Objectivity and Subjectivity in Halakha and in General – Lecture 4
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
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Table of Contents
- Conflicts in the community, violence, and authority
- Internal informing and the struggle over Kabbalah in Yemen
- Camp-based thinking, the “other side,” and Marxism
- Modern Orthodox, Religious Zionism, and language as a tool of distinction
- A symbolic leader and the model of monarchy
- Epistemic doubt and ontic doubt in betrothal not fit for consummation
- Fuzzy logic, the heap paradox, and the difference from statistics
- These and those, pluralism, and harmonism
- Maimonides, doubtful mamzer status, and the yeshiva-style reading of verses
- “Study it and receive reward” and Rabbi Israel Salanter
- Conditions, Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and “from now on, retroactively”
- Annulment of vows, something that has a way to be permitted, and changing how we view the past
- Time, Kant, and Shem Tov Gefen
- Quantum theory, Bell’s inequality, and hidden variables
- Halakhic effect as an object, contradiction between properties, and deciding by the “law of being”
Summary
General overview
The speaker presents a reality in which the prohibition against turning to the police and secular courts creates a mechanism for resolving disputes based on violence, private police forces, and the delegitimization of any internal authority as “the haters” or “the terrorists,” and he explains that this is how communities operated in the past as well. He then moves to a critique of dichotomous thinking that divides the world into camps of the “other side” versus the “side of holiness,” and compares it to Marxist thinking that identifies “forces of darkness” behind events. Later he argues that the absence of terms in a language prevents conceptual distinctions, illustrating this with the distinction between Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionism, and then develops a learned-philosophical move about the difference between epistemological doubt and ontic doubt, about fuzzy logic as opposed to probability, and about applications of this to the laws of betrothal, conditions, and annulment of vows, while attributing positions to Maimonides, Abaye and Rava, Rabbi Shimon Shkop, the Rosh, the Maharal, and Rabbi Israel Salanter.
Conflicts in the community, violence, and authority
The speaker describes the prohibition against turning to the police and to court as a root problem, because it leaves dispute resolution without an agreed-upon state authority and therefore leads to “blows” and vigilantism. He says they establish private police forces such as a “modesty patrol,” and everything is run that way, presenting this as the continuation of a historical pattern of communities in which people would beat one another up. He gives the example of the conflict in Ponevezh Yeshiva and notes that in the end they also turned to court even though it is forbidden, and that even when Rabbi Elyashiv appointed a panel of judges, including Rabbi Zimbalist, to hear and decide the matter, the outcome was immediately interpreted through the labels “the haters” and “the terrorists” according to camp affiliation.
Internal informing and the struggle over Kabbalah in Yemen
The speaker says he read an article by Eliyahu Nagar, a Yemeni college librarian, dealing with Maimonides’ doctrine in the area of prophecy, and in the course of it giving a historical introduction about Yemen around the controversy over Kabbalah. He notes that Rabbi Kapach’s grandfather was a Dor De’ah figure, defines Dor De’ah as opponents of Kabbalah, and describes how, in the context of that struggle, they were turned in to the police, imprisoned, and informed against. He says similar patterns existed in Ashkenaz as well, and that in other struggles too, such as the early days of Hasidism and in conflicts between Zionists and Haredim, people informed to the gentile authorities, sometimes falsely, in order to get others imprisoned.
Camp-based thinking, the “other side,” and Marxism
The speaker argues that the worldview of the camps functions like conspiracy theories, in which nothing exists that is not divided into one camp or another, into the enemy and the “other side” versus the “side of holiness.” He gives a symbolic example in which even Napoleon versus Blücher at Waterloo gets translated for them into “the haters” versus “the terrorists,” and expands this to say that the whole world has been painted this way from Creation until the zealots in besieged Jerusalem. He compares this to a similar pattern among other circles, such as Har Hamor, and defines the pattern as Marxist thinking in which one sees “forces of darkness” behind phenomena and attributes causal power to them.
Modern Orthodox, Religious Zionism, and language as a tool of distinction
The speaker tells of a conference held in an attempt to establish an OU branch in Israel in order to introduce the concept of Modern Orthodox, and distinguishes between Modern Orthodox in the United States and Religious Zionism in Israel by saying that Modern Orthodox deals with one’s relation to external values, culture, the world, and halakhic openness, and not necessarily one’s relation to the state. He uses the example of a “one-two-many system” among a tribe in Brazil and among Aboriginal peoples to argue that language enables distinctions, and when a concept is missing people have trouble seeing an existing distinction, as when people call everything “Religious Zionism” even though these are two different phenomena. He criticizes party unification around markers like saying Hallel on Independence Day, and argues that Israeli politics has lost written platforms, bringing a sketch from “Eretz Nehederet” in which it is hard to explain to foreigners a reality in which everyone is defined as “right-wing.”
A symbolic leader and the model of monarchy
The speaker raises the possibility of a need for a symbolic king figure like the Queen of England or the King of Spain, who does not manage day-to-day affairs but intervenes in moments of crisis. He gives an example from Spain on the day of Franco’s death, when the king took power for a few days, assigned roles, and then went back to sleep, and the transition passed quietly. He also gives the example of the Falklands War, in which the Queen of England approved and supported Margaret Thatcher and even sent a private ship as a hospital ship.
Epistemic doubt and ontic doubt in betrothal not fit for consummation
The speaker returns to the issue of subjectivity and objectivity and presents betrothal not fit for consummation as an example of a special kind of doubt, such as a man who betroths one of two women, or two sisters, without specifying which one, so that both sisters are forbidden to him and this is a Torah-level doubt requiring stringency. He asks why, according to Maimonides, there is no room here for leniency, since Maimonides holds that a Torah-level doubt is treated leniently by Torah law and only rabbinically is one stringent. He answers that here too Maimonides would agree to stringency because this is a “certain doubt,” in which reality itself is not sharply defined. He formulates a distinction between epistemological doubt, in which reality is clear and only the person lacks information, and ontic doubt, which is vagueness in halakhic reality itself, so that there is no concrete woman who is betrothed, but rather a kind of “thin betrothal” within a group.
Fuzzy logic, the heap paradox, and the difference from statistics
The speaker uses the heap paradox and baldness to present fuzzy logic, in which concepts are not binary but take a value between zero and one, like a “degree of heap-ness,” and explains that this is not statistics even though the formalism is similar. He argues that statistics fits situations in which there is one truth but information is lacking, such as a die landing on a certain face, whereas fuzzy logic fits situations in which even with full information there is no yes-or-no answer because the definition itself is vague. He demonstrates that the statement “there is a fifty percent chance that Rachel is betrothed” is misleading if the intention is epistemic probability, whereas he wants to describe a situation in which each one is “betrothed by fifty percent” in an ontic sense.
These and those, pluralism, and harmonism
The speaker presents pluralistic conceptions of these and those are the words of the living God as ones that assume ontic doubt in a halakhic dispute, and then distinguishes between pluralism, which claims that both sides are equally right, and harmonism, according to which each side grasps one aspect of truth and the full truth is the combination of the aspects. He interprets the passage in Gittin about the concubine at Gibeah so that “he found a fly and was not particular about it; he found a hair and was particular about it” means that both factors combined, and therefore both amoraim were partially right. He brings the Maharal on 150 reasons to declare the creeping thing impure and 150 reasons to declare it pure, in order to argue that the Torah sets the bottom line, but the arguments for purity are real sides, and he presents this as a justification for the skill expected of a member of the Sanhedrin.
Maimonides, doubtful mamzer status, and the yeshiva-style reading of verses
The speaker notes that the source for Maimonides’ view that a Torah-level doubt is treated leniently is the passage about doubtful mamzer status, and presents a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), who challenge Maimonides from the verse “The Merciful One said a certain mamzer, and not a doubtful mamzer,” as though a specific permission were required in order to be lenient in a case of doubt. He argues that this reflects a yeshiva-style pattern in which “every verse teaches the opposite of what it says,” and illustrates this with the statement “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice,” and with the discussion of when a specific permission teaches a general prohibition and when it serves as a paradigm case. He adds that Maimonides, in a responsum, learns from Scripture in its plain sense that doubt is treated leniently, and mentions the further branch of the rule that “two verses that come as one do not teach [a general rule].”
