Study and Halachic Ruling – Lesson 21

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

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are the two types of Chazon Ish-ists as well—also a favorite topic of mine. It’s the same thing, really, that the Briskers are always talking in the name of tradition, and they forget a little that their rebbe—their rebbes—were people who introduced a very, very major innovation in the world of learning and also in the world of halakhic ruling. And they cling to them as if this were a tradition from Sinai. Or—once I was looking through a book, a memorial volume for Rabbi Ra’anan, who was murdered in Hebron, so a memorial book came out, yes, in the circles of Merkaz and the like. And there, in all—you know—in those Torah memorial books, there’s a section called “Archives of the Ancients” or something like that, meaning manuscripts from various great sages of past generations that were never published, and this is a chance to publish them. Now all the “archives of the ancients” there were Rabbi Charlap, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, the Nazir—those were the most ancient ancients there. And the feeling was that Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Kook to Rabbi Charlap, Rabbi Charlap to Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda and the Nazir, and so on. Meaning, their tradition comes from Sinai without any interruption—except for skipping three thousand years. And again, that’s another example of this clinging, and of course it goes without saying that all the Hardalim are always talking in the name of those who don’t issue rulings according to tradition and have no tradition from their rabbis. I still remember someone attacking Rabbi Sherlo—asking which Torah scholars he apprenticed under, and how he rules not according to tradition—while he himself, on the basis of all his Kook-ist inventions, feels as if they came from Sinai. So this clinging to tradition very often characterizes precisely those who have no tradition. Meaning, very often—yes—people who fight fanatically for some value are usually people who feel they have a problem with that value, who feel that they themselves do not live it properly. That’s a rule you should keep in mind. The example—I always get a little carried away with associations—the example that always comes to mind for me in this context is Tzemach Atlas by Chaim Grade, the well-known Yiddish writer, a Yiddish writer and poet, Chaim Grade. As a child he was in the Novardok yeshivot. And he wrote two novels about this matter, Tzemach Atlas and The Battle of the Inclination. Yes, he studied and then left; in his youth—I mean in his adulthood—he was no longer connected to Torah and commandments. And this book is basically an auto—well, it’s a novel, but it’s based on autobiography. There’s a boy there, Chaimke, and he’s in this kind of Novardok yeshiva. The Alter of Novardok—who was himself known to be a wild man in his own right—sent all the boys from his yeshiva, who were also great wild men; he trained them to be like that, to establish yeshivot in various villages, towns, places, against the Enlightenment. In other words, to catch the children and keep them committed to Torah and commandments so they wouldn’t get drawn into the Enlightenment and the like. And because they received a very wild education—he taught them not to care what people around them said, yes, stories about going into a pharmacy and asking them to sell nails just so people would laugh at them, in order to get used to not caring how people looked at them, and so on. And these nineteen-year-old boys go off to be heads of yeshiva over children aged thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. So you understand what was going on in those yeshivot. Meaning, someone who got a wild education and is himself a nineteen- or twenty-year-old kid, and he’s the head of the yeshiva. So Tzemach Atlas is the name of the head of yeshiva there, and of course Chaimke the boy gets thrown out of the yeshiva because he has heretical thoughts or things of that sort—I don’t remember the details anymore—but he describes in the book how Tzemach Atlas himself is consumed by all kinds of doubts and desires, yes, “after your hearts and after your eyes” and all that. And the more he is consumed inside by those doubts, the more his fanatical war against all kinds of desires and doubts among the students becomes more and more extreme. And opposite him he sets the antithesis, another character he calls Makhzeh Avraham, but everybody knows that this was the Chazon Ish. The Chazon Ish came there to the village of Volknik or something like that, and he vacationed there in the village for a few months every year. And in that village there was Tzemach Atlas’s Novardok yeshiva. And when he threw out Chaimke the boy, the boy went to the Chazon Ish’s hut, and basically lived with him there for a few months. And that was true—he really did live with the Chazon Ish for a few months—but it’s described in the book. And the Chazon Ish, who all in all was not a moderate type—he had very extreme views—but in his personality he was a very moderate person. He was a very moderate personality, willing to hear any question, to relate to it, no problem with things, fine, everyone with his own position; his students too—Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel and so on—say the same thing. And this was a very striking contrast between the Chazon Ish and this Tzemach Atlas. I once saw an article trying to identify who Tzemach Atlas was, who this head of yeshiva was, by Hevelin, Professor Hevelin. In any event, that contrast basically shows us why the Chazon Ish also had extreme worldviews but did not conduct himself in an extreme way. He did not conduct himself in an extreme way because he was at peace with himself; meaning, apparently inside him he was not being eaten up by the same doubts and desires that ate up Tzemach Atlas. And because of that, he related more calmly, more comfortably, to people who were troubled by these things. Tzemach Atlas was weak inside on this issue. And because of that he fought in furious rage against these phenomena outside, right? It’s a phenomenon of psychological projection. You project onto others what is inside you. And you fight against it when really you’re fighting against something that is inside you. Right? So all those people who fight for tradition and swear by it and go out on a Don Quixote war—on Rosinante—against anyone who rules not according to tradition, these are usually people who have no tradition. That’s the principle. In any event, for our purposes, the claim— I forgot the parenthesis. The presumption? Yes, I was with presumptions, I know, I just don’t remember exactly where I moved into these parentheses. Fine. In any event, regarding presumptions: the claim—Rabbi Soloveitchik? What? Ah yes, Rabbi Soloveitchik, exactly. So Rabbi Soloveitchik said that presumptions were handed down from Sinai, so therefore we have a tradition, and all presumptions are tradition. And of course when someone says that, it’s clear that not a word of it is true. Meaning, not in whole and not in part. I have no doubt that Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was a very intelligent Jew and a great Torah scholar, did not believe a word of any of this. He said it the way the Chazon Ish said his exaggerations, because somehow he had to hold people firm against the Reform movement. And I judge him favorably when I say that.

