The meaning of majority: Does the majority decide? (Tur 66)

With God’s help

In recent days, a turbulent election campaign has been underway in France. Marine Le Pen is threatening to win the presidency, and reporters and commentators are united in saying that this is an apocalypse (sometimes it seems as if it is something like the Nazis coming to power in 1933). Because of the inherent left-wing bias of journalists, I do not have the slightest faith in the biased descriptions as if it is a racist monster. See similar descriptions here of Miri Regev, Bibi, Lieberman, Smotrich, or indeed of the image of the State of Israel in the general press, and you will understand what such journalistic descriptions mean and how acceptable they are. In some cases, these are false and biased descriptions based on political bias, but in my opinion, in most cases, it is simply stupidity and a lack of understanding of concepts (such as racism, etc.). But that is not what I wanted to deal with here.

Among other things, the question being asked these days is whether the elections in France will once again demonstrate the public's rebellion against the establishment (a dirty word used by journalists who are the establishment, the real meaning of which is: a rebellion against their own left-liberal indoctrination), like Brexit in Britain, the election of Trump in the US, and more. Even those who ask this question usually assume that the public is wrong and that its decisions will bring us a humanitarian and political disaster, and the question is only whether the public will be wrong again in France as well.

To replace the people

It is hard not to recall the slur attributed to Yitzhak Ben-Aharon after he saw the results of the 1977 elections, the upheaval that brought the Likud to power, that the people were wrong and that the people should be replaced. We are used to mocking such a statement as if it were arrogant and undemocratic, but there is room to examine whether this is indeed the case. Can't the public make mistakes? That is certainly possible. Alternatively, isn't it likely that the majority is wrong? In other words, is a majority inherently closer to the truth than a minority? Here too, the answer is not trivial.

Regarding the above statement by Yitzhak Ben Aharon, a man named Uri Yizhar from Sade Resources wrote scathing comments in response to the newspaper The country:

In an article that reviewed the life of Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, it was stated that following the Labor Movement's loss to Likud in the 1977 elections, he said: "If this is the will of the people, then the people must be replaced."

There was no such thing as a "was" or "was not created," and neither was there any "was." On Israeli television on the night of the revolution, Ben-Aharon said, after hearing the results of the television sample, that if this is the decision of the people, then he is not prepared to respect it. This segment was rebroadcast on the day of Ben-Aharon's death, May 19, 2006, on Channel One's "Yoman" program.

There is a fundamental difference between the statement that the people must be "replaced" and what Ben-Aharon actually said. In a democratic regime, there is an obligation to accept the people's decision in elections, but there is no obligation to respect it.[1]

In other words, the public can make mistakes, but there is a democratic obligation to respect its decisions even if it is wrong.

The meaning of most

In the next two columns, I will attempt to address these questions through the words of Uri Yizhar, on two levels: 1. Does the majority rule? I will discuss here the meaning of democratic elections and majority rule. I will expand and clarify further the obligation to respect the decision of the majority. 2. Is the majority right? Here I will examine the implicit assumption in his words that following the majority is not necessarily the best way to reach the truth or the most correct decision. That is, that the majority can be wrong.

The rule of the philosophers

Plato already proposed handing over the government of the state to philosophers, that is, to wise people. On the surface, this is a very logical proposal, since we all want the best and wisest decisions to be made. On the surface, the best way to make a correct and logical decision is to hand over the decision to wise people.[2] A milder version of this proposal is to weight each person's finger according to their intelligence. That is, when a public vote is held (such as a Knesset election), each finger would be equal according to the IQ of its owner. Thus, whoever is more intelligent would have more influence on the decision, which would supposedly improve the quality of society's decisions.

One can, of course, doubt our ability to measure relevant wisdom, and I will address this below. But at least on a principled level, the question remains. Assuming that it is indeed possible to measure relevant wisdom and assign a weight to each voter according to his wisdom, is Plato's proposal (or my softened version) indeed a good proposal and worthy of acceptance or not?

Two common answers

Two objections are usually raised to this outrageous proposal. One is that we have no way of determining who is wise in this regard. What is the wisdom required to vote in elections, and how can it be measured? How can one even determine wisdom objectively? Education is certainly no guarantee of wisdom (it has already been said that there is such infantile nonsense that you can only hear from academics). But this is only a technical problem, since it is essentially assumed here that if there were indeed a way to define such wisdom, the Platonic proposal would be correct and appropriate.

