Dogmatics – Lecture 15

Table of Contents

• The three principles: prophecy, Moses’ prophecy, and Torah from Heaven
• The ninth principle: the nullification of the Torah and its eternity
• The limits of halakhic change and the distinction from Reform
• Changing circumstances and changing values, plain conservatism and midrashic conservatism
• Examples of halakhic changes in practice: “do not form factions,” a Zoom prayer quorum, and the second festival day

Summary

General Overview

The text presents an interpretive move regarding Maimonides’ sixth through eighth principles—prophecy, Moses’ prophecy, and Torah from Heaven—and argues that they form one continuum: a divine message arrives in a way that is not a “planting of words,” and Moses our teacher apprehends abstract messages and formulates them into text and commandments. That is why there is justification for his unique stature and for absolute trust in his formulation. It then moves to the ninth principle, about the eternity of the Torah and its not being replaced, and interprets it as a normative claim that does not rule out interpretation and adaptation across the generations, but does require fidelity to the original message, while drawing a sharp distinction between legitimate halakhic change and Reform driven by considerations external to the tradition.

The three principles: prophecy, Moses’ prophecy, and Torah from Heaven

The text presents the sixth principle as the capacity to receive prophecy, and the seventh principle as the special status of Moses our teacher’s prophecy, because the formulations in the Torah require absolute precision and therefore trust in Moses’ wording is necessary. It quotes Maimonides on the eighth principle, “Torah from Heaven,” that “this entire Torah that is in our hands today is the Torah given to Moses,” and that it is “entirely from the mouth of the Almighty” by way of “speech” only metaphorically, and that “no one knows the nature of that arrival except him, peace be upon him,” and that he is “on the level of a scribe… and thus is he called lawgiver.” It explains that “the nature of that arrival” does not mean only that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not speak like human beings; rather, the Torah is not transmitted as dictated words but as abstract messages that Moses apprehends and formulates. Therefore Moses is called “lawgiver” in the real sense of creating the wording of the law and translating abstract content into commandments, stories, and dates. It explains that the level of the “scribe” is the level of the prophet who deciphers a message, not someone copying a dictated text, and links this to the need for prophetic capacities and to Rashba’s responsum mentioned earlier. It uses the image of “the Torah of the angels” to argue that there is an abstract Torah that does not depend on father and mother, impurity, murder, and theft, and Moses translates it into human application. It distinguishes between the inspiration of an artist and Moses’ prophecy in that Moses’ product must be precisely faithful to the intention of the Holy One, blessed be He.

The ninth principle: the nullification of the Torah and its eternity

The text quotes Maimonides on the ninth principle: “This Torah of Moses will not be nullified, and no other Torah will come from God besides it, and nothing will be added to it and nothing subtracted from it, neither in the written text nor in its interpretation,” and explains that this is the principle of the Torah’s eternity and the emphasis on the unchanging will of God. It ties the sharpening of this principle to the historical context of Christianity and even Islam as claims to continue or alter the Torah, and distinguishes between the eighth principle, which looks backward at the identity of the Torah in our hands with the Torah given at Sinai, and the ninth principle, which looks forward and forbids accepting a future claim that the Torah has changed. It interprets “neither in the written text nor in its interpretation” to mean that Maimonides includes both the text and the interpretive system, but argues that in practice interpretations do change, so the principle must be understood as a normative claim: changes and innovations are supposed to count as a faithful continuation of the original will, not as a replacement. It illustrates this with the formulation “Everything that an experienced student will one day derive was shown by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai,” as a normative statement about how to relate to innovations, not a factual statement. It grounds the authority of the sages in “You shall not turn aside,” alongside the possibility of each person interpreting when there is no ruling of the Sanhedrin, while admitting the possibility of error. It stresses that there is no application without interpretation, so the question is the quality of the interpretation and the degree of its fidelity to the message.

The limits of halakhic change and the distinction from Reform

The text warns that turning “everything” into something merely normative could empty the principle of content, and brings a vort in the name of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda on “How beautiful is this tree” to show how one can flip the meaning in a way that cancels the principle itself. It argues that change is forbidden when it introduces external desires that do not arise from a faithful effort to extract the Torah’s intention, and that change is permitted when it is a new application that comes from faithful interpretation of the message in the face of new circumstances, even if it looks different from—or even opposite to—previous applications. It presents the parable of “swimwear in the desert” versus moving to a cold region, and distinguishes between a group that changes “because it’s cold” and a group that changes because the tradition requires clothing suited to the climate. It argues that the difference between a Reform Jew and an Orthodox Jew is determined mainly by the reasoning, not by the result. It states that arguments should be judged, not people, and gives as an example Moshe Zemer and his book Reasonable Jewish law, to argue that substantive Reform becomes exposed when one analyzes the reasoning and sees that it is not aimed at fidelity to tradition. It adds that the lack of systematic treatment of the mechanisms of halakhic change causes every person proposing change to be perceived as Reform, while at the same time everyone changes things in practice; therefore, precisely a systematic clarification of the rules of change protects against illegitimate changes.

Changing circumstances and changing values, plain conservatism and midrashic conservatism

The text distinguishes between a change in circumstances that leads to a different application of the same principles and a change in values, and argues that “in principle, a change in values is out of the question,” while later introducing more complex distinctions. It suggests a distinction between responding to a reality in which modern values dominate as a social fact that requires considerations like “it’s inappropriate” and desecration of God’s name, and adopting new values as binding principles that replace the considerations of the tradition. It develops the model of conservatism through the “plain conservative,” who clings to the plain meaning and to the Haredi ethos of no change, as opposed to the “midrashic conservative,” who makes a midrash of the traditional principle and applies it differently out of loyalty to preservation. It argues that even Haredim are in practice midrashic conservatives, even though they live by a plain-conservative ethos. It describes disputes over Modern Orthodoxy in Israel and in America, including a conference of YU graduates in Jerusalem and a discussion of the prohibition of going to secular courts, and argues that American Modern Orthodoxy preserves principles while changing applications, whereas in Israel there is a tendency also to take value changes into account. It clarifies that the divisions are not between people and groups but between arguments, and that an Orthodox person can raise a Reform argument and vice versa, so conceptual sensitivity to the character of the reasoning is needed.

Examples of halakhic changes in practice: “do not form factions,” a Zoom prayer quorum, and the second festival day

The text brings as a central example the prohibition of “do not form factions” in the dispute between Abaye and Rava, with Maimonides ruling like Abaye that one should not establish “two study halls in one city,” and argues that in practice there is almost no city without multiple synagogues and study halls. This teaches us about a change in circumstances in which “one city” is no longer a decisive category and new distinctions arise, such as ethnicity and community. It presents a Zoom prayer quorum as an example of change based on viewing a “site” as a virtual place, and argues that halakhic decisors who do not experience the internet cannot properly judge that reality. It notes that in his opinion the second festival day is “absurd” at the principled level, aside from Rosh Hashanah, and adds that communal prayer is not, in his view, a halakhic obligation but a matter of the prayer being accepted. It concludes by noting that the text continues to the tenth principle in the next lecture, and that comments appear from the audience about biblical criticism and scientific data in the Torah in connection with the idea that Moses writes in his own formulation, and about a Hasidic story expressing non-imitation as a model of authentic conservatism.

Okay, we’re on Maimonides’ 13 principles. We saw in the last three principles: the sixth principle—the sixth foundation—is prophecy, the capacity to receive prophecy, as I explained. The seventh foundation is the prophecy of Moshe our Teacher. And I said that for Maimonides, the prophecy of Moshe our Teacher gets the status of a special principle, apparently because Moshe our Teacher did not receive the Torah as-is—not that the words of the text were dictated to him, but rather he was given certain abstract ideas, and the formulation was apparently his own. And therefore, in that respect, it’s very important to establish the special stature of the prophecy of Moshe our Teacher, because we are supposed to place trust in the formulations that he formulated—the ideas that he received—in a way that lets us derive laws from decorative crowns on the letters and be precise about every word and every letter. Just one remark from the eighth principle that we learned. In other words, there is prophecy, the prophecy of Moshe our Teacher, and Torah from Heaven. And also in the eighth principle of Torah from Heaven—this is simply what I wanted to add here—Maimonides, in some way, inserts a passage that also hints at that same move. Somehow it seems that these three principles are one single line of thought. Because here he says—look at this passage: “And the eighth foundation is that the Torah is from Heaven, and that we should believe that this entire Torah that is in our hands today is the Torah that was given to Moshe, and that all of it is from the mouth of the Almighty, meaning that all of it reached him from God in a way that is called, by way of metaphor, speech. And no one knows the nature of that communication except him, peace be upon him, to whom it came; and that he was like a scribe to whom someone reads, and he writes down all of it—its dates, its stories, and its commandments—and therefore he is called lawgiver.”

