Dogmatics – Lesson 19

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I would say: erase me from the Torah scroll. Meaning: leave it, take me out of your Torah scroll; I don’t want to be the central player in your Torah scroll. No—the Torah scroll loses its meaning. I have no interest in playing the role you assigned me. That’s how I would understand it, at least. And it seems to me that some straightforward commentators explain it that way. I haven’t checked, but that’s how it seems to me. As I said, I don’t have much faith in interpretation, so I offer an interpretation. What difference does it make whether others also wrote this way? So that’s how I would understand it. Maimonides apparently does not understand it that way, and in truth, when you look at the verses, I actually think Maimonides is right. Why? Apropos of whether we learn things from verses or don’t learn from verses. Why? Because it says, “If You would bear their sin—but if not, erase me, please, from Your book,” and what does the Holy One, blessed be He, answer? “Whoever has sinned against Me, him I will erase from My book.” Now what does “I will erase from My book” mean? From the Torah? Who appears in the Torah? People who sin, specific people who sinned there, appear in the Torah and need to be erased? Even Korach was not erased from the Torah—on the contrary, he got a very respectable section in the Torah after he sinned, the portion of Korach and all his sin. Therefore, in the Holy One’s answer it really seems that “I will erase him from My book” probably really means from the book of the living and the dead, meaning from some sense of existence. And therefore he says, “If You would bear their sin—but if not, erase me, please, from Your book.” What does that mean? If You have some way of bearing their sin, meaning: give them punishment—they deserve punishment—but punishment that will atone for them and not annihilate them, annihilate with an aleph, yes? Meaning, not make them disappear. Because if You make them disappear, then You’re basically saying, okay, they disappear from existence altogether—then erase me too. If You do that, then erase me too. If You do that, then my existence is not in x-space specifically but only from here onward. But “erase me from Your book”—and then the Holy One answers him, “Whoever has sinned against Me, him I will erase from My book.” And then it really seems that erasing from the book apparently means the book of the living and the dead, or from the book—I don’t know—from the continuity that awaits him, something like that. And that brings me back to what I said above: that the World to Come includes both Paradise and Gehenna, where Gehenna is not an alternative to Paradise; it is not the antithesis of Paradise. Gehenna is some kind of preface that is needed—if there are people who need to be cleansed before they reach Paradise, then they go through a period in Gehenna. They talk about twelve months and so on; again, I’m not getting into the details because all these details really are inventions. But Gehenna is perceived here apparently as part of the World to Come; it’s part of the good recompense. The antithesis is karet. Karet is the erasure from the book that the verses are talking about. “Erase me, please, from Your book” means: cut me off. Meaning, leave it—don’t wipe me out, I no longer want to exist. And of course there it’s talking about the Holy One wanting to kill the sinners—not necessarily erase them from the World to Come as well, I don’t know exactly, at least it doesn’t say. So either Maimonides uses this as a metaphor, that the discussion of what happens in this world—if You put them through suffering that atones but still leave them alive—that is a metaphor for what happens in the World to Come as well: put him through Gehenna, but in the end leave him alive and not cut him off. Or Maimonides really understands that when the Holy One says He is going to cut off the sinners, He means cut them off from the World to Come as well, meaning not only from this world. And then Moses our teacher is so horrified by this that he says no, absolutely not—you have to give them some possibility of repair; give them the recompense they deserve, but there has to be repair for them. To annihilate, with an aleph, yes? That is the worst thing that can be. And then Maimonides concludes that from these verses there is proof that it is known before Him who serves and who sins, to give good recompense to one and punish the other. There is one word here that caught my eye, and I don’t know what it’s doing here. And that is: “known.” I would have said: proof that the one who serves and the one who sins receive recompense and punishment. What is this “it is known before Him who serves and who sins, to give good recompense to one and punish the other”? What is this “known before Him”? That’s providence, right? It seems that the whole discussion in Maimonides—apparently from this sentence—it’s not a question of punishment and reward at all, but rather the discussion is whether the Holy One even keeps track of us in order to know who deserves punishment and who deserves reward. Passive providence. The question is whether He knows or does not know; whether He is involved here at all; whether what happens here interests Him. And that is really the point, and therefore I think that when Maimonides speaks about this issue of recompense, from Maimonides’ perspective it’s not the question of recompense—and it seems to me I said something like this in the previous principles—but rather recompense reflects the fact that the Holy One cares about what happens here, that what happens here is not a neutral thing, it is important. Not that the Holy One created a world and then went on His way. No—this world has some role, and the Holy One expects it to do this and not that, and the indication of that is that He follows what happens, and of course also gives recompense according to what you did. But recompense, the place it occupies—the recompense is not the place where what you deserve comes in, meaning justice, or the recompense that comes to you: good for the good and evil or punishment for the wicked—no. Recompense reflects a more important, more basic principle: the principle that the Holy One cares, that what we do here matters, yes, it makes a difference, it’s not just random things that don’t matter. And maybe Maimonides means to say that that is the basic principle in the matter. There is recompense too, of course, but the basic principle in the matter is not the point of recompense. And that fits with what Shmuel asked earlier: in the end, we are required to serve for its own sake, not for reward and not to avoid punishment. The point is—that’s exactly the point. Reward and punishment in themselves are not the important thing. Reward, and the awareness that there is reward and punishment, only says that the Holy One cares. You asked me, but why serve? Serve because the Holy One cares—not in order to receive reward or avoid punishment. Reward and punishment are only a sign; they are not a reason, they are a sign that the Holy One cares. And that’s why suddenly Maimonides introduces this matter: proof that it is known before Him who serves and who sins, to give good recompense to one and punish the other—because the main thing here is not reward and punishment; the main thing here is to know that the Holy One cares, and therefore He gives reward and punishment. And the caring is the foundation, not reward and punishment themselves. And in that sense, this certainly fits with the tenth principle—to the point that in a certain sense it is even duplicated with the tenth principle, and one could ask: then why do we need both of them? After all, the tenth principle basically said the same thing. And that again brings me back to the question whether the tenth principle really speaks about passive providence or active providence. If it speaks about active providence, then I understand why the eleventh principle is needed. If it speaks about passive providence, then there is room to discuss why we need both. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s decisive; one can understand both of them even if I’m talking about passive providence. But I think the concept—the word “known before Him”—casts a completely different light on the whole story. And I think that also answers your question, Shmuel, from before—meaning that the knowledge that there is reward and punishment is not really important in order to motivate me to serve. It’s not something educational, or some stick-and-carrot thing; rather, this knowledge basically says that the Holy One cares. Now you ask me: so why serve? Serve because He cares—not in order to avoid punishment or receive reward, but because from the punishment and reward I understand that He cares, and now you ask me: and why serve? Because He cares, because that thing is the right thing to do. Reward and punishment are signs that this is the right thing.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, I see that when Maimonides speaks here about reward, he’s almost saying explicitly—the punishment of the wicked is karet. He doesn’t begin to get into details or describe any sort of suffering of Gehenna and fire and afflictions and utter darkness; he doesn’t get into that. For him it’s karet or nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not karet or nothing. The greatest reward is the World to Come, and the greatest punishment is karet. There are lesser punishments.

