Self-Reference – Lesson 3

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so we’re talking about self-reference and the problems that come along with it. As I’ve said more than once already, self-reference doesn’t always create problems. There’s no such iron law, even though quite a few people and thinkers—philosophers and mathematicians—tend to think that the moment they find self-reference, they’ve automatically uncovered a contradiction, a paradox, something that has to be filtered out, right, not allowed. But I think that’s not true, and I’ve shown several examples of that. I want to bring a few more—wait—I want now to bring a few more points in this context. The first point is this: I’m going to use repentance, but really I’m talking about any change a person undergoes. To illustrate this, let’s use a simple example. Like physicists like to say when they want to solve a donkey of a problem: let’s start with a point donkey. It’s a toy model, a simplified model. And after we understand what happens there, maybe we can try to see what happens in a more realistic model, a more complex one. Let’s say there’s a person who has only one principle in his world. For example, someone who serves God for the sake of maximum reward and minimum punishment. That’s what guides him in life. That’s the only principle—he and none other. All right? Obviously we’re talking about a toy model. A person with one single principle in life: maximum reward and minimum punishment, maximizing paradise and minimizing hell. This person—so there won’t be any mistakes—this person is of course careful with every commandment, major and minor. He’s careful with every clause, he takes into account every view of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and halakhic decisors and everything, so that God forbid it won’t turn out that he failed to fulfill his obligation, or committed some transgression, or didn’t perform a commandment in the best possible way. He is careful with every commandment, major and minor, but all of it—

[Speaker B] All of it is basically not for its own sake.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All of it basically, all of it basically—

[Speaker B] Not for its own sake.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All of it is in order to maximize reward and minimize punishment. Now let’s think about someone who—say I’m that kind of person. Let’s try to think about someone who wants to persuade me to start serving God for its own sake. To do it because it is the truth, not because of reward or to avoid punishment. Like Maimonides writes at the beginning of chapter 10 of the laws of repentance, that this is the path of women and children, who serve God for reward and punishment. The wise serve God because it is the truth, to do the truth because it is truth. And in the end the good will come. Meaning, they will receive reward, but they don’t serve for the sake of reward. So let’s say we now know someone who is among the women and children—he serves only for reward. Now I am that person. Now somebody has to come and persuade me to change my ways, to begin serving for its own sake. How can this be done? What arguments can he raise to persuade me? Does anyone want to try?

[Speaker C] To tell you that if you serve for its own sake, you’ll get better reward, higher reward.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So—do you say that’s a good argument? For this—

[Speaker C] For someone who serves not for its own sake, to start with him, to open up some doorway for him in another direction, not always to keep your head against the wall. Right, but head against the wall—what does that mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I go on serving for the sake of reward with the same head against the wall. I can’t realize service for its own sake מתוך a worldview like that. It’s just logically impossible. Because if I serve for reward, then I’m not serving for its own sake. You know, it reminds me of the joke about Adam HaKohen, one of the maskilim, who wanted to repent on his deathbed just in order to refute the saying of the Sages that “even the wicked at the entrance to Gehenna do not repent.” Right? That’s a mission that’s basically logically impossible, right? Because if he’s doing it in order to refute the saying of the Sages, then he is not a penitent. In other words, this is a certain type of step that you simply cannot take; it contains an internal contradiction.

[Speaker C] Why? If he repents to refute that specific point, then he repented for everything, fine, so here he doesn’t believe that the wicked at the entrance to Gehenna don’t repent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not because he doesn’t believe it, but because he wants to confront the Sages in general. He’s just doing it this way to show that their whole story is worth nothing.

[Speaker C] Yes, but did he repent or didn’t he repent?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s what I’m asking you—what do you say? Did he repent or not?

[Speaker C] If he really repented, for—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, he repented? Did he regret what he sinned? Certainly not. After all, everything he’s doing is only in order to refute the saying of the Sages. He’s not doing it because it was a wrong act.

[Speaker C] So that’s not repentance, it’s just—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. But he can’t repent even if he wants to. Because this process of repentance contains a kind of sincerity. You can’t repent in order to refute the saying of the Sages, because then it won’t be repentance. And if you did repent, then you repented genuinely, not in order to refute the saying of the Sages. If the Sages are right, by the way, then of course you won’t succeed.

[Speaker C] Couldn’t that be a side effect of it? What? He’ll repent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, if he’ll repent? He can’t repent—he’s not repenting.

[Speaker C] I mean, let’s say this Adam HaKohen really repented, and in fact refuted the Sages?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s obvious. But if he’s doing it in order to refute the saying of the Sages—if it turns out that the saying of the Sages was refuted, fine, then it turns out that way. That’s not what we’re talking about. Here we’re talking about a step whose purpose is to refute the saying of the Sages. And if you take the step with that motivation, then you did not repent. Okay. So automatically you also didn’t refute the saying of the Sages, of course. Because you didn’t repent. The same thing here too. What do you want to tell him—to tell me—that I should begin serving for its own sake because that will give me more reward? But if I serve for its own sake because it gives me more reward, then I didn’t serve for its own sake. Because to serve for its own sake means to serve not for the sake of reward. Okay. So what does that actually mean? How can an argument be constructed by which a person can try to persuade me to change my worldview? Because that’s really what I’m talking about. It basically can’t happen. Why? Either way: if his argument is based on principles I accept, then there’s no need to change me—I already accept them. If his argument is based on principles I don’t accept, then that argument won’t persuade me. So either way, there is no argument that can persuade me to change my foundational principles. It can show me that according to my own principles I made a mistake in calculation, that I’m doing something inconsistent with my own principles and I need to behave differently if I want to be consistent, if I want to realize my principles. But you can’t raise an argument that will persuade me to change my foundational principles. It’s impossible. Because that argument itself is based on some assumptions, and those assumptions apparently contradict my assumptions, since they lead to the conclusion that my assumptions are wrong. But then I won’t accept those assumptions, and so the argument won’t work on me. And if I do accept the assumptions of that argument, then there’s no need to change anything in me—I’m already changed.

[Speaker C] So it’s like that with everything, not just repentance—with everything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. I brought the example of a person who serves not for its own sake because that’s an example of a person who has one principle in his world. And now you’re trying to change that principle—you won’t be able to do it. You have to assume premises that are acceptable to him. But if they’re acceptable to him, then he’s already changed—you don’t need to change him, he’s already changed. And if they’re not acceptable to him, you won’t be able to persuade him, because the premises on which you rely are not acceptable to him. Okay, now let’s go one step further. What happens if I want to change my own principles? Not somebody else from the outside—I want to repent, I want to change my own principles. Here it becomes completely impossible, because when I come to persuade myself or change myself, then the self that changes and the self that is changed are the same person. I’m working on myself—you see the self-reference here, right? I’m changing my own conceptions, persuading myself, changing myself, whatever. Now I ask: the persuading self believes the new conceptions, right? Because it proceeds from them—that is, it acts in accordance with them. But if I believe the new conceptions, then there’s no one left to change and no one left to persuade; I already believe the new conceptions.

