Intuition in Jewish Law – Lesson 4

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is this Rebbe definitely right? I didn’t say it’s definite. The fundamentalist claims—the fundamentalist claims—that it’s definite. I’m describing things right now—I belong to the synthetic camp—I’m describing the fundamentalist maturation process right now, not the synthetic one. And the fundamentalist maturation is basically… why do I call it fundamentalism? So we talked about this once last year, maybe even this year. I call it fundamentalism because people usually identify fundamentalism with extreme, cruel behavior, I don’t know, something like that. But that’s not the root of the issue; that’s an expression of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism at its root lies on the philosophical plane. When you think there’s something that is above the criticism of thought, that doesn’t stand for the criticism of thought, then you’re a fundamentalist. Now, you can be a fundamentalist who behaves very pleasantly. For example, a person who refuses to subject morality to critical reflection. A moral person without compromise. Fine—he’s also a fundamentalist. If you have something you’re not willing to subject to criticism, you’re a fundamentalist. But in that case, living next to you can be very pleasant—you’re a good person, you’re a moral person. But from my point of view, you’re a fundamentalist. The problem, of course, the way we feel it more strongly, is this kind of fundamentalism where the principles that are not open to critical thought are principles that cause you to behave problematically toward your surroundings—to be cruel, to persecute people who think differently, and so on. Okay? Not every philosophical fundamentalist has to be a person who behaves cruelly and extremely. But for me, the philosophical definition of fundamentalism is the definition on the philosophical level. Someone who has something that does not stand the test of critical thought. He isn’t willing to hear arguments about it. It’s above all doubt. Meaning, he’s not willing even to discuss the matter. That’s a fundamentalist. Now, as I said before, there are different people and different fundamentalist doctrines. Each one has a different system that is not open to critical reflection—each one his own different system. And they’re all fundamentalists. Now, there are some who end up murdering everyone who doesn’t think like them—that’s what’s broadly called fundamentalism. Right? But there is a more moderate fundamentalism—for example, in the Jewish world there is also fundamentalism. Usually it doesn’t get to murder and those kinds of extremes, but it can get to repression and somewhat milder abuse. Right? A child in a conservative society who asks questions that are a bit outside the permitted framework may suffer quite a bit. That too is a kind of fundamentalism, because after all he’s asking a question and expecting a response, and you tell him: no—there are things you don’t ask about, you’re forbidden to ask. So you’re a fundamentalist. You don’t kill him, thank God; with us that usually doesn’t happen. But philosophical fundamentalism does exist. Okay?

So basically, when you look at things this way, it turns out—and we talked about this once at the beginning of a lesson, before a lesson I think I spoke about it while people were gathering—so I said that I think fundamentalism and skepticism are two sides of the same coin. It’s exactly the same outlook. Why? Because both start from the premise that truth is only something certain. That’s what they share. What’s the difference between them? Within this group that thinks truth is only something certain, the skeptic says: okay, but there is only rational thought, and rational thought never gives me a certain conclusion, so I’m a skeptic. The fundamentalist remains within that same framework, where only certainty is acceptable, but says: fine, so if the rational doesn’t give me certainty—and he also understands that—then I need to reach the meta-rational, the supra-rational. Something beyond rational thought, and that will give me the longed-for certainty. And then, of course, he becomes a fundamentalist.

And I think one of the problems we experience in our concrete world—so forgive me for sliding into current events—is that the way people think it’s right to deal with fundamentalism is basically through cultural relativism, multiculturalism, inclusion, skepticism really. And they say: yes, we’ll be inclusive; if we don’t fight, if we don’t do this, then it’ll be okay, then somehow we’ll manage to deal with other approaches and there won’t be wars and there won’t be extremism. Only tango takes two. Meaning, if you want to include him, and he won’t include you, then he’ll feed on you. Meaning, it doesn’t work—you need two. And then what happens? As a result, slowly at least part of the world begins to conclude that you need to set up a counter-fundamentalism in order to deal with this fundamentalism. So in Europe too there are already such trends, and of course with us there are such trends too, and overall it’s a natural reactive process. Meaning, if the inclusive people, the democrats, the enlightened, the multiculturalists, don’t really manage to deal with the fundamentalist forces standing opposite them, then there’s no choice but to become a counter-fundamentalist—that is, to create another fundamentalism that is intolerant toward the intolerant. Okay? And then basically an opposite fundamentalism is created, which in my eyes is no less reprehensible. But the feeling is that apparently there’s no alternative.

And why is there no alternative? Understand: on the philosophical level, even before the obvious practical questions—yes, if you include everyone, then he’ll kill you and you won’t do anything to him, so in the end you’ll be dead. Those are simple facts of life; you don’t need to be a great philosopher for that. But I’d say that on the philosophical level there is a very important point here. You can’t deal with him because you share his basic premise. Therefore you can’t deal with him. On the philosophical level you accept his point of departure. You accept that certainty cannot come out of rational thought. So since I’m a rationalist, I know that I have no certainty. Now he claims some superior, exalted certainty. I respect that—only unfortunately I haven’t experienced it and I’m not there. Fine? But I can’t help but respect it, or accept it, or give him credit for it, because I share the same premise.

