Study and Halachic Rulings – Lesson 13

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

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

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[0:04] Distinguishing between first-order and second-order rulings
[2:21] Phenomenological and essential theories in science
[4:24] Glass: liquid or solid? The question in physics and Jewish law
[7:29] Federal law, Poynting's theorem, and the transfer of electricity
[9:43] Feynman and the yeshiva discussion about electricity as fire
[12:32] A phenomenological theory: black-body radiation
[16:12] A scientist in the dark and the color red — phenomenological perception
[25:47] The challenges of integrating science and Jewish law
[29:43] Defining matter and physics in the Torah
[32:01] Intuitions in sacrificial law and purity law
[38:46] The distinction between a phenomenological and an essential theory
[40:23] The obligation to fast on Yom Kippur — unit or moment
[50:43] The meaning of number series — oddness or primality
[52:46] Rules and exceptions in the Talmud — Kiddushin and Hakhel
[54:36] The danger of ruling based only on rules

Summary

General Overview

The text defines second-order halakhic ruling as ruling that sticks to precedents and technical rules and decides by a formal mechanism, in contrast to first-order ruling, which clarifies the topic itself, uses precedents as angles of vision, and decides from an independent understanding of the principle. It connects this to the distinction between the plane of command and the plane of essence in Torah-level Jewish law, and argues that first-order ruling enters into the questions of essence behind the rules and does not make do with a formal calculation. Throughout, it shows how connecting fields of knowledge such as physics and Jewish law requires caution, how halakhic rules are an approximation that can mislead, and how the Talmud and Maimonides demonstrate mistrust of operating by rules when the essence points elsewhere.

First-Order Ruling and Second-Order Ruling

The first distinction between the two kinds of ruling is that a second-order halakhic decisor gathers precedents and decides between them according to a technical rule such as majority, whereas a first-order halakhic decisor clarifies the topic for himself and studies medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) in order to see possible ways of understanding, not in order to “rule from them.” The second distinction is that in every Torah-level Jewish law there is an aspect of command and an aspect of essence, and one can deal with the command itself while ignoring the essence behind it. A first-order decisor looks for what underlies the halakhic principle and takes that into account in the ruling, rather than remaining on the technical level of the rules.

Phenomenological Theory and Essential Theory as a Parable for Jewish Law

The text distinguishes, in philosophy of science, between a phenomenological theory that arranges and describes phenomena and an essential theory that asks what stands behind the classification and description. It illustrates this with taxonomy in biology as opposed to investigating characteristics not visible to the eye, such as genetic characteristics. It presents black-body radiation as a phenomenological theory in the form of a descriptive function, and Einstein in the miracle year 1905 as someone who explains the function through the assumption of discrete packets of light, “photons.”

Glass as Liquid and the Parameters Relevant to Jewish Law

The speaker describes a question he was asked in the Hazon Ish kollel: whether glass is a liquid, and he answers that physicists do treat glass as a liquid in certain senses because of its “disordered crystal structure,” as opposed to a solid, which has symmetry and internal order. He says that through halakhic lenses glass is “dry” and not “wet,” and that heating glass on the Sabbath is like heating a solid and not a liquid. He argues that someone who goes after the wrong kind of depth may actually be “superficial” in the halakhic context, because the insights relevant to physics are not necessarily the insights relevant to Jewish law.

Electricity, Poynting's Theorem, and the Limits of Scientific-Legal Decision Making

The text brings a story from Professor Frankenthal about a federal law in the United States that requires payment to an intermediate state if transfer between states is done through pipes, but not if it “flies through the air,” and about a lawyer who tried to exempt payment for transferring electricity through high-voltage lines using “Poynting's theorem,” which claims that the power travels around the wire in the surrounding fields in the air. He calls this “nonsense,” because Poynting's theorem gives two equivalent descriptions, and the legislator's intent is clearly that using wires requires payment. He concludes that when speaking in a legal or halakhic context, the theoretical physical perspective is not always the relevant one.

Richard Feynman and the Question “Is Electricity Fire?”

The text tells a story about Richard Feynman and two yeshiva students who asked him whether “electricity is fire” because there are halakhic decisors who forbid turning on electricity on the grounds of kindling. He argues that asking for a physical opinion on this question is like asking whether glass is liquid, because the way physicists classify a phenomenon is not necessarily the way Jewish law will classify it. He says the decision depends on the framework of the discussion and its conceptual framework.

Multidisciplinarity and the Interface Between Science and Jewish Law

The text describes a built-in problem in multidisciplinary fields, where an expert in field A and an expert in field B do not know how to handle the “seam” between them. He illustrates that a halakhic decisor who receives from the scientist the answer that glass is liquid may apply that incorrectly in Jewish law if he does not understand the meaning of the answer within halakhic categories. He says that what is needed is someone familiar with both fields, in order to know whether to transfer insights, how to transfer them, and when they are irrelevant.

Electricity on the Sabbath, Ma'arkhei Lev, and Rabbi Shalosh of Netanya, of blessed memory

The speaker describes how, during his doctorate, he was given Professor Lev's book Ma'arkhei Lev to read — a book on the laws of electricity on the Sabbath — and to send comments, and from this he saw how a halakhic field is created “right now” through human understandings of technological processes. He says that a different understanding of the mechanism can lead to different rules of Jewish law and change the attitude toward electricity on the Sabbath for generations. He mentions Rabbi Shalosh of Netanya, of blessed memory, and his son, who turn electricity on and off on a Jewish holiday from an understanding that this is “transferring from an existing fire to another fire,” and argues that this is mistaken because the current passes through, but the “fire” is the power generated when current passes through a resistor and heats it, so at the moment of pressing the switch, “the fire is created” in the resistor and not transferred.

Uncertainty in Interpretation, the Sages, and “The Torah was not given to ministering angels”

The text says that it is impossible to know “with certainty” what the Torah intended, and emphasizes that in these areas it is often the Sages, not the Torah directly, who in practice determine things. It suggests that when the Sages spoke about cooking a liquid, they did not mean glass, because in their eyes it was not a liquid, even if modern physics classifies it differently. He says, “The Torah was not given to ministering angels,” and argues that human beings have intuitions about religious value even without explicitly understanding “what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants.”

Halakhic Intuitions, Brisk, and “It just doesn't fit”

The text argues that Brisk is comfortable dealing with sacrificial law and purity law because there, supposedly, “there are no intuitions,” and therefore one can ask only the “what” and not the “why.” But he says this is “living in a movie,” because it is impossible to define the “what” without an intuition about the “why.” He describes intuitions of “right and wrong” even in sacrificial law and purity law, despite there being no understanding of what impurity is or what it “does,” and cites the expression “it just doesn't fit” as an internal mechanism that decides between possible definitions. He rejects the attempt to call all this “morality” as merely a verbal dispute, and argues that human beings also have access to religious intuitions that are not reducible to interpersonal ethics.

A Phenomenological Theory in Jewish Law: The Yom Kippur Fast and a Minor Who Comes of Age

The text presents an inquiry by later authorities (Acharonim): whether the commandment to fast on Yom Kippur is an obligation at every single moment or one obligation over the entire day, and the practical implication for a minor who grows two pubic hairs at noon. He interprets the essence as follows: the command on Yom Kippur is “a positive commandment to afflict oneself,” not merely a prohibition against eating like pork or creeping creatures, and therefore “to afflict oneself” means a state created by ongoing non-eating over an interval of time. He concludes that it makes sense to view the fast as a single unit of a full day, and then argues that once one enters into the essence, the practical implication disappears, because the requirement of “a full day” is a requirement on the concept of fasting and not on the very obligation of the commandment, and in practice the minor did fast the whole day, because until noon he fasted by the law of education and from noon onward he can continue fasting at the Torah level.

Wittgenstein and Series: 3, 5, 7 and the Need for Essence

The text gives a Wittgenstein-style example of the series 3, 5, 7 and asks what comes next. One answer is 9, assuming odd numbers; another is 11, assuming prime numbers. He says that both answers are correct depending on the essence behind the series, and that someone who looks only at the phenomenology of the data may make a mistake in continuing it. He applies this to Jewish law and argues that without clarifying what stands behind the rules, one can err in applying them.

“One does not derive from general rules, even where an exception was stated”

The text presents the Talmudic rule in tractate Kiddushin, “All positive commandments caused by time — women are exempt,” along with its exceptions, and the question of Hakhel, where women are obligated even though it is not in the list of exceptions. He brings the principle, “One does not derive from general rules, even where an exception was stated,” and interprets this as the Talmud's disdain for working by rules as a substitute for understanding the essence. He suggests an essential reason: Hakhel is a commandment on the public and not on individuals, and therefore women are obligated because they are part of the public, whereas the exemption of women from positive commandments caused by time applies to individual commandments.

“The Jewish law follows Rava except for Ya'al Kegam,” Maimonides, and Epicycles and Deferents

The text presents the rule “The Jewish law follows Rava” in disputes between Abaye and Rava, except for Ya'al Kegam, and emphasizes that Maimonides rules like Abaye in more cases than those six. He describes how “books of rules” add new explanations to reconcile this, and compares it to the Greeks' epicycles and deferents, who added little circles in order to justify the assumption that heavenly bodies move in circles instead of accepting ellipses. He concludes that “there are no rules” in the sense of an absolute rule, that rules are an approximation, and that the Talmud itself allows exceptions beyond the list, and that a first-order halakhic decisor like Maimonides can reach a result that contradicts a formal rule because of an essential reason.