[Speaker C] That’s already not the previous self.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And if I still hold the old conceptions, then who is that one who comes to persuade him? After all, that one is me myself, and I myself still hold the old conceptions, not the new ones. So how can I persuade myself to change conceptions? It’s impossible. And now I come to the concept of repentance, because really what the concept of repentance demands of me is exactly this: to change my own conceptions. That is something completely paradoxical. I need to explain a bit more in order to sharpen why this is paradoxical. It could be, say—and I’ll divide it this way—there are two kinds of penitents. There is the penitent of the Sages, and there is what today is called a penitent or a returnee to religion. The penitent of the Sages, the one they had before their eyes when they talked about repentance, is a person who basically believed in everything. He just sinned because of impulse, his interests, he failed the test, he sinned. And he needs to repent—meaning to go back and behave according to the principles that he himself always knew were true. He does not need to adopt new principles. In the period of the Sages everyone believed in the Holy One, blessed be He, everyone understood that His commandments were binding, they had impulses. There was the impulse toward idol worship, which later the Men of the Great Assembly abolished, it doesn’t matter—they had impulses. And because of those impulses they didn’t do what they themselves thought was right; they didn’t act in the way they themselves understood to be right. That is one kind of penitent. That is a person who basically needs not to change his worldview but to change his behavior. He needs to change his behavior so that it fits his worldview. But the worldview itself he doesn’t change—he remains with the worldview that always accompanied him; he just has to make sure that his behavior reflects the worldview he believes in. That is the penitent of the Sages. The returnee to religion of our own day, the one we talk about today, is someone who held, say, a secular worldview, an atheistic one, whatever, and he returns to religion—he adopts a religious worldview. True, if you ask rabbis, halakhic decisors, they’ll usually tell you that no, even among us everyone believes deep down in his heart, they’re just perhaps not aware of it, and they are returning to their source. They identify today’s returnee to religion with the penitent of the Sages. But in my view that’s an anachronism; it’s certainly not true. Today’s penitent is a person who changes worldview, not one who adjusts his behavior to the worldview that always accompanied him. He changes the worldview itself, and therefore of course also the behavior that follows from it. But the change is not on the plane of behavior; it is on the plane of worldview itself.

[Speaker C] Now I’m asking, Maimonides said this somewhere, that the person says: I am not—I’m not the same person I was—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “I am not the same person I was.” Yes, Maimonides in chapter 4, I think. Yes. So the question is whether the second process can really be called returning in repentance. Because the second process really—after all, returning in repentance is something—

[Speaker C] He’s not returning anywhere in the second process.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m not speaking in the semantic sense.

[Speaker C] Yes, yes, “returning” isn’t accurate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to argue—no, I don’t want to argue only that it’s wrong to use the term “returning”; that’s also true, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, repentance is a demand of the Holy One, blessed be He, or of the Torah, upon every person—to repent. What does that mean? I’m supposed to perform an intentional act of repentance. It isn’t just supposed to happen to me, right? It’s supposed to be an act that results from my work on myself. One has to repent. Now, granted, if I believe the right thing and just don’t carry it out, then I can say okay, let’s let the intellect rule over the impulse and make sure that from now on I do what I think is right. That I can perhaps understand. Here maybe it can be done by my own initiative, to make sure there won’t be failures from now on. But the modern return to religion, the second kind of repentance I spoke about—that cannot be an intentional matter. How can a person with a secular worldview come and intentionally persuade himself to become religious? After all, if he comes to persuade himself to become religious, the persuading self already believes in the religious world, the religious worldview. So whom does he need to persuade? He himself is already persuaded. Remember what I said about the person whom one tries to persuade to start serving for its own sake? Same thing here, right? You can’t persuade yourself of something. To persuade yourself of something is self-contradictory. Because if you, the persuader, are already persuaded of it, then there’s no more work to do—you’re already persuaded. You’re persuading yourself, not someone else. So a person who persuades himself is an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as a person who persuades himself. There can be a person who tricks himself. There can be a person whose impulses want to cause him to do X even though he believes X is wrong. So he works on himself and builds a theory that somehow says X is in fact right. But that’s a psychological mechanism—he’s fooling himself. I’m talking about genuine persuasion, not someone trying to fool himself. Repentance is ostensibly something demanded of me—to return to the straight path. Now if I didn’t believe in the straight path, then what does it mean that I will intentionally come to believe in the straight path? Again—not perform it, but believe. You can’t do such a thing. If I don’t believe, then I don’t—there’s no way that I can understand how I will persuade myself to believe. In order for me to persuade myself to believe, I already have to be a believer. I as the persuader. So the persuaded one, who is also me, is already a believer too.

[Speaker C] Yes, but there is a situation where a person goes and sits with people, they explain to him that his worldview is incorrect and prove it to him, say, and he manages to be persuaded. So there can be such a case—it’s not that there’s no such thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, again, I’m not—

[Speaker C] Me persuading myself—the rabbi is right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, when I say something, when I raise some question, that doesn’t mean such a thing can’t happen. I’m asking how such a thing can happen. It’s like always with paradoxes. When I show a problem in a certain mechanism, that doesn’t mean the mechanism doesn’t exist. On the contrary. I know the mechanism exists, but because there is a problem, it requires explanation—there’s some paradox here. But beyond that, even when someone else persuades me—after all, I started with that. When somebody else comes and persuades me, even then, what arguments can he raise? After all, he can rely only on assumptions I accept; he can’t rely on assumptions I don’t accept. So if he relies on assumptions I accept, then he doesn’t need to persuade me—I already accept them. What will you say? That I missed the logic, that I made a mistake in the calculation. I accepted the premises but did the calculation wrong and reached the wrong conclusion. Then he is only making me aware of my error. Again, that’s not repentance; that’s just exposing a mistake I fell into. So it doesn’t help to shift this to someone else persuading me or me persuading myself. That’s why I started with someone else and then moved to myself. In my case there is of course a harder problem, or a sharper one, since the persuading self and the persuaded self are the same person. But in principle this problem exists even when somebody else comes to persuade me. Rabbi, rabbi—

