Learning from Experience – Lesson 12

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly important because you need to—his character as a person is a separate matter—but you need to trust his way of thinking, because otherwise you have no way to learn. Meaning, if you don’t trust him, he’ll tell you, listen, don’t go in this direction, this direction doesn’t smell right to me, and he has no way to justify that to you. Now if you trust him, or trust in him, then you’ll accept what he says and learn, you’ll adopt it. If you don’t trust him, since there are no arguments here, this isn’t organized material where you can factually show who is right and who is wrong, you won’t accept what he told you and you won’t manage to learn anything from him. Precisely because this kind of learning is not simple factual learning, you can’t talk here in terms of right and wrong, bring proofs, test him; rather, you need some trust in the person that he knows what he’s talking about. And only if you have that kind of trust can you learn from him, right? This is Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s introduction, which I’ve already brought more than once, where he says exactly this: whoever doesn’t believe in me, whoever doesn’t place basic trust in me, shouldn’t open the book—shouldn’t open the book at all. Why? Because many of the things in this book will seem puzzling to you, and you won’t accept them immediately. Someone who values me will think again and again about these things even though they seem puzzling to him, and then maybe he’ll understand that there’s something there. He’s talking about methodological guidance, right? Guidance that you get from your supervisor, say, regarding research—that’s even worse. Because there it really is some kind of sense of smell, and if you don’t trust him, you won’t accept a word he says. He’s talking nonsense. It’s obvious to me that this is what needs to be done, it seems terribly logical to me. He doesn’t bring me any fact proving that I’m wrong. He tells me, look, my sense of smell says this isn’t right. Problems of this kind aren’t solved this way, they’re solved that way. If you don’t trust him, you won’t accept it. You can’t learn from a supervisor you don’t trust. A supervisor you don’t trust—you can throw him in the trash; there’s absolutely no value in what you’re doing with him, none. That’s different from a book or from learning facts, where you don’t need trust in the person. At most, check him in another book and see whether the facts are right or not. There’s no problem there. Or if he proves it to you, as in mathematics of course, then he can prove it to you and then you’ll see that the statement is true. You don’t need any trust in the lecturer. You just need either to check him or to follow what he said, and that’s all. There trust isn’t important. Trust is important—this exists in the East too, right? It’s accepted that you sit for years with your rebbe, right? Your master in Zen or in various Eastern teachings, I don’t know, the Far East. And there too, because the learning is not learning organized material the way you learn in some scientific field, but rather some way of looking, some approach, something that is very hard to present systematically and therefore also hard to test—if you don’t trust the person, you won’t learn anything from him. That’s a simple fact. It’s not mysticism; it’s a simple matter. You can’t say otherwise. So it seems to me that the concept of apprenticeship, as distinct from study—there’s someone who teaches me. Someone who teaches me doesn’t need to be someone I trust all that much. Someone under whom I apprentice—of course I need to trust him. I see a halakhic decisor; he brings me opinions this way and that way, arguments this way and that way, and then he says, okay, it seems to me we should decide like this. Why? There are opinions like that too, there are arguments this way and arguments that way. How did you get there? My sense of smell tells me. Now if I don’t trust the person, then I’m left with the opinions this way and that way, which I’d know even without him, because I can read the books too. And that’s it—what did I learn from him? Nothing. But if I do trust him, then I say, wow, here he says his sense of smell points in this direction—I accept it. Another place he says it, another place—slowly I too develop some sort of sense of smell that tracks his sense of smell. A bit like training a neural system, right? A neural network. You get cases and correct answers, and the network organizes itself in such a way that it will be able to give good answers also in cases it hasn’t encountered. That’s exactly what we do in apprenticeship. And I think the essence, or the core,

[Speaker D] But again, if it’s all rationality, all something that can ultimately be formulated in words and formulas, then you don’t really—you can ultimately reflect on it. Why not? What can be described in words is values. Rational things can be defined and described. The Rabbi knows that better than anyone in the world. So because of that, it’s pretty clear from what the Rabbi says that if I apprentice myself to Torah scholars and “dust myself in the dust of their feet” and see my primary rabbi as something like an angel of God, that’s something value-based and not a rational matter. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re making some assumptions here, building on them towers as high as the Eiffel Tower—and absurd assumptions. You’re assuming that anything that can’t be formulated in words is values. Where did that nonsense come from? It’s just nonsense. Where does it come from? There are principles that I can’t formulate explicitly, and they’re not values—they’re truth. When I make an induction from facts and find a law, I have no way to formulate for you how I reached the general law, because there are infinitely many such ways, infinitely many such laws.

