Objectivity and Subjectivity in Halakha and in General, Lesson 11

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re in the midst of questions of subjectivity and objectivity. I want to talk now about a somewhat different aspect, and this time the question is subjectivity in the sense of what goes on inside us, in the emotional dimension. There are various commandments—some years ago I spoke about this—there are various commandments in Jewish law that address emotion. “You shall rejoice in your festival,” a commandment to rejoice. Love of one’s fellow, love of the convert, love of God. Even mourning, in a certain sense, you could say is some kind of commandment about emotion. To hate the wicked—there’s also a kind of commandment like that; it’s not totally clear exactly what its status is, maybe it’s learned from Psalms, but this does appear in the Talmud. The question is: what is the nature of these commandments? Seemingly we’re dealing with commandments that address our emotional dimension. Now my natural tendency, as a proper Litvak, is that that can’t be. Meaning, who cares about the emotional dimensions? Meaning, why would there be commandments about feelings and emotions? Tell me what to do—but why do you care what I feel? More than that—not only why do you care what I feel, but emotion is generally some kind of spontaneous phenomenon. Meaning, if you’re afraid, you’re afraid; if you’re happy, you’re happy. So what am I supposed to do now—be happy on command? One of the hard things about Purim is that you sort of have an instruction: today you must be happy. Days of feasting and joy.

[Speaker B] That’s why they instituted taking supporting materials for it—fuel materials.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there’s something that seems to me a bit problematic about addressing emotion, about giving instructions to emotion. Some formulate it in a more extreme way, as if we have no control over emotion, and therefore how can you command us? I either love the Holy One, blessed be He, or I don’t love Him. In what sense is it relevant to command me whether I love Him or don’t love Him? What is that commandment supposed to accomplish? I’m not sure that’s correct. Meaning, after all, there are ways to direct emotion, to channel it—not full control, and of course it depends on the person, depends on personality, Yitzchak, Pinchas, there are all kinds of types. But I don’t think it’s completely outside our control. So this question is a question, but it bothers me less.

[Speaker B] There are commandments—for example the commandment to love God, and a few others like that—where one has to maintain their constant fulfillment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A commandment of love that one is constantly obligated in, yes. Okay, so I have some innovations for you. Maybe the full Litvak route can help.

[Speaker B] I wanted to accept the prohibitions connected to emotion—for example, “do not covet.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Same question there too—I covet, what can I do? What am I supposed to do? I covet another man’s wife—that’s how I feel.

[Speaker B] So what am I supposed to do?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are you demanding of me? I don’t know—I’m asking you, you tell me. You say this is a commandment about emotion, so tell me what I’m supposed to do. What’s demanded of me? Not to feel what I feel? Not to think—

[Speaker B] about it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not to think about it—you know, it’s like “don’t think about a pink elephant.” You know that story, right? Don’t think about a pink elephant. Like an instruction: don’t think about a pink elephant—and then there’s only one thing in your head, a pink elephant. The cogito, right, of Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” How is that cogito constructed? You know, after all, “I think, therefore I am” is the same thing as “I walk, therefore I am,” right? What’s the difference? A person can’t walk if he doesn’t exist, right? The fact that he walks is an indication that he exists. So what’s the difference between “I think, therefore I am” and “I walk, therefore I am”? Why Descartes—what’s the great brilliance of Descartes’ argument, “I think, therefore I am”? People don’t understand this, and all philosophers, by the way—

[Speaker B] really stumble badly over this point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I walk, that’s enough proof that I exist. If you don’t walk, then maybe not. There are also people who don’t think. That’s not the claim. Obviously every action I do is evidence that I exist. But who says I’m doing the action? The assumption of the argument is that I’m doing some action; the conclusion is that I exist. The difference between “I think, therefore I am” and “I walk, therefore I am” is not in inferring the conclusion from the action, from the premise, but in the fact that “I think” is a necessary premise and “I walk” is not a necessary premise. Why? Because even if I think that I’m not thinking—I’m thinking. I think that I’m not thinking. So either way. Whether I think that I’m thinking, or I think that I’m not thinking. It’s not actually a correct argument, by the way, but I’m just presenting what Descartes’ rationale was. And therefore “I think, therefore I am” is a stronger argument than “I walk, therefore I am,” because with “I walk, therefore I am,” if you doubt that you exist, you’ll also doubt that you’re walking. What’s the difference? But if I doubt that I’m thinking, then I’m doubting that I’m thinking—meaning I’m thinking, right? Because doubting is also a kind of thought. So in the end the difference is that the premise of the argument is a necessary premise, unlike the premise of “I walk.” The inference after the premise—from the premise to the conclusion—that’s clear and it works the same way. The difference is in the premise. Why did that come to mind? Because even thinking that I’m not thinking is thinking—like the pink elephant. Meaning, if they tell you not to think about a pink elephant, then the very fact that I’m not going to think about a pink elephant—and there, I’ve thought about the pink elephant.

[Speaker B] And then in the end it turns out that you’re thinking about the thought in that sense. Meaning, instead of thinking about the transgression—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say, let’s say there’s some emotion that accompanies it, some kind of intellectual thought.

[Speaker B] No, but you can’t stop the thing. It’s not aspiration—meaning, instead of thinking thoughts of coveting, say, how I’m going to take someone’s object…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, leave aside how I’m going to take it. I covet it, I want it—that’s not the sense of operative plans.

