Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 7 – Rabbi Michael Abraham
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Human choice and the source of binding values
- Command, authority, and acceptance of divinity in Maimonides
- The service of God as unconditional obedience, and the distinction from law and state
- Haredi Judaism, Zionism, and the hyphen in “Religious-Zionist”
- Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance: serving out of fear and serving out of love
- The love of God as metaphor: Song of Songs, intensity and not emotional flooding
- Stopping the regress of justifications: axioms, “just because,” and Leibowitz
- The purposes of the commandments versus the reason for obligation: Avnei Tal and the critique of Leibowitz
- Two aspects of commandment and transgression: Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman and “greater is one who is commanded and acts”
- The Laws of Kings: the seven Noahide commandments, rational judgment, and the pious of the nations
- Implications for secular Jews, a prayer quorum, and the evaluation of traditionalists and atheists
- The Commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin: “it was said at Sinai, but written in its place”
- The distinction between personal motivation and theoretical validity, and a comparison to secular law
Summary
General overview
The text argues that a normative system, both in Jewish law and in morality, rests on a commanding source of authority that gives binding force to values, and that human choice determines only whether to act in accordance with the correct values, not what those values themselves are. In the halakhic context, it presents a Maimonidean position according to which the service of God is obedience to a command because it is a command, without motivations of benefit, fear, or emotion; and that even idolatry is defined as accepting something as a deity in the sense of an authority that obligates by virtue of its very utterance. The text develops a distinction between “serving out of love” as “doing the truth because it is truth” and emotional love, and presents the idea that commandments may have purposes, but the purpose is not the reason for obligation, rather the reason for the command. It then argues that commitment to the divine command is a foundational principle that stops the regress of justifications, and it draws sharp implications regarding commandment observance without belief in the command, alongside a distinction between the question of the system’s validity and the personal motivation for observing it.
Human choice and the source of binding values
The text states that human choice is the foundation of moral judgment because an action must be done by choice. It argues that choice does not determine the correct values, but only whether to conduct oneself according to them. It raises the question of the source of authority that determines binding values, and declares that it will later argue that this is the Holy One, blessed be He, thereby linking Jewish law, morality, and faith under a structure of command and authority.
Command, authority, and acceptance of divinity in Maimonides
The text presents Maimonides’ approach through the dispute between Abaye and Rava about idolatry done out of love or fear, emphasizing that Maimonides interprets “love and fear” as love and fear of the idol, and in that case the person is exempt, in accordance with Rava. It explains that idolatry in the fullest sense requires “acceptance as a deity,” meaning a relationship to some factor as an authority that obligates simply “because it said so,” and not because of interests, love, or fear. The text explains that in the Bible, a deity is an authority whom one obeys by virtue of its authority itself, and therefore judges are called “elohim”; but the original source of authority is the Holy One, blessed be He, and the obligation to obey His command comes from His being God.
The service of God as unconditional obedience, and the distinction from law and state
The text argues that if a person agrees that God exists but asks, “Why obey Him?”, there is no answer that fits within the framework of serving God, because any answer based on benefit, creation, love, or fear misses the definition of religious service. It states that religious service means doing something because God commanded it, and the existence of the command itself is sufficient to obligate. It explains that obeying a policeman or the law of the state is not idolatry because it stems from calculation—fear, interest, or social value—whereas obedience “because that’s the law” as an unconditional principle creates “a whiff of idolatry” if it is done by virtue of the legislator’s authority itself.
Haredi Judaism, Zionism, and the hyphen in “Religious-Zionist”
The text says that the Haredi claim that Zionism is idolatry contains a kernel of truth only where a person obeys the state simply by virtue of its legislation, without any calculation. It cites Yosef Burg’s remark that the main thing is the hyphen, and defines a “Religious-Zionist” as someone whose Zionism is religious and whose religiosity is Zionist. It presents a personal position of being “Zionist and religious without a hyphen,” and calls this “a secular Zionist,” similar to Ben-Gurion; it interprets accordingly the joke of the Rabbi of Ponevezh about Hallel and Tahanun on Independence Day as a distinction between national joy and a religious dimension.
Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance: serving out of fear and serving out of love
The text quotes Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance and states that it is unworthy to serve God in order to receive blessings or to be saved from curses, and that this is “service out of fear,” characteristic of the ignorant masses, women, and children. According to Maimonides, it defines “service out of love” as performing Torah and commandments “not for anything in the world,” but rather as one who “does the truth because it is truth.” The text emphasizes that this is an intellectual and not an emotional definition, and distinguishes between “service out of love” and the commandment to love God discussed in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah.
The love of God as metaphor: Song of Songs, intensity and not emotional flooding
The text points to a tension between law 2, where love means “doing the truth because it is truth,” and law 3, which describes intense emotional love as “sick with love,” and concludes, “the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.” It argues that the metaphor does not transfer all the details of a man’s love for a woman to the object of comparison; the point is the intensity and constant presence of commitment to truth. The text presents the demand to be devoted at every moment to “clarifying the truth and doing the truth” as the meaning of love in this framework.
Stopping the regress of justifications: axioms, “just because,” and Leibowitz
The text argues that every argument is based on premises, and every attempt to justify a premise leads to an infinite regress that stops at a self-evident principle. It states that commitment to the divine command is a “first intelligible principle” at which the chain of justifications comes to an end, and that this is not irrationality but rather a rational structure of justification that ends in axioms. The text distinguishes between an arbitrary “just because” of “I feel like it” and a “just because” of self-evident truth, and argues that Leibowitz confused these two kinds when he presented values as arbitrary decisions.
The purposes of the commandments versus the reason for obligation: Avnei Tal and the critique of Leibowitz
The text argues that since obligation stems from the command, one should not conclude that commandments have no purposes, and that a command may be aimed at repairing the world, the soul, or some spiritual goal. It cites the introduction to Avnei Tal, according to which one ought to enjoy Torah study because this improves the commandment, but if one studies for the sake of the enjoyment, that is “not for its own sake.” The text compares this to a child sent to the grocery store for a candy, in order to show that the reason why a commandment was commanded is not necessarily the reason why a person fulfills it, and it criticizes Leibowitz for claims such as that the commandments are “just like that” and that one could recite a phone book instead of praying.
Two aspects of commandment and transgression: Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman and “greater is one who is commanded and acts”
The text cites Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman in Kovetz Ma’amarim in the name of Ramchal in The Way of God, according to which every commandment and transgression includes an essential aspect and an aspect of command. It explains that the case of “he intended to eat pork and mutton came into his hand” requires atonement because there is damage to the aspect of command without essential damage, whereas one who sins unintentionally harms the essence without conscious rebellion against the command. The text explains, following Ritva and Tosafot HaRosh, that “greater is one who is commanded and acts than one who is not commanded and acts,” because the commanded person attains two benefits—fulfilling the command and realizing the essence—whereas one who is not commanded and acts attains only the essence.
The Laws of Kings: the seven Noahide commandments, rational judgment, and the pious of the nations
The text quotes Maimonides at the end of chapter 8 of the Laws of Kings, according to which one who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to observe them is among the pious of the nations of the world “provided that he accepts them and does them because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah”; but if he does them “because reason so determines,” he is not among the pious of the nations of the world but among their wise. The text interprets this as a distinction between moral value and religious value, so that an atheist who performs kindness is a moral person, but is not fulfilling a commandment and his act has no religious significance. It argues that this law is not unique to non-Jews, but is a general principle, and that it stands out particularly with the seven Noahide commandments because these are commandments “to which reason inclines,” and therefore it is easy to fulfill them on rational grounds without commitment to a command.
Implications for secular Jews, a prayer quorum, and the evaluation of traditionalists and atheists
The text argues that one who does not recognize the existence of commandments is not in the world of “commandments and transgressions,” and therefore “his commandments are not commandments and his transgressions are not transgressions”; it further expands that this claim implies that even “causing a secular Jew to sin” does not create a sin for him. It states that including an atheist in a prayer quorum is “like counting flowerpots,” because his prayer is not prayer, whereas a traditionalist does count because he belongs to the framework of obligation even if he is lax. The text presents the position that traditionalists are “more criminal” than atheists because they think there is an obligation yet do not fulfill it, while an atheist acts according to what he believes.
The Commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin: “it was said at Sinai, but written in its place”
The text presents the Mishnah in Hullin in the dispute about the sciatic nerve and the Sages’ response to Rabbi Judah: “It was said at Sinai, but written in its place.” It quotes Maimonides in his Commentary on the Mishnah, who establishes a “great principle”: everything we refrain from or do today is done because of “God’s command through Moses,” and not because of commands to prophets who preceded him, illustrating this with the prohibition of a limb from a living animal, circumcision, and the sciatic nerve. The text formulates this as a normative basis: the revelation at Sinai is the source of binding force for all the commandments.
The distinction between personal motivation and theoretical validity, and a comparison to secular law
The text distinguishes between the Laws of Kings, which deal with motivation for fulfilling a commandment, and the Commentary on the Mishnah, which deals with the principled justification for the validity of the system of commandments. It argues that in secular law, the citizen’s motivation for obeying the law is irrelevant—only the act matters—but there remains a meta-legal question about the source of the obligation to obey. The text places the revelation at Sinai as the foundational principle in Jewish law, analogous to legislation by the Knesset as a source of authority in civil law, and concludes by referring to an additional source in Maimonides in chapter 6 of the Eight Chapters that seems not to fit the picture, but is left for later.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re on the topic of morality, right, Jewish law and faith, and last time I spoke a bit—I started speaking a bit—about the question of command. We saw that human choice, which is a basic foundation for moral judgment, means that the action has to be done by choice. But the choice is not a choice that determines what the correct values are; rather, it is the choice whether to conduct oneself according to the correct values. But who determines what the correct values are? That’s some external given. Later on I’ll argue that it’s the Holy One, blessed be He, right, and that will bring us to the connection to faith, but there has to be some authoritative source that commands these values, and that is what determines that these are the binding values, these are the correct values. And therefore this brings us, in effect, to the meaning of command, both in Jewish law and in morality. So I started dealing with this in the halakhic context, even though the logic is the same logic with respect to morality as well. Meaning, I want to argue that at the foundation of a normative system, whether morality or Jewish law, there ought to stand some authoritative source whose commands are what give validity to the norms in question. So the Holy One, blessed be He, in the halakhic context; and in the moral context we’ll discuss it, but I’ll argue it’s the Holy One, blessed be He, there too—but there also has to be something like that.
