Simplicity — Lecture 11

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now look, what happens now according to my new definition—not the practical definition. Seemingly the rule is that it goes according to the manner of the transgression, not according to the type of commandment, positive or negative, right? Because in the end I’m saying passive omission is preferable. And passive omission is preferable simply means not to do something.

[Speaker B] No, but first you have to see whether the commandments are of equal weight or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I’m saying they are of equal weight. No—human dignity now. Human dignity versus a commandment. Versus a positive commandment or a prohibition.

[Speaker B] No, then it’s not a positive commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Human dignity is a value. It’s not a positive commandment. It’s a value. It’s a value that is equal in weight to a commandment. Equal to which kind of commandment? Positive or negative? All commandments. They’re all equal to one another.

[Speaker B] Positive and negative commandments are also equal to one another.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Yes. That’s what he said. No, that’s something else, that’s in different circumstances. But positive and negative commandments—that’s what Rabbi Elchanan says. A positive commandment and a prohibition are equal in weight. There’s no relation of severity such that a prohibition is more severe than a positive commandment, or that an active violation is more severe.

[Speaker B] If you have a situation where a positive commandment and a prohibition clash head-on—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else. That’s a positive commandment overriding a prohibition. That’s a different rule.

[Speaker B] What do you do? You do the positive commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. But not because it’s more severe. More weighty? No, not because it has more weight. Because in such a case, for example, Rav Nissim Gaon says that when there’s a positive commandment מול a prohibition, then there is no prohibition. It’s permitted. The prohibition was never stated about such a case.

[Speaker B] But with overriding—tell me if—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I’m mistaken, what you’re saying is the “set aside” model. There is a prohibition, but it is more severe, and therefore it pushes aside the positive commandment—or there is a positive commandment and therefore it is more severe. He says no: there are explanations that do not base this on relative severity. Okay? In the book there are many explanations of this. So Rabbi Elchanan’s assumption, on this side of the issue, and in Kehillot Yaakov, is that there is no difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition in terms of severity. And there is no difference between active commission and passive omission in terms of severity. No difference. It is not a difference of severity. It is a difference of character—how one violates it. If you violate it actively, right? Then when this clashes with human dignity and you tell me that passive omission is preferable, then in practice the result will be that you do not commit the transgression. But if one violates it passively, then when they tell you passive omission is preferable, they’re telling you: violate it passively. Okay? And there is no relation of severity. Everything is equally severe. Positive commandment, prohibition, and human dignity are all on the same level. Everything is on the same level. And nevertheless, human dignity will override a transgression in passive omission, but will not override a transgression in active commission. That is on the practical plane. Now let’s move to my definition. It overrides shaatnez.

[Speaker G] What? A positive commandment overrides a prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A positive commandment overriding a prohibition is a different discussion. That’s what I asked earlier. I’m talking about something else—human dignity versus a positive commandment, or human dignity versus a prohibition. Okay? So what happens now according to the non-practical definition, the principled one? According to the principled definition, then seemingly it really does not go by positive versus negative commandment. It goes by the question of how the prohibition is violated. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a positive commandment or a prohibition. Because in the end positive and negative commandments are of equal weight. There’s no difference in severity. They only tell me passive omission is preferable. Passive omission is preferable is always practical, right? Passive omission is preferable means you should always sit still. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a positive commandment or a prohibition. And then indeed the point would be that human dignity sometimes overrides even a Torah prohibition—as long as you violate the prohibition by passive omission. For example, jumping in to save a person in the river, right? How do you violate that prohibition? Not by active commission, but by passive omission. I don’t jump in and save him, right? And if it’s a matter of human dignity, in the sense that I’ll be wet in a bathing suit and so on, everyone will see me in a bathing suit—no, I’m not willing to jump in and save him. Then in fact I could refrain, even though it’s a prohibition. Since that prohibition is violated by passive omission. Right? That’s what would seem to come out. And then this overlap between prohibition and positive commandment, and human dignity, is severed. Human dignity can override both prohibitions and positive commandments—it depends how you violate them. If you violate them by an act or by omission. Okay? Yes?

