Substantive Explanations and Examples – Lesson 4
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
- Two offshoots of the idea of Israel’s special quality, and the phenomenon of ideas with no real basis
- Examples of entrenched ideas: the Third Temple, six thousand years, Beit Shammai, the Thirteen Principles
- The difference between Jewish law and thought: Torah as an objective body versus Torah as subjective to the person, and continuity versus invention
- Halakhic ruling in matters of thought, the Sanhedrin, censorship, and the status of truth versus what is binding
- A critique of the assumption that someone killed because of his Judaism is holy and died in sanctification of God’s name
Summary
Overview
The speaker presents the idea of Israel’s special quality as an example of concepts in Jewish thought that are treated as self-evident even though their source and foundation are unclear. He argues that this phenomenon is especially characteristic of the realm of thought, not of Jewish law. He distinguishes between Jewish law as a continuous interpretive field with a binding corpus, and thought as a less continuous field, more “invented” and more person-dependent, and therefore less authoritative and less binding, even if it is very important for someone building his worldview. From that context, he criticizes the assumption that someone killed “because he is a Jew” is called holy or is said to have died sanctifying God’s name, arguing that there is no source, rationale, or logic for that. He distinguishes between sanctification of God’s name as a result and sanctification of God’s name as an act performed by the person.
Two offshoots of the idea of Israel’s special quality, and the phenomenon of unsupported ideas
The speaker says he has finished discussing the idea of Israel’s special quality, and that it has two offshoots. The second offshoot is that this idea illustrates a broader pattern in Jewish thought: ideas that have no real foundation, yet have become entrenched as if they were obvious first principles. He says that “you shall be to Me a treasured people” does appear in the verses, but the interpretation that this teaches an inherent built-in special quality is far from self-evident. He is not sure that this is how the Sages understood it. In his view, they may have seen a cultural or moral difference between Jew and non-Jew, not necessarily a difference “in the genome” or some built-in cause that generates the culture.
Examples of entrenched ideas: the Third Temple, six thousand years, Beit Shammai, the Thirteen Principles
The speaker gives as one example the notion that “the Third Temple will not be destroyed,” and tells an anecdote about Rabbi Herzog, who tried to persuade the Brisker Rav to remain in Jerusalem during the War of Independence by saying that “we have a tradition that the Third Temple will not be destroyed.” The Brisker Rav replied that “we have a tradition from father that when people are shooting, you run away.” He presents the story as a sharp expression of the difference between Religious Zionist ideology, which interprets every event in terms of theory, and Haredi pragmatism. He emphasizes that in this context he identifies with the Haredi approach, and describes something in the Hasidic world as “healthy, normal, more relaxed.”
The speaker gives a personal example from Yeruham about coerciveness and ideology in religious life, and distinguishes between fear of Heaven “in the negative sense” and a righteous person with a sense of humor. He says things have improved today, though differences still remain, especially in the Hardal camp. He adds that he does not know the source for the belief that the Third Temple will not be destroyed, and mentions an article by Rabbi Ari Shvat in Tzohar.
The speaker also mentions the belief that the world lasts six thousand years, and that after six thousand years “the Messiah has to come, or I don’t know exactly what.” He says there is “some midrash or another that one can lean on,” but in practice it has become something like a principle of faith. He adds the statement, “In the future to come, the Jewish law will follow Beit Shammai,” and argues that it has no source, that it is a tradition attributed to the Vilna Gaon but not clearly written anywhere, and yet it is treated as self-evident.
The speaker touches on Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles and says there is room to discuss what each principle actually means, what “principles” means, and to what extent this is “Maimonides” and to what extent it is “Moses our teacher,” using the anecdote “from Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses” in order to sharpen the question of the source of authority of entrenched principles of faith.
The difference between Jewish law and thought: Torah as an objective body versus Torah as subjective to the person, and continuity versus invention
The speaker says there is a difference between Jewish thought and Jewish law, and gives the example of Dror Pixler, who argued on the basis of Maimonides that “a small matter is the discussions of Abaye and Rava, and a great matter is the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot,” and from there wanted to argue that studying physics is Torah at its highest level. The speaker says there is value in physics and in various fields, but objects to blurring the boundaries between them and the study of Talmud and Ketzot. He argues that the study of Jewish law is objectively “the core body of Torah,” while the study of thought has subjective value for someone for whom it builds a worldview, and for someone for whom it does not, it is a waste of Torah study.
The speaker hesitates about the Bible itself, and is more ready to include Midrash Rabbah. He explains that his criterion rests on the fact that the halakhic tradition is, in essence, a continuous tradition, even though it includes innovations and disputes, because its orientation is interpretive and source-based. By contrast, in the realm of thought, he says there is “invention,” not in a negative sense, but in the sense of creating a new doctrine. He illustrates this through the Maharal, who in his view “forces” rabbinic midrashim to fit the picture he is building, and says that here there is no continuity in which each thinker interprets his predecessor.
The speaker says he has no confidence in philosophical-theological literature as an authoritative text “not one bit,” not out of disrespect, but because he is unwilling to accept it as a source of authority the way he accepts halakhic texts. He argues that in the last generation there has been a “pathological process” of trying to bring Jewish thought into the yeshiva canon and make knowledge of the Kuzari part of the definition of a Torah scholar. He disagrees, and says one can be a towering Torah scholar without that, even if it limits breadth and inner world.
The speaker says that someone who does not engage at all in the realm of thought cannot be considered a truly great Jew, but adds that there is no binding corpus in that field and no “canonical literature” that one is obligated to know, unlike the world of Jewish law where not knowing the Ketzot means a fundamental deficiency in one’s status as a man of Jewish law. He argues that halakhic codes are rare, and that a code is usually a summarizing act after a system has already developed. Therefore, the Arukh HaShulchan HeAtid is not an “invention” but a summary, organization, and ruling based on Talmudic texts and on medieval and later authorities.
Halakhic ruling in matters of thought, the Sanhedrin, censorship, and the status of truth versus what is binding
The speaker connects the non-binding character of the field of thought to the question of whether there is “halakhic ruling” in matters of thought. He cites Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah as saying that there is no halakhic ruling in matters that do not affect practice, and mentions an article by Henshke showing that in three places in the Mishneh Torah Maimonides does in fact rule in those very matters. He argues that there are principles that have been accepted in practice even without a solid basis, such as the six-thousand-year idea or the notion that “someone who dies for his Judaism is holy,” but still these do not have the same binding force as Jewish law. If he becomes convinced that a theological principle is incorrect, a public ruling will not bind him the way a halakhic ruling does, because halakhic rulings rest on a tradition from Sinai.
The speaker says that in Jewish law there are marginal phenomena of errors or customs without basis, such as fish with dairy being forbidden because of “a printing error,” but in the halakhic world there is internal critique that identifies sources and weighs them, and no one turns such things into a principle such that anyone who violates it is a heretic. He says that in the world of thought there is more censorship because more “subversive” things are said, and because in the absence of a continuous interpretive framework, argument tends to turn into accusations like “heretic” instead of source-based discussion.
The speaker offers parables to illustrate a situation in which one cannot persuade a person from outside the experience, including the parable of the blind man and the room that had been full of furniture and suddenly seemed “empty” in the eyes of the one who could see. He applies this to faith, where a person feels certainty but cannot “prove” it to someone who lacks the experiential tools. He also gives the example of discussion of the Binding of Isaac as presented by Ravitzky, and of the Holocaust and monetary law in the Kovno ghetto, and argues that there are situations very far from our world in which the person who is actually there has “testimony” about what is right to do, more than the outside critic.
A critique of the assumption that someone killed because of his Judaism is holy and died in sanctification of God’s name
The speaker says he wanted to discuss the assumption that someone who dies because of his Judaism is holy, and argues that there is “absolutely no basis” for it, that it is “illogical,” and that it is “nonsense” that has become so accepted that anyone who disputes it is treated as if he were disputing the Divine Presence. He draws a distinction between an outcome-based measure of sanctification of God’s name and a measure based on the person’s action. He argues that on the level of outcomes, the Holocaust was an enormous desecration of God’s name, and cites Rabbi Shabtai as having heard from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein that the Holocaust was “the greatest desecration of God’s name since the creation of the world.”
The speaker says that during the massacres of 1096 and the Crusades, when people “gave themselves over for the sanctity of God’s name,” there is sanctification of God’s name because one sees human beings giving up their lives for their values, and where it is required this is “a very great sanctification of God’s name.” He argues that if someone was identified as a Jew and “shot in the head,” he did not perform an act of sanctifying God’s name, and there is no sanctification of God’s name here, neither as result nor as deed. He distinguishes this from cases of “be killed rather than transgress,” or from the Ten Martyrs, who were seized because of Torah study or because of principled resistance.