[Speaker D] That you could formulate in a formula and understand. Why can’t it be formulated?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know why—because we’re limited and don’t know how to formulate everything, what can you do? What do you mean? By the way, values can be formulated very well. I don’t see what’s so bad about formulating values; there’s no problem at all.

[Speaker D] I’d be happy to hear what love is, I’d be happy to hear what good is, I’d be happy to hear what sadness is, I’d be happy to hear what suffering is. I’d really be happy to hear even one sentence that formulates—not describes what it does to me, but describes the thing itself. The Rabbi knows that can’t be done.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. I’ll give you one sentence for all of them: none of what you just said is a value. Not even a single concept. So what does that have to do with values?

[Speaker D] Fine, that’s a well-known dispute between us. I think values and emotions are the same thing. Fine. I think emotions and values are the same thing. When you are driven, when you choose some motivator for the sake of some value, you are being moved—not by a computer and not by some formulation, since you don’t have one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you think emotions and values are the same thing, then ask yourself, not me. I’m telling you: when I talk about values, I’m not talking about emotions. Something completely different. Emotions have no connection to values, not even the slightest connection. Anyone who thinks they do, by the way, is simply mistaken; it’s not a dispute. It’s just a mistake, a categorical mistake. You can say there’s no such thing as values, that everything is emotions—that’s fine. That’s a philosophical view I don’t agree with, but it is a coherent view. But to say there is such a thing as values and then identify it with that—that’s just a mistake.

