Halakha and Ethics, Lesson 8
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
- Moral values that do not arise from harming others
- Weber’s Protestant thesis and the tension between determinism and human effort
- Success-orientation, science, and psychological diagnostics as products of Protestant assumptions
- Anecdotes about normality, “sometimes foolish,” and a school of students
- Autonomy as an expression of success-orientation and as a modern value that is not a basic Jewish ethos
- Instinctive reactions against personal expression and controversies around feminism and customs
- Public visibility, provocation, public peace, and the distinction between two angles of criticism
- Passover, freedom, and the tension between modern individualism and the creation of an obligated collective
- National identity versus religious identity and the connection to freedom
- Shattering ideologies as an ethos of modern freedom
- “Slaves of time are slaves to slaves; the servant of God alone is free” and the distinction between freedom and liberty
- Liberty under constraints: examples from prison, ghettos, and camps
- The Exodus from Egypt as a transition to external norms and the critique of the “sovereign person”
- Liberty as committed interpretation: how to observe, not just whether to observe
- Communal limits: “do not form factions,” “do not turn aside,” and Ran’s homilies
Summary
General Overview
The text raises a question about moral values that do not necessarily stem from concern about harming others, and proposes autonomy, self-realization, and liberty as central values in Western culture that do not depend on helping another person. The speaker links these values to Max Weber’s Protestant thesis about Western success-orientation and its influence even on psychological diagnostics, and argues that the mainstream historical Jewish ethos is not built around personal autonomy, even though sources for it can be found. Through the connection to Passover, he formulates a distinction between freedom as the absence of constraints and liberty as the ability to act independently within constraints, and interprets Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi’s statement, “the servant of God alone is free,” as a claim that value-based liberty is possible specifically under obligation. In the end, he proposes an additional dimension of liberty: committed loyalty to the system of Jewish law while interpreting it and responsibly choosing how to observe it, together with caution against sliding into arbitrary “freedom” and with consideration for principles such as “do not form factions” and “do not turn aside,” including Ran’s homilies about a situation in which the Sanhedrin errs.
Moral values that do not arise from harming others
The text returns to the question of actions that many people perceive as morally or humanly problematic even when they do not involve harming another person, giving as examples homosexuality, relations within the family such as with a sister or mother, and cannibalism. It proposes connecting this discussion to Passover through dominant values in Western culture, especially autonomy, self-realization, and liberty, which are viewed as values even when they are unrelated to helping others or avoiding harm to them. The text states that an autonomous and independent person is generally valued more than a person who is not independent, even when we are not talking about “being swept along to do evil.”
Weber’s Protestant thesis and the tension between determinism and human effort
The text attributes to Protestantism, via Max Weber’s thesis, an influence on “Western success-orientation and neuroticism” even after secularization, with a Protestant spirit remaining as a cultural characteristic. It describes a deterministic outlook associated with Calvin and Luther, according to which everything is dictated from above by the Holy One, blessed be He, while at the same time a person is obligated to strive and succeed in order to prove de facto that he is among those beloved by God, those whom God desires. The text expresses difficulty understanding how determinism can be reconciled with the demand for effort and success, and compares it to the tension in “everything is foreseen, yet permission is granted,” which has also been criticized in a Jewish context.
Success-orientation, science, and psychological diagnostics as products of Protestant assumptions
The text argues that the duty to “advance” and succeed includes scientific research and the aspiration to reach new realms of knowledge, not only economic or power-based success. It cites Mordechai Rotenberg of the Hebrew University as someone who argues that psychological and psychiatric diagnostics are based on Protestant assumptions, because the central criterion for functioning and for the need for treatment or even hospitalization is independence and the ability to function alone. The text also presents Foucault’s critique, according to which the distinction between who is normal and who is not normal in the psychological sense is a value-based cultural decision and not a clinical-scientific one, and adds that the speaker shares this critique, though he qualifies it by saying that in some areas the matter is “not clear.”
Anecdotes about normality, “sometimes foolish,” and a school of students
The text illustrates how behavior such as sorting household items by color and size can be defined as a problem even though it may just be a personal preference, and compares it to eating a cream cake and then momentarily regretting it. It uses the expression “sometimes foolish” to describe human deviations that happen to everyone, and asks when we decide that someone is “really sick” and when it is simply part of normal life. It notes that Baruch Kahane is a student of Rotenberg and that he has additional students, to the point of “almost a whole school.”
Autonomy as an expression of success-orientation and as a modern value that is not a basic Jewish ethos
The text suggests that autonomy is one expression of success-orientation and represents an expectation of self-realization, self-expression, success, and perhaps even a desire to be different, describing this as something that “seems Protestant” to the speaker. He says he personally identifies strongly with this value, and assumes many others do as well, but argues that in the classical sources “there wasn’t really such a value,” and that even if one can find sources for everything, this is not “the basic Jewish ethos” or “the Jewish mainstream.” The text distinguishes between legitimizing the existence of a phenomenon and educationally promoting autonomy as an ideal, and gives examples of sources that permit independent halakhic ruling or local difference, such as “in Rabbi Yosei’s place they ate poultry with milk,” but says these are not necessarily the main educational goal.
Instinctive reactions against personal expression and controversies around feminism and customs
The text describes a common initial reaction of dismissing autonomy as the evil inclination or as something “coming from outside,” framing it as an attitude of “it says this, do this, and that’s all.” It brings contemporary arguments around feminism, women wearing tefillin, a tallit, prayer at the Western Wall, and being called to the Torah, including the claim that people create tests of “authenticity” for women by asking things like “do you also put on tefillin?” or suggesting, as attributed to Rabbi Cherlow, that authenticity be tested through a parallel demand such as wearing a small four-cornered garment with fringes every day. The text argues that such tests are not directed at men in the same way, and asks “what exactly is the problem,” even if the motives are not perfect, pointing to a broader tendency against personal expression and against changing the status quo.
Public visibility, provocation, public peace, and the distinction between two angles of criticism
The text develops a distinction between pragmatic considerations of avoiding escalation and a principled criticism of those who are offended and respond with violence or rage, illustrating this with an analogy to ascending the Temple Mount in a way that provokes riots. It argues that one can say “don’t provoke them” so as not to get everyone into trouble, while still maintaining criticism of the very fact that something “disturbs” them and asking “why does it disturb them?” The text notes that sharp reactions to changes in custom are not new, and gives historical examples of controversies about bringing a clock into synagogues, about the placement of the bimah, and about the division between Reform and Orthodox over ritual changes, presenting this as a pattern in which changing the status quo generates wars even when there is no clear prohibition.
Passover, freedom, and the tension between modern individualism and the creation of an obligated collective
The text suggests that Passover is the central source of the tradition of liberty, but argues that from a modern perspective liberty is often seen as protecting the individual against the collective, whereas in the Exodus there is a kind of reversal because the process creates the Jewish people as a collective obligated to a detailed and binding value-normative system. It describes the move as a transition from slavery to Pharaoh to slavery to the Holy One, blessed be He, and cites the idea of “they are My servants, and not servants to servants” and “let My people go that they may serve Me,” presenting the Exodus as a stage on the way to the giving of the Torah rather than as an exit into a commitment-free interim state. The text expresses doubt whether “liberty” in the sense of an autonomous personal lifestyle is a basic Jewish value, and distinguishes between national liberty and personal liberty.
National identity versus religious identity and the connection to freedom
The text proposes a conceptual distinction according to which national identity rests on language, territory, history, origin, and shared destiny, and is not “content-based” in the sense of binding claims about right and wrong, whereas religious identity is based precisely on commitment to values and norms that define belonging. It refers to Shlomo Sand as someone who built on the ambiguity of the concept of national identity, and notes that the United States is viewed as exceptional in having been founded explicitly on values. The text presents the Exodus from Egypt as an event understood as founding a national identity that does not contradict personal liberty and may even express part of one’s personality, but argues that when the Exodus also becomes the creation of a religious identity that obligates norms, calling it “liberty” requires explanation.
Shattering ideologies as an ethos of modern freedom
The text argues that part of today’s “robes of freedom” is the shattering of ideologies, presented as a realization of freedom and not merely as hedonism. It defines ideology as something that binds the individual and demands sacrifice for the sake of an ideological, religious, or other collective, thus presenting resistance to ideologies as a direct continuation of the ethos of freedom.
“Slaves of time are slaves to slaves; the servant of God alone is free” and the distinction between freedom and liberty
The text quotes Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi: “Slaves of time are slaves to slaves; the servant of God alone is free,” and describes the initial feeling that the statement sounds Orwellian, in the style of “freedom is slavery,” alongside a mention that Rabbi Kook explains it through “inner selfhood.” The text proposes a conceptual distinction according to which freedom is the absence of constraints and is a condition or asset rather than a value, whereas liberty is independent action within constraints and is an evaluative concept. It argues that the mistake of seeing freedom as a value comes from the fact that taking away someone’s freedom without justification is immoral, but compares this to money: taking money unjustly is forbidden, and yet possession of money in itself is not a value but an asset, whereas striving for money or fighting for the rights of others can be values.
