Intention in the Commandments – Lesson 8
This transcript was produced automatically by means of artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- [0:02] Pnei Yehoshua and an introduction about the earthquake
- [1:07] The discussion of whether commandments require intention
- [2:31] The dispute about opposite intention and its implications
- [4:16] Tosafot on why a verse is needed for a stolen sukkah
- [18:44] The question whether commandments require belief
- [26:46] Belief and the foundation of commandments
- [28:00] Maimonides’ sixth chapter on moral commandments
- [29:05] The claim that commandments require belief
- [31:30] Leniency and stringency in commandments
- [36:12] Belief in God and obligation at Sinai
- [41:43] Commandments and transgressions require belief
- [48:24] The old presumption about sin and impulse
- [50:52] The modern presumption and the reversal
- [52:06] Medical coercion and not killing – what happens?
- [53:10] Maimonides’ decree and its centrality today
- [54:11] Summary and blessings for a good year
Summary
General Overview
The text presents an account of Pnei Yehoshua, who vowed after an earthquake not to engage in aggadic literature, and connects this to the claim that people discussing aggadah often say clever homiletical ideas instead of aiming at the true meaning of Torah. It then brings Rabbi Shlomo Eiman’s resolution of the Turei Even’s difficulty with Rashbam on the question of whether commandments require intention, opposite intention, and the connection to the prohibition of adding to the Torah, while distinguishing between the actual deed of the commandment and the fulfillment of the commandment and the attribution of the deed to the person. Later, another foundational claim is raised: that commandments require belief, based on Maimonides in the Laws of Kings regarding a resident alien, and from there a conception is developed according to which, without belief, there is no religious value to a commandment-act, and even to a transgression, with discussion of a child taken captive among non-Jews, the changing reality between the ancient world and the modern one, and the idea that modern heresy creates a new framework for understanding halakhic responsibility.
Pnei Yehoshua and the vow regarding aggadah
Pnei Yehoshua writes in his introduction that there was a major earthquake in his city, he was buried under the ruins, and he vowed to the Holy One, blessed be He, that if He saved him, he would no longer deal with aggadic literature. Pnei Yehoshua explains line by line and does not let go of any Rashi or any Tosafot, and he appears to be the most detailed of the later authorities on every stage in the Talmudic text. Pnei Yehoshua did not write on aggadah, and the explanation given is that in aggadah people do not aim at the true meaning of Torah but instead say clever homiletical ideas. Rabbi Shlomo Eiman is presented as someone about whom a similar story was heard, involving a vow following illness, though the details are not remembered precisely.
Rabbi Shlomo Eiman’s resolution: commandments require intention, opposite intention, and fulfillment of the commandment
Rabbi Shlomo Eiman resolves the Turei Even’s difficulty with Rashbam by saying that according to the view that commandments require intention, the intention is a law in the very body of the commandment-act, and without intention, as in one who blows a shofar for music, it is not considered a commandment-act at all. A sharp understanding was presented in Rashi’s view, linking this to the Talmudic topic of unintentional involvement, to the point of formulating it as saying that the commandment is fundamentally the intention to obey the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, while the act is needed so the intention has something to apply to. Rabbi Shlomo Eiman states that Rashbam and Tosafot innovated that if one explicitly intends not to fulfill the obligation, then according to everyone he has not fulfilled it, but there is still a practical difference between the views: according to the view that commandments require intention, there is no commandment-act here at all, whereas according to the view that commandments do not require intention, the act is considered a commandment-act even without intention.
Rabbi Shlomo Eiman explains that according to Rashbam, in the case of opposite intention, the failure to fulfill the obligation is not because of a flaw in the body of the commandment-act, but because of a law in fulfillment of the commandment, that “against his will he does not fulfill it,” and one does not discharge a person’s obligation against his will. The text formulates this as a distinction between whether the commandment was “done” in reality and whether the person has “fulfillment” and whether the deed is attributed to him and credited to him. A parallel is brought from the Minchat Chinukh on Tosafot in tractate Sukkah page 9 regarding a stolen sukkah: without a verse one might have said that this is a commandment that comes through a transgression, and therefore the act takes place but is not credited as something desired by the Holy One, blessed be He, whereas the verse teaches that the object itself is invalid, and this is truly sitting in an invalid sukkah.
Adding to the Torah, commandment-act, and the relation of opposite intention
The text connects fulfilling one’s obligation with violating the prohibition of adding to the Torah, and explains that according to the view that commandments require intention, if one performed the commandment without intention, he does not fulfill his obligation and does not violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah, because that prohibition applies specifically when one has performed the commandment properly, and the commandment-act is defined only with intention. The text emphasizes that there are not “two different laws of intention” here, but rather a direct consequence of the definition that commandments require intention; therefore, without intention there is no “addition” of a commandment. By contrast, according to the view that commandments do not require intention, even without intention it is considered a commandment-act, and with explicit intention not to fulfill the obligation, the failure to fulfill applies only to the idea that one does not discharge a person’s obligation against his will; but regarding the prohibition of adding to the Torah, he does violate it even if he intentionally did it not for the sake of a commandment, because in practice he performed a proper commandment-act.
The text argues that this resolves the Turei Even’s difficulty, and that there is no proof against Rashbam from the Talmudic passage in Eruvin, because that passage may force the conclusion that opposite intention does not help regarding the prohibition of adding to the Torah even if it does help regarding fulfillment of one’s obligation for the reason of “against his will.” It then says that the resolution depends on the dispute previously discussed: does opposite intention remove the status of commandment-act even according to the view that commandments do not require intention, or does it merely prevent a person from being discharged against his will? The text determines that the proof from Eruvin forces the first possibility to be Rashbam’s view.
A conceptual difficulty: adding to the Torah as a consciousness-based prohibition and not a physical transgression
The text states that conceptually it is very difficult to understand how a person who performs an action for some halakhic purpose out of doubt, or to save tefillin from disgrace, can be considered to have violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah. Adding to the Torah is presented as a consciousness-based prohibition like idolatry, not a prohibition on action as such, but on action carried out from within a consciousness of adding to the Torah, and therefore it is difficult to view it as merely an action-based prohibition of “you did the commandment again.” Examples are brought of making a blessing out of doubt, applying blood in four placements out of doubt, and rescuing tefillin, to show that these actions are not motivated by adding to the Torah but by fulfilling one’s obligation or protecting the Torah’s interests.
The text brings Nachmanides’ comments about freeing a slave for the sake of a prayer quorum and the comparison to the prohibition “do not show them favor” to illustrate that certain halakhic concepts are consciousness-based: a “gift” is giving with the purpose of benefiting the recipient, and if the giving is intended for the giver’s own interest, it is not a “free gift”; similarly, the freeing of the slave is viewed as use of the slave rather than prohibited benefaction. From this it is argued that seeing the prohibition of adding to the Torah as a merely physical transgression is strange, and that a definition is needed that links the action to commandment-consciousness in order for the prohibition to have meaning.
Commandments require belief: Maimonides, the resident alien, and the religious value of an act
The text raises a foundational question beyond whether commandments require intention, namely whether commandments require belief. A question is presented about Maimonides in positive commandment no. 1, “to know that there is a First Being,” and the difficulty of commanding belief, but it is argued that this does not prove that one who does not believe does not fulfill commandments; rather, it only shows that it is difficult to say that the command itself would cause a nonbeliever to observe it. The main source presented is Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings regarding a resident alien, who states that one who fulfills the commandments because of intellectual decision and not because of the Torah given to Moses at Sinai is among the wise of the nations of the world but not among their pious. The text interprets this as a good deed that lacks the religious value of a commandment.
