Dogmatics – Lesson 27
This transcript was generated automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The structure of the series and the transition to Sefer Ha-Ikkarim
- Opening Sefer Ha-Ikkarim: what is easy and what is difficult about knowing the principles
- General principles and particular principles in divine religion and in the Torah of Moses
- The author’s purpose and the claim of historical confusion
- Comparison to the enumeration of commandments and the logic of principle and root
- A question about the absence of principles in the Torah and in the Sages, and the Rabbi’s answer
- Doubt about how binding the whole enterprise of principles is, and the difference between Jewish law and thought
- Albo’s three principles and the structure of the four treatises
- The attitude toward other religions, social correlation, and peer disagreement
- Religious pluralism and exclusive discourse as an internal educational tool
- Revelation to Christianity and Islam, and a comment by Rabbi Kook
- Types of “religions”: natural, conventional, divine, and the meaning of the term religion
- Judaism, morality, ritual, and conversion
- The danger of investigating partial principles and the fear of excluding a person from the religion
- Holy lies, esoteric speech, and the loss of trust
- Segulot, simplicity, and alternative medicine
- Concluding discussion: Christianity, the prohibition on entering a church, and the seven Noahide commandments
Summary
General Overview
The series finishes its review of Maimonides’ thirteen principles and moves to a third part dealing with the opening of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim by Rabbi Yosef Albo and with the foundational questions surrounding the very idea of “principles.” Rabbi Yosef Albo presents an inquiry into the principles of religions in general and the principles of divine religion in particular, and argues that there is confusion and many disputes among the sages both about the number of the principles and about their definition, especially regarding the Torah of Moses. The Rabbi raises doubts about how far the whole project of “principles of faith” can be binding in the halakhic sense, and distinguishes between the interpretive movement of Jewish law and the creative movement of thought. Along the way, positions also develop regarding the attitude toward other religions, toward exclusive discourse as educational discourse and not necessarily a description of truth, and toward the moral and social danger of “holy lies.”
The Structure of the Series and the Transition to Sefer Ha-Ikkarim
The first part of the series defines the concept of principles, the relation between them and facts, and the question of authority to determine principles. The second part goes through Maimonides’ principles, interprets their meaning, explains why they were chosen, searches for their sources in the Torah, and points to some implications. The third part opens with a focused reading of the beginning of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim by Rabbi Yosef Albo, by choosing relevant points rather than going through the entire book.
Opening Sefer Ha-Ikkarim: what is easy and what is difficult about knowing the principles
Rabbi Yosef Albo writes that knowledge of the principles and understanding the starting points around which the foundations of religions revolve is “easy in one respect and difficult in another.” He says it is easy in the sense that all known human beings in the world belong to some religion, and one who does not know the principles of his religion is not like a doctor who does not know the beginnings of medicine or an engineer who does not know the beginnings of engineering. He says it is difficult in the sense that among “the multitude of sages” one does not find sufficient and agreed-upon discussions of the principles of religions; there is great variation in the principles and in their number, especially regarding the principles of the Torah of Moses.
General principles and particular principles in divine religion and in the Torah of Moses
Rabbi Yosef Albo distinguishes between general principles of divine religion “insofar as it is divine” and special particular principles of a specific religion, such that negating a general principle negates divinity itself, while negating a particular principle collapses that religion without collapsing divine religion as such. He raises the question whether divine religion ought to be one or many, and if many, in what they differ from one another, and whether several divine religions can exist at one time. The Rabbi suggests that the spirit of Albo’s words depicts a reality of multiple divine religions, of which the religion of Moses is one, and that there is basic value simply in a person’s being a member of a divine religion, even if the religion of Moses includes a unique higher level.
The author’s purpose and the claim of historical confusion
Rabbi Yosef Albo testifies, “I, the young Yosef Albo, dwelling here in Soria, saw,” that he was drawn to compose the book because of “the great importance of this inquiry” and the abundance of “confusion and perplexity” among those who examined it, who in his words “dived into mighty waters and brought up nothing worth paying attention to.” He argues that the investigators explained the principles according to whatever first came to mind at the beginning of thought, without turning to what ought to be investigated so that the matter could be clarified in its truth. He writes that he is investigating “the general principles of divine religion” and composed a book called Sefer Ha-Ikkarim in order to investigate the principles of religions in general and in particular the principles of divine religion, and afterward the principles of the Torah of Moses, “which everyone believes to be divine.”
Comparison to the enumeration of commandments and the logic of principle and root
The Rabbi explains that counting principles requires examining whether the principles are correct, whether they are truly foundations without which the structure collapses, whether there are redundancies, and whether there is a hierarchy in which a particular enters under a general category. He compares this to the enumeration of the commandments and to the question of distinguishing between a principle, a root, and a detail.
A question about the absence of principles in the Torah and in the Sages, and the Rabbi’s answer
A question is raised: why does the issue of principles not appear explicitly in the Torah or in a systematic Tannaitic-Amoraic discussion, if it is so fundamental that without it “the whole Torah is worth nothing,” according to Maimonides? The Rabbi answers that the Torah includes sources for what one is supposed to believe, but the heading and arrangement as “principles” are an analytical classification by the learner, similar to classification in Jewish law between commandments and details. The Rabbi adds that there is not necessarily an explicit commandment in the Torah to believe in every principle; rather, the Torah teaches the content, and from that content one understands that abandoning it causes the whole structure to collapse.
Doubt about how binding the whole enterprise of principles is, and the difference between Jewish law and thought
The Rabbi says he is “very doubtful” whether beliefs can be defined as binding principles, and argues that the absence of a stable tradition concerning principles reflects a different character of Jewish thought as opposed to Jewish law. He defines Jewish law as an interpretive enterprise that builds conclusions generation after generation on the basis of earlier sources, whereas thought is the creation of the thinker and does not operate in an interpretive mode, even if it uses sources as inspiration. He argues that this difference creates a natural lack of trust in the realm of thought, and therefore people engage in it less, and he questions the attempt to turn thought into a systematic field in a style of “medieval authorities and later authorities” as in certain yeshivot of Religious Zionism.
Albo’s three principles and the structure of the four treatises
Rabbi Yosef Albo determines that the general principles of divine Torah are three: the existence of God, Torah from Heaven, and reward and punishment. He divides his book into four treatises: the first investigates the principles in general, “how many they are and which they are”; the second investigates the first principle, the existence of God, and the roots dependent on it; the third investigates the second principle, Torah from Heaven, and the matters dependent on it; and the fourth investigates the third principle, reward and punishment, and the roots branching from it and the matters dependent on it. He emphasizes that the perfection of members of religions depends on knowledge of the principles, and therefore one ought to exert oneself to investigate this “as much as possible and as one is able, and as much as the nature of the matter can bear.”
The attitude toward other religions, social correlation, and peer disagreement
The Rabbi raises the difficulty of seeing one religion as “the truth” in light of the fact that people usually believe in the religion into which they were born, and that there is a high correlation between a person’s religion and his parents’ home. He describes this as a problem of peer disagreement and presents the question of how one can assign decisive weight to personal examination if others also examined and reached different conclusions. He argues that most people do not seriously examine alternatives at all, and that the examination itself is done with tools built out of “the landscape of your native land.”
Religious pluralism and exclusive discourse as an internal educational tool
The Rabbi suggests the possibility that religious exclusivity is an assumption intended to strengthen believers’ self-confidence and inner devotion, and not necessarily a description of truth with respect to standing “in the heavenly court.” He presents the possibility that all believers in the monotheistic religions, and even a Jew who converted to Christianity out of faith, may be judged similarly from a divine standpoint, and that “how one ought to serve the Holy One, blessed be He” may be a normative domain in which different groups can have different roles. He brings a story about Yeshayahu Leibowitz, of whom it was said, “Everything I have to say is only for Jews,” and explains that he himself is not sure the reasoning there is pluralistic, but he uses it to illustrate the question of what is said to whom.
Revelation to Christianity and Islam, and a comment by Rabbi Kook
A question is asked whether the acceptability of different paths requires assuming revelation also in other religions. The Rabbi says this is a factual question in which there is no pluralism in the sense of “both-and,” but he does not reject in principle the possibility of revelation or miracles among others as well, and he cites Rabbi Kook in Nevukhei HaDor, who says there is no obstacle to thinking that some of the miracles reported by Christians actually happened. He distinguishes between miracles and revelation and notes that even in the world of Torah there is a possibility of a prophet for the nations, such as Balaam.
Types of “religions”: natural, conventional, divine, and the meaning of the term religion
Rabbi Yosef Albo writes that in the first treatise he will investigate “of religions in general, how many there are,” and explain that there are three: natural, conventional, and divine, and he will give their distinctions. The Rabbi explains that the word “religion” here means a legal system and not necessarily religion in the Christian sense of experience and emotion, and he cites Kant, who argued that Judaism is not religion but a political constitution. The Rabbi argues that translating religion as “dat” is problematic, because in the language of the Sages “dat” means law, and he explains that Judaism is defined at its core through commitment to Jewish law and not through religious feeling or morality alone.
Judaism, morality, ritual, and conversion
The Rabbi explains that the core that defines a committed Jew is observance of the ritual commandments that distinguish Jews, and not universal moral prohibitions such as “you shall not murder,” even though they are more severe. He uses this to explain why conversion processes emphasize Sabbath, kashrut, and immersion rather than “love your neighbor as yourself,” because a conversion ulpan is meant to teach a person how to be a Jew, not how to be a human being. He argues that definitions must be unique to the object being defined and not merely necessary but general traits.
The danger of investigating partial principles and the fear of excluding a person from the religion
Rabbi Yosef Albo writes that religions can agree on general matters such as the existence of God and reward and punishment, but disagree on partial matters, and therefore they have partial principles that distinguish one divine religion from another. He states that inquiry into partial matters is “an enormous danger,” because one who denies a partial principle leaves the community of adherents of that religion. The Rabbi adds that the danger also exists when a person believes the content but does not see it as a “principle,” and notes that Albo later discusses the possibility that one who does not regard a principle as a principle will be called a denier of a principle even if he believes in it.
Holy lies, esoteric speech, and the loss of trust
The Rabbi attacks the idea of “holy lies” and the permission to say things in the name of a great person “so that they will accept it from him,” and argues that a lie is destructive because it destroys the concepts of truth and the possibility of believing rabbis even when they are right. He explains that a holy lie works only on someone who does not know it is a lie, and once the matter is exposed, it destroys itself and the entire system of trust. He brings an anecdote about Shalom Schwadron, who told in the name of the Chazon Ish about this permission and said, “And even this I won’t tell you whether the Chazon Ish said it or didn’t say it,” presenting it as an illustration of the internal destructiveness of the mechanism.
