Disputes: History and Essence — Rabbi Michael Avraham — Lesson 3

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but doing an act for the sake of learning apparently isn’t forbidden.

[Speaker I] Ah, because I understood the statement to mean that you’re allowed to study them only if it’s solely for the purpose of teaching, and not for the purpose of doing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but that too is for the purpose of teaching.

[Speaker I] But here the statement is that you’re allowed even to do the acts of sorcery if it’s for the purpose of teaching.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Teaching, yes, also. What I said before is either for the sake of teaching—you just need to make it known that what you’re doing is sleight of hand. No, this is something… uh, no, from here at least, again, I don’t have other sources. From here you see that apparently when you do it in order to engage in the relevant Jewish laws, then it is permitted. It’s a bit like what they say about Maimonides, right? The Tashbetz writes this in Magen Avot on Pirkei Avot. He explains that what is written, “Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes,” meaning that it is forbidden to read heretical books and things like that—so they ask there: how did Maimonides read them? He himself brings this prohibition of “do not stray,” and he himself says that he read those books. So they answer that someone who studies them in order to know how to deal with them is not subject to the prohibition. The prohibition is when you study in order to identify with it, to internalize it, to adopt it. So here too, apparently, the point is that if you do it as part of study or teaching, when you’re teaching Rabbi Akiva, then apparently there is no prohibition.

[Speaker E] Also, he didn’t perform an act; he said something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but “it became filled” and all that… “performing an act,” I think, doesn’t necessarily mean specifically a physical act. Rather, it means that when you speak and you actually perform sorcery, you’re not just doing sleight of hand. The contrast with “performing an act” is not speech. The contrast with sleight of hand is sleight of hand.

[Speaker E] Yes, but what it says is “one gathers and one gathers,” meaning it sounds like it’s not that one says one kind of incantation and the other says another kind.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. What’s relevant is: “one who performs an act is liable, and one who deceives the eyes is exempt.”

[Speaker E] Meaning, a gathering that involves a real act.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not “involves an act.” Real gathering is liable, and sleight of hand is exempt. How do you do the real gathering? It could also be through speech. Meaning, the contrast here is between whether you really did it or not, not necessarily in the technical sense of a prohibition that involves an act—I don’t think so. By the way, speech too, at least in some places, counts as an act. Muzzling by voice—the Talmud in tractate Bava Metzia 90—you muzzle by speaking, and that’s called an act.

[Speaker E] Yes, but they would have brought that—they wouldn’t have needed to bring this as an example of something that’s supposedly an act that doesn’t involve an act, where there’s only speech and yet he violates a prohibition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Movement of the lips is considered an act.” I didn’t understand?

[Speaker E] No, because when the Talmud brings examples, they bring conspiring witnesses and I don’t remember what else, but they don’t bring sorcery as an example. Sorcery means someone who does something that could be—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They could have brought this too, I don’t know. Or maybe with sorcery it isn’t considered a prohibition involving an act; I don’t know exactly. But simply speaking, it seems to me that the distinction here is not necessarily “act” in the sense of a prohibition involving an act, because in fact the contrast is—you would have had to say “one who performs an act is liable, and one who does it without an act is exempt.” But the contrast is “one who deceives the eyes,” not “one who does it without an act.” It also sounds like—in Nazir 11 as well, the Talmud discusses there—wait, the Talmud says there that anyone who says “on condition that” is considered as though he said “from now.” Meaning, when there is a condition introduced by “on condition that,” it uproots the act. If the condition is not fulfilled, then the act is uprooted. So Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman and Rabbi Akiva Eiger discuss there—it starts in Shitah Mekubetzet there in Nazir—how can that be? After all, when you speak—yes—how can speech uproot an act? So they say that naziriteship is not an act, because with naziriteship you just speak. Therefore the condition can uproot the speech because it is not uprooting an act. And Rabbi Elchanan says that’s not true: if the speech created the legal status of naziriteship, then this is called speech that uproots an act, because it has a result. Meaning, it doesn’t matter that the result was produced through speech; if some result was produced—and here it’s even a halakhic result, naziriteship, not a real-world result—that is called an act. And in this context, an actual physical result is produced here, not only a halakhic result, so certainly it would count as an act. But there is some dispute there—if I’m not mistaken, Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Shitah Mekubetzet disagree there, I think. Rabbi Elchanan talks about it there in Nazir. In any case, then it says: “It was stated regarding cucumbers: Rabbi said to me, ‘You taught me their planting; teach me their uprooting.’ I said one thing, and they all gathered into one place.” In short, he played around with those cucumbers in all directions. They said to him: “The ball, the mold, the amulet, the pouch, the pearl, and the small weight—what is their status?” Now they asked him halakhic questions about ritual impurity and purity, right? They asked Rabbi Eliezer. We’ve now returned to the story. Until here it was just a description of how Rabbi Akiva learned sorcery from him. But now we’ve gone back to the story of all the Tannaim who came to visit him, and they ask him, “What is the law?” He said to them: “They are impure, and their purification is as they are.” “A shoe that is on the mold—what is its status?” He said to them: “It is pure,” and his soul departed. Then he died. “His soul departed in purity”—when he said the word “pure,” he died, so his soul departed in purity because he said the word “pure.” Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: “The vow has been annulled, the vow has been annulled.” At the close of the Sabbath, Rabbi Akiva met him on the road from Caesarea to Lod. Rabbi Akiva met Rabbi Yehoshua. He was striking his own flesh until his blood flowed to the ground. He opened with a line of consolation—shurah means consolation after death—and said: “My father, my father, chariot of Israel and its horsemen. I have much money but no money changer to sort it out for me.”

