Dogmatics – Lecture 6
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- [1:25:33] The inclination as a deterministic concept and the connection to coercion
- [1:27:12] Kaufmann’s theory: investigating the meaning of idolatry
- [1:29:31] The inclination as a factor in creating a mistaken theory
- [1:30:43] The idea of beauty and the connection to worship of the ideal
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s begin. In previous sessions we spoke about the question of authority regarding facts, and how one can even talk about disagreeing with the sages on factual matters, especially where those facts are the basis for a halakhic ruling. We brought the example of lice, right, killing a louse on the Sabbath and so on. In the end, we reached the conclusion, or the view, that since principles of faith are factual claims, you can’t command a person to hold factual claims. We discussed Maimonides’ positive commandment number one, the commandment of faith / belief, and you basically can’t demand that a person hold a factual claim. And I brought the well-known Rabbi Chaim, right, who says that a heretic under coercion or in error is a poor unfortunate heretic—yes, he’s still a heretic. And the question is what exactly he means. Does he mean to say that the person does not believe the correct beliefs, simply factually—it doesn’t matter whether he’s guilty or not guilty, but bottom line, he doesn’t believe the correct facts? That is merely a description, not a judgment. So on that point, on the one hand I have no problem accepting such a claim; on the other hand there’s no point in making it, because it’s obvious. I mean, it goes without saying. Therefore people usually explain—I haven’t seen it in the original source, it’s always quotations from Kovetz Shiurim that cites him—but usually people explain that Rabbi Chaim probably wants to make a judgmental claim. Meaning, regarding a heretic there are no exemptions of inadvertence or coercion or whatever. In other words, there’s also a claim against him, not just a description that he holds incorrect views. Rather, there is a claim against him, even though generally “the Merciful One exempts a person under coercion,” but not in this area. In this area, if you hold incorrect views, there’s some kind of problem. Maybe—and I think I mentioned this—it could be that he grounds it not in the transgression itself, but in the fact that someone who holds such views is simply not within the category of a person. Again, this is not wickedness. The problem is not the wickedness involved, but rather that he is like an animal. Meaning, someone who understands nothing, with the mind of an animal. So you can’t relate to him as a human being. But it doesn’t seem reasonable to me, in any case, that he means this in the sense of blame. That this person is a criminal even though it’s complete coercion. If it’s complete coercion, then he’s not a criminal. It’s very hard to accept these statements on the level of criminality. Yes, I said that the term heretic has a dimension of judgment. It’s not just some objective description. But still, I don’t think it’s a judgment concerning the degree of culpability of that person; rather it’s a judgment about the person himself. Think about someone who behaves like an animal. He behaves like an animal—maybe he’s not to blame, he has no intelligence, nothing, he understands nothing. Fine. But he still behaves like an animal. That’s the fact. Maybe there’s another example of this: a minor pursuer. Right? A three-year-old child takes his father’s gun and starts shooting in all directions. He understands nothing, he’s guilty of nothing, but you can kill him—or must kill him—if he’s pursuing and threatening other people. Why? Because once he has done that, I’m not killing him as a punishment; I’m killing him in order to solve the problem. Meaning, responsibility for solving the problem falls on him. Of course it’s an analogy, it’s not exactly the same thing, but I want to say that often conduct that imposes sanctions or condemns someone else is not necessarily because of some criminal dimension in it, but perhaps because of the objective state he is in. In such an objective state, he is simply not a person. What, it doesn’t matter that he has two legs, two arms, a heart, eyes, and everything human beings have. Bottom line, on the essential level he’s not really in the category of a person. Maybe. It could be that this is what Rabbi Chaim means. As for myself, I don’t agree with that claim at all. A person is a person, okay, a person who is mistaken. But I think that… at least as to what Rabbi Chaim meant, it seems to me he meant something like that. Now, in order to see a bit more clearly this issue of coercion in matters of opinion, I also spoke a bit about Maimonides, who says there about the children of the mistaken ones, right, those mistaken people who followed their own thoughts—captured children, yes, Karaites or something like that—so their children are already like captured children and are under coercion. Meaning, even Maimonides, who is dogmatic—in other words, he does think there are factual claims that are binding, he has the thirteen principles and so on, we’ve seen that all along in Maimonides—even he still agrees that there are situations in which a person is indeed considered coerced. Meaning, he holds an incorrect position, and we still view him as coerced, even though this concerns conceptions, principles of faith / belief. If he was truly born into such an environment that it was almost forced on him to hold those opinions, then we see that Maimonides is not making some principled claim that the concept of coercion simply does not apply to beliefs. No, the concept of coercion does apply. He probably understands, though, that if you are not a captured child but rather an ordinary person living in an ordinary society, then in practice you probably aren’t coerced. Not that coercion is impossible in such a case, but that you are not called coerced because you really did have the ability to know the truth, and if you didn’t arrive at the truth, then that’s apparently your fault. So that’s the claim. And then it means that there is some element of blame here, yes—as opposed, say, to Rabbi Chaim, if I am right in how I interpreted him before, who should not have accepted the distinction between a captured child and somebody else. A captured child and somebody else differ only on the level of blame, how guilty he is for holding incorrect beliefs. If you say you don’t care about the question of blame, and if a person holds incorrect beliefs then he is an animal, then he is not a person—if that’s so, then that’s also true of a captured child. What difference does it make? Therefore, this distinction that Maimonides makes between ordinary coercion, or between a captured child and a person who holds incorrect beliefs, itself shows that probably what Rabbi Chaim says is not correct, at least according to Maimonides. And I perhaps want to expand a bit more on this issue and look at two very well-known responsa of the Radbaz. Yes, the Radbaz, one of the sages of Egypt in the sixteenth century. One moment. Fine. So there are two responsa of the Radbaz—I’m just taking this from some article that cites them; it’s more convenient for me to read it from there. The first responsum of the Radbaz—this is actually a very famous responsum, people often bring this responsum of the Radbaz; the second responsum—this is the first one, in a moment we’ll also see the second—they bring as a source for the claim that there is such a thing as coercion in matters of belief. Meaning, that if someone holds an incorrect view, one can still treat him as coerced, contrary to what seems to come out of Rabbi Chaim, yes, that he is a heretic. So the Radbaz is speaking about a person who interpreted the passage of the sin of the golden calf and said that the children of Israel basically understood that Moses our teacher was God. That was essentially the issue. So they sent the Radbaz a question: what do we do with such a denier? Like, what are we supposed to do with him? Now here there’s a very delicate point, because for some reason I always had it in my head—until I looked again now at the responsa—that the Radbaz was talking about someone who himself thought Moses our teacher was God. Meaning he himself thought that; that’s an incorrect conception, he’s a heretic. Now the question is what to do with him. But the Radbaz is not talking about such a person. He is talking about a person who, when interpreting the sin of the golden calf, interpreted it to mean that the children of Israel thought Moses our teacher was God; that was their sin, that was the idolatry they worshipped. And that is what arouses the wrath of the Radbaz. In any event, for our purposes it matters less exactly where that person went wrong than the question how we relate to that mistake. So he says as follows: “Regarding the preacher who preached and sharpened the knife of his thought and deepened his plot concerning the matter of the sin of the calf, and seized upon Israel things that were not so, and loaded upon the generation of the wilderness things that never entered their hearts—and He, may He be blessed, was only slightly angry, while this preacher added evil.” Yes, this preacher turned the sin of the children of Israel in the sin of the golden calf into a much graver sin than it really was. Why is it more severe, by the way? What?
