Innovation, Conservatism, and Tradition – Lesson 11
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Principled opposition to conservatism and innovation as extraneous considerations
- Historical context, academic research, and the traditional fear of dissolving dispute
- Rejecting the denial of influence and drawing a line between a trigger and a halakhic argument
- The scholar versus the decisor: characterizing tendencies versus ruling “to the best of one’s understanding”
- Distinguishing between “illegitimate conservatism” and conservatism as adherence to binding principles
- Moving to examine Reform through Moshe Zemer and posing the question: “what lies outside the map?”
- The swimsuit parable and the mapping to a midrashic conservative, a plain-text conservative, and a heretic
- Adding the axis of “intensity of commitment” and defining the Reform person as partially committed
- Distinguishing between Reform and Conservative, and between intensity and scope
- Morality and Jewish law: conflict as an indication of full commitment versus Reform’s “no conflict”
- Stomachaches, awareness of the price, and the difference between an “emotional” solution and an analytical understanding of tension
- Closing remarks and further clarifications about classifying arguments
Summary
General Overview
The text summarizes a principled stance against adopting halakhic conclusions on the basis of conservatism or innovation as extraneous considerations, and distinguishes between scholarly analysis of historical context and conscious use of context as a decisional argument. It presents the dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot in the laws of martyrdom as an example of how a contextual explanation threatens the very form of traditional analytic thinking, and then argues that such influences do exist but are not supposed to function as an explicit consideration for the halakhic decisor himself. It then moves to define Reform not as just another “kind of midrash,” but as a different axis altogether—namely, the intensity of commitment to Jewish law—and distinguishes it both from Conservative Judaism and from cases of moral conflict among Orthodox Jews. Finally, it prepares the ground for an analysis of Moshe Zemer’s book A Sensible Halakha in order to show what counts as a Reform argument and what might still count as a legitimate argument even within a Reform framework.
Principled opposition to conservatism and innovation as extraneous considerations
The speaker opposes both conservatism and innovation because both adopt theses on the basis of external reasons—either because “that’s how it’s always been until now” or because “it’s different from what it used to be.” He demands that every claim be examined “on its own merits,” without giving independent weight to whether it continues the past or departs from it. He applies this principle both to halakhic ruling and to broader beit midrash discourse.
Historical context, academic research, and the traditional fear of dissolving dispute
The text presents a debate between critical approaches that attribute halakhic positions to environmental and historical influences and an apologetic response that denies influence and claims that “our sages were like fiery angels on high.” It uses the dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot regarding sanctification of God’s name and self-sacrifice to illustrate a common scholarly claim: that the Crusades and a Christian environment pushed Tosafot toward expanding martyrdom, while a different setting among the sages of Spain and Maimonides encouraged restricting martyrdom and emphasizing the value of life. It describes how a view that attributes these positions mainly to circumstances leads to an extreme conclusion: that there is really “no method of Maimonides and no method of Tosafot,” halakhic ruling becomes a comparison of circumstances rather than analysis of Talmudic passages, and even the dispute itself is emptied of content.
Rejecting the denial of influence and drawing a line between a trigger and a halakhic argument
The speaker rejects the claim that sages are not influenced by history, society, and sociology, and says this is “nonsense,” because “the Torah was not given to ministering angels.” He accepts that context exerts real influence, but argues that the halakhic position must still “stand on its own,” and that in analytic study and halakhic ruling one must not turn context into a decisive or explicit consideration. He adopts a formulation associated with Yitzhak Gilat in the book Chapters in the Development of Jewish Law, according to which pressures and circumstances serve as a trigger to delve more deeply into an issue and search for a path forward, but the final decision rests on an “internal halakhic consideration,” not on the pressure itself.
The scholar versus the decisor: characterizing tendencies versus ruling “to the best of one’s understanding”
The text distinguishes between a scholar who classifies decisors into categories such as conservative, innovative, stringent, and lenient, and a decisor who is forbidden to decide because he “wants to be stringent” or “wants to be lenient.” It argues that such tendencies do in fact exist, even in the schools of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but these are matters for retrospective analysis by scholars, not legitimate considerations consciously driving a halakhic ruling. It refers to questions about “the power of leniency is preferable” and limits that principle to contexts of need, citing the Rema in the introduction to Torat Chatat: he did not choose a lenient view that was interpretively illegitimate just in order to be lenient, but selected a lenient position from among valid options when there was a need.
Distinguishing between “illegitimate conservatism” and conservatism as adherence to binding principles
The speaker addresses an apparent contradiction between the claim that halakhic commitment is a form of “conservatism” and his principled opposition to conservatism. He defines “illegitimate conservatism” as accepting a position merely because it is the accepted one or because that is what people have done until now, even if another interpretation sounds reasonable. By contrast, when he uses the term conservatism in this series, he means fidelity to the principles of Jewish law and to binding, authoritative sources—in other words, preserving the “rules,” not sociological habits or frozen interpretations.
Moving to examine Reform through Moshe Zemer and posing the question: “what lies outside the map?”
The text describes the sense that, at least at first glance, one could translate even Reform into different shades of midrashic conservatism, so clarification is needed as to what exactly places it outside the map. The speaker recounts an initially hostile reading of the Reform rabbi Moshe Zemer’s book A Sensible Halakha, followed by a more sympathetic reading that left him perplexed, because it was hard to pinpoint exactly what was illegitimate and how it differed from Orthodox arguments. He argues that Conservative literature looks very similar to ordinary halakhic literature, and that there is no sharp line between the left wing of Orthodoxy and the right wing of Conservative Judaism, whereas Reform literature is thinner and at times Jewish law is no longer central within it. He presents Zemer as a test case “by way of negation” and stresses that he is classifying types of arguments, not people, and that even a Reform rabbi can at times offer arguments that fit within a conservative framework.
The swimsuit parable and the mapping to a midrashic conservative, a plain-text conservative, and a heretic
The speaker continues the “swimsuit parable,” in which tradition commands people to walk around in a swimsuit, and then moving to a cold region creates the need to choose. He maps three models: the heretic, who puts on a coat because “I don’t care what my ancestors did”; the midrashic conservative, who changes to weather-appropriate clothing by way of interpretation within the tradition; and the plain-text conservative, who stays in a swimsuit, period, even at the cost of suffering. He argues that this map appears complete, and therefore it is hard to produce an “intermediate model” for the Reform person who is not a heretic but also is not conservative in either of those two senses.
Adding the axis of “intensity of commitment” and defining the Reform person as partially committed
The text adds a “vertical axis” of intensity of commitment to Jewish law, and argues that the Reform person does not present a new kind of midrash but rather a level of obligation that is not full. It explains the move from dichotomous thinking to a continuum by way of the sorites paradox and fuzzy logic, and applies that to commitment: conservatives are committed at 100% and the heretic at 0%, while the Reform person moves along a continuum of 20%, 60%, 80%, and so on. It defines Reform as a state in which tradition is “dear” and important, but a person “will not pay any price” to uphold it once all considerations are taken into account, and where no internal traditional solution is available, the demand is cancelled because the price is not worth it to him.
Distinguishing between Reform and Conservative, and between intensity and scope
The speaker argues that Conservative Judaism operates from within full midrashic commitment, and therefore is not fundamentally distinct from midrashic conservatism. He distinguishes between someone who accepts only 99% of Jewish law in terms of scope—whom he defines as “a heretic with respect to that particular law”—and the Reform person, whose issue is not the scope of obligations but the intensity of obligation. He again emphasizes that the classification is a classification of arguments, and that in practice people may hold mixtures of arguments.
Morality and Jewish law: conflict as an indication of full commitment versus Reform’s “no conflict”
The text argues that commitment both to Jewish law and to moral values is not Reform, and can appear within an Orthodox position in which a person genuinely experiences conflict and sometimes decides in one direction and sometimes in another. It defines Reform by the fact that when the moral price is high, Jewish law simply “falls away” without conflict, because the commitment to Jewish law is not full, and therefore there is no real sense of tension between two binding demands. It offers the example of levirate marriage as an area where a Reform person would cancel it because it does not suit his values, whereas an Orthodox person would say that he has no way to change it in the absence of a valid conservative midrash. It adds that expanding the model of pashnisht is not the same thing, because pashnisht describes recognition of a transgression under constraint, not a change in the law or cancellation of the status of Jewish law.
