Mysticism – Lesson 5

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

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

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[0:03] What is mysticism? Definition and essence
[1:18] The difference between mystical explanation and science
[2:34] Breaking the parallelism – cases of miracle
[4:50] Contradictions in Jewish law: hidden versus revealed
[6:26] Why does the revealed usually prevail?
[8:31] The priority of hidden considerations?
[15:01] Mysticism as esoteric – the mystic’s point of view
[16:47] Prophecy as a mystical source and how it is tested
[18:53] Migu – proof about a person, not about a fact
[20:17] Differences between migu and presumption
[27:11] The story of Rabbi Eliezer and his proofs
[31:53] The halakhic struggle and the need for persuasion
[33:55] Talmudic text Eruvin and matters concerning Rabbi Meir
[35:04] Moshe Koveh and scientific intuition
[37:02] They did not rule like him – the meaning of agreement
[38:56] The Maharal in Netiv HaTorah and the critique
[42:42] The story of Rabbi Shlomo Kluger and the discovered book
[46:22] The famous quote of the Maharal about the “destroyers of the world”
[49:55] A Jewish law passage without understanding – “destroyers of the world”
[53:54] The controversy around codification and the Shulchan Arukh
[59:07] Defining mysticism and the connection to halakhic questions

Summary

General overview

The text defines mysticism as esoteric claims that are inaccessible to the public, and therefore are examined mainly through trust in the person making the claim rather than through checking the content itself. It distinguishes between a hidden plane and a revealed plane as forms of explanation that are sometimes coordinated, but in certain places break apart and generate contradictory halakhic conclusions. It presents an accepted rule of halakhic ruling according to which, when the hidden contradicts the revealed, one rules against the hidden, but explains that this does not stem from any real inferiority of the hidden. Rather, Jewish law is supposed to be determined only on the basis of public, accessible reasons. It develops a broad principle that in Jewish law a decision must be made on the basis of evidence and reasons about the matter itself, not evidence about the person, even if that person is great or even if there are heavenly signs supporting him. It concludes that the mystics themselves can rule according to the hidden, because for them it is not esoteric but accessible, whereas the public, who are not versed in it, must rule according to the revealed.

Defining mysticism as esotericism

Mysticism is defined as a certain kind of claim that is not accessible to the general public, and so it is almost synonymous with esotericism. A person who relies on such claims depends on trust in the one making them, or on indirect considerations, because he cannot examine the claims on their own terms. The definition does not depend on whether mysticism is true or false. It simply classifies a category of claims, and the question of their truth can be discussed separately and later.

The hidden and the revealed as parallel explanations, and the logical limit of parallelism

The text presents mystical-kabbalistic and Torah explanations alongside scientific-rational explanations as two ways of relating to the same phenomena and laws, similar to multiple planes of explanation such as Pardes. It argues that the logic of “two full and parallel explanations” is not really possible, because an explanation is supposed to be a sufficient condition, and there cannot be two independent conditions each of which is sufficient. It concludes that full parallelism between explanations really means translating from one language to another, not two genuinely different explanations.

Breaking the parallelism: miracle, scriptural decree, and “topological defects”

The text argues that in certain places the parallelism between the hidden and the revealed breaks down, and the mystical approach leads to different results from the revealed approach. It describes this as a kind of “topological defect,” similar to the relation between Cartesian and polar coordinates, and claims that such a correspondence can be global but not local. As examples it brings miracle, as a break between scientific explanation of events in the world and a theological explanation in which nature is “frozen,” and scriptural decree, as a law that has no revealed explanation but presumes some hidden logic behind it. It concludes that when the hidden and the revealed yield different results, they are not translations of the same thing but two separate explanations.

Contradictions in Jewish law and the rule for deciding between hidden and revealed

The text gives examples of halakhic contradictions between hidden considerations and revealed considerations, such as the laws of tefillin and the direction of the bed. It cites a common position among halakhic decisors, attributing it to the Beit Yosef, Magen Avraham, and others, according to which when there is a contradiction one rules like the revealed and not like the hidden; and when the revealed says nothing and the hidden says something, one follows the hidden, but “does not compel it.” It states that the hidden has a lower halakhic status than the revealed in cases of conflict, and emphasizes that the decisors do not say that the hidden is “incorrect,” only that one does not follow it in Jewish law when it contradicts the revealed. It raises two questions: what is the meaning of preferring the revealed if the hidden is not mistaken, and why mystics themselves sometimes act the opposite way and hold that the hidden prevails.

The distinction between the public’s relation to the hidden and the mystic’s relation to it

The text argues that the basic difference lies in the fact that mysticism is defined as esotericism relative to someone to whom it is inaccessible. Therefore, the relation of an “ordinary person” to mysticism differs from that of a mystic or kabbalist. An ordinary person encounters hidden claims as inaccessible claims, and so for him acceptance can only be based on trust, whereas for the kabbalist the hidden considerations are accessible and he can “do the logical calculation” within his conceptual world. The text illustrates this with a prophet, whose claims are clearly esoteric from the hearer’s point of view, and therefore tests of a true prophet deal with checking the person and not the content of the prophecy. It formulates this as a distinction between checking “the person and not the object.”

Migu as proof about the person rather than the matter itself

The text uses the laws of evidence and presents migu as an exceptional case in which the evidence is directed toward the person rather than the content of the claim. It explains that migu does not prove that the claim is true, but rather that the claimant is not lying, because if he had wanted to lie he could have chosen a better claim. Therefore migu is ineffective when the suspicion is not lying but mistaken imagination. It argues that ordinary evidence in Jewish law concerns the matter itself, whereas evidence about the person does not receive the same weight, and suggests that this explains why “we do not say migu in order to extract,” while presumption can in fact extract. In this way it places a broader principle: halakhic determination is based on reasons and an objective foundation, not on an impression of who is speaking.

The oven of Akhnai, “It is not in heaven,” and excluding non-substantive evidence

The text interprets the story of the oven of Akhnai in Bava Metzia 59b as a confrontation in which Rabbi Eliezer tries to force acceptance of his ruling through signs—the carob tree, the stream, the walls of the study hall, and the heavenly voice—which are evidence about the person rather than the issue itself. It argues that Rabbi Yehoshua’s reply, “It is not in heaven,” formulates a rule according to which Jewish law is determined by principles the public can deliberate about, not by personal authority, righteousness, or even heavenly decision. It emphasizes that the problem is not that the signs are “unreliable,” but that they are “irrelevant” to halakhic decision-making, because Jewish law requires persuasion through reasons, not acceptance because of who said it. It describes the ruling as a preference for public persuasion over truth grounded in authority or revelation.

Rabbi Meir in Eruvin 13 and the demand for substantive understanding

The text cites Eruvin 13b, where it is said that it was revealed and known that there was no one in Rabbi Meir’s generation like him, and yet the law was not established in accordance with him because his colleagues could not grasp the depth of his reasoning. It interprets this as a case where, even if it is clear that the sage is greater and more correct, one does not rule based on the person but on the ability to persuade through accessible reasoning. It argues that Jewish law is not determined by who is “probably right,” but by what can be reasoned and clarified in the public domain; therefore, where there is no understanding of the issue itself, there is no binding halakhic determination.

The Maharal: ruling from legal summaries as sorcery, and the value of ruling from intellect

The text quotes at length from the Maharal in Netiv HaTorah chapter 15 and emphasizes his comparison between ruling without reasons and a magician, a sorcerer who speaks without understanding. It cites the Maharal’s distinction that Torah is fitting to be practiced through intellect, and that ruling from the Mishnah or abbreviated law digests without clarifying the reason is an act of “strangeness without intellect” considered like sorcery. It stresses that the Maharal disagrees with Rashi, who explains the problem as a concern about mistake, and instead holds that the flaw lies in the very method of decision-making that does not emerge from the Talmud and reasoning. It concludes with the Maharal’s position that it is preferable to rule from the Talmud even if there is a risk of error, because “a judge has only what his eyes can see,” and that one who rules from a compilation without reasons “walks like a blind man on the road.”

The controversy over codification, “do not deviate,” and the limits of halakhic stability

The text places the dispute around the Shulchan Arukh and Maimonides within the “controversy over codification” and argues that the disagreement is not about the greatness of the authors but about the very assumption that one may rule simply because “he said so.” It describes criticism of determining Jewish law by a “majority among the three pillars of instruction” and argues that the decisor is supposed to enter into the sugya and reach a conclusion through reasons. It exempts the authority of a great court by virtue of “do not deviate,” and argues that only there is there a mandate for binding coercion, whereas rules of decision not grounded in such authority do not override substantive persuasion. It presents the value of halakhic stability as a claim that is not sufficient in itself, and suggests that a Sanhedrin is fit to decide only in places where one public decision is required for practical functioning, while preferring room for error born of understanding where that is possible.

