Faith – Lesson 47

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, friends. A festive day today. It seems to me that today we’re going—this is my plan—to finish the series. It’s been running for about two years already, I think, or something like that. So what I want to do today, what I want to do today, is actually go in the opposite direction from what I’ve done until now. I want to explain what we get from serving God. Meaning, in the end, I think we’ve more or less reached the end of the road. I talked about proofs that God exists, the move to religious obligation, why specifically the Jewish religious obligation, and even the meaning of Jewish law and serving God. I said that when people ask me why serve God, the answer is just this: because it is the right thing. Whenever people ask why, they’re asking—or want to hear—what does it give. But the whole idea is that serving God is not done because it gives something, but because that’s what one ought to do. What I said last time about the concept of for its own sake—we also talked about this on previous occasions—the concept of for its own sake basically means that any justification for serving God, such a justification always assumes there is something self-evident through which you can explain why to serve God. But if the obligation to serve God is itself the self-evident thing, then through it you can explain other things, but it itself does not need to be grounded, does not need to be reduced to more fundamental things. That was basically the whole move up to now. But maybe, in order to conclude this move, let’s read Maimonides—really words like hammer blows. Maimonides in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance: “A person should not say: behold, I will do the commandments of the Torah and occupy myself with its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings written in it, or in order to merit the life of the World to Come, and I will separate from the transgressions about which the Torah warned in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah or in order not to be cut off from the life of the World to Come. It is not proper to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And only the ignorant masses, women, and children are made to serve in this way, out of fear, until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” Meaning, any motivation based on self-interest is service not for its own sake. And true, you need to explain to people that there is a World to Come and Gehinnom and all that, because it helps spur them on. But basically the sages are not supposed to serve because of that. They’re supposed to serve out of love. Something is happening here. I said something even more radical last time. I argued that no external motivation, even if it’s not self-interested motivation or interest in the narrow sense, is religious service. Like idolatry. We talked about someone who worships idols out of love or fear, who is exempt. Why is he exempt? Because even love and fear of God, which are ostensibly lofty aims, even they actually turn the service into service not for its own sake. Because in the final analysis, you are using serving God as a means to achieve something else. And the claim is that serving God has to be done—as Maimonides writes in the laws of idolatry—because “you accept Him upon yourself as a god.” That’s it. A god is someone whose word I do. No explanations. Explanations always assume there is some other reason that is self-evident and that has to explain this. No—this itself is what is self-evident. We talked about philosophical or ontic gratitude: because we were created by the Holy One, blessed be He, that itself obligates us, not because of explanations and not because of benefit. So even love and fear—no—not only interests in the sense of heaven and hell. So what is the love Maimonides is talking about here? So he says in law 2: “One who serves out of love occupies himself with Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, nor out of fear of evil, nor in order to inherit the good.” So then why? “Rather, he does the truth because it is truth, and in the end good comes because of it.” Meaning, you’re supposed to do it because it is the truth. Period. You see—he’s not only rejecting self-interested service in the sense of the World to Come, heaven and hell. No. Every—even love and fear in the sense he defines in the laws of idolatry, emotional love and fear—those too are foreign motives. Serving God is supposed to be because of accepting Him as a god, or in other words, doing the truth because it is truth. That’s it. Just that. You ask me why I do it? The answer is: just because. But notice, he continues with the next three words: “and in the end good comes because of it.” Meaning, there are benefits to serving God. But they are not supposed to be the reason why I serve Him. Meaning, these are two different things. The claim is not that there is no World to Come, no heaven, no hell, and that one gains nothing from serving God, but that these should not be the reasons why I serve Him. I serve Him because it is the truth. “And this level is a very great level, and not every sage merits it, and it is the level of Abraham our forefather, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called His beloved, because he served only out of love.” Now notice—Abraham our forefather searched for the Holy One, blessed be He. He did not know of His existence, found Him, and fell in love with Him. The love spoken of regarding Abraham our forefather is not emotional love. It is doing the truth because it is truth. That’s how he defines love above: “rather, he does the truth because it is truth.” Meaning, this is not the ordinary concept of love. For example, in the laws of idolatry Maimonides writes that one who worships out of love or fear is exempt. But there he is talking about emotional love and fear. Here it is a different concept of love. This is love in the sense that I yearn for truth. I want the truth because it is the truth. Not because it gives me something, even in the sense of feeding the emotions—not even that. Rather because I know that it is the truth. And this really is a very great level. I talk to people, and after I tell them this thesis, and I at least feel that I’ve convinced them, they still say to me, okay, fine, so what? But still—why do it? Okay, it’s the truth, but if it doesn’t do anything, then why do it? So there is something in human motivation for which truth alone is not enough. Meaning, you need to feel that things have meaning. Once things have meaning, it may be that you’ll do it truly because it is the truth. But if you feel that it’s true, true—but it doesn’t do anything, it has no implication, it gives nothing, not to the world and not to me—then even if it’s the truth, why should I do it? This is an existentialist tangle, I would say, not a philosophical one, but still—we are human beings. Meaning, that’s why Maimonides says: “and in the end good comes.” Meaning, there is good, there is benefit, but that should not be the reason why we serve. “It is the level of Abraham our forefather, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called His beloved, because he served only out of love. And this is the level which the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it says: ‘And you shall love the Lord your God.’ And when a person loves God with the proper love, immediately he will do all the commandments out of love. And what is the proper love? It is that he should love God with a great and exceeding love, very strong, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is found to be preoccupied with it always, like one sick with love, whose mind is never free from love of that woman, and he is preoccupied with her always, whether sitting or rising, and even while he eats and drinks. More than this should the love of God be in the hearts of His lovers, preoccupied with it always, as He commanded us: ‘with all your heart and with all your soul.’ And this is what Solomon said metaphorically: ‘for I am sick with love.’ And the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” Now here there’s a point—I think we talked about it, I’ll say it briefly. Seemingly Maimonides here is indeed talking about emotional love. He says he is always preoccupied with it, like love of a woman, which is the opposite of what I described before, doing the truth because it is truth, which sounds terribly intellectual and cold. Here Maimonides says no—preoccupied with it always like love of a woman, meaning the whole heart is involved, and so on. I think that’s not correct. Maimonides says: “the entire Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” So people think that metaphor means that the love described in the Song of Songs is not between the beloved woman and the lover, but between Israel and the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, the metaphor and the thing meant are the parties involved in the love. Yes, the lover and the beloved—there it’s a man and a woman, but the thing meant is the Jewish people and the Holy One, blessed be He. I claim that even the concept of love between them is itself metaphor and thing meant. Not only who loves and who is loved, but the love itself is a metaphor. Because he speaks of an emotional metaphor, emotional love, but it is a metaphor for the philosophical love he spoke about above—doing the truth because it is truth. Meaning, the metaphor and the thing meant are not just to change the Jewish people into the woman and the Holy One, blessed be He, into the lover, but the loving relationship itself described in the Song of Songs is also part of the metaphor. Because we are not talking about emotional love, and that’s obvious, because one law earlier he described love as doing the truth because it is truth. Meaning, this is one law right after the previous one. That’s why many times we make a mistake: we take a metaphor and compare it to the thing meant in all parameters. But no—a metaphor is always chosen because it resembles the thing meant in some important parameter. That does not mean that every detail in the metaphor is also true of the thing meant. Here the metaphor—it comes to say that the intensity of the love, and how much it occupies me all the time, so that there is not a moment when my heart is free of it, like a lover and like two partners who love each other—that is exactly what should exist in relation to the Holy One, blessed be He, but not in the sense of the emotional content of the love. Rather, that too should be intensive and guide you always and at every moment, so that you think of it—yes, “in all your ways know Him” and “I have set the Lord before me always.” So the metaphor is everything except the emotional dimension. It is not correct to transfer from the metaphor to the thing meant—and again, it may be that there are people for whom there is also an emotional dimension in love of the Holy One, blessed be He. I’m certainly not claiming that’s invalid. I’m only saying that that is not the commandment. Meaning, if it happens, then fine, but that’s not what is being talked about. What is being talked about is doing the truth because it is truth. If in addition you also feel love toward the true thing and you do it out of identification, great—but that is not the requirement. Fine, that’s an important point. Now why am I introducing all this? Because here we are always walking along this tension, and I encounter it with so many people, that almost every time—or not every time, but many times—that I meet people, it’s the same tension. I tell them this: why serve God? Just because—that’s what is right. Okay, I understood, you convinced me—but why should I do something if it gives me nothing? So this is a very delicate point. So people always explain to others, they always explain to people: no, this is the Jewish home, Sabbath candles, come stay with us for a Sabbath, see how beautiful it is and how much you gain from it—warmth and family feeling or I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. And that always amused me, this whole thing. Meaning, if he doesn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then he’ll sit with me by Sabbath candles? What do you want from my life? Meaning, if you believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, then you should do it even without the warmth and the benefit. If you don’t believe in Him, then why would you do it for the candles? It doesn’t—it’s not logical. But at some point I understood that human beings are complicated creatures, and you need to give them some tangible benefit, even if in the end your demand is that they should serve not because of the benefit. But the fact that there is benefit gives them at least motivation to do what they already know is true. It’s not that they don’t know. But often, in order to fuel me, to get me to do what I myself understand is true, yes, you do need to place some benefits there. That’s why there is a World to Come and Gehinnom and “in the end good comes,” what Maimonides says. Wait, I’ll mute because there are noises here. Maimonides says, yes: “to do the truth because it is truth, and in the end good comes.” Now, “in the end good comes” is built in. You probably need to give that to human beings, because without there being some value that I know about or understand or something like that from my action, I won’t do it even if it is true. But that doesn’t mean that after I understand that benefit, I’ll do it because of the benefit, because that is service not for its own sake. Two different things. This whole matter is very delicate. The penny dropped for me not long ago. I kept not understanding this thing, it always frustrated me, and I always thought, what are these people—like children and women and the little ones that Maimonides writes about here? I’m telling you this is the truth, you were convinced, so that’s it—what else needs explaining? Meaning, no no, but but why should I do it? So what if it’s the truth—why should I do it? And there’s something here—it’s like, think about morality. In morality too it’s like that. After all, when we talked about the proof from morality, I said that the fact that an act benefits other people is a fact. Meaning, if I benefit them they will feel good, right—that is a factual claim. But there is the ought-is fallacy. Even if they feel good, even if that fact is true, that still doesn’t create obligation. Fine, they’ll feel good—so what? Why am I obligated to make someone feel good? Therefore morality must be done because it is moral, that’s all. Like I talked about the analogy between morality and serving God in terms of for its own sake—that for Kant moral action is basically for its own sake, in order to be moral, not in order to achieve results, not even good results, that people will feel good or that things will be better—not even that. You need to do it in order to be moral. So what does everyone say? Wait, what do you mean, in order to be moral? If there’s no one on the other side who in the end will feel good, then why should I do it? Fine, it’s true and moral and important and necessary and real, but why should I do it if there are no consequences? I say there are consequences, but still you are not supposed to do it because of the consequences—but consequences need to exist so that a person will nevertheless have some motivation to do it even though he knows it is true. It’s unrelated. And even truth—why should I do it if there are no consequences? So here we’re walking on a very thin line, to explain why there are benefits, but on the other hand one doesn’t do it for the benefits. Meaning, in the end, “from not for its own sake one comes to for its own sake,” and that’s it. The depth of the Sages’ words, I think—that from not for its own sake one comes to for its own sake. Meaning, it’s not just some psychological process or another, but what I described here. You need a dimension of not-for-its-own-sake, meaning to show that there is some benefit in the thing, so that you will do it indeed for its own sake. Not that following the not-for-its-own-sake the for-its-own-sake will come—it comes together. Only in order to serve for its own sake, you need it to be clear to you that there is also meaning here not for its own sake. And then you will do it immediately for its own sake. Not as a process: you begin not for its own sake and slowly move to for its own sake. No. If you understand that there is benefit, that already enables you now, the moment you understand it, to do it for its own sake. Okay, that is the introduction—or apology—for what I’m about to say from here on. What I’m about to say from here on is specifically to focus on the benefits.