The speaker also addresses the discourse about IDF soldiers and “holy ones,” and says that with all the empathy and gratitude for self-sacrifice in defense, that does not turn the death itself into sanctification of God’s name unless the person acted מתוך a conscious sense of mission tied to a commandment. He rejects the claim that this is merely a semantic expression of comfort, saying that “something false does not comfort,” and declares that he intends to examine later quotations showing that the statement is made as a substantive claim, not merely as rhetoric.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that we were done with the issue of Israel’s special quality, so I said there are two offshoots of it that I want to deal with. The first one we dealt with over the previous two or three sessions, which was incomplete explanations, or degrees of freedom in Maimonides’ view at least. Yesterday I spoke about the individual and the community, the previous time, which also branches off from this offshoot. The second offshoot is that I think this idea of Israel’s special quality is an interesting example of something broader. All kinds of ideas in Jewish thought that don’t really have a real basis, but they’ve become deeply entrenched. There are things that are treated as some kind of obvious first principle, even though when you check where it comes from, what the source of it is, it’s not entirely clear. So I’ll just bring a few examples so we can see what I mean. First of all, the idea of Israel’s special quality itself. Meaning, again, “and you shall be to Me a treasured people” is written, “you shall be to Me a treasure” is in the verses, but this notion that it means there’s some built-in special quality here, which to some people may seem completely obvious, I’m not sure that’s such an obvious thing. I don’t think it’s clear, for example, what the Sages thought about this. It’s true that the Sages saw the Jew as different from the non-Jew, but I don’t know if they understood that there was something here in the genome, or whether they understood that, okay, this is a different culture, maybe even a more advanced one, let’s speak in an un-politically-correct way, and more moral, whatever, something like that, but not necessarily that they understood there was some built-in essence here that was not the result of the culture but the cause of the culture, like we talked about then. So the idea of Israel’s special quality is the example I’m starting from. But there are a few other examples too. For instance, the notion that the Third Temple will not be destroyed. There’s a famous story about Rabbi Herzog, who came after—during the War of Independence there was a rumor in Jerusalem that the Brisker Rav was about to flee. There was shooting and war there, and the Brisker Rav was apparently going to flee. So Rabbi Herzog went to visit him and tried to persuade him to stay. And among other things he said to him: Listen, Rabbi, we have a tradition that the Third Temple will not be destroyed. Today it sounds very funny to say that to the Brisker Rav, but I don’t know, apparently he said it innocently, and I think that was a pretty broad consensus. You know the—if I’m not mistaken, before the first or second elections, really at the very beginning of the state’s rebirth, some public call came out urging people to vote for the United Religious Front. And there it says: the first flowering of our redemption, and we must strengthen the religious representatives, and so on. Now at the bottom there are a great many Jews signed there who today would pay a fortune to have their names erased from it. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, for instance, is signed there. I don’t think he would have paid to have his name erased. Yes, true, I don’t think he would have been alarmed by that, although I’m not sure that today he would have—or today, meaning before he passed away—signed it. In any case, that’s what Rabbi Herzog said to the Brisker Rav. So the Rav—just to complete the anecdote—the Brisker Rav said to him: Look, I don’t know, our tradition from father is that when people are shooting, you run away. You have a tradition that the Third Temple won’t be destroyed; we have a tradition that when people are shooting, you run away. And to my mind this is really a marvelous story, it’s not a joke. Because it’s such a beautiful and sharp expression of the difference in outlook, of Haredi pragmatism as against Religious Zionist ideology. Meaning Religious Zionism is something very ideological. Yes, look at the wing of Har HaMor and the Kav yeshivot and so on—there it reaches very far-going extremes, and there you can see that there isn’t a single step, not a single event that happens, that isn’t immediately explained in terms of the theory. Meaning everything has to fit exactly with the writings of our master Rabbi Kook of blessed memory, or I don’t know, everything has to fit the theory, in short. Nothing fits, but it has to fit, so they press it until it does. But in any case, this approach where every step is thought through—in a certain sense it’s very admirable. After all, these are people who think through every step they take. They weigh everything on the scale of values and path and ideology and right and wrong and so on. On the other hand, somehow it seems a bit heavy and not really serious, not something that can truly hold water. If you understand what is right and what is wrong, you don’t need constantly to make calculations and check everything against the scale of ideology. In any case, I think this story is a wonderful illustration of that difference. I’m completely on the Haredi side in this matter. Anyway, on that Haredi side—yes, in this matter, I’m saying, I’m on that Haredi side.
[Speaker D] Not all of Haredi society,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Almost. I think the Haredi mainstream is like that. There are a few crazies, but the Haredi mainstream is like that.
[Speaker D] In the Hasidic world—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think in the Hasidic world too it’s like that. There’s something healthy, something normal, something more relaxed. When I came to Yeruham at the beginning of my Yeruham period, I told this once before, I held a tish. I had been there two weeks, and I held a tish for the guys in my class. Usually they come Friday night, you talk with them a bit; I gave them a tish about a sense of humor. I told them that I had come from Bnei Brak. I came from Bnei Brak to Yeruham. Bnei Brak is a Haredi city; I lived in a Haredi society that disconnects Torah from life. And it was great, meaning there was a sense of humor, a person could be righteous and have a sense of humor, meaning you don’t have to be God-fearing in the negative sense of the term. And I come to Yeruham and everyone is stiff as a board. There are the ones who have a sense of humor and they’re not from the in-group, and then there are the guys who are God-fearing—two groups. Why does it have to be like that? Meaning there’s something very forced, very ideological in religiosity. I think today it’s better, meaning it’s not what it used to be; today it’s more concentrated in the Hardal wing, I think, though even there I don’t know, that’s a bit of a generalization. But there’s still that kind of difference. Never mind. For our purposes, then, the assumption that the Third Temple will not be destroyed is also one of the examples of this. I don’t know where the source for it is. There’s some article by Rabbi Ari Shvat in Tzohar where he once wrote about this matter; maybe we’ll talk about it in one of the next meetings. And that’s one example. A second example is the world’s existence for six thousand years, that after six thousand years the Messiah also has to come, or I don’t know exactly what is supposed to happen after six thousand years. Again, “six thousand it exists, six thousand it is desolate,” and there’s some midrash or other one can hang it on, but it has turned into this kind of principle of faith. Meaning, we have another two hundred and thirty years until the coming of the Messiah; you can already mark lines on the rifle butt. Why are we waiting every day? Not because it’s “in its time” and “I will hasten it”—“I will hasten it.” Yes. There is another thing, for example: in the future to come, the Jewish law will follow Beit Shammai. Also accepted, and there is no source for it whatsoever. It’s a tradition accepted in the name of the Vilna Gaon. Again, I don’t think it’s actually written, but it’s accepted in his name to say that. But somehow today when you talk with people—well of course, in the future to come the Jewish law will follow Beit Shammai—it’s obvious. It has no basis at all; it’s not clear where it came from. Fine, I don’t even want to get started on Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles, but there too there is room to discuss each principle separately, what exactly it says. In truth, that itself would be worth a whole series, to talk about Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles, where they came from, what their significance is, what “principles” even means, and to what extent this is really Maimonides and to what extent it is Moses our teacher. From Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses, but still I think things need to come with Moses our teacher. Fine. On anthropomorphism there’s already a lot of discussion.
[Speaker C] Didn’t Maimonides write the Thirteen Principles? Yes, Maimonides wrote them, so what does it mean, “to what extent is it Maimonides”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m asking to what extent it’s Maimonides and to what extent it’s Moses our teacher. The question is whether it’s Maimonides or Moses our teacher. It’s definitely Maimonides—the question is whether it comes from Moses our teacher. Fine, but that’s just an anecdote, of course, I don’t really mean that literally. I mean things that have somehow become entrenched in our time. Today I want to talk about another example: the assumption that someone who dies because of his Judaism is holy. Someone who dies because he is a Jew is holy. It has neither root nor branch, there’s absolutely no basis for it, it’s illogical, there’s no source for it, it’s just nonsense. But somehow it’s accepted to say it, and anyone who disagrees with it is treated as though he’s disagreeing with the Divine Presence. So I want to discuss that a little bit, but before I get there, maybe first to put this in context. I don’t think it’s an accident that there is a collection of such examples—these are just what came to mind right now. I assume there are more, but these are a few representative examples. I don’t think it’s accidental that there is a collection of such principles that somehow become fixed as principles of faith when it’s not entirely clear what their source is. There is something here that is quite typical, I think, of the realm of thought, and maybe I talked about this at the beginning of the year, I don’t remember anymore. There is some difference between thought, Jewish thought, and Jewish law. And about this I definitely spoke—I don’t remember exactly what I said there, but I definitely spoke about it. Once I wrote something about this in Tzohar; there was an article there by Dror Pixler who wanted to argue—the Rambam says, he cites the Talmud, that “a small matter is the discussions of Abaye and Rava and a great matter is the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot,” and therefore he wanted to argue—he’s a physicist, he was even my student—that studying physics is basically the Account of the Chariot and that this is Torah at its highest level. And Talmud is a small matter—of course it also has value, but not like quantum mechanics or relativity or whatever. Now I actually do think there is definitely value in quantum mechanics and relativity, but it seems to me there is a certain blurring of categories here. And I wrote some short article or response there. I said that I accept the fact that there is value in many fields, not only the fields that are traditionally accepted as Torah: philosophy, science, different forms of perspective from all sorts of areas. I also don’t think I know how to give a list; each person, whatever builds him or is important for building his own spiritual world. But I do think there is a difference between those fields and Ketzot, okay? Meaning, the indication of this, it seems to me—or the implication of it—is that it seems to me that anyone who studies Talmud or Ketzot or Maimonides has studied Torah. By contrast, someone who studies, I don’t know, Guide of the Perplexed—if that doesn’t speak to him, then in my view it’s a waste of Torah study. He won’t gain anything from it. If it does speak to him, then it definitely has value, and maybe you can even call it Torah—it’s a bit of a definitional question—but I would perhaps call it Torah in the person as opposed to Torah in the object. Meaning, there is Torah that is an object of Torah. When you study a halakhic passage with decisors, commentators, medieval authorities, later authorities, and so on, that is the very body of Torah. Meaning, when you have studied that, you have studied Torah. It doesn’t matter at all whether it speaks to you or doesn’t speak to you, whether you liked it or didn’t like it, whether you agree with it or don’t agree with it—you studied Torah in any case. This is Torah in the objective sense. By contrast, areas like thought are Torah in a subjective sense. I’m willing to accept at least some of them as Torah, but it is Torah in a subjective sense, in the sense that if it builds your spiritual world, then it is very important, and by the way it is definitely no less important than studying Jewish law. Meaning, I’m not talking now about ranking at all, but it’s a different kind. It’s subjective importance. Meaning, it is important for the person for whom it really builds something, but for someone for whom it does not, it is a waste of Torah study.
