Platonism – Lecture 16

Table of Contents

• The problem of ukimta and two kinds of difficulty
• An analogy from the scientific world: lab, abstraction, and generalization
• Science versus technology and the claim that the laws of nature “govern” Platonic worlds
• Abstraction as removing parameters, and generalization as a broader description
• Interpreting ukimta through a “Platonic world” of halakhic concepts
• The example of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk and learning as engagement with “ideas”
• The Sages’ promises, “segulot,” and fitting them to a complex world
• Elisha ben Avuya, “a world that is entirely long,” and redirecting potential
• Casuistic formulation versus formulation as a general law, and an explanation of the difference
• A comparison between British law and German law, and a critique of positivism
• Didactic examples: mathematics, neural networks, and the preference for learning through cases
• “We do not derive from general rules” and the attitude toward rules in the Talmud and Jewish law
• Custom, “If you do not know, most beautiful of women,” and default practice versus an independent position
• Moral questions about slavery and the distinction between a legal perspective and a moral one
• The Written Torah and the Oral Torah: rules versus cases
• Personal closing and mourning

Summary

General Overview

The text argues that the difficulty of ukimta in the Talmud stems from the gap between a casuistic formulation of examples and an intention to convey abstract general principles, and that this can be understood through an analogy to the way science formulates “laws” that are valid in a Platonic laboratory world and not in the complex real world. According to the explanation, Rava and others like him do not mean to teach esoteric cases such as “a bound and sleeping slave,” but a general principle such as “a slave is his master’s courtyard,” and the Talmud adds an ukimta only so that the concrete example will fit the technical conditions of the halakhic implication. The text adds that the casuistic formulation itself is preferable in law, Jewish law, and morality, because complex human systems cannot be applied reliably through general rules alone. Therefore, the Talmud “downplays” the status of rules and even declares that “we do not derive from general rules, even where it says ‘except.’” Finally, the text weaves in comments about segulot and promises made by the Sages and the Torah, about the relationship between science and technology, and about the distinction between a casuistic conception and a positivist conception in law, alongside a short personal conversation at the end.

The Problem of Ukimta and Two Kinds of Difficulty

The text presents ukimta as placing a Mishnah or a statement in an unusual situation that is not the straightforward meaning of the matter, such as explaining the law of “a bill of divorce in the hand of a slave” specifically as dealing with “a bound and sleeping slave.” The text formulates an interpretive difficulty, according to which the amora did not state the limitation, so there is no justification for inserting it into his words; and a substantive difficulty, according to which there is no reason the amora would want to teach specifically such an esoteric case rather than general principles. The text states that other proposals to justify ukimtot are forced and implausible, and offers an alternative explanation.

An Analogy from the Scientific World: Lab, Abstraction, and Generalization

The text argues that general scientific laws almost never hold in the real world, and therefore an artificial “laboratory situation” is needed that neutralizes many parameters in order to see the law “in its purity.” The text describes the laboratory world as a simpler world, in which one can imagine conditions such as the absence of friction, the absence of air, and a limited number of bodies, in order to see laws of inertia or gravitation in a clean way. The text explains that understanding the complex world is done by breaking it into aspects, building a “Platonic world” for each aspect, finding the general law that governs it, and then putting the laws back together into the real situation.

Science versus Technology and the Claim that the Laws of Nature “Govern” Platonic Worlds

The text argues that the scientist’s goal is to understand Platonic worlds and not the real world, because the laws of nature are revealed in their precise form only under those abstract conditions. The text presents technology as the complicated and resistant application of those laws in the real world, where “it never works” without an effort to build devices that are like little laboratories isolating disturbances. The text describes the scientific move as a consistent transition from a complex real world to a clean abstract world, and then back to a complicated practical application.

Abstraction as Removing Parameters, and Generalization as a Broader Description

The text defines abstraction as stripping away non-essential characteristics of a real object, until only a few characteristics remain, such as a “mass point” alone. The text argues that in information theory, reducing information increases the number of objects the description can fit, and therefore abstraction and generalization are two sides of the same coin. The text illustrates this gradually, from a detailed description of a triangular wooden body with a certain weight and a certain size, to a more general description, up to simply “bodies,” and parallels this to the “idea of horseness” as a set of essential properties that is not any concrete horse.

Interpreting Ukimta through a “Platonic World” of Halakhic Concepts

The text argues that ukimta is not an attempt to teach a rare case, but a way of isolating the general principle that was stated through a concrete example. The text interprets Rava as intending to say the abstract principle that “a slave is his master’s courtyard,” but formulating it through a casuistic demonstration of acquisition or divorce. Therefore the Talmud needs to establish “a bound and sleeping slave” so that the demonstration will work according to the condition of “a guarded courtyard with his knowledge.” The text formulates this as creating a “Platonic slave” whose entire characteristic is that he is a slave, while ignoring the fact that he is a human being with understanding, desires, and movement, and presents “bound and sleeping” as a condition that creates a laboratory situation in which the principle can express itself without interference.

The Example of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk and Learning as Engagement with “Ideas”

The text brings a description according to which Rabbi Chaim of Brisk “took the frying pans out of the kitchen” and deals with the “idea of a frying pan” rather than a concrete frying pan with a handle, material, weight, and diameter. The text argues that all learning deals with abstractions and Platonic worlds, and not with analysis of real-life situations as such. The text compares the Platonic slave to a “mass point” and emphasizes that the practical implications are many, but the basic statement is aimed at the abstract principle.

The Sages’ Promises, “Segulot,” and Fitting Them to a Complex World

The text cites the Talmud in Shevuot 18: “Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: Whoever recites havdalah over wine at the conclusion of Sabbaths will have male children… Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: children fit to render halakhic rulings.” The text asks how such a claim fits reality, and brings in the name of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman the idea that the Sages present general laws that are valid in a world in which there are no other considerations conflicting with them, whereas in our world additional considerations can offset the result. The text also uses the example “one who is not careful with vows, his children die” to show a clash between different “laws,” and argues that each law may be one hundred percent accurate in a Platonic world, but does not appear in its purity in the real world.

Elisha ben Avuya, “A World That Is Entirely Long,” and Redirecting Potential

The text mentions Elisha ben Avuya’s question about long life in honoring parents and sending away the mother bird, in contrast to a case of immediate death, and interprets the absence of the result in this world as possibly due to other considerations such as a liability for death. The text argues that the potential of the reward is not wasted but “changes direction” and appears in the World to Come as an equivalent meaning, just as friction can convert motion into heat. The text raises the possibility that in the World to Come “children” might be realized as “students,” and distinguishes between promises written in the Torah and “segulot” for which there is no reason to assume they are true.

Casuistic Formulation versus Formulation as a General Law, and an Explanation of the Difference

The text argues that in science the general law is put “right on the table,” and so there is no difficulty that a laboratory situation is needed, whereas in Jewish law the formulation is casuistic and presents cases that require ukimtot in order to reconcile the example with the details. The text states that if Rava had explicitly said, “a slave is his mistress’s courtyard,” then difficulties about “a guarded courtyard” would never have arisen; but because the law was stated through a case of acquisition, the need for an ukimta arises. The text defines casuistry as the language of “cases,” and illustrates this with “one who lives in another’s courtyard without his knowledge” instead of the abstract rule of “this one benefits and that one does not lose.”

A Comparison between British Law and German Law, and a Critique of Positivism

The text describes British law as based on precedents and analogies to previous cases, and German law as a positivist tendency to apply a general law by deduction to the specific case. The text argues that when the field is complex, general rules are hard to apply and may turn people into “robots,” and brings as an extreme example the claim that only under positivism “can there be a Holocaust,” because obedience to the law overrides the intuition of the case. The text presents the casuistic approach as one in which intuition regarding a particular case can limit the rule when “it is an injustice crying out to heaven.”

