Jewish Law and Ethics – Lesson 3
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- [0:06] Defining value and the problem of incommensurability
- [1:21] Value conflicts: saving a life versus the Sabbath
- [3:02] The need for a common measure in order to build a hierarchy of values
- [6:39] A mathematical analogy: the lack of a common measure between numbers
- [16:00] Practical decisions: the actor and the cigarettes example
- [21:46] The Talmud on saving a life and the Sabbath: analysis of the sources
- [28:49] The Mishnah Berurah and the attitude toward gentile hostility
- [30:05] Modern halakhic decisors: prohibition of the Sabbath because of hostility
- [31:48] Shmuel versus Rabbi Shimon: life versus the Sabbath
- [37:22] The incommensurable conflict between the values of life and the Sabbath
- [38:57] The Talmud and a computational model of values
- [53:00] Conclusions and lessons from the topic / passage
Summary
General overview.
The text defines a value as the most basic foundation of moral reasoning, where the chain of “why” stops, and therefore a value is not instrumental and cannot be rationalized. It presents the problem of incommensurability: there is no common yardstick for different values, and therefore no hierarchy of values that allows conflicts to be decided in a measurable way. Even so, it argues that in practice human beings do in fact decide value conflicts and feel that the decision is not arbitrary, and the text seeks to explain how such decisions are possible. It proposes two mechanisms that allow decision without building a full hierarchy: “tricks” of bypassing through translation/conversion, and “territorial” considerations in which a certain value simply does not apply in a given domain, so there is no conflict of one value overriding another.
The definition of value and non-instrumentality
The text states that a value is the stopping point of moral reasoning, the place where there is no more fundamental justification and so one can no longer ask “why.” It gives as an example the prohibition against killing, which is justified by saying that life has value, and explains that when we ask “why does life have value,” the answer is that there is no deeper reason. It presents the connection to Leibowitz and concludes that a value is not a means to achieve some other goal, and therefore a value cannot be rationalized.
Value conflicts and a hierarchy of values
The text presents value conflicts such as saving a life versus the Sabbath, and also Sartre’s dilemma between helping his elderly mother in Paris and joining de Gaulle’s army. It describes the simplistic conception of deciding by means of a hierarchy of values in which a higher value overrides a lower one, and emphasizes that it is presenting this schematically while ignoring additional considerations. It argues that in order to build a hierarchy of values one needs a common measure that allows different values to be measured in the same “units,” but in real conflicts this is lacking.
The problem of incommensurability and the distinction from mathematics
The text defines incommensurability as the absence of a common measure for different values, and explains that the reason is that values are not directed toward a shared external purpose, so there is no way to measure them. It argues that the problem is so deep that it is not merely difficult to reach an answer, but that some questions have no answer at all, like the example “which is greater, human kindness or the water in the ocean.” It adds a mathematical aside about irrational numbers, and clarifies that although pi and e do not have a “common measure” in a certain sense, one can still rank which is greater, whereas with values “there is no yardstick at all,” so there is no way to compare them.
Leibowitz, disconnecting life support, and the difficulties in deciding conflicts
The text mentions Leibowitz’s article about disconnecting life-support devices and presents the claim that the value of life is absolute, unconditional, and cannot be qualified or placed opposite another value in order to permit disconnection. It raises the possibility that Leibowitz would say that in a conflict between two different values, one will prevail over the other by means of a hierarchy of values, but argues that this too is problematic because there is no way to build such a hierarchy. It describes the harsh conclusion that if there is no hierarchy and no correct decision, then practical decisions are like flipping a coin, and such a decision is not really a “decision” at all but an arbitrary action for the sake of functioning.
A verse in the Torah and the claim that “there is no answer”
The text argues that if incommensurability is essential, then even a verse in the Torah cannot solve it, because the problem is not ignorance but the absence of an answer. It illustrates this by claiming that even if the Torah were to “say” which is greater, the water in the ocean or human kindness, it would be meaningless because the matter has no answer. It uses this to sharpen the distinction between a situation where there is a truth but it is hard to reach, and a situation where there is no truth of that kind at all.
The fact that we do decide in practice, and ethical realism
The text argues that despite the logic of “there is no decision,” in practice people do struggle and arrive at decisions in value conflicts, and usually do not experience them as arbitrary. It presents the assumption that this feeling serves as a cognitive tool, and connects this to the claim that valid morality requires ethical cognition or ethical realism. It formulates a position according to which at least some conflicts have a right and a wrong decision, even if there is no clear algorithm for how to reach it, and even if the decision is presented as limited to a particular “system.”
The example of Yishai Blank? Wait no, Yishai Wosner, cigarettes, and the Mrs. Doubtfire example
The text brings an example from Yishai Wosner about an actor who receives an enormous offer to appear in a cigarette commercial and consults his doctor friend, where the doctor distinguishes between his “doctor hat,” which opposes smoking, and his “friend hat,” which encourages taking the money. It proposes an intuitive decision according to which the harm of a few cigarettes is negligible compared to a million dollars, while setting aside the moral question of promoting smoking. It asks how such a decision is possible if the value of health and the economic value are incommensurable, and illustrates the difficulty by means of the analogy of water in the ocean versus human kindness. It adds an example from the film “Mrs. Doubtfire,” in which Robin Williams refuses on moral grounds to take part in content that promotes smoking and, as a result, loses his livelihood and family, and emphasizes that the argument there between the spouses illustrates a conflict between a moral value and an economic value without a shared platform.
Tractate Yoma 85: saving a life overrides the Sabbath, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya and Shmuel
The text presents the topic / passage in tractate Yoma 85, where the question is asked, “From where do we know that saving a life overrides the Sabbath,” and it is explained that all opinions decide in favor of saving a life and are looking for a source. It cites the words of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” and the words of Shmuel, “And live by them, and not die by them,” and presents Rava’s claim that Shmuel’s view has no refutation. It argues that the topic / passage functions as a sustaining midrash rather than a creating one, because the law is known in advance and the discussion concerns its grounding, and even the analysis of the refutations fits that.
The conceptual contrast between the rationales and the problem in the halakhic rulings of the decisors
The text describes what appears to be a head-on collision: Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is understood as justifying Sabbath desecration in order to “gain” many Sabbaths, in a way that presents life as a means to Sabbath observance, whereas Shmuel is understood as placing life as a foundation above the commandments. It notes that halakhic decisors cite both rationales together, including the Meiri and the Mishnah Berurah, and formulates the difficulty of how two contradictory reasons can be brought together. It proposes an interpretation according to which Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya need not be expressing a hierarchy of values, but is offering a way of deciding that does not depend on ranking life against the Sabbath, and therefore he can fit with Shmuel and the halakhic decisors can cite them both.
“Tricks” for bypassing ranking: expected-value calculation and translating values
The text interprets “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths” as a bypass of the question of the relation between the value of life and the value of the Sabbath by making the comparison within the same currency of “Sabbaths,” thus eliminating the need to rank life against the Sabbath. It illustrates this with a schematic calculation in which desecrating one Sabbath “buys” many Sabbaths in the future, so the decision does not depend on the question of which is “greater,” life or the Sabbath. It parallels this with the cigarette example, where perhaps one can translate economic gain into health benefit and thereby decide without constructing a hierarchy of values between economy and health. It concludes that sometimes one can decide a value conflict while preserving incommensurability, through a reduction that indirectly generates a practical common measure.
The conclusion of the topic / passage and the argument against full incommensurability
The text argues that something even stronger emerges from the topic / passage: in the end, “And live by them” ranks life above the Sabbath / Jewish law, and therefore Jewish law assumes that there is a real relation of decision and not merely a bypass trick. It emphasizes that if incommensurability were absolute, then even a verse could not supply a decision, and therefore the very existence of the derashah hints that the question has an answer. It suggests that the topic / passage does not ultimately accept an essential incommensurability between the value of life and the value of the Sabbath, and states that one must understand how this is possible.
“Territorial” considerations in Jewish law: honoring parents, yeshiva study, and officers’ training course
The text presents another solution to conflicts that does not require ranking values but rather defining domains of application, and calls these territorial considerations “in the normative sense.” It brings examples from articles by Rabbi Ovadia and Rabbi Ariel on obeying parents with respect to choosing a yeshiva study track versus matriculation studies, and with respect to entering an officers’ course that involves permanent military service, and describes how they analyze this through the model of “Every man shall fear his mother and his father, and you shall keep My Sabbaths,” and the distinction between commandment / transgression / enhancement of a commandment. It disagrees with that methodology and argues, following the Maharik as cited by the Rema, that there are cases in which this is not a matter of honoring parents being overridden by another value, but rather honoring parents simply does not apply when it comes to a fundamental choice of life path, such as marriage or a significant life trajectory.
