Talmudic Thinking – Lesson 1
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Attendance, recordings, and remote participation
- A position against introductions and the method of study: bottom-up versus top-down
- Lomdut as reflection: intuition versus methodological awareness
- Philosophy of science: methodology versus philosophical meaning, and the specialization trap
- Determinism, randomness, and scientists’ philosophical mistakes
- Vitalism in biology and turning methodological assumptions into claims about reality
- The meeting point of philosophy and science, the “zero-sum game,” and faith
- Philosophy of Jewish law: methodological questions versus the meaning of lomdut moves
- Rav Chaim’s object-status and person-status as an example of a two-sided question
- Aristotle, argument patterns, and the birth of logic as a field
- Intuitive thinking, formalization, and Daniel Kahneman
- Modern lomdut, the difficulty of decision, and Brisk
- A halakhic decisor versus a rosh yeshiva, and Rabbi Chaim versus Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan
- Seridei Eish versus Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner: “what Maimonides thought” versus “what Maimonides says”
- Retroactive conceptualization and correcting the author: System A and System B
- The example of compatibilism, persuasion, and exposing hidden assumptions
- Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Eliezer, and going deeper than the rabbi’s own hearing
- Anthropology: the view from within versus the view from outside, and the parallel to halakhic rulings and politics
- Conceptualization as the foundation of lomdut and as an analogy to scientific theory
- Science and technology versus lomdut and Jewish law: end and means
- The midrash of Moses and the angels: Torah as abstract ideas and their concrete realizations
- Zen and the art of archery: learning an abstract principle through concrete realizations
- The ideology of Talmudic conceptual analysis versus the methodology of Talmudic conceptual analysis, and Rav Chaim’s frying pans
- Tension in yeshivot between in-depth analysis and “studying Jewish law,” and reading “great is study, for it leads to action”
- “Expound and receive reward,” women and the blessing over Torah study, and Rashi on Bechukotai: study as an intrinsic value
Summary
General Overview
The text presents an approach to a lecture on lomdut and yeshiva-style lomdut with a reservation about introductions for beginners, and argues that an introduction is useful only for someone who has already “rubbed up against” the material and can therefore critique the interpretations being offered. It develops a broad analogy between lomdut and the philosophy of science, between intuitive work and reflective, systematic work, and between general methodological questions and questions of philosophical or interpretive-essential meaning. It defines conceptualization as a basic building block of lomdut, similar to logic in Aristotle, and presents the ideology of lomdut as viewing lomdut as an end rather than a means, while criticizing the yeshiva split between in-depth study and “studying Jewish law” as a separate track, and calling for “great is study, for it leads to action” to be understood as one continuous chain rather than as a preference for means over end.
Attendance, recordings, and remote participation
The lecturer says the recordings are available in the course Moodle and on his website, and that sometimes there are changes in the upload schedule. He explains that he records on Zoom without an audience, but participation in the class itself is supposed to be in physical attendance. He presents watching the recordings as a solution only for those with a special constraint, such as the war or other problems, and not as the regular mode of participation.
A position against introductions and the method of study: bottom-up versus top-down
The lecturer says he is not “a big believer in introductions” and argues that introductions are more suitable for experts than for beginners, and that if anything they should be done at the end, because then they are understood better. He says an early introduction leaves principles “up in the air” without understanding the material, and also creates the danger of accepting the lecturer’s interpretation uncritically as though it were “information from Sinai.” He prefers a bottom-up didactic approach similar to teaching mathematics, where one begins from an understandable example and only afterwards generalizes to a broader principle, and in that spirit he asks first to “rub up against the lomdut material” and only then talk about general ideas.
Lomdut as reflection: intuition versus methodological awareness
The lecturer argues that the question “what is lomdut?” is barely addressed in the traditional yeshiva world, because it is generally not reflective and people “just work” without self-observation. He compares this to the philosophy of science, where scientists act first and philosophers then try to document and explain what was done, but he also notes that there is value in examining intuitive work in light of broader logic in order to correct things while doing them. He presents Maimonides as a reflective and systematic exception who formulates methodological rules, as in the principles for counting the 613 commandments.
Philosophy of science: methodology versus philosophical meaning, and the specialization trap
The lecturer divides the philosophy of science into two kinds of questions: the general methodology of scientific work, versus questions about the philosophical meaning of specific theories such as relativity or quantum theory. He says the second kind requires scientific expertise, and therefore many philosophers avoid it, but when scientists enter that territory they often miss philosophical subtleties because they are not trained in philosophy. He gives examples from Libet’s experiments and free choice, and presents most of the scientific writing there as philosophically unsuccessful because of imprecise definitions of “free choice.”
Determinism, randomness, and scientists’ philosophical mistakes
The lecturer argues that rolling a die is deterministic, and that the use of probability reflects complexity and sensitivity to initial conditions rather than genuine randomness. He explains that in quantum theory there is indeterminism at the quantum level, but in the macroscopic world there is “dephasing” and the law of large numbers, which leads to classical mechanics. He presents the discussion of randomness in evolution and argues that much of the “chance” attributed to it is actually deterministic at the level of large bodies, and that attributing randomness is sometimes used for claims like “the random can explain everything” in the context of “evolution is an alternative to God.”
Vitalism in biology and turning methodological assumptions into claims about reality
The lecturer presents the debate in the philosophy of biology over the existence of a “vital substance,” and defines vitalism as the view that a living being contains “something more than physics and chemistry.” He says biologists treat this as a “dirty word,” and presents that as a philosophical mistake because they turn a non-constructive methodological assumption in science into a claim about reality, whereas in his view one cannot scientifically determine that “it does not exist.” He describes a general pattern in which scientists, because of a lack of philosophical skill, convert methodological rules into ontological claims.
The meeting point of philosophy and science, the “zero-sum game,” and faith
The lecturer says there is a tendency among believers to point to the shortcomings of science in order to conclude, “so there is a God,” and gives the example of Yated Ne’eman and “cheers when the weather forecaster is wrong.” He presents this as a mistaken zero-sum assumption in which the success of science narrows God’s room to operate, and argues that philosophical skill shows that “that’s not how it is, or not necessarily how it is.”
Philosophy of Jewish law: methodological questions versus the meaning of lomdut moves
The lecturer presents a parallel distinction in the halakhic context between the general methodology of Jewish law and questions about the meaning of specific topics or specific lomdut moves. He says the second type requires lomdut skill and not just logic and philosophy, and is therefore prone to mistakes just like the philosophy of science. He declares that he intends to deal with both kinds, using concrete topics in order to derive general principles from them.
Rav Chaim’s cheftza and gavra as an example of a two-sided question
The lecturer presents Rav Chaim’s distinction between “a law in the object” and “a law in the person” as an example where on the one hand there is application to certain topics, and on the other hand there is a broad perspective on how Jewish law is conceived. He defines the question of whether this is a general methodological issue or a question of specific meaning as a topic that can be seen in both ways.
Aristotle, argument patterns, and the birth of logic as a field
The lecturer explains that valid logical patterns do not depend on content, and gives the example of the form “if every X is Y, and A is X, then A is Y.” He says that Aristotle, in the Organon, did not “invent logic” but was the first to conceptualize the general patterns underlying everyday thinking, and made the patterns themselves into a subject of study. He argues that this conceptualization makes an independent analytical field possible, and that in the twentieth century its power is understood through computing and algorithms.
Intuitive thinking, formalization, and Daniel Kahneman
The lecturer explains that the unconscious performs many tasks well, but in complex tasks it may make mistakes, and that formal tools allow for a systematic solution, like the formula for solving a quadratic equation. He cites Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and illustrates driving “on automatic” as an efficient but unconscious action. He presents logical formalization as a tool that makes it possible to solve problems without dependence on content, like psychometric exam questions, and presents this as parallel to the need to conceptualize tools of lomdut.
Modern lomdut, the difficulty of decision, and Brisk
The lecturer argues that conceptual lomdut makes it possible to explain the approaches of medieval authorities (Rishonim) in modern terms, but creates a problem of inability to decide, because both sides become “reasonable” within different models. He describes “the illnesses of the yeshiva lomdan” as indecision, and gives an example of a Brisker tendency to “satisfy all the positions.” He tells about the Griz, who drank water outside the sukkah and explained that he was not being “stringent” but only fulfilling all the positions, and presents this as part of a pattern in which high analytical sophistication comes at the expense of decision.
A halakhic decisor versus a rosh yeshiva, and Rabbi Chaim versus Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan
The lecturer defines the difference between a rosh yeshiva and a halakhic decisor by saying that the decisor has the capacity for decision, and therefore the books of decisors are less analytical. He tells about Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, who served as the city rabbi but referred halakhic questions to a judge, and about a letter to Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor in which he requested an answer “only yes or no, without reasons,” because reasons can be refuted. He presents a model in which the decision comes before the analysis, and the lomdan then comes afterwards and explains the structure that justifies the decision, similar to how the scientist works and the philosopher comes afterward to explain.
Seridei Eish versus Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner: “what Maimonides thought” versus “what Maimonides says”
The lecturer brings a correspondence in the journal HaMa’ayan between Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner and Seridei Eish, Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, on the question of whether Rabbi Chaim Halevi’s novelties “on Maimonides” reconstruct Maimonides or create Rabbi Chaim’s own method. He describes a yeshiva position according to which Maimonides is the book and not the person, and therefore “what Maimonides says” is determined through analysis of the text and not through authorial intention. He compares this to modern legal interpretation, emphasized by Aharon Barak, in which “we are not interested in what the legislators intended” but in the meaning of the law book as a binding system standing on its own foundations, and presents the yeshiva learner as a “super-modernist” in contrast to academia, which deals with context, manuscripts, and influences.
