Platonism – Lecture 13
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The Platonic character of Jewish law versus an Aristotelian conception
- A shift from ontic explanations to conventional and psychological explanations
- Demons, causality, and an analogy to the natural sciences
- Moral intuition, denial of abstract entities, and modern conventionalism
- Theoretical entities in science, dark matter, and mathematical Platonism
- The authority of the Sages, cumulative truth, and a dwarf standing on a giant
- Angels, tradition, metaphorical interpretation, and a heavenly voice
- Halakhic instructions based on factual assumptions
- Maimonides, Root 11: parts of a commandment, indispensability, and “one matter”
- Three models of the relation between parts and a whole, and the Rogatchover’s distinction
- The verses about tzitzit, fulfillment of the concept “tzitzit,” and support for Maimonides’ reading
- Halakhic concepts, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and the metaphysics of legal status
- Constitutive and regulative rules: chess, traffic law, and soccer
- Tzimtzum literally or not literally, and Zeno’s arrow: student questions and the Rabbi’s answers
- The obligation of tzitzit, a four-cornered garment, and a time of divine anger
Summary
General Overview
The text presents Jewish law as having a Platonic character, in which legal statuses and acquisitions are not “floating norms” but entities or metaphysical facts anchored in reality, and contrasts this with an Aristotelian conception that identifies the legal concept with the set of norms and consequences attached to it. It describes a broad modern process of moving from ontic explanations to a conventionalist and psychologistic attitude, and warns against rejecting ontology altogether at the price of giving up ethical and legal facts. It then develops, through Maimonides in Root 11, a way of understanding the relation between a “concept” and its “characteristics,” and connects this to the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules and to the thesis that a halakhic concept may still exist even when some of its characteristics are absent.
The Platonic character of Jewish law versus an Aristotelian conception
Jewish law sees ownership and legal statuses as norms grounded in the soil of reality, and it is metaphysical reality that creates the legal determinations. To say that so-and-so is the owner means that there is a metaphysical bond between him and the object, and to say that a woman has the legal status of a married woman means that there is some “spiritual, metaphysical object” called the legal status of a married woman, from which the halakhic consequences flow. The Aristotelian conception identifies being a married woman with the set of norms of “permitted to her husband and forbidden to all others,” whereas the text argues that those norms are characteristics and consequences of the entity “married woman,” not its definition. The text presents this as parallel to the Plato-Aristotle debate and to what was discussed in Leibniz regarding whether a concept is just the collection of its characteristics or whether there is such a thing as the concept itself, which exists in its own right and whose characteristics are merely its characteristics.
A shift from ontic explanations to conventional and psychological explanations
The text describes a feeling that the ontic perspective feels “old,” and that in the modern world the tendency in law is to see legal norms as floating norms that do not reflect truth or reality but are shaped for needs and goals. It presents this shift as part of a broader process in which things once understood as entities are now understood as a matter of “law in the person” and as human reactions to situations. It illustrates this with statements of the Sages about “that crowding at the assembly,” which is explained by demons standing between people, and fear in the desert and in darkness, which is explained by demons, as against modern explanations that frame it as a psychological response or a natural fear.
Demons, causality, and an analogy to the natural sciences
The text brings the passage in Bava Kamma about the benefit of living in a house, and presents one opinion about “desolation smashes the gate” as a demon that crumbles the house, as opposed to a modern explanation in terms of maintenance and cleanliness. It adds that even in the modern explanation one invokes things like the second law of thermodynamics and entropy, but the question still arises what exactly “causes” disintegration, and the phrase “material fatigue” is described as words that describe a phenomenon more than they provide a cause. It argues that behind the ancient explanations in terms of “entities” stands the principle of causality: if something happens, there ought to be a cause producing it. That is why the ancient world was comfortable attributing things to abstract and mystical entities, whereas the modern world recoils from that and looks for other formulations.
Moral intuition, denial of abstract entities, and modern conventionalism
The text draws a parallel between law and morality: in the ancient world, an intuition of “what is right” is taken as a sign of something objectively right, whereas in the modern world it is treated as an internal structure that should be replaced by thinking in terms of goals and norm design. It argues that the modern world denies the existence of abstract entities, “including the Holy One, blessed be He, by the way,” and replaces them with psychological explanations and with “law in the person” instead of “law in the object.” It describes a dissonance in which the same people who talk about subjectivity go out on a “moral jihad” against “moral evildoers,” and concludes that there is at least a subtextual assumption of objective morality. He says he partially shares the modern trend, but is not willing to abandon the ontic perspective, and believes in the existence of ethical facts and legal facts and Platonic ideas, while warning us “not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”
Theoretical entities in science, dark matter, and mathematical Platonism
The text presents a philosophical position according to which scientific entities like electrons are a conceptual framework for organizing phenomena, not a commitment to what actually exists in the world, and presents this as an example of the modern retreat from the object to the subject. He accepts the remark about “dark matter and dark energy” as a domain where truly “nobody knows that it exists.” He then adds a discussion of mathematical Platonism: the claim that mathematical entities are not constructions but “something like that… exists in the world,” and mathematics is a kind of science in which there is “observation through the eyes of the intellect.” He mentions Ron Aharoni, who argues that mathematics is an “empirical science” learned from observations such as oranges in a basket, and sharply dissents from that view.
The authority of the Sages, cumulative truth, and a dwarf standing on a giant
The text distinguishes between the inability to dispute a Tanna as a matter of formal authority and the question of the wisdom of the generations, comparing it to obeying laws of the Knesset, which does not depend on the wisdom of the legislators. It presents “the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are like angels” as an assessment by students of earlier generations, not as the source of a prohibition against disputing Jewish law, and links this to the metaphor of a “dwarf standing on a giant,” where the dwarf sees farther even though the giant is taller. It cites the principle that “the Jewish law follows the later authorities” and explains that the later authorities may be “more correct” even if they are “smaller,” formulating a distinction between wisdom and truth. It quotes George Orwell: “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them,” and argues that knowledge and truth accumulate across generations of research even if the later person is not necessarily wiser.
Angels, tradition, metaphorical interpretation, and a heavenly voice
The text distinguishes between demons as an inference used to explain phenomena and angels, which are based on “tradition… in Scripture itself,” and presents a “this requires further analysis” position regarding their existence. It allows for the possibility that angels are “natural forces” or metaphors, and brings an example from the Jerusalem Talmud in Chagigah on “what is meant by a heavenly voice,” as an interpretation of a nearby event rather than a transcendent revelation. It notes that there are many interpretations of biblical descriptions, mentions Maimonides’ claim that the angels who came to Abraham were “in a night dream,” and argues that proofs from biblical descriptions of angels are weak because “the gates of interpretation have not been locked.” He states that he does not consider himself bound by the Sages’ views outside the halakhic context, and in matters of worldview he sees himself as free to understand things differently.
Halakhic instructions based on factual assumptions
The text raises the question of what to do with halakhic instructions that are based on factual or ideological assumptions, and proposes a position that where it is clear the law is based on a factual error, “the halakhic instruction is void,” like a “mistaken transaction.” As an example, he cites Maimonides’ systematic omission of Talmudic laws about the evil eye because he did not think the evil eye exists. He mentions “water that stayed overnight” for matzah as connected to a physical explanation about springs warming up, and suggests that one can preserve the goal of cold water by other means. He cites “uncovered water” and Arukh HaShulchan, who permits it in practice because reality has changed: “we have no snakes today,” and notes that most halakhic decisors do not agree with his approach, including even on the matter of lice on the Sabbath. He adds that many lenient reinterpretations are offered only after the decision has already been made “not to change,” and he accepts an alternative interpretation only when it is not clear that the law rests on a mistaken assumption.
