Self-Reference – Lesson 6
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
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Table of Contents
- Self-reference and estrangement
- Atvan DeOraita and the methodology of lomdus
- Rule 20 in Atvan DeOraita: actor and recipient in one person
- The topic of the cutter and the one being cut in Makkot 20b
- Additional proofs: male homosexual intercourse and idolatry
- Otherness as essential: a loan with interest, murder and damages, and two people who did it
- The idolatrous city: incitement and seduction versus practical action
- A normative answer in Atvan DeOraita: the greater severity of a self-committed sin
- Speaking slander about oneself and the distinction between the factual and normative levels
- The obviousness question on Atvan DeOraita and an open ending
Summary
General Overview
The lecturer sums up the conceptual introduction to the series on “self-reference” and argues that self-reference is not necessarily a paradox, distinguishing between a statement referring to itself and a person referring to himself, and presenting the tool of “estrangement,” in which the subject relates to himself as an object as though they were two people. He then moves to a lomdish-halakhic analysis through Atvan DeOraita, Rule 20, by Rabbi Yosef Engel, which tries to formulate a broad principle: when the Torah forbids both the actor and the recipient of an act, then someone who does it to himself incurs “two liabilities.” The lecturer then challenges the meaning of the rule and argues that in cases where otherness is not essential this seems “obvious,” while in cases where otherness is essential there is no room at all to apply estrangement.
Self-reference and estrangement
The lecturer states that self-reference can create a philosophical problem but is not necessarily a paradox, and distinguishes between a statement referring to itself as the basis for paradoxes and a person referring to himself. He formulates the analysis of self-reference as an act of “estrangement,” in which a person as subject relates to himself as object, as though there were two human beings here bearing the same identity. He compares it to a function of two variables in which the same object is inserted in both the X and Y positions, and emphasizes that there are situations in which that substitution creates difficulty and situations in which it does not.
Atvan DeOraita and the methodology of lomdus
The lecturer presents Rabbi Yosef Engel’s books as writing arranged in sections dealing with broad halakhic or meta-halakhic principles, and argues that the “meat” is often found there “between the lines,” because he cites sources, raises objections, and answers them, but almost never undertakes a prior conceptual clarification of the question itself. He describes this as the methodology of a “Polish lamdan” who does not engage in conceptual analysis, unlike a “Lithuanian lamdan” in the style of Rabbi Chaim, who develops tools like object-status and person-status. He adds that at times the gap is mainly one of presentation, and connects this to a personal example about the Sma and to the role of analytic philosophy in exposing underlying assumptions.
Rule 20 in Atvan DeOraita: actor and recipient in one person
The lecturer quotes the heading of Atvan DeOraita, Rule 20: when the Torah forbids doing an act to another person and also forbids receiving that act from another person, the question is whether someone who does the act to himself violates two prohibitions, both as actor and as recipient. He explains this as a broad question about cases in which both the doer and the one to whom it is done are liable, and what happens when they are combined in the same individual.
The topic of the cutter and the one being cut in Makkot 20b
The lecturer brings the baraita: “both the one who rounds off and the one rounded off are flogged,” and explains that the difficulty is based on the rule that “one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action,” because the one being cut seems passive. He presents Rav Chisda’s answer that the baraita follows Rabbi Yehuda, “who says that one is flogged for a prohibition lacking an action,” and Rava’s answer, “when he rounds off his own hair, according to everyone,” which explains the baraita as referring to someone who cuts his own hair. He also quotes Rav Ashi’s answer, “when he assists, according to everyone,” and stresses that the wording suggests a dispute, with the possibility that Rav Ashi does not accept that the act of the cutter counts as an act also with respect to the one being cut when they are the same person.
Additional proofs: male homosexual intercourse and idolatry
The lecturer quotes Atvan DeOraita, which brings from Sanhedrin 54a, regarding male homosexual intercourse, that the Torah makes both the penetrator and the penetrated liable, and that “one who initiates penetration on himself incurs two liabilities.” He also quotes Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry, chapter 3, halakha 9, according to whom “therefore one who makes an idol with his own hands for himself receives two sets of lashes,” because of “Do not make for yourself a carved image” and because of “Molten gods you shall not make for yourselves.” He concludes that Atvan DeOraita understands from these sources a principle: wherever the Torah made both actor and recipient liable, acting upon oneself also creates double liability.
Otherness as essential: a loan with interest, murder and damages, and two people who did it
The lecturer offers a counterexample: “he lent to himself with interest” does not create a prohibition because “nothing happened here” and no money changed hands, so a loan to oneself is not defined as a loan, and otherness is an essential condition for defining the situation. He adds a second possibility: even if it were defined as a loan, the prohibition itself depends on otherness because this is about harming another person, and he parallels this to the idea that “committing suicide is not called murder” and that throwing someone else’s money into the sea is damage, whereas throwing one’s own money is not the same prohibition. He also brings the exemption on the Sabbath of “two who did it” and argues that one cannot apply estrangement and see the two hands of one person as two people, because the otherness is essential to the exemption when two people perform an unusual act as opposed to the normal way a single person performs it.
The idolatrous city: incitement and seduction versus practical action
The lecturer quotes Atvan DeOraita, which asks from Sanhedrin 112a about the Talmud’s doubt, “What if they were led astray on their own?” and asks why there is not a simple proof from someone cutting his own hair or from the active and passive parties in homosexual intercourse. He brings Atvan DeOraita’s first answer, which distinguishes between “practical action” such as penetrator and penetrated, or cutter and one being cut, and “incitement and seduction,” which is “a mental and contemplative act,” and that “it is more plausible to say in the case of practical action that a person both acts and is acted upon” than to say that a person “incites and seduces himself.” He interprets this as the claim that otherness is essential to the concept of incitement, similar to the paradox of “self-change,” where if the subject is already convinced of the new value system there is no longer anyone left to persuade.
A normative answer in Atvan DeOraita: the greater severity of a self-committed sin
The lecturer quotes Atvan DeOraita’s second answer, according to which it may be that when a person is led astray by someone else, “his sin is not all that great,” but when “they were led astray on their own,” “their transgression is more severe, and they are not atoned for by the sword.” He connects this to a principle similar to some explanations of “we do not derive punishments by logical inference,” and emphasizes that here otherness is not a condition for defining the act but rather a normative factor in defining the severity of the prohibition and the punishment.
Speaking slander about oneself and the distinction between the factual and normative levels
The lecturer raises a question about slander and presents a story attributed to the Chafetz Chaim in which someone praises the Chafetz Chaim in his presence without recognizing him, and the Chafetz Chaim minimizes his own worth, and the idea is attached there that “it is forbidden for a person to speak slander about himself.” He sharpens the point that the interesting case is when a person says negative things about himself in front of someone else who did not know them, so the factual conditions of “telling” are fulfilled, but the question remains whether the prohibition requires otherness on the normative level because “I am harming myself” and not another person. He presents a possible dispute over whether there is any prohibition in such a case at all, and argues that his inclination is that there is no prohibition even if the listener does not know that the speaker is speaking about himself.