Didactic Examples: Mathematics, Neural Networks, and the Preference for Learning through Cases

The text argues that “bottom-up” teaching through examples makes it possible to understand both the rule and its application, because a general law without examples has no clear meaning in complex fields. The text compares this to the difference between classical programming based on “ifs” and training a neural network through many examples and feedback, and argues that facial recognition cannot be efficiently encoded through explicit rules. The text uses this analogy to justify the Talmud’s way of building understanding through a multitude of cases and ukimtot.

“We Do Not Derive from General Rules” and the Attitude toward Rules in the Talmud and Jewish Law

The text quotes Kiddushin: “We do not derive from general rules, even where it says ‘except,’” and interprets this as an inherent belittling of the status of rules in legal and moral fields. The text brings the Mishnah in Bava Kamma about the “four primary categories of damages” and the Talmud’s question, “What does the common denominator come to include?” in order to show that even when the Mishnah gives a general rule, the Talmud still wants to know what it adds beyond the examples. The text also applies this to rules of halakhic decision-making such as “the Jewish law follows Rava over Abaye in the cases of Ya’al Kegam,” and argues that Maimonides sometimes rules like Abaye beyond the listed exceptions, because the rules are a default for someone who has no independent reasoning or concrete information.

Custom, “If You Do Not Know, Most Beautiful of Women,” and Default Practice versus an Independent Position

The text brings the Jerusalem Talmud’s words, “If you do not know, most beautiful of women, go your way in the footsteps of the flock, and pasture your kids beside the shepherds’ dwellings,” and interprets custom as a default only when one has no independent position. The text argues that an Ashkenazi may follow the Mechaber if that is his own position, and only someone who does not know should follow the custom. The text compares this to the rules of the Talmud generally, as a mechanism of decision in a state of uncertainty and not as a substitute for substantive judgment.

Moral Questions about Slavery and the Distinction between a Legal Perspective and a Moral One

The text accepts the comment that a concrete slave is a human being with understanding and the ability to intervene, and responds that the ukimta of “bound and sleeping” neutralizes precisely the human dimension in order to make possible a discussion of the Platonic slave as a conceptual tool in the laws of acquisition. The text clarifies that it is presenting an interpretive-legal perspective and not a moral ruling, and acknowledges that someone who wants can “interpret favorably” the value implications. The text returns and emphasizes that the ukimta is meant to reconcile the demonstration, not to limit the general principle only to a slave who is bound and sleeping.

The Written Torah and the Oral Torah: Rules versus Cases

The text is asked about the difference between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and replies that there is no principled difference, because even in the Written Torah there are formulations of cases, and even in the Oral Torah there are sometimes rules, though the proportion of rules is smaller. The text suggests that when the principle is simple and clear, like “You shall not murder,” it can be formulated as a rule; but when reality is complex, formulation through cases is needed. The text concludes with the claim that the Talmud does not move from the rule to the case, but from the case to the rule.

Personal Closing and Mourning

The text closes with the blessing “Shabbat shalom, good tidings,” followed by a short conversation about the fact that “Tzvika’s son was killed,” mention of Tzvika as a counselor in Bnei Akiva, and mentions of names from the personal context. The text ends again with “good tidings.”

