Innovation, Conservatism, and Tradition – Lesson 13
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
- Sociological classification versus logical classification
- Jewish law as an instrument for morality and Reform implications
- Motivation versus mechanism: the context of discovery and the context of justification
- Mamzer status, the sages, and the difficulty of explaining why it was not abolished
- Rav Kook, the Binding of Isaac, and the claim about consistency
- Torah law versus rabbinic enactment, and the example of the beam ordinance
- Authority, enactment, and uprooting a matter from the Torah
- “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”: three ways of understanding it
- Minimizing prohibitions, Rabbi Ilai, and rejecting “lighter sin” permits
- Pressing circumstances, human dignity, and “because of enmity” as a practical ruling
- Examples from Zemer’s book: levirate marriage, a kohen and a divorcée, and mamzer status
- Reform without conflict, and conservatism as an encounter with commitment
- A concluding note on decisors’ sensitivity and finding a mechanism
Summary
General overview
The speaker uses Moshe Zemer’s halakhic proposals to sharpen the boundaries of the “flexible” framework he is proposing and to identify what remains outside it, while also showing that an argument coming from a Reform rabbi can, logically speaking, be an “Orthodox” argument, and vice versa. He lays down two basic points: identifying Jewish law as a tool for achieving morality leads almost inevitably to Reform, and confusing moral motivation with a halakhic mechanism/justification creates the illusion that one can change a Torah law simply because the change is morally “right.” He argues that Jewish law and morality are foreign systems to one another, and that changing Jewish law requires either a valid halakhic mechanism or a move into the track of rabbinic enactments. He then presents examples such as mamzer status, levirate marriage, the beam ordinance, and “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” in order to distinguish between enactment, emergency override, conservative midrash, and Reform abolition.
Sociological classification versus logical classification
The speaker wants to show that sociologically one can be defined as Reform while advancing an Orthodox argument, and vice versa. He uses Moshe Zemer’s proposals to demonstrate both what does not fit into the framework of conservative midrashic interpretation and how a proposal of Reform origin can be non-Reform from a logical standpoint. He argues that this will sharpen the framework as one that has boundaries, even though it seems very flexible.
Jewish law as an instrument for morality and Reform implications
The speaker presents as Zemer’s first principle the idea that Jewish law is an instrument for achieving a more morally complete condition for the person and for society, and stresses that even Orthodox rabbinic thinkers share this assumption. He argues that Reform follows immediately from that assumption, because wherever Jewish law does not produce the ultimate moral condition, one must change Jewish law. He presents Rabbi Kook as an example of an Orthodox thinker who agrees that Jewish law “hits the mark of morality,” but is then forced to explain mismatches through some “higher morality” that we do not understand, or through insisting that there is no authority to change things. The speaker characterizes these as lame “excuses” whose function is to avoid Reform conclusions.
He argues that the assumption itself is mistaken, because Jewish law is not meant to achieve moral goals at all. There is an estrangement between Jewish law and morality, and therefore there is no reason to become agitated by conflicts between them. He claims that identifying Jewish law with morality empties Jewish law of content and leads to the conclusion that “there is no Jewish law,” and that all that remains is simply “to be a decent human being.” He even adds that the implication would be that non-Jews, too, should have been obligated in all of Jewish law.
Motivation versus mechanism: the context of discovery and the context of justification
The speaker presents as Zemer’s second principle a mixing together of moral/social motivation with the halakhic mechanism that justifies change. He argues that the sages were indeed sometimes driven by value-based motivations, but they did not stop there. Rather, they activated an interpretive or halakhic mechanism in order to make the change, so motivation is not enough to justify halakhic change. He compares this to the distinction in philosophy of science between the context of discovery and the context of justification, and formulates the difference between a Reform position and a midrashic conservative one as follows: the conservative uses the motivation in order to look for a mechanism, and if there is no mechanism, he does not change the law.
He argues that Moshe Zemer says, in effect, “At the moment this doesn’t seem moral to me, therefore the Jewish law is void,” whereas a conservative would say that the perceived immorality is a reason to investigate whether there is a valid mechanism for change, and only then to act. He repeats that even if formally one can describe changing Jewish law in response to changing morality as “conservative midrash,” in substance it is empty once Jewish law is identified with morality, because then there is no binding Jewish law at all.
Mamzer status, the sages, and the difficulty of explaining why it was not abolished
The speaker presents the example of mamzerim to show a case where moral values did not change, and yet Moshe Zemer seeks to abolish the law on grounds of immorality. He argues that the sages certainly felt the pain of mamzerim, and therefore if immorality by itself were enough, they would have abolished the law, but they did not, because they understood that moral motivation is not a mechanism. He claims that someone who identifies Jewish law with morality can easily abolish the law of mamzerim today, but then cannot explain why the sages did not abolish it. He presents the Binding of Isaac as an example that even when something is not moral, a clear command overrides morality.
Rabbi Kook, the Binding of Isaac, and the claim about consistency
The speaker argues that the difference between Rabbi Kook and a Reform rabbi is much smaller than it appears, and describes Rabbi Kook as “less honest” because he is unwilling to draw the conclusions from the premise that Jewish law is identified with morality. He raises the Binding of Isaac as a challenge to Rabbi Kook’s approach, and cites Rabbi Kook’s explanation in the prayer book Olat Re’iyah, according to which the lesson is “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad,” and the message is that Jewish law cannot contradict natural morality. The speaker argues that this interpretation raises the question whether Abraham should have obeyed in the first place, and concludes that in his opinion there is no way out of this tangle within the framework of that approach.
Torah law versus rabbinic enactment, and the example of the beam ordinance
The speaker moves to the stage of “rabbinic enactments” in Zemer and brings the ordinance for penitents and the beam ordinance, in which a robber is allowed to repay money instead of removing a beam built into his house, so as not to lock the door of repentance. He argues that Zemer uses this as proof that it is permissible to change Jewish law for moral and social reasons, but that in fact it proves the opposite. He explains that the Torah itself already contains a mechanism for repaying monetary value when the object is no longer intact, and that here the sages are acting through the principle that property declared ownerless by a court is ownerless, an authority not dependent on morality.
He presents a basic distinction: in Torah law, the mechanism is central and the motivational justification is marginal; in rabbinic enactment, the justification is everything, and there is no need for an interpretive mechanism, because this is not interpretation of the Torah but the creation of a new rabbinic prohibition or permission. He explains that if the sages had inserted poultry with milk into the Torah prohibition of meat and milk out of concern, that would have been adding to the Torah, and therefore they have to say that it is rabbinic. He cites Maimonides, who rules that the sages must specify that this is rabbinic law, so as not to mislead people and transgress the prohibition against adding to the Torah.
Authority, enactment, and uprooting a matter from the Torah
The speaker argues that the dispute with Zemer is not only about authority, but about the claim that a Torah law is “void” at its root. In that way, Zemer is not making an enactment but abolishing. As an example he presents sounding the shofar on Rosh Hashanah when it falls on the Sabbath, where the sages cannot say there is no Torah commandment, but can only instruct people in practice not to perform it. He cites a dispute usually associated with Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Magen Avraham regarding someone who did sound the shofar on the Sabbath. He distinguishes between the Babylonian Talmud, which recognizes a Torah obligation and says the sages suspend it in practice, and the Jerusalem Talmud, which claims there is no Torah obligation on the Sabbath. He stresses that Zemer proceeds as if the commandment itself does not exist.
He argues that Reform thinkers tend to blur Torah law and rabbinic law also because they do not believe in Torah from Heaven, and therefore the distinction is worn away for them. He says that if Zemer had presented his changes as rabbinic enactments of a binding body, the discussion would shift to the question of authority, similar to the Sanhedrin and “do not deviate,” and one could then also discuss bypass mechanisms such as a “temporary suspension” permitted to a religious court in every generation. He adds that “nothing is more permanent than the temporary,” and gives examples such as the ban of Rabbeinu Gershom, but emphasizes that suspension is a tool for extreme situations, not something to be used lightly.
“It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”: three ways of understanding it
The speaker presents the rule “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” as a subtler example, because it appears to be action based on motivation without a mechanism, and not merely a rabbinic enactment. He says that the wording “they have violated” rather than “they have abolished” creates a need to define the boundary, and he proposes three possibilities. One possibility is that this is a rabbinic enactment intended to permit uprooting in the form of positive action in an acute situation, such as writing down the Oral Torah, and therefore the verse is invoked to permit what the sages are ordinarily not authorized to do. A second possibility is that this is the exercise of authority to uproot a matter from the Torah through positive action only in exceptional cases, and he connects this to the Talmud in Yevamot 90 and to medieval authorities (Rishonim) such as the Raavad in Tamim De’im and Tosafot, who point to such exceptions. A third possibility is that this is a kind of “either way” / rationale-of-the-verse argument, in which the original prohibition against writing down the Oral Torah was intended to preserve Torah, and when not writing it down would cause Torah to be forgotten, preserving the prohibition undermines its own purpose, so the law does not stand in such a case. He connects this to examples of “its nullification is its fulfillment” and to the Meiri on suspending Torah study in order to fulfill a passing commandment.
