Quantity and Quality – Lesson 5
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
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Table of Contents
- [0:01] The law of completeness and the Omer count in Bahag and Tosafot
- [1:43] Counting under education before actual commandment-obligation
- [3:49] The Rosh and Maharam of Rothenburg on mourning of a minor
- [5:23] The example of two pubic hairs: one prohibition taking effect on another
- [10:01] Migo de-itkatzai — the determining moment for the Sabbath
- [18:03] Counting the Omer: tallying versus ordering — which approach
- [26:24] The daily transition and the different levels
- [27:35] Counting as tallying versus counting as ordering
- [29:26] Community, individual, and the organism
- [34:00] The human being as level and as quality
- [38:06] Lack of measure in numbers among the Pirahã tribe
- [40:00] Language and thought: the dispute between Rashba and Tosafot
- [48:35] Money as idolatry and turning value into something tangible (MEDIUM)
- [51:32] Limited liability corporations and the abstract concept
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the dispute between Bahag and Tosafot regarding the law of completeness in counting the Omer, and suggests that the obligation of a “complete count” may be a requirement in the very concept of counting itself, not in the definition of the commandment of counting as one unit or as a collection of commandments. From there it examines practical implications, such as someone who forgot one day, a minor who comes of age in the middle of the count, and parallel discussions in mourning, Sabbath, Yom Kippur, muktzeh, and migo de-itkatzai. It then argues that conceptual distinctions that seem “logical” may mislead if the formalization of the problem is not precise, and connects this to inquiries about quantity and quality, cardinal and ordinal numbers, abstract concepts, and philosophical questions about language, community, and identity.
Bahag and Tosafot on Counting the Omer and a Minor Who Comes of Age
The text assumes that, at first glance, Bahag understands counting the Omer as one inclusive commandment, while Tosafot understand each day as a commandment in its own right. From that comes the discussion whether someone who missed one day can continue counting, and with a blessing. The text brings an attempt to apply this to a minor who becomes bar mitzvah in the middle of the count: according to the simple understanding of Bahag, he would not be able to recite the blessing because he did not count all forty-nine days, while according to Tosafot he could begin counting from the moment he becomes obligated. The text rejects this application and cites Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul, suggesting that perhaps the requirement of completeness is a requirement on the count itself and not on the commandment, so that a minor who counted earlier under the law of education “did in fact count” and may continue even though until then he had not fulfilled a Torah-level commandment.
Mourning: Maharam of Rothenburg, the Rosh, and “There Is No Deferral for Commandments”
The text cites the Rosh in tractate Moed Katan in the name of Maharam of Rothenburg, that a minor who comes of age during the days of mourning must observe mourning for the remaining days, because “there is no deferral for commandments,” and brings proof from tractate Yevamot 33 about a minor who developed two pubic hairs in the middle of the Sabbath and from that point onward prohibitions take effect upon him. The text notes that the Rosh calls Maharam’s words “astonishing,” because in mourning the moment of obligation is the death of the parent, and if the obligating moment occurred when he was still a minor, then no obligation of mourning was ever created. The text suggests that Maharam of Rothenburg was forced to understand that on the Sabbath, twilight is “the moment that obligates Sabbath observance,” similar to the moment of the parent’s death in mourning, and therefore if the obligating moment did not apply to him at the beginning of the Sabbath, one might have thought he would not be obligated later either.
Muktzeh and Migo De-Itkatzai: Baal HaMaor, Ritva, and Tosafot
The text presents the common understanding of the rule “since it was set aside during twilight, it was set aside for the whole day” as a continuation of the law of preparation, citing Baal HaMaor and Ritva that there is no special holiness in twilight; rather, it is simply the moment of entry into the Sabbath. The text suggests that according to Maharam of Rothenburg there could be a different conception, in which twilight is “the determining moment for the whole Sabbath,” and the status at that moment determines the whole day. The text proposes a practical implication in the dispute between Tosafot and Ritva regarding an etrog on the eighth day: Tosafot maintain that “we do not say migo de-itkatzai because of the previous day,” since the prohibition during twilight stems from doubt whether it is still the seventh day and therefore does not determine the eighth day; Ritva holds that we do say it, because at the end of the day it was in fact prohibited during twilight.
The Sabbath as a Parallel Case to Counting the Omer
The text creates a parallel between the question whether the Sabbath is “one unit” or an obligation at every single moment, and the Bahag-Tosafot discussion regarding counting the Omer, and suggests an inverse comparison: in Tosafot regarding the Sabbath there is room to see it as one unit, whereas in the approach of the Rosh against Maharam of Rothenburg there is room to see an ongoing obligation not dependent on one single constitutive moment. The text uses this to return to the question in counting the Omer whether the requirement of completeness applies to the nature of the counting or to the structure of the commandment, and to explain why a minor who comes of age can continue if in practice there was a continuous “count” even earlier under the law of education.
Quantity and Quality: Cardinal and Ordinal Numbers in Counting the Omer
The text connects the dispute between Bahag and Tosafot to the question whether counting the Omer is a count of the quantity of days or an ordering of levels, distinguishing between “cardinal numbers” and “ordinal numbers.” The text suggests that if this is a count of quantity, then without counting from the beginning it makes no sense to count in the middle; but if it is an ordering of levels, then each day is an independent quality of “day number such-and-such” even without a previous count. The text hesitates and shows that one can reverse the directions depending on different aspects of cardinal and ordinal numbering, and argues that a good conceptual inquiry sounds plausible even when its opposite also sounds plausible, so perhaps both sides are correct from different angles.
Counting the Omer as Levels, Conceptual Approaches, and Kabbalah
The text argues that conceptual approaches to counting the Omer as preparation for the giving of the Torah fit well with an understanding of “ascending in level” rather than “accumulating units,” so that a person “stands at level forty-eight” and then “at level forty-nine.” The text connects this to the structure of “seven times seven” and to the sefirot in Kabbalah, noting that the term “sefirah” comes from number, but when speaking of the sefirot it is more natural to think in terms of ordinal numbers of different qualities than of cumulative quantity. The text raises the possibility that the Kabbalists’ attitude to counting the Omer begins with the question of how one understands the relation among the sefirot themselves.
Organism, Community, and the Transition from Quantity to Quality
The text returns to an earlier discussion about community and individual and explains that an organism is a collection of cells but is not defined by the number of cells; rather by the internal relation and symbiosis, and therefore “there are organisms made of a single cell.” The text expands this idea by saying that even an atom is a “physical organism” as one system, and concludes that quantity does not turn into quality by itself without an additional organizational quality. The text cites Shlomo Maimon, who defines quality as “that thing which does not change when the quantity is increased,” and emphasizes that cardinal counting does not capture the qualitative distinction.
Abstract Concepts, Left and Right, and National Identity
The text argues that there is a philosophical approach that sees ordinal numbers and concepts such as nation and community as “in the eye of the beholder” and as arbitrary agreements, and connects this to a “left-wing” tendency in the philosophical sense of rejecting abstract entities and preferring concreteness. The text gives as examples Shlomo Sand and Benedict Anderson on “imagined identities,” and in contrast presents an essentialist view according to which concepts such as a limited liability company are entities that were discovered, not invented, recalling a distinction mentioned in the series on definitions between “constitutive definitions” and “directive definitions.” The text suggests that money is seen as modern idolatry because it is “the concretization of something abstract,” and connects this to the human need for concretization.
Language and Thought: Pirahã, Whorf, Rashba, and Tosafot
The text cites the Pirahã tribe with its “one-two-many system” as evidence for the connection between language and the ability to count, and argues that the potential exists but the words are missing, so that words both express and create capacities for thought. The text connects this to the debate over the relation between language and thought, and cites a discussion in tractate Berakhot about “hear” and Rashba’s claim that the two laws derived there are not really two separate laws but connected, because language belongs to speech and not necessarily to thought. The text mentions Tosafot in tractate Shabbat 40 and the Rashash regarding thinking in the holy tongue in a bathroom, and suggests that the dispute is not necessarily about whether we think in words, but whether the words are the thought itself or merely a representation of it.
The Fast of Yom Kippur: Binyan Tzion, Rashba, and the Definition of “Fasting”
The text cites Binyan Tzion on the question whether the obligation to fast on Yom Kippur exists at every single moment or over the entire day as one unit, with a practical implication for a minor who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur. The text explains that the concept of “to fast” is different from “not to eat,” and that fasting by definition belongs to a span of time and not to a single isolated moment; therefore one can understand that even if there is a “unit,” it is a unit in the concept of fasting and not in the structure of the commandment. The text compares this to counting the Omer and suggests that just as a minor can continue counting if he in fact counted, so too a minor who comes of age can continue fasting if until now he has in fact been fasting under the law of education.
