Faith – Lesson 36
This transcription 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
- From the philosophical God to the religious God
- Morality as a means and religious aims as an external purpose
- Expectation of revelation and the separation between Jewish law and morality
- Tradition as evidence within a puzzle and the burden of proof
- Observing commandments on the basis of probability and reservation in extreme cases
- Two levels in examining tradition: the event and the chain of transmission
- The Binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard, and the possibility of hallucination
- The three analogies: perception, improbability, and logical contradiction
- The prophet’s certainty and its implication for Mount Sinai
- “Broken telephone,” the core of revelation, and what was given at Sinai
- The point of disagreement with atheism and the close connection between philosophy and tradition
- Audience questions: defining revelation, multiple revelations, prophecies, and Judaism versus the nations of the world
Summary
General Overview
The speaker presents the fifth stage in the series as a move from the philosophical God to the religious God, that is, from deism to theism and religious obligation. He argues that traditional claims like “parents do not lie to their children” are weak when they stand alone, but gain significance as part of a broader puzzle. He assumes that if God created a world with human beings, free choice, and moral obligation, then it is reasonable that He has a purpose, and morality cannot itself be that purpose but only a means. Therefore there must be “religious aims” external to us, which are not accessible from within, and so revelation would be expected in order to convey them. He argues that a tradition about revelation fits this a priori expectation, and therefore the initial attitude toward it should be sympathetic unless strong evidence is brought against it. He later distinguishes between the credibility of the event itself and the credibility of the chain of transmission, including an in-principle acceptance of “broken telephone” while still insisting on an original core of revelation and command.
From the philosophical God to the religious God
The speaker says that the previous four stages supplied arguments for the existence of God in the philosophical sense, and now he is trying to move to the religious God and to obligation in commandment observance. He says that such a God is not merely an abstract cause, because from the philosophical arguments it already follows that He created the world, wanted human beings, gave free choice, and implanted moral obligations as though He were a “moral legislator.” He asks why God did this and assumes there is a purpose, citing the question of the Arukh HaShulchan about acting “for no purpose whatsoever” in order to support the assumption that any being that acts does so for some end.
Morality as a means and religious aims as an external purpose
The speaker argues that morality cannot be the purpose of creation, because morality is a means for creating a properly functioning society, and the purpose cannot be identical with the created thing itself. He notes that even Kantian morality, although it appears non-utilitarian, ultimately benefits society, and refers to “column 122 on my website.” He concludes that there must be “something else” beyond human society and its proper functioning, and he calls this, as a general term, “religious aims,” meaning values and tasks that are not of the moral kind.
Expectation of revelation and the separation between Jewish law and morality
The speaker says that a person finds morality within himself through conscience and inner understanding, but religious aims, being external to us, cannot be discovered from within or from the world itself. Therefore there must be some way to know what is required of us. He argues that the fact that we have consciousness and free choice hints that the purpose is tied to our understanding and choosing, and therefore it is reasonable to expect revelation that will convey “how to advance the spiritual or religious aims.” He states that Jewish law and morality are “two independent categories” and that there is “a complete separation,” explaining that this follows from the fact that religious aims are, by definition, different from moral aims.
Tradition as evidence within a puzzle and the burden of proof
The speaker says that the argument from tradition alone does not stand, and gives the example of Hasidic groups in which “grandmother stories” are passed on as truth, so “I wouldn’t build the Shalom Tower on that.” Still, he gives it weight as part of a puzzle. He argues that once the philosophical consideration creates an expectation of revelation, then a Jewish tradition about divine revelation is a fitting and expected match, so the initial attitude toward it should be “empathetic, sympathetic.” He presents the view that whoever argues against the tradition bears the burden of proof, because the tradition fits what one would have expected even without already accepting it. He emphasizes that this is not certainty but high probability, just as people act in other areas of life without full certainty.
Observing commandments on the basis of probability and reservation in extreme cases
The speaker says that one observes commandments by force of command when there is “a high probability that there is a command,” and that if a person is not convinced there was a command, then he will not observe. He compares this to other life decisions, like going out to fight in the army, and argues that there is no one-hundred-percent certainty in any domain. He adds that in cases of extreme demands with a “very, very heavy price,” such as killing “a hundred Amalekites” or “the Binding of Isaac,” he would expect a much higher degree of certainty and admits he does not know whether he himself would actually do it. He argues that people tend to evade such obligations by using “workarounds,” and cites Maimonides as offering exits in the war against Amalek. He explains that this reveals that even believers do not believe one hundred percent, and anyone who thinks he does is “a liar or confused.”
Two levels in examining tradition: the event and the chain of transmission
The speaker defines two axes along which tradition can be challenged: the reliability of the event itself and the reliability of the transmission over the generations. He says that even if a person had stood at Mount Sinai, he could still claim imagination, aliens, or other interpretations. On the other hand, the historical chain may have distorted, added to, or even later invented a myth. He sets as his goal a “reasonable” rather than certain conclusion on both levels, and promises to deal with them one after the other.
The Binding of Isaac, Kierkegaard, and the possibility of hallucination
The speaker cites Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling as asking why Abraham did not regard the command to sacrifice Isaac as a hallucination, since it is immoral and also contradicts the divine promise, “through Isaac your seed shall be called.” He describes this as both a moral problem and a logical problem, and presents a framework of alternatives in the style of David Hume and Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four: if one possibility is “impossible” and the other is “highly improbable,” one should choose the highly improbable one. He mentions rabbinic midrashim about the evil inclination trying to stop Abraham, and cites Ravitzky in the name of “commentators from Eastern communities” who claim Abraham failed because he should have shown “conscientious refusal.” He rejects this as absurd in light of the Torah’s praise and the appeals made “in the merit of the Binding.” He also deals with suggestions from students such as psychological bias or norms of child sacrifice, and argues that these effectively amount to saying Abraham failed.
The three analogies: perception, improbability, and logical contradiction
The speaker gives three stories about Reuven the blind man and Shimon the sighted man in order to clarify how someone who experiences something directly is not shaken by the skepticism of someone who cannot experience it. He says that in the example of telling the time on the clock, Shimon cannot convince the blind man, but he himself does not doubt because he sees. In the example of a painting by Marc Chagall in the middle of the jungle in Bolivia, the story is highly improbable, but Shimon still does not doubt his eyes. He then gives an example of a sealed room full of furniture that becomes empty despite the door being locked and watched, and argues that even in the face of a “logical proof” from Reuven, Shimon would still say, “I saw it,” and would move to “this requires further analysis” rather than canceling the experience.
The prophet’s certainty and its implication for Mount Sinai
The speaker applies the analogy to Abraham and says that someone who has not experienced prophecy will easily claim hallucination, but the prophet himself experiences a certainty of the kind of “I see,” and so is not convinced by outside arguments. He says that Mount Sinai is actually easier than the Binding, because there were “many people” there and it does not contain the same logical contradiction, so it is understandable how the first recipients would have been convinced. He distinguishes between understanding the probability that people who received revelation would believe in it, and the later question of whether we can accept the tradition about that event.
“Broken telephone,” the core of revelation, and what was given at Sinai
The speaker accepts the claim that the chain of transmission resembles “broken telephone,” and therefore details get distorted, but he insists that this does not negate an original core of speech and revelation. He says that even if the final product is a specific sentence, an opponent’s claim that “the first person said nothing” is not persuasive, and he assumes that there was some original message. He adds that he is not claiming “word for word” that the Torah as we have it today was given at Sinai, and even says explicitly, “the Torah was not given to Moses at Sinai the way we know it today.” He accepts the possibility that Maimonides would call him a heretic, but stands by his position. He says that when there are no alternative indications, tradition is the most reasonable “default,” and that “the Holy One, blessed be He, does not come with grievances against His creatures” when this is the best that can be done.
The point of disagreement with atheism and the close connection between philosophy and tradition
The speaker argues that the main dispute with atheists is not really over the reliability of the chain itself, but over how expected and reasonable the content of the tradition is a priori. He says that if revelation itself already seems reasonable on the basis of a philosophical God who creates, chooses, and grounds morality, then traditional testimony about revelation “falls on fertile ground” and requires strong arguments to reject it. He opposes the common separation between “the philosophical God” and “the religious God,” mentions Russell and the celestial teapot, and argues that there are “philosophical steps” that bring us from the first to the second, so that the disagreement “sits in deism” and radiates outward to the acceptance of tradition.
