Halachic Thought – 5783 – Lesson 2

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s legitimate if, from your point of view, it makes no difference. Then in my view there’s no problem causing him to stumble if he doesn’t believe. No, because that’s in the law, in civil law, not in Jewish law. In civil law the rule is that ignorance of the law does not exempt a person from punishment. In Jewish law, in my opinion, no. I say “in my opinion”—maybe ask Rova and other people will say otherwise, but I’m saying what I think, just so that’s clear, yes. Ignorance of the law does not exempt from punishment, but in civil law that’s because the legislator wants people to clarify the law and obey it, and therefore he’s not willing to make allowances in various contexts. In Jewish law we discuss the real question, not questions of what damages will be created. Is he a criminal or not? Does he deserve punishment? The answer is no, he is not a criminal, he is under duress. In my view, yes. Why? Ignorance of the law is substantive. No, not if he simply didn’t have time. It doesn’t matter. There is ignorance that is the result of negligence, which is what is called inadvertent sin. But there is ignorance that says: I reached the conclusion that this whole story is not true, I simply don’t. So I’m saying that’s what people usually refer to as a captured infant, and in my opinion that expression is too weak. Because a captured infant belongs to the family of coercion. I think this is something even further removed. He’s not in the game. A claim of coercion is a claim of exemption. I’m not saying a claim of exemption—he’s not in the game. Even if, say, he performs a commandment, it’s not a commandment. This doesn’t belong to the category of a captured infant; no one would say that if a captured infant performs a commandment, it isn’t a commandment. I’m claiming that even if he performs a commandment, it’s not a commandment. No, absolutely not. Completely pointless activity. Putting on tefillin in the street, the way those Chabad guys do. I’m saying, if they catch someone who believes, then no; and that’s why I say, I don’t know who’s walking past me in the street. But if they catch someone who doesn’t believe and he’s standing there just to get them off his back, they did nothing; it has no value whatsoever on the halakhic level. You can say there may be consequences—maybe it will affect him mystically, maybe it will suddenly awaken him and he’ll start thinking and repent—anything is possible. But the act in itself is not a commandment; it has no religious value. He has to put on tefillin again. Of course, yes. Put on tefillin again and make the blessing again, and the first blessing—it would have been better had he not made it at all, just a pointless blessing in vain. In my opinion, someone like that also does not count toward a prayer quorum. It’s not only leniently, it’s also stringently. He’s not in the game. He’s a flowerpot. It’s like counting a flowerpot toward a quorum. Nine people and a flowerpot—is that a quorum? In this respect he’s a flowerpot; this activity is irrelevant, it says nothing to him. So there may be a claim of negligence here. There may be a claim of negligence, but again, even negligence is not so simple, because the question is whether they should even have entertained the possibility that they needed to investigate something like this. Do you entertain the possibility that the Apache legal system might obligate you? No, because it strikes you as obvious nonsense, so why would you check? That’s complete coercion. So what if he didn’t check? It sounded absurd to him. Why should he check? There are a million views in the world; you can’t check them all. You have to do some sorting in order to decide what could even conceivably be relevant, and investigate that. I don’t know—the Holy One, blessed be He, knows how to examine what is in a person’s heart. I’m saying that on the principled level, even that is coercion, even though he didn’t check enough, because it doesn’t even occur to him that there is something here to check.

By the way, I’m going to infer things here that maybe we’ll get to later on, but I think that a traditionalist is much worse than an atheist. Of course—just plain sloppiness. In the case of the traditionalist, his transgressions are transgressions. The atheist is outside—he’s not in the game, what do you want from him? He doesn’t believe in the whole story. More than the traditionalist? No, let’s talk about the ordinary type of traditionalist. There are several types of traditionalists; you’re right. The ordinary traditionalist is one who does accept the system, only he can’t be bothered with all the details. He drives to synagogue on the Sabbath and afterward goes on to a soccer game. What I would tell him tactically is a different question. I’m asking what the halakhic value is of what he’s doing. Clearly, tactically I’d tell him to come anyway, in order to preserve things and for the sake of his children and so on—fine, tactical considerations. But the question is what religious value there is in what he does. So with the traditionalist, on the one hand, if he performs a commandment then it is a full-fledged commandment, unlike an atheist. But his transgression is also a full-fledged transgression. He’s not coerced; he is a complete offender. And the atheist is at most coerced, and even less than that. If he’s sealed off from pangs of conscience, does that mean he’s not an offender? No, this is not a matter of impulse. The question is whether he understands that there is something true here. For me this is not in the emotional zone, it’s in the cognitive zone. What a person thinks is what determines things, not what he feels. What he feels is disconnected; the emotional wing doesn’t interest me. Yes, exactly.

All right, really we’re drifting. Let’s get back to our line of argument. So the claim, basically, is that the point of commandment is to tell human beings: this thing is halakhically forbidden. I also began with Tosafot HaRosh and the Ritva, who say: what does “greater is one who is commanded and performs than one who is not commanded and performs” mean? It means that someone who fulfills a commandment while being commanded has two benefits in what he does. First, the benefit of the act; and second, the very fact of the command. And likewise with a transgression that he commits: first, the actual damage the transgression brings—the spiritual damage—and second, the rebellion, the disobedience. Okay? Take women with regard to positive commandments dependent on time. Some say—and most halakhic decisors say—that there is value in women fulfilling positive commandments dependent on time. Okay, but they are not commanded. So the benefit that the commandment brings probably applies to women too, or part of it, I don’t know if all of it. But they are not commanded; they do not have the value of obedience to a command. That is why greater is one who is commanded and performs. Not all these little sermonettes that if I’m commanded then my evil inclination is stronger so I struggle more—those are sermonettes. Greater is one who is commanded and performs, plain and simple. One who is commanded and performs simply has two benefits in what he does; one who is not commanded and performs has only one benefit in what he does. That’s all. What do I mean by “benefit”? Obeying the Holy One, blessed be He, is itself a value. What the Holy One said—He created us, we owe Him; what He said must be obeyed even if the act itself has no other benefit. Obeying Him is itself a value. Yes, the legal point, right, the point of obedience.

No, in state law too, if that didn’t exist then state law wouldn’t really be law either. It would simply tell me what is proper and what is improper, but the fact that it was enacted would have no significance. No, state law has a framework value in the sense that you need to preserve the framework here, otherwise there will be anarchy. Right, right. In itself, yes. Right, right. But there is value in obeying the law because once everyone obeys the law, things are also run more properly in substance. But you’re right—say I’m standing at a red light at two in the morning: do you go through or not? No one is passing there, there is no danger, you’re not endangering anyone, you’re not endangering yourself. Nothing. You can go through the red light. If you are, I don’t know, very strict, then you obey the law; the law forbids it, so you wait. I don’t know, maybe there is some kind of value in that, but it sounds a bit strange to me. Fine. But the very fact that we’re dealing with a law means there is an additional layer beyond simply informing me what is right and what is wrong. Knowing what is right and wrong is a fact; determining that this thing is forbidden is a norm. Okay? That’s something completely different. That’s law—that’s what law means, whether religious law or secular law. That is the meaning of law. The meaning of law is that beyond right and wrong—morally, socially, whatever—it determines forbidden and permitted, obligation.

