The Thought of Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel – Genesis – Lesson 10

“And God said: Let us make man” — the creation of man. “And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” The image of God is the intellect, as Maimonides explains, and that is the essential thing that exists only in man and not in plants or animals. It is not man’s external shape that is called form and image and so on. That is not what makes man unique, that he has a certain bodily form called shape and image — that’s at the beginning of Guide for the Perplexed — rather, it is the inner form, the essence of man, by which he resembles the Holy One, blessed be He, and the angels, who are separate intellects. Again, that’s Maimonides’ formulation, that the angels are separate intellects. And that explains the plural expression, “in our image, after our likeness.” Why do we say “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”? The Holy One, blessed be He, is essentially saying: we will make man in whose image? Not “in My image, after My likeness” — what is this plural, “in our image”? Because it is also in the image of the angels, since the angels are separate intellects, and man’s superiority lies in intellect. So therefore, it is in the image of the spiritual entities, okay, that’s “Let us make man in our image.”

Now there are a few points here that I think are worth thinking about. First, we talked about this when we went through Rabbi Kook’s For the Perplexed of the Generation. At the beginning he brings this Maimonides, or maybe he doesn’t even bring it, I don’t remember if he does or not, but I said that I think part of the book — well, not part of the book, the book itself is meant to be an updated or adapted Guide for the Perplexed for the current generation, for his generation, Rabbi Kook’s, okay? Because Maimonides is already an old Guide for the Perplexed. The perplexed have changed in the meantime. But not only have the perplexed changed, it’s not just a matter of presentation, right? It’s not just wrapping the same ideas differently. The answers themselves are also different. It’s not only presenting the answers differently; the answers are different.

At the root of roots there, it seemed to me you could see it in several places in that book, For the Perplexed of the Generation: for Maimonides, the image of God in man — that which defines human form — is the intellect, while for Rabbi Kook it is the will. Not the intellect. And in my humble opinion Rabbi Kook is right here. That is, I think that — well, I’ll get to that in a moment. One more remark, a second one: intellect, at some level or another, also exists in other creatures. Fine, you can teach them primitive things — apes, whatever — but some kind of thought, in one form or another, may exist there too, some kind of judgment. You want to jump onto a tree, you ask where to put your hand, where to put your foot — that too is some kind of judgment. Okay, so at some level, maybe a low one, perhaps that kind of intellect also exists in other creatures. So the difference is, in a certain sense, maybe quantitative. Fine, there are quantities that become qualities, but there is something to that.

Now, will by its essence has to be free. And if it isn’t free, then it isn’t will. You might have a feeling of will, but if it’s not something free, something you yourself decided you want, but instead it simply arises within you in a deterministic conception, as described in deterministic thought, then it’s not will.

Now the assumption — and again, I don’t know — but when you talk about intellect, this isn’t Aristotle’s intellect, it’s an intellect with wanting in it, and it’s an intellect of knowing what is right and what is not right. Yes, but it’s not — it’s not some kind of supercomputer, that’s not what I said. It’s an ability, it’s an ability to distinguish. The difference between Maimonides’ intellect and Aristotle’s intellect is exactly this: the will. Because otherwise it really is — I don’t know, I don’t know Maimonides’ views well enough, but that wasn’t my impression.

I don’t think that’s right. He talks about intellect in Aristotle’s sense, same thing. All these statements are Aristotelian, after all. True, but if you can say there is something Jewish in Maimonides, it is exactly this point: that his intellect is not mere intellect, but a willing intellect. Where do you see that? If you have sources where he says it clearly. That’s the debate. In the end it’s Aristotle, Aristotle, until at the very end there’s this thing called will. I don’t know such a thing in Maimonides, and again, I don’t know him well enough to really get into it in depth. But it seems to me that in the end what Rabbi Kook is trying to do is present another model, or a more updated one, for what is called the human image — and that image is not intellect but will. And there too we saw implications, and he returns to this in other places as well.

Now here, regarding intellect, I still want to qualify what I said before. We also talked about this once, I think — I gave that example that once in Haaretz there was some article about the mathematical ability of birds, or I don’t remember what exactly, that know how to navigate, solve differential equations, all kinds of things like that. So I said that water, in my opinion, has a much higher intellectual ability than birds, because the Navier-Stokes equations are more complicated than birds. And water solves them all the time. Meaning, obviously that kind of thing is not called intellect. There’s some kind of mistake here. In other words, that sort of thing is not called intellect.

Now again, I don’t know about birds. It could be that they exercise judgment the way we do — I’ve never been a bird. That’s not my impression; I don’t think that’s the situation. In my opinion the comparison should go the other way: we are birds, not that the birds became human. Meaning that our own act of thinking is basically a mechanical act embedded in us, except that in us there is a brain embedded with greater computational abilities than those of birds. But that still isn’t the result of a decision, the exercise of judgment. Because what parallels choice in the value sphere, its counterpart in the factual sphere, is judgment. When I see, say, a collection of facts and decide that this means the correct theory is this one, or that the correct theory is another one, and infer some conclusion from them — one could see that as the result of mechanical calculation. In other words, facts enter my brain, it does some kind of calculation, and it outputs a theory. If that were so, then we would be birds. Our abilities would not really be abilities.

And by the way, even if we are aware of them, that doesn’t matter. Awareness here neither adds nor subtracts. Because if the calculation itself is done by the brain, then even if I’m aware of it, if awareness takes no part in this calculation, in the decision, in the exercise of this judgment — whether this way or that — but it is simply the result of a calculation, as is usually understood in neuroscience research, then we too really are birds, or stones, or water. It makes no difference. The difference is only quantitative.