The obviousness question on Atvan DeOraita and an open ending
The lecturer concludes that Atvan DeOraita’s discussion is relevant only when otherness is not essential, but then he has trouble understanding what the novelty is: if there is “the prohibition of cutting” and “the prohibition of being cut,” or liability for both active and passive parties in homosexual intercourse, then when the same person commits both prohibitions “it is obvious that he gets eighty lashes.” He argues that Atvan DeOraita presents this as a principle of self-reference that might perhaps have led to the conclusion of only one liability, but in practice it seems to be simply a case of two transgressions and double liability. He ends by saying that the question remains open for the next lecture: why Atvan DeOraita sees here a unique question of self-reference rather than just an ordinary case of committing two prohibitions.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re in the middle of a series on self-reference, and we finished its first part, which was basically a kind of conceptual-philosophical introduction, a general introduction, where I tried to show, on the one hand, the problematic side of self-reference, and on the other hand the ways in which it gets resolved. Or the basic claim was that self-reference is not necessarily a paradox, contrary to what people sometimes assume, that the moment you see self-reference, it’s immediately a paradox. So no, that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes it creates paradoxes, sometimes it doesn’t. We talked about a person’s self-reference to himself and a statement’s self-reference to itself, which are not the same thing. A statement referring to itself, like the liar paradox, belongs in the paradox department. A person referring to himself can create a philosophical problem, but that by itself is not necessarily so. And the way, basically, to analyze a situation in which there is self-reference is through estrangement. Estrangement means I look at—say I’m referring to myself—then I, as subject, relate to myself as object. Right? I am the object of the subject’s reference, of my own self as subject. So I assume that, basically, the object and the subject here are two people, and by chance I place under those two headings—or those two people—the same person, the same individual. I compared it to a function of two variables. I can plug into f of x and y, a function of two variables, I can put in the place of x and also y the same object, a. Put it in as both x and y. On the theoretical level that seemingly shouldn’t make a difference, but there are situations in which it does create a problem. We talked about this in the context of self-deception. I tried to show that these things actually often don’t create a problem, at least not in an essential way. And what I want to do now is try to look at these things from the lomdish-halakhic angle. And for that purpose I want to begin with a discussion found in the book Atvan DeOraita. Atvan DeOraita is a book by Rabbi Yosef Engel, and he wrote several books: Beit HaOtzar, Atvan DeOraita, Lekach Tov, various books made up of sections, where in each section there is a discussion of some broad principle. Beit HaOtzar is arranged alphabetically; Atvan DeOraita and Lekach Tov are simply collections of sections, not in any particular order. Each section deals with something: whether there are object-based prohibitions and person-based prohibitions, whether rabbinic prohibitions are always person-based prohibitions, all sorts of broad halakhic or meta-halakhic questions, each one assigned a section. And my feeling when I read his sections is that the meat is very often דווקא between the lines—that is, in precisely those things he doesn’t get into. He ostensibly presents, let’s say, takes some principle and presents all the sources he finds in the Talmud or in the medieval authorities surrounding that principle, discussing it, touching it in one way or another, raises objections, answers them, makes distinctions of this kind or that. He almost never gets into the question itself or a conceptual clarification of the question itself. And so—we talked about this—in the previous series I dealt with conceptual analysis, and we stopped, we stopped before the break period I think it was, at the beginning of Av, we stopped there, and I had actually planned to do this as the conclusion of the conceptual analysis. I wanted to do a conceptual analysis of this question of self-reference. Since I wanted to close that series and start a new series, I said okay, let’s do a series on self-reference. I said I’d get to the two forces within a person, and I’ll get to that later. This section by Rabbi Yosef Engel is basically Atvan DeOraita, his well-known book, Rule 20. And there we’ll see yet another example, one of many, of a discussion that seems very interesting. He brings many sources with great erudition, but he doesn’t bother to clarify or refine the concepts he’s dealing with and to define the question of the discussion properly. He just puts down the question and immediately starts discussing it—this source, that source, distinguishing between them, and so on—without doing the conceptual analysis that is really called for before beginning the discussion, which can often reveal many things: either that the discussion has no meaning, or that it connects things that are not similar to each other. The conceptual analysis will do what I showed it does in that earlier series. We’ll see an example of that here. But on the other hand, we’ll also see here that it may be—or at least in some cases—it’s only a methodological question. In other words, I think Rabbi Yosef Engel was often aware, at least of some of these aspects of conceptual analysis, but he didn’t—you know—a Polish lamdan. Meaning, a Polish lamdan doesn’t do conceptual analyses and philosophical questions; he discusses passages, raises a contradiction from one against another, and offers an answer. So even though his books are books organized by topics, not by tractates, still his methodology is that of a lamdan, yes, a Polish lamdan. I’m saying that deliberately, because a Lithuanian lamdan does engage in conceptual analysis. A Lithuanian lamdan like Rabbi Chaim—yes—talks about object-status, person-status, all those concepts are the result of conceptual analyses and tools for conceptual analysis. But the Polish lamdan doesn’t do that analysis; he goes straight to the passages. Yet when you dig a bit into what he says, you discover there are crumbs there, or certain parts of the conceptual analysis in one form or another, and very often it’s only a question of how you present things. It reminds me—when I was in Netivot Olam Yeshiva, once I came to my shiur teacher and said to him: look, I can’t get along with the Sma, the Sma really writes like a layman. I said to him: like some layman, he’s not a lamdan, he’s not the Sma, yes, the Shulchan Arukh. So he told me, it’s only a question of how you present it. Meaning, if I present to you what the Sma said, you’ll see that it can also be presented as lomdish analysis. And so that’s true many times—it’s only a question of how you’re used to expressing yourself, how you’re used to handling things, and learners generally do not engage in conceptual analyses. That’s pretty rare in the world of halakhic lomdus. By the way, not only there—in many other places as well it’s rare, and belongs more to analytic philosophy, this conceptual analysis. Most fields don’t deal in philosophy, even though they assume philosophical assumptions at the base of what they say; analytic philosophy exposes the assumptions lying at the foundation of what they’re saying. Okay, that’s just a general remark. We’ll see some of these things in this example too. So first of all let me share the screen. I took Atvan DeOraita here from the responsa project, I—
[Speaker B] I’ll type.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Atvan DeOraita, Rule 20: “In it will be explained that wherever the Torah forbade doing something to another person and also forbade receiving that act from another person, then if a person does that thing to himself, he violates two prohibitions, one as actor and one as recipient.” Yes, “actor” means the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done is the recipient. So here, this is the heading of the rule—that is, the topic he wants to clarify in this rule. What’s the topic? There are places where the Torah forbids person A from doing something to person B, doing some act to person B, but it also forbids receiving that act from someone else. Meaning, person B as well, the one to whom the act was done, also violated a prohibition. So person A violated a prohibition by doing this to another, and person B violated the prohibition by receiving that act from another person. Now what Atvan DeOraita asks in these situations—and we’ll soon see examples—in these situations what happens when a person does the action to himself? Does he violate two prohibitions? Since he is functioning here both as the actor and as the passive party, the recipient, so seemingly he ought to violate two, get eighty lashes, two transgressions. Or maybe not. Before I get a bit more into the question, let’s look at some examples so this gets some substance. So before going into his examples, let’s look at a Talmudic passage. A Talmudic passage in tractate Makkot 20b, yes, in this section here. “The one who rounds off the corners of his head…” The rabbis taught: “The corner of his head” means the end of his head, and what is the end of his head? One who evens his temples with the area behind his ear and with his forehead. That itself isn’t important. A tanna taught before Rav Chisda. This is the part that interests us. Yes, a baraita was taught before Rav Chisda. What does the baraita say? “Both the one who rounds off and the one rounded off are flogged.” Yes, this is speaking about rounding off the corners of the head—someone who shaves the whole perimeter—so both the one who does the rounding and the one whose hair is rounded off are flogged. Both the one who rounds off the other person is flogged, and the one who was rounded off, the one whose hair was cut, he too is flogged. You can see this is an obvious example of the principle Rabbi Yosef Engel is discussing. Fine. So in any case, what does the baraita say, yes, what was taught before Rav Chisda? That the cutter is flogged and the one being cut is also flogged. Two people are flogged in such an act of rounding. He said to him: does someone who eats dates from a pot get flogged? So the Arukh LaNer here explains that when they would go to get a haircut, they would hold a pot so the hair would fall into the pot. Now while getting a haircut, the person would put dates into that pot and eat them while they were cutting his hair. In any case—yes, I don’t know what happened there with the hair, I don’t know what went on there—but anyway that’s what they used to do. So what he’s saying is that the one being cut—the one whose hair they’re cutting, whose corners they’re rounding off—he’s just sitting there eating dates out of a pot, and for that he gets flogged? What did he do? The commentators explain here, and this also follows from the continuation of the Talmudic passage, that the discussion is not whether he violated a prohibition; clearly he did violate a prohibition. The discussion is why he gets flogged. Why? Because the rule is that one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action. So if I violate a prohibition in a way that involves no action on my part, then I’m not liable to lashes. Only a prohibition that is violated by an action, by positive action, is punishable by lashes. There are disputes among the medieval authorities about exactly how this works; there are prohibitions that can be violated both actively and passively. I’m not getting into the details, but the rule is that if one violates a prohibition with no action, one is not flogged. So what the Talmudic passage is saying here is: I understand why the cutter gets flogged, because the cutter performs the act of cutting, so there is a prohibition involving action and therefore lashes apply. But the one being cut—he’s just sitting there while they round off his hair. He’s not doing an action, so why is he flogged?