Audience questions: defining revelation, multiple revelations, prophecies, and Judaism versus the nations of the world
The speaker refuses to define “what revelation is” in precise detail and is satisfied with requiring some interaction in which God tells human beings what He wants, without deciding whether this is “through loudspeakers” or in some other way. He is asked why there was not a revelation every hundred years, and replies that this is a historical claim, hinting that the very absence of many similar traditions might make things harder דווקא for those who claim such traditions arise naturally, but he postpones that to “the next lecture.” He is asked about prophets who seem uncertain, and he emphasizes that arguing with the Holy One, blessed be He, is not uncertainty but disagreement, citing Moses, Jonah, and Abraham regarding Sodom, while acknowledging that some commentators ask why Abraham did not argue at the Binding. He is asked about “mixed categories,” and explains that “religious aims” is only a label for expected obligations that are not moral, and that it has not yet been determined what those aims are. He is also asked about the role of non-Jewish humanity, and presents a picture of a whole framework with levels of obligation, including “the seven Noahide commandments,” and a core group from whom more is demanded through revelation.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re at the fifth stage of this series. We talked about the first four stages, which dealt with various proofs for the existence of God. In the fifth stage I’m trying to move from the philosophical proofs—or if you like, from the philosophical God—to a religious God. Meaning, from deism to theism, or to religious obligation, obligation to observe commandments, and so on. Up to now, at this stage, I’ve tried to explain that the argument people often make from tradition—you know, that parents don’t lie to their children, or formulations like that—doesn’t stand on its own. Rather, there’s some general picture, some kind of puzzle if you like, where each piece fits into the proper place, and then that gives some meaning to the whole structure. Usually, when people examine arguments of this kind, they check them one by one, and really, taken one by one, at least some of the arguments aren’t very impressive. These arguments that parents don’t lie to their children and so on—let’s just say, I wouldn’t build the Shalom Tower on that. Meaning, it’s not such a strong argument. We’ve already seen in history—go to any Hasidic group and you’ll find exactly how parents do lie to their children, meaning all kinds of grandmother stories are passed on there as if they were pure truth. So that claim by itself, I think, is hard to see as a sufficient basis. But I’m not saying it has no weight at all. I’m saying I wouldn’t build a tall tower on it. But when I place it within the general framework, as one piece inside a puzzle, then it takes on a different meaning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me briefly say how this puzzle is built. The claim is this: assuming there is a God in the philosophical sense—I’ve arrived at that conclusion, never mind for the moment from which arguments, but let’s say there is one argument or several arguments that convinced me that there is God in the philosophical sense. Now I ask myself: why? Meaning, from the arguments we saw, God created the world, saw to it that we would come into being within the world, and implanted moral obligations within us. Yes, He is also a moral legislator. That already says quite a lot. This is no longer just some abstract factor floating somewhere in the heavens and we can’t say anything about Him. We maybe can’t say how He specifically looks, but we already do know quite a few things about Him. Meaning, He created the world, He apparently is interested in it, He wanted there to be human beings in it, He gave us choice, and He expects from us a certain kind of behavior through morality—even before revelation, before Jewish law, before the Torah, before everything. So what do I learn from the philosophical part of the path, what we did up to the previous stage, in the first four stages? Basically, now the question arises: okay, so why did He do all this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I’m making some a priori calculation. I’m just wondering: I’ve already reached all these conclusions, let’s see what that means. Nothing here is necessary. Again, every piece in the puzzle can be argued with, but the puzzle as a whole seems to me to have a force greater than all its parts taken separately. So I ask myself why He did it. I assume He did it in order to achieve some purpose, which is a very reasonable assumption. Again, yes, there’s personification here, anthropomorphizing, but I don’t think that’s specifically a human trait. Any creature or entity that does something, it’s reasonable to assume that it does so because it wants to achieve something by it—it has some purpose in doing it. I don’t know if I mentioned this: the Arukh HaShulchan writes—there’s a Talmudic passage about the showbread, and from there the Ran, in the topic of muktzeh on the Sabbath, learns that a utensil whose primary use is for a prohibited act is forbidden. After all, unlike ordinary muktzeh, which is entirely forbidden to move, a utensil whose primary use is for a prohibited act may be moved for its own use or for its place. If you need to use the utensil for some permitted use, that’s allowed; or if you need the place where the utensil is lying, then you move it to use the place—that’s called for its own use or for its place. But moving it from sun to shade, say, in order to save the utensil itself because it’s lying in the sun and will be damaged if it stays there—that is forbidden for a utensil whose primary use is prohibited. For a utensil whose primary use is permitted, even that is allowed. But the Ran says it’s allowed even from sun to shade, but not “for no purpose whatsoever.” “For no purpose whatsoever,” it is forbidden to move even a utensil whose primary use is permitted. So the Arukh HaShulchan asks: what does “for no purpose whatsoever” mean? Then why is he moving it? Why would a person do an action if he has absolutely no need? Whenever you do something, you have some need, even if it’s someone tearing his clothes in anger—you tear clothes in order to calm some nerves inside yourself; that too is some kind of need. Meaning, when a person does something, he does it for some need.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually, I think the explanation there is much simpler: “for no purpose whatsoever” means not for a Sabbath purpose. Meaning, it’s for some future purpose, not that you’re doing something just like that. If you do something absentmindedly, with no reason, that’s an unintentional act. There’s no point in forbidding such a thing at all. I’m just saying that, but the Arukh HaShulchan’s question still stands. What do you mean? People don’t do things just for no reason because they have no reason. Now, this assumption is not true only about human beings. Any entity I can think of, it seems to me the reasonable assumption would be this one. Maybe it’ll turn out I’m wrong, but the burden of proof is on whoever says I am. The simple assumption is this. Okay, that sounds simple enough to me. So if that’s the case, that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world and us in it, and choice, and morality, and everything we saw—why did He do that? He has some purpose.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I continue the calculation and say: let’s see what the purpose is. Morality cannot be the purpose. Why? Because morality is a means for creating a properly functioning society. But it can’t be that creating society—its explanation, why you need to create society, is so that it will function properly. Don’t create it, and then it won’t need to function properly. The explanation or purpose always has to be outside the thing that you’re doing. When you build a washing machine, you don’t do it so that it can dance by itself. Right? Don’t build it, and then it won’t need to dance. You do it because you need to wash clothes; it gives you some kind of service. The purpose has to be outside the washing machine itself. It cannot be that the washing machine itself provides the explanation for its own existence. That’s absurd. So if that’s the case, human society didn’t arise just so that it would exist, period. And therefore morality too, it seems to me, cannot seriously be the purpose for which we were created, because morality is only the means by which society functions properly. But if the purpose is society itself, meaning for the benefit of society—then don’t create society and there’ll be no need for its benefit.
[Speaker C] But Kantian morality isn’t at all for the benefit of society. Not at all. What are you talking about? That’s just a side effect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I mentioned that—I think I mentioned it—I have a column on that, I won’t get into it here. Column 122 on my website, where I show that even Kantian morality ultimately is for the benefit of society. The question of why you do it, what your motivation is when you act, that’s one question. The question of why the moral legislator established the categorical imperative—that’s for the benefit of society. That’s all from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker D] What does that mean? It’s relative to the Holy One, blessed be He—that’s the question to the Holy One, blessed be He, why He created the world. Right. Everything is “why,” so the goal is to understand why God does something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Okay. Meaning, again, I’m not even trying to understand why He does something; first of all I’m making a claim: clearly there is something for the sake of which He did it. Maybe I won’t be able to know what it is, but that sounds to me like a reasonable conclusion. Okay. Now if that’s so, and it can’t be morality, then what can it be? So there has to be something else—I don’t know exactly what—which is really the purpose of this whole story. And that something is outside human society, outside the proper functioning of society, or of us as human beings. And I’ll call that now—it’s all just terminology, all an a priori analysis—I’ll call it “religious aims.” Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, has some aims, as distinct from moral aims, so let’s call them religious aims. Okay? Some kind of values of a different type, goals we are supposed to advance, but not of the moral sort—of another sort. Okay, so that seems to me an unavoidable conclusion, a very reasonable conclusion. Nothing is necessary, as I said—there is certainty in nothing—but it’s very reasonable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I ask myself: okay, so how will I know what these aims are? What am I supposed to do? How do I advance those aims, or what the aims are—how will I know? Morality I find within myself. We have a conscience, we have something inside us, we understand what is moral and what is immoral, and also that we should behave that way. Okay, all that is within us, so I have no problem there. But those aims, which necessarily are outside us, obviously we cannot find within ourselves; we cannot understand them from within our world. So how will we know? How will we know what tasks are imposed on us and how to advance this whole thing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now you could have said: we won’t know, just as a washing machine doesn’t know that its purpose is to wash—it just washes. Its operator does the work; it doesn’t need to be aware of it. But here the fact enters that we have consciousness and free choice. Which means that apparently this purpose is bound up with our understanding what is incumbent on us and choosing to do it rather than its opposite. So if that’s the case, then we are indeed supposed to understand—even if not to understand what the aims themselves are, at least to understand how to advance them, what is required of us. Then I say to myself: fine, since I have no other indication, it has to somehow come to me from outside—or in other words, I expect there to be revelation. There has to be revelation in some sense. I don’t know, in some form; I’m not getting into the details right now at all. But there has to be some way of conveying to me how to advance these spiritual or religious aims.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I spoke about this in the trilogy, at the beginning of the third book, where I argued that Jewish law and morality are two independent categories; there is no connection between them. Meaning, halakhot do not come to achieve morality; morality does not touch Jewish law; there is a complete separation. By the way, that follows from what I said here. On the philosophical level, this is the basis. It is also empirically true—I can show it empirically too. But I’m saying that on the philosophical level, this is actually the basis, this is the reason why it really has to be that way as well. Because religious aims, by definition, are other aims, not the moral aims that we find within ourselves. Both are important; I’m not setting up a hierarchy right now of which is more important and which less. But they are two different kinds. Okay?