I think that is precisely the point: human beings, because they have will — and that is what distinguishes them, assuming it’s true, from other creatures — can decide about values, about whatever, about other things. They can also exercise judgment in the factual context. When I solve a differential equation, I’m not operating a mechanical mechanism the way a bird does — after all, a bird doesn’t solve a differential equation at all, it just flies. It flies according to whatever, I don’t know, whatever is embedded in it takes it to various places. So I’m not talking about awareness. Even if it were aware of what it was doing, it would still be a bird.

I’m talking about whether you are aware of what the brain is doing, versus whether the brain really does it, or whether awareness itself takes some part, whether your soul itself takes some part. You are sitting before a dilemma: should you fly here, fly there, flap your wings this way, at this height, or at a lower height? If you do it in a way that simply comes out of your nature, then you are a bird. If you decide and examine these two things, exercise judgment and reach a conclusion or a calculation — it doesn’t matter — but you decide to do the calculation, you choose which calculation to do, which mathematical model to build for the phenomenon before you, then that means the calculation comes only after you have decided what to calculate and how to calculate it. After that, yes, you have computational abilities, fine, that’s true. But without the first part, which comes before the calculations, you are not intelligent. Intelligence is not that.

What is defined today as intelligence, in intelligence research or in computer science — and they do a lot of research into intelligence there — what they are studying is the second part, the ability to calculate. And that exists in birds and in apes too, and therefore from their point of view there is no difference. And that is what I remarked before: that birds and apes also have intelligence, only maybe lower than that of human beings. That’s all. But they still have it.

Now according to what I’m saying now, once I understand that will is really the point that distinguishes man from other creatures, that changes the whole dimension of intellect and intelligence too. It brings will into the difference on the plane of whether you have intellect or don’t have intellect. Have or don’t have — not on the quantitative plane, whether you are smart or not smart, but whether you have intellect. Whether you are genuinely intelligent or whether you have no intelligence. A bird doesn’t have an IQ of twenty; it has an IQ of zero. That’s what I’m claiming. Not twenty. Because twenty IQ means you exercise judgment, you’re just weak at it, you’re not very good at it. But a bird doesn’t exercise judgment. It is simply built in a certain way, except that the abilities embedded within it are relatively inferior to the abilities embedded, say, in more sophisticated creatures, okay? That doesn’t mean this is lower intelligence and that is higher intelligence. It isn’t intelligence at all. It is zero intelligence — both in lower creatures and in more advanced ones, if I’m right.

So the point is that intellect and will — and here I return to what you maybe wanted to say about Maimonides, though again I don’t know, I’m not enough of an expert in Maimonides — there is some dimension of will within intellect. Will and intellect, or intellect and will — I think I wrote this in one of the books.

By the way, why are you so sure? Suppose that a mouse is placed in front of a trap. Sometimes you see the mouse hesitating — is it a trap or not? Maybe not. I’m just saying that… In other words, if it has hesitation, and in the end it decides yes to go toward the trap or not, then it has… No, I’m saying: if that is really the case, then the mouse has intelligence. I’m not saying not, not necessarily not. Not necessarily not. I’m only saying that at least in the common conception of animals — try to define the concept of intelligence. I don’t mind if a mouse has intelligence. I’m describing the mouse here the way people usually describe it. As people usually describe it, it seems at first glance that it has intelligence, but it doesn’t.

Now the question is: what is the real mouse? Does the real mouse truly have intelligence? I don’t know. I tend to think not, but I don’t know. It could really be that it does make decisions to some degree and has what is called judgment. I’m only saying that if this really is the case, then we need to understand that the same problem that exists when we talk about freedom of will — after all, the fundamental problem the determinists ask, and it really is a hard question. That’s the question. Not the hard question really — everything else is just talk. The really hard question is: how can it be that an electron moves without a force acting on it? That is really the question.

When you are in a given state, and you say that from this given state I can go either here or there, that means that this given state does not dictate the physical act that will happen immediately afterward. But in the physical conception, the physical action — say, the first electron that begins to flow from the brain to give an order to the hand to move, or the leg to move, or something like that — requires some field to activate it, some force to activate it. A particle doesn’t move unless a force acts on it.

Now to accept the concept of free choice is essentially to accept the fact that an electron moves without a force acting on it — or that there is a force operating it, namely the will, but not a physical force, not a force from a physical source, okay? In contrast, the determinists or materialists claim no: every electron that moves is the result of a physical force acting on it, and our awareness is what is called an epiphenomenon, meaning it is an accompanying phenomenon. We are aware of what is happening, but awareness doesn’t do it; it is secondary. The process happens in the brain — meaning it is all physical reactions. There is nothing beyond physics. Or biology. Or biology, yes, exactly. But materiality, let’s call it that.

But what exactly is the claim of determinism? In what terms does it belong to the system of matter? It’s kind of a tautology, meaning as soon as you think you expect to discover it from matter, then you expect to see… No, no, no — that is exactly the point people miss. When you perform an action, when you as a human being choose to perform an action, the action you perform is a physical action, not a mental one. But if the claim of psychophysics, say, is that there is some interface here that we don’t know how to explain, but it exists. Okay, but what is the meaning of that interface? That the first electron that moves on the way to the physical action you are about to do, the bodily action you are about to do, moves without there being a force that moved it. A force of will, not a physical force. Yes, not a physical force, yes, that’s what I’m saying. That contradicts the laws of physics. That’s the claim.

