Analytical Talmudic Thinking – Lesson 16

Table of Contents

• Law in the object and law in the person
• Ownership as a legal effect, and implications that are not rights
• A slave delayed in receiving a bill of emancipation, Pnei Yehoshua, and compensation for bodily injury
• Prohibition of benefit, a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and “a lion crouching on it”
• Conditions, “on condition that” and “if,” and an epistemic approach
• Logical determinism and the distinction between logical status and fact
• Rabbi Shimon Shkop against the epistemic approach to conditions
• Conditions as an ontic process: generating, not revealing
• Vows, something that can become permitted, and annulment retroactively
• Going back in time, retroactively from now on, and the status of the religious court
• A legal effect as an entity and duplication: “divorced and not divorced”
• Dominant and recessive law, and rulings without doubt
• A doubtful Jew, doubtful non-Jew as a pathological example

Summary

General Overview

The text draws a distinction between law in the object and law in the person, and argues that in the halakhic world, norms are not the starting point but rather the result of a meta-legal reality that takes place in the world, such as the legal effect of ownership or the legal effect of prohibition. It illustrates that ownership in Jewish law is not merely a label for legal rights but a bond that generates a wide variety of consequences, and at times the monetary rights do not exist even though the bond remains. It then presents the laws of conditions and the tension between an “epistemic” conception of a condition as revealing information and an “ontic” conception in which fulfillment of the condition generates a halakhic reality, bringing proofs from Rabbi Shimon Shkop against the epistemic approach. From this it develops the claim that a legal effect is an abstract “entity” that can appear in duplicate, making it possible to speak of parallel legal effects even when the normative status itself cannot tolerate contradiction, and it concludes with the example of a doubtful Jew, doubtful non-Jew, where a pathology is created of two opposite dominant laws.

Law in the object and law in the person

This distinction presents law in the object as a situation in which “something happens in the world,” and from that obligations and prohibitions for the person follow, whereas law in the person is a “floating norm” that speaks only about what is permitted, forbidden, or obligatory with respect to the person, without claiming that reality itself has changed. A vow is presented as an example of law in the object because a prohibition takes effect on the thing itself, and from that the person becomes forbidden to derive benefit from it or to eat it; the prohibition begins with the object and not with a norm directed at the person. The claim is that in ordinary legal systems ownership is not a claim about some legal effect inhering in the thing itself, but a convention of rights and duties between people, whereas in Jewish law saying “I am the owner” means that an ownership effect rests on the object, and this is a factual claim about a metaphysical, meta-legal reality from which the rights and prohibitions are derived.

Ownership as a legal effect, and implications that are not rights

The text describes situations in which ownership exists but the usual legal consequences do not exist, or in which consequences appear that are unrelated to monetary rights. The requirement that one’s animal rest on the Sabbath is explained by saying that the animal and one’s property are the person’s “periphery,” and therefore just as he rests, so too his property rests—not because of monetary rights, but because of a meta-legal bond in which the property is “part of him.” Liability to pay for damage caused by one’s property is presented as deriving from the fact that “my property caused damage,” which obligates the person not because of negligent guarding, but because his periphery caused damage, and so “I caused the damage” and must pay.

A slave delayed in receiving a bill of emancipation, Pnei Yehoshua, and compensation for bodily injury

The text brings the case of a Canaanite slave who was declared ownerless while still delayed in receiving a bill of emancipation, where the owner has no monetary rights in the slave but the slave is still considered his acquisition. This is expressed in the rule that one who injures the slave pays the master, and that if an ox kills the slave, the owner of the ox pays the thirty-shekel fine of a slave to the master even though he is no longer the master in a monetary sense. The difficulty is formulated as follows: compensation for bodily injury is understood as compensation to the injured party, and here the injured party is the slave, yet the payment goes to the owner. Pnei Yehoshua is brought as explaining that the tort compensation goes to the owner of the damaged object; the assessment is according to the difference in value, but the recipient of the payment is the owner of the object. In this case the payment goes to the master because mastership is not exhausted by monetary rights; it is a bond that remains even when the rights have been removed.

Prohibition of benefit, a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and “a lion crouching on it”

A dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) is brought regarding whether there is ownership over things from which benefit is prohibited, such as orlah fruit that grew in one’s courtyard and is forbidden for benefit. The practical difference is tied to the rule of “it shall be yours” regarding the etrog on the first day and to the question whether others are considered thieves if they take it. According to the view that there is ownership over things from which benefit is prohibited, it seems one could prove that ownership is not identical with rights, because even though there is no possibility of use, he is still considered the owner. But the text rejects this, arguing that the rights do exist; it is just that the Torah forbids using them. The phrase “a lion crouching on it” describes a case where the thing is “essentially mine,” but there is some external blocker preventing access, so no proof can be brought from there. Declaring something ownerless, by contrast, is understood as an actual removal of rights, and therefore the case of the ownerless slave is stronger evidence that the ownership relation can exist without rights.

Conditions, “on condition that” and “if,” and an epistemic approach

The text opens with an introduction to the laws of conditions and distinguishes between a condition stated as “on condition that,” which takes effect from now, and a condition stated as “if,” which is a legal effect only after the condition is fulfilled. It describes this as retroactive versus prospective. The common conception is presented as an epistemic one, according to which in a condition of “on condition that” no change happens in reality, but only a change in knowledge—like someone who did not know whether a boy or a girl was born to him until the message arrived. A difficulty is sharpened by the fact that after thirty days one can “discover two different realities,” so it seems that the future is not merely delivering information but determining what was. The text suggests that an epistemic model could still work if “the woman is divorced” is a definitional legal status that can be defined as depending on the truth value of a future proposition rather than on the event itself.

Logical determinism and the distinction between logical status and fact

An argument for logical determinism, attributed to Aristotle through the question “will there be a sea battle tomorrow,” is brought: if a future proposition already has a truth value today, then the future is fixed. The text rejects this on the grounds that a logical argument cannot add information about reality, and distinguishes between the fact “there will be a sea battle tomorrow” and the determination of the logical status of that proposition as true, which is a definition and not an event. From this it argues that there is no problem with the future event determining the logical status of the proposition “all along,” because this is not a causal relation between events but a determination of truth value.

Rabbi Shimon Shkop against the epistemic approach to conditions

The Kuntras HaTna’im of Rabbi Shimon Shkop at the end of his novellae to tractate Gittin is cited, with a list of laws showing that the epistemic conception is incorrect. Ba’al Ha’itur is cited as saying that someone who divorced his wife on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days can, after a week, retract and cancel the bill of divorce—something impossible if the woman is “already divorced” and all that is missing is information. Maimonides is brought in the case of a bill of divorce stating, “effective from now if I do not return within twelve months,” where after one month two witnesses testify that he died. Maimonides rules that she is divorced and not a widow, but she is forbidden to remarry during the next eleven months, because the condition of not returning for twelve months has still not actually been fulfilled. Even clear knowledge that he will not come back does not replace the actual fulfillment of the condition itself.

Conditions as an ontic process: generating, not revealing

Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s conclusion is presented as follows: fulfillment of the condition causally generates the halakhic result, and non-fulfillment removes it; it does not merely reveal retroactively what had already been the case. The difference is framed as the difference between Jewish law understood as floating norms, where “divorced” is only shorthand for legal consequences, and Jewish law in which something happens in reality itself and the legal effect is a real entity in the meta-legal sense. The text describes the “miracle” by which a future event generates a present legal state through “from now on, retroactively,” and connects this to the conception that legal effects are law in the object and not merely law in the person.

Vows, something that can become permitted, and annulment retroactively

The Talmudic rule is brought that a vow is something that can become permitted, and therefore it is not nullified by majority and one is stringent in cases of doubt, just as one is stringent with anything that can become permitted, like set-aside items that will become permitted after the Sabbath. The Jerusalem Talmud asks: a vow that is annulled by a sage is uprooted retroactively, so either it was never forbidden at all, or, if he will not go to a sage, it will remain forbidden forever; in that case it is not comparable to something that becomes permitted after a period of time. The Rosh cites the Jerusalem Talmud, and Rabbi Shimon Shkop explains that annulment of vows is not merely a revelation of what was already the case, but an ontic act of uprooting that cancels the vow retroactively, such that an event on Tuesday generates a state in which “already from Sunday there was no vow,” from now on retroactively.