He concludes that in each of these possibilities there is no support for Zemer’s position of abolishing Torah law on the basis of motivation alone, because either this is a rabbinic track, or it is an extreme exception used in a way that is nothing like broad use, or it is a conservative midrash that returns the discussion to the very field he himself requires.
Minimizing prohibitions, Rabbi Ilai, and rejecting “lighter sin” permits
The speaker presents another principle that Zemer mentions through examples of “better that” and harm minimization, and cites the Talmud in Kiddushin 21 on the beautiful captive woman, along with the principle, “Better that Israel eat meat from animals dying after proper slaughter than eat meat from carcasses.” He argues that there there is no permit for a prohibition, but rather guidance to do something repulsive in order to prevent a prohibition, and therefore it is no proof that one may permit prohibitions. He discusses the Talmudic statement about Rabbi Ilai, “let him wear black… and do what his heart desires,” presents two interpretations among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and argues that the Rif and the Rosh write that the law does not follow Rabbi Ilai, and that the omission by Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh likewise shows that there is no such permission in practical Jewish law.
The speaker criticizes decisors who cite Rabbi Ilai as a permit for minimizing transgressions, and argues that there is no place for Jewish law to grant permission to commit a prohibition because someone might otherwise commit a more severe prohibition. He mentions a dispute with Professor Ravitzky over recovering bodies on the Sabbath, and argues that when Jewish law prohibits an act, one should not give a “permit” in order to minimize prohibition if the alternative is a more severe transgression, but rather say, “Do what you want,” without turning it into a halakhic permit.
Pressing circumstances, human dignity, and “because of enmity” as a practical ruling
The speaker addresses claims about leniencies in pressing circumstances, great need, financial loss, testimony to permit an agunah, “because of enmity,” and human dignity, and states that all of these are not mechanisms for changing Jewish law but rules for deciding what to do in a given situation when Jewish law itself recognizes deferral or exemption. He emphasizes that the law “remains in place” even when it is deferred in a particular situation, and therefore none of this provides a basis for Reform abolition of a law.
Examples from Zemer’s book: levirate marriage, a kohen and a divorcée, and mamzer status
The speaker brings an example from the chapter on levirate marriage and halitzah, where Zemer describes women’s distress and extortion, and then quotes a decision of the Reform rabbis’ conference in Augsburg, 1871: the commandment of halitzah has lost its importance… the idea is foreign to our outlook… failure to perform halitzah is no obstacle to the widow’s remarriage. He argues that the motivations are worthy but there is no mechanism, and that the reasoning “it does not fit our outlook” is abolition with a wave of the hand, not conservative midrash. And even when Zemer tries to argue that levirate marriage assumes ownership of a woman, the speaker says that this is “not true,” and therefore the proposed midrash is invalid.
He presents as a counterexample the marriage of a kohen to a divorcée, where Zemer proposes a possible conservative argument that a kohen’s holiness is connected to Temple service and therefore today the logic is different. The speaker says that such an argument could also be heard in an Orthodox world, even if it is not accepted by decisors. He returns to mamzer status and says that Zemer abolishes the entire concept on grounds of immorality, whereas the sages permitted mamzerim only when they found a mechanism, and therefore Zemer repeats the mistake of confusing motivation with mechanism.
Reform without conflict, and conservatism as an encounter with commitment
The speaker argues that throughout Zemer’s book he opens with heartrending descriptions of distress, but does not present a choice between halakhic commitment and morality. Rather, he abolishes the law as irrelevant or foreign to his outlook, and therefore is not actually in conflict. He claims that this is an essential characteristic of Reform: morality does not “override” Jewish law, but abolishes it, and sometimes there is not even a conflict because Jewish law is defined from the outset as an instrument for morality. He concludes that being in conflict is a characteristic of Orthodoxy, whereas Reform is “never in conflict.”
A concluding note on decisors’ sensitivity and finding a mechanism
The speaker concludes with the remark that the motivations and human suffering raised by Reform thinkers do not always trouble Orthodox decisors enough, and sometimes “their hearts are… a bit coarse toward distress.” He argues that genuine recognition of suffering does not replace a mechanism, but it can push one to search for a valid halakhic mechanism and sometimes even to find creative and far-reaching solutions within the framework of Jewish law. He stops and notes that next week there is a final lecture, and at the end there is a question about the definition of the prohibition against writing down the Oral Torah, to which he replies that there are Torah prohibitions that are not enumerated, and therefore non-enumeration does not prove that the prohibition is not Torah-level.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I started discussing the proposals of Moshe Zemer, the Reform rabbi, for changes in Jewish law. And my goal was to demonstrate two things. First, to show what does not fit into the very flexible framework that I sketched here—that is, to show that this is still a framework. Even though it may somehow seem that all the boundaries have been breached, that’s not true, not all the boundaries have been breached. And the opposite direction is to try and show—this is a more secondary point, but still—to try and show that even proposals coming from a Reform rabbi can be non-Reform proposals. In other words, that same distinction I’ve repeated several times between sociological classification and logical classification. Meaning, sociologically you can be defined as Reform, but the argument you make can be an Orthodox argument, and vice versa. So those are the two things I wanted to demonstrate through his proposals, and I think this will sharpen for us the whole framework I’ve described up to now. So I really began with two foundational principles, and it’s important that this be clear. The first principle he lays out there is that, in his view, Jewish law is nothing but the instrument for achieving a more morally complete state for the person, for society. That’s his assumption. And I said that quite a few Orthodox rabbis and thinkers also share that assumption. But when you think about it a bit, you see that Reform follows from that assumption immediately. Because it basically means that anywhere Jewish law does not bring us to the ultimate moral state, then the law needs to be changed. Which is exactly what the Reform do. Now of course the Orthodox rabbis, like Rabbi Kook for example, who was certainly not Reform in his halakhic outlook at least, he too agrees with this idea that Jewish law aligns with morality. So how does he explain it, how does he deal with situations where there is no fit between Jewish law and the moral goal? Where it does not achieve the moral goal? He usually explains that it actually does achieve it. Meaning, there is some higher morality that we don’t always understand, things of that sort. Somehow he is forced either to coordinate it or to get stuck with lack of authority and say, okay, we’re stuck, there’s no authority, there’s no choice, and therefore we can’t change it. But fundamentally he needs excuses—and usually very lame ones too—but he needs excuses to explain why not to be Reform. And therefore I argue that Moshe Zemer’s point of departure, that the whole point of Jewish law is to achieve moral goals, is a very central point. It’s not by accident that he started there; the whole story sits on that. And in that sense it is very surprising to discover that this view is actually shared by some of the greatest figures in Orthodoxy. And in that sense, in my opinion, he is more honest than they are, because he really does draw the conclusions from that assumption, while they are unwilling to draw the conclusions and offer one lame excuse after another. And I said that in my opinion the whole thing is wrong, because Jewish law is not intended to achieve moral goals at all. There is an estrangement between Jewish law and morality; these are two systems that do not speak the same language, there is no connection between them, and therefore there is also no reason to be troubled by conflicts between Jewish law and morality and so on. I’m not going back into all those minefields again. That was the first point. The second point, which I reached at the end of the previous lecture, is the confusion between motivation and halakhic mechanism. And I showed several examples that appear in Moshe Zemer’s book, several examples meant to show that the sages used moral or social, human motivation to change Jewish law. And I said that he is confusing the question of motivation with the question of justification. I compared it to what happens in philosophy of science, the difference between the context of discovery and the context of justification. Because it is of course true that the sages act out of moral, social, value-based motivations, various needs, and so forth. But he stops there. Meaning, from his perspective, once there is motivation, Jewish law has to be changed. But with the sages, from the examples he himself brought, I showed that he is wrong—like the ketubah in Alexandria and others. The sages, even when they are driven by a certain motivation, still then do something further: they activate some halakhic or interpretive mechanism in order to make the change. In other words, it is not enough for them that there is a worthy motivation here. The motivation is worthy—I think his motivations are worthy too—but motivations are not enough to justify halakhic change. You also need a valid halakhic mechanism, which brings us back to the question of conservative midrash. And I said that a conservative who changes Jewish law can still be considered conservative if the change is based on conservative midrash. Meaning, he shows that this is actually the correct way to apply Jewish law under current circumstances. Now, he is not doing conservative midrash. He says: at the moment this thing doesn’t seem moral to me, therefore the Jewish law is void. So the fact that it doesn’t seem moral to you is an excellent motivation. What you should have done, if you are conservative and not Reform—he is Reform. But what the conservative is supposed to do in such a situation is: okay, I have a strong motivation to examine this. But now I need to investigate. If I manage to find a mechanism that changes the law, excellent. Then the motivation spurred me to search for the mechanism. But I need the mechanism. Meaning, if there is motivation and I didn’t find a mechanism, then I won’t make the change. And that is exactly the difference between a Reform position and a midrashic conservative of whatever sort.