So—up to this point that’s the whole story. Now the Talmud returns to the framing story: this implies that he learned it from Rabbi Eliezer. Let’s go back to the Mishnah above, right? Rabbi Akiva says in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua: “Two gather cucumbers; one gathers and is exempt, and one gathers and is liable.” So he said this in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua. Here in the story we see that he learned the laws of the cucumbers and the sorcery from Rabbi Eliezer, not from Rabbi Yehoshua, right? So why does the Talmud say it in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua? The Talmud says: he learned the tradition from Rabbi Eliezer, but not the reasoning. Then Rabbi Akiva went back and Rabbi Yehoshua explained it to him. Ah, here, here—the Talmud asks the question; I didn’t even remember that it appears later on. “And how could he do that? But didn’t we learn: one who performs an act is liable?” The Talmud answers: learning is different, as you asked, Ari, and as I answered. As the master said: “You shall not learn to do”—to do, you may not learn, but you may learn in order to understand and to teach. But that’s not important for our purposes. What is important for our purposes is this interesting ending with Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva actually learned this from Rabbi Eliezer but didn’t accept it—he didn’t understand it. He went to Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Yehoshua explained it to him. Now what’s nice is that in the Mishnah he cites it in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua, not in the name of Rabbi Eliezer. Even though he learned the law from Rabbi Eliezer, only the explanation he got from Rabbi Yehoshua.

Now, it seems to me that this sums everything up. And it’s beautiful that it happens precisely on the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death. Because on the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death they are basically explaining to us what the whole story was about. The whole story was whether Torah is given to you as a top-down transmission—that is how Rabbi Eliezer saw it. I learned from my teachers, I will tell you what the truth is, and don’t confuse me with your reasons. That’s irrelevant. You need to accept what I say. And that’s also what he said to Rabbi Akiva when he taught him the gathering of the cucumbers: he told him, this is the law—one who deceives the eyes is exempt, one who performs an act is liable. Period. That’s what I told you. Rabbi Akiva didn’t understand why. What difference does it make? Then Rabbi Yehoshua explains it to him. The explanation doesn’t appear here—it doesn’t matter—but Rabbi Yehoshua was the one who explained the reasoning. Because Rabbi Yehoshua belongs to the opposite camp. Rabbi Yehoshua is the one who says that Torah is what we arrive at through our own understanding. Right? Rabbi Eliezer demanded of Rabbi Akiva that he accept this law because I said so; I don’t want to explain it to you. I don’t have to explain anything to you. Maybe I don’t even know how to explain it to you. It doesn’t matter—the explanation is irrelevant. Fine? You need to accept the law because I said so, because I’m the authority. Again, the authoritarian, traditionalist approach.

And then he goes to Rabbi Yehoshua, who was also his teacher, and Rabbi Yehoshua of course belongs to the other camp. So Rabbi Yehoshua also explained to him why it is correct. In the end Rabbi Akiva says this law in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua in the Mishnah, not in the name of Rabbi Eliezer. That’s very interesting, even though he learned it from Rabbi Eliezer. Meaning, Rabbi Akiva basically adopted Rabbi Yehoshua’s conception and not Rabbi Eliezer’s. Even though he learned the law from Rabbi Eliezer, he states it in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua.

But still, it seems to me that maybe—I don’t know—either this interpretation is right or it isn’t. I don’t think it’s proven in the Talmud, but it seems to me to be a possible or reasonable interpretation that Rabbi Akiva nevertheless marks out some sort of middle path. Because the radical approach of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah and Rabbi Yehoshua—that everything is based on reasoning and not… Rabbi Eliezer knows everything; you can simply ask him. Why are you engaging in dialectics and trying to reconstruct laws? Ask him—the information exists. “What do we care, what do we care, we’ll derive everything from our own minds”—that is an extreme approach. It’s an extreme approach typical of rebels: when you go out against a dominant approach, you adopt the opposite approach to the fullest, in a radical way. But the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is an element of tradition in Torah; we don’t invent everything. They too didn’t think we invent everything; obviously we’re only talking about ethos here. Probably nobody took things fully to the extreme. But the ethos is like this: Rabbi Eliezer is the thesis, Rabbi Yehoshua is the antithesis, and Rabbi Akiva is the synthesis. He really is the student of both of them. He learned from both. From Rabbi Eliezer he learns the law—there is tradition. Rabbi Akiva learns the traditional law from Rabbi Eliezer; he goes to ask him, and in fact unlike everyone else he goes to ask Rabbi Eliezer. He does go ask him even though he has been excommunicated. Why? There is Torah; I want to know what the truth is. Now there is a tradition about this, Rabbi Eliezer knows it, so why not go ask him? Why on earth should we reinvent the wheel from our own minds, from our own reasoning, instead of going to ask the one who knows everything, who is the teacher of us all? Why not go ask him? So he goes to ask him, but he doesn’t stop there. Afterward he goes back to Rabbi Yehoshua and wants to learn from him too. What does he learn from him? The explanation. He now also understands what he learned from Rabbi Eliezer.

And therefore Rabbi Akiva, it seems to me, reflects here all along the way—not only at the end where it says that he learned from Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua explained it to him, but from his entire conduct. All the others didn’t even come to Rabbi Eliezer; they didn’t need to, they didn’t come to ask. Rabbi Akiva did go ask, because he wants to know what the tradition says before he goes on to understand things. He does not trust his own mind to that extent, that whatever his mind says is fine, no need for tradition, I’ll invent everything myself. It doesn’t work that way. You need tradition and explanation—precisely this combination of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. Take the tradition and think with your own head about why it is correct; explain it. Then of course you can also draw conclusions from it, you can clarify cases where the tradition got a little garbled, and then you can also critique the tradition you receive. You combine reasoning and intellect with the tradition you receive, and that really is Rabbi Akiva.