[Speaker C] Rabbi, but if we’re talking about values and aims that are not moral, and the Rabbi says we have no access to them at all except through revelation, then revelation can never solve them. So He said, fine, God revealed Himself at Sinai and commanded all the commandments—if it’s not for moral reasons, why should we observe them? By what force?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a different question. I haven’t yet said that we have to observe them.
[Speaker C] No, but I’m saying from the outset it’s not a solution. The Rabbi is offering a solution that doesn’t solve the problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is it not a solution? How is that not a solution?
[Speaker C] The solution of revelation won’t solve the problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like yesterday evening, you stop at the stage of the question and derive proofs from that. But maybe I also have an answer to why we should observe them? You decide there’s a question why observe them, and therefore it’s not a solution. Wait. Maybe I have an answer to the question why observe them. So let me build this step by step; there’s no point in jumping ahead. Yesterday evening was a different lecture, for those who weren’t there—it’s just on a similar matter. So the claim here is basically that I expect there to be some revelation that conveys to me my goals—what I’m supposed to do and how I advance those goals. Now, I have no idea whether there will or won’t be revelation, but I’m trying to show you that from a completely a priori consideration, just from a purely philosophical consideration, from the conclusions I’ve reached on the philosophical level, you’ll see how close I already get to religious faith. How wrong Russell is when he says: what does a philosophical God have to do with a religious God? What is the connection between a philosophical God and a religious God? There are many secular people who believe in God in some philosophical sense. What does that have to do with observing commandments, religious obligation, or anything like that? There is a close connection. A very close connection.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s true that this is still another step. I’m not saying that if I proved the existence of God on the philosophical level, then tomorrow morning I have to put on tefillin. But I am saying that this is a big step on the way to putting on tefillin, and I’m trying to show you now the beginning of that path. That path basically says that if I’ve reached the conclusion that there is God, then philosophical logic already leads me very close to the idea that there has to be revelation—not that there was, but that I would expect there to be. Okay? So that’s one side of the coin. I started from philosophy, I advanced, and that’s where I got. Now I leave that for a moment and set it aside.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then tradition comes to me and says: there was revelation, God commanded us such-and-such, we have to do this and that. And we have a long history, a large part of it documented. The beginning is less documented, and that’s where all the difficulties are, but a large part of it is documented. We have a very ancient tradition. Exactly where it started, exactly what was there at the beginning and what was added later—that’s a good question. But it’s clear that we have a very ancient tradition, thousands of years old, of divine revelation. That’s clear; you can’t argue with that. Whether that tradition is an invention or not—we’ll talk about that. But we do have such a tradition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I say: how do I approach this tradition? If I understand that even if this tradition had never come to me, it would already have been clear to me that there ought to be revelation—okay, yes, I’m talking about the Jewish tradition because that’s the tradition—then my attitude toward such a tradition that comes to me should be a very empathetic, sympathetic attitude. Because, contrary to the accepted notion that whoever argues for the tradition bears the burden of proof, that seems absurd to me. Whoever argues against the tradition bears the burden of proof. Why? Not because the Kuzari says parents don’t lie to their sons—which, in itself, is a dubious argument, as I said earlier—but because even before tradition came to me, I could already have reached the conclusion that revelation, and a tradition that transmits it, is something to be expected. So now evidence comes to me, a tradition saying that this indeed happened. Excellent. It fits me perfectly. So why should I cast doubt on it? Now, if someone brings me evidence and arguments and shows me that it didn’t happen, I’ll say okay, apparently my line of thought was wrong. But I expect him to bring the evidence, not me.
[Audience member] But what is revelation? We’re talking here about a concept that isn’t even clear at all. What is revelation? How do we know? We don’t know what it’s supposed to look like, who, what—what is it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t need to define anything about the concept of revelation. What I need—what I’ve concluded here—is that I expect there to be some interaction between the Holy One, blessed be He, between God and human beings, in which He tells them what He wants. Exactly how—whether through loudspeakers or directly into your brain or I don’t know what, in letters of fire at a Bnei Akiva Sabbath gathering—I have no idea. I don’t know. Why should I care? The conclusion I’ve reached is that there has to be something like that, some interaction like that. That’s all. Beyond that, I don’t owe anyone an account of what that revelation will be, because I don’t know either. I don’t know. I just expect there to be something like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now a tradition comes and tells me that there was revelation. So now the question is: what is my attitude toward it, toward this tradition? And my claim is that my attitude toward it is positive, sympathetic, because it fits very well with what I would have expected to happen. And in the end, these pieces of the puzzle connect to one another. Each one by itself, maybe you can say less convincing, more convincing—I think that taken together, the connection is definitely strong. And again I say: there is certainty in nothing. Don’t expect certainty. But I do arrive at a pretty good probability, a high probability. But—a question.
[Speaker B] Yes. The Rabbi said in the past that you have to observe commandments because there is a command. But now we’re saying, wait a second—the probability there is a Creator is ninety-five percent, that there was revelation is another ninety percent. So I’m doing it because there’s a command, but that’s on the basis of ninety percent—I’m not certain. I’m carrying out the command on the basis of some ninety percent or something I believe in.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All our lives we operate on the basis of those kinds of ninety percents. We have certainty about nothing. Okay? A person makes decisions.
[Speaker B] So I’m doing it because of a command—a command that there’s a high probability exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. If you’re not convinced there was a command, then you won’t observe. I think it’s very reasonable. You’re right that this isn’t certainty; there’s no one hundred percent. But in no field do I have one hundred percent. A person who goes to fight in the army to defend the state—does he have one hundred percent certainty that we’re right or that he’s doing the right thing? Let him just go to Australia and raise cattle—or not cattle, plants, why cattle? Let him grow plants. Okay? We hand over our lives based on considerations we’re not certain are correct; we think they’re correct. That’s human beings. Human beings have certainty about nothing. So I don’t think religious faith is exceptional in that way, but it also doesn’t need to be exceptional. If I reach the conclusion that it’s reasonable, then from my point of view that’s what should be done. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, I’ll get to the result later. By the way, I’ll already say parenthetically: there is room for a claim like yours in a case where the command imposes on me something very severe or with very extreme consequences. For example, if today I had to kill, I don’t know, a hundred Amalekites, carry out a Babi Yar on them—or the Binding of Isaac, yes, the Binding of Isaac—I don’t know if I would do that. I don’t know if I would do that, because I’m really not convinced that it’s right. Now this isn’t a matter of expected utility or probability—I don’t know. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done. But if you ask me whether I would actually do it in practice—I don’t know. I don’t know. In a place where it demands a very, very heavy price from me, I would definitely expect a very, very high level of certainty in order to do it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now what do less honest people do with this? Sorry for complimenting myself. What do less honest people do with this? They come up with workarounds. Ah, maybe he’s not really Amalek, and we’ll do it unintentionally, and actually he’ll disappear on us, and we’ll tell him to run away and… run, run before I hold the gun, and then I won’t have to shoot him—and we come up with tricks in order not to do it. But why are you doing all these tricks? For tzitzit you don’t come up with tricks to avoid it, or tefillin, or any other commandment. You do it because you don’t want to carry out this commandment. Now why not? There’s a commandment to kill Amalek. Great—it’s just like putting on tefillin. Why don’t you want to do it? Because you also understand there is a very heavy price here, and if you have some way out, some way that can plausibly hold water so you can avoid it—the Rambam, by the way, offers all kinds of ways out. Even regarding the war against Amalek, he says you must first offer them terms, with “when you go out to war against your enemies”; he has major innovations there. Meaning, in his view there’s no need to kill Amalek at all. In other words, the sages somehow drained the obligation to kill Amalek of all content. But it seems to me that in the subtext their reasoning is—they wouldn’t admit this, of course, because people don’t tend to admit that their faith is not one hundred percent—but that’s the fact. The fact is that nobody believes one hundred percent, and whoever thinks he does is a liar, or confused.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore I say that in the end, very extreme things, we generally won’t actually do in practice; we’ll find a workaround to bypass them. And why? Because to do something very, very extreme, with very, very heavy costs, you need a very high degree of certainty. And here I do accept your comment, that in such a case there is some significance to the fact that my certainty is not complete. Fine. There’s nothing to do about that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyway, let’s get back to our matter. So the picture, in the end, is that when a tradition comes to me, my a priori attitude toward it is actually an empathetic one. In my eyes it is presumptively reasonable until proven otherwise. Now, there are arguments that do prove otherwise—we’ll see that shortly. But what is the starting point? In my view the starting point is positive, even though in these discussions the believer always has to defend himself. I don’t understand that claim. The attacker should have to defend himself. The attacker should have to bring evidence for why it’s not true. So this is another price we pay, by the way, for separating the arguments. Forget the philosophy—fine, I’m convinced there’s a philosophical God, but now let’s talk about tradition. I say: no, but these are two arguments you can’t separate; they go together. Because now, when you speak about tradition, suddenly the burden of proof is on you, not on me. So it matters very much how you conduct this discussion. That’s why these separations everyone agrees to, both the religious and the secular, are simply wrong. They’re wrong, and they also lead to mistaken conclusions. I think the whole thing has to be discussed together. Is this entire framework a reasonable one, or is its opposite more reasonable? That’s what needs to be discussed.