Last time I talked about the question of ukimta in the Talmudic text. We saw the problematic nature of the concept of ukimta, where the Talmudic text seemingly takes Mishnah passages out of their plain meaning, or Amoraic statements out of their plain meaning, and because of one difficulty or another, sets them up in some ukimta—right, ukimta literally means “establishing,” some kind of placing of the case in a situation that is very esoteric, exceptional, and not what the Mishnah itself was apparently talking about. And that raises two difficulties, right? The slave where they place the bill of divorce in the slave’s hand, and by that they divorce his mistress, so the Talmudic text says it’s talking about a bound and sleeping slave. Fine. Rava didn’t mention that we’re talking about a slave who is bound and sleeping. He said “a slave,” or a sleeping slave in one place, but “bound” is an addition—it’s the ukimta of the Talmudic text. And that raises two kinds of difficulties. One difficulty is the interpretive one: Rava didn’t say that. Meaning, Rava spoke about any slave, so why are you inserting a bound slave here? If he wanted to talk about a bound slave, he would have said explicitly that we’re talking about a bound slave. And the substantive difficulty is: who on earth cares what the law is for a bound and sleeping slave? If the goal—you also have to want to benefit us, meaning, there may be a sick person whose doctor and family and so on want somehow to grant us merit through words of Torah as well. So the question is why assume that Rava wanted to teach us something about some esoteric case of that sort? Let him give us the general principles. So those are the two kinds of difficulties. We saw that there are all kinds of suggestions—forced ones, in my opinion—to explain why the Talmudic text nevertheless makes ukimtot for Mishnah passages, and I said why, in my opinion, those possibilities are forced and implausible. Then I proposed the following explanation, which at the end of the previous lecture I only stated briefly, and now I want to explain it a bit more and also return to the three passages that have been accompanying us and show it with regard to them. We saw that in the scientific world, basically, a similar phenomenon happens. When we look at a scientific law that is supposedly a general law, if we test it in the world it never really holds. In order for us to see a situation where that law really holds, we need to create a laboratory situation. A laboratory situation is some artificial state detached from the real world, in which we try to neutralize a great many parameters that appear in the real world. The laboratory world, by definition, is always a simpler world than the real world, and therefore maybe there we will succeed in seeing the law in its purity. If I want to see the law of gravity or Newton’s law of inertia, I need to create a world in which there is only one body, or only two bodies, and nothing else besides that—no friction, no air, no other bodies, right? And no “excommunicated” and no “cursed,” right? Everything is permitted to you. Meaning, the situation in which I see the law of nature is really some state that does not belong to our world at all—some Platonic state, some pure abstract world that has only very, very specific features and none of the parameters that get mixed together for us in the real world. And there I can see the law of inertia or the law of gravity or the relation between frustration and aggression, or all the examples I brought last time. When I want to use the laws of nature I discovered in that way, those Platonic ones, in order to explain a phenomenon in the real world, in our world, I take all those Platonic laws and try to connect them to the real situation before me. And there it is always complicated. There is the law of inertia and gravity, and there is also friction, and also heat, and all kinds of other things that can influence, and additional bodies, and all sorts of things, so there it will no longer be an appearance of one law of nature in its purity. It will always be mixed with other parameters. And nevertheless, the way to understand situations from our world, the complex situations, is to break them down into different aspects, and for each such aspect to build a Platonic world that has only that aspect in it, see what happens there, find the general law that governs such a world, and then take all those abstract laws back to the situation before me and see what happens when they all appear together. And that is basically the way we understand the world scientifically. We produce laws of nature, each of which is really true in a hypothetical world, and then I come back and apply that to the real world. As I might note later on as well, in fact the aim of a scientist is really to understand the Platonic worlds, not the real world. The real world, from his point of view, is only some kind of implementation through which I can try to understand what happens in the abstract Platonic worlds, because the goal of a scientist is to discover the laws of nature. But the laws of nature govern the Platonic worlds, not our world. After that, a technologist will come and take those Platonic laws of nature and try to do something with them in our real world. But that is always complicated. In a certain sense, technology is more complicated than science. Science deals with simple, abstract, pure, clean things, without disturbances, without anything. In technology—yes, anyone who has been in the world of technology knows—technology has a very stubborn nature; it never works. Meaning, somehow the laws of nature always go wrong in the real world. And the technological art is to try and see how I nevertheless manage to implement the laws of nature even in situations of our real world. And for that I need to try to create devices that are basically a kind of small laboratories. Meaning, a device inside which all kinds of disturbing influences won’t be present, and I will indeed be able to do as I wish—meaning, it will be able to perform something that the pure laws of nature say it should perform. So this move, this move of understanding how the scientific process actually works—maybe one more sentence—I said that the transition from the real world to the Platonic world involves two sides, two aspects, which are two sides of the same coin. One aspect is cleaning away unnecessary parameters. Say I want to discuss Newton’s first law, that a body on which no force acts moves in uniform motion in a straight line forever. Now, in order to try to arrive at this law or understand this law, I need to take real bodies and strip them of all sorts of other parameters. I want to strip them of the fact that they live in such-and-such an environment, that they are square, round, triangular, all kinds of features, that they are made of wood, that they are made of metal—it doesn’t matter. I want to see it as if it were a mass point weighing two kilograms. That’s it. That’s all I have in this body. The fact that it’s made of wood, that it lives in such-and-such a place, that it’s big, small, triangular, round, whatever, that there is some surrounding temperature—all that doesn’t matter. I clean all that out of the picture. So this is the world of abstraction. I abstract real bodies, where abstraction means removing all the non-essential features of that body, relating to it as if it were some abstract body. But the other side of the same coin is that such abstraction is really an act of generalization. And about that I said that in information theory, whenever I remove information I get a description that fits more bodies. Yes, when I talk about triangular bodies made of wood with a mass of two kilograms and a size of five centimeters, that’s a very specific body. There are a few such ones, but they are very specific bodies. Now I remove the size of five centimeters: triangular bodies made of wood. There are already more such bodies, right? Because they can be five centimeters, three centimeters, ten centimeters. Now I remove the fact that they’re made of wood: triangular bodies weighing two kilograms, but without wood. There are even more such bodies. Now I remove the fact that they weigh two kilograms: triangular bodies. The moment I just say triangular bodies, there are already many more such bodies. Now I remove the triangular: bodies. Then there are many, many more such bodies. Meaning, the process I called abstraction—removing information from the body, removing characteristics from the body, thinning out the characteristics—I’m left with fewer characteristics, but the description with fewer characteristics describes more bodies. Therefore abstraction is the other side of generalization. Abstraction and generalization are really two sides of the same coin. You can’t generalize without abstracting, and vice versa, and every abstraction is a generalization. And therefore we are basically used to the fact that laws of nature deal with generalizations. When I say that bodies with mass behave in a certain way, I’ve actually taken the body before me and created—seen what… In order to arrive at that generalization, I really need to talk about bodies that are not real, not concrete. Meaning, I need to talk about a body where I don’t care what it’s made of—it’s made of no material at all, not wood, not iron, not anything. And it has no shape, no bodily form. It is simply a mass point weighing two kilograms. That’s it. Now there is no such body. It is not a real body. But when I want to generalize, by definition I always strip real bodies of various features and arrive at a non-real body. And that is the Platonic dimension in the matter. Because think about the idea of horseness. The idea of horseness really contains all the essential characteristics of a horse. But a horse also has non-essential characteristics. It is of some color—say, the horse before me is brown—and it has a spot on its forehead and a spot on its tail, but not all horses are like that. So I want to clean away all the features of the specific horses and be left only with the essential features that characterize any horse as such. That collection of characteristics is never a concrete horse. A concrete horse always has all sorts of additional features. It always has a particular color, a particular weight, a particular height, all of which are irrelevant with respect to horseness as such. So when I want to move into the Platonic world and deal with horseness in the world of ideas, not concrete horses, I need to take the concrete horses and dilute their non-essential characteristics, leaving only the features that characterize a horse insofar as it is a horse. But it seems to me that here it’s exactly the opposite, because we say that in the laws of nature there are several, and we want to relate to one of them—maybe the main one, and so on. But with ukimta it’s exactly the opposite. We take the servant, take the slave, and add things to him. I’ll say that when I apply this to ukimta we’ll see whether it’s the same thing or not. For now I’m still in the world of science. Is that okay up to here? So the claim is basically that in the world of science, when I generalize, by definition I am really talking about objects that do not belong to our world. I