[Speaker B] Yes, but instead of the plans, or this emotion, being expressed in some thought connected to it, I’ll fight against it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll think about the prohibition, I’ll think about the prohibition. And the prohibition is on what? What’s the prohibition on? The prohibition is on the coveting. So now I’ll think about the prohibition all the time, yes? You can’t escape it—you go on coveting. So it’s hard to understand what exactly this commandment means. Meaning, this is a declarative commandment: try. It’s not a result-commandment or something like that; maybe I’ll say more about this later. In any case, the problem, the way it’s usually presented, is the problem of whether I have control. If I have no control, then what sense does it make to command me? I’m making a somewhat different claim: even if we assume that I do have control, still in the end the emotion is the result of the controlling actions that I take. Suppose I can do certain actions that neutralize the emotion, reduce it, change it, channel it in another direction, say. Even then, what is demanded of me is the actions, not the product—whether the emotion is there or not, that’s already a result. So why define the commandment as something that basically isn’t in my control? It’s something that comes out. What is actually demanded of me is to do actions that try to neutralize the emotion. So maybe that really is the definition of the commandment, and maybe the commandment should indeed be defined in terms of the actions that neutralize the emotion, not in terms of the absence or presence of the emotion itself. Although, I’ll say again, this is only an initial discussion. But there are commandments in Jewish law, at least according to some opinions, that are defined as commandments about the result, even though what’s in your hands is only the means. For example, procreation. There’s a dispute among the halakhic decisors how this commandment is defined, but there are decisors who argue that the commandment is defined as having a son and a daughter. That’s the commandment. What’s in your hands is only the efforts required, but whatever comes out comes out—it’s not in your hands. So how can the commandment be defined as the product, that I have a son and a daughter? The commandment should be: do what is necessary so that you’ll have them. But no—some of the decisors, it depends, some define the commandment in terms of the result. In my humble opinion, in situations like that it really isn’t correct to define the commandment that way. What should be defined—the commandment is a commandment on the action, or actions, required in order to attain the achievement. The achievement is the condition; it is not the definition of the command, it is not what is imposed on you. What is imposed on you is to do the actions. Once you have achieved the required result—meaning there is a son and a daughter—you have fulfilled your obligation. But the commandment is not defined as a result-commandment, but as a commandment about actions. So much so that one could—and this is already a somewhat delicate question—I wonder where here wordplay begins and where the real difference ends, because in these conceptual analyses there’s sometimes a line that’s hard to put your finger on. But it could be that if I spent my whole life making efforts and it didn’t work out, then I performed the commandment. Because that’s what is imposed on me. I didn’t reach the result, so at no point could I stop, because it wasn’t achieved. But say I didn’t achieve it in the end, yet I did what I was supposed to do over the course of my life—there’s certainly room for the claim that I actually performed the commandment, fulfilled my obligation. It’s not called—some would say, most would say—you didn’t do it, but you were under compulsion, you’re not guilty, no one will hold it against you. According to my definition, it could be that you performed the commandment—not that you’re not guilty because you were under compulsion, but that you actually did it. You couldn’t stop, because the result hadn’t been reached. Of course this is the required definition if I say that the Torah really addresses a person on the planes that are demanded of him. Even though the implications are—when I ask the Torah what it’s interested in, is it interested in my having a son and a daughter, or in my doing actions? That’s obvious. But what is imposed on me, because that’s what is in my hands, is to do the actions. So in terms of the definition of the commandment, it’s to do the actions. In terms of the reason for the commandment—what does it seek to achieve? It seeks to achieve procreation, that the world should be fruitful and multiply, that there should be people in the world. And this may also be one of the possible explanations, by the way, for why we do not derive law from the reason for the verse. In some contexts, halakhically, there’s a dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda whether or not we derive the reason for the verse. Whether we derive the reasons for the commandments. And in practice we rule like Rabbi Yehuda, who does not derive the reason for the verse. We do not derive the reason for the verse, meaning—for example—“you shall not take a widow’s garment as collateral.” It says that if I lend money to a widow, I may not take her garment as security for the loan. Now the question is: what about a wealthy widow? She has clothes, she won’t be lacking if I take her garment. So there is a dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda whether the prohibition “you shall not take a widow’s garment as collateral” applies also to the garment of a wealthy widow. Rabbi Yehuda says it applies even to a wealthy widow. Rabbi Shimon derives the reason for the verse: what’s the reason for the prohibition? You have compassion on the poor widow, and therefore you don’t take her garment. But a wealthy widow? Fine, what’s the problem? Meaning, you draw conclusions from what in today’s legal world would be called purposive interpretation. Meaning, you give the commandment a purposive interpretation and draw conclusions from it. Rabbi Yehuda says no purposive interpretation; interpretation should be linguistic interpretation—more or less what it says there. That’s a crude presentation, but let’s say. So in other contexts too—for example, in the context of procreation—it may be that they’ll tell me we do not derive the reason for the verse not because maybe you’re mistaken, not because you’ll make a mistaken purposive interpretation or something like that, but because you’ll arrive at incorrect halakhic conclusions. The Torah really does want the thing you identify as the reason for the commandment—it really does want you to have a son and a daughter—but the commandment is to make the efforts, because that is what is imposed on you, not because that’s what the Torah wants, but because that’s what can be imposed on you, that’s what is in your hands. The result is not in your hands. So if I define this as a result-commandment, that will have various implications—not important right now. If I define it as a result-commandment, I’ll be mistaken not because that isn’t the result the Torah desires. It is the result the Torah desires. But the Torah addresses me, so it imposes on me what is in my hands, not the result it truly wants. Therefore it’s not because I’m mistaken in the purposive interpretation of the commandment—I’m not mistaken—and still it could be that the interpretation I give the commandment will be incorrect in the halakhic sense, because the commandment is not a result-commandment but an action-commandment, because that’s what is imposed on me. And that’s only an example. But I want to return to emotional commandments. Here too I say: suppose I do have control over emotion—not the way medieval and later authorities discuss it, wandering a bit on the question, not a bit—a lot, actually. Here and there there are those who wondered about the question. I remember the Ritva talks about it. They wonder whether it is even in my hands; if it’s not in my hands, then it makes no sense to command me. But let’s say it is in my hands. Even if it is in my hands, I would still expect that the thing the Torah expects or demands from me is the actions I am supposed to do. The result—in the end it will come or it won’t come. Suppose I’m autistic. Fine, autistic—I don’t know, my amygdala is neutralized, say. I have no emotions. Okay? So what am I supposed to do now? How do I fulfill the commandment “you shall rejoice in your festival” if I’m incapable of feeling emotions of joy or sadness or whatever?

