On Faith and Rationality (Column 31)

With God's help

On Faith and Rationality[1]

The title Faith and Rationality is usually associated with arguments that lead to faith or refute it. In that context too, I wrote in my notebooks that belief in God is an almost necessary conclusion of rational thought, and that, in my view, one who does not believe does not hold a rational worldview. But here I want to address something else: not faith itself, but the way of life of the believer and the manner in which he makes decisions. It is commonly thought that a religious person makes decisions in his day-to-day life in a less rational way than a secular person. The religious person believes in mystical factors that cannot be observed, and in everyday life as well he places his trust in mystical and transcendent factors and in principles that do not accord with common sense. By contrast, a secular person acts on the basis of sensible, common-sense considerations and does not believe in imaginary friends and various kinds of Flying Spaghetti Monsters. Pure rationality.

I would like to argue that the truth is precisely the opposite (see also my side remark here in section 1). The conduct of a religious person is highly rational, whereas the secular person usually does not conduct himself that way. Moreover, in many cases the secular person's inability to understand religious perception and decision-making stems precisely from their extremely rational character. Claims like these may strike some readers as provocative, so let me clarify that I mean them in complete seriousness. This is, sincerely and truly, how I understand the matter.

Let me say at the outset that I am speaking only on the typological plane, not about any concrete individual. An example of typological analysis is Rabbi Soloveitchik's book Halakhic Man, which attempts to describe a theoretical and pure figure of the man of Jewish law. Although it is common knowledge that he had a very specific person before his eyes (his grandfather, R. Chaim of Brisk), his intention was nonetheless to describe a typological figure and not a concrete individual. He describes a figure of an ideal believer whom he calls "Halakhic Man," and the fact that such a concrete figure stood before him is not important for the discussion. I would add that my use of the example of Halakhic Man here is not accidental. The figure before my eyes as I write is not merely a believer in general, but Halakhic Man as Rabbi Soloveitchik described him. This is a particular type of religious person which, in my view as in his, is perceived as the religious ideal. When I speak about the rationality of religious conduct, I mean his conduct.

On Orthopedists and Revolutions

Years ago I heard Shlomo Nitzan on the radio telling a joke attributed to Dov Sadan (a well-known scholar of literature from the Hebrew University). Sadan stated that the person who would carry out the next revolution in the world would probably be a Jewish orthopedist. Jewish, because all the revolutionaries in the world are Jews. But why an orthopedist? The answer is simple. The first Jewish revolutionary was Abraham our Patriarch, who called on everyone to Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? ("Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these"). Such a world did not come into being by itself and by chance, and therefore there is probably someone who created it. Abraham demanded that we use our heads and draw conclusions. The second Jewish revolutionary was Jesus, who explained to people that The Merciful One desires the heart. ("the Merciful One desires the heart"), that is, God wants the heart (and not necessarily commandments or opinions). So we began with the head and now descended to the heart. The third Jewish revolutionary was Marx, who taught us that everything is in the belly. A person's needs and interests—his gut—are what drive him and the world. Marx was a revolutionary who moved us from the heart to the belly. The next Jewish revolutionary was Freud, who taught us that everything is determined below the belt. Once we had already descended from the head to the heart, from the heart to the gut, and from the gut to below the belt, Sadan asks, what remains? Probably something even lower, perhaps connected to the legs. Hence the unavoidable conclusion that the next Jewish revolutionary will be an orthopedist.

The Decline from Intellect to Emotion

In the picture Dov Sadan described there is a very real insight, both with respect to history and with respect to our own generation. Historically, there is no doubt that Christianity, which replaced Judaism, places the heart at the center. It did have brilliant thinkers and rationalists, and yet its religious focus was the heart. Judaism, by contrast, places the intellect at the center. Here too there are exceptions that grant the heart a more central place, but it seems to me that the mainstream is intellectual and logical, advocating a rational or rationalist way of acting (this is the figure of Halakhic Man). That is with respect to history. But this insight is also highly relevant to our own time.

During the modernist period there was confidence—probably exaggerated confidence—in reason and in science. The feeling was that rationality, science, and progress would solve all our problems. In the middle of the twentieth century, mainly following the Holocaust, the postmodern revolution took place, expressing a profound despair of reason and thought. Humanity came to see that science had not advanced us morally and had not helped us formulate a correct or better value-based worldview. This revolution ushered us into a deeply emotional age, in which sensations and feelings are more important than reason.