Caution with Logical Formalization: The Reason of the Verse, Mathematics, and Models
The text argues that the move from a halakhic dispute to a logical-mathematical model can “take us captive” and create mistaken practical implications if the initial formalization does not correctly describe halakhic reality. The text illustrates this through the example of fasting, where the formal definition of “one unit” leads to one conclusion, but understanding the essence of the concept of “fasting” reverses the practical implication. The text brings analogies from science and mathematics, including Popper, “two plus three equals five,” and vector addition of forces as opposed to arithmetic addition, to show that mathematics is always correct but its fit to reality depends on the assumptions of the model. The text concludes by arguing that general lectures about Bahag and Tosafot may miss the point if one assumes that Bahag is innovating “a law in the commandment” instead of understanding that it is “a law in the counting,” and therefore “the model is not right.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regarding the law of completeness, the assumption is that Bahag sees counting the Omer as one inclusive commandment, while Tosafot understand it as a collection of individual commandments. In other words, the count of each day is a separate commandment, one in its own right. And the apparent conclusion that follows from this is: if someone did not count one day, the dispute is whether someone who missed one day can continue counting afterward, or at least continue counting with a blessing. But some wanted to turn this into a dispute about a minor who comes of age in the middle of the count, who becomes bar mitzvah in the middle of the count. The view was that Bahag, who sees this commandment as one single commandment, would say that a minor who comes of age in the middle of the count cannot recite the blessing, cannot count, or really cannot count with a blessing, because in any case he will not fulfill the commandment; he counted only part of the days, and the commandment is to count all forty-nine days. Tosafot, by contrast, for whom the obligation to count applies separately to each day, would obviously say that this minor counts from the moment he comes of age, even though before that he didn’t count. And I said that I’m not sure that’s correct—or really, I later saw that Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul writes this—that maybe the requirement that the count be a complete count is a requirement on the count, not on the commandment. Meaning, the minor, even before he came of age, could count under the law of education. So if he counted, say, the first twenty days under the law of education, and now he has to begin counting as someone who is commanded and performs, it could be that even according to Bahag he can count, because that one unit—that is, the whole that is one unit—is the whole of the count, not the commandment of counting. In other words, the minor who counts from day twenty-one onward—it’s true that he did not fulfill the commandment of counting up to day twenty, but he did count. So if I say that counting day twenty-one cannot stand on its own, that you have to count all the days as a Jewish-law definition, then he didn’t count—the first twenty days under the law of education are only rabbinic; on the Torah level his count is not a commandment. But if I say that this is a requirement in the count itself—in other words, there is no meaning to counting day twenty-one unless you counted up to that point, simply because otherwise it isn’t counting, not because it isn’t the commandment of counting—then in reality he did count. True, he did not fulfill the obligation of the commandment, but in reality he counted. And since that is so, he can also continue counting afterward. And then that means that Bahag’s innovation here, that we are dealing with one unit, is an innovation on the plane of the count itself and not of the commandment of counting. In other words, he is asking: what is counting, not what is the commandment of counting. Okay, that’s basically where we were last time. I don’t remember if I spoke about Maharam of Rothenburg and the Rosh in Moed Katan. I didn’t talk there about a minor who comes of age in the middle of the days of mourning. I just remembered it now, actually. I don’t remember whether I talked about it.
[Speaker B] According to Tosafot each day stands on its own; there’s no connection—whether he counted or didn’t count in the middle, he can still recite the blessing until the end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Each day is a different commandment. Incidentally, Bahag also doesn’t explicitly say otherwise, and that’s how Tosafot understood him. I explained that even in Bahag himself it’s not completely clear that he really says otherwise, but that’s how Tosafot understood him. The Rosh brings—the Rosh in Moed Katan brings—
[Speaker B] Maharam of Rothenburg,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] so he says there: what happens with a minor whose parent dies, say, and then he reaches bar mitzvah two days later—does he have to continue and begin mourning? As a minor he is not obligated to mourn, but does he have to mourn? So Maharam of Rothenburg argues—this is the teacher of the Rosh, and the Rosh cites it in his name—that the minor, since there is no deferral for commandments, “there is no deferral for commandments” means that even if—meaning, the fact that until now he was deferred does not mean that he will not be able to fulfill the commandment from now on as well. He proves it from a Talmudic text in tractate Yevamot 33. The Talmud there discusses the rule that one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition. So the Talmud discusses what happens if a minor develops two pubic hairs in the middle of the Sabbath, and he also offered a sacrifice in impurity in the Temple, entered or did something in a place forbidden to him—I don’t remember the details exactly. And when he developed two pubic hairs, then in effect the two prohibitions took effect on him. The obligation of Sabbath, and the obligation not to offer service as a non-priest—right, he isn’t a priest—took effect on him simultaneously. And therefore there is no problem of one prohibition taking effect on another prohibition, because both prohibitions took effect on him at once. The issue with one prohibition taking effect on another is when one prohibition takes effect before the second, and then the second does not take effect. But if both come at the same time—what is called simultaneously, yes, that’s the rule of simultaneity—then one prohibition can take effect together with the other. It’s either inclusive, additive, or simultaneous. In any event, from there—from the case of a minor who developed two pubic hairs—Maharam of Rothenburg proves the point: you see that a minor who developed two pubic hairs, even though at the beginning of the Sabbath he was not obligated to observe the Sabbath because he was still a minor, for the rest of the Sabbath, once he is already an adult, he is obligated to observe it. So we see that there is no deferral for commandments. Because, after all, he was deferred from the Sabbath until, I don’t know, until eight in the morning when he developed two pubic hairs, and nevertheless from eight in the morning onward he has to observe the Sabbath once he is already an adult. So Maharam of Rothenburg says: the same thing should apply to mourning. True, during the first two days you were still a minor and didn’t have to mourn, but the remaining five days—say, of the seven days of mourning—the remaining five days, you should mourn. That’s his claim. And the Rosh says about this that these are astonishing words. Why astonishing words? Because what happens in mourning is not a case of deferral for commandments. What happens in mourning is—what obligates me in mourning? What obligates me in mourning is the death of the parent, right? When my parent dies, I become obligated in mourning. If the obligating factor occurred when I was a minor, then I am exempt from mourning. So it’s not because during those two days I was a minor; rather, the constitutive moment, the thing that creates the obligation, was at a time when I was not subject to obligation. So I never became obligated in this mourning at all. Therefore there is room to say that I should not mourn at all. But on the Sabbath—what does it matter that I was a minor during the first five hours of the Sabbath? What does that have to do with the continuation? Is there some obligating moment in observing the Sabbath that occurred while I was not subject to obligation, and therefore I’m exempt from the whole Sabbath? What does that have to do with anything?
[Speaker B] Twilight—that’s the obligating moment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So that claim—that’s already the answer. But on the face of it, what Maharam of Rothenburg says is very strange. So maybe I talked about this once before; for some reason I remember having talked about it. But it seems that what you really see in Maharam of Rothenburg—there’s no choice, because otherwise it really is astonishing words, and it’s a big novelty—is that Maharam of Rothenburg understands twilight as the moment that obligates Sabbath observance. In other words, the moment twilight takes effect on you, that is what obligates you to observe the Sabbath. If it did not take effect on you, then if there were deferral for commandments, you wouldn’t have had to observe the Sabbath even if you came of age in the middle. Since the moment—the obligating moment, like the moment of the death of the parent—appeared when you were not yet subject to obligation, therefore you would not have had to observe the Sabbath. And this relates to migo de-itkatzai—I don’t know, maybe when we talked about time I discussed this, I don’t remember. For some reason I have this feeling in my head that I talked about it. Usually the accepted understanding is that in the laws of muktzeh there is a rule—in parentheses, let’s call it a rule—but in the laws of muktzeh there is a rule that “since it was set aside during twilight, it was set aside for the whole day.” Meaning, if something is muktzeh during twilight, that is its status for the whole Sabbath, even if afterward, say—for example, laundry that was wet and dried during the Sabbath. When it was wet it wasn’t fit for anything, so it was muktzeh. Then after a few hours the sun dried it and it became dry. Since during twilight it was muktzeh, then it is set aside for the whole day—that’s migo de-itkatzai. The question is why we say migo de-itkatzai. The accepted understanding—Baal HaMaor and Ritva and others write this, especially Baal HaMaor, and all the later authorities assume it as obvious—is that there is no holiness in twilight at all; rather, twilight is the first moment of the Sabbath. In other words, if something was not prepared by the first moment of the Sabbath, then it simply is not prepared. That’s it; nothing can help. Therefore it remains muktzeh for the whole Sabbath even if it is now fit for use, because it was not prepared before the day began, since it reached twilight in an unprepared state. So it’s not that twilight is a special moment; rather, twilight is simply the entrance into the Sabbath, meaning the beginning of the Sabbath. If by then it wasn’t prepared, then it’s not prepared. And migo, in muktzeh, is really the other side of the law of preparation. Something that was not prepared is prohibited under the law of muktzeh. Right? That’s the accepted understanding. But according to this Maharam of Rothenburg, another conception could emerge: “since it was set aside during twilight, it was set aside for the whole day”—again, even though that is a rabbinic law—but on the conceptual level, “since it was set aside during twilight” means because twilight really is the moment that determines the whole Sabbath. Not because it is the first moment, but because it is the determining moment for the whole Sabbath, and your status at that moment is in effect your status for the whole Sabbath. And that is a different conception of migo de-itkatzai during twilight. Now, once I thought that maybe one could hang on this the dispute among the medieval authorities. There is a dispute between Ritva and Tosafot about migo de-itkatzai because of the previous day. In other words, if, say, an etrog on the eighth day of Sukkot—on Simchat Torah for us, let’s say—okay? Regarding an etrog, all seven days it is set aside for its commandment, right? You’re not allowed to make ordinary use of it because it is designated for the commandment. Now on the eighth day—there is no commandment of taking the etrog on the eighth day, right? On Simchat Torah there is no commandment of the sukkah anymore, no four species; the etrog is no longer an object of commandment. So ostensibly it should be permitted. The question is whether the etrog is muktzeh even on the eighth day. Why? Tosafot say that we do not say migo de-itkatzai because of the previous day. Meaning, it is not muktzeh—at least not under the law of muktzeh; it could be for some other reason. Why not? Why is it not muktzeh? Because during twilight, the only reason it was prohibited was because twilight is doubtful seventh day. But as far as the eighth day is concerned, it is certainly permitted. The only thing you are concerned about during twilight is that perhaps you still have to take the etrog because maybe it is the seventh day. Twilight is doubtful day, doubtful night, okay? So the whole reason it is prohibited during twilight is a prohibition because of the seventh day, because of the doubt that maybe it is the seventh day. So that does not prohibit the eighth day. Ritva disagrees, and Ritva argues—there in tractate Sukkah 46 there is this long Ritva—and he argues that we do say migo de-itkatzai because of the previous day, and he explains the law of the etrog differently. Why? Because at the end of the day, during twilight it was prohibited. What difference does it make why? Bottom line, during twilight it was prohibited, so it is prohibited for the whole day. Now, I think this is a practical implication of the two conceptions of migo de-itkatzai. This is in parentheses here, but maybe that’s the practical implication. Why? Because Tosafot basically claim that in order for it to be prohibited on the eighth day, it has to be prohibited for one moment at the first moment of the eighth day. Its status at the first moment of the eighth day is the status that determines the whole day. Now Tosafot say: it was not prohibited at any moment of the eighth day. Everything prohibited there belongs only to moments of the seventh day, but we don’t know when the seventh day ends and the eighth day begins. But there is no moment of the eighth day when it is really prohibited. At most we have to be careful because we don’t know when the eighth day starts and the seventh ends. So Tosafot say that if that’s the case, then it isn’t muktzeh.