[Speaker D] Wait, you were talking about saving lives? Saving lives is beyond—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As an example. No, no, no. I’m speaking right now as if it were only a prohibition. Leave aside for now the question whether perhaps it’s more severe because there are lives involved. A big question—seemingly it’s not clear why—but… human dignity. Human dignity is not a commandment. I mean, what—your life is preferable to my dignity? I don’t want to give up my dignity. Fine, let’s leave that, that’s a different discussion. But I want to claim that this is not correct. I want to claim that even according to my definition, it could be that human dignity overrides only positive-commandment obligations and not prohibitions. Why? Because there are situations in which when I get up and do an act, that is called passive omission. As I said before, passive omission has undergone abstraction. And then my claim is that human dignity overrides Torah prohibitions in passive omission because human dignity can permit you not to be in a positive state. It cannot permit you to be in a negative state. That is the meaning of passive omission and active commission. Now if that is so, then we return to the distinction between positive commandment and prohibition, regardless of how the prohibition is violated. And therefore it really is true—as I wrote in several articles—that there are situations in which passive omission is preferable means doing an act. Passive omission is not always—let me give you an example. In one of the articles I dealt with the separation of Siamese twins. There are two conjoined twins, say they have one heart. They’re joined together, they have one heart, and they are two bodies joined together, and the heart operates both bodies. Now there are many situations in which doctors know that within nine months, ten months, these children will die. The heart won’t be able to sustain two babies, to maintain two bodies. So within nine or ten months they die. The only way to save one of them is to do separation surgery. To separate them, give the heart to one of them, and then one will live and one will die. So the question is whether one may do such a thing. If the situation is symmetrical—that is, there is no one who is the natural owner of the heart and the other is merely a parasite trying to draw from it too, but rather the heart really belongs equally to both of them—then all the halakhic decisors say it is forbidden. All the halakhic decisors say it is forbidden. And I wrote an article about this; I argued that it is permitted—not just permitted, obligatory—to do such a thing. And I justified it, and I think I don’t understand how one could argue with this at all. It’s obvious that it’s correct. But I said, among the additional arguments, I said: suppose you are in doubt whether I am right or not. Is it permitted to do this surgery or not? So then what should be done while you are in doubt? Passive omission is preferable—don’t do surgery. I said no. Passive omission is preferable means do the surgery. Why? Because passive omission is preferable means pay the minimal price. And that is called passive omission is preferable. It’s the principle that the price should be minimal. Passive omission is preferable—who knows, you don’t know, let’s choose the safest way or the one with the lowest price. That of course continues what I said before. Because passive omission does not mean doing something passive; it means paying the minimal price. That is exactly the principled and not practical interpretation of passive omission is preferable. The concept of passive omission is not a practical concept, it is a principled concept. And therefore I abstract it. I say passive omission does not mean not doing; it means take the minimal price. Now I’m saying: you can save a person’s life, right? Or you can leave them both to die. You are in doubt whether you are permitted or forbidden. I said passive omission means leave one, and the other will die in any case—what can you do—but at least save the one.

[Speaker C] And who gave you permission to kill? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What prohibition of killing? You’re not killing; he is dying anyway. And if you do nothing, then what’s the problem?

[Speaker C] What’s the problem with not separating, and then one dies that way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t decide which one of them to save. Buridan’s ass.

[Speaker C] You can’t, like—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Buridan’s ass. You can’t decide whom to save, and so you leave both to die.

[Speaker C] And then in order to save one you kill? How do you save him—you kill one of them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I do separation surgery. But are you killing? Not killing. I wrote a responsum about this there. The Chazon Ish—that if, say, someone shoots an arrow at a person and you divert it, he discusses there an accident, someone driving a car—so that is an act of rescue, not an act of killing, and it hit somebody else. So he says: you engaged in an act of rescue, not in an act of killing. You saved that one. True, you didn’t notice and it killed someone else, but it was an act of rescue, not an act of killing. An obligation. So the question is whether this is even called murder. So there is one argument—there are lots of arguments here, I’m simplifying a great deal just to illustrate. So one argument says: since this is Buridan’s ass, you do not know how to decide whom to save, and therefore you may not do anything. You may not prefer one over the other. Who are you, the Holy One, blessed be He? You cannot decide in favor of one, and therefore passive omission is preferable, do nothing. I say: this passive omission—for me, passive omission means doing the surgery. That is called passive omission, not refraining from doing the surgery. Why? Because I’m talking about the—be in a state, don’t be in a positive state—that is not the same as being in a negative state. Leaving someone to die is a negative state.

[Speaker D] But that is only if the Rabbi assumes that the harm here, supposedly, in the surgery is the minimal act. Right. Meaning, you have to say that this is the minimal act.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying there are several levels here. First, you have to discuss whether there is murder here. Second, you have to discuss—even if there is no murder here—whether I am still allowed to hold a lottery and decide that one person will be saved and not the other. Who am I to decide specifically for him and not for him?

[Speaker C] What prohibition would I be violating? What? If I make a lottery, what prohibition would I violate when I kill the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are determining who will die. Murder by indirect causation—I don’t know, call it that—even if it is not an act of murder. But still, you decided that he will die and not the other. So it’s by indirect causation; that too is forbidden. Maybe you are not liable to the death penalty for it, but certainly it is forbidden. Okay.