Thus, for example, art criticism today usually appeals to feelings and emotional responses. A person returns from a concert, a play, a film, or an exhibition, and what he reports is how moved he was (or was not). In most cases you will not hear arguments and conceptions regarding what he saw and experienced. Morality too is generally tied to feelings and not to thought. Even those who vehemently oppose moral relativism, if you press them hard enough, will tell you that morality is subjective and emotional. Certainly it has no connection to thought and intellect. An immoral person is seen as defective on the emotional plane (see dozens of articles in neuroscience that speak about psychopaths as people with impairments in their emotional dimensions. Some of them simply identify the two).

In our age, moral, value-based, and political discussions too take place mainly on the emotional plane and rely far less on rational analysis. To persuade a person of a left-wing worldview, it is enough to describe a heartbreaking case of a Palestinian who suffered under the occupation through no fault of his own—or perhaps with fault of his own (cf. Gideon Levy). By the same token, arguments in favor of the right are based on describing the wickedness of the Palestinians and portraying them as a collection of terrorists, subhumans, and a subculture. The hope on both sides is that the emotions will help convert one's ideological and political worldview (not that this always works). Arguments about targeted killings, harming innocents, or any other dilemma debated among us focus on the emotional plane and are almost devoid of arguments. At most you will hear that something is proportional or disproportionate. This vague and empty terminology is the intellectual pinnacle of these discussions. In my columns here I have more than once touched on the character of our public discourse on various issues, and you can find there several more examples.

All you need do is look at the media and political storms that erupt here every other day: from Netanyahu's remark that the Arabs are flocking to the polling stations, through Garbuz on the primitive religious people, and only now we have finished the saga around the "comparison" Netanyahu made between the parents of the shooting soldier and bereaved parents. In all these cases, almost without exception, a broad media and political consensus formed around a genuinely foolish view. Note carefully: I am not speaking about political bias, but about foolishness. Simply nonsensical things that, for some reason, all sides in the discourse agree to, as if we were dealing with an irresistible flash of intellectual brilliance. Our public discourse consists of emotional sloganeering and seizes on words and the initial impression they make on us without trying to clarify their meaning. Arguments are not the relevant genre in these "discussions."

For years I have been torn between two possibilities: either all our media people and politicians (as well as the public) are complete fools, or something else is going on here. Nor do I attribute this to political bias (at least not only to that), since in the end even those being criticized apologize for what they said—that is, they humbly accept the foolish criticism hurled at them. Since it is hard for me to believe that they are all complete fools, and since from at least some of them one occasionally hears sensible things, my conclusion is that this is probably not a matter of lack of intelligence but of failure to use the intellect. Despair of reason causes people, some of them quite talented, to form positions emotionally instead of using their heads. The initial impression that arises determines the meaning of things, rather than a sober and systematic analysis of them. Appearance and the initial feeling replace logical analysis.

Once I heard Rabbi and actor Haggai Lober recount that he used to serve as an instructor in youth seminars held at Midreshet Ofra. Everyone sat around the bonfire and there was tension in the air. If he proved to them that there is a God, they would all become religious and head immediately to the study hall. And if not—everyone would be at the beach this coming Sabbath. The intellectual discussion was fateful and conclusion-oriented, and you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. A few years later he was still instructing at those same seminars, and the same youth groups came, of the same ages and the same backgrounds. They sat around the same bonfire and spoke (or tried to speak) about the same subjects. Lober tells them that there is a God and expects rebellion and objections. To his surprise, everyone agrees. Then he adds that God also revealed Himself at Sinai and gave the Torah. Here too, to his astonishment, the matter is received with Olympian calm. So he goes one step further and says that every person is obligated to fulfill the divine command, and again he encounters silent nods of agreement. At that point he is left speechless. "So what's the problem? Where are we stuck?" he asks. And the answer is: "It doesn't suit us right now" (or: "We don't connect to it"). It seems to me that the situation is familiar to every one of us. The meaning is that even if the intellect says something, that does not mean that this is what we will do or think. The bottom line depends on the heart and emotion, not on the intellect.

Brain, Heart, and Liver—or Heart, Brain, and Liver?

