Talmudic Analysis – Lesson 14

Table of Contents

• From conceptual construction to halakhic ontology
• Ontology and the theory of being, and their implications for Jewish law
• The source of object-status and person-status at the beginning of Nedarim and the arrangement of the Mishnah
• The basic difficulty: are object-status and person-status just wording?
• Maimonides, Tosafot, and the distinction between a practical difference and essence
• The role of practical differences and the confrontation with logical positivism
• Examples from physics: equivalent descriptions versus true/false
• “A practical difference for a woman’s betrothal” and the source in the Ran
• An operative status in the object versus a floating norm: explaining the difference between a vow and an oath
• A vow regarding a commandment and an oath regarding a commandment according to the Ran and Ritva
• A vow and an oath with respect to one another, and the Ran on page 18
• Other Torah prohibitions: what is the default, object-status or person-status?
• Naziriteship as a possible third category
• Another interpretation: Rabbi Shimon Shkop and Avnei Nezer—the purpose of the prohibition, not metaphysics

Summary

General Overview

The text moves from the “conceptual construction” built through a group-theory model to an attempt to formulate a “yeshivish halakhic ontology” and to ask whether Jewish law describes reality or only norms. It presents the pair object-status/person-status from the passage at the beginning of tractate Nedarim, and develops the distinction between vows and dedications as a prohibition on the object, versus oaths as a prohibition on the person, while dwelling on the philosophical difficulty of how there can be an essential difference between two formulations that seem like two ways of saying the same thing. It uses the question of the need for practical differences and comparisons from philosophy and physics to show that sometimes the absence of a practical difference indicates identity of meaning, and sometimes it points to an inquiry that cannot be settled observationally. It then returns to the halakhic implications—Maimonides, Tosafot, Ran, Ritva—to suggest that the difference between a vow and an oath is connected to an operative status in reality versus a “floating” norm. Finally, it presents directions in the later authorities—Rabbi Shimon Shkop, Avnei Nezer—that interpret object-status/person-status not as a metaphysics of legal effect but as the purpose of the prohibition, and it brings the Kehillot Yaakov, who identifies a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) over whether the rest of the Torah’s prohibitions are object-status or person-status.

From conceptual construction to halakhic ontology

The text states that the conceptual construction was explained using the structure of a group, where one builds from the base all the elements of the group just as one builds derived concepts from the “root categories” of the conceptual construction. It then moves to a new question and calls it “yeshivish halakhic ontology,” based on the philosophical division into logic, metaphysics, and epistemology, and on the distinction between classification by content and classification by character. It illustrates that in Jewish law one could imagine a Shulchan Arukh organized by the character of the laws—for example, by a legal dimension or by the distinction between laws that apply to the object and laws that apply to the person.

Ontology and the theory of being, and their implications for Jewish law

The text defines ontology as the theory of being and asks what it means “to exist,” raising philosophical examples such as the problem of the subject of the sentence in claims like “the planet Mars exists” or “the morning star is the evening star.” It formulates the basic question in halakhic ontology as whether Jewish law is ontic or epistemic: does it say something about reality itself, or about the way a person ought to view reality? As a basic example it presents the distinction whether a law applies to the object or to the person, and illustrates this with a vow regarding a loaf of bread, which can be understood either as a prohibition taking effect on the loaf or as a prohibition on the person alone.

The source of object-status and person-status at the beginning of Nedarim and the arrangement of the Mishnah

The text states that the source of the pair object-status/person-status is not “Rabbi Chaim” but the Talmud on the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Nedarim: “All substitute terms for vows are like vows, and dedications are like dedications, and oaths are like oaths, and Nazirite vows are like Nazirite vows.” It explains the categories of the Book of Hafla’ah in Maimonides as things that come into effect through speech, and the question of “substitute terms” and “handles” as an inquiry into whether incomplete or irregular speech counts as speech that creates a legal effect. It presents the Talmud’s question why in tractate Nazir it says only “All substitute terms for Nazirite vows are like Nazirite vows,” whereas in Nedarim all four types are taught, and the answer that the order of the Mishnah combines classification by content—all the laws of hafla’ah—with classification by character: vows and dedications, “where he prohibits the object upon himself,” come before an oath, “where he prohibits himself from the object,” and Nazirite status appears at the end, hinting that it is not identical to vows and dedications.

The basic difficulty: are object-status and person-status just wording?

The text raises the difficulty that apparently there is no practical difference between “the object is forbidden to me” and “I am forbidden with respect to the object,” because the command is always directed at the person, and the difference seems to be only active versus passive wording. It compares this to the question why there are halakhic differences between a positive commandment and a prohibition, even though sometimes the content seems identical in positive or negative formulation. It suggests and rejects the possibility that the difference between a vow and an oath is only whether there is an “object in the game,” as opposed to an oath about an action, and emphasizes that this does not explain the laws of vows and oaths, because an oath can also relate to an object, with technical practical differences such as the need for God’s name.

Maimonides, Tosafot, and the distinction between a practical difference and essence

The text cites Maimonides, Laws of Vows chapter 3: “There are four differences between vows and expressive oaths,” including that an oath does not take effect on a matter of commandment, while vows do take effect on a matter of commandment; that an oath takes effect even on something without substance, while vows only on something with substance. It argues that the list of implications does not explain the difference but sharpens the difficulty: how can two things that seem identical behave differently? It cites Tosafot, who asks, “And what practical difference is there whether the object is prohibited upon him or he is upon the object?” and answers that if he said, “Konam that I will not eat this loaf,” he has said nothing, whereas with an oath it is the reverse. This is presented as an example of a practical difference that is not itself the essence of the distinction, but depends on understanding it.

The role of practical differences and the confrontation with logical positivism

The text presents two conceptions of the role of a practical difference: either as a didactic tool that sharpens distinctions, or as a condition for meaning according to logical positivism, according to which without a practical difference there is no difference at all, only different wording of the same claim. It describes the argument of the logical positivists—Carnap—that metaphysical claims are “pseudo-claims,” and on the other hand rejects the conclusion with examples like “the number of ants in the universe,” which has truth or falsity even without any possibility of checking it. It cites Zermelo’s theorem about chess as a mathematically proven claim for which there is no practical way to compute which of the three possibilities is correct, in order to show that there can be a real difference without the ability to decide it observationally.

Examples from physics: equivalent descriptions versus true/false

The text argues that the debate “geocentric versus heliocentric” is mainly a change of coordinate origin, and therefore the two statements are equivalent without one being “right” and the other “wrong.” It brings examples in physics of equivalence between a causal description—force—and a teleological description—minimization of potential—and presents Fermat’s principle in optics as a theorem from which the laws of geometric optics are derived. It notes that physicists tend to regard the causal description as the “correct” one and the teleological description as an anecdote, but argues that in quantum theory there is no concept of force as a fundamental description, which gives the impression that the teleological description is broader. It explains that the difficulty with a teleological description stems from the fear that it hints at a “manager” calculating an optimum, and suggests that perhaps there is an inquiry here that has a truth but cannot be scientifically decided.

“A practical difference for a woman’s betrothal” and the source in the Ran

The text presents the yeshiva joke that if there is no practical difference, people say, “There’s a practical difference for a woman’s betrothal,” and explains that this does not rescue an inquiry that has no content. It cites the Ran in Sanhedrin page 15, who asks “What practical difference does it make?” regarding the laws of “the Sinai ox,” and answers, “A practical difference for a Nazirite,” describing this as a response that shifts the discussion away from the demand for practical use toward a conceptual clarification.

