Dogmatics – Lecture 11

Table of Contents

• The fourth principle: the eternity of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the rejection of the eternity of the world
• The classification of the principles and the relationship between the first principle and the fourth principle
• Eternity versus necessity of existence, and the distinction between epistemic necessity and ontic necessity
• A critique of the term “cause of itself”
• The fifth principle: worship, authority, and the prohibition of idolatry and mediation
• “God” as formal authority and the parallel to a judge and to the concept of “acceptance of a deity”
• The move from metaphysics to religion: deism, theism, and sanctification of God's name
• Discussions about the scope of obligation, gentiles, and tensions between Maimonides and the Raavad
• Cultural change, despair of reason, and modern examples
• The attitude toward tradition, building one’s own position, and respect for sages
• A note on Hasidism, Christianity, emotion, and the mediation of the tzaddik

Summary

General Overview

The lecture moves from Maimonides’ fourth principle, which states that the Holy One, blessed be He, is absolutely eternal and that everything besides Him is not eternal in relation to Him, to the fifth principle, which states that only He is worthy of worship and exaltation, and that no created being should be made an intermediary to Him. The lecturer sharpens philosophical distinctions between eternity and necessity of existence, and between epistemic necessity and ontic necessity, and criticizes the expression “cause of itself” as self-contradictory and meaningless. He then presents the fifth principle as a transition point from metaphysics to religious normativity, and develops a conception of “God” as one who possesses unconditional authority that obligates obedience, while discussing questions of idolatry, intermediaries, sanctification of God's name, the relation between deism and theism, and a cultural shift that weakens trust in reason and strengthens experience and emotion.

The fourth principle: the eternity of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the rejection of the eternity of the world

The lecturer says they have finished the third principle and are moving on to the fourth principle, in which “this one being described is absolutely eternal,” in the sense of being eternal in an absolute way, not merely “prior to everything else,” but “simply always was.” The lecturer quotes that the fourth principle “is indicated by” the verse, “A dwelling-place is the God of old,” and emphasizes Maimonides’ words that “the great foundation of the Torah of Moses our teacher is that the world is created anew; God formed it and created it after absolute nonexistence.” The lecturer explains that Maimonides “revolves around the matter of the eternity of the world according to the philosophers” in order to establish “a conclusive demonstration of His exalted existence,” as he explained in the Guide.

The classification of the principles and the relationship between the first principle and the fourth principle

The lecturer raises the question why the fourth principle is not included in the first principle of “the existence of the Creator,” and suggests that intuitively one could have seen eternity as a detail that follows from His being “the necessity of existence.” The lecturer argues that the wording of the first principle does not say that He is the necessity of existence, but rather that He is a necessary condition for the existence of all other beings and that His existence does not depend on them, and therefore it does not necessarily follow from that that He always existed. The lecturer presents the discussion as a matter of classification without major practical consequences, but one that is important for understanding the distinction between the ontological dependence of created beings on Him and the claim of His eternity.

Eternity versus necessity of existence, and the distinction between epistemic necessity and ontic necessity

The lecturer emphasizes that even in the fourth principle “it does not say that He is the necessity of existence”; rather, it says that He is eternal. He distinguishes between “something that is the necessity of existence,” which must also be eternal, and something that is eternal but is not necessarily the necessity of existence, and could be “a contingent being” that “happened, by chance, to have always existed.” The lecturer brings an example from Anselm’s Proslogion and explains that a logical proof that something exists is not the same as the claim that its existence is necessary. He illustrates this through “this phone exists”: one can know with certainty that it exists without its being necessary that the world include it. The lecturer defines the difference as the gap between “epistemic” necessity and “ontic” necessity, and argues that “philosophers mix this up non-stop.”

A critique of the term “cause of itself”

The lecturer says that the expression “cause of itself” is common in ancient and medieval philosophy, but that it is an oxymoron, because saying that “a certain thing created itself” requires that it existed before it was created. The lecturer argues that this “is not true of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and that it is “a mistaken expression, a contradictory expression; it is utterly meaningless.” He explains that what is usually meant is that the thing’s existence does not depend on some external cause, but he rejects the formulation that the thing is “the cause of itself.”

The fifth principle: worship, authority, and the prohibition of idolatry and mediation

The lecturer quotes the wording of the fifth principle: “That He, exalted be He, is the one who is worthy to be worshipped, exalted, and His greatness and command made known,” and that “we do not do so to anything below Him in existence—from the angels, the stars, the spheres, and the elements, and anything composed of them,” because all of them are “fixed in their actions” and “have no rule and no choice except His exalted will.” The lecturer emphasizes that “they are not made intermediaries through which to reach Him,” but rather “thoughts are to be directed toward Him, exalted be He,” and identifies in the fifth principle “the warning against idolatry,” about which “most of the Torah comes to warn.” The lecturer states that the fifth principle is not presented here merely as a commandment of Jewish law, but as a meta-halakhic foundation that precedes Jewish law and defines obligation.

“God” as formal authority and the parallel to a judge and to the concept of “acceptance of a deity”

The lecturer argues that someone who says, “I believe in God… but still, why do I need to observe this?” does not really believe in God, because “there is no answer to that question,” and the meaning is that “by virtue of His being God, His command is binding.” The lecturer explains that the term “God” in Scripture is also used for judges, and develops a distinction between a Torah scholar as an expert and a judge as someone who possesses “formal authority.” He brings material from the Talmud in Sanhedrin about “permission to judge,” the Exilarch, ordination in the Land of Israel, and the verse, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” The lecturer defines “acceptance of a deity” in Maimonides as accepting a factor that has “absolute authority,” and argues that the question, “I understand that He is God and that He commanded, but why do I need to obey?” is as meaningless as the question, “I understand that murder is immoral, but explain to me why…”

The move from metaphysics to religion: deism, theism, and sanctification of God's name

The lecturer says that the first four principles are “metaphysical facts” which in themselves “say nothing,” and he presents the fifth principle as the one that moves us “from metaphysics to religion” and “from deism to theism.” The lecturer cites the opening of the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah—“The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms”—as a metaphysical chapter, and explains that when Maimonides reaches chapter 5—“The entire house of Israel is commanded regarding sanctification of God's name”—he moves into normativity and obligation, and he sees sanctification of God's name as “the halakhic translation” of the fifth principle. The lecturer argues that self-sacrifice illustrates the unconditional authority of the Holy One, blessed be He, and explains that the fifth principle does not follow from whether there are or are not “intermediaries” as a natural fact, but from the fact that “it is forbidden to worship” a created being and that there is a unique obligation toward the Holy One, blessed be He.

Discussions about the scope of obligation, gentiles, and tensions between Maimonides and the Raavad

In a discussion of gentiles and sanctification of God's name, the lecturer argues that the relation is the reverse: the demand for self-sacrifice reflects His being God, but it does not follow that He must command this of every person, and he says, “He chose not to command them in this matter.” The lecturer grapples with the question of how one can be religiously obligated without understanding the first four principles, and distinguishes between someone who “never thought about it” and someone who “through his analysis reaches a different conclusion,” whom, in his view, Maimonides would define as an idolater because he is not worshipping “the correct factor.” The lecturer presents Maimonides’ position with a parable: someone who thinks that “an elephant has wings” is not talking about an elephant. By contrast, he mentions the Raavad’s claim regarding “upright and great worshippers of God” who did not go through this metaphysical thinking. The lecturer also addresses questions about Christianity, Islam, and comparisons to Meiri, and emphasizes that the moral level of communities is not an indication of metaphysical-theological truth.

Cultural change, despair of reason, and modern examples

The lecturer brings a story in the name of Haggai Lober about a change within “seven years,” in which people are willing to agree with claims about God, Sinai, and Torah, and still say, “It doesn’t suit us,” and he sees in this a cultural shift from intellectual decision to obligation determined by existential experience. The lecturer describes the period as characterized by “less trust in reason” and “despair of reason,” connects this to postmodernism and to Nadav Khaveri’s words about Rabbi Shagar—“A tale of a sage who despaired of reason”—and brings Dov Sadan’s joke about the move “from the head… to the heart… to the stomach… below the belt,” until “an orthopedist.” The lecturer says the culture is “crooked” and that he is not willing “to surrender” to the move away from reason, and argues that the goal is to bring people “to think correctly,” not to replace thought with being swept along by experience.

