Halakhic Thought – 5783 – Lesson 6

Table of Contents

• Value, sweeping commitment, and particular commitment
• Polynormativity and conflicts between systems
• Conservatives, Haredim, and theory versus practice
• Intra-systemic conflicts and incommensurability
• Saving life and the Sabbath: “Profane one Sabbath” versus “and live by them”
• “Territory considerations” as a way of deciding without a scale of values
• Honoring parents, choosing a way of life, and the Maharik
• An abstract measure of “worthiness” and the refutation of strong incommensurability
• Moral realism, the spinach test, and God as the binding source
• Jewish law and morality: examples of conflict and a principled roadmap

Summary

General overview

The text defines values as things that have no external justification yet are not arbitrary, and argues that a sweeping commitment to a normative system creates the possibility of double commitment and therefore practical conflicts between systems such as Jewish law and morality. It explains how conflicts within a single system appear undecidable because of incommensurability, but in practice decisions are made through “tricks” that bypass ranking values, or through “territory” rules that define spheres of authority. It then uses the Talmudic topic of saving life versus the Sabbath, along with other examples, to argue that one can decide even without an explicit scale of values, and even to suggest that there is an abstract scale of “worthiness” that allows comparison between different values and even between systems. Toward the end, it presents David Enoch’s spinach test as a distinction between the subjective and the objective, adopts moral realism, and sketches principled possibilities for dealing with contradictions between Jewish law and morality in preparation for the next discussion.

Value, sweeping commitment, and particular commitment

The text states that a value is something that has no external explanation but is not arbitrary, and distinguishes between an arbitrary decision of “I just feel like it” and something that is “right in itself,” which needs no justification outside itself. It argues that a value system requires some principle by virtue of which one adopts the system, and distinguishes between commitment on the basis of a sweeping principle and commitment on the basis of particular principles. It interprets the midrash about the Holy One, blessed be He, going around to the nations as a demand for sweeping commitment to the system of the Torah, and connects this to “we will do and we will hear,” and to the criticism in the Talmud in tractate Sabbath, “rash people, who put your mouths before your ears,” as a contrast to the outlook of the nations, who examine each command before committing themselves. It explains that this commitment is based on trust and on recognition of the obligation to obey commands “and it doesn’t matter at all what He commands,” so the commitment is not conditional on the rationality of the commands.

Polynormativity and conflicts between systems

The text argues, somewhat ironically, that sweeping commitment is precisely what allows “normative duplication” and commitment to several parallel systems of values even when there are practical contradictions between them. It says that someone who examines values one by one will not end up in contradiction, because it is impossible that after examination he will accept both value X and not-X, whereas someone committed in a sweeping way can be committed both to Jewish law and to morality and run into examples such as a command to kill Amalekite infants versus a moral prohibition. It describes the conflict as practical rather than a “principled contradiction,” and emphasizes that there is no principled problem in being committed to two systems; the difficulty is how to decide in practice. It offers an empirical description according to which Reform Jews, who sort halakhic rules according to moral suitability, hardly experience conflicts, while an Orthodox person committed to the system “as a whole” may find himself “torn” between the systems.

Conservatives, Haredim, and theory versus practice

The text argues that in his view there is no distinct conceptual definition of “Conservative” as opposed to “Orthodox,” and presents Conservatives as a kind of Orthodoxy, unlike Reform. He adds a distinction between “Haredi theory” as one extreme and “Haredi practice,” in which there is no essential difference from Conservatives, only differences of degree and of considerations regarding halakhic change. He notes that laying this out in detail would require a complicated discussion spread over many sessions.

Intra-systemic conflicts and incommensurability

The text presents conflicts between values within the same system, such as Sartre’s dilemma between joining the fight against the Nazis and staying to help his mother in Paris. It argues that values are incommensurable, and therefore apparently there is no way to decide by means of an external measure, because a value is not meant to serve something outside itself. It distinguishes between not knowing because of human limitation and a situation in which “there is no answer” because the question is meaningless, like comparing human kindness with the quantity of water in the ocean. It states that even “a verse in the Torah” does not help in a meaningless question, and therefore a scriptural decree does not solve a situation in which the comparison itself has no meaning to begin with.

Saving life and the Sabbath: “Profane one Sabbath” versus “and live by them”

The text analyzes the Talmudic topic in Yoma about saving life and the Sabbath, and presents two rationales: “Profane one Sabbath so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” attributed to Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, and “and live by them, and not die by them.” It explains that in the first rationale, the decision bypasses ranking the value of life against Sabbath observance, because it compares keeping one Sabbath with “twenty Sabbath observances plus the value of life,” and thus decides even without determining what the value of life is “worth.” It rejects the common understanding that the first rationale assumes that life has no intrinsic value and is merely a means for commandments, and cites the Or HaChaim as emphasizing that one must desecrate the Sabbath to save any person even if that person will not later use his life to keep commandments, while noting that “no halakhic decisor agrees with him.” It mentions the discussion of short-term life expectancy, and brings the Meiri, cited in the Bi’ur Halakhah in section 328, who explains that even a few minutes of life allow repentance, prayer, and Torah study, and therefore do not contradict the justification for saving life.

The text presents “and live by them, and not die by them” as a rationale that seems to point in the opposite direction, as though the commandments are a means to life rather than life being a means to the commandments, but argues that since the halakhic decisors bring both rationales together, they should not be seen as contradictory, and therefore “Profane one Sabbath” does not teach that life is only a means. It adds that if a verse decides a value conflict, this teaches that there is, after all, a correct decision even if we do not fully understand it, because a verse cannot solve a question that has no meaning. It concludes that this hints that incommensurability is not absolute and that it is possible to decide value conflicts.

“Territory considerations” as a way of deciding without a scale of values

The text presents decisions that are based not on ranking values but on the boundaries of “territory,” and illustrates this with the Talmudic topic “a person may not save himself with another person’s property” in Bava Kamma 60b, and with King David asking about it in the Sanhedrin. It describes the dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), in which most of them—Tosafot, the Rosh, the Rashba, and others—interpret this as meaning that one may save oneself but must pay, whereas Rashi writes it literally: “let him be killed rather than transgress,” and he adds that there are other medieval authorities who lean in a similar direction. He cites the Chazon Ish and Rabbi Kook in a discussion about a waterskin in the desert, and presents the Chazon Ish’s argument that taking the water from the other person is “like murder” because it causes his death.

The text brings a responsum from Binyan Tziyon by Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger, the author of Arukh LaNer, who extends Rashi’s principle to any harm done to another person, even humiliation, and connects this to the saying, “It is better for a person to throw himself into a fiery furnace than to whiten his fellow’s face in public,” noting that Tosafot see this as a halakhic statement. It argues that the foundation here is not the “severity of the transgression” but the type of transgression, because harming another person means making a decision in a domain that is not yours. Therefore, even if the prohibition of theft is overridden in a case of saving life, it is still forbidden “to enter the territory” of another person’s property. It uses the example of taking a kidney from someone else in order to save a life to illustrate that the problem is not only the prohibition of causing injury, but the very lack of authority to decide concerning another person’s body.

The text quotes Rabbi Shimon Shkop from Sha’arei on theft from a gentile, which according to some views is not prohibited by the Torah under “You shall not steal,” but is still prohibited “by Torah law through reason,” because the legal prohibition stems from the other person’s ownership. It illustrates this with a story about a friend in Bnei Brak who supposedly justified stealing a book because of “you shall not covet,” and presents the mistake as taking decision-making authority over property that is not his, even if the consideration seems logical. It connects this to the distinction between an action that harms another person and a situation of rescue where only one person can be saved, in which “your life takes precedence,” and preference considerations are applied without performing an act of killing.

Honoring parents, choosing a way of life, and the Maharik

The text brings discussions by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef about a boy who wants to study in a junior yeshiva without secular studies against his parents’ wishes, and by Rabbi Yaakov Ariel about volunteering for officer training against his parents’ wishes, and explains that both analyze the issue through the question of whether this is a commandment or merely an enhancement of a commandment in relation to the rule “Each of you shall fear his mother and his father, and My Sabbaths you shall keep.” It argues that they are methodologically mistaken and suggests that the decision should rest on territory: shaping the son’s life in a fundamental area lies outside the parents’ authority. It cites the Maharik, who rules that there is no obligation to obey parents who forbid marriage to a particular woman, and emphasizes that in the Maharik there appear both commandment-based reasons and the reasoning that “they cannot tell me how to live my life.” It concludes that these are decisions in conflicts that do not arise from a scale of stringency, but from defining the relevant sphere and authority.

An abstract measure of “worthiness” and the refutation of strong incommensurability

The text argues that “and live by them” teaches that one can decide between values, and therefore absolute incommensurability is incorrect, and proposes that there is an abstract measure by which values can be assessed without turning them into means for some higher value. It explains that saying the value of life is “important” is not really a justification but just another formulation of the same commitment, yet one can still ask about the intensity of “the will of God” with respect to different values and place them on a common scale. It gives an example from Shay Wosner about an actor who receives a million dollars for smoking ten cigarettes, and presents the intuitive decision that a million dollars is “worth” a small health cost as proof that there is some way to compare different domains by means of a measure like “how worthy this is” or “degree of goodness” in a broad sense. It argues that framing the dilemma as a practical choice creates meaning and comparison, unlike meaningless questions, and extends this also to the possibility of deciding between different systems like Jewish law and morality by means of a scale more abstract than any one system.