[Speaker C] I don’t remember—I think he wrote “lesser reward,” I don’t remember, I didn’t see that he wrote “greatest,” I don’t remember that he wrote it. The rabbi just skipped over that. But I’m asking on the principled level—for example even on the philosophical level. Suppose someone sinned, a gentile, a Jew, doesn’t matter, sinned—and now the Holy One will bring upon him some suffering, x or y or z. What exactly did anyone gain from that, what problem did that solve, what exactly was corrected by that, and what’s the logic in it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—to those comments I’ll still get to them, I’ll get to them. So really here—I’ll start already from that comment, since you asked. I already wrote on the site that in truth reward and punishment are things whose logic is very unclear to me. First of all because, as Shmuel said earlier, we are required to serve for its own sake, not for reward and punishment. So here I said, fine—reward and punishment are only there to express the fact that it matters, that it matters to the Holy One, that it’s not just some empty issue. As Rabbi Akiva said, “Happy are you, Israel. Before whom are you purified, and before whom are you destined to give judgment and accounting?” Meaning that when he sees punishment, from his perspective he also gives thanks for the punishment, because the fact that we receive punishment basically means that we stand before the Holy One and that what we do matters. That is better than not standing before Him at all, not receiving reward, not receiving punishment—that is basically the concept of karet. Meaning: what you do doesn’t interest the Holy One at all. But the question regarding punishment and reward in practice—yes, because in the end, what will motivate me to serve here is either, if I serve for Heaven’s sake, the knowledge that the Holy One cares, and if I serve not for its own sake, then reward and punishment, right? But for that it’s enough that they tell me there is reward and punishment; they don’t actually have to give them to me. Meaning, if I get to the World to Come—after all, if I receive reward or punishment, no one will know about it, right? I’m in the World to Come. The people here, who are alive here and for whom commandments or transgressions are still relevant, they don’t know what happens in the World to Come. They don’t know whether someone received reward or someone received punishment and what happens there. They tell us that there is reward and punishment there; that story in itself may do the job, but for that job the story is enough. So why punish or give reward? Who gains anything from that? No one gains anything from it. The one who receives the reward or punishment in the World to Come, in the end, won’t derive anything from it either. Again—unless there are reincarnations. But he won’t derive anything from it. So basically all you need is just the story about the reward and punishment that await us; you don’t really have to give it. Why give it? Now about reward, you can say okay, I give the reward because that is the goal in the end—I said it’s not necessarily recompense. But the punishment—what, just to torment people for no benefit? What good is that?

