Study and Halachic Ruling – Lesson 22
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Torah as bridge-principles between facts and conclusion
- Bekiut, in-depth analysis, and the order of study
- Examples of preferring in-depth analysis and extracting ideas from the sources
- Daf Yomi, Tikkun Leil Shavuot, and how much Torah there is in a given study
- Mishnah, Jewish law, and changing realities
- Studying Jewish law as preparation for a commandment and the attitude toward Rabbi Ovadia’s approach
- Compulsion, fulfillment of a commandment, and the Ben Ish Chai anecdote
- The swimsuit parable and changes in Jewish law as an argument over the “if-then”
- First-order ruling, second-order ruling, and the relation to bridge-principles
- Studying disputes without deciding, and the weight of a decision
- Weakness in systematic thinking in the yeshiva world
- Back-and-forth between definitions and the passage, and criticism of “what and not why”
- Scriptural decrees, intuitions, and sacred offerings and purity laws
- Yeshiva as a tool for study: the debate between Rabbi Kreiswirth and Rabbi Michel Zilber
- Criticism of “a scholar is someone who studies” and of Daf Yomi culture
- Professionalism versus flashes of brilliance: Rabbi Lichtenstein and the lack of systematic method
- Group arrogance, the Steipler, and methodological literature
- Clarification about Newton and competing explanations
Summary
General overview
The speaker defines Torah as the “bridge” principles that connect factual premises to halakhic conclusions, not as the facts themselves and not as the bottom-line rulings of Jewish law. He argues that broad-coverage study, memorizing texts, and deriving laws without extracting the underlying principles is not Torah study in the essential sense, whereas in-depth analysis is where those principles are extracted and therefore it is the heart of Torah. From this he proposes reversing the conventional order and giving priority to “first understanding, and only afterward memorizing,” and he connects this as well to the question of first-order versus second-order halakhic ruling, to the question of how to view the study of Jewish law as preparation for commandments, and to his criticism of the weakness of systematic thinking in the yeshiva world despite its preoccupation with in-depth study.
Torah as bridge-principles between facts and conclusion
The speaker states that Torah is neither the premises nor the conclusions, but rather the principle that explains how one moves from premise to conclusion. He illustrates this with the presumption that a person does not repay a debt before its due date: the fact is an empirical one, and the conclusion is that someone who claims “I repaid within the term” is not believed, but the Torah here is the principle that when there is a presumption, it changes the burden of proof and can shift it from the claimant to the defendant. He argues that books of Jewish law and the Talmud tend to write down the premise and the conclusion, while the bridge-principle itself usually is not written explicitly and must be extracted through in-depth study.
Bekiut, in-depth analysis, and the order of study
The speaker argues that only in-depth study is Torah study in the essential sense, whereas broad-coverage study mainly deals with the parts of the structure that are not Torah, namely the written premises and conclusions. He explains that one can understand the advice “first memorize, then reason” as a recommendation to acquire knowledge in order to enable analysis, but he believes that in our time the proper order is the reverse—“first reason, then memorize”—because someone skilled in analysis will quickly identify the underlying principles even when studying broadly. He states that someone who knows the entire Talmud by heart without understanding the principles behind the lines does not know “a gram of Torah,” and that there is no point in investing the main resources of memory in rote repetition when one can remember the ideas and reconstruct the sources when needed.
Examples of preferring in-depth analysis and extracting ideas from the sources
The speaker tells of an experiment by a lecturer in yeshiva in which students could not answer a question even though their finger was resting on the exact place in the Talmud where the answer appeared, because the answer is not in the wording but in what stands behind it. He cites Rabbi Shlomo Zalman as saying that when a possible line of thought from Tosafot in Bava Kama comes to mind regarding a question about the Sabbath, it is not because he mentally runs through the whole Talmud, but because already while learning he extracted a principled implication and retained it. He describes Rabbi Ovadia as exceptional in his powers of memory, and argues that ordinary people need to focus on extracting principles rather than holding every line by heart.
Daf Yomi, Tikkun Leil Shavuot, and how much Torah there is in a given study
The speaker estimates that Daf Yomi study can contain Torah to the extent that the lecturer seeks general principles and implications across tractates and all the way to contemporary practical rulings, and in this context he mentions Professor Yaakov Spiegel and Rabbi Udi Schwartz. He states that technical recitation of the text without understanding is neglect of Torah study, and he presents Tikkun Leil Shavuot as a classic example of such recitation, saying that the Jewish people “make a point of neglecting Torah study every Shavuot night.” He emphasizes that reality is not black and white and that even in broad-coverage study there is usually some dimension of understanding; the question is how close the learner is to the pole of broad coverage and how close to the pole of in-depth analysis.
Mishnah, Jewish law, and changing realities
The speaker explains that even a Mishnah such as “one who sold the house sold the courtyard” is not itself Torah, because it rests on assumptions about human intention and about the relationship between a house and a courtyard that may change in a different society and at a different time, so that even the halakhic ruling itself is not necessarily fixed. He states that Torah is the understanding of the premise and the principle behind the ruling, not the wording of the law itself.
Studying Jewish law as preparation for a commandment and the attitude toward Rabbi Ovadia’s approach
The speaker states that study undertaken in order to know how to behave is study of Jewish law and not Torah study, and he defines it as preparation for a commandment rather than as the commandment of Torah study. He brings proof from women, who are exempt from Torah study but are still obligated to know what to do, and concludes that studying the laws necessary for performing commandments is not Torah study but practical preparation. He emphasizes that one should not belittle preparation for a commandment, but one should identify the category correctly, and he describes Rabbi Ovadia’s approach as focused on the “bottom lines” of Jewish law and as emblematic of an approach that does not accept his own conception.
Compulsion, fulfillment of a commandment, and the Ben Ish Chai anecdote
The speaker cites a responsum of the Ben Ish Chai recounting that the Baghdad community used rounded phylacteries that were considered invalid, and the Ben Ish Chai argues that it cannot be that they did not fulfill the commandment of phylacteries, and therefore they did fulfill it. The speaker disagrees and argues that they did not actually fulfill it, but were inadvertent sinners or acting under compulsion, and he cites the principle that “one under compulsion is considered as one who did not act,” along with the dispute between Reish Lakish and Rabbi Yohanan regarding a bill of divorce contingent on arrival within twelve months.
The swimsuit parable and changes in Jewish law as an argument over the “if-then”
The speaker uses a swimsuit parable to argue that two sides can be equally faithful to tradition and yet disagree over its meaning: whether the tradition is always to wear swimsuits or rather to match one’s clothing to the weather. He analyzes that the facts may be agreed upon while the conclusions differ because of a dispute over the bridge-principle, and therefore the real argument is over the “if-then,” which is the Torah component. He states that there are almost no arguments about facts, and that most halakhic disputes reflect a deeper disagreement about bridge-principles, while practical Jewish law is the result of the Torah on which the ruling is based.
First-order ruling, second-order ruling, and the relation to bridge-principles
The speaker says that correct halakhic ruling is not copying a bottom line from the Shulchan Arukh, but ruling in light of the bridge-principles, and he sharpens the point by saying that one can extract the bridge-principles from the Shulchan Arukh and rule accordingly and still be a second-order decisor. He states that the relation is one-way: a first-order decisor always needs bridge-principles, but not everyone who uses bridge-principles is a first-order decisor. He identifies the conceptual scholar with the decisor and says that the study of Jewish law is the conclusions that emerge from in-depth study.
Studying disputes without deciding, and the weight of a decision
The speaker defines clarifying the approaches and bridge-principles of different sides as Torah study, because these are “valid facets,” in the spirit of “fifty reasons to declare pure and fifty reasons to declare impure,” and he argues that both Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel say things that are true. He agrees that an actual decision adds another Torah layer because it assigns weights to the different sides, and one who refrains from deciding leaves out part of the structure. He notes that one who remains at the “second-order” level and makes a mechanical decision is missing an important Torah component, even though the clarification itself is still Torah.
Weakness in systematic thinking in the yeshiva world
The speaker says he is surprised that married yeshiva students and yeshiva bochurim, even the most brilliant among them, are weak in systematic thinking despite the fact that in-depth study should cultivate it. He points to a weakness in defining concepts, and argues that people see sharp formulation of concepts as a waste of time even though formulation is precisely what exposes imprecision and non-trivial implications. He compares this to mathematics, where insistence on definitions can seem irritating but clarifies the picture and prevents entanglements.
Back-and-forth between definitions and the passage, and criticism of “what and not why”
The speaker states that conceptual work is not linear but a back-and-forth movement: one begins with a priori definitions, enters the passage, returns to the definitions, and corrects them as needed. He criticizes the Brisker approach of “what and not why,” arguing that this is an illusion because there is no “what” without “why,” and he points out that the writings of Rabbi Chaim are in practice full of “why.” He illustrates this through the series 3, 5, 7, showing that one cannot know the next number without understanding the principle behind the series, and he explains that the choice of generalization depends on logic and not only on data.
Scriptural decrees, intuitions, and sacred offerings and purity laws
The speaker argues that even in areas perceived as scriptural decrees there are intuitions that guide what counts as a correct definition and what does not, even if they are hard to formulate. He explains that the ability to reject an explanation as “illogical” even when it accounts for the cases points to an intuitive sense of right and wrong. He presents this as an explanation for why even in the laws of ritual impurity and purity there are deep layers beyond superficial understanding.
Yeshiva as a tool for study: the debate between Rabbi Kreiswirth and Rabbi Michel Zilber
The speaker describes a “Ma’atrei Shevi’i” dinner at which Rabbi Kreiswirth delivered a lesson made up of quotations by heart from beginning to end and presented it as a “demonstration” of the goal of broad mastery, while criticizing yeshivot that invest a whole year in ten to fifteen pages. He brings Rabbi Michel Zilber’s response, in which he argued that the role of yeshiva is to impart the skills of in-depth study and not scope, and that scope can be attained over the rest of one’s life after acquiring the tools. He describes an experiment he conducted in Yeruham of one page a day in in-depth study in order to show that one can quickly reach the central conceptual points, and he argues that the mistake is to devote eighty percent of the time to twenty percent of the material instead of the reverse.
