Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 3 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, but generalizations are a dangerous thing. If I understand that there are certain actions here in which I do decide, then don’t generalize and tell me that my feeling is mistaken because there are other actions in which I don’t decide. Obviously, in those other actions where I don’t decide, I also don’t feel that I’m deciding. So there’s no point. It’s like saying: deny the fact that I’m six foot five because, all in all, most people aren’t that height. So therefore, clearly that’s not reasonable, and so I make a scientific generalization; therefore you say I’m not six foot five. What kind of example is that? What does that test? Here too, I feel that I have free choice in this act. And you tell me, no, that feeling is an illusion. Why? Because there are other acts in which you have no free choice. Okay? In those others I also didn’t have the feeling that I was choosing freely; here I do have the feeling that I’m choosing freely. So he feels that he would have chosen. Okay, what’s the problem? Then he really chose. They say, okay, they say, ergo de-zeh, as people say. That’s exactly the point: there’s a claim here, and that claim requires examination.

Now, there are many philosophers and neuroscientists who argue that we are actually already—this is an ancient philosophical debate—the question whether a person has free choice or whether the world is deterministic. They claim that we’re already at the point where this debate is no longer in the domain of philosophy; it has moved into the domain of science. Today you can test scientifically whether we have free choice or not. More than that, some go even further and claim not only that it belongs to science, but that it has already been decided. Meaning, science has already taught us the answer too. Not only is the question now a scientific one that needs to be investigated. No, we’ve already investigated it, and the answer is that we do not have free choice. Okay?

Now how did we test it? Where did we test it? There are several suggestions. I wrote a book about this, and there I explain why none of the tests really does the job. But one of the popular candidates is Libet’s experiment, after which hundreds and thousands of follow-up experiments came. But this was an experiment conducted in the 1970s. Benjamin Libet was an American Jewish neurologist. He himself, by the way, believed in free choice; he was a libertarian. And he did the following experiment.

He sat a person down in front of a table, and there was a button there. And he tells the person: decide when you want to press the button. Press it whenever you want. Fine? Now in front of him there’s a clock with a hand running around, like a second hand running around, say for the sake of discussion—or a tenths-of-a-second hand, because we want high resolution. So a tenths-of-a-second hand that runs, say, and completes a revolution every second. You know what? One-sixtieth of a second, every two—well, that’s one-sixtieth of a second. Fine? So every second it completes a revolution.

Now we tell the person: look—he’s connected to electrodes on the brain, EEG—and it was already known, this had been known even before him, twenty years earlier or something like that, that before a person performs some action, there is what’s called a readiness potential, RP. This is an electrical potential that rises in the brain and precedes the action. Meaning, before the action is done, there is always an electrical potential that signals the action in advance, okay? In other words, before the action there is always some sort of electronic preparation in the brain, electrical preparation in the brain. Some potential arises there, and then I perform the action, okay?

Now that in itself doesn’t mean the person has no choice. Seemingly this is mechanical: electricity arose and I pressed, right? No, it doesn’t have to be that way. Because who arouses the electrical signal? It could be my decision. I decide to act, there’s an electrical signal, and then the hand stretches out and performs the action, right? So that in itself still doesn’t rule out the possibility that I have free choice.

So Libet had a new idea. He says: sit by this table with the button, whenever you decide, press it, but one thing—look the whole time at this hand that’s moving on the clock in front of you, and tell me when you made the decision, not when you pressed. When you pressed, we can see that, we measure when you pressed, okay? The readiness potential we also measure; the EEG measures it, okay? But what can’t I measure? When you made the decision. Only you know that, right? So look at the hand and tell us where it was when you made the decision. That’s why it has to move fast, because you need high resolution; we’re talking milliseconds, okay? So tell us when you made the decision.

Now what happens? Like this: if we record the three times, we record the time of the readiness potential, when the readiness potential arose; I record the time when he made the decision according to what he reported to me; and I record the time when he pressed the button. Now the readiness potential is always before the pressing of the button, right? That we know. The big question is: where is the moment of decision? Is the moment of decision here or here? If the moment of decision is here, then it could be that the decision caused the readiness potential, and the readiness potential passed into the doing of it—yes, caused the action. But if the moment of decision is here, then that means the readiness potential predicted that there would be an action before I even decided, and therefore the decision is basically an illusion. In fact, the potential caused this action to happen, and my feeling that I’m making a decision is an illusion.

So you understand that this is essentially the experiment that could decide, could test scientifically, whether the feeling of free choice is an illusion or not. Okay? The “not” it can’t determine; the “yes” it can determine. Meaning, if it’s located here in the middle, then clearly it’s an illusion. If it’s located here, then maybe it’s not an illusion. Meaning, then one can discuss it, okay? It’s a one-direction experiment. That was the claim.

Now he did the experiment and discovered that the time of decision is in the middle, after the readiness potential. The conclusion—everyone of course jumped with joy or sorrow or I don’t know what—a God-awful controversy erupted in the scientific world: the conclusion is deterministic. Basically, our sense that we choose freely is an illusion. The electrical potential can actually tell the experimenter—yes, can tell him—that you are going to perform the action before you know that you’ve decided. Meaning, the fact that you think you decided—you’re just fooling yourself. It was clear you were going to do this action before you decided. Therefore the feeling of decision is an illusion. Fine? That was the claim.

And over this there were very major debates. Hundreds, thousands of articles were written about it—millions, loads. Loads of articles, and a great many experiments have been done over the years until today. They keep trying Libet-type experiments that become more and more sophisticated all the time. Every time there’s a criticism, there’s another experiment that tries to test whether that criticism is justified. Then another argument, another experiment. A huge amount. It’s an extremely rich field and it sparked a great deal of debate.

Now, in the book I explained why in my view this experiment, no matter how much you refine it, will never be able to prove anything in this issue. And I’ll tell you one principle for which I brought the whole example, because it concerns us. Pressing a button—in these discussions they distinguish between actions called picking and actions called choosing. Choosing is to choose, and picking is to pick up at random. Okay? Choosing-actions are actions with value-significance. Picking-actions are just, to pick—do whatever you want, whatever you feel like. Nothing depends on it, there’s no value issue here, nothing hinges on it, right? And this is basically a picking-action.

Now in a picking-action, clearly there is no free choice. What, what’s the surprise? When I pressed the button, why did I really press? Why did I really press now and not two seconds later? Because I had a readiness potential that told me to press, and then I pressed. Right? Now, if I wanted to resist and decide no, I’m not giving in to the readiness potential, I could. But I have no reason to do that, because what difference does it make to me whether to press now or later? Therefore I will always do what the readiness potential dictates to me. And that’s what Libet himself claimed, because he was a libertarian. He himself revolted against the results of the experiment that he himself conducted. Meaning, he was an honest man, he did not deny the results. But he said no—a person can veto the readiness potential. The readiness potential causes you to press, but you can veto it and say okay, even though there is a readiness potential, I will not press. Okay?

