Dogmatics – Lesson 7
This transcript was generated automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- A historical change in the impulse toward idolatry and heresy
- Heresy driven by impulse and split consciousness
- The turkey prince parable, psychological healing, and “hearts are drawn after actions”
- Culture, Torah, and the claim that the Torah is part of the historical process
- Identity, continuity of the subject, and Leibniz
- Coercion, Chabad, “he is compelled until he says ‘I want to,’” and Maimonides
- The Emperor’s New Clothes, rationalization, and repentance
- A child taken captive, impulse, and responsibility
- Binding morality and belief in God
Summary
General Overview
The speaker argues that in our time it is hard to understand the concept of heresy or idolatry driven by impulse, because the modern assumption is that someone who denies faith does so because that is his actual view, and therefore change comes not through rebuke but through persuasion. He proposes that in the past there was a powerful impulse toward idolatry, similar to sexual impulse, and interprets the Talmudic statement about the nullification of the impulse for idolatry as a natural-historical process of cultural sublimation. From this he develops the idea of split consciousness, in which a person can live with an external belief that contradicts an inner knowledge, and he uses this to explain both the story of the turkey prince and Maimonides’ statement that “he is compelled until he says ‘I want to’” as a psychological rather than mystical explanation. Later he connects this to the question of morality without belief in God and argues that binding morality requires a lawgiver with authority; therefore moral atheists are either not moral in the binding sense, or else they exist within a hidden faith. Finally, he ties this to the definitions of a child taken captive and responsibility.
A historical change in the impulse toward idolatry and heresy
The speaker says that today it seems that someone who denies faith does so because that is truly what he thinks, and therefore proof does not function as rebuke but as persuasion. He argues that in the past there were people who worshipped idols out of impulse even though they recognized that it was a sin, similar to someone who stumbles in forbidden sexual relations even though he knows the act is prohibited. He suggests that the Talmud’s statement in Yoma about the Men of the Great Assembly abolishing the impulse for idolatry and the impulse for forbidden sexual relations, except for a married woman, can be interpreted as a natural process rather than mysticism, because culture pushed aside and erased certain impulses, and that is why today there is no impulse toward idolatry. He says that the story of Menashe appearing to Rav Ashi in a dream and telling him that if he had lived in his time he would have lifted the hem of his robe and run to worship idols expresses the gap in the force of the impulse between the periods, and the historical continuation of the weakening of the ability to understand sin arising from impulse.
Heresy driven by impulse and split consciousness
The speaker distinguishes between sin in action and heresy as thought, and asks how an impulse can lead a person to think something that he himself understands is not true. He proposes two possibilities: either the impulse changes the person until he truly believes what he once thought false, or the impulse works on an external plane so that inwardly the person knows the belief is false, but in consciousness he lives as though it were true. He calls this split consciousness and describes a state of dual levels in which the inner self recognizes the truth while a conscious outer shell holds the opposite belief. He accepts the distinction raised in the lecture between thinking about a false idea and actually thinking the false idea, and argues that even the problematic possibility of actually thinking what is untrue can exist.
The turkey prince parable, psychological healing, and “hearts are drawn after actions”
The speaker brings the story of the turkey prince from Rabbi Nachman: a king’s son goes mad, declares that he is a turkey, crawls under the table, and eats kernels, until a wise man goes down there with him and gradually convinces him to wear clothes, sit on a chair, and eat like a human being, and thus he is healed. He asks how healing took place if apparently the prince still believes he is a turkey, and he emphasizes the detail in which the prince asks the wise man what he is doing there, a detail that shows that the prince has an inner awareness that the wise man is a human being and not a turkey. He argues that mental illness can be healed only if there is some healthy inner point, and if there is no such point one cannot heal but only create anew. Therefore, in the story there is both illness and an inner point of truth that makes healing possible. He diagnoses the initial drive as a desire to free himself from human norms, and the drive gets translated into a theory that justifies free behavior, until the person convinces even himself, but an inner core still remains that recognizes the truth. He explains that the wise man treats the behavior rather than engaging in an ideological argument, because once the turkey behavior is eliminated, the theory built to justify it dissolves on its own. That is how he interprets “hearts are drawn after actions” — as a correction that is revealed when inwardly the heart is already in the right place and the theory is only a shell built for practical needs.
Culture, Torah, and the claim that the Torah is part of the historical process
In response to the question of how culture succeeded in uprooting idolatry more than the Torah did, the speaker argues that the cultural-historical process lasted thousands of years and that the Torah is part of that process, similar to the internalization of morality. He says the influence of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) on Western culture is almost beyond dispute, and that one could describe the change simply as a product of time without difficulty, but in this case the norms the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) implanted are part of the process. He notes that this is a statement many would not agree with, but presents it as his own view.
Identity, continuity of the subject, and Leibniz
In discussion with students, the speaker rejects the link between split consciousness and postmodern disintegration of the subject, and argues that continuity of identity can remain even when beliefs change, and even when one psyche contains simultaneous complexity. He presents a distinction between the subject and the subject’s beliefs, and argues that beliefs are not identical with the person; rather, there is an owner of the beliefs who unifies them. He mentions Leibniz and the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, and argues that Leibniz was wrong when he identified an object with the collection of its properties, adding that the claim that this is a mistake rests on logic. He says one can see in the soul a complexity in which different sides exist within the same person, and that this is a reality and not a problem; he even suggests that such a complex understanding enables us to judge favorably and not erase a person because of one isolated failure.
Coercion, Chabad, “he is compelled until he says ‘I want to,’” and Maimonides
The speaker is asked about the value of coercing commandment-observance in relation to someone who does not believe, and he answers that it depends on whether there is an inner point of faith covered by outer layers, and that he does not assume this exists in every person. He explains that the idea found in Chabad and among those who speak of an inner Jewish point rests on a diagnosis according to which the evil impulse is what holds a person back, and he says he does not agree with this as a general diagnosis. He presents Maimonides’ statement that “he is compelled until he says ‘I want to’” in the contexts of divorce and offerings, and explains that Maimonides resolves the issue by saying this is not coercion that nullifies will, because within the Jew there is a desire to fulfill Jewish law and only the impulse prevents it, so coercion reveals the inner will. He suggests this is a psychological explanation in the turkey-prince model: a God-fearing person may build an indirect theory to justify revenge and avoid giving a bill of divorce, and when the possibility of achieving the impulse’s goal is removed, the theory dissolves and he returns to his general halakhic commitment. He distinguishes between absolute coercion by beatings and milder coercion through prison and restrictions, and argues that absolute coercion can work only when there is an inner commitment to Torah and commandments, whereas milder coercion can create a valid self-interested will similar to “they hung him up until he agreed to sell.” He stresses that the psychological practical implication is that for someone with no commitment at all to Jewish law and with no indication of inner commitment, coercion of the kind of “he is compelled until he says ‘I want to’” is ineffective as a revelation of will, because there is no foundational point of commitment.
The Emperor’s New Clothes, rationalization, and repentance
The speaker brings Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes and argues that the audience was not merely lying out of fear but had convinced itself that it saw clothes, because it is hard for a person to maintain a self-image of being a fool. He says the proof is that when a child cries out that the king is naked, the theory collapses immediately and the inner knowledge bursts outward, showing that the truth was inside all along. He uses this to explain how in the words of the Sages a penitent can acquire his world in one moment, because this refers to someone who always knew that the act was sinful and only the impulse overcame him, unlike the modern sense of someone returning to religion by changing worldview. He defines the process as rationalization in which the impulse builds a theory that justifies actions, and argues that “hearts are drawn after actions” can work negatively too, when actions generate a theory, and also positively, when changing actions dissolves a theory that was meant to justify deviation.
A child taken captive, impulse, and responsibility
The speaker defines a child taken captive as someone who adopted a theory not because of impulse but because he grew up in an environment that thought that way, and so that is what he truly thinks. He says that when the façade is a product of impulse, the person bears responsibility because he built the theory in order to allow himself certain actions, whereas in the case of a child taken captive there is no responsibility in that sense. He adds that there may still be some inner point even in a child taken captive, but the very holding of the position is not necessarily a result of impulse.
