Objectivity and Subjectivity in Halakha and in General – Lesson 12

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think it doesn’t work like that. It seems to me that love is a fundamental thing; it isn’t built on something else. If love were an expression of some desire to obtain something, then it wouldn’t be love. I spoke in the previous lecture about Don Yehuda Abravanel and also a Spanish philosopher named José Ortega y Gasset. Both of them wrote books about love, and both define the difference between love and desire. Desire is a want, right? It says about Jacob that he worked seven years for Rachel, and they were in his eyes like a few days because of his love for her. And then the question arises: usually it works the other way around. Every day that I’m waiting feels like eternity. But with Jacob, he loved Rachel, worked for her for seven years, and in his eyes it was nothing, one moment, like one moment. The opposite of what we’re usually familiar with. So the answer is that Jacob loved Rachel and not himself. Meaning, someone who loves something in order to attain it—that’s desire, not love.

[Speaker J] But there are desires that aren’t about getting something for myself, but really, say, wanting someone else to have it good, or wanting to give.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that desire—I don’t know if it adds anything, because that is love. That desire isn’t an explanation of love; that’s what’s called love.

[Speaker J] Okay, I was just curious, because there are different kinds of love, and I was wondering whether that even enters the discussion, but okay, fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not familiar with such a treatment, and it’s hard for me to see how you can define emotions. I can define, like you said, wanting someone to have it good—that’s already some kind of expression that maybe touches more on the practical side of that emotion. But to define the emotion in itself, not by its practical expressions, I don’t really know how one does that. I’m not sure it’s possible.

[Speaker B] But another question: why is this such a difficult discussion, this issue of how you can command emotions? I mean, there are all kinds of things we’re commanded about, all kinds of facts, and if I can’t change them, fine, then I’m coerced. So okay, then the novelty is apparently that the assumption is that I can influence it. Why is this such a burning issue?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s why I said this question bothers me less. The question that bothered me more is what value there is in it, not whether it can be done. Rather, why is it important to the Torah that I have an emotion? Now, this is connected to the spontaneity of emotion, because if the emotion is spontaneous, then apparently there’s no value in it. Value lies in what you decide upon, what you determine. But what matters to me is not the point that it can’t be done—that’s what people usually ask about commandments of emotion. What matters to me is the question: why is there value in it if it’s spontaneous? And the answer I gave here is that we’re not really talking about spontaneous emotions. We’re talking about emotions that I build intentionally, and therefore the Torah really does have an interest in them. So that’s exactly the answer I’m offering to this question. And then, basically, the point I want to make here is that the emotion I’m supposed to feel—say, love of the convert, or love of one’s fellow, or hatred of the wicked—all of these are emotions that in the end are supposed to be directed toward a person, not toward a trait and not toward a phenomenon and not toward an idea, but toward a person. But it’s true that this is not toward the person as such, but toward the person in light of this particular background. So there’s a certain combination here of these two things. It’s love of an idea and also love of a person, but it’s not… it’s the combination of the two. It’s love of the person because he is connected to that specific idea. And it culminates in the person. You can’t love the idea and thereby fulfill the commandment. Maybe I’ll give another example.

[Speaker J] That would answer the question of why it’s important. Why does the question even arise—why is it important? I mean, emotions—even actions are ultimately aimed at emotions. That is, if you have a certain commandment of kindness or something, in the end it’s so that the other person will feel good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s so that the other person will be well, not feel good. Feeling good is only the expression. The fact that he feels good is an expression of the fact that his condition is good. The goal is that his condition be good.

[Speaker J] But the condition is how he feels. I mean, I almost don’t care about any parameter except how he feels. If a person feels on top of the world but he’s homeless, why does it matter at all that he’s homeless?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll say again: it may be that in the meta-halakhic sense, or in what’s called the reason for the verse, the rationale of the commandment, maybe that’s true. In the halakhic definition, you’re supposed to care that his condition be good. The result will probably be that he’ll feel good. You’re supposed to care for the things that produce that feeling, not for the feeling itself. Okay. Now I want to bring another example that touches on hatred. I’m not going to get into all the sources here, I won’t share the sources because I see this has already taken me too much time. Let’s talk for a moment about hatred. There is a commandment—you can call it that—there is a commandment, or at least an idea, not necessarily a Torah-level commandment, to hate the wicked. It’s not so well known, not so publicized, but there is such a commandment. In the background, one should know that first of all there is a prohibition against hating a fellow Jew. Just as there is a commandment to love a fellow Jew, there is also a prohibition against hating him. Maimonides writes in the Laws of Character Traits: “Whoever hates one of Israel in his heart transgresses a prohibition, as it says: ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart.’” Now, in Maimonides himself the definition is not entirely clear; it could be that the prohibition is only to keep the hatred in your heart and not express it outwardly. There are such formulations in Maimonides. But the accepted view, at least among other halakhic decisors—and there are views in Maimonides too that this is the meaning—is that there is a prohibition against hating a fellow Jew; you may not hate him. On the other hand, the wicked may be hated—or may be, and perhaps it is even a commandment. The Talmud in tractate Pesachim 113b says: Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak said in the name of Rav: “It is permitted to hate him.” Meaning, if a person commits a transgression and I see him, then I’m allowed to hate him. What is the proof for this? As it is written: “If you see the donkey of your enemy crouching under its burden…” So it says that I see the donkey of someone I hate crouching under its burden—it needs help. “What is meant by ‘enemy’?” asks the Gemara. How did the situation arise that I hate him? If you say it means a gentile enemy, then maybe he’s a gentile whom I’m allowed to hate, because a Jew, after all, one may not hate—that’s the problem in the background. So maybe it’s a gentile; a gentile may be hated. But wasn’t it taught: “The enemy they spoke of is a Jewish enemy, not a gentile enemy”? No, we’re talking about a Jew, not a gentile. So then it’s obvious we’re dealing with a Jew—yet is it permitted to hate him? asks the Gemara. A fellow Jew is forbidden to hate, as it is written: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart.” Rather, the case is where there are witnesses that he committed a transgression. What, we’re talking about a case where there are two witnesses who saw that he committed a prohibition? We’re talking about someone persisting in a known prohibition; there are certain prohibitions in certain circumstances such that if a person does them, then you’re allowed to hate him. So the Gemara says no: if there are witnesses who saw him committing that transgression, everyone hates him. Then it’s not just me who hates him.

[Speaker K] There’s some noise here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Avi, there’s an Avi here who isn’t on mute. Okay.

[Speaker F] Shmuel, Shmuel, he joined twice, he needs to be muted on the second one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, Shmuel. Okay. Ah, if you join from two places then of course it gives you feedback—positive feedback—whoever joins from two directions.

