Dogmatics – Lecture 5

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, it could be—the Maimonides doesn’t write it explicitly. He says there probably has to be some kind of verification procedure. Meaning, someone has to decide that a person is a heretic; it can’t be that anyone whose views you don’t like, you just shoot him in the head. That’s not reasonable. Apparently we’re dealing with some kind of status—I don’t know what exactly—maybe they issue some declaratory ruling about him: this fellow is a heretic. From that point on, his blood is permitted. And what does “his blood is permitted” mean? Again, there’s no precise definition here, so it’s hard to draw conclusions. But you could say something more moderate. You could say that in a case where he’s acting in a way that can actually cause harm—say he starts preaching his views, or I don’t know, something like that, drawing people after him and so on—then he’s still not guilty in itself, but he starts becoming a pursuer. In that situation, anyone may kill him, like a pursuer. That would be, let’s say, a more restrained formulation of the matter—not just that I see him on the street and shoot him in the head. I don’t know. I said, in Maimonides here it’s all very obscure. He doesn’t spell out what exactly one is supposed to do. Anyway, we’ll come back to this, because this whole picture still needs clarification. In my opinion it can’t be taken literally, but I’ll get to that. In any case, what I do want to say for our purposes is that if this really is the case, then holding incorrect beliefs or denying the principles also has halakhic consequences. In other words, there’s a normative dimension to the determination that you are a heretic; it’s not only a factual determination. So if that’s true, can we still say that you can’t issue a definitive ruling? Can’t you issue a halakhic ruling as to who is a heretic and who is not? I said that on facts you can’t issue Jewish law. On norms you can. But here we have facts that have normative consequences. So what does it mean to say you can’t issue a halakhic ruling about who is a heretic? Then whom are we going to kill? This has halakhic consequences. To whom do we apply the rule of “lower him and do not raise him up”? So this determination that says that with respect to facts you can’t issue a ruling, but with respect to norms you can, immediately raises the question: what happens with facts that have normative consequences? And one of the cases where this is exactly the issue of this series is the principles of faith. Because the command to hold the principles is a command about a fact. Seemingly, in that there can be no halakhic decision. On the other hand, that fact has halakhic consequences. And on halakhic questions there is supposed to be a halakhic decision. So it somehow falls between the cracks. What do you do in such a situation? So maybe to sharpen this a little more, maybe I’ll make an initial distinction. In the positive commandment to believe, which I discussed at the end of the previous lecture, it’s not a commandment where there are facts and they have halakhic consequences—well, normative consequences, yes. The norm is the fact itself. You are commanded to believe. Regarding the principles, the halakhic consequences are what we do with someone who does not believe in the principles. So believing or not believing in the principles is the factual plane, and after we clarify that factual plane, it has halakhic consequences. But in the positive commandment to believe, the positive commandment to believe is a norm whose content—or it is a command about the fact itself, about holding the fact. That is not the same thing. Therefore I say: in the commandment to believe, in my opinion such a commandment is not relevant. There cannot be such a commandment. What about Maimonides? That needs analysis. So I suggested… Is there anyone who doesn’t count that commandment? Yes, many don’t count it. I don’t know if anyone besides Maimonides does count it. Maybe the Sefer HaChinukh also counts it, probably? I don’t remember, but the Sefer HaChinukh is exactly like Maimonides except for one commandment.

[Speaker B] And do they deal with the fact that they don’t count it? Do they argue about it, or do they just not count it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I brought it in the previous lecture—you probably weren’t there. Apparently you missed it. In any case, that’s regarding the positive commandment to believe. But regarding the principles, there we are not speaking directly about a command to hold certain beliefs; there the normative dimension is a result, a consequence. One who does not hold these beliefs is subject to such-and-such laws. That is more indirect than positive commandment number one. And therefore that needs to be discussed separately. There’s room to distinguish it from the positive commandment to believe—maybe it is the same thing, but it’s a different discussion. Now, in order to move further toward this issue, I want to bring another example, a very well-known one, and then come back to this question. What do we do with the principles? Are they facts? Are they norms? How does Maimonides make definitive determinations regarding the principles? I want to talk about killing a louse on the Sabbath. Yes, the tired and well-known question. The Talmud says that one may kill a louse on the Sabbath. A Talmudic passage in tractate Shabbat on page 12 there, and in other places. You may kill a louse on the Sabbath because it does not reproduce sexually. After all, it is born from decay, from water, I don’t know exactly from what—they don’t attribute it to relations between male and female, not in the way animals are usually generated. That’s how the Talmud understood it. And therefore it is permissible to kill it, because it is not considered a living creature concerning which it is said that one may not take life on the Sabbath. Now, for many years already, sages—already in the Middle Ages—encountered the difficulty that science, already in their own time, in the Middle Ages, in the time of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), knew clearly that this was not true. Meaning, a louse does reproduce, and it is born the way other animals are born. It has no uniqueness compared to other animals. Now the question is what to do. Notice: this is exactly the discussion we’re having. There is a factual question here: how is a louse generated? Does it reproduce or not? And that has a normative consequence: is it permitted or forbidden to kill it on the Sabbath? So here we have another example of a question that is a factual question with halakhic consequences. Now when the commentators and halakhic decisors throughout the generations dealt with this difficulty, in the end almost all of them, except for very few, the best-known among them being Pahad Yitzhak—Pahad Yitzhak of Lampronti, yes, not Hutner—almost all say: you do not change the Jewish law. Meaning, if the Talmud says it is permitted to kill a louse on the Sabbath, then according to Jewish law it is permitted to kill a louse on the Sabbath. That is basically the starting point, that is the assumption. The question is how to cope with the changes in knowledge, with the new knowledge that tells us that in fact the facts that led to this normative determination are apparently not true. So what do we do with that? Here we have an impressive range of excuses and reconciliations of one sort or another. Some talk about changes in nature—which by the way is relatively far-reaching. What does “changes in nature” mean? Yes, it’s the well-known trick that if there is something you see today that does not behave the way the Sages described it, then apparently something changed between the time of the Sages and today. In other words, they couldn’t possibly have been mistaken—that is of course the clear assumption. So if they weren’t mistaken, and today we see that it is different, apparently it changed. There is the book by Rabbi Neria Guttel, Changes in Nature in Jewish Law. Once, on the program Atzor Kan Choshvim, there was some discussion about this, and I quoted in his name that this is basically a polite way of disagreeing with the Sages. Instead of saying they were mistaken, we say, well, apparently reality changed. And he got very angry; he sent me an email afterward, or I don’t remember—we spoke—he was very upset by that quote, and he told me: yes, I saw it there, it’s not as if I made it up—he told me, yes, that was something I wrote in some early article, and even there, I think, in the end he also didn’t accept it, and in the book it is certainly rejected. Meaning, the article that preceded the book. Fine, okay, so I apologized to him, and now I say it in my own name, not his. In other words, one possibility is that nature changed, the natural order changed. By the way, there is Rabbenu Avraham ben HaRambam, in an essay that appears in the introduction to Ein Yaakov. At the beginning of volume one of Ein Yaakov on the aggadic passages of the Talmud, there are various essays on how to relate to aggadic literature. There’s Mahartz Chayot and Ramchal and Rabbenu Avraham ben HaRambam and others. Oh right—so Rabbenu Avraham ben HaRambam speaks there, among other things, about Maimonides’ attitude toward demons. That there is no such thing; it’s nonsense. In the Talmud it appears—the Talmud speaks of it as a clear reality. So he says that nature changed; apparently the demons disappeared from the world in the meantime. In other words, once they existed, but now they don’t.

[Speaker C] Okay, so then the assumption is that the Sages knew everything?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that is the common assumption among the commentators.

[Speaker C] Why didn’t they get to the moon?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why didn’t they? Apparently they just didn’t feel like it.

[Speaker C] But grinding medicines, saving life.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, they didn’t feel like that either, they didn’t feel like anything. They were busy studying. A friend of mine once saw some booklet, something on this topic, that came out somewhere in Meah Shearim, or somewhere deep in old Jerusalem, where someone discussed the question of why the Sages didn’t build an airplane. Yes, why they didn’t create a plane. Because after all it’s obvious that they knew everything, so why didn’t they… Well, I don’t remember exactly what explanation he offered, but yes, that is the common assumption, that they did not err—or let’s say, maybe they didn’t know everything, but what they said is certainly correct. What they didn’t know, at least they didn’t say—that’s a more moderate formulation. Okay? Meaning, what they said is verified, certainly true; it’s Talmud, it’s Torah, it came down from Sinai if you want to be extra meticulous. Doesn’t matter—something like that. But perhaps what they didn’t say, they didn’t know—but they didn’t say it.