[Speaker D] There are those who say it is preferable that both die, no? No, clearly. That’s the question of “who says your blood is redder”; as a matter of Jewish law we rule that not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The reasoning is that of Rava and Rabbi Akiva. In the Torah, Rabbi Akiva. So I say, okay, never mind, this is a much more complicated topic. I raised several arguments there, one on top of another. But there is one point I want to take from there: what I claimed there is that doing an act is what is called there passive omission. Because that is the minimal state. The minimal state is that one should live. Anyone who wants to say that both should die bears the burden of proof. Because you are trying to take something from me; I want to save one person. One person I can save. You want to tell me to leave them both to die? You prove it—in the sense of, as with who bears the burden of proof. It can be framed in various ways. The minimal thing is first of all to save somebody. If you want to tell me not to save, prove it. You have to show me—you are trying to force me to do something less reasonable, less natural, less called-for. So that is called active commission. Passive omission means doing the separation surgery. And in many places you can see this. There are many places where you have two possibilities. Even, say, in a pressing circumstance, someone—there too one can discuss how to interpret it. You can be lenient like a certain view in a pressing circumstance even though we do not rule that way as a matter of Jewish law. Where did we ever say that in a pressing circumstance one may commit transgressions? If you rule like the other view, then acting according to that view is a transgression. Where did we ever say that one may commit transgressions in a pressing circumstance? The claim is that when you rule like the other view in a place where you did not really decide, usually you go with the other view because passive omission is preferable. When there is a pressing circumstance, or that is the more minimal, safer view, or something like that—when there is a pressing circumstance, then that more minimal, safer view is this one. That is the claim. So that is one possible explanation, of course, it’s not necessarily… that’s apparently what emerges from the Rema. The Rema at the beginning of Torat Chatat says there that he never ruled leniently against Jewish law. He has several leniencies that go quite far: new grain outside the Land of Israel, ordinary gentile wine, he has various things, kiddushin on Sabbath eve, various things. He says that nowhere did he ever rule leniently against Jewish law. Fine—but if it’s not against Jewish law, then what does it mean to rule leniently? That is Jewish law. The point is that usually we rule like the other view, but in a pressing circumstance we rule like this view, and that is not against Jewish law, because even following the other view is not that Jewish law says to follow the other view; rather, that is the minimal act, because you are in doubt. If there are no constraints, you rule like the other view because it is safer. But in a place where there is a pressing circumstance, then here this is the safer view—even though here, seemingly, you are violating Jewish law. No, because here this is actually your passive omission. Call it the minimal price. It is the minimal-price view because it is a pressing circumstance. You will not pay the price of the pressing circumstance; that is a decision of minimal price. Okay? Very often there is this hesitation—well, which view should we follow?—and the intuition of halakhic decisors is that passive omission is preferable. But passive omission is not always practical. Passive omission is very often principled passive omission. What is the natural approach and what is the less natural approach. Okay? And sometimes the natural approach is to do something. To save a life, for example, as you mentioned earlier, yes—what we said earlier: not to jump into the river to save someone because of human dignity. So not to jump—what is passive omission here? Is passive omission here not to jump? Passive omission here is yes, to jump. Because that is the minimal thing. First of all you are obligated to save. Whoever wants to argue that he should not save should bring proof. Let him bring proof that you are allowed not to save—there is a person’s life here. Do you understand? So much of this is the intuition that Arik mentioned earlier: I think here it’s a human life—what do you mean, what do you mean a prohibition violated by passive omission, what’s the problem? There is some intuition here that says no, here passive omission is to save. Therefore it is also defined as a prohibition. Why is it defined as a prohibition and not as a positive commandment? After all, it requires me to do something. So why is it a prohibition?

[Speaker D] It’s a prohibition because they tell me if you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you do not act, you are in a negative state—not that if you act you are in a positive state. If you do not act, you are in a negative state. Who permitted you to be in a negative state? Not to save? So that is passive omission. A negative state is active commission; to be in a negative state is active commission, even though in this case I bring about the negative state passively. Fine—that is active commission. Now I started to say earlier that there is a dispute between the Rosh and Maimonides regarding what happens with human dignity when what stands against it is another person’s transgression. My human dignity, when someone else, because of my human dignity, will commit a transgression by active commission. So Tosafot says—what? “Do not place a stumbling block”? That someone else will commit a transgression by active commission. No, not “do not place a stumbling block.” He will commit a transgression by active commission. I do not come to the religious court to testify because it is humiliating for me to stand before judges who are lesser than I am. But if the religious court does not know that this woman is forbidden to so-and-so, then he will marry her and commit a transgression by active commission. Tosafot says: in such a case my human dignity is overridden, because that other person commits a transgression by active commission. Now Maimonides also holds that way, and the Rosh disagrees with him regarding mixed fibers in the marketplace, because that too concerns someone else, okay? Although it is not exactly the same thing, because there too the human dignity is also someone else’s. Therefore the Noda B’Yehuda already begins this analysis with Maimonides and the Rosh. I am not at all sure they are right, but that is how they assume it: that human dignity with the prohibition—since the prohibition is somebody else’s—Maimonides and the Rosh disagree in Tosafot’s answer in tractate Shevuot. That is what they claim. The Noda B’Yehuda says that here. Now why do they bring this? Because if the prohibition committed by the other person is by active commission—if the conception is that human dignity being set aside in the face of an active transgression is not because of the severity of the prohibition, but because the directive when there is a clash is that passive omission is preferable—then automatically you are not committing the prohibition by active commission. But in the case of another person’s prohibition, it doesn’t belong to say: I am transgressing by passive omission. So what if he is transgressing by active commission? I am transgressing by passive omission, right? So why am I obligated to go testify? So what if as a result he will commit a transgression by active commission? If the conception is not that an active transgression is more severe, but simply that when there is a clash with an active transgression, passive omission means don’t do the transgression—here that is not true, because it is someone else who will commit the transgression by active commission. I am not going to testify—that is my passive omission, right? So why should I care that the other person is transgressing? This is proof that Tosafot, and Maimonides who follows that path, do not go with that side—that a clash is simply a clash resolved by passive omission. Rather, it really is a question of severity: active commission is more severe than passive omission, and therefore human dignity overrides in a case of passive omission but does not override in a case of active commission.

