Means and Ends – Lesson 3
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Process and result, velocity as potential, and the language of means versus ends
- Character refinement: Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question and the answers of Rabbi Chaim Vital and Rabbi Kook
- “Greater is one who is commanded and performs” versus “greater is one who is not commanded and performs” in Rabbi Kook’s writings and the yeshiva example
- “There’s no such Tosafot”: the commandment of “and you shall walk in His ways” and Maimonides versus Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question
- Refining the soul versus behavior: value in the process itself and not only in the result
- Traits like “jealous and avenging,” value-classification, and “you shall do what is upright and good”
- You can’t learn ethics from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and aggadic literature: the values come from outside and the text serves as a projection screen
- Kant’s categorical imperative: not the result, but the morality of the act through a thought experiment
- Voting in elections, tax evasion, and probabilistic expectation versus “it won’t happen”
- Pascal, the St. Petersburg paradox, and expectation as a poor criterion in one-time events
- The sale permit (heter mekhira), Otzar Ha’aretz, and sale of leavened food: applying moral categories and universal law
Summary
General overview
The text argues that sometimes a process has independent significance and not merely instrumental value defined through its result, and it demonstrates this through a distinction between the language of “means and ends” and the more precise framing of “processes and states.” The speaker begins with the physical example of velocity as a potential for change of place rather than the change itself, and from there moves to the evaluative question of whether an action or process is measured only by what it produces. He presents character refinement as a case in which there is value in the inner work in and of itself, not only as a way of improving behavior, and he reinterprets Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question in relation to the commandment “and you shall walk in His ways” in Maimonides. Later he presents Kant’s categorical imperative as a criterion that is not consequentialist but examines the morality of the act itself through a thought experiment, and he applies this to voting in elections, tax evasion, and public-halakhic reasoning such as the sale permit (heter mekhira) and the sale of leavened food.
Process and result, velocity as potential, and the language of means versus ends
The speaker argues that a process is not always just a means to a result, but may carry significance of its own, and he suggests that in the language of “means and ends” there is already a built-in decision that the process is instrumental. The physical example clarifies that velocity is attributed to a point in time, whereas change of place occurs over a stretch of time, and therefore velocity is understood as a potential for change of place rather than the change of place itself. The speaker allows that even if velocity is a descriptive “fiction,” it still represents potential and not result, and from here he opens the way to a value discussion in which “processes versus states” describes the issue better than “means versus ends.” The speaker states that once one relates to a process as a means, one has already said that the process has only instrumental value and that its value lies in what one reaches at the end.
Character refinement: Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question and the answers of Rabbi Chaim Vital and Rabbi Kook
The speaker brings the well-known question of Rabbi Chaim Vital in Sha’arei Kedusha, a student of the Ari, asking why the Torah does not command character refinement even though the Torah conveys that one ought to be humble, and he rejects the explanation that such a commandment is “hard to define,” since there are commandments that are only a kind of “directional instruction,” like love and awe. He distinguishes between Rashi’s interpretation of “You shall be holy” as “you shall separate yourselves from forbidden sexual relations” and Nachmanides’ interpretation as going “beyond the letter of the law,” and he clarifies that “just as He is merciful, so you should be merciful” is not “You shall be holy” but an enumerated commandment. Rabbi Chaim Vital himself answers that the Torah speaks to someone who is a “fit subject for command,” and one who does not understand that he must refine his character is not fit to receive a command, because character refinement is the infrastructure of being a commanded person at all, not one detail within the system of commandments. The speaker stresses that this claim is not trivial but logical, similar to the way a normative system rests on a principle outside itself, and that “to command the infrastructure” is self-contradictory.
“Greater is one who is commanded and performs” versus “greater is one who is not commanded and performs” in Rabbi Kook’s writings and the yeshiva example
The speaker quotes Rabbi Kook as arguing that although the Sages established that greater is one who is commanded and performs than one who is not commanded and performs, there are areas in which the simple intuition remains valid, that greater really is one who is not commanded and performs, and character refinement is one of them. According to Rabbi Kook, the Torah does not command the traits so as not to ruin the possibility of refining them completely out of inner understanding rather than out of command, because a command would make the refinement deficient. The speaker illustrates this with a yeshiva joke about a young man who rejects every match, then works for a year on the trait of humility because the mashgiach told him to, and afterward explains that now all the more so none of them are suitable for him, in order to show “trait-work” done as checking off the box of “commanded and performs” rather than as genuine refinement. The speaker ties this to the claim that the command itself may interfere where the higher value is an action that comes “from me.”
“There’s no such Tosafot”: the commandment of “and you shall walk in His ways” and Maimonides versus Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question
The speaker tells the story of Rabbi Chaim saying “there’s no such Tosafot” because “Tosafot wouldn’t say such nonsense,” and uses it to challenge the question Rabbi Chaim Vital asks, because in his view the Torah does in fact command traits through the commandment “and you shall walk in His ways.” He quotes Maimonides’ wording: “The eighth commandment is that He commanded us to resemble Him, may He be exalted, according to our ability, and that is His saying, ‘And you shall walk in His ways’… just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is called merciful, so you should be merciful… and this is the language of the Sifrei… ‘After the Lord your God shall you walk’… to resemble the good actions and the important traits by which God, may He be exalted, is described by way of metaphor, exalted above all with great exaltation.” The speaker argues that understanding this commandment as an instruction to refine character is imprecise, because in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, “it is only a metaphor” and there is no “heart” or traits in the human sense, and therefore “and you shall walk in His ways” means imitating actions of beneficence and proper conduct, not refining the soul.
Refining the soul versus behavior: value in the process itself and not only in the result
The speaker suggests that the novelty in Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question is the assumption that there is value in character refinement in and of itself, not only as a means to improving behavior, and therefore the commandment “and you shall walk in His ways” does not answer the question because it commands actions, not inner psychological work. He explains that one can perform all the correct actions from motives of “not for its own sake” or so that people will think you are righteous, and then there is no necessity that character refinement is taking place, so something beyond outward behavior is required. The speaker returns this to the framework of “process and result” and states that character refinement as “self-perfection in process” has value, and that without this Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question really would be baffling. The speaker admits that for years he struggled with this question and presents this interpretation as a solution that also fits Maimonides’ wording “and you shall walk in His ways” as behavior rather than traits in the human sense.
Traits like “jealous and avenging,” value-classification, and “you shall do what is upright and good”
The speaker points out that the Sages also describe the Holy One, blessed be He, with traits like “a jealous and avenging God, full of wrath,” and asks what one does with that if we are commanded “to cleave to His traits,” and he suggests that the sorting of good and bad traits begins with us, not with the divine description. He argues that people ultimately do what seems good to them, and then dress that up in language about the Holy One, blessed be He, as traits, and he cites the verse “and you shall do what is upright and good in the eyes of the Lord” as a brief command that depends on a person “understanding on his own” what is upright and good. The speaker states that in value-laden areas, interpretation of Scripture and aggadic literature tends to bend toward a person’s natural morality, including situations where people produce explanations to reconcile problematic cases like “why Jacob deceived” or “why Jacob married two sisters? By divine command.” He describes a yeshiva phenomenon according to which “every verse teaches the opposite of what it says,” because “otherwise why would we need the verse,” and he gives the example from the study of “a positive commandment overrides a prohibition” from tzitzit and sha’atnez in order to show the tension between a general example and an exception.
You can’t learn ethics from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and aggadic literature: the values come from outside and the text serves as a projection screen
The speaker argues that he “can’t manage to learn anything from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)” in the ethical sphere, because every value a person derives from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is a value he already knows and believes from other sources, and when the text appears immoral, the person will look for excuses rather than change his morality. He challenges anyone to produce “one value I learned from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) that I wouldn’t have known without the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh),” and claims that even “morality specifically” is not learned in a binding way because there are countless interpretive possibilities. He compares the inspirational power of the Torah to the inspirational power of Dostoevsky, and argues that the text can “stimulate” thought, but actual acceptance depends on what a person finds “within himself.” He also connects this to the joke about “canceling Torah study to read the Megillah” as “canceling Torah study in quality,” and mentions a debate with Chayuta Deutsch in the field of aggadic literature of the Sages in which, according to him, no example was brought of a value someone adopted against his previous position.
Kant’s categorical imperative: not the result, but the morality of the act through a thought experiment
The speaker presents Kant’s categorical imperative in the formulation “Act in such a way that you would want your action to become a universal law” and emphasizes that the common consequentialist interpretation is a mistake, because Kant means a deontological claim and not a teleological one. The speaker explains that the question “what will happen if everyone does as you do” is not a realistic forecast but a hypothetical thought experiment that tests whether one can will that the principle of the action become a universal law, and if not, then the action is immoral even if in practice it will have no effect. He states that there are actions that have no problematic practical consequence and yet are still immoral, because the definition does not derive from outcomes but from the normative character of the action itself.
Voting in elections, tax evasion, and probabilistic expectation versus “it won’t happen”
The speaker brings a debate with his son about voting in elections and argues that an individual has no real consequential effect because only the rare case of “one round-number mandate minus one voter” creates an effect, and the chance of that is roughly “one in thirty-five thousand,” so this is not a probability a reasonable person takes into account. He rejects the argument “if everyone does as you do” as irrelevant to the private calculation, because an individual’s decision does not necessarily depend on the decisions of others, and he can even keep quiet so as not to persuade anyone. He applies the same logic to tax evasion and argues that concealing “one hundred shekels” does not in practice change budgetary decisions, and therefore this is not a consequentialist argument against the act; the moral criticism must come from somewhere else.
