Introduction to the Talmud and Halakha, Part 3 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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

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[Speaker J] Not that I didn’t use it; at the end of the meeting I’d be happy to get sources, pages.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We live in the cloud, as the saying goes. Exactly. So there’s the second thing, meaning the second aspect when I talk about a dynamic tradition. The first was ongoing conceptualization. The second is adaptation to changing circumstances. Yes, very often those same principles, when you’re in different circumstances, get applied differently. And to apply them as-is is actually a mistaken application. So it looks like change, it looks like development, but the truth is it’s the opposite of development. Meaning, it’s an attempt to make sure you’re applying it correctly even though the circumstances have changed. Right? So for example, yes, the example I often use in this context is about some good friend of mine since childhood, some group of people walking in the desert in swimsuits. Their fathers walked that way and their grandfathers walked that way. At some point they reach a cold region. So some of these guys say, okay, it’s cold, we’re putting on parkas. The others say to them: you’re Reform, heretics, whatever you are, not committed to the rules. We have the tradition of our forefathers in our hands; we keep walking in swimsuits and pay the price. We’ll be cold, but we’re preserving the tradition. So obviously the first group are the Reformers and the second group are the conservatives. Okay? Now what would you say about the next, third group? The one that says: we’re putting on parkas, and if we’re putting on parkas we have a reason. Our forefathers who walked in swimsuits walked in clothing suited to the weather, because it was a hot region. Meaning, the rule we need to preserve, if tradition matters to us, is not the rule of walking in a swimsuit, but the rule of wearing clothes suited to the weather. Now if we’re in cold weather, then that very same rule—we’re not deviating from the rule—that very same rule tells us that now we need to put on a parka. Is that group conservative or Reform? At first instinct all the religious people will tell you that’s Reform. I know, because they say that about me; I often make arguments of this sort. Okay? But it’s not. That’s conservatism. It’s just conservatism that involves interpretation of the principle being preserved. And the conservatism of the first type says: they walked in swimsuits, I keep walking in a swimsuit, as-is, no interpretations, just whatever they did. I interpret the tradition, and after I interpret the tradition I preserve it with absolute devotion exactly like those conservatives. I just disagree with them about what that tradition is, what it says we need to preserve. Okay? It’s an interpretive dispute. And therefore, for example, when I put on a parka, people will often say: you’re choosing the convenient solution. It’s easy to choose. That’s why I’m always suspected of being Reform. But the truth is that, yes, too good to be kosher, as they say. But no, it’s not true that the principle is always too good to be kosher; sometimes what’s good is also kosher. And therefore it could be that this is the correct principle, and I’ll say more than that: if I really believe that you need to wear clothing suited to the weather, then someone who walks around in a swimsuit is a criminal. He’s paying a price, he’s paying a pointless price. He’s an idiot. Meaning, he both suffers and commits a transgression. So very often convenience leads us automatically to interpret who is conservative and who is Reform. But convenience is not a good criterion.

[Speaker C] Whoever wants to play it safe should take an even smaller swimsuit. Whoever wants to play it safe should take an even smaller swimsuit.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So the point is—this is a good example, I think, of the fact that very often what looks like a development of Jewish law or of the Oral Torah is merely a response to changing circumstances. But it’s the use, it’s the application, of those very same principles, completely preserved. Nothing changes. On the contrary: precisely the reason I don’t want to change the Torah and I think it’s eternal is what causes me to behave differently today from how my ancestors behaved, because the circumstances are different. Now there are various examples of this. For example, I once wrote a responsum about a quorum for prayer on Zoom. The rules for joining a prayer quorum require a shared roof, that everyone be under the same roof. Now on Zoom there isn’t one; everything is virtual, one person is in Australia and one is in Israel. Can you join them into a quorum? According to the accepted rules, no way. And I argued that once you understand that the circumstances today are different—and by the way, halakhic decisors, many of them, can’t understand this. Those who don’t use it, meaning decisors who don’t use it, don’t live in this world. They don’t really understand that when we talk about a site, we really mean a site; meaning, this is the people’s experience, we’re together in a meeting. In a Zoom meeting. It’s very hard to explain that to an elderly rabbi who has never seen it. Okay? And therefore he can’t issue a halakhic ruling about such a thing, because he doesn’t understand the situation he’s talking about.

[Speaker G] Can’t, or shouldn’t? Right, shouldn’t. But is there today a rabbi humble enough to say, I don’t understand what this is? Most aren’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Most aren’t.

[Speaker C] But there’s also a question of normative decision here—whether a Zoom meeting is an “abode” or not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. No, I’m saying, you can argue about that. I’m only saying: my claim, if you accept it, is not a Reform claim, it’s a conservative claim. I’m saying this is how people join a prayer quorum if virtual reality is part of our lives—which it wasn’t twenty or thirty or forty years ago. So there’s no point in following the precedents, at least not in the sense of applying them as-is. There is a point in following precedents, but in understanding what they did with the reality of their time and applying that accordingly to the reality of today. There’s a rule in the Talmud: “derive from it and from itself, and set it in its place.” When we compare two places to one another, we apply the analogy in accordance with the conditions of the new place, and we don’t take the result from there and transfer it as-is into the new place. Is there a practice of Zoom quorums? What? Is there a practice of Zoom quorums? No. No.

[Speaker B] So there’s performative conservatism versus essential conservatism. Right. There’s phenomenological conservatism—meaning, it looks the same.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I argue in favor of essential conservatism. Meaning, essential conservatism says: I use the same rules, I’m committed to those rules, I don’t dispute those rules, but I think their application can change if the circumstances are different. Think about the status of women, which today is different, so anyone today who innovates on the subject of women’s status—it’s very sensitive.

