Morality, Faith, and Halacha – Lesson 5 – 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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Table of Contents
- Weakness of will, the animal soul and the divine soul, and responsibility
- The difficulty of understanding idolatry through self-interest or impulse
- The impulse toward idolatry, cultural change, and modern examples
- An argument about compulsion, punishment, and reservations about the impulse explanation
- Culture, testimony about miracles, and David Hume’s witness argument
- Statistics, the “law of small numbers,” and criticism of miracle stories
- The approach to the aggadic literature of the Sages according to Maimonides
- Rabbi Nachman’s turkey story: the plot and two difficulties
- An illness that can be cured: a healthy inner point, autosuggestion, and a theory that justifies impulse
- Maimonides on “we compel him until he says, ‘I want to’” as a non-mystical explanation
- Practical ramifications: atheists, kiddushin, and coercion
- Steven Weinberg, 1984, and self-persuasion under pain
- A solution to the riddle of idolatry: autosuggestion between belief and responsibility
Summary
General Overview
The text presents moral behavior as the result of a value-based choice rather than of interests, and explains weakness of will as a state in which a person “drops the reins” and lets impulses lead him, even though he remains responsible because the choice not to choose is itself a decision. It raises the difficulty of how idolatry can be understood through weakness of will, suggests that there once was an “impulse toward idolatry” that underwent cultural sublimation, but argues that this still does not solve the problem because idolatry depends on belief. It uses Rabbi Nachman’s turkey story to deepen the account of autosuggestion: a person builds a theory that allows him to sin until he becomes consciously convinced by it, even though he has an inner point that knows the truth; from this it develops a model explaining how idolatry can be both “belief” and moral responsibility.
Weakness of will, the animal soul and the divine soul, and responsibility
Moral behavior is created by a value judgment rather than by the operation of interests. The author of the Tanya describes the religious struggle as a struggle between an animal soul and a divine soul, not between good and evil, and the philosophical translation of that is weakness of will. Weakness of will is a state in which a person conducts himself like an animal soul and lets impulses lead him, whereas a divine soul means holding the reins and leaving control in the hands of the will. Responsibility remains even when one acts out of a weak will, because the person is responsible for the decision “to let the horses take him” and not remain in the mode of a chooser.
The difficulty of understanding idolatry through self-interest or impulse
The text poses a difficulty in understanding idolatry: if the worshiper truly believes in the idol, then he is compelled; and if he does not believe, then why would he worship it? It rejects a solution based on self-interest such as money or popularity as a full solution, because then it looks like a game and not like idolatry in the sense of belief. It argues that even an explanation in terms of drive or impulse remains problematic, because one can still ask whether there is belief in the idol here or not, and if there is no belief then the claim arises that this is not idolatry at all. The point is sharpened: how can there even be a sin of idolatry in terms of weakness of will?
The impulse toward idolatry, cultural change, and modern examples
The text compares idolatry to sexual impulse: in adultery with a married woman it is easy to understand how a person fails even though he understands that it is wrong, because there is an impulse and weakness of will. In idolatry, it is hard for a modern person to understand such a failure because that impulse “doesn’t exist for us,” and therefore it is hard to imagine idol worship without belief. It interprets the Talmudic statement that the Sages “nullified” this impulse not literally but as sublimation and repression over the generations, so that the impulse is not present in ordinary consciousness. It brings testimony about trance parties where the names of Indian idols are thrown around and statues appear, and also mentions pictures from the Nova party in which cultic figures were seen, to argue that maybe the impulse was not entirely “nullified” but breaks out in extreme circumstances. It explains the story of Menashe and Rav Ashi as a parable for the gap between periods, in which Menashe claims that a person from Rav Ashi’s period does not understand the power of the impulse that existed then.
An argument about compulsion, punishment, and reservations about the impulse explanation
The text argues that it is a mistake to think that idol worshipers in the past were necessarily punished because they believed in idols, and suggests that they may also have worshiped out of impulse without conscious belief. It presents the position that someone who believes in idolatry is compelled, and explains that criticism of this position rests on the modern assumption that anyone who worships necessarily believes. It then presents the opposite position, according to which even if we explain idolatry as an action driven by impulse, the question still returns: is there belief here? And if there is no belief, then there is no transgression in the sense of idolatry. It states that this question will remain on the board and be answered through the turkey story.
Culture, testimony about miracles, and David Hume’s witness argument
The text uses an image from The Wizard of Oz, where “in civilized countries there are no witches left,” and interprets it as a cultural claim that modern frameworks of thought block the possibility of accepting miraculous phenomena even if they appear. It brings traditional stories to show how a modern reaction tends to dismiss testimony because of its cultural wrapping. It presents David Hume’s argument against testimony for miracles: it is always preferable to assume corruption in the tradition rather than a miracle, because a miracle is “against nature” whereas corruption is not against nature. It argues that the problem is that the argument is unfalsifiable, because every testimony to a miracle will be rejected in advance by the same method, and it adds that even his own rationalistic outlook is exposed to a similar blockage.
Statistics, the “law of small numbers,” and criticism of miracle stories
The text offers a statistical interpretation of miracle stories and brings the story of “choose a number,” in which one success is explained by the fact that thousands of letters were sent, so that a small number would hit exactly right. It applies the same logic to stories about rabbis and pinpoint prophecies and to coincidences of “deliverance” at night, and argues that a single case is not evidence without a sample, a comparison, and a weighing of probabilities. It criticizes the persuasive structure of alternative medicine through isolated success stories and emphasizes the need for control groups, placebo, double-blind testing, and medical methodology, arguing that if a method were proven it would become “ordinary medicine” rather than alternative medicine. It claims that even when there is no immediate explanation for an event, the scientific response will be, “there was a cause we didn’t find,” rather than attributing it to a miracle.
The approach to the aggadic literature of the Sages according to Maimonides
The text presents Maimonides’ division into three groups regarding the aggadic literature: the fools, who understand it literally; the wicked, who scorn the Sages because the literal reading is impossible; and the wise, who understand that aggadah conveys a message rather than facts. It presents the story of Rabbah and Rabbi Zeira as an example of stories that are not read as factual description but as an intellectual medium. It refers to articles at the beginning of volume 1 of Ein Yaakov and to discussions by various sages about how aggadot should be read.
Rabbi Nachman’s turkey story: the plot and two difficulties
The text brings the story of the turkey: a prince sinks into black depression, crawls under the table, eats crumbs and bones, claims that he is a turkey, and refuses to wear clothes; a sage comes down to him, imitates him, forms a connection, and then gradually suggests that a turkey can wear a shirt, pants, eat human food, and sit on a chair, until the prince returns to a normal way of life without explicitly giving up his identity as a turkey. The first difficulty is that apparently there is no real cure, because the prince still thinks he is a turkey, and this looks like a merely behaviorist cure. The second difficulty is that the prince recognizes that the sage is a human being and not a turkey, which makes it seem as though he was never really sick but merely “playing” and understood the truth.
An illness that can be cured: a healthy inner point, autosuggestion, and a theory that justifies impulse
The text argues that the two difficulties answer one another: an illness “all the way through,” without a healthy point, cannot be cured, whereas a state in which a person knows the truth deep down but builds a theory that covers it over is a complex illness that can be cured. It describes a mechanism in which impulse pushes toward behavior, and the person constructs a theory presenting the behavior as correct so that he will not act in dissonance with his values, until he reaches full conscious conviction. It describes this state of consciousness as autosuggestion, in which the person truly and sincerely says that he is a turkey, even though within him there is a deeper knowledge that surfaces in the encounter with the sage. It connects this to the statement “hearts are drawn after actions” as a psychological claim: when actual behavior changes, the theory built to justify it loses its point and dissolves, and then the person returns to recognizing the inner truth.
Maimonides on “we compel him until he says, ‘I want to’” as a non-mystical explanation
The text quotes Maimonides in the laws of divorce, that one who is legally obligated to divorce is beaten until he says, “I want to,” and the bill of divorce is valid, and explains that Maimonides distinguishes between compulsion to do something one is not obligated to do and coercion that removes the evil impulse preventing fulfillment of an obligation. It rejects a mystical reading of a “Jewish point” and argues that Maimonides is describing a rational process: a God-fearing man who builds a theory to justify refusal to give a bill of divorce does so out of an impulse for revenge, but he is still in principle committed to Jewish law and therefore needs ideological justification. It describes a recalcitrant husband as someone who explains that the judges do not understand and that he is “right,” and presents this as the construction of a theory that allows him to continue behaving as he wants. It argues that coercion causes the theory to lose its practical purpose, so it dissolves, and the person actually arrives at a genuine willingness to divorce in accordance with his original commitment.
Practical ramifications: atheists, kiddushin, and coercion
The text argues that “we compel him until he says, ‘I want to’” works only for someone who is actually committed to Torah and commandments, and not for an atheist or secular person who are not committed, because in their case the coercion remains an invalidly coerced bill of divorce. It notes that there are rare halakhic decisors who discuss this, and connects it to the problem that in a wedding “according to the law of Moses and Israel,” even atheists create valid kiddushin and therefore need a valid divorce. It presents this as another reason for the problematic nature of halakhic kiddushin for someone who is not committed, because coercion regarding a divorce may not work and may worsen situations of recalcitrance.
Steven Weinberg, 1984, and self-persuasion under pain
The text quotes Steven Weinberg, who distinguishes between beliefs that are not under the control of the will and situations in which people “choose to believe” what makes them good or happy. It brings the example of Winston Smith in 1984: under torture he comes not only to say but for a moment to convince himself that two plus two equals five, and O’Brien is satisfied only when it seems that the inner belief has changed. It uses the example to show that inner persuasion can be built despite a deep contrary knowledge, and that this is a complex structure of consciousness in which the person lives inside an adopted theory even though he has not entirely lost the truth.