Right, the pursuer, and Zimri and Pinchas: a limitation from within and not from without
The text argues that when someone threatens with a gun in order to take a shekel, one may kill him under the law of a pursuer not because the shekel is “more important” than life, but because the life of the aggressor does not enter the domain in which he can force me to give up money that I am not obligated to give. It brings the story in Sanhedrin about Zimri and Pinchas and the question raised by the Kli Yakar in the name of the Rebbe of Gur as to why Zimri is considered able to kill Pinchas, even though he could have saved himself by stopping the sin, and answers with the formulation “it is my right to sin” as an explanation that the permission does not stem from comparing values but from territorial right and authority. It formulates this as a limitation from within and not from without: not that an external value overrides a value, but that the qualified value simply does not apply at all in a certain situation, and it compares this to the idea of “And live by them” as a case in which the commandments do not exist where their observance leads to death.
Ending and continuation: Sartre’s case
The text concludes that so far it has presented modes of decision that do not depend on a hierarchy of values, either through computational/translational bypass or through territorial domains of application. It states that these examples do not solve the essential problem in cases like Sartre’s dilemma, where a direct decision between values is required without any bypass route, and postpones that discussion to next time.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I spoke about what a value really is, and about the problem of the incommensurability of values. The claim, briefly, was that a value is the most basic foundation of moral reasoning. Meaning, when I explain why it is forbidden to kill someone, I explain it because life has value. When I ask myself why life has value, what the justification for that is, the answer will be—as an aside, since Leibowitz was just mentioned—the answer will be this: there is no more fundamental justification than that. Wherever you stop the chain of “why,” at the most basic principle about which you can no longer ask “why,” that is what is called a value. And therefore, essentially, a value is never instrumental. Meaning, it does not come to achieve something else. Say, the prohibition of murder comes to preserve the sanctity of life or the existence of life. But the existence of life itself does not come to achieve anything outside itself, and therefore a value cannot be rationalized. We talked about Leibowitz’s article on disconnecting life-support devices, and this raises—and that’s where I ended last time—this raises the question of what we do when there is a value conflict. Because if we look at a value conflict, a clash between two values, say saving a life and the Sabbath, or Sartre—I think I mentioned him, yes—about helping his elderly mother in Paris versus joining de Gaulle’s army to fight the Nazis. Usually we think that the way to decide a conflict of that kind is to build a hierarchy of values and see which of the values stands higher on the scale; that one will override the lower value. If fighting evil stands higher than helping one’s mother, then I will have to go there even at the expense of helping my mother, and vice versa. Of course, this is a very simplistic description, because the question is how much you contribute to the fight against evil—you are, after all, only one soldier among hundreds of thousands or millions who fought there—whereas your mother may have no one else to help her. So of course there is room for additional considerations, but for the moment I’m ignoring that. I’m presenting things only in a very schematic way. Assuming I have a conflict—say, saving a life and the Sabbath, something perhaps a bit more focused than Sartre’s dilemma—then with saving a life and the Sabbath, the question is what prevails: saving a life or the Sabbath? What does that mean? The question is which value is more important: is the more important value life, or is the more important value Sabbath observance? And the way to decide such a conflict is to build a hierarchy of values, where the hierarchy is supposed to rank the values, and then it enables me to decide in any situation of collision between values. The problem is that in order to build a hierarchy of values I need some kind of yardstick or common units for all the values that will help me rank them. Meaning, if I want to rank the value of life against the value of observing the Sabbath, then I need to measure life and Sabbath observance in the same units somehow—I don’t know, common units—and then see: if this has 10 units and that has 7 units, then this is higher on the scale than that. But if there is no shared system of units that can measure those two values, then there is no way to build a hierarchy of values. That is called the problem of incommensurability, yes—the absence of a common measure. Commensurability means a common measure. There is no common measure for two different values, and therefore there is no way to build a hierarchy of values. And why really is there no common measure for two values? It follows from the description I gave earlier. Because what is a common measure? If I thought, as I said regarding disconnecting life support, that life is a means for self-realization, yes, for doing all kinds of valuable things, each person according to what he sees as valuable, it doesn’t matter—but a means for doing valuable things—then one could say: okay, life enables me to do this and this, therefore its value is 13, and money also enables me to do all kinds of things in life, so its value is 8. So life ranks higher than money because both are measured in the same system of units. Both come to achieve the same goal, and therefore I can somehow measure them and see how much they contribute to that goal, or how much of the goal I achieve by means of this value or that value. But if a value is never instrumental, meaning it does not come to achieve something outside itself, then there is no way to measure it. Certainly not against another value, but it’s much deeper than that. According to what are you measuring this thing? But if the value is the most basic thing, the ethical reasoning and the moral reasoning, there is no way to measure it. And certainly, certainly there is no way to measure two different values. And certainly, certainly there is no way to measure two different values on the same yardstick itself, so that they could be ranked against one another. And therefore a problem is created here: how do you build a hierarchy of values, how do you decide value conflicts? According to this conception, this definition of values by Leibowitz—which by the way I accept—it is not clear what one does with value conflicts. And I mentioned that this is much deeper than the question of how I know where each value stands on the scale. The more basic problem here is that there is no such scale. Not that I don’t know where each value stands, but there is no such scale. Yes, the example I gave was: which is greater, human kindness or water in the ocean? These are measured in completely different numerical systems, in completely different units. And therefore there is no way to answer that question. And when I say there is no way to answer the question, I do not mean that I cannot get to the answer; I mean that there is no answer. There is no answer. The question is meaningless. Again—“meaningless,” people argued with me about that last time; I’m willing to accept that it has meaning. But it has no answer. There is no answer to that question. Because how, by what, can you measure one against the other? Now, as an aside, in mathematics too people talk about the absence of a common measure. Yes, for example irrational numbers have no common measure. Rational numbers always have a common measure. Any two numbers, say 4 and 7, are measured by one unit. Right? One unit goes in four times in the number 4 and seven times in the number 7. Even three-sevenths and four-fifths—you can find a unit that goes into each of them a whole number of times, by way of the common denominator of course. That’s the operation of a common denominator. But two numbers—or even one irrational number and one rational number—have no common measure. Say pi and 2, or pi and e, doesn’t matter, have no common measure. There is no way to define a unit that goes a whole number of times into both of them, a different whole number in each one, and yet for a number—say pi has such-and-such units of this thing and e has such-and-such units of this thing—there is no way to do that. By the way, it’s not true of every two irrational numbers; pi and 2pi do have a common measure even though both are irrational. Fine, but different irrational numbers are essentially different; never mind. In any case, that too is an absence of a common measure, but it is not our case. And this is an important point because it sharpens the depth of the problem in our case. Because with numbers I can say which is bigger, pi or e. Pi is bigger than e. Pi is three-point-something and e is two-point-something. Even though they have no common measure, I can rank them. I can determine which is greater than which. And therefore the absence of a common measure in mathematics is a weaker notion than the absence of a common measure that I’m talking about here. The incommensurability of values is a much more essential problem, because here there is no common yardstick at all—not merely that there is no unit of measure that goes into both of them whole. With irrational numbers there is a common yardstick: they both measure magnitude, length, or whatever it may be, and I can rank them against one another. This is longer than that, greater than that, smaller than that, even though they have no common measure. With values there is no shared yardstick at all, not merely no unit of measure that goes into both of them whole. It’s not just a problem of measurement; there is no way to compare them at all. That is really the depth of the problem of the incommensurability of values. And then the question is of course how we decide conflicts. So someone could come and say—and I said perhaps another remark that I also made last time—Leibowitz said there that one cannot find legitimacy for disconnecting someone from life-support devices, no matter how difficult his condition. Why? Because the value of life cannot be rationalized, cannot be grounded in another value, and therefore it also cannot be qualified; one cannot say when it no longer exists, under what circumstances it no longer exists. It is unconditional, it is absolute. Okay, I hear that—but what would he do with conflict? Value conflicts. In war I kill the enemy who threatens me—what can you do? So there are still value conflicts in which I make decisions. So I said that Leibowitz would probably say—he doesn’t address this there in that article—but he would probably say that in value conflicts it’s something else. You cannot qualify a value, but in a conflict between two different values one of them will prevail over the other, meaning there is no obstacle to that, by means of a hierarchy of values. What I’m saying now is that this too is a problem. Meaning, not only is it impossible to qualify a value on its own terms; it is also impossible to decide a conflict between two values, because if you can’t build a hierarchy then there is no way to decide value conflicts at all, and so we are really in a complete mess. On the other hand, the fact is that we do decide value conflicts. Someone could come and say, okay, we’re just living under illusions, and the truth is that there really is no decision here. We do things, but they have no justification, no meaning; it is just a lottery. The fact that we have some kind of inner feeling that we are deciding so-called correctly is just an illusion. It’s not real; there is no such thing as right and wrong in this context. And then that really flattens the meaning of deciding moral conflicts, because it basically means: okay, so we draw lots, because in any case there is no way to decide; I can’t fulfill both values, so I’ll flip a coin. Okay? Not only do I flip a coin in order to reach a decision, but the thing I