[Speaker B] And that connects to the commandment of love, whether we define it this way or that way, but it either exists or it doesn’t. How can you command an emotion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, as for commanding love, that’s a question the medieval authorities (Rishonim) already asked, and I claim that indeed the love we are commanded about is not emotional love, but doing the truth because it is truth. And that can be commanded. If you’re talking about emotional love, then one can discuss it, although I think even emotions can be commanded, but that’s more delicate. In any case, our topic here is not the commandment to love God, so I’m not going into that here. I want to finish the whole move today, so I’m moving a little quickly. So this introduction was meant to tell you that what I’m going to say from now until the end of this lecture is all benefits of serving God—what serving God gives us—and all of it is said under a warning label: these are not supposed to be the reasons for which one serves God. There are benefits, I will describe them, but those are not the reasons why one ought to serve. But it is very important to understand that there are benefits, because as I said before, otherwise we probably also won’t do—or won’t manage to do—the service for its own sake. So that’s the apology, and from here I want to move on to the points themselves. I’ll put it briefly. I see five basic benefits in serving God. None of them, by the way, is the World to Come. Again, because I’m not talking about that, those are the obvious things. I want to talk about five benefits. I noticed some time ago—actually several years ago—that there is a certain difference in religious discourse between Haredi society and Religious Zionist or modern religious society. A difference in discourse—without now agreeing or disagreeing with whichever side you identify with, that’s another matter—but there is such a difference. In the Haredi world, the discourse of serving God is focused on the World to Come. You need to get the maximum World to Come, minimum Gehinnom. Everything is focused on the spiritual world, on what this whole story produces, what it will do for us. By contrast, in the Religious Zionist or modern religious world, the discourse is about repairing the world here. Meaning, to serve God because the world ought to look like this. Otherwise. Some say more moral—I don’t agree with that, I don’t think serving God is so that the world will be moral—but the focus is on repairing society, the world. The goal is here. I have almost never heard talk of the World to Come in a Religious Zionist or modern religious group. Nobody talks about it. Heaven and hell simply are not part of the language there, they don’t appear at all. The focus is on this world. There is something very deep about this in my eyes, and here I am indeed expressing identification and not just giving an anthropological description. Rather, I think there really is here a much deeper concept of for-its-own-sake. This concept of for-its-own-sake says that basically I think a world in which people serve God is a world that is, in itself, more repaired. Not only in the sense of what we gain from it or what benefits there will be, even positive benefits. Something about repairing the world under the kingship of the Almighty is basically saying that turning the world into one that serves God is not a means to something else, it is the goal. That is what needs to be done. Not because as a result of that things will be better, and so on. But as I said, today I’ll speak like a Haredi. Like a modern Haredi, though. Meaning, I will explain what it gives us, but what it gives us is in this world, not in the World to Come. It’s a combination of the Haredi and the Religious Zionist. So I’ll try to explain what it gives us in modern terms, in the terms of our day, not in old terms. So look, I’ll divide it into five sub-sections. One, it gives us a firm basis for morality—that I’ve already said, so I’ll do that briefly. The second thing: it gives us the possibility of rational action. The third thing: it gives us personal expression. I have the possibility to express myself, individually. Fourth thing: it gives us the possibility of meaning. And the fifth thing: it gives us the possibility of Jewish identity. These are the five sections. I think that in all these sections there is a unique benefit in commitment to serving God. And notice, all these benefits are basically completely modern values, not connected to religion at all. All these benefits simply mean this: you can be a more complete person by modern standards only if you are religious. That is basically the claim—which is usually not what I think, not what one hears in discussions in this context. I’m always apologizing for why I do this. But these are the five sections. I’ll start from the beginning. The basis that turns morality into something firm—that’s the first thing. So we talked about the fact that without belief in God there is no firm morality. And I explained: that does not mean there are no people who don’t believe and nevertheless behave morally. Of course there are. I’m not at all sure there are fewer such people than among believing people. These days I often feel it’s more—not only that it isn’t less—but unfortunately. But I’m not talking about moral behavior as such, but about the basis that gives morality validity. Not in the practical sense. In the practical sense, non-believers also behave morally. But in my opinion they are not consistent. There is a hole there in their philosophical worldview. Their commitment to morality is based on a vacuum or on an implicit belief. We already talked about this. And in that sense, I, as someone who feels one needs to be grounded—my conduct, or the values according to which I act, need to be grounded, firm—then first of all belief in God and commitment to serving Him gives me that benefit. I have a firm, grounded moral doctrine. Okay? And I don’t just happen to act this way. Ask a secular person: why are you moral? He’ll say, I don’t know, that’s how I feel, because it’s good that way, because that’s how—he himself can’t really explain why, because there are no values that obligate you unless they have some objective source that legislates them, to which you are obligated. If you legislate for yourself—we talked about this, about Ari Elchon? Ari Elon—the rabbinic person and the sovereign person. A person who legislates his own values—those aren’t values; he just does what he wants. Fine, okay. Values mean being obligated to something. You cannot be obligated to yourself. These are phrases you hear today precisely because of the embarrassment of the atheistic world, which is trying to replace with man everything that once the Holy One, blessed be He, occupied on the field. You are committed to yourself, you are true to yourself—this is all nonsense. What does committed to yourself and true to yourself mean? You do what you want. Okay? There is such a thing as being committed to yourself and true to yourself in the sense that if there is an external source of values and you believe in it, now be committed to yourself, because you yourself believe in it, so go with it, really do what you believe. But all that comes only after there is a basis that gives those beliefs validity. But if there is no basis at all, then it’s simply something that—your fantasies—and now be true to your fantasies because they are your fantasies. You need something outside, in the objective world, that gives, that anchors the values you believe in, because without that they are simply floating in the air. And this is such a simple thing, and so many people miss it. For me this is worth a lot, this benefit. I don’t like acting according to things that are clearly just subjective fantasies. I don’t like it—not only because I don’t think it obligates in the philosophical sense. Remember, we are talking about the benefit this gives me. So I’m saying: the benefit it gives me is that I feel I’m working on a solid basis. That there is such an obligation—I know why I am obligated to it, it’s not just some social convention or subjective fantasies of mine of one kind or another, which in my eyes simply don’t hold water. And therefore, as I said, many times I think that people who say such things are actually expressing hidden faith. They simply are not willing to admit, even to themselves—not to me—that they believe. Because when you hold to binding morality, firm morality, you are in fact a believer. There’s no way around it. There is no other way to ground this matter. So that’s the first benefit. The first benefit is the firm basis for morality.

