Means and Ends – Lesson 1

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll start dealing a bit with means and ends, as I wrote. This comes to expression in all kinds of ways, this relationship between means and ends. I want to touch on a few of them. There is—I’ll start maybe with a passage from Rabbi Kook in Ein Ayah. It says in the Talmud in Berakhot, page 6: whoever is accustomed to come to the synagogue and one day doesn’t come, the Holy One, blessed be He, inquires about him. And asks, where is he? Why didn’t he come? So Rabbi Kook writes there as follows: “This comment applies generally to all the paths of perfection that a person—whether the community or the individual—maintains. Once they have risen to the level of moral perfection, they are obligated to strive greatly not to fall from their level and not to lose their precious acquisition. For anything that has already come into actuality in its perfection, when it returns and falls, becomes more deficient than one who never acquired that thing at all. And this is the basis for the principle that good practices require annulment.” Meaning, the claim is that a person who has reached a certain level, it’s important that he try not to descend from it, not to deteriorate from it. “For anything that has already come into actuality, when it returns and falls, becomes more deficient than one who never acquired that thing at all.” Meaning if someone is at a certain level—let’s say we rank spiritual levels—he’s at level ten and drops to level eight, that’s worse than someone who is at level eight. Because the descent makes the state I’m now in more problematic than if I had been in it from the outset.

[Speaker B] What matters is not only the place but also the direction.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. “And this is the basis for the principle that good practices require annulment.” What exactly does he mean here? We know there are opinions in Jewish law that if a person has adopted some good practice, it has a status like a vow. And therefore annulment of vows—right, if it’s a good practice I’ve done three times. By the way, this “three times” doesn’t really have much of a source. A good practice appears even in the Shulchan Arukh, but the three times is already another question. In any case, someone who keeps a good practice requires annulment. And I think the question behind Rabbi Kook’s comment here is: why? We’re talking about a practice that I’m not obligated to do. So if someone never does this thing, there’s no problem. But someone who does it and wants to stop needs annulment. Why does he need annulment? At most, I’m now just going back to being like that person who never practiced it. Why do I need to do something that he never had to do? He doesn’t do it without any annulment; he just doesn’t do it, that’s all. I, who did something extra, in order to return to the same state he has always been in, need to get annulment. Rabbi Kook’s claim is that this annulment, the need for annulment, stems from the fact that if you go back to the same level that the other person was always at, you are actually deteriorating to a worse state. So they somehow hold you back with this annulment, or with the obligation to continue as long as it wasn’t annulled.

And with regard to the community, the good practice is very grave, because when a moral acquisition declines again, it creates a greater deficiency than if it had been absent from the outset. Meaning, on the communal level this is even stronger. A community that was in a good state and then drops back into a bad one—that’s a more problematic condition than with an individual. “And one must reflect further, for we ascend in holiness and do not descend.” So a person who has already stood at a higher level in the service of God should never descend from it. And “we ascend in holiness and do not descend” really is a principle worth noticing. It doesn’t mean that it is forbidden to be low. Otherwise you’d say simply that one must never be in a problematic state. But no—“we do not descend” means it is forbidden to regress from a state in which I have already been, even if in the end I arrive at a state that in itself is not invalid. But if I reach it through regression, that is problematic. “Therefore, the person who already stood at a higher level in the service of God should never descend from it, and if he weakens, the hand of providence is inclined to awaken him by releasing discipline upon him, for ‘whom the Lord loves He rebukes,’ until he returns, returns to his former strength, because providence is very greatly concerned with man’s acquisition of perfection, for man is the center of all creation. As we explained in the previous passage. Therefore, one who is accustomed to come to the synagogue”—this now returns to the Talmud—“and did not come one day, the Holy One, blessed be He, inquires about him,” preparing causes that will make him question himself, “because he should have trusted in the name of God.” There he says he should trust that proper conduct helps one acquire true perfection, which is to resemble His ways, blessed be He, for His conduct is the secret of His great name.

The end is less important for our purposes. The point is that if someone stops coming, apparently there is some distress, some need—why aren’t you coming, if until now you did come? Apparently there is some problem. One should trust the Holy One, blessed be He, that if you were there, continue; somehow it ought to work out in another way.

Okay, his assumption throughout this whole passage is that coming to the synagogue as such is not an obligation—that’s really what he is assuming—because otherwise we wouldn’t need all this. The very fact that you didn’t come would itself be problematic. But here it doesn’t say that not coming is problematic; rather, that you stopped. So the situation is that coming as such is not obligatory, but if you had been coming, then when you stop coming, that starts becoming problematic.

There’s just maybe an interesting note about the connection he makes to annulment of vows. On the face of it, annulment of vows is a different issue; it’s not a question of stringency or leniency. The issue of annulment of vows just says there’s some assumption that someone who has practiced in a certain way—whether three times or however many times are required—it is as if he made a vow verbally, right? A vow requires verbal articulation. If you didn’t articulate it verbally, didn’t say it out loud, then it’s not a vow and it wouldn’t require annulment. So what that means is that a person who behaved in a certain way several times, it’s as if he vowed verbally. Now if we think about it—if it’s as if he vowed verbally, then annulment of vows isn’t because afterward you were in some state and then regressed or something like that; rather, you simply vowed, so now you have to annul it: “That which comes out of your lips you shall keep.” And if it’s not considered like a verbal vow, not considered formal articulation, then why annulment of vows? Why is annulment of vows the expression of the fact that you’re doing something problematic when you stop practicing something you had been practicing?

It seems to me—and I’m saying this parenthetically—it seems to me that what is written here is really an interesting principle. His claim is that the annulment required for a person who keeps a good practice has nothing to do with the laws of annulment of vows. At least that’s how I understand what he’s writing here. He’s saying this really isn’t about annulment of vows at all. The problem is not verbal articulation and all those things. It’s apparently some rabbinic law, if I understand correctly, and not really from the core laws of vows. And the claim is that basically its purpose, the purpose of this whole matter, is to try to motivate you not to do this—that is, not to go back down, but to remain in that state. So they tell you: if you haven’t annulled it, then you have to remain. Now they don’t want to obligate you to remain in such a state, not to give you any way out to retreat. Because if they didn’t give you the option of annulment of vows, you’d never adopt any positive practice, because then you’re stuck. It’s like a black hole: every time you reach something, you’ll never be able to retreat. So they do want to let you still have the possibility that if you decide it’s too much for you, you don’t want it, you can retreat. But it shouldn’t be trivial. Meaning, you’ll have to perform some act of annulment of vows. Maybe the sage will try to persuade you, or check whether you really can’t keep it or maybe you can. But basically this has nothing to do with the laws of annulment of vows. Then the whole discussion whether what you’re doing is equivalent to formal articulation or not equivalent to formal articulation—that’s a somewhat tangled halakhic issue. There’s even a discussion whether writing counts like speech, a dispute among later authorities. So to call a good act that I do “formal articulation” is already a novelty—that such a thing is considered as though I made a vow. His point is really that this has nothing to do with the subject of annulment of vows as such. They used the mechanism of annulment of vows on a rabbinic level to make sure that if you reached a certain level, you would not regress backward. That’s all. And they wanted to use it because on the one hand they did want to give you an option to retreat, so that you’d have motivation to try and advance; but on the other hand they didn’t want it to be too easy to retreat. So that once you’ve already reached something, you should stay where you were.