Binding morality and belief in God
The speaker presents a basic claim that there is no valid and binding morality without belief in God, because binding morality derives its force from a lawgiver with authority. He says that people who do not believe in God can behave well, but this is not morality in the sense of a binding command, only a natural tendency or an interest. He uses Amnon Yitzhak’s parable of a sheep considered righteous by the criterion of non-harm, to emphasize the distinction between a good nature and commitment to a moral command. He suggests that when atheists demand morality from others and speak about binding morality, this can be interpreted as split consciousness in which there exists a hidden belief in God, but an external theory of atheism was built in order to avoid commitment to commandments beyond morality. He distinguishes between someone who truly built a theory because of impulse and someone who was born into atheism and is not at all aware of the hidden layer of faith, and argues that in the latter case this is not the same dynamic of impulse, and therefore the mechanism of “he is compelled until he says ‘I want to’” is not relevant. He also suggests a biblical-linguistic possibility of a connection between idolatry and impulse through the use of the expression “and they went astray,” from the language of harlotry.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sorry for the delay, I just didn’t notice the time. Last class we talked about the change in the situation, right, the change in our condition nowadays compared to earlier times. And the basic claim was that this situation in which people deny faith because of impulse — or let’s say idol worshippers because of impulse — is a concept we just don’t grasp today. We don’t grasp it today because it’s obvious to us that someone who doesn’t believe, or someone who denies faith, or something like that, it’s simply because that’s really what he thinks. We don’t attribute it to impulse; rather, that’s his outlook. So even if we prove him wrong, that also shouldn’t change anything. Meaning, that’s how he thinks. If you persuade him, fine, but as long as you haven’t persuaded him, it’s not a matter of rebuke, it’s a matter of persuasion. In the past, by contrast, the outlook was — and apparently the reality was too, not just the outlook — the situation was different. There was some state in which people worshipped idols because they had an impulse to worship idols. Ask them, is this a sin? The answer is yes, it’s a sin. They would tell you it’s a sin. But their impulse pulled them, and therefore they worshipped idols. Not because they really believed in it. That’s something that today is a little hard for us to grasp. The parable I often give in order to sharpen this, to illustrate it more, is the parable of forbidden sexual relations. Let’s say a person has a desire for a certain woman, a married woman. Okay? So if they come to sin, that doesn’t mean both of them agree, that both of them think this act is permitted, that there’s nothing wrong with it. A person can reach a point where he does this act even while, at the very same time that he’s doing it, he knows it is forbidden. Except what? The impulse overcomes him. Meaning, he can’t cope with his impulse. Now this same situation existed also with respect to idolatry. Not only with respect to sexual impulse. And that’s what the Talmud in Yoma says — that the Men of the Great Assembly abolished the impulse for idolatry and the impulse for forbidden sexual relations, except for a married woman. And there it sounds like some kind of mystical act, right? They did some kind of magic and abolished people’s impulses. But I’m not sure you have to get to that kind of interpretation of the Talmud. It could be that the Talmud means the cultural development we’re all familiar with: today we really don’t have an impulse to worship idols. That thing that is described so powerfully in the Talmud, and also in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), in such a powerful way, is unfamiliar to us today. We don’t know it. Now the natural description of the matter, not the mystical one, right, the natural description of the matter is that this is a natural process. Meaning, there was some process of sublimation, or there is constantly some process of sublimation taking place. Culture somehow pushes these impulses inward and maybe even erases them. And today we don’t have those impulses, and therefore one can say, at least metaphorically, that those impulses were nullified. Once they existed, but now they don’t. And the impulse that remained — desire for a married woman — the impulse for forbidden sexual relations, that too they abolished except for a married woman. The impulse toward a married woman is familiar to us. And a person can imagine a situation in which he sins with a married woman even though this is not some ideology that he thinks is permitted. He knows it’s forbidden. But his impulse causes him to do it; he can’t cope with his impulse. The same thing was true with respect to idolatry. What?
[Speaker B] Wait — isn’t that a very… according to this, Rabbi, you’re saying cultural development. Meaning that culture succeeded, and its own internal development supposedly succeeded, in removing idolatry from human culture, or from most of it, in a way that the Torah, with all the people and bans and all that, didn’t manage? Could be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? No, it’s—
[Speaker B] A bit. What did culture succeed in doing in something so essential, that Maimonides says all of Judaism is a war against idolatry — culture did the job much better, supposedly, than the Torah, if the Torah is not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not saying better or worse. The Torah is part of the whole thing. This cultural and historical development took thousands of years. Part of the effort, or the process, over those thousands of years, was also the Torah. Just like the internalization of morality. Today morality sounds self-evident to people, and it doesn’t depend on whether you’re religious or secular. The awareness — your awareness that you need to be moral. Sometimes unfortunately it’s almost the opposite. But that doesn’t mean the Torah had no part in this process. So the fact that the Torah was there and implanted these values — after a long historical process, in the end, in the end, it got in.
[Speaker B] If the Torah is part of culture? Definitely, yes. And that’s a statement that certainly many fine people would not agree with.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what “agreed upon” means; I’m saying what I think. Whoever agrees, agrees; whoever doesn’t, doesn’t. The point is that I think Western culture is called, not for nothing, Judeo-Christian culture, or Judeo-Greek, depending on the context. But I think there is almost no dispute about the influence of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) on Western culture. It’s a little hard to argue with that. This is a process — by the way, as I said before, I don’t actually need that. Meaning, even if history had done this without the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), in my opinion there would be nothing difficult about that. Time does things that other things fail to do. But here, in this case, I think it really wasn’t just time, but the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), or the norms it implanted, are part of this process. And therefore that answers the question even more, although you don’t really need it. In any case, back to our matter: what I’m basically claiming is that there has been some historical change in human nature. That is, human nature has changed; our impulses are different. The ancient impulses from back then don’t really exist today. The well-known story in the Talmud, right, about Rav Ashi, to whom Menashe appeared in a dream and said: if you had lived in my time, you would have lifted the hem of your cloak and run to worship idols. It seems to me that this story expresses exactly this process. Meaning, you don’t recognize the force of the impulse because of which I worshipped idols, Menashe says to him. And I think this process continues even after Rav Ashi until our own day, meaning this is a process that keeps going all the time, and therefore we understand less and less this state in which a person does something he knows is not right. Why? Because he has an impulse. Now there’s another point here, and it’s a slightly subtler point. Regarding forbidden sexual relations, I think the act is improper, but my impulse overcomes me and I do it anyway. It’s about an act. Maybe with idolatry too, you can understand that the ritual act of idolatry, the deed, I perform it even though I have no real belief in idolatry, because it’s still an act. But can one deny faith because of impulse? You understand that denying faith because of impulse is something much more problematic, because denial is an error in thought, not in action. Now how can I believe in something I don’t believe in? Or believe in something I think is false? Doing something I think is wrong, fine, impulse can cause us to do that. But thinking something that I myself think is false — if I think it’s false, then who is it that thinks it’s true? How can impulse cause me to think something that I myself think is false? There’s a subtle point here. And here too I can make two distinctions. The impulse might transform me completely and make me really believe it. Not that inside I still know it’s false, but outwardly I think it’s true. No — it changes the inside too. That’s it, it changed my thoughts. Once I thought it was false; impulse changed that and now I think it’s true. A result of impulse, but still, right now there’s no point inside me that still understands that this thing is false. No, that was erased. The impulse changed me. That’s one possibility. A second possibility, which I want to argue for and which sounds more plausible to me, is that the impulse works on an external plane. Meaning, deep inside I still know this thing is false, but the impulse causes me to believe it — not just perform actions, but to believe something that deep inside I understand is false. That’s much subtler and trickier. Meaning, I’m actually living with split consciousness. In my consciousness there are two levels. Deep down, I understand that idolatry is false — not the worship but the belief, the belief in the idol is false — but outwardly I live in a consciousness in which I really do believe in that idol. And again, I’m not talking only about the worship, about practical acts; I’m talking about thought. And that’s already more subtle — how can that be? There’s a concept called split consciousness. So I want to dwell on this concept a bit, because it’s an important concept. Rabbi?
[Speaker C] Yes. I think there’s a very significant difference between believing in something and thinking about something. When I think about, say, idolatry or forbidden sexual relations, I don’t believe in it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No — thinking about, versus thinking it.
[Speaker C] Yes, what’s the difference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When I think about idolatry — so what, I can think about idolatry without believing in it at all. But if I think the ideas of idolatry—
[Speaker C] To be honest it’s a little hard for me, I don’t know, to connect to what it means to think it, to think idolatry. But let’s say forbidden sexual relations, okay, like the Rabbi said, a married woman and things like that. I can think about something, but that’s not what I believe in. There’s a difference.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I’ll explain it once more. There’s a difference between thinking about and thinking. I can think about Newton’s second law, and I can think about F = ma squared. Newton’s second law is F = ma, right — force equals mass times acceleration. Now F = ma squared is a false law. I can think about it. I can think about a false law. I can’t think the false law. Because if I understand that it’s a false law, then I’m not thinking it.
[Speaker C] Thinking it — does that mean agreeing with it, so to speak?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Meaning, that’s what I think. That’s what I believe. That’s what is true in my eyes. Okay?
[Speaker C] Thinking about something—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can think about false things, what’s the problem?
[Speaker C] Right, except a lot of people claim that the very act of thinking about something false is itself a transgression.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, before the transgression — I’m asking whether it’s possible. Leave aside for the moment whether that’s defined as a transgression. I’m asking whether such a state exists at all. Obviously it exists—
[Speaker C] Obviously it exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s all. Thinking about — no problem thinking about something false. What I’m asking now is whether one can also think something false. That’s the question. And I want to argue that this too exists.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, that too exists even though I know it’s false?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.
[Speaker D] And that’s the parable of the turkey prince that you brought last time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, that’s the next part. I want to demonstrate this through the story of the turkey prince. Okay? So in the story of the turkey prince, yes, the king’s son goes mad, declares himself a turkey — an indic — takes off his clothes, goes under the table, and eats kernels. And nobody succeeds in healing him. The king is completely despairing; his son has totally gone insane. All the doctors, right, like sheep passing under the rod, none of them manages to heal him. Then one wise man comes and says, I’ll heal your son. The king says, fine, please. So the wise man takes off his clothes, goes under the table, and joins this prince, this turkey, right, and starts eating kernels off the floor with him. So the prince asks him, what are you doing here? What is one born of woman doing among us? So he says, I’m a turkey, what’s the problem? I’m a turkey too, I want to eat a few kernels — is that forbidden? He says, all right, if you’re a turkey too then that’s excellent. This is the place for turkeys. A convalescent home for turkeys. Fine. So they sit there and eat. At some point the wise man says to the prince, look, you can be a turkey even if you wear pants. Didn’t I say this in the previous lecture, by the way? I didn’t say it, right? I think I did. Yes? Could be, then suddenly I started thinking again. So he says to him, you can also wear pants, you can also put on a shirt, sit on a chair, eat with a knife and fork. He brought him back to normal human behavior, and that’s how he was healed. That’s more or less the end of the story. Now the question that arises about this story — and it’s the obvious question — is: in what sense was the prince really healed? He’s still sick. He’s still convinced that he’s a turkey; he’s just saying that a turkey can also wear pants and a shirt and eat with a knife and fork. But he wasn’t really healed. He didn’t understand his mistake and think he was a human being. No, he goes on thinking he’s a turkey; he just persuaded him behavioristically, right, only on the behavioral plane, he persuaded him to behave like a human being. But in consciousness he’s still a turkey. That’s one question. A second question, which I think people pay less attention to, is the detail I mentioned in the middle of the story. When the wise man went under the table, the prince asked him, what are you doing here? What does that question mean? What, he didn’t understand that there could be another turkey who wanted to eat kernels? It was obvious to him that this wasn’t a turkey, it was a human being, right? That’s why he asks him, he says, what are you doing here? This isn’t a place for human beings; it’s a place for turkeys. In other words, it was clear to him. It was clear to him that this wise man who comes down there naked and starts eating kernels is really a human being playing turkey, but really a human being. Now I don’t understand — if he knows that someone who looks like this and thinks like this and so on is a human being and not a turkey, then what is he telling me stories about himself for? So he understands that he’s a human being and not a turkey. The previous question was: why does the story say he was healed? He wasn’t healed. This question says: why do you think he was ever sick? He was never sick at all. Right? Because he actually knew in advance that someone who looked like that was a human being and not a turkey. So why is he declaring himself to be a turkey? He’s fooling us, but he’s not sick at all.