Rules as Aids, Loss of Intuition, and Distrust of Intuitions

The text adopts the claim that every generation loses intuition relative to the previous one, and therefore the number of rules keeps increasing and their resolution becomes finer, serving as “crutches” in the dark. He says that rules provide orientation, but clinging to them is a mistake when there is understanding or intuition of the essence behind them. He criticizes an approach that prefers only rules and precedents out of distrust of intuitions, and argues that this distrust is “too great” and that one should grant cautious trust also to intuitions.

Errors of the Sages about Reality versus a Different Criterion: Lice on the Sabbath

The text distinguishes between a case where the Sages erred in their understanding of reality — such as the example of lice on the Sabbath, where they said that they are not generated from male and female, which is “simply not true” — and a case where the Sages are operating with a different criterion that is not scientific-modern. He says that when one reaches the conclusion that the Sages explicitly erred on the basis of a factual claim, “then truly I will not listen to them,” but when they were not looking for a scientific criterion but a halakhic one, this is not an error but a different framework.

Conceptions, Slavery, Sects, and a Historical Explanation for Major Errors

The text explains attachment to conceptions through the example of the ancient belief in perfect circles in heavenly paths, and parallels this to moral conceptions such as enslaving slaves, which once seemed self-evident. He argues that smart and good people can be captive to the spirit of the age, and brings examples of joining sects and of intelligent people who function well in other areas but live inside a dogma. He compares this as well to modern conceptions within professional systems, where “if we were in their place,” we too might have fallen into the same error.

Cultured Meat

The text distinguishes between meat synthesized from chemistry, which in his opinion is not meat at all and may be eaten with milk, and “cultured meat,” which is created by multiplying a cell taken from a cow, where he is unsure whether a single cell counts as “something meaty” or whether only something with functional significance counts as such. He rejects the attempt to permit it on the grounds of nullification in sixty when the entire product is built from the original cell, and emphasizes that he does not know how to decide whether the product is meaty or not.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so last time we talked — we basically got to first-order ruling and second-order ruling. And I said that the distinction between these two kinds of rulings exists on two planes. One plane is the question of how closely I stick to precedents. A second-order halakhic decisor is one who basically collects precedents and decides between them according to some technical rule — say, where the majority of the precedents are pointing — and for him that is the Jewish law, for example. In contrast, a first-order halakhic decisor doesn’t rely on precedents but clarifies the topic itself. And of course, he studies the precedents, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim), as part of clarifying the topic, but not in the sense that he collects them in order to rule from them. Rather, he looks at the topic through their lenses in order to see more possibilities for understanding it, when in the end he himself has to decide how he understands the topic. So that’s one distinction: are you studying the topic, or are you sticking to precedents?

The second distinction is the question whether — we talked about this already — in every Jewish law, and I’m talking right now mainly about Torah-level Jewish law, in every Torah-level Jewish law there are two aspects. One aspect is the command, and the second aspect is the essence. Right? That’s how we defined Torah-level Jewish law: if one of those is missing, then at least according to Maimonides it’s rabbinic law. So there are two things here. Now, in halakhic thinking, you can make your calculations, sometimes even a conceptual talmudic calculation, even a sophisticated one. But still, you are dealing on the plane of the command, of the Jewish law itself, and you are ignoring the question of the essence that underlies the law. And a first-order halakhic decisor also enters into questions of essence. He tries to look for what underlies the halakhic principle or the halakhic rule, and he doesn’t just do a technical calculation of the rules themselves. Rather, he looks at what stands behind the rules and takes that into account as well in order to reach his halakhic conclusion.

I want to sharpen this point a little. In philosophy of science they distinguish between two kinds of scientific theories. There is a phenomenological theory and an essential theory. A phenomenological theory is a theory that describes the phenomena, simply organizes the phenomena. Just take, I don’t know, taxonomy of species in biology, let’s say. You classify species and kinds of animals or plants or things like that — that is basically, you could say, a phenomenological treatment. I want to see what the differences are, how I divide the world of phenomena that appears before my eyes into groups, hierarchies, right? Kinds, species, and so on. But an essential treatment enters into the question of what stands behind that classification. Meaning: why are tigers and cats and lions all part of the feline family? They have certain features that may be less visible to the eye; sometimes they’re actually genetic or biological features that stand behind that classification. And then you can discover all sorts of things that, at first glance, would really surprise someone who just looks with his eyes.

For example — I think I’ve told this story several times already — once, when I lived in Bnei Brak, there was a period of a year or two when I studied every weekend in this framework called Me’atrei Shevi’i. They study four pages over the weekend and get tested on them. After a month — after three weeks — there’s a review week on twelve pages and a test on all twelve pages. And then after three months, again the same thing. The idea is to cover material, but in a way that you actually know it. So I joined them for Kodashim — Zevachim, Menachot, and so on — because I hadn’t had a chance to learn that, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. Anyway, I was sitting in the Hazon Ish kollel, where this learning was taking place, and someone came over to me and asked whether it’s true that glass is a liquid, because he knew I was a physicist. So he asked me: is it true that glass is a liquid?

So I said to him: what do you mean? What does it mean, “is it true that glass is a liquid”? Physicists do indeed tend to relate to glass as a liquid because it has a disordered crystal structure. Solids have an ordered crystal structure. There is symmetry in the crystal structure — let’s say it’s literally squares arranged neatly, like graph paper, say. That’s one kind of what’s called a crystal. A crystal has a fixed inner order; that’s what’s called a solid. And glass, even though it feels solid when we touch it, behind that solidity there actually lies a disordered crystal state. And therefore physicists can treat glass as a liquid, at least in certain respects.

So I told him: look, if you’re asking physics, then in physics yes, there are those who define glass as a liquid. But if what interests you is through halakhic glasses — is this cooking of a wet thing or cooking of a dry thing on the Sabbath — then it’s dry. It’s not wet. And here too you can take the distinction I made earlier in several directions. On the one hand, when you go by what you see with your eyes, glass is a solid. But when you look at the definition of solids — and that’s already a definition not visible to the eye, but something where you understand the essence behind the concept of solidity — that is the ordered crystal structure. And if you go by that, suddenly you discover that glass is not a solid at all; it’s a liquid. If you went by the superficial view, the taxonomic view, the superficial classification, you would classify glass as a solid. But if you go by the essence behind that classification, you would discover that glass is actually a liquid.

Of course, if I want to apply this to Jewish law, then I have to check what the relevant essential parameters are for Jewish law. And from the standpoint of Jewish law, I think the distinction between solid and liquid is really a distinction according to the state of matter. And in that sense, glass is a solid. Meaning: heating glass is not like heating a liquid on the Sabbath; it’s like heating a solid on the Sabbath. So again, here too, someone who goes after the physical insights is actually the superficial person — even though he’s going after insights, after depth — but he’s going after the wrong depth. Meaning: the insights relevant to the halakhic domain are not necessarily the insights relevant to the physical domain.

Another example that always comes to mind in this context: when I studied engineering at Tel Aviv University, we had a lecturer in electromagnetic fields, Professor Frankenthal. And he told us that in the United States there was a federal law saying that if two states transfer something to one another through a third state, then if it flows through pipes they have to pay the state in the middle. But if it flies through the air — if it passes through the air — then not. Now, state A transferred electricity to state C through electrical lines, high-voltage lines, and it passed through a state in between, state B. So state B sued them, demanding that they pay for the transit, because they were transferring electricity through wires. So they came before the judge, and their lawyer had consulted a physicist, and he told the judge: in physics there is something called Poynting’s theorem. This theorem says that the electrical power actually travels around the wire, not inside the wire. It travels through the electromagnetic fields surrounding the wire, outside it, in the air. So that power is really passing through the air and not through the wire, and therefore they are exempt from paying.

I don’t know how that case ended, but of course this is nonsense. It’s nonsense because Poynting’s theorem only says that there are two equivalent ways of describing the transfer of power. You can describe the power as if it passes through the wire, and you can describe it as if it passes through the fields around the wire. These are two equivalent descriptions; there’s no right or wrong here. And it’s pretty clear that the legislator’s intent was that if you transfer using wires, you have to pay. I don’t care if there’s some description that can attribute the transfer of power to the air surrounding the wire. Bottom line, you used a wire to transfer it. So it’s pretty clear that from the standpoint of legislative intent, he meant that yes, they should pay for this. And that’s exactly the same as with glass being a liquid. It’s just that when you’re speaking in the legal aspect, the theoretical physical perspective is not always the relevant perspective.

So on the one hand it’s important not to ignore the insights that underlie the phenomena, but on the other hand you have to pay very close attention that those insights are also relevant to your discussion. And that reminds me of something else. You know Richard Feynman — an American Jew, Nobel Prize winner, and kind of a famous clownish character. He has all sorts of cult books, like Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, probably the most famous of them, and several others like that. So among other things he tells there about two yeshiva boys. He was Jewish, right, though apparently he didn’t have much connection to Judaism, but he was of Jewish background. Two yeshiva students came and wanted to ask him a question. Well, he was so happy to hear that yeshiva students were finally starting to take an interest in important things too. So he said, sure, come with me in the elevator and we’ll talk on the way. So they asked him whether electricity is fire — they wanted a physical opinion. He didn’t understand what they wanted from his life. What do you mean, electricity is fire? It wasn’t clear to him at all. Electricity is a physical phenomenon, fire is chemistry — in short, he didn’t understand what they wanted. So he asked them where the question came from, what the issue was. So they explained to him that there are halakhic decisors who forbid turning on electricity because of kindling, and therefore they were asking whether electricity is fire.