arrived at by means of the coin flip is not really a decision either. There is no decision. It’s not that I don’t know how to decide—again, I’m sharpening what I said—there is no correct decision, there cannot be, there is no correct answer to conflicts. So the fact that I flip a coin is simply in order to stay alive; it is not in order to find a solution. There is no solution, okay? It’s not only that I have no way to find it. I said that if it is really incommensurable, then even a verse in the Torah will not help me. Suppose a verse in the Torah says that I have to join de Gaulle and leave my mother. I found a verse, I learned it from the Torah. That doesn’t help at all, because if it is really incommensurable, then the problem is not how I get to the answer; the problem is that there is no answer. If there is no answer, then even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot write it in the Torah, because there is no such thing. The Torah can help me where I cannot get to the answer because I’m not smart enough, I don’t know enough. But where there is no answer—not that I cannot get to the answer—then even a scriptural decree won’t help. Meaning, the Torah cannot reveal to me which is greater, the water in the ocean or human kindness, and even if there were an explicit verse I would not accept it. There is no answer to that matter; it’s not that I don’t know. Okay, that’s an important point, and that’s why I’m repeating it, because it’s important to understand it. So as I said earlier, on the other hand we do decide. Unlike the question of the water in the ocean versus human kindness, it seems to me that we would all agree there is no answer here. It’s not that I would flip a coin or something—I don’t know, there is no answer to that, and I also won’t try to produce an answer in any way. But in value conflicts we do decide. People deliberate and arrive at some decision; it doesn’t matter right now by what route—the routes are a whole separate issue—but the very fact that they arrive at a decision, whatever the route may be, means that apparently in their view there is a decision; we just perhaps don’t know how to map how one does it. Yes, it’s a kind of intuition like that, that we do not know how to formulate an algorithm for doing this thing. But still, the fact that we make decisions—and more than that, at least for most of us, I think it is not perceived as an arbitrary decision, just because I felt like it, I flipped a coin—again, this keeps coming back, apropos Leibowitz—but rather it is a decision because that is really what I think. I really think it is more important to help my mother than to join de Gaulle, say, or the opposite, it doesn’t matter, whatever each person thinks. My feeling is that I reached a decision, not that I just flipped a coin and did whatever I felt like because there is no way to decide. Again, one can deny that feeling or deny the reliability of that feeling and say, okay, you have such a feeling, it means nothing, because on the logical level it’s nonsense, so the fact that you have a feeling—you have feelings, fine, all of us have various feelings. But if we treat that feeling as a cognitive tool—and I began with the claim that valid morality cannot exist unless I assume there is ethical cognition or ethical realism—then it means that apparently, at least I think so and it seems to me many assume this, that this feeling that I arrive at a decision actually means that from my perspective there is a decision to value conflicts. Many times it is hard to find it, I have no way to map the route to it, but there is a decision. Meaning, there is a right and a wrong answer, at least for some conflicts. I’m not talking now about all conflicts; I don’t think all of them have a decision, but it’s enough for me that some do. All right? This doesn’t mean that every question has to have a decision. Even with things that do have a common measure, there is not always a decision, because it could be that the common measure is equal in both: this is worth four units and this is worth four units, so there isn’t one. If in any case there is a decision, that does not mean every question must have one. It is enough for me to claim that some questions have a decision, a correct decision, the one correct within my view, if you want, even more qualified than that. Within my system, that is the decision. It may be that someone from another value system would disagree with me, and I have an argument with him, but right now I’m focusing on my own view, or within one system. Let me maybe give an example I found in Yishai Wosner, a law lecturer at Tel Aviv University, and he wrote this in some article, in Introductions he wrote it. He once wrote in an article that suppose an actor comes to consult his doctor friend, a film actor. He comes to consult his doctor friend because he got an offer to appear in a cigarette commercial. And they’re offering him an enormous amount, I don’t know, a million dollars to appear in this ad. Now of course he has to smoke a few cigarettes for it, and that could harm his health. So he comes to consult his doctor friend—what does he advise him to do? So his friend the doctor, who bears both of those titles, both his friend and the doctor, says to him like this: wearing my doctor hat, of course I’m supposed to tell you you mustn’t do it, because cigarettes are harmful. Wearing my friend hat, I have to tell you: go for it. A million dollars will set you up for life. So I usually think the answer would be—let’s set aside for the moment the possible immorality of advertising cigarettes, let’s assume there is no moral problem in making a cigarette ad—this is a question of health versus economic value. So I say to him: go for it. The damage from smoking a few cigarettes is negligible, whereas a million dollars is something with which you can do good and wonderful things. Therefore go appear in this ad, that’s what I advise you. Now beyond the question of exactly how we reached that decision, the fact is that I think many of us would agree that this is the natural decision in such a situation. And again, I’m neutralizing for the moment the immorality involved in promoting smoking; I’m speaking now only about the economic value versus the health value. So I think many would agree that this is a reasonable decision in such a case. Here I don’t think there would even be much disagreement. And the question is why. Meaning, if the value of health and the economic value—let’s say for the sake of discussion—are different values, they are incommensurable, then if so, how can I rank them? What will you say? That the health damage is small and the economic value is a huge amount of money? Meaning yes, but compare that to water in the ocean: take a huge ocean versus the kindness of one human being. Which is greater? The kindness of one person or all the water in all the oceans? There’s a lot of water in the oceans, it’s enormous, and I’m only one person. So can you say which is greater? No. These are two units that are not measured on the same scale at all; the relative numbers of those two quantities have no meaning. Here too it’s the same thing. The fact that the economic gain is enormous and the health damage is small—compared to a million cigarettes, not compared to a million dollars. A million dollars is not a unit that measures health damage. So why is it relevant that here it’s a million dollars and here it’s only the damage of three cigarettes? If these are different scales that cannot be compared, then how can one make decisions in such a situation? Now again, there is a certain measure of trickiness here, because one could perhaps—and I’ll get to that in a moment—one could perhaps translate the economic value into health value. If I have a lot of money, I can also pay for health and maybe be healthier, and then there might be room for comparing these two things. But let’s say that for the health problems the cigarettes will cause me, no amount of money will manage to deal with them, for the sake of discussion. And I think that’s actually fairly true, it seems to me; I’m not a doctor, but I think so. So the question is what one does in such a situation. That’s why I say that even if here specifically there might perhaps be some room to find a common measure, technically maybe yes, still let’s talk about the principled question. It’s clear that there are questions for which one cannot find a common measure, and nevertheless we decide them. And the question is what that means, what the significance of such decisions is.
[Speaker C] Actually there’s a great example with cigarettes, really in a Robin Williams movie. It’s called Mrs. Doubtfire. He quits his job, which is his livelihood, and then because of that he loses his kids, because he can’t handle it—he does dubbing, he does voices for cartoons, and there’s a cigarette company paying a film company for him to say something about smoking, that it’s good, or to do something like that, and he says, “It’s immoral. I’m not willing to encourage smoking. Kids see this, they’ll grow up, they’ll get sick,” and so on. He’s this kind of idealist, and then he quits, and then his wife wants to kill him, she divorces him afterward, because he’s so irresponsible, such an idealist with no connection to reality. But it’s very, very similar, except with more of a moral emphasis, because it’s not about his own health. I mean, as far as his health goes, the issue is that he’ll be fired and won’t have money.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, the logical structure is the same structure. There definitely is a conflict here between a moral value and an economic value, let’s say in that context. Completely, yes. So the question is: how do you decide something like that? So here, his wife said, what do you mean, this is our livelihood. Fine, but morality… apparently they’re both right. Meaning, there’s no way to measure these two things against one another, and maybe that really is what this argument you’re describing captures so well: that there really is no way to decide. What are these two spouses supposed to do now? How will one show the other that he’s right, or that the other is right? There’s no way. You won’t succeed in placing them both on the same platform. So this decision, ostensibly a decision between values, is not possible. I want to show two interesting examples from the Talmud; really it’s one topic, but there are two lines of reasoning there. The famous Talmudic passage in tractate Yoma, page 85. The Talmud says there: There was once a study hall on the road—actually, Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah were walking on the road. And there was this… why “there was”? Could be that Rabbi Yishmael and the whole group were walking with him, I don’t know. And Levi HaSeder and Rabbi Yishmael the son of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah were walking behind them. This question was asked before them: From where do we know that saving a life overrides the Sabbath? A conflict of values—in this case maybe a halakhic value, not necessarily a moral one, and we’ll still talk about the connection between the two or the lack of connection between them—but an axiological dilemma. Never mind right now what exactly the nature of each of these clashing values is. And then a whole series of answers or sources begins, trying to decide. By the way, all of them decide in favor of saving a life and against the Sabbath, which more or less implies, it seems to me, that the answer was obvious to all of them and they were just looking for a source. Meaning, it was obvious that saving a life overrides the Sabbath; they knew that. The only question was where we learn it from. Okay, this is a sustaining midrash, let’s call it that, not a creative midrash. But here different answers start coming in, and they’re all rejected. I’m already moving to the next page; there are all kinds of a fortiori arguments and things like that. I get here. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: “And the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath”—the Torah said: desecrate one Sabbath on his behalf so that he may keep many Sabbaths. Right, so Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is basically offering us a solution to the conflict. He’s saying: after all, all that is being demanded of you right now is to desecrate one Sabbath, and by doing that you’ll save this person’s life. If the person’s life is saved, he’ll now have many Sabbaths to keep. So it’s worth sacrificing one Sabbath in order to gain many other Sabbaths. That’s Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s proposal. Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel: If I had been there—that’s the last of the Tannaitic proposals in this passage. And now, surprisingly, an Amoraic proposal appears. By the way, I know of two other places, I think, where Shmuel comes after a whole series of Tannaim who offer proposals, and he says, I have something better than all of them, and offers a proposal against all of them. When an Amora argues against Tannaim, then his counterpart is Rav—Rav is a Tanna and can disagree, right? Rav belongs to the transitional generation between Tannaim and Amoraim. But about Shmuel the Talmud does not say that he is a Tanna and can disagree, even though he’s Rav’s contemporary, because he is Rav’s Babylonian contemporary. Rav sat on the court of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Right. So Shmuel disagrees with the Tannaim here; he brings a different source. Again, this is not a halakhic dispute but only a dispute regarding the source. “They differ in interpretation,” as they say. But still, he brings a different source, a better one. Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel: If I had been there, I would have said that my source is better than theirs. If I had been there among them—after all, he lived after them—if I had been walking with them on the road there, I would have told them, and they all would have applauded me, I’m sure. Because mine is much better than all their dubious proposals. What is my proposal? “And live by them”—and not die by them. Meaning, it says that the commandments are meant to… that is, “and live by them”: one is supposed to live by the commandments, and if observing the commandments causes me to die, then I am not supposed to observe the commandments. So I’m exempt from observing the commandments, and therefore that overrides… it overrides the Sabbath. Rava said: all of them have refutations except for Shmuel’s, which has no refutation. Fine. Now they bring all the refutations—how do we know why each of the others can be challenged? Almost all of them are challenged in the same way. From those sources, you could prove that definite danger to life overrides the Sabbath, but not that possible danger to life overrides the Sabbath. And from Shmuel’s source you can show that even possible danger to life overrides the Sabbath, and it doesn’t matter right now how, but that’s the Talmud’s claim. Again, this more strongly reinforces that what we have here is a sustaining interpretation, not a creative one. Because otherwise what difference would it make? According to all the Tannaim, possible danger to life really would not override the Sabbath—only definite danger would—and according to Shmuel it would. More than that: since there is a halakhic difference between them, then obviously if they are Tannaim and he is an Amora, his words are rejected. He is disagreeing halakhically with Tannaim; this is no longer just a question of bringing a different source. So his position should have been rejected. But it was obvious to the Talmud that it was not. It was obvious to the Talmud that even possible danger to life overrides the Sabbath, and therefore the whole thing is a rigged game. We are merely looking for a source, but the law is already known. It is known that saving a life overrides the Sabbath, and it is also known that even possible danger to life overrides the Sabbath. Everything is known. That’s not the practical difference. Rather, this is just a refutation of their sources. A certain kind of refutation, because… because those sources are still valid in the case of definite danger, but possible danger cannot be derived from them. For that, Shmuel brings his source. So ostensibly there is a dispute here between two… not two, but among all these views, but let’s focus for a moment on the views marked here on the page before you: Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya and Shmuel. More than there being a dispute here, in fact when you look at it, it seems that the conceptions in these two… these two blows—really these two moves—are completely opposite in the extreme. This isn’t just a disagreement; it’s a head-on collision. Why? Because Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: desecrate one Sabbath on his behalf so that he may keep many Sabbaths. What is he basically saying? What is my purpose in desecrating the Sabbath? For the sake of life? Not at all life. It’s not that life overrides Sabbath observance. What permits me to desecrate the Sabbath is that this way I will gain many more Sabbath observances. Implicitly, there’s some conception here that life in itself is not a value. It is only a means to Sabbath observance or to religious values or maybe values of some kind—it doesn’t matter—but life is a means. It’s not an end. Why does this override the Sabbath? Not because life is a higher value than the Sabbath, but because saving life will allow me better to realize the value of the Sabbath, not the value of life. Meaning, in the end, if you ask me which value is more important, ostensibly the value of the Sabbath, not the value of life. By the way, this is very interesting, because people are often troubled, to some extent justifiably, by the fact that one does not desecrate the Sabbath in order to save the life of a non-Jew. Right, that is from the law of the Talmud, and all the halakhic decisors agree, except for the Meiri, and I think the Meiri is right, but… but never mind, that’s the accepted view. They just come up with various technical solutions: for the sake of peaceful relations, or enmity, and things of that sort. But in principle, the Mishnah Berurah writes not to desecrate the Sabbath with a Torah prohibition, only with a rabbinic one. And for some reason he paints some… just see what a gap there is in the hundred years since he wrote those words. Meaning, he claims—and this is in passing, an anecdote—that one should desecrate the Sabbath only through a rabbinic category of labor and a rabbinic prohibition, not through a Torah-level category of labor. He says: what about enmity? Won’t the non-Jews kill us if they see that we do not save a non-Jew? He says: no, no, they’ll understand. If it’s a Torah prohibition, then they’ll understand why we don’t do it. With a rabbinic prohibition, they’ll really take it badly. Meaning, the expectation that the non-Jews are supposed to appreciate our halakhic considerations is amazing, right? Eastern Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today such a thing would never enter anyone’s mind. I mean, no non-Jew would accept such a position with understanding. Never mind right now whether I need to obey the non-Jew or take into account what the non-Jew says; I’m just talking about the description of reality itself. That is, in the Mishnah Berurah’s description of reality: no, that they’ll accept, that won’t arouse enmity. It’s obvious, because it’s a Torah prohibition. But with a rabbinic prohibition: don’t be so stubborn with us, don’t get petty with us over a rabbinic prohibition. A rabbinic prohibition—still, even the life of a non-Jew is worth at least a rabbinic prohibition. Okay, so that’s just an anecdote. That’s just an interesting anecdote. In any case, today really most decisors—as the Chatam Sofer already writes even before him, but most decisors today say that even with Torah-level labor one must desecrate the Sabbath because of enmity, because even regarding Torah-level labor, non-Jews today do not accept this discrimination. And from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya here in the Talmud it seems to me that one could raise the argument that at least a non-Jew willing to listen—which doesn’t really exist today, people today don’t make the effort to listen to questions like this, they won’t be willing to hear what you have to say at all once you’ve said something like that—but a non-Jew who would be willing to listen, maybe you could explain something to him. Because you could say to him, look, I don’t really desecrate the Sabbath for a Jew either. Even a Jewish life does not override the Sabbath; the Sabbath prevails over the value of life. There is no difference between Jewish life and non-Jewish life; the Sabbath prevails over the value of life. I save the Jew because he will observe Sabbaths. If you’re willing to convert, I can save you too, because you too will keep many Sabbaths afterward. It’s not that your life is worth less than mine; rather, all life, yours and mine alike, is worth less than Sabbath observance. Fine, that was just an anecdote. So that’s Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, in any case—that’s how he speaks. And ostensibly his conception, his basic conception, shows—assumes—that life does not override the Sabbath. Even though saving life overrides the Sabbath, the more fundamental value is the value of the Sabbath, not the value of life. And what I do by desecrating the Sabbath is not to save a life, but to gain many Sabbaths.
[Speaker D] Why can’t one claim that Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is just speaking practically—that we have a value here—without reaching the conclusion that life isn’t important?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says practically…
[Speaker D] One Sabbath is preferable, because there will be many Sabbaths.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think he is saying that, yes. I’ll get to that in a moment. Shmuel’s other direction says that “and live by them, and not die by them” is really the opposite conception. It basically says: if attachment to Jewish law requires me to give up life, then Jewish law is nullified, because life is the basic value. And maybe I would even formulate it this way—although here one can be more precise—but perhaps one could even formulate it so that Jewish law is meant to serve life. In contrast to Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, for whom life is a means for observing Jewish law, for Sabbath observance, according to Shmuel Sabbath observance—or Jewish law—is a means to living properly. Basically, that is how one lives properly; one must live by them. But if keeping them doesn’t let me live by them, rather I have to die by them, then forget it—what do I need this for? Everything I need from life is only as a means to live properly. So this is basically one hundred eighty degrees opposite from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya.
[Speaker E] Just a comment. I think what you said about how one could answer the non-Jew is not from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya. I think, like others are hinting here, that Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is saying that in this case of the Sabbath there is no conflict from the outset, since it also serves the Sabbath that you… But the fact is that in Jewish history, I think it’s agreed, that in the Second Temple period Jews did not conduct warfare in passive defense, so to speak, to defend on the Sabbath and so on and so on. So you can show him historically that we gave up our lives, so that could be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, as an answer to a non-Jew, absolutely. I don’t think Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is an excellent answer to a non-Jew. I don’t see what the problem with it is. But again, regarding preparations on the Sabbath, I don’t think… because you can’t answer the non-Jew with that answer; specifically the answer you’re suggesting I don’t think is correct. Because the question of what you prepare in advance is another question, although I think they do prepare in advance. But even if not, that’s only a problem of preparing in advance. But when you are facing danger to life, you certainly desecrate the Sabbath. And for the non-Jew, you do not desecrate the Sabbath.
[Speaker E] There there is a difference. No, but the fact is that in the period before the destruction, Jews died and were killed, and then the Jewish law changed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We hold “until it is subdued”—that’s war; they gave up their lives.
