Objectivity and Subjectivity in Halacha and in General – Lesson 5

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re in a series dealing with objectivity and subjectivity. After the introduction I gave, a bit about the concepts themselves—what objective and subjective mean, with the two senses of the matter. So one lecture dealt with two types of doubt, about someone who betroths one of two sisters—betrothal not fit for intercourse. Someone who betroths one of two sisters without specifying which one he betrothed—the Talmud treats this as though there is basically a doubt of betrothal here: either Rachel is betrothed or Leah is betrothed, and we don’t know which. But we saw there, also in Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and really in reality itself—you don’t need Rabbi Shimon Shkop for this—that it’s actually not a case of doubt. Doubt is when, say, I sent—the Talmud talks about someone who sent an agent to betroth a woman, and the agent died. So there was some woman that he betrothed; you just don’t know who. Then you’re in doubt regarding every woman in the world: maybe she’s your wife, maybe she’s your wife’s sister, there are all kinds of complicated laws in such a situation. That’s a normal case of doubt. A situation where I’m missing information about the world. Doubt is usually lack of information. By contrast, someone who betroths one of two women when he didn’t define which one—not that he betrothed one and forgot which one it was, but rather he never defined which one out of the two he was betrothing. That situation is one you could call, say, attenuated betrothal, not doubtful betrothal. Because it’s not that there is one woman here who really is betrothed and you just don’t know who. There isn’t one. You simply didn’t define one specific woman out of the two. If you asked the Holy One Blessed be He Himself, even He wouldn’t know. So it’s not that there’s some definite piece of information in reality and you just don’t know it, that you’re missing information. In this case, reality itself is ambiguous.

[Speaker C] And are there monetary cases like this? Why would someone be obligated? For example, if he transferred—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To you one piece of land out of all my lands, right? Same thing.

[Speaker C] But then, I mean, does that mean I have amorphous ownership in all the lands, or that he owes me a particular plot and has to choose?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. You buy one out of five specific plots, say—defined parcels that I own—and I sell you just one of them. Not that I owe you something. One of them is yours. In principle, you could use that land for betrothal—you could betroth with it. It’s not that I owe you land. I don’t want to give you anything—it’s yours.

[Speaker C] That sounds a little different to me. Wait—can you choose the plot, right? No?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. The Ritva asks why you can’t choose, and here quantum collapse already comes in, and I didn’t get into that. But from quantum theory we turned toward quantum theory. I said that in quantum theory too, when you send a particle and there are two slits, quantum theory says that basically the particle goes through one of the two slits, but it’s not that it goes through one and you don’t know which one. Rather, it actually goes through both. And that parallels exactly what I’m talking about here—not as doubt, but as ambiguous reality. And in quantum theory there’s another aspect that seemingly has nothing to do with the issue, and that aspect says that if you put—I didn’t discuss this there, but since you asked—if you put a detector next to one of the slits, then in that case the particle goes through only one slit. Either it’ll go through there and the detector will tell you it passed here, and if the detector doesn’t fire that means the particle didn’t pass there, so obviously it passed through the second one. And the moment you measure, then what in quantum language is called the wave function collapses. The wave function was in a superposition of passing through slit A and passing through slit B, but if you put in a detector, if you measure, then it collapses either to passing through slit A or to passing through slit B, with probabilities that quantum theory can provide. But that’s basically the process of collapse. Now the second feature—but I’m just completing it because he already asked, and I didn’t discuss it then—the second feature of collapse isn’t connected to the first feature. The first feature is that there is basically some ambiguous state here, what’s called a superposition. You are in a combination of two states: the state of passing through slit A and the state of passing through slit B, where you are not in doubt which of the two states is true, but the true state is the sum of the states, or the superposition of the two states, both together. Exactly like the two women—it’s the same thing, one to one. It’s exactly the same thing. The doubt written in the Talmud in the case of betrothal not fit for intercourse is quantum doubt—it’s exactly the same thing. Now what happens in quantum theory, though, is that there’s something else too, and that seemingly has nothing to do with the very definition of the state as ambiguity. And what happens there is that if you put in a detector, then you can—you cause the wave function to collapse into one of the two summed states, either the state of passing through slit A or the state of passing through slit B. Only if you don’t measure, then it’s a superposition of the two states. The Ritva—and this is fascinating—asks exactly the same thing about the sugya of betrothal not fit for intercourse. He says: fine, so why can’t the father choose one of his two daughters and decide which one he gave? At the time of the betrothal they didn’t define one of them. Why should the father be able afterward to decide retroactively which of the two is betrothed? If it were like what Arik said earlier, “I undertake to give you a field out of the five,” no problem. When I come to give you something, I can choose one of the five and give it to you. But as I said before, that’s not the legal situation. The legal situation is that this is not an undertaking to give. The legal situation is that one of the fields is transferred to you. Now it’s yours. It’s just not defined which of the five. Okay? In such a situation, the legal situation is defined—well, what does “defined” mean? It’s ambiguous, but fixed. It’s not in your hands, so it doesn’t leave you any possibility of choosing one of the five fields. What?

[Speaker E] He wants to place a lien on one of them. Okay, because there was only a loan.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In each one of them you have a problem. There’s attenuated ownership over it.

[Speaker E] Fine, but for the person giving it to me, it’s doubtful lien.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Just as there is doubtful ownership, there will be doubtful lien. This doubt gets dragged all the way through. Every consequence you add will drag the doubt along with it. Just like Schrödinger’s cat. If I go back to quantum theory—the same thing there too, it gets dragged along. It’s exactly the same state, one to one. What happens—after all, what do they do in Schrödinger’s cat experiment? They put a poison capsule with some mechanism in a closed chamber, and inside it there’s a cat. They put in a poison capsule. That poison capsule is connected to some quantum particle that has to decide whether to decay or not decay, and it’s in a superposition between decaying and not decaying. Then what happens is that if it decays, the poison capsule opens into the chamber, and if not, then not. Now if the particle is in a superposition of decayed or not decayed—beta decay—then the cat is dead-not-dead. So the poison capsule is in a superposition of dispersed and not dispersed. So the particle is in a superposition of alive and dead, right? Which is exactly the carrying over of the state of doubt we discussed earlier. Meaning, if there is a consequence to this state and that state itself is ambiguous, then the consequence will also be ambiguous. Those same two sides continue onward.

[Speaker B] And the moment you open it and look at it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then it will be in one of them. Yes, then you’re already measuring. That’s exactly the point. When you look and measure, then it collapses to one of the two possibilities. Fine, but that’s another issue. Now what’s nice is that the Ritva there, in the sugya of betrothal not fit for intercourse, asks why the father can’t choose one of the two women.

[Speaker B] Why can’t he collapse the function.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. Now this is interesting, because in quantum theory these are two independent findings. The claim that the state is a superposition, and the claim that it collapses when you measure—those are two independent claims. Two phenomena. You could have had the first without the second, or the second without the first. There are two interesting phenomena here. Now the Ritva seems to understand that these phenomena are probably one derivative of the other. Meaning, if you are in a state of superposition, then it must be that you can also collapse the function. And that’s why he asks: wait a second, so why can’t the father choose? And it seems to me that his conclusion may even be that maybe the father really can choose. Maybe the father died—I don’t know—he gives some interpretive setup there, how exactly the sugya is talking. Okay? So that’s just an interesting point—you see here, and this needs to be checked in the philosophy of quantum theory, or I don’t know exactly in what context, whether one can really explain some kind of connection, some kind of necessity, that in everything that is ambiguous there must also be the phenomenon of collapse. Because somehow it’s an outgrowth of the state of ambiguity and not just an independent phenomenon, not just another separate phenomenon. But that’s just parenthetically—that’s what Arik asked earlier.

[Speaker D] But what created the ambiguity and what made the collapse is the same mechanism. In other words, the person’s consciousness created the ambiguity—he defines one of two women—and afterward he also chooses one of the two women.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not clear, because the consciousness of the man betrothing was ambiguous.

[Speaker D] Fine, if—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The father chooses—but it’s the same mechanism.