Stomachaches, awareness of the price, and the difference between an “emotional” solution and an analytical understanding of tension
The speaker explains that the distinction between positions that may look similar in practice depends on the reasons and on awareness of the price, not on the behavioral bottom line. He uses the example of Lehava and the example of leasing land to describe situations in which the very recognition of the dilemma is significant, and prefers the formulation “an analytical understanding that there is a price” over a demand for actual emotional pain. He distinguishes between erasing one side in order to “feel whole” and keeping the other side alive as a way of understanding the value-costs of a decision.
Closing remarks and further clarifications about classifying arguments
The speaker returns to the point that he is not “defining people” but arguments, and notes that arguments of midrashic conservatism and models like pashnisht and “a transgression for the sake of Heaven” already exist in the Talmud and among halakhic decisors, and are sometimes referred to as “the fifth section of the Shulchan Arukh.” He refers to a side question about judging “a person according to his general method” and notes that he has a column about that on his website, and then closes with the blessing, “Shabbat shalom.”
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to begin with a comment that actually also concludes and summarizes my discussion of the map of Jewish conservatism—or really conservatism in general, not specifically Jewish. And then I’ll move on to the anti-thesis, to the other side, or to the “other side,” as it’s called in a literal translation. Regarding conservatism, I want to raise here a point that I’ve brought up several times on the website as well. I keep talking here about a map of different kinds of conservatism, with my assumption being that halakhic commitment has to fall under the heading of conservatism. It has to be some kind of conservatism; otherwise it’s not in the realm of—I don’t know whether to call it legitimate—but it’s not in the realm of someone committed to Jewish law. But both here and on my website, in a number of places, I’ve said more than once that in principle I’m opposed to conservatism. I oppose conservatism, and I also oppose innovation. I oppose the universe in general. Why? Because both conservatism and innovation are methods that are willing to adopt theses or arguments for extraneous reasons. Meaning, I adopt an argument or the conclusion of an argument because it fits what existed until now, because I’m conservative; or the innovator adopts an argument precisely because it’s different from what existed until now. But in my view, both this and that are irrelevant reasons. You have to examine the claim or the argument itself, on its own merits. What do I care whether it differs from what was before or continues what was before? Those are irrelevant considerations. And therefore, in principle, I oppose conservatism and innovation and all sorts of reasons that are not of the proper sort, not about the substance of the claim itself.
This does not mean—because in disputes between critical approaches, let’s call them, to Jewish law or to the Talmud, and traditional approaches, the argument is often conducted like this: the critics say, look, this law or this Talmudic passage or this statement was created against such-and-such a background—that is, under such-and-such an influence from the surrounding environment, from a beit midrash, from wherever. And the traditional apologist argues against that: what are you talking about? Our sages were fiery beings on high and were influenced by nothing. Because what is the fear of the traditional learner, or of someone learning in the beit midrash mode, in the face of statements like that? The fear is the conclusion that comes out of such statements. Let’s take the example I already brought here, and I’ll repeat it: the dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot, or between the sages of Spain and the sages of Ashkenaz, regarding self-sacrifice. As is known, Tosafot and the sages of Ashkenaz are very stringent in the laws of sanctifying God’s name and self-sacrifice. They permit giving up one’s life even for ordinary prohibitions, and in various aspects they move in a direction that encourages self-sacrifice—whether you call that being stringent or lenient, that’s another question. Maimonides goes in the opposite direction. Again, whether that’s stringent or lenient—but it’s the opposite direction. One who gives up his life for one of the prohibitions other than the three cardinal sins is liable for his own life. So basically it is forbidden to do such a thing, and so on. Meaning, there are several laws in which you can see that there is, as a common thread, a kind of basic conception that characterizes Maimonides, as against an opposite basic conception that characterizes Tosafot. Maimonides tends to restrict the possibility of self-sacrifice only to those places where it is required, and Tosafot tend to expand the permission—or even the obligation—to give up one’s life.
[Speaker B] But even in a time of persecution, according to Maimonides you give up your life for anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct.
[Speaker B] Right. So maybe the Crusades were a time of persecution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not necessarily. It could be a time of persecution; it depends what kind of decree it was, whether they were trying to force you to abandon the religion, what exactly they were trying to do there. But yes, in any case, on that there’s no dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot. So the claim, basically, is that the different views in this dispute—and of course in many other disputes as well—are a function of the circumstances that prevailed there, of various influences that affected Tosafot or Maimonides. Maimonides lived in a Muslim environment, Tosafot lived in a Christian environment, I don’t know—you can attribute it to many things. Yes, perhaps Christian martyrdom affected them. I’m making this up right now; I’m only giving examples, okay? So this scholarly claim—and scholarship often does appeal to context—says that one can understand the different views in this dispute, and generally, against the background of the circumstances, the environment, the time period, influences inside the beit midrash, outside the beit midrash, and so on.
Now, what is threatening about such a view? Why is the critical academic approach—however you want to call it—so disliked in the world of the classical beit midrash? Because you understand that the practical implication of that perspective is that there is no method of Maimonides and no method of Tosafot. In principle, what I’m really supposed to do—after all, Maimonides didn’t say what he said; the circumstances said it. And the same with Tosafot. So what I’m really supposed to do is look at the circumstances in which I live, figure out which of those two kinds of circumstances they more closely resemble, and on that basis determine Jewish law. That means you don’t need to enter the Talmudic passages, you don’t need to raise difficulties and propose resolutions about Maimonides and Tosafot, count decisors, follow the majority, follow reasoning—no, you don’t need to do any of that. You only need to see whether the circumstances in which I operate resemble those of Maimonides or those of Tosafot, and decide accordingly. I’ll say even more than that: according to this outlook, Maimonides and Tosafot didn’t really disagree at all. There was no dispute at all. In principle—of course I’m taking it to an extreme, but I just want to sharpen the point—if Maimonides had lived in the circumstances in which Tosafot lived and operated, he too would have said what they said. And conversely, if Tosafot had lived and operated in Maimonides’ circumstances. Again, that’s extreme, but that’s the direction this approach pulls toward. If that’s the case, then there is no real dispute. They are simply saying: under these circumstances the law is like this; under those circumstances the law is like that. That in itself no longer fits with the classical analytic mode of thinking, where you explain disputes through reasoning in this direction and reasoning in that direction, and so on. Therefore—and beyond that, as I said—halakhic ruling becomes completely detached from learning and from the Talmudic passages, and turns into a comparison of circumstances, a kind of scholarly exercise. Even halakhic ruling itself is basically done that way.
[Speaker C] Wait, but why do you have to take it to that extreme? It’s pretty obvious that circumstances influence Jewish law—you don’t have to be the greatest genius of the generation to know that. The context tells us that these and those are both the words of the living God, and that Jewish law will be ruled in each generation according to its judges. What’s the difference between the judges? A big part of it is also the circumstances. The fact that there were such circumstances doesn’t exempt us from dealing with the guidelines of Jewish law from previous generations, but the specific circumstances of each case and of each situation and of the generation and the period also enter into the equation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, what I said is—I said I’m taking it to an extreme. I’m taking it to an extreme because I want to demonstrate the concerns of the traditional beit midrash. You’re right that obviously no one says it’s only the circumstances and that there’s no dispute at all. I took it to the extreme in order to illustrate the point, that’s all. Now as a result of this, what happens—because of this fear—is that the traditional learner, or the traditional decisor, however you want to call him, basically entrenches himself in the opposite position. And he wants to claim: what are you talking about? Circumstances have no influence at all. Our sages were like fiery beings, as I said before. They were not subject to ordinary human influences. They were not products of their environment like regular people, and therefore one can discuss them completely detached from the circumstances. We are exempt from doing critical, historical, philological research—whatever you like. Maybe not philology, but critical and historical research. And philology, too, has to be solved in some other way, because that also is not done in the beit midrash. But that’s not this argument.
In any case, the opposite, defensive claim basically says that there were no such influences. Now that is of course nonsense. Meaning, sages throughout the generations were human beings. That may be their weakness, but it is also their greatness, because the Torah was not given to ministering angels. We’re talking about human beings applying the Torah in a human world, with human intellect, within human circumstances, under the constraints of history and society and sociology and whatever you like. Obviously. It’s nonsense. And again, of course this is an extreme nonsense against the approach I also presented in an extreme form from the scholarly-academic world. But in the end, what I want to claim is this: a scholar, for example, when he looks at some decisor—let’s speak about decisors—he can characterize him as a conservative decisor, an innovative decisor, a stringent decisor, a lenient decisor, this type or that type, tending in this direction or that direction, characterizing him in one way or another. That’s how academic research on a decisor’s teachings is done. It has become very popular lately; bit by bit they’ve even moved on to living decisors. That really is something—until now it was only decisors who had already passed away.
