Quantity and Quality – Lesson 1
This transcription was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Opening and the connection to the topic of quantity and quality
- Following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is like all of it”
- A majority that is present before us and a majority that is not present before us, and generalization
- Statistics, fallacies, and Nassim Taleb
- The Eli Goldratt bottleneck example
- The source for following the majority in Chullin and the strength of a present majority versus a non-present majority
- David Levy, representativeness, and a non-present majority that determines one hundred percent
- Rav Hai Gaon and Sefer HaChinukh: quality-majority versus quantity-majority
- The dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel and the Minchat Chinukh
- A heavenly voice, “It is not in heaven,” and decision-making when the decision-rules themselves are disputed
- Peace versus truth, and the interpretation of “because they were pleasant and humble”
- Magen Avraham and saying something in the name of a great person so people will listen
- Aharon Barak and dispute over the methods of decision-making
- A heavenly voice as a hint and not as a mystical event
- Sefer HaChinukh, Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and the definition of a present majority versus a non-present majority
- Conclusion and lecture identification
Summary
General Overview
The lecture opens with the topic of following the majority and from there moves into the question of quantity versus quality, while distinguishing between different laws of majority and between two kinds of majority: a majority that is present before us and a majority that is not present before us. The Rabbi presents the difficulty in the passage in Chullin regarding the source for a non-present majority, the question of which majority is “stronger,” and the dispute whether in a court what determines the ruling is the number of judges or the quality of their wisdom, through the words of Rav Hai Gaon and Sefer HaChinukh versus the plain reading of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the halakhic decisors. The discussion expands to the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, to the heavenly voice, and to the tension between peace and truth, and finally returns to the definitional tension over whether the distinction between a present majority and a non-present majority depends on the “nature of the world” or on a process of generalization.
Opening and the connection to the topic of quantity and quality
The Rabbi explains that the lecture begins with following the majority, and from there will move into questions of quantity versus quality, and in the end he will return a bit to the subject of time. He says that a “light bulb went on” for him following a thought about time, and that it connects to the previous topic, but he will get to that later.
Following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is like all of it”
The Rabbi defines following the majority as deciding a doubt based on the majority, and gives examples such as a piece of meat found in a city being judged according to the majority of kosher shops, and the assumption that most women give birth after nine months. He distinguishes between following the majority and nullification by majority, where the discussion is about the character of the whole mixture and not about clarifying the property of a specific item, and emphasizes that in nullification by majority the minority takes on the character of the majority when there is no identification. He adds a third law, “most of it is like all of it,” such as communal impurity regarding the Passover offering, where a majority of the community being impure defines a state of “an impure community” without the minority being nullified and without changing the personal status of individuals.
A majority that is present before us and a majority that is not present before us, and generalization
The Rabbi presents the distinction in the Talmud between a majority that is present before us, where one has before him a defined group with a known count, such as shops in a city, and a majority that is not present before us, which is a general statistic about the “nature of the world,” such as most women giving birth after nine months. He sharpens that the difference is not only whether the majority is “in front of me,” but what kind of majority it is, and proposes a conceptual definition according to which a non-present majority is characterized by generalization from a sample to unobserved cases, whereas in a present majority there is no process of generalization, only use of data from a bounded group. He emphasizes that there can be a contradiction between a general majority and a local majority, and in such a case one follows the majority relevant to the bounded domain, and the Talmud discusses, for example, the implications of whether the city gates are open or closed.
Statistics, fallacies, and Nassim Taleb
The Rabbi describes how relying on a non-present majority is based on the assumption that “what has been will be,” and on extending from a small sample to all cases, in the past and future and along additional dimensions. He argues that ending up in places where an “unusual majority” appears can be a random clustering and does not justify inferring a local “nature,” and mentions a statistical fallacy associated with Daniel Kahneman. He gives an example from Nassim Taleb about stock-market investors, according to which even in a completely random world rare streaks of success will appear and create an illusion of expertise, raising the question whether sustained success points to a cause or only to statistics.
The Eli Goldratt bottleneck example
The Rabbi brings up Eli Goldratt and a management method based on identifying the “bottleneck” in a production line and investing resources only in the stage that limits output. He says the idea is simple, but in practice many people do not think abstractly and therefore invest in improvements that do not help, and he explains that even in outsourcing one should first move out the bottleneck and only afterward the next one in line.
The source for following the majority in Chullin and the strength of a present majority versus a non-present majority
The Rabbi explains that the Talmud in Chullin derives a present majority from the verse “Incline after the majority,” in the context of a majority in court, whereas the source for a non-present majority remains unresolved, and Rashi suggests possibilities such as a law given to Moses at Sinai. He says it seems from the Talmud that a present majority is “stronger” because it has a clear source, but on the other hand notes that Rabbi Shimon Shkop brings a proof in the name of Maimonides that a non-present majority is stronger, and thus raises the tension between the readings.
David Levy, representativeness, and a non-present majority that determines one hundred percent
The Rabbi tells a story involving David Levy about a democracy in which fifty-one percent effectively get one hundred percent of the positions, in order to show that “following the majority” can be a bad method of representation. He compares this to the phenomenon that in a non-present majority every case that comes before us is always decided according to the rule, so that regarding one hundred percent of the cases we say, “they give birth after nine months,” whereas in a present majority there arises the question of the “last remaining pieces,” and the discussion among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether there is still room for difficulty when one approaches exhausting the group.
Rav Hai Gaon and Sefer HaChinukh: quality-majority versus quantity-majority
The Rabbi cites Sefer HaChinukh on commandment 78 in the name of Rav Hai Gaon, that one follows the majority only when the judges are equal in wisdom, but if the minority is wiser than the majority, the law follows the minority. He presents this as a clash between quantitative majority and qualitative majority, and cites Shevut Yaakov, who rules that in a court of three, if there is one learned judge and two laymen, and the learned judge disagrees, the Jewish law follows him, while the role of the three is to allow challenge and questioning. The Rabbi says that the plain reading of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the halakhic decisors implies that one follows the majority of people and not the majority of wisdom, producing a fundamental dispute over what determines the ruling: quantity or quality.
The dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel and the Minchat Chinukh
The Rabbi cites the Minchat Chinukh, commandment 78, section 1, who argues that there is an explicit Talmudic passage supporting Sefer HaChinukh from the discussion in Yevamot about whether Beit Shammai acted according to their own opinion, and one of the possibilities is that one follows the majority only when they are equal in wisdom, but if the minority is wiser one follows them. The Rabbi presents the objection that perhaps this was only Beit Shammai’s own view, while Beit Hillel disagreed in principle, and notes that the Talmud says that Beit Shammai were “sharper,” so there is a side according to which in such a case we would follow the minority.
A heavenly voice, “It is not in heaven,” and decision-making when the decision-rules themselves are disputed
The Rabbi cites the Talmud in Eruvin, that for three years they disputed until a heavenly voice emerged and said, “These and these are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel,” and he mentions Tosafot’s question how one can follow a heavenly voice against “It is not in heaven.” He proposes a conceptual answer: when the dispute is about the decision-rules themselves, there is no way to decide using the ordinary tools, and then the heavenly voice “rescues” a stuck situation, whereas “It is not in heaven” applies when there is an available decision alternative within the rules of Jewish law. He connects this to the Shema‘ateta’s discussion of a doubt among great authorities and to the idea that in a dispute between halakhic decisors each side does not see itself as doubtful, so the ordinary laws of doubt do not resolve the deadlock.
Peace versus truth, and the interpretation of “because they were pleasant and humble”
The Rabbi formulates that the question of what counts as the “majority” also depends on the question of the goal of decision-making: peace and uniformity, or clarifying the truth. He proposes one reading in which “these and these” is the main point, so there is no single halakhic truth and the fact that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel is an educational-social choice; and a second reading in which there is a halakhic truth, and the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because they come closer to the truth. He attributes to Rabbi Yosef Karo an explanation that the humility of Beit Hillel and their practice of stating Beit Shammai’s position first is not a “prize,” but a correct method that brings one closer to truth, because someone who seriously weighs his opponent’s arguments becomes more precise even if he is less sharp.
Magen Avraham and saying something in the name of a great person so people will listen
The Rabbi cites Magen Avraham in section 156, who brings that it is permitted to say things in the name of a great person so that people will accept them from you, and he presents an interpretation according to which the permission exists only if it causes the listeners to weigh the argument seriously rather than accept it automatically. He uses this as an analogy to Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, according to which dismissiveness toward the other side’s position causes one to drift away from the truth, whereas taking care to present and weigh the opponent’s words brings one closer to a correct decision.
Aharon Barak and dispute over the methods of decision-making
The Rabbi argues that when the argument is about the very methods of decision-making, one side may see whoever is trying to “arrange the rules” as a party to the dispute and not as a neutral factor. He gives as an example Aharon Barak, who in his view did not grasp that part of the public sees him as a side, because part of the dispute is not only about content but about authority itself and the rules: whether the majority is entitled to decide everything, or whether there are principles that stand above majority rule.
A heavenly voice as a hint and not as a mystical event
The Rabbi presents a possibility found in various contexts, that in some places a “heavenly voice” is a figurative description for hints or a sudden clarification, and he brings examples from the Jerusalem Talmud of the type “What is meant by a heavenly voice?” where verses children had learned or chance events functioned as a sign. He says one can interpret similarly the Raavad’s expression, “the holy spirit appeared in our study hall,” though he notes that in the case of the Oven of Akhnai there is a very explicit heavenly voice, so extending the figurative reading there is much more far-reaching.