Now, within the halakhic context, we started looking at Maimonides’ approach on this issue, because with Maimonides you can see it from a number of different passages. The first source we saw was the dispute between Abaye and Rava regarding idolatry out of love or out of fear, where Maimonides, unlike the other medieval authorities (Rishonim), interprets it literally: that someone who worships idols out of love or fear is exempt, in accordance with Rava. What does love and fear mean? Love and fear of the idol, according to Maimonides. The question is how that could be—what is supposed to be there so that this idolatry is really full-fledged idolatry, in every respect? So Maimonides says there that there has to be acceptance as a deity. What does acceptance as a deity mean? So I said that a deity, even in biblical language, is a factor whose word I carry out because it said so. Meaning, not because I have some reasons, interests of one kind or another, and not even because I love it or fear it; rather, the very fact that it said something is enough to obligate me to do it. That’s why the Torah calls judges “elohim,” because when a judge says something, what obligates me to uphold it, to obey, is not that the judge is right, but that he is the judge. Meaning, if he said it, that obligates. A judge, right, a legal judge—that is formal authority, and that authority obligates me by virtue of the command itself. The very fact that he commands me to do it obligates me.
This doesn’t enter into the question of what it does for me, and whether it’s good for me, and why it’s worthwhile to keep it or not worthwhile to keep it—that’s not the consideration at all. The consideration is simply that he said it. And a factor that has this kind of mandatory authority is called “God.” So a judge is also called “elohim,” but of course the original factor is the Holy One, blessed be He—that’s the religious God. And this basically means that the obligation to obey His command stems from His being God. If someone says, look, I’ve concluded that there is a God, I agree, but it’s still not clear to me—so what? Why should I obey what He commands? Then there’s nothing to answer such a person. Meaning, if you answer him something like: if He commanded, then He surely knows what’s best for us, so apparently that’s what’s worth doing; or, He created us so we owe Him; or all kinds of things like that—all these answers miss the point. All these answers are really saying: I’m doing it for side reasons, for other reasons. But no. Religious service means doing something because God commanded it. That’s it. The fact that He commanded is enough.
Meaning, if I come to the conclusion that… that there is a God and that God commanded me something—He was revealed at Sinai, whatever, He commanded me something—you don’t need anything additional in order to derive from that that I am obligated to do so. The very fact that He exists and that He commanded is enough. That is the definition of God. Any other factor, if I obey it, that will be the result of some calculation. Why obey it? Because it’s worthwhile, because I’m afraid, because I love it, because of all kinds of reasons—it doesn’t matter—of one interest or another. But there always has to be a reason. That’s why I said that obeying a police officer on the road is not idolatry. Why not? After all, I’m obeying what he says out of fear—I’m afraid of him, he’ll punish me, and therefore I obey him. Why isn’t that idolatry? It’s not idolatry because obedience to the police officer stems from some kind of consideration. Not from the mere fact that he said it and therefore I obey, but from some kind of consideration. Once it’s a matter of some consideration, then it’s no longer idolatry. Meaning, religious service is service done toward a factor such that the fact that it commanded is itself enough for me to obey.
So if that’s the case, then are you serving the state? If so, then you’re serving idols. Meaning, unless you say there is value in obeying what society has decided, or what the state has decided, or something like that—and then we’ll ask, okay, and what is the source of that value? Who gives validity to that value? But it is not the state in and of itself. Meaning, if you obey because the state said so—and a lot of people, if you ask them, say: what do you mean, because it’s the law. So what if it’s the law? It’s the law—so I can also write something here and that will be the law. I determined that it’s the law. So what—why obey it? There has to be some kind of calculation that tells me why to obey the law. You should obey the law because such-and-such an explanation, some other explanation, whatever. Once there’s a calculation, then it’s no longer absolute authority, it’s no longer God, it’s no longer idolatry. Meaning, once you obey by virtue of the fact that someone commanded, that’s idolatry.
In that sense, I think the Haredi attitude—right, which is usually foolish—has something real in it. The claim that being Zionist is a kind of worship, that Zionism is a kind of idolatry—what does that mean? Nonsense. But if you really get to a point where you obey the law by virtue of the fact that it was legislated, not because of some calculation or other, simply because the legislator said so, then there really is a whiff of idolatry here. Meaning, you cannot obey any factor other than God unconditionally, in a way that is not the result of any calculation of utility, interest, or some value or other. Okay? Therefore, religious service in its essence, or the service of God in its essence, is service to a factor such that the very fact that it commanded is enough to obligate me. And that is what is called acceptance as a deity. Meaning, if I regard a certain idol as God, that means I regard it as a factor such that if it demands something from me, that is enough for me to obey—that is what is called idolatry. But if I do it because I love that idol, or because I fear it, I’m afraid of what it will do to me, send me some disease if I don’t worship it—that’s not idolatry. Not idolatry in the full sense, okay? Because I have a calculation for why I obey it. That is not religious service.
Just as I do not obey the Holy One, blessed be He, because things will go well for me. If I obey the Holy One, blessed be He, because things will go well for me, that is not the service of God. It’s simply a technique for improving my life. I can take medicine to improve my life, I can eat to improve my life, I can perform commandments to improve my life. The only question is what I believe will improve my life—that’s all. That’s the whole difference between these different channels. Therefore that is not religious service. Meaning, if you think that observing the commandments will make your life better, then you are not serving God. You are simply serving yourself. You are satisfying your own interests. You want your life to be better.
[Speaker D] There’s no difference between service out of love and service…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …out of fear? Correct. I’m saying both service out of love and service out of fear are not the service of God. No, but I know at least the idea that you have to…
[Speaker C] …serve out of fear at first, and afterward serve out of love.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so Maimonides—we read him at the end of the previous lecture. Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 10 in the Laws of Repentance, look here. Right, so look, Maimonides here defines service out of love and service out of fear. No, this is idolatry—wait—here: “A person should not say: I will do the commandments, the commandments of the Torah, and engage in its wisdom, in order that I receive all the blessings written in it, or in order that I merit the life of the World to Come; I will separate from transgressions in order that I be saved from the curses,” etc. “It is not fitting to serve God in this way. 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…”
[Speaker E] “…and one does not serve God in this way except the ignorant masses…”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “…and women and children, whom one trains to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” Now what is service out of love? “One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, and not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit the good, but does the truth because it is truth. And this is service out of love.” Serving out of love does not mean that my heart goes out to the Holy One, blessed be He, and in order to please Him I serve—no. Rather, service out of love means doing the truth because it is truth. A very cold matter, very non-emotional, right? Even though love and fear sound like emotions. So what Maimonides defines here as service out of love is not emotional; it is intellectual. I do the truth because it is truth, that’s all.
Like what is written: “Hear O Israel… and you shall love the Lord your God.” That’s something else. You’re talking to me about the commandment to love God. The commandment to love God is something different from serving out of love. The commandment to love God is described in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Serving out of love is discussed in the Laws of Repentance. Why?
[Speaker F] Why doesn’t this law appear in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, when Maimonides…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …talks about the laws of loving God? Do you know why? Because there is a commandment to love God—that is one of the 613 commandments—and it is discussed in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Here he is not talking about the commandment to love God. He is talking about the question: why do I do commandments at all? What is my motivation for doing commandments? My motivation for doing commandments should be love and not fear. This is not in order to fulfill the commandment to love God. To fulfill the commandment to love God, Maimonides defines in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah how one fulfills it. Here the question is what my motivation should be when I come to fulfill commandments, not how to fulfill the commandment of loving God. This is a meta-halakhic question, not a halakhic question. Regarding the parameters of loving God, that’s a halakhic question. It’s one of the enumerated commandments, and you have to know how to fulfill it. That’s a halakhic question. Here this is not a halakhic question. It’s a meta-halakhic question: why fulfill commandments at all? Love here plays a meta-halakhic role. Not fulfillment of the commandment to love God, but a reason why to fulfill commandments at all. And here Maimonides really says what this love is that is being discussed here: to do the truth because it is truth.
Someone who was educated to be Haredi, right? They told his parents this and that, and leave it—I’m going with what they told him—so basically he observes all the commandments, but he is not serving…
[Speaker F] …God at all. Obviously. What didn’t I understand? What does that have to do with me? That’s obvious. What? Before you said Haredi—as if part of them is the conception. What? A moment ago you said that Haredim see Zionism as idolatry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so here you connected that to their service…
[Speaker F] …they don’t see their own service as idolatry?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I assume not.
[Speaker F] If they saw it as idolatry they wouldn’t do it. But you hear that he serves because his father told him to serve, and that’s fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that has nothing to do with what they say—it’s not the service of God.
[Speaker F] If he…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …doesn’t come…
[Speaker F] …to the conclusion that he is obligated, and therefore he serves…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …then it’s actually more similar to traditionalism.