Moral realism, the spinach test, and God as the binding source

The text describes a panel with David Enoch on the question whether moral obligation requires God, and presents a shared agreement on moral realism, according to which morality is objective and binding. It brings Enoch’s “spinach test” as a distinction between subjective preferences and objective truth, and compares a funny statement like “how nice that I hate spinach” with a not-funny statement about preferring to live in a world where people know Newtonian physics is not correct. It applies this test to morality and argues that a statement like “how nice that I live today and don’t own slaves” belongs on the objective side, and therefore people perceive moral claims as involving right and wrong, not merely personal taste.

The text argues that someone who understands that morality forbids murder cannot seriously ask, “but why not murder,” just as someone who understands what a deity is cannot ask, “why should I do what He says,” and it connects this to Maimonides on accepting God and acting “because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it.” It argues that a person who does not grasp the categories of obligation and prohibition is like a psychopath who does not understand morality, and that just as there are embedded concepts that cannot be explained to someone who lacks them, so too with moral and religious obligation. It uses an analogy about right and left versus up and down, and about the question of a mirror, to argue that there are distinctions that exist in reality but require an embedded capacity of perception in order to notice them—and so too “moral facts,” which are perceived through conscience or intuition.

The text adds that in his view moral realism is not enough to create obligation without an authoritative legislator, and therefore he argues that morality has no binding force without God. He explains that people who do not believe can still be moral in practice, but either they “believe implicitly” or they are “theoretically inconsistent” regarding the foundation of what binds.

Jewish law and morality: examples of conflict and a principled roadmap

The text presents conflicts in which Jewish law appears to contradict morality, including the beautiful captive woman, and the statement that according to the beginning of that passage “there is no prohibition against raping captives,” “killing Amalekite infants,” “not saving the life of a gentile on the Sabbath,” mamzer status, and the case of a priest’s wife who was raped and is forced to separate from her husband. It argues that there are local “solutions,” but they do not solve the principled problem of a head-on contradiction. It presents three approaches: one approach in which Jewish law is “ultra-moral,” a higher morality, and therefore the mistake lies in our interpretation of morality; a second approach in which Jewish law cannot contradict morality, and therefore the mistake lies in our interpretation of Jewish law, and he attributes this to Rabbi Kook; and a third approach identified with Leibowitz, according to which morality is an “atheistic category” and the only commitment is to Jewish law.

The text brings Eliezer Goldman, who interprets Leibowitz as saying that morality’s being an atheistic category does not negate commitment to it, but rather points to a double commitment to two systems. It explains that if morality is the product of divine command, then the question arises how the Holy One, blessed be He, can “contradict Himself” when Jewish law apparently commands something against morality, and it presents four practical possibilities: either the mistake is in interpreting morality, or the mistake is in interpreting Jewish law, or one gives up commitment to morality, or one accepts commitment to both together, with a practical conflict but no principled contradiction. It points to the binding of Isaac and Abraham’s argument over Sodom as possible hints for examining the alternatives, and concludes by announcing that later he will divide Jewish law into three categories in relation to morality: anti-moral, moral, and non-moral, such as putting on tefillin and the prohibition of pork, arguing that examining all three together will determine what the proper relationship between Jewish law and morality should be.