[Speaker B] Then it’s a commandment of emotion, and then you’re under compulsion even if you don’t study—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not clear. I’m saying: one could say, fine, you’re under compulsion, what can you do? You’re ill. You’re like someone who can’t go perform some commandment because he can’t walk—he’s disabled or something like that. What can you do? So he’s under compulsion. But it could be that not so.

[Speaker B] It could be that the Torah demands that you celebrate that day, fulfill it in such a way that you do lots of actions that essentially lead to joy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, if that’s the definition—exactly—if that’s the definition, then yes, we don’t need to get to claims of compulsion. Just do the actions. Although, I say again, there is a price to that interpretation too. Because in the end, if I say that the purposive interpretation is correct, then why should I do those actions? After all, I do those actions in order to enter the desired emotional state. And since the desired emotional state is an emotion, it’s the result of actions and it’s not in my hands, so it is not defined as the obligation imposed on me. What is imposed on me is to do the actions. But if I know that for me those actions won’t bring about the result, what is the point of doing them? It’s not the same as procreation, because with procreation I don’t know in advance. Obviously in procreation, someone who can’t—if he is infertile or physically incapable or something like that—fine, that’s different. There’s no point in doing the actions because they can’t bring about the result. So there—fine. But in a case where I do the actions and I don’t succeed—I don’t know that in advance. There one can even say that I actually performed the commandment, not just that I’m under compulsion and therefore exempt, but that I actually performed the commandment. Okay? And in this context I say: if someone is really ill in his emotional world, yes, he’s a pathological Litvak, he’s a Litvak as a worldview, he’s a Litvak in the sense that he can’t be a Hasid—not that he doesn’t want to be a Hasid. Then for such a person even doing the actions seems to have no value, because these are actions that won’t bring him to the result, and after all the assumption is that that is the desired result. But if someone can do the actions—whether he succeeds or not, the spirit doesn’t descend on him and he doesn’t become joyful—he sits on Purim, drinks wine, makes merry, but bottom line, bottom line, he doesn’t manage to reach a state of inner joy. It may be that he did what needed to be done. He did what needed to be done.

[Speaker B] He can also learn a page of Talmud, some good insight, and suddenly—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “The precepts of the Lord are upright, rejoicing the heart”—indeed. after all it is forbidden to study on Tisha B’Av, because “the precepts of the Lord are upright, rejoicing the heart.” So what do the Litvaks do with that, with “the precepts of the Lord are upright, rejoicing the heart”? It’s not that study leads to joy. Study is joy. Therefore it doesn’t matter at all right now whether it creates in you a mental state of joy afterward. It’s a definition. It’s not a claim that study leads to joy. The definition is that study means joy. Like the lulav under the law of joy, right? That Brisker line, that you wave the lulav under the law of joy. I don’t know many people for whom waving the lulav gives them a high, okay? I don’t know, maybe there are such people, and they should be sent for observation. But I assume there are also many like me in this group, who not really. But the Briskers comfort me: no problem, waving the lulav is defined as joy, not that it brings me to joy. This action—that’s what’s called rejoicing. Forget emotion; emotion is a Hasidic matter, it doesn’t interest anyone. So I’m saying: with this conception, you can take it to extremes, but I want to get here a few indications toward what I called a Platonic conception of Jewish law. But “Platonic” not exactly in the—I don’t know if it’s exactly in the usual sense, when people talk about Platonic love. It’s similar, but I don’t know if it’s exactly the same. Is Platonic love not emotional? I don’t think we would say that. It seems that usually people think Platonic love is emotional, but an emotion of a different type. Maybe it’s an emotion that lacks the dimension of desire and has only the dimension of love. I’m not exactly sure; one has to think how to define it. But there could be some kind of Platonic love that is really something not in the emotional dimension at all. Say, in the context of love—this came up for me in something I wrote in the book Enosh Kechatzir, I spoke about it a bit there. There’s a Mishnah. The Mishnah says: what is love that depends on something? Any love that depends on something—when the thing ceases, the love ceases. Love that does not depend on something—when the thing ceases, the love does not cease. Now suppose I love someone, a man or a woman, fine? Her character changes, I don’t know, what I loved about her changed. For some reason—I don’t know exactly—something happened, a car accident, whatever, something changed. So does that mean that in principle I’m now supposed not to love her? Not “supposed to” in the normative sense—not required—but that this will be the state of affairs, because what I loved, those dimensions in her, are now no longer there, so I don’t love her. It seems to me that many times it doesn’t work like that. Again, independently of judgment—I’m not being judgmental right now, I don’t care right now whether it’s good or not that it be that way. I’m speaking descriptively. Meaning, the question is what happens in practice. I think that in practice there is something in love that goes beyond the external parameters that may start the process. Meaning, you meet someone—man or woman, doesn’t matter—some person. There are all kinds of love: love of a friend, love of a spouse, love of parents, of relatives—each one is a bit different. It’s the same word, but think about it: it’s a different emotion. It’s not the same emotion. It’s not that the same emotion is directed to different people. Ah? Look, not queenly character—

