Disputes – Lesson 8

Table of Contents

• [0:01] Disputes about reality and about social context
• [1:13] Defining the concept of a dispute about reality – the example from Gittin
• [4:04] The Talmud’s conclusion – the existence of disputes about reality
• [8:59] Determinism and freedom of choice – two considerations
• [10:44] Divine knowledge and the implications for disputes about reality
• [12:42] Maimonides and the Raavad on knowledge and free choice
• [18:15] The date of the Exodus from Egypt – a factual dispute
• [23:14] The debate over its shade in finding a sukkah – a physical dispute
• [24:49] Translating light intensity – psychophysical problems
• [26:57] The scientific method and the Sages’ approach – experiments and surveys

Summary

General Overview

The text presents two points of discussion: a dispute about reality, and dispute in the negative social sense. It tries to clarify why there is a tendency to claim that there are no disputes about reality among the sages, even though there are places that seem to involve factual disagreement. It uses the passage in tractate Gittin about the concubine in Gibeah to show that the Talmud itself allows a description in which each side grasps part of the truth, and from that concludes that the problem is not the very existence of disputes about reality, but their definitiveness, and the difficulty of saying these and those are both the words of the living God when it seems one side must necessarily be mistaken. It then moves to a social conception of dispute through the Mishnah in Avot about a dispute for the sake of Heaven, and argues that the criterion is not the sharpness or violence of the conduct, but whether the motivation is substantive or driven by some outside interest, and that even extreme disputes can be for the sake of Heaven.

Dispute About Reality and “These and Those Are Both the Words of the Living God”

The text assumes that the common yeshiva-world claim that there are no disputes about reality is a difficult claim, because there are sources in which it is apparently clear that sages disagree about facts. It brings the Talmud in Gittin about the concubine in Gibeah, where they disagreed whether he found a fly in her or he found a hair in her, and stresses that this is a dispute about what actually happened. It then suggests a reading according to which reality includes both elements, so each side was partially right and captured part of the picture. It presents the idea that what is being denied is not the possibility of a dispute about reality, but the assertion that one side “was completely mistaken,” and explains that the motivation for denying disputes about reality comes from the desire to preserve the principle of these and those are both the words of the living God in a way that involves no error, whereas in reality there is only one truth, so it seems one side must necessarily be wrong.

Empirical Clarification, Interpretation, and the Distinction Between Fact and Assessment of Fact

The text describes another approach that emerges from sources speaking about the unlikelihood that sages would disagree about something that can actually be clarified. It cites the Jerusalem Talmud in Terumot: “Would the sages disagree about something you can determine?”; Rashba in Chullin regarding sinews: “Would they disagree about something the palate can testify to?”; and Ran in Sukkah: “One cannot deny what is perceptible.” It concludes that these sources mainly support a practical rule: where something can be settled experimentally, there is no point in arguing about it, rather than a sweeping rule that there are no disputes about reality. It adds that even this rule is not always simple, because sometimes people do not check even things that are in principle testable, out of confidence in their reasoning. It questions the simplicity of “let the expert taster taste it,” and shows that taste and absorption depend on a continuum, on shifting thresholds, and on differences between people and mixtures. Therefore, many disputes are not about “reality itself,” but about the threshold of definition, estimation, and quantification of phenomena such as taste, shade, or estimating women’s intentions in the laws of mistaken betrothal. That in turn makes them normative disputes about the assessment of reality rather than pure factual disputes.

The Concealment of Knowledge and Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s View of Disputes About Reality

The text cites a letter of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, who argues that when a sage in the tradition of the Oral Torah holds something about the structure of the Tabernacle that does not match historical reality, this is not an ordinary “mistake,” but a “concealment within the power of knowledge.” Just as the Tabernacle itself was hidden away, so too the knowledge about it was hidden away. It presents his view that the truth of “Torah reality” is the orientation toward the will of God, that Jewish law is not dependent on historical reality itself but on the way it is revealed and derived from the verses, and that the reasoning and derivations of the sages of the tradition are “removed from the very distinction between correct and incorrect” in the sense of these and those are both the words of the living God. According to this, even if Elijah were to come and say “what really happened,” that would not decide the Torah value of the matter, because what determines it is the Torah’s description and the halakhic or interpretive meaning that emerges from it, not the archaeology of the fact.

Summary of the Positions on Disputes About Reality

The text concludes that many of the cases classified as disputes about reality break down into disputes about threshold, quantification, and evaluation of reality, and therefore do not require that one side be “mistaken about reality.” It offers a simple possibility according to which, in actual factual disputes, one side is right and one side is wrong, and that is not a disaster, while linking that to the distinction that where something can be clarified empirically, argument should be reduced. It also describes the more far-reaching line according to which “there cannot be a dispute about reality,” because there is no room for error among the sages of the Oral Torah, and presents this as a position that requires apparently factual disputes to be interpreted as disputes in interpretation or in the assessment of reality, rather than as a contradiction over a single fact.

Social Dispute: For the Sake of Heaven Versus Not for the Sake of Heaven

The text moves to the Mishnah in Avot: “Any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven will in the end endure,” and sets the dispute of Hillel and Shammai against Korach and his congregation, while emphasizing that the Jerusalem Talmud describes the disputes between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel as reaching even violence and killing, and yet they are still defined as being for the sake of Heaven. It argues that the criterion is not politeness, moderation, or refraining from sharp expressions, but whether the dispute is substantive and driven by belief in what is right, as opposed to an alien motive or personal interest. In particular, it presents Korach as someone whose substantive claims serve as a cover for a desire for power. It maintains that verbal sharpness can be substantive if it is argument-based, and that one may tactically criticize harsh conduct without denying that it is for the sake of Heaven. Therefore, even ugly and extreme disputes can be for the sake of Heaven when the motive is a genuine conception of what serves Heaven, and not hatred or self-interest.

The Distinction Between Moral Evaluation and Diagnosing Motivation

The text insists that one can attribute an action to a person as being “for the sake of Heaven” without morally or halakhically approving it, and presents the possibility of a complex evaluation in which one recognizes dedication or ideological consistency even while opposing the act itself and fighting against it. It argues that defining something as for the sake of Heaven is not absolute praise that grants legitimacy, but a description of motive, and that there is room to denounce an act while at the same time acknowledging that it was not done out of desire or private interest. It concludes that the way a dispute is conducted is not a necessary measure of motivation, because there are zealous people who act for the sake of Heaven; therefore, the central distinction remains the question of substantive motive versus alien motive.