Going back in time, retroactively from now on, and the status of the religious court

The text rejects going back in time in a physical sense as an undefined concept, and distinguishes it from legal causality that operates retroactively. It describes a case in which a person violated a vow on Monday and it was annulled for him on Tuesday; on Wednesday the religious court does not give lashes, because from Tuesday onward Monday is seen as having been a permitted act of eating. It then raises a further difficulty: if the religious court judged the case already on Monday itself, it could properly administer lashes, and the later annulment does not turn its ruling into an error; it changes the retroactive perspective only from that later point onward.

A legal effect as an entity and duplication: “divorced and not divorced”

The claim is brought that during those thirty days of a condition stated as “on condition that,” the woman is divorced and not divorced, and the obvious logical question is asked: how can such a contradiction be possible? The answer distinguishes between contradiction in properties and the existence of two entities. The example given is that objects do not have “opposites”; opposition is a relation between properties. Salty and its opposite sweet are properties, whereas salt and sugar are entities that can exist together. From this it is argued that if one says, “there is upon her the legal effect of being a married woman and also the legal effect of being divorced,” there is no contradiction because legal effects are entities. But to say that her legal status is both divorced and married would indeed be a contradiction. This distinction makes it possible to speak of ontic duplication of legal effects alongside a normative decision that contains no contradiction.

Dominant and recessive law, and rulings without doubt

The text argues that contradictions will not exist at the normative level, and therefore in practice “the dominant law will always prevail” over the absence of a recessive law, and stresses that this is not a matter of the laws of doubt. An example is given of a case where her husband dies after a week, within the thirty-day condition period: she is permitted to marry whether she is divorced or a widow, but with respect to an ordinary priest she is ruled forbidden, because “from the side of the divorce in her” she is forbidden to a priest. The claim is that dominance is not necessarily a stringency, but a positive law that prevails over the absence of law, and in cases of commandment versus absence of commandment the same structure of decision appears.

A doubtful Jew, doubtful non-Jew as a pathological example

The Talmud in tractate Ketubot on a foundling is presented as following the majority, and the text notes that when the case is exactly fifty-fifty one enters the laws of doubt. But a problem arises regarding Torah study and Sabbath observance, because a Jew has an obligation and a non-Jew has a prohibition—that is, two opposite laws, both of which are dominant laws, and not a law versus an absence of law. It presents this as an exceptional doubt in which “both sides are dominant,” and therefore there is no simple way to choose. It brings a yeshiva joke that the solution is that he should “talk in learning,” so that it is neither Torah study nor neglect of Torah study. The discussion stops at this point as preparation for continuing next time.