The attitude toward tradition, building one’s own position, and respect for sages

The lecturer agrees that “a person has to build his worldview with his own hands” and that “this is how I was educated” is not an argument, and he emphasizes that cultural baggage has an influence but should not serve as a justification. The lecturer gives an example from a discussion with Rabbi Raam and Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein, and argues that a halakhic decisor should not use labels like “creative” or “conservative” as a consideration, but should rule “what he really thinks,” whereas the scholar can label him after the fact. The lecturer says that when we give honor to Rashi or Maimonides, it should be because one has reached the conclusion that “he really deserves honor,” and not because tradition requires it as a reason in and of itself.

A note on Hasidism, Christianity, emotion, and the mediation of the tzaddik

At the end of the lecture, the lecturer says that people have heard him say in the past that Hasidism seems to him like “modern Christianity,” and he lists characteristics: “the focus on emotion and experience,” “disparagement of Jewish law” in examples such as prayer times and the sukkah, and the status of “the Rebbe” or “the tzaddik” as an intermediary that “comes close to” Maimonides’ words about idolatry through intermediaries. The lecturer adds that a Christian source does not necessarily invalidate something, but he sees these characteristics as “problematic,” and emphasizes that he is not accusing it because of the source, but because “it’s not right” in his eyes.

We’re on the 13 principles of Maimonides, and we finished the third foundation, or the third principle, which is the negation of corporeality, together with the comment of the Raavad, and now we’re moving on to the fourth foundation, or the fourth principle. And the fourth foundation is eternity: namely, that this One being described is absolutely primordial. And every other being that exists—that is, “absolutely” means primordial in an absolute sense, not that He merely precedes everything else, but that He simply always existed, primordial in every sense. And every being besides Him is non-primordial relative to Him—that’s relative priority—and there are many proofs for this in the books. And this fourth principle is indicated by what is said: “A dwelling place is the God of old.” And know that the great foundation of the Torah of Moses our teacher is that the world is created anew: God formed it and created it after absolute nonexistence. And the fact that you see me circling around the matter of the eternity of the world according to the philosophers is in order to establish an absolute demonstration of His exalted existence, as I explained and clarified in the Guide.

Actually, suddenly now I remembered—didn’t we talk about this in the previous class? In the previous class—I don’t remember anymore. We did, we did. What? We talked about it. Oh yes? Okay. Suddenly it sounded familiar to me. For some reason I have written here to start the fourth one, so apparently I didn’t update it. So I’ll just make a few comments about this issue.

So I spoke about this point, that what Maimonides says here—why is it important to present the principle of eternity as a principle? Because it stands at the basis of the proof for God’s existence, and that’s what I spoke about. Now that’s what reminded me of it: if this stands at the basis of the proof, so what? Then maybe it isn’t true, or maybe it isn’t a principle, and that proof isn’t correct—but the conclusion, that there is a God, can still be true. So we talked about that last time.

But I want to make one more comment here, and that’s about the classification of these foundations. Because there was really room to say that this foundation should be included in the first foundation: the existence of the Creator, right? Within the existence of the Creator, where it says that there is a first being in perfection, and the cause of existence, and in Him is the persistence of their existence, etc., and if His existence were removed then the existence of every being would be nullified. Why is the principle of eternity not included there—why isn’t it placed as a detail within the first foundation? Why is it a separate foundation?

So that’s one discussion, and I already noted this too, that really it’s not very important. It’s just interesting, but it doesn’t really have any practical implication. But the question in terms of content, the substantive question here, is why exactly it isn’t included in that foundation. Why didn’t he place it inside the first foundation, but instead built an independent foundation for it rather than having it contained within the first? After all, if in the first foundation we say that He is the necessity of existence, then obviously He always existed, because if something necessarily exists, then clearly there can’t be a situation in which it doesn’t exist—meaning, He always existed; there was never a time when He did not exist. So why isn’t this fourth foundation included in the first—not why didn’t he place it there, but why do we need it at all? It’s already there in the first foundation.

Now the truth is that when you look at the first foundation, it doesn’t actually say there that He is the necessity of existence. The first foundation, the existence of the Creator, blessed be He, is that there is a being of perfect mode of existence, and He is the cause of the existence of all beings, and in Him is the persistence of their existence, and from Him their existence is drawn, and if we were to imagine the removal of His existence then the existence of every being would be nullified and they would not remain existing in reality, and if we were to imagine the removal of all beings besides Him, then His exalted existence would not be nullified nor diminished.

Nowhere here does it say that He is the necessity of existence—you have to notice that carefully. What appears here is that He is a necessary condition for the existence of everything else. The existence of every other thing is conditional on His existing. If He were not there, then nothing else could exist. But that still doesn’t mean that He is primordial. It only means that He exists.

But if they didn’t… if they didn’t exist… But he also says the reverse: that if their existence is nullified, His existence is not nullified. Right, and that still doesn’t change anything. His existence won’t be nullified even if their existence is nullified. Correct—He doesn’t depend on anyone. But the fact that He doesn’t depend on anyone doesn’t mean that He always existed. If He at some point didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be because we didn’t exist and that caused Him not to exist. That’s not it. The fact that if we don’t exist, that doesn’t cause Him not to exist—but that doesn’t mean He always existed. So it doesn’t say here that He is the necessity of existence. What it says is that He is necessary for the existence of other things, and that He is a necessary condition for the existence of other things, but not that He Himself is the necessity of existence. So that’s not stated.

So now we’re left only with the first question I raised: fine, so why not also add this detail into the first foundation? It’s not there, but why not add it there? Those are already questions of classification. I said it’s less important.

Another comment—a comment regarding necessity of existence. Even in the fourth foundation it doesn’t say that He is the necessity of existence. That’s another thing people often confuse. What is written here is that He is primordial, and everything else is non-primordial relative to Him. But it does not say that He is the necessity of existence. There is a difference between being primordial and being the necessity of existence.

A being that is the necessity of existence must also be primordial, of course, because if its existence is necessary—that is, its existence is necessary and there cannot be a situation in which it does not exist—then that means it is primordial, because there was never a time when it did not exist. But if you say that something is primordial, that in itself does not mean it is the necessity of existence. It could be what, in philosophical language, is called a contingent being, meaning a non-necessary being, an accidental existence. It just happened to always exist. Why does its always existing mean that its existence is also necessary? So maybe really it doesn’t.

And what is written here in this foundation is not that His existence is necessary, but that He always existed. As I assume Maimonides—maybe he also writes this in the Guide; I said I’m not so expert in it—but Maimonides may also think that He is the necessity of existence. But what is written here is that He is primordial. And from Maimonides’ perspective, the foundation that serves as the basis of the physico-theological proof is not His being the necessity of existence but His being primordial. That’s really the point.

That is, His being the necessity of existence may be true, but it is not the basis required in order to prove the existence of… wait. No, sorry. What I mean is: the principle of Moses our teacher, that the world is newly created, is what is needed as an absolute demonstration of the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He. Because if the world was created, then there must be someone who created it. Okay? That’s what he’s talking about, the fact that the world is newly created. But the principle itself—that the Holy One, blessed be He, is primordial, in contrast to the world, which is newly created—the Holy One, blessed be He, is primordial—that itself is not even required as the basis for the claim that He exists. In other words, it could be that the world was created and therefore there must be someone who created it, and the one who created it is also not primordial. Something else. You can ask, of course, then how was he created? I don’t know—maybe he came to be by accident, maybe—I don’t know exactly. But that’s on the logical level.

And I think—I’m currently teaching in my Wednesday classes at the institute at Bar-Ilan on faith, and I’m teaching there Anselm’s ontological proof. And there are three chapters there from Anselm’s book Proslogion, and his commentators struggle over the relation between the chapters, because apparently all three repeat the same proof for God’s existence—the ontological proof, details don’t matter right now. And I think part of the commentators’ entanglement in his words is due to missing this point.

The second of the three chapters—it’s actually chapter 3 in the book—the second of the three chapters is a chapter that comes to prove that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the necessity of existence. But then everybody says: wait, you’re just repeating what you said in chapter 2, because in chapter 2 you proved by a logical proof that it is necessary that He exists. But of course it’s not the same thing. You can prove with a certain proof that something exists—that does not mean that its existence is necessary.

Suppose I had a certain proof that this phone exists. So I know with certainty that this phone exists. Does that mean that the existence of the phone is necessary? Not that the claim “the phone exists” is necessary—that it is, if I have a logical proof. I’m not asking that. I’m asking whether its existence is necessary—whether there could not have been a world without this phone. Of course there could, right? This phone is not the necessity of existence. So establishing that I have a certain proof for the existence of the phone is not the same thing as saying that the phone has necessary existence—that it could not be that the world existed without there being this phone in it. Okay? Therefore these are two different things.