Liberty under constraints: examples from prison, ghettos, and camps
The text distinguishes between depriving a person of freedom, which is possible and is done through external restrictions, and depriving a person of liberty, which is “almost impossible,” because a person can remain inwardly free even under severe constraints. It gives the example of Stefan Mandelovitch, who told of preparing a Passover seder in a prison in Siberia and said that he was the free man, not the prison guard, and compares this to Viktor Frankl on inner liberty in the camps. The text argues that the more constraints there are, the more potential there is for liberty, while adding the qualification that constraints can also take over a person’s soul and create a “slave mentality,” as happened to the Israelites in Egypt.
The Exodus from Egypt as a transition to external norms and the critique of the “sovereign person”
The text sharpens the point that Jewish law does not restrict in the physical sense of making it impossible to sin, but rather defines what is right and wrong even when a person can choose to violate it, and that the central difficulty is the feeling that right and wrong were “not determined by me.” It presents Arieh Alon and his terms “the rabbinic person” versus “the sovereign person,” but argues that it is a mistake to think that a free person must legislate right and wrong for himself. The text states that the ideal person is one who realizes correct values, not one who invents arbitrary values, and that even in a secular world morality is supposed to determine what is right and wrong, whatever its source may be, while in the religious world additional halakhic norms are added.
Liberty as committed interpretation: how to observe, not just whether to observe
The text argues that the picture of Jewish law as a “given corpus” of permitted and forbidden is a caricature, and adds a dimension of liberty in the question of how to interpret, weigh values, and apply this non-closed system, not only whether to obey or violate it. It warns that the line between liberty and freedom is thin at this point, and defines liberty as a situation in which a person is wholly committed to the system and, once it becomes clear to him what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants, that is what he will do, while the dispute concerns the question “what does He want?” and the use of judgment and interpretive techniques to arrive at that answer. The text describes a situation in which a person reaches a halakhic conclusion that others see as mistaken or even heretical, and presents this as a test of committed liberty rather than as a necessary expression of arbitrariness.
Communal limits: “do not form factions,” “do not turn aside,” and Ran’s homilies
The text states that a person does not act in a vacuum and must also take account of Jewish laws such as “do not form factions,” especially in public action, and sometimes give up what he thinks is right. It brings Ran’s homilies about a person who knows that the Sanhedrin is mistaken and is still required to obey by force of “do not turn aside,” and explains that this principle too is part of Jewish law, so the consideration is not only the factual “truth” of the ruling but the whole set of halakhic obligations. The text concludes that after weighing those considerations, the person makes his decision from within commitment to the system.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Among other things, I talked about—what was it last time? This question came up about moral values that don’t necessarily arise from concern about harming another person. You remember, we talked a bit about homosexuality, or, yes, relations within the family, with a sister or a mother or something like that. You can add eating human flesh, all kinds of things like that, which I think are still perceived by many people—most people—as something problematic on what I’d call a moral or human level, but they don’t necessarily involve harm to another person. And in that connection I thought maybe we could actually tie some of this to Passover. There’s a whole series of things that are very dominant values in our culture. Some of them do relate to social structure and harm to others, but it seems to me that one of the most prominent doesn’t, and that’s autonomy, or self-realization, liberty. It’s really a cluster of close concepts, at least, which I think are indeed perceived as values, and on the other hand they’re not connected to harming another person or helping him. Meaning, if a person acts autonomously and independently and so on, then generally people tend to value him more than someone who just gets swept along by the current or something like that. And I’m not talking now about being swept along into evil. Not in that sense, but in the very fact that he’s not independent. That is, that he’s not autonomous. There’s something in it—yes, it has some strong dependence on Protestantism. This is Weber’s Protestant thesis, Max Weber, the famous sociologist at the end of the 19th century, who argued that Western success-orientation and neuroticism are basically the result of Protestantism, which indeed underwent secularization, but still remains Protestant in character. And the Protestants, in their theology in the 16th century, I think, something like that—Calvin and Luther and so on—they have a kind of deterministic view saying that basically everything is dictated from above by the Holy One, blessed be He, but a person still has to strive and succeed. That’s a very basic motto in the Protestant world, because by that he somehow proves de facto that he’s among the successful, that God loves him, meaning helps him or desires him fundamentally. And in that sense there’s some strange combination here between a deterministic outlook on the one hand and an obligation to success, or at least to action and activity and success, on the other. Except the claim is that I don’t exactly understand that theology. I don’t know, one day I’d need to talk to someone who really believes in this or really understands it, because I can’t figure out how those two things fit together. The claim is that everything is basically deterministic, but you’re supposed to succeed. Because what do you mean supposed to? You make every effort to succeed, and if you do succeed that will prove that you’re among those whom the Holy One, blessed be He, desires, among the successful, the beloved.
[Speaker B] Then why should you make an effort if everything is…?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So again, I don’t want to—
[Speaker B] It’s like a belief that effort is totally irrelevant, I don’t know, I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A kind of “everything is foreseen, yet permission is granted.” If that’s all it is, then I’d say: I already gave my critique of “everything is foreseen, yet permission is granted” here, also in the Jewish context, so it’s the same thing in the Protestant context. If they have something else that I don’t fully understand because I’m not an expert in this area, then maybe. I don’t know. But they live inside that duality, and many after Weber continued with this point. They argue that even after secularization, once people no longer really operate inside a religious framework, culturally this thing still remains. Meaning there’s something in this success-orientation, in this sense that we must advance. Scientific research too, by the way—not only success in the economic sense, or I don’t know, the power sense, but also the attempt to develop the world and reach new realms of knowledge—is also part of this. And therefore maybe—there’s a very well-known scholar, what’s his name, Mordechai Rotenberg from the Hebrew University, from the School of Social Work—he argues, in several books he’s published about this, and he has students too, that psychological and psychiatric diagnostics are also based on Protestant assumptions. Meaning that usually we decide whether a person can function, whether a person needs treatment or sometimes even hospitalization, on the basis of the criterion of whether he is independent. Can he function on his own or not. And he has there a kind of—well, a critique whose roots are earlier, but he links it to Weber’s Protestant thesis. Foucault already—there are old critiques of psychological diagnostics, old, from two hundred years back; the modern critique almost started from that, basically with Foucault. And the claim was that the decision about who is normal and who is not normal, or who is ill and who is not ill in the psychological sense, is a cultural-value decision and not a clinical-scientific one.
[Speaker B] And that’s not like…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What?
[Speaker C] That’s a critique? It sounds obvious to me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, it is a critique, and if you talk to psychiatrists and psychologists, to this day they won’t accept it. Well, there are… I share that critique, as I said, in contexts…
[Speaker B] Fine, there’s a zone where it’s clear that it’s not—I mean that it’s not social or this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I don’t know, I’m not sure about that. But never mind, it’s just an anecdote. So I’m saying that Rotenberg extended the Protestant thesis into this world of psychological diagnostics as well.
[Speaker B] A person walks into a house and starts sorting everything in the house by color, by size, by this…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s what he likes. What’s the problem? And I like eating cream cake, so what? Fine. Everyone likes what he likes. Why is this called sick and that called healthy?
[Speaker B] No, because suddenly he feels like doing it, and then afterward he catches himself—wait, what is he doing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, and afterward he doesn’t.
[Speaker D] Okay, then by those definitions I’m sick too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, what—sorting behavior? Fine, exactly, it’s the same thing. I too after some time can catch myself and say, what are you eating this cake for, it’s fattening. Okay, fine. “Sometimes foolish”… “sometimes foolish,” yes, exactly. So we’re all like that. The only question is what this “sometimes foolish” is—when do we decide that it’s really illness, and when is it just part of our normal lives, where sometimes we deviate. So Baruch Kahane is one of his students, for those who know him, a psychologist from Gush Etzion, and others—he has several students. It’s already almost a whole school. In any case, for our purposes, it seems to me that one expression of this success-orientation, maybe—not exactly, but close—is autonomy. A person feels that he has to realize himself, that he has to express himself, that he has to succeed, maybe that he has to be different from others. That already goes a bit beyond it, it’s not exactly the same thing, but there’s something, it seems to me, Protestant in that too. And really I think that today to a large extent we live inside that. And I don’t know, I check myself because I strongly identify with it. Meaning, it could be that the roots of this are Protestant, but I think I strongly identify with it, and I think many people strongly identify with it. That still doesn’t disqualify it just because it comes from Protestantism. But really, if you look back, there wasn’t much of such a value in our sources, let’s say. I don’t know how far one can—again, you can find a source for almost anything. Judaism is rich enough that we can manage to find a source for whatever we want. But if you ask me whether really, say, the message that emerges from the Talmud, from the thought literature of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and so on, is that a person ought to be autonomous and independent and… I don’t know. At most there is an acceptance of the phenomenon, meaning maybe it isn’t disgraceful to be that way.
