Disputes – Lesson 5

Okay, I wanted to connect a little bit what we’ve been doing to today’s topic. It seems to me this isn’t in the homiletic sense, but it does connect to our subject. We’ve been dealing with disputes. I spoke a bit about the historical development of disputes, I mentioned different ways of looking at dispute. Last time I spoke about the meaning of the different opinions. Are both of them right, only one of them, yes, tolerance, pluralism, and all that. What I want to do now is go a bit into how an opinion is formed in the first place. In other words, why do different opinions arise? I’m not talking historically, but when two people argue, why is there really an argument, or why would there be one? The description in the Talmud, what Maimonides brings, from the Jerusalem Talmud, what Maimonides brings, that the students of Hillel and Shammai did not fully attend upon their teachers, and therefore disputes began. I spoke about this a bit, that the disputes became consolidated. I assume there were disputes earlier too, but they consolidated into two schools that disagreed with each other on many issues and somehow could not reach common ground, a mutually agreed solution, or a ruling. So the assumption is that people simply did not fully attend upon their teachers. In an ideal world, in an ideal state, there should not have been disputes. And then the question—which isn’t the whole question I’ve been dealing with until now, but part of it—is whether tradition is supposed to be a hollow conduit or whether it has some added value of its own with respect to the material it passes on, in this relay race from generation to generation. That question actually gets emptied of content in practice, because it’s an artifact. The fact that you’re not a hollow conduit is only because something went wrong. In other words, if the conduit had been built properly, then even if it weren’t hollow, everything would still pass through the same way. The assumption behind asking whether the conduit of tradition is supposed to be hollow or whether there is friction in it, whether it leaves its own imprint on the material it transmits, assumes that the result is supposed to depend on the person. In other words, the question is whether that is legitimate and how much we should try to neutralize it, but the assumption is that if we don’t neutralize it, the result really does depend on the person. But if the description in the Jerusalem Talmud and in Maimonides is correct, saying that this is only the result of deterioration, that people became less skilled, did not fully attend upon their teachers, forgot the material or the analytical tools or the Jewish laws themselves, the contents themselves—in any case, then a problem arose after the fact. In other words, okay, right now I have a problem: the material that reaches me is a product of the human being and not really what was given to Moses at Sinai. But that is a problem that arose after the fact. In principle, this issue shouldn’t have occupied us at all. True, once the problem arose, you have to deal with it, fine, that’s the situation. It doesn’t help that in an ideal state this wasn’t supposed to happen—we are not in an ideal state. Now the question is what to do about it. But I wasn’t speaking about it on the level of okay, what do we do with it, it’s a given, what do we do now. Rather, I asked whether we are prepared at all to see a Torah produced by human beings as Torah. Now what does it mean, a Torah produced by human beings? Obviously that assumes, in some sense, that if the person who produced it had been a different person, then the Torah produced might have been different. Otherwise it’s not really a Torah produced by human beings. If all human beings would produce the same Torah, then fine, you can say it was produced by human beings, but it doesn’t really matter. In the end that is the Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He—in other words, it doesn’t matter by what mechanism it came to our knowledge, whether it was this person or that person, it doesn’t really matter if everyone produces the same thing. So now I want to step one step back from the discussion we’ve had until now and ask ourselves: how are disputes actually created? Is it really some kind of historical malfunction? Is it only a problem like the Jerusalem Talmud describes—simply that’s what they say. Yes?

The Rabbi in the previous class first said that, like Rabbi Eliezer, he said to them, why, what room is there for analytical tools at all? You’re only a conduit—what are you going to analyze inside the conduit? No, I assume that clearly Moses did not pass on to future generations every single situation and every application that would ever arise. That’s simply not practical. He passed on the principles and the basic Jewish laws. Now the assumption is that the applications are something completely mechanical. In other words, the applications are just to take the Jewish laws we received and see where and how they apply, but in principle it should be universal, not dependent on the factor making the decision. Obviously Moses did not tell us what to do in every situation. So necessarily this is a Torah of people. No, not necessarily. No, think about it: suppose you have a computer. Okay? It doesn’t matter which computer performs the calculation; in the end, for the same input, the result will be the same output. It changes nothing. And assuming that… Isn’t that true in every case in the world? Yes, obviously. Unless there is some malfunction in the computer. What do you mean? Of course. Same software, same hardware, same input, same output. But if it’s the same hardware and the same software, that’s a hollow conduit. Exactly. But it’s not. Who says it isn’t? That’s exactly the question. After all, from the article the Rabbi himself brought—meaning, if Rabbi Eliezer says to them, in all your lives you never asked me, I would have told you it is impure—how do you know? What do you mean, we’d ask you and you’d say it is impure? Why? Now you’re taking me back to what I already discussed. I said I was stepping one step back. I’m now stepping one step back. I’m saying: everything we discussed until now assumed that tradition is not a hollow conduit. Now the question is: why is tradition not a hollow conduit? Is it a malfunction? In principle, was it supposed to be something universal that simply passes through, and it makes no difference through which people it passes? We just ran into some problem—decline of the generations, I don’t know, distortions were created, they did not fully attend upon their teachers, all kinds of things of that sort? Or is there really something subjective in our thinking, in our analysis, so that it is built in that different people will reach different results? Now according to Rabbi Yehoshua’s words there in the Talmud, it sounds like he holds that ideally the Torah should receive the subjective interpretation of… Yes, but the question is whether that is only a result of a situation that was created. A malfunction led to our producing different Torahs. Fine, now the question is what to do, so Rabbi Yehoshua says, okay, let’s turn it into an ideal. But it sounds, even though with Rabbi Eliezer it sounds like he passes it through a conduit. You’re saying if it was only a malfunction, then why do you care? Go ask Rabbi Eliezer—in his case there were no malfunctions, he knew exactly what was transmitted from previous generations. Possibly. Therefore, and this is really what I said in the previous sessions, there was somehow a simple assumption that this is not just a malfunction, but this is how it is and probably how it is supposed to be. The Holy One, blessed be He, created us as human beings, and apparently He had to take into account that we are different people with different thoughts, and we will reach different interpretive or applicative outcomes. But on the other hand, in the Jerusalem Talmud it somehow says they did not fully attend upon their teachers, and in Maimonides too it says they did not fully attend upon their teachers. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner already speaks about this issue, and his claim is that—I think he even brings some source in Maimonides; I didn’t check it now, I need to look again—that Maimonides himself hints elsewhere that there is something here that is in fact ideal, that this is not just some malfunction. And it may be that in a certain sense this malfunction improved the result rather than spoiled it. That can happen. I had a study partner in the past who would always say, whenever I offered a resolution to a difficulty of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, where Rabbi Akiva Eiger had remained with “requires further study,” he would say to me, fine, now you have two mistakes. In other words, Rabbi Akiva Eiger remained with a difficulty and “requires further study” on the Talmud, so he made one mistake, and if I resolved Rabbi Akiva Eiger, then clearly I didn’t know better than he did; at most I made an even number of mistakes and reached the correct result. In other words, I managed to explain the Talmud. In other words, sometimes the distortion can bring me to a better result, even though in origin it is some kind of distortion. You just have to make an even number of distortions. Yes, that’s of course by way of analogy. And every malfunction in a physics experiment brings you to new discoveries. Right, often—or even in the halakhic tradition—there is a textual corruption. I think I mentioned this time. There is Maimonides in the Laws of Hiring, I believe; Maimonides writes there—he discusses there the liability of a guardian if the animal entrusted to him for safekeeping caused damage. Yes? It says in the Talmud that the guardian is liable, meaning the guardian is considered like an owner. If I accepted responsibility to guard the animal, not to guard against the animal—in other words, not to guard so that the animal not damage others, but so that it not be damaged—the simple assumption in the Talmud is that one who guards the animal so that it not be damaged is also responsible that it not cause damage. You step into the owner’s place. And this is a big question why, after all you’re not the owner, and it should have to be “his property” and “its guarding is upon you,” but that is the Talmud’s simple assumption. Now