A solution to the riddle of idolatry: autosuggestion between belief and responsibility
The text returns to the opening question about idolatry and argues that weakness of will does not solve the paradox between belief and compulsion. It proposes that autosuggestion does solve it: a person wants to worship idolatry for reasons of impulse, and builds for himself a theory that the idol is real until he acts from within it as though he believes. It argues that inwardly the person knows that the theory is not true, and precisely that inner knowledge is enough to impose responsibility and punishment on him, while the conscious plane allows us to say that the act was done out of belief and therefore counts as idolatry. It concludes by saying that this model will be developed further later on, but at this stage the claim is presented that idolatry can be both “belief” and culpable choice through the mechanism of autosuggestion.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, in the previous lecture I talked about weakness of will as part of the description of moral behavior. Meaning, moral behavior is the result of a decision or a choice, not out of interests but out of evaluative judgment. After that I talked about the description in the Tanya, where he describes the moral or religious struggle as a struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul, and not between good and evil. And the translation of his picture into more philosophical language is basically this issue of weakness of will. Weakness of will basically means that you conduct yourself like an animal soul. You conduct yourself in a way where you are not the one making the decisions. You let go of the reins, let the horses lead you. By contrast, the divine soul is a mode of conduct in which you hold the reins in your hands. You don’t let the will weaken; you leave control in the hands of the will, and only in that state is there really meaning to what you do. Although even when you act out of a weak will, that doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for your actions. You still have responsibility, and that’s exactly what I was trying to explain when we talked about weakness of will. On the one hand, the will is weak, the horses took me. On the other hand, I let the horses take me. Meaning, my decision not to make decisions, or not to be in chooser mode, in divine-soul mode, but rather in animal-soul mode—that is the decision that places responsibility on me. What happened afterward happened because the horses took me, but the fact that I let the horses take me and didn’t keep control in my hands—that’s what places responsibility on me for the results that happened there. Netanel? Wait, no, you’re Ro’i, right, okay. Okay, so now I want to look at this issue of weakness of will and decisions at a higher resolution. And for this purpose I want to use Rabbi Nachman’s turkey story. Maybe I’ll start with some difficulty. When we see, for example, people who worship idols, we often don’t really manage to understand the phenomenon. Because whichever way you look at it—if he really believes in that idol he worships, then he’s compelled, right? That’s what he thinks—what do you want from him? If he doesn’t believe, then why is he worshipping it, is he an idiot? So if you say, what, he’s forced to do it? Then again he’s compelled and not responsible for his actions. He’s not forced, so why does he do it? Weakness of will—yes, I’m reminding you again—so does he do it because of some interest? That’s not a solution here, because what does that mean? Let’s say he worships idols even though he understands that this idol is an idol, just a block of wood—so why does he do it? Because someone promised to pay him a hundred shekels if he does it, some interest, I don’t know, or because he’ll be popular in public if he does it, doesn’t matter right now. What?
[Speaker B] There was also an impulse.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The evil impulse of forbidden sexual relations, which the Sages nullified.
[Speaker B] Okay, I’m just saying there was that kind of desire, like sexual immorality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what does that mean?
[Speaker B] That it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Means that I didn’t think this was idolatry, meaning I didn’t think this idol worship was real, meaning it’s a block of wood, but I did it because I had an urge—and why did I give in to that urge?
[Speaker B] Okay, so that’s also basically an interest.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore this too is a kind of weakness of will, but here the solutions I talked about regarding weakness of will are less plausible, because at the end of the day, if the impulse really took me and made me do this, or some interest—someone will pay me a hundred shekels—there’s still room to ask: tell me, do you believe in this or not? Bottom line, do you believe in the idol or not? If not, then I was just playing games in order to get a hundred shekels or to satisfy my urges, so what—why is that… If I do believe in it, then that really is idolatry, but then I don’t need to get to needs. I worship it because I really believe in it, and then I’m compelled. No, also the worship itself. No, no, no—
[Speaker B] To bow to a statue of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And you don’t believe in it—
[Speaker B] Jesus, say—I don’t believe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then that’s not idolatry. That’s not idolatry. Of course not. It’s not idolatry. If you don’t believe in it, it’s not idolatry. It might be some prohibition, bowing—
[Speaker B] To them, because that’s forbidden in relation to idolatry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. There are many—no, that’s not true. No. Fine, we’ll talk about it in a bit. Not in a bit, but later. The claim, in the end, is that this sin of idolatry—the solutions of weakness of will don’t heal this sin. At the end of the day, if you don’t believe in it, it’s not idolatry. If you do believe in it, then you’re compelled. I don’t believe in it, but I do it because of an impulse, to satisfy some need, because of this—then it still isn’t idolatry. I don’t really believe in it. So in the case of idolatry it is much harder to understand how a state of weakness of will is possible, even after the description I gave in the previous lecture. You’re Netanel, right? You were in the previous lecture too, right? You came in late. What? No, that’s why you weren’t listed. Okay, so that’s the difficulty in the background, and I want to deal with it, as I said, through the turkey story. Yes. In idolatry, I’m saying, weakness… it’s a difficulty for weakness of will in relation to idolatry, but it’s also a difficulty in how a sin of idolatry is possible at all. It’s really the same principle. That’s true, and I still want to relate to the question of impulse. Today we even—yes, Shilo said earlier that maybe impulse could be a solution. How can weakness of will happen? I said no, we’ll get to that later. But let’s assume yes, and let’s talk about this issue of impulse. When today we see someone worshipping idols, this question immediately comes up: why is he doing it if he doesn’t really believe in it? If he believes in it, then he believes in it—he’s mistaken. But why is he doing it? What, is he an idiot? And for a modern person, a person in our time, it’s very hard to understand how a person worships idols even though he doesn’t believe in them. How can such a situation even exist? Nobody. But if we saw such a person, we wouldn’t be able to understand. Okay? By the way, there are people who do this, I don’t know, in Africa, I don’t know exactly where, and you ask yourself: if they believe in it, then of course they’re compelled. If they don’t believe in it, then why are they doing it? Something here doesn’t add up. Okay? So I want to compare this to another impulse. What about the impulse toward adultery? Sexual immorality. Okay? Let’s say with a married woman, which is an impulse that exists. With close relatives it almost doesn’t exist. But with a married woman. Now there we have no trouble understanding why someone does it, even though he himself understands he’s doing something wrong. But we have no difficulty understanding the event, how such a thing happens at all. We know—he has an impulse, and fine, he didn’t manage to deal with his impulse, even though he understands that it’s wrong. That’s weakness of will, as I explained last time. Regarding idolatry, it’s harder for us to understand, and the basic reason is simply that we don’t have this impulse. We don’t. This impulse does not exist for us. And therefore, in idolatry it’s very hard—very hard for us to imagine someone worshipping idols even though he doesn’t believe in them, because he has an impulse. What does that even mean? There’s no such thing as an impulse to worship. Either you believe in it and then you do it, or you don’t and then you don’t do it. We can’t manage to understand a state of an impulse toward idolatry. And the reason for this is probably what you—the Talmud passage you brought. Okay, they nullified that impulse. And what does it mean that they nullified that impulse? It’s this kind of mystical statement. I don’t think it means that literally. Rather, the point is that these impulses underwent sublimation over the generations. Once this impulse was very present, active, influential, things happened because of it. Over time, over the generations, this impulse is no longer so present. It may perhaps still be somewhere inside, but it’s not really present; we don’t feel such impulses. Sometimes—once I was at some conference, maybe of the Tzohar rabbis, I don’t remember exactly, they invited me to some conference and Yoav Ben-Dov spoke there. He was at Tel Aviv University, he researched the philosophy of quantum theory and so on, and he also dealt with the study of mysticism. He worked on both, and even connected them in certain writings. He came to speak to us about trance parties. And at trance parties there’s a very interesting phenomenon: the people there throw around the names of Indian idols, Shiva and Vishnu and all those guys, and they also hold statues of Indian idols. By the way, anyone who saw the pictures from the Nova party, the famous one on October 7, there were these huge figures there of this kind of idol worship, statues of who-knows-what, Buddhism or I don’t know exactly what. If it’s Buddhism, it’s questionable whether that’s idolatry at all, but never mind. There were all kinds of things like that there. So I’m not sure it’s correct to say that this impulse has been nullified. The very fact that people feel a need somehow to connect to these things—to statues, to sayings, to the names of the idols, and the like—it could be that somewhere deep inside us, in the ancient layers of our ancient evolutionary layers, these impulses still exist, but they’ve undergone very, very strong repression. They’re wrapped in lots of cultural coverings, and therefore in ordinary life we don’t feel it. Only in very extreme situations—you put yourself into some trance party—then it probably somehow comes out in some people, but in normal everyday life we don’t feel it. He told us there that the participants in trance parties come from all sectors of the population: students, academics, people in the professions, all kinds. Young, old, all kinds of people. And in everyday life it would never occur to you that these people have some impulse toward idolatry. It doesn’t show up at all in their everyday conduct. But in very specific circumstances it can break out. It could be that all of us have it, we just aren’t in the situations that allow it to come out. But still, on the conscious level that accompanies our conduct, we don’t feel it. Since we don’t feel it, it’s hard for us even to understand the situation at all. But if we try to reconstruct backward and try to understand what used to be, before the Men of the Great Assembly nullified the impulse toward idolatry—that is, before it underwent this repression, this sublimation—then what was there? It was basically like the impulse toward sexual immorality. The sexual impulse we know, right? If someone commits adultery with a married woman, we understand the phenomenon. Meaning, it’s not okay, but we understand the phenomenon. Why? Because he has an impulse. He understands it’s not okay, but he has an impulse. The same was true with idolatry. With idolatry too there was an impulse. We don’t have that, so we can’t even take that option into account when we ask ourselves how a person worships idols. We have to take into account that when people worshipped idols, apparently there was also such an impulse. Just as there is a sexual impulse, which is familiar to us to this day, and therefore we don’t ask how such a thing can happen—right?—so too there was an impulse toward idolatry. And therefore the very large gap in our understanding of these situations simply stems from cultural change, a change in reality. That is, we live inside a different culture. We don’t have these impulses present before us. We don’t experience them.