Sefer HaChinukh, Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and the definition of a present majority versus a non-present majority
The Rabbi says that Sefer HaChinukh explains that the root of the commandment is that usually the majority is correct, and Rabbi Shimon Shkop objects that this turns a court majority into a non-present majority, contrary to the Talmud, which defines a court majority as a present majority. He proposes that the difficulty is resolved if one defines the distinction differently: a non-present majority is a majority based on generalization from a sample, whereas here there is no generalization, because there is no way to check statistically whether the majority “was right” against some external truth; rather, this is a matter of common-sense reasoning. He concludes that according to his definition Sefer HaChinukh can fit with the claim that a court majority is not a non-present majority based on generalization, and even if it is not a “pure” present majority, it certainly is not a non-present majority in the sense of empirical generalization.
Conclusion and lecture identification
Up to this point, this has been the lecture of Rabbi Michael Abraham, Thursday, the 4th of Adar 5777, March 2, 2017. This is the first lecture in the series on quantity and quality.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] We’re starting a new topic: quantity and quality. Before that, actually someone asked me—his name you remember from the previous lecture.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, maybe I’m mistaken.
[Speaker A] Or I got confused—I didn’t send it to you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. I’ll start a bit with the topic of following the majority, and from that we’ll get a bit into the questions of quantity versus quality. And in the end I’ll come back a bit to time. I said in the previous lecture that I thought the next topic would be quantity and quality, because basically some kind of light bulb went on for me in the wake of a thought about time, and it connects to the previous topic. Fine, we’ll get to that—it’ll take a little time. Let me start, maybe, with following the majority. The Talmud in tractate Chullin asks: where do we learn that we follow the majority? How do we know that we follow the majority? The topic of the passage there is the law called “follow the majority.” “Follow the majority” basically means situations where I’m in some doubt, and I resolve the doubt according to the majority. I’ll give a few examples. Say with pieces of meat: there are stores in town that sell meat, and I find a piece of meat thrown in the street, and I don’t know whether it’s kosher or not. So the law is—at least on the Torah level—we follow the majority of the stores. If most of the stores sell kosher meat, then I assume that the piece of meat I found is kosher. And if most are non-kosher, then it’s non-kosher. That’s one example. A second example: a woman gave birth, and I don’t know whether she gave birth after seven months or after nine. Meaning, there are women who give birth after seven months—that’s the Talmud’s assumption, we won’t get into the actual medical reality now, which is apparently a bit different—and there are women who give birth after nine months. Most women give birth after nine. So if a woman gave birth and I don’t know whether it was at seven months or nine, the assumption is that she gave birth at nine. Or: most women are not barren in the halakhic sense. There may be a concern whether a woman is barren in that sense or not; regarding levirate marriage, it can matter if someone is marrying his deceased brother’s wife. If she is barren, then he is in fact violating the prohibition of marrying a brother’s wife, because there is no applicability here for levirate marriage—she cannot have children. But the assumption is that most women are not barren in that sense, and therefore we allow him to perform levirate marriage. And so on. In other words, we basically follow the majority. And there are a few other laws of majority in the Torah, in Jewish law. Another law of majority is, for example, nullification by majority. If I have a pot that contains pieces of kosher meat, and a piece of non-kosher meat or pork or something forbidden to eat falls into it, then it becomes nullified—nullified in the majority. Rabbinically you need sixty, never mind that now, but there is some quantitative dominance that is enough to nullify the minority in the majority. That is not the law of following the majority; it’s a different law, the law of nullification by majority. The law of nullification by majority differs from the law of following the majority in that when I follow the majority, my topic is a certain specific item, and I ask: what is the character of this item? So I say: its character is like most items of its type. Okay? So that majority serves me in deciding the character of the item about which I’m uncertain, like the piece of meat, or the woman, or all the things we talked about. In nullification by majority, the discussion is not about one item; the discussion is about the whole mixture. Within the whole there is a minority and a majority, and from my standpoint the entire whole takes on the character of the majority. Okay? It’s not a discussion about a specific piece, but about how I relate to the whole. So that’s following the majority and nullification by majority. Besides that, there is also a third law called “most of it is like all of it.” “Most of it is like all of it” is, let’s say, when the Jewish people are impure and therefore they can’t bring the Passover offering at the proper time. But impurity is permitted for the community, so they still bring the Passover offering at its proper time. If only isolated individuals are impure, then their Passover is postponed to the second Passover; they bring a second Passover instead, while most of the community brings the Passover at its proper time. What happens if there are many impure people? Not the entire community, but many. Then it depends how many there are. If most of the community is impure, then they bring the Passover at its proper time. Even though not all of the community is impure, but most of the community is impure, they bring the Passover at its proper time. Why? Because most of it is like all of it. Meaning, when there is a majority of the community that is impure, for me that is what defines a situation in which the community is impure—in other words, the majority gives the name to the whole. Okay? That’s a third law.
[Speaker D] How is that different from the second one? From nullification by majority?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here I’m not dealing with the question of whether the minority is nullified or not; the minority is not nullified. It’s the status of the majority—meaning, the majority counts as impure. It’s not because the minority is nullified; the minority remains exactly as it is. It’s just that a majority is enough for me, and the majority counts as though I have the whole. This is not nullification. I’m not going to say that someone among the pure people now becomes impure because he is nullified in the majority. Of course not. Whoever is impure is impure, whoever is pure is pure—there’s no nullification here.
[Speaker D] But that’s what I meant by saying it’s different. You said it somehow relates to the whole. Meaning, if we relate to the whole of the Jewish people, then it’s like if you have two kosher pieces and one non-kosher one—the whole is kosher.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, clearly not. With the pieces of meat, I can eat any one of them afterward because of the nullification.
[Speaker A] All three.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I treat the whole mixture as kosher meat, now I can eat every piece.
[Speaker A] Even if you don’t identify the non-kosher one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if I identify it, that’s a different story entirely. If I identify it, then that one is non-kosher. This is always when you don’t identify it. But here, it doesn’t change the nature of the minority. Nullification changes the character of the minority to be like the majority; here it doesn’t. It stays what it is, the minority stays what it is. It’s just that the majority counts as though I have the whole. Now, where do we learn all these laws from? The Talmud only deals with the law of following the majority. So the Talmud in Chullin, with which I began, brings the verse from which we learn following the majority. The law that most of it is like all of it appears in the medieval authorities, the law of nullification by majority appears in the medieval authorities, and the law of most of it is like all of it—I think only in later authorities. So what happens in the Talmud in Chullin? The Talmud in Chullin deals with the law of following the majority. Where do we learn it from? The Talmud says: it depends what you’re talking about. There are two kinds of following the majority: a majority that is present before us, and a majority that is not present before us. A majority that is present before us is like the case of the shops, where there are, say, ten shops before me, of which eight sell kosher meat and two sell non-kosher meat. So there is before me a majority of eight out of ten. Since that is so, I can associate the piece that I found with the majority. That is called a majority that is present before us. A majority that is not present before us is, for example, the case of women who give birth after seven months or nine. In that kind of situation, I do not have before me a fixed number of women of whom I know that most gave birth after nine months and a minority after seven; rather, I know that generally speaking, the statistics are that women usually give birth after nine months. That is called a majority that is not present before us. Let me just give an example to sharpen this point. Suppose there are ten women before me, and I know about each one after how many months she gave birth, whether after seven or after nine, and I have it written down; among them, seven gave birth after nine months. So there is a majority. Now a baby comes before me, and I ask whether this baby was born after seven months or nine months, so we assume that it was born after nine because there is a majority. What kind of majority is that?
[Speaker A] A majority that is present before us, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is a majority that is present before us, even though we are relying on the fact that most women give birth after nine months. Why? Because here I created the majority on the basis of statistics—I simply saw that I have ten examples before me, and seven of them are of that kind, so I’ve created a majority that is present before us. A majority that is not present before us is not from within a defined group, but rather the way the world works—it’s the nature of the world, that’s how the world conducts itself. Okay? It’s not from within a defined group. For example, a majority that is present before us doesn’t have to be typical at all. Meaning, suppose in most of the world the stores actually sell non-kosher meat, not kosher meat, but in this city most of the stores sell kosher. Then there is a majority of kosher. That has nothing to do with the nature of the world. Those are data I know about the specific case or the specific group standing before me. Okay? So a majority that is present before us is not just a question of whether it is in front of me or not in front of me, but what kind of majority it is, what kind of problem this is.
[Speaker E] Because even that majority which is the nature of the world—you created it, so to speak, by learning from the general picture, right? You actually did many trials of a majority that is present before us.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, those are not trials of a majority that is present before us. The generalization is what takes me from the sample to a majority that is not present before us. Okay? In contrast, with the shops there is no generalization at all; there is no process of generalization. There are ten shops, eight of them kosher, and I have a piece of meat. That has nothing to do with generalizations.
[Speaker A] So what is the generalization based on? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is the generalization based on? It’s based on a sample.
[Speaker A] But maybe there’s another sample that wouldn’t come out like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine—that’s true of every scientific question. But how do you rely on one sample? Maybe in the future it will be disproved? Who said that all objects fall toward the earth? Just because until now you’ve seen objects fall toward the earth? Maybe tomorrow they won’t fall? Our assumption is that what has been will be. You can argue philosophically about the justification for that assumption, but it’s a common-sense assumption; we use it in every field. Okay, so here too: we saw that most of the women we saw gave birth after nine months, not after seven months. So I assume that it is the nature of the world that usually a woman gives birth after nine months. That most women in the world give birth after nine. I didn’t see most women in the world. What I saw was, I don’t know, thirty women, okay? Fifty, I don’t know how many. And from among them I know there is a fairly clear majority in favor of nine months rather than seven. So I assume that this is true of all women in the world.