Now he, of course, threw them down all the stairs. He said, I thought you were coming to learn physics, but all you want is to clarify a halakhic question. But the truth is that asking for a physical opinion about that question is exactly the same as asking whether glass is a liquid. The way physicists relate to the matter is not necessarily the way Jewish law will relate to it. It could be that Jewish law will see electricity as fire even though, from the perspective of a physicist, these are two phenomena with no connection whatsoever between them. It simply depends on the purpose for which you are conducting the discussion, what the framework of the discussion is, what conceptual framework accompanies the discussion. So all these things show us that on the one hand it is important not to ignore the insights or the depth behind the phenomena, but on the other hand one has to be careful to apply those insights correctly and in the right context. Meaning that the physical insights are indeed also the ones relevant for the halakhic discussion. Therefore, on the one hand it is very important to enter into the insights, and on the other hand one has to be careful to do it correctly. What?

[Speaker B] Why did the Rabbi call that—

[Speaker C] —the phenomenological approach superficial?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t hear.

[Speaker B] Why did the Rabbi call the phenomenological approach superficial, since it doesn’t go down—?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is that you’re relating only to the phenomena and not to what lies behind them. A famous phenomenological theory, for example, is black-body radiation. Black-body radiation — there was some function, never mind: you heat a black body, which isn’t painted black, it isn’t about color, you heat it and there is some radiation, a spectrum of radiation. Photons are emitted — or not photons; radiation is emitted at different wavelengths, right, different colors, each color being a wavelength. And there is a graph or a function that describes the intensity of the radiation at each wavelength — for each color, how much of it is emitted in black-body radiation. Okay? And that function was known. So that is what’s called a phenomenological theory. What does that mean? I’m describing the facts to you. That theory — that function — is a theory that simply describes the facts, like taxonomy in biology, the theory of classification. Okay?

Then Einstein came along and suddenly said: wait — in order to explain this graph, I ask myself how we get such a graph. This was in the miracle year, 1905. One of the three groundbreaking papers Einstein published that year was on black-body radiation, and that basically launched quantum theory — which he later fought against. But Einstein’s claim was that the explanation for this phenomenological theory, for this known function, had to be that apparently light is emitted in discrete packets, discrete units — what later came to be called photons. Okay? So I corrected myself before. And once we assume that, one can show that the known function is obtained. So this function is called a phenomenological theory. Why? Because it describes the facts that I observe. It gives me some general description of all the facts I observe. It’s a general function that tells me, for every wavelength, how much will be emitted. But behind this there are physical mechanisms: why is the function like that? And that is already a discussion of the essence behind the phenomenological theory. That is no longer — those photons emitted in the background, nobody saw a photon being emitted. Rather, I assume — or I do the calculation and show — that in order to obtain this function, it probably has to be the case that light is emitted in discrete packets, and apparently there are photons behind it. But that’s not something I see with my eyes. That’s not phenomenology. It’s not something I observe. It’s a conclusion I infer: apparently that’s what stands behind the phenomena I do see.

Usually, theory in physics works on the plane of the essences behind things. There are phenomenological theories that are the first step. Usually you gather the collection — say, in gravitation. I say: any two bodies attract one another with a force proportional to one over r squared, the square of the distance between them. Okay? That is a phenomenological theory. Give me any two bodies, put them here, I can see that their acceleration indeed looks like that. Later you can come and ask: okay, but why does that happen? What’s the cause? Why does this happen? So there is gravitational force and all sorts of theories of what the gravitational force does; later it became curvature of space in relativity, and so on. But these are the essences behind the descriptions. Phenomenological theories are theories that describe the facts.

[Speaker D] Rabbi, but Rabbi, I’m not sure that when the Rabbi says that the essences are what stand behind the phenomena, I’m not sure that’s really so. For example, last week the Rabbi gave some example about that woman, that scientist who knows everything about optics in every sense, but she spent her whole life in a dark room. And suddenly she’s exposed to light, she sees the color red. Did she learn something new or not? Now the color, the sensation, the phenomenological awareness of the phenomenon of the color red — that’s not really explained by all the essential theoretical background she knew about the wavelength of the radiation. There’s something else here that really comes from her, something in itself, and therefore it’s not that the essence supposedly explains the phenomenology, not necessarily.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re right that knowing the physical theory cannot lead you to the color red; otherwise she wouldn’t have had to leave the room. In other words, otherwise she would have known it inside the room too. So the sensation of the color red is certainly not explained by the physical theory, but the physical theory is what underlies the color red — that is true. The only thing is that to get all the way to the color red, you also need to understand human perception. That is, how a person receives the particular cognitions that come to him. Without that, you won’t get to colors. But that doesn’t mean — still, physics is what causes these phenomena. In the end, that is exactly the kind of insight that stands behind the phenomena.

[Speaker E] But physics also doesn’t deal with causes. It deals with a deeper description of things. Maybe theoretical, less empirical, but in the sense that I can describe it sensorially — but still we’re not in the world of causes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Of course it does. What? Why not? Of course it does.

[Speaker E] I’m simply going deeper into things that maybe my eye can’t see, but I’m still not in causes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no sharp line between phenomenology and essence; there are different levels of essence. Exactly. Every level—

[Speaker E] So then the question arises: if we’re talking about Jewish law, then where— no, because the scientist too will see things differently. For him, say a thousand years ago people really saw the sun going around the earth, and today we see it differently given certain knowledge. So where is the stage at which I say: here the phenomenon ends and I begin—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What they saw in the past, they were completely right; nothing has changed today. The phenomena are exactly the same.

[Speaker F] But the Sages, who once saw demons — did they really see them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s a different discussion. I don’t know what they saw there; it isn’t clear to me. But there’s no problem — the moon goes around the earth, and that’s what they saw; that’s really true. Those are exactly the phenomena. Nothing else happened. Newton came later and explained why it is like that, why things move in circles around each other, or ellipses, or whatever. Newton offered an explanation, but Newton’s explanation too is basically—

[Speaker C] You can now be phenomenological, because that’s only a philosophical explanation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can ask yourself what stands behind the formula. It’s clear there is — it’s a series or chain of links, where each link is phenomenology relative to the next link that will come after it. The next link will be an explanation for the phenomenology, but that link too is itself only phenomenology, and afterwards I can ask what stands behind it. Einstein hoped to arrive at a unified field theory. Meaning that there would be one field that would explain all the basic forces of nature and, of course, consequently also all the phenomena in the world. I don’t know whether there is such a thing or whether anyone will ever reach such a thing, but there is an aspiration to go deeper and deeper. So clearly these are not two sharp kinds of theories, phenomenological and essential. It’s a relative matter. Phenomenology is phenomenology relative to the essence that comes after it.

[Speaker C] So, Rabbi, in Jewish law we don’t relate to technology? We need to check what stands behind the technology, right? Listen—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but nobody says that it isn’t kindling because electricity isn’t fire. Why?

[Speaker C] Because on the Sabbath I don’t have a problem — the question isn’t the fire, it’s the kindling, sort of.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying: the question whether a glowing piece of metal is called fire or not called fire — that is not a question in physics. At least in the halakhic decisors they don’t conduct physical discussions about it. It’s a question of how you conceptualize the phenomenon. Again, I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, but factually they are not conducting discussions in physics.

[Speaker C] What do you mean? When I turn on electricity, in the end it becomes fire, sort of. It becomes fire.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What fire? What fire? If you bring a piece of paper close to it, then there’ll be fire in the paper. But the electricity itself is not fire — what does that have to do with fire?

[Speaker C] Fine, but I can say that at the root of kindling this is what stands.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can say lots of things, but in physics—

[Speaker C] No, but isn’t it kindling, sort of?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a discussion in Jewish law, not a discussion in physics.

[Speaker C] When you understand how—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can ask me a question in Jewish law and we can discuss it, but that’s not the topic. I want to argue that this is not a question in physics. How to discuss it halakhically is another discussion; it doesn’t concern us right now. A physicist will not decide that question.

[Speaker C] All of Machon Tzomet — what are they dealing with? All these institutes. Machon Tzomet is technology and halakhic permissions and so on. Isn’t that what they deal with, basically — how?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you need to — I’m not saying you don’t need to understand how a machine or technological mechanism works. I’m only saying that the physical explanation does not necessarily decide the halakhic question. I think I’ve told here more than once that when I was doing my doctorate in physics, I had a neighbor, someone who lived across the street, who was the librarian of the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan. At the time I still wasn’t connected there. And he came — he was related to Professor Lev and also some distant relative of mine. One evening he knocked on my door and said: listen, there’s a book that Professor Lev wrote, called Ma'arkhei Lev. And this book deals with the laws of electricity on the Sabbath. Now, since nobody had read this book, he told me that Professor Lev was looking for someone to read it and send him comments. Because whoever reads this book has to be familiar with Jewish law and also familiar with the technology or science behind these phenomena. And there are very few people like that. So he asked me if I’d be willing to read it and send comments to Professor Lev.

