Yoma, Chapter 8, Gemara – Lesson 8

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, anyway, back to our topic. Let me summarize for a moment. So the first point I’m making here, against the background of minors and commandments, is that minors are exempt until age 13 or the appearance of two pubic hairs. That’s when the obligation in commandments begins, both prohibitions and positive commandments. But there’s a qualification: things that are based on simple reasoning are binding on minors as well. Again, that’s my formulation. Several later authorities write this; I expanded it more. I don’t remember anyone right now who says it in such sweeping and explicit terms, but it seems to me this is a correct and important qualification, and it also makes sense logically. So that’s point number one.

Point number two: what, after all, is the status of minors in Jewish law? Here we need to say a few things. First of all, as I mentioned earlier, harming them is forbidden. Someone who murders a minor is a murderer in every respect, right? The minor is considered a human being. It’s not that he isn’t considered human; he simply lacks legal competence and lacks understanding in the sense relevant to obligation in commandments. But he is certainly a human being. Meaning, he is still within the halakhic status even if he is a minor. He does not have the status of a cat, okay? It’s not that. He is still in the category of a human being. That’s obvious.

But beyond that, there are three laws that apply even to a minor. Even though commandments as such were not addressed to a minor, there are three laws that do apply to a minor. The first law is: if a minor is eating forbidden foods, there is a dispute in the Talmud whether the religious court is commanded to separate him from it or not. That’s there in Yevamot 114 and elsewhere. The question is whether, when a minor is eating forbidden foods, the court is commanded to stop him or not. So if I see a minor eating pork, am I obligated to separate him from the pork, to prevent him from eating so that he won’t violate the prohibition of eating pork, or not?

Now that’s a little strange, because if the minor is exempt from the prohibition of eating pork, then why should I separate him? What’s the problem? It’s pretty clear that apparently there is some kind of law here similar to the commandment of education, or some kind of educational commandment, but in the straightforward reading this is a Torah-level law. True, in practical Jewish law they rule: when a minor is eating forbidden foods, the court is not commanded to separate him. That is the halakhic ruling. There’s a dispute in the Talmud, but the practical ruling is that there is no obligation to separate a minor from a prohibition. I’m not talking about his father, who is obligated to educate him; rather, I see a minor in the street, or the court, or me, whoever it may be—we are not obligated to separate him from the prohibition. Let him do what he wants. That’s the first law.

The second law is the prohibition of feeding him the forbidden item directly. When I feed the minor a forbidden thing with my own hands, I violate a prohibition—and again, according to most opinions this is a Torah-level prohibition. And this is indeed ruled as practical law. Unlike the case of a minor eating forbidden foods on his own, this is ruled as binding law. Meaning, if I put the pork in the minor’s hand—or rather, if I actively feed it to him with my own hands—I have violated a Torah-level prohibition. They learn this from three verses; the Talmud in Yevamot, in that same place, derives it from three verses: ‘do not eat them’ is read as ‘do not feed them.’ It is said regarding forbidden fat, blood, and creeping creatures. In three places there is a written/read variation—‘do not eat them’ / ‘do not feed them’—and we learn from that that it is forbidden to feed a minor a prohibited item directly. Okay? So that’s the second point.

And here this is an important point, because we are not talking about causing someone to stumble. Causing a minor to sin is not called feeding directly. Feeding directly means that I actively perform the transgression upon him. For example, if I hand the minor the pork because he asked me for it, and then the minor eats it afterward, that is “do not place a stumbling block,” that is not direct feeding. “Do not place a stumbling block” does not apply with regard to a minor, because the minor’s act is not considered a transgression. So when I cause him to do it, I have not violated “do not place a stumbling block.” But if I feed him that pork—not just hand it to him so that he then eats it, but I myself feed him—then I have violated the prohibition of ‘do not eat them’ read as ‘do not feed them’; that is the prohibition of direct feeding with one’s own hands.

[Speaker E] And if I feed a gentile, is it the same law? I can’t hear. If I feed a gentile—is that also ‘do not feed’? Is that also feeding pork?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but you’re not feeding a Jew, you’re feeding a gentile. This was only said when you feed a minor. By the way, not only when you feed a minor, in my view—it also applies when you feed an adult. And this is Maimonides at the end of the laws of forbidden mixtures. Maimonides writes there that if someone clothes another person in a garment of forbidden mixtures, if the wearer was acting unintentionally and the one dressing him did so intentionally, the one dressing him is flogged.

Now understand: there is no flogging for “do not place a stumbling block.” So for what is he flogged? He is flogged for the prohibition of forbidden mixtures. But wait a second—he wore the garment of forbidden mixtures; I only dressed him in it. And indeed, the Rosh and the commentaries there are astonished: where does Maimonides get this from? What is this? I think it is simply an extension of the prohibition of ‘do not eat them’ read as ‘do not feed them.’ Just as when you feed a minor it is basically considered as though you yourself ate it, because the minor lacks understanding, so too when you feed a Jew who lacks understanding, he is exempt, but since you are responsible for it and did it intentionally, you are considered like the one who ate it.