Pascal, the St. Petersburg paradox, and expectation as a poor criterion in one-time events
The speaker presents “Pascal’s wager” as a bet that justifies observing commandments on the basis of an expectation of infinite gain even if the probability is small, and argues that this is a mistake in the concept of expectation when the event does not recur many times. He brings the St. Petersburg paradox with a payment that doubles the winnings in powers of two according to coin tosses, and shows that the expectation is infinite but that in practice people will pay only a small finite amount, and therefore the criterion of expectation does not fit rational behavior in an environment of a wide distribution and large standard deviation. He states that expectation is appropriate when the experiment is repeated many times, but in one-time decisions the chance of reaching the expectation is “zero,” and therefore people act according to a practical probability threshold and not according to the average. The speaker uses this to strengthen his argument that voting in elections is not justified as a consequentialist consideration of a tiny probability of a huge result.
The sale permit (heter mekhira), Otzar Ha’aretz, and sale of leavened food: applying moral categories and universal law
The speaker describes a debate in Tzohar about the sale permit (heter mekhira), in which it was argued against a policy of “ideally not the sale permit, and only if there is no alternative,” on the grounds that this is a policy that leaves the permit to “lawbreakers” and relies on others buying so that the farmers can make a living. He explains that the penny dropped for him when he understood that the real argument was Kantian: one must examine the act through the question of whether one would want this principle to be a universal law, and not through the assumption that others will in practice act differently and thereby “fix” the system. He gives a personal example from a grocery store in Bnei Brak that sold leavened food on Passover, and after Passover “nobody bought” the leavened food that had been sold to the non-Jew, and he asks how one justifies a permit meant to prevent “substantial financial loss” if the public is stringent in a way that in practice restores the loss. He presents this as a tension between viewing the permit as a systemic solution and private behavior that relies on others doing the act the system assumes.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Up to now we’ve been talking about the relation between the process and the result it leads to, and I argued that at least in some cases the process is not just a means of reaching the result, but has some significance of its own. In the physical world, say, when I talk about velocity versus place, velocity brings me to a new place, so the claim was actually even stronger than that: this isn’t on the level of why something is important, and it’s not a question of importance. In physics, what exists exists and what doesn’t exist doesn’t; it’s not a matter of importance. But there I was talking specifically about whether there is such a thing as velocity at all, not whether it’s important, and whether velocity is even something real or some fiction we define for the convenience of description. And I examined it through the claim that the velocity we talk about is a velocity that exists at a point in time, whereas a change of place, which is the result of velocity, can of course happen only over a span of time. Meaning that velocity is really some kind of potential for change of place and not the change of place itself. On the philosophical level you can still argue and say that velocity is a fiction. The question whether there really is such a thing as velocity—I don’t know what “really is” means in this context. It may be only our definition. But still, the claim is that even if it is our definition, what we are defining here is a potential for change of place and not the change of place itself. And that opens the door to a discussion now, this time on the level of what is important and what isn’t, a discussion of whether we relate to a process only as a means of reaching a result or whether the process itself has importance. Our topic is means and ends, so the claim is that the moment I already speak in the language of means and ends, I’ve already decided the issue. The language itself already says something, because it means the process is viewed as a means to an end. And if I want to argue that the process has a standing of its own, not only insofar as it brings me to the goal, then I no longer see it as a means—that’s exactly the point. And then it isn’t correct to define this as means versus ends, but rather as processes versus states. That’s really more accurate. The question is whether the process has importance, or whether the process is only my way of getting to the goal. When I relate to the process as a means, I’ve already stated my position; that is, the claim is that the process has only instrumental value—in the end, the value lies in what I arrive at through the process. Now I want to illustrate this a little through several points. For example, in what I already mentioned once, the refinement of character traits. There is a well-known question of Rabbi Chaim Vital in Sha’arei Kedusha, a student of the Ari. He asks why the Torah does not command the refinement of traits. If refining one’s traits is so important, then why is there no commandment to refine one’s traits? Say, it says, “And the man Moses was very humble, more than any person on the face of the earth,” so the Torah is conveying some message here that it is proper to be humble. So he asks: fine, why hint? Just command it—give a commandment that you need to be humble. I’ve heard people try to claim that it’s hard to define. There are other things that are hard to define. What exactly is the commandment to love God, or to fear God—how much to love, how much to fear, in what way? There are commandments that are only a general direction—do something in that direction. So this too could have been defined that way: there is a commandment to be humble, and again, how much you succeed and how you do it obviously varies from person to person. Therefore, in itself, I don’t think that’s a sufficient explanation for why this isn’t a commandment.
[Speaker B] There, in the resemblance to “You shall be holy”—just as He is merciful, so you should be merciful, just as He is gracious, so you should be gracious—right? That belongs to “You shall be holy.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hold on, I’m getting to that. That’s not “You shall be holy.” “Just as He is merciful and gracious” is not “You shall be holy”; it’s something else. On “You shall be holy,” Rashi says altogether, “Separate yourselves from forbidden sexual relations.” Nachmanides says it means beyond the letter of the law. Beyond the letter of the law is not merciful and gracious. Merciful and gracious is an enumerated commandment—I’ll get to that in a moment. “A degenerate with the permission of the Torah,” what Nachmanides talks about there. So the claim, the question of Rabbi Chaim Vital. True, we spoke about this once and I said—I brought from two letters that Rabbi Kook writes about it. And I saw that Rabbi Amital once cites this. And Rabbi Kook’s claim is—I mean Rabbi Chaim, before Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Chaim Vital himself says that the Torah speaks to human beings, and if someone isn’t a human being, it doesn’t speak to him. Meaning, what is there to command someone if he is not subject to command? A person who doesn’t understand that he has to refine his traits is not fit to receive a command, so there is no point in commanding him in this matter. Yes.
[Speaker C] What, that answer seems a bit puzzling to me. There are many commandments that are seemingly even more basic, for example “You shall not murder.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “You shall not murder”…
[Speaker C] As a command to a person—someone who doesn’t understand that he shouldn’t murder, then that’s not—precisely…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but this is a condition for all the commandments. Murder is not a condition for all the commandments. Traits are a condition for the very system of commandments as such. You can’t speak to someone in the language of commandments if he’s not a human being. And that’s his claim. Murder is a severe transgression, but it’s specific; it isn’t something that serves as the foundation for the whole system of commandments. His claim is that refining traits means being a human being—not being an animal. Once you are a human being, you can begin speaking in terms of commandments. So to command this foundation is self-contradictory.
[Speaker C] If a person is arrogant, he can’t keep the rest of the commandments?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s his claim. Yes, that’s his claim—not if he’s arrogant, but if he doesn’t understand that he needs to improve it. Whether you’re arrogant or not, maybe you were born that way, or I don’t know, different influences and so on—but you need to understand that it has to be improved. How far you get and how much you succeed, that depends on each person and how far he can go. So that’s Rabbi Chaim Vital. The Rabbi said that if someone doesn’t have refined traits, you can’t talk to him at all?
[Speaker D] No, no—someone who understands that he needs to refine his traits. A person whose traits aren’t refined as such… So I understand, again, I don’t remember his exact wording right now, I saw it many years ago, but I understand the intention to be that you need to understand that it is incumbent on you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …to refine the traits, because if the issue is that you need…
[Speaker D] …to come with already refined traits, then it seems…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …to me that you couldn’t speak with anyone. Which of us has completely refined traits? And how do the commandments help that? What? And commandments that are trivial—what? No, this is not a question of triviality. That’s exactly the point. It’s not a question of triviality at all. Like “You shall not murder.” Is “You shall not murder” trivial too? Are you fit to get there? Exactly. This is the foundation of your being commanded at all. It’s not a question of triviality—it’s not trivial at all. It could be not trivial at all; it may not be self-evident that one needs to refine one’s traits, say for the sake of the example. Still, it’s clear that if you don’t understand this, however complex it may be, there is nothing to command you about. You understand? It’s not a question of triviality. It’s a different kind of condition.
[Speaker C] Tell me, if a person doesn’t understand on his own that he has to refine his traits?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then no—so what is the meaning of doing commandments? At most he’ll do them mechanically, if he does them at all. The claim is that you have to be a human being in order to be commanded. You don’t command animals. You can program animals, not command animals.
[Speaker B] Like you need to be Jewish. What? Like you need to be Jewish. Wait, if a non-Jew reads this he’ll say—they’re not—the commandments are addressed to a Jew.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, not because of refined traits, but because that’s a basic condition. Right, there can’t be a commandment saying “be Jewish.” Right? If we take that example. A commandment that you should be Jewish. Commandments address a Jew. If you’re not Jewish, there’s nothing to command you. Of course “command” here means beyond the seven Noahide commandments.
