Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 6 – 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
- General overview.
- Free choice, weakness of will, and the moral status of actions
- Four models of “democracy” as a metaphor for the meaning of choice
- Freedom versus liberty: asset versus value, and a new reading of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi
- Values as given, not chosen: a critique of “the sovereign Jew” and the spinach test
- The source of obligation to values, the argument from morality, and the Euthyphro dilemma
- Command and acceptance of divinity in Jewish law: idolatry out of love and fear, and Maimonides versus Rashi
- Serving for its own sake, purified commitment, and prayer as an example
- Maimonides on motives for commandments and the seven Noahide commandments
Summary
General overview.
The text argues that an action has moral significance only when it stems from a free decision between value-laden alternatives within a given framework of costs and of good and evil. From this it follows that freedom in itself is not a value but a condition, whereas liberty is a value of autonomous conduct under constraints. The text argues that a person does not choose the values themselves, only whether to act in accordance with them, and that any consistent talk about good and evil presupposes objective moral truth that is not determined by the decision of an individual or a majority. The text raises the question of the source of obligation to values through the notion of command, and carries the discussion into the religious sphere as well, where a religious value exists only when an act is done because we were commanded, not out of benefit, fear, or love. The text uses the Euthyphro dilemma and sources from Maimonides and the Talmudic text to argue that command does not constitute good and evil, but it does constitute the obligation to act according to the truth.
Free choice, weakness of will, and the moral status of actions
The text argues that without free choice and decision, an action has no moral significance, and actions not done through decision have no standing in moral judgment. The text adds that a person who chooses “to let go of the reins” and decide not to be a chooser bears responsibility for that decision as well. The text describes weakness of will as a situation in which a person understands what the values are “supposed” to require, yet acts otherwise, and from this arises the question of where the framework comes from within which values are determined.
Four models of “democracy” as a metaphor for the meaning of choice
The text presents a “Syria” model in which there is a ballot box but only one ballot slip, so there are no alternatives and the decision has no meaning. The text presents a “Switzerland” model in which there are several ballot slips but no problems and no costs to any choice, so the choice is free but devoid of value. The text presents a third model of countries with problems, in which there is free choice within a given framework of price tags, gain and loss, and only there does choice have value-significance. The text presents a fourth model through the parable of a post office branch in Burma where there are many boxes but all the letters fall into the same sack, to describe a situation in which there is apparently choice but all the outcomes are identical, so the choice changes nothing.
Freedom versus liberty: asset versus value, and a new reading of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi
The text distinguishes between freedom as the absence of constraints and liberty as conduct of autonomous decision within given constraints. The text argues that freedom is not a value but a condition or an asset, and that unjustified harm to freedom is an immoral act just as harm to an asset like money is immoral, but it does not follow from this that money or freedom are values. The text argues that liberty is a value because it is a mode of conduct of a “divine soul” in which a person decides how to act within a framework of constraints not in his control, and without them decisions have no meaning. The text interprets Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s saying, “The servants of time are servants of servants; the servant of God alone is free,” as a claim about liberty rather than freedom, and reformulates it as “the servant of God alone is truly free.”
Values as given, not chosen: a critique of “the sovereign Jew” and the spinach test
The text criticizes Ari Elon’s distinction between “the rabbinic Jew,” whose values are dictated to him, and “the sovereign Jew,” who legislates values for himself, and presents an example of a “sovereign Jew” who chooses to be a hired murderer in order to show that praise for value-sovereignty already presupposes an objective distinction between good and bad values. The text argues that if a person himself legislates what is good and what is evil, then there is no room for moral criticism of his choice, and consequently there is no concept of a bad person, because every choice will be “good” by his own definition. The text presents David Enoch’s “spinach test” to distinguish between subjective taste and objective truth, and argues that our judgment about slavery and discrimination against women is not laughable like spinach but resembles a claim about relativity theory, and therefore is perceived as objective truth. The text concludes that moral values are binding truth that does not depend on the decisions of individuals or a majority, and illustrates this also through Nazi Germany in order to show that a majority decision does not constitute good.
The source of obligation to values, the argument from morality, and the Euthyphro dilemma
The text argues that values cannot be derived from facts or from scientific observations, and that good and evil cannot be grounded in majority decision, so an external source is required to establish validity and obligation. The text presents the Euthyphro dilemma in the question whether the good is good because God commands it, or whether God commands it because it is good, and brings Abraham versus Sodom as an example that command is not perceived as constituting morality. The text cites Avi Sagi and attributes to him the conclusion that there is almost no Jewish thinker who holds that morality was created because God commanded it, but rather morality precedes command, and even the Holy One, blessed be He, is “subject” to it in a way similar to being subject to logic. The text explains that the statement “the Holy One, blessed be He, is good” becomes empty if the good is defined only as His will, and therefore the claim that He is good presupposes a scale of good and evil that precedes His will and His command.
Command and acceptance of divinity in Jewish law: idolatry out of love and fear, and Maimonides versus Rashi
The text cites Sanhedrin 61b about “one who worships idolatry out of love and out of fear,” and notes that Rava exempts him when he has not “accepted it upon himself as a god,” and the Jewish law follows Rava. The text brings Rashi’s interpretation, which explains “out of love and out of fear” as out of love of a person and fear of a person, “and he did not regard it in his heart as divinity,” and the Rivash and the Raavad join this understanding. The text brings Maimonides in Laws of Idolatry, chapter 3, law 6, who interprets love and fear as related to the idol itself, and raises the question what “accepted it upon himself as a god” means, and what the difference is between acting out of fear/attraction and religious worship. The text proposes, in the name of Nadav Shenarav, that the difference is between a causal action, like slowing down in front of a police officer, and religious obedience in which a person acts “because he said so,” and explains that “God” is whoever one obeys “simply by virtue of his being someone,” just as in the Torah portion about judges they are called “gods” because one must listen to them.
Serving for its own sake, purified commitment, and prayer as an example
The text argues that genuine religious worship exists only out of acceptance of God as divine authority, that is, acting because of the command itself and not because of benefit, fear, love, or desire for reward. The text gives the example of the evening prayer said in a state of extreme exhaustion as an act that expresses “purified commitment” and not worthless prayer. The text cites the story of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev about repairing the wagon while wearing prayer shawl and phylacteries in order to show that commitment to prayer is preserved even when a person cuts corners and winks, and presents this as a real expression of commitment, not a children’s tale. The text refers to Leibowitz and criticizes him for the extremism according to which one could “recite the phone book,” while arguing that commitment is the first floor, and on top of it additional floors of experience and intentions can be built.
