Dispute and Truth – Lesson 16

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] says it’s the same thing, but Tosafot argues with him over this small difference. And Tosafot says that this small difference works in favor of the square, and that’s not correct. If you already want to take that small difference into account, then it works in favor of the rectangle, not the square. Or you can say, like the Rashbam, that it’s more or less the same thing, and then I have no criticism—fine, maybe he knew the Pythagorean theorem but said it’s more or less the same thing, okay? But in Tosafot it’s clear there’s a mistake here. So now what? Here too there’s no mistake. By the way, with the rabbis of Caesarea there in the passage in tractate Sukkah, with pi, they also don’t have a mistake. It’s commonly accepted that what’s there is an obvious mistake, meaning they simply say something there that doesn’t even get off the ground. That’s not true. In fact, one of my students from yesterday… one of the doctoral students here wrote something about it, and there too it really isn’t a mistake—they’re just not being understood correctly. They’re talking about circumference and not area. Never mind, that’s a different discussion. Fine. In the passage in Arakhin where they learn about the seventh month, there they exempt from execution, but that isn’t ruled as Jewish law according to Maimonides at the end of chapter 10 of the Laws of Murderer—he doesn’t rule that way. So what proof is there that the science changed and therefore we rule this way? No, we don’t rule that way. There are babies born in the seventh month and babies born in the ninth. In the Talmud they thought it was only either this or that. We know that there are those born early and those born on time. Fine, true. So what is this “nature changed”? Maybe the percentage back then was different, I don’t know. The percentage of babies who even managed to be born was much lower, because many died. Fine, I don’t know exactly. And a baby of the seventh month and of the ninth—an eight-month baby can’t be circumcised on the Sabbath? Right, so that’s exactly the whole story there, because it can’t be—it’s either seven or nine, so they don’t grasp that it’s a continuum. Never mind, there are various things like that. In any case, what would we say here? First of all, it’s a dispute about reality, right? Between the Rashbam and Tosafot. Or mathematics—it’s not even reality. Here you can’t say they’re both right. Unless we’re talking about curved, non-Euclidean space. Right, that’s not what this is about. So what do we say here? Again, there isn’t a dispute about reality and “these and those are the words of the living God” and both are right—that the square is larger than the rectangle, and also the rectangle is larger than the square, and also they’re equal, and everybody is right. There’s a limit to every trick, right? Another example: there’s someone in the Talmud too, in Bava Batra—the Talmud brings there, you know that in buying and selling there’s a rule that when you weigh merchandise for someone, you have to tip the scale a handbreadth. The merchandise should weigh more than the weight, to make sure you gave him at least what he paid for, if not more. Okay? When you weigh, you have to make sure the merchandise tips the scale a handbreadth—that the side with the merchandise is a handbreadth lower than the side with the weight. You gave a bit extra. They get into stages. There can’t be such a thing. Why not? If it’s heavier, then it goes all the way down. If it weighs the same, then it will stand wherever you put it; wherever you put it, it’ll stay. The question is whether the forces are balanced. If the balance of forces is zero, then it stands wherever you put it. If there’s friction here—then forget the handbreadth; the handbreadth measure is worthless. By the way, the scales there probably weren’t… what they describe there didn’t have friction. It was really a rod on a rod. Look, if I’m talking about a scale like this, with this kind of end, then yes. Because the moment it moves, this side gets farther and that side gets closer, so the torques will stop it at some particular point. Right? It won’t go all the way down. But the scales that, according to most commentators, are the scale being discussed—a rod with a string hanging on each side and a bowl or plate on it. Here they put the merchandise and here they put the weight, the weight. Okay? Now here, if the weight is the same, wherever you put it, it’ll stay. Wherever you put it, because the forces are balanced at zero. And if it weighs more, then it goes all the way down. There’s no situation where it stops in the middle, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a handbreadth, two handbreadths, or five. If it stands, then it stands everywhere; it would stand both here and there. But I’m saying again, if there’s friction here, then you can tilt it in either direction, so what does that help? Once there’s friction, forget it—all these assumptions are worthless. What does it help you to tip it a handbreadth? You tip it a handbreadth and it stands here, but in fact the real state could be like this. So forget it entirely, you can’t… If you’re talking about a scale with friction, don’t sell at all. The assumption is that it isn’t—it’s a good scale, a reliable scale. And their assumption was that the bigger the gap, the bigger the difference in weights. Meaning, if it’s a handbreadth, that means you gave him another two percent, I don’t know. Two handbreadths means another four percent—I’m just saying, right?—and so on. But that isn’t true. If you gave him one percent extra, it goes all the way down. If you gave him exactly equal, it stands wherever you put it. So I once raised this question in Bnei Brak, and all the leading sages of the generation were baffled by it. I even met the heads of the Ponevezh yeshiva at a wedding there; I spoke with them. Today they’re already famous figures. Huh? Sounds correct. Okay. Plain common sense. In any case, for our purposes, you can’t test it by experiment because the question is what kind of scale you’re talking about. Meaning, the question is what kind of scale they had. Ah, because a clock-type scale is built differently, but that wasn’t the scale they had. That’s exactly the point. The question is what kind of scale you’re talking about. That’s it, I’m talking about grams, I’m not talking about… No, no, it has nothing to do with grams and kilograms, it has to do with how the scale is built, what the mechanics of the scale are. So if it’s built… like that, with the clock, then that’s something else. That’s not what I’m talking about, and it’s not what appears in the Talmud. Okay, never mind. In any case, for our purposes, what I’m saying is: clearly there are mistakes in the Talmud. Clearly there are mistakes in the Talmud. The problem is that if there are mistakes in the Talmud in factual matters, then there’s also no reason to assume there are no mistakes in the Talmud in Jewish law. In Jewish law too there can be mistakes; we’re all human beings, and human beings can make mistakes. Except what? Sensible or mature people don’t need to conclude that the Talmud is always right or incapable of error in order to say that the Talmud has halakhic authority. For children, in order to explain to them why they have to obey the Talmud, you have to tell them that all the sages of the Talmud were seraphs on high, exalted prophets, because otherwise they won’t listen to them. But adults understand that there’s a legal framework. The law is determined by what’s written in the Talmud, just as the Knesset enacts a law and then it’s binding—not because they’re incredibly wise and never make mistakes; once in a while they probably do make mistakes too. But it’s simply the Knesset; it has formal authority. The Talmud is like that too. But children can’t manage with that, so you have to say they were heavenly seraphs so they’ll listen to them. Okay, that’s the point. The Talmud says in Berakhot that there are nine stars in Kimah. So Rashi says it’s eight… they say, why is it called Kimah? Because these eight stars are there. Rashi says no, it’s about a hundred—Kimah, about a hundred. And it does indeed make sense that it’s about a hundred. Ninety-nine stars were found there. So you see that when the systems for seeing really developed… Yes, but that was knowledge that already existed then; it’s not knowledge from the Talmud. They simply fed off the knowledge in their environment, and if there was an error in the knowledge in their environment, then that error entered their work