[Speaker C] Fine. I understand, like, the connection—there’s the general rule that commandments address a Jew. I still don’t really understand why someone who doesn’t understand on his own that it’s important to refine his traits—why…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone who doesn’t understand that it’s important to refine his traits basically doesn’t understand that it’s important to act properly. If you don’t understand that it’s important to act properly, then what are commandments commanding you?
[Speaker C] I mean to refine traits, meaning to work on… But if a person, say, has some conception, some correct conception of fixing specific actions, but not a conception of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then it doesn’t matter—so he calls it character refinement. Not important. He may be mistaken about what counts as refining traits. Maybe he thinks bad traits are good traits, so he’s mistaken. But on the basic level, I can understand that someone who is capable of reasoning is capable of being commanded, because he does understand that a task is incumbent upon him—to behave properly, to behave well, to behave as one ought. But someone to whom this whole business simply says nothing—what is there to command him? And that’s the claim. Now Rabbi Kook writes and goes one step further, and he argues—and this is really a different claim. And each such shade is a different claim. That’s what I’m saying: Rabbi Chaim Vital’s claim is not a trivial one. It’s not a trivial question; it’s a logical question. Meaning, this is the infrastructure of your being subject to command, so you can’t be commanded about it. We spoke about this—that you can’t be commanded to obey the law. If you don’t obey the law, then you won’t obey that command either. At the base of every normative system there must always be some principle that lies outside that system. So Rabbi Kook says that generally we have it from the Sages that greater is one who is commanded and performs than one who is not commanded and performs. That’s what the Sages say. But ask people in the street and they’ll tell you that the simple intuition is the opposite: greater is one who is not commanded and performs. So the Sages innovated that nevertheless greater is one who is commanded and performs. Says Rabbi Kook: but there are things regarding which the simple intuition still remains fully in force, that greater really is one who is not commanded and performs. And traits are one of them. And therefore the Torah cannot command traits, because if it commanded traits, then it would prevent us from doing this as one who is not commanded and performs, because after all I am commanded. And really the higher level is if you refine your traits not because you are commanded, but because you understand that this is what ought to be done. And therefore the Torah does not command this, so as not to ruin it. This sounds different from Rabbi Chaim Vital. But the claim is that the Torah does not want to ruin my ability to refine my traits in a full way. And if I am commanded to do it, then the refinement will be lacking. The refinement will not be complete. Complete refinement is when it comes from me. Therefore, in those things where the simple intuition remains that greater is one who is not commanded and performs, in those things the Torah does not command, in order not to ruin your possibility of doing it properly. And this is the example I already spoke about in the past. The example that always comes to mind in this context is the joke in the yeshivot. They always say that someone went out to meet girls for matchmaking, and he rejected all of them; none seemed right to him. The mashgiach says: what are you, so arrogant? No one is suitable for you? Sit and work on your traits for a year, learn ethics with fervor. After a year come back to tractate Kiddushin, the chapter “Ha-Ish Mekadesh.” Fine, he learns ethics, works on his traits with tremendous enthusiasm, does secluded meditation and goes to the ethics study hall and all these things. In the end he goes back to meet girls and once again rejects all of them. So the mashgiach asks him: what did you do all year? He says: Rabbi, I don’t understand. Last year, when I was arrogant, no one was on my level. Now that I’m humble, all the more so no one suits me. What’s the problem here? I mean, I don’t understand what you want from me. Rabbi…
[Speaker C] I think that was Rabbi Yosef Dov, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly here, yes. The claim is that when you—the point of that story, in my view, reflects someone who works on his traits because he was told to work on his traits. Meaning there is a command to work on one’s traits, in this case the command of the mashgiach, it doesn’t matter, but that’s the idea. Meaning, he works on his traits because they told him he has to work on his traits. Okay, so I worked on the trait of humility, check; I worked on this trait, check. I’m doing it as one who is commanded and performs. And that’s what it looks like. Meaning, if you really work on your traits, not in order to check a box because you need to discharge some obligation of a command, then a complete refinement is truly created. So I think that’s what Rabbi Kook means: in those places where the command interferes, the Torah does not command. And in those things where there is greater value in doing it not out of command, the Torah does not command. Rabbi Asher…
[Speaker D] Rav Asher Sachs said that greater is one who is commanded and performs because he wants to do the will of the commander?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently yes. Or not. Or maybe people are commanded in order to set a minimum threshold. Because there is value in love of God even when it comes through command; it doesn’t completely lose its value. And of course, whatever you do beyond merely discharging the obligation is a blessing. There are, of course, all kinds of nuances that can be sharpened here. Now the big question is, of course—this is the famous story about Rabbi Chaim, you know, that once they were sitting in some house talking words of Torah, and someone raised a difficulty from some Tosafot, saying: I don’t understand this Tosafot, how can he ask like this and answer like that? Rabbi Chaim says to him: there is no such Tosafot. He says to him: what do you mean there is no such Tosafot? I’m telling you I saw it this morning. Rabbi Chaim says: what he says there is difficult, it can’t be. But I saw it this morning, he says. Rabbi Chaim says: there is no such Tosafot; in the entire Talmud there is no such Tosafot. Fine, so he went to the book, opened it, and sure enough, Tosafot really didn’t say what he had claimed. So he comes back to Rabbi Chaim and says: tell me, how did you know? Do you know by heart all the Tosafot in the entire Talmud? I had just seen this Tosafot this morning, and you tell me there is no such Tosafot in the whole Talmud. So Rabbi Chaim said: impossible—there cannot be such a Tosafot. Tosafot doesn’t speak nonsense. Meaning, it’s not because I know all the Tosafot, but such nonsense Tosafot would not say. No, that’s not the point here, it’s just a story, a storyteller’s tale—what exactly happened there, if it even happened…
[Speaker E] …happened,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …but the point of the story is that no Tosafot would say such nonsense. So the claim, the claim here really—I want to ask the same question about Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question. Rabbi Chaim Vital asks why the Torah doesn’t command the refinement of traits, and he brings his answer and Rabbi Kook’s answer. But the question from the outset—the Torah does command it. There’s no such Tosafot. The Torah does command it. To cleave to the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He: just as He is merciful, so you be merciful; just as He is gracious, so you be gracious—an enumerated commandment, and it appears in all the lists of the commandments. “The eighth commandment is that He commanded us to resemble Him, may He be exalted, according to our ability, and that is His saying, ‘And you shall walk in His ways.’ And He already repeated this command and said, ‘to walk in all His ways.’ And it is explained that the Sages interpret this commandment and said: just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is called merciful, so you should be merciful; just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is called gracious, so you should be gracious; just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is called righteous, so you should be righteous; just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is called pious, so you should be pious. And this is the language of the Sifrei. And this command was repeated in another expression, and it said, ‘After the Lord your God shall you walk.’ And it is also explained that its meaning is to resemble the good actions and the important traits by which God, may He be exalted, is described by way of metaphor, exalted above all with great exaltation.” Meaning, regarding the Holy One, blessed be He, it is only metaphor, but we are commanded to go and refine ourselves in the good traits of the Holy One, blessed be He. So what does Rabbi Chaim Vital want? There is a commandment, there is a commandment to refine one’s traits. Everyone asks questions, and there are answers—there are more, I only brought two. There’s no such Tosafot. Meaning, there is such a commandment. So what kind of question is this—why is there no commandment?
