Thought of Halakha – 5783 – Lesson 24

Table of Contents

• Facts, norms, and halakhic change
• Presumptions, women as witnesses, and the “swimsuit” example
• Torah study versus factual relevance
• “If-then” and bridging principles in logic and Jewish law
• Modesty as a cultural and local norm
• The Ritva’s source and dependence on personal circumstances
• Distant reality and the inability to issue a ruling
• Changes in halakhic concepts in modern reality
• Prophecy and Jewish law
• Value change and extreme cases of “it just doesn’t fit”
• Secular courts, religious courts, and Haredi pragmatism
• A transgression for the sake of Heaven as a model for extreme cases
• Religious courts for monetary law, arbitration, and a contempt notice
• Experts, facts, and value judgments in halakhic rulings
• The limits of expertise: illness, abortion, and human identity

Summary

General overview

Jewish law is presented as a system that applies norms to factual circumstances, so when the facts change or are newly clarified, the application changes without this being considered “a change in Jewish law.” On the contrary, freezing the old result in a new reality is itself the real change. The author sharpens the point that the Talmud and the halakhic decisors are not the source for determining facts, but rather for “if-then” principles that connect facts to norms, and he illustrates this through legal presumptions, modesty, and changing modern realities such as digital space. Alongside this, he argues that there are extreme cases in which value change or practical impossibility leads to a situation where a certain halakha cannot actually be applied in practice, and he brings examples such as the elimination of idolatry and recourse to secular courts. Finally, he argues that even determining “what is dangerous” or “what counts as pikuach nefesh” is not handed over only to experts, because the very act of setting the cutoff point on a risk graph is a value judgment that belongs to the deciding institution, not to the scientist.

Facts, norms, and halakhic change

Jewish law always applies to a given factual situation, and therefore a change in reality leads to a different normative result without changing the law itself. The author distinguishes between a change in reality and a change in our knowledge of reality, as in examples involving fish and meat, or the Talmudic claim that lice are generated from sweat. He argues that when the factual basis of a ruling was mistaken from the outset, the ruling falls away without any need for formal mechanisms of change, such as a court greater in wisdom and number. He defines the role of the halakhic decisor and the religious court as first determining reality through witnesses and evidence, and only afterward applying the halakhic norm to the reality that has been established. He describes “when the reason is gone, the enactment is not necessarily gone” as a case in which the reason was once correct and reality later changed, and he distinguishes that from a case in which the reason was never correct to begin with.

Presumptions, women as witnesses, and the “swimsuit” example

The author argues that in situations where reality has changed, the correct application of the same halakha should also change, and whoever insists on preserving the old result is the one who is really “changing” the halakha. He illustrates this through the presumption that “a person does not pay a debt before its due date,” and argues that there is nothing sacred about the presumption itself. If today people do in fact pay before the deadline, for reasons such as interest or business arrangements, then the practical ruling should change accordingly. He suggests that the discussion about women’s eligibility as witnesses could also depend on a change in reality, such as education and economic involvement, while emphasizing that he is offering this only as an example and not as a binding practical claim. He uses the analogy of walking around in a swimsuit in cold weather to argue that Jewish law requires adaptation to circumstances, and therefore freezing the old outcome in a new situation counts as violating the halakha.

Torah study versus factual relevance

The author rejects the claim that a page of Talmud loses its value if the factual description found there is no longer common today, and argues that we study Torah in order to know what the Torah says, not only in order to apply it. He explains that the passage in Bava Batra is not meant to teach a psychological fact about human behavior, but a normative rule about the effect of a presumption on procedure and burden of proof. He states that facts are checked in reality, in surveys, and with professionals—not through analytical study of the Talmud—and he brings a joke about a rabbi looking in books while the synagogue sexton looks at the woman, in order to illustrate the distinction between books and reality.

“If-then” and bridging principles in logic and Jewish law

The author defines the essence of Jewish law as bridging principles that connect facts and norms in an “if-then” structure, similar to logic, which deals with deriving conclusions from premises rather than with the truth of the premises themselves. He argues that Torah is not facts but norm, and that the holiness lies neither in the facts nor in the practical outcome, but in the bridging rule itself. He compares this to the naturalistic fallacy of deriving an “ought” from an “is,” and presents the need for a bridging principle to justify the move from fact to judgment. He places the focus of disagreement generally in the bridging principles rather than in the facts, similar to aesthetics, where the argument is whether “what is white is beautiful,” not whether the wall is white.

Modesty as a cultural and local norm

The author argues that Jewish law has its own value world, but in the context of modesty, halakha does not have very much to say about the factual-cultural question of what is perceived as modest, because that depends on place, time, and habits of looking. He states that when something is perceived as immodest, halakha expects it not to be done, but the content of what counts as “immodest” changes between communities such as Bnei Brak and Bar-Ilan. He describes head covering as a halakha derived from the verse “and he shall uncover the woman’s head,” while at the same time noting historically that there were God-fearing communities in which women did not cover their hair, in sixteenth-century Italy and among the wives of yeshiva heads in Lithuania. He raises the issue of wigs, the attribution in Chabad of the directive to the Rebbe, and the dispute over whether the prohibition is formal or part of the laws of modesty, and he connects this to purposive as opposed to formal interpretation.

The Ritva’s source and dependence on personal circumstances

The author cites the Ritva’s language that “everything depends on what a person knows about himself,” and presents a distinction between someone who needs distance from temptation and someone whose impulse is subdued and under his control. He concludes that we are not dealing here with uniform absolute determinations, but with dependence on circumstances—especially on whether something arouses forbidden thoughts. He sharpens the point that one should not be lenient except for a great pietist who truly knows his own inclination.

Distant reality and the inability to issue a ruling

The author describes situations in which a halakhic decisor who does not live the situation is incapable of really understanding it, and therefore cannot rule on it, even if he fully masters the sources. He gives the example of a “Zoom prayer quorum” as a real space for someone who lives in the digital world, and argues that our concepts of space have changed, so that a “site” and a “room” on Zoom are real places and not merely borrowed language. He brings the story of the rabbi of Gibraltar from the Kovno Ghetto, as cited in articles in Yated Ne’eman, where it was argued that there is no ownership of property in the ghetto, and therefore the ordinary categories of monetary law are irrelevant. He presents this as a case in which reality is so different that ruling from the outside is impossible. He also brings the example of the Binding of Isaac and God’s revelation to Abraham to show that there are experiences that cannot be explained to someone who has not lived them—like explaining sight to someone blind from birth.

Changes in halakhic concepts in modern reality

The author argues that a city has ceased to be a geographic concept in the age of modern transportation, and therefore concepts such as “local custom” have weakened while concepts such as “ancestral custom” have grown stronger. He cites Maimonides’ ruling on “do not form factions” with respect to two synagogues in one city, and argues that reality has changed so that the application of “city” is different. He suggests that even categories of labor, such as selecting, may receive new applications in technological reality—for example, sorting information on Google as a process resembling selection.

Prophecy and Jewish law

The author emphasizes the principle “it is not in heaven” and “a prophet is not permitted from now on to introduce anything new,” and states that a prophet has no halakhic standing in the era of the Oral Torah and the halakha as we possess it. He notes that the prophets of Israel warned about matters of morality as well as halakhic matters such as the Sabbatical year, but argues that this question does not directly touch the framework of his own argument.

Value change and extreme cases of “it just doesn’t fit”

The author distinguishes between a factual change that leads to a different application of the same bridging principle and a value change that proposes a different bridging principle, and he argues that in principle a value change is not legitimate in halakha. Even so, he presents extreme cases in which it is argued that a certain halakha simply cannot be applied today, and he calls this “it just doesn’t fit,” even without any orderly mechanism of permission. He gives as an example the destruction of idolatry and the claim that this is not done today—sometimes on grounds of pikuach nefesh and sometimes because of moral and practical unacceptability in the current world—and he raises the question of the parallel between what people would do to Jews and what would be demanded toward non-Jews.

Secular courts, religious courts, and Haredi pragmatism

The author presents the prohibition of turning to secular courts as very severe, and describes the dispute over the status of the courts in the State of Israel, while rejecting attempts to permit them on the grounds that the judges are Jews. He argues that in practice everyone goes to court, including many Haredim who study law, and he explains this in terms of Haredi pragmatism as against Hardal ideologies. He gives the example of the Leah Shakdiel Supreme Court case concerning women on religious councils, and describes how a prohibition once regarded as “one must die rather than transgress” effectively became permitted when the constellation changed, including a case in Yeruham where Haredim sent a secular woman representative to the religious council for the sake of cooperation. He presents his conclusion that the halakhic decisors are right that the prohibition exists, and the judges are right that it is impossible to uphold it today in a democratic society whose majority does not accept Torah law, and therefore a situation has arisen in which the halakha cannot actually be implemented in practice.

A transgression for the sake of Heaven as a model for extreme cases

The author brings the Sages’ concept that “a transgression for the sake of Heaven is greater than a commandment not for its own sake,” and illustrates it with Yael, the wife of Hever the Kenite, who slept with Sisera in order to save Israel, and with Lot’s daughters, who slept with their father because they believed there was no man left on earth. He argues that there is no halakhic clause here that permits the act; rather, it is an on-the-ground decision in an extreme situation in which the halakha cannot be implemented. He uses this to explain why in certain modern situations people act contrary to formal halakha מתוך a sense of necessity, such as suing in court when the other side refuses a religious court, and creating a situation of lawlessness toward a public that will not turn to secular courts.