[Speaker B] But that a person should be autonomous—for example, that a person shouldn’t cast himself as a burden on the public. To cast oneself as a burden on the public—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else. Here autonomy means in conceptions, in outlooks, meaning in one’s way of behaving.
[Speaker E] But the Rabbi gave a lecture saying that halakhic ruling means doing what you think.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, correct.
[Speaker E] That’s complete autonomy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s complete autonomy, but I gave that lecture.
[Speaker E] No, but there the Rabbi brought Maharal and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, Maharal too, and in several places one can… As I said, you can find sources for anything. The question you ask yourself is whether this is today’s halakhic mainstream, whether it was the halakhic mainstream. Sources that perhaps encourage it—I won’t say that it’s the basic Jewish ethos, the Jewish mainstream. It doesn’t come from there, I think. It doesn’t come from there. Even with Maharal—again, I don’t know where it comes from. Maharal was very much like that, and Maharshal was also very much like that. But I don’t know, it would be worth researching one day whether this too was taken from some influences.
[Speaker C] Maharal is before the Protestants, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s about the same period. About the same period, I think. I haven’t checked it carefully.
[Speaker C] But this concept—from Luther, that’s the idea?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Isn’t it a bit later? No, no, it’s Luther and Calvin themselves, yes.
[Speaker F] The section about the manna tells you that however much you work, it’s all from above—the food.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so there’s an example. In any case, fine, that’s regarding food. But regarding worldviews and behavior and halakhic ruling and all these things—again, there are, one can find… I’m saying again, it’s not… you can find “these and those are the words of the living God,” and all in all a person does what he thinks. We see rulings: “In Rabbi Yosei’s place they ate poultry with milk.” Meaning yes, there are sources showing that a person went a different way, and it even receives legitimacy. But I don’t think that’s the ethos by which people are educated, the direction in which people are pushed. I don’t think that’s the ethos. At most it’s legitimate; you can find sources for it, you can find a basis for it. It seems to me that as a generalization, this is not the basic Jewish ethos. And so that’s one side. On the other hand, so what? Okay, we’re all influenced by many things. The Sages too, I assume, were influenced by many things. And just as the Sages did what they thought, so we too are supposed to do what we think. So it seems to me that this doesn’t disqualify the religious value. In any case, let’s talk a bit about this issue, about this value of autonomy. This value of autonomy is an example—that’s why I started with it—it’s an example of something that today is perceived as a value without helping another person or avoiding harming another person. It’s unrelated. We evaluate a person as such by the question whether he is truly autonomous, whether he realizes himself. And therefore many times—let’s say before we got used to taking everything that exists outside and finding some internal legitimacy for it—many times the initial reaction is precisely to reject this thing. Some kind of view that this is the evil inclination, something that comes from outside, overcome it. What do you mean, why do you need to be special? Why do you need to be original? Why do you need to be independent? It says this, do this, and that’s all. What are these inventions? You can often see these critiques even today in very current arguments regarding feminism or things of that sort, which often draw critical reactions as if to say: fine, so you want it—so what? So what if you want it? Bend your head and do what’s right. Now never mind whether that is even what’s right or not—that they don’t really bother to check. But suppose it is. Still, she wants otherwise. So they start asking, yes okay, but do you also put on tefillin? Or I don’t know what, do you also wear a small fringed garment, or do you only want to wear a prayer shawl? Maybe go with a small fringed garment every day, four corners. Rabbi Cherlow once wrote that, I think, to test the authenticity of these requests or these feminist demands. And that’s a very problematic thing, because for men, for example, nobody asks them: you’ve come to study Torah? Wait, did you pray with intention this morning? So what are you doing here studying Torah? What does that even mean—where’s the authenticity, where’s the… Fine, if you want to do it, do it.
[Speaker B] They’re not obligated.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, not obligated.
[Speaker B] They want to. They want to.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They want to put them on.
[Speaker B] We don’t have the custom to put them on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t have the custom, and she wants to adopt that custom—so what’s the problem?
[Speaker B] So what do you want? They want to check whether you’re doing it because of what? No—from genuine desire or from what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not genuine desire. Suppose she feels like dancing with tefillin on her head, not from a genuine desire. So what? What’s the problem? What’s the problem? What’s the problem? What exactly is the problem, Nehama? I think part of the issue is that same tendency against personal expression. It goes beyond conservatism in the normative sense.
[Speaker B] The analogy to what you said—someone comes to study Torah, did you pray with intention in the morning—that’s not relevant. He’s obligated in this and he’s obligated in that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t do that, so here you’ll check his existential authenticity when he wants to do this? So what?
[Speaker B] No, and this isn’t a commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then they’ll check whether you also do other things. Huh? But it’s not similar.
[Speaker C] But it’s an act of extra piety.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why an act of extra piety? No. She wants to put on tefillin, what do you mean? At the Western Wall—to put on tefillin, pray with a quorum, and be called up to the Torah. That’s what she wants. In public?
[Speaker G] In public, Rabbi Cherlow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does it make whether it’s public or not?
[Speaker G] Because the whole provocation, everything they do—the tefillin, the prayer shawl—it’s at the Western Wall where the media sees it, where the public sees it. So let’s see that also in…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why “let’s see”? They don’t want to see; they only want to do it at the Wall.
[Speaker G] And what about Torah study, for example? She comes to a class.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what the difference is, for heaven’s sake. In Torah study—I fulfill my obligation for reciting Shema morning and evening according to the Rosh, okay? Now I want to learn something more.
[Speaker H] Is it because his soul is really drawn to it, or is he doing it because he…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wants to provoke?
[Speaker H] I have no idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything I do—
[Speaker H] And to try to make everything anti, and always I have to be the opposite—then really that’s a flawed motive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a flawed motive here, but that’s also his business. What do you mean, his business if he has flawed motives? I too can have flawed motives in many things. So what? How is that my business? No, no, no. If we’re dependent—yes, but I’m not talking about things where we are dependent. I’m not talking about someone who intentionally wants to provoke…
[Speaker H] Then obviously there is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it mean, in public to provoke? He’s praying with tefillin at the Western Wall.
[Speaker H] Exactly. That’s what he’s doing. Why specifically at the Wall? He feels like it!
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do I go say Psalms at the Wall? Because I feel like it. That’s all. She doesn’t feel like it—it’s the evil inclination, it doesn’t come from a place of serving God, she doesn’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, at all. So what?
[Speaker H] Because in public it’s different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It seems to me that you’re all coming to fight this. No, no, no. Why fight at all? Exactly.
[Speaker B] Because it’s like someone walking naked in the street. Why is that forbidden? Why not? Someone who walks naked in the street bothers other people. Right, it’s the same thing here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does it bother them? If he walks naked in the street, that bothers—I
[Speaker B] know why it bothers.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why does it bother? It bothers you because you think it’s not okay. It doesn’t bother you because you see a woman with tefillin and it arouses forbidden thoughts in you.
[Speaker D] It bothers—
[Speaker H] Because it’s a holy place.
[Speaker D] Not because if it happened elsewhere, not in public. The very question bothers him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay. I think it bothers more in public. But the very assumption that it bothers is problematic. I’m asking what’s worth fighting over. That’s another question. Why fight? What bothers you? A person wants to do something different, so what? Because in local custom it said that a woman doesn’t touch a Torah scroll when she’s menstruating, or I don’t know what. Fine, so what?
[Speaker H] These instinctive reactions are to something that genuinely touches a point in you. Apparently it really doesn’t matter to you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not one millimeter does it matter to me.
[Speaker H] There are people for whom that place is a holy place. Why? But why? It’s meaningful to them because it is a holy place.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What holy place? The Wall? Great. So people come… And the person who comes with the white cardboard kippah—that bothers him too.
[Speaker H] I don’t connect with that either.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not that you don’t connect. Why do you need to connect?
[Speaker H] He walks around with that kippah. But I feel that you’re defending… it’s very easy for you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously it’s easy for me.
[Speaker F] But this is a situation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. And I’m asking why it should touch anyone.
[Speaker F] Because I understand it completely… I see it totally differently here. I see it as if tomorrow I come and say I want to be a priest. Excuse me, this is a lady and this is a woman and she has her commandments and her customs… The customs are a part that was accepted within the people as Jewish law. Now I want to be a priest—what does that bother anyone?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Jewish people are full of people who drive on the Sabbath, smoke, and violate the Sabbath in every possible way. Then a woman comes who wants to put on tefillin at the Western Wall. So that’s against Jewish custom, and over that we’re going to wage total war? And for that we’ll bring in the police to violate the Sabbath so that we can deal with these people? No, what I’m saying is only hypothetical—it isn’t done on the Sabbath.
[Speaker H] About what? But customs became Jewish law. Putting on tefillin in a bathing suit would bother me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It would bother me to see that at the Wall.
[Speaker H] Now for them, apparently, whoever fights this—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently his line is in a different place. I understand, but what’s the connection? A bathing suit… that’s not the question. Putting on tefillin in a bathing suit is problematic in itself. A woman putting on tefillin in a bathing suit—what happened? There’s no problem with that.
