Freedom and Liberty – Lesson 1
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
- [0:00] Introduction to the topic of freedom and liberty
- [0:00] Introduction: freedom and liberty before Passover
- [1:01] Mount Sinai and the new servitude
- [1:04] Mount Sinai: a new subjugation
- [2:04] The collective and the individual in liberty
- [2:11] The collective and liberty
- [3:29] Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s quote about liberty
- [3:29] The quote of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi
- [6:37] Warnings from Ari Elon
- [6:45] Beware of people with powerful language – Ari Elon
- [9:38] Defining the concept of freedom
- [9:43] Defining freedom: the absence of constraints
- [11:21] Freedom as a value or an asset
- [11:38] Freedom as an asset, not a value
- [12:25] The ethics of depriving freedom
- [14:32] Defining the concept of liberty
- [16:18] Defining liberty: action within constraints
- [16:18] Liberty as action within constraints
- [17:21] Differences between freedom and liberty
- [23:18] It is impossible to deprive liberty
- [25:23] Linguistic differences between the concepts of freedom and liberty
- [28:35] Self-limitation versus an external limitation
- [28:35] The difference between self-imposed and forced constraints
- [30:28] The elections in Syria: determinism
- [30:28] The elections in Syria – determinism
- [33:20] The elections in Switzerland – freedom
- [33:22] The elections in Switzerland: real freedom
- [39:28] The fourth model: elections in Israel
- [39:28] The elections in Israel – a fourth model
- [41:57] The connection between constraints and liberty
- [42:39] Amos Oz’s parable: the full wagon
- [44:59] Calculating entropy: arranging chairs in a room
- [47:23] Entropy and furniture – possibilities of choice
- [48:55] Shades of religiosity versus the uniformity of secularity
- [48:55] Shades of religiosity and secularity
- [53:25] Ari Elon’s critique of the values of sovereignty
- [53:25] Critique of Ari Elon and liberty
- [54:52] The connection between prior commitment and personal sovereignty
- [56:08] The danger of sovereignty without morality
- [57:22] The need for divinity to establish moral values
Summary
General Overview
The text presents a conceptual clarification ahead of Passover about the relationship between freedom, liberty, slavery, religious commitment, and belonging to a collective. It challenges the simple view that the Exodus from Egypt is a sharp transition from bondage to liberty, because the revelation at Mount Sinai is understood as a new servitude, and because the birth of the Jewish collective seems to contradict personal freedom. It formulates a distinction between freedom as the absence of constraints and liberty as the ability to act autonomously within constraints, and argues that freedom is an asset rather than a value, whereas liberty is a value realized precisely through constraints. It criticizes slogans that in his eyes sound Orwellian, such as “Only the servant of God is truly free,” and on the other hand also critiques Ari Elon’s ideal of “the sovereign person” and Amos Oz’s parable of “the full wagon and the empty wagon,” arguing that a world without a binding framework loses the moral meaning of choice.
Passover, the Festival of Liberty, and the Tension Between the Exodus and Sinai
The departure from Egypt is called the Festival of Liberty on the basis of a simple view of transition from Pharaoh’s bondage to liberty. The text points to a first tension in the fact that fifty days after the Exodus comes the revelation at Mount Sinai, where a “new servitude” is accepted, raising the question whether it is still correct to speak of a move from slavery to liberty when servants of Pharaoh are replaced by servants of the Holy One, blessed be He. The text points to a second tension in the fact that the Exodus from Egypt is also a collective birth, and following the Maharal, Egypt is described as a pregnancy of the Jewish collective and the Exodus as birth; therefore belonging to a collective seems opposed to freedom, as expressed in the line “Free means completely alone.”
An “Orwellian” Critique of Educational Slogans and of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi
The text describes common sayings in the style of “discovering our true self” as vague and as producing in him the feeling of an Orwellian formulation in the style of 1984, where “freedom is slavery” and “ignorance is strength.” In that context it places Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s famous line: “The servants of time are servants of servants; only the servant of God is free,” and describes years of feeling that Rabbi Yehuda Halevi was “selling nonsense” and trying to convince people that slavery is freedom. The text adds that even if one accepts an Orwellian reading, the very effort to console people and present the servant of God as free testifies to a hidden assumption that there is value in being free; otherwise one should simply say that freedom has no value, and instead take pride in being servants of God.
A Warning Against Linguistic Charisma and the Example of Ari Elon
The text presents Ari Elon as the son of the late Menachem Elon, as someone who “studied and then left,” and as a kind of “secular rebbe” who gives classes, lectures, and tisches on Judaism, with remarkable language. The text warns that impressive expressive power can cover for weak arguments, and therefore one must carefully examine assumptions, conclusions, and the transition between them. The text quotes Ari Elon’s distinction between “the rabbinic person,” who is not his own master because rabbis, halakhic decisors, and Jewish law restrict him, and “the sovereign person,” the secular individual who legislates his own laws and is therefore truly free, and even describes “going off the religious path” as an exodus from bondage to liberty.
Defining Freedom as the Absence of Constraints and the Claim That It Is Not a Moral Value
The text defines freedom as the absence of constraints, as a scale on which more constraints mean less freedom and vice versa, without claiming that there exists a human condition of absolute absence of constraints. The text argues that people commonly think freedom is a value, even a supreme value, but rejects this and presents freedom as a desirable and pleasant condition that is not a moral value. The text argues that the confusion comes from the fact that depriving someone of freedom is an immoral act, but from this it does not follow that freedom is a value, just as theft is immoral but money is not a value—it is an asset. The text connects money and freedom by saying that more money increases possibilities and reduces constraints, and therefore freedom is described as an asset or right that should indeed be protected, but not as a moral value in itself.
Defining Liberty as Autonomous Action Within Constraints
The text defines liberty as autonomous action within constraints, where despite limitations a person decides on his path, worldview, thoughts, and actions as much as possible within the given framework. The text states that someone whose constraints dictate what he thinks and what he does is not only unfree but also not liberated. The text argues that freedom and liberty are not synonyms but are related in an opposite way, because in a free condition one cannot express liberty with the same force, whereas constraints create the space in which autonomy can be revealed. The text draws on Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning to illustrate that people in concentration camps—a state of extreme lack of freedom—can specifically there express that they are liberated when they do not surrender to the system and preserve their human image.
Scales of Freedom and Liberty, a Single Constraint, and Adam
The text argues that there is a continuum of levels of freedom according to the number of constraints, and there is also a continuum of levels of liberty according to one’s ability to maintain autonomy under increasing pressure of constraints. The text suggests that a person who can remain autonomous under few constraints may break under a heavy system of limitations, whereas one who succeeds even in extreme situations is liberated at a higher level. The text brings the homiletic interpretation of “Where is Haman alluded to in the Torah?” and connects it to “Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?” in order to describe how Adam did not withstand one limitation, and how Haman likewise could not endure “one limitation” in the form of Mordechai refusing to bow. The text notes that one limitation can be more irritating than many constraints because it disrupts the picture of freedom, and illustrates this through the phrase “Don’t think about a pink elephant.”
Liberty as a Value That Cannot Be Taken Away, and Freedom as an Asset That Can
The text states that depriving freedom is immoral because it is harm done to an asset or a right, but liberty cannot be taken away in the same sense. The text argues that as long as a person remains conscious and functions as a human being, at most one can add more constraints to him, but within those constraints he can still decide to be liberated, and sometimes the more “they afflicted him, the more he multiplied and spread” the more the expression of liberty increases. The text notes that in English both concepts are usually translated as freedom, and that even in Hebrew they are sometimes perceived as synonyms, and therefore the distinction made here is a conceptual proposal rather than a dictionary one. The text asks about the phrase “to be a free people in our land” and says there is no way to know exactly what the poet meant.
