Interviewer: Noam Oren

Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham is a unique figure. This can be understood even from a cursory glance at his life story. Rabbi Dr. Avraham was born into a religious Zionist family, but as an adolescent he changed his mind. Over the years, he repented and even belonged to an ultra-Orthodox kollel. In parallel with his studies at the kollel, he completed a doctorate in physics and engaged in research at the Weizmann Institute. In recent years, Rabbi Dr. Avraham has found himself between camps on many issues. From a halachic perspective, some consider him conservative, as he has often called for a change in halachic law in light of changing realities. On the other hand, Rabbi Dr. Avraham often attacks religious Zionism for the messianic elements found within it. In addition, Rabbi Dr. Avraham has published quite a few books, some of which have become bestsellers – from ‘Two Carts and a Hot Air Balloon’ to ‘God Plays Dice’ and ‘The Sciences of Freedom’. Rabbi Dr. Avraham’s fields of interest are extremely broad. He often deals with pure philosophical issues on the one hand, and on the other, he also deals with practical halachic issues. As part of these interests, Rabbi Dr. Avraham has often aroused great anger among various factions in Israeli society and has often been at the center of passionate polemics. He is currently finishing writing a trilogy of books in which he intends to unfold his religious teachings in all their various aspects. I caught up with him for a fascinating conversation about his various fields of interest.

Next, let’s start from the end, with your latest book, “True and Unstable,” which deals mainly with ethical issues. You advocate what is known today in philosophy as “moral realism.” This means that there are moral facts that are independent of culture and time. In other words, there is “truth” and “falsehood” in morality. How can such a claim be made when it is clear that there are fundamental disagreements in the field of morality?

The fact that different people think different things is a fact, but as we have learned from Kant and since then there is no connection between facts and norms. The fact that two people think differently does not mean that both sides are right, it just means that two people think differently, it is quite possible that one is right and the other is wrong. There are also debates in the world of science, and in this field there is a wider agreement that there is a “truth”, so why in the field of ethics can it not be like that?

The reason for this is that in science we have an agreed-upon procedure for deciding scientific difficulties, but in the ethical field there seems to be no such procedure.

It is true that in the scientific world we are better acquainted with the tools at our disposal, and in the ethical world we have not yet formulated developed tools for deciding on ethical issues, we have feelings about what is right and what is wrong. But despite this difference, it seems that many people would agree that murder is wrong, even Hitler would have agreed that murder is wrong, he simply introduced some qualifications to this law and explanations for why the murder of Jews is not murder. The point is that even at the factual level, which I have already said does not determine the norms, the picture that is depicted of a plurality of moral positions is a distorted one, because there is some kind of general agreement. The differences are on the margins and in the way the agreed principles are applied. In the meta-ethical realm too, there is broad agreement that there is moral truth. People say that Hitler was truly evil and not that his actions subjectively disgust them. If the vast majority of people truly understand that there is right and wrong in the moral world, then in my opinion anyone who denies this is a skeptic, and just as I do not address skeptics in the context of physical facts, I also do not address skeptical arguments in the moral context. If we all think that something is true, then the burden of proof lies with the party that denies broad agreement. It is like I will ignore the arguments of someone who denies the existence of the wall in front of me, unless he provides good evidence that my evidence is indeed misleading. The same is true in the ethical realm – as long as they do not provide good evidence that morality is subjective, I will continue to hold to the accepted claim that morality is objective.

Even if there is indeed broad agreement on fundamental ethical rules such as “You must not kill innocent people” or “You must not steal.” How can we generalize these amorphous rules into concrete moral conclusions about the issues we face every day?

I don’t think that even on concrete issues there is such a wide spectrum of opinions. There is a tendency to see the disagreements rather than the agreed-upon factors. Ultimately, if you look at the world today, you will see that the distance between extreme libertarianism and the extreme left is already quite small. This is not what it was during the time of Lenin and American capitalism. Today’s America is not the America of that time, and today’s Russia is not the Russia of that time. Everyone more or less understands that there is a value of equality and there is a value of freedom, and the question is only about the dosages. Therefore, I say that even on more minor moral issues there is also broad agreement, although there is also a range. Regarding this gray area, I am even willing to say that not necessarily one is wrong and one is right, there may be a range of correct and legitimate opinions, but this range is not infinite.