[Speaker D] Moving on—values are a very simple thing to define. The simplest thing in the world. Values are the goals a person aspires to and invests in for their sake; the Rabbi knows that better than anyone. And therefore how do you decide that you’re in—why does a person choose that he wants to climb Everest? That’s his supreme value. He’ll sacrifice everything for that great value. He can’t describe it, define it, justify it, because the Rabbi knows that if I justify it, then it becomes a need for something else. So what’s the reason I want to climb Everest? Emotion. Some emotion in me, foolish as it may be, to reach the summit of Everest. Therefore emotion and value are the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, this is impossible—you’re giving a general lecture with every question, but it’s not correct, it’s all unfounded from beginning to end. I can’t work like this. Fine, you can say whatever you want about values, but it has nothing to do with my concept of value. You can define whatever you want. For me, values are what is permitted and forbidden; it has nothing to do with goals. If I have a goal in life, I don’t know, to make a lot of money, that doesn’t mean money is a value for me. It’s an interest. A value is something that has significance—let’s call it, I don’t know, ethical significance; of course that’s a circular definition—that has some kind of normative significance, not the fulfillment of an interest. That’s my definition. Now you can say there’s no such thing—fine, that’s your right; I disagree, but that I understand as a coherent approach. So what do you want from me? So ask yourself those questions. For my position, when I define values, they can be explained very simply, there’s no problem at all explaining them, they have no connection whatsoever to emotions, all the emotional concepts are in no way connected to the world of values, and this identification of everything that can’t be defined with values is simply completely unfounded. By the way, even if values are interests, that too can be defined well. My interests can be defined perfectly: I want money, I want love—what’s the problem? I can define that in words with no problem. I’m not talking on that plane at all. I’m talking about methodological guidance—how to do research, for example, or how to issue a halakhic ruling when there are several opinions, several possibilities. You can’t define how to decide. In most cases there’s no way to define it. There isn’t—you can’t—it’s some sort of sense of smell. Now is that entire sense of smell subjective? Some would argue yes; I disagree, but one can argue that. I argue no. I argue that we have some kind of system—call them rules, although it can’t be formulated—a system of principles that we don’t manage to formulate, or at least some of which we don’t manage to formulate, and yet they are true. It’s not a question of bias or because that’s how I’m built or all kinds of things like that—of course not, they’re true. So I can’t formulate them—so what? There are lots of things I can’t formulate; that doesn’t mean anything. Okay, so the point I just want to finish with is that the need for apprenticeship beyond study is basically the desire to avoid incorrect abductions. Do you understand what I’m saying? In the end, when you want to apprentice yourself to a senior researcher or an experienced halakhic decisor or things like that—why is apprenticeship needed? Because the facts are in front of you; if you’ve learned the material, then you know the facts, the sources in Jewish law or the scientific facts or whatever it may be. But from those facts you need to derive a theory, a thesis—say a scientific one, you want to write an article about it—or you want to infer a halakhic conclusion, it doesn’t matter. You want to derive from them a theory or a picture, right, that includes them. Now that picture is basically an abduction. You want to explain those facts within some kind of theory. But what’s the problem? There can be several theories that explain that fact, and I have no way, from the facts themselves, to show you which theory is correct and which theories are incorrect, because they all fit the facts—otherwise they wouldn’t be competing theories. All these theories fit the facts I have. So how do I decide which of them is right? Now for me as a beginner it’s harder to decide, but experienced people say, listen, I’m telling you, my sense of smell says this is the correct abduction, this is the right theory, it explains these facts, and usually when we do a future experiment and put it to the test, he’ll—I don’t know if he’ll usually be right, but he’ll usually be more right than I am. Okay, everyone can make mistakes of course, but he’ll be more right than me. That means he has some sort of sense of smell—with no way to justify it even to himself, certainly not to me—and still I want to acquire that sense of smell from him. And what does that sense of smell say? It allows me to distinguish between correct and incorrect abductions. Meaning that the fact that behind every conclusion and every generalization of ours there sits an abduction—this means that the apprenticeship we undergo, as distinct from study, apprenticeship—its whole point is knowing how to sift among abductions, or to reject incorrect abductions. That is basically the meaning of apprenticeship. Meaning: how to take these specific facts and derive from them the correct theory, and not ten or a hundred other theories that are incorrect, without having any fact against them. If you have a fact against them, no problem—that’s not apprenticeship, that’s study. Meaning, take the facts; if it doesn’t explain all the facts, then you discard the theory—that’s obvious. I’m talking about choosing a theory from among theories that all work, that explain all the facts. That is choosing an abduction, basically, as we did with the graph, with Occam’s razor and all those things. Occam’s razor says I choose the simplest theory. But sometimes there are several simplest theories; sometimes it’s unclear—it’s unclear what exactly counts as simple. The concept of simplicity itself is not so simple. In all sorts of contexts you have to discuss what exactly is called simple, more simple, less simple. It’s not simple. And these things are acquired through apprenticeship, or expertise, or internship, right? Meaning, that’s basically what we do in these processes. It seems to me—I don’t remember if it was in this series, but in earlier series I certainly brought this up—the Stradivarius violin, right? It’s an example from a philosopher of science named Michael Polanyi. He gave it—he argues that Stradivarius violins are apparently violins of superb quality. And again, I trust the experts on this; I don’t understand much about it, but that’s what they claim. And it turns out that we are unable to produce violins of that quality, apparently to this day, or at least up to the time he was speaking. I don’t know what’s happened since then until today. But with all the equipment we have and all the technology and everything, we haven’t managed to produce violins of the quality Stradivarius produced. And Michael Polanyi’s claim is exactly this point: that Stradivarius had some kind of unformulated knowledge, that he knew what to do with every kind of wood, which wood to choose, and with that wood how to sand it and to what thickness to make it. Now there is no theory, and I don’t know how to teach this in a classroom—how to do it systematically: for this kind of wood do this, sand here, sand there. There are too many parameters; it’s not really something you can teach in a classroom. But Stradivarius’s apprentice in his workshop simply acquired Stradivarius’s sense of smell and managed to produce violins, let’s say, almost like his rabbi’s. Okay? But he too doesn’t know how to formulate exactly the rules according to which he built those violins. Then Stradivarius’s apprentice’s apprentice also learned from him in the same way, and he too tries to produce violins and succeeds in making not bad violins. But slowly the violins begin—the quality of the violins begins to drift away from the quality of Stradivarius’s original violin, because it is very hard to transmit unformulated knowledge from one person to another. Meaning, there is formulated knowledge—that’s the easy thing. You write it in a book, a person learns the book, and he knows the material. But there is the unformulated knowledge—that is something passed from rabbi to student. Something passed from teacher, from master to student—yes, teacher and student in the Eastern sense, that really is it. The master. Knowledge of this sort is very difficult to transmit. It’s something where you need direct contact with the person, with the true craftsman, so that you too acquire that feeling in your fingers, how to do it right. And therefore, the farther we get from the source, the less good the violins we produce will be. Then we begin using technology to compensate for the absence of our intuition or the absence of our ability. So technology can advance us, but only up to a certain point. Because we cannot transfer to a computer, or whoever is programming the violins in the technological age, all the knowledge Stradivarius had, because that knowledge is knowledge transmitted through apprenticeship, not through study. And therefore there is some problem in preserving such knowledge, transmitting such knowledge, and therefore the quality of the violins does not manage to return to what it was in his time. I’m not saying—it may be that at some stage the technology will already be so powerful, with artificial intelligence or whatever it may be, that they’ll succeed in making violins of the same quality. Maybe they already do; I’m not up to date in that field. But this is a process that I think demonstrates well the phenomenon I spoke about earlier, this phenomenon that there is some dimension of knowledge, truth—now I remember, the book is even here, I think it’s here, wait.