But for our purposes, what we have here is a statement that regression from a positive state and arrival at a less positive state contains something negative—not only less positive. Or in other words, what Shmuel said before: your state, or the judgment of a person—that a person’s spiritual state is not determined only by the place where he stands, the state he is in, but also by the path he has traveled.

[Speaker C] The direction. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The direction, yes, the direction. Where do we see this from the other side of the coin? There is the Talmud in Berakhot 34, another passage. Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: “All the prophets prophesied only concerning penitents.” And the Talmud says: “And this disagrees with Rabbi Abbahu”—this saying of Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba disagrees with Rabbi Abbahu—“for Rabbi Abbahu said: In the place where penitents stand, perfectly righteous people do not stand. As it is said: ‘Peace, peace to the far and to the near’—to the far first, and only afterward to the near.” So there you see that the penitent is superior to the perfectly righteous person, while the first saying says that the perfectly righteous person is superior. And Rabbi Yohanan will tell you: what does “far” mean? One who was far from transgression from the outset. And what does “near” mean? One who was near to transgression and distanced himself from it.

So the claim is that we have a dispute between amoraim over who is preferable: a penitent or a perfectly righteous person. Now there’s no halakhic ruling to issue here; this is not a halakhic dispute. But it seems to me pretty clear which opinion people usually quote. The opinion usually quoted is the second one, that the penitent is superior to the perfectly righteous person. Even Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance brings this Talmudic statement.

And this statement, on its face, seems problematic. Because the penitent sinned and now repents. Now let’s say his repentance is accepted—that itself is a novelty, right? “Wisdom was asked, what is the punishment of the sinner…” all that well-known midrash. So a person committed a sin—it can’t be erased from history. Fine. So a special novelty was introduced, that nevertheless one can atone for sins that were committed, and if you repent, it gets cleaned up. But even if it gets cleaned up, at most I’ve become perfectly righteous. How can it be that a penitent is more than a perfectly righteous person? How can that be, logically? At most—what can repentance even be that is more than perfectly righteous? A perfectly righteous person is complete. Exactly. It’s not even defined that there could be a state higher than that.

There seems to be no escape except to say that when you judge the penitent, true, even if the repentance succeeded he has reached the level of a perfectly righteous person because now he is completely clean. But his state, the judgment of his spiritual state, is not determined only by the condition he is in now. There is some memory; there is some significance to the path he has traveled. And the fact that he climbed in order to reach this situation itself gives him some advantage beyond merely being at that level. And therefore the perfectly righteous person who is in that state is less than the penitent who arrives at it. So basically what Rabbi Kook explains regarding the Talmud in Berakhot 6—

[Speaker B] About the penitent, it’s not so simple, because in order to be a penitent, first of all you regressed and then came back.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, it’s—

[Speaker B] It’s not that you only advanced.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you do complete repentance, you repent also for the regression, not only for being in the lower state. Apparently. That’s already an answer.

[Speaker B] That’s already the derivative of a derivative.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the claim is no—the path is zero if you measure displacement, and that’s exactly the point. But if you’re talking about memory, then no, the path is not zero. The displacement is zero, fine, but the path is a path with memory. Yes. Both the descent downward and the ascent upward are a path.

[Speaker B] Yes, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is that basically what Rabbi Kook is saying is that the very same novelty we see in the idea that a penitent is superior to a perfectly righteous person, he says that in the other direction too. That’s how he explains the Talmud on page 6: when a person deteriorates or descends, there is some significance beyond the fact that he has reached a less good state. The very deterioration itself is some sort of factor that plays a part in your spiritual state, in your spiritual judgment. And both directions are basically saying that when we look at a person’s condition—and I’m talking about means and ends—when we judge a person’s spiritual level, it is not enough to look at what state he is in right now; the question is what path he has traveled.

The point here—maybe I’ll bring another illustration of this. There is a passage in Yoma that says there is a difference between repentance from love and repentance from fear. Repentance from love turns intentional sins into merits, and repentance—[from fear] turns intentional sins into inadvertent sins. Okay? But there’s an interesting point here: there is no type of repentance in which intentional sins are erased. That never happens. Usually we’re used to saying that what repentance does is erase history—as if the history never was. What I did is treated as though it was never done. That does not happen. In no type of repentance does that happen. History always remains. The only question is: what color do you paint it, or what meaning do you assign to the history that was? Are they now inadvertent sins? Are they merits? That could be. But to be erased as though it never happened—no. That doesn’t happen. Because when we talk about the meaning of process, clearly that meaning is added to the state. In the end, your state is determined by where you are and by the path you traveled. Both together, if you want, some kind of combination of the two. But you cannot erase states. If I repented, say, or deteriorated, we do not forget what I was. We do not forget what I was. Rather, even if we remember what I was, sometimes that itself can count in my favor, even though what I was was a bad state. It can count in my favor because in the end I progressed. But it is not erased. The point is that history is not erased. We carry our history with us.

[Speaker B] It’s the opposite. What you’re saying is the opposite. The opposite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, our history is dragged along with us; it is never erased. A person’s condition is a condition judged also in terms of memory, not only in terms of the present state. This reminds me of an article by Adi Tzemach. We once talked about it, I don’t remember exactly. The former husband of Mina Tzemach—the problematic one. In any case, he was a lecturer at the Hebrew University—I don’t know what’s with him now—literature, philosophy, something like that, maybe both. And he once wrote an article about moral obligation. What is the basis for obligating a person to moral duties toward another? So he wanted to make a kind of strange speculation. He wanted to say: why do you care about yourself in a year, or in a week? You prepare yourself a meal so you’ll have something to eat later. But the “you” of later is a different “you.” So why should you care about him? And if you do care about him, then care also about the other “you” standing next to you at the same time. The claim is basically that a person at every moment is a different person.