The necessity in the first sense is epistemic necessity—that is, epistemology is the theory of knowledge, cognitive necessity. I know with certainty that something exists. The necessity I’m speaking about here, that the Holy One, blessed be He, has necessary existence—that is ontic necessity. Ontology is the theory of being. There are things whose existence is necessary, meaning the world could not have existed without them existing. No—there’s no such thing. There is no possible reality in which they do not exist. That’s a claim in ontology, not in epistemology.

And therefore it can go both ways. There could be a situation where I have no proof for the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He—I have no logical proof—and yet His existence is necessary; I just may not be able to know that with certainty, but His existence is necessary. There is no connection between the ontic and the epistemic.

And likewise the reverse: there could be a situation in which I have a logical proof for His existence, but His existence is not necessary, because on the ontic level He could have failed to exist. Given that He does exist, I now have some certain way of knowing that, that He exists. But that is only a claim about me. When I say I’m certain of something, that’s a claim about me, not about the thing. When I say that this thing exists necessarily, that is a claim about it, not about me, irrespective of what I know about it. And philosophers mix these up nonstop, and they are simply two entirely different things.

The example I gave earlier from Anselm is a good example. In my opinion Anselm was a brilliant philosopher, and the distinction he makes between the first chapter and the second is exactly at this point. In the first chapter he has a logical proof that God exists; in the second chapter he has a proof that God exists necessarily—not that the claim that He exists is necessary, but that His existence is necessary. Okay? Those are two different claims.

Now, that was the second point—the relation between necessary existence and the necessity of existence. And a final comment I wanted to make: very often in ancient philosophy—well, medieval philosophy—there is this expression called “cause of itself,” that a certain thing is the cause of itself. Usually the accepted meaning is that “cause of itself” means there is no other cause that created it. But if you pay attention, the literal meaning of the term “cause of itself” is of course totally oxymoronic. That a thing created itself, that it is its own cause—there is no such thing. And that isn’t true even about the Holy One, blessed be He.

Because if you say that someone created himself, that means he existed before he was created, because otherwise—who created him? But how can something exist before it itself exists? So this simply has nothing to do with omnipotence and nothing to do with necessity of existence and nothing to do with anything. The expression “cause of itself” is a mistaken expression, a contradictory expression; it is completely meaningless. Usually what people mean is that it does not need another cause for its existence, but rather it exists without any external cause. Okay? But it is not that it created itself, and it is not that it is its own cause. Therefore the expression “cause of itself,” which also comes up in these contexts, is in my opinion a very unsuccessful expression.

Okay, those are just comments I wanted to add. We discussed the rest last time. So let’s move on to the fifth foundation.

And the fifth foundation is that He, may He be exalted, is the one whom it is fitting to serve, to exalt, and to publicize His greatness and His authority. “His authority” apparently means the obligation to obey Him, if I understand correctly. And one does not do this for anything beneath Him in existence—not the angels, nor the stars, nor the spheres, nor the elements, nor anything composed of them—because all of them are fixed in their actions, “fixed” meaning part of nature; they have no dominion and no choice, only His exalted will. And one must not make them intermediaries through which to reach Him. Rather, one’s thoughts should be directed only toward Him, may He be exalted, and one should leave aside everything besides Him, serving only Him and nothing else. And this fifth foundation is what is indicated by the warning against idolatry, and most of the Torah comes to warn about this.

Really, the fifth foundation—again, the fifth foundation is not some commandment to serve the Holy One, blessed be He, or a prohibition against serving idols. Those are parts of Jewish law; they are not foundations, they are not principles of faith. I said that the principles of faith are not themselves commandments, okay? Rather, they are meta-halakhic principles that precede Jewish law.

And what is written here is basically that on the principled level, one must serve the Holy One, blessed be He, and there is no need—and Jewish law even forbids one—to serve anything else. Now what exactly is this foundation? What stands behind this idea?

So I think I’ve spoken about this several times: when someone comes and says, look, I believe in God and I believe that He revealed Himself at Mount Sinai and gave commandments and it’s all true—but still, why do I need to observe them? Someone who asks that question does not really believe in God. I mean, there is no answer to that question. If you don’t understand on your own that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, then you have to obey, I have nothing to add for you; I have no way to explain it better. The assumption here is that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, then by virtue of His being who He is, by virtue of His being God, His command is binding. That is the definition of the concept of God.

The definition of the concept of God—now, “God” in the Bible is also used in the sense of judges. Right? “Then the owner of the house shall come near the judges,” or where it says “judges” three times in the passage and from that they derive that you need three judges in a monetary court at the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin. So the term “God” is also used to describe a judge. Why? Because a judge too has formal authority. What the judge says must be obeyed. And not because he is right; this is not substantive authority but formal authority, authority that stems from his being a judge. Not from the fact that he is a great Torah scholar, nor from the fact that he is right—maybe those are true too, but the basis of his authority does not lie there. It lies in the very fact that he is a judge.

And therefore in that sense, a judge is the closest thing to the Holy One, blessed be He, that one can think of. Notice, this is not “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars. There it’s talking about Torah scholars; I’m talking about a judge. It’s not the same thing. A Torah scholar has no authority. So he’s a Torah scholar—so what? I may ask him more because he knows better than I do, and if I don’t know, I’ll ask him in order to know, because he’s an expert, just as I consult a doctor. Okay? That’s a Torah scholar.

But a judge is something beyond that. He has to be a Torah scholar as a condition. But his being a judge doesn’t mean he is a Torah scholar; it means he is a Torah scholar who received authority to judge. He is a governmental authority. Of the three branches of government, there is the judicial branch. The judicial branch is not “one who judges” in the sense that being a judge doesn’t mean being a legal expert. There are legal experts who are not judges. A judge is one kind of expert.

The Talmud in Sanhedrin 5 discusses there who grants the authority to judge. Is it the head of the Sanhedrin in the Land of Israel, or the exilarch in Babylonia? Some kind of jurisdictional race, as we’d call it today, between the Great Sanhedrin in the Land of Israel and the exilarch in Babylonia. The Talmud’s conclusion is that the exilarch in Babylonia grants the authority. And why? It’s obvious that ordination exists only in the Land of Israel. Everyone agrees on that. Therefore the concept of ordination in the professional sense—that is, saying that this person is a Torah scholar, fit to judge, he received the certificate of a qualified legal expert, okay, in Jewish law—that is done only in the Land of Israel.

But the authority… that means he becomes a professor of law or a doctor of law. But now I ask: how does he become a judge? His appointment as a judge is not done by the dean of the law faculty. Even the dean of the law faculty himself cannot make someone a judge. Your appointment to be a judge is done by a governmental authority. The executive branch or the legislative branch, not important—each place according to its own system. But there has to be a governmental authority that gives you authority to judge, to be a judge or a religious court judge.

That’s what is meant by “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” In the Talmud on the portion of Vayechi—what does “The scepter shall not depart from Judah” mean? These are the exilarchs in Babylonia, but originally it means a king, the authority of a king. “Scepter” is a staff of rule—the coercive authority the king has. So the king must be from the House of David, from the tribe of Judah. But what is “nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet”? It says, “the ruler’s staff from between his feet”—these are the exilarchs in Babylonia. Why is that related to this verse? Because the exilarchs in Babylonia had a status like that of a king. They had a status like that of the king, and therefore the Talmud says—and Tosafot discusses this there too—that the head of the Sanhedrin had to be from the House of David, perhaps from the mother’s side or the father’s side, but he had to be from the House of David. And the exilarch in Babylonia was also from the House of David, on the mother’s side, not the father’s side—or not necessarily the father’s side. Why did he have to be from the House of David? As it says, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.”

And the exilarch was a king; he had governmental authority to manage ordinary life. Now the question is: who grants authority to judge? The king or the head of the Sanhedrin? The obvious answer is the king. Obviously the king. And therefore the exilarch would grant authority to judge—not ordination. Ordination is done in the Land of Israel. That’s the law faculty. But the appointment to be a judge, you receive from a governmental authority, not from an expert who is fit to certify legal experts, but from someone who gives governmental authority to be a judge.

And that’s what the Talmud is saying there—that really it is the exilarch, because he was the person who held the coercive power. In the Land of Israel they simply became used to a situation without a king, and then all the powers were concentrated in the head of the Sanhedrin. But at some point suddenly a king appeared—arose, emerged—in Babylonia, in fact a Jewish king who was in Babylonia and not in the Land of Israel. And that was something the sages in the Land of Israel didn’t know what to do with, and therefore there was a dispute opposite the sages of Babylonia. In the end, at least in the Babylonian Talmud—well, with a dispute between Babylonia and Jerusalem, it’s always easy to know, because what a surprise that the Babylonian Talmud rules like the people of Babylonia, right, that’s obvious—but in any case, that is the conclusion of the Babylonian Talmud, that the authority to judge is given by the exilarch.