Deciding between revealed and hidden as dependent on accessibility and publicity

The text ties the whole discussion together with the claim that “one does not derive halakhic rulings from esoteric sources,” not because they are false but because Jewish law is determined by what is accessible to criticism and public persuasion. It argues that when the hidden contradicts the revealed, one does not follow the hidden because it is esoteric for the public and therefore resembles mysticism in the definitional sense, not because its involvement with sefirot and configurations makes it less true. It presents “It is not in heaven” as a principled declaration against determining Jewish law on the basis of mysticism understood as inaccessible knowledge, and parallels this to the idea of “falsifiability” in the sense that something can in principle be clarified and criticized. It resolves the two questions raised earlier: the revealed prevails in public halakhic ruling because it is public, and mystics sometimes rule according to the hidden because for them the hidden is not esoteric but an accessible domain in which they exercise judgment. Therefore an ordinary person must rule against the hidden when it contradicts the revealed, because for him the hidden remains mysticism.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, a summary of the previous chapters. I began by defining what mysticism is, and the conclusion was that mysticism is a certain kind of claim that is not accessible to the general public. It’s basically almost a synonym for esotericism. If I need such claims, then I have to rely on trust in the one making them, or on other considerations, but I can’t examine the claims themselves. And so, in that sense, that’s the most accurate definition I can find, at least, for mysticism. And I said several times that this has nothing to do with the question of whether I think such a thing exists—that is, whether mysticism is true or false. First of all, I’m saying this is the definition of the category. Whether it’s true or false—that has to be discussed, and I’ll say a bit about that later too. That was the first part of our discussion. After that I moved on to try to understand the difference between mystical explanations—kabbalistic, if you like, Torah explanations—and scientific, simplistic, rational explanations, in whatever context you want to fill in. And I said that these are basically two parallel ways of relating to the same things, the same phenomena, the same laws. You can explain them on several planes of explanation in parallel, like Pardes in relation to Torah, and so on. I tried to get a bit into the question of this parallelism—what exactly is this parallelism, can it even exist, parallel explanations? I said that in the end it seems that parallel explanations can’t really exist, because every explanation has to be a sufficient condition, and it cannot be that there are two independent conditions each of which is sufficient. Logically that can’t be. And therefore the required conclusion is that explanations that really are full and parallel explanations are simply translations of one another from one language into another. They’re not really two explanations. But—and this is where I got to last time—I said that we see places where this parallelism breaks down. In other words, there are places where the mystical explanation or the mystical perspective leads to conclusions or results different from the revealed explanation. I said that this is basically like topological defects, yes, like the correspondence between Cartesian and polar coordinates, this logic of how there can be a complete correspondence except for a few isolated defects. And I said that in the case of global correspondence this can happen; in the case of local correspondence it can’t. The examples I gave for this were miracle, which is basically a break between a theological explanation of events in the world and a scientific explanation of what happens in the world—places where science is frozen and theology takes over and takes the reins into its own hands, that’s basically what’s called a miracle. Or in the context of interpreting the Torah, that’s a scriptural decree. A scriptural decree is a law for which we have no revealed explanation, but if that law exists then apparently behind it there is some other hidden logic, yes, not a revealed one. And again, that’s basically like a miracle, it’s some kind of fracture or flaw in this correspondence between the parallel planes, the parallel planes of reference. And I said that once there are different results from a hidden explanation and a revealed explanation, that means they are not translations into different languages of the same thing. I brought several examples of contradictions, say in Jewish law, between considerations of the hidden and considerations of the revealed.

[Speaker B] We talked about the laws of tefillin, the direction of the bed, and so on. Yes. Are you continuing the lecture? Can you hear? Yes, Avraham.

[Speaker C] Put Zoom on, put Zoom on. Put it on, mute, mute.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, the claim is that we’re not dealing here with translation from one language to another, but really with two explanations. Ah, two parallel explanations can’t exist, right, that really can’t happen, sometimes it breaks; the correspondence isn’t complete. And in the cases where it breaks, we saw indications of this in several areas of Jewish law: there is a contradiction between the law as it emerges from hidden considerations and the law as it emerges from revealed considerations. And what is accepted among the halakhic decisors—I brought this from the Beit Yosef, Magen Avraham, and others—is that in such cases one rules according to the revealed, not according to the hidden. In a place where the revealed said nothing and the hidden said something, then one follows the hidden, though one does not compel that. As we heard, Eruvin Matzav and other sources on the matter, but in a place where it contradicts the revealed, then there is no law like that at all. In other words, the hidden has a lower halakhic status than the revealed, let’s put it that way. So what exactly does that mean? Why really does it have a lower status—is it because it’s incorrect? The accepted assumption is—and it’s clear that those who discuss this are not saying the hidden is incorrect—that there is some principle that says Jewish law is supposed to follow the principles of the revealed and not the principles of the hidden. Usually there is a correspondence, as I said earlier, these are parallel planes, and then there’s no problem. I mentioned that the Ari used to follow the rulings of Maimonides, and Maimonides dealt with revealed considerations while the Ari operated in the world of the hidden, but he relied on there being a correspondence between the halakhic results on these two planes. But in places where the whole thing breaks, where there is a contradiction between the hidden and the revealed, that means this correspondence breaks. This correspondence is not complete, and therefore that means it is global and not local, and that basically means that each of these explanations stands on its own, but both are true. But when there is a clash, the revealed prevails, which is interesting, because I would have expected that if there were a clash between these two things, the hidden would actually prevail. As we saw with scriptural decree: when there is a scriptural decree, there is no revealed explanation, but there are hidden considerations that lead to that law, and we rule that law in practice. Now true, there it is a law that appears explicitly in the Torah, or it doesn’t matter, is derived from things that appear in the Torah, so there it’s not connected to the Magen Avraham and the Beit Yosef that I cited earlier, because the Torah itself said one must act that way. But still, what do we learn from that? We learn that in a place where there are hidden considerations pointing in a certain direction, even though they do not fit the revealed considerations, nevertheless seemingly the hidden determines things. Or as in the context of miracles that we saw, that the Holy One, blessed be He, decides to split the Sea of Reeds even though the forces of nature aren’t doing the job. But if it has to be done for theological reasons, then He will freeze nature and do it Himself, intervene in the natural order. That means the hidden, theological, whatever you want to call them, considerations are apparently of higher status—they are the real thing. The revealed thing is sort of external, it corresponds to what exists in the hidden, but really the hidden is apparently the real thing. Again, I’m not expressing a position right now; I’m trying to discuss the approaches we’ve seen. All those decisors do not say that the hidden is incorrect or less correct. They are not claiming that the hidden is mistaken when it contradicts the revealed. They say one should not follow it in Jewish law. This is a rule in halakhic decision-making: the halakhic ruling is supposed to go with the revealed and not with the hidden, not because the hidden is incorrect. What is the meaning of this? That’s one question. A second question is—I already noted this, and someone else sent me by email something from Chabad, or on WhatsApp from Chabad, all kinds of interesting references on this issue—that the kabbalists do in fact follow the hidden. When there is a contradiction between the law that emerges from the revealed and the law that emerges from the hidden, I brought from the Beit Yosef, Magen Avraham, and so on, that the revealed determines things. But from the point of view of the kabbalists, the hidden determines things. In other words, it depends whom you ask. Decisors of the revealed say that the revealed determines things, but kabbalists say that the hidden determines things. So? What is the meaning of that? So then what?

[Speaker D] Is there an example with a prohibition, for instance?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I can’t hear.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, is there an example, for instance, involving a prohibition, where the hidden would say it’s permitted and the revealed would say not, and the kabbalists too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, what do you mean a prohibition? There is an issur, with prohibitions, there are prohibitions. You don’t put on tefillin on Hol HaMoed.

[Speaker D] Yes, but that’s not violating a prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. Is neglecting a positive commandment not a transgression? You’re doing tefillin—what difference does it make?

[Speaker D] There’s the idea of passive omission, what the Sages say, passive omission.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be there’s that too, but I don’t have an example—what difference does it make? You’re allowing yourself to neglect a positive commandment.

[Speaker D] Yes, but passive omission—we find that in places.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and it’s still a transgression. By what authority are you transgressing here? You see that the hidden apparently has status. Yes, in a place where people follow the hidden, that is also at the expense of the laws of the revealed. You can be a transgressor from the point of view of the revealed perspective. So no, no, I don’t have an example right now of a negative commandment; I don’t know, maybe there is one, I’m just not thinking of one right now. But there are examples of prohibitions—the direction of the bed. Again, these are questions of how to orient the bed, so in the hidden there’s north-south and east-west. So someone who sets it according to the hidden is doing something problematic according to the revealed, and vice versa. There’s no such thing here as playing it safe. Sending away the mother bird is a bit different, because I don’t think the revealed camp—someone wrote in the chat about sending away the mother bird—I don’t think the revealed camp says there is a prohibition against sending away the mother if you don’t want the chicks or the eggs. They simply say there is no obligation. Someone might come and say maybe there’s an issue of animal suffering, okay, maybe, but directly speaking there isn’t really a full prohibition here. What does the Rashba have to do with it? Which Rashba are we talking about? You can speak—press the space bar and then you can talk. The prohibition—what prohibition could there be there? Maybe animal suffering, nothing more than that. Okay, never mind. In any case, there are situations where, when one follows the hidden, then in effect you are a transgressor from the point of view of the revealed. And indeed the Beit Yosef and the Magen Avraham say there’s no such thing. What do you mean the hidden overrides the revealed? The revealed determines things.

