Platonism – Lesson 20
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Table of Contents
- Okimtot, Platonism, and laboratory situations in Talmud study
- Scientific research, general laws, and hypothetical halakhic software
- Hypothetical passages in the Talmud, law for the messianic era, and practical implications
- The Ran on the Sinai ox and the critique of searching for practical implications
- Equivalent descriptions in physics: causality, teleology, and coordinate systems
- Quantum theory, the absence of causality, and the superiority of teleological description
- Purposefulness, God, and the philosophical meaning of discussions with no practical implication
- Maimonides in the ninth root, Rabbi Yerucham Perla, and a false dichotomy in lomdut
- Two aspects of a commandment: command and content, and religious motivation according to Maimonides
- Eight Chapters, the upright person and the one who conquers his inclination, and the reconciliation with the Laws of Kings
- Ideas behind Jewish law and the tension with “we do not derive the reason of the verse”
- The Rif in Bava Kamma, reason and definition, and the blurred boundaries
- The draft question and the absence of a public voice from Religious Zionist rabbis
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the okimta as a theoretical “laboratory situation” that makes it possible to isolate meta-halakhic ideas and expose the theory behind Jewish law, rather than settling for the “bottom lines” of practical rulings. It compares this to scientific research, whose purpose is to understand the laws of nature and not just predict phenomena, and argues that even a perfect “Torah ChatGPT” would not make careful study unnecessary, because the value of learning lies in understanding the ideas and intellectual forms. It then proposes a parallel between equivalent descriptions in physics—causal versus teleological, or different coordinate systems—and halakhic discussions that have no practical implication, explaining that even without a practical implication there is still real philosophical significance. Finally, it offers a reading of Maimonides in the ninth root that emphasizes that a Torah-level commandment has both a “command” and a “content,” and from this it argues that behind Jewish law there lies a Platonic dimension of reasons, goals, and insights, even though the rule that “we do not derive the reason of the verse” sets certain limits. The conclusion then turns to the public question of drafting Haredim and the absence of a public voice from Religious Zionist rabbis, answering this by analyzing it as a mix of fear, rhetoric of unity, an inferiority complex, and questions of leadership identity.
Okimtot, Platonism, and laboratory situations in Talmud study
The text argues that an okimta is the construction of a rare theoretical situation that is not really supposed to occur in any simple way, and that its advantage lies in its ability to present the meta-halakhic theory in a more “pure” form. It defines the goal of study as an attempt to expose the theory rather than the laws derived from it, framing this as a kind of Platonism in which practical phenomena are incomplete appearances of abstract ideas. It states that laboratory situations simulate the “world of ideas” in order to encounter an idea in its purity, because in the concrete world everything is “mixed together” and it is hard to identify the idea by itself.
Scientific research, general laws, and hypothetical halakhic software
The text compares halakhic analysis to scientific research, in which examining individual cases is meant to uncover a general law, and it argues that even complete knowledge of all phenomena would not make science unnecessary, because the goal is the laws themselves. It describes a scenario of a “Torah ChatGPT” that can answer every halakhic question and argues that even then learning would not be unnecessary, because “knowing what to do” is only an indication of understanding the theory. It raises as a separate question the future possibility that a computer might also decipher the “Platonic ideas” of Jewish law, and mentions another possibility according to which theoretical engagement itself has value as a form of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, even if the knowledge is accessible without effort.
Hypothetical passages in the Talmud, law for the messianic era, and practical implications
The text gives examples of passages that seem fictional, such as an elephant that swallowed an Egyptian basket, a warning delivered by a demon, witnesses who flew on a flying camel, and wheat that descended from the clouds, and presents them as situations whose purpose is to isolate conceptual questions, not to decide “what we would do if this happened.” It explains that the stubborn and rebellious son serves as an example of a section that “never was, never existed, and never will be,” and yet studying it teaches that the purpose of learning is not practicality. It interprets the Talmud’s question “what practical difference does it make?” as a tool for sharpening conceptual distinctions through practical expressions, and suggests that “law for the messianic era” appears when the Talmud does not sense a theoretical-Platonic value distilled from the passage.
The Ran on the Sinai ox and the critique of searching for practical implications
The text cites the Ran on Sanhedrin 15 regarding the question “How many judges were needed for the Sinai ox?” and his difficulty—“what practical difference does it make?”—about a historical discussion of something already past. It brings the Ran’s answer of a practical implication for a Nazirite vow, and describes this as intended to clarify that conceptual discussion does not depend on practical implications but on exposing underlying principles. It presents the yeshiva joke “a practical implication for betrothing a woman” as an expression of rejecting the pursuit of practical implications as the source of relevance, and formulates the aspiration as knowing the conceptual “truth.”
Equivalent descriptions in physics: causality, teleology, and coordinate systems
The text presents in optics Snell’s law alongside Fermat’s principle as equivalent descriptions, and in mechanics a description through gravitational force alongside a teleological description in terms of minimizing potential energy. It explains that a causal description uses “because,” while a teleological description uses “in order to,” and places Aristotle on the teleological side while rejecting the claim that this is personification of the stone or attribution of free choice to inanimate matter. It argues that physicists tend to say there is no meaning to the question of which description is “correct” when there is no empirical practical difference, but adds that on the philosophical level the question of truth still has meaning even without experimental difference.
The text also states that the question “the sun around the earth” versus “the earth around the sun” is a kinematic equivalence of choosing a coordinate system, and that this is not a case of truth versus falsehood but of mathematical convenience. It illustrates this with the analogy of a train and a platform, emphasizing that such differences do not produce “right” or “wrong” but only a point of view.
Quantum theory, the absence of causality, and the superiority of teleological description
The text argues that in certain areas of physics there is only a teleological description and no causal description, and it notes that in quantum theory there is no concept of force in the classical sense and that the Schrödinger equation is described through potentials. It presents the modern tendency, following Bell’s experiments and Aspect’s experiment, to think that there are no causes in the sense of hidden determinism, but rather a genuine absence of causality, and emphasizes that this does have experimental implications. It uses this to support the claim that non-causal thinking is not necessarily randomness, but can be teleological.
Purposefulness, God, and the philosophical meaning of discussions with no practical implication
The text suggests that resistance to Aristotelian language stems from its hint at a designing agent, because a purposive system is perceived as the “fingerprint” of a creator. It argues that even when science does not distinguish empirically between descriptions, one can still conduct a meaningful philosophical debate about which is correct. As an example, it raises the question of whether God created the world or whether the world “came into being on its own,” emphasizing that this has no experimental practical implication and yet there is still great reason to discuss it. In this way it strengthens the claim that practical implication is not a condition for meaning.
Maimonides in the ninth root, Rabbi Yerucham Perla, and a false dichotomy in lomdut
The text brings Maimonides in the ninth root: first, that one commandment is not counted several times even if the Torah repeats it, and then that several prohibitions are not counted from a single verse such as “Do not eat over the blood,” but only one prohibition. It cites Rabbi Yerucham Perla’s question about the contradiction between counting according to “contents” and counting according to “commands,” and answers that the mistake is a false dichotomy, since in practice both an independent content and an independent command are required for a commandment to be counted. It mentions the dispute with Nachmanides in his glosses on the ninth root regarding whether repetitions in the Torah are merely “for reinforcement” or always teach some new point.
Two aspects of a commandment: command and content, and religious motivation according to Maimonides
The text argues that every Torah-level commandment has two aspects: violating the command as an act of rebellion, and an essential harm or problematic consequence in the very act that was prohibited. It rejects a simple division between statutes and laws as involving different motivations, and cites Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings, that one who observes the seven Noahide commandments “because reason compels him” is not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise. It also adds Maimonides’ words in his commentary on the Mishnah in the chapter on the sciatic nerve, and explains that religious motivation means acting because of the command, even if the commandment also has an understandable rationale.