In previous sessions we talked about the distinction between a law pertaining to the object and a law pertaining to the person. And the claim was that, at least according to the accepted interpretation, a law pertaining to the object means that something happens in the world, whereas a law pertaining to the person is what I called a floating norm. Meaning, it’s something that is forbidden or permitted, or something I’m obligated to do, but that says only things about me—what I must do or what I’m forbidden to do—and it’s not connected to something happening in the world. A law pertaining to the object means that something happened in the world, and as a result of what happened in the world, there are consequences for me. Say, for example, a vow, which is a law pertaining to the object: then a prohibition takes effect on the thing, and from that it follows that I’m forbidden to derive benefit from it or forbidden to eat from it. But the prohibition, or in other cases the commandment imposed on me, begins with there being something in the object—that is, something in the world itself. That’s called a law pertaining to the object. And basically the claim was that, unlike other legal systems, which at least this is how they understand themselves, they deal only with floating norms. They make no claim at all about reality. Nobody thinks—nobody would dream of saying—that when I say I own something, I’ve said that there is something in the thing itself; that is, that I’ve made some claim about the thing in reality as such. Rather, what I mean is that I have rights in the thing, and others are forbidden to use it without me, and that is basically some kind of social-legal convention. Right? There is such an agreement, that the public agrees that if I am the owner then no one else may use it and I may use it, and so on. In other words, the norms imposed on me are the only thing that exists in a regular legal system. In the halakhic world everything ends in norms, but it doesn’t begin with them. It begins with something that happens in reality. Therefore, the claim was that, for example, when I say that I own a certain thing, what that means is that ownership takes effect upon the thing itself, and as a result of that—that’s a claim about fact, a factual claim about metaphysical or meta-legal reality—as a result of that I become the owner and I have rights and others are forbidden to use it, and so on. But that’s a result; it’s not the definition of my being the owner, it’s a result of my being the owner. And the implications I brought dealt with cases where the ownership exists but the implications do not, or where we see other implications that are unrelated to legal rights—yes?—like the resting of one’s animal. My animal has to rest on the Sabbath; that has nothing to do with the legal or monetary rights I have in it. So why does it have to rest on the Sabbath? What, are there Sabbath laws for animals? No. The claim is that the animal is some kind of extension of me, my property is some kind of extension of me, and just as I must rest, so too my property or my extension must rest. It’s some kind of expansion of the concept of rest. So we see that something belonging to me is not merely a statement that I have rights in it, because otherwise why should it have to rest just because I have rights in it? What does that have to do with anything? The claim is that it has some sort of connection to me; it is literally part of me in some sense. It’s a metaphysical or meta-legal connection. As a result, there are all sorts of implications—for example, when it causes damage I have to pay, according to the view that it is not negligence in guarding it, but the very fact that my property caused damage obligates me. What does that mean? By virtue of the fact that it is my property, that obligates me to pay. Why? If my property caused damage, then essentially some kind of extension of me caused damage—I caused damage. If I caused damage, I have to pay. We saw this, for example, also in the case of a slave awaiting a bill of manumission: a Canaanite slave who was declared ownerless, whose owner renounced him—so the owner no longer has monetary rights in the slave, but the slave is still his possession, he is still his. How is that expressed? In that someone who injures the slave must pay the slave’s master, and if an ox kills the slave, then the owner pays the fine—yes, the thirty-shekel slave fine—to his master, even though he is no longer really his master at all, since all the rights are already no longer his; he renounced those rights. The one harmed when the slave was injured is the slave, not the owner. So why should payment go to the owner? Compensate the one who was harmed. Injury compensation is compensation for what you did. Whom should you compensate? The one who was harmed, and the one harmed here is the slave. The claim was—and this is the Penei Yehoshua that I cited, at least as I understand him—that the tort obligation of compensation goes to the owner of the damaged object. The addressee of the payment is not the injured party. The addressee of the payment is the owner of the damaged object. You’ll say that’s the same thing. Who was harmed? When the object was damaged, the one harmed is its owner. Usually, the owner of the damaged object, or the person harmed, is one and the same. The owner of the object is the one harmed if I damaged the object. But here, in the case of a slave awaiting a bill of manumission, no. The payment goes to his owner, to his master, even though the one harmed here is the slave, not his master. His master has nothing in the slave. Okay, what’s the idea? The idea is that being the slave’s master is not exhausted by having monetary or proprietary rights in the slave. That is a consequence. But here is a case where he doesn’t have the proprietary rights and he is still considered his master. So you see that being called the owner of something, that something is one’s possession, is not synonymous with having rights in it. Having rights in it is a result of the fact that I’m the owner. And a result that does not always exist. Here, for example, in this case it does not exist. Just an aside—don’t remember whether I mentioned this—there is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) about whether a prohibition of benefit means that I have ownership of it or not. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) disagree about whether something from which I am forbidden to derive benefit—for example, produce of orlah that grew in my yard, if it is forbidden for benefit—is it mine? I have no possibility of deriving benefit. All my rights basically don’t exist. So there is a dispute. Apparently one might have wanted to bring proof from that—what are the implications of that? For example, whether I can take an etrog from something forbidden for benefit. There is the rule of “for yourselves”; “for yourselves” means it has to be mine. I’m not deriving benefit from it—commandments were not given for benefit. So taking an etrog isn’t called benefit. From the standpoint of prohibition of benefit there’s no problem. But on the first day there is a rule that the four species must be mine, “for yourselves,” from your own. If it isn’t mine, I don’t fulfill the obligation. Couldn’t he take it if it wasn’t his? Yes, produce of orlah, then he is also forbidden to derive benefit. If he’s a gentile, then yes. If he’s a Jew, I don’t care what you call it. What does “can” mean? He’s forbidden; he’s just not a thief. According to the view that I’m not the owner. He’s forbidden because of the prohibition of orlah, but he can’t take it to that extent? Yes, to that extent. If it isn’t mine, then there’s no problem if he takes it. But why shouldn’t it be yours if you’re forbidden to derive benefit from it? So that’s the question. And there is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether ownership is defined with respect to things forbidden for benefit or not. Now according to the position that ownership is defined, that there is ownership over something forbidden for benefit, apparently that proves what I said earlier. Right? We see that even though there is no proprietary right in the thing, I am still considered its owner. You see that saying I am the owner does not mean that I have rights. Rights are a result, but here are situations where the result does not exist and nevertheless the ownership relation does exist. But that’s not really proof. It’s not proof because here too the rights do exist. All the rights are mine; the Torah simply forbids me to make use of them. Like pork: pork is permitted for benefit but forbidden to eat. It is only an eating prohibition, not a prohibition of benefit. So what, because of that it isn’t mine? It’s mine, the Torah just limits me, saying that even with things that are mine the Torah tells me not to use them. So things forbidden for benefit are not things that aren’t mine—that’s the claim. If a gentile steals it from me, he is a thief; it is mine. Even though I can’t make any use of it, but my inability to use it is because I’m forbidden to use it, not because the uses are not mine. I would be a transgressor if I used it, but it is simply forbidden to me. In the language of the Talmud this is called “a lion is crouching upon it.” Meaning, it is really mine, except that a lion is crouching on it and won’t let me approach it—not that it isn’t mine. It’s mine, but there is some barrier preventing me from approaching it. The prohibition is a barrier; it is like a lion crouching over the thing and not letting me approach it. So from there you can’t bring proofs, but as I said earlier, I think that declaring something ownerless certainly removes my rights; it doesn’t merely forbid me to use them. Declaring ownerlessness means it isn’t mine. So if I declared ownerless the slave who is awaiting a bill of manumission, then I have no rights—not that the rights are mine but I’m forbidden to use them. I have no rights. And still he is called my slave, and I am called his master. So there, that really is proof. From things forbidden for benefit I think there is no proof. On the contrary, from the position that says there is no ownership over things forbidden for benefit, apparently there is proof against me. Because why do you say that if it is forbidden for benefit then there is no ownership? It’s forbidden for benefit, but I’m still the owner; it’s just impossible to make use of the rights. Apparently there is some assumption here that if you have no rights then ownership is not defined either. Fine, that too is not necessary, but if anything, the proof from there would go the other way. In any case, that is basically the claim. And then this continues our discussion about object and person, because basically the claim is that there are laws in Jewish law whose foundation is that they are created by some reality that exists in the world. And that reality has implications for what is forbidden and permitted, or for my obligations. And that is what is called a law pertaining to the object, and when I speak about legal effect, I am basically expressing that there is here a law pertaining to the object. Ownership according to this definition is a law pertaining to the object. The legal effect of ownership rests upon the thing, and as a result all sorts of obligations fall upon me, upon others—that is already a result. Okay. Now I want to bring you an example, or a good proof, for this matter. I’ll start perhaps with a short introduction to the laws of conditions. Before that, maybe I’ll sharpen the previous claim a bit more. The previous claim basically says that when I say there is an ownership effect resting on the thing, I mean to make a factual claim about the world, about this object in the world, that an effect rests upon it. When I say I own the thing, I mean that I have rights. That is, the fact that I own the thing is a result of there being my ownership effect on the thing. It’s not the same statement. The second is the cause and the first is the result. And what characterizes the statement that there is an ownership