Maimonides on motives for commandments and the seven Noahide commandments
The text cites Maimonides in Laws of Repentance, chapter 10, who states that one should not serve God in order to receive blessings or the World to Come or to be saved from punishments, and defines such worship as worship out of fear, characteristic of “the common people, women, and children.” The text cites Maimonides, who defines one who serves out of love as someone who does “the truth because it is true” and for whom “the good will come in the end because of it,” and therefore the good cannot be the motivation for the worship. The text cites Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of Laws of Kings, who states that one who accepts and is careful to observe the seven commandments is among the pious of the nations of the world only if he does them “because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah,” and if he does them “because of rational judgment,” he is “one of their wise men” and not “one of the pious of the nations of the world.” The text concludes that a religious act receives religious value only through commitment to the command, just as a moral act receives moral value only through commitment to the moral command, and indicates that the continuation of the discussion will address the implications of this.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so we were really talking about the question of weakness of will, how a person acts in a situation where he himself understands that what he’s doing is wrong. We talked about the significance of decision and choice in the moral judgment of a person’s actions. Things that are not done out of decision really have no standing in this context. And now I want to move on a bit, that is, to get closer to the importance of command. That will move us further along in our discussion, because really our topic is morality and faith / belief and Jewish law. So until now I’ve basically defined a little what morality is. Now in a moment I’ll want to move on and deal with the significance of command, or of the moral norm. But before that I want to sharpen one more point that I’ve actually already touched on from different angles. Okay. When we talk about a person’s choice, we saw that he basically has to decide how he ought to behave, and decide freely. Otherwise his action has no moral significance. I qualified this last time. I said that if a person lets go of the reins, meaning decides not to be a chooser, not to work in the mode of a divine soul, then he also bears responsibility for that. But in principle there has to be a dimension of choice, because without it his actions have no meaning. Now, the choice is a choice made between value-laden alternatives. There are certain values, I’m in some situation, in that situation the values are supposed to dictate X, the values as I understand them are supposed to dictate X, and in weakness of will I do Y. That’s called sinning, or behaving not according to the right values. The question is: how are the values determined? The framework within which I conduct this discussion itself requires explanation. Where does that framework come from? So I want to bring some example that will sharpen the point a bit. There is — maybe I already mentioned this, I don’t remember — you can talk, in the context of democratic elections in a state, about three or four models that all, ostensibly, claim to involve freedom of choice. The first model is Syria. A well-known democracy. And there, you enter the voting booth — I mean in Assad’s time; today I have no idea what’s going on there, I think there isn’t even a voting booth at all. But in the time of Assad the father, Assad the son, and Assad the holy spirit, there was a voting booth. You entered the booth and had to choose a ballot freely and put it into the box. Right. Except for one thing: there was only one ballot, only Assad. Right? And very surprisingly, every time again Assad would be elected with 99.7 percent or something like that. I have no idea where that 0.3 percent came from who didn’t choose Assad — that’s a mystery that hasn’t been solved to this very day. Maybe it was just a counting error? It could be they killed them after they voted, yes. In any case, that’s the first model. Now why do I include it in the list of models that express freedom? Because nobody tells you what to do. You enter the booth freely, right? You choose the ballot you want, put it in the box, everything’s fine. And what comes out is the president. Except there’s only one ballot. There’s only one option. So there isn’t coercion imposed on you in the active, direct sense. Okay? Nobody tells you what to do. It’s just that your alternatives are limited. Meaning, you have no alternatives. So that’s Syrian democracy. The next democracy is Swiss democracy. In Swiss democracy — and again, for me Switzerland is a metaphor; the real Switzerland is certainly not like this — this is a system where you enter the booth, put it in the box, choose one from several ballots — not one, there are several ballots there. You choose one from several ballots, put it in the box, they count, and whoever gets the most votes becomes president of Switzerland. Okay, ostensibly democracy at its best, right? Except — metaphorical Switzerland has no problems. So what difference does it make who’ll be there? Whether it’s so-and-so or someone else, what difference does it make? Either way it changes nothing. Do whatever you want, study whatever. What difference does it make? There are no problems. Meaning, there are no costs for any right or wrong choice. Do whatever you want. Nobody is dealing with problems. And where there are no problems, then you really are free. Nobody tells you what to choose. But your choice is devoid of value. Who cares? Meaning, there are no costs that are the given data, or the framework within which you operate. And in such a situation, even if you’re free, it’s basically valueless. Okay? What happens in a third model? The third model is the model of countries, at least one of which I know well, a country that has problems. Okay? Meaning there are several ballots in the box, you choose freely as much as possible, and whoever gets the most votes becomes prime minister. And here too there are problems. Meaning, if you chose wrongly, there’s a price tag. Meaning, you’ll suffer, because he’ll act in a way that won’t be good for us. Okay? So there’s some price tag that doesn’t depend on me. I don’t choose the price tag. I only choose what to do given the price tags. Meaning, I’m within some given framework, and now I say: let’s see how I maneuver within that framework. I choose X, I choose Y, and there are prices — there’s a price tag, meaning, if you chose X, you gained this and lost that. If you chose Y, same thing. Now decide how you decide to conduct yourself within this framework, when the framework is given, not chosen by you. A given framework. Okay? That’s the third model. It’s a model of democracy that also has value, right? Here when you decide to choose freely — if it’s not free then there’s no point talking about value, you’re just doing what you’re obligated to do. I’m talking about someone who acts freely. You act freely and decide on one of two options or one of several options. But if there aren’t price tags given to you in advance, and not in your hands, then your freedom of choice has no meaning. Your freedom of choice has meaning only if you choose freely and there is also some framework of good and evil, black and white, prices, costs, benefits, that is given. It is the framework within which you operate. And only then does your freedom have value-significance. Okay? There is of course a fourth dimension, and the truth is I’m more afraid that we’re there. The fourth model — I’ll tell you a story. A friend of a friend of mine was once traveling in Burma. There were very large jungles there — Myanmar today — there are very large jungles there. He was traveling there with backpacks in the depths of Burma, and at some point in the jungle he reached some village of huts, some kind of people there, I don’t know who lived there, various natives living there, far from all civilization, in the middle of nowhere, yes? Nothing. He got there and saw that there was a post office branch. Meaning, you could send a letter. This was still in the era before there were phones — not cell phones. This was after Alexander Bell, yes? But there were no cell phones, so he decided to send a letter. He went to the post office and was amazed, because there was a sort of counter there, and next to the counter there was a collection of many, many boxes sorted by continents and countries. You could put your letter anywhere you wanted. Unbelievable, in the middle of nowhere, yes? In the middle of the jungle, really sorted, wonderful. He was stunned. Fine, he came with his letter, dropped it into Israel, in the right continent, the right country, and then went to pay — I don’t know whether he dropped it in and then paid, I don’t know exactly. He came to the counter, and here were the mailboxes. He came to the counter, and then he saw what was behind the mailboxes. And what was there — you can guess — was one sack into which all the letters fell. Meaning, lots and lots of countries and continents, but everything falls into the same sack. One letter a month comes out of there; now you put one in — go check among a hundred sacks which one a letter was sent in. Meaning, that’s the parable for the fourth model. Yes? The fourth model is a place where there are problems. You have freedom to choose, you can choose whoever you want, but they all do the same thing, so it doesn’t matter what you choose. So no matter what you chose, what comes out is the same thing. So it seems to me we’re actually closer to that model. But in any case, for our purposes, what I just wanted to sharpen in this context is that freedom is not enough. Meaning, for my freedom to have value I need to act within some framework that is a given framework. And that framework is imposed on me, and it determines prices for each of my choices — good, bad, moral, economic, it doesn’t matter, from every aspect. And only the existence of such a framework gives value-significance to my freedom. And my freedom in itself has no value. Freedom to cast lots is just randomness. Okay? What am I really trying to say? There’s a saying of Rabbi Yehuda Halevi in which he says: “The servants of time are servants of servants; the servant of God alone is free.” And for many years, when I first heard that saying, it annoyed me. It annoyed me because it sounded Orwellian, you know — after all, the servant of God is not free, right? What are you talking about? We have lots of constraints, right? All of Jewish law and all that — lots of constraints, much less free than a secular person, right? Or an atheist or whatever, okay? A gentile. So what stories are you telling me? Do you think that if you repeat the mantra a hundred times you’ll convince me? Yes, this is George Orwell, right? Ignorance is strength, ignorance is wisdom, I don’t know, the mantra of 1984. So that was my feeling. But at some point I thought maybe one can give it a meaningful interpretation, yes? An interpretation that really holds water. Why? My claim is that there’s a difference between freedom and liberty. Freedom is the absence of constraints. If there are no constraints on me, then I am free. Theoretically there’s no one with no constraints on him, but in principle, if there are no constraints on me, I am free. If I have few constraints, then I’m fairly free. And so on — the number of constraints determines the degree of freedom I have, right? Meaning, at base freedom is the absence of constraints. Is freedom a value? No. Freedom is a condition. I’m very happy if there are no constraints on me. Everything’s fine — I’m not talking about moral constraints or something. The fewer constraints I have, the happier I am, yes? Obviously, nobody goes looking for constraints for no reason, right? So of course I’m very happy that I’m free, that there are no constraints on me. But you can’t say freedom is a value. Freedom is a condition. It’s not a value. I am in a free condition or in an unfree condition. A value is not a given factual state. Whether I have constraints or not is a factual question. Okay? Therefore it’s not relevant at all to discuss this on the level of whether there is a value of freedom. Nowadays, somehow, it’s accepted in the world that there is a value to freedom. There is no value to freedom at all; that’s simply a categorical mistake. It’s not a value dispute, where I think freedom is a value and he thinks it isn’t. Whoever thinks it is is confused. He’s confused because on the conceptual level, a condition cannot be a value. What—