Retroactive conceptualization and correcting the author: System A and System B
The lecturer argues that conceptual tools were refined over the generations, so the medieval authorities (Rishonim) would not have formulated “a law in the object and a law in the person,” but one may argue that their intuition worked that way even if it was not formulated. He says that conceptualization makes it possible to identify contradictions and correct the author’s method even against himself, and therefore one can “explain to Maimonides what he himself thinks” better than he formulated it, because a person does not always fully understand himself. He presents Kahneman’s distinction between intuitive System A and conscious System B as a framework for understanding the process.
The example of compatibilism, persuasion, and exposing hidden assumptions
The lecturer presents compatibilism as the claim that determinism does not contradict free choice, and argues that this is “a mistake in concepts,” because an internal constraint is still a constraint. He explains that all persuasion is built on assumptions the persuaded person already accepts, and therefore persuasion reveals to him a conclusion that was already contained in his position beforehand, though he was not aware of it. He gives the example of the claim that “if you do not believe in God, there is no valid morality in your world,” and explains that the persuaded person would then have to either change his atheism or give up the validity of morality, and thus a prior inconsistency is exposed to him.
Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Eliezer, and going deeper than the rabbi’s own hearing
The lecturer brings a letter of consolation by Rabbi Kook about the Sochatchover, in which he explains the contradiction regarding Rabbi Eliezer, who “never said anything he had not heard from his teacher,” and at the same time said “things no ear had ever heard.” He quotes Rabbi Kook’s formulation that “he heard from his teacher things that no ear had ever heard,” and adds, “including his teacher’s own ear,” in order to say that a student can uncover depth of which even his teacher was not aware. He describes a personal experience of learning from a rabbi in which he builds an infrastructure from his teacher’s words but interprets and analyzes them differently, using analytical tools his teacher does not have.
Anthropology: the view from within versus the view from outside, and the parallel to halakhic rulings and politics
The lecturer describes a methodological dispute in early anthropology between living within a tribe in order to understand it from the inside, versus objective documentation “from the top of the mountain.” He says both sides have truth to them, and that it is difficult to combine inner experience with the objectivity that allows comparison to other tribes. He parallels this to two schools in halakhic ruling: the advantage of someone inside the situation, versus the advantage of someone outside it who is not biased, and gives the model of the Council of Torah Sages versus members of Knesset as an illustration of preferring an external perspective in strategic decisions.
Conceptualization as the foundation of lomdut and as an analogy to scientific theory
The lecturer defines conceptualization as the fundamental building block of lomdut, and parallels it to the sciences, in which theory is composed of theoretical entities and laws of nature that explain phenomena. He describes scientific and lomdut work as a process of abstraction, generalization, and defining concepts and relations, and presents this as essentially similar in both worlds.
Science and technology versus lomdut and Jewish law: end and means
The lecturer distinguishes between a technological perspective, which sees laws of nature as a means to explain and apply phenomena, and a scientific perspective, which sees phenomena as a means of arriving at knowledge of the laws. He parallels this to the difference between a halakhic decisor, who produces practical answers, and yeshiva lomdut, which sees cases as a means of extracting “general lomdut laws,” and even suggests a general goal of “cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He” through knowledge of the rules. He presents lomdut as an ideology in which lomdut is an end in itself and not merely a tool for halakhic ruling.
The midrash of Moses and the angels: Torah as abstract ideas and their concrete realizations
The lecturer brings a midrash about Moses ascending on high and the angels saying, “What is one born of woman doing among us?” and Moses answering that they do not have honoring father and mother, “Do not murder,” or the laws of forbidden foods. He asks what the angels were thinking if Torah appears to be a collection of practical commandments, and concludes that Torah is a collection of abstract ideas of which the commandments are realizations in the human world. He presents the distinction between abstract principles and their expressions as a key to understanding Torah and lomdut.
Zen and the art of archery: learning an abstract principle through concrete realizations
The lecturer brings the book Zen in the Art of Archery and tells of a Zen master who proposes learning Zen through fencing, wrestling, target shooting, or flower arrangement. He describes the idea that the abstract principle is learned through different realizations rather than directly, and parallels this to Torah study, in which the laws are “flower arrangement” through which one extracts general patterns of thought. He connects this to the analogy of logic, where the general pattern appears in different fields.
The ideology of lomdut versus the methodology of lomdut, and Rav Chaim’s frying pans
The lecturer distinguishes between the methodology of lomdut, meaning “how lomdut works,” and the ideology of lomdut, meaning “why we do lomdut.” He presents the ideology of lomdut as seeing lomdut as the goal, and brings the saying that Rav Chaim “took the frying pans out of the kitchen” in order to show that the lomdan deals with abstract constructs and halakhic properties rather than practical familiarity with utensils. He defines frying pans and pots as cases for halakhic decisors who apply rules, while the lomdan seeks the underlying principles themselves.
Tension in yeshivot between in-depth analysis and “studying Jewish law,” and reading “great is study, for it leads to action”
The lecturer criticizes the yeshiva division between the in-depth study session and a separate time for studying Jewish law in the Mishnah Berurah or Shulchan Arukh, and argues that this misses the meaning of “to bring the discussion to a halakhic conclusion.” He defines “studying Jewish law” as the last five minutes of the in-depth analysis, when one reaches a practical conclusion out of the analysis itself and not from an external book, at least as a model that should be the aspiration. He interprets “great is study, for it leads to action” as the claim that the separation between study and action is the mistake, and that the greatness lies in the chain of study that ends in action, not in the idea that study is merely a means to an end.
“Expound and receive reward,” women and the blessing over Torah study, and Rashi on Bechukotai: study as an intrinsic value
The lecturer brings the rebellious son, who “never was and never will be,” and quotes “expound and receive reward,” presenting in the name of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter that the passage was written to teach that study is a value in itself and not only for the sake of knowing what to do. He brings the ruling of the Shulchan Arukh that women are obligated in the blessing over Torah study, and the words of the Magen Avraham and the Mishnah Berurah that women study the laws relevant to them, and concludes that study in order to know what to do is a “preparation for a commandment” and not Torah study as an intrinsic value. He brings Rashi on “If you walk in My statutes” as “that you should toil in Torah,” and distinguishes between “toiling in Torah” and “toiling in Torah in order to observe and fulfill,” so that analytical-lomdut Torah toil is an intrinsic value even though it also helps observance, and the lecturer concludes by saying he will continue next time.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So as I said, it’s also on this course’s Moodle and also on my website, you can see it there, the recordings. So it’ll go up within… what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of the course? Of listeners?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I need to look at the site, I haven’t checked right now, I don’t know. But sometimes there are changes too. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is it on Zoom now too?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m on Zoom, but not in front of anyone, just for recording. In principle you need to be present. Meaning, you can’t participate remotely. There are people who participate remotely, so they just watch the recordings, but they don’t participate in the class itself. And that’s only for someone who has some special constraint—the war, or some problem, or things like that. But in principle people are supposed to be present, those who don’t have those constraints. All right, we’re talking about lomdut and yeshiva lomdut, some kind of look at this subject. In general, I’m not a big believer in introductions. Meaning, I don’t think introductions are very useful, even though apparently, yes, in academia in general, people are usually used to introductions, to doing things systematically, and only then starting to learn. I think, first of all, introductions are for experts, not for beginners. So if introductions should be done at all, then at the end, not at the beginning. And for two reasons. First, because then you understand better. When I tell you some principle, it just floats in the air—you don’t really understand what it means if you don’t know the subject a little, in our context for example yeshiva lomdut. If you don’t know it and you only hear about it, then it’s less meaningful, you understand less what’s really being discussed. And the second thing is that I can take any of you captive. Meaning, I’ll tell you something, and if you don’t have direct familiarity with the lomdut world, then you receive what I’m saying as though it were information from Sinai. Meaning, it must be true. But there are also my interpretations here. Meaning, maybe I’m right, maybe I’m not right. In the end, each of you has to form his own position critically. I’m offering what I’m offering, and afterwards you’ll decide what you accept, if you accept it, and whether you have other ideas. So in my view it’s more a subject for experts. I’m saying this because of what I said to you earlier, that a class of this type is meant for people who have familiarity with the lomdut material. Because then there’s something to talk about; the ideas are grasped better. They know—also in teaching mathematics, for example, there’s always the dilemma whether to go top-down or bottom-up. Meaning, whether to start with the theorem and then do various examples, or to start with an example, understand it, and from it try to generalize and arrive at the general theorem. It seems to me that usually the second method is better didactically. Meaning, systematically the first method is called for, because the theorem is the general subject and the examples are particular cases. But didactically it works the other way around. Take an example: the example you can understand. It’s not just some general scheme that tells you nothing. And after you understand it, you understand the idea, then let’s try to see that behind it there is a more general logic, which doesn’t relate only to the case we encountered. Okay? So here too, same thing. I think first you need to rub up against the lomdut material a bit, and only afterwards can you begin talking a little more about the general ideas, how lomdut is built. This subject—the question of what lomdut is—is not treated very much. Certainly not in the regular, traditional yeshiva world, because generally it is not reflective. Meaning, people don’t look at themselves and ask themselves what we’re doing. There’s no reflection, no self-observation; they just work. You know, it’s like in the philosophy of science. Philosophers of science are sure that they are developing the methods that guide scientists in how they work. Nonsense. It’s obvious that scientists work the way they work, and after them come the philosophers of science trying to document and explain the idea behind what they do. Usually that’s how it works. Okay? So here too one has to be aware that it works in both directions. On the one hand, people do