Segulot, simplicity, and alternative medicine
A question is asked about “proven” segulot that sound bizarre but are stated with certainty by serious people. The Rabbi discusses the possibility that many believe in them innocently and not as a conscious lie, and explains that isolated experiences of success create conviction by the law of small numbers, similar to alternative medicine, where people interpret accidental successes as proof. He adds that the problem is that segulot and marginal customs receive more importance than what is truly important, and he brings a story about the Sha’agat Aryeh, who wrote the Ten Commandments in the community ledger and said, if only people would be as careful about them as they are about regulations and customs.
Concluding discussion: Christianity, the prohibition on entering a church, and the seven Noahide commandments
A debate develops over whether Christianity is “idolatry” and whether the prohibition on entering a church is a fact or the result of halakhic-educational framing, and the Rabbi notes that he is not sure that a generalization about Christianity is justified because of the abundance of internal interpretations. A question is asked how pluralism fits with the seven Noahide commandments, and the Rabbi argues that the framing of “this and only this, and nothing beyond it” is part of the Jewish conception, while it may be that other nations have additional religious norms that they perceive as service of God. The Rabbi sums up his position by saying that his monism applies to facts and morality, but in the realm of ritual and religious norms there may be different ways of serving the Holy One, blessed be He, similar to differences of roles within Judaism itself.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, last time before Passover we finished going through Maimonides’ principles, the thirteen principles, the foundations, and that basically gave us some kind of map. Meaning, after an introduction that dealt generally with the concept of principles, with the relation between them and facts, with the meaning of authority to determine principles, and so on, everything we discussed in the introductions—after that, the second part was basically to go through Maimonides’ principles, to see their meaning, why they were chosen as principles, what source Maimonides took these principles from, and some implications that also branched off a bit to the sides. I want to finish with a third part. We’ll conclude this series with a third part that basically speaks about Sefer Ha-Ikkarim. Sefer Ha-Ikkarim is a book by Rabbi Yosef Albo, whose whole subject is dealing with principles—in other words, that’s the topic of the book. And of course I’m not going to go through the whole book, but its beginning has several interesting points, some of which touch on things we discussed and some of which don’t, and I want to go through those points a bit from the beginning of the book. That will basically be the third part of our series. So I’ll start—with the introduction he gives. We won’t read everything, we won’t go through all of it, but more or less in order I’ll choose the relevant things. So he says like this in the introduction to the book: knowledge of the principles and understanding the starting points around which the ways of the foundations of religions in general revolve is easy in one respect and difficult in another. Meaning, yes, the inquiry into the principles and foundations of religions in general—already here there’s a hint: religions in general, not specifically the religion of Moses, yes, the Jewish religion—has a difficult side on the one hand and an easy side on the other. “Its ease is due to the fact that all people known today in the world are adherents of a religion, and if one were to imagine that there were a person among the adherents of a religion who related to it yet did not know the principles of that religion, or did not form a conceptual understanding of them in order to believe in them, just as one would not be called a doctor if he did not know the beginnings of medicine, nor an engineer if he did not know the beginnings of engineering, with true knowledge or at least conceptual knowledge.” And therefore he explains that it is fitting for anyone who…
[Speaker C] Can we mute for a second? Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So it’s easy in the sense that, seemingly, every person in the world belongs to some religion, and a person can’t hold a religion without clarifying for himself at some level the principles on which that religion is based. That’s the easy side. “And its difficulty is due to the fact that we have not found among the multitude of sages”—yes, here—“and its difficulty is due to the fact that we have not found among the multitude of sages that they speak sufficiently about the principles of religions, nor that they agree either on the principles or on their number, but rather they differ greatly concerning them, especially regarding the principles of the Torah of Moses.” And already here you see that he’s speaking about principles in a broader sense than merely the principles of the Torah of Moses, rather principles in general. This book is a book that basically deals with this whole idea of principles, and therefore he says that there is difficulty in clarifying them. On the one hand, seemingly everyone ought to know the principles of the religion in which he believes; on the other hand, the fact is that there are very many disputes, and apparently this is not all that unambiguous. And therefore, yes, because there are those who set them at thirteen principles, and there are those who set them at twenty-six principles, and there are those who set them at only six principles, and no one among them set his mind to explain the principles of divine religion in general, without which no divine law can be conceived, and whether divine religion ought to be one or many, and if they are many, whether each should have principles unique to it insofar as it is divine and particular, or not. And what cannot be doubted is that divine religion ought to have general principles insofar as it is divine—yes, the principles that determine it to be divine religion in general—such that if one of them is nullified, it can no longer be conceived as divine; and also special particular principles, such that if one of them is nullified, that religion falls, even though divine religion as a whole does not fall.
Meaning, here too he repeats again and again that when he speaks about principles, he’s speaking about general principles of religion. So that means it’s clear that once it is one of the divine religions, then its own principles are composed of two kinds. One kind is what is required for divine religion in general, and the second kind is what defines the religion of Moses in particular. But not necessarily only one divine religion—there could perhaps be another divine religion or something like that. And besides that, he says that this itself really needs to be examined: can there be another divine religion? Must there be only one divine religion? And when there is more than one, can they also be simultaneous—several divine religions—or is it something that develops, like Christianity for example? So Christianity, on the face of it, thinks there are several divine religions, because there is the Jewish religion and then afterward came the Christian religion. But from their perspective, the Christian religion replaced the Jewish religion. Meaning, simultaneously there is no more than one divine religion; rather, it is a developing process. At first there is the Jewish religion, and then the Christian religion arrives. Therefore he says one must examine whether there can be several religions, and whether this has to mean several simultaneous religions or whether it can develop, and so on.
And he also says—or notes another point, and this is exactly what someone asked me about on the website today—that the sages hardly dealt with clarifying the principles, and even those who did deal with it did not sufficiently explain why they saw these as principles, and why they saw in them, first, why they saw them as foundational principles, and second, why this distinguishes, say, the religion of Moses from other religions, and so on. So that’s his general introduction. And then he says: “Because I, the young Yosef Albo, dwelling here in Soria, saw that what moved me—the first thing that moved me—was the great importance of this inquiry.” “The inquiry” means the engagement with principles. “And I recognized the great fear of its magnitude and the great confusion and perplexity that befell those who studied it, and that all of them plunged into mighty waters and brought up nothing worth paying attention to, for they explained the principles according to what rose in the spirit at the beginning of thought, without turning to what ought to be investigated so that the inquiry might be clarified in its truth.” In other words, there is no source you can approach and examine in order to determine what a principle is, what the content of the principles is, what distinguishes them, and so forth. “And I set my heart to investigate the general principles of divine religion with sufficient inquiry.” Notice—not the religion of Moses, but divine religion as such. “And I composed this book and called its name Sefer Ha-Ikkarim, because it investigates the principles of religions in general and in particular the principles of divine religion, and whether divine religion ought to be one or many, and if they are many, in what one differs from another. And afterward it investigates the principles of the Torah of Moses, which all believe to be divine.” Meaning, everyone agrees that it is divine; not everyone agrees that it is the correct one—there may be other divine religions. “And it will explain that it has general principles insofar as it is divine and special principles insofar as it is particular.” Yes. “And it will explain that it has principles that include other particular principles called roots, because they fall under the general ones and branch out from them, and when the general ones are removed, the particular ones are removed as well.”
In short, this is basically the sort of thing we talked about at the beginning of the series, when I said that when we want to count principles, first we need to check whether they are correct. Second, we need to check whether they really are principles—whether they are foundations without which the structure does not stand. Third, one has to check whether all of them are necessary—maybe there are redundancies, maybe one is just a detail within another, and so on—somewhat like the enumeration of commandments; I compared it to the enumeration of commandments and so forth. Rabbi? Yes.
[Speaker D] For me this leads to a more general question. If it’s really so fundamental and important that there be principles, why isn’t this something found somewhere in the Torah? I mean, the Holy One, blessed be He, did take the trouble to give us the Ten Commandments. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s asking a broader question. He says that in general people didn’t deal with this, and it’s not just in the Torah. In general people didn’t deal with this. And even those who did deal with it didn’t do it in a very systematic way. Now, we saw in Maimonides that at least from his perspective, I think almost all the principles have a source in the Torah. It does appear in the Torah. It doesn’t appear under the heading “this is a principle of faith,” but there are sources in the Torah from which one can derive these principles.
[Speaker D] No, I mean even the concept itself—a principle of faith—isn’t there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an analytical matter introduced by the learner, but the Torah does tell you what you need to believe. Afterward you can organize that into some systematic and ordered structure and define principles and roots and all sorts of things of that kind—that’s already a classification that you perform. But the source for the things themselves can be found in the Torah, at least that’s how…
[Speaker D] Yes, but according to Maimonides it’s not just a systematic structure for study. For him, if you don’t believe in these principles, then all your Torah and all your Jewish law and everything you do is worth nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, clearly,
[Speaker D] the arrangement is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A substantive arrangement, not just an arrangement. The arrangement stems from the fact that there are certain things that hold up the structure. Meaning, if you abandon them, the structure falls. That’s why they’re called principles. Yes, fine, that’s obvious, but that’s part of the analytical work of the learner. It’s not that the Torah writes that this is a principle and without it there is nothing; rather, you can understand from the content of the things that this is so.
[Speaker D] Yes, so my question is very general. I’m saying, if there really are such foundations and principles that without them the whole Torah is worth nothing, why is this whole issue of principle not mentioned in the Torah at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t know, but I don’t see a reason why it should be mentioned. It’s obvious to any sensible person.
[Speaker D] Because according to Maimonides it’s very fundamental, even prior to Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? The fact that it’s very fundamental—so what? There are also very fundamental laws that aren’t written in the Torah.
[Speaker D] So supposedly the Holy One, blessed be He, gives us laws and assumes that we ourselves will understand that there are foundations that come before them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying the laws aren’t all listed there either—all the important laws.
[Speaker D] No, of course not, but if something is listed, then it’s laws in the Torah, meaning…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not true. In the Torah there is also, as we saw in Maimonides, a source for principles, not only for laws. It’s just that the classification of what is a principle and what is not a principle, and what are the 613 commandments and what are details included within the 613 commandments, etc.—that’s a classification we make. That’s true both in Jewish law and in principles.