[Speaker F] Maybe that’s a certain explanation for the concept of the decline of the generations?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I wrote

[Speaker C] that in Two Wagons—that’s exactly the explanation for the decline of the generations, in my opinion. One second. There’s an article that really talks about these two kinds of expertise,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I read it a few years ago, but for some reason I think it’s an article by Oakeshott, but I’m not—I need to look, because the titles don’t say much, from the titles I no longer remember. I’ll look for it. It’s actually a beautiful article, I highly recommend reading it; I’ll try to locate it. By whom? It speaks exactly about this point, about the unformulated knowledge that accompanies every intellectual activity, meaning that no intellectual activity is exhausted by formulated knowledge, by facts, by formulated rules and that’s it—there’s always something beyond that. We also brought Wittgenstein in the past; I won’t go back to that again.

[Speaker B] Which article, by whom?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think, if I remember correctly, it’s an article by Oakeshott, Michael Oakeshott. His book is called Rationalism in Politics; in general it’s an excellent book, of the sort written by those wonderful British essayists—there are a few like that. But I’ll look; right now I don’t remember which article it is, and I’m almost sure it’s in that book. I’ll look. In any case, the claim—I’m finishing the argument here, basically—is that apprenticeship is about, or is what succeeds in giving me, the ability to produce correct abductions and reject incorrect abductions. Now, from here I want to finish this series on learning from experience with a few points or a few comments about the status of experience in Jewish law and among the Sages, and so on, because until now we’ve been talking about experience, learning from experience in general. I tried to define what learning from experience means, how it works, what its limitations are, and now I want to try to look a bit at the Sages’ attitude toward experience and how we are supposed to relate to claims of the Sages—whether they were learned from experience or not learned from experience, and so on. So briefly, what I basically want to say in this final section is three claims. First claim: clearly the Sages also relied on experience. Meaning, there are things that when they learned them or when they said them, they drew them from experience; they learned them from experience. Second, as a result of that, of course they can also make mistakes like any person. Meaning, if this were knowledge that all came down from Sinai, then there would be no mistake—the Holy One, blessed be He, knows everything. But if things are learned from experience, and once you learn from experience the way each of us learns from experience, you can make mistakes, then the Sages too learned from experience and therefore they could make mistakes. The third thing I want to claim is that where there really is an error, we are dealing with an error of fact, and an error of fact is not binding, even if it appears inside an authoritative, canonical text—in our case, the Talmudic text. Meaning, if we find a scientific assertion in the Talmud and we reach the conclusion that it is mistaken according to current scientific knowledge, according to how we understand things—we reach the conclusion that it is mistaken—then since my claim is that this was not necessarily handed down from Sinai, but rather is the result of learning from experience, like all human beings learn from experience, therefore the Sages, like anyone else, can make mistakes, and accordingly where they made a mistake we are dealing with an error of fact. An error of fact is not something that binds. If I think the Sages erred in Jewish law, then in principle that is binding. That too has limits—also “one who errs in the commandment to heed the words of the Sages,” the Talmudic text in Horayot, at the beginning of Horayot. But in principle, even if I think the Talmudic text erred in Jewish law, I am bound by it. But if I think the Talmudic text erred in facts, I am not bound by it. Because with an error of fact, clearly if the Sages were alive today and understood or had scientific knowledge like we do, I assume that they themselves would also not say what they said. Meaning, what they said is based on a mistake. So in such a case it is like a mistaken transaction or things of that sort—there is no reason to grant authority to things founded on factual error, founded on a mistake that if the Sages had been aware of it, they themselves obviously would not have said.

[Speaker B] And also regarding norms, if we were to say they had

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] made a mistake, would they admit it?