The claim is that whenever you pressed, there was a readiness potential before it, but not whenever there was a readiness potential did I also press afterward. What? Veto? Wait, one more second and I’ll finish with that. But just a moment, I only want to say: so this means the following. Since the action is a picking-action, and a picking-action—even libertarians, those who believe in free choice, agree that it is not done out of deliberation and choice. So it’s no great trick to do Libet’s experiment on a picking-action. Obviously the result will be that I have no choice. Nobody claims I have choice in such actions. These are trivial actions.

Do Libet’s experiment on an action that is choosing. A person decides to murder someone, okay? Or to rob, or to beat someone, or whatever—something with value-significance. To give charity, it doesn’t matter. And now check the person: did he make the decision before the readiness potential or after the readiness potential? Then maybe it can give an indication. Okay, but there too I show that it’s not right, that even that won’t give an indication, but that is the distinction, that’s one of the claims against Libet’s findings.

So I wrote this; the book came out in 2013, I think. In 2015 the results of an experiment were published—an experiment that had been conducted by Liad Mudrik, do you know who that is? A brain researcher from Tel Aviv University; she was a broadcaster on Army Radio when she was a soldier. Today she’s a professor at Tel Aviv University in neuroscience. She and Uri Maoz, who is at New York University, an Israeli at New York University, and another few dozen researchers around the world, did a very large experiment, which was a Libet experiment on choosing-actions, not on picking-actions.

And it’s not simple to do such a thing, because you can’t tell a person in an experiment to murder or rob; you can’t do an experiment like that. The question is how do you build an experiment that can be done, that the Helsinki committee will approve as a human-subject experiment, and that still has value-significance? Meaning, you can let a person perform either of two possibilities even though one of them is bad and the other is good. Okay? So in short, they had an idea how to do it, and they checked, and it turned out that indeed the results were that there is no—the decision is before the readiness potential.

I asked her afterward, I met her at some conference, I asked her whether by chance she had come across my book, because there I argued that if they did the experiment on a choosing-action the result would be different. So she said no, she didn’t know it. But yes, it turned out in the end that for a choosing-action it doesn’t work.

Now why am I bringing this whole story? Because here you see the difference, what we talked about in Rav Kook. There is a picking-action. In a picking-action you don’t do it if you have no reason. You want to give someone a gift. Why would you give him a gift? Only if you gain something from it, right? Or if there is a readiness potential telling you to give the gift. Doesn’t matter. Meaning, some reason because of which you do it, okay? But if you have a choosing-action—murder, giving charity, honoring parents, all sorts of things like that—then there, even if there is no reason that causes you to do it in the utilitarian sense, still it’s a choosing-action. A choosing-action I can decide to do because it’s a good action. That’s why I do it. Without— not because of an interest, not because the readiness potential forced me. On the contrary, if I have a readiness potential not to give charity, I will veto it and I will give charity anyway. Fine?

Why will I veto it? Because here there is a point in intervening in the deterministic process, because I have a value. So from the standpoint of utility I lose money when I give charity, so the readiness potential will tell me not to give, because it works according to utilities, like Rav Kook. The readiness potential represents Rav Kook’s actions, yes? So it wants to tell you: don’t give charity, because you gain nothing from it, okay? But one can argue with that and say I gain satisfaction. Fine. So I’ll generate a readiness potential that represents the utility including the satisfaction, doesn’t matter. That still won’t be charity. It will be an action for the acquisition of satisfaction. It won’t be charity. Charity is when I do something when I have no interest, when I do not take my interest into account.

So that means the readiness potential is not what causes me to do it; rather my decision to do it is what causes me to do it. And therefore the claim is that in choosing-actions, not picking-actions, there the action can be done out of free decision and not out of interest and not out of internal or external deterministic influences, but rather an action—what I called earlier an altruistic action. And if one doesn’t accept this, there is no morality in the world. There is no such thing as morality. A moral action is an action done out of free decision. If it isn’t done out of free decision, then it’s not a free action, it’s not a moral action; it’s an action—we talked about Amnon Yitzhak’s sheep—it’s an action you do because it pays off for you. You don’t deserve moral credit for that.

So this distinction between picking and choosing in Libet’s experiment nicely illustrates what I claimed regarding Rav Kook. In Rav Kook’s actions, he was talking about picking-actions, and there you won’t do something without an interest. But that doesn’t tell us what he thinks about choosing-actions. In choosing-actions you can do it for altruistic reasons because that is the right way to act. Okay? Altruism, of course, is for the sake of another, so that’s not the precise term in the moral context. It’s an altruistic action, for the sake of another. In the religious context it’s for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He, or for the sake of the Torah because it is right—not necessarily for the sake of some other person. But I call all of this an altruistic action only in the sense that it is not an action done from some cause or some interest, but an action done because I decided that this is the right way to behave.

I spoke about Maimonides in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, where he says that a person should do the truth because it is truth. Because it is truth. That is an altruistic action. I do it because that is the right way to act, not because of some motive motivating me to do it or some interest causing me to do it, simply because it is right. That is an altruistic action.

Now I want to look at this from another angle. I want to study a chapter in the Tanya, chapter 9. If you want his good, why do you want his good? You want his good because it is moral, because he is needy for example, because he is poor? No problem—then that is the commandment of charity; that’s not picking, that’s choosing. That’s choosing, not picking. You want to because there is value in making a person happy, fine. But if I’m doing just a picking-action, then why would I do it if I don’t have some interest? There’s no reason.

By the way, now that I think about it a little, after all Rav Kook made a distinction between the Holy One, blessed be He, and human beings. Now when the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the Torah, I assume there was some value-issue there for Him, right? That was not a picking-action, it was choosing. Okay? So that’s a choosing-action, fine, so what’s the difference between Him and us? So it’s not picking. In picking, a person isn’t happy unless there is some benefit for him. More than that, not only is he not happy, he won’t do it if there is no benefit for him, right? The Holy One, blessed be He, is the same. Why would He do actions for no reason? He performs an action because there is some concern there for Him. So if there is some concern there for Him, then what is so surprising that He is happy? He is obviously happy because He rejoices in the moral value that there is in the thing, not in some utility that He receives. But that’s how a human being can also be. A human being too can be happy that he acted correctly, that he acted morally.

So you understand that if you accept my move all the way through, and also as an explanation in Rav Kook, then it undercuts his words from within as well. His words are remarkable in any case, because in the end no difference remains between the Holy One, blessed be He, and flesh and blood. Because the distinction between picking and choosing exists for human beings too. And then for this you don’t need to distinguish between the Holy One, blessed be He—make the distinction and teach it in his own case, as the Talmud says. You don’t need to distinguish between the Holy One, blessed be He, and human beings. Make a distinction within human beings themselves between picking and choosing. Fine? It’s the same—well, so readiness, yes, readiness potential, readiness potential.