[Speaker D] What about an argument that says: the meaning of returning in repentance is choosing an environment that will influence him and build new beliefs, different beliefs?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s exactly the point. Why would he choose that environment if he doesn’t hold those beliefs now? After all, he goes to that environment in order to adopt new beliefs. Does he believe them now or not? If he believes them now, then he doesn’t need to go to the new environment—he already believes them. If he doesn’t believe them now, then what will cause him to go there in order to change? It’s a bit reminiscent of the concept of vows for encouragement. Right? A person who swears to fulfill a commandment. So the Talmud in tractate Nedarim says that the oath takes effect, even though in principle an oath doesn’t take effect with regard to something that is already a commandment, but here it takes effect because it encourages the person to perform commandments. Now that’s fascinating psychologically. After all, the person believes that this commandment ought to be fulfilled, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t have sworn. The oath is meant to ensure that he fulfills the commandment. Meaning that already now, before he swears, he believes that this commandment should be fulfilled. But then why doesn’t he do it even without the oath? And why after the oath will this suddenly cause him to do it? Here one has to say, of course, that there are impulses or something like that, and if there is also an oath, then perhaps that will frighten him more, and therefore he won’t give in to his impulse. But where I’m talking about persuasion, not surrender to impulse—I said the second kind of returnee to religion, not the first one—there I really can’t understand it. How can such a thing happen? And then there’s the—we talked about this before at some point, I think—the story of Rabbi Nachman about the turkey prince. Right? He tells there about the king’s son who suddenly went mad, took off his clothes naked as the day he was born, went under the table and started eating grains off the floor, and declared himself a turkey. Right? “Hindik” is turkey in Yiddish. So he declared himself a hindik, a turkey. The king recruited all the doctors and nobody managed to heal his son, until one person came and said to him, don’t worry, your majesty, I’ll heal your son. Fine, the king tells him—of course he promised him wonders and miracles if he succeeded. The man takes off his clothes, goes under the table, and starts eating grains off the floor too. So the king’s son asks this wise man: what are you doing here? What does one born of woman have to do among us? This is the turkey wing—there’s no place for human beings here. So the sage says to him, what do you mean, what do you want? I’m a turkey too. Everything’s fine, I’m also from the flock of turkeys. Fine, they sit and peck at the floor, little by little they become somewhat friendly, and then the sage says to the king’s son, what do you say—maybe put on pants? You can sit here and peck at the floor under the table with pants on, nothing happens. Does a turkey stop being a turkey if it wears pants? Fine, the king’s son had no answer, said all right. So they got it arranged, the sage told the people above: throw me some pants. The two of them put on pants. After that a shirt, after that you can also sit on a chair and still be a turkey, and then eat with knife and fork from a plate and still be a turkey. Everything works while still being a turkey. And that’s how he gradually brought him back to the behavior of a normal, sane human being. And that’s it—and they lived happily ever after. Now what is this story trying to say? Because the problem that immediately jumps out is: in what sense was the king’s son really healed? He wasn’t healed. He behaves like a human being in the phenomenological, behavioral sense, but in his own conception he is still certain that he is a turkey. He’s just a turkey with pants, a shirt, eating with knife and fork and sitting on a chair. Fine, but he still perceives himself as a turkey. So he wasn’t really healed in the psychological sense. He was brought back to behaving like a human being, but there was no psychological healing here at all. There’s no healing here. That’s one question. A second question, which is easier to miss, is what happens when the sage goes under the table? The king’s son asks him, what are you doing here? This is a place for turkeys, not for humans. Now what caused the king’s son to ask that? The king’s son understood when he saw him that this sage was a human being, not a turkey. How did he understand that? After all, this king’s son, when he sees a human being, identifies him. He does not think that someone who looks like a human being is actually some other kind of turkey. First of all, he knows how to identify human beings. So himself he can’t identify—that he’s a human being and not a turkey? It actually seems that if the king’s son wondered what the sage was doing under the table, then the king’s son wasn’t sick at all. He basically knows that he is a human being and not a turkey—he’s just babbling nonsense. So the first question was: how can it be that the king’s son was healed? The second question is: how can it be that the king’s son is sick? And I think these questions resolve one another. What does that mean? If indeed—and here I return to our subject—if indeed this king’s son truly and sincerely believes that he is a turkey—

[Speaker C] Then he won’t be healed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is impossible to heal him. Why? For the same reason I mentioned earlier. What argument will you bring to persuade him that he’s not a turkey? After all, if you rely on assumptions he accepts, then he already accepts them—he doesn’t need to be persuaded. If he really thinks he’s a turkey, then he probably won’t accept your assumptions. What will you tell him—that a person with two legs and two arms, a being with two arms and two legs who wears pants and a shirt and eats in such-and-such a way, is a human being? That’s exactly what he does not accept. He himself is like that and he thinks he’s a turkey. So how will you manage to persuade him? You have to rely on assumptions he doesn’t accept—but assumptions he doesn’t accept won’t persuade him. Therefore there is no way to persuade him if he is truly sick. Meaning, if he genuinely and completely thinks he is a turkey, you will not be able to persuade him.

[Speaker C] So why in this story is there this whole business that he undressed and became naked under the table? He could remain with clothes and still be a turkey.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, once I’m a turkey, why do I need to wear clothes? I can do without. I can do with them too, but also without. There’s no obligation to wear clothes.

[Speaker C] But when the sage came and told him, put on pants, suddenly that contradicted the whole thing that you don’t need it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it didn’t contradict it. He says to him, listen, you’re a turkey, that’s all true, but do your father a favor, put on pants. Your father really wants you to put on pants. It doesn’t bother anyone that a turkey wears pants. He sort of corners him within his own framework, so he puts on pants. But he didn’t stop thinking he was a turkey. So basically that means the sage has no way to persuade this king’s son that he is not a turkey. Because either way: if he relies on assumptions the king’s son accepts, then the king’s son isn’t really sick, because he basically knows that he isn’t a turkey but a human being. If he relies on different assumptions, then he won’t be able to persuade him, he won’t be able to heal him. Do you see that these are exactly the two questions I asked? Two sides of the same coin. If the king’s son isn’t sick, then maybe it’s possible to heal him—but then there’s no need to heal him. But if the king’s son really is sick, then he won’t be healed in the end, so he remains sick. So either way something here is incoherent. You can’t say that he was both sick at the beginning and healed at the end. Either he wasn’t sick at the beginning, or he wasn’t healed at the end. But this process in which a person was sick at first and healed at the end—that isn’t possible. Again, I’m not talking about physical healing, right? You take a pill and your fever goes down. I’m talking about healing in the sense of changing your beliefs. You think you are a turkey, and to be healed means to understand that you are not a turkey but a human being. Right? This is cognitive healing, intellectual healing, not healing in some lower emotional sense, okay? Those are really the questions. What do we need to say? That in truth, if you want to heal this king’s son, that necessarily means that something in him was not sick all the way through. Because if he were sick all the way through, there would be no way to heal him. And I think all psychological healing is like this. Psychological healing, unlike say physical healing—in psychological healing the psychologist or psychiatrist or whoever is involved in it, really more the psychologist—the psychologist basically has to proceed from some points that remain healthy in the patient, and on that basis try to build the whole structure and bring him back to proper functioning. But if everything in him is sick, then the psychologist has no point of leverage; he won’t be able to return him to proper functioning. There has to be, at the root, some healthy element still present in him. So what is his illness? His illness is that his actual conduct deviates from the inner point, from that healthy foundation that exists within him. And perhaps the psychologist can help him fix that—show him that deep down, inside, he really thinks differently, and when he behaves in this way he is behaving in a way that he himself understands is not right. And then you can persuade him. Why? Because inwardly he was not sick; the sickness was external in some sense.

