Reflections on the Discourse Following the Interview with Yair Sheleg (Column 310)
The interview with me that was published this past Shabbat in the Shabbat supplement of Makor Rishon aroused quite a few responses. I will begin by noting that a journalistic interview, however comprehensive, especially when it deals with a mass of complex ideas and surveys them from above, cannot be precise. From my perspective its main purpose was to draw attention to the arguments in the trilogy and to spark discussion, and in that I succeeded. I was less interested in presenting the arguments themselves, since a newspaper article is not the appropriate platform for that.
I assume that what I said indeed faithfully represented my worldview (though it is possible that there were also inaccuracies in what I said myself during the conversation). However, in what was written in the newspaper there were several inaccuracies, some of them substantial. I pointed out some of them (certainly not all) in comments that were published here on the site. Unfortunately, the paper did not want to publish them, since their custom is that the interviewee does not respond to the interview. So I posted them on the site, and beyond that I will clarify some of the points in greater detail here.
One of my conclusions is that it is not right to publish such an interview without my prior approval of the content. In my opinion there is usually an ethical problem in having the interviewee review the interview that is being published with him, but when it concerns outlooks and, in particular, delicate and complex issues, it seems that in this case it is indeed necessary and unobjectionable. But that milk has already been spilled. What I shall do now is respond to several points and, through them, clarify in a more general way the proper attitude to these matters. I see no point in arguing about every issue that was raised, since I have already done so in the past in great detail on the site, in the trilogy, and elsewhere (it is a pity that the great majority of the respondents did not bother to read).
I will begin here with a general discussion of these critiques by way of a few examples of the disputed issues, and afterwards I shall take two of the responses to my words and address them in greater detail. In the next column I will continue and focus on the question of emotion and experience, which stood at the center of many of the critiques of my remarks.
The Responses to the Interview
The responses can be divided into two main types:
- There are those who, following the interview, are looking for the trilogy in order to better understand what is written/said there. That was indeed my goal.
- And there are those who do not bother to examine the rationales and the arguments themselves, and prefer to take this or that sentence that was written in the interview and open a broad internet discussion about it, within which the participants draw momentous conclusions for the life of the nation, or express a decisive opinion about my being a criminal Jew in my very person. Thus, for example, there were those who explained that I am actually a deist. Others announced solemnly that I do not understand psychology. Some claimed that I distort sources (the Chazon Ish and R. Kook). But it cannot be denied that I also derived some gains. For instance, I learned that I am arrogant, and in addition also emotionally and spiritually handicapped (a rational autistic). There were also “compliments” (from my perspective) in that they classified me as the new Leibowitz (even though I disagree with most of his views) or saw my position as overly rational, and the like. So thank you all for the tips and the cheap diagnoses that I received free of charge.
I am not saying that anyone who disagrees with something in the interview is obligated to buy the trilogy and read it (even though that is very desirable). I am, however, claiming that if one wishes to form a serious position, it is advisable to do so, or at least to leaf through the site. In any case, one should be aware that latching on to this or that sentence that appears in the written interview is not a sufficient basis on which to argue with it and draw far-reaching conclusions. The interview was conducted against the background of the trilogy, where the issues are spelled out in detail, and my views on most of these topics are available to anyone interested on the site in a well-reasoned and well-grounded fashion.
But as noted, the great majority of the respondents did not do that. And therefore, in my view, the responses (of the second type) mostly suffer from one of two types of problems: either a misunderstanding of my words (sometimes with justification, due to their inaccurate presentation in the interview), or else they raise and recycle arguments that have already received detailed answers in what I have written on the site and in the books. I did not find among them any new argument that would require of me a response that I have not yet given.
I will preface one comment about the manner of the discussion. There are critics who point out that my position is not the accepted one in our tradition, and perhaps even bring some source to that effect. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding, for as I elaborated at great length in the trilogy, my claim is that tradition has no standing in questions of this sort. Therefore, at least here, I do not intend to relate to sources at all.
Let us now turn to some examples.
Example A: The Dispute about Morality
One example of such a discussion is the dispute mentioned in the interview, as reported there, between the Chazon Ish and R. Kook regarding morality. Haggai Mashgav writes the following about this:
I assume that the interview with Rav Michi (link below) will still be discussed here from many angles. Many things in this interview aroused objections in me, and I assume that at least some of them were intended to do so. Here I will focus on one specific point:
Rav Michi claims that on the question of natural morality he follows neither the view of Rav Kook nor that of the Chazon Ish; not the view of Rav Kook that natural morality is planted in the human soul from an upper source and is the basis of serving God, and not the view of the Chazon Ish that it is not a parameter at all but that one should relate to Choshen Mishpat as the ultimate book of morality; rather he claims that it is just one more commandment in the Torah (“And you shall do what is right and good”), and in each case it must be weighed against other commandments.
In practice there is no real difference between the approaches. I do not recall any place where the Chazon Ish permitted things contrary to morality that Rav Kook prohibited, and it seems that Rav Michi would not disagree with him there either.
But what does stand out in the dispute between these two great figures is that in their writings one can sense the tension between the human element and the divine element. Each resolved it in his own formulation, but anyone who has read more than three lines of the Chazon Ish knows how much emotion is invested even in his halakhic writings, how much he speaks from his heart (and sometimes even builds halakhah upon that). Both were people torn between emotion and intellect, between natural morality and simple halakhah, and each decided in his own way. They recognized the movement of the soul and disagreed as to its proper direction, whether from below upward or from above downward.
But what is reflected in Rav Michi is indifference. He simply does not care. At least that is how his statements look, and not only on this subject. I do not know whether this stems from contempt for the human soul, for its storms, or some sort of “and my heart is void within me.” I do not know. I did not connect.
He wonders whether there is any practical difference between the two approaches, and essentially claims that there is none.
I will preface by saying that I did not say that morality is not a foundation of divine service, but that there is no dependence between it and halakhah. On the contrary, in the trilogy (and also in the interview!) I argue at length that there is no morality without belief in God, and certainly that God demands that we be moral. Indeed, this is not a demand of us as Jews but a demand of every human being (Noahides). My claim is that morality is universal in its essence, and therefore I do not see it as “Judaism” in the conceptual sense (see below in this section and in the next example).
In the interview I said that the Chazon Ish represents the position that subordinates morality to halakhah, and some understand in his words (although I disagree with this) that there is no morality, only halakhah. This is how his words at the beginning of the booklet Emunah u’Bitachon seem to imply, although in my lectures on morality and halakhah I clearly showed that this is not so. In the case of R. Kook one can see the opposite approach, that all of halakhah is an expression of moral principles. He writes this dozens of times, and although I am not an expert in his writings, my impression is that this was indeed his position. In any case, in my remarks to Yair Sheleg I said that these are not necessarily the actual positions of these two figures. I presented the two positions and attributed them to them in this way only in order to provide a framework that would sharpen my own view, which stands in contrast to both. I was not making a claim about R. Kook nor about the Chazon Ish.
My aim was to say that I do not accept either of these approaches. In my eyes morality exists and is independent of halakhah. I think that these two figures, even if we ignore the labels I gave their approaches, really would not have accepted my position, just as most of those with whom I speak do not accept it (except for those who are persuaded by my arguments). The matter is spelled out at the beginning of the third book of my trilogy (and I believe that there too I explain that the attribution of this position to the Chazon Ish is not precise).
Contrary to Mashgav’s conclusion, there is no hint in my words that either of them lacked sensitivity to morality. I was dealing with theological and meta-halakhic conceptions and not with a description of practical conduct. The phrase “the fifth section of the Shulchan Aruch” is attributed to the Chazon Ish, and at least in part it deals with the attitude to laws that are blatantly immoral (pas nisht). But beyond that, this dispute certainly does have practical ramifications, and not a few of them. For instance, the question whether we interpret halakhah so as to fit morality (as in the example of the teachers brought by the Chazon Ish there). Does halakhah necessarily and in every case override morality? In my view, no. The implications of this dispute will be expressed in different ways in situations of conflict between halakhah and morality, and this is spelled out in detail in the third book of the trilogy.
Beyond this, Mashgav assumes an identity between morality and emotion, and therefore mentions the emotions that burst from the words of the Chazon Ish in various contexts. For some reason he sees this as proof of his claim that the Chazon Ish had moral sensitivity. As I have already written here, I did not claim, nor do I think, that he lacked it. But it is important to note that emotionality has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. One can be very moral without expressing emotions, or be very emotional without any connection to morality. In one respect any reader of the interview will have to admit: I did not claim that the Chazon Ish had no emotion or that he did not attach importance to emotion (although in my opinion the second claim is closer to the truth). So why is this argument relevant to the discussion?
Regarding his concluding sentence, which deals with my indifference, I likewise failed to understand it. If his intention is to speak about my attitude to emotion, then this is not the place (I have already dealt with that, and will deal with it further in the next column). If his intention is my attitude to morality, then I protest. In my eyes morality is a firmly foundational, obligatory element, also on the religious plane. This was expressed also in the interview itself (for example in my comments on homosexuality. See below in the third example).
I do not intend to go further into this discussion, since my aim is only to demonstrate how an entire theological discussion is built on a sentence taken out of context together with several unfounded assumptions. Also in the talkbacks following Mashgav’s post there are quite a few similar errors, one of which I will address later on.
Example B: Judaism Is Only Halakhah
The headline given to Sheleg’s article was a statement of mine to the effect that Judaism is only halakhah. That is indeed correct; here there was no distortion. This is truly my position. In response various claims were raised. Some thought that I do not see any importance in anything beyond halakhah. For example, R. Cherlow, in response to Mashgav’s post, writes:
Among the points that occupied me in his words is the sentence that Judaism is exhausted in halakhah alone. Not because these words are entirely untrue, but mainly because of the disregard of the fact that halakhah itself is the final crystallization of world-views, moral and interpretive positions (also according to him), other contexts, and so on. That is: this claim is totally refuted not because of questions of such-and-such positions, but because the concept “halakhah” includes within it very much that is not a halakhic algorithm.
I will not address here the identification R. Cherlow makes between halakhah and algorithmicity. I have already given several series of lectures on that, and the matter is spelled out in my third book (which R. Cherlow has read in its entirety). I am not a positivist, and therefore in my view halakhah is not algorithmic either. What has that to do with the question of whether there is anything in Judaism beyond halakhah? Even non-algorithmic halakhah is a discipline, and the question whether there is anything else in Judaism beyond that is an independent question. Having set aside this pseudo-question, I will now turn to the real question.
My position is that morality is very important. I further claim that it is an essential part of what God wants of us (more than that: in the fourth dialogue in the book The First Existent I explained that without God there is no consistent and binding morality)[1]. The only claim of mine that is relevant here is this: morality is not Judaism. Not that it is not important, and not that it is not God’s will, and perhaps not even the disconnection between it and halakhah (which I do, indeed, believe in, but that is another question). My claim is that morality is universal by definition, and therefore I do not accept the concept of “Jewish morality” (just as I do not accept the concept of “Jewish thought”). There is correct morality and incorrect morality, just as there is correct or incorrect thought. The question from whose womb the pearls emerged (=what was the religion or nationality of the thinker’s mother) is simply not important.
I have already explained these things to exhaustion in dozens of places, and I will not return to them here. I will merely remind you of what I have asked several times and have not received a satisfactory answer to: Is there an example of a principle that is part of “Jewish morality” that contradicts universal morality? Is there a single person who learned something from the Torah and, because of that, changed his moral outlook? In my opinion there is none. That is all. All the moral lessons that R. Cherlow will hew from halakhah and show us that they stand at its foundation will be accepted by us because we already thought from the outset that this is what morality requires. And if we do not identify with them – we simply will not accept them. I have brought several examples, for anyone who even needs such, to illustrate this point. Therefore the question whether moral considerations lie at the foundation of halakhah and the question whether morality is Judaism are different questions, regardless of how one answers each of them.
I will summarize this as follows. Even if moral and conceptual principles underlie halakhah (perhaps sometimes they do), this does not mean that there is “Jewish morality” or “Jewish thought”, meaning that morality is “Judaism”. First, in my estimation, in most cases halakhah does not necessarily rest on a moral conception at all. And even when it does, it is not a particularistic principle but a universal moral principle (with which many people in the world would agree. See the following paragraph on the logical aspect of definitions). The fact is that if there is a person who espouses a moral or conceptual principle X, he will not change it as a result of studying halakhah or Scripture. I wrote in the trilogy that in the past Scripture likely did have an influence on morality, but nowadays this simply does not exist. I have shown more than once that Scripture is nothing but a spade into which each student sticks his own pre-existing conceptions (Zionism or not, socialism or not, capitalism or not, killing gentiles or not, the chosenness of Israel or not). Not to mention, of course, the literature of “Jewish thought”.