[Speaker C] No, that whole article he wrote there about women, and that it’s metaphysical, existentialist—all that—you’re saying the Rabbi just said that from the outside, as it were.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t even occur to me that he really believed it. If he really believed it, that’s actually slander against him. I don’t know. I judge him favorably and assume he didn’t really believe it. It’s nonsense, it’s absurd.

[Speaker C] He wasn’t someone—he wasn’t someone who was afraid to say what he thought.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He definitely was someone who was afraid, and he was a great conservative, and he was a great fighter against the Reform movement, together with his innovations—he did have conceptual innovations, less in Jewish law perhaps, but more in outlook. What?

[Speaker C] The Haredim called him J.B. and all that, and rejected him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, J.B., because they didn’t like his views. Okay. The fact that the Haredim don’t constitute a very good measure of who is conservative and who isn’t. Anyone who isn’t like them is J.B. It doesn’t matter whether he’s too conservative or not conservative enough. He and his students are very conservative people in their halakhic outlook. Meaning, American Modern Orthodoxy—that is actually quite a Haredi society. They engage in all kinds of fields that Haredim in Israel don’t engage in, but in their basic conception of Jewish law they are Haredi in very many senses. A totally different level, of course. I’ve had bitter arguments with quite a few of them. At least from the old guard. I don’t know what’s going on there today. In any event, back to our subject: what basically lies behind this whole issue? As I said before, I think what lies behind it is the question: what is Torah? Because when I study this passage about the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date—and of course that presumption did not come down from Sinai, not remotely—that presumption was the Sages’ assessment of reality in their time, and that assessment is in principle correct even today. But I’m saying: it’s only an assessment of reality. Meaning, there could be a situation in which it would not be an accurate assessment of reality. And therefore—and they also did not learn it from Sinai. It’s not only that it isn’t binding; it also wasn’t learned from Sinai. It was learned from observing reality. And also the presumption “better to dwell as two than dwell alone” was learned from observing reality—an accurate observation, by the way. True, there is such a tendency among women and among men, that they want a relationship. That’s clear. The whole question is how far you stretch that. And how far you stretch it depends on the period and the time and the place. And also the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date—in principle there can be a situation in which that won’t hold, or will hold less. So there is nothing sacred here. Now the next question that I like to ask is this: up to here this is exactly what I also said regarding the presumption of “better to dwell as two.”

[Speaker E] What? Alon? Alon?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. Let’s mute here, I don’t understand what’s going on. So the next question I want to ask: suppose I live in a place where there is no such presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. People are awash in money, and if they once owed something they immediately pay it back, and they have no interest in keeping the money with them any longer because they have no business use for it. In short, they have no problem paying before the due date. Let’s say we live in some such utopia. Now then, as I said, the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date does not exist, does not hold. Every judge would agree. Or most judges would agree. Now the question is: what do I do with the passage in tractate Bava Batra, page 5, that deals with this presumption? Can I tear out page 5 and throw it in the trash? Not even into genizah. No? It’s no longer relevant, the whole story.

[Speaker B] No, it is relevant, because the Torah there teaches us that when there are disagreements, if one side has a presumption in its favor, then now you need to examine the content of the presumption as it fits reality, but the evidentiary rule is that when you have a presumption in your favor that is grounded in reality, the burden of proof shifts to the other side. Exactly. You say—but this isn’t my own wisdom, because I already heard the Rabbi say this in another lecture.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, I know, I’ve already talked about this in other series. In any case, what I really want to say—and you defined it well—is that the Gemara is not dealing with the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. That’s a common mistake. The Gemara is not dealing with that, and that presumption interests it not in the slightest. What the Gemara there is dealing with is the question: on whom do we place the burden of proof? That is the question. And that is not a factual question; it is a halakhic question. And what the Gemara says there is that ordinarily the burden of proof is on the claimant. Right? The current holder is the possessor, and the burden of proof is on the one trying to extract money from another—“the burden of proof rests on the claimant.” So certainly the starting point is that the burden of proof is on the claimant. The innovation of the Gemara there is that there can be situations in which there is a presumption in favor of the claimant, and then the burden of proof shifts to the defendant. This can be explained in two ways: either that the presumption itself is what meets the burden of proof—the claimant brought evidence, and that presumption is his evidence. Or that the presumption changes who is considered the possessor, and now the claimant is the one in the stronger position, and the burden of proof is on the defendant. Those are two formulations; there are some practical differences between them, but it doesn’t matter for our purposes, it’s less important. What the Gemara wants to teach is this halakhic principle. And it uses the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date as an example, to illustrate this halakhic principle. And the halakhic principle—that the burden of proof can reverse where there is a presumption—has nothing to do with reality at all. It is a general halakhic principle. And it is always true. What do I mean, always true? The Gemara is authoritative; if it determined this, then that is the Jewish law. And that is not touched. Now the question whether the presumption—the one they happened to use there in the Gemara simply because it was convenient for them—they used the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date because that was the presumption they used to show that the burden of proof reverses. Now the presumption has changed. So what does that mean? It means that indeed this particular presumption no longer exists, but the rule learned from that passage remains in place: that once there is a presumption—it doesn’t matter what it is, where it is, or what its content is—but once there is a presumption, it can reverse the burden of proof. And that is a principle that remains true always. That is the principle learned from the Gemara there, not the factual datum that a person does not repay before the due date.