move to a Platonic world of ideas, and that’s what people often don’t notice. Everyone knows that a law of nature is a law built on generalizations, but very few people notice that the process of generalization is also a process of abstraction. It is a process of dealing with bodies that are really not the bodies we know in our world, but some ideal horse, an ideal mass point, an ideal human being without education, without all kinds of such things, whose frustration always yields aggression, and so on. So that is what happens in the scientific world, and therefore science is really built on some kind of Platonic conception. When I assume there are laws of nature, I am really assuming that there are Platonic worlds of bodies that are not the bodies of our world, and there every such law that I have arrived at rules in its purity. There it appears exactly, without disturbances from all sorts of additional parameters that always get in our way in our stubborn world. Now, the claim I made is that with this conception one can also understand the concept of ukimta. Because what I am basically saying—and I demonstrated this with Rava’s statement about someone who gives a bill of divorce to a woman and puts it in the hand of her slave, where the Talmudic text says that we are talking about a bound and sleeping slave—Rava is basically saying this: what I wanted to tell you is not a law about how one divorces a woman via a bound and sleeping slave. If I wanted to say that, I would have spoken about a bound and sleeping slave. I spoke simply about a slave. Why? Because what I wanted to tell you is a general abstract statement about the relation between the slave and his mistress: that the slave is considered like the courtyard of its owner. That is what I wanted to tell you. So this is a general law. Now, a slave is always a concrete creature; he is not just a slave. He also has two hands, two legs, he can walk, he has all kinds of other features. He says—yes, so let’s go and do abstraction and generalization. Let’s talk about some abstract slave who cannot walk and cannot, I don’t know, and has no consciousness and cannot do anything: bound and sleeping. But I don’t mean a specific slave who is bound and sleeping. I mean a slave insofar as he is a slave, slavishness like horseness in the Platonic world. What happens there with that slave? The only feature he has is that he is a slave. He cannot walk and cannot, I don’t know, and he has no consciousness, and he cannot do anything: bound and sleeping. But I don’t mean a specific slave who is bound and sleeping. I mean a slave insofar as he is a slave—slavishness, like horseness in the Platonic world. What happens there with that slave? The only feature he has is that he is the slave of his master. That’s it. I ignore the fact that he is also a human being, that he has two hands and legs, that he can walk, that he is awake, that he has thoughts and desires. I ignore all that, even though every concrete slave also has those characteristics. But in my hypothetical, Platonic slave, this is a slave who is bound and sleeping. Or like a mass point that has no shape and no matter; it only has weight at a point. And you can see that it is exactly the same process. And I want to talk with you about that abstract slave. Meaning, a creature whose whole being is that he is the slave of someone else. That’s it. He has no other feature. I want to claim that a creature of that sort is the courtyard of its master. That is my claim. Now, unlike the scientific world or physics textbooks, where you hear the formulation of Newton’s laws and it is always formulated as a general law—any body on which no force acts continues in uniform motion in a straight line—yes, that is a general formulation. The Talmudic text prefers a casuistic formulation. And when Rava wants to tell me a general law, that a slave is the courtyard of its master, he does not say it in that form of a general law, but rather says it through some implication. So he says, for example, if you place something in the slave’s hand, the master can acquire through that just as with courtyard acquisition. So what you said here is that the slave is the master’s courtyard, but you didn’t say it in those words, rather by way of an illustration of the point. You illustrated it with a particular case. For example, regarding acquisition, the slave can acquire for the master. What you really meant to say is that the slave is the master’s courtyard. Not a law from the laws of acquisition. There are practical differences for other things too, as I said—like the prohibition of “it shall not be seen.” The master could violate the prohibition if the slave has leavened food. It doesn’t matter to me. I want to speak about a general principle: what is the relation between slave and master, and the claim is that the slave is the master’s courtyard. But the Talmudic text, for its own reasons—and I’ll still comment on this further—the Talmudic text, for its own reasons, doesn’t say this in the form of a general law. In this it differs from physics books. It says it through an illustration of the general law. For example, a slave can acquire by courtyard acquisition for the master. But what they really intended to say is that a slave is the master’s courtyard. The fact that he can acquire is only an illustration of the fact that he is a courtyard. So they say it through the example, but they mean to say the general law. And to that the Talmudic text says: wait, but the example doesn’t work. Because in the example, the slave cannot acquire for the master by courtyard acquisition even if he really is the master’s courtyard. He cannot acquire because—not every courtyard acquires. Only a courtyard preserved by his will acquires. It says: fine, so we are talking about a bound and sleeping slave, in order for the laws of acquisition to be relevant to the slave. But the determination that he is the master’s courtyard is said about every slave, not only a bound and sleeping slave. It is said about every slave. And therefore the question on Rava—if you want to tell me a law about a bound and sleeping slave, then talk about a bound and sleeping slave. Why are you leaving it to the Talmudic text to interpret your words? The answer is that Rava did not intend to talk about a bound and sleeping slave. He intended to talk about every slave. In principle, every slave acquires for the master by courtyard acquisition under the laws of courtyard. But under the laws of acquisition, the courtyard must be a non-moving courtyard. So he has to be bound and sleeping. That doesn’t matter to me at the moment. That is not the essence. What I wanted to tell you was not a law from the laws of acquisition. I wanted to tell you the relation between the Platonic slave and his master. And that is true of every slave, not only a bound and sleeping slave. In acquisition law, in order for this to appear, one has to create a laboratory situation. Such a slave, who cannot walk and has no consciousness and has nothing, he is only the slave of the master—that is the only thing that characterizes him. Right? A point-donkey. So I say: this is a bound and sleeping slave. And I do not mean to say that this slave is bound and sleeping, but rather that there is here a Platonic object about which all I know to say is that he is the slave of the master. He doesn’t walk, he doesn’t think, he has no consciousness, he is not a human being, he is nothing. He is some abstract object called “the slave of the master.” This strongly resembles what people say—I may already have mentioned this, I don’t remember—the jokes, though they’re not really jokes; there are people who describe this with real pride, that Rabbi Chaim took the frying pans out of the kitchen. Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. When Rabbi Chaim approaches a topic and makes Brisker abstractions—object and person and such abstract concepts—he doesn’t see a frying pan in front of his eyes at all when he talks about the topics of absorbed prohibition, yes, in forbidden and permitted foods. So he talks about a frying pan, frying something prohibited, and afterwards cooking something permitted in it—does this attach to the object, does it not attach. He doesn’t know what a frying pan is; he doesn’t know what a frying pan looks like. A frying pan, for him, is some kind of thing that fries in oil and has such-and-such absorption properties. The concrete frying pan, what it looks like, whether it has a handle, what material it’s made of, how much it weighs, what its diameter is—all that characterizes concrete frying pans. But Rabbi Chaim doesn’t speak about concrete frying pans. Rabbi Chaim speaks about the idea of the frying pan. The idea of the frying pan is something—some object that he has no idea what it looks like, but it is some object that knows how to fry. Therefore he talks about a Platonic frying pan. And the claim I want to make now is that this is not only Rabbi Chaim. All our learning, basically, is not learning of concrete situations, real situations. We try to understand real situations through all sorts of abstractions, where our abstractions deal with Platonic worlds. Therefore, when Rava tells me the law of acquisition of a bill of divorce by the slave, he is not at all coming to teach me a law from the laws of divorce. He is coming to teach me a Platonic abstraction: that a slave, by virtue of being a slave, is the courtyard of his master. Now do with that what you want. Regarding acquisition law, in order for that courtyard to acquire, the slave has to be bound and sleeping. Fine—but that is not interesting. I’m not dealing here with acquisition law. But no scientist comes and attacks that scientist who works under laboratory conditions and says to him: what laboratory? This isn’t realistic, there is no such situation in our world. Nobody challenges that, because it is obvious that laboratory conditions are there to isolate the specific point. So if this is clear in the scientific world, why in the world of the Talmudic text is it not clear to them that when he said this, that’s obviously what he meant? I’ll answer you in two ways. First of all, yes, they do attack. When you make a statement—and I speak from experience with millions of facts—I often try to formulate generalizations, trying to understand some insights about the world. People always tell me: okay, that’s an abstraction, a simplistic generalization, forget it, it’s not relevant to our world. What people don’t understand is that the way to understand the world is always through simplistic generalizations. Therefore, the world does indeed treat scientific statements as some kind of childish abstractions that cannot really be useful in the world. Scientists are actually already used to this way of thinking, so they simply work that way; it doesn’t bother them, although even they themselves—if you ask them—are not always aware of why. But they are already accustomed to the scientific way of working, and for them it is obvious that this is how one works. But when someone looks from outside, he always asks himself: wait, you are dealing here with some Platonic world—why is that interesting? I want to understand our world. So that is one thing. And second, there is a difference, as I noted earlier, between