[Speaker C] What people mean when they say freedom has value is that there’s value in giving people freedom.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second, sorry, I’m getting there. Okay? What confuses people? What confuses people is that if, for example, I deprive someone of freedom unjustifiably, yes, then I’ve committed an immoral act. Right? Just throwing a person in prison, locking him in a house, whatever — that’s an immoral act. Okay? Yes, that’s obvious. Does that mean freedom is a value? No. Let’s take an example. It’s also an immoral act to take someone’s money, right? To rob — to steal or rob. Okay? Does having money therefore have moral value? The fact that I have money — no. So what is it, then? It’s not a value but an asset or a right, right? I have money — excellent, I enjoy that very much, I’m happy I have money, I have the right to hold the money, it is lawfully mine, everything is fine. But it’s not a value; it’s an asset. To harm someone’s asset is an immoral action. When I say that harming something is immoral, that doesn’t mean the thing itself is a value. That thing can also be an asset. It is also immoral to harm an asset. And I think that’s what confuses people. What confuses people is that if I deprive someone of freedom unjustly, that is an immoral action. When I say that harming something is an immoral action, that doesn’t mean the thing itself is a value. The thing can also be an asset. It is also immoral to harm an asset. And I think that’s what confuses people. What confuses people is that if I deprive someone of freedom unjustly, that is an immoral action. But that doesn’t mean freedom is a value. Freedom is an asset, not a value. Someone who has no constraints — great, good for him, pleasant for him, like someone who has a lot of money. Excellent for him. That means freedom is an asset, just as money is an asset. To harm, unlawfully, unjustifiably, another person’s asset is an immoral action. Okay? So what is a value? Freedom’s cousin — it’s called liberty. Liberty is a value. Why? Because liberty is not a condition; liberty is a form of conduct, a decision. What does that mean? Liberty is a situation in which I act as a free person within a given system of constraints. There is some system of constraints on me. The question is whether I let the constraints dictate what I will do — an animal soul, yes — or whether I decide on my path within the framework of the constraints. I am subject to the constraints, meaning they are not in my hands, okay? But I choose my path within, given, those constraints. That is a mode of conduct that has value, the conduct of a divine soul. A person makes decisions and behaves according to what he has decided. Okay? Now, the value of liberty cannot exist unless there are constraints on me. Because if there are no constraints on me, decisions have no meaning — decisions between what and what? There are no prices. Switzerland, right? No prices. So I freely decide whether to eat this pizza or that pizza? Okay, so I chose freely — so what? But there’s no constraint or price tag attached to any of my choices. So it has no value-significance at all. Exactly like the elections in Switzerland. Okay? And therefore my claim is that liberty is a value and freedom is an asset. Liberty and freedom are not synonyms; in a certain sense they are opposite terms. Freedom is the absence of constraints; liberty is defined only when there are constraints on you. Because if there are no constraints on you, you are not a free person in this sense. Freedom can be stolen from someone — if I impose constraints on him, I take away his freedom, I throw him in prison, okay? Which is not okay if I do it unlawfully. Okay? Liberty cannot be stolen, even if you want to. As much as you can, you can add more and more constraints, but the person’s decision how autonomous to be within the constraints in which he finds himself — that’s his decision. It’s not in your hands; you can’t take that from him, and you can’t give it to him. Okay? Therefore in many respects, freedom and liberty are not only not synonyms, they are opposites. Really opposites. Now Switzerland is freedom. Why? Because in Switzerland you choose completely freely, but there are no constraints, you could just as well toss a coin. There is no value-weight to any of your choices. Okay? So that’s freedom. Okay? Syria is of course neither freedom nor liberty, because you have no options, you can’t decide freely, okay? Nobody puts a gun to your head, but you simply have no options. So that is determinism, a condition of servitude, you might say. And countries — yes, countries with problems, all countries have problems — but a country with problems, there you can relate to democracy as a value, because there you conduct yourself as a free person, not as a person who is merely free. A free person in the sense of liberty, because there are constraints that you confront and within them you decide how to act. And there your freedom has value, only there. Okay? By the way, just an interesting remark: in Hebrew, what about freedom? When I’m in a state of freedom I’m called free, right? When I’m in a state of liberty, what am I called? Religious? No, not religious. You jumped ahead. In words, what am I? “Libertied”? No — a free person. Right? That’s interesting. I don’t know if it proves anything, but it’s interesting. There’s no such thing as “libertied.” There is such a thing as “free.” Why? Because freedom is the absence of constraints; you can be in a state without constraints. Liberty — you can never be “libertied.” You can aspire to conduct yourself in liberty, to decide, and then it’s a form of conduct, something you aim toward; it’s not a condition you are in. Yes? What is a person destined for the World to Come? Do you know what that means? A person destined for the World to Come is always someone living in this world. Right? Someone who has reached the World to Come is not “destined for the World to Come”; he is in the World to Come. A person destined for the World to Come is someone in this world whose face is turned there, yes, who is worthy of the World to Come or headed toward it — that’s called a person destined for the World to Come. “A person of” something always means you are not in that condition; you are in another condition, only your face is turned there, you strive toward it, essentially you aspire to it, okay? So too, a free person. A free person basically means you’re not in some “liberty-state”; that doesn’t exist, unlike freedom. You can be free; there is no such thing.
[Speaker D] Religious is a behavior of back—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second, one second, we’ll get to religious in a moment, I haven’t gotten there yet. In just a second. First I’m defining the concepts. Okay? Rabbi Yehuda Halevi — let me return to him. So the claim is that when someone tells me I am a free person, it’s like a person destined for the World to Come. I’m actually within constraints, but I aspire that the constraints won’t dictate my conduct, but rather that I’ll make decisions and choices and behave as I decide. Therefore it’s “a free person” and not “libertied,” the way it is “free.” Okay.
[Speaker E] Now, say in a certain sense in Switzerland, say, you’d prefer education or something — why would you prefer it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it would bring some benefit. So that means there’s a framework, that there are problems. Economically? No, that is a problem — an economic problem, you want money. Morally? Then you have a problem that if you don’t behave that way, you have a moral problem, not an economic one; it’s still a problem. In the end, the moment what you do has significance, that means you’re no longer in Switzerland — in metaphorical Switzerland, of course. In Switzerland there are problems, but in the terms I’m talking about, Switzerland is a world where it literally makes no difference what you do, in any respect — not morally, not economically, not in any way, security-wise, nothing. Do whatever you want. Toss a coin. Everything’s fine. Everyone has all the food they want, all the money they want, nobody threatens them, there are no health problems, everything is fine. Nothing, nothing will happen. Everyone will die on the same day, at the same time, everything — nothing is in your hands. Everything is fine. As if you have no control over anything. You can decide whatever you want — play soccer, play basketball, eat sandwiches, eat pizza, do whatever you want, you’re completely free. Only none of it will affect anything. Okay? The moment it affects something, then we’re no longer in Switzerland. Okay?
[Speaker D] It’s hypothetical, but it’s a situation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, hypothetically. I’m just defining situations. It’s not— there are no such countries. I’m defining situations. So the claim I actually want to make is that—yes, what Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi said: “The slaves of time are slaves of slaves; only the servant of God is free.” I translate that into my own language: only the servant of God is truly free. Not merely free in the sense of unrestrained. Truly free means someone who determines his fate within the constraints. He acts within constraints. That’s not freedom; that’s liberty. A lot of times people use these terms interchangeably, but in the terminology I’m using here—this isn’t a dictionary, I defined it just for my purposes here. Maybe in some places what I call liberty they’ll call something else, and what I call freedom they’ll call liberty. I don’t care; everyone with his own dictionary. I just want it to be clear that we’re talking about two different concepts. I call this freedom and that liberty. It doesn’t matter. Pick whichever two words you want, okay? So the claim I want to make is that Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi is talking about liberty, not freedom. Now why is only the servant of God truly free? What? He chooses. The fact that he has constraints doesn’t mean—if he chooses within constraints, he is free in the deeper sense. The fact that he has constraints isn’t enough. He has to have freedom to choose, and there have to be pressures or constraints or a framework within which he behaves. Okay? Now such a framework can actually be dictated to you objectively from outside only by the Holy One, blessed be He—only by God. A framework of values. Because economic constraints, health constraints, financial constraints, of course we all have those. But a framework of right and wrong in the moral sense—that has to be some external factor that dictates it. To explain this point—wait, in a few more classes I’ll get to God and morality, okay? But for now I’m assuming it, okay? I haven’t yet explained why I think that’s true. But the claim is that “only the servant of God is free” means that only the constraints that the Holy One, blessed be He, places on us can give meaning to our freedom. That is, turn us into free people in the deeper sense, not merely unrestrained people. You can be unrestrained without the constraint of the Holy One, blessed be He—not only can you, only without the constraint of the Holy One, blessed be He will you be unrestrained. But there you won’t be truly free, because when there are no constraints it has no meaning. Right? It’s like someone escaping from a locked prison—that takes creativity, right? Someone running in an open field—there’s no creativity there, he doesn’t need to discover any creative thought for that, there’s simply no constraint, run wherever you want. Okay? Meaning, whenever there’s something that resists what I want to do, then what I want to do gains meaning. Positive or negative, doesn’t matter, but there has to be some framework that tries to pressure me, tries to dictate to me, and then I’m tested on the question of whether I let it dictate to me or whether I decide my own path. Okay? That’s basically what I want to say. It basically means that for a moral act—and that’s the point I was trying to get to—for a moral act to have value, first, there have to be two paths before me, not Syria. I need to act freely, Switzerland. But that’s still not enough. Neither Switzerland nor Syria really has value. It has to be countries with problems—or, it has to be a free act, but one that is done within a framework of constraints and prices and values, yes, all kinds of things that give a price tag to everything I do. Then my actions have meaning. So in fact, the existence of values on the one hand is a constraint, but on the other hand that very constraint is what gives value to my moral choices. Or in other words, I don’t choose values, contrary to what people think. A person does not choose his values; his values are given. A person chooses whether to act according to his values or