[Speaker D] Wait, Rabbi, this doesn’t start now. The very definition that both the cutter and the one being cut are flogged already says something. The one being cut is always not doing an action.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I asked—what do you mean it doesn’t start now?
[Speaker D] Yes, but that should have been asked even before, not like…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. They just told you now that both the cutter and the one being cut are flogged. About that novelty they ask why the one being cut gets flogged.
[Speaker D] Ah, okay, it’s not like they came with the example of eating dates. Fine, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s another example. Here the principle was stated that there are lashes for the cutter and lashes for the one being cut. Understood? Okay. Fine?
[Speaker E] Wait, Rabbi, yes—it’s not a prohibition lacking an action; it’s a prohibition that can involve an action, but he himself isn’t doing it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that takes us back to the disputes among the medieval authorities that I hinted at earlier. There really are disputes among the medieval authorities. There are basically three views among them about what happens with prohibitions that can be violated with an action and can also be violated without an action. Like this prohibition. The prohibition of rounding off can be violated with an action—the cutter, for example, performs an action—but it can also be violated without an action when the one being cut is having it done to him, so he violates it without an action. In such a case there is a three-way dispute among the medieval authorities. There is one view that says that in such a prohibition lashes don’t apply at all, even when it is done actively. There are views that say when one violates it without an action, one isn’t flogged. Now according to that view among the medieval authorities, that if it’s a prohibition which can involve action then even when one violates it without action lashes still apply, then indeed there’s no question here. But for most views, that’s not so.
[Speaker D] So what do they hold? That they don’t accept the rule that one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action? Who is “they”? Those who say he wouldn’t get flogged. What? That he would get flogged.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The one who says the person would get flogged—you’re asking whether he doesn’t accept the rule that one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action. The answer is no, he accepts that rule.
[Speaker D] But—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s talking about a situation where that prohibition is always violated without action. But a prohibition that can be violated with action and can be violated without action—there, lashes apply even when you violate it without action. But he accepts the principle that one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action. He just claims that this is not a definition of what you do, but a definition of the character of the prohibition. It’s a distinction between different types of prohibitions and not between different types of transgressions by different people. It’s not a question of what you do but of the nature of the prohibition. If it’s a prohibition that, in essence, is violated without action, then lashes don’t apply even if you carry it out by an action.
[Speaker D] I understand. So the focus is on the prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. It’s a division of prohibitions into two categories, not of the transgressions or the ways you commit the transgression. Fine. But that doesn’t concern us here; I only noted it because of Eliyahu’s question. In any case, the Talmudic passage—yes—he asks him, so what exactly, someone eating dates inside a pot gets flogged? What does he get flogged for? For the act of eating dates? In the rounding off he took no part at all; he’s passive. So the Talmud says: “Whose opinion is this? Rabbi Yehuda’s, who says that one is flogged for a prohibition lacking an action.” Right, this baraita follows Rabbi Yehuda’s view, that one is flogged even for a prohibition lacking an action. That’s a tannaitic dispute. In practical Jewish law we rule not like Rabbi Yehuda—that one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action, that’s how we rule. And indeed according to that view, the one being cut would not be flogged. That is what Rav Chisda claims. Rav Chisda, before whom they presented the baraita, that’s what he claimed. Rava says: “When he rounds off his own hair, according to everyone.” No, there’s no need to get to Rabbi Yehuda; this works even according to the practical halakha. How? When a person rounded off his own hair. This isn’t Reuven rounding off Shimon; rather, Reuven rounded off his own hair. What happens there? There he violated it by an action, and therefore he is flogged both as the cutter and as the one being cut. Now notice, this is very nontrivial. Because if he is indeed flogged both as cutter and as the one being cut, then as the one being cut he did no action. He did the action of the cutter, but his being-the-one-cut was passive. Why is the act of cutting counted as an act even when I look at him as the one being cut and not only as the cutter? Somehow it seems there is reference here—this is the self-reference. On the one hand, the person rounds off his own hair and I view it as though there were two people here, even though it’s one person: he is the cutter and he is the one being cut. But just as two different people are flogged, one as cutter and one as the one being cut, so too when those two people are the same person himself, he gets eighty lashes for these two things—that’s on the one hand. On the other hand, I don’t forget that this is one person. Because the fact is that the action he performs as cutter is enough to make him liable as the one being cut. And this counts as though his transgression as the one being cut is also a transgression done through action, even though being the one cut is passive. But since he himself is also the cutter, the act of cutting counts as an act also regarding his flogging as the one being cut. That’s just a remark in parentheses.
[Speaker F] I have a question. The one being cut—isn’t he also violating it by going around like that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that way, yes, like that.
[Speaker F] Why? So that you won’t be in that state? Who says? Why is it forbidden to do it? In order not to get to the point where you walk around—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says? Maybe the prohibition is on the action and not on the result. In Jewish law there are prohibitions on the action, and there are prohibitions on the result. I’ll give you another example: the positive commandment of “be fruitful and multiply.” So with “be fruitful and multiply” we know that one must have at least a son and a daughter. There’s Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but in practical Jewish law we rule that a son and a daughter at minimum fulfill the obligation. Now the question is how to define that commandment. There are those who define that commandment as a commandment of action: the action you perform, namely sexual relations, that is the commandment. There is just a condition for when you can stop—when you already have a son and a daughter. But the definition of the commandment is that it is a commandment on the action. In contrast, there are those who define it differently: no, it’s a commandment on the result—that you have a son and a daughter. The action is only the way by which you make sure to attain that result. Now I don’t think there is any disagreement here about what the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted when He commanded us to be fruitful and multiply. Clearly in the end He wanted us to have children. But that still doesn’t tell us what the halakhic definition of the commandment is. It could be that the halakhic definition of the commandment is the action itself, even though the goal is to bring children into the world. But from a halakhic standpoint, what is defined as the commandment? The action. There are different explanations for this—for example, because that’s what’s in your hands. Whether you’ll have a son and a daughter is in the hands of Heaven; you don’t know whether you’ll succeed or not. Therefore what you are commanded in is what has been given over to you, what is in your control. What you can do is make the effort. Right? But the result is not in your hands. So even though those efforts were commanded to me in order to achieve the result, it does not mean the commandment is achieving the result. The commandment is the action of making the effort. The result is the condition that, once fulfilled, allows you to stop making the effort at the Torah level. There is still “He created it to be inhabited,” but at the Torah level you can stop making the effort. Okay? A second possibility is to define it differently: no, the commandment is that you have a son and a daughter. True, if you tried and didn’t succeed then you are under compulsion, but the commandment is defined as a commandment of result—the result being that you have a son and a daughter. What you can do for the moment is make the effort that is in your hands. But the commandment itself is not the effort; the effort is merely an instrument of the commandment. The commandment is the state created at the end. That’s an example showing that even though, in the final analysis, everyone agrees that what the Torah wants is to achieve a result, that still does not mean the definition of the commandment is a result-commandment. It could be that even though the Torah wants to achieve a result, it defines the commandment as a commandment on the action. And with prohibitions it’s the same thing. It may be that the prohibition against rounding off the corners of the head is so that you won’t walk around looking like that. But once you’re already in that state, once you’re walking around like that, what exactly are they going to forbid you from—walking around? And if you’re sitting, then you’re not like that? You’re like that in any case. So what is in your hands? What’s in your hands is not to get into that state. Therefore there is room to say that the commandment is a commandment on the act of arriving at that state. Even though the reason for the commandment is so that you genuinely won’t go around with rounded-off hair—or even if we say that’s the reason for the commandment—the definition of the commandment is the act of rounding off itself. That’s another possible definition. Okay? True, that’s one of the reasons—I wrote this somewhere too—that maybe this is one of the reasons we don’t derive law from the reasons of verses. There is always a reason, right, and the reason does not always dictate the legal definition of the commandment. Sometimes there is a gap between the reason for the commandment and the definition of the commandment. Fine. In any case, okay, we have people here who know the material. In any case, that is Rava’s view, yes? So Rava says this is speaking of someone who rounded off his own hair, and then there is no need to get to Rabbi Yehuda, because this counts as though the one being cut also violated the prohibition through an action, and therefore he is liable to eighty lashes, both as cutter and as the one being cut. Rav Ashi said: “When he assists, and then it is according to everyone.” You’re right that the one being cut doesn’t perform an action, so he wouldn’t be flogged because this is a prohibition lacking an action, but here we’re speaking of a case where the one being cut assisted—meaning he moved his head, aimed it, or gathered the hair, meaning he actively assisted in carrying out the action. Rabbi, how did we get to eighty? I didn’t understand. As cutter and as the one being cut. He’s only as—
[Speaker G] As the one being cut? The cutter gets flogged and the one being cut gets flogged. What happens when the same person is both the cutter and the one being cut? He gets eighty. But, Rabbi, he gets flogged because he is the one being cut, and that’s it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As cutter and as the one being cut. Only as the one being cut? He—
[Speaker G] He’s also the cutter and he’s the one being cut.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but what was difficult for the Talmudic passage in the baraita?