In any case, they do scholarly work on decisors and classify them according to their basic tendencies—yes? As I said: conservatism, innovation, stringency, leniency, and so on. And my claim is that, again, the research may well be correct; there’s no need to oppose that claim as such. If the research is done well, then it’s perfectly fine; if not, then not—but that has nothing to do with agendas and a priori stances. However, the decisor himself is not supposed to take those non-substantive considerations into account. When a decisor approaches an issue placed before him, he is not supposed to make the decision on the basis of, “I now want to be stringent, and therefore I’ll rule this way and not that way.” In my view that is an illegitimate consideration. Extraneous and illegitimate. The same is true, by the way, for a decisor who wants to be lenient. Also extraneous and illegitimate. The decisor has to study the issue, understand the circumstances before him, and decide what, in his view, Jewish law says about those circumstances. That doesn’t mean there are no decisors who tend toward stringency or leniency or originality or conservatism or innovation or whatever. Of course there are such tendencies among decisors. Even Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—toward stringency and leniency and so on. Not absolutely, but there is certainly a tendency. That’s obvious. But that is the business of the scholar researching that decisor. The decisor himself is not supposed to take those considerations into account. He has to decide, to the best of his understanding, what Jewish law says about these circumstances. After one examines all his decisions and his whole approach, and the scholar tries to characterize it, he can say this is a stringent decisor, this is an original decisor, this is one kind of decisor, that is another. That’s the scholar’s business, not the decisor’s.
And why? Because those considerations are extraneous considerations. The same thing I say about history and context, which I mentioned earlier. I’m not saying context doesn’t influence, and history doesn’t influence. Of course they do. But after they exert their influence, in the end the position adopted by the decisor is supposed to stand on its own. What led him to adopt that position may have been circumstances and influences and batei midrash and whatever you like. But at the end of the day, what stands before us is a position, and that position is supposed to be studied in its own right, independent of the context. Again, I’m overstating it. One can use context as an aid. But in principle, the influence of context certainly is not supposed to play a part in halakhic analysis, in halakhic ruling and analysis.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, doesn’t the rabbi see a flaw in the fact that decisors always hide behind this whole accounting system of analytic reasoning from earlier decisors in earlier generations, even though the rabbi himself says there are value considerations inside it that relate to the current situation and so on—but they won’t want to say them, they won’t put a matter-of-conscience argument forward openly as the leading thing—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The table on which I interpret the decisors—this is now a completely different question. You’re talking—but the question is whether to issue precedent-based rulings or independent rulings. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about taking context into account. That can exist both with a precedent-based decisor and with an independent decisor. The question is whether you take context into account within your considerations, or whether the scholar later says that the context caused you to shape or formulate such-and-such a halakhic conception. The second statement is entirely legitimate, and it can certainly also be true. The first approach, in my view, is illegitimate. Because I’m not supposed to say, well, I live in a Christian environment, so that affects me greatly, I’m in favor of martyrdom, and therefore I’ll be stringent in the laws of saving life. No, that’s not relevant. I need to apply my best understanding to the issue and rule on Jewish law. The scholar can later come and say: it may be that the environment influenced me. Fine. A person is a product of his environment. But that is not supposed to be a consideration that I myself take into account.
[Speaker D] So what, then, about Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s consideration of “the power of leniency is preferable”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That applies only where there is some situation of need or something like that. If it’s something else—there are places in Jewish law where you are lenient in a case of need. But if you have a doubt, then there’s no such thing as “the power of leniency is preferable.” If you have a doubt, then there are laws governing doubt. In general, the Rema writes in the introduction to Torat Chatat—he writes there that he has several very well-known leniencies. In general he was not a lenient decisor, but he has several very famous and even far-reaching leniencies. He writes there in the introduction that he never ruled leniently in a way that was contrary to Jewish law. He did not choose a path that was, in his view, not halakhically correct just in order to be lenient or respond to various pressures. Rather, from among the positions that were possible and the approaches that were possible or the rulings that were possible, if there was a place of need, then he chose a lenient position. But he does not take a position that is not legitimate in the interpretive, intrinsic, internal sense merely because of external circumstances. That does not happen. Because that would simply be using the Torah as a spade with which to dig. Fine, we’ll get back to that a bit more later. But in any case, that is my principled claim against conservatism and also against innovation. Of course, all these external arguments that are not simply analysis of the issue as I understand it are extraneous arguments. And not because they’re untrue—again, if someone from the outside looks at me and characterizes me, it may very well be that he sees I’m influenced by this or that and I tend toward stringency or leniency or whatever. But that’s his role. I’m not supposed to take that into account explicitly or openly, consciously, in my ruling. In my ruling, I say what I think. That’s the point.
[Speaker B] So then, rabbi, the decree about oil that they repealed—is that part of the halakhic conception, or did a situation simply come about?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re talking to me about decrees and their repeal—that’s a completely different issue.
[Speaker B] I’ll get to that later.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I was talking about interpretation.
[Speaker B] I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that distinction later. In any case, the claim is—and I’ll formulate it in a way I’ve already used when I discussed Yitzhak Gilat’s book Chapters in the Development of Jewish Law, and I said we’d come back to it later as well—the claim, basically, of Gilat in various contexts was that circumstances and context and pressures and whatever else did influence halakhic ruling. But—and I actually looked in the book in order to sharpen this point—he says very consistently that the circumstances were a trigger to enter more deeply into the issue, to turn over every stone, and to search for a lenient path. But in the end, the leniency is based on an internal halakhic consideration, not on the pressures. Meaning, the pressures were only the motivation to deal with the issue, but in the end, when I find a leniency or a stringency or whatever it may be, it is supposed to stand on the basis of pure, dry halakhic reasoning, independent of the circumstances. So there is a difference between looking at circumstances as context and looking at circumstances as a halakhic consideration. Those are two completely different things. I’ll return to these things later, which is why I’m bringing them up here now, but I just want to finish this remark.
