The General Principles of the Melachot – Lesson 19

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, coordinate systems can also be dependent. You can choose a description through a dependent coordinate system.

[Speaker C] No, the axes were in the sense that they were independent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, you’d have to show me an experiment that refutes that claim; I’m not sure you’ll find one. But force and…

[Speaker C] Fine, right, Aristotle isn’t useful. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not useful, fine, everything’s okay, so don’t try to convince me that it’s more efficient. You don’t need to convince me. The question is whether this is a dispute. Meaning: is someone here right and someone else mistaken, or is this our subjective choice—what’s convenient for us, we choose; what isn’t convenient, we don’t choose. Yes, think about Copernicus, for example. People tend to think there was a Copernican revolution. What does that mean? Until him, people thought the earth was at the center and the sun, or all the heavenly bodies, revolved around the earth, revolving along with all kinds of epicycles and deferents, and Copernicus basically reversed the point of view. Really the sun is at the center and we revolve around it. And to this day I still read and hear various people explaining that the benighted religious people are still stuck before the marvelous scientific innovations of Copernicus. That’s complete nonsense, of course. Copernicus didn’t really innovate anything. All Copernicus did was propose a more convenient coordinate system for describing reality; it’s not more correct. Just more convenient. It’s more convenient to describe reality with the sun at the center rather than the earth at the center. At least in our galaxy. Yes, that the sun is at the center and not the earth at the center. There’s nothing in that that’s more true or less true. It’s only a form of description. There’s no way to determine whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun around the earth. Kinematically it’s completely equivalent. The only question is where you place the origin of your coordinate system. Dynamically there will be differences—fictitious forces and so on—but that’s only dynamically. Kinematically it’s the same thing. Okay, you remember, Maimonides—

[Speaker I] Aristotle’s explanation is very complicated and it doesn’t fit reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine, it fits reality after you make infinitely many corrections of epicycles and deferents, yes, and even then it never really fits completely. Fine, but in any case, the point is that many things like this that we treat as true and false, or as science progressed—before it was mistaken and now it’s right—that’s not true. We simply have a more efficient coordinate system for describing reality. Not in the sense that… we didn’t progress from falsehood to truth. We progressed to a more efficient system. And of course, if it’s more efficient then we also achieve more with it. Meaning, obviously science has advanced in terms of its achievements as well. But that’s only because we chose a more efficient system. It’s not necessarily that this system is truer. Those are two different things. There are languages in which it’s very convenient to describe things, and languages in which it’s less convenient to describe things. That doesn’t mean the language is false or true. It’s just less convenient for describing those things, that’s all. In mathematical language it’s convenient to describe physics. Try describing physics in words—you won’t get very far. So what does that mean, that Hebrew is an incorrect language? You can also describe physics in Hebrew, by the way, and describe it completely precisely, but it’s terribly complicated. Mathematics is much more efficient, much more effective, to use when we describe physics. So it’s not a question of true and false, it’s a question of forms of description. Therefore classifications that we make, like Maimonides’ classifications and the periodic table and so on, or classifications of various animals—in those cases too the question arises: is this classification a claim about reality, or is it just convenient for us to classify things this way, and it isn’t really… there isn’t really truth and falsehood here. Okay? Or I’ll show this to you from a slightly different angle. There’s a problem in philosophy of science, in a naive philosophy of science. Yes, some philosophical remarks, but I think they give meaning to things. In naive philosophy of science, ever since Francis Bacon, people have thought that a scientist basically—or a historian or a scientist, doesn’t matter, a researcher—when he wants to explain some phenomena, first has to collect the data, collect the information, and then propose a theory that explains the information. Yes, that’s supposedly the way it works. Meaning, first you collect empirical data and then build a theory. That’s utter nonsense, of course. Utter nonsense. It’s not that it’s the other way around either; rather, it’s both together. Yes, and you can see this in… I know two presentations of this, two people who hadn’t heard of one another, describing exactly the same thing. There’s a British historian named Carr who wrote a book called What Is History? And in Hempel’s book, which is on philosophy of science—it appears in the Open University course book on philosophy of science—he gives an example involving a Hungarian Jewish doctor named Semmelweis, who discovered puerperal fever. And it’s exactly the same thing. Meaning, Carr says: suppose we want to explain why Blücher defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Okay? So Blücher and Wellington together defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Now what does Francis Bacon tell us? Let’s collect the data, see what the facts were, how much equipment they had, how many soldiers, the tactics, all those things, and then we’ll build the theory that explains the outcome of the battle. Okay? Why can’t that be right? Because think about it—think of someone arriving with no military knowledge at all. Nothing. We’re a tabula rasa in this area. Now I ask myself: which facts should I collect? Which facts should I collect? What’s the name of the adjutant’s mother—is that relevant? Maybe? I don’t know anything yet, right? I come as a tabula rasa at the start of my military research. So I don’t know which information is relevant. I don’t know—what longitude they were