Disagreement and Truth – Lesson 7
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Majority rule in Jewish law and majority rule in a religious court
- Eruvin 13: the heavenly voice, “These and those,” and the ruling in accordance with Beit Hillel
- Why the heavenly voice here does not contradict “It is not in heaven”
- A pluralist reading versus a monist reading
- Harmonism: one truth with many reasons
- The chocolate, elephant, and spurious-correlation analogies
- Gittin 6: “These and those” as assembling reality
- Lomdus-style conceptual inquiries and the critique of dichotomies
- Split brain, the owner of the brain, and weighing considerations
- A critique of pluralism and a description of Jewish law as monistic in practice
- Autonomy, tolerance, and three positions on the map
- Searching for a halakhic practical difference and preparing for what comes next
Summary
General Overview
The text presents a continuing discussion of decision-making in Jewish law through majority rule, and of the connection between rules of decision and the passage in Eruvin 13 about the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel and the heavenly voice. It proposes reading the statement “These and those are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” through two main lenses, a pluralist one and a monist one, and develops especially a monist-harmonist direction according to which the reasons on both sides can be correct, but the ruling depends on properly weighing them. It then argues that pluralism is not consistent with itself or with the way halakhic decisors actually operate, and moves on to the question of how it is possible that on the one hand there is one halakhic truth, while on the other hand there is practical legitimacy for different conduct, distinguishing between pluralism and tolerance grounded in autonomy.
Majority rule in Jewish law and majority rule in a religious court
The text continues from the previous lecture about majority rule in Jewish law, majority rule in a religious court, the different purposes served by majority rule, and the connection between a present majority and a statistical majority. It also describes an attempt to make a statistical calculation of the likelihood that the majority of judges are right or wrong.
Eruvin 13: the heavenly voice, “These and those,” and the ruling in accordance with Beit Hillel
The text identifies four components in the passage in Eruvin 13: the fact that the dispute continued for years without a decision; the decision by heavenly voice in apparent tension with “It is not in heaven”; the apparent internal contradiction between “These and those are the words of the living God” and “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel”; and the Talmud’s explanation that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because they were gentle and humble and stated Beit Shammai’s words before their own. It connects the prolonged dispute to a frozen traditionalist conception that sees Jewish law as clarifying “what was said to Moses our rabbi at Mount Sinai,” with no place for discretion, interpretation, or extension, so that dispute is viewed as the result of a “broken telephone” in transmission with no internal way to repair it. It adds that the deadlock took on a meta-halakhic expression in that there was also a dispute about the very rules of decision themselves: Tosafot, in the name of the Talmud in Yevamot, cites a dispute whether the determining majority is “the majority of wisdom” or “the majority of people,” and when the dispute is about the rule that decides, it cannot be resolved by means of that same rule.
Why the heavenly voice here does not contradict “It is not in heaven”
The text cites Tosafot’s question as to why a heavenly voice was needed at all, along with his somewhat forced answers, but argues that the question is not difficult. It says that “It is not in heaven” applies where there is an operative halakhic mechanism of decision, whereas here there is no halakhic tool capable of resolving the knot, because the argument is about “follow the majority” itself and about the identity of the relevant majority. It concludes that when the halakhic methods of decision are “locked,” the heavenly voice becomes relevant and is even required to break the deadlock.
A pluralist reading versus a monist reading
The text presents a common pluralist reading according to which “These and those are the words of the living God” means that there are multiple halakhic truths and no meaning to “right” and “wrong,” and therefore “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” is explained as a decision based on technical or educational reasons rather than as a determination of truth. It emphasizes that the explanation “they were gentle and humble and stated Beit Shammai’s words before their own” appears, on this reading, to be an educational criterion meant to encourage civility and proper regard for those who disagree. It cites the Ritva on Eruvin 13b in the name of “the sages of France,” who ask how it can be that “one forbids and one permits,” and quotes his answer that when Moses ascended on high he was shown “forty-nine facets for prohibition and forty-nine facets for permission,” and that the decision was handed over to the sages of Israel in every generation; it also quotes his formulation, “And it is correct in the homiletic sense, and in the way of truth there is a reason and a secret in the matter.” It also cites Rabbi Yosef Karo in the Rules of the Talmud, who wonders, “Could it be that because of the abundance of their good qualities they established the law in accordance with them?” and quotes his suggestion, “Why did they merit always to arrive at the truth?” so that humility and giving precedence to Beit Shammai’s words explain how Beit Hillel “always arrived at the truth,” whether through divine assistance or as a natural methodology of weighing all the arguments.
Harmonism: one truth with many reasons
The text shifts the focus of “These and those” from a reading of double truth in the conclusions to a reading of truth with multiple reasons, and argues that the statement can be read monistically without logical contradiction if we understand that the reasons on both sides are correct but the ruling comes through weighing them. It cites the Talmud in Sanhedrin 17, “They appoint to the Sanhedrin only one who knows how to declare a creeping thing pure from the Torah,” and Rabbeinu Tam’s difficulty in Tosafot: “What use is empty cleverness in declaring pure a creeping thing that the Torah has rendered impure?”—as against the Yad Ramah’s interpretation that the point is to show reasons “and not to act on the matter after the Torah has rendered it impure.” This is interpreted as a test of complex thinking: a judge has to understand that even when the conclusion is impurity there are still “true aspects” in favor of purity, so that he can judge similar cases that are not “clear cases.” It formulates this as a general principle: in serious disputes, the sides are not disagreeing about the truth or falsehood of the reasons but about their relative weight.
The chocolate, elephant, and spurious-correlation analogies
The text illustrates the idea of weighing through the chocolate analogy: “chocolate is tasty” and “chocolate is fattening” are both true considerations, and the dispute is over which one carries more practical weight. It describes a phenomenon of “spurious correlations,” in which people recruit all arguments in the same direction instead of recognizing independent questions, and illustrates this with the bumper sticker “Rabin has no mandate to give back the Golan,” which actually combines two different issues—political morality of mandate versus a security-political question—that by logic should have yielded four groups, but in practice yielded only two. It gives another example from the conversion controversy around Rabbi Druckman’s conversion system, describing how a multi-question discussion collapsed in practice into two camps that lined up all the answers in the same direction instead of weighing them. It concludes that serious discussion requires recognizing counterarguments, weighing them, and only then deciding, and explicitly connects this with the conduct of Beit Hillel, who gave precedence to Beit Shammai’s words.
Gittin 6: “These and those” as assembling reality
The text points out that in the Talmud the phrase “These and those are the words of the living God” also appears in Gittin 6, and there it is explained. It quotes the dispute between Rabbi Evyatar, who said “he found a fly in it,” and Rabbi Yonatan, who said “he found a hair in it,” and the encounter with Elijah in which the Holy One, blessed be He, says, “My son Evyatar says thus, My son Yonatan says thus.” After the question “Is there uncertainty before Heaven?” the answer is given: “These and those are the words of the living God—they found a fly and he was not particular, they found a hair and he was particular.” From this it understands that “These and those” means that each side grasped a different aspect of reality, and the full truth joins both aspects together, in the harmonist sense.
Lomdus-style conceptual inquiries and the critique of dichotomies
The text argues that in lomdus-style conceptual inquiry there is a tendency to formulate dichotomies of “either this or that,” such as “a law regarding the person” versus “a law regarding the object,” but when one gets into the depth of the passage it often turns out that both sides are true and function together in various combinations. It says that the very choice of the two sides of a conceptual inquiry already indicates the relevance and logic of each, and therefore it is reasonable that both are “playing on the field” and the dispute is about their relative role.
Split brain, the owner of the brain, and weighing considerations
The text brings an example from the book The Science of Freedom from split-brain experiments, in which the two hemispheres may produce different answers and perceptions to the point of different political tendencies within the same person. It interprets this as illustrating that the brain processes different kinds of considerations, but decision requires “weighing” “150 reasons for impurity and 150 reasons for purity.” It presents the position that “it is not the brain that thinks; the owner of the brain thinks by means of the brain,” just as “it is not the legs that walk; I walk by means of the legs.” It rejects the attempt to locate the “self” as an organ on a functional map, arguing that the self is “the owner of the map,” not a point on the map.
A critique of pluralism and a description of Jewish law as monistic in practice
The text presents a reflective claim that if pluralism is true, then monism is also true “according to its own method,” and therefore pluralism contradicts itself. It argues that in practice halakhic decisors and those “who fear ruling” behave as monists who seek truth and fear error, and that pluralist approaches remain “a game for non-halakhic texts.” It compares this to the debate over Platonism in mathematics, where philosophers disagree but mathematicians in practice are “all Platonists,” and warns against ideological declarations that do not reflect actual halakhic work. It illustrates this with the Maharshal, who wrote sharply against the Shulchan Arukh and in his introductions claimed that he would decide “from reason” even in disputes among Tannaim, but in his responsa functioned as a standard writer of responsa engaged in give-and-take among halakhic authorities.
Autonomy, tolerance, and three positions on the map
The text distinguishes between pluralism and tolerance and says they are not overlapping and are even “the opposite” in their reasoning: the pluralist does not intervene because “there is no one truth” and no “right and wrong,” whereas the tolerant person does not coerce even though he believes there is one truth, because he respects the autonomy of the other. It presents three conceptions: pluralism, intolerant monism that is unwilling to contain error, and tolerant monism based on autonomy. It emphasizes that factual pluralism—the existence of different opinions—is always true, but does not prove a multiplicity of truths, just as disagreements in science do not prove that there is no scientific truth. It adds the view that morality is objective, not subjective.
