Halakha and Ethics, Lesson 5

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be. With Rabbi Kook there are so many sources that I don’t know whether it’s possible to construct a fully systematic doctrine out of them. But there are many places—and I’m not an expert on this either, so I don’t know—but we ourselves saw in The Perplexed of the Generation when we read it, we saw in several places that he says this as clearly as possible, this identifying approach. By the way, Maimonides also has this in several places; that’s a separate discussion. Okay, so now let’s read the Chazon Ish in section 2. “Among one’s moral obligations…” Up to here we talked about the teachers, we talked about whether the Chazon Ish really is what people attribute to him or not what people attribute to him—that we already did. “Among one’s moral obligations is that a person should strive to implant in his heart this great principle: that in every case in which he encounters his fellow man, he must weigh on the scales of Jewish law who is the pursuer and who is the pursued.” Here this is already a stronger statement. In every place he encounters someone, yes, he has to weigh on the scales of Jewish law who is the pursuer and who is the pursued. “For surely the study of ethics bequeaths love and compassion for the pursued, and bitter wrath toward the pursuer. And how terrible is the stumbling block, and how great the ruin, when people reverse the pursuer and the pursued, and the pursued and the pursuer. And as for knowing the truth of who is the true pursuer and who is the true pursued—there is no place for this except in the books of the halakhic decisors, which our rabbis, the mighty ones of the world, handed down to us.”

Meaning, there are certain expressions here that you could have taken in the full-blown direction, as if he were saying: there’s nothing but Jewish law, there is no morality. But the context, and also what we saw in the first part, makes it quite clear that he means those places that deal with moral issues—there, if there is a halakhic solution, don’t try to be smarter than Jewish law. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t places in Jewish law where a conflict can arise, and we discussed that—the “fifth section” of the Shulchan Arukh is a term attributed to the Chazon Ish. Meaning, he used that term. “And one in whose heart this principle has not been fixed—his great learning and the power of his diligence in acquiring refined character traits will not help him. For when he clashes forcefully with his fellow man, he will surely justify his cause according to his natural inclinations, and even if those inclinations are refined, they will often not accord with the heavenly Jewish law. And if the foundation of his judgment is distorted, then all its consequences must be foreign offspring and a fellowship of destroyers. Alas, if a schoolteacher cries out”—yes, the children’s teacher—“in town, before Him, may He be blessed, ‘Save me from my pursuers, for they are stronger than I,’ and so on—then a heavenly voice answers him: Woe to one who acts like Zimri and seeks reward like Pinchas! Are you not the pursuer? Are you not the one who does not show deference to the Torah? Did I not write in My Torah that a schoolteacher cannot prevent others?”

Yes, he goes back to the example we saw in the first section, where the more veteran teacher says to the Holy One, blessed be He: save me from my pursuers—some teachers came here and want to take away my livelihood. And what’s the answer? He’s totally convinced he’s morally right and everything, and the answer is: you are the pursuer here. What are you—a robbed Cossack? Meaning, you are the pursuer here, really. Because Jewish law determined that the educational market should indeed be opened to competition, and therefore you are actually the pursuer. So here there are sayings that go in that direction, but as I said, I’m concerned that this is only in these kinds of topics. “A person’s impulse overcomes him most when the sin is not exposed, and careful examination is needed. At a time when the power that condemns corruption—implanted in a person’s heart, which always comes to help the seeker of the good in his battle against bodily desire and its lust—that power is dim within dim judgment, and lacks the strength to condemn the vile consequences that emerge from crooked judgment, because feeling does not discriminate in Jewish law.”

Now here you already see a very interesting sentence. He says that if we just follow our moral intuitions, that’s something very vague. It’s very easy to follow interests, really. Like that schoolteacher—the teacher sees his livelihood right in front of his eyes. And he dresses it up, of course, as what? Morality, persecution, and all kinds of things like that. And that’s simply characteristic of people. A lot of times—and again, not always consciously—we often, not consciously, are led by self-interest, and we dress it up in some garb of morality and absolute justice and so on. Yes, one of the things my wife always comments on is that victims of terrorism are always the ones calling out that terrorists must never be released and that they must be fought with maximum force and all that—and they’re only concerned about us, not themselves of course. They’re the ones worried about us.

Now, what does that mean? It’s obvious that they’re trying, they want to take revenge on terrorists because they’re victims of terrorism, right? Meaning, they want revenge on the terrorists who harmed them, who caused them suffering—that’s obvious. They clothe it in some language of concern and morality and all that. So why are only they concerned about this morality and others aren’t? Clearly there is some emotional involvement here. We can’t detach this issue. And now of course you can say the opposite: that we are emotionally numb, and that’s why we don’t fight for something that in truth, morally, should be fought for. Fine. But we all know this phenomenon: when a person is personally involved, even if the claim is a moral claim that may even be correct, what drives him is not always morality; very often it’s self-interest. And therefore the Chazon Ish says: if you go after the judgment of the heart, after your intuitions, you can go in all sorts of directions. You can’t know what is self-interest and what is morality. And therefore you have to follow Jewish law and the halakhic definitions and so on.

But notice what he’s actually saying here. If he belonged to the identification approach, you couldn’t say such a thing. Because what is he really saying? That your judgment is crooked because there’s something vague here. But if really I’m not one of those for whom the whole business is vague—there’s no concern. I know how to identify what is self-interest and what is morality. Then it’s fine. Meaning, his claim is only that maybe I’m missing something—not that there’s nothing there to miss. If he held the identification approach, then he shouldn’t say these things at all—there’s nothing to miss. Meaning, he says maybe you’re missing the real morality because your interests are carrying you away, or the vagueness enables you to miss it. Meaning, he recognizes that such a thing exists.

