Dogmatics – Lecture 23
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Maimonides' twelfth principle: belief in the coming of the Messiah and refraining from setting a time
- The meaning of “one must not say he is delayed”: no deadline, and no obligation to say “he will come today”
- “One must not set a time for him” as a principled claim: there is no such information because the future depends on choice
- If they merit it, I will hasten it; if they do not, in its time: distinguishing between a path dependent on deeds and a possible final date
- Principles of faith versus practical exhortation: the commandments are not “in order to bring the Messiah”
- “May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire”: two reasons, one principled and one practical-historical
- Verses in the Torah and the Prophets and their ambiguity: doubt about “explicitly” and the difficulty of retroactive examples
- The house of David, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” and the Hasmoneans: a difficulty between commandment and prophecy, and between text and history
- Letter skips, the Oracle of Delphi, and hindsight wisdom: a warning against overly flexible interpretation
- Rabbi Hillel and the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim: the possibility of disagreeing without being a “heretic with regard to a principle,” and the meaning of the term “principle”
- Historical meaning without certainty about a final purpose: perfection, perfecting, and Leibowitz
- A chosen people, Jewish success, and cultural-evolutionary explanations without metaphysics
- Messianism versus belief in the coming of the Messiah, and continuing the discussion
Summary
General Overview
The text presents Maimonides' twelfth principle about the messianic era and develops a reading that emphasizes the obligation to believe that the Messiah will come, not to say he is delayed, and to continue waiting even when he tarries, while forbidding setting a time or interpreting verses so as to derive a date from them. The speaker argues that according to Maimonides there is no date for the coming of the Messiah because it depends on the actions and choices of human beings, and therefore there is no existing “information” that can be calculated. Beyond that, calculations of the end are practically dangerous because they can lead to crises and conversions out of Judaism when expectations collapse. At the same time, he expresses perplexity and doubt about how explicit the proofs from the Torah and the Prophets really are, raises Rabbi Hillel's opinion that Israel has no Messiah, and suggests that turning the idea of the Messiah into a dogmatic “principle” is a later move that sharpens the question of why the matter is phrased so ambiguously.
Maimonides' twelfth principle: belief in the coming of the Messiah and refraining from setting a time
The twelfth principle is to believe and affirm that the Messiah will come, and one must not say he is delayed, but rather, “though he may tarry, wait for him.” The prohibition includes “one must not set a time for him” and “not interpret the verses in order to derive from them the time of his coming,” and the Sages said, “May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire.” Belief in the Messiah is supposed to be “out of greatness and love,” and one should pray for his coming “in accordance with what was said about him by every prophet, from Moses to Malachi.” Anyone who doubts him or belittles the matter is considered to be denying the Torah, which promised him explicitly in the section of Balaam and in the section of “You are standing today.”
The meaning of “one must not say he is delayed”: no deadline, and no obligation to say “he will come today”
The speaker explains that “one must not say he is delayed” follows from the fact that there is no moment by which the Messiah “has to” arrive, so the concept of delay in the sense of missing a deadline does not apply. He argues that this differs from common statements according to which one must believe that the Messiah will come today, and presents Maimonides as writing the opposite: that there is no target date, and therefore no reason to be disappointed anew every day, but rather to keep waiting without despair. He distinguishes between believing that the Messiah can come today and deciding that he must come today, and portrays the notion of a “daily malfunction” as unreasonable and unsupported by Maimonides.
“One must not set a time for him” as a principled claim: there is no such information because the future depends on choice
The speaker argues that “one must not set a time for him” is not only because the time is hidden from us, but because “there is no time,” since the coming of the Messiah depends on circumstances and on human action. He generalizes this into a broader principle, according to which a future that depends on human choices cannot be predicted because the information about those future choices “does not exist,” unlike natural phenomena such as an earthquake, where the information exists even if it is difficult to obtain. He presents this as an unusual sharpening of the idea, according to which it is not only that human beings do not know, but “even the Holy One, blessed be He—if you ask Him, He too would tell you, ‘I don’t know,’” because there is no fixed date in advance.
If they merit it, I will hasten it; if they do not, in its time: distinguishing between a path dependent on deeds and a possible final date
The text cites the rabbinic statement, “If they merit it, I will hasten it; if they do not, in its time,” in order to distinguish between an accelerated coming dependent on our deeds and the possibility of a “final date at the end of days” when it will happen in any case. It suggests that perhaps one can try to calculate the “in its time” side if there really is a fixed date there, but stresses that regarding the “I will hasten it” side, there is nothing to calculate because there is no date at all. It raises the possibility that Maimonides may still forbid even calculation of the “final date,” but explains that if so, that would be for other reasons and not because there is no date on that track.
Principles of faith versus practical exhortation: the commandments are not “in order to bring the Messiah”
The speaker explains that Maimonides here is dealing with principles of faith as a theological scheme, not with preaching or a call to public action in the style of “Come on, let’s repent, and then he’ll arrive.” He compares this to the laws of Grace after Meals, where Maimonides does not deliver a moral “speech” but defines the laws, and presents the commandments in Maimonides as things done “because one must do the truth because it is truth,” not as a tool for bringing the Messiah. He defines the Messiah as part of “the divine plan” and the destiny of the world to reach its repair, not as part of the doctrine of reward and punishment or as an instrumental motivation for keeping the commandments.
“May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire”: two reasons, one principled and one practical-historical
The speaker distinguishes between a principled reason, according to which “there is nothing to calculate” because there is no date, and a practical reason, according to which calculations of the end are dangerous because they may cause severe damage when they turn out to be wrong. He brings historical examples of crises following failed end-date predictions, including Sabbatai Zevi and phenomena in Jerusalem at the beginning of the twentieth century described in Shulamit Lapid’s book Like Broken Earthenware, in which disappointed messianic expectation led to mass conversion to Christianity in the old yishuv. He also mentions stories about an oath sworn by a righteous man in order to calm messianic excitement and prevent a crisis, and explains the calming move as a response to fear of religious collapse after disappointment, to the point of willingness to pay a personal price in order to preserve the public.
Verses in the Torah and the Prophets and their ambiguity: doubt about “explicitly” and the difficulty of retroactive examples
The speaker declares his perplexity and doubt as to whether the coming of the Messiah is “really written” in the section of Balaam and in the section of “You are standing today,” and argues that the verses are ambiguous and open to many interpretations. He explains that his doubt is not denial of the Torah but doubt about the correct interpretation of the text, and he challenges the use of threats of heresy as a way of imposing an interpretation. He adds that the claim that all the prophets said this does not solve the problem either, because prophetic formulations are sometimes mystical and ambiguous, and it is difficult to derive from them a clear meaning or an unambiguous timing.
The house of David, “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” and the Hasmoneans: a difficulty between commandment and prophecy, and between text and history
The text presents Maimonides’ statement that it follows from this principle that Israel has no king except from David and specifically from the seed of Solomon, and that anyone who disagrees regarding this family has denied God and the words of His prophets. The speaker points to an interpretive dispute over whether “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” is a commandment or a prophecy, and argues that if it is a prophecy then it “was not fulfilled” in its plain sense in light of the kings of Israel who were not from the house of David, and also the Hasmoneans. He concludes that the interpretive ambiguity requires honesty and a cautious stance, and criticizes enthusiasm over verses that fit modern events only in hindsight, when before the event no one knew how to derive a prediction from them.
