Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel’s Thought – Genesis – Lesson 8

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. The claim is that Nachmanides is actually uncertain about this, and the Tashbetz is also uncertain about it: whether there is really an obligation to reach the number 613. After all, all those who enumerate the commandments work and strain so that in the end they come out with 613, 248 and 365. It’s obvious that this is a bit artificial. It’s not that they counted the commandments and—boom—613 came out. They organize the whole thing so that it comes out to 613. So Nachmanides asks: who said that this is even correct? There’s a Talmudic passage at the end of tractate Makkot: Rabbi Simlai said that 613 commandments were commanded to Israel. Right? It goes like this: “Torah Moses commanded us”—the word Torah has the numerical value 611, meaning those came through Moses, and “I am the Lord” and “You shall have no other gods” we heard directly from the Almighty—another two, making 613. So that’s what Rabbi Simlai said. Okay? Now Nachmanides says: but this very statement of Rabbi Simlai can be understood in two ways. You can understand that Rabbi Simlai is transmitting to us a tradition that there are 613 commandments, and then of course, even if I disagree with Rabbi Simlai about one commandment or another, I still have to arrange things so that I get 613. Because that would mean it’s a datum from tradition that there must be 613 commandments in the Torah. But you could also understand that no—Rabbi Simlai made his own calculation, counted all the commandments according to his method, and concluded that he got 613. But if someone disagrees with him and removes one commandment, then he has 612. What’s the problem? Rabbi Simlai isn’t saying there must be 613. He’s saying: I got 613. Fine, that’s what he got, but there can still be disagreement. Someone else has 610, someone else has 650. So the number itself is not binding. Nachmanides himself hesitates about this, but he says that since this tradition is in our hands—we see all the enumerators of the commandments and so on—the attitude is as though this number is a binding number, because there really is a tradition here, and in truth that’s also the plain meaning of the Talmudic passage. Because Rabbi Simlai doesn’t just say, “I happened to come out with 613”; he derives it from the verse: “Torah Moses commanded us” is 611, and “I am the Lord” and “You shall have no other gods” we heard from the Almighty, that’s another two, making 613. So basically he claims that it’s written in the verse that there are 613. Fine, maybe you could say it’s a kind of homiletic flourish after he came out with 613—he makes some nice little exposition on the verses. But Nachmanides says that by tradition we have accepted this; you see everyone relates to it as some kind of binding number. And assuming that this is so, Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla writes here in the introduction to Rav Saadia Gaon’s Book of Commandments—he asks, what is the point at all of counting the commandments? The brother of the Vilna Gaon writes—Toledot Yitzhak, Toledot Adam, the brother of the Vilna Gaon, I think—that after all, the Vilna Gaon dealt with—there’s nothing he didn’t deal with. Anything you look at, on the side there are glosses of the Vilna Gaon, except for one thing: the matter of the commandments. In all the writings of the Vilna Gaon, in all the sources, there is no reference to the enumeration of the commandments at all, nothing whatsoever. As far as I know all this—so he says. He presumably knows; he says there isn’t any such discussion. The Vilna Gaon didn’t deal with the matter of the commandments because there’s no practical consequence in it, it’s not interesting. What difference does it make what the count of the commandments is? Something can enter the count or not enter the count because of organizational considerations. That doesn’t mean it is Torah-level or not Torah-level. It doesn’t even say whether lashes are administered or not—depends what kind of act, what kind of non-act. It doesn’t matter; it depends on many things. The count as such says nothing. And therefore the Vilna Gaon didn’t deal with it, because it has no practical consequence for anything. But Rabbi Yerucham Perla writes that although that’s true—there is no direct practical consequence—still there is a practical consequence. Because you have to organize all your commandments in such a way that it comes out 613. Now, in order to organize that, many times you’ll need to make interpretive judgments that have halakhic consequences. So it’s not a direct halakhic consequence of what enters the count and what doesn’t—that really isn’t; there’s no practical consequence there. But organizing the system of commandments according to my method so that in the end it comes out 613—this is something that can of course generate many practical consequences, and there are lots of them, tons of practical consequences. After all, the disputes between Nachmanides and Maimonides in Nachmanides’ critiques of the fourteen principles there in the Book of Commandments—you see that there are many halakhic disputes between them, even though it all begins from the question of what to count among the commandments and what not to count. But in order to organize it—for example, someone who counts two commandments concerning terumah, and someone else counts one commandment of terumah. Nachmanides tends to count two, and Maimonides says one—one of their famous disputes on this. And the argument there is halakhic, not only about the counting of commandments. Why? Because if—why do you say this is one commandment and not two? You can say it in two ways: either these are two details of one commandment—two details meaning the separation and the giving to the priest: separating the terumah in order to prepare the produce, and giving the terumah that I separated to the priest. Those are the two parts that Nachmanides counts as two commandments. Okay? Maimonides counts one commandment. Now the question is why he counts it as one commandment. Either because these are two details of one commandment—there are commandments made up of many details; it doesn’t have to be specifically two commandments, it can be one commandment with many details. A second possibility—and in my opinion this can be clearly proven in Maimonides—is that according to Maimonides there is no commandment to give it to the priest. There is only a commandment to separate it. Meaning, the giving to the priest is not a commandment; rather, he eats from the divine table. I give it to the Holy One, blessed be He, not to the priest. I separate it for the Holy One, blessed be He, and the Holy One says to the priest: take this from Me. In other words, the giving is from Him. That has practical consequences. All these things have halakhic implications. Now this comes out of a consideration of counting the commandments. According to Maimonides, terumah is one commandment, and according to Nachmanides it is two. So the question is whether—you also could have said that both are Torah-level, only they are two details of one commandment, and therefore there is one commandment here and no halakhic practical consequence at all. But the fact is that within the discussion over the count, and over what enters the count and what does not enter the count, a great many halakhic practical consequences are revealed. That’s a fact. Nachmanides raises there hundreds of halakhic arguments in his critiques on the principles, and all of it revolves around—all of it begins from—the question of the enumeration of the commandments. Therefore, in a certain sense it does have an indirect practical consequence, as Rabbi Yerucham Perla says. It is worthwhile to count the commandments because for us it serves as a clue. If in the end it really has to come out 613, then everyone has to organize for himself his interpretation, the commandments, how it all works—and the number 613 will give him clues. He’ll be able to learn various things from it: whether terumah is two commandments or one commandment, and all kinds of considerations of that sort, and halakhic consequences can also emerge from that. So that is why there is reason to deal with the enumeration of the commandments—that’s what Rabbi Yerucham Perla says. When the Vilna Gaon says there’s no point, it may very well be that the Vilna Gaon understood like Nachmanides’ doubt—that in fact this number is not binding. This number came from Rabbi Simlai; that’s what came out—613. But who says we all have to arrive specifically at 613? And therefore, according to his approach, there really is no point in dealing with it. What difference does it make what the total is? What do I care if there are 600, 500, 1500—what difference does it make? I need to know about each thing whether it is a commandment or not a commandment, and that’s it. How did I get to all this?