Now the question is whether you are willing to say that. And I am willing to say that, although it’s a little hard for me too. But I say that I am so convinced that I have free will that I say yes, I am willing to say it. Even though it’s pretty hard, certainly for someone raised on physics. As a physicist, yes. It’s hard to say such a thing. That is the price of libertarianism. In other words, that is the price, that is the real question. Everything else around it is just talk. That is the real question: can there be an electron that moves without there being a physical field acting on it? That is the question.

Now I say: assuming we have will, and will means free will — unfree will is not will, it’s just a euphemism, okay? — then that means I accept this: that an electron moves without a physical force acting on it.

Now notice what I’m saying now: what I said before, exactly the same thing happens not in the realm of willing but in the realm of thinking. Because birds do complicated calculations of navigation and all that, but when the electrons move around in their heads and perform those calculations, those electrons move only because of physical forces. In other words, everything is built into them, programmed into them, and that’s what they do. That’s all. Therefore, there really is no first electron there that moves because the bird decided it wants to use the method from the toolbox located in this part of the brain and not the toolbox located in that part of the brain.

In the end I do use a toolbox located in the brain, but the claim is that there is someone using it. It is only a toolbox. Just as I walk by means of my legs, I think by means of my brain. But that doesn’t mean the brain is the thought, okay? And it also doesn’t mean the brain even fully carries out the thought; it only brings it into effect. The intellect has first to decide that I am using the technique of a differential equation, or something like this or that. Like a computer doesn’t compute. Exactly. A computer only executes what the software tells it to do, exactly. So who produces the software? People think the software too is hidden within us, and that in essence we are just a computer. And the question is: who is the programmer? Do we also have a dimension of programmers, or are we only programmed?

You need to understand that even in the realm of thought, exactly as in the realm of ethical choice — will, values, and so on — we are facing the same question. Is there an electron — a thinking electron, not an electron of willing in this case, though it doesn’t matter — is there an electron that moves not because there was some field there that moved it, an electric field, a physical field that moved it, but because I decided it would move? That is what is called judgment.

And I am now claiming that judgment — here I’m speaking in the factual realm, not the moral realm, which would be moral judgment, but factual judgment — there is before me a collection of data, and I ask which theory is correct. I have several possible ways of thinking about which theory is correct. I exercise judgment and arrive at the conclusion that I think this is the correct theory. Is that judgment merely the result of a neural structure within me doing a calculation and taking me to that conclusion, and if someone else reaches a different conclusion that is simply because his brain is built differently? That’s all — we are just slightly different machines. That is the materialist conception.

Okay, and what I am basically trying to say is that contrary to what maybe I too once thought — and I think many people think this — free choice does not exist only on the plane of values. Leibowitz always said that the conclusions of our thinking, scientific thinking, are forced upon us. I don’t think he was right. It’s not true that they are forced upon us. If they were forced upon us, then how could we change them? How can we reach conclusions that say they’re not correct? On the contrary, I claim that exactly there you have the same process, or a parallel process to the process of choosing between values. There too I decide to move the first electron, not a physical field. And that is what I call judgment — again, scientific, factual judgment, not ethical or moral judgment or anything like that.

If that is really so, then I somewhat erase the comment I made earlier, that what distinguishes man is specifically will and not intellect, because intellect at some level or another also exists in lower creatures. The claim, if I am right in this, is that this is not true. They have no intellect at all. What they have is the computer with the software. Someone programmed them and they perform the action, but that is not called intelligence. Intelligence means deciding how to perform the action, whether to perform the action, which action to perform under given circumstances. That is what is called intelligence. And then of course you also need the capacity to implement it. A person may decide that he needs to solve a differential equation but not know how to solve it. So of course you also need technical ability, logistical ability, exactly. You need your computer; you need a powerful computer. But a powerful computer is not enough. You need a programmer. You need the programmer to tell this golem what to do. Without that, it doesn’t work.

And if that is so, then maybe indeed intellect too distinguishes man and not only will. That’s what I wanted to say.

Rabbi, it seemed to me you wanted to say that will generates a field. What problem is there with that? After all, a gravitational field also happens. No — an electron has to move an electron; a force has to move an electron. A force has to, but that force has a source. A physical force has sources. The will. No, the laws of physics determine that physical forces have sources. For example, the force of gravity has a source: mass. Mass exerts gravitational force. Without mass there is no gravitational force. Are you trying to tell me that a gravitational force will appear here without there being mass generating it? No, there is a source that — it — it is not on the plane of fields at all, okay, and it generates a field.

Okay. In the book too I mentioned two formulations. In the end I said that I’m more comfortable — I said it doesn’t really matter essentially, but I’m more comfortable with the field formulation. That is, the field that activates the electron is a physical field. Right. But the sources of the physical field are not charged particles, say in the case of an electric field, but the will. The will generates a field. I don’t know, I’m more comfortable thinking of it that way than saying that will moves an electron with no force there at all. It’s just a matter of — I don’t know if it’s really essential. Right, it’s not essential, it’s the same thing. It’s more comfortable that way, but it also, to the same degree, contradicts physics. That too contradicts physics. Physics also says that no field is created without charge sources. Yes, that too is another physical law. In other words, there’s no difference. Just as a particle doesn’t move without a physical force, so too a physical force isn’t created without sources. If you don’t have charged sources, there is no electric field around, meaning these are the laws of physics.

So you need to understand: there is a price to pay here, and it’s not an easy price for someone who knows and accepts the scientific worldview. But that’s the price if you want to be — well, I took this up in the book and tried to show that it’s not terrible, there’s the principle of causality, I did some sort of analysis there. But still, in the bottom line there is something here that goes against all of our intuitive worldview.

Which book? The Science of Freedom. The Science of Freedom. On free will, yes. I know it, I wrote a book on it — freedom of will, free choice, okay.