I say similar things regarding conceptual principles as well. Thought has value, but it is examined in light of the question whether it is true or not, and not in light of whether it is Jewish or not. In Pesachim 64 a sugya is brought whose entire content, according to the Rambam and his son, is to teach us to accept the truth from whoever says it. In the sixth chapter of Eight Chapters the Rambam learns a value-laden approach from non-Jewish sages and contrasts it with the approach of the Sages. So in what sense are such principles “Judaism”? They are either true or untrue. That is all. What is true obligates all people in the world, and it does not matter if the source is a wicked heretical gentile, and what is untrue should not be accepted even if its author is a supremely righteous man. I have elaborated on this in the trilogy, but for some reason people do not read it or do not understand these claims of mine.
I will end this section with a brief logical note. Aristotle already taught us that the definition of a concept must be made up of its genus and its specific difference. For example, a human being is a living being (=genus) that speaks (=a unique characteristic of one species among the different species in that genus). Therefore, defining a concept via characteristics that are not unique to it is a logical error. For this reason one cannot define a human being by the fact that he has a heart, even though that is true. One cannot define a Jew or Judaism via moral principles, since these are shared with very many other people in the world (there is no such creature as “Jewish morality”). The same is true regarding the great majority of the principles discussed in the empty field known as “Jewish Thought”. Therefore, when I say that morality is not Judaism, I am not saying that a Jew is not obligated in morality, nor that morality is not an important element in what God expects from every Jew. What I am claiming is that this important expectation is directed toward every human being, not just toward Jews.
Example C: Homosexuality
Here too there were several distortions in the written interview, though not severe ones (point 10 in my comments). Two interpretive mechanisms were presented there that can lead to a limitation of the halakhic prohibition, but it was not mentioned that I do not think one can rule in practice according to either of them. At most they are suggestions that should be considered. Beyond that, the first argument (that homosexuality was prohibited as part of its being viewed as a pagan practice) seems to me totally unfounded. To the best of my recollection, this was mentioned in the conversation with Yair Sheleg as an example of a mechanism proposed by others, merely in order to illustrate what I mean by limiting interpretations of the prohibition.
Incidentally, I tend to view in this way similar explanations that the Rambam proposed in Moreh Nevuchim (and also in the Laws of Idolatry) for many commandments. He saw a large portion of halakhah (even matters that on their face are far more removed from such an interpretation) as ways of fighting idolatry. In my view, these explanations are no less unfounded. So about this interpretive proposal I can say two things: 1. There is nothing special or extreme in this sort of interpretation, and certainly nothing illegitimate. It follows the Rambam’s general approach. 2. In my eyes, this interpretation itself seems unfounded, whether it comes from the Rambam’s mouth or from anyone else’s. In short, in my opinion it is legitimate but unfounded.
From this one can also understand my response to the broader claims, as though by interpretive maneuvers of this sort I can empty halakhah of content. In principle, one can interpret anything in ways that leave it irrelevant. But I am not referring to the sort of game where one sets the goal in advance and recruits tendentious interpretations in order to reach it. There are reasonable interpretive proposals and there are those that are not. Fear of slippery slopes is not an interpretive consideration. Interpretation must be examined on its own merits, and only afterwards can one consider whether it is appropriate not to use it because of various concerns. Interpretations of this kind, and even far more far-reaching ones, were employed by our Sages throughout the generations. I have no fear of different interpretations, but that does not mean that all of them are legitimate, or that anyone who proposes some interpretation can, on its basis, change halakhah. This is not make-believe; it is an interpretive discussion on the halakhic playing field. I do not intend to propose interpretations simply in order to reach a desired halakhic result. In my view this is dishonest. What I mean is that if there is a reasonable interpretation, it can be taken into account even if the conclusion is a change in the existing halakhah. Nothing in these remarks is essentially different from what has been done until now. In the third book of the trilogy I devoted the sixth part to the theory of halakhic change, where the matter is spelled out, and specifically regarding homosexuality there is a special chapter toward the end of the book.
Example D: Deism
Some of the respondents claimed that I am a deist. It is true that there was a distortion in the interview regarding my definition of deism (it is presented there as though I identify it with pantheism, which is not so), and this is mentioned in my comments (section 5). But the identification of my approach with deism is problematic regardless.
Deism can be defined in several ways. It is commonly defined as a conception of a philosophical God (as opposed to theism, which believes in a religious, commanding God). Others define it as belief in a God who is not involved in the world. I am certainly not a deist in either of these senses: for me God is a commander and not merely a creator and then absent. A foundational element of my halakhic system is the centrality of the command (see below in Example E). And beyond that, God is also interested in what we do (and perhaps also rewards us for it in the World to Come. I do not know).
One can, of course, quibble about whether such a definition counts as deism or not, but that is uninteresting semantics. After all, I am speaking of a religious God who, as the generations pass, ceases to be involved in the world. Whoever chooses to define this as deism – good luck to him. Labels and classifications have never spoken to me. What matters are the arguments for and against. I did not find any such in my critics’ words.
There is no need to note that the philosophical proofs for the existence of God that I have dealt with do not testify in any way to deism; otherwise, the Rambam and the author of Duties of the Heart would also have been deists. From my perspective, as described at length in my book The First Existent, the philosophical proofs are a strong foundation for theistic belief. This “deism” is only the first stage, and therefore to identify it with the totality of faith is itself a mistake, and certainly a mistake regarding my position. On top of it one must build theism, and therefore my entire first book in the trilogy is devoted to that.
Example E: Command vs. Tradition
On this point there was a serious distortion in the interview. My position is presented there as halakhic commitment stemming from loyalty to tradition, as opposed to commitment as a response to the command. There are those who very much enjoyed this definition and others who were outraged by it, but I am sorry to disappoint both: this is simply a mirror image of my actual position. Here a serious error occurred in the description of my view. I will quote what I wrote in my comments on the interview (points 8–9):
Contrary to what was written in the interview, I observe the commandments because of the command, and only because of it. Moreover, this is a central point in my meta-halakhic thought. What I apparently said in the interview is that the binding force of the interpretation of the sages of the generations (the details of the laws) is not because it comes from a command at Sinai, but because this is the interpretation that has been accepted. In other words: obligation to some halakhic detail does not require authenticity (that is, that its source be at Sinai, or even that God actually intended it. In many cases, in my estimation, this is not the case).
As a complement to the previous point: I do not observe commandments out of a desire to be loyal to tradition. I have no such desire. In my view, tradition does not give binding force to anything, and personally I have no fondness for it and not much trust in it either. I am loyal to (halakhic) tradition because in my view this is what God expects of us, that is, because of the command. When He gave us the Torah, He left a lot of space for interpretation, and even empowered the sages to carry it out (“You shall not turn aside”). Therefore I am obligated to their interpretation (that of the sages/institutions with authority, not of everyone), even though they are not necessarily correct. What was created by later sages (post-Talmudic) is for me at most a source of inspiration and not a source of authority. Finally, what the people practice is only custom, and its standing is grounded in the halakhic obligation to adhere to customs (I would never have dreamed of doing so without the halakhic obligation). Therefore, at the basis of the binding force of all the halakhic categories stands the command and not tradition (tradition merely transmits the command to us. It has no normative standing of its own).
In this context I will note that in my view traditionalism (observing commandments out of loyalty to tradition) is worthless. One can divide traditionalists into two types: A. A person who believes in God and in the command but observes only what he feels like (or what connects him to his forefathers, or what he has sentimental feelings for). Such a traditionalist is, in my eyes, a greater sinner than an atheist, because he believes and does not observe. B. A person who observes mitzvot simply in order to identify, without believing (in God and in the command from Sinai). A “traditionalist” of this type is simply a regular atheist (with religious folklore, like the first-fruit ceremonies at secular kibbutzim).
The matter is explained in many places here on the site and, of course, in all three volumes of the trilogy.
I will now move on to a discussion of two of the responses.
First Response: The Words of Yehuda Yifrach
Yehuda Yifrach is usually an intelligent writer, and therefore I was somewhat surprised by his superficial and slogan-like reaction to my words. I will bring his words here in full with my comments:
– Rational Autism –
What is disturbing in the interview conducted by Yair Sheleg with Rav Dr. Michael Avraham (link in the comment) is not his views.
He believes in a deist God based on the proofs of Immanuel Kant.
I have already spoken about the question of my deism. There is of course not a trace of a connection to Kant’s proofs.
In his opinion there is some probability that the revelation at Mount Sinai did indeed take place, but he is not certain.
Does he himself think it is certain? Is there any possibility for a person to know anything with certainty? Is he truly so naïve as to think that the tradition about the revelation at Sinai is absolute and free of doubt? It is hard for me to accept that an intelligent and aware person with a doctorate in philosophy thinks so. My claim is that there is nothing in the world that is certain, including faith itself. But I add that this actually strengthens faith and does not weaken it. Many people have come to me with the feeling that if they do not have complete certainty, they are not believers, and I tell them again and again that doubt accompanies every person. And still we are supposed to make decisions in the best possible way and act accordingly. Someone who comforts himself that faith is certain, and with other such nonsense, is both speaking falsehood and causing harm. And one who waits for certainty in order to act will never attain it (unless he surrenders to the common brainwashing about things that are “beyond reason” and so on).
And as is his holy custom, he finds it hard to get through an entire interview without a finger in the eye: “Chasidut does not speak to me, in my eyes it is nonsense. I observe mitzvot because a Jew should observe mitzvot. I have no religious experiences, and religiosity is as far from me as heaven from earth,” etc. etc.
If someone thinks that this finger is aimed at his eye, that is of course his business. I am describing my own worldview and not that of Yifrach. I am sure he will do that better than I. Does he intend to claim that I do in fact have religious experiences and that I am concealing them in order to poke someone’s eye? Strange. In any case, despite his arguments I failed to be persuaded that, despite my sense otherwise, I actually do have religious experiences.
To tell the truth, this is completely boring, but also entirely legitimate. He is not the first perplexed person who neither feels nor knows, and perhaps he even deserves credit for the effort to observe mitzvot even though he truly lives in a vacuum.
Regarding the boredom, this is indeed an irrelevant argument. Each person has his own fields of interest. Nevertheless, I will grab onto the hem of Yifrach’s garment and allow myself to cast some doubt on this. Why is it that a topic that is supposedly so boring, so unoriginal and so widespread, evokes such an emotional response that suffers from so many fallacies as his? I suspect that my words did in fact interest him a little, and perhaps a few other readers as well. But as noted, this is not terribly important, except as an indication of the demagoguery in which he engages. Instead of confronting the arguments it is easier to present them as banal and common boredom.
If you wondered why he responds to boring and routine opinions like mine, we now arrive at the reason:
What is disturbing about him and his ilk is the arrogant certainty that nothing can crack.
(Writes Yifrach with arrogant certainty that nothing can crack…)
He does not experience mystical experiences, so in his view the mystical world does not exist. He does not even try to take into account the distant possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, this is his own sensory-spiritual limitation, not to say handicap.
That perhaps there is no difference between Rav Avraham and a blind person who has never seen the color orange but insists passionately on claiming that there are no colors in the world. That perhaps the fact that he does not experience expanded states of consciousness does not mean that they do not exist.
Truly wise people, even if they have not been blessed with a well-developed mystical sense, do not go around the world with such a level of arrogant certainty. They know that the world is full of mystery and full of wonder, and that even after you have seen, encountered, learned, and researched, you still know nothing.
As the wise Zohar says:
“Once a person asks and searches to look and to know from level to level until the end of all levels, once he reaches there – ‘What?’ What have you known? What have you seen? What have you searched? Behold, everything is hidden as at first.”
I will open with a comment on this embarrassing passage. If Yifrach had troubled himself to read my writings, he would have discovered that in truth there are no colors in the world. Color, orange or otherwise, exists only within human consciousness. It is a translation performed by our sensory system (the eye and the brain’s processing of the information that comes from it) of electromagnetic waves of different wavelengths that strike our retina. In reality itself there are apparently only such waves and not colors.