So if you feed an adult, it’s the same thing. True, with one who feeds a minor I don’t know of any opinion saying he is flogged, because apparently at the end of the day the person who physically consumed it has to be someone who is subject to commandments and punishment, and with a minor that condition is not met. But if I feed an adult, since the one who actually consumed it is an adult, in principle he is punishable—only the mind that committed this transgression was my mind, not his. Therefore the punishment is shifted onto me. Okay? Maimonides repeats this also regarding corpse impurity and regarding a nazirite. Maimonides repeats this in three places, and in my opinion he learned it from feeding minors—from ‘do not eat them’ read as ‘do not feed them.’ And this basically means that when I feed a minor a prohibited item directly, it is considered as though I myself committed the prohibition—maybe even committed the very same prohibition that I fed him—so there is room to discuss that.

[Speaker D] Why is there no flogging for “do not place a stumbling block”? I can’t hear. Why is there no flogging for “do not place a stumbling block”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t remember anymore. Good question. I can’t think of answers offhand, but I don’t remember right now what they say.

[Speaker D] I’ll check, I’ll check.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe it’s in Sefer HaChinukh or… okay. In any case, there is no flogging. And that’s with regard to direct feeding by hand—that’s the second category.

So we talked about separating a minor from a prohibition, where practical Jewish law rules that if a minor is eating forbidden foods, the court is not commanded to separate him. We talked about direct feeding by hand, which according to the overwhelming majority of opinions is a Torah-level prohibition against feeding a minor directly. Just as an aside: in tractate Shabbat, in the chapter “All the Holy Writings,” around 116, I think, something like that, the Talmud discusses a minor who performs a forbidden act. Regarding a minor, we do not say to him “extinguish,” and we also do not say “do not extinguish,” because his Sabbath rest is your responsibility. A gentile—what does it say there? A gentile, we do not tell him to extinguish, but we also don’t tell him not to extinguish. And only regarding a minor, I think, do we also say to him not to extinguish; I think that’s what the Talmud says there.

So they ask there: but when a minor is eating forbidden foods, the court is not commanded to separate him—so why do I need to tell him “don’t extinguish”? And there Rashba writes—it’s at the beginning of the chapter “One Who Was Overtaken by Darkness,” but he explains that Talmudic passage—and he says that with Sabbath prohibitions there is a special law of “the rest of his child”: “so that your son and your daughter may rest,” and so on. Therefore the Sabbath is exceptional, and on the Sabbath there is an obligation to separate a minor from prohibition. Although it seems from there that this applies only to one’s own son, not every minor—but I don’t know, so there is room to discuss. Like the rest of one’s animal, basically—the same idea.

This is an interesting point. I once wrote an article about it, because after all it is explicit in the Torah: “so that your son and your daughter may rest,” and so on. For animals there are explicit Talmudic passages. The rest of one’s utensils is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. But the rest of one’s son and daughter—there is not even a hint of this in the Talmud or the medieval authorities (Rishonim); nobody says a word about it. An explicit verse, in that very same verse. Except for this Rashba. The Magen Avraham brought it in three places, I think, if I remember correctly: that there is a law of “the rest of one’s son,” that you are obligated to prevent your son from doing a prohibition on the Sabbath—specifically on the Sabbath, not as a general rule. So: if a minor is eating forbidden foods, the court is not commanded to separate him, but it may be that on the Sabbath they are commanded to separate him because there is this law of “the rest of one’s son,” at least according to Rashba and the Magen Avraham.

So we spoke about direct feeding by hand. The third law is the commandment of education. The commandment of education, unlike direct feeding by hand and unlike the case of a minor eating forbidden foods, is imposed on the parents—maybe only on the father; there’s a Talmudic passage in Nazir, we’ll see later—but in principle it is imposed on the parents, not on every person. I do not need to educate a minor I see in the street. According to the view that when a minor is eating forbidden foods the court is commanded to separate him, then I need to separate him even if he is not my son. Similarly, with feeding him a prohibited thing directly by hand—it is forbidden for me to do that to any minor, not only to a minor who is my son. But the commandment of education is imposed only on the parents in relation to their children; and the court, if the parents are not functioning or are absent, then the court is the guardian of minors and does the job, or compels the parents to educate the children. But in principle the responsibility lies with the parents. Other people are not supposed to educate minors.

So that is the third law. And in this discussion we are going to focus mainly, mainly on the third law, which is the commandment of education. And the commandment of education, unlike the previous two laws, is a rabbinic commandment. The commandment of education is only rabbinic; by Torah law there is no obligation to educate. “And you shall teach them diligently to your children” is written regarding Torah study—maybe there there is—but education toward commandments has no Torah-level law obligating one to educate a minor in commandments. All of that is rabbinic law. And that is the third law, and of course it exists and is imposed on the parents.

Now one more point, and with this I’ll finish the introduction and we’ll take a short break. There is a question—I just want to finish off the matter of direct feeding by hand and clear away all the introductory material.

[Speaker D] But

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We saw that it is forbidden to feed a minor a prohibited thing directly by hand. Several medieval authorities, and the Ran and the Minchat Chinukh, ask: how do we feed minors on Yom Kippur? Right? This happens all the time—parents give their children food on Yom Kippur.

[Speaker D] We said that according to practical Jewish law that isn’t the case—that according to the practical ruling we said it wasn’t ruled that way, that it’s not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Separating him from the prohibition—but direct feeding by hand is forbidden in practical law. I’m talking about actually feeding them, not about not preventing them from eating, or rather not about failing to stop them, but about actually feeding them. So the question is, how can that be? There is a prohibition of direct feeding by hand. As I said, according to the overwhelming majority of opinions it is a Torah-level prohibition, and people aren’t aware of this. To give a piece of pork to a minor, or to give him meat cooked with milk to eat, is a Torah-level prohibition. A one-month-old baby, not yet at the age of education, understands nothing. So that’s the question.