[Speaker E] The Beit Yosef was a first-rate kabbalist, and he inserted lots of kabbalistic things into the Shulchan Arukh.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A kabbalist he absolutely was not. But yes, he did bring laws from kabbalistic sources into the Shulchan Arukh. But he himself writes that this is only where there is no contradiction with the revealed.

[Speaker E] Fine, but then—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And he also writes that one does not compel this. That is the law, but one does not compel it. Someone who does not want to do it is not a transgressor. In other words, you can’t force him, unlike ordinary laws where one does compel the person. The Beit Yosef was not, was not a kabbalist. There’s that Maggid Meisharim, which is a strange and puzzling work and I don’t know what to do with it, but he was not a kabbalist.

[Speaker E] No, but that maggid is really a fiction. What? Clearly it’s something esoteric.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not clearly. I said there is Maggid Meisharim; I don’t know what to do with it. But the Beit Yosef was not a kabbalist. There’s even the well-known story that when the Ari gave a lesson in Safed, he saw that the Beit Yosef—the Mechaber—was dozing. So the guys there in the lesson wanted to wake up the Mechaber, and the Ari told them, leave him, leave him alone, the root of his soul isn’t here. Meaning these lessons weren’t for him; that’s not his domain. Fine, legends, I don’t know, but he was not a kabbalist. Anyway, even someone who is not a kabbalist—many decisors bring laws from the Zohar or from kabbalistic sources and rule them into Jewish law even without being kabbalists, because these sources are seen as authoritative sources. The claim of the Beit Yosef is not that these are not sources one should take into account, but that when the hidden contradicts the revealed sources, then it is nullified; the revealed prevails. But if not, then yes, that is the law—again, just without coercion—but that is the law. Okay, in any case, these are really the two questions: why does the revealed prevail, and why do the kabbalists not accept that? So are they violating Jewish law, or are we basically just playing games? If we ask someone from the revealed camp, he’ll say the revealed prevails. Ask the kabbalist, and the kabbalist will say Kabbalah prevails. So what exactly am I supposed to do now? I, as someone who is neither this nor that—just an ordinary citizen who wants to know what to do. So it just depends whom I ask, and that’s it? What’s going on here? I want to argue that there is something essential here. And that essential thing follows from everything I said up to now in the previous lessons, from what I’ve summarized so far, and that’s what I want to show now. The claim is basically that with regard to mysticism—as I said earlier by definition, mysticism is basically something esoteric. Esoteric means something subjective; the person knows it from within himself, and other people can at most trust the source of the statement, the person who is the source of the claim, but they have no access to the things themselves. That’s how I defined the concept of mysticism. That means there is a difference between the way an ordinary person relates to mysticism and the way the mystic relates to mysticism. Why? Because when an ordinary person encounters mysticism, then from his point of view it is not something accessible to him, so it is mysticism. From the kabbalist’s point of view it is accessible to him. In other words, he knows the considerations, he can do the logical calculation and arrive at that conclusion—of course, all within a mystical sphere, a mystical conceptual world—but for him that is the conceptual world accessible to him. And therefore with respect to him you cannot say that it is esoteric, that it is inaccessible. I also said that he himself understands that it is esoteric from the point of view of other people, if he is not detached from the world. But with respect to himself, you cannot say these are esoteric statements. From his point of view he can examine it, he can see whether it is true or not true, check the considerations. In that sense there is some difference between the mystic himself and the people around him. And that is a very important point. I’ll get to it in a moment. It actually explains the questions I spoke about earlier. But before I get to that, say for example when a prophet comes and tells me something, prophesies to me, that is almost the clearest possible definition of mystical claims, right? These are claims that the prophet tells me based on some esoteric knowledge he has. He received it from the Holy One, blessed be He, saw it in a prophetic vision, it doesn’t matter right now, but it’s on his own subjective plane. He has some way of getting to this information, or of the information reaching him. But I, who hear the prophecy from him—for me that is mysticism. I cannot check whether it is right or wrong; it is not accessible to me. I need to assess it based on the trust I have in the speaker, in the person telling me these things. And here indeed come in all the tests they apply to a prophet, right? There are tests for a true prophet—whether his prophecies come true and all kinds of things like that. Maimonides describes it; there’s a bit about it in the Talmud. In other words, the purpose of these tests is basically to determine whether the person standing in front of me is reliable. These are not tests that examine the content of his prophecy. That’s not accessible to me; I can’t test it. I have to accept it because I trust the prophet conveying the prophecy to me. But my trust in the prophet can itself be tested. It will be tested not through the question of whether I believe his prophecy, because I have no way of knowing that, but through the person and not the object. I check the person and not the content of the matter. I’ll maybe give examples or illustrations of these tests. For example, in the laws of evidence in Jewish law, one of the proofs is what is called migu. What is migu? A person comes and says—for example, I sue someone for money that I lent him, and he says, I repaid you, I returned the money. He has no witnesses for this. If he had witnesses, then of course he would be believed and exempt. He has no witnesses. But I bring out a promissory note against him. However, he has a migu, because he could have said that the note is forged. And rabbinically, documents need validation; until the document is validated, you can’t collect with it. If he had claimed that the note was forged, he would have won the case. Instead he claimed it was repaid. The note is valid, not forged, but I repaid it. In principle he should not be believed. Why should he not be believed? Because there is a note against him. “If your note is in my hand, what is it doing there?” If you repaid, you should have taken the note back from me. What is the note doing by me? Okay? So in principle one cannot claim repayment against a promissory note. But because he could have said the note was forged, he has a migu. What is this migu? If I had wanted to lie, I would not have chosen the lie of “I repaid.” I would have lied and said—rather, apparently what I’m saying here is not a lie, but the truth. Yes, that’s the familiar idea of migu. Migu is different from all the other kinds of evidence we know. Why? Normal evidence that we know—for example, if a person says, I repaid within the term, then there is a presumption against him: there is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. That’s in Bava Batra. That presumption basically says that the content of what he says is not plausible. There is evidence against what he says. If he brings witnesses that he repaid, then the witnesses are evidence that what he says is correct. What happens if he brings witnesses—

[Speaker C] You got cut off earlier.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Can you hear me?

[Speaker F] Now yes. You got cut off before—go back to what you said about migu.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My internet froze, I apologize. So what I said about migu is that migu is evidence about the person, not evidence about the matter itself. I said that most evidence in Jewish law, in the laws of evidence, is evidence about the matter itself. For example, if a person says that he repaid—I’m suing someone for money, say he borrowed from me a week ago for a month, a one-month loan. I come after a week and want the money. In principle I’m not entitled to it; I have to wait. But I came after a week. Now instead of saying, wait, he says to me, what do you want, I already returned it. Returned what? You returned it even before the due date, because the loan was for a month. So the Talmud says: you are not believed, because there is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. Okay? Now that presumption shows that what you are saying—that you repaid—is not true. That presumption deals with the content of what you are saying. It shows that it’s not true. Now if you bring, for example, witnesses that you repaid within the term, you will be believed. What do those witnesses say? That what you are claiming is in fact true. That is evidence about the matter itself, just as the presumption was evidence against the matter itself. What would happen if two witnesses came and said, listen, this person never lies. They would not say, we know that he repaid within the term. They did not see him repay. They say, we know him, he never lies, he is a man who speaks truth in his heart. He does not lie; no falsehood leaves his mouth. Would that be admissible? I think not. I’m not aware of such evidence, by the way, but I think not. Why? Because that is evidence about the person and not about the matter itself. In Jewish law, evidence is evidence about the matter itself. Now there is an exception to this, and that is migu. Migu is evidence about the person. Migu does not prove that what you are saying is true. Migu proves that you are not lying. Because if you had been lying, you would have told a better lie. But that does not prove that you actually repaid. It proves that if you say you repaid, you probably are not lying. Let me give you an example. Suppose I think that the person imagines that he repaid, not that he is lying. He has delusions—what is called in Jewish law “mistaken impression.” He imagines it. Migu would not help here, right? Because what does migu say? If I had wanted to lie, I would have told a better lie. I don’t suspect you of lying. I suspect you that it merely seems to you that you repaid, but in truth you did not repay. Migu won’t help for that, right? Why? Because migu does not prove that you repaid. Migu proves that you are not lying. Migu is proof about the person, not about the issue itself. Therefore, in a place where my problem is not with the person but only with the issue itself, migu won’t help.

[Speaker E] Here, if two witnesses testify that no false word ever came out of his mouth, isn’t that good enough to say, regarding the person, that he doesn’t lie?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, at most maybe it would have a status like migu. I don’t think it would have the status of witnesses.

[Speaker E] Obviously not, because they’re not testifying about an act.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying, maybe it would perhaps have the status of migu. Maybe. I don’t know, I’m not familiar with it; I don’t have proofs for it at the moment.