[Speaker D] There’s another generalization in that sample. You’re generalizing both from a small group to a large one, and also from the past to the future, because you can say that until today all the women gave birth after nine—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But who says tomorrow it will still be that way? Yes, but to me that’s the same thing, because the large group includes the cases of the future. Meaning, the group is all cases, including the future. Also cases I haven’t seen—what difference does it make whether they were in the past or in the future? Bottom line, I haven’t seen them, and I assume they too will behave similarly.
[Speaker D] Because maybe sometimes time enters as some kind of factor—I don’t know—suddenly some bacterium appears.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You could equally say the same thing about space. The woman I saw lives at 8 Montefiore Street; maybe the woman who lives at 10 Montefiore gives birth after seven?
[Speaker D] Yes, so those are two dimensions of the extension—extension in space—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can say more: species, places, times—you can go on forever with these extensions. I don’t think there’s any point getting into all those axes. For me, this is a generalization to cases I have not seen. Those cases differ from each other in many parameters—time, place, character, nation, I don’t know, all kinds of parameters. So if I sharpen the point, it seems to me—and this is my definition, but I think it’s the right definition—that the distinction between a majority that is present before us and one that is not present before us is that in a majority that is not present before us there is generalization; in a majority that is present before us there is no generalization. The majority that is present—
[Speaker A] Can there be a contradiction between them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker A] Of course there can be a contradiction. I mean, I have a majority that is present before us, but I know that actually in the majority that is not present before us—in the generalization—it contradicts what’s in front of me. So I have to follow the one that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It depends on the case. For example, in the case of pieces of meat, most pieces of meat in the world are non-kosher, but in this city I know that most of the stores are kosher. Now I found the meat in this city. Since I found it in this city, I follow the majority that is present before us. And the Talmud, by the way, discusses this: what happens if the city gates are closed or open—meaning, if there really is movement of merchandise from place to place, then the majority of stores here doesn’t help. Because if this market is open to the whole world, and pieces of meat arrive from all kinds of places, then we do not follow the majority that is present before us. Okay? But if we can confine the problem to a defined group, then yes. So basically the difference between a majority that is present before us and one that is not present before us is the question whether we passed through a process of generalization. Clear? Usually people define a majority that is not present before us a bit differently, I think. A majority that is not present before us is a law of nature, the nature of the world. A majority that is present before us is something accidental. Meaning, we simply have certain information about the group or place or problem we’re dealing with, so we know. If we have the information, then we have it; if not, not. It’s not something connected to the nature of the world; it’s something completely contingent. In this city, as it happens, there are kosher pieces; in that city there were non-kosher pieces. In other words, it’s something accidental. In contrast, “most women give birth after nine months” is a feature of women’s physiology in general, so that is the nature of the world.
[Speaker A] Also among most women in a certain group it could be that there would be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I know something like that, then yes. But when the Talmud uses the expression that most women give birth after nine months, it’s talking about all the women in the world. No, but I’m talking about—
[Speaker A] a majority that is present before us in a group of women. It’s not limited to a city and not limited to anything, but it could be a case of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there is a certain city where all the women give birth after seven. Not a city—I took a group, doesn’t matter—a group in which most women give birth after seven, and I can define it. If you can define it. You can always define it. If there is a group of women who give birth after seven, if you take the minority of all women who gave birth after seven and gather them into one group, that will be a group in which all the women gave birth after seven—that’s obvious. But now the question is: who is the woman before you? If the woman before you is from that group, then obviously you’ll say that she gave birth after seven. That’s not statistics; that’s information. But I’m talking about a situation where I don’t know where the woman came from—
[Speaker A] Like a high-risk pregnancy ward in a hospital—there there are many, there it’s a group… there are lots of premature babies there too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but here it’s not specifically seven months. It’s a certain group that gave birth precisely after seven.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying: if, I don’t know, maybe there’s some tribe in Africa where, for some reason, women give birth after seven months—I don’t know exactly why. Something like that could happen, with some variation here and there. Fine. And by the way, that could also happen in a purely statistical, random way. Yes, because there is a distribution of women who give birth after seven months, and it could be that one village out of a hundred just happens to have a majority of women who give birth after seven. By the way, in such a case I think this is a problem, and if you ask halakhic decisors I think they’ll tell you this is a majority that is present before us. I think that’s wrong. It’s a majority that is not present before us, and you may not rely on it. The next woman to give birth, I would assume that she’ll give birth after nine, not seven. Even in that village. Would you decide otherwise?
[Speaker E] Yes, of course. Absolutely.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely. It’s simple statistics. This is the kind of fallacy Kahneman writes about in his books. It’s obvious. Obviously, once there are women who give birth after seven months, and now they are distributed somehow around the world, then clearly if I have a thousand cities there will be one city in which there is a majority of women who give birth after seven. That doesn’t mean there is something in the nature of that city causing it; it’s simply random clustering. So that means that for the next woman to give birth there, the statistics say she’ll give birth after nine, not seven. Would you issue such a ruling about the woman? Of course, absolutely. According to the seven? Of course, absolutely. Clearly yes. It’s simply an error, a statistical error, to follow the majority of seven. This is Nassim Taleb—you know him? He has the book The Black Swan. Right, a Lebanese guy, some kind of stock-market expert. He once wrote there in the book that in his opinion Warren Buffett doesn’t know anything about economics. I don’t remember if he put it exactly that way, but I’ll present it that way. Why? Think about a million people entering the stock market. None of them knows anything—suppose there is no such thing as a stock-market expert, just for the sake of discussion. Fine? A million people enter the stock market. Now among them, each one profits at some point, right? Statistics. And no one knows more than anyone else—there isn’t more successful or less successful, suppose for the sake of argument that it’s pure luck. Fine? Now among them it’s obvious that out of those million there will be a thousand who profit on the stock market for a whole consecutive week, not just one random day, right? A whole consecutive week. That happens—one thousand out of the million, right? Now among them there will be a hundred who profit for a whole consecutive month. Right? Among them there will be ten who profit for a whole consecutive year.
[Speaker A] What? An economist named Sack checked all the funds in Israel, the ones that published the best returns over the past five years, and he says that over a long time distribution they all do the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so that’s the same claim. So there will be ten that go on for a year, ten years—I don’t know how far I got, doesn’t matter—and there will be one who profits for a hundred years straight out of the million. Now we’ll be sure that that one is a magician. That’s the law of small numbers. We’ll be sure he’s a magician. Fine.
[Speaker E] Would you issue such a ruling about the woman? Of course, absolutely. Not a magician—I’d put my money where he was. Me too. I’m sure I would. No—a hundred years?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. Only if—you see, that’s a statistical error. If you do that, you’re making a mistake. That’s only if you know—only if you think there is information, that there is such a thing as expertise in the stock market. That’s different. But if you say—if in truth the man is distributed statistically as if it were random, meaning suppose the drawing was random. Do the statistical calculation, and there you have it: one person out of a thousand really does profit for a hundred years straight, and there’s only one such person. Don’t entrust your fate to him.
[Speaker E] It’s like the weather and the Indians—when you put money on Rabbi Vadash and the others put it there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t—what?
[Speaker B] It’s like Napoleon, who said about his officers that he preferred them lucky.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly the same thing. He preferred them lucky on the assumption that there is such a thing as luck, but here it’s just statistics—that’s the luck. Statistics and luck are not the same thing. And what is preferable?
[Speaker B] That he should be lucky or trustworthy?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. I like investing in someone who has luck. What is luck? Statistics. No, absolutely not. Luck means he profits more than the statistics predict. Warren Buffett profits exactly like the statistics. He’s just the one who profits the—well, one such person has to exist, so he’s that one. Someone who has luck is someone who profits more than the statistics. That’s someone who, despite having no chance of profiting and despite there being no sample of many others, still profits. That’s something else. Napoleon also said—when they told him he was short, he said that the height that matters is from the shoulders up. The height that counts is from the shoulders up. Ah, that one too can be corrected precisely.
[Speaker D] But why assume there’s no cause? Why should I assume there might be a cause?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, that’s why I say: you have to assess whether there is or isn’t a cause. I’m saying that on the assumption that even in a completely random situation one person would still profit, there is no basis for assuming there is a cause. You assume there is a cause because he profits. If it’s simple statistics, then that assumption is wrong. And that’s what matters.
[Speaker E] He isn’t just throwing money randomly on roulette; he makes decisions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He makes decisions, but the question is whether those decisions have some rationale behind them or whether it’s just random. What do you mean, decisions? He doesn’t need to throw dice for it to be statistics. You can refrain from throwing dice and make decisions after two days of thought, but if you have no actual way to make that decision, then it’s like drawing lots. What’s the difference? Same thing. Statistical biases are an incredibly entertaining field.
[Speaker E] It’s like with drinking poison, exactly. Would you drink poison? Every cup you drank—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I would drink.
