Faith – Lesson 6
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Accepting God and the hyphen between faith and commandments
- Love in the laws of repentance and doing the truth because it is truth
- Formal authority, judges called divine authorities, and idolatry
- Obedience to the Knesset, Kantian morality, and utility versus obligation
- Maimonides, stupidity, and the prohibitions of divination and soothsaying
- Conversion, an atheist who keeps commandments, and the essence of a commandment
- The laws of kings: the seven Noahide commandments, the resident alien, and the pious among the nations
- Extending Maimonides to Jews, Ahad Ha’am, and tefillin in the street
- Why Maimonides says this דווקא regarding the Noahides and a limb from a living animal
- Hullin and the sciatic nerve: “it was said at Sinai” and Maimonides’ commentary on the Mishnah
- A source for the laws of kings and the distinction between two foundations
- The sciatic nerve as a descriptive prohibition and Rashba’s question
- Traditionalists versus Ahad Ha’am and the absence of the hyphen
- Eight Chapters: the self-controlled person and the virtuous person, and resolving the contradiction
- Eglei Tal, enjoyment of learning, and for its own sake versus not for its own sake
- Commandments require intention, commandments require faith, and awareness
- Saadia Gaon, rational commandments, and the distinction between the moral and the religious
- A lost object of a non-Jew, despair of recovery, and returning lost property
- Human flesh, aesthetic values, and neglecting a positive commandment according to Maimonides
Summary
General overview
The text presents the claim of the “hyphen”: religious faith receives meaning only when it is translated into observance of commandments, and observance of commandments receives religious meaning only when it is done because of the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, as transmitted to Moses at Sinai, and not because of love/fear in an emotional sense or because of rational judgment. The speaker develops the principle through Maimonides in the laws of idolatry and the laws of repentance, expands it through Maimonides in the laws of kings regarding the seven Noahide commandments and the pious among the nations, and distinguishes between a meta-legal foundation in the commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin and the requirement of intention and religious motivation in Jewish law. Later he resolves an apparent contradiction with Maimonides in Eight Chapters by distinguishing between rational commandments and supra-rational commandments, and concludes that a complete person is both “among their wise” and “among their pious,” while the religious motive remains the central axis.
Accepting God and the hyphen between faith and commandments
The speaker states that the essence of faith in the Jewish context is its practical expression, and the focus is the “hyphen” between faith and observance of commandments: keeping commandments because of faith. The speaker argues that detached philosophical faith that does not radiate into practical obligation belongs to deism and not to the religious sphere, and that religious faith is defined as the basis for obligation to a command. He attributes to Maimonides in the laws of idolatry the concept of accepting God as recognition of formal authority that obligates obedience, and defines religious service as observance of commandments because the Holy One, blessed be He, is God, and not because of love, fear, utility, or other considerations.
Love in the laws of repentance and doing the truth because it is truth
The speaker refers to the laws of repentance chapter 10 and interprets Maimonides’ words about “doing the truth because it is truth” as a definition of love of the Holy One, blessed be He. He argues that there is no contradiction between the laws of repentance and the laws of idolatry, because in the laws of idolatry Maimonides rejects love and fear in their emotional sense as a basis for religious service, while in the laws of repentance “love” means doing the truth because it is truth, which is itself religious service. He presents the claim that someone who accepts that there is God and that there is a command, but asks “who says one has to keep it,” does not truly accept the Holy One, blessed be He, as God, because the very concept of a commanding God includes obligation to obey.
Formal authority, judges called divine authorities, and idolatry
The speaker explains that the concept of “God” in the Bible also applies to judges, because a judge possesses formal authority whose words must be carried out, unlike a Torah scholar with whom one may disagree. He distinguishes between formal authority and substantive authority and argues that one who has formal authority is “divine authority,” or someone who draws authority from divine authority. He states that accepting a source of formal authority that does not derive from the Holy One, blessed be He, is idolatry, and raises the possibility that obedience to law itself as an independent source of authority “without connection to the Holy One, blessed be He” is idolatry, though he qualifies that he is not one hundred percent sure there is an actual prohibition here.
Obedience to the Knesset, Kantian morality, and utility versus obligation
The speaker argues that obedience to the Knesset may be driven by considerations of utility, in which case it is not obedience to formal authority but action stemming from love/fear in their broad sense as calculations of gain and loss. He argues that if a person understands that morality obligates and that its force comes from God, then the source of obligation ultimately returns to the Holy One, blessed be He. He claims that what people think of as “Kantian morality” beginning with man is idolatry and also stupidity, because it makes no sense to obey something whose source is human decision unless it is a matter of utility.
Maimonides, stupidity, and the prohibitions of divination and soothsaying
The speaker attributes to Maimonides the claim that the prohibition of idolatry is a prohibition against being stupid, and includes in this “you shall not practice soothsaying, you shall not practice divination” as belonging to the same family of prohibitions on stupidity. He notes that other medieval authorities (Rishonim) hold that there is real power in such forces, and therefore for them the prohibition is not because of stupidity but because it is forbidden to submit to real powers.
Conversion, an atheist who keeps commandments, and the essence of a commandment
The speaker responds that a convert who declares that he is an atheist but will accept all the commandments is not a convert, because he is accepting behavior and not commandments. He defines commandments as responding to a commander, and bases the claim on the idea that the concept of “commandment” depends on accepting the command as a binding source and not merely performing the behavior.
The laws of kings: the seven Noahide commandments, the resident alien, and the pious among the nations
The speaker quotes Maimonides in the laws of kings at the end of chapter 8, law 11: “Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to perform them is among the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the world to come,” on condition that he performs them “because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher.” He emphasizes that according to Maimonides, observance of the commandments must be because of the command of the Torah given at Sinai, and even though the Noahides were commanded previously, the religious response derives from the Torah and from Moses’ communication. He explains that “but if he performed them because of rational judgment, he is not a resident alien and not among the pious of the nations of the world … but rather among their wise” means deeds of value as wisdom and human morality, but without the religious value of commandment.
Extending Maimonides to Jews, Ahad Ha’am, and tefillin in the street
The speaker argues that the principle in the laws of kings is not limited to non-Jews but is also true for Jews, and notes that “several later authorities (Acharonim)” wrote this according to the Frankel Maimonides index, alongside another view that limits it to non-Jews on mystical grounds, which the speaker rejects. He argues that a Jew who keeps commandments because of rational judgment is “among the wise but not among the pious,” and that this has no religious value. He gives as an example Ahad Ha’am, who advocated Sabbath observance as national heritage, and argues that this is not a commandment; and likewise the example of putting on tefillin in the street for reasons unrelated to faith in a command given at Sinai, which he says is not the commandment of tefillin and would require putting them on again with a blessing when the person later repents.
Why Maimonides says this specifically regarding the Noahides and a limb from a living animal
The speaker explains that this law appears in the context of the resident alien because the seven Noahide commandments are commandments “toward which reason inclines,” and therefore there is a plausible assumption that one might keep them because of rational judgment. He discusses the prohibition of a limb from a living animal as a commandment that may be less “rational,” and raises the possibility that it is connected to moral emotion or to “aesthetic values” of revulsion rather than ethical values, bringing an example from a researcher named Haidt about revulsion toward actions that do not harm others. He concludes that even if that prohibition is exceptional, most of the Noahide commandments do belong to moral commandments, so the context is fitting for presenting the principle.
Hullin and the sciatic nerve: “it was said at Sinai” and Maimonides’ commentary on the Mishnah
The speaker presents Mishnah Hullin chapter 7, mishnah 6, on the sciatic nerve in kosher and non-kosher animals, and Rabbi Yehudah’s claim, “But was not the sciatic nerve prohibited from the sons of Jacob onward,” and the Sages’ response, “It was said at Sinai, but written in its place.” He quotes Maimonides in the commentary on the Mishnah: “Everything from which we refrain or that we do today, we do only because of God’s command through Moses. Not because God commanded previous prophets concerning it,” and brings Maimonides’ examples: a limb from a living animal, circumcision, and the sciatic nerve. He notes Maimonides’ proof from the statement that “613 commandments were said to Moses at Sinai,” and suggests that this explains “until this very day” as the perspective of the Sinai revelation with respect to earlier events.