effect on the thing is not only that there is metaphysics here, but that there is some kind of reality—that the effect is basically some sort of object. An abstract object, not a physical object, but some kind of object, some kind of entity existing in the world. So that is basically the claim. Right, it’s an abstract entity, a metaphysical entity, it’s not standard, yes, not a physical entity. But it is still some kind of entity, and I now want to show you an implication of this. A person who performs a halakhic act can perform that act conditionally. Right? Say a man divorcing a woman can divorce her on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days, or he can betroth a woman, whatever, any act. I can transfer an object to you on condition that you not drink wine for thirty days. Any act, any application of legal effect that I create, I can qualify with a condition. I can say I do it only if such-and-such occurs, and if it does not occur then I do not do it. Okay. Now in the straightforward understanding, maybe let’s give a short introduction to conditions because this also concerns us. How do I understand the concept of a condition? The simple conception of a condition is that it is a retrospective clarification. I’m talking about a condition that applies from now. There are two kinds of conditions—and in a moment I’ll have to define that too. There are two kinds of conditions. Say I say: I divorce this woman on condition that you do not drink wine for thirty days. What does that mean? Anyone who says “on condition that” is as though saying “from now.” What does that mean? That I divorce the woman and she is divorced from now, only it is conditional on her not drinking wine for thirty days. But if she did not drink wine for thirty days, the divorce takes effect not after the thirty days but from now. The condition is a condition that comes later than the legal effect. It actually works retrospectively. After she has not drunk wine for thirty days, it applies the divorce already from now. Okay. There is the condition “if,” which is called: behold, you are divorced if you do not drink wine for thirty days—not “on condition that.” What is “if”? “If” is a legal effect that begins after the condition is fulfilled. Meaning, if she did not drink wine for thirty days, then from thirty days later, when the thirty days are over, the legal effect takes hold. All right? So there is a “from now” condition and an “if” condition, what’s called a retroactive condition and a prospective condition. Prospective is forward and retroactive is backward. I want to look a bit at retroactive conditions. What is the meaning, how does a retroactive condition work? The accepted view regarding a retroactive condition is that nothing happens in reality—and here this connects to us—nothing happens in reality. What happens in reality is that information that I didn’t have comes to me. Meaning, say I divorce the woman on condition that she not drink wine, on condition that you do not drink wine for thirty days, and she did not drink wine for thirty days, then it becomes clear that she is divorced already from now. So now she was divorced all along—from that “from now.” I just didn’t know it until thirty days passed and I saw that she hadn’t drunk wine. Meaning, what happened when thirty days passed? What changed was simply my knowledge of reality. Nothing in reality itself changed. She was divorced and remained divorced. I just didn’t know it until thirty days passed. Think, for example, of a situation in which I’m abroad and a child is born to me. Okay? And I don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl. I arrive in the Land and it turns out to be a boy. So what, is he a boy only from now? He’s a boy from the moment he was born. I just didn’t know it until I arrived. Right? So my arrival doesn’t change something in reality; it changes my knowledge about reality. In philosophical language one could say that this is an epistemic change and not an ontic change. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, and this is a change in my knowledge of reality, in my information about reality. It’s not an ontic change—ontology is the theory of being. It is not a change in reality itself, it is a change in my knowledge of reality. So the accepted conception in a condition formulated as “on condition that” is that what happens here happens on the epistemic plane, not on the ontic plane. My knowledge changes. What happens if she did drink wine? Then she is not divorced, and in fact she never was divorced. It’s a little tricky. In other words, I’m basically saying that nothing changes as a result of fulfilling or not fulfilling the condition. What happened happened already from now, even before the condition was fulfilled or not fulfilled. I just didn’t know it until thirty days passed. But notice that when thirty days pass, I can discover two different realities. So what does it mean to say that the future changed nothing about what is happening now? After all, what is happening now is one of two possibilities, and clearly that depends on what will happen later. Right? So how can one say that it is only epistemic? How can one say that all that changed here is only my knowledge of reality and not reality itself? The fact is that reality itself depends on what will happen, not only my knowledge of it. If, say, a son was born to me, it can’t be that when I get home I discover it’s a daughter. Right? I discover that it’s a son, and then it becomes clear that he was always a son, even before I knew. But here that isn’t true. Here, when the thirty days pass, I can discover that she is divorced and I can discover that she is not divorced. Meaning that one cannot really say that at this moment reality is already fixed and I just don’t know it. The fact that this reality can be one way or the other means there is a bit of a problem in understanding the claim that a condition is purely epistemic, and that nothing at all happens in reality—that it’s not that the result brings about the divorce or cancels it, but rather what happened happened and I’m only waiting thirty days in order to know. What is lacking is just information. That is a bit problematic. Let me say one more thing—just because it’s interesting—in order to give this some logic after all. Because this is the accepted conception of conditions. The accepted conception of conditions is that it is only epistemic. There is—pay close attention, this is a bit subtle—a known metaphysical debate about determinism. Meaning, there are claims that the world is deterministic, i.e., that there is no free choice and basically everything is determined by the laws of nature. The laws of nature determine everything that will happen. In contrast, there is a libertarian conception—libertas means freedom—which says no, a human being has free choice. It is not true that the laws of nature determine in a deterministic way everything that will happen. A person can change what will happen. Given certain circumstances, a person’s decision can cause X to happen or Y to happen. The laws of nature may say that X ought to happen, but if the person chooses, he can make Y happen. That is the meaning of human free choice. Okay? And there is a philosophical-logical argument in favor of determinism. It is called logical determinism. How does it work? It may have been in Doshi’s podcast, yes, maybe, I don’t remember anymore. He didn’t manage to follow it. He doesn’t remember anymore. In any case, what is logical determinism? Logical determinism says this. Suppose I say: was there a sea battle yesterday? A question. Yes or no? If there was, then yes; if not, then no, right? The answer is either yes or no according to what happened. One answer is correct and the second is incorrect, depending on what happened yesterday. What happens if I ask: will there be a sea battle tomorrow? Apparently still the same thing. If there will be a sea battle tomorrow then the answer is yes, if there won’t then no—it’s just that I don’t know. I need to wait until tomorrow to see, but basically the answer is already correct today. Suppose that there will be a sea battle tomorrow; then the answer to the question “will there be a sea battle tomorrow?” is already yes today. True, I do not know how to give that answer because I lack the information, but the claim “there will be a sea battle tomorrow” is already true today. It was already true two years ago or a thousand years ago, okay? The truth-value of a statement—how do you determine the truth-value of a statement? You compare the statement with the state of affairs in the world that it describes, right? If they correspond, then the statement is true. If they do not correspond, the statement is false. Okay? So what happens here? Here I need to compare the statement, which I utter today, with the state of affairs in the world that it describes, namely something that will or will not happen tomorrow. Never mind—I’ll wait until I know what happens tomorrow. But after I know that there was a sea battle tomorrow, it will become clear to me that already today the statement “there will be a sea battle tomorrow” was true. Right? Agreed? That is the concept of truth. The concept of truth is basically comparing the content of the statement with the state of affairs in the world that it describes. If there is correspondence, it’s true; if there isn’t, it’s false. Okay? If so, it follows that the answer to the question whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow already exists today. And the answer—suppose tomorrow I discover that there was a sea battle—that means that already yesterday the statement “there will be a sea battle tomorrow” was correct. But if that’s so, then how can it be that today there will not be a sea battle? After all, already yesterday the statement “there will be a sea battle tomorrow” was true. So how can it be that today there will not be a sea battle? Which is what had to be proved. Let’s speak in terms of days, okay? Today is Tuesday. Suppose I ask: yesterday I asked, will there be a sea battle on Tuesday? Forget tomorrow and yesterday, it’s confusing, that’s indexical. Will there be a sea battle tomorrow? So I don’t know because I don’t have the information. I waited, today I waited, I discovered yes, there was a sea battle. That means that already yesterday the answer was yes. I didn’t know it, but already yesterday the answer was yes. Now assuming that the admiral in charge of this battle today has free choice, he can decide whether to conduct a sea battle or not, right? But if already yesterday the answer was yes, that there would be a sea battle on Tuesday, then how can it be that the admiral today decides not to make a sea battle? It’s already dictated. Already yesterday the answer was yes. What? Contradiction. Why is that a contradiction? You’re saying that there necessarily was a sea battle, right? It’s impossible that something that—impossible. Exactly, that is the argument. An argument in favor of determinism. This argument basically says: people cannot have free choice because of this logical argument. Logic compels that everything that happened had to happen, because after all the statement about it was already true yesterday or a thousand years ago. We didn’t know it, not relevant, but still the statement is true, so what difference does it make whether we knew or didn’t know? Since the statement is true, then necessarily what happened today had to happen, it could not have happened otherwise. From the six days of creation onward—at the moment of the Big Bang, if you want—this statement was already true. Everything is predetermined. It’s a very tricky argument. It sounds fishy, but it’s hard to put your finger on where the problem is. There is a problem; the argument is not correct. Why? First of all because a logical argument cannot say anything about reality. That, first of all. It cannot be that I learn information about reality from a consideration that is entirely logical. Impossible. A logical argument does not add information about reality. This was always part of the controversy around