You say this from a present-day perspective, but if you had lived a hundred years ago you would have seen a wider range of moral views. So if you had lived in those years would you have stated that there is no objective morality?

So maybe I would have held a more extreme moral view here and there, but I would have been wrong, today I am truly wiser. Just as I didn’t know the theory of relativity then and now I do. We have the ability to see more today than previous generations saw, also in the moral context. Evidence of this is that when a meeting occurs between a primitive African society, excuse the paternalism, and a Western society, it is quite clear that the Africans are the ones who will adopt Western ethics and not the other way around. Western people will not start eating human flesh, on the contrary, cannibals are becoming extinct. This means that there is some kind of universal human moral intuition that can recognize the morality of an action when it is encountered.

Does that mean that your epistemic tool for ascertaining moral truth is to examine majority opinion?

I see the majority opinion as an indication, and perhaps even a central one, in all that concerns ethical issues. But this is only a certain indication, one must be careful not to go too far with it, but there is no doubt that this is only a certain indication. The example of the encounter between a primitive society and a Western society does show that there is some progress in the ethical field, and not only in the scientific field. Therefore, I state that just as I would have been wrong fifty years ago on a physical issue, so it is also possible that I would have been wrong on an ethical issue.

It seems that your meta-ethical view also fails in the naturalistic fallacy, since it states that moral facts exist, but as mentioned, facts cannot oblige us to act. A certain person can say, “I choose to act contrary to the moral facts,” how can you condemn him? What obliges him to act according to those facts?

A person who chooses not to act on a moral fact simply chooses to act in an immoral way, you have a choice. Moral condemnation is the same, in this context, as scientific error. If you say there is no wall here, I will condemn you scientifically that your conclusions are incorrect. Similarly, in the moral context, I can condemn you for your ignorance of those facts. Moral facts, unlike physical facts, are ‘charged’ facts and therefore the naturalistic fallacy does not apply to them, the naturalistic fallacy applies only to natural, natural facts. It is true that someone can say ‘I see a person suffering’ and still say that there is no problem in hurting that person, this is because the person’s suffering is a fact and from such a fact it is not possible to derive the norm that suffering must not be caused. But if I see the fact that ‘it is forbidden to cause suffering’, this is, as far as I am concerned, a moral fact, it no longer leaves the freedom to decide whether it is okay to cause suffering.

And what is your response to the criticism of many sociologists who repeatedly claim that ethics is a social tool designed to serve various segments of the population, and as part of this show that Western ethics is also one type or another of oppression or one tool or another for satisfying needs?

Sociologists will analyze everything that happens to you and even come up with an explanation for it. My trust in sociology is limited.

And what about the issues of religion and morality? I ask this because in many ways you are a student of Leibowitz and he made a complete separation between these two areas and claimed that morality is an atheistic category. But on the other hand, there are many religious thinkers in our time who claim that morality without religion is impossible.

On this issue, I am more or less in the middle. I think that there is a close and hermetic connection between morality and religion. In my opinion, without faith in God, there is no morality, there may be good behavior but no morality. However, there is no connection between morality and halacha, these are two completely different disciplines. When I say ‘halacha’ I mean the normative part of the Jewish-religious world, and this part is really not related to morality, and in this sense I agree with Leibowitz. I do not agree with Leibowitz that morality is an atheistic category. I think that within an atheistic world, even one that is not materialistic, there is no morality and there cannot be morality. This is because there needs to be a source that defines good and evil. That ‘being’, whatever it may be, that gives validity to moral norms is God. In this context, it can be said that the distance between belief in such a ‘moral’ God and belief in a ‘religious’ God is not that far because, unlike belief in the God ‘Creator of the world’, the moral God is a God of commandments.