There is a saying, whose source I do not know, that the proper order of things is brain, heart, and liver. The brain charts the course, and the heart (emotions) and the liver (needs) follow after it. When the order is reversed, we get heart, brain, and liver—that is, the heart leads and after it the brain. As I have presented matters here, this seems to be exactly the situation in our generation. This is the generation of heart-first: the rule of the intellect over the heart is out, the dominance of the heart is in. It is important to understand that this does not mean people are becoming stupider or less intelligent. Not at all. Rather, they are driven by the heart and not by the intellect. Because of despair of reason, the heart determines what is right and what should be done, and at most afterward the intellect rationalizes things and gives them a rational anchoring (see the example of becoming religious and leaving religion in the previous column).

Sometimes I get the impression that the analytical ability and the relatively high intelligence that people today possess compared to earlier generations lead to the fact that any thesis and any claim can be established convincingly, and that itself causes despair of reason. The feeling is that one cannot reach conclusions through logic, for logic merely takes us from the premises to the conclusion, but the premises themselves cannot be justified, and therefore we have lost confidence in reason and thought. Thus grows postmodernism, which holds that everyone has his own premises, or his own discourse (narrative).

As part of that same phenomenon, many people think that philosophy is a superfluous field which, unlike science, has never advanced even a single step. This one says one thing and that one says another, and the disputes remain as they were. Unlike science, there is no empirical or rational way to decide between philosophical views, and therefore the field remains stuck. It seems to me that this is a great mistake. From my experience, when one listens carefully to the different views, one discovers that almost all of them are logical and correct. At depth, there are almost no real disputes in philosophy. Each side expresses another facet of the truth, and the whole together is the accumulated philosophical knowledge. Every new philosophical view adds yet another facet to philosophical knowledge, and it certainly does accumulate, become more refined, and develop. What leads to these feelings is that same superficial perspective described above, in which we examine things on the verbal plane and according to the initial impression they make on us, and then we see abysmal and futile disputes. Thus is created the feeling that each person begins from different basic assumptions and therefore reaches different conclusions, and from here comes postmodernism, which advocates a multiplicity of narratives without the possibility of discourse between them. But to my understanding, freeing ourselves from the initial impression and looking more deeply reveals precisely the opposite picture. Most plausible arguments will win almost wall-to-wall agreement. The disputes are mainly about formulations and different points of view, and it seems that in most philosophical disagreements we are dealing with the same picture described from different vantage points or in different terminology.

Dilemmas of Jewish Law and Morality

Years ago there was in Jerusalem a chemist named Shach, one of whose hobbies was to explode affairs that aroused criticism of Judaism and Jewish law. On one occasion he published a case of Jews who on the Sabbath saw a gentile whose life was in danger and took no action to save him. He used this to bring to the surface the Jewish law that forbids desecrating the Sabbath in order to save the life of a gentile. Another time he published a story about the wife of a kohen (priest) who had been raped, and the rabbis required the couple to divorce. Each such case stirred polemics and harsh criticism of the morality of Jewish law and of those bound by it. In some cases it turned out to be a media canard, and of course The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor. ("the Jews had light and gladness and joy and honor"). But the problems he raised were real. Jewish law really does forbid desecrating the Sabbath in order to save the life of a gentile,[2] and it really does require the raped wife of a kohen to divorce him.

I still remember that the most common argument I heard regarding the case of the kohen's wife was: "Don't you have a heart?!" After all, this woman and her family had undergone no simple tragedy and trauma. She loves her husband and he loves her, and both of them love their children, and Jewish law heartlessly instructs them to separate and makes everyone miserable. How can that be? Where is the heart? I tried to explain to my interlocutors that those rabbis had no less expansive a heart than they did, but they also had confidence in the principles of Jewish law that require the couple to separate. In their halakhic world there is a clash between the religious-halakhic value and the moral value, and they ruled in favor of the religious value.[3] My secular interlocutors were not committed to the values of Jewish law, and therefore they were of course not caught in that dilemma. In such a situation it is very easy to criticize the halakhic authorities for being immoral. One who is not in the dilemma will certainly decide in favor of the moral side. That is, there is no dispute here between someone more moral and someone less moral, but between one who is in a dilemma between morality and Jewish law (and who is fully committed to morality, no less than his secular counterpart) and one who is not in that dilemma. That was what I tried to explain to the critics, but you will not be surprised to hear that it did not really help.