An operative status in the object versus a floating norm: explaining the difference between a vow and an oath

The text suggests that the practical difference of “copying over” helps expose the distinction: with vows there is a “prohibition taking effect” in reality on the object, and therefore one can copy and transfer the effect—something from something—whereas with oaths there is nothing in reality to transfer, so there is no such copying. It formulates that a vow is a metaphysical statement about the object from which norms are derived, while an oath is a “floating” norm that speaks only to the person without changing reality. It compares this to the fact that pork is an “object of prohibition” by Torah law, whereas in a vow a person creates a prohibition status on something that was permitted.

A vow regarding a commandment and an oath regarding a commandment according to the Ran and Ritva

The text brings the case of “Konam, this sukkah is forbidden to me,” which works as a vow, while an oath “not to sit in a sukkah” does not take effect because one is already sworn from Mount Sinai. It quotes the explanation of the Ran and Ritva on page 16 that a vow takes effect because it takes effect on the object, and the sukkah itself is not obligated in the commandment; then a conflict is created between the person’s commandment and the prohibition on the object. An oath, by contrast, never begins, because it comes to prohibit the person from something that the Torah already obligated him to do. He uses this to explain Tosafot as well: a vow expressed in the language of action does not take hold because a vow requires an object on which the legal effect can “attach.”

A vow and an oath with respect to one another, and the Ran on page 18

The text cites the Ran in tractate Nedarim page 18, who says that a vow can take effect on top of an oath, while an oath cannot take effect on top of a vow. It explains that a vow can take effect because an oath is a law on the person, while a vow imposes a prohibition on the object. But an oath on top of a vow does not take effect because once the vow has taken effect there is already a prohibition on the person, and an oath does not take effect on an existing prohibition. From this it develops the understanding that an oath is conceived as a “law on the person” in the sense of a norm without an operative status on the person, not as an independent legal effect that takes hold on the person.

Other Torah prohibitions: what is the default, object-status or person-status?

The text presents the basic question whether the novelty is that vows are a law of object-status as against the rest of the Torah, which is a law of person-status, or the reverse—that oaths are the exception and all Torah prohibitions are object-status. It cites the Kehillot Yaakov on Nedarim, who presents a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim): whether most Torah prohibitions are prohibitions of object-status and oaths are exceptional, or whether most Torah prohibitions are prohibitions of person-status and vows are exceptional. It sharpens the point that the dispute also depends on what “a prohibition on the person” means: a total absence of operative legal effect, or a legal effect that takes hold on the person himself.

Naziriteship as a possible third category

The text suggests an interpretive possibility that Nazirite status is not a law of object-status like a vow, and not a floating norm like an oath, but rather an operative status on the person himself: the person “becomes a Nazirite,” and by force of that status wine and impurity become forbidden to him. It uses this to explain why in the order of the Mishnah Nazirite status is not grouped together with vows and dedications, and to show that the concept “a law on the person” can also mean a legal effect taking hold on the person as an object.

Another interpretation: Rabbi Shimon Shkop and Avnei Nezer—the purpose of the prohibition, not metaphysics

The text cites the Minchat Chinukh on commandment 30, who asks why in the case of a vow concerning a sukkah one should not say that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, and rejects an explanation of “a prohibition plus a positive commandment,” because this is “a prohibition plus a positive commandment that are subject to annulment through a halakhic request.” It cites the Nimukei Yosef, who explains, “We do not feed a person something forbidden to him,” because it is “a prohibition of object-status.” It then brings Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who objects that even so, the person’s positive commandment should override the prohibition, and therefore proposes a different interpretation of object-status/person-status as the purpose of the prohibition: a prohibition on the person is one whose purpose is to prevent damage to the person, like creeping creatures; a prohibition on the object is one whose purpose is to preserve the elevated status of the object, like consecrated offerings and misuse of sacred property. It adds Avnei Nezer, Orach Chaim 37, who formulates the difficulty this way: “In every prohibition, he is forbidden with respect to the object and the object is forbidden to him,” and resolves it by saying that object-status/person-status means whether the person “descends” to something that damages him or “approaches” something above his level. He explains that a vow resembles a sacrifice, and therefore misuse applies to konamot, whereas an oath damages the person’s own speech. It notes that the Kehillot Yaakov comments that according to the approach of “we do not feed a person something forbidden to him,” the principle that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition would collapse in cases of object-status prohibitions. From this he understands that the rest of the Torah’s prohibitions are laws on the person, and on that basis identifies a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim).

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’ve basically finished the whole issue of conceptual construction, with this description in terms of the group of representations in Kiddushin. And I tried to show that through this group structure, you can actually understand this notion of conceptual construction better. We basically build from the basis of the group, and from there we build all the elements of the group, and those are really different ways of constructing all the derivative concepts out of the root concepts—not root concepts of a “common denominator” type, but root concepts of conceptual construction.

I now want to move to another topic, and that’s a question you might call a kind of halakhic-yeshivish ontology. What is ontology? In philosophy, we divide philosophy into several areas. There’s logic—that’s the methods of inference, reasoning, the patterns of logical and philosophical arguments. There’s metaphysics, which deals with reality itself, but not reality as we perceive it with our eyes—that’s the concern of science—but rather the structures of reality, or how we look at entities that exist. What does it even mean to exist? That kind of conceptual clarification—that’s metaphysics.

There’s epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge: how we know the world, how we learn claims or insights about the world. That’s epistemology. And then there are specific fields that use all these general areas I just described and apply them to subject matters that differ from one another in content, not in character. What I just did was a threefold division according to character. Meaning, there’s logic, there’s epistemology, and there’s metaphysics.

Now I can apply that, say, to ethics, and then it’s called ethics, which is a field in philosophy. Or political philosophy, which may be a branch of ethics but not only that, and that too is a field in philosophy. But that field is defined by its content, not by its character. Think, for example, of the way Jewish law is divided—think of the Shulchan Arukh. How is the Shulchan Arukh structured? I think I spoke about this at some point. How is it built? It’s built by dividing into topics. There are laws of the Sabbath, laws of Jewish holidays, honoring parents, forbidden foods, meat and milk, and so on. The division is by subject matter.

You could have made a different kind of Shulchan Arukh, as it were—one divided according to the character of the laws under discussion. The character of the laws under discussion could be, for example, like Maimonides when he speaks about mishpatim. What are mishpatim? There are many topics inside that category, but what they all share is the legal dimension of Jewish law. But you could go even more abstract and talk about all laws that are laws in the object rather than laws in the person. Now that can apply across all areas of Jewish law, okay? So that’s a division according to the character of the laws; it’s not connected to the content of the laws. Okay? So philosophy also makes these kinds of divisions.

Now, the field called metaphysics has a branch called ontology. Ontology, translated into Hebrew, is the theory of being. What exists? What kinds of things exist? What does it mean to exist, to be real? How is that different, for example, from merely describing things? Is describing something and saying that it exists the same thing? Is existence just one of its features? That doesn’t really seem right, because a feature of what? Of the thing itself, which you’re characterizing—but if it doesn’t exist yet, then what? What is the subject of the sentence when you say, “The planet Mars exists”? What is the subject of that sentence? As long as you don’t know that it exists, then seemingly there is no subject for the sentence—so who are you talking about?

A similar question in philosophy—and this is already analytic philosophy—comes up, for example, with: the morning star is the evening star. You know there were two stars that people once thought were two different stars, until they discovered that it was really the same star. In the morning you see it and call it the morning star, and in the evening when you see it you call it the evening star. But it’s really the same star, it’s just seen differently in the morning and evening, and so people thought they were two different stars. When you say “the morning star is the evening star,” what is the subject of the sentence? That star is that star? That I already know. That’s also a problem, right?

You could say: “the morning star” means the star referred to by the name “morning star” is the same star referred to by the name “evening star.” Then the subject isn’t the star but our concept, and the referent of this concept is the same referent—or pointer—as that other concept of ours. Okay? In short, there are lots and lots of philosophical contortions around these things. So that’s what has to do with the theory of being.

