Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel’s Thought – Genesis – Lesson 3

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I say—so apparently I’m assuming you’re right, that the Rashba knew internally what he thought, and he knew how to channel things into a halakhic framework, and he says: yes, it’s “follow the majority.” And when I spoke about this I also mentioned that this is a very interesting point, which I think Elon doesn’t emphasize in his book. Menachem Elon brings several such sources, but he doesn’t emphasize there that each one of the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—at least each one I remember, like the Rashba, the Rosh, several of the medieval authorities—each one I remember says, “follow the majority,” but besides that, it’s also just not logical, you can’t do otherwise. They add that; they don’t suffice with the verse. When you say you have to recite Grace after Meals, you say because it says, “And you shall eat, and be satisfied, and bless.” You don’t say, “and it’s also terribly logical to bless, and it’s improper not to bless.” There’s a commandment here. If you do it, fine; if not, we’ll force you to do it. That’s all. The verse says it has to be done. Here it’s different. The feeling is already—anyone who’s a bit sensitive to language, to how one writes a responsum, understands that the verse there is not playing a constitutive role. The responsum did not emerge from the verse. The verse is interpreted in line with what the responsum is supposed to be. And that’s why I say: so what for? Let’s be straight and skip that whole business. Leave me alone with the verses. Say that your common sense tells you this is what ought to be done, and that’s it. The price, of course, is that you lose Torah-based authority. If you want to convince that community that they have to act this way—and there were disagreements there, after all, they asked the Rashba probably because not everyone agreed, I assume—then he wanted them to accept it from him. Meaning, he has to tell them: this is the Jewish law, it’s written in the Torah, because that’s how they’ll accept it from you. Otherwise it’s just your reasoning, very nice, but there are others who have different reasoning. But on the other hand, it’s not true.

Now today we’re a bit more sophisticated. Even if someone tells us till tomorrow that this is the verse, you do one Google search and you see ten other interpretations of the same verse. So today… today that already won’t fly. There are those who still keep using the same method. They ask about egalitarian synagogues—a very current question—so they send a question to some rabbi: is it right to do this, or right to do that, should a woman give a Torah talk, or get an aliyah, whatever, all sorts of things like that. And he says, no, absolutely not, it’s forbidden by Jewish law. Fine. So in the 11th century, or even in the 13th or 14th century of the Rashba, maybe that would have worked. Today it’s one click on Google. You see there’s no halakhic prohibition here. You can’t say that. If you were more straightforward, it would also be more correct. You’d say: listen, friends, it’s possible, but in my opinion it’s not advisable. As for why it’s not advisable, explain maybe what the implications are—I don’t know exactly what, if you think it’s not advisable. Then say it that way; be straight. Because if you’re not straight, then today it’s also tactically not worthwhile to be dishonest—not only is there a moral obligation to be honest, it also just doesn’t work tactically. And that’s why today people don’t ask anymore. Why? Because they have no trust. If you ask someone whether something is permitted or forbidden and he tells you it’s forbidden, and then it turns out it was just an educational consideration, he doesn’t really think it’s forbidden, then you stop asking him. You come to him in order to know what the Jewish law is. If you want him to educate you, you’ll ask him to educate you. You’re asking him what the law is. So when they ask you what the law is, answer what the law is. Don’t turn into an educator. Afterwards you can try to be an educator. You can say: this is the Jewish law; from the standpoint of Jewish law, this option is possible and that option is possible, and this one has advantages and that one has advantages, but both paths are halakhically possible. But educationally, I recommend that you go in such-and-such a direction. Why? A, B, C, whatever. If they accept it, they accept it; if they don’t, they don’t. But the risk that they won’t accept it is, in the long run, vastly outweighed by the gain, because in the long run they understand that when you say something is really halakhically forbidden or permitted, then they’ll listen to you. They won’t listen to you in certain cases where they don’t agree with the policy. And what happens today is that they don’t listen to you even when you’re saying what the law is—and rightly so. Because when you say “Jewish law,” I don’t really know what you mean.

So out of a desire to create authority, yes—it’s like Eve with the tree, when the serpent pushed her. She says to the serpent that the Holy One, blessed be He, said—Rashi brings this—that it is forbidden to touch the tree. The Holy One, blessed be He, said it is forbidden to touch the tree. So the serpent pushes her against the tree, and on the day you touch it you won’t die. So he pushes her toward the tree, and look, you didn’t die. And then she ate. She took the apple and ate. Why? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said not to eat; He didn’t say not to touch. And when she said it, she was being ultra-frum. She said, no, no—the Holy One, blessed be He, said it’s even forbidden to touch. That’s not true. You can say: I don’t want to touch; touching is not a good policy, because then I may also come to eat, and the Holy One, blessed be He, forbade eating. If she had said that, everything would have been fine. Because he would have pushed her to the tree and she would have said: look, you touched and nothing happened. Right, nothing was supposed to happen. The Holy One, blessed be He, said not to eat, not not to touch. But that’s exactly this excessive distancing, this overdoing it, which supposedly comes from motives of excessive fear of Heaven, from motives of trying to preserve the Jewish law more strongly or put fences around it. Its gain often comes out as its loss, because you lose people’s trust—and rightly so.

[Speaker H] But that’s in fewer cases. Meaning, I completely agree, but the rabbi has to… the gamble in taking the other side is bigger, depending on what population you’re talking about. Right, and that’s not a simple problem at all; you can lose the masses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I’m saying—

[Speaker H] It depends, look…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say this: people who are debating whether to have egalitarian prayer quorums are usually the kind of people you shouldn’t play games with. Tell them what’s forbidden and what’s permitted, and then what you recommend afterward. Don’t tell them stories. They’re good at Google—they know how to find you—or some of them maybe know it themselves; I’m not trying to insult them by saying they need Google for it. But I’m saying, at worst, they’ll find it. Meaning, it’s not… There are other populations where this still works, less critical, I don’t know how to define it, okay, so maybe there it works, and there I’m just saying it’s not moral, but maybe tactically it works.