[Speaker C] And that really is the question, because there really is this aspect of the momentum of tradition, which says you need to stick to what we already know on the one hand, and on the other hand the ability to adapt yourself to environmental changes—which are really forces that clash a bit. Right, right, completely.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I’ll say more than that. In the wake of the Reform movement, which began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the world of Jewish law became very rigid. It became very afraid of changes. And then it got much worse. There was conservatism in the past too, but now conservatism became a kind of foundational value in halakhic thinking, because there’s always some fear that you’re going to breach the fences and head into Reform, and nothing will remain of the whole system. Which is not a concern I dismiss. But on the other hand, okay, there are things that are correct. You have concerns—deal with the concerns. But the question is whether it’s right or not.

[Speaker H] Rabbi, I suddenly do see a very interesting connection between the issue of interpretation and the matter of halakhic decision-making. And I want to ask you, precisely because of what you said about Zoom: since the use of interpretive tools and tools of exposition—maybe I’m not using the right term here—can sometimes be very broad. Meaning, you came and spoke about Zoom as an actual site; I don’t know on what basis exactly, but you’re relying here on some semantic similarity or something like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—semantics expresses essence, in my view. The perception of people that they really are sitting together.

[Speaker H] So you based it, for the sake of argument, on people’s feeling, okay. Now the thing is that I can sort of understand the side of the conservatives in the swimsuit example—how do they not create some mechanism that puts a few constraints, some limits, on this? Because theoretically anything you can interpret could become…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I already commented on this before, but I’ll say something. I’ve had countless arguments about this. First of all, I want to claim these are two different questions. The first question is who is right. The second question—what you’re asking—is basically: even if you’re right, maybe there is still a boundary problem here. I’m afraid of what will happen if I act this way, even if maybe you’re right. That’s a different question. I’m saying first of all, let’s argue about who is right. Okay? After we reach the conclusion that I’m right, now let’s see what we do with slippery-slope questions and all the boundary questions and things of that sort. Good questions, we need to think about them, and this isn’t the place—we could go on at length about this. But it’s very important to understand that these are two different questions. Because the question of whether I’m right has nothing to do with the question of whether what I’m saying is harmful. It may be harmful, fine, we’ll have to think—maybe not implement it. But first let’s see whether I’m right, and after that we’ll talk further.

[Speaker H] But is that really a feature of modern halakhic thinking—that the question of who is right has become the question of what is harmful? They bring in a lot of safeguards or something like that; it’s undergone that kind of transformation in the philosophy of Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s the influence, as I said before, probably that same influence of Reformism, and the feeling that slippery-slope considerations and “what will happen” considerations are always getting mixed together with the question of whether something is correct. Almost any discussion about the status of women in the synagogue or not in the synagogue—any discussion starts immediately from the question of what will happen, what will happen if we breach these fences, nothing will remain. Maybe that’s true, fine, all right—but let’s first discuss what is correct. After we decide what is correct, then let’s see what we do with it.

[Speaker H] Rabbi, the question—not who is right—the question of what reality this will create and the fear of a slippery slope, you turned that somewhat into a kind of meta-halakhic question, but isn’t it fair to say

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that it’s

[Speaker H] an integral part of Jewish law to take into account what kind of reality it creates?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, absolutely not. More than that—not only is it not an integral part of Jewish law, first of all every consideration of that type is by definition a rabbinic consideration. Okay? Already you see there’s a categorical difference. Meaning, any consideration that is not inherently correct but only derives from a concern that this might happen or that might happen is essentially a rabbinic consideration. Any such consideration cannot be a Torah-level consideration, so you already see that Jewish law does not accept it as an essential part of itself. Now, the sages do have a role in sometimes putting up fences because of slippery-slope considerations, and that is part of their role. But even that has limits of authority. A Sanhedrin can do that; a contemporary sage cannot do that, he simply lacks the authority even if he wants to.

[Speaker H] But Rabbi, even in the Torah sometimes it says, for example, not to take a bribe or something like that, because it blinds the eyes of the wise…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I could get into that issue, but the question of places where the reason is written explicitly in the Torah is a big question. We do not derive Jewish law from the reason of the verse. We do not derive law from the reasons for the commandments, and therefore certainly not from teleological reasons like these.

[Speaker E] Teleological.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are certain places where the Torah itself writes that reason. And therefore when it writes that reason, the question always arises—and it’s a dispute among the Tannaim, doesn’t matter—the question arises why it wrote it. And there are various answers to that—for example, maybe it’s there for an additional prohibition; it’s not a reason at all, it’s another prohibition. For example. And that’s a topic in its own right; I’ve written about it, but we won’t get into it. Okay, so for example, there’s another example in the Talmud; Maimonides rules this as Jewish law, a dispute in the Talmud. By the way, here’s one of the examples where he rules like Abaye even though it’s not one of the six examples the Talmud says are ruled like Abaye: “do not form separate factions.” “Do not make factions upon factions,” that’s how the Talmud expounds it—that it is forbidden to have two synagogues in one city. Do you know a city without two synagogues? Now this is a Torah prohibition that appears in all the legal authorities, in Maimonides, in the Shulchan Arukh, in all the decisors. And nobody obeys it. I barely even know of discussions about it in Jewish law. Meaning, it’s just not—it’s not an issue. Why not? Because it’s clear to everyone—they haven’t necessarily thought it through, but intuitively it’s obvious—that in our world geography plays less of a role. Because the world is dynamic: you fly from here to there, people move; it’s not that children and grandchildren die in the same place their grandfather lived, as in the old world. And therefore today you can’t remain anchored in a geographical piece of land. Today the concept of community or of place—apropos place, yes, the site on Zoom—even in the context of “do not form factions,” place is no longer what place used to be. It’s something else now. And therefore today there’s no problem at all—that’s already a community. There are Ashkenazim and Sephardim. That isn’t called two synagogues in one city; there’s the city of the Sephardim and the city of the Ashkenazim. Okay? Now of course it doesn’t have to be that those two cities conduct themselves separately. But with regard to synagogue, where customs are different, Jewish law sees no problem at all with having two synagogues if the customs are different. But it says it’s forbidden to have two synagogues in one city. It says that, yes, in one geographical city. Today a city is not geography. Today a city is geography times a Cartesian product, yes? Times ethnic identity, times origin. Okay?