lomdut intuitively, and afterwards you can ask, wait a second, what did we do here? On the other hand, there’s also value in trying to examine what we did in light of more general logic, maybe to correct things while we’re doing them. We’ll encounter both kinds of perspective, and I think it’s important to be aware of them. Maimonides, for example, is an exception. Maimonides had a very reflective outlook or approach. Meaning, he constantly looked at what he was doing, gave himself an account of what methodological rules guided him. He counted the 613 commandments; he wrote the principles that explain by what rules one counts the 613 commandments, how one arrives at the 613 commandments. Meaning, he worked in a very, very systematic way, very, very reflectively. But usually that’s not what happens. And then, when you try to examine what lomdut is, you’re basically approaching a field that works intuitively and trying to define what form of thinking, or forms of thinking, underlie this activity—just like the philosophy of science. Okay? Now, in the philosophy of science too there are two kinds of questions or issues. One issue is the methodology of science. Meaning: how is it right to work scientifically? And that is in principle true of all the sciences. How do you falsify? How do you generalize? How do you perform statistical regression? It doesn’t matter—things of that sort, which are completely general. There are questions that concern the philosophical meaning of certain scientific fields. For example, what is the philosophical meaning of relativity theory, quantum theory, or something like that? That doesn’t concern all the sciences. In every type of science one can try to ask: does it teach us something on the philosophical plane? Okay? That’s a different kind of question. The first type of question is generally what philosophers of science deal with. And why? Because in the second type of question you need to be an expert in the science itself. In the first type you don’t need to be a scientist. You can understand scientific methodology and how one ought to work and what the meaning of each method is, and so on. You don’t need to be an expert in physics, biology, chemistry, or whatever. But when you discuss the question of what the philosophical meaning of quantum theory is, you need to know quantum theory. That’s a specific specialization; you need the knowledge. Okay? Both skill and knowledge. And therefore, in most cases, philosophers really don’t deal with that. Philosophers deal with methodology, with the first type of question, not the second type. Now, what’s the problem? The ones who enter that arena are scientists. Because they understand, they know the scientific fields. But they’re not proficient in philosophy. So their philosophical statements may be well grounded in scientific knowledge, but very often they miss the mark philosophically. There are countless examples of this. I mean, I wrote a book on evolution, I wrote a book on free choice; each of these stands opposite a scientific discipline, and you can see very clearly how the greatest scientists miss philosophical aspects, sometimes in a way that’s really embarrassing. These are really basic things. And not because they’re stupid, but simply because they’re not aware of philosophical subtleties and they’re experts in their scientific field. Now, for example in neuroscience—which is what I dealt with in relation to free choice—it’s very subtle, because neuroscience and philosophy are located right inside the scientific occupation itself. It’s very hard to separate the philosophical statement from the scientific statement. For example, things like Libet’s experiments and free choice and things like that—those of you who know, never mind—there there are lots and lots of failures because people don’t really know how to define free choice properly. In fact almost everything written there is nonsense, and thousands of articles have been written there, published in scientific journals, not philosophical ones. It’s science, but it’s so saturated with the question of what free choice is—which is a philosophical question—that there are lots and lots of mistakes on the philosophical plane. People don’t really understand the meaning of the scientific findings. Scientifically they understand, but they don’t understand the philosophical meaning of the scientific findings. And so this second type of field falls between the cracks, because the scientists don’t understand enough philosophy, the philosophers don’t understand the science, and very few people say sensible things in these areas.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but philosophy and science meet in lots of places besides what you said about neuroscience. Lots of examples.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Quantum theory—doesn’t it have philosophical aspects? What do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Quantum theory is not deterministic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s an interesting question—whether the world is deterministic or not. Is there randomness there? Is there really randomness in the world? Genuine randomness. You know, rolling a die isn’t random. Rolling a die is completely deterministic. Give me the die, give me the initial force, the initial velocity, air density, everything, and I’ll tell you how it will land. There’s nothing random there. It’s just that it’s very sensitive—its dependence on initial conditions is very sensitive—so we treat it with probabilistic tools. We say there’s a one-sixth probability of falling on each side. There’s nothing random there. It’s just a statistical treatment because the problem is complicated.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end there is randomness, yes. No, because at the more—at the very smallest level, I just don’t know how
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to call it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In quantum theory, at the quantum level, that doesn’t affect it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s smearing—what’s called dephasing. Meaning, once you move up to large scales, large scales contain lots and lots of particles, and in each of them there are quantum effects, but the average gives you classical mechanics. Okay, and that’s why people always thought classical mechanics was correct, because they dealt with large bodies. Only once they started dealing with small bodies did they begin to see that the business with small bodies doesn’t work so well. A single electron behaves a little differently than a ball. Okay? But our world is a world of large bodies, even though it’s made up of lots of small bodies, and there is dephasing. Basically the law of large numbers. Okay, so in short there are philosophical implications to many scientific fields. Biology. There’s something in—for example, maybe the most basic question in the philosophy of biology is whether there is something in a living body besides chemistry and physics. Is there what was once called a vital substance, yes? What used to be called vitalism. Today it’s a dirty word in biology. Unjustly, by the way. Unjustly because they think their scientific view dictates the philosophy, but it doesn’t. It’s true that vitalism is not a constructive assumption scientifically, but that doesn’t mean that vitalism isn’t true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is vitalism?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The view that in a living body, or a living creature, there is something beyond physics and chemistry. A soul, a spirit, whatever you want to call it—spirituality. Okay? So biologists insist that no, anyone who says such a thing will simply be thrown out of the room; anyone who says there is a vital substance—that’s absolutely forbidden. But of course that’s nonsense on the philosophical level. Not because there necessarily is, but because there not necessarily isn’t. Meaning, you can’t determine scientifically that there isn’t. You can argue philosophically—there is, there isn’t, each according to his position. But they take their methodological assumption and turn it into a claim about reality, and that’s very common. A methodological assumption very quickly becomes, for scientists, a claim about reality, precisely because of the lack of philosophical skill. For example, in evolution people think there are random elements. A lion decided to go here and a lion decided to go there, and that determines the monkey’s fate. If it’s there and the lion is there, then he’ll devour it. Then that monkey won’t survive, but the monkey that manages to escape the lion will survive. So the whole evolutionary process can change because of something random. But there is absolutely nothing random in the lion’s decision to go here or there. It’s a large body. A large body behaves deterministically. It’s just that we don’t know how a lion behaves or how a lion makes decisions, so we use random tools like with a die. But there’s nothing genuinely random there. And that’s very important, for example, regarding the question whether evolution is an alternative to God. Because someone who says that within evolution there are random processes can say: okay, so you see, the random can explain everything too; there’s no need to posit God. But if you understand that there is nothing random there, then the question is: okay, so who is running this whole story? Meaning, why—how does this happen? All these miracles. Randomness doesn’t provide an explanation here, because there is no randomness. So there are many philosophical implications. There’s relativity theory, not to mention time and space, black holes and curved spaces and the age of the universe—many, many implications. And all these implications are of the second type. They are implications that speak not about the methodology of science, but about the question of what the philosophical significance is of findings in specific scientific fields, one or another. Okay? So this area is prone to problems. When philosophers deal with it, there are scientific errors; when scientists deal with it, there are philosophical errors. And for someone to deal with it seriously, he has to be a professional on both sides of the equation. And therefore it’s much rarer in the world of the philosophy of science for people to deal with these things, and if at all then scientists deal with them. And that’s problematic, and it shows. It’s like even among legal scholars. You look at philosophy of law—it’s usually something very shallow. If someone deals with philosophy of law, he’s generally not a philosopher but a lawyer. And you can see it. At certain periods I dealt with philosophy of law, and it drove me crazy. What they call philosophy is simply not philosophy—almost childish descriptions of possibilities, without getting into meaning, ideas, reasoning, and so on. Now in Jewish law it’s the same. There can be people who deal with the philosophy of Jewish law. In the philosophy of Jewish law, one can deal with two kinds of questions. One can deal with the methodology of Jewish law, yes? What is halakhic authority? Where do such laws come from? What is the difference between Torah-level and rabbinic? Doubts, all kinds of things like that. And one can deal with the meaning of specific topics or specific lomdut moves—what they say specifically, not something general. Now questions of the second type require more lomdut skill and not just logic and philosophy and so on. And therefore questions of the second type are prone to mistakes, just as in the philosophy of science.
[Speaker C] Isn’t it because from the outset they’re more scientific questions?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, in the halakhic context?
[Speaker C] No, no, not in the halakhic context—in the scientific context.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but because there—no,
[Speaker C] that it would be more correct to look at them as scientific problems where scientific research is still lacking, and so people fill it in with a philosophical explanation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, what are you talking about? If you’re filling in a scientific lack with philosophy, then you’ve simply made a mistake. Meaning, what can be solved by scientific tools, you need to solve by scientific tools. And if you don’t know, then you don’t know.
[Speaker C] No, the problems you brought up—free choice and that substance—they’re like problems that haven’t yet been proven, or maybe can’t be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether they can be solved at all. I have a series of arguments showing that at the moment it doesn’t seem there is even a future possibility of deciding them scientifically.
