Study and Halachic Rulings – Lesson 16

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

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🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly what I’m saying. So I claim that the traditional approach is right: in the interpretive and halakhic-ruling context, you don’t need to get into the context—but not because the context had no influence. It does influence. But that’s not what matters. The context was only what led me to look at a passage in a certain way, but once I looked at it that way, that is now a possible way to look at the passage. It’s a way that holds water. Tosafot didn’t see a contradiction to that way of looking at it, right? They understood the passage that way, so that means this is a possible understanding of the passage. Maybe they wouldn’t have arrived at it if constraints hadn’t influenced them. So the constraints influenced them, and that’s how they discovered that perspective. And Maimonides discovered a different perspective. But once they discovered those two perspectives, I now have two perspectives, both of which are possible within the passage, and now I need to examine them and see which seems more plausible to me, and decide according to what seems more plausible.

I gave a more extreme example of this. There is a Maimonides in the Laws of Monetary Damages, chapter 4. Maimonides rules there in a way that is against the Talmud. The Talmud says that if someone deposits an animal with a guardian and the animal gets out and causes damage while under the guardian’s care, then of course the guardian has to pay. What happens if the guardian guarded it properly? Then he is exempt, and of course the owner is certainly exempt, because he handed it over to a guardian, the guardian watched it properly, so the owner did his duty—just as if the animal had gone out and caused damage while with the owner, and the owner had guarded it properly, then he would be exempt from paying. So if he appointed a guardian and the guardian did his job and watched it properly, then of course both the owner and the guardian are exempt. Once the owner hands it over to the guardian, the owner leaves the picture. The whole discussion is only whether the guardian is liable or exempt. That’s what is written in the Talmud.

But in Maimonides it says that if the guardian watched it properly, then the guardian is exempt and they collect from the owner—which is in direct contradiction to the Talmud. Okay? So the Maggid Mishneh already comments on this and suggests a way to reconcile it with the Talmud after all. There are other suggestions too; Rabbi Chaim of Brisk also suggested an approach like that, a different approach. In the Kesef Mishneh next to this Maimonides, he quotes a letter from Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam, who writes in the name of his father that this ruling is a scribal error. A mistake happened. They simply copied it incorrectly. Maimonides ruled like the Talmud, not against the Talmud. There was a copying error. Maimonides himself says this, and Rabbi Avraham ben HaRambam, his son, also brings it in his name. And it’s quoted in the Kesef Mishneh next to Maimonides.

So the Maggid Mishneh, who was earlier, maybe hadn’t seen this yet, so he explained Maimonides. But Rabbi Chaim lived in the twentieth century, five hundred years—four hundred and fifty years—after the Kesef Mishneh. I assume he knew the Kesef Mishneh, which is printed in all editions of Maimonides. So why is he looking for explanations for this Maimonides if it’s a scribal error? The claim is that once the Maggid Mishneh found an explanation for this ruling of Maimonides and argued that it can be reconciled with the Talmud, that means there is a way to interpret the Talmud in that manner. So true, he would never have proposed such a suggestion if a scribal error hadn’t occurred in the manuscripts of Maimonides. It would never have occurred to him to make those kinds of distinctions. But once that error occurred, it caused the Maggid Mishneh to sit and work the issue through, and he found an explanation that apparently satisfied him, one he was willing to stand behind. So in effect we have now discovered an additional new perspective on the Talmudic passage, one that we would never have discovered without the mistake in Maimonides. But that perspective holds water; the Maggid Mishneh is willing to stand behind it.

So now, true, this is not Maimonides’ view, because Maimonides said it’s a scribal error, just a copying mistake. It’s the Maggid Mishneh’s view—so what’s wrong with that? The Maggid Mishneh was a Jew too. So this is the Maggid Mishneh’s way of interpreting the passage, and now we have another approach in this halakhic topic. But that approach would never have been born without that scribal error in Maimonides’ ruling. So does that invalidate the Maggid Mishneh’s ruling? Does that mean there is no such halakhic approach? Of course not. If that approach holds water, and the Maggid Mishneh was willing to stand behind it, and it did not seem to him to contradict the Talmud—he has explanations, everything is fine, it settles his mind—then it is an approach, an approach of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) in interpreting the passage in every respect. And it was discovered by means of a mistake. So what? And without the mistake it wouldn’t have happened; we would not have had such an approach without the mistake; no one would have thought to look for distinctions like these in the Talmud. Fine.