[Speaker E] It’s a bit reminiscent of the dispute in science between empiricism and rationalism. Right. And there’s also a Talmudic statement that the law follows Rabbi Yosi because his reasoning is with him. Does that connect to what’s being said here, that there has to be an explanation together with the law, which sort of strengthens the—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure, because first of all chronologically Rabbi Yosi is a later generation. But I think that statement about Rabbi Yosi is a statement already made within this world of Rabbi Akiva. Within Rabbi Akiva’s world, meaning: the one whose reasoning is more persuasive, the law follows him. On the contrary, in a world where people contend by means of reasoning, Rabbi Yosi had good arguments, he was sharp, so the law follows him. If anything, there’s the statement about Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov that his teaching is small in quantity but clean. “His teaching is small but clean”—that does speak a bit more in traditionalist terms. Meaning, he preserves things well, he has a good memory, he gathered all the traditions, checked them carefully, and he maintains reliable material. In that sense, maybe it is some remnant of traditionalism in a later period.

[Speaker E] But about Rabbi Meir they said that the law was not established in accordance with him because they could not get to the depth of his reasoning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So—

[Speaker E] That’s also a bit of proof for this—that even if you’re right, the law still won’t necessarily follow you, because—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That too—both Rabbi Meir and those who didn’t rule like him—are all still within the conception of reasoning. Right, only that’s the next stage, and I’ll get to it in a minute. The next stage is not only that we follow the reasoning, but that reasoning has such a status that even where we have indications that our reasoning is wrong, as long as that is what we think, we rule that way. That is already one more step further. Let’s say in a place where I think—I have indications that my reasoning isn’t correct, but this really is what I think; if you ask me, in terms of my understanding, this seems to me to be the truth, and yet I have some indication that I am nevertheless mistaken. For example, precisely this Talmudic passage about Rabbi Meir: the Talmud says that his colleagues did not rule like him because they could not get to the depth of his reasoning. But if he was so wise that you could not get to the depth of his reasoning, then clearly he is right, and if you don’t understand then apparently you are wrong and failed to understand—so you should rule like him. Why is not understanding him a reason not to rule like him? The answer is that it may very well be that he is right; it is even more likely that he is right. But if this is what I think, then this is what I must do. And that is already a more extreme conception of the status of reasoning. Because one could have said that the status of reasoning is that everything has to pass through the crucible of intellect. Fine. If I have an indication that I’m mistaken, I don’t just go with my own intellect blindly. But here there is a statement of “no, no”—reason also constitutes the validity of this law. Meaning, if this is what follows from the intellect, then even if I have an indication otherwise—this is really the meaning of “It is not in heaven.” When a heavenly voice comes out and says that the law follows Rabbi Eliezer, that’s basically what it means—it means that the truth is with Rabbi Eliezer. And nevertheless the sages say: we do not pay attention to a heavenly voice. So that is already written there.

Therefore it seems to me that if I can derive some structure from the Talmudic passage we just read, it really is a kind of dialectical structure that says Rabbi Eliezer and the earlier Rabban Gamliel go with traditionalism, with authority. The later Rabban Gamliel joins Rabbi Yehoshua and his camp, who go with a Torah of give-and-take and not a Torah of tradition—of votes, a more democratic Torah. And Rabbi Akiva creates some kind of synthesis. That is, he takes the tradition and takes the explanations, the reasoning, from Rabbi Yehoshua; the tradition from Rabbi Eliezer; and from them creates something more balanced, yes, more grounded and more balanced. With all due respect to our reasoning, reasoning can be mistaken, and tradition also carries weight. So now we need to see how we weigh reason plus tradition plus understanding. And in the end Rabbi Akiva is the one who is somehow regarded as the father of the Oral Torah. The Talmud says—I brought this here, yes, in Sanhedrin 86: “An anonymous Mishnah is Rabbi Meir, an anonymous Tosefta is Rabbi Nehemiah, an anonymous Sifra is Rabbi Yehudah, an anonymous Sifrei is Rabbi Shimon, and all of them are according to Rabbi Akiva.” The Talmud says that Rabbi Akiva is basically the father of the Oral Torah as we have it today. Meaning, everything we know today ultimately comes from Rabbi Akiva. And I think the reason for that may be—again, this is a conjecture—but I think the reason is that Rabbi Akiva truly expresses this synthesis between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. He studied with both. This synthesis that says: look, you are radicals, you are revolutionaries, and revolutionaries always have to be radical—but revolutionaries are mistaken. That is, they went too far. The balanced approach is, as Maimonides says, to take things to the extreme in order ultimately to arrive at the middle—yes, Maimonides’ middle path. Fine? And the middle path is basically what Rabbi Akiva expresses here, and that is why he is regarded as the father of the Oral Torah.

Let’s maybe just finish with the last Talmudic passage there, also on the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death—another story, elsewhere, yes, thirty-five pages later. Rabbah bar bar Hannah said: When Rabbi Eliezer fell ill, his students entered to visit him. He said to them: “There is fierce heat in the world.” They began to cry, and Rabbi Akiva laughed. Which is similar to the story of the fox coming out of the Holy of Holies, yes, it’s the same pattern. They said to him: “Why are you laughing?” He said to them: “And why are you crying?” They said to him: “Is it possible that a Torah scroll should be in distress and we not cry?” “Torah scroll” here is of course Rabbi Eliezer. He said to them: “That is why I laugh. As long as I saw that my teacher’s wine did not sour, and his flax was not stricken, and his oil did not spoil, and his honey did not rot, I said: perhaps, Heaven forbid, my teacher has received his world in his lifetime.” Meaning, he received his reward, his world to come, in his lifetime. “Now that I see that he is suffering, that a Torah scroll is in distress, I understand that he is receiving what he needs to receive in this world, and for the world to come he is already prepared for eternal life.” What lies behind this, of course? Everyone understands that Rabbi Eliezer deserves punishment. There is something very problematic there; he expresses a very problematic conception. He deserves punishment. And Rabbi Akiva also agrees that he deserves punishment. The only thing is, he was afraid that he would receive the punishment in the world to come. Now that he sees he is suffering in this world and receiving punishment here for what he did, now I am calm, because he will already make it to the world to come.