Letter skips, the Oracle of Delphi, and hindsight wisdom: a warning against overly flexible interpretation
The speaker compares retroactive prophetic interpretation to the phenomenon of letter skips in the Torah and to the mechanism of general prophecies in the style of the Oracle of Delphi or “Pirkei Avot,” where a broad formulation can fit almost any outcome. He admits that some of the criticism of letter skips is not absolutely decisive, because even a post-facto discovery could be meaningful if it passes clear statistical tests, but argues that usually there is no unambiguous interpretation that forces one particular reading of the verses. As an example he brings “an eye for an eye,” which is explicitly written, and yet Jewish law determines monetary compensation, concluding that linguistic explicitness is not always a sufficient basis for an unequivocal determination.
Rabbi Hillel and the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim: the possibility of disagreeing without being a “heretic with regard to a principle,” and the meaning of the term “principle”
The text mentions Rabbi Hillel’s statement in tractate Sanhedrin that Israel has no Messiah because they already “consumed him” in the days of Hezekiah, and emphasizes that this creates a difficulty in relation to defining belief in the coming of the Messiah as a binding principle of faith. It cites the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim, who rules that Rabbi Hillel sinned בכך שלא האמין בביאת הגואל but “was not a heretic with regard to a principle,” and adds that this is also the opinion of “later authorities who did not count the coming of the Messiah or belief in creation ex nihilo among the principles.” The speaker concludes that if a legitimate amora could arrive at such a position, then the concept of a “principle” itself becomes problematic, and he presents this as part of a process of dogmatization that intensified after Maimonides and did not exist in that same framework before him.
Historical meaning without certainty about a final purpose: perfection, perfecting, and Leibowitz
The text raises the question whether there is any such thing at all as a “repaired world” of which one can say that it has been attained, and attributes to Leibowitz the position that there is no such final repaired state, but at most an expectation whose purpose is to motivate. The speaker suggests the possibility of meaning for the world through the very process of perfecting and progressing even without reaching a state of perfection, and explains this through the idea that “in the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand,” as a value of movement and derivative, not only of the destination. He uses an asymptotic model of approaching a limit to show that one can approach perfection without reaching it, and presents this possibility as an answer to the question of how there can be a purpose of continual improvement even if no absolute final state is ever realized.
A chosen people, Jewish success, and cultural-evolutionary explanations without metaphysics
The speaker rejects the idea of “a chosen people” in the metaphysical-essentialist sense of a differently constructed soul, and explains Jewish achievements as deriving from culture, historical biography, and mechanisms of natural selection that reward scholarship and initiative. He argues that a society that values scholarship creates a survival advantage for scholars, so that genetic components too can accumulate through matchmaking, resources, and number of children, and he gives the example of the Haredi world, in which a scholar receives support that enables a large family. He also refers to the story about South Korea taking an interest in the Talmud in order to understand creativity, and interprets the distinctiveness as systematic yet creative thinking born from a culture of study, while criticizing arrogance that dismisses the complexity of academia.
Messianism versus belief in the coming of the Messiah, and continuing the discussion
At the end of the text, the speaker distinguishes between belief in the coming of the Messiah and “messianism” as a phenomenon, and states that next time he wants to talk about the concept of messianism and expand beyond a reading of the principle itself. He rejects the claim that a Messiah as king is necessarily anachronistic, and maintains that the absence of a Messiah now is not a principled difficulty with the possibility that he will come in the future, even if there is an interpretation according to which Messiah means an era and not necessarily a person. He notes that he will not deeply analyze Maimonides’ description of the Messiah in the Mishneh Torah but will comment on it, and he closes with a pause in the lecture ahead of the continuation.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, let’s begin. We’re at the twelfth principle, which is the Messiah. The twelfth foundation: the days of the Messiah. And it is to believe and affirm that he will come, and one must not say that he is delayed. Though he may tarry, wait for him. And one must not set a time for him, nor interpret the verses in order to derive from them the time of his coming. The Sages said: May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire. And to believe in him out of greatness and love, and to pray for his coming in accordance with what was said about him by every prophet, from Moses to Malachi. And whoever doubts him or belittles the matter, behold, he denies the Torah, which promised him explicitly in the section of Balaam and in the section of “You are standing today.” And included in this principle is that Israel has no king except from David, and specifically from the seed of Solomon, and whoever disagrees regarding this family has denied God and the words of His prophets. Let’s see for a moment what is really here. First of all, one must believe and affirm that he will come. What does “affirm” mean? It probably means to internalize within yourself that this is true, right? To convince yourself, I don’t know what to call it. “And one must not say that he is delayed.” Though he may tarry, wait for him. What does it mean, one must not say that he is delayed? Why must one not say that he is delayed? Either because he is not supposed to have a set time by which he must arrive, so delay doesn’t apply—there is no time by which he has to come. But maybe the meaning is: one should not be disappointed that he is late; rather, though he may tarry, wait for him. Meaning, you have to keep waiting for him all the time. But notice that this is different from the common statements that say you have to wait for him, that you have to believe that today he will come. No, that is not what is written in Maimonides. If anything, Maimonides writes the opposite. What Maimonides writes is that you do not have to believe that today he will come, but the opposite: because there is no target date, the fact that he has not come does not mean he is delayed. You are not supposed to be disappointed by that; rather, you should continue to wait, meaning not to despair. But that’s not—Maimonides does not write here that you have to—yes, there are all kinds of statements like that, that you have to believe that today he will come. You have to believe that today he can come; that’s something else. And some people say there is some kind of spiritual advantage in that—come on, come on, he’ll come today already. If he didn’t arrive, then some sort of malfunction really happened here. Yes, for some reason we’ve had this malfunction for a few thousand years already; every day the malfunction repeats itself, and we’re still supposed to see it as some accidental glitch that happens every day—like the sunrise in the morning, another glitch that happens every morning. But Maimonides does not write that. Maimonides writes the opposite. He says there is no target date, and therefore you have no reason to be disappointed that he is late; you have to continue and wait. Meaning, the fact that he has not come does not mean that he will not come. Okay? So that’s his first statement. “And one must not set a time for him.” And here he goes on. Not only that—it is forbidden even to expect him at a specific time or to set a specific time for him. He pushes further what before was only implied. Earlier I said: there is no target date, therefore his being late is not lateness; you are not supposed to be disappointed or despair because there is no such thing as being late—he has no appointed time. And therefore he says here, one must not set a time for him. Later he will say: nor interpret the verses in order to derive from them the time of his coming. So what does “not set a time for him” mean? It means: don’t think that there is some defined time at which he is supposed to come in general, regardless of whether your interpretation of the verses is correct or whether you are calculating the end or anything like that. No—one must not set a time for him because in truth there is no time. Not because you don’t know what the time is. Very often people tell you: don’t set a time for him because who knows—you don’t know, you’re dealing with hidden things. But this is not a matter of hidden things at all. He has no time. It’s not that there is a time and we just don’t know it, and it is inaccessible to us. There isn’t one—there is no time. “In its time”—yes, “If they merit it, I will hasten it; if they do not, in its time.” So there is some timing that could be at the end of days, where indeed he will come. But in the ongoing flow of our history, it’s not that there is some date and we just don’t know what it is. There is no date. And that is a very big difference. So as I understand Maimonides, Maimonides is not saying that calculating the end is forbidden because you are dealing with something beyond you. Don’t deal with it because you have no access to that information. It’s hidden information; it exists only with the Holy One, blessed be He. No—it doesn’t even exist with the Holy One, blessed be He. There is no such information. Why? Because there is no date for when the Messiah will come. It depends on circumstances. If we merit it, the Holy One, blessed be He, will send us the Messiah. If we do not merit it, then He will not send him. There is no specific date already written somewhere in heaven, and now the only question is whether it is accessible to us or not. That, it seems to me, is what Maimonides wants to sharpen here. He wants to say: there is no date. Not: don’t deal with it because this is a demand to know what is beyond you, okay? Then he says: nor interpret the verses in order to derive from them the time of his coming. Yes, and don’t try to look for it in the verses. Why not? Not because you won’t succeed. Some people did “succeed.” What does “succeed” mean? They came up with some date. But rather because there is no date. Again, I think Maimonides is taking this to a place that is not where people usually take it. Don’t engage in calculations of the end from the verses, not because it is deeply hidden there, but because it is not hidden there at all. There is no date. Even in the world of ideas or in the treasury of the Holy One, blessed be He, there is no date. It’s not that there is some hidden date—there isn’t. Therefore it will not be found in the verses either. What are you looking for in the verses? There is nothing there to look for.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, isn’t it simply a matter of saying that you can’t predict the future, period? Any future can’t be predicted, whether it’s the coming of the Messiah or whatever—anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Some futures are deterministic, and those can in principle be predicted. Maybe it’s complicated, but the Holy One, blessed be He, can. But here it depends on our deeds, it depends on our choices.