The text emphasizes that this is a conceptual argument without an explicit source, and that if it is true regarding a resident alien, it is also true regarding a Jew; but Maimonides places it there because with the seven Noahide commandments there is a natural possibility of observing them for reasons of morality and reason. The text states that the required belief is belief that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the Torah at Sinai and that this is binding, and one who performs acts for moral reasons alone, without commitment to the command, does not fulfill a commandment. The text notes that this does not depend on the dispute whether commandments require intention or not, and that commandments require belief even according to the view that commandments do not require intention.
Presumptive intent for its own sake and the distinction between conscious belief and belonging to belief
The text explains that saying commandments require belief does not mean that one must think about belief during every act, but is rather a negative statement that one who does not believe is not “in the game,” and therefore has no commandments. The text applies the principle that an unspecified act is presumed to be done for its proper purpose also to belief: a believer who puts on tefillin in synagogue does not need to consciously think about belief during the act, because the context makes clear that the act is done within a framework of obligation. By contrast, one who does not believe and puts on tefillin only because he was dragged into it has no commandment, not because of lack of momentary thought but because of an absence of belief within him.
Transgressions require belief, atheists and traditionalists, and the child taken captive among non-Jews
The text presents another claim, written in an article that caused uproar in Tzohar, that in his view commandments and transgressions require belief, and therefore if a person does not believe, his transgressions are not transgressions. It is argued that traditional Jews who believe and know what is right but do not do it are “intentional offenders,” whereas atheists are coerced, and even “more than coerced,” because they do not belong at all to the field of commandment and transgression. The text emphasizes that all Jews are obligated in the commandments, and atheists are also obligated, but they cannot fulfill their obligation, because without belief the act is not defined as a commandment and the transgression is not defined as a transgression.
The text argues that the category of a child taken captive among non-Jews does not depend on knowledge but on whether one perceives the matter as binding; therefore even a professor of Jewish law can be such a child if he studies it as though it were Indian culture and does not perceive obligation. The text distinguishes between the child taken captive among non-Jews of the Sages, who was an unwitting sinner liable to a sin-offering because of missing information and group belonging, and the modern situation in which a person knows the tradition but has concluded that it does not obligate him. It is argued that this is not a child taken captive among non-Jews in the original sense but a state of being “not in the game,” where the categories of commandment and transgression do not apply to him.
Changing reality: an ancient world of the impulse toward idolatry versus modern secularity
The text describes how the ancient world assumed general religious belief for everyone, and the question of obligation was mainly a function of group belonging, so that a child taken captive among non-Jews was someone who did not know where he belonged. The text explains that the Sages saw heresy and idolatry primarily as a result of impulse, and cites the Talmudic story of Menashe with Rav Ashi and the story in Yoma about abolishing the evil impulse for idolatry as illustrations of a reality in which a person worships idols even though he knows that the Torah obligates otherwise. The text argues that today the presumption has been reversed regarding heresy, because many people genuinely do not believe and not because of impulse, and therefore the concept that commandments require belief has become central in modern reality, even though in the past it was less practically relevant.
The text concludes by stating that secularity is a new phenomenon that the Sages did not know, and that the language of the child taken captive among non-Jews, as it was formed then, is not precisely suited to the field of consciousness in our time. The text closes by saying that from here one can only go upward, and explains that the idolatry of the Indian world preserves ancient patterns of impulse, which sometimes also dress themselves in intellectual form though their source is impulse.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Who? Pnei Yehoshua writes in his introduction that in his city there was a big earthquake, and he was buried under the ruins, and he vowed to the Holy One, blessed be He, that if He saved him, he would no longer deal with aggadic literature. And indeed, look at Pnei Yehoshua: he doesn’t let go, not a single Rashi, not a single Tosafot, he goes line by line. He seems to me to be the most detailed of the later authorities there is; on every step in the Talmudic text there’s Pnei Yehoshua. On aggadah you won’t find it, nothing, there is no Pnei Yehoshua on aggadah. And why? Because people there don’t aim at the true meaning of Torah, they say nice little homiletical ideas. In aggadah they say little homiletical ideas. Rabbi Shlomo Eiman, by the way, the same thing—I heard the same story about him too. He was sick, I think, I don’t remember exactly what happened there, and he also… what? Rabbi Shlomo Eiman. Yes. So I heard the same story too. Okay, in any case, to our topic. So Rabbi Shlomo Eiman says, and resolves the Turei Even’s difficulty with Rashbam: “And what seems to me in resolving his difficulty is as follows: according to the one who says that commandments require intention, it is simple and clear that the intention is a law in the very body of the commandment-act, and without intention—for example, one who blows a shofar for music—it is not considered a commandment-act at all.” We talked about this, at least in Rashi’s view: according to the one who says commandments require intention, this isn’t some side detail that is a condition in order to count, rather it is part of the definition of the commandment. I said it in a more extreme formulation: Rashi said that this is connected to the Talmudic topic of unintentional involvement, therefore enjoyment not intended can help. And I said that there there may even be an even more extreme formulation: that what the commandment really is, is only the intention. The commandment is the intention. The act, of course, you have to do, because otherwise the intention has nothing to apply to, but basically there is only one commandment in the Torah, not 613. The commandment is to obey the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, only there are many commands, and for each one of them you have to obey. In any case, that’s what he says: if you do a commandment without intention, according to the one who says commandments require intention, then basically you didn’t do a commandment at all. And let’s see: “What Rashbam and Tosafot innovated is that if one intentionally means not to fulfill the obligation, then according to everyone he has not fulfilled it. Nevertheless, even here there is a major practical difference.” A major practical difference meaning between the one who says commandments require intention and the one who says they do not require intention. Seemingly, with opposite intention there is no practical difference, because according to both of them he has not fulfilled it. He says no, there is a practical difference. Why? “For according to the one who says commandments require intention, it is not considered a commandment-act at all, as we explained.” If there is no intention, and of course if there is opposite intention, then it is not a commandment at all. Okay. “But according to the one who says commandments do not require intention, for him even without intention it is considered a commandment-act.” Intention is a side condition, and it also does not hold things up, but clearly a commandment without intention is still a commandment. Right? So he says: if someone intends not to fulfill the obligation, then what is the problem? After all, an act without intention is also a commandment, so why can opposite intention uproot it? So he said: “If he intended not to fulfill the obligation—where Rashbam agrees that he did not fulfill it—this is only a law in fulfillment of the commandment, that against his will he does not fulfill it.” Okay, this is really the topic from the afternoon session, I just didn’t remember this Turei Even. Meaning, he says this is a law in fulfillment of the commandment, not in the commandment itself. That is, if you performed a commandment without intention, you performed a commandment, only you have no fulfillment of it. The commandment was done, only you did not do that commandment. Okay. You could say what? The object? Yes, yes. That’s how I started the afternoon series. And then he says—because we saw this, after all—we saw that there is a dispute among the medieval authorities about why, in the case of opposite intention, you do not fulfill the obligation. So there are medieval authorities who say—this is how it appears in Tosafot when he cites Rashbam—that one does not discharge a person’s obligation against his will. He does not want to fulfill the obligation of the commandment, so we do not discharge him against his will. But whether the commandment was done or not done depends on reality. If the commandment was done, then it was done. He did not fulfill his obligation, as a person, because if he does not want to fulfill it, we won’t count it for him as a commandment if he doesn’t want it to count