[Speaker L] Anyway,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s good to get feedback from yourself, you always come out looking good, that’s fine. Okay, anyway, so the Gemara says it’s not talking about two witnesses who saw him, but rather one witness. And one witness—the rest of the world is forbidden to accept that testimony. If one witness says about another person that he did something bad, I’m not allowed to accept that because it’s only one witness. But that one person who saw the other do something bad—he saw him. It’s not a matter of being forbidden to accept it, so that person who saw is permitted to hate the other. That’s what the Gemara says. That’s the situation under discussion. Later in the Gemara it says—this is Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak in the name of Rav, that one is allowed to hate such a person. Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak said: “It is a commandment to hate him.” Not only is it permitted to hate such a person who transgresses, it is a commandment. And he derives it from the verse: “Fear of the Lord is hatred of evil, pride and arrogance…” In short, fearing God means hating evil. That is called fearing the Holy One, blessed be He. Now, that’s one passage, in tractate Pesachim, where it says there is a commandment, or at least permission, to hate a person who commits transgressions, a wicked person. By contrast, in the Talmud in Bava Metzia it says as follows: “Come and hear: one whom you love needs unloading, and one whom you hate needs loading.” I have two people with two animals. One person needs help loading his animal, the other needs help unloading his animal. The one who needs unloading is someone I love. The one who needs loading is someone I hate. The question is what should I do first? The Gemara says: “It is a commandment to help the one you hate, in order to subdue your inclination.” Meaning, I actually need to prioritize helping my enemy in order to subdue my inclination, to work on not hating him. Tosafot ask there in Pesachim, and also in Bava Metzia in both places, that there is a contradiction between the two passages. The Gemara in Pesachim says that there is a commandment, or at least permission, to hate a wicked person. The Gemara in Bava Metzia says: that same wicked person under discussion—“If you see the donkey of your enemy”—that is specifically a person I have to help in order to overcome my hatred of him. Meaning, I’m not supposed to hate him. How are these two passages reconciled? Tosafot say: “It can be said that since he hates him, his fellow also hates him.” True, I am permitted to hate him, but if I hate him, he will hate me back, as it is written: “As water reflects face to face, so the heart of a man to a man.” And this will lead to complete hatred, and then subduing the inclination becomes relevant. Meaning, Tosafot say: it is permitted to hate this wicked person, but one must be very careful that it not become complete hatred. And that’s why I need to help him load or unload, so that I don’t arrive at complete hatred. On this many later authorities wrote: what is this “complete hatred” that Tosafot speak of? They also bring Hasidic writings, the author of the Tanya, and other works of Jewish thought, all dealing with the question of what it means to have hatred but not complete hatred. Usually the explanations go in the direction—you know the Talmudic story of Beruriah, Rabbi Meir’s wife? He had wicked neighbors and so on. In short, Beruriah tells him: “Let sins cease, not sinners.” You should pray that the sins disappear from the world, not the sinners—not the people, but their sins. Even though, of course, the plain meaning of the verse—what does “sins” mean? It doesn’t mean the sins people do; it means sinners. “Let sins cease from the earth” means the sinful people should cease from the earth. In biblical language that’s what it means. But as a homiletic reading, that’s how she interpreted the verse: “Let sins cease, not sinners.” That’s how many later authorities explain this Tosafot I mentioned earlier in Pesachim. They basically say I need to hate the person’s deeds, not the person. But I say that’s utter nonsense, exactly as we saw earlier on the side of love. And now I say the same thing on the side of hatred. Hatred too has to be directed toward the person. There is no such thing as hating the wicked person as an idea. Just as I can’t love conversion or love Jewishness; I love a fellow Jew and I love a convert. I love them because of the conversion, because of the Jewishness, but in the final analysis the love is directed toward the person and not the idea embodied in him. Hatred is the same. To hate a wicked person means to hate the person, but to hate him because he is wicked. Not to hate the person and he just happens to be wicked—no; to hate the person because he is wicked. Therefore, the interpretation of the later authorities who say that you should hate the wickedness and not the wicked person seems implausible to me. That’s not right; you should hate the wicked person because of the wickedness in him. I mentioned—I think I mentioned this in the previous lecture too—the Rebbe of Vizhnitz; people always quote him as saying that it’s better to fail in baseless love than in baseless hatred. And I always add to that that it’s better not to fail in either one. So here too I say the same thing. In the end there is a commandment to hate the wicked person; you can’t remove this from its plain meaning. You have to hate that person, but hate him because he is wicked. And now a subtle point: so what is this incomplete hatred that Tosafot are talking about? Now look carefully, and this has a logical formalism too that I won’t be able to get into now—it also solves various paradoxes. If anyone knows, there’s the Third Man Paradox in Aristotelian philosophy; Aristotle raised this paradox against Plato. The Third Man. And in volume eleven of the series Talmudic Logic we deal with this. And when you formalize what I’m about to say, it solves that paradox. So I’ll do it without the formalism. What I’m saying is this: basically there’s an intermediate definition here. You’re not supposed to hate the person insofar as he is a person, and you’re also not supposed to hate the idea. You’re supposed to hate the person because of the idea. The same with love: you’re supposed to love the person because of the idea. Meaning, all the commandments of emotion are commandments in which the emotion is supposed to be directed toward a person, not toward a trait or some movement. But it’s not detached from the background, or from what this person did, or his character, or the act he performed—convert, fellow Jew, or wicked person. And each one according to his choices; being a fellow Jew isn’t connected to his choices and is a somewhat separate matter. But let’s speak for a moment about love of the convert and hatred of the wicked. These are because of choices a person made. So I hate the person because of the choices he made; obviously if he chooses differently, changes his choices, then my attitude of course should be different. I said that all the loves and hatreds in the commandments are loves and hatreds that are dependent on something. If that thing changes, it is supposed to change. So basically there is here love or hatred of a person because of a certain cause, some choice he made. Now look: this is what Tosafot call incomplete hatred, in my view. Incomplete hatred in Tosafot means the following. Suppose there is a person who is a fellow Jew but a criminal, a truly wicked man. What am I supposed to feel toward him? It seems to me that what Tosafot mean is that I’m supposed to feel toward him what they call incomplete hatred. What they call incomplete hatred means love and hatred together. On the face of it, that’s contradictory, but it isn’t. If I love and hate the person as he is in himself, impossible. Either I love him or I hate him. But if I love him because he is a convert and hate him because he does wicked deeds, there is no problem at all. Those two things can dwell together. Those two things can dwell together. It takes emotional work to be able to contain such a complex emotion, but such an emotion is not contradictory. Meaning, it is well defined and one can maintain that state. One can fulfill both of these commandments. So if there is a convert who converted and now behaves in a wicked way, I am supposed to love him for being a convert and hate him for being wicked. And both of those things can exist, and I think that’s what Tosafot mean when they say that the hatred is not complete hatred. And this can exist only if indeed the love of the person is a love that arises from some specific background. Then I say: this person has two traits. Because of trait A I love him, because of trait B I hate him. And both of those things I can feel toward him simultaneously. It’s not contradictory. If you remember, in one of the previous lectures I spoke about contradictions and said there are oppositions between properties, not between objects. Salt is not the opposite of sugar, but salty is the opposite of sweet. So if I say that in a dish there is both salt and sugar, have I said something contradictory? Not at all. There’s no problem in a dish containing both salt and sugar. But if I said the dish is both salty and sweet—fully salty and fully sweet, let’s say for the sake of discussion—then that’s a contradiction. Either the dish is salty or it’s sweet. Opposing properties can’t live together. But objects are not related by opposition. There is no opposition between salt and sugar as objects; there is opposition between properties. Salt and sugar are objects with opposing properties; they are not opposing objects. In a similar way I want to say the same thing here. If I say that I love a person and hate him at the same time, at first glance that’s a contradiction. Either you love him or you hate him. Those are opposite emotions. But if you say, I love him because of the conversion in him and I hate him because of the wickedness in him, I think that’s not contradictory. It can exist. It’s like saying a dish contains both salt and sugar. In this person there is both conversion and wickedness. Because of the conversion I love him, and because of the wickedness I hate him. I think such a situation—again, it’s not simple emotional work to live in such a mental state—but it’s possible. It is not logically contradictory. You can fulfill both of these commandments at once: to love him because he is a convert and to hate him because he is wicked. This is one of the implications, for example, of the model I’m proposing here for commandments of emotion: that you can feel mixed emotions in the full sense of the term, not metaphorically. Both love and hatred simultaneously. Okay? Now I want perhaps to examine one aspect of this. There is a formalism to it; whoever wants can see it in the book there, I won’t get into it here. But now I want to do some sharing of a certain halakhah in Maimonides. This is what we saw earlier, but I’ll erase that. Look at—wait, no, I don’t want that, I’ll leave it in the background. Let’s open Maimonides, Laws of Repentance. Maimonides, Laws of Repentance, chapter 10. I’m reading halakhah 1. Actually, no, I’ll start with halakhah 3. Halakhah 3—I’m marking it. “And what is the proper love? It is that one should love God with a very great and exceeding love, intense beyond measure, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is constantly obsessed with it, like one lovesick whose mind is never free from love of that woman.” Yes, lovesick, like we say in our language today. “And he is constantly preoccupied with her, whether sitting or rising, even when eating and drinking,” and so on. “More than this should the love of God be in the hearts of those who love Him, always obsessed with it, as He commanded us, with all your heart and with all your soul. And this is what Solomon said by way of metaphor: for I am sick with love. And the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” At first glance, when you see this Maimonides, you can get the impression that the commandment of love he is speaking about is a very emotional commandment of love, right? Because one has to love Him the way one loves a woman. Meaning, you have a passionate romance with some woman, you’re constantly thinking only about that woman, you never remove her from your heart—so too should be your relation to the Holy One, blessed be He. But look what happens in halakhot 1 and 2. Notice, these are literally the two halakhot right before this one, not somewhere else. I’ll read halakhah 1. “A person should not say: I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I may receive all the blessings written in it, or so that I may merit the life of the world to come… Nor should he say: I will refrain from the transgressions against which the Torah warned us so that I may be saved from the curses written in the Torah or so that I not be cut off from the life of the world to come.” In short, one should not say that I do the commandments in order to receive reward and refrain from transgressions in order to avoid punishment. I continue reading: “It is not fitting to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one serves God in this way only among the ignorant, women, and children”—and, excuse me, these are women as conceived in former times—“whom one trains to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” What is Maimonides saying? Someone who serves the Holy One, blessed be He, in order to get reward and avoid punishment—that is service out of fear, and it is not fitting to serve that way. So how should one serve? One should serve God out of love. What is love? So what is the alternative? Let’s read the next halakhah, halakhah 2. “One who serves out of love”—I’m marking it—“engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit good, but does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good comes because of it. This level is a very great level, and not every sage merits it. It is the level of our father Abraham, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called ‘My beloved,’ as in ‘Abraham My beloved,’ because he served only out of love. And this is the level which the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it says: ‘And you shall love the Lord your God’; and when a person loves God with the proper love, he will immediately do all the commandments out of love.” Meaning, once I reach the level of love of God, then the commandments too, when I fulfill them, I will fulfill them out of love. Fine. So what Maimonides says here is that love of God means what? Look, what is the definition? I’m marking the line. “But does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good comes because of it.” True, you’ll receive reward if you do commandments, but love means doing the truth because it is truth—not for the reward and not to avoid punishment. Now tell me how this definition fits with what we read in halakhah 3. Maimonides defined love as doing the truth because it is truth, right? What happens in halakhah 3? Remember again, read what we read earlier: like the love of a woman, being constantly obsessed with her, a passionate romance, the most emotional thing I can imagine. How does that connect to doing the truth because it is truth? The coldest, most detached thing I can imagine. It is truth and therefore I do it, that’s all. Not spontaneous, not emotional outbursts, not turbulent emotional feelings accompanying me all day. How can two such definitions live in peace, one halakhah after the other? Halakhah 3 after halakhah 2. A frontal contradiction. It seems to me that what Maimonides intends to say—this is always the problem with metaphors; one has to be careful with metaphors. You should take a metaphor only as far as it is relevant and not exaggerate it. When Maimonides compares love of God with love of a woman, I think he does not mean that the love toward the Holy One, blessed be He, should be emotional in the way we feel love toward a woman. Rather, he means it should be intensive and constant like love of a woman. Read the halakhah carefully now and you’ll see that’s what he writes. “What is the proper love? That one should love God with a very great, exceeding, intense love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God and he is constantly obsessed with it, like lovesick people whose minds are never free from love of that woman,” in whom they are constantly preoccupied. Now, in her case that is an emotional phenomenon, and it accompanies you constantly because of the emotional storm. But with the Holy One, blessed be He, after all in the previous halakhah he said that love of God is doing the truth because it is truth—an intellectual matter, not an emotional one. But it has to accompany you in an intensive, continuous, constant way, like emotional love of a woman. It’s not a comparison saying it has to be emotional. Love of a woman is not a commandment; love of a woman is a fact. A person feels love toward a woman—that’s a fact. It’s not, of course, a shameful fact, full of many romances and romantic stories, but fine—it’s not something shameful, but it’s not a commandment. It’s part of our lives; that’s how we’re built. Love of God is a commandment. And as a commandment it is basically something that is not supposed to be this kind of emotion that bursts out of me.

