Ethics and Halakha 5

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time I talked a bit about value conflict. I brought the example—well, not just by way of example—the example from the Talmudic text in tractate Yoma regarding saving life and the Sabbath, and we saw there that two main reasons remain in the conclusion; the others are rejected. One of them says that saving life overrides the Sabbath because “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths”—that’s Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya. And Shmuel says, “And live by them, and not die by them.” And I said that these are really two different methodological conceptions, or two different methodological approaches, for solving a value conflict. “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths” basically—or before that let me just remind you—the problem in deciding a value conflict is incommensurability. The two values are incommensurable; they have no shared measure or common scale on which they can be measured. And because of that, we have no way to determine which is higher and which is lower on the scale. When I want to determine, saving life and the Sabbath, which of them is stronger—right?—when there is a conflict I need to decide which overrides which, so I need to measure them somehow and then decide which is stronger. But if I don’t have a common unit of measure that can measure both saving life and the Sabbath, then how can I compare them? Right, as I said, you can’t compare the quantity of water in the ocean with the amount of human kindness in people. Which is greater? I have no idea. They’re not measured by the same standards, so you can’t compare them. What Leibowitz sharpens—and I think it’s a simple point—is that values are what stand at the basis of other things. You can’t ground values in something more fundamental than they are. And because of that, you also can’t measure them by some standard external to them. A value is an end in itself. When I say that human life is a value, what I mean is that as far as I’m concerned, the reason it’s forbidden to harm human life is not because otherwise that person won’t be able to do things, or whatever, various other things—but because human life is a value, period. That’s where it stops. Meaning, you must not harm human life—that’s the meaning of a value. Otherwise, the things that person would do in his life would be the value, and life would be the means. Okay? So if a value really is the bottom line in the chain of reasoning, then you can’t measure the value except in units that pertain to it itself. What is the value of human life? That it is human life. Meaning, I can’t measure it using something else. Now, if I were to say that human life is a means for enjoying life—okay? Hedonism—then if that’s really how I understand it, there’s no problem at all. I can measure the value of life in the currency of pleasure. Meaning, how much pleasure does it give me? No problem—I’ll compare it to eating chocolate and I’ll see what’s preferable, you know, I have a basis for comparison between those two things because there is a shared unit that measures them both. But if life is not a means to anything, but rather an end—and so too every value—then how do you measure it? After all, every value basically—Sabbath observance is measured by what? By its social value? No. Observing the Sabbath is observing the Sabbath, period; there is a commandment to observe the Sabbath. So when I measure the value of observing the Sabbath, it’s only in the currency of Sabbath observance; I have no other currency. And when I measure the value of life, it’s in the currency of life. Now how do I compare two things measured in two different currency systems? What’s the exchange rate between the currencies? Right? Meaning, how can I compare them? That is basically the problem of incommensurability. And what I said is that the two suggestions there in the Talmudic text differ from one another in the method they chose for solving the problem. There’s a clash between the Sabbath and saving life. So “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths”—what you said earlier—that is basically to translate the value of life into the currency of Sabbath observance. Even though life is a value, they translate it into Sabbath observance, and then what happens? After all, if he dies then he won’t observe many Sabbaths. On the other hand, what is the price for preventing him from dying? That I desecrate the Sabbath now—but that’s only one. So it’s better for me to lose one Sabbath in order to gain many Sabbaths. We’re back to comparing two things measured in the same unit, in terms of Sabbath observance. Then I can compare the two. The trick was to translate one of the values into the same scale by which I measure the other, and then they can be compared. On the other hand, “And live by them”—then the assumption is that life is a means for observing the Sabbath; it’s really not a value in our language. Life is a means for observing the Sabbath, or for fulfilling commandments in general, not specifically Sabbaths.

[Speaker B] There’s also another practical difference here: in a situation where I need to desecrate the Sabbath in order to save the life of someone who can’t observe the Sabbath—do I desecrate it? Or what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or temporary life—he won’t make it to next Sabbath—say, to save someone who’ll live another hour or two. A disabled person, or a person who doesn’t observe the Sabbath, or who doesn’t observe—

[Speaker B] The Sabbath, who physically can’t. Let’s say physically he can’t.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Can’t? What does physically mean?

[Speaker B] Doesn’t matter, coma, disabled.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but he can do other commandments. This currency of Sabbath observance—no, I think Sabbath observance is just an example. The point is commandment observance. The Meiri writes this explicitly. When the Meiri talks about the Mishnah—the Mishnah Berurah brings him in Biur Halakha, section 328, there in those sections dealing with saving life on the Sabbath—the Meiri writes there, what happens with someone who has only temporary life? The Talmud itself says we desecrate the Sabbath for him. But if it’s “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” he won’t keep many Sabbaths—or maybe he’ll live a day, two days, whatever—even for that we desecrate the Sabbath. So the Meiri says: true, but he can fear God, he can love God, he can study Torah. Meaning, this is not specifically about observing the Sabbath; it’s about commandment observance in general. Okay? It’s phrased in the language of Sabbath observance so that the comparison will be sharper.

[Speaker B] How will this argument work out? Suppose someone says to me: worship idols or we’ll kill you. This consideration would lead me to idolatry. Why? Because then I could observe many commandments.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, clearly there’s a verse that says not to.

[Speaker B] So that’s what would come out according to the second argument, Shmuel’s.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not to live by them, in idolatry. One does not live by idolatry; on the contrary, there you have to die.