Now I really want to touch a bit on halakhic ontology, on the theory of being in Jewish law. And I think the most fundamental question in halakhic ontology—and of course it’s a yeshivish conceptual question, it just isn’t called that in the study hall—but when you look at it from a wider angle, the way I’m trying to do in this series, that’s really what it is. For example, people ask whether a certain law is a law in the object or a law in the person. What does that mean, a law in the object or a law in the person?

Simply put, the question is whether there’s something there in reality itself, or whether it’s just a norm imposed on me—permitted, forbidden, obligated—that speaks to me and has nothing to do with reality itself. Obviously, say I’m forbidden to eat a loaf of bread because I took a vow. What does it mean to say that’s a law in the object? It means that the loaf itself has something in it, some kind of prohibition, ostensibly. I’ll still talk about this, but ostensibly. And that’s an ontological statement, right? There is something in reality, a legal status of prohibition resting on that loaf. On the other hand, if I say it’s a law in the person, that means: I am forbidden to eat this loaf. I haven’t said anything about the loaf; I’ve said something about me. I am forbidden to eat the loaf. Okay? So that’s a law in the person.

So this is really the question whether Jewish law is ontic or epistemic. Meaning: does Jewish law say things about reality, or does Jewish law say things about how I’m supposed to view reality? And those are not claims about reality itself. Okay? So that, for example, is maybe the most fundamental question in the ontology of Jewish law. Is there even such a thing as an ontology of Jewish law? Or what is the difference between laws that have an ontological basis and laws that are, let’s call them, floating norms—norms not anchored in something in reality itself? Okay? So that’s a topic, maybe the most foundational topic in the ontology of Jewish law, the metaphysics of Jewish law. So I want to touch a bit on that.

I’ll start, maybe, with the source of these ideas. The source of these ideas, yes? Object and person. I’ll start with the concepts of object and person, because they appear in the Talmud and we know them from the yeshivish conceptual world, but afterward I’ll move on to a concept like legal effect—halot—and what these things really mean in their philosophical-ontological sense. So I’ll begin with object and person.

The basic source for this pair of concepts is of course not Rabbi Chaim, but the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Nedarim. The Mishnah says this: “All substitute terms for vows are like vows, and dedications are like dedications, and oaths are like oaths, and naziriteships are like naziriteships,” and so on. “One who says to his fellow, ‘I am prohibited to you’…” and so on, it doesn’t matter, the continuation is less important here. So basically there are four categories here: vows, dedications, oaths, and naziriteship. And all these categories belong to what Maimonides calls the Book of Hafla’ah. What is hafla’ah? “When a man clearly utters a vow.” What does it mean to clearly utter? To speak, right? Hafla’ah means speech. The Book of Hafla’ah is the book of things that take effect through speech: an oath, a vow, a dedication, naziriteship, and the like.

Now in all these things, speech is required; explicit verbalization is required. What happens if the speech isn’t complete or isn’t in the regular form? In another language, or even in a completely invented language—but the intention is clear, even though the language is made up. Is that okay? Does that count as speech, since in the end we understand what’s meant? Or not?

So the Talmud defines in this context two concepts: yadot and substitutes. We won’t get into the details at all. Here it’s talking about substitutes. Yadot means partial speech, and substitutes—there’s a dispute in the Talmud what exactly substitutes are; let’s say it’s a language devised by the Sages, it doesn’t matter. The Sages defined certain terms as a kind of language for vows. Okay? The question is whether that counts as speaking, as having fulfilled the requirement that one must speak in order for the vow to take effect, to be valid. So the Mishnah says yes: substitutes are like speaking, in all four categories.

Now when you look at the parallel Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Nazir—this is at the beginning of Nedarim—at the beginning of tractate Nazir it says: “All substitute terms for naziriteship are like naziriteship.” And that’s it. Dedications, vows, oaths—it doesn’t mention them. Only naziriteship. Why? So the Talmud there in Nedarim, after the Mishnah we saw above, asks exactly that: “All substitute terms for vows are like vows. Why is it that regarding Nazir it does not teach all of them, and why is it that regarding Nedarim it does teach all of them?” In Nedarim we saw all four kinds, but in the Mishnah of Nazir only naziriteship appears. Why? Either don’t mention them at all, or mention all of them—why only this? Or mention only vows, and in tractate Dedications they’ll speak about dedications, I don’t know. Anyway, oaths have a tractate. That’s what the Talmud asks.

So the Talmud answers: because vow and oath are written next to each other in the Torah, it teaches two. Since vow and oath appear together in the Torah, when the Mishnah talks about substitute terms for vows it also wants to speak about substitute terms for oaths. The Talmud continues: and once it taught two, it taught all of them. Once they already said both vows and oaths, they went on and included dedications and naziriteship too—the four things.

The Talmud asks: then let it teach substitute terms for oaths right after vows. After all, if the motivation is vows and oaths, and dedications and naziriteship are only dragged along after them, then I’d expect the order to be vows, oaths, dedications, and naziriteship, say—or naziriteship and dedications, it doesn’t matter—but oaths should come after vows. Why? But here, let me remind you of the Mishnah again, you see? It has vows, then dedications, then only oaths, and then naziriteship. So the Talmud says: then let it teach substitute terms for oaths after vows. It answers: since it taught vows, where the object becomes forbidden to him, it also taught dedications, where the object becomes forbidden to him—to exclude an oath, where he forbids himself from the object.

This is basically the source for Rabbi Chaim’s definitions of object and person. Of course he expands it, but this is the Talmudic source for this pair of concepts. The term “person” doesn’t appear here—not by that name—but it’s obvious there is something here contrasted with what’s called a law in the object. So we call that a law in the person. What does that mean? The Talmud says: in vows you prohibit the object to yourself; in oaths you prohibit yourself with respect to the object. So there is a difference here; these are two kinds of laws.

Remember the classification by kinds of laws rather than by contents? So vows—if we had, say, a book dealing with laws that are laws in the object—only vows would appear there, not oaths. When the classification is by content, then in the same Book of Hafla’ah both the laws of vows and the laws of oaths appear, because in terms of content they’re the same content. So it’s all a matter of classification. So the Talmud here says that the Mishnah reflects both classifications. That is, first of all it brings all the laws of hafla’ah, but the internal order within the laws of hafla’ah is arranged according to the character of the laws. First come laws in the object—what’s that? Vows and dedications. Dedications are also a law in the object; the object is forbidden to you by the dedication. Okay? After that come oaths, which are a law in the person. You prohibit yourself with respect to the thing. At the end comes naziriteship. That’s just interesting. The Talmud doesn’t say what naziriteship is. But if you continue this line of thought, then it’s pretty clear that naziriteship is not a law in the object. Because if it were a law in the object, it should have appeared as vows, dedications, naziriteship, and finally oaths. But the Talmud says: vows, dedications, oaths, and then naziriteship. So naziriteship is perhaps like oaths, or maybe even a third category. But it certainly isn’t like vows and dedications.

Although you should note: in the Talmud and in the Mishnah, naziriteship is considered a kind of vow. It’s a specific type of vow—a person who vows naziriteship. Fine. But in terms of the order here in the Mishnah, it seems not to be so. In terms of the kind of law, naziriteship is not a specific type of vow; it’s something else, standing on its own. Not for nothing is there a tractate Nazir—it’s not just a chapter in tractate Nedarim. There is a tractate Nazir; it’s something else. What is it? We’ll see later.