Fine, it’s sophistry—ridiculous sophistry. Completely. Yes, but why is it ridiculous? Because really, a person is not a different person every moment. That’s just not true. Why not? So he could say, suppose they created a duplicate of me with all my consciousnesses except, I don’t know, one detail that in another moment I too will have. Okay? Will that be me? The answer is no. Why not? Because our histories are different. Meaning, true, right now maybe our present state is identical if you look only at the current condition. But we carry with us a biography. In the end, a person is the accumulation of everything he has gone through along the way, not just where he is right now. That’s true on the ontic level here, in the sense of who the person is. But here in this context, of course, we’re talking about when we judge him—not in the sense of who he is, but in the sense of how much he is worth, or what his spiritual level is.

[Speaker D] By the way, how do you explain “Though your sins be like scarlet, they shall become white as snow”? If they are red like scarlet, I whitened them. Meaning, it goes back to zero.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well—who said? “They shall become white as snow” can be interpreted to mean erased and returned to zero. But you can also explain it as turning from red to white, not to transparent. So intentional sins become merits, as I said before. Merits are something that accumulates; they’re not neutral. Sins that are erased are something neutral. Intentional sins become merits. Now the question is what the white there means. If you want to align it with the Talmud in Yoma, then plainly the white there means merits, not a neutral condition.

[Speaker C] There are many verses—there are verses that speak in the language of erasure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud.” No—like a cloud. Of course. Meaning, you won’t be liable to punishment for what you did. But the question is whether you stand as though you never did it at all—that’s another question. You’re talking about the dimension of punishment that I deserve, or reward that I deserve. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the question of who I am.

[Speaker C] Why is that verse about punishment? What? Why is that verse about punishment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud” means: I will not relate to your transgression; you will not receive— There is a midrash here from Otzar Midrashim by Eisenstein. He brings—he connects two things. Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai says: “Even if a person was completely righteous all his days and rebelled at the end, he lost the earlier ones.” That’s in the Talmud in Kiddushin too. As it says: “The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him.” “And even if a person was completely wicked all his days and repented at the end, the earlier ones are not mentioned to him,” as it says: “The wickedness of the wicked shall not cause him to stumble on the day he returns from his wickedness.” The connection is interesting. In the Talmud in Kiddushin only the first part appears. But what does this connection say? That the process of a wicked person who repents and becomes righteous is being paralleled to someone who was righteous and became wicked. In both cases, we in some sense do not mention the past. Here he lost the earlier ones, and here too—as if, if I—there is a parallel here between progress and regression. The same parallel Rabbi Kook makes. But here, again, I’ll say what I think I told you before: “he lost the earlier ones” probably means he lost the merits he accumulated from the earlier ones. Meaning, not that it was erased, but in terms of the reward due to him, he lost it. And that’s the point.

And after all, the Talmud in Kiddushin says: “Then let him be half-and-half?” A righteous person who rebelled loses his merits. And the Talmud in Kiddushin asks about that: “Then let him be half-and-half?” And then it answers: “when he regrets the earlier deeds.” Meaning, when he regrets what he did, not only did he leave what he had done and change direction, but he regrets what he did. Then indeed he lost even the merits he had done. Otherwise, the merits remain, and the liabilities he accumulates are liabilities.

So the claim is that when you judge a person’s spiritual level, it’s a process with memory. A process—yes, in mathematics they speak of a non-Markovian process. A Markovian process is a process without memory. It’s a process determined only by the current state. Your next step is determined by your current state. You don’t need data from a more distant past. A non-Markovian process means that what you do in the next step is some combination of everything you did until now, or of things other than just your current state. And the claim is that what we have here is a non-Markovian judgment of the person. And in a certain sense you can even see it in a more formal way. We once talked about this in another context. If I want to describe a person’s spiritual condition, a person’s spiritual condition is not a function of his state. It is a functional of him. Meaning, the spiritual state of a person at time T is the result of the entire function of his states over time until time T—of his states over time until time T. Okay? Meaning, you need to use that entire function in order to describe his spiritual level now.

We once talked about this in the context of Maimonides, in the third root. Yes, in the third root Maimonides says there that one does not count commandments that depend on time. Meaning, for example: “Make for yourself a fiery serpent and place it on a pole,” or the jar of manna, various commandments that Moses was commanded. One-time commandments, no?

[Speaker C] What? Not commandments that depend on time, but one-time commandments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “one-time commandments” mean? There are commandments that in principle also come to an end—say, erasing Amalek. Erasing Amalek also ends: you erased Amalek, Amalek’s memory has already disappeared, there’s nothing left to do with erasing Amalek. So Maimonides himself asks that. Maimonides remarks on this in the commandment of erasing Amalek, and he says that it does not relate to the third root. Why? Because erasing Amalek is not a one-time commandment; it’s just that we already fulfilled it. In principle, if Amalek existed now, we would have to erase it today as well. It is not a commandment said only for its time. It’s simply that we finished the job, and that’s it.

But then of course the question arises: in what sense are those commandments one-time commandments? The commandments of the fiery serpent or the jar of manna? Suppose we return to exactly the same situation. Fine? Once again we come out—into the condition of the people of Israel at that time—and the Holy One, blessed be He, says to them: look, in such a state, take for yourselves a jar of manna or a fiery serpent. So basically it’s not a function of time; it’s a function of a state. It’s just that this state happened once. So what? This is somewhat similar—I mentioned this analogy once. There is a statement of Nachmanides in Kiddushin, where Nachmanides says that counting the Omer is not a positive commandment caused by time.

So later authorities ask: why not? Several later authorities are puzzled by this. Why is it not a positive commandment caused by time? Seemingly it does depend on time. So they say that the commandment of counting the Omer depends on events, meaning in one formulation: counting the Omer depends on events and not on time. You have to count from the day of the waving offering until the giving of the Torah, or until the two loaves—whatever, depending on the underlying conception. If the day of the waving offering had been in Kislev and the giving of the Torah had been in Shevat, then you would count from Kislev to Shevat. So it doesn’t depend on time; it depends on events. It’s just that the events occurred in time. That is not called time-caused. Time-caused is only when the thing depends on time.

Take another example: suppose I eat breakfast every morning at exactly eight o’clock. Okay? Now you have to recite Grace after Meals after you finish eating. Does that make it a positive commandment caused by time? I eat only once a day, every day at eight in the morning, fine? And I have to recite Grace after Meals. Does that make it a positive commandment caused by time, from which women would be exempt? A woman eats at noon. Obviously not. Why not? Because the obligation to bless did not arise from the fact that it became eight in the morning. It arose from the fact that I ate. It just so happens that I eat at eight every morning. So what determines the commandment is not time but a certain event. The event simply occurs at a time—every event occurs at some time. Okay? That does not make it a positive commandment caused by time. A positive commandment caused by time is only when the matter depends on time.