“Study it and receive reward” and Rabbi Israel Salanter
The speaker brings the rabbinic statement that the stubborn and rebellious son “never was and never will be,” and asks why it was written at all: “Study it and receive reward.” He presents, in the name of Rabbi Israel Salanter, that the passage was meant to teach that Torah study is an end in itself and not only a tool for practical implementation. He connects this to the Rosh in Nedarim on “perform the commandments for the sake of their Performer and speak of them for their own sake,” linking it to the concept of study for its own sake, and then raises a pilpul-style difficulty about the wayward city, concerning which too it is said “Study it and receive reward,” arguing that one would need a tzrikhuta argument in order to keep the principle general.
Conditions, Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and “from now on, retroactively”
The speaker presents, from Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Kuntres Ha-Tena’im, a view according to which a woman who received a divorce or betrothal on condition is in an intermediate state of “both a married woman and a divorcee,” and only when the condition is fulfilled does the state “collapse” to one side. He argues that this is not lack of knowledge but ontic doubt, and describes it in terms of vagueness rather than probability, using the expression “quantum collapse.” He brings the Maggid Mishneh on Maimonides in the case of a conditional divorce “if he does not come within twelve months” and the husband dies, and explains that Maimonides requires actual fulfillment of the condition and therefore she is not permitted until the twelve months pass; Rabbi Shimon concludes from this that a condition is not merely igla’ei milta le-mafre’a, but a mechanism of “from now on, retroactively,” in which a future event is the cause that applies a halakhic effect backward in time.
Annulment of vows, something that has a way to be permitted, and changing how we view the past
The speaker brings the Rosh in the name of the Jerusalem Talmud regarding annulment of vows, which takes effect retroactively, and asks how a vow can be considered “something that has a way to be permitted” if the sage uproots the vow as though it never existed. He explains that according to the Babylonian Talmud the annulment is “from now on, retroactively” and not mere disclosure, and therefore it matters from what point in time one looks at a past event: a person who ate before the annulment could have been liable then, but after the annulment one’s backward-looking perspective changes in a way that prevents punishment from that point onward. He illustrates this as an idea of “rewritten history,” dependent on the temporal point of view and not only on the time one is asking about.
Time, Kant, and Shem Tov Gefen
The speaker quotes Shem Tov Gefen, who tried to resolve the question of the age of the world via Kant by arguing that before man there is no time, because time is a form of human intuition. He rejects this by arguing that even if time is a form of intuition, man can still apply it retroactively to the past, and therefore the question of the age of the world remains. He connects this to the model of “from now on, retroactively,” in which once there is a timeline there is also the ability to look back and describe the past in temporal terms.
Quantum theory, Bell’s inequality, and hidden variables
The speaker says that probabilistic tools can also describe ontic vagueness, and brings quantum theory, where probability densities are used but are usually interpreted ontically rather than epistemically. He notes that one can construct experiments that distinguish between “there is a truth, I just do not know it” and “there is no truth until measurement,” and mentions Bell’s inequality and the discussion of hidden variables. He notes that Einstein did not accept the standard interpretation, and mentions David Bohm as representing belief in hidden variables.
Halakhic effect as an object, contradiction between properties, and deciding by the “law of being”
The speaker argues that the concept of a halakhic effect functions like an object placed upon a person, and therefore one can describe a situation in which two halakhic effects rest on a woman even if the final legal statuses contradict each other. He explains that contradiction is between properties and not between objects, just as salty is the opposite of sweet but salt and sugar can both be present in one dish, so too “married woman” and “divorcee” as properties contradict each other, but “the halakhic effect of married woman” and “the halakhic effect of divorcee” can pile up as objects. He argues that Jewish law behaves here like the stringencies of doubt, but not because of “doubts”; rather, because one always follows the “law of presence” and not the “law of absence,” and therefore even in a rabbinic doubt there is no leniency when a thin but certain prohibition exists. He concludes that even in the case of betrothing one of two women, what we have is vagueness in halakhic reality and not merely lack of knowledge, though in the example of married woman and divorcee the vagueness is sharper because the laws themselves contradict each other.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About fifteen years ago, something like that, I asked them: how does this make sense? You throw a shtender at the heads of yeshiva deans, the greatest Torah authorities of the generation, you understand? A shtender.
[Speaker B] Rampaging between person and person.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. These are the heads of Ponevezh Yeshiva, after all people from a very high level, yes? What do you mean? He’s violent and he’s taking property that doesn’t belong to him, or I don’t know, taking over the yeshiva and all that, so a person takes the law into his own hands. There are always halakhic explanations for everything. The whole question is whether you agree that this is really how you describe his actions, meaning, whether that’s actually true. This is one of the problems; it’s an example that always stands before my eyes. The root of the problem, after all, is that it’s forbidden to go to the police or to court, because of informing and secular courts and all kinds of things like that. And then the only way to settle disputes is to beat people up, because what else can you do? After all, go to that religious court—well, that court is “the haters.” Go to that court—they’re “the terrorists.” Meaning, there is no authority at all that is some kind of state authority you can turn to and that will regulate the dispute. It’s forbidden to go to the state authority. So what happens is that they set up private police forces to preserve modesty, a modesty patrol. And everything—everything there is run that way.
[Speaker B] How did they function for two thousand years? How did they function for two thousand years? Like this? Obviously. Like this. In the community, in the shtetl, they used to beat each other up, obviously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An article by Ephraim Levi—exactly like that. Today it sounds very strange to you because today we have a state. You say, what do you mean, there’s police, go to the legal authorities. But you don’t read—you don’t read the right things. In many communities there were private religious courts within the
[Speaker C] community, there was
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a dispute, and they didn’t accept the authority of the court because it was from the “haters” or from the “terrorists,” I don’t know—
[Speaker C] what, from the Oberlanders or the Unterlanders.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I just now read an article written by the librarian of Naveh Kollel, his name is Eliyahu Nagari, a Yemeni Jew. He wrote an article, something on Maimonides’ doctrine in the area of prophecy, I don’t know exactly, something like that. And in the course of it he discusses things Rabbi Kapach wrote. He described—there’s some historical introduction there where he describes what happened in Yemen around the dispute over Kabbalah. Rabbi Kapach’s grandfather was a Dor De’ah figure. Dor De’ah means opponents of Kabbalah, opponents of Kabbalah. And what went on there—they turned them in to the police, put them in prison, informed on them, you can’t imagine what went on there, it was insane. And exactly the same thing happened, of course, in Ashkenaz—exactly the same. The only way to solve disputes is either there’s some very strong authority that everyone accepts, or anarchy, or beatings. With the Hasidim there were wars at the beginning. And the Zionists—what, didn’t they turn one another in to the authorities? Zionists and Haredim and so on—of course. What do you mean? To the gentile authorities, and they informed on them falsely so they would be thrown into prison.
[Speaker C] No, the Rabbi said that the principle is that you don’t turn to the authorities, so it remains entirely internal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what do you think they do here in Bnei Brak—don’t turn to them? Of course they do! The Ponevezh dispute also reached court. It’s forbidden, but in the end they go, because you can’t—you can only drag it out so long. Rabbi Elyashiv and a few other important Jews appointed a panel there that would sit and judge the matter and decide it. Rabbi Zimbalist from Lithuania, he’s a very highly regarded judge, and two others, I don’t remember already who. Rabbi Elyashiv appointed them to hear the matter. They heard the matter, okay, so what? They heard it. Now they’ll say they’re “haters” or they’re “terrorists” according to whatever decision they reached. The whole world is like in Dan Brown books, you know—the Freemasons and all those secret societies. Once you look at it through those glasses, there is nothing in the world that isn’t divided either into these or those, or into the enemy, the other side or the side of holiness. For them, it’s Napoleon against Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo—that’s “haters” versus “terrorists.” Napoleon was a hater and Blücher was a terrorist. The whole world is painted in these colors, completely seriously. The whole world is painted in these colors from Creation onward—really the zealots in besieged Jerusalem are the root of the haters and the terrorists. They color all the reality around them exactly like, by the way, many people in Har Hamor or all those circles do similar things. It’s a kind of Marxist thinking where you see forces of darkness in every phenomenon that happens around you; you basically see dark forces standing behind it and driving it.
[Speaker B] I hadn’t thought of the parallel to Marxism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wrote about it on my site—about this Marxism, about this Marxist way of thinking. It’s a problem, this thing. I once wrote—there was some OU conference; they wanted to establish an OU branch here in Israel, basically in an attempt to introduce here the concept of Modern Orthodox. Because in Israel it’s divided into Haredim versus Religious Zionists. And in the United States, what’s called here Religious Zionist is called Modern Orthodox—Yeshiva University. But that’s a different category, Modern Orthodox. Modern Orthodox has nothing to do with one’s attitude to the state; it has to do with one’s attitude to external values, to the world, to another culture, or maybe openness in Jewish law, to modernity. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with Zionism. There’s a connection, but it isn’t necessary. So they’re trying to introduce it here. There are now attempts in general. Rabbi Fechter from Netanya also wrote about it some time ago in Makor Rishon. So they held some conference.