[Speaker D] It’s not just that we haven’t seen such evidence—it’s that what, can they stand over him twenty-four hours a day all the time and say he never lied? How can they say such a thing? What kind of testimony is that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? We know him, we saw that he suffered terribly—

[Speaker D] In what you know of him he didn’t lie, but maybe here, suddenly here, he did lie?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll try to answer. He says: if we saw him in several situations where he paid a heavy price for telling the truth and he insisted on telling the truth—okay? Many times. We see this man does not lie under any circumstances, even for sums much larger than the hundred shekels you are claiming from him, okay. That’s good enough. And still, it is testimony about the person and not about the matter itself.

[Speaker G] But with migu too, even if the testimony is about the person, if I come and say that since I believe him because he could have chosen a better lie, what is the result of my believing him? That indeed it happened, otherwise I get nowhere. Ah, that’s my whole point. So no—then it turns into something about the matter itself, not about the person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, my whole point is that evidence about the person—after all, apparently that too should be admissible, because if you know that the person speaks truth, then naturally what he said is true.

[Speaker G] Right, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So clearly in the end it translates into a claim about the matter itself. And that is exactly the point I want to show here: that from the point of view of Jewish law, even though in evidentiary strength it may be the same, there is such a rule in Jewish law that evidence about the person does not have the same weight as evidence about the matter itself, if it has any weight at all. Migu has some weight—“we do not say migu in order to extract,” okay. By the way, it’s very interesting: migu versus presumption, the Talmud remains in doubt. It’s evenly balanced. But we do not say migu in order to extract, whereas presumption can be used to extract. Why? If migu has the same evidentiary strength as presumption, then just as presumption can extract from someone in possession, can extract money from someone in possession, migu should also be able to extract money from someone in possession. My claim is that migu cannot extract money from someone in possession not because it is not strong enough. It is as strong as presumption. But because of the kind of evidence it is. Evidence about the person does not have the power of evidence about the matter itself—not because its probability is lower, not because its evidentiary strength is lower, but because there is such a rule in Jewish law: Jewish law deals with evidence about the matter itself, not with evidence about the person. That’s what it is determined by. I’ll explain this more later, because that’s the point I want to sharpen here, and I’ll also show what I want to gain from it. But first let me clarify it a bit more. Another example of this is the well-known Talmudic passage in Bava Metzia—

[Speaker H] Here, about the oven of Akhnai. Here. Yes, the Talmud in Bava Metzia 59b, Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel and so on, it was taught, yes, here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “It was taught: on that day Rabbi Eliezer answered with every answer in the world, but they did not accept from him. He said to them: if the law is in accordance with me, this carob tree will prove it. The carob tree was uprooted from its place one hundred cubits, and some say four hundred cubits. They said to him: one does not bring proof from a carob tree. He went back and said to them: if the law is in accordance with me, the stream of water will prove it. The stream of water flowed backward. They said to him: one does not bring proof from a stream of water. He went back and said to them: if the law is in accordance with me, the walls of the study hall will prove it. The walls of the study hall inclined to fall. Rabbi Yehoshua rebuked them and said to them: if Torah scholars are contending with one another in Jewish law, what business is it of yours? They did not fall, out of respect for Rabbi Yehoshua, and they did not straighten up, out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer, and they still stand inclined. He went back and said to them: if the law is in accordance with me, let it be proven from heaven. A heavenly voice went forth and said: why are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer, for the law is in accordance with him in every place? Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: It is not in heaven. What does ‘It is not in heaven’ mean? Rabbi Yirmiyah said: since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice, for You already wrote at Mount Sinai in the Torah: ‘Incline after the majority.’ And Rabbi Natan met Elijah and said to him: what did the Holy One, blessed be He, do at that moment? He said to him: He smiled and said, ‘My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me.’” And then they excommunicated Rabbi Eliezer, yes, and nullified all his rulings, and so on. What was going on here? Rabbi Eliezer basically wanted people to accept what he said because he said it. Right? That’s basically what he wanted. Believe me because I said it. Now you disagree with me, because after all the Sages did not agree with him—they had a halakhic dispute with him—and nevertheless accept it because I said it. Because as is well known, Rabbi Eliezer never said anything he had not heard from his teacher, and so on, and he was “a plastered cistern that loses not a drop,” meaning he was really an endless halakhic data bank. If you want to know something, ask Rabbi Eliezer. And these insolent Sages, yes, they don’t agree. Why don’t you agree? Because we are not willing to accept Jewish law from Rabbi Eliezer just because he said it. Rabbi Eliezer has to persuade us in the content of what he says, that he is right. What does Rabbi Eliezer do? He starts bringing proofs: let the stream prove it. About the person, right? Those proofs do not prove that this oven is impure. They prove that Rabbi Eliezer is righteous, and proof that the Holy One, blessed be He, loves him, agrees with him, however you want to phrase it. The proofs deal with the person, not with the content of his words. Right? Those are all the proofs he brought. The Sages—this is what Rabbi Yehoshua means when he says, we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice, yes, the walls of the study hall, yes, one does not bring proof from a carob tree, one does not bring proof from a stream of water. Yes, Rabbi Yehoshua rebukes the walls of the study hall. What is the meaning of this? The claim is basically, don’t confuse us with these things; these things are not—they are not reliable. I don’t think that is the meaning of the Talmud.

[Speaker D] Not relevant.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? But if Rabbi Eliezer really is right and the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with him, then as Yisrael said earlier, that means what he says is probably also correct, doesn’t it?

[Speaker D] But on the other hand, once the Jewish law came down to earth, down here we determine what is right and what isn’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that actually mean? It means that when we come to determine Jewish law, we determine it only according to principles that we ourselves understand, and not according to what someone else says, even though he is righteous and is probably also right—the Holy One, blessed be He, even agrees with him. But if I do not understand it, because I do not agree with him and he has not succeeded in persuading me, then even though I am convinced that he is right because, as a person, the man is right, that’s not enough. It’s like migu. It is evidence about the person. In halakhic discussion, “what business is it of yours?” as Rabbi Yehoshua says. If Torah scholars are arguing with one another in Jewish law, what are you walls of the study hall doing here? A study hall is for people, not for stones.

[Speaker G] But that’s not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what he means to say. He means to say: I’m not dealing with proofs based on the person himself. Right now we’re arguing. What does that mean? I’m waiting for him to convince me. If he convinces me halakhically, then one hundred percent the Jewish law will follow him. But he doesn’t want to convince me; he wants me to accept it because there are proofs that he’s right, that he’s righteous, yes, that he’s right in the sense that the person is right, because he’s a great Torah scholar, because the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with him. We do not pay attention to a heavenly voice; even if the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with him, that doesn’t interest me.

[Speaker G] But I think the problem there was different. The problem was that they came and said no—they weren’t arguing about the substance of the matter or not; they argued by saying, “incline after the majority”; you don’t come and determine Jewish law because we are the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but the question is why doesn’t the majority agree with him? They’re the majority because they remain with the explanation…

[Speaker G] That wasn’t the discussion. That wasn’t the discussion. The discussion was: incline after the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what are you talking about?

[Speaker D] That’s not the discussion. If he had convinced them, then he would have been the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He tried to convince them. The moment he tried to convince them… if the moment he had convinced them, then there wouldn’t have been a majority against a minority; everyone here would have agreed. My question is not why, when there was a vote, they followed the majority—that’s obvious. I’m asking why, when they voted, each one of them voted against him individually. After all, he’s right; the Holy One, blessed be He, agreed with him. Okay. The claim is that this is not relevant. That’s what Rabbi Yehoshua says: Torah scholars defeat one another through Jewish law—what standing do you have here? A halakhic discussion is determined by proofs. Convince me, and then that will be the Jewish law. If you didn’t convince me—you are the righteous foundation of the world, the Holy One, blessed be He, is riding on your shoulders and crowing cock-a-doodle-doo—it doesn’t interest me. If you don’t convince me, it’s irrelevant—not because you’re not right. If the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with you, then you’re the one who’s right; that’s obvious. But what? The fact that you’re right is not what matters. You have to convince me in order to determine Jewish law. That’s the point.

