Torah Study – Lesson 7

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[0:01] Introduction to the topic of ukimtot
[2:26] The general rule: a slave is like a courtyard
[5:15] The parallel to science – scientific abstraction
[7:56] The amount of information – general and particular
[10:12] Expanding a general rule in second tithe
[12:08] Laws of physics – an abstract object
[16:40] The laboratory: a bound and sleeping slave
[20:18] The existence of laws and systems engineering
[21:27] Scientific feedback versus a halakhic ruling
[24:10] The imposed application of theory to reality
[26:00] The connection between economic theories and the actual situation
[27:16] Why Rava presents laws through an example
[31:23] Generalizing a slave as a “courtyard” and the halakhic meaning
[33:03] Scientific laws and their abstract assumptions
[36:11] Wittgenstein: the problem of learning through rules
[48:34] A Talmudic ukimta on the topic of an egg on a Jewish holiday

Summary

General Overview

The text presents ukimta as a tool for understanding the study of the Talmud, not as a “forced answer” but as a way of uncovering the general and abstract law behind a concrete halakhic case. It argues that Rava does not mean to convey rare factual details like “a bound and sleeping slave,” but rather to teach a broad principle such as “a slave is like a courtyard,” and the ukimta serves as a kind of “laboratory” situation that makes it possible to see the principle in its pure form. The explanation is built through a parallel to science, where laws operate in an abstract world, for example without friction and with a point-mass body, and only afterward are applied to complex reality. In the end, the sugya of an egg laid on a Jewish holiday is brought as a test case demonstrating how a ukimta shapes understanding of the general principle, through a confrontation between Rashi’s interpretation and that of Rashba.

Ukimta as “Indirect” Interpretation and the Initial Problem

The text opens by saying that ukimta seems at first glance like an intellectually dishonest interpretation, because conditions are added to the words of an Amora that were never hinted at, as in the explanation of Rava’s statement about “he placed the bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave while guarding him,” which is established as referring to a bound and sleeping slave. It asks why Rava did not simply say from the outset that he was speaking of a bound and sleeping slave, and presents earlier explanations that were given for this as unconvincing. It formulates a basic claim that the discussion is not about the exceptional case, but about a general meaning hidden behind it.

The General Principle: “A Slave Is Like a Courtyard” and the Move from Example to Law

The text states that Rava seeks to teach a general property of slaves: a slave is like a courtyard in the sense of ownership, and one implication of that is that when you place something in the slave’s hand, he acquires it for his master. It distinguishes between the general principle, which is true of every slave, and the specific implication of acquisition by courtyard, which requires additional conditions because an ordinary slave is a “mobile courtyard.” It explains that the need to establish the case as a bound and sleeping slave comes from the need to create a stationary courtyard that is guarded with her knowledge, but this does not alter the fact that the principle “a slave is like a courtyard” applies to all slaves. It adds a possible example of leavened food in the slave’s possession as a conceptual implication of the slave’s similarity to a courtyard regarding ownership, and emphasizes that the Talmud immediately understands that behind the specific law stands a general principle and therefore turns to ukimta.

The Scientific Analogy: Abstract Laws, a “World Without Friction,” and a Point Mass

The text presents scientific discussion as a direct parallel to ukimtot: a scientific law never describes reality as it is, but rather an abstract reality, and therefore when someone claims the law is “not true,” the answer is, “What are we dealing with here? A world without friction.” It demonstrates this through Newton’s second law and the claim that there are always additional forces and friction, and therefore the law deals with an idealization. It describes physics as dealing with point bodies that have no size, electric charge, or other interfering properties, and cites the saying that physicists begin with “a point donkey” in order to understand a donkey. It argues that abstraction cleans reality of disturbances in order to reach a Platonic theoretical world, and only then does one return to apply the laws back to reality.

Information Theory, General and Particular, and Control over the Scope of Generalization

The text argues that the amount of information in a concept is inversely proportional to the scope of the set it describes, and demonstrates this through increasingly abstract formulations of “Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister of the State of Israel.” It presents the hermeneutic structure of “general and particular” as operating in exactly this way, where the question is how many of the characteristics of the particulars remain relevant to the generalization. It brings the example of “from the herd and from the flock, from wine and strong drink” in redeeming second tithe, and the discussion in Nazir about whether water and salt, fish, or birds are included, and explains that the dispute depends on how many characteristics are required. It connects this as well to the distinction between “and” and “or” as determining whether the generalization is narrow or broad.

The “Platonic Slave,” the Laboratory Situation, and the Role of Ukimta as Theoretical Testing

The text presents Jewish law as parallel to science: Rava is not dealing with a concrete slave but with the idea of a slave in a Platonic world, and that slave is a courtyard. It describes ukimta as creating a “laboratory situation” in which reality is forced to approximate the theoretical model, like tying up a slave and putting him to sleep in order to see the law of acquisition by courtyard in its pure form. It argues that the question of who in practice deals with bound and sleeping slaves misses the point of the move, because this is a “scientific experiment” intended to uncover a general law. It presents the accusation of “oversimplified generalization” as a foolish claim when directed at abstraction itself, and locates the problem only where theory is forced onto reality without adding the further elements it requires.

Misapplication of Theory: Communism, Centralism, and Milton Friedman

The text brings communism as an example of a “perfect” theory in an abstract world that does not work in reality because human beings contain additional elements such as emotions and motivations. It also describes approaches of socioeconomic leftism and governmental centralism as supposedly rational engineering of the market that does not work in practice. It quotes Milton Friedman as saying that what saves the State of Israel is “two thousand years of exile,” because the government does everything in its power to interfere and people have learned to work around it. It concludes that the failure is not necessarily that the theory is “wrong,” but that it is correct only for abstract objects, and therefore in reality one needs integration of laws rather than enforcement of a single law.

From Abstraction to Integration: Engineering, Halakhic Ruling, and Trial and Error

The text describes understanding as a two-stage process in which reality is broken down into different abstract laws and then put back together again in order to understand the concrete object. It compares this to Jewish law by saying that application in the real world is like the move from science to engineering, and asks whether there are “laws of halakhic ruling” or more of an “art” of application. It argues that in both Jewish law and engineering there is trial and error, and that in Jewish law the feedback comes from previous cases, major halakhic decisors, and canonical texts. It distinguishes between agreeing that a decision can be mistaken and claiming that a ruling cannot be changed, and gives as an example his remarks on conversion: he agrees with the Haredi criticism and still thinks it is impossible to annul conversions wholesale.

“There Is No Reward for a Commandment in This World” and the Example of “One Who Recites Havdalah over a Cup Will Have Male Children”

The text uses the rabbinic example “one who recites Havdalah over a cup will have male children” to show how a general statement can be understood as a law operating in an abstract world, even though in reality it does not always happen. It explains that the Sages knew that reality does not line up with such a rule, and therefore one can understand them as speaking about “abstract human beings” in whom only this commandment exists, without interfering forces such as “because of the sin of vows, a person’s children die.” It notes that his interlocutor argues that no such rule exists in reality and points to “there is no reward for a commandment in this world,” and the text responds that the goal is to understand how the one who stated the rule explains to himself its mismatch with reality. It then argues that this framework helps in understanding ukimta as the creation of a laboratory world in which the law can appear.

Why Jewish Law Is Formulated as a Case Rather than as a Rule, and Skepticism toward Rules

The text explains that in science ukimtot are not troubling because the formulation is from the outset a formulation of a general law, whereas in Jewish law general laws are conveyed through casuistic cases, and therefore a sense of contradiction arises that requires ukimta. It raises the question of why Rava or the Tanna did not simply say “a slave is like a courtyard” or state the general rule, and answers that the Talmud has a kind of “lack of trust” in formulation by rules, because a rule never fully defines reality. It connects this to the idea that the Talmud prefers cases in order to shape intuition rather than present a “concise code” of rules, and argues that the fact that Rava refrains from saying “bound and sleeping” is deliberate, in order to preserve the rule as true of every slave and not only of the laboratory situation.

Wittgenstein, Following a Rule, and the Claim That Rules Cannot Be Conveyed without Examples

The text invokes Wittgenstein to explain the limitation of thinking in generals: even when teaching a rule, one always does so through examples, and no rule guarantees that the learner will continue “correctly” afterward. It demonstrates this through learning the order of numbers, where a student can continue after ten thousand with “minus seventeen and a third” and justify it by means of a suitable function. It presents the psychometric exam as an example showing that the test is not absolute intelligence but fit with an accepted way of thinking, and concludes that the transmission of rules works only if the learner already shares a tacit understanding of the rule. It uses this to justify the Talmud’s choice to convey principles through cases and ukimtot rather than by formulating a rigid system of rules.