Religious courts for monetary law, arbitration, and a contempt notice

The author argues that in practice religious courts for monetary cases function as arbitrators by force of the Arbitration Law, and he presents a case in which they refused to adjudicate according to Torah law and preferred compromise, while requiring a signature accepting their decision “whether according to law or in error.” He cites, in the name of Nadav Shnerb, a case in which a religious court issued a contempt notice against someone who insisted on receiving Torah law after they had refused to judge that way, and he concludes that using a contempt notice in such a case distorts its original purpose. He explains that the reason for requiring the signature is fear that judges may be sued for an erroneous ruling, and argues that on the basis of this reality, the claim that it is forbidden to go to secular courts becomes unrealistic.

Experts, facts, and value judgments in halakhic rulings

The author describes a two-stage model in which the expert determines facts and the halakhic decisor applies the law, such as a doctor evaluating danger regarding fasting on Yom Kippur, but he argues that the distinction is not simple because even within “fact” there is a value component. He compares two cases: rabbis ruling on territorial concessions as a matter of pikuach nefesh, and a ruling that someone who drives above the speed limit commits a halakhic transgression, and he argues that the accepted view is the opposite of what is correct. He explains that an expert can draw a “risk graph,” but cannot determine where to set the cutoff or what counts as “dangerous,” because that depends on a value definition of an acceptable level of risk. Therefore, the legal speed limit does not automatically translate from civil law into halakha. He argues that from this it follows that rabbis really can determine whether territorial concessions fall under pikuach nefesh after receiving a description of the risks, because the value cutoff is part of the halakhic ruling and not a scientific one.

The limits of expertise: illness, abortion, and human identity

The author argues that there are almost no public disputes that an expert can truly decide, because the disagreement usually rests on value definitions rather than on data. He brings the debate over whether homosexuality is an illness, and argues that the question is not scientific but depends on the value definition of “illness.” He cites a dispute with doctors about abortion committees, and argues that doctors can provide data about fetal development but are not authorized to decide which functions make it a “human being,” because that is a value judgment. He adds that even when experts disagree, the deciding authority is the judge or the dayan, not because he is more expert, but because that is his mandate—to decide between conflicting opinions.