So I took the book, read it, corresponded with Professor Lev a bit, sent him various comments on the matter. But really one of the insights that accompanied me while reading the book and writing the comments is something we usually don’t experience. I suddenly saw that all these laws we’re so used to regarding electricity on the Sabbath — Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah is already old by now, but never mind — all these laws, in the end, are created by a collection of human beings and by the way they understand these processes. And this didn’t happen two thousand years ago; it’s happening now. And if I enter into the topic and understand it differently, then as far as I’m concerned all the laws of electricity on the Sabbath will be different. The fact that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman or Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah understood it in a certain way — generally they consulted with Professor Lev; he had a relationship with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman — fine. But if I understand it differently, then the halakhic result will be different.

It comes out that there is basically a halakhic field here that is being created now, not two thousand years ago. And the rules by which we determine what is permitted and what is forbidden are basically the result of how human beings — usually people versed in science — understand these mechanisms, and of the attempt to explain them, and in light of that, eventually the halakhic rules emerge. And if you understand it differently, you are sitting at a junction that can change the attitude toward electricity on the Sabbath for generations.

[Speaker B] Meaning, only according to how you understand the issue.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the other hand, ostensibly yes — this joins what was said here before. But on the other hand, it’s clear that the scientific and technological understanding of the circuits or of the different mechanisms there does not necessarily determine the Jewish law. You also have to understand Jewish law in order to understand to what extent the scientific and technological insights are the ones that determine what the Jewish law will say in such a case. And therefore this is always the problem of multidisciplinarity. In multidisciplinary worlds, you want to connect two fields, field A and field B. Now usually people are experts in one of the fields. So you take an expert in field A and an expert in field B and they try to work together in order to arrive at results. The problem is that the interface between field A and field B is an interface that falls between the chairs. If, say, a halakhic decisor asks the scientist what he thinks — is glass a liquid or a solid — the scientist doesn’t know what Jewish law is. So he’ll tell him: glass is a liquid. Then the halakhic decisor will say: okay, if it’s a liquid then it’s forbidden to heat it on the Sabbath. And someone has to be responsible for that seam, for the interface between Jewish law and science. And here it has to be someone who is familiar with both sides of the equation. Neither of those two experts really knows how to make that seam. So there is a built-in problem in multidisciplinary fields: when you want to combine experts from different fields, the interface between them, the conversation between them, it’s not at all certain that the expert from field A understands what the expert from field B is telling him in the correct way — or applies it correctly to his own field. You need to understand both fields in order to transfer insights from one to the other, or not to transfer them — to know whether to transfer them or not, and how to transfer them.

[Speaker C] But Rabbi, the example of liquid and dry really is true, because in Jewish law I don’t care about liquid, I care about wet. Fine, the physicist will define it as liquid, but he won’t define whether it’s wet, because he too would agree that glass isn’t wet.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so you explained why it isn’t relevant. So what’s the question?

[Speaker C] No, I’m saying — but with fire, how do you relate to it, even from the standpoint of Jewish law, how do you relate to fire? If the Torah forbade actual fire, then actual fire — ostensibly according to physics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? But that’s exactly what I’m saying again: the question is whether the definition of fire that the Torah forbids is the physical definition of fire. If there are phenomena that a physicist would define as fire, it could still be that a halakhic person would say that for the purpose of Jewish law this is not fire. There’s no necessity here. It could be yes and it could be no, but that decision has to be made by someone versed in Jewish law. Meaning, the physicist cannot simply hand him the answer whether it is fire or not fire, and then he will decide whether it is permitted or forbidden. No — he has to understand what the physical answer means when applied to Jewish law.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, there’s Rabbi Shalosh from Netanya, of blessed memory, and his son continues this as well—they turn electricity on and off on a Jewish holiday.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so there are a few Sephardic rabbis who did that.

[Speaker G] Right, because they—but this is connected to what the Rabbi is saying, because they simply understand the electrical mechanism as transferring fire from an existing fire. And again, that’s supposedly a subjective interpretation—they understand that that’s how it works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it seems to me that they’re mistaken. They’re mistaken because they’re taking the physical explanation, and it’s not correct to take the physical explanation.

[Speaker G] Why? So what is correct in this case?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because specifically—this doesn’t really touch our general topic, but specifically here—it’s actually a good illustration. Here’s an example: they see it as a transfer of an existing fire. And that’s not right. I’m transferring the current from place to place. But the fire isn’t the current; the fire is the power output. And the power output happens when the current passes through a resistor and heats it. So the fire is created in the resistor; it doesn’t move from place to place. The current moves from place to place, but the fire is created where the resistor is. Like the classic incandescent bulb of a lamp or something like that.

[Speaker G] The moment I press the button, the fire is actually created.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. It’s not transferring fire. But that’s why I say this is actually a good example, because they come in the name of science. And I claim—and this is exactly the point—that science, either they didn’t understand the science correctly, or science is not really applicable to the halakhic context, at least in my opinion. Okay, anyway, I don’t know how we got into all this. Wait a second, sorry, just one moment. Yes, what are you saying?

[Speaker H] I know the Torah law of cooking, right? But back then they didn’t have—I need to relate to glass. How can I decide that I know with certainty what the Torah meant in its definition of liquid versus solid, and not the physical definition according to which glass is this or that? How do I know that with certainty? How can I know that with certainty?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t know, and certainly not with certainty. Nothing can be known with certainty. But one thing to remember is that the ones who determined this—the answer here is not the Torah, it’s the Sages.

[Speaker H] Right, so how did they know? From where? On what basis? Did they establish some assumption? I know certainty is impossible, but really, how can they? Some new phenomenon could arise that we truly have no precedent for, and now we need to interpret what the Torah meant—but how can we know that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying again: you can estimate. Since this is not the Torah but the Sages, you can estimate that when the Sages spoke about cooking a liquid, they didn’t mean cooking glass, because glass was not a liquid for them, even though modern physics may see it as a liquid. Precisely because this is not the Torah but the Sages, the question is less difficult, because I can try to conjecture what they had before their eyes when they spoke about cooking a liquid. The question whether that hits the Torah’s will—that’s a very good question. I don’t know how much it’s possible to know what the Torah’s will is, but the Torah was not given to ministering angels; the Torah was given to human beings, and human beings understand it as they understand it.

[Speaker H] It doesn’t seem simple to me. I’m saying: if we don’t ground the Torah in morality but in “repairing the eternity within splendor,” which we’re used to talking about and of which we have no understanding at all, and we’re standing before a completely new phenomenon, how are we not supposed to be honest with ourselves and say that we’re basically helpless—that we have no way of knowing what the Torah really meant? Not “really” in that sense. We have no clue, because we don’t know at all what the Torah’s will is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What the Holy One, blessed be He, wants.

[Speaker H] I don’t agree—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t agree, because the fact that these laws ultimately—after all, why do we “repair the eternity within splendor”? I’m just speaking metaphorically, but let’s say we repair the eternity within splendor—that is, they aren’t connected to moral matters and human matters—that doesn’t mean we have no intuition about it. Because we do have some sort of intuition built into us about the question of what the category of religious value could be, even without understanding what religious value actually is. We do have such intuitions. An example: why in Brisk do they mainly study sacrificial law and purity law? They really love dealing with sacrificial law and purity law. Do you know why? Because in sacrificial law and purity law there are no intuitions. In Brisk they’re mathematicians, and when you want to deal with a certain topic mathematically, to disconnect from human insights—because the Brisker myth is that we ask only the what and not the why. Where is it most comfortable to ask what without relating to why? In sacrificial law and purity law. In monetary law, yes, we do have intuitions about what is right and what is not right, so it’s hard to detach from our intuitions and ask only the what. In sacrificial law and purity law you can ask only the what. I think that’s the reason why those fields of sacrificial law and purity law are so beloved in Brisk. But the thing is, when they tell themselves and us that what they ask is only the what and not the why, as I said earlier—they’re living in a movie. You can’t ask the what without asking the why. There’s no such thing. How can you define a phenomenological definition, yes, a formal definition, of a certain law without understanding what lies behind it? I can define the very same thing in a thousand ways. To choose the right definition, you need to understand a bit what actually lies behind the matter. The point is that you don’t formulate it explicitly to yourself, but behind the definition, behind your answer to the question of what, there is really an intuition about the why. And also in sacrificial law and purity law, anyone who deals with those topics knows: we have intuitions about right and wrong there too. Even though we don’t understand what impurity is and why impurity is good or bad or what it does at all, where it does it—there it really is the eternity within splendor. But anyone who studies those topics knows there are certain intuitions of right and wrong even in those fields. We have some access in our intuition even to those fields, although in the end we don’t understand.

[Speaker H] When it isn’t translated into any moral matter, how can that be? How can we talk this way? We have no clue, no understanding at all what the point of the eternity within splendor is, and yet we have very strong intuitions about it, on which an entire Torah is built?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We have intuitions not only in the field of morality.

[Speaker H] Where? Where have we ever heard of such a thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, where have we heard? We have such intuitions—that’s a fact. Someone who studies these topics can say all these intuitions are illusions, nonsense.

[Speaker H] No, I’m not talking about intuitions of what is, I’m talking about intuitions of norms, of what ought to be. Where do we have an intuition of what ought to be, which is the Torah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s also what I’m talking about. I’m talking about halakhic intuitions in the areas of sacrificial law and purity law, not factual intuitions.