[Speaker B] I agree, I mean—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —that there’s a verse saying you have to die. Correct. You’re right that were it not for that, one could perhaps have argued that claim. There’s a Ran—there’s a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) about slaughtering for a sick person on the Sabbath. Do you know this? The Rosh brings a series of several medieval authorities (Rishonim). The Raavad raises it for the first time; it’s brought in the Rosh, about what happens if I have a sick person on the Sabbath who needs to eat meat, and the doctors say he needs meat. Okay? Now I have no meat here. I have either non-kosher meat, or a live animal that needs to be slaughtered. It’s forbidden to slaughter on the Sabbath; that’s a capital prohibition. Now the question is: what is preferable? Of course one must desecrate the Sabbath for the sake of saving life. The question is what is preferable. Is it preferable to give him non-kosher meat, or is it preferable to slaughter? There is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim). There are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who say that obviously it’s preferable to give non-kosher meat, because slaughtering on the Sabbath is punishable by stoning—it’s a much more severe prohibition—whereas non-kosher meat is just a prohibition, an ordinary negative commandment. By contrast, the Ran argues—he isn’t cited in the Rosh, but never mind, he also discusses it—that if I slaughter, I commit the transgression once, one act of slaughter. But if I give him non-kosher meat to eat, every olive-sized amount he eats—even half an olive-sized amount, which is less than the measure—every olive-sized amount he eats is a prohibition. Since that’s so, it’s preferable to commit one severe prohibition rather than many lighter prohibitions. That’s his claim, and therefore it’s preferable to slaughter. That’s what he says. So that’s exactly an example of the consideration you mentioned: that even in the case of idolatry, were it not for the verse “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might,” from which the Talmud in Sanhedrin learns it—or in Yoma too—then were it not for that verse, really we would perform idolatry in order to save ourselves. Why? Because we would say either “And live by them”—that’s one possibility—or “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths.” Why die? Worship idols once and afterward observe many commandments. So in fact, in the conception of “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” that conception seemingly assumes that life is a means to Sabbath observance. That’s how it appears at first glance. By contrast, Shmuel’s rationale of “And live by them” assumes the opposite. It basically says that if observing the commandments will cause you to lose your life, then obviously you should not observe the commandments, because you are supposed to live by them. Meaning, the commandments are a means to life—in contrast to the previous conception, in which life is a means to commandment observance. So on the face of it, these are opposite conceptions. I said that this can’t be right for various reasons, if only because the halakhic decisors bring both rationales together. If they contradict each other, what does it mean to cite both together? Either this is right or that is right. But there is more evidence that clearly life is a value in itself. It’s not a means. So I said this is a kind of logical bypass. Meaning, “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths”—the trick is subtler. Human life is a value in itself. We have no way to measure it against Sabbath observance; I don’t know. Okay? So what do I do? I basically say: let’s translate the value of life into terms of Sabbath observance. Then I say this: life has its own value, call it A, plus n times B. Okay? A is the value of life, plus n times however many Sabbaths he will observe, multiplied by B, the value of Sabbath observance. Okay? Now I want to compare that to B. Well, nB by itself is greater than B. If you add A on top of that, then it is certainly greater than B. So I’m exempt from having to solve the problem by comparing them in a common measure. I manage to add, besides the intrinsic value of life, another value in terms of Sabbath observance, and that solves the problem for me. I bypass the need to find a common measure.

[Speaker B] You’re not setting the cost against it. What’s the cost?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Desecrating the Sabbath. There, that’s B. Where is it? That’s the B. So if you desecrated the Sabbath, it’s as if you lost Sabbath observance. That’s an assumption the Talmud makes there. You’re right in that comment; that’s a point many people raise there, and it would need to be discussed on its own merits. But in its calculation the Talmud assumes that it’s one Sabbath versus many Sabbaths, even though here it’s desecration and there it’s observance.

[Speaker B] It should be that n is greater than one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] n greater than one—you need to play with A. If you play with A, then you don’t even need that. But yes, correct. Meaning, you want A not to enter the equation. And then what that really means is that even in the conception of “Desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” you aren’t really assuming that life is a means to Sabbath observance. That’s not true. It’s a trick for solving the problem of incommensurability. And so that sharpens the point even more. Okay, so that’s more or less where I stopped last time. Now I want to talk a bit about commitment to a value system in general in light of what I’ve said so far, and in the end I’ll get to Torah and morality—that’s really the goal. Look, if indeed a value is an end in itself, and has no end outside itself, then the question is how exactly I define or ground commitment to a value system. Why be committed to any value system—moral, halakhic / of Jewish law, legal, whatever you want? When I ask why behave morally, or why fulfill commandments—because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. Very nice that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, but I’m asking: why should one fulfill what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded? That’s the question. Here some kind of reason has to be given. You can say it’s a value. A value doesn’t require reasons; a value is the most basic reason. True, because if I give a reason, you’ll ask, and why that? We already said that in the end you reach the bottom line. The bottom line is your value, and my value is obeying the Holy One, blessed be He. And then that basically means that the commandments are values in a very particular sense, because at their base stands something else: obedience to the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, there is indeed something more fundamental that grounds commitment to the commandments. When I say, why keep the Sabbath, it’s not because one has to keep the Sabbath, but because the Holy One, blessed be He, said to keep the Sabbath, and there is value in obeying the Holy One, blessed be He. Why am I saying this? Because the fact is that although values are incommensurable—but what does the word mean? Incommensurable. Meaning, they have no common measure. Fine. So although values are incommensurable, the fact is that we are constantly deciding value conflicts. Constantly. Even value conflicts between moral values—that’s obvious. Saving life on the Sabbath is one example.

[Speaker C] But I think there is morality outside the Torah, basic life and all that, as is written in various places—is that a value only because there’s a command from…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that when I talk about Torah and morality. Right now I’m just building the tools to deal with that topic. Okay? So basically—hang on, I lost my train of thought for a second—yes. After all, values are incommensurable. So if that’s the case, ostensibly we can’t really solve the problem. Notice the two techniques the Talmud used there: either a verse, or placing things on a common scale—bypassing the problem. But in many, many cases you can’t bypass the problem. When you ask—right, I think I spoke about the example of the actor, didn’t I? Who was offered a role in a cigarette advertisement. That’s an example from Wozner at Tel Aviv University, Shay Wozner. They offered him a role in a cigarette ad and offered him a million dollars for it. Okay? Now for that he has to smoke a few cigarettes; there are several takes until it works out, so he has to smoke, say, five cigarettes. Smoking five cigarettes isn’t healthy. Okay? But a million dollars is actually pretty healthy. Right? So now he’s in a dilemma. He goes to his doctor friend and consults him. He says, listen, what should I do? The friend says, look, as a doctor I’ll certainly tell you it’s forbidden, because cigarettes are harmful. But as a friend: run for it fast before someone else takes it. Meaning what? Meaning that we need to decide between the value of preserving health—right?—and the desire to make money, the economic desire. Now here we’re talking about two values that don’t even belong to the same framework. It’s not that both are moral values. One is health—maybe call it a moral value, maybe not—and the other is the desire to make money, which doesn’t belong to morality. Someone who doesn’t want to make money is not morally deficient. Okay, that’s his right. And equally, everyone has the right to want to—there’s no problem—but still. So this is not even a moral value; it’s just my personal desire. Now how do I decide between those two things? How do I decide a conflict like this? How do I map one onto the other? Right. Don’t tell me that if I die I won’t earn money, meaning—

[Speaker B] I can decide to dedicate a hundred thousand dollars out of the million to holdings for Studio C for health.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, fine. Let’s say we couldn’t make that kind of bypass—not every time can you make that bypass. So how do we make a decision? Fine, there is no Studio C in the world, we’re on a desert island. So what then? What can be done? I don’t know if that helps even if it exists; only theoretically maybe it helps.