[Speaker G] The explanation of ben HaRambam isn’t all that far-fetched, because in the Talmud—there’s a passage in tractate Bava Batra, I don’t remember where exactly, where the Talmud is discussing something and then says something like: for example Abaye, who saw the demon itself break down a house, that’s what it says there. Yes, now he says…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the greatness of a person—that he knows not…

[Speaker G] No, no, the Talmud doesn’t mean that as greatness. It says it because he saw it—as if to say, here, ask him, he saw it, and it broke down a house.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why did Abaye see it and others didn’t?

[Speaker G] No, they came to tell a story that such a thing exists, that a house can collapse even without anyone doing anything to it, so they bring a proof—a story that happened, a story—not because of Abaye’s greatness, that Abaye was great, but because they saw a demon going and knocking down a house, there was such a thing—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t remember at the moment, we’d have to look. Okay, in any case—no, I think, look, I also say something a bit similar regarding miracles, prophecy, things of that kind. There is some kind of distancing, let’s call it, from mysticism or from non-natural things over the generations. Once there were open miracles; today there are no open miracles—on that everyone agrees, right? Once there were prophets; today there are no prophets. I claim that once there were also hidden miracles and today there aren’t even those. Others will argue about that, but still. It is clear that there is some process here of retreat from mysticism, of the world becoming more, let’s call it, natural. Okay? It could be that as part of that, the demons too retreated to some other world of formation and no longer roam among us. Once they were in the desert; today even there they are no longer. Fine, I don’t know, never mind. In any case, the claim is that many times people use an explanation like this: nature changed. And likewise, the lice of old were different lice. Today’s lice are lice that do reproduce. By the way, according to this explanation, seemingly the Jewish law really should change. Fine, the lice of old could be killed on the Sabbath, but today’s lice, whose nature has changed, really may not be killed on the Sabbath. That is why I said that this excuse, in a certain sense, maybe is embarrassed to say it openly, but in the end it changes the talmudic law. Okay? So in that sense, as I said before, my sense of smell tells me that this is a polite way of disagreeing with the Sages. Either way, halakhically it certainly changes the talmudic law. Okay?

[Speaker G] In that same story, Rabbi, there’s also Professor Doron Fixler, who published an article about immersion of vessels, where it’s exactly the same story. He went to Rabbi Asher Weiss—that’s what I read in Nadav Shnerb’s book—to check it, and Rabbi Asher Weiss told him that if all the rabbis agreed then he would agree. So he laughs at them there, because that obviously isn’t going to happen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Lior said that too. What is this? Rabbi Lior also said it. Yes. It appears in his writings. Rabbi Lior said that according to these results one should really assume that vessels do not absorb, and one could permit various things, but let some other people agree with him—which of course they did not—and therefore to this day it remains stuck where it was.

[Speaker G] Does the Rabbi actually change the Jewish law on this issue, say in the matter of immersion of vessels?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think yes, definitely yes. Again, I haven’t actually encountered such a case in recent years in practice, but it seems obvious to me that yes. You just have to check what kinds of vessels they tested. There were attempts—they divided it by materials and all kinds of things like that—but definitely. There is no reason to preserve this; it’s not…

[Speaker H] Yes, but seemingly there really are things that actually changed from the period of the Sages, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I said—even the demons maybe really did disappear.

[Speaker H] No, I’m not talking about demons, even in medical matters. There are medical things that the Sages speak about very simply, obvious things, that we don’t see today. For example in tractate Yevamot there’s that passage that talks about two openings in the male organ, one for semen and one for urine. And the Talmud there says: if the opening for semen gets blocked, what happens? But there aren’t two openings. And the Chazon Ish, if I’m not mistaken, says that nature probably changed, maybe internal openings. No, plainly it’s talking about external openings, plainly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’d have to…

[Speaker H] And if I’m not mistaken the Chazon Ish says that nature changed, and it’s something very obvious, you know, that anyone can see.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they are reporting something they saw, then it really does sound unlikely that it isn’t true. I’m just very doubtful that this changed in… we would have heard about it. Meaning, it’s not something so… I’ll send it to you later.

[Speaker H] Huh? I’ll send it to you later.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Fine. In any case, the first claim—the first direction, in short—is that nature changed.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, sorry, may I ask? Yes. So what about facts given in the Talmud over which there is a dispute? Meaning, an example I’m thinking of right now is the shape of the world. So how can one say nature changed when there is a dispute—one says square, one says flat, one says…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t say it about everything. You could also say the world eventually became round. That too is possible.

[Speaker E] No, at the very moment they discuss it, they’re not discussing the future, they’re discussing the present—one says round, one says square—so what then? How do those who say nature changed manage with that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the problem? There, one of them was wrong. But they are talking about a situation where there is an agreed determination in the Talmud, and now suddenly we see that it isn’t true.

[Speaker E] But the whole Talmud is disputes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. There are things that are disputed and things that aren’t. What do you mean?

[Speaker E] Yes, fine, but I’m saying: most of the Talmud is disputes, in order to reach a decision. But you’re saying that within that dispute necessarily someone was wrong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you can always say one is right and the other is wrong; you don’t need to arrive at changes in nature.

[Speaker E] Okay, fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if one is right and one is wrong, then it isn’t absurd to say the Amoraim were mistaken. So even if they agree, it could be that they all erred. Oh, absolutely, I agree. Yes. So that’s one direction. A second direction, of course, is the fundamentalist one: if science says otherwise, then science is apparently wrong. Yes. There’s the famous line… so obviously science is wrong. Like Wolf opens his book—that fellow from the Wolf Seminary—I also heard this from Nadav. He opens his book: “Science is false and our Torah is truth.” Yes, only fanatics can write things like that. Anyway, the third direction is a formal one, which says: you are right that reality is different, but since the Sages ruled this way, the Jewish law remains in force even if we reached the conclusion that its factual basis is incorrect. Which is exactly an implementation of the distinction I made above. Because what they are saying is basically this: look, facts are facts. Meaning, if today I see that the fact is incorrect, then it is apparently incorrect, and perhaps even the Sages were mistaken about the fact. But in the end, once they established this law, that is the law, and we have no authority to change it, and therefore the law remains in force even though I am prepared to say that the Sages erred on the factual plane. No, not exactly—it’s not exactly the “swimsuit” case. The swimsuit case is an interpretive claim. Here I’m saying the Sages were mistaken, but the law remains as it is. Similar to this is the well-known Chazon Ish.

[Speaker C] Where do we have a source for the idea that when the Jewish people accepted the authority of the Talmud, they accepted it while also writing in small print: even if they were completely mistaken, totally not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are difficult questions, and you’ll have to ask the people who say that, not me. The Chazon Ish, in one of his more original inventions—in the negative sense, I mean—says that Jewish law is determined… he divides history up, as the Talmud says, into two thousand years of chaos, two thousand years of Torah, and two thousand years of Messiah. And the Chazon Ish claims that the two thousand years of Torah are actually the years that began with the Oral Torah—Mishnah, Talmud, and so on. I don’t really know if it began there exactly, but never mind—the Mishnah and the Talmud are within the two thousand years of Torah. Because for him, where do the four thousand years from creation end? That means about seventeen hundred years ago. Seventeen hundred, yes, so that finishes the two thousand years of Torah. Meaning, the Talmud concludes the two thousand years of Torah, and Jewish law is determined according to the conception of reality that prevailed in the two thousand years of Torah of the Sages. In other words, the Chazon Ish is basically claiming: this reality is not correct. I accept the current scientific determination that the Sages were mistaken, but it does not matter, because Jewish law is determined not according to actual reality but according to the reality that prevailed during the Sages’ two thousand years of Torah. Okay? Which is very similar to what I said earlier—leaving the norm in force even though the reality is not in force. He just has some theory trying somehow—I don’t know—to ground this in some more essential definition.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, don’t even the Chazon-Ish people themselves laugh at this? I mean, I feel like there’s a certain Torah scholar in Bnei Brak, Rabbi—I don’t know if you know him—named Rabbi Weil. He’s very expert in the laws of menstrual purity, and he gives classes to young men about to get married. He gave us a class in yeshiva years ago, and he talked there about something… this was before I knew the Rabbi… I asked him a simple common-sense question—what’s going on here, there’s some issue with changes in nature, something like that. And he kind of shushed me, and afterward he came and told me, look, the custom is not to… sort of gave me this no-no, don’t move things, it’s uncomfortable for me, like that. But he sort of admitted to me that this Chazon Ish thing isn’t real, like, there’s no such thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think so too. It’s hard to believe that the Chazon Ish himself believed this; it’s pretty clear to me that he did not. Meaning, he said something just so that people wouldn’t become Reform. He gave them some theory so they could somehow continue holding on to the Jewish law and not change it, and also think they were right. Because his greater concern was that they would start becoming Reform, and he preferred not to get the law right so long as they wouldn’t slide into Reform or something like that, I assume.

