For the Perplexed of the Generation – Lesson 20

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Secret meetings like these, where even at the meeting itself people speak under nicknames. Meaning, people don’t identify themselves by name; it’s more like, I’m this one, and that guy is that one. In other words, nobody says any names, because there’s some terrible fear there, and I never quite understood why. But there it’s under his own name, so that’s the advantage, because supposedly everyone can talk without fear. Without a filter? Maybe that too. Fine, there are another one or two, I think there are more. So in the first meetings there, and as I spoke a bit with people who opened up about things that go beyond what happens there in public, through personal channels, people reach conclusions that are absolutely unbelievable. You see people dressed like Hazon Ish types, with sidelocks from here to—I didn’t want to say Petah Tikva, let’s say Yeruham. But yes, as far as you want. And as for their worldview, they believe in nothing. Nothing. Now even someone who does believe gets there and reaches completely crazy conclusions. Completely crazy. He read some philosophy book, then another philosophy book. He has no ability to critique any of it, and his immediate conclusion is that nothing is correct, nothing is true, there’s nothing at all, and this one is this, and that one is wrong, and here and there. He has very solid opinions about everything. Now where does that come from? And some of these people are very intelligent people. Because they’re alone. They’re alone. You can’t clarify things by yourself; it’s hard. I mean, you need some kind of control, you need to hear from someone a bit more experienced. You need to learn this in a study partnership. You need some feedback on your conclusions. They reach absolutely crazy conclusions there, also on the halakhic plane, by the way. They once introduced me there to their rebbe, one of the founders, who is the father of this approach. And I really heard ideas there that were completely wild. I mean, you hear absolutely crazy ideas there. On the halakhic plane, I’m talking now, not even in high philosophy. On the halakhic plane. Now what does that mean? He sits alone in a room, thinking up all kinds of thoughts. He can’t say any of what he thinks, because the moment he says it—really, even before he says it—they’ll hang him for it. But even so, his name has already been dragged through the mud. Even before he said it. But things still somehow leak out. Yet he can’t say anything outside. Now if you don’t say anything outside, you get no feedback. So who do you have? The few students you have? That’s not a person who can really test himself. He says nonsense, some of it. And he’s a smart man. But he says nonsense because he’s alone. He’s alone. And the moment you shut a person in, you don’t let him conduct this conversation, try to clarify things because you’re afraid where he’ll end up—then look where he ends up when you shut him in. If people said to a person, listen, let’s go into this together and sort it out, let’s see what comes out. There may be things that won’t have answers; maybe yes, maybe no, I don’t know. Certainly, anyone who goes in thinking he’ll automatically have answers to everything is, I think, too optimistic; it’s not reasonable that that’s really the case. But okay, everywhere there are some questions; the only question is their dosage. A person doesn’t leave something just because there’s some question he doesn’t have an answer to. If the dosage gets too high, then maybe yes. But if everyone really goes in and examines it openly and writes about it and exchanges opinions on it, then it gets clarified better, so you don’t leave the child to work alone under the table and reach all kinds of conclusions and you don’t know where you’ll find him in another month. Instead, he gets some feedback. By the way, I wrote an article about my experiences in that forum. They asked me in Ma’ayan—the editor there is a friend of mine—he asked me for an article about that forum, and I thought it was very important to write it, because I think that forum saves a lot of people. Even though it deals with absolute heresy, it saves a lot of people because it lets them air out what they think, air out what they think, get feedback, hear what yes and what no, so they won’t live inside a bubble. Of course the article wasn’t published; even the article about the forum wasn’t published. The article wasn’t published—not his fault, truthfully. Apparently there was some committee there that didn’t agree with it.

[Speaker E] A committee—I’d like to see at what age I’ll manage…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To take it, it’s not exactly in the spirit of the times. Fine, I haven’t been there in a long time, I think. Anyway, this model has costs, costs no less heavy than openness, and maybe much heavier—especially today, when today you really can’t shut things down even if you want to. You can’t shut it down. Everything goes through the computer, through this stuff; the only question is whether it’s at the margins or in the mainstream. Listen, there are people I’ve met who hold rabbinic positions, yeshiva lecturers, and believe me, I’ve met quite a few of them who didn’t dare speak to me at all. Don’t send your son to study with him, don’t send your son to study with him, because he’s not one of our people; he dresses like this—of course, all of that.

[Speaker B] Someone told me, the difference between a computer store in the Haredi sector and any other computer store is that in the secular sector they sell a device that lets you use the computer to watch television, and among the Haredim it’s the opposite; among the Haredim they sell a device that lets you use the computer to watch television, and among the secular people it’s the other way around.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today even television is already outdated; the computer does everything anyway. You can’t shut it down. This whole thing is already an anachronism, and instead of understanding what world we live in, they keep on shutting things down and raising the walls higher and higher and higher. It’s a lost war. It’s just a waste of time.

[Speaker E] Anyway, it seems to me that today, in the 21st century, to criticize decisions

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that were made in the 19th century is really beside the point. Really not. I’m not making any criticism—I wasn’t there.