too. When a halakhic decisor today wants to issue a ruling and clarify some scientific or medical question, or whatever it may be, he asks an expert in the field, right? So if the expert is mistaken, then the decisor will rule on the basis of mistaken information. Right—it is what it is, that’s life. So when did that begin? In the eighteenth century? From when did decisors stop being immune to error and start becoming victims of the scientific knowledge in their environment? From the beginning, right? Sounds logical—it didn’t happen at some stage in the middle. That’s all. What do you think of Bnei Brak? How did they react? They didn’t answer. They asked you, right? What? They asked you in Bnei Brak also? About that Tosafot? Yes. Okay, and what did you tell them? I told them it was a mistake. And what did they say to you? Nothing—“it requires further analysis.” What could they say? Same thing with tipping the scale a handbreadth; that too is the same thing. Yes. Well, never mind—you have to understand that for some people, religious life is bound up with living a lie. There’s no avoiding it, and you have to get used to reciting things that you yourself know are not true, because otherwise you’re a heretic. Pains of growing up, right. That’s the subject of my next column on the website; whoever wants can read it there. It just happened to overlap with this class. Okay, so let me get back to us. In short, what I want to say is that also regarding disputes about reality—just as I find mistakes in reality, so too in disputes about reality there is no reason in the world to assume both sides are right. It can absolutely be that one is right and the other is mistaken. By the way, it can also be that both are mistaken. That too can happen. It’s not yes or no; in disputes, it can be that both are mistaken, it can be that one is mistaken. At least one is mistaken, because both can’t be right. Okay? But that also doesn’t mean there can’t be disputes about reality. There is no reason to claim that there cannot be disputes about reality. Because if it doesn’t bother me to say that a halakhic sage can make a mistake, then I have no reason to say there are no disputes about reality, because the reason people say that is in order to save the thesis that a halakhic sage cannot make a mistake. So the conclusion I reach, at least, is that there are disputes about reality, and in those disputes of course one is right and the other is mistaken. And I also think that in halakhic disputes too, one is right and the other is mistaken, and not that both are right. We discussed that when we talked about “these and those.” I’ll perhaps bring an example of something that sharpens another point. The Minchat Chinukh, in the well-known commandment 32—yes, he has there the essay “The Sabbath Garage.” Yes, there he fixes cars on the Sabbath; whoever wants to fix cars on the Sabbath, that’s the garage. So there he goes through the various forbidden labors and discusses each one. Among other things, he talks there about the Talmud that discusses the question of what happens with the milk in a woman’s breast: is it deposited there or uprooted? Meaning, is it connected there or detached there? Okay—deposited and uprooted; both are… deposited and uprooted, or connected—yes, those are the questions. And before that, in Ketubot? The Talmud—yes, that’s the Talmud in Ketubot. The Talmud in Ketubot. Now in the course of the discussion there, the Minchat Chinukh says—he explains some dispute there between Maimonides and Tosafot, I think, and he says: one can challenge Maimonides from Rashi—ah, from Rashi, no no, not from Tosafot. Why? Because in reality it’s obvious that Maimonides and Rashi are not disputing, because there are no disputes about reality. So if Rashi says thus, then obviously Maimonides must agree. So if so, how can he say such-and-such? And then he builds some structure, or says it needs further analysis—I don’t even remember the details. So he assumes that even between Rashi and Maimonides there cannot be a dispute about reality, because no one can make a mistake, כביכול. Yes, meaning this goes very far—it reaches even to decisors of our own time, yes, it goes very far. The truth is that according to the principle I said earlier, there’s really no reason to stop this at some point. If you think that in the time of the Talmud that was the case, then when did it stop being the case? In the fourteenth century? Seventeenth? In what century did decisors become capable of making mistakes? So either way, if you think that in the time of the Talmud they couldn’t make mistakes, then I understand the position that says, fine, then today too they can’t, because why should that change? I only claim that the conclusion is the opposite: just as today they can make mistakes, so too then they could make mistakes. Meaning, there was no change in this matter—unless someone truly has divine inspiration, a prophet, I don’t know exactly what, fine, who has divine sources, then maybe he doesn’t make mistakes. But sages are people, and people can make mistakes. But here I want to make another point. In this context of deposited or uprooted, of the connection between the milk and the breast, both in an animal and in a woman there’s discussion about this, yes—the question of whether milking on the Sabbath falls under threshing, extracting as a form of threshing. Meaning, the question is how we understand this labor. Now is this really, in your opinion, a dispute about reality? Right—for it’s obvious that milk is not connected to the body; milk is a liquid. What does it mean that it’s connected to the body? In what sense can a liquid be connected to the body? The question is how you look at the situation in which the milk is stored there inside the, I don’t know, that container that holds it. Do you see it as part of the body, and then halakhically I view it as connected, and if you take it out then you are plucking, threshing, whatever it may be? Or is it deposited and uprooted—no, it’s just lying there like in a box, like pouring from a bottle. Okay? So it’s pretty clear that the dispute is really not a dispute about reality at all, even though it’s formulated like a dispute about reality—it isn’t. It’s a dispute about the question of how to view reality. But that’s a halakhic dispute, not a factual one. And by the way, as I said earlier, although it’s a halakhic dispute, it’s absolutely possible that one is right and the other is mistaken. I’m not trying to gain anything by saying both are right; I’m only trying to say that in a large part of the disputes that people treat as disputes about reality, and then search for excuses and explanations and so on, they are not disputes about reality, but rather about the question of how we relate to reality. By the way, in most disputes it’s like that. Most disputes that look like disputes about reality really are not disputes about reality. I agree with the basic approach that most disputes are not disputes about reality—not for the reasons of those who say it, but because in principle there can be disputes about reality, since in principle there can be mistakes. But it’s true that most disputes are not dealing with reality itself. Yes, think about disputes over presumptions: does a person repay within the term, or does he not repay within the term? Okay, suppose there were a dispute about that—is that a dispute about reality? No. There can be, I don’t know, some percentage of people who repay within the term. Is that percentage enough to break the presumption and say no, you can no longer assume the presumption that a person does not repay within the term? Or not—does the presumption still stand? There’s a certain percentage that does, but the presumption still stands, like majority versus minority. So again, it isn’t a factual dispute, even though ostensibly it speaks about what people do—whether they repay within the term or not—a dispute about reality, a dispute about facts. But no. It’s a dispute about where to draw the line. Do I draw the line at 30 percent? At 40 percent? At what level do I break that presumption? Okay? So therefore. What? When the sages establish a majority, for example, it’s based on some existing reality. Maybe they’re disputing where to place the line, but when there is a majority that is not before us, that means there is such a thing. Right, of course. No, no, I didn’t say there aren’t factual determinations, but usually when there is a dispute, the dispute won’t be about the reality. By the way, for example regarding majority, or a majority that is not before us, or things of that sort—many