There are disputes here on two points. One point concerns a dispute about reality, and the second talks about dispute in the social sense—that is, dispute in the negative connotation. Okay, the first point, regarding disputes about reality: somehow, in yeshivot or generally in the world of learning, it’s accepted to assume that we don’t find disputes about reality among the sages. The truth is that this is a difficult claim, because there are places where it’s quite clear that there is a dispute about reality. So first, we need to understand why people arrive at that claim. And second, how does that deal with places where they nevertheless did disagree about reality? So first of all, maybe I’ll define the concept a bit. For example, in the places where the Talmud in tractate Gittin brings the story of the concubine at Gibeah, the Talmud says there that there is a dispute whether he found a fly on her or he found a hair on her. And that is simply a dispute about reality—in other words, the question is what happened: was it this or was it that? True, there specifically the Talmud says: “These and those are the words of the living God”—he found a fly and was not particular about it, he found a hair and was particular about it. So what ultimately caused him to get angry was the hair, or the combination of the two. And then it turns out that the dispute there, which seemingly looks like a dispute about reality, ultimately depends on what the Talmud means when it says, “These and those are the words of the living God”: that on one side he was not particular, and on the other side he was particular. But on the face of it, you can understand this in two ways. One way is to say that actually he indeed found one thing, but it did not cause the anger, and the other thing did cause the anger. But then both are right in the factual-historical description: he found this and he found that. But if the dispute is simply over what caused the anger, then on the question of what caused the anger only one was right—namely, the one who said that he found a hair, because that’s what actually caused the anger. If we read it differently—and it seems to me more reasonable to read it that way—then what the Talmud is really saying is that what caused the anger was the combination of the two things. That is, he found a hair and found a fly; each one on its own would not have caused what happened, but the combination of the two is what caused it. Then it turns out—now, whether you call that both are right or both are not right, I don’t know—each is partially right. In the end, the full truth is some truth composed of the two points of view. But that’s with regard to the conclusion. Does it follow from this passage that in fact there is no dispute about reality? On the contrary. It seems that the Talmud says there is a dispute about reality—the question of what really happened. But as far as the disputing sages were concerned, one thought that he found a hair and that’s what caused the anger, and one thought that he found a fly and that’s what caused the anger, and this is an unequivocal factual dispute. The Talmud says that neither of them was entirely wrong, and neither was entirely right, because in the real reality there was this side and that side, and each one grasped, let’s say, part of the picture. So that Talmudic passage does not say that there is no dispute about reality; quite the opposite. And what does “words of the living God” mean? I don’t understand. What does it mean, “these and those are the words of the living God”? What’s the question? That if both were wrong, then what does “words of the living God” mean? So I’m saying: both were partially right, or partially wrong, however you want to call it, but that’s the point. The claim is that there was an aspect of truth in each one; neither was entirely mistaken. He did find a fly there, and the other one who said he found a hair—he did find a hair. So he was right in the sense that it wasn’t a total mistake, but with respect to the full picture, each one grasped only part of the picture. So the conclusion that emerges from that Talmudic passage is not that there is no dispute about reality. There is a dispute about reality. Rather, the point is that in disputes about reality, neither side was completely wrong, let’s put it that way, or at least there was some truth in what each said. And that’s what is meant—that’s the Talmud’s conclusion. But that’s the same three-way dispute; even the conclusion is. What? The Talmud’s conclusion too sees reality as a third possibility. No, but yes—but the Talmud’s conclusion, that’s not the Talmud’s conclusion, that’s the truth. Because there, one of the disputing sages encountered Elijah the Prophet—sorry, Elijah the Prophet encountered one of the disputing sages—and told them what really happened. So it’s not an opinion. Right, it’s not an opinion, it’s feedback. In other words, what really happened. So that’s why it seems to me that in this passage the possibility of a dispute about reality is not ruled out. What is ruled out is the definitiveness of a dispute about reality. That maybe gives some hint to the motivation for arriving at this conclusion that there is no dispute about reality. The motivation is that if we say there is a dispute about reality, unlike a dispute in Jewish law, or in halakhic or moral norms or whatever, then one of the sides must certainly be wrong in a dispute about reality. And if you really want to begin from the point of view that “these and those are the words of the living God,” meaning there is no error in halakhic disputes—or disputes which in this case aren’t exactly halakhic, but disputes between sages—then you have no choice but to say that there is no dispute about reality. Because in a dispute about reality there is only one truth. You can say that on the question whether a daughter’s rival wife is permitted or forbidden, okay, there’s no single truth there; whatever the sage decides is the truth. One thinks it is forbidden and one thinks it is permitted; both are right at the principled level. You need to issue a halakhic ruling, so you rule like one of them. Because here there is no question measured against some fact in reality. But the question of what happened in the concubine at Gibeah, the question of what happened historically—either it was this or it was that. In a dispute about reality, it can’t be that both sides are right. But most questions in Torah are factual interpretation; they are factual disputes. What do you mean? When angels came to Abraham—if they were angels… Was it in a dream? If they were heavenly angels. Right, the plain sense of the Torah is reality. Okay, so now the question is where this rule stops—that there is no dispute about reality. In matters of belief, fine. So in the Prophets maybe, but in the Talmud no. Because in the Talmud there supposedly can’t be any mistake. Again, I don’t agree with this, so I’m not going to defend something I don’t agree with, but I’m getting there. So what one might perhaps understand from the Talmud here is not that there is no dispute about reality, but what bothers us about a dispute about reality. What bothers us about a dispute about reality is that one of the sides must be wrong. You can’t say, “These and those are the words of the living God.” That’s what the Talmud here kind of solved. You can say, “These and those are the words of the living God,” but partially. In other words, still one side was wrong and… meaning each of them did not grasp the full truth. Both were wrong; I said both were partially right, both were partially wrong. It’s not… So I didn’t understand—the question doesn’t even get off the ground. What did Adam eat? What did Eve eat? An apple, or wheat, or there are ten kinds there… What? That’s a factual dispute. What? That’s nothing. What? I agree. I don’t understand at all why specifically the concubine at Gibeah. Every dispute is a factual dispute. Why Adam? I brought an example. The concubine at Gibeah is where the Talmud itself deals with it and says, “These and those are the words of the living God,” and indeed… No, the Talmud doesn’t say there “these and those are the words of the living God”; here the Talmud is troubled by the dispute itself and tries to resolve it. So there’s reason to discuss it. You’re right. Maybe it’s not the consideration each one gave to reality. It could be both saw the reality—that there’s no dispute that it was a hair and a fly, and both know that the fly—one says no, it was because of this, and the other says no, because of that. That’s still a dispute about reality. Why did it happen? What caused him to get upset? The question is why more weight is given to this; that’s psychology. Which is psychological reality, but it’s still reality. What happened—the question is what caused him to get upset. It’s like—you know, in Hasdai Crescas’s sermons in Or Hashem, he talks there about determinism and free choice, and he says there are two considerations: the theological consideration that God knows everything in advance, so then how do we have free choice? And also the scientific consideration, let’s call it that, that the laws of nature determine what will happen in any given situation, so how can we have free choice? These are two perspectives from which to look at it, and he argues that in the end what will happen is indeed predetermined; it is deterministic. Because again, there’s detail in the book. Ravitzky once remarked that the first half of the book contradicts the second half—there was some kind of development in the writing of the book here and there. But in one place he writes that what is in our hands is how we relate to the matter, not what will happen. What will happen is given. In Soloveitchik’s famous lecture on free choice and fate, they asked him at the end: free choice—you’re a religious man, how can you say there’s no role and this and that…? So he explained it. Okay, I wasn’t mistaken. The claim, yes, he also brought Hasidic sources, from Hasidic thinkers there as far as I remember, the Mei HaShiloach and… so this super-determinism says that in reality what will happen is what is predetermined; it’s not in our hands. What is in our hands is how to relate to