So very often all kinds of constraints and failures and mistakes and just the influence of circumstances and challenges and hardships and distress and the like affect me and make me see the Talmud in a certain way. But after all those influences, at the end of the day, when I look at the Talmud I offer an interpretation, and I am willing to stand behind that interpretation; it is coherent. So if that is the case, then we have a legitimate interpretation of the Talmud here, and now it stands on its own, regardless of what brought me to look at it that way. Now I need to check whether the interpretation—someone else can now come and examine whether this interpretation seems right to him or not. But this is my interpretation of the passage. The fact that all kinds of things caused me to arrive at this kind of perspective—so what? Bottom line, this is how I now look at it, and this is my approach to understanding the passage. I brought in that column I uploaded today—there is.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi—so supposedly that same story, that when someone is appointed to the Sanhedrin, they check whether he has a hundred and fifty reasons to declare the creeping thing pure—did they want to document those reasons, and do they have weight?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They wrote down the Oral Torah; I assume they would have written that too, I don’t know. Everything that came up in the study hall they wrote. But for most of the period, the Oral Torah was not written down.

[Speaker E] I didn’t mean historically, I meant conceptually.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, absolutely, of course. That’s why, after a heavenly voice came forth and ruled like Beit Hillel, nobody thought to erase Beit Shammai from the Mishnah or from the Talmud. They remain there, even though Jewish law does not follow them. Yes—why were Rabbi Meir’s words taught? The Mishnah in… where is it? In Eduyot? I don’t remember—where? Why were Rabbi Meir’s words taught when Jewish law does not follow him? Or why were the minority opinions taught, those according to which Jewish law was not ruled? Why were they taught in the Mishnah? So that if a source comes before you, you’ll know to whom to attribute it, and so on. And the medieval authorities (Rishonim) added another reason as well: so that you know there is also such a way of looking at the passage, even though it was not ruled that way in practice.

[Speaker D] The Rabbi once brought something somewhat similar, I think in a dispute about settling the Land of Israel, where the Rabbi said that there each one came with his… between the Chazon Ish and Rabbi Goren, I think, each one came with his begged assumption, where he says you can fulfill settling the Land of Israel even here, and built on Rabbi Shach’s narrative. Rabbi Shach, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, he said that settling the Land of Israel can also be in Bnei Brak; you don’t have to get to Ariel for that.

[Speaker D] So there the Rabbi did criticize it, saying that supposedly it was because they think…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t criticize it. I only said that for some reason all those who hold Rabbi Shach’s worldview also agree with him in the way he looks at the topic of settling the Land of Israel. And that seems strange to me. If he had looked transparently at the commandment of settling the Land of Israel, and his worldview had led him to look at it that way and that had been his conclusion, fine. But when it divides so hermetically between the two sides, that means there is also a lack of honesty here. That’s what I think. But yes, clearly, a person is shaped by the landscape of his birthplace. Meaning, the influences on a person are influences that determine—or greatly affect—how he will study passages and how he will rule and how he will interpret. We all know that there are certain halakhic decisors whose tendency in many passages you can more or less predict. And other halakhic decisors will have a different tendency in those same passages, and many times I can even know that in advance. And that does not invalidate it; that does not mean it is bias; it does not mean it is improper that they have an agenda, yes, like Gavison. That they have an agenda—no, it has nothing to do with agendas. Every person is under all sorts of influences, and that’s fine. People are people; the Torah was not given to ministering angels. Torah was given to human beings.

[Speaker D] Yes, but if you’re aware of it—if you’re aware that it affects you, and you know there is another side and that the explanatory reasons are not enough to tip the scale

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] toward this side, then in my eyes that isn’t honest.

[Speaker D] So yes, that isn’t honest.

[Speaker E] Why exactly isn’t that honest?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One of the reasons, in my opinion—one of the reasons that in our generation there is such a strong tendency to rely on precedents—is that the halakhic decisors of our generation are part of this generation, and this generation has reflexivity; it is aware of its biases. And once you are aware of your biases, once you are already aware that you have an agenda, you cast doubt—and justifiably—on the honesty of your own ruling, and therefore you prefer to cling to precedents. The sages of previous generations were also influenced no less than the sages of this generation, but they were not aware of it, because this awareness is a very modern matter, the awareness of circumstances that affect me.

[Speaker E] But why is it not legitimate? After all, when you come to a real dispute—not about facts—then in the end it is a value dispute, and a value dispute really has no justification for either side; you have to come with some voluntary act of decision on your part. Clearly your voluntary decision is influenced by who you are. What does “who you are” mean? What you want. And what you want—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then why do you justify it at all? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Aren’t there discussions and reasonings and all that about value matters? Of course there are.