[Speaker C] A firm morality, but everyone has his own morality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone has his own morality—that’s another question. I didn’t say that, but also—

[Speaker C] That too has validity, but everyone can decide what morality is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His own—no, that’s what you’re saying. I’m saying neither that nor its opposite. I’m claiming that what I just said has nothing to do with the question whether morality is relativistic or objective. Those are two different questions. Even if morality is relativistic, and I have my morality and you have your morality, still, if it follows from the fact that I understand this to be what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects of me, and you understand that this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects of you—and even if I think that both I and you are right, because He expects different things from us, let’s say I’m a relativist—even then my obligation to morality is because the Holy One, blessed be He, expects or commands. Without that I’m not obligated even to subjective morality. Otherwise it’s just fantasies. Therefore I’m not making any claim here about objectivity or moral relativism. I’m an objectivist besides that, but I’m saying the point I just made has nothing to do with objectivism. Fine? That’s the first thing. The second thing—I want to talk about rationality. Look, one of the very special characteristics of this world of serving God, the religious world—and when I say religious I mean Jewishly religious, because not all religions are the same in this context—is the ability to be rational. There is something—by rational I mean not only in the sense I spoke about before, that the values by which I conduct myself have a solid basis, meaning they are not just fantasies—that too is part of the matter—but here I mean more the way of conducting oneself in practice, not the philosophical validity but the mode of conduct. A person who is committed to Torah and commandments is a person who checks his path according to various principles. He has principles, and he checks: does what I’m doing fit the principles, not fit the principles, is it permitted, is it forbidden, is it obligatory? Almost every step I take, I have principles or values according to which I need to decide whether to do it, how to do it, and so on. This is classic rational conduct. Rational conduct means conducting oneself according to a certain value system or a certain system of principles, and each time I check what follows from that system of principles and based on that I make decisions. Now, in a world where you don’t have a system of principles—

[Speaker D] Is it freezing for everyone? You skipped for about half a minute.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I’m saying is that rational conduct is a person’s conduct according to a certain set of principles. And again, I’m not getting into right now whether the principles are rigid or whether the deduction from the principles is softer; it’s not just rigid logic. That’s a different discussion. But there is a set of principles that governs me, according to which I conduct my life. That’s what it means to be a rational person. An irrational person is someone who reacts from the gut: here he does this, there he feels that, he does this, each time whatever he feels. A rational person is someone who can explain what he does, and can and should. When he makes a decision he can explain: I’m making this decision because the principles are such-and-such, I apply them to this situation in such-and-such a way, and therefore in my opinion this is what should be done in this situation. That’s called rational conduct. Now, in a world where you don’t have binding principles, there is no rational conduct.