He said to him: “Akiva, did I leave anything out of the entire Torah?” He knows everything, right? I learned everything. Maybe the question behind this is: why do I deserve punishment? Meaning, why do you think I deserve this punishment? He said to him: “You taught us, our teacher, that there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin.” In other words, everyone deserves punishment for something. Of course, there’s an elephant in the room. Nobody talks about it. It’s obvious to everyone what is being referred to here when they say that Rabbi Eliezer deserves punishment. It’s this excommunication he suffered because of his dispute over the oven of Akhnai. But nobody talks about it. Just as they said to him above, “We didn’t have time, that’s why we didn’t come to you.” You can’t—you can’t say that to your teacher, right?

[Speaker E] By the way, doesn’t “did I leave anything out” here mean “did I alter anything”? What? “Did I leave anything out” here means “did I alter.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I committed a transgression, not “I left something out.” What do you mean, “I altered”?

[Speaker E] As if he’s saying: there is the Torah, and he didn’t change anything from what it is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t fulfill. I think the intention is about observance. When he says, “there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin,” the point is not only that I knew the whole Torah, I also fulfilled the whole Torah. So what—why do I deserve punishment? What, did I fail in something? So he says yes: there is no righteous person who does not sin. The rabbis taught: When Rabbi Eliezer fell ill, four elders entered to visit him: Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Yehoshua, Elazar ben Azariah, and Rabbi Akiva. Yes, all the leaders of the revolutionary camp. Rabbi Yehoshua responded and said: “You are better for Israel than the orb of the sun, for the orb of the sun is in this world, but my teacher is in this world and in the world to come.” Elazar ben Azariah responded and said: “You are better for Israel than father and mother, for father and mother are for this world, but my teacher is for this world and the world to come.” Yes, that recalls the laws of honoring father and mother and honoring one’s teacher—your teacher’s lost object and your father’s lost object: your teacher’s takes precedence, because your teacher brings you to the world to come, while your father brought you only into this world. Yes, clearly this echoes that Talmudic passage. Elazar ben Azariah responded and said: “You are better for Israel than a father”—that’s it, we saw that. Rabbi Akiva responded and said: “Afflictions are precious.” Yes, Rabbi Akiva doesn’t—he goes straight at it. Meaning, he does not praise Rabbi Eliezer even on the day of his death. He speaks to him directly. He says to him: “Afflictions are precious.” Meaning, the fact that you are suffering is fine; that’s how it should be.

He said to them: “Support me so that I may hear the words of Akiva my student, who said: ‘Afflictions are precious.’” Meaning, all of you are flattering me now after not having come to me all this time. Rabbi Akiva came to hear Torah from me. I had criticism of him—we saw that in the previous Talmudic passage. But Rabbi Akiva is a man of truth. Rabbi Akiva—why is he a man of truth? Also because why did he come to me? He came to me because he knows that I hold the facts. You engage in dialectics; the truth isn’t important to you. Rabbi Akiva comes to ask me because he knows that with me he will find the truth. Afterward there will be the dialectics; he’ll go to Rabbi Yehoshua to have it explained to him. But first of all he wants to know what the law is.

[Speaker L] Maybe Rabbi Akiva’s approach is really to see something positive in everything, that we see the thing—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Positive, or just always the opposite of everyone else—that I don’t know. It’s always an interesting question. What would happen if everyone saw something positive? Would Rabbi Akiva then not say something negative?

[Speaker L] In the story of the fox, yes, there seemingly he wasn’t going against them exactly—okay, they cried and he—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Laughed. Yes. I don’t know whether he is always arguing the opposite, or whether he always goes in a positive direction. I have no idea.

[Speaker I] But it seems to me the Talmud says that Rabbi Akiva learned from his teacher Nahum of Gamzu.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. “This too is for the good,” right.

[Speaker I] That there it was on the level of like other things.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but there they’re talking about methods of interpretation.

[Speaker I] No, why? “This too”—I remember that he learned to say everything is for the good, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. The Talmud in Shevuot—as I remember it, Shevuot 26—the Talmud says there that there is the school of Rabbi Yishmael and the school of Rabbi Akiva: one derives by general and particular, and the other expounds by inclusion and exclusion. He studied under Nahum of Gamzu, and he studied under Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah. Meaning, that’s the— But it could be that he also took from him the “this too is for the good”; that’s an interesting connection, and then indeed you’d be right that Rabbi Akiva was a kind of optimist. Yes, even when—and he suffered, and they executed him—even then he viewed himself that way. So he said: “Support me so that I may hear the words of Akiva my student, who said: ‘Afflictions are precious.’” He said to him: “Akiva, from where do you derive this?” Very interesting, by the way. Do you notice the reversal? Rabbi Akiva is Rabbi Eliezer’s student. Rabbi Akiva comes to hear from Rabbi Eliezer the information, all the information he has. And now Rabbi Eliezer sits before him as a student and asks Rabbi Akiva—he learns from Rabbi Akiva. It’s an interesting reversal. But not only does he learn from Rabbi Akiva; he asks him, “From where do you derive this?” I’m asking for reasons. You are not passing on a tradition to me, because your traditions I know—they came from me. Right? Meaning, this notion that afflictions are precious, Rabbi Eliezer did not receive that as a tradition. He did not know it. He learned it from Rabbi Akiva. Suddenly Rabbi Eliezer discovers that it is in fact possible to learn things from people that emerged from them, things they did not receive by tradition, from their own reasoning. And he starts playing the same game with him. He says, “From where do you derive this?” Give me reasons, let’s discuss, let’s see. Because I understand that here there is something I can’t just tell you; here I’m already learning from you.

[Speaker K] He discovers a whole full world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And you understand that this is some sort of revolution happening here on the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death. And therefore, in a moment we’ll see at the end, “the vow was annulled”—meaning, the excommunication was annulled on the day of his death.