[Speaker A] Gladwell also wrote about Buffett and reached that conclusion, and wrote, correctly, regarding the Pareto law, that wealth is not distributed in a Gaussian way but exponentially. And he explains that truly, in the case of someone who gambles, and gambles again and again and again, and again wins money, then he really will win the whole pot. The distribution will be exponential and not Gaussian—someone who—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] who doubles the amount he invests each time. Yes. The article on complexity? The article—
[Speaker A] I don’t remember, it was—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I read it a long time ago; I don’t remember. Anyway, these are known things. These are very amusing effects in statistics. Daniel Kahneman got his Nobel out of this stuff—out of these little things. These are things that are very useful. By the way, I don’t think they’re all that sophisticated, but they’re very useful. In other words, many people miss them. It’s just so easy to fail on these things. It reminds me that there once was—well, this is an association—but there was once a Jew named Eli Goldratt; I heard he passed away. He did a doctorate in physics at Bar-Ilan, before my academic time. Afterwards he moved to the United States and became some kind of management guru. You know that every three letters is a management method. So one of those three-letter methods is his too. TQB or ABC or whatever you like. Every set of three letters is a management method; most of them are more or less the same thing. But he—like economics too. Okay. Anyway, he developed some method that was based on bottlenecks or something like that. Why? I read—he has books translated into Hebrew, The Goal—I once read that one, and several other books. And there he describes this idea. He says, basically, all his livelihood came from one simple idea. I know that I heard from an acquaintance of ours who was a manager at Polgat, I think—I don’t remember where—they brought him in for one day of lectures: half a million shekels. Half a day, five hours of lectures, something like that. The man was a superstar in those fields, and apparently people thought it was worth it to them—I don’t know, strange. Anyway, his idea is one simple idea. That’s it—the whole book revolves around this one idea. You have a production line. Okay? Stage A, stage B, stage C—one puts in this screw, the next tightens the nut. You have a production line. Now, obviously, the rate of production depends on each stage; every stage depends on the rate of production. Now, what does a reasonable manager do? He sees that there is some place where it’s possible to streamline or increase the production rate, so he makes the changes so the rate will increase. Of course he’s throwing the money into the trash. Why? Because everything depends on the rate of the weakest link in the chain. Right? Meaning, what does it help you that you manage to insert ten screws a minute, when the one after you tightens the nut at a rate of five nuts a minute? So screws will simply pile up by him; it won’t help you at all. Therefore, he says, don’t invest a penny at any stage. Identify the bottleneck and improve only that. Everything else is throwing your money in the trash. A very simple idea, right? There’s nothing here that—every child in kindergarten understands it. But it turns out that many factories—and you know, in practice, I’m not blaming anyone, I’m sure I’d fall into it too—people in practice do not think abstractly. You see something that can be improved, so you improve it. You don’t stop and think: wait, I just threw the money in the trash, because five stages later it’ll get stuck anyway. So he tells you to keep your focus always on the bottleneck and improve only that. That’s it. That’s what he made his billions on—that’s his management method. Really, that’s all. Beyond that it’s all words, I don’t know. That’s what’s there. Now this is something very simple, but very useful. In practice we don’t notice simple things, and it’s worthwhile to focus on them—it helps.
[Speaker A] The weakest link keeps moving to another place each time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. After you improve that one, look for the next weak one and improve it. And even there, by the way, at least if it requires investment, there’s no point in improving it much beyond the rate of the next link in line, because if you improve it to be ten times faster that won’t help you at all. If it doesn’t cost money, fine, but if you have to invest in it, don’t do it. Now this is the kind of thing that, in factories like car manufacturing or something like that, is worth millions, billions. It’s sophisticated, with many, many stages, and who knows—each person is thinking about his own segment. He’s not—there has to be someone who integrates the whole business. It’s an idea worth a lot of money, a simple idea worth a lot of money.
[Speaker B] And on a global level, if you have a bottleneck and you can’t keep up at that bottleneck, you outsource it and move it outside. Right, that’s also a solution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s the next stage.
[Speaker B] That’s also a solution. Therefore he says—that’s the solution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. You’re not managing to optimize it, so outsourcing is your bottleneck. That’s also a management solution. It doesn’t matter. In any case, he says: invest your management solution only in the bottlenecks. Don’t outsource the second most problematic stage. There’s no point. Only the first, most problematic stage should be outsourced, and only after that should you outsource the second. In other words, the maximum outsourcing will dictate the outsourcing for all the stages. He says that’s the principle. Okay. Everything else there is train compositions, like you already saw here, but those are train compositions of Torah. Fine, let’s get back to our topic, I just mentioned it in passing. Where were we? A present majority. Ah, yes. So a present majority and a non-present majority basically means this: the question is whether it is built on a generalization or not built on a generalization. And that’s the definition—again, when I say that the accepted definition of the difference between a present majority and a non-present majority is that a non-present majority is the nature of the world. How the world normally operates—whether females are born, what usually happens. And a present majority is incidental, accidental facts. Meaning that here, in this particular case, it happens to break down this way, so you have a present majority. That’s the definition, and behind it sits the distinction of whether there is a generalization or not. Okay, so the Talmud discusses in Chullin where we know from that we follow the majority. And it says it depends what kind of majority we’re talking about. If you mean a present majority, that is learned from “follow the majority.” From a religious court, where we follow the majority— from there we learn the rule of a present majority. A non-present majority—that’s the question: where do we learn that from? The Talmud keeps grinding away, rejecting this and that, here and there, and in the end it reaches no conclusion. It finds no source. Rashi there writes: maybe it’s a law given to Moses at Sinai; maybe that too is learned from “follow the majority.” There are all kinds of suggestions there. Really a very problematic passage. But in the end the Talmud there does make the distinction between a present majority and a non-present majority, and determines that the majority in a court is a present majority. That is basically the source for the rule of following a present majority. From the Talmud itself, by the way—and again, just an aside—today I heard an interview with David Levy on the radio. Yes, he’s still around. So it reminded me, because precisely in the context of present and non-present majority I always use an example from him. Which is stronger, a present majority or a non-present majority? From the Talmud itself it seems that a present majority is stronger. Right? Why? Because we have a source for following a present majority, from “follow the majority.” And still we don’t know whether we follow a non-present majority. Meaning that a present majority is a better rationale to follow than a non-present majority.
[Speaker A] Right? It’s a rationale, and it’s written explicitly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but if this verse tells me that we follow a present majority, I still don’t know that we follow a non-present majority. So what does that mean? That a non-present majority is weaker than a present majority. Right? If it were stronger, I could learn it by an a fortiori argument. Okay? By the way, even when there’s a verse, there’s also a rationale behind it. The fact that there’s a verse doesn’t mean there’s no rationale—we talked about a scriptural decree. If there were no rationale, they wouldn’t derive it from the verse. Meaning, they derive it from the verse because they understand that this rationale stands behind it. So that’s the simple assumption. In Maimonides—Rabbi Shimon Shkop proves that a non-present majority is stronger. And the question of how to explain the Talmud—I won’t get into that now—but why is it stronger? So here’s the David Levy example. David Levy once came to the Likud Center and said that his faction had no representation in the institutions—I don’t know, let’s say thirty percent of the members of the center, just for the sake of example—yet we have no representation in executive positions, in the institutions, in all that. They told him: what do you mean? Where’s democracy? He said, what do you mean? This is democracy at its best. We take a vote and the majority decides. So we hold a vote. He told them: in other words, if you follow the majority, then in effect one hundred percent of the positions are given to fifty-one percent of the people. Right? For every position you hold a vote, and fifty-one percent of the people decide who gets that position. So those fifty-one percent get one hundred percent representation. Meaning, following the majority is actually a very bad method if what you’re looking for is representativeness. Okay? That’s exactly the point. A non-present majority—yes, that’s what happens in the court system. The Supreme Court always used to have a religious seat. Except that every significant decision is made by three judges. And with three judges, even if we say that the number of religious people is one out of fifteen in the population—it isn’t true, but let’s suppose it were true, okay? So what do you want? You have representation according to your share of the population. And therefore, in terms of decisions, your representation is zero. Since that one person is always in the minority. So what can be done? What do you say?
[Speaker D] That you need to create coalition-type methods—roughly speaking. In a court, in a court, you don’t have that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in politics you do have that, but coalition is a question of whether I can manage it. I’m asking: how can you build a system in which there really will be fair representation? Two. What? Give it by headcount. Put in two slips or three slips and randomly assign the cases that are disputed between religious and secular people, in such a way that the percentage of questions in which there will be a religious majority is equal to the percentage of religious people in the population. For example. For example, each judge should judge separately. That on each—so that the panel…
[Speaker D] …would be one judge.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, same thing, that’s…
[Speaker D] How does this connect to present and non-present? Doesn’t it connect more to the binary nature that you’re smoothing out?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, this is exactly it, and it’s also present and non-present. Because what happens? In a present majority—and Rashba even writes this as Jewish law—say I find one piece of meat, so I say: majority, so it’s kosher. Another piece, also kosher, another piece. Then I found the last one. What do you do now? You can’t say it’s kosher, because there is a minority of non-kosher pieces. And Rashba—there’s a dispute, whether rabbinically or on a Torah level—Rashba and Ra’ah in Bedek HaBayit argue there over the question of what happens with the last pieces. That’s in a present majority. In a non-present majority there’s no dispute. In a non-present majority, every woman who comes before us gave birth after a full term. One hundred percent of the women in the world, if they all came before us one after another, for all of them we would declare that they gave birth after a full term. Why? Because this isn’t a defined group within which there is a minority. Every single one who comes before us, we ask: what does the nature of the world say about her? The nature of the world says that women give birth after a full term. Each woman, the assumption is that she follows the nature of the world, and therefore about one hundred percent of the women we will say that they gave birth after a full term. That’s David Levy. Okay? A non-present majority works like the people who argued against David Levy, yes, like his opponents. Meaning, the majority determines one hundred percent of the cases. In a present majority, here there is room for discussion.