[Speaker G] Maybe he’s afraid that you, specifically, will miss it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but he says what would happen without Jewish law? It’s possible that you’d miss it. Meaning, there is something there to miss. Meaning, there is a moral imperative that is not just Jewish law but has an existence of its own. He doesn’t claim—he’s not among those of the identification approach, that’s what I’m trying to keep showing. He’s not one of those who identify them and say there’s no such thing as morality; Jewish law is morality. No. He’s not. He only claims that in those topics at least, if I’m right that he’s talking only about these topics, in those topics that touch moral questions, Jewish law is what determines what the moral thing is—it’s what hits the mark. Not that it determines it—that is, no, it’s not a definition. Yes, the identifying approach says that Jewish law defines morality; that’s not a claim, it’s a definition. Whatever Jewish law determines is morality—there’s nothing else. He is making a claim, not a definition. He says that what Jewish law determines is in fact the most moral. You see how he suddenly goes back to being like Rabbi Kook. He’s basically saying that what Jewish law determines is in fact the most moral thing. But there is such a category as morality. If he didn’t accept the existence of such a category, there’d be no need to talk at all. If you follow morality, you’re committing idolatry. There is Jewish law, that’s what you have to do, end of story. He doesn’t say that. He keeps talking as though there is something more here—just know that you can miss it, and it’s not simple, and you have to know that Jewish law is designed precisely so that we won’t be led here by interests and emotions and such human biases or others. Meaning, he does accept the existence of a second category.

Where were we? “The vile consequences that emerge from crooked judgment, because feeling does not discriminate in Jewish law. And according to his feeling, it will not occur to him to examine whether perhaps his judgment is leaning astray”—yes, maybe he is mistaken. “And therefore I was not surprised that among individuals who are somewhat refined in their character traits, we have encountered, in another measure, a special case where one became entangled in a conflict of great value with his fellow man, and was not willing to hear the voice of teachers, and did not seek out the Jewish law, and plunged into the thick of the beam to persist in fights, quarrels, and disputes—and all the delicacy of his soul vanished from him in an instant.”

Meaning, we see that he’s talking about biases. He’s not talking about there being no such thing. Rather, he says we have a tendency to miss the truth if we don’t follow principles. And what is the basic idea here, I think? It’s beyond the claim that sages are the smartest and know morality best and so on. There’s something here that I think is less mystical and more logical. In a place where you conduct the discussion in the study hall—not when the situation affects you, when you’re already inside it—you sit in the study hall, you raise arguments this way and that, they discuss, exchange positions, reach a conclusion, take a vote in the end. The chance that you’ll arrive at the most correct answer is greater than for someone whose whole being cries out against moral injustice because he’s living it from the inside. When he lives it from the inside, then he is biased.

And therefore the point is not—I don’t think this is necessarily about sages having some kind of virtuoso ability, greater than any other person’s, to arrive at pure moral truth. Maybe that too, but I don’t think it’s only that. There’s something to this, and this is often an argument I have with many people. I think we once talked about the place of emotion in morality; maybe we’ll talk about it again. A lot of people think the opposite: that sitting in an ivory tower is not a good place to discuss moral questions. You have to live it, you have to be involved in the situation. Yes, just as a political analogy, but say, the Council of Torah Sages versus members of Knesset. So the theory at least says that the Council of Torah Sages aren’t personally involved in the matter; they don’t have a personal interest in it. They have a group interest, a value interest, whatever. But they aren’t inside the matter itself, so they’ll make better decisions and instruct the Knesset members what to do.

There is something in that model that is a good model. There is something in that model—in fact lately I’ve been increasingly convinced that that model really is a good one—because what’s worst is what happens in the Jewish Home party, if I may make a political comment. Because Jewish Home doesn’t have, in any institutionalized way, a Council of Torah Sages like that. On the other hand, there is some sense of commitment to rabbis. So what happens is that each time they choose different people and do things that are simply illogical—a confused bunch—and each time they follow someone else because they think that’s what the Torah says, because they are half-and-half. On the one hand. On the other hand, there isn’t a group of rabbis who make the decisions, who were chosen or whatever in one way or another. Rather what exists is some tendency that rabbis are supposed to say what is right—but who are the rabbis? Which rabbis? So you decide who seems to you to be rabbis and who doesn’t, and that’s whom you follow. I think that is the worst model. Either do it yourself, or have a fixed group of rabbis accepted by the public. But not this. It’s just confusion. Yes, the conversion bill simply woke me up to this issue; this whole thing is confusion without equal.

[Speaker G] It seems to me that the pursuer will get lost. He’ll become the pursued, and the pursued the pursuer, and back and forth, as long as we go according to some determination—whether of Jewish law or morality—made in advance, and give one of the sides a label in advance. I’ll give an everyday example. They set up the Histadrut to protect the unfortunate people, the dockworkers. Okay, they are the pursued. Today there is the Histadrut organization that protects the unfortunate, the pursued, and then the pursued got the title of pursued, and now the entire country is persecuted by the pursued.

[Speaker K] And back and forth.

[Speaker G] Same thing with the teachers. We need to protect the poor old teachers, and now they can get up on the table and start dancing, because we gave them the title of pursued—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then all the students become the pursued.

[Speaker G] And it goes back and forth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that is why the sages determined that this market should be opened to competition. On the other hand, that same consideration itself could apply also to pharmacies or grocery stores, and there the sages don’t say this.

[Speaker G] The moment I determine in advance that we open it to competition, then at that point the old teachers become the unfortunate ones.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying now.

[Speaker G] Every advance determination starts from a certain tendency.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not just another advance determination. By the way, it is an advance determination—we determine in advance that this market is opened to competition. By the way, this is only for teachers. “Cutting into another’s livelihood”—that’s a halakhic claim—in other contexts there is such a claim. A grocer can indeed make that claim. There too you could say, what do you mean, then he’ll raise prices, do whatever he wants because there’s no competition, a monopoly. But there for some reason the sages don’t accept that.

[Speaker I] Unless it would cause a situation that leads to poverty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Again, I’m saying—but the claim there is not that kind of claim. There we’re talking about the significance of education and Torah study. It’s not involved only in the question of service quality. That’s not the only point. But never mind—for our purposes, here too we’re dealing with a determination that is made in advance. The sages sat in the study hall and decided—or in the court, doesn’t matter—and decided that this is the Jewish law. But they did this not necessarily as those involved within the situation, where of course they’re tainted by various interests, but on the contrary, precisely through cool deliberation.

And there is something that I think is very powerful in this conception, one that the world today doesn’t like so much, but it seems to me there’s a lot of logic in it: don’t tie moral judgment to emotion. It’s not connected to emotion. Sit in a place where you are completely detached from the matter, think carefully about what is right to do, and that’s what you determine. And now all those who are in the field will have to follow the determinations made in those cold, intellectual, detached regions. Another example: Roi Klein. Everyone greatly admires what he did, and indeed he was a person worthy of admiration. He made a tremendous sacrifice there. Does that mean what he did was correct? I tend to think not. What he did was not correct. According to Jewish law, plainly, it’s forbidden. Both by Jewish law and in my opinion also not essentially correct, not only halakhically.

