Ethics, Faith, and Halakha – Lesson 11 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think he didn’t see situations like that, and he argued that the experiment can’t rule out the existence of such situations, as far as I remember. Now, one of the main criticisms of the significance of Libet’s experiments is that the action he examined, what he asked the subject to do, was pressing a button. Decide when you’re going to press a button, and press it. Pressing a button is just some meaningless action. There’s no judgment involved either way, no values are involved here, everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven, and there’s nothing here connected to fear of Heaven in the sense of morality or Jewish law; there’s no value-based dilemma here. You press now, you press in five seconds, it doesn’t matter. Whenever you decide, you press. Okay, so since this is a meaningless action, they called it picking and not choosing. Meaning, there’s no choice here, just some decision, a lottery. It’s Switzerland, not—well, it’s a lottery. A meaningless action. This is basically the action of a free person who has no constraints, since there are no values pulling in either direction, no considerations, no prices to pay. Press now, press later—it really is the choice of Switzerland. Okay, in an action like that, what is Libet actually saying? What does the Libet experiment say—not Libet, the experiment—what happens in an action like that? If you have no considerations one way or the other, then obviously the readiness potential is what will cause you to press or not press. Why not? Once there’s a readiness potential trying to push you to press, why would you veto it? There’s no reason, because there are no considerations for or against. So if it pushes you, you’ll probably press. But if they did the same experiment on acts of choosing and not picking, on actions that involve value dilemmas—moral, halakhic, legal, whatever—then the claim is that the readiness potential would not determine what you press, because there there would be possibilities for imposing a veto. Okay? There you would sometimes impose a veto because, in value terms, you don’t like what the readiness potential is trying to make you do. Okay? It’s just that an experiment like that is pretty hard to do. I mentioned, when I spoke about this, that Liad Mudrik did such an experiment with Uri Maoz from New York University—he’s Israeli, but he’s at New York University. They did such an experiment with dozens of brain researchers around the world, and in the end they really discovered that in actions of choosing and not of picking, you can’t predict your choice by means of readiness potential. What does that actually mean? It basically means that when a person has real dilemmas—choosing and not picking—then he has free choice. But saying he has free choice does not mean that he acts in a vacuum. It’s not Switzerland. On the contrary. It means he has considerations this way and considerations that way, and he hesitates. Now, his nature still does send him to do something. The readiness potential tells him: do this. Fine? That still exists even in the libertarian picture; even someone who believes in freedom understands that circumstances affect me, try to make me do things. The only thing is, he claims that I can impose a veto. I can refuse to go along with it if I decide not to. He doesn’t claim that there are no drives trying to make me do one thing or another; that too the libertarian accepts. Okay? Which basically means that we don’t live in Switzerland but in Israel. We don’t live in a world where there’s no good and evil around me and I just do whatever I want. That is basically an action—picking, sorry, choosing. Picking means there are circumstances here and there are prices for what I do—a moral price, a self-interested price, and so on—and in such situations I still have free choice, but the prices are not in my hands. But precisely because of that, my choice—and my being a chooser at all—has value significance. Because it isn’t Switzerland.

[Speaker C] I’m not really enough of a physicist for this, but are you claiming that if you put a tracker on every electron in the brain, at some stage in choosing you’d see an unexpected movement of an electron?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not every electron—at least one of them.

[Speaker C] Right, yes, I mean at least one of them. Correct. And what causes that movement?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your will, your decision. Yes, that contradicts the laws of physics. Yes, exactly. Yes. There’s an electron here that moves—I wrote a book about this, Science of Freedom, and there I go into more detail. You have to understand that if you’re a libertarian, that means you allow exceptions to the laws of physics: there’s an electron here or there in the brain that will act without a physical force acting on it, that will move without a physical force acting on it, contrary to Newton’s second law. Yes, the will, the soul, the spirit, whatever you want to call it—yes, the person’s decision. There’s no way around it. Meaning, someone who tries to describe human choice within the physical world—then it’s completely deterministic, meaning everything is determined by physics. The original Big Bang basically determined whether I would now teach this class or do something else. It just took a very long time before it happened in practice.

[Speaker D] So then how is there a concept of choice here? What? After the electron supposedly jumped.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The choice made the electron jump.

[Speaker D] You put the choice before it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, the choice made the electron jump. The electron jumped because I chose that it should jump. From there on, everything is scientific, causal, deterministic. But if I decided, let’s say, to call someone, okay? Assuming I freely chose to make that call, then that means that when I chose, some electron in my head started to move. And that electron began to activate a causal chain that in the end causes me to pick up the phone, dial, and conduct a conversation with the person I wanted to call. The choice is located before the first jump of the first electron in the chain. That’s where the choice is. It starts a physical causal chain.

[Speaker D] But you can object to that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I didn’t choose, the electron won’t jump. What? If I chose not to call, then the electron won’t jump, because there won’t be a call here.

[Speaker D] My choice—once the electron jumped, you’re saying your choice is built in, it’s part of the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, my choice is what caused the electron to jump. It wouldn’t have jumped if I hadn’t chosen it.

[Speaker D] The connection between the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An electron is not the readiness potential. Two different things. Readiness potential is the result of the deterministic system. But now I have to decide whether to impose a veto on the readiness potential or not. That decision too, in the end, is something electrical in the brain: I impose a veto on that potential so it won’t keep operating. That veto too I impose by means of some electron, and that electron will move only as a result of a decision. I didn’t separate between—

[Speaker D] The two—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, they’re two different things. Okay, so basically we talked about Aryeh Alon, and we also talked about the connection to freedom and liberty, because what this means is that a meaningful action is done only when you are inside constraints. And these things have all kinds of further implications—just briefly. In some senses, precisely the fact that there are various influences around us is what gives meaning to our choice. Because if there were no influences around us and we acted in a vacuum, then our free choice wouldn’t have much meaning.

[Speaker B] Why not? Only then can it be picking. In choosing there are all kinds of reasons; in picking it’s a vacuum, it’s clean, and choice is not causal.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In both cases it’s not causal—not in picking and not in choosing.

[Speaker B] The donkey that has two feeding troughs, one on each side—if it’s deterministic, it just gets stuck in the middle. In choice it can choose.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. So?

[Speaker B] Meaning that even if it makes no difference whether it’s right or left, it’s still a choice. Why, when there’s no value significance or considerations, is it not a choice?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because there’s no basis on which to choose; it has no significance; cast lots. A lottery is not a choice. Choice is always when there is value significance to the two options, and you choose this one or that one. And if there is no significance at all, it’s like Switzerland. Yes, that reminds me of one of the claims, one of the common arguments against the libertarian conception—the conception that there is free choice. The argument goes like this: every human action either has a cause or has no cause. Right? Those are the two possibilities. If it has a cause, then it is done deterministically, right? The cause basically dictates the action. If it has no cause, then it’s a random, accidental, meaningless action. That’s also not free choice, right? Free choice is not a random action. But since either there is a cause or there isn’t a cause, and whether there is a cause or there isn’t, there is no choice, that means there is no choice. That’s the argument. There’s no other option, after all there’s the law of the excluded middle: either you have a cause or you don’t have a cause. If you have a cause, it’s deterministic; if you don’t have a cause, it’s random. Non-deterministic and random—both are not free choice. And since there is no third option, there you have proof that a person has no free choice.