[Speaker C] Were you talking about introducing the term or introducing some activity?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So we once talked about Whorf, with the Pirahã tribe, the article in Nature, right, that we talked about.
[Speaker E] One-two-many?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? One-two-many? Yes, the model, the one-two-many system. Those who count one, two, and many. Language often enables you to distinguish things that without language you don’t distinguish. Like with the Eskimos and snow.
[Speaker D] And one, two, and many. I heard a lecture about that, I forgot his name, on the radio. Anyway, he talks about the Aboriginals, and he says—and they learned to count—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aboriginals in Australia, yes.
[Speaker D] He says that what created the change that they learned to count was the invention of the refrigerator. Because the moment they could keep kangaroo tail, which is their delicacy, in the refrigerator, then they already wanted to keep more than two or three. Okay. Until then there was a constraint.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so there’s a tribe in—I read an article about a tribe in Brazil; there are several places in the world with this kind of one-two-many system. Doesn’t matter. In any case, there you see that language is the instrument by which you make distinctions, and sometimes when you lack the term in the language, you don’t—you can’t make the distinction. For example, they asked them in that tribe, they put down three batteries and four batteries and asked them which is more. They didn’t know why. But twenty versus three, say, that they do know. Meaning, they understand what more and less is, but at the resolution between three and four it looks the same to them. This is many and this is many. Meaning, what’s the difference? So language is a very, very important instrument. So in this context, the fact that there’s no accepted term in this country for this matter prevents people from distinguishing that there are two different phenomena here. They’re often correlated, but they are two different phenomena. The phenomenon of Modern Orthodox and the phenomenon of Religious Zionism. People call everything Religious Zionism. Here, completely current events—the elections and the parties and everything—what are they doing? Uniting everyone around Religious Zionism. Who cares about Religious Zionism, for heaven’s sake? Why is that even relevant? There are people who are Modern Orthodox and there are people who are Religious Zionists who are not Modern Orthodox, for example the Hardalim. But they need to unite because both of them say Hallel on Independence Day. Who cares whether you say Hallel on Independence Day? Is that the issue you’re supposed to fight over in politics?
[Speaker C] Unless they’re uniting as a party that’s to the right of Likud, it seems to me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But they’re not. They’re uniting around Religious Zionism. Religious Zionism needs to unite. What—what—what does it need? What does that have to do with Religious Zionism right now? What, the battle is that everyone should say Hallel on Independence Day?
[Speaker C] That’s your issue? That’s your ideology?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The battle is to keep all the settlements. So that’s not related. So that’s not a uniting of Religious Zionism. Feiglin himself wrote that the only party
[Speaker D] whose platform you can understand at all is the party of—what’s his name? Feiglin. Feiglin. By the way, also Meretz. So now both of them no longer exist, so now we’re really in trouble. Erased.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole subject of a platform has been erased completely. Disappeared.
[Speaker G] The Blue and White platform?
[Speaker F] What?
[Speaker D] All of a sudden?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and now there’s a coalition with no written platform, no proposed platform. So just now there was a bit—my son showed me—there was some sketch on Eretz Nehederet that they did around all the leaders who came now to the Auschwitz event. So they’re sitting around the table there—the King of Spain, Prince Charles of Britain—and then Yair Lapid and Gantz arrive, yes, and they try to explain to them what’s going on here in Israel. They say, look, he’s right-wing. So he asks, and are you left-wing? He says, no, I’m right-wing too. So he didn’t understand. So wait a second—trying to explain to someone coming from outside what’s going on here, meaning, what this is all about… It was so beautiful, it was really a wonderful sketch. And suddenly you see it through the eyes of someone from outside, and you understand what a bizarre world you live in. People here are already used to it; we’re inside this world. Fine.
[Speaker D] It could be that we also need some kind of system. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could
[Speaker D] be that we also
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] need some longing for a strong leader by now.
[Speaker D] No, a king like—like the Queen of England, like the King of Spain, who usually doesn’t do anything, and if there’s a serious problem—on the day Franco died, the king, who was completely a puppet, took power for a few days, killed no one, distributed roles, and went back to sleep, and there you have it: elections; the transition passed quietly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or the Falklands, for example—yes, the Queen of England basically had to approve it, meaning there are big things that go through the monarch.
[Speaker D] Yes, and she gave full support to Margaret Thatcher, which was significant, including sending her private ship to serve as a hospital ship. Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good. In any case, let’s get back to our topic. Last time I spoke about subjectivity and objectivity; I talked about betrothal not fit for consummation. Betrothal not fit for consummation is an example of a very special kind of doubt. A person betroths one of two women, one of two sisters, and doesn’t define which of the two—why one of two women? It doesn’t matter—and he doesn’t define which of the two. In such a case, the rule is that a Torah-level doubt is treated stringently. Meaning, if they are two sisters, then you don’t know whether Rachel is betrothed to you, so Leah is forbidden to you because she is your wife’s sister, and vice versa. And because of that this is basically betrothal not fit for consummation. And we talked about this last time; I asked why according to Maimonides we don’t go leniently here. After all, Maimonides’ position is that a Torah-level doubt is treated leniently by Torah law; only rabbinically does one have to be stringent. So what’s the problem? What’s the problem with betrothal not fit for consummation? You could have relations with her because she is possibly your wife’s sister, possibly your wife, possibly your wife’s sister. So essentially you could have relations with her on account of doubt? So I said that here too Maimonides would agree that one must be stringent, because this is what they call in the yeshivot a “certain doubt” and not a “doubtful certainty.” A “certain doubt” is that I’m uncertain about reality, but in reality there is something certain. I just don’t know who the actual certain one is. By contrast, a “doubtful certainty” means that my state is certain, but reality is doubtful. Meaning, I know what’s going on in reality, but reality itself is not fully defined. So the difference between these two types of doubts—you can call them epistemological doubt and ontic doubt. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, and ontic refers to being, reality itself. Epistemic doubt is doubt that is my lack of information. I don’t know what reality is, but in reality itself, reality is perfectly clear—God knows everything. Ontic doubt, really, I think it’s more correct to call it vagueness and not doubt. It basically means that in reality itself there is something not fully defined, something even God does not know. Meaning, there is no information about reality that I am lacking; the doubt is not born because I don’t know everything, the doubt is born because reality itself is a doubtful reality or a vague reality.
[Speaker C] What does it mean, a reality that is doubtful?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That in reality itself one of the two women is betrothed to me, but there isn’t one specific woman who is really betrothed to me and I just don’t know which one.
[Speaker G] If
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I sent an agent to betroth a woman for me and he died, then I am forbidden to all the women in the world because they are possibly my wife’s sister. Okay? Why? After all, there is one woman who really is my wife; I just don’t know. So that’s a doubt that is the result of my lack of information. But if the agent betrothed one woman out of many women and did not define at all who the woman was—not that I don’t know—then there is no concrete woman at all who is betrothed to me.
[Speaker C] And that is defined as doubt in reality, halakhic doubt, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, doubt in reality—who is the woman betrothed to me. But it’s not that there is doubt whether there is one real woman betrothed to me and I just don’t know who. Rather, reality itself is a doubtful betrothal within a whole group of women. Like in physics—quantum theory.
[Speaker C] Is the reality of the definition of betrothal something that is part of reality? Not only part of Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That can be discussed—maybe I’ll comment on that already today. It doesn’t matter, but for me this is halakhic reality, okay? That’s the point. And this is not my subjective issue; it’s something objective—it’s the Jewish law. It’s not that someone can now come from heaven and reveal to me who the woman really betrothed to me is, and then solve my doubt. There isn’t—even in heaven they don’t know.
[Speaker C] Yes, I meant reality in the sense of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I just didn’t want to get into halakhic metaphysics, meaning the question whether Jewish law describes reality or not. Maybe I’ll comment on that in a moment; it actually connects in another way to our topic. So this is basically the difference, and therefore we actually have here a demonstration of the difference between objective and subjective. Meaning, epistemic doubt is subjective doubt; it’s doubt that exists only in me. Reality itself is well defined; I just don’t know it. Therefore that’s what it is. Ontic doubt is doubt that exists in objective reality itself. Meaning, it itself is not fully defined.