[Speaker D] But here, in the matter of the electron’s wave function, reality is ambiguous on its own. Meaning, it’s inherently so, and only our consciousness—or I don’t know, the measurement—is what collapses it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not clear what consciousness means. von Neumann wanted to say that it’s consciousness, but they did experiments—for example, they put in a detector. People used to think this was the mysticism of quantum theory. It was commonly thought that the moment it came into contact with human consciousness, the function collapsed. Meaning, when I know, when I try to check whether the particle passed through this slit or that slit, then it collapses. But they did an experiment—I even gave a reference in the book Science of Freedom. They did some experiment, and there were probably others like it, but that’s the article I found. They put in a detector, the detector transferred the information to a computer, and they burned the computer. But—

[Speaker C] It has to transfer the information to a computer? Can’t you just activate the detector in a vacuum, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter—that’s the point. The detector transfers information somewhere, that’s not important. And they burned the computer or erased the disk or whatever, and the function collapsed. No human consciousness was involved there. But the information had been taken. And that’s completely mystical. More mystical than thinking consciousness does it. Because I can’t understand why this matters: this detector is just a physical system. A physical system, that interacts with the particle. So what? But physical systems don’t collapse it. After all, even without the detector it interacts with all kinds of physical systems; the slit is also a physical system. The photographic plate is also a physical system. So what’s special about this physical system called a detector? It’s really bizarre.

[Speaker G] The moment the detector encounters the particle, it turns from passive to active. Why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It gives you information.

[Speaker G] It didn’t give information, it just interacted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It outputs information. No, everything outputs information. Everything outputs information. It’s like a photon contains information; if it doesn’t hit your eye, you don’t see the information, but the information is in the photon. So what difference does it make? There’s—

[Speaker B] A famous Japanese physicist, I forgot his name, wrote a book about this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Michio Kaku? Yes.

[Speaker B] Quantum theory is one of the stupidest theories there is. The problem is that it works. The problem is that it works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The only advantage it has—the only thing in its favor—is that it works.

[Speaker H] So the claim, in the practical legal sense, to rule some Jewish law—you can’t really do anything with this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so we talked about that. The Jewish law you establish is the law of cases of doubt. You basically have to treat this through the laws of doubt. For example, you treat this as doubt as to which of the two sisters is betrothed. Fine, and there are laws of doubt in Jewish law and you work with that. That too is a halakhic status—a status of doubt. Okay? But as I said there, it’s not really doubt. Because in a case of doubt, say, Maimonides says that Torah-level doubt is treated leniently; only rabbinically do we have to be stringent in Torah-level doubt, but on the Torah level it’s lenient. Now here Maimonides agrees that it’s stringent. The Talmud says that out of doubt one may not have relations with either of the two women. How can that be? Behold, Torah-level doubt is lenient according to Maimonides. We said that this is not a case of doubt; it is certain betrothal with respect to each one, only it is certain attenuated betrothal with each one. It’s not doubt whether this one is fully betrothed or that one is fully betrothed—what’s called a doubtful certainty—but in the yeshivot they call this a certain doubt, not a doubtful certainty. Rather, it is certainly a state of doubt, or a weak state. It’s not that I’m in doubt which of two certain states prevails in the world, because there is no certain state in the world. The world itself, the state in the world itself, is ambiguous. The doubt wasn’t born in me; it’s not epistemic doubt, it’s ontic doubt. But it’s not doubt that was generated in me; it’s ambiguity that exists in the world itself. Okay, so that was the lecture before last, I think. In the last lecture I again talked about this aspect of ontic doubt versus epistemic doubt, and I talked about the question of what happens in a case of a condition. A man divorced his wife on condition that she not drink wine for ten years. Okay? Now the question is: what is her status during those ten years? Until in the end it becomes clear—if she did drink, then the divorce is void; if she did not drink, the divorce is valid. What happens in the intermediate state? We still don’t know what will happen in the end. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop writes—again, he has different formulations in different places—but in one place he sees this as her being both divorced and a married woman in the same state. Again, ambiguity with collapse at the end. Meaning, with this state of being both divorced and a married woman—this superposition. And if in the end it turns out that she did not drink wine for ten years, then the state collapses into a state of divorce—the divorce takes effect. If she did drink wine, then it collapses into the opposite state—she is a married woman. Only what’s nice there is that it collapses backward. Meaning, it’s not that at the end of the ten years she becomes divorced. If she didn’t drink for ten years, then it turns out that she was divorced from the time she received the bill of divorce. But until the drinking, it’s a state of—

[Speaker B] Superposition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right—not that it became clarified, she becomes divorced. Right. Right. Meaning, if it were only clarified, that would be epistemic doubt. But here it’s ontic doubt. Meaning, it’s ambiguity, not doubt. Okay? She really is… okay? She really is in a state of superposition between divorced and married.

[Speaker C] But if that’s done—if it’s done retro—if it’s done backward, so then why is there this rule that she can’t—even if we know that this is what will happen—she can’t rely on it before she drinks?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Tosafot and Maimonides there. Tosafot in Kiddushin—I’d have to rely on—so no, obviously, that’s one of the proofs.

[Speaker C] But if it goes backward—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So “goes backward” isn’t—“goes backward” is from the Talmud. That’s not the novelty of what I’m saying now. What I’m saying now is that there are two ways of going backward. There is retroactive clarification. Retroactive clarification means—I gave this example—say I had a child born to me while I was abroad. Okay? A boy or a girl—a child was born, I don’t know which. I arrived in the land and it turned out it was a boy. So is it a boy only from now on? No, it was a boy from the beginning; I just didn’t know, and now I found out. But I found out what had always been true. The state of the world is not dependent on my consciousness or my information. The information was missing until that gap in my knowledge was filled. Okay? That is retroactive clarification in its ordinary sense. Rabbi Shimon Shkop speaks about “from now on, retroactively.” “From now on, retroactively” means that the future event is the causal factor in changing the state. It doesn’t reveal to you information that had always been true; it creates the state, but it creates it backward.

[Speaker C] Yes, but there’s another assumption here. I mean, the assumption is not only that it creates it backward, but not only that it’s a causal factor—rather, that it doesn’t really create it backward. Meaning, it creates it from now onward regarding how we relate to what was in the past.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already interpretation. What you see there is that it’s from now on, retroactively.

[Speaker C] No, because if it were fully retroactive, then it would have to be—no, it’s fully retroactive, but only from now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s fully retroactive. I’ll give you an example. Suppose you want—say someone—the source for “from now on, retroactively,” I don’t remember if I brought the Talmudic passage in Nedarim. “From now on, retroactively”—the Talmud talks about something that will become permitted. The law of “something that will become permitted”—what does that mean? Something that is forbidden, but in two days you know it will become permitted. For example, on a Jewish holiday there’s something forbidden because it is set aside, and once the holiday ends it will be permitted. Now the Talmud says there are various stringencies we adopt regarding something that will become permitted. The logic behind this, according to most of the medieval authorities, is that there’s no reason to be lenient in such a situation: wait till evening and eat it without having to rely on leniencies. For example, there’s some doubt about it. In ordinary rabbinic doubt you can be lenient, but if it’s something that will become permitted, then even in rabbinic doubt we aren’t lenient. Why? Instead of permitting you now to be lenient in a doubtful prohibition, wait until after the holiday and eat it with no doubts and no problems. So there are special stringencies regarding something that will become permitted. What counts as something that will become permitted? That’s a complicated topic. But the Talmud in Nedarim says that a vow is also something that will become permitted. I vowed, say, prohibition from this book, okay? That’s something that will become permitted. Why? Because I can go to a sage and consult him, and he can permit the vow for me. Then they ask—the Jerusalem Talmud asks this, and the Rosh brings it. The Jerusalem Talmud asks: if the sage permits the vow for me, then the permission is retroactive. It actually uproots the vow from the outset. How are vows annulled? They clarify what my intention was when I vowed—did I mean to vow even if I had known such-and-such? That’s an opening and regret. Right? So basically what’s being clarified here is some implicit condition. Meaning, if it turns out that I did not intend to vow if the situation would be such-and-such, then okay—then basically the vow was made in error, basically the vow isn’t valid. So that means that what the sage does is something that takes effect retroactively. After the sage annulled the vow, it turned out that it had never existed. So the Rosh asks, and really the Jerusalem Talmud itself is asking this: then why is this considered something that will become permitted? Something that will become permitted is something that is forbidden, and then a certain moment arrives and it becomes permitted. Here it’s just a gap in information. Meaning, really this is something that had always been permitted; only until you went to the sage you didn’t know that. After you went to the sage he told you there was no vow here at all—you had been living in error. Okay?

