Platonism – Lecture 28

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so basically last time we talked only within the context—I’ll put it back in. I said, I started in the session before last, in the last few sessions, I started talking a bit about Platonism in its less pleasant forms. I started with Popper, who described Platonism as the father of all evil, because he claims that Platonism is basically a recipe for ideological conduct. You have some clearly defined utopia in front of your eyes; as far as you’re concerned, that’s the perfect model, and you trample everything happening in the world in order to impose your perfect model on this world. You can see this mainly in communism, but maybe also in Nazism and in all kinds of major ideologies that usually, or very often, tend to operate with a lot of rigidity and violence in order to realize the ideology—an ideology whose basic purpose is supposedly to benefit people and the world, but in order to benefit, you crush anyone who gets in your way. And Popper sees the root of this problem in Platonism, because Platonism basically means there is some world of ideas where perfect ideas are floating around—the perfect horse, the perfect democracy, the perfect social system—and once you have things like that in front of your eyes, you try to realize them, or impose them on our world, with as much force as possible. So that’s one side. On the other hand, I said that what Popper proposes, in a certain sense—or at least what follows from him—is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Because in the end, if you give up the ideals and the utopias and the complete vision, then you don’t really have anything to aim for. Meaning, people don’t improve the world without having in front of their eyes some model of a repaired world. I gave some examples with that communist I once spoke to, who said he had already understood that the communist model was no longer workable, that you need a market economy and so on—he was, or still is, an economist. But he still improves the world in small ways; that is, he doesn’t have grand utopias. I asked him: what defines, for you, a repaired world? I mean, without a utopia, you don’t know what direction to go in with improvement. Improvement is supposed to bring the state of this world closer to the utopia. But if you have no utopia, then what does it even mean to improve? You need to define a direction that will be the right direction, and if there’s no utopia at the end of it that in your eyes is perfect, then how do you define the direction of progress? There’s a problematic tangle here, because both sides are problematic. The Platonic side tends toward crushing extremism, and the anti-Platonic side won’t improve anything. And of course… yes.

[Speaker B] I didn’t really understand why that’s called throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If a person remains modest and doesn’t set up for himself some utopia that he decided ought to be, but instead looks at reality straight on, with all the complexity and dynamics in it and the differences from case to case, like yesterday when we talked about Jewish law and all that, then you act in a much more—of course you strive for the good, but you don’t define the good a priori and detached from reality. For someone who would say moral realism, that’s even stronger. Look at the facts speaking in front of you, and don’t determine the utopia and the Jewish law, supposedly, in advance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that if you think for a second about what you’re presenting here, if you take it all the way, you’ll see that it’s an internal contradiction, or really empty of content. Because what does it mean to look at reality and decide how to improve it from within itself? To improve always means taking reality somewhere other than where it is now. And then I ask: to what other place are you taking it? In other words, what defines another place as a better place? You need some criterion that tells you what counts as better and worse. If you draw only from reality itself, reality is what it is, so there is no way to improve anything, because what is there is what is there. You need some model detached from reality, some good-in-itself. And again, obviously with all the dangers involved in that—but otherwise, how will you define what it means to improve reality?

[Speaker B] If after all we take the point the Rabbi is making, if we follow it all the way, then as I see it that’s also what moral realism was supposed to be, right? That when you see a fact that contains suffering, and that suffering itself contains within it the call to prevent the suffering, then—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you, then you—

[Speaker B] You’re sneaking the model in through the back door.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you have a model that says suffering should be prevented. That’s already something beyond reality, because otherwise there is no marker for the direction of progress. So it doesn’t matter right now whether that model is detailed and general and rigid, or something a bit less sweeping. But there always has to be something outside reality that marks the direction in which reality should move in order to become better. By definition, otherwise it doesn’t work.

[Speaker B] If we understand that suffering is completely particular and specific, and that embedded within it is the basis for happiness in general—it’s the basis. Not suffering, not suffering, but specifically embedded within moral realism, in the moral fact that makes a demand of the person, there is also embedded within it what is right to do in this specific event. And again, that’s not something—it’s not in my idea, it’s not that a person looking at it said, I thought we should do this and not that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—you’re hiding it, but it’s there. You won’t manage to escape it. After all, in the end, the very decision that suffering is bad is itself some kind of model. The very decision of how to prevent suffering, or what to do instead in order to improve the situation, also involves some sort of model. You can’t work without models. You have a set of ideas.

[Speaker B] That’s the only model that is correct—that’s really the claim about all—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Postmodernism, about the postmodernists—