[Speaker H] There’s a Talmudic passage in Eruvin, Eruvin 13b, yes, the famous passage with “these and those,” so a little before that. Rav Acha bar Chanina said, Eruvin 13: “It is revealed and known before the One who spoke and the world came into being that in Rabbi Meir’s generation there was none like him.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, an exceptional genius, yes, there’s no one in the world who comes close to him. “And why was the Jewish law not established in accordance with him? Because his colleagues could not reach the depth of his reasoning. For he would declare the impure pure and show reasons for it, and the pure impure and show reasons for it,” and so on. What does that mean? So Rashi explains here that when Rabbi Meir said a halakhic ruling, it was impossible to know whether that really was the correct ruling, or whether he was just saying it to sharpen the students. He could substantiate or justify any halakhic statement—and its opposite—and he would succeed in convincing them of whatever he wanted. It reminds me—I always remember this when I see this Talmudic passage—of my PhD advisor, Moshe Kaveh. Yes, he was president of Bar-Ilan; he was my doctoral advisor. And Moshe Kaveh had—has—an extraordinary ability that’s really very similar to Rabbi Meir’s ability in Jewish law. Any physics result you bring him, after the most complicated calculation imaginable, he will explain to you with signs and wonders why it was obvious from the outset. You can see it intuitively; you don’t need two months of calculations for this. Okay? But then there’s an urban legend—you know, it’s always some story like that, right?—that once someone came to him and showed him something… and then he explained to him with signs and wonders that of course, it’s obvious, a simple intuition. Then the student found an error in the calculations. And it turned out that the result he had come with wasn’t correct. Then Kaveh explained to him the opposite result, why it was really obvious from the start that that was the correct result. Now, I’ve seen him in action—not exactly that story, but I can definitely believe that it could happen. Okay. So what does that actually mean? It means that once you get to someone like that, and he can substantiate for you that something is impure and convince you of it, and tell you that it’s pure and convince you of that, then in practice you can never know whether he’s right or not. But then—this is how Rashi explains it too, and that’s also the plain sense of the Talmudic passage—that this is a little difficult, because then I say: so his colleagues should tell him, listen Rabbi Meir, stop misleading us and tell us what the truth is. Leave it—we’re not learning now; now we’re deciding Jewish law. Tell us what the law is going to be. I assume that if they had asked him that, he would have told them; he wouldn’t have tricked them. And therefore I want to argue that there’s something more here, beyond the fact that you can’t know whether what he’s saying is a real ruling or not a real ruling. I want to claim more than that. I want to claim that if Rabbi Meir told me that this is the Jewish law, but I don’t agree with him—after all, what does it mean that the law was not established in accordance with him? “It was not established in accordance with him” doesn’t mean that if we agreed with him then yes, we established it in accordance with him; yes, that’s obvious. “It was not established in accordance with him” means that when we did not agree with him, then despite the fact that he was such a great genius, the Jewish law was not ruled in accordance with him. And we ourselves agree that he’s a greater genius than all of us. And if he said something, then obviously he’s right and it’s we who don’t understand him. And still we do not rule in accordance with him. Why? So I claim that it’s because of the same principle we saw earlier in the case of the Oven of Akhnai. We do not rule Jewish law even if the one saying it is obviously right, until he convinces me. In order to rule on Jewish law, I need to be convinced on the merits of the matter, not on the merits of the person. About the person, I’m convinced; I know Rabbi Meir is the greatest genius. That’s obvious in terms of the person, but I want to be convinced that the ruling he states is the correct ruling. And here you have to convince me on the merits of the matter, not on the merits of the person. And if you haven’t convinced me on the merits of the matter, then that won’t be the law. Even though if you ask me what the Holy One, blessed be He, actually intends—why, what Rabbi Meir said, that’s obvious. Because Rabbi Meir is such a genius that it’s obviously far more likely that he hit upon the mind of the Holy One, blessed be He, than I did—and I say that too, that it’s more likely that he’s right—and still I will rule Jewish law according to what I think. Because Jewish law is determined by the considerations accessible to all of us. You see now how this connects to mysticism; in a moment. I’ll come back to that, but that’s where I’m heading. You need to convince us that you’re right and therefore that’s the Jewish law. Then that will be the law. If I become convinced that you’re right because of arguments based on the person, that won’t change the law. If I think otherwise, I’ll rule as I think. That’s basically what… that’s basically, in my opinion, what’s written both in the Talmudic passage about Rabbi Meir and in the Oven of Akhnai. And the place that perhaps… the place that presents this in the most extreme way is the Maharal. The Maharal is well known in Netiv HaTorah. Usually I don’t like the Maharal, but there are certain Maharals that I like very much because they say what I think. So the Maharal in Netiv HaTorah, chapter 15. Netivot Olam—there are different “paths,” and Netiv HaTorah is the first path in Netivot Olam. In chapter 15 of Netiv HaTorah. “And further there”—he learned Scripture and Mishnah but did not serve Torah scholars. I’ll read selected passages. Okay. “And further there: One who read Scripture and learned Mishnah but did not serve Torah scholars—Rabbi Eliezer says, he is an ignoramus; Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya says, he is boorish; Rabbi Yannai says, he is like a Kutite; Rav Acha bar Yaakov says, he is like a sorcerer.” Sorcerer here means a magician. Okay? Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak said: it is reasonable like Rav Acha bar Yaakov, for people say, “The sorcerer mutters and does not know what he mutters; the tanna recites and does not know what he recites.” He says it and doesn’t know what he’s saying, this sorcerer. “And the explanation is that when one learns the Mishnah but does not serve a Torah scholar in order to clarify the reasons of the Mishnah, which is clear intellect—when one grasps the reasons of the Mishnah, this is called intellect—but when he has not acquired intellect, yes, he has not acquired the intellect behind the things even though he knows all the laws—Rabbi Yishmael added that he is called a boor, for a field that does not produce grain is called a barren field, as the translation of ‘and the ground shall not be desolate and barren’—and so too one who learned the Mishnah but did not serve a Torah scholar to clarify the Mishnah for him has not brought perfection into actuality, to become actually wise. Therefore he is called barren, because a barren field is not a field that brings things into actuality, and in his case too it has not come into actuality; he is like a barren field that has not brought forth fruit. And Rabbi Yannai said, he is like a Kutite, for a Kutite does not seek to stand upon the Torah and understand it, for the Kutim did not learn Torah except what they saw before them in practice, and they did that; in this the Kutim persisted. But to actually possess Torah—they did not have that at all. And so too, one who learned the Mishnah without clarifying its reasons lacks the study of Torah, for the Mishnah is not considered Torah study; rather, the Mishnah is how one is to perform the act.” This is the Maharal that I always love; I always quote this in discussions when I say that when people learn Mishnah Berurah, that’s not Torah study—you shouldn’t recite the blessing over Torah study for that, because that’s learning what to do, and that is not Torah study. Torah study is learning the ideas behind the things, the reasoning, the conceptual analysis—that is called Torah study. “And therefore he is called a Kutite, because he does not have the Torah from the standpoint of study. But Israel is fit for Torah from the standpoint of intellect, for the Torah is intellectual, especially fitting for them, as the verse says, ‘For what great nation…’ wise and understanding, as was explained in the previous chapter.”

Now, “And Rav Acha bar Yaakov said that he is called a sorcerer”—you see, now we’re getting to mysticism—”because he speaks and does not understand what he is saying, and such a thing is as if it is not Torah at all. And this is even worse than everything else; this is the lowest level of all the levels described above, because in his eyes the Torah is considered like magic, which is something base and lowly and not an intellectual matter at all.” Yes, he does some hocus-pocus and pulls out a ruling; he doesn’t understand where it comes from, he doesn’t understand the reasoning of the matter, so it’s magic. I can’t help remembering, in this context, the story I always remember, yes, the story about Rabbi Shlomo Kluger. A Lithuanian story—there are Hasidic stories and there are Lithuanian stories—so this is the story about Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, who was the rabbi of Brody and the surrounding region. Once two Jews from some village near Brody came to ask him a halakhic question. He thought and thought and said: listen, it’s a hard question, I don’t know the answer. Fine. They return home disappointed to their village. They go and see that there’s some young rabbi there in the village; they go ask him the question. He goes into the room, and after some time comes out and gives them the answer. They’re amazed. Rabbi Shlomo Kluger didn’t know the answer, and this young fellow answered them after ten minutes. They go back to Rabbi Shlomo Kluger and tell him the story. He’s amazed—such a genius is around here and I didn’t know? He immediately summons the village rabbi. The man comes to Rabbi Shlomo Kluger trembling all over. Rabbi Shlomo Kluger says to him, listen, I heard a story—I stood astonished and baffled by this question and didn’t know how to answer, and I heard that within ten minutes you gave them the answer. Amazing. How did you get it? How did you reach that answer? In short, the man says to him: listen Rabbi, I’ll tell you the truth. When they asked me that question, I had no idea where to attack it from. I cried, I cried, I prayed to the Holy One, blessed be He, to enlighten my eyes, and then my eyes fell on the shelf above; there was some book sticking out. I said, that’s a sign from heaven. I took out the book, opened it, and exactly—some responsa—exactly this question, an answer to this question. And Rabbi Shlomo Kluger threw him down the stairs. He said to him: I thought you knew how to learn; all you know how to do is cry. In other words, this Lithuanian story is exactly what the Maharal writes here. He is basically saying: someone who knows a halakhic ruling—and it may be the correct ruling—not because the ruling is incorrect. In other words, the problem with someone who rules like a sorcerer is not that the ruling is wrong. He relies on Rabbi Meir, or if you want on the Mishnah Berurah, or on the Shulchan Arukh; they’re all Jews, Torah scholars, and if they said something it’s more likely that they’re right than that I am right. But if I rule only because the author wrote it, or because the Mishnah Berurah wrote it, or because Rabbi Meir said it, and I don’t understand why, or maybe I even disagree—then I’m a sorcerer; I’m a magician. I did hocus-pocus and produced Jewish law. Jewish law. Jewish law has to be produced through judgment. I need to understand how I arrive at the ruling that I issue. Not hocus-pocus, not crying, not prayer, and nothing like that. You have to think and arrive at the law. That’s what halakhic ruling means. And if you arrive at a certain ruling and someone else—no matter how important he may be—says otherwise, then you’re supposed to rule according to what you think, even though you yourself know that most likely he’s right. Because you too understand that Rabbi Meir is greater than you a thousandfold, or the Shulchan Arukh is greater than you a thousandfold. It doesn’t matter. You have to rule according to what you think. That’s basically what the Maharal says, continuing what we saw in the Talmudic passages I brought earlier. Let’s return for a moment to the Maharal. Yes: “For the commandments of the Torah are fitting in themselves to be done through intellect. And one who learned only the Mishnah”—and by Mishnah here he means Kitzur Shulchan Arukh—”in which there is no clarification of the intellect, this is something foreign, deviating from what is proper, and is considered magic, which is a strange act without intellect.” Yes. And then he sums up and says that it’s like magic, because the Torah is intellectual and one should not act in it through magic.