I’m speaking with regard to the state; you can argue about that. Regarding the state, there are those who want to claim that you owe gratitude to the state or something like that, and therefore you also need to… No, that’s the basis of obligation to the law, according to certain approaches. And now there is a law. Beyond that, the law itself may also have a benefit in that you prevent danger or something like that, but there is also value in obeying the law. For example, it depends on the philosophical approach; there are different legal philosophies in this context. You can say no; you can say there is no such value. But still, the law has… Even if it has no additional value, it’s obvious that once a law is enacted it changes the situation compared to a situation in which there is no law. That is obvious. Whether it adds another value or something else—we can argue about that. Okay?

Fine. Why am I saying this? Because I began with Rashi’s first comment on Genesis—and I’m repeating a bit because none of you here were in the previous class. In Rashi’s first comment at the beginning of Genesis, Rashi brings Rabbi Yitzhak: “Why did the Torah begin with ‘In the beginning’ and not with ‘This month shall be for you’?” Okay? So he says: “He declared to His people the power of His works, in order to give them the inheritance of nations.” In my eyes, the question is much stronger than the answer. The answer—let’s say—we’ve already heard good answers. But the question is definitely one worth paying attention to. Why should it have begun with “This month shall be for you” rather than “In the beginning”? What is wrong with “In the beginning”? What bothered Rabbi Yitzhak in the question? When he says they should have begun with “This month shall be for you” and not with “In the beginning,” and therefore explanations are needed for why they began with “In the beginning,” the assumption is that Torah is supposed to contain commandments. Right? “This month shall be for you” is the first commandment. Okay? So the Torah really should have begun with the first commandment and contained only commandments. Anything in the Torah that is not a commandment requires explanation—why is it there? Because yes, that is what Rabbi Yitzhak is teaching us. The Torah is a law book. No, this is not a fact. There are other pages in the Torah, other verses or sections, that are not laws. Each one of those requires explanation as to why it is there. But at its core, Torah—incidentally, Torah is from the root meaning instruction, right? It means instructions. What is forbidden and what is permitted. Torah, law. Okay? The Torah is supposed, in principle, to be a law book.

Now, along with the laws, other things were put in because there were other matters that also needed to be there. But at its base, the Torah is a law book. Therefore, when we look at the Torah—though in practice of course it also contains sections that are not laws—the Torah is divided into two genres, two categories. There are halakhic sections and verses, and there are non-halakhic sections and verses—narrative or other things. Okay? And the question is, to the extent that there’s no… But the vast majority… the vast majority of the laws are not written in the Torah. Well, you know, they learn them out of the Torah. What do you mean, “you know”? How did you get to that? Come on, we’ll get there, we’ll get there later—nothing was given to Moses at Sinai. The Oral Torah—what was given to Moses at Sinai was very little. Everything we have today developed over the generations. Including Torah-level laws. That is what Maimonides says; that’s what Maimonides says. Including the thirteen hermeneutical principles through which the Torah is expounded—they were not given to Moses at Sinai, even though they are a law given to Moses at Sinai. Okay, development is something different from saying that Moses our teacher received everything. Fine. Whether that is trustworthy or not one can discuss, but it is interpretation, expansion, of what was given to Moses at Sinai. What was given to Moses at Sinai was a very, very tiny minimum. All the edifice we have is the result of interpretations. I’m not saying they are inventions. I’m only claiming it was not given to Moses at Sinai. When the sages say that everything a veteran student will one day innovate was given to Moses at Sinai—or everything a young student asks, there are different versions of these sayings—that was given to Moses at Sinai, that is not a historical claim; it is a normative claim. Not that the entire Mishnah Berurah was literally given to Moses at Sinai—that is nonsense. Rather, it should be treated as if it was given to Moses at Sinai; that is its authority. It is a normative claim, not a historical one. Why? Because those things are products of interpretation of what was given to Moses at Sinai—extension, all these things. I’m speaking right now only about Torah-level laws, okay? Torah-level laws were created by interpreting what was given to Moses at Sinai. So from our point of view, what difference does it make whether it was given there or not? If it emerges from there, then it has the authority of something given to Moses at Sinai. But it wasn’t actually given there.

So they’ll explain it to you—but they’re wrong. There is disagreement about almost everything. About the very thing itself there is discussion? Yes. There too—where do they learn it from? That’s a different question. It’s not at all clear. Who told you? Who told you? They just took clementines from every place—who told you? On what basis are you telling this story? But fine, historically this tradition too arose at some point—who says it arose at Sinai? You are claiming that all the interpretations and expositions are really supporting expositions, that Moses received everything at Sinai. Not true. Rabbi Akiva was there… The Gemara brings views that were in the Mishnah, in the Gemara—there’s an entire discussion in the Gemara in tractate Rosh Hashanah: what is “the fruit of a beautiful tree” and where do we learn it from. Fine, there are certain things that are not. By the way, with tefillin too there is a dispute between Rabbenu Tam and Rashi—between Rabbenu Tam and Rashi—about how to arrange the passages. Fine. So which passages are undisputed? You found one thing without dispute—so that’s 95 percent? No, that’s another discussion. No, no, no.

Fine, that doesn’t prove anything, and you also are not right. Meaning, this is not proof that Moses our teacher did not receive it. It may be that they did receive it and it was only put into writing at some stage, but it may also be that not. Things were innovated over the generations. There is a dispute between Rashi and Rabbenu Tam regarding tefillin. Now the question is: according to Rabbenu Tam, who was Rashi’s grandson, what did people do until his time? Yes. Yes. Yes. Like Rashi? So what—did he just invent tefillin now? Excellent question. And what is the good answer? What is the good answer? No, there isn’t another tradition. No, he does not bring another tradition. He argues against his grandfather. No, that’s not a good question; it’s actually a very bad question. Because things become newly developed over the course of history. And that’s all. Right. It could be—I’m not saying, I don’t know, I didn’t ask him. But in principle, things became newly developed over the course of history, what do you mean? The Gemara brings such things; this is not something that “doesn’t happen.” It happens through his understanding of the verses, the tradition, the law given to Moses at Sinai, together with his interpretations—that is what he came out with. He did not invent it. Rabbenu Tam is not claiming that one should worship him instead of the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s not what we’re talking about. No, it’s very simple. Rabbenu Tam is not claiming one should worship him. Rabbenu Tam founded the tefillin according to his own view. That did not come in a tradition from Sinai. He thought that was the correct interpretation of the verses and the tradition we received from Sinai. Fine. No tradition? Of course there is tradition. Who said there isn’t tradition? I am only claiming that what we observe—the Jewish law in our hands—was in its overwhelming majority created throughout history. How was it created? Through expositions, through give-and-take, through reasoning, through various interpretations. I’m talking about Torah-level laws, not rabbinic laws. Rabbinic laws clearly arose over the course of history. But Torah-level laws—the overwhelming majority of them are like that. Maimonides writes that among the expositions there are three or four that are supporting expositions. All the rest are creative. Supporting expositions are expositions where the law was already known, and the exposition merely anchored the known law in the verse. Creative expositions are expositions in which the sage who interpreted them created a new law by means of the exposition. There were three or four supporting expositions, and all the rest are creative. That’s what he says.