For now, then, we have a distinction between laws in the object and laws in the person. Laws in the object are vows and dedications. Laws in the person are oaths. And naziriteship is something else that we’ll discuss later. What is the difference between laws in the object and laws in the person? First of all, in the Talmud itself there are no practical ramifications given. Notice: when the Talmud brings this distinction, on the face of it it isn’t even clear how there could be a practical ramification at all. What’s the difference between saying that the object is forbidden to me and saying that I am forbidden to eat the object? Isn’t that the same thing in different words? Are objects commanded regarding commandments? What does that have to do with anything? There’s no command directed at an object. The command is always directed at the person. So what difference does it make whether you say it from the angle of the person—“the person is forbidden to eat the object”—or from the angle of the object—“the object is forbidden to be eaten by the person”? It’s the same thing phrased in active or passive language. We only changed the subject of the sentence, but the content of the sentence is the same content.

So why does the Talmud define this as two types of commandments or prohibitions? It’s not two types, just two formulations of the Torah. But not two types. Last semester, I think—if I remember correctly—I spoke about the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. And there too we ran into a similar phenomenon. What’s the difference between saying that you have a positive commandment to wear tefillin and saying that you have a prohibition against being without tefillin? They’re telling you the same thing, just through a double negative that cancels itself out, you come back to being obligated to wear tefillin, right? So what is the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment? After all, if I said “you are forbidden to be without tefillin,” that would be a prohibition. Not the commandment to wear tefillin, but a prohibition against being without tefillin. If they tell you “put on tefillin,” that’s a positive commandment. But the content of those two verses is the same content. Only the formulation is different. So why does the same content, when phrased in two different ways, have a different halakhic status? A positive commandment overrides a prohibition; for a positive commandment one spends up to a fifth of his assets, for a prohibition one spends all his assets, and so on. There are other differences too. Human dignity overrides a positive commandment but not a prohibition. There are differences between a positive commandment and a prohibition. There is punishment for a prohibition, not for a positive commandment. Okay? How can it be that two verses that are formulated differently but have exactly the same content end up having different legal consequences? Seemingly I’d expect the consequences to follow from the content, not from the formulation. The formulation only expresses the content. But if the formulation doesn’t express a different content, only the very same content, I wouldn’t expect there to be practical differences between the two formulations of the two verses.

There I explained the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. Here, ostensibly, it’s the same thing. You could say that vows are oaths that speak about objects. Say, if I swear not to eat an object, that’s called a vow. Because there is a particular thing here that is what is forbidden to me. Okay? But if I swear to travel to Jerusalem, that’s an oath. It’s not a vow, because there is no object here that I’m talking about. It’s an oath to perform an action. It’s not something that concerns a particular object. So maybe that’s the difference in content. It’s not really a metaphysical or ontological difference like I said before. It’s not that here there’s some reality and there there isn’t. Here it’s in the object and there it isn’t. The question is just whether there is an object in the game or not, that’s all. But it’s not really a difference in terms of how the whole thing works. It’s just that when vows speak about specific objects, it’s a vow; when they speak about actions, it’s an oath. That’s all. But really it’s the same thing. That’s one possibility.

But then it comes out that I can’t swear not to eat an object. If I swear not to eat an object, I’ve really vowed, not sworn. A practical difference, for example: in an oath you need the Divine Name. Fine? There are practical differences between a vow and an oath. So apparently that’s not it. Apparently there is some difference here that is a difference in the character of the law, not just in what it speaks about—whether it speaks about something involving an object or it speaks about an action—but some other difference, a substantive difference, between a vow and an oath.

The truth is that the medieval authorities already struggled somewhat with these things. I’ll bring you Maimonides, who sums the matter up. Maimonides, Laws of Vows, chapter 3, at the beginning of chapter 3: “There are four matters in vows that are not in an uttered oath: in an uttered oath, one oath does not take effect upon another oath, whereas in vows, one vow can take effect upon another vow. One who extends by analogy from an oath is exempt, while in vows he is liable.” Extending by analogy means: I don’t vow not to benefit from this bag, but say that this thing is already under a vow, forbidden for me to benefit from, and I say “this is like that,” and I transfer the prohibition from there to here. That’s called extension by analogy. It’s simply another way to impose a vow.

“An uttered oath takes effect only regarding optional matters, whereas vows take effect regarding matters of commandment just as they do regarding optional matters.” For example, if I vow against a sukkah, even though I have a commandment to sit in the sukkah, it takes effect. But if I swear not to sit in the sukkah, it does not take effect. An oath does not take effect concerning a commanded matter. A vow does. “An uttered oath takes effect on something tangible and on something intangible, whereas vows take effect only on something tangible.” That relates to the earlier distinction I tried to suggest—that maybe the issue is about what you’re talking about, whether it’s an object or an action—but that’s only one of the differences, or a result of the differences; it isn’t really the difference itself.

But understand: none of these things explains anything. Because when I ask what the difference is between a vow and an oath, you can’t tell me that one takes effect on a commanded matter and the other doesn’t. Why? They’re both the same thing, aren’t they? So showing me consequences only intensifies the difficulty. How can it be that two things that are identical have different halakhic consequences? What’s written here in Maimonides is not an answer—it’s only an indication that apparently there is a difference. And when I ask what the difference is, those cannot be the answer. What are you going to tell me—that this is a law in the object and that is a law in the person? We’re back to what I said before. What is a law in the object? It means I am forbidden to eat it. So what difference does it make whether you formulate that in active or passive language? It’s the same thing. So if it’s the same thing, I don’t understand all the differences Maimonides lists here. Two things that are the same, and yet they behave differently: this one takes effect on optional matters, this one also on commanded matters; this one takes effect on something intangible, that one only on something tangible. Why? If it’s the same thing. What’s the difference? Where do the consequences come from?

That’s why, a lot of times, when people ask what the difference is between X and Y, people bring practical ramifications. But to ask what the difference is is not to ask what the practical ramification is. “What practical difference does it make?” you ask only after you know what the difference is. Then you ask: okay, so what’s the practical difference? But when you ask what the difference is, you still don’t know what the difference is—so why are you bringing practical ramifications? They won’t help me at all. Maybe they’ll give me hints about the difference, but by themselves they do not constitute the difference.

Yes, I spoke before—if I remember correctly, maybe even this semester—about the practical differences between “permitted” and “overridden” regarding the Sabbath. I said there are none, no practical differences between “permitted” and “overridden.” Okay? Even there, maybe I can understand, try to understand, what the difference is between the two sides, but I don’t think there is any practical ramification of that difference. And someone once suggested one to me, and I don’t remember what it was, maybe there is something. On my website I could look it up. But in the straightforward sense there is no practical ramification. There I understand the difference, and there is no practical ramification. In a place where I don’t understand the difference, practical ramifications won’t help me. Okay? The question is: what is the difference?

And look at Tosafot, for example. Tosafot says: “And if you should ask, what practical difference is there whether he forbids the object upon himself or himself with respect to the object?” What difference is there whether he forbids the object to himself or forbids himself regarding the object? “One can say that the relevance is this: if he were to say, ‘Konam that I will not eat a loaf,’ he has said nothing.” And similarly, regarding an oath, the opposite. If someone says, “Konam that I will not eat a loaf”—konam is the language of a vow—that means nothing. Because what is this? That konam is coming to forbid an action. You can’t forbid an action with konam. If you want to forbid an action, that’s by an oath: “I swear I won’t eat this loaf.” Konam is to impose something on the object, to say: this object is prohibited for me. As a result, of course, I also won’t eat it. But if you’re relating to the action as such, that must be an oath and not a vow. In the language of a vow, if you vow about an action, you have said nothing. That’s what Tosafot says.

But again, that doesn’t help us. It assumes there is a difference because this is in the object and that isn’t, and it asks what the practical ramification is. I’m not asking what the practical ramification is; I’m asking what the difference is. Once I understand the difference, then you can explain the practical ramifications. What is the difference?