[Speaker D] Even though it’s someone else’s.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? It is still someone else’s. Right, that is a novelty, but once you have said that novelty, one can understand that another person’s transgression—another person’s severe transgression too—justifies infringing on your dignity. Fine, that is an additional novelty, but I can justify that novelty with other explanations as well. If you’re already asking that, there is a fascinating phenomenon. It already appears among the medieval authorities (Rishonim); the Raavad already begins this discussion a bit. There is a sick person on the Sabbath. Now he needs to eat meat. The doctors say he needs to eat meat. There is no kosher meat. Okay? There are two possibilities: either he will eat pork, or some other non-kosher meat, or they will slaughter an animal properly for him. What should be done? Which is preferable? To slaughter an animal?

[Speaker H] To slaughter an animal? Why? Then at least he’ll eat kosher.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? He’ll eat kosher, but you’re violating Sabbath law. Tosafot in Beitzah 9—

[Speaker D] There you bring—not you—

[Speaker H] If he eats pork, which is preferable?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are divided on this issue. Okay? There are all kinds of fascinating explanations. There is the well-known Ran. The Ran says that if you slaughter,

[Speaker D] If you slaughter—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you committed one prohibition, and afterward he can eat the whole animal to his heart’s content. But if you give him pork or non-kosher meat, then every olive-sized portion he eats is another transgression. So even though violating the Sabbath is a more severe prohibition—a Sabbath prohibition is punishable by stoning—still it is preferable to slaughter rather than give him the… yes, this is the quip about Abraham our forefather and the Egyptians: “Please say you are my sister.” Isaac and Abraham ask there about the Egyptians—what were they… do you know this quip? Sort of semi-yeshiva pilpulim. Why—Abraham says to Sarah, “Please say you are my sister,” so that they won’t kill him. The question always is: what did the Egyptians think in the first place? What was their initial assumption? You want to kill Abraham so that she won’t be a married woman—what is preferable, the prohibition of murder or the prohibition of adultery?

[Speaker C] You want to avoid the prohibition of adultery by violating the prohibition of murder? So the simple answer is: if they violate the prohibition of murder, then they violate murder once, and from then on—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And from then on, the adultery is no problem, it is permitted. But if they violate adultery, then every act of intercourse… Ah yes, I didn’t know this Har Maimon source; I know it from some joker friend of mine from Bnei Brak. I always tell this story: we were sitting around some table, and he saw a book that he really wanted that belonged to someone else. So he said to him, look, I have two possibilities: either to take your book and violate “do not steal,” or leave it with you and violate “do not covet.” Now, since in any case I am violating a prohibition, at least let the book be with me. So I say—I see the source is Har Maimon apparently; he stole it from him, fine. In any event, where were we? Ah yes. So the point is that from the view of Maimonides and Tosafot in Shevuot, we see that the conception in a clash between passive omission and active commission, between human dignity and a prohibition, is not resolved by passive omission but by the degree of severity of the prohibition. Because if it were resolved by passive omission, then here I should not have to go testify; I could refrain from going to testify. Passive omission. Why should I care that he commits the transgression by active commission? What does that have to do with me? Okay? But if you say it’s a matter of severity, then the severity is that he is committing a transgression by active commission, that is a severe transgression, and to prevent it you are forbidden—you are obligated to forgo your human dignity because this is a severe transgression. And therefore Maimonides and Tosafot disagree with the Rosh in this dispute, on the question of how one decides a clash between human dignity and prohibitions. That is what they say. The truth is, I am not sure they are right. Why? Because as I said earlier, it could be that passive omission and active commission are conceptual passive omission and active commission. And then my claim is that when he commits a transgression by active commission, then in effect I am creating a negative state here. I may not preserve my human dignity in a way that creates a negative state. That is the definition of passive omission. It is not the halakhic definition of severity; rather it is a halakhic definition: passive omission means do not create a negative state for the sake of human dignity. If you are merely not in a positive state, fine—you can do that. Okay? But do not create a negative state. Now, with the additional assumption we made earlier, that another person’s negative state radiates onto my dilemma, I can adopt that in the second approach as well. And then I say that passive omission—even if the decision is always passive omission—it is principled passive omission, not practical passive omission. And then I can explain Maimonides and Tosafot that way too. Okay, in short, all these things really clarify one point. It took me a long time, but I’m clarifying one point. Basically, the concepts passive omission and active commission can undergo abstraction and become, in effect, synonymous with positive commandments and prohibitions. It is simply an abstraction of the matter. And therefore the practical explanation for the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition is not wrong—not entirely wrong. It is simply a view that is, let’s call it, too concrete, a somewhat simplistic view. But it is still the correct view. When you abstract it, you arrive at the precise view. But it is an abstraction of the same issue; it is not a complete miss, this practical distinction between a positive commandment and a prohibition. Okay, so I’m done with that topic. I thought it would take me fifteen minutes. Now I’ll give the next example, which deals with the concept of money. What is money? Okay? There too we will do an abstraction of the matter, because the whole concept of money is one big abstraction. And here I’m going to do an abstraction within an abstraction, a story within a story. So the concept of money raises some non-trivial difficulties. First of all, maybe I’ll describe the accepted explanation of how this concept of money came into being. It is itself an abstraction. Because at first the economic market was basically conducted by barter, right? Meaning: I had tomatoes, you had a chair, you need tomatoes, I need a chair, I give you tomatoes, you give me a chair, and everything is fine. That is barter. Okay, the concept of barter is a form of acquisition that actually has no source in the Torah; they learn it from the Scroll of Ruth. Why? Because it doesn’t need a source. Barter is natural commerce; it is what people do. It’s not because Jewish law says so. All the forms of acquisition that we derive from the Torah are acquisitions where naturally people do not act that way, and you need someone to define that this too counts as acquisition, that this too counts as an economic act. So there you need a source, or reasoning, or whatever. But with barter you don’t need that; it is the simple natural act, this is how people act. Here you don’t need definitions from the Torah.