[Speaker E] The analysis of the ideology,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course not. I’m only arguing—I didn’t claim that back then I would have done better. How can I know? I wasn’t there. We’re talking about important Jews, wise men, Torah scholars. I didn’t mean to say that I would have done it better. But today I’m already a hundred years, two hundred years later, so I’m allowed today to draw conclusions from the mistakes they made then.

[Speaker A] I think that in the final analysis it’s only in recent years that it’s become this extreme. I studied in Hebron in ’62–’63; there they read books and went to the library, you met the other everywhere. And I really asked what suddenly happened. So he said, since people were extreme in the other direction, then let’s be extreme on this side—that’s their excuse. When I was studying, I remember they really did read books openly in the yeshiva.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A friend of mine, who all in all was also in Hebron already 30 years ago—after HaMidrasha he went to study in Hebron—he studied some of Rabbi Kook’s books there, and they wanted to throw him out.

[Speaker A] Already 30 years ago, by the way, in Hebron they would go on Independence Day to Merkaz HaRav, and that was known. There was fierce opposition, true, but there is a problem with that.

[Speaker G] There is the well-known responsum of Seridei Esh in section eight, part two, on mixed singing, and there he brings a very correct analysis of the rise of resistance to the current—Hirsch and his method until the Holocaust—and he says that the sages of Germany succeeded in going against the current and gradually restoring the crown to its former glory. After the Holocaust, something happens, because there is an enormous drift into the mainstream, that failed mainstream, and it keeps growing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure this is simply growing stronger. It’s growing stronger, but it’s also shrinking. The margins here already get into sociology, but I think the margins in the Haredi world are expanding. The core is becoming more closed, but also smaller. Those who really keep all the dogmas that have to be kept in the Haredi core are, all told, quite a small group. Those who believe all this nonsense are basically a stockpile of yeshiva boys, nothing beyond that. Meaning, there are the margins around them, these huge margins, and it’s all on the table—they’re not even really hiding it anymore. So it’s a complex process. It’s true that there’s a greater closedness in the middle, but the middle is getting smaller. I think in the end that’s what this thing is becoming.

Anyway, maybe one more point before I get into the main issue itself, one more comment about the very fear. This fear that a person can get corrupted, and that it’s forbidden to engage in inquiry and in faith / belief with the intellect. So here there are a few points that maybe need to be made.

First, there’s—I don’t even know what to call it—a common view that says faith / belief and intellect are two opposing things. Opposing not in the sense that if I follow my intellect, meaning I study philosophy and science, that will contradict faith / belief, but that these are two different psychic faculties. Knowing things and believing things are two different things. Very often people would say: if I could know it, then it wouldn’t be called faith / belief, or something like that. What? And faith / belief is the task of overcoming the… yes, maybe that’s even a more far-reaching formulation—that faith / belief is some kind of binding of Isaac of the intellect, and therefore against the intellect. We already discussed that with Christianity, with Kierkegaard and so on. But here let’s speak in a somewhat more moderate formulation.

I personally don’t accept that. I don’t think it’s true. I think faith / belief is knowledge like any other knowledge. I think that knowing that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, is exactly like knowing that there is gravitational force. I don’t see any difference between them. Not that I see no difference between the Holy One, blessed be He, and gravitational force, but I don’t see any difference between knowing this and knowing that. Because very often—you understand—the conclusion from this is very convenient, to dig oneself into such a position, because then it means I don’t owe the intellect any accounting. No difficulty is difficult for me, no problem, I live in a paradox. But the payment that comes with that is a package deal. The payment that comes with it is that in the end you empty faith / belief of its content. Because if you don’t grasp the claim “There is God” as a factual claim, then you are not a believing person. After all, if the claim that there is God is a factual claim, then it is either true or false. That means either there is a God or there isn’t a God. This is not a claim about my experiences or my feelings. It’s a claim about the world. How I know it is another question, but it is a claim about the world.

Now, someone who tries to empty this out completely—of course there are degrees—but someone who empties faith / belief of all its factual, intellectual dimensions, in the end arrives at some claim that faith / belief is a mental state and not a factual claim, not a claim about the world. Now the moment you get there, you are no longer a believing person. Because to be a believing person means to believe that there is a Holy One, blessed be He. Now if you believe that there is a Holy One, blessed be He, then you have a claim about the world. Claims about the world are exposed to tools and attacks and confirmation from every direction, to tools for clarifying facts. That has to be checked: is this a correct fact or not a correct fact? If it contains an internal contradiction, I can’t accept it. If you tell me this is a mental state—fine, a mental state can be contradictory. A person can be in a mental state with inner conflicts. But a fact is either true or not true. That’s it.

Maimonides does count “I am the Lord your God” as a commandment, not as just the first basis. Maimonides counts it. People ask him why he counts it. Maimonides counts it and someone else doesn’t count it, and they ask him why he really counts this matter. So the question is what is foundational. Right. Fine, that’s a whole day by itself—the commandment of faith / belief according to Maimonides, what exactly it says and why at all…

Wait, so what’s the difference between faith / belief and proof? What? Faith / belief and proof. Nothing. There is no difference between them. There may be—I’ll get to that in a moment. No, but gravity you can prove. No, what do you mean? You can prove a scientific law? A scientific law is a generalization from facts you know. A general law can’t be proven. The only thing you can prove is mathematics. That’s science, not mathematics. Science is always some kind of generalization that stands empirical testing; you check whether it’s true or not true. Right. But no finite set of facts can prove a general law. You saw a certain collection of facts, a certain collection of facts. From that you cannot prove that there is a general law. You make a generalization. So I too see a collection of facts: I see a world, I see that it has laws, I see that it is coordinated, so I infer some generalization that it has a Creator. What exactly is the problem? It’s exactly the same form of thought. I see no difference between them. One can argue again whether it’s true or not true, but making that move—that’s the same form of thought. I don’t see any difference between them.

This is just a desire to escape confrontation. That claim—no, no, this is not intellect, I believe, it’s experiences. Today there is in general a rehabilitation of faith / belief. Today, in the postmodern age—for quite a few years already—in the postmodern age there is a kind of rehabilitation of faith / belief. Faith / belief was very much vilified in the modern period, because modernism was very much against religious beliefs. In the postmodern world, by contrast, faith / belief is flourishing. As Rabbi Shagar, of blessed memory, writes, the believer is basically one person within the circle of meanings. That is, we are all dancing in some kind of circle, all at equal distance, of course, from the center; all of us—that is, all of us are equally right or equally wrong, and everything is wonderful. No one can claim that I’m not right in a postmodern world. In a postmodern world no one is right. So that’s wonderful—faith / belief reaches its peak.

But that’s a mistake. That’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Because that kind of faith / belief is not faith / belief. Faith / belief in the subjective postmodern sense, as narrative—faith / belief as narrative—that is exactly what I was talking about: that is not faith / belief. I think there is a Holy One, blessed be He, because there is a Holy One, blessed be He, not because I live inside a religious narrative. If I live inside a religious narrative, then I’ll take a pill. That’s unrelated; that’s not a claim, that’s not a believing person. So you can save faith / belief that way very easily. You don’t have to confront anything, but you are basically throwing out the baby with the bathwater. You are left with a view that is not really faith / belief.

Now there’s another point, and this really is the important point in this matter. What exactly is the fear that intellectual, philosophical, scientific analysis will lead me to heresy, to throwing away faith / belief? After all—and we discussed this at length last year—every argument is based on premises and on deriving conclusions from those premises. So one of two things: if the conclusion of the argument is a conclusion that contradicts faith / belief in some way, then either that argument is invalid, or one of its premises is false. If both of those things do hold, then I really am not a believer. So what does it help not to deal with it? I can avoid philosophy so as not to become a heretic, but I’m already a heretic—I just haven’t yet formulated it for myself that I’m a heretic. Because if my foundational assumptions are such that one can logically derive from them that there is no God, then even if I haven’t actually derived it, so what? In that case I simply haven’t revealed to myself what is already there. What is in the heart has not yet come to the mouth. I haven’t verbally revealed to myself what is already in my heart. I am already not a believer.

And if I really am a believer in terms of my foundational assumptions, there is no reason in the world to assume I will arrive at some conclusion that contradicts faith / belief. Why? Because if my assumptions are those assumptions, how will something opposite come out of them? So where, after all, does the feeling come from that this thing is dangerous? It comes from two things. For some people it is dangerous because already now they are not believers. And if you let them engage these things, then it will also come out. By “come out” I mean to themselves, not outward to society. The person himself doesn’t understand that he is not a believer, but the moment he gets used to doing some sort of logical analysis, he will discover—he will discover that he is not a believer. He will discover it, but he was a non-believer even before. That’s one track.

The second track is that sometimes a person is swept captive by a certain field, a certain discipline, and adopts its foundational assumptions unconsciously, without awareness. Yes, classic examples—we talked about this. We discussed evolution in one of the previous chapters, and there too, it seems to me, in a very very prominent way, many people who work in that field somehow, without even noticing it, also adopt a certain form of interpretation for the scientific part. The scientific part is fine; it needs to be discussed with scientific tools. But somehow those who work in that field on the scientific plane often automatically adopt some interpretation of those scientific results without noticing. And that interpretation definitely does not emerge from the facts or from the scientific results. But there is some power in fields of this kind: they conquer you from within, so that once you enter that field you swallow it whole, with all kinds of certain foundational assumptions that are sometimes attached to the scientific part. And that’s why it seems so dangerous.