[Speaker D] So according to the accepted version, that punishment cleanses and all those things, then it’s almost mechanical.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but again—cleanses for what purpose? Meaning, it’s not in this world that I’m supposed afterward to start behaving better. In the World to Come, what has become of me has become of me, and that’s it. So that still doesn’t quite provide a full answer. I’ll note something in that direction. Even in theories of punishment, say in the legal world—yes, in theories of punishment—if you read a text dealing with legal theories of punishment, you’ll see various possible explanations for why we punish. Yes, the legal world doesn’t give reward, only punishment, so I’m talking at the moment about punishment. So you’ll see various explanations for why we punish. Now there are explanations that say: in order to deter. There are explanations that say: to protect society—we put you in prison so you won’t continue to cause harm; to deter you, to deter others; educational punishment; all kinds of explanations of that sort. There is one explanation that has become less and less popular over the years, but it still always appears in the list. Look at the list, say, in Haim Cohen’s book The Law, for those who know it, and in every place that deals with theories of punishment, one of the items is revenge. Revenge or recompense. Those usually appear as two separate items. Revenge meaning, in a certain sense, maybe some sort of outlet for the injured party. Meaning, the injured party is forbidden to take revenge on the one who did what he did to him, so we regulate revenge in an orderly way. Yes, we allow institutions, institutionally, to carry out the revenge on behalf of the injured parties. But it is the right of the injured party to take revenge on the one who harmed him. We just don’t want anarchy here, where everyone takes revenge, so we do it institutionally. There is a court, police, prison—there are institutions responsible for the process of revenge. And then there is the matter of recompense. The matter of recompense or justice. And that basically says: this is not an outlet for the revenge-feelings of the injured party, as the process of revenge would imply, but some sort of, one could say, metaphysical justice. You did evil—you deserve to get hit for it. Metaphysical justice says that if you did evil, you deserve to get hit. In a certain sense, it could also be that the revenge-feeling of the injured party is fed in part by this conception, which says: if you harmed someone, you deserve to get hit for it. Some sort of cosmic justice, yes, metaphysical justice. But that is a little different from the concept of revenge. The concept of revenge says: if the injured party has no need for revenge, then leave it, then institutionally we also don’t need to do it. We do it institutionally in order to tell him: calm down, everything’s fine, we’re doing it on your behalf. But if, say, he died—and if he died and has no relatives—then no one wants revenge, and therefore on the institutional level maybe there’s no need to take revenge either. But in the sense of recompense or cosmic justice, even if there is no one who was harmed and has feelings of vengeance, there is still some feeling that society needs to impose a sanction or bad recompense on someone who behaved badly. There is some desire that there be justice here, and in that sense this too is a legitimate motive or a legitimate explanation in a theory of punishment. And as I said earlier, I think that in recent years, in the last generation, in recent years, it plays less and less of a role. You can sometimes see in the considerations of the court—when the court explains, first, the conviction, and afterward the sentence—the conviction and the sentence. The conviction is the question whether he is guilty or not guilty. And the sentence has to explain how much punishment he deserves. Now, how much punishment he deserves depends on how you understand the role of punishment. Therefore you can see in different contexts what punishment to give him. For example, a person who is not responsible for his actions—then maybe he doesn’t deserve punishment in the sense of revenge, nor does he deserve punishment in the sense of recompense; he isn’t responsible for his actions. On the other hand, society still needs protection from him. You need to protect society from him even if he isn’t responsible for his actions; I don’t want him murdering others. Deterrence of others also still needs to be achieved, even if this person isn’t responsible for his actions; because if we do not punish a murderer, then other murderers who are responsible for their actions may not be deterred. So you see that different circumstances can lead to different considerations of punishment, depending on your theory of punishment, depending on how you understand the reason we impose punishments. By the way, of course this is not mutually exclusive—you can hold all the reasons or some of the reasons—but each reason can lead to a different result regarding what punishment you impose on a person, depending on the situation.

[Speaker G] In any case, when the Torah says, “Do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge against your brother,” your brother did something to you—you are forbidden even to say or remind him, “Yesterday you didn’t lend to me, and I, Torah says, am lending to you.” You’re forbidden to do that, even though justice says yes—he just hurt me, caused me pain, and I need to do something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You could say that revenge is something you should leave to the institutions or to the Holy One, because “Vengeance and recompense are Mine.”

[Speaker G] Is that how the rabbi interprets “Do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge”? Or is it a statement against the primitive emotion that usually—after all we see a direct relation, rabbi, we—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all we see a direct relation to that emotion. Not against the emotion—against surrendering to that emotion. Revenge is something you should leave to the Holy One or to the institutions.

[Speaker G] Doesn’t the rabbi see a correlation between the more primitive a people is, the more primitive and wild a human group is, the more revenge and bloodshed are found there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not necessarily. I think the practical expression of the revenge emotion is greater there, but the revenge emotion itself—if you’ve been harmed, then you have a revenge emotion, you have a feeling that justice really must be done even if you are not primitive. I think that feeling exists.

[Speaker G] And what does justice mean? I’m trying to decipher the emotion—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —of revenge. What is the logic here?

[Speaker G] Whoever did it deserves to get hit? Why? What will that give? What will that change? The evil has already been done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Cosmic justice. Not “what will that give?” I can’t explain values; I can explain them by means of other values, and then you’ll ask about those. It is some sort of feeling that this is what is right, this is justice. One can reject it; many people do reject it. But I do think that many people have such a feeling, and they don’t see it as a weakness. They say: it is right, that is how it should be, there should be justice. And of course on the practical plane you can say, look, leave it to the institutions, leave it to the Holy One, because otherwise the world really could descend into anarchy and there could be many problems here. But that is not necessarily a rejection of the emotion, the revenge emotion in itself. The blood avenger, for example, is a case in which we do give legitimacy to revenge. Also for an intentional murderer, by the way—“the hand of the blood avenger shall be first against him to put him to death.” Meaning, even in the punishment of an intentional murderer, the one who carries out the punishment is the blood avenger at the beginning.

[Speaker D] So hazamah too in general, the law of hazamah, conspiring witnesses, the punishment of hazamah, that’s also similar to revenge, because they divide the money but don’t divide the lashes, for example. The defendant ultimately gets the full amount they wanted to steal from him with the money, but regarding lashes, he doesn’t get it—each one doesn’t get half-and-half of the conspiring witnesses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They divide it for money but not for lashes. Okay. So you see that lashes are specifically punishment.