[Speaker F] By the way, there’s an interesting book by Rabbi Menachem Navot. Have you seen it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I forgot what the book is called. It came out not long ago. He sent it to me and I also wrote about it on the website. And there he really argues that Haredi Judaism is a kind of traditionalism. Meaning, the service of God of a Haredi—and this is an interesting claim—the service of God of a Haredi comes from a source very similar to the observance of commandments by a traditional Jew. Not a religious Jew—a traditional Jew. The traditional Jew basically observes commandments not because he must. He observes commandments because his father did it, because those particular commandments that he observes—whatever—because…
[Speaker G] …his father…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …did it, and because it’s folklore, and he has sentimental attachment to this system, so he does it. In many ways Haredim are like that too. They also basically come from there. That’s why they put much less emphasis on reaching a decision and choosing and offering different options and all kinds of things like that. And of course the Haredi would argue with you about whether that’s true. On the conscious level, obviously, he’ll tell you that he does it because clearly this is what is correct and the only correct thing, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong, etc. But when you ask what really…
[Speaker H] …what motivation drives people, why they don’t…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …engage at all in justifications for why to serve God—they don’t deal with that at all. From their point of view it’s forbidden even to deal with it. Why? Because basically they aren’t serving due to reasons and because they reached a conclusion. They serve because their father did it. Afterwards, in the end, there’s always cognitive dissonance, right? You justify to yourself what you’re doing, and obviously you look for arguments and explain why it’s the most correct. There are different components…
[Speaker F] …in the motivations of why…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …a person acts as he does, but overall I think that’s not a bad description of Haredi Judaism. Now let’s add something else, another layer, to this “I believe in the Holy One, blessed be He” and all that. Zionism is that you added another parameter to it—nationality, land—so you turned it into idolatry? What? Why? What does that have to do with it? You just said that Religious Zionism has…
[Speaker F] No, not Religious Zionism—I didn’t say anything about Religious Zionism. I said that Zionism—according to the Haredim, they say that Zionism is idolatry, not Religious Zionism. Zionism. Zionism is idolatry—why? Because it gives… why? They say that because…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …because that’s what they say, but I’m saying there is something real in it…
[Speaker F] …in the sense that once you get to such identification with the state that the very fact that the state legislated something is enough for me to conduct myself accordingly, then there really is some whiff of idolatry here. But as for Religious Zionism…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? It has nothing to do with the discussion. Why is that…? Zionism, Zionism—Zionism is some addition to religion. Why is it an addition? Religious Zionism—part of their religiosity is Zionism. What, I don’t understand. They claim that their religiosity also obligates them to be Zionist.
[Speaker F] Fine, that’s what they claim—so what’s the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can agree or not agree…
[Speaker F] …but they aren’t adding anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like saying that my religiosity obligates me to keep the Sabbath, so is keeping the Sabbath an addition to my religiosity? No—it’s what religiosity says. Another commandment, another mode of conduct.
[Speaker F] Yes, they claim…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …that it’s simply part of the… Yosef Burg once said, right, that the main thing in Religious Zionism is neither the Zionism nor the religiosity, but the hyphen between them. And that’s true—it’s not a joke, it’s very true.
[Speaker F] And his claim was basically that a Religious-Zionist…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …is not someone who is both Zionist and religious, but someone whose Zionism is religious and whose religiosity is Zionist. Meaning, it’s fused into one unit. The hyphen connects these two things into one unit. I, for example, am not Religious-Zionist in that sense, personally. I’m Zionist and religious, but without a hyphen. I’m a secular Zionist. My Zionism is secular; it isn’t connected to my religious worldview. I’m Zionist like Ben-Gurion.
The Rabbi of Ponevezh once said—there was some joke—back in Bnei Brak they would always tell it with both mockery and tremendous admiration. He would not say Hallel on Independence Day, the Rabbi of Ponevezh, but he also did not say Tahanun. It’s like, it’s a happy day, so you don’t say Tahanun. They asked him: if you’re Zionist, then don’t say Tahanun and do say Hallel; if you’re Haredi, then don’t say Hallel and do say Tahanun. How is it that you neither say Hallel nor say Tahanun? So he answered: I’m Zionist like Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion also didn’t say Hallel and didn’t say Tahanun on Independence Day. Right, he didn’t say anything at all on Independence Day. So everyone takes this as some joke at the expense of Religious Zionism. That’s a mistaken reading. It’s a joke at the expense of Haredi Judaism. Because what he was really saying—according to my interpretation, and I think quite seriously—was that he was Zionist and religious, but his Zionism was not religious. Meaning, he doesn’t say Hallel because it’s a happy day—he doesn’t say Tahanun, sorry, because it’s a happy day that a state was established. He is very happy that a state was established. He just doesn’t see in it a religious dimension, so he doesn’t say Hallel over it. Fine? That’s a different discussion. By the way, I also say Hallel. I don’t think you have to see a religious dimension in it in order to say Hallel—that’s another discussion. But I think that’s what lies behind his statement: that he is basically a secular Zionist.
Once I said in an interview on Arutz Sheva—and some woman interviewed me—on Sheva, not Arutz Sheva, she interviewed me when it was shut down—what? After they shut it down.
[Speaker F] Ah, I don’t know. So she interviewed me, and I told her…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …that I am a religious Jew and a secular Zionist. My Zionism is secular, and I am a religious person, but my Zionism is secular, like Ben-Gurion’s, exactly the same thing. That’s really the Rabbi of Ponevezh too. Okay? Later someone told me the source was Leibowitz. I didn’t even remember, apparently—I probably saw it before—Leibowitz basically defined himself that way.
Anyway, I don’t know how we got into all this. What Maimonides says here is that serving out of love means doing the truth because it is truth. That is called serving out of love. It is not fulfillment of the commandment to love God. Fulfilling the commandment to love God is in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Here we’re talking about the question of what my motivation should be for fulfilling the commandments in general. The motivation should be that this is the truth, that’s it. Not because I gain from it, not because it repairs the world, not because it repairs me, nothing like that—simply because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. And that is the… therefore I think this statement of Maimonides here completes his statement in the Laws of Idolatry, that without acceptance as a deity there is no religious service.
[Speaker F] That’s true for idolatry and it’s true for the service of God—only with acceptance as a deity. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, said so, that’s it. You have to arrive at some kind of thought exercise—why? First of all, you’re talking about an argument that will explain why? So I say: what will be…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …the premise of that argument? After all, every argument begins from premises, right? What will be the premise of the argument? What could be there as premises? After all, even about the premises you bring I’ll ask what grounds them. Right? So you’ll go one step back, bring more meta-premises that explain the premises, and then…
[Speaker G] …I…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …will ask you what grounds them. Where does this stop? It stops in that place that is self-evident. That there is no more—once you understand, not that there is no more, but that it is self-evident.
[Speaker F] You don’t need an explanation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not that there is no explanation—you don’t need an explanation. It is understood, it is clear. It is a first intelligible principle, an axiom. Okay? I’ll get to that in a moment, but the claim is basically that once you understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, is God, the reason why to obey Him does not require any argument. That is what the concept “God” means. It’s like you can’t say—I say… But getting to that is the problem. Reach the conclusion that He is God, but after…
[Speaker F] …you’ve reached the conclusion that He is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] …God, that’s what it means. What it means is that what He says is binding. How do you arrive at the conclusion that He is God? Everyone in his own way. It’s like—think about morality. Someone says to me: look, I know that murder is immoral, but why not murder? Someone who asks that question doesn’t really know that murder is immoral. Because if he really knows that murder is immoral, you don’t need explanations why not murder, because it is immoral. That is the meaning of the statement that murder is immoral. The meaning is that murder is forbidden. You can’t say: I know murder is immoral, but really why is murder forbidden? To say that it is immoral is to say that murder is forbidden.
In exactly the same way, to say that God commanded is a sufficient explanation for why I need to do it. You can’t say: I know God commanded, but why do it? Then you don’t really think God commanded—or the one who commanded is not God, whatever. You haven’t reached the conclusion that there really is a factor here that is God and that commanded. Because if you had reached that, no additional explanation would be needed. That alone is enough to create the obligation. You can say: I still don’t know that He is God, like you said—fine, different arguments, each person and his own path to getting there. Therefore Maimonides says that religious service in its essence, whether idolatry or the service of God, depends on acceptance as a deity. Service out of love or service out of fear is not genuine religious service. Out of love or out of fear in the sense of emotions of love and fear—not doing the truth because it is truth. Doing the truth because it is truth, that is what he calls here service out of love. That, yes, is acceptance as a deity. And you understand that this is the truth. If He commanded, you have to do it. That’s all. Why do I have to do it? Just because. Because He commanded. I have no explanations. I have nothing clearer than that that I can base the explanation on.
When I come to explain something, I need something else that is clearer, so that I can explain this thing by means of that other thing. So what will be the clearest thing…
[Speaker F] …that no longer needs explanation, that is the clearest of all? Obligation to God, to God’s command, will be the clearest thing there is. There is nothing clearer than that that can explain why I should be obligated to God.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s funny—someone comes and says: I believe in God, I believe there is a God and all that…
[Speaker F] …but I don’t keep the Sabbath.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in some sense, what is that… I don’t understand how that… If he doesn’t keep the Sabbath, that doesn’t change anything. If he doesn’t think he should keep the Sabbath, then he is in a logical contradiction. If he doesn’t keep the Sabbath, then he must… apparently not… no, there are people who have this impulse or that impulse—we talked about that in previous lectures. No, there is weakness of will. A person sometimes does not do what he thinks he should do. That can happen. But if he doesn’t think he should keep the Sabbath—if you know that God commanded keeping the Sabbath, then you cannot fail to think that you should keep the Sabbath. You may stumble, because your impulse overcame you and in practice you still don’t keep it, but to think that you do not need to keep it—that cannot be. Meaning, if God commanded, then you must. Meaning, there is no gap between saying “God commanded” and saying “I must.” Okay?