[Speaker G] What was the difficulty from the passage about the baraita?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand that what was difficult for the amoraim in the baraita was: why does the one being cut get flogged? Right, right? We have no problem with the cutter, that’s perfectly fine. Our problem is the one being cut. Right. But if I round off my own hair, then I’m flogged as cutter and as the one being cut, therefore I get eighty.
[Speaker G] No, but the passage has no question why the cutter gets flogged; there’s no question about that. Right. The only question is why the one being cut gets flogged. Right. Fine, so the Talmud offers three answers why the one being cut gets flogged.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, good. Either it follows Rabbi Yehuda, who holds that one is flogged for a prohibition lacking an action, or they set up the case in a particular way. What is that setup? Either he rounds off his own hair, or it’s a case where the one being cut did some action—assisting.
[Speaker G] Yes, but all three answers relate only to the one being cut, not to the cutter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, correct, but it doesn’t matter. For our purposes, someone who rounded off his own hair gets eighty lashes.
[Speaker G] Why? From where? From where? He gets only forty because he is the one being cut, and that’s it. What do you mean? I didn’t understand. If he rounds off his own hair, then as cutter, as you yourself said, obviously he gets flogged. No, he rounds off his own hair—at that point, only because he is the one being cut, and that’s it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? What do you mean? The cutter also gets flogged. If I round off someone else’s hair, I get flogged—
[Speaker G] As the cutter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if—
[Speaker G] If I round off my own hair, I wouldn’t get flogged as cutter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? What’s the difference? The whole discussion is only about my being the one cut. As you yourself said. No, but when he rounds off his own—
[Speaker G] When he rounds off his own hair, he should get flogged only because he is the one being cut. We don’t know whether someone can get two sets of lashes for one act.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course he can. What do you mean? The Talmud says he gets two.
[Speaker G] Where does the Talmud say that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Both the cutter and the one being cut are flogged.” How does that happen? When a person rounds off his own hair. So what happens then? He gets flogged as cutter and as the one being cut.
[Speaker G] But that’s what you’re saying, Rabbi. The Talmud didn’t say that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? The Talmud says that.
[Speaker G] Where does the Talmud say that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here: “when he rounds off his own hair, according to everyone.”
[Speaker G] No, but what does “according to everyone” mean? I didn’t understand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “According to everyone” means there’s no need to get to Rabbi Yehuda. Even according to the view that one is not flogged for a prohibition lacking an action, here since there was an action—
[Speaker G] Right, right, but I understand that the whole discussion of the Talmud here is that the Talmud wants to understand why the one being cut gets flogged. That’s what interests it; it isn’t interested in the cutter. The cutter isn’t part of the discussion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, that was the question—why does the one being cut get flogged—but obviously the cutter gets flogged.
[Speaker G] But we don’t know whether one can get two sets of lashes, that’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We have no issue there. The Talmud said it. Why? The Talmud says that if he rounds off his own hair, then he gets flogged as the one being cut. And that he gets flogged as the cutter is obvious; there’s no discussion about that. No, why? In the case of someone rounding off his own hair, the Talmud didn’t say anything about that, in the case of rounding off one’s own hair. What do you mean? The Talmud speaks about someone rounding off his own hair in order to explain—
[Speaker G] Why he gets flogged as the one being cut. But that he gets flogged as the cutter, as you said, that doesn’t interest the Talmud, that’s obvious. They didn’t talk about that. So it’s in the background, it’s simple, they didn’t talk about it. So if someone rounded off his own hair, that he is the cutter and gets flogged is obvious. Now they explained to you that if he rounds off his own hair, he also gets flogged as the one being cut. In short: eighty lashes. That’s it. No, but then we have a novelty here. We’re introducing a novelty that the Talmud didn’t state. A novelty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s written in the Talmud.
[Speaker G] No, but the Talmud didn’t say it. We want to introduce the idea that for one transgression he gets two sets of lashes. The Talmud didn’t say that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmud does say it. I’m sorry—again, I repeat—the Talmud says it. The baraita that says both the cutter and the one being cut are flogged is dealing with someone who rounded off his own hair, and about that it says that both the cutter and the one being cut are flogged.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, and regarding coercion—or a woman who has relations not willingly—they say she is like passive ground because she basically does nothing. So why do we need to get here? Can you be flogged for a prohibition lacking an action if you don’t resist, or if you—wouldn’t that be enough?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. A woman is like passive ground, and therefore indeed she is not flogged, she is not punished.
[Speaker D] Yes, but there they bring a reason because she is like passive ground and so on, but they don’t say because it lacks an action. The Talmud could have said, what do you want from her, it’s a prohibition lacking an action.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A prohibition lacking an action is an exemption from punishment. “Passive ground” could mean there is no prohibition at all.
[Speaker D] Ah, prohibition. Ah, that’s the difference… okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, “passive ground” is a complicated topic in its own right; I’m not going into it here. It’s also a dispute among the medieval authorities regarding Esther. Fine. In any case, so Rava says—when you have wording like “Rava says” and “Rav Ashi says,” by the way, usually such a formulation indicates a dispute. So when Rava says “when he rounds off his own hair, according to everyone,” why do we need Rav Ashi’s answer, “when he assists, according to everyone”? On the simple level, because Rav Ashi does not accept Rava’s answer. He disagrees. Why does he disagree? One of two things can be said: either because he thinks that even when I round off my own hair, still, as the one being cut I have not performed an action. He doesn’t accept the novelty I mentioned earlier, that my act as cutter is enough to make me liable to lashes also as the one being cut. After all, as the one being cut I did no action; I only performed the act of cutting, okay? So maybe he disagrees with that. And maybe he disagrees with the idea of Atvan DeOraita, meaning he disagrees precisely on this point, that when a person acts upon himself it cannot be that he is liable twice, and therefore he has to explain it differently, that the case is one of assistance.
[Speaker D] And then there are two people. And then there are two people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. It’s two people where the one being rounded off helped, so the one doing the rounding gets lashes because he performed the act of rounding, and the one being rounded gets lashes because he performed an act of assistance. Okay, so it could be that there’s a dispute here in this discussion of the Atvan DeOraita, and it could be that there isn’t. Fine, that’s the Talmudic text. I’m now going back to the Atvan DeOraita. Atvan DeOraita means, translated, “Letters of the Torah.” In the Talmud, in tractate Makkot 20b, it is explained that someone who rounds off his own hairline receives eighty lashes, both for doing the rounding and for being the one rounded off; look there carefully. And from this emerges the following rule: when the Torah made both the actor and the one acted upon liable, then even when the action is directed toward the person himself, he is still considered both actor and acted-upon, and he incurs both liabilities. From the Talmud there we see the rule that the Atvan DeOraita lays down at the outset: if a person performs an act on himself, we view him as two people, and he is lashed as the actor and as the one acted upon. And the proof is from the Talmud there in Makkot.