A Linguistic Note on “Free” Versus “A Liberated Person”
The text proposes a linguistic distinction according to which freedom is described as a direct state-adjective, “free,” while liberty is described in a form of belonging or potential, “a liberated person.” It illustrates this through expressions like “one destined for the World to Come,” which applies to the living and not the dead, and through “a master of evil speech,” meaning someone who belongs to that realm and not only someone who speaks that way in practice. The text suggests that liberty is a relation to a condition a person strives toward from within constraints, whereas freedom describes a given condition of fewer constraints.
Forced Constraints Versus Constraints Imposed on the Self
The text states that the distinction between a limitation a person imposes on himself and one forced upon him is critical, and clarifies that it is dealing with constraints not imposed by the person himself. The text argues that what a person imposed on himself he can also release, and therefore it is not a limitation in the same sense, and mentions the principle “the mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted.” The text rejects for now the conclusion that this “solves Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s issue,” and says it will return to it later.
The Election Model: Syria, Switzerland, and Israel as Metaphors for Determinism, Randomness, and Liberty
The text presents “elections in Syria” as a situation in which a person appears to act freely at the ballot box but in fact there is only one ballot slip, so there is no real choice and the circumstances dictate the result—a metaphor for determinism and the facade of freedom. The text presents “elections in Switzerland” as a situation with several slips and full freedom of choice, but argues that in a place “where there are no problems” choice has no meaning and therefore resembles a coin toss—a metaphor for randomness. The text presents a country with problems as a situation in which choice is made within a system of constraints not under our control, and therefore there are costs and meaning to “you chose well” or “you chose badly”; this is described as liberty and not merely freedom. The text adds a “fourth model” attributed to Israel, where there seems to be a choice between slips but “they all do the same thing,” illustrated through a story about a post office in Burma where there are separate boxes sorted by countries but behind them they all fall into the same sack.
A System of Constraints as Constituting Liberty Rather Than Canceling It
The text concludes that freedom acquires meaning only when it is exercised within a system of constraints, and therefore a system of constraints does not interfere with liberty but constitutes it. The text rejects dependence on the subjective “degree of importance” of a decision, and argues that the criterion is the existence of constraints and costs, not the feeling of the size of the problem. The text agrees that almost every decision in the world involves constraints, but describes full freedom as a utopian condition and emphasizes that liberty is expressed where there is maneuvering, responsibility, and the payment of costs.
Amos Oz, “The Full Wagon and the Empty Wagon,” and the Furniture Parable
The text describes Amos Oz’s essay “The Full Wagon and the Empty Wagon” from Here and There in the Land of Israel, where he compares Jewish history to a big bang at Mount Sinai that creates a space, and since then the space has been filled with “furniture”: Mishnah, Talmud, medieval authorities (Rishonim), later authorities (Acharonim), Shulchan Arukh, enactments, decrees, and Jewish laws, without removing a single piece of furniture, until a situation is created in which it is impossible to move. The text again notes Amos Oz’s literary skill and argues that his claims “don’t hold water,” and then presents a counter-argument through a combinatorial example of an 8×8 room in which adding chairs increases rather than decreases the number of possible arrangements. The text argues that in an “empty” world movement and choice have no meaning because there is no point of reference, and therefore a multiplicity of “furniture” or binding values actually creates more creative possibilities for maneuvering, more shades of life, and more room for personal expression. The text argues that there are “lots of shades of religious people,” whereas there is “only one shade of secularity,” namely the absence of religiosity, while acknowledging that secular people can adopt additional values that do not arise from the absence of religiosity itself.
Returning to the Critique of Ari Elon: Sovereignty Without a Framework Is Not a Basis for Moral Evaluation
The text returns to Ari Elon and argues that the comparison between the rabbinic and the sovereign is useful because it demonstrates the mistake: a person who legislates values for himself does not thereby become an ideal moral figure. The text offers the example of someone who legislates for himself the “noble value” of being a hired murderer, and asks whether that alone is enough to justify him as an ideal sovereign person, assuming not. The text argues that when we evaluate a person for good or ill, we do so by a standard that is not the person himself, and therefore there must be an external value framework independent of his will in order for choice to have meaning; only within such a framework does autonomy have the value of liberty. The text argues that someone who exists within a framework but lets it lead him without self-decision resembles “Syria,” and someone who acts without binding constraints resembles “Switzerland,” whereas liberty occurs when there is both a binding framework and autonomous choice about how to act within it and what costs to pay.
Kant, Autonomous Morality, and the Need for an External Source of Good and Evil
The text brings Kant as a case where commentators speak of a tension between autonomous morality without God and a “proof of God’s existence from morality.” The text argues that there is no retraction or contradiction here but the same principle: without an external source there is no objective definition, independent of the person, of what is good and what is evil. The text states that an “external source” is required to determine good and evil, and then the human choice whether to commit himself to its commands, and how to realize them while paying costs, is the place where autonomy and liberty are expressed.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good evening. A new topic. And this is in preparation for Passover: to talk a bit about freedom, liberty, their meaning, and their value, if they have one. When I talk about moral value, I also mean religious value, halakhic value, Torah value, but before getting into that I want to begin with some conceptual clarification, because I think there’s a lot of confusion about this issue simply because the concepts aren’t sharp enough. On Passover, when the Jewish people leave Egypt, it’s called the Festival of Liberty. So the simple view is that we went from Pharaoh’s bondage to liberty. And that’s the Festival of Liberty. But there are two aspects surrounding this departure that seem, at least on the face of it, to point in the opposite direction. The simpler one is the revelation at Mount Sinai. Meaning, fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt, we basically stand at Mount Sinai and receive a new servitude. So instead of servants of Pharaoh, we become servants of the Holy One, blessed be He. So the question is whether it still makes sense to call this a move from slavery to liberty. Fine, so there are all kinds of mantras that often come up in this context—“it reveals our true self,” and I don’t know what else, all kinds of statements that I don’t really understand—but my feeling about them is that they’re some kind of Orwellian statement. You know 1984—slavery is strength, ignorance is wisdom, all these sorts of slogans meant to comfort people who are in difficult situations. So they explain to us that we left slavery for liberty and that we are more liberated than ever, when in fact the situation is the opposite. Fine, I’ll come back to that in a moment. So one aspect is Mount Sinai, which essentially binds our hands again just after they were freed. And the second aspect is the collective aspect. At least in the way we think today—not only today, but especially today—there’s a kind of feeling that belonging to a collective is more or less the opposite of being liberated, of being free. And as the Maharal writes, Egypt was a kind of pregnancy for the Jewish collective. When they left Egypt, that was the birth. In other words, the Jewish collective was born, and in practice we turned from a collection of individuals into a collective. And the question is whether that too doesn’t contradict the claim that we went from slavery to liberty. As the song says: “Free means completely alone.” In other words, when you’re alone, you’re free. When you’re inside a collective, it seems like the opposite of freedom. So maybe we were freed from Pharaoh, but to say that we received liberty—that, on the face of it, doesn’t sound all that convincing.
