Study and Halachic Rulings – Lesson 31
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Table of Contents
- Rulings for a particular place and time versus rulings for future generations
- Responsa versus books of Jewish law, and the rule "a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit"
- Facts, norms, and the claim that norms too can be local
- Maimonides in the third root: temporary commandments, Amalek, the fiery serpent, and the jar of manna
- Questioning Soloveitchik through the issue of temporary commands among halakhic decisors
- The Binding of Isaac, Ravitzky, and the certainty of revelation versus logic and morality
- The parable of the blind man and the sighted man, and "Mary's room": immediate experience as a condition for understanding
- Halakhic ruling in exceptional situations: the need to experience the situation
- The example of women singing, and the difference between a formal prohibition and a purposive prohibition
- Protective restrictions, "when the reason no longer applies," and the question of deciding between a formal enactment and preventing an outcome
- Egalitarian communities, rulings from a place of detachment, and combining an internal with an external perspective
- Women's halakhic ruling: ideology, expertise in women's situations, and criticism of precedent-based conservatism
- The art of application between theory and reality, and bringing application back into theory
Summary
General Overview
The text deals with halakhic ruling in extreme situations through a distinction between rulings that are correct for their place and time and rulings that become part of the halakhic corpus for future generations, relying on Professor Haym Soloveitchik's claim about exceptional rulings on interest in the Middle Ages that were rejected by the Shulchan Arukh. The speaker sharpens the difference between responsa and books of Jewish law, uses the rule "a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit" to distinguish between a ruling on a specific object and a principled dispute, and questions whether there really are "temporary" norms that cannot be generalized. He illustrates the tension through a discussion of Maimonides in the third root about time-bound commandments, through the Binding of Isaac and the parables of "the blind man and the sighted man" and "Mary's room," and concludes that an immediate encounter with a situation is a central condition for correct halakhic ruling, alongside the need to hear the view of someone uninvolved in order to avoid bias.
Rulings for a particular place and time versus rulings for future generations
Professor Haym Soloveitchik presents a picture in which halakhic decisors in the Middle Ages, at least in Ashkenaz and apparently also in Spain, rule in the laws of interest against the Talmud and against the medieval authorities (Rishonim), while the Shulchan Arukh gathers precedents from the medieval authorities but ignores the "anti-Talmudic" elements, so they are not absorbed into the halakhic corpus. The claim is that there are statements that are correct for a particular place and time but are not relevant to the continuation of halakhic tradition and do not become precedent for future generations, whereas there are other circumstances that reveal halakhic aspects belonging to the very body of Jewish law, and once revealed they join the precedents and continue onward. The speaker is hesitant about this distinction and argues that it is "tricky," raising the possibility that even within the norms themselves it is hard to justify a sharp division between what is only local and what can be transmitted.
Responsa versus books of Jewish law, and the rule "a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit"
Books of Jewish law such as the Shulchan Arukh, Mishnah Berurah, Arukh HaShulchan, the Tur, and Maimonides define halakhic principles, while the application to particular cases is left to the halakhic decisor. The Talmud and the medieval authorities tend to convey principles through cases, but the assumption is that the case serves as a vehicle for conveying the principle and is not itself the focus of discussion, whereas in responsa the discussion is about the case itself and often combines many principles from different areas in order to decide a concrete situation.
The Talmudic rule "a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit" applies to a ruling regarding a specific object or person, such as "that chicken" or a specific "chained woman" whose husband is missing, and does not prevent another sage from disputing the issue in principle when a different case comes before him. The speaker emphasizes that this is "a rule in the object" and not "a rule in the person," so the sage's authority is not formal but is created by the fact that the questioner accepted the ruling regarding that specific object. He adds that consulting several people is permitted, but if you came to "receive a ruling," then that ruling is binding, and in practice he recommends coming for consultation rather than searching for convenient rulings.
Facts, norms, and the claim that norms too can be local
The speaker describes the temptation to see the distinction between what is correct "for a place and time" and what is transmitted to future generations as the difference between local facts and universal norms. He rejects this and argues that Soloveitchik means that even within the normative dimension itself there are rulings that remain local and do not make their way into the Shulchan Arukh. He raises a difficulty: if a normative ruling is made within certain circumstances, then one can formulate from it a principle about how to rule in that type of circumstance, and even if those circumstances never recur, that can still be part of Jewish law, like the "stubborn and rebellious son," who "never was and never will be." In the end he leans toward saying that it is not clear there are really "forms of thought" that are correct only for a certain time and place, and that the principles of ruling belong to the body of Jewish law even if they were revealed through a unique event.
Maimonides in the third root: temporary commandments, Amalek, the fiery serpent, and the jar of manna
In the third root, Maimonides states that commandments given for a specific time are not included in the count of the commandments, and he gives as examples the fiery serpent and the jar of manna. The speaker has difficulty with this and argues that in principle these are instructions for a situation, and if that same situation were somehow to recur, then apparently one should have to carry out that same command even without a renewed command. He notes that Maimonides himself discusses the question of erasing Amalek—though apparently Amalek no longer exists—and answers that the commandment is eternal, it has simply been carried out, and therefore anyone who raises the question "doesn't understand what I said in the third root."
The speaker proposes an explanation according to which there are commands that are a function not only of circumstances but of time itself, and illustrates this with a physical analogy between dependence on time via place and explicit dependence on time itself, like a conservative force versus a non-conservative force. According to this suggestion, the fiery serpent is a command that depended explicitly on that time, and therefore even if the circumstances returned at a different time, the same obligation would not apply. He adds a philosophical claim that such a distinction assumes time is a real component of reality and not just a "form of perception," because something that does not exist cannot "cause" an obligation.
Questioning Soloveitchik through the issue of temporary commands among halakhic decisors
The speaker is prepared in principle to accept that in the Torah there may be commands that depend directly on time, but argues that this is "highly implausible" with regard to rulings of sages and halakhic decisors in the laws of interest in Ashkenaz and the like, because they are responding to a situation and not to "time itself." He presents Soloveitchik's assumption as close to the assumption behind the question on Maimonides, and in his view, if a directive arises from a situation, then in principle there is no reason it should not enter the halakhic corpus.
The Binding of Isaac, Ravitzky, and the certainty of revelation versus logic and morality
Various commentators ask why Abraham obeyed the command of the Binding of Isaac despite its apparent contradiction to the promise "for through Isaac shall offspring be called yours" and to moral considerations, and some go so far as to argue that Abraham failed because he should have refused. The speaker rejects this as absurd and as interpretively dishonest in light of "Now I know that you fear God," but accepts the question of how Abraham did not pause to doubt. He argues that the explanation is that, unlike us, Abraham experienced revelation immediately and directly, and therefore it was one hundred percent clear to him that this was a divine command.
The parable of the blind man and the sighted man, and "Mary's room": immediate experience as a condition for understanding
The speaker brings a parable in the name of Rabbi Itcheh Kahan of Chabad about a blind man and a sighted man in a sealed room full of furniture, where the sighted man enters again and claims the room is empty, and the blind man proves logically that this cannot be so. He says the sighted man would say "this requires further analysis" about the logic, but would remain certain of what he saw, while the blind man does not know the reliability of sight and therefore judges only theoretically.
He adds "Mary's room," about a brilliant physicist in optics who lives in a black-and-white room and knows all the theories about red, but only when she actually sees red does she "learn something new" through immediate encounter. From this he concludes that theoretical knowledge is not enough for judgment in situations where the experience itself is an essential component of understanding the situation.
Halakhic ruling in exceptional situations: the need to experience the situation
The speaker argues that in exceptional or extreme situations, someone who has not experienced the situation cannot rule on it correctly, because immediate experience is part of the intellectual apprehension of the situation and not just "emotion." He is willing to distinguish between formal prohibitions that are not situation-dependent and prohibitions whose purpose is to prevent outcomes such as erotic thoughts or moral decline, where understanding what is really happening in the situation determines the meaning of the Jewish law.
The example of women singing, and the difference between a formal prohibition and a purposive prohibition
In discussing women singing, the speaker argues that a conservative halakhic decisor who does not know the situation in practice may interpret it as necessarily tied to the context of forbidden sexual relations and erotic thoughts, and may fail to understand the possibility of listening as recreation or as art without the purpose of stimulation. He qualifies this by saying that if the prohibition is understood as a purely formal prohibition, period, then no experience is needed; but if the prohibition depends on its consequences, then a decisor who has not experienced the relevant reality does not understand the case and therefore rules in a distorted way.
Protective restrictions, "when the reason no longer applies," and the question of deciding between a formal enactment and preventing an outcome
Questions about distancing practices in the laws of menstruation, about poultry with milk, and about decrees such as "lest one grind medicinal herbs" on the Sabbath are presented as an arena in which one must clarify whether the act was prohibited in itself or only as a means of preventing a result. The speaker notes that there are halakhic decisors who are lenient on the basis of changed reality, such as with medicines on the Sabbath when no one grinds herbs at home anymore, and argues that the decision also depends on the price of conservatism and on where the burden of proof lies for the one who wishes to prohibit.
He points to a possible indication from Ritva at the end of tractate Kiddushin regarding decrees in which the reason appears within the formulation of the decree itself, and presents a sharp position regarding legumes on Passover as a concern rather than a prohibition, with an analogy to "you shall greatly guard your lives" regarding a pothole in the road that one goes around only as long as the pothole exists. He also brings "the Rebbe of Gur's broom" to illustrate how a practice can turn into a ritual detached from its purpose.
Egalitarian communities, rulings from a place of detachment, and combining an internal with an external perspective
The speaker says that in synagogues there are many "taboos" that have neither "root nor branch," and egalitarian communities seek to include women through various forms of participation. He argues that halakhic decisors who make categorical rulings from a place of detachment from the community are issuing incorrect rulings, and at times even "lying" by saying "it is forbidden" instead of saying "this is the custom, and it is proper to continue it," because they do not understand what the matter means for the community and how it will respond.