[Speaker C] We started with those fellows, the worm, the worm—yes, right, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That scientific error about worms being born from the fruit—so then you have to knock out, in Nachmanides’ terminology it’s called to remove, to remove one commandment from the count, so you have to insert another commandment in its place. And that can have further halakhic implications, aside from the fact that worms born in fruit have no prohibition in them at all and nothing—or they’re not anything different from ordinary worms—but aside from that, when you put another commandment in their place, that too can create various practical consequences. So in the end, a scientific or factual conception can also find expression on halakhic planes; it doesn’t remain only in the realm of thought, and you can’t make some sharp division. In the halakhic realm the Sages have authority, and in the realm of thought or fact, okay, you need to use your head. Many times there are—not many times, but not a few times—there are halakhic consequences to scientific conceptions or beliefs or whatever. Yes, even Maimonides counts 13 principles, but on the other hand Maimonides says that one does not issue halakhic rulings on matters that do not pertain to action.

[Speaker G] Isn’t that only about things that are not principles of faith?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? He writes that. You can say that as an answer, but he doesn’t write it. But on matters that do not pertain to practice, he does not issue halakhic rulings—that’s what he writes in his Commentary on the Mishnah in three places. And the 13 principles stand there like a banner, meaning this obligates everyone—he ruled that way. How do you define who this is? So you have to define what a person needs to believe in order to be a heretic—that’s a halakhic question. You understand that this halakhic question is derived from worldviews. Now if my worldview is different, okay, according to Maimonides maybe I’m a heretic, but the halakhic consequence is a result of the intellectual, scientific, and religious dispute—doesn’t matter, in short. But if I think, I don’t know, that divine providence is different from what Maimonides said, then he will define me as a heretic. But let’s say, for the sake of argument, I have good arguments on this issue. So what does that mean now—that Maimonides is right because this is a halakhic domain? Because in the halakhic domain he has authority. But clearly this halakhic result came out of a worldview, and in worldview I don’t agree with him. So it’s a bit problematic to make that sharp distinction. But still, in the books of the early authorities the claim is—

[Speaker C] That maybe it’s like laws that are based on some professional field—there’s a professional who has to say what the reality is, and then the halakhic decisor rules. So here too, the philosopher is the professional.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I don’t know if it’s the philosopher—it doesn’t matter—each of us can be the professional. I don’t know if the philosopher has an advantage here. But yes, even in the scientific realm—like the examples I gave earlier—that’s a scientific field par excellence. Whether there are such worms or there aren’t such worms, that’s a respectable scientific question. But on the other hand, it’s already been fixed. It’s already been counted. Everything’s fine. If they were deciding this today, I have no doubt it would not have entered the count of the commandments. Yes, as if they were asking, it would have become clear to them. But it has already entered. So there is some feeling that this is binding—the Talmud, Maimonides, I don’t know—these are things that are binding on the halakhic level. I’m saying that where it is based on an error, I don’t think it can be treated as halakhically binding. I see no logic in that. To decide that some worms, because the Sages said they are generated from the fruit, are now permitted to eat because they aren’t worms—well, they were mistaken.

[Speaker C] Are there halakhic decisors who permit such worms? What? Are there decisors who permit such things?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t even remember what this commandment says, so I’m talking here about something that—then they wouldn’t have counted it as a commandment. A prohibition? No, no, there are such worms there—

[Speaker C] That you find—it’s a worm that you find. What? A prohibition, not a positive commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, a prohibition. I don’t remember exactly what—

[Speaker C] Happens with those worms, what the story is there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe it’s a separate prohibition to eat such worms that emerge from the fruit, I think, or something like that. It’s a different prohibition; it’s not the prohibition of ordinary worms. Fine, so here there isn’t really much practical consequence—what difference does it make whether it’s this prohibition or that prohibition? Bottom line, worms are forbidden to eat. The practical consequence will be when I remove this from the count of the commandments and put another commandment in its place. There, a practical consequence can emerge. A louse on the Sabbath? What? Or a louse on the Sabbath, yes. Even the louse on the Sabbath—even though the implication there is actually a stringency, that we ought to forbid killing it when the Sages permitted killing it—that’s easier. Meaning, here I’m being stringent; I’m not violating the words of the Sages. And even here, no decisor I know of says this in an unequivocal way.