[Speaker G] Maybe he had the idea of “you can’t say this straight, people will become Reform, so we need to invent something.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine. In any case, that’s the Chazon Ish’s thesis. It’s basically a cousin of the previous approach—that the norm remains in force even though nature, or the factual situation, has turned out to be incorrect. There is another thesis that says that the law remains in place because of hidden reasons. Not formally—that we don’t have the power to change the Sages’ normative determination; that is a formal statement—not that there are hidden reasons there that we do not know. True, the reality is not correct, but the norm still stands. Here there is some claim—yes, people attribute to the Vilna Gaon the statement that if the reason has fallen away, the enactment has not fallen away. So his claim is that even if you think the reason for the enactment is this, there are actually additional hidden reasons, and therefore even if this reason has changed, that is not enough to change the enactment. Fine. In my opinion that argument is completely absurd, for a very simple logical reason. Not because I don’t think there are hidden reasons, or do think so. Simply on the logical level it cannot work. It cannot work because maybe there are hidden reasons and maybe there aren’t. What happens if there aren’t? Must there always be hidden reasons too? Sometimes the stated reason is also the correct reason, okay? And there are no hidden reasons. That can also happen. In such a case, if you don’t change the Jewish law, then you are doing something incorrect. And the whole question is: on whom does the burden of proof lie? Meaning, if I have a clear reason and you claim there are hidden reasons, the burden of proof is on you. If there were no reason, then I wouldn’t know anything; then you say, fine, there is surely some hidden reason here, neither of us knows it, we can’t touch it. But if I say no—I have a reasonable reason, I can explain this law to you. And you say no, no, but maybe there is some hidden reason that neither of us knows. Why assume that? There is a clear reason here; it explains the law; everything is fine. And maybe you’re right. But I won’t accept that unless you bring me proof. And why? Because if I do accept it, I too may come out a transgressor. This is not called playing it safe. The assumption is as if being conservative means I’m playing it safe. So let’s play it safe. But this is not playing it safe. Because if I am conservative where the law ought to be changed, then I am committing a transgression.

[Speaker G] They base this on a midrash. There is a midrash that says that everything the Sages said has a thousand reasons for it. And therefore because of that one has to know there are a thousand reasons.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I am willing to accept that here and there there are additional reasons too; I have no principled problem with that. But I’m saying: if you don’t know, and you do have a reason you do know, a judge has only what his eyes can see. And if you have difficulty and don’t know any reason, you don’t understand what the reason is—fine, apparently they had some hidden reason. But if I have a reason and I understand it, everything is fine, it explains everything, and you tell me, okay, but maybe there’s a hidden reason. Yes, maybe, and maybe not. So the question is what the simple presumption is, and on whom the burden of proof lies. The simple presumption is that if there is a simple reason, that is the reason. If you think there is a hidden reason, maybe you’re right—bring me evidence. Therefore this thesis seems very strange to me. And now notice: regarding a louse, they tell you that you may kill it. Do you understand that if there are no hidden reasons for this, and I kill the louse now, then I am a transgressor, I desecrated the Sabbath. It is an offense punishable by stoning. After all, if the truth is that it is forbidden to kill the louse, and because of conservatism I stick with the Talmud’s law that it is permitted to kill a louse, then I desecrated the Sabbath. Taking life is one of the principal categories of labor. So for this you are prepared to desecrate the Sabbath with a Torah-level prohibition, a prohibited labor on the Sabbath, punishable by stoning—because what? Because maybe there is some other reason why they permitted killing a louse? They said what the reason was: because it does not reproduce. Fine, maybe there is some other reason too. Maybe yes, maybe no. You desecrate the Sabbath over that? The burden of proof is on you. It is perfectly clear that these reasons are not really believed by anyone. These reasons come from fear of Reform. In other words, these explanations simply do not hold water.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, I have an example—I don’t know if it’s similar. I don’t know if you know this, but Rabbi Shalosh, of blessed memory, who was the rabbi of Netanya, used to permit on a Jewish holiday—and his son did the same—he would permit using electricity freely on a Jewish holiday. Because he says electricity is, in short, in his view…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It also appears in Rabbi Toledano’s Shulchan Arukh, yes. A number of Sephardic authorities permit it.

[Speaker E] Because it’s like, from their perspective, an existing fire. Now he bases it on a fact, the way he understands it; he understands reality that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Understands it incorrectly, of course.

[Speaker E] Incorrectly in terms of, I assume, physics, right? That’s already not really about electricity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course. The fire doesn’t exist at all, not remotely; it’s simply a misunderstanding.

[Speaker E] Okay, but is that similar to the matter of the louse?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In principle yes. If he were right, then yes, yes. No, actually it’s easier than the louse. Because regarding electricity, who prohibited it? Sages from a few decades ago prohibited it. This isn’t the Talmud. So what is the problem with disagreeing with them? If you think differently, disagree with them. I’m talking about going against an authoritative institution that has formal authority—a Sanhedrin, or the Talmud, or something like that. Otherwise, what’s the problem? I can disagree with them simply because I don’t agree with them—not because they…

[Speaker E] No, but wait—electricity, when was the prohibition of electricity established? It obviously wasn’t established in the time of the Talmud.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It was established when electricity began—end of the nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth, I think, something like that.

[Speaker E] Right, so… no, I mean, it’s not a problem, right? To disagree with that ruling? Because if regarding the Talmud we’re now theoretically discussing whether this is justified, then all the more so regarding…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that isn’t an example at all, because here it’s obvious. What, if there’s a sage from a hundred years ago who said something and I don’t agree with him—not because of misunderstanding reality, I just don’t agree with him halakhically—there’s no problem, I disagree with him. So what’s the issue?

[Speaker E] But it’s based on facts, yes? It’s not as though…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying, it’s not even based on facts; I can simply disagree with him. Therefore I say: when I talk about being based on facts, I’m talking about disagreeing with the Talmud or disagreeing with a determination of a Sanhedrin that has formal authority. There, if I disagree with them on the halakhic level, I cannot disagree with them. My claim is, however, that in a place where it becomes clear that the determination is based on a factual error, that is the discussion. There the question is whether I can change it. But we are talking about a ruling of an institution with formal authority; otherwise the whole discussion never starts. Right. So that’s the hidden reasons. There are those who want to say: fine, what we call a louse today is not what the Sages called a louse; there is an identification problem. This is not that louse. And again, notice: according to that, it is forbidden to kill what we today call lice. Okay? In some senses that sounds strange, but in the end it actually yields the correct law. Okay? People often give such answers also regarding the kosher animals in the Torah. Split hoof, fully cloven hoof—there are problems with the hyrax, whether it chews the cud or not. So the claim is maybe, fine, our hyrax is not the hyrax the Torah is talking about. It’s an identification problem. Fine.

[Speaker I] Rabbi, I didn’t understand how we got to this topic. What? I didn’t understand how we got to this topic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to discuss what happens when I have before me a normative halakhic determination, where seemingly one can issue a binding halakhic ruling, but it is based on a fact. And with respect to facts one cannot issue a binding halakhic ruling. So what happens if the fact turns out to be incorrect—or at least in my opinion—but the norm built on top of it seemingly obligates me, because it has been ruled as Jewish law. So do I follow the factual plane or the normative plane? And my goal is ultimately to return to the principles, because the principles too are basically a factual determination with a normative consequence: “lower him and do not raise him,” “anyone may kill him,” all sorts of things like that. So I said I want to deal with this for a moment in order to try to clarify what one does in a situation like that, when there is a fact that generates a norm. Okay? And what I mentioned earlier—the Pahad Yitzhak basically says: true, it is forbidden to kill a louse on the Sabbath; it turns out the Sages were mistaken. Simply that. And it’s pretty amazing that throughout history—and notice, we are talking about ruling stringently. Meaning, the Sages permitted killing a louse on the Sabbath, and I want to be stringent and forbid killing it. I would have expected complete agreement among the decisors: let’s be stringent. If we are stringent, we do not violate what the Talmud said. We are only more stringent than the Talmud was stringent. Where the Talmud was lenient, we are stringent—what’s the problem? There is no problem here, no transgression. No—apparently because of concern about the attitude toward Jewish law, and certainly in an era where there are already Reform Jews, though it began earlier—there is some claim that no, even leniently we follow the Talmud, even leniently. They desecrate the Sabbath on a Torah level on the basis of that claim. It’s a sort of almost total consensus, aside from Pahad Yitzhak and perhaps a few truly marginal figures. Meaning, all the mainstream, including the most open and liberal decisors—I think even Rabbi Moshe Feinstein writes somewhere that one may not kill a louse on the Sabbath—that one may, sorry, one may kill a louse on the Sabbath. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein assumes in several places that the Sages did not err about facts. Fine.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, it basically comes out that you can’t beat this, because the original sin is basically in the Talmud—that once we were forced, as a time to act for God, to write down the Mishnah and the Talmud, then Jewish law stopped changing—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to reality. Changing according to reality.