Maimonides, Root 11: parts of a commandment, indispensability, and “one matter”
The text cites Maimonides in Root 11, who rules: “One does not count the parts of a commandment individually… when the combination of them constitutes one commandment,” and illustrates this with the four species, which are one commandment. It presents the intuition that when parts are indispensable to each other it is one commandment, and when they are not indispensable it is two commandments, but Maimonides rejects this and shows that indispensability is not the criterion for counting commandments. He brings the Mishnah in Menachot that “the blue thread does not prevent the white thread… and the hand-tefillin do not prevent the head-tefillin,” and clarifies that the blue thread is a positive commandment and one who does not place it “has neglected a positive commandment,” even though its absence does not negate fulfillment of the white thread commandment. He quotes Maimonides, who says the criterion is “whether it is one matter or many matters,” and explains that in tzitzit “the intention is… so that you shall remember,” and therefore the whole thing that brings about remembrance is one commandment.
Three models of the relation between parts and a whole, and the Rogatchover’s distinction
The text proposes three kinds of relation between parts of a commandment and the whole: a case where each part has independent value not dependent on the other; a case where each part has value but only the combination achieves the whole in a complete way, so partial fulfillment achieves the goal incompletely; and a case where no part has value without the combination and a part by itself means “you did nothing.” He applies this to the discussion of tzitzit to explain how parts can be non-indispensable and yet still be counted as one commandment when they fuse into one whole. In the language of the Rogatchover, he calls this a “blended composition” rather than a “neighboring composition,” like a chemical compound as opposed to mere side-by-side components.
The verses about tzitzit, fulfillment of the concept “tzitzit,” and support for Maimonides’ reading
The text analyzes the verses “They shall make for themselves tzitzit… and they shall place on the tzitzit of the corner a thread of blue… and it shall be for you as tzitzit,” and argues that the white thread is already called “tzitzit” before the blue is added, and then the combination is defined as “and it shall be for you as tzitzit.” It proposes that the verses do not constitute the concept of tzitzit but rather “tune” it, and that the concept of tzitzit already existed beforehand as a symbol, mentioning Ibn Ezra’s interpretation that tzitzit is a kind of symbol like “the lock of hair on the head.” He concludes that the blue and the white are characteristics of the concept tzitzit, and not that the concept is simply the sum of its characteristics; therefore it is one commandment even when the parts are not indispensable. He compares this to tefillin and argues that in the Torah there is no parallel encompassing language uniting the hand and head, and therefore according to Maimonides tefillin are counted as two commandments because each achieves a different purpose.
Halakhic concepts, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and the metaphysics of legal status
The text connects the discussion of tzitzit to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles and the dispute with Leibniz, and formulates the position that the halakhic concept is a “Platonic idea that exists in its own right,” while the properties are ways in which it appears in the world. It distinguishes between concepts where the Torah “regulates” instances of an existing concept and concepts it “constitutes,” where if you did not do it according to the rules, “you simply did not do it.” He gives the example of ownership: the legal status of ownership can exist even where there is no right of use, as in things from which benefit is forbidden or in a slave “whose bill of emancipation is being withheld,” because ownership is a metaphysical legal status and its characteristics may fail to appear. He concludes that the absence of characteristics does not negate the existence of the concept itself, and says he will return to this later.
Constitutive and regulative rules: chess, traffic law, and soccer
The text brings a distinction from analytic philosophy between constitutive rules and regulative rules, and illustrates it with chess, whose rules define the game, so violating them means “you didn’t play.” He illustrates traffic laws as regulating an already existing activity, so even a traffic offender is still “driving,” just “not properly,” and gets punished. He adds an example from soccer and basketball, where a “foul” may be a built-in tactic within the game and the sanction is part of the game’s rules, so not every deviation is treated as leaving the game. He applies this to tzitzit and argues that the commandment of tzitzit regulates an existing symbol rather than constituting it.
Tzimtzum literally or not literally, and Zeno’s arrow: student questions and the Rabbi’s answers
The text includes questions about the relation between God and the world and about “tzimtzum literally and not literally,” and the Rabbi answers that there is no difficulty in there being a “place where God is not present” in the sense that it is “not God,” and that this does not imply “two authorities” or two divinities, but simply a reality that is not divinity. It also includes a question about the article “Zeno’s Arrow” and the difficulty of how there can be “self-perfection” without deficiency in divinity, and the Rabbi answers that perfection through development applies to created beings, whereas divine perfection does not move from potential to actual, and the very idea of “perfecting a perfect being” is like a “round triangle,” not a thing at all, so the impossibility is not a limitation. The Rabbi adds, “He cannot do it. Period,” and defines omnipotence as the ability to do anything that can be conceived, not something that does not exist at all.
The obligation of tzitzit, a four-cornered garment, and a time of divine anger
The text raises the question why tzitzit as a symbol depends specifically on a four-cornered garment and whether the obligation is mandatory or only applies when one wears such a garment. The Rabbi answers that one does not derive Jewish law from “the reason for the verse,” and cites the Talmud’s statement that “in a time of wrath” one is held accountable for avoiding wearing a four-cornered garment in order to be exempt from tzitzit. He notes that today everyone wears an “artificial” four-cornered garment, but cites Tosafot that when ordinary clothing is not four-cornered, there is no claim against wearing it, because there is no deliberate evasion here. He concludes with a personal remark about a haircut and with the blessing, “Shabbat shalom.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hi, we’re in the middle of the topic of Platonism, and in previous lectures I talked about the Platonic character—after giving an introduction to Platonism in general—so I started getting into, or not started, it’s already been several lectures, the Platonic character of Jewish law. Yes, we talked about the concept of legal status, about acquisitions, about the nature of halakhic reasoning—that it’s teleological and not causal, sorry, causal and not teleological—and especially halakhic jurisprudence. I talked about legal statuses and about legal and moral facts, and in the end we finished with the question of where Jewish law is situated between positivism and natural law, which is where we ended last time. I want to continue a bit with the discussion of the Platonic character of Jewish law, but before I continue I want to make one more interesting remark, sort of a side glance at this process. We’ve basically seen that Jewish law views ownership, or legal statuses in general, not as floating legal norms, as if we simply decided they’re like this and therefore they’re like this, but rather as norms anchored in the ground of reality; they’re not floating in the air. Metaphysical reality is what actually creates the legal determinations—that’s basically the claim. We see that if I say that so-and-so owns something, that means there’s some metaphysical bond between him and that thing. When I say that a woman has the legal status of a married woman, I’m basically saying that there is something there, some spiritual object, metaphysical, I don’t know what to call it, meta-legal, called the legal status of a married woman. That has halakhic consequences: she is forbidden to the rest of the world, permitted to her husband, all the consequences that apply to a married woman. But those are consequences of her being a married woman, not the very fact of her being a married woman. That stands in contrast to an Aristotelian conception of law, which would say no: to say that a woman is a married woman means to say that she is permitted to her husband and forbidden to everyone else; that whole set of norms is what defines the concept “married woman.” And I’m arguing that this whole set of norms is a consequence or a set of characteristics of the concept “married woman,” but “married woman” itself is some object, some existing entity. In that sense this is really the debate between Plato and Aristotle, or what we saw with Leibniz regarding the question whether a concept is just the collection of its characteristics or whether there is such a thing as the concept itself, which has characteristics, but the characteristics are its characteristics and not that the concept just is the collection of characteristics. Now, there is something about this way of looking at things that somehow smells musty; it feels old. Meaning, yes, it’s an old way of looking at things, primitive, I don’t know what people would call it, something that in the modern world people don’t really hold anymore. In ancient legal systems, for example, I think you’d much more easily find Platonic references—when you talk about reality, about truth, it’s not in your hands to decide whatever you want. Today the tendency in the legal world—I showed this also regarding intellectual property law—the tendency in the legal world is to see legal norms as floating norms. They don’t reflect reality; there’s no truth or falsehood there. Whatever we determine, that’s what the legal norm says. We’re not trying to hit on something; we’re shaping something for our needs, for various purposes. This phenomenon of moving from what we might call an ontic perspective to a conventional perspective is not unique to attitudes toward the legal world. There’s a much broader process of moving from things that were once perceived as entities and are now perceived as a matter of “law in the person,” as human reactions to situations. Let me take an example. The Sages in the Talmud say, “that crowding at the assembly”—when we have the kallah months, there’s study, a lot of people come to learn Torah during those assembly months, so the crowding we feel is because there are all kinds of demons around us, filling the space between me and the people sitting next to me in the lecture. And that’s why I feel terribly crowded. Now ask a psychologist today—or not even a psychologist, anyone—why is there a feeling of crowding in a place where there are lots of people and they aren’t touching each other? If they’re pushing me, then obviously there’s a feeling of crowding because they’re physically pushing me. I’m talking about a case where we’re sitting, he’s half a centimeter away from me, but he’s not touching me. Everyone is a centimeter away from the next person, and we’re sitting in a packed hall learning Torah, listening to a lecture. Why do we feel crowded? People will tell you it’s obvious: it’s a psychological effect. There isn’t any real crowding there, nobody is pressing on you, but psychologically you feel as though something is pressing on you. In the ancient world they tended to explain something like that in ontic terms. Meaning, if I feel crowded, then there must be something there pressing on me. And that something is the demons. The demons are somehow in the spaces between me and the people sitting next to me, and therefore I feel crowded. Or another thing, for example: why are we afraid in the desert, in the dark, in desolate places? The Talmud says: because there are demons there. In the desert or in the dark, demons wander around, and when there is light, when there are people, in inhabited places, the demons don’t come. How would we explain that today? Nobody would attribute it to demons. I don’t know, some psychological phenomenon or another; you’re afraid robbers will come at you and nobody will see, I don’t know exactly what. But in the ancient world they tended to explain it through the existence of various entities—demons and the like. And today we look at it as a matter of “law in the person,” in terms of human reactions. There are some noises here.