Just a parenthetical note: we saw here this Maimonides with these two laws of his. In law 3 Maimonides seemingly says something contradictory. I didn’t bring it here. Maimonides says—here—after in laws 1 and 2 that we saw, in law 3, right, he says “do the truth because it is truth, and in the end the good will come.” In law 3: “What is the proper love? That one should love God with a very great and excessive and intense love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is found preoccupied with it always, as if lovesick, whose mind is not free from love of that woman and he is preoccupied with her always, whether sitting or rising, even while eating and drinking. Even more than this should the love of God be in the hearts of those who love Him, preoccupied with it always, as He commanded, ‘with all your heart and with all your soul.’ And this is what Solomon said, by way of metaphor, ‘For I am sick with love,’ and the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter.”
Now here it seems to be the opposite of what I said, because here it appears that love really means the emotion of love, something emotional, like love of a woman. Right? But one law earlier he says that serving out of love means doing the truth because it is truth—the coldest, most detached thing I can think of—and here it’s this emotional outpouring in law 3. Now, he didn’t get confused. It’s one law later; it’s not far away. Hm? Is there idolatry of some sort in law 3? In a certain sense, yes.
So what I want to argue…
[Speaker I] …is that this is always an important lesson in how to use metaphors.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “The whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter,” so our love of the Holy One, blessed be He, is compared to the love of a woman. Okay? So Maimonides says you should be preoccupied with it always, as with the love of a woman, and so on. But there are always gaps between the metaphor and what it represents. The whole question is which detail in the metaphor is intended to explain something in the thing being represented. Not everything in the metaphor also applies to the thing represented, right? I can give you some metaphor, some fox metaphor about human beings—but a fox has four legs and human beings have only two. So why are you giving me a metaphor with a fox, one fox or another, trying to teach me something about human beings? Because it’s irrelevant. I’m not talking about the number of the fox’s legs. I’m talking about some particular aspect we saw in the fox’s behavior that serves as a metaphor for human behavior. Okay?
Meaning, one of people’s mistakes is to take a metaphor and copy it one-to-one to the thing being represented. No. There is a certain aspect that the metaphor comes to clarify, but there are other details in the metaphor that are not relevant to the discussion. And I claim that here too, love of a woman—since that is something familiar to all of us—so the love of God is explained by means of the metaphor of a woman’s love, and “the whole Song of Songs is a metaphor for this matter,” as Maimonides writes here. But which aspect of the metaphor should we focus on? Not on the aspect of emotional flooding, but on the aspect of intensity. Meaning, just as you are occupied all the time with love of the woman, and your mind is always there and your heart is always there, and you are preoccupied with her always, etc., so too should be the love of God—but not necessarily in the emotional sense. If it is emotional, fine, but that’s not the point. The point is that your commitment to the truth—which is what he defined as love of God in the previous law—your commitment to the truth should accompany you all the time, intensely, just as love of a woman accompanies you all the time. It’s an intense thing. Right, “with all your heart and with all your soul”—it needs to fill you all the time, but that doesn’t mean you need to be emotionally flooded. One law earlier he says: to do the truth because it is truth. He defined the concept of love.
[Speaker H] People who really know that something is morally true will also love it. I don’t think that’s true, but if they love it, good for them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s not the requirement. The requirement is to be totally devoted to this matter and to carry it within you all the time. How much it enters your emotional dimension—if it enters, fine; if for someone else it doesn’t enter, also fine. That’s not the requirement; maybe it’s a result. But in the final analysis, what is demanded of you is to devote yourself to it the way you devote yourself to emotional love. But here, love really means doing the truth because it is true—that’s what he said in the previous Jewish law. That’s called love. You need to be devoted at every moment, with your whole being and every moment of your life, to doing the truth because it is true, and to clarifying the truth and doing the truth. Okay, I think that’s what needs to be understood from this third Jewish law. Okay. In Foundations of the Torah, is he not emotional? What? In Foundations of the Torah I don’t remember—
[Speaker E] —that there’s an emotional expression there,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there he’s talking about the commandment of loving God; that’s something else. There he certainly isn’t talking about the truth because it is true.
[Speaker E] Isn’t Jewish law 2 the same verse as the commandment of loving God? “And you shall love the Lord your God.” That’s the verse he brings in Jewish law 2.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. “And this is the commandment with which the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it says: ‘And you shall love the Lord—’”
[Speaker E] “—your God.’ And when a person loves God with a proper love—”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “—he will immediately perform all the commandments out of love.” What does that mean? The commandment of loving God may perhaps be emotional; even there I’m not at all sure. But it may be emotional. But here we are not talking about the commandment of loving God. If you love God, you will immediately perform all the commandments out of love. And what does it mean to perform all the commandments out of love? He wrote above: to do the truth because it is true. Right. But that verse is not talking about why you serve God; that verse defines the commandment of loving God. He says if you love God and fulfill the commandment of loving God, you’ll also arrive at performing the commandments out of love. But here the discussion is about that, which is why it’s also split up. The commandment of loving God is discussed in the laws of Foundations of the Torah, right? Not in the laws of repentance. Why—what does the commandment of loving God have to do with the laws of repentance? Because here he’s talking about performing commandments. The laws of repentance deal with returning to the performance of commandments, not abandoning one’s commitment to the commandments. So here the discussion is on a different plane. He’s only saying there is a connection: if you fulfill the commandment of loving God, it will also play a role on the meta-halakhic plane—why you fulfill commandments. Okay?
[Speaker F] But that’s not the topic under discussion. The commandment of loving God is a commandment, and it’s discussed in the laws of Foundations of the Torah. A parable? I came across something very strange. Someone told me that sleep is one-sixtieth of death.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, wow, what’s going on here?
[Speaker F] The Talmud says that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I know, but how do you—
[Speaker F] —explain sayings like that in a sensible way?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why, what’s the problem?
[Speaker F] And how does it connect to us? What is that? No, I said I was wandering off a bit—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you mentioned the word “parable,” so I brought it up. It’s not a parable; it’s a claim that it’s one-sixtieth of death.
[Speaker F] What’s the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s simple—what’s hard to understand there? What’s the parameter in death? For example, you have no consciousness when you sleep. So there’s a dimension of death here, right? The heart is still beating, everything is fine. So there is some dimension of death that is also present in sleep. One-sixtieth.
[Speaker B] It’s not death—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s some dimension of death there. Seems simple to me. Okay, anyway, that’s regarding the command. I want to continue. In the final analysis, the claim is that the commitment to serving God, or the motivation because of which I serve the Holy One, blessed be He, needs to be the very fact that He is God—acceptance of the divine. And His command. The moment He commands, the very existence of the command is enough for me to be obligated. That’s the meaning of religious service. And as I already prefaced—and you already asked, so I already said it, I’ll just sharpen it—apparently this sounds like something irrational. People also very often perceive religious faith as something irrational. Okay? It’s faith, it’s irrational, it’s not rational. That’s nonsense. It’s the most rational thing there is. Faith is above reason? No, not above—it is the rational. There’s no such thing as above reason.
[Speaker F] Those are empty words.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Faith begins where reason ends? You know how they say that—ask those who say it what they mean; they themselves don’t know.
[Speaker F] Faith is a rational conclusion—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and that’s what should be done. On the contrary, faith underlies rationality in many senses. But that’s another topic; I won’t get into it here. What I do want to say—and it’s a bit connected to what I want to say now—is that in the end you ask yourself: wait, am I just doing things for no reason? So God said it—so what if He said it? Why should I do it? As I said before, suppose I gave you some reason. You do it because of X.
[Speaker F] You can always go back and ask: and why are you obligated to X?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because of Y. Why Y? In the end, you enter an infinite regress. You have to stop it somewhere. Where do you stop it? You stop it at that principle which, in your view, doesn’t require prior justification, is understood from itself, is self-evident. Right? That’s the principle at which I can stop any chain of reasoning. A chain of reasoning will always stop when I reach some principle that itself does not require a reason outside itself.