[Speaker G] That’s also only in the short term; in the long term, less so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that there too it works. Doesn’t matter. But I’m saying, in the really interesting questions, in the questions where you really need to say things like this—if you need to say that this is Jewish law, that’s a sign they don’t want to do it, right? If they don’t want to do it, they’ll look. And they’ll look to see whether this really is Jewish law or not. And everybody today knows how to get information.

[Speaker I] Because in the end everything depends on your interpretation. Everything. Nothing starts in the Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True, but there are limits to interpretation. We know that if I have a conclusion that I can prove from the Talmud, or even say from the Shulchan Arukh. Fine, then if it’s just in Jewish law, then it’s Jewish law, no problem. That’s okay. Although even there—fine—there are medieval authorities who said otherwise, you can interpret the Talmud differently, maybe the passages disagree. Fine, I’m not talking about banging your head against the wall. You can say: this is my halakhic position, because genuinely, based on the passages, I think that this is the Jewish law, this is the halakhic conclusion. So yes, there are other opinions too; not terrible. That I’m willing to accept. But in a place where everything is only educational considerations—maybe I once told the story about the rabbi from Brisk. They once saw him drinking water outside the sukkah. The Briskers are famously extreme stringency people, and in the Shulchan Arukh it says that one who is stringent should not even drink water outside the sukkah. They said to him: what do you mean you’re drinking water outside the sukkah? It says in the Shulchan Arukh that one who is stringent should not even drink water. “Me, stringent? Never in my life. If there’s an opinion according to which I haven’t fulfilled my obligation, then I’m very careful”—meaning, to fulfill the obligation according to all the opinions. “But something that at root is not a halakhic matter at all, but only a stringency—I’m not on that level, I’m not one of the stringent.” His stringencies were simply to make sure he fulfilled the obligation. So if there are such opinions in Jewish law, one way or another, he wants to fulfill everyone’s view as far as possible. But something that from the outset is defined as a stringency—that’s not Jewish law; I’m not on that level. Meaning, that’s exactly this distinction: whether you’re inside the halakhic world—meaning, it’s forbidden, or you haven’t fulfilled your obligation, something like that—versus saying it is fitting to do so. “Fitting” is fine—say that. But say that it’s fitting; don’t say that it’s mandatory. Okay.

“Natural science,” says Maimonides, “because of the greatness of the matter and its closeness to divine wisdom, these profound matters came in the Torah in very obscure expressions.” This too—I remembered—when I was in yeshiva in Bnei Brak, in Netivot Olam, in the afternoons I went to the university every day. More than once they said to me in the yeshiva: what is there to look for at the university? Everything is in the Torah, what is this? I told them: your answer cuts both ways. Meaning, if everything is in the Torah, then find for me the rotating potential well, Schrödinger’s equation. If you find there the solution to the rotating potential well, you save me months of work. Excellent. Then it really is neglect of Torah study—find me the answer and that’s it, and I won’t go. That’s one side. And the other side is: if everything is in the Torah, then why do you care that I study Torah at Bar-Ilan University? What happened? So I study Torah at the university—does the place make the difference? Meaning, some people say these slogans—that everything is in the Torah—but it’s hidden there, meaning you can’t extract it, though it’s there somewhere very deep down. But there are prices to such statements. It’s a joke, but it’s not a joke. Meaning, if you take them seriously, then what I said is completely correct—what’s the problem? It’s not a joke at all. The only thing is: it’s also clear to them that they’re not speaking seriously. They also understand that I’m making jokes. Why? Because they too are just reciting this lip service. They don’t really think—maybe in some sense it’s there somehow, I don’t know, but not accessible to us. In short, that’s the point. And therefore these slogans are empty slogans. I don’t like this use of Torah. I also don’t like saying in general that it’s in there deep inside and impossible to extract. If it’s very deep and impossible to extract, then how do you know it’s there? How do you know it’s there? Because you decided a priori that it has to be there. If someone actually extracted it and showed me, here is the solution to Schrödinger’s equation—I don’t know how to extract it, but I understand, he extracted it from here, unbelievable. But no one extracts it from there, so how do you know it’s there? How do you know? Maybe—I don’t know—maybe it is, but how can you know? It’s like Maimonides…

[Speaker G] What? Same thing. Physics is part of the Torah, after all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, because if it’s true, then it’s there. Fine, so I’m saying: not true. Not everything that is true is there. Not true. The Torah doesn’t have to contain all correct information that exists. Even correct information. Who said? Why this assumption that inside the Torah there has to be all correct information that exists, even in some very deep way? Especially if no one can extract it from there, then what’s the point of burying it there? Just for the intellectual satisfaction that it’s there? Think about it: if truly no one can extract it from there, then why put it there? The Torah wasn’t written so people could make use of it.