for him, against his will. But you cannot say that the commandment was not done, because after all a commandment without intention is also a commandment-act according to the one who says commandments do not require intention. What does that mean? Now look. “And according to this approach”—yes, maybe I’ll say one sentence about what I already said in the afternoon. There the Minchat Chinukh writes: Tosafot asks why a verse is needed to invalidate a stolen sukkah—Tosafot on page 9 in Sukkah. Why is a verse needed to invalidate a stolen sukkah? Tosafot answers: because otherwise there is the issue of a commandment that comes through a transgression. Meaning, if you sit in a stolen sukkah, this is a commandment that comes through a transgression, so why do you need a verse? So he said: because if it were invalid only by virtue of a commandment that comes through a transgression, then if you sat in the sukkah, you do have a commandment. You can’t say you ate outside the sukkah; you ate in a valid sukkah, only your commandment is not credited to your account, because it is not a commandment that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. But you can’t say that you did not do a commandment; this is not a defect in the sukkah, it is not that the sukkah is not a sukkah. When we learn from the verse that a stolen sukkah is invalid, we understand that you sat outside the sukkah—you simply sat in an invalid sukkah, like sitting where there is no roofing. Therefore the verse is needed. So something like that is basically what he wants to say here. A commandment without intention is still a commandment, and one can even fulfill one’s obligation with it. So what happens with opposite intention? Opposite intention is no worse—after all, I still did the commandment-act, and intention is not needed. Right, but the commandment-act will not be credited to my account, because I don’t want it. They won’t count a commandment for me if I don’t want it. Likewise, a completely righteous person who rebelled—the Talmud in Kiddushin. A completely righteous person who rebelled lost his merits. Why? What he did, he did—so why did he lose his merits? Because if he doesn’t want them, then they are not his merits. They won’t count the merits for him if he doesn’t want them. “And according to this approach, the Turei Even’s difficulty is well resolved. For what we see in the Talmud, that to violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah and to fulfill one’s obligation come out of the same package,” meaning it’s the same issue of intention—fulfilling one’s obligation and adding to the Torah. “And if he performed the commandment without intention, according to the one who says commandments require intention, he does not violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah, just as he does not fulfill the commandment.” In this case, that is because according to him, without intention it is not considered a commandment-act at all. Consequently he does not violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah, because that prohibition applies specifically if he performed the commandment properly. This is all according to the one who says commandments require intention. According to the one who says commandments require intention, why is intention needed for the prohibition of adding to the Torah? Exactly what I said in the previous lecture—merit to direct yourself. Why, why, why is intention needed in order to violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah? Because if you didn’t intend, it isn’t a commandment. After all, there is only an addition if you added another commandment, and according to the one who says commandments require intention, without intention this is not a commandment. So there are not two separate laws of intention. It is simply the law that commandments require intention. What requires intention for the prohibition of adding to the Torah is not from the laws of adding to the Torah; it’s simply that otherwise you did not add a commandment. That is all according to the one who says commandments require intention. “But according to the one who says commandments do not require intention,” he says, “for him even without intention it is considered a commandment-act, and even when one explicitly intended not to fulfill the obligation, this has nothing to do with the body of the commandment-act,” as he said above. “And as for why he did not fulfill his obligation”—so why doesn’t he fulfill his obligation in the case of opposite intention according to Rashbam? Because one does not discharge a person’s obligation against his will; if he does not want to fulfill it, one does not discharge him against his will. “And therefore, regarding the prohibition of adding to the Torah, he violates it even when he expressly intended not for the sake of a commandment, because in any case he performed a proper commandment-act.” Brilliant. What he’s basically saying is: after all, there is a commandment-act here. Only as far as fulfilling the obligation is concerned, we’re not going to attach a commandment to you and say that you fulfilled your obligation if you don’t want that. But with the prohibition of adding to the Torah we’re not talking about fulfilling an obligation. You have opposite intention; you don’t intend to fulfill the obligation. In any case, you indeed don’t fulfill the obligation—that’s not a commandment, you’re just adding. What do I care what you intend—why is that relevant? It isn’t relevant. If, according to the one who says commandments do not require intention, you did add a commandment, because the commandment is a commandment even without intention, then you violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah. Opposite intention can help with regard to your not fulfilling the obligation, but not with regard to your not violating the prohibition of adding to the Torah. Because if you violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah, then what shall we say—that you didn’t commit a transgression because you didn’t intend to add a commandment, or you intended a transgression? What does that even mean? Exactly. And that is the answer according to Rashbam. Therefore there is no proof against Rashbam from the passage here. As much as it appears from the passage here that intending the opposite—not to fulfill one’s obligation—does not help, and in any case he violates the prohibition of adding to the Torah, that is only with regard to the prohibition of adding to the Torah, Rashbam will say. There indeed opposite intention does not help; Rashbam agrees with that too. But with regard to fulfilling one’s obligation, there, according to the one who says commandments do not require intention, the commandment exists—so why should opposite intention prevent fulfillment? Only because one does not discharge a person’s obligation against his will. That’s all. But what does that have to do with the prohibition of adding to the Torah? He violates the prohibition of adding to the Torah anyway. What, by adding twice?
[Speaker B] He didn’t fulfill it, but the commandment is carried out?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he didn’t do—
[Speaker B] But he did the commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The prohibition of adding to the Torah applies because he has a commandment here; only the commandment—what does it mean that it is attributed to him? He has no credit for this commandment. What does it mean, attributed to him? He did the commandment—who did the commandment? Clearly he did the commandment, but it is not attributed to him; no check mark is recorded for him in the Holy One’s ledger. He does violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah, correct. Even though as far as the commandment is concerned he does not fulfill his obligation. There is no obligation to fulfill here; there is no such commandment, he is adding. But it doesn’t matter—you need there to be an addition so that this thing will be a commandment according to the one who says commandments require intention, and according to the one who says commandments do not require intention, you truly don’t need that, because the commandment is a commandment even without intention, and opposite intention will not help here. Now this of course will depend on the dispute we saw: why, according to Rashbam, does opposite intention really help uproot the commandment? Is it because one does not discharge a person’s obligation against his will, or because if he intends not to fulfill it, that really removes from this the status of a commandment-act even according to the one who says commandments do not require intention? According to the second possibility, you cannot resolve Rashbam. This difficulty from the Talmud in Eruvin is proof that Rashbam’s view must be like the first option and not the second, because otherwise it would be impossible to resolve this difficulty. Okay, just one general comment here. This whole discussion is one that I find very difficult conceptually, I have to say. A person who does things for some halakhic purpose, out of doubt or to save tefillin or something like that—how can you say that he violates the prohibition of adding to the Torah? I don’t understand. Clearly the prohibition of adding to the Torah is a consciousness-based commandment, a commandment that says: you are coming to add to the Torah—that is forbidden. Here, am I coming to add to the Torah? The opposite—I’m trying to take care of the Torah’s interests. I want the tefillin not to be disgraced, and I want to fulfill my obligation in terms of the laws of doubt in mixing blood applications, right? So I intend to fulfill my obligation in cases of doubt or something like that. How can you say that in such a case I violate—no, and what if I had no choice? Then I think the simple answer is that I leave it there. That’s what I have, I can’t come back again for some reason, it doesn’t matter right now why. No, of course not—take both out, what’s the problem? When