[Speaker C] So then maybe he could persuade himself that way too? I can’t hear. Maybe on his own he would also get to that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, I still haven’t gotten to the self itself. Right now I’m talking about a dialogue between two people. If there was a process of healing here, that means the king’s son was not completely sick from the outset. Something in him was still healthy. Meaning, deep down, in the depths of his heart, the king’s son knew that he was a human being. He built for himself some theory that he was a turkey because he didn’t have the strength for all the conduct and conventions of human beings; he wanted freedom. But that was a theory he convinced himself of, while inwardly he understood that it wasn’t true. There was a healthy point in him, and that’s what the doctor could build his healing process on: to bring him back to that point and not let him escape, not let him build theories that deep down he himself understands are not true. And then what happens is, as the Sefer HaChinukh writes, “hearts are drawn after actions.” What does that mean, “hearts are drawn after actions”? If you want to change a person’s heart, get him to behave differently. Once he behaves differently, his heart will already follow the actions. What does it mean that the heart follows the actions? If we’re talking about his conceptions, his conceptions won’t follow the actions. His conceptions are his conceptions, and you also won’t succeed in convincing him to do different actions. He’ll behave according to his conceptions. When is it true that hearts are drawn after actions? When the problem is in the heart and not in the head. When the head knows what is right and the heart doesn’t carry it out. Why? What is happening there? In such a case, after all, a person is a creature with intelligence, let’s call it that—maybe an intelligent creature, creatures with intelligence. So what does that mean? It means that when you behave in a certain way, you usually build yourself some theory that explains to you why that is the right way to behave, that gives you justification for that conduct. You don’t just behave differently for no reason; you build a theory. Now, in the depths of your heart you know it isn’t true. And you know, a person fools himself; he builds himself some theory that will justify what he really wants to do because of his inclination. Now, if I really manage to bring him to behavior that is the correct behavior, then there will be no point in building the theory, because the whole purpose of that fictitious theory is to allow him to behave badly, to behave otherwise. If you manage, one way or another, by indirect means, no matter how, to get him to behave correctly in practice, then the theory he built for himself will collapse. And he will go back to being a person who understands what he believes and conducts himself according to what he believes. And that, in my opinion, is the meaning of “hearts are drawn after actions.” And an example of this—I think the nicest example of this—is the well-known Maimonides in the laws of divorce, chapter 2. There Maimonides says yes, the rule is that “we beat him until he says, ‘I want to.’” After all, a forced divorce document, a coerced get, is invalid. And if we compel a man who does not want to give his wife a get, if we force him to give a get, the get is void. Because a get has to be given willingly: “and he shall write her a bill of severance and place it in her hand”—the writing has to be of his own will and the giving has to be of his own will. So therefore forcing a person to give a get invalidates the get. But the Talmud, of course, says that where Jewish law requires the man to give a get, there one may compel him. And the obvious question is: why? True, Jewish law obligates him to give a get, but still the get is not valid if it isn’t given willingly. And if you forced me to give a get, then I gave a coerced get, and such a get is invalid. So what did the coercion help? Why is it that in a place where Jewish law obligates me to give a get, there the coercion does not interfere? There it’s okay? The answer Maimonides gives is seemingly a mystical answer. What do I mean? He says this: inwardly, the person really wants to fulfill what Jewish law says. Therefore, when you compel him and he says, “I want to”—you compel him until he says, “I want to”—when he says “I want to,” that is an authentic statement. That really is what he wants, because inwardly he wants to fulfill what Jewish law says. I don’t understand. Then why hasn’t he given the get until now, if he wants to? What is this mysticism? How do you know what he wants in his heart? I claim that Maimonides means nothing mystical at all here. We’re dealing here with a simple assessment. If there is a person who in general is committed to Torah and commandments, committed to Jewish law—suddenly you see that in the context of the get he refuses, even though the religious court tells him, listen, Jewish law obligates you to give the get. And usually he complies with what Jewish law says; we’re talking about a person who observes Torah and commandments. But here he digs in and says, absolutely not. More than that: we know these phenomena. Usually a person in that situation builds for himself a thousand theories about why he is really right and the Holy One, blessed be He, is with him, and the religious court and everyone else don’t know what they’re talking about and are talking nonsense, and I’m the one who is right, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will even reward me when I get to the heavenly court for what I’ve done. On the contrary, that woman needs to be crushed completely, and that’s what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. If you ask men who refuse to give a get, they will explain to you with signs and wonders why they are right, and Jewish law is with them, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is with them, and the fact that all the rabbis are against them is simply because they are biased and were manipulated and they’re confused, and all kinds of things of that sort. You build yourself a theory that will justify what your inclination is telling you, because why are you really not giving the get? You’re not giving the get because you’re angry with her. You want to torment her and cause her suffering. So you don’t give her a get so that she won’t be able to remarry; you keep her chained, de facto. Therefore your basic motivation is an emotional motivation, an instinctive motivation. The theories you build about why you are right are not what you truly believe; you build them only in order to give yourself justification to do what your inclination is causing you to do. Now look at something beautiful. What happens? What?