[Speaker F] Maybe in the messianic era we’ll merit it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, maybe. It’s like that book from Jerusalem I mentioned, that the sages knew the science of the airplane, they just ultimately decided not to build an airplane—I don’t know exactly why—and also to cure all diseases and everything. Yes, fine. These are all sorts of claims that can’t be disproved. You understand? You can say everything is in there and everything is this—fine, you didn’t extract it because you’re not smart enough. What? Obviously. Like Kant—yes, right. Okay. As the sages said: “The power of the act of creation cannot be told to flesh and blood; therefore Scripture concealed it from you with ‘In the beginning God created.’” And “therefore Scripture concealed it from you with ‘In the beginning God created’” can be interpreted in two ways. One way: therefore it wasn’t written, except that they wrote “In the beginning God created” without going into details. The second way is to say: it says “In the beginning God created”; if you scrutinize the tiny crowns of the letters, you’ll extract Schrödinger’s equation. But in the plain meaning, it isn’t written. They didn’t write all of Sir Zilmansky there, just one verse: “In the beginning God created.” That’s all. Fine, but really it’s there in some form for those who understand; those who understand can extract it from there. I tend toward the first possibility. But I don’t know—just because I have no evidence.

[Speaker C] What was the first possibility?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it isn’t written there at all. The Torah simply doesn’t enter into that issue. The Torah says, “In the beginning God created”—He created the world—without entering the question of how and why and according to what laws. Again, I also don’t know. I don’t know—maybe it’s there and I don’t know how to extract it. But since I still haven’t seen anyone who knows how to extract it, I don’t understand where I’m supposed to get the claim that it is there. Why assume it’s there at all? Okay. It still requires clarification whether natural science—what Maimonides says, that physics and metaphysics are the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot, and the Account of Creation is natural science—so it requires clarification whether natural science is only what scientists investigate, or more than that. Let’s say scientists investigate and will eventually arrive at all physical knowledge—what we today call physical knowledge. Is that what is called natural science? And what we don’t yet know is just because we haven’t finished research in physics? Or is it that even natural science—not only the Account of the Chariot but even the Account of Creation—even that does not mean physics in the ordinary sense?

Now that’s a point that couldn’t have been expected in Maimonides. For Maimonides there is no difference. Aristotle—that’s the Account of Creation. It’s an absolute identification. Maybe Aristotle didn’t know everything, fine, but at the conceptual level the domain Aristotle dealt with is called the Account of Creation. Today, because we’re more aware of the limits of scientific method—how far it reaches, and to what extent there is, say, a limit to how far it can probe, how far something is accessible to the eye or to the scientific intellect—and maybe there’s something beyond that in the world itself, not in spiritual matters; maybe there are things inaccessible to us, that we cannot know. Since that’s so, one can now ask whether even the Account of Creation—not only the Account of the Chariot—is really what we call physics. Only perfect physics—after all the research is done and they know everything—is that called the Account of Creation? Or not? Is the Account of Creation something beyond physics, something perhaps on a higher level of abstraction? “Certainly there is in the Torah true knowledge about the order of creation, and wise scholars can find it.” I don’t know where this certainty comes from, but the matters were said in an obscure fashion so that we won’t know everything. And even what we do know, we won’t know with certainty. By the way, that doesn’t bother me. I know nothing with certainty. Even Jewish law. When the Torah gives me a halakhic verse, that too can be interpreted in many ways and there are disputes about it, and even if I reach some conclusion as to what I think that verse says, I don’t expect certainty. There is certainty in nothing. Okay? That doesn’t trouble me at all. The question is whether one can nevertheless attain uncertain knowledge. Meaning: can I, even uncertainly, extract quantum theory from there? Fine, I won’t be sure—but can it be extracted? I don’t know.

Very often there’s this business with those skips, the letter-skips in the Torah, with all the codes and all that. So they do statistical searches and find the name of Sadat’s murderer near Sadat’s name, with exactly one minimal skip next to each other. There are all kinds of publications about this, and the question that always comes up here is of course: why didn’t you warn Sadat in advance? After all, you always find it only after Sadat has been murdered. Why didn’t you warn him beforehand? On the other hand, that question is a bit unfair. That’s what I want to say. In this sense, even though my heart tends to identify with it, that question is a bit unfair. Because you don’t know the meaning of that name until it happens. Meaning, you could have found that next to Sadat there’s written, I don’t know, some Muhammad—I don’t know what his murderer’s name was, fine—but you don’t know there’s going to be a murderer, you don’t know his name is Muhammad, maybe, who knows, maybe it’s only the “hamad” at the end of Muhammad, I don’t know. Since that’s so, you can’t warn in advance. It’s always only after the events happen that you know what to search for. So there is something to that attack, but you have to be careful with it; it’s not so simple. Very often things acquire meaning after you understand them. So if people show me quantum theory in letter-skips in the Torah, that would make me laugh—but only with limited amusement. Because the truth is there’s something to the claim that it’s hard to find it in letter-skips before I know it. Meaning, if I don’t know it, then even if it’s there, I don’t know that I found anything; I don’t understand what it means. As long as I didn’t understand what a wave function is, say one of the concepts in quantum theory, and I found that the Torah speaks about some kind of wave function, I wouldn’t understand that I’d found anything at all. Because as long as I don’t understand that such a thing exists, how do I know I found it? So there really is some inherent problem in finding things, and there is something to the idea that you can only find them after you discovered them from other directions, from another basis. Meaning, after it became known to you through scientific tools, and now you can try to search for it. But on the other hand, you know, it’s always suspicious. I don’t know what to do with such a thing. It’s always suspicious, because then it basically means that you can always plant things that you already know need to be there, and then you find them. That’s where I have heavy suspicions about these skips in the Torah, because the algorithm is actually fairly open. Meaning, there are several parameters you can play with. It’s minimal skip over 70 percent of the text, over 80 percent of the text, over 60 percent of the text, and somehow that gives Sadat’s murderer next to Sadat. But if you said no, I always want minimal skip over 100 percent of the text, then you wouldn’t get Sadat’s murderer next to Sadat. They arrange several parameters inside their algorithm in order to get certain results, and therefore, again, I haven’t checked it in depth because really, I don’t know if it can be checked fully.

