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Clarifications-Regarding-the-Transgressions-of-Secular-Jews.pdf

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121 Rabbi Michael Abraham

Clarifications Regarding the Transgressions of Secular Jews

(A Reply to the Responses)

From between the lines of the words of my friends Rabbi Dror Piksler (in his response in the previous issue) and Rabbi Nahum Neria (in this issue), it is evident that they did not understand a considerable part of what I wrote 1. Perhaps the problem lies in the clarity of my words, and because of the sensitivity of the subject I find it appropriate to clarify them once again, while addressing the claims raised in both responses.

A. On Rabbi Piksler’s Response

Rabbi Piksler opens his response with the assertion that I (as does my friend Nadav Shnerb, in his article in the same issue) argue that the law of mutual responsibility does not apply to Jews who do not observe Torah and the commandments. Here I will speak only for myself, but some of the points are, in my opinion, correct with respect to Nadav Shnerb’s article as well.

I will begin by saying that nothing could be further from my intention than the claim that there is no law of mutual responsibility with respect to secular Jews. I made clear again and again 2 that my entire intention was to say precisely the opposite (!): my claim was__ that their actions do not bear the significance of transgression__, since one who does not acknowledge the existence of the Creator of the world and the reality of His command is not in a position to commit transgressions. But I made clear that we are obligated to draw them near and bring awareness of obligation into their consciousness. What is that if not mutual responsibility? The fact that I argued that one may cause them to stumble does not stem from an absence of mutual responsibility, but from the fact that the transgression, with respect to them, is not a stumbling block at all. That was the core of my argument, whether it is correct or not (until now no response has reached me that refutes it substantively).

That is with regard to the substance of my argument. The argument in the article rests on proofs and on intuitions (and not only on intuitions alone, as Rabbi Piksler claims in his conclusion, although I certainly attribute great weight to intuitions even with respect to practical Jewish law, and especially to compelling intuitions such as the one in my article, but this is not the place to elaborate).

I will now try briefly to go over the main points of his claims and answer them one by one:

1. As for the claims based on mutual responsibility (section A of his article), I regard myself as exempt from responding to them, as explained above.

1. In section B of his article, he brings an encyclopedic entry regarding the law of ‘placing a stumbling block before the blind,’ and I did not understand what place it has in a response to my article. Did I deny the existence of such a prohibition? I addressed it in detail in my remarks as well.

1. In section C he compares the Karaites in Maimonides’ time to the secular of our day. Here again there is a complete misunderstanding of my words. My entire argument is that one must distinguish between one who believes in the Creator of the world but denies some of His commandments 3, and one who does not believe at all. So what do the Karaites have to do with this? Reliance on sources that are not

1. Despite the clarifications, in writing and in a telephone conversation, that I gave Rabbi Piksler.

1. See my article at the beginning of section C, in note 14, throughout section E, and elsewhere.

1. This may perhaps be similar to those who are ‘traditional’ in our day, who in my view are far worse than the heretics, for they know their Master and rebel against Him.

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122 Rabbi Michael Abraham Clarifications Regarding the Transgressions of Secular Jews (A Reply to the Responses)

relevant is one of the common failures in discussions of these subjects, and the main point of my article was to dispel these mistaken comparisons.

1. At the beginning of section D Rabbi Piksler cites my remarks (at the end of section B of my article) regarding ‘Let the wicked gorge himself and die.’ He argues that there is no permission to cause a wicked person to stumble into sin, but at most to let him stumble on his own and not prevent him from doing so (= not restrain him). He brings Maimonides and the Meiri (Bava Kamma 69a) to prove his claim.

However, several responses may be given to this:

A. I wrote explicitly that the possibility of permitting one to cause a wicked person to stumble into sin is one opinion among several. So what proof is there from Maimonides and the Meiri, even if he were correct in his interpretation of their words?

B. Even in the words of Maimonides and the Meiri there is no basis for his claim. Does it say there that there is no permission to cause one to stumble? On the contrary, at most he may suggest such a distinction on his own, but not rely on them as a source that there is a prohibition against causing wicked people to stumble in transgressions.

C. As I wrote, even the wording of the verse, ‘gorge him,’ indicates that there is permission (and perhaps an obligation) to cause one to stumble.

