Intuition in Jewish Law – Lesson 6

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, so we’re basically getting close to the end, to the end of this series on intuition. At the end of the previous session we talked a bit about the significance of rules in various areas—scientific laws, or legal rules, halakhic ones—and I raised a few dilemmas about those laws. First: are there laws at all? Or is that just a way we think about things? Second: even if there are, do we have any way of reaching them? We make generalizations, but you can never know that you’ve really grasped the correct law. Basically, the question is whether there really is—and whether it is accessible—a system of laws that can describe the set of facts in the relevant field: again, Jewish law, jurisprudence, science, things like that. Very often people take for granted that there is. In the scientific context, scientists assume this—I think almost all of them do—they assume that there is some system of laws. Not necessarily that we’ve already arrived at it, meaning what we currently hold may be inaccurate or incomplete, and it’s probably both inaccurate and incomplete, but still, on the principled level, the assumption is always that there is some system we are striving toward. Einstein even dreamed of a single comprehensive law that would describe everything, the unified field. In Jewish law too there is a tendency to assume that in the background there are some laws. And as the generations advance, I think we cling more and more to certain laws—usually ones we formulate ourselves—but people are aware that we formulate them, and yet the optimistic assumption is that what we formulate somehow really reflects the laws themselves.

[Speaker B] We’re not creating them—we’re discovering them, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so the assumption is that we’re actually arriving at the correct laws, not creating them. But as I said last time already, I’m a bit torn about this. I’m not sure it’s true. It could be, as we discussed, that giving an explanation for something is always an explanation in terms of laws. When we explain something, we try to explain it through some law of which it is a particular case. The deductive-nomological explanation of Carl Hempel—he says that when you explain a natural phenomenon, I think I mentioned this, when you explain a natural phenomenon you have to present the law and then deduce the phenomenon deductively from the law. That’s what’s called a scientific explanation. Okay? So in practice there really is an assumption built into the very scheme of scientific explanations that there are laws in the background and we’re always striving toward them. Maybe I’ll add one more layer that I didn’t mention last time. Let’s go back to the law of gravity, which I always use to talk about this issue, a law everyone knows. You could see that law as a law describing the behavior of bodies with mass: when there are two bodies with mass, they attract one another. That’s a statement about what it looks like in practice—what their trajectory will be, how they’ll behave, how they’ll move. But that’s a descriptive law, and even about that you can ask whether it’s correct or not, whether we can know that it’s correct, and everything I said before. But scientists usually assume even more than that. They assume there is something that causes this attraction, and that is called the force of gravity, as distinct from the law of gravity. The law of gravity is a law describing the behavior of bodies with mass. The force of gravity is a kind of entity, something that exists in the world, and we assume there is some force here that causes bodies to be drawn to one another. Now, of course we do not see this force at all. There is an assumption here that there is such a force, because otherwise why are they moving toward each other? Again, we assume that everything must have a cause. But no one has ever seen this force, and so there are indeed philosophers who challenge this and want to claim that this assumption is just a convenient speaking device. They’re not really making a claim about the world, that such a force exists; rather, it’s convenient for us to think about these situations as though there were some thing here pulling, or as though the bodies were pulling one another and then, as a result, motion was produced. It’s simply easier for us to think that way, but that just comes from the way we’re built, the way our intellect is built, and that’s all.

[Speaker C] So are you saying this happens without a cause? What? That it happens without a cause?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. Meaning, we have no indication of what really is—whether there really is a cause—but we’re used to thinking in terms of cause and effect, so we… We invent a force, and that’s perfectly fine. This isn’t criticism. That’s how it’s convenient for us to think, and there’s no problem with that. We create theoretical entities that populate our theories. The theories are basically built on theoretical entities that act and create interactions between them, and so on, because it’s convenient for us to think that way. But nobody has ever observed those theoretical entities. There are things that started out as theoretical entities until in the end people did manage to observe them. The electron was once a theoretical entity. People assumed there was an electron because it explained various phenomena, but nobody saw it until we reached the stage where observational tools were developed that could at least see traces. You can’t see an electron, but you can see its traces or its path as it passes. So then you already understand there really is some particle there, that there is something there and it’s not just a fiction you made up. So it turns out that quite often these theoretical entities eventually turn out to be entities we even observe. And in the context of gravity, if I go back to gravity, then—

[Speaker C] That’s also true of the chair, really, and of this table. I assume there’s something there because I see the phenomena it causes. My senses too are just an inference based on outcomes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Philosophically, you’re right. But most people don’t see it the same way. What I see is, supposedly, a direct interaction.

[Speaker C] Fine, okay, I…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree. Philosophically it’s similar. But still, I’m saying: very few people question that there’s a lectern here. But with the force of gravity, quite a few philosophers say this is a statement about us. Meaning, it says nothing about the force of gravity. The force of gravity is a statement about us. We have no indication that it really exists. Maybe it exists—we can’t know that it doesn’t—but it’s simply convenient for us to think that way. And obviously, in that case there’s no reason to assume it exists. So what if it’s convenient for us to think that way? What does the world owe us? Why am I saying this? Because the force of gravity is a good example because it has implications—again, you can question this too, but then it starts becoming a bit implausible. There are implications to the claim that behind the law of gravity there stands a force. Because today at CERN and in other places they’re trying to search for what are called gravitons. Gravitons are particles that basically carry the force of gravity. They carry the force of gravity. Now if there really is no such thing as a force of gravity, and this is just our way of describing the phenomena of attraction and the trajectories of bodies, then there is absolutely no reason to assume there are gravitons. Okay? But the accepted assumption in the world is that although nobody has yet observed them—because the effect is too weak and we still don’t have powerful enough means to observe them—even if they exist, the fact that they haven’t been seen proves nothing. At the moment we simply still can’t. The calculations also show that we still can’t observe them. But almost everyone assumes they exist. And the question is: on what basis? If this statement really is about us—that there is a force of gravity—then there is no reason to assume there are gravitons. There were fierce arguments about this in articles I wrote some years ago. I was asked to write articles for Ynet Science about belief in God—whether belief in God is rational. So I wrote a series of six articles, and it was really an uproar, naturally. You could expect that. I knew there’d be something like that. Hundreds of furious responses, insults and curses because I dared believe in God and even claim that it’s rational.

[Speaker B] And to write it in Ynet, no less.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Although there is room—I think it depends—if someone writes an atheist article, I assume he too, maybe not with the same intensity and not in the same quantity, but he too will get some insults in the comments. Usually it’s the opposition’s commenters who speak, not the coalition’s. So that’s… The editors told me afterward—they quickly called to calm me down. Maybe I wasn’t so familiar with the phenomenon of online comments, but they explained to me: don’t worry, this reflects nothing, it’s just a few loud people getting upset. But there are many, many more silent readers. Exactly. And overall it could be that… with them you don’t know what they think, but it’s certainly possible that they agree. Fine, it didn’t bother me. At a certain stage I started arguing with the commenters there. I went into the comments and responded and all that. Later I stopped; I saw there was no point. But in the course of those exchanges they all explained to me… I wanted to argue that since there are laws, there is a lawgiver, or someone who created the laws or established the laws. So they said to me: what do you mean? The laws are a statement about us. Scientists got involved there too—there were some serious people there. And there were arguments—there were a few people where the debate was actually interesting from time to time. You had to fish them out a bit, but they were there. A few of them. And they kept coming back to this: what do you mean? Who says there are laws at all? It’s all a statement about us; we’re just used to thinking that way. Now this is such disingenuousness, because these are people who don’t want to get to the place they’ll be led to if they agree there are laws, because then there’s a lawgiver. That’s a problem. So they end up in really bizarre places. They would never dare say such a thing anywhere else, and in my opinion they don’t even dream of thinking that way—not only do they not think that way. But when you’re looking for an escape route from an argument, you say, wait a second, who says there are laws? It’s all a statement about us. I asked them there: then tell me, why are billions being invested in searching for gravitons? Why throw the money in the trash? The chance that they really exist is negligible, if it’s only the way we think. Now if there is no force of gravity and we only describe everything in terms of force and lawfulness and things like that, then what is the point of investing in the search for gravitons? The chance is negligible, and this is an investment of billions. On that there wasn’t really an answer. Yes, people try, scientific amusements, I don’t know. You get to problematic territory. The pressure of a debate always leads people into very problematic territory.