[Speaker I] Did they try it on other books?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Yes, they also tried it on War and Peace. The opponents did, after all—they put quite a bit of work into this. They did skips on War and Peace; they also made comparisons to War and Peace and showed that it doesn’t give results. And the opponents also do it on Shakespeare and all sorts of things and show that it does give results. Now I don’t know, because you can play with parameters. When you can play with parameters, you can always tune them in such a way that it won’t work on War and Peace but only on the Torah. More than that: maybe in War and Peace there’s a different code, and with that you’d also reach the same information. Any murderer-victim pair you give me, I’ll find it in War and Peace, I’ll find the technique to locate it. That’s no problem. There always is one. Okay? It just won’t be the same technique that works in the Torah; it’ll be another technique. So what? What’s special about this technique, so long as there is some technique to find it? But once you arrange the technique after the result is already known, that’s not impressive. It’s like Wittgenstein—we spoke once, a few years ago, about Wittgenstein’s principle, “following a rule.” He says that basically we have no way to follow rules. It’s a general illusion. Because every rule always ends with “etcetera.” Meaning “and so on.” Right? I tell you what the rule says. Look, what the rule says is this: if you have one plus two, that’s three, understand? And two plus three is five, and so on. Meaning: continue. But I’m talking about that “and so on.” Give me the rule. How do I know whether “and so on” means that seven plus ten is seventeen, or whether “and so on” means that seven plus ten is minus one-third?

[Speaker F] Aren’t there rules that can be formulated in a structured way? No. There aren’t. In my opinion there isn’t a single rule. Anyone who builds the basis—it’s if one is two, two is three—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So now I’m asking you, what does “after” mean? Wait. Yes, I’m asking you what “after” means. “After” means, you understand, three comes after two, and then four comes after three, and so on. You understand what “after” means.

[Speaker F] I define up to nine, from zero up to… no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you define up to nine, then no problem. That’s not following a rule.

[Speaker F] Wait. And after that, I define the rest by means of it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll define for you—

[Speaker F] For every number with a number of digits that is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand, but you won’t be able to do it. You won’t be able to do it, because I’ll always tell you… Wittgenstein talks about this there. You won’t be able to do it because once you explain everything to me up to nine, from ten onward I’ll suddenly do something completely different. I’ll say: that’s the “etcetera” of this. For me, that’s its application.

[Speaker F] No, I’ll show you how you build it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t. You won’t be able to. Every definition is based on concepts or mechanisms that you’ll need to define with an “etcetera.” There’s no escape from it. I’m telling you, I’ve thought about this a lot—there’s no chance. Meaning, you won’t succeed. You can’t build without an “etcetera.” There are no rules. There’s a rule in the sense that you can use concepts, but within those concepts sits their own “etcetera.” Meaning there is no… In other words, when he demonstrates this—and I showed it then on the board when we talked about logic—he gives an example there: one, two—you have a sequence like on a psychometric test—one, two, three, four, dot dot dot. What’s the next number? Everybody will say five. Right? I can prove to you that the next number is minus seventeen and a third. No problem at all. Write: one, two, three, four, minus seventeen and a third. Okay? And now I’ll construct a function with five parameters: a plus bx plus bn plus cn squared plus dn cubed. A function with five coefficients. You choose the coefficients so that n equals one gives one, n equals two gives two, then three, four, minus seventeen and a third. That’s all. Now who said the function is specifically n? Maybe the function is some crazy other polynomial? You can build any function you want from the data, with the result already given to you in advance. If the result is given to you in advance, you won’t succeed in demonstrating the existence of any function, because anything is possible. Okay? You’ll say we take the simplest one—but the concept of simplicity also needs a definition. The concept of simplicity needs a definition; that again raises the question of how you define it. There’s no way out. Meaning, it doesn’t work.

Now let me come back to our subject. What does that mean? That once I’m already equipped with the result, and now I’m searching for the function that will produce it out of the Torah—fine, I always can. I’ll find it in War and Peace too. Give me a sequence of word-pairs—Sadat and Muhammad, Rabin and Yigal Amir, murderer and victim, say a sequence of murderer and victim—can it be found in War and Peace? Surely it can. Easily I can do it. I don’t know, easily—easily in principle. No problem at all. I’ll find those places in the text and I’ll arrange some algorithm so that… for this name it will give this, for that name it will give that. No problem. I can always build such an algorithm. That’s not the problem. Okay? But what does he say? Once you can always build an algorithm, then it means nothing.

[Speaker D] And prediction in advance you can’t give. But the claim is that in the Hebrew Bible the algorithm repeats itself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m saying—

[Speaker D] It repeats itself on a scale where you won’t find an algorithm that repeats itself on that scale.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what they say, and their opponents say that yes, they do find it. Why? Because there are open parameters. An algorithm that isn’t really an algorithm, because it has open parameters. You play with the parameters. So again, I haven’t checked; I don’t know. But to check it is a whole story from the haftarah—I’m not sure it’s even possible. There was, after all, a committee about this. They set up a committee at the Hebrew University. Aumann sat there, and Furstenberg, and three other very respected mathematicians sat there. At first they claimed there was something to it; they investigated the matter, and there was a big controversy there within the Hebrew University. So they claimed there was, and afterward Aumann retracted. Meaning, he wasn’t convinced. Meaning, that there isn’t something there. Now I assume a mathematician isn’t Aumann—so again, I’m saying, I haven’t checked it all the way, but it’s very… it’s not trivial. Not trivial. There’s a lot of room for manipulation there. Once they sent me to Givatayim from the yeshiva, when I was in Netivot Olam. They asked me to go there because there was a house lecture by Witztum—Doron Witztum, who put out that book together with Rips about the skips. He gave a house lecture there for statisticians from Bar-Ilan and the surrounding area, all sorts of statisticians or mathematicians gathered there, and he gave them this lecture on the issue of the codes. What?