[Speaker E] No, I’m saying, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya—meaning, it’s not clear—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To me, how you can answer the first person—fine. I’m talking about today’s non-Jews. Let’s not… that’s a parenthesis, let’s not go into it, it’s a waste of the…
[Speaker E] But I—fine, listen, maybe you’re right, but I don’t know what forces you to explain it that way. I would explain Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, again, as saying that in the situation of the Sabbath there is no conflict from the outset. Because desecration of the Sabbath, after all, you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait a second. Here you’ve arrived at a different formulation from what you said before, and that formulation is actually where I’m heading. So just one more moment. So the conceptions are ostensibly opposite conceptions. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya sees life as a means for fulfilling commandments, and Shmuel sees commandments as a means for life, for living properly. And that’s an extreme disagreement. Not only that, but on the face of it I could even derive from this… maybe even implications. So suddenly it comes out that according to Shmuel… sorry, what’s the status of the question? So yes, it basically comes out that according to Shmuel and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya there is even a halakhic dispute here, not only a dispute about sources; it has implications—whether life is a means to commandments or not—but we won’t go into that here. What I do want to raise is a difficulty, the way they do in the study hall, before the philosophical questions. The halakhic decisors bring both of these rationales as law. The Talmud itself in tractate Shabbat brings Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s rationale regarding desecrating the Sabbath for a child. Desecrating the Sabbath for a child—the Talmud asks there, the Talmud says: desecrate one Sabbath on his behalf so that he may keep many Sabbaths in the future. So Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s rationale applies even to children who currently cannot observe the Sabbath. And in the decisors as well—for example, the Meiri and other decisors—both rationales are brought in practice, both Shmuel’s and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s. By the way, the Mishnah Berurah also brings this, in section 318 I think; the Mishnah Berurah brings both rationales. Now this is problematic, because these are two rationales that contradict one another. It’s not just a disagreement where I find this in one source and you find that in another source. Rather, there are two rationales here with opposite conceptions. How can both be brought together as law? There is an internal contradiction here. If this is true then the other isn’t true; if the other is true then this one isn’t true. And apparently there is an assumption here that there really is no contradiction between these two conceptions. The question is why not. So here I want to propose the following. The claim is that—and this is also what Yaakov and also, yes, I don’t see your name here, you too said earlier—that I really didn’t formulate Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s reasoning correctly. And this will bring me back to why I entered this passage in the first place. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya actually—or not Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, but everyone—what is the problem the Talmud is dealing with? That there is a clash between saving a life and desecrating the Sabbath. The problem is simply the incommensurability of the values. That’s the problem. You have two values; you have no way to measure them by the same standard. What do you do when there is a conflict? What do you do? Now, of course, from the very fact that the Tannaim bring a source, and Shmuel also brings a source from the Torah, this means that in their view there is a resolution. Maybe we can’t reach it without the Torah, but there is a resolution. Because as I said about the water in the ocean and human kindness—even if there were a verse that gave me an answer, I still wouldn’t accept it, because there is no answer; it’s not that I can’t arrive at the answer. Now here the Talmud brings answers. If it brings answers, that means it believes there is an answer to this question, and it is looking for what it is, and how we know what the answer is, but the assumption clearly is that there is an answer. But look at the very interesting examples it brings. I’ll speak for the moment about the last two that I read, not the earlier ones. Both of them, in a certain sense—certainly the first of them—actually bypass the problem. They manage to solve the problem without constructing a hierarchy of values, and that’s very nice. Because if we look at the passage from that angle, the passage is asking: what do I do when there’s a clash between two incommensurable values? And what the passage answers is: I use tricks. There’s no way to solve the problem because it’s incommensurable. What I do is use tricks, and these tricks are very similar to what I suggested with Shai Wozner’s example of the actor and the cigarettes. Because what the Talmud is basically saying is the following. It says: what is lying in the balance? Let’s say I desecrate the Sabbath now. If I desecrate the Sabbath now, then I have lost the Sabbath that I desecrated, and I have gained, first, the person’s life that I saved, and second, many Sabbaths that he will keep, right? The total value of desecrating the Sabbath is actually life plus n minus one Sabbaths. I’ll make it really mathematical, okay? I have gained the person’s life plus the number of Sabbaths he will keep, minus one, the one I desecrated. Okay? That’s one side of the coin. Now I want to compare that to the decision not to desecrate the Sabbath. Let’s see what benefit I gain there, what the expected gain is there. So when I do not desecrate the Sabbath, then I gain the present Sabbath, but I do not gain all the other Sabbaths. Not that I lose them, but I don’t gain them. I don’t have those n Sabbaths that I would have gained. I have only one Sabbath, and I lose the life. Right? So basically I have on the two sides of the scale that I’m now comparing: one is the value of keeping the Sabbath and letting the person die. The value of desecrating the Sabbath and saving him is the value of life—let’s call it x—plus n, n times y, n minus one times y, which is the value of Sabbath observance. So x plus n minus one times y, as opposed to one lone y. Which is greater? Take x out of the equation. Right? Forget x. If n minus one y is greater than y, assuming he’ll live more than two Sabbaths. Okay? That’s all. So why should I care what the relationship is between the value of life and the value of the Sabbath? I don’t need to determine a ranking between x and… after all, what I’m looking for is how to rank x against y, the value of the Sabbath against the value of life. I’m saying, leave it aside—the dilemma doesn’t require that. I can decide it even without ranking them against each other. Compare the number of Sabbaths I gain on each side. Suppose he’ll live another hundred Sabbaths. Then if you save him, you gained ninety-nine Sabbaths—one hundred minus the one you lost now because you desecrated it. Right? If you did not desecrate the Sabbath, then you gained one Sabbath observance. Ninety-nine Sabbaths plus the value of life is certainly a greater value than one lone Sabbath, regardless of the ratio between the value of life and the value of the Sabbath. But how do you know that… even if the value of life is much smaller—one second—even if the value of life is much smaller than the value of the Sabbath, and even if the value of life is much greater than the value of the Sabbath, it makes no difference at all, because it cancels out of the equation; you don’t even need it. Okay? So what the Talmud has basically done here is to say: true, I do not know how to rank the relationship between x and y, but I can bypass the need for ranking. Because I can solve the problem even without constructing a hierarchy of values in which y is above x. In that sense this is very similar to what I suggested regarding the actor’s dilemma. Because what I said there was that if he earns a million dollars, that will give him a health value that far outweighs the health damage of the five cigarettes he’ll have to smoke. Therefore if I can translate the economic gain into terms of health, then I save myself the need to rank health against economics, because I translated economics too into the currency of health, and then I bypass the need to build a hierarchy of values. I can decide the problem without building a hierarchy of values. But that basically means we have a kind of trick here that can sometimes work, allowing us to decide value dilemmas without building a hierarchy of values, while leaving the incommensurability intact. That is, I remain with the problem of incommensurability; I don’t know whether x is greater than y or the opposite, but I still manage to solve some problems even without making that ranking, even without building a hierarchy of values. If I can find a trick like that that manages to translate y into the currency of… or not translate y, but say that y isn’t the only value I gain, but also values measured in x terms, then I can make the comparison without committing myself to whether x or y is greater. Okay. You wanted to comment, Azriel.