[Speaker F] By the way, what does the Rabbi include in that? Isaiah too? And the Bible as well?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Bible—I’m very… Midrash Rabbah, yes, I tend to think yes, but with Scripture itself I hesitate a lot. Although if you asked my instinct, I might include that too. But look, I think there’s a limit. There I’m very hesitant to say such a thing. Why really? I’ll tell you why. The criterion is clear; it’s not just some vague feeling. What exactly is the difference—why do I see a difference between these two domains? The feeling—again, I don’t think it’s just a feeling, it is a feeling, but it seems to me it’s grounded in facts. I think there’s something very real here. The halakhic tradition is a continuous tradition. Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t innovations. Everyone disagrees with everyone else, so clearly there are different views, and clearly we are not engaged only in transmission; we’re not a hollow pipe. Meaning, it’s not that we simply pass on the Torah we received at Sinai to the next generations. Clearly it gets colored by our own colors, our conceptions shape it, formulate it, and we also have disputes according to our different conceptions and ways of seeing things. But still, in essence, we are engaged in interpretive work. Meaning, when I come to a halakhic passage, I examine the sources. I may express a position that disagrees with all the major sources, fine—but I am still clarifying sources that stand before me, interpreting them, and then formulating a position. In the realm of thought, the feeling is completely different. The realm of thought is invention. Meaning, anyone who thinks that Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed, or Saadia Gaon, or even Maharal, Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Hutner—by the way—are reliable in the same way as the halakhic tradition… very thin, very thin—at what level roughly? Slightly. Very few people, yes. In every period there are one or two; almost no one is involved in this topic, so even in terms of the reliability of the tradition I would say it does not pass down through a broad tradition the way the halakhic tradition does.
[Speaker F] Even Kabbalah? What? Even Kabbalah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, even Kabbalah I would say that about. It’s broader, and still I… but that’s another discussion. Kabbalah is a separate discussion. We can talk about it separately, but I don’t want to bring it in here because there are special things there.
[Speaker A] The engagement with Jewish thought, I mean, there is continuity even if it isn’t the same thing all the time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I disagree. Meaning, I think the trickle—first of all, the trickle is thin, but it is also not continuous. Even the little bit that exists is not continuous. No one is going to tell me that the Maharal is an interpretation of the Guide of the Perplexed and the Kuzari. The Maharal is an invention. Invention in the— I don’t mean it negatively, but in the sense that he created a doctrine that he carved out of himself, out of his world. He uses rabbinic midrashim, of course, and so on, and forces them so that they fit him, and in the end he builds some kind of picture as it seems to him. And I respect that very much; this is not a slur. I’m simply trying to describe what he does. Same with Maimonides. And therefore it is written in a different language, with different ideas, different principles; it’s not only a question of how one handles the material. The material itself is different. It’s a different mode of thought, something else, entirely different worlds. So even that thin trickle that does pass through the world of thought is not a continuous trickle. There isn’t some situation where each one is interpreting the generation before him. Each one invents his own inventions anew. Here and there there’s some reference—Maimonides refers a bit to Saadia Gaon, I think—but at the margins; it’s nothing, you can’t really build on that. Clearly, each one also takes things from the world he knows, from his teachers, from his environment, from non-Jewish philosophers by whom he is influenced or with whom he is in some contact. And so it seems to me very difficult to relate to this kind of literature or this field as some field that is transmitting to me, by tradition, Torah that descended at Sinai. I have no trust in this field at all, not one cent’s worth. Not because I disdain it, again, really not. I don’t disdain it. I’m just not willing to accept the texts as sources of authority—that’s the point. As opposed to halakhic texts, which, again, even “source of authority” may be too strong an expression—if something is written in Ketzot I can still disagree with it, and if it’s written in Maimonides I can disagree with it too. But they are a source of authority in the sense that I am engaged with what they say. I interpret, I argue, I am part of some living, dynamic tradition, not something frozen, not something where you take something and pass it along like a baton handed from hand to hand.
[Speaker C] What are you trying to prove from that? That’s the main thing. Okay, so most people dealt with this—so what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about whether it’s the main thing or not. I said that explicitly.
[Speaker C] It’s Torah study.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I said I’m not talking at all about the question of what is primary. That’s exactly the point. I’m talking about the character of the things. The character of the things is different. I said that thought—I’ll call it Torah in the person and not Torah in the object—in the sense that if the Maharal builds you, then when you study Maharal that is certainly no less important than studying Talmud or Ketzot or whatever, or I don’t know, certainly no less important. I’m not making any claim at all about importance. That’s not the issue. It may be more important. Maybe a great matter really is a great matter, and a small matter is the discussions of Abaye and Rava and a great matter is the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot. What the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot are is basically your decision, unlike the discussions of Abaye and Rava. Meaning, it is Torah no less important, but less objective, more subjective. And in that sense there is something here that I think in the last generation has become a pathological process. They’re trying to bring this into the study halls, into the Torah canon, yes, into what people today call the Jewish bookshelf—but the yeshiva bookshelf, because the Jewish bookshelf certainly includes it, but the yeshiva bookshelf. And somehow it becomes an integral part of Torah study. You can’t be a Torah scholar if you don’t have an education in the Kuzari. I disagree with that. To the point that some have gone so far as to explain that there are also leading sages of the generation in faith, and leading sages of the generation in Jewish law, and all kinds of leading sages of the generation. So I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that.
[Speaker G] Can someone be a Torah scholar without knowing the foundations of thought, the foundations of—whether there is a God, there isn’t a God, faith, the Exodus from Egypt?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, we’re not talking about whether there is a God or there isn’t a God—that’s not what’s at issue. That’s not the dispute between the Maharal and Maimonides or Rabbi Kook or whoever. Or whether language is conventional or natural—right, yes. You can be an outstanding Torah scholar even without that. Yes. You won’t be a broad person, maybe you won’t be an original person—no, an original person you actually can be—but you won’t be someone with, yes, with range. Fine, so you won’t be. But you can certainly be a Torah scholar. You can definitely be a clear Torah learner. Now by the way, if you engage in all—
[Speaker G] those books, then that’s the Haredi discourse, at least that’s how it seems to me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, I said—in this matter at least I have no problem, I’m not put off by those labels. Yes, yes. And again, that doesn’t mean—I, for instance, think that someone who doesn’t engage in these areas really is not—I think he cannot be considered a great Jew. But not someone who doesn’t know the Kuzari and the Guide of the Perplexed. Rather someone who doesn’t engage in these areas. Now there is no canonical literature here. Meaning, I don’t think there is some body of knowledge that you must know. If you don’t know Maimonides, then you don’t know him—so what happened? Meaning, you’ll develop your own doctrine in this area. If you know it, great, nice, one should be familiar, should know it, should have context—but why reinvent the wheel? Still, there is no binding body of knowledge here, as I understand things, unlike in the halakhic world. Even if you don’t rule like the Ketzot, if you don’t know Ketzot then you are not a Torah scholar. There’s no way around it; something is missing in you. You can reinvent everything from scratch, but that’s not serious. You can disagree with the Ketzot, you can say whatever you want, maybe you don’t like Ketzot’s method of learning either—that’s just an example, of course; if someone happens not to like Ketzot, let him study Netivot. But I mean the mainstream halakhic stream. That is a body of knowledge such that if you don’t know it, you are not a man of Jewish law. That’s all. There’s no game-playing here. It’s a tradition. And not because you must accept it. Again, I’m not claiming there is authority here in the tight sense of the word, that whatever is written there you have to follow. But you are another floor in this tower that keeps being built, in this chain of links—so you are the next link. You cannot be there without being connected to all the previous links, and “connected” means also arguing with them, “connected” means also debating with them. Connection can take many forms, but that is what I call tradition in the dynamic sense. By contrast, in the tradition of thought there is almost no such thing, let’s admit the truth. There is almost no such thing. Truly each one has his own conceptual world and his own language and his own style of thought; these really are entirely different things, there is no continuity here. No one is going to convince me that the Maharal came down from Sinai. Now Ketzot didn’t come down from Sinai either, but Ketzot is a processing of what came down from Sinai for the nineteenth century, or the beginning of the nineteenth century. Okay? As far as I’m concerned that is a completely correct statement. Not because God told Moses our teacher all of Ketzot, but because Ketzot really is—again—I understand how it develops from the Torah given to Moses, through the Talmud, medieval authorities, later authorities. Every generation of course brings its own way of thinking, is influenced by different things, certainly—that exists in the halakhic realm too. But still, your basic orientation is an interpretive orientation. You are dealing with material that reached you, kneading it, processing it, creating your own layer, and passing the product onward. That’s basically what you do in the halakhic world. In the world of thought that’s not true. In the world of thought you create a level that is always a first level, perhaps on the basis of the Sages, but even there the commitment to the Sages, in my opinion, is very limited—both with Maimonides and with Maharal. Everyone can quote sayings of the Sages; no one is going to convince me that this is really the Sages. So what? You use it as an illustration. You can always find rabbinic sayings that are more suitable or less suitable. You use it as an illustration for things that seem right to you. And that is what you are writing, essentially. This book is your book; it is not an interpretation of a tradition that came to you. And therefore in the realm of thought there is—I think we spoke about this at the beginning of the year, I don’t remember anymore, but it seems to me, or at least I assume, there should have been some introduction to this issue. That’s why I say that in the realm of thought—and I’m not belittling it—I think that, again, I don’t study these books very much, as I said at the beginning of the year, because it really seems to me these books are a bit anachronistic. Meaning, they don’t speak the language that solves my problems; they don’t help me.
[Speaker A] But this is a response, that’s how I understand it, not true of all generations. There is a response—for example, the Mussar movement was a response to dryness and to students dropping out, students who were in the framework and didn’t find their place, because not everyone can really be a great Torah scholar.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, I’m not attacking the study of thought. I want you to understand, that’s not what I mean. On the contrary—I’m only claiming that one needs to understand that this is a different genre, a different type of Torah. If at all, yes.
[Speaker C] But they didn’t engage with—it’s like from another angle, the Ketzot under—flour already ground, meaning he dealt with what they had dealt with before him. But say, how many are there like Arukh HaShulchan, for example, who dealt with the laws of the future? Now—yes, thanks, Meni—Arukh HaShulchan HeAtid. So what? No one discussed, aside from Maimonides, the laws of the future except Arukh HaShulchan. No, no, no, that’s really not true, really not true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who composed—no, you’re asking who composed a code for future laws? That’s something entirely different. Who composed a halakhic code at all? There are hardly any halakhic codes across the entire history of Jewish law. The only halakhic codes we have are Maimonides and Arukh HaShulchan in all of Jewish history. Those are the only two full halakhic codes. All the rest are partial—only for this time, only for here—a full comprehensive code covering everything. But that doesn’t mean people didn’t deal with it. What, Arukh HaShulchan invented these things? He takes Talmudic texts together with medieval and later authorities, rules and decides Jewish law, and organizes it.
[Speaker C] Who dealt with how a Jewish police force works? How does it work?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not what I’m talking about.
[Speaker C] Wait, why didn’t they deal with it? As you said, because it wasn’t relevant. I’m talking about that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because they didn’t deal with it because it wasn’t relevant—what do you mean, why didn’t they deal with it? Okay, fine, so what’s the connection? I’m speaking right now—
[Speaker C] And that’s not a code? What? Shulchan Arukh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s partial,
[Speaker C] It’s partial, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are partial codes, yes, there are Jewish law books, but a code in the comprehensive, full sense—no. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t deal with future laws. What do you mean? They dealt with the laws of sacrifices, they dealt with ritual impurity and purity, there are medieval and later authorities on the relevant passages, sometimes less because it was less practical, but there are. That is a continuous Torah. I’m not saying every topic was treated to the same extent. Bava Kamma is dealt with more than the Order of Kodashim generally, yes, and that’s true throughout the generations. Fine, but you can’t say that Kodashim is an invention. He invented nothing. Arukh HaShulchan HeAtid did not invent in the sense that, say, the Maharal invented. He collected the opinions, formulated them, distilled them, and organized them, as one does in a code. On the contrary, a code is usually a summarizing act. Even in the legal world. A code usually comes after the legal system is already highly developed. No legal system begins with a code. Never. A code is the end. A code is when the system is already very highly developed, and then some person comes along—and for that you need abilities, you need the ability to arrange material, organize it, master huge quantities of material. It’s very hard work. Today committees of dozens of people sit on this for decades in order to produce a code. But I’m saying: the fact that there are no codes—even in current Jewish law there are almost no codes, in laws actually practiced today. But there is treatment of it, what do you mean? The halakhic area of ritual purity and impurity or of Kodashim is an area people dealt with—what? There’s a tradition there.
[Speaker C] And the fact that they didn’t deal with Torah and the Bible, say—okay, so what? So there was a lack in—meaning, a lack—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Definitely a lack,
[Speaker C] which is a flaw in the style of learning of the Ketzot, let’s call it that. Meaning, the fact is they didn’t deal with it. What does it mean, a flaw in Ketzot’s style of learning?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ketzot did something else. The fact that he didn’t deal with that other thing—fine.
[Speaker C] No, someone will come and deal with it, and you’ll tell him, wait, wait, you’re deviating from the tradition!
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, again, don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that someone who deals with it is deviating from the tradition, or that it is improper to deal with it—not at all. On the contrary, I said exactly the opposite. I said there is great importance in dealing with it, but one needs to know that the Kuzari and the Guide of the Perplexed do not have—and should not have—the status of Ketzot. Not because Maimonides and the author of the Kuzari were unimportant people, but because the genre is such. Meaning, this is not a body of knowledge that you must possess because it is the foundation; there are authorities here and you can build the next level. In this field, each person builds level one. And that’s fine. You can study whomever you want, whoever speaks to you and has value for you. I’m not denying the value of that.
[Speaker G] And is this connected to the question whether there is halakhic ruling in matters of thought?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly it’s connected. One of the indications of the nature of this field is what Maimonides writes in three places in his commentary on the Mishnah—that there is no halakhic ruling in fields that do not pertain to practice. There is an article by Henshke, by the way, from a few years ago, where he shows that in all three of those topics where Maimonides in the commentary on the Mishnah says there is no halakhic ruling in things that do not pertain to practice, in the Mishneh Torah he does issue a halakhic ruling. In all three of them.
[Speaker G] Exactly, and therefore it can’t possibly be that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but he shows that it does somehow touch on Jewish law.
[Speaker G] What? And there’s a halakhic relevance, and therefore he rules. What, and there is a halakhic ruling on whether I can think there is no Messiah or there is a Messiah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either the Torah is from Heaven or it isn’t. To say there is God and there isn’t God—that takes it to absurdity. But yes, what does that mean? That there’s some kind of space within which you can live, and everything is fine within it.
[Speaker G] And they dealt with this, I think, and broadly with this tension that Maimonides, as it were, on the one hand says there is no Jewish law here, but on the other hand it’s clear that he himself came and disqualified various opinions and said—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That—of course, that’s what I’m saying. Again, that’s why I’m saying you have to be careful. I don’t mean that you can simply not believe in God. It seems to me that that takes things to absurdity.
[Speaker G] Not even the Thirteen Principles?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even the thirteen—I mentioned earlier in the Tur, the whole business—you weren’t here at the beginning. I opened by saying that I want to talk about… Now, as an example, I brought several examples: that the world has existed for six thousand years and somehow we move on from that, that a Third Temple will not be destroyed, that someone who dies for his Judaism is holy, and all kinds of things of that sort. And the last example I mentioned was the Thirteen Principles, where I said that was half a provocation, because obviously the Thirteen Principles are not the same thing, they’re not of the same status. And still, even regarding the Thirteen Principles, there is certainly room to discuss how much of that is Maimonides and how much of that is Moses.
[Speaker G] I agree, but that’s exactly the claim—that even if we say it’s Maimonides, and Sefer Ha-Ikkarim will say three, and say that the Messiah isn’t important, and so on—still there is some kind of halakhic ruling, and today a person could come and say, look, in my opinion Torah from Heaven isn’t such a big deal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s very much a question of definition. Because if you define halakhic ruling as something that was accepted, then certainly yes—there are principles that were accepted. The idea that the world has existed for six thousand years was accepted, and the idea that someone who dies for his Judaism is called holy was also accepted. Ask most people, including rabbis—the overwhelming majority will tell you yes. And I disagree.
[Speaker G] Yes, but do you think they’d come and say about some rabbi, listen, he thinks that someone who dies for the sanctification of God’s name isn’t holy, and therefore they’d see him as a heretic? No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, that’s what I’m saying. But someone who denies the resurrection of the dead? Then he’s a heretic. So what does that mean? Fine—so to that you got more accustomed, and to this you got less accustomed.
[Speaker G] No, I don’t think that makes it easy, but I’m asking whether you don’t think that in the end we have to converge on some kind of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what we “have to” do. I know it’s very hard to live without a framework. That is obvious. But on the other hand, look—if I became convinced that something in these principles of thought is wrong, it won’t help if you issue a halakhic ruling ten times that it’s right. If I think it’s wrong, I don’t accept it. Because I’m sure it didn’t come down from Sinai, you understand? In halakhic ruling, in Jewish law, when we issue a halakhic ruling, for me that is the authoritative interpretation—not necessarily the correct and authentic one, but the authoritative one—of what the Holy One, blessed be He, gave at Sinai, and I am subject to that. Meaning, if something was accepted—and you know, I’m not all that subject to it, but let’s say the Talmud, yes, or things that are self-evident, then certainly yes. Why? Not because it’s definitely true. Yes—because that’s what it is. But in thought, no. Because I don’t think that there anything at all was given to Moses. That there is a commandment of tefillin—so the Holy One, blessed be He, said: put on tefillin. Now there are arguments over what tefillin are, when one puts them on, how one puts them on—fine, then we have to discuss when.
[Speaker G] But He didn’t tell Moses whether He intends to bring the Messiah or not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not at all sure. I don’t know. These Thirteen Principles are a big question. Again, each one needs to be discussed separately; after all, it’s not one package. About corporeality, for example, a lot has been discussed. Some of them are Maimonides’ own conception, and it’s not entirely clear to what extent—and certainly it was not fully agreed upon—and it’s not clear how binding it is if someone thinks that the Holy One, blessed be He, is corporeal and not abstract.
[Speaker E] The question is whether he has sources. In Jewish law, in everything connected to Torah, every halakhic ruling has sources. Where did Maimonides take this from? Where are his sources?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I’m saying, the—
[Speaker E] This depends on that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This depends on that. That’s why I’m saying: since Maimonides’ determination is not anchored in earlier sources in a continuous tradition the way we know it in the halakhic world, then even if it was accepted…
[Speaker G] But even in Jewish law, in the end we can argue about the sources, and there will be a halakhic dispute, and it’s legitimate.
[Speaker H] No, but there’s no dispute that if Maimonides says something, then he has a source.
[Speaker G] And in the Thirteen Principles Maimonides himself tries to bring verses, even—not just sources.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but we all understand.
[Speaker G] Right, but again, I have no problem coming and saying that on a given issue we’ll disagree with Maimonides, or that people did disagree with him—we know they did. But the thing that bothers me is whether we will in fact arrive at some conception that there is halakhic ruling here. Because if not, then maybe Christianity is also legitimate—because okay, he just thinks a little differently.
[Speaker I] No, a Christian isn’t with me in thought. And in thought? If he believes that Jesus is the Messiah—
[Speaker G] But someone who doesn’t put on tefillin isn’t like a Christian. Someone who doesn’t put on tefillin simply isn’t fulfilling a commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A Christian is a sectarian—it’s a contradiction, it’s denial, it’s idolatry. And if he’s a Christian who keeps all the commandments? That’s really a big question.
[Speaker I] He worships idols.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He keeps all the commandments, goes to church on Sundays, I don’t know what he does there.
[Speaker I] Fine, he does this, he does that, and checks that he has the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are signs of a fool in tractate Chagigah, yes. That wouldn’t even be religious-versus-secular, that’s—
[Speaker I] Meaning he worships idols in—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, here—on this issue, of course, you can take things to distant places, although even in those distant places I’m willing to argue from time to time. Because essentially I think that the very clear impression from the development of ideas in the world of thought, as distinct from the halakhic world, is that we are not dealing here with… transmission through tradition, with something that came down from Sinai, passed along with all the interpretations and processing. Of course that exists in Jewish law too, no doubt. But there is a consciousness here that in its essence is an interpretive consciousness in the halakhic world. In the world of thought that’s simply not true. Simply not true. The differences between thinkers—I’m not talking about the existence of the Holy One, blessed be He; on that everyone agrees, there is no argument. I think there are a few things on which everyone agrees, and one could perhaps treat them as something binding—but that’s uninteresting, because everyone agrees on them. I’m talking about where there are disputes. Now the question is whether, where there are disputes, if all the sages of the generation gather and decide that Maimonides was right or Rashba was right in whatever it is, then I’ll whistle at them and say I disagree. Why? Because they think that’s how it seems to them, and Maimonides and Rashba also thought that’s how it seemed to them, and it seems different to me. But in Jewish law, if they gather, then I say: fine, maybe I’ll argue, but yes—once they have determined that this is the law, that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, at least expects us to interpret from what was given at Sinai, because it was given at Sinai. The commandment of tefillin was given at Sinai. Now the question is how that was interpreted there, and what exactly the correct interpretation is—we have arguments, of course. And maybe we are also wrong in our decision. But the commandment was given; there is some kind of tradition here—that is the bottom line as of now. In thought, it simply does not work that way.
[Speaker G] And in what sense are you saying that this is exactly the difference between Jewish law and aggadic literature—that Jewish law is a concrete normative matter that I am obligated to follow by a ruling…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly the point—I’m saying no.
[Speaker G] And thought belongs to the world of ideas and truth, and there it won’t help if a million people say—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But is that my conclusion? That’s not my premise. First of all, I look at the facts. First: is there really a chain of transmission for principles of thought? Now you can come and ask why they didn’t do that, and here I can answer what you answered: maybe because thought—and this often goes a bit against intuition—we usually understand the opposite, that principles of thought are the foundation and Jewish law is their practical realization, their practice; supposedly that’s how it should be, and the reason for the verse is really the true thing. We just don’t agree for various reasons, but that’s the real thing, because after all the commandments come to achieve goals. The commandments are not just meditation, right? So if they come to achieve goals, then the goals are the main thing, and the commandments are the implementation of the principles of thought. And I think the history of Jewish law tells us that this is not so. There is something in the commandments that stands on its own. Obviously they come to achieve something and they are not arbitrary, and so on. But the explanations you give for commandments—after all, everyone explained all the commandments. Nobody claims that this commandment should be abolished because it doesn’t fit with my principles of thought. Everybody explains all the commandments, so that’s not the point. And the obligation to the commandment—Leibowitz took this to a very extreme place, but that’s basically what he says: that we are judged by whether we keep commandments or don’t keep commandments. All the questions of thought aren’t really that interesting. Even the Christians you brought earlier as an example—it seems to me that the point at which it was clear that this was not it, was when they stopped the practical commandments. And also Spinoza, with all the big disputes over his philosophy, none of them really understood it—the point that was truly troubling there was his lack of commitment to Jewish law. And I think in that sense Leibowitz is right. Again, he took it, as is his way, too far. But I think in that sense he is right. And I’m saying—I bring all these things only as an explanation or as context for this claim that there is a whole series of principles of thought that we have become terribly accustomed to because of our educational environment, our surroundings, whatever the reason—and in fact they have no basis. Now in Jewish law there are marginal phenomena like this, but it’s not… it almost doesn’t exist. Meaning, in Jewish law there is in any case some kind of critical attitude. Everyone knows where there are inventions and where it isn’t an invention. Everyone knows—all the Torah scholars know this clearly.
[Speaker A] Fish—like the custom among Hasidim and Sephardim not to eat fish with cheese, yes, with milk. Right. Which is a printing mistake.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, fine, things—
[Speaker A] All the great scholars of the generation would agree on that, and we all—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And we all know that this thing is… Metzitzah—no, that’s written in the Talmud, but that’s a medical matter. Fine. But I’m saying specifically in this matter of fish and cheese, it’s an excellent example, because truly everyone understands that the attitude here is critical. Everyone knows where it came from. There are those who think there is holiness in printing mistakes, and there are those who think there isn’t.
[Speaker A] But there are those who’ve kept it for two thousand years, fine, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But no one turns it into Jewish law such that someone who violates it is a heretic, yes, or desecrates the Sabbath, or I don’t know what. No one will tell you this is meat and milk. Ignoramuses will tell you that, but it’s not serious, you understand? In Jewish law these are marginal phenomena. There really isn’t anything there. And if it exists, the moment I show you halakhically that it doesn’t hold water, that is a legitimate argument, and people may agree and may not agree if they are more conservative. But everyone understands that we are in the critical field, in a field where one can argue, one can formulate an opinion. And even if you are very conservative, you understand that there is substance to what I’m saying, and that’s that. By contrast, in the world of thought I don’t think it’s like that. And the attempt to put this today into the canon—I don’t mean in the sense that there is no value in studying it. Anyone can. I don’t find much point in most of these books because they don’t build anything in me, they don’t speak to me. Fine. But if they speak to others and build something in them, great, no problem at all.
[Speaker I] There was a whole year of a class on “Nevukhei Ha-Dor” by Rabbi Kook.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine—that was part of my attempts to penetrate this hidden domain, yes. This year too is another such attempt, as I also said at the beginning of the year—that’s what I’m doing.
[Speaker A] You revealed to us that there is censorship—something that almost doesn’t exist in Jewish law. That’s good too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, true. Although yes, there’s a bit of censorship in Jewish law too—there is. But right, fine, that also depends on who and… Look, in the realm of thought, obviously more subversive things are said than in the halakhic realm, also because of the freedom… it’s connected to this phenomenon of freedom, that once there isn’t a tight framework like in Jewish law—
[Speaker D] It’s connected to the phenomenon that it isn’t a continuation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So there are all kinds of things where in the end people suddenly see—wait a second, someone here deviated a bit from… or at least that’s how it seems to you. You’re not always right, but it seems someone here missed something. Okay, so in the halakhic world, what can happen? You made an incorrect judgment, so they’ll explain to you: there’s a Talmudic source against you here, and Rashba says this here, and the objection to your position comes from there, and therefore you’re wrong. That’s all. What’s the problem? But in the realm of thought, what will they say? They can shout at you that you’re a heretic. What else can they say? Will they tell you there’s a Maimonides against you? Fine, then there’s a Kuzari against him. Here you can’t conduct a discourse of right and wrong in those contexts. It’s not that—the whole genre is a different genre. Again, without belittling it. I’m not claiming that—
[Speaker E] There are people who sit there, incidentally, in terms of the object itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Possible. But there can be many arguments that because they didn’t deal with it, it therefore didn’t develop the way Jewish law developed. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it was intentional; maybe it’s an artifact—that is, a result of a reality that wasn’t inevitable. I don’t know. But the fact, for now, is first of all this fact.
[Speaker I] It seems that someone who sat on the Sanhedrin had to know seventy languages. Just today I read from Rabbi Lichtenstein on the subject. According to Rabbi Lichtenstein, its meaning is to receive testimony. When you issue a halakhic ruling, you have to know the mentality, the cultures—why do you know seventy languages? It says in the Talmud, if I remember correctly, that it’s to receive testimony.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the Talmud it says it’s to receive testimony. In order… the broader thought of—
[Speaker G] This thing—it’s not only technical, that you have Google Translate. You have to understand the idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But originally, it seems to me… know, know—not that. Originally, in the Talmud, plainly, it’s in order to receive testimony. So that you can hear testimony and won’t have to… so that the Sanhedrin won’t hear through an interpreter.