[Speaker G] A statistician and a mathematician aren’t the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. But no—mathematical statisticians, yes, at the university, not Mina Tzemach. I’m not disparaging Mina Tzemach, I’m just saying—I don’t know, maybe she’s excellent—but I mean mathematical people. So I sat there and he spoke at length. He didn’t convince me. He really didn’t convince me. That’s also a matter of disposition. I didn’t investigate, because I don’t know if it can be checked at all. There are so many parameters to play with that it seemed fishy to me. It looked like something you basically tailor in order to reach the results. On the other hand, you can’t avoid it either, as I said earlier: without knowing the results, you don’t know that you’ve found something. So there’s some built-in difficulty in checking whether it’s serious or not. I don’t know. Okay. “Human independent knowledge also continues to develop, and this is a process that will never end.” That too is an interesting assumption. Who says? Rabbi Dessler is very decisive on certain points. Maybe it will end one day—I don’t know.

[Speaker F] What does infinite knowledge mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, who says there is infinite knowledge?

[Speaker F] Infinitely many connections between the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But all those infinite connections can be based on a small number of laws. That’s even what people believe today. Once you reach the one law that governs everything, then you’re done. That’s Einstein’s dream, right? Unified field theory.

[Speaker F] No, what do you mean you’re done? In a certain sense you’re done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there’s still more to investigate. All the rest is “go and learn the rest.” All the rest is only—

[Speaker F] He didn’t say we won’t reach one law that describes everything, but there will still be more to investigate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One law that describes everything means we know everything. It doesn’t matter that we haven’t applied it to every situation—we know everything. One law, if there is one law.

[Speaker F] But that’s the history of everything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is science investigating, after all? Fine, but that’s not knowing more. We already know that within the law. What do we investigate? We know everything even in a machine that we ourselves designed. So too here, right, that’s true. That really isn’t science. A computer is technology. Fine. Now they’ve already given up on it. All they keep doing is discovering one more new thing and another and another, and so on forever. “To say everything—impossible. But small portions of knowledge of the Account of Creation were indeed transmitted to man.” And my feeling when I read these sentences is that he too basically believes that everything is there. Everything. Not everything is accessible to us; it’s hidden there, this and that. And again I say: I don’t know where that assumption comes from. Meaning, why assume it’s there—especially if the assumption is that we can’t really extract it, certainly not all of it? Then what’s the point of putting it there if it’s not…? One can say it was put there not so that we would know, but because there is some correspondence between the Torah and… “He looked into the Torah and created the world”—they always bring that midrash. Which I don’t think really says that, but never mind.

[Speaker I] “Turn it over and over, for everything is in it,” and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Turn it over and over, for everything is in it”—you know why? Because whatever you think is true, you’ll find there. Obviously. We said that earlier. Yes, obviously.

[Speaker I] About every—

[Speaker H] Thing and its opposite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Both the thing and its opposite. Everything is inside the Torah. So too here. And that’s why I say these are empty statements. So I don’t know. In short, my sense is that he too thinks everything is there, but he’s more sober in the sense that he understands that not everything is accessible—at least, and certainly not to everyone. And again, “The Torah does not teach us orderly professional study.” If you want to learn a profession—I say it doesn’t teach me professional study, period. Not “orderly.” And therefore again I say, the feeling is somehow that for him everything is there, but not in an orderly form; they don’t bring it to you here in a row; it’s not a textbook in physics. Or biology, or whatever it may be. If you want to learn a profession, don’t expect the Torah to teach it to you. Go and learn it yourself the way one learns a profession. “The Torah does not teach how to be a shoemaker. It teaches how to behave.” Fine. Now here there is a stronger claim. The “not orderly” is what I said earlier. “Not orderly” means it’s there, just not as a textbook. You won’t succeed in extracting it from there. Here he’s saying more than that. The Torah doesn’t teach how to be a shoemaker because that’s not its business. It teaches you how to behave. So that’s already a different statement. That’s a statement that how to be a shoemaker isn’t in the Torah at all, because that isn’t its purpose. The purpose of the Torah is to teach shoemakers how one ought to act. Not how to be a shoemaker—that’s a professional question. For example, it teaches that a shoemaker may not steal, may not cheat his customers. That’s a statement completely different from what he said earlier. Because before, basically, he said that shoemaking is there, it’s just hard to extract. So maybe he means something else. Maybe he means farther on. He says: right, shoemaking really is there. Why is it hard to extract? Because really, it’s not all that necessary. Some rare individuals who want to extract shoemaking from the Torah—maybe they’ll succeed.

[Speaker G] Why would it be there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. That’s what I said earlier. Right, I don’t know. But what matters to the Torah, what everyone is supposed to be able to extract, is how one should behave—what is right, how one ought to conduct oneself. Did you want to comment? It seems to me—

[Speaker F] Maybe he just meant, like Ingber from his own reasoning, that the Torah deals with how to behave, and by the way a few things about the world got mentioned. Meaning, it’s not that all things are here, it’s not that all things, obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I said, I don’t know. After all, he doesn’t write things explicitly. My instinct says he’s talking only about accessibility, not about it not being there at all. But fine, I’m not arguing about that. We also spoke about this once, I think. The Talmud says that on the basis of a presumption one can extract money. The presumption “a person does not repay before the due date,” for example—the passage in tractate Bava Batra, page 5. The Talmud says there that if Reuven sues Shimon: give me the hundred shekels you borrowed from me—and the loan was for thirty days, and he sues him after a week—and Shimon says, “I repaid,” then the religious court obligates him to pay. Why? Because the presumption is that a person does not repay before the due date. Meaning, if you had thirty days to hold the loan, and you claim you repaid in the first week, prove it. Meaning, the likelihood is that you did not repay; the assumption is that a person does not repay before the due date.