Okay, so until now we’ve been talking about the relation to changes in Jewish law, and I said that Jewish law is always structured in such a way that you determine factual circumstances. The facts are such-and-such, and on those facts a halakhic norm applies. Let’s say this thing counts as selecting, and selecting is forbidden on the Sabbath. Now, to determine whether this is selecting or not, you have to look at reality. Or in a religious court, you have to determine: did so-and-so steal from so-and-so, or did he not steal from him? That’s a factual determination. On that there is a norm: it’s forbidden, or he has to pay back what he stole, and so on. Every halakhic determination basically applies to a certain factual situation, a given factual situation. And the claim I wanted to make is that when the facts change, then the change in the norm is not a change in Jewish law. Because when the facts are different, the norm that applies to those facts is, naturally, different. But that’s not because I changed the Jewish law; it’s simply that the facts changed. Yes, we talked for example about what? Fish and meat. Fish and meat isn’t exactly that the facts changed, but rather that we came to understand anew the facts that were always true. But yes, if there’s no danger in it, if we assume there’s no danger in it, then there was never any danger in it. It’s not that suddenly the nature of the world changed now. It’s just that once they thought there was, and today we think there isn’t. And right now I’m talking about change. No, I didn’t understand what you’re claiming—that there are no facts? What? That the fact is determined more by impression? No, the fact is determined by reality. Whether we perceive reality correctly or incorrectly is another matter. But facts are first of all what is actually true in reality. That’s called a fact. Now we have to discuss whether we correctly grasped reality or not. The role of a halakhic decisor or of a religious court, through the force of witnesses and evidence, is first of all to determine what reality is. After determining what reality is, you have to determine what the Jewish law is that applies to that factual situation. Of course, a religious court or a halakhic decisor may make a mistake and not grasp reality correctly. But from there to saying there is no reality and it’s all just human determination—that seems to me a very long way. Yes, from the Talmudic text, that lice are generated from sweat and therefore they don’t really have… Yes, but again, again, that’s the same example he gave. It’s not a change in reality. It’s a change in our knowledge of reality. Today, according to what we know today, lice back then too were born the way animals are born. They didn’t understand reality correctly then. I’m talking about a situation where reality changed. That’s not called a change in Jewish law. I talked about that last time, when the discussion was about the idea that if Jewish law was originally established on the basis of a mistaken factual assumption, then the law is void, and in my opinion the law is void and you don’t need mechanisms of change at all—all the things we talked about, a religious court greater in wisdom and number, something enacted by vote needing another vote to permit it—all that doesn’t exist there, because from the outset the determination itself was rooted in error. I’m talking about a situation where there really was a change in reality. And as a result of that change, the Jewish law changes. How does that fit with “when the reason lapses, the enactment does not lapse”? What do you mean? Right, there’s this idea where people say, let’s say—we talked about this. So? Well? Were you there? Are you talking about the earlier cases, lice and things like that? That’s not “when the reason lapses, the enactment does not lapse”; the reason was never true in the first place. “When the reason lapses, the enactment does not lapse” refers to a situation where the reason was true, but reality changed and now the reason no longer exists. Fine. Well, surely there are people who would say—here, please… Fine, we talked about that last time. Various people will say various things, but it doesn’t sound reasonable to me. In any case, we already discussed that. I want to go back for a moment to the basic point. I said—I described Jewish law, if you remember, the presumption that a person does not repay within the term, or the discussion of women’s eligibility for testimony. And I said that there are situations in which, because reality has changed, the proper application of Jewish law in the new reality should be different from what it was then, and that is the true continuation. Meaning, whoever continues the law as it was then is actually the one who is changing it. Remember the swimsuits? Whoever goes around in a swimsuit in cold weather, according to the mindset of the so-called midrashic conservative, is actually the offender, because he is not doing what the law says. The law says you should wear clothing appropriate to the weather. Okay? Same thing. If, say, Jewish law establishes the presumption that a person does not repay within the term, and today let’s say reality has changed and people do repay within the term, fine, because there is interest, business arrangements, and so on—people do repay within the term. Should we keep saying, no, no, there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the term because that’s in the Talmudic text and you can’t change Jewish law? Of course not. What was that referring to? To a certain factual situation in which people did not repay within the term. Today the situation is different; people do repay within the term. There’s no holiness in that presumption. Okay? So too with women’s eligibility. Today women are educated, involved in the marketplace, in economics, and so on, so the claim is that one can deem them eligible for testimony. A claim that can be made. It can even come straight out of the Talmudic text on these issues. So I’m saying—I explained there that I bring this as an example; I’m not claiming that today the law really should be different. But the argument proposing to change the law is actually not talking about a real change in the law. It’s talking about applying the same law in different factual circumstances. Okay? And what this really means is that when we go back for a moment to the example—I think I talked about this—let’s go back for a moment to the example of the presumption that a person does not repay within the term. So let’s say that today the reality is that people do repay within the term. Okay? Can I tear page 5 out of tractate Bava Batra and throw it in the trash? It’s irrelevant—a page that teaches me there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the term. The red heifer isn’t relevant. Fine, but that’s not correct: the red heifer can’t be applied today, but that case is just talking about a reality that’s not relevant. Relevant today. No, no. It could be that in twenty years it will become relevant again, or in the messianic era it will become relevant again. Ah, you’re saying we learn it only because maybe the situation will return. I claim no. If you ask why we learn it—is it only because maybe the situation will return? No, we learn it because that is the law. It’s a true law, unrelated to whether the red heifer returns or not. And we learn it because Torah study is for knowing what the Torah says, not only for implementation. But here the question is whether we’re not just learning some nonsense that is no longer relevant. So the claim is as follows—I think I mentioned this somewhat—the claim is this: what is that passage in Bava Batra really coming to teach us? Is it coming to teach us the presumption that a person does not repay within the term? Obviously not. That is a factual matter. There’s no holiness in that; Torah is not facts. Torah is norm. The Talmudic text is not coming to teach us the psychological facts that a person does not repay within the term. You want to study psychology? There’s a department here—go study psychology. You want to check what reality is today, whether people do repay within the term or not? Go to a polling institute and have them examine whether people do or don’t repay within the term. We have straightforward ways of trying to check factual reality. Careful Talmudic analysis is not one of them. We are not supposed to analyze Talmudic text in order to know what the facts are. To know what the facts are, you simply check—see what the facts are. Go to professionals, do a survey, look myself, whatever—but it is not by looking in the Talmudic text. The Talmudic text is not a source for knowing what the facts are. So what do we learn there? I heard a joke—want a short joke? Sure. Some woman comes to a rebbe and says, “Rebbe, my husband left me, I don’t know what to do.” The rebbe opens the holy books and says, “Wait a moment,” studies, studies, numerical values, hints—“Don’t worry, within a week he’ll come back.” She leaves the rebbe happy. The rebbe’s attendant comes and says, “Listen, no—he’s not coming back.” He leaves, and says to him, “How can you tell her such a thing?” A week later, same thing, husband doesn’t come back. “Rebbe, Rebbe, my husband left me, you told me he’d come back.” Again he looks in the holy books and says, “Don’t worry, within a week he’ll come back.” The attendant comes, after she leaves the rebbe, and says to her, “Listen, no—he’s not coming back.” She gets upset, goes into the rebbe, and says, “Rebbe, how can it be that you tell me my husband will come back, and your attendant tells me he won’t?” Then the rebbe looks at the attendant and says, “Nu, answer her—how are you arguing with me?” The rebbe says to her: “You’re looking at the books; I’m looking at her.” That’s the joke. Anyway, so the claim is: what is the Talmudic text actually coming to teach us? It’s not coming to teach us the fact that a person does not repay within the term. Facts—you simply look outside and see what the facts are. What is it coming to teach? It’s coming to teach that if there is some factual presumption, that can change procedural law—who bears the burden of proof. Suppose you claim that I owe you money: I borrowed money from you a week ago, and now you come and claim money from me, and I say, “I repaid you.” Only a week passed, and an unspecified loan term is thirty days, so in effect I’m saying I repaid within the term. The Talmudic text says there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the term; apparently you did not repay, unless you bring proof—bring witnesses that you repaid, and fine. If you don’t bring proof, you’ll have to pay. Meaning, the burden of proof is on you. Now the general rule in principle is that the burden of proof rests on the claimant. You want the money from me, not I from you. If you want money from me, you have to bring the evidence. What is the Talmudic text teaching us? That if there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the term, that can reverse the burden of proof. Instead of the claimant having to bring evidence, the possessor—the defendant—has to bring the evidence. That is what the Talmudic text teaches us. It does not teach the presumption that a person does not repay within the term; rather, it says: look, examine reality. There are situations in which, if you conclude that there is a factual presumption, that can change procedural law and place the burden of proof on the defendant instead of on the claimant. That always remains. It doesn’t change. That is the Jewish law learned from that passage there. In that case, the presumption they discussed was the one that was true in their time—that a person does not repay within the term. But it could be any other presumption; it doesn’t matter at all. What matters from the standpoint of the Talmudic text is the norm built on the presumption, not the presumption itself. The presumption itself has no holiness. It’s not part of Jewish law. A presumption is facts; you have to check what the facts are. Jewish law says that assuming there is such a presumption, the burden of proof can pass from the claimant to the defendant. And that is a determination unrelated to the facts; it is a normative determination, right? It is a halakhic determination. It is not a factual determination, and it will not change. What will change is the presumption. And each time, if the presumption is that I don’t repay within the term, then it means the burden of proof is on me. If the presumption suddenly flips and I do repay within the term, the burden of proof will be on you. Is that a change in Jewish law? No. It’s the same law applied to a changed reality. Because Jewish law says neither the fact that a person does not repay within the term nor the fact that the burden of proof is on me. It says neither one nor the other. Jewish law states the if-then. If there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the term, then the burden of proof is on me. Try for a moment to think about a logical argument. Okay, let’s think for a moment about a logical argument. A logical argument is basically built like this: all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Okay? Is the conclusion true? If the logical argument is valid, then the conclusion will be true if the premises are true. That means I cannot say the conclusion is true by force of the logical argument alone. I also cannot say the premises are true by force of the logical argument. What does the logical argument say? Only that if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. Now you decide: if the premises are true in your eyes, then you also have to accept the conclusion. If the premises are not true, don’t accept the conclusion. So notice: there are premises, there is a conclusion, and there is an argument that deals with the derivation of the conclusion from the premises—with the if-then. If the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. Logic deals neither with the premises nor with the conclusion. It deals only with the if-then, right? Same with Jewish law. Jewish law too deals neither with the factual premises nor with the normative halakhic conclusion. Jewish law deals only with the if-then. If the presumption is such-and-such, then the burden of proof is such-and-such. If the presumption is