He says that the decision should be in the hands of someone who experiences the situation from the inside, even if that person is less of a Torah scholar, but that it is still very important to hear advice from someone uninvolved in order to receive unbiased criticism. He opposes idealizing the detached decisor sitting within "the four cubits of Jewish law" as someone who always rules according to "the true meaning of the Torah," and argues that the right approach is to listen but not to hand over the decision, using the expression "the Torah was not given to ministering angels."
Women's halakhic ruling: ideology, expertise in women's situations, and criticism of precedent-based conservatism
The speaker distinguishes between "women's halakhic ruling" as an ideology of a "female perspective," which he doubts as an essentialist category, and areas in which women's experience is a central factual-halakhic component and therefore women have more of a say. He argues that a woman with halakhic tools in these areas is "the best thing available," but criticizes a phenomenon in which female halakhic decisors tend to be conservative and cling to precedents and second-order rulings instead of using the immediate encounter with the situation as a tool for first-order ruling. He agrees that there is room for research and for hearing women's experiences where Jewish law depends on how women experience pain, suffering, or symptoms, and emphasizes that not every area of Jewish law depends on that.
The art of application between theory and reality, and bringing application back into theory
The speaker describes halakhic ruling as an intellectual art that connects theoretical principles to practical application, and argues that it is a mistake either to impose theory on reality or to detach from theory in the name of reality. He says that encountering a particular case can "contribute something even to theory" and justify adding a section to the Shulchan Arukh, and he concludes by saying that he will return to the point of processing "temporary Torah" and turning it into part of the halakhic corpus.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I began dealing with halakhic ruling in extreme situations. This is connected to first-order rulings and to the topic we've been dealing with in the last few meetings, but from a somewhat different angle. And the claim basically was this: I started with a distinction between two parts that exist in halakhic ruling. There's the part that is right for its place and time, and there's the part that can join the halakhic corpus and be passed on to future generations. I brought Professor Haym Soloveitchik, who said in his book on the laws of interest in the Middle Ages, both in Ashkenaz and in Spain, that he shows—at least in Ashkenaz, but it seems to me in Spain too—that there are very sharp departures from the rulings, from the law as ruled in the Talmud and by the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Decisors rule flatly against the Talmud. And although the Shulchan Arukh takes those same medieval authorities and those same sources, and takes precedents from them and accumulates them into the Shulchan Arukh, so it does indeed pass them on, gathers them into the halakhic corpus, assimilates them into the halakhic corpus—everything in those parts that goes against the Talmud it ignores. So that part doesn't get in. And his basic claim, Soloveitchik's, was that there are things you can say in a certain place and time, and they are true for that place and that time, but that consideration is not relevant as far as the halakhic tradition going forward is concerned. Meaning, there is no point in taking it further. It's correct for its place and time, and it doesn't really get added to the halakhic corpus. And there are other parts where the circumstances create a new situation; that situation helps us uncover certain halakhic aspects that maybe we hadn't noticed, or that hadn't come up because they weren't needed under other circumstances—but there they suddenly emerged. But that is part of the body of Jewish law. In other words, we discovered more aspects, more details, more components that truly belong to the law itself, which were revealed thanks to the circumstances that arose. And once we discovered them, of course they join the Shulchan Arukh and continue onward, becoming part of the law, its precedents, and so on.
So he makes that distinction, and I think it's a very interesting distinction; he shows it very nicely there in the book as well. But I want to sharpen this point a little more, because it's a bit tricky. Meaning, I'm not entirely sure that this first component really exists. Maybe I need to think about it more, but I'll explain why I'm a little hesitant. But before that, maybe one more small introduction. In halakhic literature there are two types of writing. There are responsa, and there are books of Jewish law. Shulchan Arukh, Mishnah Berurah, Arukh HaShulchan, the Tur, and so on, Maimonides—those are books of Jewish law, and then there are responsa. What's the difference between them? The difference is that a law book doesn't deal with cases. A law book basically tells us what the principles of Jewish law are. Applying them to this or that case—that is the task of the decisor, to take the principles that appear in the law book and apply them to the case before him, or the cases before him.
Now, just parenthetically, I'll add that the Talmud, and the medieval authorities after it, usually also prefer to convey the principles through cases. So when we talked about forced interpretations, I spoke about that. So true, in the Shulchan Arukh you can find what the law is in such-and-such a case or another case, but the assumption is that the case was brought only in order to convey the halakhic principle through it. The case is just the way he conveys the principle to us. But basically his task is to present the principle. The case is only a vehicle, the means through which the principle is conveyed to us. In responsa, by contrast, the responsum by definition deals with a case. Meaning, a case comes before the decisor and he has to discuss that case. More than that: the discussion of the case often combines several principles from all sorts of different areas of the Shulchan Arukh, because our basic discussion there is a discussion of the case, not of the principles. The principles serve us in order to rule on the case. As opposed to the Shulchan Arukh and books of Jewish law, where the case is really meant to convey the principles. So even if the case has other aspects, that's not of interest. If it appears in the laws of the Sabbath, then it talks about the aspect of Sabbath law in that case; or if it appears in the laws of selecting, then it will discuss the laws of selecting, not the laws of unintended action or I don't know what, some side issue. Even though those may also be present there, basically we're dealing with the halakhic topic, and the case's role is to serve the transmission of the material, the principles of Jewish law. In responsa it's the opposite. The principles of Jewish law are the means by which we determine what the law will be for the case before us.
A nice indication of this is, for example, the Talmudic rule that says: a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit. If a question came before a sage and the sage prohibited it, and now the Jew who asked him takes the chicken to another sage—the other sage thinks it's permitted. Still, a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit. That's what it says in the Gemara. That's how it is ruled in all the halakhic decisors. Again, the question of the exact definition—when yes and when no—I'm not getting into all those details. But there is such a rule. Does that rule mean that I can't disagree with Maimonides? Maimonides wrote a certain ruling about some case, whatever it may be, and I disagree with him, I think otherwise. Am I unable to disagree with Maimonides because he already ruled on that case? That's inconceivable. After all, all the medieval and later authorities disagree with each other all the time. According to that conception, it should have been that whoever got to the topic first—what he determined would be final. Everyone after him couldn't disagree with a sage. No one does that. No one even dreams of doing that. Why? What's the difference? The difference is that "a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit" refers to responsa, not to books of Jewish law. What does that mean? It means: if a question about a chicken came before me and I said it's forbidden, another sage can't say that that same chicken is permitted. Because that chicken already received its status from the first decisor. But if that very same question comes up with a different chicken, or with another person, before another decisor, there's no problem at all with him saying something different. Things like that happen every day.
Why? Because a later sage may disagree with an earlier sage. What he may not do is change a ruling that was said about a case—a specific case, not a type of cases, but a specific case. If a certain "chained woman" came before him and a particular sage said she is forbidden, and now another sage comes and says no, no, she is permitted—that is forbidden, he can't do that. That woman has already been forbidden. But if the first sage forbids the woman for various reasons, and now another woman comes with the same reasons—had she gone to the first sage, he would have forbidden her—but she comes to another sage and that sage permits her, even though it's the same issue exactly, there's no problem: he can permit her. Because the rule that "a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit" is a rule per case, or per person, or per object. Once you ruled on a specific case, someone else can't change the status of that case. But it's not that one halakhic sage is forbidden to disagree with another sage. We've never heard such a thing anywhere.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, two questions? Yes. Does this also work the other way around? Meaning, if someone permits, then can the second one also not prohibit? It's not necessarily only in that direction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, I'm not getting into the details of this rule. There are a lot of details here. What you asked is itself a dispute.
[Speaker B] Oh really? Okay. And does this rule also apply to the one asking? Meaning, if I have a question now, I go to one decisor, and the answer doesn't suit me—am I allowed to go to another decisor?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Again, if from the outset you tell him, listen, I'm coming for consultation, not to receive a ruling from you—that's something else. You're allowed to consult with whomever you want. You can consult ten people and each one will give you his opinion. But if you came to receive a ruling, then that's it, he determined it. Yes. Okay. So in general I recommend that people not go asking for rulings, but rather go for consultation. That's true even apart from the rule that a sage who prohibited, his colleague may not permit. It's also true because that's the proper way to conduct oneself. But that's already a different discussion. In any case, what was the comment from before?
[Speaker C] I wanted to ask exactly about that point—that once, Rabbi, you sharpened for us that when you come to a rabbi, basically you're asking him the way you ask a doctor. It's not a formal authority but a substantive one. So why is it really that once he ruled, he settled the matter? Seemingly he's only clarifying it for you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that depends on the questioner's intention. I think that basically—again—the sage has no authority in that sense. He can't force his ruling on you. But if you come to ask him, then you have basically already accepted upon yourself that whatever he says will be the ruling. Do you understand? That doesn't contradict the point that he has no authority on his own. In that sense he is like a doctor. Even if voluntarily he tells you that this chicken is forbidden, there's no problem at all if someone else says it's permitted. Not if it was his own initiative. But if you went and asked, then that's the ruling that binds you. Okay? That's not connected to the question of authority; it's connected to the question of whether a ruling has already been issued on the item. It's not a rule in the person, it's a rule in the object. Meaning, the question of authority is a rule in the person: does the person have authority? Is one allowed to disagree with him? Of course he has no authority; anyone may disagree with anyone. But there is a rule in the object, that if a ruling has already been issued on it, then that ruling is the binding ruling regarding that object.
[Speaker D] So does the Rabbi hold that even another person who didn't ask the rabbi would be forbidden to eat the chicken?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn't understand.
[Speaker D] So does the Rabbi hold that also for another person, with respect to the same object, it would be forbidden?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. You'd have to look there, but I think so. I think so. Once the chicken was forbidden—again, he's the owner of it. I assume the owner is the one who determines it. If you go and ask about my chicken, that doesn't prevent me from taking that chicken to another sage. I assume, at least logic suggests, that it's the owner of the chicken who determines whom one asks, and that is what determines its status.
[Speaker E] What happens if he asks in general, not about a specific chicken? He says, for example: is there a problem with eating soaked matzah on Passover? And he tells him yes, there's a problem. Is that called a case, or is that called a principle?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—that's a principle. That's exactly like a law book, as opposed to the other kind. You can open one law book that says soaked matzah is permitted and another law book that says soaked matzah is forbidden. So why am I allowed to open books, but not allowed to ask people? That's what the Gemara says: those foolish Babylonians stand up before a Torah scroll and do not stand up before a Torah scholar. Asking a Torah scholar is like opening a book—you are simply asking a Torah scholar who has already passed away when you open a book. But it's the same thing. But when you're speaking about a ruling on a case, that's something else, because it's a rule in the object, not in the person. All right? In any case, again, I don't want to get into that issue here. It's a complicated issue, and also very murky, not only complicated. But I want to use it to sharpen the difference between the two genres—the genre of responsa…
[Speaker F] Rabbi, doesn't all this stem, again, from what we talked about last week—that Jewish law in its origin is specific, that it is absolutely casuistic? The fact that because we had no choice, and because "it is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah," we began creating principles for ourselves and writing them down too, and then drifted even further into legal positivism—that's our problem. But in truth we should have ruled casuistically for every case, because every case really is different from the next. Every case is different. And ideally, Jewish law should have been determined specifically for each event and each case on its own.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That's the discussion we had last time. But how is it relevant to the discussion now?
[Speaker F] No, I'm saying that that's the basis of the matter, of the difference between principles and things as opposed to disagreeing about the specific case.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can disagree with his principles and I can disagree with his rulings even if it's casuistic.
[Speaker F] As long as it's not a particular case. I understand that if there is significance—as the Rabbi said a few minutes ago—to the fact that you came to the rabbi and said to him, rule for me, not advise me like a doctor, but rule for me—he took responsibility and said, what I rule is what will determine it. Because otherwise he could have gone to many people. I'm not just saying my opinion; I'm putting my head on the line here, because he'll decide whether to eat this chicken or not because of me. And then if he says, no, you didn't say something acceptable, I'm going to someone else—that means from the outset you really deceived him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But again, I don't see why this is connected to the previous discussion. What difference does it make whether it's casuistic or positivistic?
[Speaker F] Because if it's positivistic and we're discussing principles, and they are in principle not really relevant to the specific event of the case, then why should there be such a fundamental difference between responsa and books like the Shulchan Arukh and books of Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A huge difference. What do you mean? Responsa deal with a case, and law books deal with principles. I don't understand. I don't see why this is connected.
[Speaker F] Why is it that on a case like that I can't disagree—on a specific case I can't disagree, and another sage can't permit it…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In contrast—there are discussions here. Maybe it's because of the honor of the first sage. Maybe there's some metaphysical issue here—a certain law has taken effect on that item. But it's not connected to positivism and casuistry.
[Speaker F] I'm not—I mean, I'm saying that if in principle the Torah is really specific to each case and every case is different, then there really are no principles. The principles are approximations, but not the thing itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you can speak about such cases in principle.
[Speaker F] You say, in a case of this type—yes, but that's impossible. It's impossible because it includes human beings. Human beings have feelings, and one person's feeling is not like another person's feeling. There's no possibility of comparing them. We think one loves the other the way the first loves the second, but that's really not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no, I don't agree. Here you're already bringing feelings into it; that's a completely different story. I don't see what feeling is doing here on the playing field at all. It has no business being here. We're talking here about the question whether you think everything through reason, with no feeling. The question is whether you think through principles in a positivistic way, or whether you think casuistically. But that's thought, not emotions.
[Speaker F] It touches the basis of morality. If morality concerns principles that you can abstract, assign, and create abstractions from that can be reasoned about and defined, then fine. But if not, and the principles and values cannot be described in words, cannot be defined, cannot be put into rules, then what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you can approximate.
[Speaker F] You say, I saw a case like that. So it gives me some food for thought, but no more than that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that has nothing to do with emotion.
[Speaker F] I think—okay, that's a well-known dispute. We've already—I think everything is emotion, but fine, we won't bring that in now, it's…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, that's a parenthetical remark. It's not connected here. I don't think the distinction I made has anything to do with either of the two disputes we just talked about. One: whether one thinks with rules or without rules. And two: whether it's emotion or intellect. Either way, I don't see why either of those disputes is related to the difference between a law book and a responsum. To my mind it's the same thing. Okay, let's continue. What I really want to say is this: what I want to do, basically, is use this halakhic rule in order to sharpen the difference between a law book and a responsum. Because a responsum deals with a case, and a law book talks about general things. And the whole idea of the distinction by Haym Soloveitchik that I mentioned earlier is this: when a case comes before you, then when you speak about the case, you're really dealing with a responsum. You're asking what the law is in the particular case before me. In that case, of course, there are certain components that are local to that time and place, and maybe to the specific people involved in this case. And that's not something that is supposed to be transmitted onward. There are things that are ways of thinking, patterns of behavior, rules if you want or non-rules, without entering our previous argument—even if all that became clarified in light of a specific case that came before the decisor, once it became clarified, there are rules here and it's part of Jewish law and can be transmitted onward.
So that's the distinction between what belongs only to the situation and what belongs to the larger body, what I mentioned last time. It's some kind of distinction, and one has to pay close attention. At first I was tempted to think that this was the difference between norms and facts. Meaning, the facts are local—there is no point in transmitting facts onward. Facts: each place and time has to determine what the facts are according to what we see in that place and time. There is no point in looking at precedents in order to know what the facts are, how to assess reality. But norms—those are universal. Now I want to make a more far-reaching claim. Even within the norms there is something that is local, only for the situation, and something that is supposed to continue onward as well. And I think that's what Soloveitchik meant. After all, he was talking about halakhic rulings that concerned cases that arose there, and even in the ruling—that is, the normative dimension—it too does not pass on into the Shulchan Arukh. Not just the facts. The facts, to me, seem obvious. Again, we saw that for the decisors it isn't so obvious, but to me it's completely obvious. Here I want to argue that even within the normative world, within the norms, there is a kind of response that belongs to this place and this time and is relevant here, and there is a kind of response that will continue onward into the entire halakhic corpus.
Now that is already a finer distinction, and I'm not entirely sure it's correct. Why? Because if I'm really talking about norms and not facts, then even the local norms—I can still try to ask myself: why, in these circumstances, did I apply specifically this norm and not another norm? I'm talking about norms, not facts. That apparently means that in a certain type of circumstances, one should rule this way. Fine—but that's a principle that can also be passed onward, because it really says how to relate to a certain type of circumstance. Now, even if those circumstances never recur in the future, that doesn't matter, because on the principled level there's also the stubborn and rebellious son—he too is part of Jewish law, even though he never was and never will be. Jewish law says that under such circumstances this is how one should rule. Whether those circumstances actually happen or do not happen doesn't matter. If they happen, we'll rule; if they don't happen, we won't use it. But it can still become part of Jewish law—yes, continue onward into the Shulchan Arukh. And the Shulchan Arukh will say: in this specific case, this is what should be done, even if it may never happen again in the future.
Therefore this more subtle distinction within the normative world—I am not one hundred percent sure I agree with Soloveitchik. I think that ultimately, after you issue a ruling, the principles according to which you ruled always belong to the body of Jewish law. There are no principles that are principles—again, not principles in the positivistic sense—but there are no forms of thought that are forms of thought correct only for that place and time. Maybe I'll give an example that sharpens this more. Maimonides says that commandments connected to a specific time are not included in the count of the commandments—in the third root of Maimonides. Therefore, for example, making a fiery serpent, what Moses did when there was a plague, or the jar of manna—putting manna in a jar—those commands that Moses received are not included in the count of the commandments. Why? Because they were said for their time. Now, when I read this, it really bothered me. Later I saw that there are discussions about this in the book Ma'aseh Nissim, between Rabbi Daniel the Babylonian and Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, on exactly this question.
Because if you think about it, what does it mean that it's something temporary? Suppose, just for the sake of argument, we went back to Egypt, the Jewish people were exiled to Egypt, enslaved, there were ten plagues, we came out of Egypt, then we complained and there was a plague—would we have had to place a fiery serpent on a pole? Even without the Holy One, blessed be He, commanding it again? Apparently yes. True, in practice that probably won't happen—what are the chances we'd enter exactly the same situation with exactly the same chain of events? But on the principled level, this isn't a law stated for a specific time; it's a law stated with respect to a situation. Every time you return to that situation, you would be obligated to behave according to that law. So in what sense is this a law that was said only for its time and therefore does not need to enter the count of the commandments? For example, Maimonides himself asks why erasing Amalek is included in the count of the commandments—after all, Amalek has already disappeared, his memory has already been erased, he has vanished from among the nations, there are no more Amalekites. So Maimonides asks about himself: according to his own idea in the third root, why does he count that commandment among his commandments? And he says that anyone who asks that question did not understand what I said in the third root. Why? Because, he says, the commandment to erase Amalek is eternal. It is eternal—one must always erase Amalek. So what then? It has been carried out. We finished the matter. Once Amalek was erased, then it was simply carried out. It's not that the commandment no longer exists because it was only said for a certain time and not another time. It was said for every time. Rather, at some stage the job was done. That's all. So that is not called a temporary commandment. A temporary commandment is a commandment that from the outset was said for a particular time. It's not that later it is no longer relevant because it was carried out. It's no longer relevant because it has simply expired. That's what Maimonides himself says.
And on that basis I ask: then according to Maimonides' own distinction, why are the fiery serpent or putting manna in a jar temporary commandments? If we entered that same situation—just hypothetically, really entered that same situation—apparently we'd have to do exactly the same thing. So why isn't that a commandment in the count of the commandments? Because of the assessment that it won't happen? Fine, but Amalek won't happen either.
[Speaker D] Maybe because you can't know the principle behind it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? The principle is that when there is a plague after you complain, you need to place a serpent.
[Speaker D] But you need the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, specifically.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? No. No. You need the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, in order not to eat pork—He commanded that only then. So why don't you eat it now? What He commanded is eternal. It's eternal, of course, when the situation to which the command was addressed arises.
[Speaker D] It's similar to a prophet giving a temporary command, like when a prophet commands something for a particular moment. Okay, but there it's obvious—there it's obvious there is no principle. There it's hard to say there is a principle.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I would say that about a prophet too. In the case of a prophet, same thing. If that's really what needs to be done in that situation, then assuming we return to that same situation three hundred years later, apparently the same thing should be done. Why does a prophet have to come and speak again? He only revealed to us that in that situation, this is what has to be done.
[Speaker G] So if it also never was and never will be, then there's no reason for him to count it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s exactly the point. The point is: what does it mean, it never was and never will be? The obligation always exists. The commandment is always binding. So what then? The situation simply doesn’t happen, and apparently also can’t happen. So what? A commandment he does not count is only a commandment where the commandment itself has expired, not where the situation is no longer relevant. That’s what he himself says; Maimonides himself said this, it has nothing to do with me. That’s what Maimonides says. I’m only asking why, in the case of the fiery serpent and the manna in the jar, it isn’t also the same thing. It’s a commandment that was said for a certain situation. True, it’s unlikely that this situation will return, but in principle, if it did return, the commandment would apply, so why don’t you count it among the commandments? So I argued in the book, in the discussion on the third principle, that this shows that Maimonides apparently understands that if, even if the situation were to come back again—if we complained, a plague came, and so on—you still would not need to place a fiery serpent. Only if there were a new command. Or in other words, this obligation to place a fiery serpent is an obligation that was not stated only with respect to a situation. It was stated with respect to a situation and a time. In physics we make a distinction between functions. Say I ask: what is the potential energy of an object? So it depends on height. And say the object moves along some terrain. So when it is on a high mountain, its energy, its potential energy, is high. When it is in a valley, its potential energy is low. Now, it has some path, and at every moment it is in a different place, so the energy is a function of time. At each moment it is in some place and its energy is such-and-such. That is a dependence of energy on time, but really it does not actually depend on time. It depends on place. It’s just that at every moment I’m in a different place. Time does not determine the energy; place determines the energy, but at every moment I’m in a different place. In contrast, if there were a case where I have energy—or force, let’s talk about force—that does not depend on place or on time through place, but has an explicit dependence on time. Say it’s F of x and t. Right? A force that is a function of x, of place, and of time. What does that mean? That even if I’m in the same place but at a different time, the force will be different. It doesn’t depend only on place; it has a direct dependence on time. Not a dependence on time just because at every moment I change place and the energy depends on place. No, there is direct dependence on time. And even if I’m in the same place but the time is different, the force will be different. Now in physics these are two different worlds, even though this is time dependence and that is time dependence—so what? Here energy is conserved; this is a conservative force if there is no explicit dependence on time, and here energy is not conserved. Conservative force and non-conservative force, there is a potential, there is no potential—it is a completely different treatment for these two kinds of forces. And basically I want to claim that Maimonides is making the same distinction here. Maimonides is basically saying this: placing a fiery serpent is a command that is not a function only of the circumstances, or not only of the circumstances, but rather circumstances, comma t, comma time. When the time is that time, two years after the Exodus from Egypt, and such-and-such circumstances arise, then one must place a fiery serpent. What happens if those very same circumstances exist but t is different? Not two years after the Exodus from Egypt but two thousand five hundred years after the Exodus from Egypt? Then you do not need to place a fiery serpent.
[Speaker D] That itself is exactly the Rabbi’s question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This command has an explicit dependence on time, not only an indirect dependence where time simply determines what situation I’m in. There is also an explicit or direct dependence on time. That’s the claim. Now this was not my question. My question assumed that there cannot be an explicit dependence on time. Every commandment is only situation-dependent—that was my assumption. Answer: not true. There are commandments that depend not only on the situation but also on time, and those commandments are not counted.
[Speaker D] And how did Maimonides distinguish between them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. That’s an interpretive question—I don’t know how. You can see from the situation that the Holy One, blessed be He, is basically saying to Moses not as a commandment—He is not instructing him the way He says don’t eat pork or observe the Sabbath—but rather this is some kind of response to what happened there. So apparently, again, I don’t know exactly, apparently the interpretive impression is whether this depends directly on time or not directly on time. Fine, the Mishnah and the Talmud won’t help us here because the question will be how did they know. You explain that Maimonides knew because the Mishnah and the Talmud didn’t deal with it, but how did they know it was temporary? In any case you still have to give some answer on this point. Fine, I don’t know exactly. I think that when you read the passage you can understand why the Sages got the impression that this really is a temporary matter. It seems to me.
[Speaker D] Obviously you can understand where something applies for generations and where it does not apply for generations, but clearly the straightforward way, the way the Rabbi assumed at the beginning, is to say that it’s because of an incidental situation and not some thing I don’t understand about time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That understanding is what I built the difficulty on. And the answer apparently—I think there is no escape—is that no, that understanding is incorrect. There are commands that are a function not only of the circumstances but also a direct function of time. And at another time, with the same circumstances, there will be no command.
[Speaker D] I don’t know physics, but it’s hard for me to understand something that depends only on time, time really in itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Read there in the article on the third principle. I want to claim that from here there is evidence that contrary to what Kant says, that time and space are only forms of our relation to the world, but do not really exist in reality itself—I want to claim that if such a thing is said, it assumes that time exists in reality itself, not just in us. Because in fact time can cause things. If you are at a certain time you are obligated, in the same situation, and if you are in that same situation at another time you are not obligated. That means that what caused the obligation was not the situation, or not only the situation, but also time. Now if time is not an existing thing but only a form of my perspective, then a non-existent thing cannot cause anything. And if time causes things, that means it is something—that is, it exists. And therefore it can cause things.
[Speaker D] Okay? Yes, I think this is something the Rabbi once talked about—Bergson and Einstein, something depends on that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Bergson and Einstein is not exactly about whether time exists or doesn’t exist. That’s a question of duration-time versus time; that’s another dispute, in my article on Zeno’s arrow. No, it’s not connected to the question of whether time exists or not. Obviously Einstein assumes that time does not exist, so that’s clear. But Bergson is open; he could say it this way and could say it that way. Fine. In any case, what this example I brought is meant to illustrate is what I said earlier. What I said earlier is basically what Soloveitchik assumes—the assumption behind the difficulty on Maimonides. That is, he assumes there are things that are relevant only to this specific time and place. And if we return to that same situation at another time, then no, Jewish law does not say one must do the same thing. Therefore he says that the Jewish law ruling issued in that place and time has no reason to be put into the Shulchan Arukh; it is not part of Jewish law, it is some local and temporary response to that moment. And I argued against that that no, in any situation I find myself in—sorry, he is with the answer, I am with the question—in any situation I find myself in, if I find such an instruction in the Torah, then ostensibly I am supposed to apply that instruction anew, even though it is a different time. And then I see no reason not to put it into the Shulchan Arukh. Okay, that is basically the claim.
[Speaker E] I’m saying that maybe one could say that time does not really exist, but the total set of cases required for this Jewish law to apply is broader than the case itself that we know about. And it won’t happen again.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether in practice it will happen again.
[Speaker E] Even in practice if it does happen again, we don’t know what defines the case—whether it is only what we think the case is. It will happen again, in the sense that we’ll broaden what “the case” means.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it won’t happen. Amalek has been eradicated.
[Speaker E] It’s not likely that… okay, fine, but if he…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only that. The stubborn and rebellious son—the stubborn and rebellious son is not going to happen at all. The Sages say that from the outset.
[Speaker E] If we take the totality of all the events of the Exodus from Egypt, then we return to the event itself. That is, we won’t be able to recreate that same event again, the event that includes all the things that were there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? I’ll recreate the same event. We’ll go down to Egypt, the Jewish people will dwindle away, a Jew named Jacob will arise, he’ll have twelve children.
[Speaker E] Okay, but it could be—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that the history we want to paint is more distant than Egypt and Egypt, and history in general will also be entirely erased and everything will start over.
[Speaker E] Oh, then we’re already… that already happened then, if so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that didn’t happen, we—
[Speaker E] don’t know if it happened.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying now it will happen again.
[Speaker E] No, maybe it also happened once before, but as long as history wasn’t erased then this thing won’t occur. I understand. But I’m saying that even with an erasure of history maybe it already happened. We don’t know anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But Amalek and the stubborn and rebellious son will not happen in practice.
[Speaker E] Because it’s unlikely, but it’s not that in principle it couldn’t happen.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not just unlikely—it will not happen. Amalek and the stubborn and rebellious son will not happen.
[Speaker E] Okay, but theoretically one can talk about a case that is not Amalek as it was then and is still Amalek.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Theoretically one can talk about a case where we go down to Egypt and Jacob and twelve children. Theoretically you can always talk. That’s the beauty of theory—that’s why I love it so much. It doesn’t give—
[Speaker E] But if the theory always leads to the exact same case, then we’re already talking about that exact same case. The question is whether there is room there…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, I didn’t understand. The exact same case, just at another time. That’s not—
[Speaker E] Then it’s not the same case because there is already a different history. Only if you really erase history.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The exact same history.
[Speaker E] How do we know it didn’t already happen several times?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I assume it didn’t happen; statistically it’s unlikely. Maybe? Then I ask: if it did happen, then why isn’t it counted among the commandments? That’s even harder.
[Speaker E] Because then what was counted would not remain in the history that was erased. I understand. Meaning if we’re talking about erasing history, then we’d need to be commanded again for the first time, without preserving the Maimonides from then? Meaning it would be exactly the same.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s unrelated. The command in the Torah can remain. The situation was erased, but it wasn’t that it never existed and never was created. Then Maimonides comes and tells us, forget it, it’s an allegory, like the angels with Abraham—it never happened. But now the situation will in fact happen. The command is written in the Torah. I don’t see the distinction. Fine, in any case, for our purposes, I want to say that I’m not sure Soloveitchik is right when he says there are halakhic instructions that were said for their time. Now understand that even if in the Torah itself I’m willing to accept what Maimonides said—which is also strange—I’m willing to accept what Maimonides said, because the Holy One, blessed be He, has some reason that this thing depends directly on the axis of time itself. But decisors who ruled in a certain situation on the laws of interest in Ashkenaz or I don’t know where—they certainly were not speaking per time. They responded to a situation. They themselves, if they found themselves in the same situation, would respond in the same way, obviously. Therefore even if I accept Maimonides regarding commandments that appear in the Torah—that they may perhaps depend on time explicitly and not only on the situation—halakhic instructions of the Sages are very unlikely to work that way. Why should that be said for a time? For this situation, this is what needs to be done. Well then, if that’s so, so what? Why isn’t that part of Jewish law? So therefore—now, from a third angle—that’s what I meant, Rabbi.
[Speaker H] Rabbi, that’s exactly what I meant—that it’s such a… that every case really is very, very different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. So what if it’s different?
[Speaker H] In the end there is Jewish law. If you recreate, if you completely recreate the same case, how is it different?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Jewish law that appears in the Shulchan Arukh, isn’t every case different? Every case is different there too, so what? So why not take all the cases? It is always true that every case is different.
[Speaker H] Ostensibly, how can the Shulchan Arukh say anything? How can it establish an overall ruling?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s talking about… that takes us back to the previous argument, leave it, let’s not go back to that. I’m saying: after we’ve passed the previous argument, here there is Jewish law. If you include the regular laws…
[Speaker H] I think that’s what Soloveitchik meant, that’s all I’m trying to say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Oh, if that’s what he meant, then he shouldn’t have put anything at all into the Shulchan Arukh—not only these laws that are for their time.
[Speaker H] Every law is for its time; every case is a different case.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You won’t manage to convince me of that. Fine, never mind, it’s an argument… In any case, what I actually want to say and emphasize through examples is that there are certain principles which, even if they were generated in a very, very specific situation, it is not clear that they cannot be transferred or integrated as general principles into Jewish law going forward. But to understand that I want to go a bit more deeply into the role of the unmediated encounter with the situation. What Shmuel might call emotion, and I call perception of the situation. What do I mean? So let’s start perhaps with the binding of Isaac. There are various commentators who play around with the question why our forefather Abraham obeyed the Holy One, blessed be He. After all, in the end ostensibly he should have concluded that it could not be that the Holy One, blessed be He, expected this of him, for many reasons. First, because the Holy One, blessed be He, promised him, “for through Isaac shall your offspring be called.” If I kill him now, how will offspring be called to me through Isaac? Logically it doesn’t work. Another thing: morality.
[Speaker D] The Holy One, blessed be He… but who said… who said that this is stronger than that? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said the second is stronger than the first?
[Speaker D] What do you mean the second?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The first—the command. Who said the second is stronger than the first? What do you mean the second?
[Speaker D] The first—the command—that the statement “through Isaac shall your offspring be called” was said by the Holy One, blessed be He, and not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what are you saying—that I should obey that statement and throw out the other statement? But the statement was said. So ask the Holy One, blessed be He: wait, wait, how does this fit together? Decide. You tell me this statement and this statement. Whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, says, that’s what I’ll do. I’m a faithful servant. But when there is a contradiction, what am I supposed to do with contradictions?
[Speaker D] So the question is basically why he didn’t ask at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And presumably on the assumption that if he had asked, he would have received an answer as to which of the two is valid and which of the two was only an allegory or I don’t know exactly what. Because this is contradictory. And a second possible difficulty is of course the moral difficulty. The Holy One, blessed be He, expects moral behavior from Abraham, and then He tells him to bind his son just like that because He feels like it. Again, this is an ethical problem, but it is also a logical contradiction. What is a logical contradiction between two moral principles? So Abraham had every reason in the world to suspect…
[Speaker D] Again, Rabbi, why is this ethics a logical contradiction?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, expects moral behavior from me, then how can He now tell me to do something immoral?
[Speaker D] Who says He expects moral behavior in general?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole book of Genesis is the book of the upright. It comes to teach that the Holy One, blessed be He, expects moral behavior from us.
[Speaker D] One could ask about sacrifices—why is that not also not so ethical? I didn’t understand. Sacrifices too, animal sacrifices, that’s not so ethical either. Well, one could ask that too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. There is a cost there in moral terms, but there is some benefit in a religious, spiritual sense, one way or another. But you need to ask. Fine, maybe the Holy One, blessed be He, will tell you: you know, it’s not moral but it repairs eternity in the world, and therefore I want you to do it. Fine, that is a possible answer to the moral question, not to the logical question. But ask. So in short, what those commentators want to claim—this is an article by Ravitzky, where he claims this was more accepted among eastern Jews—yes, the Sephardim are more moral, the Ashkenazim more formalistic. So the claim is that those commentators basically want to say that Abraham had lots of good reasons to cast doubt on whether the Holy One, blessed be He, really expected this from him. And then he could have said: fine, but maybe even the voice I heard, this revelation, maybe it was just a hallucination, possession, a demon entered me, I don’t know exactly what. Because it cannot be that this is the Holy One, blessed be He; it’s a contradiction. It’s illogical, immoral, impossible. Which is what had to be proved. And to decide that this was not in fact a command from the Holy One, blessed be He, and not obey. And some of them go even further—not only do they ask the question, they also decide that this really is the correct view, that this is the situation. And Abraham failed the test of the binding, because he should have refused. And that is what is written, isn’t it?
[Speaker D] “Nor did it enter My mind.” The verse says that, doesn’t it? The verse says, “a thing that never entered My mind.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the verse does not say that. The verse says that it did not enter the mind of the Holy One, blessed be He, except that He did it in order to test Abraham.
[Speaker D] Yes, but it did not enter His mind.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The verse does not say that Abraham had hallucinations and that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not command him. That is something entirely different. In the end the Holy One, blessed be He, resolves the contradiction for him. He tells him: don’t worry, this command was only to test you. I never intended that you would actually kill Isaac, therefore I stopped you at the last moment. And the whole process was to test you. Fine, no problem. I am only asking: from the outset, how did Abraham not stop and say, wait, wait, wait, there is something here that I… something here doesn’t make sense. And the claim of those commentators, some of those commentators, is basically that Abraham failed the test of the binding. He should have refused, and he did not refuse. The freedom of interpretation apparently has no limits. It is completely absurd. I don’t think that…
[Speaker G] It’s also against the continuation of the passage, where the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him, “Now I know that you fear God.” Obviously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), the whole Talmud is full of this. How can anyone say such a thing? It’s just… it’s simply interpretive wildness. But the claim only reinforces what I said about interpretive excesses. Here even I, as someone who thinks there is really no way to interpret the Torah at all—even I say here: this really cannot be. There is some boundary that commentators cannot cross. The fact is that they can, but they must not cross it.
[Speaker I] Fine, but Rabbi, are these commentators religious commentators, so to speak? Halakhic decisors and such? Or is this from academia? Commentators, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, even commentators who are not from our camp are supposed to interpret the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) it says the opposite. This is just interpretive dishonesty. You can say: that is what the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) says, and I don’t accept it. Fine, then you are not bound by what the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) says. But you cannot say that the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) does not say it. That is interpretive dishonesty regardless of whether you are bound or not bound. In any case, for our purposes, why am I bringing this up? So what is the answer, really? The question is a good question; the answer is a bad answer, but the question is a good question. What is the answer really? Why didn’t Abraham say to himself: wait, this thing is some kind of possession, it can’t be right? It is quite clear, yes, right? I mean, it is quite clear that Abraham apparently was one hundred percent certain that the Holy One, blessed be He, was speaking to him, that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded him with this command. We, who have never experienced divine revelation and prophecy and things of that sort—as those sitting in the opposition seats, we say to Abraham: wait, wait, why don’t you doubt whether this is even a real revelation? Yes, this is the story that always comes to my mind in this context, the parable of the Habad emissary, Rabbi Itche Kahan, who was once in Yeruham. He came to visit the yeshiva; I hosted him there, and he spoke with the guys in the study hall. In the talk he gave them there, he brought some parable—I don’t even remember exactly what he wanted to learn from it—but in my eyes it’s a very powerful parable. He says: think of two people, one blind and one sighted—that is, one sees, right? Not “sighted” intellectually, but one sees and one does not. They enter a certain room, feeling around here and there, and see that the room is packed with furniture. But the room has no window, no door, nothing, nothing, nothing—the room is completely sealed except for the door through which they entered, and it is packed with furniture. They go outside, lock the door, and both sit on a chair by the door. After an hour, the seeing fellow gets up, goes inside the room, and says: Yankel, you won’t believe what you hear—I can’t say what you see, but what you hear you won’t believe—the room is completely empty of furniture. So Yankel says to him: listen, Berl, that can’t be. After all, an hour ago we were there, the room was full of furniture. We saw that the room was completely sealed except for that one door. We were sitting by the door, no one went through the door, so there was nobody who could take the furniture out, and the furniture has nowhere to evaporate to, so clearly the room is still full of furniture, which is what had to be proved. A decisive logical proof. So he does not accept the testimony of the man who sees and says the room is empty of furniture. What is the seeing person supposed to do with this? Good argument. Logic obligates not only the blind; logic obligates those who see as well. A wonderful argument, right? What do you think will happen in practice? Leave aside what he ought to do—what will happen in practice? Will he think the room is full of furniture and that he simply doesn’t see well? I assume not. I assume he’ll say: this requires investigation. I don’t know how the furniture flew out of here, but furniture there isn’t—I see it. Now what is happening here? Why does the blind man reach a different conclusion? This is a person blind from birth, right? Why does he reach a different conclusion? Because he does not know the sense of sight. He does not understand how much reliability we assign to sight, and therefore for him it is a theoretical intellectual matter. Yes, I understand there are people who have some sense called sight—who knows, maybe it fakes, maybe it confuses them. He’s even heard there is such a thing as a mirage, so we also know that in some cases it fakes. Therefore, since I have a logical proof that the room is full of furniture, if the person says the room is empty, then he probably missed something, he doesn’t see well, he’s lying, I don’t know exactly what—clearly the room is full of furniture. It’s simple logic. What is the difference between the seeing man and the blind man? The seeing man also knows logic, but he also sees. He sees, and since we see something—hearing can never outweigh seeing, right? The Talmud says that seeing is the greatest certainty there can be. When I see something, then it is clear to me that it is true. Now of course skeptics cast doubt even on our sight, but normal people say: if I see it, it is true. I cast no doubt on it at all. And I know—there are mirages sometimes, all right, fine, I noted it on the side, there are mirages—but if I see a computer here, there is a computer here, and no blind man with pure logic will convince me otherwise. So what do we do with logic? I don’t know, it requires investigation. I don’t know what