[Speaker C] And from there we rolled into this miserable reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure the question is whether it’s written or not. Even if it had not been written, they would still have said, fine, but the Oral Torah says that you may kill a louse on the Sabbath—what difference does it make whether it’s written or not?

[Speaker C] No, but once it’s written, it becomes fixed. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a bit of a psychological issue. On the principled level, once you give authority to certain people, even if they are not written down, and you do not disagree with those people who have authority—the Sanhedrin does not need to write down its ruling in order for it to be forbidden to disagree with it, for that to be improper.

[Speaker C] But the Tannaim and Amoraim disagreed with each other freely about reality, one hundred and eighty degrees, with no fear and no problem. They looked at reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it wasn’t that it was written down. Rather, because the authority of the Amoraim declined—when you are also an Amora, you are also an Amora.

[Speaker C] So how did it happen that this disappeared? Because of that same authority of the Oral Torah? Why are we even…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not because of the authority. The question whether to give it authority and the question whether to write it down are two different decisions.

[Speaker C] Never mind, I’m not interested in the writing. But this authority given to the Oral Torah froze us to death.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. That authority creates problems, but behind it there is also a lot of logic and benefit. This coin has two sides. I also spoke…

[Speaker K] Sure, but the question is whether nothing can be done about it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think something can be done; I’ve written a lot about it. Fine, but that’s the… Anyway, for our purposes. So in short, that’s what Pahad Yitzhak claims. In my humble opinion I agree with him completely. I think all these excuses are simply pathetic. It doesn’t matter right now whether nature changed or didn’t change; it doesn’t interest me, because I’m not… It could be that even if nature changed, it could still be that this isn’t the right louse. Anything could be true. But what compels you to look for these excuses in the first place? Because you assume the Sages could not have been mistaken. I do not accept that assumption. Since I do not accept that assumption, then even if these excuses are correct, I do not go looking for excuses. And this isn’t… It may be that nature really did change, and it may be that this louse is not the louse the Sages were speaking about; all the excuses may be correct. It’s just that the motivation to look for excuses doesn’t exist for me, because I don’t have this assumption that says the Sages could not have erred. So naturally I don’t look for excuses. Therefore people often tell me, “Wait a second, who says? Maybe really the louse… maybe science is wrong, or maybe this louse isn’t the louse in the passage.” So the answer I always give is: no one told me. I simply see no reason in the world to look for excuses to justify the Sages, because I don’t assume they were right. They thought what people thought in their time on the scientific plane; the Talmud is full of this. Rav went for thirteen years to a cattle herder in order to learn about the structure of animals for the laws of non-kosher defects, okay? Why didn’t he learn it from Bible codes in the Torah? Because they learned from the experts of their time; they used the conceptions of their time, exactly the way today’s decisors use the scientific and technological conceptions of our time—which it may turn out in another hundred years were mistaken as well. Rabbi, may I ask a question? What?

[Speaker D] May I ask about that? What does a person answer who really claims that the Sages did not err, who assumes the Sages did not err—so what does he answer regarding the fact that there is a commandment, in the laws of offerings, of the offering of a Sanhedrin that issued an erroneous ruling?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The bull for an erroneous ruling. Yes, good question. As long as it’s a law for the Messianic era, it’s not…

[Speaker D] The Sanhedrin derives its authority from the Torah—it’s even more than the Sages.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the Torah says that the Sages can err. A court that erred brings a bull for an erroneous matter. The Torah did not err; the court erred. It’s just that the Torah imposes a law on a court that erred.

[Speaker D] Yes, yes, that’s what I meant.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So they will say…

[Speaker D] So then why make such a claim about the Sages?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either that it’s a hypothetical law for the Messianic era, but it cannot actually happen. It’s like Maimonides and the Raavad regarding a court—there has to be a court greater in wisdom and in number. Maimonides says that in order to change an enactment, even if the reason changed, there has to be a court greater in wisdom and number. So the Raavad brings the Talmud in tractate Beitzah—how did Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai change the matter there of adorning the marketplaces of Jerusalem with fruit? He came later, so how did he change it? And what is he assuming? He assumes that someone later is necessarily also smaller. And Maimonides can say: true, he was later, but he was greater than his predecessors—what’s the problem? He assumes that someone later is also smaller. But if you assume that, then the law that you need a court greater in wisdom and number is a dead letter. Because any later court is by definition later, and therefore also smaller. So how can there be a situation in which there will be a later court that is greater than the earlier ones and can change a rabbinic enactment? According to the Raavad that is basically a hypothetical law, a law that cannot be implemented. I don’t know, but again, I’d have to ask them. I don’t think it’s correct, so there is no point in…

[Speaker C] But isn’t there an analogy to this—or if we look at the approach, the value of “faith in sages” in the Haredi public, for example, which supposedly says that our great rabbis basically cannot err, they surely stated the absolute truth, there is no possibility that they are mistaken, no one can even say that in that public—so it’s the same thing, basically.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, what do you mean—this is exactly what

[Speaker E] we’re talking about. Post hoc justification.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if I go back to our discussion, this basically means that when we have a situation where we have a norm—that is, Jewish law—founded on some factual infrastructure, now there’s a kind of tension here. Because regarding facts, there cannot be a binding ruling; regarding norms, there can be a binding ruling. What happens if they issued a binding ruling on a norm, but it’s based on a factual determination, and I came to the conclusion that the fact is not correct? So what do I do with the authority regarding the norm? Right, the authority regarding the norm—something established by a count requires another count to permit it; with rabbinic enactments you need a court greater in wisdom and number. In other words, how do the rules for changing halakhot or changing enactments work? So I want to argue that in a place where it becomes clear—we need to distinguish here between two things—if reality changed from what it once was, then certainly there’s room to say that another count is needed to permit it. Because the original determination was a valid determination; it’s just that today reality is different. Or to say, fine, even if the reason has lapsed, the enactment still stands; you need another court to cancel it. But if I discover that already back then their mistake was a mistake already then—not that reality changed; they made a mistake—if I reach that conclusion. If that’s so, then the Jewish law was originally determined on the basis of a mistake. It’s like a mistaken transaction; it cancels itself automatically. You don’t need a court to sit and nullify the enactment, just as in a transaction, if it turns out there was a mistaken premise in the sale, you don’t need to reconvey the item back to me—you simply never acquired it. It’s just a mistake; the legal or halakhic act we performed is null and void because it’s based on an error. Meaning, even a halakhic ruling that is based—if it’s clear to us that it’s based on a fact, and if it’s clear to us that that fact isn’t true, was not true from the outset—not that today it isn’t true; it wasn’t true from the outset—then the Jewish law is void from the start. You don’t need another count to permit it. That’s not what they’re talking about when they say another count is needed to permit it, even according to Maimonides, who says that this applies even when the reason has lapsed, because the Rosh disagrees with him on this, holding that when the reason has lapsed you do not need one greater in wisdom and number. But Maimonides says that even if the reason has lapsed, you need one greater in wisdom and number. All that is when the reason has lapsed. But if it becomes clear that the reason was never correct to begin with, then there, in my opinion, even according to Maimonides, the Jewish law is void; you don’t need another count to permit it. And therefore in such a case, although as I said one of the approaches, for example regarding lice, is to say that the norm remains in force because we cannot argue with norms—that’s binding Jewish law—even though regarding the fact we disagree and say that the Sages were mistaken. According to what I’m saying here, we don’t need to get to that, even though I do distinguish between facts and norms. In a place where the norm is derived from the fact, then I do not make this kind of split, where on the fact I disagree with the Sages but the norm remains in force. If the norm is a product of the fact, then the moment I disagree with the fact, the norm is automatically void.