Eight Chapters, the upright person and the one who conquers his inclination, and the reconciliation with the Laws of Kings
The text cites Maimonides in chapter 6 of Eight Chapters on the contradiction between the Sages, who prefer “one who conquers his inclination,” and philosophers, who prefer “the upright person,” and presents Maimonides’ answer that for rational commandments the upright person is preferable, while for revelational commandments the one who conquers his inclination is preferable. It argues that this does not contradict the Laws of Kings, because the issue there is the value of a naturally upright soul, not replacing religious motivation with natural motivation. It concludes that even for rational commandments, “also because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it” is still required in order for the act to have religious significance.
Ideas behind Jewish law and the tension with “we do not derive the reason of the verse”
The text states that behind the commands there stands a “Platonic world” of goals, values, and insights, and that halakhic interpretation cannot completely avoid understanding the “why,” even if the yeshiva ethos speaks in terms of “what and not why.” It argues that one cannot answer the “what” without indirect recourse to the “why,” and adds that even derivations from verses sometimes rely on reasoning that guides the reading. It sharpens the point that the rule “we do not derive the reason of the verse” means avoiding halakhic conclusions based on interpretive rationales, but in practice there are many qualifications and the rule is narrower than people usually think.
The Rif in Bava Kamma, reason and definition, and the blurred boundaries
The text cites the Rif at the beginning of Bava Kamma, who explains the exemption for damage by tooth and foot in the public domain by saying that a person has the right to walk there with his animal and therefore the injured party must be careful, and it raises a difficulty against him as an attempt to derive the reason of the verse, from which halakhic conclusions are also drawn in dispute with Tosafot. It describes the yeshiva distinction between “definition” and “reason,” and presents an example from Rabbi Shilat’s book in the name of Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel, on “You shall dwell as you ordinarily live” as the definition of the commandment of sukkah, as opposed to “so that your generations shall know” as its reason. It argues that in many places this distinction is not sharp, and that even determining a “definition” rests on understanding a purpose, so halakhic discussion is necessarily bound up with the ideas behind the norms.
The draft question and the absence of a public voice from Religious Zionist rabbis
The text presents a question about the public discourse surrounding equal sharing of the burden and drafting Haredim, and argues that what is missing is a public religious voice that formulates military service as a commandment and non-service as a religious transgression. It answers that the dispute is not really a matter of values but stems from fear, and adds that in recent days voices have begun to emerge at the margins, though there is pressure toward “unity,” presented in a one-sided way. It argues that Religious Zionist rabbis have an inferiority complex toward Haredi rabbis, and that part of the leading leadership is in fact “national Haredi,” and therefore will not lead an anti-Haredi stance. It concludes that the public needs to decide who its leadership is and not expect Haredi leadership to act in a non-Haredi way.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the last few times, I dealt with the question of okimtot, because through that I tried to show the Platonic character of learning, or really of the Talmud in general, and of our study of the Talmud. The claim, basically, was that an okimta is the construction of some kind of laboratory situation, a theoretical situation, that isn’t really supposed to materialize—or at least certainly not in any simple way—a rare case. But its advantage is that in such a case you can see, in a purer and cleaner way, the expression of the meta-halakhic theory. And in fact the purpose of our learning is to try to uncover that theory, not the bottom lines, not the laws that are derived from it. I compared this to scientific research, which also uses phenomena that occur in the world in order to understand the laws of nature—not that the laws of nature exist in order to explain the phenomena in the world. That’s true too, but in terms of the goal of the research, the goal is not to understand the world’s phenomena. Theoretically—someone reminded me on the site some time ago—I once said that even if I had, even if I knew all the natural phenomena in the world and knew exactly what would happen in every situation, that still would not make scientific research unnecessary. Because the purpose of scientific research is not to know what will happen in every situation. The desire to know what will happen in every situation is really just an expression of the desire to know the laws of nature, and the goal is to know the laws. So if I know that in every situation you give me I can tell you what will happen, then I basically know everything that will happen, and seemingly the search for the laws is unnecessary, because the laws are supposedly only a means to know what will happen in every case. But no—the laws are actually the goal of the whole enterprise, and the various situations are only practical expressions of the laws, they are the practical implications of the laws. Meaning, if I check what happens in different cases, that gives me an indication of the question of what the general law is. The same is true in the context of Torah study. Even if I knew—as, say, Rabbi Ovadia would present it—even if I knew how to say in every situation what Jewish law says, meaning to give a halakhic ruling in every case, still—you know what, let’s put it more concretely—suppose they built for us a Torah ChatGPT. Meaning, they gave us, they built us an artificial intelligence program that knows how to answer every halakhic question. The question is whether now, from my perspective, learning becomes unnecessary. Because what’s the problem? Every halakhic question I have, I press here and I know what I need to do. So why do I need to study now? And the answer is no. Even if there were such a program, and even if that program were completely accurate—I’m not talking now because of concerns about mistakes and things like that—the purpose of learning is not to know what to do. Knowing what to do is an indication that I understand the general laws, the theory. And therefore the existence of such a program does not make conceptual halakhic study unnecessary, the attempt to uncover the patterns of thought and the halakhic theories. And that is basically an expression of what I called Platonism, because Platonism basically says that the practical phenomena we know before our eyes—objects, or the practical phenomena we know before our eyes—are expressions of certain abstract general ideas that exist, I don’t know, in the world of ideas, but they have various appearances, usually deficient and incomplete, in our world. Laboratory situations are meant to simulate the world of ideas. Meaning, in a laboratory situation an idea can appear in its purity, without all sorts of other things interfering. But in principle, as long as we are in our complicated world, it is hard to encounter an idea. Because an idea, by its nature, lives—or manages to exist—only in the world of ideas, where each idea is a bubble standing by itself, unrelated to anything else, and nothing else disturbs it; there it appears in its purity. In our world everything is mixed together. Yes, in our world the idea of horseness is mixed together with the idea of brownness, of being brown. And also with the idea of tallness, of being tall, or of being, I don’t know, all kinds of other things. All of those things together are what gather in the concrete horse standing before my eyes. And therefore in our world it’s hard for me to encounter a pure idea, one that isn’t disturbed by all sorts of other things. And laboratory situations try to get close to a situation in which you actually can encounter a pure idea. That’s basically the claim.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, rabbi,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If—
[Speaker B] if we move a little further ahead, another, I don’t know, another hundred years, and we already have ChatGPT also for the Platonic ideas of Jewish law, and basically it will give us exactly everything—then why do we actually need to study? If it’s all there in the little computer we’ll have…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. It will give us the general laws?
[Speaker B] No, it will know how to decipher—like how we sit and learn Torah—it’ll already do it by itself, and it’ll know how to say it, it knows all the Platonic ideas embedded in the Torah. So now why do I need to transfer this little hard disk into my brain at this point?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That would already be a different question. You can argue about that question, but it’s a different question from what I’m talking about here. Right now I’m talking about the fact that there is importance to engaging in theory beyond the facts it explains. You’re asking what happens when computers also know the theory, right? So maybe then it really would be unnecessary, I don’t know. Or someone else would tell you no, that engaging in theory itself is a kind of cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, and therefore there is value to the engagement—not because without the struggle or friction with the passage you won’t know the Torah. You will know it, you’ll hit the computer and it’ll tell you what the Torah is. But the very friction itself has some value of cleaving, or something like that. But that’s another discussion, and it certainly should be discussed, but it’s something else. And all this, of course, assumes there are no mistakes and you don’t need to check it because it does it better than we do, because you can always raise claims like yes, but maybe it’ll make a mistake, maybe it doesn’t understand correctly, maybe there are certain operations it won’t know how to do the way we know how to do. That’s another discussion. But for me these are all hypothetical questions—just to illustrate the point. This expression of the Platonic nature of Jewish law, what we saw through the phenomenon of okimtot, actually comes up in all sorts of other passages where on the face of it people are a little surprised why the Talmud—or why the decisors—deal with them. Passages of the type of an elephant that swallowed an Egyptian basket—yes, an Egyptian basket is some kind of basket, a question of impurity of utensils, doesn’t matter—a boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant, like Saint-Exupéry describes in his book. So the Talmud discusses such a situation. Or someone who was warned by a demon—a demon came and warned him not to commit some transgression. Or witnesses who flew on a flying camel—they got from one place to another, yes, a question of refutation of witnesses: you refuted them by saying “you were with us in Eilat,” so how are you testifying about a murder at that same time in Metula? They went on a flying camel, meaning they flew on a flying camel. Or wheat that came down from the clouds. So Rashi explains there that the wind carried some ship full of wheat up into the clouds above, and the wheat came down with the rain to the ground. It doesn’t sound plausible to me that Rashi thought such a situation could really happen. He wasn’t trying to explain why the discussion there is not hypothetical but practical. I think he was simply trying to picture the situation being discussed, but it’s obvious to him that this is a fictional scenario. By the way, I’ve seen people trying to argue no, no, Rashi really means it, and it really could happen—there are winds that can lift ships with wheat into the clouds. Fine, I don’t know.