But here I say, regarding the first part—someone who discovers that he was never really a believer to begin with, he was not a believer even before—I don’t see what is dangerous in his engaging philosophy. He simply discovers what he already was. Right? Except that this is the point of Haredi education: not to discover these things. Even if he’s a heretic, better that he stay at home—no, that he remain a heretic but with a black kapoteh. A heretic with a black kapoteh—that’s the best thing. Dresses in black and does whatever his heart desires. Within the framework… What? Yes, to preserve the framework. Right, there is some logic to it. Maybe his child will turn out all right when he studies in cheder and all that. Right, there is something to it. But still I think it’s absurd not to let a person discover what he thinks so that his child will turn out all right. That sounds a bit problematic. “If he and his son both need to study, he takes precedence over his son.” First of all I need to do what I need to do; after that my son will have to see what to do with himself.

Leibowitz… What? Even according to Leibowitz it’s to fulfill the commandments. What? It doesn’t matter that he could go on observing, but if you fulfill the commandments without believing in the Holy One, blessed be He, what is that worth? I don’t understand. Right, mechanical observance of commandments—even Ahad Ha’am observed commandments. Someone who does not believe in the Holy One, blessed be He, and in Torah from Sinai—his commandments are not commandments. They have no value. I’m not sure you were precise about Leibowitz. “From acting not for its own sake one comes to acting for its own sake,” perhaps. I’m not sure you were precise about Leibowitz; I don’t know, maybe Leibowitz said something like that, I’m not expert in that, but maybe. It doesn’t matter. If he says something else, then he is mistaken.

Anyway, that’s one point. The second path, the one that says a person can adopt certain foundational assumptions while engaging in a certain field—and this is a very common phenomenon—the way to deal with it is not to forbid him to enter the field, but to enter the field together with him. To go in there together with him and try to sort out what is and isn’t true, what are facts and what are not facts. And the simple assumption is that if something is a fact, it cannot be that I am required to throw it away. It can’t be. So I don’t know—it needs analysis against Genesis chapter 3 verse 6, I don’t know exactly what. So it needs analysis. But it cannot be that I am supposed to throw away facts. Something that is clear to me is true, just because it doesn’t fit some verse or some Maimonides or Talmudic text or something—such a thing is simply unthinkable.

I recently read a study connected to what you just mentioned, a study done among academics in the United States that basically confirms something we all feel intuitively. They checked the correlation between a person’s academic profession and the degree of his faith / belief, his degree of religiosity. They found what we all feel—that most humanists are heretics, atheists, while among natural scientists, specifically, many are far less religious but are more believing in religion. So they went to check this, they researched it and tried to understand the roots of the phenomenon, and it turned out that most humanists are convinced that science proved long ago that religion is passé. That’s how they understand what the natural sciences say.

Well, anyway, since you mention it, it’s not far-fetched either. It’s not far-fetched because, as I said before, the fact that someone is an expert in biology does not yet mean he is also an expert in the interpretation of biology. Meaning, when he thinks—when he works in biology and believes… They understand the limits of their own discipline. Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe yes, maybe no. I know more than a few literature scholars. Not at all sure, really not sure. An intelligent person who enters into this and understands what he’s saying is often less captive than the person who is already inside the field. Evolution is a good example of this. I think many of the people who work in that field do not understand the limitations of their field. And they are good professionals—I’m not saying I know more biology than they do. But that’s exactly the point: you absorb the accompanying foundational assumptions, the accompanying interpretations, together with the… the scientific work and the interpretation are almost inseparable. Whereas someone looking from the outside says: wait, in philosophy you’re not such a great expert—you’re a great expert in biology. Leave philosophy to me; I’m the philosopher. All right? So I’m not even sure this is such a far-fetched thing. But fine, that’s another discussion.

So in short, what I basically want to say is that a person who has—or a society that has—some confidence that it is right, its fear of engaging with other things cannot be so great. There are concerns, all that’s true, but very often my feeling is that this fear of what is going on outside is because you really are not convinced that you are so right. You really are afraid of what is happening out there. You really are afraid to discover that there are things there that will force you to stand before a picture you won’t like. Why won’t you like it if it doesn’t matter? Meaning, you can relate to those things, apply them. I think that’s true, but as long as you don’t engage with it, you can’t know. And it’s not that you can do whatever you want with the facts.

No, but if, say, the evidence is a certain way, and if, say, the conclusion is religious, then my attitude should be that way too. I think so too, but those who fear it apparently think otherwise. We discussed this in the chapter where we spoke about evolution. I said there that there’s some strange discourse in which both sides actually agree on one thing, both the atheists and the fundamentalist creationists. They both agree on one thing: that evolution and faith / belief do not go together. The only question is what you choose. These choose faith / belief and throw out evolution; those choose evolution and throw out faith / belief. And both are mistaken. Why? But the fear, the fear of engaging in evolution, comes from the fact that basically you agree with the atheists’ claim. You basically agree that that really is the conclusion that comes out of there. Not of the atheists, but of evolution. Of the atheistic evolutionists. You agree that this is the conclusion that comes out of evolution—that the conclusion is atheism—and therefore you are afraid to engage in it. And therefore you are afraid to engage in it.

And very often the feeling really is—there is some feeling—listen, I talk with boys, many yeshiva boys, and there is no one to answer their questions. It’s not only that it is forbidden to raise the questions—that is, of course, the easy problem. It’s forbidden to raise the questions because no one has any answers. Because their yeshiva teachers and heads of yeshivot and their spiritual supervisors know no more than they do. Have they dealt with it? How would they know how to answer questions? They don’t know. At most they can say: Rabbi Akiva Eiger was smarter than you. So if you’re torn, rely on him—he knew the truth. Did Rabbi Akiva Eiger know about evolution? I don’t know. These are the kinds of answers that a person with intellectual integrity does not accept. Does not accept. So what is his conclusion? That these people have no answers. So where do the honest people ultimately end up? The cheats stay religious, and the honest become secular. That’s what comes out. People willing to live with this lie without having answers remain religious, and those who are not willing to live with this lie become secular.

And the right solution is to enter these fields and check what is true and what is not. Not to fear anything. What is there to fear? It is much more frightening not to go in there. Much more frightening. We talked about this: what message is conveyed to a student in the state religious school system when they don’t teach him evolution? He doesn’t study evolution—it just can’t be. What is he supposed to think now? A boy who finishes twelfth grade, what is he supposed to think? Those among them who think. What are they supposed to think? That apparently this contradicts faith / belief, that there are really no answers, the scientists say this and we think science is nonsense, or else I was convinced by it or I wasn’t convinced by it. And that is the message that comes out. I’m talking now about the state religious school system, not Ponevezh. In the state religious school system they don’t study evolution? What message comes out of such a thing?

Anyway, to our matter: I think that in the end faith / belief—and here I return to this point of faith / belief and knowledge, the first point I spoke about, these two links, these two conceptual contexts called faith / belief and intellect or knowledge—I think it’s the same thing, because in the end what I said earlier is that every argument is based on some foundational assumptions. Where do those foundational assumptions come from? They come from some intuition we have. We have some intuition that this is right, that between two points there passes one straight line, and that everything has a cause, or whatever—a collection of assumptions that are usually accepted. That intuition is a kind of faith / belief. It is a kind of faith / belief, and we have a faith / belief that brings us to first principles. From there one can activate logic and derive all sorts of conclusions. And so in the end everything is decided by the foundational assumptions. If at the level of the foundational assumption I really am a believing person, it’s hard for me to see something that will truly manage to move me from that.

There will be things that certainly raise questions about details of the tradition, about what came from where. There are questions—it’s not that life is simple. And not really all the details we think were so actually were so. And maybe that too is something one has to know. But I think that in the end everything depends on the foundational assumptions, and once the foundational assumptions are believing assumptions, then all you need to do is try to understand what that means in relation to various philosophical or scientific fields, one or another. And all this fear of inquiry is as though with an ammeter we’re going to discover that there is no God—some sort of thing on the factual plane. You cannot discover with an ammeter that there is no God. This is a question of interpretation. And interpretation is not something one should be afraid of. Facts are facts; you accept them because they are facts, and their interpretation—you need to see what interpretation is given to them.

Besides Darwinism there’s one more very painful place: the Bible department and biblical criticism. There too. And in your opinion, is there a way today for a believing person to participate in modern Bible scholarship? I don’t know—let him say what he thinks. Here, for example, there is Rabbi Breuer. He developed the “aspects” approach, and now people support it and it has become accepted. Fine—that is one certain mode of dealing with it. I’ll say it again: ostensibly, what those engaged in biblical criticism do is quietly, quietly say a sentence that is a premise: let us assume this text is human, that it has no divine source—an optional premise—and from there we can begin. Rabbi Breuer refused precisely that premise and continued to engage in it. Good. And once you assume the premise, the premise of the non-holiness of the text, now you can start analyzing it in a thousand and one ways and dividing it into editions, versions, layers, and whatever you want. So the question is how can a person who does believe participate in such research?

You have to distinguish between two things. If you are talking about playing with foundational assumptions, then if there is a school built on foundational assumptions I do not agree with, no problem. I’ll say that I don’t agree, but I’ll clarify what in this is a foundational assumption and what in this is a scientific or factual result, because it is very important to distinguish between them. Because if the facts really dictate this matter, then there is no room here for foundational assumptions; these are facts. Facts cannot be ignored anywhere, not even in the humanities. And if you are speaking here about foundational assumptions, then put that on the table. Someone who does not accept that foundational assumption can do what Rabbi Breuer did: he did not accept the foundational assumption and nevertheless dealt with it. One can find all sorts of solutions. But I do not think that ignoring facts is an answer to anything. You can only say: look, these facts do not say what you think they say, because if I assume a different premise then it looks different. If they do say what they think they say, even though I would prefer that they not say it, then one must have intellectual honesty and say that this is what follows. If those are the facts, then those are the facts. I do not think it is correct to say: because I believe, I will not engage with it. Again, that comes from the same fear, lest when I get there I suddenly discover that it is not true, that my faith / belief is not true. I don’t think that’s correct.

Anyway, here Rabbi Kook now moves to—or before he moves on, there is actually a claim here that will return afterward in a somewhat more explicit form, and this is a very characteristic claim of Rabbi Kook: that with the progress of history there can actually be changes—let’s call it in Torah outlook, not in Torah, but in Torah outlook. Here it is still presented in a fairly moderate way, because he basically says: look, there once were fears about study; today there is no point, because fearing is no less harmful than not fearing, so therefore there is no point. That’s not really a real change. But someone could come and say: look, it says, “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.” In the Shulchan Arukh it says—in the halakhic decisors accepted by everyone—it says that it is forbidden to engage in matters of heresy, to read books, books of sectarians, all sorts of things of that kind. If Rabbi Kook recommends doing such a thing—I don’t know exactly what he means here when he speaks about freedom of opinions—if he recommends doing such a thing, that already involves some sort of halakhic change. And then we have to check what that means, how exactly we can accept a halakhic change of this type. I’m saying this here because later it will come more clearly to the table.

Later he actually speaks about laws, actual laws in the Torah, that are intended for some kind of intermediate state, and are essentially meant to disappear if humanity improves. A very far-reaching claim within a traditional world, because the accepted conception is: this Torah shall not be exchanged. Torah is not transient. It is not some temporary state destined to pass, some ladder that you climb and then throw away. Rather it is something meant to be eternal. And in this chapter Rabbi Kook has quite a few statements that strike, not simply, at the eternity of Torah. And how to digest that is very far from simple.

So let’s see the continuation: “The question has already been asked in the study house of freedom of opinions among our people, a freedom that knew no limit.” “Knew no limit” in freedom, meaning one must not place a restriction on freedom of opinions. “To shed light on the purpose of the Torah—what does it aspire to? What are the goals of the Torah? And we are obligated to gain insight and explain, as far as our hand can reach, the value of the wisdom and lofty aspiration that our Torah possesses, and how it is impossible to attain it except by observing it in practice.” Reflection is not enough; one also needs observance. “And if we labor and investigate, and do not fear thereby a stumbling of sin, for it is a time…” Since today there is no choice but to engage with this. Again, in the past it was dangerous, but today there is no choice but to engage with it. Earlier he said there is no choice because not engaging with it is no less dangerous than engaging with it. Now he says more than that: since this is the situation, now someone who truly engages with it also will not fail. There is some sort of heavenly assistance here or something like that. There is no choice; this has to be done. “It is a time to act for the Lord,” and certainly we shall gain insight and succeed and find what we seek. “And Scripture itself has spoken fully: ‘For it is no empty thing from you,’ and our sages explained clearly: ‘And if it is empty, it is from you, because you are not laboring in it.’” Yes—“if it is empty, it is from you.” Here: if we labor in the wisdom of Torah, certainly we will find it. And again: how does this fit with the approaches he mentioned earlier, that it is terribly dangerous and you can come to all sorts of stumbling blocks? He says: because today there is no choice. Once there is no choice, then it is also less dangerous, and there will also be some aid in engaging with it. Fine.

“Human culture, at its highest and loftiest level, is certainly what the Torah aspires to.” The Torah wants us to be people of human culture, “as the prophets spoke explicitly of what we hope for: for world peace, for true freedom, which indeed will yet turn its way upward beyond the boundary of humanity”—and by “humanity” he means humankind—“and will encompass also all living creatures.” That our relationship also to animal life, to living creatures, will look different. And on that too they don’t let me speak, so we won’t speak about it.

“Yet these aspirations, while hidden in the Torah, were arranged with wondrous divine wisdom, such that the observance of the Torah, its faith / belief and its repetition, will bring the lofty aspirations into actuality. But just as they require a driving force in order to emerge into actuality when their time comes, so too they require a screen and a restraint, so that they will not burst forth while the time has not yet come, when there is no preparation for this on the part of humanity. For it is a great principle that any idea loftier by far than the circle of humanity”—meaning something too elevated relative to our situation, our human level—“when it becomes public in the world, aside from the fact that none of its words will be heard, it will also cause damage in many particulars, and will also find many opponents, so that through this they will reject it and it will not be able to establish itself in the world so quickly, and many generations will pass without desire for it.”

So basically he says this: there are many things hidden in the Torah, even though they are positive and correct ideas, but there is such a thing as not allowing them to emerge before their time. There is something that stops them from emerging inside the Torah—not outside, even from within the Torah we do not understand it. Why? Because humanity is not yet fit for it. And if humanity is not fit for it, then if the Torah reveals it to us before we are able to reveal it? No, the Torah does not reveal it. Why? Because when humanity is not fit for it, then revealing to us something above our level can bring much more harm. It will bring a lot of harm, even though the idea as such is a positive idea.