[Speaker B] About every ideology—I’m willing to accept that point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. In the end, you can’t escape the fact that you need a model, because without the model there won’t be improvement. You have a state that is in a certain condition; it has problems like this, suffering like that, this issue and that issue. You can’t just say, okay, let’s improve. Improve what? You need to build some model that says what a better state would look like and try to move toward it. There’s no other way. You can’t function without some kind of model or utopia detached from the condition you encounter, because if that condition is what you encounter, then what criterion are you measuring it against? There has to be some criterion detached from that condition. It’s simply a logical impossibility. You can’t do without it. You cannot improve without having a model of what you’re aiming for with that improvement, or how you’re achieving it. There’s no escaping that. Except that, obviously, somewhere between these two extreme poles there has to be something that doesn’t give up the utopia and doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Meaning, it doesn’t fail in either of the two extreme failures on either side. I have a model, and I absolutely believe in that model, and I think the world would be better if that model were the one according to which the world was run. But when I strive to realize that model, I’m attentive to reality. I look at it—sometimes trampling people causes more suffering than it prevents, so why do that? The point is that I’m not captive to the model. I can also update it from time to time, of course, in light of reality. But the good-in-itself really does have to stand before my eyes when I’m trying to improve things. You can’t do without Platonism. It’s a dangerous illusion to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You need some kind of model, but your conduct toward the model shouldn’t be as rigid and crushing as Popper describes, or as it really was among the communists. It has to be something more attentive to the environment. But still, attentively, I move toward the model. That’s what I call soft Platonism. Soft Platonism means: I have a model; I do not give up the model; but I do not impose it on reality by force and at any price, because reality is resistant. So you have to know how to move toward the model, and maybe sometimes even to correct the model, because in reality it just can’t be realized. I mentioned that fellow who used to consult with me—a newly religious guy who consulted me—and he lived in a Haredi community in Ofakim. He said to me: listen, I don’t understand what they want from me. I mean, he rides a bicycle, so they tell him, that’s not appropriate, a God-fearing Jew doesn’t ride a bicycle, it’s not fitting. Even though among Haredim in many places they actually do ride, but never mind—that’s what they told him. And he had a backpack, so they also told him, what are you, a student? A Jew walks around with a plastic bag, not with a backpack. And he had an Israeli kind of name, so they told him, that’s not fitting, that name—change it to Berel or some name with the right aroma, not something like Nitai or whatever. In short, not appropriate. So he says to me, tell me, what do these people want from my life? What’s wrong with any of these things? Is it forbidden to walk around with a backpack? What’s the problem? So at some point in the conversation, I kind of had a moment of realization—this is where I talked about it. I suddenly understood how this process works, of new norms conquering more and more ground. Sometimes it feels like some kind of positive feedback loop—it just explodes. The Talmud says that a decree that was not accepted by most of the public is void. Yes, if most of the public did not accept a decree established by the Sanhedrin, then the decree loses its force; it is not binding. Usually, people tend to think that Jewish law here is being realistic, meaning it wants to recognize reality. We talked about soft Platonism. One has to understand that this is reality and there’s nothing you can do about it. In other words, you have to compromise; if most people aren’t such great saints, then you have to guide them with practical instructions they can actually carry out. In other words, this Jewish law is some kind of compromise. And I argue—and that’s the realization I had in that conversation—that this law is not some kind of compromise. If the decree does not spread among most of the public, that means it is not correct. Most of the public is giving you feedback, and telling you: if this didn’t catch on among most of the public, it probably isn’t right; you shouldn’t do it either. That means even if you are capable, and able, and think it’s right—because Torah is supposed to be realized in reality, and in reality there are all kinds of people and all kinds of circumstances and all kinds of things, and reality is not the study hall. In the study hall it seems very reasonable to enact such an ordinance or decree, but in life it doesn’t work. So the fact that it doesn’t work in life doesn’t mean that in the study hall you have to compromise with life. Because that way of looking at it as a compromise really means that the study hall is the real thing, and life is some kind of constraint that, well, you have to manage somehow. And I say no. Life is the real thing, and the study hall comes to serve life. Therefore, if an instruction comes out of the study hall that cannot be realized in life, that means the instruction is incorrect. It’s not correct Torah. It’s not correct Torah. Therefore, that feedback saying the decree did not spread among most of the public is feedback that goes back to the Sanhedrin and says: friends, you made a mistake here. Not compromise—you made a mistake. The public is giving feedback. And yes, this always comes to mind for me in this context. Once I heard from Rabbi Beni Lau, or in his name, that one of the problems in religious leadership in recent generations is that religious leadership has been yeshiva heads rather than rabbis—community rabbis. And the claim is that when yeshiva heads build a lecture, say, then the lecture is brilliant—an extraordinary analysis with wonderful complexity—and the students examine the consistency of the structure, attack it, challenge it, and intellectual sparks fly from the lecture. But 18-year-old students won’t ask you a question like: listen, this doesn’t make sense. It isn’t logical. Common sense doesn’t say this. They’ll check whether it’s consistent, what practical difference it makes, whether it fits Maimonides, whether it doesn’t fit Maimonides. But a community rabbi, when he gives his lecture, may have people who are less brilliant and less young and less enthusiastic—but many of them are older people with life experience, and they’ll say: listen, this doesn’t make sense, what you’re saying is not logical. Common sense says otherwise. Everything is consistent, everything is brilliant, everything is wonderful—something here is wrong. That kind of question a yeshiva head usually doesn’t get from his students, because they’re young kids, they haven’t gone through the world yet. They’re brilliant, but they’re not attentive to the world; they still haven’t lived in the world. Therefore, when you practically lead a community, it’s very important to get used to considering also the considerations of ordinary householders, not only considerations of intellectual brilliance and what is correct. And you need to consider the considerations of ordinary people not as a compromise, because what can you do, you also have to talk to them—but because that directs you away from the mistakes of theoreticians. Yes, there are things—you know, on Tu B’Av I write that there are things so stupid that only intellectuals could say them. That’s, what, Oscar Wilde? No, not Oscar Wilde—Lilliput, what’s his name, Swift, right? I don’t remember, anyway, I don’t remember. In any case, the claim is: when you’re an intellectual living inside some bubble, you’re simply talking nonsense. It’s very consistent, very brilliant, but it’s nonsense. It’s nonsense, and therefore it’s not Torah. Not that you need to compromise. You’re getting feedback from the field that you’re wrong. Okay, now, returning to my conversation about that guy—what happens in the Haredi world is that the Haredi world does not accept that kind of feedback. Why? Because if reality on the ground doesn’t like something—some new law that developed there, some new stringency that came out there—and it doesn’t seem right to the people, they say: the view of householders is the opposite of Torah wisdom, and therefore they force it on them anyway and say this is how it has to be done. And they are unwilling to receive the feedback of ordinary people because they believe the world is a study hall. And the outside world is basically some kind of compromise that you somehow have to manage, but the real world is the study hall. And that is a conceptual mistake. Therefore, indeed, there are these wild growths there—you get no balance and no negative feedback; all the feedback is positive, so in the end it explodes. And this is a society that cannot function. It cannot function because it doesn’t receive feedback from common sense. Everything is according to a very, very logical and consistent theory. Anyone who knows Haredi modes of thought knows this is very typical. People can present arguments to you that are intellectually brilliant and seem very logical, but it’s obvious they’re wrong. It’s simply nonsense. You can hear the arguments, say, around military enlistment—that’s a wonderful example of this. People are convinced they’ve come up with some brilliant defense argument. All kinds of Haredim I speak with—it’s just bizarre. You need to take him out of the… It’s very consistent, it has axioms, it fits this, it fits that—except that it’s not true, it’s perfect. I mean, it’s simply nonsense. And there’s no ordinary person there to tell him: listen, what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. Because he’s a yeshiva student, he lives in an environment of yeshiva students, so nothing will come out of it. He’ll build some detached mathematical structures, but no physics will come out of it. In other words, no connection to the world will come out of it. Because it’s not—it’s not a correct thing. And in that sense, I think this is a parable—a good parable—for the proper mode of conduct of what I earlier called soft Platonism. You need to have a theory. In that sense, conceptual Torah learning is a good thing. A study hall that outlines the correct theory is an excellent thing. But you also need attentiveness to reality. Not to impose theory on reality. There is some kind of two-way interaction between theory and reality. And you must not give up either of them. Whoever gives up theory and is left with reality will stay with the same reality as now and never improve it. And whoever gives up attentiveness to reality will wind up without reality at all; he’ll just murder all of reality. And the great art is how to do things in a way that has a theory, but is also attentive to reality and understands how it is correct, and whether it is correct, to apply it, and so on. For many years, as was customary in Bnei Brak, I had tremendous contempt for halakhic ruling. Halakhic ruling is for householders; the Mishnah Berurah says this, the Mishnah Berurah says that—we’re talking about conceptual learning, we’re theoreticians, the world is just some annoying factor we’ll get rid of after 120 years. But at some point I grew up a little and understood that halakhic ruling is a fascinating intellectual field. It is fascinating precisely because I’m not going only with reality, and I’m also not going only with theory, but I am committed to both sides. And finding the way in which I remain committed to theory but apply it in a correct and sensible way in reality—those are marvelous moves at the intellectual level. Much more than those detached theories that build all sorts of empty structures. There are extraordinary intellectual abilities required here, in order to understand how I do go with the theory—I do not give up the theory. There are decisors who give up the theory; they don’t engage in conceptual learning. The Mishnah Berurah says this, the Shulchan Arukh says that. They don’t engage in conceptual learning, and they are failed decisors. They do not rule correctly in relation to reality. On the other hand, those who cling to theory also fail. You have to take the theory and understand what it means in relation to the actual circumstances you’re in. And sometimes that requires far-reaching interpretive steps in order to stitch these two sides of the picture together. And here lies the great genius of halakhic decisors. If there is a brilliant decisor, it’s someone who knows how to take the theory and explain to you why the Jewish law is the one that tells you how to behave here—not in a detached way, because that’s what they said in the Sanhedrin, but by understanding how to embed it, or plant it, in reality. How—how to really apply it correctly, and when to apply it in reality. And that is an extraordinary art. It’s simply a wonderful art. But kids don’t understand that. You have to mature in order to understand it. Kids think that intellectual brilliance is the smartest thing there is. That’s a mistake. Not only is it not the right thing, it’s also not the smartest thing. The smartest thing is to take that intellectual brilliance and understand how it creates an interaction with reality.