Now understand, this is almost the opposite of what people usually think in the world: that secularity is rational conduct, atheism is rational conduct, and religiosity is irrational conduct. That’s nonsense. It’s exactly the opposite. It’s not even something you can argue about; it’s a misunderstanding. Because rational conduct—and I’m not getting into the question right now of whether these principles are rigid or imposed on me and I’m like some robot acting within them, which of course is not true—but that’s the feeling behind this distinction. But it’s not true. I have principles. Obviously I can choose how to interpret them, how to apply them, one worldview, another worldview, but in the end I have some set of principles according to which I conduct myself in the world. I tie the right shoelace before the left shoelace because there’s a rule that says that’s what should be done. And if I’m in a dilemma vis-à-vis something else because I need to hurry and I tie the right shoelace faster, then I’ll do it that way because the system of principles tells me this comes before that.

Now people see that and say, okay, so there’s this set of principles laid on you from above, and you’re just a computer doing calculations according to the principles about what to do at every stage, so that’s not called rationality. Not true—it is called rationality. Maybe it’s not called being free or liberated; that can be discussed separately. But it definitely is exactly the meaning of rationality: to conduct yourself according to a system of values, a system of values that I’m supposed to choose, to commit myself to, and then I conduct myself accordingly. But not that I have to legislate it—that’s not true; that’s Ari Elon’s mistake, and we already talked about that.

In any case, one of the things I think—one of the hardest things—together with this talk that supposedly being religious is irrational and being secular is rational, which in my eyes is simply Orwellian talk, because it’s exactly the opposite. It’s just that if you repeat a stupid slogan too many times, eventually you get convinced by it too. But one of the claims—hang on, I lost my train of thought for a second. Right, one of the things…

Let me give you an example. We once talked, a long time ago, about Jewish law and morality in another series. So I gave the example of the chemist Yisrael Shahak from Jerusalem, who was anti-religious and used to publicize all kinds of religious embarrassments. They passed by on the Sabbath, they didn’t save a non-Jew, they didn’t violate the Sabbath to save a non-Jew, and he was left to die. Or a priestly wife who was raped and was required to separate from her husband. Or all kinds of halakhic tragedies—sort of like Korach’s claims, except unlike Korach, his claims were also correct. Meaning, with Korach it was just sophistry. His claims were true claims. He really did correctly describe what Jewish law says: that one does not violate the Sabbath to save a non-Jew; and a priestly wife who was raped has to separate, and so on and so on. By the way, today they do violate the Sabbath, but according to Talmudic law they do not.

Now, I still remember the arguments around those things. I had arguments with various people, and they said to me: tell me, don’t you have a heart? This woman was raped, this priestly wife, and after the trauma she went through you also require them to separate? They love each other, they love the children, they want to stay together, and you require them to separate? You’re putting her through yet another trauma beyond the trauma she already suffered. So I kept trying to explain to them: the halakhic decisors—and of course I wasn’t the one making the decision there—but of course they have a heart exactly like you do. But they have religious principles, according to which a priestly wife who was raped cannot continue living with her priestly husband. Their hearts hurt exactly like yours, but they have to make a decision in light of their principles, and sometimes such a decision causes heartbreak and you have to overcome it.

Now, in a secular world this is inconceivable. If your heart hurts, then obviously that’s what should be done. That’s it—what more needs to happen to prove to you that that’s what should be done? The answer: the head, not only the heart. Meaning, you have to decide. Again, they don’t share this principle, that a priestly wife who was raped must separate from her husband, and that’s fine—that’s an argument that could be had. But my feeling there was that they weren’t arguing with me about commitment to Jewish law. Fine, you’re committed to Jewish law, we got it. But where’s your heart?

I mentioned—I think I mentioned then—once I saw some show, School of Music or one of those musical reality shows, I don’t remember which one anymore. And there was one judge there, one of the singers, Shlomi Shabbat. He was one of the judges. And then someone sang there, and he finished the song, and he was all emotional—you know, there it’s all emotion. Crazy emotions; it’s almost impossible to watch it, everything there is emotional. In any case, he says: look, my head tells me this, but my heart, my heart, my heart—that’s what he said there, and he stopped there. So I’m sitting there in front of the TV with my children, with some of my children, and I say: so, what did you decide in the end? The head says this, the heart says that—he didn’t say what he decided. So the kids died laughing. Why? Because it was obvious to them what he decided. Meaning, once you say, the head says this and the heart, the heart, the heart, then what? Okay, so you have a dilemma between the head and the heart—now what did you decide? No, you don’t even need to say it. Because if the head says this and the heart says that, then it’s obvious what you do: what the heart says.

But I say no: if the head says this and the heart says that, then obviously—the head. Why the heart? Do you understand? Now, by the way, I think in the new religious currents, those who are looking for existentialism, emotion, experience, they adopt this approach. They want, even in the religious world, for the heart to lead the head. And in my view that’s a completely wild reversal. Not because the heart is invalid, but because the heart isn’t supposed to determine; the head is supposed to determine.

And therefore the second benefit I want to talk about is that someone who is committed by religious commitment actually has the possibility of conducting himself rationally. And again, I’m not saying because of that you should serve God. If in your eyes the Holy One, blessed be He, does not exist, then what good does it do that you’re doomed to be irrational? Fine, you’re doomed to be irrational; you don’t believe He exists, what can you do. So it’s not really a reason why to serve God. If you do believe He exists—and you’re just looking for motivations for why to act accordingly—then here’s a good motivation: you have the possibility of being rational. You have the possibility of grounding for yourself why I do this, why I don’t do that. You can go with your system of principles and make decisions in light of that system of principles, which is exactly the definition of rational conduct.

Something secular people cannot do. They live under the illusion that they do it, but in my opinion it’s an illusion. They can’t really do it, because their system of principles is something they themselves legislated. And therefore, by nature, it usually begins in the gut. I feel this way, I feel that way, and therefore obviously if I feel this way then that’s what I need to do. And that’s true, because if you don’t have another external source that binds you—God, yes—then what else is there in the world? What I want, that’s what… Again, want not in the negative sense, to harm someone or do something bad, but even in the positive sense: I do the positive thing because I have a warm feeling to do it. That’s why I do the thing. So this is not criticism that people conduct themselves improperly. Rather, the mode of conduct, whether they conduct themselves properly or improperly, begins in the gut and not in the head. And in my opinion faith or religious commitment is almost the possibility—maybe not almost, the only possibility—to conduct yourself differently, to conduct yourself rationally. Did someone comment here?

[Speaker B] Yes. The secular person doesn’t claim that the religious person’s hard disk is defective, that it has a scratch. He claims that his database is simply wrong. Right? So what’s the argument here about who is rational and who isn’t? No, it’s built on logic… this religious logic, so clear and self-evident here on our table, it doesn’t create an airplane, it doesn’t create all the technological development. So okay, so here there is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do airplanes have to do with it? I don’t understand. The airplane also doesn’t create… the aeronautical engineer also doesn’t create prayer, so what? What does that have to do with anything?

[Speaker B] We’re trying to understand what is called rational.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, this is what’s called rational.