[Speaker F] It’s self-evident in itself—it’s obvious that it’s true. I saw people who said the world is eternal, and the Holy One, blessed be He, somehow came into being, I don’t know—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or I don’t know—
[Speaker F] —how. So what’s the point? Then where do you stop?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Each person—
[Speaker F] —stops wherever he wants.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m taking you to infinite regress, and you say each person stops wherever he wants. I’m only saying: each person has to decide for himself, when he stops, what the nature of that first link in the chain is where he stops. And for him, it has to be something understood from itself; it doesn’t require arguments outside itself. Now, there are people for whom it is self-evident that there is a God, and there are people for whom it is self-evident that there is no God. That isn’t irrational; you’re not doing it for no reason. Being rational and presenting reasons has a limit. In the end, reason and reason and the reason for the reason and so on—eventually it stops. Even rational justification ultimately stops. And therefore the claim here is not an irrational claim. This claim, which says: I observe this because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, only means that the principle that seems self-evident to me, that doesn’t require external justification, is the principle of obligation to the word of God. Obligation to God’s command. That is self-evident; that is the principle where I stop the chain of justifications. From there on I’ll begin giving reasons. Meaning, if they ask me why keep the Sabbath, I say because it’s written in the Torah. So what if it’s written in the Torah? It’s written in the Torah because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. So what if He commanded it? He is God. So what? There is no “so what”—that’s it. If God commanded, then you have to do it. These are chains of reasoning, but they will stop. Where will they stop? At that same place that is self-evident, understood from itself. It doesn’t need any further explanation outside itself to ground it. And it’s always like that; this isn’t some irrational matter. There are no rational justifications that are not like this. Every rational justification ultimately stops at some first intelligibles, at axioms, right? Therefore this mistake—thinking that such a thing is irrational—is nonsense. It’s not irrational; it’s the most rational thing there is. The thing that appears self-evident to me obligates me. Of course—that’s the most rational thing there is. On the contrary, why do I need justification for certain things that are not self-evident? If they’re not self-evident, then you need to explain: so why is it true? Ah, because of this. But if it itself is self-evident, then why do I need something else to explain it? It is self-evident. It can explain other things, but it itself does not require explanation, does not demand explanation. Okay? Therefore stopping chains of reasoning is not irrational. It’s the most rational thing there is. A chain of reasoning always stops at some link about which, if someone asks me why it is true, my answer will be: that’s just how it is. That’s it. But there are two kinds of “that’s just how it is.” This is an important point. There is one “that’s just how it is” that is arbitrary. “That’s just how it is because I feel like it.” I have no justification, no reasoning; I feel like it. I flipped a coin in the morning and decided that whatever the coin says, that’s what I’ll do. That’s arbitrary “that’s just how it is.” I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a “that’s just how it is” that is true, not arbitrary. So why do I call it “that’s just how it is”? Because it is true in itself. I have no explanation based on another principle that explains it. So in this context too, the word “that’s just how it is” is used. But it’s not “that’s just how it is” in the arbitrary sense; it’s “that’s just how it is” in the sense that it is clearly true. It doesn’t need explanations; it is simply true. Okay? I return to Leibowitz in this context too. I think he confused these two meanings of “that’s just how it is.” Whenever he was asked questions about values and things like that, he would say: “That’s just how it is,” because I decided arbitrarily. It’s an arbitrary decision. But what he really meant was “that’s just how it is” in the second sense, not the arbitrary sense, but in the sense that it is self-evident to me and therefore I don’t need arguments for why it is true. But he himself did not distinguish between these two meanings of “that’s just how it is.” There are reasons for that—he was a positivist—but we won’t get into that here. In any case, for our purposes, what I basically want to say is that at the beginning of every chain of reasoning there always sits this first principle, the one understood from itself, such that if they ask me about it, my answer will be: “that’s just how it is.” And in every chain of reasoning it is there. A legal chain, a philosophical chain, a scientific chain—any chain of reasoning you want always begins with some principles that are self-evident. Meaning: with regard to them, I don’t need additional justifications. Okay? So here too, in the religious context, there is some first principle.
[Speaker F] That first principle says that what God says is binding. By the very fact that He said it. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the first principle. Ger Hasidism, for example—when talking about Ger Hasidism… Ger Hasidism is idolatrous worship of the highest order.
[Speaker F] That’s unrelated; it’s not an example of anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they are literally idol worshipers, completely. It’s the rebbe, the rebbe said. I don’t care—there is no God. Right? No, they are full-fledged idol worshipers. Not all the Hasidic groups—in Ger especially. There are Hasidic groups that see their rebbe as a spiritual guide or something like that, but in Ger the rebbe can spit out whatever nonsense he wants and all the guys immediately answer amen. I mean the “takones” of Ger, for those who know, and all their nonsense—that is outright idolatry. Not only is it idolatry; it’s more than idolatry—it’s a cult. A cult in the most severe sense of the word. It’s a very dangerous cult. And it’s a cult—the largest and strongest Hasidic group in Israel, which is a partner in governing Israel. We have a cult. Okay, anyway, one more comment. What I just said—that I keep the commands of the Holy One, blessed be He, because He commanded—does not mean that the commands have no justifications, that they are not rational, that the command does not come to achieve something, that it doesn’t make the world better, my life better; it may well be that it does. Just that that’s not why I’m obligated to it. Do you understand? It doesn’t mean it has no justification. I think I gave the example of the Avnei Nezer—no, the Eglei Tal, right, in the introduction—where he says there are those who think that enjoying study is not good because then the study is not for its own sake. He says that’s a mistake; of course it is very good to enjoy study. It improves the study; it makes the commandment better. But, he goes on to say, if you study for the sake of the pleasure or because of the pleasure, then it really is study not for its own sake. Meaning, certainly it is permitted and desirable to enjoy yourself when you study, but still, the enjoyment is not the reason you study. That’s not the same thing. An important and obvious distinction. I say: if you didn’t enjoy it, would you still study? If not, then you aren’t doing a commandment—you’re enjoying yourself, you’re having fun.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you study, and you would also study without enjoyment, it just so happens that you also enjoy it, but you’d study even without enjoyment—that is study for its own sake, only you also enjoy it. Fine. A very sharp distinction. On the Sabbath, I know, people study tractates, each one where his heart desires. So what? Does that somehow contradict what you’re saying?
[Speaker F] Not at all. Why not? Why would it? You want to enjoy the learning—what do you mean? Does that mean if I didn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —find a tractate my heart desired, then I wouldn’t study at all? If that’s the situation, then you really are not studying Torah, not studying for its own sake. But if, among the tractates, I look for which one speaks to me more and I choose that one to study, while the very act of study I do because there is a commandment of Torah study, then everything is fine—what’s the problem? On the contrary, there is value in enjoying it, as he said, just not in studying because of the enjoyment or for the sake of the enjoyment. That’s another discussion. So therefore I say that in this context it is incorrect to conclude—and again, Leibowitz went one step too far here—it is incorrect to conclude from here that the commandments have no purpose, that the commandments were not intended to achieve some goal, some spiritual goal or another. Absolutely not. But the obligation to observe the commandments is not because of the goal. The goal is only the reason why the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, but I observe it because He commanded. Think of a child to whom I give candy so that he will—I don’t know—go to the grocery store and bring me something. Okay? So why does the child go to the grocery store? Because he wants to get the candy, right? But why do I send him to the grocery store? Because I need the groceries. He doesn’t go in order to bring the groceries; he goes in order to get the candy, right? But I send him to the grocery store because I need the groceries. I use the candy to get him to do it. Okay? The reason for which an act is done, or for which there is a command to do it, is not always the reason because of which I do the act. Those are two different things. The Holy One, blessed be He, can command the commandment of the Sabbath because it repairs the eternity within the sign, fine. Now the question is: why do I keep the Sabbath? Not because I want to repair the eternity within the sign, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded. Now why did He command? In order to repair the eternity within the sign. Like with the candy. Okay. Therefore I say: Leibowitz concluded from this that the commandments come to achieve nothing, that they have no goal, that they are just arbitrary matters. You could just recite the phone book instead of praying; it makes no difference, so long as you do what you were obligated to do, what you committed yourself to. Okay, that’s nonsense. Leibowitz always grasps a correct point and then always takes it one step too far. The correct point is that you really should not do it because of the religious experience, to pray and so on, but that does not mean there should not be a religious experience or that there is no value in your having a religious experience. Two different things. You do it because there is—
[Speaker D] —a commandment to pray; besides that, you may also have some experience of standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, and all kinds of things like that, each person according to his own world. Okay? Two different things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s just true that this is not supposed to be the reason you pray. In that he was right. Okay. So if you insist on that, then the interpretation of the purpose of the commandments will affect—
[Speaker G] —you, the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, how you… Look, if I believed those interpretations—and I don’t—then if I believed those interpretations, I assume it could play a role in the question of how I would fulfill the commandment. But what I know doesn’t convince me. Not categorically; it’s just that all the arguments—Guide for the Perplexed part 3, or whatever, all kinds of To the Perplexed of the Generation by Rabbi Kook, all kinds of inventions: the commandment is meant to do such-and-such—it doesn’t hold water, it doesn’t explain the details of the commandment. Just doesn’t. To put a flavor in your mouth, as Sefer HaChinukh writes. That’s not really the reason for the commandment in my view. It’s not plausible. Fine, but no matter—if you reached the conclusion that this reason does convince you, then fine; it could be that you’ll be able—it could influence how you perform the commandment. Maybe. Although in principle we do not interpret Scripture according to the reason of the verse. In terms of “what should I do” or the halakhic definition of the commandment, it is not fed by the reason. There is a tannaitic dispute, but in Jewish law we rule that we do not derive law from the reason of the verse. We do not shape the definition of the commandment according to its reason. Okay? But on the principled level, in terms of the experience accompanying the observance, or even sometimes also the interpretation of what you’re doing—if you’re convinced that this is the reason, it may be that it will play a part in what you do. But again, that’s because it will explain to you what to do. But the question is why do it—
[Speaker F] —not because of the reason, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The reason will only tell you what He commanded. According to the reason, you can understand whether you need to do it this way or that way, because you see what better advances the reason. Okay? But in the end, when you do it, you do it because He commanded, not because you want to advance the reason. He wants to advance the reason. You do it because He commanded. What you’re saying is: even if you found a reason, you still have to keep doing it. Yes, of course. So Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman has an essay called “Repentance,” an essay on repentance in Kovetz Ma’amarim. And there he claims, bringing from Ramchal in Derekh Hashem, that in every commandment and every transgression there are two aspects. One aspect is the substantive essential aspect, and the second aspect is the aspect of the command. Let’s say I keep the Sabbath, okay? One aspect is: what is Sabbath observance meant to achieve? It is meant to do something, I don’t know what. Okay? That’s the essential aspect. And there’s the aspect of the command. I was commanded to keep the Sabbath, so I do it because I am faithful and committed to the command. Okay? Those are two aspects. And in a transgression, the same thing. Let’s say I ate pork. So first of all, apparently I caused some kind of damage, because otherwise why would the Holy One, blessed be He, forbid eating pork? Apparently if you eat pork, something problematic happens. So on the essential level I did something problematic. Second, I rebelled against the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. Independently of the damages and everything else. Those are two different aspects.
