Study and Halachic Rulings – Lesson 25
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
- The lack of systematic discussion and the need for conceptual analysis
- Basic concepts and the possibility of using them without a definition
- Rejecting the performative definition of positive commandments and prohibitions
- The Torah’s wording and the example of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”
- The halakhic implications are not the definition
- Nozick’s analogy: enticement versus extortion
- The normative definition: a positive state versus a negative state
- A logical claim about “don’t want” versus “want not”
- Explaining the Sabbath: positive commandment and prohibition as two different contents
- Clarifying the implications: punishment, spending money, and reward
- A positive commandment overrides a prohibition: an asymmetric calculation
- Nachmanides, Sdei Chemed, and love and fear
- Refining the performative intuition: passive omission versus positive action
- Layers in the Talmud and Aharon Shemesh’s article
- Concluding remarks and external parallels
Summary
General Overview
The text presents an argument about the importance of a priori conceptual analysis in Jewish law through the question of what defines positive commandments as opposed to prohibitions, despite how central these concepts are. It rejects the simple intuition that a positive commandment means “to do” and a prohibition means “to refrain,” and instead proposes a normative definition: a positive commandment points to a positive state (righteousness), while a prohibition points to a negative state (wickedness). From that definition, it explains why the Torah sometimes chooses negative wording even when action is required, why the Sabbath includes both a positive commandment and a prohibition, and why halakhic consequences follow from this, such as punishment, reward, spending money, and the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition.
The lack of systematic discussion and the need for conceptual analysis
The speaker argues that positive commandments and prohibitions are among the most fundamental concepts in the halakhic world, yet one does not find among students, commentators, and authors any systematic discussion defining them. He suggests that one might think the absence of a definition stems from the fact that the concepts are “self-evident,” but he shows that this assumption turns out to be false when the topic is examined more deeply.
Basic concepts and the possibility of using them without a definition
The speaker uses an example from the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about the attempt to define “quality,” in order to argue that not every concept must have an explicit definition in order to be usable and understandable. He explains that every definition rests on other concepts, and therefore there must be basic concepts that are not themselves defined, otherwise one falls into a logical circle. He adds that when speaking with another person, one may need to define a concept that is obvious to one person but not to the other, by using the system of concepts familiar to the listener.
Rejecting the performative definition of positive commandments and prohibitions
The speaker presents the natural definition of a positive commandment as a command to do something, and of a prohibition as a command to desist, and then argues that this is not correct in Jewish law. He notes that there are positive commandments whose fulfillment consists in inaction rather than action, such as resting on the Sabbath and fasting on Yom Kippur, and there are prohibitions whose fulfillment requires action, such as “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” and “do not place bloodguilt in your house,” which requires building a guardrail. He concludes that the performative criterion cannot be what distinguishes a positive commandment from a prohibition, and therefore the question “what, then, is the difference?” returns with full force.
The Torah’s wording and the example of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”
The speaker argues that the Torah could seemingly have worded a command in either of two practically equivalent ways, such as “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” versus “save your neighbor,” and therefore the Torah’s very choice of negative wording requires explanation. He rejects a “literary-emotional” explanation that focuses the wording on the point of indifference, and argues that the halakhic reading looks for a normative rather than psychological difference. He emphasizes that the Sages treat the difference as meaningful through the classification as positive commandment or prohibition and through different halakhic consequences.
The halakhic implications are not the definition
The speaker lists familiar distinctions: a prohibition carries punishment while a positive commandment does not; a positive commandment overrides a prohibition; for a prohibition one must spend all one’s money, while for a positive commandment only up to a fifth; and refraining from a prohibition does not earn reward. He argues that these are not definitions but consequences, and therefore they cannot suffice to explain what defines a positive commandment versus a prohibition.
Nozick’s analogy: enticement versus extortion
The speaker cites Robert Nozick’s distinction between enticement (“if you do it, I’ll pay you”) and extortion (“if you don’t do it, I’ll take from you”), and explains that the main point is not the gap between the options but their position relative to the legitimate “zero point.” He argues that in enticement both alternatives are legitimate, whereas in extortion one of the alternatives is illegitimate because it requires going below zero.
The normative definition: a positive state versus a negative state
The speaker formulates the central definition as follows: a positive commandment points to a positive state—if you fulfill it, you will be righteous, and if you do not fulfill it, you remain average rather than wicked. He defines a prohibition as pointing to a negative state—if you transgress it, you will be wicked, and if you do not transgress it, you remain average rather than righteous, and therefore refraining from a prohibition is not “reward” but avoidance of wickedness. He compares a positive commandment to enticement and a prohibition to extortion, and attributes the structure of reward and punishment in the halakhic system to this distinction.
A logical claim about “don’t want” versus “want not”
The speaker argues that statements like “I don’t want you to be without tefillin” are not logically equivalent to “I want you to be with tefillin,” because “not” and “want” are not interchangeable. He distinguishes between “I want you not to be without tefillin,” which is equivalent to “I want you to be with tefillin,” and “I don’t want you to be without tefillin,” which defines the state of “without” as a negative state. He concludes that the Torah does not really have two equivalent ways of phrasing the same meaning, because wording with “do not” is not just syntactic wrapping but establishes that the marked state is a negative one.
Explaining the Sabbath: positive commandment and prohibition as two different contents
The speaker explains that on the Sabbath there is a positive commandment to rest and a prohibition against labor because the two are not the same content. He argues that rest is a positive state, while doing labor is a negative state, and therefore a double demand is created that removes the possibility of remaining “average”: either you are righteous (Sabbath rest) or you are wicked (labor). He justifies Maimonides’ counting them as two separate commandments, and illustrates that this is like two angles on the same act, as with neshekh and tarbit, where the same interest payment is defined both as harming the other person’s money and as the lender’s improper gain.
Clarifying the implications: punishment, spending money, and reward
The speaker derives from the definition that punishment belongs to a prohibition because it defines a negative state, and reward belongs to a positive commandment because it defines a positive state. He explains that the demand “not to be wicked” is more fundamental than the demand “to be righteous,” and therefore one must spend all one’s money in order not to transgress a prohibition, but only up to a fifth in order not to neglect a positive commandment. He distinguishes between spending in order “not to be wicked” and spending in order “to elevate oneself,” and presents this as a rule that explains the Jewish law even if one might have thought otherwise.
A positive commandment overrides a prohibition: an asymmetric calculation
The speaker connects the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition to the asymmetry between positive commandments and prohibitions, and illustrates it with the case of matzah from the new crop versus the prohibition of the new crop. He describes a calculation in which fulfilling a positive commandment carries positive value, transgressing a prohibition carries negative value, refraining from a prohibition is not positive value but neutral, and neglecting a positive commandment is a lighter negative demand. He concludes that the halakhic choice comes from comparing “fulfilling the positive commandment plus transgressing the prohibition” with “neglecting the positive commandment plus not transgressing the prohibition,” and not from a simplistic comparison of “positive commandment versus prohibition.”
Nachmanides, Sdei Chemed, and love and fear
The speaker notes that Nachmanides, on the portion of Yitro, explains the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition by saying that positive commandments are love and prohibitions are fear. He adds that the Sdei Chemed explains that there is no contradiction between saying “a positive commandment is more important” and “a prohibition is more severe,” because fulfilling a positive commandment is greater than refraining from a prohibition, but failure regarding a prohibition is more severe than neglecting a positive commandment. He presents this as two sides of the matter: the greatness of fulfillment versus the severity of failure.
Refining the performative intuition: passive omission versus positive action
The speaker says that the intuition that a positive commandment is connected to doing and a prohibition to refraining is not correct in a simple sense, but it does capture something true after abstraction. He argues that the real distinction is between frontal collision with the Torah’s will (transgressing a “do not”) and failure to realize the Torah’s will (not fulfilling a positive commandment), even though in practice both can occur through physical action or omission. He formulates this as the difference between “being in a state that the Torah wants” and “being in a state that the Torah does not want,” rather than a technical difference between action and inaction.
Layers in the Talmud and Aharon Shemesh’s article
The speaker cites an article by Aharon Shemesh claiming that in the earlier layers of the Talmud the distinction between positive commandments and prohibitions is performative, whereas in the later layers it is linguistic, and he argues that language reflects a substantive difference in reality and cannot by itself be the explanation. He describes a typical movement of abstraction: a coarse and concrete idea at first (“do / don’t do”) becomes refined into an abstract idea (“positive state / negative state”), while preserving the essence. He says that the medieval and later authorities touch on this in discussions of the Sages uprooting something from the Torah through passive omission, or human dignity, but they do not formulate the definitions explicitly.