[Speaker B] Rational means—you’re saying secular people aren’t rational at all—so then what created all the real, physical things?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those real things have nothing to do with rationality. You’re talking about science. Science is not rationality. Science is rational conduct with regard to facts and understanding the world. I’m talking about conduct, about my decision-making, not about building airplanes. Decision-making—my values, my decisions about what to do at crossroads of choice, all sorts of things like that—making those decisions rationally. Not deciding whether the law of gravity is 9.8 g there or 10 there.

[Speaker B] No, that’s what I said. So I’m only saying that the secular person receives this on the basis of real data, what he sees, what exists, and so on and so on, and the religious world receives it on the basis of some faith…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, that’s really not true. This comparison is incorrect. Why? I do science just like the secular person too; what does it have to do with being secular? I make decisions in the scientific realm exactly like the secular person. There are data and I infer conclusions from them. He may be a better scientist, he may be a worse one, but that has nothing to do with his being secular. But in your value decisions—there a secular person has no system of rules according to which he conducts himself, and a religious person does. And again, I’m not arguing that because of that he’s mistaken and therefore he needs to be religious. If he doesn’t believe in God, then he doesn’t believe in God. This isn’t an argumentative claim, it’s not a polemical claim; it’s a descriptive claim. I’m simply saying: look, you have no possibility of conducting yourself rationally. And to the religious person I’m saying: look what benefit you get from religious commitment—it gives you the possibility of conducting yourself rationally. So it’s worthwhile for you. But obviously, without truly believing in God, this by itself can’t sustain religious commitment, no question. That’s why I prefaced all the introduction.

Okay, that’s the second point. So we have a firm basis for morality, we have rationality. The third point is a really subtle point, and again almost everyone in the world thinks the opposite. But the world is wrong.

There was once, when we lived in Yeruham, once a month there was a lecture by some famous figure—I don’t know, a politician, writer, academic—who came to give a lecture on the weekly Torah portion. People came from all the surrounding kibbutzim and from Be’er Sheva, various study groups would gather once in Yeruham, once in Mashabei Sadeh, once in Dimona, I don’t know, in all kinds of places. They wandered around there; once a month there was such a lecture. One time Amos Oz was supposed to come, and he couldn’t make it, I don’t know, he had something, so they asked me to replace him. And then I took the opportunity to polemicize with him in his absence—he wasn’t there—but I spoke there about a criticism I had of a very beautiful and powerful article he wrote, and in my opinion it was fundamentally mistaken. And you always have to be careful with articles that are powerful and beautifully written, because that often causes us not to examine their arguments, the logic of their arguments. And you have to pay close attention to that.

In any case, Amos Oz’s basic claim there, in short, was that the halakhic world is like a room created in the Big Bang, which is the giving of the Torah. The giving of the Torah created some sort of space, a kind of room. And over the generations they fill this room with furniture, and add more and more and more, and in the end they’re unwilling to remove any piece of furniture because we’re committed to everything that happened until now, until finally you’re suffocating, you have nowhere to move. And therefore Judaism froze. It has become completely fossilized in the later generations. And he claims that Hebrew literature and the new culture and all that—it has creativity, it has personal expression; that’s where the space is, the—I don’t know what to call it—the personal expression, let’s call it that.

And my claim against him was that he simply made a logical mistake. Again, this isn’t even an argument; it’s simply a logical mistake. Why? So the example I gave them was this. Suppose we have a chessboard, and on this board there are sixty-four squares. Now give me one pawn, yes? And tell me to place it somewhere on the board. How many possibilities are there to place it on the board? Sixty-four. Right? You can choose any of the sixty-four squares. Now they add a knight. Okay? Now arrange the board. How many possibilities are there? Sixty-four for the pawn, right? Times sixty-three for the knight. Okay? Meaning sixty-three times more possibilities than the number of possibilities you have for arranging a single pawn. Okay? Much more. Now they add a bishop. Sixty-four times sixty-three times sixty-two, yes? Sixty-four factorial divided by sixty-one factorial. Okay? That’s the number of possibilities, and so on. Up to where, of course? Until you finish all the black and white pieces, until you have thirty-two pieces. Sixteen black, sixteen white—that’s the maximum. Once you have thirty-three pieces, it starts to go down, right? It’s like a bell curve. It has to go down. Why? When you have thirty-three pieces, then you have thirty-one holes. Think about arranging the holes, not arranging the pieces. So you have thirty-one. The maximum is thirty-two.

Meaning, absurd as it sounds, the more furniture you have in the room, the greater the number of ways to arrange it—not smaller. A person who has no furniture in the room—and this is what I claimed about Amos Oz, that he is not creative, maybe in the literary sense yes but not in the value sense—why? He has no furniture in the room. He does whatever he wants. That’s not called being creative. To be creative means to act under constraints and choose a path or direction others didn’t think of. I find an interesting, fascinating, unique arrangement that expresses my way in a personal, authentic way, okay? But if there are no rules and no laws and nothing, then where is the creativity here? There is no creativity here. It’s just, do whatever you want. Okay.

Therefore one of the things I told them always bothered me was why in the world of art there are genre rules. Yes, a tragedy is written in three acts. The first act has five paragraphs. The second act has to end with a gun, and in the third act the gun from the second act fires. Okay? No, I’m joking. There are certain genre rules in music, in painting, in theater, everywhere. Why are you setting rules for me about how I’m supposed to create the work? Do whatever you want. Tragedy is when people cry, comedy is when people laugh; from there on, do whatever you want. And even that—do whatever you want. Write a tragedy, write a comedy, write whatever you want. Why do we need genre rules? The answer is: because only if there are genre rules can creativity be defined. If there are no genre rules, how will you define creativity? Creativity always means that you work under rules, under constraints, and you manage to produce something special that no one else has managed to produce until now. But if there are no rules and nothing, then you’re just doing whatever you want. Obviously it will be something no one has done until now, and it also won’t interest anyone. Since someone else is working with different rules or different things, what you do doesn’t interest him.

But if all of us are working within a given system of rules and I manage to arrange the rules, the furniture in the room, yes, in a different way that others haven’t thought of until now—wow, that’s really creative, interesting; he managed to do something others hadn’t thought of, something that solves problems for us and we didn’t succeed. Someone who has no furniture in the room has no problems to solve. Creativity is solving problems. And therefore the more the number of pieces of furniture in the room increases, the more creativity only intensifies and does not diminish, contrary to what Georges Bataille says. In a world where you have no binding rules, there is no creativity. Creativity exists only in a world where there is a set of rules to which you are committed. Then the question is whether you are creative enough to arrange them, interpret them this way or that way.

In other words, the third value that serving God gives us is personal expression. Everything is the opposite of what people think. People think that in a secular world there is personal expression, in a religious world there isn’t. It’s simply the opposite. Because people think all those Bnei Brak types all look the same from the outside, like Black people in Africa to someone looking from outside—he doesn’t see the differences between them. He doesn’t understand that when you go inside there, the differences are so great. It looks to him like differences in nuances because the whole system doesn’t interest him, so they’re dealing with nonsense. But within their world these are world wars. He thinks this way and he thinks another way, and I believe in my values and advance them, and you disqualify me and he excommunicates me and so on. Why? Precisely because there is something—there is furniture in the room. The argument is how to arrange it. And that’s a real argument. If there is no furniture in the room, you bring in whatever piece of furniture you want, I bring in two pieces, I take out three others. So everyone does whatever he wants; that’s not an argument. Do whatever you want. The fact that there is furniture in the room, that there are rules, means there is room for personal expression. If there were no constraints and no furniture in the room, there would be no room for personal expression.