And then, within what are called postmodern phenomena, you can see a combination of two almost opposite currents living in wonderful symbiosis with one another. One current is the inclusive, skeptical, relativistic current, where everyone can say whatever they want—nonsense or not nonsense, it doesn’t matter. Everyone does whatever they want. Fine? Communicating with aliens, and everything is okay. And alternative medicine—everything is okay. Everyone can make up whatever they want, because there is no certainty about anything and everyone is as right as everyone else and everything is fine. Because only certainty is accepted, yes? That’s obvious. Probability isn’t relevant. Probability is not a legitimate consideration in this way of thinking. Now, within that same picture, fundamentalist statements are created. The moment you don’t have to justify yourself—you communicate with aliens, fine, in a postmodern world that’s allowed and legitimate. Now slowly you enter into a system like this in which basically nobody has to justify what he says. Rational thinking—it doesn’t… it only plays a role. Right? So I’m legitimate. At some stage I already begin to believe in those aliens they’re communicating with. And then it becomes some higher, exalted truth, because I’ve already despaired of critical thought. Postmodernity is a kind of despair of critical thought. Or maybe of thought—there’s maybe too much criticism there—but despair of thought because, through criticism, there’s despair of thought. And then fundamentalism is created within that world, and you can see people who are terribly convinced of the nonsense they’re speaking.

It starts as some kind of legitimate nonsense—fine, everyone is allowed to say whatever they want. And you can even see in the books, say, of Rabbi Shagar—I always come back to this when I talk about these subjects—that this is a kind of postmodern literature, and yes, “the circle of differences,” his favorite phrase. The idea that it’s terribly pleasant to be a religious person in the postmodern world because in that world everyone is on a circle. A circle is a collection of points that are equally distant from the center. No one is more right than anyone else, no one is more wrong than anyone else. We are all dancing on the circle of differences. Fine? So we’re all okay: the rationalists are okay, the mystics are okay, the religious are okay, those who speak nonsense are okay. Everything is okay, we’re all okay, no one is more right than anyone else. What a pastoral world—the wolf lies down with the lamb. Like—I don’t remember who said it—yes, that when the wolf lies down with the lamb, in any case he prefers to be the wolf. So here too it’s exactly the same thing. This world where the wolf lies down with the lamb somehow doesn’t manage to create symbiosis between wolves and lambs. You expect to turn the wolf into a lamb too, but he doesn’t become one. And then some kind of counter-fundamentalism is created.

But now democracy, in defending itself, becomes fundamentalist, and it starts persecuting every expression that smells to them like fundamentalism. I think we can see this today at every turn. And the excuse is that we are a defensive democracy. And then someone who says he’s happy Rabin died gets arrested for incitement—something absurd, simply absurd. After Rabin’s assassination there was hysteria such that what was needed was collective hospitalization. But I’m saying—today we’re already okay, twenty years have passed. So it’s crazy, in short. So that’s counter-fundamentalism, because the feeling—and it’s a real feeling—is that we are unable to cope with the fundamentalism of the religious right or of Muslim religiosity in Europe, doesn’t matter, it’s here too in fact, and then you have to create some kind of counter-fundamentalism.

And the flaw in this thinking—which to my mind is problematic because both sides suffer from the same problem—is that both are fundamentalist. Democratic fundamentalism too is a kind of very problematic fundamentalism. They too are unwilling to hear anything that subjects their principles to critical examination. In certain contexts they have become fully religious people, like atheism. Go into any atheist website and see how open they are to hearing arguments—it’s about the same as the websites for bringing people to repentance; it looks very similar. And the flaw here is not the flaw of extreme behavior—that’s an expression. In my eyes, the essential problem is that even if it doesn’t express itself in harmful behavior or problematic behavior, in persecuting the other, there is a philosophical failure here. Fundamentalism is something reprehensible on the philosophical level, even before the question of what behavioral consequences it has, because a person ought to subject things to critical thought—that is critique. That’s the basic problem. Once you subject things to criticism, then usually you’ll also behave a little more moderately; you won’t take things all the way to the end, you’ll understand that maybe you’re wrong, maybe the other side has better aspects. But I’m saying this from a non-postmodern point of view. That is exactly the third alternative, the synthetic one. Because the synthetic alternative basically says: listen, I’m not certain about anything, I’m not convinced about anything, but that doesn’t mean I believe in nothing, that there is no truth and no falsehood. There are also considerations of probability. True, proof cannot—rational thought doesn’t give me certainty, but it gives me probability, and I go with the principle of probability. And from my point of view, what is probable is what I accept. And that’s fine—that’s what I have, I can’t do more than that. So that’s what I go with, but I’m always aware that I may be wrong. And that’s not postmodernity, that’s just being clear-eyed. A clear-eyed person understands that sometimes he’s wrong. I think everyone here—I can say about myself—sometimes I was wrong. Everyone is sometimes wrong, so just be clear-eyed, draw the conclusions, and understand that even things that seem terribly, terribly convincing and right to you—you may be wrong about them. And maybe someone will raise some argument that opens your eyes and you’ll think again, and everything is always open to critical examination.

So basically, the alternative that really may be able to deal with fundamentalism is neither postmodernity nor counter-fundamentalism, because it fails in the same ways. It creates counter-terror. That doesn’t help. It’s like every revolution that comes out against terror—the Communist revolution came out against the terror of the Tsar and created terror of its own. And that’s usually what happens in revolutions. Revolutions act against one tyranny and create a second tyranny, because the feeling is that against tyranny you need to use tyranny. Which I think is not true. Against tyranny you need to attack the basic premise that leads to the conception of tyranny or fundamentalism. And that basic premise is the identification of truth with certainty. Because if you give up that identification, which may seem to many people like something obvious or necessarily true, then suddenly you’ll see: wait a second, maybe you’re wrong.