And this reasoning is further clarified, another example, from what we say in Sanhedrin 54a regarding male intercourse, where the Torah made both the one who lies with and the one who is lain with liable. And it is explained there that one who somehow penetrates himself incurs both liabilities, both as the active party and as the passive party; look there carefully. There are people there with acrobatics and unusual physical abilities—somehow a person managed to penetrate himself, to have intercourse with himself, from behind, so to speak—so he incurs two liabilities: he is the active one and the passive one, the penetrator and the one penetrated, okay? So once again we see that when a person performs an act on himself, in a place where both the doer and the one to whom it is done are liable, then even when it is the very same person, he is liable twice.
And you find this reasoning again in Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry, chapter 3, law 9. This is his language: “One who makes an idol for himself, even though he did not make it with his own hands, if others made it for him, he receives lashes, as it says: ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image.’” Because if a person has an idol, even though someone else made it for him, he gets lashes, because it says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image.” “And similarly, one who makes an idol with his own hands for others receives lashes, as it says: ‘You shall not make molten gods for yourselves.’ Therefore, one who makes an idol with his own hands for himself receives two sets of lashes.” Because if you make an idol for yourself, then you are liable for making the idol for someone, and you are liable for the fact that you yourself have an idol that someone made for you, so you are liable twice. And this example too is a third example where we see this idea, that when a person acts upon himself, he is liable twice.
Now let me pause for a moment. This is basically the presentation of the rule and the first three examples. First of all, I want to make a preliminary comment. It’s clear that the Atvan DeOraita is not dealing here with the specific definition of the prohibition of rounding and being rounded. Rather, he is asking a broad question, a general question. How do I know that? Because the fact is that he brings various examples, and from those examples he derives a broad rule, a sweeping rule. If this were merely something specific because of the definition of the prohibition of rounding and being rounded, then there would be no room here to speak about some sweeping halakhic rule. In the laws of rounding and being rounded, such-and-such follows. No. He sees several passages and creates from these examples a rule. We’ll also see that later in his words he challenges this rule from other passages. Meaning, he understands that what is being said here is some idea of general applicability throughout Jewish law. It’s not something specific to the laws of rounding and being rounded, or to the laws of the active and passive participants in intercourse, or making an idol for oneself, something like that. So this is not some local novelty stated there. Rather, there is a halakhic rule that says that if there is a case where person A performs an act on person B, then person A gets lashes and person B, on whom the act is performed, also gets lashes—then if person A performs the act on himself, he gets lashed twice. All right? That’s what one learns from this principle, and it’s a general principle in Jewish law.
Now I ask myself: what is this general principle, what philosophical idea stands behind it? It’s pretty clear that what he’s speaking about here is self-reference, right? This is a question of self-reference. When a person does something to himself, I view it as though he is doing something to someone else, and in place of that someone else I substitute himself. Like I described it with the function of two variables, f of x,y, and I substitute x in place of y as well. Okay? But from my point of view that changes nothing. The function is still well-defined, and I substituted x in place of y, and the result is the same result. If the function says that f of x,y is eighty lashes, then f of x,x is also eighty lashes. Okay? Meaning, he presents all these examples as examples that basically express the halakhic rule concerning self-reference. From the perspective of Jewish law, self-reference is well-defined—of course it is not paradoxical—and it obligates twice.
Basically, we are performing estrangement here, right? What does estrangement mean? I relate—say I round off my own hairline—then the one doing the rounding is the subject and the one rounded is the object. The object is the one upon whom the act is done. Okay? Now, when it is the same person—I round myself—then I perform estrangement. What does that mean? It is as though the object is recognized as foreign to the subject. It’s as if these were two different people. I relate to it as two separate people and ignore the knowledge I have, somewhere behind consciousness, that this is really the very same person. That is the act of estrangement we spoke about a lot in the conceptual introduction. That is basically what the Atvan DeOraita is saying. From the standpoint of Jewish law, when there is self-reference, it performs estrangement. Translated into our language, that is basically the Atvan DeOraita’s rule. And therefore, once we perform estrangement, from our point of view these are two people. Each of them is liable for forty lashes. Oops—on the same person? Then he gets the whole eighty. Fine? There is no problem at all. We are indifferent to the identity of the person. Who the person is that stands here—that doesn’t interest us.
Now I want to make an observation, to raise a question here, and this is the point that troubles me in the Atvan DeOraita, as I said in the introduction. Let’s talk for a moment about other examples where somehow intuition says no—it doesn’t make sense to speak about self-reference in this way. Let’s take, for example, a person who lent himself money with interest. What do you say? After all, both the lender and the borrower violate a prohibition. Both the lender and the borrower. What happens if a person lends himself money with interest?
[Speaker D] Nothing happened there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning nothing happened.
[Speaker D] What does it mean, he lent himself money? The money didn’t move anywhere.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. So then here this matter does not belong to the discussion of the Atvan DeOraita. Because my lending to myself is not—there was no loan here. Money didn’t pass from someone to someone. When I round myself, there was someone who rounded and there was someone who was rounded. It just happens to be the same person.
[Speaker D] And not only that—there’s also a result. There is also a result, that here there is a rounded person.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and at the same time there was also an action in which a person rounded. Both things exist here. It just happens to be the same person, but the fact that it’s the same person doesn’t change the fact that there was an act of rounding and there is someone who was rounded. In lending to myself, there was no act of lending. I did not receive a loan, and I also did not give a loan, because a loan from my pocket to myself is not defined as a loan at all. What does that mean? It means that in the prohibition of lending with interest—or in the very concept of a loan—otherness is essential. Without otherness, the act is not defined at all. It’s not that perhaps otherness creates some problem and I need to perform estrangement in order to solve the problem. It’s not that otherness creates a problem. The moment there is no otherness, the concept does not exist; this is not a loan. Therefore, the lender and borrower have to be different. That is not the case with the one who rounds and the one who is rounded. Otherness there is incidental. It happens that there are two different people here. It could have been the same person; that doesn’t fundamentally change the situation. In the case of a loan, otherness is part of the definition of the situation. If there is no otherness, then there is no loan here. In such a situation you cannot perform estrangement. What would I have to do in order to define this thing anyway? I would have to treat the lender and borrower as though they were two different people and forget that in reality they are the same person. But you can’t forget that, because in the final analysis, the fact that in reality it is the same person doesn’t allow me to perform estrangement on the legal level. I said that on the level of reality you can’t perform estrangement. Estrangement is always done on the legal, normative level. As if you were another person—and you are not another person, you are the same person. Here in this case the problem lies on the level of reality, not the legal level. So estrangement is irrelevant. Estrangement is a fiction. Estrangement means: as if there were someone else here. On the legal level I see it as if there were someone else here. But if my problem is on the level of reality and not on the legal level, then estrangement is not relevant. And therefore, one who lends himself money with interest cannot be said to have violated two prohibitions.
Let’s take another example.
[Speaker G] Rabbi, the example of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll address it. Maybe one more sentence. In lending with interest, it could be explained—I explained it on the conceptual level and not on the halakhic level, and that’s why I said that the concept of estrangement is not relevant. Okay? But you could also explain it on the halakhic level. Let’s say that lending to myself is indeed conceptually defined as a loan, for the sake of discussion, okay? Even so, what is the prohibition of lending with interest? The prohibition of lending with interest is to harm someone and take more money from him than I gave him—let me formulate it as an offense between one person and another. It’s not entirely clear that this is so, but for the sake of discussion. It may be that in such a situation, once again, otherness is essential otherness. Because when I harm someone else, I have a prohibition against harming him. But if I harm myself, then first of all I didn’t really harm another, but also there is no prohibition against harming myself. Just as committing suicide is not called murder. Committing suicide is not called murder—why? Because murdering someone means doing something to someone else. When you do something to yourself, otherness is essential. Otherness is essential not in the conceptual sense—you can say that conceptually this is also an act of murder—but in the evaluative, normative sense. The prohibition involved here essentially includes the fact that I do this to someone else. When I throw your money into the sea and when I throw my money into the sea, you cannot say that one can perform estrangement here and that I violated the same prohibition. When I threw your money into the sea, I damaged you. When I threw my money into the sea, I damaged myself. But harming myself is not prohibited. I am allowed to harm myself. There may perhaps be a prohibition of wasteful destruction here, but not the prohibition of damaging another. Okay?