But I read that Leibowitz argued that there is no free choice in intellect, that he drew some conclusion from Maimonides saying that there is a positive commandment to know that there is a God. He held that from here he reached a rather severe conclusion: that a person cannot err in intellect. Because if a person could err in intellect, then he could say — how can you come with claims against Eskimos who didn’t keep the seven Noahide commandments? They never heard of Noah, or his commandments, or anything — what do you want from them? What? What? How can you come with claims against them? The Eskimo dies, comes to the heavenly court, and they say to him: tell us, what about the seven Noahide commandments? “Who is Noah? What do you want from me?”

So Rabbi Elchanan’s claim was that in principle every person ought to arrive at it. And to arrive at it — there, it seems to me, he doesn’t say through intellect, but rather that you see a complex world, there must be a cause for it, so you are obligated to go around the world searching for what the cause is, and you will get to the Jews, and they will explain to you what the cause is and what needs to be done, and then you are obligated to heed them. That’s the thesis. Others would say that because reason, or morality, or whatever it may be, should necessarily lead you to this matter, and if you do not do so, then there is some element of culpability in any case. That’s the claim.

But I’m not sure I agree with that. Because precisely because of what I said before: our thinking is not forced upon us. If our thinking were forced upon us, then what is man’s superiority over beast? I think that in the end you have to make a decision. Now if you reach the decision that you do not believe, then you really are coerced, and no one should come with claims against you; you are coerced. Certainly coerced, fine, like I told once. And his question is an important and great question, but your claim that thinking is not compelled — isn’t that what we have in Spinoza and Kant? That doesn’t mean each person can just say he thought this way. No, but there is a conclusion here; this question already starts sounding like this narrative and that narrative. No, fine, but should every thinking person have to reach the conclusion that there is a God? I don’t want to answer that question specifically. Why not? Answer specifically. That’s what I’m asking about, because let’s be broader for ourselves, not dive down too much. But that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I’m talking about faith. And that was the question.

So I say now: someone tells me, “I don’t believe in divinity; I arrived at that conclusion.” And then someone says, “Impossible! How can you demand that the Eskimo believe in God? That means it’s forced upon him. It can’t be. If he didn’t reach that conclusion, it must just be the evil inclination, that’s all.” And I say: not necessarily. It could be that he reached a different conclusion; I don’t know. I’m saying it could be that he reached a different conclusion and he is coerced. That’s it. There is no claim against him. There is a claim against someone who reached the conclusion that there is a God and still does not serve Him.

So that recalls the language of Maimonides and the Raavad about a heretic — where he followed the plain meaning of the verses, right? What’s the guilt? Yes, what’s the guilt? Yes, Maimonides said he was a heretic, and the Raavad says: why call him a heretic because he followed the plain meaning of the verses? Yes. So it seems that Maimonides… Right, right. So there is some difference in approach here. Maimonides is very demanding, he’s kind of Leibowitzian in that sense. He is sure that intellect dictates truths, necessary truths. There is one truth; no one can reach another conclusion unless he made a mistake somewhere. That can happen. But the question is: is the mistake in intellect or in will? The question is whether the mistake is in intellect or in will. Always from the will. If the mistake is from intellect, intellect does not err. That’s the whole idea — that intellect reaches the conclusion necessarily; it’s a calculation, it is forced on you. So only in will? Obviously. The will inclines you toward a bad picture. A bad will. Right. It distorts things for you and prevents you from reaching. And all in all, we know there are such things. It’s obvious that there are such things. The question of whether it is always like that is another question. I don’t think it is always like that, but certainly sometimes it is. There is no doubt there are people who reach the conclusion that commandments should be observed and everything, and they don’t do it because they have no strength, because it doesn’t seem right to them, it doesn’t suit them, whatever. And vice versa. Doesn’t matter. That’s the question.

The question is whether in animals this works through that connection, or whether it’s only the… Animals will never do anything that begins in will; it will always be a reaction to something. Very true. And therefore I say that in animals these are machines. And therefore I say that in animals it is not intellect at a lower level, but no intellect, period. None. Intellect means operating the sophisticated system. It’s not enough that you have a sophisticated system; that is not called having intellect. Intelligence. Intellect, certainly it has — intellect in the sense of the size of the brain. Intelligence, okay?

So in the end what I’m saying is that what Maimonides says and what Rabbi Kook says are not so far apart. Because in both of these places, in the end, what distinguishes man — I’m going to formulate this now in a completely crude way, but I think there’s something to it — what distinguishes man is that he can move electrons without a physical force. And that’s all. Now this can happen on the plane of ethical choice, deciding on values or deciding within ethical dilemmas, and it can happen on the plane of scientific judgment, or academic judgment, or whatever, but with respect to facts, okay? But what characterizes both of those places is that there is something in the physics of man that is different. Not really in his physics, but within his physics something else intervenes. And in animals — if I’m right that this is the nature of animals — that something is absent. There it is only the neurons operating.

Well, even I hadn’t thought of it that way: what distinguishes man is that he can move electrons without a physical force. That is man’s superiority over beast. So there are ethical implications and factual implications. Fine, okay, these are two different planes. Okay. Add it to the prayer book, in parentheses. Tell him to add in the morning, in parentheses: “I thank You that You gave me the power to move electrons without a physical field.”

“And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Rashi explains: and later it says, “And He took one of his ribs,” etc. — that’s Rashi’s language. “And later it explains, and later it says, ‘And He took one of his ribs,’ etc. Aggadic midrash: He created them with two faces in the first creation, and afterwards split them. And the plain meaning of Scripture here is to inform you that both were created on the sixth day, but it does not explain to you how they were created, and it explains it elsewhere.”