And what do you think should be done when there is a conflict between the halakhic system and the moral system?

Ultimately, the responsibility for a person’s actions lies with the person themselves because they are the ones who ultimately make the decisions. Religious education teaches that one’s will must be subordinate to the will of God, and I accept that, but on the other hand, a person must subordinate himself . That means the responsibility is on you. If you murder someone or leave a Gentile to die and claim that the reason for your actions was that you wanted to uphold the halakha, I will not accept it. You should have made the decision and said that such an act is impossible, the moral price is already too much, and therefore you would not be willing to accept the formalistic argument that says we have no authority to challenge what the Gemara has established. You do not leave a person to die because of such a consideration. Another example is the discussion of the testimony of relatives. According to the written decree, two relatives cannot testify together, for fear of a conflict of interest. I understand those who would not accept the testimony of two brothers who witnessed the murder. But this is a simple case because at most you did not punish a murderer, and you can still punish him with non-halakhic techniques (punishments that are not in accordance with the law, etc.). I ask what you would do as a judge in the opposite case where two brothers come and testify that a person sentenced to death for murder did not commit the act? Would you still punish that murderer? In my opinion, it is clear that the proper thing to do is to accept their testimony even though the accepted halakhic procedure does not allow this. In this context, I introduce the concept of ‘offense for its own sake’, the legitimacy of which the Gemara has already recognized. The meaning of this concept is that there are acts that are ‘offenses’ from a formal point of view but are ‘for its own sake’, meaning that they implement the intention of the commandment more fully even though they deviate from the accepted judicial procedure.

In your last book you also dealt quite a bit with the analysis of fundamentalism. How does this relate to the whole moral issue we just discussed?

Nowadays, there is a kind of struggle between Western postmodernism and fundamentalism such as ISIS. My argument is that these two concepts are two sides of the same coin, and therefore they have no ability to deal with each other. Both claim that truth should be certain, they are not willing to accept an uncertain truth. The postmodernists maintain that since there is no certainty, then there is also no truth, since according to them, truth is identified with certainty. On the other hand, the fundamentalists claim that since there is no certainty with rational tools, then the way to reach certainty is by using super-rational tools. In this sense, the two agree that there is no truth in the West. The reason for the West’s defense against ISIS does not stem from a philosophical alternative but from an unwillingness to die. This is also the reason why there is a phenomenon of Europeans suddenly joining ISIS, this is an amazing phenomenon, people who convert to Islam and join ISIS. The reason for this is that they understand that the only place they can access ‘truth’, certainty, is in places where they think differently from the areas they grew up in. But all of this is a result of the identification between truth and certainty. The alternative to these two (seemingly) opposite poles is that the connection between truth and certainty must be severed.

If so, what is that alternative?

The alternative is to believe that there are ways to reach the truth, when there is no certainty that this is indeed the truth. In this field, which I call the ‘synthetic field’, the main tool for reaching the ‘truth’ is intuition. Of course, skeptics can always raise one or another doubt about my intuitions, I am willing to listen to these doubts, but my starting point is that as long as it is not proven otherwise, I accept my intuition. It should be remembered that in non-scientific fields we must also accept ‘reasonable’ or ‘acceptable’ truths and not just ‘proven’ truths. In this context, skeptics are also part of the same concept that identifies truth with certainty, the skeptic believes that as long as there is even a shadow of doubt in my belief, then it is not true. In my opinion, synthetic thinking is not only philosophically correct but also practically useful, it is the only way to fight fundamentalists and postmodernism.

I am less familiar with fundamentalist thought, but many thinkers who define themselves as ‘postmodern’ claim that the postmodern view is not only a negative perception that does not contain any positive claims, but rather it presents a worldview, even if partial and incoherent.