[Speaker C] What’s the definition of liberty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’ll talk about that. So that’s really the background to the discussion, and that’s also why I thought it was worth doing before Passover. Maybe I’ll sharpen it a little more through the well-known line of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi says: “The servants of time are servants of servants; only the servant of God is free.” Meaning, again, like I said earlier, the feeling is that once again they’re explaining to us that we’re the freest of all. Those who are not servants of God are servants of servants, while we are the freest people possible. And again, my feeling about that statement—for many years already, no, I went through this process years ago, but for years my feeling really was that this is George Orwell. Meaning, we’re in a terrible state, there’s not a single step we can take freely, and then Rabbi Yehuda Halevi comes and explains to us: what are you talking about? Your slavery is liberty. And those are exactly the Orwellian lines from 1984. Just like the communists thought that if they explained to people long enough—and to some extent they were right—that if you tell people for long enough that they are the freest, the most successful, the greatest, even though the reality is the exact opposite, eventually it sinks in. In the end people are convinced if you repeat it enough times. So here too the feeling was that Rabbi Yehuda Halevi was basically trying to sell me nonsense. And the same with all the educational statements I mentioned before—the feeling was very difficult. I thought about this quite a bit. And here I even quoted it: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.” Those are the communist slogans. They convince you that the condition you’re in is actually its opposite, and then everything is fine—with films about our combines being the best in the world and all the whole communist mythology. Yes, exactly, kind of like a Matrix. Anyway, the question really is how to relate to this, but I want to make one remark before I set out. Even suppose he is pulling Orwellian tricks on us—but the fact that he bothers to do that already says something. I mean, why is Rabbi Yehuda Halevi trying to comfort us by saying that we’re free? Let him tell us what value there is in being free. On the contrary, we are servants of God—be proud that we are servants of God. Why does he explain to us that only the servant of God is free? Is there value in being free? His assumption is apparently yes. Meaning, even if I take this statement as George Orwell-style rhetoric, still, in the subtext there is something here that cannot be ignored. Meaning, he recognizes this desire to be free, the value of the state of being free, and now he’s selling us the nonsense that we’re there. But if he were really arguing in substance against that whole idea, then instead of selling us nonsense he should have explained that we are not free, and also that we do not need to be free—what value is there in being free? Okay, so even if I accept the Orwellian interpretation, that itself already says something: that in his eyes there is some value, even in a religious context, to being free or being liberated. As an antithesis to this, maybe I’ll bring another statement—I may have mentioned it once, I don’t remember—by Ari Elon. Ari Elon is the son of the late Justice Menachem Elon, and he “studied and then left,” meaning he went off the religious path, as they call it, and he is some kind of secular rebbe today. He gives classes and lectures and tisches on Judaism, deals with it a lot. A man with remarkable language. I know very few people with that kind of expressive ability. And those are exactly the people you need to be most careful with, by the way, because very often—and this is true in journalism too, by the way, but not only there—in polemical writing, expressive ability, yes, verbal ability, often covers over weak arguments. Someone who speaks in a very strong, very powerful way immediately convinces you. You don’t stop to define: wait a second, what did he say, what is the assumption, what is the conclusion, and how did he get from the assumption to the conclusion? Because it sounds so beautiful and so impressive that you’re simply captive to him.
[Speaker C] And therefore, honey and nectar, honey and milk under the tongue of Ari Elon.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s a warning label: when you see someone with very strong expressive power, check him twice. Not because everyone with that kind of expressive power speaks nonsense—I didn’t say that—but because someone with strong expressive power can speak nonsense without us noticing. You have to make sure that isn’t what’s happening. Okay, it doesn’t have to happen, obviously, but it has to be checked. Anyway, about him: in several places, both in a book and in articles, he keeps coming back—he likes a lot of wordplay, like “rebbe,” fine—he compares the rabbinic person to the sovereign person. So he says that the rabbinic person is not his own master: he has rabbis and halakhic decisors and Jewish laws and all kinds of things of that sort constantly limiting him. By contrast, the sovereign person—that is, the secular person—is someone who legislates his own laws for himself, who is free, who is truly liberated. And in effect he draws there some kind of antithesis. If we describe the Exodus from Egypt as going from slavery to liberty, then he describes “going off the religious path” as going from slavery to liberty. In other words, we came out of Egypt, received the yoke of Torah, at Mount Sinai we received the Torah and commitment to it, and that is supposedly described as a move from slavery to liberty—so he says that when he was freed from that commitment, that was a move from slavery to liberty. But the comparison he makes between the rabbinic and the sovereign, I think, is a wonderful point through which one can demonstrate why, in this case, he’s simply talking nonsense. Not even at a conceptual level—this isn’t even a matter of disagreement. It’s just a mistake. But I really do want to begin with a brief conceptual clarification. When we talk about—let me first define the concept of freedom. That’s easy. The concept of freedom is simply the absence of constraints. Right? If you have no pressures, no constraints, you are free. Nothing dictates to you what to think or what to do—then you are free. Freedom is the absence of constraints. Now, I’m not trying to claim that such a thing actually exists—that is, someone who is completely without constraints, who isn’t situated within constraints. I only mean that this is the scale. Meaning: the more constraints you have, the less free you are; the fewer constraints you have, the freer you are. No one exists without constraints, right? None of us can fly, none of us can run like a cheetah, or even solve the problem of quantum gravity, at least not yet. So these are things that maybe human beings will do someday. Therefore, I don’t mean to say that there is a person who is truly in a state of freedom. I mean to define the axis of freedom. The axis of freedom means the number of constraints—or one over the number of constraints. In other words, the more constraints there are, the less free you are, and vice versa. Okay? That’s the definition of freedom.
[Speaker D] Is that a personal definition or an accepted one in philosophy?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t even check. It seems to me it’s just a dictionary definition, no? I think so. I don’t know, I didn’t check. But it seems completely intuitive to me—when you think about it, that’s the definition.
[Speaker E] Like, for there to be liberty, you need some freedom to choose in order to be free.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, okay, that’s where I’m heading, I’m getting there.
[Speaker E] What? The number of options instead of the number of constraints.
[Speaker C] It connects nicely, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me define it, and then we’ll see whether we agree, okay? Now, in our world it’s commonly thought that freedom is a value, and sometimes even a supreme value, you could get that impression. I don’t see why. What value is there in freedom? Freedom is a state. If you have few constraints—great, very nice, I like that state too—but that doesn’t mean it’s a value. I also like having a lot of money. Does that mean that possessing money is a value? I mean a value in the moral sense. No. What makes people think that freedom is a value?
[Speaker C] It seems to me one of the reasons is that lack of freedom is an unpleasant state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and the opposite of money is also a very unpleasant state. That doesn’t turn possession of money into a value.
[Speaker D] The realization of freedom of choice…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, that goes back again to the same point—I’ll get there. I think the point is this, look. One of the things that I think causes confusion in this discussion is that when I deprive someone of freedom, that is an immoral act. In other words, to put shackles on someone’s hands, not let him choose, impose unjustified constraints on him—that is an immoral act. Can we infer from this that freedom is a value? No. Even though at first glance it seems like two sides of the same coin—because harming freedom is something negative, so supposedly being in a state of freedom is something positive. But that’s not right. Let’s go back to the analogy with money. Taking money from someone is a moral offense—that is, stealing is wrong, right? Does that mean that owning money is a value? No. I would define it as an asset. Being the owner of money—before we even talk about what you do with it—yes, it is a right. In other words, you have an asset. Money is an asset, okay? Once you have an asset, then that’s good, that’s nice, you want to have it, but it isn’t a value. But it’s enough that this thing is an asset in order for harming it to be a negative act. In other words, it becomes a negative value, right? When I harm something and that’s wrong, it doesn’t mean that having that something is a value. It’s enough that having that something is an asset for harming it to be immoral, okay? And therefore this is not even just an analogy—it’s almost the same thing. Freedom and money are basically similar things, because the more money you have, the freer you are: you have more possibilities to do things, you are less constrained. So it’s not even just an analogy; it’s simply an example of the same thing. Therefore with freedom too, just as with money, it seems to me more correct to define it as an asset and not as a value.