The plain meaning of Scripture, according to Rashi — what contradiction is there before the plain meaning? The contradiction is that here it says: “in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” That implies they were created together, male and female. And afterward, the story in chapter 2 is that He takes a rib from the man, and from it Eve is created. He did not create them together. The plain meaning of Scripture is that here he is describing it in general: He created male and female. The details of how exactly it happened are in chapter 2, that’s all. Here it is only the principled description, not a chronological description. The heading, exactly, the heading. That is the plain meaning of Scripture, let’s say.

The aggadic midrash, says Rashi, is the splitting — the idea that He created two faces and two sides, and then split them and created man and woman, yes. We already said that one should not remove a verse from its literal meaning — that’s the language of the Radal here — unless there are decisive reasons to do so. We’ve said that more than once. It seemed to Rashi that what the sages said about one human being created as both male and female was said by way of aggadah. Same thing — to him this looks like aggadah, not the plain meaning of Scripture, okay? Even though it says “male and female He created them,” you might have said, fine, that’s the plain meaning: “male and female He created them.”

By the way, it begins in that very same verse, right? “In the image of God He created him” — so He created one being. And afterwards: “male and female He created them” — so that’s two. So there would be room to say that this aggadic midrash about the splitting is the plain meaning of Scripture. It’s not aggadic midrash. “He created him” refers to the two-faced creature, and afterwards “male and female He created them” refers to the splitting, stage two, okay? But to Rashi this seems to be aggadic midrash, not the plain meaning of Scripture. The plain meaning of Scripture, as he says, is title and detail.

But according to the plain meaning of Scripture, what is told here is what happened later, what will be described in detail afterward in chapter 2. And indeed there is such a narrative mode in Scripture, and it could be that this is the explanation of the verse. But here we have no reason to remove the verse from its simple meaning. He wants to argue against Rashi that this aggadic midrash is the plain meaning, not the derash. But of course he is not reading aggadic midrash literally — don’t think that.

And what is the simple meaning of the verse to which the aggadic midrash is referring? That on the sixth day there was created a human being, male and female — that is, a bisexual creature. And we know that there are plants, and therefore also lower forms of animals, that are bisexual, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs and reproduce by themselves without a mate. And in that light we should understand the verse “in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” — that is, the human being was created both as “him” and as “them,” because male and female were created in one body. And this is what the sages meant when they said he was created double-faced.

And the intention is not that there was literally a man and a woman who were Siamese twins joined at the back. That description is by way of metaphor and figurative language. In Genesis Rabbah the language is clearer: Rabbi Yirmiyah ben Elazar said, “At the time when the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first man, He created him androgynous.” And “androgynous” — why is that clearer than the previous story? Because in the previous story one might have said it was really like Siamese twins, literally connected from behind — here the front side is male and the front side there is female, but they are just two human beings attached together.

A while back, one of the previous years, we spoke about separating Siamese twins, and I also wrote about it once. And Moshe Feinstein — in Philadelphia there was a case in ’76, Philadelphia ’76 — by the way, I never noticed, that’s the Sixers, right? So in 1976, in the Inquirer there was an article describing the matter, and it appears in his responsa. The first question that — when he heard about it, the first thing he asked the nurses was whether this was two people or one person. And it was one person with two heads. If it’s one person with two heads, then it’s easier, because essentially this is surgery on a person so that he can be healthy, that’s all. Not killing one person in order to save one person. And then doing surgery on him. That’s an interesting claim.

So that is exactly the distinction he is making here. Two people stuck together are Siamese twins. An androgynous being is one person who has two kinds of sex characteristics, but it is one person. That is why he says this is a clearer, sharper formulation. “As it is written: male and female He created them” — the midrash explains this as referring to the androgynous.

The dual-sexed character is not only physiological but also mental. The human being that the Holy One, blessed be He, created was both male and female. This is well known from Jung. Jung always talks about the feminine side present in the male and the masculine side present in the female. He was both male and female in the way he thought and felt.

Today it’s very popular, all the discussions around a person’s gender as distinct from their physiological sex, which is not always the same thing. It could be that your physiological sex is male, but in gender you feel female — you are actually a woman. Are there mental differences between male and female, or are both simply human? The human being from the outset had a mixed mentality, a mixed mentality.

In the words of the sages, however, it is said that the male went in front. The front of this double-faced human being was male — all of which is only metaphor. So he is saying: what does that mean? It means that the masculine mentality was the dominant one in this hybrid creature, but still it was one mixed personality.

This also reminds me of a passage from the book. There were claims — for some reason lately I hear them less — but before all the Libet experiments, for those who know, whatever, the experiments that tried to show — or didn’t try to show, but seemed to show — that man has no free choice, the discussion of freedom of will revolved around split-brain. Split-brain experiments. There are conditions in which the brain is, say, split into two between the hemispheres, and then really fascinating phenomena emerge. The two hemispheres don’t communicate. So one person reacts like the right hemisphere and one like the left hemisphere. Two people with different personalities, different outlooks — one will be Republican, the other Democrat. Lots of things like that can happen there.

And the claim is that this essentially means that all we are is the brain. That is the materialists’ claim: they say this means that basically we are brain. The proof is that when the brain is split, we become two. So this means our Republicanism is the brain; it isn’t the intellect, it isn’t our thought, but our brain. And when the brain is split, suddenly I become half Republican, half Democrat, okay?