So the Ran and the Minchat Chinukh want to say that maybe it’s a case of saving life, because the reason the minor is allowed to eat is that if he doesn’t eat, it is dangerous for him. Fine—once it’s a life-saving situation, that overrides the prohibition of direct feeding. In my view that is a very dubious explanation. First, because it is simply not true that this is always a life-threatening situation. I don’t think a ten-year-old child who fasts all day enters a life-threatening state. And beyond that, in order to solve the issue of danger to life, I can also let him eat by himself; I don’t have to feed him, at least from a certain age and up. I’m not talking about a one-month-old or one-year-old, but a six-, seven-, or ten-year-old child—I can place food before him so that he eats or takes it by himself. And in any case we don’t find that people are strict about this. People feed their children

[Speaker B] on Yom Kippur.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in the book Divrei Yechezkel, he brings a Nachmanides in Kiddushin. The Talmud says there—the Talmud discusses positive commandments that are time-bound, from which women are exempt. The Talmud brings examples of positive commandments that are time-bound and examples of positive commandments that are not time-bound. The examples of positive commandments that are not time-bound that the Talmud brings are returning a lost object, building a guardrail, sending away the mother bird, and another one or two—I don’t remember.

Now all the medieval authorities there are puzzled by this Talmudic passage, because all those examples are examples of positive commandments that also have a prohibition attached to them. Right? Also in returning a lost object, also in sending away the mother bird, and in the guardrail case: “you shall not ignore it,” and “you shall make a guardrail for your roof.” “You shall make a guardrail for your roof,” and “you shall not place blood in your house,” and “you shall make a guardrail for your roof.” Or with the lost object: “you may not ignore it,” and “you shall surely return it.” Each of them has both a prohibition and a positive commandment. So even if we suppose that it were time-bound, would women be exempt? They would still be obligated. So why are you giving me those examples as examples of positive commandments from which women would be exempt if they were time-bound—or rather, examples of positive commandments not time-bound, in which women are obligated? Even if they were time-bound, women would still be obligated because of the prohibition involved.

So Nachmanides—I won’t get into the whole discussion now—but Nachmanides says there a principle that the later authorities make a whole business out of in many places. Nachmanides claims that with the commandment of guardrails, for example, the prohibition’s entire function is that its content overlaps with the positive commandment. What is the difference between “you shall make a guardrail for your roof” and “you shall not place blood in your house”? It’s the same thing, except one is positive and one is negative. So why were both said? He says: the prohibition comes to reinforce the positive commandment; it comes to motivate you to fulfill the positive commandment. That is Nachmanides’ claim.

Consequently, someone exempt from the positive commandment is also exempt from the prohibition, because the whole point of the prohibition is to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment. So if that positive commandment were time-bound and women were exempt, they would also be exempt from the prohibition. That is his claim. Because the entire role of the prohibition is to motivate the one who is obligated to fulfill the positive commandment. But if you are not obligated, then you are not obligated—so the prohibition also does not apply to you. That’s his argument.

This argument is used in several places. For example, regarding the commandment of charity, the Talmud says: one who spends lavishly should not spend more than one fifth—an ordinance from Usha. One who spends lavishly should not spend more than one fifth. Now later authorities ask—the Maharil Diskin, for example, and others—they ask: but there is also a prohibition regarding charity: “do not harden your heart and do not close your hand.” The prohibition should require me to spend all my money, so why only up to one fifth? So there too the Maharil Diskin brings this Nachmanides. He claims that because the prohibition in charity comes only to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment, once the positive commandment does not require you to fulfill it beyond one fifth of your assets, there is no reason to say that because of the prohibition you must spend all your wealth. After all, the entire role of the prohibition is only to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment that binds you. Therefore here too, for the prohibition you do not spend more than one fifth of your assets. True, that is also simple logic, because there is no reason for you to spend all your wealth and then yourself become needy and require charity from others. There is logic in setting it up that way as well, but that’s what he says.

For our purposes, Divrei Yechezkel wants to explain Yom Kippur in the same way. How do we feed minors on Yom Kippur? So he brings the Magen Avraham, whom perhaps we’ll see later. The Magen Avraham says that the prohibition of direct feeding by hand does not apply to positive commandments. He cites such an opinion; he himself hesitates about it. But he cites an opinion that there is no prohibition of direct feeding by hand when it comes to neglecting a positive commandment, only with prohibitions. Therefore he says it is possible to feed minors outside the sukkah on Sukkot. Because when you feed a minor outside the sukkah, that is not a prohibition, not an “issur”; it is neglect of a positive commandment. How can it be permitted to cause a minor by hand to neglect a positive commandment? With prohibitions, it is forbidden to feed him the prohibited thing directly by hand, but a violation by neglecting a positive commandment may be caused directly by hand. That is the Magen Avraham’s claim.