[Speaker B] What? I didn’t understand. Also regarding norms, if we were to tell them that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but with norms that’s true—that’s the next sentence I was about to say. Also with norms, in principle, you can formulate it the same way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all, if it is clear to me that they made a mistake, then it is clear to me that if they understood they were mistaken, as I am saying now, they would retract. But there it’s something different, because with norms the concept of mistake and non-mistake depends on the outlook. It’s not facts. It’s not something where you look at the world and say, okay, this is a mistake, this is an evident mistake. If there is a mistake that is an evident mistake, then that really falls under “one who errs in the commandment to heed the words of the Sages.” But any other situation where it seems different to me than to the Sages—fine, it seems different to you, but that’s a position, a different position. And therefore there is still room to demand of me to obey what they ruled, because that is the binding text. Okay? With facts it isn’t like that. Therefore I argue that with facts, if it turns out there is a factual error, then all these rules that one court cannot—one court can overturn the words of another court for Torah-level law, and for rabbinic law it can overturn if it is greater in wisdom and number—all these limitations on overturning existing Jewish laws or changing existing Jewish laws do not apply to an error of fact. They apply to an error in Jewish law. An error in Jewish law by a given court can be overturned by a later court. If a later court did not overturn it, then it is not overturned.

[Speaker E] Rabbi, can I ask for a moment? I know it’s a bit—it’s taking one step back. The Talmudic text as formal authority: if the Rabbi says that many things given originally changed, got corrupted, are very far from what was given at Sinai, then do we accept it today as formal authority? I mean, are we all obligated by this thing that is basically full of errors?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, full of errors? It is probably full of errors, but I don’t have anything concrete I can point to and say, this is an error. I’m simply saying: human beings make mistakes, so there is no reason to assume that in this whole huge corpus no mistakes crept in. But that’s just a presumption?

[Speaker E] It doesn’t result from examination of the things and—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Regarding facts I have—

[Speaker E] No, regarding facts yes, that’s obvious.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: in halakhic rulings it follows from what I think, but you know, I think—I may be mistaken. It’s very hard to think of a situation where I could point to a halakhic ruling and say, here the Sages made a mistake. I don’t—it’s hard even to imagine such a thing.

[Speaker E] So it’s only a statistical presumption that there are mistakes because—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I’m saying human beings make mistakes, and after all the Sages did a lot on the basis of interpretation. It’s not all mathematics from what is written in the Torah; a great deal of it is interpretation. And in interpretation people can make mistakes like in anything else, so it’s obvious to me that there are many things that are mistaken out of all the millions of Jewish laws we received; obviously some of them are mistakes. It can’t be otherwise. But that’s statistics; it’s not some specific halakhic ruling I can point to and say, ladies and gentlemen, this is certainly a mistake. If there were such a halakhic ruling, there would definitely be room to discuss it too. I mentioned the topic in Horayot; there is definitely room to discuss it if it is not fact but norm. Fine, so those are basically the three claims. Basic ones. And now I’ll try a bit to demonstrate and elaborate more. I’ll just say one thing, because there is the well-known Chazon Ish about two thousand years of Torah and two thousand years of Messiah. Right—they asked the Chazon Ish: what do we do with the Sages’ scientific determinations, for example in the laws of non-kosher defects in animals, which turn out today to be incorrect? Or alternatively, things that in the time of the Sages were not medically curable and today are curable—not because they were wrong but because today we have more advanced medicine. So the Chazon Ish argued that this is not—he made a very interesting claim. He does not say that the Sages were right. People don’t notice this so much. Rather, he says that the scientific truth that is binding from the standpoint of Jewish law is the truth that prevailed in the time of the Sages, even though it is not actually true. And he brings the midrash that the six thousand years of the world are divided into three: two thousand years of chaos, two thousand years of Torah, and two thousand years of Messiah. Now if you do the calculation, then the Sages belonged to the two thousand years of Torah. So he says that the scientific reality in the two thousand years of Torah—the scientific conception, excuse me, of the two thousand years of Torah—is the scientific conception that is binding for halakhic consideration. Not scientific truth, but science as it was perceived in the two thousand years of Torah. Okay, he is basically trying to dance at two weddings here. On the one hand, he does not insist that the Sages did not make mistakes in science, which is completely absurd. And on the other hand, he tries to preserve the halakhah they established as valid, even with respect to facts. But yes, against him, for example, the absolute majority of halakhic decisors argue that there is no such thing as scientific error among the Sages. It cannot exist; there is no such thing. Meaning, if science thinks something else, then science is wrong. The absolute majority of halakhic decisors. I could almost count on my fingers the decisors who are willing to say otherwise. It’s quite amazing in today’s mindset, because it’s obvious to all of us that this is nonsense. But that is the fact. When you check the sources, that’s what you’ll find. So in that sense the Chazon Ish is more clear-eyed. Meaning, he understands that the Sages erred, but he still tries to preserve rabbinic Jewish law despite the notion that the Sages erred. And for that purpose he invented this thesis of the two thousand years of Torah. It’s a completely concocted thesis, with all due respect; I don’t know where he came up with this thing or why I should accept this hallucination. It’s simply bizarre. There is no reason in the world to think that Jewish laws based on a scientific thesis should be based on incorrect science just because it was the science in the time of the Sages. So what? What does that have to do with anything? And also the two thousand years of Torah—what, what two thousand years of Torah? And if the science in the period before the Sages thought one thing and the science of the Sages was different, then which science is the science of the two thousand years of Torah? Maybe the science of King David or of Pharaoh—I don’t know who. It’s so strange that I’m almost sure the Chazon Ish himself didn’t believe it. There are a few such classic theses of the Chazon Ish where it is clear to me that he himself didn’t believe them.

[Speaker E] It’s the formal authority. What? It’s the formal authority that applies to what appears in the Talmudic text, that’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Either it’s a formal authority, meaning that he holds one has to obey it, and he had to propose some theory to ground that somehow or give it some reasoning, otherwise it sounds terribly strange. Or he does not think it is formal authority, but he is afraid of reform. Meaning, he is afraid that changes will start here and they’ll alter all sorts of things and it will be a slippery slope and so on, so he decided to erect some kind of fence and determine categorically that you cannot touch Jewish law in any way—not in factual error, not in halakhic error, not in anything like that. Simply because of fear—concern, yes, not fear—concern for the fate of Jewish law. That is what I assume. It’s hard for me to believe that an intelligent person really believed that nonsense. So therefore—

[Speaker G] But excuse me, you once mentioned that Rav Shlomo Fisher, when speaking about acceptance of the Amoraim, mentions the Chazon Ish there, and he says that according to what he cites in the name of the Chazon Ish, the earlier authorities did not do a favor and an act of kindness by accepting their opinion because there is such formal authority, but because, he says, truth required them to accept it. Okay. And therefore—that is, according to what he wrote, the Chazon Ish is convinced—I don’t know if he believes what he wrote, but according to what he wrote he is convinced that there really was an entirely different level, that truth required the Amoraim to accept the Tannaim. So with that, what did you say about the factual scientific errors?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the factual scientific errors of the Sages are not errors? Meaning, modern science is wrong?

[Speaker G] I don’t know whether he ever argued what he says there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think that’s right. No, it really doesn’t seem so to me. I don’t remember at the moment what Rav Shlomo Fisher says, but if he says that, I disagree; that is, it’s not correct.

[Speaker G] And just so I understand properly: you’re saying that when there is an error in fact, then we don’t relate to the halakhah? Meaning, all those who wrote about this, both Rabbi Dessler and others, that supposedly it’s not reality that obligates the law but the law that obligates reality—you reject that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mere empty words.

[Speaker G] Yes, yes, okay, fine.

[Speaker B] Is that like the Shakh at the beginning of the Jerusalem Talmud?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. “A three-year-old girl, her virginity returns,” right.

[Speaker B] No, but there’s an explicit Talmudic text in Rosh Hashanah, that whether inadvertent or deliberate, etc., regarding sanctifying the month.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s something else—that’s exactly the opposite, it’s proof to the contrary. Why? Because the Talmudic text there says, it learns specifically with regard to the calendar, sanctifying the month and intercalating the year, that authority is given to the court even if they act deliberately, inadvertently, or under duress. What do you see? That it is specific authority regarding the calendar, because in the calendar it is very sensitive since all the Jewish people need to observe Yom Kippur on the same day; there has to be order in the matter. So they gave the head of the Sanhedrin absolute authority. But that shows you precisely that it’s only here because of this specific area. In general it is not true. If they make a mistake, then they make a mistake—what do you mean?