you do something—maybe I’ll bring examples—there is, I’m saying, the prohibition of adding to the Torah, I’m speaking conceptually, not proving it. On the contrary, the proofs say otherwise, but this is very difficult for me. Because conceptually, the prohibition of adding to the Torah is a consciousness-based prohibition, like idolatry. Idolatry is not a prohibition on doing actions; it is a prohibition on doing actions from מתוך a certain consciousness of obligation to an idol, in addition to or instead of the Holy One, blessed be He. The prohibition of adding to the Torah also is a conceptual problem that says: you have 613 commandments, you cannot add additional commandments. But if I do something not because I am adding—if I put on two pairs of tefillin not because I want to do the commandment of tefillin twice, but because I want to save the tefillin—then how can you say that I have here violated the Torah through an incorrect conception of it? I’m not doing it because of an incorrect conception of the Torah. It is very strange to see the prohibition of adding to the Torah as a purely action-based prohibition, as though if you did the action of a commandment again you violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah. It depends why I am doing it. If I make the blessing again out of doubt, let’s say—even though with doubtful blessings we are lenient, but suppose not, okay? So out of doubt I make the blessing again—did I violate the prohibition of adding to the Torah? Is there a doubt of adding to the Torah here, because I already made the blessing, and I’m in doubt, so I made it twice—is that adding to the Torah? I’m making the blessing in order to fulfill the doubtful obligation; I’m not making the blessing in order to add another commandment, right? There’s no heresy against the Torah or against the Holy One, blessed be He, or desire to add to its boundaries here. On the contrary, I’m doing it in order to fulfill my obligations. So how can you say that something like this is the transgression of adding to the Torah? To me this is really bizarre. I’ll say again, this also emerges from the passage here in Eruvin and also from the passage in our context regarding mixing blood applications, right? Those that are applied in four places, those where two are applied which count as four, and so on. There too, basically, he does it in order to satisfy a doubt, to sprinkle on four sides even though for that blood it may be that one side is enough. And there he violates the prohibition of adding to the Torah even though all he is doing is only because of the doubt, because he thinks maybe he has to sprinkle on four. And that’s what I’m saying: I think that defining the transgression of adding to the Torah as a physical transgression is very strange—as if, if you performed the commandment again, you violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah. Why did I do it? Meaning, maybe I’ll bring an example that sharpens this a bit more. You know, the Talmud says that there is a prohibition against freeing a slave—“you shall work them forever,” a Canaanite slave, “you shall work them forever.” And Rabbi Eliezer, who needed a tenth man for a prayer quorum, freed his slave. The moment you free a slave he becomes Jewish, so he can complete the quorum. Everyone asks: how can you nullify the positive commandment of “you shall work them forever”? So Nachmanides says that he did not free the slave; rather, he used the slave. He needed to use the slave in order to complete the quorum, and one may use a slave. In this case, in order to use the slave he had to free him, but he didn’t free him in order to give him a gift; he freed him because that was the way he needed him at that moment. This is the optimal way to use him as property—you can now have him complete your quorum. Therefore there is no prohibition in this. He compares it to “do not show them favor,” do not give them a free gift—to gentiles or to the seven nations, whichever the verse refers to. What if you give him a gift for needs that will promote your own interests—did you violate the prohibition of “do not show them favor”? Of course not. You’re giving him a gift because of your own interests, not in order to improve his condition. That is not called giving a free gift. A gift is not a physical action; a gift is when you give someone something with the intention of benefiting him, showing him love or appreciation or something like that. If you give him something for some other reason, that is not a gift at all—not that it is a gift but without the proper intention. The concept of a gift is a consciousness-based concept; it is not a factual concept. The same thing with “you shall work them forever” or the freeing here: it is not freeing at all, it is using the slave. The prohibited freeing is freeing when you want to benefit him. Once I freed him there is no problem, he is Jewish, so what is the issue? No, he is using him. “You shall work them forever,” and on your approach it isn’t right. No, again, after he was freed he is no longer a slave, so I have no problem at all—what, I don’t need to use him, he is for me for the quorum. The prohibition I violate is only in the act of freeing itself, not in using him to complete the quorum. And in the act of freeing, I am doing it for my own benefit. Yes, exactly. Because there is a simple conception here: what is the prohibition of adding to the Torah? It means, listen, this is the Torah, it will not be exchanged, right? You have to understand that this is the Torah and you cannot invent new torahs. No, but that is not—we again, it is not the same thing. There are commandments which by their very essence are consciousness-based commandments. Why do the medieval authorities indeed interpret “you shall work them forever” this way? Because it is clear to them that the intention is that you are not supposed to benefit the slave. If you use him, then there is no problem. Why? Did I give him a free gift? Fine, okay, then this is my own innovation. So what, okay, what. Okay, he fulfilled it because of a Torah-level law, he fulfilled it, he violated—
[Speaker B] the prohibition of adding to the Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he violated “Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” “Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”—he uttered the divine name needlessly. Yes, the second blessing is uttering the divine name in vain. It could also be adding to the Torah, depending on whether there is adding to the Torah in rabbinic prohibitions—we talked about that. But really we talked about intention in rabbinic prohibitions, not about adding to the Torah. Adding to the Torah in rabbinic prohibitions is a different question, but it depends, it depends on that. And why can’t we say that after eight days this is a commandment without consciousness, and say that he violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah? It doesn’t need consciousness. You can say anything, but I don’t understand what the discussion is even about. Therefore, by the way, why is it that according to Rava you need intention to add when you do it after the proper time? On the eighth day in the sukkah? Because commandments do not require—
[Speaker B] intention.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so what? So what? On the eighth day it is just an action—what is the problem? So what does intention do? Intention basically tells me—say, depending what sort of intention it is. If it is intention to fulfill one’s obligation, then formally it is obvious, because you want to add a commandment. If it is intention to add, then that is exactly what I was talking about. Intention to add means that the prohibition of adding exists only if you intend to add. Okay? Otherwise, as I said, someone who licks ice cream on Purim violated the prohibition of adding to the Torah, because the Torah did not command licking ice cream on Purim. What are you doing? Every action I do that the Torah did not command is adding to the Torah. Clearly I need to define this act as a commandment-act in some way in order for us to relate to it as adding to the Torah. It can’t just be anything. Now I’m saying: if the commandment in itself is defined as a commandment, then they tell me, fine, so it is defined as a commandment on its own account, so you don’t need your intentions to turn it into a commandment. I say: but in a place where the act is not being done for a commandment at all, nor to add, nor for anything, but rather to get out of a doubtful obligation or to save the tefillin from disgrace or something like that, then how does the prohibition of adding to the Torah belong here? This thing is so strange, I can’t understand it, I don’t know. It is very strange. Okay. So that is the first part of the lecture; it took me longer than I thought. I’ll do the second part as briefly as possible. Basically, until now we were talking about whether commandments require intention. Whether you need intention, don’t need intention, and so on. There is a more fundamental question one can discuss, and that is whether commandments require belief, beyond whether commandments require intention. What does that mean? I’ll explain. Intention against—slowly, slowly, I only said the first sentence. We still have some time, I haven’t finished the lecture yet. So what does it mean? Look, maybe I’ll bring an example. Maimonides, in positive commandment no. 1, says that there is a commandment to know that there is a First Being, and so on—in other words, a commandment to believe, “I am the Lord your God.” Fine. So everyone asks about him: what, how can you count that in the count of the commandments? For all sorts of reasons this question is raised. One of the common reasons is: how can you command belief? If you don’t believe, you’re not in a position to fulfill commandments. Meaning, one who does not believe does not fulfill commandments. Now what does it mean that one who does not believe does not fulfill