Now, on the question of practical ramifications, let me make a comment. The question of practical ramifications in Jewish law is an interesting one. Yes, this is part of the whole issue—part of learning what conceptual analysis is. An inseparable part of conceptual learning is the practical ramification. You make an inquiry, say two possibilities, and immediately you ask: what practical difference does it make? Give me a case where according to this side of the inquiry the law will be one way, and according to the other side it will be different. A practical ramification.

Why do we need practical ramifications? There are two possibilities—yes, I have an inquiry—why do we need practical ramifications? There are two possible answers to the question what the practical difference is between two formulations like these. One possibility is to say that practical ramifications help sharpen the difference; they have a didactic purpose. Meaning, if there is a practical ramification, then I understand the difference between the two sides of the inquiry better. When we see the difference play out, it sharpens what exactly the two sides here are. As long as you haven’t brought practical ramifications, you may not really understand whether there is a difference and what the difference is.

A more extreme position, logical positivism, basically claims that if there is no practical ramification, then you’re saying the same thing in two different sets of words. Meaning, the practical ramification isn’t needed in order to sharpen the difference; if there is no practical ramification, there is no difference. The claim is that if you don’t show me some way or situation in which I can detect the difference between the two claims, then you’re basically saying the same claim in different words. If they are two different claims, there must be some practical difference between them.

Now, you can take this to very extreme places. For example, the logical positivists argued that the claim “there is God” is just empty talk. Not that it’s false—neither false nor true—you haven’t said anything. Because whether there is or isn’t God, you have no way to measure and verify whether that is true or false. How would you decide? What happens differently in the world if there is God or if there isn’t God? Not even our observance of commandments—forget the world—because our observance of commandments doesn’t depend on whether there is or isn’t God, but on whether we believe there is or isn’t God. I’m asking what practical difference it makes that there is God, not that we believe there is God. That’s not the same thing. Okay? There is no practical ramification, in that sense, to whether there is or isn’t God. There is no experiment you can do now to verify or falsify it. There isn’t one. So they argued that all metaphysical claims—in Carnap’s formulation—are pseudo-statements. They aren’t statements at all. They’re collections of words that sound like statements but don’t actually say anything.

Now that’s extreme. It’s extreme because it’s obvious to me that there is a difference between the claim that there is God and the claim that there isn’t God. So what if I can’t measure it? Who said that things have to be measurable scientifically in order to have meaning? If they have no scientific practical ramification, that doesn’t mean you said the same thing in the logical sense. It may mean you won’t succeed in deciding it, perhaps. And even that isn’t certain. But the fact that you can’t decide doesn’t mean the two sides are the same thing—you just don’t know how to decide. That’s all. You don’t have the tools to decide.

Take an example: someone says that the number of ants in the universe right now is one hundred billion and two. Fine? One hundred billion and two. Now either that statement is true or it isn’t true. We have no way to check it. There is absolutely no way to check how many ants there are at this very moment in the universe—in the whole universe. No way. Does that make the statement meaningless? A pseudo-statement? Is saying yes and saying no the same thing? Of course not. Obviously there is a correct answer. I just don’t know how to measure it or reach the answer. But there is a correct answer: either yes or no; I just don’t know.

That reminds me—you know in game theory there’s a theorem called Zermelo’s theorem. Zermelo’s theorem speaks about games of the chess type. There are several characteristics of the game that define it, and in those characteristics it resembles chess. All games in that family—and that includes almost all the games you know, not all but many—Zermelo’s theorem says: either White wins, or Black wins, or it’s a draw. Well, for that you don’t need Zermelo; I know that too: either White wins, or Black wins, or it’s a draw. What does the theorem actually mean? Exactly. It’s not that in every game either White will win or Black will win or there will be a draw. The claim is about strategies in a game like chess. Either there is a strategy by which White can force a win, or there is a strategy by which Black can force a win, or a forced win is impossible for either side. It doesn’t have to end in a draw, but it could. Meaning, neither side has a winning strategy. Okay? Those are the three possibilities.

Now that’s already a nontrivial theorem. Maybe there could be a situation where, who knows, maybe there is a strategy, maybe there isn’t, maybe there isn’t some fixed global solution. Fine? Who said there is even a globally optimal strategy? Okay? So that theorem is already nontrivial, yes? Now, the theorem says that one of the three possibilities is true, but it doesn’t say which one. And we also have no way to know which one, not even with computers—at least not for now. It’s too big for any computer to check. In principle a computer could check it, but it’s too long; you can’t do it with a computer, at least not for now. So what? Does that make the question meaningless? Here you have a mathematical theorem proving it, and still no way to check. Fine, but I know that such a strategy exists—I know it, I have a mathematical proof. Okay? I can’t measure it, can’t inspect it, can’t arrive at it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Does my inability to get to something mean it doesn’t exist? If I have a locked safe and inside it there is a diamond, does that mean there is no diamond inside because I have no way to open the safe? Very strange claim.

Anyway, this need for practical ramifications—yes, that’s the question whether it is merely to sharpen the sides or whether it is really to say there isn’t one. Now note well: I am not a positivist. It is obvious to me that even without a practical ramification there can still be different meaning in the two sides of the inquiry. One thing is important, though: sometimes it really is a mistake. Sometimes there really is no difference between the two sides of the inquiry. If there is a practical ramification, then obviously there is a difference. If there is no practical ramification, it may be that there is no difference. A positivist will say: certainly there is no difference. I say: no, but it may be that there is no difference. And therefore a practical ramification has an important role, because it helps us first of all verify that there is a difference, and maybe also gives us some indication of what the difference is. Okay? And in that sense I am a little bit of a positivist. Meaning, it is important to look for practical ramifications, because without that it may be that you’re terribly convinced there are two sides here—but think again.

For example, I’ll give you an example of things that sound like two sides and in my view they aren’t two sides at all—they say the same thing in different words. It’s common to say that Copernicus changed the picture—what’s it called?—the Earth-centered one, the one where the Earth is at the center; I forgot the term—geocentric, yes, exactly—and replaced it with the heliocentric picture. Meaning, before him people thought the Earth was at the center, and after him they concluded that the sun is at the center and everything revolves around it. And of course people write articles and examples and philosophers and scientists all explain how Copernicus taught us, and how the primitive stupid religious people who think the Earth is at the center and the sun revolves around them are totally outdated, and all sorts of things of that kind.

And what is the truth? The truth is that of course this is nonsense. There is no difference at all between those two claims. The whole question is simply where you place the origin of the coordinate system. If you put the origin at the Earth, then the sun revolves around the Earth. If you put the origin at the sun—careful not to get burned—then the Earth revolves around the sun. Purely a matter of definition. There is no correct or incorrect answer here. Well, this is related a bit to Mach’s principle, for those who know other things, but I won’t get into that here. At least on the kinematic level, the simple level, there is no correct answer. These are two statements that are exactly the same statement. So what did Copernicus innovate? He found a coordinate system in which it is more convenient to describe the situation. That’s all. It’s simply a system in which all the heavenly bodies revolve around one center—an ellipse, not a circle, but never mind—there is one center for all the revolutions. And if you take the Earth as the center, things come out much more complicated. The sun revolves around it, but the other planets make very complicated motions. But that doesn’t matter; it’s just translation between coordinate systems. All he did was find a more convenient coordinate system. He did not find any real physical claim that was more correct, nor did he refute an incorrect physical claim. It’s simply nonsense.

Okay? So here is an example of debates that move mountains—people argue to this day with great passion whether Copernicus was right or the Torah was right or the New Testament was right or this or that religious view was right, and they slander each other as stupid and so on—and it’s all just empty chatter, because they are saying exactly the same thing. There is no difference at all.

It’s like, for example, the same kind of claim about—I’m dwelling on this because it’s important for conceptual analysis, to understand what a practical ramification is. Something else just popped into my head and I forgot it. Yes. In physics, for example—actually I taught this again today. In physics, for example, there are descriptions of the laws of physics that are different descriptions but equivalent to the descriptions we usually know. For example, think about a ball sitting at the top of a mountain. It will roll downward. Why does it roll downward? First description: because there is a gravitational force pulling it downward. That’s the causal description. There is a teleological description: the ball wants to minimize its potential energy. It strives to minimize its potential energy. Therefore it goes down to the lowest place available. These are two equivalent descriptions. The force is the gradient of the potential. You can move from one to the other. So who is right? Neither is right. They are simply two ways of describing the same thing.

Think about two coordinate systems, Cartesian coordinates and polar coordinates, for describing a point on the two-dimensional plane. Who is right? What does “who is right” mean? It’s like describing the same thing in Hebrew and in English. They are just two languages. There is no “right” or “wrong” here. Two languages for describing the same thing. Okay? Here too, these are two languages for describing the same thing. By the way, in all of physics it’s almost always like that. There is Lagrangian mechanics, which is teleological mechanics. It defines trajectories not in a causal way—there’s a force, so acceleration develops, or something like that—but rather: no, the body moves in such a way as to minimize some quantity. Fine, it doesn’t matter right now what quantity, but it strives to minimize something. Think maybe of minimizing energy, or potential energy like I spoke about earlier as a special case. Okay? That’s how it moves.

You understand that this is a teleological description. The body “wants” to minimize; it calculates what will bring it the optimal result, and then chooses to go in that direction. By contrast, the causal description says the body doesn’t think and doesn’t decide and doesn’t deliberate. If you kick it, it flies. If a force acts on it, it moves, it accelerates. Okay? These are two forms of description, and they are entirely equivalent. There is a mathematical proof: they are completely equivalent.

In optics, for example, perhaps this is the most famous case, there is Fermat’s principle. Do you know Fermat’s principle in optics? Geometrical optics is basically light rays. I actually spoke about this today in another class too; I don’t remember why it came up. There is a light ray moving along, and say I pass from air into water, then it refracts, the angle bends. That’s called Snell’s law. Snell’s law states that the ratio between the refractive indices of the two media—air and water—determines the ratio between the angles. Okay? The angles of propagation. So there is refraction. But there is another way to describe geometrical optics: light always chooses the shortest path. That is completely equivalent to all the laws of geometrical optics. You can prove it. All the laws of geometrical optics are derived from that statement. It’s the same thing; it’s saying the same thing.

But you understand that when I say—think of, say, here there is sand and here there is sea. Let’s say here there is sea, fine? And here there is sand. Okay? Now there is some dear yeshiva student drowning here, and here stands a lifeguard who has to reach him by the shortest route. So if there were no boundary line here, the shortest route would simply be straight, right? But since on land he runs faster than he swims, obviously the optimal solution will be some route like this roughly. You’ll try to do as much of the route on land as possible and as little as possible in the sea. Not literally all the way to the edge because then it comes out inefficient. There is some point where it is most optimal. The route is the shortest—the route here meaning in terms of time, the time is the shortest to arrive. That gives you Snell’s law. Meaning, the refractive index of this medium and of that medium is simply the running speed here versus the speed here, and that determines the refraction; that’s Snell’s law.

In short, if the light starts here and gets there, the moment I say “it wants to get there in minimal time,” I have given you all of geometrical optics in half a sentence. And it’s the same thing, totally equivalent; there is a proof. That’s called Fermat’s principle. So who is right? The description that the light hits the water and then refracts is a causal description: it hits the water and that bends its motion. This other description is teleological: the light weighs things, calculates which route will take the least time, and chooses that route. Or free choice. Okay? So who is right? I don’t know—they are completely equivalent. Does that mean there are no practical differences, that is, between the two descriptions? Yes—that’s what “completely equivalent” means. Does that mean these are two different descriptions of the same thing, or are these two different descriptions even though there is no practical difference, but one is true and the other false? What do we say, from a positivist point of view, about these parallel descriptions?

If you ask physicists, physicists will usually answer you—at least in my experience—that the causal description is the correct one, and the teleological description is an anecdote. It’s an anecdote. Light doesn’t make calculations and choose. Light is driven because something acts on it and then it responds. Fine? Or a stone, or whatever— inanimate objects. Inanimate objects don’t deliberate and don’t do optimizations. They respond to things acting on them. Therefore ordinary physicists will tell you: obviously the causal description is the right one, and it is an interesting mathematical anecdote that the teleological description is an equivalent formulation, so you can use it too because sometimes it’s convenient. But not that it is actually true; what is true is the causal description.

Okay? But there is one problem. Once I gave a seminar here in physics—I came from Yeruham after I had left this place, and I came and gave them a seminar on this. I told them that there is a field in physics in which we have only a teleological description, no causal description. In quantum theory. In quantum theory—never mind the details, I won’t get into them—but in quantum theory the description of motion is teleological, via potential. There is no force; the concept of force does not exist in quantum theory. There is a well-known paper by Feynman trying to define force in quantum theory by such a route—meaning to define the potential and derive it and from there reach force—but it doesn’t appear in quantum theory. There is only a teleological description and not a causal one. That is, ostensibly, an indication that if I have to choose between the two descriptions, then in fact the teleological description is the correct one and the causal description is the anecdote. In certain fields there is an interesting anecdote that the causal description also works, not only the teleological one. But the teleological description is present everywhere. In all physics there are teleological descriptions. Causal descriptions only exist for some parts of it. So they are not symmetrical. On the contrary, if I had to decide, I would decide that the teleological description is the correct one and the causal description—where it exists in some fields—is the anecdote.

Why don’t people think that? First of all, most people are not even aware of it—that the teleological description is actually broader than the causal description; they are not equivalent. People don’t notice that potential is a teleological description and force is a causal description, but that’s how it is. Physicists are not philosophers, so that’s a problem. Meaning, very often there are philosophical blind spots. Why do they say this? As I said earlier, because a teleological description sounds inappropriate for an inanimate object. An inanimate object does not make calculations, do optimizations, and decide which route to follow based on optimization considerations. But of course that’s not what is being claimed. Nobody is claiming that an electron or light has consciousness, makes a calculation, and chooses the optimal trajectory. What is being claimed is that the description of its physics is a teleological description. No one is entering the question of what goes on inside the electron, in its consciousness; it doesn’t have one—or at least there is no indication it has one. This description does not claim it has consciousness. It claims that the system operates teleologically.

Take Aristotle, for example. Aristotle’s science was teleological. Meaning, when he says, say, why does a stone fall downward—not because there is a force pulling it as we explain today, but because it strives to return to its place of origin. The stone is made of earth, so it strives to return to its place of origin. Fire, for example—why does it rise upward? Because fire is spiritual, it has no mass, so it strives to go upward. Okay? So these are teleological descriptions. But obviously Aristotle did not mean that fire has awareness and performs deliberation—or the stone. I don’t know, I haven’t researched Aristotle, but it is obvious to me that he did not mean that. He simply chose this description for the laws of nature.

Now naturally you ask yourself: fine, if the stone doesn’t have that, then who is doing all these optimal calculations, this optimization? And then one reaches a somewhat awkward conclusion: that maybe there is someone or something managing things here. And it is what causes things to move optimally according to certain criteria, in order to optimize some quantity. The one doing the calculation is not the stone and not the fire, but when you speak in teleological terms, it does seem like the product of someone’s deliberation. So if it’s not the stone and not the fire, then who is it? Whoever manages them. But scientists or physicists often do not like that conclusion. And I think, at least subconsciously, that is what causes them to ignore the facts. And the facts are that everything has a teleological description, but not everything has a causal one, and yet they say causality is the correct one and teleology is an anecdote.