[Speaker E] About justification—about values—how can you justify them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. What do you mean?

[Speaker E] How can an “ought” come from an “is”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not from the “is”—from the “ought” comes the “ought.” I have reasonings about what ought to be, and you have different reasonings about what ought to be. So now how do we argue? Sometimes we can argue, sometimes we can’t argue,

[Speaker E] but each person has his own position.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if it’s not reasoned? After all, if you don’t have a position, you don’t reach a conclusion about what is and what ought to be, and about this halakhic topic, and you choose it only because that is your ideological tendency or I don’t know exactly what—that isn’t honest. You need to proceed here according to the laws of doubt if you don’t have a position. If you do have a position, and clearly the position is influenced by your agendas—because that’s you—that’s fine; this is what I am, this is how I look at it. But at the end of the day, I really think this is the more correct interpretation. And if I am aware that it is not the more correct interpretation and I use it tendentiously, then in my opinion that is not honest. In a time of need, maybe yes. I said: Rabbi Shimon is worthy to be relied upon in a time of pressure, so in a time of pressure you can choose a view even though you have an evenly balanced doubt about it, or even a minority view in a major time of pressure. But that is in a time of pressure. To just choose according to this agenda or that agenda—that, in my eyes, is interpretive dishonesty.

[Speaker E] I didn’t mean when you don’t really think that opinion, but when you truly believe such an opinion and afterward someone gives you some kind of reflection and says, listen, it’s obvious that this fits very well with your whole worldview and what you’re aiming at, then you don’t necessarily have to say, wait, so now I no longer believe what I decided. If you really never decided, you’re just standing on the side, then indeed that’s not honest. Agreed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m telling you: your researcher comes to you and says, listen, you actually rule this way—look consistently—and it’s clear that what influences you is something that belongs to this or that school, or you have this or that worldview. No problem at all. I’ll tell him, more power to you, write an article about it. No, it doesn’t bother me at all. As long as this is really what I think and this is really how I see the passages, then this is really how I see the passages. Of course, of course. I know I’m influenced and there are various influences on me, or yes, the circumstances tilt me this way or that. And that’s perfectly fine. I just don’t investigate what those biases are and what the circumstances are doing and all sorts of things like that. I simply take all that whole gross package as “me,” and how I see the passage is what I rule. And if a researcher comes and reveals to me that within that “me” there sit such agendas and such values and so on, fine, maybe he’s right—so what? It won’t change anything for me. Agreed.

[Speaker E] So I started to say—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that column I uploaded today I brought something there from William James’ book The Varieties of Religious Experience, relevant to the topic. In the first lecture he talks about the materialistic criticism or something like that, the materialistic doctors—I don’t remember. “Materialistic” there means materialists, it’s an old translation of that book. And he says that very often people accuse religious people—religious people—of this being the result of a mental structure, maybe even some kind of neurosis, melancholy, manic depression, whatever, all kinds of such-and-such mental defects. And William James’ claim—he was a philosopher and also a psychologist—is that the religious people and also their secular critics are both mistaken in thinking that if you accept this analysis, then your view—not you, your view—is emptied of value, of meaning. No. Very often the fact that I am neurotic or that I have some mental defect or another is precisely what enables me to encounter certain dimensions in the psyche, in reality, that mentally healthy people cannot encounter.

Sometimes it could be that a person, because of some organic defect, sees better than others or remembers better than others. I brought there an article I saw not long ago about a unit in military intelligence with guys on the autistic spectrum, Asperger’s and the like, and they have some kind of perfect visual memory, really pathological, and they use it—I don’t know—in Lebanon there, they keep in their heads all the information about what’s happening in Lebanon, and apparently they manage to get things out of themselves that a normal person can’t produce. So the fact that it comes from some organic or mental defect or whatever—so what? Sometimes the organic or mental defect is exactly what allows you to encounter or arrive at insights that ordinary people cannot reach. And therefore, once again, hanging everything on the sources that create the insight says nothing about the value of the insight itself—whether it is good or bad, whether it is true or false. The fact that it came out by some crooked route or by a different route or however you want to call it—so what? That’s the psychologist’s concern; the philosopher’s concern or the scientist’s concern is to see whether he is right.

If this person has Asperger’s, then I don’t know, maybe he needs psychological treatment, but that doesn’t mean that the information he is now holding, which a healthy person cannot hold, is false. The information must be checked on its own merits: is it right or not? And it may very well be that precisely his defect enables him to grasp things that we cannot grasp. Therefore the question of source and the factual question—yes, regarding what the source of things is, what caused them, what influenced them—and the question of value are two independent questions. You have to answer each one separately. That’s his claim.