[Speaker C] There’s that image with Menashe and Rav Ashi.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly, the clearest example is Rav Ashi, who joked there about Menashe, and then Menashe appears to him in a dream and says to him that if you had lived in my time, you would have lifted the hem of your robe and run to worship idols. And that expresses exactly this picture—that it’s before the Men of the Great Assembly and after the Men of the Great Assembly. Menashe is from the period of the Tanakh, and Rav Ashi. And basically what Menashe is saying to Rav Ashi is: you don’t understand the phenomenon of idolatry at all, because you’re not aware that people had such an impulse. You know the sexual impulse; you don’t know the impulse toward idolatry. But once, that impulse also existed. And therefore it’s very hard for us to understand how such people worshipped idols. This is very important for something I may speak about another time, say when we want to discuss our attitude toward idol worshipers. Okay? So I, for example, argue that someone who worships idols and truly believes in them is compelled. So many people to whom I’ve said this say: what do you mean? Then how were idol worshipers punished in the past? Surely they believed, otherwise why were they doing it? Do you understand the mistake here? Not true. Right, they had an impulse. Through your lenses today you don’t understand how someone worships idols unless it seems that he really believes in it. You yourself don’t believe in it, but you understand that there could be a person who did believe in it, and therefore worshipped idols. You don’t take into account the possibility that no—he didn’t believe in it, but he did it because he had an impulse. Just as there is a sexual impulse, which everyone has, so too there was an impulse toward idolatry. Now, since we are not aware of this cultural change—or at least not explicitly—then it really is hard to conduct discussions about these matters. And therefore when I say that a person who believes in idolatry is completely compelled and deserves no punishment at all, they say: what do you mean? The entire Talmud and all the halakhic decisors are full of material showing that you’re wrong. How can idol worshipers be punished? They’re all compelled—otherwise why would they worship if they don’t believe in it? And the answer is: not true. They didn’t believe in it and still worshipped because they had an impulse. Fine, up to this point what you said. And now I want to argue that that’s not correct. Why? Because I claim that even if they worship because of an impulse, I can still ask myself: but do they really believe in idolatry or not? If I say that they worship because of an impulse, that means they understand it’s not right to worship idols, they don’t believe in it, but the impulse causes them to worship. Is that so? Then they’re not really idol worshipers? So once again this question comes back—then how does this sin of idolatry happen? I’ll show later why I say this, but for now I’m just placing the pieces on the board. Was it like invented at some point and then—
[Speaker D] Evolutionarily or something like that, and then suddenly it becomes irrelevant, but still exists because it was hidden, so like—? What does it mean, exists hidden? No, evolution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, okay. It’s found in us, I don’t know whether evolutionarily or not, but it’s located somewhere within us. It could be that this is an evolution of the soul. I’m not necessarily tying it to the body in evolutionary or genetic terms and so on. But in our culture there is also a kind of evolution—it’s not genes, it’s memes. Memes, meaning, there is some sort of evolution of our psychology, of our soul, and there too we have ancient layers and more modern outer layers that wrapped the ancient ones. Whether there’s a biological root to it or not—you can argue about that, maybe yes maybe no, I don’t know. Fine? In this context I—there’s a very nice passage from The Wizard of Oz. Yes, when Dorothy, with the house, flies with the cyclone from Kansas and lands there in Oz, and she meets the Witch of the East. So she says to her—she says, I’m the Witch of the East. So Dorothy says to her, Aunt Em told me that all the witches died many years ago, that they’re only fairy tales. So the witch asks her, who is Aunt Em? Oh, she’s my aunt who lives in Kansas, the place I came from. The Witch of the North—North, not East—seemed to think for a while. Her head was lowered, her eyes cast down to the ground, and then she raised her eyes and said: I don’t know where Kansas is, because I’ve never heard the name of that country before. But tell me, is it a civilized country? So she says, of course, said Dorothy. If so, that is the reason, says the witch. I think that in civilized countries there are no witches left, nor wizards, nor magicians, nor sorcerers. But you see, civilization has never reached the Land of Oz, because we are cut off from all the rest of the world, and therefore there are still witches and wizards among us. Now this is a wonderful literary expression. That passage is just amazing to me. Because obviously she doesn’t mean literally that witches became extinct there and remained here. Obviously not. The idea that witches became extinct there is a cultural process; it is not a physical process in which witches died out. The point is that even if we saw a witch in front of our eyes, we would not believe she was a witch. It’s like all those stories—my wife’s grandmother was Moroccan. My wife’s grandmother told us that when she was in Morocco, some child was born there who spoke fluent Hebrew. Then they did something to him, I don’t know exactly what, and he forgot everything. Some rabbi came and did something to him and he forgot everything. And afterward she brought another case too, something similar, I don’t remember exactly, another case like that. And we kind of chuckled to ourselves, fine, primitive stories from I-don’t-know-where. But afterward I thought to myself: it may be that my cultural wrapping prevents me from accepting testimony from people who saw phenomena. I didn’t see this phenomenon, and I tend not to believe it exists. But where does that tendency come from, not to believe it exists? From the culture I live in, from the worldview I live in. And that prevents me from accepting testimony about such phenomena, and therefore even if testimony comes, I won’t believe it. So it’s an unfalsifiable theory, that there are no witches, or that there are no such miracles. Because every time testimony like that arrives, I’ll say, of course not, that’s not true. Hume’s argument about witnesses, the witness argument—you know Hume’s argument against witness testimony? The witness argument that says tradition transmitted to us, say, the divine revelation. It passes from father to son, and since that’s the case it’s probably reliable, right? So David Hume, an 18th-century British philosopher, asks this. He says: a tradition like that reaches you. You have two possibilities. Either to say that this tradition is indeed reliable and a miracle happened there—a tradition reporting some miracle, divine revelation, a miracle, the splitting of the sea, whatever, something like that. Okay, one possibility: the miracle happened and a reliable tradition reached us, yes, that’s what happened. Second possibility: something got distorted in the tradition. Either someone lied, someone invented, someone fantasized, interpreted a situation incorrectly, I don’t know exactly what. Second possibility. Then the event didn’t happen even though a tradition reached us, right? Now he says: let’s try to think which of these two possibilities is correct. One possibility says the miracle didn’t happen and there was some breakdown in transmission, intentional or accidental, doesn’t matter, but some breakdown in transmission. We know such things happen, right? You can accept it or not, but it’s not absurd. One can accept it or not accept it, but it’s not absurd; these are things that can happen. But miracles can’t happen. So if you have two interpretive possibilities, obviously the preferred interpretation is that the miracle didn’t happen, fine, and there was a distortion in the tradition. That is certainly preferable to the possibility that there was no distortion in the tradition and the miracle happened. Because the claim that a miracle happened is against nature. Distortions in tradition may be rare, maybe yes maybe no, but they are not against nature. Meaning, if I need to choose between these two options, obviously the second option is more plausible. My problem with David Hume’s claim is: how do you know miracles don’t happen? Because every testimony that comes to you, you reject because of this argument. This argument itself means that if testimony comes to you about a miracle that happened, you’ll say: I have two options, either decide that the miracle happened and the testimony is reliable, or say that the miracle didn’t happen and the testimony is corrupt, right? And I’ll choose the second option. Meaning that even if a thousand miracles occurred here before the eyes of all the Jewish people, it would be impossible to convince you that miracles happen. This is an unfalsifiable theory, because every testimony about a miracle you will reject by means of that same argument. So it’s a self-reinforcing argument. Do you see? And there’s a problem here with this outlook. It means that we, in civilized countries, are blocked off from testimony about miracles, witches, sorcerers, and the like. And that doesn’t mean they don’t exist; it means that we’re blocked, we won’t be able to know that they exist. We have cultural barriers to this whole matter. In a similar way, that’s what I want to say about ancient idolatry. We, with our modern lenses today, look at ancient idolatry and say: wait, this can’t be, what is this nonsense, these people were stupid, what do you mean? But we don’t say that someone who commits adultery is stupid. No, he’s not stupid, because it’s an impulse.
[Speaker C] But if you saw even one miracle, then you’ve basically ruled out the second option. I didn’t understand. It’s enough just to see one miracle—that it exists.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You will never in your life see a miracle within my culture. Why? Because the moment you see it, a hundred thousand scientists will sit down and explain what new law of nature we discovered today. That’s all. And there is nothing in the world that I cannot explain by means of some law of nature that will account for it. And therefore if my assumption is that everything is governed by laws, then the result will be that everything is governed by laws.
[Speaker C] Wait, I’ll tell you a story.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine? Yes.
[Speaker C] At one time I had a private business. I came to Rabbi Elazar.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What did you have? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker C] I had a private business. I came to Rabbi Elazar—there was some question there about some check, some money I had given him, and he didn’t want it and didn’t accept it. In short, to make this story short, at a certain moment he says to me—he reads my letter, he’s sitting in Be’er Sheva and I’m in Petach Tikva. He reads my letter and says: from this moment on, you won’t hear from that person anymore. For a year and a half he’d been driving me crazy with blessings and blessings, and he says to me: from this moment on, you won’t see him anymore. Fine, I said, who knows, a miracle, I don’t know. In short, I really didn’t hear from him, until one day his brother came to me, and I was talking with him—where is he? He says to me, what, didn’t you hear? Exactly six months earlier one of his Arab workers stabbed him and burned down his carpentry shop. So he’s sitting in Be’er Sheva and tells me, you won’t see him anymore.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I think that’s slander against Rabbi Elazar. As if he has someone murdered just in order to save you from him?
[Speaker C] I don’t know, I don’t want to accuse the criminal. I’m talking about the reality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll tell you what I say about that reality.
[Speaker C] It’s a story, it’s a true story, it happened to me personally.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’ll tell you what I say about that reality.
[Speaker C] What do you say about that reality?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And I’ll tell you another story, one that didn’t happen to me personally, but could have happened to me personally. This is a story that appears in a book called Choose a Number by John Verdon. Some thriller, doesn’t matter. The story begins like this: you receive an envelope, and inside it there’s a letter and another small envelope. The letter says this: I’m a man with supernatural powers, and I can guess any number you choose at random. Fine? Choose at random a number from 1 to 1000, open the envelope, and that number will be inside. Okay? Now if so, you see that I have supernatural powers—send me ten thousand dollars and I’ll make you a millionaire. Fine? The book opens with the fact that he guessed the number, seven hundred and seventy-one.