[Speaker D] Why is it more severe, by the way, if it’s that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The claim is that to think Moses our teacher is God is much worse than to think the calf is God. The calf being God is ordinary idolatry, but turning Moses our teacher into a deity—whose whole significance is to be the representative of the Holy One, blessed be He—that in his eyes is apparently something much, much worse. “The deed pains me and there is none to comfort me, and it is not only against him that I complain, but also against earlier ones, such as the author of the Book of Faith” and so on, “who wrote in this matter something that was not so. Look in their words, for I do not wish to copy them lest they be punished.” Meaning there were others who apparently went in similar directions, and he doesn’t bring them here. So he says: “And despite all the evil of their words, they did not reach as evil, weak, and false a reasoning as the reasoning of this preacher. And I want to conduct myself with him as I conduct myself with the Karaites who deny the words of our rabbis of blessed memory. And I must bring proof from Scripture itself, according to the order of the verses, in order to refute their words.” That itself is an interesting point. Meaning, right now he wants to prove to that person that he is mistaken. It’s not enough that we have a tradition that there is a prohibition of idolatry, or that we have a tradition that the children of Israel in the wilderness generation, the generation of knowledge, and so on, did not sin in such a way—that’s not enough. In order to convince this person I have to bring him proofs from the biblical verses that he is mistaken. And then if he insists despite seeing those proofs, then maybe we can regard him as a sinner. But without that, no. Therefore he says: “And I must bring proof from the verse to refute their words.” It says, “And the people believed, and they heard that the Lord had remembered…” and so on. “Behold, even though Moses performed the signs before the eyes of the people, nevertheless they attributed their faith to the Lord, may He be blessed, for He is the One who remembered them.” Meaning, we see that the people of Israel did not confuse the Holy One, blessed be He, with Moses our teacher. Moses performed the signs, but no one imagined that Moses our teacher was the God in whose name those signs were done; rather they believed in the Holy One, blessed be He, because of the signs Moses performed. “And the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘It is the finger of God.’ If the magicians acknowledged His divinity, then all the more so the holy nation. It says, ‘And they believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant’—behold, explicitly they believed that Moses was a servant and not a god.” Nice for you, but I’m in the middle of the lecture and I’m also working. “And they further said, ‘Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord’—behold, even when they were complaining, they attributed death and life to the Lord and not to Moses. They further said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do,’ and if they had attributed divinity to Moses they should have said, ‘All that you speak we will do,’ and this is a hidden form of speech, not someone standing before us. ‘You speak with us and we will hear’ and so on—behold, the words of the Lord kill, not the words of Moses. And it is written, ‘And the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain.’ How can even fools believe that the Glory is on the top of the mountain and the deity is within the camp?” Yes, Moses our teacher is below, but the fire and the glory of the Holy One, blessed be He, are above on the mountain. If Moses our teacher is the Holy One, blessed be He, he says, then something here doesn’t add up. “Why should I go on? Truly there are in this reasoning damages and losses to religion more than what you wrote, and their Master would not desire that we say such things about them. And far be it from Nachmanides, of blessed memory, to say that this is a valid reasoning and to reject it. Rather, because the verse pressed him—‘Make us a god’—that’s where this begins. What does ‘make us a god’ mean? They apparently understood that in place of the God who was Moses our teacher, make us someone else to replace him. He said that it is known for certain that Israel did not think that Moses was the deity; and this preacher changes what is known, and his words are words of falsehood, and it is forbidden to write them, all the more so to believe them, and certainly to expound them in public. And perhaps one may teach a bit of merit on his behalf, that perhaps he said this only about the mixed multitude, not about Israel, Heaven forbid. But if he said it about Israel, he deserves great punishment, whoever he may be.” Meaning, the slander of Israel—that is the great sin here, not the view itself, because this interpreter does not himself hold that view directly; rather this slander, that Israel held such a distorted conception, that is basically his great sin. “But because punishments are not imposed unless there is prior warning, if this preacher repents from preaching such blemishing things in public, good; and if not, let me know and I will strike him with a stick that draws no blood.” Yes, no matter, I’ll hit him with a stick. “And may you delight in abundant peace” and so on. That is the first responsum. Now the second responsum, which is more well-known, on the same issue. It says: “Regarding what you asked concerning the preacher who preached publicly that Israel thought that Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, was a god. I already wrote to you how much blemish and falseness there is in this reasoning. Although I wrote that one may teach a little merit on his behalf, that he said this only concerning the mixed multitude”—that it wasn’t the people of Israel who thought this, but the mixed multitude—“I chose my words carefully when I wrote ‘a little merit,’ and the truth is that it is little of the little. Because these things are called by me tales of blemish, I did not see fit to burden my pen with them. For it would have been proper to rebuke not only this one but all the preachers who come from those kingdoms that invent things”—I don’t know from what country this preacher was, but he claims that there was some custom in that place, a kind of preachers who made things up out of their own hearts in order to wrench the verses entirely from their plain meaning and from the sacred midrashim of our rabbis of blessed memory, “forming foreign images and delighting in the children of foreigners. And one would need to elaborate on this and make an entire book of it. And I know that my words would pain both those who are present and those who are not, and may their Master permit them, so I chose silence.” Apparently there was some place where a certain fashion of interpretation existed, or wrenching things from their plain meaning, somewhat similar to the allegorists in the responsum of the Rashba, yes, with Yedaiah ha-Penini, who were accustomed to interpret, for example, Abraham as form and Sarah as matter. And basically all the passages dealing with Abraham and Sarah are some allegory about matter and form, a philosophical allegory. So the Rashba excommunicates the masters of these interpretations—well, the people of those interpretations. Something like that apparently existed there too, some region where they used to make all kinds of such blemishing homilies. Now we proceed. “As to whether this preacher deserves punishment for speaking against the honor of Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, for we hold that just as retribution is exacted from the worshippers, so retribution is exacted from the worshipped.” Meaning, that person is actually harming the honor of Moses our teacher. Fine, when I interpret him as speaking only about the mixed multitude and not about Israel, that’s one thing—but what about Moses our teacher? Meaning, even if the mixed multitude thought this, still just as retribution is exacted from the worshippers, it is also exacted from the worshipped. So if Moses our teacher was worshipped as idolatry, then this is also an injury to his honor. “As stated in aggadic literature in many places. And it occurred to me to correct what he twisted by saying that the mixed multitude thought so in their hearts, but did not treat him with actual divine worship and did not make this known to anyone, and we do not say that just as retribution is exacted from the worshippers so it is exacted from the worshipped except where they actually worship them and treat them as a deity. But this man did not mean to say that they worshipped him, only that they thought he was a god.” Meaning, he says, perhaps he spoke about the mixed multitude, maybe, as a tiny bit of merit—and Moses our teacher did not know that they viewed him as a god, that they worshipped him. Yes, they didn’t really worship Moses; that’s just what they thought, and Moses our teacher would not know. So what follows? If Moses doesn’t know, then certainly no retribution is exacted from the worshipped. What do you want from Moses our teacher? He doesn’t even know they are worshipping him or think he should be worshipped. So certainly when it says that retribution is exacted from the worshipped just as from the worshipper, that is only when the worshipped know that the worshippers are worshipping them and they cooperate with it. But where he doesn’t know about it, and they didn’t actually worship him, rather it was only what they thought in their hearts, then clearly Moses our teacher bears no disgrace in that. “Even though it is written, ‘in order to seize the house of Israel by their heart’”—yes, even if in their hearts there is an idolatrous thought and they didn’t act on it, still there is a claim against them—“that applies regarding the worshipper, from whom retribution is exacted for the thought of idolatry. But regarding the worshipped, retribution is exacted only when they are actually worshipped by one of the modes of worship. And the wording precisely indicates that.” Yes, that is the wording of that statement, that retribution is exacted from the worshipper and the worshipped when he is actually worshipped, not when someone merely thinks of worshipping him. “Thus it occurred to me to explain according to his view”—that same interpreter under discussion here. So maybe that’s how he understood it, and then perhaps it isn’t so terrible. “But he himself did not allow me to explain his words that way.” Yes, this reminds me—I’m remembering now—that I once heard on the radio an interview with Ephraim Shach, the son of Rabbi Shach. And he said that he was at the dollar distribution with the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York. He stood there in line, and when he reached the Rebbe, the Rebbe said to him: Who are you, what’s your name? He said: Ephraim. He said: Ephraim what? He said: Ephraim Shach. He said: Are you related to the Rosh Yeshiva? He said: Yes, I’m his son. So he said to him: Wait here on the side a moment. He finished the whole distribution, and then he said to him: Listen, you’re going home and you’re going to meet your father—tell him it’s not me, it’s my Hasidim. Meaning, tell him: I did not declare myself the Messiah; it was my Hasidim who decided that I’m the Messiah. It’s not—what do you want from me? This is exactly the worshipper and the worshipped that appears here in the responsum. So fine. He said: Very good, I’ll tell him. He got to his father in Bnei Brak, went in, and said: Look, Father, I was with the Rebbe, and the Rebbe asked me to tell you that it isn’t him, it’s his Hasidim. So Rabbi Shach says to him—as he recounted there on the radio—his father told him, yes, Rabbi Shach said to him: Fine, let him tell that to his Hasidim, not to me. Right? Meaning, if you want to claim that it’s only your Hasidim, and you’re not cooperating with it, you don’t want it—then don’t tell me you’re not the Messiah and it’s only them. Tell them that you aren’t the Messiah. Meaning, if you’re telling only me, that means you are in fact cooperating with the matter, and it is indeed under your influence. Okay? You can’t tell me you’re not cooperating. Here too, same thing. Meaning, if Moses our teacher—or the worshipped one—knows that they are worshipping him and remains silent, then that means he has a part in it. He can’t tell us, no no, it’s just them, it has nothing to do with me, I’m not involved at all. If you knew, then you should have corrected them. In any event… Rabbi?
[Speaker E] Yes? Sorry if I’m asking too simple a question, but how can one even blame Israel—and also Moses our teacher in this case—for idolatry if they still hadn’t received the Torah? I mean, this was in the middle of that process.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says it’s a formal sin? So—
[Speaker E] What is it then?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Idolatry is something problematic even if it wasn’t—even if it wasn’t some formal transgression.
[Speaker E] It’s not something immoral. I mean, how could they know it was forbidden without the Torah?
[Speaker F] We have the seven Noahide commandments.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the Holy One, blessed be He, is God, then you may not worship someone else—you have to worship Him.
[Speaker E] But did they know that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They didn’t know that the Holy One, blessed be He, is God?
[Speaker E] No, they knew that the Holy One, blessed be He, is God, but does that necessarily mean there is a prohibition on worshipping another god? Not necessarily.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because there is no other. What do you mean? Not a formal prohibition—there is no other. When you follow…
[Speaker E] If it’s not a formal prohibition, why do we have claims against them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s something problematic.
[Speaker E] But if there’s no formal prohibition, why do we have claims against them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the claims are not because of… Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, have a claim against Cain for murdering Abel?
[Speaker E] No, that I understand, because that really is immoral, and He implanted morality in us—I accept that explanation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are things for which one can be held accountable even without a formal command.
[Speaker E] But idolatry seems less trivial than murder.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His claim, his claim, is that no. Meaning, idolatry is something a person should understand on his own, even if there were no formal command forbidding it.