Searching for a halakhic practical difference and preparing for what comes next
The text argues that the decision between pluralism and monism, and between tolerant and intolerant monism, should be made through a halakhic practical difference rather than through books of thought. It proposes a principled test case: a situation in which one person causes another to stumble in something that he considers permitted but the other considers forbidden. In such a case, pluralism tends toward a stricter result and monism toward a more lenient one. It rejects the example of sanctifying the new month and intercalating the year as relevant, because there there is binding authority in the hands of the Nasi even when he errs, and it concludes with the promise that there is “a passage in Sukkah on page 10” that will serve as a “litmus test” for the three categories and will be discussed next time.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time we began—I moved on after the discussion of majority rule in Jewish law, majority rule in a religious court, the different purposes of this majority, how that connects to a present majority and a statistical majority, a statistical calculation of what the chances are that the judges—the majority of the judges—are right, or that the majority of the judges are wrong. I moved on to the passage in Eruvin. The passage in Eruvin 13 deals with the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, which went on for several years without being decided, until a heavenly voice came out and said: These and those are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. And the Talmud explains that the reason the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel is that they were gentle and humble, and they stated the words of Beit Shammai before their own. That’s the movement of the Talmud. I said that this Talmudic passage can be read in two ways. In principle, this passage has, I would say, four components. One component is the very prolongation of the dispute and the inability to decide it between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai—and that itself already needs explanation: why does that happen? The second component is the form of decision through a heavenly voice. How can we accept a decision through a heavenly voice when we know that “It is not in heaven”? The third component is the apparent internal contradiction between the two parts of the heavenly voice’s statement: on the one hand it says, “These and those are the words of the living God,” meaning apparently that both are right; on the other hand, “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel.” So if the law follows Beit Hillel because they are right, then in what sense are the words of Beit Shammai the words of the living God? If both are right, then why do we rule in accordance with Beit Hillel? And the fourth component in the Talmud is the reason or explanation that the Talmud offers for the words of the heavenly voice. In other words, the Talmud itself explains why the heavenly voice ruled like Beit Hillel: because they were gentle and humble and stated the words of Beit Shammai before their own. We need to understand what exactly that means.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As for the very prolongation of the dispute, I said that of course this is connected to the historical description we spoke about in the past, which basically created two houses that weren’t able to create a shared discourse and make decisions together, because the conception was a traditionalist one. A conception that basically says: all we need to do is verify or clarify what was said to Moses our rabbi at Mount Sinai. And in that conception there is no place for discretion, for interpretations, for extensions, and therefore once disputes arise, they are the result of a disruption in the process of transmission. Each side essentially received something different, a kind of broken telephone, and now there’s nothing we can do with it. Because each side swears that Moses our rabbi received X from the Holy One, blessed be He, and the other swears that Moses our rabbi received Y from the Holy One, blessed be He. So what do you do now? You can start discussing who sounds more reasonable, but reason doesn’t play a role. We need to know what was said to Moses at Sinai. Everything is divine decree. We have no contact, no possibility of interpreting and checking the matter, and therefore it’s a recipe for deadlock—a deadlock built into this conception of tradition, frozen tradition, let’s call it, tradition of hollow pipes. And part of this deadlock is exactly what appears at the beginning of the Talmudic passage: Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed and couldn’t make a decision, couldn’t reach a ruling. And the practical expression of that, or the halakhic expression of that, was that there was also a dispute between them about the methods of decision themselves. I spoke about that. Do we follow “incline after the majority”? So why don’t we just take a vote and decide according to the majority? It’s an explicit verse. What, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai didn’t know that? They had a dispute. The Talmud in Yevamot talks about it, and Tosafot brings it here in Eruvin as well—that they had a dispute over who the determining majority is. Beit Shammai, who were sharper, claimed that the majority of wisdom determines; and Beit Hillel, who were more numerous, claimed that the majority of people determines. That’s the question: who is the majority we follow? Once the dispute is over the decision-making procedures themselves, we’re stuck. We’re stuck because what do we do now? How do we make a decision? Take a vote? In the vote, Beit Shammai will be against Beit Hillel, and once again we’ll be stuck with the same issue. Beit Shammai will claim the majority is with us, Beit Hillel will claim the majority is with us, and we have no real way to decide it. And even if we vote on that issue itself, obviously we won’t get out of it. It’s a loop. And therefore the deadlock has historical and sociological explanations, and explanations rooted in the conception of tradition—but this deadlock also has a halakhic or meta-halakhic expression, because there was here what looks like a very specific dispute—whether the determining majority is the majority of people or the majority of wisdom—but in practice it jammed the whole system and made it impossible to move forward. So that’s regarding the first component of the passage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The second component of the passage is: okay, so why did they go to a heavenly voice? Tosafot asks that already and offers various answers as to why they went to a heavenly voice; I mentioned that too—overall, rather forced answers. Tosafot says maybe this was before the rule that one does not heed a heavenly voice, or the other way around, or that the passages disagree, or all kinds of forced resolutions. I think the question isn’t difficult to begin with; there’s no need to look for answers, because the question isn’t difficult. Why? Because when the Talmud says that one does not heed a heavenly voice, that “It is not in heaven,” that’s in a case where we have a way of deciding according to Jewish law. We have a halakhic mechanism of decision. Where we have a halakhic mechanism of decision, we do not resort to transcendent decisions, to heavenly voices coming from heaven or things of that kind. But since, as we saw here, the halakhic method of decision did not allow us to move forward, we have no halakhic tool that could resolve this knot, because the halakhic tool is “incline after the majority,” but the dispute was about that very thing. What do we do now—majority of wisdom or majority of people? So what do we do? Since the halakhic paths of decision are closed to us, and we cannot decide this through halakhic methods of decision, it makes no sense to say here, “It is not in heaven.” “It is not in heaven” means: use halakhic methods of decision, don’t resort to a heavenly voice. But if I don’t have those halakhic methods of decision, that is exactly why the heavenly voice comes out—because it understood that we were stuck. And therefore there you can follow a heavenly voice; you have to follow a heavenly voice. Okay? So where we don’t have a halakhic method of decision, we do follow a heavenly voice, and that’s why one was needed. That’s the second explanation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The third point, where we essentially stopped—the third and the fourth, really—is the contradiction between the two parts of the heavenly voice’s statement, “These and those are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel,” and the continuation in the Talmud that they were gentle and humble and taught the words of Beit Shammai before their own. And I said that these two points have to be examined through two prisms. There are two ways of looking at them. There is a monist way of reading the Talmud, and there is a pluralist way of reading the Talmud. Usually, it is common to read the Talmud in a pluralist way. “These and those are the words of the living God”—there is a multiplicity of halakhic truths; there is no one halakhic truth. “These and those are the words of the living God”—everyone is right. Then the question arises: if so, why does the Jewish law follow Beit Hillel? So I understand the first part, “These and those are the words of the living God,” but I don’t understand the second part of the heavenly voice—what does it mean that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel? So I said that according to the pluralist reading, one probably has to assume that the ruling of Jewish law is not because we decided that the truth is like Beit Hillel. We don’t rule like Beit Hillel because they are right; both sides are right. Rather what? Or not right, it doesn’t matter—there’s no such thing as right and wrong. The Jewish law follows Beit Hillel for technical, educational, or other reasons—not because the truth is with them. And in fact it is very tempting to read the Talmud this way, because the Talmud—and this is the fourth point—says that why did they rule like Beit Hillel? Because they stated the words of Beit Shammai before their own. That really does look like a non-substantive criterion. It’s basically saying: educationally, I want to teach people to relate politely to the words of those who disagree with them, and therefore I rule in accordance with Beit Hillel. So it’s not because they are right, but simply because I chose. Now why not go after the truth? Because there is no truth. This is a pluralist reading: both sides are right, there is no question of who is right. The only question is what to do now—okay, but how do we decide Jewish law? So we need to find some technical criterion that will decide the Jewish law, and an educational criterion is perfectly fine. If we don’t have truth, then we’ll go with education. That’s the pluralist reading. In that reading maybe one can really see it that the practical ruling emerges here—
[Speaker B] What? The practical law? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here the practical ruling of Jewish law—
[Speaker B] After the Jewish law was established, is there a connection to—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The educational consideration was what led us to decide the Jewish law in accordance with Beit Hillel, because we wanted to educate people: look, here is Beit Hillel relating properly to the words of Beit Shammai, so let’s rule like them in order to strengthen that approach. So that means we’re not trying here to find out who is right, because apparently both are right. We’re trying to gain other gains, it doesn’t matter, some other criterion, in order to arrive at a decision between two views that are both equally right. Or equally not right, it doesn’t matter. Okay? That’s the pluralist reading.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let me bring you for a moment the well-known Ritva, which I didn’t bring last time. Here it is, the Ritva on 13b there in Eruvin. The electronic display, as usual. Okay.
[Speaker C] Let’s hope it gets there in a minute.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Remind me of the name?
[Speaker D] Sorry? Stage.
[Speaker E] It looks—
[Speaker C] I think we were exempt from armor problems. What doesn’t work by force works with even more force. I’m taking it apart and putting it back together again, hoping it works. The other side?
[Speaker E] Maybe the other side isn’t connected at the bottom.
[Speaker C] Not connected.
[Speaker E] Not connected. There, it opened up for us, friends. No, no, no, no. It’s not turning on. Oh, oh—there, there. Great. Excellent.
[Speaker C] Okay, that’s it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Temple Mount is in our hands. Okay, so the Ritva says this: “These and those are the words of the living God. The sages of France asked, how is it possible that both are the words of the living God, when one forbids and one permits?” What’s the question? Yes—one truth, logic. You can’t say that a thing and its opposite are both true. What is his assumption? That we are seeking the truth, right? Not pluralism—we are seeking the truth. But that can’t be, so how can both be the words of the living God?