[Speaker C] No decisor? There are those who… to be stringent? They don’t say to be stringent? They don’t say kill freely? Kill freely on the Sabbath?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nobody says this halakhah is not valid today. I don’t know, there are all kinds of expressions like “it is fitting to be stringent,” here and there. I’m not familiar—but again, maybe I haven’t done a sufficiently comprehensive search.

[Speaker G] Pachad Yitzchak—I don’t remember the name. Some one from about two hundred years ago. Not worth the—Pachad Yitzchak.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I brought. Pachad Yitzchak is not from two hundred years ago. Not the Pachad Yitzchak of Chabad. There is another Pachad Yitzchak. Lampronti. Yes, I think so. I talked about this, didn’t I? I talked about it once in Ra’anana, about this Pachad Yitzchak. Yes, he really does say that—that this halakhah can be changed, I think, yes.

[Speaker G] That there are decisors who say that in any case Pachad—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yitzchak—meaning, his status as a decisor, not as an encyclopedia. Pachad Yitzchak—meaning, his status as a decisor, not as an encyclopedia. Pachad Yitzchak.

[Speaker G] There are decisors who say—I think Rabbi Elyashiv says—that once there were such lice, and today’s lice are fruitful and reproduce, and therefore today’s lice are forbidden to kill.

[Speaker F] Fine, I’m quoted in box C there—various tiny creeping creatures found and generated inside fruits. Yes, exactly, okay. So it’s simply another separate prohibition because they were formed inside the fruit.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After they came out. No, that doesn’t matter, but I’m still saying that in any case they’re forbidden to eat—just not because of this prohibition, but because of the ordinary creeping-creature prohibition—so the practical consequence will only be regarding the prohibition I insert in place of this prohibition in that particular case. But fine, there can be many such phenomena. The division between thought and Jewish law, or between facts and science and Jewish law. Regarding science, by the way, Maimonides and his son write explicit things that the Sages have no authority in the scientific realm. There is an essay by Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides in the introduction to—printed in the introduction to Ein Yaakov—there are several essays there on aggadah, and one of the essays is by Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, and there he says—and I think he brings it in the name of his father—that the Sages have no authority in the scientific realm.

[Speaker B] I was—one second, guys—I just wanted to show you this Maimonides. Did I show you this Maimonides?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is also Maimonides. We won’t enter into a long discussion; I just—in any case, fine, okay. So this statement he says here—that Maimonides, okay, Maimonides thought there was no need to depart from the plain meaning, but today we have good reasons to depart from the plain meaning, to take things away from their literal sense—that’s a statement that, let’s say, in the Bnei Brak context and in the period when it was said, definitely involves a certain novelty. Now what does he explain? The word “day” can also be interpreted as a period. We find that the Sages say, “A day of the Holy One, blessed be He, is a thousand years.” So you see that “day” is not necessarily everywhere in the meaning of a solar day. Well, in my view, by the way, that’s not such a strong proof. “A day of the Holy One” because for Him it’s a different system, equivalent to a thousand years for us. Does that mean that in our language too the word “day” can be interpreted in several ways? I don’t know if that’s a proof, but that’s his argument. Maimonides describes in the introduction to the Guide the heartache of someone who knows with certainty from rational proofs that the Creator is not a body, and yet finds in Scripture expressions of corporeality. Maimonides says to him: don’t be perplexed; interpret the verses as figurative language, as metaphor and poetic expression, according to what the rules and usages of language allow you, and that is the true interpretation of the Torah—as he already wrote earlier. There is no doubt that the verses did not intend something that reason proves to be the opposite. That is a strong statement. There is no doubt that the verses did not intend something that reason proves to be the opposite. Meaning, there is here some conception of the superiority of reason—not over the Torah, but over the interpretive tradition of the Torah. Meaning, the claim is that the Torah cannot be mistaken; the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote it. But if we reach a conclusion about something, then apparently that is what the Torah said; it did not say the opposite. What I brought earlier—that it is better to strain the language than to strain the reasoning—that is an interpretive rule. So here too, Maimonides says: if reason proves the opposite, then that means that this is how the Torah must be interpreted.

[Speaker D] And not to take it away from its plain meaning, right? And also, why call that plain meaning—reasoning, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the other side, but here it’s more severe, because here I’m going with the reasoning against the text—not just that the reading is unnecessary, but against it. So they tell us: there are proofs. There’s a Ran in Sukkah that once, many years ago, back in the depths of Bnei Brak, I discovered with my study partner—some Ran in Sukkah where there’s a discussion in the Talmud about whether “its sunlight exceeds its shade”—whether that is measured above or measured below. Is the criterion that in the area of the roofing there must be more shade than sunlight, or in the illumination on the ground—yes, the sun penetrates through the cracks, and the question is whether on the ground there is more shade or more sunlight. Now the question is which criterion is stricter. There is a dispute in the Talmud there, and afterward among the medieval authorities too—I no longer remember exactly what happens there—but yes, apparently the light expands as it comes through the crack, but on the other hand there are various interferences there—it doesn’t matter, one can describe it in two ways. So the Ran writes there: “One must not deny what is perceptible.” We see that, I don’t know, below it’s more than above, or whatever it is. “One must not deny what is perceptible” means: leave me alone with all the disputes of the medieval authorities—I see it; for me it’s a fact. So when there are facts, with all due respect to whoever says otherwise, it is not correct: one must not deny what is perceptible. That sentence was engraved in me very strongly. Today it seems trivial to me, but it was engraved in me very strongly. I’m trying to reconstruct how dramatic it seemed at the time. Yes, the approach of Tosafot, for example, in many places. Tosafot—if I prove that there are many stars from the fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Abraham, “Go outside and see if you can count the stars”—you can simply go outside and see, you’ll see there are lots of stars. Why do you need a verse to know that there are many stars?