in Maimonides it does not say that. In Maimonides it says the guardian is exempt. Maybe if they don’t catch the owner there is some note there, then perhaps yes, but in principle the guardian is exempt. So everyone comments that this goes against Talmudic passages. So the Maggid Mishneh suggests some resolution. Now when you look—when you look at the Kesef Mishneh on the other side of Maimonides, it brings that Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides said that his father said it was a scribal error. A scribal error—apparently a “not” fell into the law there. No, in Maimonides. In Maimonides the printer simply made a mistake, the poor typesetter. In other words, Maimonides intended to write what is in the Talmud, and a distortion crept in. But in the end, after the distortion occurred, the Maggid Mishneh found some explanation that reconciles it with the Talmud. So what do you do with that? True, if this distortion had not occurred, the Maggid Mishneh would not have thought of this idea and there would not have been such a method in Jewish law. The distortion happened—but once the distortion happened, the Maggid Mishneh is willing to stand behind it. In other words, so maybe Maimonides didn’t say it. Exactly. You can say that. Yes. So a method was created that would not have been created without the distortion. So that is, for example, a case that shows us that something which is essentially a distortion, not supposed to be a mistake—we try not to have printing errors. What? So now everything? No, that’s the cynical conclusion. But the real conclusion, if I take this explanation seriously, is that no, a method was discovered here that would not have been discovered had this distortion not occurred. We would actually have lost that method. You can decide not to rule like it, that doesn’t matter to me, but another halakhic method was discovered here, and only the distortion created it. I assume there are many such things, by the way. In the Talmud, many of the resolutions and all sorts of things among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim)—there are things like this in the Talmud where the Talmud says “say…,” remove “not,” reinterpretation—but then they give up, and no resolution is found. They usually say that when there’s no resolution. No, the Talmud says no, say “not.” Obviously, but that’s the reverse; it’s because they don’t find a resolution. If they found a resolution, they wouldn’t need to emend the text. They wouldn’t need the “something is missing here.” That’s proof that apparently not everything can be explained. If everything could be explained, we would never reach “something is missing here” and forced reinterpretations. But anything that can be resolved—is that considered to say it’s part of the ruling? Yes, that’s one possibility. You can say it’s part of the ruling? No, not part of the ruling—a halakhic method. The question is, if you don’t want to rule like it, then don’t rule like it. If it seems strained to you, no problem. But he found an interpretive channel that he, the Maggid Mishneh, is willing to stand behind, and still it wasn’t nonsense, okay? He found an interpretive channel that wouldn’t have been created if this error weren’t in the background. You can tell me it seems strained in the Talmud and therefore I don’t rule like it, but such a method does exist. In other words, such a possibility for interpreting the Talmud does exist. In class I can say it as one of the possibilities. Okay? That possibility would not have arisen if not for the mistake. So a possibility—you sort of created it, he looked for an answer, I don’t know, it’s as if… Right, but he’s willing to stand behind it, he says this is an option to interpret the Talmud this way. Wouldn’t you give a legal ruling if you found some opening? So he found an opening. That’s exactly the point. Why do I care what constraint caused him to find it—if it’s real, it’s real. If in the end—look, if the assumption is that there is some minimal intellectual honesty here—I can offer a strained resolution, but it has to hold water. You can’t just say, because that’s how it seems to me. Okay? So the conclusion is that the resolution holds water. The fact that you were forced into it is not enough; the resolution also has to stand. Okay? True, without the constraint I wouldn’t have reached it, but once the constraint exists I found a channel that otherwise I wouldn’t have thought of. By the way, sometimes we suddenly discover that this channel is actually very logical. It’s some option in the Talmud that maybe we wouldn’t have thought of without the pressure, because on first reading it doesn’t arise and there’s no reason to think again. But on second thought sometimes we can even discover that it is more logical than the first option. That can happen too. And then all the more so it could even become practical Jewish law. Even if not, on the conceptual level we see that another interpretive channel was created here that would not have been created without that mistake. Isn’t there some point where you can say, listen, this is too much? Of course there is. If the resolution is strained. If the resolution is strained, I won’t accept it even if it was created. I’m not saying we must now rule like the Maggid Mishneh. But you can say it in class, meaning as one of the options. Sometimes it will even be more logical than the other option, only we would not have thought of it if not for this distortion. Once it happened, suddenly we discovered a very interesting option. In other words, there are many cases in Maimonides where there are contradictions between Maimonides and the Talmud. Fine? The national sport is reconciling Maimonides, right? With the Talmud. He never writes like the Talmud. So our national sport is reconciling Maimonides with the Talmud. Now often, when you think well enough—the Jewish mind, as is known, is already well trained in these matters—after you think enough, suddenly you discover amazing options for interpreting the Talmud. You would never have imagined interpreting the Talmud that way. But once you hit on it, it’s a wonderful interpretation. Sometimes it is even more convincing than the interpretations you thought of at first. I’ve had several cases like that. But I would never have imagined saying such an interpretation if I hadn’t discovered that passage in Maimonides. Which, by the way, here is not a distortion; I’m only bringing it as an example of the mechanism. In other words, suppose it’s a distortion—it may be that this is the correct interpretation in Maimonides and that Maimonides really understood it that way. You discovered only the mechanism, though? Only the mechanism. You don’t have… because you don’t have feedback… I know from the Rabbi, even in “BeTa’ama DeKra,” that he brought there this Maimonides who rules not like the Talmud that appears in the Mishnah and in the Talmud… he brings it there, and really when you hear it, it’s more convincing. Than if you read the Talmud as it is, right? Even ask yourself if it’s correct or not correct—although it’s more convincing. It’s reasoning! So good—what’s wrong with reasoning? If it sounds better, it’s better! There’s nothing wrong with reasoning, except that if you have one line of reasoning and he has another, then there’s an argument. What’s missing here? Arguments in Jewish law? Right, fine, whatever. But if it seems good to me, I go with it. It’s not that you discovered truth. Why? I discovered the truth—so far as I’m concerned, that’s the truth. But I never really know. Is there anything on earth you can know that you have reached the truth? All truth is assessment. Before that he had a contradiction and always ran into it. But here the Rabbi brought… okay, never mind. No, I always have my own opinion; someone else can disagree—what can you do? That is always true. Therefore even if there is a distortion, it’s only because we worked it enough and managed to fit it into some algorithm showing that it works all the way through. No, the distortion was created independently of the algorithm. The distortion happened! Now I want to explain the distortion, and that creates the novelty. And suddenly it seems brilliant to you. One hundred percent. But you know, it’s like in every trial—both sides are one hundred percent convinced that they… No, but it seems logical to you. I’m not dealing with two sides; I’m dealing with myself. I’m alone in the world. Now I ask what the Jewish law is. And if after this distortion I discover some method I hadn’t thought of before and it sounds logical to me, I go with it, I rule like it. And if someone else disagrees with me, that can also happen without distortions—there are arguments even without distortions. One person thinks this way and another thinks differently. Can’t this lead to Reform? What? It’s a kind of Reform, everyone keeps coming and throwing out methods. You decide that’s Reform; I don’t call it Reform. Reform is not throwing out methods. Throwing out methods is simply interpretation; you can agree with it or disagree with it. Reform is not working within the framework of the methods at all. If you offer a different interpretation, and the opinions are wrong, the thoughts are wrong. Let’s argue whether it’s wrong or not. And without distortions you won’t reach wrong opinions? What do you do with every argument that exists without distortions? Plain arguments of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—there too there is a distortion? One of them is wrong, no? So the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua—what? Between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua? Maybe, in certain senses—unless it is only a solution to a malfunction that arose. If it is ideal from the outset, then maybe one reached one solution and the other another. Therefore arguments are not a result only of that. Arguments can arise without any distortions, and they arise abundantly even without distortions. There are arguments because people think differently. So what can you do? There are arguments—we argue, and in the end we are persuaded or not persuaded. We’ll manage. Obviously we won’t arrive at certainty. It is never possible to arrive at certainty. Whoever has certainty in this story, I think, is deceiving himself. But you have probability, and you go with it. That’s what we can do; we have no more than that.