And that is the meaning of “the ruler’s staff from between his feet.” “The scepter shall not depart from Judah” means that the king must be from the House of David, and “the ruler’s staff from between his feet”—the ruler, meaning the judge, need not be from the House of David, but he must be “from between his feet.” What does that mean? He must receive the ordination, the authority, the permission to judge, from the House of David. And “from the House of David” means from the king or the exilarch—from the authority that has coercive power, the executive branch if you will.

So the appointment of the judge—therefore it says “The scepter shall not depart from Judah”: the king himself must be from the House of David. The judge need not be from the House of David, but he must receive permission from the House of David in order to become a judge; receive permission from the king in order to become a judge.

And basically what this says is that a judge has a kind of formal authority to judge simply by virtue of being a judge. And therefore he is called “elohim” in the Torah, because “elohim” in the meaning of the concept is an entity that has authority by virtue of what it is. And once the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, I must obey—must obey by virtue of His being God. There is no meaning to the question: okay, I understand that God commanded, but why do I have to do it? If you ask that question, then you don’t understand that God commanded. Either you don’t understand that the one who commanded is God, or you think there was some command there but you do not understand the status of the commander. If you understand that, there is nothing more to explain to you as to why one must observe and why one must obey.

What was the question?

But what does it mean, by virtue of His being God? What does that mean? The Rabbi says, by the force of His being God—what is the content of that sentence? That is the content of the sentence: that He has unconditional authority, formal authority. But that’s a circular definition. I want to understand what He is in order to understand… It’s not a circular definition. That’s the concept.

By what right do I say… If it’s a table, then who said you can write on it? For example, suppose God—the Rabbi proved God’s existence by the physico-theological proof and by other proofs. But that same God—everyone agrees that He is the ultimate good. Heaven forbid that He should be the ultimate evil. He runs a world full of evil, suffering, and abuse of the innocent. Then I ask the Rabbi: here is the God placed before us—should one observe His commandments or not?

So I’d say—I think you asked this already in the past, but I’ll answer like this. One possibility is: if He really is God, then one must observe His commandments even if He commands evil. You can say that if He commands evil, then apparently He isn’t God, because God by His essence is supposed to be good, for whatever reason, if you have such considerations.

So now the Rabbi is defining what God is after all. Again, let me clarify. At bottom, God is not an objective definition. I mean, I want to argue that even if you proved that He created the world, that still does not mean He is God. What makes Him God? You make Him God. “You shall be His people and He shall be your God.” There is no God without a people. You are the one who makes Him God—in what sense? In the sense that you recognize that He has unconditional authority, that whatever He says must be obeyed.

Okay. If the Rabbi believes in the value of the good, and if the Rabbi now says that we create God—which I completely agree is a deep statement—then we cannot have God be the ultimate evil if I create God. You answered yourself, so what are you asking me? No, but it’s a huge novelty, what the Rabbi is saying: that this statement, that when I believe in God, from that I am also obligated to Him—this has the implication that I also create His essence, insofar as I am capable of grasping it here. Not create His essence—you understand His essence. In my consciousness. Yes. But as a result of what I believe in. It can’t be that He is the ultimate evil if I believe in the good. That’s another discussion. I told you, I don’t want to get into that. You decide that for yourself. But after you decide that He is God—whether you think God must be good or not—after you decide that He is God, the meaning of that is that no explanations are needed for why one obeys Him.

Now everyone can say, look, I have such-and-such criteria for God, and someone else can say I have other criteria for God. I’m not getting into that; that’s another question that has to be discussed separately. I’m talking about the very fact that once you decide—this is what Maimonides calls “acceptance as a deity,” in the context of idolatry he calls it acceptance as a deity. You accept something over yourself as a god. That means not that you decided it created the world. Maybe the fact that it created the world is a reason to recognize it as a god. But its being a god—the literal meaning of the matter—is its being a factor that possesses absolute authority. That is the meaning of God.

And therefore when someone says to me, look, I believe in God, but why obey Him? Then he doesn’t believe in God. You can say, I believe that there exists some being that created the world, and the question is why obey it. That is a meaningful question. But the question, I believe in the existence of God, but why obey Him?—that is a meaningless question. It’s like asking: I understand there’s a table here, but why can you write on it? Because tables are things you can write on.

But all that is only after, as the Rabbi said, after I determined what criteria I define as God, that I accept Him over me as God, as a value… Not determined—after you understand what the criteria are. Decided—not important. I don’t mean that I create the decision, but the decision is my autonomous one, from what I believe. Fine. That’s a much deeper understanding than just saying that God is some sort of being whom, once I accepted Him, I do what He says.

I said again: the fact that God created the world—suppose I proved that there is someone who created the world—that still… does not mean He is God. Someone can come and say, look, if He created the world and everything was generated by His power, the meaning is that He is God, because then everything is subject to Him, we all came into being by His power, so everything is subject to Him and what He says must be done. That’s an argument. Someone else will say: no, I believe in someone who created the world, but I don’t think I’m obligated to Him. Then from your perspective He isn’t God; He is the creator of the world, or some demon that created the world. And the concept of God is bound up with some… it’s like saying, right? The example that always comes to me in this context: if someone comes and says, I understand that it is immoral to murder, but explain to me why to keep that? Why really not murder? If someone asks such a question, then it is not true that he really understands that murder is morally forbidden. If he understood that, he wouldn’t need explanations why not to murder. Don’t murder because it is immoral to murder. That is the meaning of the sentence “It is immoral to murder.”

Right, the perspectival force of the command is necessary in my opinion, as the Rabbi says. What? The perspectival force of the meaning of “Do not murder,” of the command, is essential to understanding it and accepting it. Completely agreed.

So I’m saying, according to that, God basically in the end is the supreme value of the person, the supreme value for whose sake one sacrifices everything. God is an object, not a value. The obligation to obey Him—you can say maybe that is the supreme value. No, I find it hard to see a difference in existential life between a supreme value and some ontological something about which we grasp nothing. Because after all, the Rabbi admits that we grasp nothing about divinity. So why does it matter? Why is this discussion important? It really isn’t important.

So the point I really want to make is like this: just as if someone says to you, I understand that it is immoral to murder, but why not murder?—you say to him, then you do not understand that it is immoral to murder. There is nothing to ask about why obey morality. There cannot be an explanation for such a thing. The fact that this is morality means that this is what one must obey. That is the meaning of the concept of morality. Okay? Therefore, someone who says, I understand that this is what morality says, but why obey?—he does not understand that this is what morality says. Maybe he uses the term morality for what people think is proper to do. Then you say, fine, it’s nice that they think that—but why should I do it? If you understood that morality says this, there would be no room to ask afterward, so why should I fulfill it? It’s simply a lack of understanding.

I claim that the same thing applies with regard to God. I understand that He is God and that He commanded—but why do I have to obey? That question is meaningless. If He is God, then by virtue of being such, one must obey. Okay, that is the claim.

And therefore—sorry, Rabbi, sorry, Rabbi—you say that someone who believes only that He created the world but that He gave no Torah, then according to his definition He is only the creator of the world and not God? God means that He commanded and he believes in commandments too? Yes. Not if He commanded. The fact that He commanded is another story. But if He were to command, I would have to obey. It could be that He decided not to command. Fine, I don’t know.

Okay. So the point is that the very concept of God includes within it the authority of that being. Without that, He is not God. In other words, someone who doesn’t understand this thing, or who doesn’t grasp it immediately, there is no way to explain it to him. From his perspective, it is an excellent question: wait, so God commanded—okay, suppose I accept that—but why should I obey? He is missing something; in certain respects he is blind. That is, he doesn’t grasp the concept of God. Something is missing in his conceptual world, the ability to grasp the meaning of this concept.

It’s like someone whose moral perception is blocked. That is, he lacks that perception; he doesn’t understand what it is. You talk to him about morality—he doesn’t understand what that means. He understands that there are various people who use the word morality, and he understands that those people also think that one should behave this way and shouldn’t behave that way, but he doesn’t understand what “should” and “shouldn’t” mean. In his conceptual world that doesn’t exist—he doesn’t understand it. There is no way to explain it to him. You will not find an explanation that convinces a person why to behave morally. There is no explanation. The only explanation is that it is moral, that’s all, simply that.