[Speaker C] What? Law for the messianic era. Why do we even have such a question?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So the question is why deal with it?
[Speaker C] Why are we discussing it? It’s law for the messianic era—we’ll wait.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Meaning, there are situations that the Talmud discusses and apparently they have no practical application at all; the discussion is just from within itself. And indeed, as you rightly noted, sometimes the Talmud asks, “What practical difference does it make?” or “This is law for the messianic era,” or something like that. The Talmud itself seems to assume that such discussions are valueless—apparently. The way I explained it now, it seems to me these are further appearances of the Platonic outlook. When we deal with the elephant that swallowed an Egyptian basket, we’re not really discussing the question of what we should do in practice if an elephant swallows an Egyptian basket. Or if a ship with wheat gets swallowed by the clouds and wheat starts falling on us with the rain. Rather, this situation is a laboratory situation—or not laboratory, doesn’t matter—a hypothetical situation that succeeds in isolating certain questions that otherwise would be hard for us to discuss. In other words, I want to deal with wheat that doesn’t come from the ground but comes from the sky. Because it’s important for me to clarify the role of the ground in defining wheat. So I say, okay, let’s talk about wheat that comes down from the clouds with the rain. But it’s not that I’m actually interested in what the Jewish law would be in such a situation, because such a situation won’t occur—like what I brought regarding the stubborn and rebellious son, who never was, never existed, and never will be. And nevertheless the Torah devotes a whole section to him and the Talmud discusses its laws, what is done, how and why—and all of this never was and never will be. So you see that the purpose of analysis is not to know what to do. The practical implications of knowing what to do are consequences or practical expressions of the theory. And what interests us is the theory. One can still wonder, then why does the Talmud ask “law for the messianic era,” or in various places “what practical difference does it make?” So I think it’s one of two things. Either when the Talmud asks “what practical difference does it make?” it really wants to sharpen the passage further and ask what the practical implication is so that it becomes clearer what exactly we’re dealing with. Because as I said, the practical expressions, the practical implications, sharpen the discussion. It’s not for nothing that we constantly want to look for practical implications. Not because practical implications are the goal, but because practical implications help us sharpen what the difference is between the possibilities, or how to move toward the correct possibility. And as for “law for the messianic era,” there it may be—and each place has to be examined on its own—but in principle it may be that there are passages that the Talmud understands to have no Platonic value. Meaning, this is not a situation that can sharpen for me some halakhic truth, some meta-halakhic truth, some meta-halakhic theory. And then the Talmud asks: why are you dealing with this? What, you just want to know what to do? Knowing what to do isn’t relevant now—that’s law for the messianic era—it’s not something that can really happen now. So in a place where we don’t see theoretical value, yes, Platonic value, a Platonic dimension of the passage, maybe one can ask “law for the messianic era.” So why are you dealing with something that cannot be realized? But the Talmud is full of things that cannot be realized, and the fact is that it deals with them quite calmly. I talked about—I think, it seems to me I talked about—the question of practical implications, and there I brought the Ran in Sanhedrin on page 15, where the Talmud there asks, “How many judges were needed for the Sinai ox?” Yes, the Talmud there discusses “like the death sentence of the owner, so is the death sentence of the ox.” When an ox is judged to death, this is done by twenty-three judges, just as a person is judged to death—“like the death sentence of the owner, so is the death sentence of the ox.” And then in the course of the discussion the Talmud asks there, “How many judges for the Sinai ox?” Yes, “even the ox and the donkey shall not graze opposite that mountain.” It was forbidden for oxen to go up Mount Sinai, and an ox that went up Mount Sinai would incur death. So the Talmud asks how many judges would judge it to death. So the Ran asks there: what practical difference does it make? This Sinai ox—what was, was. It was there then, if it really was there at all. So why is this an interesting discussion in the Talmud? Why does the Talmud enter into this discussion? So the Ran gives several answers there, two answers I think, amusing ones. But one of them is that it has a practical implication for a Nazirite. What happens if a Nazirite takes a vow of Nazirite status on condition that the Sinai ox requires twenty-three judges? The question is whether he is a Nazirite or not. That’s a very important halakhic implication. That’s the source of the yeshiva joke about “a practical implication for betrothing a woman.” If someone betroths a woman on condition that the Sinai ox requires twenty-three judges, the question is whether the woman is betrothed or not. So therefore this passage has very important practical implications. Of course it’s clear to me that the Ran was joking when he wrote this. But what did he mean to say? He meant to say: I’m not interested in the matter of practical implications. I want to clarify a question here that has conceptual value. And I’m looking at it through Platonic glasses. What interests me is this idea—how an ox is judged, or by how many, what the composition of the court has to be when judging an ox. I don’t care right now what to do with the Sinai ox; it won’t happen anymore, it was and is gone. But it will help me clarify the principles or the ideas that underlie the laws—the laws of the religious court in Jewish law. How do you judge human beings, how do you judge oxen, all kinds of things like that. And if someone is looking for practical implications, then as they sometimes joke in yeshivot, when you raise a possibility—wait, is it like this or like this? What practical difference does it make?—they say, “A practical implication for betrothing a woman.” What does that mean? It’s obvious I don’t mean that the practical implication for betrothing a woman is what makes the discussion relevant. I mean: don’t confuse me with practical implications. There is no practical implication. I want to know what the truth is. Maybe this is similar to what I mentioned. Similar to that, in physics we know that in a considerable part of physics there are two ways to describe phenomena. There is a causal way and a teleological, purposive way. For example, the best-known example is Fermat’s principle. In geometrical optics, we discuss the path of a light ray—for instance, it passes from one medium to another, air to water or things like that—so it refracts. There is Snell’s law of refraction that determines at what angle it refracts and all kinds of things like that. So there are laws of geometrical optics. Geometrical optics means that I treat light as some kind of linear ray. And then basically the question is a question of angles, a geometrical question. Now light in its essence is not like that—light is a wave. But in geometrical optics there are certain laws of this optics, and you can describe them by saying that if the wave moves in air and strikes water, then its angle of refraction will be such-and-such. Meaning, it will go from moving at this angle to moving at that angle. That’s the ordinary description, what’s called Snell’s law. But there is an equivalent description, namely Fermat’s principle, which says that light always chooses the shortest path. And that is a description that can be proved; it is completely equivalent to all of geometrical optics. Meaning, whenever you want to know how light will move, calculate what the shortest path is that it can choose, and you’ll get the laws—
[Speaker D] —of that optics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are slices here—
[Speaker D] —in the toaster. No, just turn it off—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that. Okay. Wait, there’s noise here. So these two descriptions are equivalent descriptions. Or I think also in mechanics—maybe this is more familiar—in mechanics, when I look at some body moving over some surface, there are mountains and valleys and ravines and all sorts of things like that. A little ball, okay, moves there on that topographic outline. So I say: when it’s up high, it goes down below. Why does it go down? You can describe that in two ways. You can say there is a force—the force of gravity—acting on it, pulling it downward, and therefore it goes downward. And a parallel description says that it strives to minimize its potential energy. Meaning, to convert potential energy into kinetic energy. Okay, so that too is a description. The first description is causal—it moves because there is a force acting on it. “Because” means causal. And the second description is teleological—it moves in order to minimize potential energy. Meaning, when you use the words “in order to,” the description is teleological. Just as with light, I can say because it struck the water, that caused it to change the angle of refraction; that’s “because.” And I can say no, it wanted to reach its destination in the shortest possible time, and then that is basically a teleological description. It wants to reach its desired destination in the shortest possible time. That somewhat resembles Aristotelian descriptions, where the stone falls to the ground because it strives to return to its source—again, that too is a teleological description. The stone wants or strives, and therefore it does it. In the modern description, the stone falls because there is a force pulling it downward, so the force causes it to fall; that is a causal description. Aristotle used a teleological description, meaning the stone falls because it wants or strives to return to its source. By the way, a common mistake here is that Aristotle did not mean that the stone has choice and freely decided to return to its source. Obviously Aristotle too understood that this process is deterministic; he simply chose to describe the process in teleological rather than causal terms. People laugh at this as though the stone wants, so he’s anthropomorphizing, personifying the stone. He didn’t personify the stone; that’s not the point. He’s simply describing the laws of nature in teleological language rather than causal language. By the way, to this day we still tend to do that in biology, in physiology. You ask why some organ exists—because it performs such-and-such a function. That is not the cause of why it exists. The cause of why it exists may be evolutionary, but the teleological explanation—that the organ exists because it wants, or because we need it to perform such-and-such a function—that’s a teleological explanation. And no one means to say that this organ had a choice whether to exist or not, and it decided to exist. That’s not personification of the organ. Okay, but still, here too you have a description of the same deterministic process in teleological rather than causal language. Why am I bringing all this? Because someone could…
[Speaker B] Are the two explanations equally valid, according to the rabbi? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, they are completely equivalent descriptions.
[Speaker B] No, does the rabbi think they are equally true?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s my next sentence. In other words, now someone comes and says okay, but which of the two explanations is correct? Now usually if you ask a physicist, say, which of the two explanations is correct—Fermat’s principle or the causal description, the laws of geometrical optics—he’ll tell you that’s a meaningless question. What do you mean, which explanation? It’s the same explanation itself. Why? Because explanations can differ from one another if they have practical implications. But if the explanations are equivalent, then everything explained by this explanation is also explained by that one, and vice versa. So from the physicist’s perspective it’s basically the same explanation. There is no meaning to the question of which of the two explanations is correct. But it is not certain that philosophically he is right. Because philosophically there is definitely room to discuss which of the two explanations is correct. The fact that you found another fictive formulation that is equivalent to the first formulation does not mean you’re right. It only means you can describe it in that language too. But still, it is not certain that there is no meaning to the question of which of them is right or which of them is correct. That’s another question. You know what? In other contexts, everyone laughs so much at the primitive thinking of—sometimes they attribute it to religious thinking—that the sun revolves around the earth. Because we already know since Copernicus that this is not true; the earth revolves around the sun. And then supposedly there’s some dispute and modern science discovered that ancient thinking was mistaken. That’s utter nonsense. There is no right and wrong here; both descriptions are equally true. You can say that the earth revolves around the sun, and you can say that the sun revolves around the earth. It’s simply a change of coordinate system. I’m speaking on the kinematic level, meaning I’m not talking—on the dynamic level there can be forces that appear in an accelerating frame and things like that—but on the kinematic level, when I describe the motion itself, I can describe the motion as though the center of motion is in the sun, and then the earth revolves around it. And I can describe the motion so that the center of motion is the earth, and then the sun revolves around it. There is no correct or incorrect description here; it’s a question of where you place your coordinate system. And here, in this context, absurdly enough, precisely here philosophers and physicists and so on constantly assume that there is a right and wrong, even though these are two completely equivalent forms of description. And they always say: what, we already discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, not the sun around the earth. Well, discovered? Nonsense. It’s equally true.
[Speaker C] What’s the difference between them? If the sun is in the center, Newton’s law describes everything. And from the other one you get cycle and epicycle for everything you find… here too they wouldn’t have found more laws… Ptolemy… because it wasn’t where they thought…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. Epicycle and cycle have nothing to do with this. That’s the question whether you’re speaking in the language of circles or in the language of ellipses. I’m talking about the question of who the center of the circle is, not whether it’s a circle. So it has nothing to do with epicycles. It’s simply a change of coordinate system. Meaning, it’s not connected. Newton’s laws work both here and there. The question is where you place the center of your coordinate system. If the center of your coordinate system is the sun, no problem. If the center of your coordinate system is the earth, fine, very good—make a coordinate transformation and you can describe it this way and you can describe it that way. There’s no difference at all. You can say one is simpler; sometimes a Cartesian coordinate system is simpler, sometimes a polar coordinate system is simpler. So sometimes there are situations where a certain coordinate system is more convenient to work with. But that does not mean it is more correct in any sense. Fine, so obviously if you take the sun as the origin of the coordinates and treat the planets as revolving around the sun, it’s much easier to describe mathematically than if we put the center at the earth and look at the planets and the sun as though they revolve around it, because then the trajectories come out complicated. But that’s just transferring from one coordinate system to another that is more complicated or less convenient for use. There is no question here of right or wrong. When I’m riding on the train and it starts moving along the platform, who is moving? Is the train moving and the platform standing still, or is the platform moving backward and the train standing still? There is no correct answer. You can relate to it this way or that way; the whole question is where your coordinate system is. Usually when we speak about motion, we speak about motion relative to the earth. So relative to the earth, the train is moving and the platform is standing still, but only because we decided to place our coordinate origin in the earth. If we place our coordinate origin in the train, then the earth is moving and the train is standing still. There is no right or wrong here.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, as for teleological significance, is that even possible? What, are we capable of thinking without the principle of causality? As if things happen without a cause?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, not capable of thinking? There is such a description of natural phenomena. More than that—in contexts like quantum theory, for example—I once gave a seminar at Bar-Ilan after I left; I came from Yeruham, gave them a seminar there on teleological thinking. And I told them that usually physicists treat causal thinking as the correct thing, and the teleological description as an anecdote. Meaning, there’s an interesting anecdote that you can describe things by means of an equivalent system in teleological language. But notice that if there is any indication of anything, it’s precisely that teleology is correct and causality is not correct. Because there are areas in physics where there is only a teleological description; there is no causal description. In classical mechanics you have both; you have potential and force. In optics you have Fermat’s principle and geometrical optics. In various other fields there are descriptions through—those who know, it doesn’t matter—Lagrangians and Hamiltonians, all sorts of functionals; these are basically all teleological descriptions, Lagrangian mechanics. But, for example, in quantum theory there is no causal description. In quantum theory, the Schrödinger equation contains a potential. There is a description through potentials; there is no causal description. You can’t talk about—it doesn’t exist there—the concept of force, for example, which is the causal concept in mechanics. There’s an article by Feynman where he once tried to define the concept of force in quantum theory, and he did it in a very indirect and very unnatural way, and even then only for a very particular case. The concept of force doesn’t exist there. So if anything—meaning, in most fields in physics you have a teleological description and a causal description, and they are equivalent. But the advantage is with the teleological description. Meaning, there are fields where there is only a teleological description and no causal description. And I don’t think there are fields where there is a causal description and no teleological one; I think there aren’t any such cases, if I know correctly.
[Speaker B] But in our minds, in our intuition, are we capable of grasping something that has no cause?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, it’s hard to talk about it, but in quantum theory we work with it.
[Speaker B] The fact is that there we’re in a complete conceptual problem,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the fact is that somehow we do manage with this. No, no—claim—this is an interesting question in the interpretation of quantum theory: are there causes and they’re just hidden from us, or are there no causes? And today the tendency is to think—there are Bell experiments, Bell’s inequality and all kinds of things of that sort—the tendency today is to think that there are no causes, not that we just don’t know what the causes are. And there are practical differences that can be tested experimentally, the question whether there are no causes or whether there are and we just don’t know them. And they’ve done such experiments. Aspect’s experiment—there was a Nobel Prize for it, I don’t know, two or three years ago, he got it, I don’t remember, sometime in recent years, they got a Nobel Prize for that experiment, Aspect’s experiment. In any case, the claim is that these two descriptions are ostensibly equivalent. But now notice: why do people really think Aristotle was talking nonsense when he said that the stone strives to return to the ground? You can describe it in that language too—I don’t care—as long as you describe that its acceleration is g. Why should I care whether you call it a force pulling it, or that it strives with acceleration g to return to its quarry? It’s just a difference in words as long as there’s no practical experimental difference; then it’s the same thing. Why do people object to the Aristotelian formulation? Because people think that a stone doesn’t strive, doesn’t want, and those concepts just aren’t relevant to stones. But as I said, Aristotle also did not mean to say that the stone wants in some sense of a mental process taking place inside the stone. Okay? It’s just a description of the law.
[Speaker B] But Aristotle was also a little unbelievable because Aristotle didn’t live his life according to the principle of causality. When someone patted Aristotle on the back from behind, did he turn around? Did he say, let’s think where this leads? No—he turned around in the most intuitive way, just like when he was five years old.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say Aristotle didn’t accept the principle of causality. I said he described phenomena in a teleological way.
[Speaker B] Right, so they’d ask him: why does the stone strive? Why does the stone strive to get there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does the stone strive? That’s its nature.
[Speaker B] Who pushed it to strive?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nobody pushed it to strive. Who pushed it to respond to the force pulling it? It’s its nature that if a force acts on it, it responds to it. The laws of nature you assume in any case—you assume them in the causal description too. You always start from some point of departure.
[Speaker B] You can ask why there is really a force—that’s a legitimate question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can ask the same question about Aristotle. Both forms of description will get stuck at some point where you’ll say: because that’s it, those are the laws of nature, because that’s its nature, or however you want to formulate it. The point is—I think what I just want to say is that the reason people are nevertheless troubled by these forms of description, in my opinion, is God in the background. Meaning, in the end Aristotle didn’t mean that the stone strives, but if there’s a teleological description here, that strongly hints at it—some sort of form in which someone planned things so that this would be its purpose. There was someone here responsible for this whole business working in a purposive way. When a certain system works in a purposive way, that’s a fingerprint of some factor that created it and caused it to aim at those purposes. And I think that’s what many people object to. And therefore it seems to me—again, maybe this is a kind of psychologizing that one shouldn’t do in an intellectual discussion—but it seems to me this is one reason people recoil a bit from Aristotelian descriptions. Because if you look at it soberly, nobody really thinks the stone wants or the stone strives, and Aristotle didn’t think so either, and anyone who thinks Aristotle thought so is mistaken. That isn’t the point. The criticism of Aristotle is not the question whether stones want or strive; he also doesn’t think they want and strive. But the law causes the stone to want and strive. Now, the one who really wants and strives here is the one who legislated this law, the one who created this law. And the question—I think, at least—is that the objection to this formulation comes from my looking at the system and not being willing to accept that there was someone who created it in such a way or planned it so that it would aim at these purposes and goals. And if that’s so, then you see that although there’s no practical difference on the scientific plane—that is, both explanations can both be true because they explain exactly the same set of phenomena, they are completely equivalent to one another on the scientific level—still, on the philosophical level, an argument can take place over which of them is correct. And that can even be important. Because if there is a teleological explanation that is correct, then someone can come and say that there is also an agent here who created this system for those purposes, and someone else will say no, I don’t believe in the existence of such an agent, and therefore he won’t accept the teleological explanation except as an anecdote, but not as a correct explanation. So I’m showing you that sometimes theories with no practical difference—in the scientific case, theories with no empirically different implications—there is still room to discuss which one is true and why it matters which one is true, and so on. So the existence of a practical difference is not an absolute condition for the significance of the discussion. The discussion is Platonic at root. The practical differences are only the practical expressions of the Platonic idea, and if it has no practical expressions, then it doesn’t—but I want to discuss the Platonic world as such, not its practical expressions.
[Speaker B] When Aristotle talks about a stone striving, it’s clear that you’re right that he didn’t think the stone thinks or wants in the way we understand wanting. But then what does it mean? If it doesn’t want and it’s just inanimate, then what does it mean that it wants?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: the law that governs the motion of the stone is basically a simulation—
[Speaker B] —of as if it wants.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. I’m saying again: the law that governs the motion of the stone wants it to return to its quarry. And that law is basically an entity—God. And He basically wants the stone to return to its quarry, or that law is an expression of God’s will. It doesn’t matter how you formulate it.
[Speaker B] But that’s why I’m saying: will means that now you want—you could have wanted otherwise.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, being able to want otherwise is already free will. But right now I’m talking even before the question of freedom of the will—first of all the question whether there is will here. And I’m saying yes, there is will even at this very moment. God currently wants the stone to fall to the ground; that’s why it falls.
[Speaker B] But immediately they ask why He wants. Immediately we ask intuitively.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does He want? I don’t know.
[Speaker B] No, because again, without causality, how can you describe reality without causality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? I’m speaking all the time on these planes of purposes. There’s no problem at all speaking about them. The question whether there is in parallel also a causal description or something else—that can be discussed. In a person’s free choice too, in my opinion, there is no cause in the background, and there too people get tangled up with the question, so what is the cause after all—but that’s an unnecessary entanglement, it’s a mistake. There is no cause for a person’s decision; there is a purpose, not a cause.
[Speaker B] So then it’s random—we talked about this—not random. So if it’s not random and it’s not that there’s nothing behind it, then why did you choose A and not B? That’s already another discussion, of course.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But also about this stone. Toward, not because of. But why toward there?
[Speaker B] Why toward A and not toward B?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean why? Why are you expecting a causal answer? But there is no causal answer; there is a teleological answer.
[Speaker B] So there is randomness.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not random. What other option is left? Not cause and not purpose—that’s randomness. Besides randomness there are two other mechanisms: causal and teleological. That is exactly the claim. Exactly what leads to all these paradoxes of free choice, the apparent paradoxes of free choice, is ignoring the fact that when you depart from causality, you are not necessarily in randomness. You can also be in teleology. These are three mechanisms.
[Speaker B] But on what basis… teleology is clear, but teleology for what? That’s the question—why did you decide…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why in a causal sense? Then that’s conceptual confusion. There is no “why” in the causal sense when I’m speaking to you in a teleological language. That’s exactly the point. You’re looking for causes and not finding them because there are no causes; there are purposes. That is exactly the mistake there. Okay, but we really have strayed.
[Speaker B] I—
[Speaker E] think the problem is what you mean by will—what is the meaning of that word, that you use the word will, but what does it mean… another word could be the nature of the thing—is that the will, the nature, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why, really, he brought in earlier I think the freedom of the will, because will without freedom—it’s not clear how far you can even call it will. What’s the difference between it and just some ordinary deterministic thing? After all it’s deterministic anyway, because you have no possibility of wanting otherwise. So it’s true that in certain senses part of the definition of will is freedom. But for example in our human language we often speak about something we want, even though it’s not the result of choosing to want it. There are people who think human beings have no choice at all—they are determinists—and they still speak about the question of what a person wants. And from their perspective this is meaningful language, and it’s not the same thing as saying what caused him, even though according to their view there is conceptual equivalence between the two. But it’s not the same thing; it’s language with a different meaning. So that’s why I said I don’t want to get into the question of freedom of the will, but you’re right that will without freedom—it is highly doubtful how far one can really speak of it in a clear sense, that it is will as distinct from something else, from a cause. Okay, but we really strayed too far here. What I only wanted to show here is that there are discussions with no practical differences, even in the scientific world. Discussions that have no practical differences, and still there is reason to conduct them. There may be a right and a wrong here, and it may even matter which of the two options is right and which is wrong, despite having no practical implication. Just think about the question whether God created the world or whether it was created on its own. There is no practical difference in that on the physical level—that is, it’s not something you can project into a laboratory experiment. If it were possible, that would either gladden or upset, I don’t know, a great many people. But there isn’t—there is no way to test it by experiment. So if there’s no way to test it by experiment, is there no point in discussing it? Of course there’s a point in discussing it. There are people for whom it matters very much whether God created the world or whether this world, I don’t know, came into being by itself, was created on its own, or things like that—speaking of things without a cause. So therefore, even questions for which we find no scientific or halakhic practical difference, that does not mean they are meaningless. And this sharpens even more what I said earlier: even when we do bring a practical difference, it’s not really that our goal is to know what comes out with the practical difference, but rather the practical difference helps us sharpen the conceptual, theoretical, Platonic question. But that is really our main goal. Now, I want to move briefly to additional meanings of the metaphysics or the Platonic dimension behind Jewish law. So: there is in Maimonides, in the ninth root—yes, in the roots where he describes the rules for how commandments are counted—in the ninth root, the first part of the root is devoted to the fact that we do not count commandments that the Torah repeats several times. For example, the Torah repeats twelve times the obligation to observe the Sabbath; we count only one positive commandment to observe the Sabbath. Why? Because the Torah repeats itself, but it’s not twelve different commandments; it’s the same commandment, and there is no point counting twelve commandments here. In the second part of the ninth root, Maimonides says something that seems, on the face of it, the opposite. He talks about a general prohibition. He says, for example, “Do not eat over the blood,” and from that prohibition of “Do not eat over the blood” all sorts of things are learned: that it is forbidden to eat before prayer, that one must not eat on a day when one decrees the death penalty on a person—the judges may not eat—never mind, all kinds of things like that; not to eat from the meat before the blood has been dashed, while the blood is still in the basin, and so on. So all sorts of prohibitions are learned from “Do not eat over the blood.” Maimonides says, however, we count only one prohibition here. Why? Because there is only one verse: “Do not eat over the blood.” We learn all these things from it and there is no connection between them—they are different things—but since there is only one verse, we count only one prohibition. So Rabbi Yerucham Perla asks—this is in his work on Saadia Gaon’s Sefer HaMitzvot, he has essays on the various roots—so in the essay on the ninth root he asks: there seems to be a contradiction between the two parts of Maimonides’ root. Because in the first part of the root Maimonides says that in counting the commandments, we count according to content and not according to commands. True, I have twelve commands with the same content; I count one commandment because there is only one content. Why should I care that there are twelve commands? So we go by contents and not by commands. In the second part of the root he says the opposite. I have five different contents that come out of one verse, “Do not eat over the blood,” and we count one commandment. Why? Because what determines it is the commands and not the contents. So he says: decide—what determines it, the contents or the commands? And the answer is of course—I spoke about this in the series on lomdus-oriented thinking in the last lesson of the week—the answer is of course that the fallacy of lomdus thinking is always the dichotomous fallacy. You need to decide that it’s either the verses or the commands or the contents. But the truth is that what you may need is contents and commands. Meaning, in order for a commandment to be counted, it must have both an independent or distinct content and its own command. And if one of those two things is missing, then it will not be counted. And if that is our lomdus theory, then that means the first part of Maimonides’ root is speaking about a case where contents are lacking and therefore it is not counted—twelve commands that have the same content are counted as one commandment because the content is lacking; there are commands, but there is no separate content for each of the commands. And the second part of the root is talking about there being contents but lacking a command, because there is only one command with the five or six contents, and therefore they are not counted, and therefore there is no contradiction between the two parts of the root. Rather, in order for a commandment to be counted, it needs a separate content and it needs its own independent command.
[Speaker E] Can you say that it’s the same content, it just appears in different forms?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what Maimonides claims, and Nachmanides in his glosses challenges him and says that can’t be, because there are no superfluous verses—the verses always come to teach something. So this is a major dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides in the glosses on the ninth root. Maimonides claims that it is intended for reinforcement; reinforcement is also a novelty—meaning, to show that this is very strong or very severe or something like that. Okay, in any case, so why do we really need those two things in every Torah-level commandment? We need those two things because in every Torah-level commandment there are two components or two aspects. One aspect—say I eat pork. So what is the problem with eating pork? There are two problems, or two problematic aspects. One problem is that I am defying the command. Yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded not to eat pork, and I ate pork, so I rebelled against the command. The second problem is that eating pork itself apparently brings about some problematic consequences; that’s why the Holy One, blessed be He, forbade it. So the assumption is that apparently if someone eats pork, that has some problematic consequences. So if I eat pork, then first there is the essential problem—I am creating some problematic state here—and second there is the matter of obedience: I did not obey the command. And the same thing with fulfilling a commandment when I… this is the double face of every commandment and every transgression.
[Speaker E] So by the way, in Reggio we divide between statutes and ordinances. With statutes we say that we do it because of the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, and with ordinances we say that we do it because of the reason.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I don’t agree. Maimonides himself writes explicitly not like that. Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings writes that with regard to a Noahide, a resident alien—he says that if one who keeps his seven commandments does so because of rational judgment and not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them to Moses at Sinai, then he is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but among their wise men. Meaning, he does a good deed, but it does not have religious significance. He is not pious; it has no religious significance. Why? Because for an act to have religious significance, it has to be done out of religious motivation—that is, because of the command. Likewise in the chapter on the sciatic nerve, in the commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin, in the chapter on the sciatic nerve, in the last mishnah of that chapter—there too there is a dispute whether the sciatic nerve applies in a non-kosher animal or a kosher one, and there too there is a famous Maimonides in the commentary on the Mishnah who says similar things. Not the same thing, but similar things. So there is a difference between the question whether I see logic behind the commandment and the question what my motivation should be when I fulfill the commandment. It’s not the same thing. Maybe what misleads people in this matter is Maimonides in the Eight Chapters. In chapter 6 of the Eight Chapters, Maimonides asks there—the philosophers say, he compares there between two models of people who do good deeds. One model is the one who subdues his inclination, who rules his inclination, and the second model is the upright person. The upright person is one whose nature causes him to do good; he does it because that is his nature. And the one who rules his inclination is one whose nature does not draw him to do good, but he overcomes it. What Rav Kook calls the upright person and the conqueror—whether he conquers his inclination or has some inner uprightness that he follows. So Maimonides claims that this is an apparent contradiction between the words of the Sages, because the Sages say: I would like to, but what can I do—my Father in Heaven has decreed it upon me; so there the value is specifically the conqueror. And the philosophers claim that the value is the upright person. This is just an interesting side note: from Maimonides’ perspective, when there is a contradiction between the words of the philosophers and the words of the Sages, that is a difficulty. Meaning, there is a problem here; it needs to be resolved. He doesn’t say, okay, so the philosophers were wrong because the Sages taught us that this is incorrect, and everything is fine. What’s difficult? Why do we need to look for excuses? Meaning, from Maimonides’ perspective this is something that requires explanation. He apparently took both sides of the equation seriously. In any case, what does he answer there? He says that with rational commandments, indeed the upright person is preferable, and with heard commandments the conqueror is preferable. And indeed all the examples the Sages bring—do not say, I don’t want to wear shaatnez, I don’t want to and I don’t want to, but what can I do, my Father in Heaven decreed it upon me—so that is shaatnez and eating pork; all the commandments brought there are heard commandments. And with heard commandments, indeed, greater is the one who does it as a conqueror and not as an upright person. But with rational commandments, greater is the one who does it as an upright person. Now that seemingly says what Daniel said earlier, because it seemingly says that with rational, moral commandments, there it is actually preferable to act out of the natural inclination and not because of the command, and not to subordinate the inclination to the command, to impose the command over the natural inclination. But if so, that contradicts what Maimonides writes in the Laws of Kings. I think that is not the correct interpretation of what Maimonides says there. What he is asking there in the Eight Chapters is a different question. What he asks there is whether there is value in being upright. Meaning, whether a person who has a natural tendency to do good—that is an advantage or a disadvantage. But that does not mean that if I have a natural inclination to do good, then I should do good because of the inclination. These are two different things. There is value in my soul being upright, in my having a tendency to do good, but in the end, if you ask me what the motivation is—why do I do good—I need to do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, or at least also because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. Otherwise it has no religious value. It has moral, human value, I don’t know what, but no religious value. Therefore there is no contradiction between what Maimonides writes in the Eight Chapters and what he writes in the Laws of Kings and in the commentary on the Mishnah about the sciatic nerve. So for our purposes, the claim in the end is that… in every Torah-level commandment, no matter whether it is heard or rational and so on, in every Torah-level commandment there are these two aspects: there is the aspect of the content, of the essence, of what it comes to achieve or prevent, and there is the aspect of the command. And basically what this expression, what this thing means, is—I think this is exactly what leads to what Maimonides writes in the ninth root. To what he writes in the ninth root: that every Torah-level commandment needs to have a command, and of course also content in itself. And basically what this says is that there is something in the commandment beyond the mere obligation to obey the command. There is something in the commandment that is also the insight or the essence standing behind the command. And that too, in a certain sense at least, is an expression of the Platonic character of these things. Because I really need to see the collection of God’s commands as expressions of certain insights standing behind them, or purposes or aims, values—I don’t know what to call them—that stand behind them. These are not just formal commands that one must obey or disobey and that’s it. Behind them there is an entire Platonic world. And when you discuss the question of what Jewish law says, you have to discuss not only the interpretive question of what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended when you interpret the wording of the verse, but you also have to try to understand what this commandment comes to achieve, even though there is always the problem that we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse. Meaning, we are not supposed to resort to reasons in our halakhic interpretation, but in practice that is not true. It’s true that halakhic decisors rule that we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse, but that rule is far more limited than people usually think. There is no interpretation that in one way or another does not really resort to rationales. In Brisk there is this illusion that they ask only what and not why. Right? This is the well-known yeshiva ethos, that in Brisk they ask only the what and not the why. But the fact is, there is no such thing—you cannot ask what without asking why. If you do not understand the why, how will you know what the what is? It seems to you: “If one man’s ox gores another man’s ox.” Fine. So if the Torah says that if my ox gores your ox I have to pay, what happens if my dog bites your chicken? Then I also have to pay. How do I know? Because what difference does it make whether it’s an ox or a chicken or a dog—sorry—meaning, if my property damaged your property, I’m obligated to pay. And it says, “If one man’s ox gores another man’s ox.” So we don’t get into reasons; what is written is written, we ask only what, not why. But what does “what is written” mean? Is what is written—“if one man’s ox gores another man’s ox”—an example? Or is it speaking only about a goring ox? How would I know that if I refuse to resort to the question of why? And the question of why basically says: if you have property, then you are responsible for what your property does, and you must pay if your property causes damage. That’s what stands behind the idea of “if one man’s ox gores another man’s ox.”
[Speaker E] And if so, then also a biting dog. But that’s not a good example, because if I’m not mistaken, there specifically they learn from ox, ox from Sabbath as a verbal analogy. They learn ox, ox from Sabbath, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.
[Speaker E] There they teach—how do we know it’s not only an ox? They learn ox, ox from Sabbath. So that’s actually not a good example, because there they need a decree of the verse and not reasoning about why.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ostensibly that’s true, but I don’t think it really is. Because if they didn’t have that reasoning, they wouldn’t derive even the scriptural analogy. It’s like learning the disqualification of women as witnesses from “then the two men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord”—men and not women. That too is learned from a verse, but you understand that everywhere the verse says “men,” they say it means both men and women. And here they specifically say: no, men and not women. Why? Because the reasoning says men and not women—the reasoning of the Sages said men and not women. Very often what is presented as something learned from a verse is really based on reasoning. Without the reasoning, you would not derive it from the verse either. But you are right that the Talmud does indeed bring a derivation for this expansion. But this happens every day—it’s not… also in shaatnez you mix… you are forbidden to mix species. Now you discuss the question: which species are forbidden, which are permitted, what counts as a species? To answer that, you have to get into the question of what the Torah’s command is understood to mean. And this is a commandment from the heard category, not the rational category, and nevertheless we mix our reasoning into its interpretation. And so on—there are hundreds of examples; no need to get stuck arguing over one example or another. So what this means, basically, is that when we look at Jewish law through these Platonic lenses, then we really understand that behind the normative game—what is permitted and what is forbidden, and making analogies from here to there, and seeing what Jewish law is really telling us is permitted and forbidden and obligatory—behind that stand ideas, ideals. It comes to achieve something. We do not always understand it; usually we certainly do not understand it fully, but we do have some intuitions about what it might be. And then the tension always arises between the rule that we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse. We do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse—this is the dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda; we rule as Jewish law that we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse. “We do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse” means we do not use the reason for the commandment to interpret it on the halakhic level. Torah commentators deal with the reasons for the commandments. One can engage, on the interpretive level, in the reasons for the commandments, but what one cannot do is draw halakhic conclusions from that. We do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse. Do whatever interpretation you want on the Torah, but halakhic conclusions in light of the reasons—that is forbidden to produce. And what can we do when we are constantly doing exactly that. Maybe an example where surely there is no doubt, where it clearly comes out that way, is the words of the Rif at the beginning of Bava Kamma. The Talmud learns that tooth and foot in the public domain are exempt. So the Rif explains, and in a somewhat different wording so do Maimonides and the Rosh, that since a person has the right to walk with his animal in the public domain, therefore if the animal causes damage, that is the problem of the injured party; the injured party should have been careful. He should know that people walk with their animals in the public domain, and therefore tooth and foot are exempt. I think the Maharsha asks—don’t remember who asks there on the Rif, maybe one of the medieval authorities or the Maharsha, I no longer remember—someone asks there on the Rif: what is this? The reason for the verse? How are you deriving Jewish law from the reason for the verse? The Torah said that tooth and foot are exempt in the public domain. Why are you starting to explain that it’s because he has the right to walk there? And more than that, from this explanation they derive a halakhic conclusion. This is a dispute with Tosafot. What happens if the animal is walking in the public domain and there is a board lying in the public domain, and its other end is in private property. Now the animal walks, steps on the board, and the other end of the board destroys some vessel in the courtyard. So the question is whether this is considered damage in the public domain, where the animal is exempt, or damage in the injured party’s courtyard, where the animal is liable. And that will depend on the reasons, and the Rif derives a conclusion: since the animal has the right to walk in the public domain, therefore it is in fact exempt even in such a case, even though the damage was in the injured party’s courtyard. So we see that the Rif really does derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse. Meaning, the Rif not only says that tooth and foot are exempt in the public domain; he asks himself what the idea behind it is, why it is really exempt in the public domain, and derives a halakhic conclusion from that explanation. How can that be? Didn’t we say we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse? So there are many qualifications to this rule of not deriving Jewish law from the reason for the verse, most of which people are not aware of, but there are many qualifications. For example, something learned from a derashah—there you do derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse. In my opinion there is no logic in not deriving Jewish law from the reason for the verse in something learned from a derashah, because the expounder himself derived Jewish law from the reason for the verse, so obviously I interpret the words of the expounder in light of the reason for the verse. And when I speak about interpretation that touches the definition of the law and not the reason for the law, then in the yeshivot they always say: no, no, that’s the definition, not the reason, so therefore there’s no problem; that isn’t called deriving Jewish law from the reason for the verse. What is the difference between a definition and a reason? To this day nobody knows. Meaning, the question is always how deeply you enter into teleological questions, but there is no sharp line of what is called a definition and what is called a reason. In Rabbi Shilat’s book on Rabbi Gedaliah—From the Teaching of Rabbi Gedaliah, on Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel—there he brings a distinction between a definition and a reason, but he chose an easy life for himself. Meaning, say with sitting in the sukkah, there is the definition of the commandment of dwelling in the sukkah: “You shall dwell as you live.” What does that mean? You have to sit in the sukkah as you sit in your house. Therefore one who is distressed is exempt from the sukkah, because in his house too he would not remain if he were distressed, and so on. Meaning, there is such a rule of “you shall dwell as you live”; that is how one is to dwell in the sukkah. He says: this is the definition of the commandment, not the reason for the commandment. I am not entering the question of the reason for the commandment in order to explain why one who is distressed is exempt from the sukkah; rather, the definition of what is imposed on me in dwelling in the sukkah is to sit as I sit in my house. Naturally I derive from that the conclusion that one who is distressed is exempt from the sukkah. But that is only the definition of the commandment. The reason for the commandment is “so that your generations may know that I caused the children of Israel to dwell in sukkot.” That is when you ask why you do it. And here I am only defining what I do. Yes, so here indeed there is a relatively sharp distinction between the what and the why. But in many other places, like in the Rif I brought earlier, for example, the distinction is not sharp to the point of nonexistence. And it is not clear at all when you determine that this thing is a definition and when you determine that this thing is a reason. More than that—even when you say “you shall dwell as you live,” “in sukkot you shall dwell seven days,” so you say dwell—what does dwell mean? As you live, as one sits in a home. How did you reach the conclusion that this is the meaning of dwell? I assume it is because you are in fact trying to understand what this commandment comes to achieve, and therefore behind the definition there also sits some analysis of the reason. You cannot answer the question of what without resorting, even indirectly, to the question of why. And therefore behind the formal halakhic world on which we often focus, there sit worlds of ideas, Platonic worlds, and the engagement with Jewish law itself cannot ignore the Platonic ideals that stand behind it. Whoever thinks it is possible to ignore them—well, that is the problem, to ask only the what without the why.
[Speaker D] But that turns over everything we’ve been talking about until now. Why? Because they say not to look for the reason for the commandment, but what is the reason? It’s those same ideas we’ve already been talking about for three weeks, that it’s really meant to teach us the principle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And here we—
[Speaker D] say no, don’t look for the reason for the commandment, so how will I know the idea behind it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I just made the point I made.
[Speaker D] No, I’m saying it really changes the whole discussion—it’s like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That was the difficulty, and that’s why afterward I also said why I think it isn’t difficult. The difficulty was: how can that be? After all, we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse—so what do I have to do with the Platonic ideas standing behind the commandments? And the answer is that the reason on which I am forbidden to rely in halakhic interpretation is only things that are really, say, very extreme interpretations that descend to the deepest roots of the reason. But there is definition, and there are reasons of derashot, and reasons of many other things to which I do resort. And therefore “we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse” is in the end a very limited matter.
[Speaker D] Okay, we explained that the principle is to go with the idea and not with the—these are only examples so that we understand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “We do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse” qualifies that approach and says: no, know that there is a limit to engaging in the Platonic dimensions. There is also something on the surface, in Jewish law as it is, without entering the patterns behind it or the insights behind it, and one must not disconnect entirely from that—from the syntactic dimension, let’s call it that.
[Speaker D] Until now I understood that the idea of not seeking the reason for the commandments isn’t meant for people who understand; it’s meant for the masses. Because the moment you seek a reason, it gives you an interpretation, and then every day you’ll find, ah, this isn’t it, the reason isn’t here, so it’s permitted for me—meaning a person will find leniencies for himself. If he understands the idea, he thinks he understands the reason, then he already says okay, that reason no longer exists, he’ll judge for himself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But—
[Speaker D] it’s not really meant to say not to seek the reason.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here there is a double mistake. One mistake is simply a factual mistake. In the Talmud itself, “we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse” speaks about tannaim, not about ordinary people. It is a dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda: when we as tannaim come to interpret the verses, are we allowed to resort to the reason or not? We are forbidden, Rabbi Yehuda claims. Second, I showed in the article—in my article on the fifth root—that there I showed that I do not think that “we do not derive Jewish law from the reason for the verse” is because of the concern that you will make a mistake or find leniencies for yourself. It is for another reason, but that is for another lesson.
[Speaker D] Another lesson, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s it, until here. Is there another comment or question?
[Speaker B] Rabbi, may I ask something on another topic? Yes. Not related. The impression is that soon we, the State of Israel, will be dealing in the High Court—the State of Israel—the public discourse is going to focus on the issue of equality in bearing the burden, drafting Haredim and so on, which everyone understands is really a fateful issue, almost existential. How can we continue with such a reserve-duty burden when there is such a gap? And there is a principled dispute here—if you want to call it theological, religious, moral, intellectual, philosophical—on the issue that is really on the table: what should be done in this situation. And I at least don’t hear the voice of the rabbis of Religious Zionism, or whatever we should call them—I don’t know how to define them. Whenever I speak one-on-one—thunder and lightning, clear and unequivocal statements—but a general voice that would sound this at the level of a public polemic, that would make it possible, that would give tools to the secular establishment that in the end has to be a partner in making the decision—it doesn’t have one. It is left alone in the struggle against the Haredi position, while Religious Zionism, at a moment of test like this, does not make its voice heard—not on the personal level, yes, but not on the public level, at a moment of test that is certainly fateful on one level or another. How can this be explained? How can it be that the Rabbi can open any site and any newspaper and there will be some editorial by Rabbi Piron maybe or someone, but a general organized effort to present a real religious alternative that says it is a commandment to enlist, that not enlisting right now is a religious transgression—there is no such voice. And when they come to the Knesset, Liberman may perhaps state that position, which of course will be a voice crying in the wilderness, but a religious voice that presents it as a real, binding alternative—not just that it is permitted but that it is perhaps even a commandment—there is no such voice. And no one is aware of it, and at this moment of test we are not contributing our share—as if whoever thinks this way is not contributing his share on the practical level. Later they’ll write articles. Look, I don’t know what—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to answer you on behalf of others; you need to ask them. But in any case, two comments. One comment is that the dispute is not a moral and value-based dispute and so on; it is a dispute between values and fear. Meaning, Haredi society does not enlist not because of values; it does not enlist because of fear. Therefore I don’t think it is right to present this as a value-based dispute. I am not talking about leaving a certain minority who study—I think this is accepted by almost all the religious public certainly, but perhaps also by the broader public—but about the blanket exemption for the Haredi world. That is simply a result of fear; it is not a result of values and a different moral outlook. That is point one. And point two is that on the contrary, in recent days there are such voices beginning to arise here and there, say on the margins of the camp, and sometimes—only yesterday I saw some statement by Rabbi Shneuwald that annoyed me—that he came out against this issue and said not to create factionalism at a time like this because unity is so important and all this bullshit. And part of it, I think, is the result of the exaggerated importance attributed to unity—a unity that of course only has one side. And the other side is a kind of inferiority complex. Meaning, the rabbis of Religious Zionism do not allow themselves to come out against the Haredi rabbis because they have some sort of inferiority complex; this has always been the case. And the third thing is that part of—or those considered the leading segment of the rabbis of Religious Zionism—are Haredi rabbis; they are national Haredim, doesn’t matter, Haredim. So they think like the Haredim, so why would they come out against them? What is needed here is that the public kick these people aside, and not that the public expect its Haredi leadership to speak and act in a non-Haredi way. That just isn’t going to happen. You need to decide who the leadership is that is acceptable to you, and not leave the Haredim in place and expect them to act in a non-Haredi way. So that’s what I have to say about the matter.
[Speaker B] Exactly right.
[Speaker D] No, we should offer blessings on the new venue we have. What venue? I don’t know, it’s not the usual view we’ve seen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah no, it’s just that my son is sleeping in the room, so I’m here in the living room.
[Speaker D] Ah, okay, then I was speaking in honor of the venue.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine, Sabbath—
[Speaker D] Shalom, goodbye.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much.
[Speaker D] Thank you—
[Speaker B] very much.