[Speaker F] Is it street, opinion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not even that—you’re still staying in geography. No, no, no. Origin, for example. Place and origin. The product of those two—that’s what’s called a city, for example. Doesn’t matter, various things of that sort.

[Speaker J] But the question is: once we turn every word into something open to interpretation, then we can empty anything of content. So how do we decide here on the criteria by which we can…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll tell you—look, this is basically the question Uri asked me earlier. And the answer is twofold. First, it’s not true that you can do whatever you want. There is common sense. True, anyone can play dumb and make interpretations and do whatever he wants. He simply won’t be right. Today we have no means of enforcement against someone who violates Jewish law, even without finding excuses for it. He just publicly desecrates the Sabbath. So what? What can I do with him? No, nothing. There are no halakhic institutions with authority. Therefore offenders don’t need to find themselves interpretive excuses of the sort I gave earlier; they can just be offenders. And someone who is genuinely seeking the truth—there is no criterion. Meaning, if you really think this is right, let’s discuss it and see and make decisions. If there were an institution that made decisions—today there isn’t. If there were an institution that made decisions, we’d vote and the majority would determine it, and that would be perfectly fine. But there is common sense, and therefore this is part of that same alienation from positivism, which says: no, you won’t be able to close this off with some closed and rigid rules. No—it will proceed by common sense, in a soft way, by intuitions, and yes, there will be different opinions among people. And Jewish law developed a very, very rich and impressive system for coping with a diversity of opinions without decision. I don’t think there is another system as rich and sophisticated as Jewish law that deals with exactly this area, precisely because of the combination of these two things: for thousands of years we’ve had no institution that can decide, and on the other hand we also don’t have rules that tell us what is right and what is not right. The story is very anarchic. So what do you do? You could have fallen apart, or you could say: no, we learn to live with a diversity of opinions and somehow still manage to preserve some shared framework, often voluntary.

[Speaker J] But we do see that in Judaism there are, as you say, the Reformists, as it were. Meaning, there is an entire stream categorized as people who deviate from the norm you described. So what here, how…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, in my view they deviate, and in their view they do not deviate, so what can you do? There is no supreme institution now to enact a law that will bind everyone. There is no Sanhedrin, nothing like that. Judaism existed for thousands of years without a Sanhedrin, without central institutions, and that is exactly why it developed all these forms of life with diverse opinions. Meaning, how do we live with opinions where sometimes, according to my view, you are a terrible offender in very, very serious prohibitions, or vice versa, and still we can live together, marry, your daughter with my son, all kinds of things… And how do we formulate positions, how do we function despite the disagreements?

[Speaker J] There’s a very broad range of… wait, I’m trying to ask at the meta level, one level up. More… I look and I say: the public, society, okay? more or less agreed—there are Reformists and there are Orthodox. And the Orthodox will agree, they’ll say they’re Orthodox, and the Reformists will say they’re Reformists. Meaning, those two groups have accepted that definition for themselves. So I’m asking at the level of definition, okay? How did this separation suddenly come about, one that really is accepted by the general public, that there are these two groups with a characteristic they themselves accept as a self-definition? What was different here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The answer to that question lies on the plane of sociology, not on the plane of Jewish law. There is no halakhic significance to the title Reform or Orthodox. These are concepts from the world of sociology. In the halakhic world there is only someone committed to the commandments and someone who is not. What interpretation you give to the commandments… you need categories. There are different kinds of interpretations, such and such, but the question is whether you are committed or not. And I think here the definition is fairly sharp. The Reform, for example, are not committed to the commandments. It’s not that they give a different interpretation. They are not committed at the principled level. For them it is some kind of folklore, I don’t know, a recommendation of one sort or another, but they are not obligated. In that sense I think the definition is fairly sharp. But within, say, Modern Orthodoxy, which often looks very similar to Reform in how it conducts itself—because it too puts on a parka when it’s cold, and the Reform also put on a parka when it’s cold. But the difference between Modern Orthodoxy and Reform is that Modern Orthodoxy gives a reason why it’s putting on a parka. Meaning, it claims it has a different halakhic interpretation. Now, you can accept that or not accept that, but all these arguments have accompanied Jewish law for thousands of years. Do the Reform do whatever they want? Yes, what they think—more or less. There are no binding rules there. Even if the rabbinical council, if they have some rabbinical council there, determines something, it doesn’t really bind the public. It doesn’t even bind the local rabbis. It doesn’t. The local rabbis make the decisions themselves, and their decisions do not bind the community. There are of course many shades of Reform, but generally speaking, a Reform person is someone not really committed to Jewish law. Simply put—if he makes a change, he won’t bother bringing the midrash that explains that change in terms of halakhic sources. He isn’t obligated to. Sometimes he’ll do it, but he doesn’t have to. He can make the change without that too.

[Speaker H] There’s no source of authority for him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. It’s a source of inspiration, not a source of authority.