different, then the burden of proof is such-and-such. Therefore the premises are not holy, and the conclusion is not holy either. The premises are not Torah; they are facts. And the conclusion is not Torah either; it is a result of the facts. Torah is only the if-then: if the presumption is such-and-such, then the burden of proof is such-and-such. Now if you remember, I talked about the naturalistic fallacy, the fallacy of deriving an ought from an is. The ought is what should be, and the is is what exists. Yes? If this wall is white, conclusion: this wall is beautiful. That is an invalid argument, because the fact that this wall is white is a fact, while saying that this wall is beautiful is a judgment. A judgment does not follow from a fact—not an aesthetic judgment and not an ethical judgment. For that judgment to be valid, what do we need to add? We need to add a norm? A bridging principle, not a norm, but a bridging principle. A principle that says that if the fact is that the wall is white, then the proper judgment is that this wall is beautiful. If I add that premise, then there’s no problem. This wall is white; something white is beautiful; from those two premises I can infer that this wall is beautiful. But from the premise that this wall is white, from the fact alone, I cannot infer the conclusion that this wall is beautiful. That means that from facts you cannot derive a judgment—not aesthetic, not ethical, not halakhic, nothing. One second, Rabbi, a question. If I understood correctly, “something white… beautiful”—isn’t that called a normative judgment? Basically, you can call it a judgment. That’s a semantic question. I call it a bridging principle, something that ties the facts—its being white—to the norm—its being beautiful. Okay? An if-then. I didn’t say that this wall is beautiful. I said that if something is white, then it is beautiful. That’s all. Now, the claim is that I can prove the judgment only if, in addition to facts, my premises also include a bridging principle. A principle that connects the facts to the judgment or to the norm. Okay? In Jewish law too, that’s how it works. Therefore, if you look at the philosophical field called aesthetics, aesthetics does not deal with the question of whether this wall is white. That’s a fact. Physics deals with that. Okay? Nor does it deal with the question of whether this wall is beautiful. It deals with the question whether what is white is beautiful—with the bridging principle. The applications—once it’s white, I’ll judge that it’s beautiful—that is the result of aesthetics. Okay? But that has underlying assumptions. Right. That’s a fact—you called it an underlying assumption, what is it? Yes, yes, of course. But if the underlying assumptions are only facts, you cannot derive judgments from them—not norms, not aesthetics, not ethics, not Jewish law, not law in general, nothing. You cannot derive norms from facts or judgments from facts. In order to derive them, you need a bridging principle. Now the essence of the argument always lies in the bridging principle. Usually there is no dispute that this wall is white. Fact—look and see. The dispute is only over whether what is white is beautiful. Suppose someone argues with you about whether this wall is beautiful. Your argument usually will not be on the factual plane. Your argument will be on the plane of the bridging principle, and the essence of aesthetics lies in the bridging principle, not in the facts. If there is a dispute in aesthetics, the dispute is not over facts. It is over the bridging principles. The same is true in logic. Logic speaks about the bridging principle: if this is true, then that is true. Okay? Jewish law too works that way. Jewish law deals neither with the facts nor with the norm. It deals with a bridging principle, or bridging principles, that say: if the facts are such-and-such, then the norm that applies is this norm. If the facts are such-and-such, then the norm that applies is that norm. This function that transfers me from facts to norms—that is Jewish law. I think Jewish law also has some sort of value arsenal that it uses. That is, there are some underlying assumptions that Jewish law presupposes—for example, the very fact that modesty is an important thing. You looked at that in connection with putting up a partition in a hospital. But this principle that modesty is important is also a bridging principle. That means, if there is a situation that is not modest, then the halakhic ruling about it will be that it is forbidden. Yes, but I’m saying—go to all sorts of people and they’ll tell you, no, modesty is not important. Jewish law already has its own value-world. I didn’t say Jewish law has nothing to say. I said that what Jewish law says is always bridging principles. Jewish law, for example, in the context of modesty—and that’s an excellent example—in my view, the correct approach is that Jewish law doesn’t have very much to say about the question whether a certain situation is modest or not. That is a question of norms, a question of what is customary in a given place, of place and time and forms of perception, and so on. But if something is not modest, Jewish law expects you not to do it, not to go around that way. That is the if-then. In other words, Jewish law deals with the bridging principle, not with the premises and conclusions separately. But if that really becomes the practice—say today it’s normal for women to go around in a sleeveless top and shorts. So I’m saying—what does “normal” mean? If it is perceived as something—it’s not a question of majority and minority, it’s a question of what is perceived as normative, reasonable, something that does not provoke problematic thoughts. If so, then yes, then it wouldn’t be a problem. If you go today to a clinic or a hospital, they go around in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, I mean. Okay, and therefore what is the conclusion? First of all, who says female doctors in a hospital are necessarily modest? And second, what exactly is wrong with jeans and a short-sleeved shirt? I know that in the religious community women don’t go around in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. What are you saying? Not in the religious community. I don’t know—if we had been talking thirty years ago, maybe you would have been right. Today that’s really not the case anymore. You see at Bar-Ilan a woman with head covering walking around in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. And it will be entirely normative. And that’s at Bar-Ilan we see it. In Bnei Brak you don’t see that. In Bnei Brak no, exactly. So that means that in Bnei Brak the norms are like this, and at Bar-Ilan the norms are like that. And that doesn’t necessarily—and that is exactly what I want to argue—that doesn’t necessarily mean that one of them is okay and the other is not okay, or vice versa. Because Jewish law is bridging principles. Jewish law says: if these are the reasonable norms—and one can discuss what “reasonable” means, it doesn’t matter—if these are the reasonable norms in that place, then… that is what Jewish law requires. And if there is another place where the reasonable norms are different, then Jewish law there will require something else, like with swimsuits, like with swimsuits. So in principle—what? Yes, except for her. Okay. It’s just interesting because I hadn’t thought of that. Fine, there are many things people haven’t thought of—that’s why we’re here. Yes. Does this mean that the prophets who arose among and toward the end of Israel were warning about Jewish law, or just about moral cases? Why is that connected to what I’m saying now? The prophets of Israel repeatedly warned a great deal about morality. Does Jewish law… Not always about morality; sometimes they also warned about halakhic matters, the Sabbatical year, various things. What? Theft, yes. Not only morality, but why is that relevant to us? I didn’t understand. Meaning, can this framework, from what I hear you saying, include all the laws within the words of the prophets? On the contrary—the rule is that “it is not in heaven,” and a prophet has no authority to introduce anything new from now on. Laws that a prophet introduces have no force. In the period of prophecy there were other things. In the period of the Oral Torah, in the Jewish law that is in our hands, a prophet has no halakhic standing. Fine, I don’t think that relates to what I’m saying in any case. The claim, in the end, is that just as in logic, so too in Jewish law, the essence of Jewish law is bridging principles, and usually bridging principles are bridges between facts and norms. Those are the bridging principles. Meaning: facts—check, ask whoever understands the facts. The norms are the result of applying the bridging principles to the facts as you have determined them. Therefore, the essence of halakhic discussion is about the bridging principles. And therefore many times, when we look at someone who applies Jewish law differently, we immediately say, wow, he changed Jewish law. No, he didn’t change Jewish law; he changed the bottom line. And you have to check: if reality changed, then changing the bottom line is the continuation of Jewish law; it is not a change in Jewish law. Whoever leaves the law as it was in a different reality is the one who changed the law. Because applying the same bridging principle to a different reality will give you a different result. If you keep the same result—with the swimsuit—when you also remain in a cold place, then you are violating Jewish law. There is a very different perspective here on what Jewish law is altogether. Jewish law is not a collection of rulings about what is permitted and forbidden to do; Jewish law is a kind of pair of glasses. When I look at reality, then once there is a defined reality, the glasses tell me: okay, what does Jewish law say about this reality? But what is the reality? Check. Every place, every time—check what the reality is. I am not supposed to learn that from the Talmudic text or from halakhic decisors or from anyone else. But we do have Jewish law—how is it right to walk? How is it right to walk, yes—to walk normatively, how should one walk normatively, yes. And that applies to all the commandments, all the laws? I think in principle it is always true. What about the Sabbath? The Sabbath too is the same; there are bridging principles. What’s the problem? If you see that something is selecting, then it will be forbidden on the Sabbath. What counts as selecting? I don’t know—you have to check the facts of what is called selecting. That does not mean that if there are norms for selecting then it becomes permitted, because there it doesn’t depend on norms; it’s not like modesty. You only have to check whether there is really a concept of selecting here. It’s not connected to norms; the question whether you are selecting or not selecting is a factual question, not a normative one. Modesty is a concept that is cultural in its essence; in different cultures it can take on a different meaning. But selecting or not selecting is a factual question—either you selected or you didn’t select. If the Torah had written in a very, very simple way exactly where the elbow line passes and that’s that, then there would be no room for… Right, but it didn’t write that. But it also didn’t write about selecting. What? It also didn’t write about selecting. Doesn’t matter, but it doesn’t depend on norms. It’s interpretation. If it’s not written, then it’s interpretation, but the interpretation isn’t connected to the factual question. You can say the interpretation purports to be factual in the sense that if a person says that selecting is such-and-such and not something else… Right, but that deals on the factual plane. Here it won’t be relevant to say that in another place such a thing isn’t called selecting. In most contexts, an argument of that type won’t be relevant. Selecting is selecting. Though incidentally, there are marginal situations where it could be. For example, I’ll just give you an example. Say—I think we talked about this—the prohibition “do not form separate factions.” According to Jewish law, Maimonides rules—there’s a dispute between Abaye and Rava, but Maimonides rules Jewish law that two synagogues in one city are forbidden. It is forbidden to have two synagogues in one city. Do you know of a city that doesn’t have two synagogues, or even more? No. So how does that fit with Jewish law? Because reality today is such that a city is not a geographical concept. In our world there is no—once the world was such that there were no cars, no planes, traveling from place to place was a big deal, and it wasn’t—people were born and died in the same place, they and their children and grandchildren. There were of course people who moved, but the world was static. Today, you get on a bus in the morning, tomorrow morning you wake up in Eilat. What do you mean tomorrow morning? In a few hours you’re in Eilat. By plane, in an hour you’re in Eilat. Okay? Australia, come back. It’s a completely different world. In such a world, it is not correct to treat a city as a geographical concept. It’s simply not the right category. Therefore, for example, custom today is not the custom of the place as it once was. Today custom is ancestral custom. What our ancestors had, where they came from—that determines our customs. Why? Because place today is not relevant. Today I’m in Tel Aviv, tomorrow morning I move to Petah Tikva, Jerusalem, or Eilat. Place has stopped playing a role. Now, nobody said this explicitly; it just happens. But that is the case. I’ll give you another example of concepts changing with circumstances. I think we talked about joining a quorum. I claim that you can pray with a quorum on Zoom. On Zoom? Yes. Ten people on Zoom, little boxes like that, gallery view—you can pray with a quorum. One will lead and nine will answer amen, everything is fine. This does not meet the criteria of the Shulchan Arukh. According to the criteria of the Shulchan Arukh, they need to be under the same roof, see each other, or at least some see some. The Shulchan Arukh didn’t have the internet. Obviously, it didn’t. Now what do we do with that? Our concepts of space are different concepts. For us today, it’s called a site, right, on the internet. But it really is a