[Speaker C] It’s immoral too. I mean, it’s also immoral to take a God who created the world and not worship Him, to mock the matter and go worship some lump of watermelon. That’s immoral, it’s not decent behavior.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, although you could say maybe they worshipped both Him and something else, I don’t know. Still, about the moral issue here I could argue. But there is some conception here that says: what do you mean? He’s not God, so if you make him into God then you’re either an idiot or wicked—I don’t know exactly, it depends why you’re doing it. We’ll see that in a moment. So he says: “He himself did not allow me to explain his words that way, from what you wrote, that he interpreted the verse ‘And Moses entreated the face of the Lord his God’ as follows: If they made me a god, there is no objection in this, because I accept You as my God.” End quote. That is a quote from that same interpreter. That Moses our teacher says to the Holy One, blessed be He: If they made me into a god, it’s not so terrible, don’t be upset with them. Why? Because I accept You as God, so if I am their god and You are my God, then it’s transitive. Right? So You are also their God. Therefore there’s no need to be upset. So if that is how that interpreter explains it, then it follows that Moses knew that they had made him into a god. And these were not merely thoughts in the heart. So Moses our teacher did know it. In short, that interpretation doesn’t work. And if so…
[Speaker G] If the Rabbi could improve the audio quality, the sound? There’s something—I’m hearing a bit weakly maybe?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you all feel there’s a problem?
[Speaker B] Yes, yes, it’s a bit weak.
[Speaker G] It’s weak but clear. At first I thought it was only on my end, but when I saw others suddenly asking too, and it shifted, I allowed myself to comment. Thanks.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Oh, it’s fine, no need to apologize for commenting. One second. Is it better now? Definitely. Definitely. Significantly. A small angle makes an interesting difference here. Okay. In any event… yes. “And if so, this is more difficult than anything you wrote, for why did Moses not turn them away from this error and explain to them the truth, that there is no God besides the Lord? And if you say that he did turn them away but they did not accept it, he should have judged them as idolaters—for what difference is there to me between a calf and anything else? And we hold that anyone who acknowledges idolatry, even if he did not worship it, is a blasphemer. And one who accepts upon himself any one of the forms of idolatry as a god is liable to stoning, even if he merely lifted a brick and said to it, ‘You are my god’; and likewise in any similar case he is liable. How can it be that the mixed multitude accepted Moses as a god and he knew and remained silent? This is a great deficiency in the bosom of the chosen one of God and the trusted one of His house, to say such a thing about him.” “And I found no reason to exempt him from punishment except that he errs in his reasoning. His remedy is his corruption. And this is not considered like one who errs in one of the principles of religion because of his defective reasoning, for he is not called on that account a denier.” This is the well-known sentence of the Radbaz. What is he saying? The only defense I still have for that interpreter is simply that he really believes it. That’s what he thinks, that’s his conclusion, that’s how he reads the verses. What can I do? That’s genuinely what he thinks, so he is under complete coercion. This is called “one who errs in his reasoning,” or what is called coerced in matters of belief. “And he is no worse than one who errs in one of the principles of religion because of his defective reasoning, who is not called on that account a denier.” You see? This is an interesting sentence. There are principles of faith / belief, Maimonides’ thirteen principles. Maimonides says that someone who doesn’t believe them is a denier, a heretic. He says no—that’s only someone who does believe them and yet somehow deviates from them. I’ll explain that a little more. But someone who sincerely does not believe them—what do you want from him? He is under complete coercion; he is not called a denier. Right? So remember Rabbi Chaim’s “poor unfortunate heretic”? This is exactly the opposite.
[Speaker C] And at this point, it’s impossible not to mention Shalom Tzadik. The Rabbi still hasn’t said anything about him, and this whole passage is really his whole story.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. It doesn’t sound interesting to me.
[Speaker C] The whole internet is buzzing about this guy. There’s even an article about him—they just did a piece on him in Makor Rishon.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The internet buzzes about so much nonsense that I don’t know—that’s no indication of anything. No, I don’t see it. I wrote about it briefly. They asked me on the website; I wrote about it briefly. But it doesn’t sound especially interesting to me. Fine, in any event, so he says there is an error in beliefs here. “And behold, Hillel was a great man and erred in one of the principles of religion when he said, ‘Israel has no Messiah, for they already consumed him in the days of Hezekiah.’” That’s a Talmudic text in the chapter Helek, where Hillel says Israel has no Messiah; they already had him in the days of Hezekiah, the Messiah will not come. Okay? So he essentially denied one of the principles. “And because of this error they did not regard him as a denier, Heaven forbid.” How does the Radbaz know? “For if not, how could they transmit teachings in his name?” Yes, and they even called him Rabbi Hillel, of course. How can they report teachings in his name if he is a denier? Therefore it is clear they did not regard that position of his as denial. “And the reason is clear: since his denial was only because he thought that what appeared true in his reasoning was true, therefore he is coerced and exempt. So too here, he errs in his reasoning”—that same interpreter under discussion. “And on the contrary, according to this distorted view of his, he thinks he is elevating Moses our teacher, peace be upon him, higher than his actual level. And far be it from the master of all the prophets that one should say such a thing about him.” Yes, that’s his addition. But basically he says the opposite: I’m actually increasing the greatness of Moses our teacher. So he’s even acting with good intentions, not only mistaken. So all the more so one cannot relate to him as a heretic, as a denier. In general, we also saw in the previous responsum, where this point doesn’t appear, that he still takes the trouble to prove it from the verses. He asks the questioner to show that interpreter the proofs from the verses, and only if the interpreter won’t accept them despite the proofs from the verses can one strike him with a stick. But if not, then he is coerced, and therefore one cannot make claims against him. In that sense, here it is written more explicitly, but really one can see it in the previous responsum too. “In sum, set witnesses upon him that he said the mixed multitude made Moses our teacher into a god and he knew of it. Further testify to him in my name and show him this letter, that the interpretation he made is an evident error in the plain meaning of the verses.” “An evident error” meaning a simple error, an obvious one—not famous in the sense that many people made this mistake, but rather that anyone who looks sees it is a mistake. “And it is a face not according to Jewish law, and destruction to religion follows from it. If he wishes to retract, good; and if not, send me this testimony and I will cast a great wall upon him.” Yes, bring down a great wall on him. “For if he had written to me I would have rebuked him and compelled him and driven him until excommunication”—meaning I would have excommunicated him, of course. A play on words. “But I have not seen his writing, and it is not my way to be consulted where there is no one seeking and asking. God will seek the insult of His chosen one, and all Israel are innocent.”
[Speaker E] Rabbi, but is it really the same thing to say he is mistaken and that he is coerced? I mean, when you say he is mistaken it sounds like he’s committing a transgression, and when you say he is coerced it sounds like he isn’t liable. It’s a bit contradictory, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. If the error is under coercion, then he isn’t liable. When you say he is mistaken, the meaning is a coerced mistake. Yes, that’s the same thing. Okay, sort of, okay. So what we basically see here in the Radbaz is that even with respect to faith / belief and opinions, the claim of coercion certainly applies, and that is a reflection of what we saw in previous sessions: that one cannot demand of a person that he hold any factual claim. Because if he doesn’t hold it, then either you convince him, and then there’s no problem—but if you haven’t managed to convince him, what do you want from him? At the moment he is coerced in his belief.
[Speaker D] On the other hand, though, you also see that you can punish him if he doesn’t retract, even though it’s under coercion. I mean, like we discussed before about the fact that he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because if he doesn’t retract then it won’t be coercion. Because once I’ve brought him simple proofs, the Radbaz at least assumes that anyone who looks at these proofs sees that it’s obvious. If he still won’t accept it, that means it’s not coercion—then it’s his evil inclination.
[Speaker D] And if it were something connected to analysis, where it’s a bit hard to understand, then maybe he wouldn’t say to punish him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think not. No, that’s coercion in every sense. No, that—
[Speaker D] Meaning from the reasoning you said at the start of the line and in previous sessions—that we remove a danger simply, not because we remove a danger—meaning he’s mistaken, we know he’s mistaken, and there is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s danger—if it’s only danger—then why should I care whether he’s coerced or not? Remove the danger in any case.
[Speaker D] No, but first you warn him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t warn him, so what? Suppose you can’t warn him—then what?
[Speaker D] Okay, if you can’t, but when you can, then you warn him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Still, you would remove him. So there is no condition that you must warn him first. If this is only removing a danger and not a sanction because he is a criminal or because he is not okay, then it doesn’t matter at all whether you warned him or not.
[Speaker D] No, if it’s possible to remove it by peaceful means.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If possible, yes. But that’s not a condition for punishment. If it’s possible to show him and bring him back in repentance, excellent—that’s always better. But it’s not a condition such that without that you have no business touching him, right? That is not how it’s presented in the Radbaz. In the Radbaz it seems to be a condition. So therefore I think the Radbaz simply understands that his proofs from the verses are so clear that if he doesn’t accept them, then he’s just being stubborn; it’s no longer coercion. But in the meantime, as long as he is coerced, then he is coerced—what can you do? So in the end what we basically see here is that there is a claim of coercion also regarding faith / belief and opinions, and therefore here too we are really discussing the plane of blame. Meaning, if he is coerced then he is exempt, and if he is not coerced then one can make claims against him. By the way, thoughts without actual worship are not idolatry—you are not liable to death for such a thing. People don’t always know this. Idolatry is when you worship the idol, yes? When you perform the religious service in action, then it is called idolatry. Either one of the four modes of worship or the form of worship specific to that idol. But if you merely think that it is an idol without worshipping it in its mode of worship, then that is not idolatry. There is no death penalty, but still one may lower and not raise him and all the definitions of a heretic apply.
[Speaker E] And is that true for every thought, Rabbi? Even sinful thoughts, no matter what kind?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? What is true for every thought?
[Speaker E] That you can’t punish for a thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the moment I can’t think of something for which we punish for thought, but that’s not inconceivable. In principle it’s possible. I’m only saying that in the laws of idolatry, the prohibition is only to worship idolatry. To think heretical thoughts, or even thoughts of idolatry—
[Speaker E] I’m thinking very strongly about a different transgression.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that mean, “thinking very strongly”? Thinking about a transgression?