Concluding remarks and external parallels
At the end of the text, a side discussion arises about the law “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” in Israel and the question of enforcement, including a counterclaim that “after the Good Samaritan law was passed, it already exists.” There is another attempt to connect the rule that “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition” to the difference between prohibitions and commandments, but the speaker rejects the relevance and clarifies that even among commandments one act can fulfill several commandments. The discussion closes by emphasizing that conceptualization and systematic analysis of concepts reduce confusion and make it possible to derive implications clearly.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I began the issue of defining what a prohibition is and what a positive commandment is. And that was an example of the importance of conceptual analysis, of a priori analysis of a topic—or yes, of concepts. And basically the claim was that—or maybe before the claim. What I said at the beginning was that although the concepts of positive commandments and prohibitions are very fundamental concepts in halakhic terminology, in the halakhic world, I haven’t found any systematic discussion of their definition. What is a positive commandment and what is a prohibition? Which is itself pretty strange. We’ve been learning Torah for thousands of years, and one of the most basic things in Torah is positive commandments and prohibitions, and nobody among all the learners, commentators, and authors deals with defining these concepts themselves. So maybe one could have said that they didn’t deal with their definition because it’s simple. Meaning, there are things that are simple and there’s no need to define them. I’m reminded—maybe I already said this—there was a book that in its time was a cult book, Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. When I was in the army, I think it was at the height of its fame, and there he tells about an American lecturer in some American college in rhetoric. He teaches rhetoric, and he calls him Phaedrus, the Platonic dialogue, doesn’t matter, that’s what he calls him. And this Phaedrus goes on motorcycle trips across the United States with his son Chris, and thinks through and clarifies for himself all kinds of interesting philosophical issues. Basically the journey itself was—one of the journeys was in order to try to figure out what the concept of quality even is. Right? He was a rhetoric lecturer, so say he gets essays from his students and gives them grades. Suddenly he started asking himself, wait a second, on what basis am I giving these grades? Who decided this is high quality and this isn’t? What are the criteria? Who set the criteria? He can’t really formulate the criteria for himself, even though he has some kind of sense of which essay is high quality and which is less so. Meaning, he can attach some kind of numerical assessment to those essays—this one is a 70, this one an 80, this one a 90—but he has no criteria for what the definition of quality is, what makes an essay high quality.
And at some point in his journey he says that he came to the insight that the wicked Greeks messed up our minds. What does that mean? They got us used to thinking that if there’s a concept for which we don’t have a definition, then either it doesn’t exist, or we can’t really use it, or we don’t understand it. In short, we need to look for definitions. Concepts without a definition are not understandable, not usable, not real—depending how positivist you are. And he says that this is actually not true. The Greeks messed up our minds when they convinced us of that. The claim is that there can be concepts for which we have no explicit definition, and still we can use them, understand them, and talk about them. I would add even more than that: when I define a concept, within that definition I use other concepts, right? Every definition contains concepts. When I define the concept X, I use concepts A, B, and C. Now when I want to define A, B, and C, for them too I’ll need to use definitions of concepts D, E, and F, and so on. So every concept I want to define actually requires other concepts, which I use in order to define it. You understand that this is an infinite regress? There really is no way to define all our concepts, because there has to be some initial set of concepts by means of which I define the other concepts. Those, by definition, I won’t be able to define—unless I use the concepts I defined on their basis in order to define them, and then of course that’s a logical circle. Just as I can’t prove all the claims I think are true, because every proof is based on premises, and premises are also claims. If I want to prove them, I’ll need to rely on other axioms. In the end there will be some set of assumptions that I cannot and need not prove, and on them I build everything else. The same thing applies to concepts. Claims and proofs are like concepts and definitions. In the conceptual system too, I can use certain concepts in order to define others, but in the end I’ll always have a group or collection of concepts that I won’t be able to define. They’re basic.
So what does that mean? It means that anyone who thinks you can’t use concepts unless you have a definition for them won’t be able to use any concept at all. Because the basic concepts he can’t use, since there’s no definition for them, and the derived secondary concepts he also can’t use, because they’re defined on the basis of other concepts that aren’t defined—so what did it help that you defined them? Bottom line, in the end you always need that same set of concepts that you didn’t define. Therefore this assumption, this outlook that says I have to define every concept I use and otherwise it has no meaning and can’t be used—that’s an outlook that cannot be correct. It cannot be correct on the logical level. And so I return to Phaedrus. Basically his claim was that it’s okay to use basic concepts—that is, concepts that cannot be reduced to other concepts—without defining them. I simply understand them and use them without defining them. On the contrary, because I understand them, I can use them to define other concepts by means of them, but these concepts themselves I do not need to define. So basically Phaedrus says the concept of quality too—he doesn’t know how to define it in terms of other concepts—so what, does that mean there is no such thing as quality? That he can’t use it? That it’s just some subjective illusion? No. It’s a basic concept, and because it’s a basic concept I have no ability to define it. I use it to define other things, but I can’t define it itself. Meaning, there are basic concepts that I do not need to define because I understand them in themselves. The concepts I do need to define are concepts that in themselves may not be clear to me, not transparent to me, and I need to reduce them to other concepts that I do understand. Then I say: I’ll define these by means of those, and that clarifies the picture, because I understand those; and if I define this using those concepts, now I understand this too. That’s the value of a definition. But if there are no concepts that I understand without defining them, then this whole process can’t even get started. And if I return to prohibition and positive commandment—
[Speaker B] So wait, the choice of which concepts I want to define, or need to define, versus those I don’t need to define—does that depend on the person who understands them, on what’s obvious to him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. Now look, for example, if I’m talking to you and let’s say that in your eyes there’s a certain set of concepts that’s self-evident, and in my eyes the self-evident set of concepts is different—meaning, it’s not certain that we’re in the same place—and it may be that the concepts that are basic for you are not basic for me and vice versa, or at least some of them. In that situation, if I want us to talk to each other, I may need to define a concept that for me is self-evident in order to convey it to you, and then I’ll have to use those concepts that are self-evident from your perspective. That’s when I want to define things for you. But until now I was only talking about the situation within myself. Meaning, how do I set up my conceptual system for myself? Right, if I’m speaking with someone else, then I’ll indeed need to use his concepts in order to define things for him, not my own basic concepts.
[Speaker C] Okay, so is this how the Rabbi justifies the medieval authorities (Rishonim), as it were, for not defining them? What? Prohibition and positive commandment? What? Is this how the Rabbi justifies the medieval authorities (Rishonim) for not defining them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m in the middle of it now. The point is that it could be that the reason people didn’t define a concept like prohibition and positive commandment is simply because it was obvious to them. A basic concept—I don’t need to define it because it’s obvious to me. On the contrary, I’ll use it to define other things.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi, on the face of it this distinction, this definition of positive commandments and prohibitions within the normativity of the Torah and Jewish law is really puzzling. Surely the Rabbi agrees with me that in all other fields of morality I’ve never heard of a moral theory, neither Kantian nor any other, that uses these strange definitions of positive commandment and prohibition. That’s not true. What? To define, to give the heading “positive” and “negative” as if that has meaning—I’ve never heard of such a thing. There are norms; the definition of the norm itself as positive or negative sounds pretty weak and puzzling to me. So on the face of it, the very fact that we found this in Torah requires a deep explanation—if indeed, if indeed, if indeed it’s important at all. Because on the face of it, as I said last week, we’re doing God’s will. If God defined it in His chart there in His notebook as positive commandment, prohibition—that’s very puzzling, very.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So a few things. First, He did define it as positive commandment and prohibition, and therefore I need to clarify what that means—what is a positive commandment and what is a prohibition. That’s the datum.
[Speaker D] Even if you think so—where is there a definition in the Torah itself? You have the 613 commandments and divide them into positive commandments and prohibitions, and then start inferring from that—it doesn’t say that in the Torah itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It does, it does, of course it does. The fact is that some commands are written in negative form and some are written in positive form.
[Speaker D] Even though—fine, they’re also written in Hebrew, they’re written in a certain syntax too, so what are we doing with syntax—Shmuel, give me a second.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But some are framed negatively and some positively. Now, those that are framed negatively or positively could have been framed in an equivalent negative way—we talked about that last time. So the fact that the Torah chose to phrase this one positively itself says that apparently, from its perspective, there’s significance to the way you formulate the commandment: whether you formulate it as something positive or something negative, passive or active.
[Speaker D] So why not divide the commandments into sentences formulated as compound sentences or simple sentences or appositive sentences or whatever? That’s what’s puzzling.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that important? No, it’s not puzzling. If there were a possibility of formulating a compound sentence as a simple sentence, then I really would need to ask myself why the Torah chose the compound formulation. If there’s no possibility because it really is complex, then there’s no question. But here, regarding prohibition and positive commandment, that’s exactly what I told you. The Torah could have used only negative formulations. It could define even the positive commandments like this: “I do not want you to be without tefillin.” What’s the problem? It’s the same thing. Why did it choose positive formulation here and negative formulations there?
[Speaker D] Maybe the Torah speaks in human language? Let’s put it this way—it’s not all that important exactly why.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Poetic, Rabbi?
[Speaker D] Suddenly you’re doing literary analysis of the Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, human language—Hebrew or biblical language—is human language created by the Torah. You can’t tell me the Torah speaks in human language; the Torah created that language.
[Speaker D] Rabbi Ishmael says, “The Torah speaks in human language.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “the Torah speaks in human language” means in terms of wording once the language already exists. But the rules of the language are rules that the Torah itself created. If the Torah had created a language in which there are only negative instructions and no positive ones, that too would have been human language. At least in the holy tongue, in biblical language. That’s one thing. And second, what you said earlier about morality—you’re mistaken. In moral theory, and also in philosophy, they absolutely distinguish between positive commands and negative commands. There’s a whole book by some Roni—I no longer remember—some doctor of law, where he talks about the difference between offenses by omission and offenses by action, meaning active commands and passive commands. There definitely is discussion there too. And of course now we need to examine whether this matches the definitions of prohibition and positive commandment in Jewish law—that’s another question, and we’ll talk about it—but it’s definitely a distinction that exists elsewhere too.
[Speaker D] In a very minor way, very minor, and that itself is puzzling.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whether it’s minor or not we can argue about, but the distinction exists.
[Speaker D] But it exists not from the side of the command itself, but from whether you perform an action or an omission. Of course that’s important. But the command itself—whether it was worded this way or that—that’s already the next step. There you’re already leaping—here—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re already ruling out the possibility that the definition is performative. Fine, I’m still on the way there, just a second. So in the first stage I said that it may be that the reason they didn’t discuss the definition of positive commandments and prohibitions is that they thought it was self-evident. When you ask yourself why it’s self-evident, what naturally comes up is the definition that a positive commandment is a command to do something, and a prohibition is a command to desist or not do something. So that’s a natural distinction, and therefore it’s obvious that these are positive commandments. Except that, as we saw last time, it isn’t true. It isn’t true because in Jewish law there are positive commandments whose fulfillment is by omission and not by action. And there are prohibitions whose fulfillment is by action and not by omission, or by positive action and not passive omission. So the performative difference, the performative criterion, is not what defines the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. And then the question returns: so what does? What does? After all, if the very same thing can be formulated both as a positive commandment and as a prohibition—say the Torah says, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” What is it really saying? “Save your neighbor.” If you see him drowning in a river or whatever—save him. But the first formulation is a prohibition: “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” The second formulation would be a positive commandment: “Save him.” And we see that the content is the same content, but there can be two different formulations. For some reason, the Torah chose the negative formulation of “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” And that’s even stranger because in this specific case the commandment actually imposes on me a duty to act, not a duty to desist. To perform an action, to save him. So I would have expected the Torah to formulate it in an active positive way, as a positive commandment, not as a prohibition. But the Torah chose to formulate it as a prohibition. And then the question really arises. First, we see that it doesn’t match the performative definition. It’s not true that every positive commandment is a command to do and every prohibition is a command to desist. There are positive commandments that command me to desist, like resting on the Sabbath or fasting on Yom Kippur, and there are prohibitions that command me to act, like “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” “Do not place bloodguilt in your house,” which means make a guardrail, and so on.
And from this we also understand that the wording itself could have been phrased in two ways. A command to perform an action can be phrased actively or passively. And a command to desist can also be phrased actively or passively. Two equivalent formulations exist with respect to each commandment. If so, then it’s not at all clear what the difference is between a positive commandment and a prohibition. Why should I care whether the Torah phrases it actively or passively? What matters is the content. But in the content there’s no definition other than the performative one. Yet the performative definition doesn’t really distinguish between positive commandment and prohibition. In short, it’s a tangle. There is no simple distinction between positive commandments and prohibitions. And if so, then I go back to the basic question. If the definition is not the performative one, that means there is some definition here that is not self-evident. It’s really not simple. Not only is it not self-evident, it’s not even not-self-evident. Because when I’ve asked people this in the past—“Tell me, what’s the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment?”—immediately, of course immediately, everyone answers: one is a command to do something and one is a command to desist. Then I bring them the counterexamples, which everybody knows, they just never thought about them. That’s part of the same problem: people don’t think about the definition of concepts, because they don’t notice that the definition of the concept positive commandment is seemingly inconsistent. Sometimes it commands me to do something, sometimes it commands me to desist—and the same for a prohibition. Then they get stuck; they don’t know how to tell me the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. But if that’s so, then not only is it not self-evident—even after I ask you, you don’t know how to answer me. So how can it be that nobody dealt with it?
[Speaker C] Here’s a nice example—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of this problematic feature in yeshiva-style thinking, of the lack of engagement with defining concepts, with reflection on how we think, with a priori analysis of halakhic principles and the like. Meta-halakhah, meaning all the things we’ve talked about.
[Speaker D] But Rabbi, again—for example, in “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” maybe I think it can be explained in a literary way. Meaning, the Torah addresses the moral and evaluative point, the demand that exists for a person. A person who stands and sees his friend drowning—you can define that as “you murdered him,” and you can say the problem is that you ignored it, that you were indifferent. And that’s something entirely different. And the Torah knew how to address, in literary form, that specific emotional point—the conscience—not to do nothing because you say, “I didn’t do anything.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What are you asking? That the difference is literary? And you said it’s something entirely different.
[Speaker D] No, if it’s literary—yes, no—literary is very important. I’m not belittling the literary. It’s extremely important. It addresses precisely the emotional point, where exactly the person fails. He fails in indifference, not in the fact that he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Threw—
[Speaker D] His friend into the water.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is a personal tendency of mine, but I don’t buy these emotional explanations. Meaning, when the Torah says things differently, it means something different. It isn’t only meant to arouse in us one emotion or another, it seems to me. But of course that’s a matter of taste. That’s my way of looking at it. I think—and by the way, so do the Sages in this case. The fact that the Sages define this as a prohibition and that as a positive commandment means there’s a difference here. It’s not just the same thing and the Torah merely chose to address the emotion this way or that way. The Sages con—
[Speaker D] I’m not saying it’s the same thing. On the contrary, I’m saying it’s something entirely different. But when an author formulates something one way or another, he is saying things—it’s very significant how he formulated it. We analyze every sentence here. What’s the significance? What’s the difference? The difference is where you fail. Where do you fail? In the point that when—how did it happen that people in the Holocaust stood and saw what was happening and did nothing? Gentiles. They stood by the side. It’s a very subtle point, to get at where the omission was.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you had told them—
[Speaker D] Do X or Y, do this or that—there are things you can or can’t do. But the point is not that you didn’t do it; the great crime is that you were indifferent, that you ignored it, that you shut your eyes. Right. If you hadn’t shut your eyes, then if each of those—there’s no—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no prohibition against not saving; there’s no prohibition against indifference.
[Speaker D] I think there is a prohibition against indifference. “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”—don’t be indifferent, be involved, don’t shut your eyes. Don’t say, “I wasn’t there, I didn’t see, I didn’t know about the Holocaust.” You ask people—we see all the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I understand, but if so that’s a very unusual interpretation; no commentator interprets it that way. Our whole tradition says otherwise. This prohibition is a practical prohibition. You have to save him, and if you didn’t save him you transgressed a prohibition, regardless of whether you were indifferent or not. If you were indifferent and saved him, everything is fine. If you weren’t indifferent and didn’t save him, you committed a transgression, even though you weren’t indifferent.
[Speaker D] I think that if you weren’t indifferent—and since I deny free will—then if you weren’t indifferent, you would definitely act.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not true. What do you mean? I wasn’t indifferent, but for other reasons I had other things to deal with. On the contrary, I was very sorry for the person, okay? Not indifferent.
[Speaker D] No, but if you had the full perspective of understanding your obligation not to—not to do something—then you would definitely act. It wouldn’t even be left to your choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That doesn’t stand the test of ordinary halakhic interpretation. You can interpret this verse in the Torah differently, against what everyone else interprets, but I’m going in the interpretive direction we received in our tradition, let’s call it that, the halakhic tradition. So on that plane, what I’m looking for now is what exactly the normative difference is—not the psychological one—between positive commandments and prohibitions. What’s the difference in definition? What does this require and what does that require? They’re supposed to require different things. And especially, the matter becomes difficult when I remember that there are two equivalent formulations for the same commandment. You can say “Don’t be without tefillin,” and you can say “Be with tefillin.” You can say “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” and you can say “Save your neighbor.” These are, apparently, two equivalent statements in terms of their practical content, but the Sages relate to these two statements differently. This is a positive commandment and that is a prohibition, with all the consequences. For one of them you must spend all your money; for the other only up to a fifth. A positive commandment overrides a prohibition. A prohibition carries punishment, a positive commandment does not. A positive commandment carries reward; refraining from a prohibition does not. So there are many implications here. But, as I think I may have said once before, I had a study partner once—when I started thinking about this, I discussed it with him—and he said to me, what do you mean? There is a difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. For a positive commandment you have to spend up to a fifth of your money, and for a prohibition all your money. A prohibition carries punishment, a positive commandment does not. I told him: that’s not the difference, those are consequences of the difference. Obviously, once you explain to me that there is a difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment, then that difference will presumably show me why a prohibition is punishable and a positive commandment isn’t, why for a prohibition you must spend all your money and for a positive commandment only up to a fifth, and so on. But those things are consequences of the difference; they are not definitions of the difference itself. I’m looking for the difference. Why do you have to spend all your money for this and not for that? What is the difference in content if it’s written passively or actively when it says the same thing? “Save your friend” or “Don’t refrain from saving him”—why should that be different?
[Speaker C] What’s very difficult is when there are two together and we’re obligated on both.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. No—
[Speaker C] I’m saying, what’s very difficult, what shows the difficulty even more, is like with resting, where there’s both a positive commandment and a prohibition. Parallel? No, really together. Both a positive commandment and a prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath and a prohibition against doing labor.
[Speaker C] And you can be liable for both.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not “can be liable for both”—I violate both. If I did labor on the Sabbath, then I both failed to rest and did labor. So I transgressed the prohibition and neglected the positive commandment.
[Speaker C] No, but there’s a dispute, as it were, whether it only comes to add on—whether it only comes to intensify the prohibition—or whether it’s really, actually, as someone who transgresses a positive commandment and also someone who transgresses a prohibition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I didn’t understand.
[Speaker C] What I’m saying is: if there is a positive commandment and a prohibition—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Is it—
[Speaker C] Can it be that the prohibition comes only to show that the positive commandment is stronger?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Positive commandment and prohibition means that you violated both a positive commandment and a prohibition. You committed two transgressions: neglect of a positive commandment and a prohibition.
[Speaker C] Okay.
[Speaker F] Is a description like this possible: with a positive commandment we have no problem at all with the state as it is; we simply demand that the person do something. But a prohibition deals with the state—what problem do we have? I’ll give an example. When we say “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition,” the idea is that the state is already problematic; there’s no way to add to it. But with a positive commandment, it doesn’t seem that we’re bothered by two commands that in one case ask for the same action. Because we’re not talking about problems; we’re talking about what ought to happen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If two positive commandments command the same action, then they won’t be two positive commandments—they’ll be one.
[Speaker F] No, no, I’m talking about like “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition,” where in principle there are two different cases, but we have one case in which it bears two commandments. So I wouldn’t say, oh, he only neglected one positive commandment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what?
[Speaker F] So with prohibitions, two different prohibitions that have different cases—if there’s one case to which both prohibitions apply, I say one prohibition does not take effect on top of another. But with commandments—I’m only bringing this as an example—but with commandments, I think that commandments that are different and have a case that applies to both of them, I won’t say, “Oh, I’m troubled by the fact that there are two commandments.” Because commandments don’t speak about problems; they speak about what should happen. A different kind of normative conception.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t understand why that makes a difference. It’s a good question why we don’t say, just as one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition, the same with positive commandments.
[Speaker F] We need to think about it, but why, why is that connected to our issue?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is that—
[Speaker F] Because the intuition says that in prohibitions we’re talking about problems. There’s some given situation, it’s problematic, and it has to be removed, gotten rid of, shaken off.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think there are two problems here. What—
[Speaker F] In a commandment there’s no problem when the commandment isn’t fulfilled. There is an interest in fulfilling the commandment; it’s a demand in the mode of obligation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? Then why would there be two commandments in the same act? Fine, they already told me that this state is positive, that such an act is positive. Why do I need to be told this again? I don’t see the difference for our purposes.
[Speaker F] Because they come from different demands. The fact that in one case they meet in the same act—that’s already a kind of coincidence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And with a prohibition it’s the same. The problem portrayed here is a different problem. True, in both cases there are problems.
[Speaker F] The prohibition speaks about some reality, and once that reality is already defective, what is there to add to it? The defect already exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is a defect of this kind and a defect of that kind; there are two kinds of defects in this reality. What’s the problem? I don’t see the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions in this context.
[Speaker F] In any case, I looked at it as an example, so let’s set that example aside for a moment. What I want to say is that with commandments there’s no dealing with problems at all. There’s no problem at all in not fulfilling the commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is an idea of fulfilling the commandment, and that’s it. With that approach I would agree, and I’ll get to it in a moment. Independently of questions like whether one prohibition can take effect on top of another prohibition and things like that, as for the definition itself—I’ll get to it shortly—I think we mean the same thing. So what I really want to look for here is: what actually defines a positive commandment as opposed to a prohibition? What’s the definition? And after we understand that definition, we’ll be able to explain on its basis all the differences that are consequences of that distinction. Right? What earns reward, what gets punishment, which overrides which, how much money one must spend, and so on. So the claim is this. I don’t remember whether last time I mentioned Nozick’s paradox there, about enticement and extortion. Did I talk about that? Robert Nozick, an American philosopher of law, once asked: what’s the difference between enticement and extortion? Suppose I entice someone to perform some action. I tell him: look, if you do this action, I’ll give you a thousand shekels. Fine, so if he does that action, I give him a thousand shekels. That is of course completely permitted. Every worker I hire or contractor I hire—that’s basically what I’m doing. I tell him: do such-and-such work for me, and you’ll get such-and-such money. If we both agree, everything is excellent; the law has no problem with such a thing. But if I offer him an extortion deal, I say: look, if you don’t do this, I’ll take a hundred shekels from you. And if you do do it, then I won’t take it. On the face of it, that’s like enticement, but that’s called extortion. It’s forbidden by law. And then he asks: why is enticement permitted and extortion forbidden? In both cases he’s offering him two alternatives whose gap is a thousand shekels, in order to motivate him to do or not do something. Why is enticement permitted and extortion forbidden? That’s basically what he asks. And the answer seems obvious to me: when I offer him enticement, what I’m basically saying is this: if you do the work, you’ll get a thousand shekels; if you don’t do the work, you won’t get it. Now, I have the right to give him a thousand shekels, and I also have the right not to give it to him, right? It’s my money; I can give it to him. I can give it to him, and I can choose not to give it to him. The two options I offered him are both legitimate options. Do the work if you want; you decide. If you do it, you’ll get a thousand shekels; if you don’t do it, you won’t get it. After all, I’m allowed to give, and I’m allowed not to give—no problem, it’s permitted. So that’s the situation with enticement. In enticement, the two options I present to him are both legitimate. In extortion, one of the options is legitimate and the other isn’t. Because in extortion what I’m basically saying is: if you don’t do such-and-such, I’ll take a thousand shekels from you; if you do it, then I won’t take the thousand shekels. So if he does it and I don’t take it, no problem—that’s legitimate. I can choose not to take a thousand shekels from him. But if he doesn’t do it, then I will take it—that’s not legitimate. I can’t take a thousand shekels that belong to him. Meaning, the difference between enticement and extortion is that in practice they have the same potential gradient, right? In both cases there’s a gap of a thousand shekels between two alternatives, but they’re not located at the same place on the absolute axis. Enticement compares zero to a thousand, and extortion compares zero to minus a thousand. In both cases the gap is a thousand shekels, but the location of those two marks on the axis is different. The question is whether it’s zero versus a thousand or minus a thousand versus zero. The first is legitimate; the second is not legitimate. What does that actually mean? It means that what matters to the law is not only the gap I offer between the two alternatives, but also where each of those alternatives is located. If one is below zero, it’s illegal. If both alternatives are from zero and upward, then it’s legal. But if one of the alternatives is below zero, then it’s illegal, because you can’t take money that isn’t yours. The same thing applies to positive commandments and prohibitions. The claim is basically this. A positive commandment is a commandment that points to a positive state. If you do this, you’ll be righteous. A prohibition is a commandment that points to a negative state. If you do this, you’ll be wicked. Now, with a positive commandment, if I fulfill it, then I’m righteous. If I don’t fulfill it, then I’m average—I’m not wicked, I’m just not righteous. Right? I’m basically in the zero state. It’s like the difference between a thousand and zero. That parallels enticement. A positive commandment is basically enticing me to do it. If you do this, you’ll be righteous; if you don’t do it, we won’t take anything from you, because there’s no punishment. Nothing happened; you just weren’t righteous. So a positive commandment parallels enticement. That’s basically what it means.
[Speaker C] But that’s not really true though. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not really true.
[Speaker C] Someone who doesn’t—I don’t know—someone whose head doesn’t have tefillin placed on it is called wicked, just simply speaking.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, “a skull on which tefillin were not placed” is a mystical matter; it’s not relevant to us. But you mean the transgression of neglecting a positive commandment. In another moment I’ll comment on that, in another moment.
[Speaker C] That’s only from the existential side, as it were, of what the Rabbi is saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I’ll comment on that shortly, in just a moment. But first I just want to finish the definition. So basically a positive commandment parallels enticement. If you do this, you get reward; if you don’t do this, nothing happens. You won’t be righteous, you won’t receive reward, but nothing happened. So that’s a positive commandment. What happens with a prohibition? With a prohibition, if you violate this commandment, then it’s not just that you won’t be righteous—you’ll be wicked. If you don’t violate a prohibition, you’re not righteous. To fulfill a prohibition means not to violate it. Not violating it is not being righteous; it’s just not being wicked—that is, average. Okay? Therefore a prohibition parallels extortion. They tell me: if you violate this prohibition, you’ll get punishment. If you don’t violate it, you don’t get reward, but you also don’t get punishment. And a positive commandment parallels enticement. Rabbi, but—
[Speaker D] That really can’t be. After all, Joseph was righteous because he didn’t fail in a prohibition. He didn’t sleep with a married woman, and what he did—he was heroic. So he didn’t become righteous?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the kind of righteousness of pietists. I’m not talking about pietists; I’m talking about Jewish law. Someone who didn’t violate a prohibition is not righteous. Someone who didn’t violate a prohibition simply didn’t violate a prohibition; he’s not wicked. The fact that in Heaven, because it was difficult for him and he had to overcome and it was a hard situation and so on, they may give him some reward—that’s not reward for a positive commandment.
[Speaker G] “According to the pain is the reward.” Can’t hear? “According to the pain is the reward.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right, that’s “according to the pain is the reward,” and that isn’t relevant for the basic definitions. Okay?
[Speaker G] Yes, completely pietistic, fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can also receive reward in the heavenly court for moral matters. That doesn’t mean you performed a commandment. You were a good person, so maybe you get reward for that too, but right now I’m talking about the halakhic definitions.
[Speaker C] That’s about the commandment in the Shulchan Arukh, redeeming captives, which the Rabbi discussed in the previous lesson. Okay, there there’s confusion between a commandment and a good deed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, then, the Shulchan Arukh was pietistic. Fine. In any case, for our purposes, a positive commandment parallels enticement and a prohibition parallels extortion. And now what basically happens here? Now we can actually see what would happen if the Torah wrote: I do not want you to be without tefillin. Is that the same thing as writing: I want you to put on tefillin? The answer is no. Because to say “I want you to put on tefillin” is to say that being with tefillin is a positive state. When you are without tefillin, then you are not in a positive state, you’re not righteous, but that is not wickedness. But if the Torah says “I do not want you to be without tefillin,” then when I am without tefillin I am wicked—not merely not righteous. Because I’m in a state that the Torah defines as a negative state. It’s not only that I’m not in the positive state. It’s not saying the same thing. In other words, saying “I do not want you to be without tefillin” is not logically equivalent to the statement “I want you to be with tefillin.” It’s simply not true. It’s not the same claim. These are two different claims. By the way, even on the simple logical level, for anyone who knows a bit: when I say “I do not want you to be without tefillin,” that is not logically equivalent to “I want you to be with tefillin.” Not at all. Whoever thinks it is equivalent is mistaken because he thinks that “not” and “want” are commutative, interchangeable. “I do not want you to be without,” so I swap the positions of “not” and “want”: “I want you not to be without.” Right? “I want you not to be without” means “I want you to be with.” That is true. But the Torah does not say that. It does not say “I want you not to be without”; rather, it says “I do not want you to be without.” That is not the same thing. The question is whether the “not” appears first or the “want” appears first. You’re not allowed to swap their positions. “Not” and “want” are not commutative; they are not interchangeable. Therefore, even on the logical level, it is a mistake to say that “I do not want you to be without tefillin” is equivalent to “I want you to be with tefillin.” It’s simply not true. It’s not the same thing. “I want you not to be without tefillin” is equivalent to “I want you to be with tefillin.” But “I do not want you to be without” is not equivalent. It’s not the same thing. And if that is so, then basically the claim is that the Torah does not really have two options for phrasing every commandment. No—there is only one option. If the Torah tells me “be with tefillin,” it means to say that being with tefillin is a positive state. You can’t say that in a negative form. A sentence that begins with “not” will never succeed in expressing that content. To express that content, you need a sentence that does not begin with “not.” A sentence that begins with “not” always tells me that a certain state is negative—for example, the state of being without tefillin. That is not the same thing as saying that the state of being with tefillin is positive. To say that the state of being without tefillin is negative means that someone without tefillin is wicked. To say that the state of being with tefillin is positive means that someone without tefillin is not wicked; he’s just not righteous. That’s not saying the same thing; those are two different things. Now you can also understand why this is not at all dependent on the practical question. The positive state the Torah defines—or the negative one, whichever—it doesn’t matter; that state can be a state of action or a state of inaction. For example: “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.” What is the Torah actually saying here? That non-rescue is a negative state. If it had said “save your fellow,” and I didn’t save him, then I wouldn’t be wicked, only not righteous. Because the state of being righteous, of righteousness, is to perform an act of rescue. So if the Torah had said “save your fellow,” it would basically be telling me that a state in which you save your fellow is a positive state. So suppose I didn’t save my fellow; then I’m not righteous, but that’s not wickedness—I’m average. In contrast, when the Torah says “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” it is basically telling me: if you stand there and do not save him, you are wicked—not merely not righteous, you are wicked. Therefore it chooses the negative formulation. Even though, with that negative formulation, in order not to violate the prohibition what is imposed on me is to do an action, not to refrain as with ordinary prohibitions. In this case, it is action. But the action is not what has value. Rather, when I act, I am not in the default state—and the default state is a state of wickedness, a negative state. But the action in itself has no value. Take the Sabbath: when the Torah tells me to rest on the Sabbath, it is basically saying that refraining from labor is a positive state. If the Torah tells me “you shall not do any labor,” which is the prohibition, then resting on the Sabbath is not a positive state; doing labor is a negative state. So if I rest on the Sabbath, I merely avoid being in a negative state. Then I’m not righteous; I’m only not wicked. But when the Torah tells me to rest on the Sabbath—a positive commandment—it is basically saying that resting on the Sabbath is a positive state, not merely that I am not in a negative state. That is really not the same thing. Therefore positive commandment and prohibition overlap regarding the Sabbath, but they have different content. That’s why Maimonides counts them as two different commandments, unlike two prohibitions or two positive commandments. Why? Because they really do have different content—two different things.
[Speaker C] But how can something be both—why should it be both positive and negative at once?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the opposite, the opposite—how could it not be both negative and positive at once? What was said here is that resting on the Sabbath is a positive state, and doing labor on the Sabbath is a negative state—not that resting is both positive and negative. Resting is positive. If there were only a commandment to rest on the Sabbath, what would follow? That resting is positive, and non-resting is zero—it’s average.
[Speaker C] Isn’t not doing labor basically the same as resting? What? Isn’t not doing labor basically resting?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? It is resting.
[Speaker C] So the Rabbi says that resting is positive and not doing labor is negative.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. If not doing labor were just neutral—if there were a prohibition against doing labor—then if you didn’t do labor, you wouldn’t be righteous; you’d only be not wicked. But if there is a positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath and you didn’t do labor, then you are righteous, not merely not wicked.
[Speaker C] And if there are both?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if there are both, then when you didn’t do labor you are righteous, and when you did labor you are wicked. There is no intermediate state. That’s—
[Speaker H] What the Torah—so then you can’t be, okay. You can’t be average in this whole story of labor on the Sabbath. Either you’re righteous or you’re wicked. It’s an extreme case. In a regular prohibition, you can be wicked and you can be average. In a regular positive commandment, you can be righteous and you can be average. When the Torah wants to tell me, look, here there’s no average—either you’re righteous or you’re wicked—then it has to impose both a prohibition and a positive commandment on the same case. But Rabbi, you still have to say something similar to what Shmuel mentioned earlier: why does the Torah really regard “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” as more severe—not doing anything—as opposed to saving? Meaning, the emphasis is on the state where a person remains like a lump and tries nothing?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that is a normative definition, not a psychological one. I am claiming that non-rescue is a negative state, not a neutral state.
[Speaker H] Fine, but you have to give a reason why the Torah—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It says that this is a negative thing—what do you mean, “give a reason”? It says this is a negative state. It has nothing to do with psychology, or not necessarily with psychology.
[Speaker H] And why didn’t it formulate it as “save, save the person”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could have formulated it that way, but then the result would be that not saving is not a negative state but a neutral one. But no—not saving is a negative state.
[Speaker H] Right, so the severity is in the state of doing nothing—that’s the emphasis. Therefore the wording is—and it also seems that when it’s harder to define, when it’s less defined, then it gets formulated in the opposite way. I mean, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”—so what should you do? Maybe you’ll be able to save him, maybe you won’t. It’s not like “You shall not eat any carcass.” “You shall not eat any carcass” is clear: I’m forbidden to eat any carcass; the prohibition is defined. “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” opens up all kinds of possibilities.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Why?
[Speaker H] Save him—what do you mean? What’s the difference? What’s the problem? It doesn’t depend only on me; maybe I won’t be able to save him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And maybe you won’t succeed in keeping the Sabbath, maybe you won’t succeed in all kinds of things. Fine, so you’ll be under compulsion. But what’s the problem with defining such a positive commandment? I don’t see a problem defining such a positive commandment.
[Speaker H] It seems less defined. Even rest on the Sabbath is not necessarily rest in one single thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the Torah does make a positive commandment out of resting on the Sabbath. On the Sabbath there is both a prohibition and a positive commandment.
[Speaker H] Yes, but it doesn’t suffice with saying only “do not do such-and-such labor”; it also emphasizes—because rest is a broader, more inclusive concept.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It says both this and that. Each of them could be said even without the other. It’s not that it had a problem saying only one of them and therefore it said the other as well. No—it could have said each one of them, but it decided to say both. That’s how it seems to me; I don’t see—
[Speaker C] Wait, according to the Rabbi, a person can—if I now do labor, do I violate both a prohibition and a positive commandment, or not? Obviously. I violate both a prohibition and a positive commandment. Obviously. So that’s it, I don’t understand—then I can at one and the same time… yes, then I’m in a state where I’m both in a negative state and in a non-positive state. Right. Isn’t that a bit difficult that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. You are both not in a proper state and in an improper state. Both things.
[Speaker C] So basically one thing can be both and also—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll make claims from two directions. First: why weren’t you righteous? Second: why were you wicked?
[Speaker C] Yes, but if the thing is the same thing—if it’s the same definition, doing labor is one definition, not doing labor—how can it be both a negative state and a state—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the problem? From the perspective of the obligation to rest on the Sabbath, it is a neutral state. From the perspective of the obligation not to do labor on the Sabbath, it is a negative state. Those are two angles.
[Speaker C] But how do you define—this is it—how do you define those two angles?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like neshekh and tarbit. The Talmud at the beginning of “What Is Neshekh” says that in every loan with interest there are two prohibitions, neshekh and tarbit. What is neshekh? So Rashi explains there that neshekh means you are biting into your fellow’s money. Tarbit means that you are increasing your own money unlawfully. Now that is the same action. I lent him a hundred and I take from him in return a hundred and ten. Those ten are both missing from him and added to me. The fact that they are missing from him is neshekh; the fact that they were added to me is tarbit. Those are two angles on the very same action itself. Only from the borrower’s side I violated neshekh, and from my own side I violated tarbit. So the same action has two aspects; it has problems from two different aspects. Okay, thank you. So what I now want to say—now you can understand—if this is how I define positive commandment and prohibition, now you can understand all the consequences. For example, since a positive commandment parallels enticement and a prohibition parallels extortion, then of course it’s obvious that a prohibition carries punishment, while a positive commandment—basically they extort you not to violate the prohibition, and for a positive commandment there is reward—they entice you to do it, to perform the commandment. Or in other words, clearly if you are righteous, you deserve reward. If you’re not wicked, you don’t deserve reward; you’re simply not wicked. In contrast, if you are wicked, you deserve punishment. After all, if you’re not righteous, you won’t get reward, but you don’t deserve punishment either. That’s also why one must spend all his money in order not to violate a prohibition. Because not being wicked is a much more basic demand than being righteous. In order not to be wicked, you have to make a great effort, because that is an elementary demand. Being wicked is unacceptable. No—under no circumstances do I agree that you should be wicked. But if you won’t be righteous, okay, it happens that people are not righteous. For that kind of thing, you don’t have to spend all your money. So you see that all the implications, or all the differences that we mention between prohibition and positive commandment, are basically derived from the fundamental difference that I’ve defined here between prohibition and positive commandment.