[Speaker I] It’s something like—why can’t you say that, I mean, when I read this Maimonides, I don’t see any problem at all between the truth and the… I mean, you understand that truth, its place is rational in the sense that it isn’t purely emotional. I think love of a woman too, if we talk about love of a woman, in its place is truth in exactly the same way. That is, love of God is precisely the point that we are supposed to use all the elements of the psyche, otherwise we’ll become computers; we’re human beings.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question of computers is a different question, but first of all, what does Maimonides say? After that we can think what I think about it. Maimonides says: do the truth because it is truth.

[Speaker I] But certainly that emerges from truth as it is, but truth as it is—its expression is an expression like love of a woman.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but why? He doesn’t say that.

[Speaker I] He says: how will you love?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You do the truth because it is truth. That is called love. Then afterward he says, what does that mean?

[Speaker I] The truth as… you don’t begin from a spontaneous emotion that just arises and makes you want to love God, because we see that everyone who is spontaneous isn’t always in the service of God. Rather the meaning is: you arrive from truth, and through truth you also channel the emotion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to what you’re saying, Maimonides should have defined love the way we defined it earlier: that you should deepen your involvement in truth in order eventually to arrive at a feeling of love. But Maimonides doesn’t write that. Maimonides defines love; he doesn’t define how one arrives at love. He defines love as doing the truth because it is truth. That is called love. It’s not the means that will create love in me. That is love itself. Only in halakhah 3 does he suddenly make an analogy to the love of a woman, and there my claim is that it’s an analogy of intensity, not of emotionality.