So anyway, I argue why I don’t think this is proof. But among other things I’ll speak exactly about this dual-faced aspect. After all, it is obvious that even a Republican person understands the arguments for the Democrats, and vice versa — Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, right? But in the bottom line he decides in favor of Republicans or Democrats, whatever. Okay, when the brain is split — now one side, the right side, represents, I think, Republicanism in my map at least, and the left side, yes, the left side, represents democracy, the feminine side.

And once it is split, what happens is this: I have one soul, and within it there is a feminine side and a masculine side, a Republican side and a Democratic side — forbidden to say, but okay, whatever — these two sides. Now when the brain is split, what happens is that the Republican wing within me, of this one person, comes to expression through this hemisphere, because that is the hemisphere responsible for expressing or representing or actualizing the Republican or masculine thoughts. Okay? And this side comes to represent the other outlooks. But that doesn’t mean it has become two human beings.

It only means that the representation of the two faces that exist within one person — faces that are usually in conflict within him and ultimately have to arrive at one bottom line, a hundred reasons this way and a hundred reasons that way — now those have split. One wing handles the hundred reasons for purity and one wing handles the hundred reasons for impurity, and there is no connection between them, no one connecting them. So the implementation of the matter — meaning the integration that is made in the practical expression of the common human being — has been split. Just as if you have no legs, you can’t walk. So what does that mean? That you aren’t a human being? If you have no brain, you can’t think — not in the sense that you can’t think. It could be that my intellect does reach a conclusion whether I am Republican or Democrat, but it cannot appear. The decisions I receive will always come through the brain. Intellect receives them by means of the brain, just as I walk by means of my legs. Once it’s split, then one leg limps — you can walk only left and not right. The right is severed. But that doesn’t mean there are two human beings, one who knows how to walk right and one who knows how to walk left. Rather, within the same person there are both of these aspects. They are what compose the whole, and the whole is the person, not two people. Okay? To split them is, on the contrary, to do something artificial.

They say this about Jacob and his sons too, that each one took some aspect of Jacob. This whole totality was all present in Jacob. A kind of deterministic conception in a certain sense, saying that there cannot be in the child something that wasn’t in the father. Therefore, as we become more and more split — and over the generations this keeps happening — then basically the greater consciousness, the complex, complete, encompassing thing that was in Adam the first man, who really contained everything, becomes split among his descendants, and each one takes something. And so now different opinions and disagreements and different aspects and different conceptions arise, but in Adam the first man it was all within him. So was he confused? He wasn’t confused. He had judgment. He had sides this way and sides that way, and in the bottom line he had to make a decision.

It seems everyone understands this, only in a finer or coarser way; only the dosage changes. Right. I think that’s the more correct conception. That’s usually how people describe it. It’s obvious that on each side there is also a little of the other measure, but one side is stronger. It’s like, say, in the conception of sefirot in Kabbalah. There are ten sefirot. Within each sefirah there are smaller sefirot. That is, there is Yesod within Malkhut, and Hod within Malkhut, and Netzach within Malkhut, and so on. What does that mean? That within Malkhut there is a certain dimension of Netzach or Hod. That is exactly the same Jungian conception: that within every male there is a feminine dimension, but in him the dominant thing is the masculine; and in a woman the dominant thing is the feminine. But basically there is something of both sides in each of them.

And afterward he had one complex personality. And afterward: “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a help opposite him.” Not that the Holy One, blessed be He, regretted anything — everything was revealed and known before Him in advance — but this is simply the way the development of events is described. It was necessary to reach the stage of separating the male and female so that each would have before him another person who is different from him. That is better that way, fine?

But what follows from Rashi? What is more peshat-like to say? Was there something physiological? You say that for him this is not aggadah but peshat; it’s not aggadic midrash. It is the plainest possible plain meaning. It can still be aggadic midrash, because when he presents the peshat, he presents it in the form of a metaphor, as though there really were two faces. The claim is that in truth there weren’t literally two faces. I feel that in a certain sense that’s much more peshat-like; it’s not aggadah. To say that it’s an aggadic idea, but that it’s important to emphasize that there was still physical joining here — to me that’s a bit strange. Especially since he says it in the context of Rashi. If I go with you that it’s aggadah, and that the idea is such-and-such, but it’s important to me to say that there was nonetheless a physical joining — no, it’s not aggadah, it’s really peshat. Yes, he says it’s not aggadic midrash.

I do accept the idea of masculinity and femininity and so on, and he argues that this is the plain meaning of the verses, not aggadic midrash. And he claims that in practice there was a body physically joined? Double-faced in two directions? No, of course not. It’s a description, a figurative description. That is why I say he leaves here some dimension of aggadic midrash, because after all aggadic midrash is not telling me that there was a person with two souls running around inside him, but presents it as though there were two bodies attached. The form of presentation is aggadah; the content is peshat. Instead of saying it’s aggadah, I say it’s peshat. Exactly. Obviously the story here comes to convey an idea, not to describe some bizarre figure walking around. Yes, right. But you could say that this was aggadic midrash — maybe that’s what Rashi means too — aggadic midrash only in the sense that he did not erase the idea, but illustrated it through a physical metaphor. Not because he thought that wasn’t the truth. Fine, that’s one possibility.

What did I say once? I worked on this this morning and saw it. What is the difference between pilpul and derush? And what is the difference — I think we talked about this once, right? What is the difference between pilpul and derush? Aggadic midrash, by the way.

Pilpul is regular interpretation — correct interpretation. It is a valid inference, a valid analogy, a plausible inference whose conclusion is incorrect. And that is the simplest peshat, the simple interpretation, okay? It has this or that consideration, and you reach the conclusion that this is the interpretation of the verse. That is interpretation. That is what is called interpretation.

