Kindness and Judgment – Elul 5783 – Lesson 2

Table of Contents

• [0:01] Defining kindness and law, and the basic difference
• [1:31] A kabbalistic distinction between kindness and law
• [3:10] Law as boundary and kindness as the thing itself
• [5:02] The connection to Greek philosophy: Anaximander and coming-into-being
• [6:54] The physics of particle and antiparticle, and an explanation of kindness
• [8:55] The Kantian view of the thing itself and its properties
• [12:50] Leibniz’s argument about the identity of indiscernibles
• [17:41] Bosons and fermions: the concept of identical properties
• [18:41] Borges’ story: idealists and the object
• [25:20] Abraham our patriarch as a symbol of the attribute of kindness
• [28:16] Summary: kindness begins a chain, law continues it
• [32:40] The precedence of a priest or a rabbi, and gratitude
• [39:52] A chain of kindness: pass the good onward
• [42:08] Kindness and law in the Creator: Rashi on God
• [44:42] Capitalism versus communism: justice and charity
• [57:22] The law and the scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah: law and anarchism
• [??:??] The failure of laws: the market is smarter than the legislator (NONE)

Summary

General Overview

The text defines kindness as an action that goes beyond rules, and law as action according to rules. It argues that Jewish law is a limited approximation of what is incumbent on a person, because behind it stands a layer that cannot be fully defined by rules. It moves the distinction from the logical plane to the ontological-kabbalistic plane, where kindness is coming-into-being something from nothing and law is something from something, identifying law with form, delimitation, and description by means of properties. It criticizes conceptions that identify reality with its laws, or an object with the collection of its properties, and argues that physics focuses on law while philosophy restores the dimension of kindness as the sheer fact of existence itself. It presents gratitude as an “enslavement of kindness” that creates an obligatory continuation of an act of kindness, and concludes that kindness and law cannot stand on their own but require mutual partnership, as Rashi describes in the combination of the attribute of mercy with law. It expands this model into economics, legislation, discipline, and obedience, showing that both “pure law” and “pure kindness” collapse. It then demonstrates, through the Hatam Sofer, how “law within law” flips into kindness when there is no justification for justifications, and finally describes an inversion between the order of coming-into-being and the order of interpretation.

Defining Kindness and Law on the Logical and Halakhic Plane

The text states that law is action according to rules, and kindness is action that goes beyond the rules, and shows that this has implications both positively and negatively, though this is the conceptual definition. It gives halakhic examples such as Hanukkah and terumah to illustrate an attempt to define something as law while bringing it into Jewish law in a way that still preserves the tension of “dancing at two weddings.” It cites Lot’s daughters and the concept of “a transgression for its own sake” to show that there are situations in which a person is required to do something that goes against Jewish law, from which Jewish law is understood as a constriction and approximation of what is truly incumbent on a person. It uses an analogy to the rules of language to argue that rules describe an approximation of something living that precedes them and is not fully captured by general description.

Kindness and Law on the Ontological-Kabbalistic Plane: Something from Nothing, Something from Something, Creation-Formation-Action

The text distinguishes in Kabbalah between kindness as the model of coming-into-being something from nothing and law as the model of coming-into-being something from something, paralleling this to creation versus formation, and wisdom versus understanding: wisdom is something from nothing, and understanding is “to understand one thing from another,” that is, something from something. It explains that creation is the emergence of reality from “nothingness,” while formation is giving shape and boundary to what was created, and therefore it is law, because law is boundary, rule, and the distinction of “this yes and this no.” It presents the world of action as a union of matter and form, and emphasizes that kindness is the thing itself when it is still without form, whereas law is the definitions, delimitations, and properties that make description possible. It argues that when one tries to grasp kindness by means of definition, one immediately gives it form and turns it into law.

Anaximander, Modern Physics, and Conservation Laws versus the Question of Coming-into-Being Itself

The text presents Anaximander’s passage as a description of creation through pairs of opposites that cancel each other out, and compares this to the modern description of a particle and antiparticle emerging from the vacuum while preserving charges and conservation laws. It asks why Anaximander assumes a primordial hyle-like matter, and argues that the philosophical disturbance lies in the simple fact that before there was nothing and now there is something, even if the sum of the properties remains zero. It suggests identifying here a kind of “conservation of being” that is absent from physical discourse, and argues that physics deals with properties and form and therefore with the domain of formation, while philosophy adds the dimension of kindness of the thing itself. It sharpens the point by saying that the coming-into-being of a world and an anti-world is philosophically even more dramatic, yet physicists remain calm because the focus of explanation is on the law of the properties and not on the kindness of emergence itself.

Kant, the Thing in Itself, and Properties: Existence Is Not a Property

The text uses Kant’s language of noumenon and phenomenon to argue that everything that can be said about things is a statement about their properties, whereas the question of the “bearer of the properties” escapes every property-based description. It states that the claim “it exists” is a statement about the thing itself and not about one of its properties, and hints at philosophical problems such as the collapse of the ontological proof. It identifies primordial matter, or the thing stripped of properties, with creation, and the giving of properties and boundaries with formation as law. It argues that many people do not understand that the object is not a collection of its properties but the bearer of the properties, and that every attempt to grasp kindness through description misses something of the thing itself.

Rabinovitch, Mapping the Self, and Essence in Physics

The text describes an article by Rabinovitch that tries to locate the “self” on a psychoanalytic map, and says this is a categorical mistake because the “self” is the one whose map it is, not a point on the map. It brings the example of a physicist who defines a neutron or an electron as a collection of properties such as size and charge, and emphasizes that even mass is a kind of charge-property in the physical sense. It concludes that there is no way to say anything about a thing that is not a property except for its existence, and therefore it is very hard to grasp kindness. It argues that identifying “essence” with a collection of properties lies at the heart of a confusion that erases the distinction between the thing and its description.

Leibniz and the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: A Critique of Identifying an Object with Its Properties

The text presents Leibniz’s claim that any two entities identical in all their properties are the same entity, along with his proof by negation using the property “A is not B.” It rejects the proof and argues that Leibniz begs the question by treating “being not B” as a property, whereas this is a statement about the object itself and not about one of its characteristics. It argues that there can be two different objects with the same set of properties, and offers the example of two particles identical in all properties, including location, that are still two and therefore weigh twice as much. It adds a physical distinction between fermions and bosons to show that in certain states there can be many entities with the same set of properties, thereby strengthening the claim that the object is not exhausted by its properties.

Borges and “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”: The Absurdity of a World without Objects

The text brings Borges in order to describe an idealist world that does not believe in the existence of objects, only in ways of perceiving, where one can invent nouns as one likes from arbitrary collections of properties, such as “the cry of a bird in the distance” together with “the color of the sun” at a certain hour and date. It argues that if an object is only a collection of properties, then there is no reason to prefer one collection over another, and the number of “objects” becomes all the subsets of the properties. It concludes that this conception is absurd even though it cannot be observationally refuted, because observation reveals only properties and not the object itself. It identifies this absurdity as the attempt to grasp the world through law alone without kindness, and to turn physics from a description of reality into reality itself.

Perception, the Creation of Phenomena, and the Principle of “Grasping the Thing Itself”

The text argues that the common interpretation of Kant, according to which noumena cannot be grasped, is mistaken, because “to grasp” means to place a thing into the conceptual system by means of properties, and that is precisely the creation of the phenomenon. It explains that a creature without sight would not include colors in its concepts even though electromagnetic fields exist, and therefore perception always depends on the conceptual system of the perceiver. It states that sensory vision presents only properties, but it is clear to us that the properties are properties of something, and in that sense the thing itself can be grasped as the bearer of properties. It adds that the difficulty of grasping the thing itself is not unique to the Holy One, blessed be He, but applies to every object, although in the case of the Holy One there are no directly perceptible properties such as color or shape, only actions and consequences.

Abraham, Isaac, Human Choice, and Chains of Kindness and Law

The text states that Abraham our patriarch is the father of the attribute of kindness because every beginning is something from nothing and he initiated a process, whereas Isaac is might because he is the continuation that comes from Abraham. It argues that choice is the only point at which a person truly creates something by himself, whereas actions without choice are something from something within causal chains. It presents the world, apart from the human being, as a world that operates according to rules and law, and the human being as a creature capable of generating the kindness of something from nothing through his will. It organizes this in a sefirotic structure of beginning-formation-product, such as wisdom-understanding-knowledge and kindness-might-beauty, emphasizing that beauty is the joining of kindness and law.

Actions According to Law versus Acts of Kindness: Loan, Charity, and Repentance

The text explains that action according to law does not create something from nothing but continues something from something, illustrating this with a loan that generates repayment as a legal obligation. It sets against this charity as an act that has no prior cause that obligates it, and is therefore an expression of choice and the opening of a new chain. It argues that kindness begins a chain and law continues it, and that every act of choice creates an additional branch in the world that then develops according to law. It notes that repentance is one kind of such a choice of something from nothing, and indicates that he will discuss it in the second series.

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner: Gratitude as an “Enslavement of Kindness”

The text cites a passage from Pachad Yitzchak (Rosh Hashanah, third essay), in which Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner describes how scrupulous Torah scholars are about gratitude, initially linking this with “one who hates gifts shall live” and with avoidance of “bread of shame,” bread of kindness. It argues that this does not exhaust the matter, and brings a halakhic example of two people in need of help, where one has legal precedence according to the laws at the end of tractate Horayot, while the other is owed gratitude. It analyzes the law of “your father’s lost item and your rabbi’s lost item,” which is ruled in the Shulchan Arukh, according to which if the father pays the rabbi who teaches his son, then the father’s lost item takes precedence. From this it concludes that once the salary is paid, the gratitude owed to the rabbi is removed and transferred to the father, while the duty of honor toward the rabbi remains. It determines that this proves that gratitude overrides legal precedence in acts of kindness because it is “literally an enslavement of kindness,” meaning that receiving a kindness obligates the recipient to repay kindness with kindness.