Criticism of “a scholar is someone who studies” and of Daf Yomi culture
The speaker states that yeshiva is meant to teach how to learn and not merely “to learn,” because conceptual tools save one’s Torah study for an entire lifetime. He cites a yeshiva joke about the closing formula “and saying this will help forgetting” as a caricature of study in which each page causes the previous one to be forgotten, until one reaches the end in order to forget the final page as well. He argues that the joke captures a real point about rapid study that does not produce memory of principles.
Professionalism versus flashes of brilliance: Rabbi Lichtenstein and the lack of systematic method
The speaker recounts a conversation with a rosh yeshiva who claimed that Rabbi Lichtenstein’s writings are “basic” compared to married yeshiva students in Bnei Brak, and he replies that this comparison is childish because the advantage lies in professionalism, order, and presenting a complete picture of the topic rather than staging a show of brilliant questions and answers. He tells a story about the Beit HaLevi criticizing Rabbi Chaim for “dry” lessons without the drama of questions and answers, and explains that the dryness comes from professionally organizing the possibilities and practical ramifications. He argues that a culture of “being brilliant” can replace systematic exhaustion of the topic, and that this is another example of the absence of systematic thinking despite the abundance of brilliance.
Group arrogance, the Steipler, and methodological literature
The speaker agrees with a participant’s claim about group arrogance in the yeshiva world, expressed in the confidence that there is nothing to learn from outside because “we rely on Rabbi Chaim, on Rabbi Akiva Eiger, on Ketzot.” He quotes the spirit of the Steipler’s words in Chayei Olam as an attitude that dismisses outside philosophical questions on the assumption that the Torah greats have already solved everything. He notes a gap between the clarity of Kehillot Yaakov in its novellae and its statements in the realm of thought, and he speaks of his appreciation for Rabbi Amiel’s books in their systematic dimension even though he does not agree with his analyses, while criticizing Atvan DeOraita and Lekach Tov and the connections that seem to him “too light.”
Clarification about Newton and competing explanations
The speaker addresses a question about his comments in Coffee of Opinion regarding the possibility of accepting a religious explanation and a physiological explanation together, and clarifies that such a possibility exists at the logical level, but in the example of theology versus physics, in his opinion, it is not possible. He says that the matter requires a more precise analysis of the kinds of overlap between explanations, and he refers the audience to the fourth gate of the second book in the quartet.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so today I want to go over—or really first of all to complete—what we did last time. I spoke a bit about the question of second-order halakhic ruling regarding facts, and I said that this question is really tied to understanding what is even defined as Torah. What is Torah? And the claim was that Torah is not the premises and not the conclusion, but the bridge-principles that carry us from the premises to the conclusion. In the example of the presumption that a person does not repay within the set time, then the fact that a person does not repay within the set time is of course a fact. The conclusion—that therefore a person who claims “I repaid within the term” is not believed—that is the conclusion. And Torah is neither this nor that. Torah is the principle that carries me from one to the other. In our case, the principle that says that if there is a presumption, this changes—or transfers—the burden of proof; it can transfer the burden of proof from the claimant to the defendant. That is the principle. The only thing that is Torah in this whole structure is the bridge-principle. Meaning: not the premise and not the conclusion, although you have to understand—I may not have sharpened this enough last time—that in books of Jewish law, usually it is דווקא the bridge-principle that they do not write. They write the premise and they write the conclusion. For example, they write that there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the set time—that they may write. And they write that if a person claims “I repaid within the term,” then he is not believed. That too they write. A law book will write these two things. These two things are exactly the two out of the three that are not Torah. You have to understand. What is written in books of Jewish law is, by definition—almost by definition—the part that is not Torah in this whole story. Torah is that principle that stands behind the connection between the two things written in the law book, between the principle that there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the set time and his credibility to claim that he repaid within the set time. And really the Torah in this matter is only the principle that says that if there is a presumption, then credibility is nullified, or then the burden of proof shifts. That is precisely what is not written there. You usually extract that through in-depth analysis of the Talmudic passage. And that is a very important point, because a lot of times people hesitate: should one study broadly, should one study in depth, how much value does this Torah study have, how much value does that Torah study have? In the Talmud it says: first one should memorize, and afterward understand—meaning first acquire knowledge, and then develop the reasoning. The way I have presented things here, this whole thing is one big mistake. Because only in-depth study is Torah study. Broad-coverage study is not Torah study at all. It is not Torah study because in broad-coverage study we learn what is written in the Talmud. But what is written in the Talmud is exactly those things that are not Torah. It is the factual premise that there is a presumption that a person does not repay within the set time, and the halakhic conclusion that a person who claimed repayment within the set time is not believed. That is what you will find in the Talmud. When we study the passage in depth, we understand that what stands behind this is a principle: when there is a presumption, the burden of proof can change. It can move from one party to the other, from the claimant to the defendant. Okay? Now the only thing here that is Torah is what we extract in in-depth study.
[Speaker C] But Rabbi, here you’re assuming that they’re advising people to study broadly in order to study Torah. Really, it could be interpreted as simply advising broad study so that we’ll be sufficiently learned to study in depth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s perfectly fine. I have no criticism of the advice itself to study broadly. Studying broadly is certainly something that can help people, because you need knowledge in order to begin analyzing. Although I think in our day that is much less true, but never mind—on the principled level, I think that in our time it should be first understand and then memorize. In other words, first you need to study in depth, and only after that can you study broadly. In another moment maybe I’ll come back to that. But beyond that question, these pieces of advice in themselves may have a place in one context or another. I’m talking about the fundamental conception. And at the level of fundamental conception, I’m claiming that when you study broadly, you are not studying Torah. If you know the entire Talmud by heart, you do not know a gram of Torah. As long as you do not understand the principles that stand behind the bottom lines written in the Talmud or in books of Jewish law and the like, then basically you have not reached the Torah dimension within this whole story. You’ve reached the flesh, or the medium through which the ideas that are Torah are transmitted to us. But that medium is only a means through which the ideas pass to us; the ideas are the Torah. And in that sense this goes much further than what I said before about ruling from the first order or the second order. Here we are talking about the definition of what Torah is at all. People don’t understand what Torah is. And when we discuss the question of how to learn and what to learn and so on, many times we need to take into account something that nobody ever takes into account: what is even called Torah? Beyond the question of what will help me, and how much value there is in it and so on, first there is the fundamental question: what in this whole story is Torah at all? Okay, that is also an important question when we come to decide how and what to study. Okay? And that question is not asked. Because for everybody it is obvious that when you study Talmud, you are studying Torah. Meaning, if you quote the Gemara, learn it by heart, you studied Torah. No—in my opinion, no. I think I once brought this up, I told you once, I think, about an experiment my shiur lecturer did in Bnei Brak. I used to study in yeshiva until noon, and then I would travel to Bar-Ilan University to study there. So once I happened to have the afternoon free, and I stayed in yeshiva in the afternoon too. So he said to me, come see what you’re missing. He took me on a tour between the tables—what they do here in the afternoons, since I’m not in yeshiva then. So we came over to some pair studying as a havruta, saw which passage they were working on, and the rabbi asked them: tell me, what is the law in such-and-such a case? And they look around in panic, searching, digging, checking, thinking, hesitating, discussing, trying here, trying there—they couldn’t find the answer. So my rabbi said to them: your finger was resting in the Talmud exactly on the place where the answer is written. Only what? The answer isn’t really written in the sentence of the Talmud; the answer is written if you think about what stands behind that sentence in the Talmud. And basically by that he wanted to demonstrate to me what I’m missing—or not missing—from not being in yeshiva in the afternoon. Because the afternoon was devoted to broad-coverage study; in the morning they studied in depth. And the afternoon, in short, is neglect of Torah study—you can go to the university, that was the claim. Or what would be even better from his perspective, of course, would be to study in depth in the afternoon too. But on the principled level that was the lesson. He told me he had studied in Kol Torah under Rabbi Shlomo Zalman. And he said that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman once told them: how do you think it is that when I think about a question in the laws of the Sabbath, suddenly some preliminary suggestion from Tosafot in Bava Kama comes to mind? What, every time I think about a question I run the entire Talmud with the medieval authorities (Rishonim) through my head? Absolutely not. Rather, when I studied that Tosafot in Bava Kama, already there I thought that some implication could emerge from it for questions of this and that kind. If you think well about what the initial proposal was, what the conclusion was, what they are—then I can learn from Tosafot’s initial proposal an idea that will remain valid even in the conclusion, an idea that can illuminate halakhic questions of this or that kind. And I made note of it on the side, and moved on to the next Tosafot. When I encounter that kind of question, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman told them, that Tosafot jumps into my mind, because I already wrote in my head—yes, I wrote next to that Tosafot—that from there one can bring proof, or resolve questions, of this and that type. And when you learn the material in the Talmud properly and extract the Torah in each thing, then you don’t need to remember by heart everything that is written. You understand that that kind of idea is there. You don’t even remember exactly how and what—when you get there, you’ll extract it again. And then it can jump into your mind anywhere you need to make use of it. Think about someone who studies broadly: if he encountered that same question Rabbi Shlomo Zalman encountered, he would have to go through the entire Talmud with Rashi and Tosafot, let’s say, for the sake of the discussion—or with all the medieval authorities if you like—and in every place think whether from there one can derive the answer to the question he’s dealing with. You understand that this means devoting roughly a hundred lifetimes to every question that comes to you. That work has to be done when you study the Tosafot, not when the question is asked. When you study the Tosafot or the Talmud, try to think what the idea behind it really is. When you think about what idea stands behind the material, remember that. Forget all the other things. Remember that. At most just note that it comes out of that Tosafot. Later, when you get to the Tosafot, you’ll be able to extract it again if you need to. But if you already have to remember one thing—and yes, Rabbi Ovadia is a mutation—but ordinary people cannot remember the entire Talmud with Rashi and Tosafot and all—yes, not only that, but responsa and medieval authorities and later authorities and everything. So ordinary mortal human beings: learn what the ideas are that stand behind the material, and remember those, not what is written in the Talmud. That was the lesson he really wanted to teach me then. And if I translate it into the language I speak today, then I would say: basically, that is the dimension that is the Torah in the learning. Remember that, because it is really important, and it can illuminate other situations, questions of a completely different kind, where it would never occur to you that that Tosafot or that passage is even connected to the question you are dealing with. If you didn’t already think about it when you were engaged with them, usually you won’t make that connection. And therefore it is much more correct to engage in in-depth study and to remember the analytical conclusions, and not to invest time in memorizing broadly and doing endless, frustrated review over and over in order not to forget. That doesn’t hurt—it can of course help—but it is the less important thing. That is exactly where I would not invest most of my energy. And that is what I said earlier: the Talmud says first memorize and then understand; it seems to me that today—it was my shiur lecturer who told me this—he thinks that today it’s a rather far-reaching statement from a Ponevezh person, right? He said that today, in his opinion, the right thing is first understand and then memorize. Meaning, you should begin by studying in depth, and only afterward move to broad study. And why? Because if you are skilled in in-depth learning, then when you come to a passage and study it broadly, you will get pretty quickly to what stands behind the passage. And therefore in that situation broad study does have value, because you will reach the things that are Torah—in the language I’m using now—the things that are Torah and the things you need to carry with you or remember from the passage you studied. But if you put broad study before in-depth study, what you can do is learn the entire Talmud by heart. You don’t know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, you don’t know how to isolate the really important things that one needs to pay attention to and that will also serve you later. Therefore, in my opinion—and I join his opinion—the order should be first in-depth analysis and afterward broad study. Now of course it’s not black and white. You need some broad familiarity in order to know the Talmud, to see how things go and so on. But at the principled level, meaning once you can already study Talmud, then the right order is first in-depth analysis and afterward broad study, not the reverse. That’s my opinion—again, it also depends on people’s inclinations and abilities and forms of thinking—but generally, if I had to give a broad recommendation, I think first in-depth analysis and afterward broad study. Rabbi, and regarding after you become skilled in in-depth study—yes? Yes.