[Speaker B] You can already see, like in the Daf Yomi we had yesterday, that there are already two approaches in the Talmud to why it’s beneficial if someone lives in a house: either because then demons won’t be there—because “desolation smashes the gate”—or because he’ll maintain the house. So you already see these two approaches within the Talmud itself, a dispute between them, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The next example I was actually about to give was exactly that. I didn’t know that was the Daf Yomi—I, in my sins, don’t take part—but that was exactly the next example I intended to give: “desolation smashes the gate.” The Talmud in Bava Kamma says that if a person lives in someone else’s house, then the owner gets some kind of benefit. Why? Because the house doesn’t fall apart. A person who lives in a house maintains it, keeps it clean. If you leave the house neglected, it falls apart, fills with dust. So when the Talmud addresses this, one of the opinions says that there is some demon called desolation, and “desolation smashes the gate.” Yes, when that demon goes around the house, it crumbles the house. Okay? How would we relate to that today? Obviously, no demons and no nothing. A person living in the house cleans it, maintains it, and therefore it stays in good condition. But there’s still room to ask, even today: why does it need cleaning in the first place? What causes houses to fall apart? Physicists will tell you: the second law of thermodynamics. The house is moving toward disorder, toward disintegration over time. Things—the second law of thermodynamics basically says, in a popular formulation, that things generally come apart over time; they don’t get built up or assembled over time. The natural process is to break down, not to build up. If a flowerpot falls off a roof, it shatters into pieces, but we’ve never heard of a pile of shards climbing up onto a roof and turning into a flowerpot. Okay, such a process doesn’t happen. Meaning, the natural process, if there’s no directing hand from the outside—in a closed system with no outside intervention—then entropy increases, or disorder increases, okay? Things break apart. That’s the modern explanation. But still, think about this: there’s a not-so-simple question. Fine, you explain it to me, you describe the process by which things move toward disintegration, but there is also the principle of causality. Something also causes that disintegration. It’s not enough to say, look, things generally break down over time. What does “break down” mean? There’s something generating that disintegration. Well, they call it material fatigue. “Material fatigue” is just words. In the end, what causes this? You’re describing the phenomenon, but I’m asking: what causes it? What makes the material tired? So the Sages gave an answer in terms of that demon, desolation. Because when they looked for answers to these kinds of questions, they attributed them to the existence of entities. Maybe we don’t see them, but they’re there, because after all, things are happening, and surely someone or something is causing them to happen. We need to understand that behind these apparently mystical, primitive things, this ancient mode of thought, there actually sits a principle that is very reasonable, scientific, modern, whatever you want to call it: the principle of causality. And if something happens, there should be a cause that generates it. If I feel fear, then apparently there are things around me—even if I don’t see them with my eyes—that frighten me, because otherwise why am I afraid? Okay? So in the ancient world there was much more comfort with explanations that relied on abstract, mystical, metaphysical entities, and so on. The modern world recoils from that kind of statement. Entities we can’t physically handle, that we don’t observe, probably don’t exist, and so people look for other formulations. What I want to say is that the picture we saw with regard to law is a reflection of the same issue. Meaning, when a person looks at some question—say, one person benefits and the other does not lose out—and you come to some conclusion about what the Jewish law ought to be, or return of a lost object if we’re talking about issues we discussed, or intellectual property—okay, then people have some intuition about what the right thing to do is. The modern world says: that intuition is just some structure in you. Be rational, think about what you want to achieve, and formulate the Jewish law or the legal rule so that it achieves the purpose you want. In the ancient world they would say: wait a second, if I have a sense that this is right, then apparently there is something objectively right here, something in reality saying that this is so, or in other words: there is something Platonic here, yes, a Platonic idea that exists in reality. In the modern world they deny the existence of abstract entities, including the Holy One, blessed be He, by the way; that’s part of the same process. And although there may be lots of indications for the existence of abstract entities, the modern world denies it and says no, these are psychological phenomena, this is “law in the person,” not “law in the object.” So much so that even in the scientific world—at least not among scientists, but among philosophers—there are many views that scientific theses or scientific entities are statements about us, not about the world. There are no electrons in the world; nobody has ever seen an electron. There are no electrons in the world. In the world there are things—I don’t know what—they produce phenomena that I observe. It’s convenient for me to organize those phenomena through the assumption that there are electrons, because that explains a lot of phenomena for me. But I’m not really prepared to commit to saying that electrons exist. All I’ve done is build for myself a conceptual world or a conceptual framework in which it’s convenient for me to organize the world of phenomena. But what really exists, what is really objective in science, is the phenomena. The explanations—the explanations are us, not the world. I’m not saying everyone thinks this way, absolutely not. Certainly among scientists this is not true; among philosophers many more do think that way. But there is some modern tendency to retreat from reality, from the object to the subject, meaning to pin it all on people. Anything I didn’t explicitly see with my own eyes—Platonic models—doesn’t really exist, so that’s me. Yes, someone wanted to comment?
[Speaker C] It’s even truer with dark matter and dark energy. Nobody really knows that it exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And if we’re already talking about this, then in mathematics too there is mathematical Platonism. That is, the claim of mathematical Platonism—maybe we’ll talk about this more—is that the entities of mathematics are not constructions that we built and defined, but rather there is such a thing; in some Platonic sense it exists in the world. And from that perspective mathematics is a kind of science: we are simply investigating this aspect of reality, and discovering the laws of mathematics, which are really scientific laws that come from observation. Observation, of course, not with the eyes or measuring devices, but observation through the eyes of the intellect. That’s the view of mathematical Platonism. And the non-Platonic view in mathematics says, what are you talking about? These are our constructions and they have no real existence at all. Yes, there’s Ron Aharoni—you’ve probably heard of him—I had a few arguments with him, he’s a very interesting person. He insists that mathematics is actually an empirical science. He says it’s not even science in the sense I’m talking about, of looking with the eyes of the intellect, but no, looking with our actual eyes, not the eyes of the intellect—mathematics is an empirical science. Meaning, we see that when you add two oranges into a basket and then add another three oranges, you get five, so we observed the law that two plus three equals five. Okay, so he sees it as an empirical science. In my view that’s a bitter mistake, but that’s another discussion.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, the example the Rabbi gave with demons isn’t really a clear example of the collapse of the Platonic approach. Or does somebody think there are?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so what does that mean?