[Speaker F] And still, still the argument is in the category of “and Abraham went.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.
[Speaker F] The “and Abraham went” argument—you don’t know it? How do we know you have to walk around with a hat, a kippah? Because it says “and Abraham went.” Could it be that Abraham walked without a kippah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that relevant here? I don’t understand. Where am I begging the question here?
[Speaker F] We’re assuming here that there was revelation, and here’s the tradition, and here’s the tradition—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —confirms it, but the tradition was created as a result—
[Speaker F] —of the need to explain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t put words in my mouth. We are not assuming that there was revelation. That would be blatant begging the question. I’m assuming that revelation is to be expected, that it is reasonable that there would be revelation, and now a tradition comes saying that indeed there was. That is not begging the question. It is strengthening—empirical strengthening—of a theoretical hypothesis, which is what people do in science. Science also “assumes the conclusion.” I assume there is a law of gravitation, I do an experiment, and I discover that there is a law of gravitation. No—I don’t assume it. I propose a hypothesis. That hypothesis seems reasonable to me. I test it in the lab, and if the lab confirms the hypothesis—that’s how we work, isn’t it? That’s how we work in every field.
[Speaker F] Yes, but tradition is not a laboratory. Tradition is part of the construction of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s completely a laboratory. I didn’t say the result is scientific; the tradition is the laboratory. A report of a fact reaches me, and in my prior hypothesis I expected that such a fact would probably be true, so here is the laboratory confirmation of my hypothesis. Again, “laboratory” not in the sense that I’m claiming this is scientific, but in the sense that it’s empirical, meaning it comes from the world, it’s data, it’s not a philosophical consideration that comes from me. So I’m saying these two connect; in my view, that’s how things work, that’s usually how we confirm hypotheses. What’s wrong with that? It’s the most sensible thing there is. So now let’s get more into tradition, because now we have to discuss the tradition itself, and that’s my next topic. Meaning, okay, I put this in context, I understood the starting point when I come to discuss tradition, and now let’s begin the discussion itself about tradition. When we discuss tradition, people attack it on two planes. Two planes. One plane is the plane of Mount Sinai itself. Let’s say I’d even say: after all, I’m thousands of years removed from Mount Sinai. But suppose I’m standing there right now under the mountain. It could still be that I’m just imagining it, or that it’s aliens, I don’t know exactly what, all kinds of things of that sort. Right? Meaning, the fact itself is just a fact—who says it’s true? Okay, for now I’m still saying this schematically. After that there’s also the question of transmission. Meaning, it’s entirely possible that in the transmission from there to me, along the whole chain—after all, I’m thousands of years removed from it—distortions could creep in there too; not just distortions, it could be that this was simply invented later on in the course of history and suddenly some myth about Mount Sinai having once happened was created. Meaning, the failure could be at two points: at the source of the tradition, at the point where it is created, and in the chain of transmission. Okay? And each of these is attacked by different arguments. But in order to establish a tradition, I really need to establish both things. First, my trust that there was an event. Second, that what happened at that event was passed on to me through tradition and that the tradition is reasonable. Again, not certain—reasonable. Okay? That’s basically the claim. So let me deal with these two planes one after the other. I’ll start first with the first plane, with the formation of the tradition itself. Okay? So the formation of the tradition itself—the claim is basically this: you experience some transcendent event, some miraculous, supernatural sort of thing, a revelation of God. Altogether, this hasn’t happened many times in history, if at all. And the question is whether you didn’t just imagine all this. The question is whether there wasn’t some sort of distortion here—I’m not even talking yet about lying; let’s talk about distortion. Okay? Some kind of thing, I don’t know. There are all kinds of people who imagine they saw miracles today; in most cases I can show them that it’s imagination. Meaning, even though they’re convinced they experienced a miracle. Yes, the Book of Psalms that stopped a bullet for them right in the shirt pocket, yes, fine, all kinds of tall tales of that sort, Rachel our matriarch in Gaza, all kinds of missile miracles that didn’t kill anyone in Gush Katif, or all sorts of bizarre things, really strange. Well, we all experience miracles, and usually those miracles are not miracles. Or at least there’s no proof they’re miracles—I’ll be more cautious. So the question is: who says that a person who experiences such a thing really experienced a divine revelation? Maybe it was, I don’t know, some fantasy, delusion, hallucination, things of that sort. So for that I want to take an example, or a few examples. Kierkegaard, in his book on the binding of Isaac called Fear and Trembling, this actually begins from rabbinic midrashim. I don’t know whether he relied on rabbinic midrashim, but it’s certainly possible that he knew them; I don’t know. But he writes there that he has a difficult question about Abraham our forefather: why did Abraham believe that the command God gave him to bind Isaac was not some kind of hallucination? He had two reasons, two kinds of good reasons, to assume or conclude that it was. First, it is blatantly immoral. Altogether, God expects moral conduct from us, and this is blatantly immoral. So if I hear an immoral, senseless, meaningless command like that, why isn’t it more sensible to assume that this is some sort of hallucination? Second, it simply contradicts promises that God had given him. The first problem is moral; the second problem is logical. God told him, “Through Isaac your offspring shall be called.” Isaac still had no children at that stage. If I kill Isaac, then how will my offspring be called through Isaac? Here is the proof that the command to bind Isaac is a hallucination. It cannot be a divine revelation. And therefore Abraham, standing before this command, should have decided very clearly that this was some kind of hallucination, something—I don’t know what—some demon seized him, I don’t know exactly what, but clearly this can’t be true. And Abraham—“Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey.” The Sages say how quickly and energetically he did it, even though this is the hardest act a person could imagine being required to do; Abraham did it with complete resolve. It was clear that Abraham was convinced he had received a command from God. And the question is why. Yes, later on I’ll bring David Hume’s argument against testimony; basically he puts up two alternatives here. One possibility is that this was a hallucination; the other possibility is logically impossible. Now, hallucination may be unlikely. But if something is logically impossible, that is even less likely. Therefore the solution, the way out—that this was a hallucination—is the more plausible way out. So therefore the conclusion I would have expected Abraham to draw is that this was a hallucination, period, and to reject it outright. But he didn’t do that. And the question is why. Rabbinic midrashim—these are the midrashim that say that the evil inclination came to Abraham, and there are all kinds of rabbinic midrashim about various things that disturbed him on his way to the mountain, including arguments that this was not and could not be, and all kinds of things of that sort. Anyway, this point about Abraham—incidentally, as a result of this, as a result of this, there are indeed commentators—I once saw this in an article by Ravitzky—and he claims these are commentators from Eastern communities generally, from the eastern camp, who argue that Abraham failed the test of the binding of Isaac. Basically, he should not have agreed. God expected conscientious refusal from him. Okay? And he failed. To me this is totally absurd. Meaning, the Torah itself praises him for what he did—self-sacrifice—and because of the binding of Isaac we ask God for things on the merit of the binding. I don’t understand how commentators can say that Abraham failed the test of the binding of Isaac. At a stretch I could maybe say: his self-sacrifice is very positive, and for that he deserves reward. The implementation of that self-sacrifice, that he did it through killing Isaac—that really is a failure. Well, I don’t know, maybe that’s two separate legal categories like Rabbi Chaim. I don’t know. Sounds dubious to me. In any case, it’s a good question. If I have two interpretive options—you know, Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four says to Watson: if we have two possibilities, one highly improbable and the other impossible, then we have to accept the highly improbable possibility. Because once we have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains must be true, even if it is completely improbable. Right? Meaning we always have to compare alternatives. So true, to say that I’m having hallucinations when I’m convinced this is the truth is not plausible. But when something is a logical contradiction, that is certainly not plausible—less plausible. And if God tells me, “Through Isaac your offspring shall be called,” He can’t then tell me afterward to bind Isaac and kill him. That’s a logical contradiction. So the question is why Abraham accepted this command, accepted the credibility of this command. Do you understand the connection to us? The connection to us is basically this: people see a divine revelation. Who says it’s true? Now notice, in Abraham’s case this is a harder question. Because at Mount Sinai, why assume it’s a hallucination? First, there were lots of people there. There were lots of people there. Second, I have no reason to assume it’s a hallucination. Maybe it is, but why assume that? In Abraham’s case, first, he was alone; second, he even had reason to assume it was a hallucination. It’s a logical contradiction, it’s against morality. So the obvious conclusion is that it was a hallucination. Therefore there the difficulty is much stronger than regarding Mount Sinai.