standing on, what was the height of the mountain on which the battle took place, I don’t know which… what color the horses were. How can I decide which information is relevant and which isn’t? You understand that in order to decide which information is relevant—there are infinitely many facts, you can’t collect all the facts. I need to collect the relevant facts. But in order to know which facts are relevant, I need to know how victory in battle is explained—that is, the theory. Meaning I need to know the theory when I come to collect the facts. But if I already know the theory, then why am I collecting the facts? I already know. There are those who like collecting only the facts that fit their theory. Okay? You don’t get very far with that. So what’s really true here? You come with some general idea, you understand what might be relevant and what might not. Then you collect facts, analyze them, try to test them, build a theory. Does it work out? Excellent. Doesn’t it work out? You formulate something else, collect facts, test, return again and again. And that’s how progress happens. It’s wrong to think that either theory precedes the facts or the facts precede the theory. It’s a gradual process. Okay? The classification of facts—which facts are relevant to my theory and which are not—depends on my theory. All right? The same thing with Semmelweis and puerperal fever there. There were two maternity wards. In one of them there was a very high mortality rate among women giving birth, much higher than in the second ward. They tried to understand why. So they began collecting facts to see what the difference was between the wards. For example, through which door did the priest enter and at what hour. What was the pitch of his bell. Which direction the windows faced, what color the tables were, all kinds of crazy things. Why? Because they hadn’t the faintest idea, they didn’t know which facts were relevant to this matter. They collected countless facts and of course got nowhere. At some point a kind of miracle happened and they discovered that in the two wards there were medical students who came after pathology, after a pathology course—they had done pathological work, dissected corpses, and then came to the ward. In one ward they washed their hands and in the other they didn’t. And then they understood that this is what caused the mortality. And by the way, notice: this was at a stage when they had no inkling about bacteria or things like that, so this was like saying there are sorcerers and demons doing it. It’s the same thing. Meaning, you need to understand that if I have no theoretical knowledge at all, I have no way of knowing what the relevant facts are. I have to have at least some general idea that will help me sort out which facts might be relevant, and then start searching among them for what really is relevant. But some initial sorting I have to do in any case. Or think, for example, of Newton. Newton collected a set of facts and from them built the theory of gravitation. One fact, for example, is that bodies I release fall toward the earth. A second fact is the tides. A third fact is the paths of the stars, and so on. Now before Newton, if you had asked me whether these three phenomena have anything in common, I would have had you committed. What connection is there between the tides, this thing falling downward, and the paths of the stars? Why not the color of the bird over there on the tree? There wasn’t the slightest idea. Now Newton decided that all these facts belong to one field, the field of gravitation, and he says that if we posit the existence of gravitational force, I can explain all these facts to you by means of one such assumption. What? They all move? So what? Horses move too; many things move. That proves nothing. What Newton said is that I can offer you a theory that will explain this set of facts—but this set of facts didn’t even constitute a domain until Newton came with the theory. No one would ever have thought to collect those facts in order to start looking for a common explanation of them. By the same token, I could look for why this table is brown, why that bird is ten centimeters long, and why these clouds are cumulonimbus—and look for a common theory for those three facts. There’s no connection. It’s theory that determines which facts belong to the field. And conversely, after there are the facts, I also know the theory. In short, in all these places you see that classification is a very subjective matter. Very subjective. So much so that one could argue that classification is entirely subjective, just in our eyes. There is no real classification. Somebody else could come and offer entirely different explanations for natural phenomena, not Newton’s explanation, and from his perspective the falling of bodies toward the earth and the length of that bird over there would indeed belong to the same field, if he found a scientific law that explains both those things. Then from his point of view those two things would belong to a particular field of research, and now a university faculty would be opened for it. And there would be no faculty of physics, because there is no such field as physics. What is physics? What’s the connection between electricity and gravitation—why is that the same field at all? Okay? Therefore there is definitely room for the claim that classification, or organization into groups of bodies, phenomena, or whatever it may be, is subjective. And if that’s really so, then coming back to us: basically, say, a dispute between Rashi and Tosafot, or a dispute between Abaye and Rava—they are really disagreeing over which phenomena are essential to the act of cutting, as in this case for example, or to other acts, and which phenomena are incidental side issues. What defines the act of cutting as opposed to other actions? And what there is non-essential, merely incidental. Okay? That dispute is in the eye of the beholder. Meaning, there is no one right and one wrong here. If so, then the dispute is drained of content. Fine—so you choose to organize it this way, and he chooses to organize the information differently. There is no one right and one wrong. I could have chosen a third way too; it’s completely arbitrary. I don’t think we’ll go that far. I think most of us would agree that it’s not right to go that far. Meaning, there are correct and incorrect divisions. One more example—maybe with this we’ll soon see. There is a debate, for example—you know—between individualism and fascism. Individualism is an approach that places the individual person at the center, and the state or the collective or something like that comes to serve the individual person, right? They join together because it’s good for each of the individuals. Fascism sees it the other way around. Fascism says that the individual exists in order to serve the collective; he is an organ within the collective. Now there are approaches that root this debate in a metaphysical, ontological dispute—that is, a dispute about reality itself. It’s not a dispute about values; it’s a dispute about reality itself. Do you really think that a collective is an existing entity? Is there such a thing? Or is it a fictitious definition? What exists are individual human beings. We define collectives because it’s convenient for us to deal with the world through peoples, cities, states, to divide it into groups. But that’s an arbitrary division. Before the modern era, when states didn’t exist in the sense they do today, they really didn’t use that division. Okay? So basically the claim of the metaphysical individualists is that this is an ontic claim, not a value claim. The claim is that a collective is not really something that exists; it’s a fictitious definition. We define it because it’s useful. What exists is only the individual person. Okay? And then I ask: tell me, why do you think the individual person exists? The individual person is also a collection of cells or molecules, depending on the resolution at which you’re looking. Okay? Is he really a defined, existing entity? Or is that too just us choosing to see this collection of cells as a person? And by the same token we could connect the cells I have here with the cells of the cat out in the yard there and that bird over there and see that as one creature. It’s only a question of definition. So the fact that the individualist is prepared to see—or those among them who are prepared to see—the person as an existing entity, then there is no barrier to accepting the claim that the collective too is an existing entity. Seemingly there is no more justification for this than for that. Okay? Or at least not an essential one. You can argue about where the line is drawn, but then it’s no longer some black-and-white dispute. The question is where the line passes. Meaning, which collective entities are you willing to regard as existing entities, and from what point onward are they only fictitious definitions, arbitrary definitions. Okay? Therefore I say that even things that seem to depend on definition—not every definition expresses the fact that this is arbitrary. Sometimes the definition describes something essential. Suppose someone defines something incorrectly—I can say he’s mistaken. That he defined it wrongly. Ask mathematicians—they won’t tell you that. It’s not that you define wrongly; define however you want, just be consistent with your definition. I define it differently, fine. It’s your right to define however you want, so long as you’re consistent with your definition. There is no way to criticize definitions, because definition is arbitrary. And I want to claim that this is not true. At least some definitions are not arbitrary. Some definitions try to capture something in reality itself. And if you define it otherwise, then you’re mistaken. Not that you’re choosing an inefficient language or that… you’re mistaken. No, that’s not right. There are human beings. A human being is a defined and unified creature, distinct from others. It’s not a collection of cells. It is a collection of cells, but this collection of cells is a distinct creature that one can relate to. That’s a true claim—the claim that a person exists and is not just a definition… not just an arbitrary definition, okay? That’s basically the claim. Now I think that if we really see here disputes among medieval authorities (Rishonim), Amoraim, or whatever, around this question of how we group actions in the world into categories of actions—this is the act of cutting, this is the act of kindling fire—the whole Sabbath is basically a definition of different actions. Now I want to know whether I am doing an act of cutting or an act of, I don’t know, plucking. Am I doing an act of kindling or an act of cooking, doing… So now there can be disputes: am I doing this kind of act or that kind of act? What would that depend on? On the question of which characteristics define each kind of action, right? But if it’s all just a matter of language, an arbitrary matter, then everyone can define it however he wants; there is no truth and falsehood here. There is no right and wrong here. So what is the argument about at all? Why would you even think that what you think is also what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended? I mean, what’s the connection? It seems to me that in the subtext it’s quite clear that there is an assumption here that these classifications reflect something that is also correct. Meaning, that there is a correct definition and an incorrect definition. When Rashi and Tosafot argue about the case where someone cut a fruit thinking it was detached and it turned out to be attached—Rashi says this is a side detail. It’s not essential to the act of cutting. Tosafot says no, it’s essential to the act of cutting; it’s one of the defining features of the act of cutting. Okay? That’s an argument. Meaning, each one claims that the other is mistaken. It’s not that I choose this language and you choose that language, because otherwise there isn’t really an argument here. Do whatever you want—there is no truth and falsehood here. Okay? Therefore I want to argue that behind arguments like these there sits some philosophical conception.

[Speaker J] And what is a mistake within the action? He says that I don’t actually know what I’m doing at all. So when I do an action and it’s attached or not, I intended to cut and I cut. But this detail, whether it’s attached or not attached, doesn’t change the action that I did. Okay. And therefore he says it has to be something completely different. I went from one branch—attached, not attached—and moved to another branch, so I was completely mistaken about the action. Okay. And you’re saying no, I need to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s clear. What’s the claim? So what’s the claim?

[Speaker J] If I’m cutting something attached, that’s one category, and if I’m cutting something…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, up to this point that’s what I said, but now what’s the claim?

[Speaker J] What I’m saying is that their disagreement is really not just about definitions but about the essence of the action.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—not just about definitions. What you just said is exactly a dispute just about definitions. That’s exactly the dispute. The question is whether, when you think something is detached and it turns out to be attached, are you still performing an act of cutting here? Is it the same action you thought you were doing? Is this included in the definition of the act of cutting or not? Is it a different kind of action? That’s exactly a dispute about definitions. I am just saying that perhaps it’s not merely a dispute about definitions, but a dispute about definitions. Now the question is whether every dispute about definitions is a pointless dispute—that’s what I noted earlier. I think not. Okay? There are constitutive definitions and there are directive definitions, in philosophical language. Constitutive definitions are definitions where the definition constitutes the concept. Meaning, once you defined it, that is the concept. Directive definitions are definitions that direct themselves toward an existing concept, and you have to capture it correctly. And if you didn’t capture it correctly, then your definition is mistaken. In constitutive definitions there is no mistake in the definition. If you defined it differently, then it’s simply a different concept, like Maimonides’ elephant. So you defined it differently—it just isn’t an elephant, it’s something else. Okay? That’s not a mistake. All right? When you defined elephant incorrectly, that is a mistake. You see that this whole family of questions is exactly the family of questions the passage is dealing with, you know? These are exactly the same questions. Yes, there is the Ship of Theseus. You know this well. I really will finish now. The Ship of Theseus is a famous example. Theseus was, yes, a well-known Athenian commander, and he sailed in a ship, and every time there was a storm and some of the wood broke, he would go to dry dock and repair the ship; they would replace the wood and put in new wood. So then there was another… is this still the same ship? Is this still the Ship of Theseus? This is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim), by the way, a dispute between the Ritva and Tosafot. Yes, the question is whether when he says, ‘on condition that you never go to your father’s house,’ and the house collapsed and now they rebuilt it from the stones, is she permitted to enter that house? Is it the same father’s house that existed before, or not? Now what happens if they replaced the stones? Suppose some of the stones belonged to the house that fell and for the rest they brought other stones, or they enlarged the house. Where is the line? When does it stop being her father’s house, which was forbidden to her by the condition of the divorce, and when does it become another house? Fine, enough of the philosophical remarks. Let’s return to our topic. Let’s go back for a moment to Rashi. We saw in Rashi that if he intended to cut what was detached and cut what was attached, he is basically saying: you want to lift the… you’re basically trying to lift a knife—a knife is something detached—you want to lift it, and in the course of that you cut something attached. Right? That’s basically what it means: he intended to cut the detached and cut the attached. Tosafot says no, this is someone who picked up the fruit itself, thinking it was detached, and it turned out that the fruit was attached. Meaning, according to Rashi you need two objects, the knife and the fruit. And Tosafot says no, even with the very same object itself, that is misoccupation. Okay? Now Rashi’s description already brings us even closer to an unintentional act. Because here it’s really just like an unintentional act. I lift the knife, and what do I end up doing as a result? Cutting the attached object, right? How is that different from dragging a bench and in the process making a furrow? According to Tosafot it’s a completely different world. That’s the difference I mentioned earlier. Right, according to Tosafot, when you intended to cut the detached and cut the attached, you didn’t perform two actions, one of which you intended and one of which you didn’t. You performed one action; you just didn’t know what it was. In an unintentional act you perform two actions. You drag the bench and you make a furrow. It’s just that you intend the dragging of the bench and not the prohibited act of making the furrow. Okay? That’s an unintentional act. So according to Tosafot the difference is clear. According to Rashi it’s very unclear. Because according to Rashi, misoccupation is only when you’re lifting a knife and cutting the fruit in the process. Well then, we’ve gone right back to an unintentional act. What’s the difference? What do you say? That in an unintentional act he

[Speaker B] knows that there will be a furrow.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. What I said earlier. That just sharpens what I said earlier. Right, if he knows then it’s an inevitable result, but right, he knows that a furrow might be created here. In an unintentional act the difference is on the plane of unwittingness. The difference is on the plane of unwittingness. Meaning, if you drag a bench and create a furrow, you know that a furrow is going to be created here, or might be created here, right? In that sense you are not unwitting. There is no dimension of unwittingness here. That’s an unintentional act. In misoccupation, even according to Rashi, where the case is very similar to an unintentional act—that’s why I’m bringing it up—even according to Rashi, where you lift a knife and in the process cut the attached object… again, two actions: lifting a knife is like dragging the bench, and cutting the attached object is like making a furrow. So here too there are two actions; you can’t make the division Tosafot makes between misoccupation and an unintentional act. But the division on the conceptual level is the same division. Because according to Rashi, what he will basically say is that when you lift the knife and in the process cut the attached object, there is a difference between that and dragging a bench and creating a furrow. Because you don’t know that this will happen. So notice: basically according to Rashi, in the case of the bench he must know that it can create…

[Speaker C] If you don’t know, it’s misoccupation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re saying now according to

[Speaker C] Rashi, kind of?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, it seems obvious to me, but fine.

[Speaker C] You’re kind of changing the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to Rashi, it actually comes out that the conceptual analysis I gave earlier needs to be adjusted a bit. What he’s dealing with is really a combination of unintentional action and inadvertence. A complete combination. Meaning, this is no longer the idea of unintentional action together with the idea of inadvertence. It’s literally a direct combination. In other words, unintentional action when you are mistaken about the forbidden act—that’s what’s called misdirected involvement. Okay? That’s exactly it. Because you don’t know that you’re performing a forbidden act—not that you don’t know it’s forbidden. You don’t know it’s happening. Okay, so according to Rashi, the connection between inadvertence and unintentional action is just an arithmetic combination. In other words, inadvertence plus unintentional action is what gives me misdirected involvement. Okay. This sharpens the point for us that the mistake is a very essential element in defining misdirected involvement. Even though misdirected involvement is not a claim about punishment but a claim about the absence of a transgression, the mistake is still very important for understanding what misdirected involvement is. It’s just that in the case of misdirected involvement, the meaning of the mistake changes. The mistake doesn’t make you inadvertent, because then you would be liable for a sin-offering—you committed a prohibition. The mistake turns it into a situation where it is not considered that you performed the act at all. There is no transgression. But that is caused by the mistake. It’s not that you didn’t do it—you did perform the act. It’s not that you didn’t do it; halakhically it is considered as though you didn’t do the act. Why? Because if you don’t know that this act is being done, then it is considered as though you didn’t do it. And again, not because you aren’t guilty because you didn’t know and so they forgive you. No. The halakhic definition is that if that’s the case, then this is not a forbidden act. Theoretically, if it were possible, you could intentionally not know and do the act. It’s not that afterward you apologize and say, look, it happened, I didn’t know, forgive me, charge me only with a sin-offering and not stoning. No. I could intend in advance not to know—if that were possible, yes—not to know and to do it without knowing, and that would be perfectly fine; there would be no problem at all, because there is no transgression here. Look at Maimonides in chapter 1, Jewish law 8, of the laws of the Sabbath. Just for background: throughout chapter 1 of the laws of the Sabbath, at the beginning he talks about liability for a sin-offering and stoning, inadvertence and intentional violation. After that, unintentional action. Then an act of labor not needed for its own purpose in Jewish law 7, and in Jewish law 8 he starts discussing misdirected involvement. So this is Jewish law 8, okay? Just so it’s in context. “Anyone who intended to do one prohibited labor, and another prohibited labor was done by him that he did not intend, is exempt regarding it, because his intended thought was not carried out. How so? If he threw a stone or an arrow at his fellow or at an animal in order to kill them, and as it traveled it uprooted a tree and did not kill, he is exempt. All the more so if he intended a lighter prohibition and a more severe prohibition occurred, such as if he intended to throw in a karmelit and the stone passed into the public domain, he is exempt. And so too in all similar cases. If he intended to do something permitted and did something else, such as if he intended to cut something detached and cut something attached, he is not liable at all, and so too in all similar cases.” If he intended one prohibition and committed another prohibition, then he is exempt, though there is a rabbinic prohibition. If he intended something permitted and it turned out that he committed a prohibition, then it is completely permitted. Everything depends on the question of what he intended, not what he actually did. Okay, but notice: this whole Jewish law—which category does it belong to, unintentional action or misdirected involvement? In his wording it’s intention; he says, anyone who intended, and did not intend this, and so too intended that, right? This is all talking here about intentions. But it’s clear that he’s talking about misdirected involvement, not unintentional action. Even from the context of the laws: the laws of unintentional action end in Jewish law 6. Jewish law 7 is an act of labor not needed for its own purpose. And now this is Jewish law 8. So did you suddenly go back to unintentional action? We finished unintentional action, moved on to an act of labor not needed for its own purpose—why are you now going back to unintentional action? He isn’t going back to unintentional action; he’s going back to misdirected involvement. Okay? And when he speaks here about intention, the term intention in this context in Maimonides is not the intention of unintentional action. It’s not—he does not mean intention the way we mean it in ordinary language, “I didn’t mean that.” I didn’t know at all that this is what would happen, I didn’t mean to hit you, I made a mistake, I didn’t notice that I was hitting you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to. Right? That’s how we talk. That is not unintentional action in the laws of the Sabbath, because unintentional action in the laws of the Sabbath is if something happened to a person—I dragged a bench across someone’s face and made a groove in it. Okay? I can say, look, I didn’t mean to. What do you mean you didn’t mean to? You knew you were dragging a bench; a groove came out on my face, right? What do you mean you didn’t mean to? That’s unintentional action in the laws of the Sabbath. It’s not unintentional action in everyday speech. Everyday speech is not what is called unintentional action. When Maimonides speaks here about intending, he’s speaking in the sense of intention from ordinary language, not from halakhic language. He says, I didn’t mean to—that’s misdirected involvement. Okay, so it’s very interesting that on the one hand it’s clear that misdirected involvement is a separate category, while on the other hand he uses the term intention. Why does he use the term intention? Maybe—I don’t know—it could be that he really means to say that misdirected involvement belongs to the family of unintentional action. Meaning, he is coming to tell us that the exemption of misdirected involvement is the absence of a transgression. It’s not like inadvertence or something of that sort, but rather like an act of labor not needed for its own purpose, like unintentional action, the whole series brought there in chapter 1. It’s basically an absence of transgression. So this too is some other kind of lack of intention. There it’s lack of intention in one sense; here it’s lack of intention in another sense. The Or Sameach there really does have a very long discussion on this Maimonides, and I recommend that anyone who has time take a look there, because he goes through these things at length—the difference between this and inadvertence, and between this and thoughtful labor. Now, more than that, think for example about Tosafot. Tosafot says that—even without Tosafot, just in the Talmudic text—if someone does not know that this plant is attached, he thinks it is detached and it turns out it is attached, okay? Then according to Tosafot that is misdirected involvement, right? According to Rashi, if it’s the same object then no, but according to Tosafot it is misdirected involvement. Okay? What happens if someone cuts this plant and didn’t know it was the Sabbath? He knew it was attached, but he didn’t know today was the Sabbath. Then he is inadvertent, right? Is there any difference between those two in terms of the level of guilt? What’s the difference? Here I didn’t know something, and there I didn’t know something. If there is negligence in not knowing, then there is negligence here and there alike. I don’t see any distinction in terms of your level of guilt. So why in inadvertence are you liable for a sin-offering—meaning there was a transgression—while in misdirected involvement you are exempt? Because the act is not forbidden. This is not an argument for exemption because of lack of guilt; that’s what I’m constantly trying to emphasize. It is not an argument for exemption because of lack of guilt. Okay? There is a topic we didn’t touch on, I think, last semester. I believe we didn’t. We talked about a case where it is unavoidable and he does not intend, and in those topics, Passover 25. There, for example, someone is going somewhere; he is going to do something, I don’t know, he needs to do something. On the way he passes by a shop that sells spices of idolatry, okay? And it is forbidden to smell them. Accessories of idolatry—it is forbidden to smell spices of idolatry. The question is whether he is allowed to take that route in order to get somewhere, or whether he is forbidden because of the prohibition of idolatry. He knows, he knows there is a store there; it’s not that he stumbled into it without knowing. So the Talmudic text says this: if there is an alternative route, let him take the alternative route. But if the alternative route is just a bit longer—not that you are compelled and can’t get there, no, it’s a hundred meters longer—then you can go on this route. Now you understand that this clearly is not a problem of compulsion. It’s unintentional action—unavoidable and he does not intend. Meaning, it’s not a problem of compulsion. What do you mean compulsion? Walk another hundred meters in order to avoid a prohibition involving accessories of idolatry. You won’t walk another hundred meters? That’s not compulsion. He could just not go at all, right, exactly. Here this is not an exemption of compulsion at all. So what is the argument? The argument is this: if there is another route and you went this way, then don’t tell me that you didn’t go in order to smell the odor of idolatry. Of course you did—otherwise why didn’t you go the other way? So it’s clear that you did intend. Therefore you are liable. But if there is no other route, you can’t come to me with claims. I went this way because I have no alternative. So here I am exempt not because I am compelled, but because I did not go in order to smell idolatry. That is misdirected involvement, or unintentional action, or whatever you want to call it. What happens if I do have another route but it is a hundred meters longer? That’s good enough. Why? Because I can still claim that the reason I went this way is only because it’s shorter, not in order to smell idolatry. That is enough. Meaning, the claim does not have to be a claim of compulsion. The claim only needs to show that what I did was go where I wanted to go, and not go in order to smell idolatry. And to prove that, it’s enough for me to show that the alternative is slightly more burdensome. That’s all. So here is an example of unintentional action that does not exempt you because you were compelled. People are very uncomfortable with something like this. What, you’re not compelled, so walk another hundred meters. This has many implications, by the way. For example, is it permissible to go watch movies with problematic scenes? Immodest scenes and so on. I claim that it is possible. Why is it possible? Exactly like here. You can’t watch the movie without those scenes; you don’t have the movie if you want to watch that movie. Just to choose it, if you have another movie that is no less good in your eyes, then it is forbidden. But if you want to watch this movie, you have no option to watch it without those parts. So this is unavoidable and he does not intend. And once again, why is everyone so surprised by this? Because people tend to think that this is an exemption due to compulsion. Now, don’t tell me you are compelled—just don’t go watch a movie. Do you have to watch a movie? You are not compelled. Meaning, if the issue were compulsion, then what I’m saying would be wrong. But since the issue in unintentional action is not compulsion but rather absence of transgression, then it does not matter that I could have avoided it. That’s not the point. There is nothing here for me to avoid. It is not a transgression. On the halakhic level, someone might still come and say, okay, but it’s still not advisable to do this. But I’m saying that on the dry halakhic level, this is exactly the difference between an argument of compulsion and an argument of absence of transgression. Okay? And even so, I do want somehow to connect this exemption to the exemption of compulsion. What do I mean? The claim I want to make is basically: why, really, is this thing not a transgression? A groove was dug here, a groove was made here, a groove was made here in a field on the Sabbath. Fine—it is building or plowing, depending on whether it is in a house or in a field. That is what the Torah forbids, and it is one of the primary categories of labor. But what? I didn’t do it. It is not considered my act. Yes—not that the forbidden act was not done here; the forbidden act was done, the act in the object, yes? But the act in the person was not done, meaning the person did not do this act. Okay, that’s the claim. Now if you know, also regarding compulsion there are many later authorities (Acharonim) who argue that the basis of the exemption in compulsion is that it is not considered that you did it. Something that you were compelled to do is not considered your act. By the way, in philosophy of action too—a field in analytic philosophy—philosophy of action makes it very clear that what you did not intend to do is not considered your act. You are not an agent, in philosophical language. Okay? Meaning, a person who acts out of his own choice and awareness is an agent. You can judge his actions and say this is good, this is bad, this is permitted, this is forbidden, this is obligatory. Okay? But actions that you do not out of your own choice—because you are compelled, or absentmindedly, misdirected involvement, or something like that—those are not considered your actions. Now if that is so, then you see that the two sides of the spectrum that I described earlier—unintentional action and inadvertence—are not so different from one another. Let’s talk about compulsion, not inadvertence, because inadvertence is reduced compulsion. But compulsion and unintentional action. Compulsion: apparently there was a transgression here, only there is no guilt because you were compelled. But one who says that this act is not yours is really claiming that compulsion is not an argument for lack of guilt; in compulsion you did not do the forbidden act at all, there is no transgression. And then it comes out that awareness or compulsion on one side, and unintentional action or misdirected involvement on the other side, are actually both based on the same halakhic idea. The halakhic idea is that acts of this kind are not considered your acts. The contexts are different, the reasons are different, but in the end the exemption stems from the fact that we do not see the act as your act. And then there is indeed some connection between misdirected involvement and compulsion. Again, the connection is not essential, as I said earlier; you do not need to be compelled in order to be considered misdirected involvement. But still there is some connection, because in both cases you are basically exempt through the fact that you are not considered the one who did the act, because you cannot say that the forbidden act was not done—it was done. There is now a groove in the world or whatever happened here. Okay? So there is indeed some connection between the exemption of misdirected involvement and unintentional action, and compulsion. Maybe we’ll manage one more thing. Tosafot in Sabbath 72: “He intended to lift the detached item.” Rashi explained in his commentary: for example, a knife lying in a vegetable bed, and he intended to lift it and cut the attached item. If so, then the case where they disagree, where he intended to cut the detached item and cut the attached item, would mean that he intended to cut one detached item and cut another attached item. But if he intended to cut this attached item and cut another attached item, it would imply that he is liable according to everyone. Tosafot infers from Rashi the opposite inference from what we made earlier. And to that opposite inference he adds another inference. Rashi said this: Rashi said that if he intended to cut the detached item and cut the attached item, that is misdirected involvement—this is what is written in the Talmudic text. What does that mean? Someone who intended to cut that detached item and cut this attached item—two different objects. That implies that if with the same very item he intended to cut the detached item, thought it was detached, and it turned out to be attached—that is inadvertence, right? That’s the inference we made. Tosafot adds another inference. What happens if you intended to cut this attached item and cut the other attached item? Both were attached. You cut this attached item and cut a different attached item—you intended to cut this attached item and cut a different attached item. Tosafot claims that according to Rashi this too would be inadvertence and not misdirected involvement. What is the inference? Because otherwise why would you need to explain it as intending to cut the detached item and cutting the attached item? In any case, we’re talking about two different objects. So let it be where he intended to cut one attached item and cut another attached item—an even bigger novelty, that even though he intended something forbidden, he is still exempt under misdirected involvement. All the more so if he intended something permitted. This proves Maimonides. Maimonides says that if you intended a prohibition, it is rabbinically prohibited; if you intended something permitted, then under misdirected involvement it is completely permitted. That is Tosafot’s discussion here. Tosafot here basically wants to say that in Rashi there are two cases that count as inadvertence and not misdirected involvement. If he intended to cut this attached item and cut that attached item, that is inadvertence, not misdirected involvement. If he intended to cut the detached item and that very item itself turns out to be attached, that too is inadvertence and not misdirected involvement. Misdirected involvement is only where he intended to cut that detached item and cut this attached item. Right. According to Rashi, in order for the matter to be misdirected involvement rather than inadvertence, two conditions are required: first, that it be a different object; and second, that you intended to perform a different act—cutting a detached item as opposed to cutting an attached item. Okay? Only if both are fulfilled is it misdirected involvement. If either one is lacking, it is inadvertence. It turns into inadvertence. Okay? In contrast, Tosafot says: “And Rabbenu Tam found this difficult, because at the end of the chapter ‘It Is Uncertain Whether He Ate,’ Samuel said: one who is involved inadvertently with forbidden fats and forbidden sexual relations is liable, because he derived pleasure. On the Sabbath he is exempt, because the Torah prohibited only thoughtful labor.” So there are qualifications to the law of misdirected involvement. What are the qualifications? In forbidden fats and forbidden sexual relations, even though generally misdirected involvement is exempt, in those cases he is liable. On the Sabbath he is exempt because the Torah prohibited only thoughtful labor. And that is not by the rule of misdirected involvement but by the rule of thoughtful labor, exempt. That is Samuel’s view. Not necessarily like Abaye and Rava that we saw. And that is Samuel’s view. “And it is proven there,” says Tosafot, “that even if he intended to pick this fig and picked another fig, Samuel exempted him.” So what does Tosafot prove from here? This is a difficulty against Rashi. If he intended to cut this fig and cut another fig, what is that supposed to be according to Rashi? Inadvertence, not misdirected involvement, right? And here Samuel exempted him. He is not liable for a sin-offering. Such a case is misdirected involvement, not inadvertence. Okay? “And later, in the chapter ‘One Who Throws,’ Rava exempted one who intended to throw four cubits and threw eight, because he did not say, ‘Let it land wherever you want’; and certainly if he intended to throw to one side and it went to another side, since his will was not carried out at all; or if he intended to cut this attached item and cut another attached item, he is exempt.” All of these are difficulties against Rashi. Okay? Because we see that someone who intended to do the same act on two different objects is misdirected involvement even though it is the same act. Both are cutting. According to Rashi, misdirected involvement is only different acts on different objects. Sorry—according to Rashi, just a second, misdirected involvement is only a different act on a different object. Yes, a different act on a different object. If it is the same act on different objects, or different acts on the same object, then it is inadvertence. Okay? That is the difficulty against Rashi. And therefore Rabbenu Tam says: “And Rabbenu Tam therefore appears to hold that here we are dealing with someone who intended to cut something detached and it turned out to be attached.” He disagrees with Rashi. Rashi says he intended to cut that detached item and cut this attached item. Rabbenu Tam says no, no—you need to read the Talmudic text simply. He intended to cut something detached and it turned out that this very detached item itself was attached, and this is the very same object. He disagrees with Rashi. “And he cut exactly what he intended to cut, only he did not know that it was attached. And Abaye and Rava disagree about the verse ‘through which he sinned,’ which Rabbi Eliezer explains in the chapter ‘It Is Uncertain Whether He Ate’ as excluding misdirected involvement. And that is stated there explicitly, where he said to Rava: according to Abaye, where do you find a case of intending to cut the detached item and cutting the attached item? When he intended to lift the detached item,” and so on. Well, “explicitly” depends on how you explain the Talmudic text. Rashi explains the Talmudic text as talking about two objects. But it is true that the plain sense of the Talmudic text really is like Tosafot. “And Samuel, who exempted on the basis of thoughtful labor—that is where he intended to cut this attached item and cut another attached item, because his intended thought was not carried out.” Notice: if he intended to cut this attached item and cut another attached item, what is that according to Rashi? Inadvertence, right? So what exactly is Samuel doing when he exempts it by the rule of thoughtful labor? Samuel says that, true, throughout the entire Torah, someone who intended to do the same act on two different objects is inadvertent, not misdirected involvement. But on the Sabbath he has an exemption by the rule of thoughtful labor. That is throughout the Torah. On the Sabbath there is an exemption under thoughtful labor, not under misdirected involvement. If you want, this is misdirected involvement—what? Yes, but you don’t need to get there; I’ll do it through unintentional action. That is a stronger analogy, because an act of labor not needed for its own purpose also exists only in the laws of the Sabbath and not throughout the Torah. But here he is basically saying this. He says as follows: there is an exemption of misdirected involvement which applies throughout the Torah, okay? On the Sabbath there is another exemption, which is thoughtful labor. Where is the practical difference? In places where there would not be an exemption of misdirected involvement, it could still be that on the Sabbath there would be an exemption by the rule of thoughtful labor. For example, if he intended to cut this attached item and cut another attached item—which according to Rashi is inadvertence, and according to Tosafot, sorry, is misdirected involvement. Samuel claims: in any case there will be an exemption by the rule of thoughtful labor. Okay? According to Tosafot, by the way, that is superfluous. It is superfluous, and there is the—this also belongs here by the rule of misdirected involvement. According to Rashi there is no rule of misdirected involvement here. According to Tosafot there is also the rule of misdirected involvement here, and besides that there is also an exemption by the rule of thoughtful labor. Okay? It may be that there is a practical difference, for example in a destructive act where thoughtful labor is not required, or there may be some practical differences. Why am I bringing this? Because it is very similar to what we saw in the context of unintentional action in Rabbi Chaim, last semester. With unintentional action we basically saw there too that there is unintentional action for the whole Torah, and it exempts throughout the Torah and also on the Sabbath. In addition, on the Sabbath there is also the exemption of thoughtful labor, which is the Sabbath version of unintentional action. And therefore he says that even according to Rabbi Yehuda, who holds that unintentional action is liable, on the Sabbath it will only be a rabbinic prohibition, as many medieval authorities (Rishonim) say. Why? Because on the Sabbath there is also the exemption of thoughtful labor, and that Rabbi Yehuda does accept. The exemption of unintentional action he does not accept—that is for the whole Torah—but on the Sabbath there is also the exemption of thoughtful labor, and that he does accept. Exactly the same structure is happening here too with misdirected involvement according to Tosafot. Okay, let’s stop here.