[Speaker C] So reality today—as they say—there’s a leniency that the public cannot withstand. There are decisors who say that if on the Sabbath you can’t leave the house because of the SMS, then you don’t have to go to synagogue, and so on. And I’m stringent and so on, and what do I care what that does to you in the known result. And this isn’t some minor figure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But do you know how this phenomenon of a leniency the public cannot withstand came about? It came about because they turned the whole world into a study hall. The moment you turn the whole world into a study hall, then the whole world consists of theoreticians who ignore reality. Once, it was supposed to be that the Torah scholars were the theoreticians, and there was the public, the ordinary people in the fields, who gave them feedback. The moment you turn even the ordinary people in the fields into theoreticians, you have no feedback. And then what happens? When you understand that there are things you need to be lenient about because reality requires leniency, that becomes a leniency the public cannot withstand, because the entire public is a study hall. In other words, there are no ordinary householders there to provide balance. That’s exactly the point. Turning the street into a study hall is a disaster. It’s a disaster not because not everyone should study Torah, or not everyone should always study Torah—that’s also true—but there is a disaster here for Torah itself. Not a disaster for the world, not that there won’t be anyone to sustain the world. Torah comes out warped. Torah comes out warped because it needs feedback from the world, from the study hall, from the ordinary people in the fields, in order to understand what is right. Torah does not come out of the study hall. Torah comes out of the interaction between the study hall and reality. And when that interaction isn’t there, or when there is only reality or only a study hall, then that is not Torah.

[Speaker D] So the Haredim will come and say, what? The Haredim will come and say: this is what preserved the Jewish people for thousands of years. You see, those who used the logic of adapting to reality and so on and so on, like we discussed—they produced Conservatives, they produced Reform, assimilation, and so on and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re right that that’s what the Haredim will say, but they’re not right. As for the fact that they’ll say it—sure, they’ll say it. I think that the one who is not attentive to reality is the one who doesn’t survive. Being attentive to reality does not mean adopting everything that happens in reality. Reform is very close to the pole of: if that’s what reality says, then that’s what we’ll do. That’s the other side, the opposite of Platonism. I’m claiming: I have the model, I have the right thing to which I am committed, I’m not going to let reality take over it—but I’m also not going to let the model take over. I need to implement the model in a way that is attentive to what is happening in reality. So it’s not Reform, and it’s not Haredi.

[Speaker D] So in practice that’s Conservative.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] People say: we’re the ones who see reality. The Conservatives are completely right on that point; I completely agree. And by the way, there’s no principled difference between Conservatives and Modern Orthodox. The line isn’t sharp; it’s just a sociological definition. The line isn’t sharp. I completely agree with that direction, with the direction. You can argue about details here, details there, but the direction is exactly that direction. What’s called either Modern Orthodoxy or Conservatism is the same thing in different proportions, and yes, the right wing of the Conservatives and the left wing of Modern Orthodoxy switched places a long time ago. So these really aren’t two distinct groups. But I wrote about that too, a whole series of columns about it. That’s something else. Okay, in short.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, rabbi, yes, the Rabbi gave the example of military enlistment. After all, that really is a clear example of some Jewish law that we truly, truly live, almost literally—no, not almost, literally—because we deeply feel the meaning of that Jewish law in our souls. And then when we hear the arguments from the other side, they seem to us, however brilliant and coherent they are, detached and baseless. Could that point us toward saying that maybe if we were living all—or most, ideally all—of the ways of the Torah, then we really would think differently from how we may think today about a great many laws? It’s just that we don’t live them, because for us, okay, tzitzit we wear, tefillin sort of, but it’s not really lived and not really understood, so it’s very easy to slide into accepting the other side.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To the point of the lecture—what I talked about in yesterday evening’s lecture, or in the Thursday lectures—that in order to issue a halakhic ruling about a situation, you have to live the situation, right? I completely agree.