[Speaker C] Fine, I’m convinced, yes. But no, that doesn’t contradict what I said.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it doesn’t contradict it. I agree with what you said. I’m only saying that many times in these second areas, in fields of the second type, scientific knowledge is lacking and therefore people don’t work correctly. But on the other hand, one must understand that, as in debates about faith in God, often believers are motivated to point out the shortcomings of science. Science doesn’t work here—so there’s a God. In Yated Ne’eman there are always cheers when the weather forecaster is wrong. If the forecaster is wrong, that means there’s a God. If the forecaster isn’t wrong, then everything is deterministic, so where is God in the picture? Okay? There’s some assumption that science somehow narrows God’s room to operate, and people are playing a zero-sum game. You have to choose one or the other. But again, a little philosophical skill shows that this isn’t so, or at least not necessarily so. Okay, and so on—there’s much more one could demonstrate. So in our context, I actually intend to talk about questions of both types. But my focus is this: I’ll deal with certain topics, but I’ll try to use them to show general principles—how Jewish law works, and maybe even beyond Jewish law. All right? And these are really questions that contain both aspects within themselves. Say I ask about the relationship between Rav Chaim’s cheftza and gavra—the distinction Rav Chaim makes between a law in the object and a law in the person, okay, a lomdut distinction that is applied in many topics. So on the one hand it deals with very specific topics; not every topic is divided between object and person. But on the other hand, it’s obvious that there is some kind of broad issue here, a broad general perspective on how we conceive of Jewish law. Laws in the object, laws in the person—what does that really mean, a law in the object and a law in the person? So is that a question of the first type or a question of the second type? I don’t know—you can see it this way and you can see it that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, what did you call the two types again?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One type is the methodology of the field, which is something general; it doesn’t pertain to a particular topic within the field. Yes—do you learn Talmud first, then Rashi, then Tosafot, or not? That’s not connected to a specific topic you’re dealing with. Or who has authority and who doesn’t—Sanhedrin, medieval authorities (Rishonim), later authorities (Acharonim), I don’t know, things like that. These are general questions of scientific methodology. They are more methodological than philosophical questions. Philosophical questions are questions that deal with a specific halakhic topic or a specific lomdut move, to understand why people think this way rather than another way. What does it mean? What is the significance of the matter? Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the question is why one asks?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Come over here. So we’re going to try to ask questions that will often have both sides—both the general methodological side and the specific side of a particular topic. Okay, now let’s continue. Today I’ll mainly do a general introduction; let’s see how much we manage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end you do an introduction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, I’m giving an introduction because I’m assuming you’re already in the subject. That’s why I said this introduction is meant for experts. Meaning, what do I mean by experts? I’m assuming this whole area is familiar to you. It’s not that you’re encountering it through this introduction, because then there really wouldn’t be much point in it. Maybe one more important preliminary point. You know that in logic, for example, in logic there are all kinds of rules. Say, if every X is Y and A is X, then the conclusion is that A is Y. Okay, now fill in A, X, and Y with whatever you want, and this argument always comes out valid. Right? So basically there’s some kind of structure of validity here; it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you’re talking about frogs, chairs, doves, angels, I don’t know what, or trees. Okay? It really makes no difference. Put whatever you want into X, Y, and A, and you’ll get a valid argument. That’s why it’s called an argument form, like in an equation, some kind of number pattern, a verse pattern—you know these expressions from school? So in logic too there’s basically a pattern, and whatever you plug into it will produce a valid structure. Now, the one who created the first logical rules, the basic ones, the one who made the initial conceptualizations, was Aristotle in the book Organon, which is Aristotle’s basic book on logic. But it would be a mistake to think that Aristotle invented logic. Not only did he not invent logic, he also wasn’t the first to use it. Meaning, I have no doubt that even before Aristotle, if you told someone: all human beings are mortal, and Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal—well, people understood that. So what was Aristotle’s innovation? Aristotle was the first to understand that behind these thoughts there are general patterns. When I tell you all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal—everyone understands that. But then Aristotle suddenly noticed: wait a second, in that other field they’re talking about something else entirely—every frog is green, this creature is a frog, so apparently it’s green. Now one case is in biology and the other is in I-don’t-know-what, physiology or the human sciences. Okay? But Aristotle looks and says: wait, but it’s actually the same structure. This structure and that structure are exactly the same structure. Here you’re plugging in human beings, mortality, and Socrates, and there you’re plugging in frogs, the color green, and this particular frog. But basically the logical structure is the same logical structure. And once Aristotle noticed that, he began to deal with logical structures themselves as a field of theoretical inquiry. The logical structure itself became the object of study. Meaning, now I’m dealing with logical structures; I’m looking at what logical structures there are, what kinds of relations there are between logical structures. You couldn’t do that as long as you were using them without being aware that there were structures behind them; then you just say, okay, mortal, Socrates—fine, you do the job. Anyone with common sense works with logic, but he doesn’t understand that behind these things there are patterns that appear in many places, and therefore the pattern itself becomes a theoretical field. You can study it. Let’s now study the rule that if every X is Y and A is X, then the conclusion is that A is Y. Now what field does that belong to? Not physiology, not biology, not law, not anything. Applications can be in all of those fields, depending on what you put in place of X, Y, and A. If you put in criminal, punishment, and evidence, then it’ll be law. If you put in mortal, Socrates, and human beings, it’ll be physiology. If you put in frog, green, then it’ll be zoology, okay? Animals, and so on. So each of those things is a field of research or study in its own right, some scientific discipline or another. But suddenly Aristotle understood that in all these fields there appear structures that are similar structures. And then, once you conceptualize the structure, you even give it a name—modus tollens, modus ponens, doesn’t matter, names for all these kinds of inferences—suddenly these things become objects in their own right. Not just patterns into which you fill various contents, but the pattern itself is now a subject you can specialize in, do research in, and that’s how the field of logic was born. The field of logic was born with Aristotle—not logic itself. The use of logic and the use of reason, of rationality, existed before Aristotle too, I’m sure of that. But seeing that there is such a field called logic—that it isn’t just biology, law, and so forth, but that behind biology and law there are structures, and those structures are universal—once that was conceptualized, the field of logic was born. Now today it’s very easy for us to understand the significance of this step, because all computing, for example, and our whole world today, which is built on computation, exists only thanks to that conceptualization. Without that conceptualization, there would be no computers in the world. People would know how to think, everything would be fine, but the mechanical aspect of thought, the algorithms with which we work and that we can teach machines to perform—you need to understand that there is such a general algorithm. Then you can build machines in a way that allows them to perform those algorithms. And by the way, the machines can do this in biology, in law, anywhere you want—it simply depends on what content you put into them. But the machine in itself is not dealing with biology, law, or anything else; the machine itself is a logical machine. So Aristotle’s conceptualization—only in the twentieth century and down to our own day do we fully understand the power or the great significance of the conceptualization he made. Now beyond computing and building computers, clearly there’s another significance to Aristotle’s conceptualization, because many times when we work with logic intuitively, we make mistakes. And if we have orderly formal tools, algorithms that we know how to operate independently of the contents, then we have a systematic way to arrive at the result. Look at all the psychometric tests: if Jones likes either Bill or I don’t know, James, and Bill doesn’t like James, but James was in Kamchatka yesterday, and Jones doesn’t like anyone who was in Kamchatka, then the question is whether Jones likes Bill. Questions like that on the psychometric exam, okay? Now if someone has systematic tools, he doesn’t need to think—I can solve it mathematically, I can tell you what the answer is. Maybe it’ll take me a little time; not sure that’s ideal for the psychometric exam, but I can give you the answer, because once we have the logical conceptualization, I don’t care about Jones or Bill or anything, I formalize it logically and tell you what the answer is.
[Speaker C] Were there any mathematical structures or tools that were used in logic before the computer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, I’m not a historian, no. The computer obviously came much later than Aristotle. I’m not a historian, so I don’t know how to answer that, but I assume the conceptualization wasn’t there. Use of logic, as I said, yes—Aristotle.
[Speaker C] No, I just mean: if that really was necessary in order to advance technologically?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What technology was there back then, exactly?
[Speaker C] No, I’m saying, had they not conceptualized it—if there had been…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So they used logic, but they didn’t understand that they were using logic. They just thought, that’s all, until someone came and said: wait, wait, there are forms of thinking, and now we can think about how they work. The others used the forms of thought. If you’re an intelligent person, then you use a form of thought, you draw conclusions.
[Speaker C] Why do you need to be aware of it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because many times when you do it unconsciously, you reach incorrect results. If you know the book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow—you know it? An Israeli Nobel Prize winner, in the past. So he talks there about how human beings have two kinds of systems, System A and System B. One system is unconscious; it performs many of the functions we carry out—automatic driver, kind of an autopilot. When driving a car—I had a fairly long period where I would drive and reach my destination and not remember a thing that happened along the way. I wasn’t in the driving, in the car, on the road—nothing. I was thinking my own thoughts and reflections. Meaning, I ultimately got to the place, I’m sure I signaled properly and did everything right along the way, but with no awareness at all. I did it one hundred percent—maybe even better than when I do it consciously. And sometimes I drive consciously. Now, there are certain tasks that our unconscious does better, things that are evolutionarily ingrained in us, whatever, but tasks that our unconscious does better. There are tasks where it doesn’t. There are complex tasks where your unconscious can miss things. And if you do it systematically, with the mathematics doing the work, then you know how to solve the problem. Ask someone to solve a quadratic equation, okay? It may be that a person can guess two solutions to the quadratic equation even without knowing the formula. But someone who knows the formula will give you a solution to every quadratic equation systematically. He doesn’t need to be a genius, doesn’t need to think, doesn’t need anything; he has a systematic method to arrive at the solution.