So basically the claim is that conservatism is really an illegitimate stance, like innovation. All these extraneous positions, these extraneous considerations, are illegitimate. So why am I assuming here that commitment to Jewish law requires conservatism, and I’m only dividing it into different shades of conservatism or different types of conservatism—different shades of conservatism? How does that fit with the principled conception I presented against conservatism? So of course it’s not the same thing. Why? Because the concept of conservatism is being used here in a different sense from the one I used in the remark just now. The conservatism I’ve been talking about until now, in the last few minutes, is a conservatism that adopts things only because that’s how it has been customary until now. That’s how people have said it until now, and therefore, even though the argument may sound reasonable to me, I won’t adopt it because it’s a deviation from the accepted path, from the tradition. That is the kind of conservatism I consider illegitimate. But when I speak here about conservatism, I mean preserving the principles of Jewish law, not continuing what has been customary until now. Which principles of Jewish law? Those rooted in sources that are binding and authoritative—not simply because that was the practice until now. In the halakhic context, halakhic commitment clearly means fulfilling what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands. So if I take the principles that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me, then clearly I am supposed to be conservative with respect to them. Not with respect to what people interpreted until now or with respect to what people practiced until now, but conservative in the sense I’m using in this series means conservative in the sense of being faithful to the rules, not changing the rules. That is what I mean by conservative. It’s something entirely different. Clearly, halakhic commitment means fidelity to the rules. I’m against conservatism even in the halakhic context—but conservatism in the earlier sense I spoke about, conservatism in the sense that your interpretation sounds reasonable to me but it’s not customary to think that way, therefore I won’t accept it. Leave aside the laws of custom for the moment, but in principle. Okay? That kind of conservatism is illegitimate even in the halakhic context. So that’s the distinction between the use of the term conservative in our context and conservatism in general.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, one more small question? Yes. In this series the rabbi explained to us about midrashic conservatism and about Modern Orthodoxy, which can change Jewish law because of changed circumstances or changed values—like, change Jewish law because of changed circumstances or changed values. Why can’t we also describe the change in circumstances specific to a case as some kind of micro-change in values or micro-change in circumstances? After all, every case really is its own world. And once we—if we were to define it conceptually that way, that every case could be, not necessarily but could involve, a micro-change in values or a change in circumstances, and then in full conservatism we would ostensibly change Jewish law—that would work out beautifully.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t like staying in general discussions, so let’s take an example. Let’s take the example of the dispute about sanctifying God’s name that I mentioned earlier. Okay? What you’re basically claiming is, suppose Maimonides goes against the Talmud. Let’s say the plain sense of the Talmud actually goes like Tosafot, that one has to be stringent in matters of saving a life, and Maimonides wants to be lenient. So you suggest that we explain Maimonides on the basis of a conservative midrash. The Talmud was stringent because in the Talmudic period there were persecutions like the Crusades of Tosafot’s time. I live in a calmer period, and therefore that Jewish law was not said here. If you say that, then yes indeed, you really are conservative. No problem at all. But then it’s not that you formulate Jewish law because of the circumstances; rather, the circumstances are the basis for making a conservative midrash that interprets Jewish law and leads you to those conclusions. That’s not the same thing. We’ll see examples later of why that’s not the same thing. So that’s why I’m saying: it really is a somewhat subtle distinction, but clearly it’s not the same thing. More than that, when you create a dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot, then it’s not even relevant, because in the Talmud each of them simply understands it differently. They just interpret the Talmud differently. So here there is no conservative midrash. There are simply different interpretations. It’s not that someone is changing the law of the Talmud, rather they understand the Talmud differently. So that can’t be explained by a conservative midrash at all. Rather what? Either the circumstances caused it, or the circumstances only caused them to look at the Talmud differently. But now they look at the Talmud the way they look at it, and that is the result. But later it will come out more clearly, I hope, in just a moment. So that was the concluding comment on the issue of conservatism. Now I want to move to the next step. After I characterized conservatism and tried to present as broad, diverse, and inclusive a map as possible, to the point that in the end a question could arise: so why is Reform outside? It too can somehow be translated into one of the fruitful shades… that I sketched here. Where exactly is the difference, or where is the Reform position outside this map? So I spoke about this a bit, but I want to sharpen it more and bring examples. So what I— in order to put some flesh on these things, and I already basically said this in the past— what exactly is the difference? The Reform person doesn’t need a conservative midrash at all, neither on a value basis nor on a factual basis. But I want to demonstrate this in order to show the difference more sharply, because that will give us two possible principled gains. One gain is to understand that the approach I presented here, of Modern Orthodoxy in my definition, is not Reform; that is, it is a legitimate approach. And the second gain is to understand which arguments, despite their similarity to the arguments I’m talking about, are not legitimate. Even though I’m a very flexible conservative, there are things that are outside the framework. Because if there were no things outside the framework, then the definition of conservatism would remain empty. Clearly I need to explain what is outside in order to give some substance, to put some flesh on the framework I sketched. So I’m now moving to examine Reform, and I’ll do it through a book by a Reform rabbi named Moshe Zemer, he was, I think, the head of the Reform movement some time ago. And he wrote a book called Sane Jewish Law. I once came across this book and read it with great hostility; that was before I became a heretic. I read it with great hostility. The man doesn’t know how to learn, he understands nothing, he talks nonsense, he doesn’t know the medieval authorities or the later authorities. And little by little I said to myself: wait, wait, let’s stop for a second, stay calm, take a deep breath, let’s try to read this more sympathetically. It’s an interesting exercise. And I read it more sympathetically, and the truth is I got caught in the opposite embarrassment. Suddenly I didn’t understand what was Reform here, what was illegitimate, how this was really different from Orthodox arguments I know. Maybe he does more, maybe there’s a difference in degree, I don’t know, but there was some sense that there was a difference, yet it was very embarrassing to discover that I really couldn’t quite put my finger on it, define what exactly was different. That was one of the triggers for me to try to develop this orderly doctrine that I’m trying to present here. I’ll maybe say even more than that: there is Conservative Jewish law literature. Conservative Jewish law literature is of course richer than Reform literature. Conservative literature really resembles regular halakhic literature. The differences are fairly marginal differences, and generally not categorical differences, not black and white. More a matter of degree— maybe they dare more to go against the Talmud and not just against Maimonides or the medieval authorities— but the types of arguments and conservative midrashim found there basically appear exactly according to the patterns I described in this series. And when you read Conservative halakhic literature— aside from, I’ll say again, the fact that almost nobody there knows how to learn— but beyond that, on the principled level, there is no real difference. I read some book of responsa that they call the Rabbinical Assembly, and somehow at the end of every responsum written by every rabbi or female rabbi or whatever, at the end of every responsum they thank Professor David Golinkin. Meaning somehow it looked like he did the Talmudic heavy lifting for them and afterward they added decorations and flowers. And I also know the figures involved a little, so I think there’s something to that. It’s not only him; there are others who know a bit, but it’s not completely disconnected from the truth. But for our purposes, setting aside the criticism of the people, the arguments, the types of arguments, are arguments that basically could also be situated within Orthodox halakhic literature, at least a very large part of them. And sometimes at the margins you can feel that the tune is a little different. It’s very hard to put your finger on what the difference is, and indeed I said that Conservatism versus Modern Orthodoxy, in my opinion, really has no clear dividing line. It’s a bit of intuition, a bit of degree, and a bit that there really is no difference. The left wing of Orthodoxy and the right wing of Conservatism switched places long ago. But Reform halakhic literature, which is of course much thinner, is not only thinner but also older. Today’s Reform people I don’t know well enough, but I strongly doubt that they produce halakhic literature at all, because Jewish law no longer interests them all that much. Once, when they still tried to define themselves against Orthodox halakhic commitment— Orthodox— then they still engaged halakhic issues and explained how they learned them as opposed to Orthodoxy, and in any case still touched halakhic issues. There was some semi-halakhic, pseudo-halakhic, or genuinely halakhic discussion. But I think that in most cases this doesn’t happen at all, it simply doesn’t happen. They often don’t have the ability to do it, most of them, and that’s because they’ve basically become somewhat detached from Jewish law, and as I’ll try to show today, it’s not only that they became detached from Jewish law; they were detached from Jewish law from the beginning. It’s just that the last generation is more intellectually honest and already puts it on the table. The first generation had to hide this a bit, even from itself. I’m not saying they were deceiving; rather, they themselves weren’t prepared to look in the mirror and say, “I’m thumbing my nose at Jewish law.” In the current generation, I think it happens more easily. In any case, Zemer belonged to an earlier generation, and he wrote an actual halakhic book with halakhic considerations and issues, going through them one by one, devoting at the beginning some chapter to the foundations of his halakhic doctrine, what his whole halakhic thinking is based on. So in that sense it’s a fascinating book; it’s very useful for testing the definitions I proposed here, testing them by negation. Meaning, if it were to fit completely into the definitions I proposed here, that would be some kind of objection to what I defined here, but don’t worry, it doesn’t fit. So that’s what I want to do in a moment, and in the course of that I also want to show you that, as I said at the beginning of this series, I’m engaged here in classifying types of arguments, not classifying people or groups. There is of course a connection between types of arguments and groups and people, but it’s not the same thing. And I also want to show in Zemer’s book, and in the examples there, arguments that really can enter into conservative literature or one kind of Orthodox literature or another, even though he himself is a Reform rabbi. Meaning the fact that the framework of the discussion is Reform does not necessarily disqualify all the arguments that arise within it. There are arguments of one kind and arguments of another kind, and each argument must be discussed on its own merits. Therefore I’ll use arguments there to show two things: first, to show why this type of argument really is a Reform argument, and second, to show that not all of them are like that. Therefore sociology does not determine the essence. Sociology is more complicated than the essence, harder to define. Good, so that’s what I’m going to do, but first an introduction. I always need conceptual introductions first. I want to define the concept “Reform”; that’s a point I didn’t get to in the swimsuit parable. I’m now continuing the swimsuit parable. Until now I dealt with the conservative models that arise from the swimsuit parable and tried to deepen and detail the map of the different models. We talked about those who change swimsuits because they’re cold, those who change swimsuits because one should wear clothing appropriate to the weather, and those who don’t change and remain with a swimsuit. We talked about those three types and I identified them as a midrashic conservative, a plain-sense conservative, and a heretic. The heretic says: “I don’t care what my ancestors did, I don’t care about tradition, I go with what’s good for me, what’s comfortable for me.” The midrashic conservative says: “I change to clothes suited to the weather.” He makes a conservative midrash of the tradition he received. He says: “You need to wear not a swimsuit but clothes appropriate to the weather,” and that is what he preserves. Meaning, he is conservative. And the plain-sense conservative says: “You need to wear a swimsuit, period, not depending on circumstances.” By the way, the circumstances we discussed earlier. So those are the three models I’ve dealt with so far from within the swimsuit parable, and I spelled them out much more with arguments and examples and everything. I now want to continue the swimsuit parable in the direction of the Reform position and then move to Moshe Zemer. Okay? So now let’s try to think where on this map we would place the Reform argument. Right? Again: swimsuits, our ancestors wore swimsuits, tradition says you should wear swimsuits. They always lived in desert areas, hot regions. We arrive in a cold area. Okay? So the heretic says: “Why should I care about tradition? I’m wearing a coat.” The midrashic conservative says: “I’m wearing a coat because one must wear clothing appropriate to the weather.” So I’m fulfilling the tradition under these circumstances— “expound from it and from itself, and set it in its place.” The plain-sense conservative says: “I continue to wear a swimsuit because that is the tradition, and I am willing to pay prices in order to preserve tradition.” Now I ask: doesn’t that cover everything— what will the Reform person claim here that distinguishes him from the previous three models? And I want to sharpen this a little. The Reform person is not a heretic. If you identify a Reform person as a heretic, then there is no Reform, there are just heretics, period. But the claim of the Reform movement, at least, is that they are not secular. They are a different kind of religious people— yes, I’m using everyday language now. Meaning, it’s not the same thing. So you have to understand that they have some connection to tradition. It’s not that it doesn’t interest them, but it is a connection in some more flexible sense— I’m phrasing this very generally. And now I want to try to define this more. I want to see whether on the map I sketched there is still room; seemingly there isn’t, apart from the three channels or types of argument I sketched until now. What else could there be?