But what happens? The point is that the decision there—if the purpose of the halakhic determination is to determine what is right or not right to do in those situations before you are there, when you’ve got three seconds before the grenade explodes and you have to make decisions—he did the best he could, and that was the decision he made. But if indeed he had been equipped beforehand with the right decisions—I think those are the right decisions, halakhic ones beforehand or moral ones beforehand—then in those three seconds he wouldn’t have had to make the decision; he already has the answer. He has the toolbox. You can’t do that for every situation.

[Speaker I] Why isn’t it the morally correct thing? Why isn’t it the morally correct thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because a person cannot sacrifice himself in order to save others when I don’t know which of them will be lost and how many—and he was also a deputy battalion commander there. To sacrifice himself, certainly. To take in the army that one should sacrifice himself for a group—

[Speaker D] No, and more than that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also because he was deputy battalion commander, because that also has implications for the battle. Meaning, never mind, there are all sorts of considerations there that could justify… but never mind. I’m bringing it only as an example of a decision worthy of enormous admiration in the personal sense—that much is obvious. Does that mean this decision was correct? Not always. A decision that comes from, say, positive moral feeling, from supreme self-sacrifice—that doesn’t mean it’s correct. And many times someone who says such a thing is accused of coldness, as though he is separating morality from emotion. But right—I’m actually quite in favor of separating morality from emotion.

[Speaker K] Rabbi, when we talked about Rabbi Gibraltar, we reached somewhat opposite conclusions. We said you can’t judge someone when you’re not in the situation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. There definitely is a second side—that’s what we talked about there. And I think the balance between them depends on the question of how much—

[Speaker K] Are you equipped with both tools?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, more than that. I’m saying: to what extent do you understand the situation you’re talking about? Meaning, there are pathological situations such that if I sit in the study hall, I simply don’t understand what that situation means. I can’t make decisions about such a thing. Maybe the configuration of the people who were sitting in it? I don’t know. I think we understand this one perfectly well. I don’t see what’s problematic in this situation.

[Speaker I] In that now there are people around you who are about to die and you…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. That’s what we’re talking about, right—so what? What is there, what claim is there that I don’t understand?

[Speaker I] The question is sacrifice—something that you and I are not people who have experienced.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “experienced” mean? Not only experienced. I haven’t experienced it, but I understand the meaning of the situation. A person who judges ordinary monetary law regarding what happened in the ghetto simply doesn’t understand the situation. He doesn’t understand. That’s all. He simply makes the wrong judgment—not that he makes a different judgment because he didn’t live it; the judgment is wrong. He simply doesn’t understand, he isn’t reading the map correctly. So those are cases where indeed the decision has to be made from the inside, not from the outside. That’s why we talked about how many times a halakhic decisor, say, when people come to him with a question, says: you are the local authority, even though you are of course a Torah scholar of much lesser stature. Right? But you should make the decision because you are there, you know the community, you know exactly what is right there. When a decisor feels that he does not sufficiently understand the situation and cannot judge it in a merely cold and rational way, then if he is really a responsible decisor, he leaves the decision to the one who is there. And obviously there certainly are places where that also is important. But it seems to me that in those places where it is a situation that overall we understand—if it can be understood—then that’s different.

[Speaker D] Because the responsibility a commander has toward his soldiers, toward the parents of his soldiers, to bring them back safely—

[Speaker M] With regard to—

[Speaker D] himself, it is much greater than the responsibility he has to bring himself back safely. That’s how he goes to war in the first place. And therefore he won’t hold back at all from the war, he won’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] act—he can’t in the first place.

[Speaker D] I want—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I want to distinguish here between two things. You’re talking about a commander who feels responsibility for his subordinate. That can be understood in two ways. I’m willing to accept it in one formulation and not in another. The question is what you mean.

[Speaker D] Let’s say—not the last one, but a Torah scholar who would go last.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he’s wiser, then he should go last.

[Speaker D] Why do you say he doesn’t go last?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said he doesn’t go last? Here the question is who goes first—

[Speaker D] and who goes last, depends what kind of commander.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. Fine, not a general, doesn’t matter. He’s the worst performer. Fine, true—not every commander goes first.

[Speaker F] Even though command in the IDF is something entirely different in terms of the concept of responsibility—that’s what I’ve seen in my life. You’ve gotten tangled up with Yossi now. But a lot of officers and commanders who wrote about their war traumas, from Menachem Ansbacher to General Salim, said that this feeling—that no matter how much they succeeded, no matter how much those around them said they succeeded, this feeling that I didn’t fulfill my duty toward my soldiers, toward the people who placed their trust in me—that is something that shatters their lives.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I understand, but that is exactly the point I want to make in relation to what Elazar said.

[Speaker M] The point that I think is incorrect, though. Meaning, a commander in the army—his role is not to bring the soldiers back safely; he has to win the war.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, exactly that—those two perspectives. To bring the state back safely. To win the war.

[Speaker M] Today’s conception is: we don’t fight in order that soldiers won’t get hurt. Okay, fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: what Yossi said, I just want to bring it back to our discussion. It can be understood in two ways, and I think those are the two shades we heard here. If you’re talking about the commander’s feelings—which I don’t have—I agree. Someone who wasn’t there doesn’t have those feelings. But the question is whether those feelings really have standing in the decision-making. And my claim is that such feelings are a bias. Not that I don’t understand—true, I don’t understand it because I don’t live it—but it’s good that I don’t live it, because it’s a bias. By contrast, in the ghetto, I can show you that if you understand the situation well, it really changes the law. Not because I don’t understand the situation and therefore I don’t have the biases—it really changes the law.

[Speaker D] Don’t know the rabbi’s assistant—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] whether he’ll come back or not?