[Speaker C] You immediately sent ten thousand dollars? Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did you become a millionaire? Exactly. Meaning, he guessed seven hundred and seventy-one, I opened the envelope, and wow—seven hundred and seventy-one. Unbelievable. I immediately sent him ten thousand dollars, right? But I haven’t seen them from that day to this, and I didn’t become a millionaire. What turned out in the end? In the end it turned out that the man sent ten thousand letters. You’re supposed to choose numbers between 1 and 1000, so the expected success rate of random guessing is that for ten people you’ll guess correctly. A hundred thousand dollars isn’t bad either—ten thousand dollars times ten people, you’ve made a hundred thousand dollars. Now this is a paradigm for many stories. Did you check a thousand cases of things Rabbi Elazar did, okay?—cases where he said things like that. In how many of them was he right, compared to, say, someone else, and compared to the basic probability that something like that would happen by chance? Because it could be that if he did it for a thousand people—and he did do it for many people—if he did it for a thousand people, then in one of the cases it could happen. Now as long as you haven’t checked for how many people it happened, you can’t draw conclusions. A whole year, almost a year. That’s not interesting. It’s really not interesting.
[Speaker C] It doesn’t matter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It matters not at all. The fact that he did it for a whole year and then suddenly it stops—what’s the probability of that? One in ten thousand that it happened by chance. Okay? So he said something like that to ten thousand people; for one of them it happened. That one person is you. It has to be somebody, right? You know, I had a story—we were at a celebration in Kfar Chabad.
[Speaker C] The same—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, you yourself said that about choosing a number. Exactly the same thing here. It’s the same story. Think about… I was once at some family celebration in Kfar Chabad when we were living in Yeruham. We drove there, eight people in a big car, with six children, my wife and me. Okay? At one in the morning, I think, late at night already, we were driving back through Gedera. Anyone who knows the story from my writings—I tend to tell it. We were driving in Gedera, and some young woman came out—later it turned out she had literally just gotten her license—she pulled out from some place where she had a stop sign, she came out, the car in front of me braked, I hit it, and the car died. Okay? Now, before I even knew the car had died, there had just been the collision. A car stopped next to me, I didn’t know what… yes, in principle, what do I do now? One in the morning, eight people in Gedera in the middle of nowhere. Okay? At that very second, immediately, there was a collision, and a second later a big empty vehicle stopped next to me, belonging to a neighbor of mine from Yeruham. All eight of us got in, we left the key at some kiosk nearby, told the tow truck to come pick it up, and off we went to Yeruham. What turns out on the way? The driver tells me—he was a local politician there in Yeruham, Haredi—and he would always travel Yeruham-Jerusalem, like that, a regular trip. I don’t know what happened today, I lost my way, I didn’t turn correctly at Latrun. There you turn south, somehow I ended up in Ramla, in Gedera, I don’t know, I don’t know this road at all, and I’m driving there—only today this happened to me. He drives to Jerusalem twice a week. It happened to me today, and then we pass here. Not only that—the accident had just happened, meaning he didn’t even see it. His wife says, wait, wait, Aryeh, stop for a second, the Abraham family is here, maybe they need something. Okay, “the Abraham family,” he says, so what? No, no, stop a second, stop. So he stopped, and that wrapped up the story. Meaning, we got into the car and sailed on our way, happy and cheerful, to Yeruham. Then I made a little gathering for the guys in Yeruham at the hesder yeshiva, I told them the story, and I said: you probably think that now this calls for full Hallel in honor of the great rescue by the Holy One, blessed be He, a blessing over the miracle, and so on. But the truth is that as a rational person I say to myself: what are the odds that something like this would happen by chance? One in ten thousand, say. I don’t know exactly, something like that. It can happen, right? A person can miss a turn, he can happen to be in a big vehicle, it can happen to be exactly when I have an accident—but it’s a very small chance. Okay? One in ten thousand. Now how many people got stuck in the middle of the night and their neighbor with a big vehicle didn’t stop next to them? I don’t know, I didn’t check. But if there were ten thousand such cases, and in one of them there was a successful case—and that one was me—then that says nothing at all about God’s help, or divine involvement, or anything. It just means that by chance one out of ten thousand happened. That’s the probability.
[Speaker C] Yes, I just don’t like that word.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You yourself used that word earlier when you were talking about choosing a number. Same thing, exactly the same thing. There’s no difference at all. Exactly the same thing.
[Speaker C] Out of ten thousand people, someone will see exactly that kind of thing. In your case it just happened to work out.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But do you know how many people, do you know how many
[Speaker C] people
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] got stuck in the middle of the night in all kinds of places around the world, and nobody stopped for them, throughout all of history since there have been cars in the world? Tons, tons of cases like that happened. Now in how many of those cases did someone happen to stop and save them—I don’t know. But if in one out of ten thousand such cases it happened, and that one has to be somebody, then that somebody is me. Somebody has to be that one, right? That’s all. So what does it say? It says nothing. It says nothing. I’m not sure.
[Speaker E] It’s exactly the same statistics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s exactly the same thing. You know, it’s like all those Oren Zarif types, these magicians who give you miracle cures, and afterward there are all these stories about how they succeed and everything. They give a million people some treatment, with two of them it works, the rest realize he’s an idiot and understands nothing, and the two for whom it worked advertise in the paper: look what a righteous and holy man Oren Zarif is, he knows everything—and that’s it, and his bank account tells the rest of the story. That’s how these things are built. Now again, I don’t know about Rabbi Elazar, I have no idea, but I’m saying that with a rational mindset, even if a miracle happened right in front of your eyes, you still wouldn’t accept it. You wouldn’t accept it because you’ll always have some statistical explanations, and even if you don’t have an explanation you’ll say, okay, this requires analysis, but something happened here that I don’t understand. Right? A plane crashes, okay? They appoint a commission of inquiry to check why it crashed. Fine? They don’t find anything. There’s nothing. The wings are fine, there are no cracks in the body, nothing, everything is fine. They don’t find the cause of the crash. What do you think they’ll say? That it was a miracle? No. They’ll say there was a cause that we didn’t find. What can you do? Sometimes we miss things; we don’t know how to find everything, right? That’s what they’ll say. So how are we ever going to tell that a plane crashed without a cause, that a miracle happened here? We won’t succeed. Because even if we don’t find a cause, we’ll always assume that there was some cause, we just didn’t find it. So you understand that we are blocked off from this information about the occurrence of miracles or magicians. It’s just a theory that cannot be falsified. Now I’m speaking against myself. I’m saying: I, as a rational person, a rationalist who doesn’t accept these things, need to treat that with caution. Because the fact that I don’t accept these things blocks me from being able to refute the thesis by which I operate.
[Speaker B] Okay, so then do statistics on rabbis. What? Do statistics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If someone were to do some kind of orderly statistical analysis, maybe there would be room to move forward with it. I’m doubtful how much that can really be done. What?
[Speaker C] When they talk about something like this—that a person comes to you and says, listen, a check like this and this, and sends you exactly where you need to go—how many times do you have something like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not many times. Not many. Obviously.
[Speaker C] So that’s one in a million.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Now the question is: how many such prophecies did Rabbi Elazar give that did not come true, compared to how many did come true, and you have to see how that relates to the statistics, and only then can you determine anything. But one case that happened to you proves nothing. All alternative medicine is built on that nonsense. That’s the law of small numbers. What does that mean? Somebody comes to you—yes, I had endless arguments about this until I got tired, I just didn’t have the strength anymore to argue by email in Lod with all kinds of alternative healers like these who advertise their wares: Bach drops, and stones, and I don’t know what, and all that junk. And they explain that it’s tested and proven. I had cases, they say, where all the doctors had given up—cancer, who knows what—and they only drank these Bach drops and went out to play soccer. Okay? All the doctors had given up, and therefore it’s tested and proven. So I asked them: tell me, did you test this on some sample group and control group? In how many of the cases did it happen compared to the control group? Because there’s spontaneous remission too. Sometimes a person recovers even without those drops.
[Speaker C] Here there’s a financial interest—they want to make money.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter, leave me alone with the interest. I want to check now—leave me alone with motive. No suspicions. I want to know whether it’s true or not. How do you test it? You have to do a study with a sample group and a control group and see. Because there is spontaneous recovery. Right? There’s double-blind testing, there are rules for how to do scientific research, or medical research in this case. How is it done? You have to be careful about several things in order to neutralize spontaneous recovery, placebo, all kinds of things of that sort that can explain recoveries without any miracles and without anything at all. After you neutralize all that and do a study on a great many people, you can draw conclusions. Which of course is not what is done in alternative medicine. Anyone who read Simon Singh’s book—you know, I think in Hebrew translation it’s called Healing or Deception. Simon Singh—you know, with The Code Book and Fermat’s Last Theorem and so on—he writes very nice popular science books. So among other things he has one on alternative medicine. He wrote it with some professor of alternative medicine, by the way. I have no idea how that professor took part in writing such a book, because it shows that they’re simply doing nonsense. What he does in that book is go through technique by technique, and for each technique he reviews the extent to which there are any studies at all using full scientific methodology that validate that technique. And the answer is: there aren’t. There aren’t. Now the reason for that is very simple, because if there were a study with full scientific methodology validating that procedure, then it would be a medical procedure, not alternative medicine. Because it works. Alternative medicine is, in free translation, medicine that doesn’t work. Medicine they haven’t tested—haven’t properly tested. We have no indication at all that it works, therefore it’s called alternative medicine. Because if it had been tested and they saw that it worked, then your doctor would prescribe it. Then it works, then it’s ordinary medicine. Right? Why is it alternative medicine? Why doesn’t it enter the regular framework of ordinary doctors? Because they haven’t tested it. Because it hasn’t passed the tests that regular medicine has to pass. Fine. In short, alternative medicine is medicine that doesn’t work. But there are miracle stories and wonders, about how people were saved thanks to one kind of alternative medicine or another. Miracle stories and wonders, no less beautiful than your stories. So what?
