Quantity and Quality – Lesson 4
This transcription was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Counting enumeration and ordinal counting as the distinction between quantity and quality
- Finitude and infinity in intensive and extensive measures
- Substance versus attribute, and the warning against identifying essence with practical ramifications
- Ownership in Jewish law, a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation, and an acquisitional prohibition-status versus monetary ownership
- The relation between ownership and monetary damages, and the Sabbath rest of one’s animal
- Anselm’s ontological proof and the claim that existence is not an attribute
- Reference by name and by description, Russell, and quantity as a statement about substance
- Time, Platonic ideas, and shifting the point of view between quantity and quality
- Quantifying qualities in tests, fatigue, and the distinction between enumerative and ordinal measurement
- Psychophysics and the measurement of subjective phenomena
- Counting in Jewish law: the Counting of the Omer, the Ba”ag and Tosafot, and implications for blessings
- Women in the counting and the question of “forward” versus “backward”
- The Ritva on a blessing and not eating, and Tosafot on the counting of a zavah
- A condition in divorce, retroactivity, and the claim that there is no prohibition on “recoloring” actions after the fact
- An alternative explanation of the Ba”ag’s view: continuity as a kind of “law of counting”
Summary
General Overview
The text defines the distinction between quantity and quality through the question of what magnitude is being measured and what kind of counting is being used: counting by enumeration counts units and is therefore quantity, while ordinal counting ranks levels and is therefore quality. It illustrates this through temperature and wisdom, where the number indicates a level rather than a sum of units, and suggests that finitude belongs mainly to ordinal measures, though they need not actually be finite, whereas enumerative measures tend theoretically to be open-ended. It then warns against identifying essence with practical ramifications and consequences, and develops this through halakhic examples about ownership and a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation, alongside principled claims that rights of use are a result of ownership rather than its definition. Finally, it moves to the distinction between substance and attribute and its connection to quantity and quality, to the question of measuring subjective experiences in psychophysics, and to applying the discussion to questions of counting in Jewish law, especially the Counting of the Omer and the dispute between the Ba”ag and Tosafot.
Counting Enumeration and Ordinal Counting as the Distinction Between Quantity and Quality
The difference between quantity and quality is determined by whether the number is a cardinal number or an ordinal number. Enumerative counting counts how many units there are of something, such as seconds, sheep, oranges, or coins, and gives a cumulative total of units. Ordinal counting ranks levels, like temperature, where 38 degrees is a level of heat and not a collection of 38 “degree-units,” so you cannot identify “one degree” inside the measurement or break the level down into units. Wisdom is measured through a similar image, where “the sage number 38” is a place in a ranking and not a quantity of units of wisdom that can be broken apart.
Finitude and Infinity in Intensive and Extensive Measures
The text raises a distinction according to which intensive measures may be finite, such as speed being limited by the speed of light and temperature being bounded below by absolute zero, while extensive measures such as distance and time seem non-finite. It argues that what counts units cannot theoretically stop, because one can always add one more unit, so any upper bound is at most accidental and not principled. It mentions the possibility of an upper bound on temperature based on something he read, on the order of 10 to the 34 Kelvin because of a limitation connected to the speed of light, and concludes that finitude belongs in the direction of ordinal numbers, though an ordinal scale can also be infinite in its levels.
Substance Versus Attribute, and the Warning Against Identifying Essence with Practical Ramifications
The text presents a distinction between the thing itself and its attributes, and argues that identifying them creates a conceptual error. It brings the example of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, who rules that offerings of lesser sanctity are the property of their owners, and explains that the ability to betroth a woman with the edible portion is a consequence of ownership and not its definition. It suggests that the meaning of “the owner’s property” is that the owner eats his portion “from his own,” and not “from the table of the Most High,” whereas in offerings of higher sanctity the eating is “from the table of the Most High,” and therefore transferring that portion is not necessarily a monetary transfer that can effect betrothal.
Ownership in Jewish Law, a Slave Awaiting a Bill of Emancipation, and an Acquisitional Prohibition-Status Versus Monetary Ownership
The text argues that the concept of ownership in Jewish law is not a bundle of rights of use; rather, the rights are consequences of ownership. It cites the Talmud in tractate Gittin 42 about a Canaanite slave who was declared ownerless and remains awaiting a bill of emancipation. Even though he no longer belongs to the master in a monetary sense, his status as a slave remains until the bill of emancipation is given, and in a case of bodily injury the payment goes to the master. It quotes Tosafot, who explain this with the phrase, “What difference is there whether he killed him entirely or killed him halfway,” based on the law of the thirty shekels for a slave. Then it presents the objection of the Pnei Yehoshua, that the fine is not compensation and therefore is no proof regarding bodily injury, which is compensatory payment. It interprets the Pnei Yehoshua as grounding a principle of ownership that exists even without rights of use, and cites the language of later authorities about an “acquisitional prohibition-status” and “monetary ownership,” where in the case of declaring the slave ownerless the acquisitional prohibition-status remains without the monetary ownership. From this it follows that ownership is not identical with the bundle of rights.
The Relation Between Ownership and Monetary Damages, and the Sabbath Rest of One’s Animal
The text presents an explanation according to which ownership has a relation that is not merely functional but creates halakhic consequences by virtue of the object’s being “mine.” It cites the Or Sameach and the example of the Sabbath rest of one’s animal to show that obligations can stem from ownership itself and not from rights of use. It links this to the inquiry of later authorities in monetary damages: whether liability comes from negligence in guarding, or from the very fact that one’s property caused damage. It presents a conception in which property is a kind of “periphery” of the person, and therefore responsibility arises from that relation. In the name of Rabbi Shlomo Fisher in his book Beit Yishai, it says that a person who causes damage is liable even under compulsion because the body is a “garment” and a periphery of the person; and it concludes that the difference between body and property is one of degree of closeness. Therefore, when property causes damage under compulsion one is exempt, while when a person causes damage under compulsion he is liable.
Anselm’s Ontological Proof and the Claim that Existence Is Not an Attribute
The text brings Anselm’s ontological proof, which defines God as the being possessing all perfections and argues that existence is a perfection, and therefore God must exist. It notes that one can dispute the validity of the argument, though it is not so easy to dismiss. It presents a central attack on the argument: Anselm assumes that existence is an attribute or perfection, whereas existence is not an attribute of a substance but a condition for there being a substance at all. If there is no existence, there is no substance of which attributes can be predicated. It formulates a distinction between a statement about substance, such as “Reuven exists,” and a statement about an attribute, such as “Reuven is kindhearted,” and argues that these are two different kinds of reference.
Reference by Name and by Description, Russell, and Quantity as a Statement About Substance
The text mentions Bertrand Russell’s 1905 article on reference, which distinguishes between two ways of relating to objects, and parallels this to the distinction between a name, which refers to substance, and a description, which refers to attributes. It argues that quality relates to attributes like wise, tall, fat, or thin, whereas quantity relates to substances themselves and to their count. It suggests that saying of something that it is one and not two is similar to saying that it exists, in that it is a statement about the substance and not about an attribute. It adds that someone who describes a person as a collection of cells is speaking about a different object and does not recognize the one entity being referred to.
Time, Platonic Ideas, and Shifting the Point of View Between Quantity and Quality
The text argues that time is sometimes perceived as a case of an attribute of substance, but when one counts seconds, one is counting the seconds themselves, and therefore this is quantity. It uses Plato to show that attributes in our world can be “objects” in the world of ideas, so that redness is an attribute of a red object, but as an idea it is an abstract entity. In the name of the Leshem, it brings an approach according to which space and time are entities belonging to “the foundation of kingship of world minus one,” and explains this with the image of a womb, in which the lower world is born out of the upper world by means of contraction. Therefore time and space are elusive to us even though they are entities. It concludes that the same thing can appear as quantity when measured as a substance, and as quality when measured as an attribute of something else, illustrating this through a shoe whose length of use is a quantitative measure of the qualitative trait of durability.
Quantifying Qualities in Tests, Fatigue, and the Distinction Between Enumerative and Ordinal Measurement
The text argues that intelligence tests and mathematics exams attach numbers to measurements of qualitative levels, so that the number represents a rank and not inner units of wisdom. It illustrates that two students can get the same grade even if they made mistakes on different problems, because the measure is meant to capture a “level of wisdom” and not a collection of exercises as essential units. It distinguishes between translating quality into cardinal numbers, such as counting the number of problems solved, and direct translation into an ordinal scale, such as “How tired are you from one to ten?,” where there are no units of tiredness that can be added or subtracted. It maintains that qualities can always be arranged in levels but not counted in units, and emphasizes that the challenge is to find a natural scale that is not arbitrary.