[Speaker D] That this approach depends on things that are hanging by a thread—maybe without even a thread to hang on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, things I don’t observe with my eyes are more doubtful than things I do observe with my eyes. But the question is whether I now abandon entirely the ontic or metaphysical approach because of that. The fact that one can be mistaken—that’s true. So of course, if we’re making such a claim, it’s definitely worth putting more thought into it, checking ourselves, seeing whether maybe there’s another explanation, and so on. But that doesn’t automatically mean it’s wrong. You have to examine it.
[Speaker D] But the trend—the trend is more from Platonism toward Aristotelianism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Historically you’re right. I just think it goes too far. I’m partly with that trend. I also think there are no demons. I also think that all kinds of entities people once believed in don’t really exist. But on the other hand I’m saying: no, I don’t completely abandon the ancient way of looking at things. I do believe in the existence of ethical facts, moral facts. I do think Platonic ideas are something real, because otherwise we turn the whole world into something conventionalist, meaning just conventions. There’s no truth and falsehood here, no right and wrong. And those very same people speak the language of—I talked about this in my last column exactly—morality and emotion. Those same people who talk about everything being subjective go out to wage jihad—not Muslim jihad, but moral jihad—against moral evildoers. Meaning, their assumption, at least in the subtext, is that there is objective morality, binding truth, together with all these subjective statements. And I think the dissonance our world lives in—at many points, by the way, there really is life inside some pretty insane contradictions in modern conceptions—stems precisely from the process of denial I described. On the one hand, you understand that Plato is right, meaning that there are certain things that really do exist even if I don’t see them with my eye. I grasp them through the intellect and understand that this is what is correct, and whoever says otherwise is mistaken. On the other hand, I don’t have observations that can verify it. If someone doesn’t see it, I can’t prove it to him, I can’t force him to accept it. So gradually a phenomenon develops where I deny or suppress my own intuitions and say, no, these are constructions inside me and it’s all subjective and it’s all “law in the person” instead of “law in the object.” And I’m saying that this process has a certain justification, but it’s wrong to take it too far. In the legal context, for example, independent of demons—demons, I also tend not to think exist—but in the legal context I really do think there are legal facts or ethical facts that determine what is right. It’s not merely a subjective construction or convention. Our feeling that this is right and this is wrong is anchored in some kind of abstract observation—in some sense, an observation. And I don’t think it’s right to give that up. So the reservation about the ancient mode of thought is a reservation, yes, but you shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Meaning, there is something there that may still be right. Plato is not just a bundle of nonsense. Sometimes it was taken too far. Okay? Pythagoras, of course, that’s mathematical Platonism, but it’s the same issue. Sometimes people took it too far. Pythagoras really saw these as entities almost in a physical sense. I don’t think mathematical Platonism is talking about entities in that sense, but it is talking about structures that exist in some sense in reality itself. They’re not things we made, not our constructions. In that sense I do think that even if not Pythagoras, Plato was right. Okay, but we’ll see this later; we’ll still talk about mathematical and scientific Platonism.
[Speaker E] There seem to be, at least apparently, two vectors here, or two assumptions, or I’m not sure how exactly to define it, that are really opposed. We know that an Amora is not allowed to dispute a Tanna. Meaning, if they—I don’t remember the exact quotes—if they are like angels, we are like human beings, and if they are like human beings, we are like donkeys.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Donkeys.
[Speaker E] Yes. And on the other hand, day by day, we—again, whether science contradicts faith or not is another subject—but in general we keep entering into new understandings, so here, with demons, then the Sages—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s the saying you hear on the road: don’t be smart, be right. It’s possible for a person to be very, very smart, and that still doesn’t mean he’s always right. And sometimes a dwarf standing on a giant—as in the metaphor that appears among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), though it also comes from non-Jewish sources. Yes, Tosafot Rid uses it in his responsa, and others. But a dwarf standing on a giant sees farther than the giant whose back he’s sitting on. So who is taller, the giant or the dwarf? The giant is taller.
[Speaker E] Right. But the dwarf sees farther. Right. But we didn’t ask about wisdom—we spoke about conclusion, about knowledge. Are we allowed to dispute them or not? So it’s not only about wisdom.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole question of whether one may dispute them has nothing to do with their greatness. It’s a definition that they have formal authority, just as I can’t dispute the laws of the Knesset. Is that because the Knesset is wiser than I am? I didn’t insult you, so don’t insult me. Meaning, I’m supposed to obey the Knesset because it is the Knesset, not because it’s wiser than I am. And similarly, the authority of the Talmud, in the sense that one must obey or may not dispute its halakhic rulings, does not stem from its being wiser. It stems from the fact that this is the law, this is the legislature, so to speak. Now, those statements that “the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are like angels and we are like people” are not statements related to a prohibition against disputing what is written in the Talmud. They are assessments by students of their teachers or of earlier generations, and about that I said it’s like a dwarf standing on a giant. In that sense, for example, the Talmud itself says that the Jewish law follows the later authorities, at least from the time of Abaye and Rava onward. Why does the Jewish law follow the later authorities? So the medieval authorities explain: even though the later authorities are smaller than the earlier ones, it’s like a dwarf standing on a giant. And therefore the later ones are more correct, even though the earlier ones are wiser. Wisdom and truth do not always go together. They do not always go together, because as George Orwell said: there are mistakes so enormous that only intellectuals can accept them. Or say them. Right? And we see things like that every day; precisely in these days we see lovely examples of that all over the world. But beyond that, I’m saying truth is cumulative—not wisdom, sorry, truth is cumulative, not wisdom. Meaning, I can know the world better because there were more generations of learning and scientific research before I came into the world. So I draw on many more years of research and scientific thought and the like. So I know more science. Does that mean I’m wiser than Maimonides or Aristotle? No. They were simply earlier in the chain. I’m sitting on their backs. So if you ask me who is wiser, it may be that they were wiser. If you ask me who is more correct, I am more correct. Two different things. Now, I’m not getting into the question whether it’s really true that the medieval authorities were wiser. That’s another discussion, and I’ve written about that too—that in some respects maybe yes, in other respects no. But I’m saying that the mere statement that the medieval authorities were wiser does not contradict the fact that we know science, mathematics, and various other areas better. There’s no contradiction. A person can be tremendously wise and still know less than I do, because he was earlier than I was in the chain of accumulated knowledge. That’s all. So back to our issue: the claim is that this process of moving from ontic thinking—yes, metaphysical thinking, of existing entities—to “law in the person,” to subjective, conventionalist thinking, where everything is agreed upon, or from Plato to Aristotle, is a process that is very characteristic of our generations, of the modern age. Yes, from the sixteenth century onward, the scientific era increasingly moves in this direction in philosophy as well, not only in science. Science itself, by the way, is a bit exceptional in this matter, because there most scientists, I think, do believe in the existence of theoretical entities. They don’t see them as claims about me, about the subject, but as claims about the object, about the world itself. But philosophers do represent this process, and I think it’s a process that has something to it that is, in my eyes, correct, but one has to be careful not to take it too far. There are dimensions of reality itself that do exist—they are there, they are objective truth—even though I can’t point to them with my finger and I can’t see them with my eyes. It’s wrong to throw that whole possibility into the trash, as if Platonic ideas are impossible. Okay? I think that’s wrong. Not everything I see is a mystical entity or a metaphysical entity. That’s taking it too far. So I’m saying we have to proceed carefully between the two poles.
[Speaker C] So why not believe in demons then? Huh? So why not believe in demons and angels?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I tend to think there aren’t any, but you can believe, I don’t know. I don’t have very strong arguments either way. I’ll just say that the descriptions the Talmud gives—for example, that there are rooster feet and cat tails there, the passage in Berakhot, and how we smear ash on the eyes in order to see these demons—it’s hard for me to believe that if I did that today I’d really see anything, but maybe I’m just trapped in certain conceptual frameworks.
[Speaker C] And what about angels?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Angels.