[Speaker I] But simply speaking, love by definition is an emotion and not intellect.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so on this the Ramchal already speaks, among others, that love of God has at least such a definition: intellectual love of God. It is an intellectual love. You love truth. It’s not the same thing as loving a person or loving a woman. It’s something entirely different, something much less emotional. Maybe you can also relate to it as some subtler kind of emotion. But it’s something much more connected to cognition than to feelings, than to emotion. Fine, again, it’s not one or zero, it’s not black and white, but it’s something much more refined and much less emotional. In what sense are they both loves? Fine. Now I’ll just finish because we’ve already reached the end. I just want to say that actually, with regard to the Holy One, blessed be He, the definitions I proposed earlier are indeed a bit problematic. Because in the end, if I say that love and hatred are ultimately supposed to be directed toward the person—because I love him because he is a convert, or I hate him because he is wicked—but in the end I’m directed toward the person. Now with regard to the Holy One, blessed be He, all I know of Him is only what He does. I have no way of creating some direct, unmediated relationship with Him Himself. Therefore it may be—I don’t know, it’s a question, I’m not sure about this—but it may be that there really there is no way to end with reference to Him Himself. Really I have to cling somehow to His actions or to the truth in Him, but not to Him Himself, because as for Him Himself, I don’t see exactly how I create the… and I don’t know how I manage to reach this emotional dimension with regard to the Holy One, blessed be He. It always seems artificial to me. Even people who do such a thing—it feels to me like a kind of autosuggestion, not something real. Because with regard to the Holy One, blessed be He, you can’t have some kind of interaction with Him like interaction with a friend or with a woman or with a person you meet standing before you. And therefore with Him it seems to me even much more appropriate to arrive almost at the Platonic definition itself. Meaning, to love His qualities, His conduct here, and really not reach all the way to relating to Him Himself—contrary to what I said in the earlier contexts. But again, here I’m saying this is not… I’m not completely sure about this. I am sure that it can’t be with the same intensity. In the end there probably is some connection to the object standing behind these behaviors and these qualities. But it’s so far from me that it’s very hard to see how in the end it refers to the object itself detached from its appearances or its qualities. So therefore, although I said all this with respect to people, when I come to love of God it already comes very close—even if it doesn’t fully coincide—it comes very close to those definitions that I rejected earlier, the definition of loving the idea and not loving the object that bears the idea. Okay, here it’s already a very subtle matter; I’m not sure how far one can really approach the object itself. Okay, I think this is where we stop. So if nothing changes, then we are supposed to see each other next week in the same way. Everyone is invited. If there are other people who want to join, then gladly.

[Speaker I] I wanted to ask—I don’t know, it somehow feels related—Rabbi, can you hear? Yes, yes. Suppose, without getting into the whole issue, but say regarding the subject of wiping out Amalek. I always asked myself—and again, without getting into the whole question of when and what exactly the parameters of this commandment are—but assuming there is such a commandment, where is the emotion there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think it’s a commandment about emotion; there is a commandment to wipe out Amalek.

[Speaker I] I mean, then you can approach it—this complexity you’re talking about feels relevant here too. On the one hand, even if you have to do it, the question is whether you do it—you know, say you kill, and together with that you also have compassion as a human being and feel pity, are sad about what you’re doing, while still doing it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think—let’s set Amalek aside for a moment, let’s look at just an ordinary wicked person. An Amalekite baby isn’t even wicked. But let’s talk about adult Amalekites. So he’s wicked, let’s say for the sake of discussion, okay, let’s assume he’s wicked.

[Speaker I] No, if you say he’s wicked that makes it a little easier. I actually want to create the difficulty. You feel he’s a human being,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he’s not wicked, I don’t think I’m supposed to hate him; I’m supposed to eliminate him, not hate him.

[Speaker I] So there’s some complexity here. On the one hand you eliminate him, on the other hand you do it with compassion; you eliminate him apparently

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because of what he will become, or because his child will become some wicked Amalekite even if he himself happens not to be wicked, I don’t know, we’d have to understand why the Torah says they have to be eliminated. But what I’m saying is: the Torah does not say they have to be hated. The Torah says one has to hate the wicked. So if there is an Amalekite who is wicked, then of course I’m supposed to hate him—but not because he’s Amalekite, but because he’s wicked. The commandment to wipe him out is a different commandment. It is because of the consequences expected to come from Amalekites; apparently it comes to prevent certain consequences anticipated from those Amalekites.

[Speaker I] I understand. I’m just saying there’s something complex here. You go and eliminate him, and on the other hand you feel compassion for him as a human being.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on the contrary, I think that’s how it should be. Even if you execute a Sabbath desecrator—when you kill him, are you supposed to kill him like a mosquito? No. You’re supposed to understand that you’re killing a human being, and on the contrary, a human being who may even have positive sides worthy of appreciation and love, and still, in the end, the Torah says he is liable to death—again, if all the conditions are met. So that’s again the same complex emotion I spoke about regarding the wicked. It’s true here too: one has to be able to live this complexity of two conflicting emotions simultaneously. Okay?

[Speaker G] In connection with Maimonides’ words, regarding Maimonides’ words, what Rabbi Otniel sent—yes, yes, please.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, whoever wants to stay is welcome; whoever doesn’t want to, fine, we’re talking, I’m still here. Everything is okay.

[Speaker G] Excellent. Regarding Maimonides’ words in… in halakhah 3, where the Rabbi wanted to explain all of Maimonides there as referring only to the intensity, perhaps, of the connection—that fits better in the second part, “and he is constantly obsessed with it,” but in the first part, where he describes it as “a very great and intense love” and “his soul cleaves to the love of God,” it sounds a bit like cleaving—but all that is in the intellect.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Greater love in the intellect, strong cleaving in truth. That’s why I said I don’t deny that there is some emotional dimension here. When a person loves truth there is some emotional dimension here, but it is a much more subtle emotional dimension.

[Speaker G] What?

[Speaker M] I understand. Is it really possible to say in relation to this that there’s an emotional dimension in the sense that there’s an emotional symptom of this thing? Meaning, I engage in wisdom because it is wisdom, but I feel a positive emotion, I feel some excitement while engaging in wisdom. Do I engage in it coldly and that’s all, or does my body express enthusiasm?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Listen, that’s a personal question, everyone according to how he feels. But I once wrote a column on my site where I explained that people who think Briskers have no experiences are making a bitter mistake. Briskers have extraordinary experiences from a marvelous conceptual distinction in learning. They manage to create—really, I mean this genuinely, I feel this way too, and I’m also a Brisker, at least in that sense—that when you see something… look, a mathematician, when a mathematician sees a mathematical aesthetic structure, he experiences an aesthetic experience the way a person experiences one in front of a work of art. Meaning, there is an experiential dimension here. Cleaving to truth is not as cold as people describe it. It’s not an emotion like what you feel toward a woman or toward a wicked person or things you encounter, but there is an emotional dimension here, definitely yes.

[Speaker M] And could it be that this is, among other things, what Maimonides meant, besides the constancy and the comparison to love?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely, absolutely, definitely, as I said. There is an emotional dimension here in Maimonides too, but it’s not the emotional storm you see with regard to a woman. This subtler, higher emotional dimension has to accompany you constantly as though it were emotionally stormy.

[Speaker I] Thank you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay? Okay, so that’s it. Sabbath peace. Thank you very much, Rabbi. Yes, yes, yes.