There is no such thing as ‘postmodern thought.’ Every postmodern essay has two components. The first component is nonsense, wordplay that means nothing. And the second component is arguments that can be easily translated into completely modernist language, in a way that would have allowed them to be argued even in the 12th century; the 20th or 21st century was not needed for that. If anyone can show me a single argument that I cannot explain to Maimonides, and that still has content and meaning, then I am willing to admit that I am wrong and that there is postmodern thought. In the meantime, I have presented this challenge to quite a few people and have yet to receive an example that shows such an argument.

Let’s move on to another area in which you often write, which is the philosophy of religion. From my impression, you criticize in your books two conceptions of religion, which are very widespread today. One that sees religion as an expression of emotion or as a folkloristic culture, and from this concludes that when it comes to “religion,” there is no validity to discussing its truth, since religion does not make any claims about the world. On the other hand, you also criticize the approach that sees religion as a theory that explains reality, but its explanations contradict science. This means that you believe that religion does make claims about the world, but these claims have not been refuted by science.

The question is what do you call religion – is the Bible the foundation of religion? If so, what interpretation of the Bible? Maybe it’s the Gemara in general? Religion is a very amorphous thing. The Sages certainly made claims about the world, and they were certainly wrong about many things. I don’t argue with that. On the contrary, it is clear to me that this is the case. If the Torah itself contained claims about the world, it would be more difficult for me to claim that the Torah was wrong in its judgment, because God must know the world that He created, unless there are human additions to the Bible – perhaps, I don’t know. In any case, my basic assumption is that there are no mistakes in the Bible, but there are indeed very few claims about the world. Even in places where you find descriptions of the creation of the world, the text itself is open to interpretations and metaphorical readings of one kind or another, so it is very difficult to extract concrete claims about the world from the Bible. The central elements that do make claims about the world concern two matters – the creation of the world and the giving of the Torah, and that is more or less the case. Beyond that, I am not sure that I am willing to stand behind any factual claim that exists in “religion.” There is a book by Rabbi Amit Kula, called “Being or Not Being,” in which he tries to empty the religious perception of any factual statement about The world. The disagreement between us is minor. I think that in order to hold on to religion, one must believe in one of the two phenomena we talked about and see them as a real fact – the creation of the world or the giving of the Torah.

Why are these events the fundamental points of the ”religion”?

Because without them there is no reason for me to be bound by religious commandments. Religious realism, as I understand it, fails to discern religious truths without God Himself having spoken them. In other words, I have no epistemic tools to arrive at truths concerning religious commandments, and therefore the only tool at my disposal is God’s revelation. Therefore, without any revelation from God there is no reason for me to believe that religious commandments are indeed God’s commandments.

But it seems that even if we accept the fact of the existence of the Mount Sinai event, it does not concern you at all. Why are you committed to an event that happened thousands of years ago?

The reason I am bound by an event that happened before I was born is the same reason you are bound by laws that the state enacted before you had the right to vote. When a group has taken upon itself certain laws, it binds, to some extent, its children as well, even if all the lawmakers have long since died. Laws enacted by the American Congress two hundred years ago still bind the American of today. The reason for this lies in the fact that the entity that committed to these laws is the American collective and not the collection of individuals who lived at that time, and the American of today is still part of that collective. In addition, I believe that I am bound to do the word of God. For these two reasons I feel bound to the laws that were revealed at Mount Sinai.

But these two events – the creation of the world and the establishment of Mount Sinai – are events that many scientists doubt occurred, at least as described in the Bible.

When I say that “God created the world,” this does not mean that everything written in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis is a historical-factual description. As I said before, it is possible that everything is metaphorical, maybe it is or maybe it is not. A large part of this even fits the scientific description – after all, there are the evolutionary stages in Genesis – from inanimate to plant to animal to man, but in Genesis the process is spread out over only six days, but to me this compatibility is not important at all. On a principled level, all that matters to me is that God created the heavens and the earth – that is where the factual dimension begins and ends. I already think there are good arguments for that. By the way, the creation of the world itself is not critical, as I mentioned that the status of Mount Sinai can be enough for me, but in this case I simply think that the creation of the world really happened.

In case you encounter a clear contradiction between a religious claim and a scientific claim, how can you decide?