not. Interesting. Meaning, values are part of the framework given to me; I don’t choose it. Within that framework, if I have a degree of freedom to choose—yes, if I have free will—I can choose to go with the values or go against the values. So once that exists and I choose to go with the values, my act is a moral act. So all these things are required for the act to be a moral act. I need to have two options, I need freedom to choose between them, and there has to be a framework that gives a price tag to each of my choices—a moral price tag, for the sake of the discussion right now—a system that dictates values to me. Okay. I’ll also illustrate this from another angle. There was Justice Menachem Elon, who served on the Supreme Court, he has already passed away, the religious judge. He sat in the religious seat—back then there was always just one religious judge. So he has several sons, and one of them is called Ari Elon. I think that’s the youngest son, I think, and he’s formerly religious—he left religion—but he became a kind of secular rebbe. He deals with Judaism, secular Judaism of course, lots of criticism of religious Judaism and so on, doesn’t matter. In short, he’s a person with an extraordinary gift of expression; it’s a pleasure to hear him and read him. But with people who have such strong powers of expression you have to be very careful, because often the power of expression hides some kind of vacuum in terms of content. Meaning, the things you’re saying may be complete nonsense, but you present them so wonderfully that everyone is captivated by the magic of the presentation. Yes, very often people with excellent expressive ability can talk nonsense because no one notices; they just enjoy tremendously what they’re saying and the way they present it and so on. Fine, anyway. So in one of his writings—and this comes up elsewhere too—he wants to distinguish between the rabbinic Jew and the sovereign Jew. What does that mean? The rabbinic Jew—yes, that’s the religious Jew—is basically a person whose values are legislated for him by rabbis. Yes, his values are imposed on him, dictated from outside—God, rabbis, doesn’t matter. The sovereign Jew is a Jew who is sovereign; he legislates his own values. And the whole essay there is a hymn of praise to the sovereign Jew against the rabbinic Jew, okay? And then I asked myself: what would Ari Elon say about the following sovereign Jew, whom I’m now going to describe? There is a sovereign Jew who legislates for himself the value of being a contract killer. After all, it’s a pretty lucrative profession; you make good money in that line of work, and he says, okay, I want to earn as much as possible, minimum effort, maximum profit, so a contract killer is one of the most profitable jobs. And he dedicates his life to this exalted value of making money through murder. Okay, now he meets Ari Elon’s criteria: he legislates his own values, he is a sovereign Jew in every respect. I assume Ari Elon would not see him as a role model, I think. I don’t know him, but I’m almost sure. Why not? What’s missing? Because he chose bad values, right? Being a murderer is bad values. But wait—who says those values are bad? If a person chooses his own values, then if I chose to be a murderer, then for me that’s the good. I mean, the person— the person legislates his own values, the sovereign person, right? So you can’t really have any criticism of the question of what kind of values he chose, whether they’re good or bad. If you assume there are good values and bad values, and you judge a person by which values he chose, then you’re actually saying there’s some scale that doesn’t depend on his choice which determines which value is good and which value is bad. Right? And that must be so. Because if everything depended on my choice, then I always choose the good. Then there’s no such thing as a bad person. Good is whatever I chose to be good—that’s what it means to say I choose my own values, I legislate my own values, that’s the sovereign person, right? So his mistake is that he thinks the choice we have is a choice of which values, what is good and what is bad, which values to cling to. But that’s not true. Our choice is the question of whether to cling to those values. What is good and what is bad is given; it doesn’t depend on me, I don’t decide it, I don’t legislate what is good and what is bad. The choice I have is whether to act according to the good values and not the bad values. But not the values themselves—the values themselves are not something I choose. Why? They are given; they don’t depend on my choices. What is good and what is bad is given. I’m not saying there are no arguments—there can be arguments about what is good and what is bad, fine, let’s argue. But in the end, in the end, after we reach a conclusion—or don’t reach a conclusion—there is some correct conclusion that determines what is good and what is bad. Okay? And that doesn’t depend on my choices at all. My choices are how to conduct myself within this given system of good and evil. And the system of good and evil is a given system; I don’t choose it. I can’t choose what counts as good and what counts as bad; that is not in my hands. Right? Excellent question—who is supposed to decide? We’ll get to that in one of the next classes. Okay? But for now I’m just establishing the fact. Meaning, once you use the concepts of good and evil, you are assuming there is some objective scale that determines what is good and what is bad. Okay? And if that’s so, then you can’t speak of a person’s choice determining what is good and what is bad. That’s not in your hands. All you can determine is what you will actually do—whether you do good things or bad things. That’s the free choice you have. Okay? But not the choice of what is good and what is bad. That’s simply a categorical mistake. You do not have the choice to choose what is good and what is bad. So again, this is really the same thing from a different angle. Because what we see here again is that there is some framework—in this case a moral framework of good and evil, okay?—and someone set it, I don’t know, there is some given framework, it doesn’t depend on my choices, and within it I maneuver, I choose, I decide to go this way, I decide to go that way, and now one can judge me: did I go in a good direction or in an evil direction, was I autonomous, did I let circumstances drag me along. Now you can start judging me. Okay? So this too is just another angle to see that for my actions to have moral meaning there must be a moral scale that does not depend on my decisions. Because if it depends on my decisions…
[Speaker D] Why is moral value any less subjective? If you take, say, a group of people, they have to decide what’s good and what’s not good.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole idea is that they don’t decide. I said people do not decide what is good and what is bad. You can take people to decide—people do not decide what is
[Speaker G] good and what
[Speaker D] is bad. What
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is good and what is bad is given; people do not decide that. Why? Unless you think there is no such thing as good and evil. Because what people decide has no meaning. People can decide that Jews should be murdered. Nazi Germany decided that Jews should be murdered. Is that good? They decided it; that’s what they decided. If what a person decides is what defines a value as good or bad, then it’s good because that’s what they decided. That’s the definition. If you allow yourself to judge them, then you’re actually saying that it’s not enough that they decided something for it to be defined as good. There is some objective scale that they have to conform to in order to be called good. It’s not enough that they decided something. Okay? It has to be that way, otherwise you’re not talking about good and evil. You can say there’s no such thing as good and evil, people decide for themselves and do what they want—fine, that’s consistent. But you cannot say there is good and evil but it is handed over to human choice. There’s no such thing. Then there is no good and evil, if that’s what you’re saying. This is a very important point, because people think that the sovereign person legislates his own values and still they speak the language of good and evil. That same person who legislated his own values can criticize me for being a bad person because I behave differently—but what do you mean? I legislated for myself. Why are your decisions superior to mine? If you claim there is such a thing as good and evil in the objective sense, and you see that I’m not behaving that way, then you can judge me; you can say I’m a bad person. Not because you decided that this is good or that is bad, but because it really is good or bad, because that’s what you think good and evil are. Maybe you’re wrong, but that’s what you think, okay? I already mentioned the spinach test, right? Of David Enoch. Spinach? I didn’t mention it, did I? It basically says the same thing. The spinach test is, yes—it says that if, say, a child comes and says, “How good it is that I don’t like spinach, because if I liked spinach I would eat it, and spinach is yuck.” Fine. Now what’s odd about that statement? Why is it funny? Because if you liked spinach, there would be no problem in your eating it. Fine. Right now you don’t like spinach, but then you would like spinach, so what would be the problem with eating what you like? What’s the problem? You’re judging a different hypothetical situation through your current lenses, when your current lenses are completely subjective. The question of liking or not liking spinach is a matter of taste. If you liked spinach, then spinach would be tasty; if you didn’t like spinach, then spinach would not be tasty. Tasty and not tasty is something left to a person’s choice, unlike morality, as I said before. Whether I like spinach or don’t like spinach—I legislate for myself whether I like spinach or not. That’s not reality. Okay, for the sake of the discussion. Maybe it is reality, but it depends on me. If you don’t like spinach and I do like spinach, then we have no disagreement. You don’t like it, I do like it, all is well. Okay? Therefore a statement of that kind is ridiculous. By contrast, if I tell you the following statement: “How good it is that I’m alive today and know quantum theory and the theory of relativity today, because if I had lived two hundred years ago I wouldn’t have known them.” Is that also funny in the same way? No, there’s nothing funny there, right? Two hundred years ago you really wouldn’t have known relativity and quantum theory because nobody knew them then. And the fact that I live today allows me to know them, so I’m very glad I live in a period when I can be smarter. Fine, legitimate. Someone else can come and say, that doesn’t interest me. Fine. But there’s nothing funny about what I said, right? There’s nothing funny here; everything’s fine. Why is there nothing funny here? What’s the difference between that and spinach? Why with spinach is such a statement funny, but about relativity it’s not funny? Right, because relativity and quantum theory are facts. And the fact that I discovered them now is irrelevant; they were true back then too. The fact that we didn’t know them then—we didn’t know them, but they were true then too. We only discovered them now, right? When we’re talking about factual truth, objective truth, there’s nothing funny about a statement like that. When we’re talking about subjective truth, such a statement is funny, right? Like liking or not liking spinach. So if that’s the case, we have a test we can use to determine whether a given statement is objective or subjective: the spinach test. So let’s apply the spinach test to moral principles. Now I’ll say: “How good it is that I live today and not two hundred years ago, because if I had lived two hundred years ago, I would have enslaved Black people and had slaves, or I would have discriminated against women.” Yes, not giving women proper status. Okay? Is that funny? Is it more like spinach or more like relativity? From the laughter it seems funny to you. Right—it’s like relativity, not like liking spinach. There’s nothing funny here. I’m genuinely glad I wasn’t in that reality, because it’s likely I would then have held Black slaves and abused them, okay? And I’m very glad I’m not there, that I behave morally. What does that mean? It means that the prohibition against abusing people is understood by us as an objective truth and not as a subjective taste. Because when you put it through the spinach test, it isn’t funny, right? So that means it belongs to the category of objective truths and not to the category of subjective truths, of subjective statements. Subjective truths—that’s a contradiction in terms.