[Speaker D] So the Rabbi is saying that there are actually several kinds of commandments in the Torah, and Maimonides takes some of them not as Jewish law but as a foundation, even though it’s a commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the other things are not necessarily commandments. The other things teach us that this is the correct way. We understand that whoever doesn’t accept this, the whole building has fallen, and therefore we define him as a denier of a principle. But the Torah—I don’t think it necessarily sees these things as commandments. There is nowhere a commandment to believe in reward and punishment. Where in the Torah is there a commandment to believe in reward and punishment? There is—you can find in the Torah, if Maimonides is right, and we spoke about this quite a bit—but you can find in the Torah a source for the fact that there is reward and punishment. So this is not some commandment where you decide, no, this is not a commandment, it’s a principle. No—it doesn’t appear as a commandment.
[Speaker F] Following up on that question, I wanted to know—okay, we talked about the Torah, but how is it that this whole topic somehow isn’t found in some discussion among the Tannaim, among the Amoraim, some give-and-take? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s something he already noted above—that’s the difficult side in investigating this matter, because indeed people didn’t deal with it very much, and among those who did, there are disputes, and it’s quite clear that this whole business is not really built properly. We don’t have a stable tradition about this issue. In Jewish law too there are disputes, but there there is some framework within which the discussion is conducted. Meaning, there is room for different interpretations by different people, but the framework is a clear framework. So this takes us back to things I spoke about in the introduction, because I really think that I’m very doubtful as to how far one can define beliefs of this kind as binding principles, or beliefs in general as binding principles. And therefore this whole enterprise of principles of faith and so on—I’m not at all sure it has a place.
And the fact is—and that’s what he says, that there are disputes and so on—the fact is that Jewish thought is basically some kind of field that operates differently from Jewish law. First of all, as a matter of fact, even those who deal with Jewish thought—it operates differently from Jewish law. Jewish law, in its foundation—and I’ve talked about this in other series elsewhere—Jewish law in its foundation is an interpretive enterprise. Meaning, we received in the Torah, or in the Oral Torah, it doesn’t matter, some foundations, and from there on we interpret it generation after generation—Tannaim and Amoraim and Geonim and medieval authorities and later authorities—each one on top of the previous one, interpreting and interpreting. But at base it’s an interpretive move. Meaning, in the end we derive more and more conclusions and refine and build the structure in a more systematic and orderly way. Sometimes perhaps it’s convincing, sometimes not convincing; I’m not getting into the question now of how precise and unambiguous it is. But the enterprise at root is an interpretive enterprise.
As opposed to that, books of Jewish thought, books of philosophy, are not created through interpretation. Anyone who tells me that the Maharal, or Rabbi Kook, or I don’t know, books of Hasidism, are books that are basically interpreting earlier sources—he’s fooling either himself or me or himself; it’s certainly not true. Thought is the creation of the thinker; it’s not interpretation of earlier things. Now, of course, as illustration you can take midrashim of the Sages, you can take a bit of Maimonides here, a bit of the Maharal there, and so on. But the very clear feeling is that you are not operating here in an interpretive mode. It’s not—it’s a creative mode, not an interpretive one.
Now again, the distinction isn’t completely sharp. Obviously even in interpretation there is a creative dimension, and in fact different people interpret things differently. But if you ask them what they are doing, each one of them will say: I’m interpreting. And when you ask, I don’t know, the Ketzot, Rabbi Akiva Eiger, the Netivot, all the great later authorities, when they disagree, say, with some interpretation of Maimonides, or when you ask the medieval authorities when they disagree over an interpretation of the Talmud—each one of them will say: this is how I interpret the Talmud, this is how I interpret Maimonides, this is how I interpret the Shulchan Arukh, this is how—yes? Each of them is basically interpreting his predecessors, disagreeing with them, it doesn’t matter; so he interprets the predecessors of his predecessors and disagrees with his predecessors or with his colleagues, and so on. But at base the mode is very interpretive. In the end we’re not inventing anything; we are interpreting the material that came before us, sometimes a very creative interpretation, sometimes a very far-reaching interpretation, but the inner orientation is an interpretive orientation—we are basically in an interpretive mode.
By contrast, in the realm of thought the mode is not interpretive. We create an intellectual structure as it seems to us. Where do the sources come from? So I talked about that. Logical reasoning, some inspirational sources from the Sages, from Maimonides, from one sage or another—but at base, at root, every thinker created his own thought. He uses his own language, his own system of principles, and therefore it’s very hard to relate to philosophical literature as interpretive literature. Rather, thinkers think—they create one philosophy or another. And therefore, to some extent, it’s a process that builds itself. On the one hand, it starts from the fact that we do not really have an ordered tradition; each person has to create his own thought, and not as an interpretation of earlier philosophies. The various thinkers throughout history do not create their thought as interpretation of earlier thinkers—that’s simply not how it works.
And consequently the result too is that there is no ordered tradition, and therefore even if you wanted to do it by way of interpretation, you can’t really do it. You can try to interpret Maimonides, but Maimonides himself invented it, so what does it help that you interpret him? In Jewish law I claim that Maimonides interpreted the Talmud, so I interpret Maimonides and through him I arrive at an interpretation of the Talmud. In thought, you can either interpret the thinker—but his philosophy is basically something he invented—or create a philosophy yourself, but in the end the mode is very creative and not interpretive.
And therefore I think there is a reluctance among quite a few sages to deal with this altogether, because there is not really a feeling that you received something from Sinai and are simply trying to understand what you received. No—you are creating your own philosophy, and therefore people deal with it less, because there is less trust in the whole thing. Yes, this reminds me: toward the end of my doctorate, I was sitting—at a certain stage I had two supervisors—so I sat with both of them and said, listen, the truth is I raised a serious cow here. I built and investigated some system of mathematical tools, it doesn’t matter, drawn from one field in order to try to apply them in another field, but I have no confidence in the result. I said I feel it doesn’t really grab the bull by the horns. Meaning, it really misses it; the assumptions that I put into this whole process introduce so much of myself that these tools don’t really advance me. And somehow I slaughtered the cow after raising it. They opened a pair of eyes at me and said, what? You invested a year, two years, I don’t know how much, you raised this thing, and you’re not going to do anything with it? But somehow the feeling was that I had no confidence in it. That’s me, not the physics. Meaning, I put in all kinds of assumptions there, and whether they’re right or not, what will it help to use them and reach various results? I’ll get what I think, not how nature actually behaves. So I just remembered that now as an anecdote, because I think that’s basically the reluctance many people feel toward this whole field of Jewish thought.
So they try to produce these kinds of great thinkers—in the yeshivot of the Kav line and the like it’s very prominent, but in general in Religious Zionist yeshivot it seems to me much more prominent—that they try to produce the field of thought too as some sort of systematic field that has a tradition to it, that has medieval authorities and later authorities whose positions you examine, you set up disputes, you create topics. It’s not convincing. Meaning, it doesn’t really work. And not for nothing, in Haredi yeshivot they don’t deal with this. And again, people think they don’t deal with it because they’re afraid of ending up in heresy and apostasy. Maybe that’s part of the story, but I don’t think that’s the root of the matter. The root of the matter is lack of trust in this field. There’s no trust in this field, as opposed to the realm of Jewish law and analysis—this Talmudic analysis.
Okay, in any event, to our matter. So he says: “And it will explain that the general principles of the divine Torah”—here—“are three.” They are the existence of God, Torah from Heaven, and reward and punishment. This is basically—the author of Sefer Ha-Ikkarim claims that there are three principles and not the thirteen of Maimonides. It is the existence of God, Torah from Heaven, and reward and punishment. “And for this reason we divided this book into four treatises: the first to investigate the principles in general—how many they are and which they are; the second to investigate the first principle, which is the existence of God, and the roots that depend on it; the third to investigate the second principle, which is Torah from Heaven, and the things that depend on it; and the fourth to investigate the third principle, which is reward and punishment, and the roots that branch from it and the things that depend on it.”
[Speaker D] Rabbi, historically, did he come after Maimonides?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. He is later than Maimonides. Obviously—he refers to Maimonides. And he says: “And this inquiry, which is the knowledge of the principles of religions, is something of very great value indeed, because all the perfection of people who adhere to religions”—and all people are adherents of religions, even if they adhere to different religions—“and it is clear that we ought to exert ourselves to investigate this with all the strength we can muster, as much as possible and as much as the nature of the matter can bear.” Yes? He says: I believe in something and therefore I live my whole life in the light of that belief without clarifying what that belief even means? That can’t be. After all, it’s the basis of everything. In any case, in any case, that’s basically his claim. He prays to God to give him the ability to do this, the intellect to do this, and so on.
And I want to stop here on a point that arises here somehow incidentally and then comes up again and again later. He is basically talking about the principles of divine religion in general and the principles of the Torah of Moses, the religion of Moses, in particular. And the principles of the religion of Moses include within them both the principles of divine religion that are general to all divine religions and in particular to the religion of Moses, and the particular principles of the religion of Moses that distinguish it specifically and not the other religions. This raises the question: is this only a methodological division? And in the end is there only the religion of Moses and everything else is nonsense? Only within the principles of the religion of Moses can you distinguish two subgroups. There are principles for its being a divine religion at all, even if it were not the religion of Moses, and there are principles specific to the religion of Moses. But if this is only a methodological matter, then one should not infer from here that there are also other valid religions besides the religion of Moses. It would only be a methodological division. Meaning, there are principles that define your being a believer in God at all, and there are principles that are specific to the belief we received from the religion of Moses. But in the end there are no other religions; there is only the religion of Moses.
The spirit that blows through all his words is not like that. Also later, not just here. Meaning, somehow it seems that he understands that all religions have value—that they are different ways of serving the Holy One, blessed be He. Including Christianity and Islam and everything—all that already existed in his time, of course. And from his perspective there are many divine religions, and the religion of Moses is one of them. Now of course one has to examine the relation—how true are they all, is there no advantage to the religion of Moses over other religions—that’s an interesting question in itself. But his very division basically says that there is a basic value in being a believer in a divine religion, and within that, of course, in the religion of Moses. But this is built in two stages, each of which has value. Say, Christians and Muslims—that too is service of God, that too is some kind of thing of value, perhaps not complete. But still there is some basic infrastructure here on top of which one can build still further—our level, a specific level.
[Speaker D] They have value because it’s a monotheistic religion, supposedly?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I think what he calls divine religions means monotheistic religions, if I understand correctly.