I cannot answer this question comprehensively; the question is how reliable the scientific findings are and how deeply rooted the religious claim is in tradition. In order to prove that the status of Mount Sinai did not exist and was not created, they will have to show me very good evidence, and if they really provide me with such evidence, I will indeed be convinced that the status of Mount Sinai is fiction. In relation to the facts, I have great faith in scientific thinking and rational thinking, but what is called “science” today is a collection of many fields and disciplines. Some of them are as far from science as the East is from the West, and the relevant question is how reliable that specific field is. But once I have reached a clear conclusion, then for me this is reality, these are my tools for knowing reality. For me, tradition is not a reliable source of facts.

Let’s leave aside ‘religious history’ for a moment and discuss religion today. There is no book that says that mainstream religion makes quite a few claims about the world. For example, prayer is seen as a tool for receiving help in times of distress, and in general, religious people tend to believe in God’s active and direct intervention in what is happening in the world. How do you deal with such claims?

These are excellent examples and I really think that prayer is not helpful and that there is no provision in the active sense. God may be watching what we do but He is not involved and He does not cause things in the world. Prayer, for example, should be understood by dividing it into several elements – praise, thanksgiving and request. Praise is not a problem, there is no reason to praise God for creation. Even with confession, there is no problem, although if God did nothing, there is no reason to thank Him. It can be argued that since He created the world, then every good thing that happens to us is a good reason to thank Him for the very creation of the world, since without this creation, this thing would not have happened. The big question is with regard to requests – because if I ask God for something, then it means that I assume that He is involved. Therefore, I really do not ask, I cannot categorically rule out that He is involved, it is possible that here and there He does intervene, but I have no ability to know this, but all indications point to the fact that He does not intervene in what is happening in the world. But the very possibility that God intervenes is not unreasonable and, as I said, it is quite possible that He does intervene, and therefore I cannot outright rule out the requests of people during prayer. Let them ask, perhaps He will intervene in some case. However, I do think that this applies to requests where it is not critical – it negates the approach of the Breslavs who ask God for everything, which is nonsense. I don’t assume that God intervenes in all nonsense. Even if He intervenes in the world here and there, it’s probably not in minor matters that a person has the ability to solve their own problems. If you can take paracetamol, don’t ask God to bring down your fever, take paracetamol – “God is not a health insurance company,” in Leibowitz’s language. That’s why I say that in exceptional cases, you can ask God for help. Maybe it will help, maybe it won’t. It’s very likely not, but you never know.

In the same context, in the book “God Plays Dice,” you criticized the notion that evolution contradicts belief in God. You tried to show that not only is there no contradiction between the two, but that evolution may even strengthen belief in the existence of God.

In principle, it is clear that there is no contradiction, anyone who understands this a little knows this. The only place where there is a conflict is because one of the evidences for the existence of God is based on the fact that the world is complex and this complexity indicates the existence of a creator and orderly, since something complex cannot be created spontaneously but requires a deliberate hand. This evidence is called the physico-theological evidence. This evidence is attacked by evolution because evolution shows that complex things can be created in a spontaneous process and without external intervention. But even if we assume that such a conflict really exists, what does it mean? All it means is that the physico-theological evidence has failed, okay, but there are countless other pieces of evidence that have not failed. If I present you with a geometric proof that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees and you manage to blow up my proof, it does not mean that a triangle does not have 180 degrees. The fact that a particular proof fails to prove anything says nothing about the conclusion of that proof. So I say that even if evolution does refute the physico-theological claim, then all that it says is that Proof 17c for the existence of God is invalid means nothing. But I argue that it does not even do that. Evolution fails to refute the physico-theological claim. The reason for this is that evolution shows that given these given laws of nature, the world progresses from a singular point that occurred at the time of the Big Bang to me and you – to life and the complex world in which we live. But this happens because of a set of certain natural laws that govern this process, and so it simply copies the question from ‘How did life originate?’ To the question ‘How were the laws of nature created that allowed life to arise spontaneously?’, evolution explains how life was created within the laws, but it does not explain the laws themselves, and even if it tries to explain how these laws were created, it will have to do so through additional laws about which it will also be possible to ask what their origin is. Science will never be able to explain its laws, but only describe them, and therefore any attempt by science to find an explanation for the formation of the laws is doomed to failure. This is where religion comes into the picture. It is important to note that this is not a ‘god of gaps’, this is not a gap for which science has not yet found a solution, but a gap for which science will never be able to provide a solution or explanation.