of those majorities are halakhic majorities, not statistical ones. For example. Like the presumption of fitness. What is the presumption of fitness? The presumption of fitness doesn’t mean that necessarily most people are fit. The presumption of fitness means that a person has the right to be regarded as fit unless proven otherwise. And that can exist even in a place where there is no majority of fit people. Even if there isn’t a majority of fit people, I claim that I am fit—what do you want from me? I have the right to be treated as a fit person unless you have proof otherwise. So although this is formulated statistically, it isn’t always based on a statistical determination. More than that: in the time of the sages there was no awareness of, let’s run a survey, what’s the problem? We’ll activate some polling institute, I don’t know which, call in Lev Tzuba and we’ll get the answer we want. So what’s the problem? Meaning, the sages had no awareness of that. They estimated reality by impression, based on however many cases they knew, and more or less drew a conclusion from that. By the way, that’s what people generally do even today. Only today there is also awareness that there is a more precise tool for doing it—a tool based on a representative sample and an attempt to generalize, and also to know the level of significance. There are statistical measures for how reliable the result is. For example, with election polls, people think election polls are worthless—look how much they miss. There is no greater nonsense than that. The polls are amazing in their reliability. Amazing. We’re talking about errors—taking five hundred people—and errors of, I don’t know, two, three, four percent, on five hundred people for the whole country. Now two, three, four percent in a situation of political deadlock—of course if you predicted 51 for one side and 49 for the other, and the error is three percent, then within the margin of error the opposite result can also fit. Then everyone says, throw them out, it’s the pollsters’ Yom Kippur. Throw all the pollsters into the trash. Absolutely not. These polls are astonishingly accurate. Every time I’m amazed anew by these results. Here and there there were bigger mistakes—once with Lapid there was something fairly big, between nineteen and seventeen, twelve or something. What? Because Peres hit the poll. Yes, exactly. Stay far from a poll when you’re in an evenly balanced situation. When you’re in an evenly balanced situation and the poll tells you 51–49, within the margin of error that can flip. And that’s what usually happens. Usually when people find errors in polls, it’s in a case like that, where it predicted 51–49 and it came out 49–51. Fine, so that’s within the margin of error. The poll was completely accurate. You just have to understand what the poll says. That’s all. But the poll was completely accurate. These polls are astonishingly precise. In any case, for our purposes, if in the time of the sages there was no awareness of this—yes, for example I suggested this. There are various women’s organizations that are very troubled by the presumption of “better to sit as two than to sit alone.” That presumption basically says that a woman is willing, wants, to be in a relationship at any price. No matter what price she has to pay—the husband has boils, is abusive, I don’t know what, whatever you want—the woman is willing to put up with anything, as long as she has a relationship. And that isn’t true today. Okay? I don’t know, maybe in the time of the sages it was true; today it isn’t true categorically. Yes, no, it depends on the society, to what extent—but today it is not true categorically. So now the question is what do you do with that? Because for example—yes, there was a case, I once sat on a panel that annulled a marriage. More than once. One time there was a really blatant case. A couple came before us, a pair of foolish young people who got married at seventeen or eighteen and had no idea what they were doing. Well, they knew, but they were reckless. After the wedding, at night, the bride is waiting for the groom in the hotel, and the guy doesn’t show up. After a few days they found him abroad, in the United States, living with another woman in some house they already had there. He never intended to marry her at all. I don’t know exactly why he did it, maybe for the gifts, because he also stole the gifts. In short, it was completely absurd. Now they were dragged around the rabbinical courts for years. Years. They tried to persuade him to give a divorce bill and bribe him with money and begged him and everything. And I said: there’s no need for a divorce bill or anything—the marriage is void. The woman consented to the marriage because of “better to sit as two than to sit alone”; she wanted a relationship. Where she did not get a relationship, it turned out that her consent was mistaken. That’s all. So she isn’t married. Goodbye. She can remarry. No need for a divorce bill and no need to beg the groom and so on. And that was it—we permitted her. Now of course this isn’t recognized legally, because legally only the rabbinate decides. Still, somehow they have to make a living. So in the end the rabbinate was very proud that their emissary got there, paid him—from the agunot fund they are so proud of having—some bribe, I don’t know, forty thousand shekels or something like that, and he agreed to send the divorce bill. And there were adventures with that divorce bill too—don’t ask what happened there. You could write an encyclopedia about that case. In any event, in any event they’re proud of the fact that they bribed a citizen to fulfill his legal duty. And they’re very proud of that. They bribed him with public money, gave him the money so he would fulfill his legal duty. That’s the summit of the rabbinate’s pride. Well, in comparison to other things they do, maybe you can even be proud of that. In any case, the claim I want to make is that no one there on the rabbinical court panel even thought to say: wait a second—what is “better to sit as two than to sit alone”? A woman wants a relationship at any price—fine, that’s when she gets a relationship. But here she didn’t get a relationship. It’s not that she got a relationship with an abusive husband, or got a relationship with a husband afflicted with boils, sick, I don’t know exactly what. So you tell me, okay, she’s willing at any price, as long as she has a relationship. Here she didn’t get the relationship itself—not that the relationship wasn’t worth much. She didn’t get a relationship; he never came, he didn’t live with her at all. So in such a situation, is there any doubt that the marriage is null and void like the dust of the earth? Who needs a divorce bill in such a case? Now what’s the point? That the rabbinate isn’t willing—there’s no such thing. “Better to sit as two than to sit alone”—you don’t remove a husband without a divorce bill, there’s no such thing; you don’t release a woman without a divorce bill. Sometimes they use tricks to permit mamzerim, maybe, but they don’t release a woman without a divorce bill. Okay? So what I said to the women’s organizations working on this issue was: do a proper survey one time. Bring facts. We all know that’s the reality, but bring facts. Take a proper polling institute, with rabbinic guidance to tell them how to ask the question because it’s a bit sensitive—how to ask the question—and let them do a survey among women. You can break them down by different groups or something like that, and find out at what price a woman is willing to consent and at what price she is not. What are you willing to take on as a risk when you consent to marriage? That the husband will be abusive? I assume most women would not consent to that. That the husband won’t show up at all? No woman would consent to that. Okay? You can ask these questions and you’ll have data. You’ll have data that 99 percent of women would not consent to such a thing. One hundred percent would not consent to such a thing. Once you bring data, it becomes much harder to say “better to sit as two than to sit alone,” the woman consents to anything. We’re not talking about some amorphous woman; we asked women, here is what they say. And there’s a case in Ketubot, a very strange page there on 102, where a woman had a daughter from another husband, and she got married and stipulated with her new husband that he would support her daughter for ten years. And afterward she divorced. Yes, and he agreed. And she married someone else, and during those ten years she did the same with him too. In short, she made an excellent