what is called the ontological proof of the existence of God—whether it is a proof based entirely on conceptual analysis. Kant says: conceptual analysis cannot yield a factual claim that God exists. You define a concept, you analyze what you defined—so you discover what you put in. And how from that can you learn a factual claim about the world, about something that happens in the world, namely that God exists? Impossible. Here too it cannot be. So where’s the catch? Where’s the problem? The problem is that the truth-value of a statement is a definition; it is not a fact. When I say that a certain statement is true or false, I have not established a fact. That is a logical determination, a logical status of a statement. The fact is that tomorrow there will be a sea battle. The statement that tomorrow there will be a sea battle is a truth claim; it is not a factual claim. It is a logical status of the statement “there will be a sea battle tomorrow.” And a logical status is merely a definition. I define that statement as a true statement. So what? That means that the event that will happen tomorrow can certainly be the cause of the logical status of the statement today. Because the logical status of the statement today is not an event; it is a logical status. So with respect to something like that, it does not bother me that what causes it or brings it about comes later than it. I mean, where does our problem come from? Our problem is that if it is already true today, then how can tomorrow be otherwise? The answer is: if tomorrow is otherwise, then the status of the sentence today will be different. What’s the problem? Already from today it will be different. Meaning, if the statement is true today, then tomorrow there must necessarily be a sea battle. No. Because if there will not be a sea battle tomorrow, then already from today the statement is not true. But that is still already from today. What bothers us here is that we feel that the event that will happen tomorrow is the cause, and the result is that the statement is true today. But the relation between these two is not cause and effect, because the second thing is not an event. Cause and effect are both events. There is an event that is the cause and it causes an event that is the effect. But the statement that there will be a sea battle tomorrow, and saying that a certain statement is true—that is not an event. It is a logical status of the statement. That status can be determined by a future event. What’s the problem? Why not? So if there will be a sea battle tomorrow, then the logical status of the statement today is that it is true. If there will not be a sea battle tomorrow, then already today the status is that it is not true. This is not causality backward in time. Right? It only reveals to me retrospectively the logical status of the statement. Once the sea battle either happened or did not happen, the logical status of the statement is fixed from minus infinity to infinity, meaning always. It doesn’t depend on time. What does that actually mean? Think, for example, in these terms—I return to the condition. I say to the woman: you are divorced on condition that you do not drink wine for thirty days—sorry, that you do not drink wine for thirty days. So if she does not drink wine, the divorce is valid. If she drinks wine, the divorce is void. I explained how the epistemic conception would explain this. The epistemic conception basically says that nothing happened in the world, the future did not influence the past. The future did not influence the past. What changed from the past to the future is my knowledge of reality, not reality itself. That is epistemic. Now how can we understand this? After all, the future event will determine whether the woman is divorced today or not divorced. So something does happen here in reality itself; it’s not just a question of what I know about reality. Reality itself depends on what will happen tomorrow, what will happen over the next thirty days. So no, not necessarily. Why? It depends on how I define the statement “the woman is divorced.” If I define that statement—that the woman is divorced—as a legal status of the woman, not a factual statement about reality but a legal determination, then what’s the problem if that status is determined on the basis of a future event? It is not causality whereby a future event brings about a present result. The present result is not an event; it is a legal definition, exactly like in logical determinism. The definition is that the woman is divorced. If she did not drink wine for thirty days, then she is defined as divorced. I say it this way: you are divorced on condition that the sentence “you will not drink wine for thirty days” is true. You’re not making it depend on an event; I’m making it depend on the truth-value of a sentence. And the truth-value of a sentence is something that can indeed be determined on the basis of the future. Right? True or… okay? So therefore, I think that’s the explanation in the epistemic conception. In the epistemic conception, where basically nothing happens in reality, all that changes is only my knowledge of reality, apparently what occurs here occurs on the plane of definition. Is the woman defined as divorced or not defined as divorced. And that basically means that the claim that the woman is divorced or not divorced is a floating norm. A legal status, not something that happened in reality itself. Not that there is a divorce effect resting on the woman, as I described earlier. In the epistemic conception that is not true. Nothing happens to the woman herself; it is only a question of legal definition. And legal definition can happen as a result of a future event. That doesn’t matter, because a legal definition is not an event. It’s a convention, it’s a woman’s legal status. No problem—I can definitely determine legally, if we agree among ourselves that this is the law, that the status of the woman today depends on what will happen in a week. What’s the problem? Can’t one define the law that way? This is not physics, where I say a future event cannot bring about an event now. This is a definition; I’m allowed to define whatever I want. I can define a status based on something that will happen in the future. There is no obstacle to doing that. That is the epistemic conception. But Rabbi Shimon Shkop, at the end of his novellae on tractate Gittin, has what is called “the booklet on conditions.” And at the beginning of this booklet he brings a whole list of laws from various medieval authorities (Rishonim) showing that the epistemic conception is incorrect. He doesn’t call it the epistemic conception, never mind, but the conception I’ve just described is incorrect. I’ll give an example. The Ba’al Ha’Ittur writes that if a person divorces his wife on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days, and after a week he wants to cancel the condition—or you know what, no—to retract the act, not the condition. He wants to cancel the divorce. So he says that he can. It can be canceled. Now understand that according to the epistemic conception this cannot be. Because according to the epistemic conception the woman is already divorced. I just don’t know it yet, but the woman is divorced. You cannot cancel a divorce after the woman is divorced. Suppose I divorced a woman and after a week I say to her, you know what, I regret it, sorry, I cancel the divorce. What does it mean, cancel? If you want, betroth her again. You can’t cancel a divorce. The divorce took effect—that’s it, dead. You can’t touch it anymore, right? But according to the Ba’al Ha’Ittur it emerges that the divorce has not yet actually taken effect. And why? After all, it is a condition formulated as “on condition that,” and that means “from now.” So if she does not drink wine for thirty days, then she is divorced already from now. Not from thirty days from now. So the divorce has basically already taken effect; I just don’t know it yet. What difference does that make? If the divorce has already taken effect, it cannot be canceled. How does the Ba’al Ha’Ittur say that it can be canceled? Another example I’ll bring you—maybe another example; there are several examples he brings. Another example: Maimonides says that if a person divorces a woman “from now if I do not return within twelve months.” He goes off on a journey overseas, all right? And he worries that the woman will remain an agunah because she won’t be able to remarry, because she has a husband and no one knows whether he is dead or alive. So he gives her a bill of divorce and says to her: you are divorced by this bill of divorce if I do not return within twelve months. If I disappear for twelve months and nothing is heard of me, you are divorced. Then she can remarry, she is not an agunah, everything is fine, it solves her agunah problem. Now—and these are divorces from now. If it’s not from now, it doesn’t help, because after death one cannot divorce one’s wife. It is from now. Now, two witnesses come after one month and say that he died. Is the woman a widow or a divorcee? Yes, yes, the assumption is that the two witnesses say he died. So is she a widow or a divorcee? The bill of divorce is already in force. After all, if the man did not return for twelve months and as a result the divorce took effect, and that already happened when he gave her the bill of divorce—after one month witnesses come and say he died. Why should I care that he died? She is already divorced. Right? She should be divorced, not a widow. Now Maimonides says—he doesn’t enter the question whether she is a widow or a divorcee—Maimonides, but actually he does enter it; he says she is divorced and not a widow, but she may not remarry during the next eleven months. After one month the witnesses came and said that he died. Seemingly, we said she is divorced, she can remarry. Maimonides says no, she has to wait eleven more months, because the condition was that he not return for twelve months. Now what—we already know that he’s not going to return; he’s dead. Yes, but the condition has not yet been fulfilled. The condition must be fulfilled, namely that he not return for twelve months, and only then can one determine that the woman is divorced. The condition has not yet been fulfilled. What do you mean the condition has not been fulfilled? If the whole matter is epistemic, that means basically she is divorced and I just don’t know it. I wait twelve months, I see that the man did not return, and then it becomes clear to me that she was always divorced, I just didn’t know it. If that’s the case, then obviously if witnesses come after one month that he died, I know—now I know—that he will not return. No need to wait another eleven months to know that he won’t return. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: from here we see that conditions are not epistemic. What does that mean? The fact that he does not return for twelve months brings about the divorce. It does not reveal that she is divorced; it causally brings about the divorce. Therefore, even if you know that he won’t return for twelve months, that doesn’t matter. Until it actually happened that he in fact did not return for twelve months, the thing that brings about the divorce did not happen, and so the divorce did not take effect. The same applies to the Ba’al Ha’Ittur that I cited earlier. The Ba’al Ha’Ittur says: I divorced the woman on condition that, with the condition “on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days.” Fine. Now after a week I want to cancel the divorce. Fine, let’s leave it, I cancel the bill of divorce. The Ba’al Ha’Ittur says you can. Why can you? She’s divorced according to the epistemic conception. I just don’t know it yet; I need to wait thirty days to see that she didn’t drink wine, but after I know it, it will turn out that she was already divorced from the beginning. How can one cancel a divorce after she was divorced? The answer is: the fact that she does not drink wine for thirty days is what brings the divorce into being. It is not that this reveals epistemically that she was divorced; rather, the non-drinking of the thirty days causally brings about the divorce backward in time, not that it reveals to me that the woman was divorced. And so on—there are various other laws he brings there that are practical differences showing that conditions are not an epistemic matter but an ontic one. Something happening in reality itself. The fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the condition brings about a legal result. It does not define, it does not make me aware of a legal state—it creates the legal state. The failure to drink wine creates the divorce, or drinking the wine removes the divorce. It is not that this reveals to me that there were or weren’t divorces, as in the epistemic conception. Okay? What is the difference between these two conceptions? We saw practical differences, but basically how do these two conceptions view Jewish law? The difference between them is precisely the question I discussed before. In the epistemic conception, Jewish law is seen as a collection of floating norms. When one says that the woman is divorced, betrothed, that I am an owner, that is merely stating the halakhic implications that this has. I have rights in the thing; the woman may remarry; she is no longer someone’s wife and is forbidden to a priest; there are various implications. Saying that she is divorced is no more than saying that she may remarry, that she is not someone’s wife, and that she is forbidden to a priest—according to the epistemic conception. And the whole question is just a question of information. What information do I have about reality? In reality itself nothing happens. Everything that happens is only in my information about reality. According to Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s ontic conception, what happens happens in reality itself. And my knowledge of reality is a separate story. First of all, something happens in reality itself. Fulfillment of the condition brings about the legal result; it does not reveal that it was there all along. It is what brings about the legal result. What does that mean? It means that the legal result is some kind of reality. It is not just knowledge or information—my information about the world, my view of the world. No, something happened in reality itself. And the miracle that happens here is that a future event can bring about a present legal status. But the legal status is something in reality itself; it is a law pertaining to the object, not a law pertaining to the person. Let me bring perhaps another example. The Talmud in tractate Nedarim says that a vow is something that can be permitted. What does that mean? In Jewish law there are two rules for permitting prohibitions. One is that in a rabbinic-level doubt we are lenient: if it is a rabbinic prohibition, then in a case of doubt I can be lenient. And there is nullification by majority. If a certain thing is nullified by majority, then it is permitted. One forbidden piece among two permitted pieces—you can eat from those pieces that got mixed together. You can eat from those pieces; there is nullification by majority. I’m not now entering the dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether all the pieces can be eaten or not—that’s another topic. But one may eat. These two laws, says the Talmud, exist only for something that cannot be permitted. But for something that can be permitted, one must be stringent in a rabbinic-level doubt and there is no nullification by majority. For example, say there is an egg laid on a Jewish holiday, which is muktzeh. It is forbidden to eat it. Okay? Now it got mixed together with two other eggs among two permitted eggs. What is the law of the mixture? Am I allowed to eat these eggs or not? Seemingly there is nullification by majority, or if you prefer I have a doubt about each egg, and the prohibition of muktzeh is a rabbinic prohibition. Here nullification by majority, here rabbinic-level doubt—in the straightforward view one can be lenient. The Talmud says no. Why? Because muktzeh is something that can be permitted. What does that mean? The prohibition of muktzeh lasts only until the end of the Sabbath. After the Sabbath you can already do whatever you want with the thing. There will come a stage at which this thing will become permitted; it will cease to be forbidden and become permitted. In such a case, says the Talmud, why should we permit it to you in a doubtful situation? Wait until after the Sabbath and eat it freely, without doubt. I have an egg that I don’t know whether it is muktzeh or not—wait until after the Sabbath, and in any case you can eat it even if it is muktzeh. So why permit you a doubtful prohibition now if you can wait until after the Sabbath and let you eat it without any doubt of prohibition, without worrying about anything? Therefore, for something that can be permitted we are more stringent than for something that cannot be permitted, more than for an eternal prohibition. The Talmud says in tractate Nedarim that a vow is considered something that can be permitted. Suppose I prohibited a certain egg to myself by a vow—for benefit, for eating—“this egg is forbidden to me as a vow,” then that egg is forbidden to me. Now it gets mixed with two other eggs. Does nullification by majority apply? It’s a Torah-level prohibition, but nullification by majority exists even for a Torah-level prohibition. So the Talmud says no. Why? Because a vow is something that can be permitted, and we are not lenient through nullification by majority regarding something that can be permitted. Why is a vow something that can be permitted? When does it become permitted? If I go to a sage who releases me from the vow. Right? If I go to a sage and perform release of vows before him, then that sage essentially renders the vow permitted. But I am not obligated to go to a sage. This is not like muktzeh, where at the end of the Sabbath, no matter what I do, the prohibition evaporates. With a vow it isn’t like that. If I don’t go to a sage, it remains forbidden forever. But if I go to a sage, then it is permitted, and therefore it is something that can be permitted. The Jerusalem Talmud asks: why is this something that can be permitted? The rule regarding vows is that if I go to a sage who releases the vow, the release works retroactively. After all, what does the sage do when he releases the vow? Regret and an opening. Regret means I regret having made the vow, and an opening means that had I known something, I would not have made the vow. If there is regret and an opening, then he releases me from the vow, right? What does that mean? What is release from a vow? It means that I never really intended to make the vow. Because if I had known that, I wouldn’t have intended to vow. Clearly this works retroactively. It means that even when I made the vow, I didn’t really intend to make it; the vow never took effect. Okay? A sage’s release works retroactively. The Jerusalem Talmud asks: then why is a vow called something that can be permitted? Something that can be permitted is something that is forbidden now, and in a day, in a week, in a month, it will become permitted. But with a vow, if I go to a sage, then it was never forbidden. If I do not go to a sage, then it is forbidden forever. Either way, it is not something that can be permitted. Something that can be permitted is something forbidden, and then some point arrives after which it is permitted—it becomes permitted. A vow is not like that. If I went to a sage, then it was never forbidden. If I didn’t go to a sage, then it is forbidden forever. Either way, that is not called something that can be permitted. All right? Now the Rosh brings this Jerusalem Talmud—the Rosh on tractate Nedarim. And he explains it in some way, and Rabbi Shimon Shkop explains the Rosh. He says this: the release of the vow by the sage is not retrospective clarification. It is not epistemic. It is not something where in fact the vow never took effect and the sage merely reveals to me that the vow never took effect. He does not uproot the vow; rather he simply brings to my knowledge the information that there was no vow. That is all. That is an epistemic conception of release from vows. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says no: release from vows operates on the ontic plane, not the epistemic one. When the sage releases the vow, he uproots it, he removes it, not that he reveals to me that there never was a vow. The sage’s release is an operative cause that cancels the vow, and it does so retroactively. What does that mean? Suppose I vowed on Sunday. I went to a sage on Tuesday. Okay? When the sage released me on Tuesday, that itself removed the vow from Sunday. Once again, causality works backward in time. Legal causality can work backward in time. Physical causality cannot. Except for the fantasies of various physicists who talk about traveling back in time. But physically it can’t happen. What? It can’t happen—not “not yet,” just can’t happen, period. It can’t happen because the problem is conceptual, not physical. What does it mean to go back in time? It’s an empty concept. What does it mean to go back in time? Today is Tuesday. You want after Tuesday to go back to Monday? To be in the same place where you already were, and in addition to what was. The problem—I’ll return to the place where I was tomorrow, right? That is not called going back in time. Going back in time means going back to the time, not to the place. I need to return to Monday after Tuesday, not before. All right? That you’ll be again where you were yesterday. Not that I’ll again be as I was yesterday—the time—I’ll return tomorrow to where I was yesterday. That is not called going back in time. Okay, you need to return to yesterday’s day, not to yesterday’s place. Right? So that means after Tuesday you need to be on Monday, but in such a way that Monday comes after Tuesday. But there’s no such thing; Monday is before Tuesday. No, the intention is that you will as if… Who is “as if”? Define it. Everybody says “as if.” You won’t succeed. There is no way to define it. No way. It’s simply an empty concept. An undefined concept. Going back in time is an undefined concept. Not a physical problem that one can’t travel back in time. Just as there is no physical problem in making a round triangle. There is no such thing as a round triangle; it’s simply not defined. Back to the Future, have you seen it? What? Back to the Future, have you seen it? No. That what happened… No, movies I know how to make too. But define for me the concept of going back in time. Don’t make movies for me; I know movies too. Define the concept. Don’t define the concept, but like there. Like there is no problem at all. But that is not going back in time. What happened there is no problem whatsoever. You saw the movie: in the third minute he was here and in the fourth minute he was there. What’s the problem? A movie like that moves forward in time. The fact that you formed various illusions as if he returned—that’s just words, it has no meaning. No, but that physically you could in some way be in the same place simultaneously, in two places simultaneously. Two places simultaneously is not going back in time. That’s splitting. Everyone who talks about this concept doesn’t understand what he means. I’m not a physicist, but physicists who talk about it also don’t understand what they mean. There isn’t anything to mean, because the concept is empty. When you tell me “you are returning”—of course, yesterday I was on Monday, look, I went back in time. Today I’m on Tuesday, yesterday I was on Monday, I went back in time. Why isn’t that called going back in time? Because yesterday I was before Tuesday. I want to be on Monday after Tuesday. But after Tuesday is Wednesday, not Monday. When you’re thirty-one, you can get to the same reality you had when you were thirty. No problem, no problem at all, a year ago I was there. No, something where after… But afterward I’ll be thirty-two. Okay, so I understand what you’re saying, but you can’t mean anything else. It’s not that I understood, it’s that there is nothing else. It’s just