it—whether I accept it this way or accept it another way—and that is where our choice lies. This is an interesting point, because if we’re talking about the contradiction with divine foreknowledge, then what have you gained? Doesn’t God know in advance how I will relate to it? And again, if He does know, then how can it be that I have a choice to relate one way or another in advance? If He doesn’t know, then you’re accepting that God doesn’t know things that will happen? Well, then why not say that also about the actions themselves, not just about the attitudes? If we ask what the difference is between a psychological fact and a physical fact—both are facts. Maybe for us as human beings it’s harder to know the psychology, what’s going on in a person’s mind. But a psychological fact is a fact, fine. What is a psychological fact? In the end it happens in the brain. That’s already a modern framing; I’ll comment on that in another moment. In any case, as he saw it, it was certainly not like that. As he saw it, this is psychology, this is the soul, this is unrelated to physical events happening in the world. Of course, you could say that in the fourteenth century, but today we know that our attitudes too are actually—never mind, even if we support free choice and dualism, still an attitude as a mental event is realized by physical means; that is, the neurons in our heads express one attitude or another. The question whether I have free choice to relate this way or that way means I have free choice in how to move electrons. And there are those who would say they have free choice over how to move what I’m relating to, depending on whether you’re a libertarian or not. But whatever—either way, you’re saying there is freedom even at the level of electron behavior and not only at the level of how I relate. Then you can no longer say such a thing. Of course, all this is only if what bothers you is the problem of physical determinism. If what bothers you is the problem of God’s knowledge, then there’s no point talking about the difference between them, because God can know the psychology just as He knows the physics. But if what bothers you—and he brings both difficulties there, or both planes—if what bothers you is the laws of nature, then from his perspective he could say this because he was not aware that all our attitudes are also physical events. But today we already understand that this is not relevant. Maimonides writes—and he has a commentary on the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot—“everything is foreseen, yet permission is granted.” I think it was the Raavad or Rabbeinu Yonah who wrote about him that he just pushed it one step forward, and when you read Maimonides’ commentary, he really did just push it one step forward. So I think the Raavad writes about him: what did you accomplish? It would have been better had he not explained it at all. No, Maimonides couldn’t refer to Sefer Ha-Ikkarim or Or Sameach because they didn’t exist yet. No, the Raavad, I think, wrote on… the Raavad critiqued Maimonides. Maimonides pushed it one step forward. Meaning it would have been better if he had not explained it at all. Ah, in the Laws of Repentance, Maimonides—no. Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance, when he asks about knowledge and choice, says that His knowledge is not like our knowledge—“he did not act in the way of the sages”—that’s what the Raavad says there. The Raavad says: what did you explain here? You only moved one step further. No, but there, okay, it’s a question whether Maimonides answered or whether Maimonides did not answer. It depends how you read Maimonides. The Raavad claimed that Maimonides did not answer, and Maimonides, from his words, seems to think he did answer. Fine, that’s another discussion. In any event, why am I saying this? Because again, it’s the same question. The question what made that man in Gibeah upset is a question you can ask in the same way as what really happened there. That too is a fact—a psychological fact. So if you say this caused him to be upset and that caused him to be upset, still one of them was wrong. He was wrong in psychology rather than in physics. It could be that even he himself didn’t know what made him angry. Okay, never mind, but still something caused it. In other words, the physical fact is one fact—either it was this or it was that, or the probability was such-and-such, doesn’t matter—but everything you say about what actually happened you can also say about the attitude. And at the level of attitude too, it’s a kind of fact. So you don’t gain anything principled from that. Fine, you said that the motivation of those who say there is no dispute about reality, to present it this way, is in order to say there are no mistakes. Yes. But in the Talmud itself people say about themselves that they were wrong, or “on the contrary,” or “the students of the academy mocked him,” and all sorts of things—meaning both about matters of reality and about halakhic matters. Clearly there are mistakes in the Talmud, but the question is how the people of the approach that says there can be no mistakes related to this. So they would say, fine, but in the end the Talmud exposed that mistake. There can’t be a mistake in the Talmud; there can be a mistake by… the sages of the Talmud. In other words, there can’t be a mistake in the Talmud. And if the Talmud exposed the mistake, fine, there was a preliminary assumption, but peace be upon it. But wait—where is there a mistake that someone brings such that someone… What are you talking about? It’s not… I didn’t search the literature, no no, I didn’t search the literature for who wrote this, but this is the prevalent approach. It’s prevalent in the sense—I think—let’s just try to investigate for a moment in order to understand whether people looked at it this way or not. I don’t think they would see it as something completely prevalent. Again, I don’t want to start looking through books now about who wrote what, but Maimonides himself said it, I don’t know, more than once even. What? That because people regard them as very, very wise, okay, so he says listen: even if at first glance it seems to you there is something here, dig deeper, don’t rely on that—meaning don’t just decide it’s a mistake. But as a methodological rule. Right. Turn over every stone to see whether someone really erred here, but if yes, then yes. Right. Okay, so as a methodological rule I have no problem with that, but usually that’s not the approach. It’s not that approach. No. As I said, I read here that the rabbi brought the introduction to Shaarei Yosher by Rabbi Shkop. He writes there: if you read and understood this, this is not for you. No. What does he mean? What is he going to write about himself—that I’m never wrong? Obviously. No, he’s not writing about himself. He says, listen, don’t take it the way it appears to you. Fine, obviously that’s also true; the question is whether that’s all there is here. Is this only methodology, or is it a substantive statement? So I’m telling you again: from the discourse, from the impression, I know, I talk with people, I hear—certainly it’s also written, I didn’t do a literature survey or check where it’s written, but it’s certainly also written. What? It’s written in Minchat Chinukh. There I can show you that it’s written that there cannot be a dispute about reality, he says—even among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), not only in the Talmud—there cannot be a dispute about reality. So if there is a dispute about reality between two medieval authorities, he explains that it is not a dispute about reality because it can’t be—such a thing cannot be, there was no such thing. He assumes this in several places. Regarding what you said earlier, that in the end the Talmud decided—so say okay, a dispute about reality, in the end the Talmud decided, so ultimately there are no mistakes about reality even in the Talmud if you adopt the approach denying disputes about reality. And if the Talmud didn’t decide, what did he eat from the tree of knowledge? When the Talmud didn’t decide. Only if it’s undecided, then it comes out… Yes. Again, I’m defending a position I don’t agree with, so it’s hard for me. I don’t know what they would say; I’m trying to guess. So as I said before, from this Talmudic passage I may not derive the conclusion that there is no dispute about reality, but I can understand the motivation for saying it. The motivation is that we tend to think that “these and those are the words of the living God.” “These and those are the words of the living God” means no one was wrong. How can it be that no one was wrong? In a dispute about reality, surely one is wrong; therefore there is no dispute about reality. That’s how they want to prove it—that’s the conclusion. But there is another approach, and it is prevalent when you check the medieval authorities and later authorities who write on this topic. I saw some time ago an article by Neria Gutel on when the Exodus took place—here, I’m marking it. When did the Exodus occur? On what day was it—Thursday or Friday? There are investigations there, and midrashim and calculations and various theories. And he devotes a chapter in the article to disputes about reality, because apparently it was either Thursday or Friday. In this argument one side is certainly wrong. So he devotes a chapter to the issue of disputes about reality and brings various sources, both from the medieval authorities and even from the Talmud itself. I’ll just show you a few examples. He brings a lot of references, in his way. He says that basically the source—usually—this is a view in which here you have what I told you, that I hadn’t done a literature survey, so here in Yerucham Finkel there are enough references from later authorities saying that there is no dispute about reality. In fact, this is already found in the language of the Amoraim and among the medieval authorities, he says, giving several examples. There is a Jerusalem Talmud in Terumot: “Would the sages dispute about something you can ascertain?” You can always determine it in reality, so why would they dispute it? Okay, from there he proceeds. Now we’ll see other explanations. Let’s look