[Speaker H] Meaning, it was as if given, built into this halakhah, that there are states of doubt here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t have to be given; it’s a logical result of what’s written in Jewish law even without that. If I can betroth a woman—no one brings a verse for that. If I can betroth a woman, and now I come and betroth one of two women without specifying which, that’s the consequence of the fact that betrothal exists in the world. You don’t have to define that itself. The question of how to relate to it is a dispute between Abaye and Rava about betrothal not fit for consummation, but the fact that this is a concept—that the state created is betrothal not fit for consummation—is a consequence of reality, it’s not—
[Speaker G] But there is a verse in the passage. What? There is a verse in the passage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, only regarding the question whether betrothal not fit for consummation takes effect or not. But regarding the question whether this thing is betrothal not fit for consummation or not—that is a consequence, it’s a factual state. No verse is brought for that.
[Speaker I] If it did take effect, what would the law be?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, there’s a dispute between Abaye and Rava. According to Abaye it does take effect. That’s the law—it takes effect. That’s the aleph of ya’al kagam. Both are betrothed. Both are betrothed, and therefore both need a bill of divorce. After all, you can’t have relations with either one of them, so you need to give both of them a bill of divorce. But that’s an interesting question—can you give one of them a bill of divorce and remain with the other? In principle, maybe, but then no—actually impossible, because then she would be your divorced wife’s sister, yes, you can’t; you need to give both of them a bill of divorce. Fine. In any case, so this—this is epistemic doubt and ontic doubt, and I want to move forward with this idea a bit. So first of all I’ll sharpen the concepts a little. I’ve already had occasion to talk here more than once about the heap paradox and its offshoots, yes? Basically what that paradox says—briefly—is that one pebble is not a heap, a certain collection of pebbles that is not a heap—if I add one pebble to it, that doesn’t change its status—but a million pebbles is a heap. Yes? Or one hair on your head—if you have that, you’re bald. A bald person to whom you add one hair—that doesn’t change his status. And if he has a million hairs on his head, then he’s not bald. So all these situations and so on—basically every everyday concept is exposed to this attack. So it seems that there’s some sort of contradiction here. The way to deal with this contradiction, it seems to me, is to adopt what is called fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic means—you can present it in several ways—but that the concept bald or the concept heap is not judged in terms of yes or no. It’s not binary logic; it’s fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic accepts a set of values, say between zero and one, and you can talk about the question of what degree of heap-ness this pile has. So one pebble has a very low degree of heap-ness, five pebbles already more, a thousand pebbles is already completely a heap. So there are various degrees of heap-ness or various degrees of baldness and hairiness and so on, and many other examples too. Now what is the difference between this and, say, statistics? In the eyes of logicians, statistics is one example of fuzzy logic. Because statistics also attaches a value between zero and one to events. This event has probability 0.2, this event has probability, I don’t know, 0.73, and so on. So basically this fits the formalism of continuous logic, of fuzzy logic—or vague logic, more accurately. But there is a difference between these two things at the philosophical level, not at the mathematical level, or even the physical level if you want, if we are speaking about quantum theory. Because statistics deals with situations in which there is one true answer; I just don’t know which one. For example, which face the die will land on. Now clearly the die will land on one of the faces and the answer is clear; I just don’t know it yet—it hasn’t happened yet, so I don’t know. I say there is a one-in-six chance it will land on two or three or four, and so on. So I use statistics to deal with situations for which I lack information, but this is not a situation that has no truth—there is truth, I just currently lack information. By contrast, fuzzy logic deals with situations where even if I had all the information in my hands, it would do me no good. Meaning, I know there are five pebbles here before me. Could Elijah come and tell me, this is a heap? No, because the definition of… the concept heap is itself a vague definition. This is not a lack of information. It’s not that I don’t fully know what is before me and therefore I hesitate whether to call it a heap or not. Rather, what is the logic here?
[Speaker H] What is the logic here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The logic—you have to understand—classical logic is a logic that attaches to every proposition or event or whatever you want either a truth value or a falsehood value. Continuous logic, or fuzzy logic, vague logic, is a logic that attaches to every event or every proposition a value between zero and one, not just two values—either true or false—but between zero and one. Probability, for example, is one example. It’s not the only example. Because if I ask myself how much—whether a pile of five pebbles is a heap or not—the answer is 0.2. What does 0.2 mean? It means the degree of heap-ness of it is 0.2. Meaning that you can’t answer that question with a yes or no. But here it’s not that there is a correct answer and I just don’t know what the correct answer is. That is the correct answer. The correct answer is that there is 0.2 heap-ness here. That is the answer. Therefore this is a different kind of situation than rolling a die. Rolling a die is missing information. In fuzzy logic, I have all the information in hand, except that the information itself is fuzzy, vague, not sharp. And therefore despite the similarity, there is a difference between these two things. And for example, the doubt between two—say I say I betrothed one of two sisters. Now I say there is a fifty percent chance that Rachel is betrothed to me and a fifty percent chance that Leah is betrothed to me—that expression is inaccurate. Because a fifty percent chance for Rachel and a fifty percent chance for Leah means that one of them really is the one betrothed to me, I just don’t know. I’m saying fifty percent that it’s this one, fifty percent that it’s that one.
[Speaker B] Because you could sort of say it the other way around. Each one of them is betrothed by fifty percent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s why we called it thin betrothal. Meaning, each of them is fifty percent betrothed to me. The fifty percent is in the betrothal, not in my knowledge of the betrothal. It’s not fifty percent on the epistemic plane, on the plane of what I know about the world, but in the world itself. The question is what degree of betrothal there is here.
[Speaker C] How—how can this happen technically, this matter? This betrothal?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, after all, you give a perutah to the father of the two sisters and you say, one of your daughters is betrothed to me.
[Speaker C] Does it have to go through the father or not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t have to, just the question is whether they can appoint an agent, for example. One of them. The Mishnah says that one of them can be an agent for all of them and receive a perutah, and all of them will be—well, never mind. There are ways to do it, and the Sages can surely find ten more ways to do it. In any case, this difference is basically the difference between, let’s call it now, vagueness and doubt. Vagueness is not doubt. Vagueness is a defined-not-defined state where my information about it is complete. Nothing is missing from my information, and therefore it is not correct to say that I have doubt here. I am not in doubt. By the way, in certain conceptions that I do not agree with, certain conceptions of the notion of “these and those are the words of the living God,” for example, pluralistic conceptions—conceptions that say both sides are right—those too are conceptions that basically say that in a halakhic dispute the doubt is ontic, not epistemic. Meaning, both sides are right. It’s not that I don’t know which of them is right, and therefore there’s a fifty percent chance this one is right and a fifty percent chance that one is right.
[Speaker B] Rather, both sides are right, but not fully. Partially right. Right, exactly. Partially right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, something like that. There is some… yes, again, that too can really be defined in a few ways. It could be that both are fully right even. True pluralism says both are fully right.
[Speaker B] If it’s fully, then that’s a contradiction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. What contradiction? That’s why I don’t accept that. That’s the pluralistic approach. A pluralistic approach says there’s no such thing as right and wrong; both are equally right. I’m talking about harmonism—we spoke about this once—and harmonism means that both sides are right because each one grasps one aspect of the truth. The real, full truth is the combination of all those aspects together. Right, where do we see this? Actually, the Talmud says this regarding the concubine in Gibeah, in tractate Gittin. After all, “these and those” appears in two places: in Eruvin regarding the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, and in Gittin regarding the concubine in Gibeah. One said he found a fly in her, one said he found a hair in her. So there it says that Rabbi Yonatan and Rabbi Evyatar argue: was it a fly or a hair? They meet Elijah, and Elijah tells them that the Holy One, blessed be He, says: “These and those are both the words of the living God.” And what does that mean? The Talmud explains it there. In Eruvin it doesn’t explain. In Gittin it explains. He found a fly and didn’t mind; he found a hair and did mind. Now how do we understand this? If the meaning is that he got upset because of the hair, then the one who said it was because of the fly was wrong. So what does “these and those are both the words of the living God” mean? So that’s not the intent. The intent is that he found a fly and that got him somewhat heated up, and the hair was what broke the camel’s back. Meaning, it was the combination of both those things. In other words, the one who said he found a hair and the one who said he found a fly were both right, but each grasped only one aspect of the truth. The truth is the combination of the two aspects together. That’s the full truth. I think that’s also the correct meaning of “these and those” in halakhic disputes, when the Talmud says that even in halakhic disputes each one is right—the point is that each one grasps an aspect of the truth. Like the Maharal who talks about one hundred and fifty reasons to declare a creeping creature impure and one hundred and fifty reasons to declare a creeping creature pure. Right? The Talmud says they would test someone who was a candidate for the Sanhedrin to see whether he knew how to declare a creeping creature pure by one hundred and fifty arguments. So Rabbenu Tam asks: what do we need these empty dialectical exercises for? Why do we need empty pilpul to declare a creeping creature pure? Are these Purim jokes? So the Maharal says no, this is a necessary skill for a member of the Sanhedrin. What does that mean? A member of the Sanhedrin has to understand that even a creeping creature that the Torah declares impure has one hundred and fifty aspects in favor of impurity and one hundred and fifty aspects in favor of purity. The Torah only said that in the bottom line it is impure. It didn’t say there are no real sides by virtue of which it is pure. That is basically the same statement as harmonism, right? Harmonism means that you see one aspect, I see another aspect, and in the end the truth is the combination of all those aspects together. Meaning, the harmony between the two aspects, the orchestra, right? Each side—really all of them together—creates a kind of orchestra, and the melody comes out of all the instruments at once. Right? That is the harmonic conception of halakhic truth. I tend to think that way, and not that both sides are simply right in “these and those are the words of the living God.” And what about “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel”? Fine, we spoke about that—that’s a halakhic ruling. In any case, that’s really the difference between them. So ontic doubt is a doubt where the right way to deal with it is with fuzzy logic. Epistemic doubt—the right way to deal with it is through statistics or probability. Probability is basically the tool that lets us handle situations of uncertainty, situations where the information is partial. Fuzzy logic is a tool that deals with a vague reality. Now, in terms of the laws, the laws look like doubt. For example, with betrothals that were not capable of leading to intercourse, then you have to be stringent and not marry either of the two women, or give a bill of divorce to both women. Okay? So you have to be stringent the way we are in the laws of doubts. But it’s not exactly like the laws of doubts. Because as I said before, Maimonides, who says that a Torah-level doubt is ruled leniently, here he knows that one must be stringent, and stringently by Torah law. Why? Because each woman is truly a doubtful married woman—not that she may possibly be a doubtful married woman, but rather she is fifty percent a doubtful married woman. About such a thing it was never said that one may be lenient. She is certainly fifty percent a married woman. It’s just that it’s fifty percent, so it’s a weaker prohibition, but the prohibition is certain. You can’t be lenient with that prohibition; there is a certain prohibition here.
[Speaker B] The word “doubt” here doesn’t really fit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. They use the term “doubt,” but what they really mean is fuzzy logic and not doubt. That’s exactly the point. But it behaves very similarly. Another example: what would happen, say, if these betrothals were rabbinic betrothals? Then here too, not only according to Maimonides, but even according to the other medieval authorities (Rishonim) who hold that a Torah-level doubt is stringent by Torah law—here it’s a rabbinic doubt. “Which of you is betrothed to me?” So maybe one could be lenient? So then is this no longer betrothal that was not capable of leading to intercourse? No. Everyone would agree that this is still betrothal that was not capable of leading to intercourse on the rabbinic level. Why? Because it’s certain; it’s not a doubt. She is certainly my wife’s sister on the rabbinic level. She is only certainly my wife’s sister in a weaker, rabbinic sense. That’s all, but one still has to be stringent. That doesn’t help us be lenient here.
[Speaker E] If someone is a fuzzy doubtful mamzer, can we be lenient with him? To say he isn’t a mamzer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently not. I think not. By the way, what is Maimonides’ source? The source for Maimonides’ view that a Torah-level doubt is ruled leniently is from mamzer. So there are medieval authorities who ask against Maimonides from the sugya of mamzer. It’s really funny. They ask against Maimonides from the sugya of mamzer, where the Talmud says: “The Merciful One said a definite mamzer, and not a doubtful mamzer,” so you see that you need a special permission in order to be lenient in a case of doubt. So that proves against Maimonides that in principle a Torah-level doubt is stringent, and therefore here a verse was needed to permit it. Right? That’s the yeshiva way: in yeshivot every verse teaches the opposite of what it says. Right, we already talked about that. Because “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice.” You’re arguing with your wife, and your wife says, “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice.” You fool, it’s obvious you never learned Talmud. Why did Abraham need the instruction “Whatever Sarah tells you, listen to her voice”? Because usually you don’t need to listen to a woman’s voice. Only here, specifically, he was told that he should listen. So every verse teaches the opposite of what it says. And what reverse where?
[Speaker C] It’s not the opposite of what it says, it’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the principle written there is that one should listen to one’s wife, so from here they learn that one should not listen to one’s wife, because otherwise there would be no need for a verse to say that here one should. That’s the principle. Now of course that isn’t always correct. It’s true in some places, yes, and in some places no, and it’s a very good question when yes and when no. There are places where, say, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Fine? They learn this from tzitzit and shaatnez, in tractate Yevamot. They learn it from tzitzit and shaatnez. I would have said that from the juxtaposition of the commandment of tzitzit to shaatnez, I would learn that a positive commandment does not override a prohibition, and therefore a verse was needed to tell you that in the case of tzitzit it does override. But the Talmud says no: from the fact that with tzitzit it overrides, that becomes a paradigm teaching that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition throughout the Torah. Okay. But there are also other examples, examples that say that from the fact that a permission was needed here, we see that elsewhere it is forbidden—or the opposite. And the question of when we say this and when we say that is not so simple. There are a few ideas about it, but not for here.
[Speaker E] So what would Maimonides answer about a doubtful mamzer? Why do we need the verse?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides says the opposite. Maimonides says: that is my source. Maimonides, in a responsum—people didn’t know it because it isn’t written in the Mishneh Torah—in a responsum, Maimonides learns the law that a Torah-level doubt is ruled leniently from the Talmudic passage about a doubtful mamzer. That is his source. Not only is it not a difficulty against him—it’s the very same argument. When the Torah comes to permit something, does that mean that ordinarily it is forbidden, so you can learn the opposite of what is written there? Maimonides says no, we don’t learn the opposite; we learn what is written. If it says that doubt is lenient, then apparently doubt is lenient. And mamzer is the source that teaches me that. Fine, now you can start doing pilpul, because there is also doubtful firstborn. Then you have “two verses that come as one do not teach.” Now that definitely ought to teach the opposite of what is written. I once also had a pilpul about this; I’m a bit associative today. There’s a very nice saying of Rabbi Israel Salanter. He says: it is written there that the wayward and rebellious son never was and never will be; and why then was it written? “Expound and receive reward.” These two verses are what save us? We already finished all the rest of the Torah, and the Torah had to add two more verses so we’d have something to learn? That sounds a bit unlikely. He says we’re not reading the Talmud correctly. He says the section of the wayward and rebellious son was written in order to teach us the principle of “expound and receive reward.” To teach us that when we learn, we learn in order to learn, and not in order to know what to do. “Expound and receive reward.” And the proof is the wayward and rebellious son, which has no practical implications at all. So why study it? Why is studying it Torah study? You see that even when there is no practical implication, study does not have to be for the sake of implementation; study has to be for the sake of knowing. Right, that’s what Nefesh HaChaim writes, right? And the Rosh in Nedarim. The Rosh says: perform the commandments for the sake of their performance; speak words of Torah for their own sake. So the commandments you do for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He, and Torah—“to speak in them”—Torah study is for its own sake. An end in itself. Anyway, for our purposes—I was reminded of it. So Rabbi Israel Salanter says that the wayward and rebellious son was really written in order to teach us the principle of “expound and receive reward.” And since he was a pilpulist, I