[Speaker D] Right, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The money is compensation, even though he—

[Speaker D] —didn’t lose it. Right. Right, but with money, even if he lost it, because it can be restored, it will be—that’s already—it’s not like death, which cannot be restored. But from the perspective of the defendant, when he gets the full amount of money, then he received what they wanted him to lose. But if each of the witnesses receives only half the lashes, then he doesn’t get that feeling that each one received what he really wanted to impose on him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then that’s true for money too. If they paid half the money, then he also doesn’t get the outlet for his revenge-feeling. He gets compensation for himself, but he himself didn’t lose anything. What he wants is that they be punished, not that he receive money. He doesn’t need money; nothing was taken from him. So if they didn’t lose all the money, how is that different from their not receiving all the lashes? But—

[Speaker D] Yes. What the Talmud says: they combine and not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —combine, and also the fact is that this is only for conspiring witnesses, it is specific here. It doesn’t seem that one can derive from here some general theory of punishment in Jewish law. Otherwise I would expect it to be true in all transgressions.

[Speaker D] Maimonides says—Maimonides explains double payment, the obligation of the thief to pay double—he also mentions the matter of hazamah, that it’s similar, that he too loses what he intended; Maimonides mentions it somewhere.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I don’t remember, but fine—but still, that’s also in theft. But what about all the other transgressions? And robbery—what about that? In robbery there is no double payment. Okay, in any case, what I want to say from this whole story is that if we take that revenge feeling seriously, and if we really understand that it reflects some kind of moral, ethical truth—that in fact it is right, that this is how it should be, that someone who did something wrong should get hit—then the question why punishments should be given in the World to Come becomes less strong. Because the question I posed earlier was based on the fact that it won’t bring any benefit. Since if we know that punishments will be given in the World to Come, that is enough; why must they be given in practice? After all, that they are actually given—we won’t know about it, we don’t know what happens there. So this all of course assumed that giving punishments is meant to deter or motivate us to behave properly. But if I understand giving punishments as a result of cosmic justice, then I do understand why. A person who did something wrong should get hit. And if I understand it that way, then it might even be that this is the meaning of Maimonides’ eleventh principle. Why is it really such an important principle to know that there is reward and punishment? And again—not in order to motivate me to serve, because to motivate me to serve, just the opposite, I am required to serve for its own sake. So not only is there the question why that is correct, but also why it is important. And the answer is perhaps: first, because it reflects the fact that the Holy One cares. Second, because it really reveals to us some important principle in the worldview. It tells us that there is such a thing as cosmic justice, metaphysical justice—I don’t know what to call it—that whoever did evil should get hit. Maybe it’s not our role—“Do not take revenge and do not bear a grudge”—but he should get hit. Justice really says he should get hit. The feelings we have that someone who did evil should get hit are not mistaken feelings; they are correct feelings. We need to sublimate them and refine them—not realize them, not act on them ourselves. But the feelings themselves are correct feelings. And maybe that is the message of Maimonides’ eleventh principle. I don’t know.

[Speaker H] Rabbi, if someone—a friend—wronged me, hurt me in some way, not something accidental, something long-term, and afterward he comes to me and asks forgiveness, and I feel that this is a request that really pains him and that he’s saying it with all his heart—even though the rabbi would prefer that he not feel comfortable with it—but suppose he really does feel bad about it and I decide to forgive him, then it turns out that I’m actually not so okay here. This act—it doesn’t show nobility of soul on my part and it doesn’t show greatness of spirit, but rather shows injustice—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He should have suffered, I—

[Speaker H] think he should have suffered.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not correct. The fact that you think he should suffer—that’s not your role. The fact that you think a person who did evil should suffer—that is a philosophical thought. The question is what you feel, and how personally involved you are in the matter. Here there absolutely is greatness of soul if you forgive. Those are two different things.

[Speaker H] But if the authorities come to me and say, come, do you want to forgive him or do you want us to punish him? I should say, no, no, as far as I’m concerned I forgive him, but justice says he should be punished, that person should be punished. Exactly. Is that what I’m supposed to say?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. If indeed I’m right in what I said earlier, that’s what you should answer. It’s a bit strange. Okay. Why? The rabbi doesn’t agree? No, in any case these are two aspects—that’s what I want to say. Now, regarding each aspect, decide separately what you think about it. But these are two different aspects. And the question whether you are seeking an outlet for the anger within you—if that is what you overcome, then fortunate are you. The question is whether that anger doesn’t reflect some metaphysical truth; maybe it does. Those are two different things. The Holy One takes vengeance and bears a grudge, or as they say, “Whoever says the Holy One is indulgent, his own life will be forfeit,” yes? So that means that there really is some justice in vengeance. The Holy One can restrain Himself. He doesn’t need to take revenge because He can’t restrain Himself. If He takes revenge, then apparently that is the right thing to do.

[Speaker C] And you know, that’s what—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —Leibowitz always said: when Ben-Gurion would always speak about the morality of the prophets. So Leibowitz, in his way, explained what the morality of the prophets is. “Daughter of Babylon, devastated one—happy is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rock.” That is the morality of the prophets. Meaning, the morality of the prophets says that I yearn for someone to take the Babylonian babies and smash their heads against the rock. Yes? Now let’s leave aside for the moment whether that is the morality of the prophets or not—that’s Leibowitz’s provocations. But the verse is written. The verse is written. And the feeling is that after the terrible things the Babylonians caused us, is it legitimate to yearn that the Holy One smash their infants against the rock? I don’t think it’s legitimate to say that I will take their infants and smash them against the rock. But this yearning—that that is what I want to happen to them—I don’t know, it is written that it is written. Meaning, so apparently that yearning does have a place.

