Study and Halachic Ruling – Lesson 9

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s move on. Up to now we’ve basically seen the meaning of rabbinic laws, the difference between them and Torah-level laws, and if I summarize—well, I just talked about this now too—if I summarize, then basically the claim is that in Torah-level laws there are always, or there should always be, two components. One component is the command, the second component is the essence. The correction or the damage created by this act that the Torah requires or that the Torah forbids. And besides that, there is the command. The moment one of those two is missing, this is not Torah-level Jewish law. And in rabbinic Jewish law we saw, through several indications, that there is only command and no essence. Once there is only command and no essence—this is true generally; there are rabbinic laws that have some sort of essence, but still not a Torah-level essence. In fences and decrees there is no essence at all. Still, in all of them there is no essence significant enough for this to be considered Torah-level Jewish law, and therefore it is rabbinic Jewish law. That is basically the meaning of the difference between Torah-level law and rabbinic law. And the claim that followed from this was that the study of rabbinic law, or involvement with rabbinic law, is basically similar to involvement with the law of the kingdom. Meaning, obviously it has to be observed; there is “do not deviate.” So if the sages established something, there is an obligation to obey, you have to observe it, you may not transgress their words, all of that is true. But it does not have the status of Torah. It has the status of Jewish law—in other words, it is binding in the sense that you need to know what is permitted and what is forbidden to do—but it does not have the status of Torah because there is no essence behind it. That is basically the claim.

And this—now I want to—this is basically me collecting everything we’ve seen up to now, and I want to make the following claim: when I engage in Torah, when I want to define the concept of Torah—the concept of Torah in its halakhic part, that’s what I’m talking about right now—we said that the main thing is Jewish law, but the concept of Torah is not just a collection of practical instructions, halakhic instructions. Rather, these are halakhic instructions that reflect some kind of normative truth, some sort of truth about the world or about the spiritual worlds or whatever it may be. And the expression of that truth is positive commandments, prohibitions, and so on. But every such commandment reflects some kind of thing—that’s what I previously called the essence. The command doesn’t hang in the air. The command reflects some kind of essence. We were commanded to do or not do something because that action basically repairs something positive or damages, creates something negative. So when I study Torah—and we already talked about this, that Torah study is not a means of knowing what to do, Torah study is not an instrument for issuing halakhic rulings, but has value in itself—now we can understand this a little better. And I spoke about this right at the beginning of the series: basically, Torah study is some kind of understanding of those essential truths that lie behind the laws. That is basically the meaning of Torah study. If you want, it is cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He—I spoke about this right at the beginning of the series. It is cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, by the fact that I am basically cleaving to the normative truths that Jewish law reflects.

I don’t remember—I think I didn’t mention this here—but in other series I spoke about the fact that in practice Torah can be grasped on several different levels. You can understand Torah as some collection of laws: honor your father and your mother, Sabbath observance, eating kosher food, love your fellow as yourself, and so on. But there is a midrash that Moses ascends on high to receive Torah, and the angels ask: “What is one born of woman doing among us?” Why are You bringing the Torah down to human beings? Then the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Moses: “Hold on to My throne of glory and answer them.” And then Moses asks the angels: “Tell me, do you have a father and mother? In what way is honoring father and mother relevant to you? Or do you steal? Do you murder? Do you need money? Why is Torah relevant at all?” He answers them like a good Jew—with a question on their question. Why leave the Torah up above? What do they do with it up there at all? Why is it relevant?

So that of course raises the question: what did the angels think? The answer is so good and so obvious that now we have to ask ourselves—so what did the angels think? Or alternatively, the angels who were involved in Torah until it was given to Moses, what were they doing there? What, were they studying the laws of honoring father and mother? Again, of course, this is all midrash; I’m not claiming this actually happened. But what is this midrash coming to tell us? What is it teaching us? In my view, it is teaching us what Torah is. When the angels were occupied with Torah before it was given to Moses, they were not occupied at all with what we today know as Torah. They were not studying honoring father and mother, or legal presumptions, and liars, and thieves, and murderers, and eating kosher, and eating non-kosher, and Sabbath observance, and so on. That is simply not relevant to them; it doesn’t belong to their world. But they were learning some set of abstract ideas whose realization in our world is: honor your father and your mother, keep the Sabbath, do not lie, do not steal, do not murder. But all these commands are realizations of more abstract ideas. And those abstract ideas can be exactly the same ideas in the world of the angels, where their practical expression will be completely different—not the practical expressions we know today.