[Speaker G] Now I want to suggest—maybe he also didn’t want it to be a hallucination?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, he was biased. He should have decided it was a hallucination, but he was biased. So that’s the interpretation we mentioned, that he failed.
[Speaker G] Maybe he didn’t want it to be a hallucination? It was something he had dreamed about his whole life. Rabbi Akiva says, “All my life I was troubled—when will it come to my hand so that I may fulfill it?”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He dreamed his whole life of sacrificing Isaac? But of sacrificing himself, sacrificing—
[Speaker G] Himself and Isaac is almost the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you understand that what you’re saying is actually the interpretation that Abraham failed the binding of Isaac in a very serious way? Because basically there wasn’t any command here at all, and the man took what he had expected his whole life and murdered his child.
[Speaker G] Heaven forbid, I didn’t mean to say that. Rabbi, after all, says this contradicts what was promised to him and it contradicts morality. I’m saying no—it really doesn’t contradict either morality or Abraham our forefather. Morality is not utilitarian and not for humanity, but for the service of God. And here you have an opportunity of certainty that God revealed Himself to you. I don’t know how it’s certainty, I don’t have a solution, but somehow it’s certainty, so Abraham jumped at that opportunity that at last he could realize what Rabbi Akiva dreamed about all the time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, Abraham—Rabbi Akiva dreamed all the time of sanctifying God’s name when they kill him against his will, but not of killing his son just because there is some strange command that is supposed to be a hallucination. And if this thing is supposed to be a hallucination on the level of logic, then the fact that I dreamed of it all my life is not a reason to accept it. That’s a failure. And if you tell me there’s no reason to assume this is a hallucination, I don’t understand. If God told me that through Isaac my offspring will be called, and now He tells me to kill him—is that not a logical contradiction? It’s a logical contradiction. So the conclusion is that this did not happen, that He is not commanding me. What does it matter that I dreamed all my life of killing Isaac? It changes nothing here, or of serving God. And besides, I also don’t accept the claim that combines morality with religious service, but that’s already a different discussion.
[Speaker F] But once upon a time wasn’t it customary to sacrifice to Molech or whatever? We’re looking at it with today’s morality, but back then maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re going back again, you’re going back again to the idea that Abraham failed the binding of Isaac. You’re only saying it was justified that he failed, because in his eyes the command wasn’t so far-fetched, since in his day they sacrificed children to Molech.
[Speaker F] But practically speaking, he failed because it was a hallucination.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the one hand—
[Speaker F] On the logical side I can say that in the end maybe God changed His mind. Once He said one thing—after all, we’ve seen “and He regretted,” and so on. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then let’s wait a bit. Maybe He’ll also change His mind about telling me to kill Isaac.
[Speaker F] Anything is possible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I would wait a little longer. I wouldn’t get up in the morning and saddle my donkey. Well, “God is not a man, that He should change His mind,” right? In short, there are many difficulties here; it seems to me hard to escape them. Let me bring a series of a few examples in order to answer this question. Good. These examples are taken from—yes, copyright. I constructed the first two; the third example I heard from the Chozer of Chabad. Rabbi Yitzhak Kahan once stayed at the yeshiva in Yeruham, the hesder yeshiva, and I hosted him there because Rabbi Lichtenstein—I mean Rabbi Lumentzweig—wasn’t there, and he spoke there before the students in the study hall and brought the third example that I’m going to bring. But I’ll begin with the first. Two people: Reuven, blind from birth, and Shimon, sighted. Okay? Shimon looks at a clock and tells Reuven that the time is now two in the afternoon. So Reuven says to him, listen, maybe you’re mistaken, maybe it’s not two, maybe it’s five-thirty. But I see the clock; the clock says two. Reuven says to him, I don’t know, I don’t see any clock—Reuven is blind, right?—I don’t see any clock. Maybe your eyes are misleading you altogether. So in such a situation, can Shimon convince Reuven that Reuven is wrong, meaning that the time really is two? I don’t see a way to do that. If Reuven doesn’t know the concept of sight, there is no way to convince him that when I see, I have certainty about what I see. On the other hand, it’s clear that Reuven’s skeptical doubts will not penetrate me. I know what sight is, and if I see that it’s two o’clock, then it’s two o’clock. Right? Meaning, I won’t relate to Reuven’s skepticism, because I see. That’s one skeptical claim, pure and simple. That’s the first case. Second case. Reuven and Shimon, at two-thirty—half an hour after the previous story—take off for Bolivia. In the Bolivian forests, in the middle of the forest there, they’re on some trek in the middle of the jungle, and they arrive at some little Indian hut there, and they see hanging on the wall a very expensive painting by Marc Chagall. Wait, they see?
[Speaker F] Reuven is blind.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shimon sees.