at Rashba in Chullin regarding whether sinews impart flavor. Do sinews impart flavor or is the sinew’s flavor like wood? The question is, if you cook it in gravy, does the sinew impart flavor, or does the sinew remain like wood? So he says: this is astonishing—did they really dispute about something to which the palate can testify? Taste it and see whether it imparts flavor or not. And it is forbidden to eat the sinew, but this… and this is not the way of the sages’ disputes. And the Ran says: how could the sages of Israel dispute about something that can be determined, etc. Fine. So he brings a few examples here, but of course, as you already rightly pointed out, from these formulations it is difficult to derive a sweeping conception saying there is no dispute about reality. Rather, the claim is that if there is something you can clarify, then why dispute? Check. There is a kind of empirical attitude here saying: are you disputing what seems reasonable to you? Check and see what’s true. Why should I care what seems reasonable to you? Therefore it is not likely that the sages disputed if they could go out and check and decide the dispute. So the claim is not that there is no dispute about reality. The claim is that if you can decide it, then stop arguing and check and see who is right. What sense does it make to keep arguing? But if there are things that cannot be checked, okay, then it turns out that in things that cannot be checked, like what Adam ate, then yes, there will be a dispute about reality there, and indeed one is right and one is wrong, and nothing happened. You can’t derive such a rule from here. But if it can’t be checked, why should the sages even begin to disagree about it? If they can’t bring any indicative evidence, why give an opinion at all? Well, you can’t check empirically, but you can disagree in interpreting the Torah. Say if I say that Adam ate from the tree of knowledge, I can prove via what is called a gezerah shavah that what is called “tree” means wheat from elsewhere. Then I say he ate wheat. And someone else, by other interpretive tools, will conclude that he ate a fig. Fine? Only not an apple, though even so. But that is, in my opinion, not a dispute about reality. Why? It’s a dispute about the interpretation of the word “tree.” It’s a dispute about reality. What was there? There was one thing there. It leads to a dispute about reality. So the dispute is about the reality—what was there. One was wrong and one was right. But the basis of the dispute—how we got to the different positions—did not come from observing reality but from interpretation. But it’s always like that. Because if we look at reality—but it’s not that he comes and says… If we look at reality, there will never be a dispute about reality. That’s obvious. If we look at reality, there won’t be a dispute about reality. We’ll look and see. A dispute about reality is always like that: we disagree about what was in reality. How can it be that we don’t all understand the same thing? Because it depends on interpretation. But after the interpretation, the question is what really happened, and in that question one is right and one is wrong. We’ll ask God what Adam ate. Did he eat a fig or wheat? One is right and one is wrong. There are other examples in the Talmud and Midrashim. Was there ever a stubborn and rebellious son or was there not? And was Job a parable or was he not? Yes, right. Or I don’t know, the beams of the Tabernacle—there are halakhic examples too—the beams of the Tabernacle, exactly how did they transfer them from wagon to wagon or from a wagon into the public domain? Here there are arguments really about reality itself, and it even affects Jewish law, an argument about how to define the labor of transferring on the Sabbath. As I said, it’s obvious there are disputes about reality. I’m just giving a didactic introduction. So I’m saying that from these statements of the medieval authorities and the Talmud, at most one can derive that it is unlikely there would be a dispute where you can clarify it empirically. And now I remember the Ran in Sukkah. There is an argument in the Talmud whether the shade is greater than the sunlight in the covering of a sukkah. The question there is what happens if above you have, say, seventy percent branches and thirty percent gaps. Does the percentage of sunlight below increase or decrease compared to above? In other words, does it spread out or contract? Apparently this is a dispute about reality, and the Ran there says: “one cannot deny what is perceptible.” The answer is obvious. It cannot be something one can argue about. Although I claim that one can argue about it—the question is how to define it. Geometrically, it’s obvious that if you put in a slit, the sunlight spreads. But that’s not how it works, because the light comes from various directions. If you look at the floor, you’ll see the opposite. The question is how to treat that opposite. Therefore it isn’t exactly a dispute about reality. Fine, that’s an example of something that seems to be what the Ran says is a dispute about reality that cannot be. So why can’t it be? Because check it. And I say you can’t check it. What are you going to check? What are you going to check? That grayness—I don’t know what that grayness is, how to relate to it. Is it more sunlight? More shade? How do you define quantities? This raises very interesting questions, by the way, in psychophysics. I gave a lesson on this not long ago when we were learning tractate Sukkah. Because the question is how to define the intensity of light relative to darkness, the degree of gray. And it’s also somewhat subjective. But when you put instruments there, you can measure the field intensity. How much light is there. Fine. But when I look with my eyes, I’m looking at a mental phenomenon, not at light intensity. And the translation between light intensity and mental phenomenon is a major dispute among psychophysics researchers. Is the translation nonlinear? Is it a power law or a logarithmic law or all kinds of things like that? It can change the value. It differs from person to person. In any event, I’m saying that even if you take these sources, what emerges from them is that there is no point disputing something that can be clarified. But it doesn’t say that there is no dispute about reality at all. Even regarding the point that there is no point disputing what can be clarified, I’m not entirely sure that this represents what the Sages actually thought. We know that in physics, for example—I already mentioned the famous example people always use to laugh at Aristotle—that he says that bodies fall toward the earth at a speed proportional to their weight, their mass, their weight. Now that’s not true. All bodies fall toward the earth at the same speed; it doesn’t depend on weight at all. They really could have done a simple experiment, and you don’t need particle laboratories for this. Take a heavy stone and a light stone, throw them, and see that they fall at the same speed. Why didn’t Aristotle do that? Because the awareness that even if something seems terribly logical to you, it’s still worth checking—that awareness is not so simple. It’s an awareness that accompanies modern science. But once, if something seemed very logical, then it was probably so. What is there to check? Why is it called by that name? We know, so what’s the problem, what is there to check? And people don’t take into account that just because something is obvious to me does not mean it is really so. The world owes you nothing; it was here before you, as Mark Twain said. In other words, how the world behaves and how you think do not always line up. So it’s worth checking. So I’m saying: if I move over to the Sages, there too I’m not sure they didn’t say some things that were the result of one line of reasoning or another, and it’s not clear they really had an awareness of “let’s check and see.” That’s true, and on this Steinberg wrote—Professor Steinberg, his doctoral dissertation is about this—about scientific experiments among the Sages. And he showed there several examples in which the Sages had a scientific uncertainty and did an experiment to decide it. Several very interesting experiments, medical experiments, they did dissections there, interesting things went on there. So it’s not completely far-fetched. But you should know that even Aristotle had experiments; Aristotle was not a total idiot. We laugh about it a bit, but it’s not like that. Aristotle also relied on observations; his science was not purely philosophical. On this issue he was so convinced—precisely that’s what’s strange—and there are cases where something is so obvious to you that you don’t perform an experiment. Right, and that’s why it took two thousand years to do it. Fine. But if it was obvious to them. I’m only saying that of course they also checked things there; they weren’t living in fantasies. But there will be cases, or there will be a topic, where it is obvious to you, so you don’t bother checking; there can be such cases. And it could be that disputes about reality are points where one could indeed have checked, but fine, it’s obvious to you that this is so, so you don’t go check. It’s harder to say that where there are two who disagree. In Aristotle there was one position unchallenged for two thousand years; no one disputed it. If people deal with most things, it’s more or less like that. In matters with practical implications it developed more; where it mattered less, it bothered them less. No, but I’m saying: where you make some claim that seems plausible to you and everyone agrees, I can see why people wouldn’t go check. But where there is a dispute, that’s really a harder claim. If there is a dispute and it is testable, and you already see the other one doesn’t agree with you—meaning his head works differently from yours—who says your head fits reality? Maybe his head fits reality. Check. Check and see. And in that sense this is indeed a significant claim. Meaning assuming they weren’t idiots, meaning they understood that if there is something you can test, then decide the dispute empirically. Why insist? If everyone agrees, I can understand: fine, if everyone agrees and it seems very