Now let’s say, for the sake of argument, that we live in a different reality, and in that reality a person does repay before the due date. That happens today, for example: if a person has money, he may prefer to repay before the due date rather than pay interest on the loan.

[Speaker C] Today, with all the salary—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Comes in—today, with the heter iska and all these matters, they take interest. Once there’s interest, it’s no longer so simple; then maybe it’s better to repay now and not keep the money longer. In a world without interest, it sounds much simpler. Okay, so let’s say the situation changed. So do I still have to say “the presumption is that a person does not repay before the due date” because it says so in the Talmud? And then someone comes and says, “I repaid after a week”?

[Speaker G] It’s a matter of reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, of course not. It can change. Now the more interesting question—that’s almost obvious. Sometimes I even see people who think otherwise, but it’s simple. But the question is: okay, so what’s the point of studying that passage? Can we erase that passage from the Talmud? Fine, it’s over, it’s no longer relevant. No, it is relevant. Why? Because what that passage comes to teach is not the psychological principle that a person doesn’t repay before the due date. What that passage comes to teach is that if you have a psychological principle, then on the basis of that principle you can extract money. Now if the psychological principle today is the opposite—that a person repays only before the due date, just for the sake of example, okay—then I’ll take that very passage and from it derive the Jewish law that a person who says “I did not repay after a week” is not believed. The passage remains relevant. But why does it remain relevant? Because I understand that what the passage says is not the psychological fact that a person doesn’t repay before the due date, but the legal principle of what is right to do, what you have to do on the legal level. Not the fact. The psychological fact is also a fact, okay. The Torah and the Talmud do not come to teach us facts. Facts are sometimes the platform through which principles are conveyed to us. If they had told us in general that when you have a presumption or reasoning in a certain direction you can extract money, that wouldn’t be good enough. You need to anchor it in an example. So they take an example from the world of the sages, who say that if a person repays before the due date that is implausible, so if someone says “I repaid,” extract the money from him. And that’s excellent. That’s really how one should teach. You have to illustrate the principle; you can’t just talk about abstract principles and leave it at that. But sometimes we are captivated by the medium instead of understanding what passes through it. What passes through it is a normative principle, a legal principle. The fact that a certain factual medium is used to convey that principle does not give any holiness to the medium. Meaning, if that medium changed, then it changed. That is not called going against the Talmud. To say today that a person does not repay before the due date—or in more delicate matters, the presumption of “better to dwell as two than to dwell alone,” because a woman prefers to remain with a husband even if he’s awful. Why? Because she wants to be in a couple; she doesn’t like sitting alone. That’s the presumption written in the Talmud. Rabbi Soloveitchik writes that this presumption is a law given to Moses at Sinai; it never changes. Rabbi Soloveitchik—after all—was certainly a man who…

Now it’s obvious to me—there’s no doubt in my mind—that he didn’t believe that for a moment. It’s polemical; there’s nothing to do about it, because there were attacks, strong attacks from… He presents it so sharply. Yes, obviously. But I’m convinced he didn’t believe it. Again, for the same reason I said earlier: because it’s so clearly untrue, and he was an intelligent person, so it’s obvious to me that he didn’t believe it. Again, this is not an interpretation of his words; it’s an a priori assumption that I plant into his words. You know, I can choose either to present him as an idiot or to present him as a tactician. And since I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I present him as a tactician. “Tactician” is a whitewashed term for liar. Meaning, those are the two options. There is no third option here. I’m saying: if I see today that the situation changed, that many women are not willing to compromise and are not willing to marry someone if he doesn’t seem suitable to them, then that means that today the situation is no longer what it once was. In what percentages and so on—you’d have to check. There is still such a tendency, fine; you have to see how strong, among how many women, what exactly. One can make statistics on that or try to check it. I once approached women’s organizations that I was in some contact with—because from time to time they turn to me on issues of agunot after that story. And now too I have some case. So I keep pressing them: do a study already. Because if you do a proper study—what women today prefer—do a proper survey with an established, reliable institute that knows how to do this, Mina Tzemach, yes? With rabbinic guidance, because you need to know how to ask the questions and which questions to ask, because it’s a bit delicate what to ask there—and produce the conclusion that today, factually, the presumption of “better to dwell as two” no longer holds, that’s all. With that, I think quite a few halakhic decisors would be willing to come to terms, it seems to me. As long as there isn’t…

[Speaker F] What practical difference does that presumption make?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, there’s a very major practical implication. If crazy things are discovered after the marriage, the question is whether the woman even intended to become betrothed in the first place. So if she wants a partner no matter what, then people say yes, of course, fine, she’s willing to accept anything. A husband afflicted with boils, a husband who’s this or that, she’s willing to compromise on everything—better to dwell as two than to dwell alone. A violent husband?

[Speaker G] A husband

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Violent, yes, all kinds of things like that. But I’m saying he already had a violent nature beforehand, because if he became violent only afterward then again that’s a somewhat different nuanced discussion—whether he became violent later. Right. But if he was violent beforehand already, let’s say, just to make it simpler. Then I’m saying: obviously women today are not willing to put up with that. How can you keep going with this whole “better to dwell as two than to dwell alone” idea just because it’s written in the Talmud?