site. Someone who lives in this world—in Bnei Brak not, and rightly so incidentally, because they genuinely do not live in this world. But someone who lives in this world understands that when you meet with people on Zoom, that is what once was called a meeting. That’s how people meet. What’s the problem? It is a meeting like any other meeting. Therefore we are in the same site, meaning in the same place. We are praying in the same place. All ten are in the same place. Tell me—is that a borrowed use of the word “place”? No. It is a real use of the word “place.” Physical place is only one example. Today there are many spaces. There is physical space, there is virtual space, there are all kinds of spaces. And that is perfectly fine. If you live in a world where that is your space, then you pray with a quorum in your space. Everyone is in the same room. There are even rooms in Zoom. You can be in this room and in another room, in the same room but in separate breakout rooms—you need to be in the same Zoom room in order to pray with a quorum. Understood? Now this is not a change that people in the past could even have thought about. If you had once asked people whether the laws of quorum could change—now I remember, like with selecting—they would have told you no. Either you are in the same place or you are not. What does this have to do with customs? It’s not like modesty. Either you are in the same place or not. Sometimes there is a situation—so therefore today I can think that doing labor that once would have been considered selecting perhaps today is not selecting, or the opposite. For example, today selecting pieces of information from all the information available on Google—could one say that that too is selecting? It could be yes. I don’t know. You are sorting; a program that sorts items. Would that violate the prohibition of selecting? Maybe yes. So here is an example that even perhaps the very concept of selecting can change with circumstances. But those are really extreme cases. With modesty, that’s built into the meaning of the concept. There is a Ritva at the end of tractate Kiddushin. The Ritva talks about modesty. Let’s look at it. The final Ritva on Kiddushin. Head covering isn’t connected to modesty, right? Head covering is a law learned explicitly from the Torah. Whether we call it modesty or not modesty, one can debate. Head covering from the Torah? The Talmudic text learns it from “and he shall uncover the woman’s head.” Again, the derivation—not trivial, but that’s what it says. The Talmudic text learns it. But if you say what kind of reality was there once—even men covered their heads, and certainly women. Meaning, if just everywhere—there are places that always… By the way, there were Jewish communities throughout history in which women did not cover their heads. In Italy in the sixteenth century women did not cover their heads—God-fearing women who observed all of Jewish law and did not cover their heads. Wives of yeshiva heads in Lithuania did not cover their heads. Great famous yeshiva heads, the most famous names you’ve heard—some of their wives did not cover their heads. Yes. Apparently there they somehow understood it was not a requirement of modesty, even though on the face of it it doesn’t seem dependent on custom, but there were some who understood that it was. When people want, what’s called, to cut corners, you say there’s that case. When people want to permit something, they can permit it easily. Things are more flexible than people usually present them. You have to live the situation. Maybe, maybe that also connects to our subject; I talked about this when we were elsewhere. There are situations in which—maybe I’ll talk about it a little now. There was, for example, a story in Chabad that the rebbe said not to wear a head covering but to wear a wig, so that women would not be embarrassed to go around with head covering—but in practice, if in terms of modesty it looks like real hair, then what exactly have we achieved? That’s a question. You know this too—that wigs once, by the way, were what’s called mere appearance; they really looked good. Meaning, in terms of modesty—so what exactly did we do? It’s hard to see this, but they try anyway. Some say the wig shouldn’t look like real hair and so on. It depends: if you understand it as a formal prohibition, then it can look like real hair. If it’s part of the laws of modesty, then it is more problematic. If you understand it as a formal prohibition—one may not see a woman’s hair. I’m not seeing a woman’s hair, I’m seeing other hair. Nu, it depends how you understand that prohibition. However you want? Not however you want. It’s just a different interpretation. Not however you want—it’s not that you do whatever you want; you do what seems reasonable to you. I don’t know—look at the passages, see, I don’t know, there are interpretive considerations that can be raised this way and that way. How is it really built—on the purpose of the law, right? That’s the question, whether one uses purposive interpretation or not. Big question. “Everything depends on one’s view of heaven”—you see, that’s the Ritva. “And so is the law, that everything depends on how a person knows himself. If it is fitting for him to make a fence for his inclination, he should do so, and even to look at the colored garments of a woman is forbidden, as stated in tractate Avodah Zarah. But if he knows himself, that his inclination is subdued and under his control and arouses no temptation at all, he may look and speak with nakedness and greet a married woman.” Yes, “and that is the case of Rabbi Yohanan, who sat at the gates of immersion and was not concerned about evil inclination.” He brings all kinds of examples. Fine? “But it is not proper to be lenient in this except for a great saint who knows his inclination, and not all Torah scholars may trust their inclinations.” But in principle, it depends on the circumstances. Meaning, if this thing arouses forbidden thoughts in you, then it is forbidden, and if not, then not. So there are no absolute determinations that are always true. Just regarding what you asked. Anyway, back to our subject. I began talking about the fact that there are situations in which the state of affairs is so different from what I know that it is not right, from my point of view, for me to express a halakhic position about it. I’ll give you an example. I wrote an article about this—two articles, actually. There was a story—I once read in Yated Ne’eman, a series of articles. Yated Ne’eman is the newspaper of the Lithuanian Haredim, yes. There was a series of articles there about a Jew named Rabbi Gibraltar, who was in the Kovno ghetto during the Holocaust. There were several rabbis there, several Torah scholars. He had a special method—this is how his son wrote in the articles. He had a special method: according to his view, there was no property ownership in the ghetto. He argued that there were no monetary laws in the ghetto; there was no property ownership. Once, once… Yes, there was some lecture there opposite the Holocaust. Exactly, good. If so, then I’ll shorten it indeed. The claim there was that there was some situation there so different from anything I know that the ordinary halakhic categories that I apply to that situation are irrelevant. I simply do not understand what a person experiences in that situation. I feel so far from it, and because of that I cannot issue a halakhic ruling about such a situation. That is basically the claim. It’s somewhat like what I said earlier about a quorum on Zoom. Someone who has never lived in the world of the internet—you ask a halakhic decisor about such a thing, he looks at you like you’re crazy. What do you mean, joining a quorum when you’re in Australia and he’s in Indonesia and that one is in Los Angeles? You have to be in the same place. No—we are in the same place. Here, look, there’s a frame and everyone is in the same place in the Zoom meeting. Yes, he’ll look at you like you’re crazy because he doesn’t know it, he doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. And even if you tell him and explain to him, “look, we all meet and see all of ourselves in the image,” he doesn’t really understand it. A person who does not live the situation does not really understand that this is how a meeting is conducted today. Today people don’t travel to one another; today they meet on Zoom. Someone who lives that reality—you can tell him to join a quorum on Zoom. A halakhic decisor who does not live the situation—even if you explain it to him, it makes no difference. He doesn’t know what you’re talking about, and obviously he will not permit joining a quorum on Zoom. And there were probably more examples there, if we talked about this—I don’t remember anymore—but I surely brought other examples there, yes, about Abraham with the binding. Yes, yes, Rabbi Chaim. Yes, the binding—you don’t know. The Holy One appears to you, and people ask Abraham: why did you believe it? Why didn’t you think it was just some possession that entered you? Who told you it was the Holy One? If you experienced a divine revelation in which the Holy One came and told you such-and-such, you would understand there is no doubt, obviously it’s the Holy One. I never experienced that, so from here I ask Abraham our forefather: tell me, who told you it was real? Maybe it was just some hallucination? A good question from my point of view. Why? Because I have never experienced the state of a prophet to whom the Holy One appears. Like a person blind from birth who has never experienced a state in which I see. So he asks me: you see? So what—maybe that’s an illusion? Here one could still ask that even about Abraham our forefather. Even if God appeared to him several times, how was he sure this time that it was God? It could be that previous times too were fake. Right, I said you can ask that. And what would he answer you? Yes, but it could be previous times too. I understand. What would Abraham our forefather answer you? If you ask him that as well about previous times, what would he answer? “I feel that it is obvious to me that it is true,” that’s all. Exactly. And maybe he was living entirely in an illusion; anything is possible. Maybe we too are living in illusions and everything we see never was. Fine, those are skeptical questions. But to me it is clear that this is not true. Now if the blind person asks me, I won’t have any way to explain to him why that is so, because he has never experienced it in his life. And people who have experienced it usually feel as I do. Because it is obvious. Meaning there are things, there are situations, where if you haven’t lived them, you don’t understand what they mean. You cannot discuss them academically. People will explain to you what happens there and then you will discuss what the Jewish law is. No—there are situations where, if you haven’t lived them, you cannot issue a halakhic ruling about them, because you don’t understand what one really needs to do in such a situation, okay? Even though you fully command all the depths of Jewish law, and you know all the sources and everything, everything—you are a tremendous Torah scholar—but you do not understand what reality means, and therefore you cannot issue a halakhic ruling about it. Now these stories—the experiences of every halakhic decisor and so on—meaning, if that thing is within the reasonable range around your reality, no decisor experiences exactly what I experience, right? Every person experiences the world differently. But where it still belongs to a space accessible to you, your relevant experiential world, you can issue a ruling even if it isn’t me. I can explain to you exactly what I feel and what it means for me and so on, and you will issue the halakhic ruling. But where I cannot convey it to you if you haven’t lived it—where it is simply so far from your experiential world that it cannot be transferred by explanation—in such a situation, you cannot issue a halakhic ruling. Now the rabbi has to be wise enough to assess when this is a situation where, if it is explained to him, he can understand it, and when this is a situation where even if it is explained to him, it won’t help. Okay? And many times you hear rulings from various rabbis about modern situations like these that they do not really understand, and it is obvious to everyone that this is a detached ruling. This rabbi simply does not understand that this is a situation far from his own conceptual world; he does not really understand what is happening there. Therefore he is not supposed to express a view. He can, say, have the rabbi of that place consult with that decisor, so that he can guide him, say pay attention to this point, pay attention to that point—but in the end, the decision has to be made by the one who lives the situation. He has to make the decision. Fine, we talked about that then, so I won’t get into it here, but it connects to the claim I made earlier that you need to understand reality in order to issue a halakhic ruling about it. And sometimes, as a result, a situation can arise in which you cannot understand reality. And therefore you won’t be able to issue a halakhic ruling about it, even though you know all the halakhic books on earth. Because you don’t understand which bridging principle to apply, or how to apply the bridging principles to this reality, because you don’t really understand it. Fine, so that’s another remark. I want to speak for a moment about two more points. One point: what I presented until now is a situation in which a factual state changed, and as a result the Jewish law that speaks about that situation is different. Right? Because the same bridging principle, when it applies to a different factual situation, will give a different halakhic result. And that’s what we’ve talked about until now. But—and I’ll do this really briefly because it’s a somewhat delicate and complicated issue—it can be that what changed is not a fact but a value-state. Is there room for halakhic change as a result of a value-state? For example, someone might come and say: equality matters. Let’s say—or once women were ineligible for testimony, so we talked about that earlier. The factual state has changed, today they are involved in life and so on, therefore they should be deemed eligible for