[Speaker K] Not because he died, but because he accepted it upon himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the end he probably understood—that’s how I explain it, I don’t know, but that’s what I think. The vow was annulled on the day of his death; otherwise it would not have been permitted until his day of death. The vow was annulled because on the day of his death he understood that after all he should have compromised a bit—that he had taken it too far. Then he brings sources for it. “From where do you derive this?” He said: “I expound a verse: ‘Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem, and he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.’ Also: ‘These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out.’ And did Hezekiah king of Judah teach Torah to the whole world and not teach Torah to his son Manasseh? Rather, of all the Torah he taught him, of all the toil he toiled with him, nothing brought him back to the good except afflictions, as it is said: ‘And the Lord spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they would not listen. Therefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria.’” In other words, afflictions accomplished for Manasseh what exhortation and study did not. Okay? That’s where he learned this idea from. And then onward: from there you learn that afflictions are precious. That’s basically the point. And I think this story—again, there’s a huge amount of subtext here. Behind every line there is this interesting reversal. It’s a wonderful story. There is a great deal hidden in the folds of this story. It seems to me, at least, that there is really a movement here that gives meaning to almost every line in these stories.

In any case, for our purposes, the conclusion in the end is that—

[Speaker I] It seems to me that the last part is really saying—it’s like a continuation of the same thing Rabbi Akiva says to him, that he thinks he is sinning. Meaning, not only that he sinned and therefore needs atonement through punishment, but he says to him that these afflictions are meant to bring him to repentance—that he needs to repent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And he humbled himself greatly before the Lord God of his fathers”—that’s about Manasseh. That’s about Manasseh. But Manasseh committed sins. So the question whether there are afflictions of love—that’s a dispute in the Talmud.

[Speaker I] But here he doesn’t bring—but if not, then what does he learn from “afflictions are precious”? That only this succeeded in causing Manasseh to repent? Now if so, then what makes afflictions precious? Afflictions are precious in that they cause repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be. Even though the Talmud in Berakhot talks about one who has afflictions of love. Maimonides claims there are no such things, even though the Talmud says there are.

[Speaker I] But he says—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That here it says these are afflictions that repair. Maybe. But again, we’ve basically come back to what Rabbi Eliezer has to repair. That is, the afflictions come because of what he did, not for nothing. So that also fits in here. Could be.

In any case, Rav Kook writes in a letter of condolence to the grandchildren of the Sochatchover. When the Sochatchover died—the Rebbe of Sochatchov, the author of Avnei Nezer and Eglei Tal—he wrote them a letter of condolence and said this. The Talmud says that Rabbi Eliezer the Great did not say anything that he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. That’s in tractate Sukkah and also in Yoma, in several places.

[Speaker I] That’s Rabbi Eliezer the Great?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Rabbi Eliezer the Great. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Meaning, he did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. And about this they say: “a cemented cistern that does not lose a drop.” Meaning, he was traditionalist also in his mode of learning and in his halakhic approach; he was someone who amassed all the information and was unwilling to say anything unless he had received it from his teacher. That is exactly his traditionalism. By contrast, in Avot de-Rabbi Natan it says that he said things that no ear had ever heard. That Rabbi Eliezer said things on a festival—or, I don’t remember in what context—that no ear had ever heard. So Rav Kook asks: isn’t that a contradiction between these two things? After all, he did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher; so how did he say things no ear had ever heard? So he writes as follows—I have a quotation from part of that letter. “On the face of it, this contradicts the principle of Rabbi Eliezer’s characteristic, that he did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. And we must say that if we had said that he said things that no mouth had ever uttered, that really would have contradicted the rule that he did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. But that is not what the Talmud says. It does not say that he said things no mouth had ever uttered; rather, since it says ‘that no ear had ever heard,’ we understand that the mouth of the teacher, the father of Torah, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, said them. But among all the hearers, Rabbi Eliezer the Great excelled in his deep listening, so that his ear heard from his teacher’s Torah what others did not hear. And thus in truth he did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher.” Meaning, these are things he heard from his teacher, and on the other hand, “no ear had ever heard them”—that is, only Rabbi Eliezer’s ear. “And his Torah was a complete Torah with an established source, and nevertheless it was entirely renewed by the power of his holy intellect.”

Now the ending is very interesting, because until the last line I would have said that Rav Kook is taking these two Talmudic passages in a traditionalist direction. Basically, Rabbi Eliezer listened so deeply that he truly heard from the mouth of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai—who was the teacher of all those people—things that others did not hear, but still he really did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. It’s just that others didn’t grasp it, didn’t get to the depth of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai’s thinking, and he did. If it had ended there, fine. But Rav Kook continues in the last line and says: “And his Torah was a complete Torah with an established source, and nevertheless it was entirely renewed by the power of his holy intellect.” Why? It’s not a renewed Torah—he heard it from the mouth of his teacher, he just knew how to hear well. Therefore I think Rav Kook is saying something more. Rav Kook claims, at least I think, that even if you had asked Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, he himself would not have understood that this is what he said. Not only the listeners. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said something. All the listeners heard nothing of the kind from him. Only Rabbi Eliezer managed to hear something special in it. But he heard that special thing even though Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai himself, had you asked him, would not have understood it. Meaning, the student hears from the mouth of his teacher things that the teacher himself is not even aware are folded into his words. And that is really what Rav Kook means here—not that he hears better and understands his teacher’s intention better, but that he understands within his teacher’s words things that even the teacher himself does not realize are folded into them. That is basically his own innovation, but it is an innovation based on what his teacher says. Which is actually exactly Rabbi Akiva, right? Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua—you take the tradition, but then by means of your own intellect you draw from the tradition something that even the one who transmitted the tradition to you does not always know.