[Speaker G] He told him to count the stars.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only so that if you can’t fall asleep, instead of counting sheep, count the stars. You know Sherlock Holmes? Sherlock Holmes was lying with Watson under a tent. What happened there? They wake up, Holmes looks at the stars, starts counting stars. In short, their tent was stolen. When they woke up from sleep they started counting stars, but there was supposed to be a tent there—someone stole their tent. So I don’t remember, the joke goes in some more sophisticated way, but I no longer remember it. Watson asked him, what can you infer? And then he gave him all kinds of things—what can you infer from what we see—and in the end he said, that our tent was stolen. Yes, something like that. Okay, so in short, the claim is that if reason proves the opposite of a thing, then the Torah has to be interpreted accordingly. And the meaning of this is that of course interpretation can change, because the intellect of Maimonides in the twelfth century, including the information he had and the conceptions current in his time, is completely different from today. And if reason determines the interpretation, and not tradition or the plain sense of the biblical language, then if so, this ought to change every time we learn something new. We should reexamine our interpretations and see what is correct and what is not correct. And then, according to this conception, of course it follows that our interpretations are by definition more correct than every interpretation of a previous generation, right? Because everything they knew, we know too—only we know more on the factual level.

[Speaker C] It’s a combination of tradition and reason, meaning there’s some sort of balance. If reason deviates a lot, deviates a little, that gives you more room. So they were closer to the source.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so in this case tradition is stronger than reason. You’re not accepting it in too sharp a form. But still, on the principled level it’s clear that from scientific and rational considerations things only improve.

[Speaker B] And what do you mean by intuitions?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You yourself said intuitions—they’re closer to the source. Interpretive intuitions, I don’t know to what extent.

[Speaker B] Halakhic intuitions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But interpretation—I’m talking about interpretation of verses, of creation—I don’t know to what extent intuition plays a role there, it’s not clear to me. Maybe linguistic intuitions. We in general suffer from weak linguistic intuitions because we are captives of Ben-Yehuda; we already talked about that. Because we speak the modern language, and so very often we tend to force the biblical text into the rules we know—we are used to thinking that this is Hebrew. And it seems self-evident to us that it should be interpreted this way and not that way, whereas the Sages were probably closer—still, the language of the Mishnah is not the language of the Bible—but they were closer to biblical language. I think they had more sensitivity to the nuances of biblical language than the average person on the street today. There may be people who deal with this and research it and try to reconstruct it; maybe they have developed good intuitions. But an ordinary person who speaks Hebrew approaches the Bible and interprets it the way he is used to reading a Hebrew text. He is not aware that there is actually a somewhat different language here, and that this must be taken into account. So maybe here too there is significance to closeness to the source—to linguistic intuitions.

[Speaker H] On the subject of reason, could there be such a thing as subjective reason? Is there a universal concept of reason?

[Speaker I] Or does everyone have his own reason?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Statistically speaking, obviously there are disagreements among people.

[Speaker I] Not about physical facts.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—reason also includes relating to facts and also relating to philosophical arguments perhaps, okay, all kinds of things. But no one can dispute that there are disagreements in the world. The question whether there is one truth is a different question. It may be that there is one truth, one of us holds it and the other is mistaken—that’s another discussion.

[Speaker E] Is there such a thing as common sense, which is supposed to be shared by everyone?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Common sense is the reasoning that arrives at the correct facts. But that doesn’t say much, because you know what the correct facts are only by means of your own reason. Right, and therefore common sense is the reason that matches my reason. I once saw an article on Occam’s razor. I had some argument with a certain doctor about the book on evolution. A very talented fellow, engaged in medical research, something like that, and then he was doing a postdoc in Switzerland, I think—I don’t know what he’s doing today, maybe he came back. He sent me an article on Occam’s razor, and basically the claim there was that Occam’s razor is nothing but an expression of conservatism. Because when you choose between explanations or between theories, you choose the simplest one. What does “the simplest” mean? What is simple? What is the criterion for simplicity? Sometimes there are mathematical criteria for simplicity—how many parameters are in the theory, or how many entities you have to posit. Although even “how many entities you have to posit” is not simple. Is a person one entity? Or ten to the whatever molecules of entities? What exactly is defined as one entity and how many entities there are—that too is a matter of definition. In any event, the claim is that very often we use the term simplicity to describe what is most readily accepted by the mind, what seems simpler. But then Occam’s razor is just telling us: don’t change your way of thinking. That’s really what it says. Always adopt what fits your present way of thinking, right?

[Speaker G] Unless there’s reason to think otherwise.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Occam’s razor is always between theories that have all passed the empirical tests and you have no evidence against any of them. So which one do you choose? You choose the one that fits how you think now. So that is basically a conservative principle.

[Speaker G] By the way, the original version of his argument includes a conservative principle. What? Toward the tradition of sacred writings.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.