And he says that, for example, religious experiences, special religious charisma, encounters with revelations, religious visions and the like, require a somewhat psychopathic personality—well, not psychopathic in the way we call psychopathy today, but what he called there, I don’t know why he called it that, something neurotic-psychopathic, whatever—and only that way can you manage to encounter those mystical religious dimensions, which somehow are blocked off from ordinary people. That does not invalidate those visions because they emerge from some unstable or different mental structure or however we want to call it. These are two independent questions: the psychological question and the question of the value of the product, the thing itself. They are two different questions; they need to be separated.

Yes, the Nazis invalidated the theory of relativity because they said it was Jewish physics. Right—Einstein invented it, Jewish physics. Suppose they were right, that it’s Jewish physics—so what? The question is whether it is correct physics, not whether it is Jewish physics. The fact that its source is a Jewish person is the question of source. And now the question is whether it’s true or not—what does the source have to do with that? Even say you think Jews are evil and plotting all kinds of schemes—fine, all true—but their physics can still be correct. By the way, that was one of the great strokes of luck in World War II, because once they related to relativity that way, they lagged behind in the race for the bomb. Oppenheimer. Relativity was illegal for a long period until they realized that apparently it still had to be used, and thanks to that the Americans probably got ahead of them.

[Speaker E] So how can we understand that Talmudic statement, that you should study Torah from a rabbi only if he is like an angel of God in your eyes? Why should I care? I’m studying—take the truth from whoever says it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in the series of columns I finished not long ago, I discussed this, and I…

[Speaker D] There’s also Rabbi Meir: “He ate the inside and threw away the peel.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I argued that Torah is transmitted orally, and you need to rely on your rabbi. On the level of reliability—if he is not an honest person, you can’t rely on him. But if the Torah is written and now we have interpretive discussions, and he raises possibilities and I raise possibilities, and afterward we can weigh who is right, then there is no problem at all—learn from whomever you want. It really, really doesn’t matter. And that was the revolution at Yavneh, right? Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, who had a traditionalist approach—a view that says that whoever is not inwardly like his outward appearance should not enter the study hall—they were removed, and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah came in their place, and increased three hundred or three thousand—I don’t remember—benches in the study hall. Everyone came in. He did not check who was inwardly like his outward appearance. Why? Because for him everything was a matter of discussion: present your arguments, and we’ll see whether you’re right or not right. I wrote about this at length in that series about tradition, yes, the series on tradition.

In any case, what I want to claim, to summarize, is that when we talk about the reasons for Jewish law, we need to talk about the substantive reasons for Jewish law. What really are the reasons that explain the halakhic ruling. The question of what sources or circumstances produced this perspective—that is not what I call the reasons for Jewish law. Just as I drew a distinction between reasons and sources in the previous lesson, now I’m drawing a distinction between the reasons and the sources on the one hand, and the influences, constraints, circumstances—which are also, in effect, some kind of cause of the interpretive or halakhic product—on the other. That too needs to be separated from the discussion of the matter itself. Such a discussion is a discussion of the person rather than of the matter; it is what in logic is called the ad hominem fallacy, when you cling to arguments about the person rather than arguments about the matter itself.

In column 257 on my site, where I spoke about the relation between the reasons and the bottom line—the topic of the previous lesson—I also pointed out there that the authority we accepted upon ourselves regarding the Talmud, the authority of the Talmud, is authority over the bottom lines; it is not authority over the reasons. And this is where that gap really enters, between the reasons and the bottom lines. What do I mean? I’m speaking now about substantive reasons, not circumstances. For example, if sages in the Talmud disagree, and say one of them reached a certain conclusion because he was socialist in outlook, and the other was capitalist in outlook and reached a different conclusion, and say the passage ruled like the capitalist, then I claim that what obligates me is that halakhic ruling over which they disagreed—but I am not obligated to become a capitalist. In other words, the fact that capitalism was the justification for that ruling over which they debated—I am bound by the bottom lines, by the halakhic rulings. But justifications, value-based worldviews, and the like, which were not themselves ruled as Jewish law, are not binding.

And this continues what I said in the previous lesson, that there is a gap between the justifications and the bottom lines. We saw that we follow the majority in a court and ignore the fact that the opinions often rely on different reasons. If they rely on different sources, then Rashi said no. If they rely on different reasons, then it doesn’t matter. A majority based on different reasons is still a majority. Meaning, from our perspective what determines things is the bottom line. As for reasons, each person can choose his own reasons. With respect to reasons, there is no authority; with respect to reasons, they do not combine. Each person reaches the bottom line by the route he sees fit, by means of the reasons that seem right to him, but that is his own business. In the end, what determines things is basically the bottom lines.