[Speaker D] So basically, what value does the rabbi assign to Daf Yomi study?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A rather sad question. Let’s say maybe during that hour of the day they’re not neglecting Torah study.
[Speaker C] Or joining all the Jewish people together. Okay,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, he meant…
[Speaker D] No, but can one say that the rabbi’s conclusion is that it’s not Torah study?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, in essential terms. Look, it’s never black and white. When you study a passage, yes, you do have some idea of what stands behind the material even when you study broadly—unless you are literally learning like a parrot, just memorizing the Talmud by heart, and that is not Torah study at all. But if you understand it at some level, fine, then that is the dimension of Torah you have there. But the more deeply you go, the more you increase and expand the Torah you derive from the passage. At the principled level, to learn the order of the page—what Rava said and what Rav answered, and what the question was and what the answer was and what this is—and to know it all by heart, that is not Torah study in my opinion.
[Speaker C] So Rabbi, just to make sure I understood correctly: basically you’re saying that if, for example, you learn the Mishnah “one who sold the house sold the courtyard,” that itself is not Torah—it may only be Jewish law—and the thing that is Torah is the thing that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure that it’s even Jewish law, because under different real-life circumstances the halakhic ruling itself might also change. The assumption behind the ruling that one who sells the house also sold the courtyard—there is some assumption here about human intention, or an assumption about the relationship between a house and a courtyard. But that assumption can change in a different society, in a different place, at a different time, and then the ruling will be different. So it’s not even necessarily Jewish law, but it certainly is not Torah, because you need to understand what stands behind the rule that if you sold a house, you also sold the courtyard—what assumption is really lying behind the statement. That is Torah.
[Speaker E] I participate in two Daf Yomi classes, one in person and one on Zoom or YouTube. In both of them, the lecturers are looking for the general principles, the implications from tractate to tractate, all the way to practical rulings today. Not that I became a Torah scholar from this, but that’s what the lecturers are trying to do—Professor Yaakov Spiegel and Rabbi Udi Schwartz. That’s what they’re trying to convey, to the extent that I can absorb it. One hundred percent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and that’s why I said earlier that it’s not black and white. When people do Daf Yomi or study broadly, there is always some level, some dimension, of understanding. You’re not learning it like a parrot. So therefore there is always some Torah study there. The whole question is how much Torah. How significant is what you derive from there? And certainly, if there is someone who places more emphasis on the understandings behind the material—excellent—then it is more and more Torah. It is clear that this statement is a statement—let’s call it principled. Yes, at the principled level. If you just recite like a parrot what everyone says—yes, like the Tikkun people say on Shavuot night, right? That is a classic example of neglecting Torah study. The Jewish people make sure to neglect Torah study every Shavuot night, and also not to sleep for the sake of that neglect of Torah study. And why? Because what they do there is simply recite or read, like prayer, some passages from various parts of the Torah, and that’s it. You don’t know what that “repairs,” but Torah study it is not.
[Speaker C] For certain people it isn’t neglect of Torah study—for them that’s what they’re able to do. So it’s either that or go to sleep.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s still neglect of Torah study, but if that’s what they can do, then maybe they simply can’t study Torah. Fine, what can you do. But that still doesn’t mean that what they are doing is Torah study. It only means they can’t study Torah. That reminds me of—there’s a responsum of the Ben Ish Chai, where he writes there in Sod Yesharim, section 6 I think, he tells the story that his grandfather was the rabbi of Baghdad, just as he was, right? But his grandfather too was the rabbi of Baghdad. And once an Ashkenazi emissary came there to collect money, as is the way of Ashkenazim—he came there to collect money, okay? And at some stage he prayed with them in the morning and so on, he stayed with them for a while, and this emissary suddenly saw that all the phylactery boxes in the whole community were rounded. They were not squared sharply, which invalidates the phylacteries. So he came to the grandfather of the Ben Ish Chai—this is how the Ben Ish Chai writes—he came to his grandfather and said to him, tell me, the phylacteries here are invalid. Now he himself had not been aware of this issue. They sat together and studied the passage—I don’t know exactly what—and indeed reached the conclusion that he was right. In short, the glorious Baghdad community had not put on phylacteries for generations. Entire generations, a whole community—they were people who never put on phylacteries. They had put on invalid phylacteries. So the Ben Ish Chai asks there: could such a thing be? That an entire community did not fulfill the commandment of phylacteries? And he indeed makes there a very far-reaching claim. It doesn’t sound logical to me at all, but that’s what he says. He says: yes, they did fulfill the commandment of phylacteries. It cannot be that they didn’t fulfill the commandment of phylacteries. I—apropos what I said earlier, yes, what you said, that they can’t study in-depth—I think they did not fulfill the commandment of phylacteries; they were only under compulsion. Fine, okay, inadvertent, under compulsion, they are not guilty. But you can’t say they fulfilled the commandment of phylacteries. Does compulsion mean that you acted? We say one under compulsion is considered as one who did not act; we do not say one under compulsion is considered as one who did act. That is a dispute between Reish Lakish and Rabbi Yohanan. Right, so a person who gave his wife a bill of divorce on condition that he not arrive within twelve months, and he was prevented and did not come—he was coerced, they did not let him come—then the claim is that compulsion is not like acting. In the end, he did not arrive, what can you do. True, he was under compulsion, it’s not his fault, fine—but arrive he did not. So in short—fine, that’s just an anecdote. For our purposes, what I really want to claim is that first-order learning and ruling—and in light of the expansion I made last time—really projects onto the question of what Torah is at all. This has a lot of implications. People are not really aware of this, don’t understand it—again, they probably don’t agree with me—but that is my conception. I am very emphatic about this conception: sometimes people simply are not studying Torah at all. Meaning, they are busy with things and everyone is very sure they are investing a lot of time and so on, and they are not really studying Torah. Or they are not studying Torah in an exhaustive way. Again, there is always some level of understanding; there is no such thing as study without understanding. But still, one has to understand that telling you to study broadly is really telling you to study less Torah. That is the principle. Sometimes you need it. In certain situations where you still need the broad study in order to advance on the analytical level, no problem, one can debate that—but that is still preparation for a commandment. It does not make it Torah. It is preparation for a commandment that cannot be done without, but that still does not make it Torah. There’s another story I’m remembering now. Once, when I was in Bnei Brak, I participated in a framework called Ma’atrei Shevi’i. A certain Jew named Boimerind, some energetic young kollel fellow, had this initiative—throughout the country there were groups that studied on weekends. Each time there were these sorts of world-saving learning sessions. They studied from Thursday night until Saturday night. They had to accumulate a certain number of hours, received stipends, and so on. And they learned four folios each weekend. Then after three weeks, in the fourth week they would review the twelve folios. So twelve folios a month; after three months, in the fourth month they review thirty-six folios, and so on. And this is how they went on, covering tractates and taking exams on them and so forth. I hadn’t gotten to study Kodashim, so I joined them for Zevachim and Menachot. That was somehow how I managed to begin touching Zevachim and Menachot. There were groups all over the country, and once a year he would make a dinner. What was nice there was that the dinner was not for donors; the dinner was for the participants. Meaning, for the people who took part in this framework. So once I was there and he brought in Rabbi Kreiswirth—that rabbi from Belgium, right? He had been a student of the Rogatchover, an astonishing genius. And there was Rabbi Michel Zilber. Rabbi Kreiswirth had already passed away later; even then he was almost a hundred years old, and Michel Zilber was much younger. And both of them spoke there, gave a lesson, a talk, at that dinner, that banquet. Rabbi Kreiswirth began. And Rabbi Kreiswirth put on a display there that I will never forget for the rest of my life—it was like the giving of the Torah itself. Meaning, he stood there for an hour, something like an hour, and spoke at the pace of machine-gun fire, without holding a page in his hand. And what he did the whole time was quote Talmudic passages from beginning to end. Rashi on the third wide line from the top—bang—and he quotes the whole Rashi. Moves to the Rashba, moves to the Talmud, Tosafot, Talmud here, Talmud there, without holding a scrap of paper in his hand. Nothing. All by heart, at an explosive pace, for a full hour. By the end of the hour our heads were spinning just from hearing it. I don’t know how he managed to say it, but our heads were spinning from hearing it. And then at the end of the hour he said to us: look, you probably think I’m doing this to impress you. When he finished the lesson, he said no. This—he didn’t use military language—but this is basically a demonstration. I came to show you where you need to get to. That’s my goal. And then he spoke about how absurd it is that in yeshivot they invest an entire year in ten, fifteen pages, and then how will you know the Talmud afterward? With the medieval authorities? You won’t know anything. A few years in yeshiva, and you come out a young Torah scholar and an ignoramus by Torah law. How can one develop or grow in Torah that way? That’s how he ended. And it really was a blow to the skull, especially for me, as someone