So I return to our matter. Distortions can even produce things, positive results. This distortion described in the Jerusalem Talmud too—“they did not fully attend upon their teachers”—it may be that one can read the Jerusalem Talmud literally, because many people toil over this Jerusalem Talmud and over this Maimonides, trying to explain how dispute is still an ideal thing, as we saw in the Talmud with Yehoshua and Eliezer and in Chagigah 3 and all the Talmudic passages that idealize dispute. How do you reconcile that with this description that it is essentially the result of a malfunction, that they did not fully attend upon their teachers? So they come up with all kinds of reconciliations. But maybe you don’t need to look for reconciliations. Maybe the correct thing is that it is the result of a malfunction, and still that malfunction produced something that is itself positive. That can happen. The fact that it is the result of a malfunction and the fact that the result is positive do not contradict one another. Therefore, often—“Greece darkened the eyes of Israel,” and Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner likes to see this with regard to Hanukkah. Greece darkened the eyes of Israel, but in the end, as a result, disputes arose, the Talmudic method of analysis arose. He claims that the whole Oral Torah was essentially created from the encounter with Greek wisdom. And marvelous things were created, things we are only glad were created, even though everything came out of some struggle against the Greeks who darkened the eyes of Israel and tried to make us abandon our religion and forbade fulfilling commandments and studying Torah and all those things. In other words, many times—yes, the shtreimels were created from decrees. He says, so there are people who see something positive in that too. So today as well, okay, it was created by a decree, but now it has become an ideal after having been created by a decree. In other words, many times this is even a Jewish trait in a certain sense, this is our way of dealing with decrees—to turn the result into an ideal. But sometimes it is actually true. In other words, even though Jews are used to doing this, sometimes it’s also true. So in this case I think it is not certain that one needs to look for a reconciliation; rather, there is no contradiction. The fact that it is the result of people not having fully attended upon their teachers is true. But many times when you fully attend upon your teacher, you are a bit captive to your rabbi. If you know how to reproduce his exact mode of thought, then you essentially say exactly what he says, and ostensibly this is wonderful transmission: you are a hollow conduit, you pass on exactly what he passed to you, you transmit it onward, and the Torah passes on precisely. But a huge number of options that should have arisen will not arise that way. And therefore, obviously, you are not supposed to distort yourself in order to create options—that we do not do. But for that reason, the distortion is a distortion—in other words, it is a malfunction. But once the malfunction exists, very beautiful things may come out of it, as I told you once. My maggid shiur from Bnei Brak taught us tractate Sukkah. I told this story—he taught us tractate Sukkah. At that time the lectures of Rav Shmuel Rozovsky had not yet been published. He was a devoted student of Rav Shmuel Rozovsky. And at that time there still weren’t lectures, books, of Rav Shmuel Rozovsky. So fine, we studied tractate Sukkah. That same year the first volume of Rav Shmuel Rozovsky’s lectures came out, which was on Sukkah. The red ones, not the general lectures, the daily lectures. They were both red. The smaller ones, the daily lectures. In short, we look in the book, and the truth is—it was exactly the lectures he was giving us. It was embarrassing. In other words, he didn’t say it was in the name of Rav Shmuel; he was simply giving us Rav Shmuel’s lecture without saying so, as if it were his own lecture. Fine, we were embarrassed, debating what to do; in the end I decided to approach him and ask him anyway. I was the veteran of the group there, so I allowed myself. Listen, Rabbi—or “the Rabbi”—it’s uncomfortable, I mean, but Rav Shmuel’s lectures on Sukkah came out, you know? He said, no, no, I hadn’t heard that. And in truth your lectures are exactly what is written there. He looked at me—he was stunned. He said, listen, I haven’t seen Rav Shmuel’s lectures, and I didn’t learn Sukkah with him. I didn’t learn Sukkah with him at all. But what he is producing is exactly what Rav Shmuel said on the passage. I’m telling you, the resemblance was astonishing. It was literally one-to-one. And that is exactly students who fully attended upon their teachers. He attended on Rav Shmuel; he was attached to Rav Shmuel; he admired him. I made his year by telling him this, because he suddenly got feedback that he was thinking correctly. Everything he said was written in Rav Shmuel’s lectures. In other words, he didn’t need to learn Sukkah from Rav Shmuel; when he studied by himself, it also produced Rav Shmuel. Now from his standpoint, this was the pinnacle of happiness. I myself don’t quite agree—I think it’s somewhat problematic. But from his perspective, it was the pinnacle of happiness. Now that doesn’t mean I now have to distort my commitment to Rav Shmuel or try to disagree with him by force, just so as not to agree with him. No, on the contrary: if he is a great Torah scholar and you agree with him, go with it. I’m not claiming he did anything wrong. But the result was problematic. The result was problematic because he did not discover options he could have discovered. And he did not discover them because he was attached to his rabbi’s method. Therefore, on the one hand it’s a malfunction—we are not supposed to create that malfunction from the outset—but on the other hand, these malfunctions produce things that are positive things. And what does that really mean? Many times a person who fully attends upon his teacher, especially in the Eliezerian ideology—Rabbi Eliezer, yes?—which says that we are supposed to be a hollow conduit, is a person who, even if he is not built like his teacher—and I assume there were differences between my maggid shiur’s natural mode of thought and Rav Shmuel’s mode of thought. It’s not that by nature he was born exactly like Rav Shmuel, thinking like Rav Shmuel; he just happened to land in his class. But the truth is that had he learned with Rav Yankel he would have turned out the same, because that’s just who he is. That’s not so, right? Clearly he bent himself toward Rav Shmuel and tried to build his analytical tools and thought tools exactly like Rav Shmuel. And therefore that’s how it came out. So to a certain extent he bent himself a little for this to happen. And in that sense, this is Rabbi Eliezer’s ideology. And what I really want to argue is that here there may indeed be some distortion, because you do not need to bend yourself. In other words—and here it’s an ideological dispute—you do not need to bend yourself. I, for example, do not learn at all like he did. But what are you talking about? Arguments—they’re fine, but all that I learned, I learned from him. And we agree on almost nothing. In other words, and still, in my opinion, everything I say is from him. I once spoke about this with Rabbi Kook’s eulogy for the Sochatchover. He wrote to the author of the Sochatchover the eulogy, and he wrote there that Rabbi Eliezer—I said this here—Rabbi Eliezer, about whom it was said that he did not say things that no ear had ever heard, and on the other hand it says that he never said anything he had not heard from his teacher. So Rabbi Kook says there that he heard from his teacher things that no ear had ever heard, and it seems to me that even his teacher had not heard them. In other words, this is absolutely true. Anyone who has studied with someone that intensively, I think, knows that experience. I heard from him things that he himself does not agree with, but he said them. I insist that it appears in him. He said it, my maggid shiur. In other words, even though he himself doesn’t agree. Because there is something in my ear that heard it from what he said. I really think it is there. Now, he is not only the speaker, he is also the listener. So as a listener he is different from me as a listener. Even if we hear the same speaker, our result is different because the listeners are different. Do you understand? In other words, he hears himself and understands differently from how I understand him. Okay, that’s just…

Well, it’s interesting—I once spoke about Ron Aharoni’s book, “The Cat That Isn’t There,” which I mentioned once. He talks there—he tries to define philosophy, and he claims that all philosophy is a confusion between subject and object. In other words, all philosophical issues—he goes through them one by one. All the issues of philosophy are one big fallacy. And exactly the same fallacy. The fallacy in which the philosopher essentially fails to distinguish between himself as object and himself as subject. When I think about how I think, I appear here in two roles. I am the subject matter being thought about, and I am the thinking agent. All this circularity. Yes, yes, and therefore he claims that from this come all the issues of philosophy down to the last one. All of them. Rashi, etc.? Not important now—it’s a bit complicated, and I’m not even sure I agree, but that’s his claim. It applies here too, and it’s an important point, because here too I really allow myself to argue with him about the meaning of what he himself says. Truly. It’s not a homily. Completely real. I think I’m right and he is wrong. I interpret him more correctly than he interprets himself—my maggid shiur. Why? Because when he interprets himself, he hears what he says. He interprets himself—he is the subject. I speak about him as an object. What is written in what he said? Not what is written, but what is the meaning of what he says. And here, in my ear, I hear other meanings. Agnon once said—do you want to hear Kurtzweil? Yes? Yes, yes—when they asked him, what did you mean? And I completely, completely agree. In my eyes it’s not a joke. It’s reality. He’s right. And that’s exactly it. Many things the author doesn’t intend. Yes, yes, there are. But those things are within the words even though the author doesn’t know it. Kurtzweil found in Agnon things that Agnon himself did not know were there. What? Not only did he not know; he opposed it. He may even oppose it; it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. And it’s true. It’s not this postmodern notion that says you have no authority and it isn’t yours and do whatever you want with interpretation. No, this is the true interpretation. Is it subconscious, sort of? Subconscious or hidden. When you analyze yourself, many times you don’t understand yourself correctly. For example, there are people—and now I’m going a bit far—but there are people who are committed to morality. In my opinion, it is impossible to be committed to morality without believing in God. My personal opinion. Now, how do I explain an atheist who is committed to morality? I claim that this is an atheist who doesn’t understand himself. He actually believes in God and is simply not aware of it. Then, when you back him into a corner, he invents all sorts of answers for you: no, no, I don’t believe in morality at all, it’s just convenient for me to act this way; I act this way because it feels good to do good or unpleasant to do evil. All the theories come out of that. From the denial of some intuition. Not conscious denial, but a lack of understanding of what really lies behind your behavior. And many times when a person tries to interpret himself, he gets pushed into awkwardness because