[Speaker E] I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking of a transgression in thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You need an example of committing a transgression through thought. No—
[Speaker E] So I’m asking: maybe there is no transgression in thought at all? Maybe? Maybe there isn’t? Maybe? Maybe the transgression is only in action? Maybe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is. Love of God, fear of God, love of one’s fellow—things like that—apparently yes, commandments that concern thought.
[Speaker E] That’s a positive commandment. What about a negative commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are prohibitions regarding—again, no punishment—like not being afraid in war. That’s a prohibition. But again, there in the simple sense, being afraid probably also means acting in a fearful way. Meaning, it’s not a prohibition on the very existence of fear, but on behaving fearfully. Probably—I haven’t checked right now, but presumably. In short, there are prohibitions that are prohibitions of the heart.
[Speaker E] What about “you shall not covet”? Isn’t that one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes,” for example. Those are real prohibitions of that same type, that concern the heart, not speech.
[Speaker E] Not speech and not action. Right.
[Speaker F] So this idea I mentioned in general—that a person is coerced in not knowing, and sometimes there is no claim against him—for example, the prophets of Baal in Elijah’s time. Clearly they believed, and they gave their lives, they sacrificed themselves for the worship of Baal. They believed in their hearts and with all their hearts. And they also understood… Well, in life itself too we often see that people fully believe things that somehow we leap to understanding a priori.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m getting to that in a moment. Okay? So the basic claim is that there is a claim of coercion also regarding beliefs, also regarding factual claims. Just one note before I continue. Regarding lice on the Sabbath, killing a louse on the Sabbath, the situation is a little different from our case. I brought the example of lice on the Sabbath because there are halakhic decisors there who argue that even though the facts do not seem correct to you, you are still bound by the halakhic ruling that is based on those facts. Okay? I argued that no, but the accepted view among the halakhic decisors is yes. And I just want to note that this is a different case from ours. Why? Because there the facts are not the essence of the halakhic directive. They are only the infrastructure on which the directive is built. Meaning, if I think that a louse does not reproduce sexually—that’s a factual claim—then it follows that it is permitted to kill it on the Sabbath. Now someone can come and say: You know what? It doesn’t matter right now what the nature of the louse is; it is still permitted to kill it on the Sabbath because that is what the sages determined. Now, you can argue with that, you can agree with it, but there is nothing contradictory here. Meaning, such a statement is not self-contradictory. You can say that the norm is binding even though its factual basis is not correct, or at least seems incorrect to me. So again—you can, I don’t think that is right, but most halakhic decisors think it is right, and that conception is not self-contradictory. One can say it. Okay? In contrast, in matters of faith / belief and opinion, the beliefs and opinions themselves speak about facts. It’s not that the fact is a basis from which I derive a halakhic directive or a normative directive. The fact itself is the directive. Meaning, to hold the fact—that is the directive. Now there you cannot separate the two. You can’t tell me: listen, hold the fact even though you think it’s false. If I think it’s false, then I do not hold it. To hold a fact means to think it is true. That is what it means to hold a fact. Therefore, unlike the louse, in the case of principles of faith it is impossible. Meaning, you cannot demand of a person that he hold something he thinks is false. You can demand of a person that he behave in a way he thinks is not right—for example with the louse. Okay? Therefore it is not similar to the case of the louse, and therefore even according to the halakhic decisors who make the distinction in the case of the louse and say that the halakhic directive still stands even if you think the factual basis is false, in the case of principles of faith it seems to me that I cannot see how one could argue with the Radbaz. The Radbaz is clearly right.
[Speaker H] What is the meaning of inadvertence in the words of the Radbaz? What is the meaning of inadvertence?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker H] I mean, what he said—that if they nevertheless show him the data and the interpretation and these are evident matters, and he still maintains his opinion, then he is no longer considered coerced. So why is he no longer considered coerced if he still thinks that way and it didn’t persuade him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That connects to Shmuel’s question earlier; I’m getting to that.
[Speaker D] A small question too—you also mentioned that in practice regarding idolatry there is no prohibition in thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, also according to the view— I didn’t say there’s no prohibition.
[Speaker D] I didn’t say it’s not a transgression.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it is a transgression.
[Speaker D] In thought?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It is the transgression of “do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” But it is not the transgression of idolatry. The transgression of idolatry is when you worship. Holding incorrect beliefs is a prohibition, but it is not the prohibition of idolatry. For example, there is no death penalty for that prohibition.
[Speaker D] Okay, fine, that makes sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So now I’m really getting to the questions that came up here in various formulations, but basically they’re all aiming at the same point. In practice, according to the Radbaz, it’s very hard to understand when you actually can come with claims against someone who holds an incorrect opinion. Meaning, a person has the exemption of coercion. Once a person has the exemption of coercion, then what is that situation in which he doesn’t have that exemption? Describe to me the type or the situation in which I can come with claims against a person who holds some position, and he won’t have the exemption of coercion. If it were something moral. Either way, if he believes in that position, then even if I brought him the proofs, as Shoval said earlier—right, that’s the first name, I always get mixed up—even if I brought him the proofs, he wasn’t convinced. What can you do? I brought him proofs from the verses and he’s an idiot, it doesn’t matter right now, he wasn’t convinced.
[Speaker E] Or maybe someone who believed in the past and now no longer does?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you want from him now?
[Speaker E] It’s a different situation, I mean.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t understand. You judge a person by what he is. Why do I care what he was in the past?
[Speaker G] After all, it’s obvious that most people don’t fall outside this category—like, they would be under coercion. Most would be under coercion. And it can’t be that there would be such an instruction, that the great majority, most people, are considered coerced. I’m asking—
[Speaker F] Who wouldn’t be in that category? In my opinion, the one who wouldn’t be is where the conception is moral. A person who truly sincerely believes that one should murder, murder criminals, abuse them—I believe that with all my heart. So yes, I believe you that you believe it, and I think you’re utterly wicked. That’s the case. We’re not talking about moral things. We’re—
[Speaker D] Talking about beliefs and opinions.
[Speaker F] So the question is whether those beliefs and opinions aren’t— I didn’t understand. I think you can absolutely interpret all the commandments and transgressions, including idolatry, and especially idolatry, as a moral value par excellence, with all its implications.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, if a person worships some idol, what does that have to do with morality?
[Speaker F] The meaning of idolatry, Rabbi—are there no sermons about this? The Rabbi knows plenty of sermons on this issue. What’s the deeper meaning of idolatry? It’s not just the idea that I think this statue or this doll has power.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know the sermons, and I also don’t accept them. There’s no moral problem here at all. What’s the moral problem? You remove moral responsibility from yourself.
[Speaker F] You say, I don’t decide—the idol told me I have to murder.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, my idol commands me to be moral
[Speaker F] in the most exemplary way, and it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] wants me to offer it sacrifices every morning, that’s all.
[Speaker F] The meaning of idolatry, the reason Meiri comes out so strongly against the idol worshippers of old and not against Christianity today, is because truly the meaning, the result, of idolatry is persecution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re mixing up a few things. You’re mixing up a few things. Meiri is answering the question of how far you condemn the person, and then by extension also sanctions. But he’s not talking about punishment; it has nothing to do with halakhic punishment.
[Speaker F] Not a matter of punishment—the judicial evaluation of Meiri regarding the idol worshippers of old—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that they were stripped of moral immunity. But we’re not talking about judicial evaluation, we’re talking about punishment. When will he get punished? No, for example what Meiri says about them—not to save him on the Sabbath. He says that in the past the Jewish law was not to save him because he really was a beast, he was savage, he was barbaric. And this stemmed fundamentally from his idolatry. Right. So then idolatry can have moral implication and significance.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be yes and it could be no, and here Meiri himself, that same Meiri himself, says that the idol worshippers in his own time, since they are moral, then all those sanctions are void with respect to them, but they are still idol worshippers.
[Speaker F] Yes, but the meaning of the idolatry of Christians today is really—very minimal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—why is it minimal? They are idol worshippers liable to death.
[Speaker F] The fact is that we save them on the Sabbath. We save them ab initio; we desecrate the Sabbath to save the idol worshipper.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no issue here at all—all the moral sanctions, yes, but the prohibition of idolatry is there. To stone them? Gentiles aren’t commanded concerning association, or something of that kind, fine, that’s another discussion. But why not stone them?
[Speaker F] I didn’t understand. Why not stone them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Stone? Why stone? Why not stone? Stone them?
[Speaker F] So I save them on the Sabbath but stone them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’m saying, gentiles aren’t commanded regarding association or something like that. These are two completely different things. I’m talking about the principled question. And the principled question is: what is the problem with the prohibition of idolatry, and when—or at least the thought of idolatry—and when does it appear? When is there no exemption of coercion in this situation? Seemingly there is no such situation. I’m not talking about the question of what Aharon said earlier, majority or minority. No, I’m asking: give me one, one example of someone who holds some opinion and there are claims against him. If he holds it, then he’s coerced, even if I brought him proofs, even if I convinced him.
[Speaker F] “Do not murder”—a person thinks yes, one should murder.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about murder, I’m talking about prohibitions of heresy.
[Speaker F] Only about prohibitions of heresy?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about murder too, but I don’t want to argue with you about that because that’s not the topic. Maybe it’s not the same thing.