Potential—that is the big question. If you think human beings have free choice, then this readiness potential appears because I decided that it should appear. That’s obvious; everyone agrees on that. The brain is plastic, meaning you can change your brain structure; even the determinists agree with that. You can change it—your actions change it. Your biography, various influences, change your brain structure. And once your brain structure is different, the readiness potential can appear differently, in other places, at other times, in other contexts. Obviously, it’s a function of the brain. But in their view it is only a function of the brain, meaning there is no dimension of local decision at that moment when you want to perform this action. There is no decision here. It’s because there is. No, there too these are not decisions. Biography—those are events you went through. If you are a determinist, you are a determinist, so a person never decides.

[Speaker C] Okay. Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. And now, I’m reading chapter 9 in the Tanya. “Now the dwelling place of the animal soul, which derives from kelipat nogah, in every Jew, is in the heart, in the left chamber, which is full of blood. And it is written: ‘For the blood is the soul.’” I’ll first read and afterward explain everything. “And it is written, ‘For the blood is the soul’; therefore all desires and pride and anger and the like are in the heart, and from the heart they spread throughout the whole body, and they also rise to the brain in the head to think and reflect about them and devise ways concerning them, just as the blood has its source in the heart and from the heart spreads to all the limbs and also rises to the brain in the head.”

Fine. The animal soul—I’ll explain all the concepts, but for the moment just see the picture in front of your eyes. The animal soul, which is taken from kelipat nogah, is in the heart. Its center is in the heart. Where? In the left chamber of the heart. After all, the heart has two chambers, left and right. Okay? So in the left chamber. The left chamber is full of blood, the right chamber is empty. It has nothing to do with our actual heart, it doesn’t matter, this is a metaphorical heart. Okay? So the left chamber is full of blood, and therefore all the desires and pride—which are basically the animal soul—operate like the heart. Just as the blood comes out of the left chamber and spreads throughout the whole body, so too desires have their center in the left chamber of the heart, and from there it spreads throughout the whole body, including the brain in the head. Meaning, our desire is not in the head; it is in the heart. From there it moves to the head. Okay?

“But the dwelling place of the divine soul”—this is the antithesis to the animal soul, and again I’ll explain everything—“is in the brains of the head, and from there it spreads to all the limbs, and also in the heart in the right chamber in which there is no blood. As it is written: ‘The heart of the wise is to his right.’” Fine. So the divine soul—its focal point is the brain, not the heart like the animal soul. And from the brain, just as that one spreads from the heart to the whole body including the brain, this one spreads from the brain to the whole body including the heart, but in the heart it is in the right chamber, that one without blood. Not in the left chamber, which is the territory of the animal soul. Okay? As it is written, “The heart of the wise is to his right,” “and the love of God like fiery flames blazes in the hearts of the understanding, those who understand and contemplate with the knowledge in their minds matters that arouse love.”

Fine? Fine. I’m skipping a bit. “But behold it is written: ‘One nation shall overpower the other nation.’ For the body is called a small city. And just as two kings wage war over one city, each wishing to conquer it and reign over it, namely to direct its inhabitants according to his will, that they should obey him in everything he decrees upon them—so too the two souls, the divine and the vital animal soul from the kelipah, wage war with one another over the body and all its limbs. For the divine soul desires and wills that it alone should rule over it and direct it, and that all the limbs should obey it and be nullified to it completely and serve as a chariot to it, and should become a garment for its ten faculties,” and so on, and so forth.

But the sentence summing up the chapter is this: the divine soul wants to take over everything. “But the animal soul from the kelipah desires the exact opposite, for the person’s own good, that he should prevail over it and defeat it, as in the parable of the harlot in the holy Zohar.” The parable of the harlot means, as it were, that the king sends a harlot to test his son the prince. So the harlot performs an improper act, but she was sent for a good purpose. The king sent her; he wants to test his son to see whether his son is faithful or not faithful. Fine. Doesn’t matter. For our purposes, in short, I now want to explain a bit this puzzle-text that I just read, and explain why it relates to our discussion.

Usually, when we try to think about the struggle between good and evil within a person, yes? So what we’ve been taught since kindergarten is that we have a good inclination and an evil inclination, right? And who is a good person? The one in whom the good inclination overcomes the evil inclination. A bad person is one in whom the evil inclination overcomes the good inclination. That’s what the kindergarten teacher taught us. Why can’t that be right? Even before free choice. Before, even before free choice, where am I in this whole story? When the good inclination overcomes the evil inclination, that means the good inclination is good. Okay, but why does that mean that I am good? Who is this “I”? I am not the good inclination or the evil inclination, right? Where am I in this picture? A struggle between two inclinations is some struggle taking place before my eyes, and whoever wins, whoever is stronger, will win. How does that relate to who I am? There is some essential lack in this picture.

Okay, what I mentioned last time, maybe it wasn’t in this class—there is… I once saw an article, an article by some psychologist here, Aharon Rabinowitz from the psychology department here, where he tries to identify where the self is located in the psychoanalytic map according to the author of the Tanya, according to Nefesh HaChaim, according to I don’t know what, the Maharal, Rav Kook—according to various thinkers—where they locate the self on the map of our soul. Each one has a map of the soul, and the question is where the self is located according to each such thinker.

And when I read the article, my feeling was that there was some basic categorical problem in the entire article, even before I get into the details. The self is not located somewhere on my psychological map or my soul-map. The self is the one whom the soul describes, or to whom it belongs. It is not one of the parts of the soul. The soul is my soul. I am the owner of the soul. It is not subsection 17c of the soul. The owner of the soul—it’s like asking, wait, I’m looking at a map of Asia, fine? And then asking, but where is Asia on this map? Is it in Israel? Is it in Jordan? Is it in—do you understand? It’s absurd. Asia—the map is a map of Asia. You won’t find Asia in some place on the map. Same thing when you ask who the self is—it is absurd to look for it in some specific place on the map that describes it, on the psychological map that describes it. The self is the one that this map describes. Fine? The collection of characteristics or capacities that appear on this psychoanalytic map are characteristics of the self. Okay?

The same thing with good inclination and evil inclination. It’s the same mistake. Meaning, the good inclination and the evil inclination are my inclinations, but it cannot be that the judgment of whether I am good or bad is determined by the question whether my evil inclination is stronger or my good inclination is stronger. What does that have to do with me? If my good inclination is stronger, then it will prevail; if my evil inclination is stronger, then it will prevail. Where do I enter this picture? Why is that a judgment relevant to me? How does that determine who I am, righteous or wicked?