So I think—I may already have noted this—that Maimonides is really continuing here, if I’m right in the interpretation I proposed for the previous two principles, that this move continues into this eighth principle as well. And he says that the transmission of the Torah to Moshe—from the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moshe our Teacher—is called, by way of metaphor, speech, but no one knows the nature of that communication except Moshe our Teacher alone. Now what does it mean, no one knows the nature of that communication? The Holy One, blessed be He, presumably does not speak like human beings. That seems obvious to me. Meaning, that’s not something Maimonides needs to point out. The Holy One, blessed be He, has no resonance chamber and no mouth. So I don’t think that’s what Maimonides is trying to teach here. If I had expected—if I thought—that the giving of the Torah meant implanting the words of the Torah into the mind of Moshe our Teacher, and that that’s what Maimonides means to say, then it’s obvious. Of course it’s not speech in the same sense that applies to human beings. I think it’s more plausible that Maimonides means that this is not word implantation at all, exactly as we saw in the previous two principles. Rather, it is the transmission of abstract messages that Moshe our Teacher conceptualizes and formulates, and that’s how he writes the Torah that we know.

Then you can also understand what Maimonides writes here, that “he was like a scribe to whom someone reads and he writes down all of it—its dates, stories, and commandments—and therefore he is called lawgiver.” First of all, why is he called lawgiver? Quite the opposite—if you tell me that it all comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, and He dictated it to him, and Moshe our Teacher merely wrote like a scribe, then that is the exact opposite of lawgiver. Then Moshe our Teacher is not a lawgiver and not anything of the sort—he has no part in this at all; it all comes from the Holy One, blessed be He. When one says that Moshe our Teacher is therefore called lawgiver, that means that apparently Moshe our Teacher really was the one who legislated the laws written in the Torah. Maybe he engraved them, so to speak, in the book—he created this formulation, okay? Then I can understand why he is called lawgiver, since the Torah in its abstract sense was given by the Holy One, blessed be He, but the translation of that into commandments, into events, into stories and dates—what he writes here—was done by Moshe our Teacher. And in that sense Moshe our Teacher really is a lawgiver, not metaphorically but literally. He is the one who conceptualizes the ideas and translates them into what is supposed to be—how things are supposed to work in our world.

I spoke about the Torah of the angels, right—that the angels too study that same Torah even though they have no father or mother and they don’t… And the translation he made of it is in fact the legislation: he created the 613 commandments out of those abstract ideas, and after that also formulated them in the language of words—words and sentences. So that’s why I understand why he is called lawgiver. And therefore I say: what does it mean that he is “like a scribe”? “Like a scribe” is almost an oxymoron. If he’s a scribe, then that’s not some great distinction. They tell him and he writes—what distinction is there in that? We already talked about this: prophecy is something that requires abilities; I brought the responsum of the Rashba, if you remember. Prophecy is something that requires abilities. Why? Because it’s not really that words are dictated to you and you write the words. In that sense, the Holy One, blessed be He, could implant words in you, and no abilities would be needed for that. Clearly, the one who decodes the message from the Holy One, blessed be He, is the human being—the prophet. And therefore he needs abilities.

So in that sense, when Moshe our Teacher is a scribe, he is a scribe in the sense that a prophet is a scribe for his prophecy. That is, Moshe our Teacher takes the abstract message, formulates it, writes it down, and then he is called lawgiver. And then I can also understand why being a scribe is considered a distinction. Otherwise, being a scribe is not a distinction at all; it’s the opposite. On the contrary, nothing is expected of you—don’t do anything, just write what you hear, that’s all. Don’t add a word or any thought of your own. So in that sense it’s really the opposite of a distinction. That’s why it seems to me that the eighth principle also continues this move of the previous two principles, the sixth and seventh, and is basically telling us something about how the Torah was given, or what it means—how the Torah we know today came into being through the process of representational development that I talked about in previous lectures. He is writing exactly about that.

What? About whether there is even a clear line separating great inspiration from some great artist who has inspiration, doesn’t know where it comes from, and creates some extraordinary work of art—whether there necessarily is a big difference? Yes, there is a big difference, because the question is: what that artist creates, in the end, doesn’t have to correspond to anything. He creates what seems right to him, what speaks to him. Here there has to be correspondence. That is, the product that Moshe our Teacher creates is supposed to represent exactly what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from us. In that sense, that is a distinction. The question is whether you believe that when Moshe our Teacher created this text—formulated, conceptualized, and so on—the result was faithful to the source. Faithful to the source in the sense that if the Holy One, blessed be He, had done this conceptualization, the result would have been the same. That is very different from an artist. The inspirational component is like an artist, but here precisely the difference is that the artist’s product does not have to pass any test. If it is authentic and faithful to himself, that’s enough. Moshe our Teacher has to be faithful to the message he received; it has to fit the intention of the Holy One, blessed be He. And in that sense, all the abilities of a prophet that we talked about are really the basis for the trust we can place in this product of Moshe our Teacher.

So that’s just a completion regarding the previous three principles, which I think really all go in the same direction. I’m actually writing a column about this now, because it really seems to me that this move is definitely worth presenting systematically through these three principles.

I want to move on to the ninth principle. “The ninth foundation: abrogation. And it is that this Torah of Moshe will not be annulled, and no other Torah will come from God besides it, and nothing will be added to it and nothing taken away from it, neither in the written text nor in its interpretation. As He said: ‘You shall not add to it and you shall not diminish from it.’ And we have already explained what needed to be explained regarding this foundation in the introduction to this work.” Yes, this is a short principle. He is basically saying: this Torah will not be replaced. In other words, the Torah is supposed to be eternal. “God is not a man that He should repent.” Meaning, He is not supposed to change His will. Therefore the claim is that the Torah we received from Moshe is meant to remain forever and not change.

Of course, this takes on added force in the wake of Christianity and claims—or even claims of continuations or changes in what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from us over the generations. So I think this principle, the eternality of the Torah, gets extra force precisely because of the historical developments that occurred. In the Talmud they may have known Christianity, but they certainly had not yet known Islam, and in the end Maimonides sees fit to sharpen this principle also in order to reject Christianity and Islam—claims that this thing can change.

Now a few remarks. First, he says: “nothing will be added to it and nothing taken away from it, neither in the written text nor in its interpretation.” That means the words of the Torah are those same words—nothing has been added or changed—and this will remain forever. And the eighth principle is Torah from Sinai, that the Torah in our hands is the Torah given at Sinai. This principle is not the same thing. That earlier principle looks backward and says: the Torah that was given at Sinai is the Torah we know today—that is the eighth principle. The ninth principle looks forward. It says: the Torah we know today will also continue onward, and if someday someone comes and tells you that something here has changed, do not accept it—the Torah does not change. Okay? So this is not just a repetition of the eighth principle. These are principles facing opposite directions.

Now when he says “neither in the written text nor in its interpretation,” he means that not only the text of the Torah should not change, but also its interpretations should not change. Now we already talked about this in the eighth principle, and I’m coming back to it here in the context of the ninth principle. In the end, interpretations certainly do change; they changed in the past and apparently will also change in the future, although today there is tremendous reluctance to change. But in principle things are changing all the time. Therefore, what I said about the eighth principle, about looking backward—that this is not really a historical claim but a normative claim. Right? That’s what I said: when we say that the Torah in our hands is the Torah given to Moshe at Sinai, the statement is not necessarily a historical statement that this is in fact what was given there. Rather, what is in our hands should be treated as though it were exactly what was given at Sinai. That means the statement is normative and not factual-historical.

In this context too, I want to make the same claim. That is, the Torah is not supposed to change, neither in the written text nor in its interpretation. The intent is not that it will not change, but that the changes are supposed to reflect the original will. The will does not change—only its translations or practical expressions do. And in that sense I think the move I described at the beginning of the lecture with the previous three principles continues here too. Because in the end, the act that Moshe our Teacher performed is an act that we too, and the sages of the generations throughout all the years, continue to perform: we continue to conceptualize and define and interpret and so on. Not the text itself, but certainly the interpretations. The text itself—we talked about that too, yes, verses that may have been added later, “to this very day” and the like. But I’m mainly talking about interpretations. And regarding interpretations it’s obvious that the sages of the generations interpret and change interpretations and disagree with previous interpretations.

So what is the claim here? It is a normative claim, not a factual one—that when sages interpret the Torah, from our perspective this is not called a change. From our perspective, this is the Torah given to Moshe at Sinai—not factually, but in terms of the attitude we are supposed to have toward these new interpretations. The sages have authority to interpret, as learned from “you shall not deviate,” and therefore they do interpret, but their interpretations are not called a change; we are supposed to relate to them as though these interpretations too were given to Moshe at Sinai. And that’s what I said in the previous lecture: “Everything that an experienced student is destined to innovate was shown by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moshe at Sinai.” There too this is not a factual statement; it is a normative claim, saying that all the innovations emerging now are, for us, as though they were given to Moshe at Sinai—not that they literally were, but that this is how we should relate to them.