[Speaker C] And that’s the question of how much the alternative bothers you, and how much the other thing just seems less plausible.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Although, you know, once you say no problem—say there are no gravitons and therefore there is no God—but then don’t go look for them. Amen. But no, he does look for them. Why is he looking for them? Because he does think there is a force of gravity and there are laws and forces and theoretical entities exist. He only claims otherwise in the debate. And afterward his community—the scientific community—will pour a billion dollars into searching for these things that supposedly don’t exist. I’m not talking about him personally, I don’t know what his personal view is, but the scientific community he operates within pours billions into this. So it’s so naive to say, well, who says, it’s nonsense, just a shot in the dark. You don’t spend billions on shots in the dark. Economics can prove the existence of God. Anyway, that’s exactly the point: you can say that, but the feeling of scientists—the simple feeling—is that it’s not true. There are laws, those laws exist, and there is something behind the phenomena. These things describe reality in some way; they’re not just descriptions of how we think or of the structure of our thought. And the assumption is similar in halakhic contexts. In halakhic contexts too, I think most people familiar with the halakhic material understand that the legal system keeps branching out throughout history. Meaning, it is formed over history. The question is whether it is formed or uncovered. And the accepted assumption among, I think, most halakhic decisors and learners and so on is that we uncover the system of laws, we don’t create it. Meaning that behind the halakhic system there really is some set of laws. Now, it may be that we haven’t exactly arrived at the right law, although in the halakhic context for some reason people have unlimited confidence in the laws—that there, we have reached absolute truth, unlike in science. And that’s a little naive. But still, that’s not the issue right now. Even if we set that naivete aside, there is some assumption behind this that such a system of laws indeed exists, even if I’m not naive and don’t think I’ve really arrived at it. And I’m not sure that’s true. Not sure. It could be that what we have here is a collection of divine wishes, a collection of instructions from the Holy One, blessed be He, that are not anchored in a system of laws. We once talked about giving a bill of divorce. I think that was the example we discussed with negative attributes; I spoke about it last year in a class on Jewish thought. I mentioned there that the Talmud brings dozens and dozens of examples of what counts as a valid giving of a bill of divorce and what counts as an invalid giving of a bill of divorce. And the later authorities work very hard to define the rule behind it, or the rules behind it. Give me a few rules—five rules—that define what a valid giving of a bill of divorce is supposed to look like. Forget all the examples: the divorce document in her hand while the string is still in his hand; he wrote it on a gold plate and gave it to her; they wrote it on objects from which benefit is forbidden; he wrote a bill of divorce and placed it in his courtyard and then sold her the courtyard; he put it in her courtyard; in the hand of a sleeping slave; in the hand of a sleeping slave—dozens and dozens, really many dozens of examples of giving a divorce document of all kinds and types, instead of just saying: give me the system of rules, that’s it. Why are you giving me a hundred thousand examples? It’s a bit hard to escape the thought that maybe there are no rules here at all. There are intuitions about what is right and what is not right, and those intuitions are demonstrated through different examples, but I’m not sure there’s really a formulable set of rules behind this, some set you can formulate. Even if there isn’t a rule—even if there isn’t—that’s what I’m saying. We always think intuitions reflect rules. Why? Because when we try to explain an intuition or explain the facts, we always use rules. Because explanation is always formulated in terms of a rule. But I’m saying here: I’m not sure that’s true. Okay? It could very well be that there is no set of rules behind it, and what matters is these feelings about what is right and what is not right, and I’m not sure there is a set of rules. I don’t know whether there are any at all, not just whether we can get to them. Now, the Kehillot Yaakov on Gittin devotes about three long, detailed sections to this, going through the examples and trying to extract some general formulation from them. And each time—that’s how you build a theory, scientifically too. You build a general formulation, test it against the facts in the Talmud, meaning the examples. Whatever doesn’t work forces you to revise the theory, because it doesn’t fit.

[Speaker D] So each example is a kind of failed experiment, so to speak? What? Each example is sort of a rule, no? Why is an example a rule?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you learn from that example to other things.

[Speaker D] No, not a rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m making an analogy. An analogy is that kind of thing—and it may be that you do it not through a rule. We talked about analogies. It may be that at the root of an analogy there is induction and then deduction. We discussed that, right? When I make an analogy between one item and another, basically I generalize to a rule that includes both items. Say, between one horse and another horse—I’m really generalizing to all horses and then specifying to the second horse. But no, it may be that I see a direct similarity between them and don’t pass through the rule of “horses.”

[Speaker D] But direct similarity is a kind of rule, because you…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, if you call everything like that a rule, then you’ve emptied the discussion of content.

[Speaker D] Right, basically I… Why are five rules rules, but a hundred rules aren’t?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I have no problem if there are two thousand rules—as long as they’re rules. You can always say—we once talked about defining sets. You can define them extensionally or intensionally. You want to define the set of democratic countries. You can define it as the set of all countries that satisfy, I don’t know, five requirements. Okay? Free elections, changing governments, separation of powers, civil rights, something like that. Okay? Or you can simply enumerate the set of countries. Now you can say that even enumerating the countries is not defining by extension but by content, because that too is a form: if you are England or France or Israel or the United States, then you are a democratic country. Formally you can define that too as a rule. Fine, but that’s artificial. You understand? So here too, at a totally abstract level, you can also see direct pointing as a kind of rule. Fine. But I mean the term “rule” the way we usually understand it.

[Speaker E] And when you talk about uncovering Jewish law, uncovering halakhic rules, are you talking about both Torah-level law and rabbinic law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, all of it.

[Speaker E] Because with rabbinic law it seems simple—there are rules in rabbinic law: when an individual disputes the many, Jewish law follows the many, or Jewish law follows the later authority. No, in rabbinic law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “The individual and the many”—that’s Torah-level; what do you mean rabbinic? The thirteen hermeneutic principles? No, no, not the thirteen principles—the rule of individual versus many. But that’s also a decision rule in Torah-level law, so why in rabbinic law?

[Speaker E] No, but rules of halakhic decision are not rules of uncovering Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again: there are situations where Jewish law starts from the rule. “The burden of proof is on the one seeking to extract from another” — the Talmud itself states that rule. I don’t need to derive that rule out of examples. I’m not talking about that. There are places where the Talmud itself lays down the rule. That’s exactly the same… but from that you should learn that in all the other places in the Talmud that deal only with examples, why don’t they write the rule there too? I brought the Mishnah in tractate Bava Kamma there at the beginning, where after they bring the four primary categories of damages and then bring the rule, the Talmud asks: “What does the common denominator come to include?” Why are you giving me the rule? Who needs the rule? Meaning, the assumption is as if rules don’t really capture the matter. And where the Talmud does bring a rule, fine — there are things that of course are rules. “The burden of proof is on the one seeking to extract from another,” although even there, once you start thinking about who exactly is “the one seeking to extract from another,” and you get into the definition of what it means to be in possession and what it means to be the extractor, suddenly you see that I’m not sure even there we really have rules. And you understand that if “the one in possession” and “the one seeking to extract” are concepts not defined through principles, then “the burden of proof is on the one seeking to extract from another” is not really a rule either, but some kind of framework — but not really… if the concepts themselves can’t be defined through rules. And I think I already once mentioned the interesting Chazon Ish who says that if you make a less plausible claim, you lose your status as the one in possession. Even though you’re the one holding the money and I want to take it from you, if your claim is less plausible, then the burden of proof shifts to you. Once you start defining things like that, then I don’t know if there are really rules anymore. You say: “The burden of proof is on the one seeking to extract from another” — but what is “the one seeking to extract”? I don’t know. In any event we’ll still have to think about who is the extractor and who is not the extractor. So I’m no longer sure at all that even this is a rule. But even if yes — fine, because the Talmud says so. But throughout the rest of the Talmud, the Talmud speaks in examples, and the later authorities — and a bit the medieval authorities (Rishonim), but more the later authorities (Acharonim) — try to derive or distill rules from that. And the question is whether we are… uncovering those rules or creating those rules — that is the question. The analytical analysis we do on such passages — it’s fairly clear to me that if the medieval authorities (Rishonim) heard this, they would not be with me. They didn’t think this way. They didn’t. I’m trying to explain them, but they thought directly in terms of the examples. Now that doesn’t prove anything. It could still be that I uncovered it, because I have more analytical skill, so I uncovered the rule that was implicit in them, unconscious, but really that is the rule by which they were thinking — they just weren’t aware of it. That’s not proof. I’m only saying it opens up that possibility. Meaning, it could be that rules only describe how we think, but it could be that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) didn’t think that way at all. The Talmud too works casuistically. Meaning, so maybe it’s just an inability to formulate the rules, but maybe there are no rules. Not an inability to formulate — it’s a collection of intuitions. Either there are rules or there aren’t.

[Speaker F] Or the rules are too complicated.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No — that’s what I’m saying, that’s another option: maybe there are rules and they’re too complicated, and we can’t get to them. Fine, that’s also an option. And by the way, if we can’t get to them, then on the practical level that gives me the same results, because then I still relate very skeptically to rules, even if there are rules on the theoretical level. But if I can’t get to them, then what do I care that there are rules? Fine, so I still relate skeptically to rules.

[Speaker F] There are more explicit rules and less explicit rules.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but I’m saying, I’m not denying that there are rules at all. The question is whether everything is founded on rules. Fine? I’m not denying that there can also be rules within this system. The question is whether you can describe the whole system in an alternative way — instead of telling me all the examples from the Talmud, from Maimonides, from the Shulchan Arukh, whatever — just give me a set of rules, however many there are, and that will be an equivalent description. Meaning: is there a system of rules that will give exactly the same results, an equivalent description? The question is whether there is one, or whether we can get to it. So I was there in Kehillot Yaakov, and in the end he arrives at some formulation of a valid delivery of a bill of divorce, where the number of requirements or components in that formulation is more or less the same as the number of examples. Every example added another patch to the rule. And you have to qualify it here — provided that it is like this, and maybe also like that. Meaning, every example doesn’t really fit the rule, and the rule has to be repaired. Meaning, to arrange the rule so it fits the example — but then the next example comes, and again. So in the end, the number of qualifications or requirements that accompany this rule is more or less the same as the number of examples. And then the question is whether such a thing is really saying anything at all — whether I am describing a rule here at all. On the theoretical level maybe yes, but I’m not sure. Meaning, maybe this is only my formulation of a collection of details. It’s like democratic countries, right? I can say: the rule is that if you are England or France or Israel or this or that, then you’re a democratic country. Is that a rule?

[Speaker C] The question is what happens when a new case comes before you that doesn’t resemble them. Exactly. And then the question is whether you have a rule or you don’t have a rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but you understand that throughout this whole process new cases come up, and it never passes the test. Every time you have to iron out the rule a bit more. Now in the end I’ve gone through all the Talmud’s examples — that’s it, I don’t have any more examples to test it on.

[Speaker C] I don’t have new cases.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But for those new cases I have no feedback. I don’t know whether I was right or not. The theory I built on the basis of the Talmud’s cases says that the law in the new case is such-and-such. But to know whether it works, I need feedback.

[Speaker C] And if it is at all capable of giving you some statement, then apparently there is some rule here, because it could also say nothing. “I don’t know, this case — I don’t… it’s not covered.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it could say something, but it could also not say something, and it could also say something and be wrong. I don’t know. I have no independent feedback as to whether you were right.

[Speaker C] Whether the rule is correct or incorrect is another question. If you created the rule, then apparently yes, you did create a rule if you can come and give an answer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I created a rule — and I created it, yes, I know I created a rule. The question is whether I uncovered one.

[Speaker C] You can’t give a rule because it’s divided into two hundred cases that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I formulated the rule with the two hundred qualifications, and everything is fine. It fits all the Talmudic cases. Now I ask myself: is that a rule, or is it just my formulation of a collection of details? Let’s test it on the next case. But I can’t test it on the next case — I have no feedback. I can say what it will say, what my rule will say about the next case, but I have no one to tell me whether I was right or not. For me, the Talmud is a kind of feedback, because the Talmud states that the law in such a case is such-and-such. And therefore it really is worthwhile to build the rules — someone who really wants to test the rules properly should test the rules on the basis of only some of the cases, deliberately. Not cover all the Talmud’s cases, and after you’ve built it, test it on the remaining cases, because we have no more facts than the facts in the Talmud.

[Speaker F] The question is whether it covers. What? The question is whether it covers. For example, when you have two hundred cases, can you build the rule from one hundred fifty and it will work for the one hundred fifty, or do you need the remaining fifty in order to build the rule? I don’t know — if they’re vectors spanning the whole space, and if one of them is missing then you won’t be able to describe it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but if I build the rule on the basis of one hundred fifty, now I test it on case number one hundred fifty-one.

[Speaker F] Case one hundred fifty-one — the question is whether it is a case the rule covers, or whether it’s a case that doesn’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m testing.

[Speaker F] Yes, but here too, no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? There will be — in the Talmud, I’m talking about the cases in the Talmud. There are two hundred cases in the Talmud.

[Speaker F] In case one hundred fifty-one that the Talmud brought, yes, is it one such that it isn’t there, that you can’t describe it with the others? That’s what I’m asking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it’s independent? Yes. Fine, I don’t know — no, “independent” isn’t… that’s a circular definition. Because if the theory built on the basis of the one hundred fifty also explains the remaining fifty, then clearly they are dependent, by definition. Because they follow from the same rules I built from those one hundred fifty.

[Speaker F] So why did the Talmud bring fifty unnecessary ones? Because if I’m doing linear algebra, if there are fifty unnecessary ones — two or three unnecessary ones — then I’ll tell you those aren’t needed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, it brought fifty unnecessary ones. No — I’m saying, if I build… that’s what I’ll discover. I build the rules on the basis of the first one hundred fifty cases, okay? Not all fifty are unnecessary. No, some of them. So let’s say that ten additional ones are well explained by this rule, fine? If they’re well explained, then they’re unnecessary — I could have known that rule from the first one hundred fifty. Good — so either the Talmud didn’t think of that and brought unnecessary cases, or the Talmud gave them to me so I would have feedback and be able to know that my rules are correct — that’s also possible, doesn’t matter, it’s not important. And maybe for some of the rules, the other forty that do not fit — they won’t obey the laws I arrived at — they will lead to correcting the laws, so they are not unnecessary. But after I correct the laws, then they join the one hundred fifty — now I already have one hundred ninety.

[Speaker F] So then Kehillot Yaakov is constantly adding patches inside the rule because he needed all two hundred.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That’s what I’m saying. And therefore the question is whether we’re dealing here with a rule at all. You have nothing to test it on in another case to see that it works. Every one of the earlier ones was needed; none of them was explained — so who said there’s really a rule here at all? That’s exactly the point. This doesn’t mean the work he did was unnecessary. We discussed that there in the negative attributes, because through this I defined the negative attributes. So it doesn’t mean the work is unnecessary, because even if in the end there are no rules, this form, this mode of work, is what builds in me the intuition of what a proper delivery of a bill of divorce is and what an improper delivery is. Through this I shape my intuitions, because that’s how we are built. Meaning, even if the rules are a ladder that I climb and then throw away, still that’s the ladder I can climb on — that’s how my mind works. When I try to understand and create intuition, then I need, as in language — and I’ve spoken about this more than once — when you learn grammatical rules, but in the end once you know the language well, you don’t think every time whether this is a beged kefet letter, or subject and predicate — you just speak freely, you throw away the rules. The rules built in you the intuition for how to speak, and after you already have that intuition, you no longer need the rules, you don’t use them. Right? So here too it could be the same thing. So the work is not unnecessary, the work Kehillot Yaakov did, whether there are rules or whether there aren’t, because this is still our way of producing intuition. But it is important, because we need to be careful whether in the end Kehillot Yaakov formulated a rule — a rule with all these laths, yes, in the end. Now suppose a new case comes before me. So if I trust that this is the rule, and I have no feedback on the new case, now I have to decide — I’m the judge and I have to decide what to do. So if I trust that there really are rules, then my assumption is that what Kehillot Yaakov gave is at least the best approximation to the rule, and maybe it’s even the correct rule. And then I apply it to the new case. By contrast, if I understand that Kehillot Yaakov’s whole move was only meant to build in me some intuition, then now when I see the new case I’m not interested in the rules at all. Now I think: what does my intuition say about the new case? Understand? And these two ways of relating to rules basically create two different approaches to issuing a Jewish law ruling.

[Speaker F] And how is there control over the result? There isn’t. There isn’t. No, no — not control over the result — I mean, isn’t it the same thing? If you use intuition only because you built it that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no, but it’s not the same thing, because something is also inside me; it isn’t just the collection of definitions that came out of the cases. After all, you can generalize in many ways. In the end that also causes you to feel what is right here. Understand? And then you build with that. And that basically means that you need to build intuition exactly like those who think everything is rules and that rules need to be uncovered — I too work in exactly the same way in terms of the method of work. So where will the difference be between us? When we come to rule on a new case. When we come to rule on a new case, those who think there are rules here will simply do deduction. There is this rule; they will derive from this rule what happens in the new case before us, and that is the Jewish law ruling, and they will also be convinced that it is correct. Fine? By contrast, those who think there are not necessarily rules say, okay, we built some rule, now you can throw it away; the number of qualifications attached to it is the same as the number of examples, so I don’t really treat it as a rule. But the road toward building that rule built in me some intuitive understanding of what a proper delivery of a bill of divorce is and what it isn’t. After all, I checked lots of examples and tried to see what is and what isn’t and so on. Through that there developed in me a certain orientation, so that now suddenly I have a good intuition of what is a valid delivery of a bill of divorce and what isn’t. Now a new case comes before me, and I say: it seems to me that it’s valid. That’s all — without starting to derive it from the system of rules, because I already trust that I have good intuition.

[Speaker C] That’s true

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Empirically, but it doesn’t have to be.

[Speaker C] No, you’re describing the opposite of what perhaps the intuition would have answered you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think so. Meaning, I’m describing two things. There is one person who builds the rules and then becomes captive to them, because he understood that he uncovered the correct rules. Not only captive to the rules, not only…

[Speaker C] To the method, not to the rules. Not captive to the rules — captive to the deductive, analytical, mathematical mode of working.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you build the rules that’s not deduction; when you apply them, that’s deduction. When you build them, that’s induction. After all, you take individual cases and build a rule from them — that’s induction by definition, not deduction. And there are those who understand that through this induction I uncover a system of rules which is the correct system — this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. And now when a new case comes before me, they simply derive it from the rules. By contrast, if you look at the work toward building the rule through different glasses, you basically say: this is meant to build intuition in me. True, I’m sort of building rules, but I don’t really believe I’m uncovering rules — either because I can’t, or because there are no rules, or whatever — rather, I’ve built in myself some healthy intuition, healthy halakhic intuition. Now a new case comes before me; I won’t go back to the rules. I’ve already gone through that path, I’ve been trained to issue rulings, and now I’ll say whether it is valid or invalid.

[Speaker G] But apparently throughout the generations most halakhic decisors — in the responsa that exist — are in this intuitive way. Meaning, they bring lots and lots of examples, and as if what wins depends on who…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know exactly. I haven’t done statistics. And even within responsa, within the very same responsum, there are sometimes considerations of this kind and considerations of that kind.

[Speaker G] But in the end it’s always rules. He brings lots and lots of sources in order to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but many times behind the examples there stands some rule. He brings the examples in order to prove a rule.

[Speaker G] He reaches the answer he wanted to reach.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. We’d need to do a survey one day. I don’t know to what extent that’s even possible. It’s very hard to know, always, whether you are speaking about rules or about intuitions. But I think that broadly speaking there are these two directions. It’s not always easy to identify what you’re seeing in front of you — whether it is thinking of this type or of that type, and in what proportions, because it’s always mixed. But I do think it’s important to understand that there is here some sort of… two kinds of approach. And that’s exactly what brings me to the last chapter of the series, because that is really the question: where does intuition come in on the halakhic plane? And intuition is not something you are simply born with and that’s it. Intuition is something you build. That’s why I say we need to be careful. Just plain intuition — “that’s how I was born,” “that’s how I feel,” “it seems right to me” — that’s not serious. By the way, that’s true in every field, not specifically in Jewish law. Someone who didn’t study medicine but has the intuition that doing this is very healthy — that’s not serious. Meaning, after you studied medicine, that still doesn’t mean that from what you learned you can derive what is healthy. But since you rubbed up against these materials, and encountered cases, and experienced things, and got positive and negative feedback, and tried things — you deal with it — that built in you some intuition in the field in which you were involved. Meaning, intuition is something that needs to be developed. Intuition is not something you are simply born with — that’s a naive approach. But after you develop it, yes, you need to trust that intuition that you developed. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about how I was born and how I feel and that’s what I’ll do.

[Speaker C] And in fact, for the decision itself you use intuition — if the process of building the rule itself is intuitive, because if it’s inductive then it’s intuitive — then basically all the time you’re doing… I completely agree.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So maybe that’s the connection…

[Speaker C] The training?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’m saying: the people who think they are dealing with rules do not understand that the process they are carrying out is an inductive process, and that too is based on intuitions. And you are absolutely right. I really think so. There’s no such thing as the famous Brisker statement that we ask only “what,” not “why.” Yes, in Brisk that’s famous. We ask only what is written in the Talmud, not why. Why — that’s beyond us; they were so great and wise that we cannot understand. We only describe the what. Of course — nonsense. You cannot describe the what without asking why, because once you see the examples before you and you try to uncover — and the Briskers always try to uncover rules: this is a law in the person and that is a law in the object, this is a sign or a cause, yes, all those Brisker distinctions — then you are basically trying to uncover a rule that stands behind the examples. But you cannot know what rule stands behind the examples without really asking why these examples have this Jewish law and not another one, because otherwise I can offer you a completely different rule. There are many rules I can derive from the same set of examples. Therefore, implicitly they are asking the why — they just are not aware of it, that’s all. And they try to deceive themselves that they are only asking the what. There is no what without why; there’s no such thing. You cannot get to the what without, on the way, really asking why. I’ll maybe bring one more point before I move on to the laws themselves, because this is the junction that actually brought us to the laws. Now I want to know how one issues a Jewish law ruling: do we work with rules? do we use intuition? — which is exactly the point I reached. But just in parentheses I’ll add one more point connected to the whole part about working with rules in general, to the theory of… this topic of rules. There is an argument of Wittgenstein’s about following a rule. And he basically wants to claim that you cannot — you cannot pass a rule on to someone else. There is no way to do that. There is no way for one person to teach another person, or a teacher to teach a student, a certain rule. There isn’t. There simply is no way to do it. Try teaching a student how to count, for example. There are rules: one, two, three, four; at ten it starts again — eleven, twelve, thirteen; very systematic, very orderly, right? The number system. At one hundred, then one hundred one, one hundred two; at one thousand, one thousand one, one thousand two, and so on; one thousand, one thousand one hundred, one thousand two hundred.

[Speaker H] Numbers are learned only in the mathematics faculty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, but I’m saying, the assumption is…

[Speaker H] That even people who aren’t mathematicians, just engineers, know perfectly well how to count. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So when you teach a student — but the feeling is that you don’t need number theory. You can pass these rules on to him. Maybe one can go deeper into them when he becomes a mathematician, but you can pass on to him the rule of how to count. And in fact that proves itself — meaning, in the end people do know how to count, even numbers they didn’t learn in school; they know how to continue beyond that. But Wittgenstein basically argues that there is really no way to do that if you think about it. Because think about a student — and we spoke about this once too — think about a student to whom the teacher says: listen — one, two, three, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, one hundred, one hundred ten, one hundred twenty, one thousand, one thousand one hundred, one thousand two hundred, one thousand two hundred ten, one thousand two hundred twenty, and so on, right? He teaches him the whole Torah. And then he gets to nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine and then ten thousand. Fine? Now he says to the boy — and this is connected a bit to Meir’s previous question — and what is the next number? he asks the student. So he says: minus one-third. After ten thousand, the next number is minus one-third. What do you mean minus one-third? I’ve been explaining to you for about ten thousand numbers how the pattern works, so where does one-third come from? And the student says, what do you mean? I can explain it to you easily. Meaning, I… it’s not that easy, but it can be explained. I can build… prove. Yes, I can build — no, proving it is very easy, but actually producing it is hard. Proving it is a theorem… the fundamental theorem of algebra. Meaning, when you… let’s not talk about ten thousand, okay? I give you a sequence on the psychometric exam: one, two, three, four, and now fill in the next one. Of course everyone will fill in five, right? And he’ll fill in minus one-third or square root of two. Fine? So they’ll ask him, wait — what are you… one, two, three, four, so the next one is five, no? What are you talking about? Square root of two. And why? On what basis? How did you get one, two, three, four, square root of two? So he says, what’s the problem? The sequence is apparently a plus bn plus cn squared plus dn cubed plus en to the fourth, some sequence. Now I can define the coefficients a, b, c, d, e — five coefficients — in such a way that if we substitute n equals 1 you get 1, substitute n equals 2 you get 2, n equals 3 you get 3, 4, and minus one-third or square root of two, whichever you want. Give me whatever number you want for the next number, and I’ll build you an expression that gives a pattern making that the next number in the sequence. Eight, say. Doesn’t matter what you want — I can build it. It’s a theorem that you can build it, right? You just need enough coefficients. If you have five coefficients, then five equations with five unknowns — you can find those coefficients and there is no problem. What? A polynomial. Five. You also want the third here?

[Speaker I] Sorry, you need a fourth-degree polynomial plus one,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, five coefficients, because there is a constant term. So I’m saying fine — and if by chance the equations come out dependent — they won’t come out dependent, but if by chance they do come out dependent, then add another one, what difference does it make? There is a solution, and then there will be infinitely many solutions, not just one. Okay? No problem. I can always produce this thing, and it will give you one, two, three, four, and whatever you want in the fifth place: square root of two, minus one-third, a complex number if you want — anything, made to order. Right? Now if a person comes, and that’s really how he… suppose you imagine a person whose mind is not built like the mind of a normal person, but differently — an alien comes from Mars, fine? He is built differently. He really is built that way. When you tell him one, two, three, four, he genuinely thinks the next number is square root of two. Because he understands that the sequence is, say, one and a half minus 2n plus 4n squared plus square root of two n cubed minus pi n to the fourth, fine? That’s how he is built. That’s how he does the… then he substitutes n equals 1, n equals 2, n equals 3 — it comes out for him one, two, three, four, and minus square root of two. He says, what’s the problem? That’s the next number, no? Now in what way is he less right than the person who writes five on the psychometric exam? Yes. No.

[Speaker B] No, because the psychometric exam is here and he isn’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’ll be accepted to university less readily, but he is not less right. He is not less right; he simply has a different kind of mind. Someone whose mind is built like the mind of the person who wrote the psychometric exam, he understands that the next number is five. Most human beings, I think, are built that way. Fine, but if some being really came whose mind was built differently, he is not less intelligent than anyone else. Maybe more so. Maybe more so, I don’t know — it’s harder to calculate that, but that’s how he’s built. He doesn’t need to calculate; that’s simply what comes out for him. Is it tiring? What? No, not tiring, because he doesn’t need to — for us it’s tiring because we need to calculate, but that’s how he’s built. On the contrary — when he tries to substitute five there, yes, exactly, if he tries to substitute five there he’ll have to do calculations; it will seem terribly complicated to him. What, how does your n come out five? You have to build a polynomial and… So that person is no less right than anyone else on the psychometric exam. Rather, the psychometric exam assumes that the person taking it already has patterns in his head, and those patterns are the same patterns as the writer of the exam, and now I can expect him to know that the next number is five. But imagine that I try to build those patterns. I now want to teach the students how to solve psychometric questions, and these students are from Mars, and they enter a preparation institute — Kidum or whatever one of those institutes is called that teach psychometric exams, okay? They have no chance. They’ll get zero on the psychometric exam. It’s impossible to teach them that. Impossible. Because their minds are built differently. You tell them one, two, three, four, the next is five — do you understand? And then try to explain it to them using their polynomials, because you have to explain it according to their method. Fine — at six he’ll get stuck. And if you explain six, then at seven he’ll get stuck. You’ll never succeed, because the form of generalization he makes is not the same form of generalization we make. So whenever you teach a child to count, you tell him one, two, three, four, ten, eleven, twelve, twenty, one hundred, one hundred one, etc. And the problem is always the “etc.,” because the “etc.” is really — when you say, what’s the problem? Mathematically there is a rule, n. That’s the rule. n equals 1, n equals 2, yes, like the sequence one, four, nine, sixteen — yes, the sequence is n squared. Right, there is a pattern, so every n will give you the next term in the sequence, an equals n squared. So what is one, two, three, four, five, six — the regular sequence? an equals n. Right? There is a pattern. Okay, fine. So here, I can show him: an equals n, that’s the pattern. Explain to me what n is. What is n? n is, you know, you substitute one, two, three, four, etc. Exactly. After all, you also have to explain that notation to him somehow. You always think you can talk about the rules, but you will always have to demonstrate the rule in order to explain it, and demonstration always assumes that the person will generalize in the same way you generalize — meaning that the examples are enough to pass on the rule to him.

[Speaker H] But if it’s base ten and that’s it, I don’t know — I explained all these things at around age ten, something like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, because they are built like you. If your children were from Mars, you couldn’t explain it to them even at age one hundred.

[Speaker H] But just say, it’s not connected to numbers — it’s only representation. I explain to him that there are symbols, ten symbols, and that’s fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, but I’m asking about teaching them to count. If you teach them a finite set of information items, there is no problem at all. Go through every item and they’ll know it. I’m talking about the question of how you teach them a rule — an infinite rule, a rule with infinitely many examples. How will they generalize on their own? No chance. You won’t succeed. You do succeed, of course — we all do — because the children are built like us. Whether that is good or bad, I don’t know, but in this case it is useful, at any rate. But if you had a child from Mars, no chance, you would not succeed in explaining it to him.

[Speaker H] How do I succeed, say, in programming it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the computer — who do you think built the computer? A human being like you. Obviously.

[Speaker H] I don’t think that has anything to do with the way the computer is built.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it does, what do you mean? I can build you a computer you’ll never be able to program in your life.

[Speaker H] True, but there is no connection between a high-level language and how the computer is built. Those are completely different things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It works on completely logical aspects.

[Speaker H] Absolutely not true, what do you mean? Absolutely not true. There’s also the compiler. There’s the compiler too, what do you mean?

[Speaker B] Absolutely not true. The language too was built — there is a compiler…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there is, what do you mean? You translate it with assembler to… all that is true, but it’s a translation. Correct.

[Speaker H] The level of translation has no…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, but that translation is the…

[Speaker B] In the end you get to a language whose function is that it matches the computer’s construction, its structure.

[Speaker H] There is no connection between the high-level language and the computer. I can write things — I can write in Hebrew.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if there were no assembler to do the translation, then the computer would know — you would write one plus one, and it would give you minus square root of two. Exactly. The assembler takes care of the connection. You’re right that there is no connection in itself.

[Speaker H] And that’s obvious. There is no use of intuition in execution.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say there needs to be intuition in execution. At that point it’s deductive; you’ve already created the system. You don’t teach the computer; you program the computer, you set the pattern in it. But with the child you teach — you don’t wire his brain.

[Speaker H] That’s true — my teaching creates the pattern in his head.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, but now the question is how. Because he makes generalizations. The child makes generalizations, and that’s how the… after all, you don’t have… how does he create patterns from examples? Every person will do it differently; every creature will do it differently. Not every person — human beings generally do it similarly. Okay? This raises philosophical questions that are not simple at all — the question whether there is such a thing as smart and stupid in the world at all. A person who doesn’t understand mathematics or something like that — usually we’ll think he is more stupid. But maybe his mind is built differently. If you explained mathematics to him in his language, he would be a genius and you wouldn’t understand anything. And there is room here — this leads to very interesting conclusions on the philosophical level — that really there are no stupid people and smart people, there are just different kinds of minds. That’s all. Maybe. I don’t know. These are philosophical musings; I don’t know.

[Speaker C] And geniuses at soccer. Yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The kind of things I don’t understand. In any event, Wittgenstein’s claim is basically that you can use rules only if the rules are already internalized in the other person. You cannot teach him rules. You can help him discover rules that are already internalized within him — that you can do. That is basically what a teacher does. Okay? But if it were not internalized in him, then you could never have taught it to him.

[Speaker C] Or that he can see the things, or that he has a way of seeing them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it doesn’t matter—the way of seeing is what does the building. That’s his way of generalizing from the examples. No, it doesn’t matter, so what’s embedded in him is not the rule itself, but the form of generalization that will lead to the rule. But still, those are some patterns such that when you give him examples, he generates from them the rule that you actually want him to generate. So that means he’s built in a certain way. It’s like Chomsky’s claim about language. Chomsky basically argued that with language, you’re not born a blank slate. If you were born a blank slate, it would be impossible to teach you language. You’re born with linguistic capacities. You’re not born with Hebrew, but you are born with linguistic capacities. And the fact that every person can apparently learn any language, if it’s at the right age and in the right environment, means that the linguistic capacities of all human beings in all languages are basically the same foundation. It’s the same thing. You can just feed it different software and it will work in different ways. But the hardware is the same hardware. What? That’s obvious. Yes, so that’s what Chomsky claims. So it wasn’t so obvious; it was perceived as a novelty—that you’re not born a blank slate. But yes, I also think that philosophically at least, it seems to me a pretty simple idea overall. I once told this story—I’m fumbling here—that in Nicaragua, after the Sandinista revolt, the communists in Nicaragua came to power. Before them there had been that typical South American regime where the ruler took care of his own treasury and didn’t care at all about the citizens. After that the Sandinistas came to power, and of course the Sandinistas were very cruel and murdered everyone who wasn’t like them. But overall they were communists. By the way, it was like that in the Soviet Union too. There really was concern for the ordinary citizen. Even in the worst periods of evil there was concern for the ordinary citizen’s education, for the ordinary citizen’s work. They carried out that concern in pretty brutal ways sometimes, but still the communist idea was expressed there. And what happened there was that for the first time in Nicaragua they established a school for deaf-mute children. For the first time; there had been nothing like it there. Now, once the Sandinistas wanted to set this up, they needed people who knew how to do it. So they brought in experts from foreign countries. Before the experts from the foreign countries arrived—I once read about this in an article in Haaretz—the children there started developing a language on their own, a language of gestures. Because they had to communicate somehow; they lived in the same place, lived together. And still nobody had taught them anything. And there weren’t speakers there from whom they could somehow absorb it; it wasn’t in the family, they lived together in an institution. And there still weren’t people there responsible for caring for them and educating them and teaching them. So they developed a language by themselves. And then suddenly it turned out—experts came from all over the world to see it, because it was the first time you could see a language coming into being before your eyes. For language researchers this is an enormous treasure. You see how a language is built, and this was a language in every defined linguistic sense. Meaning, it was a real language that they developed on their own, based on the same linguistic capacities embedded in all of us. So what if you’re deaf-mute? Then it came out in the form of gestures and not in the form of sounds and speech. That doesn’t matter. You’ll express those same linguistic capacities, and they researched how language develops, and it shed a lot of light also on older languages, where we don’t know how they developed. There are all kinds of theories, and this helped in trying to test them. Okay, fine, so what does this argument actually mean, this argument of Wittgenstein’s about following the rule? He comes to claim that really there’s no such thing as rules. There’s no such thing as rules; it’s simply embedded in us. We’re just built that way. If someone is built differently, then differently. There’s no right and wrong here, there are no rules, there’s nothing. It’s just more convenient for people to converse when the hardware of their systems is built similarly, that’s all. And that says nothing about the world. There really are no rules. Okay? He was talking about language, not just the world, but I’m extending it a bit beyond what he said. Because he was an analytic philosopher, at least in that phase of his. So for him the world is language. But for our purposes, I’m bringing this as an example because I don’t think he’s right. Meaning, the fact that I can’t transmit rules to someone else if he’s built differently from me doesn’t mean there are no rules. It only means there’s a communication problem. It doesn’t necessarily mean there are no rules; it only means I can’t transmit them to him because I have no way to do that. It’s a communication limitation, not proof that there are no rules or that rules are only a byproduct of how we’re built. That’s possible, but it’s not a necessary conclusion. Okay, so that leaves the issue open. Okay.

So I want to move on to what we don’t really have much time left for. I want to move now to the question of how this is expressed in Jewish law. So as I said earlier, in Kehillot Yaakov and in Gittin and so on, basically the two options for how to approach halakhic ruling differ from one another not in the training of the halakhic decisor, or at least not in the first part of that training, but in what he will actually do in practice. His training will be the same. Meaning, in principle he’ll go through cases from the Talmud or from the literature of the halakhic decisors, doesn’t matter, analyze them, try to formulate rules on the basis of those cases, reject rules or revise rules according to additional examples, and try to build for himself some sort of system of rules. So that part is the same according to both schools—the intuitive one and the one that works with laws in a deductive way. But what you do after the training is over—let’s say the training is over; let’s divide it schematically. There’s a training stage, we finish the training, and now we start issuing rulings. Of course it isn’t really built like that, but on the theoretical level. The difference is mainly in the second part, or in the stage of use, which is the end of the training—when you start seeing cases and accompanying a halakhic decisor and seeing how he relates to cases, and you try to learn what’s going on. By the way, the whole concept of practical apprenticeship is based on the idea that it isn’t enough to learn the rules. Because otherwise what’s the problem? Give me the rules, let me study the material, and I can issue halakhic rulings. Why do you need apprenticeship? Apprenticeship basically means: acquire the feel in your fingertips, the nose, for what’s right to do when a case comes before you. Because just rules—teach a person rules, and he won’t be able to deal with cases that come before him. Fine, you can also hang that on the limitation that we don’t have all the rules and so on. But even that smells a bit like—you really can’t treat this in that positivist way, as if there’s a collection of rules and I derive the result from the rules. You need to acquire a feel. The intuition too needs some polishing before you begin issuing halakhic rulings. And therefore the very concept of apprenticeship, I think, is a little Eastern in general. After all, there the entire learning process is only apprenticeship. In Buddhism, Zen Buddhism and so on, the whole idea of teacher and student is not at all the idea of frontal transmission of material: rules, learn the material, and then you know what to do. Rather, you transmit things in an indirect way. You try to challenge his intuition, to show him other angles. Meaning, the whole concept of teacher and student there is one that today some people see as outdated, but I don’t think that’s right. It’s just different. And that really addresses directly the building of intuition.

It’s a little bit like, in a certain sense, yes? Recently courses have opened for rabbinical advocates, male or female. Fine? What do they study there? Like in law school. You study the material. Meaning, you have to learn what the law is in such-and-such a case and in such-and-such a case, court procedure and so on. Now, a track like that produces ignoramuses. Meaning, usually a rabbinical advocate is an ignoramus. At least the ones I’ve met—a complete ignoramus. Meaning, in the best case he knows the rules. But when you need some idea, a little creativity, a case comes before you and you need to think of some other way to present it—you need to think how to defend your client, okay? He can’t do it. He can guide him on what the law is and what has to be done and when you speak and when the judges speak and what is written and how to file an appeal. But he can’t give him any creative form. And in fact in the religious courts, in most cases when rabbinical advocates come—the ones I’ve met—he helps him with procedure and so on. The legal level only the judges handle, at best; sometimes they don’t do that either, but only they do the substantive reasoning. Now, that’s not good. Because sometimes you really do need to open your mind in another direction. The judges can be—after all, the whole idea of “this one chooses one [judge] and that one chooses one” in the Sanhedrin, that I chose a judge, you chose a judge, and the two judges choose a third judge—the assumption is that the judge I chose will maybe try to dig more, to turn over the stones more thoroughly, to see whether there’s another way to view things. Okay? So someone who doesn’t know how to do that, someone who isn’t a lamdan, someone who only knows the material, is an ignoramus. Meaning, he may know all the material, and the lamdan may not know the material—but you know, today there are already databases; today the weight of knowledge has gone down significantly. You’ll get to the information you need. Meaning, it’s not, you—

[Speaker B] You need skill, but you’ll get to the information. What? Of the information, not of the knowledge.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, it depends what you define as knowledge. If knowledge also includes that skill… fine, yes, I’m talking about skill as opposed to knowledge or information, yes, never mind. So if I really want a good rabbinical advocate who can also help his client, he needs to be a lamdan. The rabbinical advocates’ course won’t help him with almost anything; it’ll teach him the procedures. You need to go through years of the friction of analytic learning, and then suddenly you see. I was—I’ve had a bit, not much, over the past few years I happened to touch a little on these things. I had lots of ideas in various directions about how to present things and how… First of all I discovered that it’s a fascinating field, the practical field. I always used to belittle it; I was a theoretician. The practical field is simply fascinating, because theory is enriched in an amazing way when you encounter a case. Reality is a wonderful thing, after all.

[Speaker B] It forces constraints on you. Yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And suddenly you discover how people look at things and… But I’m saying, that’s exactly the point: at most, even if you wanted to teach in a rabbinical advocates’ course, to teach analytic learning, then what would you do? Try to take the collection of rules and teach them the rules too, not just the information but also the rules for how to analyze… that also doesn’t work. It won’t produce a lamdan. You can’t—or at least as of now you can’t, I don’t know of a system that can really produce analytic learning automatically: take a course and become a lamdan. It’s work. You have to wrestle with the material and fight with it and formulate and work with a study partner and with a lecturer and argue and bring proofs. In the end somehow a certain form of thinking is created in you, a certain analytical ability, and then you become a lamdan. I don’t know of a direct way to train lamdanim except simply to engage in analytic learning, and in the end it will emerge. It depends on talent, depends on investment, but only that way. I don’t know of any other way. And again this is some hint that in the end halakhic ruling is more art than science. Meaning, it is more intuition than the application of orderly rules. Science too is more art than science, but that’s another story—but more art than logic, okay, let’s put it that way.

And that brings me now to the examples I wanted to give. Look, there are several… At a certain stage, when I started a little to engage in practical Jewish law too, and that wasn’t all that many years ago, I suddenly discovered over and over that I’m actually inclined toward the side of intuitive ruling, not rule-based ruling. Now, that requires analytical ability—you have to define the things and bring proofs—but in the end the intuition carries you. You’re not operating out of a set of rules; at most you produce rules in a way that intuition helps you produce them. Because we do use rules—you’re not going to make an argument without rules—but intuition is really what dictates; the rules are the cover. By contrast, in the second method the rules are what dictates; the rules basically determine what you do. Now, I already mentioned Rabbi Soloveitchik, who—people say in his name, I haven’t seen it written but people say in his name—that he said that in fact there is no halakhic decisor who really works by the rules. The decisor sniffs the case, he knows the answer, and then he writes the sources and the analysis, but he knows the answer in advance. I don’t think it’s that extreme, but I do think there’s a lot of truth in it. Meaning, there’s a lot of truth in it. And there’s no substitute for that nose.

Now then, when I started writing in halakhic fields, not just in analytic fields, I got a great deal of opposition to what I wrote, and at some point I suddenly noticed that it all revolved around this axis. Meaning, the accusations were always that I was forcing the material because of my intuitions. Meaning, my intuitions dictate what the ruling will be, and then somehow I manage to mix up the material and the proofs and arrive at the conclusion I wanted to reach from the start. In some of the articles I write at the beginning what my intuition is. For example, I had an article about Shai Dromi, about killing a thief. I said: my intuition is American. Someone who’s in my yard without permission—I shoot him in the head. That’s all. If he doesn’t want that, he shouldn’t be there. That’s it. But in the Talmud it doesn’t say that. In the Talmud it says that in your yard you’re allowed to kill him only if he poses a threat to you. If you attack him and then there’s a concern that he’ll kill you, then you’re allowed to kill him. Meaning, you don’t have to wait until there’s an actual threat, but the permission to kill him is based on the assumption that he poses a threat. And for example, if it’s your father—the Talmud says the practical difference is that if your father comes to steal from you, then there’s no concern that he’ll kill you even if you resist, so there you really are forbidden to kill him. That’s the practical difference. Yes, if I’m really allowed to kill him because he’s on my property, period—not because of the concern that maybe he’ll kill me, which is translated into the law of a pursuer. He is pursuing me, so I’m allowed to defend myself, allowed to kill him—and then of course that empties the law of the burglar tunneling in of content; it turns it into a subsection of the law of a pursuer. Okay? But my intuition was an American intuition: no, this isn’t the law of a pursuer. He’s not pursuing and nothing of the kind. You’re allowed to kill him to protect property. That’s an intuition. And after I stated that intuition, I tried to show arguments in favor of that point. But very clearly with me too it worked that way. It wasn’t just a writing style; that was also how I thought about the topic. And then it became clear that gradually, basically, all the articles are like that. Usually I write an article in order to advance an intuitive feeling that seems to run against the sources. Those are usually the articles I write. And then I try to show how in fact it doesn’t contradict the sources, or at least that there’s a possible way to interpret the sources like that, and if so then I go with my intuition. That’s true of almost all the halakhic articles. So I want to bring a few examples because this illustrates exactly the difference between top-down thinking and bottom-up thinking, yes? Between intuition and following rules. So maybe I’ll start with the article I wrote in Tzohar. Most of these articles are in Techumin, and there they attacked me quite strongly for this mode of analysis.

[Speaker G] What do you say about the attacks?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I say they’re wrong, because I think intuition is a very important thing, as long as I succeed in showing that it stands the test of the sources. And if you tell me, look, you’re forcing the sources because that isn’t really what they mean, then I accept the criticism. I’m just not convinced that that’s really the case. “It’s not good because you’re biased by your intuition.”

[Speaker C] Why is it perceived that way in your case and not with someone else who says something that comes from his own intuition? Maybe the justification just seems less convincing to them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. Although my feeling was that they really do cling more to the rules, to the required reading of the sources. But I’m saying that once you have a very strong intuition, look at the sources again. Meaning, it may be that you can see them differently. Many times our interpretation is nourished by what we think and not only by what’s written.

[Speaker C] And precisely because of that, maybe you can justify it on a half-convincing level, but because the intuition is so strong, together you say it works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, sometimes the intuition is the motivation to dig more deeply into the sources, and after I dig I’ll show you that this is the required interpretation of the sources. But when he reads the required interpretation—

[Speaker C] —the required interpretation, no one will say that you forced it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not like that, because he’ll follow my analysis, but without the initial intuition he too will say that this isn’t the interpretation.

[Speaker C] He’ll say either you succeeded in convincing him because you dug deeply, or…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there are arguments about that.

[Speaker C] Let’s go to examples, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, let’s bring examples. For instance, I’ll give an example: an article I once wrote in Tzohar about causing a secular Jew to sin. So I said that my claim there was—again, intuition—my intuition was that a secular Jew cannot commit sins and cannot perform commandments; he’s outside that framework. And therefore if I cause him to sin, I’ve done nothing. And he too has done nothing, or because he has done nothing, I also have not violated “do not place a stumbling block.” So that was the claim. Now why? Because in my view, although commandments do not require intention, commandments do require faith. The well-known Leibowitzian claim that says that an act of serving God, an act of commandment observance, has meaning only if it comes מתוך the commitment to fulfill what you were commanded. And if you simply keep the Sabbath without believing in the Holy One, blessed be He, then that’s not the commandment of keeping the Sabbath; it’s just monkey behavior. You happened to keep the Sabbath, or for other reasons. Yes, Ahad Ha’am said, “More than the Jewish people kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept the Jewish people,” and therefore in principle he was in favor of Sabbath observance and opposed to Sabbath observance with all the little clauses dragged along with it.

[Speaker B] Is he one of the sages of the nations or not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so that’s the source I brought afterward, but first I stated the intuition. So I said: if Ahad Ha’am, for example, keeps the Sabbath with all the little clauses of the Mishnah Berurah—did he keep the Sabbath? My answer: no. He did not keep the Sabbath. He did not fulfill the positive commandment of keeping the Sabbath. I didn’t say he desecrated the Sabbath, because to desecrate the Sabbath you have to perform the transgressive act. He didn’t do that. But he did not keep the Sabbath; the positive commandment of Sabbath observance he did not fulfill. If there is a positive commandment, then afterward if he repents he has to do it again. He put on tefillin in the morning. A Chabad guy stopped him on the way and he put them on. Fine? Completely secular, atheist. Fine? An hour later thoughts of repentance attacked him. The Chabad guy convinced him and stayed with him and convinced him to repent. He has not fulfilled his obligation; he has to put on tefillin again. That’s my claim. By the way, I once mentioned this—there’s a very interesting exchange of letters between Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I once saw it on the internet, but afterward I couldn’t find it, someone had uploaded it in “Stop Here, Think.” But I couldn’t find it afterward. And Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner makes this claim to the Rebbe. Meaning, you’re doing meaningless acts—what value is there in his putting on tefillin? And the Rebbe is a Hasid, so the Rebbe explains: what do you mean? He’s a Jew, and a Jew’s observance of commandments—

[Speaker B] —and the act itself has value in and of

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] itself, and it awakens in him the point, because he really does believe deep down. The Litvak sees the atheist and says: this is an unbelieving person. And the Hasid says: an atheist, yes—but he’s a Jew, so inside him there surely is some point of faith. He may not be aware of it, but in fact there is some hidden faith here.

[Speaker C] The atheist who’s really confident in himself usually also didn’t put on tefillin at the stand. Never mind. No, no, there are such people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He wants to be nice, yes, he wants to be nice, it’s a nice experience to do what his father or grandfather did. Fine, never mind, I just threw out a concrete example; I’m not getting into analysis of specific people right now. So the claim basically—that’s the intuition from which I started—that an act of commandment has no value at all if it does not come from responding to a command.