[Speaker B] Meaning, like what can the Holy One, blessed be He, predict?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—whether there will be an earthquake somewhere. That’s a natural phenomenon that we don’t know how to predict, at least not exactly. There are attempts to predict it, but we do it—yes, we have no precise method for doing it.
[Speaker B] Okay, so apparently you can’t predict a future that depends on human beings.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s because of free choice.
[Speaker B] And any future that depends on human beings can’t be predicted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s because it depends on free choice. And the reason for that is that the information about what will happen in the future does not exist. The information about the earthquake already exists today. We cannot access it because it’s complicated. But the information exists; the Holy One, blessed be He, knows it. The information about future human choices—the information does not exist. It’s not that we just don’t know how to access it. That’s something else.
[Speaker B] No, I understand, but I mean, I’m trying to generalize this into something broader—that any future that depends on human beings can’t be predicted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, absolutely. This is a particular case of that, obviously.
[Speaker B] Yes, exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What Maimonides is saying is that there is no date because it depends on our deeds—whether we are worthy or not worthy. It depends on that. So just as you can’t predict what human beings will do, certainly you can’t predict what the result of what they do will be—whether the Messiah will come or not come. So there is a claim here, and notice that this is not the common conception. The common conception is that it is forbidden to do this because it is beyond us; we don’t know, only the Holy One, blessed be He, knows, He keeps this information close to His chest. And his claim, if I understand Maimonides correctly, is that there is no information—not even close to His chest. Even the Holy One, blessed be He—if you ask Him, He too would tell you: I don’t know.
[Speaker B] Yes, but there is a view that says there really is a date—the latest possible date, so to speak.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so that’s what I said: there is “in its time” and “I will hasten it.” That’s a rabbinic midrash. So if they do not merit it, then “in its time”; if they do merit it, then “I will hasten it.” So there is some date—as the Sages at least say, again—some final date at the end of days, where if nothing has happened by then, the Messiah will come in any case. That’s something else. So someone who wants to predict that date—it may be possible to try and predict it. Maybe you won’t succeed, but there is such a date. But when you try to predict whether it will happen today or tomorrow, there is no such date. Regarding “I will hasten it,” it depends on our deeds. Regarding “in its time,” that is part of the Holy One’s plan, so it may be that there is a fixed date there.
[Speaker B] No, but how do we know that Maimonides is specifically not talking about that final date?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? How can one—
[Speaker B] It could be that Maimonides is saying even that final date—don’t try to calculate it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you won’t find that either. That could be. But there, if he tells you not to find it, not to look for it, that would be for other reasons. Don’t look. Not looking for the date of “I will hasten it” is because there is no date. Not looking for the date of “in its time” is simply because it leads to trouble—we’ll talk about that more—but those are different reasons.
[Speaker D] But I don’t understand, Rabbi. If according to Maimonides it depends on us, what you’re saying is that it depends on our free choice, then apparently Maimonides should have worded himself differently. Come on, let’s get all of humanity organized—if we can convince everyone and understand that it depends on us, and if we do X things, the Messiah will arrive, then let’s do it. And theoretically, that’s possible. And Maimonides doesn’t phrase it that way. He’s not a Chabadnik. He doesn’t say: come on, let’s repent and then he’ll arrive. He doesn’t say that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides—Maimonides here is talking about principles of faith, he’s not preaching. Fine, if you have a patent for how to get all of us to repent, I’d be happy to hear it sometime.
[Speaker D] But isn’t it fitting that Maimonides, if he already establishes this as a principle—something important for us on the normative level—then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That he should tell us when the Messiah will come. Right.
[Speaker D] That too—that’s part of the principles of faith. But if it is in our hands, then why not at least hint: know that it depends on you, do something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides also doesn’t write things intended to get us to recite Grace after Meals. In the laws of Grace after Meals he deals with the question of what we bless on, what happens if someone didn’t bless, if you forgot, what the text of the blessing is, what is Torah-level and what is rabbinic. He doesn’t give some moral speech there about how important it is to recite Grace after Meals and not be ungrateful and all that.
[Speaker D] No, I don’t mean the sermonic part. But if Maimonides defines this as a principle, after all in this whole series we’re discussing what the significance is—why it is a principle. Because it is something that is supposed to obligate us; it is something essential in our religious consciousness. Meaning, something we are supposed to act differently in light of. So if it is in our hands to bring the Messiah—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll get to a point—to a question I’m not at all sure about. But yes, it is important in the religious worldview: that the world has a destiny. In the end, the world will reach its repair. Are we supposed to act in order to make that happen? We’ll still talk about that today. That’s—
[Speaker D] But to hint that it is at least in our hands—that’s an important detail in this principle. To say that it is in our hands, in our hands.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—what does “in our hands” mean? If we repent, then the Messiah will come. That’s it.
[Speaker D] So Maimonides doesn’t say that. Does Maimonides say that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because that is not a principle of faith.
[Speaker D] But that’s seemingly the whole punch line. But that’s the whole punch line—that it’s in our hands, because otherwise why should I care whether he comes or doesn’t come?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He will come even if it doesn’t depend on me. When he lists the principles of faith, he lists the conceptual framework that is supposed to define the structure of Jewish faith. That’s it. He’s not giving instructions about what to do. That’s in the Mishneh Torah. He’s not giving moral guidance about what is worthwhile to do or urging us to act. It’s something else. It’s not within the scope of the principles of faith. Principles of faith are a theological scheme. And I think that here—this is not the place for him to preach to us or call on us to perform commandments. Also, according to Maimonides, we are not supposed to do commandments in order to bring the Messiah. We are supposed to do commandments because one must do the commandments. To do the truth because it is truth. Not to do the commandments so that the Messiah will come. I’ve spoken about this before, and maybe we’ll come back to it again: the Messiah is not part of the doctrine of reward and punishment. He is part of the divine plan. The world is supposed in the end to reach a repaired state. Therefore it is important to know that the Messiah will come. One needs to know that the Messiah will come because in the end the world has a destination—it is supposed to reach a repaired state. Not because this will motivate us to keep commandments, and we will keep commandments so that the Messiah will come. No. We keep commandments because commandments must be kept, because one must obey what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. Therefore I don’t think hints of that sort are supposed to appear here.