[Speaker C] The Rabbi is saying something very sharp. Right? I’m saying that the Rabbi is saying something very sharp. Meaning, if a person is a secular atheist type and he gives a get, then it isn’t a get?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that in a moment. Yes. So what does this thing really mean? Now Jewish law comes and tells us: look, in a place where, from the standpoint of Jewish law, a person is obligated to divorce his wife—there are certain grounds because of which a person must divorce his wife—in such a case I’m allowed, and not only allowed but required, to compel him, and the coercion will not invalidate the get. How does that work? Maimonides explains it to us exactly like Rabbi Nachman’s turkey story. What does that mean? If we really are talking about a God-fearing person, yes? He is committed to Torah and commandments, subject to Jewish law in every other context except this one, then clearly all the theories he is waving around are theories he built ad hoc so that they would justify his instinctive conduct. What is driving him is the inclination, not the intellect. Now, if I manage to make it so that he does not succeed in chaining the woman, that the woman will be permitted to remarry, then his theories will collapse on their own and his desire to divorce her will become genuine. What does that mean? I come to a person and say to him like this: listen, my friend, I am now going to beat you so badly that you will give the get whether you want to or not, until your soul leaves you. You’re going to give the get in the end; nothing will help you. Like in movies about torture in Soviet captivity—they beat you and torture you and tell you, look, save yourself the trouble; in the end you’re going to give the information anyway, so why suffer? Just give it now. That is basically what you say to the person. You say to him: listen, I’m going to beat you bloody until your soul leaves you. In the end you’re going to give the get anyway. So why? Give it now already. Okay? Now what happens? The person says to me in his heart—or out loud, doesn’t matter—he says, look, even if I give the get it won’t help you, because it is a coerced get, since the truth is that I do not want to give the get. So the fact that you’re forcing me because you have the power to threaten me won’t help; the woman still remains forbidden to remarry. And then I say to him like this—I’m saying all this in subtext, because I’m not sure this conversation is even actually taking place, but this is what I’m really saying to him. I say to him: listen, this woman is indeed forbidden to remarry—you’re right—because when the get is not given willingly, it does not permit the woman. But I am going to permit her to remarry even though it is forbidden, and I am going to marry her to her next partner. Nothing will help you. And I will be violating a prohibition—don’t worry, I’ll settle with the Holy One, blessed be He. But I will beat you until you give a get and say, “I want to.” But know this: after you say it and you give the get, she will also be able to remarry with this get even though it’s forbidden. I agree with you that it’s forbidden, because the get is a coerced get. What happens now? What happens now is exactly what happened to the king’s son in the turkey story. The man understood that on the practical level it was already not going to help him. What he wanted to achieve, he would not achieve: to chain the woman. The woman would manage to remarry; nothing would help him. Once he understands that he will not achieve the result, then why does he need to keep holding onto his absurd theories, whose whole purpose is really to justify the chaining of the woman? To achieve the goal that the woman remain chained. I tell him: look, you won’t achieve it; I will marry her off with my own hands. Nothing will help you. Once he understands—not at once, but after he understands—that nothing will help him and that this woman can remarry and he will not manage to chain her, then his theories fall apart by themselves. All the theories that he is right and the Holy One, blessed be He, and all that—because he himself, deep down, knows that it is not true. Why did he build them and make himself sort of believe in them? Because he wants to justify his action, whose purpose is to chain the woman. But if in fact he won’t succeed in that, then what’s the point of building those theories? Those theories fall away by themselves. And he returns to where? To that inner point where he is sincerely committed to Jewish law. And if Jewish law says that he must divorce the woman, he no longer builds himself theories about why that is not what Jewish law says, because he understands that it won’t help him. So if he doesn’t build himself imaginary theories, then the assumption that he is divorcing willingly is a correct assumption. And as a result, what happens now? After I threatened him that I would marry off the woman even though she is forbidden to remarry, that threat causes the woman to become permitted to remarry. Because the get is given of the husband’s own will. I tell him: listen, I’m going to validate this get even though you refuse to give it. After I say that to him and make clear to him that nothing will help him, now I won’t even need to validate this get as an invalid get, because this get will actually be valid. Because the man will give it willingly. Exactly like with the turkey. There too, the whole theory he built, that he was a turkey, was in order to sit under the table and stop with all the nonsense of human beings—clothes and manners and all kinds of things of that sort. Once I succeeded in bringing him to a situation where in practice he behaves like a human being, then all his theories that he is a turkey collapse by themselves, because inwardly he already really knew that he was a human being; he only built himself theories that he was a turkey in order to allow himself to behave that way. Once he no longer behaves that way in practice, there is no point in building and maintaining such theories, and then he himself understands inside that it isn’t true. And that is what dissolves the theory as well, so in the end he really is healed. So what does that mean? And maybe really to Shlomo’s earlier comment—just as a comment, really, a practical implication—if there is a person who truly is not committed to Torah and commandments, a secular person from birth, raised that way, and in his case there is no concern at all that inwardly he is committed to Torah and commandments, okay? He has no such connection. In such a case, coercion regarding a get will not help. Giving a get, yes; coercion regarding a get, no—it won’t help. If he doesn’t want to give a get, if he is a get-refuser, no coercion will help according to my explanation. By the way, afterward I saw this in some later authorities (Acharonim): some of them want to argue that if inwardly the person is not committed to Torah and commandments—some Maharik writes this somewhere—then coercion truly will not help. Even if he says “I want to,” it won’t help. It is still a coerced get. So that is the halakhic implication. But for our purposes, what is this whole story really saying? This whole story comes to say what I said earlier: you cannot influence a person and raise arguments that will persuade a person to change his genuine conceptions. If he has the true conceptions inside him, and he built himself a fabricated, false theory, then you can try to persuade him because you take him from the principles he believes in and show him that he doesn’t really believe in this fabricated theory. You have something to build on; there is something inside him on which you can build arguments. He built some shell, but inwardly he has the correct beliefs on which you can build arguments. But a person who inwardly, all the way down, truly and sincerely does not believe, or does not act for its own sake, or I don’t know, is not committed to Torah and commandments—no argument will help here. You cannot build an argument that will persuade him. And all the more so—and now I’m getting to the person himself—all the more so it cannot be that a person brings himself to repentance, persuades himself of something, changes his own conceptions in some way. All these things are impossible. Because the thing that is changing already holds the new conceptions. And if he holds the new conceptions, then there is nothing to change—he already holds them. But then the question is: so how did he get to them? How does he suddenly hold them? It must have happened to him in some way. Because it cannot be that he persuaded himself to hold them, because then the problem goes one step back—what does it mean that he persuaded himself to hold them? In the end, this matter can only happen to him in some way. It cannot be an initiated step. It cannot be something that a person does intentionally—goes, persuades himself, changes himself—there is no such thing. He can change behavior; he cannot change his own conceptions. Because you always assume your own assumptions. When someone external persuades me, there is an argument of “either way”: if he uses my assumptions, then there is no one to persuade. If he uses his assumptions, which I do not accept, then he won’t succeed in persuading. When I’m talking about me and myself, about my persuading myself, there you don’t need two sides; there is only one side. I can only use assumptions that I myself believe in; there is no other option. But if those are the new assumptions that I already believe in, then there is nothing to persuade—I am already persuaded. In short, changes in belief can occur only by themselves. There cannot be a situation in which I intentionally approach and change my own conceptions, change my own beliefs. It cannot be. Of course I can intentionally approach and examine whether these are really my conceptions, or whether I really stand behind these conceptions. That’s fine, and it may turn out to me that I do not. But there cannot be a situation where I intentionally approach and repent and decide to improve myself. There is no such thing. Improve myself in behavior, yes; I mean improve myself in conceptions. Because if I have already decided to improve my conceptions, that means I already believe in the improved conceptions. So there is nothing to change; I’m already there. And if I don’t believe in them, then there is no reason in the world that I would bring myself to believe in them. Why? After all, right now I don’t believe in them. Why would I bring myself to believe in them? Rabbi?