[Speaker G] By the way, the original version of Ockham’s own argument.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, never mind. There are sacred writings today too—everyone has his own sacred writings, meaning many people have sacred writings. Okay, so let’s move on. So they tell us that “day” can also be interpreted as a period, and so on. Fine—but still, its plain meaning is 24 hours, just as its plain meaning is. So now he really has to give us an explanation of why we should depart from the plain meaning. Fine, you can interpret it otherwise; if you can’t interpret it otherwise, then you can’t. Once there are several interpretive possibilities, now I have to choose which one I adopt. So here he says: not necessarily the one closest to the language. Sometimes what is closer to reason is more important than what is closer to the language. And now he has to explain to us what those rational constraints are because of which one must depart from the literal interpretation. He says: they tell us that there are many and varied scientific proofs, obtained by precise methods tested by experience, that processes take place in nature which have been going on for millions of years since they began. There are radioactive tests—here, another bit of heresy—there are radioactive tests, and fossil remains that have been found, and examinations of geological strata and the changing depth of rivers, and more and more, and from all of them one reaches the same conclusions about the age of the world. It is a mistake to think that it is all false—yes? The accepted Haredi view: it’s all false. Meaning, the Torah says otherwise, so presumably the scientists made a mistake in this and that’s it. He says: it is a mistake to think it is all false. In matters of saving life—the gravest matters in the Torah—we rely on scientists without hesitation. When a doctor gives medicine produced by scientific formulas, or operates on the eye or the brain using sophisticated devices, you trust him. You are not afraid that perhaps he is lying. Regarding the determination of the age of the world too—he might add, maybe even regarding theories which they say are false—there is no reason to think that the scientists are lying. And truly the reasoning—one second. So here this is the analogy he makes. Just as in medicine and scientific instrumentation and the like, you rely on the—you board an airplane, right? So you also need to rely on scientific methodology in these contexts; there is no reason to depart from this. Here I want to qualify things a bit, even though I agree with the overall tune of what he’s saying. But I think we need a slight reservation, because scientific conclusions regarding the age of the world are really not exactly scientific conclusions in the same way as scientific conclusions about the force of gravity. With gravity we make generalizations. Now true, a generalization is not certain—you can make mistakes—but there is common sense here, the science is tested by empirical tests, it gives predictions and we check that they hold. We can assume this generalization is correct. With the claim about the age of the world, there is a speculative dimension here, because you are dealing with history, not science. You are basically asking how long ago something happened. You are not asking how some force works or what equation relates it. This is a claim about the past. Here you are asking—not, I know the past entirely, I’m only asking how long it took, how long it lasted. So it’s not exactly the same as a scientific theory, even though similar tools are used. Now true, the distinction is not completely sharp, because after all there are predictions. The Big Bang theory, for example, predicts that there will be cosmic background radiation. So it’s not only history; it subjects itself to an empirical test that can be performed today, and indeed a Nobel Prize was awarded for this—Penzias and Wilson and all those—this pair of scientists who measured the cosmic radiation. So there is also an element of prediction there. And still, my feeling is that at least quantitatively, the speculative element in cosmology and the history of cosmology is much greater than in the study of everyday physics—how things work—even at the most abstract level, quantum theory and all that, but things where we are now doing experiments and saying how this business works, how the world is conducted. Here I have much more trust than in all the nonsense of Hawking, for example. Hawking does mathematical manipulations from here to there, sells everyone a bill of goods as though these are scientific facts—and it’s not science, it’s play with mathematical tools. Nothing more than that. Nothing more than that. A collection of amusements with mathematical tools. He can build one theory, he can build another. From this theory it follows that there are many worlds; from that theory it follows that there is only one world. From this theory it follows thus, and from that one it follows otherwise. I can build whatever mathematical equation you want—

[Speaker B] Just tell me what you want—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What you want to achieve, and I’ll build you a mathematical equation that gives you that. Like fitting a function through points. Exactly. Meaning, a substantial part of this field—not all of it, a substantial part of it—is pure speculation, simply. A collection of speculations and games. No connection to physics. But the speculations deal with physical topics; still, there’s no connection to physical science in the sense that—it’s not—someone engaged in those things is not fundamentally a scientist. He also deals with scientific matters and various things, but I’m saying the speculations he plays with on the side—and of course he very much enjoys the scientific prestige he has, which causes people to give him credit for it, even in places where he talks nonsense in fields that, in my opinion, he doesn’t really understand very well. And even in fields he does understand, very often he doesn’t bother to explain to people that what he is doing is speculative play. He presents it as some kind of scientific fact. And that involves a problematic lack of honesty. In any case, I’m saying there is some difference between determining the age of the world and determining how the force of gravity works, or an electromagnetic field, or things of that kind.

[Speaker B] True, but the age of the world still—I know—assuming the laws of nature did not change, then under that assumption that the laws of nature did not change—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, here there is—there is time—

[Speaker B] The half-life of something—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You measure it, but you are already assuming something not at all simple—that you know the half-life, say, over the last fifty years. I don’t know, you know, it’s always these graphs that describe—take a crazy graph, wildly fluctuating, huge rises and falls in the stock market, okay? Now focus on a very small piece of the graph—it will always look like a straight line. Right? Now if you look at a small piece of the graph and see that it’s a straight line, and then extend it over the entire time axis, you’re just doing nonsense.

[Speaker B] You’re doing nonsense because the law you established is just—just speculation about the law. But here the law is—the law is known.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is—no, of course it isn’t known. It is known from measurements. But when were those measurements made?

[Speaker B] That’s irrelevant—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But those measurements were taken in the last fifty years.

[Speaker B] It could be that five thousand years ago, twenty million years ago, the force of gravity was different.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly. The gravitational constant changes over time in such a way that today—today, in the fifty years or two hundred years over which we know it—its value is more or less this. Why not? Why can’t that be? You have no proof that it’s not so. No proof. What, you aren’t worried that now the plane—

[Speaker F] Not suddenly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It can change very slowly. It can also be a crazy function and then suddenly have some regular segment. Many things are possible. I don’t know.