[Speaker C] You know, according to what you’re saying, the revelation at Mount Sinai also didn’t happen. Why? Because that too is a miracle. It’s something that—when does that happen? And that’s what I started with, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly where I started, with Hume’s story. Exactly—that’s Hume’s claim. When a report of a miracle reaches you, you don’t accept that it happened, because the alternative—that there was some kind of mistake in the transmission of the tradition—is more reasonable than saying that there was a miracle and the tradition is reliable. That is exactly Hume’s claim. What I said is that this argument is problematic because it is blocked from being refuted by itself. And therefore I say: my thesis that I said against you suffers from the same problem. Because really, it would be very hard to convince me that a miracle happened, even if a witness like you came to me who saw it with his own eyes, that it happened to him. Why? Not because you’re lying, but because I have rationalist interpretations for almost anything that could happen. And if I don’t have an interpretation, then I’ll leave it as requiring analysis.
[Speaker B] You can relate to Hume’s argument as a statistical argument.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is a statistical argument—what do you mean?
[Speaker B] No, you’re saying it’s impossible, like the chance of miracles is
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] smaller than the chance of a distortion in the tradition, that’s all. Right. No problem. So Hume is seemingly correct. But I argue that he’s not correct. Why? There’s a long discussion about that. What I said here is only one point: that his argument cannot be falsified. He assumes that the probability of a miracle is negligible, right? That’s an assumption. Now the statistical argument begins. The statistical argument comes only after you already assume what the probability of a miracle is and what the probability is of a distortion in the tradition. That doesn’t emerge from statistics—that’s something you assume. Right?
[Speaker B] If I were to see an observation of a miracle?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—even if you saw an observation of a miracle, you still wouldn’t accept it. In scientific research? Of course not. No, he wouldn’t accept it. He’d say my eyes misled me. That’s much more reasonable than saying a miracle happened. That’s exactly the point: it’s an argument that can’t—it saws off the branch it is sitting on. That’s exactly the point. There is no such thing as a scientific observation of a miracle, by definition. Because a scientific observation has to be repeatable, right, something that can be repeated. There’s no such thing. The moment you turn it into a scientific observation, you’ve said it’s not a miracle. Maybe you just don’t know the explanation. Fine—there are many things whose explanation we don’t know; we need to investigate and keep investigating. But you will never say, as a scientific conclusion, I saw a miracle. There’s no such thing. There cannot be scientific evidence for such a thing. There cannot be, a priori, there cannot be. Right. Wait—and even the fact that tens of thousands of people came to him for advice and all these things, each one
[Speaker C] tells his own story, each one tells it. So I said, that would be more convincing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, if I do a large sample on a large group of people, and I see that there aren’t lots of other people he was with—I’m with him all the time, yes?—and I saw that this includes all the people who were with him. And suppose someone else also gives prophecies, someone who has no powers and nothing, and I look at the fulfillment rate of spontaneous prophecies of that sort, and if with him it is significantly higher, then maybe I would accept it, yes? Or I’d say there’s some scientific explanation here that I’m not aware of. Meaning, maybe—you understand—it’s like telekinesis, yes, or psychokinesis, you know? Like Uri Geller and such. So there too there were people who tried to do experiments that validate the matter and give it a scientific explanation. And then once it has an explanation, it will also be science and not mysticism, because it has an explanation. The fact that we don’t understand it right now doesn’t mean it’s mysticism. It only means we still don’t know all the science. Fine, so we should keep investigating. That’s why it’s hard even to define what mysticism is, because what is mysticism? Everything we don’t understand? Fine, there are lots of things we don’t understand. That doesn’t mean that everything we don’t understand is mysticism. Some things will become clear with more research. Even five hundred years ago they understood far fewer things. So what—was electricity mysticism back then? They thought so, but today we know it isn’t. Right? Because we understand it; electricity is a physical phenomenon. Wait, and what
[Speaker C] about that story of Rabbah and Rabbi Zeira, that he revived him and killed him and…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, those are tales.
[Speaker C] Where do you put stories like that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about them? What? Nothing—stories.
[Speaker C] In what category do you put them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aggadic literature, what else? Maimonides writes this in his introduction to the Mishnah: that there are three camps regarding the aggadot of the Sages. One camp is the camp of fools, which looks at all these stories literally, as if that’s exactly what happened. If that’s what they describe, then that’s what happened. That is the camp of fools. Then there is the camp of the wicked, who say that since this is nonsense, then obviously the Sages were idiots. That is the camp of the wicked. And the camp of the righteous—the wise and righteous—that is those who understand that the Sages were not stupid, but on the other hand it is also obvious that this did not happen. So you have to understand that there is some message being conveyed through the aggadah. They are not coming to tell me facts, but they use aggadah as a medium for conveying messages. Okay? That’s all. In the introduction to Ein Yaakov, you can read there—there are several essays at the beginning of volume one of Ein Yaakov, several essays on how to relate to aggadot, what the correct way is to relate to aggadot. There’s Maharatz Chayot and… what? In the introduction to chapter Helek, I think—maybe to the commentary on the Mishnah; I think to chapter Helek, maybe, or to the commentary on the Mishnah or chapter Helek. At the beginning of volume one of Ein Yaakov they bring various essays by different sages on how to relate to aggadot. Okay? There’s an essay by Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, which among other things also brings ideas from Maimonides; there’s an essay by Maharatz Chayot; there are various sages who wrote about how to relate to aggadot, and they discuss this there—Maharal and also Ramchal—who talk about how it is not correct to treat aggadot as factual description. The aggadot are not meant to tell me something that literally happened. They are meant to convey some message by way of a story. Okay. Fine, I don’t know, we’ve sailed very far afield. In any case, the bottom line of what I want to claim is that idolatry out of desire can exist, and probably did exist as well. Today it’s harder for us to imagine it because the desire is no longer really there. But it did exist. Except that this still doesn’t solve the problem, because the offender in the sin of idolatry, if he did it because of desire, then he’s not an offender. Because then the truth is that he doesn’t really believe in the idol. The desire just caused him to worship the idol. What—no, not that he’s coerced; he yielded to desire. I said that actions done out of desire are actions for which you bear responsibility. This is not a claim of coercion. I talked about that in the previous lecture, the claim of weakness of will. But in this case, not because you’re coerced—there was no transgression at all. Idolatry means worshipping an idol and believing in it. If you don’t believe in it and you only worship it, that isn’t idolatry. But what does it mean
[Speaker C] not to believe in it? In no form of idolatry do you believe in the stone. You believe that the stone represents some kind of force…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, there are different kinds. Some believe in the stone itself, yes, yes, and some believe that the stone represents something. Maimonides describes these things at the beginning of the laws of idolatry. In any case, that’s basically the point. And here I want to move to a higher resolution on free will by way of the story of the turkey prince. Here we go. A disaster struck the royal household. Yes. The prince, who until now had been sane and well-mannered, sank into black depression,
[Speaker E] and began having delusions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He rolled around under the table,
[Speaker E] ate off the floor, and dragged away pieces of bread and bones he found there, saying that he was
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a turkey.
[Speaker B] And as if that weren’t enough,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] he also insisted on no longer wearing his clothes, emphasizing that a turkey doesn’t wear clothes, so why should he have to wear clothes? The king suffered greatly because of this. The king called for his doctors and sages, but it was no use. The prince stuck to his claim: I am a turkey, and there is nothing strange about my behavior, because all turkeys behave this way. One day, after all the doctors and sages had long since despaired of curing him, a wise man came from a distant city and claimed that he would take it upon himself to cure him completely. He would heal him. What did the wise man do? He too took off his clothes, sat down under the table next to the prince, and also began dragging crumbs and bones around with an innocent expression, as though the whole thing were perfectly natural. The prince stared at him in astonishment, and after asking him, who are you, and what are you doing here? the wise man answered him: what are you doing here? I am a turkey, the prince replied innocently. I too am a turkey, the wise man said after him. A few days passed, then even weeks, and the two became accustomed to each other, eating the same food together with no clothes on, until a strong bond developed between them. The wise man understood that the time had come to begin real action. He signaled to those around him to throw two shirts under the table. Turning to the prince, the wise man said to him: do you really think a turkey can’t wear a shirt and still remain a turkey? And so the two of them put on shirts. After a reasonable amount of time passed, the wise man signaled again, and they threw pants to them to wear. And once more, turning to the prince, he said to him: do you think that with pants on, one can’t still be a turkey? Of course one can. So the prince put on one garment after another, without any resistance. Again, some considerable time passed, and the wise man signaled to those present to throw human food down from the table. And once more he argued with the prince: do you think that if one eats good food one ceases to be a turkey? One can eat it and still remain a turkey. And he ate. After some time, the wise man turned to the prince and asked him to sit with him on a chair at the table. Yes, that too—a turkey can sit on a chair. It did not take long before he restored him to the normal course of life, without the prince even noticing that he had become a turkey who behaved in every way like a human being. Fine, that’s the story. Now this story, in the usual interpretations, basically comes to tell us how we are supposed to deal with our inclination. People have an evil inclination to say: the commandments aren’t for me—that’s the parable—the commandments aren’t for me, and so on. I’m a turkey, I’m a human being, not an angel; the Torah is for angels, I’m just an ordinary person, I’m not. So it comes to give you some sort of way to deal with that. But I think there is something deeper here in this story. And maybe I’ll start with two difficulties in the story. The first difficulty, and the most obvious one, is that everyone who reads this story asks himself: is it really correct to say that the prince was cured at the end? After all, he is sure that he is a turkey, right? Except that now, a turkey can also wear pants and a shirt and sit on a chair and eat human food. Fine, so in practice he behaves like a human being, but he is still mentally ill, right? He still thinks he is a turkey. That he is a turkey. That’s what in psychology is called behavioral therapy, behaviorist healing. You basically cause a person to behave phenomenologically in the proper way. But inwardly his psyche still remains completely sick, and the wise man did not really cure the prince. Even worse—but let’s leave that aside for now, let’s talk about the prince. We have one poor soul; I don’t need two right now. So with regard to the prince himself, the first question I ask is: is the prince really healthy at the end of this process? Was he healed? Seemingly not. That is one question. And there is another question, which people notice less. When the wise man went under the table, the prince asks him, yes, what connection is there between us? What are you doing here?