who very much believes in in-depth study. But his goal, of course, was to strengthen the Ma’atrei Shevi’i program, which is broad study, study with greater output and so on. Then Rabbi Michel Zilber stood up—he could have been his son or maybe even grandson—and said: with all due respect to Rabbi Kreiswirth, I must disagree. He banged on the lectern and said: I must disagree. And by the way, Rabbi Michel Zilber was, I think, the first Daf Yomi lecturer. He gave it in recorded lessons on cassette tapes that used to be passed from place to place, back in the tape era. It would circulate—he would record Daf Yomi classes and they would pass around on tapes to various places, before all the electronic media and the internet and mp3s and all the other things. But there he spoke in exactly the opposite direction, not in the direction of broad coverage. And he said that he does not accept Rabbi Kreiswirth’s criticism because that is not the role of yeshivot. The role of yeshivot is to train people in in-depth learning, to impart the skills of in-depth study. That is the role of yeshiva. And you are in yeshiva for several years, where the goal is not to acquire scope—absolutely not. For that you have your whole life. In Bnei Brak, where you remain in kollel your whole life—or even if not, never mind—then do it at a slower pace. But for that you have your whole life. What you need to do in yeshiva is acquire tools for in-depth learning. That is what needs to be done. And if that is done over ten or fifteen pages a year, so what. If that’s what is needed, then do it at that pace. The main thing is that you internalize, or learn, or receive the skill of analytical study and analysis. Afterward, once you acquire those tools and reach a good level, now you can study your whole life. And then of course you also need to cover material and know the entire Talmud—everything he said is correct. But first of all you need to acquire the tools. And the assumption behind what he said—and I strongly identify with what he said there—the assumption behind it is that the yeshiva is not at the beginning of the road for nothing. After you acquire the analytical tools, you really can run, as Rabbi Kreiswirth said. That you…
[Speaker C] You’ll run through passages—just one second,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] so that you can run through topics pretty quickly, you won’t need much time to understand the analytical focal points behind what’s going on in the passage. And therefore you can already allow yourself to study for breadth, or to study more quickly. One more sentence for a moment: once, in Yeruham, I did two summer terms, and I ran an experiment with the guys. I told them, look, let’s learn one page a day in depth. But really in depth, completely in depth, one page a day — meaning three folios a week or something like that. And over the course of a summer term you can cover, I don’t know, forty folios, fifty folios, however much it came out to, something like that. One time, I think, we finished all of tractate Berakhot, and the second time we finished the second half of Gittin, from chapter six onward. Okay? In genuine in-depth study. I really tried to show them that you can finish an entire page containing several analytical topics in one class of an hour and a half. But I’m only telling them the main analytical points, without giving them all the distinctions among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and without getting into fine textual nuances and all kinds of things like that. But overall, we touch on all the points, such that even if you stayed another week on that passage, not much would be added. Maybe details, maybe more distinctions, but in broad terms you can get to the core principles very quickly if you’re skilled in in-depth learning. And in that sense I think this was a very, very important lesson, because it was a kind of hint as to what they’re supposed to do later in life. Once you’re already analytically skilled, you really can move faster. And the problem, as Michal Zilber said, is that people learn their whole lives the way they learned in yeshiva, at the same pace and in the same way, and that really isn’t right. What comes afterward has to be done at a different pace, because you’re already skilled and you can get to the analytical points pretty quickly. And my claim there was that this is basically the 80–20 rule. Right? We devote eighty percent of the time to twenty percent of the material. And that’s a mistake. Devote twenty percent of the time to the first eighty percent of the material, and then move on. That’s perfectly fine. Afterward, on the second pass, on the second round, try to complete the remaining percentages, or you’ll get there by other means. But you can reach eighty percent of the material in twenty percent of the time if you’re skilled. Everything after that is already resolving this difficulty, making that distinction. So yes, I’m not belittling it — it’s important — but that’s already the ironing, the final ironing of the passage. The principles, you can reach them pretty quickly. And I think that’s a very important lesson, and it’s connected to what I defined earlier as the definition of Torah. What is Torah. Right, there was a comment earlier.
[Speaker C] Yes, maybe you’ve heard the saying that a thief isn’t someone who knows how to steal, but someone who steals? So too, a scholar isn’t someone who knows how to learn, but someone who learns. Okay, so usually we say that yeshiva isn’t really a place to learn how to learn, but just a place to learn, period.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s the mistake. A big mistake. In yeshiva you learn how to learn, besides the fact that the passages you studied — you do also learn them, right? You study them in depth. But the goal is not at all to acquire the knowledge you get there, but the analytical tools. And why? Because once you have those tools, you’ll be able to learn your whole life. So you pay a price: for a few years you really do learn less, but it trains you so that your whole life — and there too, again, you are learning, because you’re learning in depth — but you don’t cover a lot of material. Yet it’s training that will save your learning for your whole life. And if you don’t do this, then your whole life you won’t learn. Not that your whole life you’ll be learning instead of learning how to learn. No — you won’t learn your whole life, because you don’t know how to learn. And that’s exactly the point. That statement, or the application of that statement, basically ignores exactly this point of what Torah is. You spend your whole life learning the passages, but you’re not really — that’s not called learning. You go through lots of pages. Right, these are the jokes about Daf Yomi — you know the joke? At the end of a tractate there’s the formula for completion: “Let one say this, and it will help against forgetting.” Know it? You’re supposed to say that, and it will help, right, so that you won’t forget. So in yeshivot the joke goes like this: after all, in yeshivot they never finish, right? Who finishes a tractate? Nobody finishes a tractate. It’s the householders who finish tractates. So in yeshivot the joke goes like this: what do you mean, “let one say this and it will help against forgetting”? It should help memory — what does “help against forgetting” mean? So the answer is this: when you study page 3, you forget page 2 — Daf Yomi. You study page 4, you forget page 3; study page 5, forget page 4. How will you forget the last page of the tractate? There’s no page after it. “Let one say this and it will help against forgetting” means that if you say this, it will help you forget the last page too, and then you can make a completion celebration in the most meticulous way, right? You finished the tractate — finished it in the literal sense, meaning you wiped it out through the last page and beyond. Okay, so of course these are jokes, and a bit nasty even, but there’s something to them, as
[Speaker F] every good joke does.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good jokes usually do have something to them, even if they’re nasty, or maybe especially if they’re nasty. If there’s nothing there, it’s not funny. If something is funny, that means it caught a true point, like a caricature. A caricature greatly exaggerates, but it exaggerates something real. If it just did something random that wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be a caricature, it would just be nonsense. Okay, back to our matter. That’s regarding…
[Speaker B] But just to clarify: the study of Jewish law specifically — that doesn’t fall within this category at all? Where does that fit here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What you call “the study of Jewish law”? I don’t recognize such a concept as “the study of Jewish law.” Every study is the study of Jewish law. When you study a passage, it should end with the halakhic conclusions of the passage.
[Speaker B] Okay, so someone who studies for breadth can still at least get to that? I didn’t understand. Even at a superficial level, if you study for breadth and, say, even learn a page a day, you can still come away with some laws you pick up along the way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah — that’s not Torah study, right? You can get there, certainly; that’s what you’re engaged in. Say you study the Shulchan Arukh with the commentaries, in order to know what to do. That’s not Torah study; that’s the study of Jewish law.
[Speaker B] Why doesn’t that enter the category of “if-then”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because there’s no if-then there. In the Shulchan Arukh you won’t find an if-then anywhere. No — you can extract an if-then from it. In the Shulchan Arukh you’ll never find a sentence like, “If there is a legal presumption, then the burden of proof shifts from the plaintiff to the defendant.” You won’t find such a sentence. What you’ll find is that there is a presumption that a person does not pay before the due date, or that a person who claims within the due date that he already paid is not believed. Actually in the Talmudic text it appears more, because in the Talmudic text there is still give-and-take, there are discussions. So in the Talmudic text…
[Speaker B] What if a person sees a law, say, that produce on which water was placed, and that it was with his intention, is fit to receive impurity. That’s it — that’s what he understood and he moved on. Isn’t there some kind of if-then there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s fine — that is the if-then. In receiving impurity there isn’t something beyond that, at least I’m not able to find something beyond that. If liquid falls on something and thereby renders it fit to receive impurity, fine — that is definitely a halakhic principle. Now, the halakhic conclusion is that a tomato that got wet with orange juice can receive impurity. That’s not Torah. Because the Torah there is that when you have food on which liquids have fallen, then it is rendered fit to receive impurity.