Rabbi Chaim and the Critique of Dichotomous Formulation of Rules

The text argues that Rabbi Chaim “formulates the rules” and therefore creates difficulties, and notes that “today everyone kicks Rabbi Chaim,” among other things because of the attempt to establish dichotomies of “either this or that” that do not work. It mentions the Chazon Ish as someone who grappled with these difficulties. It presents this as support for the claim that the Talmud prefers transmission through cases because general-abstract formulation tends to fail in application.

The Sugya of an Egg on a Jewish Holiday: Rava’s Ukimta, “Because of Preparation,” and Rashi versus Rashba

The text brings the Mishnah in Beitzah: “An egg that was laid on a Jewish holiday,” which Beit Shammai permit and Beit Hillel forbid, and presents Rava’s ukimta: “Here we are dealing with a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath, and the reason is preparation, since every egg laid today was completed yesterday.” It presents the general principle as the requirement that on a Jewish holiday one may eat only something prepared for it, and therefore a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath is the “laboratory situation” in which an egg laid on the holiday is revealed as unprepared for the holiday because it was completed on the Sabbath. It quotes Rashi: “And a Jewish holiday may not prepare for the Sabbath, and a Jewish holiday too is called Sabbath and its meal requires preparation… and its preparation is on a weekday… but an ordinary weekday meal is not considered and preparation does not apply to it,” and concludes from this that an egg laid on Sunday is permitted because an “ordinary weekday meal” is not subject to preparation. It brings Rashba’s astonishment at this wording and his interpretation that “Sabbath and Jewish holiday… prepare for themselves,” so that the problem is not an internal lack of preparation but the prohibition against the Sabbath preparing for a Jewish holiday and a Jewish holiday preparing for the Sabbath.

The text states that only Rashi fits the structure of ukimta that it proposes, because according to Rashi the Mishnah, by using the term “Jewish holiday,” teaches a general law about every Jewish holiday, while establishing the case as “a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath” explains only the practical circumstance in which, regarding an egg, the problem of “not prepared” is exposed. It presents Abaye’s difficulty: “If so, then on an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted?” and the Talmud’s answer, “A decree because of a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath,” and explains that Rashba sees in this proof that we are dealing with a decree and not with a general rule. It argues that according to Rashi, “a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath” is a ukimta whose purpose is to uncover the general rule of preparation, whereas according to Rashba the ukimta cannot be understood that way, because then the essence would be missing from the Mishnah.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I started dealing with the topic of ukimtot, where the context is basically some kind of attempt—

[Speaker B] To understand the learning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the previous lectures I talked about the Brisker analysis of the purpose of learning—whether the purpose of learning is Jewish law, or the theoretical or abstract principles—and I said that I would demonstrate this through the topic of ukimtot. So last time I already presented the problem and the basic explanation regarding ukimta. The problem is that on the face of it, ukimta looks like dishonest interpretation. Right? Rava says: if he placed a bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave while guarding him, it is a valid divorce, and suddenly they explain to us that this is talking about a bound and sleeping slave and I don’t know what else, all kinds of features that had no hint in Rava’s words. So the question arises: okay, so couldn’t Rava just have told us that he was talking about a bound and sleeping slave? And I brought various explanations that aren’t all that convincing. In the end I argued that what’s happening here is actually parallel to what happens in almost every discussion we have, especially scientific discussion. What Rava really wanted to tell us is some property of slaves in general, that a slave is like a courtyard. He just said it through a halakhic implication as an example—that when you place something in a slave’s hand, he acquires that thing for his master. But that’s only one implication of the general statement that a slave is like a courtyard. Now it’s true that for this particular implication, additional conditions are required, because a slave just as such is indeed a courtyard, but he’s a mobile courtyard. Meaning, he’s a courtyard that can’t acquire for someone else, and therefore you have to place him in a state where he is bound and sleeping so that the courtyard will be stationary and guarded with her knowledge, with the knowledge of his mistress. But that is only to explain to me why this slave really acquires. This slave is like a courtyard even if he isn’t bound and sleeping. It’s true of every slave that he is like a courtyard. The particular implication of the statement that he is like a courtyard for matters of acquisition exists only when he is bound and sleeping. And the claim is that Rava basically came to tell us the general principle and not the particular implication. He didn’t come to say that a slave acquires; he came to say that a slave is like a courtyard. Established? What? Like a courtyard, not like land. A slave is also like land, but besides that he is also like a courtyard. A courtyard in this sense, in the sense of ownership. A slave is like land only in terms of essence. Courtyard means that it is someone’s property, so the slave is the property of his owner just as the courtyard is the property of its owner. One implication is that he acquires. I said, I don’t know, for example, that if there were leavened food in his possession, there might be room to say that perhaps his owner would also violate “it shall not be seen,” just as if the leavened food were in his courtyard. Fine, I’m only giving an example; I don’t remember a clear source for that at the moment. But the claim is that what Rava says is really meant to tell us some general statement that is true of all slaves. And the need for ukimta is not connected at all to the general statement. The general statement is true of all slaves, and so it’s no wonder that Rava didn’t qualify it. Rava spoke about a slave in general; he didn’t say specifically a bound and sleeping slave. And why? Because what he says really is true of every slave, not only of that specific one. It’s just that the way Rava expresses himself is that he doesn’t tell us the general law, “slaves are like a courtyard.” If he had said that, everything would have been fine. But he doesn’t say that; he says it through an example, saying that a slave acquires for his master by acquisition of courtyard. But when we read him, we understand that he really intends to tell us some general law—that a slave is like a courtyard. Then we ask: fine, but regarding acquisition, you demonstrate this through the fact that the slave acquires; for acquisition there are additional requirements. It’s not enough that he be a courtyard; it must be a courtyard that is guarded with her knowledge. And that isn’t fulfilled. Fine, the slave is bound and sleeping. That’s not what matters now—I’m talking to you about a property of slaves in general.

[Speaker B] Why did he bring the least successful example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any context he might have brought, there could have been other side conditions where you’d have to say that this applies only to a slave who is such-and-such for it to work. That’s exactly the point. A general law never appears in reality in a simple pure form. Meaning, whenever you—I’ll demonstrate this more fully in a moment. General laws, when we apply them to reality, never appear in their purity. It doesn’t matter; even if he brought another example, it wouldn’t help. We would always need some ukimta in order to lower the general law into reality. And not only that: he chose one example, one ukimta. The fact is that the Talmud understood this. The Talmud immediately understands that some ukimta has to be made here and doesn’t say something else, because the Talmud understands that behind the specific halakhic statement there really lies a general principle.

[Speaker E] The term you brought, that a slave is—do we know that independently of Rava?

[Speaker C] What do you mean, that a slave is like a courtyard, or a courtyard in general?

[Speaker E] No, that a slave is like a courtyard.

[Speaker C] No, that’s what Rava says.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me return for a moment to the scientific example through which I tried to illustrate the point. When we talk about a scientific law—the scientific context, not one scientific example; there are lots of examples. Every scientific law is an example of this. There isn’t a single scientific law that really describes reality as it is. There is no such thing. A scientific law always deals with some abstract reality. We say that a body develops acceleration according to Newton’s second law, that acceleration is force divided by mass. That’s not true. It never happens. No one has ever seen such a thing. Why? Because there are always other things involved. You apply a certain force to it and the acceleration turns out different. Why? Because there’s friction, because there are other forces, because there are all kinds of influences we didn’t take into account. So someone will come and say—yes, I said this last time—someone will say, wait, but that’s not true. A body on which a force is applied doesn’t develop acceleration of F over M, force divided by mass, but a smaller acceleration. “What are we dealing with here?” A world without friction. There is no world without friction. In our world, everywhere there is friction. נכון, but the law deals with some abstract world, a world without friction. Why is that important? Because after we understand the general laws, we can go back and apply them to our world. Our understanding is built in such a way that we have to make generalizations, to shift the discussion to abstract worlds, to general laws that deal with abstract worlds. The application in the end is to take these abstract laws and apply them back to reality. What does such an abstraction do? When I say, for example, that a body on which a certain force acts develops acceleration that is force divided by mass, then I am not really dealing with a concrete body. I’m dealing with an abstract body. Because if that body also had electric charge, then there would be other things affecting it. If it had size and were not point-like, then again there would be all kinds of things affecting it. So I’m talking about a body that has no size and has only mass but no electric charge, and there is no friction in its environment. All sorts of abstractions like that. I clean the texture of reality of all kinds of disturbing things. Reality is really just annoying. Meaning, if there were no reality, science could be perfect. Science doesn’t work in reality—never. So I have to clean reality of all sorts of things and reach some Platonic state, some theoretical world, an abstract world, in which the scientific law operates. Now look at what it means to strip a concept of various characteristics. You know, in information theory, they talk about the amount of information in a sentence or a concept, and it stands in inverse proportion to the number of its properties. Meaning, when I say that Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister of the State of Israel, I have seemingly given a lot of information here, right? He was a prime minister, he was the first, prime minister of a state, which state, the State of Israel. Meaning, say he was also a member of the government and also prime minister; you could break it down into more things. So I’ve given a lot of information. But from the perspective of information theory, I’ve given very little information. Because really—well, it depends which side of the equation you’re looking from—but really, this large amount of information is true only of one object. Now let’s remove “Israel” for a moment. The first prime minister of a state. You understand that this already includes more than one object, right? There are all the states, the first prime minister—there’s a broader group. Okay. The first prime minister—not of a state, just the first prime minister. Maybe there are, I don’t know, other entities that also have a government. Okay, the first prime minister of a republic. So what does that mean? That we’re broadening the group even more, right? Now I say the head of something, not necessarily of a government, okay? I’ve expanded the group even more. Right? Now a member of something, not even the head. The head is already a specific kind of member. I’ve expanded even more. Meaning, the more I say about the thing, the more I narrow the group I am dealing with, right? There are fewer objects for which it will be true to say this. The more I remove information, the more objects I add. It’s just a question of how you look at information. If I give more information, I’m giving it about fewer objects, because fewer objects are described by exactly that information. If I want less similarity between the objects, then it will include more objects. By the way, that’s the idea of general and particular. The hermeneutic principles of general and particular are built exactly this way. Meaning, general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general—the difference between them is the question of how much information from the particulars is relevant. Meaning, if you take the particulars in the redemption of second tithe—“And you shall spend the money for cattle, sheep, wine, and strong drink,” and then yes, you redeem it and go up to Jerusalem and eat the second tithe in Jerusalem—what are cattle and sheep, wine and strong drink? Clearly these are only examples. But how do I expand from that? I have to see what the properties of cattle and sheep, wine and strong drink are, and say that everything similar to them in those properties can also be bought with that money. You can buy other foods with that money as well to eat in Jerusalem. So the Talmud in Nazir discusses this: can you buy salt? Water and salt? Fish? Birds? What is included here? And the discussion proceeds around the question of how many of the characteristics of cattle and sheep, wine and strong drink are relevant. Meaning, if I take, let’s say, that cattle and sheep, wine and strong drink have four characteristics—something produced from something produced and things that grow from the ground, the Talmud says there—never mind, there are several characteristics of those examples. Now, do I need one of the two characteristics? Any one of the two? Or one specific one? Or specifically both? Meaning, do I need both characteristics? Then that’s a narrower expansion, right? If I need only one characteristic, then that’s a broader expansion. Which is exactly this game—how many characteristics to retain, and through that to control the scope of the generalization. Meaning that when I give more information, the group I define through it is a narrower group. And so now when I return to the context of scientific concepts, where this is “and” and not “or.”

[Speaker F] What? If it’s “and.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, of course. If it’s “or” then it’s expansion, obviously. Yes. So when—“or” is really, “or” is really a combination of many broad generalizations. A union. Because each component by itself is just one component, so it has a very broad generalization; I make a combination, yes, a union of them. Now when I return to scientific concepts, what I’m really saying is that Newton’s law of gravitation, or Newton’s second law in general, doesn’t deal at all with objects from our world. It deals with completely abstract objects. These are objects that are basically point bodies. You know, I once remembered this, I think—when physicists want to understand how a donkey works, they begin with a point donkey. Meaning, first let’s see a donkey that is a point, and afterward I’ll grow it a tail, legs—you have to… So physics in general works like that. Anyone who studies mechanics knows that mechanics deals with point bodies. There are no point bodies in the world. Has anyone ever seen a point body? If it were point-like, you couldn’t even see it if there were such a body. So of course there are no such things, but we deal in abstractions. We talk about a point body that has only mass and no other property. It’s also smooth, not affected by friction, it doesn’t interfere with anything, it has no electric charge, it has no size. Meaning, it is a point of mass; it has only mass. That’s it. A body with one property. And that is the body Newton’s second law deals with, Newton’s law of gravitation deals with—that strange body that no one has ever seen and never will see. So why does it matter? Why is it important? Because in order to understand reality—how real bodies work, bodies that have electric charge and size and friction and many things—I can’t do that directly. It’s complex, it’s complicated. So what do I do? I take each aspect of reality and define some abstract body I can think about in a more orderly way, something I can understand. So let’s take a point body that only has mass and that’s it. Then we’ll take a body that has mass but also size. Then we’ll take a body that has mass and size and also friction, or electric charge, or each time add one more component to the body we’re dealing with, until in the end the hope is that we will reach a real body, an actual body, and be able to understand how bodies in our world really work. But in order to understand that, I need a law that deals with bodies that only have electric charge. That’s one law, the laws of electromagnetism. Then I need a law that deals only with bodies that have mass—that’s the laws of gravitation. Then I need a law that deals only with bodies that have size but nothing else. What is the relation between size and a point body? Those are calculations of center of mass or things of that sort. Each thing like that I treat separately. And none of these—the three laws I mentioned here—none of them actually deals with reality as such, or with bodies that appear in our world. They are not really related to the world at all. But it is very useful for understanding, because I have broken our reality down into its components. And I understood each such component separately. Therefore, such decomposition is actually another way of looking at scientific generalization. When I say that every body with mass behaves in such-and-such a way, what have I done? I’ve made a generalization that is true of all bodies that have many properties, each in its own way, so long as it also has mass. And that is shared by many bodies—many bodies have mass, just that each one… I make all sorts of cross-sections of reality, because I can’t understand reality with all its dimensions, so each time I project it onto one dimension. That projection is basically a kind of generalization that deals in abstract concepts. And that is also what the halakhic saying or the Mishnah does. What Rava really wants to tell us about a slave—he isn’t speaking at all about concrete slaves. Concrete slaves do not interest him. He is speaking about the idea of a slave. In the Platonic world there is some thing called a slave. That slave is a courtyard. True, concrete slaves also walk around on their legs, unfortunately. They have all sorts of annoying properties that don’t let us apply our theoretical laws to them. Fine. So we’ll tie their legs and do all sorts of tricks so that we can see how the theoretical property appears. But the theoretical property really appears only in a theoretical object. It doesn’t deal with the practical object, just like the point body that only has mass. It’s exactly the same thing. And now what do I need to do in order to go back and apply this general law to reality? I basically have to do one of two things. Meaning, first of all, within reality itself I build a laboratory situation—I think I mentioned this. I build a laboratory situation. In a laboratory situation I try to create a situation that is indeed real in our world, but as close as possible to the utopian state, to the Platonic state. What does that mean regarding the slave? You tie his legs and send him to sleep with a sleeping pill. Right? So who is interested in checking the law that deals with sleeping slaves with tied legs? Has anyone ever encountered such a question? Of course not. It’s a scientific experiment, this whole thing. I take a slave, put him into a kind of laboratory that doesn’t really correspond to what happens in the world, tie his legs and send him to sleep. But only there will I really be able to see Rava’s law in its purity. There suddenly I’ll see that a slave is truly a courtyard. Put it in his hand—he acquired it, his master acquired it. So I have to create a laboratory situation to see the general law. Now, you can accuse Rava if you want—fine, this is a simplistic generalization, who cares? We want to know what happens with real slaves. But that is true of every scientific law. Every scientific law is a simplistic generalization. And very often when I propose some explanation for something—I tend toward more theoretical thinking—people always tell me, okay, that’s an oversimplified generalization; in the world it doesn’t work like that. That’s a foolish claim. It’s a foolish claim because of course in the world it doesn’t work like that, and in order to understand how the business works in the world you have to make different generalizations and then take all the generalizations and see how to apply them in the real world. I think I once mentioned that people always say that a hospital could be perfect without the patients. Or a university without the students. These people only get in the way.

[Speaker C] The army without soldiers.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An army without soldiers, yes exactly. Science could be perfect without reality. Reality only interferes. And that’s true, because perfect science really doesn’t deal with reality. A scientist doesn’t deal with reality at all. That’s a conception many people get wrong. A scientist does not deal with reality; he deals with abstract worlds. Now he enters his laboratory, lowers the temperature to zero, ties the slave’s legs, and does all sorts of things like that so that it will look a bit like the abstract reality in which his law operates. Then they tell him: but go out into the street—you won’t find there a bound and sleeping slave being given a bill of divorce.

[Speaker G] No, he doesn’t do that so it will look that way to him. He does it so he can test his theory.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So I’m saying that the theory really deals with situations that, in order to see them, you have to step outside the world. You have to go to strange, esoteric places. Who deals with that at all? But without it we also won’t be able to understand reality itself. Because in order to understand how a real slave behaves, I need to combine several general laws. One law is what happens with this Platonic slave who is bound and sleeping—that is, a slave who is only a slave. He is basically a stone called a slave, right? He doesn’t know how to walk, he isn’t awake, he has no consciousness, he has nothing, but he is called a slave. Some kind of abstract thing like that. Then I say, okay, what happens with a human being who is not a slave? A person walks. So I know—it isn’t guarded; he isn’t really a courtyard, or rather he’s not guarded. Okay, now let’s take the abstract slave and combine him with a person, and say: there, now I have a slave who is a person, not a stone. So now I’m beginning to get closer to reality. I take the two abstract laws, apply them together, and try to understand what that says about reality. That’s already closer to a real slave, to what happens in reality itself.

[Speaker F] Yes, in the world of science there are these different projections, but there are some rules for how to integrate these things to get something realistic—what an engineer would do, for example. In our world, the world of Torah, yes, there are also these projections, but where are the laws?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those would be the laws of halakhic ruling, or application—halakhic application. Right. And there are also laws of halakhic ruling, though I don’t know whether to call them laws—that may be too strong a term. But yes, there are principles, or there are ways of doing it correctly, that developed in the halakhic tradition. Are there such laws? By the way, I’m not sure even in science that there are laws.

[Speaker F] In science too, in the transition, we can do wonderful things not only on the basis of laws of nature. The engineer also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not clear. But in Jewish law too we issue halakhic rulings. The fact is that we apply correctly both here and there. The question is whether that reflects the existence of general laws here; I don’t know. We once discussed the question whether we work with rules or not.

[Speaker F] That’s exactly the field of systems engineering. What? That’s exactly the field of systems engineering that is developing today.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m saying again—

[Speaker F] But the application—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is whether application is governed by laws. Very often there is a lot of art in it. You know, when you move from systems engineering to reality—I myself got burned in the transition between engineering studies and practice.

[Speaker F] Yes, but in engineering there’s also trial and error. Right. In Jewish law you have to issue a ruling.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so that’s what I’m saying—no, in Jewish law too there is trial and error. You do a kind of trial and error on cases in which earlier decisors, or major decisors, canonical texts, issued rulings. And through that you get feedback: are you right or not? After you see that you more or less know how to do it, now you can issue a ruling for a new case. True, I don’t have feedback on the case I am dealing with, unlike science. In science you can see whether it works or not.

[Speaker F] Except for the case in Safed. What? Except for the case in Safed, where you do have feedback.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there is feedback, but who says the feedback is right? That’s exactly the point. By the way, I think the feedback is right; that’s another discussion. In any case, the claim is that the transition from the real world—the process of scientific understanding—basically happens in two stages.

[Speaker C] רגע, that doesn’t mean you have to change the ruling. Right. Even if you think it isn’t correct. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Two things. Right. I agree with the second statement too. Meaning, I think it’s unjust, and I think you can’t change the ruling. I wrote the same thing once about conversion too: I also agree with the Haredi criticism of conversion, and still I think you can’t cancel conversions wholesale. In any case, the process of understanding reality is really done in two stages. One stage is the stage of abstraction. I take the non-pointlike donkey, and I say, okay, first of all there’s a body here with mass; besides that it also walks, it has a soul, it breathes, it… And then I—so each such thing, okay, let’s see what the physics is of bodies with a soul, then what the physics is of bodies with mass, then what the physics is of bodies with mass and such-and-such a shape. Okay? Each such thing is a different halakhic discussion, a different scientific discussion, and it may even belong to an entirely different scientific field. That doesn’t matter. After that I—this is the stage of abstraction. I go from the concrete donkey to some collection of ideal objects, none of which is actually a donkey at all, but only aspects, right, types of objects. After that I come back again, take each of the understandings that I reached through the generalization, and return them to the concrete donkey. And I say: this donkey is subject to this law and this law and this law. Let’s see what they do together. After I understood each law separately, I can understand how the whole thing works together. That’s exactly how things work in every scientific field. The whole idea of science is to move from concrete objects to simplistic generalizations. In everyday conversation, sometimes that’s an accusation—that you engage in simplistic generalizations. In the scientific world, that’s the whole game. We are constantly engaged only in simplistic generalizations; that’s what they do there. That’s how you understand. Only of course, where can you really accuse someone of being simplistic and overgeneralizing? When he takes the theory he arrived at and applies it as is to reality. That’s what’s wrong. He doesn’t understand that in reality—this is exactly the last columns I wrote—people don’t understand that theory never works. They take the theory and apply it—communism is a wonderful example of this, or any social engineering whatsoever. They have a wonderful theory, really perfect: everything is equal, everybody will feel great, everybody will also be wonderfully industrious even though they receive only according to need and not according to contribution, and everything will be wonderful. Except for one small drawback: it doesn’t work. Why doesn’t it work? Not because the theory is wrong, but because in reality, besides the correct theory, there are other components, and you have to take them into account. Someone who thinks that a real donkey behaves like a point-donkey is simplistic and overgeneralizing; he’s wrong. But the theory of the point-donkey is not an overgeneralized and simplistic theory, because it is the correct theory. You are simplistic and overgeneralizing when you take the theory and impose it on reality. In reality there are other components; you have to take them into account. We talked about the distinction over the cup—but not in the eyes of the neighbors—I think I brought this up in… last time. It never happens—what do you mean it never happens? A lot of times it doesn’t happen. “One who makes havdalah over a cup of wine will have male children.” So there are people who made havdalah over a cup and have no children, or no male children. What can you do? Right, because besides that they also did all sorts of other things that enter into the calculation, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is supposed to take all these elements together into account. So therefore generalizations in themselves—there’s nothing blameworthy about the fact that they are simplistic generalizations. That’s how it has to be. That’s how we build our scientific understanding and understanding in general. When you apply it to reality, then you have to remember that. You have to remember that these generalizations deal with abstract objects and not with concrete ones. Communism deals with human beings who have needs, but no emotions and no kind of motivation, or no kind of connection between motivation and what they receive. Okay? The relation between what they invest and what they receive. For abstract people of that kind, communism could be perfect. But what can you do—there are also people in the world, and that always disturbs the theory, the fact that there are people in the world. It doesn’t work. Now, it doesn’t work not because the theory is wrong. It’s right, but it’s right for pointlike people on Neptune, not here. The people we know—it doesn’t work there, because they contain many other things that you have to take into account. And like the… yes, same thing—it’s related, I don’t know, to the outlook of the socioeconomic left. Not communism, but even more moderate models. Still, the idea is that you need government centralism. Why? Because if the government manages the market, that makes much more sense. I mean, why should everybody—say farmers—each one grow whatever he wants? Then who knows, suddenly 80 percent will grow tomatoes and there won’t be cucumbers on the market. The most sensible thing is for the government to tell everyone what to do: you’ll grow tomatoes, you’ll grow cucumbers, you’ll grow radishes. Everything will be wonderful, everything will be on the market. Just one drawback: it doesn’t work. Meaning, the law—yes, Milton Friedman once said when he was here on a visit, that what saves the State of Israel is two thousand years of exile. Meaning, the government does everything it can to interfere, but over 2,000 years we got used to bypassing every government and all that, and therefore we still manage to survive. Okay, that was of course the school of Adam Smith, okay, he was a capitalist. Was, or still is—maybe he still is, I don’t remember.

[Speaker D] No. The question is why Rava, instead of stating this general, theoretical, general law, brings it through an example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I’ll bring that up, I’ll say it in just a moment.

[Speaker C] What is this? When in the Talmud, when the Mishnah says “to include what,” meaning when there’s a rule, then it’s a rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, they don’t work with rules, that’s—

[Speaker C] Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s connected to that, but in just a second I’ll mention it indeed—that, I think, is the answer.

[Speaker C] I remember classes I was in.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aryeh, you are. “There is no guardian against sexual impropriety.” Yes.

[Speaker C] But I’m interested in this issue of making havdalah over the cup. The basic assumption, that if a person makes havdalah over the cup… no, thank God I have male children. But I don’t believe that someone who makes havdalah over the cup will have male children, when it’s something that happens in the world. Meaning, there is no such rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmud says it. Right, the Talmud says it.

[Speaker C] Okay. But I’m saying, there can’t be a situation where you determine rules that whoever does something, something will happen to him, because that’s not the Torah. Why not? Just because. Because there is no reward and punishment in this world in the sense that whoever does this gets that result. I’m not going to argue—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —with you about the statement of the Talmud, I…

[Speaker C] There is no reward in this world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not… I’m an even bigger heretic than you. I’m only saying, I’m bringing this example from the Sages only in order to ask what they thought. Leave aside for a moment whether I agree with them or not. What did they think? What, they didn’t see people who had no children despite making havdalah over the cup? They didn’t know that there is no reward for a commandment in this world? They knew, right? So what are they saying? What they are saying is that when you make havdalah over the cup, it has some quality that helps you receive male children. But that doesn’t mean you actually receive them, because if there is friction or if there is… because of sin—you mentioned that because of the sin of vows, a person’s children die.

[Speaker C] But the basis has to be that this really happens, that if there’s someone who makes havdalah over the cup…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s like—no, it doesn’t happen, that’s exactly the point.

[Speaker C] In the lab.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the lab it would happen.

[Speaker C] Where does this rule come from, that in the lab it would happen?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, that’s how they derived it.

[Speaker C] But I’m saying again, how is this not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem, I can discuss that separately, but that doesn’t matter to me right now, because I’m discussing a different question now. Assuming someone thinks this way, how does he explain to himself the reality in which it doesn’t happen? Leave it aside—it doesn’t matter whether he’s right or not, but he himself wasn’t an idiot. How did he think? What did he understand? He saw that around him, not everyone who makes havdalah over the cup has male children. So he says: right, because this law too—that one who makes havdalah over the cup will have male children—deals with people who in their Torah have only one commandment, havdalah over the cup. Besides that there’s nothing—no vows, nothing. So those people, there is no other force that can interfere with this law’s appearing; these are abstract people. Those people will have male children. That’s what he said. Now, the question whether he’s right or not is a fine question; I tend to think like you, but I think what is useful here is—

[Speaker H] The first opinion in the Mishnah where it reaches this kind of abstract state. What are they trying to describe? Are they trying to describe something even more extreme or abstract?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That too. So now I’m getting there. I’m getting there now.

[Speaker E] Sorry, regarding the cup example. You have children? Yes, thank God. Aside from the discussion of where the rule comes from—why is it useful to me at all?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Suppose my mother-in-law won’t make havdalah over the cup, I don’t know. What? They produce sons in order to motivate people to make havdalah over the cup, I don’t know? That’s all, but I don’t know. Maybe there’s some idea here, that there’s a connection between—I don’t know, there are endless homiletic interpretations. It’s good for a lottery among those—

[Speaker C] —who made havdalah over the cup.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They all win a lottery ticket, and he won.

[Speaker B] You’ll see this is a conversation between the Sages and the owner of a winery. Vitaminchik.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’ve already got your criminal mind going, my brother.

[Speaker B] That’s what I have every day.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, in any case—so yes, I’ll come back to us. What do we learn from here? As in the scientific context, so too in the halakhic context: when we have before us a saying, a determination of some Jewish law, we—this, for me, is the real fact, yes, that’s the reality, that’s the Jewish law. Now, in order to understand this thing, I perform an analysis and arrive at an abstract law. I say: a slave is like a courtyard. Essentially, what was said here wasn’t only the Jewish law that if there is a slave who is asleep and tied up and they place a bill of divorce in his hand, then his mistress is divorced. That is the concrete law. I now derive from it a generalization, a general law: a slave is like a courtyard. An abstract slave, a point-slave, is like a courtyard. Now if he’s tied up and so on, then he can also acquire, because a courtyard that is not mobile is a courtyard that can acquire. So I derived from this the general law that a slave is like a courtyard. Now of course, in order to apply it in the real world—not to a bound, sleeping slave but to an ordinary slave—I need to understand that it’s a courtyard, but it’s a mobile courtyard, and therefore the application is much more complex. Meaning, you need to introduce all kinds of other laws here that deal with slaves and with movable objects and the like. So this proceeds in exactly the same way as in the scientific context, except for one difference that is very troublesome in this context, and that’s what Shmuel asked earlier. Why, in the scientific context, do these difficulties never arise for us at all? In the scientific context, all these qualifications are self-evident to everyone—that we are dealing with abstract things. No one asks himself, in a mechanics book that says a body continues moving at constant speed in a straight line if no force acts on it—what are they talking about? There is no such body. There is no such body. What are we dealing with here? A body on which no force acts and there’s no friction and it’s a point-body and I don’t know what all sorts of things, and there are no other bodies anywhere in the environment exerting force on it either. Okay? No one asks that question, and we don’t need qualifications, even though it’s clearly there. Why? Because the formulation in the book from the outset is the formulation of a general law: every body on which no force acts moves at constant speed in a straight line. They don’t say: take a marble, throw it, and it will keep moving forever unless something happens. Rather, they formulate it from the outset as a general law. Now, when something is formulated as a general law, we already understand that it deals only with abstract reality, with what is common to all bodies.

[Speaker B] It’s not only that it’s phrased as a general rule, but it’s given as a point-body. Meaning it’s phrased in a… it’s narrowed from the outset.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not always, not always.

[Speaker B] Even if it’s phrased properly, it’s supposed to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s not—sometimes you’ll see even scientific books that are careful about precision, they don’t go into all the… this isn’t mathematics. They don’t go into all the… it’s obvious to everyone that a body with mass moves in such-and-such a way. Right, but that’s on condition that it has no electric charge. That won’t be written in any mechanics book, that a body with mass has a force acting on it that is proportional to the product of the masses divided by the square of the distance. Unless and insofar as it has no electric charge and there isn’t a capacitor around it. They don’t write that, okay? Obviously, we’re talking about a body that is only that and not something else. Now there is no body that has no electric charge. Inside every body there is electric charge, some distribution, it doesn’t matter, even if the net is zero.

[Speaker B] And in any case it has mass.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. And therefore I’m saying that there it doesn’t bother us. There it doesn’t bother us because the formulation from the outset is like a general law. In contrast, in Jewish law—and that’s what’s confusing here—when they convey these general laws, they say it in the form of a case, casuistically. Right? They say: there is such-and-such a case; this is the law. A slave into whose hand a bill of divorce is placed, then the woman—yes, his owner—is divorced. Now that doesn’t look like a general law. It’s a private case, and the case isn’t correct, because if he isn’t bound and asleep, then it’s not correct. So there’s a difficulty here. So I’m saying: I already understand, when I approach the case, I already understand that it is really only a demonstration of a general law. Therefore the Talmud immediately makes the qualification—I get it. But why do we need that from the outset? Meaning, why didn’t they just say directly: a slave is like a courtyard? Let Rava say that. Let him not say that if they place a bill of divorce into the hand of his sleeping slave whom he is guarding, then it is a valid bill of divorce. Let him say what he wants to say. So here we really come back to the lack of trust that apparently exists in the Talmud toward rules. If you state the rules, we’ll cling to the rules and then make more mistakes. Because rules can never really define the matter completely. Even if you say a slave is like a courtyard, it could be that in other respects too he is not like a courtyard. Meaning, you need to examine that statement intuitively in order to understand what it really says. And when I once spoke about following rules, I brought Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein’s argument about following a rule. And I showed that…

[Speaker C] Where did you bring that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here, we once talked about rules. What you remembered earlier, you don’t remember?

[Speaker C] I don’t remember this Wittgenstein. Really?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly. What did Wittgenstein say? There’s a deficiency in defining by means of rules. It seems to us like something terribly ideal and clear and understandable. There’s a major deficiency in defining by means of rules, and therefore the Talmud really is so skeptical when it encounters rules. Because the Talmud does not believe in rules; the Talmud believes in cases, in instances. And what did this Wittgenstein say? This Wittgenstein said, Wittgenstein, said that basically even when we act on the basis of a rule, it is not true that we act on the basis of a rule. You can’t convey rules to someone. You can’t, even if you want to. I convey to you a rule. Suppose I want to teach you that n squared plus n equals n times n plus 1—that is, factoring out. n squared plus n equals n times n plus 1. That’s a rule, right? But now the student looking at it—what is n? What is plus? What are parentheses? You explain to him, right? How will you explain it? You’ll give examples. For example, three times one plus four is three times five is fifteen. Right, you need to give more examples. Through examples. You give an example with one, with two, with ten, with fifteen, with a hundred, with a thousand, until he understands the principle. And then suppose I teach someone to count. One, two, three, four—that’s the rule he understands, teaching someone to count. One, two, three, four, five, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, twenty, ninety-nine, a hundred, a hundred and one, a thousand, ten thousand. Fine. Up to where will you teach him to count? Up to ten thousand, if you have a lot of patience. So up to ten thousand. Okay, now you tell the student: okay, now continue counting. We reached ten thousand. He counts, one, two, three, gets to ten thousand. What now? Minus seventeen and a third. Ten thousand. You say to him: wait, I don’t understand; I explained one, two, three, four, I told you how you move from tens to hundreds—what do you want? Yes yes, obviously, one, two, three, ten—that’s how he answers. A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, minus seventeen and a third. What, what’s the problem? It’s all fine, it fits completely, doesn’t it? You always rely on his generalizing from examples. Even when you use a rule and convey him a rule, when you explain the rule you always explain it through examples. So what does the rule help? And it’s like on the psychometric exam. You know, on the psychometric exam for a kid—not a kid, for a university applicant. One, two, three, four, five, six, line. What’s the next number? They expect him to say seven. So here our fellow who’s stuck on minus seventeen and a third says minus seventeen and a third. Now he says—he can explain it to you. Is there such a function? Certainly. There are functions that give, for n equals one, one; for n equals two, two; three, four, five, six, minus seventeen and a third. What’s the problem? That’s seven coefficients, a polynomial, a seven-by-seven matrix. You can find it easily. So why, why is that not okay? What’s the problem? That too is a law. I can construct a function for you to order. Tell me what you want there afterward—complex numbers, anything goes, whatever you want. Okay? I can put Grassmann numbers in there if you put in, I don’t know, whatever you want. Everything is fine, there is a rule governing it, there is a rule governing it. So what’s the problem? Why is he accepted to university and not this one? Because that one thinks like us, and this one doesn’t think like us. That’s all. It doesn’t test intelligence; it tests the type of intelligence. If someone comes with a different mindset, he is equally right. Only what? Only that when he gets to the university he also won’t understand anything the lecturer says, because the lecturer thinks differently. The lecturer will explain to him and he won’t understand, so really there’s no point admitting him to the university. We admit to the university someone we can explain things to. Otherwise what will he learn there? Right, it makes sense to screen that way, only you have to understand that this could be a person no less talented, and maybe more talented, than the other person. So Wittgenstein says, in short: how will you teach the person the sequence of numbers? One, two, three, four, five, six—up to wherever you get, at the next number he’ll come with seventeen and a third. How will you make sure he doesn’t? After all, you’ll always go with examples in order to explain the rule, and in the next example he’ll get stuck. You can’t—going by rules is an illusion.

[Speaker E] No, but you said there’s a hidden assumption that the preferred rule is the simpler one. And in our case it’s simpler.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but what is simple?

[Speaker E] In the case of seventeen and a third it’s obvious that his rule is not simple. No, it’s really not obvious—its formulation is simpler. Obvious to you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your mode of thought!

[Speaker E] No, in the accepted formulation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, in the accepted formulation? Accepted—that’s exactly your way of thinking. But if there is a person, think—if there is a person—

[Speaker E] A person, the language of—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —of all of us, a person who sees the world as, like, spherical space, not straight space. Then explain to him that between two points there passes one straight line—he won’t understand what you’re talking about. The simplest form is that between two points pass many lines, all these semicircles.

[Speaker E] What’s simple is what’s common, in short.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, meaning—no, it’s simple because that’s how we are built. Yes, no, we are built that way, and it really is simplest for us—there are the fewest parameters. Yes, it’s a polynomial with one coefficient instead of six or seven. Fine, but that’s because we think that way. Someone whose mindset works in terms of curved space—for him one coefficient will describe your function and that will be simplest from his point of view. So basically Wittgenstein says that not only is it problematic to describe things through rules, it’s impossible to describe things through rules. Description through rules works only if the person standing opposite me already basically understands the rule implicitly, yes, in a way that isn’t explicit to him, and you can help him by formulating the rule. If his mind is built differently from yours, you will never succeed in teaching him any rule.

[Speaker G] So that explains why the Talmud in general—Rava in this concrete case—brings his rule through an example. But why doesn’t he set the example as it is?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, as it is?

[Speaker G] A bound and sleeping slave. No, he can’t do that. Why not as an example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That he can’t do.

[Speaker G] Like one, two, three, four, five.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that he can’t do, because he wants precisely to tell me that what I’m saying is the focal point of the matter. He wants to tell me: what I’m telling you is true for every slave, not only for a bound and sleeping slave. He deliberately doesn’t say it’s about a bound and sleeping slave, because what I’m telling you, the general law—a slave is like a courtyard—that’s true for every slave. Therefore he deliberately does not limit it to a bound and sleeping slave. He says a slave is like a courtyard. The implication is that a slave can acquire through courtyard-acquisition. Right, in courtyard-acquisition the courtyard has to be non-mobile—fine, so he too will be tied up—but he is telling you something where other conditions of a courtyard, as it were, are not met. Exactly.

[Speaker G] He deliberately doesn’t do this—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s why I say it’s intentional. And in a moment we’ll see the implications. He intentionally cannot say it, because if he said it then someone might think this is a Kitzur Shulchan Aruch—that a bound and sleeping slave acquires a bill of divorce, and that’s it. No, he comes to tell you: I am telling you something that is true for every slave. I’m just saying it through an example. This example illustrates it; if you understand the example well, you’ll also understand the rules better than if I formulate for you some rules that don’t come to expression through examples. And therefore there is some kind of game that the Talmud plays all along, and that’s what I talked about in that class there about rules: the Talmud has no trust in rules. It has no trust in rules; it works by cases, but it wants to convey rules to us.

[Speaker D] And now what—what did we gain from this? Because now the Talmud said, what are we dealing with here? With a bound and sleeping slave in this case. So no—now when we study the Talmud, what do we conclude from that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, we understand that Rava intentionally said it this way so that it’s true for every slave. Now the Talmud discusses the question: fine, I understand that it’s true for every slave, but regarding the practical implication of acquisition it can’t work. It says, fine, with regard to acquisition he is bound and sleeping. But that is the Talmud’s way of clarifying for us what the general law really is. The qualification is the laboratory condition. In the laboratory condition, you checked how an object behaves when there is vacuum, zero temperature, and no friction. Who cares? No—when I showed you vacuum and zero temperature and no friction, I showed you the general law.

[Speaker I] And the Talmud couldn’t say this more clearly, so that we wouldn’t need this class and so many later and medieval authorities (Rishonim) understand the qualifications completely differently and struggle with them. I claim it couldn’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —say it more clearly.

[Speaker I] And the fact is that throughout the generations, medieval and later authorities struggled with what they say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the fact is that those medieval and later authorities who struggle and make such qualifications—we also struggle with what they say. So what does that help? Even if you speak by rules and speak clearly, we still struggle. Therefore the Talmud says: from the outset, it’s like there are such legal conceptions, positivist legal conceptions, like those of Jhering, who think—today less so—that it’s possible to formulate the legal system as a logical pyramid. There is the basic norm, the Grundnorm as it’s called, and from it secondary norms are derived, and you can build the whole legal structure in some rigid logical form in which the whole business is just logical derivation of one thing from another. Now that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, and therefore the world today does not go in that direction. It’s exactly the same thing. The world today has gone less and less—or now that trend has halted a bit, but until not long ago—the world went less and less toward positivist thinking, until they reached actual complete anarchy. They reached complete anarchy because the feeling was that the moment you establish rules, you deviate from justice; it won’t work, it doesn’t work. Rules—the realities of life are too complicated, again in connection with what I talked about on the website there—the realities of life are too complicated to deal with by means of rules. Rules don’t work. So how do you nonetheless convey the message? How do you nevertheless… how do you nevertheless educate a person? So that’s the difference between learning and apprenticeship under Torah scholars. When a halakhic decisor wants certification to become a halakhic decisor, he is not tested only on the Shulchan Aruch. He also has to sit with a decisor and see how he works. Why? Read the Shulchan Aruch, know the rules of halakhic ruling, everything is fine. Nothing is fine. If you know all that, you will rule very badly. You need to see how this business works, how it flows through the fingers, what the feel is, where it is right to apply this and where not. That is exactly the point. It’s moving from science to engineering. Yes, exactly. And the Talmud says to me: if you see how I think, that will be much better than if I give you a collection of bottom lines. You’ll see qualifications, you’ll see give-and-take.

[Speaker C] When Rava says that this is dealing with a bound and sleeping slave, but then when you come with some Amora and some Tanna or greater Amora disagrees with him, he starts telling you maybe that one spoke in a case where he… he brings you something that is totally out of this world. Then okay, so everything is fine, I don’t disagree with him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Excellent, everything is fine.

[Speaker C] Now not only are you saying what you’re saying, that this is about a bound slave and this and that, you already begin to think that the other one also started talking in cases like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, of course—I’m saying it, I am now saying it unequivocally. Rava spoke about a bound and sleeping slave. Except what? He wasn’t just speaking about a bound and sleeping slave; he was speaking about an abstract slave.

[Speaker C] That abstract slave, the one you see. What? But when some Amora comes and disagrees with him in relation to some Tanna and brings that Tanna in some…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, Rava doesn’t say that. The Talmud says that about Rava. Rava says that a slave acquires. Rava is the Mishnah. And now the Talmud comes and says: wait, but a slave can’t acquire, because… never mind, it’s a qualification to an Amoraic statement. So it’s the same thing. I brought an example, several examples. Rava didn’t say it; we put it into his mouth. And why? He wasn’t really speaking about a bound and sleeping slave; he was speaking about the whole category of slaves. The ruling he stated is correct for a bound and sleeping slave. That’s what they do with Mishnayot too, same thing. Now the claim is that this is what the Mishnah intended. This is what the Mishnah intended. And it’s obvious that this is so. And it’s not forced at all. The Mishnah intended to say—now I’ll show two examples to illustrate this more.

[Speaker E] Earlier you said two things that sound a bit contradictory on their plain meaning. On the one hand you say the Talmud doesn’t—the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Sages—don’t believe in rules. And on the other hand you say the qualification—not the qualification, the statement itself—doesn’t concern the real case but comes another way to teach us a rule. But if I don’t believe in a rule?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not believing in a rule means I don’t believe in formulation by means of rules. There are halakhic ideas. Jewish law has some content; Jewish law is not just do whatever you want in each case. But that content—if you want to convey it in the form of a set of orderly rules, you won’t succeed. So if that’s the case, then why does Rabbi Chaim formulate them? What? Rabbi Chaim really raises some difficult problems. Today everyone kicks Rabbi Chaim because of that, among other things. I tried to show some of them in previous classes—how this dichotomy of Rabbi Chaim, that it’s either this or that, doesn’t really work. Why? Exactly because of this. Because he tried to put the rules on the table. Now come, I want to—Chazon Ish is here. Fine, but I still want to manage to show how this business works in at least one topic / passage so that you’ll see that this thing really sheds amazing light on a lot of passages. Meaning, you start from not understanding what the passage wants…

[Speaker C] No light, no light.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You start from not understanding the passage, some strange qualification, and when you understand what a qualification really does, then suddenly you see that the whole passage receives meaning. Meaning, it explains many other difficulties that you didn’t even understand were connected to the matter. So let’s look for a moment at the passage in Beitzah. The Talmud there—the Mishnah says that an egg laid on a Jewish holiday may be eaten. Beit Shammai say it may be eaten; Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten. Okay. So the Talmud looks for what it’s dealing with, and at some point the Talmud brings a qualification of Rabbah’s: here we are dealing with a Jewish holiday following the Sabbath, and because of preparation. For every egg laid today was completed yesterday, yes, it was laid—say we’re talking about a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, an egg was laid on the holiday, then it was completed in the hen’s womb on the preceding Sabbath, and since that is so, it is forbidden to eat it on the holiday because of preparation. Because it did not undergo preparation for the holiday, and therefore it is forbidden to eat it. And in the Mishnah it says an egg laid on a Jewish holiday may be eaten or may not be eaten—not eaten. We’re talking right now about the opinion of “may not be eaten” of Beit Hillel, and explaining it.

[Speaker C] May not be eaten ever? What? Not eaten at all?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No no, it may not be eaten on the holiday.

[Speaker C] Why? Why? On the holiday. Because it was laid—is it forbidden to prepare from Sabbath to holiday? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. That’s a Torah prohibition. In a moment I’ll comment on that. Who does the preparation?

[Speaker C] Who does the preparation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it’s by Heaven. In any case, but even if something was prepared, that doesn’t necessarily mean it becomes forbidden on the holiday. But let me just move on with the Talmud. So the Talmud says the egg may not be eaten. So they make a qualification here—no, this is a holiday following the Sabbath. Again a qualification, right? Couldn’t the Tanna just… what, couldn’t the Tanna tell me “a holiday following the Sabbath”? The Tanna just says “a holiday.” What is this “a holiday following the Sabbath”? What I want to claim is this: what the Tanna said is true for every holiday. Just as Rava said what he said about every slave, not only a bound and sleeping slave. On every holiday, what you eat has to be prepared in advance. That is a rule true on every holiday. Specifically with regard to an egg, for an egg laid on a regular holiday it’s simply a prepared egg, so it may be eaten. So what do I do? I say no, this is a holiday following the Sabbath; the egg was prepared on the Sabbath the day before. Since that is so, you arrive at the holiday with an egg that was not prepared, because being prepared on the Sabbath doesn’t count as preparation. So it was not prepared, and you’re forbidden to eat it. Now the prohibition against eating something unprepared is true on every holiday, not only on a holiday following the Sabbath. It’s just that here specifically regarding an egg—exactly like Rava—here specifically regarding an egg, I need some way of making it possible: how did it come out that an egg laid on a holiday is not prepared? So on a holiday following the Sabbath—just like the bound and sleeping slave. I am making a statement about every slave, or about every holiday. It’s just that the general statement is that on a holiday one must eat prepared things. And that is true of every holiday, even an ordinary holiday that does not follow the Sabbath, that’s obvious. It’s only with this specific egg—an egg laid on a holiday—it was completed the day before, so it’s prepared; what’s the problem? Fine, so regarding the egg, if you want to see this, it’s on a holiday following the Sabbath. Only then—yes, like a point-body without friction and so on, fine—but the statement is a statement about every holiday, not only about a holiday following the Sabbath. Now look how beautiful this is.

[Speaker E] Can someone repeat the statement about the holiday? What is the general statement?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it is forbidden to eat an unprepared item on a holiday. On every holiday, not only a holiday following the Sabbath. There is a general rule on every holiday that one must eat only prepared things.

[Speaker E] That it has to be prepared from the eve of the holiday, meaning?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. Now Rashi says there as follows: “And a holiday does not prepare for the Sabbath, and holiday too is called Sabbath, and its meal requires preparation, and its preparation must be on a weekday.” Yes, holiday and Sabbath require preparation; they require advance preparation, and the preparation must be done on a weekday. “But an ordinary weekday meal is not considered significant, and preparation is not relevant to it.” Yes, meaning an ordinary weekday meal is not important, and therefore it is not considered that I am preparing for it. “Therefore, on an ordinary Sunday we have no reason to forbid an egg laid on it because it was prepared by Heaven, for an ordinary weekday meal the Merciful One did not require prior designation while it is still day, for the concept of set-aside does not apply to it.” Rashi is struggling with exactly what you asked earlier—I don’t remember who asked it—what happens with an egg laid on Sunday.

[Speaker C] It was prepared on the Sabbath and laid—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On Sunday, is it permitted to eat it? Rashi says yes—what’s the problem? Of course it’s permitted to eat it. Why? Because the meal of a Jewish holiday is an important meal, so the completion of the egg on the previous Sabbath is considered preparation for that important meal. But a Sunday meal is not a significant meal at all. So the fact that the egg was completed the day before is not considered that it was prepared on the Sabbath. There is no preparation here at all; for an ordinary weekday meal there is no concept of preparation. Preparation derives from the fact that the meal is important, so what is done for it is called preparation. Therefore Rashi says that an egg laid on Sunday may be eaten. Rashba asks about this: “And I am astonished by this wording—that the Sabbath meal requires preparation while it is still day, and on a weekday as well? If so, then even the Sabbath does not prepare for itself, yet regarding plain Sabbath and Jewish holiday by law the egg is permitted.” If the egg had been prepared on that same day, not the day before—let’s say the physiology were different, and the egg had been ready while it was still day—Rashba says that would certainly be permitted. Because only a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath is the issue, but on the holiday itself, by law, the egg is permitted. So Rashba says: “And on a holiday after the Sabbath, were it not that it had been completed yesterday, it would even be permitted.” Now according to Rashi that’s not correct, because according to Rashi we’re dealing with a holiday meal or a Sabbath meal, which requires preparation. And when was that preparation done? On that same day, on the Sabbath or on the holiday. That’s not preparation; it has to be prepared while it is still day, from a weekday. According to Rashi that can’t work. So Rashba says rather this is the explanation: “The meal of a holiday and of the Sabbath is important enough to require preparation, and therefore whenever preparation is relevant, it is not proper for the Sabbath to prepare for the holiday nor for the holiday to prepare for the Sabbath. But they may prepare for themselves, and a weekday as well is not important, and preparation does not apply to it. Therefore an egg laid on the day after the Sabbath or after a holiday is permitted, because preparation does not apply to a weekday meal.”

What is he saying? It sounds similar to Rashi, but it’s the opposite of Rashi. Rashi understands that the law of preparation is a law about the holiday. Say, for example, a holiday that comes after the Sabbath: if I ate the egg that was laid on the holiday, then it was completed on the Sabbath, the day before. What was the problem? The problem was a flaw in the holiday—I ate an egg that was not prepared. Okay? According to Rashba, the problem is an affront to yesterday’s Sabbath. How is yesterday’s Sabbath serving today’s holiday? If you eat it on the holiday, that means yesterday’s Sabbath, which prepared the egg, is working on behalf of the holiday. That’s not okay; you’re slighting the Sabbath. Therefore Rashba says: if the egg is ready today and laid today, I have no problem at all. Why? Because you’re not slighting the Sabbath when it prepares for itself, for its own honor, not for something else. So you don’t have a problem. According to Rashi, he says, this should be problematic. Why? Because after all it wasn’t prepared while it was still day, and you have to eat something prepared. Who’s right? Rashi. Only Rashi. Because otherwise there’s no point to what we said. Exactly. Rashi is reading the Mishnah. So Rashi says: the Mishnah says, “An egg laid on a holiday may be eaten”—no, “may not be eaten,” right? Rashi says: it doesn’t say a holiday after the Sabbath; it says a holiday. Okay, what does that mean? That this law applies to every holiday, not only to a holiday after the Sabbath. And what does it mean that it applies to every holiday? It means there is a law that on a holiday one may eat only something prepared. In other words, in the case of a holiday after the Sabbath, the problem is that you ate on the holiday something unprepared—not that you offended the previous Sabbath. According to Rashba, that reading is completely unreasonable. Because Rashba is basically telling me that the Mishnah’s law comes to teach me a law about the Sabbath preceding the holiday—and that you don’t write? That’s what you came to say? According to Rashi, I don’t need to write that we’re dealing with a holiday after the Sabbath, because the law is true of every holiday. You want to see how it works with an egg? Fine—because on a holiday after the Sabbath, there you can see it in action. But the law is true for every holiday, just like in Rava, where it applies to every slave. According to Rashba, that interpretive setup should have been written explicitly in the Mishnah, because the Mishnah does not say a holiday after the Sabbath: “Don’t eat the egg because it offends the Sabbath.” So what, why? You omitted the main point from the Mishnah and instead mentioned the holiday? It makes no sense at all.

Now look, I just want to finish one more point. Later the Talmud asks: Abaye said to him, “If so, then on an ordinary holiday should it be permitted?” A holiday that is not after the Sabbath—so the egg should be permitted. What’s the question?

[Speaker C] Right—if the rule is that preparation is required, then on an ordinary holiday it should be permitted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. So what does he want? And what are you saying? Since the Mishnah says “holiday,” not “a holiday after the Sabbath,” he says: so this is a general rule, right? So if it’s a general rule, why are you bringing in a holiday after the Sabbath? It’s an ordinary holiday. If the Mishnah says, “An egg laid on a holiday may not be eaten,” that means an egg laid on a holiday may not be eaten. So why are you giving me an interpretive setup of a holiday after the Sabbath? Fine, you explained the case of a holiday after the Sabbath—but what about an ordinary holiday? To that the Talmud answers: “A decree because of a holiday after the Sabbath.” A decree because of a holiday… What does that mean? It was obvious to the Talmud from the outset that an egg laid on an ordinary holiday is also forbidden, because otherwise what is written in the Mishnah? Right? What is the source of the Mishnah? So therefore the Talmud says: ah, we have to say it’s a decree. And then how do we read the Talmud? We read it like this: really we are dealing with a holiday after the Sabbath; there is a law of preparation. The Mishnah is speaking about an ordinary holiday, not about a holiday after the Sabbath; the Mishnah merely presents the decree on account of a holiday after the Sabbath. The Mishnah is speaking about an ordinary holiday and not about a holiday after the Sabbath. That is evidence for Rashba. Because according to Rashi, the question doesn’t even begin. According to Rashi, why does the Mishnah say “holiday”? Because in fact, specifically on a holiday—in every holiday—you have to eat something prepared. You want the egg case in particular? I gave you an interpretive setup: a holiday after the Sabbath. What’s the problem? Don’t read the Mishnah the way one might read from Abaye through the words of Rava, that every slave in whose hand you place a bill of divorce is thereby divorced. That’s not true; only if he is bound and sleeping is she divorced. What I told you—that every slave is like a courtyard—that is true of every slave. So too on a holiday: on every holiday one may eat only something prepared; one may not eat something unprepared. As for the specific case of the egg, that’s only on a holiday after the Sabbath. That’s the understanding according to Rashi. So what is Abaye’s question? From here Rashba derived his approach. Rashi is not straightforward in the Mishnah. So Rashi will have to explain here that apparently they had some tradition that even on an ordinary holiday one does not eat it; after all, that was common practice every day. Maybe on an ordinary holiday too they didn’t eat it. So Abaye asks: how will you explain that? It’s only a tradition, not because the Mishnah just says “holiday.” So he says: it’s a decree because of a holiday after the Sabbath. But according to Rashi, “a holiday after the Sabbath” is an interpretive setup. It’s an interpretive setup. Meaning, what is written in the Mishnah is that on a holiday one must eat something prepared, and we set it up as a case of a holiday after the Sabbath. According to Rashba, that is not an interpretive setup. According to Rashba, this is in fact a case of a holiday after the Sabbath. It’s not an interpretive setup. It really is talking about that. And in fact Rashba asks—Rashba immediately afterward asks: “And I am astonished by this wording.” Wait, no, sorry.

[Speaker F] What does Rashi do with the problem?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rather, Rava said: “We are dealing with a hen designated for eating, and with a holiday after the Sabbath.” “It is difficult for me,” says Rashba, “how can he say, ‘We are dealing with a holiday after the Sabbath,’ when even on a plain holiday it is forbidden because of a holiday after the Sabbath?” That question cannot be asked according to Rashi. Because Rashba understands that we really are dealing here with a holiday after the Sabbath; rather, there is a decree, and therefore they establish it as an ordinary holiday. He understands that when the Mishnah says an ordinary holiday, that is not an interpretive setup. The law really became one about an ordinary holiday as a decree

[Speaker C] because of a holiday after the Sabbath. According to Rashi, that’s not correct. According to Rashi, what is written—“On a plain holiday because of a holiday after the Sabbath?”—that question cannot be asked according to Rashi. Because Rashba understands that we really are dealing here with a holiday that falls after the Sabbath. Rather what? There is a decree, and therefore they establish it as an ordinary holiday. He understands that when the Mishnah says an ordinary holiday, that is not an interpretive setup. The law really is about an ordinary holiday—a decree because of a holiday after the Sabbath. According to Rashi, that’s not correct. According to Rashi, what the Mishnah says—holiday—simply means that on a holiday one must eat prepared food. The egg case truly is only on a holiday after the Sabbath. It’s unrelated; the Mishnah is speaking about every holiday. According to Rashba, the Mishnah is speaking about the decree. Okay? It’s a bit late. Late. What? Late.

Torah Study – Lesson 7

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Ukimta as “Indirect” Interpretation and the Initial Problem

The General Principle: “A Slave Is Like a Courtyard” and the Move from Example to Law

The Scientific Analogy: Abstract Laws, a “World Without Friction,” and a Point Mass

Information Theory, General and Particular, and Control over the Scope of Generalization

The “Platonic Slave,” the Laboratory Situation, and the Role of Ukimta as Theoretical Testing

Misapplication of Theory: Communism, Centralism, and Milton Friedman

From Abstraction to Integration: Engineering, Halakhic Ruling, and Trial and Error

“There Is No Reward for a Commandment in This World” and the Example of “One Who Recites Havdalah over a Cup Will Have Male Children”

Why Jewish Law Is Formulated as a Case Rather than as a Rule, and Skepticism toward Rules

Wittgenstein, Following a Rule, and the Claim That Rules Cannot Be Conveyed without Examples

Rabbi Chaim and the Critique of Dichotomous Formulation of Rules

The Sugya of an Egg on a Jewish Holiday: Rava’s Ukimta, “Because of Preparation,” and Rashi versus Rashba

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

Ukimta as “Indirect” Interpretation and the Initial Problem

The General Principle: “A Slave Is Like a Courtyard” and the Move from Example to Law

The Scientific Analogy: Abstract Laws, a “World Without Friction,” and a Point Mass

Information Theory, General and Particular, and Control over the Scope of Generalization

The “Platonic Slave,” the Laboratory Situation, and the Role of Ukimta as Theoretical Testing

Misapplication of Theory: Communism, Centralism, and Milton Friedman

From Abstraction to Integration: Engineering, Halakhic Ruling, and Trial and Error

“There Is No Reward for a Commandment in This World” and the Example of “One Who Recites Havdalah over a Cup Will Have Male Children”

Why Jewish Law Is Formulated as a Case Rather than as a Rule, and Skepticism toward Rules

Wittgenstein, Following a Rule, and the Claim That Rules Cannot Be Conveyed without Examples

Rabbi Chaim and the Critique of Dichotomous Formulation of Rules

The Sugya of an Egg on a Jewish Holiday: Rava’s Ukimta, “Because of Preparation,” and Rashi versus Rashba

Full Transcript

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