[Speaker E] I think it could be that our ancestors told us to adapt ourselves to the weather, but in that they also gave us the authority in other matters too to do what suits daily needs. Just as the changed weather is a component that gives us authority to interpret them, so too other things that change in life give us the authority.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, a midrashic soul. Where’s the Reform here?
[Speaker E] No, without now getting into the question of whether it’s weather or something else too general…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So why here are you entering the question of whether it’s weather? Then here too don’t enter the question.
[Speaker E] Because I want to create the root that they are still willing, after all, to go with tradition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I’m still— but I’m looking for consistency. What is the definition of a Reform argument? That it changes without a conservative midrash? If it changes without a conservative midrash, then apparently it doesn’t care. So then it cares about nothing— it’s a heretic. I’m looking for an intermediate model. I’m looking for someone who has a connection to tradition, to Jewish law, let’s call it that now in the parable’s meaning. He’s not a heretic, but he’s also not conservative, not in any of the conservative channels I sketched. What else could there be? Seemingly this map is full.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, if we go with Leibowitz’s approach, then basically what they… the way he understood the Reform movement is that they say the purpose of Jewish law is simply to organize our lives. Folklore, rituals, all kinds of pleasantness, a matter of community, but nothing of genuine service of God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, listen, that’s the reason for the verse. But what would they say now, tell me, in the swimsuit example? What would they say?
[Speaker C] They would say certainly wear a coat, certainly. They would just say: the purpose of Jewish law is to take care of me, that I should feel good, and that’s a bit different from Orthodox conservatism, which says the commandment is that you wear clothes suited to the weather. A conservative midrash. Its purpose is not to arrange your life for you. It sometimes sends you to strike the— no, I’m saying, the conservative says: I’m not saying Jewish law comes to arrange my life. It may improve my life, and sometimes it sends me to give up my life.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Hello? You’re saying the Reform person has a different conservative midrash. It’s still a conservative midrash. You’re not accepting it… wait, I’m not talking about whether I accept the conservative midrash. The very existence of a conservative midrash means that you’re conservative.
[Speaker C] But the whole Jewish law collapses too, because even when he keeps Jewish law in a conservative way, how shall I put it, in the basic way, then even then it’s not Jewish law. Because he does it because it happens to work out… He sits in the sukkah because it’s very charming to sit in the sukkah, it’s family-oriented, it’s so lovely to smell the ushpizin, it’s charming. So it’s not a commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Slowly, slowly. You’re repeating that, I got it. But I’m saying, in the end you’re telling me he isn’t committed to anything. So he’s a heretic. Or he makes a conservative midrash you don’t agree with. But then he’s conservative, there’s just a dispute about the conservative midrash. I don’t find another model here. I’m looking for another model. After all, there are also claims against my conservative midrash. Many argue: what do you mean, you’re dismantling all of Jewish law and leaving nothing of it. Fine, so you don’t agree with my conservative midrash. That’s not interesting. I’m asking, in the logical model, what other logical model is there here?
[Speaker F] The Reform person makes a conservative midrash even when Jewish law doesn’t allow it. Again? The Reform person makes a conservative midrash even when Jewish law doesn’t allow such a conservative midrash.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Explicitly doesn’t allow. Explicitly doesn’t allow? Talk about swimsuits.
[Speaker F] Someone loyal to tradition looks for whether Jewish law…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Come on, talk about swimsuits. What is he supposed to say there? We’re circling around the issue because, understand, the focused problem here is that… seemingly the map I sketched is complete. There isn’t any other uncovered direction there. Seemingly what could there be? Either you change the clothing or you don’t change it. If you change the clothing, then there can be two reasons for that: either I don’t care, or I’m making a conservative midrash. That’s it. What else could there be?
[Speaker G] It could be that they’re somewhat, as you say, not so suited to this picture. Meaning, they do see the system of commandments as a factor, but it is not an exclusively binding factor; rather it binds them up to a certain point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so here I actually think I agree completely. Let me say one thing: I’ll move something aside, and then I’ll come back to your thesis. When you say it’s not exclusively binding, that can be understood in two ways. It can be understood that not only this binds me, but I also have other values in my world. But that too could be an Orthodox position. Morality exists outside Jewish law, but it too is binding. And from my point of view that too is the word of God. So I at least don’t think that’s Reform, even though many argue that it is, but I disagree. I claim that “not fully binding” is not a matter of scope, that I have values besides Jewish law, but rather that the intensity of my obligation to Jewish law is not complete. And that is a very important methodological-logical lesson, because I drew you a map that seemingly covers all the possibilities, and I asked you: okay, so how can one wedge a foot in here between the door and the doorframe? Where is there any open territory left here in which one might try to place the Reform person? Why? Because what could the arguments be? Either I change clothes or I don’t. And if I change clothes, then either because I don’t care or because of one conservative midrash or another. That’s it, seemingly it covers all the possibilities. But of course there is another axis along which I can examine the issue, reopen it to another axis. An axis perpendicular to this whole division, and that is the axis of intensity. The question is how obligated I am to Jewish law, whether midrashically or in plain sense— for the Reform person it’s probably the midrashic one. But not completely obligated. It’s not a full obligation. He is not fully obligated. There are certain prices he won’t pay. He won’t pay them not because he thinks Jewish law doesn’t require him to pay those prices— that would already be a conservative midrash. He won’t pay because it’s not important enough to him. He is not sufficiently obligated. That, yes, is the logical model underlying the axis I’ve added here to the picture. It’s my beloved sorites paradox. Right, the list of those paradoxes that says, for example, one grain of gravel is not a heap. If I have a collection of grains of gravel, adding one grain won’t change the status. But a million grains of gravel are a heap. Now, each of those three premises seems reasonable. But all three together lead to a contradiction. Because if one grain is not a heap, and adding one grain changes nothing, then two also are not a heap. And if two is not a heap, add one more and then three isn’t a heap either. And four and five and six, up to a million. So how is a million a heap? Or yes, the bald man paradox, the afternoon paradox— we won’t go back, I’ve already wearied you in the past with these matters. This is the family of heap paradoxes, as it’s called in logic or philosophy. What is the meaning of— what is really the solution to this paradox? It seems to me that of the three— again, there are three premises here. Premise one: one grain of gravel is a heap— is not a heap, sorry. Premise two: a collection, or adding one grain, does not change the status of the pile. And premise three: a million grains of gravel are a heap. Now, which of the three— after all, you can’t adopt all three because that’s a contradiction. So what do I do? Meaning, how do you solve this contradiction? After all, these three premises sound very reasonable. It’s pretty clear that the problem is the middle one: that adding one grain of gravel doesn’t change the status. But what’s the alternative? That adding one grain of gravel does change the status? When? From one to two? From 13 to 14? From 31 to 32? It’s hard to assume, hard to accept, that there is some number where adding the grain will move me from non-heap to heap. So seemingly that premise too is true. So we are still stuck with our contradiction. And the solution to this matter is that instead of saying that one grain of gravel doesn’t change the status, or saying that grain number 17 does change the status, there is another formulation: adding one grain of gravel changes the status a little. If you add one grain of gravel it becomes a bit more of a heap. The degree of heap-ness