[Speaker C] There is the concept that one engaged in a commandment is exempt from another commandment. Meaning, you’re saying I can’t judge both of them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but there the symmetry doesn’t exist, because “one engaged in a commandment” means that this is the first commandment you started. After all, conflict always exists when there is symmetry. Now priority is also a criterion. Fine. But let’s say they came together all at once, right, so really—what do you do? Simultaneous prohibition, right, in the Talmud. So then how do you choose? But we do decide it. I assume most of us would also decide it in the same way. But one way or another, we do decide it. Now on the theoretical level it’s incommensurable. How can one really measure units of health against economic units? What do they have to do with each other? How can I compare two desires, or two values—I don’t know what to call them—that belong to totally different scales? But we decide this all the time. For example, I don’t know, the state has to decide whether to invest money—allocating the budget, the budget pie. It has to decide whether to invest money, or how much money to invest, in health, how much in security, how much in art, in sports, in—I don’t know what.

[Speaker C] What we do in reality is we say how much it harms the whole. Like for example—how much damage does it do? Damage within that value. Meaning…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that still doesn’t change it.

[Speaker C] No, because these are different units. No, obviously, it’s just that here you’re saying a cup—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —of poison, or do this or do something else. So maybe the million dollars is preferable too. Certainly. No, that just sharpens the question. So what you’re basically suggesting is that there is a quantitative measure. Five cigarettes are a small injury to health, a negligible injury. Okay? And a million dollars is, for most people I think, not exactly a small amount of money. So therefore one can decide. But that’s not true. Because after all, that’s a little of one unit against a lot of another unit. It’s like kindness versus water in the ocean. So in principle you can’t compare; little and much don’t help here. On the contrary, that sharpens the difficulty. How can we compare little and much when they’re not even in the same unit? So how do we make those comparisons? In the end—

[Speaker F] All these are parts of quality of life, like, it’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I really think we should go in a direction similar to that.

[Speaker G] Like we talk about a person’s utility function.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. So utility, or quality of life, or—

[Speaker G] With utility you put them both on the same scale and you say what, in general, basically.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there’s still a not-so-simple philosophical problem here. How do you translate everything into utility? Utility is just a word. Is there really such a translation? Do we really have a tool to do that? Apparently probably yes. Subjective. No, fine, I’m talking only about the individual person. I don’t mean right now that all of us will reach the same—

[Speaker G] You could say that both a million dollars and health are things that in some sense—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —create some kind of satisfaction or utility of some sort, yes, something like that. So really, what stands behind all this is that even what we call values are not really the end of the road. That means that we also measure them in terms of something perhaps a bit more abstract: utility, happiness, pleasure, satisfaction—I don’t know—some very abstract sort of thing. Say I’m deciding between two moral values, then I say: how good is this versus how good is that? Even though it’s good of a different kind, still both are moral things. So I need to compare how good this is against how good that is. So yes, there is some shared unit. Between two values like economic value and health value it’s already harder to speak about good, so one has to speak about something more abstract—utility, quality of life, whatever, each person can define it as he likes—but some abstract thing into which we do manage to translate the values. Then we manage to make the comparison. Therefore I say that the Leibowitzian picture is not fully complete. Meaning, at the foundation of values there probably is still something else by which we measure every value, and then we can make decisions. Right, right, but basically those are what we usually call values. Fine? Now what this basically means—and here I move to the next stage—is that at the foundation of any value system, I asked earlier how we decide whether to uphold a value system or not—at the foundation of every such value system there basically sits something I once called a value-principle. A value principle, I don’t know what to call it. Meaning, some principle that gives value to that system. Meaning, that defines why it ought to be done, or determines why it ought to be done. For example, the principle that one ought to obey the Holy One, blessed be He. Why listen to the commands of the Holy One, blessed be He? Because we have some value assumption that says that what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands ought to be done. So that is the basic value-principle at the foundation of Jewish law. Likewise, we have a basic value-principle at the foundation of the moral system—that one ought to be a good person. We said earlier that there is such a concept as good that is shared by all moral values, and there is some basic assumption, a basic value-principle, that says one ought to be a good person, one ought to behave well, or think well, behave well—each person can define morality as he likes. So there always has to be, at the foundation of a moral system, some grounding, and that grounding must be outside it, not inside it. When someone asks me, yes, why fulfill commandments, you can’t say because there is such a commandment. It says, “You shall keep all My commandments,” right? But that’s nonsense, of course. Even if “You shall keep all My commandments” were itself a commandment—and Maimonides for that reason does not count it as a commandment—even if it were a commandment, it would still be a commandment, and about it too one could ask why it should be fulfilled. The grounding has to be something more fundamental than the system it is grounding. Okay? So it’s something from outside. Now that thing from outside can be of two types. It can be one principle that grounds the entire commitment to the value system, such as the duty to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, or the duty to be a good person, or things of that sort. Or it can be something—or a collection of separate grounds—for each value individually. I tell you why I think it’s right to be committed to this one. I recognize the value of human life, I recognize the value of a person’s property and therefore it is forbidden to steal, and I recognize the value of human dignity and therefore it is forbidden to hit him or humiliate him or something like that. And each one has a separate basis. It’s not that all of them sit on the concept of good and I decide that there is an obligation to be good or to behave well. That’s a different sort of grounding. You see this in the words of the Sages in the midrash in Sabbath 88, when the Holy One, blessed be He, goes around to the nations and offers them the Torah. So they say to Him, what is written in it? One says to Him, “You shall not murder”—not for us. Another says to Him, “You shall not steal”—not for us. And then He comes to Israel and they say, “We will do and we will hear.” What does “We will do and we will hear” mean? Why don’t they ask what is written in it? The Talmud there says, “A rash people,” right—the heretic asks Rava—“A rash people, who put your mouths before your ears.” First hear what it’s about and only afterward commit yourselves. Why are you committing yourselves before hearing?