[Speaker I] I wanted, unrelated to this lecture specifically—if the Rabbi has time now—about the issue of individual providence?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I don’t know if everyone wants to hear, but yes, fine, please, say what you want to say.

[Speaker I] I don’t know who’s still here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whoever wants, okay.

[Speaker I] What… we once spoke about this on some occasion, about this issue that if I understood correctly, you say that in practice today prayer doesn’t—in short, it has no effect.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t rule it out categorically, but generally it doesn’t seem that it does.

[Speaker I] Right, so how does that fit nevertheless with the foundations of faith?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which foundations of faith?

[Speaker I] Of providence, and of divine response to what happens.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think there are such foundations. So what is that? I don’t know.

[Speaker I] It’s one of the foundations of Torah and faith.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. Meaning, in the Torah itself, and maybe also in earlier periods, in the biblical period, there is divine involvement that prophets testified to. Prophets said that God was involved and acted and did this and did that. My claim is that apparently, at least today empirically… again?

[Speaker I] That is exactly the difficulty—I agree, but leave aside the Torah and the prophets for now. Isn’t it unequivocal throughout the Jewish tradition, in Maimonides, Nachmanides, and so on?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First, Maimonides himself has several expressions saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene at all. Maimonides says that miracles are embedded in creation from the beginning. Beyond that—even if Maimonides does say it—then I disagree, what can I do?

[Speaker I] No, fine, I’m trying to understand where he knows it from.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where does Maimonides know it from? What? Where does Maimonides know it from? Does he have a tradition about this from Sinai? If he had a tradition about this from Sinai, I would accept it. What? Tradition—tradition is a very general word. Tradition, you know, the Netziv in Kadmat Ha-Emek, in the introduction to Ha-Emek She’elah, distinguishes there between two expressions that appear in the Gemara: “it was learned by tradition” and “this is the law.” Rashi, everywhere it says “it was learned by tradition,” says “a law given to Moses at Sinai.”

[Speaker N] But

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Netziv argues that Maimonides disagrees with him. When it says “this is the law,” that means a law given to Moses at Sinai. When it says “it was learned by tradition,” that means tradition. What does tradition mean as distinct from a law given to Moses at Sinai? For example, there is a law that the sages derived through some exposition, and it was passed down to us through the generations, and we no longer remember the exposition from which it came. But this is not a law that came from Sinai; it is a law that was developed over the generations and we lost its source. We don’t know. That too is tradition.

[Speaker I] Now,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the tradition is of the second type, if I knew from what exposition it came, maybe I could argue and say that that exposition is incorrect. There are many things passed down to us by tradition whose source is not Sinai. Their source is the reasoning of one sage or another, or from the sages’ observation of reality, and naturally it gets transmitted as tradition, because a sage teaches his student and that’s how it continues onward. But I’m not sure I have to be bound by every such thing. He thinks this way and I think otherwise. If it came down from Sinai, I assume that when the Holy One, blessed be He, says something, He knows what He is saying; I don’t argue with the Holy One, blessed be He. But the reasoning of sages—it may be that they erred, it may be that they said things that were true for their time but not true for ours, and therefore I’m not sure I have to agree with every such thing.

[Speaker I] Yes, but something here feels to me as though at some point, if we don’t have the infrastructure of the foundations—the foundations—like something that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) saw as the very cornerstones of Torah, then I don’t know… I don’t know what their source is, for that matter, but I think that certainly this is the message of the Torah: that God watches over, that God acts in the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I disagree. I disagree. The message of the Torah, the message of the Torah is that God created the world and that one must keep commandments.

[Speaker I] Creation of the world itself doesn’t even appear in the Thirteen Principles, right? At least not specifically as creation of the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The thirteen principles are Maimonides’. You asked what the message of the Torah is.

[Speaker I] Rashi on the Torah

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] quotes Rabbi Yitzhak, right? Rabbi Yitzhak asks why the Torah didn’t begin with “This month shall be for you the first of the months”; why begin with Genesis?

[Speaker I] So Leibowitz says that you see from there that what matters is the practical commandments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I thought about that. I didn’t remember Leibowitz saying it, because I write that all the time. I thought it was my own little insight. It’s possible I saw it

[Speaker I] by Leibowitz; maybe by now I already think like Leibowitz. Just kidding. But what does that mean? Again, at the very least, as you often say, the Torah itself is very hard for us to deal with because everyone brings an interpretation to the Torah. But I think both of us can agree, or all of us, that certainly all the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—I don’t even know whom to start with and whom to leave out—certainly saw the cornerstone of the Torah in providence, in reward and punishment, in the idea that things aren’t random but have a cause.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And how do they know that? If it didn’t come from Sinai, then it’s their own reasoning. And their reasoning—you can discuss whether they’re right or not. Maybe, by the way, they were right for their time. For my time, from what I see around me, it doesn’t look that way. You can’t deny what is evident, right? I like quoting that Ran in Sukkah. The Ran talks about when its shade exceeds its sunlight, and he says, “You can’t deny what is evident.”

[Speaker I] Wait, wait, wait, let’s separate things. Denying what is evident is at a specific point, and it’s also very, very troubling that we don’t manage to see the correlation, right? That’s what’s evident—which again, even about that, on one hand that’s how we feel, but on the other hand a great many people do feel that there is some kind of correlation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can explain to you exactly their feelings and all the proofs

[Speaker I] they bring, contrary to every statistical law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree, I

[Speaker I] am perplexed by this too, but still it’s hard for me to call it completely evident, because in my opinion a huge number of people really do see a connection between—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] they see some kind of connection.

[Speaker I] They simply

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] were educated that way, exactly as you’re saying, because it’s a principle of faith and we grew up on it, and so they also tell us—after all, why do all the spiritual supervisors…

[Speaker I] That’s why I’m trying to sketch the boundaries of the discussion. Let’s assume for now that it really isn’t evident. But at least, do you agree that certainly, certainly, throughout the medieval authorities (Rishonim), they definitely saw this as a central, essential subject in the Torah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know about all the medieval authorities (Rishonim), but many of them, yes.

[Speaker I] I mean, at least everyone well known—Maimonides, Saadia Gaon, the Kuzari…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who write that there isn’t. There is no providence—I even bring them in the book. True, they’re not among the central ones, but they exist.

[Speaker I] Who?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Gersonides? There are commentators on Guide for the Perplexed, various commentators on Guide for the Perplexed, the Tibbonides, people like that. There’s an article by Shmuel Ariel—I even give a link there—he brings sources from the Sages too, that even when they speak about providence, the question is also in what dosage. Because what happens today is that you ask a person, and he says everything is from Allah, everything is from the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker I] Wait—once we start talking about dosage, that’s already entering into the topic itself. But try…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, but it’s an important point, because I also can’t tell you there is no involvement at all. If I reached the conclusion that there is no involvement at all, then I wouldn’t be able to say several blessings in the Amidah. Right? Now if I really reached that conclusion, then I wouldn’t say them, because there’s no point; it’s just pointless chirping.

[Speaker N] But

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I haven’t reached that conclusion, because it could be that here and there the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved—I can’t rule that out—so in the end it is a question of dosage. My claim, ultimately, is that you can’t, and it’s not right, to live with the sense that the Holy One, blessed be He, is constantly acting all around you. That whenever someone dies—even someone who says, “I don’t understand”—he says, “I don’t understand, but obviously the Holy One, blessed be He, did it; I just don’t understand.” And I claim: not true. Who says the Holy One, blessed be He, did it at all? The assumption is basically that first of all He does everything, only there are things that don’t work for us and we don’t always understand, so we have our explanations. But first of all it’s obvious that He did everything—that’s obvious. The only question is how to deal with the fact that we don’t understand. And I say: not true, He did not do everything.