[Speaker E] He knows that he isn’t a turkey, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? He understands that someone like that is not a turkey, he’s a human being. So you also understand that you aren’t a turkey either, but a human being, right? After all, you do understand that. So why are you lying to me? Telling me stories? Notice that this difficulty says—first I asked whether the prince was healed, now I’m asking whether he was ever sick at all. He wasn’t really sick; he was putting on an act. Because the fact is that he does know that someone who looks like that is a human being and not a turkey. So what are you telling me, that you’re a turkey? You’re lying. You’re not really sick, the psyche isn’t really sick. You understand that you’re not a turkey. You’re telling me stories. Maybe you’re telling me stories in order to justify that you don’t keep the commandments, or that in the parable you eat crumbs and walk around without clothes. Fine, under the table. But these are excuses, these are stories. You’re not really sick; you understand that you aren’t a turkey. So which way should we take it? There are two questions that pull us in different directions, in opposite directions. The first question says: after all, he wasn’t healed. The second question says: he was never sick. So what is this process? How should we understand this process? What I want to claim—I didn’t understand,
[Speaker C] not normal, and in some place there’s no contradiction in that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. Now I ask: there’s no shortage of such people. I’m asking about this prince, not about such people in general. Was he sick? Yes. So what—he knows that this is a human being and not a turkey? Psychologically! He isn’t psychologically ill. When the wise man went under the table, he understood that this was a human being and not a turkey. So what are you telling me, that he thinks he’s a turkey?
[Speaker C] Listen, after traumas people suddenly change their behavior.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. I’m talking now after he changed. Look, he’s already down under the table, he’s already sick, right? He thinks he’s a turkey. But he doesn’t, because the fact is that he understands that someone like this is not a turkey, he’s a human being. So what are you telling me, that he thinks he’s a turkey? It’s not true. So he isn’t sick at all; there’s nothing to cure. He just blathered and wasted our time. On the other hand, if he really is sick, then either way, if he really is sick, then seemingly at the end of the process he wasn’t healed, he didn’t become healthy, he remained sick. And I claim that these two questions, or these two difficulties, answer one another. What does that mean? Suppose the person really, truly was sick down to the depths of his soul. He understood that he really was a turkey; he had lost the ability to understand that this is a human being and not a turkey. He is completely sick, down to the deepest evolutionary layers of himself, okay? The error is fatal. A person in such a state cannot possibly be healed. Where would you even begin to heal him? You could create him anew—create him anew. Usually when a psychologist helps a person emerge from a difficulty, from distress, to recover, he uses healthy parts that exist in the patient’s psyche and tries to use them, to get the person to use them in order to expand the healthy part and repair what has gone wrong around it. But somewhere deep inside there has to be a healthy point from which you can begin to work, an Archimedean point. Okay? But if there is no healthy point at all, the whole thing is broken at its foundation. All you can do is simply destroy him and create him again. Meaning, you can’t heal him by means of treatment. Taking him and healing him—that’s not it. You can, I don’t know, make repairs, just fix him yourself. That’s not the work of a psychologist, that’s the work of a creator. Okay? So that means that a person whose sickness goes all the way down, to the very depths, where there is no healthy point at all, however deep you go—that’s a person there is no way to heal. So then what is a sick person? Someone who deep down inside is healthy, but in the outer layers there is some kind of distortion, some kind of illness. Now you’ll say: but if inwardly he knows he isn’t a turkey but a human being, then he isn’t really sick. The great insight that I think this story teaches is: no, there are illnesses—more complex illnesses. What does that mean? There are situations in which deep inside you know the truth, but it’s not that you are lying to us when you say that you are a turkey. You convinced yourself that you are a turkey, and now you really are convinced of it in your conscious part. But somewhere deep inside you also know that you aren’t. And where does that surface? When the wise man comes down under the table, suddenly something surfaces that exists deep inside him. You know that this is what a human being looks like, not a turkey. What is that state? So I want to explain for a moment what that state is, that strange state. This state basically arises—in this parable at least, I’m not claiming it’s always like this, but it’s a typical mechanism. Suppose that in the analogue, the person basically doesn’t want to keep commandments, doesn’t want to be moral, doesn’t want anything. Now, it is hard for a person to behave in a way he doesn’t believe in—weakness of will, right? If you think one should keep commandments and be moral, then you’re not just going to go and do immoral things or severe prohibitions, right? So what do you do? You basically construct a theory for yourself, and that theory says that no, actually it’s okay, today it’s possible, tomorrow it isn’t, I’m an exception, I’m different, the Holy One, blessed be He, will forgive me—millions of things. And little by little you convince yourself of this theory. It starts with some nonsense whose only purpose is to let you do what you want, but little by little, since you don’t just do what you want if you understand it’s wrong—that’s weakness of will—you don’t do something you know is not right. So what do you do? You begin to build within yourself a theory that says that it is in fact right to do this. Now, this starts as something externally constructed, when you basically understand that it isn’t right, and little by little you convince yourself, a kind of autosuggestion, until you reach a state where, when people ask you, you really and sincerely say that you are a turkey. In your consciousness you have reached the conclusion that you really are a turkey. Just as people often say—you don’t have a monopoly on turkey-ness, I’m a turkey too. Like these claims: you don’t have a monopoly on Judaism, you don’t have a monopoly on—I don’t know what—sex, gender, whatever you want. These claims that basically say everything goes with everything, nobody has a monopoly on anything. So I’m a turkey too. And little by little you start convincing yourself that there really is no objective definition of a turkey. If I decide I’m a turkey, then I’m a turkey. There are many people like that today: they decide they are a woman, so they are a woman, that’s all. There doesn’t need to be anything objective that strengthens or supports this claim. If I decided I’m a woman, then I’m a woman, that’s all. Sometimes there are objective things—I’m not claiming everyone is like that, I’m claiming there are some. Now what does this actually mean? It means that the person is in a state of autosuggestion, and when he acts, he acts with his conscious mind thinking he is a turkey. Even though deep inside there is a point where he understands that he is not, he somehow succeeded in sublimating it, as I said earlier—repressing it. It’s inside, but he wrapped it up in the layers of the theory he built. Now why did he build this theory? Because he wants to be without clothes and eat crumbs under the table. This theory simply comes to allow him the behavior his inclination wants to dictate, right? But a person doesn’t just follow his inclination against what he thinks is right, so he has to convince himself that what he is doing is also right—that’s the process. So it begins with desire, and desire causes you to build a theory explaining that the counsel of desire is actually the right act, and then you can really sin, because then you are not in dissonance with what you yourself think is right. Now what is the way to treat someone like this? If this is what we call illness—an illness in which there is no true point inside at all—then you can’t treat it. He’s lost. Someone who inwardly knows he’s a human being, fully knows, even admits it, is just a liar, so he isn’t sick at all, right? There is a terminal patient with no cure; the alternative is someone who isn’t sick at all. So what is a sick person who can in fact be healed? A sick person who can be healed is someone who on the one hand is sick, but on the other hand not absolutely, not terminally, not terminally. What does that mean? There is an inner point that really is healthy, but he wrapped it in theories that he built, and those theories are on the intellectual plane. It’s not just desire; he built a theory. People who want to steal will build themselves a theory that they’re Robin Hood—they steal from the rich.
[Speaker C] To give to the poor.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Don’t I deserve it? I’m poor, so I take money from him. That’s a theory you build in order to justify your desire. You want the action you are going to do not to be an action that you yourself think is wicked. So you build a theory that presents that action as though it isn’t wicked. Okay? What do you do in such a situation? What is the treatment for such a person? The treatment for such a person is simply to bring him, by indirect means or even by force, it doesn’t matter how, to behave anyway like a human being and not like a turkey. What will happen in such a case? If I tell him: look, according to your own view you’re a turkey, fine, but a turkey can also not eat crumbs. Now your father doesn’t want you eating crumbs, you’re causing him pain—the king, right? So don’t eat crumbs. What will he do? He wants to eat crumbs—that’s the whole story, that’s why he built the turkey theory. Fine, but he has nothing to say against it, because I’m working with him on his own terms. Fine, a turkey is also allowed to eat human food; that doesn’t disqualify you from being a turkey, right? So make your father happy, what do you care? And put on clothes and sit on a chair and eat with a knife and fork, and so on. Now what happens in such a case is that I’ve brought him back on the behaviorist level, the behavioral level—to behave, yes, I’ve returned him to normative behavior. But what happens in his head? I said earlier that in his head he remains sick. No. In his head too he becomes healthy. Why? Because the whole theory he built was intended to allow him the behavior he wanted to engage in. Now if you bring him to a point where the theory no longer helps him—I got you to behave properly despite the theory—then what is the point of holding onto that theory? After all, deep down you know it isn’t true. And then? Then you become healthy. You stop believing that you’re a turkey. You understand that you’re a human being. That’s it. Because you built the whole theory in order to allow yourself to behave like a turkey. Now if I succeeded in causing you in practice to behave like a human being and not like a turkey, then in the end your head too will be healed. Because the whole theory was created in order to justify behavior. If you can’t actually get to the behavior you wanted to justify, then what is the point of holding onto that theory which you yourself know is not true? I’ll give you an example from life. Okay?
[Speaker C] If you come with this theory of yours, I can take the formerly religious people of the past and move them back to their original path.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they really are in that situation—just a moment, I’ll talk about that. Not all of them are like that, and some are. I’ll give an example. The Sefer HaChinukh writes, “hearts are drawn after actions.” And what does it mean that hearts are drawn after actions? What is that, some kind of mysticism? No, it’s exactly this. It’s the process I just described. If I get you, on the level of action, to behave properly, then the hearts—meaning consciousness, the intellect, whatever is inside—will sort itself out on its own. Because hearts are drawn after actions. But of course that is only on condition that inside you there is a point that knows that this is the correct behavior. And that this was only an external theory you built for yourself in order to justify different behavior. A case in point—not really an example, this is the thing itself. Maimonides—the Talmud says that a coerced bill of divorce is invalid. Yes, a coerced bill of divorce is invalid. Meaning that if I force someone to give a bill of divorce, if he is coerced into giving it, then it’s not merely invalid—the bill is nullified, the woman is not divorced. Okay? But when a religious court determines that the husband must divorce his wife and he refuses, a divorce-refuser, then we beat him until he says, “I want to.” Right? That is the law in the Talmud. There is a parallel law regarding offerings too, but let’s talk about divorce. What does that mean? It means that the person doesn’t want to give the divorce, we beat him until he says “I want to” outwardly, gives the bill of divorce, and everything is fine. Obviously the question that arises here is: but this is a coerced divorce. A coerced divorce is null. This is a divorce he gave under coercion; he doesn’t want to give this divorce. So how can it be that the woman is divorced?