[Speaker C] Do you agree that a person can initiate some kind of thinking and say, let me examine myself and see whether I’m really right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, yes. Just as a person adopts conceptions in the first place. A person adopts initial conceptions; he thinks and comes to a conclusion about what he thinks. It may turn out to him that he was mistaken. He will think again; it will turn out that he was mistaken and that he actually believes something else. No problem, that’s fine. But it is impossible for him intentionally to approach and change himself. He can approach and examine himself, and maybe the result will be change. But to approach intentionally in order to change himself means that he already has the final target. Not that he is examining and may arrive at some other target, but rather from the outset, when he approaches, he already has the final target before his eyes. If he has the final target before his eyes, then he already believes in it now. Okay. Okay, so here there is basically some kind of self-reference that really is of the paradoxical self-referential kind. It cannot be. A person cannot change himself. Okay, this is something impossible.

[Speaker C] Then that’s already not him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be that he is already not him now, fine—but then he has already changed. Actually, when I thought about this point, I thought about it in the context of repentance. I also spoke about this sometime in the past. And there really the point is that if a person sins, then ostensibly that means something in his conceptions is already not right. It’s not only in the translation of the conceptions into the practical behavioral layer; there must be something wrong in the conceptions. Because if his conception is that one must keep Torah and commandments without question, then why does he sin? After all, he himself believes that Torah and commandments must be observed. What will you say—that the inclination took hold of him, and what? The inclination forced it upon him? Then he is coerced; that is not a sin. If the inclination did not force him, but rather he decided to yield to the inclination—why would he decide to yield to the inclination if he believes that it is the wrong step? There must be some problem in his conceptions. In his conceptions he does not think this is right, or not entirely think it is right. Otherwise it is very hard to explain any other mechanism. Again, I’m doing this very briefly here because this is really the issue called weakness of will in philosophy. That is, there cannot be a situation in which a person believes something is right and also wants to do it, and in the end nevertheless does not do it—unless he was coerced. But if he was coerced, then it’s not a sin. “The inclination dressed him,” as the Talmud says. But if I had an option and the inclination only tempted me, and I could have yielded or not yielded, then why do I yield if I think it’s wrong? No, the one who acts…

[Speaker C] The one who acts only in order to receive reward and avoid punishment—so he can say, all right, let’s calculate. The inclination comes and says, listen, I have so many commandments, okay, so in the end it doesn’t mean he agrees with it, but the inclination can drag him there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the question is why does he yield to the inclination? If the inclination forced it upon him, then he is coerced; it isn’t a sin. If the inclination merely tempted him, then the question is why he is seduced. After all, he knows that it’s wrong. So what? Apparently he probably does not think that it’s wrong, or not entirely. Something in the conceptions also has to be flawed. Flawed behavior begins with some subtle deviation in the conceptions. It cannot arise from the middle onward. That was basically the claim there. Again, this isn’t our topic, so I’m not expanding on it; one has to go a bit into the issue of weakness of will. I have columns, two columns on the website about this matter. And then what I wanted to claim there was that in fact every process of repentance—even the repentance of the sages, which is to correct behavior, not our repentance today, which is correction of conceptions, but correction of behavior—even that is really bound up with correcting conceptions. And therefore the whole concept of repentance is actually a very problematic concept on the logical level. Because you have to approach intentionally and change your own conceptions. That is something undefined on the logical level. Fine. The fact is that people do repent, as Shlomo asked earlier, right? People—I’m pointing here to a problem, and I cannot deny that in reality people do repent. This needs to be explained. Now I can’t get into it too much; I’ll just say in one short sentence, because it touches us too. I think the problem of repentance is that, either way: if someone from outside does it to me, if the Holy One, blessed be He, does it to me, then I didn’t repent—He did repentance upon me. If I do it, it’s impossible; I can’t change myself. Therefore either way it is impossible to repent. Yes? This is a form of dilemma argument. If it comes from outside, it has no value; if it comes from inside, it is impossible. So how can there be repentance that has value and is also possible? Seemingly there can’t be such a thing. It may be that the solution lies in the fact that this dilemma argument, this “either way,” is based on a perspective in which I stand opposite the Holy One, blessed be He, as though we are two independent factors, one standing opposite the other—yes, I work opposite Him. But perhaps that is not the correct perspective. Since I’m returning to regions of mysticism, perhaps something of the Holy One, blessed be He, is also found within me inwardly. These are not really two entities that are completely separate. The dichotomy here is probably not a full dichotomy. And then this change—earlier I said, if it comes from outside it has no value; if it comes from inside it is impossible—but perhaps there is a point that is a combination of me and the Holy One, blessed be He, together within me. Then maybe this dichotomy is broken, and somehow such an action is nevertheless possible. I’m saying this in very, very general language here, both to be brief and because I myself am not completely sure how sharply this is really formulated. But it seems to me that if there is a solution, this is the only direction in which it can be found. But what does this solution sharpen? It sharpens the fact that the root of the problem is that I cannot change myself. Self-reference is the root of the problem. If I manage to break the fact that there is self-reference here, if I manage to bring some external factor into the picture, maybe that will solve the problem. So here the true focus of the problem is self-reference. That’s why I brought this example of a person changing himself. Yes, “a person lives within himself,” we spoke about Shalom Hanoch; here a person changes himself. And that is a kind of oxymoron that seemingly cannot exist. That is one remark or one example. Another point, maybe two more points I want to get to today. The Talmud says in several places—for example in Sanhedrin 9a. The Talmud says there: a person comes and says, “So-and-so sodomized me willingly.” He had relations with me—two males—willingly. By consent, not by force. Now if I did this willingly, then I committed a transgression and I am wicked, disqualified from testimony. If I am disqualified from testimony, I cannot testify against so-and-so, because I am disqualified from testimony. Therefore, one cannot convict so-and-so on the basis of my testimony. We split the statement. But in the Talmud there is a dispute about this, Rava and Rav Yosef. And the Talmud says there that a person is related to himself, and a person cannot render himself wicked. Therefore we split the statement. Regarding myself I am a relative, and therefore I cannot testify. Only my testimony about someone else remains. The testimony about myself is not accepted, and therefore I am not considered wicked. Consequently I can testify about the other person, that he sodomized someone—not necessarily me. Therefore he is wicked and I am not. That is Rava’s opinion, and that is also the halakhic ruling: we do split the statement. But the basis of this matter is that a person is related to himself, and a person cannot render himself wicked. There is some sort of double self-reference here. First of all, what does it mean that a person is related to himself?

[Speaker C] A relative is disqualified from testimony.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A relative is disqualified from testimony.

[Speaker B] But the person, the relation—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Between a person and himself, is that a relation of kinship—he is related to himself? That’s identity, not kinship.

[Speaker C] Yes, but if I’m looking for the one closest to me, it’s me to myself, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Closest of all—you are identical to yourself, not close to yourself. You are you. Closeness is a relation; closeness is a relation between two different people who are close to one another. There is no closeness between a person and himself. One time I spoke about this thought I had, yes, that I’m my own brother because we have the same parents.

[Speaker C] That’s what I meant, yes, that’s where I was coming from.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This matter, that a person is related to himself because he has the same parents as himself, so he is his own brother.

[Speaker C] But those are artificial games.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it mean that he is related to himself? I think there is here a certain dimension of what I called estrangement—turning yourself into a stranger. What does that mean? When I come and testify about myself—“I was sodomized willingly,” or “I borrowed with interest,” in the case on page 25 in Sanhedrin, another case, but again: so-and-so lent me money at interest. The borrower at interest is also wicked, so it’s the same situation, the same example, the same story. I render myself wicked because I testify about myself that I borrowed at interest, and therefore if I am wicked I cannot testify that he lent at interest. And again I say: no, I am not believed about myself, therefore my testimony about him is accepted. Why am I not believed about myself? A person is related to himself, and a person cannot render himself wicked. Now what does that mean, what is happening here? The person comes and testifies about himself. You understand that the person is wearing two hats here. One hat is the hat of the witness, and the second hat is the hat of the one who was sodomized, of the litigant, of the person about whom testimony is being given. True, it’s the same person, but I am playing a role game here of two different roles. In my hat as witness, I am the one testifying. In my hat as litigant, I am the one about whom testimony is being given. In this case, that is me myself, the same person. But still, in terms of the functions in court, I am basically playing two functions here: I am both the witness and the litigant, the one about whom testimony is being given. In such a situation, says the Talmud, one can view the person as his own relative. Even though kinship is between two different people, and a person’s kinship to himself is seemingly an oxymoron—that’s identity, not kinship—the Talmud says yes, but if you carry out a process of estrangement, you are basically relating to yourself as a stranger. You testify about yourself as though it were someone else. In such a situation, I am willing to see you, although you are one person, as someone playing two different roles in court, and then I relate to you as the witness and the litigant, and it comes out that they are relatives because it is the same person. And since there is estrangement here, it is not identity but kinship.

[Speaker C] Isn’t that just a play on words? What? Isn’t it also some kind of word game like that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is not a play on words; it is a legal determination, not a factual determination. Clearly it is not a factual determination. But this legal determination really stems from that same process I referred to in the past as estrangement. And law, Jewish law, recognizes the possibility that a person can estrange himself from himself and see himself as some independent person to whom he himself is relating. And self-reference involves estrangement; that’s what I’ve been saying all along. If there is self-reference, it is always a matter of estrangement. Why? Because the one relating and the one to whom one is relating ostensibly fulfill two different functions, which in this case are fulfilled by the same person. Exactly like we discussed in the process of change. In the process of change, when I change myself, then I myself am two functions. I am the changer, and my self is the changed. So I am basically performing two different functions. Except that there it is not in the legal world but in the factual world. The question is whether I can change myself, because one cannot ignore the fact that factually it is the same person. The process of estrangement is not a factual process; it is a legal process, a literary process, whatever you want. But factually we are still the same person. Factually I am not my own relative. Only legally can one say that the “I” as witness is seen as related to the “I” about whom testimony is being given, the “I” as litigant. Legally I see this as a relation of kinship. Because factually it is a relation of identity, not kinship.

[Speaker C] So why can’t a person render himself wicked? If I prove there is a concept of estrangement, then I can render myself wicked. Why not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. My brother too, my brother too, is a stranger in that sense. But he is a stranger who is my relative, and I am disqualified from testifying about him. Estrangement does not mean distance. Estrangement means otherness. You are other than me, but that other can still be my relative. My father, my brother, my mother, my owner—I am forbidden to testify about him even though he is other. Now a person and himself—with all due respect to the process of estrangement—estrangement causes the litigant to be other than the witness, but it cannot affect the fact that they are relatives. After all, there is certainly a relation of closeness between them more than between brother and brother. You cannot say there is no kinship here. I am willing to accept that there is a process of estrangement here, but that estrangement only turns you into an other; it cannot turn you into someone who is not close. That is unequivocal. Understand?

[Speaker D] Rabbi, regarding the example of “So-and-so lent me money,” do we accept his testimony about the other person and not accept his testimony about himself, or do we not accept the testimony at all?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that is a dispute in the Talmud. According to the halakhic ruling, we do not accept his testimony about himself; therefore he is not wicked, and therefore we accept his testimony about the other person, because if he is not wicked then he is a valid witness. That is what is called in the Talmud splitting the statement. We divide his statement. When I come and say, “So-and-so lent me money at interest,” we accept the testimony that so-and-so lent at interest, but we do not accept the testimony that it was to me. We split the testimony, divide it.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, isn’t that self-contradictory? Rabbi. Why? Isn’t that self-contradictory?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is it self-contradictory? I accepted half the testimony and did not accept half the testimony. Why is that self-contradictory? There is nothing here that contradicts anything.

[Speaker D] No, wait. We want to accuse the second person that he lent to someone, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. But that someone is not me.

[Speaker D] Wait, just a second—and that someone, are we saying it isn’t true that that someone borrowed, and on the other hand—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not that someone. I did not borrow. Maybe someone else borrowed.

[Speaker D] But he is testifying about himself; he is not testifying that you lent to someone else, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what difference does that make? We didn’t accept that half; we only accepted the first half. We accepted the testimony that so-and-so lent. We did not accept the testimony that it was to me.

[Speaker D] But without “to me” you don’t know whether he really lent or not. We don’t really know whether he lent or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t matter. I did not accept that as testimony. I don’t care if I know outside the legal sphere that the borrower is the witness himself. It doesn’t interest me. On the legal level, he was not the borrower. We did not accept that as testimony. You can also say that he lent to someone else, if you want, on the legal level. It doesn’t matter to me. Think of a witness who comes and testifies, “So-and-so lent at interest; I don’t remember to whom.” Fine—what’s the problem? He lent at interest and he doesn’t remember to whom. In principle that is admissible testimony. There are interrogations, examinations, one can discuss it a bit, but in principle it is admissible testimony.