commandments? Suppose someone who does not believe observed the Sabbath—does he have a commandment? He doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t believe in the giving of the Torah, doesn’t believe in anything. He observed the Sabbath, he honored parents, I don’t know, he did things, he performed a commandment properly. Does he have a commandment or not? Don’t guess. Again: a person doesn’t believe—not in the giving of the Torah, not in the Holy One, blessed be He, not in anything—but he honors parents, or whatever, fulfills a commandment, takes a lulav, puts on tefillin with the Chabad guys on the street, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. Does he have a commandment? So seemingly from this objection to Maimonides it would look like no, right? But that isn’t precise. Because this objection to Maimonides is not really asking that. This objection to Maimonides says there is no point in commanding him, because if he doesn’t believe, he won’t observe this commandment either. That doesn’t mean that if someone who does not believe fulfills a commandment, then he has no commandment. That is a stronger statement. So you cannot prove from this objection to Maimonides the claim that I want to make here, that commandments require belief. Because what is said there is not that if you are without belief, and yet you fulfill the commandment, then you may still have a commandment. It only says you won’t fulfill the commandment. And if you don’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, what is the point of commanding you to believe? This commandment to believe—if you don’t believe, you won’t fulfill it. Meaning, it’s not… if someone decides to fulfill some commandment even though he doesn’t believe, it may be that this will count as a commandment. That is not the assumption of the objection. What? Even if you’re inside the game, and for some reason you do the commandment…
[Speaker B] No—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But they ask about Maimonides: why does he include the positive commandment to believe in the count of the commandments? After all, one who does not believe is not capable of fulfilling commandments, so what does it help to command him to believe? Precisely because of the one—
[Speaker B] who does the commandments, I want to give him the commandment—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He already believes? He still doesn’t believe. Right, but there is a commandment to believe, and therefore he will start believing? Or he believes or he doesn’t believe—what do you mean? He won’t start believing because there is a commandment to believe. Either he believes or he doesn’t; it depends what he thinks. So you say: fine, then there is a commandment to think about it or investigate it. But that is not a commandment to believe. Rather it is a commandment to do the checking, and wherever you end up, you end up with your conclusions. That’s something else. Fine, but that is not our topic. What I want to say is that from this objection to Maimonides you cannot prove my stronger claim that commandments require belief. That is basically what I want to argue: without belief, the commandment is not a commandment. Where do I see that? There is a Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings—this I did in the afternoon. Maimonides says there, speaking about a resident alien, that any resident alien who fulfills the commandments because of intellectual conviction and not because of the Torah that was given to Moses at Sinai is one of the wise of the nations of the world but not one of their pious. Meaning, in my translation: he did a good deed, but it is not a commandment. It has no religious value. Okay? Now why? Because commandments require belief. Meaning, if you don’t believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and in the command at Sinai, but you do it because of intellectual conviction—you honor parents because you think it is proper to honor parents, not because we were commanded in the Torah to honor parents—then you are a good person, but you do not have a commandment. What? So they always asked about that… I already wrote about this in articles too. They always asked, but that is not right. First of all, the same reasoning that applies to the resident alien also applies to a Jew. What’s the difference? After all, this comes from reasoning. It has no source—everyone, the Kesef Mishneh and all the others, wonder where Maimonides got his source. There really is no source. It is reasoning. To my mind, by the way, straightforward reasoning. And that same reasoning applies both to a resident alien and to a Jew. Beyond that, look in the Frankel edition there on Maimonides, end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings. You’ll see there are several later authorities, and one of them, I think, wants to argue that this is only for a resident alien, but the simple understanding is that this is true for every Jew. And what is the idea? So why does Maimonides place this specifically in the Laws of Kings, in the laws of the resident alien, if it is true for every Jew? Because with the resident alien, the seven commandments—he is talking about the seven commandments, because a resident alien is a gentile who observes the seven commandments. The seven commandments, Maimonides says, are things toward which reason inclines. These are logical, moral, reasonable things and the like. In these commandments there is the possibility that a person fulfills them because of intellectual conviction, not because of the command. No one is going to redeem a firstborn donkey because of intellectual conviction and not because of the command. That commandment is a commandment because we were commanded to do it. Obviously—that is what he is supposed to do. What do you mean, can he? What, if he believes in God, then he does the commandments not because of belief in God? Then he has no commandment. If he believes—he has no commandment. When he does that commandment, he has no commandment. No, again, I’m not talking about commandments of belief; among gentiles there are no commandments of belief. Among gentiles there are seven commandments. Commandments of belief are for Jews. Among gentiles there are seven commandments. Okay? If he did one of those commandments because he thinks it is logical or moral or something like that, not because of the command from Sinai, Maimonides says he has no commandment.
[Speaker B] If they don’t have commandments of belief?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We don’t really have commandments of belief either. What Maimonides writes there, he writes, but it simply is not correct. It cannot be correct. But never mind—what difference does it make whether they have commandments of belief or not? The commandments they must fulfill only on the basis of belief. That doesn’t mean the commandment itself is: there is a commandment to believe. But belief is the infrastructure, it is a necessary condition for the commandment to have value. Without it, it is not a commandment. Yes, that is what Maimonides writes there. Maimonides writes there that the descendants of Noah must fulfill them because of the Torah that was given at Sinai, where the Torah says that Noah was commanded about them. That is why we fulfill them. I have no problem if it is natural, let him do whatever he wants. No problem, let him believe naturally, unnaturally, I don’t know, however you want—animal-based belief, plant-based belief, vegan belief. I don’t care whether it is natural or not. When he fulfills the commandment, he has to fulfill it because he believes. Because of belief? Is he fulfilling it because of belief? No? Then he has no commandment.
[Speaker B] No, there are seven—wait, there are the seven Noahide commandments because of belief.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s all, up to this point everything is fine. After that, nothing. He doesn’t need anything else. I don’t care—after that there’s nothing, nothing, he’s not obligated. No, he has no commandment other than the seven commandments. He only has the seven commandments. He has no additional commandments. I’m talking about those seven, in the case of a resident alien. For a Jew, all 613 commandments are like this: if he doesn’t believe, or if he doesn’t perform the commandments out of faith, then he has no commandment. By the way, faith doesn’t mean faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, who created the world. Faith runs from the Holy One, blessed be He, who created the world, all the way to the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and that what was given at Sinai obligates me. All those things are required. If I believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and I believe in the revelation at Mount Sinai, but it doesn’t seem to me that Mount Sinai obligates me—I wasn’t there, I didn’t undertake anything, nothing—but I feel like honoring parents, then I have no commandment. I have to do it because of the command at Sinai. Right, right. What’s the question?
[Speaker C] Clear.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Isn’t that similar to Rav Chaim’s approach?
[Speaker C] Whenever people say… no, they do believe in Sinai. I only meant: because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so. Meaning, I want to eat pork, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, said not to eat pork, I don’t eat it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s Rav Chaim’s approach. Now the question is: what is this Rav Chaim? I didn’t understand. Which Rav Chaim? There? What does he say?
[Speaker C] That a person can’t say he doesn’t do the commandment because it’s not good, but really he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —wants to commit the transgression, but he says… that’s the Talmudic text, not Rav Chaim. That’s the Talmudic text: “I could desire it, I could desire it, but what can I do—my Father in Heaven has decreed upon me.”