[Speaker J] Rabbi, the Talmud says that one does not teach the Account of Creation to two or three people, and… only to someone who knows how to understand one thing from another. That shows that there is, as it were, something true there, and it’s only so that other people won’t get tangled up in it that they don’t teach it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is some framework, fine. I said: I don’t know. There may be some framework.
[Speaker J] And maybe it just didn’t develop because indeed it’s only for someone who understands one thing from another, but there is something true that one has to follow… that is the correct thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, the question whether there is something true here is a factual question. It’s not connected to genre at all. Meaning, suppose there is a dispute between Rabbi Kook and the Maharal, fine for the sake of discussion, and the dispute is whether the Holy One, blessed be He, exercises providence in one way or in another. Now, the answer is one answer. They are not both right. Either the Holy One, blessed be He, exercises providence this way, or that way. That’s a factual claim. A factual claim cannot be “these and those are both the words of the living God.” Right? I’m not claiming there is no truth and falsehood in this realm. I’m claiming that there is nothing here that binds; rather, understand it on your own, to the extent that you make your own judgment, to the extent that you can reach the truth. I’m not claiming there is no truth in this realm.
[Speaker J] No, okay, but apparently there was some kind of thing that people agreed was the correct one—meaning when they transmitted something…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either it was the correct one, or there was an agreement that it was dangerous.
[Speaker J] So what did they teach to two and not to three? I mean, if everyone teaches whatever he wants, then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They taught what people teach today. What do they teach today when they do it with two and with three hundred? So what do they teach today? Everyone teaches his own doctrine.
[Speaker J] It seems to me that’s only because they didn’t deal with it, like the rabbi says, and we are very far from the beginning, but there was…
[Speaker F] And also Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in the Mishnah in Chagigah thought that this was the doctrine of the… of whoever teaches the Account of Creation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea. I also don’t know what he meant when he spoke about the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot. I’m not sure he meant the writings of the Maharal. No—not the Maharal’s writings specifically; I mean as a representative, not literally the Maharal’s writings. Maybe he meant Kabbalah, I don’t know. Maybe he meant other things, topics in… I’m saying, maybe he meant Kabbalah. If there is some sort of mystical tradition, let’s call it that—whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be specifically the Zohar—but something of that sort. Who says this is the doctrines of Rabbi Kook and the Maharal and Maimonides in Guide of the Perplexed and Kuzari? I don’t know what is meant there by the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot.
[Speaker F] But on the essential point, at least—
[Speaker G] Maimonides thought he knew what it was, and he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] says: the Account of Creation is the great matter—physics and metaphysics.
[Speaker F] But from the very fact that there is Torah, that there is such a thing in Torah—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so what does that say?
[Speaker F] Maimonides earlier presented a situation that it’s only Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m asking you: in your opinion, is what is written in Maimonides, Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, at the beginning—or in Guide of the Perplexed, or in Kuzari, or Maharal, or whatever it may be—is that the Account of Creation and the Account of the Chariot that Rabbi wrote there in the Mishnah? I’m asking you a historical question: does that sound plausible to you?
[Speaker F] I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m convinced not.
[Speaker F] But I’m saying, let’s say—even at Sinai I know that another part was given, Genesis was also given, all kinds of material—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But still we don’t treat that—it doesn’t come with an interpretive consciousness. I—maybe all kinds of additional things were given at Sinai; I have no idea. But it’s clear that what reached us is not an interpretive processing of what was given at Sinai. Because Maimonides did not receive a tradition from Rabbi there, from the Mishnah in Chagigah, and interpret it through Aristotle. At least that’s how it seems to me, from my impression. And neither did the Maharal, nor anyone else. Therefore I’m saying: that’s not the point—that there is something passing through. That’s the point. I don’t know what the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses at Sinai.
[Speaker J] Actually I have a feeling that it is something that at least—I don’t know—he spoke with his father or with his rabbi, and there was some understanding that this was the direction, that this is what they were talking about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look at the sequence—
[Speaker K] Who spoke with his father?
[Speaker J] Maimonides spoke with his rabbi, who received from his rabbi, who received before him—I actually have the impression that this is—
[Speaker K] I’d bet that it doesn’t have that—
[Speaker J] I’m not saying—I agree—but I’m only saying I don’t have the impression that Maimonides woke up in the morning and started writing down insights.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say that. Again, don’t take things to absurdity. Obviously he thought about these things. Obviously there is some connection to things that came before, to the Talmud.
[Speaker J] Obviously he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] also spoke with other people, with all kinds of wise Jews and so on. He did not receive a tradition of thought, process it, and pass it on. That’s not how it worked. I’m not belittling Maimonides’ ideas. It may be that he formulated them seriously and worked and thought. Gentlemen, in my opinion they didn’t deal with this—but that’s another matter. Ri Migash or the Rif—I don’t think they dealt with these areas. But fine, obviously, maybe he spoke with wise people and together they sat and clarified what was reasonable and what wasn’t, studied Aristotle, processed it, and in the end arrived at conclusions. And that’s perfectly fine—I’m not belittling that. But don’t tell me that this is something that came with Moses and this is Maimonides’ interpretation of it, because in my opinion that is not true.
[Speaker C] Let’s say that now, for the next five hundred years, all the great Torah scholars deal only with this—with the issues of Maimonides and the Kuzari—and they keep at it for another five hundred years. What would your view be? That that’s it—they discussed it, formulated a position, and now it’s part of the canon.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they manage to hide the history from me up to their time—which sometimes people do—maybe they’ll manage to convince me. But since in the meantime I know the history up to them, then even if it goes on for another five hundred years and some canon forms, it doesn’t seem to me that this ought to bind me. You know, when I live there, I’ll be able to know more. As long as you’re not in the situation, it’s hard to determine your stance regarding it. I can try. It’s like what we once discussed about the Binding of Isaac. Ravitzky brings in some article that there are Sephardic sages who relate to Abraham at the Binding of Isaac as someone who failed. The fact that he wanted to sacrifice his son—that itself was a failure. The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted—this is very characteristic of Ravitzky—to test him: whether he would preserve morality even against a command of the Holy One, blessed be He. Why did I remember this? I don’t know why I remembered it. There isn’t some clear association, but I don’t remember why I remembered it.
[Speaker F] If you’re not in the situation—
[Speaker A] his, that it’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a living text—if I’m not in the situation, exactly. And then people say, how can that be? Abraham is in a situation where he’s told to slaughter his son. What, he doesn’t… many times people praise this to the skies: he doesn’t make the moral calculation, and “Abraham rose early in the morning,” Kierkegaard and so on. But on the other hand—Master of the Universe, don’t you think, maybe there’s some mistake here? Could it be you’re imagining this? There’s something here—a horrifying act—it’s not some kind of thing that is… So I say, in my eyes these are irrelevant questions. They are irrelevant because as long as I haven’t stood in a situation where the Holy One, blessed be He, came to me and said, “Take your son, your only one”—I hope that won’t happen—but if it did, I mean on the assumption that you are in such a situation, then you know what such a situation means. How can someone who never experienced this formulate any position, express any clear position on what Abraham should have done or should not have done? To me that sounds completely bizarre. We once spoke about the Holocaust, yes. I once wrote an article about monetary law in the Kovno Ghetto, yes, and there I basically said the same idea. In Yated Ne’eman there was a series there on the subject, and it prompted me to write. Rabbi Gibraltar—some Jew who told about his father—and afterward there was some review by some Jew who published a book on monetary law, a review saying that it doesn’t even get off the ground, it doesn’t fit the sources at all, regarding the decision—
[Speaker A] that he made in the ghetto, that he wasn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] willing, he wasn’t willing to accept repayment, saying that there was no monetary law there and so on. So he said it has neither root nor branch, it’s nonsense, it doesn’t stand the test, fine—but okay, he said it politely, after all it was the Holocaust and all that. And in my eyes that is an approach that misses the whole essence. As long as you weren’t there, you have no idea what the correct law is in such a situation. I’m not talking about the claim that everyone has to be in every situation—that’s nonsense. You can express an opinion on situations you haven’t been in; every halakhic decisor does that all the time. But I’m talking about situations that are so far from your world that you cannot understand what is really correct to do there. The person who is there is the one who has to decide what is right to do. And if there was a Torah scholar there who told you this—then for me that is testimony. It’s not a position I argue with; it’s testimony. This is what had to be done in that situation. Now I can try to fit it into halakhic patterns, to try to explain it—and I think I can explain it. But that’s another discussion. And here too it’s the same thing. Meaning, when I’m not inside the situation—and all this was really an answer to your question—when I’m not inside the situation, I can’t say clearly, because it’s a situation very different from what I know. I can’t say with certainty what is right to do or what I would do. It’s like someone who sees something—I think I once gave this example. I heard it from the returning emissary of Chabad, who was in Yeruham; he came to stay in Yeruham, Rabbi Yoel Kahan, and I hosted him there. So this is the example he gave. He says: two Jews enter a certain room and see that it’s full of furniture, packed with furniture. Fine? Then they go outside, shut the door, lock it, and the two of them sit on chairs by the door. The room is sealed—no windows, no other doors, no entrance, no exit. Fine? They sit by the only door with two chairs; the room is locked. After an hour one of them gets up, goes into the room, and says, wow, Berel, you won’t believe what I see here—or what I don’t see here. There’s nothing there. The room is empty. So Berel says to him from outside, what nonsense are you talking? Before, the room was full, right? Now the door was locked and we were sitting by it, nobody entered, there are no doors, no windows, nothing. So if that’s the case, the room is also full now. Which is what we wanted to prove—a mathematical proof. In other words, it’s obvious. It can’t be. The room is full. Period. So the other Jew says—suppose Berel is blind, right? He felt the furniture, okay? So he’s blind. The other Jew says to him: listen, I see with my own eyes—the room is empty, there’s no furniture. The Jew says to him: listen, I have a mathematical proof. This isn’t logic with tricks—this room is full of furniture, period. Something’s confused with you. Now try explaining to a person who has never seen what it means to see. If I see that the room is empty, then I have complete certainty that it is empty, right? We trust our sight, despite all the skeptical questions—we trust what we see. Now think about someone who doesn’t know what it means to see. Try to explain to him why it’s clear that what I see is really true. After all, there are skeptical philosophers who ask: why is it clear to you that what you see is really true? And there is no answer to that. But it’s clear to me. You can’t explain that to someone who doesn’t know the situation. But if you were in that situation—what can I tell him? If you had eyes, it would be obvious to you that what I’m saying is true; you would understand well what I’m saying. But he has no eyes, so he doesn’t understand. So with all his philosophical proofs, his logical proofs—which is a beautiful example, by the way. It’s terribly simple, but in my eyes it’s a very beautiful example. I think it’s a fascinating situation. You have a logical proof that he’s wrong, but with his eyes he sees that this is how it is. Now if you’ve never had eyes in your life, I won’t be able to convince you. You have proof that it’s not true. For me, many times this is an example for Mount Sinai—