testimony. Now I’ll give another argument. Let’s say the halakhic factual state has not changed, but there needs to be—women’s equality is a very important value today. Therefore women should be deemed eligible for testimony because the value changed, not because reality changed. Is that a legitimate argument? In principle, no. In principle, no. Why? Because that is exactly the point—bridging principles. Here you are already touching the bridging principles themselves. You are not applying the same bridging principle to a different factual situation. You are proposing a different bridging principle. That is not possible in the halakhic context. There are edge cases in which it still can be considered. What? You understand me best. I already said that if we take a bridging principle that says the seventh day of the week should be set aside and one should do certain things on it, and I cancel that and say that the value of family allows me to drive to the beach with my family—right. So once you open that up a little… I didn’t open it. I said in principle you can’t make such an argument. Except in one case. Which case? So wait, I’ll explain. If I say that there are edge situations in which the value-state is so different that applying Jewish law as… I cannot claim that Jewish law changed. I can claim one of two things. First, it just doesn’t fit. You just can’t do such a thing. It’s not something you can do today. I’ll give you two examples. One example: what about destroying idolatry? Destroying idolatry? Yes—something that needs to be destroyed. Jewish law says to destroy, to burn every New Testament, every work of idolatry, to destroy every church or things of that kind. What are we to do in such a situation? Yes, the reality is impossible. What do you mean impossible? That’s the law. Where is the halakhic argument? In principle, in our time according to Jewish law one should do it, but what will happen if we start doing it? So I say there are two mechanisms that arise in this context. Almost all halakhic decisors say—almost all decisors say—not to do this today. But some say our hand is not strong enough, Jews will be killed as a result, danger to life, one can’t do it. And there are some who do say that the various hilltop youth and those kinds of guys—some of them have rabbis who say one should destroy. Of Torah and commandments and the seven Noahide laws and faith and so on, more or less. That’s a question, first, regarding Christianity—it’s not so simple. Many halakhic decisors say that at least Catholic Christianity and maybe Protestant Christianity too are indeed idolatry. And beyond that, even something that is not idolatry, a house of worship of another religion—many decisors say it should be destroyed even if it is not idolatry, not defined as idolatry—for example a mosque. But if they practice the seven Noahide laws in their religion? So what? They invented a religion from their own heart—so what if they practice seven Noahide laws? They worship another god or in invented ways or something like that. Fine, I’m not getting into that discussion now; one can get into that discussion. I only want to bring an example from there. So, the decisors who say not to do it—some say it’s because Jews will be killed; it’s dangerous, problematic, and so on. But one cannot ignore the argument that says—and I think at least one cannot—that this is problematic? You cannot do such a thing today. Meaning, if they did this to a synagogue, what would you say? You would protest, at the UN, cry out, howl, I don’t know what, right? So what do you want? You mean to do to non-Jews exactly the same thing? So what is your argument against them? This is the kind of argument that perhaps once would not have sounded persuasive. But today it is so basic that I think many decisors, even if they don’t say it, really mean this argument. They say yes, because Jews will be killed. So do it quietly so no one knows. Blow up that mosque or that monastery without anyone discovering who did it, quietly. Then they won’t do anything to Jews because they won’t know it was Jews. No—many decisors will say don’t do such a thing not because of concern for Jews’ lives. You don’t do such a thing. It simply does not fit. No, you can’t do such a thing in our world today. What do you mean you can’t? That’s a value change, not a factual change. The values in our world today are different from what they once were. It is not a simple factual change. It is very nontrivial to explain how such a thing works halakhically. But the fact is that there are things one simply does not do. Think, for example, about… What? Why? Why is that different from the Temple Mount? It’s not different. I’m saying in principle there too such an argument could have arisen. Good question: where do you do this and where not? How much does it really hurt? Fine, one has to discuss it. There may be another example here. You know there is a prohibition of going to secular courts. The Talmudic text says “before them and not before laymen, before them and not before non-Jews,” “these are the laws that you shall place before them”—before them means ordained Jewish judges, and not laymen, judges who are not ordained, and not non-Jews and not other legal systems and all sorts of things like that. And this is a very, very severe prohibition. Anyone who goes to an unfit judge is as if he planted an Asherah tree next to the altar, and all kinds of things like that. Okay? Now there is a big dispute about the courts in the State of Israel. What is their status in this context? They do not judge according to Jewish law. Then they say: secular courts of non-Jews. Yes, they do not judge according to Jewish law, correct. So indeed the overwhelming majority of decisors claim that basically it is forbidden to go to them; they are like secular courts of non-Jews. Not only Haredim either—even non-Haredi decisors. There are many religious judges, and there are a few decisors—but almost all major decisors do not think this way. But there are religious judges, some of them Torah scholars, who claim otherwise. Yaakov Neeman, right? Yaakov Neeman I don’t know, but there are—there was Bazak and Elon and people like that. And the claim is—for example all kinds of arguments which seem dubious to me—that after all the judges are Jews, not non-Jews. The problem is the identity of the judge, not necessarily the content of the legal system. All kinds of arguments of that type. To me these arguments do not hold water. On the other hand, everyone goes to court, right? Factually. Everyone goes to court. Forget it—declarations are one thing, actions another. One of the most amazing things that happened in recent years is that when the Haredi world opened up to academic studies, where did most Haredim who studied in academia go? Law. Law. You wouldn’t believe it. The worst thing in academia isn’t history, not physics, not mathematics, not gender studies, not psychology. Law is the worst thing there is in academia. Because Haredim are champions of practicality. Right. It’s a prohibition—if there is one thing in academia that is a prohibition. Formal. Leave aside all the other things—maybe it’s dangerous, maybe it’s not good, maybe it doesn’t fit a certain worldview. Fine, one can debate. If there is one thing that is simply forbidden in the gravest prohibition, it’s law. So why do they do it? Ah, big question. First of all, they don’t all have to be rabbis. You don’t have to be. A rabbinical advocate doesn’t have to be a lawyer. So the claim is, first of all, they are pragmatic, yes, that’s obvious. But what lies behind it? What lies behind it is that people don’t understand how pragmatic Haredim are, and how non-pragmatic Hardalim are. That is the big difference between Hardalim and Haredim. Hardalim are very ideological; with Haredim every corner can be rounded. Something that is die rather than transgress today can become entirely permitted tomorrow morning; it’s only a question of circumstance. And that also happened in Yeruham, right? What? Yes, people need therapy about… No, everyone, everyone joined in—or most did. There was, you know, the Supreme Court case of Leah Shakdiel about women on religious councils, appointing women to religious councils. Once appointing women was forbidden, and she was from Yeruham—I knew her, we were friends. She filed a petition because she wanted to be elected to the religious council and they wouldn’t allow her to submit candidacy. And there was complete consensus, by the way—not only among Haredi rabbis—complete wall-to-wall consensus that this was a severe prohibition, die rather than transgress. And on the Supreme Court sat religious judges, at least one—Elon—and others, who said: what are you talking about? Of course it is permitted and one can appoint women to religious councils. And that wasn’t on religious grounds. Right—you’re looking at the system’s considerations. Okay, and I’m not done. Wait two days and suddenly it became permitted. I was in Yeruham for many years. The Haredi community in Yeruham sent a female representative to the religious council—a secular woman—and opposed a religious man. Because she suited them better; she cooperated with them more. Where did the prohibition of die rather than transgress go? Dead. Once the Supreme Court ruled otherwise, they understood it wouldn’t work, and suddenly it became permitted. There’s… and then there’s the hesitation: whether to make this into an all-out war or whether it’s… No, I’m saying—they know how to fight… They fight not over religious principles. They never fight over religious principles. They fight over the Haredi sociological interest—only that. Nothing else. They have never gone to war over any religious principle. Nothing. Not over Sabbath desecration, not over graves, and so on. There are Haredi struggles of that kind, but it never went to the street as a mass struggle on which there is no compromise. So what about graves in Beit Shemesh? Here too they started… The question is what they do, not what they declare. What do they do? Where are the struggles over which they go out and on which they don’t compromise? Only over the Haredi sociological interest—on military conscription, on budgets, that’s it. On no religious principles are there wars. And by the way, in the non-Haredi parties there are. In the non-Haredi parties there are. Anyway, back to our subject. What I want to say is: I claim the Haredim are right. It’s not a criticism—I’m in favor of this pragmatism. Sometimes it’s excessive, but I’m in favor. The claim is basically this: the decisors are right that there is a prohibition of going to court, and the judges are right that you can’t maintain that today. You can’t. We have no real option to maintain it today. What are you going to do—live in a system without courts? Not go to court when you’re summoned? Never sue anyone in court, only in a religious court? Half the public won’t go there; they don’t recognize it. You can’t function that way. You can’t be a citizen in a democratic state without having a legal system accepted by the general public, effective, and one in which you also in fact participate. Now there is no argument that can justify this halakhically. There just isn’t. But reality is such that it is simply impossible to behave according to Jewish law, so people do not behave according to Jewish law. And every time someone comes—some son of Rabbi Ovadia, one of those sons with their grand Torah pronouncements—and suddenly says, I don’t know, that a judge or a lawyer does not join a quorum because he violates the prohibition of secular courts, then immediately everyone attacks him, including rabbis. What extremism, what… He is only saying what Jewish law says. And everyone attacks him as though he said something outrageously extreme. No—it is simply Jewish law. Why? Because he is saying what Jewish law says. But everyone understands that it is not practical today, and whoever wants to implement it today is an idiot. A fundamentalist? Yes. I still don’t understand. If there is a Shulchan Arukh, how can you say okay, this law suits me and that one suits me less? No, not what suits you. There are situations in which it is clear to you that it just doesn’t fit. You can’t. You simply can’t. What’s the criterion? There is no criterion, I don’t know. You need some kind of healthy instinct for when this is not an application. The Talmudic text itself speaks about what is called a transgression for its own sake. Do you know what that is? The Talmudic text says: a transgression for its own sake is greater than a commandment not for its own sake. What is a transgression for its own sake? The Talmudic text there brings the example of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite, in the Bible, yes—she slept with Sisera in order to kill him. She was a married woman. What permission is there for a married woman to sleep with a strange man? It’s even die rather than transgress—sexual immorality. There is no permission. And the Talmudic text praises her very highly. Why? Because she did it in order to save the Jewish people, to kill Sisera, who was an enemy. Right—what? Still. And she did it in order to save the Jewish people, and therefore they praise her. And from the Shulchan—what? There’s no prohibition of a married woman with a non-Jew? Of course there is. No less and no more. No, certainly not—no less and no more. Certainly yes. What? Sexual prohibitions. Right. But in the end, in the final analysis… Of course it applies. What do you mean? Exactly—there’s no way for you to fit it in, so don’t fit it in above. But this is not about whether to punish her in a religious court. The Sages praise her—not merely refrain from punishing her because they lack power. And what about… The Talmudic text there goes on to bring the daughters of Lot, who slept with their father in order to produce descendants. There is no halakhic permission for that. It’s die rather than transgress—sexual immorality. So that is called a transgression for its own sake. What does that mean? That when there is an extreme situation where it is clear that if you keep Jewish law and they don’t sleep with their father, humanity goes extinct—that’s how they saw it. They looked around after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed there and said: there is