[Speaker C] But if here you’re heavenly—you have no reason to assume it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, true, I have no reason to assume it. But you understand this is much weaker than a scientific claim about the present, which I test and say: if it passes the test, then in the present it is so. But to tell you what was ten thousand years ago? I don’t know. This is the example—if I’m not mistaken, Tzion Lutsberg writes it in his book—think of a baby, okay? You observe him growing, and let’s say each week he grows, I don’t know, by a centimeter. Fine? So what will his height be when he is twenty years old? About a kilometer, right? That’s what you’d say. Why? Because you’re observing him at a stage when his growth is rapid. Afterward it moderates and eventually stops. Okay? So the extrapolation that you’re making when you speak about billions of years—think, look at the time axis. Suppose the world has existed for 15 billion years, okay? More or less that’s the estimate.

[Speaker C] We’re talking here all the time about 6,000 years, not billions of years. What? We’re talking about only 6,000 years. No, no—15 billion years, not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regarding the claims, regarding the claims of creation of the world. No, one second—I’m speaking now apart from creation of the world.

[Speaker C] I’m talking—the world exists 15 billion years, let’s say, let’s say that’s correct, fine?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I look at some scientific process and observe it during the period of modern science—the whole period of modern science, from the 16th century, okay?—and I discover that something, over the last 400–500 years, which is modern science, behaves in a certain way. Meaning a certain function: the dependence of, say, acceleration on mass and force is linear. Fine? For 500 years already—since Newton, not 500, 300 years since Newton—it has passed the tests. But notice: 300 years relative to 15 billion years is far, far less than looking at a baby for a week and speculating where he’ll be at age twenty. Do you understand? 300 years relative to 15 billion years is a joke. Meaning, you’re looking at one point on the graph. Understand? And you assume that if here it is straight, then apparently it was straight all along, and then you go and make backward speculations, these extrapolations, and ask what was 15 billion years ago. Anyone who did this to me in a university lab would get a zero. A big fat zero. If you draw a conclusion from 300 years about 15 billion years, you are looking at a tiny section of the graph and saying the graph is a straight line. What are you talking about? It could be a crazy graph like this, and every tiny section always looks straight. Every small section looks straight—that’s what the derivative is built on.

[Speaker G] What, doesn’t it help that you have many tests? What? Doesn’t it help that you have many tests? It seems about five billion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today—today it’s like that. But it could be that a billion years ago it was different; everything was different, all the tests.

[Speaker G] Yes, but then it doesn’t remain coherent. Why not? Because in order for them all to be different and in the same way—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, why not? What’s the problem? There is a connection between them. So if they fit each other, then there is a connection between them. And that same connection existed then too, and they all changed accordingly—certainly if Einstein is right that there is a unified field theory, then basically there is only one law and all the others are just derivatives of it. So clearly there is really only one thing that changes, not more; everything else is just expressions of that change. So there is no way to rule this out. Now you can say that all my reason tells me this is wrong, it doesn’t happen, it does happen—we can discuss it—

[Speaker B] The intuition is very, very strong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but still I’m saying your intuition is worth about as much as mine and everyone else’s. Meaning, this is not a scientific determination in the same sense as my observing in a laboratory that the law of gravity is such-and-such.

[Speaker B] Is there anyone who has a different intuition? Is there anyone you know who has a different intuition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Intuition?

[Speaker B] I don’t know—or he read and interprets the Torah that way—but intuition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. But I’m saying again: what is that intuition based on? Think—what is that intuition based on? It’s based on conservatism. We are used to this; it’s a straight line; we assume that all those fifteen billion years are a straight line.

[Speaker G] Because many things intersect in such a way—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But all those intersecting things can change together. There’s no issue at all. Compress the—just look even at the flow of time itself. After all, Einstein says this happens; today it’s already a scientific finding in general relativity. The rate at which time flows changes, right? In the Big Bang there was a very high density of mass because the world was very concentrated before it began to spread out, so the rate of time’s flow changed. Now do you understand?

[Speaker B] I think I explained this once, but the law of nature didn’t change.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but if the rate of time’s flow changes, then what that means, for example—I bring this only as an example—there is some calculation by someone from the world of Torah and science too, I don’t remember exactly who, an American physicist, who made a calculation and translated it into our present time. If you make all the adjustments from the Big Bang until today and translate everything into the rate of time’s flow that we have today, you get that the world is approximately between nine thousand and ten thousand years old, something like that. Only what? At the beginning, in the Big Bang, at the beginning there was some enormous passage of time because it happened in a different way than it does today.

[Speaker B] It doesn’t matter, but he’s not saying that this law of nature was different from what it is today, according to the fixed law of nature. It doesn’t matter, the result…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, why doesn’t it matter? If time flows faster, how is that different from saying that the constants that determine the flow of time changed their value? Those are just two ways of looking at the same thing. What difference does it make? In the end, if you translate it into our time today, you’ll get a completely different number from fifteen billion years. So you can look at it from this direction; it’s like general relativity, where you can say either that there’s a gravitational force or that space is curved. Those are just two ways of looking at the same thing. What difference does it make? So you can say that the gravitational constant changed, or you can say that the world curved. What difference does it make? It’s the same thing. Fine, I’m not coming to defend this; my intuition also says that, but I relate to that intuition with a certain skepticism, because really that intuition has nothing to rely on. Based on what? Everything we see, right, obviously we have a tendency to think that what we see has always been and always will be. That’s a natural tendency. But precisely because I know that tendency, there’s reason to be suspicious of it. Who says it’s true? Okay. So to say that the age of the world is a scientific finding like a medicine that works, or like the law of gravity, or like an airplane, I think that’s exaggerated. Even though I still also tend to believe it, fine, but I’m saying that this comparison is, I think, just a bit, a bit exaggerated.