[Speaker I] Sinai, what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mount Sinai, or faith in general. Very often when you argue with a person about faith, you say, how do you know? He raises arguments this way and that way. Fine, maybe the arguments are convincing, maybe they aren’t convincing. Look—I have a feeling. Now, in your life you won’t be able to explain to him that there is some kind of faculty here that gives you some very high level of certainty. Now you are convinced that there is a God. He doesn’t have that; he doesn’t see it, he doesn’t feel it. So this analogy of the blind man and so on—again, he can always say to you: fine, but I’m not blind, you’re just living in illusions. It won’t prove anything to him. It will only explain the situation to him. That’s what I mean to say. Not that with this you’ll bring him to repentance—you won’t bring him to repentance. But with this you can explain the situation to him. Meaning, there is a state in which sometimes there are things you don’t see—you are blind to them. I’ll never be able to explain to you why what I see is true, but what I see is true. And if you don’t see it, then you are blind. Fine. Now he’ll say: right, I’m blind and I don’t see; what can I do, I’m not convinced. Fine. But very often it sounds as though I have nothing to answer him when he says such a thing. That’s the point—that’s the significant point. Meaning, I have nothing to answer him when he asks such a question, because indeed I don’t have proofs, I don’t have arguments—say, not arguments that convince him. So what should I do? So I just keep quiet. But that isn’t true—that’s a mistake. It’s not always the case that when I have no way of conveying to the other person, or persuading the other person, of what I think, it means I’m talking nonsense. Sometimes there is something that I see—not always with my eyes, but something I experience very, very clearly and strongly. I can’t convey it to you because you don’t have that kind of experience, that kind of faculty, that kind of instrument with which these things are experienced. Now maybe for me it’s an illusion—I don’t know. But understand that it isn’t necessarily so. In other words, it isn’t true that because you don’t experience it, that says anything. It may be that you are blind. Fine. I don’t know how I got to all this from your question about the next five hundred years. So therefore, when another five hundred years pass and it crystallizes, maybe I really will change my mind. That’s a different situation, and I don’t know—you have to stand within it in order to determine what is actually right to do. From my perspective today, since I know what happened up till now, then from today another five hundred years won’t convince me. But I don’t know—maybe if I live there it’ll be different.
[Speaker A] But simply in today’s world, in our yeshiva world especially, there’s a danger that people who aren’t really Torah scholars—their whole disorder is in the realm of thought, and then it does—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But here I don’t know whether it’s a danger. Listen, actually in this sense—not really.
[Speaker A] And this—and that’s deviation from deviation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? I’m not so frightened by deviations.
[Speaker A] The halakhic Orthodox—meaning, the emphasis, the emphasis has to be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not frightened by such deviations. I don’t think so. I just think you have to take everything in proportion—not turn things into Torah from Sinai. But if a lot of the guys I knew—excellent guys—who were in yeshivot and didn’t quite fit in, at least in hesder yeshivot; elsewhere less so, say in yeshivot, yes, not Haredi ones—they don’t really get along with learning Talmud, then there are people who sit day and night over the Hebrew Bible and thought. Meaning, because that is their world. And I know quite a few people for whom this really built them up. And I don’t belittle that. I do think that someone who isn’t well rooted also in halakhic thinking and in the halakhic corpus is missing a great deal even in the world of thought. But I don’t rule it out. Listen—if that’s what speaks to him, that’s what he studies. The question is whether afterward to take his instructions as though he were the leading sage of the generation in faith and do what he says—I wouldn’t do that. But maybe I also wouldn’t do that even for someone who did study Jewish law. So that’s no proof. I think I have a certain lack of trust in someone who has only this. But again, maybe that’s because I’m conservative. I don’t know. I still think that a person should be a Torah scholar. I don’t know—that’s the question.
[Speaker G] Whether in the end we won’t at least come, or want to claim, or say, that there is some common denominator that makes the difference between Rabbi Kook and the Maharal and Maimonides and the Kuzari, as against an outside thinker?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I’m not at all sure of that. I’ll tell you why. And I did speak about this at the beginning of the year: about the difference between Jewish philosophy and Jewish thought. Meaning, the fields of Jewish thought are distinguished not by their approaches but by their subjects. Jewish thought deals with the question of what the role of the Jewish people is, the unique quality of the Jewish people, the meaning of Torah, the obligation to Torah, the relation to other Torah conceptions—it doesn’t matter. These are not the general philosophical questions. There is no “Jewish thought” approach regarding the role of language.
[Speaker A] And that’s scholasticism because it’s a rigged game. What? It’s scholasticism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—why is it a rigged game? There are different approaches in this matter. There are different approaches on these things.
[Speaker A] They use Aristotle on these subjects—even though he didn’t believe in—he was an idol worshiper, yes? They use the tools he gave us, and that’s how they do it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, obviously. That’s the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. But Jewish thought, Jewish philosophy—and the claim is, I think there is no such thing as Jewish philosophy. There is correct philosophy and incorrect philosophy. I don’t care from whose belly these pearls emerged—whether they came from the belly of a non-Jew or the belly of a Jew. As long as it’s true, then it’s true even if it came from a non-Jew, and if it’s not true, then even if it came from a Jew, it’s still not true. I think philosophy has to be judged by whether it is true or not. Jewish thought is something a bit different, because the issues with which Jewish thought deals are not issues of general philosophy. They are issues of Jewish faith—that is, the coming of the Messiah, providence, the giving of the Torah, what Torah is—it doesn’t matter, all the issues that we also dealt with this year among other things. On that there is no position of Kant, or Aristotle, or whoever. What is the meaning of Torah, and what is the providence of the Holy One, blessed be He, and what is prophecy, and the usual topics of Jewish thought. On this matter I don’t think it’s true—meaning, obviously there is what distinguishes Jewish thought from outside thinkers. What distinguishes them is that they deal with other issues. But if you ask what the philosophy of language is of the Kuzari and Guide of the Perplexed and the Maharal and Rabbi Kook, as against the philosophy of language of, I don’t know, twentieth-century analytic philosophy, or Leibniz, or Frege—I don’t think there will be a difference. I don’t think it will divide that way. You will find different opinions just as you find different opinions among non-Jews. Therefore I really don’t think—and that’s why I said—I don’t believe, I don’t think there is such a concept as Jewish philosophy at all. There is no such concept. Jewish thought—yes. Meaning, Jewish thought is engagement with intellectual subjects connected to Torah. But philosophy—there is only philosophy. There is no Jewish philosophy. There are Jewish philosophers—that is, their mother was Jewish—but that’s all.
[Speaker G] And in Jewish thought—is there halakhic ruling, or is that…?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m not talking about halakhic ruling at all. There is no ruling. Everything I said before was about Jewish thought. Now I’m saying there is something even more distant, which is “Jewish philosophy,” and there is no such thing. There is philosophy that came from Jewish thinkers, and maybe also with a Torah orientation. But when Maimonides tells me something about the nature of language, I don’t relate to him as a halakhic sage; I relate to him as a philosopher. He has a position regarding what language is, and there are other philosophers who think differently, and he is in the marketplace of ideas with all of them.
[Speaker G] But if he derives it from his tradition, say—in the Maharal I think not—but say he derives it from his tradition on “and the whole earth was of one language and of one speech”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so if he derives it from there, then great—but that doesn’t happen. Or at least I don’t know of places where it happens. Or at least where it happens in a convincing way. He can bring a verse, but that’s not…
[Speaker G] But when Nachmanides tells you this, or other people—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nachmanides—I don’t think you’ll find in him many discussions of general philosophical questions. It seems to me—again, I need to think about that a bit.
[Speaker G] Like the language of the holy tongue, which is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the holy tongue isn’t general philosophy. The question of what ordinary language is—that’s general philosophy. Exactly—holy tongue is Jewish thought. Because when you speak about the holy tongue, you are basically saying that all languages are conventional. On that both Maimonides and Nachmanides agree. Their dispute is over the nature of the holy tongue. But that dispute is a dispute in Jewish thought, not in philosophy. Philosophy takes the concept of language and asks what it is, what its nature is—not because of some specific information about the holy tongue and what the Holy One, blessed be He, did with it. That is a question in Jewish thought, not in philosophy. Therefore, when you look at discussions of language, I assume you will find the same range of opinions that you find among philosophers also among Torah scholars, also among Torah sages. By contrast, in Jewish thought there are no positions of non-Jewish philosophers—that’s not the issue. Therefore I don’t think one can find here something that distinguishes them.