What is pilpul? Pilpul is when your inference is correct but the conclusion is false. From mezuzah to tzitzit: a doorpost that is obligated in mezuzah, all the more so should it be obligated in tzitzit! A kal va-chomer, right? The argument seems, on the face of it, a terrific argument, a kal va-chomer like people use all the time. But obviously the conclusion is not correct. That is pilpul. Pilpul is basically a kind of riddle. It says to you: look, I — it’s like a paradox. Let’s say Achilles and the tortoise. I give you a line of reasoning that seems very logical. Where is the mistake? Exactly. But obviously the conclusion is wrong. We all know that. I’m basically asking you a riddle. Show me what is wrong in this reasoning process. That, at least, is how I understand pilpul. Pilpul is a kind of riddle.

People don’t mean it seriously — well, maybe some do, certainly some do. But as far as I’m concerned, I love pilpulim. Every Sabbath I used to read the pilpulim of Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz — that was real Sabbath delight. A true delight. Today I came across one of those pilpulim, I said it this morning, so that’s why I’m speaking about these matters.

But in any case, it’s a riddle. And if you are a master of pilpul, then it will be very hard to point with your finger and say what exactly the problem is here. What’s wrong? How did you suddenly get to such an absurd conclusion? So it is basically a riddle.

Derush, on the other hand — so that was a correct inference with a false conclusion. Derush is an incorrect inference with a true conclusion. Therefore one does not refute derush. When someone comes with a sermon, and in the end the sermon takes some midrash, everybody understands that what he is saying about that midrash is nonsense. Yes, it’s obvious that — but derush in the sense of sermonizing, not in the sense of derash. Those are two different things. A vort on a midrash — everyone understands that this is not the interpretation of the midrash; it’s nonsense. But no one even raises a hand to ask why, because the conclusion is that one should be God-fearing and righteous and humble and keep the commandments and all that — and that is a correct conclusion. So fine, he hung it on this midrash or that midrash, but the conclusion is correct overall, so what’s the problem? What do I care whether the interpretation of the midrash is this way or that way?

And therefore often — by the way, this is related to the funeral I spoke about earlier — I often felt this way. Everyone agreed with the conclusion, so no one criticized the line of thinking by which we got there. Because the arguments were not much, I have to say, when there were arguments here and there. But the conclusion seemed so obvious to everyone that no one stopped to ask whether the logic of the argument actually holds water. Because what is pilpul? What difference does it make? In the end what matters is the conclusion. And the conclusion is correct.

Except that, of course, if that is so then the conclusion doesn’t teach us anything new. If we all know it is correct, then why are you speaking? You are not telling me anything new. And therefore derush is not refuted. What does it mean to refute derush? To say: look, in this midrash your explanation doesn’t quite fit because… Come on, don’t refute derush. After all, the conclusion is correct, so why do you care whether it fits the midrash or not?

Pilpul, though — that you certainly do refute, because the whole point of pilpul is the riddle. Put your finger on where what I said is not correct. I expect answers. That’s the whole idea of pilpul. It’s a challenge: solve the paradox, okay? That is the difference between pilpul and derush.

Now aggadic midrash — yes, the question is always whether it is derush or derash. Derush means sermonizing, vorts. Derash is a method. There is peshat; there is derash. That is a method. Derush is just vorts.

So is that definition of pilpul a real definition? Is the result in pilpul always false? I think so. Now many times there are shades of pilpul. For example, there is pilpul where you say: this is a method, let us investigate according to the method of Beit Shammai, let’s say, but not for practical Jewish law. That’s a borrowed use of the term pilpul. When I study not for practical Jewish law, sometimes people call it “to sharpen” or “to pilpul.” Fine. I’m talking about pilpul in the evaluative sense, where it’s incorrect learning — that’s pilpul. As people always say: your peshat is my derash and vice versa; what you say is pilpul and what I say is peshat, right? Well, yes — I think there really is such a thing as genuine pilpul. And not the pilpulim that Rabbi Ovadia — Rabbi Ovadia thought that the Ashkenazic analytical approach was pilpul. But I don’t think that’s right. I think it is a systematic and correct method, and you can argue with the conclusion, but…

By the way, Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz — did he think the results of his pilpulim were not correct? I don’t know. As I said before, I’m not at all sure. It could be that some of his novelties are exactly that. Although listen, he says things there — I gave you examples — that are not serious. I’m talking about the Avnei Nezer, not Ye’arot Devash, which is a book of sermons. In his responsa, Avnei Nezer — I think I once gave this example. What, Avnei Nezer? Ah, Avnei Nezer, sorry. Afterward I mentioned the Degel Avnei Nezer this morning and got confused. Yes, with Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz too there are pilpulim — in Tumim too you can find pilpulim. But I meant the Avnei Nezer.

In Avnei Nezer, for example in his responsa — I once heard this from Rabbi Zilberstein on a cassette. I was hospitalized in the hospital, I listened to a cassette of Rabbi Zilberstein, and there he told about various interesting questions that had come to him. A certain Jew whom I know personally — by chance — and he was a rosh yeshiva for ba’alei teshuvah, and he came — one of his students asked him a question. The student was a ba’al teshuvah; his friend was an archaeologist. And he came to visit him on the Sabbath, not religious, came to visit him on the Sabbath, and brought him a little Canaanite figurine, I don’t know what, from excavations, I’m not sure exactly what. And that was the story, although I think you’re not allowed to do that, but never mind, that was the story.

Zilberstein’s stories are apparently like Terumat HaDeshen, right? The kind of stories that probably never happened. But never mind. There can’t be so many interesting stories with the same person. But he’s an artist, yes, he has stories, who knows.