[Speaker C] When I was ten years old, I didn’t study logic, I didn’t have that logical sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore there were things you couldn’t do. The intuitive things maybe you could do, and even those not everyone can, but the things where your intuition won’t work and you need reflection, you need conscious thought with systematic problem-solving—you couldn’t do them. Okay? A great many people can guess the solution to some equation, but you can guess in one equation, another equation—but how do I make sure you know how to solve all equations? Only if you have the algorithm, if you have a systematic way to do it. And the systematic way overall just follows what I do intuitively; it’s not inventing something else. But once I’m aware, I have some way of using it mechanically. I don’t need every time to think, wait, to be some kind of genius with some creative idea or another. I can solve the problem systematically. Okay? The same thing that happens in logic happens in our context too. In our context, we can look at the analytic tools of Talmudic learning as an independent field of existence. That doesn’t mean that in the twelfth century people didn’t know how to do this; the medieval authorities (Rishonim) knew how to do it. Many times we try to explain what Maimonides or Rashba did—the approaches of different medieval authorities (Rishonim)—using contemporary analytic tools of Talmudic learning. Okay? What does that mean? They didn’t use these tools, but the assumption is that if they had common sense they probably reached the right results. I have more sophisticated tools than they did, and I can conceptualize and formulate more explicitly the path they took, their mode of thinking. Then I can try to explain Maimonides’ approach, explain Rashba’s approach. And of course that often gets me into trouble, because once I’ve succeeded in explaining both of them, I can no longer know who is right. That’s the problem, the ailment, of the yeshiva analyst—that he doesn’t know how to decide. There’s a dispute between Maimonides and Rashba. This is a law relating to the person, that is a law relating to the object, and he explains this baraita one way and that Mishnah another way, and he explains everything beautifully. Okay, now you ask me who is right? What is Jewish law? What do you mean, who is right? He explains it as a law relating to the person and he explains it as a law relating to the object. Rashba and Maimonides were able to decide precisely because they were not conscious of their own logic, so it seemed to them: this is what’s correct, and therefore I rule this way. Rashba thought this was correct, so he ruled that way. I come along and try to conceptualize what Maimonides thought, what Rashba thought. And I’m left basically in a position where I don’t know how to decide. Each one has his own logic, and here there are two logics, both of which hold water—a phenomenon that I think anyone who has engaged in this kind of learning knows. By the way, a lot of people think that the Briskers—who often do analyze the different approaches—but what also characterizes Brisk is that they’re stringent like all the approaches. They were very strict, following all the approaches. There’s that story about the rabbi of Brisk, the son of Rabbi Chaim, what’s called the Griz—they once saw him drinking water outside the sukkah. It says in the Shulchan Arukh that a pious person should be stringent and not even drink water outside the sukkah. They said to him: “You, of all people, are one of the strictest—how are you drinking water outside the sukkah?” He said: “I’m stringent? I was never stringent about anything in my life. When there is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim), I do everything in order to fulfill the obligation according to all the medieval authorities (Rishonim). But if something is, from the outset, defined as a stringency, why should I do it? I’m not on that level. I only need to fulfill the obligation according to all the views, so I’m strict. But that’s not called being stringent; I want to make sure I’ve fulfilled my obligation. Being stringent means doing something I’m not required to do—that I don’t do, I’m not on that level; I do only what I’m obligated to do.” Okay, a nice distinction. Which basically means that it’s not true that the Briskers are stringent. They’re not stringent; they simply want to fulfill the obligation according to all the views. Why? Some think it’s because they are very God-fearing—maybe that’s also true—but I don’t think that’s the fundamental reason. The fundamental reason is that they don’t know how to decide. They don’t know how to say this one is right and that one is wrong. Because they’re analysts, they have excellent analytical ability, and this analytic mode of Talmudic study basically developed in Brisk. Okay? They have excellent analytical ability, so they’ll explain to you the dispute between Maimonides and Rashba in magnificent detail, with a wonderful logical structure that resolves all the difficulties and everything. Okay, and now who is right? I don’t know—each according to his own approach; each has terrific logic. If you look intuitively, you say: wait, Rashba makes sense, Maimonides makes less sense, so I hold like Rashba. But once you set each thing on its logical machinery, on its logical foundations, then you basically arrive at a kind of postmodern narrative situation: each one has his own narrative. He has this discourse, he has that discourse, and you can’t determine who is right. Okay, very often a very strong analytical ability comes at the expense of decisiveness. The difference between a yeshiva head and a halakhic decisor is exactly that. A halakhic decisor has the ability to decide, and therefore when you read books by halakhic decisors you’ll see that they are much less analytical. They don’t know how to construct the kinds of structures that yeshiva heads usually construct—the analytical, Talmudic dissection. Halakhic decisors are less analytical in that sense. But because of that they succeed in deciding. The yeshiva head, who knows how to analyze the topic and set each approach on its proper footing, ends up with both of them seeming very logical—so who is right? He doesn’t know how to decide. That’s the legendary story about Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, the founder of the new analytic method, who was the rabbi of the city of Brisk. People would come to ask him questions in Jewish law, and he would say: ask Rabbi Simcha Zelig the judge—why are you coming to me? Once he sent a question to Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan, who was the greatest halakhic decisor of Kovno—Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor was the greatest halakhic decisor of that period in Kovno. So Rabbi Chaim sent him a question and said: answer me only yes or no, with no reasoning. If you give me reasoning, I’ll give you ten reasons against it. Just answer yes or no. Meaning, he trusted Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan’s decision, but not his reasoning. If Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan tries to do the analytic work, that I know how to do better than he does. Which means that the decision does not depend on the analysis; it works the other way around. First of all you make the decision, afterward the analyst comes and analyzes how you arrived at that decision. Anyone who thinks a halakhic decisor arrives at a ruling from his analytic Talmudic dissection doesn’t understand the material. That’s not how it works. A halakhic decisor arrives at a ruling because that’s what his intuition says—that’s what his intuition tells him. Afterward an analyst can come and analyze why the halakhic decisor arrived at that ruling. Then he’ll present a structure that justifies it, that explains it: law relating to the person, law relating to the object, here, there, two laws, all kinds of things like that. Okay, but that comes afterward. Exactly like philosophy of science. The scientist first of all does the work, and then the philosopher comes and explains what he did. But the philosopher doesn’t guide him in how to do what he does. Okay? The same thing in the world of Talmudic analysis. There’s an interesting debate in this context. There was once, in the journal HaMaayan, a Torah journal, a very interesting exchange of letters between Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner—the one who founded the Talmudic Encyclopedia—and the Seridei Eish, Rabbi Yechiel Weinberg. Rabbi Yechiel Weinberg had the soul of a researcher. He also has scholarly articles. So he argued that Rabbi Chaim didn’t really understand Maimonides. Meaning, Rabbi Chaim’s book is on Maimonides, right? Chiddushei Rabbi Chaim HaLevi is on Maimonides, okay? So Rabbi Chaim basically analyzes Maimonides and explains what his mode of thinking really was and what his dispute with the Raavad was and all sorts of things of that kind. So he says: come on, Maimonides didn’t think that way and never dreamed of such things, and obviously Rabbi Chaim isn’t really Maimonides. It’s Rabbi Chaim—I appreciate him greatly—that’s Rabbi Chaim’s view, and don’t tell me it’s Maimonides; it’s not Maimonides. Okay? It’s like the famous yeshiva joke: Maimonides arrives at the academy on high, the yeshiva up above, and he sees people debating his words. He says to them: wait, but I meant this, not that. So they say: what does this Sephardi know about Maimonides? Well, yes, those are jokes you’re not allowed to tell today, never mind. But the point is that no one relates to Maimonides himself. For us, Maimonides is a book, not a person. And if I understood Maimonides this way, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s Maimonides. Maimonides is not Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon who lived in the twelfth century; Maimonides is this book sitting in my library. And if in my analysis I arrive at a certain approach that is Maimonides’ approach, then that is Maimonides’ approach. I don’t care what Maimonides the man would say about what he intended. By the way, in yeshivot this is really so, and this is a major criticism in academia of the yeshivot: in yeshivot they really don’t take philological considerations into account, the influence of manuscripts, the influence of different schools of study, all the contextual factors that academia does use—in yeshivot they don’t. And why? Because if you want to know what Maimonides really thought in the twelfth century, you need to know his environment, manuscripts, see what he meant, what he wrote, where mistakes crept in, and so on. But if for you Maimonides is a book, then why should I care where Maimonides lived and what he thought and who influenced him? It doesn’t interest me. Maimonides is a book. Now I look at the book and discuss it according to what it says. By the way, something similar exists in contemporary legal interpretation too. It’s very common—yes, in Aharon Barak’s book on interpretation it’s laid out very well—that we are not interested in what the legislators intended. What interests us is what the law says. The law book has an independent standing. If there’s a dispute between judges, they don’t go to the legislator and ask him, tell us what you meant. It doesn’t matter. Even if he says what he meant, it doesn’t matter. The law book has a standing that rests on its own foundations. The legislator created it, and with that he finished his role and goes home. From that point on, we deal with the meaning of the law book, not with the intention of the legislator. The legislator is a person who happened to be there, and as far as I’m concerned he has no importance. He created the law book; we recognized this law book as binding on us because we chose the legislator, and so on, and from then on we discuss the question of what the law book says. In that sense, the yeshiva world is much closer to modern legal interpretation than to the academic world. Because the academic world is interested in what Maimonides thought. The academic world is engaged in archaeology, in the question of what was in the twelfth century. The yeshiva learner is super-modernist, contrary to the common image. The yeshiva learner is not interested in what happened in the twelfth century; what interests him is what Maimonides is saying to him today, here. That’s what matters to him. He’s super-modernist, okay? Even though yeshiva learning looks a bit old-fashioned and conservative and primitive, actually in its philosophy it is a very, very modernist kind of learning. So that’s why Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner argued against the Seridei Eish that he was mistaken. Meaning, when Rabbi Chaim explains Maimonides, that is Maimonides’ approach. It’s not Rabbi Chaim; it’s Maimonides’ approach. Except that if you were to ask Maimonides what he intended, or ask him to analyze his own ruling, he wouldn’t know how to do what Rabbi Chaim did, because he didn’t have Rabbi Chaim’s toolbox. The conceptual world, the logical skill—all that clearly improved over the generations. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) didn’t have all these structures. You don’t find among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) systems like those of Rabbi Akiva Eiger. And Rabbi Akiva, if he saw what Rabbi Akiva Eiger wrote, wouldn’t understand a word, yes, that’s obvious. Because it’s so complex, so sophisticated, he would have no chance; he doesn’t know that mode of thought, that conceptual world—he wouldn’t understand anything there. But everything Rabbi Akiva Eiger does is explain Rabbi Akiva—what Rabbi Akiva thought, what Rabbi Akiva’s approach was. So who is right? Rabbi Akiva Eiger is right. Rabbi Akiva Eiger is more right than Rabbi Akiva about what Rabbi Akiva thought. Why? Because he has a system of tools that conceptualizes what Rabbi Akiva did intuitively. Rabbi Akiva said: my view is such-and-such. Fine. Then Rabbi Chaim comes and asks himself—or Rabbi Akiva Eiger asks himself—wait, what does “such-and-such” mean? What stands behind it? Why did the Raavad think differently? Maimonides didn’t make such comparisons of why I think this and the Raavad thinks otherwise. He said what he thought, and that was it. But the modern learner asks himself: wait, there’s a dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad—why? What is the basic point at which Maimonides and the Raavad disagree? What is the point that leads them to their different approaches? Then you conceptualize: this is a law relating to the object, this is a law relating to the person, two laws, not two laws, all these familiar structures, and in the end you arrive at some model that explains Maimonides’ way of thinking. That doesn’t mean you have reconstructed what really passed through Maimonides’ mind at the time. It didn’t pass through there, because Maimonides didn’t know what a law relating to the object was and what a law relating to the person was and what two laws were. But you are claiming that in Maimonides’ intuition, yes, it was there. It just wasn’t formulated; it was System A, not System B. Meaning, he did it intuitively; he didn’t have the tools to conceptualize, to define—it wasn’t Aristotle. We are Aristotle. We are now taking what those before us did and conceptualizing the tools they used intuitively. And our advantage over them is that because they thought intuitively, they could sometimes say contradictory things. They could sometimes say something that doesn’t really hold water. That’s what their intuition told them, and they didn’t examine it in an orderly, systematic logical way. Once you conceptualize, you basically see: wait, a statement like this doesn’t fit with a statement like that, so something here can’t be right. Then you can correct Maimonides regarding his own approach. You can explain to Maimonides what he himself thinks, better than he himself thinks it, better than he himself understands it. Because a person doesn’t always fully understand himself. By the way, this happens every day, not only in Torah study; in general. A person states a certain position, and you can help him analyze what he thinks, and he himself will understand that he doesn’t really think that. If he isn’t sufficiently skilled in analytical thought, often it seems to him that this is what he thinks, but the truth is that when we analyze it, you’ll see—no, you don’t think that. And sometimes I understand you better than you understand yourself. Even though that sounds paternalistic.