no man on earth. The Torah itself describes it. They understood that there was no one left; if we don’t do this and don’t bear a child from our father, there will be no more humanity, humanity will be extinguished. So they made a judgment that was not a halakhic judgment. Jewish law does not permit it; there is no halakhic clause that permits it. And there are situations extreme enough that the person on the ground has to make decisions. Here Jewish law cannot be implemented. And I’m not even talking about halakhic decisors; I’m talking about Lot’s daughters. If there is no decisor—if there is a decisor, let the decisor make the decision. If there is no decisor and you are out in the field, you are the one who has to make the decision. For example, sociologically, I’ll lower it to a smaller scale. Someone damaged my car, and I want to sue him, and he says to me: I’m not going with you to a religious court. So now I say this: if I go and sue him and I indeed win in court, then he will have to pay me five hundred shekels, a thousand shekels. Does a thousand shekels justify violating Jewish law? Of course it does—not because your specific case with him is the issue. If people know that religious people don’t go to court, then anyone can do whatever he wants to them, and the whole world becomes ownerless chaos. It’s not about your five hundred shekels with him. By the way, even according to Jewish law there is the law of the land, one can go to… That’s another story. If the law of the land applies here, that’s another story. But with a foreign legal system, that’s not the law of the land. But the courts of non-Jews, insofar as they are courts of Jews, or if you are compelled to go to a court of non-Jews? You can’t—you can’t go. In principle you can’t go; it’s secular courts of non-Jews. The legal system has no justification. There are certain areas in which the king has authority by virtue of the law of the land, and that is not a legal system. There ought to be a Jewish legal system. And that is when you read Jewish law and its sources in their plain sense. Fine? And that is not practical. When Jewish law was written, no one foresaw in his wildest imagination that there would be a reality in which Jews would have an independent Jewish state in which most Jews do not accept Jewish law. None of the sages in any generation would ever have imagined such a thing. And Jewish law crystallized within a reality utterly different from our reality today. Therefore we need to understand, I think, that in our reality today this thing is not practical; one cannot act this way. Now I’ll add his question and modify it a bit. Let’s say I am willing to go to a rabbinical court—does he then have an obligation to come or not? Excellent question. Interesting question. The accepted view is obviously yes; I’m not at all sure. There is this whole matter of the association of monetary religious courts, yes yes, there are things he writes there, and you sign it too, that one can force you with money and coercion. I claim one need not go at all; one can go to court from the outset—my personal opinion, obviously a minority opinion. I claim all these courts are a joke. They cannot summon witnesses, they do not judge according to Torah law at all—you sign to them that you don’t want that. I have a friend who wrote an article about this, Nadav Shenarav from physics here, and he once wrote an article about it. He brings a case there in which someone went to a religious court. I actually had such a case too—an avreikh, a yeshiva fellow, in a private religious court. They sued him; he was miserable, got tangled up there and so on. I accompanied him a bit to help him. And I asked the court to judge us by Torah law. I don’t want compromises; I want Torah law, because I thought that according to Torah law he could win. They would not agree under any circumstances. They told me: if you want Torah law, go to another court; we don’t agree. What do you understand? They don’t agree—they do not judge Torah law, they judge whatever they want. That’s what they do; they rule whatever they want. Arbitrators. No—every judge in a Torah court today is an arbitrator. You sign on the form that you accept him upon yourself as an arbitrator, and you have no claim if he ruled not according to Torah law, because he does not rule according to Torah law; he does whatever he wants. Right, I’m saying—so it’s not Torah law because… But all monetary Torah judgments today are like that. When you go to a religious court today, you sign a form—in every court—you sign a form waiving Torah law, and it’s arbitration, operating by virtue of the arbitration law of the State of Israel too. And Nadav brings a case there in which someone wanted Torah law and the court said absolutely not, so he said: I’m not prepared to litigate before you. So they issued a contempt notice against him. A contempt notice is intended for someone who is not willing to be judged by Torah law and instead goes to a secular court, so they issue a contempt notice because he was summoned to Torah judgment and refused to appear. It wasn’t police—back in exile there were religious courts, what was the tool? The tool was to issue a contempt notice, and then excommunicate him or things like that. Now the original purpose of a contempt notice was to compel someone who does not want Torah law to come be judged by Torah law. Here they issued a contempt notice against someone who wanted Torah law. He insisted on receiving Torah law, and they issued a contempt notice against him because he wanted Torah law and they insisted on their right not to provide Torah law. No, it’s not corruption—that’s how it works. And I say: if that’s how it works, then what do you want from me? You want to tell me that I’m forbidden to go to court if I want Torah law? I say: in the end I judge based on the reality I actually have. I don’t live in the reality of the Talmudic text. Go to court—for that there is a court. And that is exactly the point. So also I, as a rabbinical court in the end—why go to a rabbinical court? Then go to court. Understood. Good question. On this I’m speaking—I’m not saying it’s corruption, but it’s a problematic state. Never mind. By the way, it didn’t begin today; it’s been that way for hundreds of years. Is there some reason why they didn’t want to do that, no? The reason is that people are not sure they will issue Torah law correctly, and if you don’t issue Torah law correctly, people can sue you—the judge. You issued Torah law incorrectly; they can sue you because you caused me a loss. And to protect themselves against such suits, they have me sign that I accept whatever he says, whether according to law or in error. Whatever he determines is what will stand; you can’t sue him over it. This has been the case for centuries; it appears in the Shulchan Arukh, it’s not a modern invention. But on that basis to say there is a prohibition on going to secular courts is laughable. Fine, but that’s another discussion. In any event, what I want to say is that in the situation in which we operate today, there is a state of affairs in which, by a normal assessment of decisors and of people generally, one cannot avoid recourse to the courts. Now I do not have a permission, I cannot find in the sources a permission explaining why today the prohibition of secular courts no longer applies. So what do you do? Look at what people do, look at what people do—they go to court. Now what is the justification? The justification is that there are extreme situations in which people understand that Jewish law is simply not implementable. And in this I can maybe even bring some half-source for this permission to go to court, but my basic claim is that everyone is searching for some halakhic argument that can permit it. And the rabbis, the decisors, say there is no halakhic argument and therefore it is forbidden. But in practice everyone goes—why? Because although they are not prepared to put on the table what I’m saying here, what they are really saying is: there are situations in which it is impossible to keep Jewish law as it is. That’s all. There are such situations; that’s life, we live in reality. Now this is very problematic—where’s the boundary, and then anyone can suddenly decide that this is a situation in which one cannot keep Jewish law and therefore not keep it. Okay, true, complicated, and there is no sharp line—but that is still the reality. What can you do? Life is complicated. He will answer before the heavenly court for the considerations he made; the Holy One will judge him, whether he made a genuine judgment or whether he just wanted to escape Jewish law. Fine. But factually one cannot deny that there are such situations. Fine. I wanted to get to one more thing, but I don’t really have much time left, so I’ll try to do it briefly. Let’s talk again about the relationship between facts and halakhic ruling, but from a slightly different aspect. Usually, when we talk about halakhic ruling, as I said earlier, it consists of two stages. The first stage is the facts, and the second stage is applying the halakhic determination, the norm, to those facts. Okay? Now when the facts are complicated—not clarified, like in a religious court with witnesses or something like that, or not something everybody knows—then you need experts. For example, medical facts. A halakhic decisor wants to know whether to permit someone to eat on Yom Kippur. The decisor is not a doctor. So he goes to a doctor and asks: is there a need? Is it dangerous? What, yes? The doctor makes the scientific factual analysis, and after that the decisor determines on that basis whether it is permitted or forbidden. Right? And the division between the decisor and the expert is basically that the expert deals with the facts and the decisor deals with Jewish law on the basis of the factual determination. If he can make the factual determination himself, fine; if it’s complicated, he goes to an expert. Okay? So too in the Talmudic text, and among all the decisors throughout the generations, usually it was a doctor. Today there are many experts in many things. Once they usually dealt with medicine. The expert was the doctor. Today there is also the physicist and the scientist, fine, doesn’t matter, but the principle is the same principle. Now I want to show that this distinction is not so simple—the distinction between facts and halakhic norms. I’ll bring two examples that are apparently opposite, and in both I say against what is commonly thought. I’ll explain to you why I think I’m right anyway. And in any case, if it’s against what is commonly thought, that’s probably a good sign. The assumption is that what is commonly thought is not correct unless proven otherwise. So the first example: some decades ago there was a kind of halakhic ruling—by Rabbi Yisraeli, Rabbi Neria, and Rabbi Avraham Shapira. They said that handing over territory to the enemy as part of an agreement or something like that constitutes danger to life and is forbidden. Okay? Now when that came out, all sorts of people talked to me and said: the determination whether this is danger to life or not is a factual question, not a halakhic one. So basically I should ask, I don’t know, generals or statesmen about this, or determine it myself, whatever. But halakhic decisors do not have the mandate to determine that this is danger to life. That is a factual determination, not a halakhic determination. They can say: assuming this is danger to life, as the experts say, then it is forbidden, because Jewish law says danger to life overrides everything. Fine, I understand. But they cannot make the determination that it is danger to life. That determination itself is a factual determination, not a halakhic one. So how do rabbis issue a halakhic ruling that determines facts? Fine, that was the discussion. And I argued that in fact they can do that, even though it is a factual determination. That’s one side. Now an opposite, apparently opposite, example. I saw several statements by decisors—I remember Rabbi Nebenzahl, but there were others too—who argued that someone who drives above the legal speed limit on the road commits a halakhic transgression. “And you shall live by them,” and one must preserve life, and so on—so he commits a halakhic transgression. And there the opposite claims arose. The claims were that here, precisely because this is a halakhic determination, it is within their mandate. The decisor can determine it. The experts determined what speed is permitted on the road, and then that becomes dangerous, and because one who exceeds the speed limit is endangering his life—therefore there it’s okay. Right? In contrast to the previous case, where the decisors exceeded their mandate and dealt with facts, here they are dealing with Jewish law, so that’s fine. There is a reality, determined by the experts—I don’t know, transportation experts—which speed is dangerous here, and then the decisors really deal with their own domain, which is what they did. But there is a reality in which people drive faster and everything is fine. But that’s the reality—fine, okay, that people are taking risks. What? The fact is that they determined that this is a speed you shouldn’t drive at, presumably. The fact that not everybody dies—the fact that one drives at a dangerous speed does not mean that everyone who drives at that speed dies, only that there is a significant risk and therefore one may not take it. Right. Okay, so let’s see. I’ll get to that in a moment. So apparently here the decisors said something that is indeed in their mandate, and yet I claim that here too it’s not right. In both cases I argue the opposite of what is commonly thought, and I’ll explain why. Behind both of these disputes stands one principle. So let’s start with the speed limit. What exactly is the model behind the view that these decisors were right? There is a factual determination entrusted to experts, a transportation expert at the Technion or a police officer or whoever, who determines that on this road it is reasonable to drive up to ninety, and above ninety is dangerous. Then the decisor comes and says: dangerous driving is forbidden by Jewish law. Fine and good, right? That is the division that is supposed to exist between the expert and the decisor. But that is not correct. Why