[Speaker F] Why not as a right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the same thing. Something that is owed to me, that is mine, is my asset, and don’t damage my assets. So whoever harms that is doing something wrong. But being the owner of it—that’s good, that’s nice, I very much want to be there, but it’s not a value. There’s no need here to speak in terms of values. Now I want to define another concept. I’ll call it liberty, but let me first make a preliminary note just to clear the table a bit of arguments that might come up. I’m not trying to offer a dictionary definition. As I said before, I didn’t even check. So if you check Even-Shoshan and find that “liberty” isn’t what I define here, I have no problem with that; most likely it really isn’t. That doesn’t matter to me. I’m not trying to define two Hebrew words. I’m trying to show that there is a difference between two concepts, and so that we can talk about them, I’m giving each of them a name. So I call one freedom and one liberty. I’m not claiming that the dictionary defines them that way too. Okay? That’s just so we won’t get into semantic arguments. Have you ever noticed that the word “semantics” is used in two opposite ways? Someone pointed that out to me once, I think, some time ago. People say: “Oh, that’s just semantics.” But semantically, in literal translation, semantics means the essence. So what does “just semantics” mean? The opposite. If you’re arguing over semantics, it means you’re arguing over the meaning of things, not just some petty argument, “just semantics.” Yes, I had never thought of that.
[Speaker D] Right, that’s what you just said. When Yehuda Halevi speaks, he uses words. In order to interpret him correctly, you do have an obligation to stay close to some overlap with what he meant. You can’t just redefine terms and then reinterpret him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I haven’t interpreted Yehuda Halevi yet. When I get to interpreting him, we’ll talk. Right now I’m defining two concepts. Okay? And again—fine, I’ll get to Yehuda Halevi. So the concept of liberty—I want to define the concept of liberty. The concept of liberty means action within constraints. In other words, autonomous action within constraints. A person who exists within constraints—when do I call him liberated? He is liberated when, despite having constraints, and I don’t care at the moment what kind of constraints—internal, external, whatever, I’m not distinguishing between them right now—he still decides his own path, he decides his own outlook, what he thinks, what he does, as much as he can within the framework of those constraints. Okay? That is called a liberated person, or that is called a state of liberty. Someone who exists within constraints and the constraints dictate to him what he thinks and what he does and things of that sort—not only is he not free, he is also not liberated. Okay?
[Speaker B] A liberated person is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From the root of liberty—it simply means that being a liberated person is being in a state of liberty. “Free” means without constraints, or as few constraints as possible, the fewer the more free. Liberty means that when constraints exist, the question is how I act within them. Do I act autonomously? Do I decide my own path or not? But the constraints are there—they are not in my hands. Okay? The question is what I do with the constraints—that is liberty. Maybe I should indeed make a remark about this phrase “a liberated person”—fine, I’ll say it in a moment. So in fact, when you think about it this way, not only are liberty and freedom not synonyms, in a certain sense they are almost opposites. Right? In a state where you are free, you won’t be able to be liberated even if you want to. There’s Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning, which gives a very nice illustration of this. He describes people who are in the least free condition imaginable, in concentration camps. Okay? And there he basically shows how it is precisely there, or mainly there, that their personality can appear. Meaning, precisely there, when a person functions in a human way and doesn’t surrender to the insane system he is inside, then he is truly liberated. In other words, the more constraints there are on you, and the less free you are in the simple sense of free or not free, the more you can be—not necessarily that you will be, but you have greater potential to be—liberated. In such a state it can emerge more powerfully in actuality that you are liberated. Because you have more need to maneuver within the constraints; there is more expression there for your autonomy, for the fact that you don’t let the environment dictate to you but rather you determine. The more the environment tries to dictate to you, the clearer it is that you don’t accept that—that you are liberated.
[Speaker C] There’s a stronger challenge here that you have to climb. Right.
[Speaker D] There’s more opportunity. Adam had only one constraint. So he wasn’t liberated?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? In what sense was he liberated? You don’t need to maneuver among constraints? I defined earlier—that’s what it means to be liberated.
[Speaker D] You defined being liberated as the possibility of acting autonomously despite the constraints. But doesn’t that increase as the number of constraints rises? Obviously it does.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Again, if you’re talking about it in a binary way—yes liberated or not liberated—then you’re right. Obviously. But just as I did with freedom, where there are different levels of freedom according to the number of constraints, there are also different levels of liberty. There’s a person who, when the constraints on him are few, will decide his own path and be an autonomous person and everything will be fine. If you increase the number of constraints—he goes to prison, to a concentration camp, I don’t know, terrible situations—then he will no longer be liberated. Because he won’t succeed in coping with such a crushing system of constraints. So that means he is liberated on a low level. A person who succeeds in dealing with constraints even at the level of a concentration camp—he is liberated on a higher level. So that’s the… yes, there too there is a continuum. Of course you can also be liberated in paradise with a single restriction. If you… that Talmudic saying, “Where is Haman alluded to in the Torah?” Know it? “Where is Haman alluded to in the Torah? ‘Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’” So what does that mean? What connection is there between them? There’s an explanation that goes around—I don’t know its source—that in Adam’s case, everything was permitted to him, and this is related to what you asked—everything was permitted to him. One tree, the Tree of Knowledge, he was forbidden to touch, forbidden to eat, I don’t know—he was forbidden to eat. He couldn’t hold out with one limitation. It stabbed him in the eyes, and he had to violate the one and only command he had. Okay? Haman in Shushan—all the people bow to him. There is one person, Mordechai the Jew, who does not bow, and he cannot live with that, cannot bear it; he absolutely had to deal with Mordechai the Jew. So that’s in relation to the single limitation. Sometimes one limitation bothers you much more than many limitations, because it disrupts your picture of freedom. You basically think you are free, but there is one limitation standing right there in front of your eyes, denying you that serenity. It’s like when people tell you, “Don’t think about a pink elephant.” Right? From that moment on you won’t stop thinking about a pink elephant, because you’re constantly thinking about not thinking about a pink elephant.
[Speaker G] Is it only constraints, or also commandments? Suppose…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, commandments are also a kind of constraint. Yes, that’s where I’m heading.
[Speaker G] With Adam there were two: one was a commandment—or not a commandment—the command to eat from every…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, yes. If you define that too as a kind of pressure, that’s fine. I don’t know if I’m being obligated to eat—for me that’s not a commandment, that’s just my natural state. Only when I’m forbidden not to eat something—that’s a constraint. Fine. So, in short, liberty is really a kind of opposite of freedom, or not exactly the opposite but an opposing condition. Because if you are free, you won’t be able to express your liberty. You can express your liberty only where your freedom is not complete. And the less complete your freedom is—or the more, meaning, the more or less free you are—so at least potentially you can be more liberated. There’s another interesting relationship between these two concepts, freedom and liberty. Earlier I spoke about depriving someone of freedom, which is an immoral act because freedom is an asset, and taking someone’s asset without justification is immoral. What about… and on the other hand I said that being in a state of freedom is not a value but an asset. In other words, it’s good, it’s a pleasant condition, we want to be there, but it’s not a value. There’s no… it’s just that you have resources, you have the ability to act, perhaps rights, whatever wording you prefer. What happens with liberty in this analogy?