[Speaker G] Let’s say with him—that is, Maimonides, because he sees language as conventional, so also with the holy tongue he says that anything that is the holy tongue…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But Nachmanides also says that language is conventional.
[Speaker G] No, and then what…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nachmanides agrees that language is conventional, he just says that the holy tongue is not. And the Raavad too. That’s exactly the point. As for language itself, its nature, the general philosophical question—they actually agree. I think that overall this is pretty much a fact, no? It seems to me it’s hard to dispute that language is something conventional. There are nuances, but broadly speaking it’s clear that languages don’t descend from heaven. Languages are formed within a community that speaks them.
[Speaker G] Noam Chomsky would say
[Speaker A] to you that it’s something…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, linguistic capacity—there’s a debate whether it’s innate in us or acquired. But a language as a specific language, not linguistic ability. He’s only talking about linguistic ability; he’s not talking about language. Language is something conventional. I don’t think anyone disputes that. On the contrary, to dispute it you need some mysticism about the holy tongue, saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, made it. But that’s already Jewish thought; it has nothing to do with general reflection on what language is. Okay, the truth is I can’t even get started. What I wanted to deal with today, and now I won’t, is the… the question of someone who died because of his Judaism. Right, I said that one of the examples of a principle that somehow today is taken as self-evident or agreed upon—I don’t know—they say it as if it were a simple truth, including Torah scholars, by the way, not only people on the street. I’m talking now also about outstanding Torah scholars.
[Speaker I] Kiddush Hashem—and it isn’t called that he died sanctifying God’s name?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s how they understand it: that it’s called dying sanctifying God’s name—someone who was killed because he was a Jew. Okay? Does this concept have any root and branch? Neither by logic nor—let’s not say there’s no source for it, of course.
[Speaker I] Within the category of “be killed rather than transgress”?
[Speaker E] Yes, absolutely.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no source for it, and it also makes no sense logically. It’s simply nonsense, complete nonsense. Meaning, if they killed someone because they grabbed some Jew because he was a Jew and killed him, why is that called sanctifying God’s name? What—first of all, even within the concept of sanctifying God’s name we need to make distinctions, so I’ll say at least a few words, whatever we manage today. We need to make a few distinctions. First, there’s the result-oriented question: is the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, sanctified by this? That’s one question. I don’t think so. On the contrary. Rabbi Shabtai once told me—he told me he had spoken with Rabbi Moshe Feinstein; he’s married to his granddaughter, so he once spoke with Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. I said, I once spoke with him about this issue, and he told me: what are people saying—that in the Holocaust everyone sanctified God’s name and they are holy martyrs? What is he even talking about? Meaning, what are they talking about? Like, what do they want? So he told me, listen, I spoke with Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein once told me that the Holocaust was the greatest desecration of God’s name since the creation of the world. That the treasured people were murdered and slaughtered though innocent, by such wicked evildoers—there is no greater desecration of God’s name than that. In terms of result. Not that the Jews who were killed there were desecrators of God’s name. They weren’t—what could they do? But first of all, in terms of result. That’s one criterion.
[Speaker F] The second criterion—this is also connected to the decrees of 4856, when people died over… not the most active…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s why now I’m moving to the second aspect.
[Speaker F] Fine. Desecration of God’s name can also exist where there is sanctification of God’s name.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s what I’m saying. Now I’m moving to the second aspect. The second aspect is the personal one, not the result-oriented one. Did the person perform an act of sanctifying God’s name? The concept of an act of sanctifying God’s name is a broader concept. Now, I do think that an action cannot be an act of sanctifying God’s name if it has no result in which the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, is sanctified. But obviously, not every time there is such a result is the action itself an act of sanctifying God’s name. Okay? Now in the case of the decrees of 4856, or the Crusades, or anyone who died over… who gave himself over—not died, but gave himself over for the sanctification of God’s name—you can definitely say this even in terms of result. Because you see human beings devoted to their values and willing to pay with their lives for their values. That thing—with all due respect, yes, there is the desecration of God’s name of the Holocaust, of course; the fact that the good lost is a desecration of God’s name. But there is also sanctification of God’s name here, when a person looks at this and sees that there are people who give their lives for their values. That, I think, is completely understandable as sanctification of God’s name. And when people do this and are willing to pay that price, there is nothing greater in sanctifying God’s name than that. Completely clear. In a place where it’s required, of course—not where it isn’t required. Where it is required, then yes, this is a very great sanctification of God’s name. But when you talk about someone who died because of his Judaism, you’re talking about someone they simply grabbed because he was a Jew and shot him in the head. So what sanctification of God’s name is there in that? The question is why—because he’s a Jew. So what?
[Speaker K] Meaning, if for example he… regarding the three commandments over which one must be killed rather than transgress…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not talking about that, about his not wanting to and so on. In sanctifying God’s name, when he refused to violate one of the commandments and therefore they killed him—that is sanctifying God’s name par excellence, that’s obvious.
[Speaker I] The Ten Martyrs, for example?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the Ten Martyrs. The question is what did they do? If they were caught for Torah study, then that is sanctifying God’s name. Again, the fact that in the end they killed them was certainly not in their hands, but what were they caught for? They were caught because they endangered themselves, and because of that… say, for example, someone who is a soldier in the IDF, about whom they always say “the holy ones” and so on—and these things always make my blood boil—with all the empathy and compassion and solidarity and gratitude as well toward a person who, all in all, gave his life to protect me and people like me, okay? With all due respect, what sanctification of God’s name is there in that? Why is he called holy? What does that have to do with it? Now, if there is a person who went there מתוך a consciousness of mission, of commandment, and so on, I’m willing to accept such a thing. But what difference does it make?
[Speaker A] He was killed there because he was a soldier, and what can you do, they caught him… It’s not that the Great Sanhedrin determined that he died sanctifying God’s name—no, it’s an expression.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but no—so I’ll show, so—
[Speaker A] Let’s see, then I’ll speak,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll see some sources—not sources, rather quotations. We won’t see actual sources, but we will see quotations showing that no, they don’t mean it just as an expression, not just in order to comfort people. And I also don’t think—listen, I wouldn’t be comforted if they told me this, because you have to be an idiot to be comforted by that. Because something untrue does not comfort. Unless you’re a fool. Something untrue does not comfort. You don’t say things that are clearly untrue just for— You can beautify reality, you can glorify it, okay, but still.
[Speaker G] What was the alarm? Why am I saying this—you can compare it, for example, to terror victims or something, right? These are no longer people volunteering, going off on some mission, and yet we as a state recognize them as victims who are part of our national struggle. Why? Even though the person was just eating pizza in a restaurant, he represents, passively—not actively, passively—the people to whom fate, yes, circumstance, brought this, and through them we somehow understand that in the fact that they…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, but my evaluation of them—after all, this isn’t just a semantic question. Semantically, use whatever semantics you want. But my evaluation of them—I have no special admiration for them; I have compassion.
[Speaker G] I have a question. I don’t think the intention is to come and say that—at least it seems to me, I’m trying to explain the idea—that they don’t mean to say that this person is like someone who chose something, because in fact he chose nothing; someone came and shot him. And he fulfilled the commandment of sanctifying God’s name?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it was fulfilled in him?
[Speaker G] What does “fulfilled in him” mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Fulfilled in him”—no.
[Speaker G] In the sense that he came and chose, like a person eats matzah and chooses to do so—no; rather, he served as a vessel, served as a vessel—on the one hand of course a desecration of God’s name in that they come and harm the people of God, and on the other hand in the sense that he was the representative symbol in whom the hatred of the Other Side, one could say, the forces of evil, was realized. So what? And what sanctification of God’s name is there in that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What sanctification of God’s name is there in that? What was fulfilled in him?
[Speaker G] Fulfilled in him was the place where he was the divine or Jewish presence, and the holiness that the treasured people have in the world, and he was killed and paid a price because there are other forces that oppose that thing. So admittedly not by choice, and he didn’t do something here like every other commandment that can be fulfilled, “Who sanctified us…”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t see either the result or the action, so what is left of it?
[Speaker G] Let’s say that now they are going to kill him—would he recite a blessing over sanctifying God’s name? Right? They are about to kill him now; they come and tell him, listen, we’re killing you in another two minutes—those boys who were kidnapped and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously they cannot recite a blessing over
[Speaker G] sanctifying God’s name—a blessing in vain par excellence. So in your view, as I understand it, I’m trying to reconcile it—I’m saying, it is sanctifying God’s name because essentially they’re killing me not because of my eyes and not because of my hair.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can go back and say, look, the fact that you chose to live as a Jew involved taking some risk, because people are killed over that kind of background—you took some risk. And in that sense it’s like a soldier in the army, and then yes, you do have some contribution to the matter, because the fact is that you chose to live as a Jew and not deny your Judaism. That I’m willing to hear, although of course even that depends on context. Did you really choose? Would another option really have led you to something less dangerous? Maybe. So that kind of aspect I’m also willing to accept. But it still has to be something that somehow depends on what you did. Otherwise it simply sounds to me completely absurd. Now again, we’ll see the quotations and the discussions, so I’ll say more about this—but it’s already four.