the scientific world and the world of the Talmudic text. In the scientific world, the general law is what is written in the book. When they present the general law, they say: a body on which no force acts continues moving in uniform motion in a straight line. In the halakhic world, the mode of expression is simply different; it is casuistic. They don’t say the… Rava—if Rava had said “a slave is the courtyard of his mistress,” no questions would arise, right? A slave is the courtyard of his mistress, everything is fine. But since Rava chooses to say it through “the slave acquires by courtyard acquisition for his mistress,” through the example of acquisition, by that he says that the slave is a courtyard—here questions already arise: wait, wait, but in acquisition he has to be non-moving. Ah, fine—bound and sleeping. If he had stated the general law, nobody would ask. Therefore, in the scientific context nobody asks because in the scientific context they put the general law directly on the table. In the halakhic context, for some reason—and I’ll explain in a moment why—but in the halakhic context the Talmudic text and the Mishnah tend not to state the general law. They don’t state the general law; they say it through an illustration on a particular example. And then questions always arise and I need to reach ukimtot. If they stated the general law, there would be no difficulties and no need for ukimtot. Okay, so that is the answer to your question. Why the Talmudic text uses this kind of formulation—that really is a good question, in a moment. I just want to bring you an example that may make this clearer. The Talmudic text in tractate Shevuot 18a—this is a passage that… this is an example of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, by the way. The Talmudic text in Shevuot 18a says: Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: Whoever recites havdalah over wine at the conclusion of Sabbaths will have male children, as it is written: “to distinguish between the holy and the ordinary,” and it is written there: “to distinguish between the impure and the pure,” and next to it is written: “If a woman conceives.” Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: children fit to issue halakhic rulings, as it is written: “to distinguish and to teach.” Okay, so first of all, question number one: is this really true? Everyone who recites havdalah over wine at the conclusion of Sabbaths has male children? The Hazon Ish didn’t recite havdalah over a cup at the conclusion of Sabbath? He had no children at all, neither male nor female. Maybe he didn’t try. How does the Talmudic text speak? He did try—there is the commandment to be fruitful and multiply; he had a wife. And here, reciting havdalah over a cup means he will have male children—where are the statements of the Talmudic text? It simply doesn’t really work. Second, there is some factual determination here. So Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: children fit to issue halakhic rulings. And what does Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba think—not? So go and see. Look at someone who recites havdalah over a cup—see. Are his children always fit to issue halakhic rulings or not? And the answer, of course, is no. Right? No, you don’t need to check. What, almost every Jew recites havdalah over a cup at the conclusion of Sabbath, and how many Jews have sons fit to issue halakhic rulings? Few. So this doesn’t really work on the factual level. So how do we understand such a passage? Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman already asks this, and he says that basically this passage states a general law. Say, someone who recites havdalah over wine will have male children. But on the other hand, the Talmudic text also says that someone who is not careful with vows—his children die. Another Talmudic passage, in tractate Nedarim. Okay. Now what happens with someone who is careful to recite havdalah over wine at the conclusion of Sabbaths, but is not careful with vows? He will have children who die. So either he’ll have children who die, or yes, as Rabbi Natan said: what have you to do with the hidden things of the Merciful One? Not with the hidden things of the Merciful One—why turn the purpose upside down? Right, why give him children and then kill them? So he won’t get children at all. What does this really mean? That this principle—someone who recites havdalah, yes, I’m not getting into the question right now of how he knows and whether it is really true. Let us assume that from the standpoint of… let us assume that what he says is solid information, certainly true. It is certainly true—but in the Platonic world. In a world where there are no other considerations that can offset the effect of havdalah. When you recite havdalah over a cup, it will give you male children. But there are other considerations because of which the Holy One, blessed be He, may decide not to give you those children, or to take them from you. Therefore—and this does not mean that this law is not true or is absurd. No. Such a law can be completely true, one hundred percent. But about a Platonic world. What kind of world? A world in which the only commandment you have in the Torah is havdalah over a cup, and there are no other considerations, and there are no prohibitions relating to vows, and nothing else, no other considerations. In such a world, whenever you recite havdalah over a cup, you will have male children. But in our world there are many, many additional parameters that can interfere. Therefore all these promises of the Sages—incidentally, also the promises of the Torah—yes, now I’m reminded—Acher, for example, Elisha ben Avuyah, who saw that the Torah promised long life to someone who sends away the mother bird and to someone who honors parents. And he saw a case where someone honored his father, went up, sent away the nest, and on his way back fell and died. So where is the long life promised there, he asks himself? After all the Torah said, “Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be lengthened.” And with sending away the mother bird, “you shall surely send away the mother,” yes, also “so that your days may be lengthened.” So where are the two things the Torah promised for long life? He fulfilled them and died immediately. And the answer is that he may have died immediately for other reasons. Truly, these two commandments potentially would have given him long life. But on the other hand, a week earlier he also killed someone unintentionally, and the Holy One, blessed be He, causes them to meet at one inn, as the Talmudic text says—or if he was liable, sorry, he killed intentionally. And if he is liable to death, then the Holy One, blessed be He, will see to it that he dies. That too is a consideration, and it too is a general law, and it is always true. But in the real world, our world, there can be a person who on the one hand sent away the nest and honored parents and deserves long life, and on the other hand he is also a murderer, so he deserves to die. So what do you do with such a person? You have to weigh it up, and it may be that there will be no long life there—that he will die, depending on what outweighs what. But that doesn’t mean that the previous laws are not true. Why does the Talmudic text—one second. It means that these laws are true of the Platonic world, the world where other laws do not get mixed in and interfere. Yes. Could it be, Rabbi, that these laws are true but not one hundred percent—there are cases, cases. No, I want to claim, I want to claim the opposite. These laws are one hundred percent true. No, that’s what people usually say. Usually they say these laws are approximations. No, no. These laws are completely precise. But these laws are valid for the Platonic world. In our world there are always other laws that are also completely valid, but there are contradictions between the results. Therefore, in the end, not all the laws will be realized. One law interferes with the other. In our world, a body wants to continue moving in uniform motion in a straight line, and there is also friction. And friction too is a law of nature. So what can you do? So in the end, neither this law nor that law will really appear in its purity. But if I take the sum total of all these laws and try to examine through the prism of all of them together what happens in the real world, then I will understand it. If I know both the law of friction and the law of inertia, then when I look at a real body and take both of these laws into account, there is a chance I will correctly understand what is happening. But each such law by itself describes a world that is hypothetical, Platonic—that is not our world. It is an abstract and absolute world. Okay? And there it is always true. It’s not that… So why does the Talmudic text answer there something else? It answers: “the world that is entirely good”; it seems to descend completely from the concept. Where? In which passage? With Acher. The Talmudic text says, “so that it may go well with you”—it doesn’t say something else. It says the same thing. It says, “so that it may go well with you”—in the world that is entirely long. What does that mean? It means that in a place where something else did not let long life appear in this world, it will appear in another form in the world to come. Meaning, that potential is not wasted, but only shifts direction. So in this world it is impossible to give him long life because he was murdered—he has to die. Fine, but he still deserves the bonus that he deserves for honoring father and mother and sending away the nest. That bonus is kept for him; he will have it in the world to come. Like a body on which friction acts—then it will not continue moving in uniform motion in a straight line. But because of the effect of friction there will also be heat. Meaning, there is significance to the fact that it wants to move at a higher speed. Friction doesn’t allow it, so it comes out in the form of heat. Meaning, but that potential exists. That is the point. I think that is what the Talmudic text means to say there as well. It does not mean to say that long life, by definition, is for the world that is entirely long. Long life is in our world. Only if in our world, for some other reason, like vows or murder or something like that, it cannot emerge from potential into actuality, then that potential comes into actuality in another form in the world to come. Rabbi Abraham, how can we have male children in the world to come? So I say: in the world to come there will be something else that is like male children. I don’t know what that is. There will be something parallel. How can there be long life for him in the world to come? In the world to come people don’t live. Fine, there is something parallel in the world to come corresponding to what is called life in this world. What is called children in this world—in the world to come he will have students. Students are like children. His soul will be the head of a yeshivah, and he will teach the souls of others, and they will be his students. And students are like children. How would I know? It doesn’t matter. These are only expressions that I don’t exactly know how to explain, but the principle is this, I think—this principle. According