[Speaker E] And it’s not simple.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because if I don’t live something, I don’t live it—what can I do? Meaning, for example, one of the aspects regarding sacrifices in the Temple: there’s… I don’t know, I have a natural revulsion from that whole thing. I really do not long for it to return. I don’t know, those scenes repel me—priests wading in blood up to their knees. On the other hand, I keep telling myself: you never lived in a situation where there was a Temple and sacrifices. It could be that when you live in that situation, you understand that it contributes something that, in my current state, I simply can’t grasp. So I can’t categorically determine that this whole business is nonsense, or disgusting, or unworthy, and that one should oppose its existence, even though that’s what I feel today. But I’m aware that I do not live in that reality in which there is a Temple and sacrifices and priests in their service and all kinds of things like that, and it could be that if I lived in such a situation, I would understand why it makes sense. Right? That’s, for example, an entire wing of the Torah, a huge wing within Jewish law and the Torah, that just doesn’t speak to me. I don’t understand what people want from me there at all. It doesn’t interest me. I pray it never returns. But again, together with that, I also jot down a warning note to myself: you do not live the situation; you cannot categorically determine whether it is good or not good, what it means, what it gives us or doesn’t give us. That’s true. I completely accept that comment. But I’m saying: the life that we do have—fine, we don’t have a Temple—but the life that we do have, we need to try to live it. In order to issue rulings in it, you have to experience it, you have to understand what it means. Because otherwise you’re left with detached theory, and you arrive at the oppressive Platonism the way Popper described it. Yes? Communism is basically the purest expression of Platonism. That’s what Popper wrote his book against—against communism. And despite the apparently positive motivations, yes? Equality, caring for the weak—all wonderful motivations. And that is exactly the problem: you have a theory built on wonderful motivations, but you never checked it against reality, and then you impose it on reality. So from every direction, it’s basically saying the same thing.

[Speaker F] So now, Rabbi, who decides which parts of the model can be given up? Is it basically the majority of the public? Look, what determines—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Determines” is too strong a word. The claim is that there is an interaction between theory and reality. I don’t know how to state definitively who determines and to what extent. The result is a combination of theory and real-world considerations. How do you build the—neither one overrules the other. It’s a combination of both. What combination, in what proportion, when to compromise with reality, when to compromise with theory—that’s some kind of intuition that has to be developed and exercised in the field. I don’t know how to lay down hard and fast rules on this. But I think all of us have some kind of sense, or intuition, or common sense, that when you’re inside a situation, if you’re willing to listen to it, you understand how to behave. You take theory into account, but you understand how to behave in the face of that reality. We have that nose for things, and I trust it. Others say that’s the evil inclination; go with the theory, because the theory is Jewish law, the word of God, and it’s forbidden to touch it. But in my view that’s nonsense, because that instinct is extremely important. It is no less the word of God. Okay, so I want now to move for a moment to a slightly different plane, to say the same thing on a somewhat different level. Let’s talk now about an individual person, not about groups and big ideologies and communism and Haredi society and who knows what. A private individual, okay? How does a private individual behave? So last time we spoke about Kantian morality. And Kantian morality basically says that you should do things out of commitment to the command of morality, to the categorical imperative of morality. Meaning, if you do things because you feel like it, or I don’t know, because it’s nice for you that way, then you’re not a moral person. A moral person is a person who answers the moral command. Now, there is a certain problem with this description. First of all, it’s very Platonic. It’s Platonic because we talked about moral realism: moral facts are some kind of ideas, I observe those facts, and that dictates how I should behave, which is really Platonism. Right? I mentioned the article about the moral saint that Susan Wolf, I think, wrote, and she describes there a person who is completely attached to moral values, but it’s unpleasant to live with him. Meaning, he’s not a pleasant person. Why isn’t he pleasant? Because he functions in a terribly mechanical way. He’s constantly checking against the principles of morality and looking at how to implement them. That’s basically a kind of Platonism. Again, it’s not the oppressiveness Popper talked about. He’s doing something positive. But there’s something mechanical here that I think is disturbing in such human figures. Something there is just not… that’s not… it’s not a perfect model. It’s not a perfect model, even though in Kantian analysis, ostensibly, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. You have a principle or a moral fact, and you need to implement it in the world and live by it. So you constantly need to make these calculations: does what I’m doing fit this model, fit that model, calculate the utility function and finally reach a conclusion. Once, as I mentioned, in the first cycle in Yeruham when I taught there, one of the students got married—maybe I mentioned this. One of the students got married, and I was standing to the side with one of the teachers, watching the students dance. And I showed him how each one danced exactly the way he learned. I still remember the names and how each one danced, because it was exactly like the way he learned. There were those with extraordinary analytic abilities, and when they learned they were these theoreticians—the Platonists I mentioned earlier. They danced that way too. You could see that they moved a leg and were doing a calculation: now the knee has to go here and the foot has to go there, this distance and that distance—it was a Yemenite step done by a robot. Okay? Meaning, you’re constantly calculating exactly how to act, and then you act with precision according to the calculations. And opposite them there was at least one person I remember who stood out very clearly. It was obvious he wasn’t doing any calculations. He was simply dancing. It came out of him. It was something completely, completely natural. And I don’t know, I think maybe he even did it more accurately than they did, but aside from that, somehow I use this, of course, as a metaphor—a metaphor for the question of how it’s right to learn, and maybe also how it’s right to behave. The question is whether one should learn analytically, with principles and distinctions, like the yeshiva head I described earlier, or whether one should allow the natural flow, simple intuitions, natural life as well, to have their say. So dancing is the metaphor, but learning is the thing itself. And the same applies to conduct: when I conduct myself in the world, should I constantly be working with principles? And again, I’m not speaking on the previous level, where I work with principles and crush reality—that ideological cruelty. That’s the previous plane I discussed. Right now I mean something else. I’m not crushing anything, but the question is whether it’s right to do it in a natural, flowing way or to work constantly against principles. Of course, if I work against principles, that too can lead to oppressiveness, but at the moment I’m speaking about a slightly different aspect. Meaning, should it be something that comes from you, or some sort of submission to principles that stand outside you and you’re constantly doing the calculations? So ostensibly, in the simple Kantian account, ostensibly the Platonic model is the right one. You need to act because of the motivation of commitment to the moral command. That is the complete moral person. Someone from whom it simply flows naturally—right, this is the sheep metaphor of the Meni Sachak—that person is a sheep. Meaning, the sheep also harms no one because that’s its nature. It doesn’t decide, it doesn’t work according to principles. So a person too should be a man of principles, a moral person, and not a sheep. Ostensibly. That’s how it would seem, and I think this too is some kind of expression of the relation between rigid Platonism and reality. But here, in this case, I’m talking about the reality of the person, not the reality of the environment outside him. Meaning: do I ignore what my heart tells me and cling to principles, or do I go with what my heart tells me but without ignoring the principles? Rather, I decide right now to dance a Yemenite step. I know how a Yemenite step is structured, but I’m not calculating at every moment exactly which leg to send where. I let the thing flow after I’ve set the framework through a conscious intellectual decision. Okay, I’m using dancing here only as a metaphor, of course. So I want to bring—