[Speaker C] Maybe an example? Are there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Lots of examples. For instance, in the area of free will, there’s compatibilism. That’s a very common view in recent years. Compatibilism is the view that the fact that a person acts deterministically does not contradict his having free will. Because basically he does what his own system dictates to him, and that’s what it means to be free. But his system dictates it to him deterministically. It’s not that he now decides freely and could decide this way or that way—no, his condition dictates a very specific decision. But there’s nothing external forcing him, so he’s free; what he does is what he himself decided. So on the one hand it’s deterministic, on the other hand he has free will, meaning he’s free—there’s nothing preventing him or compelling him. Okay? Fine. In my view that’s a conceptual mistake. A conceptual mistake. Once you understand what free will is, you understand that this is wrong—it can’t be. He doesn’t have free will. There may be nothing external forcing him, but there are internal things forcing him, and that is still coercion; it doesn’t matter whether it’s external or internal. When you analyze this with the person, he suddenly discovers that he doesn’t believe in free will, or that he doesn’t believe in determinism—one of the two. But the two don’t fit together. You reveal to him what he himself thinks. More generally, I’ll tell you something further: whenever you present an argument that proves something, that convinces someone of something. Say you take an atheist and convince him, through some argument, that there is a God. Or the opposite, it doesn’t matter, okay? How does that persuasion work? After all, that argument is based on premises. Right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did he accept the premises beforehand too? If not, then he won’t accept them now either. What changed? How can you build on premises he doesn’t accept? So obviously, he accepted the premises beforehand as well. Fine, but logic says that from those premises this conclusion follows, so how did he not understand it earlier? Because he doesn’t have the analytical ability, and he didn’t understand that this conclusion follows from the premises he holds or subscribes to. Okay, for example, I claim that if you don’t believe in God, then in your world there is no valid morality. There cannot be valid morality without the concept of God. In my view. You can argue about that, you can explain it, I’m not getting into that right now here. But assuming I’m right, many people confuse this statement with Abraham’s statement, “Surely there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me,” which basically says that societies that don’t believe are not moral. And that’s not true. A society of non-believers can be moral; there are people who are more moral, less moral, like in any society. Okay? But their morality is not valid. Because philosophically there cannot be valid morality in a world without God. That doesn’t mean they behave immorally. It means that when they behave morally, they do it despite the fact that the norms in their worldview are not valid. They are inconsistent. So now when you confront them with this—and suppose I convinced the person that there is no valid morality without God—now he has one of two options: either to decide that in fact he believes in God, even though he thought of himself as an atheist, because the fact is that he thinks there is valid morality, and there is no valid morality without God, so suddenly he discovers that he believes in God even though he thought he was an atheist. Or alternatively, what do you say—no, I really am an atheist; I was mistaken, there is no valid morality. I was wrong before, I thought there was valid morality, but the answer is no, there isn’t; since I’m an atheist, then there isn’t. So I revealed to the person something that he really thought before as well, implicitly, and he wasn’t aware of it because his analytical ability was lacking. And I helped him analyze what he himself thinks and discover things there that he didn’t think were there. And every act of persuasion is like this—you have to understand that. Every act of persuasion is like this, not just in certain cases. Every time I convince you of something, that persuasion is built on basic premises. You accept the basic premises. So if I convinced you of the conclusion, that means the conclusion follows from the basic premises. Since you accept the basic premises and the conclusion follows from them, then you also thought the conclusion beforehand. So why did you think you didn’t think it? Because you were mistaken. And when I convinced you, I revealed to you what you had always thought. Yes, to reveal to someone that there is a God is really to reveal to him that he had believed in Him all along. I’m not revealing something new to him. Rather, within the premises he already accepted beforehand, the claim that there is a God is embedded in some way. He wasn’t aware of it, but really it was there. He always believed it unconsciously. Any argument you take in which one side convinced the other is an example of the examples you asked for earlier. That means you can come to Maimonides and tell him that you know what he thinks. If I introduce him to the new conceptual world and walk with him step by step and explain the conceptual framework, and then analyze the topic, he knows I’m right. Or at least it could be that he knows I’m right. Because I could be wrong—I’m not always right—but in principle it could be that I’m right even though he himself wouldn’t have put it that way. And the way you conceptualized it isn’t the way he would have conceptualized it retroactively. Right, I could be wrong and then it’s not true. But I’m saying that in principle such a situation can exist. Not that I’ll always be right and he’ll be wrong, but there can be a situation where, even though I’m telling Maimonides what he himself thinks, I’m the one who’s right and not him. There’s a very beautiful statement about this from the Sochatchover—the rebbe of Sochatchov, the Avnei Nezer—no, sorry, from Rabbi Kook. When the Sochatchover passed away, Rabbi Kook sent a letter to his great-grandchildren. Maybe his grandchildren, or his son, I think. So he sent a condolence letter to his descendants, and he wrote there as follows: it is said about Rabbi Eliezer that he never said anything he had not heard from his teacher—Rabbi Eliezer the Great. Everything he said was something he heard from his teacher, transmitted to him by tradition. But elsewhere it says that he said things that no ear had ever heard. So how can that be reconciled? If he never said anything he had not heard from his teacher, then how did he say things no ear had ever heard? He said: he heard from his teacher things that no ear had ever heard. And I would add: including his teacher’s ear. His teacher himself also didn’t truly understand what was contained in what he said. And I think that anyone who has experienced studying with a rabbi, in Talmudic topics or elsewhere, has experienced this. For example, the lecturer I studied under in Bnei Brak, in some yeshiva in Bnei Brak—I think I learned from him most of the foundation on which I build to this day. Nothing I say agrees with what he says. More than that: the things he said, I explain differently from how he himself would have explained them—what he said—and I think I’m right and not him. Because I have analytical tools that he doesn’t. That’s what I think. I may be wrong, that’s always possible. But the claim is that I understand him in a way that, in my view, is more correct than the way he understands himself. Because he is inside the story; he isn’t aware of the possibilities for analysis. He simply thinks what he thinks. But I try to analyze, to define from the outside. Very often—you know, at the beginning of scientific anthropology there was a major methodological debate. Margaret Mead’s teacher—I forgot his name—the professor who practically created anthropology. Margaret Mead—Coming of Age in Samoa, you know the book? An anthropologist. There there was a debate about how an anthropologist ought to behave. Should an anthropologist live inside the Indian tribe he is studying, in order to experience things from within and then understand better the cast of mind, how the whole thing works? Or the opposite—to sit on the mountaintop and document objectively what they say, what they think, what happens as a result, what is done and not done, without asking them, without engaging, preserving scientific objectivity? There are two sides here. Neither is simple; both contain truth. And the question is whether you can manage to do both things—that’s very difficult. To live from within, but also preserve some sort of objectivity that lets you look at it coldly. As if you weren’t inside, and then you can conceptualize it, analyze it, compare it to other tribes. Someone who lives inside the story doesn’t know how to compare it to other tribes; for him this is reality—there are no other tribes, this is just how it works. So it’s all the same thing. The same thing, by the way, in halakhic ruling. There are two schools in halakhic ruling. There is one school that gives the advantage to someone inside the situation, because he understands it from within. And there is a school that gives the advantage to someone outside, because he is not biased; he looks at the situation objectively and can arrive at an objective answer, a correct answer, one that doesn’t depend. Yes, the model of the Council of Torah Sages in politics as against the members of Knesset, okay? What is it built on? On the idea that strategic decisions are made by people who are not in the Knesset and do not know what is happening in the Knesset. The Knesset members will come to them, give them the information, and the decision will be made there—in the residence in Bnei Brak. Okay? Why? Because if the Knesset members make the decision, it will be biased, it will be incorrect. They are inside the story; beyond interests, they also lack the outside, objective perspective. Meaning, let’s think for a second what this story really means. You can’t see the forest for the trees; when you’re inside the forest, you don’t see that you’re in a forest. You have to sit outside and see all the trees, and then understand that there’s a forest here. Okay, two schools, and in each one there is truth. Meaning, the question is whether you can combine them. That’s not so easy, but maybe it’s possible. So that’s regarding the importance of conceptualization. Moving on. There is a view—yes, the basic building block of Brisker-style analysis is conceptualization. Like in science, by the way. When I explain scientific phenomena, I usually explain them within a theory, and in a theory there are theoretical entities, there are principles, laws of nature, and then from the entities and laws of nature I can try to explain the phenomena I see in the world. Okay? That is, a scientific theory requires some sort of conceptualization. You need to define the phenomena you see, to understand that this is velocity and this is place, and that there is a connection between velocity and place and force and acceleration and all kinds of things of that sort. Someone who is inside the world experiences velocity, acceleration, force, all of it, but he doesn’t know these concepts at all, and