[Speaker C] Meaning, according to that, according to this logic, every vow should really be considered a doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle, yes, yes. And then the claim is—that’s one of the reasons that can’t be right, because it isn’t like that. So the claim is no: rather, the sage’s annulment uproots the vow, but uproots it retroactively. Again, this is from now on, retroactively. That’s the source of it—that Jerusalem Talmud is Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s source for this principle of from now on, retroactively. Now think about someone who violated that vow. Say he vowed on Sunday. On Monday he read the book even though it was forbidden to him. Fine? On Tuesday he goes to a sage who annuls the vow for him. On Monday, when he read the book, it would have been possible to give him lashes. He violated the prohibition of “he shall not profane his word,” okay? But on Tuesday it turns out that the vow is uprooted from the outset retroactively, meaning that on Wednesday you can no longer give him lashes for the sin he committed on Monday, because when I stand on Wednesday, the status of that book on Monday is that it was permitted. But on Monday itself, if they had given me lashes, that would have been fine—it’s not that it became clear otherwise. Now imagine that they really did give me lashes on Monday, and then on Tuesday I went to the sage and he annulled it. So what does it turn out? That the court are actually offenders and they injured me for nothing? Right? They lashed me when it turns out I didn’t deserve it. The answer is no, because at the point in time when they lashed me, I really did deserve lashes. This is not retroactive clarification; it’s from now on, retroactively. “From now on, retroactively” means that only when you look at Monday from the perspective of Wednesday is the status that there is no vow, but if you look at Monday from the perspective of Monday, then there is a vow. I once wrote about this on my website, in one of my columns. There was some guy from Herzliya who talked about time travel, someone from the Interdisciplinary Center—the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, I think. So he wrote there about some computer program, I don’t know, that supposedly tries to solve the problem of time travel—that’s what they called it. Nonsense, all kinds of nonsense, but that’s what they called it. So I tried to explain there why this problem can’t be solved. It’s an unsolvable problem. Anyone who says he solved the problem of time travel simply doesn’t understand the problem. What is time travel? Let’s close this parenthesis—what is time travel? Suppose I’m now on Thursday, okay? Time travel means that I’ll get to Friday and then go back to Thursday. What does it mean to go back to Thursday? That Thursday comes after Friday? Thursday is by definition before Friday.

[Speaker C] Causally, Thursday—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there’s no causality here. At the moment we’re not talking about causal relations, we’re talking about temporal relations. Time is not contingent on causality. So what does that mean? The concept of going back in time is simply not defined at the conceptual level. It’s not that physically you can’t do it; it’s not a limitation of physics that prevents me from going back in time. Going back in time is a concept that is just nonsense. There is no such thing as going back in time. Going back in time means to be on Friday and then be on Thursday. No problem—here I am now on Thursday and tomorrow I’ll be on Friday; there, I went back in time. Why isn’t that called going back in time? Because right now I’m before Friday. Going back in time means that I would be on Thursday after Friday. But Thursday is before Friday, not after. So what does it mean to be on Thursday after Friday? The only way to define that concept—I explained this there—the only way to define the concept of going back in time is only if you’re talking about two time axes. There is one time axis of the days of the week—Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sabbath, and so on—on that axis Friday comes after Thursday, okay? Now there is another time axis in which, let’s say, it is… how should I define this? I’ll formulate it differently; let’s present it this way. When I talk about a process that happens over time, suppose I say I’m traveling from Haifa to Tel Aviv. What does it mean that I traveled from Haifa to Tel Aviv? It means that at time t1 I was in Haifa, and at time t2 I’m in Tel Aviv, right? Because t2 is after t1, so that means I came from Haifa to Tel Aviv. If t2 is before t1, then I came from Tel Aviv to Haifa, okay? That’s really the difference, right? Now what does it mean to travel in time? By the way, forward and backward as well—there’s no difference. There is no difference between traveling forward in time and traveling backward in time; both are equally nonsensical. What does it mean to travel forward and backward in time? When I talk about motion in space, I say: at x1 at time t1 I am in place x1, and at time t2 I am in place x2, right? What is traveling in time? At time t1 to be at time t1, and at time t2 to be at time t2. Fine, I’m always traveling in time. That’s nonsense. So what do you want to tell me? No, to travel to another point in time. So what are you telling me? Let’s translate it. At time t1 I am at time t1, and at time t2 I am at time t3. But I’m at time t2, not at time t3. What does it mean, at time t2, to be at time t3? You can’t… when I am… time is not a position on the time axis; it is the time axis itself. When you want to talk about a dynamic process on the time axis, then you describe states along the time axis. But travel of the time axis itself cannot be defined on the time axis. At point t1 you are always at time t1; they are not independent variables. To define that situation you need a function of time. So say place as a function of time, spiritual state as a function of time, mood as a function of time, I don’t know, something that is a function of time. But time itself is not a free function of time. Give me the time and I’ll tell you what time you’re at. You can’t define it here; it’s not a variable you can play with. Okay? So what does it mean to go forward or backward along the time axis? Nonsense.

[Speaker D] There’s that twin experiment where they travel at the speed of light or close to the speed of light, and then one of them supposedly…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Time flows at a different rate, yes. One ages at a different rate.

[Speaker D] Can’t you relate to time travel within that framework, where each one has his…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aha—how do you define such a thing? That’s where the whole story begins. How do you define such a thing? You have to define that there are two time axes. One time axis is the axis of your aging, and the second is the axis on which the aging process takes place. Then you can say: I’m seventy years old, but it took me two years to get there. I was twenty, and after two years I reached age seventy. What does it mean that I reached age seventy? That’s fifty years by definition. What do you mean, after two years I reached age seventy? There is another time axis where only two years passed, but on my biological axis I’m already seventy. In other words, whenever you talk about such a thing, you have to talk about two time axes. Okay? That’s the point. Otherwise the concepts are simply oxymoronic. You can’t talk about motion on the time axis—not forward, not backward, not anything—it’s just nonsense. Once you talk about two time axes, then the whole thing is well-defined. There’s no problem defining it at the logical level. How to identify the time axis, what the meaning of two time axes is—fine, that’s a whole separate issue. Okay, so wait, where were we?

[Speaker D] Divorced and not divorced…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so Rabbi Shimon Shkop basically wants to claim that a conditional state is really a superposition of divorced and married. And not only that, but the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the condition brings about the collapse of the wave function—that is, she becomes either divorced or married retroactively. Okay? So again, here we have a situation of vagueness and not of doubt. Meaning, it’s not that she is doubtfully married and doubtfully divorced; rather, she is in a vague state. She is both married and divorced. It’s a mixture, or a superposition as I called it earlier, between the state of being divorced and the state of being married. And this is not a state of doubt. One of the implications, as I said, is what happens: is she married on the rabbinic level or divorced on the rabbinic level—it doesn’t matter. So with a rabbinic-level doubt, apparently, in a rabbinic-level doubt you’re supposed to be lenient. So she would be both permitted to a kohen and permitted to everyone, and she would also not be divorced and also not married. Okay? But that’s not correct. In a state of vagueness, as opposed to a state of doubt, she will be both prohibited to a kohen on the rabbinic level and prohibited to the whole world on the rabbinic level as a married woman. Why? Because this is not a state of doubt. She is both divorced and married. From the side of being divorced, she will be prohibited to a kohen; from the side of being married, she will be prohibited to the whole world. This is not doubt; it is both states together. And it’s not the same… the term people often use is a state of doubt. But it’s not a state of doubt; it’s a state of vagueness.

[Speaker C] What does it mean that she would be prohibited as a divorced woman to a kohen, and as a married woman to the whole world? After all, if she’s married then anyway it’s prohibited…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously. Say he dies; it doesn’t matter. I mean, she will be prohibited to the whole world as a married woman, and if he dies she will be prohibited to a kohen as a divorced woman. To an ordinary kohen, that is; for a High Priest even a widow is prohibited.

[Speaker D] Last class you said that if you have a question with two possibilities—for example, whether there will be a naval battle at Waterloo or not—then you said that’s not vagueness…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There were no ships there; that was on land. The ships are Aristotle’s. Yes.