[Speaker D] But a lot of the discussions in the Gemara are about the threshold required in order to rely on a presumption. Meaning, when they argue—isn’t it always, or at least often, an argument about reality, or about what reality is, where we stand?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How would I determine it? You’re talking about a situation where there is a dispute about a presumption. When there is a dispute about a presumption, that too—

[Speaker D] In that case, and also in the case—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —where there isn’t one. No, when there isn’t a dispute, then why do I care about the threshold? The Gemara assumes that the threshold was crossed there.

[Speaker D] Yes, but since the Gemara didn’t formulate what the threshold is in numbers that I can translate into today, I’ll still always ask: okay, I have a presumption, but does it meet the threshold of that presumption over there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so ask. And how will you answer it?

[Speaker D] So if I have some fixed continuity without logic—that what was will be—then I can continue it, but if I need to infer it myself, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that continuity is not logical.

[Speaker D] Okay, so from your standpoint it’s not logical, so I don’t know what is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then we answer it from your own reasoning—what can you do? The question is: what percentage is sufficiently probable for me to build a presumption on it? Decide—I don’t know. Whatever seems right in the eyes of the judge. But that still doesn’t come out of the Gemara there. That’s a decision the judge will have to make in his time and place. And therefore, in any event, that is not what comes out of the Gemara there. When there is a dispute about presumptions, you are right that very often the dispute—obviously—is about reality, but more precisely it is a dispute over what threshold determines reality. And if one person says there is a presumption and another says there is no presumption, the dispute may be a halakhic dispute, not a factual one. One says seventy percent is a presumption, and the other says no, only eighty percent and above is a presumption, and therefore in his opinion there is no presumption. Then that really is a halakhic dispute and not a factual one.

[Speaker D] And I can’t do anything with that dispute, because I can’t translate it into anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, correct, and therefore it also won’t change anything. But there you can say that really the dispute was not about facts but about the threshold. Here, though, not at all—here there isn’t even a dispute, so there’s no need to get into that whole story. The Gemara used a presumption that was agreed upon by everyone in its time and place in order to illustrate this halakhic principle. To illustrate a principle that is much broader than this particular presumption. And that principle is what we learn from the passage. Therefore, if I now broaden this further, I say the following: when I ask what the Torah element is in this Bava Batra passage—what is the Torah dimension that I learned from that passage—the answer should be: it is not the fact that there is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. That has nothing to do with Torah at all; it’s an assessment of reality. It doesn’t interest me at all. As it says in the Gemara—not that it says in the Gemara yes, people will notice, no, they won’t notice—that doesn’t interest me. I wouldn’t even call that Gemara study. Meaning, I would simply look at present-day reality and decide whether such a presumption exists or doesn’t. But I wouldn’t throw page 5 of Bava Batra in the trash, because one absolutely still needs to study it in order to learn the principle that a presumption can reverse the burden of proof. And of course, within the framework of that discussion, I will definitely also try to understand the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date as it was understood then, because that may help me understand what strength of presumption is needed to reverse the burden of proof, how that is determined. So it may be that I can even look for that when I try to understand better even the content of the presumption. But the question itself—whether there is a presumption or there isn’t a presumption—is really not an interesting question; that is not Torah. Those are facts. Torah is instruction; it is norm. Here we have a factual determination, and a factual determination is not Torah. Someone who learned the principle that a person does not repay before the due date has nothing over which to recite the blessing on Torah study. He is simply reciting the blessing on the study of psychology. That principle—that a person does not repay before the due date—can in principle be learned in a psychology lecture. There could well be a lecture in psychology, or economic psychology, telling people: look, we did such-and-such a survey, and eighty percent of people prefer to keep their money until the very end of the period they can keep it. Okay? And that could definitely be the content of a psychology lecture, or economics if you want, doesn’t matter—it’s the same thing, psychology and economics. So that thing obviously is not binding—not only not binding, it doesn’t justify reciting the blessing on Torah study. It isn’t Torah. So just because it’s written in the Gemara, does that therefore make it Torah? Facts categorically are not Torah. It makes no difference whether they are written in the Gemara or I’m learning them now in some scientific or psychological book, or hearing about them in a lecture, or whatever. Facts categorically are not Torah. That is a categorical statement. And therefore it presents second-order ruling in an even more absurd way when you do factual investigations. Because someone who rules second-order in factual inquiries—where exactly is he mistaken at root? He is mistaken in his conception of what Torah is. He thinks that the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date is a Torah determination, or alternatively that it came from Mount Sinai like Rabbi Soloveitchik said. And therefore, when you study it, you are studying Torah that was given to us at Sinai. Which is utter nonsense. Utter nonsense. And this thing is not Torah categorically. Even if it had been given at Sinai, by the way, it still would not be Torah. Because facts are not Torah. This is simply a category mistake; it isn’t a matter of policy whether you rule first-order or second-order. It’s a category mistake. You are simply learning from sources things that are not Torah. Would I learn medicine from the Gemara? Today no one even considers taking medical remedies from the Gemara and using them today against various illnesses. Thank God, we have apparently gotten past that foolishness. Okay?