[Speaker I] Maybe you do need definitions of when the transaction is complete, okay,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, clearly you need some definitions here, but the very concept of barter is a natural concept. It’s not—therefore too, by the way, they learn it from the Scroll of Ruth. Do they have a source from the Torah? So if there is a source from the Torah, why do I need the Scroll of Ruth? Because the Scroll of Ruth is simply an indication that this is how people do it, that’s all. It’s not a source; it’s just clarification.

[Speaker D] The wording there is as though in the end it’s a command form: “a man drew off his shoe.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s how people act. It’s a description of how people act: “a man drew off his shoe.” It’s a description of what people are accustomed to do. There’s no command there; it’s not that. In any event, at first there was barter. Then problems arose—the market got stuck. Why did the market get stuck? Say you have a chair and I have tomatoes. You want tomatoes, but I don’t want a chair. I don’t need a chair; I already have chairs at home. So you want to give me the chair and get tomatoes, but I don’t need the chair. So what do we do? We have to find someone who has peppers and needs a chair, and you need peppers. So you’ll give him the chair, he’ll give you the peppers, he’ll give me the chair, I’ll give him the tomatoes—we’ll make a barter transaction through a third party. But then we have to find someone who specifically needs what I want to give and can give what you need, so he can mediate between us. Do I need three exchange rates? What? Yes, of course you need three exchange rates. Assuming exchange rates are known, you still need human beings who need these goods. Now this is a stuck market. Every time you want to buy tomatoes, go search the whole world for someone who has peppers and needs chairs in order to buy tomatoes. It’s absurd. By the time you find him, the other guy will already have sold his chair for eggs. You can’t run a market like this. So what do you do? The brilliant idea arose—really simple, but brilliant—of money. What does that mean? You now produce something that nobody needs, and everyone chases after it even though nobody needs it. That’s why money is idolatry. Money is something with no substance, yet people worship it. Meaning, that money has no use at all—exactly like an idol. So what money basically does is provide a concrete representation of the concept of value. The concept of value is an abstract concept. When you exchange ten tomatoes for a chair, what you are really saying is that a tomato is worth one-tenth of a chair. What connection is there? A tomato is a tomato and a chair is a chair. How are you putting them on one scale and saying that this is worth ten times that, or that this is more than that? When you rank things, you need to rank them on some common scale, right? What is the common scale of chairs and tomatoes? As I once asked: which is greater, human kindness or the water in the ocean? It’s not that I don’t know the answer—there is no answer. The question is meaningless, because they are not measured in common units. So what does “which is greater” mean? “Greater” means they are of the same kind, so here there are three and there there are two, and three is more than two. Three oranges are more than two oranges, but three oranges are not more than four degrees, nor less than four degrees of temperature. It’s irrelevant; they don’t measure the same thing. I once heard another good example of abstraction—we may talk about it later. So in what sense is the tomato—how is this rate created? This exchange rate, right, on which all barter is based. A rate basically says that there is another concept in the market, even though nobody sees it and nobody says it, and that is the concept of value. Basically we arrange all products on some scale, and that scale is called value. Then you say, okay, a tomato is one on the value scale, a chair is ten on the value scale, and now you say, fine, ten tomatoes equal a chair. But apples too are on the same scale, and tables too, everything—houses, everything—is on that same scale. So there is some abstract scale called value, and that’s it. What?