[Speaker F] Reuven is blind—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I say Shimon sees, not they see. So Shimon says to him, listen Reuven, you won’t believe it, here in the middle of the Bolivian jungle, where no white man has ever set foot, there is an expensive painting by Marc Chagall hanging here. Reuven says to him, are you crazy? Have you lost your mind? You probably took some hallucinogenic plants here. Meaning, this can’t be. What are you talking about? How would a Marc Chagall painting get here? Does Shimon have a way to convince Reuven that he is right? Again, no. And this time Reuven even has reason to doubt Shimon’s eyesight, because it’s not logical that a Marc Chagall painting would be in the middle of the jungle in Bolivia. Right? Will Shimon cast doubt on his own sight? Of course not. The fact that Reuven certainly won’t accept what he says is perfectly fine—but I see. I don’t know how the picture got here, but I see it is here. So it’s clear to me that there’s a picture here. I have no way to convince Reuven, but it’s obvious that there’s a picture. That’s the second case. The third case I heard from Rabbi Yitzhak Kahan. The third case: Reuven and Shimon go into a sealed room, with no windows, no doors except for one door—no windows, no entrances, nothing. The room is packed with furniture, full of furniture. Well, interesting. So Reuven feels around, Shimon looks, and they become convinced that the room is full of furniture. They go outside, lock the door, and both sit on chairs at the entrance. Fine. After an hour, Shimon gets up to stretch a bit, goes back into the room—
[Speaker F] There’s no furniture.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is astonished: the room is empty, not a single piece of furniture inside. Now notice: there are no windows, no doors, and the only door there is was locked and they were sitting by the door. Okay? He says to Reuven, listen Reuven, you won’t believe it—the room that an hour ago was full of furniture is now completely empty. Reuven says, all right, now this really requires hospitalization. Meaning, are you insane? I have logical proof that you’re mistaken. This is no longer Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall, what you said was improbable. Here what you’re saying is a logical contradiction. An hour ago the room was full of furniture. Nothing entered or left the room. We ourselves physically blocked the entrance, and now you’re telling me it’s all empty? What, did the furniture evaporate? It can’t be; therefore clearly it’s not true. And now I ask you again the question: of course Shimon won’t be able to convince Reuven that he’s right, that the room is indeed empty. Let’s say Reuven doesn’t feel around, okay? He also lost his sense of touch during that hour. This poor guy is gradually disappearing. Now the question is what Shimon will say. Will Reuven’s doubts succeed in making Shimon say, well, maybe this is a hallucination? Maybe the room is actually full of furniture and something happened to me, something malfunctioned here. It seems to me that usually, no. Why? Because Shimon says, I saw. When Reuven says to him, listen, I have logical proof that you’re hallucinating, that this is a hallucination—it can’t be that you saw it, this is a logical contradiction—that will not convince Shimon. It won’t convince Shimon, and rightly so. Not because Shimon is fixated, because for decades he’s been obsessed with the room needing to be empty, so he’s also having hallucinations, like the suggestions raised here before. No. Someone who really sees that the room is empty and trusts his eyes says, this requires further analysis, like Rabbi Akiva Eiger; he’ll move on to the next Tosafot. It requires analysis. But what can I do—I see that the room is empty. So it’s clear to me that the room is empty. Reuven’s questions are wonderful questions; we’ll conduct research, establish a commission of inquiry, I don’t know what. Maybe we’ll never discover an answer, but don’t tell me stories—the room is empty. I saw it. Now what does that mean for us? I go back to Abraham our forefather. God revealed Himself to Abraham and said to him, “Take your son, your only one, whom you love, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains.” Now we—I don’t know, I don’t know about you, I’ve never been a prophet. Okay? I don’t know, I’ve never encountered, never experienced, the voice of God revealing itself to me and speaking to me. I don’t know what that looks like. So when I hear this report from Abraham, I would tell him exactly what Kierkegaard says: tell me, are you crazy, Avraham’le? Obviously it’s a hallucination. It’s a hallucination—after all, God told you, “Through Isaac your offspring shall be called.” Yes, it’s like the furniture, right. There’s no doubt that you experienced some kind of—I don’t know what—hallucination. Did Abraham become convinced by me? The answer is no, because he heard God. When a prophet hears God, when God reveals Himself to a person, apparently there is some kind of certainty that this really is revelation. As someone who has never experienced it, you won’t be able to convince me. Fine. But obviously you yourself will not doubt what that revelation is telling you, just as I don’t doubt what I see. So therefore the counterarguments can perhaps help someone who didn’t experience this himself, and also doesn’t know what it is to experience such a thing. But someone who did experience it—apparently, at least that’s what he says—apparently the experience is so strong and so self-evident that it is clear to him that it is true, and all my logical arguments that it’s a contradiction or not a contradiction don’t interest him. It’s true. So this requires analysis—what will happen with “through Isaac your offspring shall be called,” or all kinds of things of that sort—but don’t tell me it isn’t true; you won’t convince me. Okay. Now basically, the claim is that in such a situation, even if we arrive at a logical contradiction, at something impossible, it may be that the immediate certainty—that it is simply clear to me that this is true—means I will accept it, despite enormous difficulties, because it is clear to me that it is true. Now notice, I was not at the event—I return to Mount Sinai; that’s where I’m coming from. I was not at Mount Sinai, but those who were at Mount Sinai claim that they experienced a divine command, that God revealed Himself to them, at least in the first two commandments, and told them what He told them. Now I have all kinds of questions—maybe it’s not certain. I don’t think there’s a logical contradiction there, but it’s like Marc Chagall, let’s say, at most. It’s not a logical contradiction, but maybe it’s improbable, or something supernatural, or something like that. And then I say, fine, but I understand why they accept it. The question is whether I can accept it. That is what takes me from the first point—how tradition is formed—to the chain. I said there are two points to check in a tradition that reaches me: first, the moment of formation, from the standpoint of those who received the tradition at the beginning—can they themselves be convinced that they did indeed experience divine revelation? And the second stage is, when they pass the tradition on to me—can I believe that tradition, or should I say no, this is so far-fetched that some distortion probably entered the process of transmission, and therefore something happened in transmission? So up to now I dealt with the first part, basically the encounter with God. But now the question remains: fine, but I am thousands of years later—who says it was passed on to me correctly? But here I want to draw your attention to what I said earlier. Just one second—how am I supposed to relate to such a tradition? If this thing were truly utterly implausible, there would definitely be room to say: look, you yourself, being sighted, experienced it, so maybe I understand that you believe God revealed Himself to you. I, in this respect, am blind—who says I believe you? Maybe from my standpoint it’s a hallucination, because it’s highly implausible. But here, notice: who says it’s highly implausible? On the contrary, I claim that from philosophical reasoning it comes out that revelation is likely to happen, even if no testimony of revelation had reached me. So here the previous argument I made comes in. Meaning, the basic empathy I acquire for such a tradition is very important, because this tradition is very problematic in the eyes of the atheist, and therefore he says: if it’s problematic, then the more logical conclusion is that a distortion entered somewhere along the way. But from my standpoint, even if this tradition had not reached me, it is very reasonable and expected that this should happen; and now this tradition reaches me, so why assume it’s a distortion? So apparently that really is what happened. And assuming I did not experience divine revelation, but here stand many people who say they did experience it and they pass that tradition on to me—okay, there need to be good reasons for me to cast doubt on that. So therefore this point is not a necessary point, but it goes back to the question of the initial empathy, and that is why the connection between the different parts of the argument is so important: the philosophy, the expectation that there would be revelation, and the tradition that finally reaches me that there really was revelation. Okay.
[Speaker I] But how do you know the tradition is really reliable? I mean, maybe those who say that’s what they saw actually never said that, maybe—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, that is exactly the question: why not assume there was some distortion somewhere along the way? So I’m saying, maybe there was a distortion—we’ll talk about that in another moment, I’ll continue on that—but first of all, what is my starting point? My starting point—after all, why do you assume… Let’s go back to the three stories. The first story was: I tell you it’s two in the afternoon, and you’re blind, you don’t know there’s such a thing as a clock and seeing a clock. There I think you can accept what I tell you if you know me as a reliable person. So true, you’ve never seen, but I see, and I tell you it’s two o’clock. The second story already speaks of Marc Chagall, which is very improbable—not logically contradictory, but very improbable. There you already have a good reason not to accept what I tell you, depending on how improbable the story is in your eyes. In the third story, where it’s a logical contradiction—I understand that you won’t accept what I’m telling you. Now let’s try to place the story of revelation on the axis of those three examples. Where is it located? In my opinion, it is located somewhere between example one and two, because in the end I’m speaking from the perspective of a believer, not from the perspective of the atheist. From the atheist’s perspective it’s like the Marc Chagall story—not a logical contradiction, but completely improbable. But from my perspective, on the contrary—even if no tradition had reached me, I think it is simply reasonable and expected that such a revelation would occur. Therefore when a tradition reaches me, it falls on fertile ground; it makes perfect sense to me. So therefore it is definitely somewhere between one and two, close to one. And if a person comes and tells me—listen, not one person; many people come and tell me in some ongoing tradition that this is what happened—then I accept it unless there are very strong arguments against it, because I have no reason to assume otherwise. If there were reasons to assume otherwise, then certainly there is room to doubt, because maybe there was a distortion along the way. But that is exactly why the discussion of the starting point is so important, meaning how you begin. And therefore to atheists it seems something self-evident that a distortion occurred here, but to me it seems self-evident that no distortion occurred, and therefore I don’t see any crushing argument here; we have to examine the claims themselves. But my starting point is that this business is overall reliable. I’m not talking about all the details and the pyrotechnics around it. Broadly speaking, that there was revelation and a command, and it reached me. Exactly what this included, whether things were added over the course of history—that’s already another story. But on the level of the principled story, okay? So now we need to discuss the arguments themselves. But the very structure that a tradition about revelation reaches me is not nearly as far-fetched as the atheists present it. On the contrary, in my eyes it is very plausible. And therefore the dispute with the atheists has nothing to do with the reliability of the tradition. The dispute is first of all that there is a difference between the stories.
[Speaker I] In the first story, I have direct testimony from Reuven that he himself saw it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You understand that tradition is direct testimony, one person from another? Do induction—or rather recursion, more accurately, recursion.
[Speaker F] Okay—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My parents testified to me, their parents testified to them, and so on and so on, and that’s how it reached me.
[Speaker B] I disagree, I disagree. There’s a game called broken telephone. One person speaks to the next, and the chance that by the hundredth person it will still be the same story approaches zero.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I think you’re missing something here.
[Speaker B] And if the last one is plausible, I’m not going to say, okay, this story is plausible, so surely that’s what the first one said.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me ask you a question. You played broken telephone, and in the end the tenth person got the sentence, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Okay? Now the atheist comes to you and says, leave it—the first person in the chain didn’t say anything; not that he said something else and it got distorted—he said nothing. It’s just some cry echoing through the generations. Would you accept that?