[Speaker C] And it also has to be at least a little permitted on the seventh day, because otherwise you don’t have preparation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so he says that once it’s simultaneous like that—meaning, the moment you enter the eighth day, fine, then it’s fine. More than that, according to his view it’s not a law of preparation—that’s what I wanted to say. According to his view, the law of muktzeh is not connected to preparation. But Ritva really does learn it that way. Ritva really says that it is connected: even if on the eighth day there is not a single moment in which it is prohibited, still you need preparation. In other words, there has to be one moment on the seventh day when it is permitted. And here there definitely is no such thing. Therefore there will be muktzeh here, even though its prohibition is only because of the seventh day. In other words, according to Ritva there has to be some one point in time on the seventh day when it is permitted, because then you understand that it was prepared while still day, and then you can use it on the eighth day. Because Ritva understands, like Baal HaMaor, that the law of muktzeh is the mirror image of the prohibition of preparation. What was not prepared is prohibited as muktzeh. So in order for it to be prepared, it has to be prepared while still day, so there has to be at least one moment when it is permitted. Tosafot do not understand it that way at all. Tosafot understand that the determining moment is the moment of the day’s entry. Now at the moment of the day’s entry the etrog was not prohibited. True, I don’t know when that moment exists, so I am stringent because of doubt, but in essence at that moment there was no moment when the etrog was prohibited, and therefore it does not spread over the whole day. It’s not that there is here—that is, according to Tosafot there is a constitutive moment at the beginning of the day, and the status of the object at that moment determines its status for the whole day. These are two different conceptions of migo de-itkatzai, and that’s what comes out of Maharam of Rothenburg—this Tosafot-type approach. Maharam of Rothenburg says that with the Sabbath—he holds that with the Sabbath it’s like mourning. In mourning it is clear that the death of the parent is the moment that determines, that imposes upon you the obligation to mourn. Therefore if at that moment you were not subject to obligation, then you are not obligated. But with the Sabbath, how can you compare Sabbath to that? On the Sabbath every single moment obligates on its own. He says no—even on the Sabbath, the first moment of the Sabbath is the moment that determines your obligation for the whole Sabbath. And here we really see that this is a Torah-level law. So this is not just migo de-itkatzai, which is a rabbinic law, but rather this is the conception of the Sabbath on the Torah level. Migo de-itkatzai is only an expression of the matter on the level of rabbinic law. But Maharam of Rothenburg gives us a Torah-level practical implication, because the minor who, had there been deferral for commandments, comes of age in the middle of the Sabbath—he would not be obligated to observe the Sabbath; the rest of the Sabbath he would not have to observe.
[Speaker B] What about the Sabbatical year—would he not have to there either?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s again the question whether in the Sabbatical year too we would say something like that, that the beginning of the year determines the status of the whole day. I don’t know; I’m not familiar with a discussion about it—whether there too there is some concept like migo de-itkatzai. So if I come back to our issue, this basically means that, say, according to Tosafot, the Sabbath is one unit. I’m comparing it to Bahag and Tosafot, but they’re playing the opposite game. In other words, according to Tosafot on the Sabbath, the obligation is not on every single moment; the obligation is one unit. So someone who touches the Sabbath—he’s committed, meaning he is obligated to observe the entire Sabbath. And according to Ritva, or the Rosh who disagrees with Maharam of Rothenburg, no—there is an obligation at every single moment. And the fact that you were exempt when you were a minor has nothing to do with the fact that once you are an adult, you should observe. Same thing with a minor who comes of age in the middle of the Omer count, same thing. In other words, Tosafot say that he can count, because here he understands that the obligation applies on each and every day, unlike the Sabbath where it is an obligation of one unit. And Bahag is like Tosafot there with the Sabbath, meaning Bahag says that at every single moment—or on each and every day—there is a separate commandment. Fine. So that’s regarding the dispute between Tosafot and Bahag. In a moment I’ll move to another similar case, but before that I want to connect this to the question of quantity and quality. I struggled with this a lot, and I’m still struggling with it. My feeling is that this should be connected to the question of how we understand counting the Omer—the conception of Bahag versus Tosafot. In other words, why do we say that the counting of day twenty is worth nothing if you didn’t count up to day nineteen? Or even as I spoke about in the previous lecture, maybe it could also be true prospectively—meaning, if you’re sure you won’t manage to count until the end, then don’t begin at all, since it is one unit. So I said I’m not sure that’s right, but there are approaches like that too. Why indeed is that so, if we understand the whole thing as one unit? We already spoke about two kinds of counting. There are ordinal numbers and cardinal numbers, okay? And my feeling was that the whole debate around counting the Omer turns on the question of how I understand this counting. Am I ordering these days, or am I tallying these days? If I’m tallying these days, then I have to count how many I have, right? So if I’m counting how many I have, then without counting the first five, what’s the point of counting the sixth? I need to see how many I have altogether. But if each day is ordinal, not cardinal—in other words, I’m saying now this is the next day, this is day number six—then it’s not because it’s five plus one; rather, that is its meaning. Then there would be room to say that I can count it even if I didn’t count until now. True, I didn’t track the meaning of the first day, second day, third day, and fourth day, but the fifth day I am tracking, and I know that this is day number five. In other words, it is fifth in the hierarchy, but that is not necessarily important, because being fifth in the hierarchy does not necessarily have to determine its relation to what came before. It is simply the way of characterizing it. Even if I didn’t count the previous ones, now I know that I am on day number five. If I am counting how many days I have, then there’s no point in counting only some of the stones when I want to know how many stones I have altogether. So what, I’ll count only the stones from here onward when those—then I don’t know how many stones I have in total, right? It has no meaning. If you want to count how many days there are, you count all of them. But if each day is a different essence, then it’s not quantity, it’s quality. In other words, each day has this quality of number six. Why should I care that I didn’t track quality number five? So I missed the counting of the day of quality number five, obviously I missed it, meaning I did not fulfill the obligation of counting the fifth day. But what does that have to do with the obligation of counting the sixth day? Therefore Tosafot understand that the counting is a counting of qualities. The numbers are ordinal numbers. And Bahag says that the numbers are cardinal numbers. Okay? And on that too we can start asking whether this is a law in the counting or a law in the commandment. On the face of it, the way I’ve presented it now, it really seems more like a law in the counting and not in the commandment. In other words, I want to know what kind of counting this is. The Torah of course told me to count—it is a commandment to count—but the question is, what is the concept that the Torah told me here? Not what is the Jewish-law definition of the obligation to count, but what is counting from the Torah’s perspective. This is still a halakhic question: what does the Torah want here when it tells me to count? But I am not asking how the Torah defines the commandment of counting; I am asking how this commandment defines the concept of counting that is required of me. Okay? So if I really understand it this way, that the dispute is whether these are ordinal or cardinal numbers, it seems to me that this really leans more in the direction that the question is what the counting is, not what the commandment is. Okay?