[Speaker D] But you said it has to be… that it’s not vagueness, because the answer already exists today, I just don’t know it. Meaning, you said that’s epistemic doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There my claim was that it’s not the same thing.

[Speaker D] There—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the truth value of a proposition. The answer doesn’t really have… the information doesn’t exist anywhere right now; even the Holy One, blessed be He, in principle, is not supposed to know it.

[Speaker D] Are you talking about the ship battle or the… naval battle? But you said that’s epistemic doubt, right? Even though you say—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is either that there will be a naval battle tomorrow or there won’t be—but tomorrow. Today I am in doubt because tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet.

[Speaker D] So you’re saying it’s epistemic doubt, but is it still ontic vagueness?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, epistemic doubt regarding the future.

[Speaker D] But here too, with the divorced woman, we also have epistemic doubt regarding the future—whether she will drink wine or won’t drink. But here you say it’s ontic. Ontic. Because you said it’s vagueness, and that with a rabbinic-level doubt one is stringent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about the naval battle? Who said that?

[Speaker D] No, about the divorced woman. And it’s the same thing as the naval battle—it’s doubt regarding the future. We don’t know whether she’ll drink or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. I don’t know whether she’ll drink or not, but that doesn’t matter. Because as long as she hasn’t drunk yet, right now she definitely is—definitely divorced and definitely married together. Only after she drinks will it become clear that she collapsed into one of the two possibilities. But as long as I am before the drinking, the problem is not lack of knowledge. There is lack of knowledge here, there is epistemic doubt here, that’s true—I don’t know whether she’ll drink or not—but there is also ontic vagueness here regardless of that. Even if she will drink in the future, as long as I am before the moment of drinking, from my standpoint this is vagueness, not doubt. I brought up the sorites paradox, right? Did we get to discuss that? The way to deal with epistemic doubt, in the absence of information, is statistics, probability. The way to deal with ontic doubt is actually fuzzy logic, vague logic. That’s a logic that accepts continuous values, say between zero and one—not just true or false, but a continuum of values between zero and one. For example, in the sorites paradox, I say one pebble is not a heap. A pile of stones that is not a heap—if you add one stone to it, that doesn’t change its status. But a million pebbles is a heap. These three assumptions are reasonable, and all three together are inconsistent. You can’t accept all three together. So what do you do? It’s obvious that there’s some internal contradiction here, so you have to give up one of the assumptions, because all three together don’t fit. The approach considered correct is to give up the assumption that adding one pebble doesn’t change the status. Adding one pebble does change the status—slightly. It doesn’t turn something that was not a heap into a heap; it turns something that had a certain degree of heap-ness into a slightly greater degree of heap-ness. Or in other words, levels of heap-ness are a continuum of degrees. Things are not divided into yes-heap or no-heap; rather the question is what degree of heap-ness the pile has, and that degree can be any number between zero and one. One, say, is completely a heap; zero is not a heap at all; anything in between. So adding one pebble changes the degree of heap-ness a little. That’s all. That’s the correct way. Now this is true of every everyday concept, not just heap. We talked about the bald man paradox: a person with one hair is bald; someone bald—if you add one hair, that doesn’t change his status; but if he has a hundred thousand hairs on his head, then he’s not bald. And again, adding one hair changes the status a little. Okay, afternoon, the color red, whatever you want. Every everyday concept is really defined in fuzzy logic. Concepts are not sharp. Concepts in mathematics are sharp; concepts in the world are not sharp.

[Speaker D] Is twilight also like that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously twilight is like that. The question is that we don’t know where the line passes, and obviously there is vagueness there, because it doesn’t happen as a phase transition. In general there are no phase transitions in the world. Phase transitions exist only in infinite systems. When you do an actual calculation of a phase transition in physics, you have to move to an infinite system, take what’s called the thermodynamic limit. In a finite system there are no phase transitions.

[Speaker D] Even though there’s an opinion that it is like the blink of an eye.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is how to relate to it. In processes in the world, nothing happens in the blink of an eye. But the question is what, from our standpoint, is the correct mathematical model for relating to this phenomenon. There is a debate whether it is both day and night, or neither day nor night, or exactly how to view it. So the point is that really we are speaking here in two different conceptual worlds. The world of doubt is basically a gap in information, and when I have a gap in information, the mathematical way to handle it is probability. I have probabilities of different possibilities, and just as I don’t know—for example—that it is balanced, and now I do the probabilistic calculations. A state of vagueness, the way to handle that is not probability, because here I don’t need to check which of the range of possibilities is the correct one. There is no correct possibility here. All the possibilities truly exist. It’s not that there is one and I just don’t know which. Therefore the concept of probability is irrelevant here; you can’t handle it with probabilistic tools. What you can use is fuzzy logic, which is the logic of the heap and what I said earlier, where you have to attach continuous values to claims. A certain claim is not either true or not true; rather its degree of truth is 0.2478.

[Speaker I] But even assigning that value is also, in some sense, not correct. To assign the value 0.359 to three stones is also…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it is correct. Why? No.

[Speaker I] Why? What number can you say is the correct value?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that I don’t know is something else. But here I have no principled problem saying that there is such a value; I just don’t know how to define it. Here it’s merely lack of knowledge. In principle, the pure concept of a heap, the Idea of heap in the Platonic world of Ideas—Plato, if he were there, could give me an answer. Okay, I have three stones here of such-and-such a size—what is the degree of heap-ness of this pile? He sends me the answer. I just don’t know how to define it. Fine, that’s merely lack of knowledge; there’s no principled problem that there is no answer. It’s not that there is no answer. There is an answer to this; I just don’t know how to define it. Okay? Or this is vagueness in language, in how you define heap in language.