[Speaker E] If it’s rabbinic, it’s a dispute among the medieval authorities. But a non-present majority isn’t based only on laws of nature. There are examples of non-present majority that are based… For example? I don’t know—if it’s pieces that aren’t before us not because… I don’t know, they bring you something that isn’t here, or something in the public domain, like a piece in the public domain—that’s not because it’s based on a law of nature.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A law of nature can also be psychology. Most people eat non-kosher meat—most people in the world. So that’s a law of nature; that’s how the world operates, that’s the nature of the world, not something accidental. The nature of the world also includes human psychology, or people’s beliefs—fine, that too is the nature of the world. It’s not something accidental, not something that just happened to be this way in this place or at this time, though it could have been otherwise. That’s just how it is; that’s the world. So that’s the reason why a non-present majority may be stronger. I said that according to Maimonides this is apparently against the Talmud, that a non-present majority is stronger, because a non-present majority determines one hundred percent of the cases, while a present majority maybe doesn’t. And these are just opening remarks. In Sefer HaChinukh, commandment 78, which is the commandment to follow the majority, Sefer HaChinukh writes there that we were commanded “follow the majority,” we go after the majority—in court, of course, that’s what we’re talking about. Now Sefer HaChinukh adds there—and this follows Rav Hai Gaon—that all this applies when the people are equal in wisdom. Meaning, if the people—the judges—are more or less equal in wisdom, then we follow the majority. But if there is a minority that is much wiser than the majority opposing it, then the law follows the minority and not the majority. And here we already arrive at the question of quality versus quantity. Meaning, there is a quantitative majority here versus a minority that has a qualitative majority—it is wiser, though it is fewer in number. So the question is: which majority determines things—the majority of quantity or the majority of quality? Rav Hai Gaon and Sefer HaChinukh hold that we follow the majority of quality. Okay? Shevut Yaakov says this even as Jewish law: in a court of three, if there is one learned judge and two laymen, then if the learned judge disagrees with the two laymen, the Jewish law follows him. He says this even as practical Jewish law.
[Speaker A] Why do you need a court of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …three? So they can challenge him and ask him questions. That’s why those laymen need to be reasonably capable—people who, if things are explained to them, understand, or can ask questions, as the medieval authorities explain. There are some who say that you need three for statistical reasons; the Talmud basically says you need three for statistics. Rav Acha son of Rav Ika, at the beginning of Sanhedrin, says: why do you appoint three? Because among three street-corner sitters it’s impossible that one of them won’t be learned. One learned person—this is simply to ensure statistically that one out of three knows something. So if you take three random loafers, probably one of them knows something. That’s also a consideration. In any case, yes, so that’s just… Rav Hai Gaon and Sefer HaChinukh. Maimonides on this issue—and simply from the plain sense of the medieval authorities—it doesn’t seem that way. From the medieval authorities it seems that we follow the majority of people, and that’s also how it appears in the halakhic decisors. It seems to me that we follow the majority of people and not the majority of wisdom. So there is really a dispute here over what determines things—quantity or quality?
[Speaker D] Maybe they say that because they say you can’t know the quality, so they say let’s just go by what we do know, which is the quantity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I mean in a case where we do know. Everyone agrees—even the majority agrees—that this minority is wiser. What do we do there?
[Speaker D] They still disagree even when they admit someone is wiser?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. In any case they don’t qualify it. They don’t say that where we know, then it’s different. So apparently there’s a dispute here whether we follow the majority of quantity or the majority of quality. The Minchat Chinukh on that passage in Sefer HaChinukh, paragraph 1 there in commandment 78, argues that this is actually an explicit Talmud—that Sefer HaChinukh is right. So you see, the halakhic ruling here isn’t entirely simple. There are later authorities who take this all the way into practical Jewish law: Shevut Yaakov, Minchat Chinukh. He wants to argue that this really comes out of the Talmud concerning the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Beit Hillel, the Talmud says, were the majority. And in tractate Yevamot 14, the Talmud brings a dispute between Rav and Shmuel over whether Beit Shammai acted in accordance with their own view, or whether because Beit Hillel were the majority they acted according to Beit Hillel. Then the Talmud discusses: how can it be that if Beit Hillel were the majority, how could Beit Shammai have acted according to their own view? So one possibility the Talmud brings is that it was either before the heavenly voice or after the heavenly voice. Fine, those are two possibilities; it doesn’t matter. And one of the possibilities the Talmud brings there is that Beit Shammai acted according to their own view because following the majority applies when the sides are equal in wisdom. But if the minority is wiser than the majority, then you follow the minority—you follow the wiser scholars and not the majority of people. Minchat Chinukh argues that no one ever disagreed about this; the whole argument there is only whether that was in fact the case.
[Speaker B] But that’s actually the opposite Talmud. What? In Beit Shammai they ruled for themselves. If you asked Beit Shammai, fine, what would you rule for the rest of the public?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Sha’ar HaMishpat says that, in section 18 I think, and others too—that one has to distinguish here between what a person does for himself and what the ordinary citizen does. There’s an opposite dispute here. Well, I don’t know if it’s opposite, but the question is whether Beit Shammai really held that the public too should act this way, not only that they themselves did so.
[Speaker B] They held that the public too should conduct itself that way…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also.
[Speaker B] …as Jewish law, not only that they themselves thought so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They held that the public too should do so.
[Speaker B] Everyone who disagrees…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like you thinks that the public should follow him. Yes, but there’s a majority against you—so that’s it.
[Speaker B] Wait, but after there is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …a majority against you, you have to accept the ruling. You have the same status as the rest of the public. Even after they decided that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel, they still said… So that’s what they said, but what did the sages of that generation say? Fine, so there was a question. Beit Shammai claimed that they too should act according to themselves—the outsiders too, the ordinary citizen. They claimed it, and their opinion was not accepted. And their opinion was not accepted—why? Was it because the difference between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai wasn’t all that significant, and therefore you still follow the majority? Or was the very principle that one follows the majority of wisdom rather than the majority of people rejected? It’s not clear. Fine? It could be that there was a discussion here about how large the gap was between the wiser and the less wise.
[Speaker B] Something about Beit Hillel being humble and putting the others first.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that was what the heavenly voice said, but I’ll get to that in a moment. In any case, Minchat Chinukh wants to bring proof from there that indeed no one ever disagreed on this. When it is completely clear that the minority really is significantly wiser than the majority, then obviously you follow the minority.
[Speaker D] Maybe Beit Hillel disagreed on that point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Maybe on that very point. Yes, that’s how one could disagree with him, and I agree. There are later authorities who indeed say that’s not true, and that this is what Beit Shammai thought, but maybe that itself is what Beit Hillel disputed. It could be that Beit Hillel didn’t dispute the principle, but only said that here the gap wasn’t significant enough for that to apply. It can be explained either way. In any case, what is true is that the Talmud itself explains that Beit Shammai were sharper. Meaning that they were more incisive, wiser, and therefore at least there is one side in the Talmud that says that in such a situation we would follow the minority rather than the majority. Here I move to the Talmud in Eruvin, which indeed says that for three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel argued and could not decide, until a heavenly voice came forth and said: “These and those are both the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel.” And then a decision was reached, and afterward the Talmud explains why that decision was reached—we’ll get to that in a moment. The question already asked by Tosafot there is: but “it is not in heaven.” How can you follow a heavenly voice? If the heavenly voice says the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel—well, “it is not in heaven.” So they bring, I think, three answers, and each part of this is anchored in the Talmud itself. This is Tosafot in Eruvin 13 and Tosafot in Eruvin 6, I think, the Tosafot that asks this. But it seems to me that the simple answer is not like any of their three. I think the simple answer is that if the argument between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel was really over whether we follow the majority of wisdom or the majority of people—if that was really the dispute itself, like yesterday, if that itself was the dispute—then what are we supposed to do if we don’t follow the heavenly voice? What are we supposed to do with that dispute? Take a vote on it? Do we follow the majority of people or the majority of wisdom? I understand that even in that vote we would remain stuck. There’s no way to decide it. When does “it is not in heaven” apply? “It is not in heaven” applies when the rules for resolving halakhic doubt allow us to resolve the doubt even without needing a heavenly voice. Okay? But in a place where those rules don’t help us, because our dispute is about the very rules of decision themselves—then what are we supposed to do? So when a heavenly voice comes out, we follow the heavenly voice. “It is not in heaven” applies when you have an alternative—when you can go with the internal rules of Jewish law. If you are stuck within Jewish law, then the heavenly voice comes to save you. So of course you follow it. So what is the heavenly voice really saying?
[Speaker B] That you go after the majority and not after wisdom. Right. Contrary to Minchat Chinukh.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. According to that interpretation, clearly it is contrary to Minchat Chinukh, because if that itself was the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, then forget the heavenly voice—if that itself was the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, then from that alone you see it’s not like Minchat Chinukh, because he said only what Beit Shammai—and what you said earlier.
[Speaker D] Maybe we’d say: in a Torah-level doubt, be stringent, and in a rabbinic doubt, be lenient—something else, we’d use other rules. Since maybe the heavenly voice—since we can’t decide this argument because we have no way to decide it, then we’ll use other rules. But why should I use them? I’m not in doubt. Why should I use the rules of doubt?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m Beit Shammai. I’m not in doubt; I think this way.