to do with logic. But that’s what I’m saying. Now the blind man—why does he reach a different conclusion, as I said before? He has not experienced the reliability that the sense of sight has, which accompanies the use of sight. So he discusses it in a detached way, and his conclusion is very logical. On the theoretical logical level it is very logical. What he lacks is the unmediated experience. And the same, I claim, applies to Abraham. Here in this course, after all, none of us were ever prophets—I at least wasn’t, I don’t know about you. I was never a prophet, the Holy One, blessed be He, never revealed Himself to me, I never heard, never experienced a revelation, nothing of the kind. When I hear that Abraham reports a revelation to me—okay, maybe he hallucinated something, he has a possession, there is… I’m blind. I am blind with respect to the prophetic faculty. I do not have that faculty. I do not have that sense. Therefore on the theoretical level I can say: listen, it’s very logical that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not really reveal Himself to you at all. You probably hallucinated. After all, this goes against logic, against morality; it simply cannot be. Which is what had to be proved. I have a proof. It cannot be. But Abraham, who experienced that revelation, experienced it. He knows what it means that the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself, and apparently that has a reliability that exceeds the trust he gives to my logic—the logic of the blind man. Right? And therefore he asks no questions. It is clear to him that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, and he rises early in the morning and saddles his donkey. This illustrates for us the difference between someone who experiences the situation in an unmediated way and someone who looks at it from the side in some theoretical way through his intellect, and does not experience it himself. It is night and day. Yes, another example—a beautiful example of this—is Mary’s room. There is an entry on Wikipedia; whoever wants can look. This example is meant to show exactly this point. Mary is a brilliant physicist who specializes in optics. Yes, in the examples people bring in the modern era it is always a female physicist, never a male physicist. So this physicist is outstanding in optics, brilliant, knows everything. She has ultimate knowledge—brilliant, wise, intelligent, everything perfect. But all her life she does her research in a black-and-white room. She does not see colors; there are no colors around her; everything is black and white. Okay? Now, after she spends many years of her life in that room, she goes outside and our colorful world appears before her eyes. Suddenly she sees the color red. Something—a table in the color red. The question asked there is whether she learned something new. She knew all the properties of the color red perfectly, because they are all optical properties, so if she is an expert in optics, she knows everything. It has such-and-such wavelength, diffraction, interference, all of it, she knows everything. But when she goes outside she suddenly sees something colored red. Did she learn something new that she did not know before? It is pretty clear that she did, right? What did she learn? She encountered in an unmediated way the thing she had known on the intellectual level. That is, she knows how to describe the color red with all its scientific properties, but she does not understand what red is; she had never encountered it. That is what became new for her when she left the room. And that is something very important. If she had to give an opinion on a painting, I don’t think I would accept her opinion if they merely described to her the wavelengths of every part of the painting. One needs to experience it in an unmediated way, to see the combination of colors, to be impressed by the combination of colors, and then decide what one thinks of that work. If I do not experience it, even though I know everything, all the properties, fine—but I did not experience it in an unmediated way, I cannot judge such a painting. I cannot judge such a situation. And therefore I want to say the same thing here. As long as I have not experienced divine revelation, even though I understand there is such a thing as a prophet, and there is God, and there is a revelation of God in which He conveys information to the prophet—I have learned all that, I am an expert in the theory of prophecy. Okay? But I have never experienced prophecy. So as an expert in the theory of prophecy, I can say: fine, but a prophet can also miss things; a prophet can also have hallucinations. But that is me as an expert in the theory of prophecy. The prophet himself, however, probably knows that this thing is certain. That is, if it was revealed to me, then it is probably… Another example—now I return to halakhic rulings. In halakhic rulings, basically my claim is that when you are in a very, very unusual or extreme situation, then you—or someone who is not in that situation—will not be able to issue a halakhic ruling about what should be done in such a situation. In order to issue a halakhic ruling in such a situation, you need to experience the situation in an unmediated way. But again, this is part of—again, not emotion, I insist. It is not that you need to feel something; rather, you need to experience it because this is perception. It is part of the intellectual perception of the situation. Only it is not scientific-logical perception, but unmediated perception. You understand the thing, okay? You experience the thing, you know what it is. Now you know what it is, not only that you know about it. You know it; you know what it is. Only then can you issue a ruling. Now look, there are situations that are not quite that extreme. For example, discussions about women singing. Okay? So if you go ask, say, some Haredi or other conservative rabbi, who was never Chief Rabbi, then he probably has never heard women singing, I assume. Because Chief Rabbis have to be at various ceremonies where there are women singing, and they have a special permit. But that is because no prohibition can take effect upon another prohibition—that special permit. Meaning if you are Chief Rabbi you have already violated so many prohibitions that nothing else will count as a prohibition. In any case, the claim is that a decisor who does not know the situation cannot form an opinion about it. He cannot say it is forbidden to hear women singing. You do not understand what this thing means. Now here I qualify this a bit. That is, if you understand that the prohibition against hearing a woman sing is a formal, essential prohibition, then yes. Then fine, it is forbidden to hear a woman sing, period. Why do I need to experience it? That is a fact. But suppose we understand—and it seems that this is the more straightforward reading—that the prohibition is because of concern over forbidden thoughts, over what will happen to you as a result of this encounter or sight, the encounter with this female singer who is singing, and so on. Maybe forbidden thoughts will arise for you, maybe you’ll come to forbidden acts, it doesn’t matter, all kinds of things of that sort. And if I assume that the prohibition is because of that, then you understand that a decisor who has never in his life experienced a performance by a female singer does not really understand the situation, what it does. Meaning, someone who has heard it and is used to hearing it knows that at least when there are female singers who are modest and everything is fine, and they have a beautiful voice, then I go to hear their voice because in my eyes this is beautiful art. Or entertainment—fine, let’s not idealize it too much. Entertainment, not sublime art. But it’s pleasant entertainment, I like hearing this singing, and that is what I want to hear. I do not go there for stimulation or for forbidden thoughts, and that also will not happen many times. I think that also in many cases it will not happen at all, or certainly there is no chance it will happen. Meaning, maybe for some person it could happen, but it’s not that you can say that whoever goes there is expected to experience this and this. No, absolutely not. Now try convincing a conservative decisor of that. The conservative decisor looks at it and says: what, obviously they all only want sexual impropriety, nothing besides that. Sexual impropriety in the eye, of course. That is obvious to him. It does not even occur to him—when I tell him, no, I’m going for the art, he says, yes yes, I also love art, don’t confuse my mind—in short, you’re fooling me. He will not accept it. He will not accept it because he lives in a world that is hysterical with regard to women. Meaning every encounter with a woman or with certain aspects of a woman connects for him with something that arouses forbidden thoughts. And not only that—even within a conservative world of that sort, it may be that there really is a higher sensitivity threshold, and then perhaps more thoughts really are aroused when you are in those situations. Both things are true. But someone who is in such situations, first, is less prone to it, and second, also understands the situation: that he is going for the art, not for licentiousness and not for sexual impropriety and not for anything like that. And everything is fine—he is going to enjoy beautiful singing. So then what is the problem? So I say again: one can say that it is a formal prohibition and not dependent on the situation and on what it does to me, and then it is forbidden. Fine, I understand. I’m bringing this only as an example of what I said before, but this time in the area of Jewish law. There are situations where, because you are far from them and do not really understand what is happening in such a situation, you cannot issue a ruling regarding such a situation. Rabbi,
[Speaker B] But one could say this about many cases. For example, just a case that comes to mind—in the laws of niddah, say, where they take it a bit to an extreme, that it’s forbidden for me to hand a fork to my wife when she is a niddah. So obviously it won’t do anything to me if I hand her a fork now or sit on the same couch. Okay. But I assume they ruled this because it’s a kind of fence. So what does that mean? If it does nothing to me, then it would be permitted?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That depends on the same question. If you decide that this is now a rabbinic prohibition and it does not depend on its reason, then it will be forbidden even if the reason does not exist in your case. But if you understand that this is a distancing measure whose point is basically to prevent the reasons from arising, not that the thing itself was prohibited, then maybe really, if it does not apply to you, it could be permitted. The same question I discussed about women singing can be asked here too. It will not necessarily have the same answer; each thing has to be judged on its own. The question is whether it was prohibited in itself or whether it was prohibited only because of its consequences. Each matter has to be discussed on its own.
[Speaker B] No, but I’m trying to understand the definition of such a prohibition. For example, if I now compare it to poultry with milk, okay? Which is also a fence, a kind of fence like that. So is there a difference between them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, there too you can ask yourself what happens in a world where there is no more meat, only poultry. Then the concern that you will come to eat meat with milk no longer exists. Right. Would the prohibition of poultry with milk still remain in force? Same question.
[Speaker D] If—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you understand that this prohibition is a prohibition established by a matter decided in a formal count, and no other count can permit it, then it may be that even if the reason is annulled, the enactment or decree is not annulled. And then it remains. But if you understand that the whole thing is really only to warn you against the prohibition of meat with milk, then perhaps it really would not exist in that situation. Each matter on its own. There are decisors who say, for example, regarding grinding medicinal ingredients on the Sabbath, that today this prohibition no longer applies. There is no prohibition against taking medicine on the Sabbath, even though from the law of the Talmud there was a concern lest one grind medicinal ingredients. But today who grinds medicinal ingredients? Only pharmaceutical factories make medicines. Nobody makes medicine at home. So today that concern no longer exists, that one will come to grind medicinal ingredients. So many decisors are lenient because of that consideration. I don’t know if they actually fully permit it; maybe there are some who fully permit it, I no longer remember. But certainly there are some who combine this as a supporting factor for various leniencies. So it isn’t absurd. It depends—each thing on its own. It also depends on the question of how high the cost of conservatism is. In a place where the cost of conservatism is very high, you will allow yourself to rely on this consideration even if you are not sure of it. Since in order to rule the opposite you need good reasons, it is not worthwhile to rule that way. Therefore it is very dependent; there is no universal answer here. I am raising the different sides only so that we can see, only to illustrate the importance of the unmediated encounter, of the unmediated experience, for the purpose of issuing halakhic rulings. Okay.