not? The expert at the Technion cannot determine what speed is dangerous. He cannot make such a determination. Because what is called dangerous—is that a factual question? What level of risk counts as dangerous? That two percent of drivers will die or be injured? Half a percent? Seven percent? How much? Is there some professional scientific criterion by which the expert can determine what is dangerous? No. Dangerous is a value question. What can the expert give me in such a case? Basically, what he can give me is a graph. A graph of level of risk as a function of speed. I’m simplifying tremendously, of course. Okay? Right—he can give me a graph. If you drive at sixty, then the number injured will be one-tenth of a percent. At seventy it will be two-tenths of a percent. At eighty, five-tenths. At a hundred, point eight. At a hundred and twenty, one percent, and so on—some graph. Let’s say it’s monotonic, though it isn’t exactly monotonic, but never mind that for the moment. Okay, so he gives me a graph. That is within the expert’s authority. Now he doesn’t always have all the information for that, but theoretically that is his task. He cannot always carry it out, but theoretically that is the task entrusted to him. He also does a statistical analysis of all the accidents. Right, he does a statistical analysis and comes up with a graph. Right? That is the graph he produces. Now where do you cut the graph? From what level of risk does this count as dangerous? Value judgment. What? Value judgment. First of all, to determine the meaning of the concept dangerous. So you have to say: dangerous means what? Half a percent injured? I don’t know, let’s say. Okay? So you go to the expert’s graph and say, you check where it reaches half a percent, and it comes out to eighty km/h. So you say: okay, then eighty km/h and up is forbidden to drive, up to eighty km/h is permitted. Because you decided that half a percent is what is called dangerous, right? Now is that decision a professional scientific decision? Of an expert? No, it is a value decision. Right? Now I’ll say more than that. This value decision need not be universal. The law can say: for me, half a percent is a risk I’m not prepared to take—up to half a percent. Jewish law can say: for me, point eight is also fine, or point three—it could be stricter, it could be more lenient, it doesn’t matter right now. It doesn’t have to be that Jewish law and civil law draw the same line, right? Because drawing the line is a function of judgment. And it could be that Jewish law sees this differently, more severe or more lenient than the law—never mind right now. There need not be identity between the determination of the law and the determination of Jewish law. Maybe in this case they coincide, but they need not. What does that mean? It means that in fact, to determine the permitted speed on the road or the maximum speed on the road, there are three stages, not two. Stage one is drawing the risk graph. Stage two is cutting the graph: what percentage of risk is dangerous, and therefore what speed. Stage three is determining that such a speed is forbidden. Right? Now the last two stages are not the expert’s business. Only the first is the expert’s business. The last two are value judgments. Not only are they value judgments; they can also differ between Jewish law and civil law. They can be the same, they can be different, stricter, more lenient; there need not be identity between the halakhic determination and the legal determination. It seems there’s no way of knowing what counts as dangerous according to Jewish law, meaning. And according to the law there’s no way of knowing what counts as dangerous according to the law. Right—but where does the rabbi’s authority enter here? Where does the legislator’s authority enter? Fine. The Sanhedrin can try to understand—no need to try to understand anything. They need to determine exactly what the Knesset determines. Exactly the same thing. It sounds to me as though the Torah has no answer to that. But the law has no answer to it either. You determine the law. Yes, I don’t know. Rabbi, maybe there is also some kind of logic, common sense, whatever you call it. It could be that, say, a jump from 70 to 80 is a jump that in terms of percentages of the… I don’t care—you can make whatever judgment you want; it really doesn’t matter to me. There is some judgment, and in the halakhic context the halakhic decisor will make it. Call him the Sanhedrin, I don’t care right now; I’m not entering into the question who it should be. But the authorized halakhic institution is supposed to make the halakhic judgment, and the authorized legal institution is supposed to make the legal judgment. Okay? Not the expert. The expert will give both institutions that graph and that’s it, then go home. From that point on, the one who does it is the halakhic authority and the legal authority. Okay? What does that mean? It means that the determination of what counts as dangerous is not entrusted to the expert but to the decisor or the legislator, depending on context. And therefore they need not coincide. Therefore those decisors who say that if the law forbids above 80, then someone who goes above 80 violates Jewish law—they are not right. Not necessarily right. They can say: but the legal determination does not determine Jewish law. A decisor can say: to me, as a decisor, it seems like the legislator, and therefore I also think it’s 80. Fine, legitimate. But you cannot say that because the legislator determined it, therefore if you drive above it, that is a violation of Jewish law. That is not correct. That’s one side—the second example. Let’s go back to the first example, handing over territory. What counts as dangerous? What counts as danger to life? Suppose I hand over territory and there is a two percent chance of a war in which ten thousand soldiers and civilians or whoever will be killed. Is that dangerous? Not dangerous? Does it count as danger to life or not? I don’t know. From what point does it count as danger to life? What percentage of risk in war, or how many casualties, are required for this to count as danger to life? I have no idea. But that is not a determination for the expert. Again, at most what the expert can do—assuming there are experts in these fields, and in my opinion there aren’t—but assuming there are experts in these fields, they can give me a graph. A risk graph. Of course this is much more complex than a simple one-dimensional graph, but a risk graph. Give me many parameters: with whom are you making the agreement, what is written in the agreement, what are the sanctions, what are the guarantees, what are the circumstances, and so on. I will tell you roughly what is expected, what is the probability of war, how many casualties there will be, and so forth. I’ll give you a whole graph. Where do you cut the graph? At what level of risk does this count as danger to life? That is for the decisor, or for the legislator in the context of statecraft. Okay? Therefore it is not the expert’s business. Therefore those decisors who determined that this is danger to life are right, because that really is their mandate. Because once they have—assuming they received some sort of graph; there is no such graph, but at least a description of the situation from people who understand—now they are supposed to determine whether such a thing is dangerous or falls under the category of danger to life or not. And that is indeed a determination for halakhic decisors. So here I actually do agree that… You don’t necessarily have to listen to them because they are not the Sanhedrin, but at the level of principle this is a halakhic determination. That is the claim. Okay? Therefore the relation—and I’m doing this very briefly here, maybe I’ll upload the relevant article to the site and then you can read it there—the relation between the facts and the normative or halakhic determination that applies to the facts is not a dichotomy; it is not sharp. Even the factual determination has value dimensions in it. It is not simply handed over to the expert and that’s it. There are value considerations that also determine what is dangerous, from when something counts as danger to life, and things like that. By the way, this is true for many, many issues. For example, even the determination whether homosexuality is a disease or not. There are debates, yes, the rabbis always say yes, and those attacking them say: what are you talking about? The American Psychiatric Association already removed it in ’77 from the DSM, from the psychiatric symptoms manual. All nonsense, of course—both sides are talking nonsense. Obviously. The question whether it is a disease or not a disease is not a question for the scientist. It is not a scientific question. The question is what you define as a disease. What do you define as a disease? There is no definition of disease. Whatever you do not want—that’s a disease. Fine, so if you don’t want it, that’s a value determination. The whole thing is the same. There is hardly any public controversy—in contrast to the common discourse, which always says what are the rabbis doing interfering in this, or what are they interfering there, that’s for experts—almost nothing is the business of experts. There is almost no dispute in the universe, no interesting dispute, that an expert can really decide. The expert can provide input information or insights; that can certainly be important, but never is it something an expert can decide. Think of any question that comes to your mind over which there is public controversy—there is no such question that an expert can decide. I had an argument with doctors about abortion. They said: what are rabbis doing on committees that approve abortions? How to determine whether a fetus is a human being or not is a medical determination; only the experts should decide. And I argued with doctors, intelligent people, saying complete nonsense. You simply cannot explain it to them. It’s unbelievable. They are incapable of grasping the nonsense. What I asked was: what are doctors doing on that committee? Only rabbis should sit there. Doctors can give input; they can say what functions the fetus has at each stage of pregnancy. Excellent. But they cannot determine which functions establish from when it is a human being. That is a value determination. When you determine this is a human being, that’s not for a doctor. What does a doctor understand about that? Maybe their objection comes from a place of saying: I don’t care whether it’s value-based or not—there is no place for a rabbi to sit there because a rabbi’s knowledge is nonsense from their point of view. You want a philosopher, not a rabbi. Fine by me. The place from which he comes is nonsense in their eyes. No—that wasn’t the argument. If that had been the argument, they would have said there should be a philosopher there and not a rabbi. But no—they say there should be doctors there, not rabbis. The problem was that they argued rabbis should not sit there not because they are primitive, but because they have no medical education. And I argued that medical education is not at all the relevant criterion for these decisions. Not relevant at all. You need only to be able to grasp all the information presented there at the meeting. Fine—give the information to the doctor; give me the information. What functions does the fetus have at each stage of pregnancy? Give me the graph and I will say from what stage it is called a human being. Every rabbi can grasp all this information. What’s the problem? Yes, not complicated information. Simple information. By the way, much of it isn’t even medical information either, but whatever information they have—convey it, and that’s all. What happens now if one doctor says in this case the woman must not fast, and another doctor says yes, she can? The rabbi has to decide. On what basis will the rabbi decide? Jewish law, his reasoning. How can the rabbi say this doctor…? Only the rabbi can decide—not because he is a greater medical expert than both of them, but because he is the authority who has to decide. If two experts come before a court—and it is always problematic, but that’s life—if two experts come before a court, one psychiatrist says this person was responsible for his actions, another psychiatrist says this person was not responsible for his actions. The court has to determine whether to convict him or not. Who will decide? The judge will decide. Not because he is the greater expert, but because that is what he has to determine. What can you do? There’s no other way. Because the expert can never grasp all the data of… That’s not the point. Again, I’m not claiming the judge is a bigger expert or the dayan is a bigger expert. I’m saying his mandate is to decide. What can you do? If there is disagreement among the experts, then he will decide which expert to follow. That’s it. Because that is his mandate, not because he is the greater expert. Certainly not a doctor—he cannot decide. It is not even a medical question whether this is a human being or not. Tell me what functions it has at each stage of pregnancy. That is a medical question. Tell me what it has, what it doesn’t have, what organs it has, what capacities it has, what it does, what it doesn’t do, whether it can live if you take it out, whether it cannot live if you take it out. All that is medical data that the doctor can give me. From there on, I have to decide whether such a thing is called a human being and from when. That is not a question for a doctor at all—what does the doctor know to say about that? Nothing. He’s no better than anyone else. Right—not worse, but not better either. Exactly. A great many things that we automatically hand over to experts do not belong to the expert. This is a value decision. Now you can say: a value decision also regarding the criteria, and therefore I will determine it, not the rabbi, not the legislator—I will determine it. Fine, I have no problem with that. But one has to understand that this is a value decision and not a factual decision. Thank you very much, Rabbi. What, that’s it? Last time? We’re done, yes. That’s it. Thank you very much for the whole year, for all the knowledge. My pleasure. For all the rebelliousness. We finished the season. When will you give classes here? Huh?