Now to the point. I will confess (and blush?): I do indeed not experience mystical experiences. I did not say, nor do I think, that other people who report them do not have mystical experiences. I do not suspect them of lying. Furthermore, I did not say that the mystical world does not exist (hint: I think that it does exist in some sense – for if not, what did the prophets see? And where is God? And what does Kabbalah deal with[2]?). You know what? I did not even say that it is not a perceptual limitation (sensory-spiritual?) of mine. Perhaps it is. It might be that Yifrach experiences nightly soul ascents in which he wanders through the upper palaces above Atzilut and beholds the Shekhinah and her retinue, and I, the limited Lithuanian, simply cannot join him in those upper spheres.
In light of these clarifications I wonder: where did Yifrach see in my words arrogant certainty that nothing can crack? Does he intend to claim that I do in fact have mystical experiences? Is he claiming that I ought not to be certain that I do not have such experiences? I remind again that with regard to others I have never denied the existence of such experiences. To tell the truth, I am beginning to smell here a bit of arrogant certainty that nothing can crack, but not necessarily from my side.
I will add what I did not write there, and now whoever wishes may criticize me for it. I do in fact doubt the reliability of such experiences. There are quite a few charlatans or simply naïve people who experience all sorts of things and think that they are encountering mystical worlds. I am not at all sure that every such experience reflects an authentic encounter with something that exists out there. But of course I cannot rule out the very existence of these experiences, nor categorically deny their significance (that is, the claim that they genuinely encounter something). Different people have different experiences, and I am too small to determine whose experience is reliable and whose is not. Incidentally, there are experiences of idol-worshippers and various pagans, and there are experiences achieved via hallucinogenic plants. In Yifrach’s opinion, does every such experience necessarily reflect some mystical dimension of reality? Or perhaps at least sometimes we are dealing with mental hallucinations that have no anchor in reality? As noted, unlike Yifrach, I do not speak with arrogant certainty that cannot be cracked, and therefore I say that I do not know. I do not know whether such experiences do or do not exist; what I do claim concerns only the status of these experiences.
So what did I claim? Beyond descriptions and claims about my own belief, regarding which it is hard for me to see how Yifrach finds for himself an arrogant justification to disagree with them, I made only one relevant claim, which he does not mention at all: that in my eyes, experience and emotion, even if they exist, are not important and not essential to religious faith. In my view, faith is a claim about reality, and the relationship with God is mainly through observing His commandments and walking in His ways, and not through mystical cleaving to Him (even if there is something of that sort). That is all.
In conclusion, I am not entirely certain about this claim, and I invite anyone who wishes to crack it. But in order to do so one must bring arguments and not content oneself with defamatory, mistaken, and misleading declarations that are arrogant and empty of content. I am sorry that I have still not been persuaded by Yifrach’s “crushing” arguments, which, for some reason, seem to me to be expressed with arrogant certainty that nothing can crack them.
In the next column I will try to explain in greater detail my attitude to emotion and experience. If Yifrach wishes, he is invited to read my arguments (so far he has poured out his wrath on them even though he has not encountered them at all) and try to crack them. May we all be successful…
Second Response: Akiva Zuckerman
I will conclude with a discussion of a response by a Jew named Akiva Zuckerman that was sent to me. Unlike the words of Yifrach, I found in it substantive arguments that reflect common feelings regarding my words, and therefore I thought it certainly worthwhile to comment on them a bit:
A few years ago the singer Akiva Turgeman gave me a ride. We talked, and somehow we got into a heated argument about faith. I said – I have no problem asking all the hardest questions. Either there is or there isn’t. If I discover that there is no God, I leave the religious story. Akiva said – you cannot believe like that. It’s like your not willingly going to a DNA test with your mother and father. In order to believe you have to devote yourself, to love. When you are constantly busy with doubt, questions, and proofs, it becomes impossible; the emotion is destroyed and you will in any case remain outside.
Where did I get the confidence to say that I have no problem asking hard questions? It seems to me it is only because I had already read some books by Rav Michael Avraham. But the recent interview with Rav Michi proves that Akiva was right. The tragedy of Rav Michi is the sadness of Nebo. He brings us to the very gates of the land of faith, but he is no longer capable of entering; he is captive to incessant doubt.
Rav Michi is a philosopher. His writing is not easy to get through, to put it mildly; it requires concentration and effort, but it is worth it. Totally. You read the difficulties of Kant and Hume (and it is important to stress here – I, unlike him, am not a philosopher), who basically say that there is no complete, rational proof of the existence of the laws of nature, and you suddenly feel a kind of dizziness, a bit like from a prolonged headache. You read his description of the difficulty in defining what morality is, and you are frightened – how did I not think of that until today? And then, suddenly, for a moment he goes with atheism and materialism all the way. Let us assume that there is no morality, no spirituality, nothing “beyond” in our world; there is only matter, molecules, protons and electrons. And then he sort of takes you up to a hill overlooking this entire story from above. You walk up the ascent, and at some point the valley of doubt below is revealed, illuminated, and you simply see it with your own eyes. Wow, how absurd it is to be an atheist. Suddenly it is so clear that there is morality and there is spirituality. He teaches you that logic does not work; it proves nothing, not even in the world of science. The basic tool for understanding the world is in fact the eyes. What we see and feel. But not only what we see through our physical eyes, but also what we see through the intellect. Yes, yes, the intellect is not only an instrument of thought and logical inferences, which have a secondary role in this story; the intellect produces feelings, it has intuition. It is a real, powerful tool, and upon it is based the entire world of science, morality, and faith.
As a religious person, you are always accompanied by a hidden sense of inferiority. Deep down we are primitive, believing in spiritual entities that have no proof. A very quiet, nagging voice whispers from time to time in your ear – maybe it’s all nothing, maybe there is nothing, maybe all this faith is imagination? Rav Michi transformed my perception. Thanks to “Two Carts and a Hot Air Balloon”, thanks to “God Plays Dice”, “The Sciences of Freedom”, and “True and (Un)Stable”, thanks to his wonderful books, faith in God became much clearer. Formulated in a very serious way, with sharp thinking, confronting all the questions. Not apologetically and without apologetics, but from a very confident place that explains calmly, without having to shout and persuade. My perception was reversed: now I look at secularism without God and say to myself – how can one believe in that? How absurd and detached from reality it is, how blind one can be.
So it is true that intuition can mislead. One cannot and should not disconnect from rational thought, from the need for proofs. Logic is necessary, criticism is necessary, fine. But after all the path that Rav Michi has walked with us, after we started to feel warm confidence in faith, in spirituality, in divine revelation, in the power of Torah and mitzvot, he himself remains outside. Unable to enter inside. What a sadness of Nebo.
First, I do not deal all the time with doubts. I live in a sober way, that is, I do not sell myself tall tales about faith being certain and other nonsense of the sort popular in our circles. Moreover, my preoccupation with doubts stems mainly from the questions of the many people who turn to me with such feelings (it seems to me that Zuckerman himself describes such a kind of neediness of his own in the past). Ignoring them will not help anyone and will not make him a greater and truer believer.
In my estimation, I certainly do enter and even attempt to bring people into the gates of the Promised Land. The question is: what is that Promised Land? If people seek faith as a comfort that heals with its wings, or some experience or emotion or other, then indeed I am not the address for that. Incidentally, I do not think that for those who believe in the importance of all these, the fact that their faith is more grounded should disturb them from continuing to experience and feel whatever they wish. I simply do not supply that merchandise. Am I supposed to provide service to everyone on every topic?!
It is true that there is in his words a claim that has some weight, namely that my path even interferes with the development of those feelings and experiences (and is not just indifferent to them). On that I will say that even if this is true, I still do not see why this is not entrance into the Promised Land of faith. At least the Promised Land as I understand it. In my view, faith does not mean experiences and feelings. Faith is the knowledge that there is a God and that His commandments obligate us. That is where I try to lead the reader of my trilogy, by giving answers and respectfully addressing questions. Not as is customary in our milieu – to recommend that the teacher hug the student and give him warmth and love (in order to evade the need to answer him), or to instruct him to leap into the vacuum, deny his doubts, bunker down in a Kierkegaardian leap of faith of the absurd, and crow twice “cock-a-doodle-doo” with a sense of mystical union with the divinity that will fill his entire being. That is not my Promised Land, and I have never thought of bringing anyone there. Unfortunately, I do not provide that service. I can recommend that one examine hallucinogenic drugs, yoga, or other Eastern practices, but truly, that is not my field.
I know that in Generation Z (if I am still keeping up) this is not fashionable. This generation wants to use everything for the sake of its existential feelings, in the best case, or simply in order to create excitement and experiences, in the less good case. But sadly, this is not faith, and it is not my Promised Land. Faith is a goal and not an instrument that serves something else. Faith is first and foremost obligation, and not a means for satisfying needs, vital and lofty as they may be. But afterwards I will say that in my opinion faith does give a person and the world meaning, as well as a context in which to discuss matters, an intellectual (not necessarily emotional) experience, a basis for our morality and epistemology, and more. For some reason, all this does not seem to people to be the Promised Land, but in my eyes this is precisely it, in all its splendor. Still, in my view all these are a bonus and are not a condition for religious obligation and not its goal (it has no goal. It is the basic and final goal).
In this matter I do indeed walk in the footsteps of Leibowitz, as many accuse me. Except that unlike him (he always takes a correct principle one step too far), I think that faith and religious obligation do have meaning and advantages. But as I wrote, these are not the goal and not the justification of religious obligation. The justification is that this is true and this is what we must do.
The following paragraph of Zuckerman, in which he describes where I brought him, fills me with joy (yes, I too have feelings), and therefore I will not refrain from copying it again:
As a religious person, you are always accompanied by a hidden sense of inferiority. Deep down we are primitive, believing in spiritual entities that have no proof. A very quiet, nagging voice whispers from time to time in your ear – maybe it’s all nothing, maybe there is nothing, maybe all this faith is imagination? Rav Michi transformed my perception. Thanks to “Two Carts and a Hot Air Balloon”, thanks to “God Plays Dice”, “The Sciences of Freedom”, and “True and (Un)Stable”, thanks to his wonderful books, faith in God became much clearer. Formulated in a very serious way, with sharp thinking, confronting all the questions. Not apologetically and without apologetics, but from a very confident place that explains calmly, without having to shout and persuade. My perception was reversed: now I look at secularism without God and say to myself – how can one believe in that? How absurd and detached from reality it is, how blind one can be.
This fellow is in the very heart of the Promised Land, and how sad that he simply is not aware of it and seeks his bread in existential and other realms.
What is strange is that the reason this does not satisfy him is the one described in his concluding paragraph, which he, too, drew from me. I quote again:
So it is true that intuition can mislead. One cannot and should not disconnect from rational thought, from the need for proofs. Logic is necessary, criticism is necessary, fine. But after all the path that Rav Michi has walked with us, after we started to feel warm confidence in faith, in spirituality, in divine revelation, in the power of Torah and mitzvot, he himself remains outside. Unable to enter inside. What a sadness of Nebo.
For in the previous paragraph (which I brought above) he describes that I am the one who wrote about intuition and its meaning and opened his eyes in that regard. So how can he accuse me of excessive attachment to logic and criticism and of ignoring intuition?! Almost all my writings are devoted to the opposite claim: that rationality is not ignoring intuitions. On the contrary, intuition is the basis of all rational thinking. He himself wrote that above.
As noted, I know that these are authentic feelings for many people and I do not belittle them, but I truly cannot understand them. As I said, I have brought people into the Promised Land, but apparently I have not succeeded in convincing them that they are in fact there. I will conclude with the words of the poet Rachel: “Each man has his Nebo on a broad land…”
[1] Although it is clear that there are people who behave morally even without faith.
[2] In the interview it was mistakenly written that it too does not speak to me. That is not so.
Discussion
Abba Pagum, he writes about this in the trilogy. Buy it and take a look.
Excellent article
I think hard feelings and images come up for Yifrach and Akiva—not as the only reason, and maybe not even the main one. But what peeks through between the lines, at least in my opinion, is your statement that it is not 100% certain that there was a Revelation at Mount Sinai, not certain that we are commanded to keep the commandments, and not certain at all that God exists, but that there was always doubt from the outset. And that runs contrary to what most people, even the intelligent ones among them, think—or at least to what most of them are willing to think or say even to themselves. I don’t think that Maimonides, Rav Kook, Rashi, the Raavad, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi—and also not sages who expressed themselves in a more modern style, like Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein or Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, for example—lived in a consciousness of doubt from the outset. In fact, I am sure that if we asked any one of them, he would say that he lived with the knowledge that the Holy One, blessed be He, exists and that we are commanded. And this is not an argument appealing to authority. In fact, I think every religious sage, both modern and more old-fashioned, lives with such a consciousness (and not only religious people; people coming from secular and humanistic ideologies will usually also tell you that they know their values are the straightest and most correct).