The second objection is that if we give the decision to the wise, they will use this authority for their own interests. In other words, the fact that someone is wise does not mean that he thinks about us all. We are concerned that he will use his wisdom for his own interests and therefore will not necessarily make the right decisions for us all. Here too, it is a technical problem. This objection also essentially assumes that in principle the Platonic proposal is good, but there is a concern that it will not succeed. If we were to hand the decision over to an intelligent (disinterested) computer program, it could be perfect.

Both of these objections implicitly assume that Plato's proposal is correct. Indeed, the rule of philosophers is the right and just rule, but there are technical problems in implementing this idea.

The mistake in the question

But another look shows that there is actually a mistake in raising the Platonic question or proposal. The assumption behind this proposal is that we are looking for a mechanism that will give us the most correct decisions. But this is itself a mistake, and therefore the Platonic proposal should be rejected out of hand. Even if we find a mechanism to measure wisdom, and even if we neutralize the interests (create perfect software), it is still not right to let philosophers rule and make decisions for us all.

The reason for this is that the assumption underlying democracy is that we are not looking for the most correct decisions, but rather for decisions that reflect the will of the public. What lies behind this is not the notion that the majority is right, but rather a notion of rights according to which every citizen has a built-in right to participate in making decisions that affect them. Again, not because this is how we will arrive at the best decisions, but because it is their right. If any citizen decides of their own free will to hand over the decision to someone else (which is essentially what we do in a representative government system) – there is no problem with that in principle. For example, Haredim vote in elections according to the instructions of the rabbi, and their members of Knesset vote (ostensibly. Blessed is the believer) according to the instructions of some council of sages. But the fundamental right belongs to the citizen himself.

Our conclusion is that Plato's proposal is fundamentally wrong, but not just for technical reasons. It is based on a false assumption. Even if the philosophers sat down and made the best decisions, that decision would still not reflect the will of the public and therefore would not be the binding decision.

The meaning of a democratic majority

Contrary to what those with a halakhic background are accustomed to thinking, the democratic majority is not the way to reach the truth, but the way to express the will of the public. Assuming that a citizen has the right to influence his fate, then the decision that society makes for him must correspond to his wishes. If it is a decision that applies to all citizens, then it is difficult to adapt the decision to the will of everyone. Of course, if there is agreement among all citizens, there is no problem, but in a situation where there are differences of opinion between people and groups, the decision that is supposed to express the will of the public is distilled into a mechanism that will determine what the will of the public is in such a situation. What does the public want when there is a dispute.

For example, if a proposal for some political agreement is on the agenda, and part of the public opposes and another part agrees. The agreement is binding on everyone and should be signed on behalf of everyone. Here we cannot act according to the will of every citizen and a single decision must be made for everyone. Therefore, in such a case, we must create a mechanism that will define what the public will is in a situation of dispute. It is common to adopt the mechanism of following the majority. But following the majority is not based on seeing the majority as the ascertainer of the truth, but rather on the fact that the majority is a reasonable criterion that expresses the collective will of the entire public.

There could, of course, be other mechanisms or criteria. For example, giving weight to each citizen according to the number of years he has lived, according to the extent of his contribution to society, according to the criticality of this decision for him, according to the degree of his conviction that it is right or wrong, and so on.[3] But it can be seen that the proposal to weigh a citizen's status according to their degree of wisdom is irrelevant in democratic discourse. This is because in a democracy we are not looking for the right decision, but rather the decision that reflects the will of the public.

Halachic implications

The rule of following the majority in Halacha is learned from the verse "after many to deviate" which is said regarding a court of law. When there are differences of opinion in a court of law, one follows the majority. Simply put, this is based on the fact that the majority is a criterion for truth (as also written Education In the mitzvah (8th commandment).

There are several principles in Halacha that involve a decision by majority. There is a law that "follows the majority," meaning that decisions are made based on probability (without going into the differences between a halachic majority and a probabilistic majority). For example, if a woman gave birth and we do not know in which month, the halachic assumption is that the birth was in the ninth month (this is the dalitah kaman majority). Or in the case of finding a piece of meat on the street, the assumption is that if most stores sell kosher meat, the piece is kosher (this is the daitah kaman majority). In addition, there is a second law of nullification by majority in the mixture, meaning that the minority in the mixture is nullified and takes the name of the majority (for example, a piece of pork that fell into a pot with pieces of kosher meat, according to the principle of the law, the entire mixture can be eaten). There is also a third law, majority in all, where if any requirement is met by the majority of individuals, it is considered as if it is met by all (for example, if the majority of the public is impure around Passover, they bring a Pesach sacrifice in impurity and do not postpone it to the second Pesach).