he doesn’t understand what really… If I presented him with this option, he would thank me. Sometimes even if I present him with this option, he won’t thank me because he isn’t willing to accept such a thesis. It seems mystical to him—what is God? I don’t believe in such a thing. If you say such a thing to an atheist, he will never admit it. But on the other hand, if you manage to persuade him that this doesn’t fit with moral commitment, then he’ll have to invent something, because he doesn’t want to give up morality—he is committed to morality—but he isn’t willing to believe in God because that’s primitive. So what does he do? He explains to you that morality is social agreement; morality is just that I feel like behaving morally; it’s not commitment at all, I just happen to enjoy behaving this way. And why do you judge others? Because I happen to enjoy judging others—and all kinds of excuses that, to me, are absurd. But they all stem from the fact that a person does not understand himself, at best. Sometimes he’s simply fooling me and himself. But I’m saying, sometimes it’s sincere; sometimes I think he really doesn’t understand himself all the way. Not necessarily—maybe you know, once you said that nothing is necessary. But it’s like laws. Fine, perhaps it would be worth asking the legislator what he intended? There’s no point asking him. What he wrote, what was written, is what exists. No, that’s a question of interpretive ideology in law. You can discuss why indeed—whether to ask the legislator or not ask the legislator. Ostensibly, if the rationale of the law is what determines, then once the law is enacted it is now subject to others’ interpretation. Fine, because in your ideology or your legal theory, the legislator is not the authority; the law is the authority. Fine, we can discuss whether that makes sense, doesn’t make sense, why they do that—the context matters. But in philosophy, when I want to know what someone thinks, I want to know what he thinks, not what he wrote. So when I want to know what he thinks, ostensibly I should ask him—but no, sometimes I will interpret him better than he interprets himself. Because I’m looking from outside. There is a certain advantage to an outside perspective. Of course there are disadvantages too, but I’m saying sometimes there is something you can grasp from outside. You know, there was a debate at the beginning of anthropology—a major debate—about whether you are supposed to assimilate into the tribe you are studying, live with them and understand from the inside how the whole thing works, how they think, how they relate to things; or on the contrary, sit on the hill above with binoculars—like in tanks, yes, the binoculars—and record the facts scientifically, not entering at all into the subjective dimension and maintaining scientific distance. Now I think neither side is absurd. In other words there is… I think that if you could go inside and still maintain distance, that would be best. I don’t know how possible that is; it may be possible. I think to a certain degree it is. But it’s true—there are these two sides. Sometimes from outside you grasp better, and sometimes you miss something, because something understood from within cannot be understood from outside. Thinking outside the box—there are people who only think outside the box. Yes, thinking outside the box, but outside your own box.

So the claim, really, if I now return to our subject—I stepped back one step and now I’m bringing it back—is that human beings are indeed different. And when they fully attended upon their teachers in that supposedly ideal state, when they fully attended upon their teachers and there were no disputes—that was a distortion. Because people bent themselves to their rabbis. That was Rabbi Eliezer’s ideology, in my opinion, because people were different; they are always different. People were not once all the same and then suddenly became different—that is not the process. People were different. What do you mean? In other areas of life, not in the area of Torah, I assume there were arguments then as well. So why in Torah, until they fully attended upon their teachers, did everyone agree? Because everyone was Rabbi Eliezer. Because everyone was the kind of person who bends himself to his rabbi, some kind of ideology of a hollow conduit, yes, exactly. Right? So they fully attended upon their teachers, and fine, they did it properly, they were careful not to distort anything, they fully attended upon their teachers, until the distortion happened and suddenly they no longer fully attended upon their teachers. So what happened then? Then you no longer know what your teacher says, because you did not fully attend upon him; you are not completely attached to him. So what do you do? You say what you think. And then what happens? Disputes arise. Because each one is different. Disputes arise, but these disputes reflect something real. Because who says your teacher is right? After all, there are different ways of thinking that lead to different conclusions, and these are genuinely possible conclusions. So this distortion—that they did not fully attend upon their teachers—actually took the Torah out from confinement into expansiveness, even though it was ostensibly the result of a distortion. Liberation from commitment to the rabbi often enriches the Torah rather than constricting it. And this is a very delicate art. When you study with him, then be attached to him. I agree that for a certain period you need to cling to him. But with the goal that little by little you will build yourself and stand on your own understanding. And from then on, do what you think. I only think that to do it wildly, that’s not advisable, because you still need to shape it through someone skilled. This is the meaning of tradition. The meaning of tradition is not to pass things along as-is in a hollow conduit. The meaning of tradition is to shape your method carefully, out of connection to everything that came before you—not to copy what came before you, but yes, to generate it. In other words, I say things I heard only from my rabbi. I say only things I heard from my rabbi, or could have heard from my rabbi. I didn’t learn everything from him, but obviously what I say and what my rabbi says will not be the same thing. It’s a very delicate business, this open tradition. In other words, to be committed to the previous stages of the tradition, and at the same time to be authentic—to be committed also to yourself, not to be artificially subordinated to the previous stages. And then what comes out of this is that indeed the stage we dealt with until today—today I stepped one step back and now I return—is really an ideal stage. The fact that there are different opinions is not a malfunction. It may be the result of a malfunction, but it itself is not a malfunction. Rather, different people think in different ways. And since the Holy One, blessed be He, created us—yes, one who sees the population of Israel recites “Blessed is the Wise One of secrets”—the Holy One, blessed be He, created us different, apparently not for nothing. Apparently each person has some capacity to grasp things differently from the way someone else grasps them. Therefore we are not supposed to give up our authenticity, except perhaps temporarily until we become formed, until we learn—there certainly, yes, you need to; one shouldn’t do it too early. But yes, with the goal that ultimately this is what will happen. Therefore disputes among sages, once they are already formed—I’m talking about Torah scholars who are already formed—then of course they need to say what they think. And when they say what they think, disputes arise, because people who are built differently think differently. They say different things.

Now, this result is not only a function of how you are built, of course, but also of your environment. In the end, your environment is rooted in you; it affects how you are built. What you are built from is the sum of many things: genetics, environment, education, home, society, all kinds of things. Biography—what you happened to encounter. Someone else happened to encounter different things, so maybe he formed a bit differently. And of course also your judgment. In the end we are not deterministic machines. So there is your judgment, but still it lies within some framework that differs from someone else’s. Therefore we can reach different results. But maybe—the Jerusalem Talmud does express criticism of the… It treats it as something not good, that they did not fully attend upon their teachers. So maybe the Jerusalem Talmud adopted Rabbi Eliezer’s method, and fine, the Rabbi is going with Rabbi Yehoshua’s method—that’s perfectly fine—but that’s not the Jerusalem Talmud’s method. Fine, I don’t know whether that is the correct interpretation of the Jerusalem Talmud or not. I need to look again at the Jerusalem Talmud to see whether it must be that it is indeed said there critically. I don’t know. But it is a factual description. It is true; it happened when they did not fully attend upon their teachers. The factual description is true. The question is whether there is also a value judgment there—I don’t remember. I’ll look it up, I can check it. Because in Maimonides himself there are expressions both ways. In Maimonides himself it really looks like a contradiction. Because he brings it, and on the other hand there are places where it seems that he does see it as something ideal. Wait, so the ideal is that there is dispute? I’m trying to understand. Is the ideal what was at the beginning, where there was supposedly really one opinion and one way, or… No. Ostensibly, and that is the truth. If we are aiming for truth… No, absolutely not. The ideal is that the Torah pass through people and be colored by their colors. And there you are—the colors are different colors. Again, the principles are the same principles, but each person hears something different in those principles. Everyone interprets by general and specific rule, but there is a dispute over the result. Why? Because I apply that very same principle as you do, but since I am the one applying it, it comes out differently. There is no such thing as two people who think exactly alike. It almost never happens, by the way. When you read carefully, for example, writings of later authorities, there are medieval authorities and later authorities, the most classic things possible—there are no two who formulate it in the same way. It almost never happens. Ostensibly they say the same thing, but if you are sensitive to nuances and you check very carefully, there are always differences. In other words, it is almost nonexistent that there is really the exact same formulation, the same foundations, the most classic things—migo, argumentative force—all the later authorities repeat the same thing, each one says it differently. Because those are the rules, Rabbi, not the result. Only the tools, the derivatives. In other words, of course there will be endless disputes. But in mathematics that couldn’t happen. Why? Because I said Torah is not mathematics. Right, because Torah is not mathematics, so that is true. No, not that it’s true—I didn’t say it’s true. Rabbi, you can say that with respect to truth there is “these and those are the words of the living God.” Truth is a more flexible truth. We spoke about this. I already said that in the end, the sides are certainly both right. The balancing of the sides—there I think there is only one truth, in the balancing, in my personal opinion. But that is exactly the explanation of “these and those are the words of the living God.” Yes, but even there the explanation is not fully convincing, because it’s true that it applies to the whole complex of considerations—they are playing with the same considerations. But in the end