[Speaker D] There? I didn’t understand. Don’t know the rabbi’s assistant—whether he’ll come back or not? A woman whose husband ran away, God forbid. Right? And she went to the rabbi and said, my husband ran away, it’s terrible, terrible, terrible. The rabbi’s assistant goes in to the rabbi with the note from that woman. Then the rabbi says he’ll come back; I’m telling you he won’t come back. So she says to him, that can’t be—what do you mean he won’t come back? Again she goes in. Goes in again with the note, he says to her, listen, the rabbi says he’ll come back, I say he won’t come back. She says, how can you say that? He says: I saw her. That’s not what he says to the rabbi—he says to her: I saw her.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. So that’s—

[Speaker D] exactly the thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, okay, I accept the comment, but I think that’s exactly the difference. And who will decide? Now who will decide between those two possibilities? Meaning, whether the decision should be made from outside or from inside—even that is determined from outside. The sages have to decide. Whether for such a situation they take authority upon themselves to determine and obligate others, and they establish Jewish law here, or whether they say no—in these situations, this is perhaps a transgression for the sake of Heaven—in these situations we do not want to set things in stone. Whoever is in them will have to make the decision.

[Speaker I] But what is a person?

[Speaker B] If—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the sages determine something, the person here always does something—he decides. Yes, but if Jewish law determines, then he is supposed to—that is certainly what the Chazon Ish is saying.

[Speaker B] Maybe it’s like the question whether there is a war—a discretionary war or a commanded war—who decides? Well? Same thing. If it’s a discretionary war, then the king decides; if it’s a commanded war, then the sages decide. Whose question is it whether it is—?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The sages will determine in principle, yes. And the king of course will do what he wants anyway. This is even a war between authorities, right? A war between authorities—this is the danger in separation of powers, of course. The moment there is separation of powers, it means there is no absolute hierarchy for any one of them. Now once each one is willing to go all the way, a tangle is created that you cannot solve. If the court insists all the time on striking down laws of the Knesset, and the Knesset constantly legislates laws that try to get around the court, in the end we are in a situation that cannot be solved; there’s no clear way out.

[Speaker D] In the law.

[Speaker C] There is an army, there is hierarchy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the court also has hierarchy; it has authority, legal authority.

[Speaker C] The moment it’s not absolute, then they can kind of—what, is it above the laws?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not right, not right, not right. The court can strike down any law by any majority you want if it contradicts the spirit of this—I don’t know—all these expressions, and proportionality, and all that nonsense. So yes, then it annuls it. Now what will you say?

[Speaker F] And determine that this law—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] was not determined—and determine—but it will strike that down too. No, it’s simple. And people after the Holocaust in general say that there are certain principles a state simply may not violate.

[Speaker F] That you can’t get around easily. The minister of justice is one of the judges.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Huh? What suddenly?

[Speaker F] He could be… doesn’t matter, the Knesset can pass a law—

[Speaker O] and all authority will be under the minister of justice—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then after that we’ll appeal the minister of justice’s decision to the High Court. There’s no way, you won’t get out of it. Once there is separation of powers, you can’t get out of it. Meaning, if you decide that there is one apex to the pyramid, then there isn’t real separation of powers. If there is real separation of powers, then you always take into account—and therefore the authorities have to be very careful not to pull the rope to the point where it tears, even at the price of sometimes having to give in when they shouldn’t have to give in. Meaning, therefore there has to be some kind of self-restraint, because mutual restraint will not work all the way. It just can’t work all the way. There is something very problematic here, and people don’t always understand it. Sometimes they don’t understand that the Knesset gives too much leeway to the court, which is actually the reason; and sometimes they don’t understand why the court gives too much leeway to the Knesset, when it should have intervened. It depends which side of the issue you’re looking from. But both sides come from the same point. Sometimes the court really thinks it should have intervened, but it restrains itself anyway. It says: because we’ll get to some extreme case that will completely dismantle the system. And the same with the Knesset regarding the court.

[Speaker I] You’re giving them a lot of credit. It’s probably political.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I disagree. I think there is here also—

[Speaker I] something genuine. It’s not just interests and politics and all. There’s something genuine here—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wouldn’t dismiss it.

[Speaker I] Right—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re all human beings, all human beings. We all act on the basis of interests. But there’s also something real here. I wouldn’t belittle that. You can see that even the court, which is so heavily vilified in religious right-wing circles and so on, is very, very restrained when it comes to striking down laws. And it has too many rulings—or very, very many rulings—that this public would actually have loved if it knew about them. It’s just that usually you only hear about the ones that annoy you. But there are many rulings where the court restrained itself, and we all know, say, where it stands ideologically and politically. Look, for example, at targeted killing.

[Speaker F] Huh? Targeted killing. The government needed that reasoned stamp of approval.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and there are many more examples. Therefore I think there is something here that is also value-based. It’s not just interests and politics and all. There’s something…

[Speaker F] What, from Menachem?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s also Menachem—

[Speaker F] He told you about it. He…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, he also had a part in… Fine, let’s continue reading. So: “The acquisitions of the exalted trait of submission to judgment,” yes, section 5. “The acquisitions of the exalted trait of submission to judgment are two: habit is one acquisition, and study is the second acquisition.” So now the Chazon Ish is talking about submission to judgment. Submission to judgment means this habituation to subordinate—

[Speaker M] the intuition—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] our moral intuition, our moral feeling, to the legal determination, the colder or more formal one. So that requires some kind of habit. Right? So he says two things can help us acquire this habit: one acquisition is habit itself—that is, to accustom myself constantly to check things on the scales of law—and study is the second acquisition. Meaning, one also has to study. By the way, study sometimes actually… interferes with this a bit, I think, because someone who understands how the whole business works can much more easily see where the rabbi is really inserting himself, and that that is not the determination of Jewish law. It’s very easy for him not to listen to the rabbi, specifically because he knows. Ignoramuses easily listen to the instructions of sages, because for them everything the sage says is Jewish law; they have no real ability to critique it. So sometimes study may indeed help internalize submission to law, but not submission to the representatives of law. Meaning: you determine what the law says. So, okay, that’s something—

[Speaker C] I studied—

[Speaker G] more, so that also suits me better. No, right, so I’m not saying this—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not saying it negatively. It’s a bit autobiographical, even.

[Speaker G] The whole Talmud and everything—in my opinion, most Jewish laws are not for Torah scholars. I mean, if there were a claim of “migo,” every Torah scholar would say there is a claim of “migo.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question of migo is a question, the question of migo is a question.

[Speaker G] If I choose migo, I’ll always know the less advantageous claim. There’s a good migo claim—if I’m a Torah scholar and I know, if I know how to think, if I know how to think like a Torah scholar, then everything that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not so simple. There are not-bad answers to that question, the question of “if he wished, he could have lied.” There are not-bad answers to that question, but let’s leave it for another time. I think I once talked about it. We did talk about it once. There is an explanation for that even with respect to a Torah scholar.