[Speaker C] What, because he said “I want to”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So Maimonides says—once again we’ve come back to the realms of mysticism, don’t worry, it won’t stay mystical. So Maimonides says this: one whom the law requires us to compel to divorce his wife, and he does not wish to divorce her—the Jewish court in every place and at every time beats him until he says, “I want to,” and writes the bill of divorce, and it is a valid bill of divorce, despite the fact that they beat him. A coerced divorce, and it is valid. And likewise if non-Jews beat him and said to him, do what the Jews tell you, and the Jews pressured him through the hand of the non-Jew until he divorced her, then it is valid. But if the non-Jews on their own coerced him until he wrote it, since the law requires that he write it, then it is a disqualified bill of divorce. “Disqualified” means rabbinically disqualified, meaning not a completely null bill of divorce. It is valid on the Torah level, but rabbinically we do not do this. And why is this bill of divorce not null, seeing that he is coerced, whether by non-Jews or by Jews? He is coerced, so why isn’t this a coerced divorce? Why is the divorce not null? All of this is Maimonides; I’m reading from Maimonides here. So he says that we call someone coerced only when he is pressured and forced to do something that he is not obligated by the Torah to do, such as someone who was beaten until he sold or gave something away. But one whose evil inclination overpowered him to neglect a commandment or commit a transgression, and he was beaten until he did something he was obligated to do or distanced himself from something he was forbidden to do—this is not called coercion by others, rather he coerced himself with his bad mindset. Therefore, this one who does not want to divorce—since he wants to be part of the Jewish people, he wants to do all the commandments and distance himself from transgressions, but his inclination overpowered him, and once he was beaten until his inclination was weakened and he said “I want to,” he has already divorced of his own will. Usually people are delighted to discover a mystical spark in rational Maimonides, the rationalist—yes? Here you have your mystical spark. The Jewish point in every Jew always wants to keep the commandments. That’s nonsense. It’s nonsense for many reasons. First of all, factually I don’t believe it. And second, even if it were true, it doesn’t help. Why should I care that he has a Jewish spark deep inside him? What matters is what you decide to do, not what is inside you. I’m not interested in how you were born; what matters is your choices. That is what determines our judgment of you. That’s what I talked about at the beginning when I discussed moral judgment. Maimonides doesn’t mean mystical nonsense at all. It has nothing whatever to do with a Jewish spark or anything of that sort. What Maimonides is describing here is a completely rational and logical process, and it is the same process I described earlier. Think about a divorce-refuser. Why is he a divorce-refuser? I’m talking about a God-fearing Jew. He keeps commandments, minor and major alike, but he chains his wife, he doesn’t give her a divorce. He’s a divorce-refuser. The religious court pressures him, forbids him from leaving the country, puts him in jail—nothing helps, he doesn’t give the divorce. Why indeed doesn’t he give the divorce?
[Speaker C] To take revenge on his wife.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To take revenge on his wife, right. That usually stems from some kind of anger. Meaning, she angered him, it doesn’t matter whether justly or unjustly, that’s not the issue. But because of the anger he says: I’ll get back at her, I won’t let her remarry, I’ll leave her chained. She’ll remain my wife and I won’t release her. In order to get revenge on her. Right? Now we’re talking about a God-fearing man. And Jewish law says that in such a case he must divorce, regardless of whether you were at fault or not, but that’s the law. The religious court told you that according to Jewish law, in such a case you are obligated to divorce your wife. Why doesn’t he do it? He has an evil inclination. But talk to these people and you’ll see. By the way, I had a student here, one of the most famous divorce-refusers, who studied with us here at the institute.
[Speaker C] There was that story of those who grabbed
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In prisons, Oded—something, I forgot his last name, his family name. So when you talk to this person, he explains to you: the judges don’t understand, I’m right. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not want me to give my wife a bill of divorce. I know better than they do. Because she made me angry, and she doesn’t deserve for me to release her. On the contrary, “so that others will hear and fear,” she needs to be taught a lesson—and a thousand and one explanations. There isn’t a single recalcitrant husband you won’t hear these explanations from. What does that mean? After all, basically we know that he observes every detail of Jewish law, major and minor alike; he’s committed to Jewish law, completely committed to Jewish law. So what happened here? He built himself a theory, right? He doesn’t want to give his wife a bill of divorce; at the root of it is impulse. He wants to get revenge on her, okay? But he isn’t willing to do things that are against Jewish law—after all, he’s a person committed to Jewish law. He won’t do things that in his own view are wrong. So what does he do? He builds himself a theory that this actually is right. Okay? He’s not satisfied with mere impulse. He’s not acting just because of impulse. He builds a theory, and now what he’s doing really is, in his view, the right thing. It’s right to keep her chained, right not to give her the bill of divorce. Ah, the judges say otherwise? They don’t understand. Only I know what went on in our home, and I’m right. The Holy One, blessed be He, will vindicate me in the heavenly court. Okay? That’s how he builds this theory for himself, and it’s clear that that’s how it works. With almost all recalcitrant husbands, in my opinion, that’s what’s going on.
[Speaker B] If a recalcitrant husband now—I’m an atheist, completely—but I’m keeping my wife chained?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m not talking about an atheist. I’m talking about someone who fears Heaven. Wait, one second—we’ll get to atheists. First let’s understand this. Okay? I’ll get there.
[Speaker C] An even harder situation, it seems to me, is not a religious person where you’re talking about religion. There’s a person who goes to pray and things like that, but on the Sabbath he drives. On the Sabbath he drives. Okay. How? What? Huh? He says, “I can’t.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, “I can’t” is something else. I’m talking about someone who builds himself an ideological theory that it’s permitted for him. I’m talking about someone who builds himself a theory that it’s permitted to drive on the Sabbath. Not someone who says, “I can’t.” Someone who says, “I can’t”—that’s a different phenomenon. Okay, so you—
[Speaker C] That I’m leaving aside. Somehow he found that it’s permitted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s not what you said before. Those are two different things. One person says, “Look, I just don’t have the strength for this. You’re right, in principle it’s forbidden to drive, but I just don’t have the strength for it, it doesn’t suit me.” That’s one possibility. The second possibility says no—he builds himself a theory for why driving on the Sabbath doesn’t involve any prohibited labor at all; it’s not forbidden. It’s permitted. Maybe the halakhic decisors are mistaken. A very big difference. The second one says: permitted. The second one says: this thing is not forbidden. The first says: it is forbidden, but I don’t have the strength. The first is a sinner; he knows it’s forbidden and he does it. The second is acting under compulsion in the sense that he thinks it’s permitted. Someone who says “it’s permitted” is inadvertent; he’s compelled, yes? That’s something completely different. I’m talking about the second, not the first. And I’m claiming that very often, not always, but very often when someone says “it’s permitted,” it starts from impulse. And the impulse causes him to develop a theory that justifies what he wants to do. Okay? And he says, no, it’s permitted. Or: my wife—no, no—the Holy One, blessed be He, wants me to keep her chained; after all, He wants me to teach her a lesson, it’s not just my own impulse. Now he’s built himself a theory. What do we do? Maimonides explains: after all, we know that deep inside there’s a point where he understands that he’s not okay. He understands that he’s not okay. But he built himself some theory and he’s trapped inside it. Meaning, ask him sincerely and honestly and he’ll tell you with conviction that he’s doing the right thing. Deep inside there’s some point—maybe even only half-conscious—where he knows he isn’t right, that this isn’t okay. But he built a theory, like the king’s son with the turkey. Okay? So what do I do? I say, listen, I’m going to beat you mercilessly. And after you say, “I am willing,” I’ll take the bill of divorce, give it to the woman, and marry her off. Even though it’s a coerced bill of divorce. You’ll keep shouting the whole time, “Yes, but I gave it against my will; she isn’t divorced at all; she’s forbidden to remarry; you just beat me up.” So what does that help? I don’t want to divorce her at all—this is a coerced bill of divorce. Right? And I’ll tell you this: I don’t care, I’m going to marry her off anyway. Nothing you do will help. Even though it’s a coerced bill of divorce. So what happens then? What happens is what happened to the king’s son. What do I mean? You built the theory that justifies what you’re doing because you wanted to keep taking revenge on her, to keep her chained. Now I’ll show you that you won’t succeed, that the result won’t happen—come what may. Okay? She will not remain chained, know that. The moment you understand that this theory won’t help you achieve what you want to do, and deep down you already know this theory isn’t true, then it will dissipate. Then you will truly want to divorce the woman. Because in practice you really do want to fulfill Jewish law. You built a theory that justifies this because you have an impulse. If I don’t let this theory bear fruit—that is, I don’t let you do what you wanted to do on the basis of this theory—the theory will dissipate on its own. And then you really will want to divorce her. Not because of some Jewish spark and not because of anything like that.
[Speaker C] More than that—you’ll say, in the meantime my wife will be with someone, she’ll be with somebody else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t understand—but she’s a married woman. What do you mean, she’ll be with someone else?
[Speaker C] A married woman, fine, a married woman.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A married woman—I need her to be divorced. I’ll pressure him to give a bill of divorce.
[Speaker C] But you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t permit a married woman.
[Speaker C] Wait, no, he gives her a bill of divorce so that it will be…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’m not faking it; I’m causing him to want to.