[Speaker D] I once brought another version of the spinach one—eating fish, for example. So. Fish. Why do you like fish, and then you eat it? Why are you killing them?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s HaGashash HaHiver. So what—what are you trying to learn from that? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker D] If you’re already asking whether I like spinach or don’t like spinach, then…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Does spinach taste good to you? Not that you love spinach with romantic love. Does spinach taste good to you? That’s all. That’s what “likes spinach” means in that context. “I, the Lord, love spinach”—there’s a well-known verse. Fine, anyway, so through the spinach test the conclusion is that our moral truths are truths that we assign to the category of objective truths, not to the category of subjective statements like liking or not liking spinach. And again it’s the same point. What does that mean? Taste—I have one taste, fine; someone else has another taste, also fine, right? Taste is not an objective matter; it’s a subjective one. Okay? But a moral value is an objective given; it doesn’t depend on me. If I behave not in accordance with the moral value, then I’m simply not a good person—not that “my morality is different.” No, I’m simply not a good person. Which means, once again, we see that good and evil, the value system, is a system that is given. It’s not a system we decide on. It’s an objective system, an objective truth. Okay? And again, I’m not saying there are no arguments; of course there are arguments. It doesn’t matter—there are arguments because one side is wrong and the other is right. Fine, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an objective truth here. So that basically means that in order to evaluate—if I summarize everything I’ve said so far—in order to evaluate an act or give it moral or anti-moral value, I need to have two possibilities, I need freedom to choose between the two possibilities, and there has to be a value system that doesn’t depend on me, that I don’t choose, and that determines what is good and what is bad, in light of which my act can be judged. Okay? Because if the system depends on me, if I decide on the system, then I always come out righteous. Which means, it’s not interesting. Fine. So that of course raises the question: where does this objective system come from, the one that doesn’t depend on human determination? And still we see—notice—it doesn’t depend on human determination, it is an objective system, and we regard it as a system of binding truth. So where does it come from? It’s not observation in the simple sense, like scientific observation. I can’t observe reality and see that murder is evil. Right? That would be a naturalistic argument. You can’t derive a value from facts. You can’t bring any fact from which a value can be derived.
[Speaker D] I can’t gather a group of people and take a majority vote that actually determines what is good and what is not good.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the majority doesn’t determine it, because people do not determine good and evil—that’s exactly what I’m saying. Why should I care about the majority? This isn’t a human determination at all; it’s given. In Nazi Germany everyone decided that murdering Jews was good. The majority decided. So does that mean murdering Jews was good? And if most of the world had joined in too? No—why not? Because people do not determine it. Good and evil are not determined by human beings, not by a group and not by individuals. Now of course there can be arguments, and we need to think about what among us is good and what among us is evil, because in the end we need to decide what is good and what is evil. But we can decide correctly or incorrectly. What we decide does not determine what is good and what is evil. What we decide determines what I think is good or evil. And I may be mistaken. Okay? So what this means is that there has to be some external source that gives validity to values. And that is basically the proof for the existence of God from morality—the moral argument. I’ll talk about that later. For our purposes here, though, I want to say that in the background there is supposed to be some factor that establishes the validity of those values. And what establishes the validity of those values is the command or legislation of that factor. Command, legislation—it’s the same idea. I’ll perhaps make an even more far-reaching claim. You know, there is a Platonic dialogue called Euthyphro. Euthyphro. Those are names of people, doesn’t matter. And the question raised there is whether the good is good because the gods—it’s phrased in a pagan way, doesn’t matter because it’s Greece—because the gods want it, or do the gods want it because it is good? Why is murder forbidden? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said murder is forbidden? Or the opposite: the Holy One, blessed be He, said murder is forbidden because murder is forbidden. The prohibition preceded the command, and the command is because the thing is negative. Or no—the thing is negative because the Holy One, blessed be He, forbade it. That is the Euthyphro dilemma. Now of course one can apply it to a monotheistic God as well; there it’s phrased in pagan terms but it’s the same idea. One can ask it in the Jewish, say monotheistic, context too: are good and evil what they are because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them, or did the Holy One, blessed be He, command them because they are good and evil? Could there be another world in which the Holy One, blessed be He, would command us to murder? Just like that—not for justified reasons of one kind or another. That’s really the question. Because if the good—if the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it because it is good, that means the goodness of the thing does not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He. It precedes the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, the determination that it is good, right? Because otherwise it couldn’t be the explanation for why the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it. Because the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, is what makes it good. So if you say the Holy One, blessed be He, wants it because it is good, that means the goodness of that thing, of that value, does not depend on the will of the Holy One, blessed be He.
[Speaker I] The problem here is the anthropomorphizing of the Holy One, blessed be He, turning Him into something that wants.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t have to want in the human sense in which we know morality, but yes—want. He wants us to keep commandments. Obviously. So yes, He wants. Why not? What’s the problem? There’s no problem. He tells us that He wants.
[Speaker D] He told us “we will do and we will hear.” Huh? That’s Abraham’s dilemma. What? When he came to sacrifice his son. Wait, wait, wait—until now—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The very fact that he received a command and judged the command morally means that from Abraham’s perspective the command does not establish the moral value of the thing. The fact that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it still doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. Because look—he revolted against it and said, wait, how can You command this? This isn’t right. How do you know it isn’t right?