[Speaker H] Even though they didn’t sin and didn’t transgress, so there’s no argument there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, there is some claim here that once the Babylonians as a collective did something so terrible to me, I would want—and again, “Daughter of Babylon, your infants,” etc.—it could be that this is an expression meant to convey the intensity of the evil they deserve. It’s not certain that this has to be interpreted literally, yes, that I want every baby’s head smashed against the rock. But I want you to suffer in such a hard way as a collective. Not only in the sense that whoever did something to me should get hit for what he did to me. Now how far to go with that and how much it should actually be realized—I leave that to the Holy One. But that yearning or that desire—you know, we see now, yes, we are living in times in which it’s not so hard to imagine this. Three people were returned to us this past Sabbath, and the feelings of rage in the public are very clear over what was done to them. And I don’t think those feelings of rage are saying that those, I don’t know, guards or whoever was responsible for what was done to those three—those are the ones who need to be punished. No. The feeling of rage is a feeling toward the collective standing opposite us. That this collective should get hit—it deserves to get hit.

[Speaker I] But in Judaism, rabbi, in Judaism there’s both this and that. “My handiwork are drowning in the sea, and you are singing?” And that’s what—so there’s also the opposite view. Right, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Once—this is not the opposite view; these are aspects. I don’t think it necessarily contradicts; these are aspects. Meaning, I can say, look, Egypt deserved that they fell into the sea and were destroyed there. On the other hand, I won’t sing when that happens. Meaning, one needs a certain sensitivity—you can live both of those things together, it seems to me. Meaning, you can understand that on the cosmic level justice was done here. But I cannot sing when human beings are drowning in the sea and suffering and so forth. Those are two different things. Meaning, I can yearn that all the Gazans should get, I don’t know what, fire from heaven. But on the other hand, when I see something like that happen, I don’t think I should rejoice and celebrate and sing. That is a state of mind.

[Speaker J] The criticism is of the reaction. The criticism there is of the reaction, not of closing the circle, as it were.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Closing the circle can be justified on the philosophical level, and still that doesn’t mean I have to exult and rejoice. To rejoice when people suffer, even though they deserve to suffer—those are two different things. Maybe one could say that this is my duty to work on my character traits in the face of cosmic justice. Those are two different things. Yes, I’m not supposed to strike the Nile, for example—Moses our teacher isn’t supposed to strike the Nile, because the Nile protected him. Now with all due respect, striking the Nile—the Nile doesn’t feel pain. That’s not the point. The point is how Moses our teacher educates himself to have traits of mercy or traits of gratitude. So in that sense, the Nile here is only an educational aid. I’m not really worried about the Nile. And regarding the Egyptians—they are human beings, not a river—but on the other hand, they are human beings who deserve it. Fine. But I still need to educate myself not to be indifferent to human suffering, even though it is suffering that should happen and it is right that it happened.

[Speaker H] Rabbi, isn’t the rabbi troubled by the fact that in the Israeli public, mainly in the religious public—and not even to speak of the Haredi public at all—but the religious public, countless people I spoke to about this matter after the article I published in Srugim, which the rabbi knows and didn’t agree with—most of them, you scratch the surface a little and they tell you that they are in favor of destroying them all. As far as they’re concerned it would be proper to destroy them all. Today someone told me—I said to him, tell me, if there were gas chambers and there were the possibility, and Trump supported it, looked the other way, and we could set up gas chambers and suffocate all two million Gazans there—would you support it? And he told me yes. So doesn’t the rabbi feel where we are headed with this vengeful approach devoid of elementary humanity?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The children there—it’s not simple, that’s a fact. I’ll answer you on several levels. First level: I wrote a column on this very issue a long time ago. Meaning, during the war, but already many months ago. My claim is this. First, a large part of the public wants this not as punishment but as prevention. Meaning, the claim is that you won’t be able to address the problem unless you destroy all of them with an atom bomb, as whoever it was said about an atom bomb. That can be debated—whether one can address the problem without that or not—but if it’s impossible to address the problem without that, then in my view that is a completely legitimate statement. That’s the first level. The second level, of course—I am not ignoring this—is that there is some feeling of vengeance, not prevention but vengeance. Vengeance against a public that reached levels of evil and horror at the very depths of the abyss. And that emotion, in my eyes, is completely natural. Completely natural. I would be very surprised if it did not exist. That does not mean that it should not be sublimated. That does not mean that it would not be proper to try to qualify it, to try to limit it, but the emotion itself is completely natural and I am not shocked by its existence, absolutely not shocked, absolutely not. I can indeed be worried about where it may lead, but that is a third statement. Meaning, the question whether I am troubled by the very formation of such an emotion—not at all, it is the most natural thing in the world. On the contrary, if it doesn’t arise in someone, in my view that points to a certain indifference. I would expect this emotion to arise, and still I would be strong enough to sublimate it, so as not to act on it, but rather to consider what is right and wrong to do. And the last level: I would say that even if someone held that it were right to destroy them all as punishment, not as prevention, it is still not certain that this is your role, and it is still not certain that you should rejoice that it happens. That is the last level of the discussion. Therefore, one has to break this discussion into its components, and discuss each component separately. I think the inflammatory rhetoric on one side and the inflammatory rhetoric against it on the other side—both are inflammatory rhetoric. Meaning, I think these things need to be broken apart and discussed on each level separately. That is my claim.