And the claim is that Torah is not really the collection of practical expressions that we study and know today. Rather, Torah is some abstract thing of which these are the practical expressions. But if someone were to engage in that abstract thing itself, or in practical expressions from another world of that same abstract thing, he too would be engaging in Torah. He would be engaging in that very same Torah. The parable that always comes to my mind in this context is a book that got… what?

[Speaker B] Yes, with flower arranging and the arrow.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, oh, so did we talk about that?

[Speaker B] No, I think maybe I heard it in another series, I think, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, in another series I talked about it, I remember. The claim is that yes, this German philosophy professor, Eugen Herrigel, who wrote a book called Zen and the Art of Archery. And this book basically tries to describe the world of Zen Buddhism to Western ears. So he arrived during a sabbatical in Tokyo, in Japan, to some friend of his who was a law professor at the University of Tokyo, and he asked him to connect him with some Zen master. So fine, he connected him to a Zen master. He wanted to study Zen. At the first meeting the master asks him: tell me, what do you want to learn—flower arranging, archery, wrestling, or—I don’t remember, there were four or five options there. So he says to him: no, no, none of those things—I want to learn Zen. The master says: yes, yes, but do you want to learn flower arranging, archery, or… and in the end he understood that it really makes no difference in which field you deal with these things; in all those fields you learn the very same thing. What are called the abstract ideas of Zen Buddhism can be learned either through archery or through flower arranging, but you are learning exactly the same thing. Because the ideas of Zen Buddhism are not how to arrange flowers and not how to shoot an arrow, but rather some form of relation, or way of looking, or I don’t know, some conception of the world, which can find expression in flower arranging, and that exact same conception can find expression in archery. It really doesn’t matter which medium you use to encounter that abstract system; it is the same abstract system.

And I think this is a good parable for this midrash with the angels. Because the claim is that the angels maybe learned it through flower arranging and we learn it through archery, but we are learning the same thing they learned. Exactly the same thing. It’s just that its practical realization in our world is through honoring parents, and the prohibition of theft, and Sabbath observance, and eating kosher. And in the world of the angels, apparently, it has different expressions, different garments, yes. These are called the garments of Torah. The author of the Tanya talks about this, and yes, I think I mentioned at the beginning of this series Nefesh HaChaim and the author of the Tanya, who speak of the laws or the commandments as garments of Torah. Why are they garments of Torah? Garments are the ways in which Torah appears before our eyes. When I perceive a person, I perceive him through his clothing. That’s what I see of him; that’s his external side through which he appears before me. But that is not the person himself; it is only a representation of the person himself. So in that sense too, the commandments are garments of Torah. Torah is some abstract something that clothes itself in our world in these 613 commandments, but in other worlds that same thing can clothe itself in entirely different things. And the angels dealt with that. Therefore, when they knew Torah as they knew it, they ask the Holy One, blessed be He, exactly the same question that Moses asked them: what are human beings going to do with Torah? After all, it is such an abstract and spiritual thing, something that belongs to our world and not to theirs, so what exactly do You want them to do with this Torah? Exactly what Moses asked them.

Why? Because the angels, when they know Torah, they… Torah tells them how many times to flutter with each wing, with the right wing and then with the left wing. Those are the practical expressions of Torah. Now they say: human beings don’t have wings, and “with two he flies” was said about angels. So what are they going to do with this Torah? Because they understand Torah as the collection of expressions they know. And so they ask this question. What Moses says to them comes out of his conception of what Torah is, and he asks them that same question: wait, I don’t understand at all what you are going to do with this Torah, where it says “do not steal,” or Sabbath observance, or eating kosher. And of course both sides were mistaken—that is not Torah, and neither is that Torah. Torah is the same abstract thing that wears one garment in the world of the angels and another garment in our world. And therefore it has a place with them and it has a place with us. So this is not…

[Speaker B] Maybe—

[Speaker E] Moses—

[Speaker B] Moses answered them in the terms of what they were claiming against him. They said to him “What is man that You remember him,” so he said to them “What are you doing among us,” meaning, as if, just as you don’t see Torah as something abstract, then if I also don’t see Torah as something abstract, then it will be difficult for you too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Didn’t I say that?