certainly not the connection between them. Okay? So basically, in order to do scientific work in the scientific context, or analytic-Torah work in the Torah context, you need to do some kind of abstraction and conceptualization and generalization. And I constantly make the analogy between scientific work and analytic-Torah work because they’re very similar. Okay. Then the question is: why is it important to do this conceptualization and generalization? You can ask the same question about science. Why is it important to do scientific research? Some people will tell you that if you know the law of nature, you can know or explain all the phenomena. The law of nature is a tool: if you know it—it’s the general law—then you can explain all the phenomena. You know the law of gravity, so you know why the earth attracts objects with mass, you know why the moon revolves around the earth, you know why there are tides—a lot of phenomena that apparently have no connection between them, you can explain because you discovered the general law of nature. Okay. That outlook basically sees the laws of nature as having instrumental value—they are a means to explain all the phenomena. That is usually a technological outlook. I want the laws of nature in order to apply them, build devices, explain phenomena, all sorts of things like that. A scientist usually does not look at it that way. A scientist looks at it in the opposite direction. My goal is to know the general laws of nature, the general natural phenomena. The phenomena, the events, the specific cases that I see in the world, for me they are a means by which to define the laws of nature. Because if I see the phenomena, through that I can understand what laws govern them. You do experiments in order to refute a theory, not refute a theory, and so on. But the events and particular cases are instruments, while my goal is knowledge of the laws of nature. That is the scientific outlook. The technological outlook is the opposite. It wants to know the laws of nature in order to explain all the cases. Say if you had told Rabbi Ovadia all the Jewish laws in all the situations that could exist on earth, then he wouldn’t engage in analytic Torah study. Because you don’t need analytic study; he already knows the answers to all the halakhic questions. What’s the problem? You engage in analysis, engage a bit, but the reason he engaged in analysis was because it is a tool by means of which you can provide the Jewish law for all sorts of situations. By contrast, the yeshiva analysts—the pilpulim that Rabbi Ovadia looked down on a bit—they look at it the other way around. For them, the Jewish laws or the specific cases regarding which I determine that the law is this way or that way—those are only cases that serve me in formulating the analytical laws. The Torah’s laws of nature, the general analytical laws. And my goal is to know the analytical laws, not to know how to issue a halakhic ruling in every situation. What is the ultimate goal? For example, to cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He, because these laws are some kind of expression of Him, His garments if you want to call it that, or something like that. So the path—the goal of study—is really to cleave to the Holy One, blessed be He. And the way to do that is to know the rules from which all the particular cases I deal with are derived. Okay? Think, for example, there is a midrash that when Moses went up on high to receive the Torah—it says on the Sabbath, for example, he went up on high to receive the Torah—then the angels said: “What is one born of woman doing among us?” What is he doing here at all? Why on earth are You giving him the Torah? they say to the Holy One, blessed be He. A midrashic tale, of course, but what is this midrash saying? Why are You giving him the Torah? So the Holy One, blessed be He, said: Hold on to My throne of glory and answer them. Then Moses gathers strength and asks them: Tell me, do you have father and mother, that you need honoring of father and mother? Do you murder, that you need the prohibition of “You shall not murder”? Do you eat, so that the laws of forbidden foods apply to you, or various other things like that? The Torah isn’t relevant to you. A wonderful answer, right? The big question is: what did the angels think—didn’t they understand that? They were occupied with Torah until that point and didn’t want the Torah to descend to earth. What were they occupied with? Honoring parents? Forbidden foods? What were they occupied with? Again, I’m not saying the angels study Torah and that this midrash is a historical story that happened. But this midrash is coming to teach something. It is coming to teach that Torah is not the collection of laws we know—not even the 613 commandments, if you like. Torah is some kind of set of ideas, a collection of abstract ideas, whose realization happens in captives and thieves and liars and courts and impurity and purity and all kinds of things like that. But in essence we are speaking about a collection of very, very abstract ideas, and the cases or the laws are only realizations of the abstract principles. The angels were occupied with the abstract principles—or with realizations in their world, I don’t care which way you put it. The realizations in our world, obviously, they were not dealing with; that is irrelevant. But they were dealing with Torah. Torah is not honoring parents and it is not keeping the Sabbath. Torah is a collection of abstract ideas, of which honoring parents and keeping the Sabbath are expressions; they are their expression in our world. There is a book by a German professor of philosophy named—I forgot his name—the book is called Zen in the Art of Archery. And this book came about in the early twentieth century. He went to visit a friend of his on sabbatical in Tokyo, and there there was a Japanese professor of law who was his friend. He visited him for a sabbatical year, and he asked him to study Zen, to connect him to some Zen master who would teach him. Fine, so he connected him to someone. He came to the Zen master, and the meetings with this Zen master are what gave rise to the book. The book is an attempt to explain Zen to a Western ear, okay—Zen Buddhism. So in the first meeting, I remember, he asks him—the master asks him: Tell me, what do you want to learn—fencing, wrestling, target shooting, or flower arranging? Now he said, none of those, none of those, none of those—I want to learn Zen. He said, yes, yes, but flower arranging, wrestling, fencing, or target shooting—which context? Then he understood that really you can learn the very same thing, the abstract principle of Zen, through flower arranging, through shooting with bow and arrow, through wrestling, or maybe there are other things, okay? But in all those planes you learn the same thing. It’s the same thing. You learn certain structures whose various realizations can appear in different places—remember the logic. Now Zen, that is the claim there, is the abstract principle. I always teach you through the realizations. We spoke about learning mathematics bottom-up and not top-down. You have to begin with the realizations, see how one arranges flowers, how one does target shooting with a bow and arrow. That too was fascinating in the book—he tells there that his master would shoot with bow and arrow at a very small target from—I don’t know—maybe a hundred meters away, without even looking. He would shoot and hit dead center. When was this book? Early twentieth century. He would hit dead center. Meaning, there is some kind of ability there for which bow and arrow are only an expression. He is not learning bow-and-arrow shooting. He is developing certain mental and spiritual capacities that can find expression in bow and arrow, in flower arranging, in whatever you want. The way to reach those abstract ideas is through the disciplines; you can’t learn abstract ideas as such. You arrive at them through their various realizations. But really your goal is not the realizations; it is the abstract ideas. Okay, and the same thing here. When we study honoring father and mother, keeping the Sabbath, and so on, really those are the laws, that is the flower arranging. But through that I want to understand modes of perspective, modes of analysis, and that is what is called analytic Torah study. To try to extract from this patterns of thought, general forms of perspective, like Aristotle did with logic. Okay, and that is really the goal of analytic Torah study. The goal of analytic Torah study is to engage in logic as a field of inquiry in its own right, not to use logic in order to be a better jurist or a better biologist. No, I want to be a logician. A logician is someone who is expert in logical rules, in logical thinking. That can serve you as a biologist, as a jurist, as a physicist, but that is not my goal. My goal is logic as an end in itself—exactly as it was for Aristotle. Same thing here. The analytic-Torah approach, the ideology of analytic Torah study—not the analytic mode of thought, but the ideology of analytic Torah study—is an ideology that sees analytic Torah study as a goal and not as an instrument. Analytic study exposes the forms of thought, the forms of relation, out of the cases. Therefore, for example, the analyst is not troubled in the least that he is dealing with oxen and cows and all sorts of things he has never seen in his life. They always say that Rabbi Chaim removed the frying pans from the kitchen. When he dealt with the laws of prohibition and permission, there are laws of a frying pan and laws of a pot and I don’t know what, but he doesn’t know what a frying pan is, what a frying pan looks like, or what the difference is between it and a pot. He never visited a kitchen in his life. But he knows that a frying pan is a kind of construct that is used with oil and works like this and has such-and-such halakhic rules and such-and-such halakhic rules. He has no idea what it looks like. But it is an abstract construct, and this construct has such-and-such halakhic properties. And as far as he was concerned, he was engaged in the abstract structures. The frying pans and pots are a matter for halakhic decisors; they need to know what a frying pan is, what a pot is, and accordingly decide how to apply the principled rules to frying pans and pots. But I’m interested in the principled rules, not in the frying pans and pots. Okay? So the ideology of analytic Torah study, as distinct from the methodology of analytic Torah study. Methodology is how analytic Torah study works. I’m asking why we do analytic Torah study. That is the ideology of analytic Torah study. That ideology sees analytic Torah study as a goal and not as an auxiliary means so that we can issue rulings better in more cases. Exactly like a scientist versus a technologist. A scientist wants the laws of nature not as a means of understanding more and more phenomena. The technologist uses the laws of nature to explain more and more phenomena. The scientist uses the phenomena to extract from them the law of nature. He cannot reach the law of nature directly; you need the phenomena, the observation, in order to see it. Okay? And I’m a physicist, so I always remember our attitude toward experimentalists: disgusting, a laboratory—who needs a laboratory in physics? Physics is beautiful abstract thought, and the laboratory only gets in the way; things never work there. It’s just annoying. Which is of