[Speaker C] And now the bill of divorce is actually valid.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Same thing with “she’ll be with someone.” How will she be with someone? But she’s a married woman! That won’t become kosher if she gets a bill of divorce a week later. At the time the bill of divorce is given, you have to ensure that it’s given with the intention to divorce. Otherwise she isn’t divorced. It won’t help if she’s with someone—she’s committing adultery. But when I give the bill of divorce—you give the bill of divorce while shouting, “I don’t want to at all, it’s only because you’re beating me.” And I beat you harder until you say, “I am willing.” And everyone understands that you don’t really want to. So what does that help? What kind of fraud is that—are we fooling somebody? No. The point is that once you really say, “I am willing,” you will already have come to terms with your fate. Meaning, you’ll no longer achieve the goal of keeping her chained. So there’s no point in holding onto this theory that you yourself know is not true. So the theory will dissipate. In the end you’ll really want it. Because that is in fact what you really want deep down. But not because of some Jewish spark. It has nothing to do with a Jewish spark. Rather, because you really are a person who lives with commitment to Torah and commandments. Where’s the practical difference between this explanation and the mysticism of a Jewish spark? With atheists. I claim that the rule “we compel him until he says, ‘I am willing’” exists only for a person who is committed to Torah and commandments. An atheist or secular person, I don’t know what, who is keeping his wife chained and won’t give her a bill of divorce—beating him until he says, “I am willing,” won’t help. She will not be divorced; it’s a coerced bill of divorce. Whoever says that this is because of the Jewish spark inside each and every one of us, that he wants to fulfill commandments—then he says it applies to an atheist too; he too is a Jew. He has it built in, he was born with it. So all of us deep down want to fulfill commandments, we just don’t know it. Happy is the believer. But I’m not talking about that. There is no Jewish spark and nothing of the sort. But there is a person whom I know is committed to Torah and commandments. It’s obvious—I see in the rest of his life that he observes every detail, major and minor alike, completely committed to Torah and commandments. So this is not metaphysical speculation about some Jewish spark inside him; I simply know that he’s a person committed to Torah and commandments. And then I say to myself: so wait, what’s happening here, that suddenly he behaves in such a bizarre way against Torah and commandments? Apparently he built himself a theory. So if he built himself a theory, I’ll beat him; the result will happen against his will, despite himself and to his fury, and in any case he’ll also come to terms with it. The theory will dissipate. We can’t know, but he comes to terms with it—that’s his process of coming to terms. And for us it’s enough that he says, “I am willing.” Because you have no way of knowing exactly when he came to terms with it. So Jewish law has to establish some line, and the line is when he says, “I am willing.” On the assumption that in the end he does come to terms with it. Potential acceptance at some stage until it becomes actual. Okay?
[Speaker B] Is there some halakhic decisor who says that regarding an atheist, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there are halakhic decisors who say that. They’re rare, but there are decisors who say it. I saw it once—I think in the name of Maharik—and afterward I also saw more modern decisors who wanted to make that claim.
[Speaker C] Why? Because he doesn’t want a bill of divorce?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because he betrothed a woman according to the law of Moses and Israel. What about all the atheists in Israel who marry through the rabbinate with a ring and “behold, you are betrothed to me according to the law of Moses and Israel”? She is fully betrothed. She needs a valid divorce in order to be permitted to others. Even though they’re atheists. That’s unrelated. Yet another reason why it’s problematic to marry, in the proper legal way, couples who are not committed to Torah and commandments. It’s a problem. Aside from the problem of mamzerut and everything else, with bill-of-divorce refusal a problem will also arise here, because you have no way to compel him to give a bill of divorce.
[Speaker C] And what if the witnesses are not observant?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if there was no valid betrothal, then no divorce is needed, so you solved the problem. But the problem is when the betrothal was validly done. Then the question is what you do, because compulsion won’t help in such a situation. So how do you deal with refusal? Right. So the claim, in short, what I want to say, is that this whole process of the king’s son is actually based on—it’s a cure for a mental illness of this kind, though that’s only a metaphor of course, a spiritual cure. It’s not treatment of mental illness, but repentance or spiritual healing. It’s built around a situation in which deep inside you are healthy. You know what the truth is. But you built yourself a theory that justifies your conduct. And now, the way to treat you is basically to make sure that in practice you won’t succeed in realizing what you want—to behave according to your impulses—and then the theory will dissipate anyway. Okay, that’s the behaviorist treatment method. And if he’s really an atheist and built himself—
[Speaker B] I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t know. But there are situations where I can know. No, the atheist who built atheism for himself in general—that’s not it. But if he’s generally an atheist, then I assume that here too he doesn’t believe. But if throughout his life he’s committed to Torah and commandments, then I don’t need speculation. I know he’s committed to Torah and commandments, so why here doesn’t he do it? Because here he built himself a theory. And the atheist built himself a theory? So I say—
[Speaker C] That I can’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How can I know that this is a theory and that he doesn’t really believe it? That’s the mysticism of the Jewish spark, but in my view there’s no basis for it. Yes, look at a passage—maybe I’ll finish with this passage. I brought here a passage, it’s copied from my website. I brought some passage from a book by Steven Weinberg. “The Decision to Believe.” He’s a well-known physicist. Here. There. It says this: “The decision whether to believe or not believe is entirely in our hands. It may be that I would be happier or more polite if I were a descendant of the emperors of China. But no effort or desire on my part has the power to make me believe that, just as I cannot by force of will make my heart stop beating. Even so, it seems that many people are able to control to some degree the things they believe, and choose to believe what makes them good or happy. The most interesting description I know of how such control can be achieved appears in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four. The hero Winston Smith wrote in his diary: ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.’ The inquisitor O’Brien takes this as a challenge and undertakes the task of forcing Smith to change his mind. After torture, Smith agrees willingly to say that two plus two are five. But this is not what O’Brien wants. He does not—this is not enough for him.” In the end, he wants him really to believe that two plus two is five, right? After all, all of Nineteen Eighty-Four is about communist brainwashing. They try to make us believe that communism is right, and if you repeat something enough times, the assumption is that it gets in. So he says—not at age seventeen at least, if not at twenty-three. So he says: “But this is not what O’Brien wants. At last the pain becomes so unbearable that, in order to escape it, Smith succeeds in convincing himself for a moment that two plus two are five. O’Brien is for the time being satisfied, and the torture is suspended.” What does that mean? It means that in the end he really does convince himself that two plus two is five. He isn’t just saying outwardly that two plus two is five, because that’s not enough for O’Brien. O’Brien wants to see that inwardly too he believes that two plus two is five. If you torture him enough, even that can be produced. Now of course, deep down he knows that two plus two is not five. There’s an inner point at which he remains with the fact that two plus two is four. He knows that even when he—even at the stage where he’s convinced. Conviction here is a terribly complicated thing. Meaning, there’s some theory that you build for yourself; deep inside, maybe half-consciously, half-unconsciously, you know it isn’t true. But in your everyday life you are genuinely convinced that this is the theory you believe. You act on it. People can suddenly adopt some theory that nothing in the world exists, like idealists. Now why? Because they enjoy philosophizing about it. But in the end they’ll convince themselves, “Wait, really—who says anything exists? Maybe not?” He knows that it does, but never mind. In the end, philosophically there are many philosophers in that state. People who want not to observe commandments will convince themselves that there is no God, and no argument you raise against them will help at all. So what does that mean? It may be that deep inside they understand that it is true, that there is a God, but they built themselves a theory because that’s what allows them to go on behaving the way they want to behave.
[Speaker C] In the end, like those who are in the tunnels now, already five hundred days—they can become convinced that this situation really is right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, right?
[Speaker C] Meaning, what are you saying? That they’re not suffering? Basically, that he came and through these tortures convinced him that the si—so that’s in—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A person does autosuggestion and puts himself into a state in which, in his consciousness, two plus two is five—really, not just something he says outwardly. Even though still—and this is what I’m adding to his words—deep down it is clear that he still knows that two plus two is four. Somewhere deep inside. When the torture ends, ask him what two plus two is, and he’ll go back to saying four. He hasn’t forgotten his mathematical doctrine. Okay? But there is a state in which you convince yourself by autosuggestion that two plus two is really five; it’s not just lip service. It really is a perception. What did O’Brien—
[Speaker C] He stopped torturing him when he—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Showed him that he had been convinced. How? Doesn’t matter; it’s a fictional book. A fictional book—he puts there an EEG, what difference does it make? It’s just a fictional book. I’m only trying to show a description of this process. Now with two plus two equals five it’s even much clearer that the person hasn’t lost the knowledge that two plus two is four. He knows it, right? So even if he reaches a state where he is convinced that two plus two is five, it’s not conviction all the way down to the innermost point. Rather, he lives inside a consciousness in which two plus two is five. He managed to insert himself into such a consciousness. Okay? And the claim basically is that illnesses that can be healed are like that. And I want to claim that the sin of idolatry—I began with a question, so let’s finish with it—the sin of idolatry: I asked, what is the sin of idolatry? Either way, if you believe in that idol, then you’re compelled. If you don’t believe in that idol, then there’s no prohibition of idolatry here. Because the prohibition of idolatry is not to perform actions, but to perform actions out of belief in the idol. Fine, we’ll see this in the next lesson, but for now accept it. Okay? So how can there be a sin of idolatry that is considered a sin? On the one hand, you believe in the idol—because otherwise it isn’t a sin. On the other hand, if you believe in the idol, are you not compelled, and then you have responsibility? So how can it be that it’s a sin but not compulsion? The answer—and weakness of will doesn’t solve the problem, we talked about that. Weakness of will doesn’t solve the problem. Here the parallel solution to weakness of will is autosuggestion. The person wants to worship idols for all sorts of reasons—his impulse. He builds himself a theory that this idolatry is actually real. It’s true. And he lives inside this theory for real, and now when he acts, he acts from within a theory he supposedly believes in. But deep down he knows it isn’t true. That is enough to make him responsible, liable to punishment for this transgression. Okay? So on the one hand it really is idolatry; it’s not just lip service that he doesn’t believe. On the other hand, he bears responsibility. He bears responsibility because deep inside you knew that this was only autosuggestion. It’s not really true; the idol is not really real. Okay? Fine, we’ll stop here. Thank you. Let’s go up dressed, because that’s more.