[Speaker C] According to that, Moshe Zemer is basically doing the same thing. I mean, if from the outset he defines the commandments of the Torah as something meant to produce some moral result, proper moral intentions, then once our moral standards change, I need to adapt the direction, the
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] morality
[Speaker C] higher, overarching one.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a question that came up in the previous lecture too, and I said that it’s true on the formal level, but once again that takes us back to the first point, the identification of Jewish law with morality. Once we identify Jewish law with morality, then we really have emptied Jewish law of content. I explained that there are huge difficulties with that—then non-Jews too should be obligated in all of Jewish law. It just doesn’t hold up; it’s simply nonsense. In other words, to identify Jewish law with morality, with all due respect—important and great Jews said this—but it’s simply total nonsense. To say such a thing is simply to say that there is no Jewish law, you just need to be a decent human being, that’s all. So you don’t need Jewish law for that, and non-Jews are obligated just like Jews, and that’s it, it has no meaning at all. Now, it’s true that formally you can define Jewish law as coming to achieve moral goals, and therefore if morality changes then Jewish law should change—that’s conservative midrash, true. But I don’t need conservative midrash where I believe there is binding Jewish law. Where you identify Jewish law with morality, you are basically saying there is no binding Jewish law, that’s all. So you don’t need conservative midrash there. So yes, formally it looks the same, but in substance there’s nothing here. I’ll say even more than that: what will you say in a place where moral values have not changed? Let me give you an example: mamzerim. Okay? So Zemer—we’ll see this—Zemer says that mamzerim are immoral. Why are you punishing children for the sin of their parents? That’s immoral, and therefore it’s void. Now that really is immoral, it really is immoral—you are ruining these children who did nothing, what do you want from them? And ruining them to the core. But on the other hand I ask: is this a moral value that changed? Of course not. What, the sages didn’t cry over the pain of mamzerim? Of course they did. So why didn’t they permit all mamzerim on that very argument? You can say they weren’t brave enough, or whatever—why didn’t they take that step? They didn’t take that step because it was obvious to them that the fact that something is immoral is still not enough to say that it is permitted. Because it may be that there are considerations—I said religious values, what I called them—things like that, which force us to act in a way that is opposed to morality. That’s the reality. But someone who identifies Jewish law with morality can easily abolish the law of mamzerim today, and he won’t be able to explain to me why the sages did not abolish it.
[Speaker D] But you could say, Rabbi, Rabbi, after all no one—where does the difference come from? Rabbi Kook is exactly like him, except that he’s less honest. What, Rabbi Kook wouldn’t have carried out the Binding of Isaac if the Holy One, blessed be He, had spoken to him and told him to? Ask him. In my eyes he’s simply not consistent or not honest. That’s all. Simply not consistent? Abraham our father was—Rabbi, I don’t really understand this. Does the Rabbi think Rabbi Kook would not have carried out the Binding of Isaac? Don’t ask him about Rabbi Kook—you’re in good company, I don’t understand him either. But that’s his approach. Ask him. I don’t know what to do with it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: someone who thinks that way is Reform, just a Reform person who isn’t honest.
[Speaker D] That’s all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, there are many difficulties with him. The Binding of Isaac is a good challenge. By the way, Rabbi Kook has a wonderful interpretation of the Binding of Isaac in the prayer book Olat Re’iyah, and there he explains that all of this was really a trial meant to teach this very principle itself. Namely, that Jewish law cannot contradict morality. And therefore “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad” at the end of the Binding of Isaac is really the lesson of the Binding. Not Abraham’s self-sacrifice in being willing to do it—that, if I really continued this line of thought, would actually be a failure. There are commentators who want to claim that, but that too is absurd. But still, that is basically what comes out of Rabbi Kook: the Holy One, blessed be He, deliberately led him into this very failure in order to teach him this lesson, that there cannot be a contradiction between Jewish law and natural morality. That’s how he explains it there. But then the question really arises: so Abraham wasn’t supposed to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, in the first place? Or how are we to understand the whole move here? There’s no way out of this, in my opinion, according to Rabbi Kook. I don’t understand this thing. It’s either contradictory or not honest, call it whatever you want. He really was a great man and so on, I’m of course not doubting his greatness or his worthiness; I’m not trying to cast him out of the community, and I’m not capable of doing that anyway. I’m just—fine—but his view is very problematic. Good. So the second point is the confusion between the motivation and the mechanism, or between the motivation and the justification—the context of discovery and the context of justification. And then, just to finish this point, there is the claim that the Reform thinker too is basically doing conservative midrash, because he says that if morality changed, I was just in the middle of that point, if morality changed then Jewish law must be changed. True, formally that’s correct, but in light of the first point—and that’s the second point too—but in light of the first point, this empties it of content. There is no Jewish law, there is only morality. And the second thing I’m saying is that if morality didn’t change, then where is the conservative midrash? So you tell me that today mamzerim should be permitted—why didn’t the sages permit mamzerim? So inherently you are not continuing the sages. Maybe you are more right than they were and they were mistaken, maybe you have criticism of them, fine. But you are not continuing the sages, which means there is no conservatism here. You can invent a new religion and claim that it is more correct—fine, that’s your right. But that’s why I do not accept this formal resemblance people make between Zemer’s arguments and the midrashic conservatism I’m describing here. So that’s the difference.
[Speaker D] But the Rabbi himself said several times that sometimes if there is a conflict, then it could be that the Rabbi would rule like morality and not necessarily like Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So—
[Speaker D] Maybe it’s also possible to imagine a case of—I’m not saying mamzerim should be permitted—but theoretically the Rabbi could, I don’t know. I’m asking the Rabbi: Rabbi, last week in the Torah portion of Mattot, if the Rabbi had been among the twelve thousand, surely if the Rabbi had lived then he would have been among those twelve thousand or some tribal chief there—would he have carried out “kill every male among the children” or not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t take the feathers of a tribal chief.
[Speaker D] Would the Rabbi have carried out “kill every male among the children”? It’s not written—and it’s not simple—and they didn’t do anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the Holy One, blessed be He, said so, then I would have done it, yes.
[Speaker D] Despite the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I explained this in the series on Jewish law and morality, and I said that where there is a clear command of the Torah, then obviously it overrides morality, because the Torah itself took that into account. Only in a clash that is not essential but incidental can morality sometimes override Jewish law. Not always, but it can. Where it’s built in, then obviously Jewish law prevails.
[Speaker D] It’s interesting that all twelve thousand men didn’t understand the word of God that way—only Moses did.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, they didn’t understand the word of God?
[Speaker D] After all, none of the twelve thousand men—the best of that generation, all righteous, all the directions say they were all righteous—and despite all that, not one of them, when they were told “take the Lord’s vengeance on Midian,” understood that as “kill every male among the children.” Every male among the children, and not even to kill the women who after all were coerced. And despite all that Moses understood otherwise and even became angry with them, and they don’t even say one word back—maybe explain, maybe clarify, maybe it wasn’t like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly because I’m right—so what’s the question? Apparently—
[Speaker D] But apparently it wasn’t necessary to understand the word of God that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean it wasn’t necessary? Then why was Moses angry with them? I don’t understand—you’re dancing around here.
[Speaker D] I don’t know, that’s a question about Moses. So because there’s a question about Moses, I need to—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Torah tells us this, and the message is that Moses was apparently right—not that the Torah is criticizing Moses for it, in your opinion. It’s like the commentators who say that Abraham—
[Speaker D] No, actually I have a different answer. The truth is I do have a different answer, but let’s not tire people out. A different answer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Torah says that Moses was angry with them, so apparently they were not in the right. Why do we need answers here?
[Speaker D] Yes, but it’s a little strange. Twelve thousand men, Pinchas, all the names you mentioned, all righteous. They heard the command “take the Lord’s vengeance on Midian” as not killing babies who did not sin and did not transgress. Not stabbing one-month-old babies because they did not sin,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And despite all that Moses is angry.
[Speaker D] Well, it sounds a little strange.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not strange at all. What’s strange?
[Speaker D] What, Moses can’t make a mistake? The midrash says that several times precisely when he was angry he made mistakes, like in our Torah portion with the vessels.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, the Torah doesn’t say he made a mistake.
[Speaker D] Fine, so maybe we should think—Rabbi, is it impossible to think of another interpretation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can think of lots of things. I said, it’s possible—there are also those who interpreted that Abraham our father failed the trial of the Binding of Isaac. Right? But that’s absurd, that’s all.