[Speaker B] Meaning—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Usually everything people say about how the woman looks, the young woman looks, is converted into her character traits, her qualities of soul. That’s supposedly what really ought to be, that’s how we’re always educated, right? And it becomes that way—therefore that’s the joke. Meaning, in the context of Platonic love too, I don’t think that when people speak of Platonic love they mean something completely non-emotional. There is something emotional here, but it’s a different emotion from non-Platonic love. In non-Platonic love, maybe I’d say there is some dimension of desire. What’s the difference? There are—you know—two books I once read when I was having a bit of a crisis. One by Don Yehuda Abravanel, called Dialogues of Love, and the other by a Spanish philosopher and politician named José Ortega y Gasset. Once a friend told me that that’s not first name and last name; it’s all one name—you’re not allowed to say just Gasset or something like that, I don’t know exactly. In any case, he wrote Five Essays on Love. And both of them write something very, very similar. Do you know Don Yehuda Abravanel’s Dialogues of Love? There’s a very beautiful introduction. It came out through the Bialik Institute in a new edition. For hundreds of years this book was unknown and people were sure it was a Christian work. Then it turned out that it was Don Yehuda Abravanel, who was the son of Don Yitzchak Abravanel. One of his sons, I think, converted to Christianity, and there’s some dispute whether it was him or someone else—it’s not clear. But in principle many relate to it as a Jewish book. Like something similar happened with Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol’s Fons Vitae—

[Speaker B] Fons Vitae!

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which was also considered a Muslim work for many years, until suddenly they discovered it was Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol. In any case, those two books speak about the difference between love and desire. And they say that the point distinguishing these two psychic occurrences—or whatever you want to call them—is whether it is centrifugal or centripetal. Meaning, suppose I’m at the center and there are things around me. The question is whether I want to draw them toward me, or whether I want to sacrifice for them. Meaning, whether they are at the center or I am at the center. Centrifugal or centripetal. Okay? So in desire, essentially—yes, it’s the well-known line. Later I saw that actual Torah commentators say this. There are several Torah commentators who write this. It says about our forefather Jacob, “and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her.” And yes, I think Sforno asks this, and others too. He asks: this is exactly the opposite of what we’re used to. After all, if he loved her so much, then every day should have seemed like eternity. But no—he worked seven years, and they seemed to him but a few days. So did he love her or not? The answer is yes—he loved her, not himself. Meaning, when you want to attain something—or someone, in this case—then the goal is really you. You want to get. So every moment you have to wait seems like eternity, because my desire already has to be fulfilled. Not only desire in the physical sense—of course there are many nuances here, I’m making things somewhat too crude—but still, even in the spiritual sense there is a difference between trying to attain her and acting for her sake. Now Jacob loved her, not himself. There’s the famous parable: someone who loves fish. If you love fish, then why do you eat them? The question is whether you love the fish or you desire fish. That’s really the difference. And the claim in those two books—they really describe very beautifully this difference between centrifugal and centripetal. But there is still something here that seems to me that love is more Platonic than desire. Meaning, desire has something very strong and emotional in it. Something that operates in the gut, not in the head. Love is something much more refined. You can call it emotion—there is an emotional dimension here—I don’t think it is completely detached from the emotional dimension. But it is something more subtle, in which the emotion carries you. Say, the mythology of Cupid’s arrow. That’s how mythology describes falling in love between partners. You shoot an arrow into someone’s heart and he falls in love with someone. Okay? What does that mean, really? It means something that awakens by itself. Some instinct that you are compelled to enter into. Some such thing that you are drawn to. Meaning, it’s not in your hands, it’s not your decision. It is something clearly emotional, and I think it describes desire more than love. Love is something like what you said earlier, I think. It doesn’t depend on what I said earlier, but it’s also true. I think there is in love some dimension of choice. A person really can choose whether to love or not to love, or at least it is also in his hands. There are limits, but it is also in his hands. And it’s not true that this is some business that just awakens and that’s it. If it awakens and that’s it—that’s more desire than love. Love is something you can weigh, decide on, and accept. One of the things, for example, and I’m returning to the example with which I opened, about love—if we love a person’s traits, physical traits or spiritual traits or character traits, doesn’t matter, but some traits—when we love the person, I think it may be that the encounter with the person begins through traits, both physical and others. But in the end, when a bond is created—at that stage it’s still more desire than love—when ultimately a bond is formed, it no longer depends on the traits, or not entirely on the traits. Again, in a very rough sense what I’m saying here. It can be partially dependent, doesn’t matter, on various levels. Okay? And then some connection to the person himself is created, so that even if he changes completely, the bond may remain as it was. And that’s what the Mishnah means by “love that does not depend on something—when the thing ceases, the love does not cease.” “Does not depend on something” doesn’t mean only self-interest in the low sense—that’s how people usually read it. “Does not depend on something” means if you want to get something from him, you don’t really love him. But even love in the emotional sense, in the sense of all the romantic stories, that too can still be love that depends on something. Love in the sense that you want to get something—not low self-interest, not money or a transaction or I don’t know what, like a marriage between kings: you marry the daughter of that king in order to make an alliance with him. That’s a crude case of love that depends on something. But even love between a man and a woman can depend on something in the sense that if the thing ceases, the love ceases. Meaning, in the end there is no bond between the persons; there is a bond between the person and the traits of the other person, or some characteristics of the other person. And then if that changes, it changes. Now again, without determining, without judging, and without determining what the situation always is, I think there are situations—I’m speaking carefully—I think there are situations that are also not like that. Meaning, that it goes beyond dependence on traits. It detaches from dependence on traits. The encounter begins through the things I naturally like, because those are the first things one sees, and little by little I begin to become attached to the person himself in a way that doesn’t depend on traits. And then, when the thing ceases, the love does not cease.

[Speaker B] And that’s what common language sees in the difference between infatuation and love.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. Yes. Infatuation is that Cupid thing, something lights up in you, some arrow gets shot into your heart. That example of Cupid reflects it, I think, very, very well. And that’s true; that’s why I say that just as the arrow was shot, the arrow can also be pulled out. Meaning, it’s a kind of thing—many times it starts from there, and again, it’s not something invalid. I’m not speaking here in judgmental terms. But I’m saying that I do think it becomes invalid if in the end that’s the only thing that remains. Meaning, there should also be such a dimension, but once it begins, something more substantial is supposed to be built after it, something deeper. And therefore I think that in the end there is something that one might perhaps call emotion, but it’s an emotion that is much less intense, much less stormy, and much more stable. Meaning, some time ago a book came out about the family. In these turbulent times, all kinds of religious folks decided to publish a book about the family in order to defend the institution of the family from various things, and they wrote all kinds of things there. And they asked me for some article; it was very amusing, not important right now for various reasons. But they asked me for an article, and I wrote there on the basis of things I said at the wedding of my eldest son, that many people wonder why under the wedding canopy they read the ketubah. Now technically it’s in order to separate betrothal from marriage. But it seems to me that there is something stronger here than that. Meaning, and if not, then we should believe that it could have been; I’m not betting that this is really what stood behind this custom, but it seems to me to be something very, very true and very powerful. People think that what there is under the canopy is all kinds of butterflies and pink-winged things flying around, angels fluttering about there, emotions awakening and all that. In the end, what sustains the relationship is not that. What sustains the relationship is the ketubah. The ketubah in the sense of the commitments. By the way, that’s one of the things that scares people away from establishing a relationship. That commitment that says, wow, I’m now going to be trapped inside this thing, and it won’t be simple to get out of it. It’s a whole story. The commitments, by the way, are one of the things that scare people away from establishing a relationship. That commitment that says, wow, I’m now going to be trapped inside this thing, it won’t be simple to get out of it, it’s a complicated business. People don’t like commitments, but it seems to me that in the end commitments are not the antithesis of the emotional dimension; I think quite the opposite. They build it more correctly than Cupid’s arrow. Meaning, if you know you have no choice, you’re here and that’s it, then in the end you’ll also build—and this is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance, yes, is the familiar situation in social psychology in which you generally tend to justify the path you’re taking. Meaning, if you went there, you’ll usually tend to justify what you did, to describe it as something wonderful, and so on. Here too, in this context, harnessing that dissonance in a positive direction means: I already have commitments, this is already for the long term, this is not something where every morning I wake up and think, wait, should we continue this today, or should we close the file? There’s something in this stability, because in life there are ups and there are downs, and that’s fine. But if there’s something stable, then you skip over those down periods and build something that, in my view, is not technical. It’s not that these chains help you ignore emotion; they build an alternative emotional dimension, more subtle. That, I think, is what they call platonic love, as opposed to the other matters. And therefore I think that the legal dimension—and by the way, Maimonides begins at the start of the Laws of Marriage, I’m digressing a bit today, but at the start of the Laws of Marriage Maimonides says that before the giving of the Torah, a person would meet a woman in the marketplace and bring her into his home and they would begin living together, until the Torah was given, and the Torah said that betrothal has to precede marriage. And what is betrothal? Betrothal, for those who know, is the business dimension, it’s the signing of the contract. Marriage is actually the building of the couple’s household, of the relationship. Betrothal is the contract. You sign it—what are the mutual obligations, that she is forbidden to the whole world, that she is permitted to me, the ring with an act of acquisition, all these things. Why did the Torah… the Torah did not add the emotional dimension. The emotional dimension is universal; it was there before and it’s supposed to be there afterward too. There are anti-romantics who think not, but it’s supposed to be there afterward too. But the Torah added specifically the formal halakhic dimension, the legal one, you might call it. Why? I think exactly because of this. That this is a more correct way to build things, it seems to me. Also in the emotional sense, I think this is a more correct construction if you base it on some formal, halakhic, legal institutionalization, and don’t leave butterflies and angels to do the work. They don’t always have the strength to do it. In any event, this claim that when we speak about love as distinct from lust, even if it has an emotional dimension, first, it is more subtle; second, it does contain something that depends on our choice. It’s not imposed on us, it’s not some kind of thing that just awakened in me and that’s it, there’s nothing I can do—either it awakens or it doesn’t. It is something that is the result of a decision, of effort, of building. And of course you also need conditions and so on—I’m not saying it’s arbitrary, you can’t… Before the wedding, the mashgiach of the yeshiva took me for walks around the yeshiva. That’s your advice? Yes. He would always walk like that in circles, and we would talk while walking, and he would always open those walks—I heard this from him later too—he would always open the conversations by saying that he could live with ninety-eight percent of the people in the world. Not at all, there is nothing special about his wife. But his claim was that this is something entirely built. Meaning, almost none of it is Cupid-like, not some thing that awakens in me, but rather if we build it correctly, then it will almost always happen, except really at the margins, where people are totally incompatible or something like that. It seems to me he exaggerated a bit, but there’s something to it. Meaning, there is something here, within certain boundaries of course, there is something in this being something that has to be built, and that the formal dimension helps do that. And here I return again to the halakhic definition: if I define the halakhic definition as I presented earlier, the halakhic definition basically turns to what is incumbent upon me. I need to perform certain actions, and what is supposed to be built afterward may be some sort of emotion of one kind or another. Now I want to bring examples. That was an introduction that took too much time. I want to bring a few examples of this kind of platonic quality in the commandments of emotion in Jewish law. You can see it in a very systematic way in all the commandments, the emotional commandments—not according to all approaches, certainly not according to the Hasidim—but in all the commandments I think you can see in certain approaches this conception. I’ll start perhaps with the commandment to love the convert. There are two verses that speak about our attitude toward converts. In Deuteronomy, chapter 10: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and widow, and loves the convert, giving him bread and clothing. And you shall love the convert, for you were converts in the land of Egypt.” One must love the convert. Why? Because we were converts in the land of Egypt. First of all, when I’m told “for you were converts in the land of Egypt,” and also from the very fact that I am commanded, that means the Torah apparently assumes this is in my hands. I’m not being commanded that a spontaneous feeling of love for the convert should arise within me. Which is the reasonable thing to say in such a matter. Again, a simple reading of the text. In the portion of Mishpatim it says: “And you shall not wrong a convert nor oppress him, for you were converts in the land of Egypt.” The difference, I think, between these two passages is that “you shall not wrong him nor oppress him” is a completely practical command. Don’t do things to him that are not right. Okay? And the reason too is “for you were converts in the land of Egypt.” But the first verse says, “And you shall love the convert.” “You shall love the convert” plainly speaks about emotion, not actions. Now that is not entirely precise, because Maimonides in the Laws of Mourning, at the beginning of chapter 14 of the Laws of Mourning—maybe let’s begin with the Talmud. The Talmud in Sabbath 31a: “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself, from here they said…” Sorry, that’s probably from Sefer HaChinukh. Hillel the Elder—what Hillel the Elder says in the Talmud in Sabbath is: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow”—what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow, “I am the Lord.” Every matter given over to the heart, it is said concerning it, “I am the Lord.” Now this is a complicated business between two weddings. On the one hand it says, “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Hillel’s translation of that is a practical translation: what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. So he’s not talking about the heart; he’s talking about the practical translation. But he says, “Every matter given over to the heart, it is said concerning it, ‘I am the Lord.’” That’s how Sefer HaChinukh concludes. So is it of the heart, is it not of the heart, is it practical, is it a practical command or a command concerning the heart? So in Maimonides, in the Laws of Mourning, chapter 14, Maimonides writes as follows: “It is a positive commandment of rabbinic origin to visit the sick, comfort mourners, escort the dead, bring in the bride, escort guests, and occupy oneself with all the needs of burial—to carry on the shoulder, walk before him, eulogize, dig, and bury; and similarly to gladden the bride and groom and support them in all their needs. And these are acts of kindness performed with one’s body that have no measure. Even though all these commandments are of rabbinic origin, they are included in ‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Whatever you would want others to do for you, do for your brother in Torah and commandments.” So on the one hand he says all these commandments are of rabbinic origin, from the Sages—that is, rabbinic. And this is included within “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” which is a Torah-level positive commandment. Is it rabbinic or Torah-level? The relationship here is not clear. The commentaries wrestle around this issue.

[Speaker B] If you want, it’s rabbinic; apparently you’ll arrive—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be, but he doesn’t say it as cause and effect. He says this is included within “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And apparently I would say—maybe continuing what you said—that it could be that the way to create the mental state of love is to do the actions that generate that state. And what I can do in this context is the actions, not the result. The result will come out. So in the end the goal is the result, and what is incumbent upon you is to do the actions. And then what happens here is as follows: in practice, when the Sages say “of rabbinic origin,” they are translating or breaking down into small change the commandment of “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and they say: escort the dead, bring in the bride, visit the sick, gladden bride and groom, all these things—they are basically… this is not a rabbinic commandment, but rather the way the Sages determine how you can succeed in fulfilling the Torah commandment. And according to the formulation I gave earlier, it could be that when you do this, you are actually performing a Torah-level commandment, or perhaps not. In Maimonides it’s not entirely clear whether he means that. It could be. Of course one could say in a very technical way that the Sages are simply saying: “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” is a commandment about the emotion. You have to love your neighbor as yourself. But someone who loves his fellow usually also does for him all kinds of things that you don’t do for someone you don’t love. And the commandment is to do for every fellow—not only for the ones you happen to love already—the same actions that you do for those you love. That is a rabbinic commandment. The practical difference is that now, if I go outside—suppose I escort the dead, okay? Or bring in a bride, or give charity, whatever, I help someone I’m commanded to help, but I don’t love him at all. I’m completely indifferent to his situation. Okay? The question is whether I fulfilled the commandment. So it seems that no. I fulfilled the rabbinic commandment, which is the actions, but the Torah-level commandment concerns the emotion of love itself. And if I don’t have that emotion, then I didn’t fulfill the Torah-level commandment, only the rabbinic one. If I love them but don’t do the actions—the opposite case—then I fulfilled the Torah-level one and not the rabbinic one. Therefore, in a technical definition one could perhaps still read Maimonides that way, but Maimonides also says that all this is included in “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He doesn’t say that the Sages enacted this enactment, besides the fact that there is a commandment concerning the emotion and everything is fine—this is rabbinic and that is Torah-level. He says that this is included in the positive commandment of “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” so yes, there is some kind of halakhic discourse between them. It’s not just two separate planes—the practical rabbinic obligation and the Torah-level obligation concerning the emotion. There is nevertheless some connection. And therefore it seems to me more correct to continue and say that these are the actions that in the end will also bring you to the feeling of love. And now we have to discuss: if I feel the emotion of love without the actions, then did I fulfill the Torah-level commandment or not? I don’t know, because if I feel the emotion of love without the actions, then it just exists there. I didn’t fulfill the commandment; it simply exists there. It’s hard for me to assume that this would count as fulfillment of the commandment. At most it’s like a house that has a railing. So I bought a house with a railing, so I don’t need to put up a railing. Does that mean I fulfilled the commandment of a railing? No. It means I’m exempt from doing it because it’s already there. In that sense, it may be that if I already have love for someone else, it would be hard for me to define that as fulfillment of the commandment. Rather, it’s already there, so I don’t need to fulfill it. But if it’s not there, then how do I actually perform the commandment? How do I fulfill the commandment? I do these actions that the Sages established. That’s how I do it and create that state when it isn’t present. Now I’ll go back again in Maimonides’ approach, and I’ll try to show another example that strengthens this claim. The commandment of loving the convert. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner asks a question—he brings there a question that a certain scholar asked him: why is there a commandment to love the convert, when in fact there is a commandment to love every Jew? And the convert is a Jew like any other Jew, so one should love him as one loves every Jew. According to Maimonides’ approach—you can see it in several of the principles—a commandment that adds no practical addition beyond a commandment that already exists is not counted. Now here he counts both the commandment to love the convert and the commandment to love one’s fellow, “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And the question is why. What does this add beyond the obligation to love every Jew? There’s no difference there. So Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says—look at a Lithuanian yeshiva-style answer to this issue. He says as follows: “And in order to explain this matter, let us observe. Let us look for a moment at the situation. The same picture on the side of love, namely that Reuven loves Shimon, and Shimon is indeed one of the covenant”—that is, he is Jewish, Shimon—“but Reuven is mistaken about him and thinks he is not one of the covenant.” That’s how a Lithuanian analyzes love. Reuven loves Shimon, okay? And now he thinks Shimon is a gentile, his neighbor, and he’s a very nice person, he loves him, he’s his friend. Everything is fine, a gentile neighbor, and he doesn’t know he is Jewish. In truth he is Jewish, but he doesn’t know. The question is whether he fulfilled—“shall we say that Reuven thereby fulfilled the commandment of loving one’s fellows?” Did he fulfill the commandment of “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”? Certainly not. He did not fulfill it. Interesting. Why didn’t he fulfill it? Because every love has a reason. This is not a claim about the concept of love; it’s a claim about the commandment of love. In the commandment of love there is a reason. And the reason for the love is included within the commandment of loving one’s fellows. That is, the commandment of loving one’s fellows is not interpreted as saying that one should love a person who is from Israel. “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself”—what would we have said? Love people who are Jewish. No. Rather, one should love a Jew because he is Jewish. Meaning, do I have to love a person if he is Jewish? No. I have to love him because he is Jewish. Not as the reason behind the commandment; this is the definition of the commandment. Meaning, if I love him and he is Jewish, but my love is not because he is Jewish, then I have not fulfilled the commandment. “And you shall love your neighbor” means you shall love him because he is your fellow. It’s not whom to love; it’s the reason for the love. I’ll give you an explicit example from the Talmud. The Talmud expounds why one does not marry women on a festival. And the Talmud says: “And you shall rejoice in your festival”—and not in your wife. On the festival one must rejoice in the festival and not in one’s wife. Now what does the verse “And you shall rejoice in your festival” mean? Think about it a bit.