Okay. So last time I spoke a bit about the situation of conflicts in Jewish law, or value conflicts. I talked about the question of what a value actually is. That a value is always the thing… right, so I talked about the question of what a value is. I said that a value is apparently—actually not apparently, it is—something that has no explanation, but it isn’t arbitrary. I said there are two kinds of “that’s just how it is,” right? There’s a “that’s just how I feel, I drew lots, there’s no justification for it, or it isn’t right, I decided arbitrarily.” And there’s a “that’s just how it is” that is maybe the most correct thing possible. It is true in and of itself, and therefore you don’t need to bring justifications for it from outside itself. As a result of that, I said that in value systems there has to be some principle by whose force we adopt or commit ourselves to the normative system in question. I talked about a sweeping principle and a particular principle, or a specific principle. And then I talked about the question of how exactly you take the system upon yourself—through a sweeping principle or a particular principle. I gave the example of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the midrash that says that the Holy One, blessed be He, went around among the nations and they asked Him what was written in it. He offered them the Torah. He asked them what was written in it. And they asked Him what was written in it. And on that basis they were supposed to decide whether they were willing to commit or not willing to commit. Obviously we’re talking about an aggadic midrash, but what that midrash comes to say is that the kind of commitment expected of us is a sweeping commitment and not a specific one. Meaning, we do not commit ourselves to each principle separately because it seems right to us or doesn’t seem right to us; rather, we commit ourselves to the system as a whole because whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, says must be fulfilled. Right, exactly. That is “We will do and we will hear,” basically. What? Right, exactly. It means doing because of the necessity of reason, exactly like that. It connects to Maimonides that we saw in previous classes, exactly. And therefore what that heretic says to Rava in the Talmudic passage in tractate Sabbath, right? “A hasty people, who put your mouths before your ears.” A hasty people—you put your mouth before your ear. First listen to what is demanded of you, and then say that you’re willing to commit. What is “We will do and we will hear”? First of all, we commit that we will do, and now we will hear what we need to do. First listen to what needs to be done, and then decide whether you commit or not. Again, the conception underlying the words of that heretic is the conception of the nations, right? That we want to examine each principle—seemingly very logical—we want to examine each principle: are we willing to commit to it or not? And then if everything checks out, we’ll commit. But “We will do and we will hear” tells us no—the opposite. First of all we commit, and then we hear what that means. Why? Because I commit because I trust the Holy One, blessed be He—trust, and also understanding that I am obligated to His commandments no matter what He commands. And therefore what He commands me I’ll hear afterward. My commitment is not conditioned on the commandments. I’m not going to test whether these commandments are logical or not, because I have an a priori trust in that. Okay? Now, ironically—and I talked about this toward the end—ironically it turns out that precisely sweeping commitment is what actually makes normative multiplicity possible. Commitment to several parallel value-systems, even ones that may contain contradictions or conflicts between them, exactly. By contrast, if I check each value separately, contradictions can’t arise. Because after all, I checked: if I’m committed to this system, that means I checked all its values and they all seem right to me. If I’m committed to that system, there too I checked. And it cannot be that value X and value not-X, belonging to two different systems, both passed the particular, specific test. Because either I agree with X or I agree with not-X; it can’t be both. Therefore I will never find myself in conflict if my commitment is based on a particular examination. But if my commitment is based on a sweeping examination, then yes. I can be committed to Jewish law in general, committed to morality in general, and suddenly discover that Jewish law tells me to kill Amalekite babies, which morality forbids. Now that means I am committed. So that’s a conflict, but a conflict in the practical sense. It’s not something that is, in principle, contradictory. There is no principled problem at all with a state of dual commitment, a state of commitment to two systems. And I said that this is a little surprising at first glance, because I said that sweeping commitment is kind of more religiously hardcore. Right? It’s more fanatical, more ready to die for the… I’m not checking what He told me, I’m committed to it a priori. And on the other hand, precisely those religious hardliners are the ones who can find themselves in conflicts. And the less hardline people will never be in conflict. But if you check this factually, you’ll see that this is certainly true. Factually it’s definitely true; empirically it’s true. Meaning that people who are not sweepingly committed to a system will never be in conflict. Right, Reform Jews for example. Reform Jews have no sweeping commitment to Jewish law. They examine each law in a particular way: am I for it or against it? Just as a description. They are not committed to the system in full. Therefore they never have any conflicts. Where it contradicts morality, they do what morality says. No problem at all. If it doesn’t contradict morality, excellent, I’ll do what Jewish law says. But they’ll never say: “Guys, I’m torn. On the one hand I need to do this, on the other hand I need to do that—so what should I do?” By contrast, a person who is what today is called Orthodox is a person committed to the system as a whole in a sweeping way. He will often find himself in conflict because he really is committed to morality, and he is committed to Jewish law, and here they are telling him contradictory things. So I’m torn. Torn does not mean that the situation is illogical or contradictory. No. The situation is perfectly fine; there is no contradiction in it whatsoever. But on the practical level, I have to decide whether I go with this or go with that. That is conflict. And precisely the people who are committed with sweeping commitment can find themselves in conflicts between systems. And I say, this is not very intuitive, but it seems to me that if you look around, you’ll see that it’s true. It’s not only conceptual analysis; it actually works too. Excellent question. I wrote about this, and maybe we’ll talk about it later. In my opinion there is no such thing as a Conservative definition. On the conceptual level, the concept “Conservative” is not really distinct from the concept “Orthodox.” Reform is something else. Conservatives are a kind of Orthodoxy. But we’ll talk about that. Leave it for now because it’s a complex answer. A complex answer—I’ll talk about it; we’ll devote more than one session to it. Okay? I’ll still get to it. Right. Meaning, there’s a difference between the Haredi theory and the Haredi practice. Haredi theory is the opposite extreme. In Haredi practice, it isn’t. In Haredi practice there is no essential difference between Haredim and Conservatives. There isn’t. There is a difference in dosage, there is a difference in how much you consider changes in Jewish law, but it is not an essential difference. I’ll talk about that. So that is what we discussed; I call it polynormativity, right? Commitment to several normative systems. “Poly” means multiplicity. Now, after that we talked about what happens when there are conflicts. When there are conflicts, I began with a conflict between values that belong to the same system. For example, a conflict between two moral values. I think I gave Sartre’s example, right? His student who was torn over whether to go help—whether to go fight against the Nazis in the Free French army, or stay to help his mother in Paris. Right, so that is an intra-systemic dilemma. Meaning within—not between two systems, but one system. And in that dilemma I said that essentially, apparently, it is impossible to decide. It is impossible to decide because values are incommensurable. Meaning they cannot be measured by some external yardstick. Because by definition a value does not serve anything outside itself, and certainly with two different values you cannot say they serve the same thing and then try to measure which is more important. No, only because it is right. What is motivation? It is right. That alone is why I am obligated to it. After all, I’m not talking about psychology, I’m talking about philosophy. We all of course also have psychological motives, but psychology is not interesting. Psychology is a constraint that ideally we would get rid of if we could. Okay? So the claim is that once there is some clash, it is almost impossible to resolve. I am talking right now about a clash within the system. Within one system—within morality or within Jewish law, it doesn’t matter—or between two different values within the same system. There can be a clash—saving life and Sabbath, a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, and all kinds of things like that. Or in morality, like the example from Sartre, and of course there are many, many other examples. And you need to make a decision in a case where the two values oppose one another. So I said—this was at the end of last time—I talked about situations in which, if incommensurability were essential, as I mentioned, yes—what is greater: human kindness or water in the ocean? Here it’s not that we don’t know the answer because we’re too stupid. There is no answer. It’s simply a stupid question, a question with no meaning. It’s not like in mathematics, where there are what are called incommensurables—irrational numbers. Irrational numbers, yes exactly, they have no common measure, you can’t make a common denominator between two such numbers, right? Not even between an irrational and a rational number. They have no common measure. But there, they are all measured by the same yardstick. They all have length. If we talk about length on the number line, there is some measure or distance that can be defined that includes rational and irrational numbers, and in that sense it is not essential incommensurability. But human kindness and the amount of water in the ocean—that is essential incommensurability. Meaning there is no way to compare them. After all, I can know that three is less than pi. Even though pi is a real—well, non-rational—number, and three is rational. Okay? But they still lie on the same line and there is a hierarchy between them. I can define which is larger or smaller, and overall they are on the same scale. They have a common scale. They do not have a common unit of measure, but they do have a common scale. Here it is essential incommensurability. Meaning there is no way to compare; it is not merely that there is no common yardstick in the same sense as irrational numbers. There is no way to answer. There is no answer! There is no answer to the question of what is greater, the water in the ocean. And I said more than that: even a verse in the Torah would not help me in such a case. Because what would a verse in the Torah reveal—that there is more water in the ocean than human kindness? A verse in the Torah can give me an answer that I myself do not know how to reach. The Holy One, blessed be He, reveals to me what the answer is. Okay? But in a question that has no meaning, that has no answer, then it won’t help—even a verse in the Torah will not give me that. Therefore, if you bring me some scriptural decree, that will not solve the issue. And then I got to the passage in tractate Yoma, and I said that in tractate Yoma there are two suggestions for how to solve the conflict between saving life and Sabbath. Does saving life override Sabbath or not? The first suggestion is “Profane one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” That is from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya. And there I tried to show that the decision is actually trying to bypass the need to determine a hierarchy between the values. We will be able to decide that it is preferable to desecrate the Sabbath and save a life without having to rank, or establish a ranking, between the value of life and the value of Sabbath observance. Why? Because I can show that here I have twenty Sabbath observances plus the value of life, versus one Sabbath observance. So leave it—why should I care how much the value of life is worth? Whatever it may be, twenty Sabbath observances is more than one. So that decides the matter without requiring, yes, X plus twenty Y versus one Y, where everything is positive—both X and Y are positive. So I say: if you neutralize Y, if you neutralize the value of life, then you are left with Sabbath observances. Twenty Sabbath observances versus one Sabbath observance—so the twenty wins. So you can decide this without needing to establish a ranking between X and Y, between the value of life and Sabbath observance. So here you found a trick: even though the values are supposedly incommensurable, and I emphasized that what people usually think is incorrect—that this reasoning assumes that life is only a means to observing commandments. In conceptual terms that’s what it seems to be saying, apparently: “Profane one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” Meaning, I’m not actually saving him for the sake of life’s value, I’m saving him so that he will keep many Sabbaths. But then it comes out that life as such has no value; it is only a means to observing Sabbath. So I said that is not correct. It is only a way to bypass the problem, but life itself has value—or at least can have value—for itself, and there is no need to rank it against the value of Sabbath observance; I can sacrifice it. Right, for example, the Or HaChaim really does want