[Speaker B] And the same with a transgression.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then my claim was that the same is true on the other side too: a transgression, if it is not a rebellion against the command, if you do not understand that there is a binding command and rebel against it, then it is not a transgression. Exactly the same as a commandment. I saw no conceptual difference. Okay? Fine. Now I turn to the sources. In the sources it apparently says the opposite. Meaning, the simple view is that it’s not like that. Someone who desecrates the Sabbath is a transgressor. He may be coerced, inadvertent, whatever, but it’s desecration of the Sabbath. Desecration of the Sabbath—if you did the act, then you desecrated the Sabbath. So in the end I brought that Maimonides, at the end of chapter 8 of Hilkhot Melakhim, where Maimonides writes there that regarding a resident alien, if a resident alien fulfills commandments because reason compels him and not because of the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai, then he is not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise. There’s a version “and not among their wise,” and there’s the more accepted version, “but among their wise.” Fine? Now what does it mean—not among the pious, but yes among the wise? The translation I give to that—and some will argue with me—but it seems to me that after this intuition, the way is open before you. I think the meaning is that this act can be a good act, especially in the seven Noahide commandments, where after all we are dealing with moral acts, and if you maintain a moral standard then it’s a good act—but there’s no commandment here. You’re not pious; the act has no religious significance. You are doing the right thing morally, you are doing the right act, but it cannot be treated as a commandment. Because a commandment is only for someone who acts in response to a command. And if he does it because reason led him there, then he does it because it seems to him that that’s the right thing to do. So therefore it is not a commandment. And I suggest such an interpretation of Maimonides. When Maimonides says, “not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise,” his intention is to say: this is a good and proper act, but there is no commandment here. And if there had been some commandment here and afterward he repented and so on, he should perform the commandment again because he did not fulfill his obligation, even though he performed it. But he performed it because reason led him there, like Ahad Ha’am who kept the Sabbath, but only because of rational conviction, because he wanted the Sabbath to preserve the Jewish people. Fine? Therefore he observed the Sabbath, he made kiddush. And then he repented in the morning. Fine? He repented, believes in the revelation at Sinai, understands that commandment observance is obligatory for him—make kiddush again on a Torah level, you did not fulfill your obligation last night. And that’s the claim. Okay? So I think that’s what Maimonides means.

Now of course, if you don’t have this intuition that says that an act of commandment not done in the context of command is not an act of commandment or transgression, then you can say that “not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise” means it’s not ideal, it’s just something more basic, something of value but not ideal, but still all within the religious framework. But it seems to me a very compelling interpretation of what Maimonides says. It’s a very reasonable interpretation. Now, you can’t detach that from intuition. Clearly this interpretation is very reasonable because my intuition is such that if you do things not because of responding to a command, not on account of responding to a command, then it’s not an act of commandment. But on the other hand, that’s how we interpret things. It’s legitimate to interpret them that way. I always bring my own conceptual reasoning with me when I interpret things, and it’s legitimate to bring my own reasoning in order to interpret things. Therefore I don’t see any problem with this. You see that it’s hard to separate this, what Ido asked earlier: if because of your intuition you interpret it this way, does that mean this isn’t the plain meaning? Why isn’t it the plain meaning? It isn’t the plain meaning because others have the opposite intuition, therefore to them it doesn’t look like the plain meaning. So therefore it’s not, it’s not…

[Speaker C] There are cases where…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are cases where yes, and then really…

[Speaker C] I mean, I asked why they came specifically to the Rabbi and said that he… and not to others who also…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it isn’t accepted to think this way. Intuition… not—

[Speaker C] Intuition,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but my intuition—

[Speaker C] —isn’t accepted by them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They thought they were going with the sources and I was going with intuition, exactly like we discussed earlier. And what you correctly said earlier is: not true. You too are going with intuition; you’re just not aware of it, you ignore it. And now let’s check whose intuition is right. And if I succeed in fitting my intuition to the sources and it is more correct, then as far as I’m concerned that is the interpretation of the sources.

[Speaker F] Because I think it’s right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and again I say: the fact is that after people are exposed to it, they can be convinced that it’s right. They just weren’t willing to take it into account, because to them it was obvious that it couldn’t be. Not that they really thought otherwise. Because in my opinion this really is a simple intuition. I think that a lot of people who hear it are in fact convinced, if they are willing to listen.

[Speaker B] Many halakhic decisors who disagree—and they don’t disagree using different sources, they use the same sources, and they reach a different conclusion. What does that come from?

[Speaker F] No,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then he says: so what does “more correct intuition” and “less correct intuition” mean? I’m saying that many times, when I take this Maimonides and it seems self-evident to me that Maimonides is basically seeing this as an act of commandment, because I don’t even imagine any other possibility, then automatically that’s how I read Maimonides, and automatically that also builds in me or strengthens in me the same intuitive view that this is indeed an act of commandment. I’m not taking into account the option that maybe it could be interpreted the opposite way. But when someone presents another alternative and shows you that it also fits the sources and presents a completely coherent picture, and overall this intuition seems to me a very reasonable intuition, then a person who is willing to listen will be convinced by that intuition.

Now I brought—I’ll say this in literally a minute, because it’s a very complicated topic and I won’t get into it here—division of sin-offerings. This is another example I brought there. What happens if you forget that sorting is forbidden on the Sabbath and you forget that trapping is forbidden on the Sabbath, and you sort and trap, then you are liable for two sin-offerings. Fine? But if you forget that sorting is forbidden on the Sabbath and you sort twice within the same lapse of awareness, then you are liable for one sin-offering, right? Now, I didn’t find anyone who gives an explanation for this. They bring sources or things like that, but what’s the explanation? What’s the idea behind it? In Afikei Yam, part 2, sections 5–6, he formulates something, and he too formulates it awkwardly, but at least he understands that there’s something here. He asks the question: why indeed is the number of sin-offerings equal to the number of lapses of awareness? That’s basically the rule there. The number of sin-offerings is equal to the number of lapses of awareness. Why? He raises a possibility there: perhaps when you sort twice, since it’s one lapse of awareness, the lapse of awareness is what gathers those two acts of sorting and creates one transgressive act out of them. That sounds a little artificial—why should that happen? Why does he say it? Because it is completely obvious to him that the transgression for which one brings the sin-offering is the sorting, the act of sorting. And I said: what are you talking about? The sin-offering is brought for the lapse of awareness, not for the act of sorting; you bring the sin-offering for the lapse of awareness. Do you understand that this is the simplest interpretation of the sugya? No one even considers it. After I said this before a group of rabbis from Beit Hillel—they invited me to speak about it—nobody agreed. Everyone agreed that this was the simplest interpretation of the sugya, but nobody agreed because it can’t possibly be true. I said to them: gentlemen, this is the simple interpretation of the sugya. Intuitively I see no problem with it. Think about it, take it seriously for a moment, it’s an option. They are not willing to listen to that option. And see how beautifully it explains all the divisions of the sin-offerings there—it’s a very complicated sugya, the whole division into sin-offerings.

Now what does this mean for me? I brought it there in the context of the article about causing someone to sin. Because what I basically said was that if something is hidden from a person—hidden also in the sense that he doesn’t believe in anything—then if you cause him to commit a practical transgression, he committed no transgression at all. The lapse of awareness already happened; it is already hidden from him. So what difference does it make if he commits ten thousand transgressions in that state of unawareness? It’s not just that he is exempt from sin-offerings—that’s how others understand it, an exemption from sin-offerings. No, there are no transgressions here! Since the sin-offering is not brought for a transgression; the sin-offering is brought for the lapse of awareness. So if so, what difference does it make? You cause him to sin—you step onto the road and the person stops and his brake lights go on. You know this issue of… It sounds absurd to me, this whole thing. The person is committing ten thousand transgressions in a second, of kindling, according to the number of RPMs; do the math, how many transgressions per second he’s committing. But turning on the lights when you press the pedal—you’ve now added one hundred thousand and one transgressions to him, so you violated “do not place a stumbling block”? Is it forbidden to step onto the road? On the face of it, intuitively, this seems absurd to me. But on the other hand, you added a transgression for him, didn’t you? There’s “do not place a stumbling block.” One who commits a hundred is not like one who commits a hundred and one. Intuitively it seems absurd to me. And this too is connected to the same issue—the lapse of awareness is one lapse of awareness. And therefore it doesn’t matter whether it’s ten thousand transgressions or a hundred thousand transgressions, since the problem is the lapse of awareness. If you can bring him out of his lapse of awareness, that’s the important thing you need to do. But once he is inside the lapse of awareness, all the transgressions he does have no significance at all.

[Speaker J] So a secular Jew brings one sin-offering for every hundred?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s the Talmud, that’s the Talmud.

[Speaker J] A dispute of Rav—no, the Talmud says one for sorting and one for grinding.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not about a secular Jew. The Talmud is talking about a child captured among the gentiles. It’s a dispute of Rav and Shmuel against Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish. Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish say that a child captured among the gentiles is completely exempt from sin-offerings, which is exactly what I said. But the Jewish law follows Rav and Shmuel, that he brings one sin-offering for each category of transgression. One sin-offering for each category of transgression for his whole life. Now of course he brings that only after he already understands that there is such a thing as a sin-offering. One sin-offering for each transgression? Right, but that one he brings for the lapse of awareness.

[Speaker C] No, why for each category of transgression though?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because each category of transgression is a lapse of awareness. He didn’t know that sorting is forbidden, he didn’t know—what, that’s all one big thing, no? No, each one of those is considered a separate lapse of awareness. That’s written in the Talmud. No, it somewhat contradicts…

[Speaker B] No, no, it’s a lapse of awareness.