[Speaker F] And “the words of the living God” means what the truth is. Well, that’s also not so obvious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, that’s his assumption. “And they answered: when Moses ascended on high to receive the Torah, he was shown on every matter forty-nine facets for prohibition and forty-nine facets for permission. And the Holy One, blessed be He, said concerning this that it should be handed over to the sages of Israel in every generation, and the decision would be in accordance with them. And it is correct in the homiletic sense, and in the way of truth there is a reason and a secret in the matter.” Okay? So what is he really saying? His question is based on a monist reading, and his answer is pluralist, right? The answer basically says: no, you were mistaken. This isn’t monism; it’s pluralism, and everything is fine. What about “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel”? Fine—so we moved to pluralism, I understand “These and those are the words of the living God.” Now you need to explain what “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” means. That doesn’t bother him. It doesn’t bother him because, okay, so the law is apparently determined by some technical consideration and not because that is the truth—because there is no truth. But yes, it is handed over to the sages of Israel, and the decision will be according to them. That is a pluralist reading.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But as I brought last time, Rabbi Yosef Karo in the Rules of the Talmud says: “I am astonished—if the law was not in accordance with their words, with Beit Hillel, then was it because of the abundance of their good qualities that the law was established like them?” How can that be, he says. Yes, the question is the reverse of what—exactly. He says: obviously the Jewish law following Beit Hillel means that that is the truth. In other words, for him it is obvious that establishing Jewish law is about truth. This is not a pluralist approach; it’s a monist approach. So then how can it be that based on an irrelevant consideration we establish the Jewish law like Beit Hillel? The law is not like them, and yet we establish it like them—a halakhic error—just in order to educate us? That doesn’t sound reasonable. So what does he say? “And it is possible that this is what it means: Why did they merit always to arrive at the truth, such that because they were true, the law was established in accordance with them.” He is not willing to give up monism. What does he say? The law is like Beit Hillel because they are right, because that is the truth. So what then? Because we are asking: why did they merit arriving at the truth? They merited arriving at the truth because they were gentle and humble and stated the words of Beit Shammai before their own. One could explain this on what we might call a mystical level—divine assistance, I don’t know exactly—if you are such righteous people, then the Holy One, blessed be He, helps you get to the truth. But one can explain it more naturally and say that the fact that you state the words of Beit Shammai before your own and form your position only after hearing the arguments from all sides—that itself brings you closer to the truth. It’s simply a better methodology. And that’s also on the basis of the assumption that Beit Shammai were sharper. Seemingly more brilliant. And yet Beit Hillel succeeded in getting closer to the truth, because methodology is no less important than talent. And if your methodology is sound, and you weigh what each one says and only then form a position, you will get closer to the truth than someone who doesn’t weigh his fellow’s words, even if he is smarter than you. And we talked about the Magen Avraham—yes, saying things in the name of a great person so they’ll accept them from you and things of that kind; I won’t go back to that now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So this reading is a monist reading, and according to it, of course, we now have to explain what “These and those are the words of the living God” means. According to the pluralist reading, we need to explain what “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” means. According to the monist reading, I know what “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” means, because the truth is with them. So in what sense are the words of Beit Shammai also the words of the living God? Right? That is what we need to explain.
[Speaker H] They’re aiming at the truth. These and those.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Aiming at the truth” is consolation, consolation for the poor souls. Eh? Beit Shammai contributed to the decision being true. Okay, but in the end they decided they were wrong. In what sense is that the word of the living God? There are people who explain it that way, but it never sounded logical to me. Yes.
[Speaker B] They say—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, you’re right too, because after all Beit Hillel saw that you’re an idiot, so fine, you also contributed to what happened in the end. That doesn’t sound very convincing to me, or very much like the words of the living God. Eh?
[Speaker G] Because of the way Beit Hillel listened to Beit Shammai, it became a shared basis.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The problem is, if they agreed with them, then it’s not “these and those are the words of the living God”; then only the words of Beit Shammai are the words of the living God. But if Beit Hillel didn’t agree with them, then only the words of Beit Hillel are the words of the living God. So it’s never both. So I’m asking: how can it be that both sides are the words of the living God if in the end we rule in a monist way, that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because that is the truth? Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here I really want to move into another issue. It’s called the issue of harmonism. You remember the Ritva who brought the idea of forty-nine facets for impurity and forty-nine facets for purity, and this is supported among other things by various passages—various passages. One of them, for example, is the Talmud in Sanhedrin 17. “Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: They appoint to the Sanhedrin only one who knows how to declare a creeping thing pure from the Torah.” That is, he has to know how to bring reasons, arguments, for declaring the creeping thing pure. “Rav said: I can discuss and declare it pure. And if a snake, which kills and increases impurity, is pure, then a creeping thing, which does not kill and increases impurity—should it not, all the more so, be pure?” And then they reject it, fine. But what is the Talmud really saying? That in order for someone to sit on the Sanhedrin, he has to be able to raise arguments that would declare a creeping thing pure. Okay? So Tosafot asks—Rabbeinu Tam is brought there in Tosafot—he says: “Knows how to declare a creeping thing pure”—Rabbeinu Tam finds this difficult: “What use is empty cleverness to declare pure a creeping thing that the Torah has rendered impure?” What is this, an ordination exam for Purim rabbis? If you want to declare the creeping thing pure—service on the Sanhedrin requires knowing the law, not wasting time with all kinds of dialectical tricks. “And Rabbeinu Tam explains that ‘knows how to declare pure’ means from the impurity of carcasses, that it should not convey impurity by carrying in the amount of an olive-bulk.” There are areas in which the creeping thing is pure rather than impure, and he needs to explain why that is correct. Okay, that’s not the simple meaning of the Talmud. But the Yad Ramah there says as follows. The Yad Ramah—with a heh. “Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: They appoint to the Sanhedrin only one who knows how to declare a creeping thing pure—that is, to show by a kal va-homer that it would have been fitting for it to be pure, but not to act on the matter after the Torah has rendered it impure.” He says, in essence: yes, one has to show reasons why the creeping thing really ought to have been pure, even though in practice it is obvious that he does not rule that the creeping thing is pure. He has to know the law; the Torah says the creeping thing is impure. But he still has to bring reasons why the creeping thing is pure—not like Rabbeinu Tam said.
[Speaker F] Like a talent test.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly—a kind of talent test. But I think it’s more than a talent test. The point is that it’s not only a talent test; it’s a test of complex thinking. And when you sit on the Sanhedrin, you have to be able to discuss an issue in a complex way. Because there is no case that comes before you that is a clear case. Ask any jurist—he’ll tell you there is no case where it is completely obvious who is right and who is wrong, where there are children of light and children of darkness and everything is simple. There isn’t. There are always considerations in this direction and in that direction. And the legal or halakhic decision we reach is usually a weighing of which reasons prevail, which reasons are more significant than the others, and in the end that is the halakhic decision. Therefore, for someone sitting on the Sanhedrin, it is very important that even when he declares the creeping thing impure, he understands that there are sides to declaring it pure. There are true sides to declaring the creeping thing pure—just in the end, the reasons to declare it impure outweigh the reasons to declare it pure. And that is really the requirement of a judge on the Sanhedrin. Why? Because in other cases something else will come before you—I don’t know, another kind of creature, not one of the eight creeping things of the Torah but something a bit different, half mouse and half earth, as the Talmud says, yes? Or things of that kind. You have to judge whether it is impure or pure. Here it’s no longer so simple. In other words, you need to see which reasons apply to it and which do not, and make decisions. And it could be that here indeed the upshot is that it is pure, because the reasons for purity in this specific case outweigh the reasons for impurity. And if you do not recognize the existence of reasons to declare the creeping thing pure, you won’t be able to judge complicated cases. You’ll know what the Torah says, but you won’t be able to judge complicated cases. Yes? That is the Torah of transmission, which aims to say what was said to Moses at Sinai. A Torah of give-and-take tries to show the form of thinking needed to handle issues that haven’t yet been handled—in other words, to try to apply these principles to other cases. But there, suddenly, it may turn out that the other considerations prevail over the impure-making ones, that the considerations for purity prevail over the considerations for impurity. And therefore it is very important for a judge to be endowed with complex thinking. Yes, exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The basic claim is this. Yes, the favorite analogy—the chocolate analogy—I brought it, I don’t remember if I already did, and if not then I’m bringing it now. Two people are arguing whether to eat chocolate—a fateful debate. Reuven says: you should eat chocolate because it’s tasty; it’s worthwhile to eat chocolate because it’s tasty. Shimon says: it’s not worthwhile to eat chocolate because it’s fattening. Who is right? Both of them, right? Chocolate is both tasty and fattening. Okay, those usually go together—you don’t even need to say it. If it tastes good, it’s fattening. So the reasons on both sides are correct. So what is the argument about? The argument is about which reason weighs more, which reason carries more weight regarding eating chocolate. The argument is about how I weigh the reasons, not whether the reasons are correct or not. And know that this is true in the overwhelming majority of arguments you hear—unless there’s one fool involved—but usually, when you hear an argument, certainly if it’s an argument between groups, and in groups there are always both intelligent people and less intelligent people, so not everyone is talking nonsense. Usually the reasons on both sides are valid reasons, and there is no argument that the reasons on both sides are valid; the argument is over which reason prevails, not over which reason is correct. It is a mistake to describe arguments in the other way, even though we have a very strong tendency to do that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe in parentheses I’ll add: there’s a phenomenon that I call spurious correlations. What are spurious correlations? Once I was on a bus at the Weizmann Institute, and I saw out the window a car passing by, and on it was written: “Rabin has no mandate to give back the Golan.” That used to be a bumper sticker. I’m talking about about thirty years ago. There was again a debate there—whether to give the Golan to the Syrians or not; every now and then that resurfaces. So: “Rabin has no mandate to give back the Golan.” I asked myself whether the owner of the car had a left-wing or a right-wing worldview. And the answer is: I have no idea. There is no way to know from that bumper sticker. Why? Because in the question of whether to hand over the Golan to the Syrians, there were involved—or in the public discourse there were involved—two kinds of questions, two kinds of discussion. One kind of discussion concerned political morality. What do I mean? You promised before the elections that you would not give back even a foot of the Golan, that it was a security interest of Israel and so on. After the elections you came to office, and then—as people said a few years later—what you see from there you don’t see from here, and you arrive at a different conclusion. And fine, I assume it was all in good faith and according to the best understanding of the prime minister at the time. Okay? Now the question is a moral one: you were elected on the basis of a different agenda. The question is whether you have a political mandate to conduct a policy that is not the policy you promised the voter, or whether you need to go back to the voter, present your revised view, and receive his trust or not receive his trust—but go back to make sure that you really have the mandate. That is a political question, a question of political morality. Okay? The second question is whether it is proper to give the Golan to the Syrians. A security question, an ideological question, a diplomatic question—whatever you want. Fine? A completely different question. These are two questions that do not speak to each other; they are independent.