[Speaker I] That’s why I say… on that I say, look—again, this gets into a general discussion of what Judaism is, what still gets transmitted as tradition. Meaning, if we do accept Torah from Sinai. What?

[Speaker L] Ezra, turn off your microphone, you’re creating a huge amount of background noise—you didn’t see my messages. Me? Ezra is making a huge amount of background noise, turn off your microphone.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you know it’s Ezra?

[Speaker L] Because he’s showing up in the box with a green frame—anyone whose microphone is making noise does. So right now I have a green frame, and most of the time the Rabbi has a green frame, and Ezra far too often has a strong green frame.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. But I don’t know, I think he’s not responding, I think he’s no longer here or something.

[Speaker E] I’m here, and I turned down the speaker.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, good.

[Speaker E] Only now it stopped being uninteresting and became fascinating.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. In any case, to sum up, what I want to argue is that for me what is binding is the word of God. I’m not bound to any people. In Jewish law there are concepts of authority—only in Jewish law. Not in worldview, not in ethics, and not in one’s understanding of reality. In Jewish law, yes. Why? Because it says, “Do not turn aside from all that they instruct you.” So there is a Sanhedrin, and the Talmud is accepted as having a status like the Sanhedrin, so the Talmud also has that kind of status, and that’s it. And what does that mean? That the Talmud never erred? Obviously not. The Talmud can err even in Jewish law.

[Speaker I] There’s also… I just want to say to the Rabbi, if the Rabbi could move back a bit because we can’t really see you. Yes, good. I’m saying—even about this, I think there can’t be a situation where we keep Jewish law while the principles for whose sake Jewish law was established—if we’re not there, then for practical purposes I find it hard to accept the obligation to observe Jewish law in the way one accepts law. Now, law too—you can discuss in political science what obligates me in it. But practically, law has force. And when I come to Jewish law, I think I don’t come from some kind of halakhic violence, but from the understanding that it comes to serve the internal principles of the goals it fulfills. Now if on that level we don’t agree what those are, don’t think so and don’t agree, then I think its force too—beyond just saying God commanded them and therefore we do them—but it’s very hard to accept that if we don’t agree…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll tell you how I see it. I disagree. First, the obligation to Jewish law is like the obligation to law. When the Knesset legislates something, I’m obligated by it not because it’s always right—it usually makes mistakes—but it’s the law and therefore I’m obligated. Now of course behind this notion of the supremacy of law there is also a substantive conception. After all, this isn’t just a divine decree or obligation to law. It’s clear to me that the fact that I’m obligated to law even though it can be wrong—that itself is something right, because there has to be some framework according to which we live. If everyone does whatever seems right in his own eyes, you can’t run a society. So behind these things sits a conception that there is logic in obeying—not because every law the Knesset enacted is right, but because there is an assumption that in a more general sense it’s more correct to obey this than not obey it and let everyone have his own Torah.

[Speaker I] But the moment the gap opens up—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me explain. Now regarding Jewish law, I say the same thing. In principle, Jewish law has ideas behind it. The laws didn’t just come for no reason. Obviously the laws come to implement ideas. But first, we do not derive law from the reasons for the verse. And the Sages too, when they established the laws, established as Jewish law that we do not derive law from the reasons for the verse. So they didn’t establish them based on dependence on the reasons of these laws, but on interpretive considerations of one kind or another. And we’ve already discussed more than once that there is some dimension of reason and it’s not all-or-nothing—either there is reason or there isn’t. There are certain doses of reason that they did use. But in the end, my commitment to the Sages is not because they were right in the reasons, but as with law, because I think there is importance to Jewish law being conducted within some agreed framework; otherwise everything falls apart. Not because everything is correct. So I say: obviously in the background there is some trust that the Sages said sensible things, true things—not that I just throw a die and do what the die says. I’m only saying that I’m not committed to the claim that everything they said is true.

[Speaker I] But even if I accept that—and there are people who don’t even accept that—but even if I do, surely the wider the gap becomes—for example, even with law, when you think the regime has really become Nazi, say, then you say their laws no longer obligate me in any sense. I’m saying in this context too, if we’re not even in the arena of their belief system at all, fine, fine—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I won’t obey them.

[Speaker I] So that’s why I say that the moment you open such a huge gap, when you say that their whole belief system is simply not relevant to you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s completely exaggerated. What you’re saying—”their whole belief system”—that’s totally esoteric. Providence determines, doesn’t determine, even a comma in Jewish law. There are a few laws in the Amidah that are rabbinic, as we all remember, and what else depends on providence? What part of Jewish law depends on your views of providence? Nothing. So I say, right—if I become convinced that a very large part of Jewish law is based on beliefs I don’t agree with, then fine, it may be that I won’t listen to the Sages. That’s Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift. When a theory faces too many facts it can’t account for, you replace the theory. But if there are a few facts it doesn’t fit, we stay with the same theory and remain in need of further analysis on those few facts. And that’s what happens with regard to the Sages, in my view. By the way, the Ran in the Derashot brings a question there about a rebellious elder. A rebellious elder has to obey, has to listen to the voice of the Sanhedrin. Now a rebellious elder is someone qualified to issue rulings, and he may reach the conclusion that the Sanhedrin are talking nonsense, and still you obligate him to obey them. The Ran asks: at least according to the conception that sins dull the soul, that they have some kind of effect on us, how can it be that we obligate the rebellious elder to obey the Sanhedrin when he knows that what he is doing is wrong? And we obligate him to dull his soul and damage things, because these actions lead to problematic consequences, and still you require him to do it? And what the Ran answers is a wonderful answer—what I told you earlier. He says that not obeying the Sanhedrin also dulls the soul. Or translated into what I said before: he’s basically saying there is importance in preserving the framework even where it isn’t right. But obviously if the dosage of injustice gets to—I don’t know—fifty percent, then maybe we will break the framework. And by the way, what happened in the revolt against Rabban Gamliel in Yavneh? They removed the head of the Sanhedrin. Where’s “do not turn aside”? They removed the head of the Sanhedrin because they felt the measure was full. There are certain situations—crisis situations—where “do not turn aside” gets put to the side, they replace the Sanhedrin, and then restore “do not turn aside.” Why? Because there it had become too cardinal, the break was too great. The sense of the Sages there was that if we continue obeying Rabban Gamliel, the whole enterprise will collapse.

[Speaker I] The whole analysis you’re giving sounds completely right to me. The only thing that still doesn’t fit for me is that you see this as almost esoteric—something everyone sees as the cornerstones of the Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again—they see it as the cornerstones of the Torah.

[Speaker I] You’re saying this is something that doesn’t fit for me by half a percent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. But I’ll explain again.