[Speaker G] If I know that coins are announced only if they were tied together, then every time I walk in the market and hear someone announcing coins, I’ll say they were tied together.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but that “tied together” can be in all sorts of forms; it’s never…

[Speaker G] Also last time I saw coins, it wasn’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] like that. Okay, these are examples like that. “As is well known, narrow faith is not sufficient to restrain a person from doing evil when he is driven after his natural aspiration.” Again, there would be some room to see this as a pessimistic view of man—that your natural tendency is to do evil, and law has to, because “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” and the role of law is to stop natural feeling. I’m not even sure the Chazon Ish really means to say that in a full sense, but there is such an aspect here too. He is illuminating that side. Yes, that side exists too. “And the attainment of perfection—that his actions and his faith should not contradict one another—requires, for the most part, habit and persistent study, for whose repair many books were composed and many opinions stated with much wisdom.”

There’s an interesting sentence here, because what is he saying? “The attainment of perfection”—and what is perfection? That his actions and his faith should not contradict one another. What does that mean? Up till now what he said is not like that. His actions and his faith contradict one another, but his faith determines his actions—or feeling conflicts with his faith, but his faith will be what determines. He talks about his actions—

[Speaker B] In the end will operate according to his recognition as action and not according to feeling.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And not according to feeling, but according to Jewish law, fine? Or he means to say that he will also create a psychological identification with the actions. That his actions and his faith won’t contradict each other means that even his natural tendency to act will be to do what Jewish law says. Because in the Chazon Ish there are also statements like this: that the sages of Jewish law, their natural inclination is actually exactly what Jewish law says. Once I asked some man from Bnei Brak about some important decisor—does he really know all of the Shulchan Arukh with all the commentaries, Choshen Mishpat with the Sma and Taz and Shakh and all that? He said, no, but he hits the target. Meaning, what he thinks is right is usually also what the Shakh and Taz say. Meaning, there’s some statement here that someone who is immersed enough in the matter—there it was about a legal issue, not necessarily a moral one—but also in the moral context, his moral inclination, his moral intuition, won’t be in conflict with Jewish law, because after this many-years-long habit, it will also identify with it. Maybe that’s what he means. I’m not sure. We’ll see in a moment in the next passage—I brought a passage from Rabbi Kook on this issue—we’ll see in just a moment.

“And all agreed that the cure of the traits is to increase denunciation of walking after the free inclinations of the soul on the one hand, and to awaken the great duty to obey the laws of the Torah and the great sin of rebelling against the blessed God in His holy Torah, on the other. Recognition of the disgrace of evil and recognition of the obligation to guard the good together attune the person to walk in the good path all his days.” Here he suddenly moved to good and evil as identified with Jewish law and not Jewish law. Yes, clearly he returned here to that identifying thesis, as though the natural inclinations are basically evil, and the good is to follow what Jewish law determines. But again, all the reservations I said above apply—when he speaks about those fields in which Jewish law itself truly deals with good and evil.

“However, correction of the heart has no remedy except through corrected deeds, which at first are done by coercive force”—yes, “hearts are drawn after actions,” by ancient agreement. “And through many good deeds done in struggle and courage against free will, the desire of the heart is transformed from evil to good.” Here he’s already saying what I said before; here he says it explicitly. That after the habit, in the end you’ll also no longer be in conflict. Meaning, your natural morality will identify with the instructions of Jewish law. Fine? Does that mean there is no morality—that really you have succeeded in uprooting your moral tendency and imposing Jewish law over it?

[Speaker O] In the standard case, that’s the situation. What? In the standard case, that’s the situation. What does that mean? You kind of get along with Jewish law. The whole issue is the extreme case, where you say you need…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, but he says that in the end there won’t be… the more complete you are—again, this is hypothetical—but the more complete you are, if you were completely complete in theory, there would be no conflicts. In all cases there would be identity between what Jewish law says and what your moral tendency says. “And in this way a person goes and acquires the good through the habit of overcoming, time after time, material desire and psychological inclinations, and doing action according to the instructions of reason and the obligation of the Torah, and slowly he accustoms himself to the good through a natural and free inclination.” Here there really is a very strong statement of the second step, which in the previous passage it wasn’t clear he had said. The identity between actions and faith—I said that can be interpreted in two ways. Here he says it explicitly. That after the habit and submission to judgment and so on, and ignoring moral feeling, in the end you’ll manage to tame it. Meaning, you’ll manage so that—

[Speaker I] It’s less… it seems to me that throughout the page here it’s not exactly moral feeling; all this “natural” thing is material desire. Here he writes that explicitly. But maybe earlier too he meant…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s why I—

[Speaker I] that’s what… it’s one level below that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re basically cleaning away the interests and leaving the moral feeling, which in principle matches what is written in Jewish law.

[Speaker I] Yes. So whenever he talks about the natural part, he isn’t talking about natural morality; he’s talking about narrow personal motives.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What I think is my natural morality. What I think—it gets mixed together for me, because I act out of a consciousness that this is what morality says. He says: I’m biased. Now you can clean away those impurities, and in the end you’re left with some identity between morality and Jewish law. And then, if you understand it this way, it comes back very close to what Rabbi Kook says. Because then it basically means that true morality really is what is written in Jewish law. I just think he says this not necessarily with respect to all planes of Jewish law, but to those laws, like the case of the teachers, that really deal with ethical dilemmas.