[Speaker F] Ah, a case of coercion where I still do hold him responsible—that’s apparently a case of coercion. If you and I, Rabbi, had been born in Gaza X years ago, we would have believed that you need to chop off Jews’ heads, and that they are fair game. We would have been coerced, because 99.99 percent of whoever is born there—that’s what comes out of him. Would we not have been complete villains? Complete villains. Would we have deserved to be wiped out from the world? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll tell you the same two things I said before: first, we would not have been complete villains and we wouldn’t deserve any punishment, that’s first. Self-defense would be justified. One would of course have to defend oneself against us, because we would be dangerous. No punishment whatsoever, and there is no wickedness in this, that’s first. And second, I’m not talking about murder, I’m talking about the prohibition of idolatry or the prohibition of heretical thoughts. That’s something else; you keep taking me in the moral direction. Even there I don’t agree, but I don’t want to argue about it because that’s not our topic.
[Speaker F] But everything really stems from what it means to believe in God. If you tie it to the moral, evaluative, normative foundation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has no connection whatsoever to the moral foundation; there is no moral foundation here.
[Speaker F] The question whether you worship idols or not, that’s all. It’s not a question of what it is—it’s not a matter of action, it’s something in thought. There are unequivocal views that the essence of faith is something moral.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker F] I’m not inventing the approach that says faith, the essence of faith, is moral.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re not inventing it, but it’s an incorrect approach. I don’t care whether you invented it; I’m not talking here about copyright. It’s an incorrect approach. What I’m really looking for is how we picture to ourselves the situation of a person—say, think about that commentator the Radbaz speaks about, okay? What is the situation in which you come with claims against him? Say, as you asked quite rightly earlier, Shoval— I think it was you—say I bring him the proofs of the Radbaz. He tells me, look, I’m not convinced. He gives reasons, doesn’t give reasons, he wasn’t convinced. What can you do? Seemingly, if he wasn’t convinced, what do you want from him? He’s still coerced. It could be that he’s stupid, because he doesn’t understand that there are simple and well-known proofs that he’s wrong. Fine, so he’s stupid, but that’s what he thinks. What do you want him to do? What, are you going to tell me: no, he really was convinced by the proofs. If he really was convinced by the proofs, then what do you want from him? Everything is fine, he’s no longer a heretic. How can there be a situation where he is a heretic and yet I can still have a claim against him and I don’t give him the exemption?
[Speaker E] Rabbi, I think the case is when he believes in God and also in idolatry together.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And does he really believe it?
[Speaker E] Yes, he believes there is a God who created the world, but he also thinks that He created—what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he’s completely coerced. What do you want from him?
[Speaker E] Why should he be coerced? He believes, he believes in God who created the world, and he thinks He also created other gods.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He believes both those things? Right.
[Speaker E] Yes. So he’s coerced. Why would he be coerced in such a case?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he truly believes it. Anyone who holds an opinion that he truly believes is coerced—that’s what the Radbaz says, right? He truly thinks that there is God, the Holy One, blessed be He, and one more god. He really thinks that. So he’s coerced. So look, there’s something here that very much requires definition. So I want to tell you how I at least understand this issue, and in my opinion it touches very much on practical matters in our time as well, because I think there are many misunderstandings in this context. The concept of a “captured infant” already appears in the Talmud, but Maimonides expands it further, and today they’ve expanded it even more. A “captured infant,” originally in the Talmud, is someone who grew up among gentiles and was raised on their beliefs. He doesn’t know he is Jewish, he doesn’t know the Jewish faith, so he is treated as coerced, inadvertent—yes, it’s a dispute among Amoraim, not important right now—fundamentally he is coerced. Never mind right now that regarding sin-offerings one has to discuss it a bit, but fundamentally he is coerced. So he was treated as coerced. Now what exactly is the argument? A captured infant—he could not have known. Fine, now he comes to us and now I teach him. Now everything is fine, so now he does know. What now? The assumption of the Talmud apparently, and also of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), is that once you teach him, then obviously he will return to the proper path. It’s only a question of knowledge. Meaning, if he had known—if he had not grown up among gentiles but had grown up among us—then there would be nothing to discuss; obviously, he would know exactly what his duty in his world is, and he would—well, maybe not do it, because we all have inclinations, but he would certainly know what he is supposed to do. That’s obvious. Everyone sometimes sins, that’s true. Not that he would necessarily have been perfectly righteous; none of us is perfectly righteous. But he would have been a proper Jew, yes, a Jew who knows what should be done and tries more or less to do it as best he can. Okay, that’s the assumption there. Therefore, a captured infant is usually taken as a statement about knowledge. Meaning, if he knew, then obviously he would behave properly. He just doesn’t know; what can you do, he’s coerced. But Maimonides—
[Speaker D] doesn’t assume that. What? Maimonides doesn’t assume that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker D] Why does he write that even if they explained it to him and he recognized it and still didn’t return, he is still a captured infant?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the famous law. No, that’s something else, because that famous law is an expansion. That’s why I said: it appears in the Talmud, and afterward Maimonides expands it even further, and today they expand it even further. Maimonides is talking about the children of those mistaken people, who already grew up in an error so deep that probably you can’t even explain it to them anymore. They are already sunk so deeply in it that this—there it’s already something where you can’t, you can’t know whether they truly believe it or not. Meaning, knowledge is not a necessary criterion, okay? What people do with this today is apply it even to someone who did not grow up among gentiles and grew up among us, but still reached different conclusions. He thinks differently. Even that today is already treated as a captured infant—again, you can use the term or use another term—but I still think the approach is that same approach. It’s some kind of coercion. The catch is that what happens today is that even if you explain it to him, and even if he didn’t grow up among them, and on the contrary, a person who grew up in a religious home and left everything, became formerly religious, left everything—now what? If you explain it to him, will he immediately repent? He knows what you’ll explain to him. He grew up with it. It’s not a problem of knowledge. Or alternatively I’ll ask something else. A professor of Jewish studies who is a genius, a prodigy, he knows everything backward and forward, all of the Shulchan Arukh and its commentaries and the Talmud and the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the later authorities (Acharonim), whatever you want. He knows everything by heart, okay? And he believes in none of it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s Indian culture. He researches it the way someone researches Indian culture. Now if he commits a transgression, is he a captured infant? He has more knowledge than I do. My claim is yes, he is a captured infant. Why? Because essentially a captured infant is not a question of knowledge; it is a question of obligation. Meaning, if you don’t understand that this thing obligates you, then what good does it do that you know it? Now, you can know all of the Mishnah Berurah, but you don’t understand that the Mishnah Berurah is something binding. I know all of Indian culture—does that mean I’m now going to start dancing around the fire? No, I study Indians; it’s my hobby or my profession. So I study everything they do and I’m also very interested in it, so I’m enormously expert in all Indian doctrines. I may be an accomplished artist, okay? But it’s still obvious that it would never occur to me to do it, because I don’t believe in it. Same with our professor. It’s not a question of knowledge. He may have absolute, complete, perfect knowledge. It still doesn’t connect for him to the fact that he is obligated. He thinks it’s Indian culture. So from my perspective he is still a captured infant. He’s a captured infant even though he knows everything. And likewise a young man who grew up in a religious home. If he came to the conclusion that he doesn’t accept it—I’m not talking right now about someone who leaves because his evil inclination overpowered him. I’m talking about someone who reached the conclusion that he doesn’t believe in it. Yes, that’s his position, truly that’s his position. Then he is a captured infant. Coerced, so he is a captured infant. “Captured infant” is an expression, but he is coerced. He is coerced in his opinion, exactly as the— the Radbaz said. Now regarding such a person, even if you bring all the proofs in the world, it may be that you won’t convince him. Today, unlike in the past, we recognize this. In the past it was obvious that every person in the world knows he has to be religious. The only question was which religion he belongs to. If you grew up among Christians you were Christian; grew up among Jews, you were Jewish; Muslim, pagan, whatever. Everyone worshipped the god of the place where he grew up. But it was obvious that one must worship God. So once a person discovered he was Jewish, then it was obvious to him that he had to worship the Jewish God, because it was only a matter of knowing where I’m located in this garden, yes, in this zoo— which cage, which cage I’m actually supposed to be in. But today that’s not the situation. Today, even if someone knows he’s Jewish and all that, it still doesn’t mean that from his perspective it is binding, since religious obligation itself is not self-evident. In the past, religious obligation was self-evident. The only question was: obligation to whom? To which god? But today it’s not clear at all to people that there is religious obligation.
[Speaker G] What you mean is that the professor has all the knowledge—the professor of Jewish studies—he doesn’t have the knowledge, because everything written in the Torah, the knowledge of Judaism, is the obligation, the legal instruction, okay? The fact that there is this text, if he doesn’t have the line, something that connects him to it because it comes from that obligation, legal instructions and so on, then it’s not called that he knows, so that’s part of the knowledge.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What semantic hair-splitting. At the end of the day, give him rabbinical and judicial exams, he passes them with a perfect score—that’s called having knowledge.
[Speaker G] And if that same professor is a gentile at Cornell University, then is he supposed to take upon himself the seven Noahide commandments?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—what does that have to do with anything now? I’m talking—you asked me what it means to know. To know means that he passes rabbinical and judicial exams with a score of one hundred. That’s it. But as far as he’s concerned, it’s Indian culture. Okay.
[Speaker D] In short, how do you relate, for example, to many traditional Jews who completely accept the authority of Jewish law but don’t observe most of the commandments, don’t observe like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My claim is that contrary to the common view, the traditionalists are the biggest sinners. For that very reason. The secular people are coerced. What do you want? That’s what they think—coerced in their opinion. The traditionalists are complete sinners. Like Korah from both sides. By the way, there are various kinds of traditionalists. There are traditionalists who believe everything, they just don’t have the strength, they don’t feel like doing all these things.
[Speaker D] There are such people, there are traditionalists—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] who don’t really believe, but identify with this folklore because it’s their ancestral home and all sorts of things like that. That’s something else; they’re not sinners.