[Speaker C] But it’s obvious that free choice means no cause. Why should that make it random?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.

[Speaker C] Why do you assume that if there’s no cause, it’s random? I’m telling you that my judgment is what determines it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so what you’re basically saying is that this division into two categories is correct—either there is a cause or there isn’t a cause—but the identification that says that if there is no cause then the action is random, that identification is incorrect. Because if there is no cause, it can be either a random action or an action that comes from choice. Yes, basically the claim is that an action from choice—let’s say—we actually have three kinds of actions, not two. Action from a cause is deterministic. Action without a cause can be either without cause and without purpose and without anything, just random, or without a cause but with a purpose. An action of choice is usually an action directed toward a purpose. Okay? So basically there is action from a cause, action for the sake of a purpose, and action without cause and without purpose. Action without cause and without purpose is a random action. Action with a cause is a deterministic action. And action with a purpose but without a cause is a volitional action, an action of choice. Okay? And that is the full map, not just randomness or determinism. Why is that important? Because it answers exactly what you said. You basically asked earlier that if there are no circumstances, then that is exactly free choice, because there are no circumstances, it’s not deterministic. I say no. The fact that it’s not deterministic still leaves us with two possibilities: either a random action or an action from choice. And when there’s nothing at all, it’s a random action. An action from choice is an action that, although it has no cause, is still an action of judgment aimed at some purpose. It’s not just a lottery. That’s exactly the difference between Switzerland, Israel, and Syria. Okay? An action of Syria is an action from a cause; it is deterministic. In Switzerland it’s an action without cause and without purpose, because there’s no reason for me to choose and no purpose to my choice either; there’s nothing. You can cast lots. That’s indeterminism, right? And in Israel it’s an action that has a purpose but no cause. I choose someone in order to achieve some policy, but the fact that I chose was done freely. There’s no cause that made me choose; I choose freely, based on considerations of which purposes I want to promote. Okay? That is exactly parallel to purposeful and non-causal action. Therefore these three models—Switzerland, Syria, and Israel—are basically the three modes of action we can define with respect to an individual human being: indeterminism, determinism, and choice. Those are three different things. And when there is no cause, that does not mean we are in free choice. That’s why, for example, people often say that quantum theory makes it possible to insert free choice into physics, because quantum theory basically broke determinism. There is no cause that determines the result; there can be two possible outcomes from a given state. So that makes free choice possible. The whole problem with free choice is scientific determinism. Okay? But if scientific determinism doesn’t exist—quantum theory broke it—then our choice has returned. Not true. Because quantum theory claims that the choice of what you will do is random. Randomness is not choice. Choice is judgment directed toward a purpose. Therefore if you did this with many people, say, you would not get the quantum distribution of the two possibilities. After all, the choice in quantum theory between the two possibilities—say there are two possibilities, two slits or something—is a choice determined by the wave function. Meaning, there is a distribution that says what the statistics are, how many times you choose this, what the probability is that you choose this, what the probability is that you choose that. Repeat this many times and you’re supposed to get some distribution—say sixty percent in this slit, forty percent in that slit. Right? But if human beings make a choice whether to go—therefore even the randomness of quantum theory is not equivalent to choice; randomness is not choice. That’s what many people don’t understand. Randomness is not choice. Randomness is true, it’s not determinism. But that still doesn’t mean it’s choice. Both choice and randomness are non-deterministic. But that doesn’t mean that randomness and choice are the same thing. Once you are outside the deterministic world, you can still be in one of two states: either in a state of freedom or in a state of liberty. Okay? And determinism is opposed to both of them, so to speak. All right?

[Speaker D] It seems to me there was a moment there where Switzerland—Switzerland and Israel were on one side, and Syria was the deterministic one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. Syria is the deterministic one, Switzerland is the random one, and Israel is the one of choice. Okay. We already talked about this when we discussed the author of the Tanya and more. Therefore, for example, a secular person cannot fulfill commandments even if he wants to. A person who doesn’t believe. Why? To fulfill a commandment does not mean redeeming a firstborn donkey, fulfilling the commandment of redeeming a firstborn donkey. To fulfill a commandment means redeeming a firstborn donkey out of commitment to the divine command to redeem a firstborn donkey. When you do something, if you live in a vacuum, your act has no value. Only in a place where there is some standard that determines that this is the right act to do and that is the wrong act to do, and now I choose to do the right act, only then does my act have value significance. Therefore two people can do the same thing, and for one it will be a commandment and for the other it won’t be a commandment. Do commandments require intention? Correct.

[Speaker D] Commandments require—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Belief, not intention.

[Speaker D] Even according to the view that commandments do not require intention.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Commandments require belief. So someone who doesn’t believe in God—even according to the view that commandments do not require intention—does not fulfill commandments. I do not count someone who is secular in a prayer quorum. Again, what is secular? There are different kinds of secular people. Someone who does not believe in God. He doesn’t believe that prayer does anything, that it is relevant, that it is a commandment, or that it has an effect, or however each person understands it. Okay? There’s no point counting a flowerpot in a prayer quorum; it’s a flowerpot. There’s no point counting him in the quorum. He also has not fulfilled a commandment. If Chabad people put tefillin on him in the street—yes, we talked about this—if Chabad people put tefillin on him in the street, he did not fulfill the commandment of tefillin. If he repents an hour later, he has to go back and put on tefillin again, because he is someone who never put on tefillin. He hasn’t put on tefillin until now, even though an hour ago the Chabad people put tefillin on his head. That is not a commandment.

[Speaker D] That thing could cause him to—okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say it has no value; that’s a different discussion. But there was no commandment here. He did not fulfill a commandment. Fulfilling a commandment exists only where there is a right and wrong that you are aware of, and you choose to do the right. But a person who does not recognize that there is a right and wrong—when he chooses to do it, he didn’t choose to do the right thing; he just does it. It’s like—yes—the story about Amnon Yitzhak that I brought at the beginning of the semester, yes, with the sheep: the rabbi gets up in the morning and at four in the morning slaughters a sheep, covers it with a prayer shawl, and shouts, “A righteous man, a righteous man has died, a righteous man has died.” Everyone wakes up at the windows, four in the morning, looks out—Rabbi, surely some pillar of the world has died there—joins the emotional funeral procession, everyone crying. They get to the cemetery and see that they’re lowering a sheep into the grave. They wanted to kill the rabbi. So he says to them: what do you want from me? Whenever I rebuke you, you tell me, what do you want? We’re fine. We don’t beat anybody, we don’t rob anybody, we don’t murder anybody. What do you want from us? We’re good people. So he says: the sheep is better than you. It also doesn’t beat anybody, doesn’t rob anybody, doesn’t kill anybody. According to your criteria it’s also righteous. What’s really the difference? So what’s the problem? Isn’t the sheep righteous? It really doesn’t rob, doesn’t murder, doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s righteous, no? It lives in Switzerland. Exactly. A sheep lives in Switzerland. What does that mean? There is no right and wrong with respect to sheep. So the fact that it happens to do what is defined as right for me is accidental; it has no significance. Okay? And the same goes for a secular person. A secular person is a sheep in this respect. And if he puts on tefillin, if he doesn’t believe that it is a commandment to put on tefillin, it has no significance. And the fact that he completed a quorum—then even without—

[Speaker D] The very fact that he completed a quorum—even without his knowing—he did not… a commandment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course not. Even if he recited all the words of the prayer, he did not pray. He would have to go back and pray again if he repented an hour later.

[Speaker D] So he didn’t complete the quorum?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then they would have had to pray again? Correct. No, not again—they weren’t in a quorum; they prayed as individuals.

[Speaker D] That’s quite a novelty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It seems simple to me. Also, for example, at the seven blessings, and in all kinds of things like that, I think a secular person cannot recite a blessing. His blessing is nothing. No, not as a sanction. There it’s as a sanction. As a sanction, someone who is not a Torah-observant person, desecrates the Sabbath, or something like that, is not given public standing. He cannot be a prayer leader. I’m claiming this in an essential sense—not because of a sanction. His prayer is not prayer; he’s a flowerpot. It’s not a sanction; he’s not wicked. He’s like a child taken captive; he’s not wicked, I have no complaints against him. But his prayer is not prayer. There aren’t ten worshipers here; there are nine worshipers and a flowerpot. In that sense, for example, I said I think traditional Jews are better than atheists. Traditional Jews do count for a prayer quorum, because they know there are commandments and so on; it just doesn’t always suit them and they don’t always do everything, but in principle they pray. Meaning, there are ten worshipers here. Atheists are much better than them in the principled sense, much better than traditional Jews. Because traditional Jews know what should be done and don’t do it. Atheists do what they think—they’re mistaken, fine—but they do what they think. But regarding counting for a prayer quorum, it’s the opposite. Because regarding the quorum, I claim that it isn’t determined by the question of how righteous you are. The atheist is more righteous than the traditional Jew, much more. But, but, but counting for the quorum is determined by an essential consideration, not by the question of how righteous you are. And if you are not praying—if this isn’t even part of your world—then there aren’t ten worshipers here.

[Speaker C] There’s a view in Judaism of, say, not learning anything at all about Christianity, and God forbid atheism—not learning anything about it because it could lead you there. And according to what you’re saying, there’s an obligation to learn these things, because if you don’t learn them then you’re in a bubble.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure there’s an obligation, but clearly there’s no prohibition. It’s not an obligation. If you feel that in order to formulate your worldview you need to read more things or encounter more arguments or hear more opinions, then yes, do that in order to formulate a position. If what you currently grasp is enough for you and seems sufficient to formulate a position, I’m not sure there’s an obligation now to read all the literature of thought in the world. Who does that? Meaning, everyone formulates a position according to the best of his understanding. And it can always be that I missed something because I didn’t read such-and-such an argument or hear such-and-such a claim; that can always happen. But what can you do? You can’t hear everything and read everything. So everyone draws the line where it seems reasonable to him, where it seems sufficient to formulate a position. But up to that line, if there really is something that seems relevant and significant to you for formulating a position, then absolutely you need to look at it in order to formulate a position.

[Speaker D] If you have only nine people, is it preferable for each one to pray separately rather than count someone who is not observant?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. Of course. If they count him, then all the sanctity they say and everything—they said sacred matters with fewer than ten. It is forbidden to say that.

[Speaker D] Once I experienced some case in a moshav in the Negev where there were ten religious people, and that was their quorum. Then suddenly one of them drove to Tel Aviv, and they were left with nine. So they didn’t know what to do, so they called a taxi. They said to him, I’ll pay you for the detour here, just join us until you finish the job, sit with us. And he stayed with us for the prayer there. Okay. And that was it. And everyone agreed. The local rabbi also thought about this story.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what’s the problem? I don’t understand. I agree.

[Speaker D] It contradicts what you said. Why? That taxi driver wasn’t—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—who told you who that taxi driver was? I don’t know. Maybe he was religious. Or traditional, or I don’t know. If he was secular, then too bad—they didn’t have a quorum there. The fact that the rabbi thought they did—many think so. I disagree. That’s my view. You’re setting one person against another. Meaning, that’s my view; you bring me someone who thinks differently? So he thinks differently; that’s his right. And with money he received—

[Speaker D] Favor.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, no—the driver also could have been a religious person, in which case the problem doesn’t arise at all. Okay, in any event I maybe want to make one more comment that touches a bit on the relation between freedom and liberty, and then. There’s an article by Amos Oz that criticizes halakhic Judaism, basically. His claim is that halakhic Judaism is fossilized. It doesn’t respond to the environment, it doesn’t change. He describes it as if there was some big bang at Mount Sinai and some room or space was created, and over the course of history we fill it with furniture, more and more and more furniture, and we refuse to remove any item of furniture, because everything accumulated over the generations is binding. And at some point we reach a situation where we no longer have room to move. The whole room is full of furniture and we’ve lost the ability to do anything. We are completely frozen into doing what our history basically dictates to us. This is called All the Hopes: Thoughts on Israeli Identity. Sorry, that’s the book—All the Hopes: Thoughts on Israeli Identity—and inside it there’s an essay called “A Full Wagon and an Empty Wagon.” As if secularity is an empty wagon, what they attribute to the Chazon Ish in his meeting with Ben-Gurion. So he—this is basically a response to that statement of the Chazon Ish. And he argues that it is not an empty wagon; on the contrary, it’s just that they don’t allow themselves to remove furniture from the room, and all the furniture accumulated in the room binds them, and they remain inside the room. That is basically the claim.

[Speaker D] Just a second—something we talked about earlier is bothering me a bit. What do you mean by atheist or someone who desecrates the Sabbath publicly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. Someone who desecrates the Sabbath does not count for a prayer quorum in the ideal sense. There’s no problem with that.

[Speaker D] He does count.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he believes in the Holy One, blessed be He, and his prayer is prayer, then yes. You can call it sanctions.

[Speaker D] And atheist—what did we say? An atheist who doesn’t believe.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t believe in God, so to whom is he praying? He’s standing here like a flowerpot, like I said. There is no God, so what is he doing here? Breathing. That’s the only thing he’s doing here. Nothing. Even if he says all the words of the prayer and sways in front of the holy ark, he did nothing. He can believe in God and still not believe that it is an obligation.

[Speaker B] No, that’s already something else.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because if he doesn’t believe that it’s an obligation, but he does understand that prayer is standing before the Holy One, blessed be He, or addressing the Holy One, blessed be He, then maybe such a thing could count. Here I’m not sure. Okay? The fact that he doesn’t believe it’s an obligation—fine, he doesn’t believe it’s an obligation—but he is still performing an act of prayer, meaning it is a meaningful act for him. It’s like the prayers of the Patriarchs before the giving of the Torah. They prayed, right? There was not yet a commandment to pray; that was before the giving of the Torah. Does that mean their prayer was not prayer? There is a Nachmanides on the laws of prayer. Nachmanides writes that what Rabbi Chaim basically brings in the name of Nachmanides—he argues, no sorry, not Nachmanides—there is a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides about the status of prayer, its halakhic status. According to Maimonides it is a Torah-level positive commandment, positive commandment six or seven, I don’t know, something like that—“to serve Him with all your heart,” that is prayer. And Nachmanides argues that it is a rabbinic commandment. So Rabbi Chaim says that yes, according to Nachmanides—not Maimonides—Rabbi Chaim says that even according to Nachmanides, the prayers offered before the giving of the Torah have the object-status of prayer. That was prayer. The obligation to pray does not exist. Fine? The obligation to pray does not exist, but when someone prayed, the concept of prayer exists even on the Torah level; there just is no obligation. But when you stand before the Holy One, blessed be He, and speak to Him, you are praying. As a factual state, this is a state not dependent on the question of whether there was an obligation. There is an object of prayer here. This is called prayer, even though it is not the commandment of prayer, because there is no commandment; there was not yet a commandment before the giving of the Torah, and even after the giving of the Torah, according to Nachmanides, there is no commandment. Fine? It is only rabbinic. But clearly the concept of prayer exists, according to Nachmanides too, on the Torah level. The concept of prayer exists; the obligation to pray does not exist. Okay? So therefore I’m saying that a person who doesn’t believe there is an obligation to pray is like the Patriarchs, or like Nachmanides on the Torah level after the giving of the Torah: on the Torah level there is no obligation, basically, but certainly the concept of prayer exists. And with regard to—here’s a practical difference—with regard to counting for a prayer quorum, for example, it is enough that the person is praying. He doesn’t also have to believe in the giving of the Torah and that prayer is obligatory and halakhic and all kinds of things like that. According to his own view, yes? Okay, in any event, Amos Oz’s claim is that basically—yes—he says that Jewish culture at its best is a culture of give-and-take, debate, this side and that side, sharpness, power of persuasion, dispute for the sake of Heaven, fighting in order to magnify the Torah and glorify it, “the reverse seems more plausible,” drives disguised as dispute for the sake of Heaven, all kinds of things, everything, quarrels and all. And somehow now everything is terribly conservative, closed off, because the room has filled up with furniture, and that is his criticism. He claims that basically modern Hebrew literature, or secularity, or secular culture, is in fact the more authentic continuation of Judaism. That’s his claim. Fine? Now that is nonsense. I mean, it’s nonsense on the logical level. It’s not nonsense you can argue about; he simply misses the point on the logical level. I spoke about this when we lived in Yeruham: once a month, I think, some celebrity would come give a class on the weekly Torah portion. And once Amos Oz was supposed to come. Every Thursday night, once a month. And once Amos Oz was supposed to come, and he didn’t manage, he didn’t come, he said he couldn’t come, he had some problem, I don’t know what. They asked me to speak in his place. And I took the opportunity to argue with him. He wasn’t there, but I argued precisely with this essay. That’s where I started talking about it. Later there were already columns on my website about it, but my claim was that this is a misunderstanding. Because what do you mean, you’re dealing with the circumstances? You don’t believe in God at all, so what are you telling me stories about? If you believe in God and you say—you create new interpretations, new applications—then you are a person of liberty. You act autonomously. Why? Because you accept the system of constraints. Okay? But if you don’t recognize the existence of a binding system of constraints—there is no God and no binding divine command—then in what sense are you a Jewish innovator? At most you’re doing some things from Jewish folklore. Fine. Gypsies could also do that. What? It has no religious significance. So in what sense are you the one who is dealing with the Holocaust, as he says there? Or what is there for you to deal with in the Holocaust if you don’t believe in God? If you believe in God, I say: how did He do something so terrible? We need thought that grapples with that theological question. But Hebrew literature does not grapple with the Holocaust on the religious plane. Maybe on the human plane—how did people reach such terrible deeds, and so on. But that is not grappling in the religious sense. You are not presenting a religious alternative. If you do not accept the system of constraints and act within it, then you are not in the game. It’s a different game. You are basically a free person, not a person of liberty. If you offer me another alternative within the system of constraints, you are a person of liberty. But the alternative you offer is to give up the constraint. If someone brings furniture into the room and removes it as he pleases, then he is not acting like a person of liberty. There are no rules at all; he can do whatever he wants. That’s Switzerland. Do whatever you want—bring in this furniture, remove that furniture, do whatever you want. So what? It has no significance. Therefore it is not that you are offering a different arrangement of the furniture in the room as opposed to my arrangement. That could have been an alternative Jewish thesis, a substitute one. Instead of what I offer, you offer something else. You say no, I’ll bring furniture in and take it out however I want. Well, fine—you can also take it all out. There is no constraint dictating to you what is permitted and what is forbidden. You do not recognize the existence of such constraints. So in what sense are you offering a different religious alternative to the existing Orthodox one? It has no significance. It’s simply a conceptual mistake. I told him more than that. I told them—not him, not to him directly—more than that. I said he then moved also to artistic freedom, creative freedom, yes? That constraints imposed by religious people on art are also a problem, and artistic freedom is very important, the breath of life of artistic creation, and so on. And I told him: again, a mistake. It’s a mistake because for a long time I had already been wondering about this matter: why does art need genre rules? Genre rules. There are rules for how you do drama, how you do a romantic comedy, how you do I don’t know what, all kinds of things like that. The gun placed on the table in the first act fires in the third act. All kinds of rules like that. Why do you need genre rules? And if I want to do a drama in seven acts and not three—am I forbidden? What? Why specifically three? There are all kinds of rules like that, yes? How to build a drama, how to build a comedy, how to build all kinds of things. The answer to that is that if there are no rules, then there is no such thing as drama and comedy. Then you act in a vacuum—do whatever you want. And in order for the creator to be able to communicate with the viewer, with the consumer of his work, so that it will be possible to discuss and see and judge and argue and evaluate and so on, there has to be some framework agreed upon by both sides. And now you can say: look, the genre rules say that a drama should be in three acts. Now I actually did two and three-quarters; I shortened the middle act a bit, so I’m creative, because within the genre rules I found some change. But if I said forget it, I’m doing minus pi acts, not three, okay? I’m not doing acts at all—so what? I didn’t innovate in the world of drama; I just did something devoid of context. It has no significance. It won’t say anything to the audience either, because when the audience examines my work, it understands what it should expect, and within that framework it examines what I did. Did I maneuver in an interesting way within this system of constraints? Then I’m a good artist. And if I did something formulaic, then I’m a bad artist. But if there are no rules, how will they evaluate what I did? Everyone does whatever he wants. Okay, and so what? What is good? What is bad? What is more creative? What is less creative? It has no significance. Meaning, only in a place where there are binding rules from which we do not deviate—now let’s see if you’re creative. Let’s see whether within this framework of rules you manage to create some combination that didn’t exist until now, something new. You found an interesting solution within the system of genre rules itself. Then I understand that you are a meaningful creator. But if there are no genre rules—yes?—in the postmodern world where they break genre rules, art loses its significance. They just shifted to playing with words. It’s impossible to evaluate works of art in such a world. If the audience finds it interesting—fine, let it find it interesting, no problem. But when you want to evaluate, then you need to explain by means of rules what he did here, what he innovated. You don’t need anything? If you want to evaluate, that’s what you do.

[Speaker D] To create a situation in which the public will find—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the public enjoys it, everything is excellent. But when you want to judge an artistic creation—not enjoy it, judge an artistic creation—then judgment is supposed to be according to some criteria, rules, depending on how you do it. You can enjoy lots of things, but when you talk about creativity, it’s not enough that I enjoy it. I want to see that he did something different from what others do. And what counts as different? If the rules are given, then if he acted within the rules but found a path that no one had gone down until now, then he truly is a creative person. But if there are no rules, then what does creative mean? Everyone does whatever he wants—and who is more creative and who is less? There’s nothing there; you do whatever you want. Meaning, in a world where there are no constraints, there is no value. Exactly as we saw in the ethical, moral, and halakhic context, so too in the artistic world. In Switzerland there is no artistic value to anything, because there are no constraints, no rules prescribed in advance for what should be done. Only in a place where there are prescribed rules, which I do not determine, they are given, prescribed to me—yes?—only in such a place can we begin to discuss whether you acted autonomously within the rules or whether you were formulaic, basically doing what everyone does with those rules. Okay? But you need rules for that. In a world where there is freedom without constraints, there is no liberty. No liberty. Liberty must operate within constraints. When there are constraints, I can test whether you are a person of liberty, whether you are creative in the artistic context. Okay? That’s Amos Oz’s parable of the room. I said, with the room and the furniture. So I told them, again, this is some kind of misunderstanding. I’ll give you a mathematical parable. Suppose we have a chessboard. The room is 64 squares, eight by eight, yes? 64 squares—not black and white, imagine it isn’t black and white. There are 64 squares, tiles on the floor, and that’s the size of the room. Eight by eight squares, okay? Now I have a chair the size of one square. Okay? How many possibilities do I have for placing it in the room? 64. Right? Let’s ignore orientation. 64 places, right? And let’s also ignore the possibility that it stands half on this square and half on that square. It can’t—there’s some barrier there that doesn’t allow it. Fine? 64 possibilities. If I have two chairs? 64 times 63, and if they’re identical then divide by two. Right? So that’s 63 times 32—that’s much more than 64. Notice: I have more furniture in the room, and the number of possibilities did not go down but up. What happens with a third chair? Enormous—much bigger, okay? Meaning, the greater the number of pieces of furniture in the room, the number of possibilities for arranging them increases, not decreases. It’s not as he describes: there’s lots of furniture so it’s crowded, you can’t do anything. On the contrary. The more crowded the room, the more possibilities you have to arrange it. There is only one way to be secular: simply not to keep commandments. People do other things in all kinds of ways, but in terms of their relation to commandments, there is only one way to be secular: simply not to keep commandments, right? And there are many ways to be religious. Many ways. It depends how you arrange the furniture in the room. Religious Zionists arrange it this way, Haredim arrange it that way, Hasidim arrange it that way. Everyone arranges the furniture in the room differently. Therefore, when you ask yourself who is more creative, who is more autonomous, obviously it’s the religious person. The secular person is freer, but the religious person has more liberty. This is exactly Yehuda Halevi; again I’m returning to the same point. This time it’s not necessarily on the halakhic, moral, evaluative plane, but also on the artistic plane. There too it’s the same. Meaning, your degree of creativity increases as the number of constraints within which you act increases. If a person is in a bad position on the chessboard and finds a trick to win, he is more creative than a person who wins in a position where he has an inherent advantage. If I have a queen and you don’t have a queen and I win, that’s not a big deal. If you have a queen and I don’t, and I win, then I have greater ability, right? I’m more creative than you. Okay? The more the circumstances work against me and the less free I am and the more constraints there are,