Right. I didn’t say the sages were criminals. Of course not. The sages did what was incumbent upon them and what they were permitted and empowered to do. Fine. But you can’t say that all the laws in our hands were received by Moses at Sinai. That is simply nonsense. Anyone who says that simply doesn’t know the ABCs. Huh? By reasoning, interpretations. We study Gemara; we see how things take shape, don’t we? And there we see everything—everything is on the table. No, what do you mean “the majority”? Look—take the Shulchan Arukh, take the Shulchan Arukh, and go law by law, okay? In your opinion, 95 percent of the laws in the Shulchan Arukh are not disputed? There is almost no law in the Shulchan Arukh that is not disputed. I’m asking: the laws themselves are the result of human interpretation. The foundations—fine, in some abstract sense all the foundations are from Sinai—but the laws I’m talking about, what we are talking about today as the Oral Torah, almost all of that was newly developed over the course of history. That is obvious.

Fine, but we are very much jumping ahead of ourselves. We’ll get there, I hope, later on. So in the Torah we have two types of sections or verses: the halakhic kind and the non-halakhic kind, narrative or whatever else. The categorical difference between them is that the halakhic kind consists of command-verses. The other kind is what, in linguistic terminology, is called declarative verses. Yes? Declarative verses are verses that describe facts. Command-verses—you know, even in grammar they divide into four tenses, right? Past, present, future, and imperative. Why is imperative a tense? Have you ever thought about that? Why is imperative a tense? What does that have to do with time? There are past, present, future—three tenses, right? There aren’t more than three tenses. Why is imperative considered the fourth tense in language? Because all three tenses relate to declarative sentences. Factual statements can speak about the past, present, or future. Imperative statements are simply a fourth type of statement. By the way, they are phrased in the language of the future, right? “Do something”—toward the future. An imperative is always phrased in a future-oriented form. But that doesn’t matter; it’s not really a statement about the future. It is directed to the future, but it does not describe a future fact. “Tomorrow it will rain” is a future declarative statement. “Bring rain tomorrow” is a future imperative statement. Okay? So declarative statements and imperative statements are two different categories. Declarative statements are statements that describe facts. Imperative statements do not describe facts. Imperative statements tell me what to do or what not to do. Okay? Two different categories.

Last time we spoke about the eighth root of Maimonides, where things get a bit tangled with the relationship between these two definitions. There are verses that somehow sit in the middle, between declaration and command. What? No, no—Maimonides has fourteen roots; these are fourteen rules according to which he counted the commandments, the 613 commandments: 248 positive commandments and 365 prohibitions. How did Maimonides decide how many positive commandments there are and which are positive and which are negative? According to what did he decide? Right? These principles are described in his fourteen roots. Okay? Go through the Torah and try to identify 613 commandments in it as part of the exercises I’m giving you. I faithfully promise you: even by accident you will not succeed. No one will find 613 commandments there. By no standard, according to anything you read. No one else would find them either. What? Right—if you didn’t know that the number is 613, no one would ever arrive at 613, even by accident. It’s just known that the number is 613, and people tune the rules in order to remove some commandments, add some commandments, combine some commandments, so that it comes out to 613. Nachmanides writes this at the beginning of Maimonides’ Book of Commandments. He says: how do we know it is 613? When you count the commandments, you have no way to arrive at 613. We have a tradition that it is 613—that is in the Gemara at the end of tractate Makkot—and this basically directs our counting methods so as to reach 613. And when Maimonides disagrees with the Ba’al Halakhot Gedolot, he adds certain commandments and must remove others opposite them so that it remains 613. Okay? No, the Gemara itself says 613. Nachmanides in fact argues that it is not even clear at all. He is very hesitant about this. And there are indeed a few counters of the commandments—the Tashbetz, for example, it seems to me—who say: who says there are 613 commandments at all? Not only that—not only is it just an arbitrary number. It may be that Rabbi Simlai, who said there are 613 commandments, counted the commandments and according to his method it came out to 613. But someone who disagrees with him may come out with a different number of commandments. Why should everyone be bound to 613? There are many sages in the Gemara. Rabbi Simlai counted and got 613—fine. But if there is another Amora who disagrees with him about how many commandments there are, then for him there will only be 606. What suddenly? Who is right in the whole dispute? There are disputes—who is right in a dispute? And this is somewhat substantive—every dispute is substantive. A dispute whether there are thirty-nine primary categories of labor or forty primary categories of labor. Who said that deciding the law means that one side is right? We rule according to the majority—so does that mean the majority is right? So with the 613 commandments too, go after the majority—but there can be a dispute, right? The question of who is right is not a relevant question in this context. Why? We’ll discuss that later. Yes, right—there is no practical difference at all. What is there? About the count of commandments? There is no practical difference at all. The brother of the Vilna Gaon says in his name that the only thing the Vilna Gaon did not touch was the count of the commandments. Because regarding the count of the commandments there is no practical difference; it’s just a game. There are articles about why, nevertheless, practical differences somehow do emerge indirectly, at the terminus. Because when you count one commandment, you have to omit another. And when you omit another, you need to explain why you omitted it. Sometimes those explanations create practical differences indirectly. No—for example, it is combined with another commandment, so they are counted as one and not as two. Now if it is combined with another commandment, that means you understand it halakhically in a certain way, and that can have halakhic implications. Okay? So indirect halakhic implications can emerge, but directly, what is included in the count and what is not included in the count—that is a meaningless question.

Anyway, for our purposes: we have two parts in the Torah, the declarative factual part and the imperative part. Jewish law is the imperative part. Our definition of Jewish law is: those verses in the Torah that deal with command, and of course everything learned from them—that is the basis, and everything learned from them—that is what is called Jewish law. Everything else, even if it may seem to us like Jewish law, is not really Jewish law. Declarative means opinion? “Declarative” basically means to show; a verbal declaration is to show. Okay? I show you a fact, I describe a fact. That’s what grammarians call it. Take for example the verse “And you shall do what is upright and good.” It sounds like a command, right? In form, in the language of command. Yet no counter of commandments counts it—not any counter of commandments that I know. It is not included in Jewish law. And why? Simple. No, Nachmanides and the Maggid Mishneh say so; I don’t agree. I don’t think that’s why. There are many general commandments that are counted. “And you shall do what is upright and good”—Nachmanides explains there that this means acting beyond the letter of the law. Now if it were counted among the commandments, we would be obligated to do it, and then it would be within the letter of the law, not beyond it. Obviously. No, no, the Vilna Gaon says the opposite, but the conception—you’re talking about non-obligatory commandments; we’ll talk about that. In general, every commandment is an obligation. The claim is that because of this paradox, yes, you cannot count among the commandments the obligation to act beyond the letter of the law. Because if you did, then it would no longer be beyond the letter of the law; it would be within the letter of the law, because you would be obligated to do it—there would be a commandment. Right? If you want to leave it as something beyond the letter of the law, you can’t include it in the count of the commandments. So here’s an example of a verse that sounds like an imperative verse, not a declarative one, but it isn’t in the count of the commandments. There are a few such examples—intermediate examples—that are not declarative verses, but they do not enter the count of the commandments. It seems to me that these verses should be read as verses that give us non-halakhic norms, for example moral norms. A moral norm—so this is not a descriptive verse, say, “Do not murder” morally, not the halakhic “Do not murder.” Morally, okay? That is not a declarative verse describing a fact, like “there is a lectern here.” Okay? But on the other hand, it is also not a verse establishing a halakhic prohibition. Rather, for example, “And the man Moses was very humble, more than any person on the face of the earth.” From here we learn that it is proper to be humble, but there is no positive commandment to be humble. Right? From this verse you can understand that there is value in being humble. So why do they praise Moses our teacher for it? People say a lot of things; I’m not dealing with what people say. “And you shall walk in His ways”? But “And you shall walk in His ways” is counted among the commandments, and that is also a difficulty—Chaim Vital asks that. Yes, yes, “And you shall walk in His ways,” cleaving to the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. Fine, that’s a separate question; I won’t get into it here—maybe we’ll discuss it later. There are many things we’re exempt from discussing.