[Speaker B] You can’t take it away.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So liberty—when you try, as it were, to take away liberty—there’s no such thing. At most you can impose more and more constraints on a person, and more constraints, and more constraints, and maybe it will become harder for him, but he still decides that he is liberated. Therefore, if I speak about depriving freedom as an immoral act, depriving liberty is almost an undefined act. You can of course hypnotize him, I don’t know, you can shoot him, whatever—but as long as he is conscious and functioning as a human being, all you can do is add more and more constraints. You can deprive a person of freedom; you cannot deprive him of liberty, according to these definitions, because his liberty will express itself within the constraints you impose on him—and the opposite too. Sometimes the more constraints you impose on him, “the more they afflicted him, the more he multiplied and spread.” In other words, then he expresses even more that he is liberated.
[Speaker H] What are the English words for freedom and liberty? I translate both as “freedom.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Hebrew too they’re considered synonyms. That’s why I said—I’m not dealing with the dictionary. I’m just defining them so I’ll have a name for each concept, because I want to talk about them, and so I formulate it using these two terms.
[Speaker B] What did the poet mean—“to be a free people in our land”? To be a free people in our land.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What did the poet mean? Go ask him, I don’t know. Anyone can mean whatever he means when he sings. What did the poet mean? I have no idea. It’s not even completely clear who the poet there was. Naftali Herz Imber—that’s the original ending; the song went through a few developments. Anyway… but not at the end—
[Speaker C] —of “Hatikvah.” It could mean anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But we haven’t started. But we asked him—anything is possible. Okay, in any event, now I’ll make the comment I meant to make earlier. It’s interesting, just linguistically. Again, I said I’m not committing myself that this is really the meaning of the terms, but linguistically it’s worth noticing this. Why is it that with respect to the axis of freedom we define a person as free, while with respect to the axis of liberty we don’t say “liberty-like” or whatever exactly the form would be, but rather “a free person”? Why this different form?
[Speaker D] “A free person” is only potential, whereas “free” is a de facto state.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I think that could at least be an explanation. Again, I’m not committing myself on dictionary or linguistic matters, but maybe it could be an explanation. What is “a free person”? What is “one destined for the World to Come”? “One destined for the World to Come” is always someone alive, right? Never someone dead. Someone dead is not “destined for the World to Come”; either he is in the World to Come or he is not in the World to Come. When the Sages say about someone that he is destined for the World to Come, that’s someone who is alive, only he potentially belongs to the World to Come—he has the potential to be there. Right? We already spoke about the difference between a gentile and a full-fledged gentile. About someone who died they never say he is destined for the World to Come. About someone alive they say he is destined for the World to Come. Just as about a gentile they never say he is a full-fledged gentile—only about a Jew do they say he is a full-fledged gentile. So many times when they say that you are, say, a slanderer—what is a slanderer? A slanderer is not someone who happens to speak slander, but someone who belongs to that world of slander; he is addicted to slander. It’s not someone who is engaged in it right now or speaking slander right now—that’s not the point. Rather, it’s always some kind of state in which there is either potential or some relation to a condition that you may not currently be in, but you belong to it. Meaning, you’re in another state, but essentially you belong to that one. Okay? Now, in that sense, freedom is a simple definition—it’s just a state of absence of limitations, or a place on the scale of absence of limitations. It’s not something potential. Complete freedom of course doesn’t exist, but freedom has no connection to another state. If you are without limitations, you are free; if you have limitations, you are not free. Meaning, there’s no in-between here. Therefore we say “free.” When you talk about a free person, that is always someone who exists within limitations and somehow aspires to overcome them, to get outside, meaning to be in some place where there aren’t any. The aspiration to freedom when you’re inside limitations—that is liberty. Meaning, when you want, when you act in order to free yourself from those limitations, you are in fact acting for the sake of freedom. So freedom for you is a value; the action for freedom is the value—that is liberty. And therefore, maybe because of that—I don’t know, this is half a homily—but maybe because of that they call this a free person and not “liberty-like” or whatever. Because it is really a connection to some utopian state you want to be in; it doesn’t describe a situation you are in, but rather where you aspire to be.
[Speaker F] Don’t you want to remove the limitation? No, the limitations are there; it’s just that the situation becomes—
[Speaker D] More so, the more limitations you have.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying there are two things. First, it could be that you also want to remove them—it depends on the nature of the limitations. It’s not always possible. Someone who wants to escape from a concentration camp does not want those limitations; they are forced on him and he doesn’t want them, but he tries to free himself from them. And of course there is also autonomy, where this is not expressed by my wanting to throw off the limitations, but by how I maneuver within them. So both of these expressions can exist.
[Speaker D] What’s the difference between a limitation I impose on myself and one imposed on me? That’s absolutely critical to the discussion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. I’m only talking about limitations that I do not impose on myself. If I impose it on myself, I don’t call it a limitation. The mouth that prohibited is the mouth that permitted. So what I imposed, I can release.
[Speaker D] So you’ve solved the issue of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, because all the limitations I have as a Jewish human being I imposed on myself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I’ll get to Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. So the concepts of freedom and liberty as I defined them here are basically in an inverse relation. If freedom is an asset, liberty is a value. If depriving someone of freedom is an immoral act, depriving someone of liberty is impossible. Freedom is a state; liberty is a mode of action. Okay? There are two things here. And bottom line: when there is freedom, there is no liberty. So that’s really the summary. Because they can’t live together; in that sense they are actually opposites. In order for you to be a free person, there has to be some limitation or some limitations on you. I’ll maybe illustrate these things through—I think that… I think I brought this example once. There is a way, elections, three concepts of elections: elections in Syria, in Switzerland, and in Israel. I think I mentioned it once before, but never mind. So let me try to illustrate these concepts through the concept of elections, in the political sense. Obviously this is also true of an individual person’s choices, but we’ll get to that. Okay, how did elections in Syria work back when they still had them? Today even the right to breathe there is unclear, so the right to vote—no one even talks about it anymore. But when it still existed, how did elections in Syria work? A person enters the polling station completely freely, chooses completely freely a ballot, puts it completely freely into the ballot box, and in a completely mathematical fashion they count the ballots and the majority of votes determines who will be president of Syria. Okay? Excellent, first-rate democracy. The only problem is that in the polling station there is only one stack of ballots.
[Speaker D] There’s no choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? There’s no choice. There is only one stack of ballots, and that is Assad. Assad the father, Assad—
[Speaker D] Do you have to come to the polling station?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Assad the father—no, you have to come to the polling station. Although if you remember, whenever they reported the results it was always 99.7 or something like that, and I always wondered where the remaining 0.3 percent were. Maybe those were the ones who didn’t make it to the polling station, or died on the way there, or I don’t know. Meaning, in principle I think everyone had to come there to the polling station. In any event, it was always Assad. Right? It was Assad the father, Assad the son, or Assad the holy spirit—but it was always Assad in the end, because… because there was only one ballot. Now, there is here some façade of freedom. That is, the person comes to the polling station, chooses freely, no one says anything to him, everything is wonderful, and at the end they even count the votes, and the majority determines who will be president. There is only one problem: there is only one ballot.