Psychophysics and the Measurement of Subjective Phenomena
The text mentions Daniel Algom and the field of psychophysics as raising the question of measuring perceived intensities like brightness or sound, as opposed to measuring the physical stimulus such as the number of photons or field intensity. It argues that there is no necessity for a linear relation between physical input and sensation, and that logarithmic models or power laws have been proposed. But measurement itself depends on subjective report and on whether there is any meaning at all to saying that one sensation is “how many times” brighter or sweeter than another. It formulates a doubt as to whether there is some objective answer that is inaccessible to us, or whether the question itself is meaningless because there is no unit of measure for ratios between sensations. It notes that Rabbi Shem Tov Gפן in his book HaMimadim, HaNevuah VeHaAdmatanut brings the logarithmic law and makes claims about it, and adds that today the tendency is more toward a power law.
Counting in Jewish Law: the Counting of the Omer, the Ba”ag and Tosafot, and Implications for Blessings
The text turns to questions of counting in Jewish law and raises the case of someone who knows in advance that he will miss a day in the Counting of the Omer because of surgery, and asks whether beginning the count and saying the blessings is later clarified to have been blessings in vain. It presents the view of the Ba”ag as cited in Tosafot, according to which one who forgot one day does not continue reciting a blessing and has also lost the commandment, in contrast to the view of Tosafot that each day is a separate fulfillment and therefore one continues to recite the blessing even if a day was missed. It describes the ruling of the Shulchan Arukh that one continues counting without a blessing out of concern for the Ba”ag’s view, and remarks that according to the common understanding that this is one commandment of 49 days, one might say that the law also works “backward,” and therefore someone who knows in advance that he will miss a day should not begin reciting a blessing. It brings a parallel question from Binyan Tzion about the fast of Yom Kippur—whether there is value in continuing after one was forced to eat—and suggests a distinction between the positive commandment “to afflict oneself,” as a complete unit of time, and the prohibition of eating, whose moments are separate.
Women in the Counting and the Question of “Forward” Versus “Backward”
The text quotes what is brought in the Mishnah Berurah in the name of the book Shulchan Shlomo: women who are not accustomed to count should not recite a blessing. It explains that the reason is concern that they may miss a day and not know that from that point on it is forbidden to continue reciting the blessing. It emphasizes that this rationale is focused on concern for future blessings and not necessarily on determining that the blessings already said turn out retroactively to have been in vain, and presents this as a difficulty if one adopts the understanding that the count is one unit. It also discusses the argument, “maybe she will die in the middle,” brought by Rabbi Ovadia, and formulates that the way to avoid retroactive concern is to view the problem as a problem “from here on out” and not as invalidating the past.
The Ritva on a Blessing and Not Eating, and Tosafot on the Counting of a Zavah
The text brings the Ritva on Chullin 106, according to whom someone who washed his hands, or even recited the blessing “Who creates the fruit of the tree,” and then does not want to eat, is not obligated to eat in order to “save” the blessing, because at the time of the blessing he intended to eat, and therefore this is not a blessing in vain. It notes that Tosafot disagree and point to the counting of a zavah, where one refrains from a blessing because seeing blood retroactively undoes the count, and suggests that some later authorities view this as a principled disagreement with the Ritva. It mentions a long responsum of Rabbi Kook on the subject and raises the possibility of understanding the Ritva as saying that there is no obligation “to save myself from transgressions” when the act was done properly at the time it was done.
A Condition in Divorce, Retroactivity, and the Claim That There Is No Prohibition on “Recoloring” Actions After the Fact
The text brings an example from tractate Nedarim about a woman who was divorced on condition that she not drink wine, then remarried and had children, and later wants to drink wine—something that would retroactively turn the marriage and marital relations into a prohibition, and the children into mamzerim. It presents the thought that the Torah prohibits committing forbidden relations at the time of the act, not “turning” acts that were done permissibly into a transgression after the fact, and argues that the only prohibition is the drinking of wine that activates the condition. It notes that he found something similar to this in a dispute between amoraim, though Jewish law does not follow his position, and uses this to sharpen the possibility that a retroactive-prohibition structure does not necessarily create an obligation to fix the past through an action in the present.
An Alternative Explanation of the Ba”ag’s View: Continuity as a Kind of “Law of Counting”
The text proposes an alternative explanation of the Ba”ag, according to which there is no need to say that the commandment of Counting the Omer is “one big commandment.” Rather, the count is defined as a count only if it is continuous, so an interruption severs the very designation of “counting” from the blessing from that point onward. It applies this to the law of a minor who comes of age in the middle of the counting and argues that even according to the Ba”ag he can continue counting, because in practice there has been a continuous count here, even though before bar mitzvah it was only by the law of education. It notes that he found support for this in Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul and other later authorities. It brings an analogy to a minor who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur and argues that fasting is not fulfilled in an isolated moment, but as a continuity of the state of being “afflicted,” and therefore if continuity exists in practice one can begin fulfilling the commandment from that point onward, even if its beginning was not under a full obligation.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re on the subject of quality and quantity, and in the end I suggested a definition: the difference lies in the question of what magnitude you’re measuring—what kind of magnitude it is. In other words, is the counting you’re doing cardinal counting or ordinal counting? If you’re doing cardinal counting, then it’s quantity. And if you’re doing ordinal counting, then it’s quality. The difference between cardinal and ordinal counting is that cardinal counting counts how many units I have of something. So you can count a number of seconds, you can count a number of sheep, you can count oranges or coins. Okay? In other words, you’re counting how many units are there. Even something abstract like seconds—still, you’re counting how much there is, what quantity there is. That’s cardinal counting: to count how many there are—one, two, three, four—and then I know how many I have altogether. In contrast, there are magnitudes whose quantification—quantification with a q, yes?—when I quantify them, the number is an ordinal number, not a cardinal number. Like temperature. If someone has 38 degrees, that doesn’t mean he has 38 units of a degree that you inserted one plus one plus one. The difference between someone with 37 degrees and someone with 38 degrees is not that it would help to take one degree away from him and then he’d drop to 37. There’s no such thing as one degree. You won’t be able to point anywhere to some degree—to where degree number 33 is located within his 38. There’s no such thing. So what is that 38 there? The 38 there is a heat level. In other words, there are levels of heat arranged one above another, and those heat levels—say, the heat level of 38 degrees—is heat level number 38. Okay? There are degrees of heat, but that level isn’t made of 38 units. Rather, its overall intensity is at level 38. Let’s say we arranged the wise people in the court in order. Then wise man number 38, say the one standing 38th in line, that doesn’t mean his wisdom can be broken into units, and if you remove one unit from it then he’ll equal the sage at level 37. So wisdom too, like temperature, is something measured by ordinal numbers and not cardinal numbers. Ordinal numbers arrange different qualities one above another, but they don’t count units. Quality 38 isn’t built out of 37 plus one. It’s not 37—you won’t identify the 37 within the 38. The 38 is simply the next one, meaning one level above 37. And very often we use various numerical scales to represent that, to represent the level we’re at, but the numbers function here differently than when I count sheep or stars or seconds. The numbers arrange; they don’t count, they don’t enumerate. Okay.
[Speaker B] Is there some situation where intensive measures are finite—say, speed is finite because of the speed of light, temperature also has a finite limit—and דווקא extensive magnitudes are not finite, like distance, time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About that, I think that’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about it. I think it can only go in one direction. In other words, what counts can’t be finite, but what is ordinal maybe can also be infinite. You understand? Because if it counts, what’s the problem? Add one more unit. What’s the issue? In other words, you can always take what you have and add one more unit. So by definition, the thing that counts can’t stop somewhere, theoretically. Maybe you don’t have enough units in the world. You want to know how many ants there are? Fine, there are a billion ants. Okay, you won’t manage to bring me a billion and one ants, but that’s accidental—if another ant is born. There’s no theoretical upper bound, nothing maximal. But with temperature, you can’t go below absolute zero.
[Speaker B] And you also can’t go up? Maybe there’s some finite upper bound too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t know of anything finite from above.