Therefore I claim that the same exists in the context of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the context of the obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He. And then it basically means—I return to the fifth foundation—so the fifth foundation, that He, may He be exalted, is the one fit to be served and exalted, basically says this. That is, the fifth foundation basically means this: up until the previous foundations, it is the existence of the Creator, blessed be He, and we believe that there is a creator of the world and that He is a perfect being and the cause of existence and everything. And He is also one. And also not physical. Up to there we reached the third foundation. The fourth foundation is that He always existed. All that—all that is metaphysical fact. It has no meaning in itself. We still haven’t reached God.

All the things we have spoken about up to now—that is the Holy One, blessed be He, but not God. The Holy One, blessed be He, as a name, like Moshe—that is, the object called the Holy One, blessed be He. When I refer to Him as God, I have said something more. I haven’t only said that He created the world and that He is one and that He always existed and that He is the cause of existence and conditions existence, etc. All that may be true. But when I say God, I have said something additional. I have said that because of all those things, apparently because of all those things, I grasp Him as God. What does that mean? That I say that He, and He alone, is fit to be served. That He has some absolute authority, that whatever He says must be done.

And therefore the fifth foundation moves us from metaphysics to religion. The first four foundations are simply metaphysical principles. That is, you do philosophy, and you come to the conclusion that there is some factor that created the world. Okay. And you also come to the conclusion that He is infinite and omnipotent and conditions all reality and always existed—fine, you arrived at all those conclusions. So what does that mean? Nothing. It means only a collection of metaphysical claims. They may be true, they may not be true, fine—everything is fine—but even if they are true, what does that mean? It means nothing.

The fifth foundation moves us from deism to theism. Deism is belief in a philosophical God, and theism is belief in a religious God—a commanding God, a God before whom I stand and to whose commands I am obligated. And this is the fifth foundation, and it is very important.

Therefore regarding it, for example, there is no point discussing all the issues I mentioned earlier—why the fourth foundation isn’t included in the first, and why the first doesn’t already contain the fourth and the fourth is superfluous, everything I discussed earlier regarding the fourth foundation. Not relevant. Because all those are discussions about relations between claims in metaphysics. The fifth foundation has nothing to do with metaphysics at all. The fifth foundation is a normative foundation. It is a foundation that says that He is fit to be served. This is not a factual claim that He exists, that He is one, that He always existed, that He is the necessity of existence. All those are factual claims. The fifth foundation is a normative claim, not a factual one: that He is fit to be served. Meaning, only He has some authority such that whatever He says I must obey, I must fulfill—and only He has that authority, and no one else.

Once you give that authority to someone else, that is basically a kind of idolatry in partnership. Even if it’s to His attendants, as Maimonides says at the beginning of the laws of idolatry, about how idolatry began: they started worshipping the heavenly bodies on the assumption that they were the attendants of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that this was the way to honor Him, and little by little they forgot the source and came to worship the heavenly bodies themselves. And therefore here Maimonides says that even worshipping His intermediaries is forbidden. One must worship only Him. Okay? At least when we grasp them as detached from Him.

Now this fifth foundation is basically—because if I maybe… I don’t remember if I mentioned this—at the beginning of the Mishneh Torah, I think I did mention it. At the beginning of the Mishneh Torah Maimonides opens with several very famous sentences. Look here. Yes, the beginning of the laws of the foundations of the Torah.

“The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms is to know that there is a first being, and He brings into existence every being. And all beings in heaven and earth and what is between them exist only from the truth of His existence.” Right, this more or less parallels the first principle. “And if it were to arise in thought that He does not exist, no other thing could exist”—that’s another detail there in the first principle. “And if it were to arise in thought that all beings besides Him do not exist, He alone would still exist and would not be nullified by their nullification”—that is almost a repetition in the same words of the first foundation. “And this is what the prophet says: ‘The Lord God is truth’; He alone is truth, and no other has truth like His truth, and this is what the Torah says: ‘There is none else besides Him,’ meaning there is no true being besides Him like Him. This being is the God of the world, the Master of the whole earth, and He directs the sphere with a power that has no end or limit, with a power that never ceases,” etc.

What does that mean? That He not only created reality but also guides it continuously. Okay? Halakhah 6: “Knowledge of this matter is a positive commandment.” This is a contemplative positive commandment. That is, a positive commandment saying one must know these facts, and we have already spoken about the problem with this positive commandment. “This God is one and not two or more than two”—still in the domain of metaphysics. “And He is not a body and has no bodily power,” etc.—therefore this is halakhah 7. Halakhah 8: “It is explicitly stated in the Torah and the prophets that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not body and not corporeal, as it says: ‘The Lord your God is God in heaven above and on earth below,’ and a body cannot be in two places.” Well, let’s just say I’ve seen more successful arguments. Halakhah 9: “If so, what is this that is written in the Torah—‘under His feet,’ ‘written with the finger of God,’ ‘the hand of the Lord,’ ‘the eyes of the Lord,’ ‘the ears of the Lord,’ and the like? All according to the understanding of human beings”—these are metaphors, we spoke about them. So He has no form or shape. And what did Moses our teacher seek to grasp—this is halakhah 10—it’s all connected with the question whether one can grasp the Holy One, blessed be He, etc.

Fine. He says: since it has become clear that He is not body and not corporeal, therefore none of the accidents of bodies apply to Him. There is no change in Him and all sorts of things like that, and no anger and no laughter and no joy and no sadness and the like. We are still in metaphysics, right? “And since the matter is so, all these things and the like that are said in the Torah and in the words of the prophets are all parable and figurative expression.” Yes, but the Holy One, blessed be He, does not get angry and is not sad and not happy and none of that. These are anthropomorphic descriptions.

So that ends chapter 1. All metaphysics. Now chapter 2: “This honored and awesome God is commanded to be loved and feared, as it says, ‘You shall love the Lord your God,’ and it says, ‘The Lord your God shall you fear.’” Okay? And that is already a normative command: love and fear.

Then halakhah 3. Halakhah 3: “Everything the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world is divided into three parts,” etc., and here begins Aristotelian metaphysics: angels and separate intellects and active intellects and forms and all those metaphysical, Aristotelian inventions. Then chapter 4, again: fire, wind, water, and earth—the four Aristotelian elements. A chemistry chapter, as it were. After that there is the soul—we are still in metaphysics. That is, there is the soul and so on, the account of creation and the account of the chariot, to study these things.

Now, here we arrive at chapter 5. What happens in chapter 5? “All the house of Israel is commanded regarding the sanctification of this great Name, as it says, ‘And I shall be sanctified among the children of Israel,’ and they are warned not to profane it, as it says, ‘And you shall not profane My holy name.’” And then it all speaks about sanctifying the Name, etc.—in a time of persecution and not in a time of persecution, and all the laws of sanctifying the Name and self-sacrifice. All of that is in chapter 5, and then the relation to the divine names and likewise to the Holy One, blessed be He.

From chapter 5 and onward, what happens? We move from the world of metaphysics—yes, the first four chapters are metaphysics: what the Holy One, blessed be He, is, what exists in the world, what beings there are, what kinds of beings exist in the world, etc. In chapter 5 he begins with sanctifying the Name, with the obligation to give one’s life. What is the idea behind this? It seems to me that what he basically wants to say is that this parallels the fifth foundation.

Because the fifth foundation that we just read basically moves us from metaphysics into normativity, into the normative plane. After saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, is omnipotent and created the world and always existed and is the cause of existence and guides reality and everything—now you say: and only such a being is fit to be served, meaning that the Holy One, blessed be He, is also God.

Notice: “the Holy One, blessed be He” and “God” are not two of His names. “God” in this sense functions for me as a description. To say “the Holy One, blessed be He, is God” is not a definition, not giving a name, but a claim. The claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He—that one who created the world and everything—is also God. What does that mean? That one must obey whatever He says. He has absolute authority, yes, absolute.

Therefore I said that judges too are called elohim. That is the fifth foundation. The parallel to it is chapter 5 in the laws of the foundations of the Torah. After he finished all the metaphysics, which are the first four foundations, he says: now this one is God, and He must be served. And where can you see in the purest way the absolute authority that the Holy One, blessed be He, has? In those places where we are required to give our lives. Because if you are required to give your life, what does that mean? That He is God. Whatever He says, you do, without calculation. It is conditioned by nothing; it is completely absolute.

Therefore I think that sanctifying the Name and self-sacrifice are basically the parallel, the root, of the fifth foundation: that He is God and that He alone is fit to be served. For some reason he doesn’t write that as a principle in that formulation in the laws of the foundations of the Torah, but it seems to me that sanctifying the Name is the halakhic translation of the fifth foundation of the Thirteen Principles—that He alone is fit to be served, served even to the point of self-sacrifice if necessary. So that means He has absolute authority, which is basically the expression of His being God. Okay?