[Speaker D] then

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s clear that I can be, and need to be, more creative in order to function within this system. But someone who doesn’t accept this system at all—then he’s not in the game. He isn’t offering creativity, he isn’t creative, he isn’t anything; he just does whatever he wants, and that’s it. That’s Switzerland. There’s—I saw here some passage that talks about… here, there are things Hillel Barzel wrote—he was a lecturer here, I think at Bar-Ilan—a class in research methods on genre studies in 1989. So he defines the concept of genre. And he says this: a story written in medieval Florence is not similar to a story written by Kafka at the beginning of the twentieth century. The basic norm remains, but the tools, the words, the means, the atmosphere, and the message are completely different. Examining the history of literature reveals an unceasing development in the norms of genres. On the one hand, the original rules of each and every genre remain as they were in the distant past, but on the other hand each creator brings himself into the work in his own original way, within the rules of the genre, those same genre rules. Our task as skilled readers is to examine a work, understand the genre according to which it was written, recognize the accepted norms for writing in that genre, and examine the points where the genre is breached. That is, to what extent the creator breaks the norms, changes them, adds to them, and in essence what the degree of the creator’s originality is. That is exactly what I said earlier. Now, sometimes you can also break the rules. Yes, that has its place. But you break the rules without throwing out the baby with the bathwater, because if you break the rules completely, you’ve created something meaningless. If you cut a corner, you say it’s not three acts but two and three-quarters. Like platform four and three-quarters in Harry Potter? Where you travel to Hogwarts. You leave from platform four and five-eighths, I don’t remember anymore. Right, so you do two and three-quarters acts, not three acts. You’re still more or less within the rules of the genre; you bent the rules a little. But if you make it so there are no acts at all, then you’re not in the game. And when you break the rules of the genre, you have to break them very carefully. Because if you break them in a way that leaves nothing of them, then you’re no longer in the game. If you want to be creative, you have to preserve the framework of the genre’s rules, and within that find your own original path. Yes, think for example—I once wrote in this context too—say, about art in which there are no rules of modesty at all. No rules of modesty. You can do, like my father once said about the play Marat/Sade—he said the only one who was dressed there was the director. Those were his jokes; it wasn’t exactly like that, but those were his jokes. In the film it’s different, the film is more restrained, more or less. In any case, I don’t know if you know it; at your age maybe you don’t anymore. It’s a kind of cult movie, a play and a film from the cheerful sixties. In any case, the claim is that in a world where nobody gets worked up about nudity, because everything is fine, everything is permitted, what difference does it make, you can do anything on stage—okay? So if you do nudity it won’t bother anyone; you haven’t done anything. In a world where there are very rigid standards of modesty, and a woman moves her head covering half a handbreadth upward, the whole world will shake. So who is more modest, or who is more original? The one who put on, I don’t know, naked orgies on stage, or someone who in the religious context moved the scarf half a handbreadth upward? Obviously the second. And obviously those religious norms allow you much more creativity than a world where everything is possible. There are no rules. Everything is possible. So what did you do? Even if you want to be provocative, you won’t succeed. If you want to be provocative, you need rules that you can break. If there are no rules, then what exactly are you breaking? You won’t manage to be provocative even if you want to. Okay? So there’s something here that people don’t really understand, and in the end it’s all connected to the question of whether we’re talking about freedom or liberty. Right? Because that’s really the difference. People treat them as identical—that is, they think liberty and freedom are two identical concepts. But that’s not true; they’re opposite concepts. The more freedom you have, the less possibility you have to be free in the deeper sense. And even on the linguistic level—I once thought that even on the linguistic level there’s no parallel to “free.” “Free” is someone who is in a state of freedom. What do you call someone who is in a state of liberty? Libertied? Free-ish? A free person, right? Why “a free person”? What is “a free person”? Why not some adjective? Because I think “a free person” is… what is “one destined for the World to Come”? Do I know what “one destined for the World to Come” means? It means belonging. Right. “One destined for the World to Come” is always someone alive, not someone dead. It’s someone alive who belongs to the World to Come, meaning he belongs to the World to Come even though he’s not there yet. When he gets there he’ll receive the World to Come. That’s called a… “one destined for the World to Come” is always someone who isn’t actually in the World to Come; he’s in this world, except that he belongs to the World to Come. Right? Like my favorite joke: when people say about someone that he’s a complete gentile, they only say that about a Jew, right? They never say about a gentile that he’s a complete gentile. About a Jew they say he’s a complete gentile. Meaning—right? It’s exactly like “one destined for the World to Come.” That expression is never said about someone who died. Someone who died is not “destined for the World to Come”; either he’s in the World to Come or he isn’t. “One destined for the World to Come” is someone who has some belonging to the World to Come, but he’s not there; he’s still here. Okay? When you say “a free person,” you can’t be in a state of liberty. A state of liberty depends on you, on how you strive toward some other state. And you are in that mode—you are a free person if you aspire or act in a way that has some goals you set for yourself. You’re not there. In a state of freedom, you’re simply there—you’re free. You have no constraints. It doesn’t depend on where you’re striving or what you’re doing; it’s not a characteristic of behavior, it’s a characteristic of a state. But “a free person” is a characteristic of behavior, not of a state. You are not in a state in which you are a free person. The state is defined by the degree of freedom you have. Your being a free person is a question of what you are striving toward, what you see before your eyes, what you aspire to, where you belong. Okay? A Torah scholar too, in a certain sense, right? It’s similar. Someone who aspires to wisdom, someone who strives, who goes in that direction, yes, right, okay—so maybe, I don’t know, because this distinction between freedom and liberty is my distinction. I mean, I don’t think that if you look up freedom and liberty in the dictionary, that will be the definition. I don’t really care either. But maybe it’s freedom and liberty in English. Yes, liberty is liberty and freedom is freedom. Okay? There too I don’t remember—say, emancipating slaves would be more accurate to call freedom according to what I’m saying, not liberty. Fine? But yes, you’ll hear statements about seeking liberty for slaves. Right, exactly like that. Right.

[Speaker D] According to your definition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Uncle Tom’s Cabin and all those things, all those stories, basically describe a person who is a free person in the deeper sense within terrible bondage—precisely because he is in terrible bondage. Okay? Good, so that’s enough for now about freedom and liberty.

[Speaker B] Only in Hebrew, “ben” means potential, like “capable of execution.” The same thing?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No.

[Speaker B] I’m just saying, in Hebrew, like “capable of execution,” potentially for—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The World to Come, when I’m not in the World to Come. Okay, so the same thing with “a free person”—there’s no such thing as being in a state of liberty, so you can’t call it “libertied.” Not like “free.” With “free,” you’re in a state without constraints, so you’re in a state of freedom. Fine. But liberty—there is no such thing as being in a state of liberty; you aspire to liberty, you conduct yourself as a free person, therefore it’s “a free person,” not “libertied.” Maybe, maybe it’s a nice thought for a wedding celebration speech, I have no idea, but it’s true in itself even if the linguistic interpretation isn’t correct. Good, so now the conclusion we’re reaching so far is that in order for our actions to have meaning—religious meaning or moral meaning—we basically need some sort of framework that is dictated to us and that we do not determine ourselves. Okay? Now, I mentioned in one of the previous times the spinach test, if you remember, of David Enoch. He basically says the following—he demonstrates through it the idea of moral realism. What does that mean? Suppose someone says to you—yes, I’ll go over it briefly because I already talked about it—suppose a child comes and says to you, how great it is that I don’t like spinach. Because if I liked spinach, I would eat it, and spinach is disgusting. Now why is that ridiculous? Because if he liked spinach, then there would be nothing problematic about eating spinach. Spinach is disgusting only from your current point of view, because you don’t like spinach. And if you liked spinach, then there would be no problem with your eating spinach. There is no reason to judge a situation in which you liked spinach from the point of view of someone who doesn’t like spinach. You like it, he doesn’t like it, if you liked it, then you’d like it. Right? It’s uninteresting.

[Speaker B] As opposed to—because when you like something, you’re not making a statement about an object, you’re making a statement about yourself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. By contrast, when you talk about facts, like how good it is that I live in the twenty-first century—there is artificial intelligence. And in the nineteenth century there was no artificial intelligence. And today I can do many things that then I couldn’t do. Okay? So I say how good it is that I don’t live in the nineteenth century, because then I wouldn’t have artificial intelligence, and that is a bad state, not having artificial intelligence. I want a state in which I have artificial intelligence. Okay? Now a state in which I have intelligence—maybe I can use artificial intelligence too. There are people who have artificial intelligence; that’s a bit problematic. So the claim is, that sentence isn’t a funny or ridiculous sentence, right? It’s not like the spinach. Even though it’s the same kind of claim. If I liked spinach I would eat it and spinach is disgusting. If I lived in the nineteenth century, I wouldn’t have artificial intelligence, and that is a bad state. It’s the same thing. It’s a counterfactual, right? A statement contrary to fact: if reality were different. So what’s the difference between them? Why is the first funny and the second not? Because the first deals with subjective taste, and therefore there is no point in judging a state in which my taste would have been different from the current point of view in which my taste is as it is. And the second example deals with facts. Either there is artificial intelligence or there isn’t artificial intelligence, right? And the moment you’re dealing with facts, then it’s not funny at all. I too would want to know those facts or use artificial intelligence, and therefore how good it is that I don’t live in the nineteenth century, when I couldn’t have made use of it. There’s nothing funny about that. So if that’s the case, we have a test that helps us diagnose a claim. Will I pass that claim through the spinach test? If it’s ridiculous, then it’s a subjective claim. If it’s not ridiculous, then it’s an objective claim. Okay? Now let’s examine, in light of this device, this diagnostic tool, let’s examine moral claims. Say that it is forbidden to enslave black people, okay? To enslave people. Or that women should be given equal rights, that it is forbidden to discriminate against women. Okay? Let’s see: this is a moral claim. A moral claim is not a factual claim in the simple sense. What is a factual claim? A factual claim is a claim that I can compare to the state of affairs in the world and determine whether it matches; if it matches, the claim is true, if it doesn’t match, the claim is false. If I now say there is light outside, that’s a claim, a factual claim. I can compare it to what is happening outside. In this case, right now there is no light outside, therefore the claim is false. If I now say it’s dark outside, that again is a factual claim. But it’s a true factual claim, not a false factual claim. Because I make a comparison to the state of affairs in the world that the claim describes. If there is correspondence, it is a true claim; if there is no correspondence, it is a false claim. But it’s a factual claim, right? Is a moral claim a claim, a factual claim? The claim that murder is forbidden. I’m not asking whether it’s true or not; I’m asking whether it’s a factual claim.

[Speaker D] Yes.

[Speaker C] Why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What state of affairs in the world does it describe? What will you compare it to in order to know whether it’s true or not?

[Speaker C] What do you compare logic to in order to know?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not comparing logic to anything; I’m asking about morality. Exactly the same—

[Speaker C] thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is it exactly the same thing?

[Speaker C] Because when you—logic—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About logic too I don’t say it’s true—you didn’t understand. I’m not saying logic is true.

[Speaker C] So nothing is true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not true. Here, the claim that it’s dark outside right now is true—go check and see. I have something to compare it to, so the claim is a true claim. In logic there are tautologies; tautologies are correct not because of comparison—they are valid, not true; it’s called valid, not true, because it is correct from within itself, you don’t need to make a comparison. But factual claims—their truth is the result of a comparison, a comparison to a fact in the world. Okay? Now, I’m asking whether a moral claim is a factual claim. On the face of it, no. I have nothing to compare it to in order to determine whether it’s true that murder is forbidden or not true. What would I compare it to? There is no fact in the world such that if I observe it I will discover whether murder is permitted or forbidden. Right? I can look in the law book to check whether it says there that murder is forbidden, but then I’m not checking the claim that murder is forbidden; I’m checking the claim that according to Israeli law murder is forbidden. That really is a factual claim; you can check it in the Israeli law book. If a prohibition on murder appears there, then the claim that according to Israeli law murder is forbidden is a true factual claim, and if it doesn’t appear there, then it’s an untrue factual claim, a false one. But the claim murder is forbidden is not a claim about the Israeli law book; it’s a moral claim: murder is forbidden. What am I supposed to compare that to in order to determine whether that claim is true or not? People are alive. What does that mean—people are alive? There?

[Speaker D] The presence of living people, well—and you are basically negating what exists.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so what? I negate it. Now I’m asking whether that’s bad or good.

[Speaker D] Comparison to a person, to a living person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] To the fact of murder. But I’m asking about the claim that murder is forbidden—what do I check it against? Where do I see whether murder is forbidden or permitted? There is nowhere to see that. I have nothing to compare that claim to in order to determine whether it is true or false. Okay?

[Speaker D] Therefore—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A great many people argue that moral claims are not really claims at all—pseudo-claims, the positivists would say. They are not really factual claims. Or in other words, to go further, there is no true and false here. And to go even further: these are just social conventions, social conventions that one society invented saying murder is permitted, another society invented saying murder is forbidden—there is no true and false here. Okay? That is a very common conception regarding moral claims, all right? It is a very common conception, but a very rare feeling. The feeling is usually that these really are claims, and there is true and false here, and someone who thinks murder is permitted is mistaken. That is the feeling—the feeling, yes. When you say to a person, wait, what do you mean mistaken? What are you comparing it to in order to see whether it’s true or false? Then he gets stuck and says no, it’s subjective, social constructions, narratives, all kinds of things of that sort. But that is all when you appeal to his analytic dimension. When you ask him what he feels, it is obvious that he feels murder is forbidden, right? That is obvious to him. Now let’s put this through the spinach test. All right? Suppose—do I say, how good it is that I live today and not in the period of Cain and Abel, because then I would have thought murder was permitted, I would have murdered Abel. Right? Today I understand that murder is forbidden, and therefore I’m very glad that I live today in a more repaired world in which I understand that murder is forbidden. Is that funny? Or is it funny to say how good it is that I don’t live in the eighteenth century, because then I would have discriminated against women, and today I live in a period in which I understand that it is not right to discriminate against women, so how good it is that I live today and not in the eighteenth century. Is that funny? It doesn’t seem funny to me; in any case it doesn’t make me laugh. That means that moral claims, when you put them through the spinach test, turn out to seem to us like factual claims, not like subjective claims such as I like spinach or I don’t like spinach, but like whether there was artificial intelligence or there wasn’t artificial intelligence—a factual claim. Or how good it is that I didn’t live in the eighteenth century because I wouldn’t have known quantum theory, whereas I live today and therefore I know quantum theory—I’m very happy about that. Nothing here is funny, right? Why not? Because quantum theory is a fact; it was a fact that was true even in the eighteenth century. The fact that I wouldn’t have known that fact doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. It was true; I just wouldn’t have known it. And today I do know it, so I’m happy that I live today and not then, because the claim is a factual claim. There is nothing funny about this counterfactual, this contrary-to-fact claim. Okay? In matters of taste like liking spinach or not liking spinach, there it really is ridiculous to claim how good it is that I’m not in the other state, because then I would have done something that really would have been perfectly fine. Only from my point of view today it’s not perfectly fine. Now regarding morality, this isn’t funny. I say how good it is that I live today and not in the eighteenth century because I don’t discriminate against women. Okay? Nobody would laugh at that, right? It’s very good, it’s a correct sentence, a very sensible sentence. That means that our relation to the prohibition on discriminating against women, or the prohibition on murder, or the prohibition on enslaving blacks, and all sorts of things like that, is as if it were an objective claim, an objective claim. It’s not taste and smell. Objective. Why? Because if it were subjective, then it would be a funny claim like the spinach. I like spinach or don’t like spinach—that’s subjective. Therefore the counterfactual claim is funny in the context of subjective claims. But in the context of objective factual claims, the counterfactual is not funny. Now if, regarding morality, when I apply the spinach test to moral claims I discover that it isn’t funny, that basically means that I see morality as an objective claim and not as a subjective claim. And then the question arises: in what sense is it an objective claim? If it is an objective factual claim, what do I compare it to in order to reach the conclusion that murder really is forbidden? That the claim that murder is forbidden is true, is real? And that it is forbidden to discriminate against women, or whatever, to enslave blacks? And here arises the conclusion called moral realism. Moral realism means: yes, there are ethical facts, moral facts. And when I say that murder is forbidden, I can check that sentence. How? I observe ethical reality; there is some kind of ethical fact, and I check whether murder is forbidden or not. A kind of observation. Of course not observation with the eyes; it is observation with the eye of the mind. If you like, I check in my conscience, it doesn’t matter. But the claim is that my conscience is not something subjective; it is a kind of observation of an objective reality in the world that says murder is forbidden. And therefore if someone says murder is permitted, I claim that he is mistaken, and mistaken and perhaps even wicked if you like, and so on. It’s not a matter of taste and smell. It’s not like liking spinach and not liking spinach. I won’t say you’re mistaken there. You have a different taste from mine; I like it, you don’t like it—that’s subjective. But if I say murder is forbidden and you say murder is permitted, I won’t say you have a different taste; I think murder is forbidden and you think murder is permitted, like spinach. No, that’s not how we see it. If I think murder is forbidden, then someone who thinks murder is permitted is mistaken and wicked and whatever else. What? I observe the idea of morality and I look at whether murder is forbidden or permitted.

