Parashat Emor (5761)

With God’s help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath of Parashat Emor, 5761

Quality and Quantity

Parashat Emor deals with the status of the priests and the commandments that apply to them. At any given time, one of

the priests is set apart as High Priest. The obligations imposed upon him are additional to those of his fellow priests,

a fact that creates the sense that a High Priest is an ordinary priest with an additional ‘level’ unique

to him alone. In a similar way, one can say that priests are ordinary Israelites obligated in an additional level

beyond the ordinary level of a Jew.

At first glance, there is a quantitative change here: the Jew is a very ‘small’ priest, and the ordinary priest is

a small ‘High Priest.’ That is, there is a measure of holiness found in all Jews, and it has

different quantitative degrees, which require different halakhic treatments. The relation between a Jew and a gentile

can also be understood in this way.

Here the question arises whether these are qualitative changes or quantitative ones. The author of Tzafnat Pa’aneach formulates

it as follows: every priest, and especially the High Priest, is forbidden to have sexual relations with a divorced woman.

The question is whether a High Priest who had sexual relations with a divorced woman violated only the prohibition of the High

Priest, or whether he violated two prohibitions, that of an ordinary priest and that of the High Priest, for he is

an ordinary priest and in addition possesses an extra ‘level’ of High Priesthood. Tzafnat Pa’aneach notes

that there is a view in halakha that such a change is a qualitative one, meaning that a High Priest is not an ordinary priest

with an added level but a halakhic type of a new kind. His having sexual relations with a divorced woman is

only a single prohibition. Here a question arises concerning the relation between quality and quantity in broader

contexts. The question is: what is quality and what is quantity? And can quantity turn into quality?

There are halakhic contexts in which quantity appears to turn into quality, for example when discussing a small amount of

money, half a perutah. Nearly all the laws of the Torah that concern property deal with property that is worth

a perutah or more. Less than that is not considered property. The question is whether half a perutah is a small amount of property

or whether it is not property at all. There are decisors who maintain that half a perutah is not property at all

(and not merely a small amount of property). The implication of such a position would concern a person who stole half a perutah: did he violate

the prohibition of theft, except that by law he is not punished and is not even required to return the stolen item, or

perhaps he did not violate the prohibition of theft at all, since what he took from his fellow is not property? (It is unnecessary

to note that according to all opinions this is a reprehensible act, even if no formal halakhic prohibition applies to it).

The more basic question is whether quality and quantity are in fact two different concepts. For example, there is

a question in halakha whether in a rabbinical court, when one follows the majority, one follows a quantitative majority—the majority

of judges—or the qualitative majority, that is, the greater wisdom. If there is one judge whose wisdom exceeds

the combined wisdom of his two colleagues, do we follow his opinion even when the other two oppose it,

or not?

At first glance, this is a question of whether quantity or quality is preferable. In fact, if we are a bit more precise, we can

ask ourselves: why is the quantity of wisdom considered quality rather than quantity? That is, one can formulate

the above question as follows: indeed, in a rabbinical court everyone agrees that one follows the quantitative majority. The question is

whether this means the quantity of wisdom or the quantity of judges. In such a formulation, the majority of wisdom is also conceived

as quantity and not as quality.

The seemingly natural distinction between an abstract magnitude and a concrete magnitude does not provide an adequate way out

of the problem. There are situations in which even an abstract magnitude is conceived as quantity and not as quality. For example, a majority of time

is a quantitative majority (unlike ‘the better part of the time,’ whose distinctiveness is, of course, qualitative!!). One can measure

wisdom by quantitative indices, such as IQ, and treat it as a quantitative magnitude. The claim that the

quantitative measure does not represent wisdom will not solve the problem, for even if we define that in a rabbinical court what is required is

a majority of IQ, the feeling will remain that this is a matter of quality and not of quantity.

The reader is invited to think about this problem and to try to find a difference between quality and quantity. Whoever has not

succeeded in doing so may take comfort in the fact that he is in good company. Phaedrus, the hero of Pirsig’s book

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, searches for such a definition throughout the book and does not manage

to find it.

It seems that the answer to this embarrassing problem lies in a distinction similar to the incommensurability of

the values about which we spoke last week. There we saw that values have no common measure, and therefore one cannot

measure them or decide which of them is preferable to another. In the same way, we may say that a qualitative difference

is a difference that cannot be quantified by means of a common measure. A difference in wisdom is quantified by means of the

IQ scale, yet an IQ unit has no meaning whatsoever. This numerical index is nothing more than assigning names

to levels that differ from one another qualitatively. One cannot speak of adding 5 IQ points to a person

in order to equate his intelligence with that of another person. These levels are merely

expressions of qualitative differences. There is no IQ unit such that accumulating different quantities of it yields

different levels of intelligence. The numerical index for the various levels is nothing more than giving different names to

these levels. One may say that the numbers in this context are ‘ordinal’ rather than

‘cardinal’.

There are those who conclude that qualitative differences cannot be hierarchically ordered at all (there is no one

who is wiser than his fellow), and thereby cast doubt on the significance of IQ tests. Despite all

this, it is clear that one can speak of a hierarchy among these levels. Some are wiser and others less so; that is,

even in quality there is hierarchical order. So too, a High Priest is not an ordinary priest with an added level, yet

he certainly stands at a higher spiritual level than the ordinary priest. It seems to me that this claim parallels

the axiological ether hypothesis that we proposed last week.

Have a peaceful Sabbath

This may be deposited for burial in any synagogue or yeshiva. Comments and responses will be gladly received.

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