[Speaker B] That’s the basic value.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. The point is that you don’t need to hear what it’s about, because the point is not that I put on tefillin because I understand that one ought to put on tefillin. I put on tefillin because I understand that I am obligated to whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, commands. So why should I care what He commands? I don’t need to inspect what He commands. The gentiles, when they wanted to examine their commitment, had to check what was written there, because they were working with particular value-principles. They wanted to see whether that system suited them, or seemed right to them—not suited them in the low sense; whether they identified with it even, it doesn’t matter to me. But their value-principle is a particular, specific value-principle. For each and every value they wanted to check whether they identified with it or not. And that is basically what he is claiming against Rava. And what Rava is supposed—well, there is no answer there, but what Rava—there is basically an answer there, that’s probably what he means—what Rava is basically saying is that it does not depend on the question of what we will hear. We are obligated because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, and our value-principle is a sweeping value-principle, not a particular one. Okay?

[Speaker G] There’s a different problem. Fine, you saw the Holy One, blessed be He, and accepted that as a value…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I was coerced. He forced me to accept that value-principle. So I have a “great protest declaration regarding the Torah,” and then “they accepted it again in the days of Ahasuerus,” or Oral Torah—each person with his own answers. But that isn’t connected to what I’m saying right now. What I’m saying now is that I have some sweeping value-principle that does not separately ground each commandment, but rather the basic commitment to the whole system—that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. Now, the fact that I myself did that under coercion raises the problem that you need “they accepted it again,” because there is a protest declaration.

[Speaker B] A particular grounding doesn’t carry force for most commandments between man and God, and therefore in the end they wind up secular. Someone who needs a particular grounding doesn’t understand why not to turn on a light on the Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so in fact, in an essential sense, it seems to me at least that religious commitment, in an essential sense—and I’ll talk about this later—has to be sweeping. Particular commitment is Ahad Ha’am. I once spoke about Ahad Ha’am, right, who said that “more than the Jewish people kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept the Jewish people.” Meaning, he supported keeping commandments because that preserves the character of the people, the culture, and so on, its cohesion. In other words, he observed commandments not because of the basic principle that one must obey the Holy One, blessed be He, but because, by chance or not by chance, those commandments suited his goals. That’s a principle of a particular value. Meaning, in principle, there could be a person who keeps all 613 commandments and is an atheist, if he thinks that each one of them happens to be correct, or useful, for various reasons. That is not a religious person. Religious commitment means accepting a sweeping commitment: whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, that’s what I do. Okay, we once accepted that upon ourselves. No, I don’t think that’s parallel. A constitution is part of the legal system; it’s just made up of more important laws, but they’re not more basic. “Basic” in the logical sense means that the other laws derive from them. The other laws don’t derive from them. There are taboo laws, there are other laws; they do not derive from the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty is seen by us as more important, so it overrides other laws when there’s a conflict, and to change it you need a special majority. Fine, it’s an important law. But I’m talking about priority in the logical sense—that is, that the laws are derived from it—not that it is more important than they are because it ranks higher on the scale of values. The scale here is not a scale of importance but a logical scale.

[Speaker I] Isn’t a constitution the basis of everything?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. As far as I know, no. There is a fundamental value system there that overrides everything else. If you legislate a law against the constitution, it is nullified, but that doesn’t mean all the laws you legislate can be derived from the constitution. If they could be derived from the constitution, then why legislate? It’s already legislated. You can’t derive them logically from the constitution. The constitution is seen as the most important set of laws; when there’s a hierarchy between the constitution and other laws, it’s a hierarchy of importance. I’m talking about a hierarchy of logic, of logical derivation. This law is logically prior to that law because that one can be derived from it. Okay?

[Speaker J] What added value does that have? I don’t follow—I don’t understand it—what added value does that have?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I knew how to explain it, then it also wouldn’t be a value, then it would be—

[Speaker J] A system through which I explain what you’re saying, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, and that’s why you can’t explain it. An axiom, an axiom. If I explained it, then you’d ask me about the explanation—why that one. At some point you have to stop. For someone who understands—I’ll say again—there are people who don’t think this way, so I’m not claiming we all see this as self-evident. But I’m saying this is the meaning of religious commitment, it seems to me. Religious commitment means that a person understands that if the Holy One, blessed be He—who created him and the world, or whatever exactly, and runs it, whatever formulation you want—commanded something, then one must carry out what He commanded. Someone who understands that is a religious person; someone who doesn’t, isn’t. That’s the dispute. Meaning, I don’t have explanations. It’s like: why should you honor parents? Because they brought me into the world. So what? I don’t know—they created me, they take care of me—so too the Holy One, blessed be He, created me and takes care of me, so there is some sort of obligation toward Him. Maybe you can explain it that way. But the value itself—what?

[Speaker J] Yes, that’s the foundational value, even though it has no attribute. Meaning, there’s no value in its essence, because a value can’t have one. If there were utility, then the utility would be the value—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the value would be a means. Heaven help us.

[Speaker J] But there’s no alternative on the logical level.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there’s no alternative on the logical level when you justify things. In the end, you always arrive at an axiom, and that you won’t need to justify, right? So how do you adopt them? It’s not rational. How do you adopt them? You accept them. Exactly. You decide that this is how it is, this is true, and that’s it. Okay, so why am I bringing up this issue of sweeping principles of value and specific ones with this example? Because of course it connects to conflicts. In value conflicts, I said that when we resolve a conflict, we are essentially translating both sides into a common currency. Now, if I do that like “desecrate one Sabbath for him so that he may keep many Sabbaths,” that isn’t really translation—it’s a workaround—because I haven’t translated the value of life into Sabbath observance. The value of life remains, and besides that there’s also Sabbath observance here. That’s not translation. But if I actually manage to translate—to resolve the incommensurability—that means there is some general value, utility, pleasure, quality of life, and so on, into which I translate all the other values. In other words, there has to be some foundational value at the base of my value system, and maybe at the base of all my value systems, since, as I started to say, we decide among different value systems. When we divide the budget pie in the State of Israel, or in any institution or place or company, we have to decide how much to invest in culture, how much in sports, how much in security, how much in all sorts of things, in education. How do we compare the importance of education to the importance of culture or security? About security they’ll say again: desecrate one Sabbath, because if you don’t live, then you also won’t have culture. But there’s still a quantitative question here. A little security versus a lot of culture—and where exactly is the line? How much security versus how much culture? Here we won’t be able to make a translation anymore. So how do we decide anyway?