[Speaker C] Now the question is, let’s push it to an extreme. Someone says: I don’t want to murder because it’s bad. Wait—you’re supposed not to murder, but say it’s because the Holy One—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —commanded me not to murder. So that’s extreme. In the afternoon class I explained this contradiction; it’s the sixth chapter of Maimonides in Eight Chapters. Maimonides himself writes this: that there is value in identifying with the moral and rational commandments, not doing them like someone compelled by a demon. He says all these statements—“I could desire it, I could desire it, but what can I do, my Father in Heaven decreed upon me”—apply only to the supra-rational commandments. With rational commandments, there is value in identification. So where is the commandment? So I explained there, like the Avnei Nezer in his introduction, that yes, you are supposed to identify with it, but the fulfillment is because of the command. Meaning, I have to do it because of the command, even though I also have a natural tendency to do it. In other words, a person is more complete if he also has a natural tendency toward moral behavior, but he has the commandment only if he does it because of the command. What’s the practical difference? For example, one day he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. He doesn’t have those moral feelings, he doesn’t feel like it. Fine? Now will he still do it? If yes, then even if he does it because of those feelings, there’s no problem, because I understand that the command alone would also have been enough to make him do that thing. That is a sufficient condition for him to do it; even if it isn’t necessary, it is sufficient. Okay? Okay, so basically my claim is that commandments require faith. And Maimonides does not make that depend on the dispute over whether commandments require intention or not. Meaning, according to Maimonides, commandments require faith even according to the view that commandments do not require intention. Faith is not a law of intention, nor even an extension of the law of intention. Faith is something much more fundamental, something everyone agrees on. After that, you can argue whether commandments require intention or not. But that commandments require faith—that is clear. What? Because just to be clear, Maimonides in his own view says that commandments do not require intention. So. Then why do they require faith? If it—
[Speaker B] —requires faith, meaning I believe it comes from Sinai and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not intention, faith. No, he has faith. He doesn’t have intention.
[Speaker B] And there are those who say they don’t require intention, and you need some specific affection?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If commandments do not require intention, then yes indeed, he fulfills his obligation. What’s the question?
[Speaker B] If commandments don’t require intention, obviously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s what the one who says commandments do not require intention says. What’s the question? Someone who says commandments do not require intention says that a person without intention fulfills his obligation. I’m only adding: provided that he has faith. Okay? Right? What’s the problem?
[Speaker B] I didn’t understand what the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —addition I’m making? One might have said that he can do it even without faith. The one who says commandments do not require intention could blow the shofar not just for singing, but for making music. He doesn’t care at all, he doesn’t know what Rosh Hashanah is, not the Holy One, blessed be He, not obligation, nothing. He blows. Has he fulfilled his obligation or not? On the face of it, according to the one who says commandments require intention… no, do not require intention, he has fulfilled his obligation. I say no. Even according to the one who says commandments do not require intention, commandments require faith. Otherwise this is just unintentional involvement. Without faith it’s just unintentional involvement. It belongs to the first layer, only of course this is an expansion of the definition of unintentional involvement. It’s obvious: he’s simply preoccupied mechanically. It’s worth nothing. And where is the faith? The lenient and the stringent—
[Speaker B] No—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The lenient and the stringent aren’t interesting. The question is what Maimonides says. Lenient and stringent are matters of preference. Maimonides says commandments do not require intention—that’s what I argued in Maimonides’ view. Many others think differently, but it seems obvious to me that Maimonides says commandments do not require intention. And still, that doesn’t prevent him from saying that commandments require faith. Okay? And that’s all. The lenient and the stringent, that’s already… “commandments require faith” is a stringency; “commandments do not require intention” is a leniency. You decide what… In general, the concepts of leniency and stringency—I once wrote an article about that too. I don’t think anyone understands what they mean. What is leniency and what is stringency? You have to explain it. What? Yes. If you think carefully, I promise you that you don’t know how to define what leniency and stringency are. Okay, never mind. It needs to be defined. Those who prefer not to travel, yes, for example. Anyway, so that’s the claim. Now obviously, “commandments require faith” is not a demand for conscious awareness. It doesn’t mean that when you take the lulav, aside from the question of intention—which depends on the dispute whether commandments require intention or not—you also have to think about faith. Because without that you haven’t fulfilled your obligation. Obviously not. This is really more of a negative statement. Someone who doesn’t believe has no commandments. Someone who does believe belongs to the realm of commandments. And now we have to discuss whether commandments require intention or not. You don’t need to see intention. But if you don’t believe, then the problem is not that you aren’t thinking the right thing. Rather, a person who does not believe is not in the game. He’s not in the game, he doesn’t belong to commandments, he can’t fulfill commandments even if he wants to. The Torah was given at Sinai by the Holy One, blessed be He, and it obligates, yes. What did He give us—not physically, what difference does it make why He chose to give? What difference does it make whether the act is physical or not? The Holy One, blessed be He, spoke, so He also did not speak physically. Fine, but that’s what is called speech with respect to the Holy One, blessed be He. Yes, never mind, whatever exactly your model is of commandments and faith, fine, there are different models. He may think the Holy One, blessed be He, is corporeal, like Maimonides says corporealization is not—fine, that’s Maimonides with his elephant parable. He says such a person is not a believer, but as the Raavad says, what do you mean? Many greater and better than he did believe this, and clearly they are not called deniers of a principle, even though the Raavad also agrees with Maimonides; they are not called deniers of a principle. I’m not getting now into the model or picture—what picture of faith you need to have in your head. If you believe in God who gave the Torah and that the Torah obligates from Sinai and this is the Torah, the one in our hands—you believe. I don’t care right now what you think about the Holy One, blessed be He, and what kind of pyrotechnics exactly happened at Sinai and what external force. I’m saying God. God is not a human being; God is an entity with mandatory and external authority, however you want to call it, and He gave the Torah and that obligates—that’s what you need to believe. If you believe that, everything is fine, you’re in the game. If you don’t believe that, you’re not in the game. Now the claim I wanted to make in the article that caused a bit of an uproar many years ago in Tzohar is that this is true for transgressions as well. Yes? No, you need faith for transgressions too. Obviously, for transgressions you don’t need intention in the usual sense—an intention to commit a transgression. Still, lack of intent is an exemption with regard to a transgression. But lack of intent is not the parallel—we talked about this at the beginning—it is not the parallel to “commandments require intention.” Lack of intent is a kind of unintentional involvement. Meaning, not exactly unintentional involvement, but you do the act consciously and for a different purpose, okay? But it’s not that you need to intend to commit a transgression for the transgression to count as a transgression; yes, obviously not. That law exists only for commandments. But the law that commandments require faith, in my opinion, exists for transgressions too. Or in other words: if there is an unbelieving person, his transgressions are not transgressions. Right. I extended this to traditionalists too, independently of that; the traditionalists were done for anyway even without what I said—I saved the atheists. I turned the atheists, right, I turned the atheists into better people than the traditionalists. And it’s just common sense, isn’t it? It’s just common sense. Yes. The traditionalists know what is right and don’t do it; the atheists are coerced—they think differently. Who are “they”? When they come back we’ll talk; in the meantime they’re offenders. What do you mean? They know what they should do and they don’t do it, so they’re intentional offenders—what—
[Speaker B] —do you mean? The atheist or the traditionalist?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. Are you in doubt? He has no transgression at all; they have a transgression. What do you mean? All their transgressions are transgressions. He didn’t commit any transgression; he doesn’t believe. Commandments and transgressions require faith. I don’t know which is preferable; I’m saying these are the facts. Either you believe or you don’t believe. Belief isn’t a decision. Decisions apply once you believe; then the question is what you decide to do. Traditionalists at the level of decision are criminals, because they believe—I’m talking about a certain kind of traditionalist. There are traditionalists who are not like this. But traditionalists who believe that the whole story is true, it’s just not convenient for them, they don’t feel like it right now. Fine—so in effect they are deciding to commit an intentional transgression. Complete wicked people. The atheists are coerced. What do you want from them? Atheists don’t believe; they are completely coerced. I’d say more than coerced. The standard models are “a child captured among non-Jews,” coerced, but more than that. He is not coerced; even if he wants to fulfill a commandment, he can’t, he’s not in the game. What do you want from him? You want nothing from him. Now many attacked me following that article. They said to me, wait—so they’re not obligated in commandments? Of course all Jews are obligated in commandments. Obviously they are obligated in commandments. Atheists too are obligated in commandments; they just cannot fulfill their obligation. Even if they want to fulfill their obligation, they have not fulfilled it. The commandment is not a commandment and the transgression is not a transgression. But obviously they are obligated. A practical difference is whether I can take such a person and bring him close, bring him back, and get him to fulfill his obligation. Obviously I need to do that. He is obligated. He is as Jewish as any other Jew. But he cannot fulfill his obligation—that’s the claim. You can say anything; I simply don’t agree. I think, as a matter of reasoning, it’s incorrect. It’s incorrect as a matter of reasoning. The Talmud itself distinguishes between someone who says “it is permitted” and a child captured among non-Jews, and an ordinary inadvertent sinner, right? And that’s a topic I’m not sure how far I’ll manage to get into.