By the way, this may sound like a homiletic idea; in my opinion it is simply reality. Anyone who has a teacher, I think—anyone who has had a close, intensive teacher—has experienced this. I have no doubt about it. I know about myself that I have one person you can more or less call my teacher in Bnei Brak. I studied with him for five years, and for years afterward I remained in touch with him. Truly, almost everything I learned from someone, I learned from him. Everything else is books, and from other people I really didn’t learn at all. Others did try to teach me, but I didn’t learn, to my shame. And it is obvious that in the end, even when I explained what he said, I didn’t explain it the way he said it, and he didn’t mean it that way. There were times when this came up—that is, I reminded him of things he had said, or we talked about things he had said, and I explained them differently from what he had intended. And I claim that I am right. Seriously, I claim that I am right. Meaning, he wasn’t precise. In other words, what is folded into his words is what I said, even though he didn’t intend it—not consciously, at least. In my opinion, that is what is there. If he had thought about it after hearing it—he doesn’t remember the situations anymore—but I think yes, I think there were cases, if I remember correctly, and this was many years ago, where he accepted it. Not always, but there were cases where he accepted it. Actually, one case I do remember. One case I really remember. There is a Pnei Yehoshua in Gittin 42, where he accepted it. Fine. But I think there were others. In my opinion, this is an experience that—everyone who truly had some teacher from whom he learned many things, not someone from whom he heard one lecture or something, but a real teacher-student relationship, these ties between teacher and student—in the end, there is no study hall without innovation, and no two prophets prophesy in the same style. Meaning, whenever you learn what Rabbi Akiva Eiger says, or what the Kehillot Yaakov says, or whoever it may be, you say what you say, not what they say. In the end it is always colored by your own color.

Now even when you explain what they say, you don’t feel that you are saying some innovation. We are modern, so we have more self-reflection than earlier generations had. So I think I often am aware that I am introducing some shade here that I’m not sure the author intended. But I’m sure that many times—certainly in earlier generations where there was less awareness of this—people explained what they thought, and they were convinced that this is what is written there in the medieval authority. That is obvious. It would never have occurred to them that this was actually only their interpretation, or they didn’t notice that it was only their interpretation. But their interpretation was there—obviously. There is no such thing; it is almost impossible otherwise.

What I really want to claim, at the close of the whole development we’ve gone through until now, is that the difference between the “hollow conduit” and the second conception, and the synthesis made by Rabbi Akiva, is a synthesis of ethoses; it is not a real synthesis. Because the truth is that it was always like this. Even in the period of the hollow conduit, there is no such thing as a hollow conduit. When Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua did not hear what Moses heard. Nothing will help. And when Joshua passed it on to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly—each one is a broken telephone. Well, not a broken telephone—a constructive telephone. Meaning, each of them learned it in some way that was not the same as the one who taught him. That is obvious. It’s just that the ethos, the conceptual framework within which the process took place, was an ethos of a hollow conduit. I said this when I spoke about it before, but I think here you really see it. Meaning, once you are aware of it, then you understand that a hollow conduit is an illusion. There is no such thing as a hollow conduit.

Yes, I mentioned my uncle—I already mentioned him once—that Abaye and Rava studied in Yiddish. Meaning, that it can’t be otherwise. If they sat down to study, then they studied in Yiddish. So what is that? He knows it isn’t true. But it’s a kind of ethos, and the ethos is serious. He does not mean it as a historical fact, but he means the ethos with complete seriousness. Meaning, it is obvious to him that someone who doesn’t learn in Yiddish doesn’t know how to learn. He doesn’t know what happened in Iraq fifteen hundred years ago, but someone who doesn’t learn in Yiddish doesn’t know how to learn—that’s obvious. So he says it through that story. In other words, many times you live within an ethos that is obviously not really consistent with the facts. But that doesn’t mean you don’t believe in that ethos—you completely believe in it. Meaning, Hasidim who think that the shtreimel came down from Sinai—obviously they understand that it didn’t come down from Sinai and that Moses our teacher did not walk around in a shtreimel and a gartel, right? But they basically think that he should have walked around in a shtreimel and a gartel. Meaning, the ethos is true; that’s what matters.

[Speaker L] There’s a story that a maskil—or maybe someone else—came to one of the Belz rebbes in the nineteenth century and asked him: why does the Rebbe think that Abraham our forefather wore these clothes? He said to him: I don’t know what clothes Abraham our forefather wore; I only know that he looked at the gentiles and did the opposite. Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even though they did like the gentiles, not the opposite. Those are Polish gentile clothes.