[Speaker B] “I promised, but I didn’t promise to keep it.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “I promised, but I didn’t promise to keep it,” as Yitzhak—what’s his name? No, I think that was Shamir, Yitzhak Shamir. He also promised, and he also kept it. Yes—maybe he promised to keep it, but many times he did keep it. In any case, the point is that these are two independent questions. When there are two independent questions, what would we expect? How many groups would there be in the population? Four. Right? Each of these questions has two weighty sides. I am not belittling either of the answers to either question. There is definitely a side to saying this and a side to saying that on each of the two questions. I would expect there to be four groups in the population. How many were there in practice? Two, of course—always two. Right? Those who opposed it said: it is also immoral and also wrong to do it politically, security-wise, ideologically, whatever. And those who supported it said: what are you talking about? It’s moral, and he got the mandate, and besides, it’s also the right thing to do. You wouldn’t find the diagonal groups there, the non-diagonal groups. The groups that say: it’s moral, but I think it’s not proper to do it; or: it is proper to do it, but it’s not moral. Groups like that hardly existed. Maybe here and there, but there were almost no such groups in the population. Why not? Because we are not intellectually honest, of course. What do I mean? What? Decide? Fine—decide, no problem, decide. But don’t recruit all the arguments in the same direction, because they don’t always go together. There really ought to have been four groups in the population. The two missing groups should have been, first, a group saying: no problem, Rabin has the mandate to do it, even though in my opinion it is not the right thing to do; I oppose agreements with the Syrians. Fine? But he was elected prime minister; he has the mandate to do it. That’s one position. The second position: he doesn’t have the mandate to do it, because it’s immoral—he was elected on a different agenda—but personally I’m a man of the left, I’m in favor of agreements with the Syrians, and everything is fine. Right? Two groups. Now what do you say in such a situation—should it be done or not? Weigh the reasons and decide. The reasons are pulling in opposite directions; you need to decide which one prevails. Fine? One way or the other, you have to decide. The point is that people did not weigh the reasons. There wasn’t any group with mixed reasons. There was one group with two reasons in this direction, and a second group with two reasons in that direction. That’s it. And by the way, it’s always like that. It’s always like that.
[Speaker I] Yes, exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Once I wrote a response article for Makor Rishon when the controversy broke out over conversions in the conversion system—yes, Rabbi Druckman’s conversion system. So there was a rabbinical judge in Ashdod who invalidated all the conversions of Rabbi Druckman’s conversion system because the judges there were all wicked—they don’t require observance of commandments, and since they don’t require observance of commandments, they are wicked. And once they are wicked, even if they convert according to Jewish law, it’s not a conversion, because you need a religious court; in other words, if it isn’t a religious court, then there is no conversion. That’s how he—anyway, then a controversy broke out. It reached the Supreme Rabbinical Court, and they upheld that ruling, and then Rabbi Amar canceled it. He did some maneuver, never mind, but he canceled it—which says that the whole story was political. But in the end, when the debate was going on there, at first there were arguments in this direction and arguments in that direction: what about acceptance of commandments? Do they require it or not? What do you do with acceptance of commandments? And the views rolled in all directions. Before long, I suddenly saw that the picture had turned black and white. In other words, all the Religious Zionist rabbis were against that ruling, and all the Haredi rabbis were for it. That’s how it worked. Now I wrote an article in Makor Rishon and said: look, without thinking for more than ten seconds I can raise thirteen questions—maybe it was thirteen—that are independent, and on each of them you have to answer, and only after answering those thirteen questions can you formulate a position regarding the general issue. If there are thirteen questions, each with two sides, how many answers—how many groups—should there be in the population?
[Speaker F] Two to the thirteenth, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Eight K. Okay? Eight thousand groups, not eight thousand people—eight thousand different kinds of positions were supposed to exist in the population. How many were there in practice? Two. Two. Those who answered yes to all 13 questions, and those who answered no to all 13 questions. That was it—just two groups. Now, I’m not saying that in the end you don’t have to formulate a position, like you said before. Of course you do. But if you want to formulate a position seriously, then discuss each question separately, form a position on it, and it could be that on questions one, two, five, ten, eleven, and thirteen your answer will be yes, and on the others your answer will be no. Now you’ll have to decide: okay, all things considered, am I for it or against it? You have to weigh the different sides and formulate a position. But people make life easy for themselves. Easy—and false. They present it as though everything points in the direction they had already decided on in advance, and the other side presents it the opposite way, that everything points toward the direction they had already decided on in advance, and that’s how the discussion gets flattened and becomes superficial. That’s not how you conduct a discussion. You can’t formulate a serious position that way. You’re ignoring the counterarguments. There are counterarguments. Now, there’s no problem—you’re allowed to weigh those reasons and say that these are more important than those. But you can’t ignore those reasons. Because in a different situation it may turn out that those reasons are more important. And if you’re not willing to acknowledge the existence of those reasons, then at the very least you’ll make mistakes in other contexts. And in this context too—if you’re unwilling to weigh them, the opposing reasons—you’ll arrive at wrong decisions. Just like Beit Hillel, right? Beit Hillel stated the words of Beit Shammai before their own. What were they really saying? Let’s seriously consider the opposing position, the opposing arguments—after all, they’re true too. After that I’ll weigh the different reasons and reach my conclusions, formulate my position. But I will indeed consider all the arguments and all the reasons that point in all directions, and only afterward formulate a position. And that’s what is required of a judge on the Sanhedrin. A judge on the Sanhedrin has to know how to think in a complex way, and to know that there are reasons for and reasons against, and to seriously weigh all the reasons in all directions, and not be captive to an a priori position. And afterward to weigh and reach a bottom line, formulate a position. That’s why a judge on the Sanhedrin was tested on whether he could give 150 reasons to declare the creeping animal pure or impure. Only then would he be chosen for the Sanhedrin. Because if his thinking is black-and-white, then he’s a bad judge, a terrible judge. And therefore these are absolutely not empty sophistries, as Rabbeinu Tam says. When the Torah says that a creeping animal is impure, it is not saying that there are no reasons to declare it pure. Of course there are very good reasons to declare it pure, and there are also reasons to declare it impure. And when the Torah says that the creeping animal is impure, it is only saying that the reasons to declare it impure are more significant than the reasons to declare it pure, and therefore in the end, on the bottom line, it is impure. Does that mean there are no reasons to declare it pure? Of course there are. And a good judge has to know the reasons to declare it impure and pure, not just impure, and to know the reasons for impurity because it is impure and everything else is just empty pilpul. It’s not empty pilpul at all; this is not some Purim rabbi. This is a real rabbi. A real rabbi has to act this way. A Purim rabbi is someone who decides according to the reasons that carry less weight, not someone who weighs those considerations and then concludes that they carry less weight. That’s not a Purim rabbi. This is how one should act; this is how a judge should work. What does this really mean? It means that when we have a halakhic, philosophical, political, ideological discussion—whatever you want. Any moral discussion—almost any such discussion—will have sides this way and that. Really. There are sides this way and that. No phenomenon in the world is simple. And therefore a real judge, or a real philosopher, or a real jurist—whatever you want—has to know how to get into the thick of these arguments and those arguments, and in the end formulate a position by weighing all the reasons. So in fact, when we say, “These and those are the words of the living God,” this is the interpretation—now I’m going back to the question. Our question was: according to Rabbi Yosef Karo’s monistic reading, how do we understand the statement “These and those are the words of the living God”? Right? That was the question. Answer: “These and those are the words of the living God” means that both the reasons of these and the reasons of those are correct. Now all three hundred reasons are correct! Now we still have to make decisions. To make decisions, I do a weighing. I decide which counts more and which less, and in the end I arrive at some conception. Therefore the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. So “These and those are the words of the living God” means that at the level of reasons, they’re all really right. Truly. Not partly right, not a consolation prize for good behavior or for educational purposes. Both are completely right. “These and those are the words of the living God”—there is no logical problem with that statement. The reasons here and the reasons there are all correct. And “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” does not contradict that. Because “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel” means that we have to weigh the reasons and reach the bottom line. And the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel was not over whether the reasons were correct or incorrect. Both Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai agreed that all three hundred reasons were correct. The dispute was over which reasons carry more weight. And here there is only one truth: the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. Beit Shammai were mistaken. Therefore the statement that “These and those are the words of the living God” can be interpreted literally, and it is not pluralistic in any sense. Everyone is right. All three hundred reasons are right, and that is not pluralism. It’s not that there are multiple truths. Because reasons do not contradict one another. The conclusions that emerge from them contradict one another. Right? In the weighing there is only one truth. In the weighing there is only one truth. Beit Hillel are right. Beit Shammai erred in the weighing. The reasons that Beit Shammai raised are correct; Beit Hillel agree with that too. The dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel is over the question—yes, let’s go back to chocolate. When we argue whether to eat chocolate or not. Reuven says to eat chocolate because he gives more weight to the pleasure than to the fattening, right? And Shimon gives more weight to the fattening than to the pleasure. So neither of them disputes that it is both tasty and fattening. All the reasons are correct: these and those are the words of the living God. But at the level of weighing, one is right and the other is wrong. We’re now calling this a monistic reading. I’m saying: this is the monistic reading. He is now explaining the monistic reading. The monistic reading says there is one halakhic truth. That does not mean there are 150 correct reasons and 150 incorrect ones. All three hundred are correct. In the weighing between the reasons, only one side is right. And therefore when Jewish law was ruled in accordance with Beit Hillel, it was because they were right. Beit Shammai were not right. But where Beit Shammai were not right was not in their reasons—their reasons are correct. They were not right in the weighing they performed, because the weighing they did contradicts Beit Hillel, and Beit Hillel are apparently closer to the truth. That’s the point. And more than that—the Talmud, if the explanation I gave earlier is indeed correct, then Beit Shammai did not really weigh Beit Hillel’s reasons. They were dismissive, they didn’t listen, and therefore, as we said last time, Beit Hillel seriously weighed Beit Shammai’s reasons. So even the weighing they did is based on… they didn’t really do a weighing. I’m saying that even if there is a dispute in genuine weighing, a real dispute in weighing, in this monistic framework one would say: one is right and the other is wrong. And all the reasons are correct. There is no contradiction.