A source for the laws of kings and the distinction between two foundations
The speaker argues that although it appears that the commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin is a direct source for the laws of kings, in fact these are two different foundations despite their similarity, and he mentions an argument at the law faculty at Bar-Ilan. He explains the positivist view, Hans Kelsen, and the concept of the “Grundnorm,” and illustrates that in civil law the citizen’s motivation for obeying does not matter, only the behavior. He argues that the commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin deals with the meta-halakhic question of the basic norm by whose force Jewish law is binding and by whose force the judge punishes, whereas the laws of kings deal with the practical halakhic question of what the proper motivation is that turns an act into a “commandment,” and therefore this is a foundation that interests “only the religious legislator.”
The sciatic nerve as a descriptive prohibition and Rashba’s question
The speaker presents a difficulty raised by Rashba in his novellae to the aggadic passages in Berakhot: the verse “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve” is phrased as a description of custom and not as a formulation of prohibition such as “beware,” “lest,” or “do not,” so it is unclear how it became a prohibition. He integrates this difficulty into the broader picture according to which before command there is no commandment but only custom, and suggests that the custom was described, and only at Sinai “it became a commandment,” though he says he does not know exactly how it was interpreted there as a commandment.
Traditionalists versus Ahad Ha’am and the absence of the hyphen
The speaker defines traditionalists as those who believe but do not observe, and Ahad Ha’am as one who observes but does not believe, and argues that in both cases “there is no hyphen,” and therefore neither the faith nor the observance has religious value. He clarifies that the claim relates to the question of the value of the commandment and not to questions of national identity or social benefit, and confirms that as a matter of fact they still preserve Jewish identity.
Eight Chapters: the self-controlled person and the virtuous person, and resolving the contradiction
The speaker cites Maimonides in Eight Chapters chapter 6 regarding the dispute between the philosophers, who prefer the “virtuous person” who is naturally drawn to the good, and the sages of Israel, who say, “Do not say, ‘I do not desire it’ … rather, ‘I do desire it … but my Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me,’” preferring the “self-controlled person.” He presents Maimonides’ resolution by distinguishing between rational commandments and supra-rational commandments: regarding supra-rational commandments, the self-controlled person is preferable, and regarding rational ones, the virtuous person is preferable. He resolves this against the laws of kings by saying that even in rational commandments one must observe them as commandment because of the command at Sinai, while at the same time it is proper to develop a natural inclination toward the good, so that one is both among the pious of the nations and among their wise; and this natural inclination is not the obligating motivation but an additional element of personal perfection.
Eglei Tal, enjoyment of learning, and for its own sake versus not for its own sake
The speaker cites Eglei Tal in the introduction, that it is a mistake to think that enjoying Torah study counts as studying not for its own sake, and adds the prayer “make the words of Torah sweet” as a desire that Torah be pleasing. He quotes the principle stated by Eglei Tal that if one studies because of the enjoyment, then it really is not for its own sake, and formulates the matter by saying that a person must do the truth because it is truth while preserving a positive place for enjoyment as an aid and not as a motive. He identifies “for its own sake” with observance of commandments out of faith and commitment to the command, and explains that “from doing it not for its own sake one comes to do it for its own sake” teaches that there is still value even in not-for-its-own-sake, even though it is not the full realization of commandment.
Commandments require intention, commandments require faith, and awareness
The speaker distinguishes between the halakhic question “do commandments require intention” and the principled requirement that observance be driven by faith and commitment to the command. He argues that faith need not be present in conscious awareness at every moment, just as knowledge does not depend on thinking about it right now, and suggests that a person examines himself as to whether he believes and is committed to the command. He refers to the example of someone who comes to synagogue, “mumbles and goes home,” as still a commandment from the standpoint of obligation, even if the question of immediate intention depends on the dispute over whether commandments require intention.
Saadia Gaon, rational commandments, and the distinction between the moral and the religious
The speaker mentions Saadia Gaon, who asks why rational commandments had to be commanded, and presents his answer about the need for boundaries and distinctions such as “why Amalek yes” and “why execution by religious court yes.” He offers a different formulation according to which the command turns a moral prohibition into a religious transgression, and in this way a distinction is created between the moral plane and the religious plane, which has definitions that do not overlap. He argues that the prohibition “You shall not murder” does not come to teach the moral imperative as such, but to add a religious dimension with halakhic boundaries of its own.
A lost object of a non-Jew, despair of recovery, and returning lost property
The speaker argues that the prohibition on returning the lost object of a non-Jew in the Shulchan Arukh is related to the inhuman conduct of non-Jews in earlier times, and cites Meiri as the basis for the idea that today the non-Jews “conduct themselves differently,” and therefore there is room to return it and even to be obligated to do so. He interprets that the problem in the Shulchan Arukh arises when a person does a “problematic act” because of “the compulsion of the heart” in opposition to what Jewish law requires, and not when the act itself is worthy. He compares this to returning lost property after the owner has despaired of recovery, which is defined as a worthy act and therefore is not seen as defiance of Jewish law even if it is not a Torah-level obligation.
Human flesh, aesthetic values, and neglecting a positive commandment according to Maimonides
The speaker refers to the discussion of eating human flesh versus pork, and attributes the revulsion from eating human flesh to “aesthetic values” rather than ethical values, because no one is being harmed. He says he does not agree with Rabbi Amital’s position on this matter, and adds that according to Maimonides this is a case of “neglecting a positive commandment,” so there is also a halakhic dimension of prohibition even if the discussion assumes other views. He presents his own position as a distinction between revulsion and “do not make yourselves abominable” on the one hand, and a moral consideration that would justify preferring another prohibition on the other.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] Last night I was at a class by Rabbi Meshato, you were there. Wait, wait. Rabbi Lotan? He appears there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, let’s begin. Last time I spoke about the meaning of accepting God. And I said there that the essence of faith, at least in the Jewish sense and context, is its practical expression. And I said that the focus is supposed to be the hyphen. Not faith in itself, and not observance of the commandments in itself, but observance of the commandments because of faith. In other words, that is really the meaning of faith. Faith in its detached philosophical sense—that there is a God, or even that there was revelation at Sinai, it doesn’t matter—but if that doesn’t project onto me, that belongs to the realm of philosophy, not the religious realm. That’s deism, not theism. In the religious sense, faith has meaning only when it serves as a basis for keeping commandments, for religious obligation. And that is really the meaning of what we saw in Maimonides in the laws of idolatry, what he called there accepting God. Accepting God means that you keep commandments because the Holy One, blessed be He, is your God. As opposed to someone who keeps commandments because of love, fear, or various such considerations, which is not really religious service—not religious service for its own sake, at least—and therefore just as that is not religious service with respect to idolatry, so too it is not religious service with respect to the service of God. This corresponds to that. What I want to do now is demonstrate this from two more sources in Maimonides. We also saw it in the context of the laws of repentance in chapter 10, where Maimonides speaks about doing the truth because it is truth.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, maybe you can quiet everyone down? There’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A lot of noise.
[Speaker D] There Maimonides speaks about doing the truth because it is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Truth, and we spoke there about the flow of those laws, why what follows does not contradict what he said there. That’s how Maimonides explains there the concept of love. Love of the Holy One, blessed be He, means doing the truth because it is truth. And therefore I said that this does not contradict what he said in the laws of idolatry, where he said that it is forbidden to serve idolatry—and I’m extending that also to the service of God—out of love or fear. There he is speaking about love and fear in their emotional sense. But here he is speaking about love in the sense of doing the truth because it is truth, which is exactly the meaning of religious service. And I said that if I say to a person, listen, the Holy One, blessed be He, is God, and he says to me, okay, I accept that. Then I say, good, so now one has to keep commandments. He asks me why. Because He commanded. So what if He commanded? Fine, I know He is God, I know He commanded, who says you have to keep commandments? So I said that this is really a kind of misunderstanding. You can’t answer the question. Because if he doesn’t understand that what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands has to be kept, then from his point of view He is not God. He is mistaken in thinking that in his own view as well the Holy One, blessed be He, is God. He isn’t. If he accepts Him as God, that means: whatever He says, I do. That’s what God means. It’s like when I tell you, look, morality says that murder is forbidden. So you can’t say—and I spoke about this—you can’t say yes, yes, I agree that morality says murder is forbidden, but why not murder? If you ask that question, then you don’t understand the sentence “morality says murder is forbidden.” Either you don’t understand or you don’t accept it, doesn’t matter, but you are not actually holding that proposition. Because if you do hold that proposition, there is no room for the question, so why not murder? That’s the meaning. What morality says is what one must do. That follows from the definition of “morality says”—that’s the meaning. It’s not like saying so-and-so says, or someone else says. If they say it, they say it—so what? I’m not obligated to comply. But when I say morality says, that’s something entirely different. And by the same token, when I say God says or God commands, the meaning is that one must do it. There’s no further question here: wait, I understand that He commands, but who says I have to do it?