In any event, there are certain verses that are not declarative verses, but they are also not Jewish law. They are probably normative principles that are not halakhically binding—morally binding. Suppose, for example, that in the law it were written: blessed is one who pays ten percent more income tax than he is obligated to pay. Okay? Let’s say. Fine? Then someone who does that has not fulfilled the law. The law says to pay however much you are required to pay. But there is value in doing this too. In civil law there are no such things. In Jewish law—or in the Torah—there are. Jewish law is what one is obligated to do. In the Torah there are things that go beyond Jewish law. It is not only Jewish law. Okay? Fine, so those are basically the categories.

Now I want to read with you a passage from Sefer HaChinukh in this context, which I attached last time. Commandment 69: the prohibition against cursing judges—“You shall not curse God”; “God” here means judges. You see? One second, maybe I’ll open it. Okay, loading time. So Sefer HaChinukh discusses there the prohibition of cursing judges, “You shall not curse judges.” And in the course of his discussion—I’m reading only the part relevant to us—he says this: “For the mention of punishment in a commandment without a warning would not suffice for us. And this is what our sages of blessed memory always say: ‘We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?’” And the point is that if we did not receive from God a prevention in the matter, but only that one who does such-and-such will be punished in such-and-such a way…” Maybe before that—what is he really saying? In the Torah, when it says, for example, “One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death,” does that mean it is forbidden to strike one’s father and mother? Right? It doesn’t say that. All it says is that one who strikes his father or mother will die. It does not say that it is forbidden to strike one’s father and mother. I once read in a book by Chaim Cohen—he was deputy president of the Supreme Court—in a book called The Law, and there he writes that in Israeli law, for example, there is no prohibition against stealing and no prohibition against murder. It says: the thief’s punishment is such-and-such, the murderer’s punishment is such-and-such. It doesn’t say one may not steal and one may not murder. In a liberal conception—basically a liberal conception of law—the law cannot dictate to me what to do. I am a free, autonomous citizen. No one can tell me what to do. The law can tell judges and policemen, who work for it, what to do. It tells them: one who steals, his punishment is such-and-such. As for me—I’ll do what I think fit; they’ll also do what they think fit. Okay? But the law does not forbid me. I think that is an absurd interpretation. But that is what he claims.

For our purposes, though, in the Torah—that is exactly how it is. Unequivocally. In the Torah, when it says “One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death,” the Gemara immediately asks: “We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?” Fine, but “One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death” speaks to the religious court in the Torah. And what will happen? They’ll come to court, there will be witnesses and proof, and they’ll kill him—but no remorse will help him, and that doesn’t help. Regrets and all that won’t help. I once wrote… Of course there is repentance before the Holy One, blessed be He, but not for the court. If you are liable to punishment in court, you will take the punishment together with your repentance and all your repentances and… another matter, because once in seventy years they would execute someone liable to death. But if they execute someone who is liable to death, no regrets will help him. That’s not because of the regret—the testimony wasn’t in order, he wasn’t warned beforehand, all kinds of reasons why he wasn’t liable to death. No. I once wrote an article arguing that perhaps nevertheless one can say otherwise, but that is a view that hardly exists. The accepted view is that he is punished in any case. There is the law of the kingdom, yes? Yes, yes, of course, the law of the kingdom.

Anyway, the Gemara, when it sees a verse that states a punishment—“One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death”—asks, “We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?” It does this everywhere if it doesn’t find one. Why? If there is a punishment, as we said before with kidnapping from among your brethren, then if there is a punishment it is apparently also forbidden, no? What is “warning”? “Warning” means a verse that says it is forbidden. “Punishment” is a verse that says what will be done to you if you do it. Two different things. And the Gemara assumes that you always need both verses. It is not enough to say that some punishment will be imposed; you also need to say that the thing is forbidden. Why? He says: “For the mention of punishment alone in a commandment without a warning would not suffice for us.” I’m reading again from the beginning: “For the mention of punishment in a commandment without a warning would not suffice for us.” So if there is a punishment for something but no warning, no verse saying it is forbidden—that is not enough. “And this is what our sages of blessed memory always say: ‘We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?’” We found a punishment for one who strikes his father or mother; where is the warning? There must also be a warning—that is the assumption of the Gemara. “And the matter is”—now he explains why—“because if there came to us regarding a matter only God’s prevention in the sense that He says, ‘One who does such-and-such will be punished thus,’ it would imply that anyone who wishes may choose to accept the punishment and not worry about the pain of it in order to transgress the commandment, and in this he would not be acting against the desire of God, blessed be He, and His command; and the matter of the commandment would become like a transaction of buying and selling. That is to say, one who wishes to do such-and-such should give such-and-such and do it, or take upon himself the burden of suffering such-and-such and do it.”

Meaning, if all it said were “One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death,” and there were no warning verse, then, says Sefer HaChinukh, I would say that one who strikes his father or mother is doing nothing wrong in the act itself; he can strike his father or mother provided he dies afterward. Like buying and selling—that is, this is simply the payment for the act you do. But it is not punishment in the sense that the act is wrong, that you acted wrongly and deserve punishment. It’s not punishment; it’s a transaction. But if it says “shall surely be put to death,” doesn’t that mean it is forbidden? No, no, no. Sefer HaChinukh claims not. He claims that if there were no warning verse, we really would understand the punishment that way. Therefore a special verse is needed that also says it is forbidden. It is not enough to say there is a punishment for this thing. That is what he claims.

By the way, I once saw in an article by an interesting Jew—Dov Landau, head of the Slabodka yeshiva—he brought two examples where it seems that this really is the case. For example, the Gemara says that one who suppresses his prophecy gets lashes. A prophet who received a prophecy and did not transmit it to its recipients—he suppressed his prophecy. The Gemara says in Sanhedrin that he gets lashes. Tosafot there asks: but there is no warning about this, so why does he get lashes? If you are a prophet… Okay, okay, so there are indeed those who want to make that argument, but—but what? He has to forbid it to you, not just say that there is punishment for it. To the prophet He also gave him the prophecy, and in that He told him to transmit it. So that’s derived from there. But Sefer HaChinukh says no—you can infer from the fact that fire burns, but you cannot infer from that that it is forbidden to put your hand into the fire. Without a law forbidding running a red light, I still wouldn’t do it because it’s dangerous. Okay, but there is no prohibition in running a red light unless there is a law. And that is exactly why I’m bringing this here. Okay? That’s really what he is claiming.

