Platonism – Lecture 26

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so that’s why I’m saying the difference is in the question of how we label this thing. You call it emotion; I call it… an instinct that comes out of the way I’m built, so that’s not something I would take into account. If you’re telling me that this is a kind of perception that doesn’t pass through philosophical conceptualization, then that I do agree with. What you call it, why should I care? Choose whatever name you want. That’s the important point here. So in the end, the claim is that there is, there is, as Popper said, and Straud and everyone point to the great danger in ideologies. Ideology is always Platonic thinking. Platonic thinking means I have some model, some kind of utopia, and I strive toward it. And I’ll run over the whole world, I’ll impose my utopian template on it, and everything that doesn’t fit will be trampled. Yes, I, I’ll destroy it. But, and here, here there’s some kind of missing point, it seems to me, in this way of thinking, because I don’t think this argument is supposed to make us give up utopias. This argument is supposed to make us cautious in implementing utopias. Meaning, I have utopias, but there’s also a world. You have to pay attention to what’s around us here, what, what we’re doing with it. Are we acting this way, acting another way, where to compromise, where to be flexible, while in the end, in the end, I still want to reach some state that in my eyes is the right state. I’m not giving up Platonism in this softer sense. I am giving up rigid Platonism. Platonism that sees no world, only utopia, and imposes the utopia on the world. In a great many ideological societies it’s like that, yes? From the communists to Har Hamor. Meaning, this is, it’s the same outlook, the same attitude. Meaning, you have some templates, and you impose those templates on reality. If something doesn’t fit, you find excuses, but in the end, in the end, you have to impose them on reality. But reality is more complex, and it doesn’t always fit your templates. And you need to pay attention, sometimes to correct the templates, sometimes to consider how to implement the templates, when to implement them, whether to implement them, to what extent to implement them. You have to live the world too; it’s not enough to go around with templates and live in the Platonic world of ideas. And in that sense I think that non-Platonism, or the alternative proposed by the critics of Platonism, is no less dangerous. As some, some writers have said about this—I bring some of them in Two Wagons—someone who recoils from Platonism, in my language, someone who recoils from Platonism and therefore doesn’t want ideologies because ideologies are dangerous—after all, Rabin was murdered because of ideology—will arrive at a world without ideology, where people murder without any connection to one goal or another. Meaning, I don’t think it’s right to give up ideology; you need to give up ideologies. That is, the question is how much you let ideology lead you—not as, as, not as some distant vision, but as something that dictates every step you take. That’s very dangerous. But not the very existence of ideology. In the murder of Rabin, the claim came up many times: there, you see where religious faith can lead—to the murder of a prime minister. So I said to several people who spoke to me about it: so what are you suggesting? That I stop believing in God? Because someone murdered Rabin? I believe in Him—that’s the fact. What do you want me to do with that? So yes, religious faith can lead people to fanaticism, but that doesn’t mean it invalidates religious faith. It means that someone who believes in religious faith—that’s a fact, that’s what I believe in—has to pay attention to how he implements it.

[Speaker E] How far do the red lines go? Based on what do we decide? We keep discussing and discussing and discussing, but we’ve stayed in the same place—we still don’t know where the red line is. What’s permitted, what’s forbidden. Was Pinchas, who killed there I don’t know how many millions—is that okay, not okay? What? Fine, yes, we know the dilemma, but I don’t see

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] how you get to a decision.

[Speaker E] At what point do I stop being ideological and light a cigarette on the way to the hospital on the Sabbath if I had to drive? So should I light a cigarette or not? What? Where do all these things stand?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll answer you. Look, questions of this kind are exactly what lead to rigid Platonism. Because then people say, look, you’re just floundering around—you have a vision, but you’re not carrying it out. You’re “lite.” Know the term “lite”? That’s basically the accusation against the lites. The accusation against the lites comes from ideological groups like the Hardalim, who say that anyone who doesn’t implement the ideology in every single step is lite. But that’s not true. Sometimes he is lite, but sometimes he isn’t. Sometimes he understands that ideology has its proper place, but reality is more complex. Now how do you know when and to what extent to implement it? You’re looking for rigid rules that will define that too, but you understand that if there are rigid rules that define that too, then I’ve gone right back to being a rigid Platonist. The whole point is that I listen to the environment, and I have some common sense that tells me how and when it is proper to act, and I’m not looking for rigid rules in order to know where and how much to implement. That’s exactly the point. I don’t believe in rigid rules, and rigid rules are basically rigid Platonic ideology. That’s the dangerous thing, not the very existence of rules. I think I’ve mentioned more than once the character of the Talmud, which is very wary of rules. It is wary of rules in the world of legal thought. In that context this is a dispute between positivism and casuistry. Right, meaning, casuistry is the case-based approach. I have cases, and I understand what happens in each case, and I make analogies to another case—that’s British common law. And positivism is German law, the Bundeslaw. So that’s an outlook that says there are rules, and the cases that come before me are private cases; I perform deduction from the rules. You see Nazism here, yes? You see this Platonic rigidity here that says: I have an ideology and I will apply it to the cases that come before me; all I need to do is deduction. A computer can basically issue halakhic rulings; you don’t need a human being. I have rules, and I apply them to the cases that come before me. But that kind of attitude is one that doesn’t really lead to truth. It’s an illusion. It’s fear of the softer kind of thinking—of analogies, of cases, of listening to reality rather than applying rigid rules to it. There’s fear of that because it can lead to all sorts of things, but walking by rules meanwhile seems to me to lead to worse things. And therefore even now, yes, you