There is a very central Bnei Brak myth, taken from the Hasid Yaavetz from the expulsion from Spain. And he said that when Jews there were given the choice of exile or converting their religion, he said that the common folk withstood the trial better than the Torah scholars, better than the intelligentsia. And in Bnei Brak there’s this sort of myth that they always come back to: look how important simple faith is, and how powerful it is, and how thinking about faith and sophistication in faith can be harmful, can lead to weakness. And I always rebelled against this myth. What they’re basically telling me is: be an idiot so that you can cling to your truth. And maybe it isn’t the truth? In the end, after all, I really do have a doubt—maybe it’s true, maybe not. Now true, the price is… there are extreme things I won’t do. Let’s put that on the table. There are extreme things I won’t do. I don’t know whether—I’m speaking about myself—whether I’ll condemn myself for it afterward or not, but it’s clear to me that if I stand in that test, I won’t do it. If I saw before me an Amalekite—a very nice man, everything is fine, but I know he is from the seed of Amalek, let’s say Elijah comes and tells me this is from the seed of Amalek, now I know you have to kill him, that’s the law of the Torah, you have to kill him—it doesn’t seem to me that I would kill him. I have no explanation. I don’t have one, I don’t know how to explain it. But it doesn’t seem to me that I would kill him. Why? And here this issue comes in—that I’m not sure I’m right. Maybe if I were convinced that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to kill him, and the Holy One, blessed be He, knows what He’s saying, then you have to kill him. But I’m not willing to be certain about anything. Now the price is that if I’m not certain, true, I won’t go all the way with it. That’s the fundamentalism. If I’m not certain about something, then I don’t go all the way with it. But in my eyes that is not a disgrace. I’m simply clear-eyed.

I think that the fact that today we don’t have Amalekites and we don’t have to stand in this test—as Rabbi Kook explains, by the way—is not something accidental. The Holy One, blessed be He, directs things in one way or another—if indeed, as we spoke a little bit about, the Holy One, blessed be He, directs history—but history is built in a way that suits the developmental stage we are in. And in my eyes this is a developmental ascent: that we understand there are things that are not certain. Faith too is not certain, and nothing is certain. So what? Even though it’s not certain, in my eyes it is true—I go with it, I think it is true. But it is not certain. So I’m not a fundamentalist who says, fine, it’s above reason, faith is something you don’t ask about, that is certainly true, that doesn’t stand for critical examination. It certainly does stand for it—stands and stands. Like everything else. And you can arrive at such conclusions and such conclusions.

And I know quite a few people who truly and sincerely—as far as I can tell, and I estimate this is a real process—arrive at the conclusion that they do not believe. Why? Because that is the result of being willing to subject things to critical thought. And then people say: see where this leads. Where does it lead? In my eyes that is praise, not disgrace. What’s the claim? The person weighed his path and came to the conclusion that he doesn’t accept it. So what do you prefer—that we keep pumping into him all the time, don’t think, don’t think, just accept what we say because we said it, and then no problem, everyone will remain religious? Let’s say that works for the sake of argument. Okay? Then everyone will remain—but they won’t remain religious, they’ll remain pseudo-religious. They’ll do the right actions. Huh? They’ll do the right actions, exactly. They are basically repressed heretics, who on the practical level do the right actions because it is forbidden to ask questions and forbidden to go outside the framework, and you pay socially significant prices when you do that, and therefore people sort of remain in line, and so that is always presented as some kind of achievement. That is exactly the myth of the Hasid Yaavetz, which says that for… there is great value in stupidity. There is great value in stupidity because stupidity will allow the smart people to steer all the masses in the right direction, and the assumption is that the smart people know better than the masses—which is an assumption that has some logic to it, because smart people are smart people. But on the other hand, it is a very problematic assumption. What?

[Speaker C] The tale of the simpleton and the wise man by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Yes, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s true, yes. So it’s like Plato’s rule of the philosophers, basically. This dilemma of why give everyone the right to vote? Give it only to the philosophers to run things, because they’re the smart people—never mind, for him they were called philosophers; today we’d translate that as the smart people. Let the smart people run things, and all the fools just do damage. That is basically the idea of Plato’s rule of the philosophers. Okay? And these arguments come up in all the debates between Haredim and non-Haredim. Look how much secularization there is among you—they always say that, right? Something like that. And that’s true: there is more secularization in the non-Haredi world. But the question is whether that is praise or disgrace. I don’t know. I don’t know. In my eyes there is a lot of praise in that. There is a lot of praise in that, because people weigh their path, and naturally there are people who arrive at conclusions different from mine. I think they are mistaken. I think they are mistaken, and I’m very sorry that those are their conclusions. But on the other hand, the alternative—that they not weigh it at all and just remain in line—doesn’t seem more attractive to me; I don’t think it’s better.

A person who makes his own calculation—and preferably he should do it honestly and sincerely, not letting his impulse carry him because it’s more convenient, as much as possible. Impulse can take us in the direction of remaining religious too, because the calculation whether or not to be religious can go in both directions. I once mentioned Marx, who says religion is the opium of the masses. He’s largely right. It’s very convenient to be religious, especially for someone who grew up in a religious society. It’s opium in the sense that it allows you a comfortable life that ignores reality. What do I mean by reality? Reality in the intellectual sense. Reality is the questions. And these questions—you can ignore them and smoke your opium and stay in line, because usually many people don’t have good answers to those questions. Because if they had answers, why forbid asking? Give the answer. You forbid asking because you have no answers. That’s obvious—that’s the way someone without answers deals with things. So in that situation you keep people in line, but they’re not really in line; they just continue by inertia what was there before.

And one second—now there is an advantage to this, because if he becomes secular, the chance that his child will be religious or seriously consider being religious is small—that’s usually the case. So true, there are utilitarian considerations in favor of this, but on the other hand I cannot sacrifice a person for the sake of his son. That’s not right. Every person should make his own decisions to the best of his understanding. I need to respect him as he is and not see him as a machine for producing little religious people. That is simply not the right way to relate to a person.

Now therefore all these arguments, which seem self-evident, and people always feel they are on the defensive—wait, among us there’s a lot of secularization, so why do I send my child to State Religious education, or mixed education, or education that studies things besides Torah and all kinds of things like that?—and the answers people give are hesitant; they can’t give a real answer, not only to outside criticism but even to themselves. Okay? I don’t know—I feel very whole with this. I feel very whole with the idea that a person should receive the options to think about his path. And the price is that there are people who really do this because of impulse, not because of conclusions—not everyone is a great philosopher. Fine, what can you do? Maybe I too remain here because of some comfort or something like that, but a person should get the option to decide his path. Meaning, that’s basic—that a person should… that’s what a person is. Otherwise you’re just a machine.

[Speaker C] No, that’s the way of the Torah, apparently. Free choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And in my eyes it’s specifically a halakhic or meta-halakhic command—it’s a command of the Torah: “Choose life.”

[Speaker C] The question is at what age to do this—not in elementary school, not… I’m not arguing

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] right now about nuances—what exactly the education should be and when to introduce each thing into the educational process. But on the principled level, the fact that there is secularization in the end is not a disgrace, or not necessarily a disgrace. There is a certain problematic aspect—people of impulse, people are exposed to things that are not necessarily of value, because when you open things up, you open things up. Fine, there’s nothing to do; it’s hard to open selectively, so there are people who try to close everything because it’s impossible to open selectively. Okay? But on the other hand, to close everything means that you also do not get exposed to the things you should be exposed to. And if there are good questions, I very much would want all of us to be exposed to them, because we need to make decisions, and each person should make his own decisions, and yes, there will be some who decide differently from me. What can you do? What can you do? If it is a real decision, as I’ve already said several times, a person is coerced by his beliefs. Let’s say I’m right and he’s wrong—he made different decisions than I did—he is at most coerced by his beliefs. The Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to accept that. He created us this way. He gave us the mind we have. He created us as people who cannot reach certainty, because that’s how we are. We have no ability to reach certainty, and therefore we can also make mistakes. We can make incorrect decisions. He should take that into account, and if not, then He should complain to Himself—that’s how He created us. It cannot be that we are supposed to fix His bugs, if it’s a bug. If He thinks everyone should behave the same way and not subject things to examination, then don’t create a mind for me—create me as an animal. Okay? There is something very distorted here, and people cannot deal with this kind of question.

And this kind of question basically assumes a certain kind of fundamentalism, because it basically says: look, you have to be a fundamentalist, otherwise someone may draw conclusions different from yours. Okay, right—that’s the meaning of not being a fundamentalist. Weigh your path and decide. Decide what you think. I think every person should decide. That is ideal education. And with the risk of secularization—it’s not a risk, it’s a chance, and it means that a person makes decisions. I’m not in favor of a person becoming secular. He is mistaken if he becomes secular; I think he is mistaken in his path and I regret it and it is harmful—all true. But He created the basic infrastructure that a person should make decisions about his path, and that is more important than which decision he makes. Which decision he makes—fine, I’ll argue with him about it.

[Speaker D] Is there some halakhic decisor—Abarbanel or some other authority—who says that “the Merciful One exempts one under compulsion” includes also…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I brought then the Radbaz. There’s a responsum of the Radbaz where he says that even though this is obvious by logic, why does it need to be written? It’s obvious. How is this different from any other compulsion? Why is every other compulsion a claim of exemption, but compulsion in judgment is not a claim of exemption? In an inadvertent sin there is a certain kind of negligence when you’re called one who sinned inadvertently. But when there is no negligence—when I used the best judgment I could and that’s the conclusion I reached—how is that different from any other compulsion? There is a responsum of the Radbaz—they sent him a question about someone who claimed that Moses our teacher is God. Ultra-frum, no less. He is God. God… So they asked the Radbaz: what do we do with this creature—eliminate him, I don’t know, what should be done with him? I don’t remember exactly what the options were there, yes, but what should be done with him? So he said: what do you want from him? He is coerced by his belief. That’s what he thinks. What do you want from him? Convince him otherwise. Fine, that’s it. What can you do if that’s what he thinks? Are you going to kill a person over something that is simply his conclusion? He is mistaken—it’s not that the Radbaz agreed with him. The Radbaz thinks the man is mistaken, yes? Fine—he is coerced. What? Nothing is certain.

[Speaker C] What? That’s also not certain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nothing is certain. No, right, nothing is certain, correct. And therefore I say there is something here that…

[Speaker C] I’m concerned that he wasn’t coerced by his belief.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe he was. You don’t know. Maybe he was. After all, Tosafot there and the Maharsha in Bava Batra, where Tosafot brings that midrash—that they killed the gatherer of sticks in order to teach the Jewish people that despite the fact that they sinned with the golden calf, the 613 commandments still apply to them. And so the gatherer gathered sticks so they would kill him. Then they would see that people are still killed for desecrating the Sabbath—that’s what the midrash says. It’s not a historical description, it doesn’t matter—it’s the midrash. So the Maharsha asks: but… then why did they kill him? That’s an act not needed for its own sake. He gathered sticks in order to educate the Jewish people, not for the sticks. So if it’s an act not needed for its own sake, why did they kill him? The simple answer, of course, is that the religious court didn’t know that. So what do you want? Those were his motivations, but he didn’t reveal them to the court, because if he had revealed them to the court they wouldn’t have killed him, and then he wouldn’t have achieved his goal. That’s not a question. But… wait, how did I get to this? Ah, so you said he was coerced by his belief. It could be that he was coerced by his belief, but the religious court assessed that he wasn’t. The court assessed that he was a criminal.

[Speaker C] A heretic from the outset?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. In my opinion, a heretic—well, that’s a discussion I may get to, by the way, in a moment. I don’t know if in a moment—I planned to get to it later in the context of intuition in Jewish law. But I’ll say the punch line already now since you asked: in my opinion, the entire attitude toward heretics and deniers and sectarians and so on—all those attitudes stem from the fact that the Sages saw them as people who follow impulse and not judgment. If they had seen a person who followed judgment and reached an incorrect conclusion, then he would be coerced.

[Speaker B] And that’s idolatry in the Torah, not the Sages. In the Torah—why do they kill them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because they are following impulse. In the Torah too. They follow impulse—idol worshipers who have an impulse to worship idols, not because they believe it is true.

[Speaker B] They believe it’s true. Why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is a child captured among the nations? It appears… it appears in the Talmud; it’s not an invention of our generation. What is a child captured among the nations? A child captured among the nations, as Maimonides describes it—the children of those who went astray after idolatry—Maimonides says they are coerced. Why are they coerced? Because they could not think otherwise. And their father isn’t coerced? Right. No, their father isn’t coerced. Who said so? So I’m saying—who said? The Sages say so. The claim that the Sages… I’m saying I go the other way around. I’m saying: after all, it is obvious that someone coerced in his belief is coerced. Now I say: but in the Sages I see that a person who follows idolatry is punished—not in the Sages, in the Torah—and after that in Scripture and the Prophets and the Sages and so on. And then I say: I’m now explaining this. What I’m basically saying is that apparently the Sages saw that someone who follows idolatry is not the result of philosophical reasoning that reached the conclusion that it’s true, but the result of impulse.

And I really do have indications for this; it’s not just some ad hoc explanation. For example, the Talmud says that the Men of the Great Assembly nullified the impulse for idolatry and the impulse for sexual transgression, except for against another man’s wife. Okay? What does it mean that they nullified the impulse? I’m trying to explain this to myself today. Today we are unable to understand the statement that someone who worships idols does so because of impulse. What impulse do you have to worship idols? Come on, absurd. He really believes in it, no? That’s what he thinks. Maybe he’s foolish, maybe he’s mistaken. Exactly—that’s Menashe, that’s the story of Menashe. So we don’t understand it. But why don’t we understand it? Because the Sages nullified the impulse for idolatry. Let’s try to look again—not as a historical description but more phenomenologically. Let’s try to look at an impulse that has remained with us. The impulse toward sexual transgression, say toward another man’s wife. Sexual prohibitions involving relatives and such—that’s pathology; that was nullified, let’s say. But the impulse toward another man’s wife still remains. Okay? So let’s try to see what happens there. And suddenly everything becomes understandable. All the things we don’t understand with regard to idolatry are completely understandable with regard to sexual transgression.

Think about a person who commits adultery with another man’s wife, okay? And he himself knows he’s not okay. There are many such people. There are those who turned it into an ideology and will say everything is fine, but okay, fine. But there are those who agree that it’s not okay—we have a contract, the bond between husband and wife has to be kept. Get divorced if you don’t want to keep living together, but as long as you’re together there is commitment; you signed a contract. In my eyes that is an elementary moral matter; it has nothing to do with religiosity. You signed a contract—keep it. Okay? Now, a person commits adultery. And he understands that he is not okay—I’m talking about those who understand that it’s not okay. So why do they commit adultery? After all, they understand that it’s not okay. They have an impulse to commit adultery, right? Now imagine a hypothetical situation where there is that same natural tendency toward idolatry. We don’t know such a thing, okay? So I take the impulse we do know and try to infer from it to what the Sages always describe as the impulse for idolatry. What is an impulse? Today we don’t understand this concept. What is the impulse for idolatry? The Sages saw—and again, maybe they were even mistaken, it doesn’t matter at all—but that’s how they saw it, and therefore they ruled that way. Because they also saw idolatry as the result of impulse, exactly like what we today see as sexual transgression. And that really is the story of Menashe, who appears to Rav Ashi in a dream after Rav Ashi mocked him and ridiculed him. He appears in the dream and says to him: if you had lived in my generation, you would have lifted the hems of your robe and run to worship idols. Why? Would he have become a philosopher with a different philosophy? No. Because in our generation—before they nullified the impulse for idolatry, after all, the Men of the Great Assembly nullified it, and Menashe is a king from the First Temple period—so he says, before they nullified the impulse for idolatry, it was an impulse. You don’t know this phenomenon. So Rav Ashi too was mistaken in thinking that idol worshipers were philosophers, that they simply thought differently. Maybe poor philosophers, but they thought differently. And Menashe tells him: you’re wrong. It was an impulse. It was not judgment.

Now, do you punish someone for impulse? If he knows it’s not true—like adultery. As for adultery, it seems to me one can understand why adulterers are punished. Fine, maybe not the death penalty—never mind, let’s say they put him in prison. Fine? If they put him in prison I have no problem with that at all. I have no problem with putting adulterers in prison. Why? Because they committed themselves in our signed contract, and this is also a contract with psychological significance, not just some formal contract. Yes, there is room to put someone in prison for such a thing. I don’t think that’s absurd. Fine? But never mind, without arguing about it—we are ready to accept that. Same thing with idolatry. Idolatry in that period, that’s how the Sages saw it. There is an impulse for idolatry and an impulse for sexual transgression. “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” The mind and the heart are two agents of idolatry. The heart is the impulse for sexual transgression; the mind is the impulse for idolatry. And it’s not mind, it’s not judgment—it’s a kind of impulse. And therefore we don’t understand it because now idolatry has been nullified—of course, only… the impulse for idolatry. Not… well… aren’t these counted as idolatry?

[Speaker C] No, idolatry is overlap,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But even about that there are disputes as to whether Christianity is idolatry. Even Catholic Christianity—not everyone agrees that it is idolatry. A Noahide is not prohibited in association, as is known, so it’s not at all clear that this is idolatry. It’s worship of the Holy One, blessed be He, perhaps through intermediaries or something like that. Crude idolatry is impulse. After all, it really is something foolish. So it is even reasonable to see it as a kind of impulse.

Now I don’t know—when in Africa today they worship idols, I haven’t researched exactly what their rationale is behind it, but there it seems to me that it isn’t impulse. They think that’s what has to be done—I don’t know. Okay, I’m not judging right now what really was there, but it is clear to me that the Sages saw it this way. And therefore they punish. But if a person really were a philosopher who believed that one must defecate before Peor because it brings rain—I don’t know—that this was his conclusion, he reached a clear conclusion through his pure contemplation, okay? Without impulses and without anything. Then he would be exempt—coerced. And how did we get to all this, I really no longer remember, but what… coerced in his belief. Coerced in his belief—that one should open before a person the possibility of weighing his own belief, that’s what I was talking about. And if he weighs things and reaches another conclusion, which in my eyes is mistaken—I really think it is mistaken, not that I’m a pluralist. I truly think it is mistaken. Fine, but that’s his judgment.

Now more than that, I say that part of this matter—not a necessary part, but part of it—is also that I’m not sure of my own path. Because I’m not sure of anything. I’m sure of nothing.

[Speaker C] Why do you define him as mistaken? What? When you determine that he sinned inadvertently. Obviously. If you’re not sure of your own view,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and still I think he sinned inadvertently. As I heard earlier, I’m not sure of my own opinion, and still for me not only the self-evident is acceptable. Probability is acceptable. For me, if it’s probable then that’s the truth as I see it. And maybe in truth I’m mistaken, but as long as it hasn’t become clear to me that I’m mistaken, the default, or my working assumption, is that this is the truth. Real truth—not because that’s how I need to live, but because that really is the truth. True, I’m a human being, I cannot reach certainty. Now this is part of the same issue. Once I have some level of doubt, then of course I cannot relate in such an extreme and sharp, absolute way to someone who thinks differently from me, because maybe there really is some possibility that I’m wrong. Okay? So clearly it is also connected to my lack of confidence in my own path, but my lack of confidence in my own path is simply the result of clear-sightedness. It has nothing to do with guilt or whether I’m okay or not okay. It’s not a matter for criticism—whether I’m okay in not being certain or not. The fact is that I’m not certain. What difference does it make whether that’s okay or not? If it’s not okay, then I’ll become certain? I’m still not certain. Fine? There is something here that one simply has to acknowledge. It’s not a question of whether to regard it as okay or not okay. It’s part of our being human.

[Speaker E] Then that undercuts the idea of Torah, basically. Meaning, if “do not deviate”… right or left, and there it’s literal, because otherwise you’re just believing yourself. Literally because…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, on that there is a dispute in the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, of course.

[Speaker E] Right, right. The question is in what sense to define it. In the sense that if I do what you tell me because I think it’s right, then I’m basically only doing what I think.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. So I’ll tell you where the mistake is. There are… it’s not… I can’t relate to your statements only as yes, true or not true. There are many claims in the Torah or commandments in the Torah—I have no idea why they are right. But I also don’t know that they are not right. Once I have trust that the Holy One, blessed be He, says something should be done, I do it.

[Speaker E] Yes, but then when an Amalekite comes to you, right, and you think that isn’t right—right, then you do what you want.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll think—no, what I’m saying is not, that’s not what I want, you’re exaggerating. You took a correct point but exaggerated it. I agree: there will be extreme situations in which the expected cost of error is such that, because there is some chance that I’m mistaken and the consequences are fateful, irreversible consequences for the Amalekite—for example in that case—then maybe I won’t do it. Again, I’m not sure that it’s correct not to do it, but I’m saying: if you ask me what will happen when I’m in that situation, there’s a reasonable chance that maybe I’ll find some halakhic trick for it, I don’t know.

[Speaker E] Saul thought of that too, it seems to me, no? Fine, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, he paid a very heavy price for it, but you don’t know why. He paid a very heavy price for it, but notice: the price he paid was that the kingship was taken from him. But that doesn’t mean he was liable to death because he committed a transgression. Rather, they took the kingship from him because they thought it would be better for a king to be someone who does keep this. Fine, then don’t make me king. But the question is whether I’m a criminal—whether I’m seen as a criminal in the religious sense, whether the Holy One, blessed be He, will come to me with claims. I don’t know, maybe yes, I don’t know. And I’m not even sure myself that this is the right way to act. It could be that yes, you do have to kill. Maybe this level of certainty that I have, even though it isn’t 100%, maybe it’s enough even for killing. After all, I go out to wars, right? So on what basis? I’m not certain about that either; I’m not certain about anything. And in wars people kill and are killed. Meaning, sometimes we kill and are killed even over things we’re not certain about, so it doesn’t mean that if I’m not certain then automatically I do nothing. I’m only trying to point out that sometimes the fact that I’m not certain will lead me not to do things that would demand from me a very high price, or demand from others a very high price. Like converting my religion versus going into exile. Leaving everything I have and going into exile with a sack on my shoulder. Listen, that’s a very heavy price. So the Torah scholars in the Spanish exile, right? Torah scholars who could explain to themselves in a thousand ways why really it was okay and this wasn’t a time of forced apostasy and they could be coerced converts and keep things secretly and all that—Torah scholars are more sophisticated. So they know that Jewish law is not all a law given to Moses at Sinai, and there are ways and interpretations and so on. So they found ways for themselves. And sometimes they were also wrong, and sometimes the evil inclination got involved too, because when there are possibilities then the evil inclination gets involved too—that’s all true, I’m not arguing with that. But on the other hand, what’s the alternative? To be stupid?

[Speaker C] To be—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Stupid, and say, forget it, I don’t want to be a Torah scholar, I don’t want to know Jewish law as it really is, with different paths and interpretations and so on. Everything is a law given to Moses at Sinai. I’ll educate myself and my children and my students that the entire Mishnah Berurah, every little subsection, was handed down to Moses at Sinai, beyond any doubt. To be a fundamentalist, right? That’s really the point here. I’m coming back to the point.

[Speaker C] And it’s also not reasonable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying, what, it’s not reasonable? It’s not true—not just that it’s unreasonable. That’s why I say there are people who want to say: educate this way even though it’s not true, because otherwise you’ll get what happened to the Torah scholars there in the Spanish exile.

[Speaker E] But there were Torah scholars who did go into exile from Spain. Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is how far they’ll go. Clearly the range—look, even in the world, we talked about this I think a few times ago—in the Haredi world in Bnei Brak, where I was, women are more conservative than men. More formalistic than men, usually. Why? Because they know nothing.

[Speaker F] But they go out more to work.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—they know nothing in Torah. Maybe they have a bit of general education, but in Torah they know nothing. Women are educated that the entire Torah and the Mishnah Berurah are all divine holiness handed down to Moses at Sinai. Women are a hollow pipe, right? Its details and general principles all came down from Sinai. That’s what they talk about in women’s classes, all the time in women’s classes. For a friend of mine it’s practically a dirty word. “Women’s classes” means classes at zero level. That’s the literal translation, okay? A really disgraceful kind of contempt for the listener. Because the listener knows nothing, has no Torah knowledge at all. Okay? And since that’s the case, you can sell them any nonsense you want. That’s “women’s classes.” And by the way, usually it’s not a good idea to have mixed classes not because of modesty concerns, but so that the women won’t hear what the men know—that there are approaches, there are interpretations, you can do it this way and you can do it that way. Better not. I’m speaking right now from a Haredi standpoint, yes? Meaning, the fact that they do women’s classes separately and men’s classes separately—I suspect it’s not only because of modesty concerns. It’s also because of the genre. Meaning, you have to make sure to keep the women inside the envelope of ignorance. They’ll hear, they’ll take the—well, but someone has to study, because after all you need someone who can issue halakhic rulings. So there’s no choice, the men will study, but then the women will keep them in line. It’s also terribly important to get married so that the wife will keep the man from straying anywhere, and that’s what happens, by the way, many times. Many times that’s exactly what happens: the women hold the men in place. I meet lots of people like that. The men have thoughts in all kinds of directions, and questions, and who says Jewish law—and after all they know what a law given to Moses at Sinai is, and what a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) is and all that—who says all this isn’t an invention? So many people very quickly arrive at questions of that sort. And why is it binding? So what if Rabbi Yosef Karo said this? From the wife’s perspective, if it’s written in the Shulchan Arukh then it came straight from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He. How do you even dare question such a thing?

[Speaker C] A fundamentalist in the Haredi sector? What? I heard from an optometrist who has a business in Jerusalem in a Haredi area that a woman comes to him and says, give my son glasses one number weaker so that he won’t see too much. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] She’s trying to turn him into a woman too. And that’s exactly the point. This education that says you need to be stupid so that you won’t get corrupted—that’s the point. Except you can’t, because there is the commandment of Torah study, and you need someone who also knows how to issue halakhic rulings and answer halakhic questions. So there’s no choice: the men have to study. Otherwise they would prevent everyone from studying, and only whoever was, say, the Rebbe or the rabbi would study, and everyone else he would just tell them what to do and they would keep him from going off the path. Because he knows, so he’s liable to go off. By the way, that’s definitely true. Rabbis have more credibility as candidates to go off the path than their public does. That’s usually how it is, in my opinion. Really, really—I’ve met people, and I’m telling you this from personal experience. I met people who hold rabbinic positions, heads of yeshivot, teachers in yeshivot. They have much harder questions than their students do. And usually, many times, before they’ve fully processed things, many times when a student comes to them they yell at him: you’re not allowed to ask questions. Because they don’t have answers, so you’re not allowed to ask questions. And those same people, the more they know and the smarter they are—these are intelligent people—so what, how long can you keep banging your head against the wall? At some point you suddenly see that there are all kinds of questions and so on, and then if he didn’t have a wife, by today he’d already be without a kippah. And his wife keeps him in place. His wife isn’t willing—she won’t hear any cleverness.

[Speaker C] What’s his name? He won’t ruin the children’s marriage prospects.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, he’ll ruin the children’s marriage prospects. It’s a whole envelope, not just his wife. I’m saying this whole business is built on keeping you—even if by chance you were exposed to unwanted information, and especially to Torah—the unwanted information is how this whole thing works. So there’s an envelope that keeps you from getting corrupted. Fine.

[Speaker C] Women also have questions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No, of course, it’s a generalization. There are many women today—for one thing it’s much more common, it’s already very different from what it was not so many years ago. Women are more open, they encounter things, go out to work, it’s no longer what it used to be. And still, still, I think the phenomenon exists. I haven’t done statistics and I also don’t know enough to speak in quantities, but it’s a phenomenon that exists. Anyone familiar with it can tell you that—it’s obvious.

[Speaker G] Is there no consideration at all for preserving the people, even at the price of being less truthful?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no consideration in the world that tells me I need to be stupid. Even if the people won’t survive—too bad for them. I need to make my own decisions, know how to weigh my own considerations, and arrive at my own conclusions. And if my conclusions are that I’m going in a different direction, then those are my conclusions—what can I do? No, I’m not willing to sacrifice that. Let me tell you: “If he must study and his son must study, he takes precedence over his son.” That’s what the Talmud says. Suppose you need to study Torah and your son needs to study Torah, and you only have money for one teacher. Who gets it? Me, not my son. Now, the kind of education you could in a certain sense call fundamentalist—but it’s not only Haredi, it exists in many places, certainly in religious education—is education that says the parents are basically here only so that the children will continue. Now understand that the children too will continue only for the sake of their children, so who in the end will actually do what really needs to be done? We are all enslaving the present for the sake of the future. Because we’re basically saying: wait, we’ll be stupid, we won’t think, we won’t act, we’ll limit ourselves, we won’t do this and won’t do that, even though really it would be good to do it and it’s harmful not to, because of the future. But that next person also won’t do what’s right, and in the end, when will that person finally come along who actually does what needs to be done, the one for whose sake we all threw ourselves on the barbed wire?

[Speaker C] Yondav Lobman just wrote a series of articles. Yondav Lobman. Yondav Lobman. In Makor Rishon on Sabbath. Three articles. If I understood him correctly, he says there was an emergency situation here, that during the exile survival was the guiding principle for two thousand years—the guiding principle was survival. And for survival you need fundamentalism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I agree that it helps survival.

[Speaker C] But the value question—is it really worth giving up in those terms? Is it really worth giving up in those terms? Right, that’s why we’re discussing what the child and grandchild will do, and not what I do with myself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I understand, but I’m saying that… I’m not arguing with the facts. The facts are that this sort of education generally is more helpful for survival, and by the way even that will certainly pass soon, but generally it leads more to survival. The less you succeed in closing a person off, the more this kind of education will actually harm survival. When he encounters questions he won’t have an answer. He won’t have an answer, okay? Because what is happening now didn’t happen for 2,000 years. The pace is different, so it’s a different period. You see that you can’t close people off anymore, and then each time you have to reconsider whether this is still helpful for survival. But I’m saying—even suppose it helps survival—even then, nobody discusses the value question. Suppose it helps survival—does that still justify it? Who says? Why does my son enslave me? Again, obviously I do many things for my son, I give up a lot for my son, that’s clear. But not what is essential to me. Meaning, there are things for which I am here. I very much want my son to do the things for which he is here too, but I can’t give up my own basic purpose for my son. I can give him money, I can give up things like this or that that I want to do—not only can I, I should. But to give up what is essential to me? “If he must study and his son must study, he takes precedence over his son.”

[Speaker E] But if his son will become a greater Torah scholar…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s already—very good. But not only because he’s my son. In that sense it could also be my cousin. If my cousin has greater potential than I do, and he has no money to study and I also have no money to study, I think that… when his son is greater, yes—for example, the Talmud says that in that case he should pay for his son and not for himself. That’s also true of his cousin and his neighbor and someone in Australia—it makes no difference at all. If there’s someone who will succeed more, give the money there. Because yes, we do see our goal as increasing Torah. But it’s not because he’s my son, not because he’s the next generation, but even if he belongs to my generation. Because the goal is to increase Torah, that’s all. It’s not right to enslave the present all the time for the sake of the future.

[Speaker B] So we’ll keep checking all the time and slaughter a chicken, so I’ll invest in Torah scholars and then again they’ll disappear, because they’re Torah scholars—they’re a fantastic generation. Right. So let’s close half the yeshivot.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even without the survival issue, even without the survival issue, you need to close half the yeshivot.

[Speaker B] So what? Whatever you do, it’s no good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? What can you do? Not survival.

[Speaker B] If you have a million yeshivot, everyone will be yeshiva students, everyone will be—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Top-notch learners, and then everyone will go off the path. Do you know what “Lithuanian” means? “Lithuanian” means people whose origin is Hungary. You know that line? There are no Lithuanians. The Lithuanians all went off the path or died in the Holocaust. There are no Lithuanians. Aside from Rabbi Shach, no one in Bnei Brak was Lithuanian; they were all Hungarian. Why? Because the Hungarians received fanatical education and they survived. And the Lithuanians, whose yeshivot had a more open approach, they all went off the path.

[Speaker G] Where were the people of the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yeshivot are a recipe for survival?

[Speaker B] Because they were the great scholars, the Lithuanians.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, so are yeshivot a recipe for survival—

[Speaker B] So Haredi Judaism says suicide—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying. That’s why I said that even if I accept right now that this thing is a recipe for survival—this kind of closedness—I’m already not sure of that today, and in another 10 years I’ll be even less sure of it. Because there are situations in which, when you don’t give a person the tools to deal with the questions, and the world becomes such that you can no longer close him off from the questions with a kosher cellphone and no internet and all kinds of things, because they’ll invent a cellphone from the nose, then what—will there be a kosher nose? Will you do plastic surgery? At some point they won’t be able to close people off anymore. Right? So what will you do then? Then openness will be the basis for survival, not closedness. Because then you have to go the other way—to expose him to the questions, accompany him, try to help him cope with them, and give him tools to deal with things. Anyone who doesn’t get the tools will fall, all of them. And that’s what happened in the period of the Haskalah. That’s what happened in the Haskalah. People think the Maskilim are to blame for today’s secularity—the Haredim are to blame for today’s secularity. The Maskilim did the right thing. The Haredim reacted incorrectly. Because the Haredim didn’t read the map correctly. Again, I don’t know whether if I had been there I would have read it differently—I’m wise after the fact, that’s not the point—but you need to learn from history. They didn’t read the map correctly. They thought the way to deal with this was to close things off. But the questions were flying in the air; you couldn’t close the guys off from them, they heard the questions, it was in the air in that period. Just like today things are in the airwaves—today it’s on the internet, then it was in the air. Okay? Books under the table and so on—that was the internet of then. In situations like that, openness is the survival tool, not closedness. Because if you had gone in with them—if their yeshiva head had gone in with them to study biblical criticism and said, okay, let’s see what the arguments are and what this means and whether it can be dealt with, and if yes then how and if not then how not—some of the things maybe he himself would have had questions about, some things he wouldn’t have had answers to, some things he would have had answers to—then maybe some would indeed have gone off the path and some would not. But he didn’t. He said everything—so everyone went off the path. Everyone went off the path. No one remained. Not one remained. Really, it was terrible. The phenomena—you wouldn’t believe what happened there. And I’m very afraid that today we are heading toward a similar phenomenon. It’s a recurring process.

[Speaker H] So what needs to be done?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fundamentalism, in my view, and closedness—no, so what should be done? Synthesis, the synthetic alternative.