What? Again? Or you nullify a positive commandment—that’s the same thing—but with a prohibition, we are talking about the prohibition, not the positive commandment. Fine, now that turns things upside down completely. What is the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions? I’m saying that with a positive commandment you are also obligated to do it, because if you don’t do it, then there is a prohibition. So what is the difference? Why is one a positive commandment and the other a prohibition? I’m asking, what is the difference between positive commandments and prohibitions? But there is a difference, there is a difference in Jewish law. For a prohibition there are punishments. For a prohibition a person must spend all his money in order not to violate it. For a positive commandment, only up to a fifth. If it were the same thing, then why are there halakhic differences? Is it just that sometimes it is phrased negatively and sometimes positively—what’s the difference? There is a difference. There is also a difference in severity, but there is a difference in logic. It’s different.

I’ll tell you briefly, because I also thought about discussing this later—I don’t know how much of all this I’ll get to—but the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition is this: when I tell you “Put on tefillin,” that is not the same as saying “I do not want you not to put on tefillin.” In logic, a double negative would seemingly bring us back to the same place, right? But it’s not the same. Suppose there were a state defined as being neither with tefillin nor without tefillin—some kind of intermediate state. Okay? Then I would not have fulfilled the commandment “to put on tefillin,” but I would not have violated the prohibition “not to put on tefillin.” In other words, there can be a state between… Take the positive commandment to place a parapet on your roof—put a parapet on your house, on the roof. Okay? And there is also the prohibition “Do not place blood in your house.” What happens if I don’t have a house? I have no house at all. Then obviously there is no problem in the fact that I did not put a parapet there, because I had nowhere to put a parapet, right? I did not nullify the positive commandment, right? Right. And I did not violate the prohibition either. So now, when I have no house at all, there is no positive commandment incumbent upon me to put a parapet there, but there still remains a prohibition against having a house without a parapet. It’s not the same thing. There is a neutral state here in which I didn’t make a parapet, but I also didn’t violate the prohibition. Meaning: not every time I failed to fulfill the positive commandment does that mean I violated the prohibition. If your body is not clean, then you do not need to put on tefillin. Fine, but why is that relevant to us? What does that have to do with our point? No, never mind—it’s enough for me that there are such cases in order to show you that there is a difference between positive commandments and prohibitions. Maybe there are commandments where there is no such intermediate state. Okay, so what? On the principled level these are two different categories. In principle, when one tells you a positive commandment, one is saying: this state is a positive state; I want you to be in it. If you are not in it, then you are not okay because you were not in a positive state. But when I tell you a prohibition, I am saying: that state is a negative state. If you are in it, then you are not okay because you are in a negative state, not because you are not in a positive state. Do you understand? That’s something else. A prohibition says—suppose there were a prohibition against being without tefillin. Then when I am without tefillin, I have done something negative and deserve punishment. But if there is only a positive commandment to put on tefillin and I didn’t put on tefillin, then I have not done something negative; I simply did not do something positive.

Fine, obviously not—there is no court-imposed punishment for nullifying a positive commandment. That’s another matter. The court does not punish for nullifying a positive commandment; there is punishment for a prohibition. Why? Because nullifying a positive commandment is simply not being in a positive state. Violating a prohibition is being in a negative state. Do you understand? Not always does not being in a positive state automatically mean that you are in a negative state. No, it’s not the same thing—two different things.

As you know, this is a somewhat associative example. There is a paradox called Nozick’s paradox in legal theory. Nozick—Robert Nozick, an American Jewish legal philosopher—said: look, inducement is permitted by law. Right? But extortion is forbidden. What is extortion? “If you don’t do this, I’ll take a thousand shekels from you. If you do it, everything is fine, you’ll stay as you are.” What’s the difference? In both cases I put two options before you. The gap between them is a thousand shekels, and my goal is to get you to do or not do something. So why is one permitted and the other forbidden? What’s the difference between inducement and extortion? Why? What’s the difference? There is a potential gap of a thousand shekels between the two options. Now the question is what you will or will not do. You have two options; the difference between them is a thousand shekels, and you can decide what you will do. What difference does it make whether the difference is between zero and a thousand, or between minus a thousand and zero? Why? I am also harming him by not giving him a thousand shekels. Why am I not harming him? He could receive a thousand shekels. Ah! You understand? So, in short, there is a difference between not harming someone and not giving someone something, as opposed to actually harming him. That is exactly the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. Not performing a positive commandment is to be in a state of zero—not in state one, yes? But violating a prohibition is to be in a state of minus one, a negative state. When you take a thousand shekels from someone, you are doing something unlawful. And even if—fine—if he does what I tell him, then I won’t take the thousand shekels from him. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I myself will violate the law. I’m just telling him: know that if you don’t do it, I’ll take a thousand shekels. The moment one of the options is unlawful, even if there is another option that will leave me within the law—if he does it, then no problem—still I am forbidden to do such a thing. In the case of inducement, both options are lawful. I may give him a thousand shekels, and I may give him nothing. Both are permitted to me. It is not okay because you were not in a positive state. No, everything here is substantive. If you did not perform a positive commandment, you are in state zero. That is the definition. You are not in a negative state. Only if you violated a prohibition are you in a negative state.

Okay. And now with regard to the issue of nullifying… okay. You nullified the positive commandment of “And you shall love the Lord your God.” You nullified a positive commandment. Did you violate a prohibition? That would only be if you were required to be in state one and you were in state zero. But there is a difference between that kind of bad and another kind of bad; it is like the difference between not saving a drowning person and drowning him. You understand there is a difference? Why? In both cases, basically, because of me he drowned. Just like inducement and extortion. There is a difference. Not saving a person is also bad. If you see him there and can save him easily without effort, say, and you didn’t save him—you walked by, whistled, and kept going. Okay? And he drowned. You were not okay. But you were not okay because you nullified a positive commandment. But the one who pushed him under and drowned him—he is a murderer. He violated a prohibition; he violated “Do not murder.” That is a difference. Okay? In both cases the result is the same result.

All this is a matter of definition. If the Torah defines there to be a prohibition against not sacrificing one’s life, then if I did not sacrifice my life I violated a prohibition—that is a negative state. If the Torah says there is an obligation to sacrifice one’s life and I did not, then I simply was not in a positive state; I am in a neutral state. That is not okay because the Torah wants me to be in a positive state, but it is not the same degree of “not okay” as being in the negative state. Fine, so for our purposes, Sefer HaChinukh says that if the Torah had stated only a punishment and had not stated a warning—no warning—then I would treat the punishment as something that does not reveal to me that the act is forbidden and wrong, but rather as a kind of transaction. You want to do it? Fine, do it and receive punishment, but you’re not… do you understand? It’s like—I once heard a lecture about the philosophy of soccer in the World Cup, the one before the previous one. There was a lecture by two philosophy lecturers in some pub in Tel Aviv. I went with some friends. They discussed some very interesting issues. One issue, for example, was a foul in soccer. Is a foul in soccer a violation of the rules of the game? Or in basketball, for example? Obviously not. After all, it is part of the tactics, right? The coach tells you: commit a foul now. In soccer you know this, right? Okay. In basketball too, it’s part of the tactics. Sometimes you commit a foul; sometimes if the foul is blatant that is more problematic, and sometimes they’ll even send you off. I mean a foul as part of the game—stopping him, grabbing his shirt. Yes. That is not a violation of the rules of the game. Rather, what? The ball goes to the other side. Right? What does that mean? That is exactly the “transaction” he is speaking about here, right? It’s not a violation in the sense that you did something wrong, but there is a price. You did it—the ball goes to the other side. That is the transaction he is speaking about here. Meaning, if it said “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” or if it said “One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death,” and there were no warning, I would say that this is a soccer foul. One who strikes his father or mother will die—that’s the price, but it does not mean that he was wrong in striking his father or mother. To tell him that he was wrong, you also need a verse warning him not to strike his father or mother. Okay? Otherwise it is like a transaction, which is what he writes here, yes? It’s somewhat related.