[Speaker F] see that in the interaction between the rigid people and the softer people, or the people who want to compromise, in that interaction the rigid one always wins, and the compromiser always comes out looking contemptible, because he supposedly gave up his principles. And this keeps repeating the whole way through.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A big mistake, a big mistake. Always—almost always—the flexible one wins. Except that it’s in the long term. In the short term, the rigid one will define the flexible one as lite, and as though he has the upper hand—he’s ideological, he’s attached to his values, and so on. In the long term, the flexible one wins. In the end, just think of World War II, I

[Speaker F] need to live long enough to know that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We look at it from a historical perspective. I can’t always win in my own short term, and sometimes maybe not even in my lifetime. But in the end, flexibility wins. After all, in World War II it took six years, but in the end the Nazis lost. And in the struggle between democracy and non-democracy, true, in the short term—and we know some examples—in the short term democracies suffer because they tolerate even phenomena that threaten them, but in the end democracy goes farther and wins. And maybe I’ll bring another interesting example. Once I had a meeting with a very interesting man named Doron Avital. He was commander of Sayeret Matkal. We have a mutual friend; we met at his house for a discussion about the book. He wrote a book about the doctorate he did at Princeton, I think, on philosophy. It was called Philosophy in Action, I think that was the title of his book. And there he basically talks about military philosophy and shares from his experience in the army, philosophical implications tied to Wittgenstein’s philosophy and so on. I read the book, gave him comments, and afterward we met for a discussion. It was a very interesting discussion, I think. In general, the motto of his book—it’s a fascinating book, by the way, I recommend reading it—the motto of the book is basically this. The motto of his book was that when he was a commander in the army in the First Lebanon War in ’82, I think he was even court-martialed, or there was something with that story—he was a paratrooper company commander then, before he got to Sayeret Matkal. He was a paratrooper company commander and he ordered all his soldiers to go without flak jackets, in the field, in the middle of a war. To go without flak jackets because he decided that walking with flak jackets makes movement too heavy. True, it protects you, but it makes you heavier and you won’t be able to function in the field. And that was against orders, against regulations. He said: everybody takes off the flak jackets. Then there was an uproar over it and so on; it could be he was even court-martialed over it, I don’t remember exactly anymore. But there was a whole story around it. Because he gave an order that was illegal—the commanders had ruled that they had to go with flak jackets—and his claim was that this flexibility is in the end worth more than rigid protection. You know, like with tanks: when you have very heavy tanks they are very well protected, but they are slow, and therefore very vulnerable. The whole game in producing an advanced tank is how do we produce a tank that gives strong protection but isn’t too heavy. That’s why you need complex materials and light but protective materials, and rigid and so on. And he said even more than that. He said when he got to Sayeret Matkal, he apparently, if I’m… he apparently wrote their combat doctrine. He’s that kind of philosopher, so he probably really wrote out a whole structured, orderly combat doctrine there, but “structured and orderly” belongs to the right side, not the left side, not the left side of the brain. Meaning, he says for example that when they trained for an operation, he insisted not to simulate the real situation in a one-to-one model. Deliberately not. And not to place there—usually they would take mannequins from shop windows because that’s what most resembles a person, a human being, from clothing stores. And he would insist on putting abstract human outlines there and not mannequins like that, so that it would be an abstract person, a schematic person, not a person like you meet in the field. And why? If you create a model that accurately simulates what happens in the field, you become captive to the model and it breaks your flexibility. In the field nothing goes the way it does in training. There are always things you discover that don’t fit your model because you didn’t have the full information, because something changed, because someone there suddenly got creative, and you need to know how to respond to a reality that is not the reality you prepared for. And therefore in training he would constantly change the reality, even if they knew, even if they had information, he wouldn’t give the full information, he would change it, he would say okay, what happens if this, what happens if that, and he insisted on not making an exact model. And that is exactly the point. Even though he had information and the training was indeed designed to deal with the real model, when you train people you don’t put the real model before their eyes. You put some schematic structure with various possibilities; you train them in what they need to do in each situation. He linked this to Wittgenstein’s philosophy and all sorts of other things—a very interesting book. In any case, the claim is that—by the way, he also linked it to, or maybe I linked it to, I don’t remember anymore—to Aharon Barak. Aharon Barak, for example, with contract law—the claim that a contract, there are those who view a contract as something where what is written in the contract, what is derived from the contract, that is what binds. And Aharon Barak is often accused of basically—yes, the doctrine of good faith and so on—trying to find what the parties actually intended, not what is written in the contract. Which is basically a non-positivist approach, an approach that doesn’t go by rigid rules but by something softer. Then people say this essentially destroys legal certainty. You sign a contract and you don’t know what the judge will decide; you don’t know what the contract means, because what it says is not what binds, but rather what the judge thinks should be done is what binds. And that really is very problematic in the commercial world, in the world of contracts and the like. On the other hand, going with rigid positivism—Barak too has justice on his side. Meaning, going with rigid positivism according to the rules is something that in the end often will not bring justice. There is something here that forces you to be prepared to deviate from the simple rules in order to conduct yourself properly. Not because you shouldn’t have rules—you should have rules—but don’t apply them as-is. That’s the point. Be attentive to the environment, be flexible enough to understand how and whether to adapt them, and even though it looks lite, it looks unserious, inconsistent, uncommitted, right? No—that’s how you apply things correctly. I’m in favor of the ideology of lite. For me, lite is an ideology; it’s not an accusation.