[Speaker D] And if the command is what determines what is right and what is not right, then how do you know? After all, the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded you to bind Isaac, so what’s the problem? And that contradicts everything you told me before. No, that’s the logical problem.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about the moral problem. The logical problem, you said, is “through Isaac shall your offspring be called.” Fine—now I’m going to kill him, so what offspring? No offspring will be called through me. That’s a logical contradiction. But I’m talking about the moral revolt. How can it be that You command such a thing? Or regarding the people of Sodom—there Abraham didn’t argue with the Holy One, blessed be He, specifically at the binding, but with the people of Sodom he did argue. Okay? So that very argument itself basically tells us that the good is not determined by the divine command. It precedes the divine command, right? Avi Sagi—he has a book, from the university here—he has a book on morality; he also has a collection of articles, but he also has something like Torah and morality, I don’t remember exactly what the book is called. Religion and morality, I think that’s what it’s called. And there, basically almost the whole book is devoted to this: the question of the Euthyphro dilemma on the Jewish plane. And he goes through various sources, and his conclusion is that there is almost no Jewish thinker who thinks morality is such because God commanded it. Everyone argues that morality precedes the command of the Holy One, blessed be He; it is not in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot determine of something that is good that it is evil, or vice versa. Good and evil are an objective given. They are not even in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. In a certain sense it’s like logic. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot determine that the sum of the angles in a triangle will not be 180. That’s mathematics. Meaning, you can’t determine that—it is analytically given from the concept of triangle. Okay? You cannot determine that a triangle will be round, that there will be a round triangle. No—a triangle is not round. That’s a logical problem, okay? So that is not in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to the laws of logic, okay? The claim of this side of the Euthyphro dilemma is that He is also subject to the laws of morality. The laws of morality have a status like the laws of logic. There cannot be a world in which it is moral to murder. There can be a world in which people make a mistake and think it is moral to murder, but they would be mistaken. Meaning, there cannot be a world in which morality says “murder”; there’s no such thing. Even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot produce such a world. He can produce a world in which we think murder is permitted—He can confuse us—but He cannot produce a world in which it truly would be moral to murder. That’s the claim, basically. Okay? Now let’s try to think—what? Does that contradict
[Speaker B] the whole concept of God’s omnipotence, basically?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I haven’t yet talked about the proof, so let’s leave that. It’s a good point, but we’ll get to it when I talk about the proof. For now I only hinted at it, but we’ll get to it. Now why am I bringing this? Because if we really adopt this conception, that morality precedes God, then there is indeed room to ask: so what is its source? God didn’t create it; it even preceded what God wanted. So then what did? Meaning, there’s something here that requires explanation. Moreover, if I want to speak about a command of God commanding us to behave morally, then seemingly I am in fact saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, does establish good and evil. He commands, and thereby He turns this act into something good or evil, a positive commandment or a prohibition, and so on, or a moral will. So I want to explain the theological motivation for determining that morality is not in the hands of the Holy One, blessed be He—that it precedes the Holy One, blessed be He. Because when we say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good, you understand that according to the first side of the Euthyphro dilemma we’ve said nothing. Because whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, wants is defined as good. Fine, so by definition He is good. You haven’t said anything. The question is: when you say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good, do you really mean to say nothing? Or do you mean to say something? No, not even you—but most people certainly don’t. And I’m telling you that you don’t either. What you mean to say is that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good and not evil. And once you understand this not as a definition but as a claim, you understand what’s being said here, what the subtext is. The subtext is that the determination of good and evil precedes the will of God or the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. What is good and what is evil is a given that exists before the Holy One, blessed be He, wants something or commands something. Because otherwise, if what He wants or commands is what defines the thing as good, then to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good is a definition, not a claim. It’s a definition, because what He wants is defined as good. Okay? That’s like saying that I am Michael Abraham. Obviously, because that’s my name. Meaning, you haven’t said anything there. Okay? So that’s a definition, not a claim. When you make a claim, you have to say it could have been otherwise, and I’m telling you that it’s like this, not otherwise. Meaning, it could have been that the Holy One, blessed be He, was evil, and I am now making a claim: no, the Holy One, blessed be He, is good, not evil. How could it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is evil if what defines evil is something the Holy One, blessed be He, does not want? Then such a thing cannot exist. Meaning, you turned the claim that the Holy One, blessed be He, is good into a definition. It’s not a claim; it’s a definition. But I think that when people say such a thing, they mean to make a claim, not define a definition. And that itself seems to me a very strong argument in favor of the second side of the Euthyphro dilemma—the side that says good and evil are not constituted by the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, or by the will of the Holy One, blessed be He; they precede Him. There is some scale that exists. And now notice: I went one step further than what I said before. Before, I brought the point that a person cannot legislate what is good and what is evil. What is good and what is evil is given. Right? It’s not the fruit of my legislation or my decision. I can decide whether I will behave well or badly, but I cannot determine that this is good and that is evil. That is given. Now I’ve gone one step further: even the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot. Not only me. Meaning, what is good and what is evil is an objective given—even the Holy One, blessed be He, is subject to it, cannot determine otherwise. Who determined logic? Truth, reality, it’s simply like that. There cannot be a situation in which there is a world with human beings like us—maybe other creatures, I don’t know—but a world with human beings like us, and there it would be morally permitted to murder. No, there’s no such thing. From the definition of the concept “human being” it follows analytically that murdering him is evil. Therefore you cannot determine a world in which there will be a human being—just as you cannot determine a world in which there will be a human being like us but he doesn’t breathe. If he doesn’t breathe, he’s not like us. You can’t determine another hypothetical world that the Holy One, blessed be He, would create where there would be a human like us but he doesn’t breathe, or where there would be no oxygen there. If there’s no oxygen there, there won’t be a human being like us there; we cannot live in a world without oxygen. Okay? The same thing I want to claim: there cannot be a world in which we exist there, human beings exist there, and morality tells us to murder. It cannot be; it is analytic. That is not a determination of the Holy One, blessed be He; it is not in His hands. It follows from the nature of the world. Meaning, if the world is like this, these are the moral values connected to it. It follows from the nature of the world. There cannot be a world with the same nature whose moral values are the opposite—whose moral values are different. The human being? The human being, the world—let’s see. There may be people who say there is eco-ethics, yes, that preserving ecology has moral value. Maybe. And that too is the nature of the world. I’m not going into those details right now. No—the nature of the world. Why the nature of man?
[Speaker E] No, he doesn’t decide.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A person doesn’t decide. A person is subject to it. A person is subject; he doesn’t decide. In such a world, it’s very bad to destroy it. So therefore it’s forbidden to destroy it. But that— that follows from… maybe another world really would be worth destroying, I don’t know. Some other world I can’t imagine. So it can also follow from… so for the sake of the discussion I don’t care whether it follows from human nature, but I think that’s not right. So what I basically want to say here is that morality has such a fundamental status, really like logic. Meaning, given such a world, moral values are a logical derivative of the structure of the world.
[Speaker D] And I’m not getting into all the interesting cases—two children are born, one overcomes the other, say, and you have to—three, three children. Meaning if you have to kill one so the other two—so then, what does it mean to kill?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Then morality says you have to kill one so the other two survive. What’s the problem?
[Speaker D] You hear that morality here is to kill,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but not to kill at any price. And when enemies come against me, am I forbidden to kill them? Do I have to die? Obviously the fact that it’s forbidden to kill is not something that is true in every situation without qualification. That’s it. And it’s not connected to my discussion. Regardless—whether morality has an objective source or whether morality is subjective—everyone agrees that the prohibition on murder does not exist in every situation. If someone threatens me, or if I don’t know what, then yes, I’ll kill the one threatening me. So I’m putting that claim on hold for now because we’ll return to it, but basically this means that the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, does not establish what is good and what is evil, but it probably does take part in my obligation to do the good and not do the evil. Meaning, you need some authoritative factor that addresses us as human beings, and it determines that we are obligated to act according to the values of good and not according to the values of evil. But what is good and what is evil? That is an objective given; it is not the result of the command. But we’ll get to that too—it’s a contradiction in Kant, and I’ll discuss it later when we talk about the Holy One, blessed be He, about the proof for the existence of God, the proof from morality. But here I want to talk a bit about the question of command. Because this basically means that there is something very essential in the context of morality: there must be a set of values of good and evil that is given, not handed over to me, and it is basically the result of some—I don’t know what—or of God in some sense, but in any case something that commands me to do this and not do otherwise. And without that—without there being values that are binding on me—my actions have no moral meaning. And here I want to show this now דווקא not in the moral context but in the religious context. Okay? Because it really works in very similar ways.
[Speaker B] Okay. So let’s see.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the Talmud in Sanhedrin 61b, it says: one who worships idolatry out of love or out of fear—Abaye says he is liable, Rava says he is exempt. Yes, it says: one who worships idolatry out of love or out of fear—Abaye says liable, Rava says exempt. Abaye says liable, even though he did it; Rava says exempt—if he accepted it as a god upon himself, yes; if not, no. Meaning, if you worship idolatry out of love or fear, Rava says you are exempt. Why? Only if you accepted it as a god are you liable, but if you worship out of love or fear, then you are exempt. Now on the face of it, there is something very strange here. By the way, the Jewish law follows Rava, yes, like in all disputes between Abaye and Rava except for YAL KGM, the Jewish law follows Rava. Meaning that one who worships idolatry out of love or fear is exempt. What does it mean that he is exempt? If I worship the idol because I love it and fear it, then I’m exempt? So when would I be liable? What exactly am I supposed to do in order to be liable for idolatry? After all, I’m directing toward the idol what I was supposed to direct toward the Holy One, blessed be He—love and fear—so it is my god and I worshipped it. So why am I exempt? What is missing from this idolatry?
Actually, Rashi there writes: “out of love or fear”—in the Talmud there—“out of love of a person and fear of a person, and he did not regard it in his heart as divinity.” “One who worships idolatry out of love or fear” does not mean love and fear of the idol, but love and fear of a person. Meaning, I want to please someone, and therefore I worship his idol, or because I am afraid of him, or because I love him. Doesn’t matter. But I worship the idol even though I don’t really believe in that idol, only in order to give satisfaction to someone I’m afraid of or someone I love. Then I am exempt. Why? Because I don’t really believe in the idol. If I accepted it as a god, if I believe in it as a god, that is idolatry for which one is liable.
What led Rashi to explain it this way? It’s not the plain meaning of the Talmud, that “love and fear” means love and fear of a person, not love and fear of an idol. That is not the plain meaning of the Talmud. What led Rashi to explain it this way is the difficulty I mentioned earlier. Because if you say that this is love and fear of the idol, then what more would you need to do in order to be an absolutely first-rate idol worshipper? Right? So it can’t be talking about that. That is Rashi, and most commentators explain it like Rashi—the Rivash and the Raavad and quite a few others explain it like Rashi.