[Speaker D] I agree, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That Pinchas was in the wrong because he stabbed the Midianites—but the Holy One, blessed be He, gives him His covenant of peace at the beginning of the next Torah portion. You can interpret all sorts of nonsense, fine. In interpreting Torah everybody says whatever they want. Fine. It doesn’t really trouble me what everyone can interpret. Good, let’s get back to our matter. So that’s the second point. Now I want to continue following the order of his book, because that will be a good completion of this point. Look, the next stage in the book is rabbinic enactments. And there he brings as an example the ordinance for penitents. For example, the sages enacted ordinances to make things easier for penitents—to return. For example, the beam ordinance: a person stole a beam, a plank, and built it into a house, used it as part of a house that he built. Now it’s inside the house. Then it turns out that he stole it—there are witnesses, or he wants to repent, whatever the case may be. And now the owner of the beam demands his beam back. Now as long as the property that I stole is still intact, I cannot compensate him with money; I have to return the object that I stole. If the object no longer exists, then I pay its value. But if the object still exists, then it’s his object and I have to return the object. Now here the beam still exists, except that if I take that beam out I destroy the whole house. So in order to return this one beam that I stole, do I have to lose my entire house? So the sages enacted the beam ordinance. And they said that in order not to lock the door of repentance בפני penitents, because thieves who want to return—so we do not obligate him to return the beam itself, but rather to pay money. And the beam can remain stuck in the house. Okay? And basically what he says is that we see here, says Zemer, that it is possible to change Jewish law out of moral, human, social motives and so on. Now in this context, this is of course completely absurd, but I’ll just try to explain why, and why it’s a good indication of what we’re talking about here. Because first of all, a few side points. One point is that in this case, after all, there is already a mechanism in the Torah of returning monetary value, right? That is, if I stole something and let’s say the object was destroyed through circumstances or no longer exists, deliberately or accidentally, it doesn’t matter—but it no longer exists, then I have to return money. So there is already a Torah-level mechanism in the Torah itself by which the thief returns the stolen item via returning its monetary value, and not by returning the item itself. So in the beam ordinance all the sages really did was use the principle that property declared ownerless by a court is ownerless, and that is an authority the sages have whether or not morality is involved. The sages can say: we specifically declare this beam ownerless. Now you no longer have a monetary claim against him; he has to return the stolen property, so let him return its value. That is not called changing Jewish law for moral reasons. But that’s too specific an argument. There is a much more fundamental mistake here. The claim, basically, is that this is a rabbinic enactment. And that is simply almost the opposite of what he wants to prove. Because an enactment—I spoke earlier about the fact that when the sages interpret a Torah law, or change a Torah law, doesn’t matter, or shape it, even initially, when they establish the law—they may have a motivation, but there also has to be a mechanism. Meaning, there also has to be a context of justification, not only a context of discovery. So let’s say, for example, that Hillel the Elder wanted to permit mamzerim. That was the motivation: to avoid increasing the number of mamzerim. And then he found the mechanism, namely what is written in Ketubot, “when you marry me you shall become my wife,” when you enter the bridal canopy you shall become my wife. So he said that the betrothal takes effect only from the time she enters the bridal canopy. That was the mechanism. The motivation was the desire to permit mamzerim, and the mechanism was that mechanism. And I said that in Torah law the motivation is not relevant at all; it’s like the context of discovery. What matters is the context of justification. Meaning, if the sages can justify it in terms of the halakhic mechanism, excellent. If they had some motivation or other—usually they do have a motivation—but the motivation is not relevant in the halakhic field. We are not interested in the motivation; we are interested in the mechanism. What happens in a rabbinic enactment? A rabbinic enactment works exactly one hundred and eighty degrees the other way around. In a rabbinic enactment, what matters is only the motivation, and you don’t need a mechanism. That’s the whole idea. Why? Because think, for example, about eating poultry with milk, the prohibition of eating poultry with milk. Okay? That is rabbinic law. Meat with milk is Torah law; poultry with milk is rabbinic law. Now there, what was the motivation of the sages? The concern that people might come to eat meat with milk. Right? They said it is worthwhile to forbid poultry with milk too. Fine—worthwhile, excellent motivation. Where’s the mechanism? Is motivation enough? The answer is yes—because if they had said that because of this motivation, poultry with milk is included in the Torah prohibition of meat with milk, that would not have been legal. That would be adding to the Torah. Even though the motivation is a very good and justified motivation. The Torah itself says, “you shall keep My charge”—never mind. Motivation is not enough; you need a mechanism. But that is when you are coming to interpret Torah law. If, however, you are coming to make an enactment, the whole point is that you do not have a mechanism. If you had a mechanism, it would be Torah law, not rabbinic law. If you could interpret it within the Torah itself, if you had what I called earlier conservative midrash, then it would be Torah law and there would be no need for a rabbinic enactment. The sages would interpret it and then it would become Torah law. A rabbinic enactment always exists where I have no mechanism. And therefore on the Torah level it is not forbidden, because there is no mechanism. I have motivation—but motivation does not prohibit things. Motivation is not enough; you need a mechanism. But when the sages see that the motivation is important and they have no Torah-level mechanism, another path is open to them. They can do it as a rabbinic enactment, a decree, an ordinance, a fence, and the like. What happens in a rabbinic enactment? In a rabbinic enactment they do not need to explain to me why poultry with milk is included in meat with milk—if that were the conservative midrash, yes? Because if it were included, it would be a Torah prohibition. On the contrary, they say it is not included, but we forbid it even though it is not included. Why? Because we have a motivation to forbid it, because it is a decree or a fence lest one come to eat meat with milk, which is Torah law. So a rabbinic enactment is exactly the dual complement of Torah law. In Torah law, the justification is marginal and the mechanism is central. In rabbinic law, the justification is everything and there is no mechanism. Not just that it is marginal—there is no mechanism, because if there were a mechanism, it would be Torah law. Rabbinic enactment is built on situations like these, where the sages do not have a mechanism to forbid something on the Torah level. So what do they do? They sit and enact a new enactment, add it to Jewish law, and say: from now on this too is forbidden. Not because it is included in Torah law—no. This is commandment number 614, a new rabbinic commandment. Now Maimonides really writes—and it also sounds very reasonable conceptually—that when the sages make such an enactment, they must specify that what we are saying here is rabbinic law. Don’t think that this is an interpretation of Torah law or that it is Torah law, because otherwise they would violate the prohibition against adding to the Torah. And that is exactly the point. Why? Because if you don’t have a mechanism—even though you have justification, and it is good that you are doing it—still, if you don’t have a mechanism, it is forbidden. Not only will it not be Torah law; you are forbidden to say that it is Torah law. You violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah, you mislead the public. Even though, ostensibly, you are even scaring them more, so they surely won’t eat poultry with milk—you are lying to them and saying it is Torah law. No, you can’t say that, it’s a lie. You have to explain to them: I forbid this on the rabbinic level. Fine, that too is a prohibition.
[Speaker F] But what happens when the sages want to be lenient? Until now you spoke about adding a prohibition. What happens when they want to be lenient? They don’t have the mechanism, they have the motivation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The sages have authority to be lenient or stringent according to the rules—the approaches of passive omission and positive action, there are all sorts of rules about how the sages can operate. But after they make use of those rules and act, the result is rabbinic law. It is not Torah law, because there is no interpretive mechanism, or what I called conservative midrash, something that can bring this into Torah-level Jewish law under the circumstances that have now arisen, or something like that. I have no mechanism.
[Speaker F] So basically, Zemer is only—well, not only, but—disagreeing on the question of authority, because what he’s really saying is: as a Reform Jew, in my community, I think I have sages who can be lenient. And then you come and say, but you don’t have authority.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m not claiming that. I’ll claim that in a minute. For now I argued something completely different. And on both points I disagree with him. One of them is what you said, which I’ll get to in a moment, but what I’ve said until now is not that. I did not argue that he has no authority. In truth he doesn’t, but that’s not what I argued. He doesn’t present this as a rabbinic enactment of the Reform rabbis’ council. He claims that the Torah-level law has changed or been nullified. If he had said, we are instituting an enactment because there is such-and-such a need, then we could have an argument about the question of authority—whether they are like a Sanhedrin, not like a Sanhedrin, fine, that’s a different discussion. I have an argument with him, but it’s a different discussion, and I said that you can find workarounds. On that issue I’m actually rather with him. Meaning, if one wants, it’s possible; there is temporary suspension, there are various things, which we also talked about a bit. But that’s not what he says. He says the Jewish law itself has, from the outset, been nullified. Not that I am now instructing you not to observe it by way of a rabbinic enactment. Okay? When the sages said not to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath, they did not say that the commandment doesn’t exist. They cannot nullify the commandment. The commandment exists. I say that according to the Babylonian Talmud, on the Torah level one does indeed have to blow it. So the commandment exists, but they say: as a practical halakhic ruling, or in practice, we tell you not to fulfill it. By the way, there is a dispute among the later authorities—Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Magen Avraham, that’s how people usually frame it; I don’t think that’s correct, but that’s how they usually say it—about what happens if I did violate this and blew the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that fell on the Sabbath. Did I fulfill a commandment and just violate a rabbinic prohibition, or did I not fulfill the commandment at all? But okay—even the one who says I did not fulfill the commandment does not say that because the sages nullified the commandment. It’s some sort of commandment fulfilled through a transgression, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want a commandment that comes at the price of a rabbinic transgression. But the sages cannot say there is no Torah-level commandment here. On the contrary—that’s the whole argument. The whole dispute between the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud is precisely this. The Jerusalem Talmud argues that there is no Torah-level commandment at all, because on the Sabbath it says “a remembrance of blowing,” not “a day of blowing,” so one need not sound it, only remember the sounding. But according to the Babylonian Talmud, that is a possibility that was rejected. It was an initial assumption that was rejected, and there is a Torah-level