[Speaker D] Even in the reasons for Jewish law themselves? What? The Rabbi says this even about the reasons for Jewish law themselves? Meaning? The way the sages understood the reason for the law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m talking about.

[Speaker D] Meaning also, yes, but also how they understood acquisition, how they understood things that are kind of abstract, but that’s what causes the law to be determined.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here you need to distinguish between the definition and the reason. And again, the line is not sharp and I don’t know how to give a clear definition of the difference, but in yeshivot they always say, no, no, that’s not a reason, that’s a definition. They always say, you’re deriving the reason of the verse—no, no, that’s not a reason, that’s a definition. What does that mean? You need to define the law as the sages said, and that definition is binding. But the cause, the reason that led to that conception—that is not binding. There is—there is the rabbi of Ma’ale Adumim, Rabbi Shilat, in his book about Rabbi Gedaliah—he brings there an example from Rabbi Gedaliah of the difference between a reason and a definition, if I remember correctly.

[Speaker D] “For seven days you shall dwell in booths.” Booth, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he brings there the example of dwelling in a sukkah. He said that the sages determined that the definition of dwelling in a sukkah is “you shall dwell as you normally live,” and we are supposed to sit in the sukkah as we live in the house. And that is the definition of the commandment of dwelling in a sukkah. But the reason for the commandment of dwelling in a sukkah is something entirely different: “so that your generations may know that I caused the children of Israel to dwell in booths.” We do not derive the reason of the verse, even though the Bach actually did derive it there, but in principle we do not. But the definition of the law is clear—that is the law. The law is the definition we arrived at through the determinations of the sages. That, yes, clearly the definition is binding. But the reasons on which they built that definition are not binding. The Talmud presents the worldview of the Amoraim even if they were capitalists or socialists. I still need to adopt the halakhic instructions they established on that basis.

[Speaker D] Only why they arrived at that reason, why they arrived at that definition—but that’s not to say you think the definition is wrong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying the definition I am bound by.

[Speaker D] The definition you’re bound by, but you’re bound by it while also understanding that it has to be—it’s a bit paradoxical if you don’t believe the justification for the thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not that I don’t believe. If I had to rule myself, I would rule differently. But what can I do—I’m bound, because the Talmud is binding. So I rule as the Talmud rules. Not because the Talmud is right. I rule because it is binding, because we accepted its authority upon ourselves. Therefore, if I ruled like the Talmud because it is right, then it would be very natural also to adopt the reasons, because those are the reasons why it ruled as it ruled. But if I rule like it because I am bound by the Talmud’s ruling, because it has authority, then I am bound by its ruling, not by its justifications. And if I disagree with the justifications, then I disagree—then I’m a socialist.

[Speaker D] So the Rabbi is saying basically that even if the Talmud—even if in your opinion the Talmud is mistaken—you are still completely bound, even if you think it is entirely mistaken.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. A mistake in Jewish law, not a mistake in fact.

[Speaker D] Yes, a mistake in Jewish law.

[Speaker F] But why, when they accepted the rulings of the Talmud, why didn’t they also accept the reasons?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I assume that the reasons are something much more a matter of interpretation, and who knows what the reason is, and to say that the reasons are binding is almost a dead letter. I can always interpret it in different ways, and it’s hard to establish fixed principles in that matter. It’s not part of the law. They wanted to establish some halakhic framework. Nobody wants to dictate your world of images and your world of thoughts and your world of values. They want to dictate the law—what you are to do in practice. Here there needs to be some level of uniformity, some level of shared discourse, and therefore that is what they decided to fix. Not because it is right. That’s why I say: if it were because it is right, then it would have been reasonable to accept the reasons too, because the reasons are the basis of the ruling. But if I accept the ruling not because it is right, but because that is what the Talmud decided and I accept the authority of the Talmud, then I am not saying that it is right; I am saying that this is what binds me, and therefore I will do it. If you ask me, though, what seems right to me, I’m a socialist.

[Speaker E] That opens a big door to freer interpretation. True.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you know, that opening exists whether I admit it or not. I’m just putting it on the table. Others do the same interpretive tricks, they just will never say that they are deviating from what is really written in the Talmud. They’ll say that this is really the Talmud. And I think honesty requires admitting that no. But in practice I don’t think I do things, at least because of this point, in a way that is very different from what standard halakhic decisors do. They do it too; they just don’t admit it. Exactly.

So that is regarding the reasons and the bottom line. Basically the point is that this takes us back to first-order ruling, because first-order ruling basically says that you are not supposed to play with bottom lines and adopt things from precedents or take a majority among halakhic decisors. You need to go into the level of reasons, formulate a position, and reach your own conclusion. Someone else will go into the level of reasons and reach his conclusion—maybe your conclusion for different reasons, maybe a different conclusion. It doesn’t matter. On the contrary, precisely because I am not bound by the reasons that came up in precedents, even in binding precedents like the Talmud—in the medieval authorities (Rishonim) I am not bound even by the bottom line, but in the Talmud the bottom line is binding, though not the reasons—so I’m saying that once that is the case, that is exactly what allows a halakhic decisor to be a first-order decisor. And that basically means that the decisor is now not bound by what the precedents determined to be the correct reasons. He is bound by the bottom lines, in authoritative sources like the Talmud. But as for the reasons, he needs to enter into the reasons and formulate a position on his own. Precisely because there is no canonization there, because it is not part of the binding framework, that is exactly what allows me to be a first-order decisor, to enter the arguments and arrive at my own conclusions. So this approach actually allows for—or strengthens—first-order ruling.

Now I want to move on to the next point, and I’ll only begin it, and that is the question of autonomous ruling. Because first-order ruling—part of it, by the way, not the whole matter of first order, I discussed that in previous lessons—but part of it is to be an autonomous decisor. An autonomous decisor means a decisor who does not rule because such-and-such precedents said so and he took a majority among them or some rule of ruling or another, but rather a decisor who enters into the reasons and the justifications, weighs the arguments in all directions, and in the end reaches his own decision. That is an autonomous decisor. And that is part of the meaning of first-order ruling.

So you can be, for example, an autonomous second-order decisor in principle. How? You can say there is a dispute between Maimonides and Rashba. I am not a first-order decisor; I’m not going into the reasons and checking which of them sounds more plausible to me. But I can, for example, say: okay, but Maimonides was a more important decisor, and therefore I rule like Maimonides. That is my decision, autonomously. There is no rule that in disputes between Maimonides and Rashba Jewish law follows Maimonides. I am an autonomous decisor, but not first-order. It’s not first-order because I’m not entering into the reasons and justifications. Therefore I say: there is a connection between first-order ruling and entering into autonomous ruling, but it’s not exactly the same thing. There is some gap between those concepts.

So I want to get a bit into this topic of autonomous ruling. And basically my fundamental claim is this: when I come to rule in Jewish law, I am supposed to enter the passage—as we saw from the Maharal in Netiv HaTorah, and I also discussed this in one of the previous lessons—I am supposed to enter into the reasons of the passage, formulate a position on my own, and arrive at my own conclusion. Autonomously, even if that goes against the majority of precedents, even if it goes against precedents from major halakhic authorities, and so on. I need to rule autonomously.

And the value of autonomy—we saw this in the Maharal—the value of autonomy is not connected to my being more right than Maimonides. If there is a dispute between Maimonides and Rashba and I rule according to my own view, it is not because I am right, but because there is value in ruling autonomously. That is the point, and that is what the Maharal was talking about there. We read parts of that chapter, chapter 15 in Netiv HaTorah, and this is that claim, this approach of autonomous ruling. And the claim is basically the following.

Maybe I mentioned this story—one of the thousands of stories told about Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz. A priest came to him and said, why don’t you rule like us? After all, we Christians are the majority. It says in the Torah, “follow the majority.” Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz told him: I follow the majority in a place where I am in doubt. If I am not in doubt, I don’t need to follow the majority. Now usually people tell this as a joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s a completely serious answer. A completely correct answer. It is exactly the correct answer to his question. It’s not a joke at all.

Meaning, if there is a piece of meat that I find in a city—yes, this is the example that always comes to mind for me in this context—a piece of meat that I find in a city where nine stores sell non-kosher meat and one store is kosher. In principle I am supposed to follow the majority of stores, so in principle I assume that this piece of meat is non-kosher; it is forbidden to eat it. But what if the piece of meat I found has a premium kosher seal on it? Will I still say it is non-kosher because most of the stores in the city are non-kosher? No. Why not? Because regarding this piece of meat I have no doubt; I know that it is kosher. When do I follow the majority of stores? When I don’t know what this piece of meat is, when I have a doubt. Then they tell me: follow the majority. It is a rule of decision in situations of doubt. But if I am not in doubt, there is no reason for me to follow the majority.

The same is true of the majority of halakhic decisors. The same is true of all rules of ruling. All rules of ruling are rules meant to guide me as to what I should do when I do not have my own position. But if I do have my own position, then I do not need rules of ruling. Then I do what I understand. And in that sense, this is basically the principled basis for this view of autonomous ruling. In this context I want to bring several citations, from halakhic decisors too, so that you’ll see that precisely on this issue I really am not some unusual or overly radical view. This was a very widespread approach among halakhic decisors, one that somehow in recent generations lost some of its popularity. But in earlier generations it was a very common approach, and I’ll bring you quotations from major halakhic decisors who hold this way.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, can you say it again? I didn’t fully understand, really. I identify very much with this Maharal, but to understand him more fully: if a thousand halakhic decisors, the greatest Torah scholars in the world, all together ruled A, and I autonomously think and arrive at B—I have no choice, in purity of heart that’s where I arrived. But a thousand geniuses of the generation throughout the generations thought A. So if they ask me objectively what is more likely, where the truth probably lies, they are probably right. Even so, the Maharal says: sorry, you need to go according to what you think autonomously. What is the logic in that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The logic is that autonomy has value. Autonomy is not a tool to reach the truth. In this case autonomy does not lead you to the truth, but there is value in acting autonomously. That is a value in itself. Why?

[Speaker D] Because the Maharal writes it there—it is more desirable before God.

[Speaker E] Why? But why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean why? I don’t know. How do you explain values? We were given intellect in order to use it.

[Speaker E] But if we are repairing the eternity-within-splendor in some way, and the true eternity-within-splendor is A—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only in a place where I do it out of my own autonomous decision. That’s what I think I brought from the homilies of Ran. The homilies of Ran ask: how can one demand that a sage obey the Sanhedrin, or not rule against the Sanhedrin, otherwise he is a rebellious elder? We are talking about an elder fit to rule, who is on the level of the sages of the Sanhedrin. So they are basically expecting him to make a halakhic mistake that will damage his soul, the world, I don’t know what, just because of the commandment to heed the voice of the sages. And what Ran answers there is that if he does not heed the voice of the sages, that too damages the eternity-within-splendor. Meaning, because you need to heed the voice of the sages; there is “do not turn aside.” Now here I’m making a similar move but in the opposite direction—not the obedient direction, but the autonomous direction.

What this means is that if autonomy has value, then acting autonomously also repairs the world—even at the price that you did something incorrect, which really can cause damage. One could ask the same question: why did the Holy One create us with free choice? Once He created us with free choice, that opened the door to our sinning, doing wrong things, things that damage. He could have created us as deterministic machines and programmed us always to do the right thing. Why didn’t He do that? Apparently because the repair He expects us to perform depends not only on what we do, but also on our choosing to do it. And if we did that thing but not out of our own choice, then apparently it doesn’t really do the job, or not all the job in the optimal way. There is value in my actually choosing to do the act, despite the price that if I am given free choice I will sometimes choose bad things as well. I claim the same thing for autonomy. The repair contained in a correct halakhic act exists only if it is done out of my own autonomous decision. If it is not done out of my autonomous decision, then maybe I did the right act, but the right act in itself does not bring the repair, or at least not the optimal repair, unless I do it out of my autonomous decision. Autonomy has significance in the repair effected by Jewish law—not only what you do, but also how you did it, whether from your own decision or in a compliant second-order way. That’s what the Maharal claims.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, what the Rabbi is saying, what the Rabbi brought—does the Rabbi agree with this, that basically at the root, sometimes at the root of a person’s reasoning, stand the environment and all these things, all these narratives? Isn’t that kind of an argument in favor of postmodernism, this thing? Because basically it says that there really isn’t—like, you can’t really get to any truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, on the contrary, that’s an argument against postmodernism. The postmodern claim says that if everyone acts within his own narrative, then there is no truth. There is no truth and also no dispute. Because each person has his own narrative; they are not making objective claims such that you can say there is a dispute between them. And that is exactly what I argued against. I want to say: true, each person has the influences that lead him in certain directions. But still, you need to examine the product and reach a conclusion as to what the truth is. I reject the claim that narrativity prevents you from the possibility of reaching truth.

[Speaker D] Yes, but how do you examine the product? Because the examination with which you examine the product—aren’t your reasonings there according to narratives and so on?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course they are. My narratives. Not those of the different opinions. I am shaped by the landscape of my birthplace, but fine—that’s the human being. And from my way of looking, in my way of looking, I arrive at this conclusion. And if someone looks at me from the side—yes, I too am probably influenced by all kinds of things. But fine, that’s me.