Therefore the author of the Tanya, one could say, rotates the coordinate system. Meaning, if we look at the coordinate system, say the good inclination is on the right, yes, looking to my right, and the evil inclination is on the left side. Okay? The author of the Tanya says: the struggle is not between right and left, good inclination and evil inclination. The moral struggle, or the struggle of good and evil, is between up and down, not between right and left. Up is the divine soul, and down is the animal soul. But that’s only the beginning of the revolution. First of all, it’s a struggle between up and down and not between right and left. And more than that: the right and the left, the two inclinations, both the one on the right and the one on the left, both belong to the down. They both belong to the down. Both the good inclination and the evil inclination are part of the animal soul. And the divine soul is something else, which I’ll explain in a moment. Okay? That is basically his claim. The two inclinations are actually part of the animal soul.

Except what? There is some struggle between good and evil. What does that mean? Our instinctual dimension, both the good inclination and the evil inclination together—that is the animal soul—wants to take over the whole body, of course meaning the whole soul, okay? It wants to take over the whole soul, my soul. And the divine soul also wants to take over the whole soul—that’s what he says, “one nation shall overpower the other nation”—it’s like two kings fighting over control of the whole country. One has his capital here, the other has his capital there. Each has a different capital city. But from that capital each goes out to conquer the whole country. It’s a struggle between them over the whole country.

So when I ask you where is the animal soul located? In the whole body, in the whole soul, yes—but not just in the heart. And where is the divine soul located? Also in the whole body. Both of them are in the whole body. So what does it mean that the animal soul is in the heart, in the left chamber which is full of blood, and the divine soul is in the head? The question is where is the control center, the focal point, the root of the matter? The divine soul has its root in the head. And there there are not two wings, one with blood and one without blood. In the head. The animal soul is in the heart, on the left side full of blood. That is their center, their command post, yes? Their headquarters, okay? From there they want to conquer our whole soul.

So therefore the animal soul, from its center in the heart, rises upward and tries also to conquer the brain, and the divine soul, which is located in the brain, descends and tries to conquer the heart, positioning itself on the right side, in the right chamber that has no blood. Okay? So this basically means that the locations we attribute to the two souls are the locations of their headquarters. But where are they found? Both of them, each one of them, is found in the whole body, in the whole soul. Okay.

Now maybe I’ll sharpen one more thing and then continue further with this picture. He says the dwelling place of the animal soul is from kelipat nogah. What is kelipat nogah? In Kabbalah there are four kelipot: three kelipot that are absolute evil, and kelipat nogah, which is mishcha de-chivya, the skin of the serpent, the serpent’s skin—evil and good mixed together. This is called kelipat nogah. In Etz Chaim of the Arizal, in the section on kelipat nogah, he talks about this a little. In any case, that is the uniqueness of kelipat nogah as opposed to the other kelipot. That is, kelipat nogah is mixed of evil and good. And notice: this is the source of the animal soul. Evil and good. Why? Because the animal soul includes our whole instinctual dimension, both the good inclination and the evil inclination. Fine? All of it, our whole instinctual dimension, is the animal soul.

So what is the divine soul? The divine soul is my deciding part. The one that vetoes Libet’s RP, okay? The one that decides: I am not going after the inclinations. Neither the good inclination nor the evil inclination. I make the decisions. That is the divine soul. The divine soul is our choice, our decision. The inclinations—notice—doing good because my good inclination overcame my evil inclination does not mean that I am a good person. I am a good animal. I have a good animal soul. I go with the animal soul, and within the animal soul the good inclination overcame the evil inclination, so my bottom-line basic impulse is to do good. That’s my impulse, because inclinations push me, both the good inclination and the evil inclination. Right?

Many times it feels good to us to do good. It’s not always a struggle. When we come to do good, very often it is very pleasant for us to do good. That’s the good inclination. The good inclination tries to push you to do good or pull you to do good. The evil inclination tries to pull you to do evil. The divine soul says: I am not willing to be pulled anywhere, neither to good nor to evil. I decide. No one will pull me anywhere. Conduct of the animal soul is a person who lets the inclinations pull him. Sometimes they will pull him to good, sometimes they will pull him to evil, but still this is a person of the animal soul because he is like an animal: he basically doesn’t make decisions but is drawn after his inclinations.

Animals often do good deeds. They take care of their children, help their companions—that can happen, right? Because they have a good inclination, so they go with the good inclination. But that is animal conduct. A human being is required not to go after the good inclination. A human being is required to go after what he decides to go after. And not to let the inclinations—neither the good nor the bad—pull him. Not to be pulled. The animal soul tries to make me behave like an animal. To be pulled. To do good, to do evil—but to be pulled. The divine soul tells me: you are not pulled. You make decisions. You decide what you do, and let the inclinations play before you. They do not determine.

In the previous class we studied Tanya, so I began there about the soul—

[Speaker C] The animal soul is in all the things the body needs. For example, to drink enough water during the day, and that’s the animal soul. And the spiritual soul would hate that, it would hate the water and the—I don’t know—eating and things like that, like, whatever that is… maybe?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think you need to go so far as saying it hates it. It’s indifferent to it; that’s not its domain. That’s all. Why should it hate it?

[Speaker C] But it wants matters of Torah and to rise upward.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. I don’t know the Tanya well enough to tell you what I think it says. I’m telling you what I think is correct. There’s no reason to hate this. It’s necessary, and everything is fine. To do it in the right measure, everything is fine. But obviously, I also say that the animal soul is good. But it’s good because it has a good inclination. And to conduct yourself according to the good inclination is not to be a good person, because you’re being pulled along by an inclination that happens, in this case, to be a good one. So if the good inclination pulled you, then you did a good deed. But it’s not really because you’re a good person. A good person is a person who acts out of decision, that’s what we talked about. A moral act is an act done out of decision, and that is an act of the divine soul. An act of the animal soul is an act that is simply done because I was drawn along, whether for good or for bad. Sometimes I’m drawn this way, sometimes that way. Right. What, do you know the… you probably don’t know HaGashash anymore, that’s not the right age. HaGashash HaHiver. There’s a bit there where two guys are talking to each other. “Wait, did you go with your father or with your mother?” He says, “I went with the guys.” Meaning, neither with father nor with mother. And that’s the divine soul: I’m not going with either the good inclination or the evil inclination, I’m not willing to go with inclinations. I go with what I decide, neither father nor mother. I decide what I do. Okay? I can decide that I want to go with the good inclination, perfectly fine. Then I’ll go with the good inclination, but I’ll go because I decided, not because the good inclination pulled me. Sometimes I’ll decide to go with the evil inclination, by the way. Fine? And I’ll do that because I decided. Okay? I’ll come back to that.