[Speaker G] Therefore, for example, he says there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —what happens in the case of someone who intended to eat pork but ended up with lamb? A Talmudic discussion in tractate Nazir. He thought to eat pork but ended up with lamb, and he needs atonement. Right? He ate lamb. He didn’t eat pork. What’s the problem? The thought. But what thought? Is there a transgression in thinking? A transgression in thinking? I can think whatever I want, as long as I do what I’m obligated to do and don’t do what I’m forbidden to do. The point is that the moment I thought of eating pork, I violated the command. From my standpoint, because I was sure there was a command here not to eat. The essence was not spoiled, because I didn’t eat pork. The bad result that comes from eating pork did not happen here, because I didn’t eat pork, I ate lamb. So that’s what Rabbi Elchanan says there in the essay: a case like that is basically a violation of the command but not of the essence. Therefore it requires atonement. Without the essence, there is no full transgression here, but for violating the command, in principle, you need atonement. What about the opposite? A violation of the essence without violating the command. That is an unwitting transgression. Right? When you eat something unwittingly, you don’t know at all that it’s pork, you don’t know that it’s forbidden, you are not rebelling against the command, but in substance you ate pork. The result happened. You ate forbidden fat, pork, whatever it may be. Okay? So that is the opposite case from intending to eat pork and ending up with lamb. Because here you actually violated the substantive action, but you did not violate the command, because you didn’t know there was a command. So with this he resolves all kinds of difficulties, but that doesn’t matter now. There is a Ritva and Tosafot HaRosh who explain in this way the saying of the Sages: greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does. Why is one who is commanded and does greater than one who is not commanded and does? So there are all kinds of homiletic explanations, and they themselves also bring that your inclination is stronger if you are commanded—yes, that’s the common explanation. And the less common and more correct explanation is the second one they bring. It says that when you do things as one who is commanded and does, then you are both responding to the command and fulfilling the essence. You perform the commandment and also fulfill the command. But if you are not commanded and do, then you did something good and brought some benefit, everything is fine, but you did not fulfill a command because there is no command upon you. Therefore, greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does. It’s a mathematical statement. Greater is one who is commanded and does because he has two benefits: he both responds to the command and fulfills the essence. And one who is not commanded and does has only one benefit, only the essence. He did not respond to a command, therefore the former is greater. One plus one is greater than one. Fine? You don’t need psychological explanations here—
[Speaker F] —or inclination and all kinds of things of that sort. So again, this tells us that in every commandment and every transgression there really are these two aspects: the aspect of the command, the prohibition or the command, yes? And the aspect of the essence. Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, command? He commands because apparently this is a beneficial act and that is a harmful act, and therefore this He commands and that He forbids. But from our standpoint, what matters is the command. That is, we are supposed to fulfill the command.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From what you said, it follows that the Maharsha—
[Speaker F] Too bad—came and said: why is the blessing called “the blessing of the lulav”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you come and say—
[Speaker F] —that the etrog is superior, both acts of kindness and Torah, call it “the blessing of the etrog,” not “the blessing of the lulav.”
[Speaker F] So he says that the fact—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that you perform commandments—
[Speaker F] —meaning acts of kindness—detracts from Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you—
[Speaker F] —do it in order—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —to bestow kindness and not in order to fulfill the divine command. Yes, and since lulav is Torah—perfect Torah without acts of kindness, without deeds—without deeds you call it… Ah. Okay, interesting. You have very interesting theories on this subject. Okay, I didn’t know that. For example, I thought you wanted to bring up the putting on of phylacteries that the Chabad people do in the streets, when they put phylacteries on people. There’s a very interesting debate about that—
[Speaker F] —between the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s an exchange of letters between them on this matter—
[Speaker F] —because Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner argued what I also think—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that it has no value at all; it’s just a waste of time. Because you stop people in the street who don’t believe and put phylacteries on them—that’s not a commandment. You give them that geshmak, that nice feeling, the fact that… Nice feeling or not, there is no commandment here. And during wartime what did they want? Phylacteries and this… So what do I care?
[Speaker J] And the ones who want to separate challah as well—this collection of pagans, what does he want? Just to separate challah, that’s what he wants. And they’re still pagans.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. Ceremonies of separating challah are pure paganism. There is a commandment of separating challah; when they turn it into a ceremony and think it will also help through all kinds of segulot and things like that, that is paganism. How do you get to faith and spiritual elevation through things like that? Fine, you can say there is some tactical value here or there, that’s all fine. But in the sense of whether such a thing is a commandment—that’s a halakhic question, right? Does this thing… Meaning, that person who put on phylacteries in the morning with the Chabad people, fine—if he repented that afternoon, does he need to put on phylacteries today? Yes, he needs to put on phylacteries again today. He did not fulfill the commandment of phylacteries. I would even tell them not to let him recite the blessing, although it doesn’t really matter, because even if he recites the blessing it’s not a transgression; in any case he believes in nothing. So it makes no difference. Hm? I’m saying it’s not clear. If we’re talking about someone who doesn’t believe—doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t believe in the commandment of phylacteries. Believing in God is not what matters; there are all kinds of people who believe. He does not believe that this thing is a commandment, that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. That is what Maimonides—we’ll see that Maimonides in a moment—argues is the condition for fulfilling a commandment. Fine, so now I’m moving to the next Maimonides. But what I basically want to say here is that every commandment has an essence and a command. Without being committed to the command, there really is no fulfillment of a commandment here. If you act for the sake of the essence but not מתוך commitment to the command, then there really is no commandment here—not a commandment for its own sake, in any event. This is Maimonides in the laws of Kings, at the end of chapter 8. Maybe I mentioned this last time, I don’t remember anymore. Maimonides writes like this: “Anyone who accepts the seven commandments”—he is talking about a resident alien—“anyone who accepts the seven commandments and is careful to perform them, behold he is among the pious of the nations of the world and has a share in the World to Come. And this is only if he accepts them 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 regarding them. But if he performs them because his reason compels him, this is not a resident alien and he is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but among their wise.” There are versions that read “and not among their wise,” but the more correct version is “but among their wise.” What is Maimonides saying? Suppose there is a gentile who observes the seven commandments. So in principle he is among the pious of the nations of the world; this is a resident alien. Okay? But all this is true only if he does it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded Moses at Sinai that it should be done. But if he does it because his reason compels it, because it seems to him that this is the right way to behave, it makes sense, and therefore he does it, then he is not a resident alien and not among the pious of the nations of the world, but among their wise. What does that mean? Translation into my language: such a person is not among the pious of the nations of the world; there is no religious value in what he does. There is moral value; it is the right act, so he behaves properly, he is among the wise of the nations of the world, but he is not among their pious. Meaning, he is not serving God; it has no religious significance. “Pious” is a religious category, yes? It has no religious significance; this is not a commandment. Why? He’s doing the commandment—why shouldn’t it be a commandment? Because he’s doing it because that is what seems reasonable to him. An atheist who helps others is doing acts of kindness; he has not fulfilled a commandment in his life. He is doing a good act, he is a moral person—
[Speaker B] —he is among the wise of the nations of the world, but he is not among their pious. Meaning, the act he does has no religious significance. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s exactly saying the same thing we saw in the laws of idolatry and in the laws of repentance. Maimonides goes back to the same point, because basically he says that if you’re not doing it out of commitment to a command, or acceptance of the divine, as I called it, then it’s not a commandment for its own sake, it’s not a commandment at all. From his perspective, is this only someone who believes in the Torah of Moses, or also, I don’t know, Muslims, Christians? He claims it’s only because of Mount Sinai. That’s what he says here: because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and informed us through Moses our teacher that the children of Noah had previously been commanded in them. So I’m saying: if they do the commandments because of that, then yes. But they don’t do them because of that. They may believe in Moses our teacher, but the commandments of Muhammad they do because Muhammad commanded them, not because Moses our teacher commanded them. Why? Same thing. So therefore Maimonides is basically saying here that you can do the very same acts, but if your motivation is rational necessity, because that’s the right or logical way to behave, then you did not perform a commandment. You did a good deed, but not a commandment. Okay?
What matters is that you objected when I said that faith might be on the… that faith is beyond intellectual attainment. What you just said. I don’t know, there’s no such realm beyond intellectual attainments. I don’t recognize the existence of such a realm. Now, the words you just said at the end—that because of rational necessity, someone acts because of rational necessity and not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. Right. Okay. So what? So that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it—that’s faith, and rational necessity… No, what do you mean faith? The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it because He said it to Moses our teacher at Sinai, and therefore I know that He commanded it. What does that have to do with faith? But this thing has to be internalized in you, you… Nothing has to be internalized, I know that He commanded it, what does internalized mean? I know that He commanded it and therefore I do it. I don’t know what it means that it’s internalized in me, I don’t know what that is. Just as I know that the law says something, so I obey what the law says. What has to be internalized in me? I don’t know what.
Rational necessity and this thing—it doesn’t fit for me. Why? What doesn’t fit? What is rational necessity? Rational necessity means it makes sense to behave this way, not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. I perform kindness toward another because I’m a moral person, but I’m an atheist, I don’t believe that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me to do it. So I have no commandment. Why don’t I? I did an act of kindness, there’s a commandment of kindness, let’s say, a commandment of kindness, suppose there is one. Okay? So why don’t I have a commandment? Because I’m not doing it out of commitment to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. I’m doing it because that seems to me the right and logical way to act.
Look at all these arguments about the pioneers who drained swamps and sacrificed their lives for the settlement of the Land of Israel. Did they fulfill the commandment of settling the Land of Israel? Never in a million years. I’m talking about those who don’t believe. Those who believe, yes. Those who don’t believe did not fulfill the commandment of settling the Land of Israel. Commandments require intention, commandments require faith. If you don’t believe that there is a commandment to settle the Land of Israel, then even if you settled the Land of Israel and you’re Jewish—as a Jew you are obligated in the commandments—you did not fulfill that commandment.
And those who enlisted and gave themselves in this war out of the stirring of their hearts? Obviously he didn’t do any commandment in that regard, obviously not. What do you mean? And certainly he is not sanctifying God’s name and holy and all kinds of nonsense people say around this—it’s such bullshit. That’s what someone called, I don’t remember who it was, he called it mistaken sanctifications. Literally mistaken sanctifications, like invalid betrothals. So he says that when people say every Jew who is killed because of his Jewishness is holy—that’s bigger nonsense than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. An atheist who is killed because of his Jewishness—his luck went bad and he got killed. He got killed. What makes him holy? What does that have to do with holiness? What is holy about him? Pitiful, I understand—but why holy? He’s unfortunate; he was killed because the terrorist shot him. He could have shot someone else and then he wouldn’t have been killed. What makes him holy? Did he come and sacrifice himself? No, I’m talking now about someone who was hurt in an attack right now. No, leave it.
Fine. Now someone who goes from the center to the south, but he does it because he’s a loyal citizen and he wants to defend the State of Israel—then he’s an excellent soldier. He has no commandment. You don’t perform a commandment if you’re not obligated in the commandment. He didn’t do it because of a commandment; he did it because he’s a Belgian citizen defending Belgium against its enemies. Is that a commandment? Why not? That’s exactly the same thing as the Israeli defending Israel against its enemies. What’s the difference? It’s exactly the same thing. You can’t say otherwise. What? It’s obvious. Anyone who says otherwise is just confused. It’s nonsense. What, of course not.
But “May God avenge their blood.” “May God avenge their blood”—you can wish upon their enemies that God avenge their blood and kill those who killed them. What does that have to do with it? But that doesn’t mean they are holy or that they sanctified God’s name. I’m saying: if there are people who did this out of religious awareness, then yes. I’m talking about atheists or people who are not committed. They did things for which I owe them tremendous gratitude, obviously. And they did a great and beautiful deed, among the wise of the nations of the world, but not among their pious. They have no commandment. If he did it with the intention of sanctifying God’s name and that’s why he did it, then yes, why not? Even though he wasn’t religious? No. Not because they are that. No, if he is a religious person he asked. Huh? He asked about a religious person. Religious, obviously. Right, so that’s what he asked.
In any case, when I wrote, I once wrote an article, and some of the responses were: fine, Maimonides here is talking about the seven Noahide commandments, not about all our commandments. He’s talking in the laws of the resident alien. Someone who keeps the seven commandments—that’s about a gentile. What about a Jew who does the commandments because of rational necessity and not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded through Moses? So it seems simple to me as a matter of reasoning that it’s the same thing. Look in the Frankel edition of Maimonides, in the reference index—several later authorities write that it is obvious that this is also true for a Jew. There is one, I think, who argues that this is only for gentiles and not for Jews, but to my mind that makes no sense. It’s obviously a matter of reasoning. Just as for a gentile, so too for a Jew.
So you’ll ask: then why does Maimonides write this here and not about all the commandments? Why specifically with the seven Noahide commandments does he write this idea? Let him write at the beginning of the Mishneh Torah that for the entire Mishneh Torah, if someone fulfills things only because of rational necessity, then he has not fulfilled commandments—he is among the wise of Israel but not among their pious. Why does he talk about the wise of the nations of the world and about a resident alien and about seven commandments—why in the laws of kings? Why not in the introduction to the Mishneh Torah?
So what I argued is: what are the seven Noahide commandments? The seven Noahide commandments are the rational commandments, the moral, rational ones. As Maimonides writes, they are things toward which reason inclines. That’s the seven Noahide commandments. Okay? Where can there be a situation in which a person fulfills commandments not because of the command but because that is what seems right to him? In those commandments that are rational, right? Nobody is going to redeem a firstborn donkey because that seems right to him, if he doesn’t think he is commanded and isn’t coming to fulfill a commandment, right? But the seven Noahide commandments—he doesn’t steal, he doesn’t murder—those he does because that seems right to him. Not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. And when you try to speak about a situation in which a person fulfills a commandment because of reasoning, because of rational necessity, and not because of the command, then naturally you are speaking about the rational, intellectual commandments, not the non-rational ones accepted by decree. And therefore this is said regarding the seven Noahide commandments. Not because it speaks only about a gentile. Okay?
Now I wanted to make a very far-reaching claim in the article I was talking about. I wanted to claim that you can cause a secular Jew to stumble into a transgression, and nothing happened. The secular person did not commit a transgression, and you did not cause him to stumble. Why? Because someone who does not recognize the existence of a commandment—his commandments are not commandments and his transgressions are not transgressions. He is not in this world of commandments and transgressions. He does not recognize such an obligation.
And what about things like turning off the electricity in the synagogue? That’s something else, because if he does it for you, then he’s like a gentile. Even to a gentile you’re not allowed to say it. The gentile is not obligated in Sabbath observance. You are forbidden to benefit from a Sabbath violation done on your behalf. That’s something else. But if I need to prevent him from doing a transgression—not for me, just in general? Or not to cause him to stumble. Without understanding that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded and that you are obligated to the command, your commandments are not commandments and your transgressions are not transgressions. You are outside this whole world of fulfilling commandments and committing transgressions. You don’t belong to that world.
Including people in a prayer quorum—secular Jews in a quorum. Secular people, let’s say, who don’t believe, because there are all kinds of secular people, but for the sake of the discussion, secular people who don’t believe. You stop people, I need a quorum—it’s like adding flowerpots. You can add flowerpots; it’s the same thing. They do not count toward a quorum. Not as a sanction, not because they are wicked, because they aren’t; it’s because their prayer is not prayer. What are they doing there? It’s like adding a gentile to a quorum. What’s the difference? Seems simple to me.
By the way, in this sense, for example, to my mind traditionalists are much worse than atheists. Traditionalists are actual offenders. Atheists are not. Atheists do what they think; they’re mistaken, but that’s what they think. Traditionalists are people who do think commandments should be observed, but they don’t do it—it doesn’t suit them, they cut corners. Those are offenders. Right? People always think the opposite. They always think traditionalists are half-religious, as if that’s somehow valuable, and atheists are the worst thing. Exactly the opposite. Traditionalists are the biggest offenders, and atheists are not offenders—this is what they think, what can you do.
But regarding being counted for a quorum, the picture reverses. A traditionalist can count toward a quorum, that’s unrelated, because I’m not talking about a sanction because he’s wicked or because he’s an offender. The question is: when he is here, is this one more person praying? So the traditionalist, yes—he is one more person praying. The atheist is not. So adding an atheist to a quorum is like adding a flowerpot. Adding a traditionalist to a quorum—yes, because he is praying. It doesn’t matter that he cuts corners a lot of the time, but he does belong in this, meaning this is not a meaningless act from his standpoint. Okay?
Now there is a similar Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah in tractate Hullin. Maimonides writes there—the Mishnah writes there first of all. What? Doesn’t he have to do the prayer in the way you said counts as doing a commandment? Meaning, in practice, doesn’t he have to do it as though he thinks it’s the command and not do it as though he’s some servant of God, something like that? And he still counts? On that I agree—that’s not what I said earlier, I didn’t understand the question. If he doesn’t do it out of… then it’s not prayer for its own sake, fine, like every commandment. If he believes in principle, then his commandments are commandments. If he doesn’t do it because of the obligation, then it’s like commandments require intention, fine. After all, he does do it because of the obligation—why does he do it? He’s not consciously aware of it, it’s not accompanying him consciously, but he does it because of the obligation. A person who does not believe in God or in His command—then he does not do it because of obligation, not because he’s unaware of it; inwardly too, no. That’s just not his world at all.
By the way, to my mind this gives more respect to secular people, not less. To think that saying they don’t count toward a quorum is respecting them. I respect the fact that you tell me you don’t believe. I’m not telling you stories—no, deep deep down you believe, you just don’t know it. Okay? Because if not, then he’s also stupid, not only secular. But I’m saying in principle, this approach respects him. On the contrary, the approach of counting him for a quorum is, in my view, disrespectful. You don’t really believe him when he says he doesn’t believe. You tell him: deep down you know the truth, you just don’t… No, I’m saying that if he doesn’t believe, if he says he doesn’t believe, then he probably really doesn’t believe.
Anyway, the Mishnah in Hullin says—it’s talking about the sciatic nerve: “It applies to kosher animals and does not apply to non-kosher animals. Rabbi Yehuda says: it applies even to non-kosher animals. Rabbi Yehuda said: but the sciatic nerve was forbidden from the time of the sons of Jacob, and a non-kosher animal was still permitted to them.” Right? So there is a dispute between Rabbi Yehuda and the Sages whether the prohibition of the sciatic nerve applies only to the sciatic nerve of a kosher animal, or whether even the sciatic nerve of a non-kosher animal is prohibited.