Divrei Yechezkel says: if so, then on Yom Kippur the prohibition of Yom Kippur—its whole purpose is to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment of “you shall afflict your souls.” And if I am allowed to feed a minor directly by hand as far as the positive commandment is concerned, then there is no reason that the prohibition should make it forbidden for me. Because the entire role of the prohibition is to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment. And here it’s a little tricky, by the way, because here we are talking about the minor’s positive and negative commandment, not mine. And the prohibition of direct feeding by hand—there is no positive or negative commandment on me; it’s the minor who is eating on Yom Kippur. So here this is already one step further than what I said before regarding guardrails or charity, where I was talking about the same person who is not obligated in the positive commandment and therefore would also not be obligated in the prohibition.

Here the claim is that since the minor is not obligated in the positive commandment, he is therefore also not obligated in the prohibition, and therefore when I cause him to violate the positive and negative commandment, I have violated nothing. But after all, the minor is not obligated in anything. Meaning, he assumes that my obligation not to feed a minor a prohibition directly by hand is based on the fact that the minor himself apparently is committing some kind of transgression in one way or another, and therefore I may not directly cause him to commit that transgression. Fine, so we need to know how to define that. But that’s what he argues.

In any case, according to this, it follows that if the minor is not obligated in the positive commandment, then he is also not obligated in the prohibition. So if I feed him directly by hand, even though there is a prohibition here, I have not violated anything. I am allowed to feed him directly by hand. So that brings us back to Yom Kippur. Here I’ve finished the introduction.

[Speaker D] Let’s try to resolve it in another way. Okay. On Yom Kippur, the prohibition of eating on Yom Kippur is not a prohibition on the object; it is a prohibition on the person. Maybe with a person-based prohibition, the rule of “do not eat them” / “do not feed them” does not apply?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there are those who wanted to claim that. I think—I think the Magen Avraham himself may actually say this explicitly. And the Imrei Yechezkel uses a different Magen Avraham on sukkah to resolve this difficulty. But I think what you’re saying, the Magen Avraham himself says about this question. That person-based prohibitions—he claims that every prohibition that depends on time is a prohibition on the person. After all, that same bread itself I can eat the next day; it is only on Yom Kippur that it is forbidden to me. So you see that the problem is not in the object—it is not like pork, not in the object itself—but rather in the person. If it is a prohibition on the person, then “do not eat them” and “do not feed them” was not said about that. Fine, that’s a discussion; it could also be an explanation.

Okay, let’s take five minutes to refresh ourselves, and after that we’ll come back to the law of education itself, the law of education.

[Speaker C] Okay, let’s get back to our topic. All right, friends, please turn on your cameras and let’s get back to work. Aharon and Michael, are you with us? Aharon and Michael? Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Mishnah on 82a says: “Children are not afflicted on Yom Kippur, but we educate them a year or two earlier so that they become accustomed to commandments.” Right, so basically we do not afflict them on Yom Kippur. That itself is a question: what is it coming to teach us? What would I have thought—that we should afflict them? They aren’t obligated. It seems there was an initial assumption here that we need to educate them to observe a full fast of twenty-four hours, and the first clause of the Mishnah says no, we don’t do that. We already discussed earlier that they are not obligated, and perhaps we can even directly feed them by hand. But yes, we educate them a year or two earlier. A year or two earlier. “A year or two” is also a somewhat vague expression. In the straightforward reading, it means a year or two before the age of obligation. But the Talmud, at least initially, understands it to mean a year or two before the final year before majority. Meaning, for a boy, age 12, and for a girl, age 11. “A year or two” means before age 12 for a boy and 11 for a girl. Meaning, from age 9 for a girl or age 10 for a boy. That’s how the Talmud reads it.

How exactly that fits into the Hebrew wording of the Mishnah, I really don’t know. True, the phrase “a year earlier and two years earlier” is strange. A year or two before majority—what does “a year before, two years before” mean? But that’s what the Talmud assumes here, because otherwise it’s very hard to read the Talmud. The Talmud here is very cumbersome and confusing, and you need to understand that this is basically the background of what appears in the Talmud. I won’t go into all the details here because it’s just playing around with these numbers. In the end, what the Talmud says is this. What matters for our purposes is mainly the conclusion.

“Since now we educate him two years earlier, is one year earlier even a question?” Rav Chisda said: no difficulty—this one is about a sickly child, and that one is about a healthy child. Meaning, it depends on the condition of this minor, whether he can begin earlier or later. Then Rav Huna says: at age eight or nine, we educate them by hours. Suddenly here there’s a new concept. In the Mishnah I would have thought that it says: “Children are not afflicted on Yom Kippur, but we educate them a year or two earlier so that they become accustomed to commandments.” What does “educate them” mean? One could have said: we educate them with a full fast—from what age? A year or two before the age of obligation. Doesn’t that contradict the first clause? Do you hear me?

[Speaker D] Doesn’t that contradict the first clause? It says they are not afflicted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because when they are little children, earlier than that, at a younger age, we do not afflict them. A year or two before, then yes, we would afflict them. One could have said that. But in the Talmud we see that it’s not like that. Or at least one could already have understood it not that way. In the Talmud a new concept appears. There is a concept called a partial fast by hours. Okay? We educate them by hours. At age ten or eleven, they complete the fast by rabbinic law. Here they already complete the fast. And we educate them by hours even earlier. At age twelve, they complete it by Torah law. Then the Talmud says regarding a girl, afterward Rav Nachman—doesn’t matter. The details are less important here. Look at the different opinions. But here we suddenly discover this concept of education by hours. Meaning, there is basically…

[Speaker E] Education by hours also fits the rationale of the Mishnah, doesn’t it? If we educate him a year earlier and two years earlier so that he becomes accustomed to commandments, then education by hours fits that rationale very well.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It comes to explain why you don’t need to do a full fast, because I only want to get them used to it. This is not fulfillment of the commandment itself. And this is already another point that will come up for us later, because from here it seems that there are two concepts of minors fulfilling commandments. There is a fulfillment of commandments whose role is to get them accustomed to commandments, and then you can also do it partially or incompletely—gradually, yes, little by little. And there is a concept of fulfilling the commandment fully, even though we are dealing with a minor who is not obligated in it. Two different concepts. Right, in principle.