But Maimonides, Laws of Idolatry, chapter 3, law 6: “One who worships a star-worship out of love, for example because he desired this form on account of its workmanship, since it was exceptionally beautiful, or who worshipped it out of fear of it lest it harm him, as its worshippers imagine that it does good and evil—if he accepted it as a god upon himself, he is liable to stoning. But if he worshipped it in its normal manner of worship, or by one of the four forms of worship, out of love or fear, he is exempt.”
So what is he saying? One who worships idolatry out of love or fear—that means love and fear of the idol, not of a person, as Rashi said, as the Rivash says, as the Raavad says. The Raavad there indeed comments on him and says: “And we explain: out of love of a person and fear of a person, and not out of love of the idolatry nor fear of it.” Why? For the same reason as Rashi. Because if you love or fear the idolatry itself—well then that is classic idolatry. So why are you exempt? What exactly would you have to do to become liable? Therefore it is obvious that if you love or fear the idol, certainly you are liable. That is not what the discussion is about. The discussion is whether you worship the idolatry when you love or fear a person, and in order to please him you worship the idol. Okay?
But Maimonides is not like the Raavad and not like Rashi. Maimonides claims that “love and fear” means love and fear of the idol, not of another person. So here the question returns. If I worship the idol because I love it or fear it itself, then I’m exempt? Then when would I be liable? What do I have to do to be liable? Maimonides writes—you see—“One who worships star-worship out of love, for example because he desired this form because its workmanship was exceptionally beautiful”—he really enjoys the object, it’s aesthetic, it’s nice—“or who worshipped it out of fear of it lest it harm him, as its worshippers imagine that it does good and evil—if he accepted it as a god upon himself, he is liable to stoning. But if he worshipped it in its normal manner…” Now the question is: what counts as “accepted it as a god upon himself”?
Meaning, the focus for Maimonides is the question whether you accepted it as a god. Now when Rashi explained this, what did he say? If you really believe in it. Right? And the alternative is that you worship out of love or fear of a person. If you worship out of love or fear of the idol, that means you believe in it. Right? Then obviously you are liable. But Maimonides says no. Love and fear are of the idol, and that is called not accepting it as a god. If you do accept it as a god, then you are liable.
Now what is the difference between worshipping an idol out of love or fear and worshipping it out of accepting it as a god? So here I’ll tell you—I’ll explain it this way. This explanation I heard from my friend Nadav Shnerb, physicist, Professor Nadav Shnerb. He once told me this interpretation, and I think it is a very correct interpretation. He also wrote some article about it in Hakdamot.
If you think, for example, about my driving on the highway. I’m going 150, and now I see a police officer, so I slow down to 90, whatever the speed limit is there. Did I worship idolatry? Why not? I’m afraid of him, and therefore I did what he commanded. Because the police officer is not an idol? Why not? What are the rules—who can be an idol? Only wood and stone? Can a person not be an idol? A god? Huh? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker H] Something you believe has some sort of supernatural powers?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “supernatural powers”? I’m saying the police officer will give me a ticket and that’s that. I’ll tell you why not. It’s not—obviously not. And why not? Because when I “worship” the police officer, supposedly, I’m not worshipping the police officer. I’m doing it because I’m afraid of him, or of the law he represents, doesn’t matter. Exactly. Meaning, if I worship an idol out of love or fear, then basically I do these actions because I’m afraid of it, or because I want to please it, I love it, and so on. That is not religious worship. Religious worship is when I do this worship because it said so. Period. Not because I love it, not because I fear it, nothing. Whatever it says, I do. That is called a god, simply in Hebrew. In biblical Hebrew. A god is someone you obey by virtue of who he is. Right? That explains what he says.
[Speaker D] Desire for it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, desire for it is love and fear. I’m talking, on the contrary, about accepting it as a god. Look, in the Torah, for example, at the beginning of Sanhedrin, it appears: how do we know that for monetary law you need a religious court of three? Because the word “elohim” appears three times in the passage. “Elohim” means judges. Why are judges called “elohim”? What is idolatry? Why are judges called “elohim”? Because you have to obey that judge whether you agree with him or not, whether what he said is good or whether what he said is not good, it doesn’t matter—he is the judge. Once he is the judge, you are obligated to obey him. Therefore he is called “elohim.” “Elohim” is someone you obey by virtue of his being who he is. Not because the thing benefits me, makes me better, benefits him, maybe I’m afraid of him because he will punish me—irrelevant, all of that is irrelevant. A god—that is what accepting as a god means. Accepting as a god means that he is my god. Which is to say: whatever he says, I do. Why? Because he said so. That’s it.
Yes, I just remembered—I didn’t mention Thomas Mallory, the British mountain climber. They once asked him why he climbs Everest. He said: because it’s there. That’s something other people probably can’t understand, but as if he doesn’t need an explanation. Everest is there—obviously I climb it. I mean, why in the world wouldn’t I climb it?
So it’s the same thing. Meaning, when someone asks you, for example—say I always think of the arguments between religious and secular people: is there a God, was there a revelation at Sinai, all kinds of arguments like that, right? But suppose there is God—that is, there is God and there was revelation at Sinai. Now someone says: okay, there is God, there was revelation at Sinai, and I still don’t obey. As if I don’t think that obligates me. Why does such a claim never come up? Usually someone who doesn’t believe explains either that he doesn’t believe in God, or doesn’t believe there was revelation at Sinai and that He was revealed—some kind of deistic God, yes—but doesn’t really believe He revealed Himself. But everyone understands that if He exists and was revealed… that is, then obviously—you obviously have to do it. Why? Because that is the meaning of the concept “God.”
Let some secular person come and ask me: okay, I understand that you believe in God and also believe in revelation at Sinai. Still, why do you do it? Fine, there was revelation at Sinai, He commanded—so what if He commanded? A decree was issued, so He commanded. So what? Why do you do it? The only answer I can give him is this: because God said so. That is the meaning of God. God means—and this is “accepting Him as a god.” I accept Him upon myself as a god means: whatever He says, I do. Why? Because He said so. That’s it. Not because it is good, not because it benefits me, not because I love Him and not because I fear Him. Only because He is God. And that is what Maimonides here calls accepting as a god.
And if you worship it because you fear it—because you think it will make you sick, it will kill you—fine, that is not idolatry, because you did not accept it as a god. You’re doing it like with a police officer, because you’re afraid. The fact that it’s foolish to be afraid doesn’t matter, but you are afraid. So you do it because of fear. That is not religious worship. That is not accepting as a god. So you are not worshipping idolatry—not in the full sense at least. Accepting as a god means that I have no other motive whatsoever for doing this act. I do this act because it commanded, period. Because it is God and it commanded. That’s it.
Does this remind you a bit of what I said about morality—that the value of a moral act exists only when it is done out of commitment to morality? If I do it in order to get the satisfaction of being a good person, then it is not a moral act. If I do it because I love the idea of morality, it is not a moral act. Only if I am committed—I accepted morality upon myself as a god, okay? Because it is moral, period. You ask me why I do it? Because it is moral. That’s it. I don’t need to add any explanation for you. If you ask me, yes, I understand that it is moral, but still why do you do it? I don’t need to add any explanation. Once you understand that it is moral, that also means that this is how one ought to act, and that follows from the fact that it is moral.
Same thing when I say that God commanded. I do not need to add explanations for why I do it. That is the meaning of God: whatever He commands, I do because He commanded. That’s it. Therefore religious worship, whether it is idolatry or worship of God, has to be done out of accepting as a god. If there is no accepting as a god, then you did not perform a commandment. If there is no accepting as a god, then you did not commit idolatry either. Not in the full sense, at least.
[Speaker G] If just—I’m curious whether according to this Maimonides maybe you should actually accept Pascal’s point, the expected-value argument for religions, so that you’d have some extra religion—some Christianity or something—for added security?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s exactly the opposite. Because that means you did not accept Him as a god. That means there really is no God; you’re just gambling despite there being no God, so all your commandments are worthless. By the way, Pascal’s wager is also wrong on the statistical level, but that’s another discussion.
In any case, the claim that appears here in Maimonides is that religious worship is worship done out of accepting as a god. Meaning, from the very fact that God said it, that is a necessary and sufficient condition for me to do it. No additional explanation needs to be added. Okay? And that is true of idolatry and true of worship of God.