Something like this, yes, in the topic of splitting testimony, the later authorities discuss it—they show that there are some disputes about it—but straightforwardly, Sha’ar HaMishpat, I think, talks about this, that you do not split with regard to a derivative. Meaning, if the two halakhot between which we want to make a split—one of them is a derivative of the other halakhah—then we do not split between them. Only when both halakhot are products of some third factor can I say this halakhah remains and that halakhah is void. But if this halakhah is the result of that halakhah, then I do not distinguish between them. So if that one is void, then this one is void too; everything is void. I just want to say something similar here. Meaning, if the norm is a derivative of the fact, then the moment the fact is void or is shown to be incorrect, then the norm too is void. You can’t preserve—or it isn’t right to preserve—the norm even though the fact has fallen away. Now notice: here I am not making a conceptual claim. Because on the conceptual level there is no contradiction in saying: preserve the norm even though the factual basis is incorrect. There’s no conceptual problem here. I said that with respect to a norm one can demand that I behave in a way that I think is not correct; one cannot demand that I think something I think is not correct, but one can demand behavior. Meaning, the conceptual analysis could also allow the approaches I described earlier that… split it. On the conceptual level this is not self-contradictory. What I’m claiming here is a halakhic or meta-halakhic intuition. I’m saying that if the norm is a derivative of the fact, then it simply isn’t right to do this. Not that conceptually it’s impossible—it’s possible—but it isn’t right to do it. Why? Because it is clear that the norm merely reflects the fact. And if the fact is not correct, then the whole norm that was established is a mistaken transaction; it was established on the basis of an error, and it voids itself. That’s a halakhic claim. This is not a conceptual claim—or a meta-halakhic claim, not a conceptual one. When I said that there is no authority regarding facts, I was making a conceptual claim: there cannot be authority regarding facts. Here there could be such authority; I am only claiming that in my opinion there isn’t. Okay? It’s important to clarify this point.

Now, the conclusion basically is that once I have a derivative—a norm that is a derivative of a fact—then if the fact is void, the norm is void as well. Or in other words, you can’t attach authority even to the norm if it is a derivative of a fact, even though on the basic level there can be formal authority regarding a norm. But if that norm is a derivative of a fact, then no. Now, what happens with our heretics? What I spoke about earlier. So if I think—I don’t know—that I don’t believe in the coming of the Messiah, I came to the conclusion that the Messiah will not come, okay? So am I a heretic who is lowered in and not raised out? I want to argue: if the law to lower and not raise is a derivative of the factual determination, then once the factual determination—again, not because it’s correct; meaning, someone who thinks the Messiah won’t come may be factually mistaken, but if that’s what he thinks, then it’s hard for me to accept that they should throw him into a pit as a criminal. And I also don’t tend to think that his law is like that of a cat, even though he isn’t guilty, like what I said earlier. What proof can I bring you? Maimonides himself—and here I’ll finish, but I just want to get this in—Maimonides himself, in the next halakhah: I read halakhah 1 and halakhah 2; let’s read halakhah 3. Maimonides himself in Laws of Rebels, chapter 3: “When is this said?” Yes, after he talks about “his death is by any person,” and so on, “they lower but do not raise.” “When is this said? About a man who denied the Oral Torah because of his own thoughts and those things that appeared convincing to him, and he followed his deficient understanding and the impulses of his heart, and he denied the Oral Torah first, like Tzadok and Baitos, and likewise all who erred after them. But the children of these erring people”—yes, the well-known Maimonides—“and their children’s children, whom their fathers led astray, and who were born among the Karaites and raised in their view”—yes, the Karaites who do not accept the Oral Torah—“behold, he is like a child captured among them and raised by them, and he is not diligent in grasping the ways of the commandments, for he is like one under compulsion. And even though he afterward heard that he is Jewish and saw Jews and their religion, behold he is like one under compulsion, for he was raised in their error. So too those whom we mentioned who hold to the ways of their Karaite fathers who erred. Therefore it is fitting to bring them back in repentance and to draw them with words of peace until they return to the strength of the Torah.” But it is not true that “his death is by any person.” Not that. Meaning, first of all, you see in Maimonides that there is a claim of compulsion even with respect to opinions. Yes, also with respect to opinions, and of course with respect to belief in the Oral Torah. And how does that

[Speaker C] fit with the maggid shiur from Bnei Brak? I can’t hear. How does that fit with the maggid shiur from Bnei Brak who said…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the problem? Maimonides didn’t say they’ll receive reward as though they fulfilled commandments. They won’t get punished and they won’t be lowered into a pit. What’s the problem? It fits perfectly. The point is: we see here in Maimonides that despite the fact that he’s such a dogmatist who established binding factual determinations, even there there is a claim of compulsion. The only thing is, then you need to start discussing who is considered under compulsion for this purpose. Does everyone who has a different position count as under compulsion? In Maimonides it seems not. Someone who denied on his own and reached a certain conclusion, despite having grown up in a home with the correct beliefs, Maimonides sees him as someone culpable. Someone who already grew up in such an environment, even if afterward it became known to him, he really is under compulsion.

[Speaker H] Although ostensibly it should be exactly the opposite, no? What? Ostensibly it should be exactly the opposite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I completely agree. I’m just saying, in Maimonides, what I only want to show is that in principle there is a claim of compulsion also regarding opinions. That’s written in Maimonides. The question that needs clarification—and here I’m not inclined to agree with Maimonides—is when this claim of compulsion exists, or for whom it exists. Is everyone who reached the wrong conclusion an intentional sinner, as Maimonides seems to hold, and only their children or grandchildren who grew up on that agenda are the ones under compulsion? Or alternatively—why in the world? Someone who reached that conclusion in good faith, he checked things and reached that conclusion—there’s no greater case of compulsion than that. Maybe he’s even more under compulsion than the children of the erring ones, but at least no less.

[Speaker F] And therefore he says,

[Speaker G] That’s why he says “the impulses of his heart.” It sounds like a person who’s kind of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but on the other hand: “he denied the Oral Torah because of his own thoughts and those things that appeared convincing to him.”

[Speaker G] “Appeared to him” isn’t… and then he finishes it by saying they appeared to him because of his impulses, like just a person doing whatever he feels like.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And after his deficient understanding”—what does that mean? “After his deficient understanding” means: are you such a great fool that you’re going against Rabbi Akiva, or Rabbi Akiva Eiger? It doesn’t have to be. A person maybe did not formulate his position properly, but he should not have held that position if it comes out against all the great sages of Israel, because who are you, with your deficient understanding, to go against them?

[Speaker G] Why do we have to explain it that way? It sounds more likely that from the continuation it also seems that way, and also from how he writes it, and also that he recommends to people in his own crowd—yes, if you want to study—so if you put everything together it seems that he’s sort of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? You know, I’ll ask you the question the Talmud would ask you if this were a Mishnah. The Talmud would say: let him divide and teach within the same case. Maimonides should have said: “When is this said? When he followed his deficient understanding.” But if he reached that conclusion, then no. Why does he say if he followed his deficient understanding then yes, but the children of the erring ones, no? Talk about the erring ones themselves: if he followed his deficient understanding then yes, and if they formulated a position then no.

[Speaker G] Here the esotericism comes in—they see this issue as one where he really… this is exactly the esotericism he talks about, that on the one hand it’s for the masses, so that whoever reads it will understand clearly not to think, not to do things. Why doesn’t the Rabbi accept this whole esotericism angle?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not that I don’t accept it; I just… with that I don’t know how to deal.

[Speaker G] Fine, maybe you’re right, maybe not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: from the moment I already said this about Maimonides—once he gives legitimacy to an esoteric statement, to esoteric speech, I have nothing to do with him. Anything he says I can say the opposite and claim that in fact he meant the opposite. I don’t know what to do with that. Maybe you’re right, maybe not. I don’t care. It’s a discussion about what Maimonides thought; that doesn’t interest me. What interests me is what the truth is, not what Maimonides thought. So maybe he also thought the truth—excellent, all good.

[Speaker G] No, if you go by logic and it seems to fit Maimonides, then you have to say that that’s probably what he meant, even if we don’t exactly see it in the text.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That what he writes is like that? Meaning, because he followed… he really wanted to communicate with people.

[Speaker G] It’s not my idea; in the introduction to Maimonides it says the book was intended for such people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: Maimonides himself speaks about esoteric speech, clearly. And that’s exactly the problem, because of that now you can’t learn anything from what he writes. Who knows whether it isn’t esoteric. That’s the danger with people who allow themselves esoteric speech; in my view it’s very serious.