[Speaker E] According to some one foundational value at whose base all the values stand.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. That’s why I said Leibowitz’s picture is incomplete. Incomplete because there’s something else underneath.

[Speaker E] Then they’re not values.

[Speaker C] Right, right—the thing underneath is the only value.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, in the pure logical definition, yes.

[Speaker C] Until you get to something else beyond that. It could be that there are things like life or something that I would arrive at even without Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Could be. That’s where I’m heading. Right now I’m building the conceptual system in order to get there.

[Speaker B] Why do we even need to talk, as a religious Jew, about good values? I’ll get to that in just a moment, okay?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In just a moment, later on. I’m going there.

[Speaker D] Are there several basic principles?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. First of all, obeying the Holy One, blessed be He—I assume that’s a sufficient principle. I think it’s one.

[Speaker D] And being a good person?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Being a good person—that’s morality. I’m talking about, at the foundation of Jewish law, there is obeying the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker D] And besides that, do you have any other value?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Everyone and his values. A person says there’s an aesthetic value, to live in a pleasant environment, I don’t know what. That’s a basis.

[Speaker D] That’s a basis, that’s completely a basis.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can’t reduce it to a moral value or to service of God. I think one should live aesthetically or create aesthetic works—for those who think art is a value, I don’t know. Everyone and his values. Someone else thinks sports is a value. I don’t know exactly what. And everyone will choose values for himself. For every value system, I’m saying at least every value system has, at its base, some principle from whose force the obligation is derived. It may even be that since we decide between value systems belonging to different systems, then somehow it seems that at the base of all of them there is something shared, something even more abstract that stands somewhere at the foundation of them all.

[Speaker G] Let’s go back for a second to the example of the actor and the cigarette. There you said that in the end there’s a basic value, quality of life, and then he decides according to that. Now, if the offer to that actor were a million dollars and desecrating the Sabbath, or a million dollars and murder—what would be the basic principle there? I don’t know—there it’s a conflict.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there it’s a conflict of a different kind, because it’s a conflict with something moral and not with an economic value. So maybe his decision would be different. But he would still decide. In practice, de facto, we make these kinds of decisions. If they offer me a million dollars, I usually don’t go murder someone. Okay, I don’t know, it never happened, but I hope and believe it won’t happen. Right? So that means I resolved that conflict. How? There’s no common measure.

[Speaker G] You presented the mechanism of a basic value in order to say that when he decides between a million dollars and cigarettes, there is in fact a basic value and therefore he can decide. But when there is no basic value—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, who said there isn’t? I’m claiming there is.

[Speaker G] Above both of them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, there has to be. The fact is, I make decisions. I’m going in reverse: I make decisions—this is a fact, first of all. So I’m saying that’s evidence that there is some foundational value.

[Speaker G] Exactly. You presented the mechanism of actually making the decisions, but I didn’t understand what you’re proposing as the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t propose anything.

[Speaker G] Right now you’re just saying: factually, it works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t propose anything. I don’t always know how to identify the currency into which I translate everything. But I’m just saying: look, we make decisions. That probably means that intuitively we have some currency that gives us the sense that this is more important than that, that this overrides that. Call that thing whatever you want.

[Speaker G] But adding the concept of a basic value didn’t help me at all in understanding that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? I think it—

[Speaker G] Because before, between a cigarette and a million dollars, you said “a basic principle, and therefore I decide.” Now again I decide without knowing what’s going on there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. But before, you thought one couldn’t decide; now I’m saying one can decide—take your own decision and go with it, that’s fine. Before, I was in the conception that says this decision is an illusion, because you can’t really decide—it’s incommensurable. It’s just fake. Now I’m telling you, not so. It may be that there is a fundamental currency even if I don’t always know how to identify it. By the way, sometimes I do know, but not always. And I’m saying, apparently we have some intuitive sense of what that currency is. I gave an example in the previous class. I said that if incommensurability really were a genuine problem—say, saving life and Sabbath—then the verse “and live by them” could not help us. This is very connected to what you asked. Why? Because a verse cannot reveal to me whether there is more water in the ocean than kindness in human beings. Since that question has no answer—not that it has an answer and I’m just not smart enough to know it, but rather it is, by definition, not a well-defined question, it has no answer. So how does it help me that there is a verse saying yes yes, there is more water in the ocean? There’s no biblical decree like that. A biblical decree cannot tell me something impossible. A biblical decree can reveal information that I’m not smart enough to know. So the Holy One, blessed be He, tells me: look, life is more important than Sabbath. Fine, no problem. But if there is essential incommensurability, then no biblical decree will help. If there were such a verse, I’d throw it in the trash. Because that verse can’t tell me anything. What would it tell me? If there were now a verse saying there is more water in the ocean than kindness in human beings—you’ll find all kinds of weird verses if you want. Fine, what do you do with such a thing? I do nothing with such a thing; it doesn’t interest me at all. You can’t say something that cannot be. You can reveal something that is in fact true, but I’m just not smart enough to know it. That’s what verses are for. But a verse cannot tell me answers to questions that are nonsense. So here I’m saying: one second, I’m just—what I gained through this move is that my claim is that saving a life versus Sabbath is not nonsense. Now, what it is—identifying the currency that measures both of them—that’s your friend’s example. Murder. Same thing. Anything I can decide probably means—and again, probably, it’s an indication—that there is some common currency by which I translate the two things. And the fact is that you can decide.

[Speaker G] Yes, right. And that’s the proof—as a fact.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, that’s the proof backward. Right, agreed. And now what I’m saying is basically that a person without this move stands before such a decision, and some philosopher—any beginner philosopher—will come and explain to him: listen, you’re talking nonsense, because this is an unresolvable problem. So apparently you just have juices in your stomach telling you to go here or there. Maybe that’s true; I don’t have an argument against it. What I have is only an alternative. So what I’m offering is another alternative. Now decide which of the two alternatives speaks to you. This is not an argument against the subjective position—we’re returning to a discussion we already had—but rather I’m offering another alternative. Meaning, it may be that there is some common currency here that all of us somehow feel intuitively, even though we don’t always manage to identify it—sometimes we do manage, maybe not always—and we make decisions through it. That’s a possibility. And therefore we don’t necessarily have to abandon those intuitions that tell us this is more important than that.