[Speaker L] Yes, but at a certain stage,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At a certain stage this became something different, and then it gets perpetuated. And if the gentiles had kept going with it, I assume it wouldn’t have continued. Right. We talked about this, about the two types of Chazon Ish people. Right. There are Chazon Ish people who do everything written in the books of the Chazon Ish, because they’re students of the Chazon Ish. And there are Chazon Ish people who do what they think, the way the Chazon Ish did what he thought. And those are the real Chazon Ish people. That’s R. Dalia Nadel and his circle. And there’s also a Hasidic story like this, by the way. I once saw in Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim, where he brings a story there about Rabbi Noach of Lachovitch and Rabbi Mordechai of Lachovitch. I don’t remember who was the father and who was the son there, but two rebbes, where the father died and the son took his place as rebbe and changed his father’s customs. So the Hasidim came to him and said, what, how can you change your father’s holy customs? So he said, just as I am continuing my father’s path, the way my father changed the customs of his father, so too I am changing the customs of my father. Now the question is whether you can preserve the very act of changing and still remain conservative in order to be a changer. It’s like in Monty Python. In Monty Python there’s a very amusing scene where everyone says: we are nonconformists, and all of them say, we are all nonconformists, and one says, no, actually I am a conformist. Like, one of them says, no, actually I am a conformist. Fine. In any event, so this move ultimately ends with this—I finished the first chapter of this series—and the move ends with the idea that we basically have some process of the formation of disputes, and it’s built from a few stages. First stage: Torah comes down from Sinai, and again I’m speaking at the level of the ethos, not in practice. At the level of the ethos, Torah comes down from Sinai and passes through hollow pipes. Torah belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; it has nothing to do with human beings. At a certain stage, a human Torah begins to emerge. Prophecy ends, and there is no longer any option of relying only on divine Torah. The innovation of “it is not in heaven” was renewed, of course, only after there was no longer heaven and there were no longer prophets. As long as there were prophets, in my view they never dreamed of the principle of “it is not in heaven.” Everything was prophets; Torah came from the Holy One, blessed be He. Torah had nothing to do with human beings. To some extent the Oral Torah begins at the start of the Second Temple period—that’s the end of the prophets, right? The last prophets were in the Great Assembly, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Meaning, they were in the Great Assembly, and that was it, and after the Great Assembly came Shimon HaTzaddik—that’s the beginning of the Oral Torah. And then all these matters of human Torah begin, and “it is not in heaven,” and “a prophet is no longer permitted from now on to introduce anything new,” and all kinds of things of that sort. So Torah becomes human. As a result, disputes arise, and then the question arises: what do we do with disputes? The creation of disputes is unavoidable; it simply happened. Once people’s reasoning is involved, people think differently. Now the question is what to do with that. It creates problems. The students of Hillel and Shammai who killed one another—we saw how far the fear went there, of what was going to happen, of the disintegration that was going to happen there. The first response was a forceful response, saying: we will suppress the dispute. At a certain point they see this doesn’t work, and they make a revolution. The revolution says: if you can’t beat them, join them. Meaning, dispute is a necessary evil. There is no choice. We can’t cope with it, we have to come to terms with it. And the last stage is that dispute becomes an ideal, not just a necessary evil. Meaning, now it is already an ideal, and that’s the Talmud. To a certain extent you already see it in the Talmud in Chagigah: “incline your ear to hear the words of the sages, the words of those who declare pure…” Meaning, there it is already an idealization of dispute. It’s not just de facto acceptance, some kind of after-the-fact reconciliation with the phenomenon of dispute, but an idealization of dispute. And that is the point where I want to move on to our next chapter. And it seems to me that I spoke about this at some point in one context or another in the past, but when the Talmud speaks about the issue of dispute, the foundational statement for the attitude toward disputes is: “These and those are the words of the living God.” Which, on the face of it, reflects exactly the point we’ve reached until now: the idealization of dispute. Because when you say, “These and those are the words of the living God,” you are basically saying: I’m not merely compromising with the phenomenon of dispute because I can’t deal with it; rather, you are glorifying this phenomenon. You are basically saying: words of the living God—how wonderful that there are disputes. The words of the living God multiply like a planting that grows and flourishes, as we saw in the Talmud in Chagigah. So this is basically an expression that fixes this conception in place, and this is in fact the ethos that accompanies us to this very day. “These and those are the words of the living God.” Even though originally this was said about Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, and in that aggadic passage in Gittin it is also said about the dispute there over the concubine at Gibeah—maybe that is an aggadic dispute. In the halakhic context it is said about Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but already the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the later authorities (Acharonim) expand this idea, and the accepted conception is that in halakhic disputes generally—we’ve already moved on, we’re done with the Second Temple, the destruction of the Temple, the first, second, third generation of Yavneh, we are sailing onward, now we’re already in the Talmud, okay? In the Talmud, and after that the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and after that the later authorities (Acharonim)—ultimately what accompanies us is really the conclusion of the end of this process that I described, namely that dispute is ideal from the outset, that there is a positive view of the phenomenon of dispute, and the expression of that is: “These and those are the words of the living God.”

[Speaker D] But there’s a limit.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker D] To “these and those are the words of the living God.” I mean, how far can you take that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, fine, so we’ll talk about that. Meaning, really, the halakhic tradition does not accept—Christians too are not “the words of the living God,” and heretics are not “the words of the living God.” Meaning, obviously there is some domain within which this whole thing operates, but there is a certain limit. I’ll get to that later. In any case, the Talmud—this rule, “these and those are the words of the living God,” actually appears in two places in the Talmud. One place is in Gittin regarding the concubine at Gibeah, and another place is in Eruvin. “Rav Abba said in the name of Shmuel: For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disputed. These said: Jewish law is in accordance with us, and those said: Jewish law is in accordance with us. A heavenly voice went forth and said: These and those are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law is in accordance with Beit Hillel. Since these and those are the words of the living God, why did Beit Hillel merit to have the Jewish law established in accordance with them? Because they were agreeable and humble, and they would teach both their own views and the views of Beit Shammai; and not only that, but they would mention the words of Beit Shammai before their own.” As in that which we learned, one whose head and most of his body were in the sukkah—they bring some story there where Beit Hillel put Beit Shammai’s words first, discussed them, and then formed their own position. Now I remember where we talked about this—we talked about it when I touched on it a bit when we discussed quantity and quality. So I said there, I explained there, why a heavenly voice was needed here. Tosafot already asks: how did they rely here on a heavenly voice? After all, the rule is that “it is not in heaven.” So Tosafot gives various answers—maybe this was earlier, maybe in some places you do rely on it, it doesn’t matter—or that it doesn’t follow that rule. There’s a dispute among the Talmudic passages whether we rely on a heavenly voice or do not rely on a heavenly voice. Tosafot has three answers. But it seems to me that the simple explanation is a different one. That’s what I think. There is a Tosafot on Eruvin 6 that says—and I already spoke about all this when we talked about quantity and quality. Tosafot says that the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel was an unresolvable dispute because there was a meta-dispute here on the question: why didn’t they just hold a vote? Right? “Follow the majority”—what’s the problem? There’s a dispute, so take a vote. But the problem was that there was a dispute over which majority to follow. Beit Shammai were sharper, and Beit Hillel were more numerous. We talked about the pyramid of talent. And Beit Shammai claimed that the determining majority is the majority of wisdom, while Beit Hillel claimed that the determining majority is the majority of people. And the argument was essentially over which majority to follow. Now that argument can’t be decided by voting, because in that vote too you’ll run into the same tangle again—the question whether we follow the majority of wisdom or the numerical majority. So that is something that cannot be decided. Since that was the case, they needed a heavenly voice. When people say “it is not in heaven,” they mean that you should not follow a heavenly voice or other transcendent matters, but rather you should follow the rules of Jewish law—that is, rules of decision according to the halakhic system. But in a place where the rules of Jewish law get stuck, then if “it is not in heaven,” what exactly am I supposed to do? Meaning, the heavenly voice came out in order to save us from a tangle that the rules of Jewish law could not get us out of. Therefore here that rule of “it is not in heaven” does not apply.