logical, there is no point checking. But when there is a dispute it’s harder to say such a thing. So that’s why I say that from the sources of the medieval authorities, even the later authorities, and from the Talmud itself, there really is no basis for this conception that there is no dispute about reality. On the contrary, it is fairly clear that there are many disputes about reality. But even so, I want to qualify that a little. I’ll give you an example with absorption in a sinew, what the Rashba says here: check it, what’s the problem? Go check and see whether sinews impart flavor or not. Here it’s not a simple question. I’m puzzled by this Rashba. But it’s not just this Rashba; this already goes back to Talmudic passages. Talmudic passages that talk about having a professional taster taste whether there is the flavor of meat and milk or whether there is the flavor of a forbidden substance in a permitted one—the Talmud’s assumption is that a person can simply taste and see. I ask you, tell me: if there is one part in sixty of a forbidden substance within a permitted one, does it impart flavor? One in sixty, okay, that’s the accepted assumption. Even ten percent, I don’t think you would taste, and that’s much more. Therefore this assumption that any person can taste and say there is a forbidden substance here—that is true from a certain percentage and up. When there is half pork and half beef, then someone who knows the taste will apparently know that there is pork flavor here, because there is also pork flavor and not only beef. One in sixty is very difficult. Now, beyond the problematic halakhic determination, where it seems from the halakhic sources that this really is a matter you can just check—give it to a gentile and he’ll tell you whether there is forbidden flavor there or not—leave that aside for the moment. I’m not talking now about Jewish law, but about reality itself. From what percentage? If you had to determine the law—not one in sixty—what percentage would you set? It’s very unclear. There is a continuum here, and the question is how noticeable the flavor has to be, how dominant it has to be. And it is also clear that this varies from person to person, it varies from one type of meat to another, it depends what is mixed into what. It’s not always one in sixty, yes? It is obvious that they cut this in some technical way. But why here in the Talmud—again, in the halakhic sources—it looks as though they don’t understand that it is a technical cut-off. Because if there is a problem, let someone taste it. What happened? They fixed one in sixty because you don’t always have a gentile readily available to taste for you, so they established a fixed measure of one in sixty, because that’s the indication. But in principle you should have had a gentile taste it. Fine? But I’m saying beyond that, even without connection to the question whether a gentile should taste or not, there is some assumption of the Talmud and afterward of the medieval and later authorities that this is really a factual question that can be decided by experiment. I don’t think that’s correct. I don’t think that’s correct, because the question how sure you have to be that there is a forbidden substance in order to say “I tasted and there is a forbidden substance” is itself unclear. Do you have to be 20 percent sure? 50 percent sure? Or only a 50 percent doubt? How sure do you have to be? It’s a whole continuum, and of course it varies from case to case—not to mention—but even for a mixture of pork in beef, let’s say that’s something well-defined. Still there is a continuum of degrees: how pronounced is it, how significant is it. Absorption of flavor in sinews—what does it mean “it absorbs”? Obviously a sinew absorbs. But how much does it absorb? Does it absorb significantly or not significantly? Now what counts as significant? Ten percent absorption? Twenty? Forty? I don’t know. So the dispute whether a sinew absorbs or does not absorb can definitely be a dispute that is not a dispute about reality but a dispute about what threshold is called absorption. Suppose the sinew absorbs at 30 percent, fine? Then there is a dispute whether 30 percent is enough or not. One says only from 50 percent is it called absorbing, and one says from 20 percent it is called absorbing. Then everyone agrees on the reality that the absorption is 30 percent; there is no factual dispute. The dispute is over how to judge the reality or where to set the threshold. And many very many of the disputes about reality are like that. Like the shade example with the Ran I gave before—that too. The question is from what shade of gray on the floor we see it as “its sunlight exceeds its shade.” It could be that everyone agrees on what shade of gray was produced here. But we cannot determine whether in a shade like this it is more than 50 percent shade or less. What is the brightness level of this shade? How do you evaluate such a thing? This is not a simple question, and even today scientists who try to test it can’t tell you. No one knows. When you look at a shade of gray, is it half darkness half light? Is it 70 percent darkness and 30 percent light? I mean in the shade of gray itself. How close is it to black? People will argue, because you cannot measure it. It’s only a question of how we see it. You can ask people, interview them, and ask: tell me, how would you quantify it—70 percent, 30 percent?—and make averages. And over these averages there are big arguments whether this follows a power law or a logarithmic law or various things like that. What is the relation between physical intensities and mental intensities. They do surveys, yes, that’s what they do; there is no other way to test it. Rabbi, every Passover eve I look at the knife and say: what leavened food? What? I looked at the knife and said come on, what leavened food is here? Absorbed and not absorbed. And there’s also sensitivity to gluten. I’m not allowed to cut an onion or something, an apple, with a knife I cut bread with. So every time I look at it I say: what gluten? But for that, in Jewish law it isn’t clear, because you need something sharp and a knife. No, I’m not saying—in leavened food, leave aside sharpness. No, but in prohibition, if it’s not sharp it’s only the knife, so no. You washed the knife—it’s basically zero. And every time it had been used for leavened food I said: what leavened food is here? And with gluten—and this is sensitivity—it affects the body. Obviously. It’s a question of quantities, of course. Rabbi Ben-Zion Abba Shaul writes somewhere that they asked him whether one may drink water from the Kinneret on the days when they put cloth over the faucet on Passover, because after all in the water reservoirs pieces of bread or pita can float around. Not only can—they do. There are fishermen who throw all kinds of things in there and so on. And leavened food on Passover is forbidden in any amount, meaning it is not nullified at any percentage. So he said that even “any amount” has some measure. And this is not “any amount.” But there was one problem: actually where he lived, the water wasn’t from the Kinneret at all. Fine, they asked him about the faucet. Because it all came from wells in Sha’ar HaGai. Eighty percent of the water. Fine. I’m saying: even where he lived, people asked him who perhaps did get supplied from the Kinneret. In any event, what I want to say is that many cases we would classify as disputes about reality are in fact disputes in the evaluation of reality or the judgment of reality, and that is essentially a normative dispute, not a factual dispute. And one has to know that. In many cases, that really is the case. “Better to dwell as two than to dwell alone”—yes, with what assumption is a woman presumed not to have agreed in advance to betrothal? If she had known, would she have refused the marriage? What is the law if there is a mistake in the marriage? There are a few disputes: if the husband has a defect, if his brother has a defect and she will fall before him for levirate marriage, if the husband is abusive, if the husband has a skin disease. There are arguments. So is that a dispute about reality—what a woman refuses and what she doesn’t? Obviously there are women who would refuse this, and women who would refuse that. The question is: how many women refusing counts as an estimate that says an average woman would refuse such a thing? Is 20 percent enough? Up to 20 percent? Yes, exactly. What is the standard of the reasonable person? That is not a dispute about reality. One can come and say that what determines it is the majority. Do a proper survey and see if it is 51 percent and up; then the majority decides, because in Jewish law we follow the majority. Fine, but here comes what I said earlier: the Sages did not do surveys. They didn’t do surveys. They got a rough impression of what women think, and said okay, there is a significant segment of women who think this way, so I say yes; if not, then no. What counts as significant? If you say 51 percent, then fine. But when you don’t measure, there is no way to quantify it. They simply say “significant,” that’s all. Like with a cubit—once all the measurements were roughly, more or less, is there a cubit here or not. Today we measure it in centimeters. Again, I’m saying this is how we are built; I have no criticism of it. I’m simply saying this is how we are built, and it is right for us to behave this way. We cannot do what they once did. Today we are too tied to science and technology and very formal thinking, so it has to be a uniform measurement. So first of all this removes from the picture a great many of the disputes. These are disputes where, if you split them apart, you’ll see that the reality is basically agreed upon. The whole question is how to evaluate it, how to judge it. And that really is not a dispute about reality. But several examples were already brought here, and there are more examples. Clearly there are also genuine disputes about reality. Then the question is what to do with that. So he brings something that I also once read and enjoyed very much. Things that Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner wrote in some letter. He says: “Surely you know that such passages are found in the Talmud in great number.” There are disputes about reality. “And you should know that when so-and-so and so-and-so hold that the planks of the Tabernacle were made in a certain known way different from how the reality actually was, then he is simply mistaken.” So he made a mistake. What is there to discuss? That’s obvious. But when… We have a solution for that; we have a way to check. Where we have no way to check, there can be a dispute about reality—how you grasped the whole… He assumes not. There cannot be a dispute about reality, because there is no such thing as a sage who is mistaken. You see? Here is Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner. He feels a need to solve it. Why the need to solve it? The planks of the Tabernacle—we have no way to check what happened there, so now there can be a dispute about reality. Why are you bothering him? It bothers him, so he looks for an answer, because for him there cannot be a dispute about reality. The problem is not “go check and see instead of arguing.” The problem is: how can one be wrong, when after all “these and those are the words of the living God”? That is what bothers him. So he finds a very nice solution which ultimately brings us back to the second conception. He says: “But when a sage from among the sages of the tradition of the Oral Torah”—who are the edge-beings of the Creator of the world—“when he holds that the planks of the Tabernacle were made in a way different from how the reality actually was, this is nothing but concealment within knowledge.” There is concealment of knowledge, of information. Just as the physical Tabernacle was hidden according to the will of God, so too there is a process whereby the knowledge of its nature and structure was consigned to concealment. To concealment within the knowledge of the sages of the tradition. If a sage from among the sages of the tradition of the Oral Torah did not align with the physical reality of the structure—meaning what he said does not fit what was actually there—then precisely thereby he aligned with the will of God. And consequently the Jewish law that emerges from that sage’s reasoning is the true Jewish law. And every reality has its own truth, and the truth of the reality of Torah is alignment with the will of God. And when two Amoraim disagree about the way the planks of the Tabernacle were made, the meaning of their dispute is how the picture of the planks of the Tabernacle was revealed before us.” This is almost postmodernism. Right, “and because the Jewish law that emerges from this disagreement does not depend at all on the actual reality of the planks of the Tabernacle, but rather on the way they are revealed, and the dispute of the Amoraim is how we are to expound the verses dealing with this matter, because the expositions of the verses by the sages of the Oral Torah are the will of God—here too with practical halakhic implications—in the revelation of this matter through the power of knowledge. And every detail of the reality of the body of the Tabernacle which the sages of the Oral Torah found no place to derive from the verses or from their reasoning is nothing but concealment. Concerning every other opinion found in the world we say one of two things: either it is wrong or it is right. But all the reasonings and opinions and expositions of the sages of the tradition of the Oral Torah are removed from the very distinction between right and wrong. These and those are the words of the living God.” I caught the source—what luck. Fine, what is he actually saying? He says something that on the face of it really does sound interesting. When you come to the question of exactly how they operated in the Tabernacle and what the order of the planks was, how do you reach that? You reach it through interpretation of verses; you try to understand how these verses—the Talmud or Tosafot, not important according to whom—in the Sages, let’s say, they tried to interpret the verses. Now clearly in reality one side was right and the other was wrong: either they did this with the planks or they did that with the planks. Or both were wrong? What? Or both were wrong. At least one was wrong, and maybe both were wrong. But for us it doesn’t matter what actually happened, because what matters is what the meaning is of the description of reality that appears in the Torah. Because for us, when the Torah is written, it documents reality, and what determines the Sabbath laws is how God chose to describe what happened there, not what actually happened there. That is what determines it. If so, then this is a dispute over interpretation of Torah, not a dispute about reality, and a dispute over interpretation of Torah is “these and those are the words of the living God.” Because you’re basically saying: what emerges from the Torah? Here—what emerges from the Torah is that the planks were like this. After all, certainly it is possible—like “it is not done so in our place, to marry off the younger before the elder,” as Laban says to Jacob—the claim that Laban said this, the Magen Avraham brings this as law. If Laban said in his language “it is not done so in Aram Naharayim,” so what? Does that obligate Jews here to the end of the generations? What is the connection? The claim is that if the Torah wrote it, then the Torah wanted to tell us “it is not done so in our place.” It’s not just a description of the history that happened there. The way the Torah chooses to describe something is not only to convey historical information but to teach me something that I am supposed to learn from it. And not only not only—not at all, and he claims not at all: historical reality is uninteresting. That’s what he claims. Fine? And similarly all the hair-splitting arguments that Vashti and Ahasuerus needed all of them—the dispute of Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Tzelach—what does that actually mean? Clearly—even if you take these ridiculous things seriously—but what really lies behind it? What lies behind it is that clearly Vashti and Ahasuerus did not enter into this dispute. Rather, the verses describe Vashti’s position and Ahasuerus’ position in such a way that the verses leave room for Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s interpretation and for the Tzelach’s interpretation. The one who wrote this with divine inspiration allowed it to be interpreted like Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Tzelach—not like Vashti and Ahasuerus. Fine? That’s what stands behind these things. And that’s what he is really claiming: that Jewish law does not depend on the historical reality; Jewish law depends on the description in the Torah of the historical reality. But in the description found in the Torah, this one understands that what happened was thus, and that one understands that what happened was thus, and therefore that is what determines it. And one practical consequence would be: what happens if Elijah comes and tells me what really happened there? It doesn’t matter. Here, in the concubine at Gibeah—“these and those are the words of the living God”—it doesn’t matter. The disputing sage will remain of his opinion and will not be persuaded by what Elijah said. Why? Because for him, at least regarding the lesson we understand, the lesson is this, and I read the verses, and the verses plainly yield this. I’m not interested in what really happened there. But if he read it wrongly? What? But apparently he read it wrongly if it really wasn’t that way. No, why? The Tabernacle was a certain thing. Didn’t the Torah describe what it was? Yes—it described it in such a way as to clarify for me the Sabbath laws that obligate me. It chose to describe it in a way not necessarily matching reality, because from its perspective this was only meant to teach me the laws of Sabbath—or in an aggadic context, something else, whatever. And the Torah chooses a certain way to describe things that is not necessarily faithful to the reality itself, but faithful to what I need to learn from what happened, because practical implications emerge from that. That is the claim. And he calls this the concealment of knowledge. Just as the Tabernacle was concealed, the knowledge or information about what happened there in the building of the Tabernacle was also concealed. What does it mean concealed? Concealed in the minds of the sages of the Oral Torah, or concealed in the Torah, and now you uncover what is inside the Torah, and every interpretation uncovers it this way, uncovers it. But it’s not really a mistake, because they were not claiming something about history; they were claiming something about the literary description of history, the biblical description of history. And here you can say “these and those are the words of the living God” in full. That really is what matters; it doesn’t matter what actually happened. Like we now return to the questions about Maimonides, yes, with the angels who came to Abraham—was it a parable or was it really? There too there is an argument. It doesn’t matter at the moment. The argument is only over what happened, but what happened is not important. What is important is the lesson that comes from it. And the lesson that comes from it—whether it was a parable or not makes no difference. Therefore the dispute between Maimonides and other commentators who interpret it literally is not really a substantive dispute, because it is really a historical dispute. In the historical dispute one is right and one is wrong. But it is not a dispute in Torah perspective. A Torah perspective is always the question of what conclusion you draw from it. If you draw a conclusion from it, then it will be “these and those are the words of the living God.” Because basically you can interpret the verses this way, and you can interpret the verses that way. So if the Torah can be interpreted this way or that way, that means there is room for both of these conceptions. And that is what matters. Here one says “these and those are the words of the living God.” “These and those are the words of the living God” applies to the Torah and halakhic lessons, not to factual reality. All this is under the assumption that there really cannot be a dispute about reality because there