[Speaker F] Maybe they gave more weight to their own arguments because they were sharper?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, exactly because of that. I said that last time. Sharpness—according to the sharpness, the error. Meaning their sharpness is what tripped them up. Because they were so brilliant, they said, well, Beit Hillel probably don’t understand. So they didn’t listen seriously.
[Speaker F] Is that a good question—whether to give weight to an argument according to the sharpness of the person making it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, we all have that tendency. I think it’s not correct in principle. If you have no choice and you need to sort things out without listening, fine, I’ll listen to the wise person. But if you do have a choice—and in any case, Beit Hillel weren’t idiots, they were less sharp than Beit Shammai but they were saying something different—listen. Meaning, weigh it. Say afterward that you disagree, no problem. But weigh it. I spoke about that Magen Avraham who says, yes, that when you listen to a great person, at least you weigh his words; it’s not that you must accept them, but you weigh what he said.
[Speaker B] There’s that point that they didn’t fix the Jewish law in accordance with Rabbi Meir because they couldn’t understand his words.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That’s the value of autonomy; I’ll talk about that in a moment. So is the view I presented here pluralism or monism? It’s completely monism. Avi Sagi has a book called These and Those, and there he says there are three approaches: monism, pluralism, and harmonism. Harmonism is creating harmony between the different sides—what I described here. But harmonism is really just another shade of monism. Crude monism says: these 150 reasons are correct, those 150 are incorrect. But that’s just simplistic; usually it’s not true. Usually all the reasons are correct when we’re talking about intelligent people on both sides. Okay? So in fact there is one fuller, more harmonic truth, yes, composed of all three hundred reasons with different weights that we assign to each one. That is the truth. The real truth. And therefore the harmony we make between the different opinions is simply a kind of monism. There is one halakhic truth, and that truth has many facets, but they are all correct—they don’t contradict one another. It’s not that truth and its opposite are both true, that an opinion and its opposite are both true—there’s no such thing. But different aspects do not contradict one another. They lead to different conclusions, but there is no contradiction between them in themselves. And therefore they can all be correct. Yes, it’s like the famous elephant parable: two people arguing over what an elephant is. So Reuven says an elephant is an animal with one eye and two legs that are pretty far apart from one another. And the second person says, what are you talking about? An elephant is an animal with two eyes, and its two legs are actually very close together. Right? One is looking at the elephant from the side—then you see one eye and legs that are far apart. If you look at it from the front, then you say: two eyes and legs close together. Okay? So what is the elephant really? The combination of both. Right? That’s harmonism.
[Speaker G] Every—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Each one sees a certain aspect or projection of the problem. That’s true of an elephant at the physical, spatial level, but it’s also true of an analytical problem. In an analytical problem where we have a dispute, many times I see the problem from a certain angle or from certain angles. You see the problem from other angles. In the end all those angles describe the problem. In the end we may have to make a practical decision about what to do, or which angle is more important for our purposes, but all the angles are correct. They’re just different projections of the complex, full truth. Only the Holy One, blessed be He, can see the full truth. We’re human beings; by nature we see things from certain angles. But that’s why there are many human beings, and it’s worth listening, because there are people who see things from a different angle, and many times that completes the picture that you see only partially. And therefore you’ll have a fuller picture if you listen, if you create a harmonization among all the forms of relating or all the ways of looking that different people and groups have.
[Speaker B] So again, all the objects. Again this whole question: for one person this interpretation is better, and for the other person that interpretation is better. Okay, where’s the weighing here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The weighing—the question of who is better, who is more important, who decides? So if there’s a dispute, we try to argue. If it doesn’t work, we vote. But that doesn’t mean the vote is arbitrary. Yosef Karo claims: no, this is monism; the result is true, and whoever says otherwise is apparently mistaken. Not necessarily—the majority isn’t always right—but the aspiration is to reach the truth, and the assumption is that there is a truth. The fact that I can’t bring decisive or sharp arguments to convince the other that I’m right—that’s often true, because in questions of weighing it’s a bit hard to persuade. With reasons it’s easy to persuade: I can show you that this reason is logical, and you’ll accept it. With weight it’s harder to persuade, and therefore there we vote if there are differences of opinion. But that does not mean there is no truth there. There is truth there; it’s just harder to persuade someone of it.
[Speaker B] Vote on what—on intellect or on number of people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmud says on intellect. No—you mean wisdom or number of people? That was the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel.
[Speaker B] Yes, okay,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that was the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. But the vote is held in order to understand what is correct, not just to make a decision for technical reasons. The ballot box they set up—who…
[Speaker B] The ballot box is something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The ballot box is a collection of ignoramuses as numerous as those who left Egypt, as Sefer HaChinukh says. I’m talking about Torah scholars—Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai.
[Speaker B] But there was a student for whom this consideration mattered, and another for whom that consideration mattered.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “mattered” mean? He thinks this consideration is correct, and he thinks that consideration is correct. One is right and the other is wrong.
[Speaker B] Who decided that? A vote. A vote of whom? What was the criterion of the vote?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The majority—what do you mean?
[Speaker B] Majority of people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, that was the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. Again you’re taking me back to the same point. So Beit Shammai say: majority of wisdom. Beit Hillel say: majority of people. A heavenly voice came out and said: majority of people. By virtue of the majority? Right, and therefore a heavenly voice came out and said that the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel. But in principle, when we don’t have a dilemma between wise people and fools, it’s not always like that. Many times there is a dispute between people, but there is no agreement that these are wiser than those. So what do we do? We vote, and everyone understands that we follow the majority and everything is fine. And that is the truth—that we follow the majority—not that we follow the majority because it’s a rule needed for technical decision-making. No. The claim is that the majority is an indication of the truth, as we saw in Sefer HaChinukh. Okay? So that’s regarding harmonism. So that means that in fact Jewish law holds some kind of harmonistic view, which is a more sophisticated kind of monism. It’s really one truth, but that one truth is composed of many viewpoints that together give the truth. That’s what people often mean when they say, “Love truth and peace.” We’re usually used to thinking it’s either truth or peace. Peace means giving up on truth. Okay, let’s compromise and reach peace. No—there is a higher model of peace, which is truth. What does that mean? If you understand that he is right and you too are right, in the sense of the reasons, then you arrive at—and you make peace or harmony between the different reasons—then you arrive at truth. “Love truth and peace” is a self-contradictory instruction? No, it’s not self-contradictory. A truth that is created out of peace between different viewpoints, harmony between different viewpoints—that is more truth. That is the 150 reasons to declare the creeping animal impure and pure that the judge on the Sanhedrin must know.
[Speaker B] The Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t agree. Why? Because He took peace and threw it to the earth, and truth He took and threw to the earth so that the world could exist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Couldn’t exist with what? With truth. And there’s a midrash that says yes, okay—so what?
[Speaker B] The Holy One, blessed be He, took—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —truth—
[Speaker B] —and threw it to the earth, right, because it opposed the creation of man.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what does that say for our purposes? Do you know the Kotzker on this? It says that truth, justice, and peace argued with the Holy One, blessed be He, whether to create man. Truth objected, and peace objected, while justice and the Holy One, blessed be He, were in favor. Okay, so the Holy One, blessed be He, threw truth to the earth, and in a democratic fashion they decided two against one to create—create man. So the Kotzker asks: why did He throw truth to the earth and not peace? And he says that if they had thrown peace away, then truth would have remained above, and then it would have been two against one with the one being truth. Against truth there is no majority. Against peace there can be a majority; against truth there cannot be. That says exactly what I’m saying. Yes, there is some truth—truth is truth. The claim here is not a pluralistic claim that there are multiple truths. No. Rather, truth itself is made up of many angles, and each person sees a certain angle, and many times he thinks maybe that’s the whole picture. That’s why it’s worthwhile to hear others too, and then he’ll understand that it isn’t the whole picture. Even so, in the end we still weigh things, and each person will weigh them, and they may arrive at different conclusions. But nobody here is an idiot. People who raise reasons raise reasons that have substance. And that’s the point: the truth is the collection of all the reasons, including some particular weighing among them. Okay? Think of the dispute between capitalism and socialism or communism. Communism, not socialism. What? Communism. No, socialism too, I don’t care. The question is how far you go—yes, the question is how extreme. But usually people formulate the dispute as one between the value of liberty and the value of equality. Capitalism champions liberty or freedom, and socialism or communism champions equality. Now nobody disputes that both of those things are important. The whole question is which one prevails. There’s no dispute that it’s important to have freedom to whatever extent possible, and as long as that doesn’t harm freedom I’m also entirely in favor of equality. I’m only claiming that where it would harm freedom, I’m not in favor of equality—if I’m a capitalist, okay?