[Speaker E] Right, we once had a guest in the yeshiva, and he spoke about this issue of being exact to the very end or being flexible. And he brought that well-known story of a guy who argued with him, and they argued about this issue, and then he said to him, okay, I’ll send you the answer by email, you’ll get it, and so on. Half a year later they meet, and the guy complained: you didn’t send it to me, you promised me an answer by email. He said to him, what do you mean I didn’t send it? I sent it. He said, to what address did you send it? He said the letters—everything matched perfectly. It didn’t arrive. Why? He said, ah, after the third letter there was supposed to be a dot. He said to him, I just didn’t have time, so I didn’t put in the dot—so what? And for him it was this kind of story to show that if you’re not precise all the way, exactly, the whole thing is worthless, it won’t get anywhere.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that is exactly the Hardali mistake, or the Haredi mistake in general. The Hardali mistake more than the Haredi one.

[Speaker E] Okay, so what do we do? But the dilemma still exists to this day—what should we teach the children? How should we educate them? To go all the way, or to cut corners, cut corners and always remain mediocre?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What needs to be taught is that living lite in the sense I’m talking about is not mediocrity. Don’t give in to the Hardali propaganda. When you write an email address, you are dealing with machines. A computer is a machine. A machine works by rules; if there’s no dot, it won’t do what you want it to do. By the way, neural networks or AI already do things more flexibly; that’s already closer to human beings. But machines, in the sense of an email address—if you don’t write the dot, the email won’t be sent.

[Speaker E] That’s why when the whole world works like that—not only the machine, all of us.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only the machine. When you deal with machines, you have to work exactly by the rules. And that is exactly the difference. When you deal with human beings, when you deal with the real world, the real world is not a machine. And someone who works exactly by the rules in the real world will arrive in very, very bad places. Very bad places. Rules never manage to capture the thing in a genuine way. Someone who uses—think, for example, because the example I always bring in this context is the use of language. You use language; someone who always speaks according to grammatical rules speaks bad language—mistaken, problematic language. Because there is some kind of natural rhythm to language; you understand when you need to bend the rule, round off a corner, when you need to deviate a little from the rule—certainly when you write poetry. Then you need somehow to understand how to maneuver. Now, you don’t throw away the rules; they’re there. But you need to know how and to what extent to apply them. Therefore, in the world, when you want to do something meaningful, you have to weigh the rules against reality. I can’t go straight at reality and impose the rules on it—you’ll simply break reality. Therefore this propaganda—this is exactly the propaganda I’m talking about with that email-address example. This image of human beings as computers is exactly the root of the terrible Platonism Popper describes. Because they think one should behave in the world like a computer. The peak of their utopia is that human beings become computers.

[Speaker E] Fine, so in the example of language, should we start saying “five shekel,” but others will say no, Hovi Rosenthal really

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] argues, Hovi Rosenthal really argues, there’s no problem at all with “five shekel.” If that’s what people say, then it’s slang.

[Speaker E] Right, so some say this and some say the opposite, so what—where are we poor people supposed to decide?

[Speaker F] But in the end you said—you see in practical life that in the Jewish-religious world, in the end, the leadership that dominates, even with regard to the lites, is the rigid leadership. And the lite person himself, in the public, sometimes looks down on the lite rabbi because he isn’t enough for him. He’s willing to be lite, but he doesn’t want his leader to be lite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that is