[Speaker J] Because a heap is a certain thing, it’s something that everyone can look at differently. Could there be a definition? I didn’t understand. After all, every person looks at a heap—maybe for one person…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so that’s why I say: it may be that there is vagueness in language here, and then that doesn’t bother me; the language is simply not fully defined. My problem is with the world itself. That is, in principle, one could define the concept of a heap according to the average of all human beings, or however you’d define it, in a way that the degree of heap-ness would be well-defined for every pile of stones. The fact that we don’t know how to do this is simply because we don’t… have a good way to define the concepts. So that doesn’t raise an essential philosophical problem. Okay? Good, so that is one aspect of doubt: ontic doubt or epistemic doubt. That is, vagueness—ontic doubt is really vagueness, it’s not doubt; the term doubt here is not ideal. And doubt—what we call doubt—is really epistemic doubt, cognitive doubt. I don’t know what the state of the world is, or which is the correct state that prevails in the world. Now this matter of being both divorced and married with regard to that woman before the condition is fulfilled—I said, I commented on this, and here I want to sharpen it further—I made another point about this. I said: why can one speak of married and divorced simultaneously? Seemingly those are contradictory concepts. It’s like a married bachelor—what? There is no such thing as someone who is a married bachelor. If he is a bachelor he is not married, and vice versa. So that is a pair of opposite expressions; they cannot describe the same state. So what I said is that when I say this woman is both married and divorced, I am not talking about her legal status. I’m talking about her metaphysical state. That is, my claim—and here I brought in the concept of legal effect, of halut. What does it mean that the legal effect of marriage rests upon her? Is that the same thing as saying that she is married? Usually people think so, but it is not. Legal effect is a meta-legal concept. That is, think of it as… I already mentioned this—think of it as, say, some backpack she carries on her back. There is a backpack of divorced woman that she carries on her back; the legal effect of divorce rests upon her. As a result, her legal status is the status of a divorced woman. She is prohibited to a kohen, permitted to marry other men; it has various implications. But those are implications of a state that one could call metaphysical or meta-legal. As I said, to say that a dish has both salt and sugar in it is not a contradiction. But to say that the dish is both salty and sweet—that is a contradiction. Something completely salty and completely sweet—leave aside mixtures of taste—something that is both completely salty and completely sweet cannot be. That’s a contradiction. But to say that it contains both salt and sugar is no problem. Why? Because salt and sugar are entities. Salty and sweet are properties. Contradiction is a relation between properties, not a relation between entities. Entities do not contradict one another; salt does not contradict sugar. Salt is salt and sugar is sugar. They have opposite properties. Saltiness is the opposite property of sweetness. Okay? So contradiction, the relation of contradiction, is a relation between properties, not between entities. In that sense I want to say that a woman cannot be both married and divorced in the sense of legal status. Either she is permitted to a kohen or she is prohibited to a kohen. Either she is permitted to the whole world or prohibited to the whole world. But the legal effect of marriage and the legal effect of divorce can both rest upon her. There can be both salt and sugar in the dish. So the legal effect of marriage rests upon her… when someone gives a woman a bill of divorce on condition, then he is really imposing two legal effects upon her. She has both the legal effect of marriage and the legal effect of divorce. The legal effect of marriage he left in place—he didn’t impose it; it remained. And together with that he imposed upon her the legal effect of divorce. She carries two packs. Now the only problem that arises is: what is her legal status? Not the metaphysical one, but what is her legal status? Legally she cannot be both permitted to a kohen and prohibited to a kohen. On the legal level she is prohibited to a kohen. Why? So again, our tendency is to think that this is the laws of doubt. Because if she is married then she is permitted to a kohen—say after her husband dies. Then she is permitted to a kohen. If she is divorced then she is prohibited to a kohen. Since this is a doubt—when in doubt I am stringent and prohibit her to a kohen. But this is not the laws of doubt. Rather, she is both married and divorced. From the side of the divorced woman in her, she is prohibited to a kohen. From the side of the married woman in her, she is permitted to a kohen. There is no obligation to marry a kohen, only permission. There’s no prohibition. The combination of there is a prohibition and there is no prohibition is: there is a prohibition. It’s a combination, not a doubt. I’m not choosing one of the two possibilities. I am applying both possibilities to her together. What happens in these situations is that there is always a positive rule and a rule of absence. To say that she is permitted to a kohen means that there is no prohibition. That’s not something positive; it’s something negative. To say that she is prohibited to a kohen—that is something positive. Because to say prohibited to a kohen is positive. There is something active I am saying about this state. So when I say that this woman has a superposition—let’s return again to that superposition—she is both permitted to a kohen and prohibited to a kohen, there’s no problem with that at all. She is simply prohibited. The sum of the two is that she is prohibited. It’s like darkness and light together—when I combine them, what comes out? Light. Why? Because darkness is the absence of light. Right? Darkness is not some extra thing; it does not cancel out the light. Darkness plus light is light. Right? Prohibition plus permission is prohibition. There are no cancellations. Permission—if it were prohibition plus obligation, a contradiction would arise. If she were obligated to marry a kohen and also prohibited from marrying a kohen, that would create a problem for me. But permitted to marry a kohen and prohibited from marrying a kohen—there is no problem with that; the result is that it is prohibited. There are also situations in which this really does create a problem. Yes, there are jokes in the yeshivot—a famous joke. The Talmud in Ketubot at the end of the first chapter discusses an abandoned baby. Someone finds an infant, and the question is whether he is Jewish or gentile. That is determined by the question of what the majority of the residents of that city are. If the majority are Jews, then his status is Jewish; if the majority are gentiles, then his status is gentile. What happens when it is fifty-fifty? That is Rabbi Yirmiyah’s question. What happens when it is fifty-fifty? Then it’s doubt, and with doubt one is stringent. What do you do in a situation of doubt? You always go stringently. But if there are implications for which there is no way to decide what it means to be stringent—for example, should he study Torah? Is he obligated in Torah study? If he is Jewish, he is obligated. If he is gentile, then it is prohibited for him—not that he is simply not obligated. If he were merely not obligated, there would be no problem: stringency would mean that he should study. But if as a Jew he is obligated, and as a gentile it is prohibited for him, then there is no direction of stringency here. There is no solution in terms of the laws of doubt. Same with keeping the Sabbath. As a Jew he is obligated, and as a gentile it is prohibited for him. So again there is no simple way out. There is no default. There is no easy outcome where you say, fine, go with that stringently and you’re definitely covered. You’re playing it safe. So there are very rare situations. What? We won’t go with the more stringent one?

[Speaker K] Meaning, when he has two states…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We could start discussing it now; it’s a big question. I don’t know. One can discuss it, but it’s not our topic. What I just want to say is that in such situations this is a state of vagueness, where there is no simple solution of stringency. There isn’t; it doesn’t exist.

[Speaker D] Passive omission is preferable, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: so it may be that we will have to resort to solutions from a different conceptual world. Fine? Because there you really don’t have the standard solutions of doubt. Okay? But in principle, if this is a state of vagueness and not a state of doubt, then beyond the question of severe and lenient, he will be both obligated in Torah study and prohibited from studying Torah. And the question is what to do with such a state. Good question. I don’t know. Usually that is not the situation. Usually you have prohibition versus permission or obligation versus permission. You don’t have obligation versus prohibition. Usually that simply doesn’t exist in most cases. Okay? The joke in the yeshivot says that he should talk in learning. What should the abandoned baby do regarding Torah study? He should talk in learning. “Talking in learning” is the yeshiva boys’ way of loafing off. Meaning, in Tosafot you’ve got difficulties in the answers, but you don’t have the energy to learn, so you engage in this kind of pilpul. Fine.

[Speaker C] Usually in Torah there’s a simple solution to that: he can study only the seven Noahide commandments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. No, that doesn’t help. He also needs to learn the laws that, if he is Jewish, obligate him to learn the whole Torah.

[Speaker C] And if a Jew is obligated his entire life to study Torah to the point of knowing the whole Torah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So regarding neglect of a positive commandment, he needs to know the whole Torah. The Birkat Shmuel talks about this; the Birkat Shmuel basically… on Kiddushin, I think, has a long section on Torah study, that there is a commandment to know Torah and a commandment to study Torah. A commandment to know. One has to know everything. Fine. How do we distinguish between this state…

[Speaker L] Meaning, the Rabbi said there is a difference between the metaphysical state and the legal state. What significance is there apart from the legal matters, apart from the practical ramifications, basically?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are implications. Here, now I’ll bring examples. I’m just saying, before I bring the examples, I only want to show that this is really a further sharpening of the distinction between objective and subjective. Because what I really want to claim is that at the foundation of every legal state there stands some sort of thing—let’s call it metaphysics or meta-law. That is, when you say that there is a legal effect. That a woman is divorced—that really means that the legal effect of divorce rests upon her. There is a metaphysical state, and the implication of that state is that the laws of a divorced woman apply to her. But the laws of a divorced woman do not stand on their own; they are the result of some state, some situation in reality itself so to speak—so to speak—a legal reality, no, meta-legal. Okay? And the legal status is an implication of that. Now I’ll bring examples. But before that I just want to sharpen this: it means that in objective reality itself there really is a state called the legal effect of divorce, and in the subjective state from the standpoint of human beings—how we, what we are supposed to do with respect to that state—that is the legal status, that she is prohibited from marrying a kohen and things like that. Now I’ll bring examples of implications.

[Speaker D] Is she herself divorced, or is she… if you had… if you had to determine what she is, as you said earlier…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She is both married and divorced.

[Speaker D] No, earlier you said that the dish can’t be both sweet and salty. Either it’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s in the implications. Exactly the point. In the state itself there is no problem at all—there is both salt and sugar. Both the legal effect of divorce and the legal effect of marriage rest upon her. Now when you get to the question what her legal status is—that is, what laws apply to her—here contradictions can no longer exist; you have to decide. How do you decide? Usually there’s no problem, because usually you take the prohibitory rule and ignore the permission, or the prohibition or the obligation is what determines things, not the permission. In pathological cases like the abandoned baby, that’s a good question—what do we do? Maybe passive omission, I don’t know, good question. So I’ll bring demonstrations, because it is a good question: what is the implication of the fact that there is some objective reality at the base of the subjective laws, the laws that concern human beings. I can, for example, ask the question—