But you claim that evolution also strengthens belief in the existence of God. Why?

Suppose you put some plasticine in the corner of a room and after fourteen billion years you found a zoo there. If you tell me it happened by chance I will argue that it is unlikely but you know. But if you show me that a systematic process over fourteen billion years turns a piece of plasticine into a zoo then that clearly points to a deliberate hand. Such a process is much more impressive than any sudden “creation” of any kind.

If I understand correctly, the claim is that this purposefulness that you see in nature is not true. The plasticine did not progress towards the zoo, but acted solely according to the laws of nature, and by chance the result was a zoo.

Not true, what evolution shows is actually the systematicity and not the randomness. It shows that the formation of man was done gradually and systematically and not completely randomly. I will repeat what I said before, there is a set of laws here that ensure that a piece of plasticine turns into a zoo, with a different set of laws the zoo would not have been created. It is clear that from the perspective of evolution, the process is not purposeful, since evolution looks at the world from the given laws, but if we look at the world from a supra-legal perspective, it seems that it is a clear purposefulness.

Towards the end, we will move on to questions of a slightly different style. First, I would be happy to hear to which religious stream you associate yourself from a sociological perspective?

I define myself as a secular Zionist and a religious Jew. The late Yosef Borg, one of the leaders of the Nationalist Zionist Party, said that the essence of religious Zionism is not found in religion or Zionism, but in the hyphen that connects the two, because their religiosity is Zionist and their Zionism is religious. So that’s not the case with me, meaning that I don’t accept the Zionist-religious ideology that believes that we live in a messianic or pre-messianic period. I am a Zionist like Ben-Gurion was a Zionist and I am religious like Rabbi Shach is religious, these are two different levels and I have no hyphen between Zionism and religiosity. By the way, I think that a significant portion of religious Zionism and a significant portion of the Haredim are in my place. The problem is that no one presented those people with this option. In this context, it is worth noting that the debate between the religious-nationalists and the Haredim is simply an irrelevant and completely uninteresting debate – it seems that both sides are still arguing about whether it is appropriate to establish a state as if 70 years had not passed since the establishment of the state. So from a sociological perspective, it is always difficult to define me – Some define me as Reform and some define me as Haredi. The only sectors in which I really do not see partners on the path are, on the one hand, the disciples of Rabbi Kook who see the state as ‘the beginning of the growth of our redemption’, and on the other hand, the anti-Zionist Haredi.

And from a jurisprudential point of view, where do you see yourself?

Apart from the Reforms, I don’t think there is any movement that is ‘outside the line’. I see both the Conservatives and the strict Orthodox as partners in my discourse. In the Conservative context, it is worth noting that the left wing of the Orthodox has long been at loggerheads with the right wing of the Conservatives. I can endorse most of the halachic treatises written by ‘Conservative’ rabbis, I may not agree with the final ruling, but from a methodological perspective I see no significant differences.

Why do you reject the religious Zionist approach from Rabbi Kook’s school of thought, which sees the state as ‘the beginning of the growth of our redemption’?

I deny this on two levels. The first level is factual, I have no idea if this is really the beginning of the growth of our redemption, maybe, I even hope that is the case, but I simply don’t know. How do those people know that we are at the beginning of the Messianic era? We must remember that there have already been quite a few false messiahs in Jewish history. On the second level, which is the more fundamental level, I argue that it simply doesn’t matter whether we are at the beginning of the redemption or not. Because either way, it has no practical implications. This is because I determine my attitude towards the state according to its actions and not according to the metaphysics that stands behind it. I am not interested in whether the state is the Messiah’s time or something else. If the state is acting appropriately, then I will support it, if not, then I will oppose it. The claim of Messianic religious Zionism on the one hand and the anti-Zionist Haredim on the other hand, which states that metaphysics has implications for the world of action, is an extreme innovation; there has never been anything like this. The Satmars will not be willing to see the state as something of positive significance even if it saves the world of Torah, and they will continue to see the state as the devil incarnate, while the Kokniks, on the other hand, will not be willing to see the state as a harmful factor even if it harms the world of Torah. This stems from the fact that they do not see the state at all, but only the “demons” that stand behind it.

So what are the key issues among the observant public, in its various shades, where you see significant implications?

What I don’t understand is why the watershed that divides religious society into its various strands is the issue of Zionism. It is such an uninteresting and uncurrent issue. Religious society should be fighting over other issues with much broader implications. Take, for example, the recent elections for the Chief Rabbinate. In these elections, religious Zionism felt a terrible defeat, since ultra-Orthodox rabbis and not religious Zionists were elected. This is stupidity in its essence. After all, what was at stake in these elections was not Zionism at all, and rightly so, but the question of whether the elected rabbi was liberal or not. In the struggle between the liberal candidates and the ultra-Orthodox candidates, it was all against Rabbi Stav. From the perspective of this issue, which is, as stated, the central issue, there was a clear majority for the ultra-Orthodox candidates, since all the candidates, including those religious Zionists and with the exception of Rabbi Stav, are conservative from a jurisprudential perspective. Essentially, the conservative rabbis are ultra-Orthodox for all intents and purposes, they may be Zionists, but who cares? And in all the questions at hand, from the recruitment of yeshiva students to the conversion law to the status of women, the watershed line runs between conservative rabbis and liberal rabbis, Zionism has nothing to do with it. Today, in practice, the Jewish Home is a conservative-ultra-Orthodox party for all intents and purposes, there is no difference between them and the ultra-Orthodox parties in terms of how they vote on religious issues.

You are currently working on a trilogy of books that deal with your Jewish religious teachings, as opposed to your previous books that dealt mainly with general philosophy. I would be grateful if you could give us a spoiler for this trilogy, what can we expect?

Following conversations I had with several people and also with myself, I came to the conclusion that the time had come to present fully and completely my religious view, parts of which I had written in articles that were published here and there. The book is going to present Jewish theology from the foundations to the foundations, the whole picture. The first volume of the trilogy will deal with philosophy, the second volume with Jewish thought, and the third with halacha. In this trilogy I am trying to present a current and lean theology, one that I can stand behind, one that does not include all sorts of beliefs that are for some reason perceived as ‘principles of faith.’ I think this trilogy can help many religious people who also feel that they are not ready to stand behind all the prevalent religious claims. I want to show them that Jewish theology is much more limited than is commonly thought. I have no doubt that this trilogy will receive much criticism from all sides.

A question in conclusion: In one of your lectures you said that you reject your definition as a ‘Jewish thinker.’ Why?

The second book in the trilogy, which is dedicated to the field of Jewish thought, is precisely to explain why there is no such field as ‘Jewish thought’ or ‘Israelite thought.’ These fields deal with factual questions – does God, the Blessed One, oversee?, is the people of Israel special? Is the Land of Israel special? – these are factual questions, even if there is no scientific method to examine them. There is a right and a wrong in facts. If these facts are true, then it also requires every gentile to say that it is true, although these questions may not interest that gentile. And if these facts are not true, then what does it matter if the Jews believe it is true? For me, what is interesting is what the correct philosophy has to say, not Jewish philosophy. What does it matter if the one who made a certain claim is Maimonides or Kant? It is possible that Maimonides made incorrect claims and Kant actually made correct claims, so for me, what Kant said is Israeli thought and what Maimonides said is nonsense. I am a Jewish thinker with a comma between the two Haggadahs – thinker, Jew – there is no connection between these two facts.