[Speaker B] I read there’s something like 10 to the 34 Kelvin or something, because of the speed-of-light limit on the oscillation of the particle. Really?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s interesting, I didn’t know that. Anyway, finitude, I think, belongs only with ordinal numbers, but that doesn’t mean an ordinal number has to be finite. It only goes one way, it seems to me. It could be that there are infinitely many levels one above another, even though they’re levels and not units. But when there are units, then by definition it keeps going all the time—you can’t stop it. And that dependence, it seems to me, is only one-way. There’s another aspect that seems able to distinguish quantity from quality, and I think it’s somewhat connected to what I said before, but it sheds light on it from a slightly different angle. And that is the question whether something is substance or accident—yes? When we… I even talked about this this year, I think, didn’t I? About properties of things versus statements about the thing itself. Two forms of reference. I think I talked about it at some point. The claim is that objects, or even concepts, have properties. Now, the properties are not the thing itself. The thing itself is what possesses the property. Very often we sort of turn this into something—what’s it called. Very often when we identify the thing with its properties, we fall into an error. Let me give you maybe an example that comes to mind now. Rabbi Yosei HaGelili says that offerings of lesser sanctity are the property of their owners. Now still, there are rules in Jewish law about what you do with them, what you’re forbidden to do with them, exactly like offerings of higher sanctity. With offerings of higher sanctity too, you can’t eat the fat and the tail, part of them, meaning the burnt offering—but a sin offering, for example, yes. And with offerings of lesser sanctity too—meaning, there’s no difference in terms of what you’re allowed to do with the item. So in what sense is it the owner’s property? So once I asked people like that—I don’t remember, we were learning some passage with Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, so I asked students or guys, I don’t remember, it was in the yeshiva where I studied, I don’t remember. I asked them: what’s the meaning of saying that this is the owner’s property? That you can betroth a woman with it. You can take the offerings of lesser sanctity, give the woman the portion that you’re allowed to eat, and she is betrothed. A foolish answer, of course. The fact that you can betroth a woman with it is a consequence of the fact that it is the owner’s property. But the question is: why is it the owner’s property? What is “owner’s property” here? After all, everything you’re allowed and forbidden to do with it is dictated by the Torah exactly as with offerings of higher sanctity. If you eat, ostensibly you’re eating from the table of the Most High. So in what sense is this the owner’s property? Apparently you have to say that with offerings of lesser sanctity, you really are not eating from the table of the Most High. The part that you eat, you eat from your own. The part in offerings of higher sanctity—when you eat, you eat from the table of the Most High. But in offerings of lesser sanctity, the part you eat, you eat from your own. There’s some halakhic definition like that. That could perhaps be an explanation. And then if you take that and betroth a woman with it, she’ll be betrothed because you gave her something that is yours. So you betrothed her. And she too received something—not only did something leave your possession, she also has to receive something, of course, not just that it left you. So if you give her your portion from offerings of higher sanctity—it’s an owners’ portion that only the owner can eat. But if, say, you were able to give a woman something from your portion, then basically she is eating from the table of the Most High, meaning it’s not really yours. She may simply be permitted to eat it, but it’s not yours. So you gave her nothing, and therefore she wouldn’t be betrothed. This is an example of a situation where we identify a thing with its practical ramifications. We identify the concept of ownership with what it enables. But what it enables is a consequence of the fact that I’m the owner. It’s not the essence of ownership. In other words, I’m the owner, and as a result I have such-and-such rights and others may not take it, and so on and so forth. But that’s not the essence of ownership. A few years ago maybe I also talked about this, I think. There are a few proofs, I think, that the concept of ownership in Jewish law is not a collection of usage rights. There is, for example, a Talmud in tractate Gittin 42. The Talmud there says that someone awaiting a bill of emancipation—a slave whom I declared ownerless, a Canaanite slave whom I declared ownerless—so monetarily he doesn’t belong to me. But his status is still that of a slave until I give him a bill of emancipation. There’s a dispute between Rav and Shmuel, but in Jewish law we rule that until I give him a bill of emancipation, he is still a slave. Now someone injured him. To whom does he pay? I would have said to the slave. After all, he no longer belongs to the master—the slave. What loss did the master suffer if this slave’s hand was cut off? He can’t work him, he is no longer his property. He depends on me in the sense that I can give him the bill of emancipation and then he’ll become a Jew, but he is no longer my property. So why in the world are they compensating me? The Talmud says they pay me, the master. And Tosafot ask: why do they pay the master? Tosafot say, “What difference is there whether he killed him entirely or killed him halfway?” In other words, since if an ox kills this slave who is awaiting a bill of emancipation, then the law of the thirty shekels for a slave—you know there is a fine of thirty shekels for a slave if an ox kills a slave—then they pay thirty silver pieces to his master, to his owner. Now what about a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation? The Talmud says that if the ox gores a slave who is awaiting a bill of emancipation, the fine goes to his master. So Tosafot say: if when they kill the slave the fine goes to his master, then if they injure him, it’s half a killing—what difference does it make? It still goes to his master. The Pnei Yehoshua asks… it doesn’t even begin. After all, the fine of the thirty shekels for a slave is a fine. A fine is not compensation; a fine is punitive payment. So the Torah, which introduced the payment of the fine, also introduced that you give it to his master. Fine—that’s not compensation anyway, so there’s no need to give it to the slave. Besides, there’s no one to give it to—the slave is dead. To whom will you give it? So even if you wanted to give it to the slave, there’s no longer anyone to give it to. So it makes perfect sense that they give it to his master, right? After all, you have to pay the thirty silver pieces because it’s your punishment. The fact that you give it to the injured party—if I’m paying anyway, then let’s give it to him because he was injured. But really, it’s not actually compensation. And if he’s dead, there’s no one to give it to, so of course the Torah says: then give it to the owner. You have to pay because you deserve punishment. Okay? But what does that have to do with bodily injury? In bodily injury the slave is still here, the payment is compensation and not a fine. So what does that have to do with it? What did he think? I had an argument about this with the lecturer in my yeshiva. I understood that the Pnei Yehoshua explains that the slave still belongs to his master. That’s the point I made before. In other words, the master is the owner of the slave even though he has no rights of use whatsoever. Since ownership does not mean rights of use—rights of use are a consequence of ownership. But the ownership exists even though none of its consequences exist. He doesn’t belong to me in the sense that I have rights in this slave—I can’t work him, what he finds does not go to me, meaning I have no monetary right in this slave whatsoever. But I am his owner. Why? Because ownership is the reason that I have rights. Ownership is not itself the fact that I have rights. That isn’t the definition of ownership; that’s a consequence of ownership. So therefore, since that’s the case, he is the owner, and payments for bodily injury always go to the owner. And it’s not entirely compensation—you can also see this from Maimonides—that it’s not entirely monetary; it’s not a fine either, but it’s not entirely monetary. Doesn’t matter. So that’s how I understood the Pnei Yehoshua. He didn’t really agree with me on that. But that’s what it says in the Pnei Yehoshua. We went to a din Torah before some other lecturer in the yeshiva, and he represented me—he represented me better than I formulated it. He said: in the later authorities it says that—meaning, the accepted terminology among the later authorities—is that I have in a slave an acquisitional prohibition-status and monetary ownership. In the Talmud that doesn’t appear, but that’s the accepted language among the later authorities. Maybe even among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), I don’t remember. Monetary ownership and acquisitional prohibition-status. Now a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation whom I declared ownerless—the acquisitional prohibition-status remains, there is no monetary ownership. And he asked him: why is that called an acquisition? Why is it called that I have an acquisitional prohibition-status in him? He has a prohibition-based status of a slave until he gets a bill, and that’s it. What is “acquisitional prohibition-status”? What does that have to do with me? Monetary ownership means he belongs to me. What is “acquisitional prohibition-status”? “Acquisitional prohibition-status” means that the acquisition exists, but only regarding prohibition, not regarding money. Where do the implications show up? For example, the Sabbath rest of one’s animal. Fine? What do we see there? That the fact that I’m the owner of the animal has halakhic implications that aren’t connected to my rights of use in the animal. That’s what the Or Sameach writes. They aren’t connected to my rights of use in the animal; rather, from the very fact that the animal is mine, it has to rest on the Sabbath just as I have to rest on the Sabbath. Fine? So that means the bond between me—
[Speaker D] —and the animal, there’s some kind of connection—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like it’s an extended periphery of mine, just as my body is my periphery, because I am the soul. So property is a more distant periphery. Okay? And because of that, just as I have to rest with my body, so too my property has to rest. In other words, what we see is that my property is not just something in which I have rights of use. It is part of me. There is some metaphysical connection between me and it, the result or implication of which is that I can use it. And if it causes damage, can I exempt you? Exactly. Not the slave—I’m talking about property. With property, after all, the later authorities investigate this, yes? When property causes damage, why do I have to pay? Do I have to pay because I was negligent in guarding it, or do I have to pay from the very fact that my property caused damage? And if I wasn’t negligent, then I’m exempt. But maybe I have to pay from the very fact that my property caused damage. And on that the Or Sameach brings the example of the Sabbath rest of one’s animal—in Bava Kamma 17, I think, this Or Sameach—he brings on that the example of the Sabbath rest of one’s animal, where you see that the fact that I’m the owner of an animal or of any property doesn’t only mean that I have rights of use in the thing. That is a consequence of the fact that I own it. First of all there is a bond between me and it; it is part of me, something of me—a more distant periphery, obviously, than my body. A person who causes damage, for example, is liable even under compulsion—that I once heard from Rabbi Shlomo Fisher. He writes it in his book Beit Yishai. A person who causes damage is liable even under compulsion. What does that mean, “a person who causes damage”? My body caused damage, I’m guilty? My body caused damage—what does that have to do with me? Obviously, the body is my periphery, the body is attached to me, it is my garment if you like. Therefore I have to pay. Now property too is basically some more distant garment of mine, and if it causes damage I have to pay. The difference between my property and my body is the distance from me—it is a more distant periphery. Therefore, for example, when my property causes damage, if it happened under compulsion then I’m exempt. But if my body caused damage, and that happened under compulsion, then I’m liable. Fine, all in all it’s just a quantitative difference, a difference in degree, not something essential. So again I claim that ownership over property is what causes me to have rights, but it is not the definition of ownership that I have rights.