to this, it could be that all the segulot people talk about are really true, but there are just other things, so every rabbi who has a segulah—it is really true. True, but you won’t necessarily see it here, but maybe in the world to come you’ll get something from it. Right, that could be. If I believed that that rabbi or that possessor of the segulah really had some reliable information, then that is what I would say. In practice, since it doesn’t work, I would say: fine, then perhaps it works in another context, somewhere else. But since from the outset I do not believe he has such information, then in my opinion this is just nonsense. It’s not a Platonic issue; there isn’t even a Platonic world where this works. But if there were something—I don’t know—handed down by tradition from the Holy One, blessed be He, then yes, I would think it is true. Ah, it doesn’t work in this world? Then apparently it has some other expression in the world to come. And that is what the Sages said there: “for the world that is entirely long,” because there it is written in the Torah. If it is written in the Torah, it is apparently true; it is not some segulah from Alibaba. So in such a case, if I see it does not work in this world, then apparently it will emerge from potential into actuality somewhere else, in another context. But here I am claiming that the reason it doesn’t work is simply that it is not true. There is no reason to assume these segulot work, and someone who uses them… Isn’t it worth going to Amuka for the segulah? I didn’t hear. Isn’t it worth going to Amuka? You can go to Amuka. If it doesn’t help, it won’t hurt. But I assume it also won’t help. You can take a trip; a trip isn’t bad either. Okay. In any case, with all due respect to Rabbi Yonatan ben Uzziel, I hope he’ll forgive me for my heretical remarks. Fine, now I just want to note something about the formulation, because what really creates the problematic nature of ukimtot—why, as was asked earlier, in science books nobody is bothered by these questions, that’s what I also asked in the previous lecture, and why in the Talmudic context this is very disturbing—the answer is because in science books the formulation from the outset is not casuistic but a formulation of a general law: any body on which no force acts moves in uniform motion in a straight line. If in our case it were written “a slave is the courtyard of his master,” there would be no question: wait, but it has to be a protected courtyard. I wasn’t talking about acquisitions; I’m talking about a slave as courtyard. Slave as courtyard is always true. So the question would not arise and there would be no need to make ukimtot when the slave is bound and sleeping. That is what is troubling in the world of ukimtot. And that requires me to explain why the Talmudic text indeed adopts casuistic language. Yes, casuistry—for those who aren’t lawyers—comes from the root of “cases.” The Mishnah, say, or the Talmudic text usually do not speak the language of rules. Even when the Talmudic text says “if one benefits and the other does not lose, he is exempt,” the Talmudic text doesn’t talk about “if one benefits and the other does not lose,” which is a general statement. The Talmudic text says: one who lives in another’s courtyard without his knowledge—must he pay rent or need he not pay rent? A very, very specific question, a halakhic question. But really what you want to clarify is a theoretical, Platonic, abstract question. If someone received benefit from another, and the other suffered no loss, must he pay the other or not? That is a completely general question. One application of it is someone who lives in another’s courtyard without his knowledge. But the Talmudic text formulates its inquiry—its conceptual discussion—through a specific case. And that is called the casuistic approach. In the legal world, British law tends toward casuistry, though it has retreated from that somewhat in recent years, but it still has a casuistic character. What does that mean? Basically, there are no general laws there, in the British world. In British law there are a few. In British law, all kinds of precedents that occur in various courts create the law de facto, and future cases are examined by analogy to previous cases. As opposed to German law, say—the Bundeslaw—where there is generally a tendency, yes, that’s the German character, so generally the tendency there is to speak of the science of law. There it is generally something positivistic, not casuistic, where the law states the general rule and the judge takes the general rule and applies it, in a kind of deduction, to the particular case before him. Say in German law, if they wanted to say the claim from the Talmudic text we discussed earlier, they would say: “If one benefits and the other does not lose, he is exempt.” In British law they would say it as in the Talmudic text: “One who lives in another’s courtyard without his knowledge need not pay rent.” But both mean the same thing. One is a casuistic formulation and one is a positivistic formulation. The Talmudic text is like British law. It uses a casuistic formulation. And the question is why. The moment I explain why, I have solved the problem of ukimta. Because if I explain why there is value in creating or working within a casuistic framework, then I am basically saying: I understand why the Talmudic text prefers to speak about cases and not about general laws. But at the same time it is clear to me that the Talmudic text does indeed want to teach me the general law—it just does so through the cases. And then the question of ukimta does not arise. So why, then, do I say “bound and sleeping”? But it is clear to me that in the end the Talmudic text wanted to tell me that a slave is the courtyard of his master—the general law—it just did so through a case. Now I just have to explain why. Why does the Talmudic text choose to formulate through cases and not state the general laws as in the laws of physics? And the answer is—can I suggest something, Rabbi? What? Can I suggest something? Okay. If the Torah really deals with the domain of values, if we define it that way generally, and values really cannot be defined precisely—it’s general statements that we make. All values, like all emotions, are not really statements equivalent to a target, and they can always be divided into many levels. So really every action always gets mixed up… But I think I understand the principle. I completely agree. That’s what… You’re not—fine. I didn’t hear. It can spread out into infinitely many forms. You need something that is at least precise in itself. You’re fading out on us, Shmuel. You’re fading, but I understood the principle. So I agree with what you’re saying. I think what happens is that indeed, unlike natural science or physics, where overall the formulations are fairly simple and it’s fairly clear what a formulation means, in the legal, moral, evaluative world the picture is much more complicated. Human beings and human society are complicated things. And when you formulate general laws, it becomes very difficult to apply them. Meaning, people won’t understand why this… Think about it: if I had just told you “if one benefits and the other does not lose, he is exempt,” would you be able to apply it? I promise you not. I promise you not. Just look at the topic of “if one benefits and the other does not lose” and see how many cases come up there, where in each one they explain why here this rule does not apply or applies differently. Therefore the method of general laws in legal or moral or human contexts is a less good method, because general laws remain general laws and then you basically do whatever you want because there is no—you don’t know how to apply them. And the more correct way—and therefore I personally identify very much with the casuistic method, and I think this is also the reason the Talmudic text and the Mishnah choose a casuistic formulation, the whole Talmud in general. It is because if you say it through cases, which is ostensibly much less precise—state the general law, don’t give applications; applications are always something specific—no. The moment you say it through the applications, people understand both the general law and how to apply it correctly in different cases, even in cases we did not see in the Talmudic text. But when I teach the general law through cases, I understand better what the general law means and also know how to apply it. Incidentally, when one studies mathematics, for example, one could teach it top-down. Say, formulate the theorem for you, teach you the theorem, and then show examples, applications, solve exercises, and the like. It seems to me that didactically it is more correct to teach it differently. Take an example, demonstrate the mathematical theorem on it, show people through a specific example how the whole thing works, and then from that tell them: okay, but actually this example is only an example. There is a general law here, and this general law says that for all kinds of cases with such-and-such characteristics, this-and-that property holds. But if you start and do it top-down rather than bottom-up, it will be less clear. People grasp examples better, but not only because they grasp the general law better because they have trouble grasping abstract things, but because the general law without the examples truly does not have a clear meaning. It is not only our limitations. There are genuinely many ways to apply it and many ways to understand the general law; and when you want to explain to us what its real meaning is, it has to come through examples. And despite that, even when the Talmudic text or the Mishnah brings an example, for the Talmudic text that reads it, it is completely clear that what they really intend to teach me is a general law, and therefore the Talmudic text allows itself to make an ukimta, because through the ukimta they show us how I move from the example to the general case. But even so, that is better than formulating the general law directly, as physics books do. That is the claim. Therefore, the Talmudic text, being aware of the complexity of our human existence, of human society, of the human being—these are very complex creatures. This is not a point-body weighing two kilograms and moving in uniform motion in a straight line. Human beings almost never move in straight lines. Therefore you have to handle this differently; you cannot give general laws. If you learn many examples, see many examples—like a neural network, yes—learn many examples, through this example, through that example, in the end you somehow understand how a person functions or what the Torah wants a person to do. But it has to be through examples and not through a general law. Incidentally, this is exactly the difference between classical programming and neural-network programming. Classical programming basically sets the principles: if this, go here; if this, do that; fine—and you tell the computer how to act, and now every specific example that comes before it, it will apply the algorithm programmed into it, its software. In a neural network, it works in a casuistic way. You take a network, throw a network into the computer, train it on cases, and every case is different from another, and you give it feedback—say