words. But that by means of this you could return to that reality so that there would be two of you. There being two of me is spatial splitting, it has nothing to do with going back in time. Spatial splitting? Do whatever you want, I didn’t say anything. I’m talking about going back in time, not spatial splitting. Okay, so a reality in which the grandfather paradox exists. What is a reality in which the paradox…? As if the grandson kills his grandfather and then… There is no such situation. Why? Because he goes back in time—you’re hiding the time travel inside it and piling all sorts of implications onto it and saying “like this.” Look at what you put in there and define it for me. In a reality where such a thing can happen. No, it cannot happen. In a reality where a triangle is round, what do you say the sum of its angles is? No, no, I know it can’t be, but in a reality where the triangle is round what would the sum of its angles be? There isn’t any such reality. What do you mean “in a reality where it would be”? There isn’t. The only way to speak about going back in time is only if we define two different time axes, where one time axis moves back relative to another time axis. But there always has to be some time axis that constantly moves forward; otherwise there is no way to define this concept. Fine, that’s another matter. Doesn’t matter. In any case, for our purposes, Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that release—release from a vow—basically works from now onward, retroactively. Not retroactively, but from now onward retroactively. What does that mean? I’m basically saying this: say I vowed on Sunday, and on Tuesday I went to a sage. On Tuesday, when the sage released me from the vow, from Tuesday onward there is no vow already from Sunday. Meaning, an event that happened on Tuesday brought about a result that already existed on Sunday. Not that it already existed on Sunday; rather, he brought it about retroactively. What does that mean? Suppose that on Monday—say I violated the vow. I vowed on Sunday. I ate the thing on Monday, violating the vow. On Tuesday I went to a sage and he released me from the vow. Okay? Now a court sits and judges me on Wednesday. The court sits and judges me: do I deserve lashes? I violated the prohibition of a vow. No. Why? Because once on Tuesday I released the vow, that creates a situation in which there was already no vow from Sunday, and therefore on Monday, when I ate, nothing happened. Going back in time. Almost. But note why this is not going back in time. Because what happens if the court sits on Monday, not on Wednesday? I ate it in the morning and the court sits on Monday afternoon. The release was on Tuesday. So the court gives me lashes, right? Now after they flogged me, I went on Tuesday to a sage who released me from the vow. Did they flog me by mistake? If so, then they ought not flog me; they should wait in case I go to a sage, so as not to flog me in doubt. In a doubtful situation one does not administer lashes. And also with a warning in a doubtful case one can’t give lashes. To think of giving a punishment where the whole case is later closed but you got your punishment. No, if you go to a sage, he can release the vow, yes, you can. And still the court that flogged you on Monday acted lawfully. Why? Because on Monday your status was that the vow had taken effect and that you had violated it. From Tuesday onward I look back differently too. I look at Monday differently from how I saw Monday on Monday. Here the court understood Monday, but the punishment of lashes was fixed for me only for Wednesday, and on Tuesday I go to the sage. In the straightforward understanding I still get lashed on Wednesday. Yes, because the ruling that I deserved lashes on Monday is a valid ruling. It doesn’t change the ruling, it changes the status. It doesn’t change the fact that the court judged me and judged me correctly, and if it judged me correctly then I deserve lashes. It changes the question whether today I view that eating as eating something permitted. The answer is yes, but on Monday, when the court judged me, it was correct in viewing it as forbidden eating. So this is what Rabbi Shimon Shkop calls “from now onward, retroactively.” From Tuesday onward, one sees Monday—or Sunday—differently. But one sees Sunday differently only from Tuesday onward. All right? The same is what happens in vows, in conditions, sorry. Rabbi Shimon Shkop basically says that in conditions too, what happens is not an epistemic matter. What happens is not merely a change in my knowledge of reality. What happens is a change in reality itself. When the woman does not drink wine for thirty days, that causally brings about the divorce from now, even though the thirty days come later. The future event causally brings about the present situation. Why? Because this is from now onward, retroactively. But it takes effect from now only from the perspective of thirty days later and onward. From thirty days later and onward, retroactively. Not now. And this is basically an ontic perspective and not an epistemic one. According to this perspective, conditions operate in the world. Fulfillment of the condition sustains the legal effect; violation of the condition dissipates the legal effect. And something happens in reality. The epistemic perspective says that what happens is only a change in legal status, or in my knowledge of legal status. But nothing happens in the world itself. That means that the concept of condition actually reflects what we spoke about earlier, the idea that Jewish law speaks in factual claims about reality, metaphysical ones. Now look at an interesting implication. Once I taught in Yeruham, and we were learning the topic of conditions, and I brought them the case where a person divorces the woman on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days. The Mishnah asks: what is she during those days? What is the law, what is her status during those thirty days until the thirty days pass? So Rabbi Shimon Shkop claims that during those thirty days the woman is both divorced and not divorced simultaneously. That’s what I told them. Fine, I meant to move on in the class, okay, we learned Rabbi Shimon, we can move on. Someone stops me and says: I don’t understand. What do you mean she is both divorced and not divorced at the same time? If she’s divorced then she’s divorced. How can a woman be both divorced and not divorced at the same time? What is she, Schrödinger’s cat? If you said she’s divorced, that contradicts the statement that she’s not divorced, and vice versa. A thing can’t be both true and false at the same time. There is logic, no? Is Jewish law exempt from logic? What do you mean that the woman is both divorced and not divorced? That’s not like saying she is both a woman and a marathon runner, fine, there’s no contradiction between those two things. You can’t say she’s both a woman and not a woman. Today one can already say that too, but never mind. Both divorced and not divorced? To say two contradictory things at the same time? The law of contradiction is still with us—it was eulogized too early; the reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. How can one say such a thing? Now what amazed me about this question was not the question itself, but how had I not thought of it when I learned the topic and said she is both divorced and not divorced and moved on, everything’s fine. Wait a second—what do you mean, how can a woman be both divorced and not divorced at the same time? A logical contradiction. So I stopped for a moment to think what was happening here, and to give myself as well an accounting for my own nonsense. Exactly, exactly so, I’m getting to that in a moment. You can understand this even without quantum mechanics. Maybe afterward I’ll connect it to quantum mechanics, but it can be understood without it. That’s the advantage compared to quantum mechanics: here you can understand it without any problem, and there you can’t. The claim is basically the following. Let me tell you what I told them. I have a good friend, who is secular, doesn’t matter, a childhood friend, and we collect examples. Examples to exchange—if he has an example he gives it to me, I give him one—we collect examples for all sorts of things. Collecting examples is very useful, examples. In short, one time… I came to him with the question: do you have an example of something that has no opposite? I couldn’t find one, couldn’t find an example of something that has no opposite. Everything I thought of has an opposite. Is there something that has no opposite? I couldn’t find one. He looks at me and says: what’s the problem? A dove has no opposite, a chair has no opposite—are there not plenty of things that have no opposite? Then again I asked myself: wait, then why did I get tangled up and fail to find any counterexample? And then I understood something that served me years later in that class in Yeruham. Namely what? Oppositeness is a relation between properties, not between objects. Salty is the opposite of sweet; salt is not the opposite of sugar. Okay? Oppositeness is a relation between properties, not between objects. There are no objects that are opposites of one another, so obviously a dove has no opposite; no object has an opposite. I’m talking about a property that has no opposite, not an object that has no opposite. Okay? Suppose I say that a certain dish is both salty and sweet at the same time—that’s nonsense, I said nothing. Completely salty and completely sweet, yes, spare me all the… okay, that’s the opposite of spicy, no? Ah, also the opposite of salty. Umami. It’s both umami and sweet. Do you know this? There is an umami taste—they found it a few years ago. After all, our whole range of tastes can be laid out through four, I think: sour, sweet, salty, and spicy. And now a few years ago the claim was that there is a fifth component, just as space is five-dimensional not four, and you need five components to lay out all the tastes in the world. What? Bitter, okay, bitter. Yes. Umami is the fifth. Fine, doesn’t matter. In any case, for our purposes, the claim is that if you say a certain dish is both salty and sweet, you said an internal contradiction, like a round triangle. But if you say that in the dish there is both salt and sugar, what’s the problem? You can put both salt and sugar into a dish. That’s not a contradiction, because there is no contradiction between entities; there is contradiction between properties. Okay? If that’s the case, once we have arrived at this, then if I say that a woman is both a married woman and a divorcee, or both divorced and not divorced at the same time, it depends what I mean. If I mean that her legal status is both divorced and not divorced, that’s a round triangle, I said nothing. But if I mean that there is both the legal effect of being a married woman and the legal effect of being divorced upon her, there is no problem at all. It’s like in a dish that has both salt and sugar. Because legal effects are entities, not properties. And when I say that there are two “contradictory” legal effects upon a woman, there is no contradiction between legal effects, because legal effects are entities. There is contradiction between legal states. You cannot say that the woman is both forbidden and permitted, because “forbidden” and “permitted” are descriptions of legal state. But you can say that there is on the woman a divorce effect and a married-woman effect, because legal effects are entities, like there being both sugar and salt in a dish. There is no problem whatsoever. There you have an implication of the claim that a legal effect is a kind of entity and not a property. Once I understand legal effect as an entity, that means I can say that during those thirty days, between the divorce and the fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the condition, the woman is both divorced and married. The meaning of these words is: there is upon her both the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of divorce. One cannot say that she is both a married woman and divorced; one