So I’m saying: that’s looking backward. But also looking forward, the point here is not to tell us that from now on we are forbidden to interpret, forbidden to touch anything; that we just have to transmit forward what came to us without touching it. No—we do interpret. We only interpret it in a way that seeks to do for what we received what Moshe our Teacher did for what he received: to take the Torah we received and understand how to apply it in the circumstances in which we operate. Sometimes that will lead to different interpretations and sometimes even opposite ones from those accepted until now, but in the end that is not called a change. This Torah—it is not called that we changed its interpretation. This interpretation too was given to Moshe—given to Moshe at Sinai, from our perspective. Of course, normatively, not factually.

But this really also says several things about how the process of interpretation ought to be carried out. And that is the truly important point. When we say “do not add and do not diminish,” and one may not interpret differently from how it was interpreted, and so on—what does that mean once I have said that we do indeed interpret, and we do in some sense add and diminish and so on, only we should relate to it normatively as though it were not a change? Well, then I’ve emptied it of content. In short, then yes, you can do whatever you want—just afterward relate to it in the opposite way, treat all the transgressions you commit as sacred too. Say that this is the Torah we received from the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai. That’s even worse than changing and adding and interpreting; it’s to say that the changes and interpretations and additions we make should be treated as though they were given to Moshe at Sinai. That’s much worse. So obviously…

It reminds me of when I came to Yeruham to teach there. Two guys were sitting in front of me—the first class of the yeshiva that I taught, but I didn’t know them yet. It was the first time I came to the study hall. Two guys were sitting there talking, and one of them said to his study partner some nice teaching from Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda. It says in Avot that “whoever walks along the way and interrupts his learning and says, ‘How beautiful is this tree,’ is liable for his life.” So he says that Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda said that someone who thinks that saying “How beautiful is this tree” counts as interrupting his learning is liable to death. Of course that completely inverts the meaning of the Mishnah; obviously that’s not what it means. So in that sense I want to say the same thing here. Yes, that’s a Hasidic-style teaching.

So I want to say that in our case too. I can of course say that really everything is normative and not factual. Looking backward, okay, maybe. But looking forward, that is much more problematic—because of the eighth principle. But in the ninth principle it is even more of a problem. I would seemingly be emptying the ninth principle of content, which tells me that the Torah will not be replaced and must be preserved and one may not interpret and change it and so on. And what I’m really saying is no—on the contrary, change it, interpret it freely, it’s all fine, just treat what you do as sacred, as though it had been given to Moshe at Sinai. Well, then that’s the worst possible thing—you are not only adding, you are also treating it as literally part of the Torah itself. So what does it mean that “this Torah will not be replaced”? In what sense is it forbidden to add to and reinterpret the Torah? I’ve emptied it of content with this Hasidic-style twist.

So I want to say that in this case, that is not true. In the case of the tree, it is true, but in our case it is not. Why is it not? Because the real question is—and here we enter the question—when we interpret or change interpretations of the Torah, the question is how we do it. I mentioned the move of Moshe our Teacher, that Moshe our Teacher takes the abstract message that came to him, conceptualizes and formulates it, and thus creates the text—the Torah that we know. Obviously when he does that, he does not write whatever he wants. He writes what seems to him truly faithful to that abstract message he received—which for him is the correct application of it in our reality.

Now the same is true regarding changes. It depends how you make the changes. If you make changes in the sense of inserting things that you think are right or that you want to insert, not out of fidelity to the Torah that came to you, then that is indeed forbidden. That really is replacing the Torah or adding to the Torah or interpreting in the negative sense—that is what is forbidden. But if you say no, I understand that what the Torah wants… in the reality of our time, means doing such-and-such, contrary to what was accepted in previous generations—then this is not really a change in any essential sense. Because reality has changed, we are applying that same Torah itself in a different reality, and therefore the application also takes a different form. But who decides—who decides that the application really fits the Torah?

So in this matter—just a second—well, maybe I’ll answer already. In this matter, first of all there is the Sanhedrin. In the verses of “you shall not deviate,” that is exactly what they say: when there is a Sanhedrin, they have authority to interpret, to legislate, to enact rabbinic decrees, and so on. So they are also supposed to decide what is faithful and what is not, what to do and what not to do. But beyond that, to interpret the Torah you do not need a Sanhedrin. There is nowhere that says you need some special authority in order to interpret the Torah. You and I can also interpret. Where it contradicts the Sanhedrin’s interpretation, then it is overridden, because the Sanhedrin has authority to interpret. But let’s say there is a lacuna, yes? There is some verse or some law, whatever it may be, and the Sanhedrin has not addressed it, and it now seems to me that it should be interpreted this way. Then I must interpret it the way it seems right to me. True, what I interpret will not bind you, because I am not a Sanhedrin, I have no authority. But as far as I am concerned, I am supposed to interpret the Torah and apply it according to the interpretation I understand. So you do not need authority in order to interpret.

And if I made a mistake, then I made a mistake—what can you do? We are always human, and human beings can always err. But that’s the whole point. There is no such thing as applying without interpreting; that is an illusion. There is no such thing as applying without interpreting—you always interpret. So the point is only that you have to try, to strive, to make the interpretation faithful to the original intention. Even if practically it looks different because the circumstances are different, it is still supposed to be faithful to the original intention. And if that really is the way you make the change, then it is not called a change. Then you really should treat it as though it were the will of God given to Moshe at Sinai.

So why don’t we respect the interpretation that the Reform make of the Torah? Who decides now that this is an interpretation that cannot be accepted? You yourself said that each person should decide as he sees fit, as long as he sincerely thinks it fits the way the Torah wants. Okay, that was the series we heard until now on innovation, so to speak. Right. So I’ll say a few principles. I heard the series, but even in the series you excluded the Reform from the group. Completely—and I’m now going to exclude them again. But I want to explain why.

The point is—I discussed this not long ago with a group, just last night actually. I had some Haredi group here that came to talk. A kind of home gathering, and we discussed the fact that… Is this connected to Eran Viga? What? Connected to Eran Viga? Yes, Eran. The claim is that if you get into definitions of how and how it is proper and fitting to change Jewish law, this arouses very heavy anxieties in people, and therefore people are very hesitant about such discussions of changes in Jewish law. Yes, because it goes against “this Torah will not be replaced,” against the very principle we are discussing. But in my opinion that is a big mistake, even on the tactical level. Precisely if you do not enter into changes in Jewish law, you may arrive much faster at making problematic changes. Because if you don’t engage with this issue, then everyone who proposes a change is, from your perspective, Reform. Right? Anyone who proposes a change immediately gets branded as Reform, because he is making changes.

Now if you enter into the mechanisms of change and try to define what yes and what no, how yes and how no, then you can try to define which changes are possible, which are not possible, and perhaps on that basis you can distinguish between Reform and those who are faithful to Jewish law—Orthodox. And then, precisely because of that, you won’t fail by making illegitimate changes. Someone who does not define which changes are possible and which are impossible—then from his perspective every change is illegitimate. But everyone makes changes. It is an illusion to think no changes are made. And then what happens is that very quickly you will also make illegitimate changes, because you did not define for yourself what yes and what no. Therefore, in my view, precisely someone who wants to remain committed and not drift in Reform directions needs to enter in and clarify for himself how changes in Jewish law are made. To define the types of change, what is yes and what is no—because otherwise, precisely… precisely the reluctance to deal with changes in Jewish law will lead you to become Reform, not the engagement with changes in Jewish law.

Can you give an example of a change that is legitimate and one that is not legitimate—something concrete? Yes, yes, I’m getting there. So the claim is that the change basically has to be made in a way that is faithful to the original intention. What does that mean? So yes—the swimsuit example that I’ve mentioned more than once. A group is walking in the desert. Our ancestors also walked in the desert, always dressed in swimsuits. It’s hot there, so they are dressed in swimsuits. At some point they arrive in a colder region. In the cold region, there is some group within the larger group, a subgroup, that says: okay, now it’s cold, so we’ll wear warm clothes, we’ll put on coats. The others say to them: wait a second, but it’s our ancestral tradition to walk in swimsuits—are you deviating from our ancestral tradition? Right, we are deviating from our ancestral tradition—we’re cold.

So that group that wants to wear coats—that’s a Reform group, right? In the analogy, they are not faithful to tradition. The group that is faithful to tradition will continue walking in swimsuits even though it’s cold. You pay prices in order to be faithful to tradition, so I keep walking in a swimsuit even though it’s cold. Therefore, clearly the first group are the Reform, and the second are the conservatives—say Orthodox in the sense we’re talking about.