[Speaker J] Not only that, over there they also distinguish between a man and a woman, because for a man they don’t grant that presumption.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Oh, certainly. For a man, no, because there’s no “better to dwell as two” for him. A man, by the way, also doesn’t need it, because he can take two wives. But that’s a whole other story. What I’m saying is: why are you willing to say that the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date can change, but not this? I’m sure nobody would argue that that presumption can change under different circumstances. Right? So why not “better to dwell as two than to dwell alone”? Because it touches on marriage, of course, and feminism and equality, and people are terribly afraid of this issue. But really it’s the same thing. At most, reality has changed. Let’s say maybe it hasn’t changed? Check. Let’s check and see what women do prefer and what women don’t prefer, and we’ll see. That’s all. After all, it’s just a factual claim; there’s nothing sacred about it. The question is what we do with it. Once I arrive at the psychological assessment of a woman or of a man or of a person—it doesn’t matter which—I can now use that in interpreting contracts, or as an implicit stipulation in a contract: we wouldn’t have agreed to this if we’d known when we signed the contract. Right? It’s a kind of interpretation of what we would have said had we known. Okay? So that’s already a principle of Jewish law. That, you need to see from the Talmud—when you do that, how you do that. But what is the factual basis that we’re using? That depends on the circumstances. It can change. Sometimes it’s like this, sometimes like that. There is nothing sacred in the factual medium through which the norms come to us. What matters is the norm. Torah is instruction about what to do; Torah is not a collection of facts. And here I’m actually sharpening what he says. Torah did not come to tell us facts. Torah did not come to teach us human psychology, or history, or physics, or anything of that sort. Torah is basically meant to educate us, to tell us what should be done, what is forbidden to do. Now, of course, this is done within the medium of reality. You talk about reality; you have to plant things within reality. You can’t speak in a totally abstract way. But there is no holiness in reality itself; reality can change. And “he shall uncover the woman’s head,” right, in the case of the sotah, from where they derive head-covering for women. Okay? It says “he shall uncover the woman’s head.” That’s a very problematic derivation. Really, and there are two formulations in Rashi in Ketubot, and simply speaking, all it says is that women used to cover their heads then. That you can infer as a fact: if when this happens you uncover her hair, that implies that without this… Who said you can derive from here that one must cover it? It taught me a fact; it didn’t teach me a norm. Now, this is already a Talmudic derivation, not some modern invention. But I’m saying this whole matter is a bit problematic. Sometimes facts get deeply mixed into norms. Sometimes you can say that the norms of modesty back then were like that—but who says that must remain that way for all generations? I don’t know. The Sages assume yes in this particular case. With the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date, I don’t think everyone would agree that it’s supposed to be eternal. What, why? True, even then it was like that, obviously it was like that. Even today there’s such a tendency—if there’s no interest and so on, you’ll hold onto the money until you have to pay. But besides that, a person also wants peace of mind—if you have the money, you may well repay the loan already; that can happen too. No. Anyway, so this is the shoemaker and how one ought to behave—what he says here is that Torah’s concern is to teach what to do, what is permitted to do, what must be done, what is forbidden to do, and not the facts. The facts are the medium within which the whole thing operates. The author of Tanya writes this, and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin also writes very similarly, even though of course these are two opponents—they write that essentially the Jewish laws are really the garments of Torah; they are not Torah itself. Torah itself is the king, and the garments are the way he appears to our eyes. You see a person’s outer covering; you don’t know what’s inside. And if we continue that, you don’t see his soul, you see his body, you see what appears before your eyes in this world. So what is the person? Is the person the body? No. The body is a medium through which the soul manages to act in the world. A soul that isn’t connected to a body can’t act in the world. Meaning, the body is the soul’s link to the physical world; through it the soul can do things here, can act, can form relationships with people, can… that is how it appears here. Once a soul is detached from a body, it has no significance in this world. It doesn’t appear here, it doesn’t influence here, it’s disconnected from it. Right. Does that mean the person is the body? No. The person is the soul. The body is the garment of the soul through which it appears. So here too: the principle that when you have an assessment or a presumption you can extract money—that’s the soul of the matter. How does it appear in practice? What are the practical garments? How do we see it? That if we see a person say, “I repaid before the deadline,” we don’t believe him. But that is within a particular situation. If evolution keeps advancing and in another few thousand years our body will look—well, not even thousands of years, not so sure—our body will look completely different, then what, we won’t be human beings? We’ll be human beings with different garments. That’s fine. It’s not… the body is the garment. Now okay, true, through the garment you can encounter the soul. I have no way to encounter the soul except through the garment, through the way it appears in the world. But still, there is no holiness in the body itself; the body is only the medium through which the whole thing appears. So too in the Talmud or in the Torah, the facts are the medium through which the normative, halakhic aspects appear. But that is Torah—Torah is the collection of norms. Torah is not the facts. And the same applies to the creation of the world, not only to shoemaking and all the other things. Basically, Torah did not come to teach either history or physics. It may be that through the Torah’s description of history and physics and so on it comes to teach things—most likely, otherwise why was it written? But it comes to teach not the facts in themselves. The facts are the medium through which the teaching happens. This still doesn’t completely solve all the contradictions, of course, because Torah still uses those facts as a medium. Why assume it uses incorrect facts as a medium? That just doesn’t make sense.