[Speaker H] Different from the Conservatives, I think.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Conservatives, in my opinion, are entirely within the halakhic world. Entirely. Okay. The confusion between Conservatives and Reform is simply

[Speaker H] because

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] sociologically they’re similar, but essentially they’re completely different. Conservatives are a stream within the halakhic world, completely. Okay. I’ll move on. So that’s with regard to what is called tradition. Very often traditionalism is perceived as a kind of conservatism. But when you see conservatism through these lenses, you understand that conservatism itself is a very dynamic concept. And tradition is a tradition that preserves intensely, but the question is what exactly it preserves. It reminds me of a story: once I said to a friend of mine who taught with me in Yeruham—I said to him, listen, in Bnei Brak they always tell a story that at Merkaz HaRav there is a lot of fear of Heaven, it’s just not clear which Heaven they fear there. So he was shocked. Why? Because he told me: do you know the source of that joke? I said no. He said: Rabbi Kook. When Rabbi Kook arrived in the Land of Israel and saw the people of the old settlement in Jerusalem, he said: listen, there is a lot of fear of Heaven there, but what a constricted Heaven they fear there, what a gloomy, dark Heaven, and so on. Meaning, we preserve very devotedly, but we disagree about what to preserve. Meaning, it’s a different Heaven. Everyone fears Heaven; the only question is which Heaven. Fine, so let’s move on. So that’s about the dynamics of tradition. Torah study and the commandment of Torah study. We’re starting to get closer to ourselves. There is a very fundamental value in the Torah world, and that is the commandment of Torah study, and I distinguish it from Torah study itself. The commandment of Torah study and Torah study are two different things. The commandment of Torah study, in principle, can be fulfilled by reciting the Shema morning and evening; if you said it, you have fulfilled your obligation. The Talmud says this, okay? But the ethos of Torah study in the Jewish world is far, far broader. On the contrary, there there is neglect of Torah study for every moment that you are not studying, if you could have studied—that is neglect of Torah study. Meaning, in principle you need justification for every moment you are not studying. There are justifications; it’s not that you have to be hysterical. But you do need justification. Meaning, every moment that you’re not studying requires justification.

[Speaker C] Does making a model in Judaism count, friends?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There—we already have a justification. So the distinction I make between the commandment of Torah study and Torah study itself—what matters to me is Torah study, not the commandment of Torah study. The commandment of Torah study is a halakhic discussion. It’s one of the 613 commandments. But Torah study is perhaps one of the most fundamental values in the traditional Torah world. Now one of the reasons—and I spoke about this with some of you in the past—I think one of the reasons information databases in the Torah world are so significantly ahead of their time, despite the fact that the Torah world is generally quite conservative and slow and rather primitive, let’s put it that way, and yet here it is very advanced—one of the reasons is that although we’re a small people, the percentage of learners within this small people is enormous. There’s no field that is studied in every home. Fields are entrusted to experts; there are experts who deal with them, or hobbyists, all good. But here, in every home committed to Torah and commandments, in one way or another people study Torah. A little here, a little there. Some cut corners more, some less, but it is present there. And therefore even though the public as a whole is small, the Responsa Project was an information database ahead of its time even in its techniques, by the way, also in its technologies, but also in the very idea, because it is simply found in every home—they keep it there. Meaning, in the homes of ordinary people, not just among experts and the like. And the same goes for Otzar HaHochma, which is much more expensive and more comprehensive. These are not things you can understand when you’re talking about a population that is in total—how many observant Jews are there altogether, I don’t know, maybe two million, less. In my view less than two million in the world. I mean worldwide. Okay.

[Speaker D] How many such people are there?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s nothing. It’s a truly tiny population when you’re talking about Facebook and Google, yes? It’s not—you’re not even in those orders of magnitude. But out of those two million, the percentage of households engaged—or people engaged—in Torah study is very, very large. Meaning, it’s a very fundamental ethos. And therefore I think this is also a lesson for us, that we need to understand what we’re standing before. On the one hand the audience is relatively small; on the other hand, if we manage to crack things that are relevant, the potential—the percentage within that small audience—is high. Now this of course requires us to continue on to the types of learners and types of learning. And that too is obviously something we have to take into account. So the types of learners—I don’t know, I collected a list here, I’m not sure I covered everything, but these are the types. There’s a yeshiva student, there’s a halakhic decisor and a rosh yeshiva—that’s a contrast in a certain sense. A rosh yeshiva is connected more to the analytic scholar; a decisor is someone who rules on practical law. There are people who learn by the method of pilpul. Pilpul has become a pejorative term, so anyone who learns in a way they don’t like is called a pilpulist, but pilpul is also methods of

[Speaker C] learning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Lithuanian learning. Those who don’t like the Lithuanian style say they are engaging in pilpul. But before it became a pejorative, yes, people would say “I engage in pilpul,” and it wasn’t a pejorative. There is a Talmud scholar or an academic learner. There is in-depth study and broad-coverage study. Broad-coverage study is when someone learning a passage tries to understand what it says and then moves on. In-depth study is—well, that was broad-coverage. In-depth study is when I start asking conceptual questions, questions about what lies behind the statements, all kinds of things of that sort. I’ll want to demonstrate this later, but we’re not there yet. So these are different types of learners, and each of them requires different responses. The analytic scholar and the rosh yeshiva will usually need something like a shiur editor, what Erez talks about not infrequently—help organizing a lecture or preparing a lecture, or answering analytic questions, analytic difficulties, things I don’t understand. By contrast, a decisor will need information more, and maybe also halakhic thinking, but mainly information, I think. Therefore the needs of the different learners derive from the different ways they engage with Torah. And if we want to meet those needs, we need to think about which learner we have in mind. For example, there is a Talmud scholar, and he often asks contextual questions—the status of the background of the passage, why this question arose, in which study hall this happened, what the influences were, all sorts of things of that kind.

[Speaker C] But among the interests, the Talmudic scholarship you’re describing is, in some sense, a bit in the worlds of philology and not necessarily—there’s also proper dedicated research, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is substantive research on the margins, on the margins. It’s found more in Hebrew law than in Talmud, substantive research. Talmud is more the archaeology of passages. But true, you know, there are academic professors and Talmud scholars who lean more in the substantive direction—Nesher, for those who know, or things like that—who definitely deal with substance. Boyarin. Boyarin maybe too. But most Talmudic research is not like that. Most Talmudic research is fairly technical, philological. And even among them they deal with philology, but philology is the infrastructure on which they build the substantive questions, as opposed to the traditional learner, who does not deal with that infrastructure at all. The traditional learner almost never deals with philology, almost never deals with textual variants.