[Speaker B] That’s not right. It could be perfectly fine. There are lots of comments, but on the principled level I don’t understand. The fact that you say “I decide, therefore there is a common currency”—I completely reject that, even logically. Okay, so you’re joining what he said. Why do you say that’s not proof? No, even worse. “And live by them” tells me the opposite. There is no common currency, and therefore I’m giving you a rule of decision, not a rule of measurement.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what is that rule of decision based on? Did He just flip a coin, the Holy One, blessed be He?

[Speaker B] How did He decide? I’m obligated to obey Him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not asking why you’re obligated.

[Speaker B] I’m asking how He decided. How did He decide that the tefillin should be here and not here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Presumably He has a reason.

[Speaker B] That question is not what I’m asking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re not asking it, but I am. I’m asking you now: is there an answer? Not what the answer is—whether there is an answer. Is there?

[Speaker B] A reason for the divine will?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not a reason for the divine will, but how He decided.

[Speaker B] He tells me: prefer—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Decision is not will. I’m asking how He decided. There were two values there that He wants both of.

[Speaker B] No, there weren’t values. He commanded me two things, and when they conflict He tells me: in a case of conflict, prefer this one. Now I ask: on what basis?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now—

[Speaker G] He’s saying: on what basis does He determine that? I’m asking. Just like He determined that there is a Sabbath—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On what basis did He determine that there is a Sabbath? No, the fact that He determined there is a Sabbath poses no principled problem. I just don’t understand why He said it. So I assume He has a reason why He said it.

[Speaker G] But here too I assume He has a reason when He said “and live by them.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly! Right—that’s the reason I’m talking about.

[Speaker G] There is a reason; you just don’t know it. Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that means there is a common currency, even if I don’t know how to identify it. That’s all.

[Speaker G] And then the verse decides it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But what does the verse reveal to me? I’m saying: if there were no common currency, regardless of whether I can identify it, if there were no such currency, then even the Holy One, blessed be He, could not have decided. Meaning, the fact that He decided is, for me, evidence that there is a common scale. I can’t always identify it. Fine, so I can’t. But I know it exists. So if now I have a certain intuition, I say: good, apparently I have some ability to sense that common currency and to feel that this is truer than that. Like if someone asks me—again, I keep returning to this—why do you think there is a wall here? You see it—so what? Because I have a feeling that if I see it, it’s there. I don’t know how to explain that to you. Someone will tell me: who says? Maybe not? I have no answer. But I think yes. What I’m trying to argue is that the question “who says, maybe not?” is much stronger when there is no other option. If you offer another option, I say: maybe not, maybe yes, and I think yes. But if there is no option of yes, then the question “maybe not” is not a question of maybe not—it is the assertion: no. Understand? What I’m trying to propose is that there is another interpretive option for understanding how we make decisions. Maybe it isn’t arbitrary the way all the skeptics or relativists say. Maybe it really is some moral sense—or value sense—that tells me what is more important than what. That is possible. I don’t have proofs in favor of it. If that really is so, then I can go with my decisions more calmly. Meaning, then I do go with them. Okay?

[Speaker L] The whole matter of values seems intuitive to me, but in life there are also two interests, impulses, sometimes instinctive drives.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so we need to try to neutralize those as much as possible.

[Speaker L] So do we include them too, even though—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But including them is a mistake. We do it because we’re human beings, but we should try to neutralize it. I’m talking about real, philosophical conflicts, not psychological ones. When there is a conflict against an impulse, those are usually psychological conflicts. I’m talking about a philosophical conflict. I’m asking: I have no impulses at all—what is the right thing to do?

[Speaker M] But pleasure is surely that. No, even there it’s not an impulse.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to make money—that’s a philosophical conflict, not a psychological one.

[Speaker C] No, no, no, here I’m going to break the line. You define value as anything I want to do. Aesthetics is also a value.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Want—but not in the sense of impulse. Want in the sense of thinking it’s right.

[Speaker C] Yes, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An impulse is always, by definition, something that pulls me to a place that I don’t really want to go.

[Speaker C] Impulse—after all, it’s not whatever a person says is his value. “My value is eating steak; I love steaks and that’s my value, that’s my life.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, it depends. If he really sees it as a value, then—it’s a value. If he says, “Look, I really don’t want to eat steaks, but I have this impulse,” then it’s an impulse.

[Speaker C] But you’re saying it’s all subjective. There’s no way to define what a value is and what something else is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I disagree. I disagree. How do you define it? So I’ll tell you. I defined it last time—I defined it. What you may want to say, and with that I do agree, is that we have no way to diagnose it in someone else. I don’t know, in someone else, whether it’s an impulse or a value. I can ask him and believe him or not believe him. But self-diagnosis, I think, one can try to do. Sometimes you’ll succeed, sometimes not. We’re human beings. We won’t always succeed. But very often I can see whether something is truly, for me, a value or whether it is an impulse. A person senses within himself when he wants something because he thinks it’s right that way, or when he wants something because it feels good, but he understands that it isn’t right. We can distinguish between those two things.

[Speaker C] The question is whether there is something objective outside that person that can say so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said, that’s a problem of diagnosis. I don’t know how to diagnose in your case whether it’s an impulse or a value. I have no way of knowing. I don’t know—maybe neuroscience knows which region belongs to impulse and which region belongs to values.

[Speaker C] Maybe, for example, one could say that something that is repairing the world counts as a value. Something that is not repairing the world—even if people like it—doesn’t count as a value. And what is repairing the world? And what is that? You’ll keep defining. Okay, so keep defining.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is repairing the world?

[Speaker C] He’ll say that repairing the world means that everyone should eat steaks.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You just translated word for word. That won’t help.

[Speaker D] There’s a problem here of—can I just interrupt you for a second, complicate things, sorry and pardon me? I arrived at these values.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So basically—

[Speaker G] And why is overcoming the impulse important?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say it’s important. I said there are two types of dilemmas. There are philosophical dilemmas between two kinds of values. And there are dilemmas between impulse and value. Now let each person decide what’s important. It may be that in his eyes responding to impulse is a value.

[Speaker G] Connecting to himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Connecting to himself, responding to impulse is a value. The hedonist, for example, that’s what he thinks. But then I really do believe him. Meaning, from his perspective it has become a philosophical dilemma. But there are other people who do the same thing as the hedonist, yet for them that isn’t the value. They give in to impulse because they don’t have the strength. They’ll do the same thing in practice. You won’t be able to diagnose—or it’ll be hard to diagnose—whether you’re this kind or that kind. Fine, I still distinguish. The definition exists. These are two different things. Diagnosis is hard. Fine.