Now the question is whether one of them is ruled out and only the second remains. In the straightforward reading, it seems from the Talmud that no. At a very young age, we educate them by hours. In the final year or two, we educate them already to full completion, but this is still before they are obligated. Meaning, there are basically two levels of education or two levels of—soon we’ll discuss whether this is education—but there are two levels of minors’ fulfillment of commandments. There is minors’ fulfillment of commandments in order to get accustomed, which is apparently the law of education. But there is also a concept of minors fulfilling the commandment fully in the last year or two. If he is sickly, then only one year; if healthy, then two years. But they fulfill the commandment fully.

What is that? Is it a continuation of getting accustomed to commandments? One could say that. It’s simply becoming accustomed to commandments in a gradual way. For a year or two they do it by hours, then another year or two a full fast, and then when they reach the age of obligation they are already used to fasting a whole day. Then it’s not two laws but just one gradual process, because everything is really about getting accustomed to commandments. But one could also understand it differently. One could also understand that there are two types of minors’ fulfillment of commandments. There is fulfillment of commandments whose purpose is to get used to it, so that he will know what to do when he is an adult—or know how, or get used to doing it. And there is the matter of the minor actually fulfilling the commandment itself. The difference is whether the commandment needs to be fulfilled according to all its laws. Fulfilling a commandment, even if by a minor, means fulfilling the commandment according to all its details and requirements. If we are speaking about habituation, as Yonatan said correctly before—to accustom him—you can also speak about partial fulfillment of the commandment. So this definitely raises those two possibilities.

At the end of the Talmudic discussion—and this is what matters for us—it asks: Rabbi Yochanan, Rav Huna, Rav Nachman, there are three views here, but that doesn’t matter at the moment. “The rabbis said to them: what does ‘education’ also mean here in the Mishnah? Completion.” What is written, “we educate them,” means to complete the fast. So the Talmud says: “And is completion called education? But isn’t it taught: what is education? If he is accustomed to eating after two hours, we feed him after three; after three, we feed him after four.” In other words, education means habituation. So how can you tell me that completion is also called education?

Now what’s the difficulty? It’s a bit of an odd question. What’s the problem? Education is gradual. At first you do it by hours; in the last year or two you do full completion, and it’s all one long gradual process of education. What’s the problem? What’s difficult here? The Talmud apparently understands, at least in the question, that no—these are different concepts of education, not one gradual progression. There is education by hours, and there is education by completion. So the Talmud asks: wait, I don’t understand—if education means education by hours, then how can completion also be called education?

The Talmud understands that this is not a gradual process; these are two different kinds of education. And indeed, when the Talmud answers, it apparently gives this an official stamp. It says: “Rabba bar Ulla said: there were two educations.” It does not say this is gradual—you start with education by hours and then move to full education. After all, twenty-four hours are also hours. You start with one hour, two, three, move to five, to ten, and in the end reach twenty-four. What’s the problem? That’s called education by hours too, isn’t it? What’s difficult? Why is it necessary to answer that there were “two educations”?

You can see in the Talmud that the Talmud understands it not as a gradual process. There are two laws of education. There is education by hours, and there is education to fulfill the commandment fully. True, chronologically this is done gradually, but in essence these are two different laws. I’ll say perhaps even more than that: these two laws may actually be rooted in two meanings of the term “education.” What is education? Linguistically. There are two meanings to the term. Some people would connect them, but in principle it appears in two meanings. There is the dedication of the altar. What is the dedication of the altar? What does the word mean? What does it mean to dedicate the altar?

[Speaker F] Initiation, or from the word trainee. Meaning,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is it? The dedication of the altar means the beginning of the service.

[Speaker D] The beginning of fulfilling its role.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, the beginning of fulfilling its role—that is initiation, that is dedication of the altar. Education in the sense we use today is something else. These are stages that occur before the start of the work. My trainee—I teach him before he becomes a full employee. And also in educational jargon, when we educate children, it is so that when they are grown up they will know what to do. It is not to make them behave properly right now. But if you think about it a little, it’s not so simple. For example, in everyday Hebrew—I’m not talking now about Jewish law—when I educate a child, is it only so that when he grows up he will know what to do? No. It is also to make sure that even now he behaves properly, because now he has no understanding. I do not trust him to make the right decisions on his own, so I make sure he makes the right decisions and does the right things.

Meaning, even today the concept of education has two meanings. One meaning is to be the mind of the minor, because he has no understanding, so I need to make sure that he makes the right decisions and does the right actions. First, so that he doesn’t harm someone else, or even harm himself. That is a present-oriented purpose, not a future one. In addition, I need to educate him so that he will know how to make decisions and behave properly when he is older. Two different functions. So the concept of education has a double face. It has one face turned toward the future, and one face turned toward the present.

If you look at it that way, you can definitely understand the “there were two educations” in our passage as really two different things, not a gradual process. I have one concern directed toward the future: to educate him—to give him motivation, and also the knowledge, and maybe even the physical ability, to get him used to fasting gradually, because it is not so simple to fast twenty-four hours. So let’s accustom him gradually. But all of that is future-oriented. The act I am doing now has no independent value; it will bear fruit in the future. That is one point.

There is another kind of education whose purpose is to achieve goals now. I want the minor to behave properly now. A fast by hours has no meaning for the present—you are not fulfilling the commandment. Therefore, when you speak of a fast by hours, that is certainly education directed toward the future.

[Speaker E] Why doesn’t that have the value of a commandment? After all, there is value in not violating the prohibition of eating if he were an adult. Meaning, even if I eat on Yom Kippur, afterward I still can’t continue eating.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good point. I’ll get to that; I’ll comment on it in another moment, okay? But on the face of it, if I am not fulfilling a commandment, then the minor is not doing something of value right now. Therefore this is not relevant with respect to present achievement, immediate achievement. It is future-oriented. If I want to speak about making sure that the minor does something of value now, then in the straightforward reading we are talking about a full fast. That is full completion of the fast. Education to completion means making sure that the minor does something good now, not for the sake of the future. But for that, it has to be done according to the law; otherwise it is not a commandment.

Now let me comment a little on what Yonatan said earlier. Yonatan is basically saying: fine, but even if the minor fasts for two hours, then for two hours he didn’t eat—at least I gained that. So that also has present value, not only future value. Here I would answer in two ways. First of all, it is not clear that there is education regarding prohibitions. And this is connected to the Tosafot Yeshanim, if you saw them in our passage. There is a dispute between two opinions in the Tosafot Yeshanim in our passage. And there are views among the medieval authorities that prohibitions are not relevant to the commandment of education. The commandment of education is to get you used to doing commandments. As for not violating prohibitions, when you grow up we’ll take care that you don’t violate prohibitions. But habituation and all these levels talk only about positive commandments. So it may be that even if there is a prohibition against eating on Yom Kippur, if I gained two hours, then true, I prevented a prohibition, but this is not the commandment of education.

But I want to claim more than that. It could be that on Yom Kippur—after all, you mentioned the practical implication: what happens if someone ate on Yom Kippur? Does he need to continue fasting, or has he lost it and may continue eating because it no longer helps him; he is no longer fulfilling Yom Kippur anyway? In fact the later authorities discussed this. Most of them tend to say that he must continue fasting. But there is definitely logic in saying that he has lost the fast. What is the idea here? The idea is that in the Torah itself it does not say that one may not eat on Yom Kippur. It says one must afflict oneself. The Talmud there discusses the source for a prohibition against eating, or for fasting, on Yom Kippur. There is no explicit prohibition. It appears nowhere. Maybe some analogy from the penalty of excision—something is derived—but there is no explicit prohibition. What is written in the Torah is only a positive commandment: “you shall afflict your souls.”

What is the difference between a prohibition of eating and an obligation to fast? A prohibition of eating means that when you eat, you violate a prohibition. Is not eating for one moment called fasting? In my opinion, no. Fasting always means not eating over a period of time. The prohibition of eating pork—if you ate an olive’s bulk of pork, say, at that moment you violated a prohibition. That is not “fasting from pork.” You are forbidden to eat pork; you ate pork, you violated the prohibition. On Yom Kippur there is no prohibition of eating; on Yom Kippur there is an obligation to fast. What does an obligation to fast mean? If I didn’t eat at 11 in the morning, did I fast at 11 in the morning? Then every day I’m fasting between breakfast and lunch?

[Speaker E] Yes, as long as I’m hungry, then yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Fasting means not eating over time. Hunger is the expression of that, but only the expression. Fasting is not merely not eating; fasting is not eating over a stretch of time. That’s called a fast, not just refraining from eating at a particular moment. Now what is the stretch of time? There is room to say that since the Torah defines Yom Kippur over a duration of twenty-four hours, the fast of Yom Kippur is defined over twenty-four hours. Therefore, if a person ate on Yom Kippur in the morning, he’s finished—he no longer fasted. What does it help for him not to eat later? If this were a prohibition of eating, then “if someone ate garlic, should he go back and eat garlic again?” as the Talmud says. Obviously not. If it’s a prohibition of eating, then having violated it once does not permit you to violate it again. But on Yom Kippur, if the obligation is fasting, and I define the duration of the fast as a full day—once you lose it, you’ve lost it. Therefore it may really be over, and there is no further obligation. So the fact that I make sure the child doesn’t eat for one hour may have no present value at all. It is only future-oriented. In terms of present value, he fulfilled no commandment. And as for a prohibition of eating—there isn’t one here. There is an obligation to fast. According to most opinions there is also a prohibition, but the prohibition applies to one who does not fast, not to one who eats. That’s not the point. So it may be that there is no present value here at all.

By the way, I’ll give you an interesting practical implication, because the analytic types always trip over this point. What happens if a minor develops two hairs in the middle of Yom Kippur? Is he obligated to continue fasting? Usually they make this depend on the conceptual question whether Yom Kippur is one single unit or a collection of moments. If it is one unit, as I said before—a single unit in which one must fast—then this minor has fasted half a day, and that is irrelevant; the commandment is to fast all twenty-four hours. If it is a prohibition of eating at each and every moment, then fine, he ate until now, but from this point on he shouldn’t eat. But think about it: the minor fasted until the morning by virtue of the law of education; he didn’t eat. It’s only that he was not obligated in it by Torah law; the law of education is rabbinic. But he did fast.

I claim that if so, then he should continue fasting for the rest of the day even according to the approach that this is a fast of a whole day, of an entire twenty-four-hour period, because the definition of the fast is a factual definition, not a halakhic one. If factually he did not eat for twenty-four hours, then he fasted the entire fast. True, he was not obligated in it, except from the morning onward. But from the morning onward he is obligated in it, and the rest of the time that he does not eat—if he did not eat before, even if he did not eat because of the law of education and not because of the commandment of fasting, still, at the end of the day he did not eat—then continuing not to eat from the moment he developed two hairs until evening is called fasting. Therefore, in my opinion, the minor is obligated to fast from the moment he develops two hairs, so long as by virtue of the law of education he had not eaten until that point.

[Speaker E] If the fast is only factual… if the fast is what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only

[Speaker E] factual and not halakhic, then if there is a person who is not fasting because he didn’t eat for half a day, seemingly he shouldn’t have to continue? That sounds strange, because if I need to fast and I’m not fasting just by not eating—sorry—then I don’t have a fast here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the fast is defined as not eating, not as the suffering that results from not eating. Those are the pages we skipped until page 82; look there, the Talmud discusses it there: could a person cause himself suffering—sit in the sun or do all kinds of things of that sort? The Talmud says no. The forms of affliction defined in Jewish law are the fast that is imposed on me. We are not talking about the suffering that is supposed to be caused to me as a result of that. By the way, there are those who wanted to argue that the commandment to eat on the eve of Yom Kippur—after all, there is a commandment to eat on the ninth; whoever eats on the ninth is considered as if he fasted on the ninth and the tenth—so the claim is that this commandment is meant to enable me to hold out during the fast itself. What about adding onto the fast? There are those who want to argue that there is a commandment to add time before Yom Kippur so that I will fulfill the commandment of fasting from the very first moment, because otherwise, at the first moment I am not fasting—I ate all the way until now, and I do not want to eat right now at all. But that is quite simply incorrect. There is a commandment of adding time not because I need to make sure I am fasting from the first instant, but because there is a commandment of addition, like adding onto the Sabbath—to fast even beforehand. So in short, for our purposes, the claim is that when I cause a minor not to eat on Yom Kippur, that has no present value; it is only oriented toward the future. When I talk about present value, that exists only if I make sure that the minor completes a full fast, because then he is fulfilling the commandment. Doing it by hours is not fulfilling a commandment; it is preparation, training him so that in the future he will fulfill the commandment. These two aspects of the commandment of training may actually be rooted in the two meanings of the concept of training. The dedication of the altar means beginning the service—that is completion. A minor who completes the fast in full is actually beginning to fulfill the commandment of fasting, because the commandment of fasting is for twenty-four hours. A minor who is trained by hours—that is training in the sense we speak about today, yes, to educate him, to accustom him with an eye to the future, so that in the future he will know what to do. Okay. So that is regarding our Talmudic passage. I told you, the old Tosafot raise all kinds of aspects that we will return to, but for that I need a few introductions. Now, introductions already about the commandment of training—we are inside the topic of training itself. The earlier introductions were about minors in commandments in general; now I am talking about the commandment of training.

The commandment of training, as the Talmud in Sukkah says in several places, as I said earlier, is only rabbinic. Surprisingly, this is very strange: there is no Torah-level obligation to train minors. There is no such Torah-level obligation. There is “and you shall teach them diligently to your children” regarding Torah study; regarding training in commandments there is no Torah-level commandment like that, there is only a rabbinic commandment. And the Talmud—the Mishnah in Sukkah—says: women, slaves, and minors are exempt from the sukkah; a minor who no longer needs his mother is obligated in sukkah. It once happened that the daughter-in-law of Shammai the Elder gave birth, and he removed part of the plaster roof and placed covering over the bed for the sake of the minor. All right? So basically we make sure that the minor does this, but as is explained there, it is a rabbinic obligation. The matter is stated more explicitly in the Talmud in Sukkah on page 2; let us look at it inside. I have not shared it yet. Yes, the Talmud says there: An objection was raised: a sukkah that is higher than twenty cubits is invalid, and Rabbi Yehuda deems it valid even up to forty or fifty cubits. And in practice we rule like the first tanna: twenty cubits. Rabbi Yehuda said—now Rabbi Yehuda attacks the Rabbis and tries to prove that it need not be lower than twenty cubits: It once happened with Queen Helene in Lod that her sukkah was higher than twenty cubits, and elders would go in and out there and said nothing to her. So you see that a sukkah need not be within twenty cubits in height—that is Rabbi Yehuda’s objection to the Rabbis. They said to him—the Rabbis answer him: Is that proof from there? She was a woman, and exempt from sukkah. She was a woman, after all, and so she was exempt from sukkah. So Rabbi Yehuda said to them: But she had seven sons; and besides, all her actions she did only in accordance with the sages. Here, she had seven sons whom she seated in that sukkah, and the sukkah was higher than twenty cubits—you see that a sukkah need not be within twenty cubits. And besides that, she did all her actions in accordance with the sages.

The Talmud asks: Why do I need the phrase “and besides, all her actions she did only in accordance with the sages”? This is what he is saying to them: And if you would say the sons were minors, and minors are exempt from sukkah—since there were seven of them, it is impossible that there was not one among them who no longer needed his mother. So at least one of them had already reached the age where he no longer needed his mother—that is the age of training. And if you would say that a minor who no longer needs his mother is obligated only rabbinically, and would she not care about rabbinic law? Listen to this: “And besides, all her actions she did only in accordance with the sages.” That is what Rabbi Yehuda asks the Rabbis. What is he saying to them? She had seven sons. Seven sons spaced out like that, so it is quite clear that at least one of them had already reached the age where he no longer needed his mother, and he was obligated under the law of training. What will you tell me? That the commandment of training is only a rabbinic law? True, but Queen Helene did all her actions in accordance with the sages; she did not violate rabbinic laws either, not only Torah-level laws. That is what Rabbi Yehuda proves against the Rabbis. The anonymous Talmud goes on—it is less important for our purposes. What do we actually see here? We see here, first, that the commandment of training is rabbinic—explicitly in the Talmud, right? The commandment of training is rabbinic. Second, we see that the commandment of training must be carried out according to the law; otherwise, what is the question? It could be that there was a child there who no longer needed his mother and was obligated by the law of training, and she seated them in a sukkah of thirty cubits—because for training it would not need to be done in a valid sukkah. So what is Rabbi Yehuda’s difficulty? You see here in the Talmud that if we are talking about the law of training, the law of training means doing the commandment according to the law. Right? That is what we see here in the Talmud. We also see in the Talmud that the law of training applies to the mother too, and not only to the father. Right? Because this is Queen Helene. None of these things are simple points; we will see them later, but they are not simple points—you can argue over every one of them. I will begin… the main point for us is indeed that under the law of training it has to be done according to the law.

Look at the Ritva there. Rabbi Yehuda said: It once happened with Helene, etc., up to “all her actions she did only in accordance with the sages.” From here we learn that a minor whom we train in commandments must have the commandment done for him in fully proper fashion, like an adult. The commandment has to be done according to the law. For in this discussion we bring proof from Helene’s sukkah because it cannot be that among her sons there was not one who had reached the age of training and required a proper sukkah. Yes? After all, the Talmud here—Rabbi Yehuda challenges the Rabbis: how can you say a sukkah must be no more than twenty cubits, when Helene trained her sons in a sukkah of thirty cubits? Now if training can be done through a commandment not performed according to the law, what is the objection? Fine, so she trained them, but she trained them in a sukkah of thirty cubits. Rather, says the Ritva, training must be done through a commandment performed according to the law. And the verse states this explicitly, says the Ritva: “Train a youth according to his way.” Yes, the Ritva learns it also from a verse: “Train a youth according to his way” means according to the correct way—perform the commandment according to the law. Not “according to his way” the way we usually understand it. The Ritva understands “Train a youth according to his way” to mean: cause him to fulfill the commandment according to the law. And I had to write this there—wait, he brings another proof from Eruvin—”And I had to write this because I saw sages erring in this.” There are those who err in this and think training can be done not according to the law. The Ritva says: incorrect. Here in the Talmud you see that the commandment of training must be done according to the law.

By the way, for our purposes, there might be room to distinguish between the two laws of training that we discussed. A law of training whose purpose is to accustom the minor might perhaps be done not according to the law. How do you see that in our Talmudic passage? That we cause him to fast for two hours. That is not according to the law, because according to the law it is twenty-four hours. So what is the point of training him to fast for two hours? That is training him without his performing the commandment according to the law. That is accustoming him for the future. And what is training for completion? That is training to perform the commandment according to the law. According to this, it follows that the law of training we are talking about throughout the rest of the Talmud is specifically training for completion, not training by hours. Training by hours is a special law on Yom Kippur. The regular law of training is training for completion, which is a general law throughout the Torah: one must train a minor to perform a commandment according to the law. And indeed the Shulchan Arukh writes: a minor who knows how to wave the lulav properly, his father is obligated to buy him a lulav in order to train him in commandments. You see? Properly. And if he knows how to wave a lulav not properly, then you still do not have to buy him a lulav. Why? To accustom him to a partial commandment? No. So that is what the Sha’ar HaTziyun says there: “in order to train him in commandments”—and obviously the four species must be valid, as with an adult. Okay? Training has to be done according to the law. That is what is implied in the Shulchan Arukh, that is what the Sha’ar HaTziyun writes, that is what the Ritva infers, and that is the plain sense of the Talmud in Sukkah.

That of course raises the question: so what happens in our passage in Yoma? Our passage in Yoma talks about training by hours. Training by hours is not according to the law. I already gave some hint about two laws of training. It may be that there is a specific law of training for fasting, where they tell me to do it even not according to the law. But the two stages of training at the end of our passage—that is the second law of training, which is training for fasting according to the law, all twenty-four hours, and that is the general law of training that exists rabbinically throughout Jewish law, not only on Yom Kippur. The law of training by hours is a law specific to Yom Kippur. Maybe that is a possible explanation, but we will get to that next time. If anyone wants to add or ask something, that is possible. Okay, so we will stop here. Goodbye.

[Speaker F] Thank you very much, have a good holiday.