[Speaker C] In contrast to what you’re saying about Hebrew law, you’re basically bringing it somewhat into a more academic world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about the academic departments. And within the academic world, those engaged in substantive research are more often people in Hebrew law than people in Talmud. Talmud scholars are more—it’s again a schematic division, there are always some here and some there—but Talmud researchers generally engage in philology, in the formation of the text, in influences, in clarifying versions, which version is more accurate, comparing manuscripts, all kinds of things like that. The traditional learner doesn’t deal with that. Doesn’t deal with it at first because people weren’t even aware of this matter; it’s more modern thinking. But afterward it also became an ideology.

[Speaker C] And that’s very strange to me, Rabbi, because for example in the end anyone who starts from yeshiva students and things like that are people trying to understand what is written in the Talmud. Their natural continuation would be to try to investigate the essences.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The essences, yes, but not philology. Not philology. Yes, that’s what I said.

[Speaker C] So why specifically Hebrew law? Substantive research. Substantive research of the Talmud, that’s what I mean.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying: the traditional learner doesn’t deal with philology at all. Almost not at all, it’s extremely rare, almost never. He doesn’t investigate textual variants; it doesn’t interest him.

[Speaker C] But you don’t define them as researchers?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—learner, I said. The opposite, the reverse of researchers; I’m talking about traditional learners. Researchers for me, for simplicity’s sake, means academics. Okay.

[Speaker C] There isn’t some version of researchers who are simply traditional people continuing the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is. There is. And therefore those researchers who, despite being researchers, also deal with substance and not only philology and that sort of thing—they almost always come from the traditional world. They have yeshiva education, they have a yeshiva background, they come from there. And even those who come from there don’t always deal with substance; they move on to deal with philology. These are all generalizations, of course, but they are generalizations with real substance. Okay? They are firmly grounded in what happens on the ground.

[Speaker I] Where do you place the ordinary laymen among these types?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, the laymen—I haven’t brought them in yet. A layman is usually a person who studies, in most cases—again, these are all generalizations—in most cases broad-coverage study rather than in-depth study. He goes through Daf Yomi, he wants to dedicate times for Torah every day, to be a righteous person. Basically, I always say he’s not neglecting Torah study, not that he is studying Torah. He doesn’t want to neglect Torah study. That’s the point. And he engages in Torah, but he has no pretensions. He doesn’t want to grow, he doesn’t want to create, and he doesn’t—and there are other laymen too. There are laymen who also do significant things. But I mean as a heading, as the tag “layman,” when people say “study for laymen” they usually mean someone who studies broad coverage, usually Daf Yomi or something like that, and wants to stay connected to Torah in some way, but does not deal much with analytic questions and research and things like that. He simply studies the Talmud. The primary product we’re talking about is a product supposed to serve him. Okay. Now there are several kinds of questions that arise through several kinds of learners, as I described. I see here that I’m already getting near the end, so I’ll just do this briefly. There are questions of the historical context of the passage, questions of textual clarification, comparison among different manuscripts and trying to understand what is really written. There are whole pilpul structures built in the traditional world that rest on a mere error in the textual version. And whatever, there’s a very strong ideological stubbornness: it simply doesn’t matter. By the way, I can even justify that, but I haven’t developed it, and I won’t go into it here. There are disputes over whether the Talmud is a unified text. If I have a contradiction between two passages, do I need to reconcile it at all? Or not—fine, these are different passages, they were joined into this corpus called Talmud, but it doesn’t have to be coherent. Now already among the traditional later authorities, sages like Yam Shel Shlomo and others in the sixteenth century, they speak of this as a difference in approach among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). The Tosafists made the Talmud into a ball—that’s how he puts it. Meaning, something coherent, cohesive, where if there’s a contradiction between passages you have to reconcile it, you need to resolve it. There cannot be a contradiction. Sometimes when they have no choice they say there is a dispute between passages, but that’s a last resort. That’s among the Tosafists. By contrast, the sages of Spain—the Rif, even Maimonides, and the sages of Spain—tend more toward local thinking, and if there’s a contradiction between passages they will more easily say: then the passages disagree. Again, it’s not extreme. They too will try to reconcile, but broadly speaking those really are two such tendencies.

[Speaker C] In the world of the Talmudic sages too, sometimes they allow saying there’s no decision between two opinions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No decision, that’s obvious. I’m saying they even resolve a contradiction by saying this one said it and someone else said that. So how can you raise a contradiction from one person against another person? You can’t challenge one person from another. It’s simply two study houses, two people, and therefore yes, correct. Now this point really returns in our time: in the academic world the thinking is more local. In the academic world they will not reconcile contradictory passages in most cases. Even the substantive researchers won’t reconcile contradictory passages; they’ll say this is a development, this arose here, this arose there, this developed from there, this developed from here. The substantive researchers will just also explain the substantive difference between this study house and that study house. But they won’t reconcile it. They’ll still say this is one study house and that is another study house.

[Speaker C] But Rabbi, you yourself did that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker C] You gave us—you said when we discussed the topic of someone causing hidden damage to another person’s property, you gave a solution that reconciles the passage and essentially says there is no contradiction here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. In the yeshiva I choose to reconcile the passages; I’m not an academic. No, really—that’s the world in which I work. In those senses I’m certainly not an academic. So this dispute really reaches the issue of the learners I described earlier in our time. Academics have a more encompassing way of thinking; they’ll look at the whole picture to explain how it developed, but they won’t look at the whole picture as one whole that needs to be reconciled and explained, how these things…