[Speaker H] But clearly it gets translated into something moral, otherwise it has no meaning at all. On what basis would I say—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It has no connection to morality. I don’t see any connection between sacrificial law and purity law and morality; even under a microscope I can’t see any connection. And still, anyone who studies the topics in those fields knows that we have intuitions there. We define it one way and not another because it doesn’t seem right to us, it doesn’t fit, it can’t be. What can’t be? How do you know what the eternity within splendor does? Yes, I know. Apparently I have something implanted in me; certain understandings are implanted in me also regarding the religious dimensions of reality, not only the moral dimensions of reality. True, these intuitions are dimmer, less clear-cut, but they exist. We also have such intuitions.

[Speaker H] Yes, but again, Rabbi, when the Rabbi separates moral and religious intuitions, that’s from a moral perspective where we’re talking about moral value supposedly only in the narrow sense of not harming another. But morality really means: what is the right thing to do? What is the right thing from a broad perspective on the whole world in all its scope, with God in it? So that’s morality in the plain sense, and you don’t need to understand more than that. True, we don’t always know it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re playing with words. Call it morality, fine, health and happiness. If you call this too morality, then Torah is morality, everything is fine. I suggest calling it “akumforkan.”

[Speaker H] But since we have no morality at all regarding—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regarding fixing things we have no clue about. You define things we have no clue about and then say they too are morality, even though they have nothing to do with morality in the usual sense of not harming or helping another person. You’re just calling it morality.

[Speaker H] I’m translating everything into morality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How does that help? It doesn’t help at all. It’s word games.

[Speaker H] No, but I translate everything into morality in the sense that we can see it, in the sense of morality as we understand it today—between one person and another, and in coping with suffering in the world. That’s the only thing we have access to and some understanding of. We don’t understand everything the Torah tells us to do or what its significance is, but in the end it has to be translated.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in sacrificial law and purity law it isn’t translated into morality in that narrow sense, right?