[Speaker C] Is that just fiction, or is it something real?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, but the fact is they engaged in barter, and the fact is they exchanged the chair for ten tomatoes, not for eight and not for twelve. Which means there is a rate, so it represents something real. It represents something real. I don’t know what this thing is that it represents, but it represents something real. It’s not arbitrary; it’s not conventional. It is something real—yes, a force, how much it is needed. How much it is needed and against how much of it exists—of course supply and demand—that is what determines the value of things. But those are later ideas; right now I am talking at the most primitive stages of the market. So basically there is such a thing called value, an abstract concept. But if you understand that this is how it works, that’s why we need philosophers in the world. You see? The philosopher was the only one who could understand that there is here an abstract concept that nobody can point to and nobody knows what it is, and it is called value. And everything is ranked on that scale, the scale of value, which nobody has ever seen or heard, and nobody even talked in those terms. Do you understand? As long as there was no money, nobody could talk about value. What is value? Tomatoes are like a chair. If I ask what the value of a tomato is, the question has no meaning. When there is money, then you can explain to me what the value of a tomato is—two shekels, two shekels. Okay. But before that, you can ask me: do you mean in chairs or in apples? There is no such thing as the value of a tomato. It’s like, what is the difference between a hyrax? You know these nonsense questions? The question has no meaning. But after the philosopher diagnoses this concept called value, then suddenly you say, wait, so there are degrees of value. So a tomato is one on the value scale, a chair is ten on the value scale, a house is one hundred thousand on the value scale, and so on. From there it is a short road to saying: okay, then let’s produce things that have no use at all, just nonsense. Once it was salt, by the way. Salt was the medium of exchange. Why? Because it was common, there was a lot of salt. It wasn’t something rare?

[Speaker D] I thought because it was in places.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it was rare? I may be mistaken, but it seems to me this arose דווקא in places where there was salt; it was just a marker. You take something easy to obtain in order to mark degrees of value.

[Speaker D] But if it’s easy to obtain, then it won’t have value. Meaning, it won’t be able to represent value, because anyone can bring salt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, when you use salt as a medium of exchange, then the salt has to be rare. Yes, it’s like Bitcoin—you need to produce Bitcoin, you need a hard puzzle in order to mine Bitcoin, because if anyone can produce Bitcoin then it has no meaning. But I’m saying, when you speak in terms of how many units of salt something is worth—leave it, I’m not using salt as a medium of exchange, I’m using salt as my unit of value—then it doesn’t matter. Fine, not important, it’s really a historical question, not interesting. So now I’m saying: the next natural step was, okay, let’s define the concept of money. And money means a tangible expression of the abstract concept called value. Now I produce these coins. Of course, once again, if anyone can produce as much as he wants, it has no meaning. The king has to mint them, and the king has to determine how many are produced, and he is the only one who can produce them, and that’s it. Or some institution, some authorized state authority. Otherwise anyone can produce as much money as he wants, and that’s that. And therefore there is a form on the money, because the king has to stamp the coins, and so on. And then money was created. Money is basically the concretization of the abstract concept called value. This reminds me of the famous joke: what is the philosopher’s dream, the height of his longing? That he is sitting in a dark movie theater, and suddenly the lights go on and someone shouts: is there a philosopher here? Doctors usually turn on the lights when there is an emergency and ask, is there a doctor here? Nobody ever needs philosophers, so his great longing is that one day the lights will go on in the cinema and someone will shout: is there a philosopher here? Meaning, of course, that will never happen. But here, in the roots of economics, some philosopher was sitting there, I’m sure. To diagnose this thing—that there is some abstract concept called value here—you have to be a philosopher. You have a process that, say, we just read in the weekly Torah portion, “four hundred shekels of silver, accepted by the merchant,” in the sense that these were, say, the weight of a certain material. No, so the question whether the coin is only representative or whether the coin itself must be worth its face value—that is another whole discussion, we won’t get into it now. Of course, after the philosopher comes the startup entrepreneur who turns philosophy into money. The philosopher stays poor. The startup entrepreneur says, okay, you found the concept of value; now I’m telling you, let’s produce things—coins or notes, whatever—that will represent the concept of value. And unbelievably, compared to this invention, the invention of the wheel is child’s play. It is unbelievable how powerful an invention this is. Because do you understand that it now frees the entire market? When I need a chair and I have tomatoes, and you don’t need tomatoes, what do I do? I give you money for the chair. You, with that money, will buy what you need. I don’t have what you need—so what? Go to whoever has what you need and buy it from him. No need for mediation. I can receive the chair when I need it, and you can take the money and buy what you need when you need it, and you won’t depend on whether the goods I have are the goods you need, or whether he will depend on the goods… on some person who has the goods he needs and needs the goods that I have. Okay? You don’t need to find such a person, because now everyone needs money—money answers everything. Yes, everyone needs it, and this frees the market. And that is basically the concept of value. The concept of money, sorry. The concept of money is the concretization of the abstract concept called value. Okay, now this process is very beautiful, because what I want to describe now is how we do the opposite abstraction: we go back from the concept of money to the concept of value, which is also an abstraction. And we talked about this—if you remember in the introduction, I said that many times there is some concretization; we carried out a process of concretization, which itself was really some kind of abstraction, and then returning from the concrete back to the abstract is also an abstraction. Okay? We saw a few examples of this there, and here too we will see exactly the same thing. So the concept of money, in the end, is founded on abstraction: you define it, you understand that in the background there is some abstract concept called value. You concretize it by producing coins that represent that concept of value, and now that is the situation we are in. Now the question is what happens next. The next stage is that we basically conduct transactions with money, so I pay money and receive goods, right? But sometimes I want to pay goods in exchange for goods—to go back, as it were, to barter. But I don’t want to go back to barter, because going back to barter clogs the market, and I don’t want to go back to barter. Let’s say you have a chair and I have tomatoes, okay? Now we were stuck, because without money you don’t need the tomatoes, and I need the chair, so what do we do? So there is money, and that solves the problem. Now if I don’t have money but I do have tomatoes, there is no problem at all. I’ll give you the tomatoes and you’ll give me the chair. The tomatoes I give you are not because you need tomatoes, but because the tomatoes are worth money. Now with those tomatoes you will buy the peppers that you need—what’s the problem? Pay with tomatoes. The tomatoes are worth money. Once the concept of money exists, the objects themselves can suddenly be perceived as expressions of the concept of money. Now I can use a book—rather than using it to read—as the equivalent of one hundred shekels. It is worth one hundred shekels, so I’ll give you the book, I’ll buy the chair with those one hundred shekels, and you’ll take this book—you don’t need this book, you’re not interested in this book. You’ll take this book and buy with it the chair you need; you’ll use it as money-equivalent. And the Sages say: money-equivalent is like money. What? A barter transaction? It doesn’t matter. A barter transaction is not exactly this, because usually it’s goods you need, but not—

[Speaker B] It doesn’t matter, it’s goods for goods?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like that, yes. But here it’s not goods for goods. I’m using goods as money, and that is an important point—we’ll get to it.

[Speaker B] Here too I determine the goods…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You determine the value, but it’s still merchandise and not money. We’ll talk about that; I need the next steps in order to clarify this point, because that’s exactly the point I want to discuss. So in fact what I’m doing here, after the concept of money already exists, suddenly the possibility opens up that actually we never needed money at all, do you understand? We erase money and go back. After we invented the concept of money, we throw it away again; we don’t need it anymore, just like today, by the way. What do people do today? That’s what happens today—nobody uses money anymore. There are credit cards, Bit, all kinds of computerized transfers, you make an entry. You no longer need tangible things called money. Why? Because in the end, once I understood the concept of value, then I really don’t need its representations—why should I care? I transfer to you one hundred units of value. What difference does it make whether I gave you the object that symbolizes them or I just recorded in the bank that now you have one hundred shekels more in your account? Nothing happened except a bank entry; we didn’t do anything. But that doesn’t matter, because you don’t really have to transfer the money for it to happen. Money is only a symbol, so now I have another way to manage the inventory, to define for each person how much money he has and how much money he doesn’t have. It’s just inventory management, right? So in fact what I did in earlier periods, before there were checks and bank transfers and credit cards, which are maybe sophisticated methods, actually it could have been done back then too. I take the tomatoes that you don’t need, and I give them to you not as tomatoes but as the equivalent of one hundred shekels, an item of value equivalent to money as money. The question is whether there is a difference between that and a barter deal. I give you tomatoes and you give me a chair, right? Seemingly that’s what happened in primitive transactions, right? We exchanged tomatoes for a chair. Understand, we went a whole step and then came back to exactly the same point we started from. We began with barter, we freed up the market by inventing money, by identifying the philosophy of value, translating it into money, making it concrete in money, okay? And we freed the market. And now suddenly we say, wait, who needs the money? Let’s go back to the abstract concept of value. We invented enough philosopher; we don’t need the start-up guy. The philosopher is enough. Why? If I understand the concept of money—merchandise. Wait, if I understand the concept of money, if I understand the concept of value, sorry, then I don’t need money. The tomato is worth one hundred shekels. So I use the tomato as my currency. I give you the tomato in exchange for the chair. Not because you need a tomato, not because you’re going to need a tomato—go find someone who needs a tomato. Let’s assume the tomato keeps; leave wear and tear aside for the moment, okay? Find someone who needs a tomato and pay him with the tomato. What’s the problem? Why do I need to translate this into money? I don’t. Because once objects have value, you no longer need an objective representation of value. The objects themselves become the representation of value. And that’s what the Sages say: an item of value equivalent to money is like money.

[Speaker C] But it’s less practical, because it’s easier for me to use some kind of representation that I can produce.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Less practical, fine, but on the principled level it makes no difference. On the principled level you don’t need money. It’s less practical also because there’s wear and tear; the tomato spoils. Okay, but on the principled level I—

[Speaker B] I still have to find the same person who wants the tomato.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you don’t have to. Give the tomato to someone else. Suppose you want a table from somebody else. He doesn’t need tomatoes. Take the tomatoes I gave you, which you don’t need, and give them to him as money, until eventually they reach someone who does need the tomatoes. That’s what we do with oil barrels from the year 2200, right? People trade on the stock exchange in barrels of oil that will be pumped in two hundred years. Who knows whether there’ll be autonomous cars and nobody will use oil—but yes, they trade in future barrels of oil, future commodities.

[Speaker D] No, but not for two hundred years, I don’t think two hundred.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter—future commodities. What are future commodities? In fact I don’t need the oil. I use these future commodities as some kind of equivalent of money; I buy it, but in the very end someone will get stuck with the oil itself, not with an entry saying he has future barrels of oil at his disposal—you get stuck with oil. Now you need to find someone who will also use it, otherwise you can drink the oil and recite over it, “By whose word all things came to be.” I don’t know; you’ve got nothing to do with it, right? In the very end it does have to be used. True, but meanwhile I can pass the tomatoes from one person to another until someone uses the tomatoes. Well, same with the oil—that’s the assumption. Why do people sell the oil? Because the assumption is that in the very end, when it becomes actual oil and not theoretical oil, there will be someone who needs it, because oil is useful. And with things that aren’t useful you can’t do that. Otherwise what’s the problem? I could have sold you barrels of fairies that will be drawn from the seventh heaven in two hundred years, no problem. I can pass them to you and you’ll pass them to him and we’ll do transactions, everything is fine. The problem is that in two hundred years someone will get stuck with those fairies, and now what are you going to do with them? I don’t know. It’s like Leah Goldberg’s story—do you know the story about the three nuts? “There was once a tale of three nuts full of secrets and mysteries, and whoever discovers their secret will be the happiest man in the world,” right? It’s a very famous children’s story. That’s exactly it. It’s exactly the story of money. He takes the nuts, they have some wonderful secret, he doesn’t say what the secret is, he gives them to the next person and gets from him what he wants. The second person walks around with the nuts and has no idea what to do with them; he needs someone else to take the nuts and then he gets what he needs. And they pass the nuts from one person to another, and nobody ever uses the nuts, but it solves all the—

[Speaker E] problems. The nuts themselves have no value of their own, but if you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] believe they have value, then everything is fine. Or maybe it’s a little like the Talmudic text, where in the end, from the best of his property I collect payment from the damager. Yes, so it’s an equivalent of money, but an equivalent of money is something that really does have value in the end. But an equivalent of money really is worth something in the end. It’s not the same thing. It’s equivalent to money like ordinary money, but the nuts aren’t worth anything; you just believe in them. That’s symbolic money. It’s like in the army, you know, in our company, if someone was getting discharged and he was missing something, some piece of equipment, he’d take it from the guys and clear out on the equipment. And then they were missing equipment too, right? When they got discharged, they’d take it from some company that was still around, right? And it all works, and there’s never any problem—as long as everyone is a gentleman and everything keeps going as usual, everything will be fine. When the Messiah comes and they dismantle the army, they’ll be short on fatigues. No, every once in a while there are wars—

[Speaker D] and then they say there’s missing equipment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, fine, on base, on base.

[Speaker D] Yes, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] there’s equipment you don’t need, you know. There’s equipment you don’t need that people just sign for. So there you go—that’s exactly the same thing. You can decide that something has value and pass it along; if everyone agrees that it has value, then it has value. That’s currency; that’s exactly currency. The coin has no value in itself, but we all agreed that it has value—no problem. But on the other hand, as I said before, you can also do this with actual merchandise. And when I pay you with merchandise as an equivalent of money in exchange for other merchandise, we have not returned to barter—that’s my claim. We have not returned to barter, because the merchandise here serves me as value, not as merchandise; you don’t need these tomatoes. This is still a developed market; it’s not the primitive barter market.

[Speaker D] They really should have skipped that stage.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. If they had been smart, if the philosopher had been smart and had given up on the start-up guy from the beginning, then he really could have started directly with the barter transaction and defined it as a money transaction and not as a barter transaction, while using only merchandise. That’s all.

[Speaker D] It could be that indeed that’s really how it was before they invented money, except that money—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s barter. But the fact is that they invented money, because they invented it because there was a need.

[Speaker D] It got stuck without it. There was a need; this method was simply first of all practical.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because of practicality. Okay, fine. We won’t argue about history; it’s not important. Could be. I’m saying, the nice point here is that when you understand this simple description that I gave here, you’ll see how many problems it solves that the later authorities struggle over and don’t understand. It’s simply unbelievable. And questions that seem to have no way out. Simply—once you understand this, everything is clear. Good.