business out of it, a business of tens of thousands of shekels. So the question is how you look at the data. On the principled level, on the principled level, such a thing isn’t a condition at all—it’s a contract. Because if it were a condition, he wouldn’t have to support the daughter at all. When you say “condition,” it means that if he doesn’t support the daughter, the marriage is void. But it doesn’t mean that he is obligated to support the daughter. Don’t support her. And he agreed to it. So what if he agreed? If I marry a woman and say on condition that he gives, then he has to give, and not only that. He can’t come and say the second and the third and the fourth… If the Talmud says he has to give, that means it wasn’t a condition but a contract—that’s what I’m saying. Because if it were a condition, he wouldn’t have to give; it’s just that if he didn’t give, the marriage would be annulled. That’s all. A contract must be upheld; that’s something else. Also in a contract, by the way, if you see that the consent to the contract was based on a mistake, then the contract is also annulled—what in law is called a material breach. If there is a material breach of the contract, or some material information was missing at the time the contract was made, then the contract is void. Fine. In any case, for our purposes, why did I bring that? To show that there wasn’t much awareness of the option of doing an empirical survey. Just to check reality and see what the facts are. Then you ask yourself, say—do most women give birth in the ninth month or in the seventh? That’s a factual question. Today we would send a polling institute to check all the births and see how many were in the seventh month and how many were in the ninth. And it would do statistics and discover, say, I don’t know, that eighty percent give birth in the ninth and twenty percent in the seventh. But among the sages they didn’t do a survey. Rather, they got more or less an impression from the cases they knew, that’s how everyone then saw it, and they understood that most births were to the ninth and not to the seventh. But sometimes that can simply be a mistake, because your sample is a biased sample, not a representative one. That’s why the professionalism of pollsters matters: they need to know how to choose a sample that will be representative and not biased. Okay? So many times disputes arise from that—disputes about facts arise from that. Because in principle, when you say there is a majority, you said there is at least 51 percent. And if someone says there is no majority, then he says there is at most 49 percent. So that is clearly a dispute, a factual dispute. If we conducted a survey in principle, then we would discover who is right. Except that no one ever conducted surveys. So in practice it isn’t really a factual dispute in the practical sense. In principle it’s a factual dispute—how many such women are there, those who give birth in the ninth or the seventh. But in the practical sense, as long as you don’t conduct a survey, it’s a dispute about how to assess the reality you know. So that too is not really a factual dispute, okay? Here too, what is a majority? What you get the impression of. The sages said there is a majority because they got the impression that this was the case. People say, everyone says this. The whole world thinks like me—it’s well known. Everybody wants elections now, or nobody wants elections now, depending whom you ask. But everyone you ask tells you what everyone wants, not what he wants. And everyone knows that. “The people want,” exactly. Fine—the Talmud says, “Go out and see what the people are doing”; go ask the people what they want, don’t speak in their name. Okay, so I want to get into this topic a bit and maybe bring you another example. Look, there are disputes, for example, there are real disputes about reality. In the Talmud in Sabbath 96, I think, something like that, there is a dispute over exactly how they removed the boards from the wagon for the Tabernacle. From the wagons that carried the boards—how did they remove them? Lengthwise? Widthwise? It depends on the public domain, on the two sides of the public domain, and so on. That is completely a dispute about reality. One was right and the other mistaken; there’s no room to play games here. It’s entirely a dispute about reality. The question is what was there in the Tabernacle. Did the wagons stand lengthwise to the public domain or widthwise to the public domain? Okay. Another dispute, for example—look how far things can go. In Shevuot 26, Rav Kahana and Rabbi Ami heard some halakhah from Rav, and each one swore that he heard it a certain way. Rav Kahana swore that he heard X, and Rav Ami swore that he heard not-X. Both swore. Yes, they swore that this is what Rav said. Not that this is the law—that would still be one thing. They swore that this is what Rav said. Here one was right and the other mistaken. Yes, they heard him, they were there in the lesson. And afterward there was a dispute, and each of them swore about what Rav had said—and the opposite of the other. And afterward they came to Rav to ask him who was right. And Rav told them who was right. The Talmud doesn’t say who, by the way—apparently because that would be gossip. So the Talmud only says that one of them was right and the other mistaken. Then the second one went to Rav and asked, so did I swear falsely, Heaven forbid? And he said to him, no—“with regard to a person and an oath,” excluding one under compulsion. You were under compulsion; you truly thought that was what I had said, and therefore you swore. But for our purposes, what we see here is that even about facts that occurred before our very eyes—not about assessments of reality and the like—there is a dispute between Amoraim, and one of them was right and the other mistaken. You can’t say there are no disputes about reality. In a certain sense one could even say that every halakhic dispute is really a kind of dispute about reality. The question is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. After all, Jewish law reflects what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. We have a dispute over what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. If we asked Him, He would say: I want this, or I want that. That’s a dispute about reality. Never mind—that too is reality. There is one correct answer here, either yes or no. We have no way to ask Him, never mind, but on the principled level there is one correct answer and the other is wrong. There is also “it is not in heaven”—don’t worry, we’re protected; it’s a thesis that can’t be refuted. Even if a heavenly voice came out and said that from the Holy One, blessed be He, I meant this—we would say to it, we pay no attention to a heavenly voice. So everything is fine, and both of us can remain in our own positions, yes. But I’m saying, for our purposes, that too is a dispute about reality. So in a certain sense one can say that every halakhic dispute is really a kind of dispute about reality. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, say to Moses? Or what does the Holy One, blessed be He, want? However you want to formulate it. So in that, one can be right and the other mistaken. Probably. There was something from the Maharal, if I remember correctly—an explanation that in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, spread before Moses all the reasons to permit and all the reasons to forbid, and therefore it comes out that everyone is right. Yes, but that’s not true. The question is how you weigh the reasons, so we discussed that when we talked about “these and those.” One hundred and fifty reasons to declare the creeping thing impure and one hundred and fifty reasons to declare it pure—but in the end the creeping thing is impure. Because the reasons to declare it impure outweigh the reasons to declare it pure. So in that sense, someone who says that the creeping thing is pure is mistaken. Not because his reasons are wrong—his reasons are correct—but the relative weight he gives them is wrong. In the end there is an error here. It doesn’t matter if all the reasons are correct. The Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t say, as it were: here are all the reasons to permit and here are all the reasons to forbid—He did not hand over the correct answer, and an answer is needed. And there is a correct answer, so He didn’t give it. But there is a correct answer. If there is a correct answer, then still one is right and the other is mistaken; you’re only explaining how the error arose, since the correct answer wasn’t given over. But that doesn’t mean there’s no error here; there is still an error here. Suppose the answer is correct, I don’t know. Ask the Holy One, blessed be He, what He really meant—let Him reveal it to you after all. He didn’t want to reveal it, but, you know, just between us, He won’t tell anyone—tell me what You really meant. And once He says it, then it will become clear to you that one was right and the other mistaken. Unless you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself didn’t mean anything at all, but then that really goes a bit too far. Fine. In short, these disputes about reality… Yes, look for example at the Talmud in Gittin page 6. I brought this Talmud about the concubine at Gibeah—he found a hair, he found a fly. So the Talmud says “these and those are the words of the living God”: he found a hair and was not particular, he found a fly and was not particular, he found a hair and was particular. Okay? So there too there is a dispute about reality. One says he found a hair, and the other says he found a fly. In the end the Talmud says they are both right in the sense that each one grasped a correct part of reality. But what did they themselves think? One thought he found only a fly, and the other thought he found only a hair. So obviously here, in this case, both were mistaken. Not one—both. Because he found both a fly and a hair. Okay? The Talmud is full of this. I’m not even talking about the case of the bull brought for an erroneous ruling, where we see that there can be error even in Jewish law, not to mention facts. Okay? So I want to bring here a passage, a passage from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, from a letter of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. In a book called Letters and Writings. And he writes as follows. There is a very interesting book by Rabbi Natan David Rabinovitch, who is a yeshiva head in Jerusalem, a Brisk yeshiva head in Jerusalem, who wrote a history book. But a history book in the Jewish way—a history book from within our own sources. You don’t dig archaeology and look at what really happened, but we examine… not entirely; actually he was more sober—but we examine things in light of the sources and clarify various historical issues. So in the introduction to the book he really deals with the question of factual disputes. He brings this passage from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s letters. I took it from him, though I would like to believe Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner also wrote it. It jumped for me. Here, okay. Wait, here he found the reasons. Okay, I’ll start. Regarding the question of the boards of the Tabernacle—yes? I said there is a dispute in the Talmud in Sabbath regarding the boards of the Tabernacle. “Surely you know that such passages are found in the Talmud in large number.” Meaning, the question of the boards of the Tabernacle was really: how can there be a dispute about reality? It’s obvious that one was right and the other mistaken. So where is “these and those”? Where is the thesis that says everyone is right? So he says: “Surely you know that such passages are found in the Talmud in large number.” Fine. “Regarding the question of the boards of the Tabernacle, surely you know that such passages are found in the Talmud in large number.” Meaning, there are many factual disputes. “Therefore I discuss quite simply the fact that you took the passage of the boards of the Tabernacle as an example, and it is thus understood that the answer will be a general one encompassing all similar passages.” He wants to discuss the issue of disputes about reality generally, not specifically the boards of the Tabernacle. “You know that there were several depositings away among Israel.” The Tablets were put away, the Tabernacle was put away, the Ark was put away, and so on. “And certainly from every such depositing away there were consequences in the ways of Torah and worship.” Every such depositing away has implications for divine service. “And just as an object can be put away, so too knowledge can be hidden.” Information can also be put away. “And you should know that when so-and-so thinks that the boards of the Tabernacle were made in a particular manner different from what the reality actually was, then he is simply mistaken.” If you think the boards of the Tabernacle were made in one way and in fact they were made in another, you are mistaken—a factual error. Okay? “But when this so-and-so is one of the sages of the tradition of the Oral Torah, through whom the Torah was given”—that’s a quotation from Nachmanides—“who are the very counselors of the Creator of the world, and he thinks that the boards of the Tabernacle were made differently from what the reality actually was, then this is nothing but a depositing away within the power of knowledge.” Just as the body of the Tabernacle was put away according to the will of the Omnipresent, so too there is a process whereby knowledge of the character and structure of the Tabernacle is consigned to concealment. Except that while the place of concealment of the body of the Tabernacle is somewhere in the world, the concealment of the knowledge about the Tabernacle is within the power of knowledge of the sages of the tradition. And the information about how the Tabernacle was made is concealed in the minds of the sages of the tradition, because it is information, not an object that is concealed. It is information that is concealed. Where is it concealed? In the minds of the sages of the tradition. “And therefore, where the knowledge about one detail of the structure of the Tabernacle matters to us today for Jewish law”—where we need this information to decide Jewish law—“if a sage of the tradition of the Oral Torah did not align with the reality of the actual structure and erred in understanding what was there in the structure of the Tabernacle, then precisely thereby he aligned with the will of the Omnipresent. Because in that way the will of the Omnipresent is to join the concealment of the knowledge to the concealment of the body.” What is he really saying? He says: the Holy One, blessed be He, concealed the information about how the Tabernacle was built. He concealed that information. Why did He conceal it? Why is it not stated explicitly in the Torah? Because He wanted the sages to try to infer how this happened from understanding the Tabernacle section in the Torah. So the information is hidden inside the Torah. Now different sages learn the Torah differently, and they reach different conclusions about how exactly things were done there with the boards. Okay? Are both right? Factually, no. Factually one is right and the other mistaken, or both are mistaken. Okay? But from the standpoint of Jewish law, for the sake of which we are having this whole discussion—for after all we are having this whole discussion in order to discuss the laws of carrying on the Sabbath. Okay? Now why was the information hidden? To open up these two interpretive possibilities, from which emerge two halakhic possibilities. From each such interpretation of what happened in the Tabernacle there follows a halakhic conception. And about the halakhic conceptions it is said, after all, “these and those are the words of the living God.” His claim is that the information was concealed precisely in order to open up these two halakhic possibilities. Therefore from a halakhic perspective, it is true that the wagons stood lengthwise and also true that they stood widthwise. Because in the Torah both these interpretations can fit. The proof is that one sage learned it this way and one sage learned it that way. And that’s what matters. We are not engaged in history. We are engaged in the question of how the wagons stood in light of what emerges from the biblical description of the matter. And here—wait—and here this is not a dispute about reality; it is a dispute about how I understand the Torah, and consequently what halakhah emerges from that. And here I say: these and those are the words of the living God. It is not a dispute about reality, he argues. Because it is a dispute about the question of how I understand the reality through reading the Torah, not a dispute about what happened there historically. So if historically someone were to reveal to me—if I found an archaeological manuscript that said the wagons stood lengthwise and not widthwise—that would change nothing, because I am not discussing how they really stood. I am discussing how the Torah describes their mode of standing, because that is what determines Jewish law in the laws of Sabbath, not what they actually did in practice. So he basically says that all disputes regarding facts in Scripture or in history are not disputes about reality. What do you mean they are not disputes? In reality itself, of course, only one is right and the other not. But they are not speaking about reality. Therefore you can’t say the other is mistaken. They are speaking about what this projects for us, what it means halakhically, what it means morally, whatever it may be. And therefore in this dispute it is not a factual dispute but a halakhic or moral dispute, whatever it may be. And therefore there one can say “these and those are the words of the living God” in the usual way; it is not a dispute about reality. “And therefore the halakhah that emerges from the reasoning of this sage is the true halakhah. In every reality there is its own truth, and the reality of Torah too has its own truth. And the truth of the reality of Torah is alignment with the will of God.” Meaning, who is right? The one who aligned with the will of God halakhically—not the question of how the wagons stood. “And when two Amoraim dispute the manner in which the boards of the Tabernacle were made, the meaning of their dispute is how the image of the boards of the Tabernacle is now revealed to us.” Meaning, how the Torah describes what happened with the boards of the Tabernacle—that’s the dispute. “Because the halakhah that emerges from this dispute is not entirely dependent on the actual reality of the boards of the Tabernacle, but on the manner of their revelation”—how the Torah describes it. “The concealment of the holy things of the assembly of Israel is itself the body of Torah, because every concealment acts upon the course of holy life in Israel.” Meaning, every concealment of information actually opens options that affect Jewish law or our conduct in life. And in that sense you can say “these and those are the words of the living God.” As I said earlier, even in a halakhic dispute, in my view, in “these and those” one is right and the other mistaken—but he doesn’t get into that here. He only says the dispute is not about reality but a halakhic dispute. “And the dispute of the Amoraim is how we ought to interpret the verses that deal with this matter.” The dispute is interpretive, not historical. “Because the interpretation of verses by the sages of the Oral Torah is the will of the Omnipresent in the revelation of this matter through the power of knowledge. And when a court greater in wisdom and number than the previous court should arise, which by law has the power to overturn the words of the previous court, and it interprets the verses differently, in a way that reverses the whole picture from one extreme to the other, then we say that the will of the Omnipresent is now to reveal what was previously concealed. And these and those are the words of the living God.” Any other kind of opinion in the world is outside this whole process of revelation and concealment. In any other discussion in the world, we discuss facts. When we study history, we don’t discuss what Thucydides wrote—we look at what reality was, using Thucydides to understand what reality was. But in Torah we don’t use it to understand what reality was. On the contrary, for us what matters about reality is only how the Torah describes reality. Why? Because from that we can learn what it means for us. That is his claim. “Therefore we say about it only one of two things: either it is a mistake or it is correct. But all the reasoning, opinions, and interpretations of the sages of the tradition of the Oral Torah are removed from the very distinction of factually correct and incorrect, and we discern in them only an appearance of revelation or an appearance of concealment. Both are the will of the Omnipresent; these and those are the words of the living God.” That is basically the claim. So what he is doing here is that all the disputes, for example, about the fly and the hair regarding the concubine at Gibeah, or the boards and so on—all these disputes are not dealing with the historical question at all. It’s not interesting. Yes, they are not dealing with the historical question. They are dealing with how Scripture describes the historical facts, because from our standpoint that is what matters, since from that we learn what we need to learn halakhically, morally, or whatever it may be. And that is what truly matters. By the way, let me just add parenthetically that in this issue of the concubine at Gibeah, the Talmud in Gittin that I mentioned earlier, there it seems the Talmud does not go this way. Because the Talmud brings a dispute over whether it was a fly or a hair, and the Talmud could have… I mean, there is one side from which to see that he found a fly and one side from which to see that he found a hair, because what matters for our purposes are the moral lessons or whatever it is that come out of the question whether he found a fly or found a hair. But it doesn’t say that. The Talmud says that factually he found both a fly and a hair. And that is how it resolves “these and those.” What? Amen. Right, it’s aggadic literature, but never mind, a moral lesson. I don’t care—some kind of lesson. Still, it was said in order to teach us some sort of lesson: “A person should never impose excessive fear in his household.” Okay, so that lesson, for us, is really what matters. But if that were the approach, then I would have expected the Talmud there to say: forget the factual question—these and those are the words of the living God, because there is a valid side to “he found a fly” and a valid side to “he found a hair.” And tell me what we learn from this and what we learn from that, what it means for us. But when the Talmud tries to resolve it and says “these and those are the words of the living God,” it says: he found both a fly and a hair. Meaning, it tries to root “these and those are the words of the living God” in reality itself. Okay? So that’s a bit of a comment on his move. I don’t think the Talmud in Gittin implies that. In any case, for our purposes it is a nice solution, I think, for many disputes. Because on the one hand it says: obviously factually one is right and the other mistaken; there’s no arguing with that. But for our purposes “these and those are the words of the living God,” because from our standpoint the halakhic, moral, and similar lessons can be either this or that, as long as both fit within the biblical description of those events, then both are legitimate. Now we need to discuss what the halakhah is. What do you think of that from that perspective? What—there? What did you mean, both, regarding… an explicit halakhic lesson… Yes, there can be such lessons and such lessons. Otherwise, why the whole story? The spies said, “we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers.” Rashi says not like grasshoppers but like ants—that they saw themselves as ants. So why do you change the Torah? Rashi says right here in the verse that it wasn’t grasshoppers, it was ants—that in their own eyes they were ants. So why did they say grasshoppers? I don’t know. Maybe grasshoppers means we were small; grasshoppers are small creatures, but relative to them it was really like ants. Because they were such giants that next to them it was like ants. Is an ant more degrading? A grasshopper isn’t… No, an ant is smaller, that’s what I understand, not that it’s more degrading. Okay, I don’t know. In short, I don’t deal with these things, I don’t… No, it doesn’t mean anything. What is there for me to discuss in those things. Okay. In any case, there is Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides. He has a letter printed at the beginning of Ein Yaakov. Ein Yaakov has five volumes; at the beginning of the first volume there is a letter by Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, and various essays are printed there about the proper attitude toward aggadic literature. There is Maharatz Chajes, and Ramchal, and Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, and others, each of whom talks about how to relate to aggadic literature, because Ein Yaakov is a book that gathers the aggadic sections from the Talmud. “Know that you must know,” says Rabbi Abraham, “that anyone who wishes to uphold a given opinion and show favor to the one who said it, and accept his opinion without examination and understanding as to whether that opinion is true or not—this is among the bad opinions, and it is forbidden both by the way of Torah and by the way of reason.” Meaning he says this: if you want to—in short, the ad hominem fallacy. The ad hominem fallacy is accepting something