[Speaker F] No, there is a choice—you could choose not to put… I mean, you do have to put in a ballot. You could take an envelope and put it in empty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe that’s the 0.3, I don’t know. But never mind, that’s not… again, we won’t get into the Syrian regime; it has no intellectual value worth investing too much in. So let’s… so that’s one direction. Right? There’s only one ballot, so as I said, it’s a façade of freedom; it’s not freedom. Meaning, it’s clear that it is completely deterministic. Meaning, here the circumstances dictate the result, although it’s interesting because in the person’s feeling he doesn’t feel that someone is telling him something or that… everything is fine, he does everything… But the circumstances of course channel him in a very specific direction. There are some, by the way, who claim that every person is like this in every situation. Determinists, right? Determinists say that even our sense that we choose is some kind of façade even when there are many ballots. Right? Even when there are many ballots it’s still a façade, and in the end the circumstances dictate what comes out. So that is really just to say that the whole world is Syria. I hope only in that sense—not that they’ll also start throwing gas at us. So that is the first model or the first state. The second state is perfectly democratic elections in Switzerland. What happens in Switzerland? A person enters the polling station—metaphorical Switzerland; if there’s anyone Swiss here, I apologize in advance—you enter the polling station, choose freely; there are several ballots there; you choose freely one ballot from several options, put it in the ballot box, they count the votes, and whoever got the majority is president of Switzerland or prime minister or whatever the system is there. So that is really not like Syria, right? Here there is free choice, everything… the citizens determine, they count the votes, everything is fine. There is only one problem. Or maybe no problem. A Swiss president… well, there are no problems in Switzerland. What difference does it make to me who will be president? Draw lots. You understand that in a place where there are no problems, there is no significance at all to the question whether the president will be Reuven or Shimon—or Van Heng, I don’t know what they’re called there. Meaning, what difference does it make? In the end these elections have significance when there are problems, when you choose one path or another, and then people ask whether you chose correctly or not—there are prices to pay. But if there are no problems and you don’t need to cope with anything—again, this is metaphorical Switzerland—then flip a coin. What difference does it make? Hold a lottery. The only practical difference is who gets the salary. Apart from that, nothing. Therefore I would say, in the previous language, that if Syria is determinism, then Switzerland is freedom. There are no limitations, no prices, no constraints. You act in a vacuum. When you act in a vacuum, then you can choose your path freely. That choice has no significance whatsoever. Meaning, you can flip a coin. And if you want, by analogy to the way an individual acts: if I likened Syria to determinism, then Switzerland resembles randomness. Flip a coin. It has no significance. The two options are equivalent; you can flip a coin. The choice here is indeed made, but you understand that it is not made on the basis of considerations. There are no considerations. Because what possible considerations could there be in choosing Reuven or Shimon? That they would handle the economy better, security better? But if there are no economic or security problems, then there are no considerations! So in fact what you are doing is not choosing but drawing lots. Right? Therefore, if Syria is determinism, Switzerland is randomness. The third example, which some of us may know, is a country that has problems. There are such countries. And in such a country, when people freely enter the polling station and choose one ballot from among several possible ballots, there the system of constraints is not in our hands, or a large part of it is not in our hands—economic, security-related, social, all kinds. Okay? The only question is how to deal with the constraints. And that is what the elections are about. Meaning, you have to decide according to which ballot we are going to deal, and in which way we choose to deal with our problems. And since there are problems that we do not determine—we can only cope with them, but they are given to us—there are prices. If you chose well, you gained; if you chose badly, you lost. You gained or lost economically, you gained or lost morally, it doesn’t matter—there are of course many aspects. But once there is a system of constraints within which you act, then your freedom to choose acquires meaning. Because then it means you are choosing between two different options, such that if you chose this way you did well, and if you chose that way you did badly. In Switzerland there is no doing well and doing badly; there is only drawing lots. Therefore the fact that we choose freely both here and in Switzerland does not mean it is the same thing. There is another very important difference beyond freedom itself, which is the contrast with Syria. In Syria there is no freedom at all. In Switzerland and Israel there is freedom, but that is not enough. Beyond the fact that there is freedom, in Israel there is also some kind of system of problems that must be dealt with, and in Switzerland there is not. So therefore, although there is freedom, here—in translation into our concepts—I am talking about liberty.
[Speaker C] If possible, you can explain it through a small child and an adult. Say a small child, whose problems—he has no problems—he chooses chocolate milk or plain milk. Isn’t that liberty?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that is freedom.
[Speaker C] But with an adult, because he has problems and large constraints, yes. So is it subjective, not objective?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely objective.
[Speaker C] For a child, the most important thing in life—or for a little girl—to buy a white shirt or a black shirt, for her that is the whole world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, let her buy a white shirt or a black shirt—what’s the problem?
[Speaker C] It may not seem important to you, but for him—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not because it’s not important. It’s not a question of importance. It’s a question of the fact that it has no significance. He can do it—let him do it, what’s the problem? There is nothing preventing him from doing it. He pays no price for choosing the white shirt or the black shirt, because I’m paying for it; I’m buying it for him. Fine, so what? That is freedom, not liberty. Liberty is when you pay prices. You maneuver in the face of problems; you solve this problem and pay prices in terms of that problem.
[Speaker C] In my view, if I may add, I think it’s on the same scale, just higher and lower on the scale.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If so, then we really disagree—but again, it’s not a matter of disagreement, it’s a matter of definition. That’s why I’m saying: according to the definition of liberty that I gave earlier, it has nothing to do with the degree of importance. Nothing to do with the degree of importance. The question is whether constraints are imposed on you. If the child will get any shirt he asks his father for, and he also doesn’t need to take money out of his pocket to pay for it, then as far as I’m concerned that is freedom, not liberty.
[Speaker C] No, but once he really is dealing with the problems he has… if he is coping and paying prices—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he is coping with problems, then both child and adult—that is liberty, no problem. But that’s why you presented the—
[Speaker C] The problem as if—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As if the child is not coping with problems. If he isn’t coping with problems… if he is coping with problems, then that too is liberty. It’s a matter of definition. If he isn’t coping with problems, and instead everything—
[Speaker C] Fine, and dad takes care of everything, then that is freedom. That’s all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now decide which child you are talking about.
[Speaker D] He’s talking about one shirt—he takes the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The black one, he gives up the white one. So I said: if there is a limitation, then yes—then there are constraints, so a child too has constraints.
[Speaker C] Almost every decision in the world has a limitation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. I said that freedom is a utopian state. Obviously. By the way, yes, I’ve brought this parable of the three kinds of elections several times already, but I can’t resist—there is also a fourth. You know, in Israel we live in the fourth model, not the third as I said earlier. The fourth model is when you enter a country with problems, democratic, you enter the polling station, you choose among several possible ballots, they count the ballots, and whoever received the majority becomes prime minister. Fine? Except that everyone elected does the same thing. That, in my opinion, is the situation in Israel today; it is the fourth model. We have in some sense gone back to Switzerland. In some sense we have gone back to Switzerland. Yes. This—I have a friend whose friend once did some backpacking trip in Burma, what is today called Myanmar, many years ago. And there in the jungles he was walking around for a long time, and he arrived at some village with huts, really in the middle of the jungle, in places where human feet barely tread. He got there and saw some little hut that was a post office. He said, wow, I’ll go send a letter, or make a call, or I don’t know exactly, something. Fine, he gets there and is amazed: on the wall of the post office there were mail slots sorted by countries and continents. In a hut in the jungle there—what a wonder that there are envelopes there at all. But no, it was sorted: countries and continents and everything divided up; you could send your letter, choose where to drop it. He was stunned. So that was on this wall, all these mail slots, and here was a service window. Fine? So he goes up to the window, wanting to buy stamps or something, and he looks at the other side of the wall—what does he see?