[Speaker B] Of the fact that something belongs to me?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That the legal effect of ownership rests upon it for me, beyond the legal rights I have in my possessions. Because the legal rights are the regular implications of the fact that the legal effect of ownership exists. Could there be something else? I’ll give you an example: the Rogatchover talks about this in Bava Kamma 17. The Rogatchover, for example, discusses the question—the inquiry of the later authorities (Acharonim) regarding liability for damages. When my ox gores someone else’s ox, I have to pay. The later authorities discuss why I have to pay. Is it because I was negligent in guarding it, or because of the very fact that my property caused damage? Do I have some responsibility for my property, such that if my property did something, I have to bear the consequences, I have to pay? The Rogatchover argues that the view that says the very fact that it is my property obligates me to pay—not just… if it’s negligence in guarding, then there’s no problem. That’s responsibility: I messed up, I bear the consequences, meaning I didn’t guard it properly so I have to pay. But what is the meaning of this idea that the very fact that it is my property obligates me to pay? Why? What did I do? The Rogatchover’s claim is that this is a consequence of the fact that I have ownership in the thing—a consequence that is unrelated to the question what my rights in the thing are. This is an implication of what I said earlier. That is, the very fact that the thing belongs to me imposes responsibility on me for what it does, even though that implication is not the regular proprietary implication. What are the regular implications of the normal state of ownership? Suppose this thing belongs to me. The implication is that I may use it, and someone else may not use it without my permission, right? Those are the regular implications of the fact that the legal effect of my ownership rests on the thing, okay? But here we see implications that are other halakhic implications—namely, if it damages, I must pay. What does that have to do with my rights in the thing or with someone else being prohibited from using the thing? It is not simply related to the fact that this thing is my property. It is a novelty of the Torah, that the Torah says that if something has the legal effect of my ownership on it, then I am liable for its damages. An even better example here—he himself brings it, the Rogatchover—is the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal. Even though this depends on a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim), apparently at the beginning of the chapter “Who Took Out at Nightfall.” The Sabbath-rest of one’s animal—it’s a law many people are not aware of—that there is a Torah prohibition that your animal should do labor on the Sabbath. Just as if I plow with my animal, that is labor I do by means of my animal. But if my animal does labor on the Sabbath, I have transgressed a Torah prohibition. This is called the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal. The Sabbath-rest of one’s utensils is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal is an agreed law. What does that mean? My animal grazes grass, so essentially it is reaping. It is prohibited to detach grass from the ground on the Sabbath, right? So I have transgressed a Torah prohibition.

[Speaker C] But Rashi writes exactly the opposite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. I transgressed a Torah prohibition. Except that here we had… what does he say? Since it is necessary for the animal’s life, then no. In such a case that is not how it is defined. But if the animal carries from a private domain to a public domain, then I have transgressed the Torah prohibition of the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal.

[Speaker C] Even if it’s completely… like, say, the cow of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like the donkey of Pinchas ben Yair, in principle, if it still belonged to me. What that donkey didn’t understand was that once you sell it, then it’s already permitted. But if I hadn’t sold it… The Talmud in Avodah Zarah, regarding renting a house to a gentile for example, that’s where they discuss this. Now there, the moment a transgression on the Sabbath is done with my property, then I transgress the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal, the Sabbath-rest of… there it may be the Sabbath-rest of utensils, which is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. But regarding an animal, it is the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal. What?

[Speaker I] Even if it’s accidental? An animal acts accidentally?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since we already know that in damages it has intent to cause damage, I’m no longer surprised even about accidental action. Once animals have intentions, then animals can also have accidental action there. Because goring is with intent to damage.

[Speaker C] According to this, then someone who owns animals, say… if he has ownership of animals in pastureland, and there’s no eruv there in the pastureland, there’s no…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He has to make sure they do not transgress Sabbath desecration. And what—

[Speaker C] What does that mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aside from grazing—I’m telling you, if they eat that’s something else; they are permitted to do things there because it’s necessary for the animal’s life…

[Speaker C] Necessary for its life. If an animal kicks a stone and rolls it, then that’s… so it is transferring…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So from one domain to another… but if they do any labor, any labor they do, in principle you transgress a Torah prohibition.

[Speaker C] No, if it kicks a stone and rolls it, the cow pushed a stone from a private domain to a public domain. Yes, indeed. So does that mean that in practice it is prohibited to keep…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have to put up guards and so on. In principle you have to watch over them. Again, without getting into all the details, I’m sure there are all sorts of—

[Speaker C] discussions, like making an eruv everywhere there’s a meadow, or placing a guard who will stand everywhere…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, making sure your animals aren’t there. No, a karmelit, again, is rabbinic; an eruv helps only for a karmelit. Fine, but…

[Speaker C] So regarding rabbinic law there is no obligation of Sabbath-rest…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I assume not. I don’t know.

[Speaker D] No, but it has to be carrying with intent. Meaning, when you just kick a stone without intending that it reach a certain place, that’s not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That depends on what they said earlier, the question whether intention applies to an animal. Fine, maybe. I don’t know. What is accidental for an animal? Mere involvement? I don’t know. It walks and in the course of that it kicks.

[Speaker D] No, even a person himself, if he gives a kick…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A person, yes. The question is with the animal… the question is whether with an animal there is such a distinction at all, whether there is intention…

[Speaker G] such a distinction at all, if there is intention…

[Speaker E] to tip it from the wagon…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In any case, for our purposes, the Rogatchover argues—there is a dispute, between the Tosafot Rid and the Ritva at the beginning of the chapter “Who Took Out at Nightfall.” But according to the Tosafot Rid at least, the view is as I described now. The view is not that the person is doing labor by means of his animal. According to the Ritva’s view, then all these questions don’t arise. According to the Tosafot Rid’s view, the moment the animal does something that would be Sabbath desecration if a person did it, then I have committed a transgression. And the Rogatchover brings this as an example of an implication of the fact that the animal is mine—not in the proprietary context of what usage rights I have in the animal or what others are prohibited from doing, but rather the very status of it as my property has halakhic implications. And this is basically proof, in his view, that when we say an animal is mine, it’s not just saying that I am allowed to do things with it and others are forbidden to do things with it, but first of all that there is some metaphysical bond between me and the animal. It has implications. Most of the implications are that I have rights of use and others cannot use it, but there are also implications that do not concern use, ownership law, or Choshen Mishpat at all.

[Speaker I] The fact that a person has to add a fifth when he redeems his own consecrated property, or first-fruits—and that’s not proof of this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe that too; it could be. You know, redemption always smells a little like commerce, so I’m not sure, because commerce again relates to the value of the thing. I don’t know. Metaphysical… could be, could be.

[Speaker D] There is the law of “for yourselves” regarding the four species, and…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, the law of “for yourselves” regarding the four species could also be.

[Speaker D] First-fruits, and ownership—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Prohibition of benefit and all those things. Right. So here, the Rogatchover argues that from here there is proof that the concept of ownership is not a collection of rights that I have. The rights are a consequence of the fact that this object is my property. But what is that, what is the very statement that this object is my property? It is some sort of meta-legal claim. There is some state in the world called my possessions. I once defined it as my property; say my body is also not me. I am my soul, not my body, right? So if my body caused damage, why should I have to pay? If I’m awake and alert, in control, then there’s no problem. I use my body to cause damage. After all, if I take a hammer and cause damage with it, that is a person causing damage, not property causing damage. I use the hammer and cause damage with it; so too I use my body and cause damage with it. But a person is always liable, whether awake or asleep. A person who causes damage is liable even when asleep. Now when I’m asleep, why? My soul didn’t cause the damage; it didn’t move the body; the body did whatever it did—why should I care? Why am I liable? I’m liable because I have responsibility for things that are my periphery. The body is me in a certain sense; it is the periphery of the spirit or the soul. Now property is also my periphery, a more distant periphery. Therefore, with the close periphery I am liable even if I’m asleep, even in a case of compulsion. With the more distant periphery, in a case of compulsion I am exempt. But if it’s not compulsion, then I am liable—but I am liable not because I was negligent. I am liable because of the very fact that it is my property. It is like a person causing damage. Property causing damage is simply an extension of the concept of a person causing damage. Property is a more distant periphery than the body, but it is still my periphery that caused damage. That is basically the claim. There is Rabbi Ephraim Fisher, in Beit Yishai, he has something there. I once heard this from him orally, but in Beit Yishai I saw it in an organized form. He said there—it was a very long and interesting lecture—he basically said this principle: just as the body is my periphery, so too property is my periphery, and therefore this view of the later authorities, that I am obligated to pay not because I was negligent in guarding but because of the very fact that my property caused damage—why? Because that is exactly the same as if my body caused damage and I am obligated to pay. Then there is no question why, because it’s me. What do you mean, me? I am the soul. Correct—right—but the body is my periphery, and I still have some responsibility for what it does even if I’m not guilty in the sense of having made a conscious decision to cause damage. But I have responsibility. At the end of the day, that body is me. So this property is also me. Fine, this already comes out as some more concrete content in that meta-legal state of ownership. We once spoke about— I wrote in an article in the introductions, I don’t know if it was the latest one, maybe another came out after it—about the matter of marriage betrothal. There was some female rabbinic pleader who wrote an article saying that betrothal is the husband’s ownership of his wife, and therefore she said one should not perform betrothal; it’s anti-feminist. Lubitch, that was her name. So I wrote a long article there and explained that in my opinion this is a complete misunderstanding. Betrothal is not the husband’s ownership of his wife, even though at the beginning of tractate Kiddushin it says, “A woman is acquired in three ways; a woman is acquired by money, by document, and by intercourse,” which is really parallel to the three ways land is acquired: by money, by document, and by possession. It’s very similar. But one can show unequivocally, both from the Talmud and from the medieval authorities (Rishonim), that this is simply not true. And what is confusing, I think, in this context is that the concept of kinyan itself has undergone some confusing metamorphosis. When I say that I perform a kinyan act, that does not necessarily mean that the thing thereby becomes my property in the sense that I own it. A kinyan act is an act that imposes a legal effect; that is what a kinyan act means. Sometimes I do a kinyan act merely to reinforce the matter, just to show serious intent. I appoint an agent, and it is customary—even though in principle it isn’t necessary—to lift a pen like that, right, as they do when appointing the rabbi to sell the leavened food. So what is that? Fine, the question is whether they sell the leavened food itself there. Simply speaking, it is not a sale of the leavened food, because I am only appointing the rabbi as an agent and he sells the leavened food to the gentile. So what is the lifting of the pen? The lifting of the pen is a sign of serious intent that I really am giving this authority to the rabbi. I didn’t sell anything there, and yet it’s called a kinyan act.