[Speaker D] Then Beit Shammai do this and Beit Hillel do that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. You don’t know either. Do as you think. But what are we supposed to do? If everyone does what he thinks, then basically there is no halakhic solution to such a situation. And in Jewish law, when we want to establish a ruling, what are we supposed to do? It’s like the Shemaiteta, you know. The Shemaiteta explains—in Shemaiteta 1—that Maimonides writes that every rabbinic law is included under “do not deviate,” and Nachmanides disagrees with him.
[Speaker A] And Nachmanides asks…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …about Maimonides: why is a rabbinic doubt treated leniently—after all, it’s a Torah-level doubt of “do not deviate”? Fine? And Nachmanides himself raises the possibility of saying: they said this, and they said that. The sages said—for according to Maimonides, it is the sages who said that in a Torah-level doubt one is stringent—so they also said that in a rabbinic doubt one is lenient. After all, they could simply have chosen not to enact the rabbinic ordinance at all, so they determined: we enact the ordinance, but in a case of doubt you may be lenient. But Nachmanides rejects that. He says that’s not a possible explanation. It’s not clear why; many later authorities do in fact explain Maimonides that way. It’s not clear why Nachmanides rejects it. So the Shemaiteta, in Shemaiteta 1, says that this won’t work in a dispute among authorities. A dispute among authorities means a doubt whose basis is a disagreement between halakhic decisors, between people—not a doubt where I myself am uncertain because of facts or law, but a doubt caused by a disagreement between Maimonides and Rashba, or between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, no matter. A dispute among authorities. Why won’t it work? Because both disputing sides tell you—after all, “they said this and they said that” means that the sages who established the law also told you that in a doubtful case you may be lenient. Right? But Beit Shammai don’t say there is any doubt, and Beit Hillel also say there is no doubt. So on one thing there is consensus: this law is not in doubt. So how can you say in such a case, “they said this and they said that”? The sages who established this law did not say that here you should be lenient. On the contrary, they told you that here you must be stringent. After all, neither side is in doubt—not Beit Shammai and not Beit Hillel. You can argue about that too, by the way. That’s his claim.
[Speaker B] There are those who say: from the point of view of a third party, you are in doubt; we are not in doubt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, correct. And what’s more, who says it’s Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel at all? Moses already determined that when you are in doubt regarding a rabbinic law, you should be lenient. Fine, but that’s what the Shemaiteta says.
[Speaker E] After that heavenly voice, these still followed their own view and those followed their own view.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the question in the Talmud in Yevamot—it’s not agreed upon. It’s a dispute between Rav and Shmuel.
[Speaker E] The Talmud itself says that they didn’t—despite the fact that these acted this way and those acted that way, they did not refrain from marrying one another, and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe that was after the heavenly voice?
[Speaker D] Maybe before. That’s the dispute. Yes, but maybe it’s because one has to follow the majority of the sages, but simply because there’s no way to determine who the sages are?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying—it depends what the dispute was. If I say that the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel was over this very foundation, over whether one follows the majority of wisdom or the majority of people, but it was agreed that Beit Shammai were wiser, and even Beit Hillel agreed to that—fine, that Beit Shammai were sharper, that’s how it sounds in the Talmud, that this was agreed; there was no dispute about that. The dispute was over whether the decisive majority is—yes—whether you count heads or count feet. That’s basically the question. Okay? So that was the dispute. In that dispute, the heavenly voice decided like Beit Hillel. If that was the dispute, as we said earlier, then you can say that maybe that wasn’t the dispute at all, and then you can’t learn anything from the heavenly voice. That’s probably how Rav Hai Gaon and Sefer HaChinukh would understand it.
[Speaker D] But you said there’s no way out of that dispute.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that if that’s the dispute, then there’s no way out of it.
[Speaker D] Why? Because you can decide like Beit Shammai.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But Beit Hillel claim not. So what do you do now? Beit Hillel claim that you follow the majority of people; Beit Shammai say you follow the majority of wisdom. What do we do now? In that very dispute, how does the Talmud decide it?
[Speaker D] You’re saying you need a heavenly voice?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You need a heavenly voice to decide it, because without that we’re stuck. And therefore there’s no question of why “it is not in heaven,” because here we have no other option. The rules of Jewish law won’t help us here.
[Speaker D] Also in the Talmud in Berakhot chapter 8 there’s a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel and they say the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel, and then they say: obviously. Then they give two answers; one of them is: if you want, say that the Jewish law does not follow a heavenly voice. That’s what the Talmud says.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you want, say…
[Speaker D] …that the Jewish law does not follow a heavenly voice, and therefore it teaches us that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. There are several places; there are also places where they rule like Beit Shammai—in Beitzah, several Mishnahs in Beitzah at the beginning of chapter one. Yes. So the question isn’t simple there, historically either—what exactly happened there. Tosafot also wants to suggest that maybe they really did disagree with “it is not in heaven,” and we rule that “it is not in heaven.” One of the answers of Tosafot in Eruvin that I mentioned earlier says this too, and if so it’s the same thing as in that Talmudic passage. Now basically, when we think about the question whether in court we follow the majority of quantity or the majority of quality—yes, the majority of wisdom or the majority of people—what lies behind this question? You can describe it as a formal question: “follow the majority.” The question is, what is “majority”? Is it the majority of wisdom or the majority of people? Feet or heads? And it may be that behind this lies another question. And the question is: what is the majority trying to achieve? Is the majority meant to achieve peace, or is the majority meant to achieve truth? If the goal is to reach a bottom line so there will be peace—unity, uniformity, something we can live together with—then the logic says to count feet. But if the majority is meant to achieve truth, then the logic says to follow the sages. And what do I care if there are fools as numerous as the ocean? What help are they against one sage? Meaning, yes, the wisdom of crowds—nowadays there are all kinds of interesting theses about this, but fine, let’s leave those theses in their place. It seems to me that they too are part of the wisdom of crowds. In any case, the question is whether we are seeking peace or seeking truth. What lies behind that question? The question of whether there is such a thing as truth. Maybe—not necessarily, because someone might say: we seek peace even though there is truth, because peace is more important to us than truth. But it may be that there is a deeper question here: is there truth at all? This connects to the Talmud, where the Talmud explains the heavenly voice—why it rules like Beit Hillel. The Talmud says: because Beit Hillel were gentle and humble, and they would state the words of Beit Shammai before their own. How should we understand that? On the face of it, it sounds like a reward for good behavior, right? Meaning, they behave nicely, put Beit Shammai’s words before their own, they’re humble, and so on—a reward for good behavior. What does it mean, a reward for good behavior? Are we handing out prizes here? Are we ruling Jewish law and handing out prizes? Apparently there is no halakhic truth. There are no right ones and wrong ones. “These and those are both the words of the living God.” Fine. So why does the Jewish law follow Beit Hillel? After all, there is a contradiction in the heavenly voice’s statement. “These and those are both the words of the living God” on the one hand, and “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” on the other. Make up your mind. If both are the words of the living God, then what does it mean that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel? And if the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel, then in what sense are the words of Beit Shammai also the words of the living God? So it depends. If we take “these and those are both the words of the living God” as the main point, then the claim is basically that there is no halakhic truth—both are right. Then what does it mean that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel? A reward for good behavior. If in any case both are right, and all we want is to establish a bottom line for the sake of peace, as I said earlier, then we still want to decide. So we say: all right, let’s at least choose those who will convey the right educational message. Why not? In any case there is no truth here; both are right, from the standpoint of truth. So let us at least choose those from whom we gain an education in good character traits. Fine? That’s one reading of the Talmud. A second reading of the Talmud is the opposite. Basically, the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because the truth is with them. And “these and those are both the words of the living God” means that there is also something in the words of Beit Shammai—I won’t get into that right now. There is also something in the words of Beit Shammai, but the truth is with Beit Hillel. There is halakhic truth. So why do we rule like Beit Hillel? Rabbi Yosef Karo, in his book Kelalei HaGemara, explains it this way—or at least that’s how it seems, though maybe one can hesitate a bit. Why indeed do we rule like them? Because they were humble and put Beit Shammai’s words before their own, and therefore they are more correct. Meaning, someone who conducts himself that way actually comes closer to the truth. It’s not just good behavior. It’s a more correct method for arriving at the right answer. Because someone who, before formulating his own position, seriously considers the positions of those who oppose him, puts them first and then examines—do I agree, do I not agree, arguments this way and that—and only then makes a decision, even if he is less incisive than his opponent, will still get closer to the truth than someone who is more incisive but does not seriously consider the other side’s position. I once brought the Magen Avraham—remember? I’ve brought it more than once, I think. You know in section 156 in the Shulchan Arukh, there’s that section? Paragraph 2 of Magen Avraham throws in there all the laws he doesn’t know where else to put. And afterward one goes out to business— in the Shulchan Arukh, after that one goes out to business, there is a law that afterward one must go out to business. So Magen Avraham there brings in all the laws he doesn’t know where to put, and one of those laws is that you are allowed to say things in the name of a great person so that people will accept them from you. What?