[Speaker E] Is that really how the story goes, that he asked him why are you here? Because he thought he didn’t belong?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Without the “because” — the “because” is me. He asked him, what are you doing here?
[Speaker E] What are you doing here? Just, you know, started talking with him and from there…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Started talking with him, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why be so exact that specifically in the morning? That doesn’t appear in the story. Clearly this detail appears in the story, which means it has a role in the story. And when he asks him, what are you doing here, apparently — as I understand it — the subtext is that he understands that something like this doesn’t belong here. So these two questions actually lead us in opposite directions. The first question says, wait a second, he wasn’t healed. The second question says, wait a second, he was never sick in the first place. And I think these questions answer each other; one resolves the other. What do I mean? The claim is that if this turkey, this prince, really had been sick all the way down — meaning, if it had been clear to him that he was a turkey and there had remained no inner point, in the deepest layer of the soul, not even a tiny grain that understood he was a human being and not a turkey — then it would have been impossible to heal him. Healing of the soul can always be aided from outside, but it has to begin from some point within the sick person. Meaning, you have to find some true point, some healthy point, and use it to expand it and spread it throughout all parts of the soul until you manage to heal him. But if there is no healthy point there at all, if it’s all sick, you’ll never heal him. You can only create him anew; that’s all you can do. It’s lost, because he’s corrupt to the bone, all the way, to the root. Such a thing can’t be treated. You can treat an illness — a mental illness I’m talking about now, maybe a non-mental illness too, I don’t know. But a mental illness can be treated only when inside there is some point that is not sick, a healthy point, and you use it as an Archimedean lever to heal the rest of the soul. And since that’s so, one could ask: then either way, what are we saying? Meaning, if there is such a point, then he’s not really sick, so whom are you healing? If there isn’t such a point, then it’s an incurable mortal illness, so you can’t heal him. The point is: no. We’re talking about a person who is indeed sick. There is inside him a point where he understands he is a human being. But that point is covered by so many layers, he has sold himself this theory that he is a turkey, until in his consciousness he really believes it. Now deep inside, if I had some way to expose that point within him, there is still a point where he understands he is a human being. But if you ask him in his ordinary consciousness, in the way he lives — he’s a turkey. Now because deep inside there is a true point, this illness is indeed an illness, but it is curable. One can try to heal it. How do you heal it? It works like this. Basically — why did this illness happen in the first place? First a diagnosis, right? Before healing you need a diagnosis. What’s the diagnosis? Why does a person who knows he is a human being suddenly live in some consciousness that he is a turkey? The answer is that this person simply had no strength, or didn’t want, to behave according to human norms. He wanted freedom — no clothes, pecking around on the floor, doing whatever he wanted. He was fed up with the restrictions placed on human beings. Right? In the parable’s meaning — in Breslov they already write this — the meaning is a person who wants to get rid of commandments. It’s too much for me, not for me, I won’t hold up, I’m not this, and then he sells himself a thesis that he’s really a turkey, not a human being — meaning he’s not obligated, he can’t keep commandments. Okay? But let’s stay with the parable for a moment. This prince doesn’t want to behave like… he’s not a human being. Those restrictions are too much for him, they annoy him, he doesn’t want them. So what does he do? He starts convincing himself with a theory that he’s really not a human being, he’s a turkey. Like people say today: you don’t have a monopoly on turkey-ness. I’m a turkey too. Who says I’m not a turkey? What, a turkey has to have feathers? I’m a turkey without feathers. Today this is very popular. Anyone can be whatever he wants. You can be a telephone pole, you can be a woman, you can be a man. Whatever a person decides, that’s what he is. So that’s what the turkey says too. That is, the prince says: so I — who says a turkey has to look like that? I’m a turkey too. And slowly, if you repeat this mantra enough times, that I’m a turkey, in the end he succeeds in convincing even himself. So it begins with an impulse that says he doesn’t want to follow human norms, human etiquette, but that impulse gets translated into a theory. And this theory basically comes to provide him with an escape hatch from the things he doesn’t want to do. Once he convinces himself he’s a turkey, a turkey isn’t obligated in commandments. He doesn’t need to sit on a chair, doesn’t need to wear pants and a shirt, doesn’t need to eat with a knife and fork — he can do whatever he wants. A turkey is obligated in nothing. And then it becomes very convenient for him, and he becomes more and more convinced in the theory that he is a turkey. But deep inside, very deep down, there is still a point where he understands he is a human being, even though he is already living in another kind of consciousness. That is a state of split consciousness. And notice: it is a result of impulse. You see the connection to what I said before? Because a person has an impulse, he builds himself a consciousness which inside, deep inside, he understands is not true. But he genuinely lives it. If you ask him what he believes, he tells you: I’m a turkey. He is convinced of it; he has convinced himself of it. But how do I know that deep inside there is a point that is still healthy, where he still perceives himself as a human being? Because if I can bring it out of him in a process of healing — if a process of healing is possible for him, that means that already at the initial stage there was some healthy point inside him, otherwise healing could never have happened. And that’s what the wise man does. What does he do? He says to him: look, come on — after all, you can sit on a chair even as a turkey. And wear pants and a shirt and use a knife and fork and all that — you can do that as a turkey too. He had no answer. Yes, even as a turkey he can. So he sat together with the wise man on the chair and ate and behaved exactly like a human being. What happens in that situation? What happens is that the person basically does not achieve the goal for which he developed his theory in the first place. After all, this whole theory was developed so that he could behave like a turkey, right? Now if in the end he doesn’t actually reach the state he wanted — being free and behaving like a turkey — if in the end he does everything that human beings do, then his theory will dissolve on its own. Since the whole reason it was built was to allow him to behave like a turkey. But if I manage to get him to behave differently, only on the behavioristic level — meaning only in behavior, not to change his head — his head will change on its own. Why? Because deep inside he knows he is a human being. He built himself a theory to justify behaving like a turkey. If I manage to take him out of the turkey behavior, then the theory that he is a turkey will also dissolve and no longer exist. And this is the point of “hearts are drawn after actions.” Yes, “hearts are drawn after actions” applies in a place where truly, deep inside the heart, there is a point that already understands this from the outset. “Hearts are drawn after actions” does not mean that after the actions your heart will turn over. That’s what I want to argue; it’s a suggestion I’m offering. “Hearts are drawn after actions” means only in a situation where deep inside, your heart is already in the right place. You just built yourself some theory and took your heart to another place. So there, if we manage to get you to behave properly, it will correct what is in your heart as well. Hearts are drawn after actions.
[Speaker C] Rabbi—
[Speaker B] Rabbi, there’s really a revolution here today. Suddenly a person can believe whatever he wants, and not that the facts and data are imposed on a person, and maybe a person can even choose to believe if he really wants to believe, including in God. And also the whole issue of continuity of the subject — suddenly we shattered it and split it, and all of these are distinctly postmodern statements.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Two different things. The first thing I partly agree with; the second thing I don’t agree with at all. There is continuity of the subject, and the person now perceives himself as a turkey.
[Speaker B] And in his innermost heart he believes one thing, but outwardly, in another part of that same subject, he believes something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no — even apart from my theory now about inside and outside. First of all, continuity of the subject can remain even in this description. This person remembers the period when he thought he was a human being; now he thinks he’s a turkey, let’s say even fully thinks he’s a turkey. That doesn’t mean he forgot the previous phase. There is continuity like that. There are two figures here.
[Speaker B] Someone tells me I can talk with two people. And that’s really complete discontinuity of the subject.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is continuity of identity. Identity is the inner thing. But he is one identity that holds opposite beliefs. So what? Those are beliefs; that’s not him. Continuity of identity doesn’t speak about beliefs. Your beliefs don’t have to remain the same. If your beliefs changed not because of impulse, just because you were convinced otherwise — so what?
[Speaker B] But at the same time you believe two opposite things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, you became convinced otherwise. So it’s not what you thought before. Now you really think differently, not because of impulse. Does that mean you’re a different person and there’s no continuity of identity? Why?
[Speaker B] No, you developed; you became a different character who believes something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But at the same time — suppose there is an inner core—
[Speaker B] An inner core that believes one thing and an inner core—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, wait, don’t mix things up. I’m talking now about no inner core. Leave aside what I said before. A person changed his belief completely, with no inner core. Okay? You’re saying that this doesn’t fit with continuity of identity. Not true.
[Speaker B] No, no, that’s not what I said. I said that at the same time it can’t be. And mainly what the Rabbi is saying — that a person can believe whatever he wants, a person decided he doesn’t want—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To believe—
[Speaker B] the religious thing and invented—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s the second part that I said I partially agree with. We’ll get there in a moment. Right now I’m talking about continuity of identity. With continuity of identity I don’t see the problem at all.
[Speaker B] I’m only talking about the same time. That the same person, within the same person, outwardly believes one thing and there is some other inner core that believes something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? So that’s—
[Speaker B] the same one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course. It’s the same one. These two beliefs together — that’s him.