[Speaker H] Rabbi, I didn’t find a single religious person, one, not even my brother, who supported me—one. They all supported—they opposed that article in the strongest terms. Not even one, whether a great rabbi or a small rabbi or a simple person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: I think that if you had broken it into factors the way I did here, you would have found among the people you spoke with various people who would go as far as the first factor, second, third, and fourth. There were also some in the fourth factor, but not all of them.

[Speaker H] About the first there’s no argument; the rabbi agrees. If there is no choice, we need to survive, then we fight a total war, obviously. The first is simple. I’m talking about the others, about punishment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A large part of the people who speak this way meant it in that sense. By the way, who was it—I don’t remember who it was—one of the ministers from Otzma Yehudit, I don’t remember who it was, who said something about dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. He didn’t exactly say that, never mind. But I had a discussion about this on a podcast with Jeremy Fogel, and I tried to show him, even from what was actually said, that what he meant was prevention and not punishment. You could show that. And I think the outrage against it is also indiscriminate. Because even in the outrage, you have to make distinctions between these things, and the people objecting also don’t make those distinctions. Because in our public discourse, we don’t make distinctions. And I think we need to make the distinction. And when you do make the distinction, then you discover—even on the side that supports revenge—that maybe people are in different places on this map; not everyone is in the fourth stage. Some are in the first, second, third, and so on. And those who criticize it also need to pay attention to what exactly they are criticizing: the first, the second, the third, or the fourth. And these kinds of distinctions usually aren’t made, and that’s a shame, on both sides. Okay, back to our topic. So really, I mentioned here—the issue that kept coming up was this whole idea of serving for its own sake and not for its own sake, so I just… yes, this is already Maimonides, whom I’m fond of, and I’m sure we talked about him in other series at least; maybe here too, I honestly don’t remember. Yes, Maimonides says: A person should not say, "I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I will receive all the blessings written in it, or so that I will merit life in the World to Come; and I will separate myself from the transgressions that the Torah warned against so that I will be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or so that I will not be cut off from life in the World to Come." It is not proper to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one serves God in this way only if one is one of the ignoramuses, women, and children, whom they train to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love. And then he says: One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, and not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit good, but does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good will come because of it. You see? He does the truth because it is truth, but in the end the good will come because of it. Meaning, it’s not that Maimonides says no, there is no reward and no punishment, you just have to serve Heaven. You have to serve Heaven, but that doesn’t mean there is no reward and no punishment. There is reward and punishment; you just shouldn’t serve because of the reward and punishment. And the example that always comes to mind for me in these contexts is the introduction to Eglei Tal. He talks about Torah study, and he says that some people make the mistake of thinking that it’s forbidden to enjoy Torah study, because then the study is not for its own sake. And that’s a mistake, because part of study is enjoying the matter itself; that also helps me in the quality of the learning and in my attachment to the learning and so on. But he goes on and says: still, they are right about one thing—that you must not study for the sake of the enjoyment. Or not that it’s forbidden, but if one studies for the sake of enjoyment, then that is not study for its own sake; it’s not complete study. So once again, the same distinction. It doesn’t mean it’s not good to enjoy it—of course it’s good to enjoy it—but the enjoyment should not be the motivation because of which I study. And that’s what he says here too. There is recompense, there is reward and punishment and everything else, but that does not mean I should serve for the sake of the recompense, to avoid punishment or receive reward. Those are two different things. So you’ll ask: then what is recompense—reward and punishment—for? So here there is a possible answer, yes: "And one serves God in this way only if one is one of the ignoramuses, women, and children, whom they train to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love." So one could say that recompense is needed—but then why do you need recompense if that is not the motivation because of which I serve God? Why do we need it at all? He says: in order to help children and people serve until they reach service out of love. Okay? But as I said earlier, that still doesn’t explain why recompense and reward are actually given in the World to Come. And I’m also doubtful that this explains why it is a principle of faith to believe that there is reward and punishment. If it’s merely a didactic tool for children until they mature, then why is it such a major principle? You hit him with a stick—what, is there a principle of faith that there are sticks? Why is that such a foundational thing? Therefore I think it’s hard to accept that this principle of reward and punishment is really only about that—making sure that people at a lower level will still serve God for the sake of reward and to avoid punishment as an intermediate stage until they reach serving God for its own sake. And therefore everything I said earlier seems to me to gain even greater force. Either the real point is to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, cares—that reward and punishment are only an indication of that, and therefore it is very important, because I need to know that my actions are actions with significance. They are not just technical or neutral things. And the second possibility I mentioned is that feelings of revenge—yes, what I said before—actually reflect something that also contains truth in itself. This idea that someone who did evil should get hit, and someone who did good should be rewarded for the good he did—yes, that same feeling of gratitude. If someone did me a favor, then I feel gratitude toward him, and I ought to repay him with good in return for the good he did for me. Why? Simple justice, metaphysical justice. If he did me a favor, then he deserves good from me. And that is some kind of justice; it’s not a subjective feeling. It’s not a feeling that I’m supposed—I assume many would agree that this is not a feeling one needs to overcome. The feeling that I am grateful to someone who did me a favor—why not? That too is just some kind of feeling of recompense, like doing harm to someone who did harm, doing good to someone who did good. What is it? Just a feeling? So let’s overcome it. Why do we need it? No. Here there is a sense that there is something real here. He deserves good for what he did, and that other person deserves bad for what he did. Meaning that these feelings apparently reflect some truth—an ethical truth, yes? It’s not just psychology. What is problematic in these feelings is the question of dosage, and to what extent I act on them. But the very fact that such a thing ought to be—that itself also contains truth. Meaning, it’s not just something one should overcome and that’s it, as though