[Speaker B] I learned it differently. I learned that in this case the court creates the—not just reveals the details as in monetary or capital law, but creates something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—no, you understood correctly. It’s not differently; that’s what I’m saying. But why? Because here the Torah itself wanted there to be uniformity, and therefore it said that what the court says is constitutive, not directive. They determine the calendar. And therefore—but that is specific to that case. Otherwise the source about intercalating the year and sanctifying the month would not have been needed; it should have stated a sweeping rule for all of Jewish law.

[Speaker G] “Which you shall proclaim them”—“which you shall proclaim, even if you…” What? “Which you shall proclaim them”—“which you shall proclaim, even if you…”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “You,” “you,” even if inadvertent, “you,” even if deliberate, yes. So the claim—again, look, for example, if I were in the period—say I was in the time of the Sanhedrin, all the disputes of Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabban Gamliel, right? If I were in the time of the Sanhedrin and I reached the conclusion that the Sanhedrin had made a factual mistake, I still couldn’t disagree with it. Why? Because what is incumbent on me in such a case is to go to the Sanhedrin and tell them: friends, here is my evidence, you are factually mistaken, there is this scientific knowledge, there are these facts, and try to persuade them that they are mistaken. And now they have to decide. If they decide I didn’t persuade them, then they will determine that the binding scientific truth is what they determine, and I will have to obey. I’m talking about a different situation. I’m talking about our relation to the Talmudic text or to the Sanhedrin that once existed, where I no longer have any way to reach it and persuade it. Clearly, where there is a dispute about facts and there is a Sanhedrin, the Sanhedrin has to decide the factual dispute too—that’s obvious. Just like in a religious court, every case in court also deals with facts, right? There are laws of evidence. Someone murdered, someone borrowed and did not repay, so we clarify the facts. Now with regard to facts, ostensibly there is no authority; authority is only regarding norms, regarding Jewish laws, not regarding facts. So what, now I can disobey the court because I am not convinced that I did not repay? I claim that I did repay and the court ruled factually that I did not repay. So I say, fine, these are facts; facts I don’t have to obey? Of course not. Obviously, once the court determined that these are the facts, that is binding. Certainly, there’s no doubt at all about that. Even if I am sure they are factually wrong, it changes nothing. But all that is only where I could present my claims before the court, try to persuade them, and they were not persuaded. Fine—then they determine. Like today, for example, if you come to a civil court and there is a scientific dispute on some question that comes up in court, the defense brings an expert on its behalf and the prosecution brings an expert on its behalf. Who decides which expert is right? Do we hold a poll in the scientific community and let the majority decide? No, the judge decides. Why? The judge understands nothing in science—why should he decide? Because that is how a legal process works. A legal process says: okay, you bring your expert, you bring your expert, there is a contradiction between the experts, there is no choice, somebody has to decide. Who decides? The judge, of course. Not because he is the expert, but because that is his role. He has to make the decision, there is no choice; in the end, a verdict includes factual components too, and when the court decides. I’m talking about a situation where there is a determination by the Sanhedrin that once existed, or by the Talmudic text, and I today am already, I don’t know, hundreds or thousands of years later, and I’ve reached a scientific conclusion that they were clearly mistaken, and I have no one to go to now to try to persuade him to retract. Now the question is whether because of that I am still supposed to continue obeying him because I didn’t persuade him—whereas we said no. Clearly, if he were alive today, I would persuade him. So the fact that he isn’t alive today—well, what can I do? Then I act as I understand even without persuading him. It’s not the same thing as, say, the disputes between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabban Gamliel; those were disputes conducted between two parties who were alive and could persuade one another. So there certainly Rabban Gamliel is also right—or rather, determines—also on the factual plane, not only on the halakhic plane, because he is the head of the Sanhedrin; what he determines is binding. Regarding the calendar specifically, Rabban Gamliel says this is even more than that; there I have a constitutive status, so I don’t even need to invoke authority. I determine the calendar—what kind of dispute is that? So that is even more than in other areas, but also in the other disputes between them, even if there was a factual dimension there, it changes nothing. Because if Rabban Gamliel is here and he is the head of the Sanhedrin and he heard the arguments and was not persuaded, then everyone must obey. That’s obvious. Okay, so that is basically the thesis. Now from here on, I hope that in the next class we’ll finish this series. I hope—maybe it will take us a bit more—but it seems to me one more session may suffice. I’ll try to show these claims a bit: that the Sages learned from experience, and as a result they can make mistakes, and what one does with factual mistakes of the Sages. We’ll do that next time. Any questions or comments?

[Speaker C] Okay, goodbye then, Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace.