talmud says explicitly, is the possibility of distinguishing between depending on one’s own judgment and depending on the judgment of others. Abaye said—I’m skipping a bit. Where is it

[Speaker D] this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here. Abaye said: They asked him about depending on the judgment of others, and he resolved it for him from a case of depending on one’s own judgment, and then he went back and challenged him from a case of depending on the judgment of others? This whole passage, says Abaye, I can’t understand it. Why? What was Rabbi Oshaya asking above? It says, “whichever one of them I will want, I will divorce”—didn’t he know the Mishnah? He knew the Mishnah too, so didn’t he know that it was already resolved from the Mishnah? The answer is no: he knew the Mishnah and still thought it was not resolved from the Mishnah. Why? Because the Mishnah is speaking in a case where it depends on his own judgment; it says, “whichever one of them I will want to divorce,” right? What he asks about is depending on the judgment of others: “whichever one of them comes out through the doorway first.” That depends on them, not on me. So what? What’s the difference? This is not what I said before, the difference between an act of choice, between picking and choosing; this is a different distinction. Rashi explains: in a case depending on one’s own judgment, it could be that what the Mishnah says—that there is no retroactive clarification—is not because there is no retroactive clarification, not because there really is no retroactive clarification, but because when he makes it depend on his own judgment—after all, what is retroactive clarification? Retroactive clarification means that the future reveals that already now I decided to divorce her. But if I myself make it depend on what I will decide tomorrow, then obviously today I have not yet decided. The proof is that I’m leaving the decision for tomorrow. If I had already been decided today, why didn’t I say whom I had decided on? By contrast, if I say to him, write it for whichever one comes out through the doorway first, then I’ve basically finished my decisions; I have no more hesitations. I’ve decided: I’m making a lottery. Whoever comes out tomorrow through the doorway first will be divorced. I’m not keeping the reins in my own hands; I’ve let go of the reins. There it could be that there is retroactive clarification—that’s what Rabbi Oshaya is asking. Because there my decisions are finished. So what difference does it make that I marked the woman by means of a future event? Bottom line, already now one woman is marked in a univocal way as far as I’m concerned. I have nothing more to say about the matter. So there Rabbi Oshaya says that maybe the law is that there, yes, there will be retroactive clarification. There we will indeed see this as designating a woman, and the bill of divorce will be a valid bill of divorce. This is a different distinction from the one I said before. Notice: one distinction is between an act of choice, between choosing and picking. “Whichever one comes out through the doorway first” is picking; “whichever one I will want” is choosing. But it doesn’t matter whether I want it or someone else wants it. The practical difference would be if I say: write the bill of divorce for whichever one my father decides I will divorce. That’s the practical difference. If the difference is between a voluntary act and a neutral act, picking and choosing—this is a voluntary act; my father is supposed to decide, he too will face the dilemma and decide, a voluntary act. So if that’s the case, here there would be no retroactive clarification, like in the Mishnah. But if the distinction is between depending on one’s own judgment and depending on the judgment of others, then the fact that I hand the decision over to my father means that I’m no longer keeping the reins in my own hands. True, the decision is in the hands of someone who has free choice, but the someone who has free choice is not me, it’s someone else. And therefore I have in fact already let go of the reins, and one can definitely say that I have already decided. So in that situation perhaps there is retroactive clarification. That would be the practical difference between the two explanations.

[Speaker C] The point—the question is whether this isn’t really a matter of firm intent. I really do have firm intent; at this moment there is firm intent, and then the act will occur.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, firm intent about who the woman is, not whether to divorce, but who the woman is. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. Now the Talmud brings that there is a dispute among the Tannaim. Yes, what does he answer him? Rava said—yes, after all we asked the question. Yes, Abaye said: he asked you about depending on the judgment of others and you answer him from the Mishnah, which is depending on one’s own judgment. Rava answers him: What’s the difficulty? Perhaps one who holds that there is retroactive clarification—there is no difference whether it depends on one’s own judgment or on the judgment of others, he holds there is retroactive clarification; and one who holds that there is no retroactive clarification—there is no difference whether it depends on one’s own judgment or on the judgment of others, he holds there is no retroactive clarification. Who says there is a distinction between depending on one’s own judgment and depending on the judgment of others? One who says there is retroactive clarification says so in both cases; one who says there isn’t says so in both cases. Of course, all Rava is saying is an explanation of what Rabbi Yehuda answered, why Rabbi Yehuda answered as he did, but Rabbi Oshaya’s question was clearly based on Abaye’s distinction, right? Because otherwise Rabbi Oshaya would just be against a Mishnah—what, he doesn’t know the Mishnah? It’s just that Rabbi Yehuda resolved it for him from the Mishnah, so Rabbi Yehuda was saying to him: I do not distinguish between depending on one’s own judgment and depending on the judgment of others. What Rabbi Oshaya was asking was whether there really is such a distinction; Rabbi Yehuda said no. That itself is the give-and-take here. Now the Talmud brings proof. Rav Mesharshia said to Rava: But Rabbi Yehuda—in a case depending on one’s own judgment he does not hold of retroactive clarification, while in a case depending on the judgment of others he does hold of retroactive clarification. You’re telling me it always goes together? I’ll show you that in Rabbi Yehuda’s own view, one who depends on the judgment of others does have retroactive clarification, and one who depends on his own judgment does not have retroactive clarification. So don’t say it’s the same thing. Abaye asks an excellent question; it’s a fine distinction he makes. I can prove it to you from within Rabbi Yehuda’s own opinion. We already saw this baraita: one who buys wine from the Cutheans—is that depending on his own judgment or on the judgment of others?

[Speaker C] Depending on his own judgment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Depending on his own judgment. He will decide to separate the two logs that will remain at the end, right? And there Rabbi Yehuda says there is no retroactive clarification. Right—depending on his own judgment, there is no retroactive clarification. Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Shimon prohibit it. See? Rabbi Meir says he may desacralize and drink immediately; Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yosei and Rabbi Shimon prohibit it. And that same Rabbi Yehuda himself says that in a case depending on the judgment of others, there is retroactive clarification. What does that mean? That Rabbi Yehuda holds that in a case depending on the judgment of others there is retroactive clarification, as we learned: What is meant by “during those days”? Someone gave his wife a bill of divorce: “This is your bill of divorce if I die—from now, from today”—yes? If I die, this bill of divorce is effective from now, in order to exempt her from levirate marriage.

[Speaker C] Yes, from today, yes, all right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Yehuda says: she remains a married woman in every respect. This depends on whose judgment? She remains a married woman in every respect, and when he dies it is a bill of divorce. So what do we see?

[Speaker C] That it depends on someone—on the Holy One, blessed be He, on someone who will kill him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, he depends on the judgment of others, and what is the law? There is retroactive clarification; it is a valid bill of divorce.

[Speaker C] Right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So we see in Rabbi Yehuda’s own view that if it depends on one’s own judgment, there is no retroactive clarification—that’s the wine case—and if it depends on the judgment of others, in this case of death, there is retroactive clarification. By the way, notice that in both cases we are not dealing with events of human choice; here that’s really not relevant. The distinction between choice and non-choice is not relevant here; this is simply depending on the judgment of others versus depending on one’s own judgment, but not in the question of choice or non-choice. So from here the Talmud proves that there is a difference. Rav Mesharshia said to him—and then he continues and says—Rav Mesharshia said to Rava: I can prove the same thing to you also in Rabbi Shimon’s opinion, not only in Rabbi Yehuda’s opinion: that one who depends on his own judgment has no retroactive clarification, and one who depends on the judgment of others does have retroactive clarification. One who depends on his own judgment has no retroactive clarification—that’s what we said. Rabbi Shimon, after all, holds like Rabbi Yehuda in the case of one who buys wine from the Cutheans, because there were three Tannaim there—Rabbi Yosei, Rabbi Yehuda, and Rabbi Shimon—so it’s like Rabbi Yehuda. And where do we find that he said that one who depends on the judgment of others has retroactive clarification? As it was taught: “I am having relations with you on condition that Father will approve.” Even though the father did not approve, she is betrothed. Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda says in the name of Rabbi Shimon: If the father approved, she is betrothed; if he did not approve, she is not betrothed. What does that mean? There is retroactive clarification, right? Whatever the father wants is what determines it. So we see that one who depends on the judgment of others has retroactive clarification, while in the case of buying wine from the Cutheans there is no retroactive clarification. Then the Talmud rejects this—never mind that for the moment—but up to here, as far as what concerns us. In the end we see that there are Tannaim who distinguish regarding whether there is or is not retroactive clarification. There are Amoraim—in the Talmud’s answer you can simply see this, I’m not going into it now—who say there is no such distinction, and that is apparently what Rava answered Rabbi Hoshaya. But Rabbi Hoshaya says there is such a distinction, and Abaye also says there is such a distinction, and Rav Mesharshia as well. Rabbi Yashiya says there is such a distinction, and Abaye also says there is such a distinction, and Rav Mesharshia says there is such a distinction. All right? So for our purposes we have learned the following: there is a dispute whether there is or is not retroactive clarification—that’s point number one. Point number two: according to the one who says there is no retroactive clarification, there is a dispute between Rashi and the Tur, or other medieval authorities (Rishonim), on the question whether this is a state of doubt, or whether there is no legal effect at all according to the view that there is no retroactive clarification. Besides that, we saw two more distinctions, and each of them appears in different views. One distinction is between depending on one’s own judgment and depending on the judgment of others, unrelated to choice: if it depends on one’s own judgment, there is no retroactive clarification, because it cannot be clarified retroactively that I decided, since in fact I didn’t decide—I’m leaving the decision for tomorrow. If it depends on the judgment of others, there perhaps there will be retroactive clarification. A second distinction we made—and we didn’t see it explicitly, I only mentioned the possibility; maybe we’ll see it in Nachmanides next time—is that there is a difference between an act of choice and an act of picking, between picking and choosing. If it is choosing, then there is no retroactive clarification, because right now the information does not exist; choice creates the information only at the moment it is made. If it is picking, then one can calculate it in advance; I know what he will do. One last point I want you to notice is that the two examples of depending on the judgment of others are examples that look like a condition, not like retroactive clarification. Someone gives a woman a bill of divorce: “This is your bill of divorce if I die,” or “on condition that I die,” okay? So it is a conditional divorce, not retroactive clarification. Why is this retroactive clarification? Or really this raises the question: what exactly is the difference between retroactive clarification and a condition? Likewise, “I am having relations with you on condition that Father approves”—“on condition” is really the language of a condition, right? So what does that have to do with the topic of retroactive clarification? It’s the topic of conditions. Does anyone dispute whether a condition is effective or not effective? There is a dispute whether there is or is not retroactive clarification, but regarding conditions we found no dispute at all. A condition is certainly a valid mechanism in Jewish law. So what really is the difference between retroactive clarification and a condition? And if there is a difference, then why are these cases associated with retroactive clarification and not with a condition? These are cases of a condition. That’s a point we’ll talk about next time. More power to you. Okay, that’s the situation. Wait, hold on one second, just attendance. All right. More power to you.

[Speaker D] Goodbye. More power to you, thank you very much. More power to you, thank you very much. So basically the claim, the claim in Rav Huna’s position—we’ve only spoken about Rav Huna so far—who says that each one comes on her own and testifies. Basically what Rav Huna is claiming is that this is not doubt

[Speaker B] in the ordinary sense of who is right, but rather there are two interpretations here of the entire situation. Because they contradict one another, there are two inter— Abraham our forefather is the pillar of the world. In our portion, Parashat Lech Lecha, we encounter the beginning of the great journey of the Jewish people. The midrash in Bereishit Rabbah says: Rabbi Yitzhak said, this may be compared to a man who was traveling from place to place and saw a building lit up. He said, “Can it be that this building has no one in charge?” The owner of the building looked out at him and said, “I am the owner of the building.” So too, because Abraham our forefather said, “Can it be that this world has no one in charge?” the Holy One, blessed be He, looked out at him and said, “I am the Master of the world.” Abraham’s central point is the search. Abraham does not wait for others to come to him; he seeks the truth. He looks at creation and understands that there is a Creator. But that is not enough. The Holy One, blessed be He, says to him, “Go forth”—leave your comfortable place, your habits, and begin to walk toward the destination that God sets before you. Abraham is a man of kindness: “The world is built on kindness.” He teaches us that the path to God passes through kindness to people, through hospitality, through concern for others. “And the souls they made in Haran”—Abraham would convert the men and Sarah would convert the women, bringing them close under the wings of the Divine Presence. That is the essence of a Jew: to be a blessing to the whole world. Abraham our forefather teaches us that faith is not only a feeling in the heart, but an entire way of life of action and of repairing the world. He was the first who called in the name of God in a world filled with idolatry, and he did so out of great love. Our Sages say that Abraham recognized his Creator on his own, through deep contemplation of nature and the human soul. May it be God’s will that we merit to walk in the ways of Abraham our forefather, to increase kindness in the world and to shine the light of faith in every place we go. We are standing at the opening of the book of Exodus, the first portion, Parashat Shemot. This book is called by our Sages the Book of Names, after the opening verse, “And these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt.” But we need to understand: the name of the book is not merely a technical matter of its first words. A name in the holy tongue expresses essence. When we ask, “What is its name?” we are really asking, “What is the essence of the thing?” As it is written, “And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name”—the first man gave names to the animals according to their essence. Nachmanides, in his introduction to the book of Exodus, writes a great foundational principle. He defines this book as the book of exile and redemption. And Nachmanides asks a major question: apparently, redemption ended when they left Egypt, or at the very latest at the splitting of the sea and the giving of the Torah. Why does the book continue to deal so extensively with building the Tabernacle, until the end of the book? Nachmanides answers with a wonderful foundation: redemption is not complete merely in the very act of leaving physical bondage. Redemption is considered redemption only when the Jewish people return to the level of their forefathers. The level of the forefathers was that the Divine Presence dwelled in their tents permanently. Therefore, only when the Tabernacle was established and the Divine Presence returned to dwell within the Jewish people, as it had in the tents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—only then were they truly considered redeemed. This is the depth of the book’s name, the Book of Names: the return to the original essence of the Jewish people as the children of the forefathers, a people within whom the Divine Presence dwells. May we merit, with God’s help, to see the indwelling of the Divine Presence and the complete redemption speedily in our days, amen.