[Speaker C] I can’t hear. About angels—has the Rabbi also seen angels?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said angels even exist? You’re assuming that I do believe in angels and only not in demons? No, I don’t know. By the way, I also don’t deny their existence, because angels—well, let’s say demons—are the kind of thing that is usually my conclusion. Meaning, I see unexplained phenomena and I attribute them to a demon, so I can argue about the conclusions. But angels—there is, I think, a very strong tradition in the Bible itself that there is such a thing called angels, the spiritual messengers of the Holy One, blessed be He. So that I’m more willing to accept, because there it’s not a conclusion that I draw in order to explain phenomena, but a tradition I received, just as I accept that there is God. I haven’t seen Him either, and I have various indications of His existence. So regarding angels, I don’t know, it’s something that requires further analysis; maybe they exist and maybe they don’t, but it’s not the same as demons. It’s not the same thing. It could definitely be that angels too require an interpretive transformation like the one we did with demons, and we would say that angels are simply messengers of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the sense of laws of nature or natural forces, and not in the sense of mystical entities or metaphysical entities. I don’t know—maybe yes, maybe no. These things can also be metaphors, or these things can be descriptions that don’t necessarily describe facts. Someone met an angel—fine, that doesn’t mean he actually met an angel. The Jerusalem Talmud in Chagigah, I think—the Talmud says: what exactly is a heavenly echo? What is a heavenly echo? And the Talmud gives several examples there. For example, one case is of someone who was about to go down to Babylonia to ask Shmuel a question of Jewish law. Shmuel was a sage in Babylonia. And he passed by a schoolhouse of young children and heard that they were studying precisely the verses, “And Shmuel died,” in the book of Samuel—that Shmuel had died. And then he understood that he had no point in going down outside the Land, either because Shmuel had died or because they didn’t want him to go outside the Land—it doesn’t matter. But from that he understood not to go outside the Land. An interesting question is why this isn’t forbidden divination—“you shall not practice divination”—that’s a different discussion. But the Talmud brings this as an example of what a heavenly echo is. And we would have understood that a heavenly echo is some transcendent, metaphysical thing, some kind of spiritual illumination. No, it isn’t. It’s an interpretation of events happening around me. There’s simply a certain mode of looking at things that we call a heavenly echo. There are noises here. There’s a certain mode of looking at things that we call a heavenly echo. And therefore it could be that angels too are just a name given to something that today we would call natural phenomena of one kind or another, maybe explained, maybe unexplained—I don’t know exactly. But not necessarily that there really are angels with six wings each.
[Speaker C] But the whole Hebrew Bible is full of angels,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Daniel,
[Speaker C] Zechariah, all the prophets.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that, I mentioned it. So I’m saying it could be that in the Hebrew Bible these are metaphorical descriptions. There are many metaphorical descriptions in the Hebrew Bible, or at least there are interpretations that speak that way even in the Torah. Maimonides talks about descriptions that are allegory. The angels who came to our forefather Abraham—that was in a night dream. So maybe the angels also came in a night dream. Okay. No, I don’t know whether the Sages interpreted it metaphorically or not. I can interpret it metaphorically; I don’t know, I have no idea. But I’m saying I’m not committed to the Sages’ ways of seeing things when they are not in the halakhic context. In the halakhic context, that’s the Knesset—meaning, that’s binding. But in contexts of how one looks at the world, as we said earlier, even if they were very great sages, I know better how to look at the world and how to understand the world. And therefore I don’t feel committed to what the Sages said, even if they didn’t understand it the way I do. So I don’t know what they were—whether they meant it metaphorically or not metaphorically. It doesn’t seem so. It seems they really meant it. And I don’t know. Maimonides talks about the aggadic passages of the Sages and says explicitly: many, many aggadot, all the aggadot that seem strange to us, are really just allegories and not actual descriptions. He says that. I’m saying even more than that—even about things in the Torah itself, even about things in the Torah itself, descriptions of angels. If you go that far, then certainly the gates of interpretation have not been locked. So bringing proofs from biblical descriptions of angels is weak evidence.
[Speaker H] Maimonides really does make angels metaphorical too, doesn’t he? The Active Intellect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I didn’t understand?
[Speaker H] Maimonides also makes angels metaphorical.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, I don’t know what the Active Intellect is, it’s taken from Aristotle, but those concepts never…
[Speaker H] He doesn’t interpret them so much as personalities.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Who says he doesn’t? I don’t know.
[Speaker B] But there are places where there’s overlap.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The spheres and those kinds of things are existing entities. It seems from his words there in the Laws of Character Traits—sorry, the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah—that that’s how it is.
[Speaker H] Yes, there’s the sphere and there’s the sphere’s Active Intellect. Fine.
[Speaker B] But there are places where there’s overlap between Jewish law and the understanding of these things, like how he describes someone as a heretic or a sectarian.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So—
[Speaker B] It enters the category of Jewish law on the one hand, and also…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For that I need full lectures; I already gave series of lectures on that, but that needs a separate class. The question is: if I don’t think the Talmud or the Sages have authority in areas that are not halakhic, what do I do with their halakhic instructions that are based on factual or worldview assumptions? I’ll say very briefly: in my opinion, if it’s clear that it’s based on that, then the halakhic instruction is void. It’s a halakhic instruction that was given in error—that is, it’s like a mistaken transaction. Meaning, once it becomes clear to me that the basis for that ruling is mistaken, and they too would have understood, if they were alive today, that it is mistaken, then the ruling is void. That’s my opinion here. Most halakhic decisors disagree, but that is entirely my opinion. The case of lice, of course, is always what people bring up, but there are other cases too—evil eye. Maimonides himself went this way regarding the evil eye: he systematically omits all the Talmudic laws that deal with the evil eye. He leaves them out of Jewish law; he does not rule them as practical Jewish law, because he did not think the evil eye exists.
[Speaker C] And what was even clearer—there’s the matter of “our water” for matzah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s built on some physical assumption, that the sun heats—
[Speaker C] the springs underground, which we don’t believe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is yes, but the idea that you need cold water—you can still preserve that. Is spring water the right way to get cold water? Put it in the freezer, it’ll be colder. That’s a different discussion. So I’m saying, definitely true—I think one has to be very careful about how far the Jewish law goes and from where the factual assumptions begin. If it’s clear that the Jewish law is based on mistaken factual assumptions, in my opinion it is not binding. Yes, uncovered water—the Arukh HaShulchan already writes that there’s no need to be careful about that anymore; there are no snakes among us today, and there’s no need to be strict about such a thing. That’s a change in reality, not because we understand things differently.
[Speaker C] Most halakhic decisors don’t permit using water from the refrigerator or something like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Most halakhic decisors—I disagree with them, what can I do. Most halakhic decisors do not think what I’m saying now. I agree, almost all of them don’t. Almost no halakhic decisor is willing to say—even in the case of lice on the Sabbath, where we’re supposedly expected to be strict in relation to the Sages, not lenient in relation to the Sages—even there, almost no decisor is willing to say that it’s a mistake and can be ignored. Even though to me it seems obvious.
[Speaker H] Rabbi Moshe Levi rules that way. What? Rabbi Moshe Levi rules that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Fine. But it’s almost nonexistent among the halakhic decisors.