Now notice something very interesting that comes out here. Apparently there are no commandments that really depend on time. What would it mean for commandments to depend on time? Commandments always depend on some event that happened at a time. So take Passover. Is Passover a positive commandment caused by time? Yes. Right? We left Egypt; we’re just commemorating the Exodus from Egypt. If the Exodus had been in Cheshvan, we’d celebrate it in Cheshvan, no? So there too it would not depend on time but on an event; the event just happened in time. So what does dependence on time mean? There is some claim behind this, if it’s right. There is a claim here that really Passover could not be at another time. Essentially it is the festival of Nisan, not the festival of the Exodus. The Exodus happened specifically in Nisan; it could not have been at another time. The Beit HaLevi writes this. It says in the verse: “Because of this the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt.” So he asks there: that’s seemingly the reverse formulation. What does “because of this” mean? The commandments that we do tonight—“the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt”?

[Speaker B] The Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It should—

[Speaker B] be the other way around: I do these commandments—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I do—

[Speaker B] because of what the Holy One, blessed be He, did for me when I went out of Egypt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then he says there that no, that’s exactly it. Meaning, the Exodus from Egypt happened here because at this time these commandments need to be done. There he says this in the answer—this is Hanukkah, rabbinic—he says this in the answer one gives to the wicked son. Yes? I don’t remember.

[Speaker E] In any case, there is the commandment: “Observe the month of spring,” that it must specifically fall in the spring.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that Passover should fall specifically in the spring, right. There are all kinds of indications that it’s not accidental that the Exodus from Egypt happened in Nisan; there’s some kind of significance there. By the way, even with Tisha B’Av there’s a story like that. The Talmud in tractate Ta’anit says, “He proclaimed an appointed time against me to crush my young men,” a verse in Lamentations. So the Talmud in Ta’anit asks what that means. The Holy One, blessed be He, told Moses our rabbi to intercalate the month so that when the spies returned it would fall on Tisha B’Av. Because it is an appointed time fit for crying: “You cried a baseless cry, and I will establish for you a cry for generations.” Now this is a very strange thing, because Tisha B’Av became Tisha B’Av only after all kinds of things happened on it. Right now we’re at the stage of the Exodus from Egypt, long before the destruction, before everything; Tisha B’Av still has no significance at all. Why is there a need to intercalate the year, the month, so that the day of the spies will fall on Tisha B’Av? What is there in Tisha B’Av? Let it fall on the tenth of Av, and for future generations the tenth of Av will be the problematic time. What is there in Tisha B’Av? In other words, once again you see some conception here that dates have a status not only because of what happened on them, but maybe sometimes the reverse. Something happens on them because of—I don’t know—something that exists at that point in time. Okay? So there’s something abstract in that point in time because of which events happen, and not that it becomes special because those events happened on it. Well, I don’t know, it really does sound a bit… Yes, this is a well-known idea from the masters of ethics, that there is a special quality of time, a special quality to every point in time. I don’t know, it sounds a bit speculative, but on the other hand here we really do see, at least in the halakhic definitions, we really do see some kind of attitude like that. Now we need to understand what that means. What this basically means is that there are things that explicitly depend on time. That’s a very non-intuitive thing. I wouldn’t expect that to be the case. I wouldn’t expect anything in Jewish law, or in general, to depend on a point in time. Jewish law is supposed to tell me what to do given certain circumstances; it’s just that the circumstances occur in time. If the same circumstances occur at another time, then the obligation will apply at that other time. But when I say that a certain thing depends on time—not just that the circumstances depend on time—then that basically means that there is something in time itself that causes, apparently, I don’t know, various halakhic consequences. In time itself.

[Speaker C] Wait, and what about the Sabbath?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, only the Sabbath?

[Speaker C] The difference between the Sabbath and all the festivals is that the Sabbath is, so to speak, fixed and established—it really depends on nothing other than time. Not on any event and not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but when you talk about time, it could be that time is the time established by a religious court, so on a Jewish holiday too things can depend on time. The only question is: what is time? Time is what the religious court determined. On the Sabbath the religious court doesn’t determine it, so it is fixed and established. But it’s still the time axis. On a Jewish holiday too it can depend on time itself. In general, what is the time axis? After all, time seemingly is just a fiction; we’re talking about the movement of an astronomical system that we divide into months and days and years and things like that. So apparently not. That is, the claim is that there is some concept of time on which we maybe mark off intervals, and it helps us mark these events on it—but these events are not time. They’re only markings on the time axis. But what this actually means is that there are certain things that are a function of time and not of the events that happen in it. That is, the very same thing, if it happened at another time—even though the circumstances were the same—the halakhic obligation, say, would not apply. A commandment that is not time-dependent in that sense—if the Exodus from Egypt had happened in Cheshvan, we would not celebrate Passover. That’s basically the claim. Or the fiery serpent and the jar of manna—what Maimonides says there; Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides has a long responsum on this root, on the third root. Rabbi Daniel the Babylonian asks him about it and he answers there. What he basically says, in my language, is that these obligations are essentially one-time obligations. Meaning, if we were to return to exactly that same situation, everything exactly the same, there would be no law requiring us to place a fiery serpent. Or there would have to be another command in order for there to be such a law. In other words, that command is, in essence, temporally unique, one-time by its nature—not that it’s a command about circumstances that just happened once. That’s the second alternative; that’s what parallels wiping out Amalek. Wiping out Amalek is a command about circumstances, only the circumstances occurred and ended. So therefore the command is not a time-dependent commandment, says Maimonides. So what is a time-dependent commandment? A commandment such that even if the circumstances return at another time, the obligation would not. Meaning, the obligation depends explicitly on time, not only on circumstances that happen to depend on time. Okay, so let’s go back for a moment to our issue. The claim, basically, is that there is some importance to the process a person goes through, not only to the fact that the process leads to the destination it leads to. That is, being a penitent is important not only because after you become a penitent you become righteous. Fine? And deteriorating is bad not only because after you deteriorate you reach a bad state. Rather, the deterioration itself contains something problematic—not only the end result, that in the end you reach the bad state. And the same goes for improvement. Improvement no less than deterioration. Let’s maybe bring something I wanted to print out here, and because of that mishap… There’s a passage here from Rabbi Kook about perfection and self-perfecting. Maybe one more comment before I say that. In Maimonides it says, Laws of Repentance, chapter 7, law 4: “A penitent should not imagine that he is far from the level of the righteous because of the sins and transgressions he committed. This is not so; rather he is beloved and cherished before the Creator as if he had never sinned. Moreover, his reward is great, for he tasted sin and separated from it and conquered his inclination. The sages said: In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous cannot stand—meaning, their level is greater than those who never sinned, because they conquer their inclination more than they do.” I’m glad that Maimonides himself also brings Rabbi Abbahu’s view that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person. Usually people understand this as some kind of reward you deserve for effort. You conquered your inclination, you worked harder, so therefore you deserve more reward. If you understand it that way, then it basically means that it’s not that you are actually more righteous. You are righteous to the same degree, because you reached the level of a completely righteous person, but you deserve more reward because you exerted yourself. In other words, it’s not that you’re more righteous because of that. What I said earlier is something else. I argued that you are more righteous—not just that you deserve more reward—because the path you took has a status within your very perfection, in the overall measure of your perfection, not only in what you deserve. More than that: is being a penitent really harder than being completely righteous? I’m not at all sure of that. The completely righteous person struggles much harder, and therefore he succeeds in not failing all the time. That doesn’t mean it comes easily to him. He works very hard and he constantly works and succeeds in not failing. So does that mean he works less than the penitent? On the contrary. The penitent was slacking off all the time, not working hard, until at some point he got himself in hand and then he started working like a completely righteous person. So he worked more than the completely righteous person? Like Elazar ben Dordaya, right—“there is one who acquires his world in a single hour.” Elazar ben Dordaya did one hour’s work, and over that Rabbi cried and said, “There is one who acquires his world in a single hour.” I work all my life, and he is ready for the life of the world to come. Meaning, you work for a very small part of the time at the work I do constantly, and you are ready for the world to come? And the answer is, I think the point is not effort. It’s not a question of effort—who puts in more effort, the penitent or the completely righteous person. The point is really that you are more righteous. That is, someone who went through that process—the process itself contributes something to the degree of his righteousness, to his spiritual status. It’s not a question of effort that entitles you to more; it is itself a greater perfection. Look at the… uh