[Speaker H] No. Right, and that’s what I’m claiming.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m claiming there was speech at the beginning, and that’s what I said. It may have gotten distorted along the way; things may have been added, things may have gotten corrupted—all true. But the core story—there was an interaction, and there was an initial speech act that started the broken telephone—that I accept. And therefore my claim is not that everything we have today was indeed transmitted at Sinai. On the contrary, I say it was not. Obviously not, obviously not. I’m only talking about the core itself: there was a divine encounter, there was revelation, and He told us certain things. I don’t know exactly what. From there came some broken telephone. Okay? By the way, even in broken telephone, if I ask you: tell me, we concluded that the first person said something. Now I ask you: what did he say? And what reached you was the verse, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” You say, look, broken telephone—the chance that this verse is the exact one that was said is zero. Okay, so what do you say he said? You have no other source of information. So I say, if I had to bet, I would bet on “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” even though I know the odds are high that that’s not what he said—but it’s closer than some sentence you invent on the spot. Therefore I say the broken-telephone argument is not proof to the contrary, because I agree that what reached us is not what was said to Moses at Sinai. Completely. I’ve written books and articles about this. But I do not agree that there was no Mount Sinai. The question is what was said there—that’s an excellent question. If I have indications, then I am absolutely willing to disagree with what the tradition passed on to me, but if I have no indications, then what the tradition passed on to me is the least bad assumption—what can I do? I don’t have anything better than that, so I’ll assume that. But perhaps we’ll get to that later, in discussing distortions. Right now we’re talking about the core itself—that there was speech there at the first link in the chain. So notice, notice: in the end, the dispute between me and the atheist is not at all about the reliability of the tradition. It is always presented as though these are fantasists who believe all sorts of mystical traditions, and against them people say: these aren’t honest, because they believe a historical story about Napoleon but they don’t believe a story about Mount Sinai. Both sides are missing the point of dispute here. The point of dispute is not the reliability of the chain at all. The point of dispute is the question of how expected it is a priori that there would be such a story. If it were an expected story, even the atheist would accept that the tradition is reasonable. Everything he claims is that it is not reasonable because the story the tradition brings us is, in his eyes, unreasonable. And I, by contrast, say: if the story were very unreasonable in my eyes, I too would say the tradition is unreliable. The argument of the Kuzari is pretty dubious in my view. But since I claim that the story the tradition brings me is reliable, then why cast doubt on the tradition? You see that suddenly the exact opposite is happening from what both believers and atheists assume. They say to me: look, leave it—about God and philosophy we agree; that’s an unnecessary argument. Let’s talk about the religious God, about obligation, about Sinai, about the Torah, about Jewish law. I say: leave it—that’s not the argument. The argument is not about the religious God. The argument is about the philosophical God, which in the end gets translated into an argument about whether to accept the tradition about the religious God. But it starts there, and therefore the whole philosophical move we’ve made until now is very relevant. Even though every time—just now I posted a column on my website with someone, yes, who knows him of course, who commented on my podcast and argued that there is no connection between the religious God and the philosophical God. That the philosophical God—my arguments convince him—but what does that have to do with the religious God? Since he had studied philosophy, he spoke about a different discourse, I don’t know, a different meaning of the discourse. In my opinion, that’s all nonsense. But this disconnect is the daily bread of many people, including believing people. I think it’s a big mistake. The whole dispute does not sit in atheism; it sits in deism. The dispute starts there, and therefore the philosophical discussion is very significant, even though I agree that the philosophical God is still far from the God of Mount Sinai. But that distance—there are philosophical steps that bridge it, that move me from the philosophical God to the religious God. And people ignore that path, which has not-bad arguments that move us from there to here. It is easy for them to agree about the philosophical God and argue about the religious God. They don’t notice that once you agree about the philosophical God, there are already not-bad arguments for getting from there to the existence of the religious God as well.
[Speaker H] But even if it’s the philosophical God, the atheist will tell you that revelation is improbable, it doesn’t make sense. And you assume it is reasonable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—why doesn’t it make sense? I don’t understand. What doesn’t make sense about it? God exists—you agree, right? So what doesn’t make sense about Him deciding to speak to me suddenly? What’s the problem? It doesn’t make sense only if you think there’s no such thing as God. I talked about this in previous classes when I discussed Russell’s celestial teapot. But if you think there already is a God, then someone says, look, and I also met Him. I spoke with Barack Obama—you remember the example I brought about Barack Obama. If someone thirty years ago had come to me and said, look, the United States has a black president named Barack Hussein Obama and he also passed Obamacare, the health-care law, I would have told him: and this morning I met Tinker Bell and she flapped her wings three times a second. Because the story of a black president of the United States thirty years ago—that was science fiction. That was Marc Chagall in Bolivia.
[Speaker H] But in the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), that was an approach of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—But after I hear and already know there is a black president of the United States, and now someone comes to me and says, look, I met him and he told me he’s going to pass Obamacare—fine, why not? I already know there is such a president, so maybe yes, maybe no. It’s like two o’clock. It’s like the sighted person telling the blind person, look, it’s now two o’clock. If you say there’s no such thing as a clock, it can’t be, it’s contradictory—you won’t accept what he tells you, that it’s two o’clock. But if all that is fine, and why not, it’s possible—then why not accept what he tells you? Fine, but God—here you have to accept something much more fundamental. Wait, he started. Wait, yes. I’m saying—
[Speaker I] that the God of deism, of philosophers, says there is a God who created the world. It doesn’t say that—you leap ahead, that if there is a God who created a world, He can and wants to speak with people. That too is a leap.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. You need to define what God is, in my opinion. I made that leap very explicitly today. It’s not a leap. I have reasons for every stage. I’ll do it briefly once more. Look: I reached the philosophical conclusion that there is a God. But I reached that conclusion in several different ways—in the first four talks, yes, the previous four parts of the series. And I reached the conclusion that He created the world, that He created it in such a way that people would arise in it, that He gave them free choice, and that He implanted morality within them. All that I reached through philosophical considerations. Now that means that God basically created us in order that we make decisions about what to do, and expects us to have a proper society. And now I ask myself: so why did He do that? Apparently for religious purposes, what I called earlier—because morality is not optional. But the religious purposes I do not know. So how will I know what I am supposed to do? And I have choice—that means it depends on what I choose to do—so I need to know what to do. So there’s no choice—or not no choice—but it is very likely that there should be revelation. So that really takes us, with reasonable arguments, from the philosophical God almost all the way to the religious God. Now all that’s needed is the tradition to tell us that this indeed happened. So it’s not true that the gap—of course the gap exists, but I bridged it. I showed by arguments how I move from here to there.
[Speaker B] I have another question. In my opinion, the chance that the Torah was transmitted word for word over thousands of years is almost like finding Chagall in the jungle or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying again: I agree with you. Once again you’re going back to broken telephone.
[Speaker B] Maimonides says that someone who doesn’t believe—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] believe word for word—
[Speaker B] that this is what we received—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ask Maimonides; I’m not Maimonides. My father’s name wasn’t—well, his name actually was Nachman, but I’m not even Nachmanides. Ask him; I’m not making that claim. I’m saying that the Torah was not given to Moses at Sinai the way we know it today. So Maimonides says I’m a heretic? Maybe. But that’s what I’m saying. So I accept the broken-telephone argument. But notice what it says and what it does not say. It says that the information that reached us is not necessarily the information—or rather certainly not the information—that was given to Moses at Sinai. But first, obviously something happened, because the first person in the chain did say something. And second, if I have no other indication, then this is the closest thing I have to the original message, so I go with it even though I’m not sure it’s right. On the contrary, I’m fairly sure parts of it are not right. I have nothing better than this; don’t expect more from me—I don’t have it. But I think this is good enough.
[Speaker F] Also, what exactly was given at Sinai? What are you hearing? So what was given at Sinai?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. But the tradition that reached me is the only tool I have to try to estimate what was there. So if I have certain indications—for example, if there is a contradiction within Jewish law—then I will not observe that, because the contradiction indicates there is an error here. But if there is something I don’t understand, and I only suspect it has been distorted, fine—but if I have no alternative, then this is the presumption, this is the default, so I will assume it is this. And since God does not make excessive demands of His creatures, I assume that if He understands that this is the best I had, then He will accept what I did; He won’t come to me with complaints. There’s nothing to do—I have no way of knowing what was really there.
[Speaker F] So I’m asking, does Shimon know how to tell me what was there? Who?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shimon. Who is Shimon?