[Speaker B] What is “a sinner”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think he is mistaken, but fine, that’s how he understands it—what’s the problem? It has nothing to do with what I’m saying. If he justifies his laziness by means of a worldview, he says that this simply doesn’t… I’m not obligated to do it, therefore I don’t do it—no problem. No, no problem. So that’s not what I call a traditionalist. That’s not what I call a traditionalist in this context. I said there are several kinds of traditionalists. I’m talking about the traditionalist like you said before—the lazy ones. Not the traditionalists you’re talking about now. Those traditionalists who say: I basically believe everything you believe, but I just don’t feel like it right now. I’m driving now to a soccer game, not… I don’t have time right now. Prayer is over, now I can get into the car. Fine, that may sound right to you, but that’s why I’m giving the class, because I think it’s wrong. It’s exactly the opposite. I don’t know; I didn’t see it with my own eyes. I don’t know about you. I… I don’t know, I didn’t see it with my own eyes. Maybe your vision penetrates more than mine. Is that really how they think, or are they mistaken? Because he didn’t see it with his own eyes either; neither did I, nor did he. The Torah says that whoever was there saw all kinds of pyrotechnics, and even that I don’t know if it’s a factual description. I didn’t see it. That’s what you imagine.
[Speaker B] I don’t deal in fantasies.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In this class, we’re not dealing in fantasies. Fantasies belong in the wing of hallucinogenic drugs; there you can have a circus of hallucinogenic drugs and live in fantasies. Everything’s fine. We’re in a class now. In class I deal with what I think is right and what is not. And I may be mistaken; you can argue. But the fact that people imagine things is not an argument in this context. Okay, anyway—what I basically want to say is that commandments and transgressions require faith. And someone who performs a commandment or a transgression while not believing—again, notice, “not believing” does not mean not believing in God specifically. He may believe in God but not believe in the revelation at Sinai, or he may believe in Sinai but not think that it obligates. All of these are less than a child captured among non-Jews. Meaning, their commandments are not commandments and their transgressions are not transgressions. People mistakenly think that the concept of a child captured among non-Jews depends on knowledge. Then they say: look, someone who left religion, I don’t know, learned everything, has all the knowledge in the world—he’s not a child captured among non-Jews? Complete nonsense. A child captured among non-Jews is someone who does not grasp these things as obligating him. He can be a professor of Jewish law and Talmud and know every little detail in the Mishnah Berurah, an immense Torah scholar among the immense, he knows everything forwards and backwards with all the views of the medieval authorities and the later authorities. But he studies it the way people study Native American culture. Yes, there are all kinds of crazy things like a Shulchan Arukh and 613 commandments. Okay, I write articles about this; this is how I make a living. So I study everything and I’m an enormous Torah scholar, but it’s clear to me that it doesn’t obligate me. For me it’s like Native American culture. Completely a child captured among non-Jews, even though he knows more than all the obligated Torah scholars. It has nothing to do with it. Therefore if someone truly reaches the conclusion that this whole story does not obligate him, he is a child captured among non-Jews. It doesn’t matter how much he knows. The question is not one of knowledge. You can see endless questions online, all kinds of questions—it’s all misunderstandings. Both by those asking and by those answering. Meaning: is he a child captured among non-Jews or not, after all he left religion and he knows and he’s a Torah scholar—and it has nothing at all to do with the issue. The whole question is whether he ultimately reached the conclusion that this thing does not obligate him. If yes, then he is a child captured among non-Jews. That’s all. That’s his conclusion. In my view it’s a mistaken conclusion, but fine—if that’s his conclusion, then he is more than coerced. Now it’s true that in the Talmud—I’m not getting into the details now—I’ll send you links if you want, and if you don’t want I’ll send you links too; if you want, open them. No, no. On the contrary, this is completely coerced, not wicked. In a moment I’ll get to the definition of wicked. The claim… what? No, I’m saying it’s much more than coerced. A coerced person is someone who really has transgressions; he’s just not blameworthy for them. Fine? Here the claim is deeper. There are no transgressions here. It’s not a transgression at all. He is not in the sphere or the field in which one plays in the language of commandments… he does not believe at all. A coerced person is someone who believes, who belongs to the field. He isn’t guilty; something happened to him. Fine? Those are arguments about blame—coercion, okay? But here I’m not… these are not arguments about blame. It’s not a transgression. Say I could cause him to stumble, for example. Causing someone to transgress when that person is coerced—it’s a major question whether I violate “do not place a stumbling block” or not. Here my claim is that I do not violate “do not place a stumbling block,” because he did not commit a transgression and merely isn’t blameworthy because he’s coerced; rather, he did not commit a transgression at all. I can cause him to stumble ab initio; there is no prohibition of “do not place a stumbling block” in that. If I put it directly in his hand, that’s something else, because forcing something into his hand is like my own transgression. I’m talking about causing him to stumble, yes? Not forcing it into his hand. Now I just have to complete this—so who is an actual offender? According to each person’s own view, he’s not an offender. So who is an offender? Then who are all the heretics and all the… “they may be brought down and not brought up,” and everything we find in the Talmud and in the medieval authorities and the later authorities? We need to understand that the reality in the past was different from today. In the past it was clear to everyone that there is a God. Never mind each person and his own belief—he could be pagan, doesn’t matter. But there is religious obligation, there is God, there are commandments, and basically people understood that which commandments are incumbent on you is a function of which group you belong to. If you are Jewish, you keep these commandments; if you are pagan, then Peor for Peor; if you are this, then… Everyone has his god of Canaan, his god of this, a kind of pluralism that you find today in the Far East. There, you know, a person can be Buddhist or Shinto or something like that together with being Christian. It doesn’t bother him. Everything is fine. He belongs to both groups, so he does both this and that. That kind of pluralistic religiosity that sounds so strange to our Western ears. In any case, I think that used to be the world. Therefore, for example, when they talk about a child captured among non-Jews, he grew up among gentiles. So of course he is obligated to worship Peor as Peor. But it is clear to the Sages that if he understood that he was Jewish, he would keep commandments. Of course. A child captured among non-Jews is not someone who decided this is not true; it is someone who did not understand where he belongs. That was the culture or consciousness in the past. I think it’s clear that this is so. Today it is absolutely not like that. Today—one second—today in our simple way of seeing things, it is obvious that when a person behaves in a certain way it is not because he belongs to a group. It affects him, of course, but I mean: that is not the reason by which he justifies why he behaves that way. He behaves that way because he thinks that’s right. Now even if he belongs to the Jewish group, if he doesn’t think it’s right to keep commandments, then today, from his perspective, he will not keep commandments. It has nothing to do with his belonging to the Jewish group. The fact that he grasps his belonging doesn’t mean that automatically he will also understand that all this obligates him. That’s another step. He also has to be convinced that it obligates him. Now this is a new reality, a reality the Sages of old did not know. And in the Hebrew Bible and in the Sages—right—secularism is a new phenomenon. Therefore secularism is a phenomenon more distant than a child captured among non-Jews. The concept of a child captured