[Speaker B] But they’re opposite. Right. So what remains of these two subjects if they believe different things — all the implications that follow from that: how to dress, how to live, how to act, what to aspire to?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re talking not about the subject but about the beliefs of the subject. Those are two different things. The subject can be the same subject with different beliefs.
[Speaker B] Then it’s not the same subject. What remains? What remains as the unifying thing? The owner of the beliefs. The unifier. What is it, and in what way does it remain one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You ask: who is the owner of the beliefs? Not the beliefs — who is the one who holds the beliefs? What is he?
[Speaker B] So there is no such thing. I think there is no such thing. There isn’t one person who believes one thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if you think there is no such thing, then that’s where our disagreement is.
[Speaker B] No, but even now the Rabbi is speaking to two people who believe opposite things. One believes he’s a turkey and one believes he’s a human being. It’s a bit different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the same person. At the same time.
[Speaker B] Within him—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Deep down, he knows he’s a human being, but in the outer shell, in his conscious awareness, he thinks he’s a turkey. It’s the same person, one person. Yes, a person has a complex soul. That can happen. Just as it can happen along the axis of time, it can also happen simultaneously. And it’s still the same person. As for the argument from earlier, yes, that’s Leibniz with the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Meaning, the thing is not the collection of its beliefs or its traits. The thing is the bearer of the beliefs and the traits. And its identity is not conditioned on its beliefs and traits. If his beliefs and traits change completely, it can still be the very same person, with different beliefs and different traits. In other words, Leibniz identified the collection of beliefs and traits with the object. He didn’t see that there’s something more in the object. And then he really says that what defines the object is the collection of traits. But that’s a mistake. Anyway, for our purposes this is—
[Speaker B] A metaphysical claim that has nothing to hold onto—how can you say it’s a mistake, based on—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is the rabbi saying is a mistake?
[Speaker B] On what basis does this claim stand, to say that what Leibniz says is wrong?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the basis of logic. What do you mean, on what basis? It’s wrong. What?
[Speaker B] One person who in the morning is a kind person and does commandments, and in the evening does—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Evil, sees misdeeds and does—
[Speaker B] Does, and believes as well.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who does?
[Speaker B] The same one? Not the same one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s how many figures he has inside… wait, wait, you said it’s the same one, didn’t you?
[Speaker B] No, it’s not the same one.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just now you said it’s the same one.
[Speaker B] I didn’t understand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then there’s no problem at all. In the morning I got up and put on tefillin. In the evening my neighbor went to sleep without even saying the bedtime Shema. Do you have any problem with that? No. Because in the morning it was me, and in the evening it was my neighbor. But what you’re describing here—you’re telling me, look, the same person in the morning thinks one way and in the evening thinks another way. So you yourself are saying it’s the same person. And the soul is the bearer of the beliefs; it is not the beliefs themselves. The beliefs are my beliefs; the beliefs are not me.
[Speaker B] I—who is that same person? What remains? If we strip from that person the desires, the background, the beliefs, everything he is—whatever remains there, then what remains there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The person remains, the bearer of the desires.
[Speaker B] What—but how? What can be said about him? God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much. If you ask me what can be said about him, whatever you say about a thing is always its traits. So if you strip away all its traits, obviously you won’t be able to say anything about it except that it exists.
[Speaker B] So I’m forced to arrive at some metaphysical claim that has nothing to hold onto, some matter of belief that I just accept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And your opposite metaphysical claim has even less to hold onto. So what?
[Speaker B] No, I see two people in front of me. I literally see two people. In the morning he’s like this, and in the evening he’s the opposite.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You imagine two people, but what—what is that based on? I see one person. In what sense is your claim more anchored in something than mine?
[Speaker B] I’ll put it this way: the rabbi looks physically at the hands, feet, and ears and says, “This is one person.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I look at his spiritual world and below, and I—
[Speaker B] See two people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. I’m not looking physically at all. The physical doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’m looking only at the soul. The soul is the bearer of belief, the bearer of beliefs; it’s not my molecules, it’s not my cells. The bearer of the beliefs is my soul.
[Speaker B] Fine, there’s a righteous person and a wicked person there, going around together and acting and doing. That’s why—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. There’s—in short, fine, it’s an argument, an argument.
[Speaker C] But in the end we’re all like that. What? In the end we’re all like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That’s what I think. I don’t see any problem with it. What problem? That’s reality; that’s what we’re like.
[Speaker C] Yes.
[Speaker B] But the implication is that if we want to judge a person favorably, we won’t say, “Listen, you sinned in one place, you’re disqualified, that’s it, erased.” You can say there are positive parts in you, good will, and sometimes moments of bad will and evil and wickedness.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine, so what?
[Speaker B] A complex way of looking that allows you—when you don’t attribute to this subject some metaphysical entity that you have to fight to the bitter end because there’s some grain of wickedness in it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can keep saying that, but you yourself can’t escape it. Because you yourself say: at one point you thought this way, and after some time you thought differently; you had moments like that and afterward other moments. Who is this “you”? “You” means there is one someone here, and both this and that are him. You can’t escape it.
[Speaker B] Even those who talk about the death of the subject don’t mean there is no person, that we’re just dreaming there are people and that they talk. There are human beings, living creatures, organisms, but they’re complex, and this illusion that they’re continuous and that it’s one thing acting—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The body doesn’t interest me—leave me alone with organisms. I’m not talking about the body at all. I’m talking about the soul. When Descartes says, “Cogito ergo sum,” yes, I think therefore I am, he isn’t proving the existence of the body, he’s proving the existence of the soul. Right, right. So in short, what I want to say is that—
[Speaker C] Rabbi, may I ask, sorry? Yes. If I try to move from the parable to the lesson, then really in this story, if you take a person who is, say, secular—he thinks he can’t stand under this burden of the commandments and therefore he is completely secular—and now we forcibly make him do commandments, put tefillin on him like Chabad do, forcibly take him to synagogue, what value does that have in the end?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In my opinion it has no value. But again, it depends on the assumption. If your assumption is that deep down he does believe in it and it’s only an outer shell, then you can apply here the idea that the hearts follow the actions. The question is whether that’s really the situation. I don’t assume that every person who sins, deep inside understands that he is sinning. There are some for whom that’s true, but there are also many for whom it isn’t. Someone who never believed, and didn’t grow up in a home where people believe, or who reached the conclusion that he doesn’t believe, or whatever—then really, I don’t think you can assume that deep down there’s some point in him that understands that the belief is in fact true. I’m only claiming—what I want to claim today—is that another state is possible. Not that every case is like that, but that it’s also possible for a person to believe something that he actually knows is not true. That’s the claim. I didn’t say that’s always the case.
[Speaker C] And is that what Chabad are latching onto, basically? Is that what they’re relying on?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. After all, when you ask—not only them, you ask everyone—they tell you there’s a Jewish spark. Deep inside, a person really wants to fulfill the will of God and keep Torah and commandments; it’s only the evil inclination that holds him back. So if you assume that, then there is logic in taking the actions and hoping that they will draw the heart after them. On this point I disagree. With that diagnosis.
[Speaker E] But Maimonides says this too—what do you mean, you disagree?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “They coerce him until he says, ‘I want to.’” I’m getting to that now, exactly that. And you think that really what that wise man did in the story of the turkey—what he actually did was cause the king’s son to behave like a human being. And then the question is, after all, he wasn’t healed—we asked, after all, he wasn’t healed. The answer is: yes, he was healed. Because once he behaved like a human being, the theory that he’s a turkey would dissolve. There’s no point in holding onto it, because the only reason he wanted it was in order for it to justify his behavior as a turkey. But if in any case he’s unable to maintain that behavior, then why hold onto that theory? So the theory dissolves on its own. And that’s the claim. And therefore I’m really answering the two questions through one another. The first question was: after all, he wasn’t sick at all. The answer is: yes, he is sick, only there is also such a sick person that deep inside has a healthy point, even though consciously he is sick, in the outer shell he is sick. And then as a result of that I say: fine, if so, then after he already behaved correctly he was also healed, since the inner point ultimately came out, and the whole theory he built for himself just to justify his behavior dissolved on its own. There was no need even to begin arguing with him that he really is a human being and not a turkey. It dissolves by itself, because the reason he developed that theory disappeared. Now this is also what I want to claim is the meaning of what Maimonides says, that “they coerce him until he says, ‘I want to,’” yes, in the laws of offerings and in the laws of divorce. So Maimonides says there that if a person doesn’t want to divorce his wife, then the Talmud says: they coerce him until he says, “I want to.” So Maimonides explains there: what does that help? After all, if they coerce him, then it’s a coerced bill of divorce, and a coerced bill of divorce is invalid. So what help is there in coercing him until it’s clear that he says “I want to” just so you won’t beat him—not because he really wants to? What did you gain? It’s a coerced bill of divorce, and a coerced bill of divorce is invalid—actually void, not merely invalid, void. She is not divorced. So what does this whole fiasco of “until he says, ‘I want to’” accomplish? So Maimonides says: because every Jew, deep inside, has some point at which he really does want to do what Jewish law says. And if a religious court told him to divorce the woman—because that’s what Jewish law obligates him to do in his situation—then obviously deep down he really does want to do it, except that the evil inclination, and so on. So they coerce him until he says, “I want to,” and when he says “I want to,” that reveals the inner point inside him. And all the mystics celebrate: every Jew has a deep inner point, and so on and so on. And I think this explanation is not a mystical explanation; it is a psychological explanation, exactly like what we saw with the turkey. On the psychological level—it’s not mysticism—on the psychological level, if deep down the person wants to keep commandments, and the religious court tells him that he must divorce his wife. Now they’re in conflict, right? Many times in divorce the spouses are in conflict. Once they’re in conflict, she upset him, he wants revenge on her. He wants revenge on her, so he’s unwilling to divorce her. Ah, but he knows he has to divorce her because Jewish law requires them to separate. So what happens? He develops a theory for himself: what do you mean, this Jewish law doesn’t apply to me. I know this woman is evil, wicked—what I need to do is abuse her. The Holy One, blessed be He, really wants me to abuse her, obviously. And you develop for yourself some theory like that, according to which you should abuse the woman. And it’s completely justified, even though you are God-fearing; inside, you’re meticulous about every minor and major point in every other area, and in principle here too, deep inside you understand that this is what’s required—but because of the inclination, because of the desire for revenge and so on, you develop for yourself some theory that no, no, this law doesn’t apply here. I know it well—she is evil, wicked; she needs to be abused, to be crushed completely, not to be released. All right?