So one can explain that estrangement is irrelevant here, first, on the conceptual level, because simply this is not a loan when I lend to myself; second, on the normative level, because lending myself money with interest is not prohibited. The prohibition involved requires otherness—not the reality of the loan, but the prohibition involved. But either way, these two explanations share a common side: otherness here is essential. This is not a case where you can say, okay, let’s perform estrangement and ignore the fact that there is no otherness. No—if there is no otherness, then something essential is missing from the situation. Let’s look at another example.
[Speaker D] It’s also defined in the verse.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What?
[Speaker D] Rabbi, I’m saying it’s defined in the verse: “You may charge a foreigner interest, but to your brother you shall not charge interest,” meaning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but “your brother”—we already said about that that I am my own brother; we have the same parents.
[Speaker D] That’s the first example, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi—
[Speaker G] And in the previous example we dealt with, of the one who rounds and the one rounded, is the assistant also self-reference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What assistant?
[Speaker G] Whether that can also be self-reference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, self-reference? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker G] The assistant, the assistant—the interpretive setup the Talmud made for “assistant.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in the case of assistance, the one doing the rounding is someone else from the one being rounded. The one being rounded performs an act by assisting.
[Speaker G] I thought the one being rounded assists the one doing the rounding.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but the one doing the rounding is someone else. It’s not that the one doing the rounding rounds himself and assists himself.
[Speaker G] Right, but assisting—assisting to round himself. Yes, that’s also a kind of self-reference, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, why? He is rounding me, and I help him round me. So I’m the one being rounded—just an active one being rounded, so I deserve lashes for that. I don’t see self-reference here. Even when I put on tefillin, that’s self-reference—I put tefillin on myself. That’s not called self-reference. Fine? I’m doing something with my body, with myself.
[Speaker G] Yes, but when he assists, he assists—as if he is the one assisting in the rounding—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the assistant is both the one doing the rounding and the one being rounded? No, no. He is assisting someone else who is doing the rounding. Someone else is doing the rounding and I assist him. That’s not self-reference. So what if he is rounding me.
Let’s look. I mentioned the example of Adi Tzemach, who wanted to ground my moral obligation to care for someone else in the fact that I care for my future self. Remember that example? When I care for my future self, he claims that my self as I will be in the future is like another person from who I am now in the present. I have different memories, I may even look different, weigh differently, I’ve changed—it’s a different person. So why do I care about myself ten years from now? Because I care about someone else. So care about someone else for real too—someone else at the same time, simultaneously, yes? That’s his claim. Now say—why did he need the assumption that I, ten years from now, am someone else? He could have said: from the fact that you care about yourself, care also about someone else.
[Speaker H] No, because caring about yourself is not essentially the same as caring about someone else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly the same example. Otherness here is essential. Meaning, caring about yourself and caring about someone else—true, maybe both are called “caring”—but the evaluative meaning of them is completely different. Caring about yourself is egoism, and caring about someone else is altruism. You can’t say, well, if you care about yourself then care about him too; that’s a verbal analogy. He had to assume that I in ten years am someone else, and then you can argue that if I care about myself in ten years, why shouldn’t I care about someone else. Fine, that’s casuistry, one can of course argue with it, and it’s nonsense.
[Speaker D] That’s someone else caring about someone else, Rabbi. What? If I care about myself in ten years, that’s someone else caring about someone else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I now care about someone else, right?
[Speaker D] But relative to the one I cared about, I’m also someone else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, obviously. He is different from me, I am different from him—sure. That’s obvious. I’m now asking whether I need to care about a third person. So I’m saying: if I care about myself ten years from now, why shouldn’t I care about someone else standing next to me now? He is other and he is other. Just as I care about him, so too I should care about him. Fine, let’s not get into that casuistry. I’m bringing it only as an example of another situation in which otherness is essential. Meaning, you couldn’t make that argument on the basis of “if you care about yourself, care about him too.” That doesn’t work. You had to say: you care about yourself ten years from now, and your future self is someone else, so care also about someone else. That’s an argument one can maybe at least hear. Why? Because from the fact that I care about myself, I cannot infer the conclusion that I must also care about someone else. Caring about myself is egoism. Caring about someone else is altruism. You can’t derive altruism from egoism.
Sometimes in psychology they tell us: if you want to improve in helping others, think of it as though by doing so you are also helping yourself. Expand your self and include others in it. That can help you develop concern for others, but that’s psychology, not ethics. It’s only a tactic for how to carry something out; it’s not a justification for why one really ought to do it. So in fact all these examples are examples of situations in which otherness is essential otherness. So on that the Atvan DeOraita, of course, is not speaking. He is speaking about examples like rounding, like someone who has intercourse with himself, and so on and so on.
What happens, for example—I’ll give you another question. On the Sabbath there is an exemption for a case where two people do it together, right? Two people take an object and carry it from a private domain to a public domain. Then they are exempt. Fine. So now I’ll hold the object with my two hands, yes, and we’ll see that as “two who did it,” and I’ll be exempt. Again, perform estrangement on myself and exempt it under the rule of “two who did it.” As though I’m holding with my right hand and myself is holding with my left hand, and the two of us take the object from a private domain to a public domain—“two who did it,” I’m exempt. Yes? Two forces in one person—this begins to come closer to the issue, the topic we’ll reach later. So of course this is irrelevant. Why is it irrelevant? Because here too otherness is essential otherness. In a place where the normal way to carry the object is by one person, then when two people do it, that’s an unusual act, and therefore you are exempt. But if one person holds it with two hands, that is not an unusual act. That’s how one carries the object. So otherness here is essential to the exemption of “two who did it.” You can’t substitute yourself in place of another person. For example, in a place where in fact two are really needed to carry the object—this one cannot and that one cannot do it alone—then there is no exemption of “two who did it.” That’s how this object is carried. Okay, so once again this is an example of a case in which otherness is essential. You can’t put myself in place of someone else and claim that the conclusions don’t change.
[Speaker B] Okay, now let’s look at an example from the Atvan DeOraita.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And one should note here from what we say in Sanhedrin 112: They asked: if they were led astray by themselves?” Like the people of an idolatrous city who led themselves astray to worship idols. No outsiders came and led the city astray; rather, the people of the city led themselves astray. “What is the law?” What’s the law in such a case? “‘And they shall lead astray,’ the Merciful One said.” Yes? It says in the verse: “Lawless men have gone out from your midst and led astray the inhabitants of their city.” And not that they were led astray by themselves. “Or perhaps even if they were led astray by themselves.” End quote from the Talmudic text.
And it is explained here that where the Torah spoke of an action a person performs on another—the one who leads others astray—the Talmud asks whether that law also applies when the activation was from the person himself toward himself. And there in Sanhedrin it remains an unresolved question; look there carefully. So the Talmud remains in a teiku; the question is unresolved. Seemingly, we saw three examples that when a person acts upon himself, we perform estrangement and from our point of view it is like two different people. So why doesn’t the Talmud here say that if people led themselves astray, then the law of an idolatrous city applies there too? “And if so, it is difficult: why is the question not obviously resolved from Makkot and Sanhedrin, where we say that when the Torah imposed liability for acting upon another, then that liability also applies when the action was from the person himself upon himself, as above? And one must distinguish between a practical action—like the active and passive participants, and the one who rounds and the one rounded—and incitement and leading astray, which is an intellectual and contemplative action.” To lead someone practically to idol worship is an intellectual, mental action. To round oneself, to have intercourse with oneself—that is a practical action. What’s the difference? He says: “It is more appropriate to say, regarding a practical action, that the person himself acts and is acted upon, than to say regarding a person that he incites and leads himself astray.” And of course, analyze this carefully. What is he saying?
[Speaker D] This distinction—why is there such a distinction? If he incites himself—if a person otherwise wouldn’t do it, and he incites himself, persuades himself—why shouldn’t that be like the active and passive sexual roles? Why shouldn’t that be like the one who rounds and the one rounded?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. What do you say? Good question. What do you say?