[Speaker C] Again—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I understand that He is God and that He commands. The fact that He commands doesn’t yet mean one has to do it—but the fact that He is God and He commands, a God who commands—that is the meaning, that is the concept of God. That’s why I said that in the Torah judges are also called divine authorities. Why are judges called divine authorities? The Talmud at the beginning of Sanhedrin says there are three occurrences of “divine authorities,” and from there we learn a religious court of three—yes, “then the owner of the house shall approach the divine authorities,” meaning the judges. Why are judges called divine authorities? Why are judges called that in the Bible? Because a judge has authority; what he says must be carried out. That’s what a judge is. As opposed to someone else—a Torah scholar, whoever—what he says you don’t have to do. He’s a Torah scholar, but I don’t want to do it, or I’m not obligated, or I have a different interpretation. Fine. But with a judge you can’t say I have a different interpretation so I won’t comply with the ruling. If you don’t comply, the police will come. And a judge’s words have to be carried out not because he is right, but because he has authority in the formal sense, the definitional sense. I’ve spoken several times about the distinction between formal authority and substantive authority. Whoever has formal authority is, in effect, divine authority, or someone drawing from the power of divine authority. To accept upon yourself another formal authority that is not God—that is idolatry. And therefore when you say that I serve idolatry out of love or out of fear, that is not idolatry. But if I accept it as God, that means I see the idol as a formal source of authority, like the Holy One, blessed be He—that is idolatry.
[Speaker E] And obeying a judge isn’t idolatry? What did you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I said: either God, or someone who receives authority from Him. The Holy One, blessed be He, can delegate authority to other agents. He tells us, listen to the judges. Fine? So in effect that is what it means to listen to the Holy One, blessed be He, because He Himself said to listen to the judges. But there is no other source of formal authority. Meaning, if there were some other source of formal authority not coming from the Holy One, blessed be He, that would be idolatry. And someone who obeys the law because the law is a formal authority apart from the Holy One, blessed be He—that is idolatry. Idolatry, I’ll say again, at least in idea. I’m not one hundred percent sure there is literally a prohibition of idolatry here, but I’m also not ruling it out. It could be that there really is a prohibition of idolatry here.
[Speaker E] Fine, but then when I listen to the Knesset, when I obey the Knesset, then really I need to obey not from the source of the Holy One, blessed be He?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Again, everyone has his own reasoning, but those reasons—say moral principles of one kind or another, because of which I decide to obey what the Knesset says—those principles are one of two things: either utility, and then fine, that has nothing to do with formal authority. I’m doing it out of love or fear; doing it for utility is like doing it out of love or fear. Or I understand that morality obligates me, and morality gets its force from God, and therefore in the end it all starts from Him. So morality is the same. What people think of as Kantian morality—which in my view is wrong—but what people think of as Kantian morality, as though it starts in man, that is idolatry. And also nonsense, of course. It’s nonsense because why on earth should one obey something that originates in man? Unless there is utility, fine, then that’s not called obeying—that’s called doing it because it benefits me, because I have considerations, out of love or fear, fine? But to obey because one must, something that is just a decision made by human beings? Why exactly? That is both a prohibition of idolatry and also stupidity. For Maimonides, as is well known, those are the same thing. The prohibition against idolatry is a prohibition against being stupid. And in general, “you shall not practice soothsaying, you shall not practice divination,” all those things, that whole family of prohibitions—for Maimonides it is basically a prohibition against being stupid, that’s all. There are other medieval authorities (Rishonim) who understand that these forces have real substance, and then there is a prohibition on obeying them even though it isn’t stupid to obey them because they do have powers—but then it’s a prohibition. For Maimonides, he says it’s simply a prohibition against being stupid. Okay, I have a question.
[Speaker F] If a convert comes and says that he is an atheist but he will accept all the commandments and do everything—is that conversion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously not. A complete non-Jew, a total and utter non-Jew. He is not accepting commandments upon himself; he is accepting a certain behavior. Commandments means responding to a commander, to a commander. That’s what commandments are. In fact, I’m getting exactly to that now. So here I want to bring, precisely on that point, two more sources in Maimonides. Maimonides writes in the laws of kings—I’ve already mentioned this in the past, I think; I don’t remember when and where, but from things we’ve seen before. At the end of chapter 8 in the laws of kings—I’m sharing the text—Maimonides writes as follows. In law 11: “Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is among the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the world to come. And this is provided that he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had already been commanded concerning them. But if he performs them because of rational judgment, he is not a resident alien and is not among the pious of the nations of the world”—and the correct text is “but rather among their wise,” not “and among their wise”; the correct version is “but rather among their wise,” as in the Frankel Maimonides and elsewhere. What does this really mean? Maimonides is saying this: non-Jews are divided in Jewish law into two categories. There is an ordinary non-Jew, and there is a non-Jew called a resident alien. He is called a resident alien because he may be allowed to remain living among us in the Land of Israel. He can be a resident in the Land of Israel as a non-Jew; he is not a full convert but a resident alien. Meaning, he accepts upon himself the seven Noahide commandments, not that he converts. So in order to be a resident alien, you need to accept the seven Noahide commandments before a religious court. And Rabbi Kook already writes that today perhaps you don’t need a religious court; there is a presumption that normal non-Jews are indeed committed to the seven Noahide commandments. Because one must remember that the non-Jews whom the Sages knew in their time really were non-Jews who were very degraded in their human behavior—not only in matters of idolatry and prohibitions but also on the basic human level. Therefore the presumption concerning a non-Jew was that he was a wild person. In order to leave that presumption behind, he had to stand before three judges and accept upon himself, to say: I am a human being. That’s all. In a place where accepted norms have already spread through the world, and now non-Jews as a whole also understand that one has to be human, there, Rabbi Kook says, there is no need for formal acceptance before a religious court of three, because you are not trying to remove a non-Jew from his previous presumption. That opposite presumption no longer exists, so there is no need to stand before a religious court. That seems to me to be the reasoning behind Rabbi Kook’s statement. In any case, returning to Maimonides: Maimonides here is speaking about the laws of the resident alien. He says that one who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is among the pious of the nations of the world, and that is a resident alien, and he has a share in the world to come. So this is not merely technical—that one is allowed to leave him here living among us—but it also has religious significance for what he does. These are commandments. Commandments that the descendants of Noah are obligated in. Non-Jews also have commandments, and the seven Noahide commandments are commandments. And, Maimonides says, this is only if he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had already been commanded concerning them. Meaning, this is conditional on the fact that this non-Jew accepts upon himself the seven Noahide commandments—but that is not enough. Rather, he accepts the seven Noahide commandments because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah given to us at Sinai through Moses our teacher. And even if it is written in the Torah that the descendants of Noah had been commanded about this earlier, still this non-Jew keeps it not because of the command given to the descendants of Noah, but because the Torah says that the descendants of Noah were commanded about it. In the final analysis, it comes from the Torah. Without that he is not a resident alien. A huge novelty. Without that he is not a resident alien. Therefore Maimonides says: but if he performed them because of rational judgment—we’ve now returned exactly to the same principle that has been accompanying us, and that is why I came to this Maimonides—if this non-Jew decides to perform his commandments, he does them all, everything is fine, but he does it because it is logical and moral, not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded through Moses our teacher at Sinai, he is not a resident alien and not among the pious of the nations of the world. One may not let him remain living in the land. He is keeping the seven Noahide commandments—what’s the problem? He behaves properly. But he does not do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded in the Torah at Sinai. If the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded but not through Moses our teacher at Sinai, that also isn’t good enough. The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded through Moses in the Torah. By the way, non-Jews—the Christians and the Muslims—do in principle accept the Torah, meaning the command, they accept the revelation at Mount Sinai. This is a very subtle point here; one could discuss it a bit, but that is the principled claim. So he says: he is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but rather among their wise. At first the text says “and not among their wise,” but as I said, the version is “but rather among their wise.” What does it mean, not among the pious of the nations of the world but rather among their wise? In my translation I think the meaning is: his actions do not have religious value. He is not among the pious of the nations of the world, this is not commandment, but rather among their wise. He behaves well, he behaves wisely, he behaves morally—but he is not among the pious of the nations of the world; there is no religious significance here, this is not a commandment. It is a good act, he is a moral person, a good person, he behaves properly. It’s like an atheist who behaves according to morality. In my view, an atheist who behaves according to morality is not consistent if he believes in the binding force of morality. Someone who behaves morally can be consistent; someone who believes in the binding force of morality is not consistent—but there are such people. So on the behavioral level they are good people, and it is perfectly fine to live with them and everything is excellent. So Maimonides says: true, they are wise, in that sense they are civilized, they speak properly, they behave properly—but they are not among the pious of the nations of the world, there is no religious significance of piety here. This is not an act that is a commandment; it is a good act, a moral act. They are good human beings, but there is no religious value in it. Now, as I said regarding Maimonides in the laws of idolatry, here too I’m making the same extension. There Maimonides was speaking about what an idol worshiper is, and I said the same thing applies also to one who serves God. Yes, worship out of love or fear is not idolatry; likewise service of God out of love or fear is not service of God. Now I’m saying the same thing here. Maimonides is speaking here about a resident alien, but this is true for every Jew in every context. A Jew who keeps commandments because of rational necessity, because that’s what makes sense, or is moral, or whatever it may be—he is among the wise but not among the pious. There is no religious value in this. There may be human or moral value in it; he is a good person, whatever—but no religious value. What Maimonides says here is not only about a resident alien and about a non-Jew, but also about a Jew. By the way, if you look in the Frankel Maimonides, in the index on that law, you’ll see several later authorities (Acharonim) who write this. There’s one, I think, who appears there and says no, that it’s only about a non-Jew, because in a Jew there is always some inner point that wants to serve God—I don’t know, all these mysticisms that I don’t understand and don’t agree with—but several later authorities write in a straightforward way, and it is clear on logical grounds. The same logic that led Maimonides to say this about a non-Jew is also true about a Jew. A Jew who does not do things because this is a commandment—then it is not a commandment. Maybe he is a good person, everything is fine, but a commandment it is not. This is Ahad Ha’am—we spoke about Ahad Ha’am, who advocated keeping the Sabbath and holding onto our heritage, our national tradition, our culture—all of that is not commandment. I think I spoke about putting on tefillin, right? Putting on tefillin in the street—that is not the commandment of tefillin. Someone who put on tefillin through Chabad people in the street, and then repented in the afternoon, has to put on tefillin again with a blessing. He did not fulfill a commandment. We are talking about a case where he did not put on tefillin in the morning out of faith in the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai. If he does believe in that and is just sloppy, that’s something else. But if he does not believe in it and just did it for one reason or another, then it is irrelevant. Therefore Maimonides, in my view, is really saying something that is true for Jews as well and not only for non-Jews: in the end, observance of commandments can count as a commandment only if you do it in response to the command, and not because of rational judgment. And you see the analogy to worship out of love or fear—not out of utility, not because of some other source of validity, but because of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is the only possible source of validity.
[Speaker D] Can I ask—yes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For this Maimonides—
[Speaker D] Does he have a source?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The commentators ask that here; it’s unclear. Some bring some marginal midrash they found in some source, and there it says more or less this idea, but I don’t think you need to go there. Maimonides says it from logic, in my opinion. It’s a simple logic; it doesn’t need a source. Why do I need a verse? It’s logical reasoning. But for whoever is looking, they did bring him some source from a midrash.
[Speaker E] There’s a source in Hullin, the Mishnah in Hullin regarding—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m getting to that in a moment. So one can ask why this law is brought here. If it’s true for every Jew, then why does Maimonides bring it here in the laws of kings regarding the resident alien? The answer, in my opinion, is very simple. The commandments being discussed with respect to the resident alien are the seven Noahide commandments. And Maimonides writes earlier in the laws of kings that these are commandments toward which reason inclines—logical commandments, moral commandments. Redeeming a firstborn donkey, eating pork, things like that—such things have no foothold in reasoning the way the others do. So there there is no plausible assumption to keep them because of rational judgment. If someone is not doing it because of obligation to the Holy One, blessed be He, then why would he do it? So if you’re looking for examples of commandments where someone might come and say: I do this because of rational judgment—and Maimonides wants to say that this has no religious value—the examples are the seven Noahide commandments. That’s why Maimonides says these things specifically regarding the seven Noahide commandments, because there these are really the commandments, the human foundation that every person is obligated in, not only a Jew. That’s why it binds the whole world, because it is a human foundation; it is not connected to the special religious level—okay?—that is unique only to Jews. Maimonides says, however, that even in the general human foundation there too there is a religious dimension. That is his novelty. Meaning, you can be a human being. You can’t be religious—even religious in a non-Jewish sense—you can’t be that if you don’t do it because of the seven Noahide commandments. You can be a human being. You can be a human being who behaves well, everything is fine. But religious significance—even non-Jewish religious significance—you cannot have if you are not doing it because of the command given to Moses at Sinai. You are not a non-Jew who keeps the seven Noahide commandments if you don’t do it because of the command given to Moses at Sinai.
[Speaker F] What about a limb from a living animal? I can’t hear. A limb from a living animal?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so I know why these are indeed the commandments. Maimonides says that reason inclines toward them, and with respect to a limb from a living animal there is room to discuss it. Some will tell you that here too there is logic—not logic exactly, but a moral feeling. You don’t eat a limb from a living animal—something like that, like an animal—I don’t know. It needs discussion. It may be what I once called in a column aesthetic values, not ethical values. There are values—you know, I brought examples there. There is an American psychologist named Haidt. Haidt. And he studies the psychology of morality. So he brings there a few somewhat disgusting examples, and I ask forgiveness, but he brings there examples such as a person buys a frozen chicken in the freezer, brings it home, has sex with it, then cooks it and eats it. Is there anything immoral here? What’s the problem? Whom did he hurt? Not even the chicken. So what exactly is the problem? And yet somehow we feel revulsion toward such behavior. Why? So I called that aesthetic values, not ethical values. There’s something about it—it’s not proper human conduct, I don’t know, it’s degraded in some sense. Not because it harms someone. So perhaps a limb from a living animal belongs to that family, I don’t know. Or perhaps Maimonides thinks there is also a moral problem there. But in practice, that’s what he writes. And even if a limb from a living animal doesn’t belong there, it’s not important, because most of the Noahide commandments are of that type. So if you want to state this principle of Maimonides, it makes perfect sense to say it in the context of the Noahides, because here the plausible assumption arises that one would do it because of rational judgment—even if with a limb from a living animal that’s not the case. It doesn’t really matter. So I think this continues what we saw from Maimonides last time: essentially, observance of the commandments—and last time I spoke about how religious faith has no meaning if it does not come to expression in keeping commandments—now I’m talking about the opposite side. Keeping commandments has no meaning unless it comes from religious faith. And you see, these two things together are what I called in the previous lecture the hyphen. Meaning, not faith by itself and not observance of commandments by itself, but observance of commandments because of faith. That “because of,” that hyphen, is the important thing. Okay? Indeed, it was mentioned here earlier that Maimonides says similar things elsewhere as well, and that is in the commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin in the chapter on the sciatic nerve.