[Speaker C] They describe more than they actually—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and the substantive researchers not only describe but also explain what stands behind the positions, where the substantive dispute lies. But they won’t reconcile it; they are not inclined to reconcile things. The traditional learner today at least tends more toward the Ashkenazi approach of the Tosafists—the approach that says the enterprise is unified, and when we have a contradiction we need to reconcile it, find an answer, broadly speaking. There are always tendencies this way and that way, but in general I think that divides the learners in this way. A few more points—can we continue or are we…? Just a few small points. In the ethos of the new analytic learning, which is basically what is accepted in the Lithuanian yeshivot—but also, say, the Religious Zionist yeshivot mostly follow the Lithuanian yeshivot. Not all of them, but most. The analytic ethos was formed there in, you could say, the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century the current analytic conception was really crystallized—it continues to develop, but the foundations were laid there by Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, Rabbi Shimon Shkop, and several great Torah scholars who were in Lithuania at the beginning of the twentieth century, the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth. In the Brisker world, which is considered perhaps the most fundamental infrastructure of contemporary learning, the basic approach is that we ask only what, not why. What in psychology is called behaviorism, for example. You look at the behavior and don’t look at the question of what lies in the subconscious that motivates this behavior. So here too—this kind of phenomenology. I say: let’s see what is written, and I’ll offer definitions, not explanations. Explanations are invalid there—definitions. I’ll define what this one says and what that one says. Now if you ask why this says this and that says that—that’s not a legitimate question. Their justification is that we are too small in relation to the great ones, we can’t understand them and all that sort of thing. We can only define what they said. Fine, I don’t know if that’s the real explanation, but that’s the explanation they usually give. But in practice you need to understand that very often in yeshivot they really don’t ask what—they ask only why. And therefore very often you’ll find there explanations that seem very far from common sense. Because if it explains the facts well and reconciles them, and sets up a coherent structure that represents Maimonides’ position well on all the points in the passage, and that other one is another coherent structure representing Rashba’s position, then as far as I’m concerned I’ve done the job. The fact that the coherent structure doesn’t make sense, sounds unreasonable, doesn’t fit common sense—that doesn’t matter. In the yeshiva world—again, “doesn’t matter” is an extreme formulation. In the yeshiva world the emphasis is much more on coherence than on understanding, than on whether it makes sense or not.

[Speaker C] Meaning, basically they examine what they’re telling me I’m supposed to do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even more so, even when you’re not talking about practical Jewish law. You’re looking at what the law is, what the legal rule says and what the person said.

[Speaker C] But inside the Talmud itself there are a lot of disputes and explanations and entering into the essences themselves.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True. The Amoraim were allowed; the Amoraim were allowed because they were great, and we are small.

[Speaker C] But they know what they said? The Amoraim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But we are small.

[Speaker C] No, we know what they said, not why.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We only understand the what. Again, there is no what without why—that’s nonsense, childish. You can’t answer the question of what unless you understand the why.

[Speaker H] Sometimes at least the why also appears.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sometimes the why appears too, but from their perspective that doesn’t mean much.

[Speaker C] I’m saying it’s a childish distinction—there’s no what without why. It’s a matter of understanding in the narrow sense, so that you’ll know how to project it onto your behavior. Syntax without semantics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is a very analytical foundation.

[Speaker H] Right, it’s completely analytical.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It also grew, incidentally, in parallel to Wittgenstein in a very, very clear way. In any case, again, without direct influence—they didn’t know each other in any way—but yes, that really was the zeitgeist exactly. But this distinction, you have to understand, is very present. Meaning, it’s important to understand it and recognize its existence, even though in essence they are asking why—they just don’t call it that and don’t define it that way—but it’s very important to understand it. I’ll try to demonstrate it when I give a more substantive lecture. But it’s important to recognize this, and maybe I can finish with…

[Speaker H] Where does Rabbi Shimon Shkop fit into this, maybe, now that you brought it up?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks why more than Rabbi Chaim does, but even he can be converted for the benefit of the Brisker method. Okay. There’s a story—well, a well-known story, a founding myth in the yeshiva world. They once came with a question to Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, and he sent the question to the greatest halakhic decisor of that generation, Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan of Kovno. And he said to him: answer me only yes or no, without reasons. Because if you answer me with one reason, I’ll find ten reasons against you. I’m better than you at reasons. I want you to tell me yes or no. And that’s part of the point, and it’s very common. Incidentally, he was the rabbi of Brisk, he received a salary to be the rabbi of Brisk, and for every question of Jewish law he would send people to Rabbi Simcha Zelig, the religious court judge, to answer their halakhic questions. He did not answer halakhic questions. Now why not? It’s not because maybe he wasn’t smart enough. On the contrary—it was because he was too smart. Meaning, a person with very highly developed analytical abilities—and he definitely was a person with amazing analytical abilities—can explain anything. Now go decide on that basis. It’s like postmodernism. There are certain assumptions from which a conclusion follows, and it’s coherent. There are opposite assumptions from which a conclusion follows, and that too is coherent. Now you ask yourself: but who is right? So the postmodernist will tell you: these are different narratives; there’s no right or wrong here, the question is which narrative you live in. Rabbi Chaim is exactly that. Meaning, there is no right. What does right mean? I don’t know how to decide who is right. This one says this and that one says that. What remains is the what and not the why, remember? So I made the what coherent, and I also made the opposite of the what coherent, and I don’t know how to decide. The craft of the halakhic decisors—just a second—the craft of the halakhic decisors is to say yes or no, to make a decision. But halakhic decisors really are usually, in most cases, weaker in their analytical abilities. When I spoke about a lamdan and rosh yeshiva as opposed to a halakhic decisor, beyond the difference in field of occupation, it’s also a difference in abilities. A halakhic decisor usually has some kind of intuition for deciding. Assuming he decides correctly—it’s hard to check that—but that’s the accepted belief. A lamdan and rosh yeshiva has analytical abilities that are sometimes amazing, but because of that he also loses the ability to decide. Analytical ability does not let you decide. You can explain anything and set it up coherently, and now go check who is right. You can’t determine who is right through an analytical argument, because what you’re testing is which foundational assumptions are correct, not whether the conclusion follows from the foundational assumptions. That is not the craft of an analytical sage. That the one who is right is the one who argued last. Yes, so people start arriving at all kinds of rules of that sort.