[Speaker D] No, no, but there really are traditionalists who completely accept the authority of Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From the first type of traditionalists—they are sinners in every respect. The biggest sinners are the traditionalists. That’s obvious.
[Speaker F] Rabbi, Rabbi, the Rabbi usually says that if a person says, “I believe in God, but why do I need to obey Him,” then the Rabbi says: you don’t really believe in God. Because the very essence of belief in God is accepting His authority or command. So if that traditionalist supposedly knows that there is a God but he doesn’t accept—it’s a fact that he doesn’t do it—he is not aware of the prescriptive demand, the prescriptive content of that command, because if he were, he would do it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How is he not doing it? Not true, not true. What do you mean how not? Not true. There are many people who will tell you, yes, one should do everything; it just doesn’t suit me, I don’t do it.
[Speaker F] So the Rabbi understands that they don’t really—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] say what they believe.
[Speaker F] If you feel absolute obligation—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then how does he not do it? You understand intellectually that what the Holy One, blessed be He, says should be done. What, has it never happened to you—between us, quietly, no one hears—has it never happened to you to commit a sin? Something that in your eyes was not right?
[Speaker F] A sign that I didn’t really believe in it. This weakness of will is what keeps feeding us every time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are a true righteous person, meaning you are exempt from the Ten Days of Repentance—
[Speaker F] Afterward, how did you not feel the transgression?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From the coming Ten Days of Repentance you are completely exempt from doing repentance. I hereby exempt you from all the transgressions you’ve had until now—you don’t have a single transgression.
[Speaker F] The Rabbi is right that I don’t think that’s the essence of repentance. The Rabbi also doesn’t think that’s exactly the essence of repentance.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? That is the essence of repentance. The essence of repentance is when I understand that I was wrong, and even then I understood that I was wrong, and I did it anyway. That’s what is called weakness of will.
[Speaker F] So I think exactly that it’s not that. I think it’s simply that I didn’t take responsibility and I told myself stories.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t accept my exemption. But know that when you reach the heavenly court you can present them a note in my name—you are completely exempt. Just say that you yourself perhaps don’t agree; add that in parentheses.
[Speaker F] I’ll have a file.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you don’t have a drop—if that’s your situation, I find it hard to believe. If that’s your situation, you’ve never committed a transgression in your life.
[Speaker F] It’s obvious that if a person knows, if a person knows that he is obligated in something and he accepts the conscious meaning of the obligation, he will do it. That’s the meaning—it’s literally the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely not; that’s just a logical mistake. The fact that I know I should do something still doesn’t mean I will do it. Who says that what I know I should do is also what I will do? Why do you assume that?
[Speaker F] Because it negates weakness of will—
[Speaker D] Weakness of will is an illusion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, weakness of will is exactly that phenomenon: there is something I know I should do, and nevertheless I don’t do it.
[Speaker D] According to that, there shouldn’t be overweight doctors, for example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, there you go. Moral theory as triangles— as a mathematician you don’t have to be a triangle. Moral theorists who sin. Leave it, these are simple facts. There are philosophical hairsplittings about how this can be. Weakness of will is an interesting philosophical issue. But how can it be—that’s a good question. But does it exist? Of course it exists.
[Speaker C] Someone thought—someone once argued to me, when there was a group talking about evil speech in yeshiva, he claimed that once a person speaks evil speech the public simply forgets that it’s forbidden to speak evil speech, and therefore he speaks, because they forget. Everyone looked at him and didn’t understand what he was talking about. Everyone remembers it and still speaks, I don’t know what he wanted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the philosophers.
[Speaker F] But Rabbi, let every person think of something he really thinks is an absolute obligation, then obviously he does it. Absolutely. A person is driving on the Ayalon at four in the morning, suddenly—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Shmuel, look, right now already I’m thinking and telling you that for me it’s not like that. There are things that are absolutely clear to me that I want and need to do, and I don’t do them. Exercise, diet—forget religious transgressions, let’s talk about things outside the religious context. It is completely clear to me that I should do it. Do I exercise?
[Speaker F] No. What the Rabbi is saying according to logic—what? Well, people say many things, and that’s the whole problem of weakness of will, that’s the whole joke.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We just keep telling ourselves stories. I have absolutely no doubt that that’s what should be done. No doubt at all.
[Speaker F] A fact—but if the Rabbi thought that this was the healthy thing—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and the right thing, and that the supreme value is to be healthy, you’re begging the question. You tell me, ah, that’s a fact—if you thought so you would do it, and if you don’t do it that’s a sign that you don’t think so. That’s begging the question. No, I think that’s how it is and nevertheless I don’t do it. Yes. I believe there are one or two more people like that here besides me.
[Speaker F] Deluding—
[Speaker D] themselves—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] themselves—
[Speaker F] deluding.
[Speaker D] By the way, among traditionalists it’s even more prominent because of the fact that they grow up in a place that believes in Jewish law and nevertheless everyone around them doesn’t do most of these things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, they are captured infants among the traditionalists.
[Speaker D] Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, in any case, so what does this actually mean? It means that it really brings us to the point of weakness of will, which is genuinely tricky. In other words, the philosophical question is very, very non-trivial, what Shmuel asked earlier. But from that I don’t draw factual conclusions when I know the facts are otherwise. I once wrote a column about paradoxes, and I said that very often when there’s an argument that proves a claim, and that claim contradicts our intuition, that’s considered a paradox. What do you do in such a case? There are always two possibilities. One possibility is to say, okay, I thought one way before, but this argument proves that I was mistaken, so I need to change my position. The second possibility is to find a flaw in the argument. Right? And even if I didn’t find a flaw in the argument, does that automatically mean I have to change my position? No. It could be that there is a flaw in the argument and I just didn’t find it. Right? So in the end I remain with the possibility that what I think is still correct; I didn’t find a flaw in the argument, but maybe there is one and I just can’t find it, I’m not smart enough to find it. So very often when someone raises an argument and at the end it reaches a conclusion that we clearly know is factually wrong, and I didn’t find a flaw in the argument, that doesn’t mean I have to change my conclusion. Because there may be a flaw there and I didn’t find it. When I’m very, very convinced of what I think, then even if there’s a good argument against it, I won’t change it. I have strong trust in my intuition. As for weakness of will, I even suggested a kind of solution, and this is really not a trivial question at all. I have two columns about it on the site. In any case, for our purposes, we arrive at weakness of will from other angles too, because really the only possibility, if you accept the fact that there is coercion in matters of opinion, the only way to understand how there could be a claim against someone who holds incorrect opinions is if… what does that mean? In other words, if he holds them, that means he believes in them. If he doesn’t hold them, then what do you want from him? It turns out that a human being is a complex creature. A person is a complex creature; there can be a situation where a person convinces himself of a certain opinion, say because of his evil inclination. Now, deep inside, he understands that it isn’t true. If you ask him what he believes, he really believes it. Now I can give examples. For instance, let’s say all kinds of atheists—or not atheists, forget atheists, that’s a more sensitive topic. There are people who lead others to repentance who themselves don’t believe. Moral conceptions—you come to a person, a lot of people will tell you that morality is a matter of feeling, a subjective matter. Right, you can’t verify it scientifically, there’s no way to arrive at certainty regarding these things, or not even certainty, but moral principles at all. So therefore it’s subjective, it’s a matter of feeling, and so on. Now they have good arguments in favor of that position. But still, I think most people understand that it’s not true. They understand that morality is something binding, objective, obligatory. It’s not a matter of subjective feeling. And one of the indications of that is that if someone behaves immorally, they will condemn him. But why? If it’s your subjective feeling, then my subjective feeling is different. Why are you condemning me? If you condemn me, that means you assume that I too ought to behave the way you feel. So that means it’s not your subjective feeling, but something binding, objective. And yet the person says, “Look, morality is a subjective feeling.” I believe that deep down he doesn’t actually think that. Sometimes he himself doesn’t know how to formulate for himself what he really thinks inside. Because he has good arguments; he says, “Look, you see there are different societies that believe in different moralities, and there’s no scientific criterion that can show us what the correct morality is,” and so on. He has good arguments, and still I claim that deep down he understands that this thing is immoral. Now it may be that I can still come to him with claims if he does something immoral, even though he openly declares that as far as he is concerned morality is a subjective matter and his feeling didn’t forbid him to murder, so that’s why he murdered. It’s subjective; he doesn’t recognize this norm that murder is objectively forbidden, so what can you do? He’s coerced, seemingly. I say no—if I assume that deep down he knows it’s true, then I can still come to him with claims. If you asked him honestly what he thinks of himself, he thinks he believes that morality is subjective. Now there’s something here that is very… maybe I’ll bring—now I remember, I have a good example for this, I hope I’ll have time, I’ll do it quickly. The story of the turkey, yes, I’ve often used it in this context. Yes, Rabbi Nachman’s story about the king’s son who went mad, stripped, took off his clothes, sat under the table, and ate crumbs from the floor. And he declared that he was a turkey. He wasn’t a human being, he was a turkey, so he didn’t need clothes, he could eat crumbs off the floor, everything was fine. He didn’t have the strength for knife and fork, plates and all the manners and the royal court and all those things. Fine, the king was despairing, no one managed to cure him, until one wise man came and said to the king: I’ll cure him. He went down there, this wise man, and first of all he took off his clothes and started pecking crumbs together with him under the table. This king’s son said to him, “What are you doing here? What does one born of woman have to do among us? What is a human being doing in the realms of turkeys?” So the man said, “What do you want? I’m also a turkey, I’m also an indik.” So he said, “Oh, okay, very good.” They sat there pecking crumbs for their pleasure without clothes, everything was fine. Then the wise man said to the king’s son there, “Tell me, you know, a turkey can also wear pants, that doesn’t disqualify it, I mean, it’s not an obstacle.” “Okay, bring pants.” So what happened? He put on pants. After that a shirt, then sitting on a chair and eating with a knife and fork and plate and speaking like human beings and all the… Fine, you’re a turkey, but you can still do… and so on, until he brought him back to behaving like a human being, and they all lived happily ever after. Now the question that arises in the context of the story is whether the king’s son was really cured. After all, inwardly he’s convinced that he’s a turkey. Just what? He’s a turkey who behaves like a human being. So what, a turkey is allowed to behave like a human being. If it gives pleasure to the king, then he does it—what difference does it make? But he’s still a turkey, he’s sure he really is a turkey. So in fact he wasn’t cured. So it’s not true that the wise man cured the king’s son. This is what’s called behaviorism in psychology, yes? This is a kind of behavioral cure, meaning he cured only the symptoms, not the mental illness itself. That’s on one side. On the other side there’s another difficulty, less obvious, but I think worth noticing. When the wise man went down under the table, the king’s son asked him, what are you doing here? Why does he ask that? What bothered him? Because he understood that this wise man was a human being and not a turkey, right? Well, if you understand that someone like that is a human being and not a turkey, I assume you also understand that you yourself are a human being and not a turkey. So you haven’t lost the distinction between a human being and a turkey, right? Otherwise what’s difficult for you about this wise man coming down under the table? Here, just another turkey came into the area, what’s the problem? Because he understands that someone who looks like this, behaves like this, is not a turkey, he’s a human being. Now here the question is the opposite. If so, then it’s not that he wasn’t cured—he was never sick in the first place. He wasn’t sick at all. He knew the difference between a human being and a turkey, right? So we have two opposite questions. On the one hand, it seems he wasn’t sick at all. On the other hand, if he was sick, it seems he was never cured. He remained sick. It seems to me that these two questions resolve one another. If a person is really sick, meaning he is sure he’s a turkey, then no therapist will ever be able to cure him. A therapist usually has to use some healthy point that exists inside the person—I’m talking about a psychologist, yes, not a physical doctor. He has to use some healthy point that exists inside the person and try through that to leverage it or expand it more and try to treat the sick parts of the soul. But if the soul is sick all the way through, you have no Archimedean point to grab onto, and then you’re lost—you can’t treat such a person. Therefore my claim is the following: the king’s son was sick, but clearly deep down he understood that he was a human being. So why did he enter this whole turkey game? Because he wanted to get rid of all the table manners; he was already fed up with all the nagging of the royal court. So he began convincing himself that he was a turkey, and if you repeat that for long enough you eventually convince yourself. Then he lives with the consciousness that he’s a turkey, even though deep inside there is some very deep inner point where he understands that really he is a human being and not a turkey. But if you ask him, he will honestly and sincerely tell you with conviction that he is a turkey. But since deep down there is that healthier point, then the wise man can come and say, come, come, I’ll bring you back to behaving behavioristically, yes, in terms of the symptoms, like a human being. That’s possible, right? What happens when he behaves like a human being? After all, the whole theory he built for himself that he is a turkey was meant to allow himself to be without clothes and eat crumbs under the table. And once he no longer gains that benefit, his theory will dissolve on its own. You don’t need to convince him he’s wrong; deep down he knows he’s wrong. But he built himself a theory because it justifies his behavior. He doesn’t want to behave like a human being, he doesn’t have the energy for it; he wants to behave like a turkey. So he built himself a theory—well, who says? You don’t have a monopoly on turkey-ness, as many people say. I’m also a turkey—who says not? There can also be a turkey with two hands and two legs. Right, what’s the problem? And then little by little he convinces himself; in fact he enters into this theory that he’s a turkey, and all of this—why? In order to allow himself to behave like a turkey. The goal in the end is to permit the behavior. But since he convinces himself so strongly, and after the actions the hearts are drawn, in the end he reaches the conclusion that he himself already lives with the consciousness that he really is a turkey. But still, deep inside, if he catches some moment of real honesty, he will find that deep inside he still knows he is a human being and not a turkey. Now what happens when the person gets him to behave properly? Then once he behaves properly, the whole benefit of the turkey theory disappears. After all, the whole thing was meant to allow him to behave like a turkey. But if he doesn’t get that, then the theory will disappear on its own. You don’t need to argue with him about it. He built the whole theory in order to allow himself to behave that way. If he doesn’t behave that way, the theory is useless to him; it will dissolve by itself. I once explained in the same way Maimonides’ famous “we coerce him until he says, ‘I want to.’” Both regarding offerings and regarding divorce. What does it mean, you beat him until he says, “I want to”? And then Maimonides says that since every person wants to do the will of the Torah or the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, therefore even if he is refusing a bill of divorce or doesn’t want to bring an offering or something like that, you beat him until he says, “I want to,” and this is considered a valid bill of divorce, not a coerced one. It’s a bill of divorce given willingly. Why willingly? It’s obvious that he says “I want to” only so you’ll stop beating him. No—since if the assumption is that this person really is committed to the Torah, then he understands that in truth he has to give the bill of divorce because the religious court ruled that he is obligated to give it. Except that there is the evil inclination. He’s angry at his wife, he’s upset, he wants to chain her, he wants to ruin her life, so he refuses to give the bill of divorce, and then he builds himself a theory: what do you mean, I know better than the religious court, I know better than the Holy One, blessed be He, obviously here I’m forbidden to give a bill of divorce. I’m prepared to suffer, anything—no, I will not give her the bill of divorce. But deep down he understands that this is not the right thing; the right thing is to give the bill of divorce, because that’s what Jewish law says in such a situation. What happens? I now beat him by force and say to him, listen, you are going to give her the bill of divorce and nothing will help you, and even if you scream until tomorrow that it isn’t your will, I’m going to remarry her afterward if she’s permitted. The moment you see that you’re not going to achieve the practical results, that you won’t manage to chain your wife, then the theory that this is okay will also dissolve, and then you will return to that point where you know that actually this is the proper thing to do and this is what you want to do. A practical difference, for example, is that the rule of “we coerce him until he says, ‘I want to’” doesn’t exist for someone who is not committed to Torah and commandments. Coercion won’t help. In that situation, if he refuses to give a bill of divorce, it won’t help to beat him until he says, “I want to.” But a person who does want to keep commandments, and here all the halakhic decisors and all the judges and everyone tell him, you are obligated to divorce your wife—why doesn’t he do it? Clearly it’s because of inclination. After all, he wants to fulfill the will of the Torah, but this inclination causes him to build a theory: what do you mean, she wasn’t okay and I’ll get back at her and I’ll chain her and I’ll stand here like a fortified wall, no one will succeed in convincing me. And then I say, you know what, I’m not trying to convince you, I’m simply going to beat you to death and the woman will be released; you won’t achieve the practical result. The moment he doesn’t achieve the practical result, he won’t hold onto the theory either; it will dissolve on its own. So he’ll return and say, okay, then why did I build this whole theory? In order to chain my wife. If I can’t succeed anyway, I go back to my real inner will, that I actually do want to fulfill what the Torah says. And that is exactly the story of the turkey. And I think these stories show this dissonance, that a person can live inside himself like the traditional person. Yes, the traditional person who says: deep down I know that this should be kept, but practically I build myself some nice theory, I say no, it’s only when it’s pleasant for me, when it suits me, when there’s no soccer game on or something like that, then I’ll keep the Sabbath, but when it doesn’t suit me, then no. But if deep down he knows that this isn’t right—and that can happen, contrary to what Shmuel said earlier—then basically, why does he do this? He does it because he built himself some theory that justifies the actions; these are the sophisticated ones who build a theory. Others do it without explicitly building the theory, and it justifies my way of conducting myself, which doesn’t really fit what I truly think ought to be done. Okay? A person can live with a kind of mental duality, where deep, deep inside he actually knows what is right, but if you ask him he will sincerely and honestly answer the opposite. Sincerely—he really is convinced of it on the conscious level, but deep inside there is some point where he understands that it isn’t okay. And I think only in such a case can you come with claims against a person who holds incorrect opinions. If he holds incorrect opinions, but in my estimation deep down he understands they are not correct, even if he doesn’t admit it and says the arguments didn’t persuade him—again, he isn’t lying. If he were lying, then fine, he’d just be a liar. But I’m not talking about someone who lies. He sincerely says, I wasn’t persuaded, I don’t believe it. Now I understand that he’s just being stubborn because of his evil inclination; deep down he understands that it isn’t true. Such a person—you can come to him with claims for thinking incorrectly, only such a person. And regarding, yes, secular Jews today, or a “captured infant” in today’s terms, it’s the same thing. In other words, when people speak about the inner point that exists in every Jew, that he really wants to fulfill the Torah or that he believes in God and everything else is just layers—I don’t buy that, I don’t think it’s true. Not because such a state can’t exist; such a state can exist. It can exist in someone where that really is present. But most secular Jews are not like that. Most secular Jews really and sincerely believe something else, and you can’t come to them with claims. I can come with claims against someone—for example, someone who grew up in a religious home and left. Now why did he leave? It’s hard to diagnose, but suppose Elijah the Prophet came and told me that deep down, even today, he really thinks this isn’t okay, meaning that he ought to keep the commandments, but now he lives with a consciousness in which he has already built for himself the theories and the explanations and the arguments that this whole story is completely justified. In fact this is how one ought to behave. Okay? Such a person—you can come to him with claims. Even though if you ask him on the conscious level, he will really tell you, listen, this is what I truly think. And that’s true—again, he’s not lying, he’s not lying. He’s just dimming his awareness a bit of that inner point inside him. That’s all. It’s not a lie; he genuinely lives with the consciousness that this is the truth as far as he’s concerned. Lying to himself? Huh?
[Speaker D] Lying to himself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, first of all to himself. Yes. Okay, that’s it for now. Any comments or questions?
[Speaker H] What the Rabbi mentioned reminded me of the last move you made, something we learned in the logic course about persuading people—that with regard to each person there is a different starting point. That the way is to show him that from his own starting point, and then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Persuasion in a logical way—the claim I made was that when you persuade someone by means of a logical argument, you’re not moving him from one position to another, but rather revealing to him that deep down the second position had already been there from the start. Otherwise you couldn’t have done it by means of a logical argument.
[Speaker H] The truth is that there it was—it felt a bit clearer. Now precisely the final conclusion of the lesson is something that for me personally I’m not so able to put my finger on from acquaintance with, so to speak, my own soul. But I need to think about it; it really is an elusive point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like weakness of will. In weakness of will too, this is basically a state in which in principle I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t do it. Now when I don’t do it, I’m not just simply doing something I know is wrong, that’s all. In that sense, Shmuel, I accept your earlier comment. But I do think that a person can find justifications for what he does, while still deep down at some deep point he knows it isn’t okay. When he does it, he has the justifications also on the conscious level; it’s an act for which he has justifications. But there is some point deep inside where he understands that it isn’t okay.
[Speaker G] But why can’t I—why can I judge him for those justifications? I can go more radically and say, as in the assumption of the question—the question was, who is coerced and who isn’t? Meaning that seemingly everyone is coerced. Who is the one who is not coerced? And then the answer is yes, there is someone where at the inner point, at some certain point or in some way… So what I’m trying to say is that maybe even those justifications, or someone who thinks he can live with this dissonance as you described with the traditional person—even him I can’t come and judge, because in his conscious awareness what he would share with us, he’d say that he has a justification for it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, this is a question; it’s not black and white. There could be someone who somehow, somewhere deep inside, understands that it isn’t okay, but the conscious level is so strong that there is no chance he will uncover that point of which he is unaware. So he is still coerced, even though it exists inside him. But I’m talking about a situation where it is accessible to him on some level or other. After all, this is not something I know how to point to and diagnose. I’m only trying to sketch what kind of situation could make it possible to come to someone with claims. So I’m saying that such a situation is one I can describe. How exactly I know that we’re in this situation and not in a state where that point is no longer accessible to him at all—I have no way of knowing. Okay,
[Speaker G] More power to you, thank you very much, Sabbath peace.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sabbath peace. Rabbi, Rabbi?
[Speaker F] Yes. Rabbi, regarding the Talmudic passage in Sanhedrin about Manasseh, where they asked him: if your wisdom was so great, then why did you worship idolatry? He said to them: the evil inclination was so strong that if you had been there, you would have run and lifted the hems of your robe in order to worship idolatry. Seemingly the knowledge is the same knowledge—he says to them—but the inclination is different. And that’s the explanation, and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’ll ask you about that very passage: if the inclination is so strong, then he’s coerced. What do they want from him? What claims can be made against him? Is there a claim against Manasseh? There is a claim, right? Right—he tells Rav Ashi, listen, you can’t judge me because it’s a very difficult trial. A difficult trial, but possible, because otherwise there is no claim against him; he’s coerced. Now why? Because deep down he understood it wasn’t okay. He built himself some theory, and it had already become so strong that he was already running after his inclination, but deep down he understood it wasn’t okay. It’s very difficult to deal with that, but it’s still possible. His answer comes to say: you, Rav Ashi, are not in a position from which you can criticize me. If you had lived the reality I lived in, and you had seen how hard it is, you wouldn’t mock so quickly what I did. That doesn’t mean he is coerced; he still deserves his punishment.
[Speaker C] Could it be that it’s a culture of inclination, no?
[Speaker D] In this case.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s what inclination does, right? But again, if it’s inclination—if his inclination overcame him in a deterministic sense—then he is coerced.
[Speaker D] Yes, it’s a comparison like sexual inclination, what is brought in the Talmud.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, regarding sexual inclination too you can say the same thing—that the Men of the Great Assembly nullified the inclination toward idolatry and the inclination toward sexual transgression. What does it mean that they nullified this inclination? Today we think that someone who thinks incorrectly simply thinks differently; he is coerced. Because in our reality it is indeed very rare to find someone who worships idolatry even though he doesn’t believe in it. I can’t see how such a situation could exist. But apparently in the time of the Torah, or the Bible, and the Sages, reality was different. Because there was an inclination toward idolatry and toward sexual transgression. Sexual inclination we also know exists, right? And what does sexual inclination mean? Let’s say you have an inclination toward your sister, okay? Now this is a grave prohibition, an incest prohibition, but you sin with it anyway—why? Because the inclination overcame you, right? Now once there was an inclination toward idolatry just as today there is an inclination toward sexual transgression. Toward another man’s wife, say—they nullified the sexual inclination too except for another man’s wife. So just as today there is an inclination toward another man’s wife, there once was an inclination toward idolatry. So people worshiped idolatry even though they didn’t really believe in it. That is a reality we don’t grasp today. Because we no longer have that inclination; it was supposedly nullified. This is not a description in some actually mystical sense that they nullified it; rather, it’s a cultural description. In other words, that inclination was pushed further and further inward, and today it has already undergone sublimation.
[Speaker D] There are the books of Yehezkel Kaufmann on the history of Israelite faith, where he tries to prove that in practice the people of Israel did not really know, did not truly know, the essence of idolatry, only its modes of worship. He tries to prove from many places in the Bible that they didn’t really know the essence of idolatry, and therefore the prophets spoke about the idols and the material substance, even though the prevalent idolatry was not really worship of stones; it was worship of spiritual things that were expressed through idols. So he argues that in practice the people of Israel practiced idolatry even though they didn’t really know its essence, and that fits what you’re talking about now—that we are dealing here with culture and not with belief in spiritual essences.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay,
[Speaker F] So on the contrary, that means it proves that belief in idolatry is not knowledge of something, it’s not a fact, it’s not a factual claim, it’s a cultural claim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even if you do not acknowledge the existence of the idol, you can still perform the entire ritual.
[Speaker F] After all—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t think it’s true, so why are you doing the whole ritual?
[Speaker F] Because it’s not a matter of knowing something, it’s not a fact.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because you can do things even though you know they are not true.
[Speaker D] He argues that the people of Israel didn’t understand the whole issue of idolatry, and therefore they thought that the surrounding nations worshiped stones and trees, and that wasn’t true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but now how did the nation worship even though it didn’t understand? Because apparently even though it understands that this isn’t the truth, because it doesn’t believe in the existence of idols, it still performs the ritual.
[Speaker F] So that strengthens it—the Rabbi is saying there was still an inclination to worship, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Inclination is not knowledge. Inclination was the culture. But by force of that inclination a theory or an atmosphere is created in which you live, and now that you are inside that atmosphere, you also have justifications for what you do, even though deep inside you understand there is nothing to it.
[Speaker F] So if the essence of idolatry is inclination, then it’s not knowledge, it’s not fact.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. The inclination creates a theory, even though deep down you know that theory is not correct.
[Speaker F] The fact is that the inclination decides.
[Speaker C] It’s not so far-fetched to understand that inclination in the sense that you see it today, say in America, where people worship an inclination toward beauty, or money, or things like that. They took something and made it the be-all and end-all. When you take something and make it the be-all and end-all, it could be that you are capable of reaching such levels of worship. I mean, it’s possible in cultures even today; I think it exists. I don’t think it’s only desire; I think it’s a kind of idea. Beauty, or things like that—those are spiritual things too, it doesn’t have to be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But they don’t worship it. It’s not that beauty commands them and they obey.
[Speaker C] Why not? Really not, I’m not sure. And beauty at a level where, just as something moral obligates me, at that same level they understand it. There are people who reach that, that level.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think that’s the situation there. That’s not worship in that sense, I don’t think.
[Speaker C] Why? It’s like an idea—the Rabbi writes in the book that there is an idea of morality that tells me what is right and what is wrong. There is an idea of beauty; it draws the person. And it’s also written in books—Kabbalistic books, but that doesn’t matter, that’s not proof—but the idea is that once a person gets caught by that idea, he can reach a point where he becomes a psychopath. That’s the idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe a psychopath, but to worship something means to fulfill its command, okay? So then they fulfill the command of beauty.
[Speaker C] What is beauty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To cleave, to cleave to it. Cleave to what? Beauty is not an object.
[Speaker C] It is an object, it’s an idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Without being an object?
[Speaker C] Right, it’s an idea, the idea of beauty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He worships the idea of beauty—whatever it commands, he does? That sounds to me like an artificial description.
[Speaker C] The command is to cleave to it, to cleave to it and not to something else and not to God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no someone here who commands; it’s my interest, I want to cleave to beauty.
[Speaker C] There are two states in this: there is the physical state and there is the spiritual state, the idea of cleaving to the most beautiful thing in the world, for example. So I give the person—he cleaves to it as to something binding and permitted, let’s say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there is no something that commands him and he fulfills its commands. I don’t see here any dimension of religious worship.
[Speaker C] That is the command. The command is the command to cleave to it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And who is the commander?
[Speaker C] What do you mean, who? Who commands you to do something moral? The idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker C] The Holy One, blessed be He, created an idea that commands this, fine, same idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, same idea?
[Speaker C] The Holy One, blessed be He, created ideas.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is that? And who commands me to cleave to beauty? It sounds to me like an external analogy, artificial; I don’t see it.
[Speaker C] I actually find it
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] very logical actually, fine. Okay, well, Sabbath peace, good tidings.
[Speaker C] Peace, thank you very much.