Once someone—a penitent I was accompanying—came to me all agitated, and he said: why, why are there so many wars and quarrels in the religious world? Rabbis are always fighting. You don’t find such a thing in other places. Today maybe a bit more, but generally I’m not talking about political involvement and political fights, but in life, day to day. Why all these quarrels? I told him, look, I also often don’t like it, but look at the positive side of it. There is something to fight about. People believe in things, and they believe that what you’re doing is wrong. You arranged the furniture in the room incorrectly, and I arrange the furniture in the room differently, and I think you’re arranging it incorrectly. So we have quarrels, but that means that there is room for personal expression. I’m a Hasid, you’re a Mitnaged, he’s Religious Zionist, he’s Modern Orthodox, he’s this. So you arrange the pieces each time differently. There are quarrels, there is personal expression, there is everything; it’s a living world.

As the poet said, I would not want to live in a world where there is nothing worth dying for. Okay? Meaning, if there is nothing to die for—it’s not good to die for things, people die from it. But in a world where there is nothing to die for, it isn’t worth living; I’d want to die there. It’s not worth living. In a certain sense, the fact that you have beliefs—yes, sometimes you’re fanatical, sometimes you quarrel, sometimes you do things that shouldn’t be done—but first and foremost there are things you fight for. So that means there are conceptions here, disputes here, storms here; this is a world full of personal expression.

And that leads me to the next point. That is the meaning. And it’s not the same thing as personal expression. In the world of meaning, here maybe the world is not mistaken. I think here people often do understand it this way, and I think they’re also right. It happens; even a broken clock is right twice a day. In the world of meaning, when people talk about meaning—first of all, first datum, I wrote columns about this on the site—the first point is that people’s happiness is often linked to pleasure. People who have lives full of pleasure are perceived as happy people. But that’s not true. There are many studies on this in psychology and in various places. Meaning is far more important to our happiness than pleasure. Far more. Meaning, a person can be in a very difficult economic and social situation, but he understands that his life has meaning, and he is much happier than someone who has everything but it doesn’t mean much. Psychology studies show this very, very clearly. Yoram Yovel talked about it and others as well.

And the claim ultimately is that—for example, Viktor Frankl, yes, Man’s Search for Meaning—Viktor Frankl basically argues that when a person is in a psychological crisis, one way to get him out of it in certain cases is to try to find, to implant in him, a sense of meaning, to give his life meaning. You know that in the Haredi world, where overall the socio-economic situation is low relative to other societies, the level of happiness is not lower—usually it is higher. Despite the lower socio-economic status, there is—they feel meaning in life. It doesn’t matter, you can argue or agree, but once a person feels he has meaning in life, that gives him happiness much more than welfare and economics and all the factors of pleasure, let’s call it that. And therefore meaning is a very, very important benefit of serving God. Once you understand that every act you do has meaning, that it does something, that it matters to do it this way and not that way, it fills you in some way—again, the not-for-its-own-sake aspect of serving God benefits greatly from this. You become happier. Sorry if I sound like a preacher at an Arachim seminar, but you become happier. That’s not a reason to serve God; if you don’t believe in Him, being happy doesn’t help. But if you do believe in Him, then know that there’s also a bonus here.

And meaning, in my opinion—and this brings me back to the previous points—meaning cannot be manufactured out of nothing. That’s what Viktor Frankl tried to do. He tried to generate meaning in the psychological sense, meaning to implant in you the feeling of meaning. Sometimes he has one or another formulation, from what I’ve seen—I’m not an expert in his doctrine—but from what I’ve seen in logotherapy. The claim is that if you search within yourself for meaning—not if you convince yourself that there is meaning, because that’s just delusion. Maybe it will heal you psychologically, but it doesn’t really give meaning. Meaning is something objective. Meaning says that if my actions bring about some positive result, that means what I do has real meaning, not because that’s how I feel. Maybe I feel that too if I understood it, but that’s not the point. I’m not speaking on the psychological plane; I’m speaking on the philosophical, ontic plane. Meaning, like values, like everything I’ve talked about so far, like morality—all the things I’ve talked about so far, people shift these concepts, copy these concepts onto the subjective plane. I create values for myself, I create meaning for myself, I create morality for myself, I create principles for myself. What you create for yourself is worth nothing. Again, not psychologically—psychologically it may be that you can use autosuggestion. But in the essential sense, it has to be valid, true, not just convincing yourself that it’s so. And if you understand that there is a God and He requires you to do commandments and these commandments repair the world, that it matters to do this, then you have a real sense of meaning, not because you gave yourself autosuggestion.

So that is the fourth and final benefit. I’m moving a bit fast today because each of these deserves a whole lesson, but I want to finish the overall move. The final benefit is Jewish identity, somewhat connected of course to the concept of meaning. People are looking for Jewish identity today; it’s very popular to look for Jewish identity. You know, my sister studied criminology at the university, and she told me that almost every course began with a discussion of what science is, the definition of science. I told her: I don’t know, I studied physics and not one course began with a discussion of what science is. Why? Because a guilty conscience gives itself away. Right? Meaning, obviously you don’t need to explain why physics is science; everyone understands he is engaged in science. If you want to explain to me that criminology is science, you’ll have to work hard—or the social sciences in general, the human sciences—you’ll have to work hard, because you understand there’s a problem. It’s not really science in the same sense as the natural sciences. We won’t get into that dispute right now, but the very fact that they deal with it there only means that they feel there is a problem.

You know, the fact that people deal with the question of what secular Judaism is in such an obsessive way reflects the fact that everyone feels there is a problem. But the problem is not because we haven’t yet found it, because we forgot what it means to be Jews, as Bibi says, or all kinds of things like that. Rather, it’s because you really are not Jews. What does it mean to be a Jew? When you ask a person: tell me, what is secular Judaism? Secular Judaism is reading Amos Oz, or serving in the army, paying taxes, or I don’t know what, speaking Hebrew. Okay, but what value is there in that? If you pay taxes in Zimbabwe, is that worse? What’s the problem? If you’re a citizen of Zimbabwe, pay taxes there. If you’re a citizen of the State of Israel, pay taxes here. If you speak Belgian—if you’re in Belgium, then speak Belgian. You’re in Israel, speak Hebrew. Where are the values? What is Judaism in the value sense, not in the ethnic sense? In the ethnic sense I understand: your mother was Jewish, so you… In the end we’ll get back to Abraham our Patriarch. In the best case; it’s not certain that for all of us it’s like that. But fine, ethnically you’re Jewish.