[Speaker H] But there are other interpretations of it too, that it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s because we’re basing ourselves on the science about lice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know, but those interpretations usually come after you’ve decided you don’t want to change. After you’ve decided you don’t want to change, then you find one interpretation or another of the original law, even though when you look, it’s clear where it came from. So I don’t really buy those other interpretations, but fine, if there is another interpretation then no problem. I said: only where it is clear to you that this law is based on an incorrect factual claim, then it is not valid. If you’re not sure of that, then no. I’m not arguing now about a specific question. Okay, I want to move for a moment to the next stage and talk a bit about halakhic concepts and the relation between halakhic concepts and their characteristics or their components. In root eleven, shoresh 11, Maimonides says that… one does not count parts of a commandment individually, each part on its own, when the combination of them is one commandment. Yes, I’ll give an example that clarifies the matter: the four species. There are the four species; Maimonides says, how many commandments do we count? Etrog, lulav, myrtle, and willow—is that one commandment or four commandments? Maimonides says: it’s one commandment. Why? Because here there are four parts whose combination is one commandment. In such a case we don’t count each part as a commandment, but all four as parts of one commandment. That’s basically the claim. Within that root Maimonides enters into a discussion of what the relationship is between the question whether the different parts prevent one another and the question whether it’s two commandments or one commandment. Our simple tendency is to say that if there are two parts of a commandment that are mutually indispensable, then obviously it’s one commandment with two parts. But if they are two parts that are not indispensable to one another, then it’s probably two commandments, not one commandment with two parts. Maimonides says that’s not true. For example, the Mishnah in Menachot that says the blue thread does not prevent the white, and the white does not prevent the blue, and the hand tefillin do not prevent the head tefillin, and the head tefillin do not prevent the hand tefillin. Seemingly we would expect Maimonides to count the commandment of tzitzit as two commandments—the commandment of blue and the commandment of white—and the commandment of tefillin as two commandments. But Maimonides doesn’t count it that way. Maimonides counts tefillin as two commandments, but tzitzit as one commandment. Therefore Maimonides says: the fact that something is indispensable or not indispensable does not necessarily define whether it is one commandment or several commandments. So what does? Maybe just one note that will help us later. When I say that the blue does not prevent the white, people usually think that blue is some kind of optional commandment, something voluntary. If you did it, great, you gained a commandment; if you didn’t, nothing happened. That’s not true. The blue thread is a positive binding commandment. One who does not put on blue has neglected a positive commandment. But it does not prevent the white. And if you put on the white, you have not lost the commandment of white even if you did not put on blue. But obviously you did not fulfill the commandment of blue; there is neglect of a positive commandment here. And then when I say that the blue does not prevent the white, I did not say that putting on blue is something not obligatory. Those are two different things. One might have said that not only is it clear that one is obligated to put on blue, the question is whether without putting on blue at all what you did is worth anything—whether putting on white alone has any value at all. One might have said maybe not, because the blue is indispensable. The Talmud says no, the blue does not prevent the white. But obviously it does prevent the blue itself. And if you did not put on the blue, then you neglected the positive commandment of blue; it is a binding positive commandment. Therefore there are many mistakes regarding this whole issue of indispensability—what prevents what. In any event, for our purposes, in a moment we’ll return to this point.
[Speaker H] But blue can’t exist without white.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker H] Blue without white—it can’t exist. Why not? I mean, in what way would the blue apply to the tzitzit if there is already a commandment there, so to speak?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what are you talking about? If I dye the white blue, then it’s blue, not white. It was white, but now it’s blue. If you put only a blue thread, didn’t you fulfill both the obligation of white and the obligation of blue? No, that’s only blue.
[Speaker H] So I fulfilled the obligation of blue?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, obviously. So the point is that he says parts that are not indispensable to one another are sometimes one commandment. Maimonides says: when the matter is one. That’s his criterion. Indispensability is not the criterion, but whether the matter is one. Because the intent in tzitzit is “so that you shall remember.” If so, the entire thing that brings about remembrance is counted as one commandment. Maybe I’m reading here and I didn’t share it.
[Speaker F] Wait, but in tzitzit it’s two commandments. No. Oh—in tzitzit it’s one commandment and in tefillin it’s two? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, okay. “It will become clear to you that even parts that are not indispensable to one another will sometimes be one commandment when the matter is one, because the intent in tzitzit is ‘so that you shall remember.’” The Torah itself says, “so that you shall remember.” “If so, the totality of the thing that brings about remembrance is counted as one commandment.” So then we’re not left with looking in the count of the commandments to ask whether they are indispensable or not indispensable, but only to the matter itself—whether it is one matter or many matters. So the question is whether the matter is one, and Maimonides understands that the blue and the white together basically produce the remembrance—yes, like the Talmud says, blue resembles the sea, the sea resembles the sky, the sky resembles the Throne of Glory, and so on. There’s some whole idea here: “and you shall remember all My commandments.” And the blue and the white together do the job of remembrance. Therefore it’s one commandment even though they don’t prevent one another. Now what exactly does that mean? That there is some one shared matter to the parts of the commandment, or not one shared matter? What exactly is the difference between these two things? Look, there can be three possible kinds of relationship between the parts and the whole. There can be a first kind, where each part has independent value. When you fulfill the blue, you remember the commandments connected to the blue. When you fulfill the white, you remember the commandments dependent on the white. Each one has its own independent value, not dependent on the other. Therefore they don’t prevent one another. And still, it could be that the remembering of all the commandments is one commandment. But the blue and the white—the action of each one by itself—doesn’t depend on the other. Each has its own operation. That’s one possibility. A second possibility is that fulfilling each part has value, but only the joining of all the parts together achieves the whole. All right? There is some—unlike the blue and white of tzitzit, where there too you could say it that way—in the blue you remember such-and-such commandments, in the white you remember the other commandments, and together you remember all the commandments. But the action of the blue doesn’t depend on the white and the action of the white doesn’t depend on the blue. That means each one does its own action in itself. Those are two separate parts that don’t depend on one another. But there can be a case where even the action the blue does needs the contrast with the white. Meaning, once I see the difference between blue and white, then the action of the blue occurs. In other words, the white also takes part in the action performed by the blue. And therefore there is value to each part separately—there is an action the blue performs, there is an action the white performs—but only if they come together do I achieve the full whole of the commandment. And therefore in such a case it still may be that one part prevents the other part, but it will have value in itself. All right? And that’s the second possibility. A third possibility is that in fact no part has value in itself. Only the combination of the parts has value. Meaning, if you did one of them, it’s simply worth nothing.
[Speaker E] It’s like glue made of two materials—if you didn’t put them together…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Flour and water together create glue. The water alone doesn’t make glue and the flour alone doesn’t make glue. But the water and flour together create glue. Okay? So that’s a third type of relationship between components and a whole. The first case is: each part doesn’t prevent the other, and you can also say it doesn’t prevent the overall commandment because there is no overall commandment, because each one performs its own action. In the third case, obviously doing one part alone—not only does it prevent the other part, you simply did nothing. You prevented the commandment. Therefore here it’s not like blue and white. Here it’s completely valueless in terms of the whole commandment. You did nothing. Okay? In the second case there’s room for hesitation. Because in the second case the claim is that each part, if I fulfilled it, has some value. But only the joining of all the parts together constitutes some commandment that is a complete whole. So the second type basically says that it could be that a certain part does not prevent the other part. Meaning, there is value in doing only part of the commandment. But you can’t say that I fulfilled the whole commandment. Because in the first case, if I did one part then I did it; there is no such thing as “I didn’t fulfill the whole commandment,” because there is no whole. The two parts do not combine into one whole. In the second case the two parts do combine into one whole, but even if I did only one part of the whole, I achieved the whole in a deficient way. Say, when I put on only white without blue, one can say that I achieved the purpose of white, and one can say that I achieved the purpose of tzitzit, just not in a complete way.