supervised training, for those who know. You give it a case, it classifies it, you say right or wrong, give feedback, it reorganizes itself. It learns from that example, another example, another example, another example. In the end, that network will understand how to deal with this issue generally. You could have given the network—say you want a network to identify faces, identify people. Okay. Now you could teach it how to identify people: look, identify by this eyebrow angle and nose thickness—and there is no end to it. It is so sensitive, with such high resolutions, so complex, that there is no way to do this in the form of classical software: if the angle is such-and-such then this, if the eyes are like this then that, if the nose is like that. If you do it with if-statements and such things, you won’t get anywhere. Therefore, the way to deal with complex problems is basically through cases, in a casuistic way. Take Mickey Abraham—you see him, that’s Mickey Abraham. Take Moshe Zuchmar—you see him, that’s Moshe Zuchmar. The moment you teach it with many, many examples, in the end the network knows how to identify all human beings, not only Mickey Abraham and Moshe Zuchmar. But I taught it the general law through examples and not through direct feeding of the general law into it. The general law is complicated. And I think that is a wonderful example of the difference between physics and law or Jewish law or psychology, if you like, because all those fields are so complex that basically the way to handle them is by analyzing cases, and through the cases trying to gain some more general insight into the field, and not going top-down—taking the rules and the cases as a special instance of the rules. And that is the reason—and I think there is a very good reason—why the Talmudic text works in a casuistic way. Incidentally, part of that same difference between the Bundeslaw and British law, common law I think it’s called, is that this is with the Yekkes, because they are positivists, they apply the… there are general laws and all the cases are particular cases. Now among Yekkes, only among Yekkes could there be a Holocaust, because from the Yekke standpoint one must obey the law. That is the rule. Now no one will say, wait, wait, no—but if the law says such-and-such, that one should murder random people, then no, that’s not what’s meant. A Yekke doesn’t understand such things. If there is an obligation to obey the law, then you obey the law, and what the law says is what we do. That is exactly the positivistic conception of law. A positivistic conception—because law is a complex thing—positivism does not work. Even the Yekkes today already understand that, but the tendency is still there. Today they are only tendencies; everyone is somewhere in the middle. But in British law, in principle, this could not have happened. It could not have happened because even if there is something the general law says—“if one benefits and the other does not lose, he is exempt”—yes, but in this case it is obvious that this cannot be right. Something here is a screaming injustice. So I would say: no, no, that speaks about a case like that, but in our case this rule does not work. That is exactly the casuistic way of thinking, in which the general law is on limited warranty. My intuition about the particular case can override the general law. The general law does not turn me into a robot; I am not a programmed person. Okay? Therefore there are many, many implications to this difference between a casuistic approach and a positivistic approach. And in that sense, I think this is an excellent explanation for why the Talmud—yes, many times people think the Talmud is some kind of primitive composition. What, they didn’t know how to state the rules? State the rules and we’ll apply them to the cases by deduction. Why all these cases, other cases, ukimtot, here and there it contradicts and then they change? It is built in such a complicated, unclear, associative way. To my mind, that is the whole idea. The whole idea is that only this way can you build a system. A system that tries to build itself differently, in a legal way, that tries to build the science of law the way the Yekkes call it, will not get very far—or sometimes will get too far. Therefore, the complexity of the field requires a kind of treatment that is bottom-up, not top-down. From the cases to the general law, and not from the general law to the cases. Therefore, the limitation is that whenever the Talmudic text or the Mishnah want to tell me a law, they do so through specific cases. Then there is always, of course, some uncertainty, because from this specific case one can formulate various general laws. So I make attempts, I test it—bound slave, sleeping slave, and so on—so what about a slave who is not bound? I need many examples to train, yes, to train my neural network so that I understand the picture and act correctly. But after I have all those examples, in the end I think I act more correctly than someone who gets only the general rules. Therefore I have often said that the Talmudic text has a built-in contempt for rules. Yes, the Talmudic text says in tractate Kiddushin, the Talmudic text in Kiddushin says: “one does not derive from general rules, even in a place where ‘except’ is stated.” Yes, it says: all positive commandments dependent on time—women are exempt, except for a list of three or four commandments. The Talmudic text asks: but there is also a fifth. It says: the assembly. The Talmudic text says: fine, one does not derive from general rules, even where “except” is stated. Now one has to understand that this is a strange thing—almost insane, I would say. Meaning, if they tell me: all positive commandments dependent on time—women are exempt, and I found one exception or two exceptions, fine, not terrible. They said something general and there are also a few exceptions. I understand. But here the Talmudic text says: even with the exception. It says: all positive commandments dependent on time—women are exempt, except A, B, C and D. It also counted the exceptions. Now I found one more exception. The Talmudic text says: don’t make a fuss. Fine, there is one more exception. Why are you making a fuss? Meaning, even where the formulation is the most meticulous formulation possible, including the “except,” where you also list the exceptions—even in such a place I am not bothered by there being one more exception. Meaning that the Talmudic text here belittles—almost openly laughs at—the use of rules. Right? Yes, the example I always bring in this context: the Talmudic text in the beginning of tractate Bava Kamma. The first Mishnah says there are four primary categories of damages: the ox, the pit, the grazer, and the fire. And at the end: the common denominator among them is that they are your property and their supervision is upon you, and when they caused damage, the damager is obligated to pay compensation from the best of his land. So here the Mishnah does something unusual, something that in many Mishnah passages does not appear: after it brings the examples—the ox, the pit, the grazer, and the fire—it also gives the general law, that anything that is my property and whose supervision is upon me, if it caused damage, I am liable to pay. The question I would ask in such a situation is: if you brought the general law, why do you need the examples? The examples are a special case; state the general law. The Talmudic text on page 6 says: what does the common denominator come to include? You already brought me examples, so why bring me the general law? It is the opposite of logic. If for once the Mishnah did me a favor and gave me the general law, then the question should be: thank you very much for giving the general law; why do we need the examples? But the Talmudic text, even in a place where it was given the general law, asks why it is needed, since there are examples. Meaning, you see that the Talmudic text regards examples as a more reliable medium for conveying information to me than the general law. Let’s take another implication, an example. There is a Talmudic rule that in disputes between Abaye and Rava, the Jewish law follows Rava except in YAL KGM. YAL KGM is an acronym for six topics, yes? Unknowing despair, conspiring witness, a post standing on its own, and so on, in which the Jewish law follows Abaye. Now if you look in Maimonides, you will see that there are other topics in which he rules like Abaye, beyond YAL KGM. Two, for example—one of them is “do not form factions.” “Do not form factions,” two courts in one city—that is a dispute between Abaye and Rava, and Maimonides rules like Abaye, that it is forbidden to have two courts in one city. The same with “if one did it, it is ineffective,” at the beginning of tractate Temurah. There too, at least according to some interpreters of Maimonides—there are some contradictions in Maimonides on this—according to some interpreters of Maimonides, he ruled like Abaye. And the question is: how can that be? Not only does the Talmudic text say that with Abaye and Rava the Jewish law follows Rava, it also counts the exceptions—except for six cases, YAL KGM. But Maimonides brings two more cases and in those too he rules like Abaye. So everyone starts—and the books of rules start inventing fine distinctions and differentials. As if, no, the law follows Rava only where Abaye and Rava disagree on their own, but if they disagree about the views of Tannaim, then it may be that the law follows Abaye in additional cases. Where does that come from? Where did they get that? Where is it written? It is written nowhere. Where did they invent that rule from? You don’t need to invent that rule; the rule is unnecessary and incorrect. Maimonides is simply applying another rule that appears in the Talmudic text: one does not derive from general rules even where “except” is stated. Here—this is a classic case. It is a rule that the Jewish law follows Rava except in YAL KGM, but even in such a place one does not derive from general rules. One does not derive from rules, but there are also additional exceptions. How do I determine the additional exceptions? If it is clear to me that the Jewish law follows Abaye by reason, from other Talmudic discussions, no matter what, then I will rule like Abaye. The rule that appears in the Talmudic text is a rule that speaks about someone who has no specific reason to rule like Abaye or like Rava. In such a case, know that there is a rule: the Jewish law follows Rava except in six cases. But if there is a topic in which you have a very clear position and you think Abaye is right, then rule like Abaye. The rules do not speak—unless it is the Jerusalem Talmud that says, “If you do not know, fairest among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flock and pasture your kids beside the shepherds’ dwellings.” What does that mean? You want to go in the footsteps of the flock, to follow custom. That is only if you do not know. If you have no position of your own, then you go after the custom. But if you have a position of your own, why do you need to go after custom? If you are in doubt, follow custom. If you have a position, you are not in doubt. Why do Ashkenazim have to be like the Rema and Sephardim like the Mechaber? They don’t