[Speaker B] “And you shall rejoice in your festival,” in its plain sense, with the wife together?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, without the wife. I’m speaking now about “And you shall rejoice in your festival,” about the verse. The meaning is: rejoice—when should you rejoice? On the festival, right? The festival indicates the time when to rejoice. But the Sages do not derive it that way. “And you shall rejoice in your festival”—and not in your wife. What’s the connection? “And you shall rejoice in your festival” means that the festival is the cause of the joy, not the point on the time axis when you are obligated to rejoice. “And you shall rejoice in your festival” means that you should rejoice in the festival, in the fact that it is a festival; that must be the reason for the joy. What is your joy about? That is why you may not marry women on the festival, because when you marry a woman on the festival, you rejoice in the wedding and not in the festival. So they read the verse “And you shall rejoice in your festival” not as everyone reads it in the plain meaning of Scripture. Again, it is the plain meaning of Scripture, but this is an exposition, a homiletical reading. In the plain meaning of Scripture, you rejoice—when do you rejoice? So on the contrary, according to the plain meaning of Scripture there would be reason specifically to marry on the festival. So that when you marry the woman you rejoice, and thus you made sure to rejoice on the festival. What’s the problem? That’s the best possible case. Any joyful event you have, put it on the festival. Excellent. According to the exposition, no—it’s the opposite. According to the exposition, if you rejoice in the wife and not in the festival, then you did not fulfill the commandment. See that this is exactly like Maimonides here. “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” is like “And you shall rejoice in your festival.” By the way, also the continuation: “And you shall rejoice in your festival, and you shall be only joyful.” What does “and you shall be only joyful” mean? That there shouldn’t also be both joy and sadness? What does “and you shall be only joyful” mean? It seems to me—and I think this is the meaning—that “and you shall be only joyful” means that you should be joyful only in the festival, only from this joy and not from something else. Therefore it’s not even an exposition; it’s really the plain meaning of the verse. “And you shall rejoice in your festival.”

[Speaker B] That everything should be joyful, not that, say, there shouldn’t be even an hour in which you’re sad.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but if you want to say that there—obviously, “And you shall rejoice in your festival,” then what would you say? That you have to rejoice all the time. “And you shall be only joyful” is a prohibition. So there’s also a prohibition besides the negation of a positive commandment.

[Speaker B] One could understand the meaning—it could have been understood as joyful—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, joyful, not just a moment.