[Speaker I] Equality of opportunity, yes—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So there are all sorts of formulations, right. But I’m using a simple formulation just to illustrate the point. The claim is that there is no dispute here over whether both things are important. The question is what happens when they clash. When they clash, you have to weigh them and decide which one is worth more in your eyes. And that’s the difference between an enlightened capitalist and an enlightened socialist. Unenlightened capitalists and socialists will say, what are you talking about, equality is worth nothing—or freedom is just a fantasy, it has no value at all. Not true. Both have value. The point is that sometimes they clash and you have to decide which one prevails. I think that is a much more correct way to look at truth. In any value system, truth contains a set of values but also a hierarchy among them, what is called a scale of values. Which weighs more and which weighs less. As for the set of values, almost everyone will agree that those values are correct. The disputes are usually over the question of the scale—which is more important and which less. That’s exactly the same thing in all contexts; it’s the same thing. And therefore I think the harmonistic perspective sheds light on a lot of things that people get terribly tangled up with at the logical level, as though—how can it be that “these and those are the words of the living God” and both are right? Yes, maybe both can be right, and that doesn’t contradict anything in logic. Nothing. It can’t be that at the bottom line both are right, because there is logic. But with reasons there is no problem; reasons do not contradict each other. Does the fact that chocolate is tasty contradict the fact that it is fattening? No. It is both tasty and fattening. True, at the practical level one has to decide now whether to eat or not eat, and here there is one correct decision, and whoever says otherwise is mistaken. So that is “the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel.” But “these and those are the words of the living God” refers to the reasons. That is the monistic reading of the Talmud. Look, this expression—“these and those are the words of the living God”—appears in the Talmud in two places. One place is Eruvin 13, what we saw. The second place is Gittin 6. And there, unlike in Eruvin, the Talmud also explains what “these and those are the words of the living God” means, and therefore it has an advantage. So let’s try to see what it says there. If you train him, in the end he catches on. Fine. Open the page again. The Talmud—what is brought there in Gittin is that there is some dispute there, no matter, a halakhic dispute involving Rabbi Evyatar, and the Talmud discusses whether Rabbi Evyatar is authoritative. Okay? And then it says: certainly, for the Holy One, blessed be He Himself agreed through him. It says there as follows: “And furthermore, Rabbi Evyatar is one through whom his Master agreed, as it is written: ‘And his concubine played the harlot against him’”—the concubine at Gibeah. Rabbi Evyatar said: he found a fly on her. Rabbi Yonatan said: he found a hair. Rabbi Evyatar met Elijah.” What did that guy find—that fellow whose fuse blew, who went crazy and did what he did? So one says he found a fly in the dish; the other says a hair in that place. Fine? “And Rabbi Evyatar met Elijah. He said to him: What is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing?” Elijah says to him: unbelievable—He is occupied with the concubine at Gibeah. Right in our topic, the Holy One, blessed be He, is also engaged. Oh, excellent—now at last we’ll know the truth. “And what is He saying? He said to him”—Elijah quotes the Holy One, blessed be He—“Evyatar My son says thus, Yonatan My son says thus.” The Holy One, blessed be He says that Rabbi Evyatar says this and Rabbi Yonatan says that. So Rabbi Evyatar says to Elijah the prophet: “He said to him: Heaven forbid—is there doubt before Heaven?” Doesn’t the Holy One, blessed be He, know what happened there? Whether it was a hair or a fly? “He said to him: 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.” What does that mean? He found both the hair and the fly. So both were really right. He found a fly and was not particular about it, and when he found the hair he became particular. This can be understood in two ways. One way is that factually he found both things. But essentially Rabbi Yonatan was right that it was the hair, because the hair is what really upset him, not the fly. But that is a little odd, because if so, then what does it mean that the Holy One, blessed be He agreed through Rabbi Evyatar? The opposite—He agreed through the one who disputes him. It seems to me that the simpler reading is that the anger of that person was the accumulation of both things. He found a fly and did not get upset—that only started warming him up—and then he found the hair and that blew his fuse. So in the end that means both of them were really right, even on the essential level—not only that factually he found a hair and a fly, but what caused the person’s anger? Both the hair and the fly. But on the other hand it’s also clear that neither of them was entirely right. Because one says hair, the other says fly, but in the end it was only the two together that caused the anger. Each one by itself did not cause the anger. Right? It only added. I’ll add that afterward the Talmud says: “Rav Yehuda said: a fly in the dish, and a hair in that place. The fly was a matter of disgust”—yes, it disgusted him to have a fly in the food—“and the hair was a danger.” The Talmud says there is danger if there is a hair in that place. “Some say: both this and that were in the dish; the fly was unavoidable, and the hair was negligence.” A fly happens accidentally, and a hair is negligence. She should have shaved, yes? So that’s negligence. Now that’s an interesting point, because if it really is unavoidable accident versus negligence, then an accident shouldn’t make you furious. What do you want? It’s an accident—what can one do? Psychologically it can happen, but there’s no real justification. By contrast, if it’s negligence, then I can believe he’s angry because she was negligent. On the other hand, disgust and danger are two reasons pulling in two directions. But it seems to me that even in the reading of the latter version, it can be read the way I said before: the fly is an accident, but after he sees that she also acts negligently, he understands that the accident too was really negligence. Because once she isn’t careful, then the accident also isn’t really an accident. And therefore in the end both things upset him, and perhaps even each one separately could have upset him if he had known that the fly too involved negligence. But in any case, for our purposes, I think the simple reading of the Talmud here really is that “these and those are the words of the living God” represents a harmonistic reading. Both sides are right, or the truth is a composite of the two points of view. And the Talmud itself says this. Meaning, here the Talmud itself explains that “these and those are the words of the living God” is what that means. In Eruvin the Talmud only says “these and those are the words of the living God,” but it doesn’t explain what that means. But here they tell me what “these and those are the words of the living God” means: that each one grasped one facet of reality. One grasped the fly, the other grasped the hair; in the actual reality both were there, both a fly and a hair. And that’s exactly what I said before: this is the harmonistic reading, which says that the reasons of both sides are all correct. The question is how you weigh them, or whether they join together, or this one weighs more and that one less. There one can argue. And therefore I think that from the Talmud itself one can learn that in fact “these and those” is interpreted harmonistically. Yes, many times when we speak, for example, about conceptual Talmudic investigations, in those investigations we have a tendency—and I’m dealing with this in tonight’s class on conceptual Talmudic investigations—we have a tendency to formulate those investigations in a dichotomous way. Either this is correct or that is correct. Either this is a law about the person or a law about the object; either negligence in guarding obligates you to pay for property that caused damage, or the very fact that you are the owner means you bear responsibility for what your property does—the well-known investigation of the later authorities in Bava Kamma. Why do you pay when property causes damage? Is it because I was negligent in guarding it, or because the very fact that I am the owner obligates me, so that I bear responsibility for what my property does? Usually we tend to formulate it in an extreme way—either this or that. But the truth is that when you check the Talmudic passages, many times the dichotomous formulation doesn’t really work. We discover that in fact both things are true, and there are different mixtures or different roles for each side. I don’t know—negligence in guarding obligates you, provided that it is your property. Or being your property imposes responsibility on you, provided that you didn’t guard it properly. Some combination in which both sides of the investigation create some truth composed of harmony or integration between the two sides. And usually these childish, dichotomous formulations of either this or that don’t really hold water. When you get more deeply into the conceptual thickness of the sugya, you see it doesn’t work. That is, suddenly we discover inconsistency. Maimonides comes out as holding that it’s a law about the person, but from elsewhere it appears that Maimonides holds it’s a law about the object. So we have difficulties and search for answers and all that. No need for difficulties and no need for answers. Maimonides understands that there is both a law about the person and a law about the object, but there is some particular combination of them that Maimonides holds, and someone else can hold a different combination. Which is exactly parallel to what I said before about the sides for declaring the creeping animal pure and impure. The disputes are over the question of how I weigh the different sides, but all the sides are correct. And when we merely raise two sides in a conceptual inquiry, obviously when we raise the sides we are not thinking that I have to pay when my property causes damage because I have a tall house. That too is a possibility. Why don’t we examine that? Because what connection is there between the height of my house and my having to pay damages when my property causes harm? There is no connection, right? When I conduct an inquiry, I conduct it between two sides where in both I see a relevant connection to the topic. I say: I am the owner of the property, so if it caused damage then I bear responsibility for it. Or: I didn’t guard it properly—fine, then I deserve a sanction. You didn’t guard it properly, damage occurred, bear the consequences, pay. Both of those sides have logic, right? That’s why I chose those two sides. I didn’t choose sides with no logic at all. Once they have logic, why assume that one of them plays a role and the other doesn’t? Both play a role, because both have logic. There may be disputes about the relative role or relative weight of each side, but that both sides are on the field is pretty clear. From the very fact that I raised both sides, it’s pretty clear that I understand both sides to be relevant. I didn’t raise irrelevant sides here. Okay? So this is just a lesson that a lot of yeshiva-style conceptualists don’t understand, but I think it’s very important to understand it, because otherwise it leads to terribly simplistic, somewhat childish thinking—this yeshiva-style analyticity of either this or that. It never works. Meaning, usually it’s both this and that, but in different forms of integration. Okay, so basically the claim in the end—here I’m reading from some columns I wrote on my website—yes, I have an interesting note here. The claim, the claim I made there—I have a book I wrote on neuroscience and free choice called The Science of Freedom. And in that book I discuss—I confront the position that refuses to accept that a human being has a spiritual component, and instead says the human being is entirely matter. Okay? A materialist position. So in neuroscience there are several aspects that touch on this question, and I try to examine all these aspects and see whether they really say what they purport to say. A lot of people think that findings from neuroscience show that we really are just matter, with no spiritual or mental dimension, or whatever you want to call it. One of the fascinating phenomena is split-brain experiments. In the brain there is the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres. And then what happens is that there is no direct connection between the hemispheres, or almost none. There are some indirect mechanisms, but almost no connection. And then what happens, to our amazement, is that we can test what each hemisphere says separately on various questions, among them what it sees. And you get different answers. This hemisphere sees a house, that one sees a chicken. Because it depends where it is looking—after all, the right hemisphere uses the left eye, the left hemisphere uses the right eye, yes, the order reverses; also in hearing, each side. The entire right side is controlled by the left hemisphere, the left side is controlled by the right hemisphere. So suppose you have a picture of a house and a chicken, and the left eye sees the chicken and the right eye sees the house. Then if you ask the left hemisphere, it will tell you what the right eye says—it will tell you that you see a house. If you ask the left hemisphere—well, then it will answer from the right eye that sees the chicken, and so on. But one of the interesting things there is that there’s a difference in worldview. There are people whose left hemisphere is Republican and whose right hemisphere is Democratic. They support Nixon and oppose Nixon in the same person. Nixon was a Republican, yes. So they support Nixon and oppose Nixon in the same person. Now there is a claim that, well, that clearly shows that this whole story is just biology. It’s all biology. Fine—so our brain performs all kinds of manipulations, and in the end that leads to your being Republican or Democratic or capitalist or socialist or whatever—all those things.