[Speaker F] “The inclination of a person’s heart is evil from his youth”—that too is a page of psychology. Same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If psychology shows me that this isn’t true, then I’ll conclude it isn’t true. What to do with the verse, by the way? It’s a verse, not the Sages. What will I do with the verse? Fine, I don’t know—we’ll have to think about what to do with the verse.

[Speaker F] But that—and that—that’s the word of God, a fact—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that speaks—

[Speaker F] about human psychology.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I’ll have to think about what to do with that verse. But what isn’t true isn’t true; it won’t help me if the verse says it. It isn’t true. Now the question is, okay, what do we do with the verse? So I don’t know—I’ll give it some interpretation. It may be that a person was also given an evil inclination, and that doesn’t mean it is stronger than the good inclination, for example. You can offer all sorts of interpretations, you know. That’s why I don’t study the Hebrew Bible, because with biblical verses you can do whatever you want. But I’m saying even someone who does study it needs to understand what you can learn from it and how far you can force what you learn there onto reality. I don’t recommend forcing anything from the Hebrew Bible onto reality at all. By the way, including prophecies—like the example of the story of Rabbi Herzog and the rabbi from Brisk during the War of Independence. When the War of Independence began there in Jerusalem, there were rumors that the rabbi from Brisk was about to flee Jerusalem. Rabbi Herzog, who was the Chief Rabbi, feared that this would create demoralization, so he came to visit the rabbi from Brisk and ask him not to. And he said: don’t worry, they’re not going to defeat us here. And the rabbi from Brisk answered him: “And I have a tradition that when people are shooting, one runs away.” I think it’s a marvelous dialogue between those two Jews, because it so perfectly represents the two approaches. I just love that story. A wonderful story. I am of course completely with the rabbi from Brisk. The claim that Rabbi Herzog was imposing some tradition—by the way I have no idea where it was drawn from; it’s attributed, I don’t know, maybe to the Vilna Gaon, I don’t know exactly to whom—some tradition or other. All traditions with no source are attributed to the Vilna Gaon, I have no idea. In any event, there is some such tradition, and on that basis he was willing to risk his life. Meaning, on that basis—you need to understand—not only that, even if this tradition were correct, who says we are in the Third Temple era? The Temple, as far as I know, has not yet been built. And the fact that we returned to the land means we are in the Third Temple and this is an irreversible process? What, it’s obvious that the State of Israel cannot be destroyed? I wish I were convinced of that. I am very much not convinced of that, and lately even less so. Therefore, taking sources—not to mention dubious sources like tradition—but even verses, and drawing conclusions from them about reality, seems to me a deeply distorted and incorrect approach. It is a great mistake to do such a thing. Reality has its own rules; it is stubborn, it doesn’t like our theories, it usually kicks against them, and it’s worth being careful with it. Meaning, it’s not advisable to go head-to-head with reality; better to flow with it. That usually works better. Again, I’m not saying one shouldn’t have vision, and I’m not saying one may not take risks, and I’m not saying I’m with the rabbi from Brisk in the sense that I too would have fled Jerusalem. I’m with the rabbi from Brisk in the theological conception. I still think it would have been proper to stay there and fight. Fine, that’s another discussion. But it is not a metaphysical consideration that we were promised that nothing would happen. We weren’t promised anything. The Old City fell, right? In the War of Independence the Old City fell, and the people there were also killed and taken captive and so on. Where is this tradition that the Third Temple is not destroyed? How does that help the rabbi from Brisk? Does it mean his house also won’t be destroyed, even if we say—suppose—that it’s true that the state as a state won’t be destroyed? I don’t know on what basis people take these strange arguments. It’s hard for me also to accept that Rabbi Herzog really meant this. It may be that he used it in order to make the more practical argument: don’t demoralize us; we’re in a war. That’s a good argument. But from how they present that dialogue, I think Rabbi Herzog’s position there is bizarre. In any event, for our purposes: so what is Torah, then? Usually when we issue halakhic rulings, we basically have to clarify reality. I’ve already said this more than once: we need to clarify reality. After we understand what reality is, we apply to that reality a halakhic determination, the halakhic determination relevant to that particular reality—while of course with respect to that halakhic determination too there can be disputes. It’s not as if all disputes are only about reality and then all you have to do is check reality and close the matter. The halakhic clarification is also a clarification; there can be disagreements about it too, reasoning and sources and disputes. Yes, obviously, all true. But that is still stage two, and there perhaps there can be authority in the Gemara, or some such authority, or the Sanhedrin—there is authority, and it determines what the Jewish law is. Over reality there is no authority. And therefore, when we issue halakhic rulings, the process is a process of clarifying reality and then halakhic clarification that tells me which halakhic norm is implemented upon the reality that emerged from the factual clarification. Now pay close attention: if I go back to the presumption that a person repays before the due date—let’s try to isolate even more what exactly the Torah element here is. Look: that a person does not repay before the due date is not the Torah element here—that is a factual determination. But that the burden of proof falls on the defendant—that is a halakhic determination, that is the conclusion of the passage. And even that is not Torah. Why not? Because when I say that the burden of proof falls on the defendant, what I’m really saying is that because the presumption is that a person does not repay before the due date, and there is a principle that says that when there is a presumption it reverses the burden of proof, therefore the burden of proof has reversed and now rests on the defendant. That’s how the argument is built, right? Meaning, there is an argument. At the beginning there is a factual datum: the fact is that there is a presumption that a person does not repay before the due date. There is a principle that says that if there is a presumption, then the burden of proof reverses. That is a halakhic principle. And the conclusion is that in this case the burden of proof indeed reverses and rests on the defendant. The Torah element here is neither the factual premise nor the halakhic conclusion. Even that conclusion is not Torah. The Torah is the principle that takes me from the factual premise to the halakhic conclusion. And what is that principle? That when there is a presumption, it reverses the burden of proof. That—and only that—is the Torah in the passage. Because if reality were the opposite, then with the same Torah principle—that when there is a presumption the burden of proof reverses—but here there is no presumption, then the burden of proof would not reverse, right? So the question whether the burden of proof reverses or does not reverse is a question that is basically a reflection of the facts. That too is not Torah. With these facts, that will be the conclusion; with other facts, that will be the conclusion. Torah is only the link that says: with these facts, the Jewish law is this; with other facts, the Jewish law is that. That “if so, then so” is really the Torah in the matter. Or in other words—if I formulate this more generally—this is David Hume’s is-ought problem. Right? He says you cannot derive an ought from an is, the normative from the factual. So what does that mean? If I have a factual premise—say, women today are educated—conclusion: therefore women should be qualified for testimony. Right? So that is a factual premise and a normative halakhic conclusion. Therefore, if the premise is factual and the conclusion is normative, then obviously the argument is invalid, the argument is void. Why? Because in order to reach the conclusion that women are qualified for testimony, I need to assume that everyone who is educated is qualified for testimony. Or that women were once disqualified because they were not educated. Meaning, education is the parameter that determines qualification or disqualification for testimony. Then I already have a valid argument. If someone presents the argument this way—women today are educated; whoever is educated is qualified for testimony; conclusion: women today are qualified for testimony—that is indeed a valid argument. Why? Because that argument has two premises. One premise is a fact: women today are educated. The second premise is a premise that connects facts with norms: whoever is educated is qualified for testimony. “Educated” is the fact; “qualified for testimony” is the norm. That is the second premise. The conclusion is a norm: women are qualified for testimony today, okay? Suppose we accept the two premises. Now what does that really mean? It means that in an argument of this sort, the only thing that is Torah is the bridge principle. Not the fact and not the norm. The norm is just a reflection of the fact. There is nothing sacred in that norm. Let the fact be different, the norm will be different. The only thing that remains the same in all situations, in all realities, normative and factual, is the bridge principle. The principle that says that if someone is educated, then he is qualified for testimony. Or if there is a presumption, then the burden of proof reverses. Or if a woman does not consent, then the betrothal is void. But when does a woman not consent? Does a person repay before the due date? And so on. Or are women educated or not educated? Those are facts. And the outcomes as norms in themselves are also not Torah. Torah is basically a kind of pair of glasses, you could say—how one looks at reality. And when I put on those glasses and I see a reality in which there is a presumption, then through those glasses I understand that the burden of proof reverses. The Torah here is only the glasses. Not the result that the burden of proof reverses, and not the fact that there is a presumption here, but only the “if-then.” Not the “if” by itself and not the “then” by itself, but only the connection between “if” and “then” is Torah. Therefore, if we now take Torah as a kind of pair of glasses—I once heard from someone that Rabbi Tzadok defines Torah that way. I don’t know, I haven’t seen it inside, so I don’t know, but someone once said this in some Torah thought I heard. If I really look at Torah as glasses, then I’m basically saying that in every reality I encounter, I will apply these glasses, and whatever result comes out will come out. That will be the Jewish law. The Torah in the matter is the glasses. The result of seeing through the glasses is not Torah; that is the result, a reflection of reality. Only the glasses are Torah, and those glasses are valid for every reality, every place, every situation, and each time they will give me the result in accordance with the reality I am looking at. And this is somewhat similar—I compared it in another series—to logic. Rabbi?