[Speaker G] So in my view, someone who remarries his divorced wife has another commandment in general from that, that he didn’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We once said that it’s not so simple—where does that commandment of remarrying one’s divorced wife come from? There’s some myth like that, but look it up—it’s hard to find where it comes from.

[Speaker G] A commandment?

[Speaker C] No, I’m not,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I poked around a bit once—no, I didn’t find a clear source for that matter. About the matter itself, or about the source, or about its reason?

[Speaker C] No,

[Speaker B] No,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About the very idea that there is a commandment here. No, the reason is something else. Look at Rabbi Kook, in Orot HaKodesh, part 2. He says like this: “The slowness in the order of existence, the limitation in nature, its outward laziness, the constriction in spiritual ascents, the transience of miracles—all these uphold the foundation of unceasing elevation, which is the inner foundation of existence, whose limit lies within its very limit: that the descent of the manifestation of worldly existence should suffice to reach its lowest depth and its darkest darkness, for an eternal ascent without any interruption.” Meaning, transience and changes and the fact that we go down and up—that is intentional. It is intended so that we can ascend. That is, a perfect person could not ascend. Meaning, yes, that’s the point. Therefore all these deficiencies, seemingly—our deterioration into the low depth and the darker darkness—are actually an advantage, because they enable us to progress, to improve. “And every future period prepares power for a more rapid period in its ascent, until the highest speed—‘He will guide us forever with alacrity,’ ‘running and returning like the appearance of lightning’—and the phenomenon of elevation and the increase of light, delight, and life, ever becoming sweeter and fuller with ever higher value, will never cease. Until the form of complete perfection and the form of unceasing self-perfecting, which comes because of the original deficiency, become equal together.” Meaning, complete perfection—the completely righteous person—that is perfection. And self-perfecting, improvement from a bad state because of prior deficiency, is itself also perfection. Meaning, the fact that you were lacking and improved is itself a kind of perfection—not only that you reached the perfect state, but the very progress itself. “The memory of past deficiency will suffice to give a constant push to ever-increasing self-perfecting, and the form of unceasing self-perfecting will rise above complete perfection. ‘A woman of valor is the crown of her husband,’ and ‘the righteous sit…’” and so on. Anyway, here he is only saying that the process of self-perfecting is itself a kind of perfection. That returns to what he also said in Ein Ayah and what we also saw regarding the penitent. But later he writes as follows. “The tendency of all existence, from the side of the hidden infinite will, as it is revealed to us, is a great counsel of eternal elevation and addition. For if there were no reality of smallness and deficiency, there could only be greatness and fullness, but not continual growth and constant stepping toward added blessing.” So if there were no deficiency, there could be perfection, but there could not be self-perfecting. Self-perfecting is possible only because our world has deficiencies, because our world is not perfect. “And although there is no end to the elevation of complete perfection, which has no elevation from the side of its infinity, nevertheless this exalted power of constant elevation is also included within it. And this is considered as though absolute perfection is perfected through the self-perfecting that comes through the appearance of smallness coming to greatness. And this labor is a high necessity.” Maybe I’ll read a little more and then explain. “What are we to think about the divine purpose in bringing existence into being?” Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create the world? We are told that absolute perfection is necessary existence—the Holy One, blessed be He, is necessary existence; He was never created, He always was. “And in it there is nothing in potential; rather everything is in actuality.” With the Holy One, blessed be He, everything is actual; He is simply perfect, that’s all. If there were some perfection that was only in potential and not in actuality, then He would not be perfect. With Him everything is perfectly actual. “But there is a perfection of adding perfection, and that cannot exist in divinity.” It sounds a bit like hairsplitting, but actually it’s an interesting claim. He says that once the Holy One, blessed be He, is perfect, He cannot perfect Himself. Because to perfect oneself means to become more perfect, and the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot become more perfect. But if self-perfecting is itself one of the perfections, then that means that this type of perfection is lacking in the Holy One, blessed be He. Because if He is perfect, then He cannot self-perfect. “For absolute infinite perfection leaves no room for addition. And for this purpose—that the addition of perfection, too, should not be lacking in existence—worldly existence had to come into being, and according to this it had to begin from the very lowest depth, that is, from the condition of absolute deficiency, and go always upward toward absolute elevation. And existence was created with this quality”—existence was created deficient with this quality—“that forever and ever it will not cease from ascending, for this is an infinite action.”