[Speaker K] And each one separately, each one…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Meaning my claim was that our brain is simply a judge on the Sanhedrin. What do I mean? The right hemisphere is responsible for a certain type of considerations—in this case probably Republican considerations—and the left hemisphere is responsible for the Democratic angle of vision. Now in the end you’re supposed to weigh 150 reasons to declare impure and 150 reasons to declare pure, and after weighing them all you finally reach a conclusion whether you’re Republican or Democratic. But it’s obvious that there are correct considerations this way and correct considerations that way. So the fact that the two hemispheres think differently merely means that these two parts of my brain are each responsible for processing a certain kind of consideration, but in the end I make the decision by weighing all the considerations. And on the contrary, I think this picture shows clearly that we are not a material creature, and that in the end what it means is that the right brain is Republican and the left brain is Democratic, and our psyche or soul performs some weighing of these sides and those sides and finally reaches a conclusion—what am I? That is, I reach a conclusion about what I really think, but that conclusion has to weigh the sides, the 150 reasons to declare impure and the 150 reasons to declare pure, and there are always 150 this way and 150 that way. And I think there is a wonderful biological expression here for this harmonistic view, yes, that I described.
[Speaker I] And that there is an owner of the brain, like Leibowitz talked about.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. The homunculus.
[Speaker I] What? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An owner of the brain?
[Speaker I] Owner of the brain, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The brain doesn’t think; the owner of the brain thinks by means of the brain. Just as no one says that the legs walk—I walk, and I do that by means of my legs, right? The same when I think: the brain doesn’t think; I think by means of the brain. The brain is the organ that performs that action for me. Just as the legs walk for me, the brain thinks for me, but the one who thinks is the owner of the brain, not the brain. That is the intellect. What’s the difference between intellect and brain? The brain is a biological organ; intellect is a mental faculty, a mental function.
[Speaker B] Of the owner of the intellect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The owner of the intellect is the one who… yes, the intellect is a function of the owner of the intellect, yes exactly. Therefore I once saw an article—there is a Rabinovitch, someone who used to lecture here in psychology, I don’t know if he still does, he’s probably older by now—he wrote a book, Aharon Rabinovitch I think his name is. He wrote an article, sorry, in Bedad or Higgayon, in one of the issues of Higgayon I think, where he tries to locate where our ego is on the psychoanalytic map of Nefesh HaChaim, of the בעל התניא—of the author of Tanya, of I don’t know what. According to different worldviews, in which part of our soul or psyche is the ego, the I, my I, actually located. And all the while I was reading that article, I thought he had made a category mistake, a conceptual mistake. The I is the owner of the map; it is not on the map. The map is his map. There’s no point… It’s like asking where the bird is—in the wings or in the legs? The bird is the wings and the legs and everything together—that’s the bird. The wings and the legs are wings and legs. A person is the owner of these mental functions. The I is not one of the mental functions; the I is the owner of the mental functions—they are his functions. Okay? But that really goes beyond our discussion here. So the claim in the end is that “these and those are the words of the living God,” according to the monistic reading, is really a statement that speaks about the reasons. The reasons are correct in all directions, but the Jewish law follows Beit Hillel because there is a truth—the true weighing is the weighing of Beit Hillel. Okay? Now I’m taking one more step. So we reached the conclusion—or I don’t know, I described the possibility, and in my view it’s also the conclusion—so maybe I’ll say one more sentence about that. Up to now I’ve presented two readings: monistic and pluralistic, okay? Who is right? If you say that both are right, then that means you’re a pluralist.
[Speaker B] If you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you say that both are right, then that means you’re a pluralist, no? So pluralism is right—not that both are right.
[Speaker B] Who? What are you saying?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying this is a proof by negation that pluralism cannot be correct. Because if pluralism is correct, that means monism is also correct, because pluralism says that even in this very dispute both sides are right. So both the pluralist and the monist are right. Which means that pluralism, according to its own method, leads me to monism—or at least to monism as well.
[Speaker F] And then according to its own method, it’s wrong.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, exactly. And that’s a proof by negation in favor of monism. Meaning, if you apply pluralism to the dispute about pluralism itself, like a Gödel-type sentence, right? If you apply pluralism to the dispute about pluralism itself, you arrive at a contradiction. And therefore that’s a sign that pluralism is not correct. In short, when you actually look, you see it—leave aside all the rhetoric. Very often, when we try to discuss philosophical questions or meta-halakhic questions, we turn to books of thought, introductions to books and responsa, and there people say all kinds of nice lines. Forget all that—there’s really nothing to learn from there. If we want to see what really happens, then look at how people actually work in Jewish law. And when people work in Jewish law, nobody is a pluralist. Nobody is a pluralist. Fairy tales. People are clearly looking for the truth. They think they may have made mistakes, they’re not sure they’ve reached the truth, but they are looking for truth—they’re not playing a game. They’re looking for truth, and they think that whoever says otherwise is mistaken. It’s not that—yes, they do believe in the existence of a halakhic truth. I’m not talking about the arguments; in the arguments everyone can be right. I’m talking about the weighing and the final conclusion. In the end, when you reach your conclusion, if that’s your conclusion then you think you’re right and the other person is wrong. And more than that, there are people who are hesitant to issue rulings, afraid to rule lest they make a mistake. According to the pluralist position, what is there to be afraid of? Whatever you say is correct, so what does fear of issuing a ruling even mean? The halakhic decisors, speaking innocently and naturally, can be seen very clearly not to be pluralists. They are all monists, that’s obvious. Pluralism is a game for non-halakhic texts. There you can amuse yourself with these ideas and say whatever you want without committing to anything. But in the real world, people are monists. It’s like the debate about Platonism in mathematics, for example. You know there’s a debate over whether mathematics describes some kind of objective truth, or whether it’s just a structure of how I think and not really out there in the world. Now in the philosophy of mathematics opinions are divided, but among mathematicians—at least in the surveys I’ve done—everyone is a Platonist. Yes, everyone is a Platonist. You can play around with it when you’re sitting off to the side in an armchair. Someone who is inside the business has a very clear position. Mathematics is not arbitrary, and it’s not a statement about us; it’s a statement about—there is objective truth in mathematics. In philosophy you can play around and say whatever you want; it’s always fine. And that’s also true in Jewish law. In Jewish law too, when you read philosophical texts you’ll see all the options and all the positions. In law as well, by the way. For example, in the legal world, when people talk about intellectual property, copyright, intellectual property and so on, they present all the possibilities: one possibility is to see it as actual property, that you have ownership, you have a right in the thing; and another approach says no, it’s just an efficient regulatory arrangement for the sake of promoting human thought and creativity. If you give a person rights over his creation, he has motivation to create things. Okay? So it’s not really that a person owns anything. So all kinds of possibilities come up. That’s how intellectual property is taught—they teach all the possibilities. When you get into the field, you discover only one. There is no property. There are interpretations and explanations. In the practical world, very often people have a very clear position about what is right. By the way, in that context I disagree—I’m a Platonist there too. Meaning, I think there really is ownership of a creation, not just a tool for regulating life more efficiently. But that’s another discussion. So many times I say: the theoretical possibilities—when you’re in a theoretical class, you present all the possibilities. In practice everyone knows that this option is the right one and all the others are not. Right. So too in this issue of monism versus pluralism: in the literature of thought, or whatever, you can see in Avi Sagi, for example, in his book, that he surveys the different views, brings sources in favor of pluralism, in favor of monism, in favor of harmonism. All the sources he brings are incorrect. Either they’re texts of thought, and then it’s very hard to draw conclusions from them. He doesn’t bring a single halakhic source. Not one halakhic source, only philosophical sources, and even in the philosophical sources, for the most part, they don’t say what he says they say, because with texts of thought you can play games. Maybe one source from Maharam Gavay—I seem to remember he had one source where maybe there his analysis was correct—but that’s it. There is no source for a pluralist position in Jewish law, in my opinion, no serious source.
[Speaker F] Doesn’t that make halakhic discourse unnecessary? As if the discussion has no meaning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it has meaning, because we’re trying to understand what the truth is. There are disagreements—no one disputes the fact that there are disagreements.
[Speaker F] No, I—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that if everyone is right, then the argument has no meaning. Yes, you’re saying the reverse.