[Speaker D] So does someone who came of age really have to count? What? Someone who comes of age in the middle of the Omer—does he have to keep counting?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Depends according to whom. According to Tosafot, yes, because these are ordinal numbers; and according to Bahag, no, because these are cardinal numbers. That’s the claim. Why am I hesitant? I’m not completely sure about this—that was my initial intuition. Because one could also say the opposite. These inquiries are always slippery. You could say the reverse. What are cardinal numbers? Cardinal numbers are that each unit has meaning on its own. I’m counting how many stones I have altogether, so of course—I have five stones, I add the sixth stone, and then I have six stones in total, but the sixth stone is well defined. By contrast, in temperatures, as I said, or in intelligence, IQ, there is no “degree 37” that I add, and then I go from 36 to 37. The individual unit has no meaning; only the whole has meaning. You understand that this takes me to the opposite conclusion? Because then it means that only the whole has meaning; you can’t look just at the last unit, that has no meaning.
[Speaker B] But a quantity of energy does accumulate.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Energy does, yes, because energy really is a cardinal magnitude, not ordinal. And that’s the difference between temperature and heat energy. Temperature is extensive and intensive. In any event, that’s why I say: here I’m a little uncertain. I do tend to think that the first direction makes more sense to me—it sounds more plausible—but you see that I can point pretty easily in the opposite direction. So I’m not completely sure. Either way, I need to formulate it for myself better. I assume both things are true, meaning the question is which aspect of ordinal and cardinal you are looking at. Usually when an inquiry is a good one, it sounds plausible even when its opposite reasoning is also true. That means they are both true, but from different aspects, from different angles. We need to understand what relation between cardinal and ordinal yields this distinction, and what yields that distinction, because both are somehow true. And still, in two different aspects it really does make a distinction between cardinal and ordinal number. Never mind that the distinction is reversed—that actually sharpens the question whether this is a cardinal number or an ordinal number. Particle and dual, particle and wave.
[Speaker B] Yes, like that—two aspects, when you look at it as a particle or as waves.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s something here that has two aspects, and both are true.
[Speaker E] And number of days—you said that’s a cardinal magnitude.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to whom?
[Speaker E] No, you said in physics generally that time is a cardinal magnitude, and say temperature is an ordinal magnitude. So if we take that implication, then why not here too?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because the counting—it’s clear that the number of days, if I’m counting how many days there are, that’s cardinal. But that’s exactly the question: do I need to count how many days there are, or do I need to count what the quality of this whole set of 49 days is? I don’t need to count how many days I have—that is certainly a definition of a cardinal number—but rather I need to arrive at the quality of 49 days, the whole set. And then it’s an ordinal number. You’re not counting how many days you have—that’s already one definition, and it really assumes that the counting is cardinal counting. But if the definition is that the counting is ordinal counting, then it’s not at all about counting how many days I have. That’s exactly the point. Rather, it is to produce a whole that is at level 49, which of course contains within it 49 days, but it is not a view of 49 units; it is level number 49. Exactly as you’re saying. Yes, this reminds me now—maybe we talked about it once when we talked about time. We also had a series on time. When we speak about a commandment that applies all the time—say, the commandment of Torah study. One has to learn all the time. Forget about reciting Shema morning and evening; we discussed that. But the accepted view, at least regarding the existential dimension, is that one has to learn all the time. What does that mean? That at every single moment there is a commandment? I don’t think so. The commandment is to learn all the time. It’s not a collection of a huge number of commandments, where at every moment there is a commandment to study Torah. You simply have to learn all the time; it’s a supra-temporal commandment. It’s not a commandment composed of all the moments; rather it is a commandment that applies to the whole of time. It’s the same thing. You can say that I have a collection of moments, and that’s the day, and at every moment one has to learn. Or you can say no, I have to learn throughout this whole stretch. True, that whole stretch is made up of many moments—so what? But conceptually it’s not a commandment built out of moments. For example, Maimonides says—one second—Maimonides says that commandments that apply every day are not counted every day as a separate commandment. Reciting Shema every morning and every evening—even those are counted as a separate commandment every morning and every evening, but certainly not every single day. A commandment to count on day one, on day two, on day three—why not count them? Why not? Well, he has a special principle that explains why such a commandment is not counted—Principle 13—why such a commandment is not counted every day.
[Speaker D] But there are commandments for which that principle isn’t needed at all, like the commandment of Torah study.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The commandment of Torah study wouldn’t enter there under that principle.
[Speaker D] Because the commandment of Torah study is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not a commandment on every—
[Speaker D] single moment that there is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question why you don’t count every such commandment doesn’t arise there, because it’s not defined at all as every single moment. It’s one commandment: learn all the time. You’re simply never exempt from it, that’s all. It doesn’t really relate to time at all. There are commandments that do relate to time, only they apply at every hour and hour. They apply to all hours, but for each and every hour there is a commandment. And there is a commandment that does not touch time at all. It’s not a time-bound commandment; it is all the time, that’s all. But did we say Torah study is not a commandment? I didn’t say that. The existential dimension of Torah study, not the obligatory dimension. The obligatory dimension may be reciting Shema morning and evening. There isn’t another example, though. What? There are many examples. Love—love of God. Love, love of God. Tons. There are six constant commandments that Sefer HaChinukh mentions, and the Mishnah Berurah at the beginning of the Mishnah Berurah cites six constant commandments from Sefer HaChinukh. Love of God, fear of God, and there are others as well. So that answers your question. The point is that when I count days, clearly the number is a cardinal number—I see how many days I have. The whole question is whether that is really the law here. Is what I need here to count how many days I have, or is this counting something else? It is not counting how many days I have, but counting where I stand. I am now standing at level forty-eight, and after that I am standing at level forty-nine. Yes, all the conceptual approaches to counting the Omer as preparation for the giving of the Torah fit very well with this. You are not really collecting days; you are rising each time to another level. That level is not one plus the previous level plus one, but simply the next level in line, like in temperature. In other words, you have to reach a maximal level, and you want to do it gradually.
[Speaker B] And it’s not an object made of days, not a collection of days.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying—yes—the conceptual explanations of counting the Omer, that you are involved in preparing for the giving of the Torah and every day you have to experience some additional ascent toward the giving of the Torah, fit this view very well. True, it’s not halakhic, but I’m just saying that it fits this view very well—that each day is not simply another unit alongside the previous day. You are in a different place. Each day you visit a different level. That level is not the previous level plus one; it is a different level. It is level number thirty-two in this hierarchy, on this scale. Okay? It is not level thirty-one plus one. You simply climb gradually from level to level.
[Speaker E] And in Kabbalah there are the sefirot, like foundation within foundation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, counting the Omer is seven times seven; it’s built out of the sefirot.
[Speaker E] So that’s somewhat parallel to qualities, kind of?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Same question. However you understand counting the Omer, it may start with the question of how you understand the sefirot. Are the sefirot basically cardinal? In other words, the sefirah of kindness and severity, say—is severity kindness plus one? As that is not correct in terms of the right column—they’re divided into columns. So kindness is above netzach, on the right side. So the question is whether netzach is kindness plus one—or plus downward, meaning thicker or denser than kindness—or whether it is a different level of thickness, meaning simply the next level of thickness. It could be that the Kabbalists’ attitude toward counting the Omer starts from the question of how you understand the relation among the sefirot. By the way, the sefirot themselves—the very name sefirah—
[Speaker B] It comes from the word for number.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what are you counting? With the sefirot, it’s much more natural to think that this is an ordinal number, not a cardinal one. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge, kindness, might, beauty, eternity, glory, foundation, and kingship. It’s not one plus one. It’s not that eternity is twice kingship, or kingship plus one. These are different kinds, or in our language, different qualities. And so these are qualities, let’s say. So they’re not qualities? No, they are qualities—that’s exactly what I’m saying—and therefore these are ordinal numbers, not cardinal ones. I said that an ordinal number is a quality; cardinal numbers are when you count how many you have, how many units you have. So with the sefirot too, the term sefira is interesting, because it’s called sefira because we count them. We count, yes, the ten sefirot, or the seven sefirot in this case. Isn’t that counting? No—counting here means ordering; it’s ordinal counting, not cardinal counting. Okay? And these are different levels of refinement, let’s say, or of coarseness—how far and how close they are to the light.
[Speaker D] Maybe it means spheres?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but “sefirot” as an expression is taken from there. In my view, “counting” is what’s taken from there. The original concept of sefira is the kabbalistic one, and in modern Hebrew we call them “sefirot,” I think—unless it comes from English, sphere, meaning a ball. If you look at it as if they’re concentric balls, then “spheres,” yes, I don’t know, maybe. I don’t know how that expression developed.