Ared, is there any logic to why non-Jews are not commanded about sanctifying the Name the way Jews are? That’s a discussion in the Talmud, but what do you mean by logic? Meaning, if that’s the derivative—if we’re talking about a theistic God and He also has some expectation of non-Jews, there are commandments for non-Jews and some expectation of… Seven commandments. What? Seven commandments. Yes, but I’m saying that logically it seems this derivative ought also to apply to them. No, the relation is the other way around. That is, if I am required to sanctify the Name, that reflects the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, is God. Because such an absolute demand, with such a full and irreversible price—the expectation that I fulfill it—that is only if I really understand that He is God. The reverse is not necessary. Meaning, if I understand that He is God, then true, if He had commanded, I would have to obey—but that doesn’t mean He will command. He may be God, and if He had commanded the non-Jews they would have had to obey that too. He chose not to command them in this matter. So His being God does not mean He will command, but rather that if He does command, then even such a drastic command you must obey. Us He commanded; the non-Jews He did not command.

I thought you meant to say that this command of giving one’s life for sanctifying the Name, beyond the command itself, also has some sense of being called for if one follows this rationale to the end. Come on, what does “called for” mean? If He had not required it of me, I would not do it. I do it because He requires it. But the fact that even if He requires it, I do it—that’s the novelty. Because what does it mean to give one’s life? It doesn’t mean to give Him something; it means simply to disappear from the arena, to die, to end the… yes, that my whole self is given into His hand. So only at His demand. I won’t do it without His demanding it of me. So with the non-Jews He doesn’t demand it, so no.

And therefore the point is that the transition between the first four foundations and the fifth foundation is very important, because here we move from deism to theism, from metaphysics to religious faith. Metaphysics—that’s all of the first four foundations. Any secular person can accept them. No problem. He believes, in the philosophical sense, that there is a creator of the world, that He is omnipotent, that He always existed, that He guides the world, and that without Him the world would not exist. A person can arrive at that philosophical conclusion without being a believer and without observing a single commandment. He can just stop there and say: okay, but from my perspective, the Holy One, blessed be He—whom I have concluded exists, and I believe in all the details exactly as you do—is not God. I don’t see why to give Him such absolute authority that whatever He commands me I must observe. No, I don’t have to observe. So he grasps that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, but he does not see Him as God. God is someone such that when He speaks, I must obey. And that is the fifth foundation.

The first four foundations are not connected to religion at all. They are necessary but not sufficient conditions for religious commitment. But there can also be a completely secular person who adopts Maimonides’ first four principles. When we get to the Book of Principles, we’ll see that there are principles of various kinds of religions—civil religion, divine religion, all sorts, and Judaism. We’ll return there to this distinction.

In any case, the fifth foundation basically says that this factor described in the first four metaphysical foundations is also God, and therefore one must serve Him and no one else, because if you serve someone else, that basically means there are two gods—that is idolatry in partnership. So that is the place occupied by the fifth foundation.

What? The Rabbi says deism does not entail theism. Correct. And the reverse? If I’m committed to the Holy One, blessed be He, then obviously you believe He exists. No, but I don’t violate the principles—the first four foundations. No, but I don’t violate the first four foundations, I just don’t know them, I don’t believe in them. Right, it could be that—Maimonides might tell you, say—that you’re mistaken on the philosophical level. You think God is two and not one, or that He is not the necessity of existence, or that He does not condition existence. So that’s possible? Is it possible to be religious, supposedly committed to sanctifying the Name, and yet disagree even intellectually with the first principles? Why not? Of course. As long as you accept Him as a god—after all, people accepted even an idol as a god. So then why do we need the first four? If Maimonides says one can arrive—Exactly because of that, that’s precisely the point. A class in metaphysics. It’s not connected to religiosity. Isn’t that a little superfluous? Why should they be principles? What do you mean superfluous? From Maimonides’ perspective, you can say they’re superfluous. From Maimonides’ perspective it is very important to define who that God is whom you worship. It’s not enough to define someone to be a god whom I worship, because idolatry works that way too. If I crown Peor as my god, and from now on whatever it says I obey—and it’s Peor. No, I accept the revelation at Sinai and keep all the commandments, but I disagree with the first four foundations. Why does Maimonides put me outside the boundary? But I’m saying: because from his perspective you are worshipping Baal Peor. No, I keep all the commandments, I intend all the proper intentions. If Baal Peor had obligated them to tithe, not eat pork, and keep the Sabbath, then they wouldn’t be idolaters? They would still be idolaters, because they worship Baal Peor—not because of what they do, but because of for whom they do it. Therefore Maimonides says: metaphysics is a condition, because you must worship the Holy One, blessed be He, with this absolute commitment. The fact that you have some absolute commitment toward some other object means you are not serving God. It is your god in the conceptual sense I described earlier, but it is not the right god.

Christians too have their own god, Muslims, pagans—everyone has their own god, and some of them too will give their lives for their god. So what does that mean? That they are not idolaters? Yes, they are idolaters, because the god they worship is not the right God; it is another god. And it matters to describe for you who that factor is, that entity that you determine is God. It is not enough to determine that something is God; the question is what that something is.

Therefore it is agreed that the first four foundations are philosophically very difficult to understand, and most—like the Raavad says—99.9 percent of the servants of God throughout the generations did not go through this line of thought, and nevertheless they are righteous and innocent. Let’s say, that 99.9 percent you mentioned there—I don’t know where you got that from—but yes, as the Raavad says, there were those who did not agree or did not think about it or whatever. They were innocent and great servants of God—and what does Baal Peor have to do with it? What Baal Peor? He keeps all the commandments, intends for the sake of Heaven, does kindness, charity, and justice. We already had this discussion about the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad; we spoke about it a lot. Granted—that is what the Raavad thought. Maimonides thought otherwise.

Maimonides thinks—it’s like the elephant parable. Maimonides thinks that if you think the Holy One, blessed be He, is corporeal, that’s like saying you think an elephant has wings. If you say, “I think an elephant has wings,” you simply are not talking about an elephant. This is not a dispute about an elephant—you simply are not talking about an elephant. You’re talking… except for Dumbo, yes? You’re talking about someone else, a winged creature and not an elephant. And that’s what Maimonides says regarding the Holy One, blessed be He. If you think the Holy One, blessed be He, is something other than what He is, then this is not a disagreement; you simply are not worshipping the Holy One, blessed be He, you are worshipping someone else.

This description is the problematic one, because if you deny the first four foundations, the normative meaning—then Maimonides indeed remains very rigid against the Raavad, as we already discussed, right. But it is very hard to understand him. What normative meaning? If it has no normative meaning, just some philosophical knowledge, very difficult and not simple. Again, the normative meaning always presupposes within it the factor toward whom you direct your normative commitment. And you cannot ignore that that factor has to be the right one. Again, if you direct this normative commitment toward another factor, then what have you done?

Let’s talk concretely. If we met some genuinely God-fearing person—morning prayer, afternoon prayer, evening prayer—really keeps all the commandments, the Rabbi knows many such figures. We sit opposite him and really examine him, and it turns out he is unaware—he certainly doesn’t understand and also can’t accept—the first four foundations. Maimonides tells him: “Listen, once this terrible thing became clear to me, you are an idolater.” Not likely. Very difficult. Very difficult. Fine—Maimonides claims that, again, if that person arrived at another conclusion, then yes, correct, he is not serving God, he is serving someone else. That is Maimonides’ claim; that’s exactly the point.

Beyond that I say: there is room here to discuss what happens with someone who never thought about it—he’s an idiot, not a philosopher, he never thought about it. About him I don’t think Maimonides would say that he does not worship God. He says, “I worship the Holy One, blessed be He.” I worship the Holy One, blessed be He; I’m not getting into details right now because I have no way of knowing who or what He is, but it is the Holy One, blessed be He, whom the sages know who He is. Fine. That, I think, Maimonides would fully accept. If someone arrives through his inquiry at a different conclusion, one that is not the Holy One, blessed be He, as Maimonides describes Him, in my opinion Maimonides would define him as an idolater, yes, someone who worships not the Holy One, blessed be He, but someone else.

Rabbi, maybe one could suggest—the Rambam, after all, makes a distinction between worship of God among Christians and among Muslims. He says that Muslims worship the same God, supposedly because they accept the first four foundations, and Christians do not; there’s even a practical difference there. Regarding Christians it’s a question because of the Trinity, first of all the Catholics—but even Catholics, it’s still not clear exactly how you interpret the Trinity. Among us too it is also written…

Among us too it says “The Holy One, blessed be He, Israel, and the Torah are one,” and that’s literally the same thing as the Christian Trinity, exactly the same thing. Now the question is how you interpret it. It seems to me that’s not within Maimonides’ assumptions. What? It seems to me that quote is not within Maimonides’ assumptions. Right, but then that means that a great many people—including all the kabbalists and all the people who hold at least some of those conceptions, even if they themselves aren’t kabbalists—they are all idolaters. I don’t think even Maimonides would say that. But I don’t know—maybe.

Here too, Rabbi, history would show that Maimonides was also challenged, because history—I mean if we look in a somewhat historical way after all—then on this point too Maimonides was challenged, because Islam—we saw the Muslims deteriorate from the Middle Ages until today, and the bottom isn’t even in sight. And Christianity—you can’t say that overall it didn’t reach a very… You’re talking about their moral and human level, but that’s not the issue. I’m talking about their theological level. They did not accept the first four foundations and yet managed to rise to very significant heights theologically and morally and in all sorts of values, whereas Islam accepted them and Maimonides boasted about the level of Islam… Why is moral behavior relevant here? I don’t understand. So that only further shows how much the first four foundations are, apparently, completely detached from real life. It doesn’t show that, because correct metaphysical beliefs are not an instrument for becoming more moral. They are simply so that you know you are worshipping the Holy One, blessed be He, and not someone else, that’s all. You can be blatantly immoral. Would Maimonides today also boast about Islam as he boasted then compared with Christianity—the Muslims? Not Islam, the Muslim conception, Muslim theology. Yes, but in the end it goes hand in hand, in the religious idealism of Maimonides. No, no—human behavior is something entirely different. What does that have to do with it? Like Meiri, who says that in our time the gentiles are bounded by the norms of the nations, and therefore all the halakhic sanctions against them are void, but that does not mean they are not idolaters—they are idolaters. Their theological conceptions are one thing, and their behavior, their human level, another. In the Hebrew Bible that usually went together, maybe in the Talmud too, but in later generations clearly not. Already in the time of Meiri he recognized that for us certainly that’s the case. Moral behavior is not an indication of correct views on the metaphysical-theological level. These are different things.

In any event, the fifth foundation basically is our move into theism, okay? Sixth foundation.

What? I understood the fifth foundation as the way God governs the world—as if He does not govern the world by delegating authority to angels or things like that, and therefore there is no reason to worship them. Not that one must worship Him because He is God; if there were an angel making decisions in the world, then it too would be fit to be worshipped. No, no. If there were an angel that was the Holy One, blessed be He, then it would be the Holy One, blessed be He. I don’t understand what… No, but he says that because it doesn’t make decisions, it is just a nature embedded in it, therefore there is no reason to worship it because it won’t help. Not “no reason”—it is forbidden to worship it. What do you mean “no reason”? It is forbidden by Jewish law, and there is also no reason, because it won’t help, because it has no authority to make decisions. “No reason” is true, and you also see that it is forbidden. What does it mean that it is forbidden? It means there is some sort of normative commitment here.

“No reason,” fine—no reason because factually there’s no reason, some consequential consideration. No, but this foundation is teaching that the whole world is supervised by the Holy One, blessed be He, and the laws of nature, but there are no intermediaries between them, as it were. Maybe that’s true, maybe not, but that’s not what this foundation is coming to say. This foundation is coming to say that there is normative commitment toward the Holy One, blessed be He, and only toward Him, not toward anyone else.

So both things are novel here: first, that He is fit to be worshipped; and second, that it is only He and no one else. Now, the first point is clear from what I said before, and I think the second is too. The second point basically says that if you worship someone else, then the Holy One, blessed be He, is not your god, because Maimonides’ assumption above is that there is only one God. Okay, so this is simply the transition to the normative dimension.

Because very often people, even in philosophical debates, often do not grasp this distinction. I think I told this story—not here, it was on some other podcast—about Haggai Lober, you know, the rabbi-actor, whose son was killed and who is now active on Haredi enlistment and so on. I once heard—I went once to a one-man performance he gave, about some formerly religious person, the first time he drives on a Friday night from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. And afterward there was a discussion with the audience—it was in Elkana—about the phenomenon of formerly religious people and so on.

Among other things he told there that he had been an instructor at Midreshet Ofra, and the guys from high school would come there for seminars at the yeshiva. He said: seven years earlier—I’m quoting how he spoke then; this was already quite a long time ago—but then he said: seven years ago I was still an instructor at Midreshet Ofra. I sat there, we sat around the campfire with this group of kids who had come, and you could cut the air with a knife. There was tension. If I prove to them that there is a God, then they immediately repent and do everything they’re supposed to and become religious. And if I don’t prove it to them, but they show me that it isn’t true, then we all go to the beach next Sabbath and close the matter. Fine.

Seven years passed—not two thousand years—seven years. He was still an instructor at the same place. He says: I sit around the same campfire with a very similar group from the same demographic, from the same places, they come there, and I tell them: there is a God. Right, sounds reasonable. Then they say: and He also revealed Himself at Mount Sinai. Okay, yes, we’ve heard of that too. And He also gave the Torah. Sure, obviously—what else did He do at Sinai if He didn’t give the Torah? And besides giving the Torah, there is also an obligation to obey everything He commanded. Of course, what do you mean?

He says: wait—here he stops—and asks: so where do we disagree? Because after all, they weren’t there, and that group certainly did not express some supreme religious commitment in its daily conduct. So he says to them: I don’t understand—you agree with everything I’m saying now, so what? And the answer was: it doesn’t suit us. That is a wonderful description, I think, of this transition, which is so frustrating—or the despair of reason—the transition from thinking to existential feeling, to existential experience. People no longer care so much about arguments and what’s true and what’s not true and intellectual analyses and the like. Rather, what suits them, what speaks to them—that is what really decides.

And in that sense I certainly share his criticism and his reservation. But one must know that even in the earlier period, before those seven years, after you proved to them that there is a God and that He gave the Torah and all that—after Sinai and the giving of the Torah and all that—you still hadn’t finished the job. Because the fact that He did all that—so what if He gave the Torah? Who said that He is God in the sense that one must obey everything He said?

And very often the feeling is that if I proved to you philosophically that there is a God, then I won, the religious side won. And certainly if I proved to you that there was a revelation at Sinai, then surely the religious side won. Okay? But no. To be religious, you have to go all the way through the fifth root, including the fifth principle. You also have to reach the conclusion that He is God, in the sense that His commands are binding. It is not enough that He exists, and it is not even enough that He revealed Himself at Sinai and gave the Torah. You also have to decide that what He gave also binds you—that He has some authority, that He is God. And this is the meaning of the fifth foundation. That is why the fifth foundation is actually the most important stage here in this whole progression of these roots, these principles. It is the infrastructure for all worship of God.

Therefore Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of the foundations of the Torah says: “The foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms is to know that there is a first being and that He brings into existence all beings.” What does “the foundation of foundations and the pillar of wisdoms” mean? That it is the pillar of wisdoms I understand. What is “the foundation of foundations”? “The foundation of foundations” means that this is the infrastructure from which everything begins. Remember, this is the opening of the Mishneh Torah. That is how the Mishneh Torah begins. Why? Because Maimonides explains that before I begin detailing what Jewish law requires or forbids or whatever, I have to explain to you that there is some factor that has the authority to command you. After that I’ll describe to you what He commands and what He doesn’t command, but first I have to explain the infrastructure. The infrastructure is that this is the foundation of foundations of everything. And that is what…

Rabbi? Yes. Existentialism doesn’t claim that it discovered the right way and that one ought to go this way. It thinks it simply reflects reality; it basically claims that humanity always experienced things this way, it just wasn’t aware of it. But how does the Rabbi explain the fact that really in the last seven years some people got up, appeared, changed, and decided to observe Torah and commandments? Their existentiality didn’t exist? But it did exist, Rabbi. So what was existential then seven years ago—did it not exist? No. The culture changed. Once there was more trust in reason, and today the feeling is that emotion or existential experience is more important than rational argument.

The well-known joke that I like, by Dov Sadan—he was a literature scholar at the Hebrew University, I think his famous book was called Raisins and Almonds or something like that. I once heard on the radio someone telling this—it was Shlomo Nitzan, I think. He said that Dov Sadan once said that the next person who will make a revolution in the world will be a Jewish orthopedist. Why Jewish? Because whoever makes a revolution in the world is always a Jew. Why an orthopedist? He said: because the first Jew who made a revolution in the world was Abraham our father, who said, “Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these”—use your head.