And now he says: “Let us set forth, for example, the moral aspiration not to kill any animal for the sake of man.” And from here until the end of the chapter—ten pages or something like that—it’s about animals. But notice that this is brought here as an example. “For example.” Meaning, I think originally he means here to talk about what he discussed in the opening paragraphs. Again the same doubleness, the same double language. Basically, the Torah wants us to investigate and engage with everything. He is talking about the first paragraphs. And that is a correct and positive idea, and that is what should be done. True, in the past there were disputes about it, many were skeptical and did not investigate and feared all sorts of things, but he already said earlier too that today things are different; there is no choice, and so on.

Now he says: but more than that. Not only is there no choice, but there are situations in which there are things—values—that are correct from the outset, and nevertheless they will not be revealed until the generation is fit for them. And he is not speaking about animals; animals are an example, which is why I read the first line of the next paragraph. It is only an example. So what is he speaking about here in this paragraph, “Yet these aspirations”? “These aspirations” are the aspirations he spoke about earlier, the aspirations to investigate, to analyze, to see. Meaning, what we are coming to reveal is, essentially, what I said earlier: that he sees this as a positive thing. Simple faith / belief is not an ideal from which we fell; it is a deficiency. The ideal is grounded faith / belief, faith / belief that comes from reflection, from acquaintance with many broad areas of knowledge. It is just true that until now this was less popular or controversial because until now we were not fit for it. And once we were not fit for it, to engage in something above our human or spiritual level is dangerous, even though it is positive. But that does not mean—just because meanwhile it was not yet revealed, just because until now it was not there—that does not yet mean the thing is negative. That is his novelty.

Something can suddenly arise today and be against the conceptions that always existed. People always said it was a negative thing. That does not mean it really is negative. Basically this is a recipe for reform of one sort or another. It is a recipe for changing Torah outlook, perhaps even Jewish law, as we will see later. Why? Because he basically says: what we had until now was only because we were not yet prepared for the true thing to be revealed. That is very far-reaching. Because now if I take this—if I take this further—I can now take all 613 commandments and explain that people thought this was correct because it suited the level of people in earlier periods, but today we already understand that the whole business is not… not right, but rather its opposite is right—it just was not revealed until now. All right, where does this conception stop?

As we’ll see later, he also speaks about Jewish law, and he also… So this is the part omitted here about sacrifices. Well-known things. He writes this elsewhere—I really don’t know why they omitted it here. He writes it elsewhere, in The Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace, that in the future there will be vegetarianism and compassion for animals, and they will not bring animal sacrifices, and so on. And the fact that they really won’t bring animal sacrifices—what is that, a fifth of Jewish law, I don’t know how much, a third of Jewish law—these are commandments dealing with sacrifices. So what about all those commandments? They are no longer relevant in the period when we are perfected? Yes, to say that commandments are not relevant in a period when we are perfected sounds very familiar. Right? The only difference is the question of timing. Only timing. Meaning, Reform Jews do it today, and Rabbi Kook says it will be when the Messiah comes. By the way, Christians said it happened when the Messiah came. After all, for them the Messiah already came, right? And it is not for nothing that Christians really did give up practical commandments, because from their perspective “the commandments will be nullified in the future.” The future was when he was born, or when he was revealed, it doesn’t matter. Meaning, all these conceptions really go in the same direction. The whole question is only where the timing line is drawn. That’s all. For Christians that line was already crossed two thousand years ago; for Reform two hundred years ago; and for Rabbi Kook, I don’t know, when the Messiah comes. But it’s the same move. And there is here a very far-reaching move.

There is even a Talmudic statement that says, “The commandments will be nullified in the future.” The medieval authorities (Rishonim) twist themselves into knots to explain how this does not contradict the eternity of Torah. “This Torah shall not be exchanged.” What does it mean, “The commandments will be nullified in the future”? Are commandments some sort of intermediate state until we are set right, and then we no longer need to perform commandments? So the medieval authorities (Rishonim) struggle greatly. And Rabbi Kook himself mentioned this in one of the previous chapters. But that is basically what he says—at least some of the commandments. Some of the commandments will be nullified because we have already passed beyond them; we are already good enough; we no longer need them. We climbed the ladder and now we throw it away. That is a very far-reaching statement.

Now there are… I’m saying this in extreme form; it appears later, because it is extreme, because there it is already in the realm of Jewish law itself. There are places where there is the same form of thought. Rabbi Kook presents the same form of thought, but it is somewhat different—not very, but somewhat. For example, there are places where Rabbi Kook speaks about why there are no court punishments today. Lashes or execution or things of that kind. He says: because our generation already cannot accept such a thing. Not because we are deteriorating. On the contrary, we are already at too high a level; it no longer suits us.

Now there too there is basically some statement about the… about the halakhic realm. But there it is a bit different, because there we know what the halakhic reason is that there are no court punishments today: because there is no ordained semikhah. Rabbi Kook is not claiming that therefore one should change Jewish law because it doesn’t fit. He gives a meta-historical explanation to a process that in any case is happening. So that’s still one thing. Right? Or why we do not kill Amalek today, why Amalek disappeared. Rabbi Kook says: today, at our moral level, it is impossible that we would be obligated to destroy a nation, down to children and women and infants. That cannot be. Now what does that mean? This commandment is nullified because there are no Amalekites, not because we have already improved. But Rabbi Kook comes with some kind of meta-halakhic or meta-historical explanation that explains the process from some theological point of view. So that is still more moderate.