[Speaker C] This—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a feeling many spouses are familiar with.
[Speaker C] If we assume that truly in each person there is that point of light—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, I haven’t gotten there yet; I’m getting there in a second. So that’s the claim of Maimonides. Now I want to say: since this is not mysticism but psychology, here is the practical difference between mysticism and psychology. What happens with a person who sincerely does not keep commandments, is not committed to Jewish law, in other areas too, unrelated to divorcing his wife? He doesn’t keep Jewish law, he’s not committed to it, he doesn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He. Regarding such a person, if we’re talking mysticism, then people will tell you—and that’s the accepted explanation—that every Jew deep down really wants to keep the Torah. And even if he doesn’t keep it, it’s only the evil inclination; therefore with every Jew you can apply “they coerce him until he says, ‘I want to.’” That’s if you understand this on the mystical level. But if you understand it on the psychological level, then it’s not true. If you see that there is a Jew who observes Torah and commandments, who is God-fearing, who is careful about Jewish law—and suddenly here, on the issue of divorce, he doesn’t agree with anything all the rabbis and judges tell him. He absolutely refuses. Then it’s obvious, obvious, that here it’s a matter of inclination, because after all we see that in other places he does observe Torah and commandments. And here you really can assume that deep down he basically understands that this too is something he must do, and all his theories are just a result of the inclination. What do you do in such a situation? You do exactly what the wise man did to the turkey. You say to him like this: look, I’ll beat you until you say, ‘I want to.’ And after you say, ‘I want to,’ I’ll take the bill of divorce from you, give it to the woman, and I myself will marry her off. You’ll shout, of course, that you didn’t really agree, it was only because they beat you—well, I couldn’t care less what you say. I’ll marry her off even though she’s a married woman. What happens in such a situation? In such a situation, he will no longer achieve the goal of making the woman miserable. Here, I will marry her off myself. Once he doesn’t achieve the goal of making the woman miserable, then the theory he built for himself to enable him to make her miserable will dissolve on its own. Then he’ll understand that he was basically seized by this frenzy because of the anger and so on, and he’ll return to his basic motivations, to his basic commitment to keep Torah and commandments. Why? Because this whole theory—that here he supposedly doesn’t need to divorce her—after all, it’s obvious he built it only so that he could obey his inclination, yes, abuse her. Deep down he is in favor of observing Torah and commandments; he is committed to Torah and commandments. In such a situation, the heart follows the actions. I’ll show him that he won’t achieve the result. This woman will marry someone else. Nothing will help you; you can scream that she’s not divorced and that you didn’t really agree—I’ll marry her off. She won’t remain [bound to you]; nothing will help. Once nothing will help, the theory too will dissolve, because the whole theory came only to enable you to abuse her. That’s the idea. Now where is the practical difference? What happens with someone whom I know is not committed to Torah and commandments? Just an ordinary secular person all his life, nothing at all; he keeps nothing. By the way, not only secular—also someone formerly religious, anything—someone who doesn’t observe Jewish law at all. Then clearly, at least in many cases—not always; there can be someone who doesn’t keep all of Jewish law and still inwardly believes—but here the situation is more problematic. Because here you don’t have the indication that deep down he understands that he must obey Jewish law. Because the fact is that in other areas too, where he doesn’t have this inclination involving the woman, there too he doesn’t observe. So in such a case, it won’t help to coerce him until he says, ‘I want to.’ Because I’m not talking about mysticism; I’m talking about psychology. And in psychology it depends on a factual question: either deep down he really has a commitment to Torah and commandments, and only the inclination caused him to build this theory—then coercion until he says, ‘I want to,’ will help. But if deep down he’s an atheist, then what—what help is it that he says, ‘I want to,’ because he’s afraid I’ll beat him? He doesn’t want to divorce the woman. And he doesn’t have this inner desire to observe Torah and commandments. It’s not just the advice of the inclination, that he built himself some theory that the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t want him to divorce the woman. He’s not interested in the Holy One, blessed be He, at all—neither evil inclination nor anything else; he doesn’t believe in it. So in such a case, what help is there in beating him until he says, ‘I want to’?
[Speaker D] What do they actually do in such cases, in practice?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today they don’t beat anyone.
[Speaker D] No, they put him in prison and all that, all the surrounding restrictions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t beat him. You know, in Jewish law—and this is an interesting question, how to explain it—but in Jewish law there are different levels of coercion. The level of absolute coercion is beating, beating until he agrees. They don’t get to that. Nobody does that. Rabbi Shilat once proposed it—in Makor Rishon he wrote to do it. And by the way, I was completely in favor. There were all kinds of self-righteous protests: what do you mean? Against democracy? Civil rights? Human rights? I’ve never heard of a human right to make your wife miserable, but never mind, there were all kinds of protests like that. But in practice they don’t do it. Now, milder coercion—like prison or something like that—they do do that sparingly, but they do it. Now there it’s a subtle point, because the seam always lies in the assumption that with mild coercion, if the mild coercion works, then in the end he has a genuine desire even without “they coerce him until he says, ‘I want to.’” Rather, in the end, even if he does it in order to get out of prison, still he wants to divorce his wife. It doesn’t matter that his interest is to get out of prison; for that purpose he wants to divorce his wife. It’s like “they hang him until he sells,” or “they hang him until he gives,” or things like that. Why is “they hang him until he sells” considered a valid sale? Right? Because if someone is forced to sell, the sale is valid. True, he sells only because he was forced, but in the end he wanted to sell because they forced him. When a person sells for money, there too the sale is for something, right? For money. If he didn’t need the money, he wouldn’t sell, and still that is considered his genuine desire. His desire is because of the money, but in the bottom line he really did want it. So here too—that’s the point: his desire is because of prison, but in the bottom line because of prison he really did want it. So he divorced.
[Speaker D] So in the end it comes from his own initiative, meaning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. By contrast, in “they beat him until he says, ‘I want to,’” when the beating is absolute—that is, in total coercion—then there he doesn’t really want to; he says “I want to” simply so that we’ll stop beating him. It’s not that he wants because of that; rather he simply says “I want to” so that we won’t beat him. There the halakhic assumption is that even after the beating there is no real desire. It’s not that he wanted to divorce only in order to escape the lashes—no, he didn’t want to divorce, he simply escaped the lashes. That’s the difference between non-absolute coercion and absolute coercion. And it really is not a simple question why they make that distinction, but that’s the assumption in Jewish law. And I claim that total coercion can work only on a God-fearing person. Non-total coercion—if in the end, in the end, you want—then I don’t care whether you’re God-fearing or not; bottom line, you want it. So if you want it, then the divorce is valid. Only in total coercion, only in total coercion, do I need Maimonides’ whole idea that says that deep down he wants to; therefore even if he’s shouting that he doesn’t want to, in the end he really does want to.
[Speaker B] And that can only be said about someone who really, deep down, wants to. Unlike every… that even according to your proposal, even according to your proposal that you agreed to bring back beatings,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you mean that you would go check, for each person, whether in his personal life he observes the commandments, and if so then you would beat him, and if not then you wouldn’t beat him. That too is an interesting distinction. No, no, obviously. I don’t mean in practice. “We coerce him until he says, ‘I want to’” applies only to someone who keeps Torah and commandments. Rabbi, Rabbi, but if someone reveals this secret that the rabbi told that whole group of God-fearing recalcitrant husbands, and tells them: if you stand your ground and don’t yield, don’t give up this ideology you’ve built for yourselves by the force of the evil inclination, but keep holding onto it, then it creates a paradox in the whole matter, because it collapses the entire thesis. It creates no paradox at all. I’m marrying this woman off, and I don’t care what they say. No, if we know that all of them held onto their view because they thought that in the end… I’m marrying this woman off anyway. Then they won’t be able… and then they’ll know that those who do stand firm… No, they won’t know, because I’ll marry them off in any case. Even if they stay silent. That’s exactly the point. The point is that you’re willing to go all the way—it’s a game of chicken, because whoever blinks first… and Jewish law blinks last. You’re playing chicken with the recalcitrant husband, and Jewish law blinks last. And Jewish law says: I’m marrying this woman off even if you scream here until tomorrow that you don’t agree. It doesn’t interest me in the least. And the assumption is that if in the end you won’t get your way, and you know you won’t get your way—nothing will help you—then you’ll give up the theory too. And he won’t blink last? He’ll insist on blinking last, he wants to blink last. Fine, then the woman will still be a married woman and I’ll marry her off.
Rabbi, regarding the tale of Rabbi Nachman, wouldn’t it be correct to say that it’s really a very clear formulation of Wittgenstein—that there’s nothing in the content except what is revealed in the shell—Wittgenstein and Leibowitz, that they’re… I didn’t understand. After all, the idea in the plain meaning of this story is that you basically adopt all the manners, conduct, habits, and culture of human beings. Supposedly, once you acquire them and do all of them, also think like a human being, dress like a human being, speak like a human being—then you are a human being. There is nothing in the content except what’s in the shell. That’s Wittgenstein’s well-known idea. Ah, okay, so I disagree both with Wittgenstein and with anyone who says that. That’s my claim. My claim is that this is an interpretation that in my opinion is mistaken. They think that if the heart is drawn after the actions, then there’s nothing in the action beyond—there is no “heart,” and all there is is just the action. And I claim: not true. That is exactly why I made this whole move here, this whole description, to explain that this is not a correct conclusion, or not a necessary one. And in my view it’s also incorrect.
I think there’s a very interesting expression—in the last two or three years I’ve heard of people returning to religion who define themselves as “a secular person who keeps the commandments.” Meaning, he defines himself as secular, as it were, but he says, what—can’t a secular person put on tefillin? Can’t a secular person keep the Sabbath? So I do all of the Shulchan Arukh. The question is what he means. Yes, no, I mean people who do believe, but they recoil from the discourse with Haredi culture, and so all of that… It depends. It can be interpreted like Ahad Ha’am, who really was secular but wanted to keep the commandments because it was the national folklore and so on. And it can be interpreted in the way you said, and then indeed it’s just words. Because there are Jews who really are religious in practice, and that’s how they live, but they specifically like living in Tel Aviv, specifically in a secular place, and that’s how they define themselves. Fine, complete people—what difference does it make? “The light within it will bring them back to the good path.” But what about “they have forsaken Me and My Torah”—what comes of that? Right, I think that’s actually the parable of the turkey prince in this case. Supposedly he’s considered a turkey prince, but in practice he behaves like a human being. That does something good for him. What you’re describing is not the turkey prince, because consciously too he believes, not only deep down inside. But he’s connected—I mean people who are connected to the culture, as it were, to secularity, to television, and they keep the commandments. Fine, it does them good to define themselves as secular in that cultural sense, that they feel freer. Yes, but I don’t care about that; culture is not a prohibition. In terms of the commandments, they believe and keep the commandments. Right, I think that’s the practical parable of the turkey prince in our time, as it were. Meaning, a person who is, as you said—it’s not essential, because it really deals only with the outer shell, so it’s not. Yes, yes.
It’s worth remembering, Ido, that this concept—“secular” and “free”—we created it. It was a conscious decision less than 150 years ago, when Agudat Yisrael decided to do this, even though Rabbi Kook and the Netziv warned them that this would be stabbing a knife into the heart of the Jewish people—that this separation between religious and secular has no validity whatsoever. Well, I don’t understand this little homily. Obviously they were right. There are secular people. And if you hadn’t defined it as secular, then they wouldn’t be secular? I don’t understand this game. That’s Rabbi Kook according to his own view, apparently—that he grasps the Jewish point on the mystical level. Meaning, he thinks that really everyone remains religious inside; it’s only something external. I don’t agree with that. For me it’s psychology, not mysticism. And the fact that there are doubts—so what if there are doubts? There are doubts, and you make decisions. So someone who has doubts makes the decision that he believes—fine. He doesn’t have to believe one hundred percent; there’s no such thing as one hundred percent among human beings. But that’s his conclusion, so he believes. Someone who decided to adopt the conclusion that he does not believe—then he does not believe.
Do you really think that Elbaz, who jumped on the grenade many decades ago and sacrificed his life to save dozens of recruits there, did not believe just because he didn’t sit and read the first part of the trilogy and delve into it and accept it? What does that have to do with it? Belief is a matter of belief. What does it have to do with anything? Did I say there can’t be deep faith? No, he was apparently a secular person, from what I know. Fine, but what’s the claim? Because he jumped there, that means he does believe? Doesn’t believe? What? There’s Heaven in every possible sense there. Grounding Judaism and faith in theology is very problematic; the rabbi understood that. I don’t know what “theology” means, what’s problematic, and what that has to do with Elbaz. I don’t see any connection to our discussion. Either Elbaz was religious or he wasn’t religious—how does that relate to us?
This division of secular or religious according to some statement that he says—“I believe” or “I don’t believe”—that’s what I’m saying, that that’s what’s inside him. But these are distinctions that can’t even be defined. These are words hanging in the air; they define nothing. Silence would have suited them from the start. I can’t understand your words. Your words are hanging in the air; they simply don’t connect for me. It’s not that I’m arguing—I don’t even know what to argue with. The words just don’t connect for me. A person says, “I believe in God.” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he doesn’t know what he would say. You can ask him: what can you say about that God you believe in? He’ll be silent. What will he say? He’ll say He’s big, He’s small, He’s great, He’s this? He’ll say there is someone, something, who created the world and gave us the Torah, and whose commands obligate us. And that’s it. As HaGashash say: and that’s it. And that’s where it ends? Yes, that’s where it ends. Except that the rabbi believes in a higher God. Yes. Very simple, very clear, unequivocal, no problem with that. He built some infinite number of galaxies empty of content, darkness over the face of the deep. What does darkness over the face of the deep have to do with anything? You asked who God is. Yes, I’m asking. God is the one who created the world and gave the Torah. So I say sarcastically: that same God created meaningless vapor, full of darkness, full of suffering, and that’s what He looks at? Therefore I need to worship Him, and even as an extra pious measure? I can’t connect your words into a sentence at all. I really can’t conduct a discussion. You’re bringing me arguments that don’t seem connected to the discussion at all. I don’t even know what to argue about. What does it have to do with the issue at all? You ask a person which God he believes in. He says: the God who created the world and gave the Torah. Is that the only God you believe in? What, so small? Does he have…? Yes, that’s the only God I believe in. Is everything okay now? That’s it. No, so I said that all I said was that I disagree with the idea that the rabbi even thinks that this is God, because it can’t be that it’s summed up by that. Fine, so you believe in a different God. Everything’s okay. No, I think we all believe in God. You think so—fine. I happen not to think so. You think I believe? No, I think we all believe in God. You think so—fine. And I don’t think so. You think I believe in another God, but I have some internal information regarding what I believe. No, the argument started from what Ido said about a person who is supposedly a perfectly righteous man who keeps all 613 commandments from beginning to end, including Torah study, including kindness, charity, and justice—an Aryeh Levin plus-plus. Only what? Ask him: do you believe in God? Did you go through the first part of the trilogy and did you accept it? He tells you: I didn’t read it, and what I did read—I didn’t get it, I didn’t understand it. Fine, I’m stopping here. You can’t discuss things like this. What does the trilogy have to do with it now? He believes in God without the trilogy—simple faith, belief… No, he doesn’t believe. But he didn’t speak with him. Ido was talking about a secular person who supposedly doesn’t believe. I’m talking about what Ido said. So what does that have to do with a believer? Even if someone doesn’t believe… Also, excuse me, I said I meant rational, intellectual belief. Ask him, and he says: I don’t believe. Not rational intellectual belief and not nonsense. He believes there is a God, that’s all. Whether it’s rational intellectual, not rational, the question is at what levels he understands. No, but Ido wasn’t talking about such a person. Ido was talking about someone who is secular—that is, no—ask him, and he tells you: I don’t believe. Really don’t believe. No problem. But he does all the commandments. What’s the problem? But he does all the commandments from beginning to end. Yes, right. Ahad Ha’am—he wants to connect to Jewish folklore. No, he wants it for its own sake. He does it because that’s what his heart tells him. He doesn’t do it for the sake of the Jewish people and the family—no, the Jewish people, it has nothing to do with the Jewish people. I said he keeps the commandments for their own sake, not so that the Jewish people should be strong and have… Maybe. Then he’s just an idiot. Such a person, in my opinion, you can’t count for a prayer quorum on the grounds of being mentally incompetent, not on the grounds of being secular. And that same person who keeps the commandments for their own sake—so in our ordinary concept that’s more intelligent, more understandable? Of course. Absolutely. It makes perfect sense.
All right, let’s stop here, because it seems to me we’re already not… Fine. In short, what I want to say is that there is such a state, called cognitive duality. That’s the claim I wanted to show from the turkey prince. Cognitive duality means that a person can not only do something that he thinks is wrong, but also believe in something that he thinks is not true—something that he himself thinks is not true—which is very tricky. But it seems to me that yes, this is part of human psychology. Human beings can repress true beliefs and wrap themselves in, or live in, a certain consciousness in which they sincerely believe in something that they don’t really believe in. Deep down, they don’t really believe it. That’s the counsel of the evil inclination. Yes, such a thing can exist.
There’s an example—I wrote about this in one of my columns—about the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Yes, remember Andersen’s story? The Emperor’s New Clothes. The idea is that the emperor announces to the whole country—he’s walking around with no clothes at all—that these are the most wonderful clothes there are, and whoever doesn’t see that there are marvelous clothes here is apparently a fool, an idiot. Whoever has eyes in his head, whoever is an intelligent person, sees that these are magnificent royal garments. And he walks around the world completely unclothed, like the turkey prince, and the whole world applauds the splendid clothes the emperor is wearing. And no one even thinks of saying that the emperor is naked, that there are no clothes here.
At some point—the child, I no longer remember the details of the story, but that’s basically the idea—there was some child in the crowd who suddenly says, “Wait, father, the emperor is naked, the emperor has no clothes.” And then instantly the entire crowd suddenly arrives at the conclusion that the emperor really is naked, he has no clothes. Now this is a wonderful story because I think it really parallels the turkey prince. I want to claim here that it wasn’t fear. Usually people explain it as fear: people were afraid that if they said the clothes weren’t there, that they didn’t see any clothes, then people would think they were stupid. So out of fear they all lie to one another and say, “No, what wonderful and splendid clothes,” and so on. I want to claim that it wasn’t fear. In the end they convinced themselves that they really did see clothes. Because it’s hard for a person to think of himself as stupid, so little by little he builds himself a theory that the clothes—that there are wonderful clothes here—and he even sees them. What’s my indication that deep inside he still understands that the emperor is naked, that it’s only an external facade? Because when the child shouts, “The emperor is naked,” suddenly the whole crowd comes to the conclusion that the emperor is naked—in an instant. What does that mean? That someone simply had to make the penny drop for them, and then all the theories they had built evaporated, and what they understood deep inside—that the emperor was naked—immediately came out. Which means that the child didn’t convince them that the emperor had no clothes. The child merely dismantled the theory they had built and brought out what they had always known deep inside. That’s why it happens instantly. Otherwise it couldn’t happen instantly.
Yes, like Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, “he acquired his world in one moment.” How did he acquire his world in one moment? He wasn’t “returning to religion” the way we speak today. When we say today “returning to religion,” we mean someone who was secular and changed his worldview; now he became religious. “Returning in repentance” in Jewish law, in the Talmud, in the words of the Sages—that is someone who was always religious. He just sinned, and he repents for his sins. Even when he sinned, he knew he was doing wrong. Only now he repents and tries not to return to that sin ever again. A “returnee to religion” in today’s sense—when he sinned, he was coerced, he has nothing to repent for at all. When he sinned, he was under compulsion; now he knows the truth, and now he truly keeps it as well. That’s a “returnee to religion.” A penitent in the sense of the Sages is someone who always believed; even when he committed the sin, he understood that it was a sin. And nevertheless he did it, and for that he has to repent and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Now what does that mean? It can happen in an instant. A change in worldview usually does not happen in an instant. “Returning to religion” is not a matter of a moment, but a penitent can happen in a moment. Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya acquired his world in one hour. Why? Because all along he knew he wasn’t okay. It’s not that he suddenly discovered he wasn’t okay. He was a believing Jew. He understood that what he was doing was forbidden. But what? His inclination overpowered him. And maybe when the inclination overpowered him, he also built theories for himself. But then in an instant some penny dropped for him, and all the theories evaporated, and what he had always known deep inside came out. And therefore this thing can happen in an instant. In other words, the indication that deep inside you have the true perception, and the false perception is only an external facade, is whether it can happen in an instant—without persuasion. Rather, either “the hearts are drawn after the actions,” or the cry of a child that suddenly changes it, or a penitent like that for whom the penny suddenly drops, or something of that sort. That means it was inside him all along. But if it’s really a returnee to religion and not a penitent, then he changes his worldview; he was never living in duality. He was secular and now he became religious. The sinner who is a penitent—not a returnee to religion—was always religious, only a religious sinner. So all these examples are ultimately just telling us… That this is what we do to ourselves as rationalizations. Right, exactly. Rationalization is building yourself some theory that will justify what you want to do. Yes, “the hearts are drawn after the actions” in the negative direction. I want to do negative actions, so I build in my heart a theory that justifies those actions. The hearts are drawn after the actions. And the correction is: the hearts are drawn after the actions in the positive sense. Meaning, if you do the positive actions, then the negative theory will evaporate on its own. But all this is only where the whole theory is designed for practical purposes, to justify actions. But if you truly hold such a theory, and there isn’t some different understanding deep inside you, then that’s something entirely different. Then that really is what you believe. Then you’re under compulsion, and at most you can be a returnee to religion, not a penitent. Okay?
You can change your worldview, but not reveal outwardly what was always inside you. And the claim—the claim I want to make—is that the sinners of the past, and I’m returning to what we talked about in the previous lesson, the sinners of the past—I said they worshipped idols, or denied, or thought other thoughts because of the inclination. How can that be? Regarding actions, fine. But thoughts that you think, which you yourself know are untrue—how can that be? The answer is that same cognitive duality that I described today. And about this too Menashe still says to Rav Ashi: if you had lived in my time, then you too would have developed the theory that idolatry is true, and you would have lifted up the hems of your robe and run after it. It’s not an inclination that simply overcomes what you think. After the inclination pulls you to a place opposed to what you think, very often you build yourself some theory as though that is also what you think. It’s not just doing something while it is blatantly clear to you that it’s wrong. Usually, when a person does something that he himself understands is wrong, that happens when, because of the inclination, he has built for himself some theory that it is right.
And it may be that even in their time, when I speak about people sinning because of the inclination, this does not mean that they followed the inclination against what they knew. Rather, the inclination built them a theory that helped them cope with what deep inside they knew. And today, since we don’t have that inclination, fewer people get to that point, because you also don’t build yourself a theory unless you truly believe it. But if you truly believe it, then that theory is not the result of inclination; it really is what you think. And therefore today we don’t really recognize this concept of a person who worships idols or who denies because of the inclination. It may be that he commits sins because of the inclination; it may be that he doesn’t keep the whole Torah because of the inclination. But what does it mean that he doesn’t believe because of the inclination? That’s hard for us to grasp.
But the truth is that it can be. We don’t have an inclination for idolatry, but we definitely do have an inclination not to believe. Since a person wants freedom, he doesn’t want what belief obligates him to do, like Rabbi Nachman’s turkey prince, so he builds himself a theory that he really doesn’t believe.
I’ll say one more thing. I think my basic claim is that there is no valid morality without belief in God. Meaning, someone who does not believe in God cannot have valid morality in his world, binding morality. Now, that does not mean he won’t behave morally. Many people who do not believe in God behave morally, but they are not consistent. They are not consistent because valid morality is morality that draws its validity from some lawgiver with authority, something that determines the validity of moral laws. That’s a claim I’m making here as a preface; I don’t want to get into that discussion here, but that is my general claim.
Now I want to say: so what do I do with all kinds of secular people who behave well, behave morally—atheists who behave morally? Then there are two possibilities, maybe three. One possibility is that they don’t really believe in morality. They feel like behaving well, so they behave well. They have a good nature, they behave well. But they don’t understand that there is such a thing as morality in the valid sense that obligates—that I do this because I must. I do it because it feels right to me, because my conscience tells me that this is how one ought to behave, and so I do it. So he is a good person by nature. But a moral person is someone who does the good deeds because he is obligated by moral imperatives, because he sees that there is such a thing as valid moral imperatives. That cannot exist in a world where all there is is only me. Then who issues moral commands? Therefore there cannot be morality there. There can be good behavior, but not morality.
But many secular people—if you ask them—they won’t tell you that they behave this way because they feel like it. Some will, some have told me that. But I also don’t believe most of them, because they also demand that others behave that way. They don’t only behave that way themselves. And that is harder to explain by saying: that’s how I’m built, that’s what I feel like. What do you want from me? I’m not built that way. So secular people who are more aware of the issue say: no, no, no—there is valid morality, and it is secular, and so on. They build themselves towering structures—that morality can exist on a secular basis and so on. They lean on Kant, even though Kant himself says that’s not true. But that’s the thesis.
And I, as an outside interpreter, want to claim that they are actually hidden believers. They believe in God; they understand that there is a God. And therefore they think there is valid morality. But they built themselves a theory that they are atheists, an external theory. Why? Because they don’t want to keep commandments beyond morality. They don’t want to keep commandments—or I don’t know exactly why—so they built themselves some theory that they are atheists. Sometimes that theory was built by their society; they were born into it. It’s like captured infants. But still, if they think there is valid morality, that means that deep inside there is some understanding that in fact there is a God, there is validity to His commands, and therefore there is valid morality.
So here is an example of conscious duality or cognitive duality: someone who in effect declares himself an atheist, but deep inside there may really be belief in God. By the way, this is a different kind of duality from “we coerce him until he says, ‘I want to.’” In “we coerce him until he says, ‘I want to,’” he wants to fulfill it on a more visible level; it’s not on a completely hidden level. After all, he does keep the other commandments; he is committed to the commandments. It’s not a matter of deep psychological diagnosis. You can see it; there are indications that he is committed to the commandments. When I speak about someone who is committed to morality, he is genuinely an atheist. He somehow, in some sense, probably unconsciously assumes that there is a God who gives validity to moral laws, because of which he obeys them or sees moral laws as valid. But this exists in him on a completely unconscious level. Meaning, regarding such a person I don’t think this is because of the inclination. When he says of himself that he does not believe, it’s not because of the inclination. He is simply unaware that he believes. It’s not that he built himself a theory through the inclination.
Only someone who really believes and nevertheless lives with the consciousness that he does not believe—then that consciousness was probably built because of the inclination. But someone who was born in a completely secular environment, who from his youth never thought about God and religion and all that, he did not build himself a theory that he is an atheist because of the inclination. He really is an atheist. So how do I explain the fact that he still thinks there is valid morality? Because he has some internal intuition, deep inside, of which he himself is not aware on any level, that there is a God and there is meaning, there is validity to His command. This is a case in which “we coerce him until he says, ‘I want to’” will not help. Because here it is not a theory built because of the inclination to permit me various actions. It really is my theory. I’m inconsistent in some sense, but it is not a theory that is a product of the inclination, so “we coerce him until he says, ‘I want to’” won’t help here. All right?
Only it may be that because of this—because of this perhaps—in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), everywhere idolatry is spoken of, the term used is “they whored after,” from the language of harlotry, meaning that it really is a matter of inclination. Yes, that sounds reasonable. Rabbi, I really don’t understand the connection to morality now. Do we have an obligation, are we obligated to be moral according to the Torah? Yes. Only according to… only because… not Torah. You have to posit God in order to be obligated to morality. A Christian too—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t specifically have to be Torah. You need some external source that gives validity to the system of laws. Why? Why do I necessarily need validity without someone giving it validity? No, but I feel I’m obligated to the law because I want to be good to others, so I’m moral. What does that have to do with God? I’m not asking about your nature. If you want to be good to others, then be good to others. I’m talking about the claim: I don’t want to be good to others—do you have a claim against me? No, if there’s no obligation then no. Then there is no morality in your world. I’m talking about someone who has a claim against me.