also allowed myself to be a pilpulist, and I asked myself: the Talmud says the same thing about the condemned city, doesn’t it? Right? The condemned city never was; it is there only so that you may expound and receive reward. Now those are two verses that come as one, which do not teach. So in fact you learn from here not “expound and receive reward,” but only those two you study even though they have no practical implication, whereas ordinarily, when there is practical implication, you study the rest. Fine. Now you need to make a tzrikhuta between them. Make a tzrikhuta between them and then you can preserve Rabbi Israel Salanter’s conclusion. That’s how you build pilpul. Fine. In any case, I now want to go into another example that shows this point. Actually, I’ll start with two examples. I’ll start with the concept of condition. Rabbi Shimon writes—he has some contradictions in this matter, or somewhat different formulations on this issue—he has a pamphlet on conditions at the end of his novellae on Gittin. And in one of his formulations there he says: what happens when you have a condition, say, for another month? A woman divorced conditionally. What is she during those days in between? That’s what the Talmud asks. And the question is: what is her status in the days until the condition is fulfilled or not fulfilled? Then he says it depends whether it is a condition of “on condition that” or a condition of “if,” and there are reversals there from one extreme to the other. But I’m not going into the details right now; I only want to show the logic. So Rabbi Shimon claims that in the interim days she is both a married woman and a divorced woman. Both a married woman and a divorced woman. And then when the time of the condition arrives, if the condition is fulfilled then she is divorced; if the condition is not fulfilled then she is a married woman. From that point on, the situation becomes clarified as either this or that, but until then it is both this and that. So when I taught this in Yeruham in the yeshiva, the guys opened their eyes at me—what do you mean, both a married woman and a divorced woman? If she’s a married woman then she’s not divorced; if she’s divorced then she’s not a married woman. What do you mean she is both a married woman and a divorced woman? So I stopped for a moment, because to me it had sounded so obvious that I hadn’t even thought about it. I said, obviously, both a married woman and a divorced woman; let’s move on to the next sugya. And then suddenly you say, wait a second—the emperor has no clothes. There’s something problematic here. I paused for a moment. It was clear to me that I was right, but I had to look for the formulation, how to explain such a thing. On the face of it, I’m just saying a thing and its opposite, a logical contradiction. And the claim I told them there was that the legal effect—and we talked about this, right?—that the doubt whether she is a married woman or divorced in this situation is not a doubt; it is a state of vagueness, in the language I used here. It’s not a doubt—maybe a married woman, maybe divorced, and I just don’t know. Rather, it is both together. Rabbi Shimon, all through that pamphlet there, that is really the thread running through it. He tries to prove from the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that a state of doubt is not “the matter becomes clarified retroactively” when you are speaking about “on condition that.” It is not clarified retroactively. It’s not that there is one truth, only I don’t know it because it depends on a future event, but the Holy One, blessed be He, knows. No. He says that right now both things are true; it’s not that I don’t know which one is true. It is ontic doubt, not epistemic doubt. It is vagueness, not probability. Okay? That is basically his claim, and it has all sorts of implications. For example, there is the well-known Maggid Mishneh on Maimonides—I don’t remember, there are several examples there. One example I do remember: Maimonides says there about someone who gives his wife a bill of divorce if he does not return within twelve months. If I do not come back home within twelve months, you are divorced—in order to save her from levirate marriage, from being an agunah in relation to levirate marriage. So what happens if he dies? He dies after two months. Fine? Maimonides says she cannot marry until the twelve months pass. So everyone asks him: what do you mean? Here we are talking about a condition of “on condition that,” not a condition of “if.” A condition of “if” means the legal effect takes place only at the end, when the condition is fulfilled. But with a condition of “on condition that,” that means that if the condition is fulfilled then retroactively—the phrase “on condition that” is equivalent to saying “from now.” So if the condition is fulfilled, then the legal effect has already taken place from now. So what’s the problem? After all, you know he’s not going to come—the man is dead. You know he isn’t going to fail to come for twelve months? Sorry—you know he’s not going to come for twelve months. It’s only a lack of elapsed time, but already today you know he won’t come for twelve months, so she should be allowed to marry. After all, if he doesn’t come for twelve months, then already from now she is divorced. So why shouldn’t she marry? What does it mean that she shouldn’t marry?
[Speaker C] Does it mean she shouldn’t marry a High Priest? No, in general. A priest?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She’s not divorced.
[Speaker C] If she’s not divorced, then she’s a widow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine, we can think there.
[Speaker C] Shouldn’t marry a priest, or shouldn’t marry at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that she shouldn’t marry a priest. That’s not important right now. So the Maggid Mishneh there says that Maimonides requires actual fulfillment of the condition. Meaning, in order for her to be able to marry, the condition must actually be fulfilled. It’s not enough that you know the condition will certainly be fulfilled; rather, twelve months have to pass and he has not arrived. Therefore, until you wait through those twelve months, the condition has not been fulfilled, even though you know it will be fulfilled. So Rabbi Shimon says: if a condition were merely a retroactive clarification of the matter, then what’s the problem? You already know today that he isn’t going to come, so you already know that she is divorced. What information is missing? You know everything. Therefore, Rabbi Shimon says, this proves that a condition is not retroactive clarification. A condition is quantum collapse. Meaning, there is a state of being both a married woman and a divorced woman simultaneously, and the moment the person does not arrive within twelve months, that collapses into one of the two states—either he came or he did not come.
[Speaker F] And if he comes, would they kill him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle yes, except it’s only a question of uncertain warning.
[Speaker F] If they judge—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they judge him after the twelve months, then certainly they won’t kill him. But if they judge him now, in principle they could kill him.
[Speaker H] There, in that case, she is certainly a widow. The question is whether she will be exempt from levirate marriage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Say he is imprisoned somewhere and we know it won’t be opened for twelve months. He is in a place farther from us than a journey of more than twelve months, so he won’t arrive, and he is still alive. Fine? You can construct scenarios; that isn’t the problem. So Rabbi Shimon says that from here you see that a condition is not a retroactive clarification of the matter. Rather, a condition is both this and that. That’s what he calls “from now on, retroactively.” That’s what Rav Shmuel says in Makkot and elsewhere. “From now on, retroactively” means that the fulfillment of the condition is a causal factor for the legal effect that occurs today. It doesn’t clarify that this was the situation today. Say I’m abroad and a child is born to me, and I don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl. Fine? Then I arrive here and it becomes clear that it’s a boy. Then obviously, once it becomes clear to me that it’s a boy, it was a boy from the beginning; it’s not that only now it became a boy. I just didn’t know. Here the problem is epistemic. I lack information; I don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl, but there is an answer. Rabbi Shimon says that’s not the situation here. Here the point is that until now it was doubt-boy doubt-girl; it was vague. Right? From now on, basically, from the moment I know, so to speak, he becomes a boy. That’s the condition with conditions. A condition in conditions is not: when it becomes clear later, it turns out to have been so retroactively. It doesn’t happen from now; that would be a condition of “if.” It’s a condition of “on condition that.” But it happens causally backward in time. That’s his claim. He says the cause must occur in order for the effect to happen, even though once it happens, the effect occurs backward in time. That’s what he calls “from now on, retroactively.” It’s not from now on, and it’s not a retroactive clarification of the matter. It’s something in between: from now on, retroactively. It’s a third mechanism. Where does he bring proof for this? From a Talmudic passage in Nedarim 50. The Talmud there talks about a vow, and it says that a vow is something that has a way to be permitted, because you can go to a sage and ask him about it. The Rosh brings there in the name of the Jerusalem Talmud that the Jerusalem Talmud asks: if you go to ask, and the sage permits the vow, he permits it retroactively; he uproots it. This is not a permission from now on. It’s not that from the moment you were with the sage, now it is permitted to you. The sage determines that there never was a vow. He uproots the vow retroactively, through an opening and regret, and in the end you had never vowed under those conditions in the first place. Okay? So he says: if so, why is a vow called something that has a way to become permitted? “Something that has a way to become permitted” is something that is forbidden for a certain time, and then some moment arrives from which onward it becomes permitted. Like things forbidden on a Jewish holiday or on the Sabbath, then the end of the holiday or the end of the Sabbath arrives and it is permitted. There are special stringencies for something that has a way to become permitted, because they tell you: why do you need to be lenient now? Wait until after the Sabbath and be lenient then. Okay? So now the question is whether a vow is called something that has a way to become permitted. The Babylonian Talmud says yes, and the Jerusalem Talmud argues that this cannot be, because the sage uproots the vow retroactively.
[Speaker H] But the reasoning that it is—what Rav Tzachi said—that something that has a way to become permitted is because what you eat in prohibition you’ll eat in permission, that still exists by a vow. That it will be eaten—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, alternatively, right. Fine, that’s a long lesson on the matter, right. There’s also the Ran there, after all. There are two rationales in “something that has a way to become permitted,” the Ran and Rashi.
[Speaker E] Why, in the prohibition of produce, you don’t know whether you’ll tithe it in the future or not—does that count as fuzzy logic or doubt—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, right now it’s tevel. What do you mean?