it’s like two pharmacists compounding—this one eighty-twenty, I don’t know, seventy-twenty-ten, and the other seventy-five-ten-fifteen. In dosage there is an error—only one is right. Fine, in the dosage of the considerations, in the end it’s not mathematical. No, then it isn’t true. But if you’re talking about the considerations—if you don’t weigh the Maggid Mishneh’s reasoning because it doesn’t exist, then even if you would have decided in its favor had you known it, you won’t get there because it doesn’t exist. So first of all you have to know his reasoning, his consideration. Does it carry great weight? Should one rule that way or not? That’s another question, I don’t know. But the consideration is, in a certain sense, a real consideration, with some weight. Fine? You have to discuss what that weight is. Rabbi, when a pharmacist compounds medicine, it has to hit exactly. One hundred percent. And when a halakhic decisor rules, it also has to hit exactly. But he has nothing to hit exactly, because there is one dosage that is right and the other dosages are not right. He has something to hit—it is exactly like the pharmacist. In my claim, it doesn’t happen. What? It can’t happen. Obviously, because one is right and one is wrong. What does that mean in practice? In practice, one is always right and one is wrong. We have no way—we don’t ask the Holy One, blessed be He—we do not know who is right and who is wrong. We have rules for what to do when there is a dispute. And even when you ask, He says, it’s not Me, it’s you. At least we say in His name that He says not in My name. We say that too. The Talmud says. Because that shows that this is true only about the derivatives, only about the method of calculation—not the truth itself. Because if the Holy One, blessed be He, says the Jewish law follows Rabbi Eliezer, and they say to Him, listen, but “follow the majority”—because that is the mechanism by which decisions are made. True, only the decision-making mechanism. The result doesn’t matter. It’s not true that the result doesn’t matter. Of course the result matters. The mechanism for making decisions overrides the problem of the halakhic mistake. Okay, so I brought the Derashot HaRan once. Derashot HaRan asks: how can you require a rebellious elder to obey the Sanhedrin if he has reached a legal conclusion—after all, he knows it is a mistake? You require him to dull his soul with a transgression just because of “do not turn aside”? So he says yes, because “do not turn aside” overrides. And that doesn’t mean the Sanhedrin are right. No. He is right; at least in his own view he is sure he is right. But the value of obeying the Sanhedrin and not breaking the framework of “do not turn aside” overrides the value of doing the truth. Here too I say the same thing. The Holy One, blessed be He, was right; Rabbi Eliezer was right as far as the Jewish law is concerned. “It is not in heaven” is a rule of how to rule. And what is the truth? The truth is Rabbi Eliezer—that is clear. The Holy One, blessed be He, said Rabbi Eliezer was right. But what is more important to the Holy One, blessed be He, is that we go after our understanding and after the majority opinion than that we go after the truth. Not because there is no truth. Fine, but all these are discussions we’ve already had here.

So what comes out is that people’s opinions are formed in light of their personality, their circumstances, their environment, and so on. Now something very interesting happens here. There are many people who think—at least ideologically, again, these are Rabbi Eliezer-types—they think that this is bias. My personal inclinations are bias, something one should try to neutralize. They know you cannot completely neutralize it—we are human beings—at least the more sober among them. But at least on the ideological level they say that we should neutralize this as much as possible. Fine? And I want to argue no. You should not neutralize your personal inclinations, your a priori approach. Be subject to… That’s exactly the question. To leave the Talmud, say, or the medieval authorities, I don’t know. Fine, the question is where you draw the line of what counts as something without bias. Were the medieval authorities not bias? Apparently they weren’t human beings. But fine—no, the meaning… You can think of it as two interpretations. The meaning of the intention is to avoid biases and cling to what was said before us. Yes, okay. No, to avoid bias in the sense of emotional biases—that I also agree with. In other words, impulses—work with your head. That I agree with. But often people understand that when you have an opinion, that itself is bias. In other words, you should try to understand what Rabbi Akiva Eiger or the Mishnah Berurah said, not what you think. And what you think is bias. Fine? Now I claim no. As a continuation of this same point, I claim that this… Wait, and what was Rabbi Akiva Eiger supposed to do? Ah yes, he too was supposed to leave himself aside—and of course that’s what he did, because Rabbi Akiva Eiger is Rabbi Akiva Eiger, so that’s what he did. We are the ones with biases; he wasn’t. He was only engaged in interpretation. The claim is—I understand what people are saying. There are rabbis who come and say… No, you’re talking about the question of awareness. I’ll get to that in a moment. To what extent are you aware of this, since in truth no one really does it. Even those who want to clean out the biases—no one really does it. Obviously everyone rules according to what he thinks. Except that the rabbi of the… what? In the end he too does what he thinks. True, he worked at being very close to Rav Shmuel as an ideology in this matter. But people do do what they think, and it’s not… The issue is they are not aware. And that is one of the great problems of our generation. In previous generations people did the same thing as in this generation, but they were not aware. People were sure, on the level of consciousness, that they were adding nothing of their own. And it’s clear—look, it’s written in Maimonides. I’m only telling you what Maimonides says. I’m not… Oh, does someone else think differently from you? Fine, then he’s probably wrong. But I’m telling you, it’s obvious, that’s what is written in Maimonides. It’s Maimonides, not me. But today we have reflexivity; we are more sophisticated. We already understand that interpretation is obviously involved. Postmodernism of course helps a lot with this, but we don’t need it for this. It’s obvious that such a phenomenon exists. One needn’t exaggerate its importance, but it exists. In other words, it’s clear that we have some whole cluster of characteristics, parameters, ways of thinking, influences—that a person is a pattern of the landscape of his birthplace. The question “what do I think?” is the question “who am I?” not “what do I think?” The “I” includes everything they call biases—all this whole business, this whole complex, that is me. And if this whole complex reached a certain halakhic conclusion, then that is the halakhically correct conclusion for me. Why should I remove myself from myself? In other words, that’s me. It doesn’t matter that the self is made up also of influences—influences from outside, influences from inside, social influences—it doesn’t matter. Everything is fine. In other words, as long as it is me, and with that I approach the text honestly, as much as I can, and I interpret. Except that today I am already sophisticated, and today I already understand where I’m coming from and what my influences are, because we are already used to looking at ourselves too. That didn’t exist in the past. Then all sorts of problems arise, and I think this is one of the reasons people cling to precedents today more than they once did. The reason is ironic. Precisely because in the past they weren’t aware that this was their interpretation and not Maimonides’, they weren’t troubled. What they thought was simply Maimonides. Ah, I didn’t do anything; it’s simply Maimonides. So he has no problem, no sense of distress that he isn’t clinging to some precedent that explained Maimonides this way or that way. It is simply Maimonides, period. And Maimonides is of course Moses our teacher, and Moses our teacher is the Holy One, blessed be He, so in the end what I am doing is the Holy One, blessed be He—it’s obvious. We are all hollow conduits; it never was and never existed, but that was the consciousness. Now modern consciousness, and certainly postmodern consciousness—we are already aware of this. We know that a person is a pattern of the landscape of his birthplace. And then what happens is that the hysteria of caution begins, of bias. The concept of bias comes from there. Bias not, again, in the sense of impulses. Bias in the intellectual sense—in other words, remove yourself from the interpretation. Not your real impulsive biases, your drives, but move your reasonings aside. You don’t want to… I want to see what the precedents are. I want to see what that one said and what that one said. I don’t start from the question what seems right to me. For many halakhic decisors that is almost not a relevant question. And why? Why did decisors of the past do it? Not because they were braver, but because they were less aware. The decisors of today are more aware, and therefore they are careful not to insert themselves. If the decisors of the past had been aware that they were inserting themselves into the matter, they too would have been careful. And I want to claim that both these and those are mistaken. In the end, I am aware that I am inserting myself, and it is perfectly okay that I am inserting myself. When you act out of honesty? Yes, yes. We’ll talk—not bias in the impulsive sense, as I said. Honesty in the sense of what I really think. Creativity will certainly have an effect, so try to clean that out as much as you can. We all try, fine, no one guarantees it completely. There is someone more refined, let’s call it so—Moses our teacher, great figures—whose reasonings are presumably much cleaner. Okay, we can discuss that now. It may be that you should follow him—that’s already also a question of the value of autonomy—but yes, I’m willing to accept that argument. At the conceptual level right now, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not talking about the question of autonomy—whether to follow a known rabbi or to follow myself. What am I looking for? I’m not looking for what he said; I’m looking for what is correct. Okay, I’m saying: suppose there is a cleaner idea and a less clean idea—you know, from someone, say—then follow the cleaner one. Follow the cleaner one even if the other person’s reasoning sounds much better? No, it depends who I am. If I am capable, then I don’t go after either of them; I do what I think. But if I want to choose a rabbi and follow what he said, then I suggest choosing the cleaner one. Sounds simple to me. Two different things. Therefore, if I’m already at the point where I decide for myself that I am capable, then when I hear rabbis, I hear them and want to discuss their words, but I do not hear them as sources of authority. So why should I care who is clean and who isn’t? About this we spoke in previous classes, that after they deposed Rabban Gamliel, three hundred benches were added to the study hall. Why? Because Rabban Gamliel used to check: anyone whose inside is not like his outside should not enter here. He wanted to check the people, whether their inside was like their outside, whether they were clean. Why did Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, who was appointed nasi in his place, add three hundred benches? He didn’t check the people—what did he care? Why should he care whether they are clean or not? State your arguments and I will consider them on their merits. I’m not relying on you. If I need to rely on you, then I need to make sure you are clean. But if you are only raising possibilities for me—on the contrary, the dirtier you are, the more options you’ll raise for me, metaphorically speaking of course. Raise as many possibilities as you can for me. We saw before that people who did not fully attend upon their teachers raise possibilities I wouldn’t have thought of. I would bring them into the study hall, into the very center of the pot, I’d bring them in. Why? So that they raise more possibilities for me, and then I can weigh them and make decisions, because I do not treat them as a source of authority. I treat them as those who raise options I might not have thought of, so that’s excellent. The further someone is from me, the greater the chance he’ll raise an option I didn’t think of. Very often, by the way, you hear this. People who are complete ignoramuses—if you want to hear options you would not have thought of, go to ignoramuses. Go to ignoramuses and take them seriously. It’s a little hard sometimes, but really. Because sometimes you’ll hear things you wouldn’t have thought of. Stop for a moment and see that it isn’t foolish. There is something there you’re not thinking about. Laymen, nonsense, people don’t listen to them… Sometimes that’s true too. But I’m saying that sometimes you’ll hear things there that you wouldn’t have thought of. This has happened to me not infrequently in the past; I even told a little about some such cases.