[Speaker C] Not humility,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He said all the good traits—what do you mean? “The important traits by which God, may He be exalted, is described.” “And it is also explained that its meaning is to resemble the good actions and the important traits by which God, may He be exalted, is described by way of metaphor, exalted above all with great exaltation.” Meaning, regarding the Holy One, blessed be He, it is metaphor—but all the good traits. So the question is, what does Rabbi Chaim Vital want, and everyone keeps answering this question—there is no question. It seems to me there is a question, because the question is what exactly this commandment says. And here it touches us. What does this commandment say? After all, it is clear, as Maimonides says, that this is only metaphor and that He is exalted above this with a great exaltation—the Holy One, blessed be He. What does that mean? The Holy One, blessed be He, is not kindhearted. He doesn’t have a heart, and you can’t speak about Him in this kind of human language of kindheartedness. What can we know about Him? What He does in the world. Right, that’s what he says; that’s why he says, “the important traits by which God is described,” not the good traits of the Holy One, blessed be He, but the traits by which He is described. And usually people understand that this is simply because of negative theology, because you can’t really speak about Him directly, and what we describe… I don’t think Maimonides means that here, or not only that. There’s something deeper here. The claim is that this commandment, “that He commanded us to resemble Him, may He be exalted, according to our ability”—“and you shall walk in His ways”—what does that mean? Do the actions as He does. It has nothing to do with character refinement as such. The actions He does—actions of beneficence toward others, how to behave—that you should do as He does. But traits, refining traits, is not a question of what you do; it’s the question of whether your soul is built properly. That isn’t written here—that’s not the commandment. Now Rabbi Chaim Vital says—and this is the novelty in his question—that there is value in refining traits, and here it connects to our topic: there is value in refining traits not because as a result I’ll behave more properly or better—not only, of course that too—but not only. Rather there is value in refining traits in and of itself. Again, not just process and result. Refining traits is not merely a means so that in the end I’ll be humble; the work on the traits itself is a process of self-perfection. We talked about perfection and self-perfecting. The work on the traits itself is a value. And that is what Rabbi Chaim Vital asked about. That is what he asks—why doesn’t the Torah command it? The Torah commands us to behave properly like the Holy One, blessed be He. To behave decently is not refining traits; it is behaving. It could be that sometimes we refine traits through action, as the Sefer HaChinukh writes: “hearts are drawn after actions.” Okay, but there the action is a means to refining the traits. But what we are commanded here is only the correct action. And Rabbi Chaim Vital is talking about the question whether—or why—there is no commandment to refine the traits. To do inner psychological work, meaning to become a better person inwardly, not only in the behavioral, behaviorist sense of what we do in the world. But what underlies the whole thing is that there really is value in refining traits not merely as a means of becoming a better person. Refining traits is an action that has value in itself. Because if it were only a means of becoming a better person, then what’s the problem? The commandment to do it—the commandment basically says: behave better. How do you do that? You refine your traits, and that way you also come to behave better. What’s the problem? So again, we are basically commanded in it, to the extent there is a commandment here—or it is a means to what we are commanded—but practically that is what we need to do. He says no, the division is probably a sharp one. Meaning, if you do it as a means to behave better, that is not character refinement. You need to do it in order to be a better person irrespective, at least at this point, of behavior. Of course a better person also behaves better, but the value of the refinement is not in your behaving better—not in the result—but the action itself has value. This again brings us back to perfection and self-perfecting, everything we discussed in previous sessions. And I think this is the only way I can understand this whole issue; otherwise I really don’t understand it, it’s baffling. By the way, I struggled with this for years. I didn’t understand what they wanted—what all the later authorities are asking, all answering Rabbi Chaim Vital, and “why isn’t it commanded,” and “because of this,” and “because of that,” and “for another reason”—we are commanded, so what does he want? So this is the explanation I found, and I think it really fits Maimonides’ wording too, because it says “and you shall walk in His ways.” “And you shall walk in His ways” means: behave as He behaves. Not refine your own traits, because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not have refined traits; He has no traits at all. What you can do, at least in our language, is see what He does, and that too you should do. That is called cleaving to His traits, walking in His ways. It is not cleaving to His traits in exactly the same sense. Therefore when Maimonides says at the end, “by which God, may He be exalted, is described by way of metaphor, exalted above all with great exaltation,” he means not only in the sense of negative attributes, but in the sense that when we talk about the traits of the Holy One, blessed be He, we are not talking about traits in the same sense in which we talk about them in ourselves. We are talking about what He does. The language of traits is just the language, but really we are talking about what the Holy One, blessed be He, does—and that too we are supposed to do like Him.
[Speaker B] So according to this interpretation, the question becomes whether this situation is even necessary. Meaning, if it’s “and you shall walk in His ways,” then I say okay, I’ll walk in the way of the Holy One, blessed be He. I’ll see an elderly woman, I’ll help her cross the street, I’ll return lost objects, I’ll do this, I’ll do that, and all the time I’ll think what to do in each case and response, and I’ll do it. That’s what is written in the commandment according to Maimonides. Right. Is that enough? Why do you need more than that? To refine the soul—that’s the point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When Rabbi Chaim Vital asks his question, he is obviously taking for granted—and I don’t know where he got this from—but he takes it for granted that not only this is demanded of us. We are also supposed to refine the soul. And that is what he asks about.
[Speaker B] It will get fixed automatically. It will get fixed automatically if all day long I’m thinking what happens in this situation because I want to walk in the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if you do it? And if you do it because you want a good reputation, for ulterior motives? So that people will see that you’re a righteous person. You can still do everything, every light and severe matter alike, behave like a perfectly righteous person, but your motivation is so that people will see you as righteous. Does that also refine your traits? Who says?
[Speaker D] And the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded—isn’t that still refining traits?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what we saw earlier—to do it because of the command, exactly what Rabbi Kook says, right? So I think that’s what he means to say. Now, true, there is some assumption here, and you can ask where he drew it from. I’m only pointing out the fact that Rabbi Chaim Vital apparently assumed it. Otherwise there is no room for his question. And what he assumes is indeed—and all the later authorities who answered his question all assume this assumption—that there is value in refining traits not only in order to reach better behavior. Because that is an enumerated commandment.
[Speaker D] And all the traits were said about the Holy One, blessed be He—gracious and merciful.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sages say so, yes. And what do we do with the traits “a jealous and avenging God, full of wrath”? There Abraham leaves Him there. The Sages describe the Holy One, blessed be He, with all the traits. In the midrashim of the Sages He even observes commandments. How much of that is really connected to the plain meaning of the text, I don’t know.
[Speaker D] There are commandments here that yes… If the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t attach the trait of humility, and He even consults, then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean to say that this isn’t included in that teaching? Then why—you’re saying he really is talking about behavior and not traits? He is talking about behaviors, not described traits. In the Sages’ conception it’s quite clear that the intention is all the good traits. On the contrary, they assume what counts as good traits and attribute everything to the Holy One, blessed be He. After all, just as there are the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, and one should cleave to His traits—merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in kindness—what about “jealous and avenging,” which appears at the end?
[Speaker E] Are we supposed to do that too?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, it’s already been explained that there are situations where a Torah scholar who doesn’t take revenge and bear a grudge like a snake has an eighth of an eighth of pride. There are places where that still has some expression. But why did we institute that? Who said so? It could be that really one ought to be zealous and vengeful. It says you should cleave to the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, is zealous and vengeful, so you too should be zealous and vengeful—what’s the problem? Because it’s obvious to us that this is not a good trait, and that starts with us; it doesn’t start with what’s written. We decide what good traits are. And after we do this work on character traits, we then find it and dress it onto the Holy One, blessed be He. But that doesn’t change the fact that in the end we do it not because we found it in the Holy One, blessed be He, but because we understand that these are good traits. Afterward, since these are good traits, apparently that also characterizes Him, and in any case we attribute it to Him too. So it starts that way; it doesn’t start the other way around.
[Speaker C] Maybe it’s because of the commandment of “do not take revenge”? What? Maybe it’s because of the commandment of—
[Speaker E] “Do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge.”
[Speaker C] If—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re commanded—
[Speaker C] not to take revenge, then we understand that our good traits can’t generally be vengeful and grudge-bearing.
[Speaker E] Okay,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] so I assume that’s also the commandment of “do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge.”
[Speaker E] Yes, but then this suddenly imposes on us an obligation to sort out the bad traits too and not follow them. And then if I’m already starting to sort this out on my own, then maybe Rabbi Chaim Vital is really right—so let’s just sort out the good things directly and cleave to that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s what we do, that’s what we do!
[Speaker E] No, what you’re saying—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that’s what we do. In the end we do what seems good to us, not what we found in the Holy One, blessed be He. What we found in the Holy One, blessed be He, is just a way of expressing the thing. We need to do what seems good to us. It says, “And you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord.” Where is it defined what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord? It’s such a laconic verse: “And you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord.”
[Speaker E] There are lots of examples.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You understand on your own what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord—whatever a person thinks.
[Speaker E] Just as many times Jewish law in the Mishnah and the Talmud gives applications, brings cases, and doesn’t give rules, so too in the Torah we see many, many examples of behavior. We also see contrary examples, and there we don’t cleave to His attributes. This or that prophet says about a certain thing that it’s not good, and from that we understand, okay, that’s the direction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if in the weekly portion there’s something that comes out of it that we think—
[Speaker E] that it’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] yes, good, but it comes out that it’s not good, then we’ll interpret it in a way that fits what we think. Yes, that’s what we do, almost always.
[Speaker E] You can interpret it differently.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not Jewish law—I’m talking about value-laden areas. Jewish law can contradict natural morality. But values—I don’t see how you derive a value from Scripture that contradicts natural morality.
[Speaker C] Not something that contradicts, but it could be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] neutral, where we have nothing to say about it.
[Speaker C] It could be neutral, or something that doesn’t seem clear-cut in terms of reasoning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s what I call neutral for the purposes of this topic. There’s no unequivocal position about it. That’s very rare—you’ll hardly find examples like that in the Hebrew Bible.