[Speaker G] What? Can I ask? Yes, yes. Yes, I understand the Rabbi’s logic very well, I just don’t understand the goal—where exactly the Rabbi is trying to get to. Meaning, I understand that there is a presumption and in your view it is not Torah, and there is a conclusion and it also is not Torah, only the bridge is Torah. But I would not arrive at that bridge if I didn’t have the presumption and the conclusion. Meaning, it’s one whole process, one whole process that I need.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. When the Gemara tries to convey this bridge principle to you, it uses a particular presumption and through the bridge principle arrives at a particular halakhic conclusion. That’s true. So that is only the way of conveying the logical principle to you. They just use the example of a certain presumption. They could have used the example of the opposite presumption. What I learn from the Gemara is only the logical principle: that if there is a presumption, the burden of proof reverses. From that point on, I can erase the passage. Now I will look each time, and according to the presumption I will act accordingly.

[Speaker G] But I can’t erase the rest, because I have the bridge in the middle, but without what’s on the sides I wouldn’t understand the bridge. Meaning, everything here is necessary; this is one process, all of it necessary.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. That’s a didactic rule. It’s simply a didactic tool, and that’s fine. But a didactic tool is not Torah. It’s didactics—that’s how people teach. It’s like when they teach me arithmetic in elementary school; once they used to teach with beads, like an abacus or beads, whatever. You put two and three together, count, you get five. Okay? So I used the beads to teach the child that two plus three equals five. But in life he doesn’t need the beads; the beads are the didactic means. Now he already understands that two plus three equals five, and he’ll use that wherever he wants. So I’m saying that the presumption that a person does not repay before the due date is like the beads. It’s a didactic means. Yes, but still, even if it’s a didactic means, I need it. Meaning, if I didn’t—

[Speaker G] —have it, I wouldn’t learn, I wouldn’t learn this bridge.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not an interesting discussion. So you need it. What difference does it make?

[Speaker G] I’m asking what the Torah is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not asking whether you need it or don’t need it.

[Speaker G] No, but I’m saying that I need it in order to say that you can’t disqualify it as Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what are you talking about? Beads are mathematics? Beads aren’t mathematics; beads are plastic. They’re a tool I use in order to teach mathematics. And the fact that I need them—so what if I need them? It’s a didactic tool. If someone later invents another didactic tool, there’s no problem at all—throw this in the trash, use that other tool. And even if nobody invents another tool, then we have a technical problem because nobody invented another tool, but that still doesn’t turn didactics into Torah. Essentially it’s not Torah. And I’ll say again: if you could have learned in a psychology department that people do not repay within the allotted time, would you recite the blessing over Torah study for that? No. So if it’s written in Aramaic, then yes, you recite the blessing over Torah study? It’s the same thing. I compared it to very similar structures; let’s start with logic. I once needed this example in the past too. What did Aristotle do? Aristotle is considered the father of logic, in his Organon. Did Aristotle invent logic? Of course not. Not only did he not invent logic, I have no doubt that people before Aristotle also used logical rules. If you had said to a person before Aristotle: look, all frogs are green, this thing is a frog, therefore this thing is green—wouldn’t he have understood you? Of course he would. I have no doubt people made arguments like that even before Aristotle. So what did Aristotle invent? Aristotle was the first to understand that—let’s go back to the frogs—all frogs are green, this thing is a frog, therefore this thing is green. Now, until Aristotle, people never imagined that there was some kind of rule here; they just used that reasoning naturally when they studied zoology. When they dealt with plants or animals or something like that, or some taxonomy of something, then obviously they used that reasoning in all kinds of places, or in a legal context, in some scientific context or another. No one ever thought: let’s stop for a moment and look at the logic, at this rule itself, that if every X is Y and A is X, then A is Y—and it doesn’t matter what you put in place of A, X, and Y. In that form, apparently, nobody thought before Aristotle. That conceptualization is what Aristotle did. Now understand that in order to teach this, obviously I have to begin with examples involving frogs, or all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is… That’s the example they always use to clarify the idea of a logical syllogism. But does that mean that Socrates and being mortal are part of logic? What’s the connection? They use Socrates and the property of being mortal to demonstrate a logical principle. And what is the logical principle? The logical principle is when you abstract the facts entirely. Use variables. A, X, Y. And define the rule with A, X, Y in a completely formal way—then you’ve arrived at logic. When you substitute Socrates for A, human beings for X, and mortals for Y, you get a specific argument, which is not logic; it’s an argument in biology, that human beings are mortal, or that Socrates is mortal. But the logical structure, when I strip away the examples, that is logic. And Aristotle was the first genius who understood that these rules themselves could be a subject of study, of research. You can deal with logic itself; it’s a subject in its own right. Until then they used these logical rules without understanding that they were using rules; they just used them because everyone understood that it was true. But they used them when studying biology, when studying law, when studying I don’t know, poetics. Okay, all the fields Aristotle dealt with. But no one noticed that there was some field here that you could research and study in itself—the X’s and Y’s and A’s. And that conceptualization, that was Aristotle’s invention. And the moment he understood that there is such a field called logic, he didn’t invent the logical rules; rather, he understood that there are rules. Once he understood that there are such rules, the field of logic came into being. That field came into being after we abstracted away from all the examples to which I applied those rules, stripped away the examples, and understood that there is some rule here. And it’s the same rule in every context; you can use it in law, in biology, in poetics, in whatever you want, and it’s the same thing. And once I understood that there is something common to all these fields, it suddenly became an independent field. And that field is called logic, and to that, of course, we owe our entire modern world. Computers and all the things built on logic—we owe that to Aristotle’s conceptualization. Without him it never would have happened, no way. If we had not understood that there is such a field called logic and started investigating that field itself—not using logical rules when studying biology, but investigating logic itself as an independent field—then we wouldn’t have computers today. And we owe that to Aristotle’s conceptualization. This means that logic is not the premises and not the conclusion; it is the rule that moves me from the premises to the conclusion. Okay, do you see the analogy to what I said earlier about Torah? Torah is parallel to what, here? To logic. When we abstract this rule out of the specific passages in which it is applied, then we have arrived at Torah. That is basically Torah. And to say that Torah is the presumption that a person repays within the allotted time is roughly like saying that the statement that all human beings are mortal is logic. It’s not logic; it’s a statement in biology. Okay, now I—this is an example I like, so I’ll continue with it. I once thought of using this very same thing to explain another interesting point, something a bit against postmodernism, perhaps. The claim, basically, is why—yes, I asked why Bach is considered a musical genius and I am not. In case someone doesn’t know, I am not. Right? So why is Bach considered a musical genius and I am not? After all, it’s obvious—obvious to you—that I could create beings such that the crooked music I write would sound to them like something heavenly, the ideal music in their eyes. Right? You just have to organize their minds so that this is the most perfect music in their eyes. In reverse engineering, in principle, there’s no problem doing that. Given the music, create for me a person for whom this is the ideal music. I don’t see any principled problem with that; again, I’m not sure I know how to do it, but in principle such a thing can be done. There’s no problem at all. Okay? Today, actually, with AI I think you could even do that with no problem whatsoever. Just build an AI creature and teach it that this is the best music, and give everything else low scores in supervised learning, and you’ll immediately get a creature that values this music as genius-level music. There’s no problem creating that, basically. Today it’s really not a problem to do. Okay, so what’s the difference between Bach and me? So I too am basically a genius in music. The only difference is the question in whose eyes I’m a genius. Bach… Bach is a genius in the eyes of the human population familiar to us, at least the European one, and I am a genius in the eyes of a population that unfortunately was never created. Evolution has not yet reached such lofty levels as that. Okay, so what can you do? So Bach is lucky. So because of that he’s more of a genius than I am? Why am I to blame for his good luck? So the answer I give myself, because I’m not willing to accept that statement—a postmodern statement, yes? Multiple intelligences and all that; people would go crazy with delight over a statement like that. Everybody comes out a genius, there’s no more genius and less genius, everything is wonderful. There are only oppressed people, not weak people. So how do I explain to myself why that isn’t true? And it isn’t true. Because in my opinion, if I made the music and then by reverse engineering built human beings for whom this is genius music, that’s no great trick. Musical genius is taking given human beings and matching to them music that will sound heavenly or genius to them. That’s forward engineering. Reverse engineering is never a great feat. That is, to see the arrow and draw the target around it so that it lands in the middle—that’s very minor genius. The real genius is to shoot the arrow exactly into the middle of the target. And here it’s exactly the same thing. Therefore I assume that if Bach really was a genius, it’s not that by chance he landed exactly on the music that sounds to the European ear like the most genius music. It works the other way around. Because he was a genius, he understood the people standing before him and himself, and knew how to synthesize music—to compose, yes?—ideal music that would be genius music in their eyes. And that is real genius, objective genius. It’s not subjective genius. It’s objective genius. In principle, if I had produced for him human beings of another kind, I assume Bach would have succeeded in producing different music that would be genius in their eyes too. Because he really is a genius. Rabbi?