So basically, notice an important point now. It’s not… if so, the struggle is not between good and evil. Not between right and left, good inclination and evil inclination. The struggle is between the person and his instinctive dimension. The divine soul and the animal soul. Do you decide, or are you dragged along? That’s the argument. You can be dragged into doing good, you can be dragged into doing evil. The essential struggle is whether to decide or to be dragged along, not whether to do good or to do evil. After you decide, you’re also required to decide to do good. But the fundamental struggle is whether to decide. By the way, once you’ve already made it through that, if you’re already deciding, then usually you’ll decide for the good. When you do something bad, it’s because you were drawn into doing something bad. Not because you do evil ideologically—it’s almost hard to imagine such a thing at all. Someone who does evil because he knows it’s evil and ideologically decided to do it because he supports doing evil. Either he thinks it’s good, or he does it because his inclination took him there, fine. But to do an altruistic action ideologically in order to do harm—I already defined altruistic action earlier, right? There’s no such thing as an altruistic action to do harm. It’s almost unimaginable. Maybe there is, but it’s very hard to imagine such a thing.

What? Yes, psychopaths—again, maybe that’s because they really don’t have the ability to choose, so once again that’s not really this thing. That’s why it’s defined as psychopathy. So the basic struggle, again—we’ve made a full turn around the coordinate system—is not between good and evil, but between higher and lower. Not between right and left, but between higher and lower. Not between good and evil, but between decision and being dragged along. Okay? My animal dimension, the two inclinations, is the being-dragged-along. The divine soul says no, I’m now making decisions. I have free choice, I make decisions, and I do what I decide.

Now one more comment, one more qualification: this is not a struggle between stupid people and smart people. It’s not that someone who conducts himself with the divine soul, which is in the brain, is a wise person, and someone who conducts himself with the animal soul is a stupid person, like the difference between animal and human being. A person is smarter than an animal, okay? Usually. So there’s a tendency to think that if so, if the struggle is between the human within us and the beast within us, then it’s a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. So no, it’s not. It’s a struggle between decision and being dragged along. A person can be very, very smart and by nature still be someone who gets dragged along. He doesn’t decide; he gets dragged along. But he’ll solve any equations you want, he’s a very smart man, he always knows what it would be good to do, even in morality he’s very smart, he’s a genius. Fine? It has nothing to do with IQ, nothing to do with intelligence. So don’t get confused by this description of brain versus heart. This is not a struggle of intelligence versus stupidity, or smart people versus stupid people.

So what is it? The struggle is not between intellect and emotion, but between rationality and emotionalism. Do you understand the difference? A person can be very, very smart, but still be an emotional, highly emotional person. So he conducts himself according to emotion, even though he’s very smart. Not because he’s stupid—he also has a brain. What happens with such a person? What happens is that the animal soul, which is the inclinations, spreads out and takes over the brain too. Now it harnesses even his wisdom for the sake of the goals mapped out by the animal soul. So not only is he a smart person, he also conducts himself intelligently. He makes very sophisticated calculations in order to achieve his goals, but the goals he sets are set by the animal soul. The head did not set the goal; the emotions or inclinations set the goals. That is a person of the animal soul, and he can be a great genius or not such a genius, but it has no connection to intelligence.

What is a person of the divine soul? A person of the divine soul can also be stupid; he doesn’t have to be smart. But he does what he decided to do, what seems right to him to do, not what the inclinations carry him toward. He may be an idiot and all his decisions may be wrong, fine, but he still makes the decisions and does what he decided is right, not what his inclinations drag him into doing. So he is a person of the divine soul. Therefore it is wrong to identify this with good versus evil, and it is wrong to identify it with wisdom versus stupidity; both identifications are wrong. There is good and evil here, and in principle there is also good and evil here. There is wisdom and stupidity here, and there is wisdom and stupidity here. So what is this axis of here and here? What is the vertical axis? What distinguishes the heart from the brain? It is the axis of being dragged along versus choice. When you choose, you’re up here; when you’re dragged along, you’re down here. The more you choose, the higher you are, the more you are up here. The more you are dragged along, the closer you are to being a person of the animal soul. And that is the focus of the discussion—not good versus evil, not wisdom versus stupidity. I think that is basically the claim of the author of the Tanya.

Now I want to clarify a bit more what this means. Think, for example—look—suppose you take, let’s take even a current discussion. Take a discussion about the situation in Gaza, okay? To make a hostage deal, not to make a hostage deal, to reach an agreement, not to reach an agreement, to continue the war, not to continue the war. Things like that. Or the judicial reform. All the current issues troubling the public here in the country. You hear definitely intelligent people on both sides. There are intelligent people on both sides in every such argument. But very often my feeling is that there is an answer, there is a correct answer in the argument. It’s not that both answers are correct; one answer is clearly more correct than the other. And why does an intelligent person hold the incorrect answer? Because he is intelligent, but he isn’t acting from here, he’s acting from here. He is a person of… okay, you can also make a mistake. But an intelligent person generally makes fewer mistakes, that’s my assumption. On average. So if here there are smart people and here there are smart people, why do these smart people hold an incorrect position and those hold the correct one? And in my opinion many situations are like that—the positions are not evenly balanced—because these are people of the animal soul. Again, I’m not trying to insult anyone, but people who are driven by inclinations, by emotions, and not by the head.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s not talk about inclinations; let’s talk about emotions, okay? Think for example about the hostage deal. There it’s very prominent. You notice—I’m sure you noticed—that those who opposed the hostage deal most clearly and consistently were religious people. Not all religious people, but those who opposed it were religious. That is, among those who did not oppose it there were religious and non-religious people. But those who opposed it were almost all religious; they led the opposition to it, at least. Right? The correlation is very clear. Again, we’re talking about a lot of people, there are always exceptions, but overall that correlation is unequivocally correct.

Now there are considerations this way and considerations that way. I’m not entering at all into the question of who was right here, what the discussion is. But I want you to notice that the arguments raised in favor of the hostage deal are arguments very emotional in character. You can accept the conclusion, or not, and that’s clear. When people say to Bibi, “Listen, what would you do if it were your son?” Right? There were signs all over the country. “What would you do if it were your son?” I have never in my life seen such a stupid question. Now there are many smart people who asked that question. I know some of them—very smart. Why are they asking such a stupid question? After all, it’s obvious that if it were his son, he would have to remove himself from the decision and leave the decision to someone else. He’s biased. Obviously if it’s his son, he’ll make a bad decision. Precisely you—the ones whose son is there—should not be the ones making the decision, but the government, or whatever institutions are supposed to make the decision. Because their son is not there. And if by chance Bibi’s son had been there, and they had kidnapped him from Miami, then he would have had to remove himself from the decision and leave it to other people.

So how does a person come to ask such a stupid question? I’ll tell you how. Because for him morality is located in the heart and not in the head. The feeling of empathy toward those who are suffering, the hostages who suffered there—and they suffered terribly—and that empathy is of course natural and correct and worthy. Okay? The question is whether you let that empathy run you. When you imagine someone suffering there in the tunnels, you can’t stand up against it. So obviously we have to do anything, at any price, any deal, in any form, just bring them back. Now once you’ve decided that, you’ll find sophisticated arguments because you’re an intelligent person. Some of them will be stupid arguments—that’s what indicates that you’re acting emotionally here. Some of the arguments will be very smart and insightful and maybe even correct, because you’re an intelligent person. But you started from the gut, and the head serves the gut. The gut decided that there has to be a deal, and now the head is marshaling the arguments in favor of a deal. That is a person of the animal soul.