[Speaker E] Yes, why do you consider it something that has a way to become permitted?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not permitted by way of doubt.
[Speaker E] Tevel is not considered something that has a way to become permitted?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it is, because if you tithe it, it will become permitted only at the time you tithe it, not from the beginning.
[Speaker E] Who says I’ll tithe it? Maybe I won’t manage to tithe it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can tithe it. What do you mean? Yes, there’s a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim): if it may be that you won’t manage, the question of whether such a case is called something that has a way to become permitted is a dispute among the medieval authorities. So the Rosh there writes—and this is how Rabbi Shimon explains him—that according to the Babylonian Talmud this is called something that has a way to become permitted. Why? Because even if a sage permits the vow, he permits it from now on, retroactively. Not that he clarifies that the vow never existed, but rather he uproots it: the vow took effect and he uproots it, but he uproots it retroactively. Meaning, it took effect and was uprooted, but uprooted retroactively. So what happens, say, if someone ate that thing before the sage permitted the vow? In principle, you could flog him. He ate something forbidden now, and even if afterward they permit the vow, there’s no problem: you can flog someone who was liable to lashes. But after the sage permits it, if we now judge him, we can no longer flog him. Why? Because once the sage has permitted it, when we look backward, even in the past it was already permitted. I once gave an example for this—slightly drifting off—from Rabbi Shem Tov Gafen. I already mentioned him. He was the great-great-grandfather of all the Gafens—Yehonatan Gefen, Aviv Geffen, and all of them. He claimed that according to the Kantian view, one can resolve the question of the age of the world. Since Kant saw space and time as forms of our way of looking at reality, not as things in reality itself. Again—subjective and objective. So he says: we ask how long the world has existed. Say humanity has existed for some thousands of years—it doesn’t matter how you define “human”—but by stricter definitions it’s something like eight thousand years. Ten thousand, even in evolutionary conceptions. The question is what counts as “human” in the present-day sense, when we start relating to it as human; it isn’t necessarily Homo sapiens.
[Speaker C] By “stricter” you mean narrower? Yes, he narrows more the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the option of who counts as human. Stringency and narrowing are the same thing. I once gave a lesson on that. Someone who is stringent is not someone who makes life harder for me. Someone who is stringent is someone who narrows the number of options available to me. Even if what he removed were hard options and not easy ones, he is still being stringent. Meaning, someone who forbids me to fast two days on Yom Kippur is being stringent. He says it is forbidden to fast two days on Yom Kippur. He is being stringent; he is closing off an option.
[Speaker C] I know of a discussion around the question whether, in a time of religious persecution, parents are allowed to kill their children so they won’t be taken into Christianity. And it says there that “some are stringent and forbid it.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, that’s exactly the point. Because anyone who closes off an option is being stringent. It doesn’t matter whether that option is a burdensome one. In the end, whoever closes off an option is stringent. Fine, I once developed that; we already talked about it. There was also some lesson on it once.
[Speaker G] Isn’t this just terminology?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No, no—this is what “stringent” and “lenient” mean in Jewish law; it’s not just terminology. This is what “stringent” and “lenient” mean in Jewish law. What does it mean that in doubtful blessings we are lenient? It means not to recite the blessing. Why? I really want to recite the blessing—why is that called being lenient? If in doubtful blessings we are lenient and I want to bless, then saying the blessing seems more, no? You’re being lenient.
[Speaker G] Maybe because of doubt about “Do not take [God’s name in vain],” maybe a doubtful prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So then it isn’t lenient; it’s a doubt about something else. That’s the point. “In doubtful blessings we are lenient” doesn’t mean not to recite the blessing. “In doubtful blessings we are lenient” means that everything is open. You may recite the blessing, and you may refrain from reciting it. Once everything is open because you have no obligation to recite it, then the prohibition of “Do not take [God’s name in vain]” says, fine, then you may not recite it, because that would be taking the name in vain. But really, if this were just from the laws of doubtful cases being lenient, they ought to allow me to recite the blessing. And there are halakhic implications to this definition of leniency and stringency. I mentioned there also some Rosh on that.
[Speaker B] Fine, in any case, the issue of the age of the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The age of the world, yes. So Rabbi Shem Tov Gafen says that according to Kant there is no problem at all with the age of the world, because before there was a human being there was no time. Because time is only a form of human perception. Before there was a human being there was no time, so the world is six, eight, I don’t know, ten thousand years old. Not terrible; the difficulty is relatively small. It isn’t fourteen billion.
[Speaker C] Why assume that animals don’t have such a conception of time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can discuss that, but that’s his assumption. That’s the assumption, because the Torah says the world is six thousand years old. A sign that animals don’t have it. Why is that explanation not correct? It’s not correct because the fact that time is my way of looking at the world does not mean that I can’t also look through those space-time glasses at the past. When I ask myself how old the world is, it is true that before there was a human being there was no one to ask how old the world is, because the concepts of time did not exist when there was no human being. But once there is a human being, the human being can also look at his past and describe it in terms of time. Now I ask how old the world is. And the question is whether it is fourteen billion or six thousand. The question still exists. It’s like someone imagining that according to Kant I can’t ask when my grandfather was born. Because before I existed there was no time axis, and the time axis is subjective. Meaning, before I existed there was no time, so if there was no time my grandfather wasn’t born. My grandfather has no date of birth. That’s nonsense. Obviously after I was born I have a time axis, and I have marks on the time axis, and I can also look backward through those glasses. That’s called “from now on, retroactively.” “From now on, retroactively” means that from now onward history itself gets rewritten. But it’s not that in the past things really were different. Rather, history is rewritten. Okay? Meaning there are two ways of looking at the same moment in time—say, as in annulment of vows. Suppose on Sunday I made a vow, on Monday I ate the forbidden thing, and on Tuesday I went to a sage who permitted my vow. Okay? So I ask: what was the legal status of that piece of bread on Monday? There is no answer to that. It depends how you are looking. The answer to what was on Monday depends on the question of from what time you are looking. It does not depend on the time you are asking about—not only on the time you are asking about, but on the question of what is the time from which you are looking at the thing.
[Speaker B] That’s the “from now on, retroactively.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. “From now on, retroactively” means that from now onward our retrospective perspective also changes, but not that it becomes clear that it was always that way. Because if it were a retroactive clarification of the matter, then it wouldn’t be “from now on, retroactively”; rather, it was always that way, only you didn’t know. Like my child: a son was born to me and not a daughter; I didn’t know—that still doesn’t mean he wasn’t a boy. He was a boy, I just didn’t know. Here it isn’t like that. No, he wasn’t a boy until I looked. That is quantum collapse. It is exactly the same idea.
[Speaker H] And therefore the laws that derive from that time going forward, or from the time we are in now, change.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. But say if you flogged him before the sage permitted it, then that’s perfectly fine. You didn’t flog an innocent person, because you too were in a state from which Monday was still a forbidden day. But if after the sage permitted it someone came to flog him, then no. You can’t flog him when he didn’t commit a transgression.
[Speaker H] And the law regarding conspiring witnesses there—isn’t that a law of “they had him killed,” so—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They exposed them on Tuesday and said, “You were with us.”
[Speaker H] No, no, now “you were with us.” From now on they are disqualified, but not from today’s perspective—in essence that was just a case. They didn’t flog him, he wasn’t liable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that an ordinary retroactive clarification of the matter?
[Speaker H] No, because if I look perhaps from today, meaning at the witnesses—did he not commit the offense of lying? Of course he did. No, the offense wasn’t here. No, he committed an offense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It becomes clear retroactively that it never was; that is a retroactive clarification of the matter. It simply becomes clear retroactively that they lied; they simply weren’t there. Fine. The question is why from now on they are disqualified. That’s the dispute of Abaye and Rava there, right? “You only have it from the moment of its novelty.”
[Speaker E] And earlier you said that statistics describes epistemic doubt, but you can’t describe ontic doubt with statistics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that you can’t. Rather, fuzzy logic can look just like statistics. The mathematics will be the same; the philosophical meaning of it is different. You can use statistical tools to describe the same fact—that in quantum theory we also use statistics. Except that in quantum theory the accepted conception is that this is ontic doubt, not epistemic. Not that I don’t know through which slit the particle passed; it passed through both, and still the distribution function is a distribution function, meaning a probability density. So probabilistic tools are used in both cases, but their philosophical meaning is different. And incidentally, this also has implications. In quantum theory this has implications: is it only probability, or is it fuzzy logic? That’s what Bell’s inequality is about. Meaning, there are situations where you can construct an experiment that will behave differently depending on whether there is a truth—just a quantum truth that I don’t know—or whether there is no definite truth.