Why am I saying all this? Because it basically means that Torah, in its essence—again, independent for the moment of the question what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended, that’s another question—but in the end, like a hammer that shatters rock, in the end it passes through you and takes on a different form. And all these forms, this whole range, in the end is Torah. You don’t need to clean out anything. And I need to do what I think, and you need to do what you think—let’s say, assuming we have already reached the level of halakhic decision and everything is fine. Now the next stage—and I noted this one of the previous times—is that from the academic perspective, this is exactly what they look for. From the academic perspective, what they ultimately look for is: what produced the opinion of a sage or of a certain school? What was the context? Who influenced whom? What were the pressures? What was this? Now the standard apologetics says: what are you talking about? They were ministering angels, heavenly seraphim; they were influenced by nothing. And to me that is the opposite of ministering angels, because to me a human being is someone who is influenced. A human being who is not influenced is not a human being. On the contrary, you must be influenced. Torah must come out of the influence of the world. “The Torah was not given to ministering angels”—that is what is written. Torah has to be made by human beings and not by ministering angels. But that is the standard apologetics: what are you talking about? They were not influenced by hardships, or atmosphere, or desires, or ideologies—only some pure calculating machine. Why did disputes arise? I don’t know; ask the people who say this. I have no idea. There was a bug, I don’t know. Yes. In any event, they didn’t really get into that. But this is the apologetics against the academic contextual approach. Why does this defensiveness arise? It arises because the subtext, the assumption in the background, is that if this ruling is indeed the product of the landscape of the decisor’s birthplace, of his environment, of his personality and so on, then it is not Torah. Then it’s bias, then it’s a problem. So I paint for myself some picture that no, he was free of bias. Again, bias not in the impulsive sense, but free of bias in the sense that he wasn’t a specific personality at all; he was a general personality. Yes, one can hear sayings like that. That’s the apologetics. Now I claim the concern is justified, but what people do because of that concern is not justified. In other words, I want to claim that people, including the medieval authorities, were patterns of the landscape of their birthplace, were human beings like me and you. They could of course also make mistakes—that even more so—but leave mistakes aside for a moment. They formed an opinion the way human beings form an opinion. And that is a Torah opinion, because a human opinion is a Torah opinion. It is not the opinion of an angel. “It is not in heaven.” That is exactly the point. “It is not in heaven” means that Torah is a human position. And human beings are patterns of the landscape of their birthplace. You cannot get rid of that even if you want to, and apparently you also don’t need to get rid of it. On the contrary, if you live in a certain society it influences you—excellent. So what you need to rule is what you need to rule according to what you are. And it doesn’t matter that in another society people see this as bad influences of your society. That doesn’t interest me.

So that’s one side. On the other hand, if you take this all the way, this academic perspective—I brought the example of the Crusades, I think I mentioned it one of the previous times—then it turns out there are no disputes at all. There are no real disputes. Because say, in the example of the Crusades, the sages of Spain, Maimonides and the sages of Spain, were more lenient in the laws of sanctifying God’s name and life-saving. In other words, they prohibited being killed where one is not required to be killed—not in the three most severe transgressions—“anyone who kills himself in such a case is liable for his own life,” as Maimonides writes his famous formulation: one who kills himself over a transgression that is not one of the three severe ones is liable for his own life. Now Tosafot and the sages of France were more stringent in life-saving—or more permissive, depending how you look at it. But they said yes, yes, give up your life wherever you can, blessed are you. Not required, but blessed are you. If you do it, that’s excellent, and certainly it is permitted and even desirable. Okay, that’s it. Whether this is lenient or stringent is the same question. No—if they only permit it and don’t require it, then it can’t be stringency but rather a transgression. That’s already a question of leniency and stringency, what we once discussed, what leniency means. We discussed leniency as meaning there are more options, not that it is easier. But if you look at it from a research perspective, then from that perspective what scholars are basically telling us—and I think there’s a lot of sense in it—is that the sages of France lived in the stormy period of the Crusades, and they, Tosafot, had to erect a fortified wall against those threats and the killings and the slaughters that were going on there, with self-sacrifice to the very end, even over a shoelace, over everything. Fine? Now the sages of Spain lived in a different environment—let’s say maybe not ideal, but calmer, okay? Therefore there they acted in a more moderate way. Now if I take this one step further, it basically means there is no dispute at all between Tosafot and Maimonides. It’s entirely a question of the environment in which you operate. Now I want to know what the Jewish law is. What does it mean, what is the Jewish law? I go to the passages and check who is right, Maimonides or Tosafot, and which reasoning is more correct, and who has proofs and who doesn’t. But this is not relevant at all. What I need to check is whether the period in which I live and operate resembles the Crusades. Then I should say like Tosafot, because even Maimonides, if he had lived there, would have said like them. Because after all, a person is a pattern of the landscape of his birthplace, so if he had lived there, that is what he would have said. And the fact that he said something different is only because the environment was different and the influences were different. But if Tosafot had lived there too, they also would have said so. So then it turns out there are no real disputes in Jewish law. I am of course presenting this in an extreme way, but conceptually, if you take it all the way, it comes out that there are no disputes in Jewish law. Because what comes out is that given the pattern or environment in which a certain decisor operates, I can tell you what the ruling will be. It doesn’t depend on the decisor at all—anyone who was there would rule the same way. But then it turns out that when I want to know how to act, I need to look not at what the decisor said, but at the environment in which he lived. If my environment resembles that of Tosafot, I will rule like them. If it resembles that of Maimonides, I will rule like him. Now you can check if someone in the same neighborhood spoke differently from him. Doesn’t matter—it’s the same neighborhood, so your environment is because of the family, not because of the Crusades. So you have a different family. It doesn’t matter. I’m obviously taking this to an extreme, but conceptually it is always the result of something else that influenced you. But there are many disputes between people who grew up in completely the same reality. No, no, there is no completely the same reality. Therefore the question is always what causes the differences. But sometimes they can be very small things. Identical twins have the same genetics. Not only did they grow up in the same reality—they have the same genetics—and they behave differently. Esau and Jacob. Yes. So in today’s TheMarker there was a petition to the Supreme Court under the Freedom of Information law. They wanted to know, about all the senior officeholders in the country—senior people in the Ministry of Justice, the police commissioner, the attorney general—which newspapers they subscribe to and read. Which newspapers they read. And why? Because they say it affects a person’s judgment. If the attorney general reads Haaretz, he thinks X; if he reads Makor Rishon, it’s something else. And in fact it turned out—it turned out all kinds of things. They got the information? They did. They printed the information today. There is a very interesting distribution of who reads what. I have to see that, it’s interesting. There is a very interesting distribution. I only saw it in the headlines this afternoon. What? Subscriptions? What? There are subscriptions—you can often be subscribed through work, others in public service—I don’t know whether it’s office subscriptions. No, no, no, home subscriptions. No, that’s what they’re talking about. Yes, but if they read at home. No, that’s what they’re talking about. Fine, interesting. That sounds like something interesting to read. In any event, nowadays it’s all online anyway. Today nobody reads Haaretz or this one in print; he just reads Ynet on the computer. I have no idea how many people still buy newspapers. In any case, the fact that they read newspapers, the fact that they buy newspapers, already says something about them—they’re probably computer-disabled like me. Anyway, it’s an example. If one is a Mitnaged and another a Hasid, even though they grew up in the same territory and area. And you see two people living next to each other, and one can be a Mitnaged… No, but in a different community, come on… No, no, no—but it’s not geography. But I explained that neighborhood and area are not enough. One was rich and one was poor; one was smart and one was less smart—that is probably the difference there. But it raises the thought—you say who, how, what environment… I’m saying this is of course extreme, but conceptually, if you take the contextual research approach all the way, in the end it turns out there are no disputes. The whole question is the context. And then what happens is really a kind of banalization of learning. Not