[Speaker A] Not falsely, you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says that even if it’s not…
[Speaker A] You can say…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …your own ideas in the name of a great person so that people will accept them from you. Are you lying? Yes, you are lying. You say: this was said by… yes. So of course there is a very significant question here: how can such a thing be? How can I be allowed to lie and say things that I say—which could be totally wrong—and attribute them to one of the greatest halakhic decisors? If one of the greatest decisors says it, then you’ll act accordingly. How am I allowed to cause someone to stumble like that? So my claim there was that this is permitted only in a place where the person hearing it will not accept it automatically, but will only consider it seriously. But why do I do it? I do it because I feel they aren’t taking me seriously, that they look down on me. No, this was said by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. Fine, now they won’t just ignore what I’m saying; they’ll at least think about it again. If they will accept it only because Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it, I am forbidden to do such a thing. But if it causes them to weigh my arguments more seriously, then yes—why not? I want them to take my side seriously. That is exactly Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Meaning, when Beit Shammai don’t seriously consider the words of Beit Hillel because they look down on them—we are sharper—then they will make mistakes.
[Speaker A] But according to the Magen Avraham, are you allowed to disagree with the leading sage of the generation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that was my claim, yes. And even if he didn’t say it, I disagree with him. Yes. You know the story that Rabbi Shalom Schwadron once said in the name of the Chazon Ish—that he brought the Magen Avraham, and I don’t know if he brought it in the name of the Chazon Ish. I heard in the name of the Chazon Ish that he said one may say things in the name of a great person so that people will accept them from him, and even this I won’t tell you whether the Chazon Ish said or didn’t say. In any case, what I’m saying is that since Beit Shammai belittled the opinion of Beit Hillel and did not seriously consider Beit Hillel’s arguments, it turned out that although they were more incisive, they hit the truth less accurately. And Beit Hillel, although less incisive, because they were careful to examine all sides and to weigh and think, came closer to the truth. So what Rabbi Yosef Karo is basically explaining there—that the Jewish law was ruled like Beit Hillel because they were gentle and humble and put Beit Shammai’s words before their own—that is not a reward for good behavior, but a more correct halakhic method. That’s how you get closer to the truth. By the way, that is very true. Very true. Less intelligent people will arrive closer to the truth if they seriously weigh all opinions, more than someone who dismisses others’ opinions and thereby moves further from the truth, even if he is perhaps sharper.
[Speaker D] Why was it determined that they themselves determined the Jewish law as Beit Hillel? What do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That the sages who came in the generations afterward decided…
[Speaker D] …that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because they were humble…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The sages of that generation were divided between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Apparently there weren’t neutral people there; it was Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Everyone else were just ordinary citizens. This was the core. A decision had to be made—what do we do now? The later generations… the later generations… what do we do now? It got to the point that the Jerusalem Talmud says that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel killed one another. Meaning, the dispute there apparently reached situations—I don’t know if they literally killed one another, but at least it’s a metaphor for a hard war. And that exactly expresses the fact that that generation, or those generations, got stuck in a situation where they could not decide. There were two study houses, each one acting in its own way, and no decisions could be made. Everyone—and why? Because the dispute was about the methods of decision themselves. When the dispute is about the methods of decision, what do you do? This is one of the things I think Aharon Barak did not grasp when he was president of the Supreme Court. He often expressed himself as though he was not a party to the matter; he only wanted to allow everyone to express an opinion and conduct public discourse. And he didn’t grasp that part of the public saw him as one side in the matter. Why? Because part of the dispute was about the methods of adjudication, not just about the content. There was a dispute over the question: what are the methods of adjudication? What may be decided, and how? Can the majority decide everything, or are there fundamentals on which we do not accept the majority’s opinion? For example, religious people think there are certain things on which we do not accept the majority opinion. The majority has no mandate to give up the Land of Israel—certain rabbis will tell you that, for example. So the dispute here is about the methods of decision, not only about the content. So clearly they view Aharon Barak as the opposition. Aharon Barak didn’t understand—he really didn’t understand, in my opinion. No, no, he really didn’t—what do I mean, he didn’t understand? He didn’t agree. Meaning, he couldn’t understand how one could say such a thing at all. I’m only arranging matters so that the majority can decide, that everyone can express an opinion and the majority can decide. And he didn’t grasp—he didn’t grasp why people saw him as belonging to the other side. He was one of the sides here; he wasn’t the UN secretary-general. That’s how it was perceived then, and I think very consistently he kept saying: I don’t understand what they want, why are they attacking me? What do they want? I’m only acting according to the law. I’m regulating the public discourse and allowing it to take place. You make your decisions, vote in the Knesset, make your decisions—I’m only arranging the framework so this can happen.
[Speaker A] Yes, but he struck down laws, so it’s not like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about—depends in what context. There are many disputes with Aharon Barak, but some of them were about this. So here too, when the dispute is about the methods of decision, then we have no way to decide, and therefore they needed a heavenly voice. So it turns out that Beit Hillel—say if the dispute really was that Beit Hillel say we follow the majority—then there would be room to say that Beit Hillel are really claiming that the purpose of the majority is peace, and therefore even though we think they are sharper, one should still rule like us because we are the majority. What difference does it make that they are sharper? The purpose of the majority is to achieve peace. And Beit Shammai claim that the purpose of the majority is to achieve truth. That is one possibility. A second possibility is to say that the truth is with Beit Hillel even though they are less incisive, but not because they are the majority, rather because they weigh Beit Shammai’s view before stating their own. In any case, this depends on the medieval authorities. Meaning, there are medieval authorities who explained it this way. It depends on the medieval authorities who maintain that we follow the majority of wisdom—they then have to explain this Talmudic passage differently. Because here the Talmud seems to conclude that we follow the majority of people, not the majority of wisdom. Fine, it doesn’t matter, but those are just reckonings with the Talmud. In any case, there are two conceptions here: is the purpose of the majority peace, or is the purpose of the majority truth? I tend to think that in Jewish law there is truth, and it really is as Rabbi Yosef Karo said: the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because the truth is with them. There is truth in the arguments of Beit Shammai—I already spoke about this once. There is truth in the arguments of Beit Shammai, but the true ruling is a ruling like Beit Hillel. But that’s just in passing.
[Speaker D] I read somewhere that a heavenly voice didn’t really come out, but rather it was a device they used in order to…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s possible. For example, in Ritva. Raavad, in several places, writes: the Holy Spirit appeared in our study hall. So there are already those who interpreted—I don’t remember who, maybe Rabbi Margaliot in the introduction to his edition of the responsa From Heaven—there’s a long introduction there, “it is not in heaven.” There is a book From Heaven, a responsa collection by one of the Tosafists, who asked questions in heaven and received answers to various halakhic questions. Then the question is what its halakhic status is, so he discusses all sorts of things of this kind. And it seems to me he brings the Raavad, those places where the Raavad writes that the Holy Spirit appeared in our study hall, and one of his suggestions is that it means: it became very clear to us. It doesn’t mean that some actual heavenly voice came out, some mystical thing that everyone heard. Rather it means that suddenly somehow it became clear to everyone that this was the truth.
[Speaker D] If everyone had been fighting so much with one another, what suddenly happened that made everyone understand that they needed to…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Suddenly they understood. That’s exactly the point. After the fights, suddenly the penny dropped, and they understood that things couldn’t go on like this, and let’s really try for a moment to see what’s going on here—and they understood. Maybe, I don’t know. It’s a nice suggestion. For someone who says “it is not in heaven,” then what does he say?
[Speaker B] What do you mean, “it is not in heaven” if a heavenly voice decided? After all, it was decided on earth—the public decided in the study hall of the Oven of Akhnai, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the Oven of Akhnai it was clearly a heavenly voice.
[Speaker B] There you say it’s clear, but here it isn’t clear?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, on the contrary—in the Oven of Akhnai it was clearly a heavenly voice. In other places where a heavenly voice is mentioned, I don’t know. Look into it: there’s Jerusalem Talmud and Babylonian Talmud in Shabbat, and Jerusalem Talmud in Chagigah, I think—what is meant by a heavenly voice? What is meant by a heavenly voice? They bring several cases there. One of the cases is that Rav and Shmuel wanted to go to… no, sorry, Rabbi Yochanan, I think, wanted to go to Shmuel in Babylonia to ask him several questions that he was uncertain about. And then he passed by… Rabbi Yochanan passed by a room, and the children there happened to be learning the verses in Samuel: “Samuel is dead.” So he decided not to go to Babylonia. And that is an example of a heavenly voice. Or that story with the officer, the man there with the snake under the… I don’t remember who it was there, the snake under the stone that the officer lifted, and he sat down in his place, and then the snake came out from the stone and bit the officer, and that tanna— I don’t remember who it was there—was saved. And that’s a heavenly voice. And all kinds of things like that. So a heavenly voice is understood as hints like these; it’s not really some mystical heavenly voice coming down from heaven. That’s what the Jerusalem Talmud says. Meaning, there is quite a strong basis for this rational explanation of a heavenly voice. Fine. In any case, if we really understand that there is a source…
[Speaker B] One source for a heavenly voice, which is the Oven of Akhnai, and everything else is imitation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he says, it’s called that only figuratively, yes, figuratively they call this too a heavenly voice. You could say, look, if you want to continue, you could also say that in the story of the oven of Akhnai it’s the same thing: “We do not pay attention to a heavenly voice” means that, true, all of us suddenly feel some identification with Rabbi Eliezer, but our arguments are such-and-such, and “we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice,” “It is not in heaven.” Fine, but that really is already more far-reaching as a way to explain the Talmudic text. Fine, it could also be that in the Talmudic text in Eruvin it’s not like that either, and the intention really was an actual heavenly voice. As for the Rivash, I’m saying it’s already a bit more far-fetched to say that it was an actual heavenly voice. Why am I saying this? Because in Sefer HaChinukh, when he brings this point that we follow the majority of wisdom and not the majority of people, that you follow quality and not quantity, he explains it. How does he say it? What is he actually saying? What is the role of the majority? Why do we follow the majority in a religious court? In the roots of the commandment, when he says it there, when he explains the commandments, what does he say there? Because usually the majority is right. So according to his own approach, it’s clear that he understands the majority as a means of reaching the truth, right? Consequently, it’s clear that he also follows the view that the determining majority is the majority of wisdom, not the majority of people. Because from his perspective, the purpose of the majority is to uncover the truth, not peace. But Nachmanides, for example, who follows the majority of people—I don’t know—it could be that he thinks the purpose of the majority is to achieve peace and not truth. And “usually right”—the majority is usually right—is that actually a majority that is before us, or not? Ah, that’s my next question. According to this Sefer HaChinukh—and this is already something Rabbi Shimon Shkop points out—it is very difficult that the Talmudic text in Chullin says that the majority in a religious court is a majority that is before us. The Talmudic text says, after all, from where do we learn a majority that is before us? From “Follow the majority,” from a religious court. Why is a religious court a majority that is before us? Let’s now try to go back to the definitions of a majority that is before us and a majority that is not before us. What is Sefer HaChinukh actually telling us? Sefer HaChinukh is basically telling us that the majority is usually right. What are the examples? What is the collection of things here? The sample space? Take all the rulings of all the religious courts on earth that have ever existed—doesn’t matter—gather all of them together, okay? And always take the majority opinion. In most cases, the majority opinion will also be the truth. Right? That’s basically what you’re saying. Is that a majority that is before us or not before us? Clearly not before us. We do not have before us some set of rulings or some set of courts where we know what each one says, right? And then we can infer that this court probably belongs to the majority. Because a majority that is before us is classification—that is, this piece belongs to the majority of the stores, belongs to a certain group. A majority that is not before us is not classification—there are no groups here—but statistics: you take the natural order of the world, so probably this woman too gives birth at nine months. Okay? Now here in Sefer HaChinukh, this is not classification; this is a majority not before us. In most cases the majority is right. A majority about a majority? In most cases the majority is right. That’s strange, because the law of majority itself is learned from “Follow the majority,” and it is based on the fact that in most cases the majority is right. That’s an interesting loop.