[Speaker E] We heard here in the synagogue a lesson about how Joshua is basically commanded to wipe out a nation. So there’s the case of Rahab: if there’s some Canaanite woman who behaves properly, then they even give her the best match possible. On the other hand, if there’s a Jew who behaves like a Canaanite—Achan—then they wipe him out and all his property; they put him and his property under the ban just as they do to a Canaanite.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but here there are special commands from the Holy One, blessed be He, on both sides, so it’s not exactly that. True, this is always one of the problems because of which you can’t draw conclusions. You know that joke? I’m sure I already told you. It says, “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice.” That means you have to listen to women, right? So what does the yeshiva-style Talmudist say about this? What do you mean? It means you don’t have to listen to women; that’s why Abraham had to be told, “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice.” Now go learn from the verse what the correct value really is. Whatever you decide—that’s the value learned from the verse. Decide what’s right. Very often, again, it sounds like a joke, but it’s true, completely true. And in very many places. I’ve already talked about this more than once: in the yeshiva world it’s accepted that every verse teaches the opposite of what it says. Because otherwise why would you need the verse? A sign that the opposite is correct, and that’s why you needed the verse to say it. Now sometimes, by the way, this also appears in the Talmud. And sometimes not. Where did this come up for me? I don’t remember in what context already—Zevachim or something. Doesn’t matter. About a positive commandment overriding a prohibition: in the end they learn it from fringes. That’s a topic in Yevamot. A positive commandment overrides a prohibition—they learn that from fringes. But what you learn there is that because fringes is juxtaposed to the section on mixed fibers, you make fringes from mixed fibers. And from here the Sages learn that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. The question is why? The opposite. From here I would say that a positive commandment does not override a prohibition, and therefore you needed the juxtaposition of the verse to teach you that in fringes and mixed fibers it does. Exactly the same thing. But there the Talmud really says no—from this example they indeed build a paradigm for the whole Torah, for the whole hermeneutic principle of analogy. Yes, there are situations where that happens. Something that left the general rule, and something that left to teach a new matter—various such principles where the Talmud says you do not return it to its general rule unless Scripture explicitly returns it to its general rule. Meaning, something that left really is exceptional. And there are situations where when you see an example, you see in it something general. With fringes and mixed fibers, by the way, I maybe have an explanation for this, because with fringes and mixed fibers what happens is that there’s a juxtaposition of fringes and mixed fibers. The question is whether that comes to say: don’t make fringes of mixed fibers, or it comes to say: yes, do make fringes of mixed fibers. The verse says nothing; it just juxtaposes them. Now the question is what do you learn from that juxtaposition? I don’t know. Both possibilities exist in principle. Right? So here it’s clear that once I learned that you make fringes of mixed fibers, you can’t then say that this means that generally a positive commandment does not override a prohibition, and therefore you needed a novelty in fringes and mixed fibers. Because if generally that really were the case, then why not say here too that the verse is not telling me to make fringes of mixed fibers? I chose that direction. Why did I choose it? Apparently because it’s more reasonable than saying that a positive commandment does not override a prohibition. There were two possibilities; I chose this option because it’s the more reasonable one. So here precisely the verse teaches me what it says, not the opposite of what it says. But a verse that explicitly states what to do—it’s not written in a way that can be interpreted in both directions—there this dilemma always accompanies us: so what do you learn? Do you learn the opposite, or do you learn the good thing? Yes, that always accompanies the learning when we try to learn something from the Hebrew Bible. I say you can’t learn anything from the Hebrew Bible—this frustrates me, this issue. You can’t learn anything from the Hebrew Bible, really nothing, nothing at all. I can’t manage to learn anything from it. People think they learn Hebrew Bible—well, we already talked about this once—I think you don’t learn anything from it. Morality? Actually yes? I think not. You learn no morality from the Hebrew Bible. You learn from the Hebrew Bible only moral principles that you already know on your own. On the contrary, if you see in the Hebrew Bible something that seems immoral to you, that creates a problem between Torah and morality. Meaning, you start looking for explanations: so why is it like that anyway? Meaning that you are actually assuming your morality is the correct morality; you are not drawing it from the Hebrew Bible. On the contrary, where the Hebrew Bible doesn’t fit what you think is moral, you’ll find excuses. So why learn it? If in the end you always come out with your own moral conceptions, then you aren’t learning anything from the Hebrew Bible—so why learn it? Other than some abstract commandment of Torah study, I don’t know, formally—but practically, you don’t learn anything from it. I’ve talked about this on my site too more than once; I even sent out challenges there. I told you: come bring examples of something learned from the Hebrew Bible. I’m not talking about facts—that Abraham our forefather hosted the three angels; I wouldn’t know that on my own if it weren’t written in the Torah. Okay. But I’m talking about values. Right? Tell me one portion, bring me one example, one value that I learned from the Hebrew Bible. I don’t think—I haven’t found such an example.
[Speaker E] Like, for example, why did Abraham our forefather welcome guests?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously we all understand that it’s proper to welcome guests.
[Speaker E] So what do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A value that I learned from the Hebrew Bible that I wouldn’t know without the Hebrew Bible. Suppose I had thought that hospitality was something silly, improper, not right—you understand that I wouldn’t learn it from Abraham our forefather. I would understand that he hosted them because it was a decree of Scripture, because there was some reason, and therefore he hosted them—but in truth one need not host guests. Why do I learn to host guests? Because I think it’s right to host guests. So in the end I’m saying the only place where there might be an exception is, as Arik said earlier, in a place where I don’t have a position. It could go either way. Then if I manage to interpret the Hebrew Bible in some unequivocal way—which is not so simple to do—but if I succeed in finding some unequivocal interpretation, maybe that will teach me something that without it I might not have thought. But that almost never happens; I can’t think of an example.
[Speaker C] You could also think of something not necessarily in the sense that it teaches me something in the direct intellectual sense. It awakens me in a certain direction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so it’s like an ethical self-improvement book. Yes, not as learning but as internalization, character work, yes.
[Speaker C] No, and also as learning—it can somewhat guide me, so to speak, help me gain insight. Explain to me, like—like a person I talk to, and he tells me this is how one should act. I’m not obligated to him, but it may be that if he says it, then I’ll think that way too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you’ll think that way because you find it within yourself, not because he said it.
[Speaker C] But if he hadn’t said it, then maybe I wouldn’t have thought it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, but then that’s true of the Torah just as much as of Dostoevsky.
[Speaker C] But assuming that in the Torah to begin with there is more—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where does that assumption come from? That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think that makes a difference. Because if it awakens me to think in a certain way, fine—that can happen in any book or in any situation even, not only a book. Someone will awaken me to understand that something is right, and I’ll act that way.
[Speaker E] On every guided tour in the palaces of some European capital, all the kings without exception, all along the whole chain, were one hundred percent fine. So a tourist asks the guide, why did that king murder that other king? The guide looks at him as if he’s in North Korea. Now by contrast, our Hebrew Bible presents our heroes as larger-than-life figures but very human. And that too is a kind of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Larger than life, by the way, is from the Sages in my opinion. In the Hebrew Bible you don’t see them as larger than life.
[Speaker E] Okay, fine. So the very fact that it educates you toward a certain norm? Right, with that I agree, with that I agree.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But again, loyalty to truth is also a value I agree with. And I didn’t draw that from there. In the end you’ll see that the values we learn from the Hebrew Bible are only the values we already understand on our own.
[Speaker E] Our internalization from the personal example of our parents, of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] our educators, our environment—it’s some complex business made up of all kinds of sources. But in the end, a value I believe in is what I’ll learn from the Hebrew Bible. If I don’t believe in it—and it doesn’t matter right now where I drew it from—then I won’t accept it from the Hebrew Bible either. On the contrary, then I’ll have a difficulty: how is the Hebrew Bible immoral? And I’ll find an explanation for why nevertheless the Hebrew Bible is in line with proper speech. Why did Jacob marry two sisters? By divine command. Meaning, Nachmanides brought an explanation there for why. So what, did we learn from here that one should marry two sisters? No, you don’t learn that; rather, it was by divine command. That’s a legal matter, so it’s just not a particularly good analogy. But we always have excuses. If it doesn’t fit morality—well, it was by divine command. Why did Jacob deceive? Let’s take a better example; that’s not Jewish law. Why did Jacob deceive? It’s not okay to deceive, right? Why not? Look, it’s written in the Hebrew Bible to deceive, and the Hebrew Bible teaches us values, so apparently one should deceive. What’s the problem? No, because it’s obvious to us that deceiving is not good. Oh, Jacob deceived? Then look for excuses why he deceived. So in the end I’ll always remain with what I myself think—from somewhere else.
[Speaker C] Wait, and why assume that the facts in the Hebrew Bible are less Torah study than, I don’t know—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already a different question. I talked about that on the site too, and that’s a different discussion. But I’m saying that at least in the sphere of values, it seems to me that one learns nothing from the Hebrew Bible. The question is what value the facts have. I say the value of the facts is Torah study. I do think it’s Torah study. I’m just saying it doesn’t interest me—what difference does it make to me whether Abraham was like this? Was Abraham here? The question is what lessons I learn—
[Speaker C] from it, that’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a personal matter, not everyone is—why is there something in this that’s somehow more or less than, I don’t know, studying the laws of a guilt-offering?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I do. On the contrary, from there it’s very significant; it teaches me many things, even on the practical plane. About the guilt-offering I even wrote an article; I think I’m planning to get to it in this series. The matter of the guilt-offering and the sin-offering—and I’ll show you that we learn significant things from it.
[Speaker D] There’s the concept of neglect of Torah study in terms of quality, right? Reading the Megillah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a yeshiva joke about reading the Megillah. It says in the Talmud that one suspends Torah study to read the Megillah. Right? So people ask—the world asks—why suspend Torah study to read the Megillah? Reading the Megillah is also Torah study. You close the Talmud on the lectern and go read the Megillah. So what is that? Is that neglect of Torah study? Instead of studying tractate Bava Kamma you go study the Book of Esther—what, that’s not Torah?
[Speaker D] Because the Talmud is on a higher level.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, and that’s the straightforward meaning, of course. But the joke is that it’s neglect of Torah study in terms of quality.
[Speaker D] Reading the Megillah, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I know it just as a yeshiva joke; maybe the source is the Vilna Gaon. An interpretation, not the straightforward meaning. What is the straightforward meaning? The straightforward meaning is the going to read it.