[Speaker B] But now “only joyful,” that there shouldn’t be even a short time—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think certainly after there is such an exposition, it seems much more compelling to interpret it that way. And then you’ll see that this is exactly “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and it’s like “And you shall rejoice in your festival.” It’s the same thing. The thing that indicates whom to love or when to rejoice—it doesn’t indicate that; it indicates the reason. And then Rabbi Hutner says as follows—now look at his conclusion. So he says: “And the reason for the love is also included in the commandment. The meaning of the verse ‘And you shall love your neighbor’ is that you should love him specifically because he is your neighbor. And consequently, if Reuven loves a Jew but does not recognize that he is Jewish, then the reason for this love is not the Jewishness of the one loved. I don’t love him because he is Jewish; I just happen to love him, and he also happens to be Jewish. That is not fulfillment of the commandment. It is simply ordinary love without the reason required for this commandment.” And here the reason is part of the act of the commandment. This is not just the rationale of the verse; this is how one must fulfill the commandment. It has nothing to do with interpreting the rationale of Scripture. “And therefore the commandment of loving one’s fellows is not fulfilled by such love.” And the same applies on the other side, with hatred. Also when you hate, say, sinners—you have to hate them because they are sinners, not hate him and he just happens to be a sinner, and that’s fine. No. The hatred has to be because he is a sinner. And now what he says is: if that is so, then the commandment of loving the convert is no longer difficult. Why? Because if you love this convert because he is a Jew, then you fulfill the commandment of loving one’s fellow. But the commandment of loving the convert is not fulfilled, because you have to love him because he is a convert and not because he is your fellow. And therefore these are two independent commandments. And see that in fact Maimonides himself hints to this. He doesn’t say it explicitly, but Maimonides himself says as follows: “It is a commandment upon every person to love each and every Jew as himself, as it says, ‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Therefore one must speak in his praise and be careful with his property.” Here “therefore” moves to the practical plane, exactly like in the Laws of Mourning. And here too he speaks from the Sages. This already sounds Torah-level. “Just as he is careful with his own property and wants his own honor, and one who honors himself through the disgrace of his fellow has no share in the World to Come,” and so on. Love… this is from the Laws of Character Traits that I’m reading now. “The love of the convert who comes and enters under the wings of the Divine Presence—there are two positive commandments to love the convert. One because he is included among one’s fellows, and one because he is a convert, and the Torah said, ‘And you shall love the convert.’ It commanded regarding love of the convert just as it commanded regarding love of Himself”—that is, the Holy One, blessed be He—“as it says, ‘And you shall love the Lord your God.’ The Holy One Himself loves converts, as it says, ‘And He loves the convert.’” Now when one reads Maimonides plainly—this is not Rabbi Yerucham Perlow—when one reads Maimonides plainly, the meaning is that when you love the convert, if he is both a convert and a Jew, and every convert is also a Jew, then you fulfilled both commandments. You did two commandments at once; you gained double. But Rabbi Yerucham says you can’t read it that way. Because if that were really the case, the commandment of loving the convert would not be counted; it would be a superfluous commandment. But if Maimonides says that you fulfill two different commandments, that means Maimonides is not saying that you gained two commandments here, but rather that two commandments are incumbent upon you. It could be that you love him and fulfill only one of them. If you love him because he is Jewish, or you love him because he is a convert, you fulfilled only one of them. You have to love him for both reasons. Now think about this a bit; I’m returning to the introduction I gave about love and love and love of characteristics. Here this is really love of characteristics. Right? This is love that depends on something, in essence. It is love for him because he is a convert. But apparently it is clear that since this is incumbent upon me as a task, it doesn’t simply awaken in me and that’s it. The second dimension of love, the motive of love, exists here—that this is something that is the product of choice and not something imposed upon me. True, in this case I am supposed to love him for a certain reason, but the reason is not because he looks a certain way or because he happened to be born a nice and good person, but because he made a choice worthy of appreciation. I’m talking about the convert. Regarding a Jew, truly, it’s simply because he was born Jewish, nothing more than that. And if he is a bad Jew? If he is a bad Jew, then one must hate him insofar as he commits sins, and that is a different discussion. By the way, the question whether one can love and hate at the same time—even in my book formalism hasn’t gotten to that issue. One can do both things here, one can do both. There are questions about this; the later authorities discuss how I can fulfill both the commandment of love and the commandment of hate at the same time. As far as I’m concerned there is no principled problem; on the logical level there is no problem with it. Psychologically it requires work, but it is well defined and there is no principled problem with it when you define it this way. If in the end it has to conclude in a relationship to the person himself, period, and the characteristics are only the way to get there, then I don’t think there is any way to do it. But if the reason for the love or the hate is really part of the definition of the thing itself, of the commandment itself, then what’s the problem? I can love him because he is a Jew or because he is a convert, and hate him because he is a sinner. I can do both. And so now, when I try to place these definitions between love and lust, as I defined at the beginning, this falls somewhere in the middle. On the one hand it depends on something, and in that sense it is like lust, because you love him because of something; you don’t just love him, period. But I think every commandment is like that in the end, because a commandment has some value-based goal. You need—with every commandment—but it is reasonable that commandments should be like this. The value-based goal is to appreciate the fact that he is a convert, not simply to love him, period. Not to abuse him is something else, because he is in a certain situation and you must not abuse him, “for you were converts in the land of Egypt.” But loving him means simply appreciating the step he took. So this really is not a simple emotional matter. It is more, I would say, intellectual, like what Ramchal and others say about intellectual love of God. There is love that is in the intellect, not in emotion. Also in this context of the convert, in a certain sense this is an intellectual love. It is not emotional love. You have to love the decision he made. In the end it is supposed to translate into the person, but what you are really supposed to work on is the appreciation you have for the step he took. That is really the commandment. And then it truly becomes, on the one hand, dependent on something, and that makes it somewhat similar to lust; on the other hand, it is something that involves choice and is not imposed upon me—on the contrary, I am supposed to work on myself even if it does not already exist within me—and in that sense it is indeed similar to love. And I think all the commandments of emotion are like this. Maybe we’ll continue.