But when you talk about Jewish values, explain to me in what sense your values are Jewish. So he says: in my eyes, to be Jewish is to give charity to the poor, to repair the world, I don’t know what, socialism, capitalism, doesn’t matter, everyone and his own values. You’re simply taking universal values for which people all over the world act and placing a title on them—this is my Judaism—and now you’re Jewish. There simply is no such thing. There is nothing Jewish except Jewish law. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There is no such thing as Jewish identity outside Jewish law. Someone who talks about Jewish identity outside Jewish law is talking about something ethnic. Ethnically, yes, of course, just as there is Zimbabwean identity or Belgian identity or, I don’t know, Panamanian. So there is also Jewish identity, yes? We speak Hebrew, there is such literature, there are such characteristics. Of course not all of them exist, but fine, national identity is always a fuzzy matter, yes? Not fully defined. But fine, it’s a fuzzy concept. That’s okay; I’m not speaking on that plane. I’m asking: what are your Jewish values? And immediately you hear a list of universal values. Thank you very much—they’re perfectly fine, I’m committed to them too—but what is Jewish about that? That you say them in Hebrew? And if you said them in Afrikaans, then they wouldn’t be values? What difference does it make? In what sense is this Judaism? It’s simply nonsense.

And very quickly, very quickly, you get to the question of whose grandfather Hitler killed. That’s the supreme criterion for Judaism. Hitler also killed my grandfather, so don’t teach me what Judaism is. Certainly I will teach you what Judaism is. Hitler killed your father, who had done no wrong, and your grandfather, because he was not Jewish. I mean, his grandfather looks like him—but sometimes he doesn’t look like him. He was Jewish because his mother was Jewish in the ethnic sense. But culturally—not culturally, value-wise—there is nothing Jewish there. There is none. Beyond commitment to Jewish law, there is no Jewish identity. And if you try to look at all the discussions about secular Jewish identity and all kinds of people philosophizing about it, some of them smart people, and you see what nonsense they talk, what logical circularity—I’m Jewish because I feel Jewish. And for a moment we forgot the fact that you can’t define a concept using that very same concept. Everything is circular, everything is empty of content. In the end, they basically say: because I’m a good person. That’s what they say. Okay, true—but there are many good people of all kinds. I’m asking in what way you are Jewish, not in what way you are a good person. There is no answer to that question. None. Simply none.

And you can read volumes, hundreds of volumes and articles and study halls revolving around this issue, and all of them, every last one, speak nonsense that doesn’t hold a drop of water. But what does that express? The same discussion in criminology: is it science or not science? Yes, because they all understand that they are not Jews. They forgot what it is to be Jews; they never knew what it is to be Jews. Bibi is right—except that he is the same too. So the claim is that the whole attempt to search for such definitions is simply ridiculous.

Now again, in my view as a religious person, this attempt is a positive thing. Because it reflects the fact that deep down they are Jews. They do understand that there is such a thing as being Jewish, but they can’t define for themselves what that thing actually is. They are unwilling to change their worldview because they understand that being Jewish is not this. So they try to explain: no, what I do is what is called my Judaism. And you don’t have a monopoly on Judaism—you know all this talk. And then you immediately retreat: no, no, paternalism, and you’re not allowed to say that, and what do you mean they forgot how to be Jews, how he insults us like that—and immediately they move into the realm of offense. But you never hear an explanation of the essence. Why, in what sense?

I remember—and maybe I’ll finish with this—there was, remember Rabbi Shach’s “rabbits speech”? The coalition depended on it, and everyone was waiting in Yad Eliyahu. Rabbi Shach was supposed to announce whether he was joining the right or the left, because that was the deciding factor. And then he started talking there not about politics at all, but about kibbutzniks who eat rabbits on Yom Kippur and go to the sea on Yom Kippur, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. And I was naive there. I said, look, you have a microphone, the whole world is waiting for your words, why are you saying things that will make them die laughing. They’ll die laughing, right? Of course. My commander in the army explained to me that the rabbits at the sea on Yom Kippur are the tastiest. So you say to him: because you eat rabbits on Yom Kippur? Okay, right, I know, so what? You have a microphone—speak, say something meaningful. That’s how over-smart I was.

That night or the next day there was a tsunami in Israel. A tsunami. People said: what do you mean? How dare he say that we’re not Jews? What do you mean? And they got angry at him, shouted at him. By the way, afterward in Bnei Brak I saw the shock wave in the form of a wave of people becoming religious again. There was a wave. A huge wave of people becoming religious after the things Rabbi Shach said. Because the honest people—and in Sdot, yes, in the kibbutz movement’s publication, and in other places, pages and Sdot and things like that, I think of the religious kibbutz, I don’t remember anymore—in various kibbutz publications, people said: friends, let’s be honest, he’s right. He’s right.

Why did that bother everyone so much? Because deep down, deep down, it bothers everyone; they do want to be Jews. And when you hold a mirror up to them and say, in what way are you Jews, and they see nothing in the mirror, then they start shouting and taking offense, because arguments they don’t have. And the honest people say, wait a second, friends, be honest, we have no arguments, the old man is right. And the impact of that speech was amazing. I listened to that speech and said: he has—he’s not using the opportunity. They gave him a microphone the whole world is listening to. And it turned out that I was the idiot. It’s simply unbelievable. Dozens of people, just the ones I met in Bnei Brak, came following that speech, became religious, became Haredi.

And this point marks how much Jewish identity is something that bothers people. It’s not true when people say… Try to separate religion and state in the State of Israel—the strongest opponents will be the secular people. A large part of the secular people, the strongest opponents. Because they understand that it will leave them stripped bare in terms of Judaism. It will leave them non-Jews, and they understand that. They won’t admit it, but they understand it. And they won’t want religion and state to be separated, because their Judaism is to fight against the religious. And if there’s no one to fight against, they won’t be Jews. And that’s how it is. It’s a fact. Can’t hear?

[Speaker B] Most Jews in our world are Reform. Right, what is true is that religious Judaism is what preserves Judaism. That is, over time if it weren’t there then really it would slowly unravel and merge with others.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Most Jews in our time are not Reform. Most Jews in our time are secular. And the secular—or traditional, I don’t know where the line passes.

[Speaker B] Reform by definition or not by definition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the fact that there are such groups says nothing. The question is whether they manage to convince themselves by this that they are Jews, and the answer is no. Because it doesn’t hold up for a generation, two, three. That’s true. That’s it. Meaning, a person lives and—and this is the claim—a person manages to produce for himself some facade of Judaism, but it isn’t really… even he himself, once he is a little honest, understands that it’s a facade. So I’m not saying there aren’t such facades; of course there are. Reform is a facade, secularity is a facade, all kinds of things. But it doesn’t really hold water. They are only attempts by people to cling to the horns of the altar.

And therefore, if I summarize—here we’ve finished the journey—so I summarize: basically we talked about five benefits: a valid basis for morality; the possibility of conducting oneself rationally; personal expression, in what sense I am authentic and different from others; meaning to my actions—it’s not the same thing that what I do has meaning, that it’s not just a random action; and Jewish identity. All these things do not exist without commitment to serving God. And the fact that people try to create alternatives in each of these areas detached from serving God only shows how much it bothers them.

And again I’ll summarize: this is not because one must become religious and serve God. If they don’t believe in Him, then it won’t help that it gives meaning and happiness and whatever else you want; that is not a basis on which you can serve God. I’m only saying: someone who does believe and is committed to the Holy One, blessed be He—then these give you good reasons to go in that direction.