Because here, basically, he is not saying: one must make a change because we are already perfected. He is only explaining why a change occurred for other reasons; it happened for prosaic reasons. But… but there are apparently also divine reasons here. So in that sense it is different from what he says regarding sacrifices. Because regarding sacrifices he also says—he does not say, look, this will be nullified because, I don’t know, there just won’t be animals anymore, but I’ll tell you why it is nullified: because we are already at a level… No. He says this must be nullified; it will not be. Even though there will be animals, it will not be, because we need to treat them properly. That is already a much more far-reaching statement.

But understand: on the other hand, it is really the exact same conceptual basis. Because ultimately in both these forms of argument there is some very, very far-reaching statement. A statement that says we see certain parts of Torah—not just worldview, but commandments of Torah—as intended for an intermediate time. Intended to improve us from our lowly state to bring us to a better state, and once we get there it is no longer relevant.

I read today on Ynet, I think, a ruling by Rabbi Cherlow: a car alarm that desecrates the Sabbath, a car alarm that disturbs the neighbors and the whole neighborhood. He permits turning it off in an unusual manner, meaning if not by a gentile then at least with a shinui or something like that. What do you see here? That an argument like disturbing the neighbors and the whole neighborhood and making noise suddenly carries such great weight that the classic Sabbath prohibition of disconnecting a running alarm begins to weaken.

Yes, although here I think I can—that one can explain it on the level of formal halakhic justifications. A rabbinic-level prohibition upon a rabbinic-level prohibition in the place of a commandment—that’s the rule. Thirty years ago they would not have said it because of the noise. Right. Because the force of an argument like how much it disturbs the quality of life of the surroundings… Although, you know, the casuistry that appears in the Rema says one may call a gentile to light a candle for us for the Sabbath meal because we are sitting in darkness. I don’t know if that is less far-reaching. People say that today they would say it less, but if so it is much easier, I think. What? Electricity, if it isn’t fire, if it isn’t sparks, if it… No, that’s what I’m saying. And he says it’s Torah-level to light a candle—why? Because we are sitting at the Sabbath meal in darkness. So when an entire neighborhood cannot sleep and loses its Sabbath pleasure, fine, one can justify that on the Sabbath formally. You are right in the practical sense—that perhaps they wouldn’t say it, and others even today wouldn’t say it. But I think this can still be justified with ordinary halakhic tools. Here there is a much more far-reaching argument. There is an argument that says: these commandments—not that I’ll find a technical way to nullify them. There is no technical way to nullify them. They will be nullified because they are not relevant. A classic Reform argument.

And Rabbi Kook says there is some time when, once humanity is perfected, the question is: how do we determine that? Does he give tools for that? Who says maybe that still hasn’t arrived, and who says it will keep not arriving? That is exactly, exactly the problem. He doesn’t say, okay, today we are already perfected so it can be nullified. Nowhere does he say that. He preserves that framework. It’s really not clear why. In some places we may see this later. In some places he does say that when days come when morality is in everyone’s heart and so on, then indeed the whole business will be nullified. Meaning, he sees the coming of the Messiah as something that marks the moment when we have reached the perfected state. And then the commandments will be nullified in a formal sense. Not that each person should now nullify them because he has decided that now we are already free. But this is the extremity of nullifying commandments. Along the way there are many additional layers to find. And that he already does himself. And that he already does himself—not on the halakhic plane, but on the plane of outlook. Or here, for example, on the plane of “do not stray,” which is already almost halakhic. How to relate to the study of external matters and so on. He makes the change already today, not at the coming of the Messiah.

But that’s why I say that in this chapter he moves through it this way. He begins with opinions; he brings the treatment of animals as an example—but an example of what? The paragraph that links the two things—yes, in the middle of page 46—the paragraph linking the two things is still talking about the earlier part, not about the treatment of animals. It basically says that analysis and wisdom and all that is a positive thing worthy of engagement, and the Torah expects us to engage in it. It’s not only that it’s not dangerous and there is no choice and so on. And the fact that until now we didn’t think that way—fine, because the generation was not fit. And today it is fit. So it’s not only because we deteriorated and there is no choice and otherwise everyone will be corrupted, but because on the contrary, because we rose. And today people are no longer willing to swallow nonsense. They want to clarify things with the intellect and see that this whole business really works. And in that sense this is the rise of the generation, not the decline of the generation.

And therefore the example later of animals only comes to give us the parable by way of the example of animals. But it is an example of this. Even though almost the whole chapter goes on about that issue. Fine.

Concluding remarks of Rabbi Michael Abraham, The Perplexities of the Generation, 13 Adar I 5771, February 17, 2011.