[Speaker C] To define the age of the world as fifteen billion—what? To define the age of the world as six thousand years ago, that is closer to something like the medicine already. Meaning, if I’m talking about nine thousand years ago, that’s already more like saying that if I get on a plane now it won’t crash. It’s closer, because I’m

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] talking about an order of

[Speaker G] magnitude of ten times, that’s reasonable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Very reasonable. Not ten times; it’s not ten times, because this is what I told you before: at the stage of the Big Bang, in the first three seconds of the Big Bang, billions of years passed in terms of our time today. You understand? So when you translate that into our terms today, you’ll get a timeline of ten thousand years or six thousand years, but that’s exactly the point—what time are you talking about? The timeline itself can change over time, and then you don’t know the length of the actual time over which you’re looking. These are often matters of definition.

[Speaker C] Fine, that’s why I

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] say I don’t know; these are things I have no way of knowing what is correct there. By the way, there might perhaps be some way to know if, say, we remain for another million or billion years and see that it really does stay constant the whole time, then what I’m saying now—that it wasn’t—would become more speculative. Right now, when we know three hundred years of modern science…

[Speaker G] No, why a million? Six thousand years is enough. What? Six thousand years is enough to show that it’s not after the mass is already…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not dense; the changes are already not so great. The expansion of space is already not what…

[Speaker G] Yes, but you don’t have to get to the expansion of space and all that; it’s enough also to get to the behavior of the Earth, where there are things that show they developed from more than six thousand years ago.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but the Earth is in a static state now. The Earth is no longer changing. So if you discover in another million years that it’s like today, that doesn’t mean anything, because six thousand years ago, when it was created, things happened here at speeds you can’t even imagine. It doesn’t say much. Fine. In short, so I’m saying: if there’s a small change over a billion years, we’ll measure it also on today’s Earth, because a billion years is already enough time for even a small change to show up. But I don’t know what the time scale there is, okay? These things need a bit more explanation; I’m just waving my hands. I’m only saying that this comparison scares me a little; people make it a lot. I think it’s a little troubling, because it’s not exactly the same thing. Meaning, there is a considerable speculative dimension in this claim about the age of the world—not to mention that what someone says here, that from every direction they arrive at the same place, is of course simply not true. It’s well known and famous: absolutely not. There are many contradictions between the calculations of the age of the world.

[Speaker C] But “the same place” can mean the same place of a million or a billion; that doesn’t matter for the sake of the discussion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For this argument, it doesn’t matter.

[Speaker C] It does matter. Six thousand years is not a billion and not a million and not ten billion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It matters because it means those calculations may be calculating something completely different. Maybe the timeline changes, and then maybe it could also be six thousand. You don’t know. And as long as you don’t resolve all these things…

[Speaker C] But it doesn’t have to be at that level of precision.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not about precision at all. The question is what you’re calculating. The question is what you’re assuming. If biology doesn’t agree with physics—and it doesn’t agree with physics today—and they always force adjustments because the assumption is that there was a Big Bang and that it’s supposed to fit, so they force the adjustments. By the way, this happens a lot, including the evolution trees, supposedly. The genealogical trees, for example, that they build for different species—where they came from. What is that? It’s an insanely speculative field. I spoke with Amyod—Amir is his name, right?

[Speaker G] Amyod Amir? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he dealt with this a bit once; he gave some little lecture at some conference I was at, and I talked to him a little afterward. He showed there that these development trees are based on so many assumptions that it’s simply a joke. Meaning, you build some model and you say what comes out of it. You don’t really have indications that it’s the right model. And every such model will give you a different tree—which species came from which species. There are many, many, many assumptions and speculations in the background here, and of course it is often presented as some clear and well-founded scientific fact, mainly, by the way, because of the theological arguments around it. It’s terribly sensitive for all sides, so each side is careful to say that everything on its side is solidly based and beyond challenge. Fine. He also says that simple common sense points that way. We see that every change in nature takes time. Everything that changes and develops changes gradually. If so, it stands to reason that the transition from chaos and void, from the primordial matter to the solidification of the materials in nature, and afterward the formation of all the creatures that came after them, all of it took place through extended processes that could last thousands and millions of years. Yes, he says simple common sense also says that things don’t happen all at once. That, of course, is under the assumption that the things that happened happened the way they happen today according to ordinary laws of nature, and not through some utterance of the Holy One, blessed be He, or something like that; otherwise this whole argument is irrelevant. Belief in the creation of the world is the belief that there was a beginning, that time once began. But how much time passed from the beginning? There is no fundamental difference between a small number and a large one. This, once I heard someone say, is something that is true. After all, Maimonides deals with the claim of the eternity of the world. Because in the Torah-and-science debate in Maimonides’ time, it was belief in the creation of the world versus belief in the eternity of the world, Aristotle’s view. Aristotle was then the scientific hegemony. Today it has been proven unequivocally that the science of that time was mistaken—what do I mean, proven unequivocally? That’s the consensus among all physicists. Meaning, there was a Big Bang; the world was created. And the idea that the world is eternal has been dropped. Why?

[Speaker G] But there is a theory that the world contracts and expands.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, fine, the universe…

[Speaker C] as you know it now was created.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Big Bang claims that it started from something. Every time you look it falls, but actually otherwise it doesn’t fall.

[Speaker C] But the Big Bang also started from something; even the Big Bang theories—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the Big Bang started from an explosion,

[Speaker C] from a singular point that began.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was a singular point, so it existed. From eternity—the singular point? There is no “from eternity”; the time axis began then.