[Speaker H] The Holy One, blessed be He—what? The Holy One, blessed be He, was created lacking?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, existence, the world, was created lacking. The world was basically created—this is what he said above, “labor is a high necessity”; the medieval authorities write about the secret that labor is a high necessity. What does that mean? That because the Holy One, blessed be He, is perfect, He cannot perfect Himself. But if that is so, then that perfection of being one who perfects Himself is lacking in Him. So it turns out He is lacking. How do you solve that problem? For that He created us. Contraction. He created us as deficient. Since we are deficient, we can and are required to perfect ourselves. Through our self-perfecting, He in effect perfects Himself. That is “labor is a high necessity.” He needs us in order to be complete. Without us He is not complete. There’s a novelty here—the medieval authorities call it the secret that labor is a high necessity. They are very hesitant to talk about it. Because it basically says, as the Ari interprets the verse, “Give strength to God.” What does “Give strength to God” mean? We give strength to the Holy One, blessed be He. There are things we can do that He cannot. He cannot do this thing because He is perfect; He cannot self-perfect. So He created a world, deficient creatures, and requires them to perfect themselves, because through that He in effect perfects Himself. That’s the claim, and that’s what he calls here “labor is a high necessity.” In a certain sense, as it were, the Holy One, blessed be He, needs us. There’s a very interesting point about this in the Book of Jonah. Near the end there, with the gourd—the story of the gourd—he is standing there near Nineveh in the blazing sun, and the Holy One, blessed be He, causes a gourd to grow for him, and then a worm comes and dries up the gourd, and Jonah asks to die. And then the Holy One, blessed be He, asks him: “Are you so upset about the gourd?” He says: “I am very upset, even to death.” And then He says: “You had pity on the gourd, for which you did not labor and did not grow, and I should not pity Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many people and beasts,” and all those things. Some kind of a fortiori argument: you didn’t grow the gourd, yet you pitied it so much—don’t you understand that I pity Nineveh, a great city full of people? It’s not just some random gourd that happened to grow by itself for you. It’s obviously a ridiculous a fortiori argument, right? This a fortiori is odd. Why? Because first of all, did the Holy One, blessed be He, labor over Nineveh? He created them by speech just as He created the whole world. But beyond that, Jonah didn’t pity the gourd at all. As we said in a talk about someone who catches fish: if he loves fish, then why does he catch them if he loves them? Meaning, Jonah didn’t pity the gourd; he pitied himself. He was hot, and the gourd gave him shade. So what is the Holy One, blessed be He, saying to him: “You pitied the gourd and I should not pity Nineveh”? So I once told the guys in Yeruham that you can give two kinds of answers to this. One answer is that we are basically looking at this with our criminal mindset. Who says Jonah didn’t pity the gourd? The fact that he needed the gourd is true, but does that mean that because of that he asked for the gourd? Maybe he needed the gourd and in addition to that he also pitied it? We always assume—we say—and this is really apropos of the day’s issue—as soon as someone has an interest, we assume he acted out of that interest. But the fact that someone has an interest does not mean he acted on it; those are two different things. It could be that Jonah was such a righteous person that even though he wanted the gourd and it helped him, he still really pitied it. So who says Jonah didn’t pity the gourd? That’s just one lesson: you don’t always have to look through an interest-based lens, even when interests exist. Yes, it’s like my favorite saying: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. Sometimes they really are after you even though you’re paranoid. And the opposite perspective is to look specifically at the side of the Holy One, blessed be He, in this a fortiori, in this equation. We assume Jonah needed the gourd, not that he pitied the gourd. And therefore I say: so what is the a fortiori to the Holy One, blessed be He, that He pities Nineveh? The answer is that the Holy One, blessed be He, also needs Nineveh, exactly as Jonah needed the gourd. Then it is a good a fortiori. Meaning, just as you needed the gourd for yourself, so the whole world needs Nineveh. Why does He need Nineveh? Also what Rabbi Kook writes here: He needs Nineveh so that they will repent, and therefore He sends Jonah to them. What does it mean to repent? Because they were in a deficient state and they had to correct themselves—and that is indeed what they did in the end, right? And that is why the whole world was created. Meaning, the whole world was created so that there would be here some deficient creature that can perfect itself, and then it brings from potential to actuality the ability of the Holy One, blessed be He, to self-perfect. Okay, and that basically means that through us the Holy One, blessed be He, receives the final perfection that was lacking to Him without us, and that is the ability to self-perfect. But that is exactly an expression of what I said earlier. Because if the whole value of self-perfecting were only that it brings one to the perfect state, then the Holy One, blessed be He, does not need it—He is already in the perfect state. And Rabbi Kook’s assumption—and again, as he said in Berakhot, as we saw in all the other places—his assumption is that the value of self-perfecting is not only that in the end through it we arrive at perfection, but that there is value in the act of self-perfecting itself. And I’ll say even more: it could be that the very definition of the state of perfection was created so that we could self-perfect. Meaning, it really turns the means into the end and the end into the means. After all, in the end, when we were created, we were created in order to self-perfect, not in order to be perfect. So which is the goal and which is the means? Is self-perfecting a means to reach the state in which I am perfect, or the opposite: are states of greater and lesser perfection defined so that I can self-perfect? In the end, the goal is the process. Leshem writes—in Hayom Ani, on matters of Rabbi Kook, and Leshem is not exactly his usual style—Leshem writes at the beginning of his commentary on Etz Chaim, in Klalei Peticha I think, that at the beginning the Ari brings two inquiries at the opening of Etz Chaim, and he explains there that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world so that His names could be revealed. He says that that’s how it starts there in Etz Chaim: so that His names could be revealed. I think that translated into what Rabbi Kook is writing here means this. That is, His ability to self-perfect will be revealed through us. That is, our self-perfecting basically reveals His perfection. And Leshem, when he quotes the wording of the Ari, notices that at first he says he is speaking about the reason for the creation of the worlds, and then he asks what the reason for the creation of the worlds is. That’s the inquiry. And the answer is: so that His names could be revealed. Meaning, he says, in effect the answer is a purpose, not a cause. Meaning, you were looking for a cause and as an answer you gave a purpose—because the concepts of cause and purpose often reverse. Meaning, certain things we think are the purpose of something turn out in the end to be the means, while reaching the purpose is really the thing itself. Now who is the cause and who is the effect? That depends on the perspective. For us, say, the goal is to be perfect, not to self-perfect. That’s obvious. And this—I didn’t mention this before—there’s a Hasidic interpretation of “I will sin and repent.” “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent”—they do not give him the opportunity to repent. So the Hasidim explain why—if they were Hasidim in general I’m getting carried away—why do the Hasidim ask what the initial thought was in “I will sin and repent”? “I will sin and repent” means: so that I will be a penitent, so that I will have the perfection of the penitent, because a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person. So that person who wants to be completely righteous will sin in order to repent and reach a higher level—that’s the initial thought. So they tell him, listen, it is not fitting for you to do that. Meaning, it is forbidden to behave that way, even though the idea is a correct idea, but you must not behave that way—they do not give him the opportunity to repent. Know that it won’t work. In other words, don’t do it. What does that mean? It basically means that we as human beings are not supposed to look at things this way. We as human beings are supposed to be concerned with being perfect, not with self-perfecting. There is no idea that we should sin so that afterward we can self-perfect. But the theological question of why we were created, and from the point of view of the Holy One, blessed be He—that perspective can be completely the opposite. There the perspective is that self-perfecting is the goal, and perfection is only a means. So the relation—what is the means and what is the goal, or what is the cause and what is the purpose—is a function of the point of view. From our point of view, the goal is to be complete, and the means is to perform an act of self-perfecting. From the point of view of the Holy One, blessed be He, He created us with this world of demands for perfection and all the rest because this whole world is a means so that we can self-perfect. So that this process of self-perfecting will be defined for us, this process will be defined for us. Now there is one point that still has to be completed in this discussion: in what sense does the fact that we were created deficient and we self-perfect make the Holy One, blessed be He, more complete? So we are more complete, we have that perfection. Why does that help Him? Meaning, why does that make Him too endowed with the quality of self-perfecting? He is not endowed with the quality of self-perfecting; we are endowed with the quality of self-perfecting. Why does creating deficient creatures that self-perfect complete Him? In what sense? So here there is another point that is also connected to this issue. And this—maybe I’ll just begin it here—there is, you know Zeno’s paradox of the arrow in flight? One of Zeno’s paradoxes. Zeno challenged the concept of motion, and one of his challenges is the paradox of the arrow in flight. What does he mean? Suppose an arrow is flying, so at every moment it is either standing in another place. At this moment it stands here, at this moment it stands here, and at every moment it stands here. Then Zeno asks: so when does it pass between the places? Meaning, at every moment it stands in a different place, so when does it pass? And therefore, basically, he claims there is no motion. In fact, what is the meaning of “there is no motion”? I don’t even understand that sentence. Never mind, the paradoxes are nice paradoxes. What is the conclusion from these paradoxes? I have no idea; I never understood what he wanted. But raising the paradoxes is interesting, like Achilles and the tortoise—it doesn’t matter, all his paradoxes come to undermine the concept of motion, yes, the opposite of Heraclitus. Where is he not right? The river is not—it is not