The approach of deciding on religious faith out of an underlying doubt that remains there in consciousness, without being a million percent sure that one is right, is quite rare among religious intellectuals and religious philosophers—at least in declaration. A person who chooses to devote his whole life to serving some entity that he neither sees nor hears believes—or at least lives with the consciousness—that he is a million percent right. And usually also with the consciousness that in the end he will receive reward for it, or improve and certainly redeem the whole world through that faith. I think that if you ask Yehuda Yifrach, he will indeed tell you that he knows the Revelation at Mount Sinai occurred, and does not merely believe that it occurred. A long time ago I read your book Truth and Unstable, and it helped me a great deal in the process. But the point you made there—that people confuse belief as decision, concerning the existence of one truth (and not a plurality of truths or postmodernism), with certainty—is correct. Usually, a person who investigates faith and does not manage to reach a consciousness of certainty often slides into postmodernism, into concepts like multiple truths and the union of contradictions. The possibility of believing but not being sure seems absurd, in my opinion, to most people—at least on the declarative level. Truth be told, that was how it was for me at first too. And one can understand where it comes from. The thought that comes up for me at least many times—that I keep commandments and try to align myself with the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, but in the end it is possible that I am mistaken and He does not exist at all (or that I will receive no reward for it, nor merit to bring the Messiah to my grandchildren in the next 100 years because of it)—is frightening and off-putting. Many times.
As someone who has read many of the rabbi’s books, I can say that the interview published in the newspaper simply made the rabbi look bad, and I understood this even more after I spoke with relatives and friends.
First of all, every statement by the rabbi was published there in an excessively provocative way, and in addition, things were published there that according to the rabbi are simply not true.
I’ll respond to Yehuda Yifrach’s response:
A lot of what he wrote is simply nonsense and silly claims (if they can even be called claims). That said—I do understand what he is saying regarding the Revelation at Mount Sinai, since the rabbi’s view was presented there in a provocative formulation similar to “I don’t even know whether there was a Revelation at Mount Sinai,” when the rabbi is basically only saying that it is not certain and therefore moves into the realm of probability like anything else.
To conclude, I’ll just say that in my opinion the interview will not cause too many people to read the rabbi’s writings (if any) because of the distortions in them, and personally that makes me sad, because for me the rabbi’s books were great amounts of light especially on matters of faith, and on rational thought in general. True, I don’t agree with the rabbi about everything written in the books, but many things the rabbi writes are, in my view, sacred work that will save many religious people, and religious thought in general.
I didn’t understand what is unethical about an interviewee seeing the interview before it is published?! That actually sounds very reasonable.
Honestly, it seemed strange to me at first too. But דווקא now I understand. The article belongs to the newspaper; it is not the interviewee’s mouthpiece and not a promo for selling his books. The interviewee has that, for example, on his own website. The interviewer gets an impression and writes what he understood; the reader of the article relies on him if he wants. The interviewee, for example, would want to prettify things that seem to him not good for presentation, hide parts, and so on. It could be that the article actually saved—or at least spared—some people money from buying the books.
I was a soldier in outposts on the Lebanese border and also inside Lebanon, after a year and a half in a hesder yeshiva. Already without a kippah and with a lot of contempt for the religious and for Judaism as I had known it. Toward the end of my service I read The Bowed Rebellion, which took the wind out of my sails in my search for an orderly secular truth. I was left with nothing. On one of my visits to the Tziporen outpost I came across a young man from Yeshivat Hesder Yeruham who was holding a number of green booklets. He agreed to lend them to me after making sure I would make an effort to return to the outpost and give them back to him. I read them. My eyes lit up, and my mind as well; in time those booklets became Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon. That was the first time I understood that I could be religious, that it could definitely be intelligent, and that stupidity exists in every camp. Rabbi Michael gave me confidence and certainty to believe even if not everything is always clear. Later I drifted away from his path. That is, my need to investigate every topic/issue through analytical inquiry ceased. I turned to the world of psychology and later to art (theater and music). I never stopped following him. The main reason was and remains a deep conviction in examining issues with the help of reason. When you are drawn to art and literature, it is easy to talk nonsense; for that too I thank Rabbi Michael, who is always there for me like a warning sign. Study, read, take an interest—just beware of nonsense; apparently from time to time it will come. As for Yehuda Yifrach, I think he is mainly frightened by imaginary monsters. You don’t have to agree with Rabbi Michael about everything (I am fairly convinced that the Holy One, blessed be He, intervenes in the spiritual parts of a person, but this is not the place to elaborate), but I thank the Holy One, blessed be He, that He intervened in creation 🙂 and sent him in our post-everything generation to straighten out our heads. Strength to the Torah.
Obviously the final word belongs to the interviewer and the editor (otherwise interviews would be advertising columns), but why shouldn’t an interviewer simply agree to send a draft to the interviewee and consider his comments? He too presumably understood that it isn’t easy to be precise and distill things correctly out of an entire conversation dealing with delicate subjects, and he certainly could have made use of feedback. A response after publication is a matter of policy, due to considerations of placement and ratings, without any ethical concern.
You yourself prove that in the end our initial assumptions stem from intuition, so here is the meaning of the concept “Jewish thought”: thought born from the intuition of Jews, with a plot and development—admittedly not linear, but conducted through a dialectic that in the end does produce Jewish thought. This thought was greatly influenced by some encounter in the past with God, and therefore could not have developed among other nations. Why does it matter that the intuition is Jewish? Because it is influenced by Jewish history—a history that includes prophecy in all its variety. Clearly, if you strip Judaism of everything that is not logic, no Jewish thought will remain.
As for the interview, the problem is not what was said—it is clear enough that an interview usually presents a rather distorted picture—but the fact that you chose to exaggerate and broadcast on a wavelength that is evidently trying to appeal to an audience that is not your audience, and therefore your examples and the possibilities you raise, even if they are not really what you think, as you write here, convey to a reader interested in your genre a position far more extreme than what you present here.
I think an interviewer portrays the interviewee like an artist; it may be that he sees things the interviewee does not yet know about himself. The direction, the inaccuracies, the slips of the tongue are an important part of the picture. It is not a summary of the book, and it is not something that should be corrected. And to the objective reader it may be that Yair Sheleg describes the interviewee correctly (if he is a successful interviewer), even if the interviewee does not agree with it. Maybe they put a mirror in front of him, and hence the reactions.
Akiva Zuckerman expressed wonderfully the feeling some people go through as they study your thought. I am one of them.
But his conclusion, or his question, is absurd… the promised land he wants you to enter is the land from which you redeemed him.
Rabbi Michi:
How does one fulfill the commandment “to love the Lord your God and cleave to Him” without emotion and experience?…
You burst through an open door with Kurzweil on Agnon (I read that only here; I don’t know the source of it). A general interviewer is not a deep scholar capable of exposing layers beneath the surface. And again, there is no expectation that if a disagreement arises between interviewee and interviewer over some content or some presentation, the interviewee gets to decide. But what is wrong with letting him make his comments for the interviewer’s attention? Just as during the conversation itself clarifications, refinements, explanations, and expansions are needed. The interviewer has artistic freedom to conjecture motives and make broad generalizations, but that has nothing to do with the substance of the opinions he is quoting. This seems to me very simple and self-evident.
What’s the problem?
‘To cleave to Him—that is, to emulate His attributes: just as He is indifferent, so you too should be indifferent’; just as He does not intervene, so you too should not be involved’ 🙂 ‘And to love Him’—what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; ‘live and let live’—do not assist and do not long for it 🙂
Regards, The interpreter of the religion of Delfinger
To Mr. Interpreter of the Religion of Delfinger:
Still, the words “love” and “cleaving” carry a connotation of experiences and emotions; more matter-of-fact words could have been chosen…
Ish.
Do you have a short, concise conclusion of what he says in the book? If so, I’d be happy if you’d bring it here.
More power to you, Rabbi Michi. Great post. Keep enlightening us. You save people.
That’s an example you took from me, no? I discuss it at length. There is a frontal contradiction here to morality. What is the question? There are contradictions between halakhah and morality.
Quite possible.
Possible. I had second thoughts about doing this interview in the first place.
Thank you. You made me happy.
I don’t think there was anything extreme there. There were things that were unclear and/or inaccurate.
As for Jewish thought, there is no point going over it again. I clarified it here and even more in the second book of the trilogy. If what matters to you is the ethnic or religious identity of the thinker’s mother—good health to you.
I completely agree. I too felt that the article was authentic and nicely described common feelings about me. I wrote that in the column, and because of that I thought it was important to address it specifically.
I just don’t entirely understand why the answers I gave here in the column leave you with those feelings.
See column 22 and Nefesh HaChaim.
Many thanks.
“What troubles me about him and others like him is the arrogant certainty that nothing cracks.” Indeed, there is something to that. I wonder whether you learned it from Leibowitz.
Uriyah.
I don’t know what kind of saving of souls you’re talking about; I’m sure that by this path it will only fade away. Such a skeptical Judaism, dry and consisting only of halakhah? How long do you think people will hold out on this path? And the pit is empty, there is no water in it—but because the halakhah does not change, there are snakes and scorpions in it.
With God’s help, the 48th day of the Omer, 5780
To A. — greetings,
Clearly, dry commandment observance without religious feeling does not hold up over the long term, and yet there is in it a kind of ‘first aid’ that enables one to remain more or less within the religious framework ‘until the storm passes.’
Faith and religious feeling are dynamic things: at times they weaken and at times they strengthen, but life habits are hard to change, and for one who has left the religious way of life—it will be hard to return to it.
So Rabbi M. A.’s method is a kind of Magen David Adom—emergency services 🙂
Regards, Shatz
The truth is that it bothered me from the first time I heard about it (if memory serves me correctly).
I’d be happy if you’d attach a link to a more extensive discussion of the above.
What I wanted to argue anyway is that the very command proves there is no morality outside the Torah; the Torah is what determines what is moral and what is not. All negative feelings are the result of the world in which we grew up. Obviously, a Nazi did not feel about murdering a Jew what I would feel if I accidentally ran over a cat, and therefore it is impossible to decide what morality is unless we have an external command. And it seems that this is also what you meant in the interview: that without God there is no morality. But you stopped there. The continuation is that God transmitted through the Torah what morality is. By the way, as is well known, only in tractate Avot is there the introduction “Moses received the Torah from Sinai,” etc. etc.; Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura there, and many other commentators, explain that precisely here there is a need to emphasize the transmission of tradition even in moral matters, for otherwise there is no reason that something that appears to them as moral, and does not come from Sinai, should obligate us to follow it. For if a person is convinced—and not merely declares—that murdering the elderly and the sick is a moral thing that advances evolution, and that this is his moral duty, then I have no way to judge his actions, and punishment comes only in order to protect us from him (which, as far as I know, is not accepted anywhere in the world; so at least on this point the moral consensus is that this person should be punished severely, because he should have looked right and left and realized that he was mistaken).
The only way to determine what is moral is not the wisdom of the masses, though that is what is accepted, and not intuitions either, just as circumcision appears immoral, and so does sending away the mother bird, killing an Amalekite, and the other creatures—and yet the Torah determined at least some of these, certainly circumcision, as a routine matter. So there is not even any point in trying to search for dubious interpretations and change this commandment. And from this it also follows regarding homosexuality: there is no point in trying to press the text when it is proven that the Torah does not care about my meager feelings, and therefore Scripture does not depart from its plain meaning, and all male lying is an abomination, and the homosexual is liable to death according to the Torah even if he was born with strong inclinations only toward men, and is not to blame for it—just as a person with a heart defect is not to blame for having been born with a heart defect, but in practical terms he has a defect and there is a very good chance he will not live a happy life.
The main claims against you, as I understand them.
It is true that innocence is not orange, and it is true that it is possible the world does not exist and everything is only in my consciousness, and only if I think therefore I am, and there is no way to prove an uncrackable certainty, b u t!! just as when you go to the grocery store you ask for an orange pepper, not for a pepper that you experience in waves, etc. etc., because in practice concepts are according to common usage, and it is customary to call experiences by colors and certainties certainties, even if it is possible they are not certainties. The world was given to human beings, not to ministering angels. Our game is according to our experience, and what appears logical is considered certain, even if Kant proves otherwise. And consequently, when you insist on mentioning Kant in every other word you say, for example regarding the Revelation at Mount Sinai, then between the lines it comes out that you are downplaying the prevailing conception of the commonly accepted notion of certainty. Even if in practice the probability that ordinary people call certainty leads to the same result—namely that there was a Revelation at Mount Sinai—whether because that is what is probable or because that is what is certain, it is only semantics.