[Speaker D] Right—he’s not referring to idol worshippers or something like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so, it doesn’t seem to me that—no, I don’t remember right now, but it seems to me not. Meaning, he says that nowadays there’s no one who has no religion. So again, the environment he knew probably had nothing there except Muslims and Christians. So I don’t know whether that proves anything, because in the world there were certainly others. In Africa, in China, in all kinds of places like that, there were certainly others. But it seems to me that what he knew was monotheistic religions, that’s what I think at least. In any case, why am I mentioning this? Because more than once—I think I may also have spoken about this sometime in the past—but more than once the following question comes up: look, you were born Jewish, and of course you’re convinced that this is the true religion and all the others are mistaken and will inherit hell and so on. The guy who was born in some Polish or Italian village, or whatever, Catholic—he is convinced of exactly the opposite. Meaning, he is convinced that Christianity is the true religion and everything else is nonsense and they’ll inherit hell and so on. And the same goes for the Muslim, and all the different shades of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. So in the end, how can you take seriously a worldview that is, all in all, just an expression of the landscape of your birthplace? That’s simply how you were born. So in what sense can you really relate to this as truth and to other things as falsehood? Or in other words, how do you explain the surprising statistical fact that people usually believe in the religion into which they were born? There’s a very high correlation. It’s not always true, but there’s a very high correlation between the religion a given person has and the religion of the home of his parents into which he was born. Now, if the examination were really substantive and independent, fine, there are always disagreements, but I would expect there to be disagreements among those born in a Jewish home, a Christian home, a Muslim home, and everywhere it would be distributed the way it ought to be distributed—the same. Meaning, the house you were born into should not have an effect. And therefore a question arises. It’s always kind of the question of peer disagreement, right? A disagreement among equals. It’s an issue in philosophy. If there is a dispute between two philosophers, how can you take the position of one of them seriously as if it were true? The other one is also convinced he’s right, and you too are convinced you’re right. You’re no smarter than he is, and he’s no smarter than you are. So in what sense can you take your own position seriously? Why—because you think you’re right? Obviously he also thinks he’s right. Because you checked? Fine, obviously he also checked. Meaning, it’s obvious that you checked and that’s what you came out with, and he checked and that’s what he came out with. When you look at this from the chair of the UN Secretary-General, you can absolutely ask yourself what all the examinations we do are worth. In the end, a person is the landscape of his birthplace. And that question really is not a simple one. Now, there are answers I’ve suggested to this question. I think very few people seriously examine alternatives they weren’t born into. Many of them even think it’s forbidden to do such a thing; different religions often forbid examining other religions. Distinct from those for the better—what are they called, the Amish? Yes, the Amish in America. There’s a fascinating phenomenon there. Do you know it? It seems to me that a boy at age 17 or something like that gets a year off—or two years, I think one year—to leave their Amish villages, go live in the big city, do whatever he wants, hang around with whomever he wants, and after a year decide whether it seems right to him, and either return to being Amish or stay in the city, leave everything, and live in the way he chose. It turns out that apparently most of them return after that year, and there are all kinds of reasons for that, but that’s not the point. But it’s beautiful, that willingness to give a person the freedom to choose. Meaning, to understand that the fact that you grew up in a certain place should not dictate your choices. Come, try to examine it in an independent, unbiased way, and then decide whether you accept it or don’t accept it. But in most religions it isn’t like that. People relate very unsympathetically to this idea of ‘come, examine me.’ And therefore a great concern arises, or a great doubt, about how much the examination we do is really worth. So I’m saying again: most people don’t examine at all. But even if I do examine, obviously I’m doing the examination with my own tools. There are Christians too who examined; true, it’s a small minority, just as among Jews it’s a small minority, but there are people who examined and reached their conclusions. So even after you examine, who says that the examinations themselves are not also a phenomenon, a result of the landscape of your birthplace? And therefore in the end, in the end, you can’t get out of it. Meaning, in some way you remain trapped within your monad, or your narrative, if you want to use postmodern language or something like that, and that really raises a difficult question.
[Speaker D] But Rabbi, all those who leave religion—that’s also a kind of abandonment. The fact that I don’t move to another religion doesn’t mean I didn’t examine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so I said that—I mentioned earlier that it doesn’t always hold, but there is a high correlation. Yes. The number of religious and secular people is not distributed the same way among those born in a religious home and those born in a secular home, despite the phenomena of becoming religious and leaving religion. The correlation is significant. You can’t deny it. It’s not one, but it’s—I don’t know—0.8 if we’re being conservative. Okay? So—and certainly not another religion.
[Speaker D] That’s already a leap. Exactly, yes, there are many more people who abandon their religion, whatever religion it is, than people who move from one religion to another.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter. What difference does it make?
[Speaker D] No, because I’m saying even a Christian person, let’s say, won’t say, maybe the truth is with the Jews, I’ll check with the Jews and then if so I’ll convert. It’s much more likely that he’ll just leave his religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I said: both those who become religious and those who leave religion make exchanges between secular and religious within the same religion. But they don’t move to another religion. A secular person who becomes religious doesn’t become Christian. And a Jew who leaves religion also generally doesn’t become Christian. He just leaves religion. Max Weber already pointed this out, yes, that even secularity is colored by religious colors. Meaning, Protestant secularity is Protestantism that has undergone secularization, has become secular. And there’s Catholic secularity and Jewish secularity and Muslim secularity and all kinds. But that secularity too is different from this secularity. Meaning, secular Jews and secular Catholics and secular Protestants and secular Muslims are not the same. It’s like the synagogue I don’t go to is only an Orthodox synagogue, says the secular person, right. Under no circumstances will I not go—right—to a Reform synagogue. I’m Orthodox-secular. The synagogue I don’t go to is only an Orthodox synagogue. Yes, I have a friend who wanted to establish in Yeruham a Conservative synagogue. He told me, listen, after all, most of the people there are traditional. Traditional people are basically Conservatives. Less than Conservatives, of course, but certainly not Orthodox. So he didn’t succeed. He couldn’t find ten traditional people who would come to a Conservative synagogue. Why not? Because the synagogue they don’t go to—even though many of them do in fact go, but on the metaphorical level—the synagogue they don’t go to is only an Orthodox synagogue. Meaning, they’re secular vis-à-vis Orthodoxy, not secular vis-à-vis Conservatism. Okay? So it’s a known phenomenon. In any case, for our purposes, I’m saying—Elad.
[Speaker E] Maybe it’s worth saying that the problem here is not only that people haven’t examined other options, but that they really can’t examine other options. Because in order to examine an option you have to respect it very, very much; you have to come with some kind of respect from the outset. And that’s impossible. It’s really impossible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know if it’s impossible, but it is hard, true, I agree. Meaning, obviously there are many reasons not to examine other religions. Some are more justified, some less, but the fact is that people don’t examine. And since that’s so, it’s very hard to take seriously the conclusions I reach—that Judaism is the truest religion, or Christianity, or Islam, or whatever. And in this matter, of course, first of all research is required: check. Do what you can. What you might have missed—you might be trapped inside your own system of assumptions, anything is possible. But at least do what you can do. Examine as far as your hand can reach. That’s one. Second, what I want to argue is that the difference among religions—at least among religions, let’s leave secularity aside for the moment and so on, but certainly among the monotheistic religions at least—the difference, or the exclusivity, may be only an assumption, an assumption created for the sake of the believers’ self-confidence. Meaning, the fact that Jews think they’re right and Christians will inherit hell, or Muslims will inherit hell—that’s a discourse created in order to build the self-confidence, the devotion of Jews to their path. But it’s not true. Meaning, in the end, when a devout Christian comes, God-fearing, who did exactly what he was told, observed the commandments of his religion properly, and arrives at the heavenly court, the Holy One, blessed be He, is not going to send him to fry in hell because he worshipped idols. I don’t believe that will happen. And therefore, in fact, it may be that if not—then one could say He won’t send him because he was coerced, of course. You could say that too. But I want to make a stronger claim. It may be that in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, expects us to serve Him. Exactly how we serve Him? It may very well be that there are several different ways, all of them acceptable from His perspective. That doesn’t mean there are many truths; I’m not slipping here into postmodernism, because in factual contexts there is only one truth, there aren’t many truths in factual contexts. But in ritual contexts, in contexts of religious norms—how one ought to serve the Holy One, blessed be He—it may very well be that different people are required to serve Him in different ways. Just as priests have a different role from Israelites or Levites, so too Christians may have a different role than Jews or Muslims. And from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, all those ways are legitimate ways. All roads lead to Rome, to speak in the language of these times, right before the holy year. So there you are. All roads lead to the same place. And the fact that we speak in an exclusive discourse, as if we’re right and everyone else is talking nonsense—that’s discourse for internal purposes. Simply in order to strengthen people’s confidence, because people find it hard—hard to grasp such a complex worldview, or let’s call it such a pluralistic worldview. And certainly it would be hard for them to devote themselves to their own direction if in fact it’s not really the one and only truth. Therefore, for the needs of, I don’t know, enlisting people, creating devotion and dedication of people to the path, an exclusive discourse was created. But the truth is that from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, it may be that all believers of the various religions will stand before Him in the heavenly court, and all of them will sit in paradise under the wings of the Divine Presence in exactly the same way. I don’t know.
[Speaker E] Can I bring an anecdote in support of the Rabbi? Yes, yes. I heard Leibowitz’s grandson, and he said that once when the Dalai Lama came to Israel he turned to his grandfather and said, Grandpa, the Dalai Lama has come to Israel, maybe you should confront him? Reveal the truth to him. So Leibowitz said to him: I have nothing to say to him. He asked, why do you have nothing to say to him? He said: everything I have to say is only to Jews.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I think with Leibowitz it came from a different place, in my opinion. It came from positivism. Meaning, something for which you cannot produce a reasoned argument in its favor—there’s no point speaking about it at all.