Now look at the continuation. This is the better-known part of the Maharal. “And further there: the tannaim are destroyers of the world.” Destroyers of the world—could that enter your mind? Rather, they are those who issue halakhic rulings from their Mishnah. It was also taught in a baraita: And are they destroyers of the world? Are they not rather sustainers of the world, as it is said, ‘His are the ways of the world’—do not read halikhot, ‘ways,’ but halakhot, ‘laws.’ Halakhot are the sustaining of the world. Rather, it refers to those who issue halakhic rulings from their Mishnah.” Meaning: they issue rulings from the Mishnah, or from the Mishnah Berurah, or from the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, or from the Shulchan Arukh. That is what destroys the world. And the Talmud asks: are they destroyers of the world? And it does not answer that it is talking about someone who did not serve Torah scholars—it doesn’t matter; that’s everything from before. And it answers—I’m now reading here, yes?—”and it answers: because they issue rulings from their Mishnah, that is, they issue rulings even though they do not know the fundamental reason of the Mishnah, and in this they destroy the world, because the world stands upon Torah, and this is not considered Torah when one does not know the clarified reason of the Mishnah. And the Torah whose purpose is to instruct action is the essential Torah, and on this the world stands.” It’s not that Jewish law is not Torah, but the Jewish law of the sorcerers, where you magic it up instead of using conceptual halakhic judgment and arriving at the halakhic conclusion—that is the sorcerers, that is what destroys the world. “Therefore, when they issue halakhic rulings from the Mishnah not from clear intellect, they are destroyers of the world that stands upon Torah.”

Now look at something he sharpens here, and this is important. “And Rashi of blessed memory explained: ‘those who issue rulings from their Mishnah’ destroy the world through erroneous rulings, because since they do not know the reason of the Mishnah, sometimes they liken one thing to another when it is not so. Moreover, they do not know the disputes of the tannaim, and therefore they issue mistaken rulings. Thus Rashi explained.” What does that mean? Rashi says: why are those who issue rulings from the Mishnah without knowing the reasons destroyers of the world? Because maybe they’ll make an incorrect ruling. If you don’t know the reasons, maybe you’ll make an incorrect ruling. The Maharal says: “And this explanation is entirely not correct.” Rashi is mistaken. “For when it says they issue a halakhic ruling from their Mishnah, that implies a true ruling”—not because of fear of error. “And it does not make sense to say ‘an erroneous halakhic ruling.’ If it is an error, then they are not issuing a halakhic ruling; they are issuing an error from their Mishnah. Rather, the explanation is as we said: that the essence of Torah is when one issues a practical halakhic ruling, and this thing ought to emerge from Torah and not from magic, for the Torah is intellectual”—yes, remember Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, this is exactly that—”and this is the Talmud, which is intellectual, and from this it is fitting that practical Jewish law emerge. And this is certainly the sustaining of the world, which stands upon Torah. Therefore, the tannaim who issue rulings from the Mishnah are destroyers of the world. But in this generation, if they were issuing rulings from the Mishnah, that would have sufficed, because the Mishnah is the beginning of the Talmud, and Jewish law initially goes to it. But they do not issue rulings from the Mishnah, which is made for Talmud, because the Talmud is the explanation of the Mishnah. Rather, they issue rulings from the legal codes that were composed to instruct practical Jewish law and were not made to teach them, but only to rule from them. And this is even farther from reason.” What is he saying? He says: in our generation, issuing rulings from the Mishnah—which destroys the world—means someone who issues rulings from halakhic books. That means the Shulchan Arukh, Mishnah Berurah, Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, and so on. Someone who rules from those books destroys the world. That’s what he wanted to teach. Because these were not made in order to learn them, but only in order to rule from them. “And this is even farther from reason.” Meaning, you’re not ruling from reason. You’re ruling because someone said so. You can’t—you’re forbidden to rule like that.

“And the medieval authorities (Rishonim) such as Maimonides of blessed memory and the Tur”—let’s say on this I’m not sure I’d sign off, but of course he recruits everyone to his side—”and the medieval authorities (Rishonim), such as Maimonides of blessed memory and the Tur of blessed memory, even though they too composed legal rulings without explanation,” meaning they don’t bring the reasons, they write that this is the law, “their intention was only to indicate the final law as it emerges from the Talmud. But that a person should rule from them without knowing from what source the law emerges—a ruling without reason—this never entered their intention or thought. For they said here that one who rules from the Mishnah is considered a sorcerer, as was explained among the other condemnations, now like a Kutite. And had the authors known that these compositions would cause people to abandon the Talmud entirely and issue rulings from the compositions, they would not have composed them.” Here I’m not entirely sure, but it’s possible. By the way, it’s not impossible.

[Speaker D] Maimonides doesn’t say it like that. Maimonides—Maimonides clearly doesn’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the Shulchan Arukh—the Shulchan Arukh writes in the introduction that the Shulchan Arukh is only a summary of the Beit Yosef. It’s not a book written so that people should rule from it. In the end, it became fixed as a book people rule from, so that wasn’t the original purpose of the composition. Because now look, this is the Maharal’s most famous sentence here; everybody always quotes it. “For it is more fitting and more correct that one should issue rulings from the Talmud, and even though there is concern that he may not follow the true path and may not rule the law truthfully, so that the ruling would accord with the truth—nevertheless, the sage has only what his own intellect yields and understands from the Talmud. And that is what he must do, even though he errs. And when his understanding and wisdom mislead him, even so he is beloved to God when he rules according to what follows from his intellect, for the judge has only what his eyes see. And this is better than one who rules from a single composition and does not know the reason of the matter at all, who walks like a blind man on the road.” What is he saying here? He’s saying that someone who rules on the basis of his own analysis of the passages, even if he is mistaken, is more beloved in the eyes of the Holy One, blessed be He, than someone who rules from the Shulchan Arukh even if he’s right. And it’s more likely that he’s right, because the Shulchan Arukh was a great Torah scholar.

[Speaker D] So like Rabbi Eliezer? Huh?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all, according to—

[Speaker D] It comes out that the view the Maharal doesn’t—doesn’t identify with is like Rabbi Eliezer, who ruled according to what he had received long, long before, not something he could convince others with.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and that’s what Rabbi Eliezer wanted from the other sages: that they should accept it because he said so. So what they answered him, basically, is what the Maharal spells out here: we’re not sorcerers. You’re supposed to convince us so that we’ll rule Jewish law that way. We have no argument with the fact that you’re righteous, and that you’re the greatest Torah scholar, and that the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with you, and everything is fine—we have no argument with that. Okay? But what? We do not rule Jewish law that way. That’s sorcery, that’s magic. In order to convince us, you have to convince us on the merits of the matter, not on the merits of the person. And by the way, that comment in the chat earlier was correct—it’s true—if you look under the entry “halakhah,” say, in the Shulchan Arukh or elsewhere, you’ll see quite a few later authorities (Acharonim), commentaries on the Shulchan Arukh in the 17th century generally, who forbade issuing halakhic rulings from the Shulchan Arukh. Not to mention the Maharal and his brother, who of course came out against the Shulchan Arukh altogether. Also the Maharshal, who battled against the Rema—it doesn’t matter, but it’s the same struggle. What is called the codification controversy. It essentially revolved exactly around this issue. This controversy was against compositions like the Shulchan Arukh—what are you giving me books here that are legal rulings without reasons? That’s not how you issue Jewish law. Not because he wasn’t great, and not because he wasn’t right, but because that’s not how you issue Jewish law. That was the discussion, and therefore they say you’re forbidden to issue Jewish law from the Shulchan Arukh. The Maharshal writes this and the Bach writes this. You do not issue Jewish law from the Shulchan Arukh. But what? There are authorities who say that today, since around the Shulchan Arukh there are commentaries that disagree with it and bring the sources for its words and the reasons and everything, then if you’re already dealing with the Shulchan Arukh together with the commentaries, then yes, it’s permitted to issue Jewish law from it. Because that is no longer called issuing Jewish law from one’s Mishnah, which is like destroying the world, like the sorcerer. Okay? But in principle, if you simply take a book of rulings and rule from it—and again, even if it’s the Shulchan Arukh—most likely he’s right even if you disagree with him, because he’s like Rabbi Meir. And still I need to do what I think. Unless the Shulchan Arukh convinces me—excellent, no problem—then of course I need to acknowledge the truth. But someone needs to show me what the truth is on the merits of the matter, and not on the merits of the person.