Meaning, among constitutive rules there are two levels. Neither of them is… Actually, you know what, maybe exactly so. It doesn’t matter. Suppose committing an unsporting foul, doing something against the rules of the game—so what? There are two things here. First, you are playing—in a certain sense that is actually a directive rule. Because the claim is not that there is no complaint against you; rather, you simply didn’t play basketball, you played something else. No, there are complaints; you acted wrongly. Right? So that means you did play basketball, just badly. In fact, a more serious foul is a violation of a directive rule, not a constitutive rule. No, you violated a moral norm. Philosophically speaking, you simply didn’t play chess. You committed a moral wrong, fine, but you did not violate the rules of chess; you simply didn’t play chess. Like the current cheater—there’s a story now with Hans Niemann and Carlsen, this young guy, Niemann, something like that, who claims—or rather he won several times, he beat the world champion, the best player who ever lived, Carlsen. And Carlsen quit the game at some point and said: I’m telling you with certainty that he is cheating. Then there are all sorts of electronic checks, all sorts of techniques for checking whether a person is cheating. Against Carlsen, yes—he’s nineteen. So he beat Carlsen once, and in the next game, after the first move, Carlsen resigned. He said he cheats. No, he didn’t cheat in that game. He claims he cheats; he had also beaten several other grandmasters beforehand, and Carlsen claims he cheats. Simply—he says—if he beat me, one can see he was not focused. At such a level of concentration no one beats me, Carlsen says. If he beat me, he cheated. And people took it seriously because, listen, the man is serious. You don’t just beat him—he’s a prodigy, yes, Magnus Carlsen, yes, the best in the world and probably the best who ever was, in many people’s opinion. He’s really a freak mutation. And after he said this, investigations began. There are chess sites—people play on websites—that can compare games, what you did in similar situations, and so on. There are ways to assess with fairly high certainty whether you are cheating or not. And the claim now is that he probably really is cheating. Incidentally, he has arrived in Israel, or is arriving here, this cheater. They tell you that you have a device buzzing in your pocket telling you what to do. Someone outside is sitting with a computer—and today there are computer programs—and sending you instructions. Deep Blue was the first to beat Kasparov. Deep Blue was the first to beat Kasparov, and from then on, the programs—it’s artificial intelligence—you have no chance. No one will beat them. They simply calculate I don’t know how many moves ahead; you have no chance of beating them. The question is whether that is a constitutive rule or a directive rule. Good question. Yes.

Anyway, for our purposes, the claim is that this really is like a transaction. Now let’s continue reading. Yes: “It would imply that if one says one who does such-and-such will be punished thus, it would imply that it is permitted to anyone who wishes to accept the punishment”—some kind of deal like that—“and not mind the pain in transgressing the commandment.” Yes, there’s no problem in violating the commandment—it’s not against God’s will. “And in this he would not be acting against the desire of God, blessed be He, and His command”—no problem, you didn’t do anything bad, only know that this is the price. “And the matter of the commandment would become like a transaction of buying and selling.” Rather what? “One who wishes to do such-and-such should pay such-and-such and do it,” or “should take upon himself to suffer” —yes, receive lashes or death or something like that—and do it. “And this is not the intention of the commandments.” Therefore, says Sefer HaChinukh, the Gemara does not accept this. Every time the Gemara sees a verse of punishment, it asks: “We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?” Meaning, it assumes that where there is a punishment verse, it cannot be only punishment; it must also be that the act is forbidden. But in order for the act to be forbidden, you need a warning verse. Therefore it asks: all right, so where is the warning verse? And we see this from the Gemara’s questions, from the Gemara’s very challenges, that it always assumes the commandments are never a transaction. If you are punished, it is because the act is wrong. Okay? No—you need the prohibition. You need the prohibition in order for this to be a halakhic transgression and not merely a moral one, because without it there is no punishment either. Exactly. No, but punishment does not itself show that there is a law. You still have to forbid it halakhically, not only morally, in order for there to be punishment. Right, that is what he says. Sefer HaChinukh says no—otherwise the Gemara would not always ask, “We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?” The Gemara assumes that even if punishment is written regarding a certain act, there still must be a verse forbidding it. What? The Gemara says so. I don’t know—whether by tradition, or reasoning, or whatever—but this is how the Gemara asks in quite a few places.

So Sefer HaChinukh says: from these challenges of the Gemara we see that the Gemara understands that the commandments are not like transactions. Rather, if you receive punishment, apparently the act is wrong. That is one side. But on the other hand, seemingly, if I already have that assumption—now it says “One who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death.” And I know the assumption that punishments are not imposed gratuitously, but because of an act that is wrong. Okay? Maybe that could spare us the warning verse? Even so—even though I know the assumption that punishment is not given unless the act is wrong. Okay?

I began with two examples I saw in that article. One example was, in my view, for all these stories—I began with the example of suppressing prophecy. One who suppresses his prophecy gets lashes, right? So Tosafot asks: where is the warning? Why lashes? Then the Minchat Chinukh offers an explanation. He says: in fact there is no warning. There is no warning. And the statement “he gets lashes” is a kind of transaction, as Sefer HaChinukh says here. Because there is no warning, so the act is not forbidden—but he gets lashes. Fine; the lashes are the transaction. According to this, he says, we can understand what happened with Jonah the prophet. Jonah the prophet received a prophecy from the Holy One, blessed be He, and then he fled to Tarshish. What is he, a little child, running away from the Holy One? The Holy One—he was a prophet. He was a Jew who apparently had spiritual attainments. He receives a command from the Holy One to go to Nineveh and tell them such-and-such, and he runs away from the Holy One. What do you mean, runs away? The Holy One sent you to bring a prophecy to Nineveh. The Minchat Chinukh says: the whole Book of Jonah is built on there being an ideological dispute between Jonah and the Holy One. Jonah claims that if the people of Nineveh sinned, then let them take the blow. What do you mean to give them this chance now? Jonah says to himself: okay, one who suppresses his prophecy gets lashes—and this isn’t forbidden—so I’m running away from the Holy One. I’m not—I’m not going; no, “running away” means not prophesying. I’m not going to prophesy. We are not asking why he runs away, or how he knows the Holy One won’t see him. “Running away” here is a metaphorical description of a person who simply is not willing to fulfill his mission. So this is a kind of conscientious refusal. Meaning: I understand that I will take the blow for it—one who suppresses his prophecy gets lashes—but this is not against God’s will. I understand it differently; I don’t agree with this outlook. And that is what you said before: because the Holy One gives you prophecy, in that very act He is also telling you to say that prophecy—so why need a warning? But if the assumption is not like that—the assumption behind Sefer HaChinukh’s question is not like that; in Tosafot it is not like that—rather, an explicit warning is needed; the Holy One’s giving speech to the prophet is not enough. Then here, no, this is not against God’s will—sorry, not “against God’s will”; this is not a prohibition, because there is no warning. Okay? So he says: fine, I am willing to accept the punishment as a transaction, and that is like every place where punishment is written but no warning is written: I am willing to accept the punishment as a transaction; I know that this is not an action against the will of God. Then he rejects this and says it cannot be, because the Gemara always asks: “We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?” The Gemara assumes there must be a warning; there cannot be a case where punishment appears without a warning. It’s true that one always needs a warning, but on the other hand the Gemara assumes there always is one. So how can the Gemara ask, “We have heard the punishment; from where do we know the warning?” if the punishment itself is like a transaction? So that is what we said—it doesn’t matter, there are various answers. It could be that these lashes are not Torah-level lashes at all. There is also the question of who warns him—there are all sorts of discussions there. Who warns him? No one knows that he received prophecy. If he doesn’t receive a warning, how can they lash him? Some say that his fellow prophets warn him. The other prophets know he received prophecy, and if he doesn’t say it, then they’ll say it. One can analyze all of that.