A person of the animal soul is someone whose goals, values, and directions are determined by the inclinations or the emotions. I’m not distinguishing right now between inclinations and emotions; it’s not exactly the same thing, but for our purposes it’s everything that is not the head. Okay? And that doesn’t mean he’s stupid, and it also doesn’t mean he doesn’t use the intellect he has. He uses it. But the animal soul spreads upward and takes over the brain. It operates the brain. And with the divine soul, the brain operates it. Meaning, with the divine soul, I need to come to… suppose I come to the conclusion that I’m against a hostage deal. Now I too have empathy for those people suffering there terribly, and we are responsible for the fact that they are there. We as a state, yes, are responsible for the fact that they are there. You can’t ignore such a thing. So I have to restrain myself and let my brain rule over the animal soul, not let the part with the storming, hot, boiling blood—that part—be what moves me to action even if it’s irrational; not to let it act, to sit on the right side in the bloodless side of the heart, and make sure that the emotions are channeled to the right place, where the brain says they need to be, and not the other way around—to channel the brain to where the emotion tells it it needs to go. That is the difference between the animal soul and the divine soul.

Think of another example, a little more philosophical. Think, for example, about a discussion—suppose we’re having a philosophical discussion in ethics, in the field of philosophy, okay? And we want to clarify what our moral theory is. Now I say—suppose I want to clarify whether it’s a utilitarian theory or a non-utilitarian theory. So I do a thought experiment. I say let’s suppose ten people, their plane crashes—Manchester United—their plane crashes in the middle of winter on snowy mountains, and they can’t get out. Fine? Now they’re going to starve to death if they stay there, and they have no way to get out. So the question is whether to slaughter one of them so that his friends can eat him and stay alive until the snow melts—or two of them, I don’t know however many are needed—or not. In other words, you don’t kill a person, certainly not in order to eat him. So whatever happens, happens.

Now very often a discussion in philosophical ethics proceeds in this way. I propose a utilitarian thesis. I say, in my opinion the moral act is the act that brings the greatest benefit, okay, to the maximum number of people. I say, that’s my claim. Now you, Shilo, right? You now ask me, okay, then tell me what you think about that case of the ten people who crashed on the mountaintop. According to your view, you need to slaughter two of them so that the other eight can eat them—at least eight will gain, otherwise all ten will die. Right? That’s maximum utility. But very often you bring up the case in order to show that I’m wrong, because look, that’s the implication. That can’t possibly be right. Therefore clearly the utilitarian theory is incorrect. Just as an example—it doesn’t matter, I’m not getting into that argument now—but that’s often how arguments in moral theory proceed. Okay?

Now I ask you: suppose you reached the conclusion that indeed, according to my theory, you need to slaughter two and eat them. Okay? From where did you reach the conclusion that that’s not correct? That therefore my theory should be thrown out? And you place more trust in what you think about the situation than in my theory? Why do you decide that? Almost every discussion in philosophical ethics works this way. A discussion in philosophical ethics always sets the general thesis up against thought experiments. You create some imaginary scenario like this—what comes out of it? Let’s see if it makes sense, if it seems rational or not—and that’s how you test your moral theory. Okay?

Now in doing that, you’re basically assuming some kind of absolute trust in those examples, or in the intuition you have about those examples, and on the strength of that trust you change your moral theory. Now you need to understand that very often—why do you really think it’s not correct to slaughter two people so that the others can eat them? Yuck—it’s just unthinkable. What, slaughter a person in order to eat him? Such a thing can’t be. That’s an emotional revolt. And because of that emotional revolt, you now change the theory, which is your intellectual dimension. You construct a theory of morality, and then you’ll make another example, another test case, and again you’ll change the theory. What?

[Speaker C] You won’t have a consistent theory. No, in the end you will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s possible you will. You’ll take all the examples, each time another case, patch up the theory, change it, organize it so that it fits all the examples you brought. But what do you have in the end? What you have in the end is basically an intellectual formulation of your collection of emotions. That’s all. And you used the brain, you used the brain, and sometimes it’s a brilliant process intellectually—but all you did here was let the brain serve the heart. The brain here pours your gut feelings into some intellectual pattern, so it serves the heart. That is the animal soul.

The divine soul says: look, I think morality is maximum utility. True, it’s very hard for me to think about killing two human beings in order to eat them, so I’ll take a pill if it’s hard for me, because the theory says that’s the right thing to do. If my head tells me that’s the right thing to do even though my gut revolts, then it revolts—so what? I will let the divine soul rule by having the brain rule over the heart, and not use the brain as a servant of the heart. Okay? These are just examples to illustrate the point.

What I brought up one of the previous times—yes, that example that I once saw—there was a music reality show, with the judges’ turning chairs, you know what I mean? I forgot what it’s called. The Voice? Okay. So there too—I think it was there—Shlomi Shabbat was one of the judges, and he referred to some song someone sang there. He said, “Listen, there was this problem and that problem, but the heart, the heart is just wonderful, the heart is overflowing.” And everyone bursts into thunderous applause and practically falls on the floor from excitement. Then when everyone finishes—and I watched this with some of my kids—I said to them, “Okay, so what did he decide now?” My kids were on the floor laughing, because it was obvious what he had decided, right? What did he decide? If the heart says so, then obviously he’s putting him through—or her through, I don’t know who it was—right? Why? But the head said the performance wasn’t good, there were problems. Yes, but the heart, the heart says yes.

That’s the atmosphere in which people operate in this generation. It’s an atmosphere in which, basically, the heart determines things. You’re supposed to strengthen the heart over the head, not the head over the heart. Whoever strengthens the head over the heart is heartless. Right? Why do they accuse all those who opposed the prisoner deal? They accuse them of being murderers, of not caring about the prisoners, the hostages. How exactly did you reach the conclusion that I don’t care about the hostages? Because I didn’t go with the feeling of my heart, I didn’t let the feeling of my heart dictate my position, what I want to do. Right? So I have no heart. But I do have a heart—only the heart doesn’t determine what I do; the brain determines what I do, because I try to be a person of the divine soul and not of the animal soul.

Okay, now you can see from various directions that our generation is like this. And I told this story of Dov Sadan with the Jewish orthopedist, that there is some kind of decline over the generations from the head to the heart to the stomach to the soles of the feet. In other words, the claim is that people are not less intelligent, but they have much less trust in the intellect. They don’t make decisions with the intellect; they make decisions with the heart. Someone who makes decisions with the intellect against the heart is considered detached, alienated, immoral. Okay? But that’s not correct. He is not alienated and not detached, and he has feelings, all of that is true—but his head tells him that morality says to do this, despite the fact that the heart pushes him there.