[Speaker E] But for example, Leibowitz’s attitude toward Vanunu was very negative. When he converted to Christianity, he didn’t agree to sign support for him or something in his favor, because he said he was a despicable person. Even though he was, all in all, just a Jew who converted to Christianity, he saw that as something terrible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that someone who grew up inside a Jewish world, perhaps one can indeed make arguments to him as to why he ought to remain Jewish; I don’t know. Exactly. But I’m saying, I’m not sure that comes from the pluralistic place I was speaking about earlier. Because as far as I’m concerned, if a Jew became Christian, his status is exactly like that of a Christian. Meaning, he sits in the heavenly court—he sits under the wings of the Divine Presence in the World to Come together with me. If he really believes that, there’s no difference between him and a Christian. If that’s really what he believes, if that’s really how he thinks one should serve God, then what’s the problem? That’s what he did. Everything is fine. Well, on this point I wouldn’t go in the direction Leibowitz went. If you really believe in it. Fine. This will also come up later for us here, but I’m only saying that when you read Sefer Ha-Ikkarim, the impression that arises is very much along these lines. Many times he doesn’t even write it explicitly, but that’s the spirit blowing through his words. He constantly speaks about many divine religions, one of which is the religion of Moses. But there are many divine religions, and they have principles that define them, and whoever observes the principles or believes in these principles is essentially a member of a divine religion—while the religion of Moses has its own unique principles. And again I’m saying, in principle one could say that this is only a methodological division. Meaning, there are principles that are principles of divine religion, and principles of the religion of Moses, but only the religion of Moses is right; only within the religion of Moses do you have both the general principles and the particular principles. But the spirit that blows from him, in my opinion, is not that.
[Speaker G] Rabbi, when you raise the possibility that the different ways, supposedly, of serving the Holy One, blessed be He, are all acceptable—for the Christian in one way and for the Muslim in another way and for us in another way—are you assuming that they too had revelation, or that they reached this religion from…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not—look, factually, factually there is no pluralism. Meaning, either there was revelation or there wasn’t. But the question whether yes or no—meaning, what the truth of the matter is—I don’t know. Rabbi Kook, for example, in Nevukhei Ha-Dor writes that there is no impediment to thinking that some of the miracles reported by Christians really happened. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself to them as well; they have their own way of serving Him, and He reveals Himself to them. For Rabbi Kook this is not complete pluralism. He does see them as some sort of preliminary infrastructure, as Maimonides sees them—an initial infrastructure on top of which, if you want to be more complete, you should be Jewish. But still, yes, he does not rule out the possibility that the revelations and miracles that happened there indeed happened. That is a factual question. Here there is no room for pluralism, meaning that both could be true at once.
[Speaker D] Wait, but what is the meaning of their miracles? Is it Jesus walking on water, or is it divine revelation? That’s not the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s why I’m saying: it could be this and it could be that, I don’t know. But in principle I don’t think one can rule out the possibility that there were also revelations, miracles, or…
[Speaker D] Because if miracles are defined as things that are above nature or something like that, then the Egyptians in Egypt also knew how to do sorcery there. Okay, so I’m saying: there’s a difference between revelation and miracles that people perform. There’s a difference. What’s the difference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about both. I’m saying revelation and miracles too; I didn’t say it was the same thing.
[Speaker D] I’m just saying: could the Christians have had a revelation like ours at Mount Sinai?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. To Muhammad in the cave, or to Jesus, I don’t know where—yes, it could have happened, maybe, I don’t know. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to Balaam, there are prophets of other religions who received the message relevant to their people. I don’t think one can rule that out out of hand. It may be so, it may not be so, I don’t know. I’m less—precisely because of what I said earlier—I’m less interested in that question. I also have no way to examine it. But I’m less interested in that question because as far as I’m concerned, I think this path is the path by which I am required to serve the Holy One, blessed be He. But at the same time, together with that, in the back of my mind I make a note of caution to myself that, after all, I too was born into this thing, and therefore this view—that to me this seems to be the right path—that is my perspective. I think it is the right path, and more right than other paths, but at the same time I also remember that when I myself judge this, I judge it from the point of view of someone who grew up inside it. And therefore everything is under reservation.
[Speaker D] But the very fact that the other religions are only a modification of our religion, okay? It’s not some revelation that started from scratch. They took our religion and made a New Covenant and all that. So how can one say that they too may be right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? What’s the problem?
[Speaker D] Because they took something that exists, that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed and gave to the world, and they changed it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So He revealed Himself again and created Christianity. What’s the problem?
[Speaker D] But why would He need to change it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Because He saw that Judaism was a small thing and He wanted to spread it more among the public; that’s what Maimonides writes. He wanted to spread it more in the world, so He created Christianity and Islam. Why can’t religion—
[Speaker D] Why can’t our religion be spread throughout the whole world?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it didn’t work. It doesn’t fit everyone. Just as not all Jews are priests, not the whole world is Jewish. Even within the exclusive discourse you can say that. Even if you think Judaism is the right thing, as Maimonides and Rabbi Kook probably thought, they still say what I just said. They could say that even within the exclusive discourse. I’m just going one step further and saying: who says the exclusive discourse is right at all? It may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to Christians and Muslims not because, well, they too deserve to travel second class. No—that’s not second class. That is their class, and I have my class, and each person should focus on his own class. And from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He, each person is supposed to serve Him as he understands, in the best way he understands. Therefore I am supposed to adhere to my path, and the Christian is supposed to adhere to his path and advance his way, and I will advance my way; everything is fine. But in the end, from the view from above: each river has its own course.
[Speaker D] But what does it mean, as he thinks best? Non-Jews, even in our tradition, have the laws of the seven Noahide commandments. There isn’t something other than that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean there isn’t something other than that? Fine.
[Speaker D] Meaning, if the non-Jew follows the seven Noahide commandments, then yes, maybe he deserves some World to Come or I don’t know what will be there. But not that now everyone does whatever he wants and changes the religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re not doing whatever they want. The monotheistic religions, at least in principle, do accept the seven Noahide commandments. Not all seven—the moral part of them. Say, the limb from a living animal, not necessarily, and idolatry—that’s already a bit of a question with Christians perhaps, though I’m very doubtful about that. But in principle yes, they do accept that core. So again, Rabbi, are you disagreeing
[Speaker G] with what the Sages say—that Jesus is judged in boiling excrement and all these negative things about him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not disagreeing with that, because I don’t know what he did and I don’t know the background. So I’m not arguing with anyone who was there and knows the background. Can you hear me? It froze somehow. Can you hear? Can you hear me now? Okay, I don’t know what happened here, my… disappeared. Okay, I don’t know exactly where we stopped, but…
[Speaker G] For me it stopped when I asked you about the view of the Sages, which is very negative regarding Jesus.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, I can’t argue with the Sages regarding Jesus. First of all, I can disagree with them on the principled level. I simply don’t know the situation there well enough. If Jesus really was wicked because he did things that were not okay, then fine, maybe that’s true. I don’t know.
[Speaker H] But if not,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if not, then not. Then I disagree with them. Who says he is judged… It could be that they themselves perhaps didn’t think so and only said it as part of creating the exclusive discourse, I don’t know.
[Speaker G] Yes, yes, I’m not asking about the interpretation that they don’t see what happens above. If they don’t see what happens above. But their approach itself, which is
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] so negative. So I’m saying, let’s talk about the approach. I’m saying, obviously—about above, nobody knows what happens above—but also with respect to their approach: A, it could be they were mistaken. B, it could be that when they speak in an exclusive discourse, they too are speaking in esoteric language. They are really saying it in order to strengthen our devotion to Judaism, and so they say that everything else is boiling excrement and so on—but not as a true claim, as a true approach, but as an educational approach they say it. That’s B. And C, it could be that they are also right, because Jesus was in the wrong. I don’t know exactly what he did there innocently and what he really believed as opposed to what he did. If he did something he truly believed in, there is no reason to think that he is judged above in hell or something like that. I don’t see—it doesn’t sound plausible to me.
[Speaker G] Yes, because your approach is actually a much more universal view, because we look at it as though we are 14 million people and everything revolves around us, everything depends on us, the whole world, the whole cosmos, the whole universe is for us. But what you’re saying is really much broader.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I claim that all this discourse that places us at the center and says the whole world rests on us is an exclusive discourse meant to spur us to do what we are supposed to do. But that is not a factually correct claim. Meaning, that’s at least how I… there is no necessity that it be so. Again, I also don’t know that it isn’t. I don’t know. But I take into account the possibility that it isn’t. It’s not a factual claim, but a methodological claim. Meaning, you need to relate to it as if that is your truth, and you need to go with it and advance it and focus on it as if the whole world… Think, for example, of the Sages’ statement that for every commandment you do—or every transgression you do—you should assume that… or every transgression you do, you should assume that it destroys the world. That the world is exactly balanced, half commandments and half transgressions, and every transgression you do tips the scale… But that isn’t true. Right? People commit transgressions and the world is not destroyed. So why should you relate to it that way? So the Sages tell you: they are not giving a factual description here, but saying, this is how you are supposed to relate, because then you will take your task seriously. Right? Meaning, if with every transgression you understand that the world rests on it, you will take transgressions seriously. You won’t commit them lightly. I want to claim that something like that statement applies to the entire exclusive discourse. All this discourse that says the world is built on us is also discourse of that kind. The world is built on us because that will spur us to truly carry out our role properly. As they say, you know, in the army every unit has some anthem saying they’re the best and all the others know nothing and the other units are worthless, only we are the most outstanding and the greatest fighters. Now every reasonable person understands that this is nonsense. Right? But they sing it with full force and they are sure that only Golani or only Givati or only the paratroopers or only whoever. Why? Because they are trying to build fighting spirit, unit spirit, so you have to create this sort of exclusive discourse. I think it’s the same in the discourse of religions. And therefore it’s a bit hard to live this way. Because it’s not for nothing that they tell you an exclusive discourse in order to spur you to devote yourself to your path. Now I’m saying: but I know, after all, that this is only to spur me, so in fact I know that the truth is not exclusive. Fine, so how do I nevertheless make sure that I devote myself to this anyway? Hard question. I don’t know. It really is harder to devote yourself that way.