[Speaker H] Exactly as we said: to incite someone—I cannot incite myself. Why—
[Speaker D] Why not?
[Speaker H] Because if I incite myself, that’s just what I think. To incite someone means to change his thought. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what you basically want to say is that—exactly. That the otherness—like what you said about repentance, yes—that’s exactly what Eliav said earlier. Here too the otherness is essential. That’s what I think the Atvan DeOraita means to say. The otherness here is essential. Why? Because here, again, you can say it in apparently two ways. The first way is what we’ve been saying until now. It connects to what we said about the paradox of repentance, that a person has to improve himself, change himself, in the framework of repentance. And what I said there was that this thing is not well-defined. Why? Because if you hold, say, a set of values X, and now you want to change yourself, to cause yourself to hold a set of values Y—once you as subject influence yourself as object, then you as subject already think that system Y is the correct one, otherwise you wouldn’t be convincing the object to move to system Y. But if you already know that that is the correct system, then you are already convinced; there is no one to convince. So here in fact—how, in the language I used now, do I formulate it? The otherness here is essential. Without the persuader and the persuaded being different people, the concept of persuasion does not exist. Incitement and leading astray. That is basically what he is saying. Therefore—so you see that here he is aware of the conceptual analysis I made earlier, when I said that there are all sorts of examples showing that when otherness is essential, that’s not what is under discussion. Here the Atvan DeOraita says that without making the prior conceptual analysis. He says it as an answer to a difficulty, because he’s a Polish Talmudist. But basically—do you understand?—there’s a conceptual analysis here. When he speaks about essential otherness, he is basically saying: in places where there is essential otherness, I am not speaking about them. I speak only where the otherness is incidental, not essential.
What is interesting in this context is to look at his continuation, although it’s not that important for our purposes. See what he says next: “And one can further say”—a second answer—“that when a person is led astray and enticed by another, his sin is not as great as when he worships idols on his own initiative. And therefore the Talmud needed to ask, because perhaps when they led themselves astray their sin is more severe, and they are not atoned for by the sword, as an idolatrous city led astray by another is atoned for.” He turns it upside down. He says it could be that when you were led astray by someone else, your punishment is death by the sword. Why? Because your sin is not so severe. If you lead yourselves astray, then you won’t have the punishment of the sword. Why? Because it is too severe to be atoned for by death by the sword. Not because it is less severe, but because it is more severe. A bit like “we do not derive punishments by inference,” where some explain that we don’t derive punishments by inference because perhaps the more severe offense is too severe, and the punishment of the lighter one is not enough for it, and therefore we don’t punish the severe with the punishment of the lighter.
[Speaker D] But isn’t an idolatrous city something extremely severe—they burn everything and it’s forbidden to benefit from it and it may never be rebuilt? It’s something—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says that if the person does it on his own, it’s even worse. He deserves an even more severe punishment, and they’ll deal with him in the World to Come. Fine? That’s the second possibility. What’s the difference between this possibility and the previous one? From the perspective of—leave aside now the laws of an idolatrous city—from the perspective of the conceptual analysis we made. This is essential otherness on the normative level, not on the practical conceptual level. Right? What I said earlier there was that a person inciting himself is not defined as incitement at all; there is no such thing. That action requires there to be otherness. If there is no otherness, the action is not defined. Here his assumption is that perhaps the action is defined, but the prohibition requires otherness, because otherwise it is less severe—or more severe, sorry. If it is the same person himself, then it is more severe. So here otherness is essential, but it is essential to the normative layer, not to the factual layer. Exactly like the two possibilities I spoke about earlier regarding lending with interest. Remember? Lending with interest—I said either my loan to myself is not a loan at all, so on the factual level you simply need otherness. Otherness is essentially required in order to define the concepts, so that the fact at the factual level is a loan. The second possibility I said was that the prohibition against lending with interest to another requires that it be to someone else, because lending yourself money with interest is not prohibited, even if you define it as a loan. It’s not prohibited; you didn’t harm someone else. That is otherness required in order to define the prohibition, not in order to define the concept. These are basically the two directions the Atvan DeOraita is speaking about here. In any case, for our purposes—what?
[Speaker I] What about slander? If a person says about himself and speaks slander without telling it to anyone else?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Ask a better question. Telling slander to oneself has no meaning, because he already knew it beforehand.
[Speaker I] No, not about himself. He tells slander about someone else, but without telling it to anyone—he just says it out loud.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So as I said, if he says it to himself, he knew it already beforehand. So how is that relevant? The point of telling slander is that you bring to someone’s attention facts that harm someone else, but here it was already in my knowledge. I said it out loud because I already knew it. The question raised here is famous in the name of the Chafetz Chaim. It’s an oral story that goes around, and I’ve heard several people swear that it can’t be true. I don’t know if I’d swear, but I also think it can’t be true. He once traveled on a train, and someone sat down next to him, next to the Chafetz Chaim. Someone sat next to him and told him wonderful praises about—he didn’t know this was the Chafetz Chaim. He says to him: listen, there is Rabbi Yisrael Meir from Radin, the priest from Radin, an exemplary figure—and he told him stories about what wonderful traits he had. So the Chafetz Chaim calms him down and says to him, leave it, he’s not so great, he has these flaws and those flaws and he’s not exactly as you think. And then—I don’t remember exactly how the story goes—something happened to him and he attributed it to the fact that he had spoken slander about himself. A person is forbidden to speak slander about himself. Okay?
Now this is a better example than what you suggested earlier, because here I told slander about myself to someone else.
[Speaker J] I brought—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I brought it to the knowledge of someone who didn’t know it. Okay? So that really is slander. But there is still some kind of self-reference here, because in the end I am telling the faults of myself. The content of the account is myself. I relate to myself. And here I think this is a very interesting example, because here I think otherness is required on the normative level, not on the factual level. Right? Telling someone else faults of my own self is slander in every factual respect.
[Speaker H] No, no, no, that’s not slander. Slander means harming someone.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here I’m harming me.
[Speaker H] Wait—I’m speaking on the normative level.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the point. From the perspective of whether there was an account of bad facts about one person to another person—that’s true even if the facts I told were about me. What you’re saying is only that the prohibition is not defined without otherness.
[Speaker B] So—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, because I didn’t harm someone else, I harmed myself. Harming myself is not a problem. Exactly. This is a perfect example where otherness is essential, but it is essential on the normative level, not on the factual level.
[Speaker H] Right, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But, Rabbi, when I harm myself, I have the right to harm myself. But when the other person does not know that it’s myself, like in the story about the Chafetz Chaim—
[Speaker H] In that story, the Chafetz Chaim speaks slander about himself, but that person doesn’t know it’s the Chafetz Chaim. So what? If he did know, then what? If he knows, then it’s my right—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he knows, then it’s my right to harm myself. And now the listener doesn’t know that I’m harming myself; he thinks I’m harming someone else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know. But I, the one speaking slander—he didn’t accept the slander, but I spoke… If he didn’t accept the slander, he didn’t violate a prohibition. Fine, but I said slander, so I violated a prohibition. Okay, so whether he knows or doesn’t know is not relevant. I told slander. There is room to discuss what happens when he knows that it’s a story about myself. Then even someone who says that if he doesn’t know, there is a prohibition, maybe when he knows—I don’t know—there may perhaps be room to say that there would be no prohibition in such a case.
[Speaker D] Why should there be a prohibition? A person can say whatever he wants about himself, and the other person hears him. He talks to the other and says—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] bad things about himself, so it’s his right. I also think there is no prohibition, but there are those who claim that there is. The question is whether those who claim there is would agree that if the listener knows it’s about me myself, maybe even they would admit there is no prohibition. I myself think there is no prohibition even if they don’t know. Fine? So that is the difference between otherness on the normative level and on the factual level.