[Speaker I] That really is something different—two different kinds of kinyan.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that mean? And why is it called a kinyan act? A verbal kinyan and all those things.

[Speaker I] But what does that mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What gets acquired there? A document… nothing gets acquired, nothing at all. That’s it. Which means—no, the point is exactly this: the concept of an act of acquisition is not necessarily about transferring ownership of things. That’s just one example. An act of acquisition means an act that applies a halakhic legal status, an act that expresses firm intent. In the context of ordinary acquisition acts, I apply the legal status of ownership and express my firm intent through an act of acquisition. In the context of a woman, I apply the legal status of betrothal, and I perform an act of acquisition that expresses firm intent to carry out an act of betrothal. But that does not mean that the woman is acquired by me; she is not acquired by me. I perform an act of acquisition. There is a Shitah Mekubetzet in Bava Metzia—he says there, Avnei Milu’im brings in the name of a responsum, discussing eating terumah. He says that with regard to a woman, “one purchased with his money may eat of it,” so the Shitah Mekubetzet asks: but the woman is not her husband’s monetary acquisition, so how does she eat terumah? And the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are not only saying this apologetically, that the woman is not her husband’s acquisition; they even ask a question on that basis in a place where it does look like she is her husband’s acquisition, so that can’t be. A woman is not her husband’s acquisition. And this is not being said apologetically; it’s a straightforward conception, it’s obvious that this is so. So he says: since this is betrothal… the betrothal takes effect through an act of acquisition, therefore it is called “one purchased with his money may eat of it,” not because she is her husband’s acquisition, but because the application of betrothal is done through an act of acquisition. Therefore she is called “one purchased with his money,” and that is why she may eat terumah; the betrothed woman may eat terumah. So you see that the conception is—that is, the woman is not her husband’s acquisition; rather, the legal status of betrothal is applied through an act of acquisition, that’s all. It’s called an act of acquisition because in most cases, the most common acquisition act really is applying ownership, acquiring something, the way we usually say “buy something.” But in the language of the Sages, an act of acquisition is not buying something. An act of acquisition means carrying out firm intent so that a legal status will take effect. And he said to me—what? And is a bill of divorce not about ownership?

[Speaker L] Right.

[Speaker M] I’m also saying—the question is whether this is a proprietary right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, yes, that’s about her handiwork. But I’m saying—even regarding her, that’s her handiwork.

[Speaker M] No, they’re saying here that maybe the ownership is with respect to prohibition, personal prohibitions of a woman to a man—say, for intercourse.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But no, she is not his for intercourse; she’s also not his for intercourse, so that’s not it either.

[Speaker L] Because—

[Speaker M] Can he force her?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. But there is a Rashba in Ketubot about a stipulation—a stipulation contrary to what is written in the Torah, in a monetary matter, his stipulation stands; we’ll soon see whether this is related, it just popped into my head by association. So there, after all, if he says, “You are betrothed to me on condition that you have no claim upon me for food, clothing, and conjugal rights,” he says this is a monetary matter, and therefore his stipulation stands. That’s what Rabbi Yehuda says. So Rashba asks: why is conjugal rights a monetary matter? Conjugal rights is not a monetary matter. And then he says that first of all, the question itself—why? After all, aren’t we acquiring something here for intercourse, as you said before? I’m acquiring ownership over intercourse—what’s the problem? There are intercourse rights to the woman. So already in the question you see that this is not correct. Meaning, you do not acquire intercourse; it is not a monetary transaction. In the answer there is room to hesitate. What does he say there in the answer?

[Speaker I] These aren’t monetary rights, but rights of prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Huh? They’re not monetary rights? Every right is monetary. What do you mean? My right to enjoy a dance—after all, one can effect betrothal with a dance before me, right? That is a monetary right. It is a right worth money. What are “monetary rights”? Property—we talked about what money is, that was in one of the previous series, about what money is. Money is just an expression; money is an expression of value. Anything that has value is property. What difference does it make whether that thing is intercourse or whether that thing is, I don’t know, dancing or an artistic performance or whatever it may be?

[Speaker I] But can you sell it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? That’s exactly the point—why not? In principle yes, one can sell it.

[Speaker I] It’s not merchandise?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, because it is not a monetary right, that’s what I’m saying.

[Speaker I] Because there is someone who owns that right, and someone who doesn’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying no—it’s not a right at all. Every right is monetary; there is no such thing as a right that is not monetary. There is something that is a right, and there is something that is not a right. This is not your right, therefore you cannot sell it. Every right is monetary.

[Speaker N] Is there a direct connection between the acquisition act of betrothal and the permission to have relations with that woman? Meaning, not the permission—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s not that you bought that. Yes, this is the “mati… mati…” for intercourse—that was Rabbi Gustman in an opening lecture to Kiddushin, who says that “a woman is acquired in three ways: money, document, and intercourse,” and there are three aspects in betrothal: the prohibition to the world, the permission to him, and an acquisition of prohibition… I don’t remember, he has three aspects to betrothal. And there are three formulations of betrothal: “You are hereby sanctified to me,” “You are hereby betrothed to me,” “You are hereby for me as a wife.” And he argues that each formulation contains, and each mode of betrothal contains, a different aspect of betrothal. So this spreads out across the Talmud; there is a Tosafot in Kiddushin 6a where he makes a distinction there: if he says “You are hereby sanctified,” then there will be the rule that “the sanctity spreads to the whole,” and if he says “You are hereby betrothed,” then not. Because “sanctified” begins from the side of sanctity and then it spreads, but “betrothed” begins from another side, and if you do that on only half of her it won’t help. And this has a halakhic implication for the question of from which side you approach the concept of betrothal. These are different aspects. Who said this? What? Who said this? Rabbi Gustman. Gustman? Yes, in Kuntras Shiurim on Kiddushin.

[Speaker O] This idea that the woman acquires herself upon the husband’s death—what kind of acquisition is there here? In the husband’s death… creation of a legal status?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, dissolution of a legal status. She acquires herself. Dissolution of a legal status. After all, there was a legal status of betrothal upon her; now the legal status of betrothal has dissolved.

[Speaker O] But no act was done here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like ownerless property.

[Speaker O] What do you mean, ownerless property?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is acquisition? Why is declaring property ownerless a dissolution of betrothal? After all, there is a dispute whether it is permitted to declare property ownerless on the Sabbath, right? Why? Because dissolving a legal status is like applying a legal status; it is a legal act. A legal act that has legal implications. In this case the implication is the absence of a legal status, okay? Or the dissolution of a legal status.