[Speaker G] The holy lies for those who believe? What? The holy lies for those who believe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. Now once you’ve reached the conclusion that this is already a holy lie, then there’s no point lying to you; the holy lie won’t work on you anymore. So you can regret it or not regret it, but that’s the fact. That’s the fact. It’s like many times people who begin to struggle with problems of faith. They come talk to me and afterward they regret that they even decided to get involved with it, because they can’t get out of it and all kinds of things like that. I tell them: listen, maybe it was a mistake that you went in, maybe—I think not—and maybe it was a mistake, but you went in, and now you’re already here. The questions won’t disappear. You won’t be able to return to a state of simple faith. You can’t; it’s irreversible. You can remain believers if you become convinced that this really is the path and so on, but you won’t be able to erase everything you’ve gone through and return to the essence of simple faith. It’s irreversible, finished, you’ve already gone through it. Same thing here: holy lies work, as you said, holy lies work on those who accept them. On someone who already understands that these are holy lies, then you understand there is no meaning anymore, there is no point lying to him anymore, because he already understands it’s a holy lie. In a certain sense, this really is terribly frustrating, because—I’ll give another example perhaps. There’s that Magen Avraham who brings there in section 156 that a person is allowed to say things in the name of a great man so that they will accept it from him. Basically you can lie, say your own ideas, attribute them to some great authority, so that your interlocutor will accept them. I already spoke about this and explained why it actually makes sense and so on. But just think about the fact that once there is such a permission, and I already know there is such a Magen Avraham—really it’s not Magen Avraham, it’s a Talmudic text—I know there is such permission, I can no longer believe anyone. Now who knows whether he isn’t lying to me? And once that’s the case, then the whole method of lying so that people will accept from you also won’t work anymore. Because once people understand that it is permitted to lie so that they will accept from you, then the lie will no longer work; they won’t accept from you even if you lie. And in a certain sense, holy lies are something very destructive, and among all their destructiveness, they also destroy themselves. Meaning, they no longer even allow holy lies, once you discover that there are holy lies. The greatest secret that a holy liar must protect is the very fact that there are holy lies. That is the greatest secret, because if he exposes that secret, he has finished his career with holy lies; it’s no longer possible to say anything. All esoteric speech—we spoke about this even, I think, in this series. The problem is so difficult with those who justify esoteric speech. Esoteric speech is basically holy lies. Meaning, not revealing the truth because the audience before you could be harmed by it, something like that. Now, this can work so long as the audience before you thinks you are not lying to them. But if the audience before you understands that you are hiding things from them for educational reasons, then you’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater. And since today everything is already exposed, and today everyone already knows these permissions and the holy lies and the fact that one can say things in the name of a great man and so on—everything is already known, the principles too. Once, this Magen Avraham was known to Torah scholars, so they could go on lying to everyone because only they knew it, while those listening did not know the Magen Avraham because they were not Torah scholars. But once it’s all known, and it’s all in databases, and it’s all on the internet, and it’s all in ChatGPT, I don’t know where—you can no longer do it. And now is a time when this becomes so clear as such a destructive thing, that retroactively it becomes clear that it was a very, very great mistake to take this route even in the period when it worked. Because today it is totally destructive. Today a person who really knows how things work does not believe a word a rabbi says. Rabbis are a group of liars like no other. Really—I mean this truthfully. They do it with good intentions, but they lie at every single step. Every time he tells you this is forbidden and that isn’t permitted, and it’s not really forbidden, but he tells you that so you won’t argue and so on—he lies at every step. Now this simply drives me out of my mind. And therefore people lose trust in rabbis’ statements even in places where they really are stating the correct Jewish law. You no longer know what to believe and what not to believe. Holy lies are something truly destructive, a terrible thing. Not only whether it works or doesn’t work, but that it destroys all concepts of truth. You can no longer believe anything. Here—there’s a story, a known story, that I once heard about Rabbi Shalom Shvadron, the Jerusalem preacher, that once he told his listeners in the name of the Chazon Ish that the Chazon Ish said one may say things in the name of a great man so that they will accept it from him, like the Magen Avraham—and even that I won’t tell you whether the Chazon Ish said or didn’t say. That’s what he said in his talk. Now this is a wonderful demonstration of the destructiveness in this approach. People don’t understand how much a lie—whatever the reason may be—is destructive. How much a lie is the most despicable thing there is. The most destructive thing there can be, worse than any other transgression. I think a lie is a terrible, terrible thing. Terrible, really. The moment you—you begin with this thing for the best reasons possible, it is simply destructive. It’s only a matter of time. It destroys the world. It’s something awful. People don’t understand how awful this thing is. How did we get to all this? Yes.
[Speaker E] By the way, Rabbi, can I bring one more support for the Rabbi’s position? Lavan—Lavan the Aramean. At the Passover Seder, when we speak about Pharaoh’s attempted destruction of the people, and about terrible things, genocide, no—we begin with Lavan. What did Lavan actually do? He gave us two daughters who are our matriarchs. He grew up together with Rebecca, and she became a woman of kindness, and still we attack him as though Lavan wanted to destroy everything. What did he really do? He cheated Jacob a bit. He hugged him—‘Surely you are my bone and my flesh’—and it was all one big embarrassment of lies.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Lavan wanted to kill them, what do you mean?
[Speaker E] Lots of people wanted to kill us—that’s not the point. But what did he contribute to us? The moment they want to…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Nazis wanted to kill us, but it was impossible to kill ten or twenty million Jews. They managed six million—not a bad achievement. But when there is one Jew, you can eliminate him; that’s exactly the point there, that when there is one Jew, if you kill him you’ve finished everything.
[Speaker E] But Jacob—what did he contribute to us? Let’s also think about gratitude. He contributed all the tribes to us. Gratitude. Lavan came on the one hand and wanted
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to destroy everything, and besides, perhaps he also deserves gratitude? Two daughters.
[Speaker E] Besides the fact that he was a swindler, I wanted to say that what the Rabbi said—he was a swindler, he presented the face of someone who loved Jacob, and there was nothing behind it. And that, being deceitful on the human level, is the worst thing. That is the lie.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the worst thing, but I still think that if he deserves gratitude, give him gratitude. And besides that, he’s a liar, and that’s a terrible thing, and we pointed here to his deceitfulness. Meaning, that double perspective remains, however terrible his sin may be. I think one still has to judge people in a complex way: what they deserve, they deserve; and what they don’t deserve, they don’t deserve.
[Speaker E] Yes, but the severity with which they attacked him over something—for the fact that he presented a human face that never existed at all—that’s terrible. That’s the lie.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The negativity in lying. In any case, what I actually want to say is that exclusive discourse may be—I’m not sure—but it may be that exclusive discourse was created for internal purposes. And if that’s so, then when I read Sefer Ha-Ikkarim about all the divine religions, I read it quite literally, and so be it. There are several divine religions, there are certain principles shared by all of them, and that is basically what is called the service of God. And within that there are particular religions, each with certain principles of its own. And here a person has to choose which path seems right to him, which path he finds himself in. But here there is no truth and falsehood, and if there is exclusive discourse, it is only for internal purposes. But not really—it is not really true that there is someone right here and someone mistaken. Okay, so I’ll continue onward in the introduction to the first treatise. Right, so the introduction to the first treatise: “The first treatise will investigate, among religions in general, how many there are, and explain that they are three.” Meaning, types of religions: natural, conventional, and divine. Three types of religions. “And it will give their distinctions and investigate the principles of each of them, so that the principles of divine religion may be clarified. And afterward it will explain the method of testing by which the divine religion is distinguished from the counterfeit that imitates the divine, and whether it is possible for more than one divine Torah to exist at one time.” As he said earlier. Notice—I remind you that his four treatises are the four treatises of the book. The first treatise deals with the principles of divine religion in general, and the next three treatises deal with the three principles of the religion of Moses: Torah from Heaven, reward and punishment, and what else is there? The existence of God, or something like that. So those are the next three treatises. But the first treatise really speaks in some broader spectrum about all divine religions, and here he broadens the canvas even more. He says, essentially, that divine religions are only a certain type of religion; there are also natural religions and conventional religions. Now here we’ll see later exactly what the definition of each type is, but I’ll already say here what the concept of religion is. I once wrote about this and also spoke about it—that when Kant looked at Judaism, people talk a lot about whether he was antisemitic or not antisemitic, but when he looked at Judaism he claimed that it is not a religion. It’s a civic code, some kind of collection of social laws, but it’s not a religion. Of course, in his world, religion—the model is Christianity—and Judaism is not another thing of the same kind. It’s not a religion at all; it’s something else, a kind of code like the code of a guild or some club or something like that. Now, his Jewish students—and there were quite a few—his students and followers tried to explain that he didn’t understand, and that he was influenced by Spinoza and all sorts of things, which is true, and that he didn’t understand, and so on. But basically they said it’s obvious that Judaism too is a religion. And why? Because it also contains morality and emotion and all kinds of things of that type. And I think that in a certain sense Kant understood far better than they did. He didn’t know it better than they did, but he understood it better than they did. Because I really think that in the senses in which Christians call something religion, Judaism is not another religion of the same type. It’s not really a religion in those senses. For Christians, religion is basically some kind of standing before the Holy One, blessed be He—experience, emotion; morality also enters there; and of course there are some ritual obligations of one kind or another, not many, but there are a few ritual obligations. But generally religion is very much a matter of religiosity, of experience, of feeling, things of that sort. In the Jewish world there are those who see value in those things and those who do not, but it is completely clear that those things are not the focus. That is not what defines you as a faithful Jew or not a faithful Jew—whether you have the feeling or the experience or even morality. What defines you is commitment to Jewish law, and that is clear. Whether the other things have value or not—that can be debated, and how much value they have. But if you ask what the core is, what defines a person as a faithful Jew or a committed Jew, it is commitment to Jewish law. That’s why people often complain: a murderer who is observant is called religious but criminal, while someone who doesn’t eat kosher is called non-religious. Now why? What, is murder a less severe transgression than eating non-kosher? Of course not; murder is much more severe than eating non-kosher. So why is it like that? Because the claim is that someone who committed murder, aside from violating “You shall not murder,” which of course he violated, committed a moral offense. The problem with him is that he isn’t a decent human being, not that he isn’t a Jew. He doesn’t behave the way a human being ought to behave. When you want to define a Jew, you have to define him through the things unique to him and different from other human beings who are not Jews. “Do not murder” is shared by all human beings. There is no point defining Judaism on the basis of the prohibition of murder or theft. Not because those are not important and serious prohibitions—they are—but because they are not unique. It is not correct to define something by features that do not distinguish it. Just as you would not define a human being by the fact that he has a heart—I mean a physical heart. Why? Animals also have hearts. True, but every human being has a heart, obviously. Right, but that is not a unique trait; it is a necessary trait, but not a unique one. And when you define a certain concept, you have to choose definitions that are unique to it and distinguish it from parallel concepts. And in that sense, when I want to define Judaism, I have to define Judaism דווקא through the ritual commandments and not the moral commandments, because the ritual commandments are what distinguish Jews. Moral commandments—the whole world thinks one should behave morally. Maybe they don’t see it as a commandment, or whatever they call it, but everyone