[Speaker B] They all fall into the same sack.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the letters fall into the same sack. So that is the fourth model.
[Speaker B] Okay, in any—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Event, so by the way, I think that’s true. There is no difference, really no difference; everyone does the same thing. Never mind.
[Speaker C] What we heard recently with waste separation—garbage—that they sort for us into all kinds of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no, with us too it’s like that. We have two different bins, two different bins, and they take them to the same place, and the municipality is sophisticated and says it’s not the same place, only they’re preparing for a situation in which they’ll be able to separate, they’ll be able to separate. In the meantime they still aren’t set up for it, they still haven’t done—no, no, like in Burma, like in Burma. For now it works—they’re sewing all the little sacks together; in the meantime he puts one big sack there just in order to… yes. Okay, so this comparison between the different states really sharpens the difference between freedom and liberty, because in effect it says that freedom receives its meaning only when it takes place within a system of constraints. And that is what I called liberty. Okay? Therefore the system of constraints does not interfere with liberty; it constitutes liberty. Meaning, without a system of constraints there is no value at all to my freedom to choose, because that is freedom and not liberty. Let me maybe bring a few more aspects or examples of this point. Amos Oz writes in some essay once—he wrote in an essay once, Here and There in the Land of Israel, he has a book by that name, a book of essays—there is an essay called “The Full Wagon and the Empty Wagon,” which is something that accompanied Amos Oz for a long time. He raised it, I think—or rather Ben-Gurion did in the 1950s there at Beit Ha’am with the Hazon Ish—but it resurfaced and came to public attention with an article by Amos Oz in the 1980s, more or less, I think. He is of course very indignant against that distinction—unjustifiably in my opinion—but within the essay he describes Jewish history as though it were some kind of physics. That is, there was a big bang at Mount Sinai, space was created—the space within which we act, the Jewish space, right?—and since then, he says, we have been filling it with furniture and refusing to remove any piece of furniture. That is, every piece of furniture that enters remains, obligates. Right? The Mishnah, the Talmud, the medieval authorities (Rishonim), the later authorities (Acharonim), the Shulchan Arukh—that is, enactments, decrees, Jewish laws—everything… more and more and more furniture comes in, and at the end of the day we are already in a state where you can’t move, but it is forbidden to remove any furniture. And the feeling is that it started with some great explosion that should have enabled enormous freedom, and we are putting ourselves into a state that is completely bound, completely thickened and rigid. And when I read—and again, this is the same warning I gave regarding Aryeh Elon—Amos Oz has an extraordinary gift of expression; he doesn’t need my approval, of course. But every time I read him I get annoyed, because he always makes problematic arguments. That is, his arguments don’t hold water, and he says it so beautifully that people don’t analyze it, they don’t examine it. So let’s look for a moment at this argument, because it really gave me a lot to think about and I began to wonder whether he is right. Because seemingly this is true; it describes the situation correctly. We are constantly adding more and more things—Mishnah, Talmud, medieval authorities, Shulchan Arukh. But while the space grows—
[Speaker D] Here it’s because the space grows, that’s something else—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that the space grows, because I think in this parable the space grows, but I’ll give you an example—yes, entropy, entropy calculations. Think of… a room built in the form of eight by eight squares.
[Speaker C] Like those squares, eight by eight, like a chessboard.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, now I have a chair. A chair like this, that’s very good. A chair like this takes up more or less one square, right? So I have a chair in a room of 64 squares. How many possibilities do I have for arranging the room?
[Speaker C] What do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How many possible arrangements are there? One chair? 64. Right? Simply put it in any one of the squares. Let’s say it can’t be between squares, right? Meaning there are little walls between the squares. You can put it either in this square or in that square.
[Speaker C] And you can also rotate the chair.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Let’s say it has no orientation, you can’t rotate it. It’s symmetric, simply symmetric. Right. So that’s… now understand that if you can rotate the chair in four directions, that increases the number of possibilities crazily. But in any case, let’s say it can’t be rotated. A round chair, fine? A round chair, circularly symmetric, can’t be rotated. It’s all the same. So… so, one chair—64 possibilities. And two chairs?
[Speaker C] 64 times 63 divided by 2, if they’re identical.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? Meaning that when there are two chairs, the number of possibilities for arranging them increases many times over. Right? By about a factor of 30. Okay? When there are three possibilities—three chairs? Again, another such factor, right? 64, 63, 62 divided by 6, three factorial. Right? It goes up, up, up until you reach 32 chairs. When you go to 32 chairs—say you go up to 33 chairs—then you have 31 holes. Right? Now arrange the holes too, not just the chairs, and therefore it is clear that this is some kind of parabola. Okay? So that basically means that the more furniture there is in the room, the more possibilities there are to arrange it. Not fewer.
[Speaker D] Until the halfway point… right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One, two, three—I’m not talking about forty. One, two, three—you add more and more chairs to the room, and that increases the number of possibilities, not decreases it. That is if you are the one placing them—
[Speaker D] But you are not the one placing them; you are the one suffering from the clutter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no.
[Speaker D] I as a citizen am not placing the Shulchan Arukh.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think you are. Wait—you arrange them. You didn’t create the chair, but you arrange it. And that is exactly the point. Meaning, Amos Oz—think of a completely hypothetical situation for the moment, fine? Suppose Amos is a secular person, he has no values in his world of any kind—not only religious. Let’s say that just for the sake of illustrating the point. Then supposedly he is the greatest free person, right? There is no furniture in the room at all. You understand that this has no meaning. He has no possibility of doing anything. Meaning, in a world in which there is no… in an empty world there is no motion. Right? Motion always requires some frame of reference. That is, you move relative to something. In a world where there is one point object—or not even point-like, in a world where there is one object—there is no motion. Meaning, you need orientation, you need things located here, in order for there even to begin to be… for possibilities to appear. Now, it’s not that possibilities appear; the possibilities existed before too. Even in an empty world you can go here, you can go here, you can go here. But there is no such thing as here, here, and here. It’s all the same. Fine? The meaning of the possibilities—or the difference between possibilities—becomes real only because there is additional furniture in the room. Okay? Possibilities do not of course come into being, but the possibilities are colored in different colors only in a place where there are other things. Meaning that the more furniture you add into the room, the more ways you have to arrange it. The more values you have in your world, in order to maneuver among them and live, satisfy them all—not satisfy in the negative sense, but obey them all, fulfill them, realize them—you have to be more creative. There are many more possibilities for how… how to act. Think… I think there are many shades of religious people, and only one shade of secular. No, really. Not of secular people—of secularity. There are many kinds of secular people, but secularity is simply the absence of religiosity. There is nothing there besides that. The fact that a secular person can adopt other values—that is true, obviously. Everything is true. But I’m now looking only at his secularity, not at anything else. How many kinds of secularity are there? One. Simply, you are not obligated, and that’s it. Anything you do beyond that is a second floor—go do other things. By contrast, when you talk about religiosity, there are many shades of religiosity. That is, there are people—one second—there are people who are committed to the entire Shulchan Arukh, with all Jewish law, everything, and they act, conduct themselves, and think completely differently from one another. And all of that is shades of religiosity. It’s not other things besides religiosity. It is shades of religiosity itself. Meaning that because within the religious world—or not specifically religious, but any world of norms, yes? Any world in which there are normative constraints, or right and wrong at the normative level—then in such a world there is much more room for personal expression than in a world that is empty. Yes.