among non-Jews itself is anachronistic. The concept of a child captured among non-Jews was born in the period of the Sages and the medieval authorities. It appears in the Talmud and afterward in Maimonides and the medieval authorities. But it also belongs, it is rooted in the field that existed there. In our field, to use the concept of a child captured among non-Jews is a mistake—or to expand it, whatever, that’s semantics—but it’s not the concept of child captured among non-Jews that they were talking about. The child captured among non-Jews they discuss is inadvertent. He brings a sin-offering. True, he brings only one sin-offering for all categories of transgressions, but he sinned. There is an Amoraic dispute whether he is coerced or inadvertent. In Jewish law they rule that he is inadvertent. Maimonides rules that he is inadvertent. But that is a child captured among non-Jews. I’m not talking about a child captured among non-Jews. I’m talking about someone who is not in the game at all. Even if he knew he was Jewish and had been at Mount Sinai, it wouldn’t occur to him to keep it. That is not a child captured among non-Jews. His problem is that he decided otherwise. A child captured among non-Jews didn’t decide otherwise; he lacks information, he doesn’t know he is Jewish. If he knew he was Jewish, then of course he would keep it. As for the heretics of old, the assumption of the Sages was that the heretics of old followed the counsel of the inclination. It was a result of inclination. Meaning, if they were thinking correctly, without the biases of the inclination, they would reach the correct conclusion. That was the assumption of the Sages. Now it may be that even then there were first-rate heretics like today, people who truly and sincerely made their own calculation and reached a different conclusion. But after all, we do not know what goes on inside a person. So we follow presumptions. The presumption in the past was that an ordinary heretic was that kind of heretic. That’s the Talmudic text about Menasheh, yes, who appeared there to Rav Ashi and said to him: “If you had lived in my period, you would have tucked up the hems of your robe and run to worship idols.” We today don’t grasp this. A person who worships idols because of inclination? A person worships idols because he is mistaken, because he thinks it is right, I don’t know—that’s his belief. Think about it for a second. We don’t understand that Talmudic passage at all. That Talmudic passage describes someone who worships idols—ritual, god, the whole story—who doesn’t believe in it at all. Only because of inclination does he do it. There is an inclination toward idolatry. Not for nothing does the Talmud in Yoma say that the Men of the Great Assembly abolished the inclination toward idolatry. This description is not mystical in my view. It’s a description we still know today. The inclination toward idolatry underwent sublimation. It is now wrapped in cultural coverings, and today this is already very powerful. Today it is obvious to us that if someone worships idols, it is because he thinks it is right. He’s an idiot, he’s mistaken, everything’s fine—but that’s what he thinks. For the Sages it was clear that it was not so. It was clear to them that someone who worships idols does so because of inclination, and that was probably the reality in the past. There was a strong inclination to worship idols. And the whole Hebrew Bible is full of this. And it is talking about people who do believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and know that idol worship is forbidden. The prophet comes to them and rebukes them; they understand that he is right. Why do they persecute him? Think about someone today coming to idol worshipers, rebuking them in the name of the giving of the Torah at Sinai: why are you not, why are you eating pork, not keeping the Sabbath—they would institutionalize him. They wouldn’t do anything to him except institutionalize him, right? Why were the prophets persecuted in the Hebrew Bible? Because those people—the prophets rebuked them, and they knew the prophet was right. They believed in God, they knew the Torah obligates, but they had inclination. And when the prophet rebukes them, he rubs salt in their wounds; they know they’re not okay, so they persecute him. Today they wouldn’t persecute him, because this prophet is some kind of psycho, he’s delusional. It is obvious to us that he is speaking nonsense. Fine, at most I’d institutionalize him. Back then too there may have been genuine atheists, and today too there may be heretics because of inclination. Obviously there are many such people. I’m only talking about the presumption. Since you cannot determine what is going on with a specific person, because what goes on in his heart is hard to know—certainly not with the certainty needed for punishment, because to punish you need certainty—okay? So you go by presumption. The presumption in the past was that if you sinned, it was because of inclination. Even if you denied, it was because of inclination. That was the presumption. Anyone exceptional was an outlier, and the burden of proof was on him. Today the presumption has flipped. That’s what I think. Meaning, someone who denies does so because he genuinely thinks that this is the right path for him. Because I see people and I get the impression that this is the case. So why? A kibbutznik who grew up, I don’t know, somewhere and lives that way—what, he does it because of inclination, he doesn’t keep Sabbath? It never even enters his mind that it’s true. It’s obvious to him that it’s nonsense. Why can you tell me about masses of people who constantly violate these prohibitions—you see Eyal Golan, singers getting tattoos… No, so I said, with transgressions—no, no—with transgressions I said, with transgressions people certainly do it because of inclination, even though they think what’s right. I’m talking about denial, not transgressions. A person who denies—meaning he holds a different religious or philosophical outlook. I’m not talking about someone who believes in the Holy One, blessed be He, but desecrates the Sabbath because it doesn’t suit him. A traditionalist—all traditionalists are like that. Then of course they would beat him. Or they would beat him, or they would listen to him, like in the Hebrew Bible. Either beat him or listen to him. But if he rebukes them for lack of faith, then they’ll institutionalize him. They won’t beat him, won’t listen to him, nothing—just institutionalize him. He’s delusional. Yes. Yes. They don’t want to kill him only because he wants to impose things on them; otherwise they’d institutionalize him. They want to kill him because he imposes it on them. Not because he tells them repent, don’t eat pork. Obviously. The issue here is coercion, not when you ask them what they think—what, is eating pork forbidden? The man is delusional. An Indian. That’s it. And this is a reality that did not exist in the past. Therefore I argue that in today’s reality, the concept that commandments require faith did not receive attention because simply in the past it didn’t exist. Everyone had faith. The only question was which faith was correct, and whether there was inclination or not. Today it is far more significant. Today, for most people, when they commit transgressions out of lack of faith, it is a genuine lack of faith. It’s not inclination. They don’t believe it. So now this concept has become very important—a concept that in the past was somehow hiding in Maimonides and it wasn’t exactly clear what he meant and so on, and it has no clear source and all that. Today, in my opinion, it suddenly stands at center stage, simply because it has appeared practically. It exists today among people. But the concept itself is fully part of the flesh and blood of Jewish law. It’s just that in the past it was not relevant; there were no such people. There are secular people there too, except that there secular people are like a kohen and an Israelite among us. But there are also secular people in the Western sense among Muslims today. Never mind. Fine, this preserves something of what used to exist among us, but even among Muslims that is changing. Certainly among people in the West. Yes. For us, okay, among us too it’s like that. Fine, I think we’ll stop here. I’ll send you a link, for whoever wants to read a bit more… okay. To you as well, a good year, may you be sealed in the Book of Life.
[Speaker C] Remember that from here you can only go up.
[Speaker B] That’s modern over there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the past they worshiped idols because of inclination. That’s it. And the Indian story is exactly that. But sometimes it reaches the intellectual plane, though it comes from inclination. Meaning, the inclination causes it.