agrees that a person should behave morally. So if you want to define Judaism, there is no logic in defining it through the fact that one should behave morally, just as he should eat breakfast. But that has nothing to do with it; it doesn’t distinguish him. What distinguishes him is—therefore people often come and complain about the conversion process. Why, in the conversion process, is the emphasis placed on ritual commandments—immersion, kashrut, Sabbath? Why not “love your neighbor as yourself,” honoring parents, morality, and so on? And the answer is simple: that is the correct way to do it. A conversion program is a program that is supposed to educate him to be a Jew, not to educate him to be a human being. The assumption is that he was a human being even as a gentile, and he should know that one must behave morally as a gentile too, and he probably did know that. What he has to learn in the program—what will determine whether he really wants to be a proper Jew—is commitment to those commandments that have no connection to morality, because those are the commandments that will really test whether he wants to be a Jew. Because behaving morally does not make you Jewish. It’s like what you hear all the time today, these attempts to define secular Judaism: “My Judaism is to behave in a moral and democratic way,” I don’t know what. That’s complete nonsense. Not because Judaism does not require me to be moral—it does—but it also requires me to eat and drink and go to sleep and have the strength to work. So what? Does that define Judaism? What does that have to do with anything? What defines Judaism is something that is meant to distinguish the Jew from other people. To say that my Judaism is that I help others and don’t murder is simply an insult to gentiles. What, because you’re Jewish you do that? If you were a gentile you wouldn’t do that? Therefore the problem here is a logical problem. It’s not a problem of importance. And in that sense, when you want to examine what distinguishes some religion or some concept, when you want to define some concept or some religion, you have to choose what distinguishes them. Now, in the Jewish context, what distinguishes Judaism is the laws, Jewish law. Not religious feeling and not morality—not because of my own views, that I don’t see value in feelings at all. Even if you do see value in feelings, that still doesn’t define Judaism. It’s unrelated, even if it has value. What defines it is commitment to commandments. Now, there is some confusion here about the concept of religion itself, right? In English they call it religion, yes? Someone who is religious. But “religious” really translates to someone with religious experiences, someone with a religious experience, someone who stands before the Holy One, blessed be He. The word “dat” in our language means laws. “And the law was given in Shushan the capital,” yes, “all who know law and judgment.” What is “dat”? “Dat” is a legal system. That’s called “dat.” Therefore, when Kant said that Judaism is not a religion, whoever translates that as “Judaism is not a dat” is doing a translational injustice. Because it is a defective translation. That Judaism is not a religion in the Christian sense—that is true, because religion in the Christian definition really does make Judaism look unlike another religion. But translating “religion” as “dat” is very problematic. Because “dat” is a legal system—that is what “dat” means. Now true, one can say “the Jewish religion,” but that is not a translation of “Jewish religion” in the Christian sense. The Jewish dat is the collection of laws of Jewish believers. That is called the Jewish dat. And in that sense, if I return to him now, when he says he will investigate religions as natural, conventional, and divine, these religions are simply systems of law. He does not mean religions in the religio-experiential sense, but rather religions as legal systems. There are three types of legal systems: systems of natural laws, systems of conventional laws, and systems of divine laws. Okay? Incidentally it’s a bit similar to Kierkegaard, interestingly enough. Kierkegaard’s triad. Not exactly, but it somewhat resembles it: the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious. Right, the aesthetic is the natural, the ethical is the conventional, and the religious is the divine. It’s almost parallel, for those who know. But in any case, these are three legal systems, not three religions in the usual sense. Within the divine religions, which are the third type, there are various religions, and there it is religions in the sense of religions, yes? Religions in the sense we speak about in ordinary language: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and so on. Okay? So those are the divine religions. Now he says, “And investigation into the principles is a very dangerous investigation, because religions, even if they agree on general matters such as the existence of God and reward and punishment and the like, nevertheless differ on particular matters. Therefore it is necessarily the case that religions have particular principles by which one divine religion is distinguished from another.” You see? Meaning, now he is entering into it. There is natural religion, conventional religion, and divine religion. Within divine religion there are several kinds of divine religions. And now here at the beginning of chapter 1 he speaks about the principles of divine religion, and he says: but there are several divine religions, and here we really are speaking about religions. Meaning, the natural and conventional legal systems are not connected to God or religious faith in the ordinary sense, but are legal systems. But when he speaks of divine religions, he really means religions in the sense we usually speak of: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the like. And therefore he says there must be for religions particular principles, meaning principles that characterize only that specific religion, and there are principles that are principles of divine religion as such. Okay? Then he says, “And in investigating the particular matters there is enormous danger, because whoever denies one of the particular principles of that religion thereby exits the category of adherents of that religion.” And here there is already some hint that he is not so pluralistic as the picture I described earlier, because he says: true, there are several divine religions, but there is only one correct one, and if you leave it then that is a very, very great danger, and it is as I described earlier: if you leave it, then you probably… But yes, it still could be that this has partial value. After all, he still holds a divine religion, maybe not the correct religion, but he does hold a divine religion. And in that partial sense, I think that does exist for him. The question is whether they all have equal weight, or whether all exclusive discourse is incorrect. Here at least it seems not—that in his view there is room for exclusive discourse. And then he says, since there is some danger here, and in the end the danger is double. In his method I can’t keep going, I have to finish, so I’ll just say in one sentence to close the matter: the danger is double. First, you might err in one of the particular principles. When we speak about Maimonides’ thirteen principles, some of them are particular principles of the religion of Moses, and some are general principles of divine religion in general. The existence of God, reward and punishment, and what else was there? Something else.
[Speaker G] Torah from Heaven, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Torah from Heaven, yes. So he argues that these are principles true of every divine religion, and there are specific religions that have private principles, which are particular principles. Now the danger is that if you investigate the particular principles and remain only with the general principles, then suddenly you’ll identify with another religion. So you’ll belong to a divine religion, but not the correct divine religion, and therefore that is dangerous. Beyond that, he says there is another danger, and he says this later on: the danger is that you won’t see it as a principle. And if you don’t see it as a principle—and this is his assumption—someone who believes in that thing but just doesn’t see it as a principle is also called a denier of a principle. Meaning, if you believe in the coming of the Messiah but don’t think it is a principle, it could be that you are still called a denier of a principle, even though you believe in the thing itself. He’ll discuss that later. Therefore, the danger he is speaking about here is not only in the sense that maybe he won’t believe in one of the principles, but also that even if he does not see that principle as a principle. Okay? Fine, we’ll see that later on. All right, I’ll stop here. Okay, if there are questions or comments. Yes. Rabbi,
[Speaker B] First of all, thank you very much for the lecture. It’s really nice to come back after this break, this period—not really a break. I wanted to ask—I was planning to ask after the lecture, but it came out that you also somewhat mentioned this issue of holy lies. Lately I’ve been hearing about a lot of segulot and things like that that are really bizarre and disturbing on a serious level. Not things that are terrible, but you hear people who are supposedly serious people, some of them even academically educated, but with a certain yiddishkeit, talking to you about segulot with a very, very definite confidence. Things that really have no basis, like saying parts of the prayer while standing for a month and then you’ll merit a proven segulah to light candles, things like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I want to judge them favorably: some of them probably really believe in it. Once you reach the conclusion that some segulah is true, you’ll see it being fulfilled everywhere, and that will really convince you. It’s the law of small numbers; I’ve spoken about it many times.
[Speaker B] But do you think that the person who originally came up with that segulah—I mean, I can’t think of any other possibility besides a consciously dishonest person?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, of course not. He may really have believed in it. Think about alternative medicine. Alternative medicine is the same thing as these segulot. Now there are people—many, many people—who sincerely believe in it; they are not lying. They are saying nonsense, never mind, but they believe it. Meaning, you see that you stood in prayer for a month, you took it upon yourself to stand, and I don’t know what, and someone got healed—the sick person who worried you, for whom you did this—so you decide that it’s a segulah. Here, fact: it worked. There is spontaneous healing. Now run statistics to check whether it really works or doesn’t work—fine, but he’s not a statistician. And I think that many times these things really come from innocence. Of course there are liars too. Various operators like “the Rebbe of Stefanesht prayed for you” and I don’t know what, “salvations will come to you”—those are consummate liars; they were caught as liars. And they paid people to lie. But I think that’s the minority of cases. In most people, I think they really do believe sincerely.
[Speaker B] As for the masses who do this, in my initial assumption I also thought it came from innocence, but I did tend to think that the one who buys into it—I mean, I say no—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I haven’t done statistics and I can’t do statistics. I think that many of those who buy into it also really believe in it. How many of them, and how many are liars, I don’t know. I have no way of checking.
[Speaker B] Okay, you’ve given me the challenge of really trying to find the point in their favor, so that’s also why I asked.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think alternative medicine is an excellent example. I had so many arguments with people about these things, and it’s clear to me that some of them had no interest at all. Some people make a living from it, so they have an interest, but some had no interest at all. They are convinced that these stones—I don’t know what—these crystals or whatever they’re called, these stones used in alternative medicine, I forgot what they’re called, are very helpful. Or reflexology, or I don’t know, all this nonsense—they are sure it is tremendously beneficial. Because it really did work here and there. Statistically, everything works. Anything I tell you will work in two percent of cases. If you focus on those two percent, you can believe it works.
[Speaker B] I understand, thank you.
[Speaker D] I think the problem with some of the people who believe in these things is that they give them greater importance than what is really important. A lot of times, customs and all these segulot take up such an important place that it’s…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sha’agat Aryeh—when the Sha’agat Aryeh arrived in, I think it was Königsberg, he was wandering and persecuted, and when he got there, I think they appointed him rabbi of the city—I think it was Königsberg, I’m not sure—and when he received the appointment he said, “Bring me the community ledger.” They brought him the community ledger, and he wrote the Ten Commandments in it. They asked him, “What? Why? Here we write the community regulations, the rules…” He said, “If only you would be as careful about the Ten Commandments as you are about the customs and regulations that you write here in the community ledger.” These are well-known phenomena. Even the Sages often greatly elevated rabbinic laws—yes?—more than Torah laws, because there is concern people won’t listen to them. In that sense, sometimes marginal things are turned into important things, because if you leave them marginal, nobody will do them. See? I’ve also judged them favorably. Humanistic—I’m really coming out righteous. If anyone wants a blessing from me afterward, for a symbolic sum. Okay, anyone else?
[Speaker D] No, Rabbi. I really need to think about what the Rabbi said today about Christianity and Islam. It’s very hard, hard to digest. I need to think about it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not sure about it, but it’s a possibility that I definitely take into account. My pluralism is greater than pluralism itself. Even regarding that I’m a pluralist. Meaning, I don’t know—but it’s an option. I can’t be absolutely certain at the height of exclusivity; I’m really not sure.
[Speaker D] Even if there’s some chance of it, I think it’s a very slim chance, because it doesn’t even sound plausible to me. Again, because of what I said—because those religions are actually a change of our religion and of all history. So what? Not a change; they are a continuation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but they change it.