to argue that—but no halakhic decisor agrees with him. You need to desecrate the Sabbath to save any person, and if he uses that and keeps Sabbaths, excellent, and if he decides not to use that chance, that’s his account with the Holy One, blessed be He. You need to give him the possibility of keeping Sabbaths. Okay, so moving on. That is temporary life, and the Talmud itself already discusses temporary life. The Meiri explains how temporary life fits with… there are those who want to argue that it fits only with “and live by them” and not with “keep many Sabbaths.” But the Meiri, in Biur Halakha on section 328—I think 328, I don’t remember—says there that no. Because we are talking about observance of commandments in general, not only Sabbaths, and if he desecrates Sabbaths, then in the two minutes he lives—even two minutes—he can repent, he can pray, he can study Torah. So therefore you can’t… right, so therefore it isn’t—therefore you don’t… it doesn’t have to be at least a week or two in order for you to be allowed to desecrate the Sabbath. Fine, but those are just side notes. So that is the first direction. What was the second direction in the Talmud? The second direction in the Talmud was “and live by them, and not die by them.” And I said that on the face of it, the philosophy of this direction seems opposite to the philosophy of the previous one. Because this direction assumes that the commandments are a means to life, whereas the previous direction assumes that life is a means to observance of the commandments. “Profane one Sabbath so that he may keep many Sabbaths” means that the commandments are the goal and life is a means to keeping commandments. “And live by them” is the opposite. “And live by them” means: you are obligated in commandments if they serve life, but if you are going to die because of keeping the commandments, then leave the commandments aside. So apparently this is an opposite conception, and therefore I said that since the decisors bring both reasons, it cannot be that they are bringing an internal contradiction. Rather, clearly they understood that “profane one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths” does not mean that life is a means to the commandments, and I explained earlier why. Okay? What happens with “and live by them”? With “and live by them,” they learn from the verse, “and live by them, and not die by them.” But even if we learn from a verse, I said before: if the question is one of essential incommensurability, then even a verse will not help. So how does it help me that you bring me the verse “and live by them, and not die by them”? How does the verse determine this? Therefore we are forced to say that despite the incommensurability, despite the absence of a common measure, it is still possible to decide value conflicts. Right now we don’t know how, so the verse comes and tells us that this is the decision. But the very fact that they rely on a verse means that there is, after all, a correct decision here—we just don’t know what it is. Because if there were no possible decision here at all, then a verse would not help. Okay? All of this is now within Jewish law. But I said: even within Jewish law this is so. Even within Jewish law—or within morality, it doesn’t matter—I am currently dealing only with conflicts that are intra-systemic, within one system. Now, there is still incommensurability of values here even within the same system. As in Sartre, right, with fighting evil versus helping his mother—both are moral values, not connected to Jewish law. How can there be a decision? If there is no decision, then it is like the question of whether the Torah can decide what there is more of: water in the ocean or kindness. Fine, it is by force of the Torah, but they are still two different values, so what relation is there between them? They do not serve something else; they are values. If they are values, they have no ranking. But if they have no ranking, then a verse cannot help here either. It does not matter that this is within one system. Rather, we are forced to say no. Meaning, if we take seriously what the Talmud says—that there really is a decision here by force of a verse—then it means, even before understanding how, that this is not completely incommensurable and there will be a possibility of making decisions; we just do not know what it is, so we have a verse that tells us what it is. But if there were no possible decision here at all, no verse would help. Okay. So the question. Sorry, I always forget this and it comes out not. This means, actually, that it already gives us a very important hint for decisions—additional decisions. We see that there is, after all, a possibility of deciding between values despite incommensurability, despite the fact that they serve nothing else. How can that happen? So here, maybe before that I’ll say one more sentence—or not one sentence, a few sentences. There are other decisions that can be made even without establishing a scale or a hierarchy between the values. I’ll give you a few examples that sharpen the point; I call them territory considerations. What do I mean? For example, Rashi writes in the Talmud—this is basically the straightforward meaning of the Talmud—in tractate Bava Kamma 60b, the Talmud says there that a person is forbidden to save himself through another person’s property. King David, who sent mighty men to ask the Sanhedrin whether a person may save himself through another person’s property, was told: it is permitted for you because you are a king, but in principle it is forbidden. It is forbidden, but you are a king and a king breaks boundaries. Okay, so what—an ordinary person who is in danger, if in order to be saved he has to take another’s property, it is forbidden—he has to die. We should mention this with Rabbi Shefran, that if now they did to me… right, wait, that is what the Talmud basically says. The Talmud says that a person may not save himself through another person’s property. It is true that the overwhelming majority of the medieval authorities say no, that cannot be, and therefore what has to be said is that when you do it, you must pay, but not that you are forbidden to do it. Tosafot, the Rosh, the Rashba—the overwhelming majority of the medieval authorities. But Rashi writes it literally: “let him be killed rather than transgress.” Now, in articles I showed that it is not only Rashi; there are other medieval authorities who agree with Rashi. They disagree with him on technical matters, but conceptually—for example there is the Rashba in a responsum—the Rashba writes there: why is it permitted for me to do this? Because this is not robbery, since he too is obligated to spend his money to save me—“do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” So in any case he is obligated to spend his own money to save me, so I too may take his money in order to save myself. Exactly, but the Rashba implies that he says only because there is no robbery here. But if there were robbery here, then he agrees with Rashi that it would be forbidden; otherwise there was no need to get to that. What’s the problem? Robbery is overridden by saving life and everything is fine. What’s the issue? But there is also another opinion, with grain and all that—in the ancient world, in principle, you would destroy their grain, you would be harming their food for the whole year, and there was severe famine, and maybe they couldn’t even… because they would no longer have food for a long time, and then the first thing that comes out of grain is the same thing. In the ancient world grain was much more than… so then this is about lives—is that their lives, saving life? Yes. No, that is obviously forbidden. That is forbidden even in the final Jewish law. No, right, I mean, but this is not certain danger to life but possible danger to life. If it is possible danger to life, it is also forbidden. You cannot harm another person’s life in order to save your own life; that is “let him be killed rather than transgress.” Property—the property. No, no, it is property. The Talmud says there: property, period. There is the… you see there is… the Talmud speaks, yes, fine, but the wording of the Talmud says that a person does not save himself through another person’s property. What stood on the other side was not the other person’s life; it was the other person’s property. There is the Talmud that discusses two people walking in the desert, right, Ben Zoma and Rabbi Akiva, with one canteen of water, and one of them has a canteen that is enough only for one of them. Meaning, if both drink, both will die in the desert; if one drinks, he can be saved. Is he obligated to share it? No. Not only that; according to most opinions, he probably is even forbidden to share it. He must drink it himself and survive. So later authorities discuss this—Rabbi Kook and the Chazon Ish both talk about it—whether I may steal it from him. What’s the problem? Saving life—I’ll steal his water. That is obviously not allowed. Why not? Because now I explained it—that’s why I explained it. The claim is exactly this: when you take his water, the Chazon Ish writes, it is like murder. It is not robbery; it is murder. Because you are taking his water, so in effect he will die. Now true, this is only indirect causation of murder. He argues that taking the water is like murder. So you are forbidden to do that, because that is “let him be killed rather than transgress,” just as you may not kill someone in order to save yourself, you also may not take his water. So here too the same thing: if taking the grain would harm the life of the owner of the grain, it would be forbidden to do it. What is written here as permitted is only because it concerns property. Permitted or forbidden—that is the dilemma. And in the final Jewish law it is forbidden. Fine. In any case, I’m saying this briefly; I don’t want to get into that whole passage. How should this be understood? The medieval authorities ask about Rashi: there are three severe transgressions—idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed, right?—for which one must be killed and may not transgress. All the other transgressions, in a case of saving life, such as Sabbath and the rest of the transgressions—Sabbath is a very severe transgression—but aside from the three severe transgressions, one is permitted—or rather obligated—to transgress everything in a case of danger to life. Now how can it be that Rashi writes here that robbery or causing financial damage overrides saving life? What is this—there are four severe transgressions, not three? This is a different world of values, because all the others are in the same world, because it is toward Heaven, because toward the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, can basically come and tell you that within His system these two transgressions are toward the Holy One, blessed be He, so from My perspective your life is more important. Okay, I’ll formulate it a bit differently; I’ll say this. First of all, there is a responsa collection Binyan Tzion by Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger, the author of Aruch LaNer. Right. So in Binyan Tzion there are some five, six, seven responsa—186, I think, until 192, something like that—where he expands this principle of Rashi into practical Jewish law. He rules this way in practice. He extends Rashi’s principle to any harm to another person; it is not only robbery. Any harm to another person—embarrassing him. Same thing as what the Talmud says: “it is preferable for a person to throw himself into a fiery furnace rather than whiten his fellow’s face in public,” meaning publicly shame him. Now Tosafot there says, in the plain sense, that this is aggadah. What? Regarding Tamar. Yes, but as a halakhic determination, it is not a halakhic Talmudic discussion, it is aggadah. So the Talmud says this with Mar Ukva and his wife there, but Tosafot there understands it as a halakhic statement: one must be killed rather than transgress by humiliating someone. If you humiliate another person, it is “let him be killed rather than transgress.” The Aruch LaNer says, in Binyan Tzion, that this is the same idea as Rashi: every time you harm someone else, it is “let him be killed rather than transgress.” What is the idea here? Because on the face of it that is an excellent question, because if so, it’s not just three severe transgressions; there are dozens of severe transgressions that give way in the face of danger to life. Humiliation, damage, robbery, whatever you want—every kind of harm. So my claim is actually the following. These are not severe transgressions. The reason this overrides saving life is not because of the severity of the transgression, but because of its type. What do I mean? When I go and take another person’s property while I am in mortal danger, then I am making decisions about his property. But I cannot make decisions about his property; he is the owner. Not because robbery is severe, but because it is outside my territory. Only he can make decisions about his property. A person can come and say: I am not willing for you to touch my property, and as far as I’m concerned, let you die. Now he is wicked, the Holy One, blessed be He, will settle accounts with him. But I cannot make decisions about his property. That is his decision, not mine. Not because of the severity of the prohibition of robbery, but because it is outside my territory. If I did this and said: look, but robbery is not one of the three severe transgressions; it is overridden by danger to life—people would say to me: you are right. Correct, you did not violate the prohibition of robbery, because robbery is overridden by danger to life. What you violated was entering territory that is not yours. The prohibition of robbery is overridden; it is not one of the three severe transgressions. But why are you forbidden to rob? This is Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s famous point: why are you forbidden to rob? Not because of the prohibition of robbery, but because that money belongs to someone else. Even if the Torah had not said, “Do not rob,” it would still have been forbidden to rob. It would have been forbidden to rob by virtue of the fact that someone else owns that property. Only he can make