Likewise regarding the World to Come: the tune coming from your mouth is a tune of denial, not of skepticism. Just as if someone asks you about the creation of the world, you use Hoyle’s airplane, even though it is probabilistic evidence and not certain evidence, but in practice that was enough to convince you that such cosmological evidence suffices in order to assume a notion of certainty—so why be deliberately provocative, why stick a finger in the eye, with certainty about a skepticism that allows nothing to crack it?!
A question in conclusion.
What is the deal with halakhah? Like the laws that exist in a proper world? A matter of communal acceptance? After all, sometimes you feel like messing up on the law, and that is human too, as long as it is not at someone else’s expense of course, especially when you are facing terribly strong urges, so all the fences and prohibitions are emptied of content, because every now and then it flows to violate them, no?! (I’m asking, not arguing, just trying to understand your view on the matter).
Bottom line, it seems that studying psychology would help a vessel as full as you understand why you chose to take your gold mine to dark and provocative places. And maybe my own tiny psychological analysis: apparently the third thing that takes a person out of the world, in every sense, is your guiding light—of course not consciously, otherwise that would be foolishness. Even chasing honor should be done with honor….
Would you also say about Hoyle’s airplane that it is entirely possible it was created by a tornado storm?!
So why be annoying?..!!
Shatz.
If one who occupies himself not for its own sake comes in order to provoke, his end will be destruction.
In practice, emptying the wagon of all content and leaving only dry halakhah is really emptying the main thing, for it is not the Creator’s desire that the Sabbath be kept, but that you keep it! And especially for one who holds that God has in fact abandoned us—why should we keep anything here, especially if it is mostly anachronistic, like tefillin, lulav, matzah, and the rest of the bitter herbs.
Dear Tam.
I didn’t understand a few things in what you wrote.
1. What is the moist content that is so important in your eyes, beyond the dry halakhah? That is, what in your view is lacking in a Jew who believes in the God of Israel (who has reached the conclusion that there is a Being who created the world, revealed Himself, gave the Torah to the people of Israel, expects us to keep commandments—for reasons we cannot always understand—and perhaps will give reward in the World to Come) and keeps the halakhah?
2. Even someone who upholds (dry) halakhah says that it is not the Creator’s desire that the Sabbath be kept but that you keep it, so I don’t think that claim is relevant.
3. Does someone who holds that God has not abandoned us keep commandments in order to receive reward in this world? Again, I don’t think that claim is relevant. Views about God’s policy do not seem connected to the question whether to keep commandments.
4. I didn’t understand the connection to the anachronism claim. There are good answers to that claim (some are indeed literally from Sinai, and some are a natural and necessary development/interpretation of the Torah by its true interpreters, and therefore there is a presumption that God wants this to be what we keep), but I didn’t understand why you intensify it specifically against the view of the one who says there is only (dry) halakhah and that God has altogether abandoned us.
Shatz.
First of all, I’m A-dot. And you must have gotten confused about his method with the Burial Society.
My dear fellow, it’s hard to sell me a popsicle in the desert, so when I see people selling ice to Eskimos, should that move me? Another provocateur continuing in Leibowitz’s path. Wow, don’t ask how much it affects me. I’m just overflowing with soul-uplifting experiences of cleaving to Him and to His path, blessed be He.
P.S. I really do not see Leibowitz as a great thinker. I can fold him into my little pocket in learning and understanding, and if I weren’t lazy and had lived in his time I would also have made sure to show him that to his face. Just some loathsome old man who managed to fool all sorts of know-it-alls. And that only shows how knowledge is no indication of wisdom and that there is no end to human stupidity.
If you have new and good arguments, please write and publish them. Otherwise it reminds me of the Hasidic stories about the holy Rebbe, the owner of the straps of so-and-so, who became famous as a pleasant Jew who prolonged his prayers, and they say he wrote a work in which he refuted with tremendous proofs everything the Shakh said in Yoreh De’ah where he disagreed with the Rishonim, except that before his death he placed his head between his two holy hands and sank into deep thought, then roused himself, took the bundle of manuscripts and threw it into the fire, and said: “The Shakh studied Torah for its own sake, and it is beneath his honor that I should publish objections to him.” And the living should take it to heart!
And possibly in a simpler wording, as our master the NNMH said:
If I studied Gemara, Tosafot, and Poskim, I would turn all the learners into ashes—but I just don’t feel like it.
Dear Kashkashani.
First of all, I addressed the rabbi’s main claim, that we do not derive the principles of morality from the Torah, which in my opinion is utterly mistaken. And for the simple reason: why is that binding?! What is binding, after all—even if there is some principle you believe in and it is a hierarchy, what fault is that of mine?! If I do not feel like believing in it or do not believe in it.
The rabbi’s source for morality is the verse “And you shall do what is right and good.” The rabbi quotes it often, and that is almost a distortion of the Torah’s intent, against halakhah, etc. The full continuation of the verse is: “And you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:18). The distortion and deliberate omission of the words in the eyes of the Lord is cheap apologetics, and above all infuriating.
1-3 Common sense says that God did not bring laws for the sake of laws, but that the laws would bring us to some place, even if we do not understand the reason for the verse. What is certain is that there is no point in dry commandments for their own sake—so says human intuition, and with it we work and act; the Torah was not given to ministering angels. As for His involvement in the world, I will leave aside for now the proofs of His intervention in the world. Only a world in which there is interaction between man and his God (even after prophecy ceased, through providence, or even within the hiddenness)—a God who watches over the world, cares about what happens in it, and cares what human beings do in it. In such a world there is meaning to serving God. Note well: the meaning is not because of hope for reward or fear of punishment (contrary to how you tried to portray my words), but because this is indeed the service of God—like the service of a king before him in his palace. By contrast, in a world where “God has abandoned the earth,” in Rabbi M. A.’s words, and gone off to amuse Himself with His angels somewhere beyond the galaxies, this is a world analogous to a palace whose king has left it, cut off contact, and doesn’t even phone. What value and meaning is there to serving the king in such a palace? So what if he built the palace and commanded how to conduct oneself in it? Why is that interesting at all after the king abandoned his palace, moved to dwell in another palace, and leaves every demon and fiend to run wild in the abandoned palace and destroy every lovely corner in it? What moral value is there in such service of the king? If God abandoned the earth because of a “policy change,” there is no moral impediment to our abandoning Him. And so it seems to me that one who thinks the king has abandoned his palace actually does, and enough said..
4. The matter of the development of morality, and anachronism. To throw out that there are answers does not really answer anything. I would be glad if you would answer about selling one’s daughter as a maidservant, about the rape of a priest’s wife, about circumcision, sending away the mother bird, killing an Amalekite, and killing someone who lies with an animal, and male homosexual relations, etc. etc. The Torah brings the one who follows it to places from which our world only distances us. Now admittedly, over the last 500 years humanity has advanced greatly on the scientific and technological plane—but can you really say that alongside this progress humanity has also advanced in the spiritual dimension? On the contrary, it seems to me that anyone who is not shutting himself up within the four cubits of philosophizing—and that is my one point of credit regarding Rabbi M. A.—will feel that the opposite is true. Religion has lost its standing in the world, atheism is flourishing, and with it all sorts of ideologies of evil, and in recent decades ideologies of hedonistic materialism, lewdness swarming from every corner. True, we have gotten used to it through our sins, some of us at least. The mechanic does not notice the added black oil on his filthy hands. Bestial pleasure-seeking, postmodernism. Thus, for example, just the phenomenon of the shorts protest, which returned us to the painful routine—and I’m not talking about fantasies like the free-the-nipple movement and the rest of the wild beasts.
With God’s help, the 48th day of the Omer, 5780
To Tam — greetings,
What Rabbi M. A. proposes is precisely to keep the commandments ‘because God commanded’—He commanded, and that’s that. One cannot say this is not ‘for its own sake.’ In his view it makes no practical difference whether God helps us nowadays or not, and no practical difference whether we feel taste and emotion in doing them or not. One must fulfill God’s commandments by hook or by crook, as a royal decree.
His method is problematic, of course, because an inseparable part of God’s commandments is the ‘duties of the heart’: faith in God and in His providence, and the religious feeling of love of God and awe of Him. And when the Torah’s foundations in thought and feeling are neglected, the practical part too grows dry and loses its vitality (as A. rightly noted). There is value in clinging to the commandments even in a state of constricted consciousness, as Rabbi M. A. suggests, but in no way should one be satisfied with that; rather, one should strive to reach expanded consciousness as well.
What is good as ‘first aid’ is no substitute for the need to reach the wholeness of faith and love of God. One cannot remain stuck all one’s life in ‘MDA’ 🙂
Regards, Shatz
And that really is the difference between the explanations said to the simple son and to the one who does not know how to ask, which emphasize the obligation to fulfill the command because of the past: “With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt,” “It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.” By contrast, in the answer to the wise son they conclude also with the future purpose: “for our good all the days, to keep us alive, as at this day”—that the commandments should bring us to a feeling of goodness and vitality in the service of God.
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.. and when the foundations of the Torah in thought and feeling…
Dear Tam,
With your permission I’ll respond to your answers.
1. Apparently we know what is right and good in the eyes of God by what appears to us right and good. The Gemara, after all, learns from here matters of going beyond the letter of the law (which sometimes enter the letter of the law and sometimes do not). I didn’t understand the question, why is that binding? Did someone try to convince you that it is binding? If you do not feel obligated to morality (as God’s command or in itself), then no.
2. Common sense indeed says that God did not give laws for the sake of laws, but that the laws would bring us (or the world) to some place. So?
3. An important point, and I didn’t fully grasp your meaning. Personally I am not sure that the question whether God knows our deeds is critical for keeping the commandments. But suppose it is—then it seems you are not satisfied with God watching and knowing, but demand that God also steer creation. The truth is I do not identify with what you wrote, but I have no explicit objections. In any case, this is certainly not a self-evident claim whose truth proclaims itself.
4. Regarding morality and anachronism: difficulties are difficulties. I just didn’t understand why those difficulties are harder for so-and-so’s view than for someone else’s. I was not addressing the question of morality, only the issue of the anachronism you presented (that is, the claims that Hazal missed the Torah’s intent in their interpretation). And regarding that I presented the answer (and did not merely declare that such answers exist). As for morality, Rabbi Abraham’s view is known: that this is indeed a moral problem and a halakhic demand (or permission) that exists on a separate plane (and what should a person decide in the conflict? That is his business).
5. As for progress on the spiritual plane—unfortunately it is not clear to me exactly what that is, and perhaps I am the mechanic you described.
It seems to me no wonder that the negation of emotion stirs bears from their lairs.
Rabbi Akiva, who wept over the Song of Songs, could not have been in doubt about the book’s reliability. Many descriptions in the sources could not be either.
The plain sense of the Torah is not like that either. One can believe in one’s heart even when the intellect is only at 80%. And that is apparently our duty.
I don’t understand what the rabbi doesn’t understand?
Your answers were precise, in my humble opinion.
Meaning, the answers seem satisfactory to you? I really don’t understand your intention. You wrote that your feelings were like his (that is, that my words do not bring one to the promised land). Has that changed?
Of course they are satisfactory. I reached the promised land and have in it “a portion and an inheritance.”
My feelings are like his only in his description of the illuminated valley of doubt, and of “as a religious person, a hidden sense of inferiority always accompanies you. In the final analysis, we are primitive, believing in spiritual entities for which there is no proof at all. A very quiet, nagging voice whispers in your ear from time to time—maybe it’s nothing, maybe there is nothing, maybe all this faith is imagination? Rabbi Michi transformed my perception.”
My claim, against Zuckerman, was that the sense of inferiority and primitiveness, and the beliefs without any proof…
come from a religious world of cleaving, warmth, and religious experiences. So where exactly does he want you to enter?!
Back into a land where, in the final analysis, we are primitive. In short, his aspiration is an oxymoron.
The article distorted things. Even I, small as I am, saw that immediately. I do not blame the interviewer. It is hard for an older interviewer who does not know and does not understand to present the rabbi’s method well. He tried, but it was evident that he was not really inside the issues.
In the end the interview was a good interview, and as time passes and people are more exposed to the rabbi’s method, they will understand the limitations of the interview and move on beyond it.
The joy you got from Akiva Zuckerman is really a case of seeing your world in your lifetime. If only it were so for me.
Now that everyone knows one has to be moral, what need is there for God, or the Torah, or halakhah?
I identify with Akiva Zuckerman.