[Speaker B] Does Maimonides connect the coming of the Messiah to the resurrection of the dead somewhere?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Resurrection of the dead is the thirteenth principle—the next one. Okay. Wait.
[Speaker E] Rabbi, in the end the question is—what? The question in the end is whether there is any such thing as a repaired world at all. So that we could say at the end, after another X years—whether a billion years or two billion years—that’s it, the world has reached its repair. The question is whether such a thing exists. Leibowitz thought there is no such thing. There isn’t. We will never reach a state where we can say the world is repaired and the Messiah ought to arrive, or has already arrived.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll get to Leibowitz. We’ll still get to Leibowitz. I have no idea, I don’t know how to answer that, but I think the common view is that yes, there will be a state in which we are inside the repaired world. It’s not only an expectation whose purpose is to spur us to act properly, as Leibowitz thought. But we’ll talk about that more. So I just want to finish reading this principle, this foundation. Yes. “And the Sages said: May the spirit of those who calculate the end expire.” Here Maimonides goes one step further. He—he curses those who calculate the end. The Sages, yes, curse those who calculate the end. Now notice something: until here the claim was, don’t calculate the end because there is nothing to calculate. It is a question that has no answer, not that we don’t know the answer to it. So why curse someone who deals with something that there is no point in dealing with? Okay, so he’s an idler, he deals with things there is no point in dealing with. Why curse him? The curse—or the great concern about calculating the end—is apparently, if I understand correctly, a practical concern. Not because there is no such date. There is such a date and you calculated it, so you made a mistake. Human beings make mistakes; you don’t have to curse everyone who makes a mistake. The problem is that this mistake is one that can lead to great damage. And therefore the Sages, and then Maimonides following them, are very, very concerned about this mistake. Therefore they say: may the spirit of those who calculate the end expire. And why? Because, you know, we are familiar with this; there were such events in history too. People calculated the end, came up with some date—by the way, some of the greatest medieval authorities did this—came up with a certain date. That date passed and the Messiah did not arrive. And they probably did not agree with Shmuel, that even when he comes we may not be able to point to him and say: here, now the world is repaired and everything is fine. They thought that if we don’t see it, then apparently he still hasn’t arrived. And what happened as a result was very great destruction—from Sabbatai Zevi onward, and continuing with less well-known phenomena. You know, there is a book by Shulamit Lapid—yes, Yair Lapid’s mother—called Like Broken Earthenware. And that book revolves around a period at the beginning of the twentieth century, World War I, the beginning of the twentieth century, when a very, very strong messianic spirit swept through Jerusalem. There were very strong rumors that the Messiah was about to arrive. And in the end he did not arrive. Maybe it was around the time of the war, I don’t remember the exact years anymore, but it’s a known phenomenon, quite a bit has been written about it. And in the end the Messiah did not arrive, and there was a mass conversion of Jews in Jerusalem, in the old settlement, to Christianity. In Jerusalem at the beginning of the twentieth century there was a mass conversion of Jews because they were sure the Messiah was coming, and he did not come, so they decided to draw conclusions.
[Speaker C] The immigration of the students of the Vilna Gaon in the middle of the nineteenth century also produced conversion to Christianity? Right, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Phenomena like these happened in various contexts throughout history, and yes—once they saw that the Messiah had not come, they decided to move over to the group for whom the Messiah had already come, and they drew the conclusions. Apparently they’re more successful than we are. In any case, I assume that these curses against those who calculate the end were said because of these fears. So there are two levels here, and many times people connect one to the other—that is, they don’t distinguish that there are two elements here. And I claim that there are two elements in Maimonides. The first element is: there is nothing to calculate; don’t mess around with nonsense, you are calculating something that doesn’t exist. The second element says: fine, even if I decide to calculate something that doesn’t exist, why do you care? Fine, I’m a theoretician, I want to calculate something that doesn’t exist, or I’m simply mistaken. What is bad about that? No—because this is a harmful mistake, and that is where this curse comes in: may the spirit of those who calculate the end expire. But that’s not the whole story. People think that the whole problem with dealing in calculations of the end is these fears—the crisis that will come after the thing turns out false. And I say no: first of all there is the principled point that there is nothing to calculate—there is no such date. Therefore there is no point in engaging in such calculations, and of course also no point in being disappointed that the Messiah has not come, because there is no date by which he was supposed to come. After that there are the practical fears: if you calculate the end and are disappointed, this can lead to a very, very large crisis. You know, there is—I heard this same story about some Jews, about Rabbi Aharon Kotler, I think I heard it once, and about the Tzemach Tzedek. Yes, interestingly enough it was specifically in Chabad, where some very strong messianic fervor began, and they banged on the platform in the synagogue and swore that the Messiah would not come that year. He swore that the Messiah would not come that year. Simply in order to calm people down, because he saw that people were on the edge; they were sure already, starting to sell their houses and pack up their things and prepare for the Messiah to knock on the door. And he feared the crisis that would happen afterward if it didn’t happen, if he didn’t come, so he swore that the Messiah would not come.
[Speaker F] But was he so sure that he actually swore? Apparently the belief in the Messiah wasn’t that strong.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think he was counting on the idea that a righteous person decrees and the Holy One, blessed be He, fulfills—that because the crisis was so great, he was decreeing to the Holy One, blessed be He, not to send the Messiah. At least that was his conception. I’m not sure I agree, but I think that is what stood behind those things. It doesn’t seem to me that there was a flaw in their belief in the Messiah; I don’t think so. That’s not the background here. Rather, it really was the great fear of the crisis, and he said: okay, if I decide in an earthly religious court that the Messiah will not come this year, then the Holy One, blessed be He, will probably adapt Himself. Okay, and at worst, you know—what was the worst that could happen? At worst the Messiah would indeed arrive, and then people would know that I’m a liar—but at least they would remain good Jews. So what’s so bad? That’s not such a terrible price. So I would lose my standing, okay. A righteous Jew—you see, he’s not worried about his standing; he’s afraid people will break. Fine. In any case, that’s what I’m saying: that in Maimonides here there really are two elements. One element: don’t calculate, because there is nothing to calculate. The second element: this calculation is dangerous because it is liable to bring crises once it fails to materialize. “And to believe in him out of greatness and love, and to pray for his coming in accordance with what was said about him by every prophet, from Moses to Malachi,” and so on. “And whoever doubts him or belittles the matter—”
[Speaker G] Rabbi, can you share your screen?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, that’s it, I suddenly see that I’m not sharing it. Yes, and anyone who doubts him or treats the matter lightly is denying the Torah, which explicitly promised him in the section of Balaam and in “You Are Standing Today.” Okay, here I’m actually a bit uncomfortable, because, well, to my shame, I do have some doubts. I have doubts because I’m not one hundred percent sure that this is really written in the section of Balaam and in “You Are Standing Today.” Those ambiguous verses can be interpreted in all kinds of ways. And since that’s the case, then I don’t know. Now, I don’t… I don’t think I’m denying the Torah, because what I’m really claiming is that I’m not sure that’s what the Torah says. Meaning, if someone told me, look, this is what the Torah says, and convinced me that this is the correct interpretation, I’d accept it. My doubts are not because I doubt what the Torah says, but because I’m not sure that this is what it says. So that’s why I don’t know whether I fall into this category that Maimonides is describing here, but even if I do, what can I do? We already discussed that when it comes to facts, there’s no authority regarding facts, and I’m really not sure. I don’t know. I hope so, I assume so, and it could indeed be so, I don’t know. But to tell you that I’m sure—I’m not. But even the Rabbi, even Maimonides admits that it’s not written explicitly. “A star shall go forth from Jacob”—where do you see the messiah there? All kinds of hints, all kinds of allegories, that’s… Right. No, he claims that this is what is written, or at least that’s how he understood it, or that’s what the tradition transmitted to him, I don’t know. For some reason he thinks that’s the interpretation of the verses. But I’m saying: if someone wasn’t convinced and isn’t sure that this is the interpretation of the verses, then what can he do? So now because you’re threatening me that I’ll be a heretic, therefore I’m supposed to adopt it? This is what I think—what am I supposed to do?