[Speaker I] This issue of

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] providence—listen, Moshe—that’s not true. The fact that they see it as the cornerstones of the Torah is one question. The question how much of Jewish law depends on it is another question. When I speak about the cornerstones of the Torah—the Torah’s outlook interests my grandmother. What interests me is what the correct outlook is. Not the Torah’s outlook, and not Judaism’s outlook, or Christianity’s outlook. For me, what’s true is true, and what isn’t true isn’t true. Jewish law is what matters for our purposes, because that’s the law. And when there is a break that touches broad percentages of Jewish law, then indeed we will be in a time of crisis. What people see as the cornerstones of the Torah in matters of outlook—that’s their consideration; let them decide what counts as the cornerstones of the Torah and what doesn’t. In my view, I think not, and it’s worth nothing at all, because for me the Jewish framework is Jewish law. Outlook doesn’t interest me at all. Yes, the second book in the trilogy is devoted to the thesis that there is no such thing as Jewish thought. I don’t recognize that concept at all. What is Jewish thought? There is true thought and false thought. And if a non-Jew says the true thought, then I will accept it. And if a Jew, however wise, says false thought, then I won’t accept it. And by the way, this idea comes from Maimonides and Gersonides.

[Speaker I] Ninety-four in Pesachim, the end of 94.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? There? “The sphere stands still and the constellations revolve”—Maimonides writes in Guide for the Perplexed, and his son writes in an essay there, that this comes to teach that the sages of Israel retracted and admitted that the sages of the nations were right—whether the sphere stands still and the constellations revolve or the opposite. And Maimonides and his son Rabbi Abraham say: this teaches you to accept the truth from whoever says it. If the sages of the nations are right, then they’re right. That’s all. And this is all in the realm of Jewish thought—or is it astronomy there? In the realm of Jewish law it’s something else. Because in the realm of Jewish law, not because the sages of Israel are always right, but because that’s the law. Like the Knesset. In the end, I accept it. There, there is authority. And if there is a crisis that threatens a considerable part of Jewish law—that’s a hard question.

[Speaker I] But don’t you think that in the end Jewish law—or I would say, I don’t know if Jewish law, I think so—but that the whole role of Jewish law is ultimately to bring a person to some particular state? The role of Jewish law isn’t that we should functionally observe a lot of details; it’s to bring us to certain inner things. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What role is that?

[Speaker I] Because in the end what matters is what the person grasps about the world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? To bring us to belief in providence?

[Speaker I] To the correct beliefs.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Go ahead, list for me—go on—

[Speaker I] list

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] for me which laws are meant to bring us to belief in providence.

[Speaker I] Surely all the laws of prayer and the commandments—tefillin.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s rabbinic—we already settled that. A marginal rabbinic part. Yes, go on.

[Speaker I] What do you mean? Everything, practically, that we observe in… there are indeed 613 commandments, but in practice our daily conduct from morning to night is found in Orach Chayim, not in Choshen Mishpat and Even HaEzer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does that make? Even in Orach Chayim—so what? In the end, which laws are connected to a conception of providence? Even remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt isn’t connected to that. Because remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt means recognizing gratitude to the Holy One, blessed be He, for taking us out of Egypt then. Who told you that it also comes to instill a conception of providence for today? It doesn’t say that there. That’s a commandment that seemingly very clearly speaks about providence, right? And most of Jewish law doesn’t deal with that at all.

[Speaker I] That’s exactly the point—that it’s a matter of interpretation. Nachmanides tells you that once you put tefillin on your head and a mezuzah on your doorway, you’ve already acknowledged all the cornerstones of the Torah, because you’ve acknowledged providence, you’ve acknowledged the ten plagues that show there is reward and there is punishment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So there you go—I don’t. I put them on my head and I didn’t acknowledge that. I fulfilled the commandment. What do you mean? That’s Nachmanides’ interpretation—that he decided these commandments come to achieve that. I don’t agree. Who says that’s what these commandments come to achieve?

[Speaker I] That’s my difficulty, that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing depends on that. If I don’t accept Nachmanides, then I don’t need to put on tefillin? Why? Who said such a thing?

[Speaker I] No, but practically that’s exactly the difficulty I have here with you. You come and say, look, the commandments are what the Torah said. Everything else is interpretation, and that’s true. The Torah also said “and they shall be frontlets,” you know, and Jewish law says that’s on the frontlets. But now in the end when you come and say, wait a second, and what is in these tefillin? What is written there? So you say: the four passages are written there, and those passages speak about the Exodus from Egypt, the Exodus from Egypt has a certain message, and once we disconnect—let’s call it—Jewish thought, the tradition of what the commandments… come on, translate it. What’s the message? So according to the tradition, the message is all these principles of independence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to my view, the message is that the Holy One, blessed be He, helped us organize as a people and took us out of Egypt. That’s the message. Does something here prevent me from putting on tefillin if that’s how I understand the message? No. That’s it.

[Speaker M] So that is exactly what I’m claiming—that there is some tradition of what the message is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Tradition, yes—but tradition in the second sense I spoke about before: people decided that’s the message; I think that’s not the message. If it were a tradition from Sinai, I would accept it, but it’s not a tradition from Sinai. Nachmanides says one thing and Maimonides says another. It’s not a law given to Moses at Sinai. It’s reasoning, and I have reasoning too.

[Speaker I] And if someone had formulated it as Jewish law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Formulated what?

[Speaker I] If someone had said it and put it into a section—into a legal clause—in the Shulchan Arukh—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that this is what—It wouldn’t help at all. I still wouldn’t believe it.

[Speaker I] But you say that’s Jewish law. You say that Jewish law you do accept as an authoritative ruling.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Because Jewish law is not facts; Jewish law is norms.

[Speaker I] But if they had marked it in Jewish law as the thought?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no such thing, no such thing. There is no Jewish law that deals with facts. There can’t be. I wouldn’t accept it even if there were such a thing. Anyone who says there is such a thing is mistaken.

[Speaker L] If you’re quoting Leibowitz, he says that if you really believe something more or less—if you really believe, for example, that prayer affects your health—then you should note the fact that if a doctor tells you to take a certain medicine, say, three times a day, then no person, even if he’s very God-fearing, wakes up in the morning and says to himself: today I prayed well, today I received a blessing from the rebbe or something like that, and therefore today I’ll take only two pills or only take the medicine twice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I already talked about that. That’s why they invented the whole idea of “human effort,” and to me it’s all ridiculous inventions. But the question is a good one, even though everyone will throw you down the stairs for asking it. They’ll explain to you: no, that’s the effort imposed on us. The Holy One, blessed be He, helps us through the medicines. But acetaminophen will lower a fever even if you didn’t pray in the morning—somehow nobody notices that. I don’t buy these stories. These are stories that come to protect a conception that people themselves understand is not true. Except that because they were educated in it so deeply, as you said—people explained to them that these are the cornerstones of the Torah—so people internalized it and they tell you all the time that they feel it at every step. They don’t feel anything; they internalized it, ingrained it in themselves. On the contrary—why do all the mashgichim constantly give talks about “my power and the might of my hand,” that we need to see “that which happened to you on the way,” that everything is chance, that we need to see the Holy One, blessed be He, everywhere? Why are those talks needed? Because everyone is in the state that we don’t see it.

[Speaker I] Right, and they say that too. They tell you that’s exactly the test, exactly the complexity of nature as against providence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They say it’s a test, and I say they’re talking nonsense, because everyone sees—

[Speaker I] But how do you explain—but it’s not just the mashgichim—when Nachmanides tells you about Aristotle, “that wicked man who denied”—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] what is evident, who denied it—and I bring the mashgichim not in order to show that, but to show you against what you said earlier. Earlier you said that everyone basically—or not everyone, but many people—see and feel the Holy One, blessed be He, at every step. I deny that. I deny that. People feel it because they feel obligated to feel it, because it was ingrained in them that you must feel it, even though in truth you don’t feel it. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit it’s not true. That’s why all those talks are needed. That’s proof it’s not true. I brought a proof here against what you said earlier, that many people have such a feeling. I don’t buy it.

[Speaker M] What does the Rabbi intend in “I give thanks before You… that You returned my soul to me with compassion”? If there is no providence, then what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the expressions of thanks—I explain this in the book too—I explain prayer in light of my approach in the second book. I explain those thanksgivings as thanks for what the Holy One, blessed be He, created in the world. The Holy One, blessed be He, created in the world a certain nature with laws of nature, and these laws of nature determine that after I sleep I will also wake up, and I thank the Holy One, blessed be He, that in the laws of nature He gave me the possibility to gather strength and then to wake up and return to activity. Not that He performed an action this morning.

[Speaker M] Thank you.

[Speaker N] On that—the fact is Maimonides himself already addressed this, that there is general providence and individual providence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, Maimonides says more than that. Maimonides says that even miracles—the Sages say this, it’s not Maimonides; Maimonides only brings it in his Commentary on the Mishnah in several places—even miracles are built into creation from the time of creation. It’s not something the Holy One, blessed be He, is doing now. So then—is returning the soul in the morning not built into creation? That’s exactly the laws of nature.

[Speaker M] But the Holy One, blessed be He, is above time, so from His perspective there is no such thing as setting it then and only now not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So let’s leave those things—nonsense, just empty words. What does “above time” mean? I’m in time. I’m asking whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is acting now. I’m asking the question, not Him. The answer is no.

[Speaker I] Let’s ask, for example—now we had Purim. The whole message of Purim, ostensibly—again, you can read the Megillah as just a plain story—but if we go by the traditional message of Purim, it’s that there was a rescue that God arranged, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. And I say not.

[Speaker I] So what is the message of the Megillah, then? What is the Jewish narrative of Purim?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regarding Purim—two things. First, Esther was said with divine inspiration. So if you accept that as something prophetic, then I’m prepared to accept the testimony that the Holy One, blessed be He, was involved there even though it appears to follow the laws of nature, because there were prophets who told me that this is how it was. Even though it doesn’t look that way—that’s one possibility. Beyond that, there is thanksgiving to the Holy One, blessed be He. Many times we’re supposed to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, when a miracle happens to us. Now for me—I don’t believe in miracles today, Yossi. Or again, maybe there are, but there is no indication. I don’t know where and whether there is a miracle anywhere. So what does thanksgiving mean? Thanksgiving is simply a psychological matter: when something happens to you, it’s a psychological opportunity to think again about the world that the Holy One, blessed be He, created for your benefit and to give Him thanks for what He did. And that’s thanksgiving for a miracle. And for me Purim is the same. What happened there may have been completely natural, but once we were saved from trouble, that shook us up; it enables us to stop for a moment and think again about everything that happens, and to thank the Holy One, blessed be He, for the world He created.

[Speaker I] Yes, but that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make—that this is a great example of how Jewish law is intertwined with the narrative and with thought. Meaning, for practical purposes, when you give food portions and gifts to the poor, and read the Megillah, and say, “I’m celebrating Purim”—that same Purim that I didn’t invent just now, but that Purim that the Sages instituted for me—then I’m walking in the path they came and showed me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe you are. I’m not. I do the commandments.

[Speaker I] But the moment you disconnect—it’s as if it feels to me like something not straightforward. Even if you’re inventing, you’re inventing a new Purim, but it’s not the Purim of Purim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not inventing a new Purim. I understand that this is what happened on Purim—what’s the problem? And therefore, just as Maimonides interprets, I interpret too. I’m allowed to interpret. Before Maimonides interpreted, his interpretation didn’t exist. So before my interpretation existed, my interpretation didn’t exist—so what? Everyone interprets as he interprets, and that accompanies Jewish law. There are different interpretations. According to Maimonides too, Abaye and Rava there in Bava Metzia 36, right? Each says to the other: any judge who doesn’t judge according to this ruling is not a judge. Right? And that doesn’t stop the other one from adjudicating according to the ruling that the first one says means he’s not a judge at all. Each says it about the other. In thought it’s even more so. What, aren’t there disputes in matters of thought? So one says the other is a heretic, and the other says the first is a heretic, and that’s perfectly fine, because this goes with his interpretation and that goes with his interpretation, and I too go with my interpretation. Jewish law is what defines the field. And the fact that people give different interpretations—so what? As long as you observe Jewish law, you’re part of the game. Give whatever interpretations you give it. Where I see that a law was established clearly based on an incorrect conception of reality, in my view the law too is invalid. For example, lice on the Sabbath—killing lice on the Sabbath. In my view that law is null and void, utterly void.

[Speaker I] Which law? What? I didn’t understand—which law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Killing lice on the Sabbath. It’s a law; it appears in the Talmud. In my view it’s null and void—that it’s permitted. Yes. I claim it’s forbidden. Someone who transgresses that violates a Torah prohibition and desecrates the Sabbath. His wine is wine for idolatrous libation.

[Speaker O] Yes, because you say they were mistaken about reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. And once the ruling is clearly based on a conception of reality, and I clearly think that conception of reality is incorrect, then the law too is not valid. In that I accept what you said earlier. Where it’s clear that a law comes to achieve something that in my view is incorrect, then there is no such law and I won’t observe it. That’s obvious. But again I say: why won’t I observe it? Not because I don’t accept the authority of the Sages, but because if the Sages themselves knew what I know today, they too would cancel it. They never instituted it under those conditions in the first place. It was a mistake from the outset.

[Speaker I] But what I’m trying to claim is that I hear what you’re saying, but I think there is some point at which you can’t invent—it seems like you’re presenting it as if it’s just a disagreement between one opinion and another. I think that if over generations a certain interpretation of Purim was accepted, then a new interpretation is already inventing a new Purim. That’s what I think.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m inventing a new Purim, and in my view that was the original Purim. I claim that you invented a new Purim.

[Speaker I] Right, so it already feels to me like—you know, we’ll call that Judaism, but it’s a different Judaism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There comes some stage where it simply becomes something else.

[Speaker I] Then let it not be Judaism—let it be Christianity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m a Christian. I’m a Christian who observes commandments. Why do I care about these labels? Judaism, Christianity—what do I care? I know that commandments have to be observed. If you call that Christian, then I’ll be Christian—what do I care? The word Judaism doesn’t interest me. I don’t care whether it’s Jewish thought or Christian thought. What interests me is whether it’s true or not. Why should it matter to me whether it’s Jewish or not Jewish? It’s like what the Nazis said about—sorry for the comparison, yes, Godwin here—the Nazis said about Einstein’s physics that it was Jewish physics. So what? The question is whether he’s right, not whether he’s Jewish. Fine. One hundred percent.

[Speaker N] Thank you very much.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you all. Have a good day, all the best, Sabbath peace, and good health.

[Speaker E] Sabbath peace,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much, Sabbath peace.