But there can be a third group. And the third group says: I too will switch, I too will put on a coat, but the reasoning they offer in favor of wearing a coat is not the same as the Reform group’s reasoning. The Reform group says: we put on a coat because it’s cold. This group says: we put on a coat because our Torah, our tradition, requires us to wear clothing suited to the weather. Our ancestors, who were in a hot area, tradition required them to wear swimsuits. We, who live in a cold area, tradition requires us to wear coats. Now this is a subtle difference, but understand—it is a world of difference. The first group is directly opposing tradition. It says: with all due respect to tradition, I’m cold. Right? Like Rabbi of Brisk—the famous story about the Rabbi of Brisk. During Israel’s War of Independence, there were rumors in Jerusalem that the Rabbi of Brisk was about to flee Jerusalem. Gunfire, danger, and so on. So Rabbi Herzog came to try to persuade him to stay, so as not to demoralize the public. And he told him: we have a tradition that the Third Temple will not be destroyed. Meaning, it will be fine—we have some tradition attributed to the Vilna Gaon, I don’t know exactly what, that the Third Temple will not be destroyed. So the Rabbi of Brisk answered him: and I have a tradition that when people are shooting, you run away. Meaning, a tradition from my father. I think that’s a wonderful story. It’s a wonderful story because it so beautifully represents these two modes of thought, and it is completely authentic. I don’t know whether it happened or not, but there’s no doubt it could have happened. It’s a wonderful story in my view. I’m totally on the side of the Rabbi of Brisk. But again, on the principled level, that doesn’t mean you always have to flee—but yes, I don’t build on the idea that the Third Temple will not be destroyed.

So here too, I say, this group says: with all due respect to tradition, I’m cold. Yes? I have a tradition that one must flee from the cold. In other words, that is Reform reasoning. But the reasoning of the third group says no—we are completely faithful to tradition, we observe it meticulously. The only question is: what does the tradition actually say? Does the tradition say that one must walk in swimsuits, or does the tradition say that one must wear clothing suited to the weather? If the tradition says one must walk in swimsuits, then one must walk in swimsuits always, even when it’s cold. I agree; I am not Reform. I only claim that this is not what the tradition says. The tradition says that one must wear clothing suited to the weather. Why did our ancestors wear swimsuits? Because they were in a hot climate. Therefore, in a hot climate, wearing clothing suited to the weather means wearing a swimsuit. I, today, in a cold climate, precisely because of my faithfulness to tradition, put on a coat. Not because I am cold, but because tradition requires me to put on a coat. Even if I enjoy the cold, it doesn’t matter—I’ll put on a coat because I am faithful to tradition. So the bottom line of the first group and the third group is the same, but their reasoning is different.

What is the difference, really, between the first and third groups? The first group is not speaking in the name of tradition. When it says one should put on a coat, it does not say: because this is what tradition requires. Rather: with all due respect to tradition, there is a limit to the price I’m willing to pay in order to be faithful to tradition. So the motivation for the change does not come from the tradition. The motivation comes from their own considerations—external considerations. That is Reform. But if the considerations come from the tradition itself, only I am interpreting what happens within the tradition—we are talking here about interpretation—then I am interpreting what happens within the tradition. Tradition transmitted to us that we walk in swimsuits, and I interpret: what does that mean? Since that was in a hot region, what it really means is that one must wear clothing suited to the weather. When our ancestors were in a hot region, they wore swimsuits. I am in a cold region, so I will wear a coat. Why? Because both my ancestors and I are faithful to the exact same principle: the principle that one must wear clothing suited to the weather. And for that I am ready to die—that is faithfulness to tradition, not looking for an easy life, even if it also happens to coincide with an easier life.

We do have some intuition that it’s too good to be kosher—that there are things that are too pleasant to be permitted. So no, it can be. It doesn’t always require sacrifice from us; sometimes tradition tells us to do things that are also pleasant. That is allowed. It can happen. There are people for whom the moment something is pleasant, it automatically becomes forbidden.

I’m sure an intelligent person, or a group of intelligent people, could sit down and find many principles in the Torah such that a Reform Jew could understand that the intention was such that the Reform application today, on the ground, is actually implementing or interpreting what is written in the Torah. And to dismiss it wholesale is like not taking their interpretation seriously. One could also come with your example and say: don’t tell us stories—tradition, not tradition—they walked in swimsuits, so you walk in swimsuits. I completely understand the point and I agree with it, but then one has to respect every interpretation of everyone who makes that adaptation.

And I’ll make it clearer, because that is exactly what I am saying. What I want to claim is this: the definition of Reform or not-Reform has nothing at all to do with what you do. It has to do with how you justify what you do. That is the question of whether you are Reform. And that is the most important point here. You can wear a coat and be Reform, and you can wear a coat and be Orthodox. The difference is not what you do—namely, that you wear a coat, deviating from what our ancestors did when they wore swimsuits. The question is how you justify what you do.

Therefore, when I speak about Reform, they are not defined for me by the question of what they do. That is completely irrelevant. They are defined for me by the question of how they justify what they do. So if there were a Reform person who did everything Reform people do, but had interpretive justifications, as one interprets anything, then in my view he is not Reform. I may disagree with him or agree with him, case by case—but he is not Reform. He is in the game. We have to discuss his interpretations and agree or disagree and debate. But what happens—and I also have a series of columns about this, I also gave an oral series, but I also have a written series about it; you can read there, I think it’s the series on Modern Orthodoxy—there I began with these distinctions, and in the end I devoted a column to a book by a Jew named Moshe Zemer, who was the head of the Reform movement in Israel, and he wrote a book called Sane Halakha. I go through several chapters of the book there, and I show one after another that he really was Reform. Not Reform in the sociological sense—that’s obvious, he belonged to the Reform movement—but Reform according to the substantive definition that I set out here. That is, his considerations were not considerations of being faithful to tradition. Rather, his considerations were considerations of behaving as he thought one ought to behave—not in the sense of extracting what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from us, or what tradition wants from us. And I show it there quite clearly—I simply analyze his justifications, and that is exactly the point.

If he had said the same things, but grounded them in interpretations of the relevant sources, then in my view he would not have been Reform, even if he did everything the Reform do. That simply would not matter to me at all. The bottom line does not determine anything; what determines things are the justifications.

So why doesn’t the Rabbi himself make changes? Depends what changes—what do you mean? I’m talking about things the Rabbi talks about—for example, requests in prayer aren’t accepted, so why do we keep asking? A prayer quorum, all those things? The second day of the holiday? All those things? I explained those. First of all, when you talk about requests that aren’t accepted—that connects to the next principle in Maimonides. When you talk about requests that aren’t accepted, that’s not a change of circumstances; that’s a new interpretation of the same circumstances that already existed. Why? Did the circumstances change? Were requests accepted in the past and today they are not? That’s the… Do you think requests were accepted in the past? For certain people, yes; today also for those same people maybe not? Maybe yes, maybe no, I’m not sure—who told you? So here the question really is how you understand change over the generations. If you understand that you are disagreeing with the sages, then disagreeing with the sages is problematic because they have authority—or the Sanhedrin, whatever—they have authority. If you say no, I am only interpreting what they themselves said in the new circumstances in which I operate, then that really is possible. But the question is whether that is really what is going on.

Is the Rabbi really uncertain in that sense—what was in the past? What does the Rabbi think was in the past? No, I am uncertain about today as well, not only about the past. I think that even today there may be sporadic interventions—that from time to time the Holy One, blessed be He, does intervene. And the sages established this… I’ve also written on the website several times that the reason I do not stop saying the requests, despite my views about providence—and again, this belongs to the next principle—is because I truly cannot be certain that there are no interventions in certain places or times. I cannot rule it out categorically.

No, the question is: when the sages established this, did they establish that this would apply to every single person and every person is… Did they establish it on the basis that he would receive an answer? Did they establish it like that? Of course not. What, is there a promise that whoever prays is answered? Of course not. All the aggadic teachings of the sages are full of this—that someone who does such-and-such… There are even rules for it. Oh, so suddenly there are no rules, and nobody ever imagined that everyone who asks gets answered. What do you mean? Why did the sages establish it in the form that everyone should say those same requests every day, and that requests are asking for something? Well, the fact that everyone says the same requests does not mean that everyone who asks is answered. What is the connection? They established a fixed liturgy for reasons they had—they wanted a fixed liturgy, not a personal one. And I can understand that.

Okay, so not specifically that. Can we take other enactments that are simpler and can be abolished—for example a prayer quorum? Or the second day of the holiday? Or things like that? Fair enough, fair enough. Regarding the second day of the holiday, I really do think that in this matter, in my opinion, it should be abolished. And the Rabbi doesn’t write that, doesn’t say that or something? I don’t write that. If you ask me what I would do outside Israel, I don’t know. I don’t know—maybe I would abolish it. Again, if I were outside Israel I might still be considered a resident of the Land of Israel, so in any event I wouldn’t be obligated, in principle. But really, yes, the second day of the holiday is indeed an absurd thing. Except for Rosh Hashanah, of course.

And prayer with a quorum, that whole thing? Prayer with a quorum, in my view, is not really an enactment at all. There is no halakhic obligation. It’s some sort of value—that prayer is more accepted, or something like that. I don’t think there is such a halakhic obligation. So I’m saying—things like that… Rabbi, what about value change? Let’s say there’s a value change that occurs and we… Again, I can’t now go into the whole series I gave and all the columns I wrote. I deal with exactly these things. Look at the series of columns on Modern Orthodoxy. Search the site. There’s a column there, or maybe more than one, that deals with value changes.

I meant in the context of this principle in Maimonides—that the Torah is not replaced—and if there is a value change… Fair enough—that is exactly the point, and I do talk about it in that context. The point is how the eternality of the Torah is reconciled with value changes. Fine—changes of circumstance while preserving values, only that different circumstances require implementing those same values differently. But if you change the values themselves, then what is left? Okay. Right. So I’m saying: at the moment I’m not talking about value change, because that is a more complicated story. You can read it there in the series. In principle, value change is not really on the table—let’s put it simply. There can be a change of application because the circumstances are different. Value change is another story.

Now even with value change, I make distinctions there. There is a difference between a case where a value change has taken place in the world, and as a result the situation or world in which I operate is different. Then my considerations have to be different, not because those values obligate me, but because within a world that holds values of that sort, it just doesn’t fit to behave otherwise. It is not because those values themselves count for me, and then from my perspective it is called a factual change, not a value change. For example, equality for women. Fine? A person could come and say: look, I do not accept equality for women because Jewish law is not egalitarian. I do not accept equality for women, but I understand that in the world today equality for women is a basic thing. Therefore, to behave in a way that does not preserve equal standing for women is not acceptable, it is a desecration of God’s name, it won’t be accepted, and things like that. Not because I believe in equality for women. So that is a factual consideration, a legitimate one. The reality in which I operate has changed, and therefore the application of those same values has to take into account the reality in which I live. That is not called a value change.

A value change is when I come and say: wait a second, equality for women is a very important value, and therefore I cannot apply the laws as I see them in the Talmud. So then I apply them differently not because the circumstances changed, but because the values in whose name I act are different. And that is indeed a much weightier question. I think even that is possible, and in essence, by the way, that is what is called Modern Orthodoxy. Modern Orthodoxy is Orthodoxy that is willing to accept changes that are value changes and to take them into account as well.

Because maybe I should return for a moment to the swimsuit example. What we saw there, in effect, is that there are two kinds of conservatives. There are conservatives who continue to walk in a swimsuit. I call them simplistic conservatives. According to the plain meaning, you walk in a swimsuit, so that is what Jewish law wants—that we walk in swimsuits. Like the Rabbi of Brisk said: if the sages told us that the Messiah will arrive riding on a donkey, then he will arrive riding on a donkey—not on a tractor and not on a Mercedes and not on a plane and not on anything else. A donkey means a donkey. Okay, someone who says that—I don’t know, I don’t want to say, never mind.

That claim is basically the claim of a simplistic conservative. Okay? The second conservative is the one who says: I put on a coat, but his reasoning is conservative reasoning. I put on a coat because that is what tradition obligates me to do in the new circumstances. I called that conservative a midrashic conservative. Why is it a midrashic conservative? Because he takes the tradition that one must walk in a swimsuit and gives it a midrashic reading. He says: why did they walk in swimsuits? Because it suited the weather. But what has to be preserved? What must be preserved is suitability to the weather, not the obligation to wear a swimsuit. So he too preserves the tradition, only for him the tradition passes through midrash—that is, through interpretive transformation. He does not preserve it in its simplistic form. Therefore I call this a midrashic conservative, as opposed to a simplistic conservative.

But notice: the midrashic conservative—as I described with swimsuits and the cold region—is really a conservative who applies the halakhic principles as-is, as they were among the sages, but he applies them in different factual circumstances—in a cold region. So the same principle of wearing a swimsuit in a hot region, when you are in a cold region, may mean wearing a heavy jacket—a coat, sorry—when you are in a cold region. Okay? Now here you really preserve the traditional values completely. What changes is only the application, because the factual circumstances are different, so the implementation of those same values becomes different. That is Orthodoxy—midrashic conservatism.

You could say that this is—what should I call it? I don’t even know. Let’s say it this way: simplistic conservatism is the Haredi ethos. The Haredi ethos is that yes, just as my uncle always used to say, Abaye and Rava studied in Yiddish. Yes? Obviously. In fifth-century Iraq—whatever century it was—they studied in Yiddish. Why did they study in Yiddish? Because they knew how to learn. What do you mean? Anyone who knew how to learn obviously learned in Yiddish. Now obviously he didn’t believe that—he wasn’t an idiot—but that is indeed an ethos he fully believes in. Not as a fact, but as an ethos. In his eyes, what he does is what Abaye and Rava did; it’s what Moshe our Teacher did. Moshe our Teacher wore a shtreimel. He knows that he didn’t, but he’ll tell you that he did. Because he lives within a certain ethos, within a certain consciousness, according to which nothing changes. The Jewish community in the second century CE looked exactly like the community in Belz Hasidism—exactly the same, no difference. That is the ethos. Again, sensible people know it isn’t so, but that is the feeling, the atmosphere in which they operate.

Midrashic conservatism, you could say, in the simplest tendency, is the modern religious people. Orthodox, that is—the Religious Zionists, people call it, but I don’t like the expression Religious Zionists because that refers to the state. I’m talking about the relation to modernity, not the relation to the state. So these religious people basically say: no, there are different circumstances here. Modernity means the new world, the contemporary world, and modern religious people are religious people who take the contemporary world into account. Okay? They take the contemporary world into account, and therefore many times they will give a midrashic reading to the principles of tradition and implement them in a way different from how their ancestors implemented them—but precisely this is done out of fidelity to tradition. It is not a desire to change; it is a desire to preserve.

Understand that from the perspective of the midrashic conservative who says one must wear a coat, the simplistic conservative who keeps walking in a swimsuit is a criminal. It’s not that… “I also have a justification for wearing a coat.” No. You must wear a coat. If you do not wear a coat, you are a criminal. You are not keeping the tradition, because the tradition said to wear clothing suited to the weather. People don’t understand this. People think a midrashic conservative means: I also have a justification. I can also produce a midrash and then I’m okay too. No. If I produce a midrash and that is what the Torah wants, then you—the one who is supposedly stricter, suffering more, walking in a swimsuit in the cold—you are the criminal. Because you are doing wrong; you are deviating from what the Torah expects of you. Therefore I say: this is conservatism in the fullest sense. The only difference is what is being preserved. Are you preserving the plain sense, or preserving something that has passed through midrash? But even the midrash is a midrash nourished by changes in circumstances. It says: factual changes occurred, and therefore those same principles are implemented differently because the circumstances changed.

But there is a third group. The third group—you could maybe call it Modern Orthodoxy, or not exactly Modern Orthodoxy in my view. Let’s say the American Modern Orthodoxy is not that. American Modern Orthodoxy is what I described earlier: taking reality into account while preserving principles. They do not touch principles. The Israeli version of Modern Orthodoxy, in a certain sense, is an Orthodoxy willing to take into account value changes too, not only factual changes.

Now I’ll say more than that: among the Haredim, the ethos is one of simplistic conservatism, but of course they themselves are actually midrashic conservatives, not simplistic conservatives. There are no simplistic conservatives. Nobody really preserves or keeps the Torah exactly as our ancestors did five hundred years ago or fifteen hundred years ago. Nobody really behaves like them. That’s nonsense. The question is what line you sell yourself—that’s your responsibility. But no one is really like that; everyone is a midrashic conservative. There are just some who live in an ethos in which they ignore the fact that they are midrashic conservatives and think they are simplistic conservatives, and others who are aware that they are midrashic conservatives and for them that is fine. So in fact, on a deeper view, the Haredim are midrashic conservatives. Modern Orthodoxy goes one step further and says: I take into account value change too, not only factual change. Value change too can play a role in my halakhic considerations. Because for me, value changes are some kind of divine will in some sense.

Regarding value changes, could it be connected to the normative facts you talk about so much? That from their perspective, when there is a value change, it is a normative fact that has been uncovered—a fact that has been revealed, and reality really changed? Right. No—I don’t think reality changed at all. I would say more than that: it was revealed, yes. Reality was revealed as I think. It’s just that in the past they didn’t understand this. Morality progresses just as science progresses. Today we understand moral facts better too, not only scientific facts. That is a more far-reaching claim. Yes. Okay, it’s like discovering something new in physics. Yes, exactly. We are progressing, in effect. Again, standing on the shoulders of giants, you can say what you like, but bottom line, we are progressing. So the claim is that, say, if I today think there is value in equality for women, then my claim is that there was always value in it. The fact that in the past people thought otherwise is not because the moral ideals were different then, but because they did not correctly grasp the moral ideals. The world progresses. That is really the claim.

The Rabbi described this as if these are methods. They’re not methods. You go to American Modern Orthodoxy or to classic people there, and you ask even rabbis—they’ll tell you they don’t know, they just do this, as it were. It’s not really some reflective process where they examined themselves. No, that doesn’t matter. When I say someone is Modern Orthodox or whatever—simplistic conservative or midrashic conservative—obviously he is not consciously aware of all this. I’m looking at what he does. But once I see what he does, I do the conceptual work for him. Right, but even conceptually he’ll tell you that basically there is no difference between him and a Haredi. He doesn’t understand the difference at all; it’s just the reality he lives in. He’s in a different American reality that is more modern than his people, so he acts that way. He doesn’t really believe in some idea. That’s not true. The fact is they define themselves as Modern Orthodoxy in order to distinguish themselves from the Haredim. What do you mean? The concept exists there. That’s something sociological, not real. No, no. You can see it—where do you see it? You see it now in the dispute there in America, where the left wing of Modern Orthodoxy really does want to implement modern values. And then the rabbis of Modern Orthodoxy… No, no, no—you are mixing things up. I am not talking—on the contrary—in America I am not talking about value changes. I am talking about awareness of, or sensitivity to, factual changes. So I’m saying that even that does not interest them. What interests them is just, I don’t know, as a social reality, and that’s what their public wants. No, but you’re going back to the same thing. I disagree. The fact that people are not aware—or not everyone is aware—is something else. A public often is not aware of the reasons it behaves one way or another. But when you try to conceptualize and understand what really drives them—and I assume the leaders also conceptualize and understand more where they are taking things—I think this conceptualization is the correct one. This really is what drives them. It is not only sociology. It is a different religious conception.

And there is an impression that they cooperate with the Haredim too, at the top level—the Modern Orthodox. They cooperate quite nicely with Yitzhak Yosef and all those people. They do that because they really feel they belong with them and not with the Religious Zionists, say. Again, you are taking me back to sociology, but that is exactly my point. Sociology does not interest me. I am asking: what really is their religious conception? The fact that they have coalitions and it suits them in certain respects to make coalitions—fine, let them make coalitions. But in their religious and halakhic conception, it is different from the Haredi conception. Again, on the contrary, I want to claim that the Haredim too are midrashic conservatives. Their ethos is simplistic conservatism, but that is not really the case.

Now of course one gets to gradations. How far do you go, how much are you willing to change, and so on—that already becomes a matter of degree. But nobody talks about changes because one is not allowed to make changes. So no one talks about changes, and therefore the world of halakhic change, and these concepts, are not analyzed, and distinctions are not made. Once you don’t make distinctions, there really is great confusion.

But does the Rabbi agree that the ethos of Modern Orthodoxy abroad and the Haredi ethos here is the same ethos? It is the same ethos in the sense that they do not touch principles. Okay, so what is the difference between them? So I claim that Israeli Modern Orthodoxy—or at least as I imagine it—is not the same as American Modern Orthodoxy. Israeli Modern Orthodoxy ought to be, at least as I see it, something that takes into account value changes too, not only factual changes. And in that sense, the American Modern Orthodox are entirely on the Haredi side relative to this view. But there are still different religious and halakhic conceptions between Modern Orthodoxy and Haredim.

Like what? What do you mean? Even fields of activity—there are differences, academic studies. But that doesn’t come from an intellectual place; it comes simply from sociology. I don’t think it comes from a different worldview. I disagree. You are welcome to read their thought; it is radically different. Again, that is because constraints forced them to write that way. Not constraints. Read Rabbi Sacks, read Rabbi Soloveitchik. He has nothing to do with the Haredi rabbis here. I think this discussion assumes too sharp a distinction between sociology and ideology. Ideology creates sociology, and sociology in turn feeds back into ideology. They are not two things that are completely separate. There is a different ideology here that also creates a different sociology, and therefore also feeds on that different sociology. But in the end it is a different ideology. You cannot ignore that.

But in my view, American modern Haredism is actually very systematic. What? There is system there. It is not such a clearly sociological product. There is some such influence behind the scenes, but you can see there is thought, there are people who have written their doctrines—it’s not just some… I’m only saying that the broad public usually is not aware of the theoretical infrastructure of how it operates. That’s obvious. But there is still such an infrastructure. Even if it is not aware of it, I can still try to think—or its leaders think—or whoever—but I can still try to conceptualize and understand what really drives these different groups, and I think that this is what drives them. And in that sense, the Modern Orthodoxy that I try to present, say in the trilogy, is definitely not the American Modern Orthodox. It clashes head-on with what I… I also addressed this in the series on Modern Orthodoxy.

Because this whole story began with a conference in Jerusalem—I don’t know, ten years ago, something like that—of graduates of YU, Yeshiva University, who wanted to establish the Orthodox forum in Israel. In other words, to establish Modern Orthodoxy in Israel. And I said, wow, very nice, excellent, really symbiotic—I’m totally in favor. They invited me to the conference and I spoke there too. I spoke about the prohibition of going to secular courts, and I said that in that prohibition, for example, there is an expression of Modern Orthodoxy in my opinion. This halakhic boycott of the civil courts, which is halakhically justified, and still I cannot do it. That is, not because it’s permitted—it’s forbidden—but despite its being forbidden, I have no choice; I cannot avoid it. Never mind, some consideration of “it just doesn’t fit.”

And there at least some of the people strongly protested, and the entire discourse really was—and one of them… in the end we sharpened the disagreement between us. The disagreement really was whether one can deviate from the principles or only apply them differently in different circumstances. And he argued that one must preserve the principles and only make an analytical examination of the circumstances to see whether the applications should differ. And that is American Modern Orthodoxy. I think he represented it faithfully. And I am talking about something else. I am talking about something else. Therefore, that alliance is probably not really an alliance—at least not naturally. I assume there too there are shades and parts that are more and parts that are less. Fine.

And for our purposes, this is sociology—all this division into groups. Let me add one more remark here. When I make this distinction between midrashic conservatism, simplistic conservatism, value change, and circumstantial change—these distinctions are not distinctions between people or groups of people, but distinctions between arguments. And that is important. Because many times, say, a Reform person can raise arguments that are Orthodox arguments and support his change with Orthodox arguments. And sometimes not. Sometimes an Orthodox person will raise arguments that are Reform arguments. Because precisely since people did not make this analysis of the ways of change and the modes of change, there isn’t really this awareness and sensitivity to which arguments are relevant or legitimate in halakhic discussion and which are not.

So for example, there’s Rabbi Pachter’s sukkah, right? A good example. I think Rabbi Pachter is Orthodox, but he raised a Reform argument. He raised a Reform argument because he was not sufficiently sensitive to the difference in justifications. It may be that one could have formulated it with another justification—I’m not sure, because I don’t agree with his conclusion—but the justification he raised is a Reform justification. And that doesn’t mean that because of this I say he is Reform. I am not judging a person, I am judging an argument. Human beings are complicated things. Human beings raise all sorts of arguments, and sometimes they make mistakes.

And that reminds me of something else. There was another fellow about whom I once wrote—he wrote an article saying that secularism is here with us and it is not going to disappear, and that one should recognize it as another Jewish stream. I don’t remember exactly what—something like that. I wrote an angry response and said that if you think you are not right, or that they are right like you, that is of course legitimate; it just seems to me that it does not fit with your being a rabbi in Israel. A rabbi in Israel ought to think that this is correct and that one who does not keep the commandments is mistaken, is in the wrong. This strange pluralism basically says that you don’t really believe that commandments ought to be observed.

Afterward, a friend of mine from Yeruham read the article—I gave it to him to read because in the end it wasn’t published, fortunately, because it was harsh, but they sent it to him and he had already managed to get upset, though it was never published—and my friend from Yeruham told me: listen, you judged the person. Judge his arguments. Because people can also get confused, people can make mistakes and raise incorrect arguments. But the fact that he raises a Reform argument does not mean that he is Reform. He may be confused, he may not have noticed, he may have made a mistake—whatever. Anyone can make a mistake. When you judge a person, it should be on the basis of a much broader totality, not on the basis of seizing on one particular argument, even if the argument really is Reform. The argument really is Reform, no question. Whoever says this is raising a Reform argument. But that does not mean the person is Reform. He may be an Orthodox person who is confused, an Orthodox person who made a mistake. And the same in the other direction. In the books of Reform writers you can also find Orthodox arguments—legitimate arguments too—in favor of their changes. But then it gets called Reform because they are making a change.

And again, everything stems from the fact that there is no systematic engagement with the theory of change in Jewish law. Once there is systematic engagement with the theory of change in Jewish law, it becomes much easier to be sensitive to which reasons are acceptable and which are not, which reasons are outside the boundary of what I called Reform and which are inside the boundary—even if they are raised by a Reform person. And what is outside the boundary, even if raised by an Orthodox rabbi, remains outside the boundary. I am not talking about people at all; I am talking about arguments. Human beings are a far more complicated matter, and sociology is even more complicated. Groups of people—as you said—are not aware, so how can I judge them on the basis of their motives when even they themselves are not aware of their own motives? That’s not serious. But arguments should be judged, and that is in fact what matters. Because when I want to know which arguments I can raise or which arguments I accept, that is relevant to me. I’m not trying to judge whether he is okay or not okay; I’m trying to determine what I am willing to do or what I think ought to be done. That is what really matters. Therefore for me, what matters is which arguments are legitimate and which are illegitimate, not which people are legitimate or illegitimate.

But when one looks at the Orthodox—the point I was trying to make is that when you look at the American Orthodox, at the way they conduct themselves toward moderns such as the Rabbi, say abroad, you see that their conduct is completely Haredi. Their outlook is completely Haredi from an intellectual standpoint. The fact that they write in a somewhat more modern way is not because they have a different conception. We’re back to the same point. I disagree. Their thought is the same only in the sense that they do not change values, they only change applications. But they do change applications—that is not like the Haredim. Is there an example? Yes. Mixing between men and women. Among the Haredim that is not done, and among American Modern Orthodoxy it is done freely. And is that done out of ideology? Certainly, certainly. Rabbi Soloveitchik founded a school—Maimonides School—where boys and girls studied together, and the girls learned Talmud. So don’t tell me he did that because of sociology; he did it because he thought that was the right thing. But the reality there was a catastrophic reality religiously, so perhaps he had to do it. Fine, perhaps also they, in a different Haredi… No, you can attribute everything to sociology. That’s a Marxist outlook that says there is no ideology; everything is sociology. No, there is ideology, but I think these groups specifically do not really view things that way. I disagree. It’s also a generalization—these are groups. There are people like this and people like that, but many people are not aware of it themselves. Those who hold the reins—I’m not talking about specific individuals. No, I disagree. The move itself is based on an underlying conceptual framework, and the fact that it also dovetails with sociology and all that—certainly. It also feeds sociology and is fed by sociology. But in the end there is some kind of conception here.

Among the Haredim here in Israel too there is huge weight to sociological components, but it is not true that there is no different ideology there. There is a different ideology there, and that is behind our endless disputes—not disputes, but endless questions—what is Haredi about those modern Haredim who are really with us? Excellent question. But the Haredim who are not with us have a different conception; it is not only sociology. Sometimes it really is left as only sociology, and then okay, I do not like those phenomena—phenomena that are purely sociological. But usually sociology also reflects some sort of different ideology. That is at least my view.

So what the Rabbi spoke about earlier, and the previous fellow too—about the discovery of value facts, as if the moral value-fact was always there and now we just discovered it. So let’s take for example the prohibition of freeing a Canaanite slave—“they shall be your labor forever,” one may not free a Canaanite slave. Yes, that’s what it says. Abraham our Patriarch did not free Canaanite slaves. And if today we would not free a Canaanite slave—yes, in some bizarre hypothetical—if we were to decide that this is not the value today, that it is unthinkable and forbidden, would we then say that Abraham our Patriarch acted immorally or without value or not in accordance with Torah? Yes. Unless, again, in the circumstances of his time that really was the right way. Sometimes change—exactly, that’s what I meant. Moral change isn’t only that I discovered something; reality changed in a certain sense. No—there are both things. There are situations where, say, equality for women—the father can sell his daughter as a maidservant or marry her off to a leper, something that horrifies us today, right? But in the circumstances that existed then, there was a lot of sense in it. He had to provide for the woman; she could not support herself if she had no husband, and after all the father’s role was to see that his daughter could make a living. That is a factual change. And they gave him the rights to do this. Now, that seems like a value change. A factual change. Exactly. But it is intertwined with totally different life circumstances, and therefore totally different life circumstances sometimes dictate different moral behavior.

Fine, fair enough. But again, notice that this is not simply applying the same principles while the circumstances changed—that is what I was not talking about earlier. That is what I call a value change, even though it is fed by factual circumstances. Because what happens here is that the father who sold his daughter as a maidservant and I, who recoil from doing such a thing, are not applying the same value in different circumstances; in my world the value itself is different. Do you see? That is not the same thing as applying the same value itself in changed circumstances, as with the swimsuits. With the swimsuits I apply the same value itself, only the application is different because the circumstances changed. Here the change is a value change, not just a change of application. The value change is also a function of circumstances, since values are implemented differently in different circumstances.

But suppose the circumstances did not change—say, the captive beautiful woman. Suppose the circumstances did not change, but we could never regard someone who fulfilled that commandment two thousand years ago in the same way we would regard someone today. And on the halakhic level there is no problem even today. That’s all. But on the moral level— No, I’m saying that on the moral level the sages would forbid such a thing; rather, morality has advanced. But the morality I think today was correct back then as well. But you are talking about Jewish law, not morality. And it could be that in Jewish law even today there is no halakhic prohibition against the captive beautiful woman. The prohibition is a moral one. Fine, that already belongs to the issue of Jewish law and morality. But what I really want to say is that when Maimonides writes—and I’m returning to Maimonides’ principle—when Maimonides writes that “Moshe’s Torah will not be annulled, and no other Torah will come from God besides it,” that is a normative matter and not a factual one. But even after I say it is normative, as I said before, one could say: okay, so I’ve emptied it of content. Then you can make whatever change you want, and afterward just treat that change as though it were the Torah given to Moshe at Sinai.

And now I say: no, it is not like that. Because I cannot make whatever change I want. I make a change that, in my view, truly fits the message of the Torah that reached me. I simply think that today that message has to be implemented differently, because of changes in factual circumstances and perhaps also because of changes in values. But I need to think that this same message should be implemented differently in the circumstances of our current lives. And therefore in that sense, what I am doing now really is the Torah that Moshe received from the Holy One, blessed be He. It is the same thing, even though he acted oppositely and never dreamed of what I am doing now—that does not matter. In our circumstances today, this is in fact that same Torah Moshe received. Therefore it really has not changed.

But simply to say: you can make whatever change you want, and whatever you do is the Torah Moshe received—that empties this principle of all content. Then sure, you can replace the Torah, and after replacing it you can also fully recognize it as Torah. No. I say there is still meaning here, I have not emptied it of content. I say: if the change is made with the intention of correctly implementing the Torah we received, then there is no change here; then this really is the Torah Moshe received. And then the claim that the Torah has not changed is a normative claim, not a factual one. Or maybe even factual in a certain sense: the principles of the Torah have not changed.

But to replace the Torah in the Reform sense—that is, to choose different principles—who was it, Groucho Marx, I think? “I have very wonderful principles, but if they don’t suit you, I have other principles too.” If I replace the principles themselves, I cannot say, okay, and this is Torah for me normatively, I relate to it as Torah. That is what Reform arguments do. Again—Reform arguments, leave aside Reform sociology. Reform arguments do exactly that. That is, I think this cannot be done; it’s inconceivable. Therefore I change Jewish law. I do not give a midrashic reading of the verse and show you that from the verse itself one can show that it means this and not that. I do not anchor it in midrash. Rather, some external value or mode of thought says: okay, I am changing Jewish law because I am cold. I do not walk in a swimsuit because I am cold, not because Jewish law tells me to wear clothing suited to the weather. This difference, even though the bottom line is the same, makes the entire difference.

And if your orientation in making the change is an orientation toward the message of the Torah that you received, then it really is not a change. We do this all the time, all the time. Therefore in this matter, even on the factual level, one cannot accept Maimonides’ words literally—that the Torah does not change and is not interpreted and everything was given at Sinai and one should continue as-is throughout the generations. That simply does not happen. Maimonides himself—yes, I talked about this last time—Maimonides himself says that not everything was given at Sinai: the thirteen hermeneutical principles and a few word explanations, and that’s it. All the rest are additions created throughout the generations. The assumption is only that these additions are the distinctions, the understandings, of the sages regarding how best to implement the Torah in the circumstances in which they operated. And when you make the change in that way—and again, someone else can come and say you are wrong; in my opinion this is not the correct implementation of the Torah. No problem. But if you think this is the correct implementation of the Torah, then even if I disagree with you, you are in the game. That is the game; we simply have a disagreement. Therefore, in that sense it is not called a change in the Torah.

But for that, one really has to enter into the theory of halakhic change and see which types of changes are of this sort and which are really change and not preservation of the spirit of things. And when one does not enter into the theory of halakhic change, then everyone who proposes something is Reform, while in fact we too are Reform because we too make changes, even if we do not admit it. Everyone makes changes.

Okay, yes, Rabbi. Yes. I think the very fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose this form of transmitting His Torah through human beings—even when it comes through a prophet, in the end, even if he is a prophet, surely there is some touch of his own, because after all he is still a human being. And that is what ultimately makes possible all the discussions and disputes we have in the Mishnah and also in the Talmud, because at the end of the day we are human beings, and this is how the Holy One, blessed be He, wants the message to pass. But still, although He transmitted it this way, He also establishes rules for how these disputes can be conducted. I’m trying to understand—maybe what the Rabbi is saying is that as long as we remain within those rules… Yes, but what are those rules? One has to understand what those rules are. Part of the theory of halakhic change is precisely those rules of how Jewish law is decided, who may disagree, who has authority. Yes, perhaps also the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted. Perhaps that too, yes. The theory of halakhic change includes all those aspects. Yes, it is a framework—a kind of set of rules—that the Holy One, blessed be He, told us: okay, these are the rules. I tried to survey this whole story in the third volume of the trilogy. A large part of it is devoted to this, to the theory of halakhic change, with all its aspects: halakhic authority, types of change, classifications, Reform or Orthodox, and all those things are consequences of this issue. Yes, fair enough, I agree.

Now examples of changes of this sort. A nice example is “you shall not form factions.” The dispute between Abaye and Rava—we rule like Abaye, although this is not one of the exceptional cases where Abaye is followed; Maimonides rules like Abaye that one may not establish two study halls in one city. Synagogues, two study halls in one city. Does anyone know of a city today that does not have two synagogues or two study halls? A Torah-level prohibition: “you shall not form factions.” Maybe according to Maimonides it’s rabbinic because it’s based on interpretation, but in the simple sense it’s a Torah prohibition. Where does the total disregard come from—and by the way, I found very few references among decisors to this issue. People simply do it and that’s it. Nobody gives any account of it: “wait, but why? There is a prohibition according to the Talmud—‘you shall not form factions.’” The answer is that everyone understands the circumstances have changed, and when the circumstances change, the world is so dynamic that geographical location is no longer the important factor. Geographic location—one city—is no longer what matters. It has now become an ethnic axis. That is, if there are two synagogues, one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi, that is not called two synagogues in one city. In the Ashkenazi city there is one synagogue, and in the Sephardi city there is one synagogue too. Of course the next stage is to make two Ashkenazi synagogues. Then they already have two outlooks as well, and again, from there it keeps branching out. But this is an example of a change in Torah law.

A change that no one really notices, but everyone makes without batting an eye, and nobody blinks, asks, nothing. Why? Because it is obvious to everyone that the reality is different and therefore the applications are different. And that includes all the greatest Haredim whose chief ideal is simplistic conservatism—yet they do it nonetheless.

Yes, I spoke about a prayer quorum over Zoom. I wrote about it on the site too. I think one can have a prayer quorum over Zoom. Even though there are rules in Jewish law that they must be under one roof, and all the rules about seeing each other and all the halakhic rules of joining a quorum. And I say that in the circumstances in which we live—and decisors who don’t live the internet have no idea, they can’t even have an opinion on it—but in the circumstances in which we live, when we conduct a meeting on the internet, that is a site. A site is a place. We are in the same place. The virtual place is also a place. Anyone who experiences the internet and lives it feels this very easily, I think. But if you ask some decisor who has never been on the internet and doesn’t know how the whole thing works, he’ll think you’ve lost your minds. It fits none of the rules for joining a prayer quorum. Okay? So here too you have another example of a change in reality that can actually change laws established from ancient times, simply because the circumstances changed. That’s all. Yes, more examples could be given.

All right, we’ll stop here. This took me more time than I thought, so next time—the tenth principle. Okay, comments or questions or… Rabbi. Rabbi, regarding that comment about “you shall not form factions,” which is indeed strange. On the one hand there is a clear commandment in the Talmud, and on the other hand a total disregard in practice. Isn’t this an example of a failure—where if we tried to understand who Abaye was, or whoever it was there who said that prohibition, we might perhaps apply it in a way appropriate for today, and maybe there is some eternal message there? And instead, we did not interpret it that way, and we interpreted it in a very simplistic way. For example, separation? For example, separation between religious and secular Jews, which the Rabbi earlier justified so strongly—maybe there is a problem with it from that standpoint? What problem? What? Two synagogues in one city? The secular synagogue? No, no, again—I’m not talking about a synagogue in that sense. Secularism is not a synagogue. Not because it doesn’t have a synagogue, but because it is not a religious outlook. What, so then what about Christians? Can Christians and Jews also intermingle? The Torah was not given to Christians; the Torah was given to Jews—to all Jews. To Jews who do not keep it even though it was given to them? Is there any Jew who keeps the whole Torah? He does not keep the whole Torah. There is a Jew who is obligated in the Torah, not one who keeps the whole Torah. And there is a Jew who is not obligated in it at all. The question whether you are obligated or not is binary. He may be obligated to honor his parents and feel obligated, obligated to defend his people. Morally obligated, morally obligated to honor his parents—not obligated by the Torah. The overlap is accidental. It has nothing to do with the Torah. He doesn’t believe in God or the Torah. To apply this to secular Jews is just illogical.

Where is that article? Does the Rabbi perhaps remember by any chance who the rabbi was that the Rabbi mentioned earlier, the one he sent a harsh response to that wasn’t published? Which article was it? Oh, no—now I can’t say, because that would be slander. Wait until I die, then read it. No, for me it’s not slander. Fine, never mind. I’ll send the Rabbi an essay, sorry. I also don’t remember where the article appeared. I think it was in De’ot, but I’m not sure.

Okay. In the previous principles we talked about how with each principle we understand both why it is true and why it is a principle. Here I don’t need to explain why it is a principle, right? Exactly—that’s what I wanted to make sure of. All the later principles are basically about the framework itself of all these things, right? Right. With prophecy I needed some explanation in order to get there. I argued that without believing in prophecy, or in the prophecy of Moshe our Teacher in particular, there is no proper relation to the Torah, and therefore it is a principle. But here—that the Torah will not be replaced and that it is from Sinai—these two things don’t need explanation as to why they are principles; it is obvious.

Why? Why is it a problem if now the Holy One, blessed be He, were to give a second revelation and give different commandments? What’s the problem with that? No—you’re asking whether it’s true. He’s asking why it’s a principle. Assuming that it’s true. Assuming that it’s true, do you understand why they made it a principle? Yes. That’s what I mean. I was asking about both aspects, actually. Ah—where do we know it is true? “God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should repent.” I don’t know—here, in this context, Maimonides indeed doesn’t seem to bring a verse, but he says he already explained this foundation in the introduction to his work. In the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah one has to look there and see exactly what he wrote; I don’t remember right now. Apparently he omitted it here because he had already done it there. I don’t remember exactly from whom or from where, but maybe this is a view we learned in the study hall—that theoretically there could be another Moshe, a second Moshe, who is in his category. The fact that Maimonides first establishes the principle that no one like Moshe will arise, and therefore no other Torah will come and no prophet can contradict it—but theoretically another person like Moshe could arise, and maybe… If hypothetically another prophet like Moshe could exist, then this principle of the non-replacement of the Torah would also collapse. These are two principles that depend on each other. Maybe. I’m not sure, but maybe. This principle is not based on Moshe’s greatness; it is based on the policy of the Holy One, blessed be He. So if the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to give one Torah and not change it, then that is what He decided. Why should I care if the second person is as great as Moshe? The Holy One, blessed be He, does not want to change the Torah. So why, if He decides to change it? He told us that He decided not to change it. And if He changes His mind? He has no possibility? He changed His mind about whether to change or not? Yes. I don’t know, that’s already a second derivative. No, but is it really that solid that He truly won’t? How solid it is is another question. But Maimonides first determines that it’s true, and if it is true, then it is obvious why it is a principle. Okay? Yes.

I wanted to note that the explanation the Rabbi gave two lectures ago about Moshe as a scribe—that he actually wrote the Torah in some aspect of his own, but the Holy One, blessed be He, endorsed it—connected for me to a kind of biblical criticism question that troubles religious people. In the Torah, and generally in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), but more in the Torah for our purposes, there are scientific facts that are not correct; they are correct perhaps according to ancient scientific conceptions. In the story of creation we see that the world is built according to the worldview with the firmament and the waters above everything. So this idea of Moshe as a scribe, describing things… it could be that the scientific aspects really came from him, and therefore they are not necessarily correct. Yes. And if you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, dictated the Torah, then what—did the Holy One, blessed be He, make a mistake? Then you don’t need to look for explanations for why this needs to be correct. Yes, it could be.

By the way, regarding conservatism—my father always likes to tell an amusing story. There was once a Hasidic Rebbe who died, and his son was appointed in his place. Rav Noach? Rav Noach and Mordechai of Lechovitch. You know the story. So they said he didn’t behave the way his father did, and they asked him: why don’t you behave like your father? He answered: I behave exactly like my father. My father didn’t imitate anyone, and I also don’t imitate anyone. It’s the same idea, really. Exactly, right. I usually bring that story when discussing followers of the Chazon Ish. I say there are two types of followers of the Chazon Ish. There are followers of the Chazon Ish who do everything written in the Chazon Ish’s books, and there are followers of the Chazon Ish who do what they themselves think, just as the Chazon Ish did what he himself thought. The true followers of the Chazon Ish are the second kind. Truly—the Chazon Ish writes this, that a person should do what he thinks, not what I, the Chazon Ish, say. The Chazon Ish himself says that true followers of the Chazon Ish should do what they think. Well, all the Chazon Ish followers—and almost all of them—should draw conclusions, or almost all. The serious ones have already died out. Huh? The serious ones have already died out. I don’t know, I’m no longer following the developments there. Yes.

All right. Okay, thank you very much. Goodbye, good night. Thank you.