[Speaker B] I… maybe a bit surprisingly or something, maybe sometimes you see the opposite situation: that specifically people who are educated into full identification with Jewish law don’t have any sensitivity to natural morality at all, because that’s how you feel there is a certain degeneration in it. Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that later. Meaning, I… this is a series. I’ll talk about it more afterward. There’s also the opposite effect, but I want to be… there’s a thesis and an antithesis, and in the end we’ll arrive, I hope, at a somewhat more complete picture. And this is the straight path to acquiring good, both through habit and through study, and first of all through the struggle to answer and compel the freedom of desire. Because generally one will not find a desire for diligence in books that condemn the craving for pleasures and incline a person toward modesty and abstinence, and keep the youth restrained against wildness. And necessarily one must use a prior agreement—apparently that’s also what he said above—a prior agreement to diligently study a book. Here there’s some confusion that I can no longer identify, even with the deciphering in Otzar HaChochma, so that’s fine. But the principle, the principle is clear. The principle is that in the end you arrive at some kind of identity between the moral inclination and the halakhic command. Though I think that in this sense I still say this happens in those contexts where Jewish law really does deal with questions of morality. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean that throughout all of Jewish law we’re really talking only about ways of arriving at morality, as I said earlier in the name of Rabbi Kook, but rather in those places where the halakhic determination is trying to hit upon the most correct moral result. So apparently that’s where it is, and then indeed this work will ultimately bring you to some kind of identity. That means it will cleanse your conscience or your moral feeling of all impurities, and in the end you’ll be left with a natural inclination toward true morality. Now in this context there’s the passage I brought in the name of Rabbi Kook—I don’t know, we’ll see how much of it we get through—on the Binding of Isaac. I think I already spoke about this once, but it’s from Olat Re’iyah, from Rabbi Kook’s prayer book, in his commentary on the Binding of Isaac passage. I brought only a few excerpts because it’s long. It’s continuous, meaning I brought several excerpts that are one particular section from all of his commentary. Rabbi Kook’s interpretation of the Binding of Isaac proceeds in a way quite similar to the move Kierkegaard makes in Fear and Trembling: that in fact the Binding was something much broader than binding the son. There was here a kind of binding of moral principles, a binding of reason, a binding of the person himself—not his son, or not only his son, but himself—before the divine command. That was really the process of the Binding. The main difference between Rabbi Kook’s description and Kierkegaard’s is the question of the conclusion. That is, Kierkegaard remains with the conclusion that what he calls the knight of faith—Abraham our forefather was the knight of faith, the perfect model of the believing person—is someone who binds himself before the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s the conclusion; that’s what is demanded. “Do not raise your hand against the boy”—that’s a malfunction, from Kierkegaard’s point of view.

[Speaker B] A feeling of the absurd, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The absurd is the essence of religiosity, yes. The binding of morality and of logical thought—that is the essence of religiosity. That’s how Kierkegaard understands it. I think this has deep Christian roots. For some reason it has also become increasingly common in the Jewish world in recent generations, unfortunately. Rabbi Kook ends differently. That is, he goes with him all the way, but in the end he concludes differently. “Do not raise your hand against the boy”—that is the lesson of the Binding. “Do not raise your hand against the boy” basically means that the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Abraham our forefather: “What, did you really think I was going to tell you to kill your son? Such a thing is impossible. It cannot be that a divine command would contradict morality and reason”—yes, because “through Isaac shall your seed be called.” There was also a promise; it was against reason too, not only against morality.

[Speaker L] Why didn’t Abraham our forefather reach that conclusion on his own?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He had to make him—Abraham our forefather—that’s exactly the point. Maybe I’ll broaden the question even more: so why was all this necessary? Let Him just tell him directly, and that’s it. What was the whole process for? That’s what Rabbi Kook explains here. And it completely parallels what we just read in the Chazon Ish, it seems to me. That’s why I brought it now, because it continues—or develops—the last two paragraphs of the Chazon Ish. So let’s look for a moment at what we can get through. “And he bound Isaac his son”—these are all excerpts from the verses and his commentary. “The quality of the flame of holy fire, of love of God and the soul’s yearning, in all its waves and all its rushing torrents of strength, to fulfill with all its might the absolute command, overcame with all its force, until even had it been joined by the power of the deep love of the old father for his only son, which by the force of its nature would prevent him from doing this act—would prevent, sorry, by the force of its nature, from doing this act.” You see? This is exactly the conflict between natural feeling and the divine command—that is the essence of the Binding. And with Abraham there was both: the natural feeling and the submission to God’s command. “Also every kind of resistance and refusal and all the power of bravery on Isaac’s part against this act, likewise from the holiness of soul of the holy father, would all be overcome. And he would do the word of God strongly, being bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and mighty as a lion to do the will of his Father in Heaven. Therefore, even though here the holy souls of both of them, father and son, united in one wondrous yearning to fulfill the word of God, still the impression of the act had to be according to the force of the will of the one being tested, for it is revealed and known before the Knower of secrets that even had the test become more difficult because of some refusal and resistance and the stirring of all feelings of pity and mercy on the son’s part toward the father, and all the tumult of his inward parts and his heart, the act would nevertheless have been carried out, in all its beauty and all its yearning. Therefore: ‘And he bound Isaac his son’—as though the thing were against his will,” Isaac’s will, “and he was overpowering and compelling him to this against his will, as one bound.” Because he says: why “and he bound Isaac his son”? Isaac cooperated. The Sages in the midrashim say that Isaac basically knew what was happening and cooperated, so what does “and he bound Isaac his son” mean? Rabbi Kook means to say that Abraham was so resolute in his commitment to the divine command that he bound Isaac in such a way that even if Isaac had resisted, he would have done it. Meaning, obviously if Isaac didn’t resist, that helped him, because Isaac’s resistance too he would have had to fight. But he would also have succeeded in overcoming Isaac’s resistance if Isaac had resisted. That’s how resolute he was in his commitment to fulfill the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. “And he placed him on the altar above the wood,” and so on—it doesn’t matter, I won’t read it all. He holds this very strongly, yes, he sharpens it more and more. These are only certain excerpts. The whole progression basically heads toward this: there is here an absolute binding, this Kierkegaardian movement into the absurd—yes, with eyes open, into the absurd. Abraham loves his son, he recognizes moral principles, principles of reason, everything is true—but the divine command overrides everything. He binds everything before the divine command.

[Speaker G] So then why is the divine command to stop not at the same level right now…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, one second, one second. So now: “And an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven”—I’m skipping a bit. Most of the time his prophecy did not come in the appearance of an angel. It was more exalted and higher than that which comes through the appearance of an angel. But there are also events in which the appearance of the angel completes the prophecy and magnifies it. “And the first vision of the word of God, to offer up his son as a burnt offering—no angel could participate in that. ‘And an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven.’” So he says there is some tremendously great lesson here, and therefore he needs to explain why this was done through an angel and not by the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. I’m not getting into the details now because I want to get to the punch line. “And He said: Do not raise your hand against the boy, and do not do anything to him. The voice of the Lord in power, through His angel, doing His word, says that the absolute command, both from the standpoint of justice—to refrain from the wickedness of bloodshed—and from the standpoint of nature—to abstain from anything that harms the fatherly feelings full of love for his beloved son—remains in force as it stands.” And that is the lesson. The lesson is that these natural feelings, or this reason and natural morality that all of us live with, and that Kierkegaardian feeling that these things are the evil inclination, and that the religious person, the knight of faith, is supposed to overcome them and bind them before the command—that all this remains in force as it stands. That’s “do not raise your hand against the boy.” The lesson of the Binding is “do not raise your hand against the boy,” not “please take your son, your only one, whom you love,” but “do not raise your hand against the boy.” In a moment I’ll return to the question of why this whole path was necessary.