[Speaker M] Maybe that’s also what “teiku” is, no? In the end, isn’t “Tishbi will resolve difficulties and problems” about reaching a dead end and not managing to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Teiku” in the Talmud means they didn’t manage to decide, but teiku remains a doubt.

[Speaker M] And “Tishbi will resolve” means they’re waiting for a heavenly voice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but “Tishbi will resolve” is not the meaning of teiku. That’s just a folk acronym.

[Speaker M] Teiku means it stands.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Teiku, teikum, means “to stand” in Aramaic. And the problem remained standing, that’s it—we don’t know what to do with it. And then the laws of doubt apply to it. The halakhic decisors discuss what to do with a teiku. Meaning, there are rules for what to do with a teiku: if possession has been taken, possession is effective; in a Torah-level doubt we rule stringently; the burden of proof lies on one seeking to extract property from another; all sorts of rules about what to do in a situation of teiku.

[Speaker I] Seemingly, the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and the sages—you could also say the same thing about that, at least according to how the Rabbi explains it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Whether we follow the tradition or the reasoning?

[Speaker I] Yes, and then according to that, there too one should have had to rely on…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there, for some reason, no heavenly voice came out.

[Speaker I] Why? A heavenly voice did come out.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You mean in the Oven of Akhnai. Yes. In the Oven of Akhnai, seemingly it’s the same thing as

[Speaker I] Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Interesting point, because then it turns out that the revolution was a double one. Meaning, there was a heavenly voice that decided not about the laws of the oven, but it also decided in favor of traditionalism and against the Torah of give-and-take, human Torah—and the sages rejected even that ruling.

[Speaker I] If you explain Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel this way, you could say in both cases not so; you could say in both cases the ruling is local.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but look—what does a local ruling mean? But this wasn’t a local ruling. There was a dispute of three years here over many issues, not one issue.

[Speaker I] No, local on the matter of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—which of them is fit to decide by.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why specifically there? Tosafot already says that the reason they couldn’t decide was because of that. By the way, this is in the Talmud. Tosafot only says that because of this they were stuck here. It’s a Talmudic statement that Beit Shammai were sharper, and Beit Hillel were not. In Menachot, I think, or Yevamot. But Tosafot says that because of this they were stuck here. So I think one is naturally led to conclude from this—again, this is my conclusion, but one is naturally led to conclude from this—and later I saw this in fact in one of the later authorities (Acharonim), maybe in She’eilat David, I no longer remember; I saw it in one of the later authorities. One is naturally led to understand that according to this, that is indeed why they needed a heavenly voice. Why there really not? Because apparently the sages understood that if we listen to the heavenly voice, we are stuck again. Meaning, once again we’ll be stuck with the fact that we cannot deal with disputes. So what do we do now? Meaning, there are different interpretations of traditions, or different traditions, and then… we’re stuck. Therefore they decided to break the rules completely. But here I really hadn’t thought of that—that’s an interesting point. In any case, for our purposes, the Talmud basically says that “these and those are the words of the living God,” and ruled that the Jewish law is like Beit Hillel. And in this Talmudic passage there are three components, each of which requires explanation. The first statement is: “These and those are the words of the living God.” The second statement is: “The Jewish law is like Beit Hillel.” How, if these and those are the words of the living God, can the Jewish law be like Beit Hillel? If both are right, then what does it mean that the Jewish law is like Beit Hillel? And if the Jewish law is like Beit Hillel, then in what sense are the words of Beit Shammai also the words of the living God? There is some contradiction here between the two parts of this statement. And after that there is this explanation that Beit Hillel merited having Jewish law established in accordance with them because they were gentle and they put Beit Shammai’s words before their own—that too requires explanation. And maybe we also talked about that once. I’ll do that a bit next time, but here maybe I’ll just finish with the Ritva. The Ritva in Eruvin brings a famous quotation. He asks about this Talmudic passage: how can it be that “these and those are the words of the living God”? He says: “These and those are the words of the living God”—the rabbis of France of blessed memory asked, it appears in Tosafot of Rabbenu Peretz—how can it be possible that both are the words of the living God, when one prohibits and the other permits? Does the Holy One, blessed be He, both prohibit and permit? There is some logical contradiction here. “And they answered that when Moses ascended on high to receive the Torah, they showed him with regard to every matter forty-nine arguments for prohibition and forty-nine arguments for permission, and he asked the Holy One, blessed be He, about this, and He said that this would be handed over to the sages of Israel in every generation, and the decision would be according to them.” Now here this is a very interesting question. On the face of it, it usually seems to me that people read him as though the decision follows them not because that is the truth—on the contrary, “it is not in heaven.” In heaven maybe they think one thing, but the sages will decide, and you should follow how the sages decide even though that is not the truth. Okay? Or because there is no truth and both sides are right, and you make a ruling according to what the sages think, but in essence both are right. In another moment I’ll stop, and next time I’ll sharpen this a bit more. But he goes on and says, “And this is correct according to homiletic interpretation, but in the way of truth there is a secret reason in the matter.” That’s an interesting mystery. I don’t know what he means. I don’t know why he calls this a homiletic interpretation. Meaning, what, does that mean he doesn’t really accept it, that this is some nice sermon? He doesn’t really accept this explanation? Why doesn’t he accept this explanation? What’s wrong with it? Maybe he doesn’t accept that it could really be that we follow the sages even when they are mistaken. That doesn’t seem reasonable. Meaning, something here doesn’t—so Jewish law is not the truth? Maybe that’s what bothers him. Or the opposite: if there is truth, how can it be that the truth is with both sides? I don’t know. But something here bothers him in this explanation, and therefore he says there is some secret in the matter. I don’t know exactly what he means. Okay, so next time we’ll enter into this Talmudic passage starting from this point.

[Speaker A] More power to you.