[Speaker B] And that can also be understood on a superficial level? Meaning, you can say he understood the if-then even at a superficial level of this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. Although even there there are deeper layers.
[Speaker B] Right, right, exactly — if there weren’t layers, I wouldn’t be pointing to anything. I’m saying that there are layers, and certainly already on the superficial layer, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In everything, not just here. In everything. I can’t imagine a person learning without understanding anything. Obviously he has some level of understanding beyond the literal meaning of the sentence he learned. Therefore there is always some dimension of Torah; you shouldn’t run away with what I’m saying. I described two extremes here, or two poles, but clearly these are theoretical poles, not actual poles. In practice, anyone who learns, learns with some understanding. The whole question is how close he is to the pole of breadth-study that I defined as not Torah, and how close he is to the pole of in-depth study. So wherever he is in between — that’s the measure of Torah that he is learning. Okay? It’s not — obviously I’m not claiming that everyone who participates in a Daf Yomi class is neglecting Torah study. There are some who are.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, if I’m not mistaken, Rabbi Ovadia’s approach really was that for householders, and not for yeshiva students, the idea is specifically to study only Jewish law, or to begin with Jewish law, so that we know how to conduct ourselves day to day.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But Rabbi Ovadia, I think, is almost the symbol of someone who does not agree with what I’m saying here. Rabbi Ovadia and those who follow his approach, his sons or whoever, understand that the goal of study is basically Jewish law. The bottom lines — that, for them, is Torah.
[Speaker D] Okay, so that’s what I’m trying to understand. Why doesn’t the Rabbi agree with that, basically? Why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It
[Speaker D] means that when a person wants — when a person takes a Shulchan Arukh or, I don’t know, Yalkut Yosef, in the end he wants to know how to behave according to Jewish law. How is that not considered Torah study?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying: knowing how to behave is perfectly fine. But that is not Torah study. That is the study of Jewish law. I spoke about this — we had it here too, in this series as well — not long ago, about rabbinic laws, and there I went more into the issue of the distinction between Jewish law and Torah. I have two — you can read on the site — in two columns, 582 and 583. You can see there a somewhat more intricate discussion of the…
[Speaker D] So if it’s not Torah study, then what is it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That one who errs in rabbinic law?
[Speaker B] It’s preparation for a commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s preparation for a commandment.
[Speaker D] No, wait, wait — if it’s not Torah study, it’s preparation for a commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It’s preparation for a commandment because you study in order to know what to do. I brought several proofs for this. For example, women are obligated to learn this kind of learning too, right? In order to know what to do. But women are exempt from Torah study. So how can that be? If this were Torah study, then women would be obligated in Torah study exactly like me and you. They also need to know what to do. The question is…
[Speaker D] whether there is some hierarchy here, what’s preferable to do and what’s preferable to start with.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning no, not a hierarchy. Not a hierarchy. It’s not Torah. Not that it’s lesser Torah — it isn’t Torah.
[Speaker C] So what do you say to someone just starting out?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I say: Rabbi Ovadia says otherwise. Don’t rely on me. If I convinced you, I convinced you, and if not, then not. But that’s my claim.
[Speaker C] So for a person who’s starting, do you tell him to study in depth, or to study Jewish law so that he knows what to do?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You need to study a bit — no, Jewish law is something else; it’s to know what to do. It’s unrelated to Torah study. It’s not that the two compete with each other. You need to learn in order to know what to do, and you need to learn Torah. Two things, both things.
[Speaker C] But right now he has one hour a day. He’s debating what to study and what not to.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I don’t know. It may be that first of all he needs to learn what to do. But then he is neglecting Torah study — though he’ll know what to do. That’s unrelated.
[Speaker D] When he studies Jewish law, is that called neglecting Torah study? What? When he studies Jewish law, is that called neglect?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you study — when you engage in preparations for a commandment, that’s not neglecting Torah study. When you build a sukkah, is that neglecting Torah study? No. When you build a sukkah, is that neglecting Torah study? Leave building aside — when you sit in the sukkah, is that neglecting Torah study? No. You’re fulfilling a commandment, what do you mean? You’re obligated to sit in the sukkah. Now obviously, in order to sit in the sukkah, you also need to build it, right? And not only do you need to build it; you also need to learn the laws relevant to building the sukkah. All those are preparations for a commandment. When you engage in them, you are exempt from Torah study, because you need to know what to do. That’s perfectly fine.
[Speaker D] Exactly, but when I engage in preparation for a commandment, am I fulfilling a commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. According to Maimonides maybe yes; there’s some discussion about that. Because one who is engaged in preparation for a commandment is exempt from the commandment — some want to claim that preparation for a commandment is actually the beginning of fulfilling the commandment itself. But the simple understanding is: building a sukkah is not a commandment; sitting in the sukkah is the commandment.
[Speaker D] So then, what the Rabbi is saying, supposedly, is that not only is learning the laws not Torah study, it’s also not a commandment,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because it’s only preparation for a commandment. Yes. But why should it be a commandment? Which commandment would it be? If it’s not the commandment of Torah study, then what commandment would it be? The commandment of sitting in a sukkah? The commandment of sitting in a sukkah is to sit in the sukkah, not to build the sukkah.
[Speaker D] No, no — again, I’ve gone back now to the study of Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I’m also talking about the study of Jewish law. Yes. Which commandment do you want it to be? I didn’t understand. If it’s the commandment of Torah study, that’s the previous debate. I argued that it isn’t, but again, many argue that it is. Almost everyone argues that it is. Fine? So that’s one thing. But if you accept my conception that it isn’t the commandment of Torah study, then what commandment would it be? There is no other commandment. It’s preparation for a commandment, in order to know what to do. It’s not something to belittle. Preparations for commandments are very important. Without them, you can’t fulfill the commandments. But you need to know the category it belongs to. Period. Yes. Rabbi?
[Speaker G] Maybe what the Rabbi is saying can be explained by analogy — I don’t think it’s really an analogy, it’s the same thing, but let’s say according to the Rabbi it’s an analogy. If we were talking about the study of ethics, right? A person wants to study ethics, but if he learns only the “what needs to be done” — you have to obey traffic laws, don’t go through a red light — but he has no understanding at all of the psychological aspect of the matter, no connection to it, doesn’t understand it and also isn’t trying to understand it, then obviously we’d say: you’re not studying ethics, you’re learning some rules of conduct so that you don’t get traffic tickets, but that’s not the study of ethics. So by analogy, or not by analogy, so too in Torah study. If you
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] study only the Jewish law, then yes, you need to do that, but it doesn’t really relate to Torah study. Why exactly — that’s an interesting analogy. I need to think about it a bit. I’m not entirely sure about the analogy, because the question is whether the study of ethics has value, or whether the value is only ethical behavior — you only need to learn in order to know how to behave.
[Speaker G] But according to the Rabbi, ethics alongside Jewish law is certainly the will of God, so the Rabbi doesn’t dismiss the study of ethics as something important for a person who serves God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you’re talking about it through Torah lenses, then certainly you’re right. Through Torah lenses, then obviously — you’re learning the will of God, that’s clear. But if — I was now thinking you meant to make an analogy from what people would say outside the Torah world, just…
[Speaker G] No, no, I’m not talking about secular humanistic ethics. I mean ethics from our perspective.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, I agree.
[Speaker B] I think there’s room to distinguish between, say, ethics or things for which we have logic, like civil laws — there really there’s a difference between the case and the if-then. But in things that are, say, a scriptural decree, where our logic doesn’t fully grasp them except only on the level of the rule — so where does the if-then begin, and where, sorry, where does the merely particular case begin, and when does it become an if-then? Is there some definition we can hold onto here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll say a few things about that. First of all, there’s a difference between definition and rationale. Meaning: when you examine the definition of the laws of purity and impurity — I think I mentioned once why the Briskers so love sacrificial law and purity law. They mainly study sacrificial law and purity law, because there we have no intuitive reasoning. Meaning, the Brisker ideology is that they ask “what” and not “why.” And in other areas of Torah, we have some intuitions about what the why is. Therefore very quickly we slide into questions that, in Brisker terms, are illegitimate — that’s not part of our Torah study, because we need to ask only what is written in the Torah and not why. Why — that’s scriptural rationale; we don’t deal with that. In sacrificial law and purity law it’s easy to conduct oneself that way, because we don’t have any intuitive understandings there, any intuitive reasoning. Rather, it’s all just data, and we play with mathematics or logic. So there it’s wonderful, because there you can ask what without why. That’s why they mostly deal with sacrificial law and purity law. But of course that’s an illusion. Why is it an illusion? Because there is no what without why. If you don’t know the why, you also don’t know the what. And when you look at every little piece of Rabbi Chaim, which analyzes the “what” in quotation marks, it’s full of why. Full of why. Okay? You can’t define what the category is according to Maimonides and what the category is according to the Raavad — whether it’s a law in the object or a law in the person, or here or there — without trying to understand the why. After all, how do you know how to define the law if you have no idea what concept stands behind it? Generalizations — you can make generalizations in… yes, the classic example I give for this is: three, five, seven — what is the next number in the series? After three, five, and seven? Like on a psychometric test. What’s the next number?