[Speaker G] the current state

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the current state—that is exactly the point we’re talking about here. The river is the process of flowing, and that is the river. The river is a function of the whole time. Anyway, the paradox of the flying arrow basically wonders when the arrow changes its position, at what point in time. Usually when people deal with this issue they speak in terms of the infinitesimal. Meaning, that you basically cannot speak about a point in time; you need to speak about an interval of time, as small as you like, but time is made of tiny intervals and not points. Continuity. The number line, a continuous axis, cannot be built out of discrete points packed one next to another. There is the property of continuity. The property of continuity is something beyond just there being many points here. Meaning, it’s something else. And that is also why continuity takes us from dimension zero to dimension one. Meaning, if it is a collection of points, then each point is dimension zero. Not only is the length zero, the dimension is also zero. By contrast, in a segment or on an axis, the dimension is one, even if we take an infinitesimal whose length tends toward zero, its dimension is still one. We are talking about a segment, not a point. But I always had the feeling that this does not solve the problem, it only hides it behind the infinitesimal. Because now we can ask about the infinitesimal: so then when does the change happen within the infinitesimal? After all, there are points on that segment; the segment is indeed made of points. So at each point in time, the process is in a different situation. So where is the dynamic? When do things change? The infinitesimal only describes the process in some consistent way—I hope at least consistent. But it doesn’t solve any philosophical problem; it just gives us a description in another language of the same thing. That is not an answer to any philosophical problem. I think the answer should not come from the infinitesimal at all; the use of the infinitesimal here is unnecessary. The question is based on a conceptual mistake altogether, not a mathematical mistake. It is simply not true to say that the arrow at every moment stands in a different place. The arrow at every moment is located in a different place. That is not the same thing. What is the difference? To be located in a place means that that is my location. To stand in a place means that that is my location and my velocity is zero. I am standing. Okay? Why don’t people distinguish—including Zeno and to this day, including those who rely on the infinitesimal—between those two statements? Because people have the feeling that there is no such thing as velocity at a point in time, velocity zero in this case. If I am standing, then standing at this place at that point in time means I am at this place and my velocity is zero. But velocity is not at a point in time; velocity is always over an interval. Not at a point. Okay? I think that is wrong. That is a mistake. It is a mistake that stems from the definition we give, the mathematical definition we give, to velocity. Usually when we define velocity, we define it as distance divided by time. And if the velocity is not constant, then we have to increase the resolution, meaning look at very, very close points.