Here I want to focus on another aspect that probably lay behind the dispute. Why do the critics assume that those rabbis have no heart? They did not say that they were immoral, nor did they dispute the commitment to Jewish law. It was clear to them that there was a disagreement here about that commitment, and these critics understood that they were standing facing people with a different position. They perceived their criticism as a criticism that was valid even according to my own view (that is, according to the view of those committed to Jewish law): if we had a heart, we would abandon Jewish law and act in the way required by feeling and emotion—that is, we would not require the couple to separate. They took it for granted that if we had a heart, we would act on it even if we were committed to Jewish law.

Had the critics said that Jewish law is nonsense and that one who is committed to it is a fool—I would have kept quiet. That is a substantive disagreement. But they did not argue that. From the totality of their words it emerged that even if someone is committed to Jewish law, since his heart tells him to keep the couple together and not harm them, that is necessarily what he ought to have done. In a dilemma between brain and heart, the heart necessarily prevails. This is part of that same heart-first approach, whereas the rabbis expressed a brain-first approach. My interlocutors simply could not understand that way of thinking at all. Here we begin to see the emotional incomprehension toward the rational conduct of those committed to Jewish law. Conduct determined by principles is not well received today. It is ideological rigidity and adherence to that neglected and disappointing creature from which we have all already despaired: the intellect. Instead of following the heart, we cling to something arbitrary, cold, and alienated (it is arbitrary because the heart does not feel it, of course).

The Rationality of the Believer

In my notebooks on this site I tried to show that the religious conception is entirely rational, and in fact I argued that one cannot be rational without faith. I make this claim on three different planes: 1. Faith is derived from the basic principles of thought. There are excellent arguments in its favor, and therefore a rational person ought to adopt the conclusion that there is a God. 2. Without belief in God there is no reasonable basis for morality (the fourth notebook), nor for the basic principles of thought (the third notebook). Without faith, you are condemned to be irrational. 3. The daily conduct of the religious person (= Halakhic Man) and his decision-making are distinctly rational. The first two planes deal with the philosophical God, that is, deism. The third plane deals with a person who believes in the God of religion, that is, theism (Jewish theism, in this case).

The Rationality of Religious Commitment

What is rationality? We can view our decision-making process as based on foundational principles that are accepted axiomatically, together with the logical inference of operative conclusions derived from them with respect to our behavior. The premises are very hard to characterize as rational or not. As is well known, rational is whoever thinks like me, and irrational is everyone who disagrees with me. But that is true only in the realm of premises, because we have no way to judge them and distinguish between the rational and the non-rational. The logical inference, however—that is, the move from premises to conclusions—can indeed be characterized in terms of rationality and irrationality. If a person derives his conclusions consistently from his premises and maintains consistency and systematicity in his way, one can say that he is a rational person. By contrast, a person who acts from the gut, on the basis of emotions, and does not preserve consistency is not rational. So rationality characterizes mainly the logical derivation of the conclusion from the premises, and not the premises themselves. Moshe Dayan once said that only a donkey never changes his mind, and I entirely agree. But there are people who have no confidence in opinions at all, and they simply do not act on the basis of opinions but on the basis of momentary sensations and feelings.

An interesting anecdote in this context appears in the responsa Igrot Moshe, Even HaEzer, part I, sec. 120, where R. Moshe Feinstein discusses a person who is insane in one respect (that is, a person who has one delusion and in all other contexts conducts himself logically):

Now, aside from this permission, one may also argue that he should not be considered a lunatic at all on account of thinking himself the Messiah, just as one who worships idolatry of wood and stone is not considered a lunatic, even though it is certainly great folly to believe in wood and stone. Rather, we say that he is mentally competent but wicked, and we sentence him to death. So too, one who regards himself as the Messiah, although this is great folly, should not be considered a lunatic; rather, his excessive arrogance has misled him into thinking that he is fit to be the Messiah. Consequently, one can argue even further that all his foolish actions, which stem from his mistaken belief that he is the Messiah and that, in his corrupt view, they are for the betterment of the world, do not render him a lunatic. For anything a person does on the basis of some doctrine or path that he believes in, even if it is great stupidity, does not make him a lunatic in this respect, as is evident from idol worshippers, who performed many foolish acts, and all the amorite practices mentioned in tractate Shabbat 67 are foolish acts, yet those who do them still have the legal status of mentally competent persons.

He determines here that if that person acts in a manner consistent with his premises (= rationally), then he is not insane, whatever his premises may be. He identifies insanity here with irrationality in the sense defined above, that is, with inconsistency (incidentally, I do not agree with him on this).

Halakhic Man, as the Jewish ideal, is a person who conducts his life according to fundamental principles, and makes decisions by means of analysis and the logical derivation of operative conclusions from those principles. Every step in his life is examined in the light of his principles, and the decision is the systematic application of the principles. A secular person, by contrast, usually conducts his life "from the gut." His value-laden decisions are generally based on vague feelings and slogans, and very heavily on emotions. He behaves morally even though there is no justification for this in his worldview (see the fourth notebook). He rebels against injustices although this is absurd in his worldview. He believes in the basic principles of scientific thought and makes analogies and generalizations with no logical basis whatsoever. He acts on the basis of emotions and is sure that he is the pinnacle of rationalism. In the example of the kohen's wife brought above, this difference could be seen in a very sharp and striking way.

As I already mentioned, much of a secular person's failure to understand religious conduct stems from the extreme rationalism of the religious conception. He simply cannot understand how people act on the basis of "detached" principles without paying attention to their emotions. He does not understand conduct carried out in light of principles and not according to the heart. That is why it always seems strange to me when I hear people speak of secularism as a rational approach and religiosity as emotional and irrational conduct. It is simply a complete inversion of reality.

You may say that this comparison is unfair. I am comparing an ideal figure (Halakhic Man) on the religious side with the ordinary person in the street on the secular side. So I will repeat and remind you that I am not speaking here about people but about ideal types. In practice there are not a few religious people who act very irrationally, but to the best of my judgment there are almost no secular people who conduct themselves rationally. Of course there too there are sensible people, but the foundations on which their reasoning rests are themselves groundless. Their decision-making in life is not based on a systematic and consistent set of principles (apart from a few exceptions. Perhaps Moshe Kroy and the like).

Torah Study

This is in fact the deep meaning of Torah study. In halakhic study we engage in abstract analysis of theoretical ideas, and the conclusions generate practical implications in the small details of everyday life. Every conclusion I reach, however abstract it may be, has practical significance. It is immediately translated into an implication for my practical life. It is no accident that the Talmud and the commentators constantly ask What practical difference does it make? ("what practical difference does it make?"), that is, what practical implication follows from the dispute or the statement under discussion. Every statement or claim has an implication in the world of action (even if not always an actual practical implication, as with the well-known implication regarding the betrothal of a woman).[4]

In fact, as several figures of Jewish law and thought wrote (two of the most prominent among them are the Alter Rebbe of Chabad in Tanya, and his great opponent R. Chaim of Volozhin in his book Nefesh HaChaim), the whole point of Torah study is the connection between idea and theory on the one hand and practice on the other. The abstract analysis can deal with theoretical ideas such as the nature of time, space, the conceptual understanding of various halakhic obligations, and the conclusions touch on the question of how to place the pot on the stove on the Sabbath and what and how we ought to do when going to the bathroom. This is a connection between heaven and earth that is unique to Jewish law. Jewish law gives us a conceptual and principled system that allows us to discuss the small and prosaic moves in our lives through abstract theoretical and conceptual analysis.

The Talmud (Kiddushin 40b) discusses the question: which is greater, study or action?

Rabbi Tarfon and the elders were once reclining in the upper chamber of the house of Nitza in Lod, when this question was asked before them: Is study greater or is action greater? Rabbi Tarfon spoke up and said: Action is greater. Rabbi Akiva spoke up and said: Study is greater. Then they all answered and said: Study is greater, for study leads to action.

The conclusion is that study is greater, since it leads to action. This is a strange conclusion, for if study is a means in order to know what to do, that means that action is the goal and study is the means. So why does that imply that study is greater? It seems to me that this Talmudic passage should be read differently. The assumption underlying the question was that one can separate study and action, and then the question arises which of them is greater. The answer is that this is an artificial separation. What is great is "study that leads to action"—that is, study and action are two successive stages that cannot be separated. Study that ends in a practical conclusion is study, and without a practical conclusion it is not study.

A Little Lithuanian Existentialism

The Talmud is a highly associative system of passages, but one who knows it and is skilled in Talmudic analysis finds in it a complex and fascinating conceptual framework that enables us to connect worlds utterly different from one another, and to infer systematically conclusions for practical application in our daily lives. A person wrestling with a moral or halakhic problem, and at times also with various educational and social problems, can find in the Talmud tools to analyze them and reach a decision in a systematic and consistent way. This ought to be consistent with his other decisions as well, since the principles of Jewish law he uses have further implications in entirely different fields.