[Speaker C] Here’s a person who thinks, “I think it’s good to kill bad people.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, yes, there were such people. Right?

[Speaker C] That’s his value. Clearly. And we can say yes, that’s his value.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also a person who thinks it’s good to kill good people—that’s his value.

[Speaker C] Why does he think that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know—because from his perspective it’s a value, it repairs the world because he is the perfect repair of the world and everyone else only lowers the average, so he kills everyone. Fine, what do I know, everyone and his delusions. But never mind, I’m going with you. I’m not trying to judge someone’s values or not-values. I’m trying to go with him. But I’m trying to help him define for himself where he stands—not define him. I don’t know how to define him. The person examining himself has to ask himself whether this is, for him, a value or an impulse. He should simply examine himself. I’m not judging anyone, meaning I’m not—

[Speaker C] You’re not, but people—we all do this, right? We all treat some things as values, and as a public we are forced to judge; legally we must decide that some things are values and other things are not values. Right. How do we do that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, how do we do that? According to our values. We don’t judge him; we judge according to our values. We don’t enter into his guts. We judge him: if he murders, then even if for him it’s a sublime value, we think murder is bad and he’ll go to prison because we think murder is bad. It’s always us. We don’t need to enter into his world of values and impulses, except in pathological cases of an uncontrollable compulsion, where a person can’t control himself and then he has no criminal responsibility, and so on.

[Speaker C] Where do you get the authority?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s an interesting philosophical question: how does society have authority to judge its citizens? If you ask me personally, I have a whole theory about this, but I think that’s a somewhat different discussion. In law, I’ll tell you: in my opinion it’s not authority at all. Everyone who looks for authority is making a conceptual mistake. By the way, that’s also true regarding rabbinic commandments—that’s where this comes out. I think in legal theory it’s the same thing. These are two parallel searches and both are mistaken in the same way. All the answers there are wrong on both sides. Because there can’t really be an essential answer to this matter. What I think is that society has authority over the individual because he is part of it. It is he who has authority over himself. Meaning, it’s not someone else standing opposite me and me asking, what authority do you have over me? I am an organ in the social organism, so I am obligated by what it does not because it has authority over me. It’s like my hand does what my brain tells it. Right? That’s not because there is authority over the hand, but because the brain is responsible for the whole body—that is, it is the body. It is the whole. And when I stand opposite the sages and ask what authority the sages have, the usual assumption is that I am standing opposite them. And the question is why should I obey them—who are you that I should obey you? You’re human beings too, right? And I say: you really don’t have to obey us. What does that have to do with anything? We’re simply you. We are your mouth. We are the mouth of society. And when society decides—he animates the whole body? Fine, it’s the body. It’s the whole. And when I stand opposite the sages and ask what authority the sages have, the usual assumption is that I am standing opposite them. The question is why should I obey them? Who are you that I should obey you? You’re human beings too. Right, after all, do you really want to obey us? What’s the connection? We are simply you, we are your mouth, we are the mouth of society. And when society decides, then every organ in that society ought to behave similarly. Now, of course, even that is not immune to attack. Someone can say: fine, I don’t feel like an organ in this society. But indeed, if he doesn’t feel like an organ in this society, then really one should just remove him, not put him in prison. One should place him somewhere else. On the principled level that is a correct claim. In any case, fine, maybe we drifted a bit. Foundational principle.

[Speaker G] Yes, so we were on foundational principles.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now why is this distinction between a particular foundational principle and a sweeping one important? Because it brings me directly to the question of whether and how—how and whether, sorry—it is possible to be committed to two value systems, especially if there are conflicts between them. Fine, you can want to be healthy and also want to be rich. But very often being healthy will interfere with your being rich because it will cost you a lot of money. Okay? Now the question is whether there is some contradiction in commitment to those two systems of values. So I say, on the principled level, it depends on whether your principles of value for each of those two systems are particular or comprehensive. If they are particular principles, then you cannot hold two contradictory value systems that contain contradictions between them. Why? Because once you decided that health is the supreme value, then together with that you cannot also decide that money is the supreme value, because that can’t be—like the shell that penetrates every wall versus the wall that stops every shell. What happens when they meet? I fire a shell at a wall. The shell is a shell that penetrates all walls. And the wall is a wall that stops all shells. Now I fire this shell at that wall—what will happen? You won’t see. Do you know why you won’t see? Because there is no such thing. Either there is no shell that penetrates all walls, or there is no wall that stops all shells. There cannot be two such things. Okay? So that’s a logical contradiction, right?

[Speaker K] Or one of the things is not true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or both aren’t true, yes, that could also be. Although actually, by the way, it can’t be that both are false. One of them has to be true. Just fire all the shells at all the walls; whichever remains at the end is the one that exists. It must be—it’s a theorem. One must be true; they can’t both be false. So when I ask whether I can be committed to two value systems—and here you see I’m starting to get a bit closer to commitment versus commitment to Jewish law and conflicts and so on—so I ask, before the conflicts, is it possible at all? Is it even possible to be committed to two different value systems when there are conflicts between them? So I say: it depends.