[Speaker G] They both came from the same command. Why is the first one so powerful, and the second one he won’t hear?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course he’ll hear it, of course he’ll hear it. The second is not a command; the second is a revelation. The second says: what, did you really think I wanted you to kill your son? Obviously the natural moral feelings and natural reason should align with what I want. It parallels what I want. Don’t think—this whole process came to teach you that lesson. That’s how Rabbi Kook explains it here. The lesson of the Binding is found in this verse: “do not raise your hand against the boy.” And of course this is no longer Kierkegaard. Then he says: “The steadfast holy powers, engraved in spiritual nature and in material nature, did not descend from their station even by a hairsbreadth because of the supreme vision revealed in the word of God concerning the offering and the deepest self-sacrifice to the living God, which is holy and mighty in truth through the power of desire and the wholeness of spiritual will. Therefore: do not raise your hand against the boy—in all the force of the simple and upright prohibition of the matter.” “Do not raise your hand against the boy” is not a scriptural decree. “Do not raise your hand against the boy” means: your natural feeling—that is what I want; that is My command. You are obligated to act accordingly. “And do not think that there is some practical contradiction between your pure fatherly love for your dear son and the noble love of God that flows in strength in the depths of your soul, such that there would be even some slight justification for actually doing something that indicates a lessening of that love.” Not even a peep of diminution in a father’s love for his son is required in order to be a servant of God. On the contrary: you should love your son according to your natural feeling. I placed that natural feeling in you. “And do not do anything to him”—do absolutely nothing to him; don’t even do something symbolic to him. That’s what he means by “do not do anything to him.” “For a father’s mercy and his love, in a pure soul, are themselves kindled in holy fire that proceeds straight from the pure love of God, and from His mercy upon all His works, whose appearance in the world increases the splendor and glory of the supreme purposive holiness that elevates life and the entire universe to the height of their station.” So up to here he says that the lesson is really “do not raise your hand against the boy.” The obvious remaining question is: why was the whole process necessary? So what for? Just tell him that straight away.

[Speaker D] No, but maybe this is also a criticism, a divine criticism, toward…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that I don’t think. Ravitzky brings, I think, Spanish commentators—or liturgical poets and Spanish commentators—who wanted to say that Abraham failed the test of the Binding. That his willingness to bind his son was the failure. In the plain meaning of the verses, I don’t think you can force that in even with a tractor. I don’t know how they say such a thing. And here this is an important point. So he says as follows: “You are the pure, bright light, refined of every impurity of limited bodily stirring. Your soul is clear, to the point that even your love of God—which, insofar as it lowers itself to dwell within a soul bound to matter and within a spirit limited by certain boundaries, must be refined in the fire of the supreme fear that stands above every image of love and feeling, only in the place of intellect and higher recognition, in the power of its pure might—through this you fulfilled all the exalted content that a human soul is fit to aspire to in relation to mighty perfection. For now the great divine knowledge has been engraved in the full reality of your existence and being: ‘For now I know that you fear God,’ and you did not withhold—not only that without the compassion of supreme fear, full of preciousness and supreme truth in their purity—but also that you are one who fears God, whose wondrous and wholehearted love was refined and purified through the light of pure fear, and in your love for your son there is no point lacking the radiance of purity, for ‘you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me’ with all the power of your full love. And you have reached the supreme measure, that your love for your son is a direct and closely bound branch also of the love of the Rock of the worlds, of the life of life, the true God. ‘And you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me.’” What he is saying here, it seems to me, is two things. I won’t go into all the contexts; I’m doing this briefly because I want to finish with it now. He says two things. First: why was this path necessary? First, in order to sharpen the message. When you want to put someone through a test that will brand the conclusion into him, it’s very hard to impress upon people the conclusion that their natural moral feeling is actually what is demanded of them. There’s a tendency among religious people to think that if it feels good and seems right to me, then that probably is not what Jewish law expects of me, yes? Too good to be kosher, as they say. The Binding came to uproot that idea—not to plant it, but to uproot it. Yes, it came to say: not true. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: I also gave you a conscience, a moral feeling, a father’s love for his son. I gave that to you because I expect it from you. Now, He had to put him through this terrible trial in order to sharpen that point, like in a refining process, so that it would be clear. Because it’s very hard to fight that argument. Maimonides talks about this too, among others. It’s very hard to fight that feeling that says religiosity must be irrational, immoral, against natural inclinations. Because if you go with natural inclinations—yes? if you’re liberal, if you’re this or that—then you’re not religious. There’s a very strong tendency in the religious world, and not only in the religious world I think, to see it that way, and the Binding comes to teach otherwise. But there’s more here than that. There’s a second point. So far I’ve spoken only about a didactic means, that is, sharpening the message by taking him through the whole thesis in order to sharpen the antithesis. But there’s something more than that. Because there really is a great danger in liberalism. There’s a great danger in this conception of “do not raise your hand against the boy.” There’s a danger in this lesson that basically says that what my conscience tells me is also what the Holy One, blessed be He, means. Because then that leads exactly to what the Chazon Ish says: then I’ll just do whatever I want; in the end that’s what the Holy One, blessed be He, says. I won’t even bother trying to find out whether that’s really what He says, how to find the interpretation, how to reconcile things. I’ll just do what I think, and that’s it—and by doing so I have emptied all my religious commitment of content. In that sense Kierkegaard is right. There is something in religious commitment that has to be, at the very least, a willingness that it would override my feelings and my reason and my natural morality. In the end it may not have to do so—or at least usually not. For Rabbi Kook maybe never; never mind. But even if in the end you don’t have to do it, it is still true that this is a measure of the extent to which you are truly a servant of God. And therefore what Rabbi Kook is saying here is that the path—and here this really is a development of the last two paragraphs of the Chazon Ish—what he is really saying is that the way to educate children and people and a society: if you educate them from the start toward liberalism—liberalism meaning not necessarily liberalism, but yes, going with the simple natural human flow, with accepted human values—that is a very dangerous path, because in the end you can throw the baby out with the bathwater. You empty religious commitment completely. Because in the end, on the contrary, you can hang everything on the Holy One, blessed be He, and do only what you want. And then of course interests get mixed in too, and all sorts of things. Therefore one must pass through the stage in which one must be willing to bind everything. And only after it has become clear that you are truly willing to do that, now an angel can come and say, “Do not raise your hand against the boy.” And this is also a lesson in how one educates: how one educates children, society, all sorts of things. You have to raise them on the idea that everything is a scriptural decree. Everything is irrational. You have to be devoted to the Holy One, blessed be He, to the command itself—not because it is logical, not because it is right, not because it is moral, but because that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, said. But slowly—don’t get stuck there. That’s the problem with conservatives: they get stuck in this education all the way to the end. And that’s not right. You need to begin there—exactly the process of the Binding—and in the end, slowly, gradually, bring in the angel who says, “Do not raise your hand against the boy,” and say that in fact after you’ve already done this properly—and that’s what the Chazon Ish says—if you have really become strongly habituated to this, in the end it will come by itself; you won’t need an angel from heaven. In the end you’ll discover within yourself some kind of identity between your morality and what the Torah says—but not in the way that people maybe attribute to the Chazon Ish, perhaps he really means it, I don’t know, the view that is convenient for conservatives. Namely: I will train myself. As if in the end what I want will be what Jewish law says; I’ll become numb. About that I said I’d get to it later, and we will, but I’ll already hint at it here. I’ll become numb to ordinary morality; there is no morality, it’s all Jewish law. That’s not it. In the end, when I arrive at identification in this sense, it means that sometimes I will interpret Jewish law because it is clear to me that morality says so. And after the Binding—before the Binding it is forbidden to do that, because before the Binding it is simply a tried-and-true recipe for failure. It means I’ve simply taken Jewish law and done with it whatever I want. But after the Binding, someone who is willing to bind all that he thinks before the divine command can already approach the commands of the Holy One, blessed be He, and interpret them in order to understand that they really are coordinated. And when he does that—and here I no longer go entirely with Rabbi Kook, and maybe not with the Chazon Ish either if that’s exactly what he means; I don’t think he means it entirely—I don’t think it is always true. There will be cases in which there is conflict. I don’t think—it’s too pastoral. Maybe we are not whole enough; I don’t know, I don’t know, I was never that whole. But practically speaking, it seems to me one does not arrive at a state of complete convergence. But fine, at least one should take it this far: there are places where it converges; there are places where I succeed in finding an interpretation of the halakhic or Torah rules that does bring them together with morality; and there are places where not.