[Speaker B] And the two slits—that’s exactly what shows that it isn’t probability.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but the question is whether after all it may still be probability by means of a hidden variable. There are all sorts of claims there about hidden-variable theories, that maybe this can still explain it, only I don’t know. That’s the question. So the claim is that the accepted conception is that there are no hidden variables. They haven’t entirely ruled out all those possibilities, as far as I’m updated—I’m no longer updated about what’s going on today—but they ruled out most of the hidden-variable possibilities. But there still were people who clung to it—David Bohm, a Nobel Prize candidate, a very important physicist, was the advisor of Yakir Aharonov. So he, for example, believes in hidden variables. He thinks there is no—this is not really statistics.
[Speaker B] And Einstein too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Einstein didn’t accept it at all. Fine. In any case, I’m returning to Rabbi Shimon Shkop. So his claim is that the doubt regarding conditional states is basically ontic doubt and not epistemic doubt. The woman is both a married woman and a divorced woman. What does that mean? After all, those are two contradictory things. The claim is that this is even worse than man or woman. There there is no contradiction. In principle it could be that two women are both my wives, but I betrothed one of them, so there is no frontal contradiction between saying “she is my wife” and saying “she is my wife.” But there is a frontal conceptual contradiction between saying she is a married woman and saying she is divorced. These are two opposites, not just two options that you don’t know how to decide between; these are two contradictory options. If this one is true, that one cannot be true. Okay? So it’s much worse. So the claim there that I made was that epistemic doubt is a possible mechanism to explain how ontic doubt can exist, how ontic reality can exist. The claim is that this is the concept of what a legal effect is, right? The claim is that when I say there is upon the woman the legal effect of married status, when people ask what do you mean by legal effect of married status, what is a legal effect? What is a legal effect? That she is a married woman—that’s just some kind of yeshiva hand-waving: “the legal effect of married status.” You can’t just say she is a married woman; you have to say something a bit more scholarly, so you say “the legal effect of married status.” So is there any difference between them? I claim yes, there is a difference between them. And I think people intuitively feel that there is a difference, even though I think most people haven’t really given themselves a true account of what exactly the difference is. But I think they understand the difference, intuitively. The difference is that I think a legal effect is a kind of object. The legal effect of married status is a kind of object. When I say that there is upon the woman the legal effect of married status, it means that she is carrying on her back some kind of backpack. Right? There is some sort of legal effect of married status resting upon her. Okay? Now, if I say that, then to say that a woman is both a married woman and a divorced woman is not a logical contradiction. There is no problem at all. She has two backpacks on her. One backpack of married status and one backpack of divorced status. The laws contradict each other. You cannot say that she has the law of a married woman and the law of a divorced woman at the same time. That doesn’t work. But the legal effects themselves—no problem. We already spoke once about this matter. I said—not long ago, I think—I said that contradiction exists between properties; there is no contradiction between entities. Darkness—the property “dark”—is the opposite of illuminated. Darkness itself is not the opposite of light. Darkness and light are two objects, let’s call them objects, whatever, right? They are not opposites. They are two opposite properties. Salt is not the opposite of sugar. Salty is the opposite of sweet. But salt and sugar are two objects. It could be that the same dish contains both salt and sugar. Right? No problem. But it cannot be that the same dish is both fully salty and fully sweet—I mean fully salty and fully sweet. It can’t be. Okay? So properties are things that—the contradiction, or a contradiction between two things, is a contradiction between properties. There is no contradiction between entities. Different entities do not contradict one another; they can have opposite properties. But the entities themselves are not opposites. My claim is that when you say a woman is a married woman or that she is divorced, you have said something about her properties, her halakhic-legal properties. Therefore you cannot say she is both a married woman and a divorced woman, because in terms of properties that is a contradiction. But if you say that there is upon her a legal effect of married status and a legal effect of divorced status, you have said nothing contradictory. You have said that the dish contains both salt and sugar. There is upon her a legal effect of married status and also a legal effect of divorced status. Now the question is what to do with that halakhically. Good question. So halakhically we proceed as with the laws of doubts. Say you ask yourself whether she is permitted to a priest. The answer is no, because there is a side that she is divorced. Is she permitted to the world at large? The answer is no, because she may be a married woman. And therefore, essentially, you must be stringent according to every—like half-slave and half-free woman. Half-slave and half-free means that she is both a slave and a free woman. How will the laws work? Obviously the laws of both slave and free woman cannot apply simultaneously, because those are contradictory laws. So what do you do? You go each time to the stringent side. Now I’ll say more than that—just as I said in the previous examples. You aren’t really going to the stringent side. Rather, you go with the positive law and not with the law of absence. That’s the point. It’s just that almost always the stringent side turns out to be the positive law. What do I mean? When I say that a woman is both a married woman and a divorced woman, then they tell you: I act according to the laws of doubtful cases. What does that mean? If you ask whether she is permitted to marry a priest—the answer is no. Because there is a side that she is divorced, so she is forbidden to marry a priest; one must be stringent. But is she permitted to marry someone else? No. Because there is a side that she is divorced, so according to that side she is permitted; but there is a side that she is a married woman, so she is forbidden. On the face of it this looks like the laws of doubtful cases. What if this doubt is a rabbinic doubt—married woman or divorced woman on the rabbinic level, fine? Say the betrothal was rabbinic. In the case of a minor girl whose brothers and mother married her off, okay? So she is only betrothed on the rabbinic level, fine? And now there is a doubt whether she was divorced conditionally, so there is a doubt whether she is a married woman or a divorced woman on the rabbinic level. Is she permitted to a priest? On the face of it, a rabbinic doubt is ruled leniently, exactly what I said earlier. On the face of it, a rabbinic doubt is ruled leniently. But that is not correct. This is a certain doubt, not a doubtful certainty. Meaning, she is certainly a weakly divorced woman, a rabbinically divorced woman. Fine? And therefore she is forbidden to a priest even though this is rabbinic. Because this is not the laws of doubtful cases. So what determines it? How do you choose which side to follow, the side of divorced or the side of married? What always determines it is the positive law and not the law of absence. Meaning, when I discuss whether she is permitted to marry a priest, I say: the side of divorced says she is forbidden to marry a priest. The side of married woman says she is permitted—it doesn’t say she is obligated, just permitted. Therefore the positive side is the prohibition. The side of permission is absence. There is an absence of norm—no prohibition and no permission and no obligation—so that is what you want. So the determining side is always the positive side. Therefore she is forbidden to marry a priest. If you ask whether she is permitted to marry another man, then on the side that she is divorced she is permitted, but not obligated—it’s just permitted. On the side that she is a married woman she is forbidden. So what determines here is the side of married status, not because it is more stringent, but because it is the positive side and not the side of absence. Therefore even in rabbinic law, where in ordinary doubtful cases we are lenient, here we will be stringent. “Stringent” means according to the positive side and not according to the side of absence. Okay? So therefore this state too is basically a state of ontic doubt and not epistemic doubt. She is both a married woman and a divorced woman. It’s not that I don’t know whether she is a married woman or divorced; rather, she is both a married woman and a divorced woman. The laws, of course, cannot be both and both, because that is a contradiction. But in the case of one who betroths one of two women, there is no contradiction between the two laws. If I betroth one of two women, then I say one of them is betrothed to me and the other is not, and I don’t know which one. There is no contradiction between saying she is betrothed to me and saying she is betrothed to me. Forget the sisters for a moment. Just two ordinary women—there is no contradiction at all. In terms of the laws, you can say that both are betrothed to you. That’s perfectly fine. With married woman and divorced woman it cannot work that way, because in terms of the laws there is a contradiction. If she has the laws of a divorced woman, then they are not the laws of a married woman, and vice versa. Therefore here there is a problem. Here you always go after—
[Speaker H] the positive law and not after the law of absence. Wait, that’s the law of an unmarried woman, isn’t it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also the law of a married woman and also the law of an unmarried woman. No, one is betrothed to me and this one is betrothed to me—leave aside whether she is unmarried. Betrothed and unmarried is a contradiction. But if this one is betrothed and that one is betrothed, there is no contradiction at all. It could be that both are betrothed to me, if they aren’t sisters, I mean. Fine? So here too, basically, this is ontic doubt and not epistemic doubt, and reality itself is vague—not that I don’t know what is happening.