[Speaker B] The Rabbi says—again, if I return to our topic—the Rabbi is basically claiming that if I reach the level where I’m capable and I think I can rule for myself, then in a specific case like this, if women singing does nothing to me, I can rule for myself that I’m allowed to go?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, if you come to the conclusion that the prohibition… For example, I listen to women singing. Live too, not only on discs or on the radio. Performances. Performances, yes. No, actually I’m hardly ever at performances anyway, not because of women. But now and then it happened that a woman—when I was at my son’s military graduation ceremony for some course and some female singer from a military band sang there, something like that—everything was fine, it never even occurred to me to leave.
[Speaker E] How can one know when a rabbinic decree is final and when we do go with the reasons? There is a very thin line here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good question, good question. And as I said before, it doesn’t only depend on that; it also depends on the question of the price of the other side. Because if you are stringent out of conservatism, the question is at what cost that comes. Because if it comes with a high cost, then fine—even if I’m in doubt, I think this is the more reasonable side. And whoever wants to prohibit bears the burden of proof. Sometimes there are indications, yes. For example, there are certain decrees that, when they appear, appear together with their reasons: one should not read by candlelight lest one tilt the lamp. So in the decree itself it is already written that in fact you are forbidden to read by candlelight because of the concern lest you tilt it, unlike other decrees where we can speculate about the reason but it is not written in the formulation of the decree itself. The truth is that the Ritva—
[Speaker E] at the end of Kiddushin says—one second,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are halakhic decisors who say that with decrees like these, where the reason is written into the very wording of the decree, then once the reason no longer applies… The Ritva at the end of Kiddushin says this; he asks there how they met the noblewoman.
[Speaker E] And spoke with her—after all, it says that it’s forbidden to speak with a woman—and then the Ritva says at the end of Kiddushin. Yes, well known. Okay. So that’s it—he actually says that if it already touches on sexual prohibitions, then there ostensibly only the reason remains.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s basically giving a purposive interpretation to all these kinds of prohibitions. Yes, in general, if you have a purposive interpretation of a prohibition, then you have to examine the purpose. He says it—he actually does that in practice. Yes, right.
[Speaker E] We all do it in practice. Maimonides and the Tur, after all, when they spoke about head covering, wrote “whether unmarried or married”; that distinction doesn’t appear at all. And today—and the Mordekhai comments on this there—why today unmarried women don’t…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no—there I don’t think the rationale really is that with a married woman there’s this concern and with an unmarried woman there isn’t.
[Speaker E] Yes, there are other rationales. The rationale isn’t always the same one. But you can see that the definitions are less…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact that we don’t always go by the formal definitions of the enactment, even though ostensibly once the reason is gone the enactment does not lapse—
[Speaker I] A lot of times it does lapse.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And many times—by the way—the rationales are sometimes exactly purposive rationales. The reason no longer applies in a place where it’s clear to me that all the enactment itself wanted to do was simply prevent the outcome, and they did not establish the act itself as an independent formal prohibition. In that case, if there’s no outcome, then there’s nothing. With legumes on Passover, for example—I gave a more extreme example, because there, in my view, there is no prohibition against eating legumes at all; there never was. Not just that today there isn’t—there never was. It was a concern, not a prohibition. A concern means that in that period, when people ate legumes, there was a concern that wheat would get mixed in, or something like that, or that people would come to eat wheat, or something like that. But if today we don’t have that concern, then I don’t even need to get to the rule that once the reason is gone the enactment does not lapse; this wasn’t an enactment at all. It was never prohibited. It’s like the broom of the Rebbe of Gur, as I wrote there. Yes—if there’s a hole in the road, okay? Then there’s “you shall greatly guard your lives,” right? I’m supposed to steer the car around the hole. Now they fixed the hole. Do I have to keep driving in a half-circle at that same spot? “Once the reason is gone, the law does not lapse”? I mean, this is even a Torah-level law, not just rabbinic: “you shall greatly guard your lives.” It’s obvious that “you shall greatly guard your lives” is not a law requiring you to make detours. It’s a law to avoid danger. In that case, in order to avoid danger I had to make a detour, but there is no law to make detours; there is a law to avoid danger. Meaning, the rule I carried out is a means to prevent an outcome. So if it’s that kind of rule, then you have to check whether there is in fact an outcome here to prevent or not. And the same with legumes. Yes, like the broom of the Rebbe of Gur, where he says to his attendant, “Move the broom away from here before lighting the Hanukkah candles, move the broom away from here.” So the attendant asks, “Why?” He says, “Because next year everyone, before lighting candles, will put a broom next to the menorah because the Rebbe did. Move the broom aside.” Fine, the attendant obeys and moves the broom aside. What happened the next year? Everyone put a broom there, moved it aside, and lit candles. Meaning, that’s exactly how it works.
[Speaker E] That story didn’t happen—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can’t—he doesn’t ask his rabbi why. What? There isn’t—
[Speaker E] In that story, the part where he asked the rabbi why—it doesn’t seem possible to me. I wasn’t there, I don’t know, maybe you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Were there. I wasn’t there.
[Speaker E] My version of the story is like this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As for the story, the author is responsible—unless it’s history. In history there are facts. In stories, the author decides what the story says.
[Speaker E] So for present purposes, I’m the author. Yes, but the message of the story is that somebody here tried to understand something, and that doesn’t sound logical. I didn’t understand. The message of the story is that in the end they did something without understanding, but the story is built on the attendant asking why. No, he doesn’t ask why, he simply obeys. Fine, doesn’t matter, don’t get stuck on that point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, I didn’t understand, but fine. Anyway, in my version that’s how the story of the Rebbe of Gur came down. My Rebbe of Gur’s story went like that, in my narrative. Okay, in any event, to our matter: what I want to say is that the immediate lived experience that you, as a halakhic decisor—or whoever has to make the decisions—go through is an inseparable part of your ability to rule. If you don’t experience it directly, you may be a giant in Torah and Jewish law, but you won’t be able to issue a ruling in that situation. You can of course say whatever you have to say, but there’s a very good chance you won’t hit the truth. And therefore another example, perhaps: very often questions arise in egalitarian, more modern communities—what to do with women in the synagogue. In the synagogue—what yes? what no? and so on. Now in the synagogue there are lots of taboos, most of which have no root or branch. It’s like a cemetery. A synagogue is more or less a kind of cemetery. Meaning, we basically behave there in some way that has no connection at all to the sources or to what ought to be, but there’s some taboo that this is how it has to be done, and the Jerusalem custom, and I don’t know what, and therefore everyone has to do it this way. So that’s also how many people feel about the synagogue—a kind of cemetery. You have to go there, there’s no choice, but bring along a good book, if I may quote one of my acquaintances. So the claim is that egalitarian communities want to integrate women more into what happens in the synagogue: saying words of Torah, receiving an aliyah to the Torah, some go even further—maybe leading parts of the service—not to mention sitting together. The Israel section, the women’s section, the men’s section—today there are already terms for these things too. And then of course they come to ask the halakhic decisors, and the halakhic decisors of course prohibit everything categorically. But of course they do this with no basis—naturally, as is their way. There’s no basis—I mean for some of the things. For some things you can argue, for some things there is a basis, for some things there is no basis at all. But since that’s how people practiced, you can say: this is how people practiced, and it is fitting to continue. That’s perfectly fine. Then they can decide whether they want to continue or not. But you know what they’ll decide if you tell them it’s not required. So therefore you tell them it is required—or rather, you lie. When you lie, you say, “No, this is forbidden,” but it isn’t forbidden. And then what’s the problem here? The problem is that you’re issuing an incorrect halakhic ruling, first of all. But second, you also won’t achieve your goal. You won’t achieve your goal because you don’t understand how a community of that kind will respond to that sort of ruling. What is it saying to them? How important is the integration of women to them? Because to you it looks like just some nonsense. To many people it looks like just… By the way, to me too, some of it looks like just nonsense. If I were a woman, I’d stay home and let them say all the words of Torah in the synagogue by themselves. But fine, I’m not a woman, so that’s easy for me. But fine, to some people it looks like just nonsense. But there are people for whom it’s apparently very important; I believe them when they say so. It’s very important to them, men and women and so on. Now someone who doesn’t understand this, who hasn’t experienced it, should not issue rulings for a situation like that. He’ll simply rule incorrectly. Both in terms of halakhic policy, but also the ruling itself—even if he doesn’t lie, but genuinely tries to understand what the right ruling is for the situation—he cannot understand the situation. He has not experienced what a modern liberal person—whatever you want to call it—experiences within that kind of community. You need to understand what every such thing means to them in order to instruct whether it is forbidden or permitted. Otherwise, you are simply failing in your role; you are derelict. You are issuing halakhic rulings in a place where you are not qualified to rule.