can say that there is upon her both the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of divorce. Now one can ask: okay, then what will her status be? Legal status has no contradictions, right? If she is permitted then she is permitted, if she is forbidden she is forbidden. She cannot be both forbidden and permitted, there is no such thing. In legal statuses these are properties, not entities. Properties obey the law of contradiction; properties cannot be opposites simultaneously. Entities can be simultaneously present—any two entities can be present together even if their properties are opposed. Okay? Therefore, when I say that on the woman there is the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of divorce, I have said a perfectly valid sentence. Perfectly valid. But if I say that the woman is both divorced and a married woman, then I’ve spoken nonsense, I just moved my lips and said nothing. Now if I say there is upon her the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of divorce, what does that mean in terms of norms or her legal status? In terms of status, in terms of when you ask me what her laws are, in the laws there will be no contradictions. I cannot say she is both forbidden to the world and permitted to the world. As a married woman she is forbidden to the world; as a divorcee she is permitted to the world. There is no such thing. But there is no problem. Why no problem? Because from the side of being a married woman she is forbidden to the world. From the side of being divorced she is not forbidden. “Permitted” is not a status. It is the absence of the status of prohibition. All right? But from the side of her status as a married woman, there is the status of prohibition, so she is forbidden. Meaning, what will determine things in the end is always the positive law. The absence is simply subordinate, yes? It is recessive. The dominant law is what will determine things. Okay? So if I say she is a married woman and divorced, and I ask whether she is permitted to the world, the answer is forbidden. By the way, forbidden not out of doubt—forbidden with certainty. Because both married woman and divorced; as a married woman she is certainly forbidden to the world. So what if she is also divorced? This is not a doubtful married woman or doubtful divorcee. It is both married woman and divorcee. All right? Or there is upon her both the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of divorce. That means she is certainly forbidden to the world, certainly, not out of doubt. What if she were a married woman only rabbinically, betrothed only rabbinically? A doubtful divorcee and doubtful rabbinic married woman—then can one be lenient because in a rabbinic doubt one is lenient? No. Because this is not a doubt; she is both a married woman and a divorcee. So even if this is rabbinic one must be stringent. There is here a definite rabbinic prohibition. And always, in all the questions you ask, almost always—not always, almost always in all the questions you ask—there will always be a dominant law and a recessive law. Always, or almost always. And there will never be a problem that I don’t know how to act. This is not the law of doubts; rather, the dominant law will always prevail. Usually this will match the statement that in doubt one goes stringently. Usually it will amount to the same thing, but not always. For example, say the woman was divorced within the thirty days, and her husband died after a week. He divorced her on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days, and he died after a week. Is she allowed to remarry? The answer is yes. Why? Because whether she is a divorcee or a widow, she may remarry, right? Now I ask: may she marry a priest? An ordinary priest. A widow may, but a divorcee may not. What do you say? What will the law be? Forbidden. Why? Certainly a divorcee. Not because it took effect first. Not retroactively. Neither first nor retroactively. Both together. She is both a divorcee and a widow together. So from the side of the divorcee in her, she is forbidden to a priest. Not because that came first, not because she is only a divorcee; she is both a divorcee and a widow. But now she is forbidden to a priest from the side of the divorcee in her. This is not the law of doubts. Even if this divorce were only rabbinic, she would be forbidden to a priest. Because she is certainly a divorcee and certainly a widow together. Maybe she is a widow because she is divorced? Why? What do you mean? It got mixed up. Okay. She doesn’t need to—if he already divorced her then what’s the problem? On the contrary, if he hadn’t divorced her then she would have had to take care of him. Once we were on a tour in Rome, and someone there told us about some emperor who kept various women and so on, and one of them really did poison him because she was sick of him. And afterward she poisoned others too—in short, there was quite an impressive series of poisonings there. She was an energetic woman. Fine, in any case, here is an implication of the claim that conditions operate on the ontic plane and not on the epistemic one. We are dealing here with a reality that contains duplication. Duplication cannot exist on the epistemic plane. If it is true that she is divorced, then it is not true that she is a married woman. If this is only epistemic, what I know, I cannot know that she is divorced and know that she is a married woman at the same time. If she is divorced then she is not a married woman; if she is a married woman then she is not divorced. If this is only epistemic, such duplication cannot exist. But if I say that there is upon her the legal effect of a married woman and also the legal effect of divorce, that is ontic, not epistemic. That can exist. There is upon her the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of divorce. What does that mean halakhically? The dominant law will always prevail. According to the more stringent side? No, that’s the point, not always stringency. In principle it could also be leniency. The dominant law. Whenever you have such a dilemma, it is a dilemma between a law and—whenever you have a dilemma between a positive law and a negative law, or between a law and absence of law, then the result is the law. True, usually the law is the stringent side, because prohibition is a law and permission is absence of law. But where would there be a practical difference? For example, if the law were a commandment, not a prohibition. A commandment and the absence of a commandment. Then “law” means that there is an obligation, right? And absence of law means there is no obligation. Then it is not the prohibition that is the law, but the obligation that is the law. And still permission is absence of law in any case. Let me give you an example—this occurs to me now—and we’ll stop here because the next stage is already long, but I’ll give you an example. In some yeshivot there is a joke going around. A Talmudic passage in tractate Ketubot speaks about someone who finds a baby abandoned in the street, an asufi. Right? We don’t know who his father is, who his mother is, what he is—we don’t know whether he is a Jew or a gentile. The Talmud says you go according to the residents of that city. If most of the residents are gentiles, then he is a gentile; if most are Jews, then he is a Jew. Now of course the question immediately arises: and what if it is fifty-fifty? Then it’s the law of doubt. What do we do in cases of doubt? For Torah-level matters, stringency; for rabbinic matters, leniency—everything is fine. So fine, we’re set, right? There is one thing where we are not set: what about Torah study? If he is a Jew, he is obligated to study Torah. If he is a gentile, it’s not that he is not obligated—it is forbidden for him to study Torah. That is not absence of law; it is the opposite law. So what counts as the stringent side here? That he should study, or that he should not study? Find some conversion process for him even if he insists? You found a trick. Impossible—all the judges died, there is no one to convert him, a terrible tragedy. I’m not talking about tricks, I’m talking now—you remind me of the story in Vayikra Rabbah: Alexander the Great comes to Africa. Did I already mention this this morning? I don’t remember. He comes to Africa and he heard that there was a very wise king there. So he went to see how the king judged the public, all right? Two men come before him. One sold the other a courtyard, and the buyer who bought the courtyard found a treasure in it. He says: I bought a courtyard, not a treasure, and he wants to return the treasure to the seller. The seller says: what are you talking about? You bought the courtyard and everything in it; the treasure is yours. They come to be judged before the king. So the king—the Midrash is really impressed with him—the king was a genius. Why? He said: do you have a daughter? Yes. Do you have a son? Yes. Let them marry each other and take the treasure. Are you kidding me? This is a king? He asks you what the law is; what do I care about all your tricks? Tell me what the law is in such a case. Why are you finding tricks for me? Tricks aren’t wisdom; I can find tricks too. Let them both die, kill them both, and the treasure will now be ownerless, and now anyone can take it. That’s how Stalin would solve this problem. That’s not clever. I want to hear what the law is, not what tricks you’re devising. So what does that fellow do who is a doubtful Jew and doubtful gentile—what does he do regarding Torah study? Sabbath observance is the same thing. As a Jew he must keep the Sabbath, but as a gentile he is forbidden to keep the Sabbath. You know the well-known story, a study partner in Ponevezh. One of them says to the other: listen, I suddenly discovered that I’m a gentile. They stunned me, I didn’t know, suddenly it turned out I’m a gentile. So what? So I need to desecrate the Sabbath, need to desecrate the Sabbath. The other says to him, okay, put a stone in your pocket so that you’ll carry it four cubits in the public domain, some object in your pocket, and that way you won’t be keeping the Sabbath, because a gentile is forbidden to keep the Sabbath. So he said to him: but there’s an eruv. Ah, you rely on the eruv? He says to him, as the gentile: you rely on the eruv? Yes, this is the doubtful Jew and doubtful gentile. In any case, for our purposes, this is a situation, for example, that is a pathological situation in terms of the map I drew earlier. Because the map I drew earlier always says there is a dominant law and a recessive law. Right, there is always a dominant law that will prevail, and another law that is merely absence of law, not really a law. But here, in this case, why is there a problem? Because we have two opposite laws. They are laws. It isn’t law and absence of law. A Jew must study Torah; a gentile is forbidden to study Torah. Not that he is simply not obligated. A Jew must keep the Sabbath; a gentile is forbidden to keep the Sabbath. What should this doubtful gentile-doubtful Jew do in such a situation? I don’t know, there is no answer. Maybe passive non-action is preferable, maybe not. But in principle, from this standpoint, this is for example a very unusual doubt, by the way. It is very unusual. Why? Because it is basically a doubt in which both sides are dominant. It is not dominant and recessive. Both sides are dominant. And then you have no simple way to decide which one to follow. Now why did I tell you this on the yeshiva side? Because what do they say in yeshiva in such a situation? What should this gentile—this doubtful gentile and doubtful Jew—do regarding Torah study? The answer is: talk in learning. That’s the lazy yeshiva-boys’ way—they talk in learning. What, a difficulty? And he finds resolutions; no energy to study, you just do pilpul around all kinds of things. So he’ll talk in learning, yes—that’s something which is neither Torah study nor neglect of Torah study. You’re not studying Torah, but you’re also not neglecting Torah, some kind of middle path. Fine, I’ll stop here, because the next section we’ll already do next time.