[Speaker F] a terrible affliction, because in the end everyone falls into line according to the rigidity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, I completely agree, and I’ve written this more than once, and I’m also acting now in practice for the sake of this issue. Exactly because of this matter, because this propaganda about the lites penetrates so deeply into religious consciousness that even the lites themselves live that way—they internalize it. And for them the utopia is a Hardali utopia. Meaning, the synagogue in which he does not pray is only a Hardali synagogue. Meaning, no, yes—it’s like when I was in Yeruham. MK Michael Biton, he’s a good friend of mine, there was a period when some couple wanted to set up a Conservative minyan there. And they couldn’t do it—nobody came. So Michael Biton said to me, look, all of Yeruham are basically a kind of Conservatives, so how can it be that they can’t gather a minyan? So I said to him, look, the people of Yeruham are not Conservatives; the people of Yeruham are religious lites. Meaning, the synagogue in which they don’t pray is only an Orthodox synagogue. They’re not willing not to pray in a Conservative synagogue or to pray in a Conservative synagogue. They just won’t pray in the Orthodox synagogue. Yes, traditionalism and Conservatism are two completely different things. Until Buzaglo comes along and turns traditionalism into an ideology. But traditionalism as an original phenomenon is a traditionalism that basically says: in practice I’m Orthodox, I just don’t feel like it, it doesn’t suit me right now, so I’m not there. The Conservatives turn litetism into an ideology, and that he does not agree with. He is Orthodox, it’s just that he doesn’t observe anything—he doesn’t observe anything because he doesn’t feel like it—but he is Orthodox. He won’t come pray in a Conservative synagogue. So it’s exactly the same issue.

[Speaker F] So I wish you, I really do wish you, great success in that you’re beginning to work in practice to change this situation. Okay, thank you. I’m not, I’m not optimistic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, look, I don’t know whether I’m optimistic or not, but you have to try to do something. That’s for sure.