[Speaker B] But couldn’t one say specifically the opposite—that precisely because he hasn’t experienced it and isn’t biased, he actually rules objectively and not subjectively?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s my next sentence. My next sentence is basically this: what have I said until now? What you’ve heard until now—suppose such a community has a young rabbi, liberal, modern, but he studied in Ponevezh. So he’s unsure, and he goes to his rabbi from Ponevezh to consult with him. The rabbi of course tells him, “What do you mean? Everything is forbidden.” Okay? But of course he’s talking nonsense, because he doesn’t understand the situation; he’s never experienced it. So what really should be done? Obviously, the person who needs to rule is the one who experiences the situation. Only he can issue the ruling. Again, I’m not talking about every situation. A situation I can understand—I don’t need to experience it in order to rule on it. In many cases I can understand; if people tell me, I’ll understand—that’s not the point. But if the situation is very far from me, or very extreme, or whatever it may be, then I need to understand that I am forbidden to rule. The one who should rule—even if that rabbi is much less of a Torah scholar than I am, the young fellow who is there in that community—he is the one who should make the decision, not you, even though you are the leading sage of the generation. But—and this is the other side of the coin—it is definitely important that this young fellow go and consult with his rabbi from Ponevezh. Let him hear what he says, from the perspective of someone not involved in the situation, because that perspective is also important. There are situations in which personal experience can bias you; it can lead you to make wrong decisions. So it’s very important to hear the opinion of someone who isn’t biased, who doesn’t live the situation. But hear his opinion—the decision you make. Not him. But it’s very important that he hear it, that he give you some feedback on what you’re saying. You’ll factor in his feedback and decide. It’s like the blind man and the sighted man: it’s very important that the sighted man hear the logic of the blind man. The blind man has logic; he’s very clever and has crushing logical arguments. So it’s very important to listen, because sometimes sight does deceive me—I also know there are mirages. But in the end, I will decide whether there is furniture in the room or not, because I saw it. I’ll take into account the logic I heard from him, absolutely. I’ll weigh it seriously, but in the end I make that judgment and I arrive at the bottom line, not him, even though he’s a genius in logic. And the same applies to halakhic rulings. In that sense, in Bnei Brak they idealize a halakhic decisor who remains within the four cubits of Jewish law, who is not involved in life, and on the contrary, is detached from all biases—yes, one of the highest heavenly beings, yes, an angel. So therefore he will always issue a halakhic ruling in the truest way of Torah. That is utter nonsense. It’s utter nonsense not because there’s nothing to it. There is something to it, true. It becomes utter nonsense when you take that true something as the whole picture. It’s very important to hear such a person as well. But to give him the decision—not only is that not right, it’s foolishness. Yes, to take some Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky type, or Rabbi Elyashiv, and let them make decisions about public conduct—that’s simply stupidity. It’s not merely that you don’t have to listen to them; you must not listen to them as decision-makers. It’s very important to hear what they say, certainly, very important. I think the unbiased view of someone who doesn’t know the situation from the inside can often contribute something we ourselves won’t reach. It’s very important to hear it, but the decision has to be made by someone who is in the situation. The Torah was not given to ministering angels. Okay, I’ll continue with this, because I still haven’t even gotten to the point I wanted to sharpen. I still want to return to temporary Torah and how I process it and turn it into part of the Shulchan Arukh, even though it was only temporary—yes, that’s what we began with. Okay, that’s it for now. Comments or questions?
[Speaker B] What the Rabbi began with at the start of the lesson—when the Rabbi tried to define the distinction between responsa and a book of Jewish law—is that connected to the lesson the Rabbi gave this week about commandments and preventing them, where there are basically laws and examples?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. It’s only very loosely connected. It’s connected to what I argued about earlier with Shmuel: your conceptual Torah analysis—the responsum is a responsum; it addresses a case. But the law book and the principles you use in the responsum—the principles are taken from Jewish law, and you apply them to the case. There you can discuss casuistically, and you can discuss positivistically.
[Speaker G] You—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can discuss by way of rules and a kind of mathematics, this kind of deduction; you can say, no, no, I’m making analogies, I’m trying to reach a more natural understanding, let’s call it that, less analytic. But all of that is just two sides within theoretical Torah. Beyond that there’s the practice, the application. Application is a very great art. For many years I looked down on halakhic ruling, as is customary in Bnei Brak. To look down on halakhic ruling—yes, we study Torah, halakhic decisors are some kind of Mishnah Berurah machines. And you have no greater mistake than that. It’s a fascinating field. It’s fascinating because of this meeting between the theoretical principles and how you apply them in the field, how to apply them correctly in the field—not like some Mishnah Berurah fool, but how to apply them correctly in the field—that is an amazing intellectual challenge. It’s a wonderful field, truly fascinating.
[Speaker B] And very often it collides head-on with the theory—that’s the whole…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then you have to see what to do and how, yes. Reality also has something to say. It’s not that we impose theory on reality—yes, reality kicks back; it also has something to say. And this art of how—again, I say art in the sense that I take both sides into account, because it’s no great feat to say, fine, reality says this, so who cares about the theory. That’s no feat. And it’s also no feat to say, this is the theory, reality shouldn’t bother us, we’ll force the theory onto it. Both of those are mistakes. You must not detach yourself from the theory, but you need to be attentive to reality. And there are people who detach from this, and people who detach from that. The wisdom is how you integrate them, meaning to see the… You do the theoretical analysis, but you understand how it is applied to this situation. When you do that, suddenly you discover that what you worked out in the particular case actually contributed something to the theory as well. You can feed it back into the theory and add another section in the Shulchan Arukh. And that’s the point I wanted to reach, but we’ll still talk about that.
[Speaker C] Okay, may I ask, Rabbi? Yes, yes. Recently a certain concept has come up—what’s called women’s halakhic ruling. You know, in our earlier sources there’s a lot of discussion of things like—the Rabbi gave the example of the epidural, with that rabbi’s daughter, and also things like what a woman feels during menstruation, and based on that they issue rulings and assess and things like that. So in that respect I wanted to ask the Rabbi what you think about this concept. Is there really a need to make corrections?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, women’s halakhic ruling is sometimes an ideology. There are those who say that not only in women’s issues specifically, but in general there is value in a female angle of vision on a matter. Now, yes, I’m skeptical. I’ll tell you why: because I’m not sure there really is such a thing as a female angle of vision. There are many women and many men and many angles of vision, and this stereotyping—as if there is a male perspective and a female perspective—doesn’t convince me all that much. On this issue, I actually represent a more advanced feminism than the feminism of those who want to talk about a female perspective. Fine, that’s already a question of generations of feminism. But the claim is that there are many perspectives, and I’m in favor of that, because the more perspectives there are, the more that can enrich the discussion. But this stereotyping, that there is a female perspective and a male perspective—I don’t buy that necessarily. There are certain correlations; I assume there are modes of seeing that are more typical of women and modes of seeing that are more typical of men. On average that’s true. But to make some categorical essentialist claim like that doesn’t persuade me.
[Speaker C] But regarding the examples I asked about—things that are really connected.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s the next stage. But I do want to say yes: there are things, like those connected to the lesson itself, where there is definitely significance to the question of how a woman feels. And on that, obviously, women have a much more meaningful say. And if there is a woman who has the tools to issue halakhic rulings in those areas, that’s the best thing possible. The problem is that very often women who issue halakhic rulings are terribly conservative. They are conservative because they don’t understand—they didn’t grow up with halakhic ruling from childhood, they don’t live it as a mother tongue. They cling to precedents, and they issue second-order rulings of that sort: what is so-and-so’s view, what is so-and-so’s view, and can one be lenient—because they are not first-order halakhic decisors. There are almost no women who are first-order decisors. Those who deal with practical situations usually cling very tightly to precedents. And by the way, often precedents from rabbis in our own time, not even precedents in the halakhic literature. And precisely in that sense, in my view it’s a bit of a missed opportunity, because the more she clings to precedents, the less weight there is to her immediate encounter with the situation; and that immediate encounter with the situation is exactly the tool by which you can become a first-order decisor. You understand what the situation is saying, and you understand what is right here. Leave me alone with what so-and-so said and what so-and-so said—what is right here? Now, you do need to hear what so-and-so said and what so-and-so said, weigh it, understand it, but in the end you have to apply it to the situation. So—
[Speaker C] Suppose there’s a first-order decisor who wants to discuss and maybe innovate and make these laws more relevant. Then do you need to do some kind of research and find out from women what the pain is and what the suffering is, and based on that draw the conclusions?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely, in those situations that depend on how women perceive things or how they experience things. Not every halakhic issue depends on that. Yes, obviously, no question about it.
[Speaker C] Thank you. Rabbi, I wanted to make a comment. In this week’s Torah portion there’s, in my opinion, a good example that illustrates the difference between a law for all generations and a law for its specific time. In the commandment of the second Passover sacrifice, which on the face of it is really according to the context—you’d say it was specifically for that particular case—but there in the verses themselves it says “throughout your generations.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. Here the Torah itself states that it is for future generations. Meaning, if the Torah had not stated that, then maybe I would have interpreted it like the manna in the jar.
[Speaker C] Exactly, the lesson really illuminated that point for me. Thank you.
[Speaker G] Rabbi, regarding a completely side question: what you mentioned about morality, that Abraham our forefather had to go—he apparently went against logic and against morality. What about the episode where they took Sarah and he said she was only his sister and didn’t oppose their taking her? It didn’t bother him—that doesn’t seem very moral, not such noble behavior.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll tell you two things. First of all, obviously this bothers every person in our time, I think—every person who is at least somewhat attuned to the spirit of the age. But two things. First, that is exactly the point. We look at it from the perspective of our own time, but we need to apply that in reverse as well. Until you are in Abraham our forefather’s situation, within the environment in which he operated, with the norms that prevailed there, it’s very hard to judge it. From our perspective today, anyone who held slaves two hundred years ago was an utterly wicked person. But that’s not true. There were very good people there who held slaves. Exactly—that’s anachronism. Meaning, you have to be careful not to judge the… especially when you’re making a moral judgment, because it depends very, very much on the situation and on what was accepted. That’s the first point. The second point: suppose, for the sake of argument, that if Abraham our forefather had fought and not allowed it, they would have killed them both. Would you say the same thing then too?
[Speaker G] Yes, actually I thought about that too, true, but I don’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Know, maybe—but it could be that it’s very easy to be terribly moral when you’re not in a situation where you know you’ll pay a heavy price and you also won’t save her. So what have you gained? They’ll kill her and take her. They’ll kill you and take her. After all, that’s basically what—I mean, Abraham our forefather said exactly that. No, this isn’t my interpretation; it’s written in the verses. Why did he do it? Because he said: otherwise they will kill me and take you.
[Speaker G] “Because there is no fear of God in this place,” yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so what… You thought this was just my interpretation, but it’s written in the verses.
[Speaker G] Yes, okay, okay. Thank you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay then, have a peaceful Sabbath, and may we hear good news.
[Speaker H] Thank you very much, goodbye.