is continuous between zero and one. The more grains of gravel there are, the degree of heap-ness increases. It becomes more of a heap. In everyday language we say that from 0.8 and up I already call it a heap, and that’s it. Fine, that’s not important right now. But on the principled level, there are really many shades of gray, even more than fifty, between white and black. Okay? So this is some kind of continuum. Therefore the statement “adding one grain of gravel doesn’t change the status” is not true, but that does not mean that adding one grain of gravel does change the status in a simple sense. That too is not true. Rather, adding one grain of gravel changes the status a little. That is the correct and more precise formulation. And now I say: one grain of gravel is not a heap at all. Add one grain and it’s already a tiny bit of a heap— that’s two. Three stones are already a little more of a heap. Four stones are fairly heap-like. Five stones are already a heap, pretty, yes, very heap-like, I don’t know what, right? I don’t have enough words in Hebrew. So use numbers between zero and one. All the real numbers are at your disposal. Okay? So the degree of heap-ness can be any number between zero and one, and the number of stones overall changes the level of heap-ness. That is the solution to the heap paradox, and what it basically says is that whenever we have some dichotomy that we know or feel we need to get out of, but we can’t find a way to do so, very often it’s worth thinking in this direction of vague concepts. The concept “heap” is a vague concept, because you can’t say of everything that it either is a heap or is not a heap; rather there are levels, a continuum of levels, of heap-ness. What in logic is called fuzzy logic, vague logic. That’s a logic whose values are not zero or one, but any number between zero and one. Okay? Therefore very often the dichotomy into which we fall— contradictions, paradoxes, which always begin, or often begin, with some kind of dichotomy— can actually be solved by showing that there is also a third option. It’s not only these two that cover the whole picture. Right, the example that always jumps to my mind in this context, a dilemma argument. A dilemma argument in philosophy is an argument of the following type. There’s no point in giving exams. Why? Because someone lazy won’t study even if there’s an exam, and someone diligent will study even without an exam. So there’s no point in giving exams. Either way. Okay? Where is the flaw here? The flaw is that the world is not divided only into either diligent people or pathologically lazy people. There is a continuum of levels of diligence between zero and one, and somewhere in the gray zone in the middle, exams really can improve the situation. For zero and one it really won’t change anything, or for what’s close to zero and close to one. But much of the middle range is people who may be pretty lazy, but if there’s an exam they’ll study. And for them the exam really will help. So the dilemma argument assumes some kind of dichotomy, some kind of two possibilities that spread over the whole space of possibilities, and they tell you: look, there’s no third possibility, what else can you do? And suddenly you discover that’s not true; if you move to continuous logic, you suddenly see that not only is there a third possibility, there is a whole continuum of additional possibilities. In that sense, that is exactly what I’m doing here. I laid out three possibilities that seemingly cover the whole space. The heretic, the midrashic conservative, and the plain-sense conservative. I can’t think of another type of argument I can try to fit onto the Reform person. But I feel that in the Reform person there is nevertheless something different. So how can that be? Where on the map is that located? And the answer I propose is that the Reform person basically goes on the axis of the intensity of commitment, not the type of commitment, but how committed I am, not to what I am committed. Until now I divided everything through the question of what I am committed to, if at all. Right? Everyone was 100% committed. All the conservatives are 100% committed. The heretic is not committed at all, zero. Okay? The Reform person is committed 20%, 80%, 60%. There are different Reform levels. Okay? That is basically the definition I propose for Reform. What does that mean?
[Speaker E] Like I said earlier in the swimsuit example, how would he behave with the swimsuit?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: like in the swimsuit example, for instance, he would say, listen, actually tradition is very dear to me, I’m in favor of preserving tradition, I think it’s very important, maybe even mandatory, if there’s some hysterical one among them. But in the end, in the end, I’m cold, and I’m not paying any price in order to preserve tradition. I’m not a heretic, I’m not throwing away tradition, it’s not that it doesn’t interest me, but I’m not going to pay any price for it. Again, of course in places where there is no need to pay a price, because saving a life overrides, no problem, that’s part of the tradition itself. I’m talking about a place where there is no solution within the tradition to the issue, and he says, forget it, tradition says one thing after all the considerations, but for me it’s too difficult, that price I’m not willing to pay. And therefore I cancel it. Okay? That is basically the definition that I at least am able to propose for Reform; that is the definition I’m proposing here in this context.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, this very much resembles the conception of Judaism on a spectrum in Rabbi Wachter’s book,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And also
[Speaker C] the opposition to the separation between religious and secular, this dichotomy of zero or one, of Rabbi Kook and the Netziv who came out so strongly a hundred, I don’t know, a hundred and forty years ago against the separation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, on this matter I’m completely dichotomous. Anyone who is not one is Reform. 0.99 is also Reform. Whoever is not— again, not that he doesn’t withstand the test; there are many who don’t withstand the test. Rather, whoever does not think one ought to withstand the test. I’m not talking about someone who fails; we all fail. I’m talking about someone who in principle does not see this as a failure; for him it isn’t worth that price. It’s not that he’s in a dilemma and has no choice, he failed, he fell, his inclination overpowered him, circumstances beat him. No, those are failures of Orthodox people, of conservatives. I’m not talking— I’m talking about someone who doesn’t see himself that way.
[Speaker C] By the way, Leibowitz also objected to that too, to this acceptance of “I failed though I wanted to.” You wanted it; if you hadn’t wanted it, you wouldn’t have failed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s weakness of will; I have two columns on that, I don’t agree. But that’s another discussion. That’s weakness of will in philosophy.
[Speaker H] In any case, it somewhat resembles Maimonides when he says that anyone who denies one Jewish law or is not bound by one Jewish law—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides there is talking about scope. You’re not committed to all of Jewish law but only to 99% of it. I’m talking about intensity. Because for me, someone who is not committed to all of Jewish law but only to 99% of it is not Reform; he is a heretic. He is a heretic with respect to that particular law. He can be a plain-sense Orthodox person with respect to the other laws. After all, when I want to define the concepts, for me these concepts should be definable even for a law that contains one single norm. Because otherwise if you tell me, okay, Reform is defined only in groups of norms that contain many norms, and then whoever is committed only to some of them is the Reform person— that’s not enough for me, because then for a system containing a single norm, the concept Reform would not be defined. And I think it is defined there too. All right? Therefore I would define such a person as someone who is a heretic regarding one law and a conservative regarding the other laws. And that is not legitimate from the standpoint of Jewish law, no matter. But from the standpoint of the types of arguments, that is not a fourth type of argument. It’s the first three arguments. He is a heretic— that’s the third argument— with respect to one law, and he is a midrashic or plain-sense conservative with respect to the other laws. So we haven’t found a fourth type of argument here. Here I’m proposing a fourth type of stance. It’s not a quantitative matter. It’s a matter of intensity. Not only quantitative, but the intensity of commitment, not the scope.
[Speaker H] What does it mean that he is
[Speaker I] obligated to a certain degree of intensity?
[Speaker H] What? What does it mean from his perspective that he’s obligated with a certain intensity? Not willing to pay any price.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There will be tests he won’t pass.
[Speaker H] But what does he feel— what does he feel about himself? That he doesn’t meet it, that it’s okay that he’s not willing to do it at any price? That it’s okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He thinks it’s okay.
