Torah Study – Lesson 6

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s just get situated first. I was talking about the purpose of Torah study, right? After we talked about all the Brisker analysis and yeshiva-style learning, in the end I concluded with the goals of learning, and I said that yeshiva analysis basically uncovers the rules that underlie the specific laws or the specific Talmudic passages. It does that through various analytical methods, right? Two laws, and all the object/person distinctions, sign and cause, and all sorts of distinctions of that kind, which are analytical tools whose role is to take us from the examples, from the specific cases, to the rules, to the theoretical laws, the principles. And then in the end I concluded by saying that there are two approaches in the Torah world regarding the purpose of Torah study. There is Rabbi Ovadia and his circle, his students, who at least that’s my impression understand that the purpose of learning is basically to know the Jewish law. And the rules are only an auxiliary means to understand what the existing laws are saying and to apply that to new cases. In principle, if someone came and revealed to Rabbi Ovadia all the laws for all possible cases, then there would be no need at all to analyze Talmudic passages. Meaning, there is no interest in the rules as such; they are only a means to derive conclusions for various cases. In contrast, in the yeshiva world—when I say Lithuanian, when I say the yeshiva world, though I think today this is already true almost across the board—the goal is not halakhic ruling in concrete cases; the goal is the rules. The cases are only diagnostic tools. Meaning, you test your rules on specific cases. According to this rule, the law will come out this way in such-and-such a case, and according to another rule the law will come out differently. The cases are practical ramifications of the halakhic theories, of the halakhic principles, while the goal is really to reach the principles. And I compared this to the difference between a scientist and an engineer. For the scientist, the specific cases or experiments on particular situations are tools for understanding what the correct theory is. He is really striving to understand the theory through the examples to which the theory applies, because that is how you can understand which theory is the correct one. The engineer, by contrast, says that what interests him is applying it to this case or that case—of course also constructing cases with his own hands, or understanding cases that occur—and he uses those general laws to understand the cases.

[Speaker C] A general question. In yeshivot they don’t like what’s called a balabatish approach, a straightforward layman’s approach. I remember Rabbi Soloveitchik—every time I learned Gittin, something is invalid because of rumor, not rumor, it takes us to some object-status of a bill of divorce or some principle and so on. But on the other hand, it seems that there are a lot of sugyot that really are balabatish.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t like it, but that’s the Talmud, fine. To each his own taste. I also don’t like it; I’m a yeshiva guy too.

[Speaker C] There’s that famous article by Rabbi Soloveitchik, that until Rabbi Chaim people were dealing with pots and pans, and he took the frying pans out of the kitchen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. I’m saying, I’m not getting into the question right now of how authentic this is. Meaning, does yeshiva-style analysis really uncover the original intention of the Amoraim or the Tannaim? That’s an interesting question; probably not. But it doesn’t matter. Meaning, contemporary study—this is its purpose. Independent of the question whether it uncovers the original intention. I once wrote about this in an article that dealt with hermeneutics, what I called “the hermeneutics of canonical texts.” Hermeneutics is the theory of interpretation. And there the question was why the yeshiva learner ignores the intention of the text so crudely. Meaning, why does he not care at all what the text intends? Which is basically the kind of thing you described here. It’s that kind of question.

[Speaker C] I assume Rabbi Ovadia would take the text in a more straightforward way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, obviously. And the more of a scientist you are, the more detached you are from the cases; you’re basically constructing for yourself some conceptual structures that it’s not clear to what extent they were really in the minds of the Amoraim and the Tannaim. That’s one side. But on the other hand—and I think I did mention this—there’s Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner and the Seridei Eish, the person who founded the Talmudic Encyclopedia. The Seridei Eish—they have some correspondence about Rabbi Chaim, very well known. And one of them—I don’t remember again who says what—I think Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner is the critic and the Seridei Eish is the defender, I think that’s how it is. So one of them says: it’s obvious that Rabbi Chaim was not aiming at what Maimonides intended. Right? Rabbi Chaim usually interprets Maimonides. Maimonides never dreamed of what Rabbi Chaim is saying. And the other says to him that’s true, but this is the commandment of Torah study—or that’s how we understand it today. I think it’s much more fundamental. We understand it today this way, and in my opinion Maimonides intended that. He intended it even though he didn’t have the toolbox that we have, and if you had asked him maybe he wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. But in our language this is the correct formulation of what Maimonides really meant. Meaning, with our analytical tools we are exposing things that perhaps even he himself would not have formulated this way, but in this language this really is the correct formulation of what he meant. So that’s the intuition behind what he said.

[Speaker D] And that’s the story of Rabbi Akiva and Moses?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s exactly the midrash about Rabbi Akiva, yes—that he was sitting in the study hall of Moses. Moses, sorry—they took him to Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, and he didn’t understand a thing there until they said, “It is a law given to Moses at Sinai,” and then he relaxed. Why did he relax? He still doesn’t understand anything. What’s the connection between that and a law given to Moses at Sinai? No—he understood that in the language of Rabbi Akiva’s generation, this is the correct formulation of the laws given to Moses at Sinai. In that sense I’m actually very optimistic—some would say naive. I think this really is the way to uncover the intention. And in that sense I think yeshiva-style learning really does uncover, if it’s done properly, the intention of the Talmud and of the medieval authorities (Rishonim). True, if the Rishonim were sitting in my study hall they wouldn’t understand a thing. Not because I’m so smart, but because the language is different. They don’t use the system of tools we use today. But that doesn’t matter. If they entered into this system of tools and understood what it means and all that, they would tell you that this is what they meant.

[Speaker E] The hidden intention?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, or this is an analytical formulation, an analysis of what they really meant. A lot of times—I was once dragged into this, I was sick, very sick—so they managed to drag me to all sorts of sorcerers like that, alternative medicine and things like that. To this day I don’t know how they did it; apparently the despair was great. In any case, I went to maybe three of them, two of them I think, something like that. Did it help? No, of course not. But never mind—the conventional medicine eventually did the job. Anyway, I was there, and each one of them started explaining his theories to me. I said to him, listen, don’t explain anything to me, just tell me what you want me to do. That’s all. Why? Because I said, even if there is something to this—and today I tend to think there isn’t anything to it—even if there is something to it, there are some unarticulated intuitions here. Meaning, maybe his theory is nonsense. He’s trying to create some rationalization for himself for all kinds of feelings he has. Now maybe he has good intuition? That can happen. Meaning, maybe he really manages to know what the right thing to do is, and maybe it really would help me if he has good intuition, I don’t know. Explanations pulled from nowhere? Exactly. But leave the explanations alone—with the energy lines and meridians and all that nonsense, just a pile of nonsense, you can’t believe you’re hearing it, your hair stands on end. Everyone with his own theories. But that doesn’t mean his intuition isn’t right. Then afterward a theorist can come and try to explain why those actions maybe really do help. Again, I’m saying, I think they don’t help. But in principle there could be intuitions like that that really do help, without the person himself understanding the theory behind them. And then if someone comes, a scientist, and tries to examine the matter, he can propose an explanation of what the theory behind it is. I think I once told this story: there was a guy in our yeshiva, today he’s a well-known figure in Gush, who had jaundice. Did I tell this? He had jaundice and for about half a year he wasn’t in yeshiva. Hospitalized, comes home, it went on forever, he didn’t recover. And at some point they brought some sorcerer with pigeons. Pigeons? Yes. They put them on his belly button, all the pigeons died. A few days later he came back to yeshiva. A friend of mine was there, saw it in the hospital. He comes back and tells me about it with amazement. Back then this thing with the pigeons wasn’t yet so well known; in recent years it’s calmed down, I haven’t heard about it for years. Did the pigeons run out? They ran out of pigeons. Okay, I hadn’t thought of that. Anyway, my friend told me about it with amazement, said to me, listen, it’s unbelievable. In short, I go home, tell my parents, look, amazing story—pigeons, they died, and a few days later he came back to yeshiva. They laughed at me and said, what are they doing to you in that dark yeshiva? Where’s rationality? Where’s all that? Yes, Gush Etzion of course, that’s what we’re talking about. So I said to them—because nobody would accept anything they don’t understand. Rational thinking means that if there is a fact and the evidence for it is reliable, then I accept it. Afterward you have to try to think about what it means and why it’s true and to create the theory. But someone who is “rational” in the sense that he clings only to what he already believes will die with the knowledge he was born with. He will never add knowledge, never add understanding, because he will never accept something that contradicts his existing paradigms. Science can’t advance that way; that’s the opposite of rationality. True, afterward—as opposed to those who say, wow, what miracles, what a great sorcerer, and immediately give him some big donation—the rational person then has to think what this means, why it works. But the facts are facts. Meaning, if there is reliable testimony, why not accept it? My friend was a very reliable person, I did not suspect him of some absurd mysticism, and I assumed that if he said it, it probably really happened. Then you have to think what it means. By the way, later I saw some article by the rabbi from Har HaMor—what’s his name? Rabbi Tao.

[Speaker A] An article by Rabbi Tao.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He did some kind of investigation of those pigeons and claimed it was all nonsense. They apparently have some breathing opening in the back, that’s what he claimed, not from the mouth, or not only from the mouth. So when you press them against the navel, yes, it blocks that opening and suffocates them. Simply kills them. That’s why the pigeons die.

[Speaker H] But the issue isn’t the death of the pigeons, it’s the recovery of the patients.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, as for the recovery of the patients, that’s just—yes, that’s placebo. It’s not serious. What’s persuasive with the pigeons isn’t the recovery. Recoveries can happen; you can never know. But the pigeons die. Meaning, something is happening there. So he says no, the pigeons die because they suffocate. True, some people recover—at some point they always do—

[Speaker G] They recover if they’re alive at all, that’s okay. But it’s interesting. I was glad to discover that he too is a rational person, even if not in my way, but still a rational person. Anyway, the point is that one of the methods of the rational people is to deny the facts.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s rationalists, not rational. That’s anti-rationality, that’s rationalism. Meaning, there are people who are rationalists: they accept only what is understood; what is not understood, they do not accept. Those are the people, for example, who deny the existence of God because it isn’t within their tools. So they think they’re rational, but in my eyes they’re rationalists. Meaning, they cling only to what is already known, but that’s not rational, because sometimes there are good arguments for something that I don’t currently understand, but I still think it’s true. Why am I saying this? Because these are examples of situations in which there are facts that are true facts even though I don’t necessarily understand why, I don’t necessarily understand the theory that explains those facts, that stands behind those facts. Therefore it is certainly possible that a person has good intuitions and says the right thing, but if you ask him why it’s right—give me the theory, where did you get it from—he won’t know how to tell you where he got it from. Some scientist will come afterward and try to explain him to himself, meaning where he got it from. In my view most psychology is like that—sorry if there are psychologists here. In my view most psychology, or psychoanalysis, is almost entirely like that. It’s a collection of Freud’s hallucinations. I have no idea where he even came up with all this stuff; none of it has any meaning. But what? I assume he had good intuitions, like many psychologists, or good psychologists. They have good intuitions and can sometimes help people in distress. I think it doesn’t happen very often, and even there it’s a bit like alternative medicine. But they can sometimes help people in distress—sorry if there are psychologists here—but that’s really what I think. A psychiatrist? Okay. In any case, I attribute it to intuition, not to theory. The fact that there are different and opposite theories that “work”—for this one it’s this theory and for that one it’s that theory—what does that mean? It means those theories are irrelevant. The question is whether the intuition is good. That’s why I don’t know how much the studies really help. Are you a psychiatrist? God forbid, no, I’m allergic. Okay.

[Speaker F] I’ll analyze—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you afterward, why I’m saying what I’m saying. In any case, the point is that many times my feeling is that the psychologist—I’m speaking more about psychologists, because psychiatrists are part of medicine, so fine, there I’m relatively okay—but psychologists, many times my feeling is that the theories they learned are not really what gives them their added value. Meaning, you learn this theory and that theory—that’s not the point. You treat with intuition, not with theory. Meaning, if you have good intuition then you’re a good psychologist, and if you don’t have good intuition then you’re a bad psychologist; it doesn’t matter how much you know. Knowledge can help a little, fine, maybe, like it seems to me—who was it, I don’t remember—someone once said: theories never really work. A good true theory—not really. Theories never truly work in the full sense. The purpose of a theory is to give insights, not to “work.” A theory never explains reality, there’s no such thing. Reality is always more complicated than the theory. But the theory gives insights. You can understand certain aspects that you won’t be able to understand if you just look at reality itself. You need a system of tools. In my view, Freud’s greatness—and I say this as an idiot—is his system of concepts, not his theory. Think about when you approach the analysis of psychological phenomena and you have no language at all. You have no conceptual framework at all. What are you going to do with that? There’s nothing you can do with it. Only try intuitively to say this may help, this may not help, he’ll do this, he won’t do that. There is no way to approach a collection of people, phenomena, or situations if you don’t have a conceptual system. Therefore inventing a conceptual system—whether it has substance or not, whether it’s somehow connected to reality or not—inventing a conceptual system is progress. Because within that conceptual system you can organize the phenomena and say this comes from that part of the psyche, this comes from this part, this is repression and this is here and that is there. And it gives you some conceptual system for dealing with the phenomena. Now through that you can also show that what you’re saying is wrong. Because once you have a conceptual system, you can define your thesis and put it to the test of falsification. And then if there is a case showing that the thesis is not correct, you’ve still advanced. But if you have no conceptual system, you have no way even to begin dealing with such a field. And therefore I think—in my view again, though it’s a bit pretentious—it seems to me that Freud’s main contribution was the conceptual system. The language of psychoanalysis, that conceptual system—not necessarily the theories or the insights themselves. Because within that conceptual system you can begin to discuss. Before there was a conceptual system, there was no way to conduct that discussion. Okay, enough speculation. In any case, what I want to do now is try to show an implication of this through the issue of forced contextual readings. Meaning, I want to try to discuss the issue of these contextual restrictions in the Talmud, which I think troubles quite a few people, especially in our generation. And I want to argue that behind this lie the conceptions I described earlier. And in that sense these forced contextual readings are a demonstration that even in the Talmud itself they basically did what is done in the yeshivot. Contrary to what people often accuse the yeshivot of, I think there was something of this already in the Talmud itself, but it did it in its own way. And I want to try to demonstrate that a bit. These forced contextual readings are basically situations in which we take some authoritative text—a Mishnah or an Amoraic statement, it doesn’t matter, of an earlier Amora—and we restrict it to a specific case. Let me give one example. Rava said: If he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her sleeping slave, while she is guarding him, this is a valid bill of divorce. There is some slave belonging to the woman, and he is asleep. The woman’s husband comes, wants to divorce her, takes the bill of divorce, puts it in the hand of the sleeping slave, the slave doesn’t even feel it, he puts the bill in his hand. It’s a valid bill of divorce. The woman is divorced. If he woke up, it is not a valid bill of divorce. Because that would be a guarded courtyard not by his own awareness. If he is sleeping and she is guarding him, this is a valid bill of divorce. Meaning, if he is sleeping and she is guarding him, that is a courtyard guarded with her awareness, so it is valid. So she acquired the bill of divorce, and therefore she is divorced. So the Talmud asks: Why? It is a moving courtyard, and a moving courtyard does not acquire. After all, a slave is a courtyard. True, he is a slave—slaves are compared to land—but a slave is a moving courtyard. It is not a stationary courtyard, and a moving courtyard does not acquire through courtyard-acquisition.

[Speaker H] Sorry, what’s the question?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So how did the slave acquire it?

[Speaker H] No, but what does “moving courtyard” mean? Is that a newly invented concept?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Meaning, a regular courtyard—slaves are compared to land, that’s a known comparison. Now we say that a regular courtyard is stationary, but a slave, although he is like a courtyard, is a mobile courtyard.

[Speaker H] So then we can find another thousand differences between a slave and land.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the relevant difference is that he moves and land doesn’t move. The Talmud thinks that is a relevant difference. Fine. And if you say that sleeping is different? Then while he is asleep he is not moving, he is asleep, so this is not a moving courtyard. But didn’t Rava say: anything that, if it were moving, would not acquire—even when standing or sitting, it does not acquire. Rava himself, the same Rava who says this about the bill of divorce in the hand of her sleeping slave, himself says that it doesn’t help if someone is asleep. If when awake he moves, then even when asleep it is called a moving courtyard. So that doesn’t help. So the Talmud says: And the law is that he was bound. He is tied up. The slave being referred to is a bound and sleeping slave. Now there are parallel places where it’s even more amusing, because here at least it says in the original statement that the slave is sleeping. There are places where it says: he put the bill of divorce into the slave’s hand and she is divorced. Then the Talmud asks: one second, but that’s a moving courtyard. It answers: when he is sleeping. Then it says: but a moving courtyard—even if it is sleeping, it still doesn’t acquire. Bound. Meaning, he is also sleeping, also bound, also lame, missing one ear, and actually dead, and his cousin is called Moshe. Other than that, everything is fine. Meaning, that’s what we’re talking about. So that is a forced contextual reading. And a forced contextual reading means that I take something that is presented as a general principle—yes, you take a bill of divorce, put it in the hand of a sleeping slave, the divorce is valid, that’s what the Talmud says—and suddenly we realize that this is talking about some bizarre case that can hardly ever happen, if at all, and that’s all they were talking about. So this raises very difficult questions. What do you mean? The rabbi couldn’t have just told me: if he put the bill of divorce in the hand of the slave when he is sleeping and bound, then it’s valid. And if he isn’t bound, then it isn’t valid. Why make such a general statement when it is obviously not true? It contradicts what he himself says. Not only is it just not true—he himself said that as long as when he is awake he is moving, then even when he is sleeping he is considered moving. So why formulate it this way? Now, these forced contextual readings are something that appears on almost every page of the Talmud. It’s not always presented so clearly, but there is almost no page in the Talmud without one. And the question of course arises: what are we doing here? What kind of thing is this? This is blatant intellectual dishonesty. Basically, many people—and I think this is probably the common view among most people today—understand a forced contextual reading as a polite way of disagreeing with the Mishnah. You’re not allowed to disagree with a Mishnah; Mishnayot acquired some kind of canonical status. So what do we do in order to disagree with the Mishnah? We say: the Mishnah is only when the slave is bound and sleeping. Here it’s not a Mishnah, it’s an Amoraic statement, but never mind. It’s only when the slave is bound and sleeping, but with a regular slave it’s not so. The Mishnah did not speak about a bound and sleeping slave; it spoke about a regular slave. But since you don’t want to confront the Mishnah head-on, you do it politely. You say: the Mishnah speaks only about that specific case, but in general the law is the opposite. I once said, I think, that in the yeshiva world every verse teaches the opposite of what it says. Do you know that principle? That’s how it is. Imagine an argument between husband and wife. The wife says to the husband, listen: “Whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice.” It’s written in the verse, you need to listen to me. The opposite. Why did the verse need to teach, regarding Sarah, “Whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice”? Because ordinarily one does not need to listen to one’s wife. And here there is a special novelty that the verse teaches. Meaning, if there is a verse, it means the opposite is true; the verse is needed only to tell us that here it isn’t so. So every verse that says something, we learn the opposite of what is written in it.

[Speaker H] In our case here, the forced contextual reading is required because there is an internal contradiction in the words of the Amora.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but still the question is whether it’s real. Is that really what Rava meant?

[Speaker H] So why didn’t he say it? These are two different things, and I have to choose between them in practice. So choose!

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Say he retracted, say he contradicted himself, I don’t know what—but it’s not an answer. Because that’s clearly not what Rava meant.

[Speaker H] It’s much more serious if I approach him head-on and say: you’re wrong, period.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And here it’s done as a matter of politeness, but the question is whether it’s real. Forget the manners and etiquette—the question is whether this is real. Do you really think that Rava was talking about a bound slave who’s asleep? That’s strange. Now here, okay, at least there’s a contradiction in Rava’s own words, and in general this is an amoraic statement, so it’s even less serious. After all, if it’s an amoraic statement, you can say: I don’t accept it, Rava contradicted himself, I disagree with him, I’m also an amora, right? The Talmud is speaking here. But when you’re talking about a Mishnah, you can’t do that. You can’t disagree with a Mishnah. But with a Mishnah, usually the difficulty isn’t that it contradicts itself or something like that; it contradicts some other source, and then you say: fine, so we’ll establish this Mishnah in a particular case. Come on—if it contradicts the other source, then apparently there’s a dispute. What, or it’s an amora who wants to say something and there’s a Mishnah against him, so he makes an ukimta in the Mishnah. What do you mean, you make an ukimta in the Mishnah? The Mishnah is against you. Just say: I disagree, elegantly, with the Mishnah. That’s basically how people usually understand this notion of ukimta. It really is a difficult problem. I once had an argument with my son about ukimtot. And in the course of the argument I showed him how he himself was doing an ukimta. Meaning, he was yelling, what do you mean, what kind of logic is there in these ukimtot, this is intellectually dishonest. And during the argument—I don’t even remember exactly, I should have recorded it because it was really wonderful—I showed him, in the middle of the argument, how he was doing an ukimta. Because an ukimta is the most logical thing in the world, if you understand it properly. There is nothing more logical than an ukimta. If there were no ukimtot in the Talmud, I wouldn’t understand the Talmud. There had to be ukimtot in the Talmud. So I’m going to try to explain this, and I think it connects to everything I said before; it’s an expression of the fact that in the Talmud itself you already see yeshiva-style thinking. So now I’m moving to the topic of ukimtot. One example of an ukimta I brought there was Rava with the bound, sleeping slave. Let’s bring two more examples, because after I explain, I’ll come back. A second example: this is the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Beitzah: “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday—Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten.” Right, contrary to the myth that Beit Hillel are always lenient—not always. Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, an egg laid on a Jewish holiday, and Beit Hillel say not. Then the Talmud there brings various possibilities for how to explain the matter—because of muktzeh, because of preparation, fallen fruit, all sorts of things like that. One of the examples is Rava’s statement. “Rather, Rava said: actually, we’re dealing with a hen designated for eating…” or for laying eggs—there’s a discussion in the Talmud about which hen we’re talking about. “Rather, Rava said: actually, we’re dealing with a hen designated for eating, and with a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath.” We’re not talking about an ordinary Jewish holiday on which the egg was laid, but a Jewish holiday that comes after the Sabbath, and the issue is preparation. “And Rava holds: any egg that is laid today was completed yesterday.” Meaning, we’re really talking about a Jewish holiday that comes after the Sabbath. On an ordinary Jewish holiday, eat whatever egg you want; that’s not interesting at all, he’s not talking about that. I’m talking about a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. Notice the ukimta: the Mishnah says, “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday—Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten.” Very simple and clear—what could be clearer than that? Rava says: no, no, this means a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, only that case. And what’s the problem? The problem is preparation—“and they shall prepare what they bring,” the problem is preparation. None of this has any hint in the Mishnah; it goes against the plain meaning of the Mishnah’s language. What is going on here? So that’s another ukimta. By the way, when we read a Talmudic passage like this, often we’ll pass right by it and not even notice that an ukimta was made, because we’re so used to it. But there are passages where the Talmud says, “What are we dealing with here?”—with the bound and sleeping one—so you understand that this is an ukimta; they’re announcing that they’re making an ukimta here. Here the Talmud doesn’t even do that: “Actually, with a hen designated for eating, and a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath.” That’s it. That’s what it’s talking about. So this is a wild ukimta.

[Speaker H] The second one is wild. What? The first one isn’t wild, the second one is wild. The fact that it’s designated for eating isn’t so wild—that makes sense in terms of muktzeh—but here it’s just… not clear. But that part you understand once you understand that it comes from the law of muktzeh and that’s what they’re discussing. The whole Talmudic discussion is about muktzeh. The Talmud, sure—but how did the Talmud know that? I’m talking about the interpretation of the Mishnah, not the problem of after the Sabbath—that really is bizarre.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m asking how they interpret the Mishnah, how the Talmud knew to interpret the Mishnah, not what I know—I’m already seeing the Talmud. So you still have to understand where this is written in the Mishnah. A third example: the Mishnah at the beginning of the second chapter of Pesachim. There I had a nice line of thought; I think maybe that’s where I first grasped this issue. The Mishnah says like this: “As long as it is permitted to eat”—this is talking about leavened food—“one may feed it to domesticated animals, wild animals, and birds, and sell it to a non-Jew, and one may derive benefit from it. Once its time has passed, it is forbidden to derive benefit from it.” Right? After the beginning of the time when eating is forbidden or benefit is forbidden, then it’s forbidden to sell it to a non-Jew, forbidden to derive benefit, you can’t feed it to animals or birds; before that, it’s permitted. What’s the novelty? Obviously—before the prohibition, it’s permitted, and after the prohibition, it’s forbidden. Once you’ve already told me that there’s a time when it’s prohibited, I already know there’s a time before that when it isn’t prohibited. So obviously after the time it’s forbidden and before the time it’s permitted. Just like on the Sabbath it’s forbidden to do prohibited labor, and before the Sabbath it’s permitted to do prohibited labor. Okay. “And one may derive benefit from it”—the Talmud says, “That’s obvious.” Obviously one may derive benefit from it. Leavened food on Hanukkah is permitted for benefit, right? So the Talmud says: “It is necessary only for a case where he charred it before its time.” He charred it, burned the leavened food, before the time, while it was still permitted. “And this teaches us in accordance with Rava, for Rava said: If he charred it before its time, one may derive benefit from it even after its time.” So we’re really talking about leavened food that was charred before the prohibition began, and deriving benefit from it is permitted after charring; before the prohibition began, even without charring it was permitted for benefit, but it is permitted for benefit even after the prohibition begins because it was charred before the time. Fine. So aside from the question of what exactly that helps—if the leavened food is charred and it’s no longer really leavened food, then fine, so again, what do you want from me? And if it still is leavened food, then how does it help that I charred it beforehand? So it’s not even clear what this ukimta accomplishes. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the question of the ukimta itself. The Mishnah didn’t know how to say that charred leavened food from before the time is permitted for benefit after the time? After all, it says the opposite: before the time, benefit is permitted; after the time, benefit is forbidden. And you tell me: no, it’s talking about benefit after the time, and after the time it’s permitted for benefit if you charred it before the time. But the Mishnah said that after the time it is forbidden for benefit. So what’s going on? What kind of ukimta is this? You completely scramble the Mishnah and decide it’s talking about something else entirely, basically a different Mishnah in place of the Mishnah. To replace the Mishnah—it doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll write a different Mishnah: leavened food that was charred before the time—after the time we are permitted to derive benefit from it. Excellent. Wonderful law. Completely unclear, but very wonderful. What does that have to do with the Mishnah? What does it have to do with the Mishnah? Okay, so those are ukimtot.