[Speaker B] Seventeen and a third.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so some here already know it, but there’s a simpler answer here, a simpler demonstration. You can say nine, because they’re odd numbers. You can say eleven, because they’re primes. Three, five, seven — nine isn’t prime. Three, five, seven, and eleven. In other words, if in the series three, five, seven, you don’t know whether it’s the series of prime numbers or the series of odd numbers, then you don’t really know what series is before you. And one indication of that is that you won’t be able to write the next number in the series. Therefore, to claim that I deal only with the what and not with the why is nonsense. There’s no such thing — the what derives from the why. If you don’t know the why, how will you know the what? Why do you decide that the generalization is this one and not that one? Because this seems logical to you and that doesn’t. Meaning that your logic is involved even in those areas where it seems to you that you have no logic. And here I come to the answer to your question. In sacrificial law and purity law, or in areas called scriptural decrees, we definitely do have intuitions. There too. We definitely have intuitions. It’s just that those intuitions are often hard for us to formulate, and clearly they don’t connect for us to harming another person, or preserving an orderly society, or the things we’re very used to. But we do have an intuition of how — what the correct definition is for the cases we’ve seen, and what would be an incorrect definition. There are definitions you hear in sacrificial law and purity law and you say: no, that’s not the definition, even though it also accounts for all the cases. Yes, but it’s not right, it’s not logical. That’s not the definition. What that really means is that even in these scriptural-decree areas we have some intuitions. They are often not conceptualized, not formulated, but they exist. We do understand something behind these things. And therefore, when we look at receiving impurity, fitness to receive impurity, or questions of that kind, there is some dimension of understanding behind that as well. Even there, although at first glance these seem like things completely detached from our world. The fact that there are valid lines of reasoning and invalid lines of reasoning even in sacrificial law and purity law — someone can come and offer an argument that explains the very principle we’re discussing, and I offer a different argument. Fine, but if it explains all the facts, then the story is over, isn’t it? Then there are two arguments, and we have no way to decide who is right. But no, we do. I have a feeling that I’m right and you’re not. What is that feeling based on? After all, both of us explain all the cases. It’s based on the fact that we have some intuitive grasp of what is right and wrong even in these areas. Okay, so I want to move on. So in essence that is the meaning of the concept Torah. Maybe one more small addition on this matter — this took me much longer than I planned. One more small addition on this matter: when we spoke in other series about changes in Jewish law, for example the swimsuit parable, that too is connected to this definition that I gave here, this definition of Torah. What exactly does the swimsuit parable say? That you want to — suppose there is such a tradition: a group of people is walking in swimsuits in the desert, and at some stage they reach a cold area. Then one subgroup says: we continue walking in swimsuits because the tradition of our forefathers is in our hands. Just as they walked in swimsuits, so we too will continue walking in swimsuits, even though we’ll be cold. Another group says no — just as our forefathers walked with clothing suited to the weather, we too will go with clothing suited to the weather, and therefore we’ll dress warmly. But they dress warmly not because they can’t be bothered to be cold, or because they’re unfaithful to tradition, but because they’re faithful to a different interpretation they give to the tradition. The tradition is not that one must walk in swimsuits; the tradition is that one must walk in clothing suited to the weather. And we have a dispute over what the tradition means — it’s an interpretive dispute. But once each side formulates its position regarding what the tradition says, these two groups are equally faithful to the tradition; they only disagree about what the tradition says. I’m saying this briefly because we already discussed it in other series, and I assume most or all of you already know it. If you look a bit at the logic of this matter, you’ll see that in fact the dispute between these two groups is a dispute over the Torah component within the tradition. The tradition doesn’t say to walk in a swimsuit in the desert, and it also doesn’t say to walk in warm clothes or in a swimsuit in the cold region. What the tradition says is only the if-then. If the weather is such-and-such, then wear clothing suited to the weather. And now the given fact will be that the weather is such-and-such, and the halakhic conclusion will be what kind of clothing one should wear. But the Torah aspect of it is not the factual assumption about the weather, nor the conclusion about what clothing to wear, but rather the rule that says the clothing should suit the weather — or that the clothing should not suit the weather and should always be a swimsuit, whatever. But the dispute here is precisely about that component, which is the Torah component in the matter. And this dispute has implications in the conclusions, because the premises are shared. The weather is cold according to everyone; it was hot and now it’s cold — that is true according to everyone. There’s no dispute about facts. So where is the dispute? The dispute is about the bridging principle, about the if-then. There are those who claim that the bridging principle is a fixed function, and one always wears a swimsuit regardless of the circumstances of the weather, and there are those who say no — clothing should suit the weather. So the dispute is about the bridging principle. The practical consequence of the dispute is that we disagree about what to do in practice — whether to wear a swimsuit or warm clothing. But the Torah aspect of it is not that now the weather is hot — or that the weather is cold, sorry — and not that now this group should wear a swimsuit or the other group warm clothing, but rather the if-then. That is the Torah aspect, and the dispute is there. The dispute is over the Torah. Therefore disputes about changes, disputes about interpretation — all disputes, everything that belongs to the field of in-depth study, the essence of in-depth study, the main thing, the core of in-depth study — all of that is the Torah component of the matter. Always. All the definitions we propose, all the disputes we have, are not disputes about facts; there are almost no disputes about facts. In most cases these are disputes about bridging principles, which of course ultimately also generate disputes in Jewish law, in the halakhic conclusion, because each bridging principle yields a different halakhic conclusion from the same facts, since the bridging principle determines what conclusion will emerge from those same facts. So we have a halakhic dispute that in fact is fundamentally a dispute about a bridging principle, and the halakhic dispute reflects a Torah dispute. The dispute in Jewish law is not. Of the Torah conception that I advocate. Okay, so the discussion of changes in Jewish law, or interpretive disputes in general and the like — all these things, whichever way you look at them, you always arrive at the same point: the core of the matter is the if-then principles. That is the Torah aspect. There are of course implications, but those are implications; they are not the real thing. Okay, now I want to move one step further, and now enter a bit more into the meaning of first-order reasoning. So I spoke about second-order reasoning in facts; from that we arrived at the definition of what Torah is and how one ought to issue rulings, of course. One ought to issue rulings in light of the bridging principles, and not by copying the bottom line from the Shulchan Arukh, because the bottom line is not really the right thing at all. Rather, one should rule in light of the bridging principles. And of course, regarding the bridging principles themselves, one can ask whether to adopt the bridging principles of the Shulchan Arukh and be a second-order decisor, or to formulate bridging principles that are accepted by me and be a first-order decisor. And the fact that I need bridging principles does not necessarily mean that I am a first-order decisor, but a first-order decisor always needs bridging principles. That is true. Not everyone who needs bridging principles is a first-order decisor. He can extract the bridging principles of the Shulchan Arukh and rule according to the Shulchan Arukh, and then he is a second-order decisor even though he needs bridging principles or analytical reasoning. So that’s the difference. In other words, the connection between needing bridging principles, or the Torah aspect of the matter, and first-order ruling is a one-way connection. Meaning: a first-order decisor will always need bridging principles. A decisor who needs bridging principles is not always a first-order decisor, or a first-order scholar — not necessarily a decisor; for me, scholar and decisor are the same thing. The study of Jewish law and in-depth study are the same study itself. When is it Jewish law? It’s simply the conclusions that came out of my in-depth study. That is what is called the study of Jewish law. Okay, so now I want to enter another aspect of first-order reasoning.
[Speaker F] Rabbi, the Rabbi just mentioned the difference between a scholar and a decisor. There are many scholars who study bridging principles but without issuing rulings. Meaning, they raise all kinds of possible bridging principles, but they say: this is also right, that is also right, we’re not… So what kind of learning is that? Is it really Torah study? You know how to lay out the spectrum without putting your own head on the line?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even though it is not “to study the discussion toward the Jewish law,” it is still Torah study. Why? Because again — maybe not in this series, I think in other series I spoke about this — when there is a dispute, certainly among the greatest halakhic decisors, the medieval authorities (Rishonim), the Amoraim, and so on — meaning people who are truly capable, who know how to learn — none of them is talking nonsense. And when I search for so-and-so’s bridging principle and define it, and search for so-and-so’s bridging principle and define it, I have arrived at correct things, and both things are correct. In the end, one has to weigh and arrive at a halakhic bottom line. But it is not that clarifying the different positions is not Torah study — it certainly is Torah study, because I am reaching valid facets. One hundred fifty reasons to declare pure and one hundred fifty reasons to declare impure — but it’s all true. Both what the House of Shammai says and what the House of Hillel says is true. Only in the end…
[Speaker F] But when you rule, you’re forced…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m asking if
[Speaker F] when a decisor is forced to decide among the different possibilities, doesn’t he have some additional understanding on the side — in the side because of which he ruled — that he won’t reach, and if he doesn’t rule then in fact he doesn’t really have the understanding, maybe the last meter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the Torah study is incomplete. Because complete Torah study is “to study the discussion toward the Jewish law.” And “to study the discussion toward the Jewish law” does not mean to learn in-depth in the morning, say whatever you want, and learn Mishnah Berurah in the evening in order to know what to do. That is exactly not Torah study of “to study the discussion toward the Jewish law.” “To study the discussion toward the Jewish law” means to study the passage from morning to evening with its halakhic conclusions, including those of the Mishnah Berurah, because that’s the important way to learn — but in the end to reach your own conclusion, and that is the halakhic conclusion for you.