Now I ask: is there something here— is there a “correct” and “incorrect” here? Or since there is no practical ramification, are you really saying the same thing in two different languages? Are you saying the same thing? And does the lack of practical difference here mean there is no inquiry at all? Or does the lack of practical difference only mean that the inquiry exists but cannot be decided scientifically? For example, if we were to discover by metaphysical tools that there is God and that He manages things here in some teleological way, then we’ve decided this inquiry. But of course you can’t do that scientifically, because there is no scientific way to reach the conclusion that there is or isn’t God. That is not a question exposed or accessible to observational scientific tools. Okay? But that does not mean there is no answer to it. Just as there is an answer to the question whether there is God, there is an answer to the question whether He manages the world teleologically—meaning, whether He causes stones and light and fire and so on to move in a teleological way or not.

The fact that we have a causal description is a nice anecdote in some areas, again not in all of them. But the truth is that things are run teleologically. I tend to think that there is a correct and incorrect answer here. There is a correct and incorrect answer, and the proof is that not everywhere is there a causal description. Some things have only a teleological description. The fact that I can’t decide it with observational tools means this inquiry will not be decided by scientific observational tools, but that does not mean there is no inquiry. It does not mean there are not two sides here. Okay? So here is an example, unlike Copernicus, where in my view that really is just two languages—there is no correct and incorrect there. Here, at least to the best of my understanding, there is a correct and incorrect answer. It’s just that it cannot be decided because there is no practical ramification.

So here is an example of two inquiries, both of which have no practical difference. In the first, that means there is no inquiry at all. In the second, it means there is an inquiry but I have no way to decide it scientifically. In Jewish law too it’s like that. There are cases where you say the same thing in two different forms, but really you said the same thing. There is no practical difference, and not by accident. There is no practical difference because you said the same thing. Or not—in some cases there happens to be no practical difference, but you still did not say the same thing. It remains an inquiry; you just won’t succeed in deciding it through practical ramifications. A practical ramification is the scientific experiment or scientific observation in the halakhic analogy. So there are two possibilities, and both exist.

You know, in yeshivot they often say: you make some inquiry, there are two possibilities. Your study partner asks, “What practical difference does it make?” And you answer him, “A practical difference in betrothing a woman,” right? In betrothing a woman. What do they mean? “Permitted” and “overridden,” fine? The question is whether the Sabbath is permitted in the face of saving life or overridden in the face of saving life. And what practical difference does it make? There is no practical difference, as we saw earlier. Fine—so: a practical difference in betrothing a woman. What does that mean? If I betroth a woman on condition that the Sabbath is permitted in the face of saving life, the question is whether the woman is betrothed or not. Because if the Sabbath is overridden, then she is not betrothed. If the Sabbath is permitted, then she is betrothed. So there you go, there is a practical ramification.

What do you say—does that practical ramification rescue the inquiry? Obviously not, right? In “permitted” and “overridden,” you could at least imagine that maybe there is no inquiry at all, not just that there is no practical ramification. Maybe you’re simply saying the same thing in two forms. That is possible. I’m not sure, but it’s possible. And still, that won’t stop someone from generating this “practical difference in betrothing a woman.” Why? Because that practical difference in betrothing a woman is like those differences Maimonides listed between a vow and an oath. Once there is a difference, you can say there are all kinds of consequences, practical ramifications, but those consequences do not define the difference. You can generate a difference that is a product of the difference in wording, even though it’s only wording, only word order. The different formulations say the same content, have the same meaning, and yet there will still be an artificial practical ramification of this sort.

Just as an anecdote, there is actually a source for this business of “a practical difference in betrothing a woman.” There is a Ran in Sanhedrin on 15a. The Talmud there asks: regarding the Sinai ox, by how many judges? The ox, after all, was forbidden to approach the mountain. The flock and cattle too—“let not the flocks or herds graze facing that mountain.” And if the ox approaches the mountain, it has to be killed. The Talmud asks: how many judges sat to judge the case of the ox that went up onto Mount Sinai, such that the ox is killed? This comes there in the context of “as the owner’s death, so the ox’s death.” The execution of a person requires twenty-three judges. Does the execution of the ox also require twenty-three judges, or not?

So the Ran asks there: what practical difference does it make? What happened, happened. What was, was. What practical difference does it make? I don’t know whether there even was an ox that went up or didn’t go up, but even if there was—it was and it died. What practical difference does it make? He says: the practical difference is for a nazirite. If someone vows naziriteship based on the assumption that the Sinai ox required twenty-three judges, the question is whether he is a nazirite or not. So that Ran is, I think, the source of the yeshiva joke about “a practical difference in betrothing a woman.” I found it elsewhere too, but I think the other place is less strong. It’s clear to me that the Ran was joking here, obviously. Fine, you want to understand the idea there. There’s no practical difference? So, a practical difference for a nazirite. What do I care now? Leave me alone, stop bothering me—that’s really what he means. Don’t bother me now; what are you looking for a practical ramification for? Fine, a practical difference in—whatever—in betrothing a woman, for a nazirite. I’m asking you a question: how was that Sinai ox supposed to be judged? Does “as the owner’s death, so the ox’s death” mean it requires twenty-three, or not, and it requires three? Good question. It has implications—not for our day, because what happened, happened—but it is a very clear question and one can certainly discuss it according to the principles of Jewish law and reach conclusions. So why should I care what practical difference it makes? Okay?

That’s basically saying: there is a good inquiry here. When people ask “what practical difference does it make?” intending to say there is no inquiry here at all, then you won’t answer “a practical difference in betrothing a woman.” If they ask “what practical difference does it make?” but the inquiry exists and only there is no practical application, fine—“a practical difference in betrothing a woman.” It’s interesting to discuss what the truth is, not in order to apply it in some situation; there is no practical implementation. Fine, then “a practical difference in betrothing a woman.”

Now let me return to our matter. As for the consequences, I brought Maimonides’ summary of the consequences. I’ll focus on one of them, because I think it will help us sharpen the issue. Maybe one more as well. One consequence is that extension by analogy doesn’t work in an oath. In a vow, extension by analogy does work. I explained earlier what extension by analogy in a vow is: say this object is forbidden because I vowed against benefiting from it, and now I want also to vow concerning this. So I can also vow regarding this: “This phone is forbidden to me like a konam.” Second possibility: I can say “this is like that,” meaning transfer the prohibition from there to here. That’s called extension by analogy. Okay? Now extension by analogy exists in vows. Maimonides says: but not in oaths. In oaths there is no extension by analogy. Why not?

I said that practical ramifications are not the answer to the question what the difference is. They are derivatives of the difference. But because they are derivatives of the difference, they can still give me an indication. The indication is that apparently—and this is the accepted understanding of the difference between a law in the object and a law in the person—in a law in the object it means that a legal status of prohibition rests on the object. That is a metaphysical claim. To say that I am forbidden to eat the object is a normative claim. What is permitted and forbidden—that deals with permission, obligation, and prohibition. But to say that the object is forbidden to me is a metaphysical claim that has normative consequences. Do you see the difference? Meaning, first of all I am saying there is something in reality on this object, something resting on the object. The object has changed. The moment I vowed against benefiting from this object, something in it changed. In the object. Before I even discuss the legal consequences, first of all that’s the reality. Metaphysically, something happened here. As a result, I am forbidden to benefit from this object.

By contrast, in an oath, if I swear not to eat from the object—“to eat” is an action—then if I swear to eat or not to eat from the object, no legal status rests on the object, nothing happened to the object. A prohibition or obligation or command is imposed on me to eat or not to eat. That’s a normative statement. It has no metaphysical basis. In vows, the vow has a metaphysical basis from which the norms are derived. In oaths, these are floating norms. Norms not based on a metaphysical state, but norms floating in the air. Here I’m calling them floating norms.