Notice, when the heart pushes me there, it’s the good inclination pushing me there, not the evil inclination. Those people who want to bring back the hostages—that is not the evil inclination. It is the good inclination. The problem is not that they are bad. The problem is that they are instinct-driven. That’s the problem. Do you understand? And the problem is not that they act badly—they don’t act badly. They want the good, obviously. They act in order to realize the good as they understand it. The only point is that what determines for them what is good and what is not good is the inclination and not the head, or the heart, the emotion, and not the head. The problem in the phrase “evil inclination” is not the “evil”; the big problem lies not in the evil but in the inclination. The fact that you are driven by inclination—that is the problematic thing, not the fact that you do evil. Once you are inclination-driven, you may also do evil. If you are not inclination-driven, then usually you also won’t do evil.

Because I don’t know any person who understands that this is the good thing to do, and is a person of the divine soul—he decides what should be done, not the inclinations, not interests, not anything—and then does evil. Can you imagine such a person? It can’t be. Either he is mistaken, he thinks that this evil is good—that, yes. But if he himself knows that the good is this, okay? He knows. And he is not an instinct-driven person, he is a person who works with the head and he decided to do the right thing without interests and inclinations and emotions and so on—and he does evil. Can such a thing exist? That is exactly Rabbi Kook, right? If you have no reason to do something and it also has no value, you won’t do it. Why would you do it? A good thing I do even if I have no interest in it, because it is good. But why would I do a bad thing if I have no interest? It’s both bad and I have no interest, so what for? Evil for the sake of evil? There is no such thing as evil for the sake of evil. Who acts in such a way, evil for its own sake? Again, there are crazy people for whom evil gives some kind of sadistic satisfaction or I don’t know exactly what, so they do it for the satisfaction, not for the evil.

Someone says, no, I’m not an instinct-driven person, I’m not doing it for emotions and inclinations, I’m a rational person, a person of the divine soul, and I do evil because I decided to do evil—there is no such thing. I can’t imagine a person who acts that way. Theoretically maybe it exists, but I can’t see it. I just can’t imagine it. Yes, you can make mistakes, as I said, that’s fine. Not certain—the emotions can also make mistakes, as we saw. Fine. But the best way to clarify whether you made a mistake or not is not in the gut; it’s in the head. The brain is responsible for the question of whether I’m mistaken or not mistaken. That doesn’t mean it always works correctly, but it is still the proper tool. Do you understand? Just as you don’t walk with your gut, you also don’t think with your gut. You walk with your feet and think with your head. With your gut, you feel. Good. Sometimes the head misleads, and sometimes the gut accidentally lands in the right direction. True. But the designated tool for deciding what is right and what is not right is the head, not the gut. You need to use the head.

And yes, it’s possible that you’ll make a mistake. In Kings it is told there about the scene on Mount Carmel with Elijah on Mount Carmel, when he says to the people: “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him, and if Baal, follow him.” Now usually when we read these verses, we tend to interpret them as some kind of rhetorical trick, trying to corner them—“Oh, do you really believe in Baal? Then go after him”—in order to show them that they don’t really believe in him, it’s just inclination. Okay? I read that verse literally. Elijah the prophet is telling them: look, do you really believe in Baal? Then why aren’t you worshiping him? He really demands that they worship him, not as a rhetorical trick. Do what you truly think. If you are worshiping Baal without believing in him, then the problem is not that you are worshiping Baal. The problem is that you are not doing what you think. The problem is that you are instinct-driven, not—the problem in the phrase “evil inclination” is not the evil; the big problem lies not in the evil but in the inclination. The fact that you are instinct-driven—that is the problematic thing, not the fact that you do evil.

You worship Baal because you don’t believe in him. If you worshiped Baal and believed in him, my criticism of you would be less severe. I think it would still be a mistake, because belief in Baal is mistaken, but I would still understand that you are doing the evil because you truly and sincerely think that this is the right thing to do. You are people of the divine soul—just a divine soul that made a mistake. But if you go after Baal because of inclinations, then my problem with you is not that you go after Baal. It’s that you go after inclinations. Even if you worshiped God because of those same inclinations, I would have the same criticism of you. Because you are worshiping God not really because you believe in Him, but because that’s what the crowd does. Because that’s what my inclination is, that’s my comfort zone. Therefore I do it. Okay?

What does that mean, basically? It means that the demand we make of a person has two levels. The first level is to be a chooser. And the second level is to choose the good. First of all, be a chooser and not someone dragged along. Don’t even be dragged along toward the good. Don’t be dragged along—not by the evil inclination and not by the good inclination. Be a chooser. After you choose, I also want you to choose the good. But that is almost trivial. If you are already choosing and not being dragged along, you will always do what seems good in your eyes. You’ll make mistakes, doesn’t matter, but you’ll do what seems good in your eyes. That is the maximum I can expect. If that’s what you think is good, then that’s what you’ll do. Okay? Therefore you can present this as two demands: A, be a chooser; B, choose the good. But in fact the demand is only: be a chooser. Because once you are already choosing, you also choose the good.

If you are dragged along, then there are already two possibilities: you can be dragged into doing evil, you can be dragged into doing good, depending on which inclination is dragging you. Always inclination, but depending on which inclination is dragging you. Okay? But if you choose, then usually you’ll do what seems good in your eyes. Up to the level of your errors, meaning that you may make mistakes, but you will do what seems good in your eyes. That’s the point.

And this has educational implications too. We see, for example, a young man who finishes religious education and then goes off the religious path, and that is usually perceived as an educational failure—of the education, of the parents, whatever, the educational system, the parents, whoever. And I think that outlook is too narrow. In my view, a person who stays on the straight path not because he decided to, but because that’s his comfort zone—that is an educational failure. Even if he observes every minor and major commandment—an educational failure. Because he is here simply because he doesn’t dare do anything else, or because he didn’t think enough, or because he… I’ll say even more than that: if in truth he examined the matter and came to the conclusion that he doesn’t believe in any of it, then even now he doesn’t believe in any of it. He just hasn’t examined it; he’s hiding from himself that he believes in none of it. But the truth is that he believes in none of it. He’s just hiding it from himself. He doesn’t look at the arguments and doesn’t examine them, so ostensibly he continues on that path. He doesn’t really believe. Fine. Most of that is an educational failure. Fine.

And by contrast, those who leave—there I think the proportion is smaller. There are more people there who really leave because they do not believe, or are not committed, it doesn’t matter, each one in his own way. Of course there are many who leave because of comfort and inclination and so on. But I think there are many more who stay because of comfort than there are who leave because of comfort. People always look at the one who leaves as someone who surrendered to his inclination. “Ah, you were looking for a nice, easy, more pleasurable life, and that’s why you abandoned it.” Yes, “Israel sinned only in order to permit themselves forbidden sexual relations.” No, that’s not the right way to look at it. Here Marx said religion is the opium of the masses. Staying religious is very comfortable for someone born into a religious home. Comfortable—the social circle is here, the family is here, keep going as you’re used to, it’s your comfort zone. Everything is fine. So very many stay simply because it’s their comfort zone. And leaving is hard. Leaving is not easy. It’s not a trivial step to leave. Even though today it’s already much easier than it was, I don’t know, twenty years ago, it’s still not a trivial step to leave. And therefore I think that among those who leave, the proportion of those who do it authentically and not because of inclinations or lusts or things like that is greater than among those who stay. Contrary to the prevailing myth. But that is of course a matter that, I don’t know, would have to be checked as much as one can check such a thing. But for our purposes that isn’t important.