[Speaker E] I think maybe Amos Oz would say to you: no, that’s not the point. The point isn’t whether someone lives inside the room, but what furniture. You determined what furniture is in the room. He says: I want that… if there is language, or whatever furniture there is in the room, I should be able to choose among them and how to arrange them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that is still choosing. No, if… the question, again, is whether there are constraints on the choice. If you can create whatever furniture you want, remove from the room whatever furniture you want—that I do not call choice. Because that basically means these are not options. You do whatever you want. There is no significance. There is no right and wrong here. If you have a given set of furniture, and you choose among it or arrange it, fine. That is called choice. I agree.
[Speaker E] The question is who determines the furniture. Who determines the furniture? A secular person has no external something—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] External to him that determines the furniture.
[Speaker E] And also the secu—no, I said… they don’t accept religion—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, I’m not arguing that there are secular people who have values, and that they are good people and people who differ from one another. All true. But that is not their secularity. Secularity is simply the absence of religiosity. Beyond that, of course you can do many more things, be committed to many things—but these are not different shades of secularity. They are different shades of secular people.
[Speaker E] Fine, but his claim—he won’t tell you that it’s an empty wagon, that there is some kind of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. And that isn’t secular.
[Speaker E] And they are committed to morality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So again I say: if he is committed to morality, then there are many shades of commitment to morality, I agree, because that too is religiosity. Religiosity without God—I don’t care. But secularity is a concept that is negative in its essence. Again, I’m not criticizing; I only mean to say that the secular dimension of a person is one thing. Meaning, on top of that he can build… a lot. He can be a capitalist or a socialist, he can be this or that, and all sorts of things. That’s obvious. That is besides the point, but those are not different shades of secularity.
[Speaker D] And his claim is he never claimed he fills it with secularity; he fills it with moral values. No problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I also fill it with moral values. No, wait. I also fill it with moral values, so in that sense there is no difference between us. He claimed that he does not fill it with religious values—that is what he claimed. That he has other values; those values, I have them too.
[Speaker D] And therefore his wagon is not empty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but I too have his values. So what is his dispute with me? Whether to put religious values into the wagon. He says no, and I say yes.
[Speaker C] It seems to me that his argument is simply that he thinks we are at the end of the sixty-third square, sixty-four chairs.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, fine, but I think not—that’s not correct. Because look at how many possibilities we have to maneuver and you’ll see that it’s simply not true. There are many possibilities. Look—religious people appear and think completely differently. Meaning, there are lots of possibilities. On the contrary, these possibilities are much more significant in a place where you maneuver within a system of constraints. That is liberty. If there are no constraints, there is no liberty. Meaning, if you… he talks there about dealing with the Holocaust. He says: religious thought does not deal with the Holocaust. And secular thought did deal with the Holocaust? What is there to deal with? There is nothing to deal with. If you have no problem, then what are you dealing with? The problem of the Holocaust is not a problem in secular thought. In religious thought it is a problem. How can there be a Holocaust if there is a God? You need to deal with it, whether successfully or not. But again, the perception is as if, if I don’t have problems, then I am coping. No—if you don’t have problems, then you do nothing. It’s the same mistake. Now I’ll return for a moment to Aryeh Elon because I do want to close the circle; I see it’s become a bit—
[Speaker C] But—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll return for a moment to Aryeh Elon.
[Speaker C] So where exactly is Aryeh Elon mistaken?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aryeh Elon—let’s say we accept his criterion, that a person legislates his own values to himself, the sovereign person, not the rabbinic person. Not someone from the outside dictating to him what is right and what is wrong, but rather he legislates for himself. Now I ask: what would Aryeh Elon say about someone who legislated for himself the noble value of being a hired murderer? A very profitable line of work; I highly recommend it to anyone interested—they pay pretty well, and that’s that. That’s what he decided to do. He legislates that value for himself, clings to it, works for it, excels at it, and does it in a… Does Aryeh Elon see such a person as a moral person? As a positive person? As a sovereign person? Is that the model he wants to adopt? I assume not. Aryeh Elon is a good person, I think, as far as I can tell. So what is missing? After all, this person legislates his own values—
[Speaker C] His choice—that’s the sovereignty, not the act itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, one second. This person legislates his own values, and in that sense he meets Aryeh Elon’s criterion. But in the end, if we judge a person by the fact that he legislates his own values, then everyone is righteous. I do what I decided to do.
[Speaker C] What value? Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the question is: what value did you legislate for yourself? But notice what is happening here. It means that I evaluate what he chose not by the criteria that he set,
[Speaker B] But rather—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By criteria that are given in advance, to which he is committed without having decided them. He cannot determine what is good and what is bad; he can determine what he will do. In other words, for your autonomy, your sovereignty, to acquire meaning, you must be rabbinic. Rabbinic not necessarily in the religious sense, of course; I mean in the sense of being within a value system that is dictated to you, not one that you determine. Because if you determine the value system, it is like Amos Oz—he determines what furniture there will be and where; he comes in and puts in whatever he wants. It has no significance. If you act within a given system of constraints and are committed to it, but you express your own way of doing it, you stand by it honorably, you pay prices in order to do the right thing—then you are a free person. Now how can one even argue with such a thing? It’s not even a question one can argue about; it’s just a mistake in what he writes, what he says there. It’s obvious that it’s not correct. The sovereign person is not a person who legislates values for himself; that’s nonsense. It’s simply a non-religious person, that’s all, whose values are moral values and not religious ones. But still, those values are dictated to him; he didn’t decide them.
[Speaker D] Why? It could be that in his eyes a hired murderer does meet the criterion of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think not.
[Speaker D] He’s sovereign, but not good.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But he is sovereign.
[Speaker D] No, I have no problem. There are such people who are—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no problem with his being sovereign, but he presented the sovereign person as an ideal figure. Why is that not good? I have no problem—he is sovereign, but it’s not good. That is exactly the point.
[Speaker D] It was determined for him in advance from outside that such a thing is not good.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t mean—I’m not disputing that he chooses freely and does what he does, obviously. I only claim that this is freedom and not liberty. And in fact he is not acting within a system independent of him that is given to him, a system of good and evil. And since that is so, this is indeed Switzerland—he does choose completely freely, but since there are no constraints with which he must cope, it has no significance; you cannot value him for anything. After all, it is obvious that when you evaluate someone for good or bad, you evaluate him according to a standard that is not himself. Unlike, by the way, in Kant’s philosophy, where there is a certain tension that many of his interpreters deal with: on the one hand he speaks of autonomous morality, the person legislates for himself, the person—and without God and without anything. On the other hand he brings a proof for the existence of God from morality. Because without God there is no morality. And I think—and everyone discusses it—so did he retract, are there contradictions… It’s not that. It’s simply the same lack of understanding. He did not retract, and it is not a mistake; it is one hundred percent correct. What does it mean? Without God there is no objective definition, independent of me, of what is good and what is bad. Because if there are only human beings and no God, then really what is there besides what we decide? Okay? Meaning some external source—I call it God, but it doesn’t matter—some external source that determines what is good and what is bad. After that, you need to decide that you are committed to His commands, and how you do it, and what prices you pay, are willing to pay, and then it really is an autonomous matter. So there are two sides here, and both are necessary. There must be both a framework independent of you and your choice to act. Now, one who is within a framework but lets it lead him, does not himself decide whether to act and how to act—that is Syria. Fine? One who is within—