[Speaker C] A positive commandment overrides a prohibition?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “A positive commandment overrides a prohibition” is Nachmanides on Parashat Yitro. Nachmanides says that positive commandments are love and prohibitions are fear. And therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Now that’s very strange, because what are you basically telling me? The Sdei Chemed explains this Nachmanides and says: after all, on the one hand a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, which means the positive commandment is more important. On the other hand, for a prohibition you spend all your money and there is also punishment, while for neglect of a positive commandment there is not. So that means the prohibition is more severe. So which is more severe, the positive commandment or the prohibition? So the Sdei Chemed says: clearly fulfilling the positive commandment is loftier than refraining from a prohibition. But failing in a prohibition is more severe than neglecting a positive commandment. Meaning, from the standpoint of fulfillment, the positive commandment is higher than the prohibition. From the standpoint of neglect, the prohibition is worse, more severe, than the positive commandment. And that of course is not contradictory; these are two sides of the same coin. Right? There is no contradiction here at all. When you look from the side of fulfillment, the positive commandment is greater. When you look from the side of neglect, the prohibition is more severe.
[Speaker C] Meaning, according to the way the Rabbi defines it, that a positive commandment makes you righteous and a prohibition makes you wicked, then surely there is no room to say: be wicked in one place in order to be righteous somewhere else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I haven’t gotten there—one second. So that’s regarding the general implications. What happens regarding “a positive commandment overrides a prohibition”? Nachmanides also ties that law, that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, to this distinction. And the question is why the law that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition follows from there. Let’s do the calculation for a moment. We have a positive commandment—say we are at Passover and we have only grain from the new crop. And the day of waving the omer is tomorrow, right? It’s Passover eve; we need to bake matzot. We have only matzah from the new crop, grain from the new crop. We don’t have grain from the old crop. So a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. We bake matzah from the new crop and eat matzah even though there is a prohibition against eating the new crop before the day of waving. Why? Because a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. So let’s do the calculation. I basically have two options: either bake matzah from the new crop and eat it, or not eat matzah. Let’s check what the first option is worth. What do I gain and what do I lose? Okay? In the first option, where I decide to bake the matzah from the new crop and eat it, I gained the commandment of eating matzah. I have a great reward or a greatly positive state, which is a positive commandment, and I have a greatly negative state, which is the prohibition. I violated the prohibition of the new crop. So let’s say, if a positive commandment is one and a prohibition is minus one, then fulfilling a positive commandment is one, and neglecting a positive commandment is minus one-half. That’s a lighter transgression than violating a prohibition. Violating a prohibition is minus one; refraining from violating a prohibition is half? What do you say? It’s a commandment but less important than a positive commandment? What number would you attach to that—refraining from violating a prohibition? Zero? Zero, right, not one-half. Okay, it’s not a commandment; you’re just not wicked. Now let’s do the calculation. If I bake the matzah from the new crop, then I have one and minus one. Overall my total gain is zero. The utility function of this thing is zero, right? What happens if I don’t perform the commandment? Then I have neglect of a positive commandment, which is a lighter transgression than a prohibition, but it’s minus one-half. And I didn’t violate the prohibition because I didn’t eat the new crop; I didn’t bake matzah at all. So what is the total gain? Minus one-half. Minus one-half plus zero. Clearly zero is preferable to minus one-half. Therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. At the root of the matter is the fact that there is an asymmetry between prohibition and positive commandment. Neglecting a positive commandment counts as a transgression, just a lighter one than a prohibition. But refraining from violating a prohibition is not a lighter commandment—it’s not a commandment at all. Positive commandment and prohibition are not symmetrical. And therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. And whenever we think about “a positive commandment overrides a prohibition,” what immediately jumps into our minds is: wait, which is more severe? Is the positive commandment more severe? Is the prohibition more severe? But that is of course a very misleading formulation. You can’t answer such a thing. Because the question is whether you are speaking about fulfilling the positive commandment or neglecting the positive commandment, about fulfilling the prohibition or neglecting the prohibition. After all, on one side you have fulfillment of a positive commandment and neglect of a prohibition, and on the other side you have neglect of a positive commandment and fulfillment of a prohibition. And now you have to ask: is this sum greater or is that sum greater? Not positive commandment versus prohibition, but fulfillment of a positive commandment plus neglect of a prohibition versus neglect of a positive commandment plus fulfillment of a prohibition. The question is whether this sum is greater or that sum is greater. That is the correct calculation that has to be made. And then it simply comes out that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. But Rabbi—
[Speaker I] That same—
[Speaker B] The same calculation could show that neglecting a positive commandment is also zero, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That relates to the question Dov asked earlier. In order to explain the concepts of positive commandment and prohibition, I attached to them the values one, minus one, and zero, or righteous versus wicked versus average. But the truth is that at least with existential positive commandments, with positive commandments that are fulfilled by their very performance, that is exactly the situation. With obligatory positive commandments it isn’t precise. Someone who does not fulfill an obligatory positive commandment is a little bit wicked. It’s a kind of transgression. Why? Apparently, if the positive commandment is obligatory, then that means there is some demand here to be righteous. This is not some special saintliness; here it is a basic demand. Everyone, in this context, has to be righteous. If you were not righteous, there is a claim against you. It’s not a prohibition, but there is a claim against you. By the way, the same thing as a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment. A prohibition inferred from a positive commandment is a prohibition without—when you fulfill it, you’re not fulfilling a positive commandment, but when you neglect the positive commandment, you have the transgression of neglecting a positive commandment. But the transgression is minus one-half; it’s a positive commandment, not a prohibition. A prohibition inferred from a positive commandment is a positive commandment. It’s a positive commandment, not a prohibition.
[Speaker I] But Rabbi, if I may ask—if I may ask—the calculation the Rabbi made can also be made regarding whether to invest all your money or only a fifth. Meaning, it comes out that in terms of expected value it pays more to invest all your money דווקא in a positive commandment, and for a prohibition not to invest all your money, because you lose only minus one and you can gain one—and the whole expected-value calculation the Rabbi made, it pays more to invest—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you’re mixing things up completely here. When you talk about spending money on a positive commandment or on a prohibition, that’s positive commandment by itself and prohibition by itself. It’s not prohibition versus positive commandment.
[Speaker I] But a positive commandment, according to the Rabbi’s calculation—the calculation the Rabbi made—when a positive commandment and a prohibition clash, it pays more to fulfill the positive commandment and incur the minus one of the prohibition, according to the expected-value calculation the Rabbi made. That same expected-value calculation can also be used in comparison with money. Meaning, according to the Rabbi’s calculation, a positive commandment pays more than a prohibition. So also when converted into money, a positive commandment ought to pay more than a prohibition. The calculation the Rabbi made with—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they cancel each other out exactly and you end up at zero. It’s only on the side of neglect that you get to minus one-half; therefore that is preferable.
[Speaker I] I understand, but I’m saying: if, after all, if you neglect the commandment in a positive commandment, you get minus one-half. If you fulfill it, you get one. Right. Meaning, for how much is this commandment worth to you? If you fulfill it, you get one; if you neglect it, it’s minus one-half.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s formulate it this way: look, in order not to be wicked you have to spend money. In order to be righteous you don’t have to spend money. Now, with a positive commandment you will be at a level of wickedness of minus one-half. So spend up to one-fifth of your assets, not more than that. With a prohibition you will be wicked at the level of minus one, and for that you must spend all your money.
[Speaker I] What seems hard to me about the Rabbi’s point is that he makes a certain jump. Rabbi, you’re making a certain leap. That is, in the calculation of positive commandment versus prohibition, you look at it as though it really is one and minus one, as though one can compare righteousness and wickedness—as though it’s the same calculation, the same balance, the same currency. Basically an execution of that same currency. But in the calculation involving conversion to money, you don’t perform the same move. You say righteousness is one thing and wickedness is another. Right, right. But when I tell you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Money is spent for—this is what I propose. You don’t have to say this, but this is what explains the Jewish law. Money is spent in order not to be wicked, not in order to be righteous. It’s like the difference between paying so that they won’t beat me and paying so that I’ll enjoy something. Even though the level of enjoyment is one and the level of suffering from being beaten is minus one. That doesn’t mean that I will pay for enjoyment in exactly the same way as I will pay in order not to suffer.
[Speaker I] But would you also be willing to receive the enjoyment and also suffer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe yes. If they’re equivalent, maybe yes.
[Speaker I] In one place you make a comparison, and in another place you say it’s not the same currency—and that’s what seems strange to me. If you say that it really is in the same—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t have to be the same across the entire metaphysical plane.
[Speaker I] As if every person has—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You pay—I’ll say it again—you don’t pay money in order to rise in the levels of Torah and fear of Heaven. You pay money in order not to be wicked. That is the rule, that is the assumption. Now the question is how wicked you will be if you don’t pay the money. In neglect of a positive commandment you’ll be minus one-half, or if you like minus one-fifth, it doesn’t matter to me. And in a prohibition you’ll be wicked at minus one. So for that you spend the money. You don’t spend the money in order to be righteous. You don’t have to. You can, but you don’t have to. I don’t see any problem with that. Again, I wouldn’t fall off my chair if people said otherwise. But once one says this, I don’t see any difficulty in it.
[Speaker I] I’ll try one last time, and if not I’ll stop arguing, but I’m simply saying: in one place, when comparing positive commandment and prohibition, you treat it as though there is some metaphysical bank in which my merits and liabilities are recorded, and it’s all in the same currency. Like a kind of Bank Leumi. A bank in Heaven. But now how much is each such point worth? How much money is each such point worth?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, now you’re moving to the value of money. Money has no such value. Money does not translate your spiritual level. It doesn’t operate on that. Money operates on not being wicked. Money is not compensation for your spiritual level.
[Speaker I] In the end—not really—I’m trying to understand. In the end I have a clash between paying for a certain commandment, paying a certain sum of money for a lulav, or not fulfilling the commandment. And I have to choose whether that money is worth the commandment or not worth the commandment. For a positive commandment I pay only one-fifth, and for a prohibition I pay everything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not worth the commandment. It only has to save you from being someone who neglects a commandment, so that you won’t be wicked.
[Speaker I] Okay, now that’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m paying not in order to fulfill the positive commandment, but in order not to neglect it. Like Kanvoker suggested here—Ido.
[Speaker I] Okay, that’s an interesting direction. Thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In any case, for our purposes. I just want to clarify the matter. I can already see that I won’t manage to start the next topic, so let me make one more remark here on this issue. The initial intuition that says that the difference between prohibition and positive commandment is in the mode of performance: positive commandments are fulfilled through positive action and neglected through passive omission, whereas prohibitions are fulfilled through passive omission and violated through positive action—that’s the initial intuition. Therefore people say that a positive commandment means doing something, and a prohibition means a failure to act, yes, not doing something. Now, I said that this is not correct. Meaning, the practical definition is not what distinguishes a positive commandment from a prohibition. But I want you to notice: this intuition is not totally baseless. It just should not be interpreted literally. What do I mean? Suppose the Torah tells me to keep the Sabbath, a positive commandment. Fine? Now I did labor. You understand that this is a lighter transgression, or less severe, than a transgression where the Torah tells me “you shall not do any labor” and I did labor. Why? Because in the first case I am not colliding head-on with the will of the Torah. The Torah wants me to be righteous, so I’m not doing what it said. But it’s not that I’m doing something it told me not to do. Meaning, my transgression is a passive transgression; it’s not an active transgression. If the Torah had said “you shall not do any labor,” and it did say that, and I did labor—here I collided head-on with the will of the Torah. That’s a severe transgression. I did what the Torah said not to do. Here I merely didn’t do what it did tell me to do. You understand that this is very similar to the difference between passive omission and positive action. It’s very similar to the practical distinction. Because in the end, if I were to ask you the following question: suppose the definition of prohibition and positive commandment is that a positive commandment means doing something and a prohibition means not doing something. Now I ask you: tell me, why is violating a positive commandment less severe than violating a prohibition? Suppose the definition is practical. Why is violation of a positive commandment—neglect of a positive commandment—less severe than violating a prohibition? So what if one is a positive commandment and the other is a prohibition—why is it less severe?
[Speaker H] Because I didn’t do anything, so what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You didn’t do anything negative, right? You just didn’t do something positive. Only what I want to say is that this “doing” here, in quotation marks, is not talking about the nature of the action, but about the level of your clash with the will of the Torah. Doing something negative—violating a prohibition—why is that severe? It’s severe because you collide head-on with the will of the Torah. You do something the Torah said not to do. With a positive commandment you are passive: you simply don’t do something it wanted you to do. So you understand that even in my definition, which has nothing to do with the physical mode of performance—whether it’s an action or an omission—still this is basically the difference between prohibition and positive commandment. Right? You see the similarity. It’s basically the same idea, except that the practical definition has undergone abstraction. I am now saying that violation of a positive commandment really is a transgression of passive omission. But it is not passive omission in the sense that I am not acting, that I am inactive. Rather, passive omission here means that I am not doing something the Torah wanted me to do—but not that I am doing something it did not want. So in that sense, neglecting a positive commandment really is a transgression of passive omission, even though sometimes I do it through an action. Suppose the Torah said to rest on the Sabbath, and I did labor. And suppose there were no prohibition—suppose there is no prohibition, only a positive commandment to rest on the Sabbath, and I did labor. Then I neglected the positive commandment of Sabbath rest. Why is that not as severe as the case where there was also a prohibition and I violated the prohibition? It is not as severe because I did not do something the Torah said not to do; I merely did not do something it did say to do. So what difference does it make whether this is a physically active act or not? Let’s speak about states and not actions. The question is whether I was in a state the Torah wanted me to be in—or rather, whether I was not in a state the Torah wanted me to be in—or whether I was in a state it wanted me not to be in. You understand that this is essentially the same distinction?
[Speaker C] Rabbi, does what the Rabbi is talking about indicate something about the command itself, about the transgression or the commandment itself, or only about the command? Meaning, Rabbi, several times I’ve heard the Rabbi divide commandments—Rabbi says there’s the side of the thing itself within the commandment, what it does—for example there is value to… I mean, can one say that the difference between prohibition and positive commandment is basically only on the level of the command? No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Because I claim that the command also reflects the real state of affairs. When the Torah said to rest on the Sabbath, it was basically telling me that a state of rest is a positive state. Now that is a claim about reality; it is not about the command. The command only reflects that this is reality, but in fact we are talking about reality itself. So now, if I did labor, then from the standpoint of the command I did not fulfill the command, but also on the level of reality I simply was not in a positive state. My distinction concerns both planes, that of commandment and that of transgression—not only the plane of command, but also the plane of essence.
[Speaker C] Yes, because on the plane of command I’m dealing with it because, since it’s rebellion, and sort of rebellion against the One who spoke, as the Rabbi says.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The distinction I’m making exists both on the level of the command and on the level of the essence. The question is whether you are colliding head-on with the command, or only colliding with it passively. But not only on the level of the command—also in reality. The question is whether you are in a negative state, or only not in a positive state. It’s the same distinction, formulated once on the level of commands and a second time on the level of essences. And so what I’m trying to say here is that people’s intuition—that the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment is basically whether you are required to do something or required not to do something—is not groundless. It isn’t correct, it isn’t precise, but there is something true in it. It captures a real point. Because in practical terms as well, the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment is the question of how directly the collision is with God’s will, or with the problematic element in the commandment. If you did something, an act, something improper, then you collided head-on with what the Torah wants from you. If you merely failed to do something it wants, then the collision is not head-on. Now I’m saying: okay, if that’s the difference, then why should I care whether we’re talking about a physical act or a physical omission? Bottom line, the question is whether I was in the positive state or not in the positive state, or whether I was in the negative state. And then I’m basically abstracting the practical definition, and instead of defining positive commandments and prohibitions as action versus omission, I’m now defining them as passive collision versus active collision with God’s will. And now suddenly we discover that this same difference between positive commandments and prohibitions no longer depends on the practical question of whether you perform an action or merely fail to do what you should have done. I’m simply abstracting. And that’s something to know: I’ve often said that in Aharon Shemesh’s article, he says that in the earlier layers of the Talmud, the distinctions between positive commandments and prohibitions were practical. In the later layers, the distinctions are linguistic. And I asked about that: fine, linguistic, linguistic—but what does the language reflect? Language in itself cannot explain the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. The language is different because apparently there is really something different in reality between a prohibition and a positive commandment. And then I asked: what is that real difference that the language reflects? And now I said the answer I gave today: this points to a positive state, and that points to a negative state. But this transition from the earlier layers to the later layers is a very typical transition in the Talmud. A transition from Mishnah to Talmud, or from earlier passages to later passages—very often things become abstracted. The same principles that at the earlier stage were very concrete and clear—here it means to do, and here it means to refrain or not do—undergo a kind of abstraction. But the idea remains. It becomes abstracted, and now a positive commandment means being in a positive state, and a prohibition means not being in a negative state. But that is simply an abstraction of a practical definition. It isn’t something else; it’s not that something here changed from one extreme to the other. Rather, it became refined. The earlier definition was cruder: the question was whether you do or do not do. Let’s look at the concept, the idea. And therefore the claim, ultimately, is that these moves—the moves that happen over the generations—are not moves that change the essence of things, but rather very often we make some kind of generalization, an abstraction, of the same idea, which then takes on more abstract meanings. And that happens in many contexts, both in the Talmud and in general. Things that begin as coarse, simple, initial understandings gradually undergo refinement: abstraction, generalization—but the core idea remains, the essence remains. It just goes through a certain refinement. Just in closing, I’m not going into it here, but anyone who wants can look at the article on the sixth root in the book Send Forth Your Roots; it’s also online. There I talk about how among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) you can see various expressions of this idea. For example, there are various places in the Talmud that distinguish between a transgression through passive omission and through positive action. For example, the Sages can uproot something from the Torah through passive omission, but not through positive action. Or human dignity overrides a Torah-level transgression only through passive omission, but not through positive action. So the medieval authorities and later authorities discuss this. The medieval authorities don’t formulate it this way, but it is already there among them—the well-known dispute between Maimonides and the Rosh. The later authorities formulate it explicitly: when we distinguish between passive omission and positive action, do we mean the distinction between a prohibition and a positive commandment, or do we mean the physical action? In other words, let’s say the Sages uproot something from the Torah through passive omission. What does that mean? Does it mean they are allowed to cancel a positive commandment from the Torah but forbidden to cancel a Torah prohibition? Or does it mean they are allowed to instruct me to refrain from acting, but not allowed to instruct me to do something forbidden—regardless of whether it is a prohibition or a positive commandment, but rather on the practical level? Understand that this reflects what I said earlier. Basically, the question is whether passive omission and positive action themselves also underwent abstraction and refinement. And now I am no longer speaking about passive omission or positive action in the practical sense—when I need to do something or not do something—but rather about positive commandments and prohibitions. Because a positive commandment in its essence is a commandment of positive action even when I perform it through refraining, like resting on the Sabbath—I am, in effect, doing a cessation. But what I am doing is not physical; I am doing something conceptual. I am in the positive place. And therefore, among the medieval authorities you can indeed see that in all these passages that distinguish between passive omission and positive action, some of them claim that this is not speaking on the practical plane, on the question of whether you act or do not act. It is speaking about prohibition versus positive commandment. And when we are speaking about prohibition and positive commandment, then the prohibition applies whether it is carried out by action or by omission, and the same with a positive commandment. Because on the conceptual level, every positive commandment, every neglect of a positive commandment, is passive omission even when it is done through a physical act; and on the conceptual level, every violation of a prohibition is positive action, even though sometimes I do it through omission on the physical level—but conceptually it is a transgression of positive action. That is basically a reflection of what I said here. But notice that all these things appear in the medieval and later authorities, yet they do not make the conceptualization that I made here. They do not really show that on the conceptual level it remains positive action and passive omission, and only underwent abstraction, because they did not define what a positive commandment is and what a prohibition is. And therefore I think that defining the concepts and doing an a priori analysis—the example I gave here—very, very much clarifies things that perhaps were intuitively clear also to the medieval and later authorities. But still, they did not make the conceptualization. And I think that once you do make the conceptualization, it clarifies the picture tremendously, and you can also derive various implications from it. The picture becomes much less confusing. And I think this is a good example of the importance of conceptual analysis and a priori analysis. Okay, I’ll stop here.
[Speaker E] Well, maybe—
[Speaker G] I just have some example of something that’s more about an earlier distinction in the lesson, but it’s a parallel that might be relevant. With the commandment of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” which the Rabbi defined as a positive commandment… no, as a prohibition. As a prohibition. In Israeli law it’s an obligation to act, an obligation to rescue, but there’s no enforcement of it, meaning there’s no enforcement remedy.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there is. After the Good Samaritan law was passed, there is.
[Speaker G] In the law of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” there’s no enforcement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there is.
[Speaker E] An obligation?
[Speaker G] No, it’s an obligation, but you can’t… there is compensation due to someone who did the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no minimum sentence, but there is… criminal is criminal. It’s not about compensation, and just because there’s no minimum sentence doesn’t mean you aren’t liable. There was that case of Margalit Har-Shefi—they convicted her for this kind of thing, and she got a severe punishment. In other cases someone got a symbolic sentence of one shekel.
[Speaker G] No, not from “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” not from the law—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Your neighbor’s blood”—from the law “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” not… no… the punishment isn’t written in the law, because there is no minimum sentence. They don’t tell the judge he must impose a punishment. But there is certainly enforcement.
[Speaker G] Okay,
[Speaker E] As far as I know, no, but fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. I—
[Speaker F] Want—I can, just for a second, explain again the point about “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition,” because it seems to me it can add a bit of definition here. What I said earlier about one prohibition not taking effect on top of another—I think it can illustrate something here. Let me try to formulate it a little differently, and maybe we’ll succeed, maybe not. A prohibition always encounters a case. Now, when you have a case to which two prohibitions apply, I can say it’s redundant to apply another prohibition to it—the case is already problematic. A commandment never encounters a case. Meaning, it doesn’t tell you: here, take this lulav. It tells you: go take a lulav. Now if we have a case through which it’s actually possible to fulfill two commandments, neither commandment knows about the other; meaning, there isn’t really any point where those two commandments meet, because there isn’t.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say I take—let’s say I take a commandment, then I have also fulfilled the commandment of “whatever comes out of his mouth he shall do,” because I vowed to take a lulav, and I also fulfill the commandment of lulav.
[Speaker F] So I want to distinguish for a second. In commandments whose whole fulfillment is, say—for example, “whatever comes out of his mouth he shall do”—only when you attach it to another commandment, then maybe there is no expression of it in a case where you were already obligated anyway. I’m actually inclined to say there still would be two commandments, but even if not, I can understand why not, because then it’s no longer a meeting at the level of a case; it’s a meeting at the level of principle. You explicitly said it about something that… But it may really be that there would also be two commandments; I don’t see a problem saying that. But it’s a little different, because again, he is talking about the commandment itself. He says: the commandment that I want to fulfill. But in “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition,” that’s true even when the overlap is accidental—by chance, in one case, you have something forbidden for two different reasons.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I don’t see—even here it can be two different reasons. I don’t see the difference.
[Speaker F] So if we don’t see a difference, you can say that here too in fact he would be canceling two commandments; yes, that’s also possible to understand. But I can understand why this happens, why I don’t hear these terms regarding commandments. No, I don’t see the connection to us.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t see the connection to us.
[Speaker F] What do you mean? A commandment never encounters some given present state; it always refers to the future, to what needs to happen. So in the present I can say: here, two things happened to you—why do I care where I’m coming from? It talks about some specific reality. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is this relevant to us, I’m asking? I understand the distinction, but so what? Fine, that’s the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. So what? Why is that connected to “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition”?
[Speaker F] Because “one prohibition does not take effect on top of another prohibition” means there is a case to which two prohibitions apply. There is no case to which two commandments apply.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is an action in which you perform two commandments. So if they tell you it is a commandment to do this action, and there is already a commandment to do this action, why do I need another commandment?
[Speaker F] But it isn’t the action that interests me; it’s the commandment that interests me—how I succeed in fulfilling it, how I answer it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The action is the commandment. I don’t see the difference.
[Speaker F] You get up in the morning and you see a lulav—there is no commandment telling you, “take it.” Okay, you have a commandment to take a lulav; if this is the way you fulfill it, then fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if I take the lulav and by doing so I also fulfill another commandment? I also support the lulav seller—I gave him charity by buying a lulav from him, okay? So are there two commandments here or not?
[Speaker F] There are two commandments here, certainly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why?
[Speaker F] Because they are two commandments that stand independently, and the fact that you managed to gain both through one action is nice, but you can’t say that about the action, because the action is not what interests me.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also with two prohibitions—with two prohibitions too, it’s a case where one accumulates onto the other.
[Speaker F] But the case is what interests us. It tells you: don’t eat this piece. So if I already can’t eat it, then in the end it’s this piece.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t eat it because it’s pork, and don’t eat it because it’s—I don’t know—because it’s stolen. Fine, so what? Why not? What’s the problem? I don’t see a difference. Okay. Fine, anyone else?
[Speaker J] Rabbi, Rabbi, something regarding the dilemma the Rabbi brought in the name of—I don’t remember the philosopher’s name—the one between temptation and extortion. Robert Nozick. Nozick, yes. So I’m saying, aside from the difference of whether it’s legitimate or illegitimate, even if we found some case in which they were both legitimate, there is still a difference in the following sense: true, the resulting topographical map is apparently the same shape, exactly identical, yes? Let’s say the same mountains and the same hills and the same… But in the case of temptation, it is in my hands—the tempted person’s hands. If I want, I can remain in the same state I was in, ignore the mountain or hill that you presented to me, and live my life as I was living it before. By contrast, in the case of extortion, I can’t. I can’t say: I’ll ignore what you said, I’ll ignore your whole existence, and I’ll remain where I was until now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a huge difference.
[Speaker J] It’s different—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —from doing something else.
[Speaker J] What do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is remaining in the same state different from doing something else?
[Speaker J] No, because I remain within my autonomy; you haven’t harmed my autonomy, since I can remain what I was.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can do something else. You can remain what you were, and you just won’t get the 1,000 shekels.
[Speaker J] Yes, but I remained what I was, so I’ll go on living my life as before, ignore what you said to me, and ignore that person’s existence altogether. But in extortion I can’t ignore it. My world has changed. The map has changed against my will; I can’t return to what was before.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s just another formulation of what I said: that here there is a negative side; on one of the two sides it is negative.
[Speaker J] No, but not from the standpoint of legitimacy. Even if we found a situation where for some reason it isn’t extortion—I didn’t steal from you and I’m allowed to do it because… the point is, these are different concepts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you try to think of such a situation, I don’t think you’ll find one. And if both are legitimate, it will always be temptation. It won’t be extortion, in my opinion. Okay. Okay, fine—someone asked: tomorrow morning there’s no class. Someone asked that earlier. Okay, I’ll announce when there is. Goodbye, Sabbath peace.
[Speaker J] Sabbath peace, thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All the best.