[Speaker H] Changing the status quo. Every time the status quo is changed, there’s a war. This was the existing status quo, now they want to violate it, they want to go against the mainstream. So the mainstream opposes it. Yes, by definition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Very often there’s this mixing of categories, the question from which angle I’m looking. And that often gets mixed up. I’m only saying this parenthetically, it’s not related to our topic. It’s like ascending the Temple Mount, okay? Ascending the Temple Mount—say, ascending it provocatively, not just someone who wants to go up, but really to say that there is… I don’t know exactly, I’m not sufficiently familiar with the details there—that causes riots among the Arabs. Fine? So people say, as if, what, you’re hurting their feelings, and so on. Now there it seems to me that much of this is public peace, and that’s all true. But public peace is not a consideration because of which I won’t criticize the Arabs who go wild there, right? Meaning I can say: look, these people are crazy, I don’t know what, violent, they’ll do all sorts of things. Okay, but don’t do things that will get us into trouble, because the clever fool doesn’t get into troubles that the wise man can get out of. But obviously that has nothing to do with the question of whether I criticize the Arabs who go wild there, their violence, and the fact that this needs to be addressed, right? Now here too it’s the same thing. I might say: look, don’t provoke and don’t make trouble, because there’s some collection of Indians there that this really bothers. Okay, I’m talking now about the Western Wall, not the Temple Mount. So that can be true on one level, but on another level the criticism of those whom this bothers still stands. These are two completely different things, and we very often mix those two perspectives together. It bothers them. What do you mean it bothers them? My criticism is of the fact that it bothers them, of the fact that—
[Speaker D] Why does it bother them?
[Speaker H] Why does it bother them? Because it comes to provoke. So what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it comes to provoke because those are the feelings; otherwise why would it be provocative?
[Speaker H] And if there weren’t such feelings, it wouldn’t be provocative.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but then I’d examine those feelings.
[Speaker B] It could be that if people didn’t react and didn’t do anything, maybe it wouldn’t turn into mass claims. Okay. What could be?
[Speaker D] Okay. Not claims against you.
[Speaker F] But look—conduct regarding customs that became rooted in the Jewish people, endless controversies, endless. They invented the “ohr”—that’s how it’s written in the books, “ohr”; they didn’t yet have the word clock. And they brought a clock—“ohr”—into synagogues. Permitted.
[Speaker B] There was over this—
[Speaker D] almost—
[Speaker F] killing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The moment—
[Speaker F] the rabbi died, they brought in the clock. Who needs to know the time in the middle of prayer? There was a sexton who would raise claims.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have exactly the same criticism there too—what’s the question? Why?
[Speaker F] Customs—there were things that became Jewish law, Jewish law. So that’s what I’m talking about. My son calls today and asks me how my father conducted himself regarding this or that, since I’m already a million percent authentic, because it’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s looking at it in a halakhic way.
[Speaker F] Okay. Now tefillin for a woman or things like that—these are practices that became rooted in the Jewish people, and all these customs became Jewish law. It’s a fact, a fact, that people were called to die rather than move the bimah forward or backward, and these were called—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Reform, and those were called Orthodox, over whether the bimah in a synagogue was one meter farther forward or one meter farther back. Fine, I know all these things. So everyone was always crazy—so what does that prove? That we also need to be crazy? What’s the connection?
[Speaker F] But I’m pointing to it as though I want to be a priest, not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] feelings, this—
[Speaker F] tefillin for a woman, not a prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but there’s also no prohibition on putting the bimah farther forward, as he says. Fine, there’s no prohibition, but it’s crazy. Right, exactly, exactly what you’re saying. Okay, but we’re getting into—
[Speaker B] It’s not so simple that there’s no prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why would there be a prohibition?
[Speaker B] What’s the reason you’re doing it? If you’re doing it in order to look like… okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say at the level of that prohibition, I can find you a hundred thousand excuses. It doesn’t begin and end with prohibition.
[Speaker B] When the rabbis, Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Zonnenfeld, arrived in Zikhron, they came and wanted to invite them to speak at the school, and they refused when they put the platform there in—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I understand, that’s the sensitivity he was talking about, I know. But it’s not because of the prohibition. It has nothing to do with prohibition. It’s because it was Reform, and it starts with customs, and it’s exactly like circumcision.
[Speaker D] Not because of circumcision as an example.
[Speaker B] What was Rabbi Kook’s answer? That they’re endangering the child…
[Speaker D] Rabbi Zonnenfeld.
[Speaker F] If they’re endangering the child, then that’s something completely different. Rabbi Chaim Zonnenfeld was the father of the father of Neturei Karta. He said about the Rebbe of Gur, who drank Rabbi Kook’s wine, “It wasn’t for nothing that the raven went to the starling, but because it is of its own kind.” Abraham Kook went to the rabbi—to the Rebbe of Gur, who was also called Abraham. Abraham went to Abraham, drank the wine, idolatrous wine. He was—incidentally, that’s not an example. He said it. I’ll give you a photograph. I’ll give you a photograph. He said it. Personally religious, he said that he drank his wine—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Idolatrous wine. Okay, let’s move on for a moment.
[Speaker F] I read Ish HaChoma maybe three times back and forth. And there’s also a photograph of the posters. Is that the poster?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you know… posters—the connection between them and the truth is rather doubtful. I don’t know how clear it is that Rabbi Zonnenfeld said such things; I’m not sure. Not sure. Okay, never mind, that’s a different discussion. In any case, what I’m saying—these are just more examples. There’s no point getting into these examples in this framework, just to show that, let’s say, autonomy is not some terribly basic Jewish value.
[Speaker D] Isn’t it perceived as a value of freedom? What? Autonomy, freedom—and freedom is still a central value, no? Why the festival of Passover?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so now we’ll get to Passover, to freedom, but I’m saying: what central value does it have? Fine, we celebrate the Seder night, we recline on our left side—that’s our freedom. But freedom as a direction, as a way of life, as a way of thinking—I’m not sure that’s some terribly basic Jewish value. I don’t think so.
[Speaker B] Freedom in what sense—that you’re not subject to anyone? Wait, wait, freedom in the sense of not being subject to other people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, fine. Subject in what sense? National sovereignty, do you mean?
[Speaker C] Also personally, like the prohibition on slavery.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A prohibition on slavery, right?
[Speaker C] “For My servants—”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “They are My servants, and not servants to servants.”
[Speaker C] No, but that’s the whole point. Meaning, true, in today’s concepts of freedom, there’s this idea that you’re forbidden to be a slave to another person because that harms your servitude to God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Negative freedom, not positive freedom—like Isaiah Berlin. But I’m saying again, I’m not talking right now about sources. I said, sources can be brought for everything. I’m asking the question: how does the mainstream Jew actually conduct himself? What part does this play in his life? Is such a thing really a central value, a foundational basis in the Jewish ethos? I have great doubt that it is.
[Speaker D] “To be a free people in our land”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “to be a free people in our land”—that, yes. Are you talking on the personal level?
[Speaker D] What? On the personal level mainly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And not what? Not national? After all, everyone wants to be free, yes, on the national level. The question is what they do for that. The fact is that when someone did something for this issue, he usually came out against the rabbinic establishment. No? What are you saying? Also “to be a free people in our land.”
[Speaker C] No, wait, wait, Rabbi, what you’re saying is already what entered Judaism after all the revolts ended with the Jewish people almost being destroyed, so they learned a lesson.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously, but why do I care now how it entered? I’m saying in practice you see that this isn’t the ethos that developed here. I’m not saying there weren’t things, and there are sources, and there were revolts—all true. But when you say freedom—no.
[Speaker B] What, freedom means if I don’t feel like getting up in the morning for prayer, is that freedom or is that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, maybe yes, I have no idea. Depends why you’re doing it, for all kinds of reasons. Okay, here I’m willing to get into the question of why you’re doing it, okay, willing to accept that.
[Speaker B] Okay, that’s the Sages. When I’ll be—there are many times you talk about the difference between freedom and liberty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So I’d like to talk a bit about that today too. I think I talked about it here in certain contexts; I’ll do it briefly. So that of course brings us to Passover, right? After all, if there is a basic source in which we can see freedom in our tradition, it’s Passover. Now on Passover, when going from slavery to freedom, then again, if I try to examine it through today’s lenses, then in today’s lenses freedom is usually perceived as the individual preserving his territory against the collective, right? Very often freedom is attached to individual freedom. Meaning, some conception in which the individual has a certain standing that he is not willing to have crushed before the collective—whatever collective, ideological collective, national collective, one collective or another. There is also, of course, freedom or liberty of the collective itself, okay? But I’m saying today, certainly in the more Western context, freedom is often perceived as something that is a struggle of the individual against the collective of which he is a part.
[Speaker C] It’s also one person versus another individual—children versus parents, women versus men, it’s not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I agree. I didn’t say it was only that. But I’m saying it’s connected, yes, to individualism, let’s call it that.
[Speaker C] But not only.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, among other things. Among other things. Meaning, it’s connected to individualism in some way. And in that sense there’s something about Passover that is a bit the opposite of this conception of freedom. Because on Passover, as the Maharal talks about it, and all in all it’s almost a historical fact, the Exodus from Egypt—or Egypt and then the departure from Egypt—is basically the transformation of the Jewish people into a collective. Not only does it make them a collective, but a collective committed to a very, very normative system of values. Very detailed, very binding. And in that sense there’s something here that seems a bit the opposite of going out to freedom. So true, we were enslaved to Pharaoh and they made us work and all that is true. But in the value sense at least—say, through today’s lenses—there are several signs here that don’t really fit with viewing this as going from slavery to freedom. Meaning, you are basically becoming part of the collective, taking upon yourself the yoke of commandments; that is, you’re already obligated to a value system that you did not determine. And in that sense—what? The Exodus is a departure—certainly “They are My servants and not servants to servants,” meaning in order to receive the Torah: “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
[Speaker C] The yoke of commandments is on Shavuot. The question is whether there isn’t an intermediate stage between Passover and Shavuot?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but the freedom is obviously not the exit into the intermediate stage, and then afterward we mourn that we returned to a state of slavery. Rather, it’s an intermediate stage on the way to the giving of the Torah. What do you mean? The exit from slavery to freedom is “They are My servants and not servants to servants.”
[Speaker B] And they became a collective upon entering the Land? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They became a collective? Yes, let’s talk about the whole process of the Exodus; I’m not talking about what happened on the fifteenth of Nisan. I’m talking about the process.
[Speaker B] “This day you have become a people.” Yes, in the portion of Nitzavim. “This day you have become a people.” That’s entry into the Land.
[Speaker C] “Behold, the people of the children of Israel…”
[Speaker B] Why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today there are many whose Jewish identity is basically whom Hitler murdered. Meaning, very often our persecutors determine our identity for us. Okay, there really is a point here. They just asked me now to write some article about Jewish identity, so I also dealt with that a bit—or actually explained why there’s no point at all in dealing with it. And I said there’s usually a difference—in the Jewish people this is a debate—usually there’s a difference between national identity and religious identity. National identity is something that is of course very hard to define, and Shlomo Sand built on that vagueness in the concept of national identity. And it usually doesn’t involve some shared binding values. I’m Belgian because I’m Belgian. Meaning, that doesn’t mean I need to behave in way A or way B. It just means that’s what I am.
[Speaker D] Doesn’t matter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, actually in the United States it’s not like that. Actually in the United States there is a very strong value system.
[Speaker D] I’m not from Belgium, I just think Belgium is not a good example.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. So then I didn’t choose a good example. Maybe Holland. Again, even in a search for identity—I don’t know how much that is, you tell me, I don’t know. The question is how much a Belgian feels a problem with himself if he doesn’t realize Belgian values. Is there such a thing? A Belgian who struggles with whether he is realizing Belgian values—Belgian in some unique sense as distinct from Dutch, Swedes?
[Speaker D] No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s obvious. That’s something else. I’m talking about values, not ethnic identity. I’m talking about values. Obviously there are quarrels over independence and fights between groups in the population—that exists everywhere. But I’m talking about values. Languages… language too is not a value.
[Speaker D] There’s something else here… Dutch… never mind, that’s a historical mistake, let’s move on to Holland.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m saying that even in Belgium I’m not sure—again, I don’t know—but even in Belgium I’m not sure how much you’re talking about a set of values that people feel obligated to by virtue of being Belgian. And that someone else, for example, isn’t supposed to do them because it’s only Belgian. Obviously many people feel committed to values of, I don’t know, democracy or peace or all kinds of many things, but that has nothing to do with Belgium. Meaning, I’m also Belgian and besides that I’m also committed to all these values like anyone else in the world. The question is whether there is someone who says: this identity obligates me to a certain value system.
[Speaker D] What does that mean? I know that in my time in France, if someone didn’t have, for example, his regular paper at his regular café, then he wasn’t… he was a stranger.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I experienced that.
[Speaker D] Fine, that’s all psychology.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what I’m saying. There isn’t. That’s psychology. I’m not talking about identity in the psychological sense. A lot of people have that. But I’m talking about identity in the value sense: that there’s a set of norms that defines this national collective, it is obligated to them, and someone who doesn’t do it doesn’t belong, or isn’t okay—not okay in the sense that he isn’t Belgian, not that he isn’t okay because he’s a murderer and a bad person, but because he isn’t Belgian. Or not French. Never drank in any café in his life.
[Speaker D] Because in that cup in which they serve you coffee there has never been any other kind of drink. That’s contrary to the values and culture of French food. Certainly not soup and not—even not juice, maybe not even water. So now that too is some kind of value commitment and so on, and in the same way among the Jews too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sufficiently expert in these nonsense things, but—
[Speaker D] I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I doubt a person would relate to someone who departs from this conduct as someone who is not okay. He’d relate to him as just a person—or as uncultured maybe, okay, a person—but not okay? Meaning, is it a binding value in that sense?
[Speaker D] To be cultured and to be French among the real French, that’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, but again, that’s culture in the psychological sense.
[Speaker D] Even if he stirs coffee and—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that is identity in the psychological sense. I’m talking about identity in the value sense. Identity in the value sense means that it determines what is right and wrong to do—not in the sense that this is our culture, this is how we feel. I eat with the knife from here and the fork from there, and whoever puts them the other way around is simply an uncultured person.
[Speaker B] But with countries there’s no such thing. In countries, no. But you’ll defend the country. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying. National identity.
[Speaker H] Try to define it in light of this: language, shared history, origin, shared fate. Right, right, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying.
[Speaker H] Origin. But among Jews it’s not like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So wait, with Jews I’m getting there in a second. But I’m saying, when we talk about national identity, national identity is indeed not something that is supposed to bind me in a certain sense, because national identity is not based on content. Meaning, it’s not the result of content. National identity is language, territory, and yes, exactly, some culture or another—that’s all. There isn’t here—
[Speaker D] But it has a lot to do with how people accept you. Like a Jew in Satmar in the United States—this is the first time in maybe two thousand years—he feels and is considered American like the Chinese neighbor next to him. In Europe it doesn’t work like that. Fine. So for him that’s very—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying again, it has implications and it’s a different psychological feeling, but it’s still not the same thing as religious identity. Religious identity and national identity differ in that religious identity determines for you—it’s a collective that determines for you what is right and wrong to do, how to think and so on, how to behave. National identity is not something that’s supposed to deal with these issues. Now I’m saying again, this is all a generalization, and there can be such manners, and coffee is made this way or that way, but—
[Speaker D] Bergson—my soup and my coffee are not the same Frenchness.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a statement. It’s not true that it’s not the same Frenchness. He won’t say he’s not French. He’ll say he’s not at the real cultural standing. Okay.
[Speaker D] They’ll try to look within Frenchness for very exact precisions in language and definitions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but again—
[Speaker D] I’m saying, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Bergson won’t say that someone who’s imprecise in language doesn’t deserve civil rights, right?
[Speaker H] I assume.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s a difference between saying, look, you’re a typical Frenchman, you’re French from the high intellectual level or high cultural level—there are classes. So very often in slang they call that “a real Frenchman.” He doesn’t mean that this one is really French and the other one is not French. He means to say that this is perhaps the beautiful essence of Frenchness. That’s not the same thing. It’s a completely different world from religious identity. Religious identity—someone who is not committed, say according to the accepted conception before the new inventions, someone who is not committed to the system of commandments does not belong to that identity. That’s all. It’s not a matter of being greater or lesser. He’s not in the game. I’m not talking about halakhic status. Again, halakhic status is determined by the mother, and that’s clear.
[Speaker C] And also someone who doesn’t speak French and doesn’t practice French customs.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and therefore there it really is—
[Speaker C] Is he not obligated in that as a Frenchman?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not sure, not sure at all. And those aren’t values either.
[Speaker B] Is there a distinction between nationhood and citizenship? Is there a distinction between nationhood and citizenship?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course there’s a distinction. Certainly in Israel. There are people who are not of the Jewish nation and they have Israeli citizenship. You’re talking about many places where that’s the case.
[Speaker B] Judaism isn’t a nation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Usually it’s accepted to think so. Judaism is not… on the identity card: Jewish nationality. The nationality is Jewish, right.
[Speaker H] There is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also Jewish nationhood.
[Speaker H] Yes, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore I’m saying—okay, again, every such example takes us into arguments. What I really want to say is that religious identity in its essence is something different from national identity, because religious identity is identity based on content, while national identity is fundamentally not based on content. Meaning, there are characteristics that were formed, there are—of course—various psychological feelings, but it is not an identity based on content. So that means that if I create national identity, then I can remain free in a certain perspective—on the contrary, maybe the aspiration of free people is to create a genuine national identity. But religious identity is something that in many respects is perceived as contradictory to human freedom, since it creates some kind of obligation. The collective or the ideology or the shared values obligate you, and even if you want to do otherwise, your commitment to the collective basically means you have to submit.
[Speaker B] It’s not exactly obligating—
[Speaker D] You, they’re not forced on you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so in a moment I’ll get to this freedom and liberty.
[Speaker B] If I want to be Jewish, if I want to be Christian, I can’t just decide I’m Christian. There’s a process there and they restrict you. Same thing in Islam. It’s not that you simply—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regarding national identity it’s like that too—citizenship, I don’t know—national identity.
[Speaker B] So that’s what I’m saying. You say there’s a difference between them. Religion doesn’t obligate? In order to belong to a certain religion I have to undergo a certain process; I don’t have to keep the commandments.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I said again, I’m not claiming that someone born to a Jewish mother who doesn’t keep the commandments is not Jewish. What I’m claiming is that until not so many years ago he was not perceived as someone with a Jewish identity. He was not perceived as someone with a Jewish identity. He is Jewish in the halakhic definition, a biological definition almost, meaning.
[Speaker D] Maybe there’s a connection between what the Rabbi is saying and the growing phenomenon of the “light” people? The “light” people in our circles. There is such a phenomenon, and they have a status today, they have an identity. What does that mean? Less religious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, also Reform. I’ll tell you more than that: Reform too. Why are you going to the “light” people? It’s still a Jewish identity that basically revolves around the world of halakhic religious commitment. Now there are interpretive arguments about what is included in that and what is not included in that. Fine, I’m not getting into those arguments now; that goes back to Bergson.
[Speaker D] Maybe by definition the “light” one is not committed?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, you’ve taken it too far.
[Speaker D] Not fully committed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. He’s less committed, or he’s committed to fewer commandments, or less committed to commandments. But these are already nuances. There are many—you can create a continuum of levels of commitment. Broadly speaking, religious identity is an identity whose foundation is commitment to values. National identity is not connected to commitment to values. By the way, the United States is an exceptional phenomenon in this respect, although there too, again, no one will say you’re not American if you’re not committed to the values. But it’s a country that was founded on values—
[Speaker D] In the most—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] clear way possible. Meaning, unlike almost any other country. There’s something very strong there, even though for some people “American” is perceived almost as a curse word. It was founded, right. Right. No, and it was founded by a committee of people of stature. Overall, listen, it seems to me there’s a lot there worthy of great appreciation.
[Speaker D] France too was founded as a republic, the French Revolution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case—
[Speaker F] And they didn’t give freedom to the Indians.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I didn’t say they were saints. I said they were founded on values; those are two different things.
[Speaker F] And an Indian who remained in his religion and his idol worship—is he free? Is he a free man or is he—if he wants to go around with feathers all week, then is he a slave to religion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Greek demos too, which created democracy—there too it was ten percent who had the right to vote, and the other ninety percent, who had no right to vote, sat on the side. But it’s the cradle of democracy. That’s how it develops, slowly. I didn’t say they were all saints, and we probably aren’t entirely saints either, okay, but it arose on values. You can’t deny that, including the Greek demos too.
[Speaker B] In any case, so today I happened to hear that Washington, in his speech when they were looking for a symbol—he and Adams and all those people—chose the splitting of the sea and the Exodus from Egypt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the whole Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is there. Puritans. They were all Christian Puritans there.
[Speaker F] Look at the dollar: “In God We Trust,” where they take only the pyramid with the eye…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Trust” is—yes, of course, a double meaning. Anyway, this departure from slavery to freedom in Egypt, on the one hand, became a kind of ethos of going from slavery to freedom and so on. Why? Because they perceived it as the formation of national identity. And indeed national identity is not something that contradicts the individual’s liberty, but maybe the opposite. Because part of the individual’s identity is his being an individual within a nation; the nation does not enslave him, the nation… it expresses another part of his personality. But when you talk about creating religious identity, in creating religious identity there is something that does contradict freedom. Meaning, to call it a departure to freedom is a little problematic; it requires explanation. Therefore, indeed, for example, as part of today’s unruly freedom, there is also the smashing of ideologies. The smashing of ideologies is perceived as a continuation of the demand for freedom, not as some kind of hedonism in the negative sense, where people don’t want ideologies anymore and want to do whatever they feel like. That may be psychologically true, but at least in its explicit formulation it isn’t presented that way. In the explicit formulation, it is the realization of freedom—the realization of freedom in that I’m not willing to be part of an ideology. An ideology, by its essence, is something that compels or binds the individual because it demands of him that he sacrifice some of his own for the sake of whatever—the religious ideological collective, this one or that one. Now here I really come to what I talked about, freedom and liberty. Yes, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi says: “Servants of time are servants to servants; the servant of God alone is free.” And yes, at first glance this sounds like some Orwellian statement. For many years that was my feeling when I read it—that it really irritated me, because it’s like Orwell, right?—who says war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength; you know those statements. If you repeat it long enough, everyone gets used to it and is eventually convinced. So in the end, what does it mean, “the servant of God alone is free”? Rabbi Kook of course explains that this is the inner selfhood, and I don’t know, all kinds of things of that sort.
[Speaker D] He explains it very beautifully.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, what? What? What? The psychologist.
[Speaker D] Well, yes, it’s known. Basically, in total freedom a person is not free because he has too many options. He needs commitment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It interferes—it’s not that you’re not free. Too much freedom can interfere with you.
[Speaker D] He says total freedom, and he tries to explain the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, okay, anarchism. Right. Anarchism is the purest expression of the aspiration to freedom, right. By the way, anarchism today is perceived as something like a pejorative term, but the first anarchists were very idealistic people who were actually fighting for values. People who—
[Speaker H] Okay, that’s another discussion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying again, we’re always wiser after things happen, but originally these were people who—
[Speaker B] When we talked about choice we said that if everything is open then there’s no choice. If everything is open to you then you don’t really have choice. Freedom and choice?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly where I want to get now. This saying of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi—it seems to me that he really does mean a somewhat different concept than the concept of freedom, and that’s what I said—I don’t remember when I talked about this—that I distinguished between freedom and liberty. Freedom is the absence of constraints. And the ethos—I began with Protestantism—this Western ethos that advocates freedom basically sees freedom as an ideal, not only in the sense that it’s more convenient for me that way, but in the sense that it is a value to be free. Fine. Anarchism, for example, is the expression of that. And therefore anarchism also came out against state regimes, against national structures, because all of these are perceived as oppressing the freedom of the private individual. To be free is to be entirely alone, yes, as the poet said. Free is to be entirely alone, yes. So the concept—I think there’s a certain conceptual mistake here in viewing freedom as a value. Striving for freedom can be a value. But to see freedom itself as a value seems to me to be a conceptual error. This isn’t a matter of disagreement, as though I’m arguing with—this is a conceptual error, because freedom is a state. A state is never a value. Either you have freedom or you don’t have freedom. Either constraints are placed on you or they aren’t. What does that have to do with value? A value is something I’m supposed to realize, to act for. But a state is never a value. What leads people, I think, to think of freedom as a value is the fact—or not the fact but the norm—that depriving someone of freedom when it’s unjustified is a forbidden act. When I deprive someone of freedom without justification, that’s an immoral act. So seemingly the obvious derivative is that freedom is a value. But here the example that seems to come up immediately is money. Taking money from someone unjustifiably is a moral prohibition—both legal and moral. Right? Does owning money make it a value?
[Speaker C] According to the Protestants, yes. Maybe. But I’m saying in Judaism, okay—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s pretty clear that that’s not true. Owning money is not a value. Owning money can enable you to do nice things, important things, but ownership of money itself is not a value. It’s very good, it’s pleasant to own a lot of money—
[Speaker B] But money is paper.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is that money is not a value; it’s an asset. Owning money is an asset. I have a certain right, and I don’t want to give it up because it’s pleasant for me to have it.
[Speaker B] Striving for money can be a value. Striving for money can be a value. It’s a value, not—it’s a value.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now whether that’s good or bad is a different question, but it is a value. It is an action for the sake of a certain goal that a person sets for himself, and that is a person’s choice of a direction, of how to live. You can condemn it and you can praise it, it doesn’t matter. But at least categorically one can relate to such a thing as a value—positive or negative. But owning money is a state; either I have money or I don’t have money. So money is an asset, not a value. That doesn’t mean that if I take it away, that’s not a forbidden act. Taking an asset that belongs to someone lawfully is a forbidden act. Okay? The same is true of freedom. Someone who is in a certain state of freedom—there’s no such thing as someone completely free, but at some level of freedom—that is an asset he has. Just as you have the asset of money, you have the asset of freedom. To deprive someone of freedom is a forbidden act if you don’t have justification for it. So the fact that depriving someone of freedom is a forbidden act doesn’t mean freedom is a value, because taking an asset that lawfully belongs to someone is also a forbidden act. Therefore it seems to me that it is more correct to say that freedom is an asset, not a value. Now, me fighting for the freedom of others—that certainly is a value. In the same sense that if I want to ensure that other people have money, that too can be a value. Communism is a value. Again, you can say good or bad, but it is a value. I fight so that other people will have means of production, or means of livelihood. Okay? So likewise I can fight so that people have freedom. But being free is a state, not a value—it’s an asset. The parallel concept that I think one can talk about in the field of values is liberty. Again, I’m not getting into semantics, I’m defining things now. Meaning, sometimes people use the word freedom to describe this concept, but basically I’ll call it here liberty, to distinguish it from freedom—where liberty means my own independent action within constraints. So when there is a system of constraints imposed on me and I nevertheless decide to act independently—not submit to them, or maneuver within them, or yes, find for myself the path that is right for me—then I am free in the deeper sense. So that is the concept of liberty. And I think that the value, if one can talk about value in these contexts, is not freedom but liberty. Meaning, to be a free person is a value; to be free of constraints is a state. It’s simply an asset, not a value. It’s not a negative thing either, of course. It’s just an asset. It’s good, it’s pleasant, it’s very important.
[Speaker I] It’s possible to be free people in Egypt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right.
[Speaker D] And if you take freedom in that sense, then it becomes again—there was difficulty—in a democratic society suddenly a dictator comes, so does freedom once again become a value?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The aspiration to freedom. Maybe, although again, my aspiration to freedom—I don’t think that’s a value. It’s an aspiration for an asset: don’t take my asset from me. If I fight for the freedom of others, maybe that’s a value. Is fighting for my money a value? It’s not a value. It’s my right to do it. I don’t want someone to take my money because it’s my asset. But to say that fighting for my money is a value? No, I don’t think so.
[Speaker D] Why are you comparing it to money?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because in my opinion freedom and money are the same conceptually. Not that they’re the same thing, but their conceptual function is the same. It’s not in the field of values; it’s in the field of assets.
[Speaker F] Like that rabbi who asked at the end of his question—he wanted to be a free man in order to accept Jewish law and… like in one of the lessons the Rabbi mentioned the rabbi who asked in the ghetto. Rabbi Gibraltar? Yes, the halakhic question. So he wanted to be a free man even though he was a slave in the ghetto. Right, that’s exactly it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that concept, I think, is more correctly connected to the value discussion.
[Speaker D] We just heard a lecture by Stefan Mandelovich, the returnee to Zion. He described everything he went through in prison—he was in prison in Siberia for about eleven years. And he said he cut, he took a knife and made a Passover Seder and prepared this and prepared that, and in the end, I was the free man and not my jailer. And that’s exactly—yes, right. He says, I was a free man, even though of course he was much less free in the ordinary sense. He was almost completely unfree. Within the constraints he had, he chose to do things, to climb up the hill.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Viktor Frankl, yes. His descriptions of what happened in the camps—those are exactly descriptions of a person who succeeds in being free in the deeper sense within a world overloaded with constraints in a crazy way. Meaning, there is no one less free than him in the ordinary sense, and yet he is a truly free man. He is truly free because within the given constraints he conducts himself as he thinks one should conduct oneself. Meaning, to be free in the deeper sense does not mean to be without constraints. To be without constraints is ordinary freedom. To be a free man means to do what I believe in within the given constraints. And there is a kind of anti-analogy between freedom and liberty. As I said earlier, to take away someone’s freedom—to deprive someone of freedom—is a forbidden act. To deprive someone of liberty is almost impossible. You can add more and more constraints to him, more constraints, but if he is truly free—
[Speaker B] Then he’s completely free inside his soul.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Then he is free. Then he can be free even under almost the harshest constraints, until of course you reach a point where he—
[Speaker D] In a certain sense it’s even the opposite: the more constraints he has—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The more he can potentially be—
[Speaker D] free.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right.
[Speaker E] And how does that find expression? If you take someone and lock him in a cell—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In what he thinks, and in how he relates to it.
[Speaker E] Only in what he thinks?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For example. Now he’s already completely constrained, but still, in how to relate to it, he has freedom. That’s exactly the point. But that’s only in thought, no? Not only—it’s tremendous liberty.
[Speaker F] He closes his eyes and feels like he’s in a forest… he closes his eyes and feels he’s not imprisoned.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is tremendous liberty, because on the contrary: if you manage to preserve that liberty in such a constrained system, then you are more free than someone who manages to preserve liberty in a place that is less constrained. Therefore, not only is the absence of constraints unnecessary for liberty, but sometimes constraints are even needed in order for you to be free. Meaning, if you have no constraints, if you are not acting within constraints, then you cannot be free in that deeper sense. The more constraints you have, the more you can—at least potentially—be free. Now this picture is a bit simplistic, because obviously the more I am a slave, I also enter the mentality of a slave. Meaning, I am less inclined to be a free person too. There is something about constraints that sometimes also takes over a person’s soul, not only limits him. That’s true.
[Speaker B] That’s what happened to the children of Israel in Egypt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Yes, that’s true. But I’m saying on the principled level, the fact that constraints are imposed on you in itself says nothing in the value sense. It only says that this is your current state; this is your starting point. Now you can begin to talk. So in short: freedom is not a value but an asset; depriving someone of it is a forbidden act. Liberty is a value, and depriving someone of it is almost impossible. That is, you can’t really take it away. That, I think, is the anti-analogy between these two concepts. Now when you look at the Exodus through these lenses, then it requires a somewhat subtler discussion. Because if I look at it as going from being Pharaoh’s servants to being the servants of the Holy One, then I am ostensibly entering, as I said before, an identity—religious identity—a kind of subjugation that obligates me, limits my actions, dictates to me what is right and what is wrong. And in that sense I do not go out to ordinary freedom. But the question is whether it would not be correct to say that I go out in order to become free in the deeper sense. So I don’t know if it must mean that I go out in order to become free in that sense, but at least—
[Speaker H] It could be that I go out in order to become free. You received a soul, and you received the—what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You received a soul when you left Egypt, you received—
[Speaker H] the soul, until you reached the Holy One, and you limited the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, regarding limiting liberty, that is exactly the subtle point I want to talk about. We received some set of values that now obligates us. That’s already religious identity, not only national identity. That identity of course dictates permitted and forbidden, limits us in many contexts. But what does it mean that it limits us? It doesn’t limit us in any real sense. I still can do what I want. I can desecrate the Sabbath, eat pork, do everything. I just know that it is forbidden. Fine, there is also the World to Come and so on. So in principle I know that it is forbidden; that’s what I know. That’s not a limitation in the sense that it doesn’t allow me to do it. It’s a limitation in the sense that it tells me what is right and what is wrong.
[Speaker H] And also that I wasn’t the one who determined it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And I am not the one who determined whether it is right or wrong.
[Speaker H] So it’s very hard for me to stand before myself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But now here we come to the discussion we talked about.
[Speaker H] If I identify with the goal, so to speak, then I’m obligated. Maybe even if not. Okay, and then that is what limits.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is whether I identify or not. Fine. But I’m saying: the system of commandments obligates—the system of commandments obligates the Jew regardless of his identification with it. That is at least the accepted conception in Jewish law. So these commandments are not really limitations in the sense of deprivation of freedom. Rather, they dictate to me what is right and what is wrong. But here we enter another point that I also talked about. When?
[Speaker G] If I’m connected and they force me, then what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so in a framework where there are also enforcement institutions, obviously it’s not only the World to Come; it’s also this world. I agree. But say in our world, at least here, there really isn’t an immediate sanction for your being a religious offender.
[Speaker C] No, maybe in the past. But in those areas where there was no enforcement, meaning where you didn’t have—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so you can talk about the World to Come or something like that. Fine. So there are prices to pay, that’s true.
[Speaker B] The World to Come is not a price.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, right. But I’m saying that this feeling—that I’m not the one who determines what’s right and wrong—very often accompanies this antagonism, this sense that we don’t really have genuine freedom or liberty here. But that’s certainly not true. It’s certainly a mistake. Because this is what we talked about when we discussed the proofs for the existence of God, there with morality—who determines the values, the feeling people have. I brought up Aryeh Elon, I think, if I remember correctly. Aryeh, the son of Justice Elon, the secular preacher, who talks about the rabbinic person and the sovereign person. Right? The rabbinic person is the one for whom Jewish law determines what is forbidden and permitted, and the sovereign person is the one who determines for himself what is forbidden and permitted.
[Speaker F] But I decided for myself that Jewish law would determine that for me. I decided for myself that I want Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not exactly something you decided for yourself; at Mount Sinai it was forced on you like an overturned barrel.
[Speaker F] But I don’t have a father anymore; I decided that I want Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Am I not allowed to decide that? No, you decided that you want it, but you didn’t decide that you’re obligated. You’re obligated because there was the revelation at Mount Sinai and they obligated you. I know, Rabbi Kook explains to us that deep down, truly, truly, truly, we really want it; that’s our authentic will. Fine—if that convinced someone, then okay, but in practice they coerce—
[Speaker D] —him until he says, “I want to.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, they coerce him until he says, “I want to.” So the assumption here is that in order to be a free person, a sovereign person, you’re supposed to be your own legislator, the one who determines what is forbidden and permitted for himself. But here too, I think, this is again a mistake. Because we talked earlier about a free person: a free person means what you do given certain constraints within which you act. But those constraints are not constraints that you determine. More than that: if someone were truly free and he decided to murder in a place where murder is forbidden, then he really would be free—but that would be a problematic freedom. Why is it a problematic freedom? Because he legislates for himself the law that from his point of view murder is permitted or desirable. And it seems to me that generally we do not conceive of the ideal person that way. That is, an ideal person is someone who is free to realize correct values. Not values that he decides on, but the moral values that you do not decide on. Even if you decide the opposite, you still have to do them. Therefore this sovereign person is a fiction that I don’t really accept even on the conceptual level. Since it is a mistake to think that you need to legislate right and wrong for yourself. You need to realize them under the constraints in which you find yourself, but to do what is truly right. And what is truly right is not determined by you, but by morality, whatever its source may be—it doesn’t even matter, even for a secular person—but morality is supposed to determine what is right and what is not right. So in the religious world you have additional norms, not only morality; you also have halakhic norms. So the fact that this is determined for you from the outside does not mean that you are not free; it has nothing at all to do with the question of whether you are free or not. It’s simply a mistake. And I think that’s what Rabbi Yehuda Halevi means when he says, “The servant of God alone is free.” “The servant of God alone is free” means that once you have a set of values of right and wrong, now the question by which you are measured—whether you are free or not—is how to realize them, or whether to realize them. But in a world where there are no values—this connects to what you said earlier in the name of Kant—maybe in a world with no values at all, it could be that you are free, you have no constraints, but your freedom has no meaning whatsoever. Yes, I gave that example of the elections in Switzerland and Syria—right, elections in Switzerland, you’re completely free, no problem, except that nothing depends on it. Fine, so therefore it’s really…
[Speaker H] You can’t know that this is really your freedom. What? That right now you’re really choosing freely.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, I think none of us can ever know that. To what extent it’s really authentically from me.
[Speaker H] But if you’re subject to laws, to something you didn’t determine, then what’s preferable? The fact that I do it because I’m subject—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I know that it’s me, so where is the freedom here?
[Speaker H] So again—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the same problem.
[Speaker H] No, when you choose to be subject to laws—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said? Maybe you’re going to be subject to laws like all of society. What? I don’t see why that changes anything. You can never know to what extent this is really your own pure decision, without surrounding influences. I don’t think anyone can know that with certainty. But there’s an additional point here that I nevertheless think is important to add. Until now I’ve described a caricature of freedom. Because basically I said: there is a given set of values, dictated to us from above, and my freedom is the question of whether to fulfill them, within the constraints in which I act. But I want to argue that there’s another concept of freedom, or even a more far-reaching concept of freedom, and that is the question of how and what you choose to fulfill.
[Speaker D] In what way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How to fulfill. Exactly. Meaning, how you interpret Jewish law, or the normative system within which you operate. Because the picture I’ve described until now is as if Jewish law is some given corpus. It says: these are the facts—what is forbidden, what is permitted—that’s it. Now you’re inside this framework, and let’s see whether you do it or not. But there is something in freedom—and here I’m saying that this really is freedom—that I don’t know how authentic it is. I return to the point with which I opened: to what extent this really is an authentically Jewish conception, the basic Jewish ethos. But I think that today at least many people—I certainly identify with it, and I think many people identify with it today—and I’m not interested right now in where this comes from. There is something about the question of whether you are authentic in how you do this. Or what this system means from your point of view. Here too there are different interpretations, different choices of how to interpret, how to act, how to implement these values, what they mean, how to weigh them against one another. This is not a closed system. And in this open system there is another dimension of freedom, not only whether to fulfill or not fulfill, but what to fulfill. Now here one has to be very careful, because the boundary between liberty and license at this point is very thin. That is, you can actually be unrestricted, not truly free. Decide whatever you want—what you fulfill, what you don’t fulfill—that doesn’t count. It’s not legitimate. Not legitimate meaning: that’s not freedom; that’s just license. You’re deciding on your own; once again you are basically legislating for yourself. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about freedom in the sense that you are completely committed to the system. The moment it becomes clear to you what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from you, that’s what you will do. The question is what He wants. And then you use interpretive techniques, judgment, you bring in the various values you believe in, and so on, and reach a conclusion about what this system really says. Not what I want to do, but what the Holy One, blessed be He, really requires of me. And the question is what happens when I decide that this system is telling me to do something that everyone else says is wrong. That this is not what the system says. A freedom that goes beyond whether to fulfill the system or not, but whether truly to free oneself from the binding positive system—a system that binds me to choose certain directions of thought like these.
[Speaker H] Very often you tend specifically to choose something where you have an interest.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That brings me back to your previous question: you can never know.
[Speaker H] But you have to be committed—I keep thinking of Moses holding onto the edge of the Holy One’s cloak—you need to hold onto someone in order to…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I hold onto someone. I hold onto the sources that have come down to me, to the halakhic decisors, to the Talmud, to the Torah, and I arrive at some interpretive conclusion. If I’m within the boundary, then that’s fine.
[Speaker H] But I decide that this is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I—if I reached that conclusion, then it’s within the boundary. But others say it’s outside the boundary, so what am I supposed to do now? So here again that’s a question. If I say, correct, it’s outside the boundary, but I don’t care, I decide what I do—then that’s license. But I’m talking about a concept of freedom that is subtler. That is, the freedom to determine the values not in Aryeh Elon’s nihilistic sense, that I legislate for myself what is right and what is wrong, but in the real sense—that is, to try to identify what this external value system really says, a system whose source is not me—what it really says, in my opinion. And if that’s what I think it says, then I am obligated to that. And even if everyone else says the opposite—that I’m mistaken and I deny the fundamentals and I don’t know what—all kinds of other things, in the name of exalted values, not necessarily in forceful senses. You’re a heretic, you’re an apikores, it’s forbidden to do this, it goes against the tradition of our ancestors, or all kinds of things of that sort. Here there is another concept of being free. Now this, as I said earlier, may already be a more Protestant concept, I don’t know to what extent—
[Speaker D] Is this considered some kind of work-obligation, to neutralize from these considerations your personal desires, your biases?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s true, but on the other hand, you know, also going—
[Speaker D] with—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] with the flow. Going with the flow too—you don’t know where that comes from. So it’s not only about neutralizing the… But even in going with the flow, you need—
[Speaker D] because—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because someone who goes with the flow, many times he does it simply because it’s comfortable, it’s pleasant, because that’s what he’s used to—not because there’s really something there that he believes in. So I don’t think it’s right to point specifically at the revolutionary or specifically at the exceptional person. With anyone, you can never know to what extent it is truly authentic, to what extent you are really clean here, really operating cleanly here. We are all human beings, so we can try to cleanse things as much as possible, but in the end we have only what our eyes can see. And this is a concept of freedom that is subtler. And as I said about this, I wrote that article—I’ll finish with what you actually opened with—that indeed this has at least legitimacy within the halakhic world. To say that this is the central ethos, or that this is how we have been educated from time immemorial, I think that would be exaggerated. But this thing certainly does have legitimacy in the halakhic world, and it is important to put it on the table.
[Speaker F] According to Judaism, according to the side that Benny Zohar brought, then freedom—the liberty to do the will of the Holy One, blessed be He—leads to freedom, releases a person from slavery. That’s what Rabbi Yehuda Halevi says. And therefore He gave them the manna in the wilderness—
[Speaker H] because—
[Speaker F] because with the manna there wasn’t the curse, “by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,” to show them that if one does the will of God, one also arrives at total freedom; the curse too will no longer be there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but again the question is: what is the meaning of saying that if one does the will of God one arrives at freedom—in what sense? What does that mean? Explain that.
[Speaker H] When there is water… what will happen? You’ll be more yourself.
[Speaker F] What—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What will happen when there is water?
[Speaker H] You’ll be genuine, you’ll reach the point…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so that’s the question.
[Speaker H] Suppose there is—wait, but I want to tell you there is a Jewish law of “do not form separate factions.” Yes. “Do not form separate factions.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what?
[Speaker H] So you break away, you decide—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that too is Jewish law. That too is Jewish law, so one must also take that law into account when choosing the path. Correct—in a place where we’re dealing with a public act in these particular contexts, one has to take that into account as well, and sometimes a person has to give up what he thinks is right. It’s like the Derashot HaRan. Derashot HaRan says: a person who knows that the Sanhedrin is mistaken—yes? Now suppose according to the view that sin harms the soul, dulls the spirit—so what does he do? He knows they are wrong, he has “do not turn aside,” there is the commandment of “do not turn aside,” and because they are wrong and there is “do not turn aside,” does he now have to dull his spirit? So he says that violating “do not turn aside” also dulls the spirit. Part of Jewish law—“do not turn aside” is also part of Jewish law, not only the very correct discussion. I don’t think a person acts in a vacuum or empty space, certainly not. A person has to take those considerations into account as well, and after he has taken those considerations into account as well, then he makes his decision.