[Speaker D] But here there is a contradiction. If he says, “I don’t know to whom”—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here too, legally he says, “I don’t know to whom.” Because legally a person’s testimony about himself is inadmissible; we erase it from the record. He didn’t say it. Okay, fine. This gets us into the issue of splitting the statement. I’m only trying to show, once again, that the process of estrangement is required even in a place where we accept self-reference. And even if it does not lead to paradoxes and things like that, still some sort of estrangement is needed here, because without it you cannot properly define self-reference. At least on the conceptual or legal level, one has to make some act of estrangement, because without that it is impossible to define self-reference. Because the one relating and the one being related to function in two different roles in such a sentence of self-reference, even though in this case we placed the same person there. And therefore it is essentially bound up with a process of estrangement. There is another example of this, and with this I’ll finish. There is an article by Adi Tzemach, a professor at the Hebrew University, the former husband of Mina Tzemach, for those who know all those affairs—never mind. He once wrote an article—actually an article on morality, which is fascinating. He dealt a lot with morality, and he wrote an article on a person’s moral obligation. And he wanted to ground moral obligation—why should I care for someone else? So he asks: why do I care for my own future? After all, a person prepares his own future, cares for his own future. That seems obvious to us. Now he says: but my future self, tomorrow or in two years, is someone else; it isn’t me now. I have a different consciousness, the time and place are different—it isn’t me, it’s someone else. So he says: if I care about someone else who is later in time, why can’t I care about someone else who is elsewhere in space? Just as I care for myself in the future, I care for someone else in the present; this is on the axis of space and that is on the axis of time. Therefore all concern for other people is some kind of extension of concern for myself. You can actually view others as some kind of extension of yourself, and suddenly egoism will lead you to be a moral person. You care for yourself; the only question is, who is your “self”? Your “self” may include all people. Now of course this process—I don’t know whether it is the opposite of estrangement or an extreme estrangement. He is basically saying that when I relate to my future self, then I am really relating to a person who is another person; it is not me. One can see this as philosophical estrangement, as though on the philosophical level I somehow am willing to view this as though it were relating to someone else. But if that were so, it would not ground a moral duty to the other, because the other is really other; this is not a fictitious philosophical relation. He apparently wants to argue that it really is someone else—myself in the future is someone else, not me. Therefore, what is the difference between him and someone else really in the present? To say that it is someone else is, of course, extreme estrangement. But this estrangement is done not only because it is me at another time, but also because it is I myself caring for that future other, who is my future self. Again, there is self-reference here: I care for myself. But if I care for myself, that is self-reference, and self-reference requires some kind of estrangement. The moment I care for myself, I thereby see myself a bit as someone else, because after all I am caring for someone, and that someone happens to be me myself. I care for myself. Remember the difference between “I” and “myself”? “Myself” is always a process of estrangement from the “I.” So he of course takes this one step further, into a far-fetched pilpul, but it is an example of a process of estrangement that goes too far. Okay, that is basically the additional example. Next time I hope I’ll finish the philosophical introduction and then we’ll get into a few halakhic issues. Okay, any comments or questions?

[Speaker C] Rabbi, in the conclusion of the turkey story, of Rabbi Nachman, did he want to bring the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The conclusion of what?

[Speaker C] No, the story the Rabbi brought from Rabbi Nachman—does it come to give us some message that basically, basically, basically—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the message I learn from the story. What Rabbi Nachman wanted to convey in the story—you’d have to ask him.

[Speaker C] No, what the Rabbi says is enough for me; that’s more than enough, it’s fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The accepted interpretation of this story says that very often, yes, Breslovers, when they publish pamphlets with interpretations of this story—once I saw some short interpretation of theirs. They claim that basically the turkey comes to symbolize how a person arrives at his sin. Basically a person thinks that this business is far from him, it’s impossible for me, I’m just a turkey. He belittles himself: I’m not a human being. And we need to raise him up and show him: no, you are a human being, you are a lofty and exalted creature, you are not just a turkey. Fine, I don’t know—that’s an interpretation that in my view is fairly low-level. But there are interpretations I’ve seen also in Breslov that are quite close to this, that want to explain how a person sins—by building for himself a theory that he is a turkey. Because a person doesn’t just sin because he feels like it; he always needs some intellectual justification. So he builds a theory: yes, I’m a turkey, who says not? You don’t have a monopoly on turkey-ism. We hear that a lot today, right? A man declares himself a woman and informs women that they do not have a monopoly on womanhood; he too is a woman. Okay. So there are all kinds of statements of that sort: you don’t have a monopoly on—fill in the blank. Fine? That is basically the claim. So the scholar also says to the turkeys: you do not have a monopoly on being turkeys; I too am a turkey. And there, he built himself a theory. But the idea that a person’s way of sinning is basically by building and giving himself some intellectual backing through some absurd theory that he invents for himself—that too is a kind of lesson I once saw in an interpretation of the story, and that already comes very close to what I’m saying. I just think the story says much more than that. The story says that in such a situation one can also repair things, and the way to repair it is through practical correction, because “hearts are drawn after actions.” By the way, one more thing I forgot—just one second—one more thing I forgot to say. You know in Avinu Malkeinu we say: Avinu Malkeinu—there is one Avinu Malkeinu that is very unusual. It is always requests from the Holy One, blessed be He. But there is one Avinu Malkeinu where it says: “Avinu Malkeinu, bring us back in complete repentance before You.” What is that? Give us livelihood—I understand; save us from illness—I also understand. But what does “bring us back in complete repentance” mean? If He brings us back in complete repentance, then He did the work of repentance, not me. What is that worth? I need to repent, not Him. And that is a bit of a hint to what I said earlier, which I simply forgot to say then: that the process of repentance apparently requires some kind of cooperation between us and the Holy One, blessed be He. If He does it alone, then it has no value. If I do it alone, it is impossible. If there is some kind of cooperation, or giving up the dichotomy between us, then perhaps this thing is possible and valuable. And maybe that is what this Avinu Malkeinu means: “bring us back in complete repentance before You” means, cooperate, because I alone cannot do it; it is not defined. Yes, okay—that’s just a point I remembered. Anyone else?

[Speaker D] Yes, yes, I wanted to ask about… in the process of alienation, is it possible to say that the alienated one—let’s call it the alienator and the alienated—whether one of them is more “I” than the other, or are they both equal?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In relation to the alienator?

[Speaker D] And the alienated one, yes—can it be described

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] spoken of

[Speaker D] as one of them being more “I” than the other?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think the alienator is more the “I.” Why? Because the alienator functions here as a subject, and the alienated one functions here as an object. Right? At the alienated one I look from the outside; I testify about him, I say what he did. But when I look, then I’m acting from within, not from outside. I’m operating here as a person, as a subject. I grasp, I see, I think, I love—so that’s my action as a subject. The alienated one is presented, כביכול, as some kind of object toward which my subjective relation is directed. Therefore, after all, the real “I” is the “I” as subject. When I see you, from my perspective you’re an object; I don’t see your soul. You discern within yourself—we talked about Schopenhauer, right?—you discern within yourself, so you see yourself as a subject. But I see you as an object, not as a subject. I believe you that within yourself you are a subject, but I have no ability to encounter that directly. Therefore, if I place… if I place myself as a stranger, then that stranger there is less “me” than the hermit. Okay?

[Speaker D] Okay, I understand. Thank you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone else? Okay, so we’ll stop here. Sabbath peace.

[Speaker C] Sabbath peace, more power to you.