[Speaker B] Meaning half a measure—half a measure for commandments?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but a qualitative half-measure, not a quantitative one. Meaning, when I speak about—yes, that’s the Sefat Emet and the Rosh at the beginning of Shabbat there, about why there is no half-measure in carrying on the Sabbath without lifting up and without putting down. It’s a qualitative half-measure, not a quantitative one. That’s how he explains why there is no half-measure there. When you eat half an olive’s bulk of pork, that’s half the quantity, but you did exactly the same thing—you ate pork, only the amount is lacking. In lifting without placing, or placing without lifting, part of the quality of the action is missing; it’s not that half the quantity of the action is missing. And there it’s not at all clear that there is such a thing as half a measure. So for our purposes—
[Speaker E] The second approach basically says that 1 plus 1 equals 3. There’s one here, one there, and the two together are an additional commandment, so to speak.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I wouldn’t put it that way. I would say that 1 plus 2 is something new. 1 plus 2 is a whole. It’s not that you achieve 1 and achieve 2, but if you fulfilled 1 and 2 you achieved the purpose common to both of them, one purpose common to both of them. So in what sense does one not prevent the other? Only in the sense that even if you did the white, you achieved the purpose of tzitzit, but only partially. Not a quantitative part, but you achieved it not in the most perfect form. If there had been contrast with the blue, it would have reminded you of the commandments better. The white alone reminds you a little. Okay, just as an analogy. Okay, but then that means there is value in fulfilling the white or the blue separately. But that value is not in fulfilling the commandment of white; rather, it is in fulfilling the commandment of tzitzit. Just white is incomplete tzitzit—just deficient tzitzit. The difference is that in the definition I just gave, the second definition, the white and the blue together create one whole. The white and the blue are components of it or characteristics of it, but they are not the thing itself. The thing itself is not white plus blue. The thing itself is tzitzit. And if fulfilling the white alone or the blue alone is also tzitzit, just deficient tzitzit, then it is not indispensable and I fulfilled the commandment of tzitzit—there is value to it—but it will still be counted as one commandment by Maimonides even though it is not indispensable. But if it belongs to the first type, where there are two parts, and when I fulfilled one I did not fulfill the commandment of tzitzit in a deficient way but fulfilled the commandment of white, then there it would truly be counted as two commandments. There is the commandment of white and the commandment of blue, two different commandments. In the second type it will be counted as one commandment, the commandment of tzitzit. There are just many ways to do tzitzit. The best way is to do blue and white, and less good ways are to do only blue or only white. But all those ways are ways of doing tzitzit. They are not ways of doing white or doing blue. Meaning there is an inclusive concept that the different characteristics create. That whole produces a third thing—what you called three, okay?—and not just a sum of one and one and two. In the Rogatchover’s language, you could call this a fusion composition and not a neighboring composition. Meaning, the one and the two merge and create some third entity, and not just live side by side with one another. A physical compound versus a chemical compound. So these distinctions are probably what underlie what Maimonides says—that there are parts that are not indispensable and they are two commandments, like tefillin, and there are parts that are not indispensable but are one commandment. They are not indispensable but are one commandment because there are two different characteristics here that still create one whole. What exactly does this mean? Maybe one more sentence before that. In the verse about the commandment of tzitzit it says: “Speak to the children of Israel and tell them that they shall make for themselves tzitzit on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and they shall place upon the tzitzit of each corner a thread of blue, and it shall be for you as tzitzit.” What does that mean? It means first of all: make tzitzit on the corners of your garments throughout your generations. How? Put upon the tzitzit of the corner a thread of blue. Meaning, the white that you’ll put on, and then after that blue—what is the verse now saying? “And it shall be for you as tzitzit.” This combination of the white and the blue is what will be your tzitzit. But notice, the white itself is also called tzitzit at the beginning, right? “They shall make for themselves tzitzit on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and they shall place upon the tzitzit of the corner a thread of blue.” Meaning it was already called tzitzit while it was just plain white. And then I added blue, and about that the verse returns and says, “and it shall be for you as tzitzit.” “And it shall be for you as tzitzit” also sounds, at least in its plain sense, as though the concept of tzitzit already exists before this verse. I really need to make tzitzit—say, like a lock of hair on the head. Ibn Ezra says that tzitzit is basically a kind of symbol. A lock of hair on the head. Someone puts something on his head, a feather on his hat, that’s his symbol, yes? A crease in the hat, that’s his symbol. Okay? Now, the Torah says what your tzitzit will be: take that, put white and blue on it, and that will be your tzitzit. Meaning these verses do not constitute the concept of tzitzit, but direct it. That is, the concept of tzitzit existed beforehand as well. And the verse tells me how to make my tzitzit. This further supports what I said earlier: the concept of tzitzit is not the sum of blue and white. The concept of tzitzit has an independent existence; it’s a symbol. The Torah just says that these two components together are supposed to create your symbol. And therefore Maimonides derives from here the point that there is really one whole here, such that the different components, although they do not prevent one another, are not two commandments but rather two parts whose matter is one, as Maimonides says. This is explicit in the language of the verse. And therefore Maimonides says that although they don’t prevent one another, it is really one commandment and not two. In tefillin there is no such statement in the Torah: “and they shall be for you as frontlets between your eyes.” “Upon your heart and upon your eyes” or something like that, right? So it isn’t written that these two together will be tefillin for us. “They shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” The frontlets are only between your eyes. So there we don’t have the inclusive expression that we find in the section of tzitzit, and therefore Maimonides says there: I count this as two commandments. Since the hand tefillin and the head tefillin each achieve a different goal. It’s not that each of them achieves the whole goal, just in a partial, incomplete, imperfect way. Okay? No. Each of them achieves a different goal. There, the fact that they don’t prevent one another is seemingly perhaps even enough to say simply: two commandments. Just as observing the Sabbath does not prevent honoring parents. Fine, if you fulfilled this and didn’t fulfill that, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from it. If one who did not eat garlic—if one who ate garlic should go back and eat garlic? What, because you didn’t fulfill one commandment, therefore you don’t need to fulfill another commandment? What’s the connection? Why suddenly talk about one commandment not preventing another commandment? The point of saying that the tefillin do not prevent one another is to remove the notion that it is one commandment. Otherwise it would indeed be superfluous. Obviously if it’s two commandments, there would be no need to say that they don’t prevent one another. Two commandments never prevent one another. What the Mishnah says—that the hand tefillin do not prevent the head tefillin—is meant to say that these are two commandments. So obviously they do not prevent one another and they should be counted as two commandments, and that’s it. And that is not the same as tzitzit, where the blue and the white do not prevent one another. Because there their matter is one, as Maimonides says. And this thing really—I’ll jump to the end, just so we don’t stop in the middle—what I really want to argue is that what is written here is what I discussed in the discussion of the identity of indiscernibles. The characteristics of the inclusive concept tzitzit are that it has blue and white, with threads, with knots and strings, and blue and white—all these laws of tzitzit, all of that together creates the concept of tzitzit. But the concept of tzitzit is not the sum of those properties. The concept of tzitzit is a Platonic idea that exists in itself. And the Torah tells us what the characteristics must be through which this idea will appear in the world. But the concept of tzitzit, as I said earlier, the Torah does not constitute it. It’s not that the concept of tzitzit is created by this collection of characteristics; rather, the Torah directs it. The Torah says: the concept of tzitzit—I am telling you that I want you to make it this way and not that way. But the concept of tzitzit could have been made that way too and it would still have been tzitzit; it’s just that the Torah doesn’t want me to do it that way. In constitutive concepts, these are concepts where when the Torah says do such-and-such, if you didn’t do such-and-such then you simply didn’t do it. This distinction comes from analytic philosophy. In analytic philosophy they distinguish between regulative and constitutive systems of rules. Constitutive systems of rules are like chess. The rules of chess constitute the game. If you play not according to the rules, it’s not a violation; you simply didn’t play. The game of chess is defined by its set of rules. The set of rules doesn’t characterize the concept of chess that existed beforehand; rather, the set of rules is what defines the concept. By contrast, traffic laws only tell me how to drive correctly, but even if I drive incorrectly, I am still driving. They do not constitute the concept of driving. Okay? And therefore traffic laws are usually an example of a regulative system of rules, meaning they direct me how to do it properly and how to do it improperly. And the indication is whether, if I violate the rules, I still remain in the relevant semantic field or not. In chess, no—if I violated the rules then I simply am not playing chess. I’m playing checkers, backgammon, I don’t know, something else; I’m not playing chess. But I don’t deserve punishment if I didn’t follow the rules of chess; I’m simply not playing chess. In traffic, if I violated the law, I deserve punishment. Why? Because even if I violated the law, I drove; I just drove in an improper way. Meaning the traffic laws do not constitute the concept of driving or moving on the road, but direct it—tell me how to do it properly and how to do it improperly.