[Speaker E] If I examine it, as you said before, and there is something foundational even between systems, then the answer is yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here, in my opinion, even without that. Why? And it will depend on whether I am talking about sweeping principles of value or particular principles of value. If I’m talking about particular principles of value—say there is system A and system B. In system A, the principles are A1 through A613. Fine? And in system B, the principles are B1 through however many—fifty—the principles of morality. Morality and Jewish law, as an example. Okay? And now I want to know whether I can be committed to both these systems when there are contradictions between them, situations in which there is conflict. I say: it depends. If I really based my commitment to system A on 613 particular principles, meaning principle A1 seems reasonable to me because of this, therefore I’m committed to it. Principle A2 likewise, A3, A4, A613. I went through them all like the nations did, right? What does it say? Those who wanted particular principles of value. Let’s check what it says, and every thing we’ll check whether it suits us or not. If they are particular principles of value, then a contradiction cannot arise. In fact, among the pious there can be a contradiction. So someone who adopts the Torah commandment by commandment, and keeps the Sabbath because it sounds right to him, and doesn’t eat pork because it sounds right to him, honors parents because it sounds right to him—everything is fine. In such a case, it cannot be that he will adopt a system that conflicts with that system, because he checked principle by principle and in each principle he decided that this is what seems right to him. So how do you adopt another principle which you also checked individually and it tells you the opposite? That can’t be. Can we have an example? Desecrating the Sabbath on the Sabbath, say—or morality, you know what, killing Amalek. A conflict between Jewish law and morality. Okay. Now if I accept the value of human life as a value in itself, not because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, but as a value in itself, then I have in effect decided that there is a prohibition, a taboo, against killing human beings. On the other hand, now I also want to know whether I can at the same time be committed to the moral system that says all human beings. Okay. Now if I examine principle by principle in the moral system, and principle by principle in the halakhic system, then it can’t be. I should have gotten stuck when I reached the principle that says it is forbidden to kill a person in any case, as against the principle that says one must kill Amalekites. I wouldn’t have been able to accept one of them. Apparently I’m going principle by principle; I’m accepting them one by one. So that can’t be. I cannot submit to a conflict with my own particular value system. But if the principle that obligates me to obey Jewish law is not the value of human life but the duty to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, then there is no problem. And I also think there is a duty to be a good person. There is no contradiction between them, and the conflict can emerge. Because the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, somehow causes me to do something that is not moral—what do I do? So precisely the pious, yes—the Jewish people, who accepted it by a sweeping principle of value, unlike the nations who accepted it by a particular principle of value—precisely they can be in conflict. Someone who accepts it on the basis of particular principles cannot be in conflict. Any principle that is contradictory he simply won’t accept, that’s all.

[Speaker B] No—

[Speaker G] He won’t accept it—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the peak or not at the peak, yes—important or not—if he does, from my perspective that’s called not accepting it.

[Speaker B] You’re not making a distinction that I think is very important and relevant in life, between absolute and—right now I’m assuming the value is absolute. But you know that isn’t true. Wait—even when I go buy a car, trunk size versus the beauty of the metallic paint or how comfortable it is for me—lots of different considerations, none of which is absolute.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That brings me back to the previous topic. The previous topic of establishing a hierarchy among values.

[Speaker B] Not hierarchy. I’m saying a value that I fulfill up to the level of the green—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know what you mean, but that’s what I was talking about there. When I say there is a hierarchy among values, what am I basically saying? That not all values are absolute. I’m basically saying this one has this intensity and that one has that intensity; not all values are total. You can rank them. So there I was talking about the non-absoluteness of values. Okay? But I’m building the puzzle step by step, so I’m saying: I discussed, within one value system, how you build a hierarchy among values. Now I’m beginning to talk about the relation between systems. At the moment I’m ignoring the hierarchy. In the end we’ll arrive at a situation in which there are two systems, and in each one there is also a hierarchy, and the question is whether there is a hierarchy between the two. Okay? So I’m simply trying to do it step by step. So right now I’m assuming all values are absolute. That isn’t true—I completely agree—but just for didactic purposes. So when I talk about a system of particular principles of value, I cannot be in conflict. Only if I’m talking about sweeping principles of value. Okay? And therefore now, ironically or absurdly, precisely because commitment to Jewish law is founded on a sweeping principle of value, precisely because of that conflicts can arise. Precisely because of that. Because if I accepted, like the nations, each and every commandment because it looked right to me, then obviously a system that tells me the opposite of one of them I simply would not accept. So I’m not in conflict. I’m in conflict only if I’m committed to both values in the dilemma. Okay? So precisely because there is a sweeping principle of value at the foundation, precisely because of that conflicts can arise. And now, of course, the question arises with even greater force: how do you solve them, once they’ve arisen? Okay? Meaning, someone who has no conflicts in his world doesn’t need to solve them. Let me give you maybe just one quick example: think about Reform Jews, for example, who try to make changes in Jewish law, sometimes for moral reasons. Fine? You can look at that in two ways. You can say: look at how their argument is structured. Their argument is built like this: look, the commandment actually presupposes such-and-such an assumption, but that is against morality, therefore we need to cancel it or change it or something like that. The question is whether their commitment to the system of commandments is a sweeping commitment, in which case they are basically saying: I need to obey what the Holy One, blessed be He, said, and this is what He said, so one must obey. Except that this doesn’t mean they can’t make their claim. Now your question comes in, because okay, but morality also obligates us. We’ll still talk about why, and whether it belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He, or not, but morality also obligates us, so maybe in the hierarchy between them we will determine—because it’s not an absolute value—we have to decide what is more important. That’s one argument. Just a second. The alternative argument, another possibility—and very often my feeling is that this is the case, though maybe not always—is that they are not committed to the system of commandments at all. They check the system of commandments the way the nations checked it there: what seems fine to me and what doesn’t. That means you’re not in conflict at all. It’s not that you change the commandment because I’m compromising, I have no choice, I’m in conflict and need to decide. There are people who are not in conflict. It simply isn’t binding because it isn’t moral, so there’s no problem. That’s an indication that the principle of value on which they are relying is a particular principle of value, not a sweeping one. They are basically not religious, or not committed in our sense—not committed to Jewish law. Okay?

[Speaker G] I think that if you ask them, they’ll say there’s a third option. That a large part of Jewish law is the Oral Torah, and they’ll say: listen, if you asked the Holy One, blessed be He, today, He would agree with us. They’re just—a conflict, precisely because there is a sweeping—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I haven’t gotten to that yet. You’re right; I’ll raise that option too, but when I talk specifically about Torah and morality. For now I’m only bringing it as an illustration of what I was talking about here, because right now I’m talking about the logic of the issue. In a bit we’ll get into Torah and morality; you’re right.

[Speaker G] You said the Reform?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s what they would say. I don’t know, maybe. But you’re right. Just as I think that even things they do believe in, it doesn’t seem that they all observe them either. My feeling is that halakhic commitment, even among Orthodox Jews—no, no, but there is something about it—I’m saying, these are all generalizations, all of them are generalizations. But halakhic commitment at its foundation seems to me often to be different there than it is for me. Not just the scope— which commandments yes and which no. Even for the commandments they do keep, there isn’t that exactness and that meticulousness that there is among people who are—but fine, maybe, okay.

[Speaker G] But for them, that’s what matters—the spirit of things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get there, I’ll get there to that option too, okay? All right, it’s eight-thirty now, so we—