[Speaker D] The question is how far you take this. Suppose the Sabbatical year—the Torah taught the Sabbatical year because most of the public were farmers, and therefore it made a Sabbatical year in order to create some kind of socialism. But maybe really the question is how far you’re willing to go, I don’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, according to the line you said, I’m saying yes, you can take it very far. I don’t know. I said: in the Talmud itself we see this attitude. For example, with head-covering, or in many other places, yes, you do see that the Talmud takes the facts seriously too. But when you do this logical analysis, then you understand that facts can change. I don’t understand why people take that as so absolutely binding.

[Speaker D] Is it easier to challenge facts from the Talmudic period or the Mishnah period than facts from the Torah period?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Facts too—I said before, like head-covering, same thing. So in the Torah period women used to cover their heads—so what? What does that mean? Does it mean they were more modest? Maybe people today are more modest? Why assume that the model of modesty is what they did then? On what basis is that assumption founded? I don’t know.

[Speaker K] It’s not only that; the ruling also won’t be realistic. Meaning, if the factual presumption really changed, a religious court sits and issues an anachronistic ruling, irrelevant—you’re standing there and you don’t understand what they’re even talking about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only that—it’s not correct, it’s not what

[Speaker K] the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forget the ruling, because if what the Holy One, blessed be He, really wants is the norms and not the facts, then what you’re doing is wrong. Suppose today it were necessary, say, to validate women as witnesses. I once wrote this in some article—let’s say that argument, I raised some argument there, doesn’t matter. Suppose that women really, in truth, should today be valid as witnesses. Okay? Because the situation changed; women today are not like they once were, let’s say, for the sake of discussion. Now someone says: fine, but let’s play it safe. You can’t know. So let’s leave them disqualified. Why is that called playing it safe? Two women come and say that Reuven murdered Shimon. Now you acquit Reuven because the two women are the witnesses. That’s not a price? That’s called playing it safe? What is safe about that? Every decision has a price. You have to make decisions. It’s not a matter of playing it safe; everything has a cost. Okay. In any case, if the Torah teaches us about the creation of the world through ten utterances, this is like the tanna says in Avot: “The world was created by ten utterances.” This is basically the description, the Sages’ summary, of the Torah’s description of creation. Okay? Ten utterances—“And God said”—ten utterances through which the world was created, and that is the rabbinic description in Pirkei Avot. So there it says this: “The world was created by ten utterances. And what does this come to teach? Could it not have been created by one utterance? Rather, it was so in order to exact punishment from the wicked, who destroy the world that was created by ten utterances, and to give good reward to the righteous, who sustain the world that was created by ten utterances.” It’s really a nice midrash for this issue, because what it basically says is: why was the world created by ten utterances? What do you mean? Because it takes ten utterances to create it? No. Why? In order to reward these and punish those. Meaning, the goal is a normative, behavioral goal. Even when they teach you the physics—that the world was created by ten utterances—the goal is really what you do with that. The goal is not the physics as such. And again I say: this does not automatically solve the problem, because the physics still ought to be correct. Why teach normative lessons through incorrect physics? Fine. But still, it softens the difficulty a bit, because the goal is not the physics. Okay? But notice, just in terms of it being a beautiful example—it really is—but when you look closely, that’s not exactly what the midrash says there. Because the midrash there doesn’t explain why the Torah wrote the ten utterances. The midrash explains why the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to create the world with ten utterances rather than one. That’s a little different.

[Speaker E] Meaning, from the standpoint of physics, He could have done it differently too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. He could have done it with one utterance too, and this is an explanation of why He chose a different physics, not why the Torah chooses to describe it that way. But still, I think there is something to it, because once He chose to create the world through ten utterances, He somehow has to write that in the Torah, because otherwise how would we know that He created it through ten utterances? How would we learn it? So true, that’s why it’s also written in the Torah. And I think yes, what he does here with this midrash isn’t completely divorced from its plain meaning. That is: look what a beautiful and sophisticated world was created and prepared for you—you, the human being, are the last of the work of creation—and be careful not to destroy it; take care that you do not ruin and destroy My world. How do you destroy the world, or sustain it? The Torah teaches that afterward, in the normative part, so to speak. I spoke about Rashi’s very first comment on Genesis, where he says: why didn’t the Torah begin with “This month shall be for you the beginning of months”? That question is based on the fact that the Torah is basically supposed to contain only commandments, right? That’s the essence of the question. Clearly the underlying assumption is that the Torah is supposed to contain only commandments, and if there is something there that is not a commandment—the first quarter of the book isn’t a commandment—then the question is why it’s there. There are various answers, but the basic answer is what he says here. It is, in the end, an infrastructure in order to get to the commandments. Because that is Torah’s purpose, bottom line—the commandments. And therefore, by the way, the main kind of study, even in Torah study, I think, is halakhic study, and not aggadic study or narrative study, meaning the narrative parts of Scripture, because they are basically supposed to be the infrastructure for the normative part. In the end, the main thing is that. And therefore I think that the yeshivot are indeed right, and this yeshiva-style education that sees Jewish law as the focal point of Torah study and not the things around it. This is the whole Torah. From the standpoint of the moral purpose, Torah, including the account of creation, belongs to every person. It can be learned by every person. That is what one needs to do. By contrast, the truths of the account of creation belong only to sages who are capable of analyzing them, and they fall under the category of “the secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him.” Here you can already see more clearly what I said earlier: that he assumes everything is there; it’s just not accessible to everyone. What needs to be accessible to everyone is only the normative part. Physics is only for sages who know what they’re talking about. I still haven’t met those sages who know what they’re talking about who managed to extract physical findings from the Torah, but I don’t know, maybe he succeeded. Okay, we’re done with the introduction.