have to. If I have a position of my own and I am Ashkenazi, if I have a position of my own and I agree with the Mechaber, I will act like the Mechaber. If I have no position—if you do not know, fairest among women—go forth in the footsteps of the flock, go after the custom. Custom is the default for someone who has no position. But someone who has a position should do what he thinks, what he knows. The same thing with all the rules in the Talmudic text. I don’t know if all, but most of the rules in the Talmudic text are like that. Therefore, many times the rule-writers struggle: wait, here there is a deviation from one rule, a deviation from another rule. Deviations from rules are exactly what one should expect to find in the Talmudic text; it is not a difficulty. The rules were said for cases where you have no concrete information what to do, where you have no position what to do. Use the rules then. “The burden of proof lies on the one who seeks to extract from another.” Fine—except in a place where it is clear to me that he is wrong. If he is wrong, I will extract from him even without proof—explicit Maimonides in chapter 20 and chapter 24 of the laws of the Sanhedrin. The rules in the laws of evidence are for whom? For a court that has no position of its own, for which it is not clear who is right. Then go by the rules. If it is clear to you who is right, then decide accordingly. And the rule that says every rule has an exception. Right—that is apparently the only rule without an exception. So then what is the exception to the rule that a triangle has 180 degrees? No, that is a mathematical rule. That is exactly the difference. A mathematical rule has no exception. So to what was it said that every rule has an exception? To legal rules, social rules, psychological rules. And that is exactly the point of the complexity I spoke about earlier. There is an exception, not necessarily because the rule is wrong, but because there are other rules that sometimes intervene and interfere. To this day, for decades, I’ve understood that the answer is that this is the exception to the rule that says every rule has an exception. Fine, okay, that’s a nice sharpening, but… you are treating it as if it were a Mishnah. Fine, that is the meaning of this popular saying. The claim in the end, what I want to say, is that there is a good reason why the Talmud prefers the casuistic conception or framework over the positivistic framework. Therefore it is not difficult why Rava, instead of telling me that the slave is the courtyard of his mistress, tells me that the slave acquires by courtyard acquisition for his mistress. Because he wants to show me what it means that he is a courtyard. What, that you can put a fence around him? No. The meaning of his being a courtyard is for legal-halakhic matters like the laws of acquisition, for example. So he brings an example through acquisition law—that is the way of the Talmudic text. But it is still clear to the Talmudic text that Rava did not mean to tell me a story about what the law is regarding a bound slave. Rava came to tell me a general principle, and precisely because of that the Talmudic text makes an ukimta. Because the illustration of the general principle—the general principle is that the slave is the courtyard of his mistress—the illustration is in acquisition law. Specifically in acquisition law, he has to be bound and sleeping in order to acquire. The Talmudic text makes an ukimta: we are talking about a bound and sleeping slave. But Rava—when I asked why Rava specifically didn’t mention… didn’t mention that the slave is bound and sleeping, it’s because he wasn’t talking about a bound and sleeping slave. He was talking about every slave. So that is not a question. The ukimta does not disagree with the Mishnah. It does not disagree with the Mishnah. It decodes the rule that the Mishnah wanted to convey to me through the examples. So which case does fit the idea that the slave is the courtyard of his mistress? I said, for example, one might think of “it shall not be seen.” If I find leavened food with my slave, perhaps I would violate the prohibition. Rabbi, Rabbi Michael Abraham, on the subject of a slave for example, there is a difference, say, between the laws of Hammurabi, where a slave only belongs to his master and has no rights at all, nothing, and in our system a slave can… if it is bad for him he can flee from his master to another place and it is forbidden to extradite him. What happens, for example, in our system if there is a slave who… they bring the bill of divorce in his hand to his wife, and he says: my master, you don’t want to divorce, and she doesn’t want to divorce, you’re having a temporary crisis, I know both of you… what’s the situation? The slave is not supposed to say anything about it. First of all, because he is bound and sleeping. So he cannot speak and cannot think. And I think the reason for that is exactly what you said. Why does the slave have to be bound and sleeping? Because a concrete slave—not a Platonic slave—a concrete slave is a human being. He has understanding. He can agree, can refuse, want, not want. Therefore I say: when I speak about a concrete slave I have to abstract. So he is bound, sleeping, he does not walk, he is not conscious, nothing. But Rava was not speaking about a concrete slave. Rava was speaking about a Platonic slave. And the Platonic slave is an entity that belongs to its master. It is not a human being and it does not… it has no other characteristics. A point-donkey. That is exactly the point. Meaning, the slave is like in Nabucco, the way they walk, slaves chained one to another and that’s it, and unable to veer right or left. Yes, but they were not talking about such slaves; they were talking about every slave. Only the concept of acquisition can be illustrated—this concept of acquisition—only if the slave is bound and sleeping. The statement itself speaks about every slave. But its implication with regard to acquisition law—that the slave can acquire by courtyard acquisition for his master—that is only if the slave is bound and sleeping. Therefore, the ukimta in the end only removes problems regarding the illustration, but it is not necessary in order to understand the general idea. That is the bottom line. The ukimta is never necessary. The general idea is true of every slave, not only a bound and sleeping slave. Therefore it is not difficult with Rava why he did not state that he was talking about a bound and sleeping slave, because he wasn’t talking about a bound and sleeping slave. The expression of the general principle—that one can acquire through the slave by courtyard acquisition—does not work unless the slave is bound and sleeping. So there you need the ukimta. And that is a rule that I will try to demonstrate regarding our other passages in the next lecture, where we will see what the implication is. It is a consequence, a derivative, of the explanation I gave here. And we will see implications—there are very interesting implications for the next topics. Rabbi, perhaps one could suggest, somewhat subversively, that the very fact that the Talmudic text says “a bound and sleeping slave” comes to tell you in the subtext that this treatment—that a slave is the courtyard of his master and not a human being—basically both exists and doesn’t exist, because it is only for a bound and sleeping slave. In truth that isn’t the essence of the slave, because a slave, as the Rabbi said, is living and speaking, so he is a human being with all the implications. Whoever wants to expound this favorably can certainly expound it favorably. But at the moment I am looking at it not from a moral perspective but from a legal or interpretive perspective. And from the interpretive perspective, what I want to say is that Rava wants to say something about a slave in general, not specifically about a bound and sleeping slave. And the fact that I bind him and make him sleep is only in order for the Platonic slave to appear here and for me not to relate to the concrete slave. Now, the implications—each person can take that where he likes. Fine. Any other comments or questions? Rabbi, I wanted to ask: in the Written Torah we find both types of formulations. Meaning, there are codified laws like that, and there are also laws learned through a case—meaning, where the Torah describes them through a case. Look, the boundary is often unclear. “You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” Is that a case? Ostensibly yes. I don’t think so; I don’t think so either. Maybe it is just broader. There are tools of animals, there are tools of garments, and the Talmudic text, the Torah speaks separately about them. Mixed wool and linen. If, for example, the case of divorce, of levirate marriage—that is really presented in the form of a story, but slaves… whereas here there are… everything is casuistic. Where is the positivistic? A simple example, the Ten Commandments—that’s the most classic example that comes to mind right now. There are also lists of commandments in the portion of Kedoshim. In the Talmudic text too there is “and what is the common denominator among them? That they are your property and their supervision is upon you.” There is, but it is rare. Usually they speak to me about the case. It may be that there are places where it was important to the Torah or the Talmudic text to express the general principle as well, and maybe it was simple enough or not complex enough that one could formulate the general principle too. “You shall not murder”—I assume people won’t get confused. Meaning, people will understand the meaning of this rule and you don’t have to tell me “do not take a soul from a creature of one meter sixty in a particular example.” Here it is clear what is meant, so they used the clear thing. But in general, since the picture or the medium is complex, examples are used and not rules. I simply wanted to ask, basically, whether the Rabbi thinks there is some distinction between the Written Torah and the sources in the Oral Torah. I don’t think so. The Written Torah also speaks a lot in cases. And in the Oral Torah there are also sometimes rules. It’s not that there are no rules, but the dosage is small. And even, as I said earlier, when it appears in Bava Kamma they ask “what does it come to include,” meaning why do I need the rule when there are examples. And you see that the rules do not hold the status that I would have expected them to hold, as in German law. Ostensibly I would expect: give me the rules and I’ll do the applications—it’s deduction, what’s the problem? No. In the Talmudic text the starting point is the opposite. Thank you very much. Okay, so let’s stop here. Sabbath peace, good news. Sabbath peace, Sabbath peace, thank you very much. Rabbi Michael? Yes. Do you know that Tzvika’s son was killed? Yes, yes, I know. I remember Shaul, his grandfather—I think I still remember the mourning notice for his grandfather Shaul in Haifa. And our tribe put it up on WhatsApp. Yes? Tzvika? Yes. Tzvika was our counselor in Bnei Akiva. Who was your counselor? Tzvika. Yes, Tzvika? Wow. Tzvika’s counselor in Bnei Akiva was Oded Rodenblum. Yigal’s brother, who always told them stories from the War of Independence from his father and from his father. Fine, good news.