[Speaker F] Yes, but who says that desecrating the Sabbath—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —isn’t much greater—
[Speaker F] —than what he gains from many Sabbaths?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good question. I’m not getting into that now; it’s what the Talmud says. You can challenge the Talmud, but that’s what the Talmud says. Because one could compare it this way: my desecration of the Sabbath is terrible damage, while Sabbath observances—fine, someone who didn’t exist doesn’t keep Sabbaths; the fact that I lose Sabbath observances is not the same thing as desecrating the Sabbath. But the Talmud does make that comparison. Fine? So I don’t want to get into the details of the passage. What I’m trying to show is the logic the Talmud is working with. And the logic the Talmud is working with, if I now put this in the context of our discussion, is this: the Talmud was deliberating how to build a hierarchy of values, since this is incommensurable—the value of life and Sabbath observance—and in the end it remains with: yes, indeed, it is incommensurable, there’s no way to rank them, but I can still solve the conflict without that. That is basically what Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya claims. In other words, in the solution he offers, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is implicitly admitting that there is no way to rank them. He claims: I have a trick; there’s no need to rank them. Even without ranking, I can decide the conflict. That’s the first stage. But as I said earlier, the halakhic decisors bring both of these conceptions simultaneously. So that means there still is some kind of resolution here after all. So look, what I described earlier in Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is actually stronger than that. Because if Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya’s way of resolving things really is as I described above… then that means it does not necessarily follow that he remains with the incommensurability of the values. He is only claiming: I don’t need to rank them in order to decide. That does not mean that he doesn’t accept that there is a ranking. Maybe yes, maybe no. You can’t infer anything definite from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, because his ruling says nothing about the relation between x and y. Which of them is greater? He managed to decide even without building the scale. Does he have no scale? That is already an addition that only I added. I argued that Rabbi Shimon ben… since I presented the Talmud’s question as one based on the problem of incommensurability, I said: fine, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: true, the problem of incommensurability exists, but I have a trick that bypasses it. If I present it that way, that means Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya admits the problem of incommensurability. But that is not necessary. It could be that Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says: maybe I can rank the two values, I just don’t want to get into it because I don’t have to. I can decide the conflict without doing that. Why is that important? Because if I now go to Shmuel and say: Shmuel says “and live by them, and not die by them,” there, ostensibly, there is already a ranking. There it is a real ranking. That is, Shmuel really does say that life stands above the commandments, except for the three cardinal ones, let’s say. But at the level of principle, life stands above the commandments. Therefore the commandments come to serve life, or proper life. And therefore, if they require me to give up life, then my obligation to the commandments is void. And therefore the claim is that, by the simple meaning of “and live by them and not die by them,” this means danger to life makes the prohibition entirely permitted. The Sabbath is entirely permitted in the face of danger to life, not merely overridden. That, I think, is the simple reading of the Talmud, although the medieval authorities and later authorities engage in intricate analysis about it. In any case, the point is that all we see is that Jewish law is basically a means in order to live. The moment it no longer brings me to that goal, it no longer exists. Meaning, it doesn’t even need to be observed at all. Not that it is pushed aside—it simply is not required. Because its whole purpose is to enable me to live properly. If I do not live properly with these things, then they have no value at all. Why keep them? That is basically what I think is written there. And then what comes out is—one second—then what comes out is that according to Shmuel there is a ranking. Life stands above Jewish law, or most of Jewish law, except for the three cardinal sins. And on the other hand, and on the other hand, Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, as I said earlier, leaves this open. He does not say there is no ranking. He only says: I don’t need to get into the question of ranking. I can decide this even without entering that question. But that doesn’t mean he says there is no ranking. It is entirely possible—especially since Shmuel is an Amora and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is a Tanna—that what Shmuel is saying is: I’m adding to Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, not disagreeing with him. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya too can agree with my ranking, because my ranking comes from the verse “and live by them and not die by them,” or from an interpretation of that verse. Yes, to say that it comes directly from the verse is exaggerated. But it comes from an interpretation of the verse. And if so, then it comes out that Shmuel’s ranking is that life stands above Jewish law, or above the Sabbath, let’s say in the language of this passage. And Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya does not disagree with that either. He merely claims that the decision itself does not require us to go into that. That’s all. But he can accept it. If so, there is no problem that the Meiri or the Mishnah Berurah or whoever brings both rationales together. There is no contradiction between them. The two rationales are not based on opposite value conceptions, the way I presented it earlier. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is not based on the conception that life serves Jewish law. He only says: I’m willing not to enter this issue at all, because I can solve the problem even without it. What do I really think about the value relationship between life and Jewish law? Maybe like Shmuel—that life stands above Jewish law. And someone who brings both rationales, like the Mishnah Berurah, like the Meiri, who brings both rationales, ostensibly—if I allow myself such an interpretation, a conceptual interpretation of these two positions—ostensibly that is what he assumes. He basically assumes that the passage has decided that life is a greater value than Jewish law. Okay? And both Shmuel and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya agree with that. That is basically what is written here. Yes, Yaakov.
[Speaker E] The tendency to explain a dispute in the Talmud in this sort of way—this method and that method—I think that’s academic language that we’re imposing on the Talmud. No, it could be… I mean generally.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand, but—
[Speaker E] I’m saying they are people with a living Torah, who have a practical problem, and one says solve it this way and one says solve it that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s not get into that question; it’s a broad question. A broad question on which I have a lot to say. I hinted at it earlier. I opened a parenthesis and said: assuming I can do such an analysis of the dispute, a conceptual analysis of the dispute, then this is what stands behind it. I was referring to your point. But I don’t agree with you, by the way. Not because they were necessarily aware of the conceptual infrastructure—that I don’t know. But yes in the sense that I think I can make this analysis regardless of what was consciously present to them. That’s another discussion. The question is interpretive, right? Which of these principles, which of these sub-principles, obligates me? That’s another question. Does what obligates me consist of the bottom line, or the conception underlying the bottom line? Here I’m with you. That is, I think that even if I analyze the dispute that way, I am not necessarily obligated to the value underlying it, because I’m obligated to the Talmud’s halakhic rulings, not necessarily to the value conceptions there. But as I said, that really is a very broad discussion, and I don’t want to go into it here. So the point is that what we learn from this passage is, first, yes—I think at least at the beginning of the passage it is quite clear that this hesitation reflects the problem of incommensurability. And again, I am not claiming that the Tannaim there spoke about incommensurability of values. Not in the Latin word, and not even that they were necessarily troubled by that kind of question at all. But clearly, at the basis of their dilemma, that is what stood there. Meaning, I ask myself what troubled them, what prevented them from deciding? And what prevented them was exactly that: they could not straightforwardly rank life against the Sabbath. It is clear that this is at the basis of the dilemma. And in the end they did arrive at a decision. Meaning, if I were to make do only with the analysis of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, then all I would learn from the passage—and I still do learn it, but not only that—first of all I would learn one interesting thing from the passage: that even though between values there is a relation of incommensurability, that does not mean that every value conflict cannot be decided. Sometimes you can decide a value conflict even when the values are incommensurable. All right? And therefore, for example, like the actor and the cigarettes: with the money I’ll buy health, and with life I’ll buy Sabbath observance, and so on. So first of all, that is a first lesson that is very important to understand, because then it means that perhaps all the decisions we make between values are actually decisions that bypass the incommensurability. It doesn’t undermine the incommensurability itself; rather, we somehow manage to reduce one side and the other side to the same system of units, to the same standard, and then we make the need to build a hierarchy of values unnecessary. But there is an additional lesson from this passage—my conclusion. That lesson is true; I’m not rejecting it, it is a true lesson. There are situations in which I can decide conflicts even without ranking the clashing values. But in this passage, in the end, they do arrive at a conclusion. The value of life overrides the value of Jewish law, and they learn this from the verse “and live by them.” Or they interpret it from the verse, or if you prefer it’s just a scriptural support. But to my mind this interpretation is pretty dubious. It is quite clear that this is some conception Shmuel is attaching to the verse in some way, but there is some value conception here, and I believe it did not emerge for Shmuel from the verse itself. But fine, that’s my opinion. In any case, for our purposes, what I want to say is that what we also learn from this passage is that the problem of incommensurability is not accepted by it in the final analysis. Because in the end it does rank the relationship between the value of life and the value of the Sabbath. And even if it derives that from a verse, notice: I said earlier that if this were essential incommensurability—human kindness and water in the ocean—even a verse wouldn’t help. Because there is no answer; it’s not that I don’t know what the answer is. So what does it help if you bring me a verse that gives me an answer? If there is a verse saying that there is more kindness than water in the ocean, then does that make it okay? No, it doesn’t. There is no answer to it. The moment they bring an answer, even if from a verse, that means the passage assumes there is an answer. So that means it is not true that these values are incommensurable. And that is already a more significant lesson. Because that already means that the problem of incommensurability does not exist. Not only that in some decisions you can bypass it, but that the problem of incommensurability doesn’t really exist at all. And that we need to understand—how can such a thing be?
[Speaker D] Just one small question. If I understand correctly, basically to summarize the rabbi’s innovation in that passage: with Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya one can say there are two approaches. There’s one side that says Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya means that the value of the Sabbath is more important than the value of life, it’s just that here I want this because of the Sabbath. Meaning—and another option that we’re introducing as a method, two options within Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. After Shmuel comes along, I say that at least those halakhic decisors and medieval authorities who bring both together probably understood Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya in the way that fits Shmuel.
[Speaker D] Exactly. That’s interesting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, in Shmuel himself there is certainly a ruling, and Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya is only for those decisors who bring both together.
[Speaker D] And the rabbi’s innovation is that there was even another option to say in Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya that he is choosing another value, that he is not choosing the value of life.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. The claim? So I’m saying: from Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya I learned a lesson that remains true even in the final analysis. The lesson is that there are conflicts I can decide without resorting to hierarchy. I did not say that Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya has no hierarchy, but in the calculation he makes I learned something in any case, whether there is a hierarchy or not, and that itself is an important lesson. Beyond that, the question remains open whether he really has a hierarchy or not. If I align him with Shmuel, then he does. All right?
[Speaker E] I asked: why do you say values can’t be compared? So one moment. Then you can’t speak of a decision. It could be that in our minds, in our human perception, there is no overarching framework that connects these two values in one language. Maybe in the divine language there is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re saying they’re not incommensurable, that’s all. That’s what you’re saying: that they’re not incommensurable. They have a shared measure; we just don’t know it, and therefore a verse can come and tell me, because there is a correct answer.