For our purposes, the conclusion that emerges up to this point is that the Atvan DeOraita, his entire discussion in this topic, is only in a place where otherness is not essential otherness. Right? But now I no longer understand his question. And we saw that he himself is aware of this: when otherness is like in the case of someone inciting himself—when otherness is essential otherness—that is not under discussion. Meaning, the discussion here is where otherness is not essential, right? Now explain to me: so what is he talking about? Let’s say that in rounding and being rounded this is a case where otherness is not essential, or one who lies with and is lain with—there the otherness is not essential. So there is a prohibition on the one who rounds and a prohibition on the one who is rounded, right? And it doesn’t matter whether this is another person or not another person on the essential level. So what is the side of the argument that if it’s the same person, he should not get eighty lashes? Obviously he gets eighty. He violated the prohibition of the one who rounds and the prohibition of the one rounded. If a person does both a Sabbath prohibition and a Jewish holiday prohibition, wouldn’t he violate two prohibitions because he did two prohibitions? Why? He did two different prohibitions. What is the argument for saying that he should not get lashed twice?
[Speaker H] No, I didn’t understand. Now that you have the answer, you’re saying there is no question?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. No, I don’t have an answer. On the contrary, I said this is not an answer. I narrowed the question. I said his question cannot deal with cases where otherness is required essentially. Rather what? It deals with cases where otherness is incidental. We’re talking about two people. Sometimes they’re two different people, sometimes it’s the same person, but the case is well-defined, the prohibition is well-defined, everything is defined properly, right? That is what the Atvan DeOraita’s discussion deals with. What? But I don’t understand—if that is what the discussion deals with, then there is no room for discussion there. Because if there is a prohibition of the one who rounds and a prohibition of the one rounded, and there is no problem either in defining the rounding or in the prohibition of rounding—there is no problem in the fact that there is no otherness here—well then, I committed the prohibition of the one who rounds and the prohibition of the one rounded. I committed two prohibitions. Why shouldn’t I get lashed twice? If I selected and trapped on the Sabbath, am I not liable twice, two sin-offerings? Why shouldn’t I get lashed twice? I don’t understand the discussion. If otherness is essential, then that isn’t under discussion at all, because there I could understand the side that says you’d get only one set of lashes—or really, there it wouldn’t be true that you violated a prohibition at all; there is nothing. When there is no otherness, there is nothing. So therefore it’s clear that the Atvan DeOraita is not speaking about such cases, but rather about cases where otherness is incidental. But in places where otherness is incidental, then really what’s the problem? Give a warning and there are two… You violated the prohibition of the one who rounds and the prohibition of the one rounded. You don’t even need to make a big deal of the warning. You violated the prohibition of the one who rounds and the prohibition of the one rounded—these are two different prohibitions. And since you violated two prohibitions, you get eighty lashes. So what exactly is—
[Speaker H] Is that his whole discussion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.
[Speaker H] I didn’t understand what he is saying in his words. He says that there is—that one needs to do a warning, and afterwards he qualifies it and says that you need incidental otherness and not essential otherness and so on and so on. His whole discussion is what you explained to us. But after you explained it to us, I’m saying: what’s the novelty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The novelty is that when people commit two prohibitions they are liable for two sets of lashes?
[Speaker H] No—when they commit one prohibition upon themselves.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not one prohibition. It’s two prohibitions. There is the prohibition of the one who rounds and the prohibition of the one rounded.
[Speaker H] It’s in the same act, Rabbi Kook.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? There is one act for which a person can be liable to eight sin-offerings. In one act he plows with an ox and a donkey together on a Jewish holiday that falls on the Sabbath during the Sabbatical year.
[Speaker H] Rabbi, then ask that on the Talmud itself—ask it on Makkot 20. Why on the Atvan DeOraita? Ask it on the Talmud itself. The Talmud is what introduces the novelty that the one who rounds and the one rounded get lashes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. The Talmud introduces the novelty that there is a prohibition on the one rounded. He says: after the Talmud introduced the novelty that there is a prohibition on the one who rounds and on the one rounded, what happens when the one who rounds and the one rounded are the same person? What do you mean, what happens? If there is a prohibition on the one who rounds and a prohibition on the one rounded, and if it’s the same person, then that person did two prohibitions, so he gets lashed twice.
[Speaker H] That’s Rava himself. It’s not the Atvan DeOraita who introduced this. It’s Rava in the Talmud who says there that if he rounds himself off he gets lashes. That’s Rava’s answer.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he’s not coming to introduce that. He’s coming to explain how there can be a case where the one rounded gets lashes. Because after all, the one rounded performs no act. So he says: when he rounds himself. Fine. But he’s not introducing the novelty that eighty lashes can apply to one person. Of course it can; he committed two prohibitions, so he gets lashed twice. If this were all just because of the act, Rava wouldn’t have opened his mouth. But according to the Atvan DeOraita this is not relevant. Even if it were in one act, there would have to be a novelty here that it is eighty and not forty. Why? He did two prohibitions, so why shouldn’t he get eighty? So whichever way you look at it: if he’s speaking about a situation where otherness is essential otherness, then there truly there is no discussion at all. Certainly he would not get even one set of lashes, not just that he would not get two. So there’s nothing—
[Speaker H] to discuss at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore it is clear that the Atvan DeOraita—
[Speaker H] is speaking about cases where the otherness—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is incidental.
[Speaker H] But in cases where the otherness is incidental, what is there to discuss?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously he gets lashed twice. Either way, he gets lashed twice. There’s nothing to discuss. But he teaches us these things. What? I didn’t understand. There’s nothing to discuss, but he teaches us these things, and without him we wouldn’t—teaches us what? Every such section is devoted to some novelty. What is the novelty? That someone who both traps and selects is liable to two sin-offerings? He committed two prohibitions, so he gets lashed twice. Fine, thank you very much. The whole Talmud is full of that: someone who commits two prohibitions gets lashed twice.
[Speaker I] Maybe he is unsure whether here the otherness is essential or not.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.
[Speaker I] Maybe he is unsure whether in this case the otherness is essential or not.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That can’t be the meaning of his words. I’ll tell you why. Because if that were the uncertainty, then what room would there be to compare the passages to one another and ask from one on the other? Maybe in the case of the one who rounds and the one rounded, otherness is or isn’t essential, while in Sanhedrin, in the one who incites and leads astray, otherness is essential. That’s why I prefaced and said that he is not discussing the definitions of the one who rounds and the one rounded. He is discussing a broad, meta-halakhic topic: what is the law with self-reference? From his standpoint, all the passages are examples of the same rule, and I am asking: what is the rule talking about?
[Speaker B] Okay—
[Speaker H] So in short you’re asking: isn’t it obvious?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Not “isn’t it obvious”—what do you mean, “obvious”? It’s clear that he’s not talking about that, so what is he talking about? Okay, let’s stop here. Next class we’ll continue. If anyone wants to ask or comment—
[Speaker J] Is there Alena’s class tomorrow?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not mine in any case. There is, after all, an alternating weekly schedule there. I don’t know whether the other class is taking place, but mine isn’t. More power to you, thank you.
[Speaker H] Okay, so in short, in the end we’re left with one question about the Atvan DeOraita: it’s obvious that what he says is obvious, that’s all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Two offenses—one gets lashed for them twice, obviously. Or in other words, I’m asking why he thinks this is a question of self-reference at all. There’s no shortage of self-reference. A person committed two offenses, he gets lashed twice. The Atvan DeOraita clearly understands that there is some principle of self-reference here, and it could be that self-reference would obligate only one set of lashes and not two. But if these are two offenses, then it’s not self-reference. You said two offenses—then get lashed twice.
[Speaker H] That’s basically my question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in this case it is—
[Speaker H] the one who rounds and the one rounded—it’s one offense. No, it’s two offenses, because both the one who rounds and the one rounded get lashes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is one offense—
[Speaker H] of two people, and in this case—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] it is one person, so here there is—
[Speaker H] one offense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not one offense of two people. It’s—
[Speaker H] two people who committed an offense. No, it’s two people who committed an offense, like one passes it and one carries it out. Is the offense defined over two people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either it is forbidden to be the one rounded, or it is forbidden to perform the act of rounding, or both. Both, yes. Okay, if both, then these are two offenses: to perform the act of rounding and to be the one rounded. Okay, next time we’ll talk about that. Thank you. Fine, Sabbath peace, goodbye.
[Speaker B] Sabbath peace.