[Speaker B] How do you know that there is something metaphysical here beyond its implications? I mean, one could say that only the implications exist and there is no metaphysical relation at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You could say that. I’m only saying that in Jewish law they don’t conceive it that way. How did they know that? I don’t know how they knew that. But—
[Speaker B] Maybe it’s just for convenience, like defining some kind of legal fiction that there’s a bond, but it’s not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not fudgy—I’m not claiming that there is, say, something concrete in the meta— but the conception is that there is something behind it. That something may be abstract; maybe it’s not a “thing” at all. But the definition is that the rights are not the acquisition; they are a consequence of the acquisition. You can call it a legal reality, not a metaphysical reality. Fine, I won’t argue about that. Okay. What I really want to say is that you have to be careful not to identify the thing with its characteristics, with its consequences. We once saw an example of this when we talked about it, but we also saw an example in the argument of the ontological proof for the existence of God, by Anselm, the well-known Christian philosopher. He argued that—this is a pretty subtle business, a pretty subtle business—but I’ll say it briefly. We won’t debate the proof; whoever wants can see it on the site or in the first notebook, where I discuss it. He says that he proves the existence of God in the following way: he basically says, let’s define God as a being possessing all perfections, the most perfect being. All perfections in their fullest realization, completely. Okay? That’s a definition. You’re allowed to define whatever you want. Even someone who thinks there is no God has to explain to me what there isn’t. Fine? So first we need to agree on a definition, on what we’re talking about. That is the definition. Now he argues that if that is the definition, he can prove that He also exists. Why? Because if He did not exist, then He would lack that perfection of existing, because something that exists is more perfect than something that does not exist. And therefore that contradicts His definition as the being possessing all perfections, and therefore He exists. In this negative way, it’s a proof that He exists. Fine, one can argue about it—Shmuel is shaking his head. Okay, I—
[Speaker B] You can argue about it, here with set theory, with Russell—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there too it’s a complicated paradox. Fine. A lot of people laugh at this; in my opinion, not justly. I also think that in the end it isn’t completely valid, but in order to show that you have to work. In other words, this argument is not simple at all. In any case, never mind. But the point I want to illustrate here is this: one of the… there are a few formulations of attacks on this argument. The main attack is that Anselm assumes that existence is a kind of perfection. The question is whether that is true. I, for example, think not. Why? Because the perfections of a thing are its attributes. Right? It has attributes—it’s kindhearted, it’s beautiful, it’s… I don’t know, these are kinds of perfection. Perfection always means having attributes in the most complete way. Okay? It’s generous, beautiful, courageous, good, whatever—various attributes of that kind. But existing is not an attribute. Existing is not an attribute. Either you exist or you don’t exist. Existing is not an attribute of the substance. If it doesn’t exist, then there is no substance. An attribute of the substance means: there is a substance, and it can be like this or like that; it has such attributes or such attributes. But existence is not an attribute. If there is no existence, then there is no substance. In other words, saying that Reuven exists is speaking about his very substance. Saying that Reuven is kindhearted is speaking about one of his attributes. Okay? The statement that Reuven exists is not a statement about the same thing as—it’s not the same type of statement as the statement “Reuven is handsome” or “Reuven is kindhearted,” because the latter statements speak about his attributes. The statement that he exists speaks about his substance. Usually these are two different kinds of reference. The article in this context—the one we talked about once, right? About reference—Bertrand Russell in 1905 wrote an article on reference. In the very same year that Einstein turned the world upside down. They call it the annus mirabilis. Then there appeared an article considered perhaps the most important article in analytic philosophy, by Bertrand Russell, on reference, and there he distinguishes between two forms of referring to things. You can attach to them—I think I talked about this with the letters of Torah by the Rogatchover and Rabbi Mordechai Glina. Right? I talked about “for her sake”—what does “for her sake” mean? The woman’s name, because reference to the essence is through the name, while description is reference through attributes. Two forms of relating to objects. So basically, every object has its substance and its attributes. Now usually when I talk about the quality of the thing, I’m talking about its attributes. Its quality is that it’s kindhearted, tall, short, fat, thin—all that is its quality; that it’s wise, less wise. Quantities deal with the things themselves. For example, I once thought—I’m not one hundred percent sure, but it seems to me—that saying that this thing is one and not two is also a statement about the substance and not about the attributes, like saying that it exists. I’m not entirely sure about that, but that’s how it seems to me. Because if it’s two—being two or being one is not an attribute of the thing. Either there are two things here or there is one thing here. It’s like saying that it exists. Because saying that there are two here is basically saying that there are two objects that exist. It says nothing about them. It speaks about the substance, not about the attributes of the things. So yes, think about the statement that a human being is one entity. You can view him as being made up of cells, or molecules, or particles, whatever. The human being is one entity. I don’t think that’s an attribute of the human being; it’s a statement about the human being. Someone who speaks about a collection of molecules is simply not talking about the same thing I’m talking about. It’s not that we’re describing the same object differently. He’s talking about something else. He doesn’t recognize at all the object I’m talking about. He sees the person as a collection of cells; he’s talking about a different object. When I say it’s one entity, I’m talking about a different object—not an object with a different attribute, but a different object. Fine. Therefore, saying that a thing is one and not two is basically speaking about the thing itself. That basically means that cardinal numbers, or quantities, deal with substance, while qualities or ordinal numbers deal with accident, with their characteristics. “Accident” here means what happens to the substance—meaning, the attribute of the substance. So this too is a kind of difference between quality and quantity: quality deals with characteristics, with form or accidents, while quantity—cardinal numbers—deals with the substance itself: whether I have one, two, or five. Now therefore, for example, if I count time, that’s quantity. Why is that quantity? Ostensibly time is one of the accidents of substance. How long it exists, how long it takes. Time is usually attached to something else. I don’t just say: how much time passed? How much time did something take to do something. Time usually accompanies events or objects or something else. Therefore, very often time is treated as an accident—one of the accidents, also in Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. This all begins with Aristotle, of course. Time is one of the accidents, or one of Aristotle’s categories, or of Kant, for example. But you need to note that time, while it is indeed attached to objects and in that sense is ostensibly only one of their attributes or measures their qualities, when I look at time itself—when I count seconds—then I am not counting how many seconds the object lived; I am counting the seconds themselves. I’m not talking about the object; I’m talking about the seconds. And when I talk about the seconds, I’m talking about quantities, not qualities. And very often, with all the Platonic ideas—say, Plato, that the ideas exist in some sense—the redness, as the idea of redness. So objects are red, and in that sense redness is an attribute of the object. But if you look at the idea called redness, then that is an object, not an attribute. So ideas are a very interesting thing. They are a certain kind of object that can appear as consequences—the consequences of these objects are attributes of other objects, embodied, actualized within other substances as attributes of other substances.
[Speaker D] A world of attributes, a world of substances.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not a world of attributes—
[Speaker D] There is a world—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —of material substances that have attributes. There is a world in which the attributes of the material substances in this world have a root in the world of ideas, where that root is an object, an entity. Fine? In our world too, it’s a world of entities; there’s no such thing as a world of attributes. Every world is a world of entities. But there they are abstract entities, and here they are concrete entities that have attributes, whereas in the abstract world they are abstract entities. I think once I saw in the Leshem—we once talked about this with the definitions, right?