So for example—and Nadav added this point too after he explained it—think, for example, of a person who goes to sleep at night, dead tired. You’re already in bed, just about asleep, and then you remember that you didn’t pray the evening prayer. Fine? You say, wow, this is a pain. What do you do? You shove one arm into a sleeve, prop yourself up on one arm, mumble the evening prayer quickly, collapse onto the bed and fall asleep. The spiritual supervisor will come and tell you: forget it, that prayer is worth nothing. You had no intention, you weren’t standing before the Holy One, blessed be He. So Nadav said to me—and I think to a great extent he was right—there is no finer prayer than that one. Because that prayer is a prayer that comes out of purified commitment. Meaning, you do it because you know you are obligated to pray. Right, we are all human beings and it is hard for us and we have urges and we do this and we do that, but you see the basic commitment that finds expression in the most distilled way possible in that act.
Because the fact that you… yes? Think, for example, of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, the well-known story about the Jew who went outside the synagogue wearing prayer shawl and tefillin in order to fix the wagon’s yoke. Instead of praying, he goes outside to fix the wagon so that immediately after prayer he can travel. Then Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev says—he says: listen, Master of the Universe, what a nation of righteous people You have. They pray in the synagogue, they pray while they fix the wagon, they are praying all the time. Meaning, they never stop praying.
Now, that always sounded to me like Hasidic stories for idiots. But the truth is that there is something very real here. Why is he even bothering to play this game? Forget it, forget everything, fix the wagon and drive off in peace. You weren’t going to pray with intention anyway. Because the person really is obligated to pray. Right, we are human beings, so we cut corners and wink and maneuver around things. Fine, we are human beings. But at the base, you see that this is a person committed to the commandment of prayer.
A person who comes every morning to the synagogue and prays with devotion every morning, every morning, but doesn’t have intention because he doesn’t need livelihood or healing or anything, and none of this whole business interests him—but he arrives at the synagogue every morning like clockwork. Like Leibowitz, yes, you could set your watch by when he arrived at the synagogue. Yes, he didn’t ask for anything—not livelihood, not healing, nothing. For that there’s the health fund, as he said. Yes, so he doesn’t ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for those things. So the spiritual supervisor will tell him: this is routine commandment, yes, this prayer is worth nothing. “A commandment of men learned by rote.” You just go there out of habit; you didn’t do anything, you didn’t pray. And that is a big mistake. There is no greater prayer than that. That is prayer rooted in commitment to pray. I know that whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, I am obligated. If He commanded prayer, then I pray. I don’t need livelihood, I don’t need healing, I don’t need anything. I don’t know, I don’t need it and I don’t ask Him for it. But there is an obligation to pray, so I go and I pray.
Leibowitz’s mistake was that he said: fine, I could just as well recite the phone book. The prayer book—they just happened to set that, so I say that. You could also recite the phone book. After all, I’m not asking, not praying for healing or livelihood or anything, so what difference does it make? So that is a mistake. Why is it a mistake? In his usual way, he always says something true and then takes it too far. That runs like a thread through all of Leibowitz’s thought, I think.
The point is that after this sense of commitment, because of which you go to the synagogue, after that there is also standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, and there can also be religious experiences, or each person and the additional layers he adds within his prayer. But it is true that all those are second, third, fourth, fifth, all the way up to the 115th floor. The first floor is commitment. That you go because you must. That’s all—there is a commandment. Commandments require intention; you need to pray. And all the intentions—what you want and this and connecting to the Holy One, blessed be He—all of that is at most higher floors, additional virtues.
If you say that coming out of commitment is “by rote,” yes, and really you need to come because you understand that you need the Holy One, blessed be He, and you want the livelihood and you understand that everything comes from Him—you have never fulfilled the commandment of prayer in your life. You have never fulfilled the commandment of prayer. Because commandments require intention. And the intention required for all commandments is the intention to fulfill one’s obligation. That is true in prayer too, besides the intention of the words, where there are additional intentions. But beyond that there is also “commandments require intention”—to fulfill one’s obligation. You need to come because there is an obligation to pray. That’s all. On top of that there can be other layers, the intentions of the Ari and whatever else you want beyond that. But the initial layer has to be this one. And that is exactly the “accepting as a god” being discussed here.
[Speaker B] A distinction between rabbinic commandments and Torah-level ones, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. According to Maimonides prayer is Torah-level. What—rabbinic commandments also need intention? I think so. Commandments require intention, but intention to fulfill one’s rabbinic obligation. That’s not adding to the Torah. How—
[Speaker D] Explain that according to the one who says commandments do not require intention. I claim that commandments require faith. Even according to the one who says commandments do not require intention.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You do not need actually to intend to fulfill your obligation. But obviously you go to the synagogue because it is a commandment to pray. Why are you there? If you are there because there is a bar mitzvah for your cousin but you don’t believe in any of it, then you didn’t pray. Even according to the opinion that commandments do not require intention, you didn’t pray. And you said all the words in the prayer book. You said everything. You did not pray at all. You’re a potted plant. In my view, someone who does not believe does not count toward a prayer quorum. There is no point collecting them from the street and saying, come join the quorum. You can’t count potted plants toward a quorum. A quorum needs ten people praying, or at least six who are praying. But the others also need to be fit for it, meaning they understand what prayer is, are committed to it, and are praying when they have not yet prayed—yes, when they are obligated.
So that is the meaning of “accepting as a god” according to Maimonides. And once again, from here on I’ll make an analogy between halakhic commitment and moral commitment. Just as we saw with moral commitment, that you need to do it because of commitment to the moral imperative, so too religious commitment—you need to do it because of commitment to the religious imperative. Without that, this has no religious value and that has no moral value. If I perform the commandments for other reasons—if I perform the commandments for other reasons—why is it different here? What? What is this source you wrote? It’s a text I wrote on my website.
So look, for example, here. “A person should not say,” Maimonides in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance, “I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings written in it, or in order to merit the life of the world to come, and I will separate from the transgressions against which the Torah warned us in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or in order not to be cut off from the life of the world to come. It is not proper to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one serves God in this way only if one is one of the common people, women, and children, whom they train to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” Okay? That is law 1.
Law 2: “One who serves out of love”—so what yes? Up to here this was what not; and what yes? “One who serves out of love occupies himself with Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit good, but does the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good will come because of it.” If you serve for the sake of reward in the world to come, so that it will go well for you, so that it won’t go badly for you, then this is service not for its own sake. That is the path of children and women, okay? What yes? To do the truth because it is truth. You do it because it is truth. If the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, then that is what must be done. Not because it adds something for me—not even spiritually. Nothing. And not because I love the Holy One, blessed be He, and not because I fear Him. There is a commandment to love God and a commandment to fear God, but those are commandments. If love and fear of God are the motivations because of which I serve Him, then I did not serve Him. I need to serve Him because He is God—I accepted Him upon myself as God.
Besides that, there are commandments to love God and fear God, but those are not the motivations because of which I should serve Him. When Maimonides here brings “service out of love,” notice what a strange definition this is. What is service out of love? “To do the truth because it is truth.” Is that how you would define service out of love? Service out of love means my heart goes out to Him, I’m connected to Him, I want to please Him, I love Him and therefore I serve Him, right? What does that have to do with the definition “to do the truth because it is truth”?
“In the end the good will come”—that’s what he says: don’t serve for the sake of the good. The good will come if you serve. But you may not use the good as the motivation because of which you serve. You serve because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, because that is the truth. And only in that way do these things have value. And in the end the good will come. But the good cannot be the motivation because of which you serve.
And what does that actually mean? Again: you need to serve because He is God, and what He says is the truth and that is what must be done. For no other reason, including love and fear of the Holy One, blessed be He. For no other reason except because one must, because He is God and He said so, because Everest is there. Okay?
[Speaker D] Does that mean the only one who did this was Abraham our forefather, just here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not the only one—Abraham our forefather did it. Look, for example, here at Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings, not chapter 10: “Anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the world to come”—that is, a resident alien. “And this is provided that he accepts and performs them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the descendants of Noah had previously been commanded concerning them. But if he performs them because of intellectual conviction, he is not a resident alien and is not one of the pious of the nations of the world, but rather one of their wise men.”
Meaning, if this resident alien performs the commandments because of intellectual conviction—what does that mean? That it seems moral to him, or good, or beneficial, or I don’t know, for all sorts of such reasons—then he is not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise men. Or in my translation: such an act has no religious value. It is a good act, you are doing the right thing—after all, he is among the wise of the nations of the world, you are acting properly—but you are not among the pious of the nations of the world. It has no religious value. Because religious value exists only if you do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us in the Torah through Moses our teacher at Sinai.
Again, what do we see? That religious worship has religious value only if it is done out of commitment to the command—to the command at Sinai. He is speaking there about a resident alien, but plainly this is true of a Jew too, true of anyone. So maybe we’ll discuss that more next time. Okay, let’s stop here. Thanks. Thanks.
[Speaker D] Thank you very much.