Marcel Mauss, the Gift as Obligation, and “Pay It Forward”

The text brings Marcel Mauss and his Essay on the Gift to argue that in different cultures a gift operates almost like a loan, because it creates an obligation to return something. It interprets the accounting of “how much he gave me at the wedding” as reflecting a real mechanism in which the giver has a moral claim on the recipient, even though it is not a legal right. It suggests that kindness receives meaning when it continues into a further chain, sometimes as repayment to the giver and sometimes as passing it onward, and brings as an image the film and idea of “pay it forward.” It defines gratitude as an intermediate concept between kindness and law, where an initial kindness gives rise to a dimension of law in the form of obligation so that the kindness will not vanish as a one-time act.

Rashi on Genesis: Joining the Attribute of Mercy with Law

The text quotes Rashi on “In the beginning God created”: “At first it arose in thought to create it with the attribute of law… He saw that the world could not endure, so He gave precedence to the attribute of mercy and joined it with the attribute of law… ‘On the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.’” He uses this to argue that kindness without law and law without kindness cannot endure, and that there must be a partnership in order for the system to exist. He compares this to the claim that a collection of properties has no meaning without a bearer of properties, and that pure law is the identification of reality with its laws in a way that cannot stand. He states that pure kindness disappears if it does not generate a continuation of law, and pure law is emptied out if it does not rest on the kindness of an actually existing thing.

Communism, Capitalism, and Social Democracy as a Mixture of Kindness and Law

The text presents communism as a model of pure law in which the law distributes resources equally and renders voluntary charity unnecessary, identifying this as an attempt to create a world without kindness. It presents pure capitalism as a situation in which there is no regulation of kindness and everything depends on goodwill, describing this as “piggish capitalism” that cannot endure because people will die and phenomena such as monopolies will require restraint. It concludes that neither extreme can survive, and therefore the real world moves between the models in the form of social democracy, with the real argument being over the mixture. It emphasizes that someone who wants to function without any rules will not succeed, and someone who wants to function only with rules and never deviate also will not succeed.

The Failure of Solving Problems through Rules: Laws, Loopholes, and Game Theory

The text argues that laws do not solve real problems because the market and human beings are “smarter than the legislator” and will always find a loophole. It brings examples such as the Scribes Law, the law on bank commissions, and the law forbidding incandescent bulbs that led to bulbs being sold as “heaters.” It also gives an example from game theory of dividing a cake—“one divides and the other chooses first”—in order to achieve equal division, and says this is an educational mistake because it uses selfishness to achieve a result rather than building character. He concludes that there is no solution to real problems merely by changing rules, but that one should not infer from this that rules are meaningless; rather, education and ideological identification must accompany legislation.

Tradition, Norms beyond the Law, and “A Scoundrel within the Bounds of the Torah”

The text compares the United States and Britain as traditional cultures in which there are things “one simply doesn’t do” even if the law permits them, with Israel where there is “only the law,” and therefore nothing works. It argues that sticking only to rules makes it possible to be “a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah,” and that “therefore Jerusalem was destroyed,” because “they acted only according to the line of the law,” emphasizing that even Jewish law cannot cover everything. It presents the law as the central tool of wicked people when they cling to it in order to justify their actions, but also warns that throwing away law creates anarchism, which cannot function either. It states that a delicate interplay is required between rules and norms and the spirit of the law in order for a social system to hold together.

Obedience, Refusal of Orders, and Nazism as the Extreme of Law

The text argues that he would not go to war with a soldier who obeys every order, and defines absolute obedience as “a recipe for Nazism” because it exempts commanders from thinking. It argues that limits and refusal in acute cases force commanders to weigh orders and produce a better army and better commanders, adding that both refusal of orders and absolute obedience can dismantle an army over different timeframes. It applies this to current events and argues that even a legal majority does not justify acting without considering the deep opposition of a large public. It explains that in Israel the absence of agreement on norms and the absence of tradition make the problem worse, and cites Milton Friedman as saying that exile taught people how to circumvent government, so that “what saves the State of Israel is two thousand years of exile.”

The Order of Coming-into-Being versus the Order of Interpretation: Law Comes First in Study, Kindness Comes First in Reality

The text states that in reality the thing comes into being first and only afterward come form and rules, but when interpreting an existing system one starts from the rules and only afterward understands that there is something beyond them. It illustrates this with learning language in an ulpan, which begins with rules, as opposed to natural speech at home, which precedes them, and compares it to analytic Talmud study, where one extracts conceptual principles from the Jewish laws even though the Jewish laws themselves were generated from such principles. It argues that the number of rules increases through the generations—from the Mishnah to the Talmud to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) and then to rule-books—because this is an ever-increasing conceptualization of primordial material. It concludes that one must learn through the rules but use them as a ladder and not cling to them, in order to reach “what really needs to be done” beyond the formal framework.

The Hatam Sofer and Lag BaOmer: Law within Law as Kindness, and a Holiday without Justification

The text cites the Hatam Sofer (responsa, Yoreh De’ah, section 233), who acknowledges the Heaven-intended motives in Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s celebration in Safed on Lag BaOmer, but expresses reservations about joining the custom. It quotes his argument that one should not establish a festival on a day on which no miracle occurred and that has no hint in the Talmud and halakhic decisors, and sets this against local “Purim” customs that rely on the a fortiori argument: “If from slavery to freedom we recite song, then from death to life all the more so,” and therefore they are not an addition to the Torah. It brings the explanation of Ma’aseh Ya’avetz according to the esoteric tradition, that Lag BaOmer is “like a court all of whose members find guilt, and it is rendered innocent—that is, hod within hod,” and interprets this as striving toward a day that is “law within law” that turns into kindness, like acquittal in a court all of whose members convict. It explains that ordinary festivals rest on the justification of law, such as an a fortiori argument, whereas “law within law” is a situation in which there is no justification for justifications, and therefore kindness is revealed.

Law within Law on the Logical Plane: Justification for Justifications and the Impossibility of Grounding Everything in Law

The text demonstrates a valid inference: “All human beings are mortal… Socrates is a human being… Socrates is mortal,” and asks what justifies the mode of inference itself. It argues that there is no explanation for the methods of explanation just as there is no explanation for axioms, and therefore someone who looks for “law within law” discovers that there is no rule standing at the foundation of all rules. It concludes that someone who accepts only what is justified by argument will be left with nothing, because one can always ask what justifies the principles of justification themselves. As an example it cites the principle of causality as a principle that has no observational justification, and yet we assume it. It presents this as another explanation for why pure law cannot endure, because the world cannot stand on justifications alone without a point of kindness in the form of initial acceptance.

Rema of Fano, the Thirteen Attributes, and Seal-Imprint as Inversion

The text cites the Rema of Fano, who draws an analogy between the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy and the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded, and parallels the supreme crown with the a fortiori argument. It notes that this seems strange because law is not first in the order of coming-into-being. It suggests that this is true with respect to interpretation: in the hermeneutical principles, a person interprets an already existing Torah and therefore begins from the law of rules, like the a fortiori argument, whereas in the attributes of mercy the Holy One, blessed be He, creates a world, and therefore the order is kindness and then law. It explains this through the kabbalistic idea of seal and imprint, in which the visible image is the reverse of the generating order, like a reflection in a mirror. It concludes that the relationship between kindness and law is complex: in creation one begins with kindness and adds law in order to sustain, while in perception one begins with law but must understand that it is only the skeleton of something deeper that surrounds it and grounds it.