[Speaker H] I don’t know. I think if you asked Rav Kook—if the Rabbi asked him—I think he would find an explanation. I do think that if I sit and think about it a bit, I’ll find an explanation, and that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course the Rabbi understands that that’s possible. Sit and think about it, then tell me what your answer is. Don’t tell me that “if” you sit and think then you’ll discover it. Sit and think, and if you discover it, please update me. I can’t find one. Okay? Rav Kook tried to convince me and didn’t really succeed—in his writings, of course, not that we met. Very unconvincing. But by all means, sit and think. I’m willing to retract my whole famous thesis about the separation between Jewish law and morality, but saying that “if you sit and think you’ll find it”—I can’t take that to the grocery store. Tell me when you find it. And the fact is that we have such intuitions. That means we can arrive at insights even in areas that are not moral areas, not defined as “morality” in the ordinary sense. I don’t care if you want to call that too morality, then call it morality too. But practically speaking, these are fields not connected to relations between people, and still we have insights there about right and wrong. You can say—various kabbalists will tell you—that our souls come from the upper worlds, and therefore they contain some understanding of the upper worlds. Maybe yes, maybe no, but factually we have such intuitions. That’s simply a fact. You can say these intuitions are nonsense, just hallucinations, not real. Fine—that’s already a question of whether you believe those intuitions or not. After all, you can also say that about moral intuitions. Moral relativists say that about moral intuitions too—that they’re just hallucinations. Fine, you can say that about everything. But we do have such intuitions; that’s the fact. Okay, let’s move forward a bit. So I actually want to argue that theory—I’m making a distinction between phenomenological theory and essential theory as an analogy to the distinction between first-order and second-order halakhic ruling. A second-order halakhic ruling basically says: I want to know what quantity. Sorry—second-order halakhic ruling: I want to know how much radiation there will be for such-and-such a color. No problem—I go to the formula and say that according to the formula the radiation will be such-and-such an intensity for this color and that color. But a first-order halakhic ruling says: wait, let’s see what stands behind the formula. Behind the formula stands an assumption about photons and all kinds of things like that. And now I ask myself the question: how much radiation will there be in this or that color? The answer will probably follow the phenomenological theory, but sometimes it won’t. If I understand the essence behind the phenomena, I may discover that the phenomenology can mislead me. And I’ll now bring an example of this. I also gave this in the course I’m teaching now on halakhic ruling, on modernity—Jewish law and modernity—and the example is this. I wrote about it in “Two Carts,” actually. Maybe before that. The distinction between first-order and second-order ruling is not in the sense of sophisticated versus unsophisticated. When I talk about shallow and deep, the shallow can be very sophisticated mathematically, but it deals only with the surface and not with what lies underneath. But you understand—it can be very sophisticated scholarship, yet it deals with the surface. I’ll try to clarify this a bit with an example. When dealing with Yom Kippur, with the Yom Kippur fast, the later authorities define an analytical question: is the obligation to fast on Yom Kippur an obligation for every single moment, or is it one obligation for the whole day? The practical difference they bring is: what happens to a minor who develops two pubic hairs in the middle of the day? He became an adult at 12 noon on Yom Kippur. So now, until 12 noon he was exempt at the Torah level from the commandments. The commandment of education is a rabbinic law, but at the Torah level he was exempt. So basically he starts fulfilling the commandment at 12 noon. So if the commandment is to fast a whole day, and the whole day is one unit, then he has nothing to fast for. He won’t be able to fast a whole day, because until 12 he was exempt, and he can fulfill the commandment only from 12 onward. Therefore, at the Torah level he really doesn’t need to continue fasting. But if I understand that the obligation applies to every single moment, then from 12 onward he is already an adult and obligated in those moments. The fact that he didn’t fast until 12 or didn’t fulfill the commandment at the Torah level until 12—so what? The obligation on each moment is a separate obligation. So from 12 onward he does need to continue fasting. That’s the usual explanation of this practical difference according to the two conceptions: whether it is one unit or an obligation on each moment. Now, that’s if I’m really defining the phenomenology, yes, the phenomenological theory. Then I say: is this one unit or an obligation on every single moment? And then the practical difference emerges simply regarding a minor who became an adult at 12 noon. But now let’s try to see what the essential theory is—that is, what stands behind the phenomenology. So I ask: why really define the obligation to fast on Yom Kippur as an obligation on a whole day and not on every single moment? So I say: because let’s say there are eating prohibitions in the Torah—you may not eat pork, you may not eat creeping creatures. Eating prohibitions are not connected to time. Every time you eat pork, you violate a prohibition. It isn’t tied to a unit of time; at every single moment it is forbidden for you to eat pork. If you understand the Yom Kippur prohibitions as eating prohibitions, then you may not eat, like any other eating prohibition—at every moment in which you exist, as long as it’s Yom Kippur, you may not eat. That is the conception that the obligation is on every single moment. But on Yom Kippur, at least in the Torah, there is no prohibition at all; no prohibition against eating on Yom Kippur appears explicitly. What there is is an obligation to afflict oneself, a positive commandment. Maimonides says there is a prohibition, but that raises a big question of where the prohibition is learned from. Rav Saadia Gaon, for example, apparently—if I remember correctly—counts only a positive commandment. But that positive commandment is a commandment to afflict oneself. Is every time I don’t eat considered that I am afflicting myself? The answer is no. Suppose I’m talking to you now, so I’m not eating at the moment. Is that called that I’m afflicting myself? No, I’m simply not eating. What is the difference between afflicting oneself and not eating? Not eating means not being engaged in the act of eating. Every moment I’m not engaged in the act of eating, I’m not eating. But afflicting oneself is something else. Clearly, when I don’t eat, in the end I reach a state of affliction, but affliction is a result of ongoing non-eating. When I don’t eat over time, over some stretch of time, I begin to feel affliction in my body, and that is called afflicting oneself. Therefore, once the Torah defines the eating prohibitions on Yom Kippur as an obligation of affliction and not as an eating prohibition like pork or creeping creatures, but rather as an obligation of affliction, then it certainly makes sense to say: okay, then there is here a definition of some stretch of time in which I am not supposed to eat, and once I do not eat for that stretch of time, then I am afflicting myself. To afflict oneself is not to eat for a span of time, not merely not to eat for a moment. Someone who does not eat for one moment—I’m not fasting between meals. I ate breakfast, I ate lunch, I ate dinner—so between meals was I fasting? No. Between meals I just wasn’t eating. To fast means not to eat for a period of time, including not eating my normal meals, not just between one meal and the next. Therefore the definition becomes compelling that if the Torah says, “From evening to evening shall you rest your Sabbath,” or “You shall afflict yourselves,” then that means that the fast is defined as one unit of a full day, not as an eating prohibition defined for every single moment. Okay? That is basically the conception behind the phenomenological definition that the Yom Kippur fast is defined as a unit of a whole day. That’s the definition; that’s the phenomenology. When I ask myself what stands behind this, what stands behind it is that the Yom Kippur prohibition is not an eating prohibition but an obligation of affliction. The result is the equation, yes, that logical definition that the prohibition is on a unit of a full day and not on every single moment. Now look at the implication. I now ask what the practical difference is. So we said the practical difference is a minor who becomes an adult, develops two pubic hairs, at 12 noon. According to the conception that it is a day—that it is an obligation on a whole day—then he does not need to continue afflicting himself at the Torah level, because in any case he can no longer fulfill a whole day. Until 12 he was a minor, exempt, and from 12 onward he will fulfill the commandment only for a few hours. But the commandment is for a full day. So he didn’t fulfill the commandment and doesn’t need to continue afflicting himself. But according to how I defined it before, if we now go to the essence and not the phenomenological theory—or if you prefer, to semantics and not syntax—in logic they distinguish between syntax, which is the formal play with symbols or language, and semantics, which is the meaning, yes, the essence behind the syntax. Syntax is structure. So phenomenological theory is basically structural theory. It simply arranges the phenomena into some structure. After that I ask myself what the meaning of the matter is, what stands behind it—that is the essential theory. Now look: if I take the essential theory into account, the practical difference disappears. Because this minor, after all, fasted until 12 only by the law of education, rabbinically. Right? There is an obligation to fast from age 12, even a whole day. So he fasted until 12 by the law of education. Now from 12 onward he developed two pubic hairs. The question is whether to continue fasting. The answer I propose is yes—to continue fasting even according to the conception that the fast is defined as a whole day. And why? Because the requirement that the fast be a fast over a whole day is not a requirement on the commandment of fasting. It is a requirement on the concept of fasting. The concept of affliction or the concept of fasting requires a period of time, an interval. Okay? And the commandment is a commandment to fast, not merely not to eat. But here’s the thing: this minor did in fact fast the whole day. Until 12 he fasted by the law of education, and from 12, if he continues, then he will fast as one who is commanded and acts, at the Torah level. So if I ask myself whether he fasted, the answer is yes. After all, he did not eat throughout the whole day. Not eating throughout the whole day is called fasting. True, until 12 he fasted only rabbinically by the law of education, but in practice, factually, he fasted—he did not eat. So the hours from 12 onward in which he does not eat will be called a fast. It’s not merely non-eating; it is a fast, since in the end he did not eat throughout the entire duration. Therefore, even according to the conception that a fast is defined over a whole day, he must continue fasting from 12 noon onward. Because he has the possibility of fulfilling the commandment of affliction—not only non-eating, but also the commandment of affliction. Of course, that assumes—you can argue about it—but it assumes that the definition, I once wrote about this in some column, that the definition requiring a whole day is a definition of the concept of fasting, not of the commandment of fasting. The concept of fasting is defined as non-eating over a full day. The concept. And since that is so, I have fulfilled that concept. I did not eat for a full day. True, I fulfilled the commandment only from 12 noon, because until 12 I was a minor and did it by the law of education, but the concept of fasting was fulfilled. And if I understand that the requirement is on the concept of affliction or fasting and not on the commandment, then there is no problem at all: I need to continue fasting even from 12 noon onward. So here is an example of something where, when I deal with it at the phenomenological level, it is two definitions: whether it is a whole unit or every single moment. If I stay at the level of definitions, yes, at the syntax, at the phenomenological theory, then a practical difference emerges for a minor who became an adult at 12 noon. But when I enter the essence and ask myself why the fast is defined over a whole day, suddenly I discover that the practical difference evaporates. He must continue fasting even according to the view that a fast is defined over a whole day. He must continue fasting. So this is an example of how a second-order decisor would basically say: wait, so-and-so’s view is that the fast is over a whole day. Someone else’s view is that the fast is on every single moment. So it turns out that according to so-and-so he must continue fasting, according to the other one he need not continue fasting—here it’s a Torah-level doubt. But in principle, that’s how he would analyze the topic, someone who works at the second order. And someone who works at the first order says: wait, wait, let’s ask ourselves why it is defined as a unit of a day, one unit of a day, and not as eating prohibitions at every single moment. And once I ask why, I’m entering the essence, and suddenly I discover that the practical difference dissolves. Or another example, also one I’m fond of—an example taken from Wittgenstein. I think he doesn’t bring it himself, but it’s inspired by Wittgenstein: following a rule, yes? In the later Wittgensteinian treatment, Philosophical Investigations. He talks about continuing series. So if I give you a series of numbers—three, five, seven. What is the next number? Psychometric test, yes? Three, five, seven. Fill in the next number. What’s the next number? Nine. Nine, ostensibly, right? Everyone agrees? I propose eleven. Not nine. I’m as right as you are. You assumed the series is odd numbers, right? Three, five, seven, so the next is nine. I assume the series is prime numbers. Prime numbers: three, five, seven, so eleven. Nine is not prime. What does that mean? Who is right? We are both right. The whole question is what essence stands behind the series. If you relate only to the series, then you may err if you try to guess the correct continuation. Because you need to examine what essence stands behind the series. Do three, five, and seven represent odd numbers, or do three, five, seven represent prime numbers? And that changes the whole picture, because it changes what you do with the next number. And the same is true with regard to Jewish law. You can take a phenomenological theory—if you don’t ask yourself what stands behind the phenomenology, then you can err in the halakhic application you make of these rules. Yes? This is the distrust—we’ve talked about this more than once—the distrust the Talmud has of rules. The Talmud does not believe in rules. And I think it doesn’t believe in rules because of this tension between phenomenology and essence, or between semantics and syntax. For example, the source where you can perhaps see this most clearly is the Talmud in Kiddushin—it appears elsewhere too, there are parallels—but the Talmud in Kiddushin brings: every positive commandment that is time-bound, women are exempt, except for three or four examples brought there. Then the Talmud says: but what about Hakhel? That too is a positive commandment that is time-bound, and women are obligated—“Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the children”—that includes women too. Okay? So this is a positive commandment that is time-bound and women are obligated in it, so why don’t you bring it among the exceptions? So the Talmud says: “One does not derive from general rules, even in a place where ‘except’ is stated.” General rules in the plural, yes? That means you do not derive from rules, even when the rule is formulated together with a list of exceptions. If it had said: every positive time-bound commandment, women are exempt, and then I suddenly found that in Hakhel women are obligated, I would say okay, that’s the general rule, but there are a few exceptions, no big deal. But here the formulation is more precise. They tell you: every positive commandment that is time-bound, women are exempt, except A, B, C, D. I say: wait, but what about E? There’s another exception. Fine, so there’s another exception—don’t make a big deal out of everything. What does that mean? “Even in a place where ‘except’ is stated.” Meaning, even when they give you the list of exceptions, there can still be more exceptions, and it’s not exhaustive. In other words, if they tell you only the rule without exceptions, you say fine, they gave the general rule but there are some exceptions here and there. If they also give you the list of exceptions, then you would not expect there to be another exception not listed. They tell you: no—even if they give you the list of exceptions, there may still be another exception. Or in other words: forget the rules. The rules are not what matter. What do you mean, they’re not what matter? Then why give them? They give you the rules so they’ll give you a direction of thought, or some framework for thought, to help you, to orient you. But in the end, in the end, you may not issue a halakhic ruling based on the rules. If you issue a halakhic ruling based on the rules, you’re working with phenomenology. You’ll make a mistake. You need to think about what stands behind the rules. And there are good reasons why Hakhel is an exception. And once I understand why Hakhel is an exception, then even though it doesn’t appear in the list of exceptions, I will rule that women are obligated in Hakhel, because I understand why that is. The explanation—I wrote more than one article about this as well—is that Hakhel is a commandment upon the public, not upon individuals. And therefore everyone included in the public is obligated in that commandment, and women are part of the public. The exemption of women from positive time-bound commandments applies to positive time-bound commandments of individuals. So the Torah says that in such commandments, women are exempt. But if there is a commandment on the public and the public is obligated, then what sense is there in exempting women? The public is obligated; everyone who belongs to the public is obligated. Now this is a consideration that tells me what stands behind the idea of Hakhel. But once I understand the essence, the rule doesn’t bother me. The rule tells me that women are exempt from positive time-bound commandments except for four exceptions, and Hakhel doesn’t appear there. Someone who works with rules would say fine, then in Hakhel women are exempt. But someone who works at the first order says: wait, wait, let’s try to think about the logic of the matter. From the standpoint of the logic of the matter, it is clear that women should be obligated in Hakhel, because they are part of the public and it is a public commandment. And therefore it is dangerous to work with rules. The Talmud treats rules with a great deal of disdain. Because working with rules—the mathematics of rules—is very tempting. It sounds very structured, very logical, very necessary, very certain, very logical. But it can lead to a great many mistakes. Therefore it is very important to ask yourself what stands behind those rules, not to work with rules. Ask yourself what stands behind the rules, and only then issue a ruling. Someone who rules according to rules is liable to err many times. Yes, maybe another example…

[Speaker F] Rabbi, but isn’t it exactly the opposite? Because basically what the Rabbi is saying is that the Torah proceeds in a casuistic way and not in a rule-based way. Right. So the feeling is that you have no possibility of grasping the essence. You have to experience, so to speak, each case, each individual case, and that is entirely phenomenological and not essential—because if it were essential, then really say the essential rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but there is no essential rule—that’s exactly the point. It’s not accidental that women are exempt from all positive time-bound commandments. It’s not that by chance, case by case, it turned out they were exempt, and somehow in the end I made a rule out of it. How did it happen that specifically for all positive time-bound commandments women are exempt, and not for non-time-bound ones? Women are obligated except for a few exceptions. But in general this comes out very correlative. It probably isn’t accidental.

[Speaker F] Yes, clearly, but it still probably didn’t capture the essence.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no, I’m saying: it touches the essence, but you need to be careful. This rule gives you some guidance, gives you some sense, but don’t cling to it too much. Think about what stands behind it. But I’m not belittling rules; I’m not saying you can ignore them. I’m saying you need to be careful not to cling to them. I’ll use rules in order to get—it’s like rules of grammar in a language. Right? So I’ll use rules to know how to speak or write correctly, but there are places where my sense tells me: leave it, don’t apply the rules in this way here. This needs to be written differently. So I’ll use my sense even though it goes against the rule. The rules give you some orientation. If you have no sense, go with the rules. But if you have some understanding of what actually stands behind it, or an intuition—even not a formulated understanding, just an intuition of what stands behind it—then leave the rule aside. Yes, one of the rules in the Talmud is that in disputes between Abaye and Rava, the Jewish law follows Rava except for YAL KGM. Outside of six cases—YAL KGM is an acronym: unconscious despair, a side-post standing on its own, conspiring witness, and so on. These are the six cases where we rule like Abaye. Now if you check Maimonides, Maimonides rules like Abaye in additional cases beyond those six. Now that already contradicts an explicit rule in the Talmud. These are not rules invented by the medieval authorities and later authorities—those, I really don’t know where they churned out all those rules from, all inventions with no root or branch. But here it’s a rule that appears in the Talmud. So what, Maimonides disagrees with the Talmud? The Talmud says the Jewish law follows Rava except for six cases, and Maimonides rules in additional cases like Abaye. In “You shall not form factions” he rules like Abaye; in “if one acted, it is ineffective,” according to some interpretations he rules like Abaye. So the books of rules grapple with this and begin adding epicycles and deferents. Yes? It’s the famous analogy. You know the Greeks tended to think that all heavenly bodies move in circles, because the circle is some kind of very perfect form. So it seemed obvious to them that the heavenly bodies all move in circles. A kind of Pythagorean thing, aesthetic considerations. Yes, if the circle is a perfect form, then clearly all heavenly bodies move in circles. The problem is that it’s not true. They don’t move in circles. And they also knew they don’t move in circles. So what did they do? Suppose it really moves in an ellipse. So how can that be, if it’s supposed to be a circle? You add another small circle here and another small circle there onto this circle, and then it already almost looks like an ellipse. And that still isn’t true. At higher resolution it still isn’t an ellipse. So you need to add another little circle here and another little circle there, and of course you need infinitely many circles in the end to arrive at an ellipse. So that’s called epicycles and deferents. In other words, they added small circles in order to reach the real path, while keeping their assumption that everything had to be described in terms of circles—because circles are the perfect things. Then suddenly Kepler or Copernicus comes and says: what are you talking about? The whole story is ellipses. It’s not circles. And boom—the whole Greek theory goes into the trash. You have one simple description of an ellipse instead of infinitely many small circles correcting larger circles, an incredibly complicated description. Okay? So to be carried away by the theory of circles is very convincing, and then you add epicycles and deferents in order to stay with that theory of circles. At a certain point you need to understand that the whole theory of circles is probably wrong—it doesn’t work. Look for something else. And the correct theory is ellipses. Then everything becomes simple: one ellipse, no corrections, no nothing. The same thing here. The rule-mongers assume that the Talmud’s rules are obviously correct and absolute and general and sweeping. So how does Maimonides rule in more cases like Abaye? So now they start inventing more rules: that when Abaye and Rava disagree regarding the opinion of tannaim, then it could be that the Jewish law follows Abaye in another case. The Talmud’s whole rule applies only when Abaye and Rava disagreed in their own dispute, not in a tannaitic dispute about whom to rule like. Where did you get that from? Divine inspiration, apparently. I have no idea where they invented this from. They just fabricated it out of thin air. They were simply looking for something else—more epicycles and deferents—in order to remain with this picture of the Talmudic rules. And the answer is: it’s an ellipse. There are no rules. The rules are some first approximation. There are no rules. If a clear conclusion comes out to you that the Jewish law follows Abaye in another case, then please rule like Abaye even though it is outside the six cases the Talmud gave. “One does not derive from general rules, even in a place where ‘except’ is stated.” But of course you have to have a good essential reason why you rule like Abaye. Because from the standpoint of the arithmetic of the rules, the Jewish law should follow Rava. But if you enter into the essence, what stands behind the rules, the understandings—if you are a first-order decisor, and Maimonides ruled at the first order—then very often the result comes out not matching the rules. And the answer is that Maimonides was right and the rule-mongers were not, because rules are an approximation. The Talmud itself says: one does not derive from general rules even in a place where ‘except’ is stated. The classic example: the Jewish law follows Rava except for YAL KGM. But even in such a case there can be more exceptions—explicitly in the Talmud. And the rule-mongers tear their hair out in panic trying to explain that Maimonides. And there is an explicit Talmudic statement that he is right, that you shouldn’t make such a big deal out of rules. And this is a very big difference between a first-order decisor and a second-order decisor. A second-order decisor clings to precedents and clings to phenomenological rules. Meaning, the mathematical calculation of how this story fits together, because those are the halakhic principles for him. The whole layer behind the rules, the essential layer—a second-order decisor doesn’t deal with it. A first-order decisor enters into the reason of the verse, yes? One does not expound the reason of the verse, never mind, maybe I’ll comment on that too—but he enters the essence behind things, and often the result can contradict the rules, and still he is right and not the one who follows the rules. Okay, we’ll stop here. Any comments? Questions?

[Speaker I] I wanted to ask: this matter the Rabbi is now saying about rules and exceptions really reminds me of something we learned in earlier series, that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) had a very clear intuition and from that Jewish laws got detailed and formulated—for example in other things too, in language, grammar, and so on—and when we formulate it, then exceptions appear.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. We are the ones who formulate the rules because we have somewhat lost the intuition. We try to use rules as compensation. Instead of understanding what’s going on here, I’ll work with rules and maybe that will bring me to the right result. But you have to be careful with that, because the rules are an approximation, and so there’s no choice—you still have to try to develop intuition of your own as well. Along with the rules; the rules will help you.

[Speaker I] I wanted to ask: let’s say the issue of women being exempt from positive time-bound commandments—is there some parallel here that maybe the Sages did not have the intuition that, say, Moses had, and so they formulated this rule?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Everywhere I’ve talked about this—and I think I have talked about it—every generation has less intuition than the previous generation, and therefore more rules get added, and the number of rules keeps increasing. And their resolution also keeps growing. Why? Because the farther we get from the source and lose the simple direct intuition, the more we need crutches to help us function in the dark. So we use rules, because with rules you can issue rulings even without understanding. But you have to be careful with that, because you really should still try to understand as much as you can, together with the rules. And people who use only rules and recoil from understanding—like the Briskers, who supposedly ask only what and not why, or deceive themselves into thinking they ask only what and not why—those are people who have no confidence in their intuitive insights. They think their intuitive insights are all nonsense, and therefore they have nothing to do except cling to the precedents and rules set by our predecessors and follow them like a blind man in a chimney. Because that way you’ll reach the truth. If you follow your heart, that’s only misleading—or your intuition. There is a great distrust of intuitions. And I think that distrust is unjustified. It’s too great. No, I agree that one must be careful with intuitions—they can mislead—and it is good to use rules as an auxiliary tool, but not to cling to rules. That is a mistake. One should also place trust in our intuitions.

[Speaker I] Good, an important insight. One more question, with your permission, Rabbi. I’ll give an example—it’s clear to me it’s not all that similar, but I still can’t quite put my finger on the difference regarding what we said: that in halakhic ruling we don’t ask a scientist. On the other hand, I remember a very, very classic example we discussed in earlier series: that if it’s clear to us that the Sages were mistaken in their understanding of reality—the most classic example, say, lice on the Sabbath—then scientific discovery really did change the Jewish law here in a drastic and extreme way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. Where I reach the conclusion that the Sages were mistaken, then indeed I won’t listen to them. But where the Sages were operating with a different criterion, not that they were mistaken—they didn’t know modern science, but they didn’t need to know it because that’s not what they were looking for—then it’s not a mistake; it’s simply going with a different criterion. But I think that with regard to lice, they said what they were relying on, and they were mistaken. They said they think it comes into being—it does not come into being without male and female. That is simply not true. So therefore, you say: if they had said, I’m not working with scientific definitions at all, I’m working with definitions—fine, then it’s not called a mistake; they’re working with a different criterion. But here they explained why they say it, and the explanation is not correct. That is a mistake. Anyone else?

[Speaker F] Rabbi, as an aside, the Rabbi casually mentioned the Greeks’ epicycles and so on. Did the Rabbi manage to understand that whole thing? I could never understand what led such brilliant people, from Aristotle onward, including Maimonides, to decide—based on some strange intuition for some reason—that it had to be perfect, and that perfection specifically meant a circle. And because of that they suffered and kept spitting out, generation after generation, all these epicycles, when the whole thing is nonsense—not to mention the intelligence of those spheres up there. Where did they get all this foolishness from? It’s really so strange, and I’ve never been able to understand it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today it’s much easier to explain, in this age of collapsing conceptions. Meaning, all of us are captive to various conceptions. And sometimes when you look back afterward, after the conception has shattered, you ask yourself: tell me, what on earth made me think that way in the first place? But it turns out that people—even very smart people—are often captive to the spirit of the times, to certain modes of thinking. I assume we’re like that too. Every person is like that; that’s the situation. Sometimes, after some time, suddenly the conception breaks and you ask: wait, what made them get caught up in that nonsense in the first place? Good question.

[Speaker F] They paid such a high price for it, and were willing to keep paying. Strange.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are moral conceptions too, you know—slavery, for example. Two hundred years—no, two thousand years. Today it seems morally absurd to us. Okay? But back then even good people didn’t see it as absurd; it seemed perfectly fine to them, like using oxen to plow a field. If you had asked them—very good people, not evil wicked people like they’re portrayed today—that was simply the culture, that was the conception there, and no one even raised the question of why this was right. I’m not even talking about religious conceptions, where all of us live inside religious dogmas, and there are all kinds of people who take that very far. You ask yourself—even smart people—you ask yourself: where did that come from?

[Speaker F] Even so, Rabbi—even so, if we try to judge them favorably, here it’s easier for me, because a slave back then didn’t really feel the suffering that a slave today would feel. If there were a slave today, he would feel—the world would be—he did feel it, yes. By the way, a laborer in the United States who works twenty hours a day doesn’t know he’s a slave, but basically he’s also a slave. So essentially he is a slave too.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And still, there’s still a difference. Meaning, obviously the degree of suffering is a function of accepted norms. I don’t suffer from the fact that I can’t fly. Why? Because it’s clear to me that I can’t fly. Maybe in two years it’ll turn out that a person actually can fly, I don’t know, they’ll discover some ability that enables a person to fly. But today I don’t suffer from it, because I think a person can’t fly, so I’ve made peace with my condition. A slave back then also made peace with his condition. Fine—but still, it’s obvious that he suffered, and it’s obvious that this was an incorrect way of seeing things. I agree that he suffered less; when you live inside a different culture, you probably come to terms with it and suffer less. But that doesn’t turn the enslavement of people into something moral. So I think that’s actually not a bad example of living inside a conception—when you’re inside the conception. How do you—how do you look at all those people around Goel Ratzon, or all those strange cults, and you talk to some of those people or women, and you discover very intelligent people. In every other area of life they function normally. Just now someone told me—someone I know—told me about a woman who works, she has a doctorate in chemistry at the Hebrew University, and she’s a member of one of those Breslov cults, those Shuvu Banim people—Berland, right? Or people like that. She has a doctorate in chemistry at the Hebrew University.

[Speaker F] It can happen to anyone. Sure.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, you’re inside some conception, and it’s obvious to you that this is what’s right. I don’t know exactly—you know, human beings are probably complicated creatures. I don’t know how to explain it. I can only point out that it happens to a great many people in a great many contexts. I assume it happens to me too. I’m sure that someone looking at me from the outside would say the same thing about me. A person doesn’t see his own defects, so it’s hard for a person to judge himself. But I see it in others, and I can only assume that it probably exists in me too.

[Speaker F] Right, and I think that’s why all of us are baffled at how the Chief of Staff, a minister, the head of Southern Command, the head of Military Intelligence, and the head of the Shin Bet didn’t see all the signs and so on. We’re all baffled by the conception. I think, as the Rabbi says, that probably if we had been in their place—these aren’t bad people, they’re professionals with good intentions—we probably would have made the same mistake. The self-righteousness of “how could this happen to them?”—well, that’s how it happens in every generation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re not talking here about just one commander; we’re talking about generations. Obviously, obviously, there’s some conception here, and I assume that if I had been there, I would have fallen the same way they did. That’s pretty clear to me. Okay.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, regarding science—should we look at cultured meat the same way too? What the Rabbi was talking about with fire and technology—meaning, in science, how does science see it? Regarding cultured meat, how should we look at it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether it counts as meat.

[Speaker C] Yes—what is it at all? Is it the kind of meat the Torah was talking about?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m a bit undecided about that. If they synthesize meat from chemistry, not from biology but from chemistry, then in my opinion there’s nothing meaty about it at all. It’s not meat and not meat-status in any way. You can eat it with milk to your heart’s content. But today, when they make cultured meat, they take a cell from actual meat and multiply the cell; it’s not synthesis at the chemical level. And there the halakhic decisors are divided, and I’m undecided too. I don’t know whether such a thing has meat status or not. I don’t know how to decide it.

[Speaker F] But look, Rabbi—even here, for example, if we bring a moral consideration into the matter—say the whole prohibition is because of some kind of compassion regarding slaughter and so on, and then we say: wait, humanity succeeded in overcoming and solving that problem, so to insist and say no—even though humanity solved it and animals will no longer be slaughtered—we’ll still continue to prohibit it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are we talking about the prohibition of meat and milk? What does meat and milk have to do with slaughter and…

[Speaker F] No, but why “do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”? After all, that’s where it started.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It started from some kind of compassion in meat and milk? “A kid in its mother’s milk” is just an example from the standpoint of Jewish law. What does that have to do with animal suffering? I don’t see any connection. Rabbi Kook, by the way, does indeed connect it to animal suffering and to The Perplexed of the Generation. I don’t see any connection.

[Speaker F] No, but the essential difference between meat and vegetables or something else can presumably be explained—certainly—on a moral basis. And then if you look at it that way, it could be that this engineering…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are differences in the moral realm too, but that doesn’t mean that every difference that exists between plants and meat is rooted in the moral difference. Those are two different things. The prohibition of meat and milk doesn’t seem to me to be connected in any way to morality. And I don’t see how I can decide, based on moral considerations, what to do with cultured meat—whether it has meat status or…

[Speaker F] Again, the Torah phrased it as “do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk,” so even if it doesn’t specifically mean its actual mother’s milk, still it chose this wording, which is so obviously moral.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the fact is that Jewish law doesn’t understand it that way.

[Speaker F] There are certain associations there, but I don’t know.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, but when the Rabbi says he’s undecided—is the Rabbi undecided because of the legal categories that the halakhic decisors discuss, because of nullification in sixty and so on? Can we say that it’s considered an important substance and so on? Or is the Rabbi basically undecided about how to define it in the first place—whether to see it as meat or not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A cell taken from a cow—does that have meat status? If it has meat status, then when you multiply it, the result also has meat status. The question is whether a single cell can be treated as meat, or whether only an organ is meat, or something that has what we might call functional significance and not just biological significance. A cell is the minimal biological significance. So that’s the question; I don’t know.

[Speaker C] Not connected to the discussion—no, because over there they also discuss whether you could say nullified in sixty, even if we say maybe it’s problematic, but the multiplication isn’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but once everything has been multiplied from that, what does nullified in sixty mean? That’s what…

[Speaker C] No, I saw some young married scholar write about it—he wrote that maybe it’s considered an important substance and so on, and he wanted to use that as a reason to be stringent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think that makes sense, because once that cell is what created everything else, you can’t say the rest nullifies it. It’s their source. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker C] Thank you very much, Rabbi.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, Selichot, goodbye. Sabbath peace. Thank you very much, Sabbath peace.

[Speaker B] Have a good month.

Study and Halachic Rulings – Lesson 13

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

First-Order Ruling and Second-Order Ruling

Phenomenological Theory and Essential Theory as a Parable for Jewish Law

Glass as Liquid and the Parameters Relevant to Jewish Law

Electricity, Poynting's Theorem, and the Limits of Scientific-Legal Decision Making

Richard Feynman and the Question “Is Electricity Fire?”

Multidisciplinarity and the Interface Between Science and Jewish Law

Electricity on the Sabbath, Ma'arkhei Lev, and Rabbi Shalosh of Netanya, of blessed memory

Uncertainty in Interpretation, the Sages, and “The Torah was not given to ministering angels”

Halakhic Intuitions, Brisk, and “It just doesn't fit”

A Phenomenological Theory in Jewish Law: The Yom Kippur Fast and a Minor Who Comes of Age

Wittgenstein and Series: 3, 5, 7 and the Need for Essence

“One does not derive from general rules, even where an exception was stated”

“The Jewish law follows Rava except for Ya'al Kegam,” Maimonides, and Epicycles and Deferents

Rules as Aids, Loss of Intuition, and Distrust of Intuitions

Errors of the Sages about Reality versus a Different Criterion: Lice on the Sabbath

Conceptions, Slavery, Sects, and a Historical Explanation for Major Errors

Cultured Meat

Full Transcript

השאר תגובהלבטל

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

First-Order Ruling and Second-Order Ruling

Phenomenological Theory and Essential Theory as a Parable for Jewish Law

Glass as Liquid and the Parameters Relevant to Jewish Law

Electricity, Poynting's Theorem, and the Limits of Scientific-Legal Decision Making

Richard Feynman and the Question “Is Electricity Fire?”

Multidisciplinarity and the Interface Between Science and Jewish Law

Electricity on the Sabbath, Ma'arkhei Lev, and Rabbi Shalosh of Netanya, of blessed memory

Uncertainty in Interpretation, the Sages, and “The Torah was not given to ministering angels”

Halakhic Intuitions, Brisk, and “It just doesn't fit”

A Phenomenological Theory in Jewish Law: The Yom Kippur Fast and a Minor Who Comes of Age

Wittgenstein and Series: 3, 5, 7 and the Need for Essence

“One does not derive from general rules, even where an exception was stated”

“The Jewish law follows Rava except for Ya'al Kegam,” Maimonides, and Epicycles and Deferents

Rules as Aids, Loss of Intuition, and Distrust of Intuitions

Errors of the Sages about Reality versus a Different Criterion: Lice on the Sabbath

Conceptions, Slavery, Sects, and a Historical Explanation for Major Errors

Cultured Meat

Full Transcript

שתף

השאר תגובהלבטל