D. I referred to the Talmudic Encyclopedia (note 14 and the surrounding discussion), and he rejects this and claims that there is no such opinion there. Again, this is at most a distinction (a possible one) that he draws on his own, but it is certainly not what is written there. I would add that I have now found explicitly in Sdei Chemed (vol. 2, p. 302) opinions that state explicitly that there is permission to cause a wicked person to stumble into sin (!), that is, ‘to violate placing a stumbling block before the blind,’ in the explicit language of those decisors. The case concerns judges who administer an oath to a person when they are certain that he will swear falsely, which is a classic case of ‘placing a stumbling block before the blind.’ To be sure, there is room to disagree with this (see there), but such opinions certainly do exist, and that is what I wrote.

E. But beyond all this, here again there is a complete misunderstanding of my words. For I argued that a secular Jew is not ‘wicked,’ and that the law of mutual responsibility does apply to him, and therefore this rule is not valid with respect to him. At most I raised the possibility of learning from here something regarding the question of the harm in the world or in the soul caused by transgressions of these kinds, and even that was only a side remark in a few sentences in my article, as an opening to the argument and not as part of it (even in the conclusion I did not rely on it, and not without reason).

There is more to be said in response to Rabbi Piksler:

1. In section D of his article there is a factual claim according to which most secular Jews in Israel today believe in God, though this is a belief in a God who does not command, as he puts it. I am not at all sure that belief in some philosophical deity has anything to do with the faith of Israel. Christians, Muslims, and perhaps even Bushmen, believe in some kind of higher power. In my view, from a Jewish standpoint, this is complete atheism. Our God revealed Himself at Sinai and gave us commandments. He is one and possesses all powers, and promises us providence and redemption. All of these are essential with respect to Him.

In any event, none of this is at all necessary to the discussion itself. My claim, on the basis of the end of chapter 8 of Maimonides’ Laws of Kings, that one who fulfills a commandment not because God commanded it to Moses at Sinai is not performing a commandment, certainly remains fully valid with respect to these people as well. After all, if they do not believe in a commanding God, what meaning can the ‘commandments’ they perform possibly have?

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123 Rabbi Michael Abraham Clarifications Regarding the Transgressions of Secular Jews (A Reply to the Responses)

1. Rabbi Piksler does not address my legal arguments: from the words of contemporary decisors (Rabbi Feinstein, who says that a blessing by a secular Jew is not considered a blessing, and Rabbi Sternbuch), from the words of decisors and early authorities dealing with increasing the measure in ‘placing a stumbling block before the blind,’ from the words of Maimonides in the Laws of Kings, from the Talmudic discussion of ‘a child taken captive,’ and from inadvertent sin-offerings, which on their face quite directly support my position⁴.

He contents himself with the unreasoned assertion that my errors stem from a mistaken intuition. I do indeed begin with an intuition, which in my opinion is almost unavoidable and certainly not mistaken, but I also provide arguments. I saw nothing in his remarks that would cause me to abandon that intuition.

B. On Rabbi Neria’s Response

I will now address the short response of Rabbi Nahum Neria that appears in this issue. First, I did not really understand the term ‘Jewish-legal thought,’ which he uses with respect to my remarks. To the best of my judgment, my article was an article of Jewish law, whether correct or incorrect, and not a philosophical one.

And now to his actual remarks. There are two paragraphs in his response: the first argues against the comparison I proposed between a commandment performed by one who does not believe and a transgression committed by such a person. His words contain no argument, nor any rejection of my arguments, and therefore I do not see any objection here. There is indeed a widespread assumption that there is such a distinction, and it is precisely against that assumption that I wrote my article.

In the second paragraph Rabbi Neria argues that heretics have existed from time immemorial, and that according to my view an offender could always exempt himself from punishment by claiming that he does not believe.

These remarks are highly puzzling, and it is difficult for me to see what I need to answer here beyond referring him back to what I wrote in the article. Does he disagree with the Radbaz, who says that compulsion in matters of belief is also compulsion? Or does he think there is no compulsion here? If so, he must answer what compulsion in matters of belief is, if not a person who does not believe in God at all. How is one to explain the term ‘a child taken captive,’ which I certainly did not invent? After all, most decisors agree that a secular person in our day is regarded as under compulsion, and therefore certainly is also exempt from punishment. If so, the same question should be asked of them: ostensibly every offender in the past could have exempted himself by claiming that he was ‘a child taken captive’? Such children have always existed.