obligation to blow the shofar, and the sages suspended it. So the sages cannot nullify the commandment; the sages can say: you should not fulfill it. We prohibit fulfilling it. That is exactly the difference. But with Zemer, the commandment does not exist—that is his claim. Now, that is incorrect; it does not follow from there. I think the problem is that he really does not distinguish between Torah-level law and rabbinic law. He doesn’t make those distinctions. By the way, this is very common in the world of scholarship. Those people mix up Torah-level and rabbinic law in truly crazy ways. But with the Reform movement I think this is also tied to a worldview. It’s tied to a worldview because they do not think the Torah came from Sinai. So what is Torah-level and what is rabbinic? It’s all things that were accepted by the Jewish people over the years. Go try to distinguish what counts as Torah-level and what counts as rabbinic. The fact that at some stage they decided to write something down and call it the Written Torah—so what? Then sages decided to write and produced the Talmudic text. So that too is written. I can also write various things for you and they too will be written. So I think essentially—I don’t know, I haven’t seen this explicitly anywhere, and I don’t see it stated outright—but it seems to me almost demanded by Reform conceptions that they would not make the distinction between Torah-level and rabbinic law at all, because that whole distinction is based on the idea that some things are Torah-level, given by the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai, and some things are additions added by sages over the generations. For the Reform, everything is additions added by sages over the generations. So in that sense, yes, the field, the playing field, is completely different; we are speaking here on a different field. But I’m saying: if you are already bringing proof from the sages, from rabbinic enactments such as the sages’ enactment of the beam, that is simply proof to the contrary. Because the whole idea you see there is that when there is motivation but no mechanism, you cannot change the Jewish law. What you can do is enact a rabbinic ordinance; you cannot change the Jewish law. Once again, that shows that motivation alone is not enough. In other words, the inversion between Torah-level law, where only mechanism matters and the justification is marginal, and rabbinic law, where only the justification matters and the mechanism is irrelevant—does not exist. But both sides together show that he is wrong. Because right there we see that when there is justification but no mechanism, you cannot change the law. You can add a rabbinic enactment or leave things alone, but you cannot change Torah-level law. And he brings this as support for the idea that if you have justification you can change Torah-level law, which is simply a mistake. So indeed the next point really is what Ezra noted: that the sages can—or let’s say he could come and say, okay, you’ve convinced me, you can’t change Jewish law because it’s immoral or unsuitable or something like that, but you can make an enactment. So now we, the council of Reform rabbis, enact a rabbinic ordinance that nullifies the commandment of levirate marriage, or I don’t know what, or all kinds of things of that sort. Well, there are other problems here, because to nullify the commandment of levirate marriage is actually to commit a transgression through positive action, not passive omission. Because we would be permitting a woman to marry without levirate marriage. That’s not nullifying the commandment of levirate marriage; that is permitting her to marry without levirate marriage. When she goes and marries without levirate marriage, that is uprooting Torah law through positive action, not passive omission. Now, a rabbinic enactment that uproots Torah law through positive action, simply speaking according to the rules of the Talmud, cannot be done, although the medieval authorities wrote that in exceptional cases they do do this, and there are various examples of it. There is the Raavad in Tamim De’im and elsewhere; a number of medieval authorities wrote this. There is even Tosafot in I think two places, showing that sometimes the sages uproot something from the Torah even through positive action. In any case, if he had come and argued that we are instituting a rabbinic enactment here, then indeed a different discussion would arise; the sources he would bring would be relevant sources, and my earlier arguments would not be relevant. But here we really return to the question we also discussed, namely the question of authority. That is, who really can institute rabbinic enactments or repeal rabbinic enactments that already existed—that is a whole separate issue. Simply speaking, at least according to the Talmudic law, it is only bodies that have “do not deviate,” and therefore “do not deviate” applies to them. Or perhaps something that the entire public accepted upon itself; then maybe. But if the entire public accepts a certain body upon itself, it is very doubtful that it can nullify Torah law. It can institute a rabbinic enactment that will bind the public, but to uproot Torah law, even by passive omission, I don’t think so. It is not reasonable to entrust that to a body that has received the public’s confidence. That has to be a Sanhedrin; it has to be something with formal authority. Anyway, that would have raised the question of authority, which is a more ambiguous question, because as I said, I brought some examples when we discussed the question of authority and I said that where the motivation exists, there are ways of bypassing the authority question. You can make a temporary suspension. A temporary suspension is entrusted to every religious court in every generation; you don’t need the Great Court for that. I can prove that from Maimonides, and we talked about that, I think. And as is well known, nothing is more permanent than the temporary. Meaning, a temporary suspension can be temporary until further notice, like the ban of Rabbeinu Gershom, and like various other things—everyone said they were very temporary. They are very temporary, except nobody ever repeals them, and woe to whoever tries to repeal this temporary thing. So the mechanisms for bypassing authority are easier. That is, precisely regarding the question Ezra raised earlier, in my eyes the first claim I made is actually a stronger argument against him. Because he basically wants to argue on the Torah-level plane; he wants to argue that the Torah-level Jewish law at its source has been nullified. If he wants to argue, fine, it has not been nullified, but we will now make a rabbinic enactment telling us in practice not to observe it—we are not nullifying the law itself, but in practice we decree not to observe it—that was in principle possible. It brings us into authority problems, and I think authority problems are easier to get around, though one still has to be careful. That is, when we bypass the authority problem, that is only in places where there is truly acute need. And we’ll see this later with the Reform movement too, and in Zemer’s examples you can see it—there need not be any acute need at all. The moment you see something that doesn’t sound reasonable to you, then it is nullified. Take levirate marriage, for example. Levirate marriage, for example—he nullifies it with a wave of the hand. It’s not that some terribly difficult problem or distress arises, and therefore one needs to make some temporary suspension or another. No. He says it seems that today it isn’t relevant, and therefore it is nullified. That, I don’t think, can be done through temporary suspension. That is, suspension is a tool for extreme situations, for situations in which the sages see that something here just does not fit, yes? There are things that cannot be observed today. But using suspension mechanisms with too light a trigger finger basically means that you are not using a suspension mechanism at all—you are simply nullifying.
[Speaker F] If he had really gone with that argument—that he is not nullifying the Torah-level law, but rather by their rabbinic enactment, within their own framework, they do what they do and run into some authority problems—then in such a case would you expel them from the camp? As you are doing now?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, “expel them from the camp” is an undefined expression. I’m not expelling them from the camp.
[Speaker F] Fine, okay. So you’ve removed them from the definition?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For a prayer quorum, I would not join with such a person.
[Speaker F] What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I would not join a prayer quorum with such a person. I think—so it seems to me. Again, I’m saying, it depends very much, because there are all kinds of Reform types, so I’m not going to talk about people; I’ll talk about arguments. Okay? Let’s say a person who does not believe in Torah from Heaven and in commandments—then he does not join a prayer quorum; his prayer is not prayer, meaning, it is not the commandment of prayer. Obviously he is praying to the Holy One, blessed be He, good for him, but there is no commandment of prayer here; there are not ten people praying or ten fringes. So he does not join. This is not a sanction. I am not pushing him outside the camp because I’m angry at him—who am I? What am I, the Master of the universe? I simply cannot join a prayer quorum with him; I do not count him as one of the ten. Not as a sanction. Therefore now, if he had said this—let’s say, the authority question you mentioned earlier—I think not. I think he could definitely, definitely be included. I disagree with him, fine, but I disagree with many people on many things, so what? He is definitely within the framework. That is, he is playing the halakhic game, and okay, in my eyes that is not a Reform argument. That is an argument I do not accept within conservative midrash, but it is not a Reform argument. A Reform argument is an argument that does not accept the principle, not one that applies it in a way I disagree with. Okay? All right. So that really is the aspect of authority, which one reaches quickly enough, but in my opinion the central point is not authority but the law itself. Another example he brings is a principle that is subtler—the principle of “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” Yes, for example in tractate Berakhot the Talmud says that they permitted writing down the Oral Torah because “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” And Rashi explains—Rashi in Yoma, never mind—he says: when the time comes to do something for the sake of the Holy One, blessed be He, it is permitted thereby to violate Torah. Now this is a very interesting principle, and its definition is really not clear to me, and I don’t know of a place where they clarified the definition of the matter. Again, I didn’t do a comprehensive search, but I looked into it a bit. But there are sages who use the word “they violated,” not “they nullified.” Yes. Again, no—I’m saying, “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” needs to be understood. Because if this were speaking about an enactment—an enactment—let’s say, is there a need to violate in the meantime? There is a prohibition on writing down the Oral Torah. Now Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi saw that there was distress, so he made an enactment that permitted writing down the Oral Torah. If that were all this was, I would not need a verse saying “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” Are there no rabbinic enactments? And when they enacted not to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath, does anyone mention “It is a time to act for the Lord”? No. It’s a rabbinic enactment, fine, there is a rabbinic enactment. The expression “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” sounds like something more similar to Reform claims—not to the claim that I am making an enactment here, but that I am nullifying the law at its root. And that really is strange, because here it does seem that there is motivation without mechanism, and it is not an enactment but a change in the law. This is already better evidence for Zemer’s claims. And here I’ll make a few comments. The first is the issue of dosage, as I said earlier. Here too it is really hard to draw a line, but it has two sides, even if the line can be blurry. Clearly you can’t—and what is the motivation, Rabbi?
[Speaker E] What? Here too the motivation matters, the motivation of the sages to preserve.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Only the motivation? Only the motivation matters. Yes. So that is what I’m talking about; therefore this is good evidence. There is an action here based on motivation without mechanism. Yes.
[Speaker E] And it
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] does not create a rabbinic enactment, which I said would not be evidence. No. Because if this were just an ordinary rabbinic enactment, there would be no need for the verse “It is a time to act for the Lord”; rather, it seems to be some kind of principle that can be used to deal with the law itself, not to add a rabbinic enactment. So what does that mean—how do you deal with the law itself? There is a prohibition on writing down the Oral Torah. Okay, now you say: look, but the Torah will be forgotten or something like that; this creates problems. Since it creates problems, therefore I permit writing down the Oral Torah. Not an enactment—permit; I nullified the prohibition. Or the prohibition does not exist in such a case, or I don’t know exactly how to define it, a kind of “it just doesn’t fit” perhaps, yes, I don’t know, something like that. Now this is really a Reform move. It is a Reform move because you have no mechanism, you are nullifying Torah law, you are not adding a rabbinic enactment, you are nullifying Torah law and you have no mechanism. That’s good evidence. So I’m saying, first, the dosage here—how much can one use “It is a time to act for the Lord”? In very extreme situations, when the Torah is being forgotten—that’s a dramatic situation. But to use “It is a time to act for the Lord” in order to nullify not three-quarters, but ninety-five percent of the Jewish laws, when the need is, even if it exists at all, completely minor—yes, exactly, a kind of transgression for its own sake. That sounds like a thoroughly improper use of this principle, “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” And again, where exactly the line passes I don’t know, but somehow it seems it passes far beyond what the Reform movement does; that’s what my common sense says. But I think all the same one can explain “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” in two other ways. One possibility is that “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” really is a rabbinic enactment. So why do you need “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”? Because here we are talking about a rabbinic enactment involving positive action, not passive omission. Not to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah that falls on the Sabbath is passive omission: don’t blow the shofar even though by law you were obligated. So they tell you to sit and not do what the law says. That is passive omission, an ordinary rabbinic enactment; the sages uproot something from the Torah by passive omission. But in writing down the Oral Torah, it is active permission to violate the Torah through positive action. Where do we find this? The sages have no authority to nullify Torah law through positive action. The Talmud says—Talmud in Yevamot 90—that you can’t nullify through positive action. So how do the sages nullify? “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” Meaning, in places where the need is acute, extreme, foundational—there they nullify even through positive action. And I already mentioned the Raavad earlier in Tamim De’im and other medieval authorities who indeed bring in other contexts that there were places where the sages uprooted something from the Torah through positive action, not only through passive omission, in places where there was truly acute need. And where is the source for this, apparently? What do you mean? Very nice that the need is acute, but where do they get authority to do that? If I’m right, then the authority comes from here, from this verse: “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” And then this basically says, once again, that it has nothing to do with the Reform movement, if one interprets it that way. Then it has nothing to do with the Reform movement, but rather says that here one may uproot something from the Torah even through positive action, because “they have violated Your Torah”—the Torah is about to fall apart. This is an extreme situation. So this would only be a justification for why it is permitted to make such a rabbinic enactment, but we are still dealing with the rules of rabbinic enactments, not with nullifying the Torah law itself. A second way to explain it—or a third way to explain it—is that this is some kind of “whichever way you look at it” argument. Why is it forbidden to write down the Oral Torah? A kind of inquiry into the reason for the verse, if you like. Why is it forbidden to write down the Oral Torah? It will harm Torah study, the halakhic ruling process of Torah. And there are those who explain—and I think this is the reasonable explanation—that if you write down the Oral Torah, you turn it into a kind of Written Torah; you freeze it too much. You drain it of vitality, flexibility, the ability to develop, and therefore they forbade writing down the Oral Torah. Now, in a place where, if we preserve this prohibition and do not write down the Oral Torah, the Torah will be forgotten, then it makes no sense to preserve the Torah-level prohibition. Because the whole Torah-level prohibition came in order to take care of the Torah, but you cannot take care of the Torah in a way that harms it more than if you had not done this. Therefore they say: “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”—here this prohibition is nullified. And now I’m saying on the Torah level, not as a rabbinic enactment. The Torah-level prohibition is nullified. Something like this—in one of my recent columns I wrote, I posted there a photo of an interview they did with Rabbi Gershon Edelstein regarding how to relate to children who have left the path. And there I was really surprised to hear that interview. Afterward, in the comments yesterday I think, I also posted something with Rabbi Moshe Hillel Hirsch, head of the Slabodka yeshiva, saying very similar things. He argues there a kind of “whichever way you look at it” argument. He says, let’s say my daughter wants me to buy her immodest clothing—is that permitted? And he says yes, buy her immodest clothing. Now isn’t that “do not place a stumbling block”? Without me she would not have the clothing—if I didn’t buy it for her, she wouldn’t have it. So if I buy her immodest clothing, am I causing her to stumble in the prohibition of “do not place a stumbling block”? And he says yes, but if you don’t buy her the immodest clothing, she’ll throw everything away and observe even fewer commandments. So this is a kind of argument where he does not mean to institute a rabbinic enactment here. He means to expound some kind of reason-for-the-verse argument, to tell you: you are worried about “do not place a stumbling block,” but your concern for “do not place a stumbling block” will itself become a worse “stumbling block.” Something like that is what I want to say here. Yes, now I remember—there is also a Meiri like this. The Meiri argues: why do we suspend Torah study for every passing commandment? After all, Torah study is equal to all of them; it is the most important commandment. So how do we suspend Torah study for every passing commandment? And he says, because I study Torah in order to fulfill it; if because of the study I won’t fulfill it, then what am I studying for? Again, this is some kind of argument like that. It is not a rabbinic enactment. It goes into the roots of Torah-level law and says to you: look, sometimes its nullification is its fulfillment, because if you preserve and obey the Torah-level law, you will not achieve what it came to achieve; on the contrary, you will only do harm. And therefore in such a place the Torah-level law does not stand. And it may be that what is said here, “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah,” is exactly that. You want to preserve the Torah, and therefore you say, “Do not touch My anointed ones”—yes, don’t write down the Oral Torah. He says: if you don’t touch it, in the end there will be nothing left to touch. The Torah will be forgotten. So what did we gain from the whole story? You want to preserve the Torah—today, preserving the Torah means writing it down, not refraining from writing down the Oral Torah.
[Speaker H] So we’ve come back—so we’ve come back to the field of conservative midrash.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What again?
[Speaker H] We’ve come back to the field of conservative midrash.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And therefore I claim that this too will not be evidence for Zemer.
[Speaker H] It’s conservative midrash, it has nothing to do with it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Exactly. So I’m saying: if the interpretation is like what I said earlier, that this is a rabbinic law of uprooting through positive action, then it is not evidence for Zemer, because it operates on the rabbinic plane, where justification is enough and you don’t need a mechanism. And he is looking for something where on the Torah level justification alone is enough without mechanism. That, you can’t do. And if the interpretation is what I said here, then there is conservative midrash. Once there is conservative midrash, fine, then I agree—but that is not what he says. Okay? Therefore I think that in the end this claim too—“It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”—in my opinion does not hold water from the standpoint of midrashic interpretation. The Reform think differently, but I am trying to show that there are things a conservative midrashist would not accept. That is, there are things outside the boundaries of flexibility that conservatism has drawn here. There are similar principles that he also mentions; for example, the Talmud in Kiddushin 21 says there—they discuss there not the stubborn and rebellious son, sorry, but the beautiful captive woman. And the Talmud says there that the beautiful captive woman was permitted against the evil inclination. Why? Because it is better that Israel eat the flesh of dying but ritually slaughtered animals than eat the flesh of dying carcasses. Rashi there explains that there is something disgusting about eating an animal that is dying, even though it is still permitted—if you slaughter it, that permits it and you may eat it—but if it is already in advanced stages of dying, then it is disgusting to eat it. Now I have a dying animal. The Talmud says that if the two options are that if I do not slaughter it, people will eat it as a carcass without slaughter, then it is better to slaughter it now while it is already dying, and this is disgusting, in order to spare them the prohibition of eating carrion. In other words, as people often put it, it is better to commit a light prohibition in order to prevent people from committing a serious prohibition. Well, one can elaborate on this at great length; these are fascinating topics, and I think they have not been dealt with enough. But there is the Talmud in Sabbath 4—actually this is Tosafot there, not the Talmud—about whether a Torah scholar may commit a light sin so that the ignoramus will not commit a grave sin. On the one hand, they say to a person: we do not tell a person, sin so that your fellow may benefit. But sometimes, with a light sin so as to prevent a serious sin, they do say that. There are various situations in which I allow a light sin in order to save a person from a serious sin, whether that same person or someone else. On the other hand, there is a Talmudic statement that people quote a lot for some reason, though I never understood why, not even among the halakhic decisors. It is the famous Rabbi Ilai, who appears in several places—in Kiddushin, in Moed Katan, and elsewhere. Rabbi Ilai says that if a person sees that his inclination is overcoming him, let him wear black, go to a distant place, and do what his heart desires. A person sees that he cannot cope with his inclination, so let him wear black, go to a distant place, and do what his heart desires. Seemingly there is some kind of permission here to commit transgressions. So there are two interpretations brought by the medieval authorities; already in Rashi both are brought. One interpretation is that there is no permission here to commit transgressions. Rather, if you go to a distant place and wear black, there is a chance you’ll succeed in overcoming the inclination and in the end not do it. A very forced interpretation, of course, because it says “and do what his heart desires.” That is, let him go to a distant place, wear black—it should have stopped there. But the Talmud says no: let him go to a distant place, wear black, and the second interpretation therefore is: go to a distant place, wear black so they won’t recognize you, and then do what your heart desires; at least there will be no desecration of God’s name. So you minimize the prohibition. Now from this, various halakhic decisors—the Netziv and Rabbi Ovadia and others—bring in responsa; Rabbi Ovadia has a well-known responsum about pants, girls wearing pants in school, and he brings this Talmudic statement and says that it is better to permit a light sin so that they not come to commit more serious sins. Now this is very strange, because the Rif and the Rosh in Moed Katan 16, where this statement appears, say that the Jewish law does not follow Rabbi Ilai, because we hold that everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven. In other words, there is no situation you cannot deal with. If you are commanded, you can cope, and therefore Rabbi Ilai is wrong. One may not compromise, or one does not give a ruling to compromise—that is what the Rif and the Rosh claim. True, in Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh this is not brought as Jewish law; in Maimonides it appears in some responsum or something, but it is not brought in Maimonides himself as law nor in the Shulchan Arukh. And in the Rif and in the Rosh it is written explicitly that the Jewish law does not follow Rabbi Ilai. In my opinion, the omission by Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh also says that, because omitting this law means it is not normative law; had it been normative law, they would have had to bring it. If they bring nothing, they have not said that it is forbidden to go to a distant place; they simply said nothing. Since they say nothing, it is obvious that they are not bringing the permission to go to a distant place and wear black and do what your heart desires. Meaning that all the halakhic decisors rule against Rabbi Ilai. There is a Tosafot in Megillah from which it seems that the Jewish law does follow Rabbi Ilai. At least that is what it implies, because he discusses the Talmud there as if Rabbi Ilai is simply assumed. He doesn’t write it explicitly, but somehow it looks as if he understands that Rabbi Ilai was ruled as law. But all the decisors, all the main decisors—Shulchan Arukh, Maimonides, Rif, Rosh—all rule against Rabbi Ilai. So I don’t really understand how everybody brings him. Now, the argument often brought is that Talmudic statement: it is better that Israel eat the flesh of dying but slaughtered animals than eat the flesh of dying carcasses. But I think that’s not evidence. There is no contradiction between that and the other one. With dying but slaughtered animals, we are not permitting a prohibition. We are telling you to do something disgusting, something perhaps not right—there is an issue. But there is no prohibition here in the formal sense; this is an animal whose meat is permitted to eat, even if it is dying. What then? It’s undesirable, improper, disgraceful, disgusting—however you want to call it. If there is something like that, and the other possibility is that if you don’t do it you’ll come to a prohibition—then do it. Okay? But to commit a light prohibition in order to spare a serious prohibition, that is to permit you a prohibition from the outset in order to prevent a serious prohibition—I think here the Jewish law does not follow Rabbi Ilai, and whoever uses Rabbi Ilai as normative law is mistaken. Therefore from this too, at most you can learn to permit things that are problematic, but not prohibited. So to nullify Torah prohibitions just because something doesn’t seem right to you—I don’t think one can bring the slightest proof from here. It reminds me that I once had an argument with Professor Ravitzky about this issue. Once we ate together at his daughter’s place with mutual friends of ours, his daughter and her husband. We had an argument around a case—there was some IDF action in Gaza, one of ten thousand such actions, yes, wars in Gaza, Days of Wrath, Days of who-knows-what, all the books of Steinbeck, yes, never mind. So in one of those operations, the IDF finished the fighting on the Sabbath. There were soldiers’ bodies there, and the dilemma was whether to go out and retrieve them on the Sabbath evening—well, no more fighting on the Sabbath because the mission was over. But the bodies had to be extracted. So the question was whether to do this on the Sabbath, which involved combat and a lot of things, or to go out, come back on Saturday night, and collect the bodies then, and then again there would be greater danger to the soldiers because those people would already organize themselves or hide the bodies or it would become a much more complicated story. Since then we’ve all become wiser because of Goldin and what happened there. In short, Rabbi Tzara”z Weiss, I think—if I remember correctly—was there. And there was an argument; the Chief of Staff asked Weiss what to do. I think the conclusion there was to do it on the Sabbath, I think. And then in that argument at the meal I said: I don’t know the situation, of course, but hypothetically at least I would answer the Chief of Staff that it is forbidden to retrieve the bodies either on the Sabbath or on Saturday night; they should be left there. Since when do you endanger soldiers in order to retrieve bodies? What is the reasoning? So he said to me, yes, but the Chief of Staff says: if you don’t permit it, then I’ll do it on the Sabbath. I’m presenting the two options: either do it on the Sabbath or on Saturday night; Rabbi, you tell me what to do. He ruled out the option of not doing it at all. So I said to him that if the Chief of Staff said such a thing to me, I would tell him: do what you want; I’m not answering. The Jewish law says not to do it at all. You’re asking me what the Jewish law says—that’s what it says. If you want to violate Jewish law, violate it; I don’t know what to do with you. But you won’t get from me any permission to violate Jewish law. Again, I’m not talking about operational considerations, if there were such considerations that I didn’t know, of course; I’m speaking hypothetically, let’s say that was the situation. By the way, afterward I saw a responsum by Rabbi Goren who writes very forcefully exactly this way. He says: do not endanger a single soldier for a body. In any event, that is where this argument began. Meaning: okay, the Chief of Staff says I am going to commit a prohibition, so at least minimize the prohibitions for me, tell me which is lighter—to go on Saturday night or to go on the Sabbath—because otherwise I’ll commit the more serious prohibition. So I tell him: then do what you want; I don’t answer such a question. And he said, why? At least gain something—tell him to do the lighter prohibition. So I brought him the well-known urban legend—I think I even once heard it from Rabbi Galinsky—but it’s an urban legend that many people tell, about a Jew who once came to a rabbi in South America and said, listen, Rabbi, I always eat kosher from the beginning of Elul until Yom Kippur—apparently including Yom Kippur, yes? So he eats kosher from the beginning of Elul until Yom Kippur. The question is whether to start from the first day of the month or the second day of the month. So I said to Ravitzky that I would not answer such a question; I would tell him that he has to eat kosher all year long. And then he says to me, yes, but the person will tell you—Ravitzky again said to me—what do you mean? At least gain another day that he’ll eat kosher; tell him from the first. And this is the same point again. I don’t think
[Speaker H] that Jewish law
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] can give someone permission to commit a prohibition because otherwise he may commit a more severe prohibition. If he commits a more severe prohibition because he was coerced, then he was coerced, so he’ll be considered coerced. But where did this idea suddenly come from, to give someone permission to violate a prohibition? There’s no such thing. So this whole story of—yes, true, that’s a nice quality in Chayei Sarah, there are Jews here who are really following—so the claim, the claim that this whole story of Rabbi Ilai, yes, minimizing, minimizing transgressions, I think this is not even a discussion that can be conducted within the framework of Jewish law. Okay, so that’s regarding these principles of minimizing prohibitions. Beyond that, he brings other leniencies in pressing circumstances. All kinds of pressing circumstances, major need, financial loss, monetary loss, all sorts of things like that—I don’t know—an agunah, for example, the leniency of accepting a woman’s testimony or one witness in order to free an agunah, and the like. All these, of course, also have nothing to do with the matter. Because a pressing circumstance basically means the Jewish law remains exactly as it is, only in this particular situation, where there is a pressing circumstance, you are exempt from it. But I have not abolished the law because of a pressing circumstance; rather, I am saying that in a pressing circumstance, this overrides that law. From here to bring proofs for abolishing laws in a Reform way—I don’t see the connection. What does that have to do with it? On the contrary, Jewish law itself recognizes a pressing circumstance as a halakhic consideration, perfectly fine. But you can’t say that the law is nullified because this is a pressing circumstance. You can say, again, as with a rabbinic enactment, that in a pressing circumstance you are exempt from observing this law, but not that it does not exist for you. This is a kind of suspension, a response to hardship, a response to distress; it is not the abolition of a law. With the Reform movement, that’s not it—they are not talking about a pressing circumstance. They say this law is nullified; there is no need to do it; it is even forbidden to do it, not merely that one is not obligated to do it. Therefore relying on mechanisms of pressing circumstances and so on seems to me irrelevant as well. Hostility, human dignity, all these things—I think all these things are not rules for changing Jewish law, and this is simply a misunderstanding. They are not rules for changing Jewish law; they are rules for making a practical decision about what to do. I am not determining anything about the law itself. If this harms human dignity, then it overrides a prohibition under “do not veer from the law,” or by passive omission—it doesn’t matter, all these halakhic rules—but there is nothing here that functions as a mechanism for changing laws. I think these approaches simply do not grasp these principles correctly. Now when you go into the book itself—that was the general principles. Now when you go in, what happens inside the book I am basically exempt from having to explain, because once I have shown you why the principles cannot fit into a framework of midrashic conservatism, then obviously the examples he brings afterward are already not relevant. I’ll bring a few examples just to sharpen the point. He starts with levirate marriage and chalitzah, chapter three. He starts with levirate marriage and chalitzah, and opens the chapter with some heart-rending description of the status of women in moral and value-laden situations, women chained to marriages, extortion by those performing chalitzah, and all sorts of things like that—things we hear about from time to time, not only nowadays, though nowadays the media spreads it more so it’s more visible, but it certainly always existed. And after giving this heart-rending introduction, he goes on and gives some general introduction about what levirate marriage is, and then he moves to the following claim. At the conference of Reform rabbis in Augsburg in 1871, quote: “The commandment of chalitzah has lost its significance, since the circumstances that require levirate marriage and chalitzah no longer exist. The idea underlying this law is foreign to our religious and social outlook. Failure to perform chalitzah is no impediment to the widow’s remarriage.” That’s it. That was the decision of that group. Now this story is very problematic, because it begins with motivations. True, levirate marriage creates serious problems, leaves women chained, leads to extortion by the one performing chalitzah or by the levir or things like that. Obviously, it creates serious problems. In terms of the justification of the motivation, I’m completely with him. Okay? But that’s not enough. You still have to explain to me: what is the mechanism? Now somehow he tries very hard to present some sort of mechanism, as if the foundation of the commandment is foreign to our religious and social outlook today. What does “foreign” mean? What was there once that no longer exists today? All he’s really saying is that it doesn’t sit well with me today, and that’s all. Elsewhere he writes that the commandment of levirate marriage assumes ownership—that the woman is the husband’s property—and that this is not true in our eyes today, and therefore it is nullified. Now here this is already almost midrashic conservatism—just incorrect midrash, because levirate marriage absolutely does not assume that, and we discussed that on one of the previous occasions. In general, the relationship between husband and wife is not one of ownership, and levirate marriage does not assume that either, so this is simply a mistake, and in any case the conservative midrash he brings is incorrect. So I very much identify with the motivations, but in my view there is no mechanism. But it’s so flimsy—I mean, you’ll see, in a very, very long chapter, the conservative midrash, the supposedly conservative midrash that he brings, is one sentence. One sentence in the whole chapter. It doesn’t fit our outlook today, and a woman is not her husband’s property. He does not show where in the Talmudic discussions of levirate marriage one sees that it stems from her being her husband’s property; he does not show why this no longer seems right to you today, what changed since then. A and B, you are making a very dramatic change—the laws of levirate marriage—you are permitting a forbidden sexual relation to marry outside. That is a dramatic permission. I would expect something more than a sentence to explain to me the conservative midrash. It’s obvious that he himself also understands that there is no conservative midrash here. Therefore sometimes something appears to be conservative midrash but it isn’t. Sometimes the proportions show that it isn’t; sometimes the seriousness shows that it isn’t. Not everyone who tosses out a few words is thereby offering conservative midrash. That too is an important lesson, because often the claims raised against my picture are that anyone can present conservative midrash. So are you basically saying that everyone is conservative, everyone is Orthodox? But that’s not true. One can present facades of conservative midrash. Fine, language can tolerate anything. But there are things that are clearly not conservative midrash. Not because I disagree, but because it’s simply not true. Even you understand that it’s not true. I don’t think the Reform person thinks what he is doing is untrue; rather, even the Reform people understand that what he brings here is not really conservative midrash. He thinks this is the correct way to act—fine, that’s his approach—but there is no real conservative midrash here; it is merely an external resemblance. After that, as I already mentioned earlier, or maybe before, he mentions marriage between a kohen and a divorced woman. In the case of a kohen marrying a divorced woman, for example, he brings a fairly plausible conservative midrash in my opinion, something we could of course think of ourselves. Namely, kohanim today do not serve in the Temple, and the claim is that the whole prohibition of a kohen marrying a divorced woman, and preserving his holiness, is necessary when he serves in the Temple, but not today. Now this is not the accepted view among halakhic decisors, and one can discuss what the source is in the Talmud and how and this and that, but this is already conservative midrash that one could definitely hear even in a completely Orthodox world. One can argue about it, yes or no. Right, a state of impurity, yes, the impurity of those who are impure—whether an impure kohen is allowed to become impure again. So that claim, for example, is in my view an Orthodox claim, not a Reform one. Now again, one would have to discuss whether it is correct or not, and the Talmudic passages and so on, but it is certainly a claim one can hear; it is not absurd at all. So there you have proof, for example, of a claim that appears in a Reform book by a Reform rabbi, but it is an Orthodox claim, and it has to be discussed on its merits. The last example is the example of mamzer status. There too he opens with heart-rending descriptions of situations involving mamzer status, and with that I completely agree; the Sages already mention this. And immediately he makes the standard Olympic leap: how can it be that children are punished for the sin of their parents, and therefore this whole business is nullified, that’s it. He brings precedents where mamzerim were permitted, and again this is the same mistake as with Hillel the Elder in Alexandria. Because in all those precedents arguments were brought. The motivation was indeed the misery of the mamzerim; everyone shares that motivation, including the Sages, but everyone agrees that motivation alone is not enough—you have to find a mechanism for how to permit the mamzerim. So sometimes very far-reaching steps are taken, but you have to find a valid mechanism. And he does not do that—he abolishes the concept of mamzer status. Not in a particular case where he can void the marriage and then there would be no mamzer status. He abolishes the concept of mamzer status because it is not moral. And then the question, as I said before, is: the Sages also thought this was not moral, so why didn’t they abolish it? Because it was clear to them that moral justification or motivation is not enough; you need a mechanism. I just want to sum up: these are a few examples, but all the other examples are basically mappings or consequences of the disputes I had with his principles, and therefore there is no need to go through them too much. In the end, I just want to draw your attention to an important point with which I began the class before last. Notice that in every topic he begins with heart-rending distress: kohanim and divorced women, tragedies of people who love each other and cannot marry, levirate cases, mamzer status—and truly difficult tragedies; sometimes there are very hard tragedies. But from there he immediately moves to abolition, because it doesn’t fit our outlook today or something like that. Notice that nowhere in the entire book will you find a single place where he says: this is a conflict, I am torn, but there is no choice—the human distress tells me that we must permit it. No, not at all. The human distress is brought as motivation, but after the motivation he completely forgets the motivation and abolishes the law entirely. And this fits perfectly with what I told you in the general introduction to Reform—that Reform Jews are never in conflict. He doesn’t say: look, there is a law of levirate marriage, I am bound by it, but there is a terrible tragedy here, so that overrides the law of levirate marriage and I permit it. Not that this would really hold water, but if he had said something like that, then I would understand that he is in conflict and that for some reason I disagree with, he decided in favor of the human over the halakhic. But no, he does not present it that way at all. There is no conflict. He says: in our time it is not relevant, it does not fit our outlook, and therefore it does not exist, that’s it. That is exactly the expression of the fact that he is Reform and not a midrashic conservative. Because a midrashic conservative, even if he plays such games, it is clear that he is working against something; there is some conflict that he has to resolve. And he is not in conflict. He is simply saying: no problem, it doesn’t fit, so fine, it’s not forbidden, everything is okay. So here I am just closing the circle on what I said, that Reform people are never in conflict. Precisely the one who is in conflict and allows morality to override Jewish law is always someone Orthodox; it will never be someone Reform. Because for the Reform person, morality does not override Jewish law—it abolishes it. That is a difference. It sounds semantic, but it is a real difference. More than that: he does not abolish it at all, because the law itself is only a tool for arriving at morality, as we said before. So there is no conflict here at all. The moment you understand what morality says, that is also what the law says, so there is no problem; you will never find yourself in conflict. Therefore, contrary to what people usually think, being in conflict is a characteristic of Orthodoxy, not of Reform. Reform is never in conflict. Okay, maybe one last sentence: I think there is one point that I nevertheless should mention. The motivations he raises—the moral and human difficulties—my feeling is that they do not trouble Orthodox halakhic decisors enough, at least not always. And in that sense I think we should pay attention to these arguments. Because often, if it troubles you enough on the level of motivation, then you will also find the mechanism. Not always, because if you always find a mechanism then that means only the motivation is working. But many times you can find a mechanism if it matters enough to you to find one. And my feeling is that often the hearts of Orthodox halakhic decisors and religious court judges—not always, but in quite a few cases—are somewhat insensitive to distress, and therefore they are not willing to invest effort and perhaps take creative, far-reaching steps in order to solve the problems. If they recognized the distress, then true, distress alone is not enough, and in that sense I do not agree with the Reform approach, but recognition of the distress is very important. Because if you recognize the distress, many times you have a better chance of also finding the mechanism. And that is a point that I think is important to adopt דווקא in the Orthodox direction. Okay, I’ll stop here. Next time will be the last class. Usually during the break between terms we stop; if you want to resume in Elul, then we’ll resume in Elul. That’s it. If there are comments or questions. There is one more class next week, yes—not today, next week is the final class.
[Speaker I] Rabbi, I wanted to ask about “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” So basically what’s being discussed there is the prohibition concerning matters that are written—those are things you’re not allowed to say orally, and oral matters you’re not allowed to write down. So the whole discussion there really sounds very, very dramatic, but I never managed to understand what exactly the nature of the prohibition is here. Meaning, it’s not a negative commandment, it’s not a Torah prohibition, right? No, it’s not enumerated.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are Torah-level commandments that are not enumerated; half a measure is not enumerated either. Okay. No, right, there are—I forgot that category, yes. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay then, goodbye, Sabbath peace.
[Speaker B] Sabbath peace.