Rabbi, what about the part where he wrote that all the prophets said this, basically? Same thing. No, but is there some… like, is that written somewhere? Did every prophet really say that the messiah would come? I don’t know, every prophet—but when he says all the prophets, he means that it appears many times in the prophets. I don’t know whether you can count and say that every single prophet dealt with the messiah. But again, these are passages that are very ambiguous. The question is what they’re talking about, when this is supposed to be fulfilled, what it means—these are things that are usually phrased in a very vague and kind of mystical way. And you don’t really know what the meaning of the words is. So that’s why I say: maybe it really is true, I don’t know. To tell you I’m sure? No. The formulations are not unequivocal.
And also, what does it mean that he has to come from the house of David and from the seed of Solomon and so on? “Anyone who disputes this family is denying God and the words of His prophets.” So here too there’s some room for hesitation, because “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” in the section of Vayechi is understood by some commentators as… I don’t know what to call it, a commandment or a prophecy; there are those who say it is literally a commandment. Meaning that kings must come from the house of David, and whoever appoints a king not from the house of David has violated the prohibition of… he has violated, nullified the positive commandment of “the scepter shall not depart from Judah,” or violated this prohibition of “the scepter shall not depart from Judah.” “Shall not depart” sounds like a prohibition, not a positive commandment. And there are those who explain that this is a prophecy, not a commandment. The prophecy is that the scepter will not depart from Judah; the kings will be from the tribe of Judah. By the way, if it’s a prophecy, then that prophecy quite simply was not fulfilled. There were quite a few kings who weren’t— all the kings of Israel were not from the house of David, from the tribe of Judah. The Hasmoneans too. The Hasmoneans too, right.
Now again, you suddenly see the ambiguity of the messages that we derive from the verses. We’re very used to just moving past it and repeating the usual formula, or getting very excited by a verse that we suddenly see being fulfilled while forgetting all the verses that don’t quite get fulfilled. And therefore I think one has to be honest about these things. At least leave it as requiring further analysis, but don’t get overly excited. Someone sent me a few days ago some verses—where he got them from, I don’t even remember which verses, from Isaiah I think. He told me: this is exactly our period, one-to-one, he said—a penitent. I said, let’s try reading it together. Not one-to-one, and not one-to-three either. Meaning, you can interpret it in a thousand ways. And pretty quickly he understood that it wasn’t. And he was so excited that everything is written there. If they had said this earlier—he was talking about Zionism, about the establishment of the state and all that—if they had said this a hundred years ago and predicted everything that would happen now, I’d be more convinced. But a hundred years ago nobody knew how to interpret the verses. Now after it happened, suddenly all the verses fit us nicely. Now if it really did fit one-to-one, then you could say fine, after it happened suddenly we understood; beforehand we didn’t. But it doesn’t really fit one-to-one. There are lots of interpretive possibilities.
It reminds me that there’s a very common criticism of those Torah-codes people. You know that whole business where they find all kinds of messages in equidistant-letter sequences in the Torah—who murdered Sadat and things like that. And very often, the criticism—a very widespread criticism of this whole thing—says that all these messages are discovered only after the events have already happened. Nobody ever predicted, from those letter-skips, an event that had not yet happened, saying in advance that this thing would happen. Wisdom after the fact. Yes, this kind of after-the-fact cleverness. And therefore it really means, come on, leave it. These prophecies are like the Oracle of Delphi. The Oracle of Delphi says something, and you can interpret it in a thousand ways; whatever ends up happening, afterward you can fit it into the wording of the oracle’s prophecy. Or with Oren Zarif, or all the miracle-workers and quasi-mystics we have today. They give you—or there are also academic quasi-mystics, like Pasig and people like that. They say something so general that whatever happens will fit what they said. It has no meaning.
But on the other hand, you also have to be fair about this. Suppose we did find in letter-skips the name of Sadat’s murderer in minimal proximity to Sadat himself. There are so many options for what to search for and how to interpret the matter that you still couldn’t really know from those letter-skips in the Torah that Sadat would be murdered by—I don’t remember what his murderer’s name was—even if that were actually true. And therefore this criticism is not such a decisive criticism. It’s certainly clear that after things happen, you suddenly understand that this name and that name have significance, and the fact that they’re close together means something. And therefore I think this criticism is not a crushing criticism; it’s a criticism that raises a warning flag. But after that, if this prediction really does stand up to significant statistical tests, then even if I discovered it only after the event, it seems to me that one has to be honest and say yes, it’s written there. Before, I didn’t have the tools to understand that this is what was written there; now I do. Except that I think that with significant statistical tools, you don’t really see it. Same with the letter-skips. Letter-skips are complicated; I’m not qualified—mathematicians much greater than I am have already argued about this. But in this context of prophecies and all the interpretations of the Torah, I generally don’t see a very decisive interpretation of the verses. You can interpret them in a thousand ways.
Yes, Hillel, who said, “Israel has no messiah, for they already consumed him in the days of Hezekiah”—he too studied the section of “You Are Standing Today” and the section of Balaam. He studied those two sections and still came to the conclusion that there isn’t one. But there’s one thing I can’t understand: when we talk about principles of faith and Maimonides goes to the trouble of defining them, then a principle of faith is the foundation on which everything stands; from there I go onward. So why does a principle of faith need to be so vague? Why can’t it be much clearer and stronger, so that someone who wants to—meaning, now it’s not only that the verses are not clearly giving the picture, but he himself also says, I also don’t think there is a fixed time, I don’t think one can know when it will be—meaning such a huge fog around something that ought to be very clear. When you draft a constitution for a state and you want to know how to behave, you don’t give hints about what you want to happen. You spell it out in—
Okay, it seems to me there are really two different questions here. One question is why no fixed date was set, because the Holy One’s policy is “in its time” and “I will hasten it”; that’s not difficult. I’m not getting to the date; I’m getting to the very issue that there’s no… One question that you asked is why no date was fixed. There’s no date because the Holy One decided He didn’t want to set a fixed date—that’s not hard. What may be harder is: if the Holy One really wants us to believe in the messiah, why doesn’t He write it in a more unequivocal way in the Torah? Why is it always subject to interpretation? So here I really say: I don’t know. I don’t have an answer to that. I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe He really doesn’t want that. We talked in the first classes about all the dogmatization of faith that Maimonides carried out—up until his time that really didn’t exist. And therefore I think this picture, as though there are principles of faith from which one may not deviate and anyone who deviates from them is a denier of the fundamentals and so on—that is a picture that exists after Maimonides. Before Maimonides, the concept of an apikores existed, but there was no binding dogmatic framework. I talked about that in all the first classes. And therefore I think this question is difficult mainly for the picture as Maimonides understands it.
Maybe the very fact that Maimonides established this as a principle of faith was meant to tell us the opposite. Since according to Maimonides, if the messiah arrives, then that principle collapses. There’s no point saying the messiah will come—he already came yesterday; a month ago he came; he’s already taken over the territory. So maybe when Maimonides establishes this as a principle of faith, he’s hinting to us that he won’t come. I didn’t go there. Listen, if he comes, then there you are, it was fulfilled, everything is fine, the principle is excellent because the messiah arrived. What am I supposed to believe—that he will continue to come afterward, after he’s already come? Why— No, I’m saying in the new edition of the Mishneh Torah he won’t… Maimonides will remove that principle after the messiah comes, right? It will no longer be relevant to write it there. He won’t remove it. The messiah will come on a certain date—what do you mean? After he has come it’s still true: he came. But how can you say that it’s a principle of faith? He already… what meaning does a principle of faith have with regard to something that has already happened? It’s like, you know, Maimonides—you remind me of Maimonides in Sefer HaMitzvot. He writes there about the commandment concerning Amalek or the seven nations, I don’t remember which one. He says that in fact their memory has already been lost, they assimilated among the nations, we no longer know who they are—and Amalek too, same thing. So he asks: then you’ll ask me, says Maimonides, why am I counting this commandment? I already said in the third principle that commandments limited to a set time, or intended for a certain time, are not included in the count of the commandments. For example, the commandment “make for yourself a fiery serpent,” with the snakes there, the plague of snakes, or the jar of manna, or things like that. They aren’t included in the count of the commandments. Why not? Because that was a commandment for its specific time. It was a commandment whose time has already expired and is no longer relevant. Only eternal commandments are included in the 613 commandments.
So then—Amalek and the seven nations are not eternal commandments? Look, they’re no longer relevant today. You could ask the same thing about the Temple. So Maimonides says: whoever asks this does not understand the idea of eternal commandments. He says: eternal commandments are commandments that we are always obligated in. But if we have already carried them out—Amalek was eliminated or the seven nations were eliminated—then it has been done; it’s not that it’s no longer relevant. Meaning, with the jar of manna, whether it was carried out or not, the next day it was no longer relevant. It was relevant to that event, to that time, so it is a commandment that by its essence is tied only to a specific time. But Amalek and the seven nations—that is an eternal commandment. It’s just that once we already carried it out, it has been done. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t eternal; we simply actualized it, carried it out. Like the commandment to build the Temple. There is a commandment to build the Temple, or to appoint a king. Okay, we built a Temple—what now? Has the commandment been nullified? No, it hasn’t been nullified; it has simply been fulfilled, actualized. Same thing here. You have the 13 principles of faith. The fact that one of these principles was eventually fulfilled doesn’t mean it isn’t a principle of faith; it means it was fulfilled, that it already happened. Okay, so that’s—
Rabbi? Yes. I want to ask about the very point that the Rabbi says—that the verses that are supposed to predict the messiah are subject to interpretation and can be understood this way or that. But doesn’t it carry some weight that overall there is a kind of consensus among the Jewish people that there is a messiah? Okay. Right? That he is supposed to come at some point. Doesn’t that carry some weight? It could also carry some weight, let’s say. So what? Then it has some weight. Does that mean I’m sure because of it? I’m not saying the messiah won’t come. I’m saying I don’t know. Let’s say it carries some weight; then maybe I don’t know not with 20 percent uncertainty but only with 15 percent. Fine, okay, I didn’t say with what percentage I don’t know. Are there other such opinions among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), for example, that cast this kind of doubt? What? Doubt that he will come. Ah, I don’t know, but I’ve never researched it. It doesn’t really matter to me. You know, if you go by the weight that popular beliefs carry, you won’t get very far. No, but this isn’t just some random folk belief. It’s something that, again, according to Maimonides, is a foundation; it’s not… So it’s a foundation. Maimonides decided that it’s a foundation—so what? Rabbi Hillel said it’s not a foundation, and the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim says it cannot be a foundation because Rabbi Hillel didn’t accept it, even though the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim agrees with it. But he says it cannot be a foundation if Rabbi Hillel disputes it. So Maimonides decided that it’s a foundation—what can I do? You know, there are so many people who determine that various things are foundations. I listed such things in the second book of the trilogy. Yes, I have several chapters, each devoted to some other principle of faith: that someone who is killed because of his Judaism is holy; that “turn it over and over, for everything is in it”; that we are a chosen people; all kinds of things like that. For many Jews these are principles of faith. In my view it’s nonsense. There I even hold that it’s false. Not here—regarding the messiah, I say: I don’t know. I think it may be true, but I can’t be sure; I don’t know. There it’s nonsense; it isn’t true.
Wait, and if it isn’t true, what is the meaning of the existence of this world, of us? What is the ultimate purpose? Not the personal purpose—the general purpose. I have no idea, I don’t know. And if the messiah does come at the end, then what is the purpose? No, that is the purpose—to bring him, that’s the purpose. The messiah will come, and after he has come, then what? That’s it, we’ve reached—as the Rabbi said—a repaired world, and we’ve reached the goal. Fine, but from then on, why sustain the world? From then on I don’t know what will be; the question is up to that point. Up to that point, is there a purpose or not? Already today I don’t know, so what’s the problem? I don’t know, I have no idea. With our commandments we can repair various things; maybe that’s the purpose. We talked about perfection and self-improvement—not in this series but in general I talked about it. The Holy One wants us to be lacking and to perfect ourselves. That is the meaning of the whole process of repair in the history of this world. So the repair has value in itself, not only in the sense of where it leads us, but the very derivative itself. Yes, the very fact that we are progressing has some importance. The progress is not intended only in order to reach the perfect state. In this context I cited “a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person.” Yes, “In the place where penitents stand, completely righteous people cannot stand.” And not only because it’s crowded. So the claim is: why is a penitent preferable to a completely righteous person? No matter how perfect a penitent becomes, he has turned into a completely righteous person. So why is he preferable to a completely righteous person? He is preferable because he progressed, and progress has value not only because it brings me to a more perfect state, but the very progress itself has value. The derivative also has value. The value function is alpha times the function plus beta times the derivative. All right? That is the value of your conduct. And therefore the claim is that this world can have meaning even if it does not ultimately lead to a perfect state. The very progress. Leibowitz—yes, let’s go with Leibowitz—the very progress toward the perfect state is itself the purpose for which the world exists, perhaps.
Rabbi, then what the Rabbi is saying now—this formulation right now—doesn’t support the coming of the messiah. When the messiah comes then we’ll all say, that’s it, and that’s it. I said it’s a possibility, not that it’s true. I didn’t say that’s my position. I’m saying: since that is also a possibility, then I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. I’m saying there are verses—I’m not dismissing them—there are verses, and one can understand that this really is their meaning. All true. And since there is so much interpretive freedom with regard to biblical verses, it’s hard to build anything on that. It says “an eye for an eye”; that too is written explicitly. There’s nothing much more explicit than all the verses about the coming of the messiah. And we require monetary payment. So what is written or not written is far more unequivocal than all the verses about the messiah. And that’s Jewish law, not some belief about what will happen in the future; it’s about what one has to do now. A lot of things are written in Scripture, in the Torah; a lot of things are written. I don’t think one can build anything on that. Again, this is some kind of exhibit.
How does the Rabbi define “chosen people,” which he says is nonsense? Chosen people in the essentialist sense of the word, in the sense that we are built differently in some way. Not necessarily physiologically, right? The Chatam Sofer says that physiologically too we are built differently. But I’m saying leave that aside—even spiritually, let’s say. In my opinion that’s nonsense. It’s nonsense because—or at least it is something with no basis whatsoever. At least not—what do I mean by nonsense? I can’t determine that it’s false. Rabbi, the Jews… Rabbi, the Jews succeed more than everybody else; there are Nobel Prizes—it’s empirically visible. True. Not necessarily in terms of success, but really, Jews—someone who lives abroad feels that among Jews there is really something different. Of course, and in every people there is something different. I mean something different in a positive way. A result of our biography. It doesn’t have to be that our soul is built differently. That we have an organ—not 365 organs but 366 organs, right, spiritual ones in our astral body. That—well, it can be a result of the biography, of our culture. It can be, and it’s even plausible that it is a result of our biography and our culture. And every people has its own special characteristics that it accumulated over the course of its history and culture. So in what sense? But you see that Jews all over the world, in a disproportionate way relative to their percentage of the population, succeed—no matter where they live, where does that come from, no matter what. Right, and there is something in our culture that causes that. But each one lives somewhere else with another culture, a local culture—why? No, he has Jewish culture. He has Jewish culture; that gives it its weight. And of course it also enters genetics. It enters genetics; there are adaptation mechanisms. Meaning, obviously in a society that values scholarship, scholarship will also develop at the genetic level because scholarship confers survivability. Yes, in the Haredi world, someone who is a scholar gets an apartment for his wedding. He’ll have more children. He’ll have more money. He’ll survive better. I mean, just look at it on that level.
And I have a friend who says: why are we the start-up nation? Because a person who had no initiative would not have survived history. Those who are with us today are all those who jumped off the trains to Auschwitz. So natural selection worked here very quickly, in a very dramatic way. And therefore there are explanations for this that in no way require metaphysical assumptions about Jews. And to me this is also very convincing; meaning, it’s not even just some possible option—it’s a completely convincing explanation as far as I’m concerned. On the contrary, it may testify to something about the value of our culture. That, yes. That Torah really does something—that says something about the Torah. I absolutely agree with that. But I don’t think it necessarily says something about our soul being built differently. No, I don’t think that’s true. There is no indication whatsoever that it’s true.
Yes, at the beginning of Ibn Ezra there are signs brought there about—yes, Jews are compassionate, children of compassionate people, and someone who isn’t, someone who is cruel—yes, one should question his lineage. Let’s say I would question the lineage of many Jews in our society by this strange criterion. Very often we get impressed by some temporary state and think there is in it something essential and timeless. But that can be the result of outlooks, of cultures, of a temporary state that will pass. Jewish dominance in Nobel Prizes is declining over the years. I think that—I haven’t done an orderly statistical analysis, but it seems to me that the percentage of Jews winning Nobel Prizes has been declining in recent years. Why? Because the gentiles have also begun to engage in study and scholarship and to value scientific and academic research and so on. And therefore the equation is becoming a bit more balanced. That is an indication—if I’m right, one could do statistics, I haven’t done it—but that’s my impression. If I’m right, then that is, for example, an indication that this is the outcome of culture, and not of a different soul. By the way, if it’s the outcome of culture, in my view that is much greater praise, because it means that we are responsible for it and not the Holy One, blessed be He, who created us differently.
Specifically in Eastern countries there is a very organized academic system and schools and learning, and there they always get higher scores when you look at the global index, but they don’t have the same success when it comes to— About that too, first of all—you mean the Far East? Yes. There are also various explanations for that. The explanations are that the learning there is not creative learning; it is professional, technical learning. Leave aside all the story—it’s not a story, it really happened, but it got inflated beyond proportion—about the South Korean Ministry of Education delegation that came here and toured Ponevezh in order to understand the secret of the Jewish people’s success. South Korea, right? South Korea is an Asian powerhouse compared to which we’re not even beginning to scratch our belly button. Meaning, they send people here to understand the secret of Jewish creativity, and in their curriculum there is also some unit on Talmud. Now people exaggerate this a bit; it’s some, I don’t know, selected passages or something very minimal like that. But yes, there is some subject called Talmud there; I understand they really do study it in the schools, as a result of the visit they made here. But why? Because they really feel that there is something here that is more creative than what they have. And I think our culture definitely does encourage creativity in a certain sense. It encourages a kind of thinking outside the box—but still systematic thinking, only outside the box. Some such combination, and that can indeed explain the unique achievements we have compared to other peoples who perhaps also value learning but in a more mechanical, more standard, more imitative way.
So I don’t know where one sees thinking outside the box in the Jewish people. I think in the world of scholarship it very much encourages thinking outside the box, even though the people there exaggerate. There’s a kind of myth in Haredi yeshivot that the entire academic world is child’s play compared to us; a yeshivah student who gets there will do it with his eyes closed. Complete tomato-juice nonsense from ignorant people. They can allow themselves to say it because they have no idea what they’re talking about. But yes, there is something there that encourages creativity. The fact that the creativity is confined only to Ketzot HaChoshen and excuses for Maimonides, and when you move a little outward—to thought and the world and all that—you get people at the level of Gnome, that’s true, but there is some encouragement of creativity there. And when people step out of their gnome-picture and apply that creativity also to other fields—which is what doesn’t happen in the Haredi world—then I can certainly understand how they would reach impressive achievements. I can definitely see that. To me that’s even a plausible explanation, not just some possible option.
Wait, so how does that spill over from the Haredi world, where there are no such outcomes at the level of success and Nobels and things like that, into the general world…? It’s genes that enter evolution, through evolution into genes. It’s in the… it’s not the Haredi world. The Haredi world is degenerate. I’m talking about the world of scholarship; the Haredim didn’t invent it. The world of scholarship is our ancient tradition, that Torah scholars received more honor, received higher status, and therefore… Yes, among the Christians too there was a bit of that among monks, but they didn’t produce offspring, so that’s an evolutionary bug. Meaning, the learned there received esteem, but without genetics there is no evolution. And in the Jewish world… Wait, so they received esteem and they were fruitful and multiplied at higher rates? Who? Those who… Those who receive esteem have better marriage prospects, they have a father-in-law who supports them, and they can afford to have more children and support them and educate them. Obviously. What do you mean? It gives a very clear evolutionary advantage. Again, all these explanations seem to me to be very plausible explanations. Maybe they’re true and maybe they’re not, but they are so plausible that there is no reason in the world to resort to all kinds of metaphysics. Why resort to that when I have very plausible explanations right at hand?