A. Contrary to what someone here presented, his aspiration is not to return to primitiveness.
But there is a basic understanding that religion is built on certain traits, what is called religiosity.
That has nothing to do with the mysticism Yehuda Yifrach mentioned.
But religion is not performing an act because it is true. Rather, it is surrendering oneself to the Holy One, blessed be He, which includes love and fear and more.
That is the psychological infrastructure on which religion rests. It is not for nothing that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed His will to us so that we would know what is true and then keep it because it is so.
And in general, receiving the Torah is through a covenant. It is not just the dropping of a command; it is the forging of a bond with the Holy One, blessed be He. The way the rabbi describes Judaism in a dry way is indeed binding as truth, but it does not sit on the psychological traits that a religious person seeks (not that religion is supposed to provide fulfillment of certain needs; doing things because they are obligatory also rests on a certain place in the soul that directs a person there, but the psychological place from which a person turns to religion is not only the conception of duty of a categorical imperative, but another feeling that moves him to surrender, etc.).
B. It seems to me that this claim also includes the matter of “Jewish thought.”
The rabbi claims there is no such thing as Jewish thought, only thoughts that are either true or not.
Here too the feeling is that the rabbi is from the U.N.
Obviously every thought can be formulated in universal language, and then its claim is universal.
But claims are not only pure logic; they are also identification.
Regarding the occupation there are “Israeli” claims—not because they are formulated only for Israelis, but because apart from factual claims, every evaluative argument on this issue is driven by a person’s inner identification, and there are claims that naturally someone coming from the Israeli point of view perceives this way.
The feeling here is that the rabbi stands outside and judges claims coldly; this is possible for someone coming from outside.
It is like a person asking himself what his marital relationship should look like. It would be ridiculous for someone to come and describe to him the definition of a marital relationship (and what binding norms it contains); that is an external description that includes all kinds of relationships. He is seeking the form unique to him; the binding norms for him according to his character and psychological traits do not apply to every person (though of course we could formulate a general law that anyone with such psychological traits and such relationships would have these obligations; of course that would not interest anyone).
In conclusion, I must strengthen the rabbi’s hands.
Young men from yeshivot turn to me with questions of faith,
and much of what I have to tell them is things I learned from the rabbi.
So besides the direct fruits you have from those who speak with you, there are many fruits of fruits as well.
Thank you very much.
With God’s help, 4 Sivan 5780
To Mrs. Fisher — greetings,
Everyone knows one has to be moral—thank God that after three thousand years in which His Torah has been present in the world, the consciousness that one must be moral has indeed spread in the world. Judging by the way the world looks, it seems it still has a long way to go until this consciousness is also internalized 🙂
But the ideal that everyone should be moral is only the first floor—the seven Noahide commandments: a humanity in which there is no injury to another’s property or body, and no idolatry or sexual immorality. The second floor is to be compassionate and to do acts of kindness, not only ‘live and let live,’ but ‘love of kindness’ toward all creatures; and at the same time to be ‘modest’ before the Holy One, blessed be He, to walk humbly with your God out of recognition that all our virtues come from Him—to reach that requires much personal work and much guidance from the Torah of God.
With blessings for receiving the Torah with joy, Shatz
In the last line
With blessings for receiving the Torah with joy, …
Dear Kashkashi.
1. Whoever believes there is such a thing as morality is committed to the conclusion that there is a God, and consequently morality is also an obligation. True, supposedly we began from the premise that there is morality, but after that fact, the ultimate cause is God. (If there is rain there are clouds, but the clouds are what bring the rain—Rabbi M. A. in his ethics lectures.) Therefore to say there is morality outside God is empty verbiage. At most these are facts that appear moral, but not moral behavior. Therefore whoever does believe there is such a concept as morality is obligated to God, who is the producer (the ultimate cause) of morality.
2. Nu, all right. What “nu” and what “all right”? See your second question and enough said.
3. If you don’t think that’s critical, good luck to you. I truly cannot imagine Mr. Kashkashi or any other sane person working in the palace described above after the king abandoned it—and don’t sell me Ali Baba stories.
Besides this line of reasoning, which every reasonably sensible person of one day’s standing understands unless he is stubborn and arrogant enough, or driven by interests, there is also a probabilistic argument—see Russell’s teapot. If the teapot was revealed even once, then the burden of proof is on the one who denies it. In our case, the teapot called the Creator of the world has been revealed more than once, in public, and consequently our presumption is that every providential event is His long and hidden hand, and there is no need to prove this again and again. If you want, I’ll attach several links at length.
4. What do you mean, what should the person decide in the conflict?! There is no conflict, because when God said that a priest’s wife who was raped must divorce, that obligation was after weighing morality, and therefore there is no conflict. It isn’t something that developed over the years, like slaves, say, and selling one’s daughter as a maidservant. Therefore the conclusion is that this is His will, and that is what obligates!!
5. No person declares himself wicked, but speaking innocently it definitely seems that you are the filthy mechanic, if you do not see the deterioration into filth, lewdness, and unrestrained lust in the age in which we live.
Have a lovely day,
Tam.
Shatz.
I miss you..
I don’t know who Kurzweil is. I read the article and raised my eyebrows quite a bit, because a completely different figure emerged there from the one I had heard about. I admit I once tried to read Michi’s books and understood nothing, and I didn’t have the patience or time to invest. I still haven’t gotten back from coronavirus vacation, so now I had time and leisure to start reading some of Michi’s blogs. It intrigued me precisely because I think almost the opposite on most things. I saw that he often answers questions, so I asked. I got coy answers, somewhat condescending and dismissive. After a few times he stopped answering—his full right—but I, for my part, do not feel I got any real answer. I read the fifth notebook; I saw that the rationalism is not all that strong, and I think Michi admits that. So as I understand it, he does not really have answers to the questions. The truth is that I think a person is not capable of being completely rational. The attempt to be rational only leads to contempt for other people’s thoughts (which I found in abundance in the blogs and in the article), and in my opinion to mistakes, of which I also think there are many (like for all of us). As I read, I am discovering views that in my understanding are Reform (which is also his full right, but it is not what I am looking for). I simply think Yair Sheleg describes exactly that figure, and it is very possible that corrections to the article would have led to less highlighting of these views, which in my opinion Sheleg picked up in an impressive way. (It took me a very long time to find them through reading forums; I finally learned to appreciate journalism. In a one-hour interview he picked up a lot, in my view.) A more restrained article might have caused me to buy the books without checking enough first.
Ahad Ha’am.
I will answer in place of the rabbi’s expected response: “And let us say Amen.”
By the way, in those two delightful volumes almost everything you wrote is included. (I identify with you, but with reservations, because there are times when your words do not clash with the rabbi’s view, and they are a case of eating the fruit and throwing away the peel—and there is a lot to eat. You just need to pay attention to the peels that slip in from time to time even into the food.)
Are you hinting that this is a kind of missionary activity in disguise? Because that is what I am beginning to feel, and if so then it really is a shame about the time I’m currently spending on the blogs? (That’s what my wife told me from the very beginning, but I have not yet merited to reach her level of faith.)
I smell plagiarism in the air…
Dear Tam,
1. We were not talking about morality outside of God, but morality outside of halakhah.
2. The commandments probably have a purpose, except that we do not know it.
3. Probabilistic arguments are one thing. You are saying there is no point in doing commandments if there is no providence. I do not agree with that.
4. Halakhah said she must divorce; that is on the halakhic plane. There can be an overarching contradiction, because morality and halakhah are two separate considerations, and in particular there can be a contradiction in a concrete situation, in which a person is in conflict (what is God’s ultimate will here).
Have a lovely day.
I see in this thread a golden opportunity to write what is on my heart as well regarding Rabbi Michael Abraham’s books:
I see myself as a rational person (who doesn’t, really), and as such Rabbi Michael Abraham’s books are like cold water to a weary soul.
Over time, as I left the “bubble” of the yeshiva and the national-religious frameworks, and especially when I began to get to know, talk, and philosophize with secular atheist friends with broad and high education, I was drawn into an inner whirlwind of wanting to clarify, know, analyze, understand, and place myself on a higher level of understanding: what my life is based on—my opinions, conceptions, beliefs, etc.
[As a side point I’ll note that in my view, the more a person in his way of life is careful about Torah study and commandment observance, and the more it fills his inner and outer daily schedule—the stronger the demand for rational clarification becomes. After all, it is obvious that if a person invests more in a task, he will want to understand why he is doing it at all. So “religiousness” intensifies the demand for clarification, and this is not at all a domain limited to people “whose faith has weakened,” as it sometimes appears.]
At this stage, through much reading and discussion on evolution, I came to Rabbi Michael Abraham’s book God Plays Dice. That book opened my eyes. It strengthened my faith and influenced me directly and indirectly.
Directly: the book gave me intellectual tools to look at the whole subject of evolution with open eyes—not to be afraid, to think, to confront. It provided a rational anchor for this charged subject.
It restored my confidence to speak with my friends as an equal among equals, and not as someone rationally inferior or as a person who suppresses science or reason when convenient. In fact, it restored my ability to look at myself that way.
Indirectly: the book gave me tools for how to approach the subject—with confidence, not to leave the subtleties of reason aside but to use them and trust them. Not to see the demand for rationality as a weakness but as an advantage and a strength.
I owe Rabbi Michael Abraham deep thanks in that sense, and I am happy for the opportunity in this thread to write about it.
At the margins:
I also read the words of Akiva Zimmerman and others here in the thread, and on that too I would like to add:
There is indeed a feeling that accompanies me in reading the books (which are very analytical) and the articles, and in general in the thoughts afterward:
Sometimes there is a feeling that the analytical occupation, because it speaks about everything and penetrates every corner, essentially becomes the whole picture. It leaves no room for other layers in a person’s perception.
The example I thought of is people looking at the sea: analytically, there is here a certain material that obeys gravity. That is all.
The first person, the analytical one, says that this is what he sees. And he is right. And not only is he right—he is completely right that there is nothing more here beyond that.
But the second person says that he sees a sea here. We know he too is right, without contradicting the first.
The third person even composed a poem about the sea his eyes see, and he too is right.
So the feeling is that the books are “the first man” (and perhaps the most important as a basis). The second and third men, who do not have the first man’s knowledge, are greatly lacking. But would not “the first man” want in addition to clarify what the second and third are talking about?
In conclusion I want to thank Rabbi Michael Abraham again.
I discovered the site בעקבות the interview, and it is like a treasure of knowledge.
Thank you for the possibility of writing directly, asking, clarifying, and arguing.
Rabbi Mordechai, my teacher.
Absolutely, but there is no theft here, Heaven forbid. In the past I used your description in an argument with a friend; I simply enjoyed your words, sent them to him, and did not remember from whom I had taken them. At this point I used what I had sent him, and indeed I want to bring redemption to the world and say that the words are yours—more power to you!! Especially for the wording. The content is shared content among many readers of the site; your presentation definitely presents the points in proper form.
If so, then I really did not understand you. Very well. Sorry.
Zehava, your question is not clear to me.
1. We do not need God. He is there. I do not create God because of some need.
2. We need the Torah and halakhah in order to know His will (religious values), not for moral values. That is exactly what I keep arguing: that the Torah does not teach us (at least today) moral values. It is meant for halakhah. By the way, that is also what emerges from Rashi’s first comment on the Torah.
So after all we are not exactly in the same place.
In my opinion not every thought can be formulated in universal language. The obligation not to eat pork cannot be formulated universally; otherwise it would obligate all the inhabitants of the world, and so too with most halakhot. That is precisely what is different in Jewish thought.
The question of psychological connection is, in my view, a technical matter. Psychology is not essence. If people need something in order to connect, let them take it. But there is nothing essential about it. To each person according to his own psychological tendencies.
Thanks for the encouragement.
Thank you very much.
I accept all your claims. I definitely intend to be the first man. The second and third men, in my opinion, each person should build for himself. I do not negate all those levels, but only claim that they are not the foundation and they do not obligate everyone (and how could they be universal rather than specifically Jewish). It seems to me that this is what I called in several places “Torah in the person,” as distinct from “Torah in the object” (which is the minimal infrastructure in theology, along with halakhah and study of it). You described that here very nicely.
Your apology is accepted; the compensation still hasn’t arrived…
Just kidding… be well!
Happy holiday.
And one more thing I just remembered.