[Speaker D] It’s like twilight and vacation time, no? Twilight and vacation time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s basically regarding quantity and quality. Maybe one more comment, and with that I’ll finish with quantity and quality, and then move on to a few remarks that relate only to things we’ve already seen. After all, when we talked in this series about the collective and the individual, there too you have to notice that the concept of a collective, or of an organism—I linked those two concepts back then—an organism is basically a collection of cells. But it’s not that from fifteen cells and up it becomes an organism. It doesn’t depend on the quantity of cells; it depends on the internal relation among them, on the order, on the symbiosis among them. Meaning, if they function as one whole, then it’s an organism. There are organisms made of a single cell. An amoeba, or yes, single-celled creatures. So that too is an organism. Even a cell itself is a kind of organism, because all the molecules inside the cell function together as some sort of whole, not as a collection of molecules lying next to one another. Right? So that is basically the concept of organism, the concept of a collective or a public or something like that. It’s exactly an expression of the transition to a state in which quantity becomes quality. Now, when people talk about quantity becoming quality, they often view it as something numerical. Meaning, if you have enough quantity, suddenly you see it as some different quality. Here it’s not exactly like that. Meaning, that same quantity itself—if you just place a random collection of cells one next to another, it won’t be an organism. There will be fifteen cells lying next to each other. But if you have a creature composed of fifteen cells, then it’s an organism. Now what does that mean? That there is something in it beyond the fifteen cells. The fifteen cells in it—that’s a cardinal number, I simply count and see that it has fifteen cells. You understand that this counting won’t tell me that we’re dealing here with an organism. If you count fifteen cells next to each other, you’ll also get fifteen. So what does it mean that it’s an organism? It means there is something here in the quality, not only in the quantity. Meaning, you have a number—the number of cells is fifteen—but the quality of those fifteen cells that come together, that’s what gives you the…
[Speaker D] But that’s also true of electrons.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker D] Not every twelve electrons that aren’t connected to each other are something; only if they sit on the same…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are organisms on a lower level, physical organisms, not biological ones. Say, an atom is a physical organism, because it functions as one system. There’s a nucleus, which itself is also composed of a lot of other things, and around it there are electrons and protons and all sorts of things like that. So this whole can be seen as an organism. True, this is physics, not biology, but still, in physical thinking we see it as some sort of organism. So that too shows us, or expresses, the fact that you can’t move from… quantity and quality are two different things. Meaning, it’s not that if you increase the quantity enough, you’ll get quality. The quantity has to satisfy something in order to become a different quality. And that something it satisfies is another quality. Meaning, quantity—you can go on counting the quantity, and it still doesn’t become an organism, a collective, something else. Meaning, there has to be some quality in this whole that turns it into something else. So again, this shows us that numbers can define quantity, but when you move into the plane of quality, you won’t get there through cardinal counting. Meaning, counting how many you have won’t tell you anything about the quantity—sorry, about the quality. We spoke about Shlomo Maimon, who defines the difference between quantity and quality. What is quality? It’s the thing that doesn’t change when the quantity is increased. Right? If you add another cell to a person, or another molecule to a cell, what difference does it make? It’s still a cell or a person. It won’t change anything here. Meaning, what determines it is the quality of the things, not how many things there are. Now, true, it’s likely impossible to be a person with fewer than a certain number of cells—that doesn’t happen, because you can’t produce that quality—so there is also a quantitative requirement here. Fine, that’s a quantitative requirement, but it’s not that quantity defines what a human being is. The definition of a human being is something qualitative, something else. It really is a very interesting philosophical question how… biologists struggle a great deal with this, and philosophers too. What… how… that’s what I talked about then, when I spoke about the individual and the collective. Why is a person really one thing? A person is, all in all, a collection of cells. As a rough definition, in our eyes it is one thing, but actually it’s a collection of cells that somehow function together. But our immediate intuition is that that’s not right. It’s not just something that appears that way to our eyes—it really is one thing. Even though there is a collection of cells here, true, there is some relation among them that turns them into some sort of network, so that it’s not just a collection of many cells. So when I look at it through cardinal counting, then indeed the question arises. The people who ask that question don’t understand that what’s involved here is ordinal counting, not cardinal counting. A human being is a level above the vegetative, animate, and speaking, right? These are levels, not… these are ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers. Meaning, the difference between them is not quantity, the difference between them is quality, and everybody feels that, by the way. And there are people who can’t define it, so they aren’t willing to accept this difference.
[Speaker D] What are the numbers in a human being, Rabbi? What are the numbers in a human being? I mean…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How many cells there are, or what degree of complexity there is in him.
[Speaker D] But I can say, I don’t know, that one has more cells than the other numerically.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, of course. But that won’t define the humanity in him. The number isn’t relevant.
[Speaker D] So in what sense do numbers have meaning in human beings? If not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, I’m saying they really don’t have meaning—only ordinal numbers do, not cardinal numbers, when it comes to a human being. Meaning, on the contrary, someone who looks at a human being asks himself: in what sense is a human being one thing? All in all it’s a collection of cells—so what if they’re connected together and do… the combination simply does what each individual unit can’t do. So what? That’s an additive combination, a cardinal combination. But a human being is an ordinal combination. And that is the difference: a quantity of stones is a quantity, more and more of the same thing, so there you have cardinal numbers. But the combination of cells that creates a human being—that’s ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers. And people—and the same thing with a collective. A collection of people that creates a public—people say the public is a fiction, all in all there are people, people exist, what is “the public”? Then of course philosophers immediately come and ask: people don’t exist either; what exist are cells, or molecules, or if you like elementary particles. In what sense do molecules and cells exist? It just stops in the middle. Those who stop in the middle show that basically they are willing to accept that there are also qualities and not only quantities, that there are ordinal numbers and not only cardinal numbers. So why stop there? A human being too is a different ordinal quality. Okay? Therefore, either you go all the way, because you really aren’t willing to accept ordinal numbers—you see them as a kind of fiction. Numbers are only cardinal; ordinal numbers are in the eye of the beholder. Meaning, if you don’t grasp this as something objective, but rather if we define it differently then it’s convenient for our purposes to define it differently—for example, a nation. What is a nation? Shlomo Sand, in his book Who Invented the Jewish People. He talks there about the notion of—what’s his name, I forgot—Benedict Anderson, yes, of imagined identities. He basically says that a nation is a kind of fictitious creature: a collection of people build for themselves some shared identity, and that’s how a nation is formed. There is nothing objective here. The whole question is only whether you define yourself—define yourself. You understand why he’s a leftist? No, really, because he understands that if the Palestinians define themselves as a nation, then they are a nation. There is nothing beyond whether you see yourself as such. Like those who say a Jew is whoever sees himself as a Jew. Because they aren’t willing to accept that there really is such a thing as Jew and non-Jew; they aren’t willing to accept essential definitions. These are just subjective definitions. All these views basically claim that the ordinal, the ordinal concept, is in the eye of the beholder. There is no such thing in the world as real ordinal relations; there are only cardinal relations. Those are objective. Five is four plus one, and if you add one you get five—so that is completely objective; it doesn’t depend on the eye of the beholder. But ordinal is just a subjective matter. So they regard ordinal numbers as an invention of the people, while cardinal numbers are objective. And what I want to claim is that this is wrong. Ordinal numbers also describe something in reality. If someone doesn’t understand that a human being is one entity, he simply doesn’t understand something. It’s not that he thinks differently; he’s simply mistaken. He isn’t perceiving a certain aspect of reality. That’s all. Meaning, true, I don’t know how to sharpen it as much as I know how to sharpen cardinal quantity—how much I have, everyone sees: two, four, add one and it’s five. By the way, I once spoke about this too, and it’s related here, about the Pirahã tribe—I think I spoke about this, right? The tribe with the one-two-many system. Maybe I also spoke about it in the discussion of the individual and the collective; I spoke about it there.
[Speaker B] How many do they have…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, they don’t know cardinal numbers either. They don’t understand the concept of cardinal numbers either. They have one, two, and many. One-two-many system—that’s what they know how to count. They know how to count one, two, and from three onward it’s many. Meaning, they don’t have four, five, six. So for example, if you ask them which is more—you put eight batteries in front of them and five batteries—where are there more? They have no idea. This is many and that is many. What… they don’t know how to compare. Now apparently, as far as I remember from the article—it’s an interesting article in Nature—when the quantities are very large compared to each other, then they do distinguish. Meaning, they understand that this is more than that. But when it’s eight versus five, or ten…
[Speaker D] Versus fifteen, it’s not… it’s many and very many and… it’s crazy, like if you… it’s stayed in my head ever since the… if you put eight chickens on one side and on the other side…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’d exchange them in trade in the market, meaning…
[Speaker D] You have five, but he wouldn’t take the… wouldn’t he have a feeling he’d take the bigger amount? No? What, he’d hesitate between sixteen of these and four?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From what I read, yes—he can’t say that here there are more than there. He doesn’t know. Now what does that mean?
[Speaker D] Maybe he can’t say it, but he’ll go to… no? He’ll take fewer chickens?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I think. Again, they didn’t describe that experiment there, but they said if you ask them, “Tell me where there are more,” they don’t know. So what does that mean? That’s what it means.
[Speaker D] They just don’t understand what “more” means?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they do know what it means. They know that two is more than one, and many is more than two—that they do know.
[Speaker D] Really? When he’s hungry and he sees a pile of apples here and only one apple there, and he’s hungry…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, one apple maybe yes. Five versus six, eight versus five, right? Then he won’t know how to distinguish. Again, it’s clear they’re not stupid. Meaning, when they taught them, they got it. Meaning, it’s not… once you teach them, it’s very nice, because there’s a book about this by Whorf—I forgot the name of the book. Around the discussion of how much people think about this issue, there was the question: do we think by means of language, or does language express our thought? Meaning, is language needed for thought, or does it only express thought? These are studies by Whorf—some guy who was self-taught, but apparently he’s considered an icon in this field.