[Speaker E] It’s like saying that the sum of the angles in a triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees, which
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] becomes
[Speaker E] a law after you check most of the triangles in the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but really, that you’re allowed to follow the majority comes from the verse, but the verse itself is based on the idea that the majority is right.
[Speaker D] There’s no problem here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, it’s not a problem, it’s just something interesting. Meaning, the verse assumes that the majority really clarifies the matter, and yes indeed, from there we learn it. That is the truth. The verse reveals that truth to us.
[Speaker A] There is a problem, because we said earlier that a majority that is before us is stronger because it has a verse, while a majority that is not before us does not. No, no, that’s just in the Talmudic text.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The problem I was talking about is one that isn’t a problem in logic. The problem in the Talmudic text is a difficult problem. This is Sefer HaChinukh—Rabbi Shimon raises an objection to Sefer HaChinukh, and he rejects him; he says this cannot be correct. Because the Talmudic text says that the majority in a religious court is a majority that is before us, and according to Sefer HaChinukh it comes out that the majority in a religious court is a majority that is not before us. What do you say? I think Sefer HaChinukh is right. Because of Rabbi Shimon Shkop? What? Because of Rabbi Shimon Shkop? I disagree with Rabbi Shimon Shkop. For once I allow myself to disagree with him, with
[Speaker A] all that notwithstanding, I admire even the hems of his cloak.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, let’s think for a moment about how this works. What are we doing? We’re doing statistics, right? A majority not before us—usually when we say… now look at the difference between the definitions. The accepted definition distinguishing a majority that is before us from one that is not before us is that a majority not before us is the natural order of the world, while a majority that is before us is contingent information in certain circumstances, right? By that definition, Sefer HaChinukh is talking about a majority not before us. But according to the definition I suggested earlier, no. The definition I suggested earlier is that a majority not before us is a majority based on generalization. I saw several examples and from that I learned about the rule, right? And a majority that is before us is not based on generalization, but simply on the fact that I have a collection of known facts; I don’t need generalizations. I’m talking about the known facts. Is there any generalization here in Sefer HaChinukh’s words? No generalization whatsoever. How do you know that the majority is usually right? What, did you see several cases in which the majority was right and from that infer that the majority is always right, or usually right? You have no way of knowing whether the majority was right or not. All you have is that the majority says this and the minority says that—how do you know that the majority is right? It’s just plain reasoning. Reason tells you that the majority is usually right. Right? And that is just plain reasoning. There’s no—you can’t do statistics here. For statistics you need a sample. To say, for example: how do I know that all bodies with mass fall to the earth? I check this body, then this body, and this body. It worked for ten bodies, so apparently all bodies with mass fall to the earth, right? So there is a sample that I checked; there I saw it with my own eyes, and then how do I know it is true for the entire group? I make a generalization. Let’s see whether it works the same way in religious courts. I take one court that ruled according to the majority, and I see that the majority was right. I take another court that ruled according to the majority, and I see that the majority was right. There is one court that ruled according to the majority and it was wrong, and that is the minority. Most courts that followed the majority were right, so I generalize: if so, every court, when it follows the majority, is right. Is that how it works? Of course not. How can you check whether a religious court that ruled according to the majority was right that time? The majority says it was right and the minority says it was wrong. You have no direct access to the truth other than what the judges themselves say.
[Speaker A] But the question is more basic: what does it even mean that it was right? What does “right” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it accords with the truth.
[Speaker A] What? The truth itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Was there a loan or wasn’t there a loan? They came before a religious court, okay? Reuven and Shimon. Reuven says: you borrowed money from me, you borrowed money from me, pay me back. The other says: nothing of the sort ever happened. Now the majority claimed that there was a loan, and the minority says there was no loan.
[Speaker D] The question is factual—either there was a loan or there wasn’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now witnesses came. Now witnesses came. But there aren’t any. Did anyone ever do such statistics, where the court actually ruled and then witnesses later showed up? Do you know where they did statistics like that? In the United States. In the United States, after DNA was introduced as legal evidence, it suddenly turned out that a great many problematic convictions had occurred there. And then you really could test the reliability or trustworthiness of the legal process.
[Speaker E] It could be that here too it happened. Meaning, I’ll tell you how: there probably really were such courts that people felt confident enough to go to because it later became clear in reality, or people repented and suddenly said, yes, I really did borrow, or I didn’t borrow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s mere speculation. Sefer HaChinukh did not have statistics that no one else had either. I don’t know of such statistics, and neither do you. So where did Sefer HaChinukh know this from? He didn’t. So what did he have? His straight reasoning told him that usually the majority is right, at least when they are more or less on the same Torah level, yes? That’s why he says if they’re not at the same level, then no—but if they are at the same level, then straight reasoning says so. It’s not a generalization. If you want, maybe it’s even statistics. Suppose we say that if there is a good judge, then let’s say he is right in seventy percent of cases. Fine? Someone once asked me: if so, then the majority is always wrong. When there are two against one, what is the probability that the two are right? Seventy percent times seventy percent is forty-nine percent. Therefore the chance that two are right is actually smaller than the chance that one is right, correct? And that is of course a statistical mistake, but—what?
[Speaker A] The probability of error is zero point three times zero point three—the probability that two are wrong.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s conditional probability, it’s worse, it’s more complicated. You need Bayes’ formula there. But in any case, the claim that a religious court that follows the majority is right—we have no way of knowing that except by estimating with our straight reasoning that this is so. Okay? Or by statistics with Bayes’ formula, whatever. But it’s not a generalization based on cases we examined. So if that’s the case, then this is not a majority not before us. Not a majority not before us.
[Speaker A] Statistics and generalization are not the same thing. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Generalization and statistics are not the same thing. Of course not. A statistical calculation is a majority that is before us.
[Speaker A] But generalization too you do on the basis of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I see several cases and I say, fine, this is true of all of them. Statistics, on the contrary, belongs to a majority that is before us. A majority that is before us is when I know that there are ten stores and eight of them are kosher, so I say there is an eighty percent chance that this piece is kosher, because this piece belongs to that same group regarding which I know that eighty percent are kosher and twenty percent are non-kosher. So I am doing statistics. Generalization is by definition not statistical. By definition not.
[Speaker A] What about life expectancy, say, of people in the world? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is
[Speaker A] not before us or before us?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Life expectancy is not before us. You check a number of people and infer a conclusion about all people.
[Speaker B] Like most women give birth at nine months. Yes. Most people live…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that sense, understand that the religious court—the majority in a religious court—is a majority that is before us, not not before us. We are doing statistics. If there is a judge whom, let’s say, I assess as seventy percent likely to be right, and I have three such judges, then the two are more likely to be right than the one. Why? Because I made a generalization? Of course not. I did statistics on the basis of knowledge I have about those judges. If anything, it is more similar to a majority that is before us—certainly not a majority that is not before us. It’s also not exactly a majority that is before us, but it is not a majority that is not before us. Definitely not. So if the definition is whether we are following a generalization or not following a generalization, and not whether it is a law of nature or not a law of nature, then it seems to me that Sefer HaChinukh is right: the majority in a religious court is a majority that is before us, or at least not a majority that is not before us. Okay? That’s how it seems to me. Fine, we’ll stop here, and then—
[Speaker A] Thus ends the lecture of Rabbi Michael Abraham, Thursday, the 4th of Adar 5777, March 2, 2017. This is the first lecture in the series Quantity and Quality.