[Speaker B] Is that the summary of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of today: do the truth because it is truth, as Maimonides says, and in the end the good will come. The good will come; there is a lot of good here. These are much better lives, in my opinion. But of course that is not a reason in itself. That’s it, friends, we’ve finished a journey of about two years.

[Speaker B] Will there also be some kind of summary of the series as a whole? Because now we only summed up today, the benefits.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t sum up today. I said today—it wasn’t a summary of the day, it was an ending, not a summary.

[Speaker B] I’m only asking whether after two years there will be some conclusions from the series.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In general, that one should be a good Jew and observe commandments—that’s the conclusion.

[Speaker B] No, I mean whether there will be another lesson in that context.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it’s possible—if you want, we can do one lesson that is a kind of summary lesson, an overview of the whole series.

[Speaker F] Worthwhile, worthwhile. Rabbi, first of all, truly infinite appreciation for this series. For this alone you deserve the Israel Prize, I think, beyond all the other work. Really—today they refuse to give it. Extraordinary, despite all the disputes. Now regarding what the Rabbi said at the end now regarding faith.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My position is that in the current situation, personally, in the current situation I am in favor of separating religion and state for two reasons. One reason is that I don’t want to be the secular person’s punching bag for him. Meaning, he basically needs me and I don’t need him—in the value sense, that is. I need him because we are one people, and of course we share the burden of security and everything, but I don’t need him in the value sense in order to be Jewish. Okay? And he needs me, and I take all the blows for insisting on forcing things on him when all I’m doing is for his sake, not for mine. Leave me alone, I want to separate.

A second reason, in my opinion, is that if I seriously demand this, the secular people will oppose it—most secular people will oppose it—and that will be a winning card. Because at last I’ll manage to show them that I am not coming to coerce them; I don’t want to coerce them. You want it. Now again, everyone according to his own dosage and all that, but it will place them in front of a mirror that today they don’t really see. Today they’re convinced they’re Jews just like me and I’m only coming to force my Judaism on them because I don’t have a monopoly on Judaism and so forth. Once there is some kind of separation here, like in the United States, everyone will marry non-Jews and everything will be fine—once there are enough non-Jews here, yes, then everyone will marry non-Jews, everything fine—nothing will remain of them, and they’ll understand that too. They understand it too. If they don’t understand it consciously now, then it’s in the subconscious and it will rise to consciousness.

And therefore in my opinion it is indeed a kind of game, a game of chicken, yes? You—you go… I don’t want to do this, but I do want our not doing this to be because of you, not because of me. I want you to admit that it’s because of you. And when I keep taking upon myself the coercion and the Judaism and everything, you say there are many Judaisms—excellent, go ahead, run the state, define its Judaism, do whatever you want. Very quickly it will remain empty of content. Empty of content. Because every definition they propose will be racism.

[Speaker B] It won’t happen very quickly; it’ll take a hundred, two hundred years, and they say, so what do I care?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A hundred, two hundred years—so what do I care—until everyone repents.

[Speaker B] There’s no other solution.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no other solution. Without repentance, there won’t be a Jewish identity.

[Speaker B] Right, but they say, so what do I care, it won’t already be in my time.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they’re not saying, so what do I care. You know, someone who says that, someone who has a lot of money says, so what do I care, so I lost a million dollars—because he has it. But if you don’t have it, when you’re about to lose a hundred shekels, you care a lot. Today you’re giving them the fig leaves that give them the feeling that they’re Jewish. What’s the problem? After all, they fight with the religious people, so of course they’re Jewish. When they won’t have that, I want to see them not care. That’s exactly Rabbi Shach’s speech. With Rabbi Shach’s speech too, I thought—I was the idiot—I thought they didn’t care. He tells them they eat little rabbits, and they themselves say they eat little rabbits; suddenly you discover just how much they do care.

[Speaker B] No, I’m saying they don’t care because they understand that this assimilation, or the decline of non-Orthodox Judaism, will take time; it won’t happen in my lifetime.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but you understand that the moment this starts becoming a significant phenomenon—the Reform in the United States are troubled by it, even though they supposedly allow intermarriage, they’re very troubled by it. And the secular people in the State of Israel, the secular political leadership, are constantly dealing with demography—how many Jews there are in the world. Why do you care? Why do you care—you’re secular, right? And why all this Jewish identity and things like that that they try—the Jewish Agency tries to create Jewish identity. What Jewish identity? What, what, what kind of Jewish identity do they want? To speak Hebrew, immigrate to the Land of Israel, serve in the army—that’s not Jewish.

[Speaker B] They want identification, that the Jews will be with me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That they’ll help me—that’s interests. They want us to have a stronger backing—that’s the interest. But today I’m not talking about interests; I’m talking about concern for Diaspora Jewry, and there’s that too. It’s not only interests, and it expresses the fact that people really do care about Judaism—nothing will help, they can say it until tomorrow, but the moment this thing collapses and you lose it, then you’ll suddenly stop telling me stories. You’ll admit that it matters to you and that something needs to be done to save this thing. And today you’re doing the work for him in his place—you’re giving him the fig leaves of Jewish identity. I’m saying: leave it, remove the fig leaves, and let’s see. Okay, this is already really current political arguments.

[Speaker E] Can I ask a question? Yes. It’s a question I wanted to ask in the previous class, but Rabbi had to leave. We talked then about idolatry and acceptance. So I wanted to understand what the difference is between that and any formal authority that a person accepts upon himself, like when Rabbi, for example, always talks about traffic laws or the basketball association and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The claim is that there is no such thing—no formal authority exists except the authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. Any other formal authority is idolatry.

[Speaker E] If a person is now a citizen of the State of Israel and accepts the law because it’s the law, he accepts the ruling of the court—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He accepts the law because it’s the law—but I ask, why do you accept a law? Because you believe there is a social contract that we are all signed onto, and it’s worthwhile for us to uphold it for the sake of our functioning. But if you say it just because it’s the law, that really is idolatry. Or if you say, like these Hardalim—there are some Hardalim, yes, the hardcore ones—they’ll say: there is the Holy One, blessed be He, there is the Jewish people, and you must obey the traffic laws because that is the Jewish people. Fine, so that too is connected to the Holy One, blessed be He. One of two things: either it’s connected to the Holy One, blessed be He, or it’s idolatry. Only if there are reasons like love and fear—that’s the antithesis of accepting a god. If there are reasons, you say: if I don’t obey the traffic laws, things will be bad here. Perfectly fine, that’s good. I take medicine because otherwise I’ll be sick. I don’t go into fire because the fire will burn me. That’s fine. You can act on self-interested considerations. Values come only from the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker E] Meaning, if a person accepts the law not as a value, but he understands that it’s the basic need for running a proper society or a healthy way of life—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And he has a value of standing by his commitments, but the value of standing by commitments really comes from the Holy One, blessed be He. The commitment itself is our social agreement, but the obligation to stand by agreements is a moral value—that comes from the Holy One, blessed be He. Thank you. Okay, that’s it—have a kosher, happy, and amusing Passover. Goodbye.

[Speaker F] Thank you very much, happy holiday—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Happy, happy holiday—

[Speaker F] Happy.