[Speaker B] The straightforward meaning is in public, in the going.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the going to read it is neglect of Torah study, because you leave the lectern, go to the synagogue to read the Megillah, or wherever the public reads the Megillah, so there’s neglect of Torah study here. That’s the simple meaning. But the yeshiva answer is that it’s neglect of Torah study in terms of quality. What are you reading—the Book of Esther? Persian stories from two thousand years ago? Who cares? Fine, there’s no choice; it’s a commandment, so we’ll do it. That’s the novelty. One suspends Torah study for reading the Megillah. A sign that ordinarily—remember our matriarch Sarah—a sign that ordinarily studying the Hebrew Bible is not Torah study; therefore the Sages had to say, okay, but here you have to suspend Torah study, there’s nothing to do, publicizing the miracle. What’s the difference between this and, I don’t know, Caucasian legends? What’s the difference? There are folk tales with various lessons and so on—always lessons that I know on my own—they’re like Aesop’s fables, like all sorts of things like that, which illustrate very nicely various values and insights that people think of on their own.
[Speaker C] Then why did they put it into the Talmud? It seems to me the Sages didn’t think like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe they didn’t think like that, but I’m saying that from my perspective I don’t see what one learns from it. Anyone who learns something from it is learning himself. I’ve had arguments about this. I’m now opening a book of arguments—Hayuta Deutsch is the editor of the book; she has a doctorate in aggadic literature. And I wrote about this in the book now, this section, not long ago, about two months ago I wrote it, and then there were heated arguments. But she couldn’t bring even one example. In a lecture too I asked people—there are no examples, none, you won’t manage to bring one.
[Speaker C] She couldn’t bring an example that convinced you, or she couldn’t bring one at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, she couldn’t bring an example that would show that she herself hadn’t just learned something she already knew—not that it convinced me, but that she herself learned something new there. Show me a feminist who takes an aggadah of the Sages, sees that the aggadah is chauvinistic, and says, ah, okay, then I retract my feminism, now I’m chauvinistic because the Sages said one should be chauvinistic. No. If the aggadah is chauvinistic, then either there’s some excuse for why there it had to be chauvinistic, or that was then, but nowadays it’s not relevant and we need to be feminist. I have no problem with that; I’m not opposed to feminism, I’m completely in favor. I’m only saying that you don’t learn anything. She brought me examples exactly like that—it was absurd. I said to her, that’s from feminism; bring me an example against yourself, not an example that supports you. She’s that kind of feminist, so it was all like that. Never in my life have I learned, and never in my life have I seen someone learn from an aggadah of the Sages that one must not be humble, or that one has to be chauvinistic, or whatever. It’s always the same values you bring on your own—yes, that this is how one should be.
[Speaker D] Here it seems to me it’s something between making it an ethics book or—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m saying even that is questionable, because there are so many—
[Speaker D] possibilities, so many—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] possibilities for interpreting aggadah that in the end I can get anything out of it. Meaning, suppose it were clear from the aggadah that one absolutely must be humble. Then I’d say fine, so it’s an ethics book, something new, it’s an ethics book, it educates. But I’m saying that even that, many times, you can’t get out of aggadah. Sometimes yes, but many times not, because there are so many ways to interpret aggadah, and aggadah uses all kinds of sophisticated literary techniques, and sometimes in reverse, and in fact commentators on aggadah interpret from one extreme to the other in opposite directions. It’s just not—so even morality, I don’t know how much—
[Speaker B] Look at the spirit of Abraham our forefather’s hospitality and look at the spirit of the Grimm brothers’ tales. That’s a spirit, no? The Grimm brothers’ tales don’t come to teach morality, the tales—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the Grimm brothers’ tales come to entertain those German yekkes, the Nazis, who amuse themselves with those crazy stories—but they come to entertain, not to teach. And there are many things that can come—
[Speaker E] They present the tale as some kind of grits from which the German gentile learned that they behave under some wicked inner program—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Avital Shamir, I think, wrote some book about that once, I think.
[Speaker E] Yes, about German children’s tales—they don’t draw moral conclusions at the end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, I have no problem, so—
[Speaker B] there are methods, there is a way—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] but that way is because we understand it’s true, not because the tales say it. If we thought the opposite, then we would interpret the tales the opposite way. Why? It’s the correct analysis of—also, you have to understand, the fact that the Nazis created the tales, the fact that they were that Teutonic—the Teutonic race is what created the tales, not that the tales created their superheroes. Yes, right. But it didn’t turn them into Nazis.
[Speaker E] At most they became superheroes because they were like that, and all the Cinderella-type tales—now if you take our Cinderella tales, meaning Queen Esther or Rebecca or Ruth the Moabite, in all of them too they measure—but not by a yardstick—they measure… how does he say it? “I have heard all that you did for your mother-in-law,” meaning, or with Rebecca too he’s looking for a girl with good character traits. Right. And among us the character is not measured by a foot, meaning there’s even a similarity in the structure of the tales: they look for character traits, not with a tape measure but with something moral. And now that educates a people, it educates people—that’s what turns—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not—again, this is not one-directional. It educates a people, but it is also created by the people. The character of the people is also expressed in the tales; it’s not that the tales shape the people, rather the tales take root among the public because that is their tendency. The Teutons are coarse regardless of the tales.
[Speaker B] Wait, so say that about the Hebrew Bible too—it’s not that the people who appear in the Hebrew Bible were righteous; they were simply from the people of Israel and were born righteous or were born—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has nothing to do with being born righteous; I’m not getting into that question. I don’t care right now where all my conceptions came from. Right now my conceptions are of a certain kind. When I now read an aggadah or a non-legal biblical passage in Scripture, what I will find there are my own insights. So I’m saying: where did that come from? From all over.
[Speaker B] So I’m saying that your conceptions came from the Hebrew Bible, they came from the aggadot of the Sages, and that’s where they came from. Now you stand in a certain situation and say, what does this tell me?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no problem with that; I wrote that too. But what I said is that maybe indeed in the past—or probably even—in the past this took part in shaping our moral and value ethos, all correct, of the world, not only ours, by the way—even among the Germans, by the way, they too are influenced by the Hebrew Bible. But practically, as of now, for me, right now the situation is no longer like that. You understand? Even if in the past it was so, today I already have confidence in my moral ethos, that kind of confidence, such that when I find something in the Hebrew Bible that contradicts it, I won’t change it; rather, I’ll explain away the Hebrew Bible.
[Speaker C] But maybe it influences over time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe yes, maybe no. You can say many speculative things. I don’t know. The edge of this is clear learning; everything else—the burden of proof is on whoever claims that it does something. I don’t—I don’t see any such value in it, no. Fine, that’s a different discussion. In any case, character refinement itself…
[Speaker B] A Litvak—it won’t help.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, a Litvak. Nothing to be done, just drop dead. More mudslinging. Nothing. A lump like a snake. In any case—dry, but true in my humble opinion. Fine. In any event, then, the claim basically—I return to my line of thought—the claim is that character refinement really is the process or the means to reach a state of a better person and better behavior. But there is still room to discuss—and Rabbi Chaim Vital, for example, Rabbi Kook, and anyone who dealt with this topic assumes—that character refinement has value in itself, not only as a means to become a more whole person. In that sense this is another example of the kinds of things I described here. As an additional example of this matter, or really an expansion of the same matter, one could mention—although it’s a little tricky, maybe I already talked about this, I think—the categorical imperative of Kant. Kant’s categorical imperative is a very interesting game between the action and the result. Because Kant basically, in several of his works, tries to define the basic moral principle, and in the end he arrives at the categorical imperative which says: act in such a way that you would want it to become a universal law. There are several formulations; this is one of them. What does it mean, in such a way that you would want it to be a universal law? Simply speaking, that’s a consequentialist statement. Something like: the world would be better, right? That’s a consequentialist statement. You would want everyone to behave that way because then the world would look better, so do it—contribute your share as well. Right? Basically that’s a consequentialist statement. But actually that’s not true. That’s a common mistake in interpreting Kant. Kant does not mean that. I think not only is that a mistake in interpreting Kant, I also think it’s a correct interpretation in terms of what morality is. Let’s return for now to what Kant meant. My claim is that it is not a consequentialist statement; on the contrary, it is a deontological statement, not a teleological one. That’s how people speak in the context of morality—whether it is deontological, dependent on your intentions and your will, or whether it is teleological in the sense of your ends, the result. I’ll bring an example from the matter of deontology—about which we also talked in the past—the question of why to go vote in elections. My endless arguments with my son. Why vote in elections? He argues that it’s a waste, because in any case each individual affects nothing. Now you have to understand: when I say each individual has no effect, I do not mean that my effect is very small and therefore—then people say, fine, each person with a small effect, and another small effect, together that’s what creates the big picture. True? Each person has no effect at all. Not that he affects a little. Not at all. Because the chance that your vote will have some effect in terms of the outcome is only when the party you care about happens to be at a round number of mandates minus one voter. Modulo, yes, a round number of mandates minus one. If a mandate is thirty-five thousand voters, I don’t know, something like that, then if the party gets—say it is heading toward three mandates—then that’s one hundred and five thousand votes. So if there are one hundred and four thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine votes for the party and I cast my vote too, then I gave them a mandate. Like the one who writes the last letter in a Torah scroll—yes—he is liable as though he wrote two letters, because it’s the end of the scroll; that’s the important writing. So here too, fine? But what’s the chance that such a thing will happen?