[Speaker H] No, he thinks it’s okay from God’s side, from the side of the source of authority?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t attribute it to the Holy One, blessed be He— meaning, it could be that from the Holy One’s perspective it isn’t okay, but fine, he’s not committed to the Holy One. It depends; each one you ask may answer something else. I’m not claiming that everyone says the same thing here. I also don’t think everyone really says what I’m saying; people are complicated things. I classify arguments, not people. And the fourth argument that I find can be placed on this map without stepping on any of the others is this argument. Okay? Now a person who defines himself as Reform can raise any one of these four arguments. People are complex creatures. But the Reform arguments, I think, are these. Now I’ll tell you…
[Speaker I] Is the Conservative person also on the axis of intensity of commitment, or is he… I didn’t understand. Is the Conservative person also on the axis of intensity of commitment, or is he?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. No. In principle, Conservatives— again, even among Orthodox people there are those with reduced intensity of commitment, sociologically defined as Orthodox. Therefore I’m classifying arguments here, not people. But the people, fine, there are such cases. Just as there are Orthodox people whose commitment is not complete. But Conservative theory, or the Conservative type of argument, the Conservative logic, is one of full commitment. Full midrashic commitment. And in my opinion they are not distinguishable from midrashic conservatism. Now I want to sharpen my previous remark, which also connects to this. I said earlier that commitment to Jewish law and alongside it also to moral values, that is not Reform. That is Orthodoxy. Even where moral values contradict what Jewish law says, that doesn’t mean that you are not Orthodox. Or not conservative, in our language. It only means that if I am in a situation where morality tells me one thing and Jewish law tells me something else, and I have no way to arrange Jewish law somehow, I don’t know, with a halakhic solution that would align with morality, for the sake of discussion, okay? Then I am in conflict. What I will decide in the conflict, that too I don’t commit to. Maybe toward Jewish law and maybe toward morality. And I am still Orthodox with full commitment, even though I am fully committed also to morality. And once there is a contradiction, just as there is a contradiction between two moral values, then I have to make decisions to prefer one over the other. Or a contradiction between two halakhic values, saving a life and the Sabbath, then I prefer one over the other because there is no choice, I can’t fulfill both. The same applies to a contradiction between a moral value and a halakhic value; there too I have to make some kind of decision, and there’s no choice, I’ll have to uphold one at the expense of the other. I brought the examples of “that just won’t do.” The example of worshipping idolatry, secular courts— that’s not exactly morality, but it’s also a kind of “that just won’t do” argument. Maybe we’ll see more later. So this is an important point. When the Reform person encounters a Jewish law that doesn’t fit his moral principles, he too will not act according to Jewish law but according to morality. Why do I define him as Reform? Because he is not in a dilemma. He is not deciding a conflict here. In a place where it contradicts morality, then there’s no problem, he goes with morality. Jewish law falls away. It is permitted away, not merely overridden. The Orthodox person can do the same thing, but for a different reason. He will feel the tension, he will feel the conflict before he makes decisions. And the Reform person is not in conflict. Reform people in principle, by the way, are not in conflicts. By “not in conflicts” I mean conflicts of Jewish law and morality. Moral conflicts every person has. But I mean conflicts of Jewish law and morality, which in my opinion do not exist for Reform people. There are no conflicts there. Why? Because in a place where the moral price is high, Jewish law has no standing. Because he is not fully committed to Jewish law. So it’s not that he decides in favor of morality even though he is in conflict. He is not in conflict. A moral price is also a price, not only a price of convenience. It is of course a higher price, let’s call it a more elevated one, I don’t know what to call it. Doesn’t matter. But in terms of the logic, this is still a conception that is unwilling to pay any price for commitment to Jewish law. In a place where the price is high, the commitment does not exist— not that I’m in conflict. That is not the same thing. Someone who is in conflict is only a person who is committed to both sides of the conflict. Otherwise he is not in conflict. Therefore being in conflict does not contradict my having full commitment to Jewish law. On the contrary. Not only does it not contradict it; on the contrary. Being in conflict is the indication that my commitment is full. It’s just that my commitment is also full to morality. And when there is a contradiction I am in conflict, so I have to make decisions about what I fulfill and what I forgo. I cannot fulfill both sides. Like in dilemmas between moral values or between halakhic values themselves. So too between Jewish law and morality, it’s the same. Therefore it looks similar, but it is completely different. What Yonatan said earlier, yes, the question if I remarked that if the Reform person’s commitment is not full, then I said: not full in terms of scope or not full in terms of intensity. If he has other values in his world, moral values, that is not Reform. An Orthodox person can be there too. The Reform person says that once moral values demand something, Jewish law is nullified. He is not in conflict, because he is not willing to pay that price in order to keep Jewish law; from his perspective it does not obligate him at all to pay that price. That is Reform. The Orthodox person may behave morally against Jewish law. There are such situations: a transgression for the sake of Heaven, or whatever, all kinds of such situations in the Talmud and in the halakhic decisors. The fifth section of the Shulchan Arukh, what people routinely bring in the name of the Chazon Ish, and so on; there are examples of this, many examples. But you are always within tension, within conflict, and sometimes you decide in favor of morality, sometimes in favor of Jewish law. The claim is that it does not always have to be in favor of Jewish law. That’s a claim many Orthodox people won’t accept. I do accept it. And still, that is not Reform. That’s what I want to argue here.
[Speaker E] Do you have an example? Do you have an example where the Reform person, unlike in this example, where the Reform person unlike the Orthodox person would make decision A and the Orthodox person would do something else in a matter of morality? A conflict between morality and Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, what do you mean? For example, levirate marriage. So we’ll see examples of that. The Reform person says: there is no levirate marriage today because it doesn’t fit my values. And the Orthodox person says: maybe it doesn’t fit my values, but what can I do, that is what the Torah commands.
[Speaker E] I don’t have a midrash I can
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] use in order to change this. So why can’t you
[Speaker E] see in the matter of levirate marriage an extension of “that just won’t do”? He expands the issue of “that just won’t do.” He still remains committed to Jewish law, but he says, levirate marriage…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First, you can define everything as “that just won’t do,” but then there are no “that just won’t do” arguments; all arguments are like that. And second, even in a “that just won’t do” argument I am in a dilemma. In a “that just won’t do” argument I understand that I am transgressing Jewish law. I’m in a dilemma. I decide because this just won’t do. But the Reform person is not in a dilemma. He is not in conflict.
[Speaker J] But what is morality? Divine morality, human morality, what is it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what divine morality is. There is morality, that’s it. There is no morality X, morality Y, and morality Z. There is morality. What is moral is moral, and what is not, is not. Every gentile and every Jew is obligated in everything that is moral, and not to do what is immoral. There is no such thing as Jewish morality, there is no such thing as divine morality, and there is no such thing as any of that. There is morality, period. I’m not saying there are no disputes in the area of morality. Disputes between people with different positions, different arguments, that’s true. But there is no such thing as different kinds of morality. There is a dispute about what morality says, that’s all. Okay, I didn’t understand earlier,
[Speaker G] could you explain again why this isn’t called an extension of “that just won’t do”? Meaning, didn’t we say that “that just won’t do” is exactly the argument of the midrashic conservative, that even in a change of values he sees a reason to change Jewish law? So why, if he simply expands the values even further to the point of Reform…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in “that just won’t do,” he does not change Jewish law. In a “that just won’t do” consideration you do not change Jewish law. That’s what I said, for example regarding secular courts. Regarding secular courts the claim is that going to civil court is a transgression. It’s a transgression that I have no choice but to commit, because the alternative is simply unthinkable. I’m not using “that just won’t do” as an interpretive tool; on the contrary, “that just won’t do” is an extra-halakhic tool. A tool that says: okay, here I cannot keep Jewish law, I have no way to change it, I have no conservative midrash, but it’s impossible, the alternative is unimaginable. Still, once again, the conflict is what matters.
[Speaker K] But why were the Reform people at their beginning… what? Why were the Reform people at their beginning midrashic conservatives? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Reform people at their beginning were midrashic conservatives. Fine, that’s history; history doesn’t interest me right now. I’m characterizing arguments.