[Speaker B] Right, doesn’t Chomsky deal with this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Chomsky, I think—no, he doesn’t talk about thought, he talks about speech. Maybe it’s related. But there too, this is an excellent example, because you see that if they don’t have the language, they can’t think about it. But it’s not that they can’t grasp it—if you teach them the language, they understand immediately, and they’ll know how to think that way too. Meaning, they have the potential to think that way. With monkeys you won’t be able to teach that—at least not beyond a tiny bit they can maybe teach them, but not really, not on a real level beyond some minimum. So monkeys don’t have even the basic ability to count. These people do—they just lack the words. Meaning, the words also express the ability to count, but they also create that ability. Meaning, there is a very interesting relationship between speech and thought. And this reminds me that there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) about this. In the Talmud / Talmudic text in Berakhot, the Talmud / Talmudic text there derives two things from “Hear, O Israel.” It says: “in any language that you hear,” and also “let your ear hear what your mouth says,” meaning that you have to make it audible to your ears. So the Rashba asks there: how do you derive two things from the same word? Usually the assumption in the Talmud / Talmudic text is that if one thing is derived, the word is already occupied—you can’t derive something else from it. The Rashba says it’s one and the same thing, not two things. What does that mean? If you need to make it audible—no, the one who says “in any language,” the one who says—I already don’t remember, Rabbi Yose who said there—the one who says that you can recite Shema in any language also says, I think, that you don’t need to make it audible to your ears. And on that the Rashba says it’s the same thing. Why?
[Speaker D] Because if he thought it in Hebrew,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, wait, I need to remember. He says there that language exists only in speech, meaning thought is not done in language. So if something doesn’t need to be spoken, then obviously it’s in any language. Meaning, if they tell you that you don’t need to say the thing, it’s enough to think it,
[Speaker D] language is necessarily language,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the Rashba’s claim there. What do you mean, of course not?
[Speaker B] No, certainly, a lot of things that I’m capable of saying and describing what I did—it’s like multitasking. Can you explain to me, for example, how to tie a shoelace knot or how a zipper works?
[Speaker E] Do you imagine the words?
[Speaker B] No, I don’t imagine the words. You imagine the action, not the words.
[Speaker D] No, that’s in action, but Rabbi, when you speak English, if you’re not an English speaker, you think in Hebrew and translate it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously sometimes we think with language.
[Speaker B] To describe it in words, no—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] doesn’t work, right. But the question is whether in the essence of thought it is always done in language; whether without language I can’t think. With the Pirahã tribe, I think they say about them that as long as they didn’t have the language…
[Speaker D] What do you dream in—even in Hebrew, Rabbi, you dream in Hebrew. What? You even dream in Hebrew.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I dream in Spanish—que sera sera, que sera, whatever will be, will be.
[Speaker D] You dream in Hebrew. There’s no way it’s anything else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not necessarily, I don’t know. I don’t know what I dream in.
[Speaker B] Now this is a book—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] by Antonio Damasio, the Damasio couple, brain researchers, called Descartes’ Error. They too talk about this issue: do we think in language, or do we necessarily think in language? Obviously sometimes we think in language; I don’t think anyone disputes that. But the question is whether thought is necessarily in language. And beyond that, even when we think in language, the question is: when we think the words, is that the thought, or is that too already a representation of the thought, while the thought happening inside is not in language? The words present in our consciousness in thought are a representation—they describe the thought. Exactly, they are a representation of the thought, not the thought itself. Because I don’t think the Rashba disagrees that a person sometimes thinks in language, or maybe even always—but when he forgets words—
[Speaker B] then he can still think.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, that’s the point. Maybe it will be harder for him—I said, as with the Pirahã tribe—because sometimes words help us think. But to say that we think in words is basically to say that without words it’s impossible to think. It seems to me that if without words it were impossible to think, then this whole cycle could never get started. How does a baby learn to speak? Meaning, if he can’t think, he won’t learn to speak. But if he doesn’t know how to speak, then he also can’t think—so how does this start? It’s like the egg and the chicken—how does this thing begin? Therefore it’s clear that there is some complex process here. Meaning, we have the ability to think the things themselves without language, and then when words are attached for me to elements of thought, I understand what the word means, because I have the elements of thought already. After I understand what the word means, it sharpens for me more the ability to use that idea. By the way, all learning works this way: once you know the language. On the other hand, it’s clear that once you have a whole framework—Rabbi Chaim, all the “object-status” and “person-status” and all those distinctions of Rabbi Chaim—what was the great idea there? Everyone understood these ideas beforehand too. Once he gives them a pair of concepts, “object-status” and “person-status,” it becomes more usable. Everywhere, you already know what to look for; you’re equipped with a toolbox that is accessible to you, that is usable to you. So it’s a very interesting relation. Because the Rashash writes on Tosafot in tractate Shabbat 40 regarding speech in a bathroom. Tosafot says—I think—that it’s forbidden even to think in the holy tongue in a bathroom, I think, something like that. Or maybe that it’s permitted to think—I think he says it’s forbidden to think. And from there you see that Tosafot says that yes, people do think in words. And that disagrees with the Rashba, because the Rashba in Berakhot there says that thought is not in words, meaning thought is not in language; rather, one thinks the things themselves. Not that it is necessarily a dispute, but the question is—the Rashba does not deny, as I said before, that people think with words. The Rashba only claims that the words are merely an expression of the thought; they are not the thought itself. So if the Torah doesn’t want me to speak, then apparently thought is enough. It doesn’t matter if you think in words, and one can think in words, but the words are not the point—the point is the thought. Why should I care in what language that is done? Therefore, if you don’t need to speak, I don’t care in what language. But it’s not that the Rashba denies that people think in words. I think he too understood that people think in words, at least sometimes. By the way, the Chazon Ish discusses this. He explains this Rashba in several ways, and the dispute with Tosafot—if there is a dispute at all—and the claim whether the Rashba really says that people do not think in words. The Chazon Ish tends to think that this is not correct; meaning, even the Rashba agrees that people think in words. How did I get to all this? From counting, from the counting of one, two, and many. And there indeed—and that came from the question whether ordinal numbers are merely subjective. And the leftists basically claim—the philosophical leftists, okay, I don’t care now about the political labels—the philosophical leftists basically are unwilling to accept abstract things, things you can’t point to, things that are not concrete. In a certain sense, they are idol worshippers. No, really—they’re unwilling to recognize abstract entities. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, too—but that’s only an example—also nations. A nation is an abstract thing. I know there are human beings, but what is a nation? “Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning and feels he is a nation and starts to walk,” as Amichai says in his poem. And what? You decide—fine, that’s an arbitrary decision. That is a leftist outlook. Meaning, a leftist outlook is—ah, we spoke here about left and right, we also had a series on left and right. Yes, I think so. Or maybe left and right was an expression of something—I no longer remember, maybe in the collective and the individual here, I don’t remember. So here too it’s the same thing: numbers, things connected to cardinal numbers—they won’t accept ordinal numbers.
[Speaker E] But why is that idolatry?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Huh? Because they want everything to be concrete; they don’t recognize abstract things. “Make us a molten calf that shall go before us,” that brought us out and shall go before us. Because I don’t—God, what is God? I don’t know, that’s just in the eye of the beholder. You have these feelings, I have other feelings, that’s not—there’s no such thing. I need a calf. Meaning, I need something concrete: stone, wood, something you can point to. Sometimes it only represents the abstract thing, but still, on various levels, you need concretization—you can’t do without it. By the way, money too. Once someone—to someone I once spoke about this—money is also… why do people always say that money is the modern idol? People usually say that as a preacher’s line, right? Not really. I think there’s something to it in essence too. Because money—the whole idea of money is that it is an illustration of an abstract thing. What is money? It’s turning value into an object, right? Meaning, everything has a body and fruits, let’s say a hammer: it has its body, being the owner of it, and then there’s the possibility of using it—that’s the fruits, what you can derive from it, right? Everything has a body and fruits. Now money is… yes, a coin whose imprint has worn away and whose imprint is made to vanish, as the Talmud / Talmudic text says. A coin is pure form; it has no body, only form. It has no body and no likeness of a body. Therefore people worship the coin as an idol. Meaning, this really is not just a preacher’s line—there is something real here. Meaning, there are people for whom, when you turn something abstract into something tangible, that captures them. They can’t recognize the existence of something abstract. What does it mean to chase value? Chasing money I understand. I need to see the coins, the bills—even though what difference does it make? If I have value, if I have purchasing power, and I don’t have a tangible representation of it—if it isn’t done through coins or through bills—what difference does it make? So a right-wing person says to himself: fine, what difference does it make? It’s only purchasing power; the object itself isn’t significant. And a left-wing person says: without an object there is nothing. Meaning, only once money was invented did this become real. Meaning, before that it didn’t exist. Money is conventional. And I claim that money is not conventional. This specific money may be conventional, but value itself is not conventional. Now, how to represent value—whether this should be worth one hundred shekels, this or that or something else—fine, that is a matter of convention. We agree among ourselves what will represent the value of one hundred shekels, so one group chooses dollars and another shekels and another some other level—it doesn’t matter at all. Meaning, the whole idea of money is also ultimately abstract. And therefore maybe, maybe that is why people worship idols or chase money: when something abstract becomes tangible, suddenly you connect to it, suddenly you understand that it is real. This is a very human trait; it affects us very strongly. And that is the impulse of idolatry—meaning, that you are not willing to accept the existence of an abstract thing. You need it to be concrete in order to acknowledge its existence, connect to it, identify with it, or something like that. That is what the people said: make us a calf. Who is the Holy One, blessed be He? We did not know Him. Make a calf, so that we can see something concrete here. I think this is a failure to recognize quality, or ordinal numbers, as something that truly represents reality in the world. Only quantity represents something in the world—cardinal numbers, where you can point to the things. Ordinal numbers, in their eyes, are just a way of looking. Fine, you can make an arbitrary convention among ourselves that this will be called a nation and this a person and this, I don’t know, a limited liability company. Fine, these are all arbitrary conventions that you may define or not define. The opposite essentialist claim says: a limited liability company is a creature that has existed since the dawn of history; we just didn’t catch on to it until the modern period—when it began in Britain, apparently. So until the stage where it began, we simply didn’t perceive the existence of this thing, but it was there before too. And this is something that has existence in the world. It’s not a definition we created out of nothing; we discovered something new that already existed. The Holy One, blessed be He, created limited companies. It’s part of the world. When we defined such things—that’s what I talked about in the lecture on definitions, in the series on definitions, when I spoke about definitions. There I said that some definitions are constitutive definitions and some are directive definitions. Constitutive definitions are something where the definition creates the concept. Directive definitions are definitions that attach a term—sorry, a word—to an existing concept. The concept already existed. We suddenly understand that there is such a thing, and I attach a term to it, and then I define the thing through words. But the words did not create it; rather, I understand that something is there, and at some stage I attach a word to it or give it some particular definition.