The Gemara in Cholin cites a source for the first law from the verse "after many to incline." Some of the former write that the second law is also learned from there (in different forms, and not always clear and agreed upon). There are some of the latter who wrote this about the third law as well. Against this background, it is very interesting that there is one halakhic context in which a long-standing polemic arose regarding following the majority: making decisions in the community, and there the connection to the verse "after many to incline" is not agreed upon and may not even exist. It now seems that the meaning of this puzzling matter also lies in the understanding of the democratic majority as I presented it above.

Implication: The concept of community and decision-making in the community 

The exodus of the Jewish people into exile occurred in stages. First, we lost our political autonomy in the Land of Israel, but the majority of the people were still here. After that, a significant part of the people went into exile, but the majority of the people still lived in Babylon, under a fairly autonomous Jewish government and legal system. Babylon had a hierarchical national structure, even if not political independence. In such a situation, the concept of community had not yet taken shape, since in reality it was still a cell within an active and effective national organism. But towards the end of the first millennium and the beginning of the second millennium, the dispersion of the people from Babylon began, and then small independent cells began to form throughout the world, which organized themselves in the form of communities as we know them today. Such a community lived its own life, and there was no Jewish government or Jewish legal system to which it was subordinate. Such a community made decisions on its own and for itself.

It is no wonder that it was only from the eleventh century that the poskim began to seriously discuss the method of decision-making in the community. Naturally, they turned to familiar mechanisms, primarily the mechanism of following the majority. Most poskim believed that the majority determines the decisions of the community, but some opposed this. For example, Rabbanu Tam believed that the majority has no meaning and that decisions in the community should be made unanimously.[4] This dispute was finally resolved only towards the end of the Middle Ages, and since then it has been accepted that even in community decisions, the majority is followed (this was also ruled inTable set And its bearers are Justice C. Rakhah). I believe that at the essential level, only then was the democratic nature of Jewish life determined.

What is interesting is that most of the first who discuss the question of decision-making in the community cite as a source for following the majority the verse "after many to incline," but many of them are careful to add another logical consideration. For example, in the Rosh's response that deals with this matter (Klal 6, 35), he writes:

And you asked: Can two or three of the moderates in the city exclude themselves from the agreement that the community will make, or from a decree of boycott that they will make on anything? Know that regarding the business of many, the Torah said: To incline after the many. Regarding every matter that the community agrees on, they follow the majority, and the individuals must carry out everything that the many agree on. Otherwise, the community will never agree on anything, if the individuals have the power to revoke their agreement; therefore, the Torah said, regarding every matter of the agreement of many: To incline after the many.

And so it is in several of the Rashba's responsa. The question is why the Rosh does not settle for the verse "after many to incline," and adds the consideration that if we do not follow the majority, it is not possible to reach consensus? Is this a matter of reading? After all, the verse deals with the case of a by-law, and the reasoning that the Rosh brings is not really relevant to the case of a by-law. It deals with decisions in the community.

In the article Good measure For the Parshat Mishpatim, 567,[5] I expand on this subject. Among other things, I argue that the goal of a majority in a court is to reach the truth, as opposed to a majority in a community, which is a democratic majority whose goal is to express public opinion (and not to strike at the truth, as explained above). In my article, I show some of the implications of the different perceptions of majority law, and especially of the question of whether its goal is to reveal the truth or to express the will of the public. For example, the jurists disagreed on whether in a court they follow the majority wisdom or the majority of the people (for example, if the head of the court, who is the wisest, disagrees with his two younger colleagues). My argument is that if one seeks the truth, it makes sense to follow the majority wisdom (this is actually Plato's proposal), and even those who do not adhere to the view that following the majority wisdom is for technical reasons only. In contrast, in a community, as I explained, there is no reason to adopt the Platonic proposal, since the decisions there do not seek to reveal the truth but rather to define the will of the public.

This is probably why the Rabbis believed that the law of "after many have voted" that seeks to ascertain the truth cannot teach about the manner of decision-making in a community. There is no source in the Torah that teaches that the majority is the way that best expresses the will of the public, and therefore, if there is a disagreement in the community, the majority cannot impose its opinion on the minority. This would be an infringement on the right that every citizen in a community or democratic state has to decide about his fate. The Rabbis' view favors liberalism and concern for individual rights over democracy as majority rule.