[Speaker J] Maybe one last comment, if you’ll allow me—there’s also a story, there’s a well-known joke. I’m asking forgiveness in advance from some of those concerned, in the world—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the yeshiva world they say: we argue about Maimonides, Maimonides could come and tell us—

[Speaker J] What, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It says here that I actually meant to say this and not what you’re saying. So they would say to him: what does Frank know about Maimonides? Meaning, yes, Sephardim—as if that counts for less in the world of… what? I want maybe to connect this a bit to knowledge extraction. I think that… okay, wait, let me just finish the comment and then you can speak. Sure, after you finish, sorry. No, no, I want to say: there’s a very interesting debate between Yehoshua Hutner, who initiated and edited the Talmudic Encyclopedia, and the Seridei Esh, one of the most important halakhic decisors of the 20th century, considered somewhat to have the temperament of a researcher, a bit more modern, not classically Haredi, but in principle belonging more or less to the Haredi world, you could say. So there’s a very interesting debate between them on this question: when Rabbi Chaim explained Maimonides—and Rabbi Chaim usually explained Maimonides, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, yes, this lamdan—he built wonderful analytical structures there; it’s first-rate analytic philosophy. He did this in order to explain the contradictions in Maimonides and reconcile Maimonides and so on. And there are jokes in yeshivas that if Maimonides saw this, he would faint from laughter—meaning, he never dreamed of what Rabbi Chaim is saying on his behalf. So there really is an exchange of letters between them, and the Seridei Esh says: look, Rabbi Chaim—there’s no doubt, he absolutely did not mean it; Maimonides absolutely did not mean what Rabbi Chaim says. But this is Rabbi Chaim—he too is an important Jew—so let’s study him. Meaning, we are not studying Maimonides; we are studying Rabbi Chaim. And the Seridei Esh argued against him—and I also agree with the Seridei Esh—the Seridei Esh argued against him: that’s not true, we are studying Maimonides. Because many times—and I can show you examples, countless examples—many times when you come with very strong analytical abilities, and Maimonides did not have the analytical abilities that we have today—it’s a different era, not because he was less smart, it’s a different era, analytical thinking was less developed at that time—when we come with our analytical tools today, we decipher what stood behind Maimonides’ consciousness. And even if we asked him and he said no, he would be mistaken and we would be right. It could be that he is mistaken and we are right, because behind the words, if he understood this language and was proficient in using these tools, it could be that he too would understand that this is really what he said. And that’s not absurd; it’s not baseless. There is a eulogy by Rabbi Kook for the Sochatchover, the author of Avnei Nezer, the Rebbe of Sochatchov, where he says there is a contradiction in the Talmud. In one place it says that Rabbi Eliezer never said anything he had not heard from his teacher. In another place it says that he said things no ear had ever heard. So he says that Rabbi Eliezer sometimes heard from his teacher things that no ear had ever heard, including his teacher’s own ear. But I understand something in a rabbi that he himself does not understand that this is what he is saying. And that definitely can be; it’s not absurd at all. It’s a matter of using tools that he doesn’t have—he didn’t have those tools, and I do have those tools.

[Speaker H] It’s a bit like Rabbi Akiva tying crowns onto the letters and Moses our teacher—it’s exactly the same dynamic.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can definitely explain it that way there too.

[Speaker H] Okay, more power to you, very nice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is—

[Speaker H] What we’re trying to do to your brain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s it for now. Next time, when you’re here, maybe we’ll take a Talmudic topic / passage and try to see this in practice.

[Speaker H] Yes, okay—

[Speaker J] What I wanted to say is just, first of all, what you just said is why meta-analysis is an effective thing. And often there isn’t the ability to do meta-analysis for the one writing initially, only for those who come afterward. But I think you came and said: that same analyst, that same analytical person who tries and reaches a point where he can’t decide, is a bit at a loss. So I think that for us, when we produce inference pipelines, or inference processes, we’ll need to create scoring mechanisms so that we actually can decide. So what is a good explanation? Or what is satisfactory? If we know how to create good enough criteria, then maybe we’ll be able to do these things.

[Speaker C] That’s a task—I don’t know if it’s impossible, but it’s very, very difficult. Even so, it’s better to think about a strong argument standing behind an answer to some question of Jewish law, and to give an argument on one side and even set up a counter-argument on the other side, than to decide at this stage of our lives. I’m just saying: the issue of decision is not the main thing right now; formulating an answer well is the main thing.

[Speaker J] No, right, I’m just saying that we’ll probably be able to generate an enormous quantity—as the degrees of freedom increase—an enormous quantity of scenarios. So we won’t be able to flood the learner, or whoever it is, with such an enormous quantity. In the end we’ll have to decide, because the person in front of us ultimately has a limited capacity to grasp. So okay.

[Speaker H] Hananel, tell me—going back to Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. I want for a moment to understand a bit more what this looks like in practice, because you said they deal a lot with describing the what. Meaning, maybe a very analytical characterization of the structure of the various opinions they identify in the course of the Talmudic give-and-take. Does that ultimately boil down to a kind of taxonomy? Meaning, we have the one who argued X in the most detailed way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a taxonomy, but not one given in advance. Meaning, it’s not that you have an ontology and now you dress it onto some point on this branch. You produce it.

[Speaker H] Nice. So in that case, what would reconciling contradictions look like? Meaning, you came and described X here, and essentially two laws, for example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A classic analytical reconciliation of contradictions. Two laws means, essentially, that you’re talking about two different aspects of the topic / passage. Got it.

[Speaker H] So it will always be analytical, but are there also synthetic moments?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.

[Speaker H] So then how—what—will they prove equivalence, as it were? Like, what are the techniques for coming and combining them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there are several kinds of synthesis; I wrote about this. The simplest synthesis is: after you do the analysis into two laws, you say both laws exist here together. Meaning, under certain circumstances this law is dominant and that one is recessive.