[Speaker E] I feel this sometimes when you speak with—sometimes, many times—with Haredim, and you talk with them even about the subject of kindness. Very often—God forbid, I’m not generalizing—the Kantian feeling I get is that they do it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In order to discharge their duty and be righteous.

[Speaker E] Yes, but you look at him in the—you know, he’s not really looking into the eyes of the person, and something is terribly missing. And that doesn’t fit. Kant would say it’s excellent that you’re not looking, because if you look, you’ll feel compassion, and then you’ll be doing it for the wrong reason.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—not for the Kantian reason, but because you feel compassion for him. So it’s like the famous joke about the kollel fellow who had to give gifts to the poor on Purim, but there were no poor people around, so he hired a gang of robbers to make sure there would be a few poor people so that he could fulfill the obligation of gifts to the poor. Of course that’s grotesque, but it’s a grotesque image meant to describe this kind of conduct, where you do good for someone—supposedly—in order to discharge your duty and be righteous. Because the principles say that you have to do good for someone else. Yes, like—the nice example that always comes to mind—yes, the yeshiva boy goes out to meet girls for matchmaking, and he rejects all of them. The spiritual supervisor comes to him and says, what is this? Really, none of them suits you? Sit and study ethics with intensity, work on your character traits for a year, and then go back to meeting candidates. Fine. The boy studies ethics with fervor, isolates himself, grinds through The Path of the Just. After a year he goes back to dating and again rejects all of them. So the supervisor asks him: what did you do? You worked on your traits for a whole year and nothing came out of it? He says: why, Rabbi? A year ago, when I was arrogant, none of them suited me. Now that I’m humble too, all the more so none of them suits me. Meaning, I think this is a wonderful expression of someone who works on his traits or keeps all the commandments because he has to discharge his duty, because there’s a principle that says he has to do it. So on the one hand, the Kantian model says exactly that. That’s what you’re supposed to do. If it simply flows out of you, it has no moral value. Moral value comes when you cling to the moral theory, you are committed to the categorical imperative, and of course you’ve learned all of Kant’s philosophy in order to understand what the categorical imperative says, and after you become such a great philosopher, then you are the truly moral person. But an ordinary person who does good because he’s a good person—that has no moral value. That’s what Kant says. On the other hand, people’s simple intuition is not like that. Mine isn’t either. There is something more whole in a person from whom goodness comes naturally. But I agree with Kant—again, here too I’m not a rigid Platonist, but I am a soft Platonist. Meaning, in this issue itself of moral Platonism, I am a Platonist. Meaning, here too I take Kantian theory seriously; I don’t throw it away. I think it is correct. But at the same time, I’m also attentive to my intuitions that say: wait a second, but this robot-like existence that constantly behaves according to rules—there too there is something flawed. So how exactly do you reconcile these two things? Do you understand? This is a second-order move. I’m looking at the issue of soft Platonism itself and applying the method of soft Platonism to it. In this very issue, I go with neither the principles alone nor reality alone, but with some combination of the two. And I want to illustrate that specifically not in the moral or Kantian context, but in the context—

[Speaker E] Rabbi, rabbi, rabbi… what? Rabbi, for example, Eichmann said he was a Kantian, and to a certain extent he was right. After all, what could have prevented him from doing what he did would have been if he had said: true, there are orders and laws and so on, but I’m looking at the victims in front of me—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I feel something.

[Speaker E] But he said: I’m sealing myself off, I need to be Kant and obey—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the Platonic failure. Also the German legal positivists—the whole culture there is a culture of rules, of laws. And yes, that is an expression of the danger in this kind of conduct. Correct. And it’s not because it’s wrong to obey the law—that’s exactly the point. Even obedience to the law has to be attentive to the constraints of reality, to what is happening in reality; not just to impose it on every situation no matter what. Pay attention to what situation you are in. Meaning, you can’t go with rules like a bull charging into a wall. That is exactly the point. I want to show this within the world of halakhic commitment or religious commitment. Because there is a move really parallel to the Kantian move, or to everything I said before, in the halakhic context. So there is—I’ll do this very briefly, this is also basically a column on my website; maybe I’ll send it in WhatsApp. The Talmud in Sanhedrin brings a dispute between Abaye and Rava regarding one who worships idols out of love or out of fear. “It was stated: one who worships idols out of love or out of fear—Abaye said he is liable; Rava said he is exempt. Abaye said he is liable, because even though he worshiped. Rava said he is exempt—if he accepted it upon himself as a god, yes; if not, no.” Meaning, if he worships the idol out of love or fear, Abaye says he is liable; he worshiped, that is idol worship. Rava says no, only if he accepts it as a god. Now what does “only if he accepts it as a god” mean? Most of the medieval authorities right there explain this passage not according to its plain meaning. For example, Rashi says: what does it mean, worships out of love or fear? Out of love of a person and fear of a person, and he did not regard it in his heart as divinity. Meaning, I worship the idol because I love someone and want to give him pleasure, or because I’m afraid of someone—a person, not the idol. And that’s not the plain meaning. Worship out of love or fear, plainly, means love and fear of the idol, not love and fear of my friend or some other person. But Rashi interprets it not according to the simple meaning. And most of the medieval authorities do likewise. Why? Very simply. Because if it means love and fear of the idol, then there’s no greater idol worship than that. After all, we too serve the Holy One, blessed be He, out of love or fear. So if you direct that very kind of service toward an idol, then it is certainly idol worship. So how can Rava say you are exempt in such a case? What would you have to do in order to count as an idol worshiper? That is exactly what “accepting it as a god” means—to love and fear this idol. Right? That’s apparently the claim underlying Rashi and the other medieval authorities, who explain that when the Talmud says love and fear here, it means love and fear of a person. But Maimonides, in Laws of Idol Worship, chapter 3, law 6: “One who worships idolatry out of love, for example because he desired this image due to the beauty of its craftsmanship, or who worshiped it out of fear of it lest it do him harm, as its worshipers imagine that it can do good or evil—if he accepted it upon himself as a god, he is liable to stoning. But if he worshiped it in its usual mode of worship, or by one of the four forms of worship, out of love or out of fear, he is exempt.” So what does he say? He says that if he desires this image because its workmanship is very beautiful—that’s aesthetic enjoyment—or he fears that it may harm him, then he is exempt. But if he accepted it upon himself as a god—that’s the antithesis—then he is liable. That is first of all the plain meaning of the Talmud. Maimonides sticks to the plain meaning of the Talmud. Rashi and the other medieval authorities—that is not the plain meaning of the Talmud. But Maimonides writes that the love and fear spoken of here are love and fear of the idol. Now, that is indeed the plain meaning of the Talmud. But it is not for nothing that the other medieval authorities moved away from it. Why? Because that simple meaning is difficult. What does “accepting it as a god” mean? If he worships it out of love or fear, isn’t that already treating it as a god? Why do we serve the Holy One, blessed be He? Out of love or fear or something like that. So you are directing that very same religious service toward an idol. So why is that not straightforward idol worship? Why is he exempt? After all, we rule like Rava, of course—when Abaye and Rava disagree, the law follows Rava, with certain exceptions, and this isn’t one of them. So here the law is that he is exempt. And Maimonides explains it literally. The Raavad indeed comments on Maimonides and says: “And we explain it as love of a person and fear of a person, and not love of the idol and not fear of it.” Right, exactly—that is the problem. True, that isn’t the plain meaning of the Talmud, but you can’t explain the Talmud according to its plain meaning, because it’s difficult. So I want to propose an explanation for Maimonides—not mine, by the way, but a friend of mine’s, Nadav Shenarav. Many, many years ago he explained this Maimonides to me. And basically the claim is that idol worship out of love or fear is in fact not religious service. And even serving the Holy One, blessed be He, out of love and fear is not religious service. Because when you serve the Holy One, blessed be He, out of love or fear, you are actually serving yourself. Because you feel love or fear, and that is what motivates you to serve. Religious service is service that you do for Him or because of Him, not for yourself. When you love or fear and therefore act, you’re really doing it for yourself, for your own feelings of love and fear. I’ll maybe bring an example that I’ve also given in the past on various occasions. Once I was at Sde Boker during the Ten Days of Repentance, at the environmental school. The director there was a friend of mine. He asked me to come speak to them—but not on “religious” topics, right? They were secular. So something related to the season, but without religiosity. So I said to them, I asked them: what happens if I hurt someone, and I don’t have the slightest twinge of conscience over what I did to him? I’m whistling a merry tune, happy and cheerful. But intellectually I understand that I hurt him, and I decide to go and appease him or ask his forgiveness. Let’s say Elijah the Prophet comes to you—secular Elijah the Prophet—and tells you that that’s what’s in my heart, meaning that I don’t feel anything. Would you accept such an apology? There was a full consensus there that no, they would not. Everybody. What is this? It’s hypocrisy. You don’t really feel it in your heart; you’re doing it just externally. I told them that in my view that is the greatest apology there is—only that one I would accept. Why? Because if I come to appease you because I feel guilty, then I’m really doing it for myself, to calm the guilt inside me. And that is why I come to you. But if I feel nothing inside, then I have no need for this apology—for me, there is no inner need here. I do it because—because I truly think I hurt you and that it is proper to correct that, so I go and ask forgiveness. Again, I’m not talking about someone doing it out of self-interest, but someone who does it out of cold intellectual judgment, without his heart being in it, and I ask your forgiveness. That is a wonderful apology. That is really a person who wants to correct the wrong he caused, the distortion he caused, and is not coming to feed the distress inside himself. And the same thing, says Maimonides, applies also in the context of serving God. If you serve God out of love or fear, you’re doing it for yourself, because there are feelings inside you and you’re catering to them. So you’re doing it for yourself. You’re serving yourself, not the Holy One, blessed be He. So what does it mean to serve the Holy One, blessed be He? To do it because He said so. Not because I love Him, not because I fear Him, but because He said so. And that is the meaning of the term “accepting as a god.” Yes, in the Talmud and afterward in Maimonides, the antithesis of worship out of love or fear is accepting as a god. What does accepting as a god mean? What is “god”? In the Torah, “elohim” means judges, right? “Then the owner of the house shall come before the judges.” Or in the Talmud at the beginning of Sanhedrin, it is derived that you need a court of three for monetary cases because the word “elohim” appears three times in the passage. “Elohim” means judges. Why does “elohim” mean judges? Because a judge or a court is someone whose words I have to obey because he said them. Not because he is right, not because I identify with it, not because it speaks to me—not connected at all. But because he said it. He has absolute authority, formal authority. What he says must be done because he said it. That is the meaning of “elohim.” That is why judges are called “elohim.” “Elohim” is not someone I do things for because I identify with them, because I love him so much, because I fear him—no, no, that is not “elohim.” “Elohim” is someone such that if he says something, I do it because he is “elohim.” Ask me why I do it, and the answer is simply: because he is God, because God said so. There is nothing to ask after “so what if God said so?” Anyone who asks “so what if God said so?” does not understand what God means. God is the final answer to the question of why to act. Why act? Because God said so. That’s it. It’s an axiom. In every chain of reasoning, in the end, we arrive at some principle that is an axiom, which we cannot justify further. The fact that God said it, and that He is God—that is the most basic axiom. That is the meaning of God. God is someone whose commands must be fulfilled because He said them. And therefore judges are called “elohim,” and that is the meaning of “accepting as a god” in Maimonides. Religious service that has value with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He—or in the case of idol worship, negative value—is when it is done out of acceptance as a god. Not love, not fear, not dancing, not identification, not because I understand that it will improve the world, none of that—even if all of that is true, regardless of whether it is true or not; that is a different question. That is not the motivation for which one should act. The motivation should be that I accepted him upon myself as a god. Yes, one of the examples Nadav gave me was, say, that you’re driving on the road and there’s a policeman there. So you slow down—you go from 130 to 90, the legal speed limit. Did you commit idol worship? Ostensibly yes: the policeman is some kind of god, you fear him and therefore do what he says. Why is this not idol worship? It’s not idol worship because I’m doing it not because the policeman said so, but because I’m afraid of him, or because I think he is right, or for whatever other reason there may be. But it’s not because he said so. If I did something solely because he said so, that would be idol worship in every respect. That would be idol worship. Obeying a policeman would then be idol worship. Say, for example, someone obeys the laws of the state because the state said so—not because it is right, not because I identify with it, not because society needs order, or any such reason, but because the state said so. And sometimes there is a feeling that there are people for whom this is the case—“because it’s the law,” that kind of answer. That is idol worship. Completely. It is outright idol worship. There is no such thing. Meaning, there is only one God, and only that one being must be obeyed by virtue of the fact that He said so, because He is God. That’s all. If there is someone or something else, some other factor like that, then you have two gods in the world, and you are engaging in associated idol worship. That is basically what—what?

[Speaker C] Which contradicts what we said at the beginning. The stringent halakhic decisor says: this is Jewish law, and whether it’s realistic or not, he doesn’t care—you must obey Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t understand—

[Speaker C] Fine, I’m not interested.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re right in principle, but I disagree on one point. I claim that this is not the Jewish law; this is halakhic theory. But the Jewish law is the correct way to apply the theory to reality. If I were compromising with reality, you’d be right. If it were a compromise, you’d be right. There is Jewish law; there is no counsel and no wisdom against God. There are places where one can compromise, but no. But if I understand that the interaction with reality is not a compromise—reality shows me what the Jewish law really says. Not theory alone, but the interaction of theory with reality. If so, then that whole argument never gets off the ground. You can’t tell me “there is no counsel and no wisdom against God,” because the question is what God wants. God does not want the theory; God wants the theory in the correct way of applying it to reality. That is the Jewish law.

[Speaker C] It depends on the decisor. One decisor—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Says one thing, one decisor says another.

[Speaker C] Fine, that’s my approach. But what if according to Jewish law you’re forbidden to use an elevator on the Sabbath, and it matters what certification and so on—stay home, don’t go out—and that’s Jewish law, even if it’s not realistic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, if

[Speaker C] someone

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] thinks that this really is the Jewish law—meaning, for the sake of the discussion, he clings to the theory. I’m not getting into the question right now of what is actually correct here. But suppose someone says: this is the halakhic theory and I don’t care what’s happening in the world. Then if, from his perspective, that really is the Jewish law, then he is right. The only question is whether that is really the Jewish law. I claim that it isn’t. Meaning, I claim that Jewish law is taking the theory, understanding how to apply it correctly to reality and its constraints, and that is the Jewish law—not that one should compromise. I’m not telling him: compromise because reality is very difficult. I’m telling him: if in reality it doesn’t work, that means your Jewish law is incorrect. So if he thinks that what I’m doing is compromising, and therefore he says “there is no counsel and no wisdom against God, and I am the true righteous person,” then I tell him: no, I’m not compromising. This is the Jewish law. What you are doing is incorrect; that is not the Jewish law. In other words, this is the debate over a decree that the majority of the public did not accept—whether that’s a compromise, or whether the fact that it did not spread among the majority of the public gives me feedback that it is not correct.

[Speaker G] That’s exactly the difference between those two conceptions. Yes, Daniel. But what about morality? So now we’re getting into the whole issue of: what if I do something because I think it’s moral? Maybe there’s Torah, but there’s only Jewish law, no morality? And you once explained that yes, there is also morality that one is obligated to keep. There are two systems—there is Jewish law and there is also morality—and we are obligated in both. But how does that fit with this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand the problem. There are two systems and we’re obligated in both, so what’s the question?

[Speaker G] No, I do it because it’s moral, because I think it’s moral, not because God commanded me. Maybe God gave me the moral sense. Ah, you’re talking about moral laws.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean when I fulfill—say, I give charity. When I give charity, if I give it out of compassion, the question is whether I fulfilled a commandment. Is that the question?

[Speaker G] Let’s say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll get to that later; that’s exactly where I’m aiming. Okay. I don’t even know anymore whether it will be today, because I see our time is already up, but that’s the next stage.

[Speaker C] There’s a big discussion whether there is morality outside Jewish law or something like that. There are several things that Rabbi Lichtenstein, Rabbi Amital—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know. I gave, I think, two whole series on morality and Jewish law, and I also wrote about it on the site, and I completely disagree with Rabbi Lichtenstein and with all those approaches. But that’s a separate issue; we won’t get into it here. So in short, what I want to say is that Maimonides claims—really, this is the Talmud—that religious service, and now I’m no longer talking about idol worship, now I’m talking about service of God, religious service cannot be done out of love and fear. It must be done in a Kantian manner. Just as I am committed to the categorical imperative in the moral context, I am committed to the divine command in the religious context. And if compassion arrives, as we said before, or love or fear or things that come from inside me, that is not religious service. It is not serving God. Serving God must be accepting the yoke. Okay, that’s what Maimonides says. You can see this in another place in Maimonides—even more than one other place—but one such place, for example. Maimonides writes at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance: “A person should not say: behold, I perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings written in it, or in order to merit the life of the world to come; and I separate myself from the transgressions that the Torah warned against in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah or in order not to be cut off from the life of the world to come. It is not fitting to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And only the ignorant, women, and children serve God in this way, and they are trained to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” What is called—here he says fear is not service, love is. But notice how he defines love. This is law 2: “One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, nor out of fear of evil, nor in order to inherit good, but does the truth because it is truth, and in the end good comes because of it.” What is called serving out of love? Not that my soul yearns for the Holy One, blessed be He, and I do these things because I love Him so much. Rather: to do the truth because it is truth. The coldest and most alienated thing I can imagine. To do the truth because it is truth. That fits very well with what he said in the Laws of Idol Worship. I do it because I accepted the Holy One, blessed be He, upon myself as God. That’s it. And he says: “This level is a very high level, and not every sage merits it. It is the level of our forefather Abraham, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called ‘My beloved,’ for he served only out of love. And this is the level that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it says: ‘And you shall love the Lord your God.’ And when a person loves God with the proper love, he will immediately perform all the commandments out of love.” Here it seems, ostensibly, that he is already speaking about feelings of love. But above he said: do the truth because it is truth. How does that connect? More than that: look at the next law. I didn’t bring it here. In the next law—and with this I’ll finish—I just want to show you this because it really is a gem.

[Speaker D] So he says—but that’s not the plain meaning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about Maimonides now.

[Speaker D] You can argue—Maimonides—but he’s defining love now as he defines it, but that’s not the plain meaning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Afterward, come—let’s first understand what he is saying, and then we’ll decide whether he is right or not. Right now I’m occupied with understanding what he says. Fine. “And what is the proper love?”—this is law 3. We read the first two laws; this is law 3. “And what is the proper love? It is that one love God with a great, exceeding, intense love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is found preoccupied with it constantly, like one who is lovesick, whose mind is not free from love of that woman, and he is preoccupied with her constantly, whether sitting or rising, even when eating and drinking. More than this should the love of God be in the hearts of His lovers, preoccupying them constantly, as He commanded us: ‘with all your heart and with all your soul.’ And this is what Solomon said metaphorically: ‘for I am sick with love,’ and the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” This law is rather surprising, because in the previous law he defined love as doing the truth because it is truth. How did we suddenly get to the emotional storm that he describes here? So it seems to me—and I’ll say this briefly—it seems to me that what he means to say is that “the Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” What does that mean? Just as emotional love occupies us all the time and we are constantly preoccupied with it—“preoccupied,” not in the sense of mistaken, but occupied—so too should love of God be. And what is love of God? To know that He is God and that we have accepted Him upon ourselves as God, and what He says is the truth, and we do the truth because it is truth. Without connection to emotional dimensions. The emotional metaphor comes only to say how much it should always be in your heart—yes, “preoccupied with it constantly.” The constancy is the point, but not the emotional storm. To do the truth because it is truth, but all the time—“I have set the Lord always before me.” One must always know that this is the truth and to this I am committed. The metaphor that speaks about emotional love—we have to be careful, not all the details of the metaphor fit the thing being described. This metaphor is only saying that it needs to be done with intensity, like emotional love. And then it fits, of course, with law 2, where he says that what is required is to do the truth because it is truth. That is basically what he is calling love here. Okay? So it’s not talking about the emotional dimension; it’s talking precisely about the Kantian dimension that we saw earlier. That you should do it because you accepted Him upon yourself as God. And if you serve out of love or fear, that is not religious service—so he says in the Laws of Idol Worship. How does that fit with what he says here? Because there he is speaking about love in the emotional sense. Here emotional love is a metaphor. Here he is speaking about doing the truth because it is truth. That should be the motivation for religious service. And if you direct that toward an idol, and think that it is the truth, that it is the god, that what it says must be done—that is idol worship. If you do it because you love it or fear it, then it is not idol worship; it’s like the policeman. You’re mistaken because the idol cannot actually harm you, unlike a policeman—never mind—but still you’re doing it for reasons that are not absolute authority. That is not religious service. Okay, so up to this point we’ve only just begun. I’m getting to soft Platonism, but we’ll get there next time.

[Speaker H] Rabbi, can there really be an action that is done because it is true, or is there always something built into it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think there can be. There is column 120 on my website, where I deal with exactly that question. People think that the concept of altruism is an empty concept, that altruistic action is impossible. A person who acts always does so because he has some motivation, some interest, something. I don’t agree at all. There are altruistic actions. Actions that stem from a perception that this is the right thing, or something like that. Not something of love and fear, not something inside me pushing me, but something from outside me that I understand to be what is right, and therefore I do it. And in the moral domain, in the religious domain, in all these domains, what is required of me is altruistic action. And an altruistic action does not mean compassion for the other. Altruistic action means knowing that this is the right way to act. Now again I say: this is only the first step, only the thesis. After that there is also an antithesis and a synthesis, where I then deal with concepts like compassion as well, and giving charity to the poor out of compassion and the like—the questions that came up here. I’ll get to that later. I’ll get to it. But if there’s another minute, then—

[Speaker D] We were talking about morality—whether a person who does this because that’s how he is built, he’s just a good guy and so on, versus someone who does it because he has to and so on. If that first one—if it’s just not his character—why does he deserve a reward? I thought about this once. It’s not correct, because in the end we are not going around giving grades. As a society we look at who contributes to us, who acts for our benefit, and we feel gratitude.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if he

[Speaker D] does it for one reason or another, why should I care what reasons?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Gratitude is a different discussion. I’m talking about moral judgment.

[Speaker D] But that is—it is the meaning. If someone contributes to—does good things for people for his own reasons, why should I care what reasons?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I do care. I’m not talking right now about the question of gratitude; that’s the dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda. But I’m talking about the question of how I judge—how I judge the person. And if the person does it like a sheep, fine. But I’m saying: the fact that he contributed to me and it’s pleasant for me to live next to him—that’s completely true. In the instrumental, consequential sense, I have no problem with that. But when I judge the moral aspect in him, how worthy it is to value his way of behaving, it has no value whatsoever. But we’ll talk about that next time. Okay, anyone who needs to leave, that’s why I moved this up.

[Speaker D] Yes, of course. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And pardon me.

[Speaker D] It’s fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you very much.