cannot be an error, as he assumes. And he claims the dispute is not about reality but about how we see reality. I assume in the story of the angels there, there is a dispute among the commentators how to understand the plain sense. And it is known that one can read the Torah on the levels of peshat, remez, derash, and sod, and that there are seventy faces to the Torah. But when there is a dispute among Torah commentators, it is a dispute over what the plain sense is. And if you’ll tell me as a homiletic interpretation that the angels… No, no, that’s what I’m saying. That too—the dispute between Maimonides and those who disagreed with him in interpreting the Torah: did it really happen or not? One was right and one was wrong, clearly, at the level of plain sense. But the Ritva says fine, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the argument is not really there. The real argument is over what lessons I am to learn from there. And the lessons I learn from there do not depend on whether this was a parable or not. You’re saying the plain meaning of what happened isn’t interesting? Not interesting. Only the question of what lesson I learn from there. That is the claim. The discussion of taking what happened—that’s fine, that’s already an archaeological dispute. So one is right and one is wrong, but who cares? What interests us is the lesson I learn from there. And even if it was a parable, the Torah wrote this visit of the angels in order to teach me, you know, that hospitality is greater than receiving the Divine Presence. There are many lessons learned from those angels. Even though, according to Maimonides, it never happened at all, fine—but the Torah wrote it in order to teach me that lesson. Why not say the lesson explicitly? What? Why not say the lesson explicitly? That is the question why the Torah chooses to communicate things through narrative messages. Sometimes it is a better way to communicate things when you tell a story rather than saying it in a plain, direct way. By the way, with Laban too there was a dispute about reality, because Laban said to Jacob, “It is not done so in our place.” He told him, don’t do that among us; among us they don’t do so. “It is not done so among us”—it referred to particulars. Yes, okay. But there was no dispute at all. “It is not done so in our place”—everyone agrees it was not done so in their place. No, he said “it is not done so”; he said things like that. So there is no dispute. There is no dispute about the interpretation of the verse there. Fine, so that is regarding disputes about reality. So if I summarize—I see this took me more time than I thought—if I summarize, then basically I would say this: indeed, in most cases the dispute is not about reality. That is true. Not because I have a motivation to say that, but because it really is not a dispute about reality. It is a dispute about the evaluation of reality. It is basically a question of how to evaluate the threshold: how much is called flavor, how much is called shade, all kinds of things like that, and only a question of what the threshold is—how much a woman needs, how many women, what percentage of women need to refuse in such a case in order to say that the average woman does not accept a marriage of that sort. When there really is a dispute about reality, then there are various possibilities. One possibility is simply to say: yes, indeed, there is a dispute about reality, and one is right and one is wrong. So what? Who said there is no such thing? True, where it is possible to decide by checking, what is the point of disputing? Just do a check and decide. And even about that I said that in the mentality of that time, they were not necessarily aware that every time one must ask what reality is and check. I can see disputes remaining unresolved without checking. Although I say that when there is a dispute, according to Aristotle’s conception, then it is really harder. If you truly have a disagreement, why bang heads between the two opinions? Go do an experiment with the two views and check who is right. And that really is a significant claim. Therefore there are disputes about reality. According to this conception there is no dispute where… where one can check, certainly where one can check easily. And this is also like in the laws of doubt: if you are in doubt, that does not mean you may be lenient in a rabbinic doubt if you can check it. Then it is not called being in doubt. Check it. It is something capable of being checked. What do you mean, I am in doubt so I may be lenient? That is not called doubt. Those who go farther are those who basically say that such a thing does not exist at all—that there is no such thing as a dispute about reality—like the assumption of Rabbi Saadia Gaon. Why? Because it cannot be that a sage from among the sages of the Oral Torah is mistaken. Such a thing cannot be. I said that Maharatz Chayes applies this even to the medieval authorities, not only the Sages. He brings a dispute among medieval authorities about “stored” or “uprooted” in the name of the Talmud in Ketubot; that is one example. There are others in Maharatz Chayes regarding the question how blood is contained in a woman—in a virgin, when she has intercourse, blood comes out. The question is how that blood is situated: is it deposited as in a receptacle or is it absorbed into the organs—“stored” or “uprooted”? And this has practical implications for whether intercourse is a Sabbath prohibition and under which labor category, etc. In any event, Maharatz Chayes says there: what? There cannot be a dispute about reality as to whether the blood is “stored” or “uprooted,” and therefore he explains it differently according to his approach. He assumes that even among the medieval authorities there cannot be a dispute about reality. There is no such thing, because then one would be wrong. I said, that doesn’t necessarily bother me. But even if we adopt this, there is still Rabbi Saadia Gaon’s concept, who takes it to the end. He says basically: okay, true, it cannot be that one of the sages of the Oral Torah made a mistake. Therefore whenever something seems to you to be a dispute about reality, first check whether it really is a dispute about reality or only a question of where to set the threshold. Second, the dispute is over how I interpret reality or where I set the threshold, not a dispute over what really happened in reality. Fine, that’s the first part. The second part really concerns social disputes, as I said. Maybe I’ll give some introduction. It says in Avot: “Any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven will in the end endure; one that is not for the sake of Heaven will not in the end endure. Which is a dispute for the sake of Heaven? The dispute of Hillel and Shammai. And one not for the sake of Heaven? Korach and his congregation.” An interesting point is that the Jerusalem Talmud describes the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel as reaching the point of killing one another—I mentioned this one of the previous times—and this is called a dispute for the sake of Heaven. Fine? That is, the definition of a dispute for the sake of Heaven as opposed to an invalid dispute is not necessarily the question how extreme it is and how it is conducted. Again, I still don’t understand that literally as them actually killing each other, but apparently there was something fairly violent and extreme there. Today people often tend to think it depends on how you conduct the dispute: if it is extreme then it is a dispute not for the sake of Heaven, and if it is for the sake of Heaven then it must be conducted gently, and so on. I do not accept that. On the website this has come up more than once—sharp expressions, the question whether sharp expressions are automatically illegitimate or not. I’ve repeated many times that in my view the question is whether it is substantive or not substantive, not how harshly you speak. Fine, there may be a value in not speaking harshly, and sometimes maybe I exaggerate and I’m willing to accept criticism. I only claim that on the principled level I don’t accept that as the criterion for what is legitimate and what is not. I’m saying: if I talk about his mother’s or his sister’s profession, speculating about their profession, baseless speculations, then that is irrelevant, because what does that have to do with anything? Discuss the matter itself. But if I speak sharply and say “you’re stupid, you’re an idiot,” that can be substantive if I actually show that he is stupid and an idiot—I bring arguments and show that he is stupid and an idiot. Then I said it. And maybe I said something harsh; maybe it would have been better to speak more moderately. There is room to discuss when yes and when no. But again, moderation is not the criterion for whether a dispute is legitimate or not and whether it is for the sake of Heaven or not. What? The medieval authorities used such language. Right, certainly. They called each other stupid. Right, Nachmanides says: any judge who judges in such a way… in the Talmud in Bava Metzia 69, Abaye and Rava say to one another: any judge who judges like you is not a judge at all. Abaye and Rava are not judges at all. Or Baal HaMaor and Nachmanides—Nachmanides says: “ancient words from the mouth of a new old man,” an old man newly arrived. Baal HaMaor wrote this as a young boy, wrote criticisms on the Rif, and Nachmanides was shocked by it. The Rif was really regarded as untouchable, sacred, and Baal HaMaor at age seventeen—the “small luminary” wrote at seventeen and he writes critiques on the Rif, and Nachmanides got heated with him: first grow up, study a little before you write. But he bothered to answer him, meaning there was appreciation together with the… If I answer you, that means you wrote a work… In any event, I’m saying the sharpness of expression I don’t think is relevant at all. One can argue over concepts and over gentleness, and one can argue over tactics—that is, what helps and what works, what is effective and what is not effective. But many times people treat this as something essential—that if a person speaks sharply then it is not legitimate, and that is a dispute not for the sake of Heaven. I absolutely do not accept that. In retrospect, you can be harsh, revile and insult the other—I have no problem with that, including if it is I myself—so long as you establish it, you show that what I said is true, that I talked nonsense, that I’m an idiot. Then say I’m an idiot, fine, what’s the problem? I’ll argue with you and say I’m not an idiot, but I have no problem with your saying it. That is exactly the point. Yes, that post about me being a heretic. People were terribly offended on my behalf. I said: what’s the problem? After all, that really is what he thinks; according to his definition of “heretic,” it fits. He is right according to his view. Now, one can argue whether I agree with him or disagree with him, but what is illegitimate about saying it? That is the dictionary definition of the term according to him, so that is what he says. What is the problem with that? The fact that there are stupid people—certainly there are stupid people. So if I call someone stupid, is that necessarily illegitimate? It is illegitimate unless I have shown that he is stupid. Meaning if I show with arguments that he is stupid and then I say he is stupid, that is entirely substantive. Again, you can say it is not helpful, not tactical, not this—fine, those are tactical arguments, but that’s not the point. And a dispute for the sake of Heaven can be conducted in a very extreme way, and many times it was described in a very extreme way, and that does not mean it is not for the sake of Heaven. The dispute—I don’t know—the whole fanatical madness of Satmar, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that, yes? In my opinion that is a dispute for the sake of Heaven in principle, including the ugliest acts, informing to the authorities against the Zionists—not today, I’m talking about the beginning of Zionism—or the opposition to Zionism or the Enlightenment; they informed on each other to the authorities, things like that happened there. In my view that is a dispute for the sake of Heaven. It is a dispute for the sake of Heaven in which they may have done things one perhaps should not do or may not do, but the dispute is for the sake of Heaven. You truly think the other fellow is causing harm and needs to be put in prison by the Russians so that he won’t lead the children of Israel astray in mind or religion. Fine? Now I can argue with you whether it is right to do that and whether it is permitted to do that, but according to your view you are doing it for entirely substantive reasons; you are not doing it because you just hate me. That is a dispute for the sake of Heaven in my opinion. What about killing? What? Killing? In certain cases, killing too, yes. Again, I may disagree, but that I disagree—for example, let’s return to Yigal Amir, yes, what do you mean “what about killing”? I say: that was entirely an act for the sake of Heaven. And I can disagree with him, but it was an act for the sake of Heaven. He didn’t do it just because he felt like killing Rabin because he—I think, I don’t know him—but because he hated him. He thought that by this he was preventing disasters. That’s what he thought. Now it may be that he was mistaken; it may be that even if he had prevented disasters, it still would not be justified to do it. That is a substantive legal argument. But if that really is what he thought, then it is a substantive act for the sake of Heaven. “For the sake of Heaven” is not necessarily “for the sake of Heaven” in the sense of an ideal. It’s something—you said it as a compliment to the dispute. Fine, it is a compliment. Why is what I just said a compliment to Yigal Amir? That he did it not for his own desires and not for any personal reason—is that not something good? No, I said it’s not something good; there’s no connection. I said it’s not something good and I said it’s a compliment. Those are different things. He did it for the sake of Heaven, and I disagree with him, and he did something wrong. Those are different things. So I give him the compliment for what he deserves it for, and I condemn him for what I disagree with. That’s what I’m saying. Hillel and Shammai wanted to kill one another, or killed one another. I’m not necessarily praising that. In fact, I’m not coming to praise that at all. But I see it as a dispute for the sake of Heaven. The Mishnah says it is a dispute for the sake of Heaven—the dispute of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai is a dispute for the sake of Heaven. Fine, even a dispute for the sake of Heaven may need limits, but the definition of whether it is for the sake of Heaven or not, in my opinion, is the question whether it is substantive or not. The dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel was a substantive dispute. They really thought the other was wrong, harmful, whatever, and therefore they did what they did. So I can argue that what they did was not okay, but it is a dispute for the sake of Heaven. And where was Korach wrong, that it was not for the sake of Heaven? What? Where was Korach wrong, that it was not for the sake of Heaven? Because Korach apparently—the claim of the Sages, I don’t know—but the Sages’ claim was that it was not because he disagreed with Moses. The substantive claims were a cover for other motivations. That was the claim—at least that’s how I understand it. Therefore the Sages say this is not a dispute for the sake of Heaven. He wanted a position for himself. He wanted that Moses not be the leader but that he be the leader. Yes, “why do you exalt yourselves?” Now if you truly make that claim in the name of democracy, then it is a dispute for the sake of Heaven. But if you make that claim because you want to be the leader rather than someone else, then it is a dispute not for the sake of Heaven, because you are really doing it because you have an interest. Okay? That is exactly the point. It is not at all a question of how sharply Korach did it. That’s not the point. The question is why he did it. Was it substantive or not substantive? You can’t take the label “for the sake of Heaven” and by using it give legitimacy to murder. For after all, one must die rather than transgress. Because it’s for the sake of Heaven—he didn’t say I gave it legitimacy; I said it was for the sake of Heaven. You’re not giving him a compliment—you’re praising him. I am praising him, and I’m saying it is for the sake of Heaven, but that does not mean legitimacy. When you praise something bad—you can’t praise it. On the definition of the dispute. This thing is bad in one respect and good in another respect. You think we are contaminating the phrase “for the sake of Heaven.” I disagree. I think the evaluation of events and of figures and of people’s conduct can be very complex. I can disagree very strongly with someone and greatly appreciate him according to his own view, what he does according to his own view. We once talked about suicide terrorists. Same thing. I think their self-sacrifice—yes, exactly—their self-sacrifice is very worthy of appreciation in my view. I don’t know whether I would be willing to sacrifice myself to that extent for what I think is true. At the same time, clearly one must kill them, and they are harmful, and this must be prevented by any means. I do not agree with what they do. Fine, “do not agree”—I am of course also the potential victim. But I’m saying that does not prevent me from appreciating them. In my opinion, conceptual contamination is the opposite—to mix the levels. One must relate to the phenomenon in a complex way. There is this aspect and that aspect. Each thing on its own terms. And I claim that whether a dispute is for the sake of Heaven or not is not the question of how it is conducted. That does not mean I have no criticism of how disputes are conducted. There can be criticism of that. But that is criticism of a dispute for the sake of Heaven, which also has ways it should and should not be conducted. That is a different argument. But a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven is a dispute whose motivation is a foreign motivation, not for the sake of Heaven. And here that is not true. You can conduct a dispute in a very ugly and extreme way and it can still be a dispute for the sake of Heaven. Everyone laughs so much at all those who do everything and of course it is all only for the sake of Torah, right? And they always say that ironically and cynically. I don’t see it cynically. I think that very often—not always, but very often—it really reflects or expresses a person’s genuine Torah position. He thinks that this is how one ought to act. And I’m going to argue with him—not only about the position but also that even if this is your position, it is not right to act this way. But still I understand that according to your view you think it is justified to act this way. And again, this is not postmodernism, as was said here earlier, because I will still oppose him and I will put him in prison or I will prevent what he is doing. It is not that I am willing to let everyone do whatever he wants. But I can also appreciate him according to his own view. A person is complex. It is not that everyone is right. Rather, even in someone who is not right there can be facets that are indeed facets one can appreciate and recognize, and things of that sort. Therefore, if I summarize just the introduction—because I only began this point—we’ll continue next time, and then we’ll start the next topic. Thank you very much, everyone, we’ll continue. The criterion, therefore, for “for the sake of Heaven” and “not for the sake of Heaven” is not the question how the dispute is conducted, but the question of what its motivation is. Is the motivation substantive or not? And I also don’t think it is true that the manner of conduct is an indication of motivation. Not that either. The manner of conduct in itself does not define the dispute as not for the sake of Heaven, nor is it necessarily an indication that the motivation is improper. That’s not true. There are people who are truly zealots. And they are zealots, and they do it for the sake of Heaven. And you can argue with zealots and you can disagree with them, but it is not necessarily not for the sake of Heaven. It depends. There are some yes and some no. Yes. Fine.