because of the speaker, because of the person who said it. Ad hominem fallacy. All the fallacies are “ad”—ad hominem, ad populum, and ad whatever in general. Meaning all the fallacies are called “ad” something. So ad hominem means a fallacy through the person—that you relate to the speaker and not to the thing said. You say, this is surely correct because Einstein said it. That’s ad hominem. Discuss whether what he says is correct or not; leave aside who said it. Okay? “Accept the truth from whoever says it” is already in the sages, so it doesn’t matter who the speaker is—look at what he says, okay? On the contrary, you should evaluate the speaker based on whether what he says is correct, not evaluate what he says based on whether the speaker is wise. You can conclude that he is wise after you examined his words on their own merits and saw that he is correct; now you can conclude he is wise. But that is not a reason to accept the statements. In any case—yes, often in arguments anything goes. “The sages say like me”—all the… yes, that’s ad populum or ad hominem, really. Ad populum is “the whole nation wants elections,” that’s ad populum. But ad hominem means I’m attaching myself to the person and not the issue. So Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides says this is among the bad opinions, and it is forbidden by the way of Torah and by the way of reason—not to accept things just because someone said them. “And on the basis of this introduction,” he says, “we are not obligated, because of the great stature of the sages of the Talmud and their understanding and the perfection of their qualities in interpreting the Torah and its precise details and the correctness of their sayings in clarifying its general rules and particulars, which were given to them, to uphold their opinion in all their sayings in medicine and natural science and astronomy, and to believe them in these as we believe them in the interpretation of Torah, whose ultimate wisdom is in their hands and was entrusted to them in order to teach it to people.” In other words, the fact that the sages of the Talmud have a great stature in Torah study, in Jewish law and so on, does not mean you must accept what they say in the scientific realm, in factual matters, in medicine and things of that sort. Why? Because their wisdom is wisdom regarding Torah; it doesn’t necessarily mean they were the greatest scientists. Therefore one need not accept what they say on the factual level. Or in other words, what Maimonides says is that the sages definitely erred, could err, and even made use of that ability. They erred in factual fields, and therefore it is not correct to accept their words there. As is known, Maimonides very consistently and systematically omitted all the sages’ references to mysticism. And in Jewish law too. Yes—“a person should not stand over his neighbor’s field when the grain is standing,” in the Talmud in Bava Batra page 6, is omitted by Maimonides. Why? Because the Talmud says it is due to the evil eye. Maimonides omits it. The Talmud also says that one may whisper over a scorpion on the Sabbath—there is a discussion in the Talmud. Then Maimonides famously—yes, the Shulchan Arukh copies him in Yoreh De’ah—Maimonides says one should not whisper over a scorpion, neither on the Sabbath nor on a weekday, because in any case it is of no use; it is nonsense. And on that the Vilna Gaon writes there in Yoreh De’ah, in harsh language, that accursed philosophy led him astray—how can that be? He goes against the sages, for the sages said there is an evil eye and there are incantations that help, and so on. But Maimonides says no—this follows from his approach here. He says: if I come to the factual conclusion that it is not true, then it is not true. And the sages were mistaken. And I omit it also from Jewish law, not only in matters of thought but also in the halakhic realm. So he says that the sages could make mistakes, and that means they had factual determinations and factual disputes. It is definitely possible that one side is right and one side mistaken. One can discuss, for example, there is a dispute—whether the stubborn and rebellious son existed, and “I sat on his grave,” or whether he never existed and never will. He never existed, was never created, and never will be. What do you do with a dispute like that? This is a historical dispute—whether the law of the stubborn and rebellious son ever existed or not. And in the Talmud itself it appears in a very blunt way. One says, “He existed and I sat on his grave.” And the other insists: no, he didn’t exist. What do you mean he didn’t exist? He tells you he saw it—he sat on his grave. You didn’t see it, okay, but he did. What is the meaning of that? Again, there is some kind of dispute here, a dispute about reality: was there a stubborn and rebellious son or not? But the other side insists on ignoring testimony about the facts. It may be that what he wants to say is that normatively there ought not to be a stubborn and rebellious son, not that one literally never existed. I don’t know. But it may be that he really says, listen, it’s so clear that this never happened that even if you think you sat on his grave, there was apparently some mistake on your part. Because it cannot be that this happened. Meaning, it is so clear to him that it did not happen. That’s the example I once heard from the Hozer of Chabad, Rabbi Yitzchak Kahan, who was with us in Yerocham in the yeshiva, so I hosted him, he has since passed away, and he spoke there with the students. Among other things—don’t remember what the subject of the talk was—he brought them the following example. Two people, one blind and one sighted. One sees and one doesn’t. They enter a room, and in the room they find it packed with furniture. Full of furniture, impossible to move. Okay, fine. They go outside; the room has no windows and nothing, one door and that’s it. Okay. They go outside, lock the door, put two chairs there, and sit in front of the door. After an hour, the sighted fellow goes into the room and says, Berel, you won’t believe it—there isn’t a single piece of furniture here; the room has emptied out. So Berel says to him: that can’t be. An hour ago we were there and the room was packed with furniture. There’s no way in or out of the room except through the door on which we were sitting. No one passed there; we were sitting there by the door. So he says all the furniture that was there is still there. What do you mean? There is conclusive logical proof that the room is full of furniture. Fine, but the other sees that it isn’t. It’s empty—what can you do? You have logical proof, you’re right, but I saw that it isn’t. What can I do? I don’t know, something happened here that I don’t understand, but factually there is no furniture in the room. Maybe your eyes are deceiving you? The blind one says to him, no. Right, no, the blind one felt it. Fine, never mind, it’s just a story—you don’t challenge a sermon and you don’t answer a sermon. So this person says to him, listen, in fact I see with my own eyes there is no furniture, the room is empty. He says, but I have a logical proof that the room is not empty—it’s full of furniture. Okay? What do you do? Good question. It’s not so clear. The blind person has a logical proof; he also doesn’t see otherwise, so why should he change the conclusion drawn from his logical argument? Okay? And the sighted person—well, with all due respect to the logical arguments, I see there is no furniture in the room. So here too he says: I have a decisive proof that there cannot be a stubborn and rebellious son, because his father and mother have to be equal in height, and all the requirements the Talmud brings there that cannot be fulfilled. Okay? Therefore statistically there never was one and never will be. What does the second one say? Yes, but I sat on his grave. The room is empty of furniture—I saw it with my own eyes. He says, then apparently you made some mistake there. It cannot be; I have a clear proof that it cannot be. The same dilemma. And it may be that the person says: look, you sat on his grave, very nice, but I have such a strong proof that this cannot be that I assume there must have been some mistake on your part. You thought you were sitting on the grave of a stubborn and rebellious son, but you weren’t. Maybe they only wrote about him by way of praise that he was a stubborn and rebellious son, but they didn’t really judge him under that law. Okay? So again, it is always a dilemma of how to relate—yes, every paradox is basically built like this. How is a paradox built? Take Zeno’s paradoxes. Those are paradoxes that present an argument whose conclusion is that a fact I am certain is true is not true. Right? Zeno brings the argument of Achilles and the tortoise, or the flying arrow, and all those things, in order to prove that there is no motion in the world. But I know there is. Free choice too—there’s a paradox here. Meaning, I don’t understand. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows what I’m going to choose. Ah yes, there are many paradoxes there. But take Zeno’s paradox, for example. What is he trying to prove? That there is no motion. But I know there is. That is why it is a paradox. Because on the one hand there is an argument—I may not know where exactly the mistake in the argument is—and its conclusion is that there is no motion, while on the other hand intuitively it is obvious to me that there is; I see it. Okay? What do you do in such a situation? Not a simple question. If you ask people—I wrote a column about this on the site—if you asked people on the street what they think is more reliable, intuition or logic? Logic? Right, logic is necessary, you can’t argue with it, it’s certain. Intuition, you know, everyone has his own intuition; it can also mislead us, right? But it turns out that in practice, when you put people before a dilemma like this, everyone prefers intuition over logic. When you have a logical argument proving that intuition is wrong, you will prefer the intuition. And if you found a flaw in the argument, no problem. And in Zeno there are flaws in the argument. But I mean, suppose you didn’t find a flaw in the argument—what do I do then? Most of those people you would ask don’t know what the flaws are in Zeno’s arguments, and still they are sure there is motion. Why? Because you trust your intuition more than your logic. By the way, I explained there that this—I think, actually, that it’s not implausible at all. Intuition is a very strong thing, and mistakes can creep into arguments too. Even if I didn’t find the mistake, there may still be one. So I’m not smart enough to put my finger on it. Therefore it is not necessary to prefer logic. It is a very difficult question what one should prefer in such a situation. There is, I think, part of the… never mind, I’ll close with this. I think you know George Orwell’s saying. He said there are ideas so foolish that only intellectuals can believe them. Now that is true as a matter of reality. When you hear something completely idiotic, only an intellectual said it. You will hardly hear something completely idiotic from a non-intellectual. It’s true; he didn’t mean it as a joke. I’ll tell you why. Because intellectuals, first, are more skilled in philosophy and logic, and second, they are more open and critical. Therefore even if intuitively they think one way, if they have a good argument that attacks it, they are willing to throw it out and go with the argument. They have a wonderful philosophical argument, so it seems to them that if so, one should honestly give up one’s intuition and go with logic, or with philosophy. That is intellectual integrity. And to some extent that is admirable. But on the other hand, many times, even though you didn’t find a flaw in the argument, if you still have a strong intuition, don’t give it up so quickly. It may be that you missed something, you didn’t analyze the argument properly, but if you had succeeded, you would have found a flaw there. And ordinary people usually don’t put much trust in philosophy and logic. If I feel that there is motion, then there is motion—let Zeno not convince me otherwise. Right. Even if I have no answers, even if I don’t find the flaws in his arguments. Zeno. Yes, and each side says this about the other side—that the other side is the intellectual and I am right. Both sides say that. The claim, I think, behind this is that when you have something that is clear to you as true, intuitively or for some other reason—even a proof from perception, or a logical proof, or whatever it may be—many times that won’t persuade you otherwise. And that isn’t always intellectual dishonesty. Sometimes that is genuinely correct. Not dishonesty. I have a very strong intuition and I see—especially if the argument is very complex, and especially if I am not skilled in logic. If the argument is very complex and I’m not skilled in logic, it’s very easy for me to conclude that there’s probably some flaw there that I just can’t identify. On the other hand, intuition—I have a very strong intuition that there is motion in the world. That’s it. Therefore I remain with the view that there is motion. By the way, often—why is it that among intellectuals there are more determinists and non-believers in God than among ordinary people? Not that most are, but among intellectuals there are more such people than among simple people. I’ll tell you why. Because the simple human intuition is that there is a Creator of the world and that we have free will. That is the immediate experience. But there are arguments—on the contrary, that’s the intuition. With logic you can raise all kinds of intricate arguments saying this and saying that, and now the question is what to do, since it clashes with my intuition. Intellectuals have a tendency to go after a philosophical argument. They have a very strong philosophical argument, so yes, they also have the same intuitions I do, but they say apparently that is misleading me. There is a logical and philosophical argument, and I’ll go with it. And an ordinary person says: I have a very strong intuition; leave the logic and philosophy aside—that’s probably right. And I think that’s the reason. And in this case, in my opinion, the ordinary people are actually right. But of course that’s because I’m on that side. What? Common sense. The people who say things far removed from common sense are people willing to go with arguments even where it doesn’t make sense, where it isn’t reasonable. Okay? They are willing to go with the arguments. And that generally characterizes intellectuals. Therefore intellectuals can come up with all kinds of bizarre things—they claim solipsism, yes, that the world does not exist at all. There is no world, nothing exists; all that exists is only in my consciousness. You don’t exist at all; you’re just figures inside my consciousness. There is no world. Now I can’t prove to him that there is. Wonderful argument, right? He can tell me even more: how do you know there is? All you know is what your consciousness shows you. How do you know there’s anything beyond that? Wonderful argument, right? So the philosopher or intellectual says, wow, I have a wonderful argument, so I become a solipsist. And what does the ordinary person say? Fine, you have a wonderful argument, but there is a world. I’ll slap you. Yes, Descartes’ move. Right, Descartes’ move is a purely intellectual move. Exactly. But Rabbi, there was one person who solved all disputes about reality—some kind of dualist, I’m trying to remember his name. Someone who says everything comes in twos. There were two Jacobs, there were two Abrahams, two worlds. It’s like in quantum mechanics, multiverse. Yes, when he did that with a figure of Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, he didn’t understand the joke. Okay. Here we’re building other things: ordinary person, intuition. Right, no, I’m saying, there are sides both ways. There’s no simple answer here. Sometimes you really have to be honest enough to take a good argument and give up your intuition and say, no, it misled me here. And you have to admit that it isn’t true. But not always. Sometimes this way, sometimes that way. I don’t have a criterion for when; that’s another discussion. And here it connects to the claim. Right, so “it connects” basically means there’s something dishonest here. But I’m saying that it’s not only something dishonest; there’s also logic to going in that direction. “These and those are the words of the living God.” Yes, right—sometimes these and sometimes those. Not together. Yes. Okay, let’s stop here. More than that—even in logic, after all, logic is based on assumptions. Where do the assumptions come from? From intuition. Right. But logic isn’t wisdom. What was the conclusion I came away with at the end of this class? What? It seems to me that that was the general conclusion. No, he tried to show that sometimes. Ah, that’s the conclusion, I understand. Yes—that sometimes common sense says something that a logical argument cannot topple. Exactly. And everything I wrote down—intuition, common sense, all that. Can I ask something? What? Could you maybe speak with Doron about…?