Eighteenth-century composers were essentially servants of some nobleman (an aristocrat, in the secular tongue) or of foreign worship (the Church, in the secular tongue), and were under heavy work pressure. Because of this, they all used to “steal” passages from older works and recycle them. Naturally, the upright ones (or the proud ones…) made sure to “steal” only from themselves. In the period before recordings, one could hope that listeners would not remember the older works…
It is told that after a performance of one of Handel’s works, the king invited him to his box and said to him: “I recognize thefts here.” “Indeed,” Handel replied, “my lord has found out his servant’s iniquity, but at least he will admit that I have good taste and know from whom to steal”… According to the story, the king enjoyed the answer and dismissed Handel in peace.
In my yeshiva they used to say about that, “Knowing what to take is also a knack.”
Mordechai, I had already thought about compensation, but in the end it seems you gave it up just as the king pardoned Handel..? (By the way, the Handel story itself is heresy that calls for a thief.)
Kashkashani.
1. Morality outside halakhah means morality outside God.
2. So what follows from that—should we present it dry as an oasis?!
3. Ask Mordechai… ?
4. I didn’t understand.
Kashkashani.
If I were Mordechai I’d be generous, especially since the source of the theft happened in the past, and now it was reconstructed according to the circumstances. It is certainly fitting to take fruits from among the commenters when they are juicy fruits; perhaps it is also worth remembering who planted them and giving him credit on the very day the fruits come to market..
I wouldn’t call it a knack..
breach*
I don’t know what plagiarism is being referred to here (and even by logic it is hard to guess, because I didn’t see anything one could boast about). I was speaking generally and noting that even in order to know which objects are worth borrowing without the owner’s knowledge, one needs discernment and understanding. (They say that it was said that the difference between Rabbi Chaim and Rabbi Itzele is that everything Rabbi Chaim said Rabbi Itzele could also have said, but there are things Rabbi Itzele said that Rabbi Chaim would not have said—not because Rabbi Chaim had not thought of them.)
1. That is the very point under discussion, and it is a plain begging of the question. Someone says there are two separate planes (and both are included in God’s will because He is the source of morality, and he notes that this is a simple intuition, and refers one to look into the matter of a transgression for its own sake, etc.), and you claim there are not. So the discussion was pointless.
2. What moistness are you proposing? It is still not clear to me what the point of contention is in this section. What do you have in halakhah that is absent from the approach you disagree with? The approach you disagree with does not say that halakhah consists of arbitrary commands.
4. I don’t know how to explain it more. If you didn’t understand (plainly or homiletically), then we’ll stop here. Really this is included in 1.
From Rashi’s first comment one learns that the Torah innovates also in the moral sphere, saying contrary to simple thinking that a people’s ownership of its land is not a natural ownership, but depends on the Creator’s will. The foundations of morality may be natural, but it is the Torah that defines man’s rights and obligations. And as the Hazon Ish showed in the question of the competing schoolteacher, the Torah’s ruling whether competition is permitted is what distinguishes between a robber and someone acting lawfully.
Regards, Shatz
I too read the interview and many thoughts came to me, and I thought of writing a response there, or sending one to Yair Sheleg, but in the end I decided to write here. Forgive me if this is a bit long, emotional, and not written methodically and neatly; I have never been good at writing (not for lack of understanding. And hoping that the rabbi will read this).
Both in the interview and in the responses, many of the claims are not only about the substance of the arguments, but about putting the bearer of the report before us—namely Rabbi Michi. That is, claims such as whether he is indifferent to religious feeling, or perhaps he suffers from rational autism, and these are the kinds of claims coming from people of various shades.
But I think they all forgot one thing there which in my opinion is the tie-breaker, and when I say everyone forgot I include Rabbi Michi himself—and that is… the Torah, its study, and its students.
As someone who grew up and lives in the Lithuanian Haredi world, ever since I can remember all the preaching, whether in cheder or in yeshivot, connected the service of God to Torah and its study. Everything else was minor. Yes, on account of this there were also valuable things that were missed, like prayer or classes in faith, which scarcely exist in yeshivot.
But the whole ethos was Torah and its study. Nefesh HaChaim, by the way, was learned in the lower yeshiva immediately, in order to instill that from our perspective this is the true service of God.
As a result, there is no question that the level was extremely high (I studied in the best yeshivot there), both in diligence and in the level of learning and knowledge.
(As an aside, not long ago there was a discussion here on the site regarding Haredi yeshivot versus national-religious yeshivot, and people tried to compare them. I was in Yeshivat Har Etzion for three weeks out of curiosity, and likewise in Har Hamor. True, in Har Hamor the situation is better, but anyone who tries to compare them—I have no other word except that he is delusional. Those boys from Har Etzion and the other mountain have many virtues (by the way, they are also mostly less intelligent in their personalities, even in other things), but in learning these are simply different worlds, in knowledge, in analysis, in skill—in short, almost everything. Most of the occupation there is with introductions, or with fantasies about prophecy and redemption; all that was just… by the way.)
And here comes my point of criticism. I have known Rabbi Michi for five years now. I came to him through questions, and especially through the feeling of shame that I had, unfortunately, every time I encountered an academic person or just some secular person a bit smarter and more knowledgeable in these matters.
And suddenly, through him, a huge world of things was opened to me that without him I would not have managed to uncover and discover, and more than once it gave me a feeling of pride, as Akiva Zuckerman wrote.
And nevertheless, what caused me most to learn from him is the love of Torah in him, which for me is what the essence of serving God depends on (unlike most of the commenters, and it’s good that they commented and did not remain indifferent when things sacred in their eyes were struck, but for them the main service is this or that research, important though it may be, on the influence of Hasidism on existentialism at the beginning of the year 5000 and so on).
Most of Rabbi Michi’s books deal with conceptual learning matters across the expanse of Talmudic sugyot. In one of the recent columns he wrote a certain sentence that was roughly this: “that the biography of the heads of Lithuanian yeshivot whom he greatly admires interests him much more than Kant’s life.”
This is also the same Rabbi Michi who, a few years ago, in response to the words of some professor of the humanities who eulogized Rabbi Eitam Henkin, of blessed memory, by saying that it was a shame he also engaged in Torah or something like that, because otherwise he could have been a much greater scholar—Rabbi Michi attacked him, saying there is much more value in his Torah study. Anyone who has seen Rabbi Michi deliver a class in learning and seen how much he lives it, or has seen Rabbi Michi write here several times that there is tremendous value in a person immersed in and successful in his learning even if in the end he does not influence the environment, or become a halakhic decisor, and therefore there is an obligation to exempt him from army service (unlike most commenters, who would not dare say that there could be justification for any person to be exempt).
And still, many of the things he writes are very hard for me to accept—both their content and their style, like all the discourse about the Haredim that was here; in my opinion he exaggerates and is detached from the reality that exists there. But that is not my point now.
About a person like him, so rooted in the world of halakhah and Torah, it is impossible to say that he has emotional blockage or religious autism, because for me, or for most of the Lithuanian world, there is no more emotional person than one whose discourse is authentic learning discourse (not academic research). See the Hazon Ish’s words in his letters about a person who studies Torah and that is the bulk of his occupation.
The criticism here is also directed at Rabbi Michi, who in the interview, although it is not connected to the trilogy, did not say that this is the main part of his spiritual world, if that is what the interviewer was looking for.
I have much more to say on this subject, but as I said above, I am not good at writing, etc.
Many thanks.
I connect to the last criticism in the column. And I will expand on it.
More precisely, I think this is mainly a feeling of frustration, more than criticism.
True, you answer those who do not believe in God very well, and your faith has a solid rational basis, but at the same time you rather empty it of any content of interest, experience, and emotion.
Prayers—probably do not help. Reward and punishment—maybe. Divine inspiration—ha!
And so on…
What remains for us? Keeping halakhot by force of authority and not מתוך understanding that this is necessarily the truth—nu, all right… not especially inviting…
There is a major issue of temptation here. True, this is the truth in your opinion. It is also true that cigarettes are harmful, so why color them black? Everyone is aware of the dangers. Even so, there is an emotional temptation that often overcomes every sensible rationale.
This method in faith brings many people to an enormous temptation—simply not to keep anything. It makes it harder.
When one is not sure what measure of God’s involvement there is in this world (and also in the world to come), the difficulty of keeping commandments is far greater.
It is also important to add that there is excessive reliance here on people’s opinions. Most readers here have not read as you have, thought as you have, and delved as you have (especially on these issues). And if you present logical arguments regarding the basis of faith, they continue with you one more step (almost with closed eyes, one might say), and then… fall into a pit…
We do not always have the tools to cope with all the arguments, if only because we have not yet had time to acquire them. Your expectation is that each person should form his own opinion, but that ability is limited compared to people who have formed such things over dozens of years, with thousands of data points and hundreds of apprenticeships.
One can easily be persuaded this way, so your responsibility is very great in my opinion.
Hello Rabbi!
I too connected very much to Zimmerman’s words above. I owe the rabbi deep thanks for the rationality he brought into my religious faith. I truly feel that the rabbi’s message is the only message for truth-seekers in our generation, also from experience in conversations with friends who have already lost their faith.
At first I wanted to write a response to this column, to compare the matter to a person who loves his wife sometimes more and sometimes less, but does not understand that the moment he married her he also has a fixed commitment toward her that is not dependent on circumstances and feelings. Then someone comes and explains to him the matter of commitment, and he accepts it, but still he looks for a solution for how to do everything with joy and love, and how to harness emotion for the sake of a full and complete married life.
The rabbi is like the one who explained the commitment in married life, which is the foundation, and without it there is nothing. But all those who complain about the rabbi ask: what about love itself? How can it be grounded?…
What the rabbi writes here, in my opinion, can set many people’s minds at ease. Indeed, the rabbi agrees that a person needs to find his emotional connection to religion; it’s just that the rabbi thinks that is not his business, it does not obligate everyone, and each person should do as he understands.
I think it would be worthwhile somehow to highlight this response of the rabbi so that additional people will see it.
Again, thank you for everything!
Happy holiday!
Hello and blessings,
It seems to me that the central point that distinguishes you from most Torah scholars, including many of your “followers,” is what you wrote here—
“In my eyes tradition gives no validity to anything, and personally I also have no affection for it and not much trust in it.”
Regarding “affection,” there is not much to write, because in your eyes in any case there is not much importance to the world of religious feeling, and therefore it does not matter whether so-and-so feels affection or not. But among those who think religious feeling is important, affection for tradition is also part of the matter, and its absence is a significant lack.
A more central point is the matter of “trust” (which in any case also gives “validity”). Among most Torah scholars there is great trust in the words of Hazal and the sages of Israel throughout the generations, that by virtue of their wisdom and cleaving to God they understood far better than we do in all spiritual matters, and that at least some of them had one degree or another of divine inspiration. It is not the place to elaborate the proofs of this. Therefore they have essential authority and not merely formal authority (something like the “authority” of a professor of physics compared to a first-year student). And the meaning of this is that basically one should assume they are right in what they say, certainly on topics where we have no contradictory information (such as the world to come or various spiritual determinations). And even if we have difficulties with what they say, one should first assume that “if it is empty—it is from you,” and try to resolve it; only with great difficulty and by force of strong and compelling evidence would we say they were mistaken (for example in scientific matters, where one may say they took things from the knowledge of their time).
But you do not accept all this, and as you wrote elsewhere, “Hazal were people like you and me.” And therefore you give almost no weight to factual/spiritual statements they made. And in the eyes of many (and also in mine), this lack of trust stems from some defect in intuition, as though from too much “rationalism” there is no longer “rationality” here. And truly it is a bit puzzling that the master of the teaching on the importance of intuition is himself deficient in this, though this can be reconciled, but this is not the place.
I will conclude with a story: A certain Hasid of Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk had a friend who was a great “opponent” of Hasidism. The Hasid tried many times to persuade his friend to travel with him to Lizhensk, and after much urging the friend agreed. When they arrived at the rebbe’s court, they saw a peasant complaining to the rebbe that his horses had been stolen. Rabbi Elimelech closed his eyes, and afterward said: “Go to the nearby town to such-and-such a street, and there in such-and-such a courtyard you will find your horses.” The peasant went out, and after a few hours returned and said the horses had been found exactly where the rebbe said.
“Well, what do you say now?” the Hasid asked his friend.
“What can I tell you,” said the “opponent.” “I’m uncomfortable saying that the rebbe himself stole the horses. But he was certainly one of the partners…”
(I am not the same Yosef as in the previous comment)
It was taught: the Torah, the Oral Torah, the early authorities and the later authorities and the last of the later ones—Michi Abraham—
all of it is occupational therapy,
a brilliant invention of the Jews,
for Torah together with the way of toil removes sin.