[Speaker C] Well, maybe Maimonides really understood people to the bottom? If we examine most of the formerly observant, and those who are “lite,” or those who took off the kippah and so on in our story today—not hundreds of years ago—if we check them one by one, the overwhelming vast majority, we’ll ask: what happened? What did you discover now that until age fifteen you didn’t know, and now you suddenly discovered it? If we investigate deeply we’ll see they didn’t sit in some seminar and study anything and research anything. Rather, they looked at the community, saw the polished, self-satisfied public, the way of life and culture of those who follow Jewish law, and said: we don’t want to be part of this. And afterward, after they left that society, then they were exposed to information from outside it, and suddenly fountains of insight and wisdom and all the scholarly arguments were revealed to them. And therefore… let me just finish… Maimonides came out exactly against that. Maimonides says…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand. So I’ll tell you in two ways. First, I’m not sure you’re factually right. I think if someone changed his position, there is definitely also an element here of forming a position. Now, not everyone forms positions by means of some long philosophical inquiry over years. Sometimes a person goes by his intuition, goes by what seems right to him. That’s how all human beings make decisions in other areas too. And to make a decision that way—if that is the ordinary way he also makes decisions in other areas—that can still be completely under compulsion, or completely like a child taken captive.

[Speaker C] Not that I’m criticizing them for

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] this; it’s your factual claim that most of them are like that.

[Speaker C] I’m not criticizing them for no reason, I’m only saying…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Second, I’m saying again: even if you’re right, and even if Maimonides understood the inner workings of all sorts of people—and maybe he understood them correctly—so what? In the end I’m making a principled determination. Someone who erred through forming a position is under compulsion, and someone who didn’t, isn’t. Now you can begin to argue or discuss who falls into this category and who falls into that category. That’s a question of diagnostics; that’s not… I’m not dealing with that.

[Speaker K] Maimonides was talking about the overwhelming majority of people

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] whom we also see today. No problem, let him talk, but I’m making the distinction. A principled distinction, a principled distinction between someone who forms a position and someone who does not form a position. Someone who forms a position is under compulsion. That’s the claim. You can say: yes, but that’s only two percent of the population. So I’m talking about two percent of the population. I’m not getting into the factual or diagnostic question right now of who is who.

[Speaker G] Even if we’re talking about such people, they are still apostates out of appetite and not apostates out of spite. So there’s nothing to talk about at all; these aren’t even the people they kill at all. Most of them, most of them are just people who don’t have the energy, want peace and quiet, and aren’t interested. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In any case, that’s it, enough for now. We’ll continue next time. If there’s any question or comment,

[Speaker C] then it may be that what you just said about seeking peace and quiet—about appetite—there is such a thing. If a person decided that what he values is appetite, then that’s a value judgment like any other judgment. It is no less a value judgment than that of someone who decided that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a halakhic definition of an apostate out of appetite versus an apostate out of spite.

[Speaker C] I’m not required to agree with it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a halakhic definition.

[Speaker C] Yes, but I think that this distinction—someone who doesn’t accept the function of desire—it doesn’t quite work. Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is what

[Speaker B] is the source for the idea that heretics must be killed? Say that again? What is the source for the idea that heretics must be killed? It’s written in the Talmud. But where does that come from? I mean, in the Torah they kill someone who desecrates the Sabbath. Aha. They don’t kill a person…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is the source of the matter? I really don’t know. I don’t remember whether a source was brought; I think not. And I think that hints to the fact that killing heretics is not a punishment, because a punishment needs a source—a Torah prohibition with a punishment written in the Torah. Rather, this is some kind of statement that these are not human beings. The attitude toward them is like toward cats. It’s like the Talmud in Bava Kamma 37, where the Talmud says there: “He stood and scattered the nations”—He saw that they had abandoned the seven Noahide commandments and permitted their property to Israel. And there Maimonides in his commentary to the Mishnah writes things quite similar to the Meiri that I mentioned earlier: once they do not behave like human beings, then—Maimonides writes there in his commentary to the Mishnah—do not wonder at this discriminatory attitude toward gentiles; if they do not behave like human beings, then they are treated like animals.

[Speaker B] It’s a very extreme thing to learn without a source.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, okay. There are lines of reasoning that lead to extreme things. But it’s worth drawing attention—maybe I’ll talk about this later, I plan to get there—that one has to be careful not to look at this anachronistically. We are used to seeing the gentiles we know today, and the gentiles we know today are not the gentiles the Sages are talking about, nor those described by the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). And when they stood facing gentiles who behaved like animals, apparently it was obvious to them that these people were not fully in the category of human beings. For us today it’s outrageous because we simply don’t know the gentiles they saw.

[Speaker G] The problem is that even today in the yeshivot they describe those gentiles in the same way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s the conservatism in the yeshivot. But I’m saying that on the principled level one has to be careful with this kind of anachronistic criticism, because it may be that if we had lived the situation—yes, exactly, “the nature of the gentiles changed”—because if we had lived the situation then, it may be that it too would have seemed obvious to us by logic. We just live in a different situation, so it’s hard for us to understand that attitude.

[Speaker H] Following the beginning of the lesson, also on the same subject of “they lower but do not raise,” which may be the reason for “they lower but do not raise,” I had a thought—I don’t think I… it just occurred to me—the question whether it could be that this whole story of “they lower but do not raise” is talking about someone not as a private heretic, but when he brings it out publicly, when he expresses his opinion in public.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, maybe. I said regarding Maimonides that maybe what “his death is by any person” means is that any person kills him not simply the moment there’s a headline saying he’s a heretic, but when people see that he poses a danger. So what’s the novelty? The novelty is that it’s like the law of a pursuer, and “his death is by any person.”

[Speaker H] Yes, no, and I’m saying that according to this we can distinguish between the Thirteen Principles of Faith and the law Maimonides is speaking about here, that maybe here he’s talking about…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says that he is included among the heretics. Where? In those same halakhot we read. He says that someone who denies the Oral Torah is also included among the heretics, and therefore…

[Speaker H] Yes, no, but the question is whether the definition of one who denies the Oral Torah could be like he says, “one who says the Torah is not from Heaven,” “one who says,” “one who says.” Maybe the meaning of “one who says” is that he expresses his opinion publicly. And with a heretic, what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also, also,

[Speaker H] “one who says”—how does he write it there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, also with a heretic it’s like that.

[Speaker H] Yes, yes, no, I’m saying maybe these laws too, even according to Maimonides, are talking from the outset about a person who expresses his opinion publicly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I’m saying: that’s the suggestion I already made when we read Maimonides. I said that maybe the permission to kill them is not simply to walk by and shoot him in the head because I feel like it—if he’s a heretic then I’m allowed. Rather, in a place where he poses a danger, then we no longer scrutinize him or anything—“his death is by any person.” But in a situation where he poses a danger. What does it mean that he poses a danger? That he starts negatively influencing his surroundings.

[Speaker H] Exactly, yes, and then the words Maimonides writes in Laws of Repentance, “one who says,” “there are three who are called heretics.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “One who says” is not a proof; I’m proposing the suggestion.

[Speaker H] No, no, I’m not saying it’s a proof, but the other way around—it’s not a proof. According to this you can interpret Maimonides differently. When he says “one who says there is no such thing as prophecy,” it’s not that he thinks it to himself, it’s that he says it to others.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand, I’m only saying that “one who says” can be interpreted in two ways.

[Speaker H] Yes, yes, I’m saying that according to what you said, it can be interpreted differently.

[Speaker K] Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This inference

[Speaker G] —this inference I heard from Professor Agassi saying, only he took it more extremely. Yosef Agassi. He took it more extremely. He said, “one who says there is no share in…” “one who says there is no Oral Torah has no share in the World to Come.” What does it say? “One who says.” Only one who says. But in principle everyone knows there’s no Torah and so on. That’s not correct. Right, obviously that’s not correct, but that’s how he infers.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s the Mishnah. It means someone who thinks this way, someone who says it in his heart. I think that’s the straightforward understanding, but fine. In any case, I’m saying, from logic—not because it says “one who says,” but from logic—there is definitely room for the claim that this is not simply me walking down the street and shooting him in the head. It’s when he starts spreading his opinions, when he starts influencing. There it really is a bit like a rebellious elder. Because Maimonides too in Laws of Rebels chapter 3 compares it to a rebellious elder. A rebellious elder is exactly the next halakhah that begins after these three halakhot. And with a rebellious elder, he has to instruct that way, not merely behave that way. Otherwise he is not a rebellious elder.

[Speaker H] According to this, then, it could also be that a person who really denies the Thirteen Principles of Faith but does not express it publicly—according to Maimonides, that has no halakhic implication.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Clearly. That’s the claim.

[Speaker J] Ostensibly, ostensibly, in the statement of the Sages that says, “Anyone who says David sinned is nothing but mistaken,” or things like that, David really did sin. So I explained to myself more that “anyone who says is nothing but mistaken”—that when he says it, he says it publicly, like he said.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but what does “nothing but mistaken” mean? Then say: “Anyone who says it, they lower him into a pit.” But if he’s mistaken, then he’s mistaken also when he thinks it, not only when he says it. Either it’s true or it isn’t.

[Speaker J] No, no, no, he can think it but not say it publicly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I’m saying, because “anyone who says” means he’s a transgressor, you’re saying. But it doesn’t say that there. There it says “Anyone who says is nothing but mistaken.” Now if we’re talking about error, then the error is in the thought itself, not in the utterance. As far as error is concerned, what difference is there between saying and thinking?

[Speaker G] It could be that the mistake is to say it.

[Speaker J] He thinks it because in fact he’s right, David sinned. What… David sinned… what does “nothing but mistaken” mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then let it say “he is nothing but harmful,” or “his law is to lower him into a pit.”

[Speaker J] No, I’m just saying that “anyone who says” can be interpreted, in my opinion at least, that way in that saying.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think not. On the contrary, that is proof against it. If it says “is nothing but mistaken,” then the meaning is that it’s apparently a mistake. And if it’s a mistake, then specifically “anyone who says” does not mean only says, but also thinks.

[Speaker J] It’s a mistake to say. There are things one thinks but doesn’t say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A mistake to say, forbidden to say—what does “a mistake to say” mean? They don’t use that expression. In modern Hebrew people say, “It was a mistake to say that,” maybe. “It was a mistake to say; you should have kept it inside.” In Talmudic language that’s not it. “He is nothing but mistaken” means he is mistaken. It’s not that “one who says” means someone whose thought is mistaken.

[Speaker C] Okay. Rabbi, Rabbi, the very interpretation of “anyone who says” as though we’re talking about an absolute opinion—there’s a difficulty here. Because if someone says, for example, “Listen, I’m 99 percent convinced there is a God, one percent not”—do we kill him? Does Maimonides say to kill him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already a different question.

[Speaker C] Ninety-seven… it’s a different question, the question of where the line passes. When does this whole expression… you’re asking where the line passes: in the morning I think yes, in the evening I think no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re asking where the line passes, fine, but…

[Speaker C] I’m not making just a line-passing point here; no, I’m not doing that. I’m trying to say that in general this statement, “I say something, I’m sure of it,” is very, very weak and unclear.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I mean that this is my position, even if it’s only 70 percent. But if that 70 percent is enough for me to make a decision that this is what I think, then I believe it. If it’s not enough to make a decision and I’m only betting on it, then I’m betting on it—even though in both cases it’s 70 percent. I have… in the article “Belief and Betting,” that’s exactly where I talk about this point: people think that betting is the opposite of certainty. No. Betting is the opposite of decision, not of certainty. If there is 70 percent and that is enough for me to make a decision that this is what I think, then I believe. If it isn’t enough to make a decision and I’m only betting on it, then I’m betting—even though in both cases it’s seventy percent.

[Speaker C] I go back to saying that maybe the decision, what the Rabbi is talking about—the decision of what I think—can be expressed only in how you live, your way of life. And that’s what Maimonides was aiming at. A person who lives like a heretic, not a person who at night, when he turns over in bed, thinks something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are you talking about? If thoughts of heresy pass through a person’s mind, no one would imagine that he would be considered a heretic. What do you mean?

[Speaker C] Right, so therefore Maimonides can’t possibly be talking about that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides is talking about “do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes,” at most.

[Speaker C] Right, so Maimonides isn’t talking about someone who thought something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you jumped, you jumped. He’s not talking about someone who just thought something, true. But that still doesn’t mean someone who lives that way. It could also be someone who decided that this is his position.

[Speaker C] What does it mean that he decided? Again, if something passes through his mind, is that called deciding?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You ask him: tell me, do you believe? He says: I don’t believe. He said something! That’s it, he said something. He expressed a position. Not that a thought passed through his head: maybe I believe, maybe not, I have doubts here, doubts there. That’s thinking something. No, he decided.

[Speaker C] The fact that here he put it into words, that brought the whole matter closer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not the putting it into words. The putting it into words is an indication that this is a thought in his head; it isn’t just some passing notion that came up for him to consider. He reached a conclusion; he formed a position.

[Speaker C] It’s very, very complicated, Rabbi. Thoughts—everyone understands… no, therefore I’m saying that the very possibility of judging a person for thoughts,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even when you say he behaves that way, it’s no less complicated—don’t have illusions. When you say a Jew lives that way or doesn’t behave that way—does he have to desecrate every Sabbath, every other Sabbath, how many Sabbaths does he have to desecrate?

[Speaker C] I don’t know. How much did he sacrifice for his faith?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You won’t arrive at mathematical definitions here in any case.

[Speaker H] He sacrificed something for his faith. A Jew who lives according to the approach of Ahad Ha’am, keeps the entire Shulchan Arukh without believing in anything—that’s clearly someone who falls into Maimonides’ category.

[Speaker C] No—“Would that they forsook Me but kept My Torah”—absolutely not. “Would that they forsook Me but kept My Torah”—exactly the opposite. Leave Me, don’t believe in Me, don’t believe in Me, be moral like Ahad Ha’am and you’re perfectly fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, Shmuel, that’s a midrash we won’t get into now. In my opinion you’re completely mistaken, but that’s another discussion, not for now. Okay, friends.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, if there’s another minute, could we maybe get a word about Yom Kippur? How does the Rabbi experience Yom Kippur?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With moderate trembling.

[Speaker E] No, but aside from that, a word, a sentence for Yom Kippur—can we get something?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s funny? It’s a fact, no? I don’t know. It’s a day of soul-searching; a person needs to make decisions. I don’t feel… I wrote on the website about Rosh Hashanah. There’s so much written on the website that I… I don’t think this is judgment in the sense they describe… they keep describing to us all the time that now we’re in this process of judgment—righteous, wicked, now our sentence is being decreed. But it is a day on which a person needs to make an accounting of the soul, see where he stands, and make decisions for what comes next. In that sense, these are certainly the fitting days to do it. That’s all. Nothing beyond that. And not to eat because it’s prohibited. And prayer?

[Speaker E] Concerning prayer on Yom Kippur?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Prayer—pray, what can you do. A Torah-level commandment according to Maimonides, rabbinic according to Nachmanides. And as for the liturgical poems, from the liturgical poems you can read something interesting. You don’t have to go through that war of attrition the entire Yom Kippur.

[Speaker E] So the Rabbi spoke about…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do the soul-searching through the liturgical poems. It’s an opportunity…

[Speaker E] What is soul-searching? That also needs defining.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To think about the year that passed, see where you stand, what you want to improve, and try to think what you decide to do—how to improve, a resolution for the future. Yes, everything that’s described, just without all the mysticism and metaphysics wrapped around it. Simply another junction where we need to stand, look back, and then look forward and see how to improve.

[Speaker C] Maybe the Rabbi spoke about this in one of the lessons or one of the talks online, about the fact that this project has apparently failed. Meaning, our approach to repentance and repair, and the Ten Days of Repentance and Yom Kippur, and in general the whole year—for some reason it doesn’t really succeed. When we examine the overwhelming majority of the public, has the graph gone up or not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think I’ve spoken about this several times, maybe not exactly in this context, but it doesn’t matter. The claim is that the value of the process of repentance lies in the process, not the result. How do we know this? The Sages say: “In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.” And not only because of the crowding. So penitents are on a higher level than the completely righteous. Now ostensibly this is absurd. If you’re a penitent, then at most, in the most perfect case, you became completely righteous. How can it be that a penitent is greater than someone completely righteous? We are forced to conclude that the process of repentance has value in the very walking on that path of repentance, and not only in the result that you come to be completely righteous after having repented. Meaning, the act of repentance itself is a goal; it isn’t merely a means to become righteous and wipe away sins. And I said that I wrote about the problem of perfection and perfecting oneself, with Rabbi Kook—yes—because in the book of Jonah, if you wanted a Yom Kippur talk, I wrote it there, in the book of Jonah the whole discussion between Jonah and the Holy One, blessed be He, is about whether to accept repentance, right? Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, sends Jonah to bring Nineveh to repentance, and Jonah rebels. He says—yes, “Wisdom was asked: what is the punishment of the sinner?” yes, the well-known midrash. Meaning, Jonah says: if they sinned, let them get hit. What do you mean—why should I go there and bring them to repentance and all sorts of things like that? And then the Holy One, blessed be He, takes him through all the stages of the book. At the end of the book He gives him the a fortiori argument of the kikayon, right? “You did not have pity on the kikayon, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow, which came in a night and perished in a night, and shall I not have pity on Nineveh the great city, with thousands in it, much cattle and many people and cattle,” and so on. That a fortiori argument is a ridiculous one, right? Meaning, Jonah didn’t pity the kikayon; he pitied himself. He wanted shade. He was hot, the sun was beating down, and once the kikayon was gone he no longer had shade. So he didn’t pity the kikayon. So what kind of a fortiori argument is this: you didn’t pity the kikayon and I shouldn’t pity Nineveh? I understand. So one can answer this in two opposite ways.

One way is to say that we are mistaken in our understanding of Jonah. What do I mean? We have the mindset of a political commentator. Yes, a political commentator, the moment he sees that a politician has an interest, it’s obvious to him that the action is impure. But that’s not true. It may be that you have an interest, but you are still doing it for the right reasons. In principle that can happen, right? Same thing with Jonah: it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, saw that although he wanted the kikayon for shade, or missed the kikayon because of the shade, besides that he also really pitied the kikayon, got attached to it, felt pity for it—maybe. That can happen. The fact that he has an interest doesn’t mean he acts because of the interest. Yes, like the introduction of the Eglei Tal: the fact that I enjoy Torah doesn’t yet mean that I study because of the enjoyment. To enjoy Torah is excellent, but to study because of the enjoyment is forbidden. Two different things. That’s one possibility, and then it turns out that Jonah really did pity the kikayon. He did pity the kikayon, and the a fortiori argument is excellent, as is the Holy One’s pity for Nineveh.

The opposite a fortiori argument seems to me deeper; the opposite explanation is deeper. Correct—Jonah did not pity the kikayon, he needed it. The Holy One, blessed be He, also does not pity Nineveh; He needs them. If He created them, then apparently He needs them. This is what is called the secret of divine service as a need above. That what we do in serving is actually for Him. He needs us; there are things He cannot do, and He needs us to do them for Him. And therefore it’s called the secret of divine service as a need above, because people recoil from saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, needs human beings. The Ari tied this to the verse “Give strength to God.” We give strength to the Holy One, blessed be He. What’s the idea behind this? Rabbi Kook explains in part 2 of Orot HaKodesh. He says this is the problem of perfection and perfecting oneself. He says that the Holy One, blessed be He, is perfect, but if He is perfect, then one perfection cannot belong to Him—the perfection of becoming perfected. The fact that you become perfected is itself one of the perfections. Now, if He is perfect then He cannot become perfected, so that perfection is missing for Him. That’s why He created us, says Rabbi Kook, because we were created lacking, and our role is to perfect ourselves, and through that we are actually completing something that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself cannot. That is the meaning Rabbi Kook gives to the secret of divine service as a need above. What does it mean that the Holy One needs us? How can it be that He needs something if He is all-powerful and perfect? Yes—precisely because of that there is something He needs that only we can complete for Him: the process of repair. Yes, the whole world is basically a world of repair, the Ari and all those things.

Now what does that actually mean? That we were created lacking for a reason; it is not our failure. Like Adam’s sin: “You came upon me with a pretext,” Midrash Tanchuma, yes? This was a rigged game from the start. It says in the Torah, “When a man dies in a tent,” right? “When a man dies in a tent” is written in the Torah. So the Holy One, blessed be He, comes and decrees death upon Adam after the sin. So Adam says to Him: “You came upon me with a pretext.” After all, it is written in the Torah that preceded the world by so-and-so many generations, “When a man dies in a tent.” What does that mean? That from the start You planned for there to be death for man, so what are You telling me—that it’s because of my sin? It’s like a man whose wife ruined his food, and he takes out of his pocket a bill of divorce already signed by two witnesses and gives it to her and divorces her. So she says to him: “You came upon me with a pretext”—you already had a signed divorce bill in your pocket before… Because the Holy One, blessed be He, created us lacking and sinful on purpose. Someone who does not sin—the Holy One does not need him. To be perfect—the Holy One manages fine on His own. The Holy One needs human beings, and therefore He also gave us the power of choice and did not program us to do what needs to be done. And therefore even if there were an option to hypnotize me so that I would do only the right things and refrain from the wrong things, I would refuse. Because the goal is to choose to do right and not do wrong. Not simply to do right and not do wrong. It has to come through choice.

[Speaker B] So therefore to kill someone who doesn’t believe? I can’t hear. So therefore it’s worthwhile to kill someone who is a heretic? That seems to contradict everything we learned today.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, what we learned today is that it’s not right to kill him.

[Speaker B] No, but I can’t understand the Talmud—how does it even propose such things?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said, the Talmud itself suggests that maybe, at most, even according to Maimonides' view, only if he causes some kind of harm. And I want to argue—though I’ll get to that later—that even that isn’t correct. Only if it comes from impulse, but we’ll get to that later. In any case, let me come back to this: I want to say that basically we were created in order to sin and repent. We were not created in order to be righteous. Someone who doesn’t sin—what is he even doing here? It’s completely unnecessary. And that’s why the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Noah—to Jonah, Jonah not Noah, I don’t know why I said Noah—to Jonah, He says: you don’t understand the idea. I created Nineveh because I need them. And the fact that they sinned and need to repent—it’s not that I’m going beyond the letter of the law with them, forgiving them despite the fact that they sinned. That’s what I wanted: that they should sin and repent. That’s why they’re there. Therefore, a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person. A penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person because being righteous—the Holy One, blessed be He, could have created us righteous from the outset, without free choice, and everything would have been wonderful. Our purpose is self-perfection through development, because that He cannot do for us. And if that’s so, I’m coming back to the question someone asked here earlier: what’s the point of repenting when every time we fall again? Because the purpose of repentance is the act of repenting. The fact that afterward we fall—fine, then we fall afterward, so we’ll repent again. And that’s excellent. Every time we repented, we completed another piece of development, even though perfection doesn’t come as a result of that. We didn’t reach perfection. But we did go through the process of development, and we’re here for the process of development, not in order to reach perfection. And therefore it’s perfectly fine as long as we’re thinking, trying to improve, and working on it seriously. So what if we fall afterward? The fact that we fall afterward is almost built in. This is the conduct of the One “who is awesome in His plot,” because “with a plot You have come against me.” It is decreed upon us to sin. Why? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, needs us to sin. He can’t do without it. Because if we don’t sin, how will we develop? Okay, there—you even got a short talk for Yom Kippur.

[Speaker J] I liked that. Can you send that column? What? Can you send that column? Did you write this somewhere?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on the website. Look up “the problem of perfection and development”; search for it there on Google, on the site.

[Speaker G] I think the Rabbi said this last Yom Kippur, something in that style. A column on the last Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah—the Rabbi wrote that it’s like the Sisyphean stone, that you raise it up and it has to fall again and be raised again.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it appears in a few places. I don’t remember exactly anymore in what contexts. There’s no problem with “I will sin and repent.” Who asked here about “I will sin and repent”? I didn’t manage to see. There’s no problem with “I will sin and repent.” The Hasidim say—although the Hasidim sometimes are also right, it happens… What is “I will sin and repent”? Sorry, there are Hasidim here too, I don’t want to offend anyone, but just a cynical remark. The claim of “I will sin and repent” is the real initial assumption. “I will sin and repent” means: I understand that my role is to sin and return. If I don’t sin and I remain completely righteous, what have I accomplished? It’s worth nothing. What am I here for? Therefore there is an initial assumption here: no, I will sin intentionally in order to repent, because I know that the process is the goal. But the Talmud says, “One who says, ‘I will sin and repent,’ is not given the opportunity to repent.” The Talmud says: although this is a correct initial assumption—in principle, that really is what we should have done—the instruction is not to do it, not to behave that way. Don’t worry, you’ll sin even without doing it on your own initiative. You’ll sin anyway. You should try not to sin. Don’t help the Holy One, blessed be He, more than He helps Himself. But the initial assumption is a correct initial assumption. Here’s someone who correctly understands his role in the world.

[Speaker G] That’s almost a Sabbatean idea already.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said it’s a Hasidic idea, but it’s not the plain meaning… it’s not the plain meaning of “I will sin and repent” in the Talmud, yes, obviously not. But it is a correct principle in itself.

[Speaker C] “A person does not fully grasp words of Torah unless he has first stumbled over them.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, may you have a good final sealing, may it be a year—may you have a good final sealing. A good year—not just a better year; a better year says nothing. May it be a good year, and inshallah, for all Israel, for the whole world.

[Speaker C] Amen. Thank you very much.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much.