Last time we talked about defining the concepts of kindness and judgment, and the basic claim was that judgment is acting according to rules, while kindness is acting beyond the rules. That has implications both positively and negatively, but in principle that’s the conceptual, abstract definition. I tried to give examples of this through the halakhic attitude toward rules—which are judgment—and toward what lies beyond the rules—which is kindness. I spoke a bit about the examples of the Hanukkah candle and terumah, which reflect this tension between wanting to define something as law and yet somehow bringing it into Jewish law, which is like trying to dance at two weddings. I spoke about Lot’s daughters, about a transgression for the sake of Heaven, where you see that there is something we are required to do even though it goes against Jewish law. In other words, you see that Jewish law is some kind of approximation of what is really incumbent upon us, a narrowing or approximation of what is really incumbent upon us, while behind it there sits some body of content that cannot really be defined through rules. That’s one example through the rules of language and so on. So we talked about those things. That’s on the logical plane. On the ontological plane, on the plane of existing things, of existence, Kabbalah also distinguishes there between kindness and judgment: kindness is some kind of coming-into-being ex nihilo, while judgment is coming-into-being from something already existing. Creation is ex nihilo; formation is from something existing. Wisdom is ex nihilo, koach mah, as we talked about a bit, and understanding is understanding one thing from another. Therefore also in the kabbalistic worlds we talk about—you can look at the triad of creation, formation, and action. Creation is essentially the emergence of reality out of nothingness, where that “nothingness” is actually abstract entities—in this context, emanation—but for our purposes, for the discussion on the plane of reality as we know it: nothing existed, and then something came into being ex nihilo; that is creation. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—that is primordial creation ex nihilo; from there the whole story begins. And formation is from the language of form, giving form to that raw thing, to that thing that has just now been created. That is really judgment. Why is ex nihilo kindness and from something existing judgment? Because judgment—judgment means rules, we said. Rules basically say how far something extends, or up to where something is permitted and from there it is forbidden. Judgment is always setting a boundary. A rule sets a boundary. The rule says yes to this, no to that. There is some boundary between permitted and forbidden, between existing and non-existing, or things of that sort. The form of a thing is essentially its delimitation; that is what is called judgment. And kindness is the thing itself, the coming-into-being of the thing while it is still without form; that is emergence ex nihilo, the thing in itself, and that is done in creation. So creation is kindness—some kind of thing with no rules, where suddenly something is created against the accepted rules of conservation, let’s call them that in the language of physics. And from there on, the whole business is conducted in the form of judgment. Once something has been created, now there are rules—what yes and what no—and form is given to it and it is organized. That is the world of formation. The world of action is the combination of the two things: the things themselves and their form. The thing plus form, or matter plus form in Aristotle’s language, that is the world of action, the world as we know it. So you have to remember that kindness and judgment have meaning in the logical sense—rules and what lies outside the rules, the same in the legal-halakhic sense—and that is on the logical plane, but there is also the ontic plane, in the sense of the reality of existence, where there too the thing itself is the abstract thing, and its form is judgment. Kindness is the thing itself and judgment is its definitions, its delimitation, and therefore it is always done through rules. When you try to describe something, you describe it as this and not that; you establish its boundaries and delimit them, and that is why this is called judgment. By way of analogy, you know that the earliest text from Greek philosophy that we know, the earliest written text that has survived, is from Anaximander. Anaximander—there is a small fragment left from him, and there he explains the creation of the world through the emergence of pairs that cancel one another out. Very similar to the modern account of emergence from a vacuum of a particle and antiparticle. There, their properties or characteristics—what in physics are called charges—cancel one another, so that overall it remains zero. The conservation laws are preserved. Things are created from the vacuum: if there is a particle with a positive charge, then opposite it there is a particle with a negative charge, so that overall the charge is preserved. That is the way one can describe emergence that preserves the conservation laws. And basically Anaximander claimed the same thing. He said there was some kind of primordial matter, and from it opposites were created that nullify or cancel one another. The interesting point is that he assumes, like Plato, that in the beginning there was some primordial matter, and only afterward does he talk about these cancellations of properties. And the question is why he needs that assumption that there was primordial matter. In fact, from the standpoint of modern physics, no one is bothered by how things emerge from the vacuum so long as the total charge is preserved, the total mass is preserved, the total charge is preserved, the energy is preserved, and so on. What I think bothered Anaximander is that something else happened there, something physics is indifferent to or transparent to. The physicist doesn’t see it. And that is the emergence of something when previously there was nothing. Let’s think about two particles. Okay, a particle and an antiparticle are created. So all their charges are opposite: positive and negative mass, positive and negative electric charge, and all the other kinds of charges—properties are called charges in physics—all their charges cancel one another, so that their sum is zero. Is there no philosophical problem with such a thing? No problem, after all all the conservation laws are preserved, everything is conserved, charge wasn’t created ex nihilo, mass wasn’t created ex nihilo, everything is fine, right? No problem at all. There is a problem. The problem is that before there was nothing and now there is something. That too should trouble us. In other words, there is also here what you might call some kind of conservation law, even though in physics they don’t talk about this, because it would be conservation of being, you could call it, or something like that. In physics they speak about charges, about properties, but the thing itself—you can create an entire world and anti-world, and from the physicists’ point of view nothing happened; everything is excellent. But philosophically, when something happens, it requires explanation. In other words, it isn’t something with no problem at all, everything’s fine, all the conservation laws are preserved, wonderful. And why? Because physics deals with properties, with form, with judgment, with rules. Philosophy adds to that the dimension of kindness—not the properties but the thing itself. Something has been created here, and before there was nothing: that is creation. Physics deals with formation. So emergence can only be from something existing, and if something was created when before there was nothing, then it comes with properties that cancel out. So then everything is fine? No, not everything is fine. Before there was no world and now there are two worlds, not one—a world and an anti-world. That is philosophically far more severe, and requires more philosophical explanation, than the emergence of one world. But physicists are calm about it. Why? Because physics focuses on describing the properties of things, or judgment. Okay? But in philosophy you also ask yourself about the thing itself, not about its properties. Let me formulate this perhaps in Kant’s language. Kant speaks about the thing in itself and the thing as it appears to us, the noumenon and the phenomenon. And Kant’s claim is that all we can say about things are statements about their properties. You can say it’s red, tall, short, kindhearted, whatever, all those kinds of things. Those are all properties. But who is the bearer of the properties? Whose properties are these? There is something, some object, of which these are properties. What can I say about it? Anything I say about it will be a property of it—except perhaps that it exists. The statement that it exists is not a statement about one of its properties; it is a statement about it itself. That has philosophical implications—anyone who knows the ontological proof and where it fails—but never mind, we won’t get into that now. So the claim is that there is an object that exists, and then afterward it also has properties; it is also the bearer of properties. It may perhaps appear without the properties, with the properties, but first of all there is the thing itself, even before the properties—the primordial matter, or the primordial thing stripped of properties. That is creation. Creation is bringing the thing into being. Formation is from the language of form—to give it form—which is really judgment: to give it properties, to delimit it, to say where it is and where it is not, what it is and what it is not. That all belongs to the plane of judgment. What happens is that many people do not understand the fact that the object is not a collection of its properties. There is in the object—that is, there is in the object something beyond the properties. The whole object is something that is not the properties. The properties are its properties. Once I saw an article by someone named Rabinovitch, who was here in psychology—maybe still is, I don’t know—where he tried to identify the self on our psychoanalytic map. Where is the self located? In my opinion that is a category mistake. The self is the one whose map this is. It is not a point on the map; it is not a parcel on the map. The map is his map. The self is the bearer of the properties and tendencies and all these psychoanalytic or psychological descriptions. And these too are properties, and that is also clear. What is a neutron? Ask the physicist. He’ll tell you: it’s a particle of such-and-such size and such-and-such charge; that is called a neutron. Right? Yes, of course—it’s a set of properties. So that’s called essence? I don’t know what essence is. There are properties and there is the thing itself. The “what it is”—that too is still a property. You can’t say anything about it; anything you say about it will be on the plane of properties. Go ahead, answer me: what is it? What is an electron? What is it? No no—anything. What is probability? Anything. What is an atom? An atom is something larger than an electron; an atom is basic. Protons are like electrons, on the same level, in the same scale. There’s nothing. Anything you say—so what? Mass too is a property. Mass is a charge from a physical point of view; to a physicist, mass is a charge, like electric charge. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. There’s no way—you cannot say anything about the thing that isn’t one of its properties, other than that it exists. In other words, there is something that is the bearer of the properties. And that is exactly why kindness is very hard to grasp. When you try to grasp kindness, you give it form, you try to define it, and in doing so you turn it into judgment. And in the definition you miss the thing when you describe it by means of its properties. There is something you miss. This goes back to what we discussed last time. Let me perhaps give you an example that sharpens this. A philosopher named Leibniz, a German philosopher in the 17th–18th century, yes, the one who discovered the infinitesimal calculus parallel to Newton—yes. So he brought a proof that any two objects that are equal in all their properties are the very same object; they are not two, they are one. He called it the identity of indiscernibles. If there are two objects that are not distinguishable—that is, all their properties are identical—then they are not two objects, they are one. Now that was his claim. And he had a proof. What is the proof? The proof is: let us assume they are two objects, and prove by contradiction that this leads to a contradiction. So let us assume they are two objects, not one. Now object A has the property that it is not B. B does not have that property, so it turns out they have a different property. That contradicts the assumption—our assumption—that the set of their properties is identical, right? Therefore, he says, since the assumption that they are two leads us to a contradiction, they are one. And that is what had to be proved. What do you say about that proof? It has no meaning. He says they are not two. What is the meaning of saying they are two? Leave it. I don’t know what “meaning” means. But he says they are not two, they are one; it is the same object. You are not talking about two objects, you are talking about one. That is his claim. Now I disagree with him. Well, but he has a proof! He says there is a proof that there are not two objects here. There are not, because if there were two objects here, then A would not be B and B would not be A, so they differ in a property, which means they are not two objects. What do you mean? What is the problem in