It should be noted that even the first to disagree with the R.T. apparently agreed with him on this point of principle, and therefore always made sure to add the logical reasoning in addition to the verse itself. In their view, too, the verse that deals with decision-making in the Jewish court (i.e., striving for halakhic truth) does not teach about a democratic majority (which aims to define the will of the public), and therefore it should be seen at most as a distant source of inspiration for the law of the democratic majority (majority in the community). The main thing is the explanation that says that without this it would be impossible to conduct business.[6]

My article mentions a dispute between historians Yitzhak Ber and Chaim Soloveitchik (see his aforementioned book), whether democracy was brought into general thought from the Torah or whether Halacha was influenced in this matter by general thought. I tend to favor Ber's opinion, since as we have seen, the verse "after many to lead astray" (cited by Soloveitchik as a source for the democratic concept) has nothing to do with democracy.

Summary: Back to Uri Yizhar

If we return to Marine Le Pen and Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, the conclusion is that there is indeed no obstacle to criticizing the majority's decision, but at the same time there is an obligation to accept it. The majority's decision is the result of a mechanism that reflects the will of the public, and this is what is required in a democracy. Although we have no guarantee that the majority does indeed reflect the most correct decision, we also do not need such a guarantee to determine that the majority is decisive.[7]

So, in this column we addressed the question Does the majority rule?, and we saw that it does indeed determine. But at the same time we saw that it does not depend on the question of whether the majority gets the truth or not. Ostensibly the question of the majority and the truth (Is the majority right?) remains open. On the other hand, majority law in halakhic law generally assumes that the probabilistic majority is indeed an indication of the truth. For example, we saw that in a court of law whose goal is to uncover halakhic truth, the Torah instructs us to follow the majority. In other words, it seems that the majority is indeed a criterion for truth, even if this has nothing to do with the democratic validity of the majority decision. It is no wonder that the sages learned from this verse the rule of majority law, the purpose of which is for the majority (perhaps with the exception of the majority law as a whole) to ascertain the truth. In the next column I will try to delve a little deeper into the question of the connection between majority and truth (Is the majority right?) and to show that this connection is also far from trivial.

[1] He adds another personal sentence there that is less important to our subject, but I will also include it here for the sake of completeness:

It seems that the upheavals and hardships that Israel has experienced since 1977 can teach us that the just punishment that the people imposed on the establishment in 1977 did not bring a cure for the ills of society and the state, and Ben-Aharon's words, even if they were said at the time as an irritated response, were a kind of prediction that, unfortunately, largely came true.

[2] There are versions that require handing over the decision to professionals. My assumption is that in political fields, such as security and foreign policy, there are no experts. As Ben-Gurion said, experts are experts in what was, not what will be. Therefore, I am dealing here with the question of handing over the decision to smart people and not to professionals.

[3] These various mechanisms are discussed in the field of mathematical economics. There is an incredibly fascinating book by Prof. Shmuel Nitzan, Preference and social choice, published by the Open University, which reviews the topic and shows several mathematical theorems with interesting and surprising results regarding it.

[4] See Mordechai in the Book of Revelation, 19:1-2, and also inResponse From Maharam Ben Baruch C. Rell and more.

For a review, see Menachem Ayalon's book, Hebrew law (Volume 1, Chapter Nineteen), as well as in the book by Prof. Chaim Soloveitchik, Responsorial Psalm as a source historical also Wikipedia By 'Community Regulations'.

[5] Also appears in my book (with Gabriel Hazut) In the shadow of wisdom, Kfar Hasidim Tsha, 2010.

[6] Ironically, it is precisely the law of the majority as a whole, which is generally perceived as the furthest from the meaning of the verse "after many to incline" (only some of the latter connect them), that is closest to the law of the democratic majority. It essentially says that the majority gives its character to the whole. Similarly, in a democratic majority, the will of the majority defines the will of the entire public.

[7] I will only note that a similar error arises with respect to the authority of the Talmud or halakhic authority. There too, people tend to think that if the Talmud has authority, then it is wiser and not wrong. There too, this is not necessary. The Talmud has authority because it was decided so by the whole of Israel, but this does not mean that it does not contain errors, and perhaps not even that it is wiser than any other sage. The validity of a decision and its correctness are not coincident principles.