[Speaker F] But isn’t the blind one someone who can tell me what happened in that revelation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shimon, the blind one, is the person who was at Mount Sinai. I’m asking: what are they telling us? What happened there? Reuven, the blind one, is the person whose son wasn’t there, but heard it from him. So when Reuven asks Shimon, Shimon will tell him what happened there, yes. He also knew what happened. Me, living thousands of years later, by now it’s already Reuven Shimon Reuven Shimon Reuven Shimon, lots of chains, and it’s a game of broken telephone. So here it’s certainly reasonable that distortions crept in, right. But those distortions—you have to understand—don’t mean all that much. Because first, the initial interaction really did happen. And second, as long as I have no other indication of what happened there, the most sensible thing is to go with the information I received, even though I assume distortions entered into it. I don’t have anything better than that—what can I do. But I—
[Speaker F] think that’s good enough. That too is what was transmitted at Sinai. So if revelation is so necessary, why only once? Let it happen every hundred years, every thousand years, and it would solve our problems.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What you’re raising now is a historical argument. Those who say that revelation… that traditions like these can arise spontaneously—one argument against that is that traditions like these do not arise spontaneously. And if there were such a natural process, then let’s hear of a few peoples who tell of some great event in which God spoke to the entire nation and the message was passed from generation to generation down to our own day over thousands of years. I don’t think there’s even one such example. And whoever says this is a natural process—it seems to me that this difficulty is actually on him, on the idea of a process of… but about that—
[Speaker F] I’ll speak in the next class—
[Speaker J] next one. Fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. We’ll stop here. I went a bit over time, so pardon me. Okay. Sabbath peace.
[Speaker F] Sabbath peace. I don’t think there’s even one such example. And whoever says this is a natural process—it seems to me that this difficulty is actually on him, on the idea of a process of—but about that I’ll speak in the next class. Fine. Okay. Okay, we’ll stop here. I went a bit over time, so pardon me. Okay, Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace.
[Speaker J] Rabbi, may I ask a question?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes.
[Speaker J] Both from the Torah and also a bit from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), we see that there are prophets who experienced revelation, and many times—especially the first time—they aren’t completely certain that this is really it. Moses our teacher, who kind of argues with the Holy One, blessed be He, Samuel who didn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Arguing doesn’t mean—
[Speaker J] that he has no certainty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Arguing doesn’t mean he has no certainty. He argues with Him. If he had no certainty, he wouldn’t do that—why would he argue? He argues because he’s certain about what the Holy One, blessed be He, said; he just doesn’t agree. Like Jonah—Jonah fled from the Lord, but he understood what was being demanded of him. Abraham argues with the Holy One, blessed be He, about Sodom, but he knows what the Holy One, blessed be He, is about to do. People disagree with the Holy One, blessed be He—even prophets. It happens.
[Speaker I] But regarding the binding of Isaac, there he did agree with the Holy One, blessed be He?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why did he argue there and not here? He did what he was commanded. He certainly wasn’t like Jonah, who ran away.
[Speaker J] Meaning, the certainty was in the connection itself, in the speech itself—he wasn’t confused.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s already that question—commentators discuss, I think, the question why concerning Sodom he argued with the Holy One, blessed be He, and concerning the binding he did not. There are various answers to this, some better and some less good. But yes, regarding the binding he did not—or at least it’s not described that he argued. Yes, you can say there are different levels of prophecy. You can say that Sodom concerned other people, so he allowed himself to be their defense attorney. But here it was a command directed at him. When the command is to me and I’m personally involved, I don’t argue—I carry it out. Fine, there are all kinds of explanations; you can think about it. Okay? Good, Sabbath peace. Rabbi? Yes. I didn’t—
[Speaker E] manage to fully understand the assumption that with the Holy One, blessed be He, there is some religious expectation of human beings. I understand the idea of crowning the Holy One, blessed be He as king, but from there to the prohibition against mixing species—that’s not clear enough to me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. That’s why I said: the term “religious” in this context only comes to mark expectations that are not morality. What exactly does that require? Maybe to eat the holy bread in church every Sunday. I don’t know—I’m not getting into that at all. That’s why, step by step, we’ll still get to Judaism, Christianity, and so on. At this stage I’m building theism in general out of deism. Afterward we’ll see whether it can also be focused more in the Jewish direction or not, and whether it needs to be. Okay?
[Speaker E] Thank you very much.
[Speaker H] A question—what—
[Speaker C] the Rabbi claimed that if you assume—you—
[Speaker H] accept that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world, then it also follows that it’s very plausible that He would reveal Himself to you. But that was the whole difficulty of all the… I mean, say, from the days of Maimonides, all the philosophers who disagreed with him argued that they accept that the world was created—sorry, they accept that God exists—but who says He revealed Himself to you? And that was their whole difficulty, exactly that leap from God exists to this. So why does the Rabbi say it’s plausible? I mean…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does the Rabbi say it’s plausible because they think it isn’t plausible? You have an ad hominem argument here. In other words, if someone says it’s not plausible, does that mean I have to provide an explanation because of that?
[Speaker H] No, no, obviously not. No, I’m saying: because the Rabbi claimed that the whole difficulty in accepting that there was a revelation is only because you don’t believe God created the world. But if you believe God exists, then it’s very plausible to accept it. I’m saying—they believed that. That was the prevailing approach in their time, that they believed that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So they were confused. What is this? What? I’m making a claim on the merits, not about particular people. The fact that there are confused people—why does that obligate me to provide answers? I’m saying I understand someone who argues with me if he doesn’t believe in God’s existence. But if he does believe in God’s existence, then this argument is a problematic one. Now, I’m not claiming people don’t make this problematic argument. Obviously they do; many people do. But I don’t agree that it’s a logical one.
[Speaker H] But I don’t understand how it’s plausible. I mean, here you’re also assuming that God now wants something from human beings, that He relates to them, speaks to them. That’s not something trivial.
[Speaker E] I mean, why would that be the next step?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said it’s trivial? I didn’t say it’s trivial, but I said it’s not impossible. And if a tradition reaches me and it’s also plausible, then I accept it. It may be that they didn’t accept the tradition for some other reasons and therefore didn’t think this way, but the very debate about the tradition really has to begin with the debate about deistic belief. That’s my claim. If there are people who don’t think this way, ask them why they don’t think this way.
[Speaker H] The Rabbi presented acceptance of the tradition as depending on how plausible the thing is. Meaning, say, atheists don’t accept it because they say it’s utterly implausible, and the Rabbi holds that it is relatively plausible, so I’ll accept it. Meaning, you always come with some prior assumption. So that assumption, that the Rabbi says it’s plausible—based on what? Based on what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, we’ve already been sitting with that assumption for about a year. I proved God’s existence in several ways, I reached the conclusion—from everything I explained earlier—I reached the conclusion that He created the world, created us, gave us free will, and expects us to be moral. Now I ask myself: so why did He do that? Presumably He has goals, and morality is not the goal. So how am I supposed to know those goals? I have free will, so I need to know—therefore presumably He has to reveal Himself. That’s it. That’s everything I’ve been explaining all along. Therefore it’s plausible that He would reveal Himself.
[Speaker H] Wait, but the component also enters here that He expects us to be moral. Suppose you believed in a God who created the world but doesn’t expect anything from you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, then each person should exercise his own judgment. In my view, that’s where I arrived. So that’s a dispute that should have arisen in the earlier part of the series, where I tried to prove God’s existence from morality. Fine. It may be that a person won’t accept that, even though in my view he’s making a bitter mistake, but if he won’t accept it, then fine—he’ll have to weigh his steps accordingly. I’m presenting the view as I understand it.
[Speaker B] What’s the purpose for which the Holy One, blessed be He, created all of humanity who are not Jews?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? What’s the purpose for which He created animals? Or trees? In this whole system, each part has some role, and each part does something different. There are beings that have no free will—not human beings, but inanimate things or plants or something like that. They of course fulfill the role that the Holy One, blessed be He, caused them to fulfill; they don’t need awareness or commandments or anything. There are people who have free will, but only a minimum is required of them—the seven Noahide commandments, or all kinds of very minimal things. And there is some kind of core from which more than that is required, and there you need revelation. This whole ensemble together has some role as a whole. Like in our head, like in our body—there is a head and there are hands and there are organs; so the role of the head is to think, and the role of everything else is to carry out what the head tells them. Now, I’m saying all this within the conventional conception that Judaism really is the head among the limbs. Later on I’ll challenge that a bit, but for now I’m presenting even that as a possible conception; that is, I don’t see a problem with this conception.
[Speaker J] So for you, the anchor of the Sinai revelation is the written text of the Written Torah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the tradition that accompanies it. The text and the tradition that accompanies it.
[Speaker J] In other words, let’s call it the folklore of the entire Jewish people, the story we tell.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Folklore” is already a word with a certain connotation—
[Speaker J] but I got it, okay, thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good. Sabbath peace.
[Speaker F] Sabbath peace.