[Speaker E] That’s what you’re saying. And a second comment: the big problem you raise, yes, is what one does with values that can’t be compared, as you call it. But I claim that even values that can be compared—you notice, we notice, that two people who face the same two values will decide differently, because values by definition have no justification. Rather, it’s a kind of feeling: this matters to me and this matters to me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Come, come, come, let’s stop for a moment, because these are topics we’ll deal with. Disagreements and relativity, and how and why human beings think differently. We’ll get to that, okay? So I just want to show one more certain kind of conflict-resolution that also doesn’t require us to rank values. And this is what I called in several places territorial considerations in Jewish law. Territorial? Territorial, yes. It’s a borrowed term, not territory in the geographic sense, but territory in the normative sense. I’ll explain. I’ll give an example. I once wrote an article about limits on the obligation to honor one’s parents. I cited there two articles. One of them by Rabbi Ovadia and the other by Rabbi Ariel. Rabbi Ovadia discusses a child who wants to go study in a holy yeshiva, a yeshiva where they study only sacred studies, and his parents want him to do matriculation exams, learn a profession, go to a yeshiva high school or a religious school or something like that. And the question is whether the child is obligated to listen to his parents. He has an article, a responsum on this, and it was written in a certain version in Techumin. There’s an article by Rabbi Ovadia that was written in Techumin, some sort of summary; I don’t think that’s the original. In any case, all of Rabbi Ovadia’s discussion there revolves around the question of what level—after all, we know that it says in the Talmudic text: “A person shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths,” and the Talmudic text derives from this: all of you are obligated in My honor. Meaning, if his father and mother tell him to desecrate the Sabbath—again, by the way, another conflict—what is this conflict? His father and mother tell him to desecrate the Sabbath. Now he has a conflict: there is the obligation to honor parents and there is the prohibition against desecrating the Sabbath. Again, a value conflict. What do you do in such a situation? So the Talmudic text learns it from the juxtaposition, right? “A person shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths,” so Sabbath observance was juxtaposed to honoring father and mother in order to teach us that even if my father and mother tell me to desecrate the Sabbath, I don’t need to listen to them. Because all of us, including the parents, are obligated in the honor of the Omnipresent. So just let’s talk about that for a moment before I return to Rabbi Ovadia, let’s talk for a moment about this issue. What is the meaning of how this decision is made? Here too they resolved a value conflict between honoring parents and keeping the Sabbath or committing some transgression. Here too they resolved it with a kind of bypass maneuver, because basically they said: what is the force of my obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, versus the force of the obligation to obey my parents? Here it’s clear that there is a common measure, because in fact my parents too are obligated to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, so it’s clear that my obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, is greater than my obligation to obey my parents. And since that is so, I found a common measure that can rank the obligation to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, against the obligation to obey parents, and that’s how I resolve the conflict. So that’s one example. But for my purposes now I’m just closing the parentheses and returning to Rabbi Ovadia. So Rabbi Ovadia discusses the question, yes, a yeshiva where one studies only sacred studies versus a yeshiva high school, and he discusses it in terms of what the obligation is to go to a yeshiva where they study only sacred studies. How strong is the obligation? Is this an enhancement of a commandment? Is it a full-fledged commandment? Is it a transgression to go—neglect of Torah study, I don’t know—to go to another yeshiva or another school. And accordingly he says: if this were a full-fledged commandment or a transgression to go not to a yeshiva but to a yeshiva high school, then of course one would not need to listen to one’s parents, because “A person shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths.” Regarding transgressions I don’t need to listen to them. If it is only an enhancement of a commandment, then here there is room to hesitate. If my parents tell me not to enhance a commandment, the question is whether I am obligated to listen to them or not, because it’s not a full obligation, so there is room for discussion. By the way, in my opinion an enhancement of a commandment is a full obligation, but that’s a different discussion. It just doesn’t invalidate the commandment, but it is a full obligation—that’s the truth of the matter. In any case, that’s somehow the accepted view among the later authorities (Acharonim), I don’t know why; in my opinion it’s a mistake. But the claim is that the discussion is conducted in the language of the level of halakhic obligation. How obligated am I, or what level of transgression or commandment is at stake here, as against the obligation to obey parents. And Rabbi Ariel wrote another article in a different area too, and he writes about a soldier who is debating whether to go to officers’ course. Now officers’ course requires signing on for extended service. And the parents want that after three years he be discharged; they need him at home, I don’t know what, or they simply want him to move ahead already in his civilian career, they don’t want him to sign on for more extended service. Now he wants to go to officers’ course and his parents tell him not to go. Is he obligated to listen to them? And again Rabbi Ariel enters a discussion: what is the nature of going to officers’ course? His assumption is that army service is certainly a commandment, helping Israel against an oppressor and so on. The question is how far, how do I view going to officers’ course? Is it an enhancement of a commandment? Is it really a commandment? How should one view it? And again the same considerations. The question is whether enhancement of a commandment also justifies disobeying one’s parents or not. The whole framework of the discussion is basically a framework under the heading of “A person shall fear his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths.” Okay? And when I read these articles I thought that I do not agree with the basic methodological conception of the discussion—not the conclusions, the methodology of the discussion. Why? There is a Maharik that appears in Jewish law also in the Rema in Yoreh De’ah, in the laws of honoring father and mother, Rema section 240, 241 there or something like that. He brings there that if his father tells him—he wants to marry a woman, and his parents, his father, doesn’t matter, tell him: she is not good for us, we do not want you to marry her—he does not need to listen to them. Now when you read the Maharik inside, there are two kinds of reasoning in it. He gives reasons in two styles. One style is: there is a commandment to marry a woman, be fruitful and multiply, kiddushin, whatever you want, and therefore he need not listen to his parents. But there is also there—and in my opinion this is the main spirit that blows through his words—it has nothing to do with commandments at all. I want to marry her. My parents don’t want me to marry her. Let’s say for purposes of the discussion that they don’t want me to marry her for my own sake. Because there are medieval authorities (Rishonim)—this is in Yevamot 6—there is a dispute between Tosafot and Rashba, the question whether I need to obey parents at all when they are speaking about matters that concern me, not things that they need. The obligation to honor parents applies only to things they need. If they want to do me good and they think this is good for me and I think something else is good for me, then I need not obey them. So this is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) in Yevamot 6, but let’s assume for purposes of discussion that there is indeed, in principle, an obligation to obey even in matters of this type. By the way, Rabbi Ariel I think brings this up: yes, the question why they want me not to sign on for extended service and go to officers’ course. If it’s because they need me, then maybe I need to listen to them. If it’s because they want me already to move ahead in the civilian ladder or in my civilian career, then no. It depends on the dispute between Tosafot and Rashba there in Yevamot. In any case, for our purposes the Maharik says that since I am dealing with matters of—
[Speaker D] Does suicide violate honoring parents?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker D] Someone who commits suicide—he wants to commit suicide now—for the parents this is certainly great anguish, he won’t exist in the world. But if we said there’s no obligation regarding things that are about him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be that there is. Who said there isn’t?
[Speaker D] What do you mean it could be there is? That there’s no honoring-parents issue here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That there is an honoring-parents issue here. Ah—there may be, and there may not be; both are possible.
[Speaker D] No, I mean according to what the Rabbi is saying, that there isn’t. Just—no, because I know someone who doesn’t commit suicide because he doesn’t want to cause his parents pain, he thinks that’s his reason. Okay, could be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the main reason? I’m not sure how much that’s the real reason, but okay.