[Speaker G] But if I’ve reached conclusion A, and the rules of decision say—there’s a dispute between Abaye and Rava, and the rules of decision say the Jewish law follows Rava—and I don’t agree with that, because I’m convinced of what I’m convinced of, then what? So I go against the rules of decision?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It depends. In a place where the rules of decision were decided by the Great Court, there is “do not deviate.” Wherever there is “do not deviate,” the Great Court is the exception to the whole picture I’ve described here. And the Torah says “do not deviate.” But this innovation was said only about the Great Court, or only about such bodies regarding which this “do not deviate” was stated—what is called halakhic ruling. All kinds of rules of the Shulchan Arukh and all kinds of crazy inventions people have today—dozens of rules about how the Shulchan Arukh established Jewish law, most of which are of course made up and have no basis and no sense. But even if it were correct, it wouldn’t matter. Why should I care what the Shulchan Arukh intended? The question is what seems correct to me, not what the Shulchan Arukh intended. Why should I care about all these rules? So the claim, ultimately, is that the Torah—the Maharal formulates it in perhaps the most blunt, sharpest way—he basically says: the way halakhic ruling works is that it has to emerge from the sources and the reasoning and ultimately arrive at the conclusion as I understand it. And even in a place where I myself understand that I probably erred, because standing opposite me is Rabbi Meir, or Rabbi Yosef Karo, or Maimonides, or the Mishnah Berurah, whom I too say are Torah scholars far greater than I am, and if we disagree they’re probably right or closer to the Jewish law than I am—that doesn’t matter. Because if I have not been convinced that they’re right on the merits of the matter, meaning in this specific ruling, then I’m supposed to do what I think and not what they say. By the way, this is my own claim—just to put things in proportion. Meaning, most halakhic decisors obviously disagree with this, with what I’m saying now. And that was the codification controversy: the Shulchan Arukh itself wrote the Shulchan Arukh, and the decisors who came after him of course argue that one should rule from the Shulchan Arukh. I’m only saying that all along there are these voices saying no. The Maharal is one of the prominent ones among them. And I think you can also see from the Talmudic passages that this is how one should act. And my personal position is like this. And I think it’s very well grounded. On the contrary, the people who say otherwise, in my opinion, are not well grounded. Even though it’s the overwhelming majority of decisors today who work with a different method, the method of ruling by reliance on the pillars of legal authority. The Shulchan Arukh itself—what caused the uproar around the Shulchan Arukh? That when he came to his conclusion, to his conclusions in the Shulchan Arukh, he himself writes that he took a majority among the three pillars of legal authority: the Rif, the Rosh, and Maimonides. And what the majority says, that’s the Jewish law. So that’s what they shout at him about—the Maharal and his brother in Be’er Mayim Chayim, the Be’er Mayim Chayim controversy, Rabbi Chaim, the Maharal’s brother. Yes: what do you mean, you take a majority among three pillars of legal authority? Who decided they’re the pillars of legal authority? And who decided that you can determine what the Jewish law is? Tell us the reasons, what seems correct to you, and we’ll consider whether we agree or disagree. And you yourself, the author, when you rule the law, aren’t supposed to draw lots among the decisors. You need to enter into the Talmudic passage and reach conclusions as you understand them. That was the sting, the sharp edge, of the controversy around the Shulchan Arukh and around Maimonides in his time and so on—what is called the codification controversies. Elon talks about this at length in his book HaMishpat HaIvri, Menachem Elon.

So the claim, basically—let me close the circle here for a moment because I don’t want to leave it hanging even though I still have a bit more to add. Where am I heading? Why does all this connect to our topic? First of all, this story of Rabbi Eliezer is outright mysticism, right? You want to issue a ruling from a voice that comes out, some kind of prophecy—”It is not in heaven.” Yes, so “It is not in heaven” means we do not go after mysticism, basically. But I want to claim—remember what the definition of mysticism is, at least according to my conclusion from the beginning, from the first classes. Mysticism means something esoteric. Not necessarily things dealing with mystical concepts—sefirot and Kabbalah and things like that. Anything that is not public, not public in the ordinary sense, but esoteric—where the person wants me to accept things because he said them, because he has some esoteric information, he has special charisma, whatever the reason may be, even if it’s entirely within the revealed part of Torah. It’s not Kabbalah, not in the concepts of the esoteric teaching, right? Rather, it’s hidden in the sense that it’s esoteric. Even if the considerations are ordinary halakhic considerations. But if you can’t convince me of it, if it’s not accessible to the general public, and you want me to accept it only because you said so—that is mysticism. According to the definition of mysticism that I gave, right? And I claim that that’s why… we do not issue Jewish law like Kabbalah when Kabbalah contradicts the revealed law. Not because Kabbalah is sefirot and partzufim and things like that, which may perhaps be untrue or may be things that—no, no. It’s simply because it’s not accessible. You can’t convince me that it’s true; you want me to accept it because you understand it. There is no such thing; Jewish law doesn’t work like that. And again, not because you’re not right. It may be that all of Kabbalah and everything is pure truth; on the contrary, if you know it and I don’t know it, then maybe you’re right and I’m wrong. And still, when issuing Jewish law, I’m supposed to issue Jewish law according to what I understand with my own intellect. And if you don’t succeed in convincing me that you’re right, I’m forbidden to go with what you say. Now usually, rulings of Kabbalah versus the revealed law are exactly that kind of case. The kabbalist wants us to accept it because he has one or another kabbalistic calculation. But the revealed law goes against it. So it’s not because the revealed is more important than the hidden. And not because the revealed is more correct than the hidden. Maybe that’s true too, but that’s not why. Rather, it’s because the revealed is public. And Jewish law is determined by what is given over to discussion in the public domain. You’re supposed to be able to convince me. Like positivism, right, which wants things to be open to falsification. I do not accept things that are not open to the test of falsification, not open to rational critique. Not because they’re untrue. But because Jewish law isn’t supposed to work on those kinds of foundations. Jewish law is supposed to work on the basis of things that are public, on the basis of things accessible to me and that I myself have been convinced are true—not on the basis of the fact that you say so. And that is why I gave the whole previous introduction, to show you that this is not a special issue specifically concerning Kabbalah. It’s not a principle that concerns Kabbalah or the esoteric teaching or something like that. Even in the revealed law it’s like this. I brought you the examples earlier; the earlier examples are all matters of the revealed law. When there is a Shulchan Arukh—the Shulchan Arukh ruled according to the revealed law. I don’t agree with it; the Maharal says I’m forbidden to rule in accordance with it. Why? He was much greater than I was. Most likely he’s more right than I am. Correct. But Jewish law is not determined by who is most right; it’s determined by who convinced me.

[Speaker G] But this view of yours, which I like very much, causes halakhic instability. The whole codification project was to create halakhic stability. That’s Maimonides’ point—I don’t want everyone to start doing whatever he wants. So I checked all the rules of decision, made a codification, and now there is halakhic stability.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. First of all, as things stand now, halakhic stability is a fantasy. So many disputes were created because of Maimonides, because of the Rambam, that to say he closed off disputes is a joke. He wanted to close off disputes, but of course, he writes in the introduction that he wrote the book so that people would stop dealing with the less important things and engage in the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot and the things that really matter. And what happens today? People engage in hair-splitting not only over the Talmud but also over Maimonides. Now what he wrote has been added to the pile of material over which one can engage in hair-splitting. It’s even less possible to get to the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot, because now we have more work. Now we also have to reconcile Maimonides. Ask Brisk.

So first of all, as a matter of fact, codification didn’t really solve the problem of stability. Factually. Second, you can’t solve a stability problem. It doesn’t work. First, who said there is value in stability? And second, even if there is value in it, who made you the one to decide? You’re Maimonides. If there were a Sanhedrin here, that would be something else. What the Sanhedrin determines is binding. But you’re Maimonides, and you decided that you want stability—excellent, so you always go by what I write. Why should I go by what you write? What is stability? Stability is a nice thing, so everyone says—like when people say, why isn’t there unity? Always, why isn’t there unity? What does that mean, why isn’t there unity? Why do you disagree with me? Come on, let’s be united, let’s all think the same thing—as I do, of course. That’s Maimonides’ concept of stability.

If the Sanhedrin creates stability, that’s something else, because it has the authority to do that, the mandate to do that. And by the way, even with the Sanhedrin—I’ve talked about this more than once—there are people who dream that the Sanhedrin will return and at last the Torah won’t be like two Torahs, there will be stability. For me, that’s a nightmare. If the Sanhedrin returns, that means they’ll force me to do things that I don’t think are correct. I don’t want that. It is absolutely not part of my utopia. I also want to believe, I want to hope to believe, that when the Sanhedrin returns it will make binding determinations only in those places where it is truly necessary for public functioning. But in places where there’s no problem with people acting in different ways, each according to what seems right to him, then the Sanhedrin won’t establish something binding, even though some people are mistaken. It will prefer to allow them to be mistaken, as the Maharal says, rather than dictate things to them even though that is the truth, because the Sanhedrin consists of the greatest Torah scholars. Why? Because there is greater value in doing things because you understand them than in merely doing the correct things, as the Maharal wrote.

