Quantity and Quality – Lesson 2

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

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The framework of majority rules: following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is as all of it”
The majority of a religious court, Sefer Ha-Chinukh, and R. Shimon Shkop: present before us or not present before us
Majority as reasoning, statistics, and the laws of doubt
Nullification by majority, something that will become permitted later, and the inclination toward stringency
Truth versus peace: majority of wisdom and majority of numbers in a religious court
A majority present before us, the law of fixed status, and formal reasoning
Democratic majority and majority in a community: rights rather than truth
Trust, judicial authority, and the example of Rava
Benevolent dictatorship, Singapore, and Edmund Burke: right overrides utility
The crystallization of majority rule in the community in Europe and the dispute of Rabbeinu Tam
Conclusion and continuation: quantity versus quality, truth versus a formal rule

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a discussion of the laws of majority in Jewish law and of the relationship between quantity and quality, while distinguishing between following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is as all of it.” At its center stands a fundamental question: is the majority a tool for clarifying truth, or a formal decision rule by force of “follow the majority”? R. Shimon Shkop’s objection to Sefer Ha-Chinukh’s understanding of majority in a religious court is discussed, and a distinction is proposed according to which the majority of a religious court is not a statistical generalization like a majority not present before us, but an a priori line of reasoning that in some structural ways resembles a majority present before us. The text then presents a clash between seeing majority as a clarification of truth and seeing it as a binding decision mechanism, and from that examines the question of majority of wisdom versus majority of numbers in a religious court. Finally, democratic majority and communal majority are distinguished as majorities based on rights and representation of the public will, not on discovering truth. It is argued that this mechanism only crystallized historically in the communities beginning in the eleventh century, and the dispute is explained between Rabbeinu Tam and the Rosh and Rashba over coercing acceptance of the community’s majority decision.

The framework of majority rules: following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is as all of it”

The text opens by saying that the discussion deals with quantity and quality through various majority laws, including following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is as all of it.” The Talmud derives the law of following the majority from “follow the majority,” while the other majority laws are also derived from that verse according to medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim). The distinction between a majority present before us and a majority not present before us is presented as background for understanding majority in a religious court.

The majority of a religious court, Sefer Ha-Chinukh, and R. Shimon Shkop: present before us or not present before us

Sefer Ha-Chinukh sees following the majority in a religious court as a means of getting as close as possible to the truth, as an algorithm that brings us to the correct answer. R. Shimon Shkop objects that according to this, the majority in a religious court looks like a majority not present before us, because the assumption is that in general, throughout the world, the majority is usually right and not the minority, and not because of information about a given group standing before us. The Talmud in Hullin states that majority in a religious court is a majority present before us, and therefore “follow the majority” teaches a majority present before us, which implies that a majority not present before us is a different law. A possibility is proposed that the majority in a religious court is not built on generalization from cases but on a priori reasoning, and therefore it is not a majority not present before us even though it looks that way, and in some respects it resembles a majority present before us though it is not identical to it.

Majority as reasoning, statistics, and the laws of doubt

The text explains that statistical generalization begins from observations of known cases and infers about the group as a whole, whereas in a religious court there are no prior observations that the majority was right, only a line of reasoning that the majority presumably reaches the truth more than the minority. It is argued that even in the case of a majority of kosher stores versus non-kosher ones, we are not necessarily dealing with an experimental generalization but with a decision based on reasoning, and a theoretical example is even brought of a claim that the non-kosher stores have some “special property” such that meat specifically gets lost from them, in order to show that deciding by majority is not the result of an empirical experiment. Majority is presented as a decision, not as an even doubt, and Torah-level doubt requiring stringency is defined specifically as an even doubt, while majority is not doubt at all but a rule that decides. The possibility is also raised that majority is simply a decree of Scripture, but it is argued that there is a logic behind it: choosing the better option when there is no neutral way to avoid deciding.

Nullification by majority, something that will become permitted later, and the inclination toward stringency

The text proposes an explanation for the idea of nullification by majority through the proportion of loss: the Torah does not want a person to give up a great deal of what is permitted in order to avoid a minority amount of prohibition, and therefore permits it when there is a majority of permitted substance. A dispute is cited over whether nullification by majority “turns the prohibition into permission,” and practical implications are mentioned, alongside a difficulty raised from the law of something that will become permitted later, where the instruction is to wait and not eat it now, in the formulation “instead of eating it in prohibition, eat it in permission.” It is argued that this law shows that it is not always wrong to be stringent in cases of majority, contrary to views that present such stringency as “heresy,” because Jewish law itself guides us to bypass eating when that can be done without loss. A further question is also raised about the Torah’s attitude toward monetary loss versus avoiding prohibition, noting that Jewish law requires a person to spend all his money in order not to violate a prohibition.

Truth versus peace: majority of wisdom and majority of numbers in a religious court

The text returns to the question whether majority is meant to achieve truth or peace, and presents its implication for the question whether one should follow the majority of wisdom or the majority of people. It is argued that Sefer Ha-Chinukh’s approach implies that the role of majority in a religious court is to uncover the truth, and therefore there is room for the claim of medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) that one follows the majority of wisdom. The Ran is quoted as saying that when there is one sage on the religious court and two others who are not on his level, one follows him, and the question is raised why the others are seated there at all if their ruling does not really carry equal weight, and a possible answer is proposed: that they challenge the sage and conduct a discussion with him. A dispute of the Amoraim at the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin is mentioned regarding the relation between one judge valid by Torah law and the addition of others by rabbinic law, or vice versa.

A majority present before us, the law of fixed status, and formal reasoning

It is said that R. Shimon Shkop wants to argue that a majority present before us does not uncover truth but is a formal rule resembling a decree of Scripture, while a majority not present before us does reveal truth, and the text rejects this by claiming that an ordinary person would on his own conclude that a piece of meat came from the majority of kosher stores. The law of fixed status is discussed, and the speaker says he has no convincing reasoning for it, expressing the feeling that the law of fixed status “developed beyond its proper height” and became a formal rule that lost its logic. Strange Talmudic examples are brought, such as “wagons in Tzippori,” to illustrate the difficulty.

Democratic majority and majority in a community: rights rather than truth

Democratic majority is presented as a majority whose goal is not to reach the most correct decisions but to discover what the public wants, because its foundation lies in rights, not in truth and not in peace. It is argued that discussion in the style of Plato’s “rule of the philosophers” mistakenly assumes that the goal is truth, whereas in democracy a person’s right to influence his fate is not contingent on his wisdom, and he even has the right to be wrong. Common arguments against rule by the wise are brought—difficulty in measuring wisdom and concern about self-interested takeover—and these are defined as technical arguments that do not touch the real underlying problem, which is the denial of the right itself. There is also discussion of the “wisdom of crowds” as related to averages and the law of large numbers, not to binary majority rule, and a mention of the mathematical-economic world of representational rules and theorems in the style of Condorcet showing that several reasonable representational requirements cannot all be maintained together.

Trust, judicial authority, and the example of Rava

A case is brought from the Talmud about Rava, who reversed an oath based on information from his wife that a certain woman was a liar, and the reaction of modern judges is presented as suspicious, coming from a kind of “criminal mindset” that prefers formal rules over local truth. It is argued that if one trusts the honesty of a judge, then logic requires allowing him to reach the truth and not leave money in the hands of a liar out of fear of a future precedent. The text distinguishes between a rule disqualifying relatives as witnesses and a realm in which “the judge should act according to what his eyes see,” so long as he is not contradicting a specific halakhic principle.

Benevolent dictatorship, Singapore, and Edmund Burke: right overrides utility

It is argued that a dictatorship can sometimes make better decisions, and the example is given of Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew as a kind of “democ-tatorship” with cleanliness, standard of living, and zero corruption. Edmund Burke and his Reflections on the Revolution in France are mentioned as defending a mixed monarchical regime on the ground that it thinks long-term, unlike short-term politics, and the text responds that the problem is not efficiency but the public’s right to decide for itself whether to give up its rights. The central claim is that democracy stems from the right to influence one’s fate, not from a mechanism that guarantees truth or maximal utility.

The crystallization of majority rule in the community in Europe and the dispute of Rabbeinu Tam

It is argued that majority in a community is a “third kind of majority” that is not identical with the majority of “follow the majority,” and that in practice the question of communal decision-making begins to arise around the eleventh century with the appearance of early responsa on the subject. Rabbeinu Tam holds that one does not follow the majority in a community but only unanimity, in a way that gives every individual veto power and allows a community to split, whereas the Rosh and Rashba and other medieval authorities (Rishonim) disagree and argue both that it is impossible to survive that way and that one can also rely on “follow the majority.” It is emphasized that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) consistently cite “follow the majority” together with the claim that “it is impossible to function otherwise,” and from this it follows that “follow the majority” by itself is not a direct source for communal majority rule but an extension arising from the existential needs of an autonomous community. A historical picture is presented of the shift from royal-authoritative structures in Babylonia with the Exilarch and academies to an autonomous communal structure in Europe and North Africa, in which the concept of “the community” in its new sense required reworking the concepts of monarchy, Sanhedrin, and government, and majority took on a new form.

Conclusion and continuation: quantity versus quality, truth versus a formal rule

The text concludes by stating that the discussion of following the majority remains tied to the question of quantitative majority versus qualitative majority, and that later additional contexts of quantity and quality will be discussed, after which the very meaning of quality versus quantity will be clarified. A framework is laid out for what comes next: the question whether following the majority is a clarification of truth or a decree of Scripture for legal decision-making, and its implication for the possibility that the quality of the opinion of one great sage may outweigh many others. It is said that the words of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), of Maimonides, and of the Ritva on majority of number and majority of structure will be brought, the Talmudic passage in Sanhedrin on legal decision-making will be examined, and the Maharal of Prague’s discussion of the natural world, where quantity rules, versus the spiritual world, where quality decides, will be studied in order to understand the depth of the debate about quantity and quality in Jewish law and Jewish thought through the generations.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re in the middle of the topic of quantity and quality. I began with a discussion of the various laws of majority. I spoke about following the majority, nullification by majority, “most of it is as all of it.” And with following the majority I spoke about a majority not present before us and a majority present before us, which really serves as background for following the majority in a religious court. And the Talmud says that from “follow the majority” we learn this law of going after the majority. The other majority laws—the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) say those too are learned from that verse—but following the majority already appears explicitly in the Talmud. We talked about how Sefer Ha-Chinukh sees following the majority in a religious court as a means of getting as close as possible to the truth—that is, as an algorithm that brings us to the right answer. And on that I asked—or really, R. Shimon Shkop already asks—that according to this, it comes out that this is a majority not present before us. Because in most religious courts, where the majority holds one way and the minority another way, in most cases the majority is right and not the minority. So this really comes out as a majority not present before us, meaning it’s a phenomenon spread throughout the world, not information about a given group standing before us. Whereas the Talmud in Hullin says that the majority in a religious court is a majority present before us. Therefore the Talmud says that from “follow the majority” we learn a majority present before us. And if so, a majority not present before us must be a different law. So I spoke about the definition of a majority present before us and a majority not present before us—I’m not going to go back through the whole thing—but I said that really this is a majority that is not built on generalization from cases. Even though it looks like a majority not present before us, it’s a majority not built on generalization from cases, and therefore it is not a majority not present before us. In some respects it resembles a majority present before us. It’s also not exactly a majority present before us, but it’s also not a majority not present before us. So I think Sefer Ha-Chinukh can still stand, because R. Shimon Shkop discusses this at length in Gate Three, and he really arrives there at a very, very formal conception of majority. Let’s say, I have serious doubts whether that’s what the Talmud meant. Even though it’s certainly an interesting explanation, I have serious doubts whether that’s what the Talmud meant. In my view, the simple straightforward reading is Sefer Ha-Chinukh. His difficulty with Sefer Ha-Chinukh is that on his view this comes out as a majority not present before us. I think that can be explained.

[Speaker B] So why here don’t we need to get to generalization? What? Why don’t we need generalization in a religious court?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that we don’t need it—it’s just not based on generalization. There’s no way to decide. Generalization always starts with observations of certain cases where I know what the reality is, and then I determine what happens in the whole group that… Say you see some black ravens—you saw that they were black. From there you conclude that all ravens are black. Now here you never saw that the majority was right in a religious court. There are no examples where you saw that the majority was right. Rather, what is there? It’s a kind of a priori reasoning. You say: apparently the majority hits the truth better than the minority. That’s a line of reasoning we come with; it’s not examples we saw and from which we infer conclusions. So there’s no generalization here based on examples, and that’s why it’s not a majority not present before us.

[Speaker C] Is that weaker than a majority not present before us?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not clear. Not clear. I actually tend to think not.

[Speaker D] No, sometimes these are just initial assumptions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If that common sense really is… I have some indication that it’s right. With generalizations, usually you don’t know… How do you know whether ravens are black or not black? You only saw some ravens; you have no indication at all whether that applies to all of them. You assume that if you saw some, then probably it’s true of all. But you don’t have any reasoning that says ravens ought to be black. By contrast, with this kind of majority, you have an actual line of reasoning saying that it’s true. It’s not just some arbitrary inference because you saw a few examples. There’s definitely room to say that it’s even more logical.

[Speaker C] Maybe it’s a line of reasoning, maybe it’s not majority at all? Why is this called a law of majority? Maybe it should be called…

[Speaker D] No, because it’s the reasoning about the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s the majority that’s here. Every majority is based on reasoning. A majority not present before us too.

[Speaker C] But I can learn from it to some other majority, derive from it laws of other kinds of majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Right, but the reasoning—that same reasoning, or similar reasoning—also exists in a majority present before us. You say: if most of the stores here are kosher and a minority are non-kosher, and you found a piece of meat, it probably came from the majority. Even there, by the way, it’s not—notice, even there it’s not based on generalization, it’s not based on statistics. I mean, suppose someone comes and says, “Look, the non-kosher stores have some special quality such that specifically from there pieces of meat get lost,” okay? Even though they’re only two out of ten. What? No, reasoning. Maybe, investigation, yes? I’m suggesting a possibility. Maybe that’s true, and then you don’t know that just because there’s a majority of kosher stores. So what should you do? Let’s run an experiment and see. Let’s see over many cases where it came from, and then we’ll decide what generally happens. But you can’t really run an experiment here. What, you’re going to lose a piece of meat by chance and…? In any event, it’s clear that our decision that there is a majority here is not based on such an experiment. Even if you could do such an experiment, certainly the decision that we follow the majority of stores was not founded on such an experiment. Nobody did such an experiment. So in that sense it resembles majority in religious courts. It’s the same logic. Here too there’s some sort of a priori reasoning that says: if most of the stores are like this, then presumably it came from them—just as if most people say something, then presumably it’s true. It’s this kind of reasoning not based on generalization from cases.

[Speaker D] If it’s only reasoning, then you enter the issue of maybe it’s still doubt? What? Just as reasoning can still leave doubt—Torah-level doubt requires stringency?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Doubt is an even doubt. Otherwise how do you ever follow a majority? Right? No, what suddenly? Majority is not doubt. Doubt is an even doubt.

[Speaker D] No, it’s not doubt, it’s a decision. Maybe majority isn’t a matter of reasoning at all, but a determination by the Sages that in a case governed by rules of conduct—meaning, once this situation exists, then that’s the Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the Torah determined it—not the Sages—the Torah determined “follow the majority.” Fine, okay. On what basis did the Torah determine that? Just a decree of Scripture? Yes. Meaning, the majority isn’t more right than the minority?

[Speaker D] Not necessarily. Certainly not necessarily.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a line of reasoning that it is…

[Speaker D] You have five hundred and one—not fifty-one—five hundred and one versus four hundred and ninety-nine. Okay, so then you follow the five hundred and one?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Practically speaking, according to the four hundred and ninety-nine it’s prohibited. So if those are the two options, then yes, you go with the five hundred and one.

[Speaker D] But why? Listen, you should go according to the laws of doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why should it go according to the laws of doubt?

[Speaker D] Because it really…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end, in the laws of doubt too you ultimately decide. Look, in the end you have to go either like some of the judges—the five hundred and one or the four hundred and ninety-nine. You can’t rule like none of them. Even the laws of doubt tell you to decide.

[Speaker D] I’m saying, but not because that’s the truth…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Necessarily—but because…

[Speaker D] There’s a rule that once such a thing happens, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that rule isn’t just purely formal; there’s logic behind it. If I have two options, I choose the better one. That doesn’t mean it’s certain, but it’s surely… It’s like, say, in the democratic game when people want a supermajority—we once talked about this—they want a supermajority in order to change some basic law, say something like that; they want sixty percent. That’s outrageous. Why is it outrageous? Because let’s say that fifty years from now there will be a vote in parliament, and fifty-nine percent of the members support changing the law—but because fifty years earlier there were fifty-one percent of parliament who decided that in the future sixty percent would be required, now they’re letting the minority rule over the majority.

[Speaker E] The assumption is, though, that in order to require a supermajority, you don’t need a supermajority to enact that—is that not so? What? I’m just assuming that in order to enact a law that requires a supermajority to repeal it, you need a supermajority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be, I don’t know, you’d have to ask—I don’t know. But even if so, it doesn’t change anything. Even if there’s a supermajority now, so what? Who are you to decide that the forty percent fifty years from now will rule over the sixty percent? You have to understand: every decision is a decision to go in one direction. So if I’m in a place where I have to choose a direction, then I choose the five hundred and one and not the four hundred and ninety-nine. What can I do? There’s no neutral way out.

[Speaker D] Fine, but there is a neutral way…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The laws of doubt aren’t a neutral way? No—leaving it with the current possessor is also going with some judges: four hundred and ninety-nine judges say to extract it, five hundred and one…

[Speaker D] I’m not talking about leaving it with the current possessor—right, there there’s a problem. But when you’re talking about prohibition and permission, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you’re forbidding me to eat something permitted? What do you mean? You’re forbidding me to eat something permitted.

[Speaker D] We do this kind of thing all the time in cases of doubt, in day-to-day life, when we’re in doubt.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that itself is a novelty. There’s no need to add more novelty to it. Meaning, you have the novelty of doubt already. What is not evenly balanced is not doubt in Jewish law. There is a majority, so we follow “follow the majority.” I don’t see in that… We once talked maybe about nullification. I think I once spoke about nullification by majority. I said that I think the foundation of nullification by majority is basically this. Say that you… say you want to eat something from a pot, right? Some prohibited egg fell into a pot with, I don’t know, fifty permitted eggs. Okay? Well, not fifty—even two or three. So it’s nullified by majority. What’s the idea behind that? Why not doubt, but yes majority? So I think the idea behind it is that obviously, if they prohibit it to you, they are also prohibiting what is permitted. Now the Torah doesn’t want you to give up, let’s say—I’m exaggerating now—all your money because there is some egg that fell in there. That’s not reasonable. Okay? The Torah says: what’s the proportion? Let’s see what makes sense. The proportion is to tell you, you know what? Double. Meaning, to prohibit one item in order to save you from eating one prohibited item—that I’m willing to do. Not more than that. Once I require you to give up two things that are actually permitted just in order to be careful about one prohibited thing—that, no. I think that could be the idea behind the law of majority. Therefore, for example, many times even the later authorities who say—also the later authorities who say—what?

[Speaker D] There are later authorities who say you can eat all of it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the medieval authorities say you can eat all of it, and even those who say not, apparently that’s only rabbinic law—the Ra’ah and Rashba. But the point is that there’s also the Oneg Yom Tov and others who go on about this at length, arguing that nullification by majority turns the prohibition into permission. Meaning, now you have one hundred percent permission. That has various practical implications. It’s a strange thing if you think about it, because there is a law called “something that will become permitted later.” Do you know that law? Something that will become permitted later is a prohibition that is only temporary. Say muktzeh on the Sabbath: after the Sabbath it will already be permitted. So the Talmud says that in a case where you have rabbinic doubt about something that will become permitted later, or where there is a Torah-level majority—a majority of permission, yes—in a Torah prohibition, if it is something that will become permitted later, don’t touch it. Wait until it’s permitted. “Instead of eating it in prohibition, eat it in permission.” That’s the standard explanation. The Ran says otherwise, but that’s the standard explanation. So what does “instead of eating it in prohibition, eat it in permission” mean? But it’s not prohibition—it was turned into permission. How can you say such a thing according to the views that it really becomes permitted? Or if, for example, someone wants to be stringent and not eat it—that’s not absurd. More power to him. He isn’t obligated, but good for him, because there’s a tendency among some later authorities who discuss this to say that someone who is stringent in a case of majority is some kind of heretic. Meaning, what do you mean? The Torah said it’s permitted—don’t be more righteous than the pope. Not true. In the law of something that will become permitted later, you see that that’s not so. There you see that it isn’t true—it’s eating prohibition, and if you can get around it, then get around it. That’s a simple proof. What’s the idea behind it? It seems to me that this is the idea: it turns into permission because the Torah permits it to you, because it doesn’t want you to lose a great deal of permitted material in order to avoid the prohibition. But if you can do it without loss—wait until evening, and then you can do it without loss—then eat it then. Obviously they didn’t permit it to you with that case in mind. A prohibition on the person?

[Speaker E] What? A prohibition on the person—or the Torah permitted it to me? If it’s prohibited, then what does the Torah…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, certainly, the Torah permits it to you. Yes. A prohibition on the object that the Torah permits you to transgress. A prohibition doesn’t have to be on the person; it can be on the object.

[Speaker D] And if it makes it permitted, that means there’s a practical difference regarding what happens if afterward, after the fact, it turns out that what you ate was…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. Permission is permission. What does it mean “it turned out”? When you eat a mixture of prohibited and permitted, then you ate prohibited food, period. You know that you ate prohibition. There was a majority. And you’re talking about following the majority, not nullification by majority.

[Speaker D] Not nullification—following the majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about nullification. In nullification, you eat all of it. You eat all of it, so obviously you ate it. I said—I mentioned—there are views that say not to eat the last piece, and some even say the last two pieces, but apparently that’s a rabbinic law. Not many views; there’s one view that says it’s Torah law.

[Speaker B] So you could say that generally it’s heresy if someone doesn’t eat, and only when it’s something that will become permitted later, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why? It’s not heresy. I really want to be stringent, because clearly there is something problematic here. So why do we wait—why should one be stringent in something that will become permitted later? So what if it will become permitted later? Eat it now—it’s fully permitted.

[Speaker C] What difference does it make to you?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do you need to wait until the evening? It’s suspended—it’s some kind of… No, it’s permission; it’s permitted. That’s what I’m saying. It’s not merely overridden—it’s permitted. It’s permission. If it were merely overridden, fine, that I understand. But one who says that it’s actual permission, then that means that from the outset…

[Speaker B] I think that definitely someone who can avoid eating it should avoid it. Why, why is it not overridden? After all, when you don’t lose anything—when you do lose, then okay, but don’t be more stringent than what they permitted you. The Torah itself doesn’t want you to lose money, so then you are indeed looking for…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t mind losing money in order to gain commandments—what’s the problem?

[Speaker B] To avoid prohibition—it’s almost like adding to the Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. The Torah allows it, the Torah permits it; the Torah does not obligate me to eat it. It says: one who does eat it, fine, it’s permitted, I have no claim against him. But where is it written that I shouldn’t want to be more righteous? The Torah obligates me to spend all my money in order not to violate a prohibition—you have to understand that. To spend all my money so as not to violate a prohibition. For a positive commandment it’s up to a fifth, but for a prohibition it’s all my money. So then losing two eggs isn’t worthwhile in order to avoid one prohibited egg? So why doesn’t the Torah demand that of you? We need to understand why. Fine, but if I want to be stringent and be especially righteous, then on the face of it that is worthy of appreciation.

[Speaker B] What? You’re casting doubt on the mechanism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not casting doubt. I know it’s permitted, but I want to forbid to myself what is permitted. Like someone who goes beyond the letter of the law—is he also casting doubt? Someone who goes beyond the letter of the law returns a lost object even after the owner has despaired. Why are you returning a lost object after despair? The Torah said you can keep it—why are you being stringent? Right, I know it’s permitted to take it; the Torah said it’s permitted. But I want to be righteous and do more. I’m not casting doubt on the fact that it’s permitted, and I’m not speaking ill of someone who doesn’t do it, but I want to be on a higher level. What’s wrong with that?

[Speaker E] You see it in the law of something that will become permitted later. I think there you see it pretty clearly—that this is the point. And that this is the issue, that it’s actual permission. What? Maybe it depends on a certain distinction I once heard from my father. The question is why the Torah permits those things that it permits because of pressure or necessity and things like that. Does that mean that in principle it would have been proper not to permit them, but we take human weakness into account and permit them,

[Speaker D] or

[Speaker E] maybe the assumption is that this is something we think the Torah values—that according to the Torah it is something not proper to lose. And if we say that, then maybe one could say—not that “heresy” seems to me an exaggeration—but maybe that it would not be right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But then why is there a law of something that will become permitted later?

[Speaker E] Because then you won’t lose anything. But if—meaning, the assumption is that loss…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if I don’t lose, if I don’t lose, then really there is something to being stringent.

[Speaker E] Rather that loss itself…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Torah has compassion…

[Speaker E] For it, so maybe it’s not certain that the Torah wants you to lose.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course you can say that. But I’m saying the point is that in order not to violate a prohibition, in any case you are obligated to spend all your money. Meaning, the Torah is not all that careful about my losses when it comes to preventing me from violating a prohibition. So I don’t know how far we can absorb that line of reasoning. Fine, okay. Where were we? So what I wanted to say is that a majority present before us and the majority in a religious court are actually pretty similar mechanisms. Not the same thing, but pretty similar. In any event, the majority in a religious court is not a majority not present before us. But for our purposes, what comes out of Sefer Ha-Chinukh, if I’m right that Sefer Ha-Chinukh is really the straightforward reading and R. Shimon’s objection can be resolved, is that the role of majority in a religious court is to uncover the truth, right? Majority is our mechanism for getting as close as possible—there’s no guarantee, sometimes the minority is right—but it’s the best route we have if we want to set up a fixed rule that will work generally.

[Speaker D] Even when it’s not a majority but according to one person, even then that’s the guarantee that this is the right way. Right, obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what I’m saying: if I’m already choosing one of two possibilities, I want to choose the better one, so I say this is the better one; it’s closer to the truth. And that brings us back to what I opened with last time—the question whether majority comes to achieve truth or peace. And that matters, for example, for the question whether we follow the majority of wisdom or the majority of people. If we want truth, then ostensibly we should follow the majority of wisdom. If we want peace, we should follow the majority of people. Here it seems that the role of majority in a religious court is to achieve truth. And if its role is to achieve truth, then the medieval and later authorities who want to argue that we follow the majority of wisdom are right. By the way, afterward I saw more later authorities—I mean, it’s not so simple. I thought that was an esoteric opinion, but no, there are quite a few later authorities who want to say this. I also just saw the Ran saying the same thing: that obviously if there is one sage on the court and two others who are not on his level, then we follow him—we follow the majority of wisdom. So then why seat them there from the outset?

[Speaker E] You could say he should deliberate alone.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you could say that maybe they are supposed to question him, challenge him, carry on a discussion with him.

[Speaker E] I could understand if they said they join him as a judge and two others discuss with him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right—that’s the court. That’s the court.

[Speaker E] Something that from the outset, if so, is how they would define it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s a court of three, except that the court is defined such that the other two only challenge the sage.

[Speaker E] It seems strange to me to define that as appointment as a judge if from the outset you’re saying their opinion isn’t accepted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you have three ordained judges, then you seat three ordained judges. We’re always talking about a situation of need, when we don’t have enough expert judges. So fine, then one ordained expert who is fully qualified is enough, together with two who have understanding. Fine. So what good do they do? They help because they challenge him. By the way, it could be that this is only rabbinic law. There’s a dispute among the Amoraim at the beginning of Sanhedrin—Avu Devei Rav Ika, if I remember correctly—whether one judge is valid to judge by Torah law and the other two are added by rabbinic law, or the opposite: that three are required by Torah law, and rabbinically they relaxed it to suffice with one and two who have understanding. In any event, the simple assumption here is that the aim of the majority is to uncover the truth. And also in following the majority—both in a majority present before us and in a majority not present before us—and this is against R. Shimon. He wants to argue that a majority present before us does not uncover the truth, only a majority not present before us uncovers the truth. A majority present before us is some kind of decree of Scripture, some formal rule—that’s what he wants to argue. I think that’s wrong. It’s quite clear. Take an ordinary person off the street, without decrees of Scripture: you found a piece of meat; there are eight kosher stores and two non-kosher ones—what would the average person say without any decree of Scripture? He too would say it came from the kosher stores. It seems to me that this is ordinary human reasoning; you don’t need a decree of Scripture. Just on its face, it seems strange to say otherwise.

[Speaker E] There are those who said the opposite—that precisely because…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it’s reasoning, it…

[Speaker E] It should have produced the opposite result, and the Torah innovated that nevertheless we do as you say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right.

[Speaker F] You said regarding Torah-level doubt that only an even doubt requires stringency. So if it’s less than an even doubt—for example, one of two is permitted—then ostensibly there’s no issue there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why, in all the matters of “whatever separates is assumed to have separated from the majority,” if…

[Speaker F] I can simply say that there is no doubt here; there is a majority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is, but when something comes before you, why isn’t it an even doubt? Either it’s prohibited or it’s permitted, as she says—there are two possibilities. Fifty-fifty. No, you say because it separated from the majority. So now it’s no longer an even doubt, and therefore you can eat it. Is there reasoning to establish… what?

[Speaker D] Is there a line of reasoning for the law of fixed status?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t—I don’t know of such reasoning. There was once an article by Uman about it. I wasn’t convinced, but he gave some lecture at Machon Lev; someone once sent me a summary on the law of fixed status. He gave some lecture there and claimed he has a line of reasoning for it. I wasn’t convinced. I don’t remember exactly what he wrote, because online I found only an abbreviated version; it wasn’t what he said there. But I wasn’t convinced. I have a study partner who was my study partner many years ago, and once again he came with another idea, saying he had a line of reasoning for the law of fixed status. I told him: when you drink poison on the basis of that reasoning, I’ll be willing to listen. He gave some halakhic reasoning like that, but you don’t really want to say that fixed status is not fifty-fifty—that fixed status is fifty-fifty.

[Speaker E] Do you want to say that for a majority of fifty-one percent you would indeed drink poison?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. If I have to drink one of two cups and one is forty-nine and one is fifty-one, I’ll drink the fifty-one. Okay. So fine—bottom line, I don’t know what to say about fixed status. I’m worried that this law of fixed status developed a bit beyond its proper height. Meaning, it started from something that maybe really had some logic to it, but it turned into some formal rule that has completely lost its logic. And now the question whether you moved or you stood still, and in the Talmud with wagons in Tzippori and all sorts of things like that, which are extremely strange things—I don’t know. In any event, that’s regarding majority for peace versus majority for truth; I said majority of wisdom or majority of numbers. Now, to complete the picture, maybe let’s move to a third kind of majority. And that is democratic majority. In a democratic state, we go by the majority—that’s the accepted practice. And I once saw—there’s a book by Haym Soloveitchik, the professor, grandson of Rabbi Chaim. Or great-grandson, sorry. A historian from the Hebrew University. He once wrote about responsa literature as a historical source. By the way, it’s a very interesting book. He teaches how to extract historical information from responsa. I’ll just give you one example of an amusing principle I saw there. It’s a kind of booklet, coursework for students in a class. He says there, for example, that if you have two manuscripts, one corrupt and one correct, which is the original? The corrupt one. Obviously the corrupt one. Because nobody corrupts a correct text; they correct a corrupt text. Fine, that’s not exact, of course, because things do get corrupted. Obviously things get corrupted. But you don’t do it intentionally; sometimes errors creep in during copying. Still, it’s an interesting idea—you don’t think about it.

[Speaker E] Right, usually that’s how it’s known, in versions like that, and they write it in philological explanations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Philology—I wasn’t familiar. Yes, it’s philology, he teaches philology. It’s a book that teaches philology. In any event, that book teaches its own topics around the discussion of how decisions are made in a community. He brings there an article by the historian Yitzhak Baer, who argued that the law of majority was adopted into Judaism from Roman law, together with all sorts of things like that. And he really gets upset about it, like a Brisker. He gets all worked up: what do you mean, we didn’t invent this idea? “Follow the majority,” following the majority, and the Sanhedrin—what, all that was born in the eleventh century? It existed from ancient times.

[Speaker E] The eleventh century and Roman law? Roman law was in the period… what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the law—first of all, yes, it was earlier, but it spread much later. Not the Romans of the first century CE, but the Justinian Code—I don’t remember exactly the historical chain, but these are things…

[Speaker E] What’s called later European law, which follows Roman law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe—I’m not sufficiently familiar with the historical development—but what’s called Roman law is a later creation; it’s not something from the first or second century CE. So I actually think Baer is right, by the way. And I’ll tell you why. “Follow the majority” is not majority rule in a community. Majority rule in a community is a different kind of majority.

[Speaker E] Ah, he was speaking specifically about majority rule in a community, not about majority in general.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Decision-making by majority vote, public decisions, things like that.

[Speaker B] A majority for peace, a majority for peace.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe, maybe not even that. In a moment I’ll try to explain. The fact is that this question of majority rule in a community arose around the eleventh century. And in the responsa of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), right at the beginning of the era of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), responsa begin to appear on this issue of majority rule in a community. And there were major disputes. Rabbenu Tam argued that we do not follow the majority. Decisions in a community are only by unanimity. That’s Rabbenu Tam’s view. And there were major disputes around this issue and all kinds of variations, and in the end it was settled—or fully agreed upon—around the fifteenth century, roughly around the time of the Shulchan Arukh, a bit before. Meaning, this is something that took several hundred years to crystallize. What?

[Speaker E] What does it mean, unanimous decisions? Can such a thing even exist?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It can’t really exist, but if there isn’t a unanimous decision, then it isn’t binding. Don’t live together. But Rabbenu Tam says: only unanimity; there’s no law of majority in such a situation.

[Speaker E] Meaning the community can basically split up; anyone can split off, basically.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyone can impose a veto on the decision.

[Speaker E] You can’t force something on an individual just because the others agree to it for him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now the medieval authorities (Rishonim) argue against him—the Rosh and the Rashba and all of them argue against him: what do you mean, you can’t survive like that, and it says “follow the majority,” and so on. But they always say: it says “follow the majority,” and also you can’t survive. Meaning, they themselves understand that “follow the majority” by itself still doesn’t say this. Rather, there’s an additional rationale: since you can’t survive otherwise, there’s no choice but to extend the law of “follow the majority” to this matter as well, because “follow the majority” is talking about a religious court. Now what’s the idea behind this? What’s the dispute behind this? It seems to me I once saw this idea in Elon, in his book, volume one. I think that’s where I saw it once, not sure. Basically, I think the point is this: let’s ask ourselves why, in a community—or generally in democratic voting—we don’t give greater weight to the wise. Meaning, extra weight to the wise. Why don’t we factor in the…

[Speaker D] Let’s measure IQ.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll do a psychometric test.

[Speaker D] Is IQ wisdom?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] IQ, psychometric, I don’t know what—we’ll decide.

[Speaker F] People will want to decide the test.

[Speaker D] Let’s measure who has…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The greatest wisdom—they’ll be the majority. You know, like Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel.

[Speaker D] Do you know how many people with high IQs I know who are stupid?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say—let’s say that I think in the end, despite all these things, if I had to—well, you always say we need to check what the alternative is. If I had to compare majority rule by the wise versus majority rule by the public, even though it’s true that wise people often make foolish decisions, it still seems to me that the decisions there would be better.

[Speaker E] Personally, I don’t think so. Wise in the sense of people who passed…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Psychometric tests, or intellectuals?

[Speaker E] Yes, intellectuals. Personally, no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, psychometric testing is a dubious measure of wisdom. Not only of practical wisdom, but even of intellectual wisdom, the psychometric is a dubious measure.

[Speaker E] Right. Not necessarily psychometric, I don’t care—some measure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Still, it’s better than having no measure at all. That’s what I think, but again, it’s worth examining.

[Speaker F] There’s a danger that the wise will take over for themselves and dominate the others.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a moment I’ll get to all the dangers and those kinds of things. Whenever I’ve said this to people, they always pull out this thing about the wisdom of crowds. There’s such a thesis, very popular in recent years; some articles came out, and there really are some fairly interesting experiments. It says that if you try to estimate how much a cow weighs, for example—if one person has to estimate the cow’s weight, he’ll probably make a significant error. But if you ask many people how much the cow weighs and then take the average, you’ll get pretty close to its real weight.

[Speaker E] Is that something that was replicated, or is it just that one story from a hundred years ago?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, they did experiments. There are experiments on this. By the way, in my opinion—I haven’t checked it deeply—in my opinion this is just simple logic. The wisdom of crowds isn’t simple at all. The wisdom of crowds doesn’t say to go by the majority; it says that the average will be close to the true value. Going by the majority is not an average. It’s not the same thing. Going by the majority means accepting the decision of the majority against the decision of the minority. Here I’m not accepting the majority’s decision; I’m averaging. It’s not binary, either this or that. It’s lots of estimates—how much a cow weighs, or how many leaves are on a tree, or all kinds of questions of that sort. And what’s the idea behind it? It seems to me the idea is that everybody makes mistakes. But the distribution of mistakes is presumably symmetric around zero. Why would people err upward more than downward, or significantly more?

[Speaker E] In this kind of issue that’s less likely, but there are issues where it really…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. And maybe there it really won’t work. I’m only suggesting an explanation for why the wisdom of crowds isn’t really some mystical thing called the wisdom of crowds, but rather the law of large numbers. Meaning, once you take enough people, and the distribution of errors is around the mean in a roughly symmetric way, then if you average across many people, the law of large numbers says you’ll arrive at the correct result. That sounds very reasonable to me; it’s not such a surprising finding. Huh? More accurate, right. Yes, more accurate. Meaning, I’d have guessed that on my own if someone had asked me. Again, if I’d known to think of it, I’d have guessed it—not a sage after the fact—but I’m saying it’s definitely something one can understand; it’s not surprising once you hear it.

[Speaker F] The median comes out more accurate than the mean. What? The median turns out to be more accurate than the average.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that needs checking. Again, maybe that too can be explained statistically. The question is how the errors are distributed.

[Speaker F] If suddenly some people get some weird bug in their heads and give some very—I don’t know—million-ton answer, then that skews the average very strongly, yes, but it hardly affects the median at all. So that kind of reduces the impact of extreme values.

[Speaker D] And moves…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The—cuts off the tails of the Gaussian. Yes, yes, okay. No, there’s also a problem here, because you can deviate upward much more than downward. Downward there’s no weight below zero, while upward you can say as much as you like. Fine, maybe. In any case, I’m saying there are statistical explanations for this either way; these are statistical explanations. It’s not some wisdom-of-crowds thing in the sense of collective intelligence or something. It’s not collective intelligence; it’s the law of large numbers. In any case, it’s irrelevant to us here, because that talks about an average, and I’m talking about a binary decision with some cutoff value.

[Speaker E] There are times when an averaging decision operates as a result of a coalition. A coalition can sometimes give you not exactly an average but some kind of compromise between positions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the question isn’t binary. I’m talking about a binary question—say, Reuven is liable or Reuven is exempt in a religious court. Fine. I once saw an interesting article—an interesting article by, what was his name, Ron Shapira. He was deputy to Menachem Finkelstein in the prosecution service; today he’s president of Peres College, some kind of mathematician-lawyer type. He writes articles. So Menachem once brought me a booklet of his where he discusses what to do when judges disagree. So he has all kinds of mathematical algorithms for minimizing errors and reaching a decision. But there, for example, he has suggestions of the following sort: if one judge says liable, and two judges say liable, and one judge says exempt, then give him two-thirds, or something like that—meaning, he turns the decision into something non-binary. Meaning, true, that’s a decision that necessarily isn’t correct. Tosafot at the beginning of Bava Metzia, after all, says that you don’t make a division when it can’t be true. Such a division can’t be true.

[Speaker E] Yes, but the minimization of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Error, yes, depends on what your criterion is. In any case, what comes up here is basically the question of rule by philosophers. Right? Plato, after all, proposed that in the state, those who rule should be the wise. What use are millions of fools to me, like drops in the sea, water in the ocean? What use are they to me? They don’t count for a garlic peel against one wise man, as some philosophers put it. And therefore—what?

[Speaker D] As some wise men put it. Yes, some wise men.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore Plato basically argued for rule by philosophers, rule by the wise. Now when we think about that today it really sounds like heresy to people. Now there are those who explain why it’s heresy in principle. Why is it really not reasonable to follow the wise? So one claim says: because how do you know who is wise? Someone who knows how to solve mathematical problems isn’t necessarily wise in political or security decisions. How would you measure it? Wisdom is hard to measure. That’s not a substantive claim, because it’s a technical claim. Meaning, if I could find the criterion for determining who is wise in political decisions, security decisions, economic decisions, then I would average accordingly—

[Speaker D] But that’s such a technical claim…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, it’s not a substantive technical claim.

[Speaker D] Fine, but there’s no…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no problem with that claim; I’m only characterizing it. I’m saying: this is a claim I hear, and I’m only saying that it’s still a technical claim, just a difficulty of measurement. It doesn’t deny that, in principle, if I had a criterion then I ought to give the decision to the wise. The only problem is I have no criterion for who counts as wise. A second claim is what Oren said earlier: the fear of takeover. Meaning, if the wise were doing everything for our benefit in a completely altruistic way, then it really would make sense to hand them the decision. But they’re human beings like me and you, and they’ll manipulate. Once we let them rule, they’ll take care of their own interests, and because of that I don’t want to give them that power.

[Speaker D] In short, they won’t decide according to wisdom; they’ll decide according to interests.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So therefore there’s no point—wisdom won’t guide them, so there’s no point in giving them the power. But that too is a technical question. Suppose there were a wise person whom I fully trusted in his goodness and honesty—then yes, it would be right to give it to him. The only thing is, I have a technical problem: I don’t trust these people. I think I once told you: once Rakover invited me to lead some kind of workshop for judges and lawyers. He used to run weekends where they studied topics, each time on different issues. One time we studied this case—in the Talmud / Talmudic text in… where is it? In Ketubot? I don’t remember. It’s the source for Maimonides, where Maimonides writes that in monetary law a judge should act according to what his own eyes see, according to where his judgment inclines, not according to the regular laws of evidence. And what’s the source for that? The Talmud / Talmudic text tells about Rava, before whom a woman came to court, and Rava imposed an oath on her. Then Rava’s wife entered the religious court and said to him: listen, I know her—she’s a pathological liar, don’t make her swear. So he transferred the oath to the other party, so that he would swear and collect. Which is a problematic move, because when you transfer the oath and let the plaintiff swear, you’re basically allowing him to take money. Meaning, if you impose the oath on the defendant, he swears and is exempt. If he doesn’t swear he pays, but it’s in his power to retain money, not to extract money. And when it’s in your power to extract money, that’s very problematic—I can pounce on anyone, swear, and take money. One liar willing to swear falsely could take all of our money.

[Speaker E] No, again, if there’s consistency here, then they’ll become suspicious of him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. I’m talking on the principled level: what is difficult about such a policy? The difficulty is—it’s harder to let the one who extracts swear than to let the one… That’s why Torah oaths, for example, are only oaths of someone who becomes exempt. In the Mishnah there are oaths for one who collects. But even there, since in principle he should have collected, the Sages were stringent with him and said he may not collect without an oath; that’s a stringency, not a leniency. But here he made it easier for him to swear—meaning, to swear and collect. So the judges there were outraged by this. What is this? Is it his private courtyard? Meaning, his wife comes in, whispers in his ear that she’s a liar, and then he transfers the oath? What’s going on here? So I said to them: look, I think you have a criminal mindset. I mean, imagine a hypothetical situation, okay? We have a judge in the community whom we fully trust in his integrity, his honesty. We know—there’s nothing here—the man would not utter falsehood, would not take out a penny for his own benefit. He speaks truth even at his own expense, and we fully trust this person. What do you propose to do in such a situation? His wife comes in—and he believes his wife too, because he knows her very well, he knows she’s telling him the truth. Okay? So what are you proposing, basically? To make this pathological liar swear and leave the money with her even though it’s not hers. Why? Because you don’t want it to become the judge’s private courtyard. Yes, a high probability. Yes. Because you don’t want it to become the judge’s private courtyard. Meaning, you’re mortgaging present truth because of future concerns—because someone unworthy might do this too. So let’s see whether such a concern exists or not, but don’t assume it as obvious. Meaning, if I trust a person, then this is the right path—I really do want him to bring the truth to light. The only thing is, you’re used to not trusting people, not even judges. So fine, whether justifiably or not.

[Speaker E] It’s really… trust like that is something one can consider, and even then it seems to me that saying you give someone absolute trust is always excessive, but…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean trust? It’s not absolute trust, no.

[Speaker E] But not to give…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not giving absolute trust is also absolute.

[Speaker E] That’s the other extreme; I was only responding to your previous sentence. But never mind—giving that kind of trust is something that can be considered in some small, closed group. You can say, I don’t know, two students who come to the head of the yeshiva—they’ll trust him even in something that is… Once it’s a public system, it’s not… I think a public system that would work like that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s fine. But Rava was a judge in his city; two people came before him for judgment. Fine? Assuming they know him and he has integrity, very good. So if that’s the truth as far as he’s concerned, why on earth should we require him to make a pathological liar swear and leave the money with her? There’s no logic in that at all. True, I understand the logic that of course it could also happen that maybe you’re reading him wrong and he’s not that honest, or maybe someone else will come along who isn’t that honest and will use these rules.

[Speaker D] And also… Moses and Aaron come and testify that Reuven owes Shimon money. So yes, as of now they’re brothers, that’s that. Okay. And it’s inadmissible, even though we know with certainty that what they say… practically speaking. Rather, there’s a rule in the Torah that you don’t extract money…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there’s also…

[Speaker D] A rule…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the Torah that brothers are not accepted as witnesses, not because of concern for lying. Even without Moses and Aaron, brothers’ testimony isn’t accepted even though they speak truth. The law is that all brothers speak truth, not only Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron are just an extreme example.

[Speaker D] And still we don’t accept them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But even with two ordinary brothers they have a presumption of fitness.

[Speaker D] And there’s a rule that you don’t administer an oath in order to extract money.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there’s also a rule that a judge should do what his eyes see. It’s not against the Torah’s rules. It’s against the Torah’s rules to accept two witnesses who are brothers. But this is not against the Torah’s rules, because the Torah itself tells us—the Jewish law tells us—that we act according to what the truth is, so long as it doesn’t contradict some specific principle. That’s all. Now I understand that you want to establish rules so there won’t be a slide downhill. Fine. But you also need to understand that this too is a terribly problematic policy. The slippery slope of slippery slopes. Meaning, people have become so used to this criminal mindset that they’re unwilling to accept giving trust to human beings.

[Speaker E] In a public system, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in general. No, it’s not even only a public system—they already forget that it was only in a public system. They no longer trust people at all; when they hear this even within a closed group, they’ll still say, “What are you talking about? That’s not proper.” It’s become a pattern of thought for people. Maybe it really started from public behavior, but I think it’s already become a way of thinking.

[Speaker E] Fine, even within a closed group it’s not necessarily like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a closed group, if it wants to, then it does it, and that’s perfectly fine; it’s not improper conduct. Why did I remember this? Because I said that if we trust the wise not to seize power for themselves and act for their own interests, then yes, we’d give it to them. These two arguments—the suspicion that they may act out of self-interest, or the problem that we can’t measure wisdom—both are technical in the sense that if, hypothetically, we really had wise and upright people, then yes, we would give them the right to decide. Or if you want some more sophisticated algorithm, then we’d actually weight your voting power by your intelligence. Because it’s not all-or-nothing. The wiser a person is, the more weight his finger gets on the ballot. You could weight it in some way and get wisdom-biased decisions, meaning decisions dependent on wisdom.

[Speaker F] That already happens in the judiciary, where judges are appointed as though they’re in the category of the wise, and they’re given authority to decide regarding the public, even though it’s not connected to majority choice. I didn’t understand? Meaning, judges are appointed as though they’re in the category of the wise, okay, and they decide public issues.

[Speaker D] Fine, but here this isn’t recommendations; here it’s the legislator.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not the legislator—the judges. Not the legislator, the judges. Judges don’t legislate. The legislator legislates, and the legislator is also representative government—he’s basically my representative, because it’s impossible to gather all of us into the town square and decide. So they do it by a shortcut; it’s just a technical matter. So they do it through representative government. After the legislator legislates, the judge only decides what to do—at least theoretically, of course. That’s why there’s all this war over judicial appointments.

[Speaker F] Right, because in practice they…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also legislate a bit; it can’t be avoided.

[Speaker D] The moment you go beyond that, the problem begins.

[Speaker F] Again, by that same principle of rule, of authority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but here there’s no choice. What else are we supposed to do?

[Speaker F] Can you do away with judges altogether?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but what happens if there are disputes between people? Or if someone breaks the law?

[Speaker F] You can give it to public representatives elected as judges by the public.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, but that too is chosen by the public. No, but here they were chosen by the public through…

[Speaker F] My excellence, not by a public criterion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they need to know the law. Exactly—so we’re dealing with violations of the law. Not rule by the wise in the sense that they’re smarter, but in the sense that there are rules that determine things and they know the rules; we don’t.

[Speaker E] They’re experts in the law; they know the rules.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Once we’ve moved to the formal plane, then fine—you need to know the formal plane in order to work with it.

[Speaker E] No, in reality, not only reality is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, I once thought that this is really unnecessary. Meaning, the system would work better if they chose judges and there were no laws. Without laws. Not in every field, but in many fields it could be that if there were no laws it would be managed better. Because in any event the laws don’t really succeed in regulating steady conduct—the thing they were supposed to do. In any event, ask any lawyer: you don’t know what will happen when you get to court. You have no idea what the decision will be. Even if you know all the material, you have no idea; you can’t predict.

[Speaker D] I don’t think that’s true in most cases.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In most cases—ask lawyers. I asked lawyers.

[Speaker E] Once you get to court, usually those are the kinds of cases.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, I’m talking about those cases.

[Speaker E] The cases where it’s clear don’t get to court.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about the cases that do get to court. The cases that get to court should go to public arbitrators.

[Speaker D] No, the question in court—the question is whether a case comes to court where they need to determine whether there is sufficient evidence regarding the facts, which is most cases, in criminal court and so on.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, and there too you can’t know whether he’ll accept this evidence or reject this evidence.

[Speaker D] True.

[Speaker E] There really are no laws there.

[Speaker D] Yes, and there really are no laws there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So that’s why I’m saying it. But the point is that the laws don’t succeed in giving you the certainty they were supposed to give. So if that’s so, think how much cumbersomeness this whole legal system creates. Enormous cumbersomeness. You need lawyers and tricksters of this kind and tricksters of that kind, and time in court that completely loses its effectiveness—you get the judgment years later, I don’t know how long. It’s completely cumbersome. Come before one wise person, three wise people, whom the public trusts as honest and wise; come before them, present your arguments, and they’ll decide. That’s all—without all the nonsense, and procedural rules, and legal pilpul, and all these things.

[Speaker E] You know, that too will have lawyers and all that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’ll be lawyers, but it’ll be much shorter. There won’t be statutory clauses; you won’t need legal gimmicks. What—let’s hear it. You say what you say, you say what you say, and that’s it. Which is how it used to be, by the way. What was it in the old religious courts? Did a case take years? Of course not. They came before the judges—and there was law, Jewish law. They come before the judges, there’s one session, two sessions, three sessions, done. There wasn’t more than that. Today’s system is so cumbersome because it tries to be simple and tries to give certainty, to have a fixed law so nobody can do whatever he wants. And what comes out? Everybody does whatever he wants, and you’re also cumbersome. Increased cumbersomeness.

[Speaker B] The goal of these things is fairness, fairness.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and what is this? Arm-twisting. Now we set limits, boundaries. You can’t kill, you can’t use force. Fine. But within that, decide whether he owes him or doesn’t owe him.

[Speaker F] The laws—they make an approximation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but the laws do much more than that. That’s why I’m saying: I’m not saying there should be no law book at all. There should be a law book the thickness of a small booklet. It gives people rules, a framework within which they more or less operate, that’s all. All the clauses and sub-clauses that require such expertise that you need to hire this lawyer and pay him millions—you lose a huge amount of money. For what? In order to get your rights. Then if you win, the other guy will have to pay the millions you paid the lawyer, besides the money he owes you. The whole business is so cumbersome—who says justice is really with you there?

[Speaker D] What’s needed is law. But…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying regarding—you need to go through the law book. It’s very general and very rough. But I’m saying that a large part of the legal system is unnecessary, in my opinion. Put there people who aren’t lawyers—people who are honest, whom you trust to be honest—and that’s all, enough.

[Speaker E] Where will we find such people?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think yes, I think it’s possible.

[Speaker E] Not that there are no honest people, but there aren’t people whom one gives that kind of trust.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t know—it’s all political, whoever determines it. But let them determine it by honesty, not by legal skill, or by coalitions, or by I don’t know what. By the way, I think it’s the same as the psychometric test. All those things they give instead of the psychometric—exactly. A friend told me a while ago: cancel the psychometric, do what they do in economics—let everyone into first year, and after first year decide who is suitable and who isn’t. That’s much more efficient than all these exams.

[Speaker D] But that’s what happens, look—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In economics, that’s what happens.

[Speaker D] No, look what happens with the psychometric. It’s for getting into physics at the Technion. Well, in physics there’s no demand, so everyone gets in.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In physics all you need is a pulse.

[Speaker D] And after half a year you’re thrown out—that’s what happens.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but I’m saying—no, but that’s exactly the point. What do you need all this for? Even the screening isn’t relevant. The psychometric is one filter for all fields. Take him, put him in law, in physics and mathematics, filter him on exactly what’s needed, and even if he didn’t study it in high school, give him a chance to learn now. And all the money spent on psychometric prep—make one big hall in first year, put him there with the lecturer, there are hundreds of students.

[Speaker D] You don’t know how much that costs; it’s not simple.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it’s much simpler than what happens today. The psychometric madness today is insane, really insane, insane—and it doesn’t produce the results.

[Speaker D] In my day there was no psychometric, and the students were not bad at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly why I’m saying the psychometric doesn’t…

[Speaker D] Give the output.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And also, lots of people who didn’t work in high school—so what, now because of that they’ve lost out? The whole thing makes no sense. A lot of money; whoever doesn’t have money can’t get through.

[Speaker D] I know some major professors in various fields who say that if there had been a psychometric today, they wouldn’t have been admitted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. They would have been admitted, I assume—it’s convenient to say that, yes. But fine, there are many—anyway, what I’m saying is that many times we come to regulate something with a system of rules, metrics, and so on, and we basically throw out the baby with the bathwater. We become prisoners of the metrics, prisoners of the rules. Whereas the rules originally came to help, but in the end the rules swallow up the picture; they become the picture itself instead of being some approximation of the picture. By the way, in Jewish law it’s like that too. We talked about rules in Jewish law, right? About positivism, and the claim that in Jewish law too the rules were ultimately only an approximation of how Jewish law functioned, and at some stage suddenly Jewish law became the collection of rules. It’s obvious that this doesn’t work. Someone who works from the rules doesn’t rule correctly. It’s a mistake to think that.

[Speaker D] That also relates to first-order halakhic ruling.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, of course. In those same areas you can see the same idea. Okay. In any case, what these arguments against Plato’s thesis—the rule of philosophers—have in common is that they’re technical arguments. Meaning, on the principled level they accept the Platonic claim that the wise should decide. And I claim there is a basic mistake here. You don’t need excuses, and it’s not a technical problem, and nothing of the sort. Why? Because all of them assume that the goal of democratic majority is to reach the truth. That this is our way of reaching the best decisions—getting as close as possible to the truth, never mind.

[Speaker D] Why do you call that truth?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The best decisions. Truth in the sense of what is most effective, what is best for us—never mind, yes—some correct answer; that’s what I mean. It’s like the wisdom of crowds; meaning, this is our algorithm for getting as close as possible to the correct answer, like in education. And then the debate begins: do we go after the majority of wisdom or the numerical majority? That’s exactly rule by philosophers, right? It’s exactly the same debate that comes up in education that comes up here too. Only in education it makes sense to raise that debate—but here it doesn’t. Why? Because the goal of democratic majority is not at all to get the best decisions. It’s nonsense to think that. The goal of democratic majority is to get the decisions the public wants. It has nothing to do with the correct decisions. Suppose there’s a public of idiots who want to go to a war that is doomed from the outset, but that’s what they want. Now that’s a stupid decision. If there were one wise person there who stopped them, everyone would benefit. But they have the right to make decisions about what they want—about how they want to conduct themselves. Majority rule in democracy is grounded in rights, not in truth. I have a right to influence my fate. And that right is not conditional on my IQ. What does that have to do with anything? I’m a human being with rights. And as for your being wise—consider whether you want to be in one society together with me and make decisions. Just as the refined people of Jerusalem would check who sat with them at a meal: if someone whom I consider unworthy is voting together with me and we go by the majority, then truly, yes, I don’t enter that arrangement at all, because I’m not willing to accept the decisions of such a majority when they all seem like idiots to me. I don’t want to accept those decisions. Fine, so I don’t play with them on the same field. But if you enter a society of which you are a part, take into account that all the members there have a right to influence their fate—not only you. And it may be that this will bring decisions that perhaps are not good; fine, but that’s what the society wants. And since that’s what the society wants, that’s what we’ll do. The role of the majority in a democracy is to serve as an algorithm telling me what society wants. It does not tell me what the correct decision is. Since there are decisions about which there are disagreements within society, okay? So when I now want to do what society wants—what is it that society wants? This one wants this, and that one wants that, and that one wants something else. Everyone wants something different. Or groups want different things. What does society want? So I need to decide on some algorithm. By the way, there’s a whole field in mathematical economics dealing with representative decision-making, rules of representation. There are theorems in this—Condorcet’s theorem and a whole collection of other theorems. I once gave a lecture on this at Bar-Ilan with one Shmuel Nitzan, a professor of economics. He published a very interesting book through the Open University. If anyone gets the chance, I think it’s very interesting to read. He let me read it before we spoke there, and that’s where I discovered this whole world. The son of Aluma?

[Speaker E] The son of Aluma? Is that the dean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I don’t know Aluma, and I don’t know whether he’s her son. Shmuel, I think, is the professor’s name. In any case, all these rules—there’s a very nice theorem there. He presents—it’s not his, it’s a course—but there’s a theorem showing that if you require several requirements from your representation rule—meaning, you want the decision to represent the public’s views as fully as possible, and to minimize error, and to be such-and-such, and several pretty reasonable requirements—there’s a theorem that says there is no such decision. It’s impossible to reach a decision that satisfies all those requirements. It’s a theorem in mathematics. Very nice, a very beautiful field; I enjoyed reading it very much. In any case, what this field does is simply try to propose algorithms.

[Speaker D] I don’t understand why this is connected to economics. Why is it connected to economics?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you want public policy. Fine—it’s in every field. Right, right. When you want to invest money in something: what do you invest in? This one wants to invest in yeshivot, that one in culture, that one in soccer, and everyone in something else. So where do you invest the money? Or how do we divide it? These are sometimes very complicated questions. So here the rule of following the majority, or the rule of the average, is of course the simplest rule. What is the role of the majority in such a case? The majority is simply an algorithm that tells me what the public wants. Now in a certain sense this is arbitrary, because it’s not what the public wants, it’s what the majority of the public wants. But that’s the rule I chose, because I need to arrive at one decision; there’s no choice, in the end we have to do one thing. So the simplest rule is the majority. By the way, there are better and more sophisticated rules than majority, which represent—at least it seems more plausible that they better represent—what the public wants. I’ll give you an example. Suppose the majority wants one thing and the minority wants something else, but the minority really, really wants what it wants, while for the majority it matters less. There’s room, for example, to weight how important it is to the minority versus how important it is to the majority. Not simply let the numbers decide.

[Speaker E] And that’s what coalitions are for. That’s what gets realized in the form of coalitions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, coalitions are another kind of algorithm that can represent that idea. I’m saying: all this is just different algorithms for representing what the public wants. But let’s return now to the issue of majority. The most basic algorithm is following the majority, as is accepted in democracy, as is accepted in communities, and so on. Following the majority simply says what the public wants. It doesn’t need to hit any truth at all.

[Speaker D] Is there also tyranny of the minority there? Is there also tyranny of the majority there? Suppose the public wants there to be some minority within the public from whom everything should be taken away.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay, so there is tyranny of the majority. Fine, there are all the problems of tyranny of the majority and so on. I’m talking, say, about decisions—not about depriving the minority of rights, but about what we’re all going to do. Shall we go to war? Shall we make these or those economic decisions? In those senses.

[Speaker F] Why is it that in civics, I remember learning in high school, there are questions of when you go to a referendum, when you leave it to representatives of the public, and what the considerations are in direct democracy versus representative democracy? So beyond the technical issue that not everyone can make every decision, they also say there’s the matter of expertise and wisdom in decision-making, in public understanding.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But even if you accept that, it’s only because the public wants to entrust matters to those who have expertise and wisdom, assuming that’s really the case. If the public doesn’t want that, it has the right to say no. Right? Many times we—true, the public didn’t do this by a vote—but basically we sort of estimate the public’s will, and these are always ad hoc theories. But the justification isn’t because we’re looking for truth. It’s because what the public wants also happens, usually, to be what is beneficial for it—that is, what is true. Meaning, usually people want what is beneficial. Okay? So that’s why I say: fine, let’s take the people who are most likely to lead us to what is beneficial and let’s entrust them with authority—but only because we decided to entrust them with authority, not because they are truly wise. That by itself gives them no authority whatsoever.

[Speaker B] Now, when the public wants to decide, is that because it has some ideology of going…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On its own? Or because it believes that if it goes on its own it’ll get worse decisions? No, no, it’s not because of that.

[Speaker D] It’s not an ideology at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not because of what…

[Speaker D] It’s a right. Why should a person—I don’t want to—why should I…? You don’t want to? Fine, give it up. You’re allowed to waive it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But under dictatorial rule they’ll make bad decisions.

[Speaker D] When there is a democratic regime… no, I don’t think that’s true. Because when there is a dictatorial regime—by the way, dictatorial regimes have often made much better decisions. I’ll give you an example I know very well, yes, Singapore. Singapore was founded by a man, Lee Kuan Yew, in 1967 I think, something like that, and he died not long ago. He was prime minister for something like forty years. And his son, I think, right? What, his son replaced him as prime minister, yes. And he—and I call this a democ-tatorship, yes? It’s a dictatorship. Truly, truly, it’s a dictatorship. And he took a nation of swamps and of—I don’t know what—of Chinese who came from China, and he called them—he himself was Chinese, yes?—dirty Chinese, and turned them into one of the leading countries today, all of three million, four million people. I was there many times. The cleanest place in the world, economically the most advanced—I mean in terms of the average standard of living of people—zero corruption. In terms of the average level of people, zero corruption.

[Speaker E] There’s almost no corruption, maybe at the very lowest levels.

[Speaker D] There’s no corruption, no corruption.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look at corruption indices, there are corruption indices.

[Speaker D] In corruption indices they are number one in the world in the negative sense, meaning there is no corruption. I know this personally, it’s not that I read articles—I was there many, many times. And why does this happen? Because this really is a person with integrity, and truly, truly, all he cared about his whole life was what happens to the nation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And again, it’s the same thing as with Rava. We’re afraid of dictatorship, and that’s excellent.

[Speaker D] The problem is that if you give that kind of power and someone comes along who is a bit…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re afraid of dictatorship because someone might sit there who won’t do

[Speaker D] what is good for the public.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if someone sits there who will do what is good for the public, dictatorship is the best thing there is.

[Speaker D] It’s a fantastic example. Now, I don’t know what will happen to Singapore in another twenty years—someone a bit off might take over and then it will start becoming like this and that, and maybe they’ll go down the drain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was a very interesting book about this by Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, one of the books from the Shalem Center, from the conservatives, conservative literature. And following the French Revolution, he wrote a defense of the British system against French democracy. The British, after all, went through a long process—there was democracy there much earlier, but it was a democracy with both a king and a parliament, and the relations between the king and parliament kept changing all the time in favor of parliament, and the king’s authority kept declining. So I think it was still somewhere in the middle then. And he writes there a major paean in favor of mixed monarchical rule. And we constantly have some kind of aversion to that kind of thing, and he says that’s not correct, because the king always makes the long-term calculation. Parliament will never think more than four years ahead, or the government. Never. The calculation is different. If you need to make a decision that will bear fruit only in five years, they won’t make such a decision.

[Speaker E] You can also buy off the prime minister or the king, which is what happened to him over twenty years.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but that’s already dictatorship. That’s dictatorship, because twenty years is already irrelevant. After twenty years he retires, he doesn’t

[Speaker E] depend on anyone, you can’t depose him.

[Speaker D] And that’s a serious disadvantage.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m claiming there’s an essential problem in all the regimes I just described, an essential problem.

[Speaker D] Because we

[Speaker B] are afraid of someone like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s

[Speaker B] exactly what we…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that they’ll want only the good… I want to claim there’s an essential problem.

[Speaker B] Why? Who says that I… I need to decide my own fate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to decide. Why? If you want to give that up, no problem—again I’m saying: if you want to give it up, that’s your right to give it up. But everyone has a right to influence his own fate. My claim against Burke is not that democracy works better than this mixed monarchy, but rather that democracy is my right. And if I want to choose a king, fine, I’ll choose one, no problem. I’m allowed to waive my rights. But I will decide that. Not the king, and not that his son will be appointed. Okay? It could be that based on my own considerations I’ll decide that a king is better—excellent, then we’ll appoint a king—but I need to decide because I have

[Speaker D] rights

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] even though that system may be less good and may produce worse results. That’s exactly the point. I’m claiming all these arguments are mistaken at their root. It may even be less good for me, only I… don’t think so. Yes, exactly! And it’s my right to decide what’s good for me, even if I’m wrong. I have the right to be wrong. Therefore, the conception of democracy is grounded in rights, not in striving for the best thing, but in my having the right to determine my own fate.

[Speaker E] And now you understand that rule by philosophers is not relevant at all. Because rule by philosophers starts—the whole question starts—only because we’re proposing an algorithm for reaching better decisions. But if you understand that the goal is not to reach the best decisions, the goal is to reach the decisions the public wants, then the concept of rule by philosophers is not relevant at all. The question doesn’t arise; you don’t need excuses. I mean, it can arise in a somewhat different form. Instead of proposing that philosophers should rule, I don’t know, through a revolution, through a military revolution, then say that philosophers will rule because the public chooses them of its own free will. That’s not a problem, that’s perfectly fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the public wants it, the public can vote and decide that it wants philosophers to run things, that’s fine.

[Speaker E] Rule by philosophers is a conception that says—he can also give up

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] democracy deciding, no problem, it can do anything, as long as it decided that. But it cannot be that Plato will decide for me that the philosophers will rule—that, no. As a political doctrine, that means that from the outset we determine that the philosophers will rule, not that this is a recommendation to the public, “come, let’s choose philosophers.” Rather it is the claim that you fools have no right, no say. The philosophers decide.

[Speaker E] But what happened in practice was that philosophers ruled only if the public gave it to them in some way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s not true. No, historically that’s not how it was. That’s not how it was. In Athens it wasn’t like that. In Greek democracies it wasn’t like that. As is well known, there voting rights belonged to roughly ten percent of the residents.

[Speaker E] And that’s not a matter of sages, it’s a matter of powerholders. Fine, what difference does it make?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not the same idea.

[Speaker E] No, it’s not the same idea, it’s the complete opposite.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not the complete opposite, because wisdom is also a kind of power. It’s also a kind of power, wisdom. Sages can manipulate you. Sages can do a lot of things to you. Wisdom is a kind of power. Why, when a person fights a lion, does the person usually win? Because he’s stronger? Because he’s smarter.

[Speaker E] No, but that wisdom gives power is true, but the idea and the logic

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] of rule by philosophers is not that philosophers are strong and therefore they should rule, but that philosophers will steer better and therefore they should rule. The fact that in practice ten percent ruled—that’s not

[Speaker E] because they navigated so well on behalf of all the slaves they ruled over. No, because they positioned themselves to rule. Not because the public decided they should rule. Rather, that was the system there: the public couldn’t say anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, if the public had decided they should rule, all the better. Why would I care if they rule?

[Speaker E] Fine, but you can’t do that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can, you can, you can.

[Speaker E] Not without causing the public to be swept along after them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are manipulations that are not just causing the public to be swept along. There are. I once just talked about Stalin. I read a biography of Stalin; it was fascinating. One man ruling over a nation of a hundred and fifty million people, where everyone who even knows him wants to kill him. With almost the strongest army in the world, maybe the second strongest in the world, I don’t know, something like that, after World War II, in the early 1950s. Okay? And he dies in his bed. And he overcame a hundred and fifty million people with the strongest army in the world, all by himself. How did that happen? Did he persuade everyone? No. There are situations where a person with power, or a smart person, manipulates things and can overcome the entire public in all sorts of ways because he is either stronger or smarter than they are. Not because he persuaded them. You don’t always get power from the public. In the ancient era, it wasn’t public power at all. Did a king get power from the public? A king was perceived as appointed by God; he didn’t get power from the public.

[Speaker E] Again, so the public had to believe that he was appointed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The public had to believe, but the public could rebel against that and it still wouldn’t help them. The army had to believe. The army—each individual in the army had to believe—but the army as a collective could do nothing.

[Speaker D] Because if one soldier

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] rebels against him, the other three will shoot him. Because they’ll be afraid. After all, the collective would have to believe—that’s the system. No, I’m saying that even if one person doesn’t believe, that’s not enough.

[Speaker E] One individual who doesn’t believe isn’t enough. What was the fear of Stalin? Everyone wants to kill Stalin, but he’s afraid that if he conspires with someone else, the other person will inform on him and get him killed. So he doesn’t dare, he can’t do anything. And everyone wants to do the same thing, except no one can talk to the other. And that, by the way, is exactly a market failure. In economics too you have this. Where, even according to capitalism, should the government intervene? Why, according to capitalism, do they fight monopolies? By the way, that too is a certain variation of capitalism, not wild capitalism.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but the clearest capitalists agree that you need to fight monopolies. Why? Why should the government intervene? Let the market be—the market forces determined that it’s a monopoly. No. Because the claim is that a monopoly is a market failure. Meaning, in the end the monopoly accumulates power beyond the power that reality itself gives it. There’s some kind of failure there, as in the case of Stalin. And because of that, capitalists—there are capitalists who say, in my opinion most capitalists say—that monopolies should not be allowed to form. In any case, for our purposes—and this took too much time—for our purposes, the point is that the democratic majority is a majority grounded in rights. Not truly and not in peace. Now maybe it’s not even peace—there are those who would say that it is peace, but that it is something stronger than peace. Everyone has the right to have a finger in the decision, in what is done. Those are the foundations of the majority. Now if that is indeed so, then it is now clear why the majority in a community cannot be learned from “follow the majority.” Because if “follow the majority,” like education, is a means of arriving at the truth, how can you learn from here the majority in a community? Even following the majority in Jewish law—“go after the majority”—that too is basically a tool for clarifying what reality is, for clarifying the truth. Therefore following the majority learned from “follow the majority” is also a tool for clarifying the truth. But the majority in a community, although superficially it’s the same thing—you vote and follow the majority—it is really not that at all. And you’ll see, quite consistently, Rashba and Maharam, responsum after responsum, everyone who deals with this—and there are many responsa on this matter of how communities are run—it later entered the Shulchan Arukh too. In Choshen Mishpat; there is also some in Yoreh De’ah. Mainly the Rema in practice more than the Shulchan Arukh, because in Europe this was indeed stronger. So you’ll see that quite consistently, every responsum dealing with this brings “follow the majority,” and also adds: and besides, it is impossible to function otherwise.

[Speaker E] So it doesn’t sound like their conception is a conception of rights.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is, I don’t know whether the conception is one of rights or not, that’s not clear to me. But it is clear to them that it does not come from “follow the majority” alone.

[Speaker E] That it doesn’t come directly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s an extension of the idea of “follow the majority.” Why? What’s the difference? That there it is in a religious court and here it isn’t in a religious court—so what? Also. So what? Well, even following the majority isn’t only in a religious court. In stores—is that a religious court? We learn from a religious court to go after the majority of stores. Is that a religious court? No. That’s a natural extension. No, but each one adds a reason. I noticed it once—responsum after responsum, you can see it. And what of “follow the majority”? As Chaim Soloveitchik argued against Baehr, he said: what stories are you telling me, that the democratic majority comes from the Torah? We invented democracy? Nonsense, we invented democracy. There is nothing democratic among us. Democracy reached us in the eleventh century. All the majority before that is not democracy. In general, ordination came from above, not from below. All government is from above. The king is from the house of David, the Sanhedrin is ordained from Moses our teacher. What democracy and what nonsense. Once communities began functioning outside a state framework, not a national structure—in Babylonia there was still a national structure, even though we were in exile—but there there was the Exilarch, who stood in place of a king, and there was Rav Nachman, the great sages of the generation, and there were the two academies, Sura, Pumbedita, Nehardea, it doesn’t matter—the great heads of the academies who basically stood at the head of the system, and they appointed the judges. There was quite an orderly structure. There indeed the whole business was not run democratically at all. After they began to spread out through Europe and North Africa, the four captives, in the eleventh century this whole thing really began. The great dispersal. Babylonia gradually thinned out, tenth century, eleventh century, it began to disperse. And then, not surprisingly, the question began to arise: what do you do with communities? The concept of the community was born. The concept of the community did not exist before in its modern sense. Because a community was a city within a state. We too had communities. But when we talk about communities, they’re not really communities. There is city government, state government, and we are inside that whole arrangement. Fine, there’s a synagogue with a few bylaws, but that’s not really a community. You have no real communal freedom, no communal autonomy. There is a system from above that controls everything. You can go to court and it will straighten things out for you. The police, or whatever it is. A community had to manage on its own. A kind of autarky, as it’s called. A self-standing structure, like a state. And now all the concepts of king and secular government and religious government and religious court and Sanhedrin and everything had to be expanded into the community. To take all that into this microcosm of the community. So they made an extension of the state concepts, but in the meantime they underwent a transformation. They changed. And the majority in fact really became a completely different kind of majority. It is a majority that did not exist until that time, at least not clearly and fully the way it later did. And therefore the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are indeed very hesitant. And as I said, Rabbenu Tam said that here you go unanimously. You do not follow the majority in a community. Not at all. Where would you learn “follow the majority” from? There’s no such thing. It’s another kind of majority. I see that here I really need to stop. Okay, so for now I’ve finished this issue of following the majority, and I’m left with the question of quantitative majority versus qualitative majority. In the next lesson we’ll begin talking a bit about quantity versus quality in other contexts, and afterward I’ll come back and try to clarify what quality versus quantity even means. In the next lesson we’ll begin talking a bit about quantity versus quality in other contexts, and after that I’ll come back and try to clarify what quality versus quantity even means. The question is: what is the foundation of following the majority? Is it a clarification of the truth, or is it a scriptural decree of legal decision-making? If the majority is a tool for clarifying the truth, then certainly the quality of one opinion from a great sage can be weighed against the opinion of many who are lesser than he is. But if the Torah established a formal rule of “follow the majority,” it may be that quantity is the exclusive measure. We will look at the words of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), Maimonides and Ritva, who discuss the concepts of a numerical majority and a structural majority. We will examine the topic / passage in tractate Sanhedrin regarding legal decision-making, and how this connects to the concept of social agreement versus absolute truth. We will also try to understand the Maharal of Prague’s comments on the relation between the natural world, where quantity rules, and the spiritual world, where quality is decisive. All this will help us understand the depth of the discussion surrounding quantity and quality in Jewish law and in Jewish thought throughout the generations. We will continue examining the sources and see how these concepts are integrated with one another in practical halakhic ruling.

Quantity and Quality – Lesson 2

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The framework of majority rules: following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is as all of it”

The majority of a religious court, Sefer Ha-Chinukh, and R. Shimon Shkop: present before us or not present before us

Majority as reasoning, statistics, and the laws of doubt

Nullification by majority, something that will become permitted later, and the inclination toward stringency

Truth versus peace: majority of wisdom and majority of numbers in a religious court

A majority present before us, the law of fixed status, and formal reasoning

Democratic majority and majority in a community: rights rather than truth

Trust, judicial authority, and the example of Rava

Benevolent dictatorship, Singapore, and Edmund Burke: right overrides utility

The crystallization of majority rule in the community in Europe and the dispute of Rabbeinu Tam

Conclusion and continuation: quantity versus quality, truth versus a formal rule

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The framework of majority rules: following the majority, nullification by majority, and “most of it is as all of it”

The majority of a religious court, Sefer Ha-Chinukh, and R. Shimon Shkop: present before us or not present before us

Majority as reasoning, statistics, and the laws of doubt

Nullification by majority, something that will become permitted later, and the inclination toward stringency

Truth versus peace: majority of wisdom and majority of numbers in a religious court

A majority present before us, the law of fixed status, and formal reasoning

Democratic majority and majority in a community: rights rather than truth

Trust, judicial authority, and the example of Rava

Benevolent dictatorship, Singapore, and Edmund Burke: right overrides utility

The crystallization of majority rule in the community in Europe and the dispute of Rabbeinu Tam

Conclusion and continuation: quantity versus quality, truth versus a formal rule

Full Transcript

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