[Speaker K] I also don’t know Orthodox people who are plain-sense conservatives like you say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They simply
[Speaker K] see in their eyes, they don’t think the circumstances have changed
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In their eyes, the circumstances
[Speaker K] have changed in their eyes, they see…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I spoke about this at length. I said that I also don’t know people like that. I know people for whom that is the ethos, not people who are actually like that. Haredim—their ethos is plain conservatism, but they don’t actually behave in a way that reflects plain conservatism. We talked about this at length in the previous classes. And in the end, almost the entire religious map falls under interpretive conservatism. And that was the big puzzle: so how do you define modern conservatism as opposed to non-modern conservatism? In any case, so maybe… I lost my train of thought for a second. Yes. So basically, the difference in this respect between the Reform movement and… Orthodoxy, interpretive conservatism, or the modern religious person who also changes Jewish law or his conduct in accordance with a change in values—it’s often only a question of whether you do it with stomachaches or whether you do it smoothly. But you’re doing the same thing, just as the interpretive conservative behaves like the heretic: both of them wear a coat. Their reasons, their justifications, are different. So very often in practice it looks similar, and that’s why people accuse you of Reform and so on, because the behavior is similar, and they don’t understand that what really determines things is the reasoning, not the bottom line, not the behavior. Yes, that reminds me—this is what I just remembered, what had slipped my mind—I had some column about the Lehava organization, where I discussed whether that organization is racist or not. And ostensibly there’s room to hesitate about that, because after all, fighting intermarriage—religious people are certainly in favor of that, but so are many secular people. That used to be government policy, I don’t know to what extent it still is, on the part of the Jewish Agency and the government, to try to prevent intermarriage, within the limits of what is of course possible. Today that’s very politically incorrect, but assimilation still troubles secular people too, not only religious people. So in that sense it’s hard to see the behavior of the Lehava organization as racism. And I said there are two characteristics I can point to for why I think they are nevertheless racist. The first characteristic is how they present non-Jews—the generalizations and so on, that’s not important right now. The characteristic that matters for our purposes is the stomachaches; that’s why I remembered this example. My feeling is that the attitude one may take toward non-Jews—maybe I too would take that attitude—but I would do it with stomachaches. I would understand that there is some moral price here, and with no alternative, Jewish law forbids intermarriage and I’m supposed to act to prevent it, but I understand that this hurts people, and they are decent people overall, and I have stomachaches over it. I’m in a conflict—not in a dilemma. Yes, there is a price to what I’m doing. And the feeling I often get from these people—and again, this is a generalization, of course—but the feeling I get from these people is that from their point of view it’s glatt. There’s no—there’s no other side, no problem at all. So you can see this as some kind of supreme devotion to Jewish law and the service of God; maybe that’s also true, I don’t know. But on the other hand, you can also see it as devotion that is a little too weak when it comes to morality. It’s always a question, yes: when a person clings to something, is it because that something is more important to him, or because the opposing things are less important to him? Meaning, you can judge it one way or the other; I don’t know how to decide. So this is a good example of a situation in which the behaviors can be very similar, but what determines the difference is the stomachaches. The question is whether you do it because you understand that there’s no choice and you are in conflict, and you are willing to pay the price of one value in order to realize another value that in your eyes is more important under the existing circumstances, or whether you say, what are you talking about—the second value doesn’t exist in my world. Meaning, it’s not.
[Speaker J] There’s another very problematic example. Can’t hear? There’s another very problematic example: the State of Israel, through the Jewish National Fund, is not always willing to lease land to people who are not Jews.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, same discussion, same discussion. You can say what the bottom line is, but you can’t argue with the fact that there is a dilemma here, there are two sides here. Now you have to decide what overrides what, and in what proportions, and so on—but you can’t deny that there is a dilemma here. Someone who denies that there is a dilemma here is saying that one of the sides, for him, simply doesn’t exist, okay.
[Speaker G] Are we—are we Reformist regarding, say, the prohibition that matters transmitted orally may not be said in writing, which since Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi was permitted? Nobody even has stomachaches about that. Everyone writes Torah insights and isn’t concerned about writing down the Oral Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I think—let’s put it this way—I agree that there are no stomachaches, but on the principled level there ought to be headaches. On the theoretical level you’re supposed to be aware that this step is permitted; after Rabbi permitted it, it’s permitted, but it has costs. So psychologically—I don’t judge people by their psychology—psychologically we’ve already become detached from it, we’re long after it, and we’re already at peace with Rabbi’s decision. But if you ask me on the conceptual level, not the psychological one, then I’ll tell you: yes indeed, but it has costs. I also talk about those costs, by the way. As far as I’m concerned, I’m even very aware of them: the fact that they wrote down the Oral Torah has heavy costs—of rigidity and a certain ossification. It has benefits, and Rabbi decided that the benefits outweigh the costs. Fine, I accept that, but of course it has costs. In this case these are even built-in costs, not only the mere fact that it was halakhically forbidden. These are costs I also understand. So it’s easier for me even to feel that. But you know, this whole discussion of mine here—I phrased it as stomachaches—that really wasn’t a good formulation. I don’t have to be the kind of person who actually feels it on the emotional level. If someone is built differently, then it could be that he is at peace with his decision and doesn’t feel it. That doesn’t mean he is a disqualified person or morally flawed. If conceptually he understands that there is a price here, then fine, then he is built correctly. Okay, I see I didn’t manage even to begin Moshe Zimmer, but these introductions are important introductions and they’ll come back in the examples we’ll see there. Okay. Comments or questions?
[Speaker H] A comment—I wanted to ask about the previous class regarding the definition of Modern Orthodox. So would you define that way also rabbis—let’s call them earlier ones, not from the twenty-first century, the twentieth century, medieval authorities (Rishonim), later authorities (Acharonim)—that one could define them with this definition as a rabbi who is willing…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t define people. I define arguments.
[Speaker H] Meaning then every argument raised by a halakhic decisor, meaning that he
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to…
[Speaker H] If you take
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the argument, then obviously there are arguments of interpretive conservatism and of Modern Orthodoxy even among the classic halakhic decisors. The argument about secular courts appears in the Talmudic text,
[Speaker H] and no one framed that
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] as Modern Orthodox.
[Speaker H] No one framed it in the language of the halakhic decisors, such a phenomenon?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They call it by various names. The fifth section of the Shulchan Arukh, a transgression for the sake of Heaven, sometimes they simply say: it’s not appropriate. Yes, that’s not a halakhic argument—it’s halakhic language—but if you speak to the person orally, that’s what he’ll tell you.
[Speaker L] Is there really such a thing as the fifth section of the Shulchan Arukh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there is.
[Speaker L] I mean, does it exist from an intellectual perspective in the words of the Sages?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s modern terminology; they associate it with the Chazon Ish. I don’t like it, but they’re talking about
[Speaker M] the existence of
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Jewish law beyond Jewish law. Yes, there is a transgression for the sake of Heaven in the Talmudic text. What is a transgression for the sake of Heaven?
[Speaker H] There are things you just don’t do, not done.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmudic text seemingly says that.
[Speaker H] Rabbi, may I ask another question? The last example we talked about regarding stomachaches, where in the end you refined it and said that it’s not necessarily stomachaches but could be something that bothers you conceptually regarding, say, moral conflicts—there is a kind of education, and I’m interested to hear what the Rabbi thinks about it, there is a kind of education in yeshivot and among rabbis that when there is this kind of conflict, you’re supposed to arrive at some kind of inner alignment or inner elevation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ve written in several places, and also spoken about it here: in my view, feelings have no value whatsoever. Feelings and experiences have no value whatsoever—neither positive nor negative.
[Speaker H] Not necessarily in the emotional sense, also in the sense of personal conflict—meaning if, I don’t know, in matters of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even intellectually—so what does it mean to arrive at equilibrium? You understand that there is one side and another side, and you carry out what seems to you preferable to the other. What are you supposed to do in this spiritual work that you’re describing, if we’re not talking about the psyche but about the intellect?
[Speaker H] There’s such a stage in mental maturity where things become aligned for you, meaning in the overall picture—I don’t know what to call it…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not in a state of conflict. Again, it may be that you’re talking about things that are a divine decree, that are not part of morality or something like that, and still it would be natural from your point of view; meaning, you would incline to it naturally. The straight person and the one who subdues himself in Rav Kook, or Maimonides in chapter six, I think, where he talks there about the… what’s it called there… the one who rules. The superior person and the one who subdues, the superior person and the one who subdues his inclination. Okay, the one who rules over his inclination. Yes, exactly. So that’s fine—that’s a different discussion. I’m talking about a situation of conflict. In a situation of conflict there is no point in erasing one of the sides in order to be at peace with the side according to which I act—quite the opposite. There is a point in keeping the other side alive so that I understand that there are costs here, because these are real costs; such costs do exist. It is not a psychological distortion to feel that you are in conflict; on the contrary, it is a psychological distortion not to feel the conflict.
[Speaker K] It’s
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not the same thing as turning from one who subdues himself into a straight person. Turning from one who subdues himself into a straight person means the psychological or self-interested costs, not the ideological, value-based costs. There you need to overcome it and somehow—say, according to that approach, I’m not sure I agree with it—but according to that approach, you’re supposed to become aligned with it so that it becomes natural for you. But those are not truly conflictual situations; they are only impediments—overcoming the impediments and straightening what is crooked.
[Speaker M] Regarding Lehava, where you said that in your opinion they are racist—in their opinion they are not racist—the question is whether one can accuse them of being racist even if they think they are not racist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That they are racist is a fact. The question is whether they think racism is good or not. About that too I wrote a column: the question whether you judge a person by his own standards or judge a person objectively. I laid out a very detailed map there—you can read it there. It’s hard to lay it out here again. Search on the site for “Should a person be judged by his own standards,” something like that, and it’ll come up for you. Thank you. Okay, goodbye, Sabbath peace.
[Speaker K] Sabbath peace.