[Speaker G] And what I want to say, before we even start opening up all the strings—by the way, this is a remark—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An interesting point. I talked about this in one of the recorded lectures somewhere else, but it went up on the site—about the rules of soccer and basketball. What is a foul in soccer and basketball? A foul, seemingly, is going against the rules, but that’s not true. After all, one of a team’s tactics—of a coach—is, commit a foul now to prevent a basket; he’ll get two shots, but there’s a tactic of committing a foul. Meaning the foul is not perceived as going outside the rules of the game. The foul is part of the rules of the game: you commit a foul, he gets two shots, everything is fine, we go on our way. Sometimes when you commit a foul that requires your ejection, that means you’re not playing anymore—meaning you violated the rules of the game. But a foul in the ordinary sense basically means that those foul-rules are not constitutive rules, they are regulative rules. It’s part of the rules: if you do this, the sanction is such-and-such; if you do otherwise, the sanction is otherwise; that’s all. Now decide whether you do it or don’t do it. There is nothing problematic here, nothing that’s a transgression, nothing wrong in that sense—yes? If it’s a normal foul, not something excessively violent. So those are examples of constitutive and regulative systems of rules. And what I want to say is that the commandment of tzitzit comes not to constitute the concept of tzitzit, but to direct it. The concept of a symbol, or tzitzit, existed even before the Torah. What the Torah wants is to direct us to make the symbol this way and not another way. But the concept of tzitzit is not defined in these verses; it existed beforehand. And therefore the collection of characteristics that appear in the verses are characteristics of the concept of tzitzit, but it’s not that the concept of tzitzit is this collection of characteristics. And that’s exactly the dispute I had with Leibniz about the identity of indiscernibles. He said that the collection of properties creates the concept—that is the concept. And I said no: the concept exists, and the properties characterize it. And one implication is that sometimes the concept will appear without some of the properties and it will still be that concept. Like the concept of ownership—we talked about the fact that the concept of ownership can appear even though I have no right of use, in cases of things from which benefit is forbidden, or with a slave whose bill of emancipation is being withheld. But the concept of ownership still exists. Why? Because if the concept of ownership is a collection of usage rights, then the moment I have no usage rights, I’m not an owner. So no—I am an owner. That’s a metaphysical definition; there is an ownership status, it exists in reality. Will its characteristics appear? That’s another question; it could be they won’t appear. But the fact that the characteristics don’t appear does not mean that the concept itself does not exist here. Okay, we’ll come back to this next time as well. Questions or comments, if there are any?
[Speaker H] Rabbi, I have a question unrelated to this class. I saw in the Rabbi’s article regarding the relationship between God and the world, that there there’s tsimtsum in the literal sense and not in the literal sense. And the Rabbi tries to explain that the contraction is in the literal sense, and according to Nefesh HaChayim, according to Rabbi Shem Tov Gפן—as the Rabbi brings there—using the analogies of dimensions. I didn’t really manage to understand: even if we say that the dimension we are in doesn’t encroach on His dimension, what does that say about us in the end? That in the end it’s all Him, or that it’s us? Even if the dimensions don’t encroach on Him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is where He is, and we are where we are, and He is not here.
[Speaker H] But where we are, then what is there? Is it like another domain?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So—and how—
[Speaker H] So what about the difficulty that it’s another domain, so to speak? That there are two domains כביכול?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no difficulty in that at all.
[Speaker H] Even if it doesn’t encroach on Him, in the end it’s still another domain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Domains—that’s not another god. It’s a place where God is not present. What does “not present” mean? You can say He influences that place, but it’s a place that is not God. It is something else and not God. If you call “two domains” the fact that there exists something that is not God, then there are two domains. What’s the problem? Who said two domains are forbidden? There aren’t two gods in the sense that there is no one else who can rule the world, create it, and whom one must obey. There is only one of that. But taking it to non-literal contraction is taking the concept of two domains too far—saying that nothing at all can exist that is not Him. That’s not true. Here I am, and I am not Him.
[Speaker H] Okay, and another question, Rabbi, regarding the Rabbi’s article on Zeno’s arrow. There the Rabbi wants to distinguish with the—well, he starts with physics and then wants to get to it in relation to Rav Kook’s perfection and perfecting. I didn’t really understand—because even if we explain, as the Rabbi explained, that there really isn’t a state A that reaches a better state B, but rather it’s the state itself that is moving, and therefore it’s perfecting without arriving at another state—even so, then why is there this philosophical difficulty that seemingly God doesn’t need any further perfection? Even if I don’t reach another perfection, what is this perfecting doing here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is the movement of perfecting with the Holy One, blessed be He. The emergence from potential to actual, the transition to a more complete state—that appears only with us. And perfection is the movement of perfecting, not its actual realization.
[Speaker H] Right, but then why does the Holy One, blessed be He, so to speak, need us in order to do the perfecting?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because He wants things to move from potential to actual. That—
[Speaker H] Meaning He Himself can’t do it? So then we haven’t really gotten out of the philosophical difficulty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. What’s the difficulty? He can’t do it. Period.
[Speaker H] Ah, isn’t that a bit limiting? Isn’t that a problem of limitation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Things that cannot be done cannot be done. He also cannot make a square triangle.
[Speaker H] So the Rabbi says that this—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, that’s not a limitation because there is no such thing as a square triangle. Just as there is no such thing as perfecting a being that is whole and perfect. There is no such thing, like a square triangle. So that’s not a limitation. A limitation would be that He can do anything that can be conceived. That’s what omnipotence means. If there is something conceivable and He can’t do it, then He is limited. But if there is something that simply doesn’t exist, that cannot be conceived because there is no such thing—there is no such thing even in imagination—then it’s not called a lack of omnipotence. He is omnipotent; it’s just that this is not part of “everything.”
[Speaker E] He can do everything, but this isn’t part of everything. It doesn’t exist.
[Speaker H] Okay, thank you very much, Rabbi.
[Speaker E] If we go back for a moment to tzitzit, it’s not so clear. On the one hand it became a symbol, almost the most basic symbol, the symbol of Judaism. On the other hand it says explicitly: only someone who wears a four-cornered garment. Meaning, if not, then you don’t need it. So what is it—yes obligatory or not obligatory?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re asking: if the meaning is symbol, then why is it attached specifically to a four-cornered garment and not that one should always walk around with some symbol, like a kippah, say? Right. Good question. We do not derive law from the reason of the verse. That means it’s not entirely a symbol, or not only a symbol.
[Speaker E] In short, is one obligated to wear tzitzit, or only if I’m wearing a four-cornered garment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand. But the Talmud says that in a time of divine anger, one is punished if one does not wear a four-cornered garment in order to exempt oneself from tzitzit. And therefore today everyone wears tzitzit and puts on an artificial four-cornered garment. I don’t really want to wear it. In the past those were normal clothes. But Tosafot already says that’s not correct. Because if indeed “in a time of divine anger” is a complaint against someone who doesn’t wear his regular garment only in order not to become obligated in tzitzit, but today our regular clothes are not obligated in tzitzit, then when I wear them it isn’t in order to evade the commandment of tzitzit, but because these are the clothes we wear. About such a thing there is no complaint even in a time of divine anger.
[Speaker E] Yes, but here the Torah actually gives a reason why it’s needed, so that they should remember, and so on and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, that’s your first question.
[Speaker E] I said—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your first question has no answer. We do not derive law from the reason of the verse.
[Speaker E] Yes. Okay. Fine. Was there some celebration this week? Or something?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker E] The Rabbi trimmed his beard, I know…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whenever my wife decides I’m going to the barber—
[Speaker E] that’s the celebration—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the only celebration that causes me to—my wife forced me.
[Speaker E] Well, we need to—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] check with her whether she had some celebration maybe, I don’t know. Could be she did.
[Speaker E] Okay, Sabbath peace.
[Speaker H] Thank you very much.