The claim of the social order… Wait, wait, but a person whom the rabbi says is moral even though he is completely atheist—inside him there is some understanding, of which he isn’t even aware, that there is a God—but not necessarily. No, necessarily. Why? How is that related to God? Because, I’ll say it again: if he behaves well, then you’re right—he behaves well because that’s what he feels like, that’s how he’s built. That is not called a moral person. That is called a good person, like Amnon Yitzhak’s sheep. The story of the sheep—I’ve told it a few times. Amnon Yitzhak once said—I heard him say it—that the city rabbi gets up at four in the morning, slaughters a sheep, lays it on the road and covers it with a prayer shawl, and cries out, “A righteous man! A righteous man has died!” The whole city wakes up at four in the morning, looks outside, sees the rabbi wailing and crying, and everyone joins the funeral procession of the righteous man. They get to the cemetery, he removes the prayer shawl, wants to lower the body into the grave, and they see it’s a sheep. So they say to the rabbi: tell us, what is this, are you making fun of us? They wanted to kill the rabbi and put him in the grave instead of the sheep. What are you doing to us? And he says to them: what do you want? You always tell me—I rebuke you—and you tell me: what do you want from us? You tell me: we’re good people, we don’t hurt anyone, don’t steal, don’t murder, everything’s fine, we’re good people. And this sheep too is righteous. It didn’t rob, didn’t steal, didn’t murder anyone. By your criteria, it’s righteous—it’s righteous. What stands behind this parable? That this is not what it means to be righteous. Someone who behaves well because his nature is good is not righteous. He is not a person obligated to morality. A person obligated to morality does it because of the validity of the moral law, regardless of how he is built. What is the validity of the moral law? What validity does it have? From the fact that God legislated it.
What Jewish law, what Jewish law obligates us to be moral? There is no Jewish law. So what, then what is the validity? God’s command, not in Jewish law. He expects us both to be moral and to keep Jewish law. These are two independent categories. We’re returning here to topics that have already been discussed many times. Right, right. But if He expects us to be moral, He can expect, He can hope, but if there is no Jewish law here, there is no law… No, there is a deontological law, a moral law. But we’re not obligated if there’s no law. The rabbi never stops saying that in all the lessons. No, of course we are. We are obligated to morality. Why not? And it is written in the Torah, “And you shall do what is upright and good,” right? “And you shall do what is upright and good” means to behave morally. But that’s subjective. Yes, but subjective—you choose what is upright and good. But nobody includes that in the count of the commandments. So there is no command. What do you mean there is no command? There is an expectation or a moral command. There is an expectation, yes, but not a halakhic command. Correct. So again, then what is its validity if there is no halakhic command? Its validity is that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands us to be moral. He doesn’t command, He hopes, He expects, He expects. He gave a moral command and not a halakhic command. Therefore He comes with complaints to Cain: “Where is Abel your brother? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.” Where? There was not yet a command of “You shall not murder,” nor “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Right, because He expects it—He expects—but there is no legislation. No, He doesn’t only expect; He punishes him too. But the Torah gives only halakhic commands, not moral commands. The Torah describes what it means to be moral, and the command—the transformation of that thing into a command—is in our conscience. The fact that conscience was planted within us—that is the divine command.
So what we… so it was planted in us, so that person will come and say: conscience was planted in us for the sake of social order—not, wait a second—but as social order, because we all have to live with one another, and therefore I make claims against you that you conform to that. If you want to live with one another, if you want to protect yourself, then protect yourself. Morality is not that. And that is what we call morality. I didn’t understand. We call it morality—conduct that is proper and… You can call it whatever you want; I don’t call that morality. So those same people who expect people to behave morally call it morality. They can call it that until tomorrow, but I don’t—what do you want from me? I don’t think that’s what you should call coffee either. I’m explaining—you’re explaining those people who don’t believe but still expect people to behave morally—on what basis do they expect it? On the basis that conscience was planted in us and that we should behave according to it. And the inclination to speak slander was also planted in me. So what? Many things were planted in me. The inclination to speak slander was planted in me; the desire to eat cream cakes was planted in me; lots of things were planted in me. Why should I do what was planted in me? Evolution planted something in me—does that obligate me to it? So what? Then I want to overcome my inclination and be a bad person. I have a good inclination, and I overcome my inclination and want to be a bad person. What, is that forbidden because I have a good inclination?
But what is that morality in the end? There’s what the Torah says, there are the commands, and then the rabbi says there are also other moral matters the Torah speaks about, and the rest is us—the moral feelings planted in us. What the Torah says doesn’t matter—no, what the Torah says doesn’t matter? My conscience is enough for me too. Fine, so my conscience tells me to speak slander, my conscience tells me not to speak slander. No, but without God in the background, my conscience has no validity at all. It’s like an inclination to speak slander. Only because of the assumption that God planted conscience in me. Yes, there’s no binding validity, but then what is that morality? Everyone decides for himself. No, that’s not morality. That’s the behavior of a sheep—a calm sheep because that’s its nature. Fine, once I believe and I think that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave validity, then I decide what morality is. No problem. That’s another discussion—whether morality is relativistic or objective. That’s another discussion. I’m talking about the question whether there is subjective morality, whether there is binding morality. If yes, then it means you believe in God. And that sounds to me like too easy a shortcut. Many people would say: I want to be moral. I’ve heard lots of theories from people. No, I want to be moral because I believe that if I develop myself and am good to others, then they too will be good to me, and that’s to all our advantage, and it promotes culture, promotes interest. Fine, he’s an opportunist. But he doesn’t believe—never mind—but he doesn’t believe in God, it has nothing to do with God. Of course it has nothing to do with God, because that’s not morality either. It’s opportunism. You’re trading. If you’re good to me, I’ll be good to you—fine, you have an interest, behave according to your interest. I’m talking about someone who grasps the moral law as a binding law, not as an interest in obtaining benefit. But if the benefit is positive, there’s nothing wrong with that—he’s a positive opportunist. What does that have to do with it? The benefit is always positive. Getting money is also a positive benefit. What, it’s exactly the same thing. Fine, these are really other arguments already. I just…
Rabbi, if I go back to the discussion of the lesson itself: if we hold that everyone has this inner spark that can be awakened, what is the meaning of a captured infant? I didn’t say everyone. I didn’t say everyone. I said that among them there are those who have such a point. Not everyone. Okay, so okay, then I’ll ask a different question. Someone who doesn’t have it—is he a captured infant? Even someone who has it may be a captured infant, but you can awaken him. Someone who doesn’t have it—you can’t awaken it in him, you can’t awaken him. So how does the rabbi define a captured infant? A captured infant is someone who built that theory not because of the inclination, but because his environment was like that. He grew up there. So he’s a captured infant—why? Because it’s not a result of the inclination, but because his environment was like that, so that is what he really thinks. But that doesn’t mean there can’t still be some deeper point in him; for example, through morality you can see that there is in him a point of concealed belief in God. But the facade around it is not a product of the inclination. When the facade around it is a product of the inclination, then he is not a captured infant. For that he has responsibility. Maybe that definition, yes, exactly, that’s what I was about to say—maybe that definition is also connected to punishment. Maybe a captured infant doesn’t deserve punishment. Correct, correct. For that you have responsibility, because in the end the inclination built you a theory and you built that theory, so you have responsibility for it. Okay, and in Binyan Tzion they discuss it…
Rabbi, rabbi, basically everything the rabbi said in the last remarks is exactly what I meant to say. I don’t know—the rabbi phrased it wonderfully. It’s not clear to me where we disagreed and then ended up saying the same thing. But I wanted to ask something else, Rabbi. If this explanation is so beautiful, the way the rabbi explained it, then why can’t we explain Maimonides this way? After all, the rabbi knows that for Maimonides there is a demand upon every person to be moral, right? We are all people who believe, so we also demand that every person be moral. Maimonides says there is a commandment upon a person to believe, the commandment of belief. And basically he says: you are commanded to be moral, and hidden within that—even if you don’t recognize it and you aren’t consistent—there is really hidden belief in God. And with this we have explained Maimonides in a complete and full way. Meaning? I didn’t understand. Rabbi, after all there is a difficulty in Maimonides; the rabbi spoke about this in previous lessons—how can Maimonides command the commandment of belief? I don’t believe—what can I do? It’s not in my hands. But the rabbi says: wait, there is a demand upon you to be moral. If you accept that demand upon yourself… From whom is there a demand upon me to be moral? If you truly think there is no valid morality, then I have no demand of you. No, but we all think… but when the rabbi sees a wicked person, he doesn’t say, “Fine, I have no claim against you.” Because the rabbi knows that in him there is really… Yes, he says… I claim by this… If a person sees a wicked person—a thief, a rapist—does he say, “I have no problem with you, you’re built that way, it’s fine”? Not with every person. There are people to whom I definitely do say that. About ISIS, I don’t know what… yes, that’s what they believe—what can I do? No, all right, that’s because of a cultural matter. We’re talking about a person who, within his own culture, deviates from the morality accepted in his culture, from which there is… In a place where, in my assessment, that person is in principle committed to morality and here he sinned because of the inclination or something like that—then yes, I have a claim against him. But if a person comes and says, “There is no morality at all, I don’t believe in that,” then what can I do? That really is what he thinks.
But why can’t we still explain Maimonides this way? Maimonides is talking about a person who lives within Jewish culture, right? Who lives in Jewish culture. He says, “Listen, I demand that you be moral,” and if you are moral then you also believe, and in that you fulfill the commandment of belief. So we’ve explained Maimonides wonderfully. But who told you that every person is obligated to be moral? When you are a person who lives within Jewish culture, you grew up among Jews and learned about morality, and you still… and he doesn’t think there is binding morality. Does the rabbi think there are such people against whom there is no demand and no commandment? Yes, I don’t know. Many people I’ve spoken with really told me either no—that there is secular morality—or that they really are not moral, they only do it because that’s how they are built. But don’t they have a demand of others to be like them? No, they say no, only because they feel like it. Does the rabbi believe them? No. Nor do I. Fine, but that’s what they say—what can I do? All right, Sabbath peace. Thank you, thank you.