[Speaker F] So why is the second way of thinking so negative? What? This way people think?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if it sounds from what I said as if it’s negative, that’s only because I don’t agree with it. But fine, whoever thinks that way thinks that way; there’s nothing to do about it. I think he’s mistaken. It seems to me that abstract things do exist. On the contrary: cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. People usually debate whether a person has a soul, or whether he’s only a body. I say, if anything, debate the opposite: am I only a soul, or maybe I also have a body? Because the one who grasps that he has a body is the soul. My perceptions, the place from which I think—that’s what Descartes basically said. I think, therefore I am. Who exists? Not that my body exists. Why would the fact that I think prove that my body exists? The fact that I think proves that my thought exists, that the thinking being exists. Meaning, the clearest thing that exists is דווקא the soul. Whether the body exists or not—the soul understands that the body also exists; ah, so the body exists too, apparently that’s true. But that’s the second thing, not the most… people think the body… it’s the same thing, understand—it’s like quantity, ordinal, and cardinal. Exactly the same thing. People think quantity is the fundamental thing, and the ordinal is just an invention, something arbitrary. I think qualities are something perhaps even more fundamental than quantity—meaning, something whose existence is clearer to me than quantity.
[Speaker B] Leftists also use thermometers, for example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Leftists also sometimes use a thermometer. But the leftists will say—it’s funny to use the word leftist here, but I mean leftist in the philosophical sense, of course, it doesn’t have to be—Yossi is personally offended, I understand. Fine, never mind. They use it, but if you ask them, they’ll tell you that temperature is a fictitious definition. That temperature is a definition we created because it is very useful; it reflects all sorts of things that help us function and deal with things—that’s how science works. But they won’t tell you that temperature is something that existed in the world even before we invented the concept and understood how it is defined and calculated and measured. Others, by contrast, say no: once we defined the concept and created an instrument that measures it, then the concept came into being; it has no independent existence. Another society that didn’t define it in that way but in some completely different way—that is the leftist view. Therefore the leftist view also says that everyone has his own truth. Because truth is not something in the world itself; rather, the way I perceive it—that is the truth. So he perceives it differently—what do you want? He has his discourse, his narrative, and you have your narrative. In what way are you more right than he is? We talked about this back when we discussed left and right. I think here, in quantity and quality, you can once again see the same thing… whenever we talk about broad concepts or deep concepts of the sort I usually deal with—what is definition? What is left and right? What is the individual and the collective? What is quantity and quality? These things always connect down below. Meaning, when you speak about abstractions, there are very interesting connections among these abstractions. And when you see the connections on the level of abstract concepts, you suddenly discover all sorts of connections that at a superficial glance you would never understand. Why is a leftist such that he thinks a nation is an imagined thing? What does that have to do with a leftist philosophical outlook? Suddenly you see that the things are connected. Why should that make you a socialist? What does that have to do with economics? As we discussed. On the level of philosophical abstraction, this has a lot of power, because it explains many phenomena that on the face of it you don’t really see any connection between. On the face of it, they could be completely independent. Okay, I just want to manage a few more remarks. I’ll return to this matter of counting, of the definition of the Ba’al Halakhot Gedolot: is the law of completeness a law in the counting, or a law in the commandment? Is the commandment one unit of forty-nine countings, or is this the concept of counting? Okay? That is the practical difference for a minor who comes of age. If he counted until he came of age—even if he did it under the law of education for minors—still, he counted. So if he counted up to day 20 of the Omer, and now he counts day 21, there is no problem, because he also counted the first twenty. True, he didn’t fulfill a commandment by that because he was a minor, but the law is in the counting, not in the commandment, that there must be completeness. Okay, that’s the Ba’al Halakhot Gedolot. Something similar exists regarding fasting. In Binyan Tziyon, he discusses the question whether the obligation of fasting—say on Yom Kippur—is an obligation at every single moment, or whether the obligation is for the entire day all at once. He brings some Rashba saying that the obligation is at every single moment; he deliberates on this issue. And again, the practical difference is someone who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur. Does he have to fast the rest of the day, or since he missed part of the day—again, here it’s not a matter of a moment, right? Here it’s not because during twilight of Yom Kippur—
[Speaker G] the whole thing takes effect; here he only missed one hour, so apparently he only missed 4% of the commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So fine, he should continue the rest of the moments and afflict himself, because he must afflict himself at every single moment. So the practical difference is a minor who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur, just like the counting of the Omer. And here too there is the same distinction. Why? But here too I think I can explain the logic behind the distinction, and that changes the picture. Because when I ask myself why indeed the definition is that this is one day and not every single moment, the claim is that the commandment on Yom Kippur is a commandment to fast. Now to fast does not mean merely not to eat—apart from the other afflictions; eating and drinking are what the fast concerns—it’s not just not eating. If I didn’t eat or drink for five minutes, did I fast for five minutes? Of course not. A fast is by definition over a period of time, right? Meaning, on a regular day too, no one would say that it’s a day of fasting. I don’t eat the whole day—I hope not. You eat two, three, four times.
[Speaker D] So the definition of a fast is hours? What? It’s only a definition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there’s no problem. A partial-day fast is still a fast, because you define a stretch of time during which you won’t eat. A fast, by definition, is over a stretch of time. In other words, a fast is not just not eating for a moment. Not eating for a moment is just not eating, but fasting is always, by definition, over a period of time. Now, that’s simple reasoning. Meaning, when the Torah says to afflict yourselves, it’s not telling you, at every single moment of the day, don’t eat. The idea behind this definition is that the obligation to fast applies to the whole day, not to each and every moment. What lies behind this is that it’s not a prohibition against eating; it’s an obligation to fast. Maybe that’s the difference between the positive commandment and the prohibition: the positive commandment is to fast, and the prohibition is not to eat. So maybe the prohibition applies at every single moment, but the positive commandment is to fast the entire day. Maybe that also explains why the Rashba says the commandment applies at every single moment, while the Binyan Tziyon still argues that he has grounds for saying—based on other medieval authorities (Rishonim) he found—that perhaps it applies to the whole day. It could be that that’s talking about the positive commandment. In other words, the prohibition is not to eat. Not eating means, at every moment, don’t eat. But the positive commandment is to fast, and fasting is not just not eating—they’re two different things. Therefore it has a different definition: it really applies to a stretch of time.
Now, if you understand it this way, then exactly what happens with the Behag regarding a minor who comes of age in the middle of the counting of the Omer happens here too. Even according to the one who says the fast is one single unit—now suppose the minor comes of age in the middle of the fast—does he… so will he continue fasting? The answer is yes. Why? Since up until now he was fasting because of education, a partial-day fast. Okay? We train them for hours. So if he has been fasting for hours until now, then when he continues not to eat, that will be a fast. The fast is at every single moment. The fast is not the whole day as one unit. Only—what is a fast? Not what is the commandment of fasting. This is a rule in the concept of fasting, not in the commandment of fasting. The concept of fasting is twenty-four hours of fasting, of not eating. That he will fulfill. Why should I care that it was because of education? That non-eating at ten in the morning—let’s say that’s when he produced the two pubic hairs—that’s not mere non-eating; that’s a fast. Since it comes after non-eating from the beginning of the day until now. True, I did not fulfill the commandment of fasting until now because I wasn’t obligated in that commandment—I was a minor—but I did fast. So you can’t say that this non-eating here is not a fast, that it’s just non-eating. It is a fast.
Exactly as I said regarding the Behag, that “complete” counting is a rule in the counting, not a rule in the commandment of counting, so a minor who comes of age can continue counting even according to the Behag. And then that means that even according to the Behag the commandment applies to each and every day, or even according to the Binyan Tziyon the affliction is a commandment at every single moment. It’s just that the concept of affliction—if you afflict yourself only for a moment, that’s not called fasting—but you are obligated to fast at every single moment. It’s only that the concept of affliction itself is not eating over a period of time.