If so, it’s quite clear why extension by analogy exists in a vow and not in an oath. Because what is extension by analogy in a vow? Taking the legal effect from this object and transferring it to that object. Unlike an ordinary vow, which creates a legal effect out of nothing, extension by analogy transfers a legal effect from something that already exists. It transfers it from here—or copies it, not transfers it, because it remains there too—and you can copy it or extend it to here as well. But of course that only works if there is a legal effect in the object. If I swear not to use this bag, and now I want to swear not to use this phone, I can’t say “this is like that” and transfer the legal effect from here to there, because there is no legal effect. There is a prohibition on me. There is nothing in reality that you can transfer from one place to another. In order to extend by analogy, there has to be something in reality that you take from here and extend there. If there is nothing in reality, you cannot extend prohibitions by analogy. You can create a new prohibition; you cannot take an existing prohibition and pass it along, because the prohibition is not a reality. The prohibition is a statement about what is permitted and forbidden to me. There is no thing here that I take and move from place to place.

So that helps us sharpen things. Now this is no longer merely a practical ramification. It is a practical ramification that helps us understand what the difference really is. There is a difference between saying the object is forbidden to me and saying that I am forbidden with respect to the object. What is the difference? On the face of it, if I understand everything as norms, then there is no difference. In both cases I am saying that I am forbidden to eat the object. One time I say it from the point of view of the object, one time from the point of view of the person. But as I said before, these are not two different statements describing the same thing. They describe different things. To say the object is forbidden to me is not only to say that I am forbidden to eat it. First of all, it is to say that there is a legal status of prohibition on it. As a result, I am also forbidden to eat it. It has become an object of prohibition. With pig, it is an object of prohibition even without my imposing any legal status on it. In a vow, the vow takes effect on things that are otherwise permitted—a loaf of bread. So if I prohibit it to myself, I myself have created a legal status of prohibition. That is the novelty of the section dealing with vows: one can create a legal status of prohibition on a thing. As a result, of course, it will be forbidden to me. Pig is forbidden to me because it is forbidden; I did not create the status of prohibition there. Maybe the Torah did—about that we’ll speak later.

If so, there is a metaphysical difference between a vow and an oath. Not a halakhic difference—the halakhic differences are derivatives of this difference. First of all, there is a metaphysical difference. A vow introduces something into metaphysical reality itself. An oath has nothing to do with reality. An oath speaks to human beings, not to reality. A vow creates a change in reality itself, and that has normative, halakhic consequences for the person. And those are consequences of the fact that there is a vow. They are not the essence of the vow itself.

Another consequence that can be explained this way is that a vow takes effect on a matter of commandment and on an optional matter, while an oath takes effect only on an optional matter. What does that mean? As I said before, for example, the Mishnah and then Talmud in Nedarim 16. What happens if a person prohibits the sukkah to himself? There is a commandment to sit in the sukkah—on Sukkot, obviously—and he prohibits the sukkah to himself by a vow: “This sukkah is forbidden to me like a konam.” There is no other sukkah around; the festival of Sukkot has arrived, and this is the only sukkah there is. And he says, “This sukkah is forbidden to me like a konam.” Does the vow take effect? The answer is yes, the vow takes effect, and now automatically he cannot sit in the sukkah, because he prohibited the sukkah to himself; the sukkah is an object of prohibition. What happens if the person swears not to sit in the sukkah? That does not take effect. One oath does not take effect upon another, and he is already sworn from Mount Sinai. Why? What’s the difference? He is already sworn from Mount Sinai to sit in the sukkah as well. Why does the vow take effect regarding sitting in the sukkah, while the oath does not take effect regarding sitting in the sukkah?

So the Ran and the Ritva and other medieval authorities on 16a explain that a vow is a legal effect that takes hold on the object. So when I prohibit the sukkah to myself—the sukkah, as we know, is not itself obligated in commandments—then if I prohibit the sukkah to myself, there is nothing to stop that legal effect. The sukkah becomes prohibited. Once it is prohibited, now a conflict is created. I am obligated to sit in the sukkah, but in reality there is already a legal status of prohibition on the sukkah. It is forbidden to me. Yes? I can’t sit there. In an oath, I am not creating a legal status of prohibition in reality. It does nothing in reality. All it does is prohibit me from sitting in the sukkah. But you cannot prohibit me from doing something that the Torah obligates me to do. I am already obligated in the commandment—my obligations will not let you act. If I swear not to sit in the sukkah, I can’t, because I am already sworn to do the opposite. The Torah told me to sit there. So that oath cannot take effect. But if I prohibit the sukkah to myself, there is no commandment on the sukkah that I sit in it. The commandment is on me. That has nothing to do with legal effects on the sukkah. If I impose a legal status of prohibition on the sukkah, that status will take effect. Now a conflict will automatically arise, because now there is a prohibition and on the other hand I have a commandment. What do we do? A clash. In an oath, no clash is created because the second oath never gets off the ground. You cannot swear about something when I am already sworn to do the opposite. In a vow, it doesn’t clash with my obligation—the vow takes effect on the sukkah. The result clashes with my obligation, because now a prohibition has been created and on the other hand I have a commandment.

So here are two consequences that appear in Maimonides—two out of the consequences Maimonides lists—that explain what the difference is. Now you can go back to Tosafot and all the other consequences and see that those practical ramifications really are good practical ramifications. What Tosafot said, for example, that if someone vows not to eat a particular loaf of bread, Tosafot says that does not take effect. Why doesn’t it take effect? Because to vow not to eat is to vow about an action. But a vow must take effect, must impose a legal effect, on an object. Not on an action. An action is not a tangible thing; you cannot impose legal effects on actions. Okay? And on an object you need to impose a legal effect, but here you didn’t impose a legal effect on an object—you prohibited an action to yourself. Therefore, if you swore, then it would take effect and you would be forbidden to eat the thing. But if you vowed, then you simply did not say the right kind of thing. You cannot impose a vow as long as there is no object in which the legal effect is anchored, right?

So now we understand that what Tosafot says is not just some random practical ramification “for betrothing a woman.” Once we understand the difference between a vow and an oath, then clearly even the technical difference, this derivative Tosafot mentioned, gains meaning. Now it’s clear why you can’t express a vow in the language of an oath or vice versa: because if you vow in the language of an oath, then you swore—you didn’t vow. But to swear about an object doesn’t help, and to vow about an action also doesn’t help. Okay? All the practical ramifications gain meaning once I understand the real difference. Meaning, the practical ramifications don’t tell me what the difference is, but they can hint to me, or give me some indication of, what the difference might be.

Now let’s try to think for a moment: what about the rest of the Torah’s prohibitions? So we understood what a vow is and what an oath is, and we also understood that there really is a difference here—it’s not just two formulations of the same thing. What about the rest of the Torah’s prohibitions? The prohibition of pig, creeping creatures, impurity, whatever you want. Are those too laws in the object, or are they laws in the person?

Basically the question is this. We know that oaths are person-based, laws in the person, and vows are laws in the object. Which one is the novelty? Is the novelty in vows—that there we have a law in the object—because all of Torah is laws in the person, including oaths, and in vows the novelty is that these are laws in the object? Or the opposite: all of Torah, including vows, is laws in the object, and in oaths the novelty is that these are laws in the person. What is the default? What would I have thought had the Talmud not told me that a vow is in the object and an oath is in the person? I would have thought it is like the rest of Torah’s laws. But what are the rest of Torah’s laws?

So the Kehillot Yaakov in Nedarim says this is a dispute among the medieval authorities. There are authorities who maintain that an oath is the exception: all the Torah’s laws are in the object, all the Torah’s laws where there is an object, obviously. All of Torah’s laws—for example dietary prohibitions or impurity and things like that—are laws in the object. And a vow is like that too; the novelty is in oaths, where it is a law in the person. And there are authorities who claim the opposite: all of Torah’s laws are laws in the person, and vows are the novelty—that specifically vows are laws in the object.