[Speaker C] There is a dispute among the Tannaim there. Chapter 7 in Hullin is the chapter on the sciatic nerve. Mishnah 6, the last mishnah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] applies to a kosher animal and does not apply to a non-kosher one. Rabbi Yehuda says: even to a non-kosher one. In other words, what happens with the sciatic nerve of a non-kosher animal? An animal that is forbidden to eat. The sciatic nerve of a pig. What's the question? After all, in any case it's forbidden to eat it, because pork is forbidden. The question is whether someone who eats the sciatic nerve of a pig violates two prohibitions—both the prohibition of the sciatic nerve and the prohibition of pork. So Rabbi Yehuda says yes. The prohibition of the sciatic nerve applies to kosher animals and—sorry, Rabbi Yehuda says no. The prohibition of the sciatic nerve applies to kosher animals but does not apply to non-kosher ones. No, no—yes, to non-kosher ones. The Sages say no; Rabbi Yehuda says even to a non-kosher one. Rabbi Yehuda says it applies to non-kosher animals as well. Rabbi Yehuda said—yes, now Rabbi Yehuda raises an argument against the Sages. By the way, it's rare in the Mishnah that within the Mishnah itself there is already give-and-take between the positions, and not only a quotation of the positions. Rabbi Yehuda said: But wasn't the sciatic nerve forbidden from the time of the sons of Jacob? Right—where does the sciatic nerve come from? From the struggle with the angel. And at that point non-kosher animals were still permitted to them. After all, at that stage there was not yet a prohibition on non-kosher animals. So if there was a prohibition there on the sciatic nerve, it apparently applied both to non-kosher and kosher animals. So here is the proof that the prohibition of the sciatic nerve also applies to a non-kosher animal. The Sages say to him, they said to him: It was stated at Sinai, only it was written in its place—in the story of Jacob and the angel. By the way, that's very interesting, because this is also how the plain meaning of the Torah reads. Because in the plain meaning of the Torah it says, “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve to this day.” And all these verses that say “to this day,” as is well known, already raised problems for the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and certainly for modern scholars. What does “to this day” mean? You can see that this was written from some retrospective vantage point. Meaning, I'm looking backward; someone writing this later says “to this day.” Right? “The kings who reigned in Edom,” and things like that. So you can see that it was written in a later period, looking back over history; it wasn't written at that very time. So here there are discussions about when the Torah was given, when the Torah was written, all the pilpul around biblical criticism. But here the Sages say: there's a simple answer. It was said at Sinai, and therefore at Sinai, when the Torah was arranged and they described what happened to Jacob with the angel, and they also wrote, “therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve,” they write it at the stage of Mount Sinai. Not “they”—the Torah writes it at the stage of Mount Sinai. And therefore it says “to this very day,” from our forefather Jacob until this very day. So here this is really a beautiful explanation of that verse, “to this very day.” What about events that happened after Mount Sinai and about which it says “to this very day”? That's a harder question. But events that are described in passages about things that happened before Mount Sinai—that's not a problem. “To this very day” means from the perspective of Mount Sinai. We are looking backward, so it says “to this very day.” In any case, that is what is written here in the Mishnah. Maimonides says in his commentary to the Mishnah—and pay attention, can you see it? This is shared, right? Yes. “And note this great principle brought in this Mishnah, namely their statement, ‘It was forbidden from Sinai.’ And this means that you must know that everything from which we refrain or that we do today, we do it only because of God's command through Moses, not because God commanded it to the prophets who preceded him.” So take Maimonides in Laws of Kings—that the Noahides do not do it because Noah was commanded in the seven commandments, but because the Torah says that Noah was commanded. Exactly the same thing. For example, we do not eat a limb from a living animal not because God forbade a limb from a living animal to the descendants of Noah, but because Moses forbade us a limb from a living animal in what he was commanded at Sinai, that a limb from a living animal should remain forbidden. And he is hinting to the Talmud in Sanhedrin, yes, that every matter that was said and then repeated at Sinai was said for Israel. And likewise we are not circumcised because Abraham circumcised himself and the members of his household, but because God commanded us through Moses to be circumcised just as Abraham, peace be upon him, was circumcised. And likewise the sciatic nerve—we are not bound by the prohibition because of our forefather Jacob, but because of the command of Moses our teacher. Do you not see—what is Maimonides' proof? “Do you not see their statement that 613 commandments were said to Moses at Sinai, and all of these are included among the commandments.” After all, the Talmud in Makkot says that 613 commandments were said to Moses at Sinai. And if we do not accept what Maimonides says here, then there are a few commandments that were said before Moses at Sinai. So then not all 613 were said at Sinai. And it's true that this is not such a great proof, of course, but Maimonides says: if it says 613 commandments were said at Sinai, that means all 613 were said at Sinai. Even those that were said earlier—we keep them because they were repeated at Sinai, and there we were commanded again to continue observing what we had been commanded previously.
[Speaker E] And does Rabbi Yehuda disagree with that? I can't hear. And does Rabbi Yehuda disagree with that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Yehuda—either he disagrees with it, or he says it doesn't matter; his proof can still stand. Because after all, what difference does it make that we were commanded again at Mount Sinai to keep what was there? He's asking: but what was there? After all, there, when they began refraining from eating the sciatic nerve, there was no distinction between a non-kosher and a kosher animal, right? So then certainly they did not eat the sciatic nerve even from a non-kosher animal. Now at Sinai we were commanded again regarding what was there. Fine—we were commanded regarding what was there. We do it because of Mount Sinai, but what is it that we do? What they did then, when there was no distinction between non-kosher and kosher. His proof could still stand—to the point that the question is what exactly the Sages answered him at all. Fine, but that can be gone into; that's a different discussion. In any case, seemingly I would say even more than that—not only does Maimonides here continue his position consistently, that from his point of view observance of commandments has no value, no religious value, unless you do it because of God's command to Moses at Sinai. So much so that I would even say that I don't understand why the commentators on Maimonides in Laws of Kings look for a source for him. Here is the source: this Mishnah in Chullin, what the Sages answer Rabbi Yehuda. By the way, not all the commentators here explain it like Maimonides, but never mind—Maimonides interpreted the Mishnah this way. Once he interpreted the Mishnah this way, then seemingly this is the source for what he writes in Laws of Kings. So what—what's the question? Why go looking for midrashim and other sources? It's stated explicitly in the Mishnah. A Mishnah that contains halakhic give-and-take. So I think that's not correct. And what is written here is a somewhat different principle from what is written in Laws of Kings, despite the similarity. I once had an argument about this on some panel in the law faculty at Bar-Ilan. They claimed it was the same principle, and I argued that it wasn't true—that there are two different principles here, and I'll explain. In standard legal thought—standard—in legal thought there is an approach called positivism. Positivism is an approach that sees the legal system as a kind of hierarchical system, like an axiomatic system, yes? Like a geometrical system in mathematics. Axioms, derived theorems, theorems derived from derived theorems, and so on. And according to this approach, the role of the judge is basically just to use logical tools to derive from the legal rules the answer to the question before him. Okay? That's how, for example, German law saw things—or today a bit less, but in the past—the Bundeslaw, as it were, unlike British law, common law, which is based on precedents. And within the positivist approach there was a Jewish legal thinker named Kelsen, Hans Kelsen. And he argued that at the basis of—and this sounds reasonable—at the basis of every legal system sits what is called the basic norm. The Grundnorm in German, yes, Grund is ground, the basic norm. What does that mean? It is the fundamental norm from which everything begins. From it come the laws, then the derived laws and the consequences and the whole legal logical structure. And in every legal system there has to be some such Grundnorm. What does this Grundnorm mean? It means: by what authority do we demand that a person obey the law? So, for example, in Israeli law the Grundnorm is the authority of the Knesset. What the Knesset determines obligates the citizens. Right? That's the basic norm. From here on, now there are the laws the Knesset enacted, and because of the Grundnorm, those laws receive validity. By virtue of those laws there may now also be derivative laws. Say one law delegates authority to the director-general of the Ministry of Transport to enact regulations in his field. So now that too is binding, because it is derived from the authority of the Knesset, which gave authority to the Minister of Transport, who gave it to the director-general of the Ministry of Transport, and so on. So here you have a logical, axiomatic system that begins with the Grundnorm. Now I ask: suppose a person obeys the traffic laws, but he does not do so because of commitment to the Grundnorm. He stops at a red light, he doesn't go through, but not because he firmly believes that one must obey the laws of the Knesset, but because he's afraid of a policeman, or because he just doesn't like the red light—it doesn't sit well with his eyes. Doesn't matter, everyone has his own reasons. Does the legislator have any problem with such a person? Obviously not. What do I care? As long as you obey the law, everything is fine; do it for whatever reason you want. If you don't obey the law, we'll hang you. That's all. I don't care in the slightest what your motivations are. It's not important. In the legal world motivations are not interesting, except in criminal law, where criminal intent matters. But in principle, certainly not in obeying the law—I'm not interested in why you obey the law, only that you obey it, that's all. So much so that this goes to the practical plane: ignorance of the law is no excuse. Meaning, what matters to me is what you do; I'm not interested