[Speaker B] No, yes, and then maybe Moses did know that Torah is also not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not necessarily that they were both mistaken. Moses may have been trying to teach them exactly this point. That could be. Since this episode never happened and was never created, there’s little point in discussing what Moses really thought he was teaching them. I’m asking what this midrash teaches us, not what Moses said to the angels—he didn’t say anything to them.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, but what is this collection of ideas that is expressed אצלנו differently than among the angels? Is it a collection of norms, or of ideas, or of facts? Because several times you already said that there are no facts behind Torah, and that one must not extract facts from Torah, because as a fact no one has authority over a fact. So what does it teach, then? This collection of ideas—what is it? A norm, or a fact?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not exactly Torah; it’s Jewish law. Jewish law is a collection of norms. And the facts that arise in halakhic discussions are not relevant because they are facts—you can argue about them, accept them, it doesn’t matter; facts are facts. But there are certain parts of Torah that are not Jewish law that do deal with facts—that there was an Exodus from Egypt, that there were ten plagues, that there was Abraham our forefather, that there was creation…

[Speaker C] No, no, no, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about intellectual, philosophical, and reflective ideas behind Jewish law—the Platonic ones, or whatever you want.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: in any case, these are not facts. That thing is not facts. Maybe you can call them ethical facts. In ethical realism they say that behind moral commands there stands some kind of objective facts. But these are not neutral facts like the facts we usually know; these are loaded facts—I spoke about this in other series too. These are loaded facts that are not subject to the naturalistic fallacy. Meaning, if you recognize the fact, something follows from it that you must do or must not do. It’s a different type of fact.

[Speaker C] Yes, but who says that this fact is true? The Torah can’t say that, because it has no authority for that, because a fact doesn’t have authority.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Torah doesn’t need to say it by force of authority. Torah reveals to me that this is the truth. That is substantive authority, not formal authority.

[Speaker C] Okay, and for example if from a certain law you learn that behind it stands, say, a capitalist outlook—would you then stick to a capitalist outlook because the Torah said that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I understand that behind this law sits a capitalist outlook, then I’ll probably stick to it. But generally it will be difficult, I think, to extract it. The understanding that we develop regarding the ideas behind the laws is usually not a formulated understanding. We can’t really say what idea stood behind the law. Rather, it is some kind of perception that becomes absorbed into us through engaging in the laws. I don’t know how to point to it and describe it in words. If I describe it in words, I’ll tell you that it’s honoring parents. I have no other way to describe it in words. But behind the principles of honoring parents and so on sits some kind of way of relating, a way of perceiving, and that is actually the thing that is closer to what is really called Torah. And therefore when later on I look—if I have studied a lot of Torah, as people say—then I’ve acquired some kind of way of relating to the world, so that now when I relate to the world it will be through some kind of Torah glasses. But I don’t know how to formulate what those glasses are, to define them in words and point to them. If it were possible to do that, then the Holy One, blessed be He, could have given us Torah not through garments but Torah itself. But no—there are things we can only know how to do through certain garments. It’s just that while we are occupied with the garments, we are actually absorbing the thing itself in a non—yes—just as words represent ideas. Words are not the ideas, but we have no way to express ideas except through words. Ask me what the idea behind the words is, what idea the words express—I have no way to answer that. What will I tell you? I’ll tell it to you in other words. I can’t speak without words. So too, I cannot grasp the concept of Torah except through the specific garments it wears in my world. That doesn’t mean that that is Torah, but it is my only way of encountering it or understanding it. But in the end what enters me is not an understanding of honoring parents and who steals and the prohibition of murder or forbidden foods.

[Speaker C] Okay, and the goal of lomdut, when you study—and you study in, say, the yeshiva style of analytic learning—the goal is to arrive, kind of subconsciously, at this collection of ideas.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I think I once spoke about this, and I said that a good parable for this today, in our generation, is that we have the ability to take parables from computer science. So a good parable for this is, for example, training a neural network. In training a neural network, let’s say I’m teaching a neural network—I don’t know—to identify faces, facial recognition. Okay? In a classical program, what I would do is use all kinds of if-statements. If there’s a nose like this and eyes like that and the height, the distance is such-and-such, then it’s Grandma Yocheved. And if not, then it’s Grandpa Itzik. Okay? So you have to give the computer the information itself, and then maybe it can implement it, but that’s obviously not practical. If you want it to identify the faces of millions of people, you’ll never get anywhere that way.