[Speaker F] What I mean is, when I study a dispute between Abaye and Rava — I don’t know, object and person — and I know how to do this Brisker inquiry, and I sort of think I’ve done something, and then they ask me, tell me, what’s your opinion? What am I supposed to do, put my head between two great Amoraim? But the two Amoraim did know how to put their heads on the line. Meaning, Abaye said I’m sure I’m right, and Rava said I’m sure I’m right. So apparently they understood something you haven’t even touched, because you, that scholar, supposedly don’t really
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] have
[Speaker F] any opinion on the matter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the part I said is missing in this kind of learning. Right, you’re completely right. That’s the missing part. The decision is definitely another layer in the Torah structure that you are building. Because in the end, that is what leads you to the bottom line. And those weightings are definitely part of Torah. Clearly. And someone who does not engage in that, and remains on the second order and just does lotteries or I don’t know, follows the majority or things like that — then that part of the learning is missing for him. But I’m only claiming that the clarification done in yeshivot is Torah study even though they don’t finish it with a ruling. It is Torah study, because we clarify sides that are true sides. Yes, that’s what I spoke about in this series too, actually. Okay, so I want to move one more step regarding ruling and first-order learning, and that brings me to a question or point that came up in some meeting I had here at home. A young Haredi couple was here, and we spoke about various matters, but among other things in the conversation this point came up. He’s interested in philosophy too and additional areas and so on, and he’s debating how to enter those fields and the like. During the conversation I told them that every time I’m surprised anew to discover the problem that yeshiva students and kollel fellows have with systematic thinking — it’s surprising to an astonishing degree, every single time. And why? Because it seems to me that if there is any field on earth in which I would expect a person who deals with it a lot to be a world champion in systematic thinking, it is in-depth study of the Talmudic text. This is really a field made for that sort of thing: define concepts, build the structure, try to sharpen from statements what stands behind them. It really seems to me that everything involved in in-depth study is just exposing systems or working with systematic tools. And for some reason I keep discovering again and again that kollel fellows and rabbis — doesn’t matter — and also yeshiva students and so on, are very weak in systematic thinking. And I don’t — I don’t understand it. More than that, I’ll say: I’m talking also about the brightest among them, the brilliant people, people who can give you a brilliant difficulty, a brilliant answer, brilliant connections — they too. What’s the problem? So I tried to define for myself what exactly is missing, what I don’t find in the typical graduate of the yeshiva world. What is missing there in systematic thought? So there are several things; I’ll try to demonstrate them too. But first I just want to say: the first thing that’s missing is the definition of concepts. For some reason, although ostensibly many people deal in defining concepts in in-depth study, the issue of defining concepts is very weak in the yeshiva world. And more than that — and by the way, this characterizes many people not used to systematic thinking — when you try to define concepts well, people look at it as a waste of time. Fine, I understand the concept — come on, why do you now need to formulate precise sentences that define the concept? You do need that. Because once you formulate it, suddenly you see that there are nontrivial points there, and the applications are not nearly as simple as they seemed to you, even though the concept is intuitive and you understand it. But after you formulate it well, you’ll see that the formulation has implications. It’s not just formulating things I already knew anyway. It starts from things that I know intuitively; I try to conceptualize them, define them, formulate them. But after I formulate them, I suddenly discover that what I thought intuitively was not complete or not precise, and I suddenly see that the whole business is more subtle than I thought. And many times — you know — that is basically what mathematicians do. Mathematicians, that is their craft: systematic thinking. And many times you see that when mathematicians define a concept or formulate a principle or something like that, they are careful about every tiny detail and so on, and you tear your hair out in frustration. Who has the strength for all this nagging? Fine, I understand what a point is, what a line is, what a triangle is — why do you now need to invest ten minutes in defining a triangle or a point or a dimension or I don’t know what, or a graph — yes, the Potocki graph. It looks like a waste of time, but it turns out not to be. Once you define things very well, you suddenly see that the definition helps clarify the picture enormously. A great many complications that you’ll have, even if you’re a brilliant person, a great many complications that you’ll have will become unnecessary if you do this initial conceptual analysis, define the concepts properly.
[Speaker C] But if you define the concepts before you study the passage, then you walk into a trap. Because every rule has an exception.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re right, you’re right that this thing is not linear. It’s back and forth. You have to define the concepts, enter the topic, examine what you’re learning through the concepts you’ve defined. If it doesn’t fit, then check—maybe the definition needs to change, maybe what you learned really isn’t correct. I’m not claiming that this goes from definitions to learning. It starts with a priori definitions, then you move on to learning, and then you go back to the definitions and check them. That’s obvious. I’ve spoken about this in other contexts, about the philosophy of science, yes, when people talk about Francis Bacon trying to define scientific logic. And he said: how do you arrive at a theory? You examine particular cases and then make a generalization. And that’s of course not correct. Why? Because how do you know which cases to examine? Which cases are particular cases of that same generalization? Think about the law of gravity, yes, as an example I’ve already given—I don’t remember if in this series, but I’ve given it more than once. Newton’s law of gravity explains the falling of bodies to the earth, explains the tides, and also explains the paths of the stars. Now before Newton, in the 15th century—I’d ask someone, in the 16th century I’d ask someone—what do these three phenomena have in common? And he would say, “What are you talking about? What’s the connection?” It’s like looking for what the color of the clouds, the height of the pile of books sitting here, and I don’t know what cake I like all have in common. Nobody would have thought to connect those three things to the same category. In the parallel series on Plato I talked about this, in the Friday series. So nobody would have thought to connect those things. But those same three things I mentioned earlier—the tides, the paths of the stars, and the falling of bodies to the earth—after Newton formulated the law of gravity, suddenly you really do see that they are all expressions of the same general law. So how did Newton know to look at precisely those three? After all, before he formulated the law of gravity he didn’t see, and there was no reason he should have seen, any connection between those three phenomena. It turns out that we have some kind of intuition—connected a bit to what I also said earlier about Kodashim and Taharot—we have some sort of initial intuition even before we’ve formulated things. We know what to look at. So let’s formulate those initial intuitions and then look at the things, but then we’ll go back again and see: does it work, does it not work, and again we’ll correct and again we’ll return. It’s a process of back and forth. Very often that’s how science works, by the way. So don’t misunderstand me, as Eliyahu quite rightly pointed out earlier. It’s not that I’m saying: define the concepts and now everything is clear and you can move on. But defining the concepts is the first step in analytical and conceptual thinking. And define them without knowing, or with the initial knowledge that you have. Then enter the topic, and you’ll immediately see where there are points worth thinking about. It helps identify the analytical points of the passage. You’ll discover that the definitions don’t work—okay, then you need to think. Either that medieval authority or later authority you looked at really did miss something—that can happen too. If you see that everyone here—and we’re talking about people who know how to learn, the greatest commentators—then apparently something in your definitions isn’t working properly. So it’s a kind of interplay between my logic and what I find in the topic. But it’s very, very important first of all to do, on the a priori level: first, conceptual definition, and second, analysis of the principles. What would I say a priori, and what does my logic say? And only afterward to enter the topic and test both the definitions of the concepts and my a priori logic and see—maybe something needs correction. But in the topic itself there may be things that I reject because they really do seem illogical to me. And if I hadn’t done the initial analysis, then I’d discuss it in a completely free way—this view and that view and that view—and of course I also wouldn’t succeed in deciding, because there’s no logical and illogical here, because there is no second-order framework. He thinks this, and I think that, and he thinks something else, and everything is fine. Everyone is on the same platform. But if I have an initial logic, then that also gives me a tool for deciding among the different interpretive possibilities or halakhic rulings. And therefore conceptual analysis and a priori analysis of the principles are very, very important. Very often in analytical learning in yeshiva you won’t see this; people don’t do it. Even when they talk about migo as argumentative force or migo as “why would I lie,” which is ostensibly a classic formulation or analysis of the meaning of a concept—the concept of migo—even there there really isn’t a definition of the concept of migo. There is a conceptual distinction, but they don’t sharply define all the way through what the difference is between argumentative force and credibility force. It looks like parallel formulations among later authorities; some formulate it with this word, some with that word, but I think they mean slightly different things: argumentative force and credibility force. But for that you need to define the concepts well. Or the concept of legal effect, which I’ve also talked about in other series—the concept of legal effect has to be defined. Every student in the yeshivas has some intuition about what legal effect is, but he hasn’t properly defined it for himself. The moment he hasn’t properly defined it for himself, he doesn’t really understand it fully. Once he defines it fully, suddenly he’ll understand it, and suddenly there will also be all sorts of implications; it will resolve various difficulties that he wasn’t able to resolve if he doesn’t do that conceptualization for himself. He’ll get tangled up in a thousand things and he won’t be able to answer them. And therefore—I’ll tell you a story. My son studied in Grodna in Ashdod. In— not in Ashdod, in Be’er Yaakov. And when he started glancing outward.