course a somewhat childish or naïve outlook, but ideologically that is exactly the outlook of a scientific researcher. You need the laboratory, because without it you can invent whatever laws you want, but those are not the laws of nature. Okay? So you need the laboratory, but the laboratory is a means to understand the law, not that the law is a means to explain more and more laboratory experiments. And the same with analytic Torah study. The ideology of analytic Torah study is basically that analytic Torah study is the goal, and not a means. In this context, maybe one more introduction. Usually in the yeshiva world there is some tension between the conception and what is actually done. What do I mean? In yeshivot, for instance, they usually study until noon—or until after noon—they study in-depth analysis, analytic Torah study, and after that they study other things, I don’t know, broad coverage or whatever, and there is a section of the day dedicated to the study of Jewish law. In law study they learn Mishnah Berurah, Shulchan Arukh, I don’t know, tractate Kelim, whatever. Now this is a very problematic approach. It is very problematic because the goal of analytic Torah study, in the end, is to arrive at—when they say to derive the Talmudic discussion in accordance with the Jewish law, yes, you need to study in order to arrive at a halakhic conclusion—they do not mean that you should study in-depth analysis and say whatever you want there, and afterward study Mishnah Berurah and then know the law. That is not called deriving the Talmudic discussion in accordance with the Jewish law. Deriving the Talmudic discussion in accordance with the Jewish law means that your Talmudic discussion, your analytic study, should lead you to a halakhic conclusion. With all the difficulty involved, as we said—that someone who is a good analyst finds it hard to decide, hard to reach a halakhic conclusion—but basically that’s what you are supposed to do. Therefore the kind of study that should exist is study of the topic in depth all the way to the end, proper analysis, ending with a conclusion: what is correct. And that is called learning Jewish law. Learning Jewish law is just the last five minutes of in-depth study; it is not a separate session. You don’t need to study Mishnah Berurah. Mishnah Berurah is one of the commentators that you can study too, just like the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) and everything else. In the very end, you need to reach your own conclusion from your own analysis, not from what is written in the Mishnah Berurah—if you are capable of it, at least. If you are capable of it. If you are capable of it, then maybe yes—at the beginning, at least until you attain good halakhic skill—you do need to rely on books and learn Jewish law from books. But the model you are meant to aspire to is a model in which the in-depth study is what leads you to the halakhic conclusion. Therefore when they say—the Talmud says: is study greater or action greater? And the Talmud says: study is greater because it leads to action. Right? There is a dilemma whether study is greater or action is greater, and the Talmud says: study is greater because it leads to action. What does that mean? It’s paradoxical. If the value of study is instrumental, a means in order to get to action, then that means action is greater, not study. So why does the fact that study leads to action mean that study is greater? On the contrary—study serves action, so that means action is greater and study is the servant. There in the Talmud it is not clear—they deliberate whether study is greater or action is greater, and the answer is: study is greater. Why? Because it leads to action. That is the opposite of logic. I think it needs to be read differently. When you ask whether study is greater or action is greater, you are asking a dichotomous question. There is study, there is action, and the question is which is greater—studying Mishnah Berurah or doing in-depth study in the morning, which is greater? And the answer is that your mistake is the separation between study and action. Study that leads to action—that is what is greater. There is no separation. Action is the end of study. When you finish study, you should finish with a practical conclusion. And that is what is greater. Not study and not action. But notice: that does not mean that study serves action. Rather, this chain of study that leads to action is what is greater. What does that mean? Why is this chain greater? If the purpose of study were only to know what to do, then study Mishnah Berurah. In the end you need to know what to do—that is the purpose. If you say that the path also matters—study that leads to action is greater, not merely doing the correct action—that means that the purpose of study is not to arrive at knowing what to do. Rather, the proper form of study is study of a kind that ends in a practical conclusion. If it ends in a practical conclusion, that means you studied well, you studied correctly. But study is an end in itself; it is not a means in order to know what to do. Only, the form of study should be one that ends in a practical conclusion, and not to separate the morning into in-depth study and afterward half an hour of studying practical Jewish law from Mishnah Berurah. That is the meaning of the Talmudic statement. I have a few proofs for this. One proof is the stubborn and rebellious son. The Talmud says that he never existed and never will exist. So why was it taught? Why was it written? Expound it and receive reward. So Rabbi Israel Salanter asks, in an essay: do we need these three verses so that we’ll have something to learn? Have we already finished all the other verses? Have we completed all the other topics? Is the stubborn and rebellious son what’s going to provide our livelihood? If these three verses were missing, would we be unemployed? What does it mean that it was written, if it is unnecessary, just so that we can expound it and receive reward? He says: you are not reading it correctly. He says: it was written in order to teach the idea of “expound it and receive reward.” That when you study, you do not study in order to know what to do; rather, you study because study itself is a value. It is a value in itself. Learn and receive reward for the learning, not because I need to know what to do. And the proof is that here there is a whole passage that never happened, will not happen, and will never be implemented. So why is it in the Torah? Why study it? To teach you that study—and now, study even of practical topics, in principle—from the fact that there is a non-practical topic and it too is Torah, you understand that even practical topics, the study is not in order to know what to do. Study is a value in itself. Of course, the proper form of study is when the study ends in a conclusion of what to do, passes over into action. Of course you must also actually do it in practice. But study in order to know what to do—that is simply the proper form of study. Not because study is the means and knowing what to do is the goal. Another proof of this: the Shulchan Arukh brings that women are obligated in the blessing over Torah. What does that mean? Yes, in the morning we recite the blessing over Torah. Now the Magen Avraham and the Mishnah Berurah ask there: but women are exempt from the commandment of Torah study, so why do they need to recite the blessing over Torah? The assumption is that it is a commandment blessing, the blessing over Torah. And if you are exempt from the commandment, why would you recite the blessing? I think that’s incorrect—it’s not a commandment blessing, it’s a blessing of praise—but they assume it is a commandment blessing. So why do women need to bless? So they say—the Magen Avraham says, and the Mishnah Berurah copies him—that women need to study the laws that apply to them. Now this is very tricky, because he does not retract the statement—which is in the Talmud and all the halakhic decisors agree—that women are exempt from Torah study. Only men are obligated. If women are exempt from Torah study, how does that fit with the fact that they need to study the laws that apply to them? Because apparently studying the laws that apply to you is not Torah study. Studying in order to know what to do is not Torah study. That kind of study is a preparatory instrument for a commandment, an instrument without which you won’t know what to fulfill. A preparatory instrument for a commandment. Torah study is a value in itself; it is not an instrument for something else. And the proof is that women are exempt from Torah study but obligated to study in order to know what to do. That means that studying in order to know what to do is not Torah study. Simple. QED. There is a Rashi at the beginning of the portion of Bechukotai. It says there at the beginning of Bechukotai: “If you walk in My statutes, and keep My commandments, and do them.” Okay? There is a triple structure here, yes. If you walk in My statutes, keep My commandments, and do them. What is the meaning of these three things? So Rashi writes: “If you walk in My statutes”—could this mean fulfillment of the commandments? Since it says “and keep My commandments,” fulfillment of the commandments is already stated. So what do I fulfill with “if you walk in My statutes”? That you should toil in Torah. And “keep My commandments” means to fulfill the commandments. Okay? What does “walk in My statutes” mean? To fulfill commandments too, no? So what is “walk in My statutes” and “keep My commandments”? So he says: “and keep My commandments” refers to fulfillment of the commandments, so what is “if you walk in My statutes”? That you should toil in Torah. Toil in Torah—“if you walk in My statutes.” Now the next Rashi: “and keep My commandments”—toil in Torah in order to observe and fulfill, as it is said, “and you shall learn them and observe to do them.” So basically you have here the following: there is fulfillment of the commandments, there is toiling in Torah in order to observe and fulfill, and there is “that you should toil in Torah.” That is “walk in My statutes,” “keep My commandments,” and “do them.” What is the difference between these three? One of them is simply doing the commandments, not connected to study. And the other two are connected to study. One of them is study in order to fulfill, right? As he says here: toil in Torah in order to observe and fulfill. So here you have the instrumental kind of study, so that I can know what to fulfill. And “that you should toil in Torah” is study as a value in itself. Toiling in Torah means the toil of Torah itself, not in order to know what to do. Here again we see the same thing we saw earlier: that toil in Torah has value in itself; it is not a means in order to know what to do. Now what is toil in Torah? Toil in Torah is in-depth study, analytic Torah study. That is called toil in Torah. And it is not a means in order to know what to do; it is not a means in order to issue rulings. Or not only a means in order to issue rulings—it has intrinsic value. Of course it also helps me issue rulings; I also need to issue rulings according to how I studied, as I said earlier. But its value is not only the value of a means in order to know what to rule; it also has intrinsic value. And that is called “that you should toil in Torah.” Good, we’ll stop here. I haven’t even finished the introduction yet, but next time a bit more and I’ll finish it.