[Speaker H] But the connection is contingent?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, an essential connection.

[Speaker H] Within—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Within this halakhic concept there are two aspects, and both are there. It’s just that until Rabbi Chaim, people didn’t notice that there were two aspects there. Now once you separated them into two aspects, that is the analytical part of the discussion. After you have that part—like a dialectic, yes—then you basically do a synthesis. And the simplest synthesis is simply to combine them. There are more sophisticated syntheses that say: I fuse them, I don’t combine them. I fuse them and create something new here out of these two. Layered composition and blended composition of the Rogatchover. Interesting. And there definitely are synthetic steps there.

[Speaker C] Very interesting. Nimrod, tell Hananel: fuse and not combine, okay? It’ll be better for him.

[Speaker H] So what, do they make some kind of—like—a breakdown of the kinds of fusions they do? Are there lists like that of techniques, and that too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s one of the tasks I once thought of doing.

[Speaker H] And?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doing—not thought of doing, I didn’t do it.

[Speaker H] And why not in the end?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, good question. To make some kind of classification of techniques of analysis and synthesis. Analysis and synthesis within existing Talmudic conceptual thinking, just to go over those techniques and try to map them.

[Speaker J] Because in the end, when we think about reasoning and all that, if we want to use LLMs, we need protocols like that, we need—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are books that try a bit to deal with this topic, but there is no book that presents an encyclopedia of techniques. Meaning, I don’t know of one. There are books that try to distinguish a few techniques and show that they appear in a few places. But there are such books.

[Speaker H] And that sounds exactly like the kind of thing that somewhat goes against the DNA of Talmudic discussion as you described it. Meaning, if that exists, then they’ll do something else now.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it’s analytical while the Talmudic discussion is entirely synthetic. It is, yes, correct.

[Speaker H] Do we have—

[Speaker J] Do we have access to those texts you just described? Sure, in digital form.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I assume so, we just need to check which database each one is in, but yes, they exist. There are lots of texts like that, because all the Talmudic conceptual literature of the last several decades is entirely like that. All the conceptual-Talmudic books published in recent decades are of that type. But Nimrod would prefer to read it on a Kindle before going to sleep.

[Speaker J] I’d prefer that we really have such a repository. It doesn’t have to be institutional in order to get to sleep, when you go to sleep, yes. Look, that way too, you know, you really could do—as you say—you could write an academic article that way and also make an academic contribution. But besides that, it could really serve us well. I think probably not only in this domain, but it’s quite likely that some of these techniques could be transferred to other fields.

[Speaker H] What do you think about that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. There’s nothing special here to the Torah world. These are completely general thinking techniques.

[Speaker K] And following that, then maybe specifically in philosophical domains and so on there—

[Speaker H] This is a fascinating discussion, I’m really looking forward to it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Absolutely, absolutely. Really—

[Speaker H] Interesting.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Incidentally, even in the philosophical world, I don’t think there’s a complete taxonomy of forms of argument. No.

[Speaker H] There are efforts, though—like all the argumentative schemes and things like that, so they’re starting to pile things up there, but apparently it’s not exhausted.

[Speaker J] Do you have any name there? You say it’s not an encyclopedia, but do you know how to give me accepted and familiar names of techniques? Are there such names, or even cases where they didn’t give a technique a name?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are “two laws,” “object and person” — these are names in the world of Brisk. But every such pair—I can now do a Brisker analysis of the Brisker method, and I’ll show you that underneath the distinction of object and person sit three or four different distinctions. And that, by the way, I already did. Or “between two laws”—that too is used in several ways. So when you want to make a full taxonomy, those names are really only a starting point.

[Speaker J] Okay, excellent. Thank you.

[Speaker K] Nimrod, but what I asked earlier was that maybe you don’t necessarily have to start from this. If the Rabbi says this doesn’t exist in the Jewish world, but these techniques are accepted techniques, then maybe it’s actually worth going to the philosophical world, where things are more defined, and taking it from there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that when we get to that level, we need to work together. I think philosophy and lamdanut completely converge at this stage, completely. These are exactly the same techniques.

[Speaker J] I think that if we look at complexity, then today we’re at the stage of the basic knowledge layers and the associative layers—let’s say softer things like concepts, where even if we’re not a hundred percent precise in how we connect texts to concepts and then to authors and then to writers, we can already run more interesting analyses. The level of precision is relatively more flexible and fluid. Once we want to really do logical analyses, lines of reasoning, then we’ll truly need to reach precision both in the procedure and in the representation of the knowledge. So that’s a higher level of difficulty, but in my opinion that’s really where a lot is hidden.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s worth research in its own right. I think taking several lamdanim and several analytic philosophers, sitting them down to work on philosophy or on Judaism not in our context, and characterizing the forms of analysis and synthesis that exist there. And I’ve already done a few things like that.

[Speaker H] You did a bit? Yes. No, but there I didn’t characterize techniques.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I did a specific topic / passage that we talked about.

[Speaker H] So there you go—doing the transfer to logic in itself has value, like, that could be super interesting. Actually, they have that group at Hebrew University that did something like that?

[Speaker J] I—

[Speaker C] I know them, some of them are friends of mine, and yes, nice. Four point six and thinking five point two—that’s our analytic gang. The analytics took the most beating. Okay—

[Speaker F] That’s the quote for the end of the— Thank you, Rabbi. Menashe, how are you? Great, I’m perfectly fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today at four-thirty we’re in the sync—

[Speaker H] Philosophical as well.

[Speaker K] Dudi also pushed for it.

[Speaker H] Is Yossi missing from the philosophical sync?

[Speaker K] Yes, yes, actually we don’t have time anymore for a philosophical sync, maybe tomorrow. I have lots of things to talk with you about. Talk to me.

[Speaker H] Actually I’ll finish the sync in a few minutes.