Anyway, for our purposes, the claim is that what Sefer HaChinukh is really saying here is that when a verse says there is punishment for something, even that is not enough to say it is forbidden; there must be a command telling us that this act is forbidden, or obligatory in the case of a positive commandment. And this strengthens even more what I said earlier: that the meaning of the imperative verses in the Torah is to turn this thing into law. That is the meaning of the verse. It is not to reveal to us that it is not okay. I know that it is not okay, but without a command, then it is not okay yet it is not a prohibition, and therefore there also would be no punishment. Okay? That just sharpens the point more about the significance of command-verses.

Now I perhaps want to add one more note, because I don’t have much time left, one more brief note about the significance of these two parts. I said it briefly last time. It seems to me—and this is a far-reaching claim, but I think it is correct—that what Rabbi Yitzhak says is that Torah, in its essence, is Jewish law: the imperative verses. Everything else consists of things that have explanations, or require reasons for why they appear. There are reasons, so they appear there. But I want to claim more than that. Basically, when we study—factually, leave slogans and declarations aside for the moment—factually, when we study a Torah portion that is not a halakhic portion, generally we do not learn anything. There is nothing there. I asked people to bring me examples of something that became newly clear to them through studying a non-halakhic portion in the Torah or aggadah in the words of the sages—in short, non-halakhic study. If you pay attention, you will see that usually the lesson you “learn” is a lesson you already understood to be true beforehand. If I were studying—what is learning? Learning is when, say, I approach the Torah and I see there that value X is a value, and I would not have thought that it is a good value; perhaps I would even have thought it was bad. The Torah says it is so; then I understand that I was wrong, apparently X is good. That is called learning, right? As in Jewish law. I did not think that on the Sabbath it is forbidden to light a fire; I did not think that eating pork is a problem. The answer is no. I’ll sharpen it more, I’ll sharpen it more. Exactly. Everyone overlays his own evaluation there on… put that aside. Exactly the point. Everyone takes it in a different direction because everyone already thinks something else. When you take it to the same place—that’s like, you know, with the Holocaust. The Religious Zionists learn from the Holocaust that it was punishment for opposing Zionism. The Haredim learn from the Holocaust that it was punishment for Zionism. That is how people usually “learn” from Scripture. Meaning, everyone learns from it what he already thinks beforehand.

I’ll give you an example. We see that Jacob lied, right? It says that he lied to his father. Fine—so apparently lying is okay, right? It’s written in the Torah. So why do we have difficulties? Why the difficulty? How can it be that Jacob lied? That’s not okay. So how do you know it’s not okay? How do you know? After all, the Torah writes that yes, everything is fine, what’s the problem? No, because it’s clear to us that it’s forbidden. “Keep far from a false matter” is something else; maybe that’s in a judicial setting, which one can explain. There is no prohibition against lying, right? There is no prohibition against lying, so there is no problem. I interpret it—what’s the issue? Jacob lied, excellent. After all, he is the choicest of the patriarchs, a wholesome man dwelling in tents. Huh? Right? So why do all the commentators struggle with how it can be that Jacob lied, and produce explanations—by divine instruction, and all kinds of things of that sort? Why? What’s the problem? Just say that apparently it is permitted to lie—everything is fine, that’s all. But one may alter the truth only when the assumption is already that this is problematic, and then one needs explanations for why in that case it was okay. Why? No, no—we don’t learn. Maybe one could have done that, but no. Why not? So I’m saying: no, essentially not. Maybe one could do it, but in fact one does not. Why? Because it is obvious to us that one may not lie. You will not extract from the Torah a value that you don’t think is correct. Because if you thought it was incorrect, you would find explanations for why they nonetheless did it there in a way that would not undermine what you already think. I’m not talking about facts—that’s obvious. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—I would not know that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the heavens and the earth had it not been written. That I do learn from there. Nor would I know there was an Abraham our father, or that his wife was Sarah. I’m speaking about values, not facts. About values. As for values, basically I learn nothing. Think about it—I’ve gone through hundreds of examples. People argued with me, got angry at me, shouted at me. I told them: bring me one example where you learn something new from aggadah or from a verse in a non-halakhic Torah portion. There isn’t one. I haven’t found a single example. Wonderful explanations. And therefore what? And still you learn nothing from Scripture. What would you do with… obviously, and because of this the Holy One will give us this land—that’s a fact, right? So where does that teach anything? No, on the contrary—I would say the Holy One will give us this land, so we don’t need to do anything. You can take a thing wherever you want. You know, it’s like “Whatever Sarah says to you, heed her voice.” If you say that to women, they’ll say: you see? The Torah says the man must listen to the woman. But what about the men? They’ll say: you see? A man does not need to listen to the woman; that’s why it required a special innovation that Abraham received a special command that he had to listen to Sarah. “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”—there is no initial plain meaning there that you already think. Those are areas that do not concern moral values. That is Jewish law. In Jewish law there is no problem. You receive from the Torah that it is forbidden to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. There are interpretive differences, of course—this explanation and that explanation—but you always learn something new. You are not superimposing it on what you would have thought before. And in all the moral parts—you do not learn morality from the Torah. It says “And you shall do what is upright and good.” What is upright and good? Whatever you understand to be upright and good. The verse does not tell you what the upright and good is that ought to be done. Why? Because it assumes that we already know on our own what is upright and good. God expects us to do what we ourselves understand.