With a neural network they do it with a completely different philosophy. It turns out that if you build some network with nodes and branches connecting the nodes, and each branch has a weight and so on—whoever knows, the details aren’t so important—you give it a face and you give it feedback. Meaning, it says, ah, that’s Grandma Yocheved, and you say incorrect; or if it’s not Grandma Yocheved, you say incorrect. And you do this with a great many examples. After you’ve done this with many examples and given it the feedback—that’s what’s called supervised learning; there’s also unsupervised learning—then the neural network organizes itself according to the feedback it receives. And then after enough examples, that neural network will know how to identify faces it has never seen before. It will learn how to identify faces.

And now ask the neural network: wait, by what principles do you identify faces? Those principles do not appear anywhere in the neural network. It’s just some collection of weights and complicated structures of this kind of tree, this sort of logical tree inside, and that’s it. But somehow it succeeds in identifying faces. But there’s no chance that if you ask the neural network to now go teach a class—let the neural network be the teacher—and now the teacher has to teach in class how to identify faces, there is no chance. There is no way this network could do that, because it itself doesn’t know how it does it; it just does it. Meaning, I think this is a good parable for the fact that the principles according to which you trained the network don’t actually appear inside it. Nowhere will you find the principles by which this network performs the function it performs, but it succeeds in doing it. The examples it received—which parallel the laws, yes?—the examples it received and the feedback it gets on each example somehow built within it a certain mode of relation, and now through that mode of relation it manages to carry out the function it has to carry out.

So in the same way with us: we learn various laws, which are the garments, and medieval authorities (Rishonim), and we engage analytically in Talmudic passages here and there, we mix it all together, it is absorbed into us in a very deep way, until our neural network has organized itself in a way that fits the examples we have seen. And the neural network now inside us—that is basically the Torah, or a representation of the Torah—not the answers it gives. The answers it gives are to a halakhic question: what is the law regarding such-and-such an animal cooked in such-and-such a way? Is it kosher or not kosher? So you’ll get an answer from the neural network: kosher or not kosher. And if it learned a lot of Torah, you’ll get the right answer. But that’s not Torah at all. Torah is the structure of the neural network that was formed in the process of learning. If it is built correctly, it will also give you the right answers. But the structure of the neural network is basically the Torah.

And therefore, I think that from this perspective one can understand very, very well the Talmudic midrash: “Those Babylonians are foolish, for they rise before a Torah scroll but do not rise before a Torah scholar.” In this conception it’s as clear as daylight, meaning it’s obvious that it’s true, it’s not some homiletic flourish. The Torah scroll is not Torah at all. It is a certain representation or garment of Torah. But the neural network that is in the Torah scholar after he has engaged in much Torah—that is the closest thing there is to Torah itself. If you want to see Torah in the world, you should see a Torah scholar, not a book. The book is not Torah.

So this structure, or these ideas that stand behind the halakhic instructions, are basically what I called the essence. And therefore one cannot always—or usually cannot even—formulate this essence. I don’t know what happens when I keep the Sabbath or when I honor parents or when I eat kosher or non-kosher. But there is something in spiritual reality that happens as a result of doing the right thing or the wrong thing. And these things are what I called the essence—the corruption and correction of the essence—that is basically Torah. Therefore, “He looked into the Torah and created the world,” or all the midrashim of this type, now suddenly receive an almost literal meaning. Meaning, in the end, the spiritual structures that describe the spiritual core of the world—their expression is basically the commandments of the Torah. Because the commandments of the Torah are supposed to repair or not damage these spiritual structures. Now I cannot point to them, I don’t understand what they are, I don’t know how to formulate them, I don’t know how to describe them. But they are there. And the only way I have to touch them, to encounter them, is through engagement in the Talmudic passages. Even though the passages are not them; they are some garment, some expression of that abstract system.

And therefore from this perspective—and here I’m closing the circle back to the beginning of the series—from this perspective the whole concept of Torah takes on a different meaning. The concept of Torah is ultimately just a representation of certain abstract truths. Its representation in the halakhic context is representation through commandments, positive and negative, of abstract truths. Now, things that are connected to Jewish law, that are binding in Jewish law, but do not have abstract truths behind them, are not Torah. For example, the law of the kingdom. I study civil law. So as I said, in monetary law what determines the halakhic ruling today is the law. Does that mean that if you study law you recite the blessing over Torah? Is that Torah study? The answer is no. Why not? Because that thing is important for Jewish law, it binds me, I need to behave according to it, but Torah means understanding or forming a connection with the abstract truths behind the halakhic instructions. That is what is called Torah. Such halakhic instructions as have no abstract truths behind them, have no essence but only command—in my earlier terminology—so that is not Torah. And this is Jewish law—again I’m saying—and it is halakhically binding, and you need to study it because you need to know what to do and what you are forbidden to do. Rabbinic Jewish law is binding Jewish law, and the law of the kingdom is also binding. But you need to study it in order to know what to do, whereas it is not Torah, just as studying law is not Torah.