his proof? Something that isn’t here is quantity—or that it is here—that’s a somewhat different issue. No, it’s not the same thing, and that is a property and that too is a property. To say it is gray is to say it is not brown, not green, not pink, not yellow, not all the other colors. It’s the same thing, just phrased differently. His mistake is that he really identifies the object with the set of its properties. He is basically assuming what he has to prove. Now, that isn’t enough; you have to show what is problematic in the argument. So I’ll show you where in the argument he assumes it. When I say—suppose I’m arguing with him—then I say that there can be two different objects. Different—I don’t mean there is a difference between them, but that they are two—and yet they have the same set of properties. What have I said? What I have really said is that A’s not being B is not one of its properties. It simply is not B; that is a statement about it itself, about its very selfhood. It has a set of properties, but being not-B is not a property. It may differ from B in color—that is a property. But the mere fact that it is not B—if you assume that this too is a property, then you have already assumed that there is nothing in the thing beyond the set of its properties. But that is exactly what you are trying to prove to me, whereas I assume otherwise. I think there can be two objects with the same set of properties. What am I basically assuming here? That the thing is not the set of properties; the thing is the bearer of the properties. The one who has this set of properties—who is that thing? That is object A. And object B has the other set of properties, or an identical one, it doesn’t matter, but also that same set of properties. So the moment I say that, what I have basically said is that being A or being not-B is not a property. Properties concern the characteristics of the thing. When I speak about the thing itself, I can speak about its existence and about the fact that it is not B, or that it is not similar to B, but that it is not B. Being not similar to B is a property, fine. The fact that it is not B is not a property; it speaks about the thing itself. Those are statements about the thing itself, and therefore his argument is really an argument that assumes what it is trying to prove. Now think about it: you have two different particles, and let’s say all their properties are identical, including location, including everything. Location is a property, yes? Everything is the same. Does that mean they are one? Of course not. They are two objects occupying the same place, looking the same, with the same color, and they are still two. If I weigh them, they will have double weight, right? Not one weight. If I weigh these two things, there will be double weight here. I won’t know how to say which contributes which part of the weight—I don’t care—but there are two here. And we know in modern physics that they distinguish between bosons and fermions. Bose was an Indian physicist. Between bosons and fermions. Why? What is the difference between them? Fermions—each one has to have different properties; there cannot be two fermions with the same set of properties. And bosons can. Bosons can be a collection of many many particles all of which have exactly the same set of properties. That is called condensation. They all enter some situation in which they have the same state, the same set of physical properties. Right? Except for the fact that it exists, right? Namely existence. But on the other hand, understand: someone who assumes there is no such thing as being—that the object is nothing but the set of its properties—there is a wonderful description of this, I recommend reading it. There is an Argentine writer named Borges. Jorge Luis Borges, yes? A genius. Dead, a genius of a writer, unbelievable. He has a story called “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” about some planet—it doesn’t matter—he goes wild, he’s a savage in his stories. He describes there a planet of people, let’s call them idealists, who do not really believe in the existence of objects; everything is really in the way I perceive the world. The world itself does not really exist. And among other things—it’s a marvelous story, not a great feat, but the philosophical description is simply perfect. One of the things he describes there is that on that planet, nouns are created however you want. And you can take, for example, the scream of a bird in space together with the color of the sun at eight in the morning on such-and-such a date, and for you that is an object. The collection of those two properties is an object, because an object is nothing but a set of properties. There need not be something that bears the properties. So explain to me why precisely that set of properties is an object and not some random collection—pick properties from different places and make that too into an object. Somehow it seems to us, say, that a bird is an object. Why? It has a set of properties: it has a beak, a certain length, a certain color, it flies at a certain speed, it is there. Whatever—a set of such properties. And for us that is the bird. Now why do we define that set of properties as an object? Because it is obvious to us that there is something that bears those properties, one thing. But if you do not believe that there is someone who bears the properties, and the set of properties itself is the object, then you can create any set you like. Take all the properties; two to the power of the number of properties is the number of objects, right? All the subsets of the properties. So you can do whatever you want. Do you understand how absurd this is? In other words, this view according to which the thing is its set of properties and nothing more—that is the only thing there is there—is an absurd view. True, you can’t prove by observation that it isn’t so, because the object itself is not an object of observation; in observation you discover properties. That is why physicists deal only with properties. But there is the thing itself, and I think that is exactly the expression of trying to grasp the world only through judgment, without kindness. You are basically saying: okay, I have properties, I have laws of physics, that is reality. Not that physics describes reality—physics is reality. No, that’s absurd, to say that physics is reality. Physics is a description of certain properties of reality. To say that physics is reality is to ignore the existence of the thing and focus only on the form, or to ignore kindness and focus only on judgment. To ignore the thing itself and focus only on the way it appears to our eyes. Okay, what—not that this is one of the accepted interpretations of Kant, that you cannot grasp the thing itself but only the thing as it appears to our eyes—but that is a mistake. Of course you can grasp the thing itself. To grasp the thing itself means to understand what its properties are. That is what it means to grasp the thing itself. There is no such thing as grasping the thing itself—not that it is impossible, there is no such thing. Because to grasp the thing itself, what you mean by that is really to tell me what the properties of the thing itself are—that is what “grasping” means. But there are no properties of the thing itself; the properties are the phenomena. To grasp the noumenon is to understand what its phenomena are. That is what it means to grasp it. There is no limitation here; it is not inability to grasp—that is what is called grasping. To grasp a thing—just a second—to grasp a thing means basically to take it and place it within my conceptual system. That is what it means to grasp it. Now when I place it into my conceptual system, I am basically describing it through characteristics, properties drawn from my world, the way I perceive. For example, someone who has no visual consciousness, no sight of electromagnetic fields, who has no eyes, is blind—or whatever, a creature created without eyes—in his world there will be no colors, no light, nothing. That is not because there are no electromagnetic fields in the world; it is because he does not perceive them. Okay? Therefore, to grasp something is always to place it into my conceptual system. That is what it means to grasp. Now to place something into my conceptual system, in other words, is to produce its phenomenon. To grasp the noumenon, to grasp the thing in itself, is to produce the phenomenon. So it is not true that one cannot grasp the noumenon. One can. That is how one grasps it. In other words, one produces a phenomenon. And that is called grasping the thing. And one can definitely grasp the thing itself. Therefore I say: when we look at the thing and see a set of properties, we do not see the thing itself, because seeing is always seeing properties—how tall it is, what color it is, what shape it is, and so on. That is all that sight contains: properties of the thing. But it is obvious to us in perception that these properties are the properties of something. And thus we have grasped the thing itself. That is what it means to grasp the thing itself. Yes, yes, exactly like that. No—He is the bearer of the sefirot; that is our way of grasping Him. Now what does “beyond” mean? A table too is beyond its properties. A table too is beyond its properties. So to grasp a table you also cannot, in the same way that you cannot grasp the Holy One, blessed be He. There is no difference at all. You can grasp only the thing as it appears to your eyes. The point is that the Holy One, blessed be He, also does not appear to your eyes through properties. He has actions perhaps, some consequences that appear to your eyes. You do not grasp His color, or shape, whether He is square or triangular. So in that sense there are no direct properties of the Holy One, blessed be He, that we do not grasp. But on the principled level, the inability to grasp the thing itself is not a feature unique to the Holy One, blessed be He. Every object is like that. To grasp is always to grasp the properties. I’m bringing this in order to explain that the distinction between kindness and judgment is found not only on the logical plane of rules versus what lies beyond the rules, or what the rules represent, as we discussed last time, but also on the ontic plane, the plane of reality, of metaphysics. Judgment is the characteristics of the thing, and kindness is the thing itself. Therefore to create the thing, or the primordial matter in Plato’s language, to create the primordial matter—that is creation, that is ex nihilo, that is kindness—and then comes judgment, which gives it form. That is from something existing. And that property of from something existing is what is called judgment. That is why, for example, Abraham our forefather is the father of the attribute of kindness. Why? Abraham our forefather began the whole process ex nihilo. Isaac is gevurah, because Isaac already comes from Abraham. Isaac did not begin the process; Isaac continues it. Every beginning is always an ex nihilo beginning, and therefore Abraham is perceived as the attribute of kindness; that is Abraham’s attribute. And not in the sense that he did good—that is also true, with the angels and what I spoke about last time—but more than that, much more than that. Abraham is kindness by his very definition, in this definition, because he began the process. Therefore, for example, every person who chooses—the act of choosing is the one point at which a person truly creates something by himself, truly creates something by himself. All the rest, when we do not choose, we are being acted upon; that is from something existing, something that happens as a result of our doing something else. Therefore the whole world, apart from human beings, is a world entirely conducted according to rules, according to judgment. A world of judgment. And the human being is the only creature in the world who has a point that succeeds in generating ex nihilo—kindness. And that is creation. Creation is really choice—from something I decide upon, not by force of previous things that dictated it. There is no rule by whose force I acted. I decide, and therefore I do; my will is creation ex nihilo, really creation, ex nihilo. So in that sense all these chains—kindness, gevurah, tiferet—it is always a beginning ex nihilo, then giving form to the created thing, and the product is basically the third aspect. This is wisdom, understanding, knowledge. Wisdom is the axioms that come ex nihilo; understanding is to derive from them from something existing; and knowledge is the whole that is created from wisdom plus understanding. The same with kindness, gevurah, and tiferet; netzach, hod, and yesod. All of these vessels are basically built in the same way. It starts with kindness, then it is given form—that is judgment—and the final product is tiferet, the union of kindness and judgment. A great many things come out of tiferet; there are subdivisions, but as I said, I’m not dealing with the subdivisions, only with the structure, the framework. And this arrangement is—among other things—me. So whoever thinks otherwise, I disagree. It is not a matter of definition; it is a matter of a claim. That claim is wrong. This is not about defining. Whoever wants to argue that there is no choice, I disagree with him. Let him give his lecture; I’ll give mine. I claim I could have chosen otherwise. Well, obviously I assume there is choice. I want to show a bit the meaning of these things. Basically, every action we do that is an action according to judgment creates nothing ex nihilo; it is simply from something existing. I borrowed, and according to the law I am obligated to repay. Right? So basically the loan generated the repayment. I could fail to repay—I have choice—but on the principled level, on the legal plane, let’s call it that, there is something that generated the repayment. In contrast, when I perform an act of kindness for someone, give him charity, I owe him nothing—there is nothing prior that generated or caused my action. Therefore every act of human choice is basically the beginning of some chain, and from there on the whole business continues by means of judgment. Kindness begins a chain and judgment continues it. So if the creation of the world was the beginning of something that the Holy One, blessed be He, created ex nihilo, from there on the whole business begins according to judgment. But within history all kinds of sub-chains are formed: every act of our choice creates some additional branch of the world, which then continues afterward in a process of judgment and develops further. All the rest of the world proceeds as cause and effect by force of the Big Bang, and basically everything began there and was created there; the rest is just the transition from potential to actual. I won’t get there here—that’s true. In any case, repentance is basically some kind of such a choice ex nihilo. I’ll talk about that in the second series, I’ll talk about it in the second series. Yes, it’s Rabbi Eliezer, exactly Rabbi Eliezer. In any case I want to show an example from a very beautiful passage by Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. What happened to this guy? He and I don’t get along. Rosh Hashanah, yes. Third essay, Pachad Yitzchak. Yes, here, yes, I can send it. No, here I don’t send a summary. No, but really—good that you reminded me—I’ll share it here on Zoom, so in the recording it will be organized. Okay, let’s start reading and hope he will have mercy on us at some point. The attribute of kindness, in any event. Whoever had the privilege to serve true Torah scholars knows how severe their insistence was regarding gratitude. A person in whom they sensed an ungrateful nature was almost considered by them to be altogether deficient. The Sages were very strict about gratitude. When we come to look for the roots of this matter of gratitude, the first perception is that the attribute of gratitude is a detail within the general trait of “one who hates gifts shall live.” “One who hates gifts shall live,” and by repaying one good turn with another good turn, the gratuitous quality of the first gift is diminished. And the ungrateful person shows that he is comfortable with bread of shame, bread of kindness. What is he basically saying? He is claiming that in the initial perception, when I show gratitude to someone for something kind he did for me, then the gift he gave me is no longer a free gift. Because I gave him something back in return for that gift. There is some idea of not leaving that gift as a free gift. Okay, because that is “one who hates gifts.” I show that I hate gifts. But still, says Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, this does not exhaust the content of the attribute of gratitude. That is not the whole story, this “one who hates gifts.” And we have a striking example that the attribute of gratitude has roots in another realm in addition to its roots in the realm of hatred of gifts. And here is the example. Two people ask for help, and a third person does not have the means to help them both. One of those in need has precedence according to the laws at the end of tractate Horayot. The Talmud in tractate Horayot brings laws of precedence, yes, exactly. But toward the second one, that third person owes gratitude. Which of them takes precedence? Two people need help, two poor people ask me for charity. One takes precedence over the other—he’s a priest, fine—but the second did me a kindness, so I owe him gratitude. Who comes first? Let’s see. So he says like this: “The lost object of one’s father and the lost object of one’s rabbi”—the Talmud says the lost object of one’s rabbi takes precedence. And it is ruled in the Shulchan Arukh: in what case is this said? When the father is not paying wages to the rabbi who teaches his son. But if he is paying wages, the father’s lost object takes precedence. So notice what comes out. And this is obvious, he explains, because with respect to honor alone, the honor of the rabbi is greater than the honor of the father, for he brings him to life in the World to Come, as the Talmud says—even in a case where the father pays wages. The honor you owe the rabbi remains; the rabbi precedes the father. In terms of the laws of precedence, the rabbi comes before the father. But regarding the kindness of returning a lost object, the father comes first when he pays the wages. And what does that depend on—the payment of wages? Why should the fact that the father pays the rabbi change the order of precedence regarding the return of a lost object? Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says that from this it must follow that in “for his rabbi brings him to life in the World to Come,” both are present: the obligation of honor toward the rabbi and the obligation of gratitude toward the rabbi. Both the obligation of honor toward the rabbi because he is a Torah scholar, and because he brings me to life in the World to Come—gratitude. And through the father’s payment, when the father pays wages to the rabbi, the obligation of gratitude toward the rabbi is removed. The honor, of course, remains toward the rabbi, but gratitude I no longer owe him—he is doing it for money, the father is paying. The gratitude, of course, passes to the father. Now I have gratitude toward the father and honor toward the rabbi. So which one wins? And since we see that because gratitude reaches the father, his lost object takes precedence over that of the rabbi, it follows that the obligation of gratitude overrides the order of precedence in the commandment of acts of kindness. Returning a lost object is an act of kindness. There is precedence for the rabbi over the father, but I owe gratitude to the father, and therefore I am obligated to return the father’s lost object before the rabbi’s. So that means gratitude takes precedence over the precedence set by the law of acts of kindness, by the end of Horayot. And there is no explanation for this except to say that gratitude is literally an enslavement of kindness—namely, that receiving a kindness binds the recipient to repay with an act of kindness in return. Only from that perspective can it be so, because an enslavement of kindness comes before a commandment of kindness. And it is clear that the general trait of “one who hates gifts” is not enough to raise gratitude to the force of an enslavement of kindness. What does he mean to say? Let’s put it this way: when the father pays the rabbi, I owe honor to the rabbi, meaning the laws of precedence—I should return the rabbi’s lost object first. But if the father pays the rabbi, then the gratitude belongs to the father, even though the honor still belongs to the rabbi. Now the question is this: if gratitude is only because “one who hates gifts shall live,” then that is just my issue. I owe him nothing; I do not owe him gratitude, right? There is a value in showing him gratitude so that I will not be in the category of one who loves gifts—“one who hates gifts shall live.” But that cannot change the order of precedence. The rabbi owes nothing to my father such that he should give up the return of the lost object that I owe him. He deserves the lost object first. The fact that I need to work on my character traits—what does that have to do with the rabbi? He has the right to receive the returned object first. We are forced to conclude that the obligation of gratitude I owe my father is something my father deserves from me. He has a right against me. It is not merely my private duty to work on my character. My father has some right due from me, and that overrides the right the rabbi has over me, and it changes the order of precedence for returning a lost object. What is he basically saying? That the obligation of gratitude is not a duty of self-improvement. I owe him something. It is an obligation. He can, so to speak, claim it from me—not really claim it in court, but he has some kind of right that I owe him—and therefore it can override the rights the rabbi has over me and change the order of precedence. If it were only my duty to improve my character—suppose someone is owed money from me, a creditor, fine? I owe him money, and another I do not owe money, but for self-improvement I want to pay that second one the money afterward. You can do that—work on your character, but not at my expense. I’m owed money by you. Your self-improvement is your problem. But if now someone else comes along who is also my creditor, who is owed money from me, then we have to understand whose debt comes first. There are rules of precedence there. So if you say it changes the order of precedence, that means gratitude is not my self-improvement—it is some obligation I have toward the father in this case, or toward whoever did me a kindness. It is an obligation; he has a right against me; I owe him something; and therefore it can intervene and change the order of precedence. What does this really mean? There is a book by Marcel Mauss, Essay on the Gift, published by Resling. Sometimes things are published there that actually make sense. This is an essay by a French philosopher from the late 19th, early 20th century, about the gift. And there he shows, in different cultures in various places, that a gift is almost like a loan. It creates some kind of obligation in the other person to return something to me, like all the calculations we always make—how much he gave me at the wedding, so I’ll give him the same amount at his wedding in return. He claims that this is not merely petty accounting; there is something real here. There is something real here. When you did me a kindness, you created in me some kind of obligation, or you gained some right against me to receive something from me. And this is not—just a second—it is not legal. It is not legal in the sense that I borrowed and therefore I owe you money. Obviously not. There is something here between kindness and judgment, this gratitude. Now I want to suggest what this really means. What this really means is that the whole significance of kindness is that kindness now creates a new chain. Right? Ex nihilo. In contrast to all other actions, which are just a pawn on the board, a marionette. Okay? What? No no, that’s not yet part of the account. I haven’t yet presented the conception; afterward we’ll see whether it’s part of it. First I’ll say it. So the claim is that when someone does an act of kindness, that is supposed to begin a chain. Right? It is the creation of ex nihilo. And from where does it get its meaning? From the fact that the chain continues. You know the movie Pay It Forward? There’s also a book like that. It’s exactly this. In other words, you did an act of kindness for someone, and you create in him an obligation—not necessarily to repay you, maybe to pass it on. But the whole essence—not the whole essence, but the significance—of your act of kindness becomes fully formed when it also continues onward. Because then you truly created a new chain, you created a world. If you did some action and it ended there, then it was and died. You created nothing. In a certain sense, for that action to have meaning, the person who received the kindness must continue it onward. Now sometimes that is gratitude toward the giver, and sometimes it is passing it on to someone else. Parents do kindness for their child; basically he is supposed to continue that kindness to his own child, and so on—not only to repay the parents. There is something here: the concept of gratitude is an intermediate concept between kindness and judgment. The original kindness was kindness—I simply gave kindness, did kindness for someone who needed it. From there on, some kind of what he calls an enslavement of kindness is created. Enslavement is a concept from the conceptual world of judgment. I lent you money, and therefore there is an obligation; I must repay you, satisfy the loan. He says no—kindness creates some kind of obligation. You need to continue this idea, and that is really what gives significance to the initial act of kindness. Therefore kindness is really the creation of a chain, and gratitude is the continuation of that chain. Actions of judgment are actions that create nothing. One simply depends on the other; yes, it is deterministic conduct. Therefore I think the concept of gratitude stands in the middle between kindness and judgment. It is some dimension of judgment, so that kindness may have the significance of kindness. In order for kindness to have meaning, you have to insert into it some meaning of judgment. In fact, Rashi at the beginning of the Torah—there is a source here, yes? At the beginning, on “In the beginning God created,” Rashi says there: “It says ‘God created’ and not ‘the Lord created.’ ‘God’ refers to the attribute of judgment, ‘the Lord’ to the attribute of mercy, because at first it arose in thought to create it with the attribute of judgment. Therefore: ‘In the beginning God created.’ He saw that the world could not endure, so He gave precedence to the attribute of mercy and joined it to the attribute of judgment, and that is the meaning of what is written: ‘On the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.’” That is chapter 2. In chapter 2 it is “the Lord God”; in chapter 1 it is “God.” Why? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, thought to create with the attribute of judgment, saw that the world could not endure with the attribute of judgment, and joined the attribute of kindness with it. And that is basically the world of action—creation plus formation, or kindness plus gevurah, that is the… yes, yes. Mercy and kindness, yes, it’s the same thing. So sometimes mercy is already the combination of kindness and judgment, depending on the context. In any case, what is the meaning of this? Kindness has no meaning unless there is also mixed into it a dimension of judgment, as we saw before with gratitude. Judgment by itself cannot stand at all. Judgment by itself is like identifying the thing with its characteristics, or identifying a system with the system of rules that describes it, reality with physics, with the laws of physics. That identification has no—it cannot stand. If there is not something that bears the properties, then that collection of properties is nothing. It is obvious that there must be some dimension of kindness within judgment, and some dimension of judgment within kindness, for the whole thing to exist. Pure kindness and pure judgment have no existence whatsoever. Because it disappears. If it does not create in its wake some judgment that continues it, it disappears. If there is—think about an object… right, it creates, and then what? Now what? It was created, and then what? And it disappears. That’s it—created and died. Only if you continue it onward by means of judgment, one thing from another, does it have some kind of existence. Just as things that are merely a collection of properties have no existence if there is nothing that bears the properties. This feeling that kindness alone can stand, or that judgment alone can stand, is two mistakes. Neither can stand on its own. Even though they are still two different things and it is important to distinguish between kindness and judgment. But kindness alone or judgment alone cannot stand. The Holy One, blessed be He, said that it does not work with judgment, so He changed it with kindness. No—He joined kindness with mercy; He joined them. Why? Because neither one alone can stand. Okay? It has to be the combination. I’ll perhaps give a somewhat more worldly example. There is an argument about the proper social policy: communism versus capitalism. That argument basically boils down to the question whether you want justice or charity. That is often how people formulate it. Yes—communism means justice, or socialism means justice, while capitalism speaks about charity. You have to understand that the concept of charity inherently belongs to the capitalist world, contrary to what some people may think. Why? What is communism—or socialism? Communism is the pure expression of socialism. What is communism? Communism means dividing the means of production equally—according to need, or equally, by some criterion of equality. Okay? It has nothing to do with how much you produced, how talented you are, what you deserve—irrelevant. The question is simply that we compel a person to divide all his resources equally. That is basically an attempt to produce a world without kindness, in which everything is judgment. The judgment will take care of charity; there is no charity in the voluntary sense. You do not give charity to anyone, because no one needs charity. He will simply receive it by law. We all equally own everything produced here by definition. Capitalism says: what I produced belongs to me and what you produced belongs to you, but if you are in distress I will give you charity voluntarily. And the socialists or communists—again, communism is easier for me to discuss, because there it is pure—but socialism basically moves in that direction. Communism basically wants to say: I do not want charity, I am not willing to receive charity, I do not want to depend on your good heart. The law should make sure that everyone is equal. Not allow someone to do charity of his own accord. Therefore a world of communism is a world of pure judgment, without kindness; there is no kindness in the communist world. It is pure judgment; everything works by rules. The rules will take care of the weak, the rules will take care of everything, and there is no place at all for an expression of a human act of kindness. Again, by kindness I mean in the ordinary sense of kindness. There is no need for kindness; I don’t need your kindness. What? Everything is law, yes—we divide the means equally. That’s it. No more needy and less needy. Of course this is all hypothetical; such a thing can’t really exist and never did. But the model as such is a model of pure judgment. That cannot stand. It cannot stand; that’s why it collapsed. It cannot stand. It didn’t stand even when it stood. Never mind—but in the end it collapsed because it cannot be. On the other hand, what is called predatory capitalism. Among some people there is no such concept as capitalism; capitalism always comes with an adjective—predatory capitalism. There is either predatory capitalism or socialism; there is no capitalism without “predatory.” Now what is really called predatory capitalism is indeed pure capitalism, just as there is predatory socialism, which is communism. Fine? Pure capitalism, which says man devours his fellow man—and again, and there is charity! But nothing is done by law. Everything is left to the person’s good will. Exactly—there is no regulation of kindness at all. That is predatory capitalism, and that does not mean there is no kindness there. There is kindness there in the sense that… but I do not regulate it, I impose no judgment in that context. In other words, the law does not intervene in this matter. Whoever wants to give may give; however much he wants to give, let him give. That too cannot stand. It cannot stand. Predatory capitalism cannot stand; people will die there. It cannot happen. Not to mention monopolies and all sorts of things of that sort. Look—even the biggest capitalists say monopolies must be restrained. Even though monopoly is ostensibly the summit of capitalism—you succeeded, excellent, so everything is yours; what’s the problem? You understand that pure capitalism cannot stand. Just as pure judgment cannot stand, pure kindness cannot stand either. The complete absence of judgment—that is capitalism. The complete absence of judgment means without laws. Economic Darwinism. Okay? No laws. Again, not murder. Everyone according to his talents will do what he can, outdo the other, it doesn’t matter, economically, without violence and without anything else—that was supposed to be pure capitalism. There’s your predatory version. It cannot work. That is the absolute absence of judgment; that is only kindness. Communism is pure judgment. Neither can stand. Therefore today the whole world basically understands that we are somewhere in the middle between these two models, and the whole question is which social democracy you want, what the right dosage is between pure capitalism and pure communism. But everyone understands that it has to be somewhere in the middle, and the debate is about the mixture, the right mixture. So now anyone one millimeter to my right is a predatory capitalist, and anyone one millimeter to my left is a communist. But that’s not true. The debate is about the mixture, and there is room to argue about the proper dosage of what is called social democracy. Yes, those are the models in the middle. And again it’s the same issue. Whoever wants to work without rules—it won’t work. Whoever wants to work only with rules and never deviate from the rules—also not. Look, I once wrote an amusing column on my site about attempts to solve problems with rules. It never works. Every law that tried to solve problems failed. Take the Scribes Law, the bank commission law—everything failed. No, laws cannot solve problems. Why? Because the market is always smarter than the legislator. Always smarter than the legislator. Yes, the classic example I gave in that context: you know from game theory how to divide a cake equally between two siblings, two children? One cuts and the other chooses first. Why? Because you know the second will choose first, so you will divide it exactly equally. If you divide it so one part is a little bigger than the other, the second will choose it, right? So that will lead to a perfectly equal division. You solved the problem of equal division. Is that the right way to educate children? It is a grave mistake to educate children that way. You will produce equal divisions with super-egoistic people. Why do I care whether the division is equal or not? My goal is that the child not be egoistic. What you are doing in that division is using the child’s egoism to arrive at the result of equal division. But equal division is not a value in itself. If he eats one millimeter more, so what happened? What matters to me is the child’s character. When you try to achieve this that way, you are trying to do a trick, to reach a result by means of rules, and by definition you fail. You won’t succeed. There is no solution to real problems by means of rules. Yes, the change in the law for direct election of the prime minister—again, pure judgment. They tried—they really thought it was almost messianic. They were convinced it would solve all the problems of the universe. It failed within a month. Within a month it failed. And my in-law told me about his father in England, in London, where the rule there is that stores are not opened on Sunday. Only food stores may open on Sunday; that’s their Sabbath, yes? What? I don’t know, that was once the case; I don’t know what happens today. So that was what there was then. What did he do? He had a furniture store. So he opened the store and said: anyone who buys a kilo of tomatoes will receive a couch for 2,000 shekels. In other words, with laws you won’t succeed in doing anything. He showed me there—he gave me an amazing link—about a factory in Germany which, the moment that law about light bulbs went into effect, the one banning incandescent bulbs and requiring energy-saving bulbs instead, right? Incandescent bulbs are forbidden because they waste energy, right? A lot of the energy goes not to light but to heat. They waste a great deal of energy. So someone came along and established a factory for highly efficient heaters, and he sold the bulbs, saying: this is a heater. True, part of the energy also goes to light, but fine, what can I do, I didn’t find a more efficient heater than this. He sells heaters. And he sells it—that is a real site. I can give you the link if it still exists; I have the link. It’s written there in my column. It’s the same trick. In other words, when you try to solve a real problem by changing the rules, you will fail. There is no chance. You will not solve a problem. Now that does not mean that rules are unnecessary. It means it is not wise to count on the rules. No—you need education, you need some kind of identification of people with the idea; without that it won’t work. The rules will always be bypassed. The market or the ordinary person is always smarter than the legislator and the rules and everything—always. He will always find the loophole. Only if you truly succeed in convincing people also on the level of ideas, and that persuasion accompanies the legislative process, do you have some chance of success. No legal changes—all the legal revolutions they’re making now are all nonsense, of course. It really makes no difference what they do. What will be is what was. Exactly the same thing. It won’t change anything. I say this both against the opponents and against the supporters. In other words, they are fighting over nonsense. It won’t change anything. Even if they pass all the laws they want, it won’t change anything. They’ll find one trick or another, just as they found tricks until now, and until now things worked despite the legislation. They’ll find it, and rightly so too. That’s how it should be, because these laws are dreadful. Never mind—that is my personal opinion. But it will change nothing. This illusion, thinking that you can solve a problem by legislative change, by changing the rules, and that solves the whole problem—that’s nonsense. There is no such thing. No life problem is solved by changing rules. That does not mean rules are meaningless. Again, don’t take me too far. There is meaning—you need to preserve the rules, and together with that… one of the problems in the State of Israel, why nothing works here—nothing works here because we are a very non-traditional country. In the United States and Britain these are very traditional countries, very traditional cultures. When Obama came to power, one of the central aspects of his agenda was Obamacare, yes, the health law, the national health law. Fine? Now… he had a majority—I remember reading this—he had a majority in the Senate of fifty-two out of one hundred. But the practice says that very fundamental laws require sixty. Now that is written nowhere; according to the law he could have passed it with fifty-two. He did not pass Obamacare even though he had a majority of fifty-two. I’d like to see something like that happen in the State of Israel. Never in life. If the rules allow it, it will happen immediately. Even if the rules do not allow it, it will happen. There is something in that tradition that says there are things that are matters of practice. Not because the rules do or do not say so; there are things that are practice. So in Britain it is like that, in the United States it is like that, and many times it is like that. In Israel it is not like that. There is no such thing as practice here, only law. And therefore nothing works. Because people think the law will solve the problem, and on the other side of the coin people say, fine, so I stick to the law. Whatever the law says, I acted according to the law, what’s the problem? But it doesn’t work. You can act within the law and be a scoundrel with the permission of the Torah. Why are there concepts like that—“a scoundrel with the permission of the Torah”? I spoke about this in the previous lesson, about going beyond the