This means that there are differences between what I call Jewish law, the halakhic part of the Torah, and the non-halakhic parts of the Torah—not only the linguistic differences, that one is in the language of command and the other in declarative verses. There are deeper differences. Jewish law is, ultimately, what defines Torah. Everything else—and just one second—everything else consists of values that, incidentally, are not directed specifically to Jews. There is no such thing as Jewish morality, for example. There is morality. If that morality is correct, then it obligates every human being in the world. And if it is not correct, then it does not obligate Jews either. There is no such thing as Jewish morality. Jewish law is Jewish. Morality is universal by definition. But in the spiritual system, surely there is. That is Jewish law, not a moral system. No, they do not come together. No, they do not come together. They come separately. I’m saying: since morality now stands on its own, when you reach the conclusion that something is forbidden, from your point of view is it permitted for a non-Jew to do it? It is morally forbidden, not halakhically forbidden. What do you mean “for me personally”? I’m asking you now: give me an example. Give me an example of something that in your opinion is a non-halakhic moral prohibition that applies only to Jews. A moral prohibition that addresses only Jews. Where did you hear this? Say what you mean. For example, that the motive has to be a lofty motive. For a non-Jew too the motive should be lofty. As far as each person gets, each person according to what he reaches. I’m asking what is required. We are not commanded in morality at all; morality is not command. Commands are in Jewish law. Morality means that we are expected to be moral, and non-Jews are also expected to be moral. Morally, certainly. Halakhically he is not commanded. What is “holy”? Those are words. Friends, these are words. Friends, these are words—you’re just arguing about words. It’s only a matter of how you define “holy.” The non-Jew is expected to do everything that you are expected to do… not commanded, expected to do, on the moral level. There is no difference between morality directed to a non-Jew and morality directed to Jews. The difference between Jews and non-Jews is in Jewish law. And only in Jewish law. That’s it. The simplest morality—why, helping one another? A non-Jew too should help one another. Refraining from idolatry… that’s morality? No, but it isn’t morality. It isn’t morality. That is beyond the letter of halakhic law, not morality. What, is there a moral problem with making a statue? There is no moral problem at all. It is a halakhic problem. I’m talking about morality, about values. There can also be bad consequences to eating breakfast. So what? What does that have to do with anything? But the thing itself… of course one can separate. The fact that a certain thing leads to certain consequences—what does that mean? It means nothing. No, it means nothing. It means it is a means. The thing in itself is not invalid. It may lead to invalid things, but if it leads to invalid things then for the non-Jew too they are forbidden. So what is the difference? What conclusion follows? What conclusion? What conclusion? Either he too is commanded, or else it is not true that this is forbidden because it leads to problematic things, because the non-Jew is not commanded regarding idolatry, regarding a statue. There are things in idolatry regarding which he is not commanded. “Morality in the Jewish world”? Yes, that’s a book by Asaf Vol, I think, no? Asaf Vol has a book on Palestinian history—110 pages in which not a single word is written. Jewish morality is an even shorter book.

Anyway, the claim is—and I want to say this in one sentence and with this I’ll finish—basically, what distinguishes Torah, what distinguishes Judaism, what distinguishes Jews from non-Jews, is only Jewish law. Nothing else. Everything else is folklore. Only Jewish law. That’s it. How to behave halakhically, not morally. No, not clear at all. Obviously not. No—then you’re mistaken. I’ll bring you many examples. We’ll have a whole series on this later. It’s not only that it isn’t connected, not only that it’s not identical—there is no connection. It is independent. Everything connected to morality does not belong to Jewish law, and vice versa. Two independent categories. What? These are not commandments—the rational commandments are not morality. Again, you’re going back to the same thing. On my own I would be morally awakened, but not halakhically. Yes, yes, fine, we’re done. This whole class revolves around that distinction. The moment there is a command, it becomes law. I know that murder is immoral even before the command, but without the command there would not be a halakhic prohibition of murder. The halakhic prohibition has nothing to do with morality. The halakhic prohibition is an additional layer on top of morality. When you want to… no, no, no. How to behave is made up of two kinds of laws: halakhic laws and moral laws. The moral laws are universal; the halakhic laws are only for Jews. In brief, in essence. Yes. What? Excellent question; I have no idea. I have no idea. You tell me why there are. Can you explain to me why there are? Yes, everyone tries, they just don’t succeed. Therefore my conclusion is this: I have no answer. All those who say, “No, you learn tons and tons of things from there”—when you check, you’ll see that you learn nothing from there. So the slogan that we learn so many things from there solves all the problems, except that it doesn’t hold water, because you learn nothing from there. I don’t learn anything from there; maybe you do. Again, I’m not talking about facts. I’m talking about implications. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—that’s a fact. The fact is that God created the world. Leave the implications aside right now. You’re talking about the facts. I learn things from that. You can derive all kinds of implications. You know, when I see a bird in the sky, I can also derive many implications. Lots of implications are possible. Of course. The bird can fly high, so maybe I too should learn that I need to aspire spiritually to great heights. So what? Does seeing a bird fly therefore become Torah? Implications are not interesting. You can derive implications from many things. I’m asking what the value of the thing itself is. So what difference does it make? If it helps you, fine; and still you learn nothing from it. But it may help you as meditation. Maybe it helps you implement things—possibly, fine. Maybe not. I declare that I don’t know how to tell you with certainty. But what I do know, and what I wanted to sharpen, is that the difference between these two parts of the Torah—the halakhic part and the non-halakhic part—is a difference of very great significance. The definition of Judaism—what is a Jew? The definition of Judaism is one who is obligated in Jewish law. Everything else is completely irrelevant to the definition of Judaism. So then he is not a Jew in the essential sense. In the ethnic sense he is a Jew; in the essential sense he is not a Jew. His conduct is not Jewish conduct. Only Jewish law. In thought there is no such thing. Things that are not halakhic are nothing. If someone is immoral, then is he not a Jew? Is a religious Jew who is immoral not religious? It’s just that morality does not define Judaism, whereas Jewish law does. People always ask this: Yigal Amir, right? Someone who murders is a religious Jew who committed a crime, while someone who eats non-kosher is not religious. Why? Murder is a more severe prohibition. So why? What does that have to do with it? Murder is more severe. So why is one who murders considered a religious Jew who failed, while one who eats non-kosher is considered non-religious? But he doesn’t keep the laws—he murdered. So I ask, what is the difference between him and someone who ate non-kosher? There is a difference. Someone who ate non-kosher we treat as non-religious. Someone who murdered—we say he is religious but sinned. Why? Because we perceive murder on the moral plane. And the definition of moral conduct is a definition for human beings, not for Jews. Being moral does not define you as a Jew; it defines you as a human being. Jewish law says that too, obviously. But it is not the definition. When you want to define something, you need to define it against something else—what it is not. Now, you cannot define a Jew as someone who wears trousers, even though all Jews wear trousers, because non-Jews also wear trousers. Right? Therefore I say: moral laws cannot define Judaism and the Jew. Halakhic laws can, because they apply only to Jews. There is a very deep significance to Jewish law, and that’s it. That’s the truth. I don’t know what “truth” means. Obligation like every non-Jew. Morality. Not Jewish law. No, not Jewish law, because Jewish law does not expect it of him. That’s just how it is; there is a division of roles. Why are priests obligated in commandments that ordinary Israelites are not obligated in? Exactly. So we too, by virtue of our role, are obligated in these commandments, and the non-Jew is not. Let’s say, given the situation that there are no priests, then there are substitutes. In those circumstances there are substitutes.