A skilled student derives tremendous satisfaction from such a life, if only from the very ability to make decisions and act rationally. Jewish law and the Talmud give us a conceptual framework that enables us to live according to principles that we formulate through theoretical analysis and conclusion-oriented study of the relevant passages. In this sense, it seems to me that the Torah is the only framework that offers the possibility of living in a completely rational way, of drawing conclusions and formulating positions regarding almost every step we take in life, and then acting accordingly.

Clearly, this is not a monochromatic system (one of a single color). Different people formulate different worldviews and reach conclusions utterly different from one another, and all of them do so within the Talmudic-halakhic framework. And yet it is the Talmudic and halakhic framework that makes this possible for them. Surprisingly enough, personal expression too is made possible in the best way precisely within the Talmudic framework. A person who thinks in a certain way can ground his conception in the Talmud and its commentators and try to persuade others of his position. There is a framework for discourse among them, and that enables them to conduct dialogue, discussion, and dispute, to bring proofs and refutations, and not dismiss one another with the noncommittal claim that everyone has his own truth or his own narrative (or with vague talk about proportionality). Nor are they forced to make do with merely expressing feelings for or against—that is, remaining on the emotional plane, as is customary in our parts—but can also engage in rational clarification and reach a conclusion.

The feeling I am describing here depends on a certain conception of Jewish law and halakhic ruling (described in my article here). Some view Jewish law as a given and fixed corpus that binds us all. Thus it is customary in the yeshivot to study the Talmud and its commentators in free and open conceptual study, but when one reaches the study of Jewish law, one looks in the Mishnah Berurah or other books of halakhic ruling, and thus knows what to do. In my eyes this is a distortion of the halakhic idea. The whole point of Jewish law is making decisions autonomously. This is not only a right but an obligation (see my above-mentioned article). Whoever sees himself as part of the halakhic discourse and allows himself to intervene in it and express a position, to stand his ground and make decisions on his own—he, and he alone, will experience this special satisfaction.

Rationality and Becoming Religious

Of course, in order to live this way one must adopt the foundational assumptions of the religious worldview (or at least one interpretation among several possible ones). Therefore nothing I say here is meant to persuade anyone to become religious. It is not reasonable to adopt assumptions you do not believe in merely so that you can derive conclusions from them rationally. Therefore my remarks here are not aimed at bringing anyone to become religious (though I have no objection to that whatsoever. If someone decides to do so, I will be very glad), but only at describing the satisfaction in the life of Halakhic Man. Contrary to the impression one may receive—as though Jewish law only shackles and restricts us and our thinking—it seems to me that this is not correct. There is a measure of restriction in halakhic commitment, but precisely because of it a great freedom and an exceptionally broad and original personal expression become possible. Contrary to the common conception that halakhic conduct is not rational, the opposite is true. Halakhic Man embodies an extreme rationalist mode of conduct.

Above I described three planes of religious rationality. The first two planes (the deistic ones) may perhaps cause a person to become religious, that is, to adopt the assumptions of the religious and halakhic framework. The third plane (the theistic one), on which I focused here, speaks to one who is already within it. But perhaps it can also give people motivation to examine the assumptions that make such rational living possible. Perhaps the aspiration to rationality can cause people to examine this option more seriously.

[1] One of the readers, Benjamin, reminded me some time ago that I had said I wanted to write something about the question of rationality in religious conduct and its connection to Torah study.

[2] Although, see my article here, where at the end I argue that this is not correct.

[3] See column 15 on the relationship between Jewish law and morality. When the Torah says that such a couple must separate, the assumption is that the Torah also took the moral aspect into account and held that the halakhic value outweighs it. Therefore, in a case like this, about which the Torah speaks directly, it is reasonable to decide in favor of Jewish law and against morality. This is not always the case, and this is not the place to elaborate further.

[4] In the eleventh volume in the Talmudic Logic series we deal with the Platonism of the Talmud. There we note that the "implications," that is, the consequences, are not always practical. But one always takes care to see what the implication of every claim is, because the assumption is that every theoretical position must project in some way onto the practical plane, even if it is an implication that will not actually be realized in our world.