You’ll ask: what difference does it make? A non-kosher animal is forbidden to eat anyway—not because of the sciatic nerve, but because it’s forbidden to eat it because it’s non-kosher. Yes, but if you eat the sciatic nerve of that animal, it could be that you violate two prohibitions: the prohibition of eating a non-kosher animal and the prohibition of the sciatic nerve. Impure? Not impure? An animal that isn’t kosher. Yes, not impure in the sense that it touched a dead body—an animal. But not impure? Not because it touched a dead body. A non-kosher animal means an animal that is not kosher. “Impure,” a non-kosher animal—that according to Maimonides he’s liable for nothing. What do you mean liable for nothing? He doesn’t… Because if you ate the sciatic nerve of a non-kosher animal… Wait, leave Maimonides now. I’m learning Mishnah. Who told you how Maimonides rules? There’s a tannaitic dispute here. Slowly, slowly.
So we’re talking about the tannaitic dispute. The tannaitic dispute is over whether the prohibition of the sciatic nerve applies also to a non-kosher animal. So Rabbi Yehuda, who claims that it does apply also to a non-kosher animal, has a proof against the first tanna. What is the proof? When was the sciatic nerve forbidden? At the time Jacob and the angel, right? Jacob’s struggle with the angel. At that time there was not yet the revelation at Mount Sinai. So there still was no distinction between kosher animals and non-kosher animals. There still was no prohibition of non-kosher animals. What do you mean? Non-kosher animals… No, but there was no prohibition against eating non-kosher animals. We’re talking about the prohibition of eating non-kosher animals. There was not yet any distinction between non-kosher and kosher animals. Mount Sinai had not yet happened. And if at that time they observed the prohibition of the sciatic nerve, then it makes no sense that they observed the prohibition of the sciatic nerve only in kosher animals and not in non-kosher animals. They didn’t distinguish between them at all. That’s what Rabbi Yehuda argued.
So the first tanna answers him: they said to him, “It was stated at Sinai, but written in its place.” We do not observe the prohibition of the sciatic nerve because Jacob our father struggled with the angel and all sorts of things like that. We observe it because it is written in the Torah not to eat the sciatic nerve. The Torah is arranged according to the order of events, so it describes it for me in the book of Genesis, but from our perspective, what forbids the sciatic nerve? The command at Sinai, not Jacob’s struggle with the angel.
And in any case, even in the verse itself—“Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve to this day,” right? That’s not described as a prohibition. They practiced not eating the sciatic nerve as a memorial to Jacob’s struggle with the angel. Where does it say that it is forbidden to eat the sciatic nerve? There are rules for how a prohibition is written in the Torah—“beware,” “lest,” and “do not.” What is described there is simply a custom of the children of Israel, that they practiced not eating the sciatic nerve. Fine. How did you derive a prohibition from that? In any event it’s difficult to derive the prohibition from that verse.
In any case, that’s what the Mishnah says: that by virtue of the command at Sinai, not by virtue of the story with Jacob. So Maimonides says this—and take note, in his commentary on the Mishnah there in Hullin: “Set your mind to this great principle brought in this Mishnah, namely their statement: ‘It was forbidden from Sinai.’ And it is that you must know that everything from which we refrain or that we do today, we do only because of God’s command through Moses, not because God commanded it to the prophets who preceded him. An example: we do not eat a limb from a living animal not because God prohibited a limb from a living animal to the children of Noah, but because Moses prohibited it to us through what he was commanded at Sinai, that a limb from a living animal remain forbidden. And likewise we do not circumcise because Abraham circumcised himself and the members of his household, but because God commanded us through Moses to circumcise, just as Abraham, peace be upon him, circumcised. And likewise with the sciatic nerve: we do not follow the prohibition of Jacob our father, but the command of Moses our teacher. Do you not see that they said: six hundred and thirteen commandments were stated to Moses at Sinai, and all these are included among the commandments?”
Maimonides says that what is written here in the Mishnah is a foundational meta-halakhic principle—apparently the same principle we saw in the laws of kings in Maimonides. Namely, that what we fulfill as commandments is not because Jacob our father and the angel and whatever prohibition they observed there, but because of the command at Sinai. And when we ask ourselves why not to eat the sciatic nerve, it’s not because Jacob struggled with the angel, but because we were commanded at Sinai not to eat the sciatic nerve. Even though Jacob did struggle with the angel and the children of Israel did indeed practice not eating the sciatic nerve. Same thing with a limb from a living animal: it was already forbidden to the children of Noah. Why don’t we eat it today? Not because it was forbidden to the children of Noah, but because at Sinai it was renewed that this prohibition applies to us. In short, everything we are obligated in today in terms of commandments is only because we were commanded in them at Mount Sinai, even those commandments that had a prior command. It doesn’t matter. From our perspective, the command at Sinai is the binding one.
Exactly as we saw in the laws of kings, where Maimonides says that someone who does something because of rational necessity or for all kinds of other reasons has not fulfilled the commandment. Only someone who did it because of the command received by Moses our teacher at Sinai—only then is his commandment a commandment. So apparently he is basically saying here what he says there.
Now, when you think about it a bit more, you see that it’s not exactly the same thing. There is a difference. Here’s the difference for you. In the laws of kings, Maimonides is speaking about the question of what my motivation should be when I come to fulfill commandments. So he says: the command to Moses at Sinai, not rational necessity. Okay? Here, in the commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides is not asking the question of what
[Speaker F] should motivate me in fulfilling commandments, but what is the principled justification by virtue of which we are obligated in the commandments.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain
[Speaker F] this to you through a comparison to Israeli law. Is the secular person to fulfill the
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] commandments or not
[Speaker F] to commit transgressions because of
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the command and not because of
[Speaker F] rational necessity?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s say someone pays taxes not because the law obligates paying taxes, but because he thinks it is proper to pay taxes. Did he fulfill the commandment of paying
[Speaker F] taxes? Obviously yes, right? And if someone did not murder, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not because the law said so, but because it seemed improper to him to murder.
[Speaker F] Did he violate the prohibition of murder?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously not, right? He didn’t murder. The law is not interested in the citizen’s motivation. The law is interested in what you do or do not do. It tells you what you may do,
[Speaker G] what you may not do, what you must do.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And you need to obey the law—I don’t care why. Okay? Therefore the question that troubles Maimonides in the laws of kings would not trouble a secular legislator. The secular legislator is not interested in why the citizen fulfills commandments. The Torah is interested in that. But there is another question that would interest the secular legislator too, and that is a meta-legal question that asks: by what authority do I expect a citizen to obey the law? It’s a question many legal thinkers have written about. What is the justification? Why exactly? By what authority can I come and make claims against a citizen who did not obey the law, or why do I demand that he obey the law? It’s not a question about him—why he obeys psychologically or what
[Speaker K] motivation leads him to obey the law or violate the law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is about me as legislator, or me as judge: by what authority do I come and judge him? And that question is also asked within a secular legal framework. And it could have practical consequences. For example, if this is, I don’t know, someone who isn’t an Israeli citizen at all but is visiting here in the country, and he committed some offense. There is room to discuss whether this is considered an offense. Why? Because he is not obligated to the Israeli legislator, and therefore maybe we would not regard this as an offense—let’s say just for the sake of discussion, it’s not so simple, but just for the sake of discussion.
[Speaker D] Okay? Meaning, the legislator and the judge can definitely take into account the question of why, by what authority,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] we come and demand of a person to obey the law or not violate the law. More than that, there are court rulings in which, for example, the social contract appears.
[Speaker F] That is a theory that says why
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a citizen should obey the law: because there is a social contract that all of us are signed onto, that we will uphold what is agreed upon by everyone. Fine? It’s pompous, not important, but that is one possible theory. Okay? Now in court rulings they use this to determine the limits of
[Speaker F] the duty to obey the law or violate the law, and some derive conclusions from it sometimes. Okay? Meaning the question why
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I demand that a person obey the law is a question that interests
[Speaker F] a secular legislator or secular judge as well.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the question what a person’s motivation was when he obeyed the law or violated the law does not interest them. Do it however you want. If you did what the law said, then from my perspective everything is fine. I don’t care whether you intended for the sake of unification to fulfill the legislator’s commandment. That doesn’t interest me. In the religious world it does interest. That too interests. In the religious world, not only the theory of why we are obligated in commandments matters, but also our personal motivation—why we go and fulfill this commandment. That interests the religious world, not the secular world.
Now Maimonides in the commentary on the Mishnah in Hullin is talking about the theoretical question that interests secular people too: what is the force of our obligation to the commandments in general? He says: the command at Sinai. Maimonides in the laws of kings is talking about the question of what is supposed to motivate me when I fulfill a commandment. Not the meta-halakhic theory that tells us why commandments must be fulfilled, but the question of why the person should—what should be the person’s motivation when he comes to fulfill or violate a commandment. Those are different questions. But for our purposes, in both places Maimonides sees the revelation at Mount Sinai as the foundation, the basic normative principle. The obligation to fulfill commandments derives from Mount Sinai. If you are not obligated by the revelation at Mount Sinai, your commandments are not commandments.
That doesn’t exist in law. If you don’t do it because you are obligated to the law, so what? Bottom line, you did what the law said, so you did it. The legislator doesn’t care if you’re not doing it because the law said so, or if you’re doing it because it seems logical to you. It’s not important to me. In the halakhic world it is important. In the halakhic world, motivations count too. Okay? But the meta-legal question that asks why one must obey the system at all exists both in secular law and in Jewish law. There, Knesset legislation is the basic principle, and here the revelation at Mount Sinai is the basic principle. But the question what the basic principle is, or what our obligation to the law is based on, is a question that exists in both of these contexts.
Now Maimonides in the Eight Chapters, the introduction to Avot, chapter six—there is another source in Maimonides, and there something emerges that apparently does not fit the picture we have seen until now. The truth is, I think we probably shouldn’t start that now, because it will take us—we don’t have more than two minutes left anyway. Let’s stop here.