Where, then, does the Sanhedrin nevertheless need to determine things, so that when it determines them there is “do not deviate,” and everyone must obey? In those places where it’s impossible to function if everyone does whatever he wants. Life simply can’t be run that way. Not all Jewish laws are like that. Say, for example—I don’t know—if a public decision had to be made whether to hand over territory to the Palestinians as part of a peace agreement. Suppose the Sanhedrin had to decide on that matter, okay? Here you can’t let everyone do what he thinks, right? There has to be one public decision that binds all of us. So here there is room for the Sanhedrin to determine something, and it would be binding.

Obviously that’s an extreme example. I’m saying even in a place where, I don’t know, maybe they would need to set certain boundaries in kashrut, so that people can eat in each other’s homes, because otherwise there would be a social problem. So they would establish some framework of kashrut. But within that framework, I assume they would still allow people to act as they understand, even mistakenly. Even if they are wrong and, because of that, are violating Jewish law. It doesn’t matter, because if that’s what they think, there is value in their acting that way—the value of autonomy.

But for our purposes, why am I bringing in this whole discussion? Because with it I want to resolve the two questions with which I opened the lecture, and this seemingly turns the whole thing upside down. That is, I want to argue that it’s not that I don’t issue halakhic rulings from esoteric sources because maybe they are wrong. Rather, they are wrong because I do not issue halakhic rulings that way. Meaning: I am forbidden to rule that way not because it’s an error, but because Jewish law does not operate in that way, even though maybe that is the correct view.

And my claim is that Kabbalah versus the revealed layer is not because the revealed layer is preferable to Kabbalah. Not because it is more correct than Kabbalah. No. Kabbalah is more correct than the revealed layer—that was the first question I asked. Because the secret is always the divine decree; behind it there is only secret, there is no revealed layer at all. And nevertheless we go this way, because—I spoke about this also with Menachem. On the contrary, there is some advantage to… yes, think about the Holy One, blessed be He, in the Oven of Akhnai. The Holy One, blessed be He, said what His opinion was. So what seems more logical to you as being correct? Rabbi Eliezer, right? After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself said he was right. So what—we don’t rule that way because maybe it isn’t true? No. We don’t rule that way because “it is not in heaven.” Because You wrote in Your Torah, “follow the majority,” and “it is not in heaven.” When Torah scholars debate in Jewish law—“what business do you have here, walls of the study hall?”—it’s not because you aren’t right. The Holy One, blessed be He, knocked down the walls of the study hall. So what? Right now we are exchanging arguments. You have to convince me so that I’ll vote with you. That’s what Rabbi Yehoshua says.

And my claim is that Kabbalah is set aside in favor of the revealed layer because it is esoteric. Not because Kabbalah deals with configurations and sefirot and the revealed layer deals with human reasoning. No. There is no advantage of one over the other. What’s my indication? The second question I asked. What was the second question? Why do kabbalists, yes, rule in accordance with the hidden layer? The answer is: because for kabbalists it isn’t mysticism. Kabbalists can examine it and see whether it is right or not right. They also argue among themselves. It is accessible to them. So from their standpoint they are right to rule that way. Because from their standpoint Kabbalah is not mysticism. From their standpoint it is not mysticism in the sense that it is not esoteric. They are not supposed to accept it just because someone said so. They do the calculation in the hidden layer the way I do the calculation in the revealed layer. There are always basic assumptions in any calculation; that’s true in the revealed layer too. The fact that one has to put on tefillin is an assumption written in the Torah. I don’t necessarily understand why that is true. Even in the revealed layer you start from certain assumptions and on their basis you do the calculation. So in the hidden layer these are hidden assumptions, different assumptions. It doesn’t matter. As long as you are aware of the reasoning and you understand the arguments and you can justify the Jewish law ruling you arrived at, then from your standpoint it is not mysticism.

So the kabbalist is right to follow the hidden layer and not the revealed layer. And this does not contradict what the Magen Avraham and the Beit Yosef say, that one must follow the revealed layer. And I asked earlier: if I’m a layman, then it depends whom I ask, so whom should I follow? The answer: I need to follow the revealed layer. Why? Because for me the hidden layer is mysticism. I will not be able to be convinced; I will have to accept it because the kabbalist said so. That is not the way Jewish law works. I am not supposed to accept things because someone said them. You have to convince me that you are right. Or at least be able to convince me. There are people who are not Torah scholars, so even in the revealed layer they won’t be able to verify the claim. But in principle they can verify it; it is accessible to them. Okay?

In that sense, it’s like science being falsifiable, even though… even though most people can’t really falsify a scientific theory. You need to understand a lot of science and have access to a sophisticated laboratory in order to falsify a scientific theory, but it is still called a falsifiable theory. Why? Because in principle, anyone who wants to, and decides to, and invests the effort, could falsify it too. In principle it is accessible to everyone, so it is called falsifiable. Just an example, of course, but I want to claim the same thing here.

And therefore the two questions are resolved: first, why when Kabbalah conflicts with the revealed layer does the revealed layer prevail? Not because the revealed layer is correct, but because the revealed layer is public. And why among the kabbalists themselves is it not like that? Very simple—it’s not a contradiction at all, because for them the hidden layer is not mysticism. So from their standpoint they have discretion, they arrive at a conclusion by reasoning that this is the Jewish law ruling, and so that is indeed what they do, and that is perfectly fine. But I, as an ordinary citizen, as an ordinary person who wants to ask what the Jewish law is—clearly, from my standpoint, this is what the Magen Avraham and the Beit Yosef are saying: I am supposed to rule like the revealed layer.

And therefore someone who gives halakhic instruction really does need to say that when the revealed layer and the hidden layer conflict, Jewish law follows the revealed layer. That is what needs to be said—not because you are a master of the revealed layer, but because you are a law book addressing the public. A law book that addresses the public has to say that Jewish law follows the revealed layer. Kabbalists should not be impressed by this at all; they will rule according to the hidden layer, and that is perfectly fine, that’s how it should be.

And all this—notice—comes out of the initial definition I gave, which says that the definition of mysticism has nothing to do with the conceptual world being strange, which is how mysticism is usually defined. No. Mysticism means esotericism. That is what mysticism means. Something that is in someone’s private domain and is not accessible to me—that is what is called mysticism, that’s all. You can talk about things that are completely revealed, but if only you saw them and I have no way to verify them, then from my standpoint that is mysticism. If I define mysticism this way, then everything we saw earlier becomes very clear. Why are there contradictions between the revealed and the hidden layers? Because this is a global correspondence, and there are two explanations, both of which exist, as we explained in the second lecture. And now I come to the third stage, which says: why, when the revealed and the hidden conflict, does Jewish law follow the revealed, and why among kabbalists is it not so? So the whole picture ultimately comes together. Here I’m closing the circle. I wanted to close it here so as not to leave things hanging in the middle. In the next lecture I’ll continue a bit more with what I said today, and then we’ll move on. That’s it. If there are comments or questions?

[Speaker G] More power to you, thank you very much. More power to you. Thank you, shalom. Sabbath peace.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sabbath peace.

Mysticism – Lesson 5

Table of Contents

Summary

General overview

Defining mysticism as esotericism

The hidden and the revealed as parallel explanations, and the logical limit of parallelism

Breaking the parallelism: miracle, scriptural decree, and “topological defects”

Contradictions in Jewish law and the rule for deciding between hidden and revealed

The distinction between the public’s relation to the hidden and the mystic’s relation to it

Migu as proof about the person rather than the matter itself

The oven of Akhnai, “It is not in heaven,” and excluding non-substantive evidence

Rabbi Meir in Eruvin 13 and the demand for substantive understanding

The Maharal: ruling from legal summaries as sorcery, and the value of ruling from intellect

The controversy over codification, “do not deviate,” and the limits of halakhic stability

Deciding between revealed and hidden as dependent on accessibility and publicity

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General overview

Defining mysticism as esotericism

The hidden and the revealed as parallel explanations, and the logical limit of parallelism

Breaking the parallelism: miracle, scriptural decree, and “topological defects”

Contradictions in Jewish law and the rule for deciding between hidden and revealed

The distinction between the public’s relation to the hidden and the mystic’s relation to it

Migu as proof about the person rather than the matter itself

The oven of Akhnai, “It is not in heaven,” and excluding non-substantive evidence

Rabbi Meir in Eruvin 13 and the demand for substantive understanding

The Maharal: ruling from legal summaries as sorcery, and the value of ruling from intellect

The controversy over codification, “do not deviate,” and the limits of halakhic stability

Deciding between revealed and hidden as dependent on accessibility and publicity

Full Transcript

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