[Speaker D] Yes, so I didn’t understand—are you opening the door to pluralism? Like, he according to his subjectivity and he according to his subjectivity. Not pluralism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I think Tosafot were mistaken, then as far as I’m concerned, whoever acts like them is mistaken.

[Speaker D] Yes, but you still admit that if you were in Tosafot’s narrative, you would probably reach the same conclusions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. Maybe I would, and maybe I wouldn’t.

[Speaker D] But the narratives—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I am not claiming that narratives determine what I say in a deterministic way. I definitely try to overcome that. I do try to look at what seems right to me. I understand that there are things inside me that I probably won’t manage to get rid of, and it may be that they influence me, and therefore I am not certain of what I say. But that does not mean I am in an evenly balanced doubt among all the possibilities. Not being certain about what I think and being in an evenly balanced doubt are not the same thing. Postmodernism claims that everything is an evenly balanced doubt. There is nothing more correct than anything else.

[Speaker D] And also regarding what the Rabbi said about the reasons—that I’m not bound by the reasons—so every time, basically, the Rabbi brings examples, say, that Jewish law is monistic and not pluralistic and so on, so basically that doesn’t obligate anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be. Not binding—but in this case I also happen to think so.

[Speaker D] Yes, the Rabbi is only saying that this is how Jewish law thought, but it basically doesn’t obligate anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so too. Right, that’s a good comment.

[Speaker D] Yes, thank you very much, Rabbi. All the best.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Any other comment or question?

[Speaker B] Or maybe something not so connected to the lesson? Yes, yes. I heard today about Maimonides' explanation that the persistence of the soul is בעצם the philosophical truths that one arrives at. I didn’t understand? That there isn’t really a soul or spirit, some kind of spiritual thing inside a person. Rather? Rather, it’s the connection to philosophical truth, or learned philosophical thought, which is basically eternal truths that you connect to, and that’s what remains after a person dies.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And these truths will be in the Garden of Eden and enjoy the abundant good reserved for the righteous.

[Speaker B] So that’s just it—not exactly. But they’ll simply remain, meaning probably in the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When Maimonides talks about the World to Come, what is he talking about? The truths?

[Speaker B] So that’s the question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea; I’m not familiar with that Maimonides, but if he says such a thing, then there’s a contradiction in Maimonides.

[Speaker C] He discusses this at length in the Guide, right? He says that the persistence of the soul is the opinions and philosophical truths.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there’s no object that remains?

[Speaker C] That’s what he says.

[Speaker B] Apparently. Like, your soul connects to those truths and that’s kind of it, but he still says there is a soul, which is also a contradiction, because there still is a soul and that’s what remains.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying. If he says there’s no entity and only the truths remain—yes, their words are their memorial—then you’re basically saying that nothing remains. Their words remain, fine, they also remain in their books, but that’s not the persistence of the soul.

[Speaker E] What’s so terrible about that? Why is it so important to us that this object, this subject, keeps floating around somewhere? Why is that so important to us?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing is terrible and nothing is important; the only question is what Maimonides writes. If he says that in one place, then it contradicts what he writes in other places.

[Speaker B] Elsewhere—he’s not consistent. But there was a debate on Channel 14 just now about the soul; in my opinion the atheist won this time. It’s the same atheist who was up against you, by the way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.

[Speaker B] There was a debate about whether the soul exists or not. Okay.

[Speaker E] And in my opinion, this time the atheist really did win.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, some kind of debate?

[Speaker B] Yes, yes, something nice with someone—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That he had a debate with—Bloj, Bloj. Fine, that’s not serious.

[Speaker B] It’s not serious at all, at all. But the atheist did bring good proofs, in that, for example, he said there was a surgery where the hemispheres of the brain were separated, and then each hemisphere produced a distinct and opposite personality. Now Bloj tried to argue that there’s a soul and it’s responsible for the personality, but he told him no—it’s all a result of the brain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wrote a book about this, about these topics. It’s called The Science of Freedom, and I dealt with these issues there at length. There isn’t a shred of evidence here; it’s all a mistake.

[Speaker B] What’s a mistake?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] These proofs. Really?

[Speaker B] Clearly, from A—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To Z.

[Speaker B] Too bad they didn’t bring you. It’s a misunderstanding. They should have brought the Rabbi. With God’s help, Rabbi, go back there, bring us honor.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, this isn’t a gladiator match, it’s not…

[Speaker B] I got to know you from there, by the way, I’m not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine,

[Speaker F] So thank God, thank you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, friends, good,

[Speaker F] Good night and goodbye.