line of the law and so on. Because the law cannot cover everything; Jewish law too cannot cover everything. And if we stick to halakhic rules, we will be complete villains with the permission of the Torah. There is something in judgment that is a problematic approximation. In other words, if you cling to judgment and take it as the thing itself, if you take reality as metaphysics, then there is no God. In other words, there is no reality—not only no God. Only the laws of physics exist. If you grasp law only through what is legislated and not the spirit of the law, not the surrounding norms, it cannot work. Pure judgment cannot work. But again, the opposite illusion is no less dangerous. So let’s throw out judgment—that is anarchism. Right? Let’s throw out judgment. I am an anarchist by nature, by temperament. But it is clear to me that anarchism cannot work. It cannot work. You cannot live without rules. You need rules, and you need to understand that the rules are only the skeleton, but around them there are many norms—what yes and what no—beyond the formal definition of the rules. This raises many disputes and much bitterness, and anyone who wants to be wicked always clings to the law. The law is the central tool of the wicked. Those who cling to the law and say, we’re fine, the law allows this. The same in Torah: “a scoundrel with the permission of the Torah,” those who acted only according to the strict line of the law, as the Talmud says—that is why Jerusalem was destroyed. Because one who clings to the law is generally characterized by wickedness. But one who despises the law is also wicked. There is a very delicate play here between kindness and judgment, and neither of them alone—yes, right—and neither of them can really work. Think about Yael wife of Heber the Kenite, or Lot’s daughters, which we discussed in the previous lesson. If Lot’s daughters had acted according to the law, today we would not be sitting here. Right? Because they would not have had relations with their father. Incest—one must be killed rather than transgress. According to Jewish law there is no permission for this at all. But humanity would have become extinct if people had gone according to the law. In other words, there is something—although we are very accustomed to magnifying or glorifying obedience to the law, in Jewish law and in law and everywhere—which is perfectly fine, these things are important, but one has to be very careful not to overdo it. When I spoke with the class in Yeruham, when I taught in Yeruham, then in the second cohort several guys went out to a post-Sinai trip, and they passed through Marami, and we spoke with them before the trip. I told them: look, I would not go to war with a soldier whom I know will obey every order. That is a bad soldier. I want a soldier who has boundaries and will refuse beyond that boundary. Such a soldier will produce a better commander and a better army, and of course he is a better soldier. Because a soldier who obeys every order—and again, I don’t care right now in which direction, left or right, each according to his outlook—but a soldier who obeys every order is a recipe for Nazism. A soldier who obeys every order does not force his commander to think twice before giving the order. Because he knows the soldier will carry out everything, so I don’t need to think about it, everything is fine. But if I know there are boundaries my soldiers will not cross, I think ten times before I give an order, and I examine whether it really makes sense, whether it is right. Now this is very dangerous—it sounds anarchistic, like it will dismantle the army. People always tell us, yes, refusal of orders dismantles the army. Absolute obedience also dismantles the army. Maybe dismantles it even more. Okay, we’ll stop here; we’ll continue. Okay? One has to be very careful—it is a delicate boundary. You refuse only where it is really very acute for you; you have to be honest with yourself. In a place that is very acute, you refuse. But you do refuse; that option is always in the background, always. And when a commander or chief of staff or prime minister or even a field commander, a platoon commander, knows that his soldiers have certain boundaries, he will think very carefully about the orders he gives. It is perfectly fine that he should weigh his orders. Very good. And even if there is a minority—and I return again to current events—even if there is a minority that opposes your order or your law or whatever rule you want to impose, if you see that it is in their blood and soul, think twice whether you want to do it. Even if it is a minority, but that is your right. There is something here—you need to weigh very carefully the loss against the gain. It does not work formally: yes, we are the majority, sixty-four mandates, therefore it is our right and we will do everything. No. There are things that are not your right. Even though the law says yes, and all of that is true, from the standpoint of dry law perhaps it is correct. No. There are things you need to think twice about. And not because you are not right. When there is a sufficiently large and important public that is very, very, very opposed, from the depths of its soul—not doing it casually. Opposed. You can argue also about why they are opposed; certainly there is a lot of demagoguery there, and a lot of incitement and politicization and agendas. All true. But in the end you cannot ignore the intensity of the opposition; you have to take it into account. And you need to take it into account. Now I’m not saying what my opinion is or what should be done; I’m only bringing this as an example of the problematic nature of clinging to the law. And in the State of Israel this is a doubly intensified problem. In the State of Israel, because there is no basic agreement on norms, and we have no tradition—we are a young country, we have no tradition, and we are also Jews. Jews are a non-traditional people. So they cling to nothing that is not according to the law, and that too is part of our tradition: our tradition is to be non-traditional. We cling to the law, and if it can be bypassed one way, we’ll bypass it that way. Milton Friedman once said, yes, the greatest of capitalists after Adam Smith, that what saves the State of Israel is two thousand years of exile. In the State of Israel, the government thinks it will manage everything from above, and if it had succeeded, today we would be in a jungle. What saves the State of Israel is that for two thousand years we have been practicing bypassing quotas and governments and everything they try to dictate to us. And that is what saves the State of Israel. There is a certain truth in that; there are also problematic aspects, never mind. I’m just bringing here this side, the problematic side of conduct according to rules, according to judgment. Now the other side of the coin is that when we look the other way, when we look at reality as it is, the order is reversed. In coming-into-being, kindness comes first: first the thing is created, and then it is given form. First you create a state and then determine the rules by which it will operate. In Israel this is certainly so. In some countries it was not so; perhaps it seems obvious. But in Israel it is so. And I think there is logic to that. First produce the thing and then try to give it form, and not determine in advance what its form should be, because that will fail. But when I look after the thing already exists… in nature, first of all the thing was created, and then laws were legislated, yes, the Holy One, blessed be He, legislated the laws of nature. When we look at nature today, it works the other way around. We begin with the laws, and then gradually understand that there is also something beyond the laws. That is one of the reasons why today, when science is developed, there is greater tendency among people not to believe in God—because they remain on the plane of laws and for them that is a sufficient explanation. There are laws and everything is fine—what is missing? I have a full explanation for everything going on here. And they do not notice that laws are always laws of something, or that someone legislated those laws. The laws are not standing on their own. Now when we look, for example, at the Talmud, or Jewish law. When Jewish law is formed, it was not formed through laws, as here—I talked about this in the previous lesson. Jewish law was formed in some natural way, and gradually one can infer rules that describe for us how this business works. As with language—it is formed naturally, and then someone comes and tries to infer rules that describe how people speak. In Jewish law too it is like this. But after Jewish law already exists and has been conceptualized and there are laws and rules, when I now look at Jewish law, it works the other way around. I begin to decipher Jewish law or learn Jewish law through the rules, and gradually I begin to understand that there is a bit beyond that; I develop a sense of smell, I understand that there are places where one needs to deviate a little, interpret the law differently. It starts from the rules, like think of someone learning in ulpan—I spoke about this in the year. Someone learning the language in ulpan starts with the rules. Someone who speaks the language from home has never heard of the rules at all; he speaks the language before he has heard the first rule. The difference is whether you are creating the language or dealing with the language once it is already an existing body, an existing corpus. When the thing exists, you begin with judgment, because that is the initial way to understand the thing, and slowly you understand that that is not the thing itself, but there is something beyond it. Therefore formation happens one way, but deciphering happens in the opposite way. When I study analysis, I derive the concepts from the laws. Right? There are the laws, and I try to understand why the laws are this way and not another; I raise a concept, invent a definition. How were the laws created? The opposite. The Sages wanted—there was some concept for them—and by force of that they determined that this is the law. In other words, formation often takes place in the opposite direction from the direction in which I look at the thing that was formed. When I look at a formed thing, I see its external face, which is the rules, and through them I try to understand what lies within the rules. When it was formed, it worked the other way around. First the thing, and the rules are things created on the basis of the thing itself, the thing that was created. Therefore the process is reversed. Therefore when we study Torah, it is no wonder that we cling to rules. It is true—you need to study things through rules. But after you have learned the rules, you must not cling to them too much. Exactly. But you do need to work through the rules. You can’t—kindness alone without judgment, you won’t be able to learn anything. You’ll just learn a collection of cases. What will you do with a collection of cases? You need to generalize from them into rules, try to define. Each time the rule runs into another problem and you understand that the rule is not quite precise, and you develop that sense of smell—when yes, and to what extent, and when not. But that comes after you deal with the system as though it were a system of judgment, of rules. Its formation is the opposite. Its formation is the opposite. That is why the number of rules, by the way, constantly increases through the generations. The number of rules constantly grows. In the Mishnah you will barely find rules. In the Talmud there are a bit more. In the medieval authorities and later authorities, in books of rules there are already thousands of rules. The rules keep being generated over time. Why? Because these are further and further conceptualizations of material that was originally primordial. It was formless, and the rules give it form. That is judgment. Okay. But now, once the rules have already been conceptualized, when I study Jewish law I am already studying the rules. The mistake many people make is that they think the rules are Jewish law. Not true. Learn it through the rules, but try through that to use the ladder and then throw it away. In other words, afterward understand what really ought to be done. The same with language. You learn language through rules, yes, the rules of the language, but after you have learned it, go back and try to speak naturally. The rules are only the ladder by which you climb. There is a cryptic passage from the Hatam Sofer. He says this, speaking about Lag BaOmer. He says: “Indeed I know, for I have heard that now, when generations are fit as red copper, from afar they come and seek the Lord in the holy city of Safed on the day of Lag BaOmer at the celebration of Rashbi, of blessed memory.” This is in Yoreh De’ah, in his responsa, Yoreh De’ah section 233. “And although all their intention is for the sake of Heaven, their reward is surely great. But for that very reason I would be among those who separate themselves, like Ben Dortei, so that I not need to sit there and change their custom before them, and that I not wish to join with them in this.” A beautiful custom, they deserve reward for Lag BaOmer, but I don’t want to be inside that story, said the Hatam Sofer. He is basically hinting here that this is why he did not go up to the Land of Israel—so as not to have to celebrate Lag BaOmer in Safed together with everyone. A bit strange, but that is what he claims. “For the Pri Hadash in Orach Chayim 496, in the booklet on forbidden customs, letter 14, already greatly argued about places that make a holiday on a day when a miracle happened to them, for in my humble opinion we say from this a kal va-chomer: if from slavery to freedom we say