So here I close the circle as to why I want to claim that rabbinic laws are not Torah. It is very important to know rabbinic laws in order to know what I have to observe, what is forbidden to me and what is permitted to me, and I have to obey the sages—that is part of Jewish law. But these are laws that do not express abstract truths; there is no essence behind them. At most there is a concern that I may arrive at something else that does have essence—I’m talking about decrees and fences. So that thing is not Torah. It is important and valid halakhically, you must observe it, you must behave according to it, but it is not Torah. The whole idea of Torah is that Torah is garments that express abstract truths. Rabbinic laws are not like that, just as the law of the kingdom is not like that. The law of the kingdom and rabbinic laws are the same thing on this point, yes? To study rabbinic laws and to study law is the same thing in my opinion. The same thing, there is no difference at all. In both cases I need to study it in order to know how to behave, and in both cases what I studied is not Torah, because it does not reflect abstract truths.

[Speaker B] Does the Rabbi think that on this matter of abstracting the commandments—is this also Maimonides’ view on the issue? Again—does the Rabbi think that Maimonides also held this approach of abstracting the commandments? I mean, when Maimonides gives reasons for the commandments and so on, there it seems as though this content isn’t really there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides offers reasons that are taken from our world, reasons that can be formulated.

[Speaker B] Yes, but I’m saying, if he had the approach the Rabbi is now saying—the abstract approach—then apparently he wouldn’t have needed that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea. It could be that he also thought this way, and he wanted to provide some reasons that would be more accessible to his readership, because Maimonides’ reasons—let’s be honest—are very weak. Very unconvincing. All these reasons for the commandments just seem like nonsense—not only in Maimonides, in general. Anyone who deals with reasons for the commandments—it’s all nonsense, which is why I don’t deal with it. I deal with the claim that there are reasons for the commandments, not with what the reasons are. Meaning, I have no way of knowing what the reasons are, and what I read around the subject is so unconvincing that it just sounds to me like a waste of time to deal with it. But that’s not because there are no reasons. There are reasons. It’s just that I think the reasons are found in the very bodies of the laws themselves. There’s no need to look for formulated principles standing behind them; the very bodies of the laws themselves are the reasons for the commandments. My way of dealing with the abstract truths behind Jewish law is simply to engage in Jewish law itself.

So if I formulate it now, then I say the following—and now I’m formulating it in an even more extreme way. I mentioned this briefly, but I elaborated on it in other contexts, both in writing and in previous series. I tend to distinguish between Torah in the person and Torah in the object. Torah in the object is the study of Jewish law, and probably also Written Torah—not that I understand what there is to study there, but clearly its holiness is holiness in the object, yes? So I don’t know what one does with that, but that’s the fact. There are many, many fields, certainly nowadays, that people engage in that are at most Torah in the person—Torah in a subjective sense, not objective Torah. Studying ethics, thought, aggadic literature, all kinds of things of that sort—all of those are Torah in the person. And in that sense I also don’t see a difference between studying Guide of the Perplexed and Critique of Pure Reason; both are Torah in the person. Meaning, what determines Torah in the person is whether it is true or not, not whether it is Torah or not Torah, or whether it is Jewish or not Jewish. Torah in the person is, in essence, universal truth. Therefore morality, for example, is Torah in the person. Morality is Torah in the person because there is no difference between the morality of Jews and the morality of gentiles, as a matter of fact. Rather, there is no difference between the morality that binds Jews and the morality that binds gentiles. If something is moral, then it binds all human beings; it makes no difference whether you are a Jew or a gentile. Morality is by definition universal, and therefore morality is not Torah—not Torah in the object, but Torah in the person. Or various other forms of wisdom. In Torah in the person there are also… there are also facts. Maybe physics is also Torah in the person, philosophy, I don’t know exactly—various things like that—it’s all Torah in the person.

[Speaker D] By the way, why does it matter whether it’s Torah in the person or in the object?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is value in studying it.

[Speaker D] And in Torah in the person there’s no value? There is value. And in Torah in the object there’s no value?