[Speaker D] Fine, if we’re talking—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] about it in a—if we’re talking about an even distribution, say, just the crudest model there is, then it’s one out of thirty-five thousand, more or less. Right?
[Speaker C] So it’s still worth it. It’s still worth it. I still have a tiny chance of doing something enormous. I influenced a mandate, which means I influenced the entire policy of Israel.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but I’m saying that doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. It’s like—you know, once I wrote in “Does God Play Dice,” I once wrote about Pascal’s wager. You know that trick? Pascal was religious, yes, a devout Christian. So he raised an argument to persuade people to keep commandments, or to be believers. So he says, let’s see what’s at stake here. If you don’t keep commandments, then you’ll get hell until the end of your days—an infinite amount of time. Not until the end of your days, until infinity. Yes, terrible and awful hell. If you do keep commandments, maybe you won’t enjoy life so much, for the sake of the discussion. Fine. But that certainly isn’t on the scale of the hell you’ll get, nor for the length of time you’ll get it. So let’s say the chance that this is true is one percent. If you’re some atheist and you don’t believe it—one percent. But the punishment you would get is certainly a hundred times more severe than the inconvenience of keeping commandments unnecessarily. Therefore, in probabilistic terms, it’s obviously worthwhile to keep commandments. That’s his claim. Now there are all kinds of counterarguments, various claims that maybe it isn’t worth keeping commandments like that if you do it for probabilistic reasons, all kinds of things. By the way, it depends on the question whether there can be a condition in commandments, like the condition of the Avnei Nezer regarding the midnight cutoff for matzah: that I eat on the condition that if the Jewish law is that one has to finish by midnight, then this will be the afikoman. And if not, then I’ll continue eating after midnight and the last matzah will be the afikoman, so that I can continue the Seder even after midnight. Now they discuss whether conditions are applicable to commandments. So here too, it’s basically the same thing. You’re making a kind of condition in Pascal’s commandments. And I claim that this is a probabilistic mistake. It’s not a problem of commandment observance. It’s a probabilistic mistake. Why? Not a probabilistic mistake—a mistake about the meaning of probability. Because he is basically checking the two alternatives through an expected-value calculation. Expected value of profit. He examines two alternatives. Expected value of profit—suppose the chance that there is a God and that one must keep commandments is one percent. Okay? And ninety-nine percent that not. Now I have two options: either I kept commandments or I didn’t keep commandments. So let’s calculate the gain if I kept commandments. If I kept commandments, I get enormous reward in the world to come, I don’t know, wonderful—of infinite value. And my life here for the seventy years I live, eighty years I live, was maybe a bit less comfortable. The expected gain is enormous. If I don’t keep commandments, then assuming there is no God I lived a somewhat more comfortable life. All true. But if there is a God—that one percent—the punishment I get is insane. Okay? So that one-hundredth times that infinity obviously comes out worse than the extra comfort-value of life. Therefore, he says, one should keep commandments. So what lies at the base here is expected-value calculation. Now expected-value calculations are a very bad criterion in such situations. Simply on the level of rational behavior, expected-value calculations are a very bad criterion. I’ll give you an example. I brought this example there. There’s the St. Petersburg paradox, which, whenever people invest in the stock market, in courses for brokers and investors they always teach this paradox. That’s what I was told. I’ve never been in such a course. But that’s what they told me. What does it say? Suppose they offer you a game. And the game works like this. We toss a coin. All right? If the coin comes up heads, you get two shekels and you leave the game. And it’s over. If it comes up tails, we toss another coin. If on the second toss it comes up heads, you get four shekels and the game is over. If it comes up tails, we toss another coin. If it comes up heads you get eight—powers of two: two, four, eight, sixteen, and so on. And if not, we continue, and so on. All right? Now I offer you this game. How much money would you pay me for a ticket to this game? Two shekels. Two shekels? Why?
[Speaker F] Because that’s the minimum I can get.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that is the minimum you can get—but why is the minimum a good criterion here? Because—
[Speaker F] Here you lose. What if—what comes out after one time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, you’re saying that if you pay two shekels then at least you’ll never lose, okay. What—what do you say?
[Speaker C] I would calculate it—I would define some probability that seems to me like a minimum probability for something I regard as a real chance, and then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] calculate it objectively, of course?
[Speaker C] Yes, subjectively, I don’t know, say one in a million.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what we usually do. And I think an average person, if I offered him such a proposal, would pay ten shekels, twenty shekels, something like that, right? More or less. Fifty shekels. What is the expected gain? A billion, infinity. One-half times two, plus one-quarter times four, plus one-eighth times eight—and that’s infinity. One plus one plus one infinitely many times.
[Speaker C] That’s what I wanted to say—meaning, I would define what for me counts as a real probability, and where the series is at that point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And where, in your opinion, can it get before it stops? How many steps can happen? Okay, that’s what you really have to define.
[Speaker C] I would stop the series at that point, and that’s how you get to fifty shekels.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fifty shekels basically means I’m willing to assume five or six tosses might happen; more than that won’t happen. Okay, five or six. More consecutive tails come out—you need consecutive tails, right? How many consecutive tails will come out? Five, six, roughly—what, ten? Then pay a thousand shekels. But the expectation is infinity. So why? What do you see here? That the criterion of expected value is a very illogical criterion to conduct yourself by. And why?
[Speaker C] Because it doesn’t fit the human psyche.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “doesn’t fit the human psyche” mean? Someone who behaves like that is an idiot. It’s not about the human psyche. There’s a utility function. Fine, you can always hang it on your utility function, but it doesn’t work like that; people don’t do it. I offer you to outfit a ship, a research vessel, to go to islands in the Pacific Ocean to find a pirate treasure that was hidden there. There’s a chance—maybe there’s a treasure there worth a hundred billion dollars. A very tiny chance, but maybe. Let’s outfit a ship; it’ll cost me only a million. The expected gain makes it really worthwhile, right? What’s the idea in that? In that context it’s even easier to show.
[Speaker C] In that context what happens, even in expectation—not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Suppose even that in expectation it were correct—still it would not be right to do it. It won’t happen. Expectation is a good criterion in a place where you repeat the experiment many times. If you repeat it—you outfit a ship and set out on a voyage, then outfit another ship and set out, and you do infinitely many such times—then expectation is an excellent criterion. But if you do it once, to invest a million dollars—you’re crazy, you’re throwing it in the trash. There’s no chance you’ll find it; the chance of finding it is negligible. True, if you do find it it will be an enormous treasure, but you won’t find it; the chance is negligible. In a place where the standard deviation is large—yes, an infinitesimal chance against a huge payoff—the standard deviation around the mean is enormous. Where the standard deviation is very large, expected value is a very poor criterion. Because in the end the probability that you’ll realize the expected value is zero. People think that the expected value and the most probable outcome are the same thing—they are not the same thing. The most probable outcome here is not necessarily related to the expectation. The expectation is not the most probable outcome.
[Speaker B] On the other hand, the fact is that people buy lottery tickets.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else; it relates to what the rabbi said earlier. Because ten shekels—I don’t mind investing that. To invest ten shekels for the hope that maybe I’ll earn a million. But if it were a significant amount for me, I wouldn’t invest on those terms.
[Speaker C] And someone who does invest a significant amount?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those people really get hospitalized—meaning, they are perceived as irrational people. So I’m saying, the same thing with the paradox, the St. Petersburg paradox. Basically the claim is that the criterion of expected value is not a good criterion in a place where there’s a very broad distribution. In general, to describe a broad distribution using a small number of moments—mean, standard deviation, or third and fourth moments—that’s a mistake. You need many moments; the broader the distribution, the more moments you need to describe it, so your errors are large. So to go after the average, after the expectation, is like describing the distribution with one moment, and that’s not right to do with a broad distribution. Now what—I return to our matter. So when I go vote in elections, I ask myself what’s the chance that I’ll have an effect. Right, there’s a one in thirty-five thousand chance that I’ll add one mandate to my party. For a chance of one in thirty-five thousand, I don’t lift a finger. I go down to the street with a higher chance of dying, and I’m not excited about it at all. In one trip? Doesn’t matter how many trips—what difference does it make? I don’t refrain from going into the street. Why? Because that’s not a chance people take seriously. One in thirty-five thousand? Who takes that chance seriously? To invest the half hour to go to the polling station and vote for such a chance—I don’t invest the half hour. It’s not a chance worth dealing with at all. Now understand, this is not expectation. Because if I went to vote many times and one in thirty-five thousand times I would have an effect, then maybe there would be some logic in going because once I would make a difference. But I go once, or however many election cycles there may be, ten, twenty, I don’t know how many—but not thirty-five thousand. So the chance that any effect will come out is negligible. When in history—I don’t know, one would have to check this—when in history was there ever a party, not only in the State of Israel but anywhere, that got a number of votes that was one less than the modulo of whole mandates? In the last local elections there was a case of a complete tie, an exact tie. But that’s a place with five hundred voters. A place with five hundred voters—then there’s some chance that that could happen. But you’re talking about thirty-five thousand. Now, in the last local elections, it was in Savyon if I’m not mistaken. There was a tie in Savyon.