Anyway, so he asks him: tell me, so I broke it on the spot. The ba’al teshuvah — no nonsense — got this gift, and right there in front of the imagined eyes of the friend who brought him the gift, he smashed it. Smashed it, yes — destroying idolatry, of course. Then afterward he went to ask Rabbi Dessler, the rosh yeshiva — was that from the Torah level? Rabbi Dessler asked Rabbi Zilberstein whether that was correct, whether it was permitted to do on the Sabbath.

So he brought a contradiction in Sefer HaChinukh — and Avnei Nezer writes this — there is a contradiction in Sefer HaChinukh between women regarding the commandment to wipe out Amalek and women regarding the commandment concerning the seven nations. Regarding the seven nations, women are obligated like men — the destruction of the seven nations. But regarding the destruction of Amalek, women — “it is not the way of women to wage war”; from “when you go out,” “remember” — I don’t recall — he says there that it is not women’s way to wage war, and they are exempt from this, okay?

Now how can that be? If it is not women’s way to wage war, then also regarding the seven nations, no — what’s going on? So Avnei Nezer says this, in his responsa. I think he meant it seriously. He says: why do we need to kill the seven nations? We need to kill the seven nations so that we won’t learn from their ways, as the Torah says, so that they won’t cause us to stumble in idolatry, sexual immorality, all kinds of things like that. So essentially killing someone from the seven nations is a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah, labor not needed for its own intrinsic purpose. You kill him only so that he won’t cause you to stumble. Like trapping a snake, right? One of the cases that is exempt and permitted — Talmud, tractate Sabbath, daf 3 — one of the cases is trapping a snake. What is trapping a snake? You trap it not because you need the snake, but so that it won’t bite you, in order to protect yourself from it. So that is a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah, okay? There is a Rabbi Chaim on this, on trapping a snake. But anyway, in the simple sense that is a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah: trapping a creeping thing so it won’t sting me or something.

So he says: if so, then killing a Hivite is essentially a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah. So if now on the Sabbath a Hivite appears before me, then I need to kill him, because it’s a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah, it is permitted to kill, and it is a positive commandment to kill him because one must wipe out the seven nations. And there is no Sabbath prohibition of taking life, because it is a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah. So it applies even on the Sabbath. And if it applies on the Sabbath too, that means that this commandment applies all seven days of the week; it is not time-bound, and therefore women are obligated.

But in the commandment of wiping out Amalek, wiping out Amalek means killing for the sake of killing, not in order that they not cause you to stumble, but by its very nature… So on the Sabbath you can’t, because taking life is a prohibition. A positive commandment does not override the Sabbath prohibition, because it is not time-bound, a positive and negative commandment involving stoning, and so forth. So one does not do this on the Sabbath; it is only six days, so it is time-bound, and women are exempt. That is what he says in his responsa. That is how he resolves it.

So Rabbi Zilberstein took this Avnei Nezer and said to him: what you did by breaking the idol is only a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah, only a rabbinic prohibition. So it’s not so terrible. Yes, not so terrible. And maybe the commandment to destroy idolatry overrides the rabbinic prohibition you transgressed. Even though there are places — for example under a collapsed building and so on — where we see that the sages upheld their words even in the face of a positive commandment.

But why is this thing obviously absurd? It is absurd first of all because it’s not correct, and second because Sefer HaChinukh himself says that women are exempt from wiping out Amalek because it is not women’s way to wage war, not because it is a time-bound positive commandment. You are explaining Sefer HaChinukh and forgot that Sefer HaChinukh says the reason is that it is not their way to wage war. So did he mean it seriously? I don’t know. He writes it in his responsa; it’s not a book of sermons. He writes it in his responsa. There are other things there too. In Avnei Nezer he was a genuine deep-rooted Pole — there are really pilpulim there. He was very sharp, a great Torah scholar and a holy man, an amazing Torah scholar. But there are things there that — he was an amazing rebbe, yes, yes, a Hasidic master, astonishing.

And what about Eglei Tal too? In Eglei Tal too? No, I think Eglei Tal is a more conventional book. But I’m saying it’s possible to question whether the pilpulists mean it seriously. Maybe they do, I don’t know. But for me it is a challenge. In other words, it is a challenge to point out what isn’t right. By the way, that’s a question. Now try to think: what exactly is not right in this argument of the Avnei Nezer? It is a melakhah she-einah tzerikhah legufah to kill that person, right? And on the Sabbath then you should, because you need to kill them. So if so, indeed — let’s leave aside Sefer HaChinukh, since he does not base it on a time-bound positive commandment but on the fact that it is not women’s way. What is not right here? You can raise points, yes, you can explain why, but it’s not trivial.

That is, real pilpul is something where often the thing is called pilpul not because the result is incorrect — that’s why I said I was in the middle of explaining a nuance — but even where you understand that the inference itself is not right, you still don’t know how to put your finger on where. I would still call that pilpul. Sometimes you say: the result is not right — Achilles catches the tortoise, leave me alone with all your business, obviously that’s not right. Fine. But still, try to find where I erred in the calculation. I showed you that he doesn’t catch him; now you have to find it.

That’s when I have an indication from the result: the result is clearly wrong, so obviously something went wrong along the way, okay? But sometimes in the argument itself I understand that it’s not right, yet I still — it’s like what Bertrand Russell once said about the ontological proof, the proof for the existence of God. He said it is much easier to say that it is not correct than to put your finger on where it is defective. That is much harder. He said that as an out-and-out atheist, okay? So that’s a kind of pilpul — beautiful pilpul.