[Speaker D] Why not begin educating for balance from the very start?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake because of human nature. No, it’s not just a technical question. Human nature is built in such a way—look, the fact is that you do not succeed in creating religious commitment in areas where the education is open and liberal and modern. That’s a fact. Nothing will help. I don’t like that fact; it annoys me terribly. But those are the facts. There is something in human nature such that you need to pass through the Binding. The problem is that those who put children through the Binding usually leave them there, without the angel that comes at the end. And I’m saying there is a complex message here. It’s a message that says—and I say, I don’t take it as far as Rabbi Kook does. Because Rabbi Kook is very optimistic; he was always optimistic. That is, he thinks that in the end you reach some pastoral calm where everything fits together beautifully.

[Speaker B] And then that is Torah, that is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but I’m saying that no—there are places where I do not arrive at a pastoral calm; I remain with a dilemma. And in places where I remain with a dilemma, sometimes this side will prevail and sometimes that side will prevail, with all the complexities we discussed earlier. But it is still true that after I have passed through the Binding, I will allow myself to make more and more creative interpretations of halakhic sources if I am convinced that something is not morally right. Because now I trust myself more that these are not just my biases; I have cleansed myself of those biases by walking toward the Binding. Therefore, some reflection of the Binding—educating children on the final message of “do not raise your hand against the boy”—that is flawed education. It is flawed education. That has to come at the end. That is, after you educate him on the Binding, afterward you slowly open him up to “do not raise your hand against the boy.”

[Speaker N] It’s not only religious education, it’s education in general. Right—every kind of education at the beginning has to be strict, with very clear things.

[Speaker G] And does every single individual among the Jewish people need to go through the process—first submission to the divine command, and only afterward?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. I don’t know—every single individual?

[Speaker G] I don’t feel enough, but…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I think the principle is correct. Everyone needs to go through some kind of reflection of such a Binding. And therefore there is something in this kind of education that is often criticized, this education that tells people: yes, you have to do it because that’s what the Torah says. The problem is that it’s hard to insert the “do not raise your hand against the boy” into that education. Kids are very smart. In first grade you explain to him that no, you don’t do everything by command; he knows that by tenth grade they’ll tell him “do not raise your hand against the boy.” He wasn’t born today; he also surfs the internet.

[Speaker G] But if my forefathers were totally, absolutely according to the divine command, and then the Sages came and could already…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re saying this is also a historical process?

[Speaker G] Yes. No—because, with the necessary distinction, I’m about to get to Christianity.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, the forefathers—

[Speaker G] Our forefathers were fanatical Sabbath observers, and they brought about the situation that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Do you know what the difference is between Christianity and Judaism? It’s only a difference of 2,000–3,000 years, that’s all. What happens in the end of days? In the end of days, the commandments are annulled, right? In the end of days the messiah comes, the commandments are annulled, the festivals are annulled, everything is fine. Only what? Only that they thought the messiah had already come. That’s all. It’s only a question of 2,000 years too early. Nothing beyond that. The same thing with the Trinity, by the way. What is the Incarnation? “The Holy One, blessed be He, Israel, and the Torah are one”—isn’t that a trinity?

[Speaker G] The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—that’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly that.

[Speaker G] So we’re the primitives… so we, the primitive Jewish people, remained with the first command, that we need to bind, while the Christians are already at the next stage?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They think the messiah came—that’s the fact. They think the messiah came already—“and he shall bear their sins,” yes? They think he already came. So they’re doing what we will do when he really arrives.

[Speaker G] They think he came, that’s all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no difference at all. Mendelssohn in the Biur… sometimes timing is terribly important. I’m not… fine, but still, the theology is exactly the same theology.