decisions about it. You cannot step in there and make decisions about someone else’s property. Exactly so. Right, that is a reasoning, but I am saying this is a reasoning that does not stem from… this talks about robbing a non-Jew. Exactly. Rabbi Shimon Shkop writes this in Shaarei. He says that although according to some views robbing a non-Jew is not forbidden by the Torah, it is forbidden by the Torah by logical reasoning. Yes, it is forbidden by the Torah, not by “Do not rob”—“Do not rob” may not apply—but the legal prohibition, that the property is theirs, exists. And he has many, many statements of this type there in Shaarei, all throughout Shaarei. The legal prohibition. Right. What? The question still remains: why is this “let him be killed rather than transgress”? Because you cannot do it. That’s it—at any price. Not because of “let him be killed…” No, it is not that the severity of the prohibition of robbery overrides saving life; therefore it is not listed among the three severe transgressions. Robbery does not override saving life because of its severity—it does not override it at all. Rather, simply because you cannot enter someone else’s territory and make decisions about his property. Tomorrow morning someone needs a kidney or a lung, or I don’t know exactly what. Let’s talk kidney, because with a lung maybe you can’t live without it, but with a kidney you can live without one, right? So I go in and take someone’s kidney in a proper operation, with all hygiene, and he stays alive. Because I need to save a life, and it’s only the prohibition of injuring someone. So is that permitted? By pure logic, it doesn’t even occur to us that it could be permitted. Why not? The prohibition of injuring someone is overridden by danger to life; it is not one of the three severe transgressions. Right, but you cannot step in and make decisions about your fellow’s kidney. Those decisions may be halakhically justified—that is exactly the point. But even justified decisions you cannot make about another person’s property, because with decisions about another person’s property—you are not being charged because your decision was wrong; your decision may be halakhically correct. You are being charged for the very fact that you made the decision. You are not the one who is supposed to decide. A decision about someone else’s property. I’ll tell you a story. I have a clownish friend in Bnei Brak who is a Torah scholar—he wasn’t mistaken about this—but we were sitting around a table and he saw someone reading a book he had been looking for for a long time. So he says to him: look, I have two options: either violate “Do not rob” and take your book, violating “Do not rob,” or leave it with you and violate “Do not covet.” Now since in any case I’m violating a prohibition, at least let the book be with me. Now where is the mistake here? So of course this is a mistake in the laws of “Do not covet,” and he knew that, but let’s assume he were right. So where is the mistake? The mistake is that your decision is perfectly justified halakhically. Right, indeed if in both cases there is a prohibition, then from your perspective obviously logic says the object should be with you. Logic is very nice. Use your logic on your own property. Regarding my property, the one who makes the decisions is me. That’s all. Not because I’m right and you’re wrong. Your consideration can be a wonderful one—correct, logical, moral, everything excellent. My consideration can be wicked, unfair, wrong—also true. But only I make decisions about my property, even if the decisions are wicked, even if they are wrong. This is a different kind of argument. And the fact that danger to life gives way before robbery does not stem from a clash or hierarchy of values saying that robbery is more severe than danger to life, because it isn’t. Right—you did not violate the Torah’s “Do not rob”; you violated the legal “Do not rob.” This sounds a bit like an argument between deontological theory and utilitarian theory. Why? Utilitarian theory says I’ll take his kidney because he’ll manage with one kidney and I’ll get mine. Depends which utilitarian theory you hold. There are utilitarian theories that say absolutely not, because if everyone takes someone else’s kidney, then if you look at the whole picture, that’s not a world we’d want to live in. So that sort of utilitarian theory is not what is going on here. A private utilitarian theory where each person only pursues his own utility. Yes. Deontological theory yes, but utilitarian theory is of course not a moral theory at all—it just shares the name. Obviously not. So the claim—what I want to demonstrate here is that there are other examples. I want to demonstrate—perhaps one more example so it has a bit more substance. Look, there are two articles, one by Rabbi Yaakov Ariel and the other by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef discusses the question of what happens if there is a boy, say fifteen, fourteen, who wants to go study in a yeshiva high school that does not teach secular studies. Okay? And his parents want him to have matriculation exams, to acquire a profession so that he can earn a living. Fine, that is legitimate. But he wants only to invest himself completely in Torah. Must he obey his parents? That is the question. Now the rule in the Talmud is, “A man shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths”—where the parents tell you to do something against Jewish law, you are not obligated to obey them. That is the rule. Okay. By the way, this principle of displacement is also a type of territory consideration, but I’ll leave that for now—I won’t go into it—because here too there is a kind of conflict between obeying parents and committing a transgression, right? That too is a conflict. So there too you solved the conflict. Regarding the Land of Israel, no? What? Regarding the Land of Israel—if someone’s parents do not want him to immigrate to the Land of Israel or something like that, no? That it overrides honoring parents, no? Maybe, I don’t remember. A wife and her husband, that I know; honoring parents, I don’t know—maybe, I don’t remember. In any case—one second, focus for a moment. Right. So Rabbi Ovadia there discusses the question whether this youth must obey his parents. Now his whole discussion is about the level of obligation to study Torah all the time without secular studies. Is that an enhancement of the commandment? Is it a commandment? Does enhancement of a commandment fall under this principle of “A man shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths”? Meaning, if my parents tell me not to enhance a commandment, am I then also not obligated to obey them, or only regarding a commandment that I actually have to fulfill? Fine, so that is a whole discussion. Rabbi Ariel has a similar article about volunteering for officers’ training. A soldier wants to volunteer for officers’ training; now officers’ training requires career service, so that means additional years in the army. The parents do not want this; they tell the child, come home. Okay. But he is already above the age of education. Yes, doesn’t matter that he’s above the age of education; the parents tell him to come home. So Rabbi Ariel discusses the question, again: does he need to obey his parents, or can he go to officers’ training? Again, he discusses what the category of going to officers’ training is—enhancement of a commandment? a commandment? right? Combat service, helping Israel against an enemy, all sorts of things like that. I think they are both mistaken. Not mistaken in the conclusion; they are mistaken in the methodology of the discussion. Because I think the child does not need to obey the parents in either of these two cases, if this is truly a fundamental principle for him. Meaning, he wants to build his life in a certain way. With all due respect to the parents, the parents are telling him, in a matter that is basic for him, something fundamental for him: no, we do not want it, we do not want you to do that, we want you to do something else. That is not in their territory. It is like, for example, studying engineering. Right, exactly. There is a certain area where the parents cannot enter my territory and tell me various things. So that is not because the commandment to honor parents is less important than army service, or Torah study, or whatever it may be. Rather, because the parents’ command cannot enter the territory within which I choose the way I live my life. There is the well-known Maharik, who says that if his father or parents tell him, “Do not marry this woman”—yes, “don’t marry her, we don’t want you to marry her”—he does not need to obey them. And whoever reads the Maharik carefully and sensitively sees that there are two types of reasoning there. One reasoning truly concerns the question of what category the commandment to marry a woman falls under, and things like that, and then “A man shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths.” Meaning that the Maharik says he does not need to obey them. But there is another reasoning there saying that they cannot tell me how to live my life. I have to honor them, help them, all true, but they cannot tell me how to live my life; that is outside their territory. Again, this is a consideration that does not stem from the question of how severe honoring parents is versus the severity of not marrying this woman but another one. Their command simply has no force at all when it touches the question of how I live my life. That is my territory; they cannot enter it. So therefore this is not at all a question of a hierarchy of values, a scale of values, who is stronger than whom, but simply that in this domain the value does not apply. It may be very important, but it does not relate to this area; it is irrelevant here. It is outside the field. Okay? All these are examples of ways to decide conflicts that, once again, do not bypass the need for ranking, but do not require ranking. It is not like “and live by them,” not like “profane one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” but in principle it is similar: it decides conflicts without entering the question of where each one is ranked. I can remain in essential incommensurability and still make a decision, even though the displaced value may be much more important than this value, or unrelated to it altogether—it doesn’t matter. The decision does not stem from the consideration of which is stronger. Okay? Fine, now I return to “Do not murder” in the two aspects, and also from the standpoint of the value. Yes, right. Meaning, the fact that you are forbidden to murder is also because of the severity of the prohibition, and also because that life belongs to someone else. Just as you are forbidden to humiliate him and must die rather than do so, so too certainly you are forbidden to murder him. But what about the Talmud, which uses the reason “Why do you think your blood is redder?” There, what does “Why do you think your blood is redder?” mean? Isn’t the concept here supposedly something instrumental? As if, you don’t know who is worth more? No, that can be understood in two ways. You can understand it as a halakhic principle saying that the prohibition of murder is not overridden by danger to life, or you can understand it as a non-halakhic principle, namely exactly the territory principle, saying your blood is no redder than his—you cannot make decisions about his blood; his blood is outside your jurisdiction. But with the obligation to rescue, there is a matter of priority—in the obligation to rescue. Unrelated, because in the obligation to rescue—you are talking about directives, not the obligation not to save myself. “Your life takes precedence over your fellow’s life.” But if two are drowning in a river, whom do I save? Because there it is clear. There I do not need to take any action against either of them; after all, in any case I did not throw either one into the river. But I can save only one. Here they are equally balanced—what should I do? So I go to the one whose life is worth more. That is not the same as killing someone in order to save myself, because there I am performing an act of killing, and I have no such justification for an act of killing. But if in any case I am doing the act, and the whole question is only where to direct it, then I direct it where it is preferable. You are not drowning one person in order to save another. No, certainly not—that is forbidden, regardless of whether his life is worth less or more. But if two people are drowning and you need to save one of them, that is a completely equivalent case. What will you do? Like Buridan’s donkey—not save either of them? They’ll both drown—that is obviously irrational. You know the train question? The trolley problem. Yes right, that too can be analyzed with this, but there it is more complicated because it is five people against one; there is room for hesitation there. Fine. In any case, returning to our line of thought: all these are decisions about conflicts without requiring a value scale. I can decide conflicts without requiring it, and that still leaves us with the naive conception that says you cannot decide a clash between two values because it is essential incommensurability. And if you have decisions of the kinds I described until now, then you can manage a decision without building a scale. But where you haven’t found such a trick, apparently you have to build a scale; there is no way around it. But here I return to “and live by them and not die by them,” and I say: if we learn from the Torah that the value of life overrides Sabbath observance and all the transgressions except the three severe ones, that means there is probably an answer here—we just don’t know it, so we learn it from the Torah. And therefore this tells us that the whole idea of incommensurability is not correct. Now I want to sharpen that a bit. When I… what is the point here? I said earlier: how do I reach the conclusion that a certain value is important, that I am obligated to it—for example, the value of life? I have some moral intuition, let’s call it that, or something like that, a clear sense—not “sense” in the emotional sense, but an intellectual perception—that the value of life is a very important value and that I should be obligated to it. I must not harm it; I must save the person, and so on. Okay? We said that this can be described by the word “thus.” I have no justification from a more basic value that would explain the value of life, because then life would not be a value but a means. But it is not true that this is something arbitrary. So I’ll formulate it differently now. Basically, my intuition tells me that life is very, very important, right? That is what it says. So I am not saying one must preserve the value of life because it is very important. The importance of life is not a justification for why I should preserve it; it is simply a description of the same thing in different words. It is not a justification, right? I say the value of life is important and one must preserve life—that is saying the same thing in different words. But notice, there is an important point here. If I say that life is important and therefore one must preserve it—not “therefore” causally, but as a description of the obligation to preserve it—okay? then maybe—and why must one keep the Sabbath? Also because it is important, right? Important in some sense, for example because it fulfills God’s will. Okay? Now I can ask to what extent this contradicts God’s will versus to what extent that contradicts God’s will. Now that does not mean that these things are not values because there is something more basic that explains them. God’s will is that we do this and that—that is not a justification located outside those things. It is not the same as, say, “I am forbidden to do some action because it harms the value of life.” That is a justification. When I say I need to preserve life because the Holy One, blessed be He, wants me to preserve life, that is not exactly a justification. The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it is what makes life a value; it does not contradict the fact that the value of life is a value. It is not some additional principle that explains the importance of the value of life. It is simply the yardstick by which I measure the importance of the value of life. The value of life is, say, an eight on the scale of fulfilling God’s will. Now Sabbath observance is a five on the scale of fulfilling God’s will. So it is possible to build a scale of values even though none of these values serves the others or serves a value outside itself, because there is still some… what is the yardstick, as it were? God’s will. God’s will. How strong God’s will is here. Now how strong God’s will is… it is not that God’s will is the reason why I do it. God’s will is this very thing itself. But I still can measure how much God’s will is present here. And therefore this conception of incommensurability—which says that because values do not serve some other value outside themselves, therefore they cannot be measured, and therefore cannot be compared or placed on a common scale—is wrong. They do not fulfill a more basic value, but there is some abstract scale by which I can measure them. Can outside moral values too, say, be placed on this scale of God’s will? Wait, wait—we’ll get there slowly. I’m doing it step by step. I’ll give you an example. Suppose there is—an example I once saw in an article by a Jew named Shay Wosner, who today is a law professor at the university. Ah, the one who wrote “Law and…” a book that gave… Yes, exactly. He is a law professor at Tel Aviv University. He once gave an example: suppose there is a person, an actor—a theater actor or movie actor, whatever—it’s his profession. Now someone comes and offers him to make a cigarette advertisement. Okay? Now they offer him a million dollars, and he has to smoke, I don’t know, ten cigarettes in different takes until… say ten cigarettes. They offer him a million dollars for that. Fine? He goes to consult his doctor friend; he has a good friend who is also a doctor. He asks him: tell me, what do you think—should I take the offer or not? So he says: look… with my doctor’s hat on, certainly not, because smoking ten cigarettes is harmful to your health. But with my friend’s hat on—go for it, and big time. A million dollars is no small thing. What is he really saying? That the economic value of a million dollars is worth the health damage of smoking ten cigarettes. Now I ask you: how can you compare an economic value, a quantity of money, with a certain amount of harm to health? This is totally incommensurable, completely incommensurable. How can you compare them? No, because… because people with a higher standard of living, with a higher economic level, then they also have… it will also be expressed in… No, let’s say it won’t be expressed in… You won’t be able to buy life. Let’s assume that, just for the discussion. You’re not doing it because of the compensation; it is simply obvious to you that a million dollars, with all due respect to a bit of health damage, is worth it. Now what does that mean? After all, life is a value, and you can measure it in economic terms? No—that is totally incommensurable. How can you measure? And still the feeling is that if the economic value is great and the harm to health is small, then it wins. Even though I ask you: there are a billion liters of water in the ocean—does that outweigh a little human kindness? I don’t know; you can’t measure one against the other. Right? That’s incommensurable. But here it turns out—maybe intuition… I mean, intuitively we all agree that this is a reasonable decision, right? At least not absurd. Right? Even if you don’t agree, you wouldn’t say it’s just nonsense. It’s not nonsense. One second. What does this mean? That we understand there is some common measure even behind things that seem to belong to completely different worlds. And what is that common measure? The measure… you could call it how fitting it is, or how good it is, in some very broad sense. Because a million dollars is not “good” in the moral sense, but the value of life has moral status. Okay? Still, there is a question of how fitting it is, or how much goodness there is in the thing. This is some abstract scale on which we can measure things even though they belong to entirely different conceptual worlds. And in practice we make intuitive decisions, and I think most of us would agree with this decision—that a million dollars is worth the damage of ten cigarettes. Okay? So that means that even though these are measured in completely different units or yardsticks, we still have a way to decide and compare quantitatively. Even though you are comparing for me a million kilos of oranges with level three human kindness. What does it mean that this is a million and that is three? Define one-millionth of this as your unit, then you have three million units of human kindness. That is just an arbitrary definition; it has no meaning. What… how can you compare the numbers here—one million versus three? How do we make that comparison? These are simply things that are not measured in the same way. Right, so therefore this… what… like the famous joke: what is the difference between a rabbit? What is the difference between a rabbit? That both its ears are longer than each other to the same extent. That’s nonsense, right? What do you mean, what is the difference between a rabbit? That is a question with no… the question has no meaning, and therefore no answer, right? So if you understand the question that way—what is better: a million dollars or health damage? If you asked it that way, what is really more fitting—a million dollars or the health damage of ten cigarettes?—people would stare at you blankly, as if you’d asked what is the difference between a rabbit. But if you present them with the practical conflict—take a million dollars and absorb the health damage of ten cigarettes, or not—that is already a question that has meaning, and I think most people would decide in the same direction. That means that even if we do not know how to explain it to ourselves explicitly, intuitively it is clear to us that these dilemmas or these conflicts can indeed be decided. Fine, so you are trying to suggest bypassing circles like the ones I described earlier. You are basically trying to suggest techniques for deciding, like he suggested earlier: if I have a million dollars I can take care of my health and make up for the damage of ten cigarettes. Fine, fine—I’ll have bariatric surgery, it’ll cost me I-don’t-know-what, I’ll be thinner, I’ll live longer despite the ten cigarettes. Again, that is bypassing the issue. You are telling me: okay, I manage to create a “profane one Sabbath.” Exactly, it is like “profane one Sabbath.” But let’s say you can’t do that; still we would all decide that way, right? What does that mean? That intuitively, even if we don’t know how to explain it to ourselves explicitly, it is clear to us that these dilemmas or conflicts can indeed be decided. It’s like sacrificing a year of life for a million shekels—that’s a question that… Yes, yes, but if you make a person work for a year and have no life for a million shekels, most people would say… the question is whether that counts as having no life. The question is what you call life, okay. Because enjoyment in life—I don’t know if that is life. The value of life is not enjoyment of life. The value of life. In a case where you would need to—say, you have a million dollars. Now you have a project: either increase the amount of water in the ocean, or increase human kindness, make an educational project. You’ll have to decide where to invest your million dollars, and suddenly you make a decision. Meaning, there is something about the moment when things are translated into the question of whether to do or not do, whether it is fitting or not fitting—suddenly some scale of degrees of fittingness is born, I don’t even know what to call it. Okay. Now see how far this goes. Basically, if I’m talking about a dilemma within the moral world, say like Sartre’s, then it’s easier to understand. Basically I ask: how good is it—how good is it to fight evil versus how good is it to help my elderly mother? Then it is easier to understand that the degree of goodness can create a scale between those values that will decide the conflict. This is of course very simplistic, because the question, for example, is how significant my contribution to the war against evil will be—one more soldier, there were millions of soldiers fighting there—whereas my mother may have no one else to help her. So of course the calculation is much more complicated; I’m speaking only illustratively here, this is not a real calculation. So that is an intra-moral dilemma. In an intra-moral dilemma it is easier to understand that there is some scale of level of goodness. But if I now ask a non-moral question—or a question between normative systems, for example Jewish law and morality—then in the question of Jewish law and morality I still claim that one can decide, even though one side means how much this accords with God’s will and the other means how good it is. And I still claim that both goodness and God’s will, I do because it is fitting to do them, in some more abstract sense than moral goodness and religious fittingness—I don’t even know what to call it—or religious justification. Right, so I’m saying there is some degree of—let’s call it fittingness—which is already more abstract than any particular normative system. Morality, law, Jewish law—there are many possible normative systems. At the base of all of them there is some abstract scale that lets me decide even inter-systemic conflicts. But once we begin to examine this within the system, we discover that this logic can actually help us solve conflicts outside the system too. That is why I began with conflicts within the system and I end with conflicts outside the system. Now I want to get into—this is really my next stage—I want now to get into conflicts between Jewish law and morality. And here I’ll give a brief introduction and then we’ll enter these conflicts. First of all I want to sharpen further what is meant by a moral obligation or moral value. There was a panel some time ago with me and David Enoch—he is a professor of philosophy and law at the Hebrew University—and we discussed the question whether moral obligation requires God, or whether without God people just do whatever they want or not. I argued yes—that God is required, and without God people can do whatever they want. And he argued no. Not all moral people are religious. They are religious even if they are not aware of it, or they are inconsistent. One of the two: either they are inconsistent—they are not religious and are living in the illusion that there is moral obligation, but there isn’t; they are mistaken. Now both of us agreed—the starting point of the discussion, otherwise there would have been no point in the discussion—both of us agreed with the conception of moral realism. Meaning that morality is something objective, not just convention, not some social agreement or something; rather, it is binding. Meaning, if you think differently from me, you are mistaken. It is not that everyone has his own morality; otherwise there is nothing to talk about, otherwise there is no place for discussion. On that we both agreed. Now the question was whether God is needed for that or not. But he proposed a nice test in one of his articles, a nice test that illustrates the point. He calls it the spinach test. What does that mean? Think of a child who says to you: “How good it is that I hate spinach, because if I loved spinach, I’d eat it, but spinach is yuck, so how good it is that I hate spinach.” Now why is that funny? Why is it funny? A contradiction? No, it’s not a contradiction. He simply does not understand the categories. If you loved spinach, then there also wouldn’t be a problem with eating it. You’re forgetting. He judges the situation in which he loves spinach through his current situation in which he hates spinach, but there is nothing objective here. Now that you hate spinach, don’t eat it, because it’s yucky. But if someone else likes spinach, let him eat it, good health to him. What’s the problem? There is nothing objectively problematic here, right? It is entirely subjective, and therefore it’s nonsense. But now I’ll ask you another question. Suppose someone says to you: “How good it is that I live today and know that Newtonian mechanics is not correct, because there is relativity or quantum theory if you want. If I had lived two hundred years ago, a hundred and fifty years ago, I would have lived in error. I would have thought Newtonian mechanics was the correct physics, and that is a mistake.” Now maybe some of you don’t care that if you had lived then you wouldn’t know physics; that’s beside the point. But clearly someone who says such a thing is not saying something funny. Right? Why? He wants to live in a world where knowledge is more complete, right? He wants to be smarter. What is wrong with that? That is perfectly fine. Maybe someone doesn’t want to be smart—good for him—but it is not absurd to say that. It is not funny; it is not a joke. Right? It is not like spinach. What’s the difference? Not funny. Because it is something real. What? Exactly. Loving spinach is entirely subjective; there is no truth or falsehood there, no right or wrong. But which mechanics is correct—that is a factual question. Quantum theory was the correct mechanics even two hundred years ago; we just didn’t know it. That’s all. So clearly when a person says, “Look, I prefer to live in a world where I am more knowledgeable,” that is a completely reasonable and sensible statement. Even if someone else doesn’t care about being knowledgeable, he can still definitely understand the one who does care. There is nothing funny here at all. Okay? So if so, we have a measure to test claims: are these claims subjective or objective? The spinach test. Now I’ll ask you a question. Someone comes and says: “How good it is that I live today. If I had lived two hundred years ago, I would have kept black slaves and enslaved them.” Entirely reasonable. Is that funny like the spinach case, or does it look more like quantum theory? Like quantum theory. Yes. Agreed? Right. Clearly there is nothing funny in that statement. Because it’s true. Yes, I’m not claiming that if he had lived then, then perhaps he would not have had good grounds of defense if they prosecuted him. What, I wasn’t aware that it was problematic, my whole society thought that way. So there are arguments, mitigating circumstances. But it is completely clear that in my eyes today, what he did there was wrong. Maybe you can justify it. Maybe if I had lived then, I too would have done it; it’s not that I’m condescending to him. But clearly, if someone came and said that to me, there is nothing funny about it. He wants to live in a world where people behave better. Right? Meaning, this is a criterion—and I think it is a very nice test—because it is a criterion that shows you, or lets you test yourself, when you say there is a moral value in doing or not doing something. Do you mean an objective claim here, or just a matter of subjective taste—each person to his own taste? So it seems to me that if a person examines himself seriously, he will discover very quickly that in the spinach test, moral statements belong to the objective wing, not the subjective one. That means that when we say a certain thing is binding, that it is a value, we do not mean to say that this is a convention, some agreement we made among ourselves, and we could just as well have agreed otherwise and nothing would have happened—everyone has his own morality. You can say that because language tolerates everything, the ear tolerates everything. You do not really believe it. When you look at someone doing something that is wrong in your view—now maybe you are mistaken, maybe you have a disagreement and perhaps he will convince you or you will convince him. But your basic outlook is that if you think it is wrong, then someone who does otherwise is wrong. So what if he thinks differently? Then he is mistaken. If someone in physics thinks differently, so what—is that also physics just like mine? No, he is mistaken. Unless he convinces me and then it turns out that I was mistaken, but one of us is right and the other is wrong. It is not that everyone is right, each with his own morality. In that sense it is objective. I am not claiming that I am certainly right—that is another claim. But only one is right here. And if, to the best of my understanding, morality forbids this, then I will fight for that, and I think that someone who does it, someone who acts otherwise, is wrong. And if we have an argument and he convinces me, fine—he convinced me. But so long as he has not convinced me, then if that is my conclusion, he is wrong. This is not like liking spinach and hating spinach. So morality, basically, is for me some kind of binding normative system such that whoever acts otherwise is either mistaken or wicked, depending on why he acts otherwise. Either he is mistaken or he is wicked, but in my eyes he is not equivalent to me. Okay? That is basically the claim. When I ask now the question why—why be moral?—it seems to me, and I think I mentioned this one of the previous times, that this is like what I said when I discussed accepting God according to Maimonides in the Laws of Idolatry, if you remember. Maimonides says that if someone does things because of the necessity of reason—that Maimonides you mentioned—or because of love and fear of the idol, he worships idolatry because of love and fear of the idol, then this is not idolatry in the ideal sense, or not worship of God in the ideal sense, if you do it for other reasons, some kind of necessity of reason. You need to do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, and you accepted Him as God over yourself. Meaning, what does that mean? I talked about how “God,” by definition, in the literal sense—the interpretation of the term “God”—means someone whose commands must be followed. Therefore if someone says to me: “Look, I believe in God, but I still don’t understand why I should keep what He says,” then you do not believe in God. “God” is someone such that if He said something, it must be fulfilled; that follows from the very concept. So I don’t need to explain it to you—unless, of course, you simply do not believe in God. You believe in something, but not in God. “God” is a concept that says this is an entity that has authority by virtue of what it is. Meaning that if He commands, then what He commands, I must fulfill. It is the same thing—I gave the example then, one second—I gave the example then: if someone says to me, “Look, I understand that morality forbids murder, but why not murder?” That is a ridiculous question. It is like the spinach test squared. It is funny because he treats it like spinach even though it is not spinach. If you understand that morality forbids murder, that means murder is forbidden. You cannot tell me, “I understand that morality forbids murder, but why not murder?” Then you do not really understand that morality forbids murder. And if you understand that morality forbids murder, what does that mean? It means murder is forbidden. Meaning, you don’t need something more to explain why murder is forbidden. If you need something more, then something in your original understanding is defective. Then you do not know what morality is. Morality is something such that if it says something, then one must behave accordingly, or must not behave against it. Yes, otherwise you simply do not understand something. Therefore, for example, if there is a person who has no conception of morality at all. He does not understand what it is, he doesn’t know, he does not grasp that category—you will never in your life succeed in explaining to him what morality is. Never. You won’t. Because you need to understand the concept in order to understand that it is binding. If someone understands only facts and says, “I see a wall here, so there is a wall here. I see a computer here, so there is a computer here. Now, I do not see that murder is forbidden in any sense.” Therefore I do not understand what “forbidden” means; the concept “forbidden” is unclear to me. What does forbidden mean? There are facts, there are true facts, false facts. “Forbidden” is not a fact in the simple sense. So you will never be able to explain this concept to him. By the way, this is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to explain religious obligation to a non-believing person. Because that person is blind to that kind of obligation. It is like a person who was blind—that we would define as a kind of illness or blindness. A person who does not understand the meaning of morality—he is simply ill, something in his brain is defective. Right, that is how we define it; that is what is called a psychopath. Okay? Or a certain kind of psychopath—that’s not an exact definition, but I mean it’s the same logic. There is a person who asks me, “Tell me, I understand that you believe in God. I don’t believe, or maybe you do believe, but why do you obey what He says?” I will never in my life succeed in explaining it to him, because he does not really understand what God is. To understand what God is means, among other things, that what He commands must be done. Meaning that someone who lacks that conceptual category—you cannot explain it to him. Now, I think that most human beings do have that category, even if they are not aware of it, and I think in some sense they have that category within them. And say repentance—since we talked about that today—repentance is some kind of exposure to that category within yourself. You suddenly understand that there is some factor such that if it commands, one must fulfill. But if that thing is not in you, you will never discover it. There is no way. You know, try sometime to think—there are very interesting riddles and paradoxes here. Try explaining to some creature what “right” and “left” mean. You will never be able to do it. You cannot explain to a creature that does not already understand it internally the difference between right and left. You won’t manage. These are categories that have no explanation in objective terms. We all manage—how do people teach a small child, one second—how do they teach a small child what the right side is? “The hand with the watch.” They identify it for him; you have no direct way to explain it. But in the end he grasps it. Why? Because it is embedded in him. He knows it; he understands it within himself. You only need to help him discover it, conceptualize it. But if it were not already in him, you couldn’t. You know, there is a riddle that drove people crazy. A riddle that became famous here: you stand in front of a mirror, and the person standing opposite you is yourself in the mirror, right? Now you have a watch on your right hand. The one opposite you looks exactly like you, but on which hand is the watch? The left. His left, right? Meaning, the mirror reverses right and left, right? But it does not reverse up and down. The feet are below and the head is above. How can it be that the mirror reverses right and left, right? The mirror is totally symmetrical. Why does it reverse right and left but not up and down? Now if you say it is because of the symmetry of our bodies—not true. Look at a circle. Put a circle in front of the mirror. Put a dot at nine o’clock on the circle. In the circle opposite, the dot will be at three o’clock. There are no numerals of course, only the position. Okay? But it will not reverse up and down. Put a dot at the top; in the reflected circle it will also be a dot at the top, not at the bottom. And the circle is symmetrical—both in the X-axis and the Y-axis. Right? So why does it reverse right and left but not up and down? In my opinion, the explanation is—there is a nice article by Gadi… the one from the mathematics blog, what’s his name? Gadi Alexandrovich. He has a nice article about this. Ah? Morality is like a concept that is objective, a subjective concept, as a subjective concept? My claim was that it is objective. That is the Turing test. So what do I want to say? My claim is that there is an essential difference between the distinction up-down and the distinction right-left. Up-down is an objective distinction. What is close to the earth is down; what is far from the earth is up, right? But right and left—if we were not built in such a way, we would have no idea how to define those concepts. A creature in whom this is not embedded—you cannot explain what right and left are. What up and down are, you can easily explain: what is close to the earth is down, what is far is up. North and south too? North and south too—it’s simple physics. North is what goes in the direction of the earth’s rotation and south goes against it. That’s all—completely objective. And east and west as well. All those directions—you can explain them to a person: where the sun rises and where it sets. All those directions you can explain to someone; nothing has to be embedded in him. You can explain them on the basis of objective criteria. Right and left you will never manage to explain to someone if that understanding is not already embedded in him. There are concepts… now, absurdly enough, you might think that right and left are really subjective concepts—that we created them. But no. In physics, for example, there is right spin and left spin. There are physical consequences to the difference between right and left. But if we were not built in a way that allowed us to understand the difference between right and left, then that part of physics would be blocked to us. We would not be able to understand it. And the fact that we have the ability to understand the difference between right and left is something embedded in us. But once it is embedded in us, we also see it in the world. The distinction exists in the world, but there is no way to perceive it unless that distinction is embedded in us. So I’m bringing this only as a metaphor for the claim about divine command or moral command. Someone who does not understand the category of forbidden and obligatory or permitted—all the moral categories—there is no way to explain it to him. It is not like “look, there is a wall here.” Okay, I got it. But it is not like that. There is nothing to point to. What will you point to when you say to him, “Look, murder really is forbidden”? No, I don’t understand. Try to explain to me why murder is forbidden—what fact will convince him that murder is forbidden? “If you murder someone, his family suffers”? First of all—so what? Who said one must not cause suffering? Second—and if he is a lonely person with no family and no friends, then is it permitted to murder him? No one suffers from it, and he too won’t suffer from the murder—I’ll kill him instantly, he won’t notice, and everything is fine. You will not be able to explain it to a person, except if there is already a person in whom this is embedded, then you can explain it. This means that we have some capacity to perceive moral facts. There is a moral fact—murder is forbidden—and in some sense we see it. See it, of course not with our eyes, but we see it by means of our conscience or our moral perception, our moral intuition. So that is what I earlier called moral realism. Moral realism means that the principles of morality are some kind of facts that exist in the world. Therefore if someone says otherwise, sees otherwise, then we have a dispute. One of us is right and the other is wrong. It is not that each of us is equally right. Exactly. Yes, exactly. So this does not deal with the physical world, but with some other world. But there are facts there, and conclusions flow from them, and one can observe these facts—in quotation marks—and in that sense it is like physics, just spiritual physics, okay? Now of course one can still ask why these moral principles are binding. After all, the fact that something exists should not obligate me in any way—unless the one who created that thing has some authority to obligate me: God. Right? And therefore I argued there in that panel that I am not obligated by facts, even if there is moral realism, unless I believe that behind them stands some lawgiver—there are no laws without a lawgiver. What does it mean for a system of laws to be binding if there is no lawgiver with authority? So there is a system of laws—so what if there is a system of laws? There has to be some lawgiver whose authority I recognize, such that what he legislates obligates me. Therefore I argued there that there is no moral force, no valid morality, without God. Now this does not mean, by the way, that people who do not believe are less moral. Practically speaking, I do not think that is true. I do claim that either they believe implicitly without being aware of it, or they are inconsistent. Many people are inconsistent. So their morality is indeed not really well founded, but they behave well no less than anyone else. And my claim is not a practical one—that people who do not believe are less moral. Not necessarily. There are more and less, as in every group. But I do think their moral theory is inconsistent. So either they are hidden believers—they are inconsistent because they think they do not believe, but they actually do believe. Not necessarily in the God of Sinai and so on, but in God as the basis for morality, okay? Or they really do not believe, and then their moral obligation is simply inconsistent. They do it, but not for moral reasons—rather because it feels nice to them, or that is how they were educated, or I don’t know, some other reason. But there is no real force to moral obligation in such a world, in such a picture. That is the claim. Now what does this actually mean? It means that morality too is basically founded on divine command, exactly like Jewish law. And that raises the question: okay, what happens when there are conflicts? Or let me ask another question: what exactly is the relation between Jewish law and morality? Even before conflicts—just on the theoretical level—what exactly is the basic relation between Jewish law and morality? Well, there are many halakhic commandments that stem from a moral rationale. Okay, that’s where I’m headed; I don’t agree, but that’s where I’m headed. Because “for you were strangers in Egypt,” “do not oppress the stranger,” and all that. I’ll get to that in a moment. We’ll get there. Look, in the context of Jewish law and morality, the dilemma and the different approaches arise in those places where there is conflict. For example, before the current chief military rabbi was appointed—I forgot his name—people brought quotations from a responsum he had once given regarding the rape of captive women. From the beginning of the portion “When you go out,” the beautiful captive woman, he said that according to Jewish law there is no prohibition against raping captives. And that is correct as far as the beginning of the portion “When you go out” is concerned. And of course there was a huge uproar. Not then—years later, when he was appointed, when he was a candidate to be chief rabbi of the army—then all the uproar began. What do you mean, what kind of morality will the army have if that is its chief rabbi and it is permitted to rape captives? And then religious apologetics began—“But it’s written there, how can that be?” and “No, no, you don’t understand, that was then and today…” In short, a whole mess. But that is of course only the tip of the iceberg. There are other laws that quite clearly seem to contradict morality. Killing Amalekite babies. Not saving a non-Jew’s life on the Sabbath. It is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath to save a non-Jew’s life. All these are established halakhic rulings. The beautiful captive woman. The beautiful captive woman is the first example I gave. A priest’s wife who was raped. There is a solution for each of them. There is a solution for each one. The beautiful captive woman, for example, is because in any case people cannot withstand their impulse, so the Torah adds things to make it distasteful to them—Rashi says that about it, what do you mean. No, no, but that doesn’t help. It doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. Illegitimacy! A person did nothing—he was born from his parents’ sin. What is he guilty of, that now he is ruined for life and cannot marry? That is surely a morally proper question. A woman, the wife of a priest, who was raped. She has to separate from her husband, leave her children, or he has to leave his children—they want to remain together. She has already been harmed once, and now you put her through another hell after what she already suffered? And there have already been cases that really caused public uproar around this issue. So there are these dilemmas, certain laws that seem to stand in frontal contradiction to moral principles. And that raises the question: wait, so what do we do here? Fine, there are several possible principled approaches here. One approach says: no, no, these laws are ultra-moral, they are just some higher morality. A higher morality. You do not really understand morality; the Torah knows and understands morality better than you do. And if you think there is a contradiction, you are mistaken in your moral interpretation. There are opposite approaches that say: if you see a contradiction between this and morality, then your halakhic interpretation is mistaken. Jewish law essentially cannot deviate from morality, and if you see a contradiction—or a contradiction—then you did not interpret the Jewish law correctly. In Rabbi Kook this is written in many places, this second approach. You could also say this regarding “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” that these too are some kind of constraints that caused us… The question is whether the moral constraints there really do the work or not; maybe we’ll still talk about that. A third possibility says that… so what if there is a contradiction between Jewish law and morality? I don’t see any problem with that. I am committed to Jewish law, not to morality. What Leibowitz used to say was that morality is an atheistic category. I am committed to Jewish law; if morality contradicts it, those are human inventions—throw them in the trash. Jewish law tells me that this is… no, he would say, he said it is an atheistic category. Now do with that what you understand. After all, among other things, people asked him about all kinds of contradictions—how can this be, after all he himself constantly protested moral wrongs that we commit—the occupation and all sorts of things like that. So morality is an atheistic category? There is an interesting article by Eliezer Goldman. Eliezer Goldman writes—he was a moral philosopher, and I think he was here at Bar-Ilan—that the fact that this is an atheistic category does not mean I am not obligated to it; it only means that I am not obligated to it as a religious person. We began with someone asking me earlier how I can be a secular Zionist and a religious person, so it is the same thing. Meaning, his morality was a morality based on atheistic foundations, not connected to the Holy One, blessed be He. But he is obligated to it just as he is obligated to the commands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and he has two systems to which he is committed. Therefore it does not contradict the claim that he says it is an atheistic category with the claim that I am obligated to it. Okay? But of course, if so, that does not solve the problem of conflict. If I am committed to morality and committed to Jewish law, and where Jewish law obligates me to do something immoral, then the problem remains. What do we do? Because I am committed to both, even if this is an atheistic category. Okay? And there is also the question whether the Holy One, blessed be He, created morality as something real and objective. Yes, that’s where I began; that is why I prefaced earlier that God created it. So is God, as it were, contradicting Himself when He commands something against morality? That is a reflection, an echo of the same question. A reflection of the same question. How can that be? If you say morality is an atheistic category and you are committed to both, then you have a dilemma. If you say morality is the result of God’s command, as I said earlier, then what—God commands us contradictions? How can that be? So what must one say? There’s no choice, we must resolve it. How to resolve it? One of three possibilities. Either I didn’t understand morality correctly, or I didn’t understand Jewish law correctly. The common denominator of both is that there must be congruence between morality and Jewish law. Or I am simply not committed to morality; I am committed to Jewish law because Jewish law is God’s command, and morality is just a human invention. Which is old. What? Okay, let each person decide for himself what he thinks, but these are the options in this situation. That is, either your moral interpretation is incorrect, or your halakhic interpretation is incorrect, or I am not committed to morality but only to Jewish law. Of course, I could also be committed only to morality and not to Jewish law—secular, or Reform, or whatever—but I said that a sweeping value principle doesn’t allow that. Or I can say that morality is a theistic category and I am committed to both, and then I have a conflict but not a contradiction. I have a conflict in the sense that I don’t know what to do, but there is no contradiction. This is a command of the Holy One, blessed be He, and here this is an obligation that I recognize as a human obligation independently of the Holy One, blessed be He. So there is no contradiction in my being committed to these two things; I have a conflict, and I need to decide what to do. Okay? So that is basically a roadmap. Now we have to decide which route we are taking. Now I need to finish. And what about the clarification raised by the Binding of Isaac? Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, commands you to kill your son, and that seems so immoral. Excellent question. So all these different possibilities—we will need to, we can also try applying them to the Binding of Isaac and see what each path gives us in that kind of dilemma. And of course compare it to what Abraham did, and the Torah praises him for it, exactly. And the Torah praises him for it, and so on. So maybe that will give us some hint that will help us choose between the different approaches. Okay? But these are basically the options before us when we find ourselves in a contradiction between Jewish law and morality. Okay? But there is also Sodom, where Abraham argues with the Holy One, blessed be He, in the name of morality. Yes, I may have mentioned that one of the previous times, I don’t remember. It is really at the end of that same portion. Right. I don’t remember if I mentioned it here before, I don’t know—maybe in this series or another series. Somewhere around there. Okay. Because not long ago in one of the classes—I give other classes too—so maybe it was there. Indeed there Abraham argues over the people of Sodom like a livestock or horse trader. Right? One righteous man, thirty righteous men, fifty righteous men. Yes. And in the Binding of Isaac he gets up early in the morning and is ready to kill Isaac without saying a word. There is a dilemma here that we need to think about and see how to reconcile. Fine, that is another story. What I just want to say—I no longer have time to get into it, we’ll do it next time—but keep in mind the principal directions available when we stand before a conflict. And already here I’m saying: I’m now leaving conflicts aside, and I want to discuss Jewish law in general, not only those laws that contradict morality, because I’m going to divide Jewish law into three categories in relation to morality. There are categories of laws that contradict moral principles. That’s what we discussed earlier. There are categories that fit moral values—do not murder, do not steal, and so on. Honor your father and mother. And there are those that are neutral. Let’s call them anti-moral, moral, and a-moral. A-moral meaning something neutral. Putting on phylacteries, the prohibition of pork—things that have no connection to morality, and the Torah forbids or obligates them. And the interesting question is to try to examine all three categories, not only the first category of contradictions between Jewish law and morality. Because when you examine all three categories, I think you discover very quickly what the truth is. All the possibilities I described earlier, none of which is convincing—all of them collapse. And I think that through this we can try to understand what the truly required relation is between Jewish law and morality. But we’ll do that next time. Okay? We’ll stop here.