[Speaker C] That—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] doesn’t mean that I will necessarily succeed in persuading him. That’s a different discussion. You’re asking how I form a position? I observe the idea of morality and reach a conclusion about what I see there. Fine.

[Speaker C] But you know what, I have an argument with a scientist friend about results, and then he can prove to me from the results themselves—we look at the same thing and we see—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so you have arguments to explain the results this way. And again you return to the point I made earlier: I’m not talking about the question of how I will persuade you that I’m right. I’m talking about how I grasp for myself that I’m right. You don’t need persuasion from me; I need to be persuaded that I’m right. No, no, because if I say that I like spinach, I’m not persuaded that I’m right. There is no right and wrong there. I like spinach, you don’t like spinach. But if I say that murder is forbidden, then from my perspective I’m right. Regardless of whether I can persuade you. That doesn’t matter. I grasp it differently from the claim I like spinach. For myself—leave aside how I persuade others. I’m asking why. Because for myself, when I reach the conclusion that I like spinach, it isn’t the result of observation; I simply like spinach. It’s not an objective fact that I discovered, not a fact about the world, but a fact about me. Okay. But when I reach the conclusion that murder is forbidden, I relate to it as an objective claim. If you don’t see it, then you’re blind—what can I do? I have no way to show you, no way to persuade you. So what? I still see that this thing is true. The question of whether I can persuade you is a completely different question. First of all the question is how I grasp it. About—

[Speaker C] whether murder is permitted or forbidden? One says yes, one says no. Right. Who is right? Me. Who is this “me” here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Me, me. You’re asking me who’s right? My answer is: me. Again, so you go back—you ask yourself who’s right? Then you’ll say you. You ask the judge who’s right between the two of us? Then again you’re asking how to decide. I’m not asking how to decide. I’m asking why I see the claim murder is forbidden differently from the claim I don’t like spinach. And for me it is different. Why? Why is it different? It’s not clear, not clear at all.

[Speaker C] There is—that I also check within spinach.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, so what’s the problem? Then you’re saying that here too—again—you agree with me that this thing is indeed the result of some kind of abstract observation. That’s it. That’s what I’m saying, that’s all. So what’s the argument about? There is no argument. I’m simply asking—

[Speaker C] Now a new problem arises for me.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so I said: you have a new problem—how do I persuade someone else, or how do I decide a dispute between two people? That’s another question. Why should that interest me right now? I’m not dealing with it. I’m dealing with the question of how I grasp my positions. Why do I relate to them as true positions? Not like I like spinach, which is just how I happen to be built. Why do I think you are mistaken when you say murder is permitted? Regardless of what arguments I’ll raise against you and whether I’ll manage to persuade you. That’s a different discussion. It’s a debate discussion; it’s a different question whether persuasion is possible or not. In my opinion persuasion is possible too, but that’s another discussion. Judging and persuading are the same thing.

[Speaker D] Let’s move on. This “do not murder” is deterministic—it’s yes or no. I mean, take “do not steal,” for example. Take the example of “do not steal.” Well?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You—

[Speaker D] can also break down this concept of “do not murder”? Clearly, stealing is forbidden.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Someone who thinks stealing is permitted is a criminal. Yes, certainly. It’s true: stealing is forbidden. That is an objective truth, an objective moral truth. I don’t know. Fine, that’s the claim. If you don’t know, then you probably think morality is like liking spinach—that morality is subjective. Fine, you can think that. Just notice whether you really do think so. That’s all. And apply the spinach test—it will help you check whether you think this way or that way. That’s exactly the point. I didn’t come to persuade you; I came to give you a diagnostic tool. This tool will help you check yourself: do you relate to morality like liking spinach, or do you relate to morality like a scientific fact or some other kind of fact, it doesn’t matter. Someone who thinks that “do not murder” is true—that is, that someone who says murder is permitted is mistaken—grasps it as a fact, not as liking spinach, not as subjective personal taste. Okay? That’s all. Someone who thinks it’s subjective thinks it’s subjective. Fine. I have no way to persuade him, I don’t agree with him, but fine, I can’t persuade him. I’m only presenting you with a diagnostic tool. Check. I think that almost all human beings, when they put themselves through the spinach test, will discover that their relation to morality is like their relation to facts and not like their relation to subjective taste.

[Speaker B] But take the child—even the spinach isn’t funny. I mean, it could also be an adult who all his life, say—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It can always be that I’m mistaken; that’s a skeptical question. But fine, I reached a conclusion and I even have arguments. Fine, maybe I’m mistaken.

[Speaker B] No, but I’m saying there could also be an adult, say, whose whole life is playing the violin—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then—

[Speaker B] at age sixty he says, how lucky that my parents sent me at age five to study violin, because if they had sent me to study piano it would have been pointless. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but he really means it, because if they had sent me to study piano and I’m talented for violin, then I really would have suffered. The truth is that I am talented for violin.

[Speaker B] Very good, now he thinks it’s beautiful. Obviously.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then he’s simply mistaken.

[Speaker B] Because it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] not spinach, so he’s simply mistaken. So what? Human beings make mistakes—what does that prove? There’s no difficulty here. The fact that human beings make mistakes—right, they make mistakes. So what?

[Speaker B] The intensity of the violin for him, say, could be a really good reason for the fact that—no, no—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, because he needs to understand that there is nothing special about violin as opposed to piano; it’s just taste. If he doesn’t understand that, then he is simply mistaken, that’s all. There are human beings who make mistakes, but that proves nothing from the fact that they make mistakes. Good, let’s stop here.