banalization? Like those answers that things changed and therefore we need to do… So no problem, fine, but there too I would say the same thing. I did say the same thing, not only would I say it. But the point I want to make is that circumstances, in the end, may not generate the position by themselves, but they certainly contribute to the position that is formed. Obviously there is also judgment. They contribute to the position that is formed, and therefore statistically it is obvious that in different environments different positions will emerge. And still, I think I evaluate those positions as what they are, not according to the circumstances. In other words, in my apologetics against the research approach, I do not claim they were angels and were not influenced by their environment. They were certainly influenced by their environment. And I agree that Tosafot radicalized their views because of the Crusades, and that the sages of Spain were more relaxed because there were no such great troubles there. I completely agree. And it does not interest me. It does not interest me because in the end, as I said with the Maggid Mishneh, in the end they arrived at a position they were prepared to stand behind. Right? It is a halakhic position they stand behind. It is supposed to fit the sources—in terms of the Talmud, that is. Now I ask which of the two positions seems correct to me. And I check the proofs, the Talmudic passages, what seems more reasonable to me. You check with your environment; from my environment; and afterward the scholars can come and ask what my environment is—let them ask. Why should I care? But, but I’m saying that in the end, true, it is a product of the landscape of the sages of France and the sages of Spain. But that is not important. It’s like the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification in philosophy of science. In philosophy of science, Reichenbach said that when we create a scientific theory, it can come from my grandmother appearing to me in a dream and telling me that there is a law of gravity. That does not invalidate it as a scientific theory. What matters is what tests it has to pass in order to be accepted—not how you discovered the theory, but whether it works. Test it experimentally and see whether the theory works or doesn’t work. Therefore, on the conceptual level, again, if someone comes and tells me he got it from his grandmother’s revelation, maybe I won’t bother checking. That’s not important. But in principle, if it passes the test of justification, I will accept it even if it came from his grandmother’s revelation. It’s just that there, in the test of justification, you have something to compare it to because you can test it. Right, doesn’t matter. I’m taking the example from science precisely because there I can explain it. And what I want to claim is that the way I arrived at my position is not important. I want to evaluate the position. Now I agree that Tosafot reached their position because of the distress and the Crusades and all that. And I agree that Maimonides got there because of the environment in which he lived. But why should I care how he got to the position? I ask about the position itself. Is it logical? Is it not logical? Does it stand up to the sources? Does it not stand up to the sources? What is more reasonable, what is less reasonable? And from my perspective, when I decide Jewish law, Maimonides and Tosafot and I are sitting around a round table and conducting a negotiation. And I don’t care that under his table there are Nazis stabbing him from below there in the Crusades, and in his chair there are all kinds of pleasant fellows petting him. At least they’re not stabbing him. Rabbi Soloveitchik describes… Yes, exactly. And I say we all sit around the table and discuss. I know that each one comes from a different place and looks different, but that doesn’t matter. I too come from my place and look the way I look. But I relate to their products, not to how those products were created. For me what determines things is the context of justification, not the context of discovery. I want to see whether the theory he presents seems right to me, whether it is reasonable, whether it fits the sources. If it seems reasonable to me, I accept it. Even though I know how he got there. The Maggid Mishneh too got there because of a distortion in Maimonides. But now, when I evaluate what he says, I’ll evaluate whether it is logical; I won’t evaluate whether that text of Maimonides is corrupted or not. That doesn’t matter to me. Because in the end, if this is a halakhic position that a decisor stands behind, it is worth my examining it. Maybe it is correct. Why should I care how he got there?

So I say that the right approach—again, as in every argument, both sides are mistaken; that’s always how it is. And also in the dispute between the scholars, so to speak—I mean what I am putting in the scholars’ mouths—and the apologetics: both are mistaken. In other words, there is a dispute. True, the scholars are right that this is a product also of the environment, not only, but also of the environment. But on the other hand, those who say that because of that there is no dispute between the two views are not right. Of course there is a dispute, because both views are possible. The circumstances only explain how you got to those views. But in the end, a view has to hold water on its own. And now this is really the important point: there are situations—and all this introduction was supposed to take a quarter of an hour—there are situations where the circumstances are so extreme that I cannot judge at all the statements made in that place. I mean, years ago I spoke about an article I wrote on monetary law in the Kovno ghetto, and there was a description there of a Jew named Rabbi Gibraltar. His son wrote a series of articles in Yated Ne’eman about his father, who had been in the Kovno ghetto. The “Dvar Avraham” was there, there were several important Jews there, but he too was there—a layman, apparently, but a respected Torah scholar, one of the rabbis of the ghetto. And he described there a very unique approach in monetary law of Rabbi Gibraltar, his father. The claim was that there is no monetary law in the ghetto. There is no monetary law in the ghetto, and basically he had lent money to people, and when they came to return it after the Holocaust he said, that money wasn’t mine; you have nothing to return to me, because in the ghetto there is no ownership of property. This has various implications. The question is: if a person dies, can you take his coat? Well, if he dies, then certainly yes, but he has heirs. So he says if you take the coat from the person… Somewhat similar to what the Chazon Ish says about two walking in the desert. Two people walking in the desert. He says, why shouldn’t I steal the flask from him? If the flask of water is his, then he drinks, right? And the law is ruled like Rabbi Akiva, that the owner of the flask drinks. Okay. Now why shouldn’t I violate “do not steal”? It’s life-saving. So violate “do not steal.” One is allowed to violate “do not steal” in life-saving, except according to Rashi’s view—we also spoke about that once. Rashi in Bava Kamma. But now the second one will also die. Yes, the second one will also die, but that’s indirect causation now, because he has no water. I only violated “do not steal.” So the Chazon Ish says no, that’s not indirect causation—you’re murdering him, not stealing from him. In such a situation, taking the water counts as murder, not as theft with indirect causation of death. That doesn’t matter right now; that is his claim. What? In indirect causation it is still murder. There is no death penalty, no punishment, but it doesn’t matter. I’m just saying the same thing was argued there too. And the claim is that taking the coat from the person while he is still alive is murder. But if he is dead, that is the practical difference. Because if he dies, then in monetary law it passes to his heirs, right? But there is no monetary law there. So if he dies, take it. In other words, even if his children have no coat. They have no coat and will now die too—yes, that doesn’t matter, but still you are allowed to save yourself. The coat is ownerless. Anyway, there were all kinds of… So there was some criticism there by someone who deals with monetary law, some critical article that was published, saying this has no basis, that it’s not correct, and so on. Fine, he wasn’t judging him; he didn’t have books there, he didn’t know all these things there, whatever. But it isn’t correct and it doesn’t stand up to the sources, etc. I wrote an article in Tzohar—of course I wrote it not in Yated Ne’eman. But I wrote there, and I opened by saying that first of all there is a situation there so far removed from us that it seems we cannot really judge it with our normal tools. In other words, from my point of view, someone who is inside the situation is a witness, not only a decisor. In other words, when he tells me that this is the right way to act in that situation, I assume he is right. Now I can only try to understand why. Fine—it is important to try to understand why. But my basic assumption is that he is right, because he was in the situation and I was not there. And I say this also about cases that are less extreme—we once spoke about this. I say it also about less extreme cases, yes? I once spoke about rulings by Haredi rabbis on hearing a woman’s singing voice. Fine. Now suppose this is not a formal prohibition. If it’s a formal prohibition, okay, then you don’t need to understand anything; you just say it is forbidden, period. But suppose it is forbidden because of improper thoughts or because of things dependent on the situation and dependent on the context. Now, a person who has never in his life heard a female singer, never been at a performance, doesn’t know what it does, why people come, what the significance of it is—he doesn’t understand it. It’s not the Holocaust, it’s not that distant, but it is still far from his world. Right? He cannot rule about such a situation. He simply cannot rule. Only someone who knows such a situation can understand what this thing does, and therefore only he can rule. Now if someone who is inside the situation—a rabbi qualified to rule—is inside the situation and says this is permitted, I do not argue with him. I cannot argue with him. I don’t know the situation, I don’t understand what is right in that situation; it is unfamiliar to me. It is far from my world. I can try to understand why he says so, ask him, clarify with him. But in the end he is the one who has to determine it. I said that sometimes an older rabbi—a young community rabbi comes to him, to the head of his yeshivah, to his rabbi who is older than he is, to consult him on some question—and the older rabbi always gives him backing. We’re familiar with this: no, honored rabbi, you decide. His student says yes, honored rabbi, you decide. It’s always very nice like that, that the older, greater rabbi gives the younger rabbi respect. People think that’s only to give him standing in the eyes of his community. I don’t think it’s only that. Maybe it’s also that, but not only that. Rather, the older rabbi simply doesn’t understand the mentality of a young community. Certainly if it is far from his world and it doesn’t operate by the same… If he’s a Haredi rabbi and the other isn’t, no matter—but yes, he doesn’t understand their mentality. So truly he is the one who should rule, not me. I can advise him, suggest to him: look at this, think about that. But in the end he is the one who has to make the decision. He understands the situation, not me. And it’s not only a matter of being gracious and giving him respect, but a recognition that this is a situation you cannot decide from the outside.