it were merely an artifact of human weakness. No, it can definitely be something that contains truth. Another point is the relationship between this world and the World to Come. Because as I noted earlier, Maimonides says that the main recompense is in the World to Come. Which implies that there is also recompense in this world, but it is not primary, and maybe that’s also why it doesn’t appear here, because it isn’t the main thing. It’s not a foundation, like I said regarding the previous principle. The question whether there is or isn’t recompense in this world is a question discussed in the Talmud, in the passage in Kiddushin 39b. There are other places too, but that’s mainly where it is. The Mishnah says this—I’ll just begin, I see I don’t have enough time for it, but let’s start a bit. The Mishnah says: Anyone who performs one commandment, they do him good, they lengthen his days, and he inherits the land. And anyone who does not perform one commandment, they do him no good, they do not lengthen his days, and he does not inherit the land. The Talmud asks: yes, so here apparently it looks like there is reward in this world. You do a commandment—you get rewarded; you do a transgression—you get hit, okay? Or if you don’t do a commandment, they do not do you good. Transgressions are not mentioned here, but presumably it’s the same on that side too. But they raise a contradiction: These are the things whose fruits a person eats in this world while the principal remains for him in the World to Come, and these are they: honoring father and mother, acts of kindness, hospitality, bringing peace between one person and another, and Torah study is equal to them all. What do you mean? So you see that there are only a few specific things whose fruits a person eats in this world, and not every commandment, as seems implied by the Mishnah. To that Rav Yehudah answers, Rav Yehudah said: this is what it means—anyone who performs one commandment in excess of his merits, they do him good, and he is considered as if he had fulfilled the whole Torah. Right? Someone who has one commandment more than the fifty-fifty line—then they do him good, and so on, and that applies for any commandment. Rav Shmaya said—sorry—so it follows that those listed there, even with one alone as well? Meaning, those listed in the Mishnah in Peah—"These are the things whose fruits a person eats in this world"—those apply even when they are not beyond the fifty-fifty point. For those, you receive reward in this world even without their tipping you beyond half. Rav Shmaya said, to say that even if there are many transgressions—so that already doesn’t seem reasonable to the Talmud. Rav Shmaya said: to say that if the scales were balanced, it tips them. Right? What does that mean? If he is at fifty-fifty, then if among the good half there is one of those listed in the Mishnah in Peah, then that’s it—he receives reward for it in this world. And if not, then not. Other commandments require there to be an excess beyond half in order to receive reward. Fine. All these things—as I’ve already noted more than once—I have no idea where the Talmud gets all this important information from, and therefore I’m suspicious, suspicious of these statements. But for our purposes, what matters is what comes next. Rava said: this follows Rabbi Yaakov, who said that there is no reward for a commandment in this world. Yes, there is no reward in this world for commandments. As it was taught: Rabbi Yaakov says, there is not a single commandment in the Torah whose reward is written next to it that the resurrection of the dead is not dependent on it. About honoring father and mother it is written: "so that your days may be lengthened and that it may go well with you." About sending away the mother bird it is written: "so that it may go well with you and you will prolong your days." Now imagine that his father told him: go up to the building and bring me chicks. And he went up to the building and sent away the mother and took the chicks. So he performed two commandments for which long life is promised—both honoring father and mother and sending away the mother bird—and on his way back he fell and died. Where is this one’s good? Where is this one’s long life? Rather, "so that it may go well with you" means in the world that is entirely good, and "so that your days may be lengthened" means in the world that is entirely long. Do you understand why you can’t learn anything from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)? I mean, it says to you, "so that it may go well with you and your days may be lengthened." It doesn’t work out for me? Okay, then it means the World to Come. Not this world. It says, "so that it may go well with you and your days may be lengthened"—yes, long life in the world that is entirely good and entirely long. In short, everyone loads into it whatever he decides. But bottom line, Rabbi Yaakov says there is no reward for commandments in this world, and wherever the Torah writes reward for a commandment in this world, know that you have to force the text and interpret it as referring to the World to Come, because in this world there is no reward for commandments. To this the Talmud asks: but perhaps that wasn’t really the case? How does Rabbi Yaakov know that a person really can fall and die on the way back? Fine—maybe in fact that wouldn’t happen. Why does Rabbi Yaakov assume a person can die even if he is going to honor his parents and also send away the mother bird? Maybe really that wouldn’t happen. Why does he assume such a thing can happen? The Talmud says: Rabbi Yaakov saw an actual incident. He saw an incident, yes—he saw someone to whom this happened. It wasn’t hypothetical; he saw something that happened. And maybe he was contemplating a transgression, and thought is not combined by the Holy One, blessed be He, with action—never mind, all kinds of answers. And later in the Talmud it brings what is more famous. Rav Yosef said: had Acher not interpreted this verse as Rabbi Yaakov, son of his daughter, did, he would not have sinned. Yes—Acher, Elisha ben Avuyah—he saw such a case, where the child fell and died on the way back, and he said: well, it says "so that it may go well with you and your days may be lengthened," both regarding honoring father and mother and regarding sending away the mother bird, and nevertheless he died. And therefore he left; he said the whole story isn’t true, and he abandoned it. If he had interpreted it like Rabbi Yaakov, son of his daughter—Rabbi Yaakov was his grandson, yes—if he had interpreted it like Rabbi Yaakov, and apparently Rabbi Yaakov interpreted it this way because of the incident involving Acher, his grandfather, then he would not have sinned. Unless he did know the interpretation and simply wasn’t convinced—yes, it says "so that it may go well with you and your days may be lengthened," and you’re giving me homiletics about the World to Come, but that’s not what the Torah seems to say. So it could be that Acher did know this interpretation but was not persuaded by it. Anyway, for our purposes, that’s what the Talmud says. Now, in the background of all this, I’ll just conclude here: basically we see a discussion in the Talmud whether there is any reward at all for commandments in this world. The Mishnah says yes, Rabbi Yaakov says no, the Talmud says that if Acher had interpreted like Rabbi Yaakov he would not have sinned, which somewhat implies that the Talmud supports Rabbi Yaakov’s view that there is no reward for commandments in this world. In Maimonides we saw that the great reward is in the World to Come, which implies that in this world there is reward, just that it is not the main thing. So that is not like Rabbi Yaakov. And so here there is room to discuss how Maimonides’ words in our principle, the eleventh principle, fit with the Talmud, with Rabbi Yaakov’s view. It may be that he rules like the Mishnah and not like Rabbi Yaakov. Fine, but that we’ll already…

[Speaker F] Rabbi, regarding gratitude, what the Rabbi said—after all, the obligation that all of us feel, and the obligation to feel gratitude, isn’t because I need to pay him. When I buy merchandise, for example, I feel an obligation to pay the merchant; otherwise I feel I’m doing something wrong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t need to feel that you’re paying him; there’s a contract. You are obligated to pay him legally. Right, but if I don’t do it, then beyond the fact that the police will come, I also feel that I did something flawed. He worked, he gave me goods.

[Speaker F] Theft! Not because he worked— theft, theft. Yes, right, right, okay, but here when you feel

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] gratitude, that’s not from the same family as theft.

[Speaker F] The issue is that you need to feel gratitude. You see someone who did something for you, sacrificed something for you—if you’re indifferent to it, even if you don’t give him anything, if you’re indifferent to that, that’s a deep moral flaw. Why is that? Because if our purpose in the world is to see good, and here a manifestation of good appears before us in the world and we pass by it whistling, indifferent, then we are flawed. Now let’s translate that to the other side of the equation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone who passes by evil and is indifferent to it—that’s not okay.

[Speaker F] Yes, fine, absolutely, I didn’t say to be indifferent to evil. But I said to look for the good. If I see, for example, those babies in Gaza and say they didn’t sin—and some of the adults too—if I had been born there…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We already talked about that. I’m talking—pay attention—to the basic principle; let’s not go back through all the details. The basic principle says that just as you’re not supposed to be indifferent to good, you’re also not supposed to be indifferent to evil. Therefore the basic feeling that rebels against evil and wants something bad to happen to people who do evil—that is a proper feeling and it contains truth.

[Speaker F] But the Rabbi skipped two levels. To feel protest against evil—you should feel it and you should be angry. But for me to say, okay, now I’ll take revenge, and now I feel everything is fine because I’m going to show that he deserves a good hit…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A good hit? I’m also supposed to repay him with good, not just feel that he deserves good.

[Speaker F] Right, but if I feel good—here, now I gave him something—it happens to me as a doctor: someone came and did me a favor, so now I’ll bring him something, or I solved something for him, I moved him up, I fixed something for him, and now I’ve removed from myself the burden of gratitude because I arranged something for him—that’s a moral flaw, to do that. If you feel gratitude…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. It’s a moral flaw when you do that at the expense of others. Gratitude—and repaying him with good for something he did for you—is that a moral flaw? Of course not.

[Speaker F] No, Heaven forbid. I’m saying if I now, let’s say, repay someone for a favor, and then I say, now I no longer need to feel gratitude toward him because now he got a return for his fee.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, about that—about that—you can argue, but it’s not relevant to us. I’m trying to show you both sides of the coin. What we say regarding the good side, there is definitely room to say also on the bad side. And on the good side we saw that I have an interest in it being good for him, and there is also an interest in my doing good, repaying him with good for the good he did for me. So on the bad side too, it’s not far-fetched to say that I’m not supposed to be indifferent to evil, and maybe I also need to do something so that this evil comes to its due recompense. Except that because this can create anarchy, and because it damages my soul on the moral level, the Torah really does say—or Jewish law tells us—to sublimate it. There is institutional evil, and it has to be done proportionally, and there has to be oversight over these things. All of that is true, all of that is fine—but the basic feeling and the desire for revenge are not something absurd. That’s what I want to say.

[Speaker F] Okay, it’s just a little hard to understand, I don’t know. Personal problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For me it’s really not hard to understand. You have to be careful with it because it’s dangerous, but it’s really not hard for me to understand. On the contrary, it’s hard for me to understand someone in whom this doesn’t arise. It does arise,

[Speaker F] It does arise, but I feel that it’s not good. Obviously it arises in me too, no question, it washes over me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that it arises is perfectly fine, and the fact that it needs to be sublimated is also true—I agree. I’m just saying: both sides of the coin. You have to live both sides. And each side in this argument, I think, is deficient in one of the two sides—or can be deficient in one of the two sides. Okay, good, so good night.

[Speaker F] Thank you very much.