Okay, this is really a bit… Rabbi, I just want to return to the Rabbi’s answer about the messiah. So if I understand the Rabbi correctly, there is a goal that is self-improvement and not perfection? A possibility. It’s a possibility—I’m not saying… A possibility, yes, a possibility. But now I want to ask: is there really such a thing as self-improvement or improvement without perfection? Or without—meaning, how far can one improve if there is no perfection at the end? Why not? What’s the problem? Think about it: there is a perfect state, like Leibowitz. There is a perfect state. After all, you claim that if the messiah has to come, why? Because we need to reach a perfect state; that is the purpose of the world. Suppose you’re right. Okay. What does that mean? That there exists some state of perfection. Now I say: let’s assume, let’s take that state of perfection that you say is a perfect state, but let’s also assume that we will never actually get there. We will approach it asymptotically. Okay? One minus e to the negative alpha x. Alpha t, sorry, t is time, okay? You approach it asymptotically until you get to the point—but you never actually reach the perfect state. Yet the whole process of approach is defined as a process of approaching perfection. Meaning, the concept of perfection exists as a concept. There is something to approach. It’s just that the claim is that we will never be there, but we are constantly getting closer. All right? First of all, it’s obvious that we will never be there. Humanity. That’s not obvious. It’s one possibility. No, no, no—I mean practically. People are not perfect and will never be perfect. I know—maybe the world will eventually reach some kind of perfection; I have no idea, I don’t know. It’s hard for me to see how that would ever happen. But apparently there is some stage that is not a hundred but ninety-eight, and supposedly that’s good enough. Maybe. I have no idea. I don’t see the point in dealing with it because we have no way— No, because it’s hard for me to understand the theory behind “we keep improving, perfecting ourselves all the time, and that’s the purpose, but there is no destination.” That’s what is hard for me to understand, how that can be. Not that there is no destination. Improvement is defined by approaching a destination. That is the definition of improvement. The only question is whether we will at some point reach the destination, or whether the destination is a limit but not a state that we actually reach.
No, the question that the Rabbi is casting doubt on is not whether we will reach it, but whether there is any destination at all. No. What? No. I’m claiming that the question of whether there will be a messiah is a factual question—whether in the end the messiah will come. But that we are approaching, keeping commandments, improving, reaching a more perfect state—why not? What does that have to do with the question of whether the messiah will ultimately come or not? No, fine, we’re improving, we’re approaching—but approaching what, if not that? So what? A perfect state, which we will never reach. So we remain… You set a model before yourself—I don’t understand what the problem is; that’s what people do every day. You set a model before yourself, and the model is well-defined, and you want constantly to get closer to it. You improve and improve. You want—you know what, let’s take an example from sports. You want to run 100 meters in, I don’t know, eight seconds. Fine? Nobody has yet run it in eight seconds. You want to run 100 meters in eight seconds, and now you’ll get closer, and the world keeps getting closer and closer and closer, but it is very doubtful whether anyone will ever reach eight seconds, I don’t know. But does that mean you can’t set such a goal and keep approaching it? What’s the problem? I didn’t understand. No, it has to be possible because we improve every time. No, that doesn’t mean it’s possible to reach it; it has to be possible to approach it. Why? If there’s continual improvement, eventually we’ll get there. No, no, because the improvement can be asymptotic. What does asymptotic mean? Come, let’s take the following series: one-half, add one-quarter, add one-eighth, add one-sixteenth, and so on. Do you know what the sum of that infinite series is? Infinity? One. The sum is one. One-half plus one-quarter plus one-eighth plus one-sixteenth. What do you mean the sum is one? This is a series whose limit is one. Or a sum whose limit is one. Not a series—the sum. The limit of that sum is one. But we’ll never get there. How do I know it’s one? Think about it. I have one-half. What does it mean to add one-quarter? It means to add half the distance to one, right? From one-half to one, you still have one-half left; you add half of that, which is one-quarter. After that you still have one-quarter left to one; you add half of that, which is one-eighth. Each time you cut your distance from one in half. So you understand that your limit in the end is one, but you’ll never be there. If I do this, if I sum it infinitely, I’ll never pass one? Of course not. You won’t reach one—not only won’t you pass one. You’ll never reach one. The proof is simple. After all, every sum you add always leaves you with half the remaining distance to one, right? So by definition you will never be at one. Because every addition always halves the distance to one. Each time the distance gets smaller and smaller and you only keep halving it again and again. Meaning, I keep progressing endlessly. One can approach even if the limit is something we ultimately never arrive at. That is the whole concept of a limit in mathematics. The concept of a limit in mathematics is something we keep approaching all the time but are never actually there.
All right. So really I’ll just conclude with the statement of Rabbi Hillel, which we already mentioned in the past. It’s a passage in tractate Sanhedrin. The author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim brings it too, of course, as is well known: “And Rabbi Hillel was a sinner because he did not believe in the coming of the redeemer.” That’s the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim. “But he was not a denier of a fundamental principle. And this is the view of the later authorities (Acharonim), who did not count the coming of the messiah or the belief in creation ex nihilo among the principles.” Again, the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim agrees that the messiah will come. He agrees with Maimonides. But he claims that it cannot be a principle because Rabbi Hillel did not accept it, and they called him Rabbi—meaning he was a legitimate amora—and he did not accept it. Therefore it cannot be a principle. And this tells us something about the definition of the concept of a principle, as I discussed in the first classes: whether it is a framework, or a necessary belief, or all the possibilities we discussed there.
So we see here that one can cast doubt on the coming of the messiah in the sense that once someone casts doubt on it—and this is someone you do not think is a sinner or a fool or something like that—then you cannot define that principle as a principle. Meaning, once you define it as a principle, that means that anyone who is intelligent and righteous, or at least not wicked and not foolish, cannot deny such a thing. But if there is someone who is not wicked and not foolish and can deny such a thing, then it cannot be that such a thing should count as a principle. Even though the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim says that it is true—not that it is false—but it cannot be a principle. That’s similar to what I said earlier. I don’t want to place myself in the distinguished company of Rabbi Hillel, but I’m saying: in a place where a person reaches that conclusion, that is his conclusion, that is the interpretation he gives to the verses—what do you want him to do? So therefore—we talked about this—I also compared it then to the Raavad.
Okay, so we’ll stop here. We’ll continue next time. Next time I want to talk a bit about the concept of messianism, as distinct from belief in the coming of the messiah—what messianism is. We saw a bit of the various shades of that concept in Maimonides, but I want to spell it out more. That’s it for now. If there are questions, comments, or questions? Rabbi, I wanted to ask you specifically whether you will in fact deal with the concept of the messiah itself, because it sounds like something very detached from our modern conceptions—maybe unlike many other principles—a kind of heroic figure, where it isn’t clear where he comes from, it isn’t very clear what his qualities are, he comes at some stage and, let’s say… So what’s the problem? Today there is no messiah. When the messiah comes, then it won’t be detached from our reality. Detached maybe in the sense that messiah is a period and not a person. Fine, anything is possible, but I don’t see any difficulty that forces me to say that. Meaning, fine, there is no messiah now; there will be a messiah when he comes. Why should it bother us that today I don’t see such a phenomenon? In the aspect that it very much fits older ways of thinking, more ancient thinking, where you know, large processes are pinned on one person. And that may indeed cause people more to say that this picture—that the messiah is basically a king, a defined person who performs very specific actions—perhaps fits monarchical thinking. And in our period perhaps one can translate this into a democratic messiah, or messiah as a period, or as a phenomenon, or a movement, and not necessarily as a specific individual. But not because of some particular difficulty—rather because it could be that the interpretation given to this thing then drew from the reality that existed then. No, but if there’s no difficulty—meaning, if a messiah comes and he is a king and does what needs to be done, then we’ll have a messiah. The fact that today there isn’t one—so there isn’t one. So what? And Rabbi, didn’t you mean to analyze the concept of messiah according to Maimonides as he writes in the Mishneh Torah? No. I’ll comment on it a bit, but no. Yes, that he will gather Israel and do all the house of David and all those matters. I’ll speak about that a bit. We won’t really read it, we won’t actually study Maimonides himself, but I will comment on those things. Thank you. Okay. Goodbye, Sabbath peace, good night. Sabbath peace, thank you very much. Sabbath peace.