in what you knew and what you intended and why you did it and why you didn't do it. I demand behavior, that's all. This kind of behavior and not that kind. I claim that Maimonides in the commentary to the Mishnah in Chullin is speaking about that. What is the basic norm by virtue of which we are obligated to keep the Torah? Answer: God's command to Moses at Sinai. The basic norm means: why can the judge who judges me for having violated the law come to me with a complaint? By what authority does he come to me with a claim? This doesn't interest me as a citizen. Maimonides in Laws of Kings is speaking about something completely different, something that has no meaning at all in the ordinary legal-civil context, only in the religious context. And that is the question of what my intention should be when I fulfill a commandment. Not why, theoretically, one should fulfill a commandment—that is not a question in halakhic theory. It is a halakhic question in halakhic practice. When I fulfill commandments, what is supposed to be in my consciousness? Am I supposed to do it because of the dictate of religion? Or no—I am supposed to do it because of God's command to Moses at Sinai. By the way, this is not connected to the question whether commandments require intention—that I once wrote an article about. “Commandments require intention” is a dispute about whether I need to intend to fulfill my obligation—whether an actual intention has to be presently in my awareness or not. Here Maimonides is speaking at the principled level: why do I fulfill the commandment in principle, not what is presently before my awareness. Do I do it because I am bound by the command of the Holy One, blessed be He? Then I am among the pious of the nations of the world, or among the pious of the Jews—and not Hasidism in the Baal Shem Tov sense, of course. If not, then maybe I am among their wise, but not among their pious. But this really is a question of what my motivation is in obeying the law. Why I obey the law—that is what determines whether this observance is a commandment or not. That's a question the legislator has no interest in. The legislator is not interested in why you obey the law as long as you obey it and don't violate it. That is a religious question par excellence, and it appears in Laws of Kings. In the commentary to the Mishnah on the sciatic nerve, Maimonides says that the legal principle that matters also in the legal context is also true in the halakhic world: that in the halakhic world too, the basic norm, the Grundnorm because of which we keep Jewish law, is the commitment to God's command at Mount Sinai. Here this is not a statement to me about what I should intend when I fulfill; this is a statement to meta-halakhic theory. Why does Jewish law demand obedience from you? Why would the judge rule against you if you did not obey? Because of commitment to the command at Sinai. Do you understand the difference? It's not the same principle. Of course it is the same statement in the sense that the command at Sinai is the basis, but there are two different implications of it here. One implication belongs to meta-legal theory. Why does the legal system in fact hold that the citizens have a duty to obey it? Why does it think we have an obligation? Because one must obey the command at Sinai. That is the answer in meta-halakhic theory. A second question: what should my actual motivation be—not why theoretically I am obligated, but when I approach the fulfillment of a commandment, why am I supposed to do it? What is supposed to move me when I do it? The command at Sinai. That is a completely different principle. Here it is a requirement about how one fulfills commandments—not why to fulfill commandments at the theoretical level, but how to fulfill commandments. Without that, it is not a commandment. If you didn't do it because of that, it's not a commandment. You understand that this is a completely different principle. And therefore you cannot derive Maimonides in Laws of Kings from the commentary to the Mishnah in Chullin. That is not the source. And therefore they look for another source, some midrash or whatever—but I said, it's a simple logical point; I wouldn't have needed any source for it. I would have said it even without Maimonides if I had thought of it. What's unclear?
[Speaker E] I didn't understand the difference between Chullin and Kings.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you understand why, for example, the legislator is not interested in what Maimonides writes in Laws of Kings?
[Speaker E] Yes, the secular legislator. Yes, but the religious legislator is interested in it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. So what is written in Laws of Kings is the principle that interests only the religious legislator, not the secular one. What is written in the commentary to the Mishnah is the principle that interests the secular legislator, and it is also true for Jewish law. What interests the secular legislator? The theory of Jewish law. Why is Jewish law actually binding? Because of the command at Sinai. That is a theoretical explanation: by what authority can I as a judge punish you if you violated Jewish law? Because I have authority by virtue of the command I received at Sinai, and you too had an obligation to obey because you had a command at Sinai. So that is a question of justification that the legislator or judge receives from the Grundnorm. Maimonides in Laws of Kings tells me how commandments are fulfilled, how one must act so that the commandment counts as a commandment—not a theoretical explanation of why there is authority or why one must fulfill. This is not theory, it's practice; it is a halakhic instruction. And in the commentary to the Mishnah in Chullin this could not appear in the Mishneh Torah, because it has no halakhic significance at all; it is only a justification in halakhic theory. Why is halakhic theory binding? Because there is a command. Therefore, for example, the Grundnorm will not appear in a law book.
[Speaker E] But the practice follows from…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a law book. In a law book it won't say that one must obey the laws of the Knesset, right? That's the subtext that says that without it the law book has no meaning. After all, if that appears in the law book, I will ask myself: and why should I obey that law itself? Because there is a principle that one must obey the laws of the Knesset? Is that principle written in the law book? But I ask: why obey the law book? Therefore by definition this is a principle that cannot appear in the law book. Therefore what Maimonides writes in the commentary to the Mishnah appears in the commentary to the Mishnah, not in the Mishneh Torah. What appears in the Mishneh Torah is a halakhic statement. It is a statement saying that if you do not fulfill—if you are Ahad Ha'am and never kept the Sabbath in your life—that is not written in the commentary to the Mishnah in Chullin. But it doesn't say there that Ahad Ha'am never kept the Sabbath even פעם. That is a halakhic statement, okay? Clear, Eliyahu?
[Speaker E] Yes, but the practice follows from the theory.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that in the basis of both statements there is the same claim—that there was a command at Sinai and that it is binding. Obviously. But it has two different implications. One implication concerns the theory of Jewish law, and the second concerns the practice of how one fulfills laws. The fact is a fact: we were commanded at Sinai, and that command is binding. That's clear. But it has two different implications. One of them interests every legal system in the world, and the second interests only Jewish law. Okay?
[Speaker D] A question, Rabbi, a side question. Not on this principle, but related to it. You're discussing by what authority we keep commandments. By what authority did the sons of Jacob keep the sciatic nerve prohibition?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not because of a commandment. Therefore, for example, this is really a difficult question. Rashba in his novellae on the aggadah to Berakhot notes this. Because in essence the sciatic nerve is a very unusual example of a prohibition. We know from the Sages that “beware,” “lest,” and “do not” are conditions for something to be considered a prohibition, right? There has to be a language of command or prohibition. “Beware lest there be in your heart a base thought,” and so on. Or “Do not stand idly by your neighbor's blood.” The word that constitutes a commanding prohibition must appear in the Torah in order for something to be a prohibition. What is written regarding the sciatic nerve? “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve to this day.” The prohibition that appears there is not a prohibiting prohibition. It is a descriptive prohibition. It describes what the children of Israel did. At that time they had a custom not to eat the sciatic nerve. So where is the prohibition? Without there being a command in the Torah, there is no prohibition. Maimonides in the eighth root writes that we do not count negations of command. Negations of… what does he call it there? Negations of obligation.
[Speaker D] Negations of obligation, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Verses of obligation—that's why we don't count them; they are negations of obligation. What does that mean?
[Speaker D] That if you have a positive commandment, then you don't count the prohibition…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For example, there he gives the example of a Hebrew maidservant who does not go free through loss of limbs. With a Canaanite slave, if you injure one of 24 extremities, he goes free. But with a Hebrew maidservant this does not apply. And also with a Hebrew slave it does not apply. Now when the Torah excludes the rule of going free through loss of limbs from a Hebrew maidservant, that is not counted as a prohibition. Why? Because the Torah is not forbidding anything here. It is only saying that that rule does not apply to a Hebrew maidservant. It negates; it does not prohibit. The negative wording that creates a prohibition is not one that merely excludes. It is not a negative wording that describes something, that describes a negative fact. That is not a prohibition. Now here, “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve”—that “do not eat” describes what they did. How did this become a prohibition? It is astonishing to me, by the way, that almost no one comments on this except that Rashba there, who says something I don't remember but not something very convincing. Right now I don't have a good answer for it. But notice how well this fits into the fabric I've described here. Because what the Torah describes there is really not a commandment. What the children of Israel did there was merely a custom not to eat the sciatic nerve. They had not yet been commanded. If they were not commanded, there is no commandment. So it was only a custom. That's how they behaved—not to eat the sciatic nerve. Then the Torah comes at Sinai and repeats it, and there it is interpreted as a commandment. Why? I don't know. But there it is interpreted as a commandment. So the Sages tell us. Now it became a commandment. Therefore there, although it is only a description, there is no prohibition there at all, and nevertheless suddenly it became a prohibition. Because it became a prohibition.
[Speaker F] Did someone who was circumcised in Egypt need another symbolic drawing of covenantal blood at Sinai? I can't hear. Did someone who was circumcised in Egypt need another symbolic drawing of covenantal blood at Sinai? Yes, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Before we were commanded—it wasn't exactly at Sinai, it was a bit before Mount Sinai, but yes. As part of the Sinai event. We know this, after all—it's the moment of entering the covenant, and from there the laws of conversion are learned, yes, right, obviously. And this is exactly the same principle. The picture that really emerges here—and again I return to this, because this is what I keep wanting to sharpen from every angle—is that in Maimonides, very consistently, in Laws of Repentance, in Laws of Idolatry, in Laws of Kings, and in the commentary to the Mishnah in Chullin, everywhere, you see very, very consistently that for Maimonides, belief has no meaning unless it comes to practical expression. And commandments have no meaning unless they come out of faith and commitment to the command at Sinai. The hyphen is the essence of faith. Therefore those traditional Jews, or I don't know, or Ahad Ha'am types, or I don't know exactly what—traditionalists and Ahad Ha'am are opposites. Traditionalists are people who believe but do not observe. And Ahad Ha'am is the type who observes but does not believe. What they have in common is that in both of them there is no hyphen, because they do not understand that the two sides of the hyphen have to come together. And therefore what both of them do is worth nothing. Another point that comes up in this context is Maimonides in the Eight Chapters, and there Maimonides discusses—basically there is a source that seemingly contradicts what I'm saying here. Because there in chapter six Maimonides discusses the question: which is better—the one who rules over his impulse or the virtuous person. In Hebrew translation—I don't know how it was in the original—the terms are a bit… I would say “the one who conquers his impulse,” but never mind. In any case, that's the dilemma Maimonides presents there. And Maimonides says—just a second, here, let me share it—we won't read all of it, but just so you get the impression. “The philosophers said”—right? This is the distinction between the virtuous person and the one who rules his soul. “The philosophers said that the one who rules his soul, although he performs the excellent actions, and does what is good, nevertheless he desires bad deeds and longs for them, and he struggles with his impulse and opposes in his action what his force, desire, and character traits arouse in him, and he does good while suffering in doing it.” That is what is called the one who rules his soul. Meaning: someone who does only good and refrains from doing evil, but all the time he has to deal with impulses—he has impulses to do evil, he overcomes them, he does only good, and he has impulses to do evil. That is called the one who rules his soul. Over against that there is the opposite type: “But the virtuous one is drawn in his actions after what his desire and character arouse in him, and he does good while desiring it and longing for it.” Right? The virtuous one is someone whose natural tendency is to do good, not bad. Maimonides says: “And the philosophers agreed that the virtuous one is better and more complete than the one who rules his soul.” Right? Someone whose natural tendency is to do good is a person on a higher spiritual level than someone who has an evil inclination and merely overcomes it; and he always overcomes it, he does good, but he wants to do evil. So he still has room to improve; he is not perfect. That is the philosophers. And opposite them, the Sages of Israel say—I once discussed this when I spoke about whether philosophical considerations have significance—Maimonides, yes—the Sages of Israel say, “A person should not say, I do not want to eat pork; rather, I do want to, and what can I do? My Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me.” I'm not reading now, I'm just saying it in my own words. So what does that mean? That the one who rules his soul is better than the virtuous one. Not someone who is naturally drawn not to eat pork, who doesn't want to eat pork, who is repelled by it. On the contrary—someone wants to eat pork but overcomes himself. “Do not say: I do not want to eat pork,” and so on. So he says there is a contradiction here: the philosophers say the virtuous one is better, and our Sages say the one who rules his soul is better. I already remarked once that today what would people say? Okay, then the philosophers are wrong. What's the question? End of discussion, what else is there to say? Maimonides doesn't do that. Maimonides says: if this is a sound argument, then there is no such thing as “the philosophers are wrong.” So there is a contradiction here and it must be resolved, because the reasoning is sound. It is not ad hominem, right? It's not because the philosophers say it. What the philosophers say is an indication that reason says this. And then the question is what to do with that in relation to the statement of the Sages. To this Maimonides answers that there is a difference between rational commandments and revelatory commandments. In rational commandments—what morality requires and reason requires—the virtuous one is preferable. In revelatory commandments, the one who rules his soul is preferable. And indeed, if you look at all the examples the Sages brought—look here—Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: “A person should not say, I do not want to eat meat cooked with milk, I do not want to wear wool and linen together, I do not want to have forbidden relations; rather, I do want to, and what can I do? My Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me.” All the examples here are examples of revelatory commandments, not rational commandments. In revelatory commandments, the one who rules his soul is preferable. In rational commandments, the virtuous one is preferable. That is Maimonides' claim. Now I ask: how does this fit with the picture I've described until now? Seemingly Maimonides says here, at least regarding the rational commandments, that it is preferable to do them out of internal motivation rather than out of submission to God's command and the bending of my impulses. So how does that fit with what he writes? Now you'll say: that's only in rational commandments. But in Laws of Kings Maimonides writes it specifically about rational commandments. After all, these are the Noahide commandments toward which reason inclines. And there Maimonides writes that there one must do it because of God's command at Sinai, not because of rational necessity. So he says this specifically about the rational commandments, and I explained that it is specifically about the rational commandments. Because with revelatory commandments there is no reason to do them because of rational necessity, since rational necessity does not say them. Only with rational commandments is there such a possibility—to do them because of rational necessity. So here there is a frontal contradiction. First of all, if we talk about revelatory commandments, in revelatory commandments we already see that there really is a dimension of doing them because of the command. My natural tendency is not such, but I do it because of the command. What happens with rational commandments? In this entire chapter Maimonides nowhere writes that one should do them because of natural tendency. That he does not write. What he writes is that the virtuous person also has a natural tendency to do them. But if I ask him why he does this, the answer is: because of the command at Sinai. At the same time, my natural tendency is also a good tendency. He is both among the pious of the nations of the world and among their wise. That is exactly the point. Meaning, when he does this thing as a commandment, he does it because God commanded it. Because otherwise it is not a commandment. Only—you might say, okay, so maybe there is a point specifically in cultivating the evil inclination within me so that I can overcome it and do it because of the commandment. Maimonides says no, what are you talking about? There is also value in being a good person. Be both among the pious of the nations of the world and among their wise. Then you are the best kind of person. And therefore you should also have a natural tendency to do good. That is the complete person. But if one morning you wake up and that natural tendency is not there for you, will you do it or not? If you will, that means that despite having a natural tendency, you are not doing it because of the natural tendency. You are doing it because of the command. And then there is no problem that you have a natural tendency; that is perfectly fine. Then you are both a good person and someone who fulfills commandments. You are both among the pious of the nations of the world and among their wise. That is the complete person. A person who is only among the pious of the nations of the world but not among their wise is also not a complete person. Because he has no natural tendency to do good; in his soul he still desires evil. But he does it because God commanded it—he's religious. Right, he is righteous, he fulfills commandments, but he is not a good person. And a complete person has to be both. Not one of them, not just one and not the other. He has to be both—both religious and a good person. That is what Maimonides says here. And therefore there is no contradiction at all. Along these lines, this is what the Avnei Nezer says in the introduction—that many err from the path of reason and think that someone who enjoys Torah study is studying not for its own sake. He says: you have no greater mistake than this. Obviously the enjoyment is part of the commandment, and it causes us to learn better and understand better and internalize better. I will add: there is a blessing every morning, “Please make the words of Your Torah sweet in our mouths.” We want it to be sweet to us. So the Avnei Nezer says: obviously there is nothing wrong with someone who enjoys his learning. But in the next sentence he says something people know less. If someone studies because of the enjoyment, then that really is study not for its own sake. Meaning: there is no point in giving up the enjoyment, but you do need to be careful that even though you have enjoyment, and it is good that you have enjoyment, you should not do it because of the enjoyment or for the sake of the enjoyment. You should do it because Torah study has value—to do the truth because it is truth. And at the same time it is very desirable to enjoy and rejoice and understand, because then the words speak to you more. That is exactly parallel to what is happening here. To be both among the pious of the nations of the world and among their wise. Not to give up the natural tendency, but not to be captive to the natural tendency—not to do it because of the natural tendency, but to do it because I have decided to do the truth because it is truth. And the natural tendency is excellent, it will help me, it makes me a better person, and therefore it completes my personality—but it is not the focus, it is not the motivation for which I act. And therefore what Maimonides writes here also does not contradict in any way the picture we have seen in his sources up to now.
[Speaker G] Is there a distinction between for its own sake and fulfilling commandments out of faith—because of faith?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn't hear well.
[Speaker G] Is there a distinction between the concept of for its own sake and fulfilling commandments because of faith?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think that is the deeper meaning of for its own sake.