[Speaker O] But in the husband’s death, nobody is doing any act that is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, it is not done by an act, obviously. That is exactly the point. In the husband’s death, that’s how it happens.

[Speaker O] But what am I explaining in the acquisition at the husband’s death?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again—what is acquisition? The result. The legal result is that the legal status of betrothal has dissolved. That’s it. That is a legal result. This is an event that is not an act a person did; it happened, it is an event that has implications that are legal results. Okay? I’ll maybe give one last example—I simply haven’t even started the class yet, all this was supposed to be just remarks. I’ll finish with one example. The Talmud in Kiddushin—in Gittin, sorry—discusses someone whose bill of manumission is delayed. And the Talmud says: someone whose bill of manumission is delayed is a person who is half-slave and half-free, who in principle is supposed to be freed, and the question is what happens if someone injures him. So the Talmud says that if someone injures him, the fine goes to his master. If someone injures a slave, there is the thirty shekels for a slave—or look, if an ox kills him, excellent. If someone injures him, then they say: just as when an ox kills him the fine goes to his master, so too when someone injures him the fine goes to his master. Tosafot asks: what connection is there? After all, when an ox kills a slave, the thirty shekels for a slave is a fine. Why? Because it is a fixed amount. It is not compensation according to the value of the slave. If it were compensation, then compensation is a monetary matter. A fine is a punishment. Since the amount is fixed, not dependent on the slave’s value and all that, once it is a punishment then I don’t care that it goes to his master. Fine? But with injury—why does the Talmud compare injury, Tosafot asks, to the thirty shekels for a slave, to a fine? So Tosafot says: what difference is there to me between killing him completely and killing him halfway? What is the difference between killing half a slave, killing him partially, and killing him entirely? Injury is partial killing. The Pnei Yehoshua asks: that does not answer the question. What do you mean? But this is monetary payment and that is a fine. Monetary payment has to go to the person who was damaged. And who was damaged here? The one damaged here is the slave; he is awaiting a bill of manumission, he is ownerless. He does not belong to his master in the monetary sense. His master cannot make any use of him. He no longer belongs to his master. Okay? So why does the payment—because this is not half-slave half-free, leave that aside, it’s not that. It’s a slave who was declared ownerless. Awaiting a bill of manumission. Fine? He did not receive the bill of manumission; he has the status of a slave but I have no rights in the slave. So the payment for injury goes to his master. Tosafot asks why. I am not the one who was damaged; I cannot make any use of him; the slave no longer belongs to me from the monetary standpoint. So why does the injury payment go to his master? I think—apparently this is also what the Pnei Yehoshua means; I once had an argument about this with the maggid shiur who taught me, many many years ago. But I claim that this is also what the Pnei Yehoshua says there. The claim is that regarding a slave, they distinguish between monetary ownership and prohibition-ownership. That is the language of the later authorities (Acharonim), not the language of the Talmud, but that’s what they call it. The master has in the slave an ownership of prohibition—that is the slave’s status—and he has monetary ownership, meaning he can make use of him and he belongs to him like an animal. Okay? Now when the slave is awaiting a bill of manumission, when I declared the slave ownerless, then the monetary ownership lapsed, and only the ownership of prohibition remained. What does ownership of prohibition mean? Why is that called ownership of prohibition at all? What is ownership? The answer is, I think, that the point is that this slave is still my slave, with no monetary implication whatsoever. There is the metaphysical state; there is a legal status of ownership upon him that is mine. Therefore it is called ownership of prohibition, but I have no monetary right whatsoever. What? I think with a woman it is the same thing. With a woman that is the normal situation.

[Speaker F] A legal status ends when a new legal status enters. What? A legal status stops only when another legal status enters.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or when you dissolve it, if you give a bill of divorce, yes. And therefore what happens is: once this is my slave, if you injure him it goes to me. Because he really is mine. I may not be the one who was damaged, because I cannot make any use of the slave. But I am still his owner. I am the owner; even on the legal level I am the owner, only this ownership gives me no rights. No rights at all; the slave is ownerless as far as the monetary ownership I have in him is concerned. But here I think we see a stronger illustration than what the Rogatchover says, because here we see this distinction—we wedge a foot between the door and the doorpost, yes?—this distinction that I’m making, where the legal status of ownership exists without any monetary implication; I have no rights

[Speaker I] in the slave.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But he is still mine. Mine in what respect? I don’t know, maybe I can wave him on Sukkot, I don’t know in what respect. He is mine, but I have no monetary rights. That is exactly the point. Meaning, there is here a disconnection between the metaphysical state and the legal implications, which proves that there is such a thing as a metaphysical state underlying legal rights. And therefore there can be a situation in which the metaphysical state exists but the legal rights that are usually derived from it do not appear, as in this case. Of course, that requires making additional assumptions about tort payments. There is another assumption here, about what it means that this is not going to compensate the person who was damaged, but that is a different opera. Okay, we are on page 94b, in the Mishnah above. “One who robs and feeds his sons, and leaves it before them—they are exempt from paying. But if it was something that carries responsibility, they are obligated to pay.” Okay, so like this. First of all, this law—“one who robs and feeds his sons, and leaves it before them, they are exempt from paying”—we already learned earlier, right? When are they exempt? When they ate it after despair. After despair—sorry, the opposite, sorry. After despair they acquired it through change of domain, right? The robber robbed it, the owner despaired, and he transferred it to his sons. So now the sons acquired it. So why are they exempt from paying? After all, they ate something that was… The answer is: what do you mean? After despair and change of domain, it is theirs. So if they ate it, they ate their own property. So when is there a problem? Before despair. Before despair it still belongs to the robbery victim. So when they ate it, they ate someone else’s property. So why are they exempt from paying? The answer is that they did not rob; their father robbed. They ate. And a person who ate another person’s property—if he did not perform an act of damage—is not obligated to pay. We will see this shortly in the Talmud. But if it was something that carries responsibility, they are obligated to pay. What is something that carries responsibility? Land. With land there is no robbery, and no despair, and no change of domain. Land always belongs to the owner. So if they received the land, the land still belongs to the robbery victim and they have to return it. Okay, now the Talmud asks. Rav Chisda said… the Talmud on page 94b below. Rav Chisda said: if one robbed and the owners had not despaired, and then another came and ate it, if he wishes he may collect from this one, and if he wishes he may collect from that one. What does that mean? The robber robbed the object, the owners had not yet despaired, then somebody else came and ate that object. Now the robbery victim can sue whomever he wants. He can sue the robber, because the robber became obligated at the moment of the robbery to return the object. And he can sue the eater, because the eater ate another person’s property. So why does the Mishnah say that if the sons ate it before despair they are exempt? After all, they are like that “other person” who ate. So the Talmud says: this is not difficult; this case is before despair, that case is after despair. The Talmud asks: if it is after despair, why specifically his sons? Even another person too. After all, if it is after despair, then it is acquired through change of domain, so anyone would be exempt. Rather what must it be? Before despair. If before despair, then Rav Chisda is difficult. The Talmud says: what are we dealing with here? A case where they ate it after their father’s death. Meaning, the sons ate it thinking that it belonged to their father and was their inheritance. Since they ate it by mistake, they are exempt. But if it still existed, they would be obligated to return it. Okay? So that is the explanation of the Mishnah. Now the Talmud brings another law of Rav Chisda. Rav Chisda said: if one robbed and the owners had not despaired, and then consecrated it, it is not consecrated. Why? Because it is not his. In order to consecrate something, a person has to have ownership over the object. And the robber has no ownership before despair. But if he consecrated it after despair, then it is consecrated, because despair acquires. That is what Rav Chisda says. Now the Talmud objects to Rav Chisda from our Mishnah. In our Mishnah it says: “One who robs and feeds his sons… they are exempt from paying. But if it was something that carries responsibility, they are obligated to pay.” We said that something that carries responsibility is land. And with land there is no despair. So why are they obligated to pay? Because the land always belongs to the owner. So you see from this that precisely because there is no despair they are obligated to return it. But if there were despair they would be exempt. That means that despair acquires. But Rav Chisda says that despair alone does not acquire; you also need change of domain. So how does this fit? So the Talmud explains that the meaning is change of domain. With sons this is considered a change of domain. Okay, let’s see it inside.