The Revelation at Mount Sinai, our souls, the giving of the Torah, Moses, etc.—from these myths they built the biblical ethos.
And where did we end up—
God is the peak of creativity;
this is the ultimate conspirac-y.
You challenged
the trilogy and its trail of admirers
What caught my attention in the interview was actually the fact that of the rabbi’s six children, two are not religious. Until that moment, in the absence of other information, I had guessed that all of them were religious. Beyond the trivial, this is a very interesting datum. I start from the assumption (there is some support for it in the rabbi’s words in the interview) that his children did not throw God behind their backs, but did so after thought. That is, they know the rabbi’s teaching, gave it a chance, turned it over and over, and still were not convinced. They weighed the arguments for and against, and ruled negatively. Granted, this is a rather small sample space, but still, two “failures” (or perhaps successes?) out of six is no small matter.
In the rabbi’s opinion this is, of course, a success. As he wrote in the post “Am I a Heretic”: “In my view, someone who examined and reached other conclusions, even if in my opinion they are mistaken, is not a failure but a success.”
And I wonder (with no small amount of concern), what is the status of the rabbi’s children from God’s perspective? And more generally, how does God relate to one who investigated and checked and was not convinced? After all, in the end He will judge us, not Rabbi Michi. What is the fate of those, for example, who read the rabbi’s The First Existent carefully and attentively, and in the final analysis did not buy it? Will the Holy One, blessed be He, pat them on the shoulder for the investment and honesty, or will He come at them with grievances for their sins even though they did not lie to themselves?
Personally, I am very worried. To put it mildly, I do not recommend that you rely on God’s capacity for understanding and accommodation; He does not excel at it like Rabbi Michi does. It is not clear who in the Talmud is responsible for “The Holy One, blessed be He, does not come with grievances against His creatures,” but whoever it was, one thing is certain: he was completely detached from reality. In the grievances competition, the Holy One, blessed be He, takes first place walking away—He is a champion at it; it is His number-one hobby. Kudos to Rabbi Michi, who would let Stefan the Pole off the hook, since he is likely Catholic and one should not come to him with grievances about that. The Holy One, blessed be He, by contrast, did not let off Stefan the Girgashite or Stefan the Jebusite, and even though they likely worshiped idols as was the custom of the ancient Canaanites, the Holy One, blessed be He, nevertheless commanded Joshua to devote them to destruction and kill them all—women, elders, children, and babies.
And if that is the fate of ignorant Jebusites, what will be our fate, we enlightened heretics? May God preserve us…
Almost all the commenters are ablaze with fervent faith and know
and proclaim what the will from Above is (as if they received a WhatsApp from the One who dwells on high).
Are Michi’s children (and they are only an example) atheists, or perhaps at least agnostics?!
I believe in stories more than in ideas.
In the yeshiva where I studied, one of the rabbis said—he was Maimonidean in his outlook—that he found it difficult to pray for his personal needs; it did not seem fitting and proper to him to turn to the Holy One, blessed be He, over trifles.
For years, prayer was a blocked channel for me.
Eight years ago I moved house and wanted to buy a second-hand kitchen that might or might not become available.
I decided to pray, and in my prayer I said that indeed this was a trifle, but I wanted the kitchen, and through it I wanted to discover that the Holy One, blessed be He, has an attitude toward my desires and my world as such.
I bought the kitchen.
If I understood the rabbi’s words in the interview correctly, there was a note of disdain for those who seek a living relationship with God (religiosity and piety). I identified with Yehuda Yifrach’s words, who saw in the inability to connect to God, to bond with God, and to experience Him as present in life a kind of disability. By the way, without condescension, I experience this disability in myself. The stable anchors of your doctrine of faith served for years as my anchors of faith. The connection between belief through reason and morality and belief in God was a foundation in my outlook that no wind of heresy could shake. But when faith remains there, on the first floor of the first man (among the three mentioned in an earlier comment), God is not alive, not present, and then in the best case one maintains loyalty to tradition, makes adjustments in order to minimize conflicts between halakhah and morality, and other things whose echo I hear in your words.
The binding of Isaac cannot emerge from such a place, nor much less than that.
I have a condition of aphantasia: an inability for visual imagination. The imaginative faculty lies at the base of faith, prophecy, and even morality.
It is the faculty that gives rise to desires; it is the faculty that gives rise to empathy toward another.
Its absence weakens desire and the prayer that comes from it.
In its absence, intellectual ability grows stronger and compensates as far as it can reach, but even the most polished thought still lacks the vitality and clarity that imagination grants.
I identify in your words a reflection of my maladies.
I wonder whether you will identify with that.
Clearly the binding of Isaac is not possible with such a level of rational faith (by the way, not everyone in religious experience undergoes some kind of binding), but in any case, in the case of the binding and in general all the biblical stories—they had not belief but knowledge, and prophecy, things that do not exist today.
Whoever wants a living relationship with God, all the best to him. I tend to think that one cannot create such a relationship, and that it is also unnecessary. But perhaps other people can. Be that as it may, I do not see in that any disability. If anything, then the opposite: those who succeed in creating a relationship have a kind of fantasy. But as stated, I understand that they will accuse me of the exact opposite.
The question whether one can perform a binding from within such a view is unimportant. Even if one cannot, in my opinion this is still the truth. If the truth has problematic implications, one must cope with them, but that does not change the truth.
See my remarks in column 62 (and also 27 and 264) on the myth of Hasid Yaavetz:
Rabbi Michi, I just want to tell you what I did on Shavuot night, and that is what I have been doing throughout these two months of corona—continuing to read the trilogy. In the middle of the night my son came and saw me with the book. I asked him whether this fulfills one’s obligation of Torah study on Shavuot night (I know there is controversy among Lithuanians about the Tikkun Leil Shavuot). Toward dawn, close to five, I went to catch some sleep. After that, on Friday night, since it had been good the previous night, I said: what would happen if I were now abroad, where they celebrate two days? I got up and continued in the third book from where I had finished the previous night. I found myself at 6:00 in the morning standing with the book in both hands. I finished it; I came to close it and discovered that my right hand hurt to the point of paralysis, unable to straighten it. What was said in the Gemara about Rava was fulfilled in me: “Impulsive people.” Therefore I would like to ask: what am I to do now in anticipation of the second wave? Do I have something to look forward to, so I won’t be bored?
Whoever is not seeking a living relationship with God, all the best to him.
Such people will need to anchor the sense of their existence’s worth in drawing attention and provocations.
Your conclusions are probably the peak one can reach by the power of thought, but the Torah is above reason, and therefore it also gives more and demands more.
By the way, morality too is not necessitated by reason, yet it stands at the base of your teaching and is the basis of your recognition not of God but of His being, since a person believes in God by nature.
It seems to me that the search for a living relationship with God is no different from belief in the existence of a moral demand.
The need for relationship is apparently even more fundamental and more universal than morality, and apparently lies at its base.
What is certain is that Abraham our father did not seem to be connected to your rational faith.
Nor did David, who says, “My soul yearns, indeed faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.”
Nor Moses, who says: “And who has a god so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call upon Him?”
Whoever thinks he does not need a living relationship with God, all the best to him. I think he lives in denial.
This is the central point—if indeed one cannot reach prophecy and an unmediated relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He, with such an “truth” (and I am not making any positive claim here, only assuming it for the sake of discussion), then perhaps that itself is the proof that this is not really the “truth” (or at least only part of the truth)?
Perhaps I was too laconic, so I will expand (but only a little).
When I search on the map for my way to Jerusalem and mark a route on it, and at the end of the trip I find myself in Tel Aviv, it is clear that somewhere I went wrong along the way, as it says: “This is not the way, and this is not the city.”
Obviously not every person will merit prophecy and divine inspiration even if he is meticulous in commandments and constantly studies Torah. It is not guaranteed to anyone. Even when you marked the correct route on the map, you may still make mistakes in navigation and the like. But if the route from the outset leads to a different place—meaning, if from the outset the path you propose blocks any possibility of prophecy and an unmediated relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He (and you even add words of contempt toward that very aspiration)—then its end testifies about its beginning, that something in your logical-philosophical analysis and your “thin theology” is flawed, even if I could not point to the exact failure. (And it seems to me, after reading most of the trilogy, that I can point to quite a few failures, but this is not the place.)
Unfortunately, the expansion does not help in the least. I am still looking for the meaning of your claim, and the strange analogy you raised here does not help me do so.
An interesting mixture of begging the question and unsupported declarations, several appeals-to-authority fallacies, and above all an unclear connection (to put it mildly) among all these items. This seems to me a good illustration of people whose faith comes out of their gut and whose heart is in place of their mind.
The question is not whether one needs it or not.
The question is whether it is possible.
Abraham our father, Moses our teacher, and King David lived in a period in which they had the possibility of a direct communication channel with the Holy One, blessed be He. What existed there was called knowledge—just as we know that the sun rises in the morning, they knew who the Holy One, blessed be He, is and what He wanted from them.
And that no longer exists. So there is no way to ground faith except on rationality and common sense. Because if I am an ordinary householder who, through my many sins, did not merit prophecy and divine inspiration—what experience exactly am I supposed to rely on? On the theological-messianic experience of the rebbe of Lubavitch and Chabad? On the mystical experience of Rav Kook, of blessed memory, and the people of Har Hamor, who tell me that the army and the institutions of the state are the holy of holies and that soon all the nations will come bowing in Jerusalem? They tell me that the best way to communicate with the Holy One, blessed be He, is through combat officership in the IDF. Or perhaps I should go smear myself in the streets while getting drunk on a few glasses of vodka—Rabbi Nachman is alive and well—and prostrate myself once a year on the graves of righteous men?
shout in the streets*
On the contrary, Mordechai—if you found several flaws, present them in an orderly way. I think it could be interesting.
You are far too smart and intelligent for me to believe you when you make that claim.
Michael acknowledges the manifestation called Elohim but denies the manifestation called Y-H-V-H.
I can accept disbelief in a divine presence in reality, a lack of intimacy, and a lack of concern for the creature’s fate—but not as a Jewish approach.
His approach certainly does not accord with Judaism: not the Judaism of the Bible, not that of Hazal, and not that of Israel’s revival in our generation.
Very quickly I managed to lose interest in his rational view, which strongly proves God’s existence but empties that fact of meaning for man.
The absence of prophecy in our day is a fact, but the question is whether it is a painful fact or something from Heaven.
According to Michael’s approach, it is doubtful whether prophecy was ever a reality.
If it was, why does he disparage those who seek a living relationship with God?
And if it was not, then all his faith is no more than loyalty to tradition based on a kind of fantasy, in his own words.
I admit I expected more.
An answer will appear in a column going up shortly. 🙂
I’ll only say that unlike many people who attacked the rabbi rightly or wrongly, and who in my opinion perhaps created the impression that the rabbi mainly arouses opposition, I am one of those whom the rabbi led to the promised land, and without him I would surely be very far from Torah and commandments and from the Holy One, blessed be He. And for that I owe him thanks every single day. And I know there are many others like me who owe their spiritual world to the rabbi. So, rabbi—thank you from the bottom of my heart, and beyond the tribe of attackers, there is also a silent majority that is not always heard or felt, that appreciates you and for whom you are a role model.
Many thanks. I’m glad to hear it.
I must note that I am really against the things written against Michi. I myself first heard Michi’s lectures and was so impressed by the way he makes things accessible, the rationality, the honesty, the Judaism stripped of excess that he offers. Know, Rabbi Michi, that thanks to you I merited to become a religious person—something I would not have been in any full sense at all were it not for exposure to the content and things you write and convey in your lectures! And not only I; many acquaintances and friends of mine come from different worlds: hesder guys, Haredi yeshivot, kollels, army people—many of them (I’m talking about more than 15–20 people) could tell you, as far as I know them, that they owe a tremendous amount to the thought you produce!
In general I have to say—Judaism has existed for thousands of years, and a great many additives have been added to it by people who thought around it or within it various ideas, some beautiful, some strange. The question is: are they binding? Is that what the Torah meant, or are these ideas part of the word of God? Michi offers an approach that, even if one does not agree with all his ideas, one can definitely adopt the approach—straight and honest thinking, rationality that examines the ideas that somehow snuck into Judaism: are they worthy of adoption or not… In short, this whole trilogy and Michi’s books and ideas are definitely worthy of admiration, and they certainly provide an approach and an opening for justified discussion! I simply cannot understand the others—it seems bizarre to me what they are writing.
A priest’s wife who was raped and is required to divorce her husband—doesn’t that contradict accepted and upright morality, and yet it is still halakhah?