[Speaker G] Yes? What the Rabbi is explaining now with music, quite nicely, really reminds me of something less nice: that today a lot of rabbis and preachers use reality to justify their aspiration, their worldview, their way of seeing Torah. Like what happened on October seventh—many used that to justify their worldview.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Drawing the target around the arrow. Yes, exactly.

[Speaker G] That’s really it. Like, this is the beginning of the redemption, I don’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no reality that won’t fit their theory, that’s clear. It’s like communist literature; it’s exactly the same thing. In communist literature, there is a whole hagiography explaining how Lenin and Stalin foresaw all the innovations of physics, and whatever they didn’t foresee is Jewish and anti-Semitic physics and therefore worthless, counterrevolutionary physics and therefore worthless. And they explain it to you exactly the way they explain things at Har Hamor; it’s exactly the same thing. It’s communist literature in the strictest sense. I mean, with signs and wonders they show you, by letter skips in Lenin’s writings, the theory of relativity. I mean, this is—and I’ve read books like that, I even have one.

[Speaker F] It seems to me Bach wrote for himself. What? It seems to me Bach wrote what was beautiful for himself. I don’t think he was thinking about what would be beautiful for other people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, it doesn’t matter, for himself too—but he too is a human being.

[Speaker F] Yes, but he wrote it for himself. It just happened that that self was popular enough

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] for

[Speaker F] most of the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Try to create music that is genius in your own eyes. Maybe you can; I can’t. It’s not about other people, I’m talking about himself too. That too is genius. He himself is people. Human beings are built pretty similarly overall. So the assumption is that you write music for a given creature, not build the creature for a given piece of music.

[Speaker F] But today, people who write popular music, with the lowest common denominator, they specifically are not considered genius works. Fine. So the fact that you create something that fits most people’s taste…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re mixing levels. I’m not saying Bach was a genius because he was popular. Bach is not at all popular.

[Speaker F] How many people enjoy Bach’s music? I, for example, don’t. Wait, your definition is that it should be pleasant to most people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that it should be pleasant, but that it should be considered genius in people’s eyes—not that it should be pleasant. We’re talking about an intellectual judgment. In the eyes of all the people who understand music. Who are those people who understand music? How do they get that definition? What do you mean, how do they get it? I don’t understand. I mean, how do you decide that this person is a genius in music and another person… And you think there’s nothing to learn in musicology departments?

[Speaker F] Maybe he adapted himself to those people who just happen to be considered people in the… Good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone else couldn’t have adapted it that way. That’s why he’s a genius.

[Speaker F] But I don’t understand who decides who’s a genius and who isn’t a genius.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whoever can fit the arrow to the target and not the target to the arrow.

[Speaker F] No, who decides who’s a genius in the population that he can, like, point to?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whoever hits the mark. I mean, this is already getting into aesthetic judgments, really, or artistic ones. But you could say that Yossi Gispan is also a genius. Because he writes music that is indeed popular among a great many people. By the way, he probably really is a very talented person. Again, I don’t understand music, but he’s probably genuinely very talented musically. So I’m not getting into the question of what I call genius and what I call talent that is not genius. I’m willing to accept that Yossi Gispan is also a genius. I also don’t know how to do what he does. So he makes adaptations not in the intellectual sense to his audience, but in the popular sense. That too is a kind of talent or ability that most other people don’t have. I have no problem accepting that too. It doesn’t matter to me. But still, it’s not the same thing. That, I too can do: create a population of bots that will greatly enjoy my music. That I can do with no—nobody calls that genius. Just know a little bit of AI, nothing more.

[Speaker F] You don’t even need that. Today you know exactly what the winning formula is that appeals to the lowest common denominator, and then you produce those works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t belittle it, don’t belittle it. If it were like that…

[Speaker F] That’s what all pop creators do today.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true, not true.

[Speaker F] Yes, very, very formulaic… Not true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it were like that, then there’d be no problem, anyone could be a popular pop creator like, I don’t know, whoever you want. No, there are only a few like that. It’s not true. You’re belittling it too much. That too is a kind of talent, a real talent. Now again, to get into the nuances—I don’t understand music, so I can’t define for you why Bach is genius and these others are talent that isn’t genius. Maybe that too is genius, I don’t know. That’s already a question one can argue about. But there is clearly objective talent here. It’s not subjective talent. That’s the mistake of postmodernism. It’s not subjective talent; it’s objective talent. And in that sense it’s very similar to the definition—what I really want to claim is that just as Torah is really only the formal structure, not the specific contents with which I fill the structure, just as logic is only the formal structure and not the specific contents with which I fill the structure, so too musical ability is actually something like logic and Torah—not the specific contents. It is realized, of course, in a specific content, just as Jewish law in the end is realized in some concrete normative ruling—on whom the burden of proof lies, whether women are valid or invalid for testimony. But that is only an implementation of the Torah-based, logical, or musical ability. The ability itself is something abstract. And it is objective. It doesn’t depend on circumstances, it doesn’t depend on anything. There is no musical genius relative to one set of circumstances who is not a genius relative to another set of circumstances. Genius is something objective. That’s my claim. And therefore this very relativity that people talk about—what, it’s relative, in one population this is genius music, in another population that is genius music—that’s relative. But genius itself is absolute. A true genius will manage to create genius music both here and there. If he understands the people before him, he will know how to fit genius music to them.

[Speaker G] Rabbi, I’m trying to find examples of Jewish laws or halakhic rulings that were based on facts, basically, the way the Rabbi defines it. And the classic example that comes to mind right now is the second festival day in the Diaspora. Okay. How do you justify it? I mean, how was it justified in the past? Because until the information reached outside the Land of Israel they didn’t know when… Right. So today, when the fact has changed completely and we certainly know when it’s the festival, then why don’t we change it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It should be changed, obviously. It’s only a question of—only a question of authority, and even about that I’m not sure it has to remain. It’s only a question of authority. Authority of the Sanhedrin? Yes. Meaning, a matter established by a quorum requires another quorum to permit it, and even if the reason has ceased, the enactment does not lapse without another quorum that permits it. There’s a dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad whether it has to be greater in wisdom and number when the reason has ceased or not. But still, another quorum is needed to permit it. And therefore, ostensibly, there is a formal problem in abolishing the second festival day of the Diaspora. But I’m not sure that’s correct. In places where it is completely clear that this is the reason, the Rosh, for example, writes that it can be abolished. The Talmud itself says what the reason for this enactment is: “The Temple will soon be rebuilt.” That’s the reason. Now today I know that if the Temple is rebuilt—even if the Temple is rebuilt—within a second, on WhatsApp the whole world will know exactly when the month was sanctified. They won’t light signal fires on Sartava, I promise you. And they won’t send messengers either. So why should I care who rebuilds the Temple, what will happen when the Temple is rebuilt? There is no reason whatsoever for the second festival day of the Diaspora. It’s simply nonsense. And there is an argument over whether—do we have authority to abolish it, do we not have authority to abolish it. Now the Reform messed us up, and we remain rigid in many ways. I’m sure that without the Reform it would have been abolished long ago. The Reform are to blame for the fact that it won’t be abolished.

[Speaker G] And who, in principle, could have abolished it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Any halakhic decisor. Really, it’s just irrelevant, end of story, leave me alone for heaven’s sake. Okay, so let’s stop here. Comments or questions?

[Speaker H] I have a question, Rabbi. From everything you explained about what Torah is, that you said it’s the connection between the fact and the halakhic conclusion—so if we take, just as another example, the Torah principle of “the law of the kingdom is law,” is that Torah? Is that principle Torah? Is it the thing that bridges the fact?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why, let’s apply it to “the law of the kingdom is law.” “The law of the kingdom is law” basically says this: the legislature in Israel determined that a paid custodian is exempt from theft and loss, contrary to Jewish law. Fine? Since “the law of the kingdom is law,” therefore in Israel a paid custodian is halakhically exempt from theft and loss. So the factual claim is what the legislature did. The normative conclusion is that a paid custodian is halakhically exempt from theft and loss. “The law of the kingdom is law” is a bridging principle. Okay? Yes, thank you. Anyone else?

[Speaker C] Rabbi, regarding what the Rabbi said a bit about the Hebrew Bible, that it’s not exactly—what is the definition—so, for example, when the Torah says “and your desire shall be for your husband,” I mean, that’s what Rabbi Soloveitchik brings there, so for the Rabbi that has no meaning at all? Or, I mean, right, that’s supposed to be from the story of creation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No meaning at all? It’s a true fact. It’s a true fact, but it’s true not because it is written in the Torah; it’s true because I see it around me. If I didn’t see it around me, then I would say that this verse—I don’t know, I would interpret it non-literally.

[Speaker C] Okay, I mean, can’t you say that the Sages supposedly saw what stands in a person’s deeper psychology—is there something to that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That wouldn’t make it right. I don’t believe that. But I’ll say more than that: even if you believe that the Sages were genius psychologists and they saw down to the depths of psychology, that still doesn’t turn it into Torah. It only means that this is the correct psychology. So now when you go to the psychology department, study the Sages, not Freud and not Adler. Study the Sages. But it’s still psychology, it’s not Torah. Because facts are not Torah; it has nothing to do with whether they are true or not true. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, Sabbath peace. Good Shabbos.

[Speaker E] All the best.