Beyond that, there is here a complete misunderstanding of my words. My innovation did not concern punishment at all, for the exemption of a complete heretic from punishment is perfectly obvious (at least in my view), and it is even agreed upon by most decisors. In my article I argued for more than that: there is no act of transgression here at all, and not merely an exemption from punishment. The practical difference concerns ‘placing a stumbling block before the blind,’ as was explained in my remarks.

As for his actual question (why every offender in the past did not exempt himself with this claim), although as stated it is not directed at me at all but at all the decisors who exempt the heretics of our day from punishment, I will answer briefly (similar to what I already wrote in my article).

The question is how the court knows that a person is ‘a child taken captive,’ or how it knows that a person is under compulsion in matters of belief (and that is not always the same thing, but the legal status of both is identical). The answer is that ‘we stone on the basis of presumptions.’ That is, when the court comes to judge a person who committed a transgression, it must determine whether this is ‘a child taken captive,’ that is, a person who truly does not believe in God, or at least in His command, or

1. This is apart from the strained reading of the Ran, which I cited in my article, and on which Rabbi Piksler did not rely either.

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124 Rabbi Michael Abraham Clarifications Regarding the Transgressions of Secular Jews (A Reply to the Responses)

a person who committed a transgression out of appetite or in defiance, and who raises this claim (that he does not believe) only in order to escape punishment. One can examine his background, ask his friends and neighbors as witnesses, just as with any inquiry conducted by a court.

And what, in truth, is the basic presumption? If the matter has not been clarified, what do we do? We follow the simple presumption. In the atmosphere prevailing today, even Rabbi Piksler in his above response admits that most of the secular public does not believe in the commands of the Torah, and certainly does not regard itself as bound by them (in my view this is an almost absolute majority). If so, the presumption is that a secular person who commits transgressions today truly does not understand his obligation to the commandments of the Torah. In our day, unlike in the time of the Sages, the presumption is that the person is under compulsion in matters of belief, and not an offender yielding to his inclination. Therefore he is exempt from punishment unless and until it is proven that he is an offender who is aware of his obligation and of his Master and rebels against Him. By contrast, in the time of the Sages the reality was different, for there the presumption was that every Jew who committed a transgression was an offender who knew his Master and rebelled against Him. Then the atmosphere was such that faith was self-evident, and sins were the result of inclination and not of compulsion in matters of belief. Therefore, in the rabbinic courts of the Sages, proof was required that he was under compulsion in matters of belief, and not that he was a believing offender, as in our day⁵.

If so, I agree that there have always been deniers of the fundamentals among the people of Israel. The question is whether they were under compulsion or not. That is the entire difference. I did not invent the exemption of one under compulsion from punishment, and I do not assume that Rabbi Neria disputes it. And compulsion in matters of belief is also compulsion, as the Radbaz writes in his responsum. If so, it is not clear to me what exactly the dispute is about.

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By way of conclusion I would add that, in my view, the editorial staff of ‘Tzohar’ would do well in the future to make sure to send the responses to the authors of the articles, so that they can address them in the same issue and prevent misunderstandings such as these. Moreover, responses like that of Rabbi Drori (regarding the article by my friend Nadav Shnerb, with some of what was said in it I also do not agree) have no place at all in the journal⁶*. ‘Tzohar’ is supposed to deal in substantive and reasoned discussions, not in unreasoned preaching accompanied by sighs, even if they come from the depths of the heart.

Even if the claims raised are difficult and require rethinking the foundations, and especially if they are such, a substantive response is required.

1. Regarding presumption in this sense, see my article ‘On the Nature of Conceptual Inquiries,’ Meisharim 3 (2004), the Yeruham Hesder Yeshiva, note 8. For fuller detail, see the pamphlet ‘Between Factual Reasonings and Legal Reasonings,’ printed as an appendix in the booklet ‘A Lesson on the Law of Migo,’ Michael Abraham, Bnei Brak 2005, part II, chapter 9, and this is not the place to elaborate.

1. Editorial response.