[Speaker D] A somewhat different story, a somewhat different story. The rabbi of Brisk was very rigid. So there’s a story with Rabbi Chaim Ozer, who disagreed with him. He said that he didn’t take reality into account, and he said, it’s good that there are people like the rabbi of Brisk, who remind us at least what the rules are. I may be more compromising, but it’s good that there are people like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I completely agree with that reservation. And I think a world that was entirely Lithuanian would really be a Lithuanian world. Because then we’re already following our natural feelings, and we’re completely abandoning the principles that after all are also supposed to be taken into account—not only reality. And sometimes we can forget the principles and just flow with reality, and for that we have all sorts of fanatics like these, yes, who go all the way with their principles. So they are not right. But they do have important added value, because they always remind us that there’s another side that has to be taken into account—not only reality, there are also principles. But the fact that they are important doesn’t mean they are right. It’s good that there are such people, but not in our school. Meaning, it’s important, but I don’t think they are right. I completely agree with the statement that this is important. There is something in this Haredi or Hardali fanaticism that is always breathing down our necks. It always says to us, wait, wait, pay attention, there are principles here too. Not only life exists in the world; principles do too. And you need to know how to apply the principles to life—so that life does not prevail, because that is Reform, and so that principles do not prevail, because that is Hardalism. Rather, there is something in common sense that says: take the principles, the same principles as theirs, but they need to be implemented in life. And in life there is common sense. A friend of mine once gave me a nice example. He said that there is no one who does not stumble in gossip almost. Here, I just said gossip. Meaning, there is no one who does not stumble in gossip. So why shouldn’t there be a recommendation to live in some cave? Like Maimonides says, to flee to the deserts and live in a cave so as not to stumble in gossip. Ostensibly, that is the required conclusion from relating to Jewish law as it is. Why live here and risk all sorts of prohibitions? Live alone in a cave. Today I even think that by Zoom you can make a minyan, so you can even pray with a minyan there. But never mind—even if you don’t pray with a minyan, you won’t stumble in gossip. But no one recommends doing that. Even Maimonides, who wrote that, I don’t think he would recommend it. Why not? Because there is something—the Torah was not given to ministering angels. The Torah was given to be implemented in our world. And our world, with all its stumbling blocks and challenges and the difficulties it creates and the struggles—everything is true, and it will lead to failures. But that does not mean I need to go to a monastery so that there I can do things perfectly. No. The Torah was given in order to be implemented in this world, not in a monastery, not in Noah’s Ark—in Haredi language that’s what they call monasteries, Noah’s Ark. So I say no, it should be neither in Noah’s Ark nor in a monastery; it should be in the street. The people in the fields must keep the Torah. And yes, there are prices to that, and it will not be kept in a pure and complete and pristine way. And it is very good that that is so; it is not only after the fact—this is how it should be. Because ideology is like the stubborn and rebellious son: it never was, never existed, and never will be. So why was it written? Study it and receive reward. What does that mean? The stubborn and rebellious son was written in order to mark for us, to signal to us, a direction. But anyone who imagines implementing it in practice is crazy. Meaning, obviously you do not implement it in practice. What, you demand of parents to kill their child because he stole a tartemar of meat and drank a log of wine? Obviously not. But there is some statement there that is very important to have written in the Torah—that this is a dangerous phenomenon and one must pay attention to it, to the point that it is as if he deserves death. Fine. So the Sages already do all the tricks there so that this thing ceases to be practical, or cannot be practical. But there is a tension here between two things. Meaning, on the one hand there is the section of the stubborn and rebellious son, and there are those who would lament our bitter fate that people in this world do not implement the law of the stubborn and rebellious son, because parents love their child and will not bring him to be killed if he steals a tartemar of meat. Fine, but that is not something to lament. These instructions are supposed to be implemented in our world, within the world of human beings, with all the challenges and constraints and everything. And we need to use common sense in order to know whether to implement, how much to implement, until when to implement, to play with the rules in such a way that I still remain faithful to them. But there is also a world, there is also reality. And you need to understand how I maneuver between the rules and reality. And this is the same thing everyone misses, both the Hardalim and Popper who criticizes them. Both miss it. There’s some noise here. Both the Hardalim and Popper who criticizes them, both miss it. Because the Hardalim miss it, Hardalim as ideological societies, because as I said before, they impose the utopia on reality. But Popper, who accuses them of this and therefore demands that they give up utopias—he misses it too. There should be a utopia. There should be a utopia that is my vision, but there is also a reality within which it has to be implemented. So I do not give up the utopia; I give up the rigidity in the way of implementing it, or in its interpretation, in its realization, okay? It’s a very delicate business. So rigid Platonism really is a problematic thing. Platonism in itself is not only something blessed, but in my view also something correct. There need to be utopias, there need to be ideals that guide us how to move forward. But you need to know that when you implement them in life, yes? I was asked more than once on the website—and now I’m already just going by associations. I simply haven’t yet started what I planned. I was once asked on the website, I don’t remember anymore, in several contexts, about the Kantian principle of morality, yes, do what you would want to become a universal law. And then it would turn out that the world would be destroyed. Meaning, if people did that, the world would be destroyed. And I told them that there are situations in which the Kantian principle—that you should do what you would want to become a universal law—is a correct principle. But there are other correct principles too. And sometimes another correct principle can override the Kantian principle. Someone who thinks that the Kantian principle is morality and there is none beside it, and applies it all the time as-is, will not get far. It is a correct principle, I completely accept it, I wrote about it, I identify with it, all true. But it is not the only player in the arena. There is reality. There is sometimes some common sense that tells you, look, but here you need to understand that there are other systems, other principles, other constraints, because of which it is not right to apply the Kantian principle. I need to look for the examples—there are very nice examples of this on my site, several times, where people say, wait, according to the Kantian principle one should have done such-and-such. And I said not to do such-and-such. Why? Because there are other principles besides the Kantian principle. As who was it—Groucho Marx said, I don’t remember: I have wonderful principles, but if you don’t like them, I have others. Meaning, if you don’t like them, I have more, I have others too. And I say that positively, not negatively. Meaning, there is something here that praises flexibility, praises litetism, and this is Platonism in its negative sense. And again—not postmodernism, which is the same outlook that says, okay, so let’s throw out all ideologies because they’re dangerous. That takes it too far. I am not throwing out ideologies. I implement them carefully and flexibly, attentively. Okay? But not that I give up ideologies. There are things I believe in. I’m not going to give up what I believe in. But I hope that won’t lead to murdering a prime minister, or murder at all, even before murdering a prime minister. Right? Because it can get there. So you need to implement it delicately, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not say that because it leads to murder, therefore I’ll throw out ideologies. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because after all, I believe in them. Maybe I mentioned once—I was in my family, my sister married someone from a communist family. And they’re all from Yad Hanna, yes, a communist family, devout, genuine, not communism just from the lips outward. A real communist heritage. And when my brother-in-law’s father passed away, I was at the funeral; the funeral was in Yad Hanna. Yad Hanna was the only truly communist kibbutz there was in Israel. Others were close, here and there, Mapam and the like, but an actual communist kibbutz—there was only one, only Yad Hanna. And Tamar Gozansky is from there, yes, who was a translator, a writer, appeared on television—she is my brother-in-law’s half-sister. In any case, at the funeral there was all this wailing—it was a funeral for communism, not a funeral for my brother-in-law’s father. All of them there, all the communists in the country gathered there, around three hundred. I think just about all of them were there. And they understood that that’s what it was, and they mourned the fact that the world no longer—they were no longer relevant. They are at the margins of history. And in the course of it I met some economist, a professor at the Hebrew University, I forgot his name, some redhead, who is a member of the Communist Party to this day. And my daughter started arguing with him, never mind, we talked and it was very interesting. And he said, listen, we’ve disillusioned ourselves of our great utopias. We no longer have that kind of utopia of full equality and so on. We know that without a free market the world today can’t function—that we understood. I asked him, so in what sense are you a communist? So he told me, because I’m still seeking the truth, still want to fix things. He’s willing to make changes. I told him, that’s not a definition of communism—that’s a definition of people who want to improve the world. People who want to improve the world exist in all kinds of directions. World-improvers of the communist type are people who want to make change, but a certain kind of change. Meaning, what defines—In what sense are you a communist? I think what confused him was that he does believe in communism, in the content of communism. But the thing is, he understands that in our world it isn’t implementable. So the vision remains a communist vision, but he does not really want to implement it now, because he understands that trying to implement it would lead to what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Lenin, Stalin, and the whole gang. Meaning, he understands that implementation can no longer be trampling implementation of the kind the old communists thought, but he lives with the same vision. In that sense he is a true communist. And therefore he did not know how to define for himself and for me the distinction I made here. This distinction that says: I remain with the vision, but I understand that its implementation needs to be more attentive, flexible, soft—something where I cannot simply charge straight toward the vision and trample everything in the way. But he does remain with the vision; he is a communist, he defines himself as a communist. And that is exactly this failure of distinction, the fact that he could not define in what sense he is a communist—that is the same mistake as Popper’s. It is the same mistake as all the mistakes I talked about today. This mistake that says: I do not give up my vision, my utopia, my Platonic ideals, but I understand there is a world and I am attentive to it and I need to understand how to implement this and when and to what extent and so on. But all the time in the background I have that vision, and I really do strive toward it—just not head-on. I strive in this way, in that way, and apparently I also won’t finally reach the vision exactly as it is, but that’s okay, that’s how the world is. It’s an interaction between theory and practice. This interaction creates something more complete and more correct than ideology by itself or practice by itself. And that is one of the reasons I agree with Professor Turkel’s reservation, when he said that true, but it is very important that there be people who constantly remind me of the ideology. From the perspective of that redheaded fellow, it is very important that there be true communists who also want to implement it exactly as it is. They are very dangerous, they are killers, but if they are not there, then he will not remain a communist. Like Rav Chaim in the well-known story—Rabbi Chaim of Brisk said, if I am lenient in the laws of nat bar nat of the same day, then the poultry apprentice in Paris will worship idols. Meaning, there is something in this determined dogmatism of the hard Platonists that is important—important that it be there—so that we remember that reality is a terribly powerful thing; it always takes us captive. It is very easy for us to go along with it and forget where we are going and what principles we believe in, because it isn’t practical and it isn’t this, okay, so let’s leave the principles and just flow with life. Then we really do become the lite phenomenon. But I think lite in the real sense is not lite at all, and not second-class, and not someone weak who doesn’t implement principles, but someone who understands that the implementation of principles must be done in a more flexible way. And this is an ideal approach from the outset; it is not weakness. And once I explain this—or if I succeed in explaining it to people—it seems to me that it rescues many of them from the consciousness, from the self-perception, of themselves as lites, as second-class. Because very many people who perceive themselves as such—there are many who are indeed like that—but there are many who perceive themselves as such and they are not. They were forced into that box because what was presented to them was either rigid Platonism or nihilism. Yes, or nothing. And that’s not right—there is non-rigid Platonism, and that is what it seems to me Popper also missed. And therefore when he criticizes Platonism, he throws out the baby with the bathwater. He doesn’t want ideologies at all. I say: if you believe in communism, be a communist. But when you implement it, pay attention—you don’t need to kill people in order to help them. Communism is intended to help people, and you’re basically killing everyone in order to help them; in the end there’ll be no one left to help. And in that sense you need to be attentive to the matter, but remain with your position, don’t give it up. And the fact that the world is recalcitrant, that it doesn’t cooperate with your ideologies, does not mean you need to give up the ideologies. It only means you need to know how to implement and how to progress toward them, to update them, or whatever you want to call it. Okay, that’s the point, and I see that the whole meeting has gone on this issue. What I had actually planned to do today—I’ll just say in one sentence so you can see how it connects—what I had actually planned to do today was to speak a bit about morality, Kantian morality and realism, what’s called moral realism. The claim will be, and I’ll do that next time, that at the foundation of morality there do exist Platonic ideals. Morality is not floating rules. It is not a collection of principles, social conventions, and the like. Rather, there is a very, very clear Platonic conception at the foundation of morality, because otherwise there is no morality. But, as I said here, soft Platonism, not rigid Platonism. So in that sense, everything I said here in the end I’ll try to demonstrate in the field of ethics. Right. On questions of morality. Okay. I’ll stop here, I didn’t even get to start it. If there are comments or questions.

[Speaker G] Okay, I wanted to ask a few things. First of all, regarding the lite public, what came up here in the discussion. A sociological question. What I’m exposed to and know is something that more resembles the Rabbi’s definition of Reform Jews—that is, people whose attitude to the principles of Jewish law and faith, let’s call it, is more pragmatic, and if it works for me, good, but if it clashes with other values, there’s no conflict. And you don’t agree with that distinction?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I don’t know what the majority is; I didn’t do statistics. But you need to pay attention to an important point. A great many of the people are led to be like that דווקא because of the stigmas or stereotypes imposed by the conservatives. Meaning, the moment someone tells you, look, Judaism is this. Anyone who doesn’t implement it even against reality and against everything is lite, Reform, I don’t know what. Now I, as someone who is not some great philosopher, just an ordinary person, not some great philosopher, say: okay, if that’s Judaism, then I’m not there. I don’t believe in it. Now if you present him with an alternative and say to him, look, but there is another option. True, that is Judaism, but that is the ideal of Judaism; the implementation of Judaism has to be done in a way that is attentive to the world. And you tell him that this is an approach from the outset, not a weakness. Then it could be that very many of the people who behave like Reform Jews, as you described before, will suddenly understand that this is not their real place. Their real place is here. Not lites—they are lite in the sense I’m talking about. Many, many people behave like the lites you described, but only because they don’t have the conceptual framework through which they can create the identity in which they really believe—the third identity, yes?—in which they really believe. The moment you give them that slot, he suddenly finds himself located there. And then it could be that he really does also conduct himself more seriously. Because people are often pushed into being like that because there’s no room given to such an outlook. There is no such outlook. Either you are Hardali, or you are nothing, or you are Reform. There is nothing else. So if Judaism is Hardalism, then I’m not Jewish. That’s what many people say to themselves.

[Speaker G] I’ll try to think practically. For example, people who are not careful about sexual boundaries—whether in touch, or seclusion, or things like that—or Sabbath observance, because that just doesn’t fit with the world, there’s no getting around it. We don’t live in a world that allows that in a way

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] of “it doesn’t fit,” it doesn’t fit with the world—but when a person takes the constraints of the world into account, the implementation of that also has to be more flexible, even there. And when people see this lack of flexibility, yes, “he should not converse with her behind the fence, he should not converse—even if he dies,” yes? That rigidity around sexual prohibitions says to them, okay, this is not a system I’m willing to accept. So I’m not there. So no—then I don’t observe the laws of touch, as they call it today, right? No—then I’m not, I’m not there. And if you tell him, look, this is the system, and it sets you a challenge, and it is important to meet it, but we live in a world, and in our world there are these applications and those applications, and we do not believe—I do not believe—in separation between men and women, hysterical separation like in the Haredi world so that we not come to prohibitions. Not because it isn’t safer. It has its own problems too, the result of it, but—but true, one can fail if I don’t insist on separation, but I do not believe in a world of separation. And true, it can lead to problems. So I will have to deal with the problems. And once I present things that way, I think more people will be able to find themselves, from the outset, in such an outlook, and not find themselves detached from the halakhic or Jewish world.

[Speaker G] But how should I relate, for example, to a person who is in this dilemma, and let’s say he can’t observe seclusion because of work issues, because of one social situation or another, he just can’t keep it—how should I address this specific case with him in a conversation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you have to discuss things case by case. If there’s a situation where it’s impossible to keep this, it’s simply not the way the world works—people don’t keep it. Not to keep it, to be in seclusion. Because that’s just not how things are conducted. You mentioned it—there’s this phenomenon of “it just doesn’t work”; I’ve written and spoken about it more than once. There’s the prohibition against going to civil courts, right? That’s the example I often bring in the context of “it just doesn’t work.” What about the prohibition against resorting to the courts? It’s a severe prohibition, as though one planted an Asherah tree beside the altar, and all sorts of terribly severe things. But today, in everyday life, every normal person understands that even though he is committed to Jewish law and he’s not lax, he uses the court system. Why? Because in our reality, it just doesn’t work otherwise. You can’t function that way. And I said, this already appears in the Talmud—the concept of courts in Syria. The Talmud itself already says that this is how one should act. You need to be attentive to reality. Being attentive to reality does not mean I erased Jewish law. That’s always what the conservatives accuse you of: fine, you’re attentive, I get it—you’re not committed. You’re committed to nothing. You’re sloppy, you’re lax. No, that’s not true. I’m not lax, but I am attentive to reality. Because in my view, attentiveness to reality is part of the proper way to implement Jewish law.

[Speaker G] So in a case like this, is there supposed to be a conflict, or are you saying from the outset that this prohibition isn’t applicable?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course there’s a conflict. But I find some kind of outlet for it, because I’m committed to both things. When there’s a conflict between Jewish law and morality, or between two values within Jewish law, or between two moral values, in the end I arrive at a bottom line and that’s how I act. Does that mean there’s no conflict? There is a conflict. I’m committed to both, and they contradict each other. But I believe that since I’m committed to both, then the practical implementation has to take both into account. Meaning: to find the way to realize both of them in the best possible way.

[Speaker G] If I may, Rabbi, I want to add another comment in connection with what you said about the need for people who are ideological—let’s call it on the edge—and who dictate some kind of essence that sets something. In yeshiva we often learned Ein Ayah of Rabbi Kook on tractate Shabbat, on the story of Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Shimon, and Rabbi Yosi with the Romans—about what they instituted. So Rabbi Kook really analyzes it, that each of them was very, very similar to the groups the Rabbi defined: that Rabbi Shimon was—this is also how the people who taught us explained it, and they were mostly rabbis from Har Hamor—they defined themselves as, we are like Rabbi Shimon, who say the absolute truth, the pure ideological truth, without qualifications, without compromises, and live in some kind of cave. Then there’s Rabbi Yehuda, who did agree to it on a certain level and was willing to be in dialogue with it and to act in that context, and Rabbi Yosi, who kept silent, which is some kind of maybe—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. My problem with that is that I can say it’s very important that such people exist. But the person who is like that—how does he justify his own conduct? In other words, the fact that it’s important for him to exist is true, but it’s not right to be that way. So when a person says, look, it’s important that I be this way—that’s not really it. Har Hamor says it’s important to be me; it’s not just important that I too appear on the map. Do you understand? That’s a different statement, and in my opinion they make that leap too quickly. And I’m willing to say that it’s very important that they, too, exist. But if I had to choose—clearly, that is an incorrect path. I don’t agree with it. The fact that this path is useful and important that it exist—that’s all true. But because of that, you yourself should act incorrectly? In other words, one should not behave that way. Now, when a person says, I behave this way because it’s important that I exist—that’s absurd, because if you yourself understand that it’s not right, then don’t be that way. So what will happen—who will be that way? Those who really think that way. But you, as someone who doesn’t think that way—it’s as if your teachers didn’t really think that way either. They understood that it wasn’t okay, but that it was important that they exist. If you’re in that mindset, then you’re not supposed to be that way. That’s something that should emerge after the fact. Since there are people who truly think that this is how one should behave, then I, as someone who thinks not, say yes—but it’s important that they exist. But from their point of view, they are that way because they truly think it’s right, not because they think it’s important that such people exist. Do you understand what I’m saying?

[Speaker G] Is this maybe related to the distinction between a person, privately, wanting to live in that kind of pure ideological way, versus saying this about a community—maybe a bit similar to that distinction?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, more than that. I think even a private individual shouldn’t behave that way. True, for a private person it is of course more feasible, more appropriate, and less harmful. But I’m saying that in principle, I don’t believe in that path. Meaning, whatever is not suitable for the many is not suitable for the individual either—that’s the categorical imperative. You should do what you would want to become a general law. But the point is this: I say there’s a difference—and this is what Rabbi Kook’s interpreters at Har Hamor don’t understand—there’s a difference between saying that problematic phenomena have positive consequences, and saying that therefore one should adopt them. Secular Zionism made an enormous contribution—what do I mean enormous? Without it there would be no state. Does that mean I should be a secular Zionist? A secular person—not Zionist, I mean a secular person. No, of course not. So the fact that I say it’s important that such people exist is not a justification for me to be one of them. I don’t think that’s right. That path is not right. After the fact, once it already exists, it’s important that such people exist. But that same person who behaves that way cannot himself behave that way because he thinks it’s important that such people exist. He has to behave that way because he truly thinks it’s right. In my opinion he’s mistaken, but it’s still important that he exist. But a person who says, look, I behave this way even though it’s not right, because it’s important that such people exist—that strikes me as ridiculous. If you think it’s not right, don’t do it. There’s a difference between justifying a phenomenon after the fact and producing it from the outset, or recognizing its importance once it already exists, versus saying, I—

[Speaker G] One hundred percent, thank you.

[Speaker E] So I have a brother—we always tell this story about him—who one Sabbath opened the refrigerator and discovered that he had forgotten to disconnect it. So what did we do? Anyway, the story is that he took a chair and put it by the door so it wouldn’t close. I already committed one transgression once; I don’t want to again. Is that how it is? Is that how one should act? To put a chair there so as not to close the door?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. What’s the problem? Not “always”—that’s exactly the point. I’m not saying that whenever reality creates a problem, Jewish law is nullified or cancelled.

[Speaker E] That’s obvious. But that means wanton destruction, all the food in there goes bad, the cost, everything—what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your food won’t spoil that quickly if the door stays open just two centimeters so that the light won’t turn off; the refrigerator will still more or less keep cooling, so it’s not terrible. If there really are situations with extreme consequences, then you have to discuss each case on its own. There’s asking a non-Jew to do it, there are all kinds of solutions, never mind—but yes, then you really have to start discussing it. That’s exactly the point. So that’s exactly this tension between fanaticism that refuses to discuss, and someone who completely erases the principles and says, well, if it doesn’t suit me then I just won’t keep it. That’s exactly what I’m talking about—the middle path between those two extremes. Good.

[Speaker B] Rabbi, I assume the Rabbi probably won’t agree with me, but if we—after all, they are captive to this myth of weakness of will, which all of us have managed to internalize, and therefore they relate to themselves the way they do. If we understood that this is a myth, then the whole ethos would collapse, because they do what they believe, and they need to stand behind it—each person according to the level of his belief and the level of authenticity he attributes to himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, fine, I completely agree. Okay, have a peaceful Sabbath, may there be good news. Have a peaceful Sabbath. Good news.