[Speaker D] No, the real reason. If the Rabbi knew him, the real reason.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, so I’m saying—
[Speaker D] There’s—there’s now, I see there’s a halakhic dispute here, you could suggest it to him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not so simple, because the question is whether the parents need him, yes? What is bad for them? If they need him in their old age for help, then that’s their need, not only his. On the contrary, if they want him not to commit suicide for his own sake, that’s already a philosophical problem of wrongful birth, because if he dies then for whose sake do they want him not to commit suicide? The subject they want no longer exists. So there’s a lot to analyze in this matter. But okay, let’s return to our topic. So basically the claim is that I think what the Maharik means to say is that this is not a question of commandment versus honoring parents, but a question of right versus honoring parents. And basically honoring parents cannot dictate to me how to live if I have decided to live differently. That’s his claim, in my opinion, or at least one of his claims. In a place where I stand before a step that in my eyes is significant for my way of life—whom to marry is certainly a significant claim, certainly a significant question—and I want to marry her, and now my parents tell me no, don’t marry her, whether for their sake or for mine, I’m not getting into that at all. So they say no—so what? But I want to marry her. This is the way I chose to live. It is not reasonable that I should change my way of life because of the commandment of honoring parents. What does that mean? What stands behind that reasoning? What stands behind that reasoning is what I called a territorial consideration. What does that mean? The parents’ command to me not to marry her, or not to go to officers’ course—I claim the same thing about officers’ course and about yeshiva and about everything, assuming it really is important enough to you. If, from your perspective, it really is fundamental to the way you want to live, then in my opinion you do not need to obey your parents, regardless of whether—even if it is not a commandment at all, even if it is optional. But you want to go to yeshiva and study only Torah, you do not want to study secular subjects, you decided to take upon yourself ascetic separation. Fine? That’s all—this is how you chose to live your life, and you are not obligated to obey your parents. Of course, don’t ask them afterward to finance you, but that’s another discussion. I am only saying that on the principled level there is no honoring-parents issue here. That’s my claim, regardless of whether it is a commandment; there’s no commandment here at all, maybe it’s even a transgression. Better to learn a profession; the Sages say yes, a person should learn a trade, right? Fine, I don’t care, but I decided to live this way. And once I decided to live this way, it cannot be that my parents can command me to do something else. Or suppose it is extremely important to me to be an officer. So this is not an enhancement of a commandment and not a commandment and not anything, but it is very important to me; it builds my personality; I serve in a command role; in my eyes this is something very necessary for me, okay? So the fact that my parents command me not to go—this is not because it’s a commandment. They simply cannot tell me what to do. Tell me what to do in the sense of how to live. They can ask me: give me a glass of water, help me here, do something for me there—fine, everything like that must be done. Even things that are quite far-reaching, even if they throw your wallet into the sea, yes, the famous story in the Talmudic text. Fine, even far-reaching things—but not to change my whole life for this. If there is something essential in the way I chose to live, it is not reasonable that parents have authority over that thing. Now notice: what overrides honoring parents is not a value but a right. I have a right to live as I understand—not necessarily. Even if my parents told me to go to a Haredi yeshiva and I go to a secular school, okay? That’s outright a transgression, okay? It doesn’t matter; I chose to live this way. I am not obligated in honoring parents here, because this is the way of life I chose for myself. There is perhaps a story that sharpens this very much: the Talmudic text in Sanhedrin, the Talmudic text says there that had Zimri turned around and killed Pinchas, he would not have been executed for it. Yes, Pinchas came to stab Zimri; Zimri could have turned around and shot him in the head. There is the law of a pursuer; Pinchas is about to kill him. So the Kli Yakar asks—I think he brings it in the name of the Rebbe of Gur—he asks: what do you mean? After all, if Pinchas had decided—if Zimri had decided—to stop sinning, then Pinchas would not have killed him, right? Meaning, he can save himself even without killing Pinchas; he can simply stop sinning. So what is the permission to kill Pinchas? After all, if one can be saved by injuring one of the pursuer’s limbs—if a person can be saved without killing the pursuer, then there is no permission to kill the pursuer. If you can save yourself without that, then shoot him in the leg, tie him up, I don’t know what, bring people to help—then certainly there is no permission to kill. There is permission to kill only if you have no other way to save yourself. Now here—just stop sinning, he won’t kill you, and you won’t have to kill him, that’s all. So the Kli Yakar gives a wonderful answer, I love it so much, in the name of the Rebbe of Gur—he says that’s true, but I have the right to sin. I want to sin. The Holy One, blessed be He, will settle accounts with me; it’s a bad act. Fine. But you cannot demand anything from me. If you demand that I not sin, I have the right to sin, and if you threaten me, I will kill you, because you have the law of a pursuer. And all the more so if someone threatens me with a gun and says: give me a shekel or I’ll kill you. What’s the problem? I’ll give him a shekel; I don’t need to kill him under the law of a pursuer. Give him a shekel and he’ll leave me. What, kill him in order to save a shekel? The answer is yes. Not yes in the sense that it is obligatory, but yes in the sense that it is permitted. I am permitted to kill him in order not to give him a shekel; I do not owe him a shekel. If he threatens me so that I give him a shekel, I will kill him, because he has the law of a pursuer. What—what does that mean? There is no value here. The value of holding onto a shekel does not override the value of a human life, right? That is obvious to everyone. Not to mention the value of sleeping with a Midianite woman. That exalted value certainly does not override the value of a human life. So what is the meaning of this? This is not a conflict between values. The value of honoring parents, or Pinchas’s right to life, is limited from within, from the inside, not from the outside. There is no external value that overrides it; rather, it simply does not reach that domain. In the domain that says how I choose to live my life, the value of honoring parents does not exist—not because another value overrides it. That is what I call territorial considerations. Meaning, the value of honoring parents has a certain domain within which it exists. That is the domain where the parents need me; it does not require me to change my whole life, but within reasonable bounds, there there is a value of honoring parents. And then one must discuss, as a halakhic discussion, when yes, when no, what this overrides and what it does not override. There are places or situations in which the value of honoring parents is not overridden by another value; it simply does not exist there. It does not exist there because it cannot be that in my territory my parents have the right to dictate to me how to live. That is outside their relevant territory; it is not valid in that area. The same is true regarding my money. There is no value to your life? You cannot ask me for a shekel and demand that I not kill you while you are threatening me with a gun. I do not owe you a shekel. In my money I alone am the master. And if you threaten me, I will kill you, because there is the law of a pursuer. Not because the value of holding onto a shekel overrides the value of your life; obviously that is not true. In terms of the collision between the values, on the scale of values, if I wanted to decide this by constructing a hierarchy of values, there is no doubt what the decision would be. The decision would be that the value of life stands far above the value of holding onto a shekel. But here this is not overriding because on a hierarchy of values one value is stronger than the other; rather, the strong value is limited from within itself. It has some internal brake that says that in this situation it does not exist. This is a limitation from within and not from without. Not something from outside that overrides it and does not let it enter, but rather it itself does not get there at all. This is not override; this is permission in halakhic language. Okay? There is simply no honoring-parents obligation in such a case. That does not mean that someone who does this would not have some kind of special virtue, but he is not obligated to do it; there is no obligation of honoring parents. Someone who would do it and be willing to give up—I don’t know what—the way he lives his life, maybe he is a person of special stature, maybe he deserves great praise because he truly honors parents in a wonderful way, but halakhically he is not obligated. That is the claim I am making. And this is another kind of limitation. There is a whole list of these; I wrote several articles about it. Basically this is another type of resolving conflicts. It is resolving conflicts from within and not from without. Meaning, it is not because there is a clash here between two values and one overrides the other, but because one of the values is simply limited from within itself. Meaning, in this situation it simply does not exist. It is somewhat similar, by the way, to “and live by them.” The commandments simply do not exist in a place where they require me to give up my life. Not that the value of life overrides the commandments, but rather that the commandments simply do not exist there, because their whole purpose is to make sure that I live properly. But if as a result of keeping the commandments I will not live, then what is the point of the whole story? It is somewhat similar to what the Meiri writes about someone who had Torah study before him and a passing commandment came before him, so the Talmudic text says that he has to leave the Torah and engage in the commandment. So the Meiri asks: but Torah study is equal to them all; it is the most important commandment. So he says yes, but what you study, you study in order to do. And if because of the study you do not do, then what is the point of the study? Well, there is a bit of a contradiction in that Meiri, because that means Torah is an instrumental value for practice, so then it is not equal to them all. Never mind. But the reasoning he gives is very similar. And if the commandments cause you to give up your life, then there are no commandments. The whole purpose of the commandments is to enable you to live. If you have to give up your life in order to keep commandments, then no, you do not have to; then there are no commandments.
[Speaker C] And what about mother and the flag? I can’t hear. With mother and the flag?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There I don’t know of such a deduction. Meaning, there I don’t know how to decide it by these methods. There you really do have to decide according to what is more important, and that I’m leaving for next time. Meaning, until now I’ve only shown that there is a problem of incommensurability on the one hand; on the other hand we do make decisions; and third, these decisions can bypass the need to rank the values—that is, to create a hierarchy. To remain with the incommensurability and still decide. And I brought a few examples for this: desecrate one Sabbath so that he may keep many Sabbaths, or territorial considerations, or various kinds of decisions that do not require me to rank values, but I can still decide without ranking. But of course that does not solve the essential problem. The essential problem—for example the case of Sartre—and the question of how to understand this. So here I come to what Yaakov said earlier; I said I would get to it later, and that continuation will probably be next week. Okay, if anyone wants to ask or comment—then I’m done.
[Speaker D] I understand why the Rabbi likes the answer of the Kli Hemda, that he has the right to sin, but I still have something that doesn’t quite sit right with me. Could it be that the whole permission that Zimri can kill Pinchas under the law of “if someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first” is by Torah law that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him, right? That’s the reason he can kill him back. What Torah law? I didn’t understand. I mean, if there is a possibility not to kill by his stopping the sin, then surely he has to stop sinning and not kill. Independently of Pinchas, it’s not the example of the shekel, because the shekel is in someone else’s possession.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I accept all your distinctions as possible distinctions, and still I make the same claim even about this case. True, there is a distinction; on the contrary, that’s why I began with Zimri. Clearly it is more novel than the shekel. The shekel—I have the right to keep it. I commit no transgression by keeping the shekel. Therefore I brought the case of Zimri, which is more far-reaching. There, after all, it’s not “my right to sin” in the sense of—after all, it is a sin. The Holy One, blessed be He, demands that I not do it. True, He demands that I not do it, but it is my right. It’s like the difference regarding benefit-prohibitions, where the question is whether it is mine or not. A dispute among Rishonim.
[Speaker D] But at that same time the Holy One, blessed be He, may have withheld from me the permission of “if someone comes to kill you.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That permission is not from the Holy One, blessed be He. That permission is not from Jewish law and not from the Holy One, blessed be He; it has no source at all. It is a moral principle.
[Speaker D] I knew that would be the answer—that it’s universal, not connected to Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You knew, so why did you ask, as they say. I still insisted a little. Maybe we can say it from Ketzot HaChoshen; some people bring a source for it, but obviously it does not emerge from the source. It’s like these sources about saving a life on the Sabbath, only much more so. Okay, what? Anyone else? More strength to you. That’s it? Okay then, thank you, have a good week, goodbye.