[Speaker G] So then why does doing it not for its own sake lead to doing it for its own sake?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, there is value in not for its own sake. Not for its own sake is not a worthless thing, but it still is not a commandment in its full meaning. Only for its own sake is a commandment in its full meaning. That doesn't mean that if you do it not for its own sake, then there is no value and you shouldn't do it at all. Of course there are also levels within not for its own sake. There is a state in which, in your basic motivation, you do it because of commitment to the Holy One, blessed be He, but that is not present enough in your awareness; it is not sufficiently present in your awareness. There are different levels of doing it for its own sake. Tosafot, after all, distinguishes between someone who does things in order to provoke and someone who does things simply not for their own sake. There are different levels of not for its own sake.
[Speaker D] I think you can also combine this with what Saadia Gaon says about why rational commandments were commanded at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Again.
[Speaker D] Saadia Gaon asks: why were rational commandments commanded? So he says that, for example, the fact that murder is forbidden—the virtuous person knows that, the virtuous person knows. But what is the definition of the commandment? Where yes and where no? Why Amalek yes? Why execution by religious court yes? And so on. For that there had to be a command.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I would formulate it differently. I would say: even if I know all the definitions, what the virtuous person does is at most moral behavior. But now I ask: where is the religious dimension? When I say that murder is forbidden, I am saying two things. First, murder is immoral. Second, murder is a religious transgression. And in order to turn it into a religious transgression, you need a command. Without the command, it would have been a moral transgression. Therefore, for example—we also discussed this in the series on Jewish law and morality—there are differences in definition between the moral prohibition of murder and the religious prohibition of murder. Cases of moving a thing closer to a fire, indirect causation, and all sorts of things—moving a thing closer to a fire and indirect causation and so on. And we see that there are exemptions in the prohibition of murder. Morally there is no difference at all—you are a murderer completely. Because “You shall not murder” does not come to state the moral imperative. The moral imperative I know even without that. My conscience says it, my moral reasoning says it. The religious imperative comes to say that there is also a religious prohibition here in addition to the moral prohibition. But the religious prohibition has its own definitions; it does not overlap with the definitions of the moral prohibition. Two different planes, in my opinion.
[Speaker H] Rabbi, according to the Avnei Nezer, of the one who exerted himself and the one who did not exert himself, who is better?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that the one who exerted himself will receive reward, because according to the pain is the reward. But your spiritual level is higher if you rejoice in Torah study. Because it enters into you better, you understand it better, you internalize it more. It is study of higher quality.
[Speaker I] And the one who understood and the one who didn't understand? And the one who didn't understand made a great effort?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The one who didn't understand—so he made an effort, and he will get reward for the effort, but he did not fulfill the commandment. The commandment is to understand. Studying is not mumbling. I don't know what you did on Shavuot night—there are people who think there is a commandment to mumble. There is no commandment to mumble; there is a commandment to study. Someone who mumbles—maybe he is making an effort, and God will reward him for the effort, very nice—but he did not study Torah. He could just as well lift weights instead; that also takes no less effort. Rabbi?
[Speaker E] Yes. If you're saying that all the verses… if you're saying that the verses are commanding verses, that I need the “turn from evil” to cry out in a religious sense, for it to have religious value as a command, then I didn't understand the meaning of the Talmud's question: why do I need a verse? It is logical reasoning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Why do I need a verse? It is logical reasoning” is not said
[Speaker E] about
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] newly introduced laws. It is said only about details within existing commandments. I have an article on the status of reasoning in Jewish law on the website; there I explain this in detail, you can look there. Okay.
[Speaker E] Yes, and one more question: in your opinion, on the one hand the traditionalists and on the other hand Ahad Ha'am—do they nevertheless preserve their Jewish identity?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that's a fact; it has nothing to do with my opinion. Obviously yes. The question is whether it is a commandment. That's the only question I'm talking about. Does it have some national value? Maybe their children will hear, maybe there are consequences? All that can be true, not relevant. Right now I am talking about the principled question: is this fulfillment of a commandment? The answer is no. Okay, all right.
[Speaker F] Another question regarding returning a lost object to a non-Jew. In the Shulchan Arukh it says that it is forbidden to return it to him because you are showing that you do it because it is reasonable and not because of the commandment. And I saw all kinds of rabbis who are not enthusiastic about that; they think it really is good to return it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that what is written there—after all, in the end, returning a lost object to a non-Jew, meaning the prohibition against returning a lost object to a non-Jew, is because of the inhuman conduct of the non-Jews of those times. The well-known Meiri says that today non-Jews conduct themselves differently. So then the Shulchan Arukh says: if you return a lost object to them, then you are doing it because of the compulsion of your heart, but you are doing something that is not right. That's the problem. Meaning, acting because of your heart leads you to do something wrong. That is what is not okay. But if you return a lost object to an enlightened non-Jew, a non-Jew in our time, then suppose even that you are not obligated—according to Meiri you really are obligated. But say you are not obligated. Certainly here there is no problem at all. You are showing that you conduct yourself morally in a different way. According to that, why is returning a lost object after abandonment not problematic? And it is written in the Shulchan Arukh that one returns a lost object even after abandonment, and the Sages are displeased with one who does not return a lost object after abandonment, and the Rema brings that one even coerces for this. Why does that not show that I conduct myself according to my heart and not according to Jewish law? Why is that not forbidden? Not only not obligatory—forbidden. The answer is that returning a lost object after abandonment is a worthy act. So even if I do it without a halakhic command, there is no problem with that. Where does the problem arise? When I do a problematic act because of my heart, when Jewish law tells me not to do it and I do it—that is problematic. So in a place where non-Jews behave like normal human beings, as in our time, certainly one should return their lost objects, and certainly there is no prohibition in that. On the contrary.
[Speaker D] I don't know if you spoke about this in morality and Jewish law, but there is the famous discussion between eating human flesh and eating animal flesh…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Amital, yes.
[Speaker D] Rabbi Amital and Rabbi Lichtenstein. So how do you interpret it according to this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I say: in my view these are aesthetic values. Aesthetic values. I see no problem at all in eating human flesh. Bon appétit. “And they ate grapes and were satisfied.”
[Speaker D] Suppose a plane crashed and in order to survive you had to eat either this or that. So which takes precedence?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I would eat human flesh if I could hold out. It may be that I would vomit, and then it wouldn't help me because it wouldn't help me survive. But at the principled level I would eat human flesh. I don't see any problem in that. It's an aesthetic value. Meaning, it's disgusting, it's “do not make yourselves abominable,” I would even say, but it is not an ethical value. Whom are you harming? What's the problem? And a halakhic prohibition? To permit a halakhic prohibition for the sake of that? I don't agree at all with Rabbi Amital's statement. According to Maimonides, by the way, this is the neglect of a positive commandment, so there is a halakhic prohibition here too. But for the sake of discussion, according to the common positions that there is no neglect of a positive commandment—so in short, if any of you is planning to expire near me, don't do it around here. Or make sure there is kosher food next to me. Anyone else? Rabbi Michael. No, I'm not saying you have to be a philosopher. I am saying that you do have to believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and understand that His command obligates you. That's what Maimonides writes, not me; Maimonides writes that.
[Speaker E] Just, Rabbi—isn't it true that I don't have to be consciously aware in every act of commandment that I'm doing it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that already goes into whether commandments require intention.
[Speaker E] So when do you say that if someone does a commandment because he believes in the Holy One, blessed be He—you have to ask him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, ask him—I don't know, I'm not one who examines kidneys and hearts. A person should examine himself.
[Speaker E] Fine, so a person who does the commandment without the awareness that he is doing it because of faith?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that depends on the dispute whether commandments require intention or not. We spoke about Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, right? A person goes to the synagogue, mumbles, and goes home. In my eyes that is indeed a commandment. Because after all he gets there for its own sake, because of commitment; it doesn't matter that he has no conscious intention to fulfill his obligation and all that. So regarding whether commandments require intention, there is still room to discuss because he has no intention. But as for whether commandments require faith, he certainly has that.
[Speaker E] Yes, but do commandments require faith in conscious awareness, or also without conscious awareness?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—faith / belief is not necessarily something in your conscious awareness. Faith / belief means that a person is a believer. In principle, if you ask him, "Do you believe in the Holy One, blessed be He?" he says yes. It doesn't matter whether I'm thinking about the fact that I believe right now—what difference does that make? If I'm not currently thinking about the law of gravity, does that mean I don't know the law of gravity? I know it; I'm just not thinking about it right now, and that doesn't matter. Anyone else?
[Speaker D] Okay, thank you very much. Sabbath shalom, thank you.