So also think of a case where someone falls in an elevator whose cable snapped. The elevator is falling; we’ll be dead in a second. Two people are in the elevator, we’ll be dead in a second. Now you have a pen, and I want quickly to write a will saying I loved her—to lie—before we crash. Fine? Is that permitted in such a situation? So I steal your pen—you don’t want to give it to me—I steal your pen, write the will, and we crash. Did I violate the prohibition of theft? Formally, seemingly yes. Where do we find that if in one second you’ll be dead… Someone living inside such a situation understands and experiences it, and in such a situation there is no theft. This is nonsense. It’s simply detached. Now someone on the outside doesn’t understand; there are no rules, it doesn’t work with the rules, it isn’t right. Because you were not in the situation; you don’t understand what is right and what is not right there. And I say again, this has to be someone qualified to rule who is inside the situation. Not mere gut feelings, but someone capable of ruling who is inside the situation. Then he knows what is right there. I can later come and try to formulate some rules and definitions and fit it in. Then perhaps I can take his ruling in that extreme situation and attach it to Jewish law, and then we have learned something new. Now it has joined the halakhic corpus that will also be transmitted onward; that newly innovated part becomes part of the halakhic canon. After I understood it, deciphered it, placed it on halakhic foundations, now I can perhaps also attach it to Jewish law and say that in such-and-such a situation there is no monetary law, there is no ownership. If I didn’t do that, then maybe it will remain only for its own time, and I cannot add it to the Shulchan Arukh, because it remains for that time and place. It doesn’t become some law that I know how to define as a sweeping law for certain situations—but a law whose parameters I know how to define, when yes and when no. If I know how to define it, it will join the Shulchan Arukh. Therefore there is here a situation in which on the one hand the situation—and in extreme situations the situation itself creates the ruling, as I said before. In extreme situations, it’s not only that the situation creates the ruling. Rather, when I try to understand how it happened, often I won’t succeed. In a dispute, I can understand why you think differently from me. If Tosafot met Maimonides, I assume they could understand each other. Fine? I may not live there, I may not think it’s the most reasonable thing, but I can understand why you think so; I can step into your shoes and try to understand your method. There are situations where even that is impossible—it is simply far from your world. A person who has never in his life heard a singer is sure that every time one hears a woman’s voice all the hormones leap to life. That is not true for someone who knows the situation. Sometimes maybe yes, but not always; sometimes no. We’re entering an atmosphere here just to say every case of a woman’s voice… What? People say female singers, so they make boundaries. No, so I said: if you think it is a formal prohibition, I’m not discussing that. That’s why I said this only for the example. Suppose it is not a formal prohibition, but only a question of what it causes. If it’s a question of what it causes, you need to know the situation. The shift from formal to causal. If it’s formal, then I say: no, it is forbidden to hear a woman’s voice. It doesn’t matter if it causes you improper thoughts or not—it is forbidden to hear a woman’s voice. But if you explain it on the grounds that… not explain—I say the prohibition is the improper thoughts, not every woman’s voice. Any woman’s voice may be heard; only if it causes you improper thoughts is it forbidden. Improper thoughts are forbidden. Fine, then one needs to understand what kind of improper thoughts it causes, how much, to whom, when, under what circumstances. So again, someone looking from outside says: all of you are evil inclination, obviously this causes all of you improper thoughts. He won’t believe me when I tell him it’s not so. He won’t believe me because he has never experienced it; it seems obvious to him. But he also doesn’t give credit. If he’s not sufficiently sober or generous, he doesn’t credit… Listen, someone in the situation can tell you that you don’t understand certain situations. You cannot understand it. Now I say again: the Holocaust is an example of this kind of thing. In the Holocaust there were various rulings that I think at least some of them can be understood afterward, but at first glance they don’t fit any rules, they don’t work. For example, a famous question: why did people shave off their beards? According to Jewish law, even over the color of a shoelace one must be killed rather than transgress in a time of persecution. After all, decrees were made against them because they were Jews. It was forbidden to grow beards, forbidden to… So how…? Now the Dvar Avraham really did keep his beard in the ghetto, but most Jews, including the most scrupulous, shaved their beards. Why? Fine, we can now discuss it in terms of definition, and here Jewish law itself speaks of a time of persecution. Jewish law itself speaks of the extreme case. Yes, but there are extreme cases that are still even more extreme than that. I don’t know. I’m just saying, as one possibility, only to explain that you have to live the situation. You have to understand: this situation is not the “time of persecution” the Talmud was speaking about. I’m telling you, I was there. It’s not that. It’s not that. They were not talking about this. They did not know it. It cannot be. It may be that afterwards I can fit it into such a pattern and say that if everyone leaves the beard, they will simply kill all Israel, kill all the Jews, and none will remain. So that was not what they spoke about in “a time of persecution.” They spoke about one individual facing a dilemma: don’t give up the beard, or even the shoelace, even at the cost of your life. But the cost of the life of the entire Jewish people? Or of fifty percent of the Jewish people? It doesn’t matter, I’m not talking literally about not one Jew left in the world. Fifty percent is also effectively all of it. In other words, it’s something macroscopic; it’s not this individual or that individual. Who says the phrase “a time of persecution” was said about that? Now I don’t know. I have no proofs one way or the other. But someone who lives in the situation can feel what is right and what is not right. If he is a decisor qualified to rule and also lives in the situation, he can feel it. And therefore I think that the significance of how disputes arise—which I spent too much time on here—ultimately leads, in the context of the Holocaust, to a very interesting mode of relating to or interpreting exceptional rulings that existed in the Holocaust. Because suddenly you understand that circumstances create a different Jewish law. It’s not bias. It’s not that because you were in the circumstances, let’s clean out the circumstances—they influenced you and therefore you missed it. I’m now sitting in an armchair and I’ll tell you what the correct Jewish law is. There is some truth in that claim too—I’m not dismissing it. Sometimes hardships really can cause you, because of the hardship, to rule differently—not because it is right to rule differently, but because it’s hard for you. Fine? That is a problem. Therefore I say there is a very delicate balance here. But this balance has two sides. That is what I want to argue. Well, I see I didn’t finish, so maybe we’ll continue with…