[Speaker C] Did they know you before they accepted him? What? Did they know you before they accepted him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. No, and not really—that was still an earlier period. I’m talking about twenty years ago or something like that. I still wasn’t a known heretic. But it had already begun. And the Mida Tova pamphlets had already come out, because I remember the mashgiach asked that I not come to the yeshiva after he was already there. Because he had read the Mida Tova pamphlets and, God forbid, there’s nothing there—just straightforward analytical learning—but there are a few foreign words here and there, so maybe it was some quotation from outside sources or something like that, and that really bothered him. If he had read the trilogy, I think he would have burned me together with my son. In any case, at some point he decided to leave for Gush Etzion, to a hesder yeshiva. And a huge uproar broke out in all the worlds, in heaven. And why? Because if someone leaves because he’s a slacker, that doesn’t threaten the yeshiva. It’s not good, you should try to prevent it, but it’s not a crisis. But if someone transfers to a hesder yeshiva instead of this yeshiva, that means he wants to continue learning Torah but not here, because he thinks it’s better there. That can’t be—after all, with us it’s the best, with us it’s perfect, and everyone else is stupid. So how could such a thing be possible? So there were major upheavals; at some point they threw him out of the yeshiva. So I said to them: tell me, doesn’t neglect of Torah study count for anything with you? Meaning, the fact that a student is sitting there, and they threw him out of the yeshiva in the middle of the year because they knew that at the end of the year he wanted to move to Gush Etzion—and the fact that a person is sitting at home for months doesn’t bother you? Meaning, never mind. In any case, at some point I got a call from a certain Jew, a well-known rosh yeshiva, who among other things handles difficult cases of this kind. So we had a phone conversation and he said he had heard that my son was about to transfer to Gush Etzion. He said, listen, I’ve seen things Rabbi Lichtenstein wrote, everyone says wonders about him. He says: it’s basic. Every kollel fellow in the Hazon Ish kollel and the Ponevezh kollel says things a thousand times more brilliant than what I saw there. So why do they think so highly of him? Again, he’s talking to me—I’m in Bnei Brak, I know the material. He really asks me: do you actually think Rabbi Lichtenstein can compete with an average kollel fellow in the Hazon Ish kollel or the Ponevezh kollel? So I said it more gently, but basically I told him he was talking like a child, like a little child. And why? Because it’s the same story as the grandfather of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s father-in-law, Rabbi Chaim. When Rabbi Chaim was in Volozhin, the Beit HaLevi was the rosh yeshiva, and for a short overlapping period he was too. And the claim was—the Beit HaLevi once caught his son and said to him: listen, your lectures dry the students out. When I give a lecture I raise ten questions and then stitch them together with some brilliant answer. People tear their hair out after the questions and dance with joy after the answer. But with you, there’s this possibility and that possibility, and this fits here and that fits there—no questions, no answers, nothing. The whole business is astonishingly dry. And by the way, anyone who knew Rabbi Lichtenstein—it’s less so with Rabbi Chaim. Rabbi Chaim does speak about questions and answers; with Rabbi Lichtenstein it was entirely like that. And he said to him: it dries them out completely. So I said to him, listen, when you read or hear a lecture by Rabbi Lichtenstein, in that lecture everything is arranged in an orderly way. There are these possibilities, and the practical implication is this, and from this follows this, and from that follows that—he lays it all out. He didn’t ask them and then answers popped up and everyone danced a hora from joy; rather, he works like a professional and not like a person trying to be brilliant. In yeshivas they try to give a brilliant lecture. And when you give a brilliant lecture, you have to ask ten questions, stitch them together with one answer, even though you haven’t necessarily covered the topic. You don’t come out of the lecture with any orderly picture of what the topic is. There are some who do more, but generally not. And with Rabbi Lichtenstein, when you come out of the lecture you have a complete picture of the topic. Not a single question from the Hazon Ish kollel or the Ponevezh kollel would even come up at all. It simply wouldn’t arise. He already anticipated it. So who is more serious? Who is more brilliant? Children think that the brilliant people from the Ponevezh kollel are the truly brilliant ones because all those sparks make an impression on them. But someone who really understands the value of professionalism, of seriousness, of trying to exhaust the topic and understand it, to define the concepts, to make distinctions properly—he understands that Rabbi Lichtenstein is ten levels above everything going on there. Not because he knows more—I’m talking now about the nature of the lecture. I’m not measuring right now who knows more and who knows less; that’s not the point at the moment. I’m talking about the character of the lecture. It’s a lecture on a much higher level, a much higher level. Even though after you’ve heard it enough times you acquire the tools and it really is almost mechanical, almost mechanical. But still, in the end you remain with an orderly picture of the topic, and all the questions and answers don’t arise. And there, all the questions are answered with one answer, but you don’t understand the topic. You remain without the topic. So for a person, for a child, that makes a huge impression. An adult understands that this is a much more serious form. Be professional. Learn the topic. Stay with order in that topic. Understand what it says. What the disagreements are about. Not one track that resolves several questions and you succeeded in producing some clever flash. That’s not a professional way and not a serious way to relate to things, and it’s part of that same issue of the absence of systematic thinking. Clever insights—there are wonderful clever insights in the world of analytical learning. What is very lacking is systematics. Systematics, method, reflectiveness, the attempt to look at what I’m saying, to place things within a context. Meaning: what kind of reasoning is this actually saying? In what other places do we find this kind of reasoning? Why here yes and there no? Today I posted a column that really deals with these things, and I also intended to get to it today but I won’t manage to get to it. But among other things it really comes to illustrate this issue. So I’ll try to demonstrate these things through various examples that try to explain what I mean when I talk about systematic thinking in the context of learning, and how that differs from the ordinary style of analytical learning that we’re familiar with in the yeshivas and also among halakhic decisors and so on, which in my view is very lacking, very problematic. And also how this affects halakhic decision-making in the end. Because systematic analysis ultimately also helps in deciding Jewish law. But that’ll be for next time. Next Thursday we’re having a lecture. Yes? We’ll take a sample from among the people here. Fine.
[Speaker C] What did you say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is there anyone for whom next Thursday doesn’t work? It works, it works.
[Speaker C] What will happen next Thursday?
[Speaker G] Is it intermediate festival days or not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, before Passover. No, no.
[Speaker G] Maybe it’s better to add a lecture too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not on the intermediate festival days. Okay, so we’ll do it on Thursday—I see there isn’t anyone, or maybe they’re embarrassed. Okay.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, it’s true that professionalism and systematics have value, but dialectics also have value, and doing it in a brilliant way so that it strengthens the learners and gives them…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no problem with that. If for you that’s a method, but you’re conveying the material that needs to be conveyed, excellent. The more interesting and more exciting you make it, the better. But when you see the interest and the excitement as goals in themselves and not as methodological tools, then in my view it’s not serious.
[Speaker H] Rabbi, may I? Regarding the question the Rabbi asked—why yeshiva students ostensibly should have been the most brilliant in the philosophical direction and things like that. I have a feeling there’s a very significant element there, very significant unfortunately, of arrogance. There isn’t a drop of humility there, there isn’t a drop of openness. Even when Torah, instead of opening them up and bringing them closer to the image of Moses our Rabbi, who was humbler than any man, turned them into, “What is this already? What are you already? You basically have nothing, even before… You really have nothing to add. There’s nothing to add that doesn’t appear
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] in the Torah.”
[Speaker H] And that leads to very destructive results.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It ties into this matter—that when you try to build concepts and do a priori analysis and so on, they reject it because of that same arrogance. And again, the arrogance is not only personal; there’s some sort of… confidence in the path. After all, I rely on Rabbi Chaim, on Rabbi Akiva Eiger, on the Ketzot.
[Speaker G] Exactly, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not just arrogance in the personal sense—it’s collective arrogance. That we have nothing to learn from others, because we are sitting here on the shoulders of the greatest geniuses.
[Speaker G] So if you come with Kant, he’ll say: What? What does he have to add already?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like the Steipler—in a book there he says: So, he has questions. Well, and do you think Rabbi Akiva Eiger didn’t have such questions? He knew very well how to answer them, so be quiet and keep learning. Meaning, a kind of childish and foolish outlook, I don’t know, really—and apparently it really was a book that influenced people. To me, it’s bizarre. And it’s astonishing to me that he thought it would influence people, but on this point he apparently was more right than I was. And it’s astonishing that it influences; it’s astonishing, and I really have no answer for it. Truly foolish things at a shocking level, really. And it’s so opposite, by the way, to the very clear and orderly responsum that he has in Kehillot Yaakov in his novellae. He’s one of the clearest and most orderly Jews I know among the later authorities. But when he gets to the whole world of thought and things like that—save your ears. Okay, that’s it.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, Rabbi, you’ve never connected to the books of Rabbi Amiel, who really—I feel—he really is into metaphysics and systematics and excellence and depth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t really agree, by the way, with his analysis a lot of the time. But yes, that is definitely the kind of work he is trying to do. Compare it, for example, to Atvan DeOraita or Lekach Tov, which ostensibly are doing similar work. But no—Atvan DeOraita and Lekach Tov, on the one hand, take broad concepts and try to examine them across all the topics, which is ostensibly what I’m looking for. But you can see that with those broad concepts he does no a priori work at all; there is no definition of concepts. And therefore you distinguish between things that shouldn’t be distinguished, and you fail to distinguish between things that should be distinguished. Precisely because of his genius and because of his willingness to deal with methodological questions and broad meta-halakhic questions, it becomes even more conspicuous how much systematics is lacking in him. Others who don’t do this, of course it’s lacking in them too, but with him—where I would have expected it even more—it stands out all the more when it isn’t there. At one point I thought of writing a work on his books, only it’s unpleasant. Meaning, it was supposed to be a very critical work.
[Speaker C] And the Rogatchover also does things like that, tying so many things together at once.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there too, in my view, many of the connections are questionable.
[Speaker C] So that’s what in the yeshivas they call leitzes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leitzes is someone who says things lightly, as if playfully. Something that at first glance seems brilliant, but after you think about it a bit, it doesn’t hold water. Not everything, of course, but there are quite a few things like that there too. Again, these are…
[Speaker B] Does Rabbi Chaim Brisker answer to systematics? What? Rabbi Chaim of Brisk is perceived as someone who corresponds to systematics?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He tries to move closer to systematics more than others, definitely.
[Speaker B] How is it that he didn’t influence the yeshivas, in your opinion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He did influence them. He influenced them, but you know, there’s… you have to keep progressing.
[Speaker I] Can I ask a question, Rabbi? Yes. Rabbi, I saw this week that they posted the video on Cafe Da’at, your talk about disagreement in truth, about disagreement, sorry, disagreements. Okay. And right at the end of the lecture, the Rabbi talked about Newton’s famous example, the duke sitting… oh, I think maybe it’ll come back to me in a second, but I’ll ask. In short, at the very end of the talk, the Rabbi said that there is a possibility that Newton would accept both the religious explanation and the physiological explanation, which really contradicts the things we discussed in previous series.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, because that was only… I gave a two-minute example there. After that you need to continue that an explanation is a sufficient condition and not a necessary one, and therefore only one of them can be correct. I discussed this at great length in the second book of the quartet.
[Speaker I] I remember that from previous series too, but it seemed as if the talk ended דווקא with the conclusion that it is possible.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s possible, but it has to be analyzed more precisely. It’s possible, I’m saying, on the logical level. Logically. In this specific example of theology versus physics, there in my opinion it’s not possible. But this logic can apply in a place where the explanation is not complete. In any case, in the fourth section of the second book.
[Speaker I] Very good, thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, good, so goodbye. Good news.
[Speaker I] Thank you very much. Thanks.