[Speaker A] What benefit does he get from charred bread? Oh.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the smallest question I have about this passage. That is the smallest question I have about this passage. I like burnt toast—maybe that’s it, I don’t know, could be. Well done, as they say. Okay, anyway. What? It’s forbidden to eat. No, that’s another question; not clear. Some of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) want to say that maybe it’s even permitted to eat charred leavened food, but really most of the medieval authorities say no. Fine. In any case, this question of ukimta led various commentators to really far-reaching, surprising suggestions. Just to teach you the depth of the difficulty. I mentioned here once, I think, what I heard from Rabbi Medan from Gush Etzion: he said that he knows twenty-two explanations for why the Book of Ruth is read on Shavuot, but only one explanation for why the Book of Esther is read on Purim. Because none of the explanations are convincing, so you need twenty-two explanations. When there’s a convincing explanation, nobody suggests another one. So here too, basically, there are all kinds of explanations for the phenomenon of ukimta. There are those who want to say—Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, for example, I think in his book on Hanukkah or on Purim, I don’t remember which one—that the point of ukimta is to keep the Mishnah as the Oral Torah. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi wrote down the Mishnah because “it is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah,” but he needed to leave it oral, as Oral Torah. So what did Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi do? He wrote the Mishnah in a way that can’t be understood without a tradition passed down orally. And then it didn’t really become Written Torah; it remained oral.

[Speaker H] He wrote it deliberately as a kind of riddle?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, something like that, a kind of riddle.

[Speaker H] That’s what he wants to claim. Seems a little problematic to me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But it’s a nice idea. Yes, a nice idea. There are lots of nice ideas that are problematic. In any case, no—beauty and aesthetics are not always a guarantee of truth. Those are different things. Anyway, that’s one explanation. There’s another explanation saying that the Mishnah is basically like—people say this in the name of the Vilna Gaon; his students quote it in his name—that just as there is plain meaning and interpretation in the Torah, there is plain meaning and interpretation in the Mishnah. And basically the ukimtot, and the “something is missing and this is what it means,” and all those things—that is interpretation of the Mishnah. There is a plain meaning of the Mishnah and an interpretive meaning of the Mishnah. And the idea behind it—some want to say there is also esoteric meaning in the Mishnah. Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano writes in his book Asarah Ma’amarot, I think, he writes: in Bava Kamma on page 57, I think, something like that, the Talmud says there “Rabbi Yaakov pays.” There’s some case—I don’t remember anymore—such-and-such a case, “Rabbi Yaakov pays.” What does “Rabbi Yaakov”? Rabbi Yaakov said he is liable to pay, Rabbi Yaakov said he pays, and someone else said he doesn’t pay. What is “Rabbi Yaakov pays”? Well, it seems pretty obvious that a word simply dropped out there, right? No! So Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano explains that this is Rabbi Yaakov paying; he was a reincarnation of somebody, and he had to pay for some such-and-such omission. Meaning, the point is that we use language that seems imprecise because we want to hide behind that language another meaning, besides the simple meaning—an additional meaning. Now in order to hide both meanings, there’s no choice; you have to twist the wording a little, and then the Mishnah can really be interpreted on several planes at once. There’s the simple plane, there’s the interpretive plane, there’s hint and secret, and the whole explanatory structure that exists in the Torah also exists in the Mishnah. And therefore the wording is never complete on any one plane, because on each plane it has to fit all the interpretations. Tiferet Yisrael on the Mishnah, for example, wants to say that they wrote it this way because the Mishnayot were transmitted orally, so they were set to tunes. You see? It’s not a new invention of our generation—they were set to tunes so they could be remembered; people sang Mishnayot. So because of that, it had to be written in some phrasing that fit the melody, and that’s why there are problematic formulations there. Fine, that too is a very—I mean, you can’t say it isn’t beautiful, right? Whoever said last time that Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s idea was beautiful—this too is a beautiful idea. Maybe an even more beautiful idea, and even less correct. So the question is: what, then, is actually going on here? Meaning, how are we to understand this matter of ukimta? And really because of these difficulties, it’s common today to think—there are a few articles by David Henshke, for example; I once argued with him in writing in the Yeshiva journal in Yerucham, where they brought an article of his, and there he explains, also in the name of the Vilna Gaon, that ukimtot are basically polite disagreement. That’s what is accepted in the academic world, and I think also within the traditional world it’s accepted to think that an ukimta is a polite way to disagree with the Mishnah. As long as it can be fit into the Mishnah, it’s fine; it doesn’t matter if it’s not the Mishnah’s intention and not really what the Mishnah says—what the Mishnah presents. By the way, I don’t think the Vilna Gaon says that. He’s mistaken about the Vilna Gaon too, not just mistaken about the principle itself, it seems to me. But that’s a different discussion.

[Speaker I] But that doesn’t fit the first example, where the Talmud is making an internal contradiction?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker I] For the example of “they bound him,” because you said it’s a polite way. But he’s contradicting himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Mishnah disagrees with Rava.

[Speaker H] The Mishnah is basically raising a contradiction. The Talmud. That answer doesn’t answer the first difficulty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It does answer it, it does, it does. Because the Talmud asks about a contradiction in Rava’s words. What does it do? It makes an ukimta. What does the ukimta mean? It means that the Talmud is basically saying that Rava has been refuted and rejected.

[Speaker H] But why doesn’t the Talmud say that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For the sake of politeness, we say—it’s a statement by an honored amora and so on.

[Speaker H] But the Talmud is full, full, full of impolite disputes. Right. Right. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, the point is, the Talmud is saying as if: I really disagree with Rava, because there’s a contradiction in his words, but we’re not going to do it head-on. To say I don’t accept this—I’m not going to defend that, because I really don’t accept it, also because really what’s the problem? After all, here this is an amoraic statement; Rava is from the late fifth generation of the amoraim, I think, or something like that. So what’s the problem? Why can’t the Talmud say it disagrees with Rava? That there’s a contradiction? “A refutation of Rava is indeed a refutation,” and that’s it. What? The Talmud says such things. Or alternatively, if you really are allowed to disagree politely with the Mishnah, then what does it even mean that somebody ever brings a Mishnah against me and my words are therefore rejected? After all, I can always explain that the Mishnah is dealing with—I don’t know—a Jewish holiday in the Sabbatical year on the moon. And therefore it has nothing to do with what I’m saying. If the route of ukimta is always open to me, and it’s only a polite way to disagree with the Mishnah, then how can you ever prove anything against someone from a Mishnah? He can always disagree with the Mishnah, as long as he does it politely. And the worst thing is that if one may not disagree with the Mishnah, then one also may not disagree with it politely. What difference does it make whether you’re polite or not? If the rule is that one does not disagree with a Mishnah, then one does not disagree. It’s not a matter of manners and etiquette. The question is whether you can disagree or you can’t. So this whole business—I understand the distress that led to these explanations, but these explanations are not convincing. In my eyes, those explanations are ukimtot too. What I actually want to say—and this isn’t my explanation, by the way, it circulates in the yeshivot. Later I saw it in Rabbi Shilat’s book about Gedaliah Nadel, where he brings it in his name. But the first time I heard it was in the name of Gedaliah Nadel many years ago, and it circulates in the yeshivot. I want to define it a little better and show why it is very, very logical. The claim is that an ukimta is basically the removal of side issues. Meaning, the assumption is that the statement or the law of the Mishnah is really coming to tell me a certain principle, some general principle. It demonstrates that through a particular case. Now, in that particular case there are problems, because the principle doesn’t appear well, doesn’t appear fully, in that specific case. So I have a side problem. So you make an ukimta. I say: okay, then let’s talk about a purer case, where you can see the principle in its purity. Okay, that’s basically the point. I’ll illustrate it and explain it, and then you’ll see that it has a lot of implications, and I think it at least sounds very, very logical. The Mishnah is basically trying to create a laboratory situation—that’s how I’d put it. Meaning, for example, take Newton’s first law, which says that a body on which no force acts moves in uniform motion in a straight line. Okay. Now every body you have ever looked at—nobody has ever seen a body that actually fulfills this law. No such body has ever been born. Why? Because whenever a body rolls here on the floor or flies through the air, there is always some level of friction. There are other masses acting on it, electromagnetic fields, whatever—it doesn’t matter. There are all sorts of influences that interfere with this, and the body will not continue in uniform motion in a straight line. So what do I say? What are we dealing with here? A body moving in a vacuum, with no surrounding mass, coefficient of friction zero, temperature zero. Fine? That’s it. That’s what the law is talking about. Isn’t that an ukimta? Does anyone even blink when they read Newton’s first law? What’s the problem? We make ukimtot all the time. Why? Because this law is a law that can’t actually appear in real situations. It’s a law that speaks about some pure situation. Now in order to get to that pure situation, you have to create some Platonic world, a world that is not our ugly, complex world, but some distilled pure world in which that law can appear cleanly. What do we do instead, when we want to test this law in the laboratory? We try to create in the real and—what do we do instead? When we want to test this law in the laboratory, we try to create in our real, ugly world some reality that resembles the Platonic reality a little, resembles it as much as possible. What do we do? We put it into some vacuum tube, yes, try to create a vacuum, lower the temperature, try as much as possible to create the ukimta here. Meaning, the ukimta is basically an attempt to create a laboratory situation in the real world, so that we won’t have to rely on fantasies about a Platonic world. So what we do is, we try as much as possible to get close to the Platonic situation. That’s what’s called a laboratory. When we conduct an experiment in the laboratory, we usually try to clean that experiment of all sorts of other influences not relevant to the law we’re testing. When we test a certain law in the laboratory, we try to clear away side issues. That’s what an ukimta does. That’s what an ukimta does. It simply clears the field of all sorts of other things that interfere with seeing the message that one really wants to convey, the general law.

[Speaker C] Exactly. Meaning, the claim—what? It also doesn’t formulate the rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, it also doesn’t formulate the rule.

[Speaker C] Which makes the explanation very difficult.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Very difficult, I agree. I’ll get to all that. Good question—I’ll get to it in a moment.

[Speaker C] Dad, if the Mishnah had said that, it would have been better. There are lots of ukimtot where the Mishnah implies A, and after the ukimta it turns into exactly B.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that parallels his comment. Meaning, basically, the Mishnah should have told me the general law, and then I would understand that you need to make ukimtot. But why doesn’t it say the general law? It gives an example; it gives the wrong example. That still—I’ll get to all of that in a moment. So basically the claim is that in the scientific world—let me give another example, one from psychology, so you’ll see this isn’t only in the natural sciences. My sister studied criminology at university, and she told me that in every course—first of all, in every course they gave an introduction to what science is. I don’t know, I studied physics, and in no course did anyone bother defining for us what science is. And secondly, she told me that in many of those courses the same situation kept recurring. They would talk about a law in the human sciences, social sciences, things like that. And then they would say: take, for example—and then they’d pause for a moment to think what law to bring as an example—take, for example, the connection between frustration and aggression. But it was always frustration and aggression. There was no other law, as if there is only one law in that whole area; every time you make a didactic pause to think, okay, which law out of the ten thousand laws should I choose this time, and somehow everyone always chooses the connection between frustration and aggression. Meaning, apparently that is the general law in that area, the only law in that area. In any case, let’s take that law too, the connection between frustration and aggression. That law never really works, of course. Like any other law of nature. It’s true that when a person is frustrated, sometimes you can see it expressed as aggression, but many times not. There are people who are more frustrated and will be less violent; people who are less frustrated and will be more violent. It never actually appears in pure form. You can’t say clearly: if he’s frustrated, he’ll be aggressive; if he’s not frustrated, he won’t be aggressive. Besides, of course, frustration is not a yes-or-no thing, but a continuum of levels of frustration, and also of aggression—but let’s say for the sake of argument that it were binary. Okay? You still don’t see it.

[Speaker H] There isn’t even a statistically significant correlation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so I’m saying—so people start speaking this language of correlations and statistics and so on. But why is it really like that? Is it because the law isn’t precise, it’s only a statistical law? I don’t think so, or at least not necessarily. The law could be completely precise. The problem isn’t that the law doesn’t correctly describe reality. There are other influences. Exactly. Rather, there are additional influences. A person who sublimates his emotions, a person raised to be very restrained, or who lives in a restrained culture—the British culture or whatever, something like that—will probably react less aggressively even though he’s frustrated, like me. So what does that mean? In him too, frustration causes aggression exactly as it does in me. And that’s a completely true law—not statistically true, not maybe true and maybe not, but a law that is entirely true. But there are also other laws that are entirely true. There are laws saying that if you had a certain upbringing or you live in a certain society, that affects you. That too is entirely true. Now in the real world, our behavior is a composite of all these entirely true laws. Okay? So if I want to know the first entirely true law, I won’t see it in the real world. Not because it isn’t precise—it is completely precise, or could be completely precise. That’s not the point. The fact that it doesn’t operate doesn’t mean it isn’t completely precise. What does it mean? That other laws are involved too, and those laws also complicate things. They’re on the field too. What do I need to do in order to see this law in pure, distilled form? What I need to do is create a laboratory world, a Platonic world, in which there is a person who received no upbringing at all, only frustration exists in his world, no other emotion, no other influence—he is just frustrated. That’s all; besides that there is nothing. And now of course he’ll be aggressive. But there is no such person. Every person, besides his frustration, also has all sorts of other things, all sorts of other influences. So in order to understand this law—which is a completely true law, not a statistical one, at least for the sake of discussion, I don’t know if it’s actually true, but in principle it could be completely true—even so, to see it I need to climb to some Platonic world, not our world. Exactly like Newton’s first law about a body moving in uniform motion in a straight line. And laws of nature—people think that because they never really work, that means they are approximations, not true, not precise. That is not necessarily so. Maybe it’s true, I don’t know. But it’s not necessarily so. And it doesn’t work because in a real system, in the system of our world, there is always a combination of several laws acting together. Therefore, if you want to identify one of them, you need to clear away all the others. You need to build some Platonic world in which the other laws are not relevant. It’s like the Talmud brings—this is an example from Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman. The Talmud says in Shevuot 18: Rabbi Chiya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: Whoever recites havdalah over wine at the conclusion of Sabbaths will have male children, as it is written, “to distinguish between the holy and the ordinary,” and it is written there, “to distinguish between the impure and the pure,” and next to it is written, “If a woman conceives.” Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: children fit to render halakhic decisions, as it is written, “to distinguish and to instruct.” Whoever recites havdalah over the cup will have male children, and maybe even children fit to render halakhic decisions. Fine? First of all, this discussion itself is interesting. Meaning, look around you and see: take people who recited havdalah over the cup, and see whether those children are fit to render halakhic decisions or not. What’s the problem? This isn’t terribly complicated empirics. Now true, there’s no real disagreement here, because all children fit to render halakhic decisions are, in particular, also male children, right? So the whole question is just how much you narrow the conclusion of the experiment. Meaning, you observed that from everyone who recited havdalah over the cup came rabbis fit to render halakhic decisions; in particular they’re also sons, so the one who says you’ll have male children is right, yes? But the one who says they’ll be children fit to render halakhic decisions is also right. There’s no disagreement here. So the whole question is how much you narrow the conclusion. In any case, the fact is that this doesn’t work. Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman already says it here; this isn’t my heresy. Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman. It doesn’t work. The Chazon Ish, a little later in generation—never mind—but I think they even knew each other. Let’s say the Chazon Ish presumably recited havdalah over the cup. He didn’t have any children at all. Neither male nor non-male, neither fit to render halakhic decisions nor unfit. So what happens with this Talmudic statement? Whoever recites havdalah over the cup will have male children. Where is this Talmudic statement? It doesn’t work. So the simple answer is—it’s not forced, it’s not an ukimta, it’s obvious that this is how it is—on the other hand, there is also “because of the sin of vows, a person’s children die.” Okay. What happens with someone who recites havdalah over the cup but is not careful with vows? So will he have male children and they’ll die? Or maybe they’ll spare him the whole business and not give him children at all? A debt of Rabbi Natan. Meaning, really, why bring children and then kill them? Better not to give him children at all. That’s… what’s the problem? That’s a reasonable solution on God’s part if He wants to deal with a complex person like that. So what? Does that mean one of the laws isn’t true? They’re both true. But in real situations, both can be present. Yes. I’m saying that in real situations what happens is a composite of all the true laws, not just one of them. So obviously a certain law often won’t operate because there is another law. The body won’t continue moving in uniform motion in a straight line because there is friction. Friction too is a law of physics, not only the law of inertia. Now when you want to know what will happen, you have to take all the true laws into account. So what does scientific thinking do—and here we come to the yeshivot, and soon to governance? What we do is basically—like I said earlier about Freud—when we want to analyze, to build physics, think about the situation before Galileo and Newton. We wanted to build mechanics. There was no way to do that. There wasn’t even a conceptual system. What would be the basic concepts playing on the field of physics? So Galileo and Newton decided: position, velocity, time, acceleration, force. Mass. Something like that. Okay? These are the basic concepts. Do you understand what an enormous advance it was to invent that conceptual system, so that now we can begin making claims—that if there is such-and-such a force, such-and-such an acceleration develops if there is such-and-such mass. Meaning, maybe that’s not right; we’ll do an experiment, we’ll see, maybe we’ll get a different law. But now we have a way to start moving forward. Once we have a conceptual system, we find various laws. So these laws basically tell me the relation between force and acceleration, which is Newton’s second law, or things of that sort. But there are also other true laws. And when I speak about a relation between concepts, I always have to understand that if a certain force acts on a body, the acceleration developed won’t be exactly what Newton’s second law says will develop, because there are always other forces that I didn’t put into the equation. For it to happen, I need to say: what are we dealing with here? Up to this point, we’re talking without the other forces; there is only this force, in some clean world. Therefore science never really deals with our world; science deals with Platonic worlds, not with our world. In our world there is always a combination of different Platonic worlds. We are trying not only to create a conceptual system but a system of laws. Now, this is a system of laws, none of which works. None of the laws works. The hope is that if each one by itself is true, then when we take all of them together, more or less it will describe what happens in reality. And even that never really works, but—

[Speaker H] But in physics, for example, you can predict very, very precisely the path of some object in the sky long before it happens, and you hit it exactly, and you know how to use all the laws excellently.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know, I know—but there too it’s only an approximation, because there too there are influences from distant objects, and those ellipses of one around another are not really ellipses because there are other masses around.

[Speaker H] But you get it right to the millimeter.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not to the millimeter—to the centimeter. That’s exactly the point. Meaning, in the end I always have to cut back my precision because of the other influences.

[Speaker H] I know, but I can also calculate what my level of precision will be.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. No—even with that I’m not sure I can always do it. It depends on what you know about the surroundings. You don’t always know everything about the surroundings.

[Speaker C] If, for example, people knew—like when Neptune was found, or certain planets—they saw a deviation from the predicted path. Right, there had to be something else there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the power of scientific abstraction. It doesn’t work—but if it doesn’t work, I can look for why, or I know that I need to look for why. If I hadn’t formulated what should work in the Platonic world, I wouldn’t understand our world either, because then I’d have no predictions, no deviation from prediction, and I wouldn’t think I need to look for something else. That’s exactly the point. That’s the advantage of theoretical work. Now theoretical work basically means, first, to define a conceptual system, and second, to define a system of principles, each of which is a law that doesn’t work in the real world. Doesn’t work. It works in the Platonic world, but it is true of the real world. There’s a difference between being true and working. Meaning, it is true regarding the real world, but it doesn’t work in it. It doesn’t work in it because what happens in the world is a combination of all these laws. And the wisdom, the intelligence of a scientist, is how well he can isolate those laws, try to make these generalizations or Platonic scientific laws such that each one by itself doesn’t work, and still understand that it is a true law even though it doesn’t work; it is a true law—and then get to the complex situation and try to understand it through all those laws together. How do you know these abstract laws? You build laboratory situations. In laboratory situations, you try to create a situation in which only this law will be expressed and not that one. Say I want to discuss the law of gravity, so I make an ukimta: we’re dealing with an electrically uncharged body. If it isn’t electrically charged, then electric fields won’t affect it, and then I can see the pure effect of gravitational force. But usually there are no such situations. Almost every body is electrically charged. So sometimes that’s negligible and you can manage with it, and sometimes not. Then I also have to take the law of electricity into account. How do I build the law of electricity? How do I test the law of electricity? Also in a laboratory situation. I go to another Platonic world. In that Platonic world there are only electric fields, no gravity. And I ask what happens there. There is inertial mass but not gravitational mass. Meaning Newton’s second law exists there; not the law of gravity. Then I test what happens there when there is an electromagnetic field. But what can I do? In our world there are always masses too, not only electromagnetic fields. True, but now I come back to our world and try to see—maybe where there are almost no masses, like among the stars, that’s a good place to test the theory of gravity. Why? Because the other stars are very far away, so they won’t interfere much with the path of one star around another nearby one. So that’s a good place to try and see the principled law. Once we see it there, it’s still not exact. There are always deviations because of the other influences, but we understand that this is probably the Platonic law. And then we say that this law is completely true, not approximately true—completely true. It’s just that other things interfere with it and create the deviations. Then we check what the other things are and produce another scientific law, and in the end we explain reality through a combination of all those laws together.

[Speaker E] The laws are fine; reality is the problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. I always thought that in Jewish law, the conceptual analysis could have been perfect if only there weren’t practical ramifications. It could all have been so beautiful if people didn’t keep telling us all sorts of things that never fit our theories. Like they say, a university could be perfect if there were no students, or a hospital could be perfect if there were no patients.

[Speaker G] They just get in the way, those people.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case—by the way, that’s an interesting perspective, because it connects to what I said earlier about Rabbi Ovadia. Because in a hospital maybe not, but in a university that really is a real perspective. From the standpoint of a university researcher, the students only get in the way; he’s not there for them. As a student, when you look at it, you think the university exists for the students, so it sounds like a joke when I say that without the students it could be perfect—but it’s not a joke. Look at it as a research institute, not as a teaching institute. From the standpoint of a faculty member, what matters to him is research; the students are just a nuisance. Really. It’s simply a question of what the goal is: are you there to teach students, or are you there to do research? A real and valued thing. A research institute. By the way, in every such place in the end there are also students—research students, not undergraduates. At the Weizmann Institute there is no undergraduate degree.

[Speaker H] Because they help the research—slaves.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s true, but they’re also helped. Meaning, there’s also a goal of giving students an internship. In any case, I just want to finish with one example so this won’t remain hanging in the air, and next time we’ll continue and come back to Rava with the bound, sleeping slave. What is really happening there with the ukimta? I’ll show you how it is exactly analogous to what happens in the scientific context. Basically, when the Talmud sees Rava—Rava says that if one placed a bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave, and the slave is guarding it, then it is a valid bill of divorce—the Talmud understands that Rava is not really coming to tell me a practical law at all. We’re not dealing with practical laws, and here I come back to Rabbi Ovadia: the goal is not the practical ruling; the practical ruling is an expression of a general law. The Talmud understands that what Rava wants to say is a general law, and he presents it through the example of a slave. And what does he want to say? Now the Talmud asks: let’s distill the Platonic law that never actually works—which law is he trying to tell me through the case? The law is that a slave is like a courtyard. Slaves are compared to land; in terms of acquisition, a slave is land—that’s what is called a courtyard. Okay? So a slave is like a courtyard. But the Talmud doesn’t say the rule “a slave is like a courtyard”; rather, it says if one placed a bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave, and the slave is guarding it, then it is a valid bill of divorce. That is how it gives me the law, through the practical ramification. Then the Talmud comes and asks: wait, but that’s not right. For acquisition through a courtyard this won’t work, because acquisition through a courtyard requires a stationary courtyard, not a mobile one. There is friction, there are things interfering with the general law’s operation. So what do I do? I make a laboratory condition, okay? I say: this is a world without friction. And this is a slave who is bound—he isn’t walking. What does that mean? It means that now, when the slave is bound, you’ll be able to see the law that a slave is like a courtyard in its pure form. For example, if there were leavened food in the hand of the slave, then his mistress would violate “it shall not be seen and it shall not be found,” because there is leavened food in her domain. Because a slave is like a courtyard. Specifically regarding acquisition, it’s not enough to be a courtyard; it has to be a stationary courtyard, not a moving courtyard. So let’s tie him up. That’s not important, it doesn’t matter. I’m solving a side problem for you, because I’m creating a laboratory condition that removes the interfering factors. But why do they interfere? The general law remains exactly what Rava said. What Rava said—now I’m reading Rava in translation—is: a slave is like a courtyard. That remains, and no one disagrees with it. That is what he said, and that is what we understand from what he said. He just said it through a case. Now in the case it doesn’t appear accurately, because in the case other things are mixed in. True, he is like a courtyard, but he is a moving courtyard; he can also walk. Fine, so let’s talk about a slave who can’t walk, because we tied him up. Why? Because I wasn’t coming to tell you the law of a tied-up slave. I was coming to tell you a principle, that a slave is like a courtyard. This law of nature that a slave is like a courtyard. True, I presented it through a real-life example, but in real life the law never works. I need to create a laboratory condition to neutralize the side problems. So fine—we’re dealing with a bound, sleeping slave. But this law wasn’t meant to tell me the novelty of what the law is in the case of a bound, sleeping slave. A bound, sleeping slave never was, never existed, and never will exist, and no one cares about it.

[Speaker J] Like with the cup of havdalah and then sons and daughters.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. Meaning, I’m telling you that when you recite Havdalah over the cup, that is conducive to having children. Male children. If there are other factors, it could be that in the end you still won’t have them. But this will contribute to that; it causes there to be male children. Now, if you also weren’t careful about vows, then they will die. If there are problems such as your wife being infertile, then there won’t be male children. What can you do? Or if you’re infertile, it doesn’t matter. Okay? That’s true. There are other influences, but this influence is a valid influence. And what I came to say is the principled influence, not the concrete case. Because we don’t work like Rabbi Ovadia, where the goal is to know what the law is in the concrete case. The concrete cases, from our perspective, are a casuistic form, as it’s called in law. For us, the particular cases are demonstrations of the general rules. And the goal of the Talmud—and the Talmud understands the Mishnah this way too—that’s what we see here. The Talmud understands that when the Mishnah tells me a law, what it really means is to tell me a general principle, not a law. Its way of saying that is through a particular law, but then in that particular law all kinds of disturbances arise, all kinds of problems. So I make an interpretive qualification and remove them, which is completely clear. I’ll expand on this more next

[Speaker A] time, okay?