song, then from death to life all the more so.” After all, we know there are all kinds of local Purims—Purim of Casablanca, Purim of Frankfurt, yes? Various places where a miracle happened and they establish that day as a holiday for generations. There are holidays of certain communities, usually called Purim because the days of Purim were in memory of the miracle, and so they establish it. Where does this come from? The Tosafists asked: how can one do such a thing? So he says it comes from a kal va-chomer. If from slavery to freedom we say song, then from death to life all the more so. That is from the Talmud in Megillah, on why we say Hallel on Purim. It is a kal va-chomer: on Passover, when we went from slavery to freedom, we say Hallel; then on Purim, when we went from death to life, all the more so. Therefore certainly one says Hallel. By the way, this kal va-chomer, the Hatam Sofer also writes that it explains why the author of Halakhot Gedolot counts Hanukkah and Purim as Torah-level commandments. Because it comes out of a kal va-chomer, a principle of derivation, and therefore it is Torah-level. But for our purposes here, what he wants to say is: there is this kal va-chomer, therefore it is not “do not add.” Therefore it is permitted to make such holidays, and it is not adding holidays, like Jeroboam. “But to establish an appointed time on which no miracle occurred, and which is not mentioned in the Talmud or codifiers anywhere, and only by hint or allusion with the mere practice of avoiding eulogy and fasting—that is a custom, and I do not know the reason for it—then that is ‘do not add.’” Therefore he says he is opposed to Lag BaOmer, opposed to the celebrations of Lag BaOmer. Because here there is no kal va-chomer of from death to life—no miracle happened here. What are they celebrating? They are celebrating nothing. And in the siddur of Maharil Yaavetz, Rabbi Yaakov Emden, he wrote according to the esoteric tradition—listen now, this is the riddle—that it is like a court all of whose members declare guilt, and therefore the accused is acquitted, namely hod within hod. But according to this, it would have been fitting to establish every celebration when we reach gevurot, on day nine of the counting of the children of Israel, except that in any case those are the days of Nisan and eulogies are not made. Okay, if you don’t see this in front of you there’s no chance, so I’ll explain. He says: what does it mean that it is like a court all of whose members declare guilt? Remember again the three lines of the sefirot—kindness, gevurah, tiferet; netzach, hod, yesod, and kingship. Okay? Those are the seven sefirot of the counting of the Omer—seven times seven, right? Kindness within kindness, kindness within hod, and so on. What is on the right side? Kindness and netzach, right? That’s the right side. What is on the left side? Gevurah and hod, right? And in the middle there are three sefirot. Fine, and in the middle there are three middle sefirot. Now he says, if we want judgment within judgment, then it is either hod within hod or gevurah within gevurah. Gevurah within gevurah—what is that? Nine. On the second day of the second week, that is the ninth day—“on day nine of the counting of the children of Israel”—except that in any case those are the days of Nisan and eulogies are not made. So there is no point in establishing no-eulogy on gevurah within gevurah, because in any case no eulogies are made then; it comes out in Nisan. “Upon bright daylight…” okay. So hod within gevurah—the only judgment within judgment left is hod within hod, of course day 33, the fifth day of the fifth week, which is 33, which is Lag BaOmer. In other words, he says, basically the Sages—or the custom, or who knows what—looked for a day that was entirely judgment. A day that is entirely judgment. And that is the court all of whose members declare guilt. As you know, in capital cases, if the whole court declares guilt, the defendant goes free, right? So we are looking for a holiday that is all judgment. There are two such days. One of them falls in Nisan, so that doesn’t work. So only Lag BaOmer remains. Actually there is also hod within gevurah and gevurah within hod, two others, but never mind—he ignores those two. In any case, that leaves us only Lag BaOmer. What is the meaning of this? Look, I said earlier that judgment alone cannot endure. Judgment alone cannot endure—cannot. What does that mean? For example, let’s take the national dimension, which I want—I spoke about it once in the previous lesson. No, actually that was in the second series of Shaarei Binah—probably in the second series. Suppose I draw the following logical inference: all human beings are mortal; Socrates is a human being; conclusion: Socrates is mortal. That is the classic argument always brought to illustrate a valid logical argument. Okay? Now someone says to me: tell me, why is that correct? When I want justification for why Socrates is mortal, the justification is this inference. That is judgment, or the inference, one thing from another, that justifies the conclusion. Now I ask: what is the justification for this way of inference? Not the axioms—for the way of inference. After all, judgment is to understand one thing from another, right? That is understanding. Right? Understanding is the gevurah in understanding; understanding is in the second triad. Okay. When I want to understand understanding, I want to understand why if all human beings are mortal and Socrates is a human being, then Socrates is mortal. What is the explanation? There isn’t one. Yes, there isn’t one. If you don’t understand that, then I don’t know what to tell you. When you want me to explain the methods of explanation, there is never an explanation. It’s like explaining an axiom, yes. By definition you will not be able to explain it. When you look for judgment within judgment, you are basically looking for the rule underlying the rules. There is no rule underlying the rules. All the rules sit upon kindness. Therefore judgment within judgment is kindness. So when there is a day that has no justification at all by kal va-chomer or logical justification or anything like that, then that is a holiday. The holiday of lack of justification. In all the ordinary holidays there is justification according to judgment. And when you seek judgment within judgment, then there isn’t any—I do something without justification. There is no justification. And that is basically how he tries to explain the celebrations of Lag BaOmer. There is no justification; it is “do not add.” Fine. When I look for what justifies justifications, I basically come up with nothing. Yes? It is like someone asks: from where do you know the assumption is true? I cannot explain assumptions. You have to understand that yourself. In other words, nothing can stand if you want to ground everything on judgment. Right? And that is the antinomy. When you want justifications for why the rules are correct, in what language do you want that justification? By means of other rules? You will ask about them too. Where will it stop? There is no justification for justification. Therefore the person who thinks the world can rest only on judgment simply does not understand why he believes in that judgment. Why this rule? There he will have no rule. Because someone who accepts only things for which he has a good argument that justifies them, proves them—then I will ask, and from where do we know that this argument is correct? And another question, of course, about the mode of inference. He won’t be able to answer. So it turns out that a person who looks for justifications for everything is left with nothing. Right? Yes, as I said in that series. And the fact that here there is some “justification” is metaphorical. There is some legal justification, because the claim is that if everyone says the same thing there was presumably some distortion in the judgment. There is the well-known explanation. But he uses it as a metaphor: a court all of whose members declare guilt and therefore he is acquitted—that is to say, judgment within judgment is kindness. The point is that one who thinks that only things that have logical justification exist, or that only physics or only laws of nature are what really exist, and not that there is something these laws describe—then nothing exists. Someone who thinks we can cling only to observation, a pure empiricist. We are only with observation. He is left with nothing. We learn nothing from observation. Right? It is an illusion, a great illusion. We learn nothing from observation alone. There are observations that help, but never just that. There are always generalizations, logical analyses, statistics, all sorts of things like that. It always involves principles for which we have no justification, like the principle of causality, for example. And the principle of causality is a principle all of us assume, and it has no justification. It does not come from observation, it does not come from anywhere else, but it is obvious to us that it is true. Someone who questions everything that lacks justification will not accept the principle of causality. But if he does not accept the principle of causality, how will he have justifications for other things? All the principles with which we justify are themselves unjustified. That is judgment within judgment. You are looking for why the justifying principle—what judgment explains it? What kal va-chomer explains why kal va-chomer is valid? Someone who looks for why kal va-chomer is valid is left with nothing. Someone who looks for justifications of justifications is left with nothing. This is another way to see why pure judgment cannot hold water. You are left with nothing; it is an illusion. There is no such thing. You cannot arrange the whole world only with judgment. Of course, as I said before, not only with kindness either. On the other hand, there is a short passage I’ll mention from the book Asarah Ma’amarot by the Rama of Fano, one of the students of the Ari in Europe, before the Ari arrived here in the Levant. He says as follows. He makes an analogy there between the thirteen attributes—you know from “Who Knows One.” What is thirteen? Thirteen attributes. What is thirteen attributes? Do you know what the thirteen attributes are? If you look among the Hasidim: “The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious…” Look in the Haggadah of Brisk: kal va-chomer, gezerah shavah, binyan av—the thirteen principles. The thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded. Now the Rama of Fano makes an analogy between those thirteen and those thirteen. He claims there is something common in each attribute corresponding to the attribute opposite it. Among the explanations—never mind—he makes an analogy between the highest crown, which is the highest sefirah, and kal va-chomer. Now that is very strange, because the highest crown is the thing that begins everything. Kal va-chomer is indeed the first of the thirteen principles. But judgment is not the first thing. There is always wisdom and then understanding. There are axioms and then inferences. From the axioms you can derive other things. You cannot begin with judgment. To begin with judgment is nothing. I think the root of the matter is that a kal va-chomer always presupposes some assumption. Right? It presupposes some assumption, and then you make a kal va-chomer and derive something else. The thing learned is an assumption, and the thing teaching it is an assumption, and the former is learned from the latter by kal va-chomer. But once the thing already exists, after kindness and judgment have been joined, now you decipher it through rules—you start from the rules. In our backward gaze we begin with kal va-chomer. We begin with judgment. It depends how you look. Formation is from kindness and then judgment; deciphering is first judgment and from within it I understand that there is also kindness. I think the principles by which the Torah is expounded—we expound the Torah. That is not the way the Torah… The thirteen attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He are “The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious”—those are the ways in which He created the world. There it begins with kindness and ends with judgment, because that is the way of formation. Formation is first ex nihilo, and then giving form to what has been created. And the principles by which the Torah is expounded are the way we interpret the Torah once it is already written, or decipher the world, it doesn’t matter at the moment. There it begins from judgment, not from kindness. Therefore it begins with kal va-chomer. Okay? I think these things reflect this reversal. In Kabbalah they call it seal and imprint. You know, in a seal the imprint is always in the opposite order from the seal. The upper world, and beneath it the lower world—in the mirror image of them, the lower world is above and the upper world is below. Look in a mirror. Fine? And here too it is the same thing. When you look at something, you see it in the reverse of the order in which it was created. You first of all see the external format, and afterward the inner side. First the rules, and afterward what lies at the basis of the rules. In formation it happened in the opposite way. Therefore the relation between kindness and judgment is a complex one. You begin with kindness. Kindness alone cannot come into being, so you add judgment to it. Now when you grasp what is happening there, you begin from judgment—but you need to understand by your own reasoning that judgment is not really the thing itself. It is an approximation, but within it, at its base, around it, there is some something of which judgment is only an approximation, or the skeleton, its skeleton. Okay. That’s it for now.