[Speaker F] According to pluralism, the argument has no meaning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —but according to monism it does. If everyone is right, then you won’t find—yes, right. So in the end, my claim is not only that I presented a monist conception as against a pluralist conception, but that I want to argue in favor of the monist position. Meaning, I think Jewish law is monistic. And then of course that raises the question: okay, if that’s so, we would expect that after we’ve reached a decision—say we took a vote and followed the majority, we reached a ruling—then now everyone should have to do that, because that’s the truth. Now everyone has to do what is true, right? But we see in quite a number of places that this is not so. Not everyone does what was ultimately decided, and there’s no claim against them either. It’s perfectly fine—everyone should do what he thinks, unless once again there was a ruling by the Sanhedrin that decided everyone had to unify their behavior. But we don’t criticize people who act differently, even though a ruling was reached. The House of Shammai followed their own view and the House of Hillel followed theirs. Nobody expected the House of Shammai to change their conduct after the heavenly voice ruled like the House of Hillel. More than that—even in the Talmud we find in certain passages that the Amoraim rule like the House of Shammai, even though the words of the House of Shammai in the place of the House of Hillel are not Mishnah after the heavenly voice. It’s void. No—Amoraim can rule like the House of Shammai in certain passages. At the beginning of tractate Beitzah there are a few such passages, and others as well. There’s no Jewish law like the House of Shammai? Yes, all kinds of cases. So the claim is that beyond the question of halakhic truth, we now enter another plane, and I call it the plane of autonomy. Here I want to discuss this—maybe first discuss the concepts, and then try to see what these concepts mean. The concepts are: pluralism versus tolerance. Pluralism and tolerance are often perceived as synonymous concepts, as having the same meaning. Every year the Ministry of Education has some theme to which the year is devoted—either democracy, pluralism, tolerance, respect for whatever, it’s all the same thing in the end. Each time they call it something else, but it’s the same thing. So the assumption is that tolerance and pluralism are almost synonyms. Why? Because in both of these situations I basically treat views other than my own tolerantly, or I contain them. But I want to argue that not only is this not synonymous and not overlapping—it’s the opposite.
[Speaker E] Pluralism and tolerance—we talked about this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I’ll do it briefly, I don’t know, that point slipped my mind. So I’m basically saying this: when I accept or contain the opinion of someone else who thinks differently from me, if I’m a monist, then to the best of my understanding X is correct. If he thinks Y, then he’s mistaken. Right? That’s logic. Still, that doesn’t mean I will force him not to do Y but to do X. Why? Because I’m tolerant. Okay? By contrast, the pluralist will not force him to do X because he thinks Y is correct just like X is correct. There’s no difference. Okay? So therefore, on the practical level, the two sides may appear similar, but the reasons for this behavior are very different in the tolerant framework and in the pluralist framework. The pluralist does not intervene because there is nothing to intervene in—there is no reason to intervene. The tolerant person does not intervene because of the value of tolerance, which we discussed, and I said is based essentially on respecting the other person’s autonomy. Meaning, the other person has the autonomy to act as he thinks. And what that means is that even though I’m a monist and there is one halakhic truth, disagreement has significance not only on the factual level. Factually there are differing opinions—that’s obvious, you can’t argue with that. Factual pluralism is certainly correct. Factually, there are different opinions among people; there’s no argument about that, right? But the question is whether the fact that there are different opinions also means that there are multiple truths. Because there can be different opinions, with one person right and the others mistaken. Many people think that if there are different opinions, that’s a sign everyone is right. Very often in the field of morality they bring this argument. After all, different groups relate differently to the same situation, which shows there is no one morality. Not true. It shows that not everyone thinks the same thing about morality, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one correct morality and all the others are mistaken. Those are different things. In science too there can be disputes, so does that mean there’s no truth in science either? There is truth; it’s just that not everyone understands it or not everyone agrees with it, so they argue. It’s subjective morality. What?
[Speaker B] Morality too is something subjective.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I claim that it’s not. I claim that it’s not. I claim that morality is something objective.
[Speaker B] And that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —people don’t agree about it because there’s disagreement. In science too there’s disagreement, so what? One is right and the others are wrong. The fact that there is disagreement does not mean there are multiple truths. It means there are many opinions among people—that’s a true fact—but it doesn’t mean everyone is right. It doesn’t mean there are multiple truths; those are two different things. You can also say there are multiple truths if you’re a pluralist; I’m only saying that the existence of different opinions doesn’t prove that. All right? That’s my claim. So the foundation of tolerance, as I said, is basically monistic. It is monistic, and it’s a monism that recognizes the autonomy of the other, and therefore it is tolerant monism. Since I’m already getting close to the end, I’ll just summarize this for next time. Basically we have three possible conceptions on the map. One conception is pluralism, a second conception is intolerant monism—one truth that is not willing to contain errors—and the third conception is tolerant monism, which is based on the value of autonomy, basically. It’s monism plus autonomy, and therefore this monism contains other views, is willing to contain other views even though it is monistic. It thinks it is right and they are wrong. Those are three conceptions. Now when I want to examine—not in the literature, let’s call it Torah journalism, but in the literature of Jewish law itself—which of these three approaches is correct, the correct meta-halakhic approach, how should one correctly understand Jewish law: pluralistically, tolerant monism, or intolerant monism?
[Speaker K] Tolerant monism—we see that in the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel; they never refrained from marrying into each other’s families.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that doesn’t prove it.
[Speaker K] It doesn’t prove it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says? Maybe they just didn’t have the energy.
[Speaker K] They have a principled dispute in tractate Yevamot.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They have a dispute, but that’s practical pluralism. Or practical tolerance. I’m asking whether, essentially, I recognize the value of autonomy. Do I recognize, from the outset, that you should do what you think? Not just that I’m willing to accept what you do because I have no way to influence you, but that I think from the outset that if you think differently, then you should act differently, even though I think you’re wrong. So here I say: usually when we examine a question of this kind, we go to Torah journalism. Torah journalism means books of thought or introductions, all the things I said before. That won’t get you anywhere. That’s what Sagi does there, and you can’t learn anything from it. One indication of this, for example, is in Yam Shel Shlomo, by the Maharshal. In Yam Shel Shlomo, in several places there and in the introductions to the book, he writes very sharply against the Shulchan Arukh. He writes: what do you mean, ruling on the basis of precedents? A person should rule based on his own judgment, on his own reasoning in the passage. What does it mean to follow the three great halakhic decisors and the majority among them—the Rosh, the Rif, and Maimonides—as the Shulchan Arukh does, or the Rema? So he attacked them very sharply. He says, I will decide disputes among Tannaim by reasoning. And in Yam Shel Shlomo he writes this. There is a dispute among Tannaim—I will determine who is right by reasoning, not according to rules of decision or anything like that. I enter into the disputes of Tannaim and Amoraim, certainly of the medieval authorities (Rishonim). The Shulchan Arukh doesn’t even enter into disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim); it just decides by technical rules. He says: no, by proofs I will decide who is right—whether Abaye is right or Rava is right, or whether Rabbi Yehuda or Rabbi Shimon. All right? That’s what he writes in several places in Yam Shel Shlomo, in the introductions to the book, and so on. Look at the responsa of the Maharshal—completely standard responsa. He goes back and forth like every later authority (Acharon), discusses the question, the Rif says this, Maimonides says that, and there are proofs this way and that way. You won’t find any of the big fireworks that accompany his other writings. Why? Because the responsa deal with practical halakhic questions. In practical Jewish law, he behaved normally. In journalism, in ideological declarations, he was very forceful. And therefore one has to be very careful with ideological declarations. You have to see how it works on the ground if you really want to know. And therefore, when I ask myself how I should decide this meta-halakhic question—pluralism, tolerant monism, or intolerant monism—I say the way to do it is not to search in books of thought or works of that kind, but to go to Jewish law itself. Let’s try to think of a halakhic practical difference that will distinguish for me between these three approaches. Let’s start with monism and pluralism; we’ll get to tolerance in a moment. Monism and pluralism—can anyone think of a halakhic question such that if you’re a pluralist you would answer one way, and if you’re a monist you would answer another way? Because then that gives me a way, through the practical difference, to try to decide this meta-halakhic question. Okay, that’s basically my goal. Again? Ashkenazim and Sephardim? There? What does that mean?
[Speaker J] No, I’m saying that what you’re saying doesn’t decide anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, they contradict one another because they think differently. So what should be done now? No, here you’re right, but how will you know who? Sephardim think they’re right and Ashkenazim think they’re right. So they’ll still each behave according to what they think. That won’t decide it. Because as I said, the factual existence of different opinions is certainly a fact. It’s obvious that factually there are different opinions. The question is what happens on the conceptual level: is there one truth or not? Look, I’ll suggest a very simple question: I want to cause you to stumble in something that in my view is permitted and in your view is forbidden. Okay? If I’m a pluralist, then I haven’t caused you to stumble.
[Speaker K] Then I haven’t caused you to stumble.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The opposite. I cause you to stumble in something that in your view is forbidden and in my view is permitted. Fine, so I certainly have caused you to stumble. If I’m a pluralist, that means that according to Jewish law it really is forbidden, even though from my perspective it appears permitted—but we are both equally right, I’m a pluralist—so you’re supposed to behave according to what you think, and therefore I’m not allowed to cause you to stumble.
[Speaker F] But if I’m a monist and you think you’re right—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m right and you’re wrong, so the fact that I cause you to stumble in something permitted that you think is forbidden—that’s your problem, why should I care? I didn’t cause you to stumble in something forbidden; it’s something permitted. By the way, notice a very interesting lesson. Many times people think that being a pluralist is the lenient position and being a monist is the stringent one. Here is an example where pluralism leads to a stringent answer, and monism—the view that there is one truth—actually leads me to a lenient answer here, not a stringent one. So that, for example, is a practical difference. So if I find a passage where I can check what the Jewish law is in such a situation, it can help me decide between the conceptions of monism and pluralism, and afterward we’ll also look at tolerant monism. There is such a passage, and it’s a wonderful litmus test that gives a different answer for each of the three categories. A pluralist will answer one way, a tolerant monist will answer another way, and an intolerant monist will answer a third way. A passage in tractate Sukkah 10. No, there it’s a somewhat different story, because there Rabban Gamliel—we talked about this in the historical introduction—because there it’s about sanctifying the new month and intercalating the year. In sanctifying the new month and intercalating the year, there is mandatory authority vested in the head of the Sanhedrin. Meaning, he determines it even if he is mistaken. “Even if you err, even if you act deliberately, even if you are coerced,” so that isn’t such a good example. There is a passage that does this job, and we’ll talk about it next time.