[Speaker C] Very, very close intervals.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The derivative of position with respect to time. Yes, exactly—what is called a derivative. You take two very, very close points, you look at the difference in distance, the difference in time, and divide this by that; and when you take the points to be as close as you like, that limit is called velocity. But that always speaks about an interval, just an interval as small as you like—a ratio between intervals. In Leibniz’s notation—you know this absurdity that Leibniz’s notation was adopted by physicists and Newton’s notation was adopted by mathematicians, even though Leibniz was a mathematician and Newton was a physicist. Both, of course, discovered the infinitesimal calculus in parallel. So the notation is dY over dX or dX over dT; that is, some interval of distance over an interval of time. And therefore a certain feeling is created in us that velocity is something defined over an interval, not at a point. But that is not true. That is only the method of calculating velocity. After all, the result after we differentiate—suppose there is some position function, say x = t squared, okay? Three t squared. Okay, so what is the velocity at each point in time? Six t. We differentiate the function, so give me t and I’ll tell you the velocity. Give me a point, a point in time, and I’ll tell you the velocity at that point. At another point in time the velocity will be different, no matter how close the point is to the other point. The velocity will be different, and there is velocity at a point in time. The calculation we do is a calculation that looks at an interval around the point and takes that interval to be smaller and smaller as much as we like, and so we get a mistaken feeling, in my opinion, that velocity is a concept that lives only over time intervals and does not exist, is not defined, at a point in time—but that is not true. Velocity is defined at a point in time, but in order to calculate it we need to spread out to the interval around the point and shrink to a very short interval, as short as we like, around the point. But in the end, the result is velocity at a point in time, and every point has a different velocity. What does this basically mean? That velocity has two aspects in our language. Velocity is change of place, but change of place of course is only over an interval of time. You can’t change place at a point in time, right? So what is velocity at a point in time? It is potential for a change of place. Velocity is potential. A body that has velocity is a body such that if you wait a bit, you will see that it changes place, right? So people identify velocity with change of place, but that is not true. Velocity is the potential to change place. The change of place is an indication that the body has velocity; it is not the meaning of the concept velocity, it is a consequence of the fact that it has the concept of velocity. Okay? In other words, velocity is not change of place; velocity is potential for change of place. Now, that potential for change of place exists in a body at every point in time. This potential goes from potential to actuality in the form that the body actually changes place only over an interval of time, because it cannot be at two points in space at the same point in time. That cannot be. By the way, that cannot be not because the velocity is infinite, as people think; it is a logical contradiction. That is, over a very short interval of time, as short as we like, the transition from here to there may require—if the distance is, say, a centimeter and the time it takes to cross it is epsilon, or very small—then I may run into physical limitations. That is, I would need very, very high velocities, and beyond the speed of light there are no such velocities in physics. Okay? So that’s a problem in physics, not a problem of definition; it could have been otherwise—that’s a physics problem. But if we talk about a point in time, not an interval of time as small as we like, for a point-body to be found in a whole segment of space at one point in time is a logical contradiction. That is not a physical limitation, and it cannot be. Okay? Therefore what I basically want to say is that if velocity is defined at a point in time, that means velocity is not change of place; it is potential for change of place. Okay? When I say a body has velocity, it means it has the potential for change of place, and once it has the potential for change of place, what will actually happen is that it will change its place. Okay? I’ll continue just a little, all right? Just let me finish this—I also started a little late, so okay, a bit more. Why is this relevant? I’ll just close the circle so we don’t stop in the middle, and then I’ll return to the Holy One, blessed be He, with perfection and self-perfecting. And the claim is that this is true not only of velocity; it is true of every dynamic process, meaning a process that changes. A changing process can be described as a function of time, and that function has a derivative; that derivative describes what the potential of that function is. Say a factory increases its profits over time, okay? Then I can describe the factory’s profits as a function of time. I can always define a concept called profitability potential. What will that be? It will be the derivative of the profit function with respect to time, right? Because with velocity—the rate of growth of the profits, exactly. If the factory has such a potential, then if we wait a bit we will see that the profits grow. Meaning, that potential can exist at a point in time. I can look at the factory at one point in time and see—suppose I could, I’m not sure how, but in principle—that it has the potential for profit growth. I won’t see the growth; I’ll see that it has the potential for growth, and if I wait another moment I’ll also see growth. Now if we return to the Holy One, blessed be He, I think—how is it that by self-perfecting we give Him the perfection that was lacking to Him? As the Ari wrote at the beginning of Etz Chaim—I said he brings out His names into actuality, and that’s why He created us, He created the world. What does that mean? The potential for self-perfecting is also in Him. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot self-perfect; He cannot become more perfect because He is already perfect, right? So change of place or change of state cannot apply to Him. But there is no problem at all for the potential for change of state to exist in Him as well, right? Only that this potential cannot go from potential to actuality, because how can He become more perfect if He is already perfect? So what does He do? He brings this from potential to actuality through us. Meaning, His ability, His potential to self-perfect—in order for it to go from potential to actuality, He creates a world or creatures that contain deficiency, and their ability to self-perfect is basically the actualization of His potential. And therefore, in fact, if I ask whether the Holy One, blessed be He, is perfect—He is perfect. Why? Because perfection is not the change of state; perfection is the potential for change of state. After all, why is the penitent better than the righteous person? Not because he is more righteous, but because he has the potential to become righteous, right? If you wait with the penitent a little, you’ll see that he becomes more righteous. But his perfection is not that he becomes more righteous; his perfection is that he has potential, and you can see that by the fact that he becomes more righteous. Okay? That is only an indication, only a sign; it is not the thing itself. Okay? With the Holy One, blessed be He, it is the same. With the Holy One, blessed be He, there is the potential for self-perfecting. And that potential He cannot actualize by Himself; for that He created reality. That is what Rabbi Kook claims. And therefore labor is a high necessity. Meaning, what we do is basically the actualization of one of the perfections of the Holy One, blessed be He. He cannot actualize it because He is perfect. But that perfection exists in Him, not only in us. It is asked: if this perfection exists in us, how does that help complete Him? The answer is that this perfection in us is the practical expression of the potential that exists in Him. That, I think, is Rabbi Kook’s claim. And therefore it really does complete Him. I’ll give one more example and with that I’ll finish. Think of a situation where I take a ball and throw it at a wall. Okay? That ball has velocity, say constant velocity. Okay? So the ball moves at constant velocity, hits the wall, and returns—say an elastic collision. Okay? It hits the wall and returns. All right? What is its velocity at the instant it hits the wall? Zero. No, so yes—every physicist will tell you it’s zero, right? Physicists will tell you it’s zero. Why? Because when physicists look at velocity, they look at velocity as dX over dT. They look at change of place over time, and that’s true: the change of place here is zero; it doesn’t change its place. But it is obvious that this is not zero in the sense I just defined. After all, it has the potential for change of place. If the velocity were zero in the sense of potential, then it would remain stuck to the wall and never move again. The fact that afterward it changes place means that even at the moment when it was pressed against the wall it had potential for change of place. Only what? That potential does not manage to go from potential to actuality because the wall stops it. So what happens? It is actualized differently. How? Either by the ball bouncing back, or if the collision is plastic rather than elastic, then as heat—it doesn’t matter, it comes out in another way. Meaning, many times the potential, since it cannot be actualized in the ordinary way in me, is actualized in some other form. Okay? That’s a metaphor for what I said before: that in the Holy One, blessed be He, there is a potential for self-perfecting. That potential in Him cannot go from potential to actuality. There is, as it were, a wall that does not let it come out. It’s not an external wall; it’s an internal wall. Meaning, He cannot self-perfect because He is already perfect. How will this potential go from potential to actuality? It almost seems, according to this metaphor, as if there is some necessity to create us—it

[Speaker I] doesn’t even depend on Him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This potential somehow has to come out from potential to actuality. How does it come out? By creating deficient creatures who can bring it from potential to actuality and perfect themselves. What does our perfection have to do with His potential, and how are we connected? So I say: His potential is actualized through us, just as velocity is actualized not through change—the velocity is potential for change of place—but when it cannot be actualized in the form of velocity, it is actualized in the form of heat. In a completely different form. Okay? So yes, right, this potential somehow seeks a way to emerge from potential to actuality. It comes out through us. That’s the point. All right.