[Speaker D] Never mind, it’s a continuation because historically it happened afterward, but they changed our religion. That’s a change.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They changed our religion with respect to gentiles, not with respect to Jews. Gentiles were not obligated in our religion beforehand either—quite the opposite. What they caused gentiles to do was at least something that comes close to our religion, which previously they didn’t even do.
[Speaker D] True, but the Rabbi also said that if a Jew today converts to Christianity because he believes it is really true…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s already my view, which really says that if you reach the conclusion that this is what is true, then that is your path of serving God. Yes, indeed. You ask why the Holy One, blessed be He, created these paths? He created these paths so that gentiles would at least serve Him, because Judaism they are not going to keep. At least let them serve Him in that way, and He wants that—it’s fine from His perspective. Now step two: okay, now a Jew comes along and becomes convinced that this path is the right path for him. So I say: okay, once that path was created and the Holy One, blessed be He, put it on the board, then for a Jew too it may be that this is the path.
[Speaker D] I don’t understand how that fits with the seven Noahide commandments and I don’t know—it just doesn’t…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The seven Noahide commandments are part of the Jewish religion. What do you mean?
[Speaker D] No, fine, I’m saying: if indeed the only true and correct revelation is our revelation, which also includes the seven Noahide commandments, and as the Rabbi said, Christians are idol worshippers—after all, we are forbidden to enter a church.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is not at all certain that they are idol worshippers. And idolatry—and the fact that one is forbidden to enter a church—that prohibition is a consequence of the view that they are idol worshippers. What do you mean, “after all”? If you decide they are not idol worshippers, then there will also be no prohibition on entering a church. There are no “facts” here; the question is what you think. But is that prohibition incorrect? There is no such prohibition—what does it mean, “is that prohibition incorrect”? It could be—
[Speaker D] You can also explain it as part of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —the exclusive discourse. You need to ostracize Christians so that you, as a Jew, will cling to your own path and think that all the others are off track, okay? But now, once someone has already reached the conclusion that it is the right direction, then he has reached that conclusion. He has already moved beyond that exclusive discourse. I’m saying: the exclusive discourse certainly exists in our sources; it’s not invented. I only claim that it is not discourse that describes the truth, but rather discourse that tries to get us to act correctly. I’m not saying—you can say that it is forbidden to enter a church and keep that prohibition, but not because Christianity is invalid, but because you as a Jew need to see it as invalid, because your role is such. And with a Christian there is no problem.
[Speaker D] No, but they don’t say that about the—what do you call it—the place where Muslims pray. There it is permitted to enter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying, if you decide—therefore here what I said before does come in. The question is whether you think Christianity really is idolatry. I’m not at all sure; I tend to think not.
[Speaker B] Protestant Christianity—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For example. Or I don’t know—most… I think a great many halakhic decisors say it is not idolatry. Catholic Christianity has a problem with incarnation, with the Trinity, okay? But we also have a trinity: “The Holy One, blessed be He, Israel, and the Torah are one.” So is that idolatry too? The question is how literally you take it and how much you take it as some conceptual statement. And in the Christian world too there are different interpretations. The Christian world is no less complex than the Jewish world; it is much more complex. There are countless shades and interpretations there. It’s not only Protestants versus Catholics. At our resolution there are Catholics and Protestants; there are millions of interpretations and nuances within each such group. Therefore to make some sweeping statement like that is ridiculous.
[Speaker D] I’m trying to connect this to the Rabbi’s monistic approach.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I say: my monism is monism in contexts of morality, in contexts of facts. There I’m not willing to accept pluralism. There is one truth and none besides it. But in contexts of religious worship, the question is what mission the Holy One, blessed be He, assigned to you; it is not a factual question. It is entirely possible that the mission the Holy One, blessed be He, assigned to me is not the mission He assigned to Franciscus. And therefore it’s fine. Just as the mission He assigned to a priest is not the mission He assigned to me. Different people have different missions. Here there is no such thing as one truth. It is not fact and it is not morality. Therefore there is no reason to assume there must be one truth here. It is entirely possible that there are different ways for different people to serve the Holy One, blessed be He. Hasidism and Mitnagdism too are two approaches. Is there one truth or not? Religious Zionism and Haredism, all the divisions you can make among us. So is there one truth or not? In approach, no—the accepted claim at least, you can argue, but the accepted claim is no. It may be that there are several different ways, all of which are acceptable to the Holy One, blessed be He, as ways of serving Him. And a person can choose which way suits him for serving the Holy One, blessed be He. And that applies outside Judaism too, not only within Judaism. But the logic is the same logic.
[Speaker D] Yes, but a way of serving—between Hasidim and, I don’t know, Lithuanians and all those things—that’s very generic, very general. When I speak about one truth, I mean one halakhic truth, okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “halakhic” mean? But Jewish law does not obligate gentiles.
[Speaker D] No, but their law—again I go back to it—is the seven Noahide commandments. That’s it, it stops there, not beyond that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s our perspective. From our perspective, part of the Jewish religion is that gentiles must keep the seven Noahide commandments. And all of that is from my perspective as a Jew.
[Speaker D] But my perspective as a Jew starts from the assumption that it is the true one, the only and first revelation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I put that assumption under a question mark. Because I argue that my perspective as a Jew may be only my perspective. It does not describe the truth. I am supposed to look at it that way, but it does not describe the truth from the perspective of the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker G] When the people of Nineveh repented—when they tell the story after Jonah, that they repented—they did not put on tefillin and keep the Sabbath after they repented.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously.
[Speaker D] But when the Rabbi said that this is the truth—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are moral transgressions.
[Speaker D] —that the seven Noahide commandments are my truth—that’s not my truth, that’s a truth the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it is a truth the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to Jews.
[Speaker D] The seven Noahide commandments—He gave that to Jews for the rest of the world, for the gentiles.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. So everything is from the point of view of Jews. Jews need to perceive the world in such a way that our task is the 613 commandments and the task of those around us is seven commandments—they’re second tier. But all of that is our perspective.
[Speaker H] But they were punished—the Talmud brings it as the context of why they were punished because of the seven commandments; that’s not something of Jews.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the seven Noahide commandments—they certainly are obligated in them. The question is whether it is only that. I am not saying they are exempt from the seven Noahide commandments; if they do not keep the seven Noahide commandments, that is not okay. That is obvious. But the question is whether beyond the seven Noahide commandments there is something more. We claim not. But it may be that that is only our discourse, and they would say: yes, we have an entire religion, not only the morality and norms of the seven Noahide commandments, those basic norms.
[Speaker D] Yes—not only that everything they do beyond that is nothing, but that it is an error.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the question. Yes.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, do you think they have validity only if there really was revelation to Muhammad and Jesus?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If not, then they just made it up. So in what sense is that the service of God?
[Speaker B] Say regarding Islam, which developed, you know, in a way that is more documented than Christianity and Judaism. I mean, for a reasonable person, we can see—it’s very easy to understand how Islam developed, and it’s not convincing in the sense that—the figure of Muhammad and all that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is this convincing?
[Speaker B] I didn’t say—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that it’s convincing. I’m saying, even if I think—and I also feel—it’s not convincing to me; Christianity isn’t either. But I take into account the fact that I come with all the Jewish baggage within which I grew up. So the fact that it doesn’t seem convincing to me may also be part of my perspective. And the proof is that there are people there no less intelligent than I am for whom it is convincing. And therefore it sounds very postmodern and off-putting, not only religiously but philosophically too, but I say: that’s not true. Because in the realm of norms there is no obstacle to pluralism. Just as there are Hasidic norms and Lithuanian norms, there are priests and non-priests, householders and Torah scholars—each has his own path of serving God, and it does not have to be that there is one path for everyone. So I’m only broadening the canvas beyond the bounds of Judaism as well. On the logical level there is no problem with that.
[Speaker B] And Rabbi, do you have an analysis of the content of this Jewish priesthood? Meaning, the election of the people of Israel?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. The Holy One, blessed be He, thought there should also be such a group in the world. I don’t even know whether we are “the heart among the limbs” and “the world stands upon us” and all those things we were raised on. I don’t know; maybe it’s just megalomania—which is fine, we need to be educated that way for the sake of devotion and so on—but it may just be megalomania. We have our role, and we need to fulfill it with total seriousness. And it may be that they also have a role, and they should fulfill theirs with total seriousness. As long as they don’t murder us—it doesn’t seem likely to me that murdering us is part of their role.
[Speaker B] You don’t think there is a universal vision of the people of Israel, like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a universal vision for the world: that there be the people of Israel, and Christianity, and Islam, and all these things together create the world that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants.
[Speaker B] But “for Torah shall go forth from Zion”—I mean on that axis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Torah will certainly go forth from Zion, but the New Testament won’t. It ended up coming from Zion, but that’s not essential. Yes. I don’t know if the Rabbi listens a bit… We have this silly American joke, so it says that once the rabbi was a good friend of the priest. So he once came to hear a sermon by the priest in church. He’s not there—it’s forbidden to enter a church—he came to hear the priest’s sermon in church. Now the priest sees him and says, “I ask everyone who is not Christian to leave the place.” The Jew remains seated there and doesn’t move. It’s awkward, he’s his friend. He says, “Listen, I ask generally that everyone who is not Christian leave the place.” He doesn’t move. A third time he says, “I ask…” The rabbi gets up, takes the statue of Jesus, and says, “Listen, they don’t want us here.”
[Speaker D] You know, Rabbi, I don’t know whether the Rabbi listens a bit to Rabbi Uri Sherki, but especially since October seventh he keeps saying and acting in the direction that we have a role, that the people of Israel have a role—especially since October seventh—to show goodness to the world. Okay? That we are the source of goodness in the world, and that this is our role vis-à-vis the world. Okay, very good, let it be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good for him. Very good that he acts that way and increases goodness as much as he can. The exclusive discourse has done its job. There—you see? It works.
[Speaker E] Here we are really sanctifying God’s name throughout the world by doing so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We—
[Speaker E] We’re already entering dangerous corners here, Shmuel. Rabbi, Rabbi, but I’m full of appreciation for the Rabbi, really, full of appreciation for the Rabbi. Toward the end of a series on Maimonides’ principles, we arrived at an embracing of many other religions. I simply feel that Maimonides meant exactly this. That’s my feeling.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, I don’t know. Okay, friends, so may we have good news.
[Speaker D] Thank you very much, Sabbath peace.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sabbath peace, goodbye.