[Speaker D] In Haredi folk tales they tell that once in Ramat Gan there was someone who took exactly his grandfather and exactly on—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That was everything, the whole observance of the Sabbath, okay, could be. But it’s probably not true if that’s how they tell it. And if they just tell it casually, then maybe it was true. But if they tell it like that, it probably didn’t happen. The Rabbi said we need to get back to the weekly Torah portion. And during Torah study time, simply yes. The point is that this is just the argument with my son. Like, so what? Then why is there no point in explaining if it has no effect at all? So whenever he argues about this—it’s one of those eternal arguments in our house, and I’m tired of going over it every time, and this has happened dozens of times—so the guys always tell him, wait a second, what if everyone did what you do? If everyone did what you do, then yes, it would have an effect. In the end. I said, right, I don’t want everyone to do what I do, only I do it. Meaning, after all, if the others also don’t go vote and I do go vote, that would change something, so they make their decisions independently of me. I just have to decide whether I’m going to vote or not going to vote.
[Speaker C] Everyone won’t go vote and only I’ll go vote and I’ll decide?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course, but that’s not going to happen. And if a few people don’t go vote—
[Speaker C] Don’t tell them that, don’t persuade them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re supposed not to persuade. Right, right, the claim is basically that you should keep quiet. But on the intellectual plane a person discusses this issue. And people can’t understand this: it’s the wrong consideration, when they tell him, what will happen if everyone does what you do? That’s nonsense. What do you mean, what will happen if everyone does what you do? Nobody will do what I do. I’m quiet, I sit quietly, I don’t tell anyone, and I save myself the two hours or the hour or half hour of going to the elections, because it’s just unnecessary waste of time. Quite apart from the question whether going to vote in elections is really a waste of time. But I’m saying even if there’s something in these elections that really matters to you, what’s the point of going? I’ll give another example: tax evasion. Tax evasion—the same question. When I evade a hundred shekels in taxes, in the state treasury that has absolutely no effect. No effect. There isn’t a single action the state won’t take because those hundred shekels are missing. The state budget doesn’t look at the digits after the decimal point on that level. It won’t happen, it won’t affect any decision, it won’t affect anything. Meaning, I just can’t see what possible effect that could have.
[Speaker C] Affect some department? But it will affect something, it accumulates.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing. What will happen? They’ll juggle things around, accounting games, nothing. The computer will have one more zero, one less zero. Nothing will happen on the practical level. So I’m saying: then why not evade taxes? What’s the problem? It has no consequence at all. So people always say, wait a second, what if everyone did what you do? That’s already much stronger. Obviously I’m not going to reveal to others that I evade taxes—they’ll put me in jail. By definition, this is something I do quietly. So if I do it quietly, then it really doesn’t matter. Whatever others do, if they decide to do it, they’ll do. The question is: what would make me do it? Why should I do it regardless of others? So why should I care what would happen if everyone did what I do? The same thing came up once in an argument—where did the penny finally drop for me? In Tzohar. I once wrote an article in Tzohar about category in Jewish law. And it came following some argument between two rabbis about the sale permit. The claim was—Rabbi Yehuda Amichai from the Torah and the Land Institute, so he argued there that the policy of Keren—I don’t remember what the other fund was. Otzar HaAretz. Otzar HaAretz, yes. The policy of Otzar HaAretz is, ideally, not the sale permit, and only if there’s no choice or there’s no produce or something like that, then the sale permit. Okay? So another fellow argued against him—I forgot his name, maybe someone here in the audience remembers. Doesn’t matter. One of the rabbis there argued against him: what do you mean? So you’re leaving the sale permit for the transgressors? You’re basically saying that the sale permit exists so that people will use it. So Rabbi Amichai replied to him: what do you want? There are many people who aren’t as strict as we are in Otzar HaAretz, and they’ll buy produce under the sale permit, no problem. And the farmers will make a living. That’s not the issue.
[Speaker C] What’s the problem? Suppose—that is, to leave the sale permit for those who don’t want to be strict. Suppose everyone—no, but suppose even here at the conceptual level—suppose everyone wanted to be strict, then we wouldn’t need the sale permit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the farmers would simply go bankrupt.
[Speaker C] Why would they go bankrupt? They’d switch to Otzar Beit Din.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they’d use the sale permit. Right now the farmers aren’t going to switch to Otzar Beit Din. They’re staying with the sale permit. So the claim is that you basically need to make sure they don’t go bankrupt.
[Speaker C] That’s a structured argument—why…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not so simple, because with Otzar Beit Din the produce has holiness, and with the sale permit there is no holiness, and you can’t export it abroad. It’s not so simple. There are all kinds of problematic things here. So the claim is that basically the farmers will manage—that’s what he answered him. And that was it. No, it wasn’t a ping-pong exchange, it was in the same issue. So I thought about it—what did the second fellow really mean, again, I forgot his name. What did the second fellow mean? And in the end the penny dropped for me: he didn’t know how to formulate it himself, but what he meant is what I mean to say also about income tax and also about voting in elections. What’s at issue here is not a consequential effect at all. All these discussions are discussions of consequential effect. You evade taxes, there will be no result, so what’s the problem? You don’t go vote, it has no implication, so what’s the problem? You don’t buy produce under the sale permit, nobody gets hurt, so what’s the problem? Again, all of it is considerations of what the result will be. What Kant says is something else. Kant basically claims that you have to do a thought experiment. Suppose the whole world adopted your policy. That won’t happen, of course—in the case of income tax, for example. Suppose everyone evaded income tax; that would of course be very bad, the state wouldn’t function. Right? Yes. But my son argues: fine, but that won’t happen. I evade taxes quietly, and with nobody else is it that… whatever others evade, they evade, but that has nothing to do with me. Kant is not talking about the question of whether it will happen. Let’s do a hypothetical experiment: suppose everyone adopted your policy. Do you agree that this would be a problematic world? If so, then your act is immoral. Not because that is the result that will occur. It’s only a hypothetical criterion. You do a kind of thought experiment—what would happen if everyone adopted it—and based on that you decide whether the act is moral or not. That’s not the claim of what will happen if everyone does it; that’s not a consequentialist claim, the way it sounds at first glance in Kant. On the contrary, it’s a claim that speaks about the action itself as a moral or immoral action, regardless of its consequences. And then Kant tells us: notice, there are actions that have no problematic consequence whatsoever, and they are immoral actions. They are immoral actions even though they have no problematic consequence. Why? Because the definition of an action as moral or immoral is not through consequences. We define the action itself. And that’s really what he wants to claim. And I think that’s what they all meant. Meaning, when that person who argued with Rabbi Amichai—what he basically meant to say was: after all, you wouldn’t want nobody to buy produce under the sale permit; you’re counting on everyone buying under the sale permit so that you can be strict. But you have to evaluate your act through the hypothetical experiment: what would happen if everyone adopted your policy? So you agree that that wouldn’t be okay. So if so, you’re not allowed to do it. And similarly, when I was in Bnei Brak, I thought about this even before I dealt with Kant, when I lived there. There was a grocery store downstairs from me, and on Passover he sold the leavened food. But after Passover nobody bought that leavened food from him, because this was leavened food that had been sold—actual leavened food sold to a gentile; not incomplete leavened food, I don’t know, all kinds of terms—but leavened food sold to a gentile. Businesses permit themselves to sell actual leavened food. Nobody bought it. And I started thinking, I asked my shiur teacher, I said to him: tell me, what do you mean nobody buys it? After all, they permit him to sell because it would be a great financial loss. If nobody buys it, he’ll have that same loss. How can you say that they permit the grocer to sell, but I’m actually supposed not to buy?
[Speaker C] Why is that contradictory? It’s a permission, not a recommendation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but what is that permission for? Because we understand that he’ll suffer a major loss, and we allow him to sell actual leavened food. Now, if we recommend to everyone not to buy what he sold, then we ourselves are causing him that loss. So what’s the point of permitting him to sell actual leavened food? Permitting actual leavened food means that we don’t want him to suffer a loss; for us, making sure he doesn’t suffer a loss is a value.
[Speaker C] The question is how you understand the concept of major loss in that ruling of Rabbi Blumenfeld—do we see it as a permission or as a commandment? Not as a commandment to prevent it—do we see it as something that is a value that overrides the principled stringency, or do we see it simply as something like, okay, if you want to.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that even if you see it as a permission, it’s still problematic here, because the permission too, in the end, is meant to look after him. Now you’re not looking after him if you tell everyone else not to buy.
[Speaker C] No, but I mean, suppose he says, I want to be more meticulous, so should we tell him, burn the leavened food? Yes. If so, then I want to be more meticulous—what am I not obligated?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly the claim I’m making: if you want this not to be a general rule, because after all you don’t want him to lose money, then you agree that it’s not okay. That’s a different argument.
[Speaker C] But I’m willing—if he wants to observe, that’s a different argument.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying, assuming you say, no, no, let the secular people, or those who aren’t so strict, buy from him. No—if you don’t want this to become a general rule, then you yourself also shouldn’t be doing it. That’s the claim.