[Speaker C] What is a singular point?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The time axis began there; space also began there, and the time axis too. It’s not that some world existed and the world

[Speaker C] began to expand into a given space. Space itself was created in the process of expansion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now Hawking is to introduce another time axis and define some kind of breathing of worlds, yes? A world collapses, a world develops, collapses, develops, and then in fact it could be that this does bring us back to eternity. Which is, of course, completely speculative, but maybe. But that’s speculative on a level where I can challenge even today’s laws of nature in the same way. Everything that falls, falls because I see it falling. What’s there outside my sight? Maybe it actually stays in the air? Did you see Toy Story? Or the exhibits in the museum—Night at the Museum?

[Speaker C] Something like that, this assumption of symmetries,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Night at the Museum—what happens there, the exhibits have parties at night when nobody is around, yes. Anything is possible. Or Andersen with Toy Story, yes—all the toys, when you’re not there, they’re actually living whole lives there, and when you arrive they turn back into plastic. A tin soldier, yes, a tin soldier. Fine, in any case, so he says there is no difference between a small number and a large number. There was creation; science also agrees that there was creation. What is the age? How much time has passed since then? Fine. But what? In the Torah it says six days. So he says: for that, Maimonides wrote his book, so that you should know that it is possible to interpret an expression in the Torah not according to its literal sense. And if reason requires this, and the ways of language allow it, then you are obligated to interpret it in a borrowed sense, allegorically. In our case, since the rational proofs are convincing that the world has existed for more than six thousand years, you must interpret “day” in the six days of creation to mean a period. You cannot and must not throw reason behind your back. Fine? Reason, science, or whatever it may be. So what is he actually claiming? That because of this whole issue—that processes take a very long time, and this is both common sense and a scientific finding, and so on—we have constraints that did not exist before Maimonides. We need to take Scripture away from its plain meaning. “Day” cannot mean one day. It is not possible that plant life was created from inanimate matter in a day. That doesn’t happen in a day; it’s a process that takes a very long time. Fine? So therefore, okay, the concept of “day” there is interpreted as a period and not as a twenty-four-hour day.

[Speaker C] What does “the language allows it” mean? If my reason tells me that the world has existed for billions of years, what difference does it make what the language says? Then it’s just a mistake.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, a mistake in the Torah?

[Speaker C] Could be, but what can I say? That reason…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I think. No problem. But then you leave the Torah, and that’s it. If you want to remain with both, you need an interpretation that fits. And if the language doesn’t allow it, then you’re stuck. You have to decide: either you give up your reason or you give up what is written.

[Speaker C] It all depends on the question of how far you’re willing to stretch and be…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine? You have to be honest with yourself, what can you do. It all depends on the degree of your faith in your reason versus the degree of your faith in the Torah. I think we once spoke about “judge every person favorably,” that the commentators there… Rabbi Chaim once said—they asked Rabbi Chaim, after all, everything created in the world has a purpose. Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, yes? So why was crooked reason created? And he said: in order to judge favorably. If you want to judge someone favorably, use crooked reason; find excuses for why what he’s doing was really okay, he’s not such a villain as he seems, and so on. The truth is that “judge every person favorably,” the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot, if you look there at the commentators, you’ll see commentators who explain it this way: “judge every person favorably” within the limits of common sense. You don’t have to be an idiot.

[Speaker C] Wait, so what does that mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now the question, of course, is what the limits of common sense are. Meaning, obviously that depends on the person. Suppose you see some supremely righteous person chasing a frightened girl with a knife, I don’t know what—so what do you conclude? That he wants to rape her? And you shoot him under the law of a pursuer? Or not? After all, with someone like that, it can’t be that he would do such a thing; it’s not reasonable.

[Speaker C] You don’t even need to say “judge favorably”; it’s just not reasonable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So then what? Apparently she forgot the knife at home, and he’s running after her simply to return the knife to her, or something like that.

[Speaker E] You can also wait and see at the end, yes,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then it’s a bit late. So I’m saying that this interpretation is the reasonable interpretation. It’s not that you need to be righteous and judge him favorably; rather, if he is righteous, then it really isn’t reasonable that he’s chasing her for that purpose. Meaning, if you saw Mother Teresa chasing people with two loaded rifles, machine guns, loaded machine guns, whatever—it would be clear to you that she isn’t going to shoot them and kill them, right? That’s a matter of straightforward interpretation; it’s not saintliness to judge her favorably. Someone who interprets it otherwise is mistaken. But if it were someone else, who doesn’t have that presumption of righteousness, then no—I would interpret it as indeed being pursuit. Okay, so the claim there is that basically judging a person favorably is within the limits of common sense. Fair enough—so what’s the point? Fine, obviously you need to apply common sense in interpretation; do we need commands for that? So apparently the truth is that first of all, you need to understand that we have some tendency to judge him unfavorably. So stop for a moment, think again, think about who the person is that you’re seeing, and check again whether you’re still convinced that this is the conclusion or not. That’s the first thing.

[Speaker C] Second, meaning you justify it in terms of rationality. We have a tendency, so you need to be straight—it’s still basically just: use your head, be logical.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You—the rabbi says—but the meaning here is that there is a commandment. You asked what the point of the commandment is. What commandment is there here? To instruct you to be rational, to stop our irrational impulse. That’s one thing. Second, in a place where you have several possible interpretations. I don’t know if they’re all equal; it’s hard to measure exactly, but they’re all on the table. It may very well be that they are all acceptable. So take the better possibility—why judge him unfavorably? Judge him favorably.

[Speaker E] Doesn’t it say, “Judge every person favorably”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, every person. If it’s exactly equal, what does “the favorable side” mean? But what is “the favorable side”? It’s a function of who the person is.

[Speaker C] So if it’s exactly equal, then why take דווקא the favorable side?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then assume a presumption of propriety, assume the person is righteous. Why judge him as wicked if you have no indication whatsoever that he’s like that? Okay, fine, we…