What I want to say is that the demand made of a person is a double demand: A, to be a chooser, and B, of course, to choose the good. But if you are already choosing, usually you’ll choose the good. And that’s the point. People often ask me in this context: wait, so what, then someone who does evil is basically being dragged along, right? Because someone who truly chooses—there’s no one who chooses evil. He is dragged along. If he is dragged along, then he is coerced. So what do you want from him? What is your claim against him?

No, I do have a claim against him. My claim against him is over the very fact that he was dragged along and did not choose. After that, once you’re already being dragged along, then it drags you wherever it drags you. But why on earth were you in dragged-along mode? That was my problem with you. Why are you in dragged-along mode? And about that I’ll perhaps speak more later when we discuss the philosophical problem of weakness of will. Yes, it’s an interesting philosophical issue and it’s also connected to this.

What I want… what I want to close for us now—I see that I’ll soon have to finish and I can’t start something new now—so I’ll just summarize how this touches us. Basically, when I spoke earlier about an altruistic act, an act done because it is a value to act that way and not because of fulfilling an interest or an inclination or satisfaction or something of that sort, basically I am speaking about functioning in the mode of the divine soul. Yes, in this picture of the author of the Tanya, that’s the translation. Basically you are required to be with the divine soul. A moral person is a person who acts with his divine soul. A person who acts with his animal soul—I don’t judge the act he did at all. It doesn’t matter whether he did evil or did good; it’s not really his act at all, it’s the act of the animals that dragged him. I do judge him for the very fact that he was in dragged-along mode and not in deciding mode, that yes. But where you were dragged, once you are in dragged-along mode—then if the good inclination is stronger, like the kindergarten teacher, right, then you’ll do good; if the evil inclination is stronger you’ll do evil. At that point it no longer depends on you. Once you are dragged along, then wherever you are dragged, you are dragged. The blame against you is for the very fact that you are dragged along, not for the question of what you did with the being-dragged-along.

Yes, it’s like in the parable, a parable for this: someone who drank, yes, alcohol, and afterward drove and hit someone, yes, drove while drunk. Okay, I can’t blame him for the fact that he hit someone; he was drunk. I blame him for beginning to drive while drunk. Even for beginning to drive while drunk I may not be able to blame him, because once he’s drunk he also lacks judgment about whether to drive or not, perhaps. My blame against him is that the moment you started drinking, when you still had control, you didn’t make sure what you were going to do regarding driving, you didn’t appoint—yes, like the National Road Safety Authority—you didn’t appoint someone to drive in your place or to make sure you wouldn’t do stupid things when you were drunk. In other words, the blame is not at all on the question of what you did. You’re not guilty of what you did; for what you did you are only responsible, not guilty. The guilt is at the point where you failed in that responsibility, where you started drinking and didn’t appoint someone to make sure you wouldn’t do stupid things. And the same is true in the moral context generally.

When I see a person acting badly, I don’t accuse him of being a bad person—that is not the point at all. He was dragged into doing evil, everyone, every last one. There is no person who is truly evil, there is no such thing. Yes, “there is no bad child, there is a child who feels bad,” as people always say. So I’m claiming that now much more broadly: there is no bad person. A bad person is always a person who is dragged along. Rather, the claim against him is over the very fact that he let himself enter a state of being dragged along, that he entered the mode of the animal soul and not the mode of the divine soul. That is the claim against him. What happened from there onward—wherever the horses took him, that’s where he got to. The fact that you let the horses pull you, that’s my problem with you: that you were in the mode of the animal soul and not in the mode of the divine soul.

And therefore the struggle described by the author of the Tanya—I’m returning to him—the struggle described by the author of the Tanya is basically not a struggle between good and evil, and it is also not a struggle between wisdom and stupidity. It is a struggle between the divine soul and the animal soul. Whether to be a human being or to be a beast. And the decision to be a beast is also a decision; once you have already decided that, then you are dragged into doing all sorts of things, and you decided to be a beast, and for that you are called to account. And that is the point.

And the real struggle of the human being is to what extent to be a chooser. I think each of us knows this after we fail at something—religious sin, moral sin, or just not keeping our diet, it doesn’t matter, each person has all sorts of kinds of sins. Why did we do it? And very often when you give yourselves an accounting—always, not very often—when you give yourselves an accounting, why did we do it? “My inclination overcame me,” right? Meaning, “I was weak.” What does it mean, “my inclination overcame me”? I let the inclination lead me to do what it decided should be done. I didn’t decide what I do; the inclination took me, right? That is always the feeling. Therefore it is the same issue as weakness of will. That I had a weak will, and the inclination overcame me and took me. Fine? That’s always the feeling. But the blame against you is not answered by the excuse that your will was weak and the inclination overcame you. You are responsible to make sure your will is not weak, not to let the inclination take you, to be a person of the divine soul and not a person of the animal soul. That is the demand made of you—not that you did evil, but that you let the inclinations lead you. That is the point.

And therefore, if I return to education, the goal of education is not that the child should observe commandments, in my opinion. That is not the fundamental goal at all. The goal is that the child should make decisions. That is the goal. Assuming he makes decisions, if he thinks it is right to observe commandments then he will also do that. Fine? But if I want to educate him in terms of personality, it is not at all to educate him to keep commandments; it is to educate him to make his own decisions about himself, not to be dragged along, to be a person of the divine soul in parallel. In terms of personality, not in terms of intellect. In terms of personality, what I want from him is that he be a chooser and not that he do the good. I do not educate a child to do good. I educate a child to choose. That is the point. This picture has many, many implications. It is something very fundamental, even though it may seem simple once you think about it.

[Speaker C] Just, if we’re already talking about the Tanya, then it seems that you’re not leaving any room for a complete wicked person? Huh?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A complete wicked person is someone completely dragged along. No, there is no such thing in my opinion as doing evil for the sake of evil.

[Speaker C] So there’s no wicked person in the Tanya?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. A complete wicked person in that sense—in my opinion, no. There is someone who is completely dragged along; he really doesn’t struggle at all, he lets the inclinations do with him whatever they want. Sometimes he’ll do good, sometimes he’ll do evil. You know, even among robbers there is a robbers’ ethic—they help each other, save each other’s lives—so they do good within that framework, but it’s all the ethics of robbers. Fine. To be a person of the divine soul.