And that really raises an interesting question. I once spoke about this in the context of something I wrote about ta’ama de-kra, the reason for the verse. Because when you look at it—if I ask you, tell me, does the commandment apply to the whole day or to every single moment on Yom Kippur?—then I’m defining the commandment at its mathematical level; I’m defining the inquiry at its mathematical level. And if I define it at its mathematical level, then ostensibly a minor who comes of age in the middle of the day would not need to continue fasting according to the approach that this is one single unit, whereas if you say it’s every single moment, then yes. But when you descend to ta’ama de-kra, you ask: wait a second, why is that? Why really is it one unit? Because fasting, the concept of fasting, applies only when you do it for a whole day—and then suddenly everything flips. Because then you’re basically saying that even though it is one unit, a minor who comes of age in the middle of the day will have to continue fasting afterward. Meaning, the ta’ama de-kra changed the Jewish law. This is really an interpretation based on ta’ama de-kra. It turns out that when you define why the definition of fasting is really a whole day, you suddenly change the practical implication. The practical implication, when you define it at the formal level, is: it’s a whole day, fine; if the minor didn’t do half the day, then there’s no reason for him to continue fasting—that’s the practical implication. Now when you ask yourself, wait, but why is it a whole day? Because the concept of fasting is a whole day. So if that’s the case, then the minor really can continue fasting—has to continue fasting, not just can. Okay? So the interpretation based on ta’ama de-kra changes the…
So I spoke about this in the context of ta’ama de-kra and I argued that this isn’t called ta’ama de-kra; it’s what people always call a definition, not a reason. Meaning, all I’m trying to do is define what the Torah is saying. The Torah says to fast, and it doesn’t say not to eat. I need to understand what it is telling me. It’s not a question of why it wants me to fast—I have no idea—but a question of what it wants. So it says it wants me to fast, not merely not to eat. That’s just a definition of what the Torah wants; I’m not entering now into ta’ama de-kra. This is not called interpreting based on ta’ama de-kra.
That’s one discussion. But beyond that, here I want to discuss it in a somewhat different context, to point out something else. There’s a slipperiness here in the conceptual definition. I spoke about this earlier too. Definitions like the one I discussed with the Behag and Tosafot—who of them represents the organizing conception and who represents the counting conception. You could reverse it. This happens a lot in conceptual analyses, and it comes from the fact that when we build a logical model for reality, you have to be very careful, because it takes us captive. When the model is persuasive, you immediately turn it into mathematics or logic, you draw the conclusions, and it seems compelling. Meaning, how could it be otherwise? If it’s one unit, ask most people in the world and they’ll tell you, what, according to the Behag it’s obvious: if a minor comes of age in the middle of the count, he can’t continue counting, because it’s one commandment. That’s simple logic. Fine? They don’t—until you ask yourself why. Or rather, what exactly is expressed by this model that forty-nine days are one unit? Then, in the realm of mathematics, everything is totally clear. There are no problems with the mathematics and the logic; it is certainly correct. But that doesn’t mean that a mathematical argument and a logical argument always lead to correct results. Because it may be that the formalization you made, the translation of the Jewish law problem—or the scientific one, or whatever kind it may be—into the logical and mathematical model, that’s where the problem lies. You translated it incorrectly.
Take this example. I say: the concept of fasting is to fast for twenty-four hours. I translated that into a logical model that says, from my standpoint, the commandment of fasting is a commandment over the whole stretch of time. I translated it incorrectly. It’s a commandment at every single moment. It’s not a commandment over the whole day; it’s a commandment at every single moment. It’s just—what do you do at every single moment? Not merely not eat at every single moment, but fast at every single moment. But fasting is only when you do the whole day. Do you understand what happened here? I understand the reality perfectly well. The model that you attached to that reality is simply the wrong model; the formalization is incorrect.
[Speaker B] The model doesn’t represent the why.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And the moment the model doesn’t represent the why, the model is mathematics, and it looks very persuasive, and so the conclusions immediately roll out, and right away you give a major lecture on it.
[Speaker B] It’s true, but not the whole truth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. In the end it’s not even the truth when you think about it; these are mistakes. There are mistakes here. Why? Because we’re captive to the mathematical model. I once spoke about… yes, when I was teaching mechanics at the university, I asked the students there—because it’s known from Popper that a scientific theory is a theory that can be falsified. Right? If you can subject it to a falsification test, then it’s a scientific theory. So I said to them: tell me, is the statement two plus three equals five a scientific theory? No. Is there no experiment that can falsify that claim?
[Speaker B] No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here, I can do an experiment for you. Put two apples into a basket, add three more apples, count how many you have in total. If it comes out five, fine; if it comes out six, then we’ve falsified the theory. So is the theory that two plus three equals five a scientific theory? Is it falsifiable? Never mind that this falsification will never happen, fine, but in principle you can subject it to a falsification test. So the answer is no. Why not? Because suppose there were six. Let’s assume it. What would we conclude? That two plus three does not equal five? Never in a million years. What we would conclude is that there was a mistake in the experiment. Probably there was an apple already in the basket that we didn’t notice, or someone put one in there, or I don’t know. Something happened there. We would never conclude that two plus three does not equal five. And why not? Because what we would conclude at most—even if there were no mistake in the experiment at all—is that the theory does not describe… mathematical addition, or arithmetic addition, is not the correct model for adding apples into a basket. That’s adding apples into a basket; it’s not correct to use the addition two plus three equals five to describe the result. Because that result is in physics.
[Speaker B] Just like logic is not a scientific theory.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, same thing. Yes. Meaning, when we attach a mathematical or logical theory to reality, there are always physical assumptions there. Mathematics is always correct; there are never mistakes in mathematics.
[Speaker B] Mathematics is not science.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. But when we use mathematics to express scientific ideas, people have some kind of feeling—they call it exact science. People have the feeling that this is a science that is…
[Speaker B] Certainly correct, it can’t be…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not true. Today they call everything science; there’s also science… yes, exact and inexact sciences, so they can still preserve this idea that there are exact sciences. But I’m saying the point is that even exact science is not exact. Even there there is always doubt whether it’s right or not. Why? Because the mathematics it uses is always exact, but the question is whether the mathematics describes reality. If it doesn’t describe reality, then what do I care that you can produce results that are certain using mathematical tools?
Why did I bring this up at the beginning of a mechanics course? I asked them: what happens if there is a body on which I exert a force of ten newtons northward? Ten units of force northward. And another ten units of force eastward. What is the total force acting on the body? Vector addition.
[Speaker B] Vector addition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the diagonal of a ten-by-ten square, right? That’s fourteen point something. Ten root two. That diagonal—“for every cubit in a square there are two-fifths in the diagonal,” right? So that’s more or less it, plus a bit. So the resultant force is fourteen point something. So did we just falsify the statement that ten plus ten equals twenty? Here—we did ten plus ten and the result didn’t come out twenty; it came out fourteen point something.
[Speaker B] What’s the definition of “plus”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. What did we falsify? We falsified the claim in physics, not in mathematics, that says the correct mathematical model for adding forces is algebraic addition. Because that really isn’t true. It’s not arithmetic addition; it’s vector addition. Okay? So the point is that mathematics is both its strength and its weakness. Meaning, if it fits reality, it’s an incredible tool. You do mathematical calculations and reach results that are certainly correct—everything is fine—assuming that the mathematics and the logic are a good model of reality. But there is always a speculative dimension here, and you can’t be sure it’s right. Therefore science can never be certain. Because science, even when it uses mathematical and logical tools, assumes assumptions of formalization—giving form, yes, formalization in foreign jargon. Form means shape. To give reality a mathematical model is basically to make an assumption in physics, and that assumption can be disproved. Once the model is correct, then you’re right—it becomes mathematics. But who says the model is correct? That you can never know with certainty. So that’s formalization.
So here too, exactly the same thing. We built a model for the two possibilities in counting the Omer or in fasting, and the model looks completely mathematical. If it’s one unit, then obviously if the minor came of age in the middle, he didn’t do half of it, so how can he do the second half? So he can’t do it. By contrast, if it applies at every single moment, then of course he can continue. Suddenly you see that this is not right. Think about the reality that the model represents, and when you think about the reality, then suddenly you’ll see that the practical implication is incorrect. And therefore one has to be very careful with logical thinking. I’m very much in favor of it; of course I’m not objecting to logical thinking. But I am very much against becoming captive to logical thinking, imagining that it is necessarily correct. Because the logic is necessarily correct, but the model that assumes this logic describes your subject—mental, physical, philosophical, halakhic / of Jewish law, whatever—there you have assumptions of your own that you need to be careful about. Who says they’re right?
And that’s why, many times, in conceptual Talmudic analyses, you can see that the problem with these analyses is that after you define the two sides really well, all the practical implications melt away like water, like a knife through butter. Only the initial definitions don’t always hit the mark or the point. Here’s an example: we created a conceptual definition, and really we missed the idea. We threw out the baby with the bathwater. Even though in conceptual discourse you’ll hear major lectures—on counting the Omer, everyone talks about it, the Behag and Tosafot and all the practical implications—none of that is correct. None of it is correct, because the model is incorrect. The model of the Behag that people understood as a rule in the commandment is incorrect; it’s a rule in the counting. And therefore the model is incorrect. Okay.