[Speaker D] That there’s some world of ideas—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and the definition of concepts, exactly—he defines, he defines the idea, a democratic state, exactly, something like that, yes. Leshem—I suddenly remember now that I once saw him write: why do space and time seem to us so elusive? All kinds of slippery things like that, that we can’t define, can’t grasp; it’s not clear whether they even exist at all or whether they’re only a mode of our perception, like Kant said. But it’s kind of—what is space and time altogether? Or is it just a quality of things? A particular thing occupies volume in space or occupies a place in time, yes, has duration in time, but that’s not—time and space are not entities. So he says that the space and time of the world of Ein are the yesod of malkhut of the world of Ein minus one. Meaning, in plain language, yesod of malkhut is the womb, translated into Hebrew. Right? Because malkhut is the feminine side, right, if I’m not mistaken there are seven sefirot of the male, and malkhut is feminine, and yesod is the sexual organ, right? Just as the male yesod is the sexual organ, the female yesod is the womb. Now, yesod of malkhut is the womb of the mother, of the female of the world above. And inside that womb lies the lower world, which is the baby born from the upper world. That’s the contraction—contraction is basically that the womb makes space and creates a baby within it. The surrounding contraction is essentially a womb, and within it a baby is born, okay? So since space and time really belong to the womb, in that our whole world is inside the womb, they belong to some world one level above, a more abstract world above us, and therefore we can’t manage to grasp them. But his claim is that space and time are entities; they are not just qualities of things, they are entities. So they are abstract entities, because in the world of action they belong to the yesod of malkhut of the world of formation; in the world of formation it’s the yesod of malkhut of the world of creation, and so on. Okay, so that’s why we can’t grasp them even though they are entities. And translated, say, into Plato’s language, what this basically means is that the world of ideas is the abstract world one level up, and here it appears as qualities of objects, which are the entities of our world—the more material entities, the thicker ones, the less abstract ones. So there is a relation between the idea and its appearances, which is basically a relation of embodiment. Meaning, the objects are more material, and then the spiritual objects appear as properties of the material objects. Okay? If the idea of the good exists, but we don’t know what the idea of the good is, we know that one person is good and another less good, then goodness is a property of a person, not an entity—it’s not an object—because the idea of the good belongs to some higher world when I relate to it as an object. So by analogy, when I look at time and count seconds, that’s quantity. Because in time I count seconds; I’m simply checking how much time has passed. But when I look at time as an attribute of an object, then time really is a quality. How long the object exists. And actually, if you think about how long an object exists, it becomes a bit like an ordinal number and not a cardinal number. Not completely, because the same object could exist for five seconds or for six seconds, so the difference between five and six seconds is a quantitative difference. But an object that exists for five seconds and an object that exists for six seconds means that the object that exists for six seconds is a bit more qualitative, therefore it exists for six seconds. So its difference is a difference in quality, not in quantity. I translate that into the language of cardinal numbers—I translate the quality into how many seconds it survives—but that is only a measure of how qualitative it is. When I check a shoe and ask whether this shoe is high quality or not, if you walk in it for a month and it tears, then it isn’t high quality. So does that mean the quality of the shoe is a kind of quantity? No. I have quantitative measures for the quality of the shoe. The quantitative measure is how long you can walk in it before it tears. Okay? A lot of times that’s what we do: we attach quantitative measures to magnitudes that in essence are qualities—you can’t really measure them. All right? So therefore, very often we can look at the same thing depending on the context. Sometimes it will be a quality of something else, and then in essence it’s an ordinal number and not a cardinal number, or an expression of something ordinal. And sometimes we look at the thing itself, and then when we count it, it’s cardinal. So for example, when I test intelligence, or intelligence tests, I also attach numbers. Right? Or we talked about a math test, we talked about this last time, right? Someone who solves 100 problems gets 100, someone who solves 90 problems gets 90. But clearly the number of problems—I count how many problems—that’s a cardinal number, but clearly what I’m trying to measure here is something ordinal, not cardinal. I’m trying to see what his level of intelligence is, where he is positioned in the class. So the one who solved 90 problems gets 90; by the way, if someone solves 90 different problems—that is, it’s not the same 10 that he missed as the other one missed—he’s at the same level. Why is he at the same level? After all, these are different units. Because the quality of his intelligence is the same quality; he’s lacking in different places, but overall his intelligence is at level 90. Okay? So a lot of times we use quantitative measures in order to deal with qualitative magnitudes. That’s the cleverness; often that’s the cleverness—to try to translate something qualitative, which you can’t talk about directly, into quantitative measures. And that’s always a problem. We once talked about the problem with multiple intelligences, and what a problem it is to measure intelligence, and that’s also related to this issue. Why is there a problem with intelligence? Because measuring intelligence means measuring quantitatively something that in essence is ordinal.
[Speaker D] Can I ask with another example maybe—how tired are you from one to ten? Seven?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly the same thing.
[Speaker D] Is that quantity?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s quality. Here it’s not even—here it’s a translation into numbers, but not into cardinal numbers, and it’s a subtler translation. When I ask you how tired you are from one to ten, the answer you give is not a cardinal answer; it’s an ordinal answer. I’m tired at level seven, not level ten or nine. Okay? But I haven’t translated it into something measured cardinally, where I count units. Not like the time it takes for a shoe to wear out, where I simply count seconds. Or the grade in math, where if you solve 90 problems then I count how many problems you solved.
[Speaker D] But also in math, when you solve 90 problems, that’s only because they chose those 90 problems, like you just said. If he solves other problems they’re not at the same level.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. Give the same class the same hundred problems, and now measure the intelligence levels of the students in the class.
[Speaker D] I can do the same thing—write down for me how tired you are from one to a hundred, everyone writes a number, I’ll arrange you within the class, I’ll tell you these are more tired, these are less tired. Exactly. But that’s all quality then.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it’s all quality, that’s what I’m saying. Math also measures quality, and tiredness too. What’s the difference? In math we managed to translate the quality not only into numbers—even with tiredness we translate it into numbers. In a math test we managed to translate it into cardinal numbers. I simply count how many problems there are. With tiredness I have nothing to count; there’s no unit of tiredness that you can add or subtract.
[Speaker D] That’s only because in math you kind of have a result, and I can, I don’t know, nothing comes to mind, but you can measure lots of things where in math two people get eighty. Okay? Fine? There are four problems—let’s say I build such a test where the results could be not similar at all and both got eighty.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then the test isn’t good, doesn’t matter, or maybe it’s impossible to build such a test, I don’t care. But what we’re trying to do, even if we don’t succeed, what we’re trying to do in tests is quantify qualities. But not only to quantify qualities; to quantify them by means of cardinal numbers, not ordinal ones. When you don’t have a natural scale, you can’t measure, and therefore you ask him how tired he is from one to ten, and you understand that the answer is arbitrary. He can’t really quantify it.
[Speaker D] He can quantify it, you know, mentally. If—because it’s just a quantitative question, but you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can’t quantify it at all, not just that I can’t understand it.
[Speaker D] You can quantify it, you know, maybe not in resolutions of one to ten, but if I ask—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You—more tired than I was last night, that I can say.
[Speaker D] If you compare it all the time you’ll tell me, listen, it’s not at the level of the previous time—you’re saying that because the scale is broader.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but then you understand that this is exactly quality. Because quality also has degrees—I’m more tired than I was. But there is no unit of tiredness such that if I subtract it I’ll get to yesterday’s tiredness.
[Speaker D] It’s just where you put the lines on the continuum.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but qualities are always like that—that’s exactly the point—therefore these are not cardinal numbers but ordinal ones. Ordinal numbers are numbers that arrange qualities one above another. I’m not claiming that with qualities you can’t order one above another. There is something more qualitative or less qualitative—that’s Phaedrus, we’ve gone back to Pirsig again. You can arrange qualities one above another, only the arrangement will be by means of ordinal numbers, not cardinal ones. And that’s the point. And sometimes we succeed in translating it into cardinal numbers, like the math test. Maybe we don’t succeed, maybe we do, doesn’t matter—that’s what we try to do. There’s— I once read a very interesting book, and afterward I met the Jew who wrote it, Daniel Algom, he’s some kind of psychologist. Psychophysics. Psychophysics. And there he talks about the question of how you measure subjective phenomena. How do you measure the intensity of light, for example? I know how to measure the intensity of an electromagnetic field; there are instruments that tell you the strength of the field. And I’m asking about the intensity of light, not the intensity of the electromagnetic field—that is, how bright you perceive it in your consciousness. Okay? There’s no way to measure that.
[Speaker E] Or the intensity of sound?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The intensity of sound—any perception. Now, there’s an interesting question; the scholars of psychophysics disagreed about it.
[Speaker B] You can measure the number of photons.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no, so I’m saying, you can measure the field, but you can’t measure the sensation. And there’s a question—I’ll tell you now why not.
[Speaker E] There’s a question: let’s say you doubled the number of photons—one person feels strong light, the second feels weak light—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even the same person himself, if he sees five photons or ten photons, it’s not certain that the brightness he experiences will be twice as much. The question is whether the relation is linear between the input and the output—that is, between the physical input and the sensation, which is the output.
[Speaker D] Why assume it would be linear?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, and there’s no reason to. That’s a debate among psychophysicists. One very common approach was that it’s logarithmic. That it’s logarithmic. And there’s an approach that it’s a power function, something between two and three, something like that. There’s an approach that it’s a power function; some claim it’s linear; it’s not clear what— you see how deeply this is all so… Now, how do you measure it? After all, you can’t measure it. You need to measure this, measure that, and then see the relation between them and plot a graph. But how do you measure how bright it is for me? You have to ask me—but how do I know how bright it is for me? I don’t know. What’s the unit of that? That’s it—I have no way of estimating whether it is twice as bright as the light I experienced a few minutes ago, or only one and a half times. How do you answer such a question? It’s not defined at all. The question is whether the question—not only… this is an interesting question—whether there is in fact an answer and I just can’t know it, or whether there is no answer to it at all—is this a meaningless question?
[Speaker F] How do they arrive at an approach?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the claim is that they somehow try to ask people, or ask groups of people, and make some sort of averages out of the sensations. How tired are you from one to ten?
[Speaker F] So you give a—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Number, but statistically—but based on what? Statistically in terms of what you report. But that doesn’t mean that’s what you experience. When you say it seems to me twice as much, it seems that way to you, but it may not be twice as much at all. It may be that saying “twice as much” has no meaning at all, not just that you don’t know. Fine, but they report, and you go by the report—there’s nothing else to do, we have no other way to get there. This is the philosophers’ palace, we already talked about that. If we see the same color whenever we talk about the same color. So therefore even when you get to measurements of this kind, like how tired am I from one to ten—that’s what you asked—the question is whether the question is even defined.
[Speaker D] Sugar in tea—two sugars—and if I put in three you’ll tell me it’s too much—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s perfectly fine, but a logarithmic relation could happen there too. You can’t infer from this whether the relation is logarithmic or a power relation, because obviously it will be sweeter with more sugar. The question is how much sweeter. If you doubled the sugar, will it be twice as sweet? Four times? Log two times?
[Speaker B] Right, the question is how you define “how many times sweeter.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Therefore I’m saying I’m not entirely sure the question even makes sense. One can say there is an answer and we just have no way of reaching it—we don’t know how to measure such a thing. It could be that there is no answer to it at all, that the question is meaningless. You can’t measure quantitatively relations between sensations.
[Speaker C] There’s no unit of measurement. Right, that’s it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t know, so you can’t—there’s no meaning. You can’t measure relations between—well, not only can’t measure; there may simply be no metric at all for relations between sensations. Maybe, I don’t know. But psychophysicists deal with this; it’s a very interesting question. By the way, Shem Tov Gefen—Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen, in his book The Dimensions, Prophecy, and Earthliness—brings the logarithmic law. It’s pretty brilliant; there are a lot of interesting things there. He brings the logarithmic law and makes various claims about it. It’s quite interesting. Today I don’t think people believe so much in the logarithmic law; today more in the power law. But who knows what that means at all. Read it, actually—it’s an interesting book. There’s an upgraded edition, made more accessible, easy to read.
[Speaker D] Okay. How easy to read?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s only after you read it, in every sense. Only then will you experience how easy it is, and only then will you know how to measure the “how easy,” meaning if you understood the book. Okay, I want to move to another point in this context of quantity and quality, and that is the question of counting. Last time we talked a bit about counting in Jewish law—the counting of the Omer, counting in the laws of zavah and all kinds of things like that, niddah. So these countings in Jewish law have, I think, some interesting connection to the question of quantity and quality, though I’m not completely sure about it. Once I had some nice idea about it, but I’m hesitating a bit. I don’t know whether it’s right or not—tell me what you think. Let’s start maybe with some question that can kind of… build the structure on it. Counting the Omer, okay? Let’s say someone knows for certain that he is undergoing surgery in the middle of the Omer count, and on one of the days he won’t be able to count—he’ll be under anesthesia, I don’t know, he won’t be functioning for one day and won’t be able to count. Can he—he already knows now that this will happen; he scheduled it for two weeks from now, in the middle of the Omer. The question is whether he can begin counting, or whether once he misses that day it will turn out that all his previous countings and blessings were blessings in vain. So maybe he can’t recite the blessing on counting the Omer from the outset. That’s the question. Or, for example, people who are worried they’ll forget—we can ask less dramatic questions. People who are worried they’ll forget, like in recent years they’ve always missed some day—should they begin at all, or maybe not? Is there already a presumption after three times that I’ve not completed it? What?
[Speaker F] Is it agreed upon that if you don’t complete it to the end, then everything was in vain?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything that—no, the Shulchan Arukh ruled that if—if you miss one day, you can’t continue counting. With a blessing?
[Speaker F] No, blessings in vain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, we’ll get to that in a moment. But that’s the question. Okay? So apparently there are later authorities—not apparently, there are later authorities—who tie this to a well-known dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim), Bahag and Tosafot, over how to understand the commandment of counting the Omer. Bahag claims—this is how Tosafot quotes him; in Bahag himself it’s not written exactly like this, but Tosafot brings it in the name of Bahag and it’s known as Bahag’s view—that if you forget to count one day, you can’t continue making the blessing. Count without a blessing, but you can’t continue making the blessing; basically you’ve lost the commandment. That’s the claim, and you don’t even need to continue counting, because you’ve lost the commandment. In the end we say yes, continue counting but don’t recite a blessing, out of concern for Bahag’s view. Okay? Tosafot says no. Tosafot says each day count, and if you missed a day then count the next day—count with a blessing. Usually the later authorities understand the dispute as being about how to define the commandment of counting the Omer. Is counting the Omer each day its own separate commandment, and there is a commandment to count 49 days—49 commandments? Why is it counted this way—why in the enumeration of the commandments doesn’t it appear that way too, so the quantity would show? Why in the enumeration of the commandments does it appear as one commandment and not 49? Because those are 49 details within the general commandment of counting the Omer, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t fulfilling a commandment every day that you count. All right? So that is Tosafot’s definition; that’s how some later authorities explain it. In contrast, Bahag understands the commandment of counting the Omer as one large commandment. You have to count 49 days. If you missed one, then you counted nothing; you lost the commandment because you didn’t count all 49 days. It’s not that each day you have a separate commandment. There is, by the way, a similar inquiry—though less well known—regarding fasting, regarding Yom Kippur. In Binyan Tzion he talks about this—whether to continue fasting or not. If someone missed part of it—he even had to eat because he was ill, doesn’t matter why—does it still have value to continue fasting, or do we say he already lost the fast? The question is whether the fast is one unit of affliction, and once you don’t have the whole unit in full then it’s worth nothing. A practical implication, for example, would be that if you know in advance that tomorrow morning you’ll need to eat, then don’t begin fasting at all; there’s no point, you won’t fulfill the commandment anyway. Just like I said here. Or perhaps the commandment is to fast at every single moment, and there is a commandment to fast throughout the whole day, but at every moment there is a separate commandment; so if you missed one moment, fast for the rest of the day. There are those who want to claim that “to afflict oneself” is not simply not to eat. On Yom Kippur the commandment is to afflict oneself. To afflict oneself is not just not to eat. To afflict oneself is not eating over time. After all, the fact that I’m not eating at this very moment—every day I don’t eat during some of the moments. Some people more, some less. But three meals or something like that, and the rest of the time I don’t eat—that doesn’t mean I’m fasting for a few moments; yes, I’m dieting between meals, as people always say. No—there’s no such thing. Dieting means not eating at all, okay? Therefore in a fast too, the commandment is to afflict oneself; the commandment is not merely not to eat. It’s not a prohibition of eating; it’s a commandment of fasting. Maybe that’s the difference, by the way, between the prohibition and the positive commandment—that there is a commandment to afflict oneself and there is a prohibition against eating. And maybe that would produce a difference: the commandment to afflict oneself applies to the whole unit of the day, because that is what is called affliction; there is no affliction in a single instant. But the prohibition is the prohibition not to eat—not to eat at every single moment, don’t eat. Maybe. I once thought that could be an explanation, I don’t know. In any case, there too the very same question arises as with counting the Omer. Meaning, if at one moment you had to eat, the question is whether the rest of your fasting has value or not. So Binyan Tzion investigates this; I think there’s an explicit Rashba who writes that you have to continue.
[Speaker B] Why do we recite a blessing every day if Bahag says the counting is one unit? Then why bless every day?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s one of the questions they ask. If indeed it is one unit, why bless every day? There is a Tosafot that wants to say that you can bless even on parts of a commandment, or things of that sort. In any case, apparently they tie it to the dispute between Bahag and Tosafot, and then if one really understands it that way, it seems it should work both backward and forward. Right? So someone who didn’t count one day can’t continue counting with a blessing. But someone who knows in advance that he won’t count one day should, in principle, also not begin counting, because there’s no point. You already know you won’t be able to count on that day, so therefore you shouldn’t begin at all. There actually is such a statement in the Mishnah Berurah: he brings that women who are not accustomed to counting—yes, if it is their way to count, they will certainly make a mistake on one day; they don’t pray with a minyan, never mind, all kinds of explanations—then they should not count the Omer, meaning they should not recite the blessing.
[Speaker E] But is his source the fact that it’s a time-bound positive commandment? What? Counting the Omer is a time-bound positive commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s from Nachmanides in Kiddushin, that counting the Omer is not a time-bound positive commandment. We once talked about that.
[Speaker D] Yes, because it doesn’t depend on time itself—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It depends on time and it depends on an event that depends on time. I gave several explanations for that. In any case, the source of the Mishnah Berurah is a book called Shulchan Shlomo, and from there it sounds like that’s not what he meant. He says there that women should not count because if they miss a day they do not know the Jewish law that on the following days they are not allowed to recite the blessing. Meaning, the problem is not with the blessings they already recited; the problem is with the blessings they will recite afterward. Since they do not know the Jewish law that after that they may not bless, therefore they should not begin. So that is basically the claim. Meaning, the blessings they recited in the past are not necessarily invalidated if they failed to count one day. But the problem is from that point on. And then of course the question arises: how does that fit? If counting the Omer is one unit, as we at least take into account for Jewish law according to Bahag’s view, right? Then what difference does it make whether we’re talking about forward or backward? Why do we need to arrive at concerns about the future? These are concerns about the past. You lose the blessings that you already recited, so indeed, don’t begin. Why is the concern only forward?
[Speaker G] Here do they bring that the Jewish law is that he should begin? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The accepted Jewish law is that yes, he should begin, yes.
[Speaker G] Maybe because there’s doubt here? What? A person is going to undergo surgery.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He knows, he knows—he scheduled it for that day. What doubt is there?
[Speaker B] You have to take doubt into account.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not doubt. In cases of blessings, we rule leniently in uncertainty, but this isn’t even an evenly balanced doubt. There’s a concern and uncertainty that maybe not, but we follow the majority; most likely it will happen. The assumption is that it will happen unless it gets canceled. It’s not only not an evenly balanced doubt, and even in an evenly balanced doubt you don’t recite a blessing. In any case, there are even questions like: why begin counting the Omer at all? Maybe you’ll die in the middle?
[Speaker D] That applies to all commandments, by the way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Ovadia talks about this. He brings this question. Maybe you’ll die. “Perhaps he is dead” we do not worry about; “perhaps he will die” we do worry about. Meaning, maybe he’ll die sometime—every person will die eventually. Meaning, regarding the future you can’t know when. So why is it permitted to begin counting? So again, there too the point is that if you take it only forward, then there’s no problem. He’ll count, and if he dies then he dies; that doesn’t invalidate his blessings, it doesn’t turn the blessings he already recited into blessings in vain. But if indeed the conception is—what?
[Speaker C] He has a presumption of being alive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are you saying?
[Speaker C] As long as he isn’t dead, he has the presumption of being alive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He has the presumption of being alive, and therefore “perhaps he is dead” we do not worry about; but “perhaps he will die” we do worry about, because that presumption of being alive is temporary—as Rabbi Maimonblat said, yes, he was looking—it was some young people there who asked, something he said was too young or something like that, I don’t remember anymore. In any case, in halakhic language it’s a presumption liable to change. A presumption liable to change. True, you are presumed alive, but there is also a clear presumption that in the end you will die. The assumption of quite a few later authorities is that according to Bahag this really goes both backward and forward, right? Meaning, if you missed one day, then there’s no point, because it’s one unit—that’s also the logic. If truly this whole counting, all these forty-nine days, is one unit, then obviously you’ve lost the past as well. What logic is there in defining it only forward? There’s no logic in that at all. So in truth, here there is room to discuss it. There is a Ritva in Chullin, page 106. The Ritva there says: what happens if you washed your hands in order to eat bread, and in the end you don’t feel like eating bread? You recited the blessing on it, you washed your hands—bring the bread, they brought the bread—I don’t feel like eating. I had a friend in the yeshiva high school, he used to sleep all the time in the classes of our rabbi-teacher. I also slept quite a bit, but he slept even more. So at some point the rabbi asked a question, and he wakes up, raises his hand: “Rabbi, rabbi, I have to give the answer.” “Forget it, Palter, go back to sleep, this isn’t for you.” “No no, rabbi, I have to, I have to.” “Leave it, Palter, go back to sleep.” “No rabbi, such a wonderful answer, I have to.” “Well, speak.” “I’m not telling.” Apparently still sleeping—even when he answered he was still asleep. In any case, the Ritva basically says that I’m not obligated to eat the bread if I don’t want to. He actually starts from another discussion. What happens if I recited the blessing “who creates the fruit of the tree” and I don’t feel like eating the apple in the end? Too bad—they brought me an apple, I blessed, and then I saw it was an apple that one obviously may not eat, something forbidden. So now what—did I recite a blessing in vain? What do you do—eat or don’t eat? So the question is whether I’m allowed not to eat the apple, simply because I don’t feel like it; leave aside the prohibitions, I just don’t feel like eating the apple. So the Ritva says yes, I may refrain. Since when you blessed, you intended to eat—that goes even further than hand-washing, because in hand-washing you recite a blessing but you did wash your hands; true, you don’t need to wash if you’re not eating bread, but it’s not a blessing in vain—you blessed on the washing, the washing was in vain, but you did bless—so that’s a somewhat stronger novelty, and actually a smaller novelty. But when you bless over the fruit of the tree, then there is nothing—you didn’t eat anything—still, you don’t need to eat. If you don’t feel like it, don’t eat. When you blessed, you intended to eat, so it is not a blessing in vain. Who said you’re obligated to eat? You’re not obligated to eat. If you don’t want to eat, don’t eat. There are many ways to explain this Ritva, by the way. There are all kinds of assumptions here by later authorities. I’m not completely sure, because from his wording it somewhat sounds as though here too it’s like hand-washing: you bless the Holy One, blessed be He, over the apple because He really did create the apple and give it to you, and so what if you don’t eat it? Because of that you can’t bless the Holy One, blessed be He? The sages instituted that one blesses only when one eats, true, but in terms of the content of the blessing it is not a blessing in vain: “who creates the fruit of the tree”—He did create the fruit of the—
[Speaker F] tree. You got there, did you enjoy it, did you not enjoy it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. Therefore the sages said that in such a case one should not bless. But if I did bless, you can’t say it was a blessing in vain. I blessed because I thought I was going to eat, so I didn’t violate the words of the sages. But now that I don’t feel like eating—am I obligated to eat in order to rescue the blessing? No, because the blessing doesn’t need rescuing; it was a proper blessing.
[Speaker B] And postpone the eating? What?
[Speaker C] I don’t feel like it now; I’ll postpone it until the day after tomorrow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you can’t—unless you don’t divert your mind from it. In principle, if you diverted your mind, you bless again.
[Speaker C] And according to the Ritva, ideally you don’t need to eat? Yes, ideally?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean ideally? If you don’t feel like eating, don’t eat. In any event, this is being discussed ideally. What does “after the fact, not eat” mean? The question is whether to eat or not. No. In a deliberate way. He’s not saying it’s preferable to eat but if you didn’t eat then you’re not such a great sinner. No—if you don’t want to eat, don’t eat; it’s not a blessing in vain. What about an unnecessary blessing? Exactly—that’s what we’re discussing, that it is not an unnecessary blessing.
[Speaker B] No, there’s “in vain” and there’s “unnecessary.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? What’s the difference?
[Speaker B] “Unnecessary” means you could have avoided it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But he wanted to eat. Ah—no, that’s not—there’s no such thing. What do you mean “I could have avoided it”? I couldn’t have avoided it, because when I blessed, I thought I was going to eat. In any case, we see that Tosafot disagrees with this. Tosafot argues in Niddah—Tosafot in Ketubot—that regarding a niddah or zavah, why doesn’t she count with a blessing? Because if she sees blood, that undoes the whole count. Therefore she doesn’t recite a blessing over the count; that’s why they do not bless over a zavah’s counting. Why does it undo it? Fine, so if she saw blood, then what she counted up till then she counted, and from then on she won’t be able to continue; she has to start again. But why does that invalidate what was done retroactively? So there are later authorities who want to claim that this Tosafot goes against the Ritva. There’s a long responsum of Rabbi Kook on this issue. Because one can understand the Ritva differently too. One can understand the Ritva to mean that there is no obligation to save myself from transgressions. It is forbidden to commit a transgression, but there is no obligation to save myself from transgressions. I once talked about this—I connected it once to a dispute among Amoraim in Nedarim. What happens if a woman was divorced on condition that she not drink wine?
[Speaker H] I also talked about that once in Nedarim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A woman, yes, a woman was divorced on condition that she not drink wine. Then she remarried, and she had children from the second home, from the second husband. Now she wants to drink wine. Let’s say she must not drink wine for thirty years, or her whole life—it wouldn’t count as full severance—but say twenty years she must not drink wine. Fine? So she already has children, fine, they celebrated bar mitzvahs, they already got married, she already has grandchildren. Now she wants to drink wine. And if she drinks wine, then all her acts of intercourse were illicit intercourse, adultery, a married woman, and the children become mamzerim, right? Because she is not divorced from the first husband, so the intercourse with the second husband is illicit intercourse. Okay. Now the question is whether it is forbidden for her to drink wine. In terms of interpersonal wrongdoing, I assume it is forbidden—meaning, she turns the children into mamzerim, she causes them terrible suffering. But I’m talking about prohibition—of forbidden sexual relations, of course, or an interpersonal prohibition. So at one point I thought there is no prohibition at all. Where is it written that it is forbidden to turn acts of intercourse already done into forbidden acts of intercourse? What is forbidden is to engage in forbidden intercourse. That is what the Torah prohibits. The acts of intercourse I already had—and when I did them, I did them permissibly—what prohibition is there in turning them,
[Speaker H] in repainting them now in a different color?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When did I violate that prohibition? When I drank the wine did I violate it, or in the intercourse did I violate it? It now becomes revealed retroactively that in the intercourse I violated the prohibition.
[Speaker H] It could be that this—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is what the Ritva means.
[Speaker H] isn’t related to everything I said before.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What the Ritva means is: there is no obligation to save myself from transgressions. It is forbidden to commit transgressions. But if when I blessed, I blessed properly, then there is no obligation upon me now—
[Speaker G] to eat it in order to save myself from transgressions, even though maybe in some abstract sense it turns into a transgression retroactively. But there is no claim against me, because I have no obligation to save myself from transgressions. And what about the child? What? Yes, retroactively he becomes a mamzer. That’s clear, that’s in the Gemara. If she violates the condition and the child was born, he becomes a mamzer. So that’s clear, so there’s no question there. When is he a mamzer? Retroactively. Yes—once there was a condition, the condition works retroactively. So if she drank wine, then there was no divorce from the beginning. If there was no divorce from the beginning, then the intercourse with the second husband was illicit intercourse. So the child was born a mamzer, yes. What is the difference between the child and the intercourse? The child now gets painted as a mamzer.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It affects the act of intercourse too. No—at the beginning he wasn’t born a mamzer. Now we’re coloring him retroactively, from birth, as a mamzer. Just like the intercourse—the same thing. The acts of intercourse, same thing, both of them too. Both get colored. The intercourse gets colored with the status of illicit intercourse, and the child gets colored with the status of a mamzer. Okay? But the question is whether I’m forbidden to color things with the color of a transgression. After all, the acts have already been done. The intercourse, when I did it, was not a forbidden sexual act. Now I’m turning it into a forbidden sexual act—especially according to Rabbi Shimon Shkop, whom I mentioned when we talked about time. I said that with conditions it works from now on, retroactively. Right? So it comes out that this intercourse really was completely permitted intercourse. Even now, it’s not that it was clarified retroactively that it had been forbidden all along; rather, only now it became forbidden. It’s not that it was discovered that it was already forbidden back then and I just didn’t know. Rather, now it became the forbidden act of intercourse. Fine—but who says it’s forbidden to turn acts of intercourse into forbidden ones? So turn it into that. What—go ahead and turn all of them into that. And if this child got married? If this child is a mamzer and he married—well, you’re not allowed to marry—no, no, I’m saying he already got married. Already got married? Yes, and now she wants to drink wine. So his betrothal too is obviously not valid betrothal. All of that is fine, but she doesn’t need to take any of that into account. According to my argument, she doesn’t need to make any such calculation.
Now, this once came out for me as a dispute between Amoraim in a passage in tractate Nedarim. If it’s true that this really is a dispute between Amoraim, then the Jewish law ruling is not like that. I connect it to a dispute between Amoraim, but the halakhic ruling follows the Amora who goes with the view that yes, it is forbidden to do this. Which Amora? I’d have to look it up—I don’t remember. It came out for me once in a passage in Nedarim, a dispute involving Rav Nachman and so on. What happens there? Some Talmudic passage in Nedarim that says today like this and tomorrow like that, or… I’d have to look it up. Send me an email if you want, and I’ll send it back to you. It may be that the Ritva doesn’t say this at all, but that doesn’t matter for our purposes.
What this basically means is that if so, then it’s clear why this only works going forward. It only works going forward because even if my blessings are, as it were, revealed to have been blessings in vain, there is no prohibition against turning blessings into blessings in vain. But it’s not entirely simple, because if you know in advance—if she knows in advance that she’s going to drink wine—that’s more problematic. Because the Ritva says that when she made the blessing, or when he made the blessing, he really intended to eat. So that’s fine. Afterwards, then if a day came out on which you didn’t recite a blessing, you could continue counting—even according to the Ritva, depending on how we understand him now, in light of everything I said earlier. But even according to the Ritva, it may be that one really should not begin counting at all in the first place. It depends—it depends how one understands what the Ritva is saying. There are people who want to say that.
But there is another possible way to explain the Behag. There are several difficulties raised against the Behag. Tosafot says this can’t be. What the Behag says: first, why do we make a blessing every day? And second, how do we begin counting—that’s what everyone asks—all these things. Third, there is also a question that people connect to the dispute between the Behag and Tosafot: what about a minor who comes of age in the middle of the counting? Right? In the middle of the counting he becomes bar mitzvah. He knew in advance. He knew in advance. But he counted too, under the law of education. He counted. A minor counts, and also recites the blessing, under the law of education. And now he got to the middle—halfway through he became an adult. Now the question is: what he did until now wasn’t really a commandment, it was only under the law of education. And the fact is, as far as actual obligation goes, he didn’t count until now. So if this is one single unit, then he has nothing to count from now on. Right? The education requirement he already did. Yes. And according to the Behag—whereas according to Tosafot, then yes, because every day is a commandment unto itself, and what you missed, you missed. Okay?
So I once argued that this is not correct. I claim that even according to the Behag he can continue counting. Later I found several later authorities (Acharonim) who say this. Rabbi Ben Zion Abba Shaul writes this explicitly in a responsum. And afterwards I also saw later authorities who explain the Behag the way I wanted to explain him. There are several like that.
The argument—what I want to claim—is that the Behag does not really want to argue that the commandment of counting is one single unit. Rather, counting can only be done if it is done continuously; otherwise it is not counting—not otherwise it is not a commandment. Like fasting. What? Yes, exactly. Where’s the practical difference? The minor counted until he grew up, under the law of education—but he counted. True, he didn’t have the actual commandment, but that doesn’t matter. You can’t say that he is counting the thirtieth day without having counted through the twenty-ninth day. He did count. It wasn’t a commandment, but that doesn’t matter. The commandment is not defined as one commandment; it’s just that without counting each day on its day, it isn’t counting. Counting is only something that comes in a consistent sequence: this day, and after that that day, and after that that day, and after that that day. So that is a rule in the counting, not a rule in the commandment of counting.
The same is true, by the way, with fasting. A minor who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur. A minor who comes of age in the middle of Yom Kippur. Until now he was fasting under the law of education. Should he continue? Suppose he developed signs of maturity in the middle of Yom Kippur. Should he continue? According to the approaches that say this is one single unit, seemingly not. But if I understand that the single unit is not the commandment of the fast, but rather the concept of a fast—a fast simply does not apply if you eat even for one moment—then that boy didn’t eat the whole day. True, not because of the commandment, but what difference does that make? Bottom line, he is afflicted. That means that at each and every moment from now on when he does not eat, he is in a state of affliction, because earlier too he did not eat—not as a commandment—and now at every… that is, the commandment applies at each and every moment. It’s only that being afflicted in one moment doesn’t make sense if you weren’t afflicted in the previous moments—it doesn’t make sense. But in terms of the definition of the commandment, it is a commandment at each and every moment. Therefore, a minor who comes of age in the middle—even according to the approach that it is one single unit—must continue fasting and fulfill this commandment. Okay, I see that…