The second Jew who made a revolution in the world was that man, yes, Jesus, who said everything is in the heart. We started with the head, we went down to the heart. The third Jew who made a revolution in the world was Marx, who said everything is in the stomach—the capital, the interest, the food, the livelihood. Fine? That’s what really determines things. The fourth Jew who made a revolution in the world was Freud, of course—everything is below the belt. So we started with the head, moved to the heart, went down to the stomach, and then to the organs of generation, below the belt. The next Jew who will make a revolution in the world will probably be an orthopedist, somewhere in the foot.

What stands behind that joke is, in my opinion, a very true description. There really is some kind of decline in the world—I spoke about this on a podcast not long ago—there is some kind of decline in the use of reason, and some move to the heart, or to interest, which is obviously lower, to drives, which is even lower. But it’s not that the world has become stupider or that people are more stupid than they once were. On the contrary, I think that in some senses they are more clever, more intelligent. But they have less trust in reason. Not less reason, but less trust in reason. There is some kind of despair of reason. This is postmodernism, or this era of the last few decades, whose essence is despair of reason.

Nadav Chaveri once wrote a review of Rabbi Shagar’s book Broken Vessels—later it came out in a fuller edition, Tablets and Broken Tablets—but originally it was a little booklet called Broken Vessels. The review was called “A Tale of a Sage Who Despaired of Reason.” Rabbi Shagar basically tried to argue for a postmodern Judaism, and postmodernism is basically despair of reason. And the claim is that there really is this process of descent from the head to the heart, to the stomach, to the organs of generation and below. And this process basically means there is a kind of despair of reason. This is the same culture that Haggai Lober’s seven-year story illustrates.

When they were there seven years earlier, the feeling was that if you prove to me intellectually that this is what must be done, then that’s what I’ll do. Maybe I won’t be able to live up to it; there are drives, all true. But at least it will be clear to me that this is what ought to be done. Now the question is not a question of drives at all. They don’t refrain because they can’t control themselves, but because they don’t feel like it; it doesn’t suit them. It’s not a question of drive—not that I struggle but fail because my inclination overpowered me. No. Because what decides is not the rational consideration. Why should I care about rational considerations? The question is what builds me, what speaks to me, what gives me life. Existential feelings are what decide, not rational analyses. And that is a cultural transition. Of course there were always both experiences and intellect; it is the proportions that decline from generation to generation.

Rabbi, can it be explained in the direction the Rabbi mentioned, that it’s a cultural issue? I’m listening. Can it be explained one step further? The Rabbi just said in the last words that it’s a cultural issue. That can be part of it. I don’t think that’s the whole story, because today there’s some ideology saying that you have to build yourself with your own hands. It’s not only that you’re not rooted in the tradition of previous generations—the ideology is to not be rooted. Secularization—yes, secularization says disconnect from all religion and all these things. Right, so from my perspective that is part of it. But one could also be—in that sense I totally identify with it—I think previous generations really don’t need to interest me. That is, when people often say, “Why do you do this? Because that’s how we were educated, that’s how I was educated.” So what? A pagan was educated that way too. What kind of explanation is “because that’s how I was educated”? Who said my parents are right? What, because they’re my parents, therefore they’re right? And if I was born in a pagan home, then also that’s how I was educated, so therefore I should do it? That’s a ridiculous argument.

I fully agree that a person should indeed build his worldview with his own hands and not be nourished by tradition and continue it out of inertia. Okay? The question is: that building should be done with the head, not with the stomach. And is that really possible from scratch? After all, we come with a huge burden of the past. Fine, absolutely, I didn’t say you can detach from that burden. I’m just saying that the burden is not an argument. It’s like we often spoke about a panel I once had in the Gush, I think it was there, with Rabbi Re’em and Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein. There we had some discussion—I don’t even remember what the topic was. And at some point they spoke about a halakhic decisor needing to be creative, innovative, I don’t know exactly what. I told them I strongly oppose those demands. A decisor should say what he thinks. Whether he is creative, innovative, conservative, whatever—that is a question for the scholar of that decisor. The academic scholar who documents or studies the way that decisor worked can say he was conservative, he was innovative, he was creative, he was this, he was that. But you yourself cannot use those things as an argument. You cannot say, ah, I am creative, therefore I rule this way; or I am innovative or conservative, therefore I rule this way. No. You have to rule what you really think.

That doesn’t mean you’re not conservative or innovative or creative, but that itself cannot be a consideration in your ruling. The scholar who studies your work can label you as conservative, innovative, creative, and so on, but it is not supposed to take part in the consideration itself that you make.

The same here. The baggage—that I am a product of the landscape of my birthplace and cannot disconnect from everything I grew up in and came from—that is certainly true. But on the other hand, the fact that I grew up in some place should not itself be part of the reasons I use to say what I ought to do and how I ought to do it. That it influences me—fine, my scholar will see that indeed I was influenced by the beit midrash I came from or the home I grew up in. That is my scholar’s business. I will not say: this is how one should do it because that’s how I was educated. No, I do not accept such an argument. “That’s how I was educated” is no argument for anything. So what? Maybe you were educated wrongly. Check it. Say what you really think. True, when you say what you really think, your education is sitting there inside it too; you can’t disconnect from those things. But it is not supposed to be, in itself, a consideration you make. Those are the considerations you make.

And still, when you approach the past, you can approach it merely as a discourse, with indifference; you can say, let’s see what they said, I’ll examine it with my own intellect, but I have no respect. But when we come to study Rashi or Maimonides, we don’t come saying let’s see what he says, and if it’s wise… I come with a mantle of respect, a lot of respect, with a lot of basic respect. And he writes, and I don’t understand, I disagree, but that has enormous influence on the result. True, that respect is because he really deserves respect. Right, you’re correct. If you reached the conclusion that he deserves respect, excellent, give him respect. That is a completely substantive consideration. But if you say I give him respect because tradition obligates me to give him respect, then no. Or because that’s how I was educated to give him respect—that’s just a foolish argument. I give him respect if I reached the conclusion that he truly deserves respect. Fine. Then that becomes part of the substantive consideration I make. And that’s fine.

All right, so we’ll stop here. If there are questions or comments, then… Rabbi, if you said there is a cultural shift and people connect more to emotion and less to intellect, then why do you continue with the rational intellectual approach and not try to combine more approaches in light of this cultural shift? Well, what can I do if the culture is crooked? Am I supposed to surrender to every nonsense because many people are swept up by it? If now this song is supposedly the best—and it’s very much in the headlines now, everyone writes about it and discusses it—“even better and better.” A stupid song, and usually the discussions about it are stupid too. So because it speaks to everyone and everyone dances to it, am I also supposed to join in? I assume that’s the whole point of the site, not just to reach people. So if it doesn’t appeal to people now… The goal of the site is to try to get people to think correctly, as far as I understand—maybe I’m wrong—but at least I try to persuade them that this is the correct way to think. If someone doesn’t think that way, am I supposed to dance a hora with him instead of thinking? Then let him not bother with the site; let him go look for that song, let him sing that song.

I wanted to ask—I heard the podcast in Spoken Haredi, and at the end you made some remark there about Hasidism, that in your view it is like modern Christianity, and I wanted to understand in what respect. Ah, I already wrote that in the past. I don’t remember where, but yes… Was it a topic or just a passing mention? What? Did you write about it as a topic or just mention it in one of the posts? I don’t think there was a column devoted to it, but yes, I commented on it. There are several characteristics I think are Christian in Hasidism.

First of all, of course, the focus on emotion and experience. In my view that comes from a Christian world. And part of that too, at least in early Hasidism and maybe still somewhat today, is a kind of disdain for Jewish law. That is, some sort of yes, you can pray later, not sleep in the sukkah because there is encompassing light, yes sleep in the sukkah, things like that—because the focus is basically experience and standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, and not Jewish law. And in that sense, that is basically what Christianity did. It basically gave up Jewish law entirely and replaced it with morality, experience, perhaps community, or things of that sort. So there are a great many Christian elements there.

There are more. But yes, the rebbe of course—I didn’t even need to begin with that—the status of the righteous leader or the rebbe as an intermediary, which borders—I don’t know on which side of the border—but borders on Maimonides’ discussion of idolatry through intermediaries. There are various aspects there.

By the way, something whose source is Christianity is not necessarily disqualified. There may be things whose source is Christianity and they are excellent; maybe it would be worth adopting them. In this case I think these are also problematic characteristics. That is, I’m not accusing them because it comes from Christianity; I’m accusing them because it is not right. I’m only saying that this is some kind of influence very similar to Christian influence. Okay, thank you. I’ll look for it on the site too. Okay. All right, goodbye, Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace.