The Thought of Halakha – 5783 – Lesson 3
This transcription was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- A conversation about vaccination and the authority of “most rabbis”
- Command, statement, and the definition of Jewish law
- Kant, “religion” in the Christian world, and the definition of Jewish religiosity
- An essential definition: what matters and what is unique
- “Religion” versus religiosity, and the lack of a corresponding term in Hebrew
- “Jewish law is the essence of Judaism” versus “religious feeling”
- Maimonides on the aggadic teachings of the Sages and the three groups
- Emotional commandments: “duties of the heart” and the interpretation of “love”
- Serving out of fear and serving out of love in Maimonides
- The value of emotion and morality: asking forgiveness without pangs of conscience
- Reason versus emotion: the John Nash analogy and the ability to ignore experience
- Prayer without emotion and the understanding of Psalms
- Resolving the contradiction between law 2 and law 3 in Maimonides
- Rejecting the authority of quotations and of a majority of rabbis
- A commandment versus a “good deed”: Maimonides in Laws of Kings
- Why observe commandments: the Euthyphro dilemma and “doing the truth because it is truth”
- Rabbi Shimon Shkop: pre-Torah norms and property
- Axioms, intuition, and the possibility of accusing someone of error
- God as binding authority and command as a self-evident “that’s just how it is”
- The Binding of Isaac and the parable of the blind man and the sighted man: immediate knowledge
- Rhetoric as a tool for changing basic assumptions
Summary
General Overview
The speaker concludes that the criterion for what counts as Jewish law is command, and argues that Judaism is essentially defined as commitment to the halakhic system rather than as a religiosity of feeling and experience, as is common in the Christian world. Therefore, Kant was correct in his own terms when he said Judaism is not a “religion.” He maintains that emotions in themselves have no moral value, and that what matters is intellectual decision and motivation. He interprets “love” in Maimonides mainly as commitment to do the truth because it is true, and not as an emotional state. Later, he defines a commandment as existing only when the act is done in response to a command, and not as an independent judgment or because of utility. He concludes that the question “Why obey God?” comes to rest in a kind of self-evident “that’s just how it is,” stemming from the very concept of God as an authority who obligates obedience. He adds that when this basic intuition is absent, one can at most try to awaken it by rhetorical means, not by logical proof, and he brings parables, including the Binding of Isaac and the image of the blind man and the sighted man, to describe such gaps in perception.
A conversation about vaccination and the authority of “most rabbis”
The speaker rejects deciding based on “most rabbis” and instructs people to decide according to what seems reasonable and act accordingly, including going to get vaccinated. He expresses distrust in an educational framework that determines the need for vaccination on the basis of “most rabbis” and “some tiny variant,” whatever that means.
Command, statement, and the definition of Jewish law
The speaker defines a command as different from factual claims or statements, and presents this as the criterion for distinguishing which parts of the Torah and the Talmud are Jewish law and which are not. He seeks to summarize the first part of the series on the basis of this distinction.
Kant, “religion” in the Christian world, and the definition of Jewish religiosity
The speaker says that Kant claimed Judaism is not a religion but a social code of laws, and adds that Kant’s Jewish students thought he had not understood, but in fact he understood better than they did within his own conceptual framework. The speaker explains that in the Christian world, religiosity is understood as faith, religious experience, and moral behavior with relatively few laws, whereas in the Jewish and Muslim worlds there is Jewish law. He argues that in Judaism one cannot define religiosity through religious feeling or general belief in God, because those also exist among people who do not observe commandments. Therefore, the litmus test of Jewish religiosity is commitment to Jewish law.
An essential definition: what matters and what is unique
The speaker clarifies that a definition is determined not by what is “most severe” but by what is “most unique.” He gives the example that Yigal Amir can be considered “religious but morally failed,” whereas eating non-kosher is perceived as placing a person outside the definition of religiosity, because kashrut is a uniquely Jewish marker. He presents Aristotle’s model of definition through genus and species in order to explain how unique traits define identity. He concludes that Jewish religiosity is defined by commitment to the halakhic system and not by morality or faith alone.
“Religion” versus religiosity, and the lack of a corresponding term in Hebrew
The speaker argues that in classical Hebrew concepts, “religion” means law, and therefore “religious feeling” is not a natural concept in that conceptual world. He says there is no Hebrew word equivalent to religion in the Christian sense, and therefore people use foreign terms like “religious experiences.” He maintains that translating religious as “religious” in the Hebrew/Jewish sense is misleading, because it shifts the concept into something else.
“Jewish law is the essence of Judaism” versus “religious feeling”
The speaker declares that Jewish law is the essence of Judaism and that all the other components are “decorations and flowers,” so lacking “religious feeling” does not impair one’s halakhic standing, but failure to observe Jewish law places a person outside the system. He rejects the attempt to argue that Jewish identity preceded Jewish law through “the descendants of Abraham,” and emphasizes that the discussion is about the Jewish people in its current sense. He says the midrashim of the Sages are not historical descriptions but tools for conveying a message.
Maimonides on the aggadic teachings of the Sages and the three groups
The speaker cites Maimonides in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah regarding three groups in relation to the aggadic teachings of the Sages: those who think everything is literally true and therefore laugh are “the wicked,” those who think everything is literally true and adopt it are “the fools,” and the correct group understands that these things are true as messages but not as historical facts. He argues that the midrashim of the Sages are meant to convey messages through stories and myths, not to report history.
Emotional commandments: “duties of the heart” and the interpretation of “love”
The speaker says there are commandments that seem to be imposed on emotion, like love of God, love of one’s fellow, and love of the convert, and that these are still part of Jewish law within the division between “duties of the limbs” and “duties of the heart.” On another level, he argues that in his view these commandments do not require emotion but rather actions that a lover performs, and that the root meaning of love in the Torah should be interpreted as action and not emotion. He uses Maimonides to argue that the Book of Love includes tefillin and tzitzit, and presents this as translating love into action.
Serving out of fear and serving out of love in Maimonides
The speaker quotes Maimonides from Laws of Repentance chapter 10 and defines serving out of fear as acting because of reward and punishment, emphasizing that this is a purposive consideration and not the emotion of fear. He quotes Maimonides on “one who serves out of love,” who fulfills commandments because he “does the truth because it is truth,” and concludes that the concept of “love” here is a philosophical motivation and not an emotion. He argues that a person is judged by decisions and not by feelings.
The value of emotion and morality: asking forgiveness without pangs of conscience
The speaker presents the position that emotions have no moral value, defining them as mere givens that are not under a person’s control. He recounts a conversation at a school in Sde Boker where he argued that a “pure” request for forgiveness might actually come without emotional sorrow, when a person asks forgiveness because he knows he acted wrongly and not in order to rid himself of guilt. He explains that pangs of conscience can at most ruin the purity of the act, not grant it value.
Reason versus emotion: the John Nash analogy and the ability to ignore experience
The speaker brings up the film A Beautiful Mind as an example of a person who acts according to reason and ignores a threatening experience that seems real to him, in order to show that one can act against emotional impulses. He uses this to argue that even when emotion exists, it is not the value-laden motivating force but rather a datum in relation to which reason decides. He repeats his claim that the current generation is “captive to emotions” and that rationality should decide.
Prayer without emotion and the understanding of Psalms
The speaker argues that it is easy to pray without emotion and that no experience is necessary in order to fulfill the obligation of prayer. He says that gratitude is a cognitive matter and not an emotional one, and casts doubt on the idea that the Psalms were meant to teach that feelings themselves have value, even if King David expressed emotions.
Resolving the contradiction between law 2 and law 3 in Maimonides
The speaker quotes law 3 in Maimonides on love “until his soul is bound up” like “love-sickness,” and admits that this seems the opposite of the cool definition in law 2. He suggests that the analogy to love of a woman is meant to illustrate intensity and constancy, not an obligation of emotion, and that Song of Songs is a metaphor for the demand of being occupied with truth “24/7.” He emphasizes that he is not relying on Maimonides’ authority but on logic.
Rejecting the authority of quotations and of a majority of rabbis
The speaker says he does not deal in quotations from Rabbi Nachman or others, and that if Rabbi Nachman says otherwise, then “he’s mistaken” from the standpoint of logic. He repeats that he does not hang his views on the majority of rabbis, and that a position is accepted only if its reasoning is persuasive.
A commandment versus a “good deed”: Maimonides in Laws of Kings
The speaker says in the name of Maimonides in Laws of Kings that a gentile who observes the seven Noahide commandments out of rational decision is “one of their wise men” and not “one of the pious of the nations of the world,” because this is not a commandment in the sense of responding to a command. He formulates this as “a commandment is commitment to a command,” and from that concludes that even moral commandments must be done by force of command in order to count as a commandment. He raises the question “Why observe commands?” and connects it to the principle of “doing the truth because it is truth.”
Why observe commandments: the Euthyphro dilemma and “doing the truth because it is truth”
The speaker raises the question “Why do what is right?” and distinguishes between acting because of consequences or utility and acting because it is true. He argues that acting for utility, even if the utility is hidden and one acts out of trust in God, is not a “commandment” in the fundamental sense.
Rabbi Shimon Shkop: pre-Torah norms and property
The speaker cites Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Sha'arei Yosher, who argues that there are legal principles that obligate even before the Torah’s command, such as the prohibition of harming property simply because it belongs to another person. He presents Shkop’s claim that even if there are opinions holding that robbing a gentile is not included in “Do not steal,” there is still a Torah-level prohibition by force of this pre-Torah principle. He enters into the debate over the source of property rights and the relationship between reason and command.
Axioms, intuition, and the possibility of accusing someone of error
The speaker explains that every argument rests on premises that cannot themselves be justified, and therefore all thinking begins from intuitions and axioms. He argues that there is an absolute truth of right and wrong even if one cannot prove the final stopping point. He says there is no logical tool with which to persuade someone who does not accept the axioms, but such a position can still be regarded as mistaken.
God as binding authority and command as a self-evident “that’s just how it is”
The speaker suggests that the concept of “God” in the Torah is tied to binding authority, like a judge who is called “godlike authority” because one must do what he says. He states that someone who believes in a being who created the world and gave the Torah but does not think one is obligated to obey His command “does not believe in God” in this sense, but in something else, even if he calls it by the same name. He defines the question “Why obey?” as coming to rest in a non-arbitrary “that’s just how it is,” something self-evident that follows from the concept itself.
The Binding of Isaac and the parable of the blind man and the sighted man: immediate knowledge
The speaker presents the logical and moral objections to the Binding of Isaac and brings a view according to which some interpreters saw obedience there as failure, mentioning an article by Avi Ravitzky that cites Spanish sources without naming them. He then brings a parable from the Chabad lecturer Rabbi Yitzhak Kahan about a blind man and a sighted man who entered a room full of furniture, and then the sighted man “sees” that it is empty, in order to illustrate the gap between logical proof and immediate seeing. He concludes that Abraham obeyed because he “met and heard,” and therefore was not troubled by the objections, and that the same applies to the perception of obligation toward a divine command.
Rhetoric as a tool for changing basic assumptions
The speaker says that for someone who lacks the “initial intuition,” he has no necessary answer, but one can still try to lead him to another way of looking through rhetoric, which is not demagoguery but a literary-like tool of persuasion. He argues that the adoption of axioms happens through contemplation and not through proofs, and therefore persuasion regarding axioms must also happen in a similar way.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did you get vaccinated there ליד the cafeteria? What? Did you get vaccinated there ליד the cafeteria? Yes, of course. Oh really? You got vaccinated? Good.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because they said here in the preparatory program, get vaccinated, no? And in the end they decided that you had to, because most rabbis said you had to, and some tiny variant, whatever it is. Wait, but where is this preparatory program?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can’t believe it, I can’t believe my ears. It doesn’t matter what most rabbis said. Decide what seems logical to you and do it — meaning, go get vaccinated. Weird. Fine, okay, all right, in all my glory, okay. So let’s summarize a bit of what we’ve seen so far. We spoke a bit about the meaning of a command and the difference between it and a statement or factual claim. I said that this is really the criterion for determining which part of the Torah is Jewish law and which part of the Torah is not Jewish law. By the way, also in the Talmud, not only in the Torah. And there’s one more thing I want to do — meanwhile I won’t confuse you here with that. I just want to summarize the first part of the series. There is a common conception of what Judaism is. Kant, for example, the philosopher, claimed that Judaism is not a religion at all. It’s some kind of social code or something like that. Now, he had quite a few Jewish students, and they said, fine, he didn’t understand, he wasn’t all that familiar, maybe he was influenced by Spinoza or other factors, and therefore he didn’t really understand. But the truth is that he understood better than they did. In other words, in the accepted perspective, at least in the Christian world, what is religion? What does it mean to be religious? In the broader world context, not specifically the Jewish one.
[Speaker D] To be religious is to keep a system of laws; religion is law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Religion is law — you’re trapped in the Jewish conception. You’re right about the Jewish religion. But when you look at Christians, they hardly have any laws. So what does it mean to be religious?
[Speaker D] Maybe a certain kind of faith? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning to believe in God. I might even say to have religious experiences, some sort of religious feelings, a connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, or something like that, and to behave morally, it seems to me. Those are more or less the main religious demands in the Christian world. In the Muslim world, there is Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And also
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] in the Jewish world there is Jewish law. In the Christian world there isn’t. Now, here and there — I mean, you need to go to church on Sunday, communion bread — but that’s marginal. And you have to believe in them. That’s also a kind of command, it’s not only…
[Speaker C] No, why a command?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they tell you to believe something…
[Speaker C] No one tells you to believe anything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is what you believe and what you don’t. You can’t tell someone to believe. If you believe it, then you believe it, and if not, then not. If you believe, then you belong to that specific religious framework, and if not, then not. You can’t command someone to be religious; that’s absurd. We’ll talk about that in a moment. So the claim is that Kant assumed religiosity is basically belief in God, religious feeling, maybe moral behavior or something like that. Now, when he looks at Judaism through those lenses, he says, wait — this thing is not a religion. They have some collection of laws, like some kind of state. In other words, they have a code, a collection of laws about what to do and not do, all sorts of details — what does that have to do with religion? It’s like, I don’t know, the ethical rules of the bar association. Is that a religion? Is someone who belongs to the bar association part of a religion? He too has to keep certain rules and not keep others. In other words, on the contrary, he understood the exact opposite of what you said earlier — that a collection of rules is not religion. A collection of rules is a code. Religion is something else; religion is something connected to the heart, to feeling, maybe morality if you like. And what about Judaism? Wait, we’ll get there in a moment. Therefore, when he looks at the Jewish world, he says this thing is not a religion at all. But actually, quite apart from the debate over what is a religion and what is not — that’s just semantics. Call religion whatever you want; what difference does it make? It’s just a word. But he was right. In his terms, Judaism is not really a religion. Why? Let’s try to understand. Let’s think. Suppose someone does not observe commandments, but he has religious feeling and he is a moral person. Would you call him a religious person? No. Right? And if someone observes commandments and has no religious feelings? You know what — he’s not moral either.
[Speaker D] Well, that’s some kind of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s religious but failed in the moral sphere, right?
[Speaker D] No, let’s say that religion itself obligates certain actions. Fine, but…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Formalism, obviously. Everything you do or don’t do that is part of the matter. What’s essential here? What’s the essential definition of your being, say — they always mention Yigal Amir, right? Now it’s around the Rabin assassination memorial day. They always mention Yigal Amir, okay? How can it be that someone who murders is considered religious but morally failed, while someone who eats non-kosher is not religious? After all, murder is much more severe than eating non-kosher. Now that’s a mistaken question. Why? Because murder — the definition of something is not determined by the question of what is most important, but by what is most unique. Most unique. And when you want to define, for example, what a human being is, okay? You can say a human being is something with a beating heart. That’s very important — without that you’re not… right? But that’s ridiculous; animals have that too. So it’s very important, but it’s not unique. When you want to define something, you need to explain what characterizes that thing specifically, and not all the other things. Even though that specific feature is not necessarily the most important one. Okay? So now, in the Jewish context, to say that a Jew is someone who doesn’t murder is ridiculous. Every person is required not to murder. Okay? But to say a Jew is someone who is required to eat kosher — that makes a lot of sense. Not because eating kosher is more important than not murdering, but because eating kosher really characterizes only Jews. Others are not obligated to eat kosher. When I’m looking for a definition of what a Jew is, then in fact I need to give that definition in terms of what specifically characterizes Jews, as distinct from all other people, say. Okay? Yes, Aristotle, when he talked about definition — he defined definition, right? So he defines what a definition is. A definition is giving the genus and the species. When you want to say what a human being is, you say it is a speaking living being. The living being is the genus; within that genus there are many species. There is a speaking living being and a non-speaking living being. So this is the speaking living being. Fine — that is the definition. In other words, you give the context, the general genus within which the species we want to define exists, and within that genus I distinguish among different species and say what sets this species apart from the others. That’s how things are defined. Okay? When I want to define what a Jew is, then I have to look for what makes him unique. What makes him unique is eating kosher, not murder. Not because eating kosher is more important, but because it is more unique. Okay? Simple logical point. Now, when I ask myself what makes Jewish religiosity unique, then clearly it is not morality and not even belief in God. Because belief in God also exists among other people who do not observe commandments at all; they believe in Him in some philosophical sense or another. Okay? They’re not religious. Why? Because in the Jewish context, religiosity is defined by commitment to the halakhic system. That is the definition of a Jew. An essential definition. And you can say that around it there are all kinds of other things. I ask you, let’s try to see — what is the litmus test? What is the thing that, if it exists, you are a religious Jew, and if it does not exist, then you are not? And that thing is Jewish law. That’s obvious. Now, in the Jewish context, it defines religiosity differently from the way it is defined, say, in the Christian world. So Kant, in his conceptual world, was right when he said Judaism is not a religion. Because he defines religiosity the way a Christian defines religiosity. Now it doesn’t matter how you define the word, but his characterization is a correct one. We tend to define religion as you said, “and a law was given in Shushan the capital” — religion means law. Therefore, in this context it is not a translation of religion. A translation of… okay? In other words… what is religion, really?
[Speaker D] What? What is religion — faith, say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Religion, translated into Hebrew, would be religiosity. No — that’s exactly the point. You don’t have a Hebrew word for it. You don’t have a Hebrew word for it. Why? Because it doesn’t exist. It’s not an important parameter in the Jewish world. That’s exactly the point. You don’t have… when you use the word, you use the foreign term. Now, when people want to say “religious experiences,” they don’t say “religious experiences,” they say “religious experiences” in the foreign-language sense. Because “religious experiences” is not a concept that exists in the classical Jewish conceptual world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An aesthetic experience — don’t people say that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are all kinds, but in the religious context, when you want to speak about religious experiences, very often — usually — you use the foreign term, religious experiences in that sense. Okay? Or religiosity is religious feeling. Why use… they use the foreign term because really the term “religious feeling” is a phrase that doesn’t… religion is law. What does a feeling of laws even mean? What does that have to do with anything? Therefore translation from English has to be done carefully. Because in English, what we call “religious” isn’t what they call “religious”; they call it religious in their own sense, that is their concept. Therefore it is not correct to translate religious into the Jewish-Hebrew word for “religious.” It’s simply a wrong translation. It transfers the concept into something else.
[Speaker D] Religious — like saying a believer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Say a believer, or someone connected to God, or something like that, I don’t know exactly — something in that family. Okay? So what I want to say is that what we have done until now is define command, and through it Jewish law. Now I want to continue one more step and say that Jewish law is really the essence of Judaism. Everything else is decorative frills. Whether it exists or doesn’t — if you don’t have religious feeling, if you don’t feel a connection to the Holy One, blessed be He, so what? You are fully religious, exactly like anyone else. But if you do not keep Jewish law, then you are not in the system. Okay? Quite apart right now from the evaluative question of whether you are okay or not okay. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But we were called a people before we received Jewish law. When? We were called a people — we just talked about this not long ago — in the book of Genesis, we were called a people before there were laws, before there were…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where were we called a people?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know — why is that important? No, because I’m saying, what
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] united us from the start was not our religiosity, even when we… No, the Jewish people, when you talk about it, is not the people of Abraham’s descendants. Abraham’s descendants were unrelated to commandments because there were no commandments yet. But now when you talk about the Jewish people in the sense we mean today… The Maharal says they kept commandments.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sages say they kept commandments, but those are midrashim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not a historical description.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can rely on them, can’t you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can rely on everything — it’s just that midrashim do not claim to describe facts. Do you think that everything midrash says is really a description of something that happened? That Abraham was in the fiery furnace and smashed Terah’s idols? You think all of that are historical events that actually happened? Look at Maimonides in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah. Maimonides says there are three groups in relation to the aggadic teachings of the Sages.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually I’m reading it now. Okay. Yes. Those who think everything is true, those who think…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those who think everything is true and therefore laugh at it. Yes, I just read it. Those are the wicked. Those who think everything is true and also embrace it — those are the fools. And those who think there are many things here that are not — what do you mean not true? They’re true, but not true as facts. This isn’t meant to describe history; it’s meant to convey a message. Messages can be conveyed through myths, through stories; not every event there has to be something that actually happened historically. Okay? The midrashim of the Sages are not meant to describe history. How would the Sages know that Abraham fought against Terah’s idols? Or I don’t know what, jumped in Ur Kasdim into the fire there with Nimrod? Divine inspiration? What divine inspiration. The Sages give you midrashim through which they want to convey messages, that’s all. No one is claiming that these were really events that happened. Children in first grade get told these things, you know, like Greek mythology. You tell it to a first grader and he is sure that that god fought this god and Achilles and Zeus and all those guys. An adult understands that a myth has to be interpreted in its own context. In other words, it is not a historical description. Okay? So yes.
[Speaker C] How does that work, really, with love of God? Because in the Torah there are many descriptions of love of God and things like that, a lot of verses like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so regarding love of God…
[Speaker C] There is
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a whole collection of commandments that are, ostensibly, imposed on emotion. Love of God, love of one’s fellow, love of the convert, hatred of wicked sinners, not being afraid in war. There’s no shortage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Yes, there are all sorts.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s another question, and I’ll answer you briefly on two levels. First: all those emotions are emotions we are commanded about. So that is part of Jewish law. In this case, Jewish law does not command you to do something but to feel something. Fine, but it is still Jewish law. So in that sense, yes, it is part of the essential definition of Judaism because it is part of Jewish law. Jewish law is divided into duties of the limbs and duties of the heart. Okay? There are duties regarding what you feel and duties regarding what you have to do. Fine, and it is still all Jewish law. That’s answer number one. But on a second level I’ll tell you — and I’ve written this in several places — that in my opinion all these commandments have nothing to do with emotion. Love of God? When the Torah uses the root for love, what it means is… that you are supposed to perform the actions that a lover performs. So I’ll give you an example. Maimonides — since you asked already — let’s look. Right. The question is what he means when he calls it love; let’s see. Here: there is a book called Love, and what does it include? Tefillin, tzitzit — is that love? Isn’t love being constantly lovestruck with the Holy One, blessed be He, wandering the streets all wrapped up in it? No. Love is putting on tefillin, wearing tzitzit; it is translated into action. But look.
[Speaker C] What? Maimonides writes that these things lead to love.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, where does he write that? No, he doesn’t write that. What leads to love he writes in Laws of the Foundations of the Torah: to contemplate His deeds and His wondrous creations, and so on. But look, here I’ll bring you a definition of what…
[Speaker C] That is a love connected to emotions and compared to the love of a woman.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One moment, now I’ll show you exactly. I’m bringing you right now the comparison to the love of a woman. Just look from the beginning. Since you asked, let’s look at it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Examiner of hearts” — that has nothing to do with it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s something else. He looks to see if you are serious,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t see whether it’s
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] deeds — He does not examine your emotions at all, but everything without fulfillment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Does my inner feeling matter to Him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Examiner of hearts,” in the sense you mean, is not emotions at all — what does that have to do with emotions?
[Speaker E] Exactly. You think God doesn’t care
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] whether
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I pray and do it with feeling, or do it as if with no feeling at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t care? Fine, I’ll say — I’ll get to that, okay? In a second. Look. Maimonides, on chapter 10 of Laws of Repentance: “A person should not say, I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings written in it, or in order to merit the life of the World to Come; and I will separate myself from the transgressions against which the Torah warned in order to be saved from the curses written in the Torah or in order not to be cut off from the life of the World to Come. It is not fitting to serve God in this way, for one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. And one serves God in this way only among the ignoramuses, women, and children, whom one educates to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.” Now notice, first of all, already here regarding the definition of fear. Do you understand that the fear discussed here is not an emotion? It is a rational consideration. You do this in order not to get punished — what does that have to do with emotion?
[Speaker D] It is accompanied, presumably, by…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but that’s not the definition. Say you have… no emotion of fear at all. But everything you do in serving God is in order to avoid Gehenna and get Gan Eden.
[Speaker D] If you didn’t know fear, maybe you also wouldn’t care…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not true. I don’t want to suffer later, even if right now I’m not afraid. I know I will suffer and I don’t want that. I make my calculations. I’m going to invest in the stock market. I invest in the thing that will yield me the most money. Does that mean I’m afraid of someone? Or love someone?
[Speaker D] Let’s say you’re afraid of losing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I simply want money, that’s all. It’s a purposive consideration. I make a calculation and say… it has nothing to do with emotions. I’m saying, it is often accompanied by emotions, but that’s not the point. The point is, this is about motivations, not emotions. The question is why you serve. Do you serve in order to gain something or avoid some punishment, or do you serve out of… in a moment we’ll see the alternative. Okay? It’s a question of why you serve; it does not belong to emotion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fear of sin in Ramchal. Huh? That’s classic fear of sin in Ramchal.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, it could be that it’s fear of God in Ramchal; you can debate it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that it’s a very, very low level. Okay, but God wants that, God wants the heart, God wants the feeling within the deeds.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what you think. I don’t think so, and apparently Maimonides doesn’t either. Just look at the simplest law there is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look at Maimonides in law 2.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “One who serves out of love” — until now this was service out of fear, right? “One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom, not because of anything in the world, and not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit the good” — what he defined above as service out of fear, right? “But rather does the truth because it is truth, and the good will ultimately come because of it. And this level is a very great level, and not every sage merits it. And it is the level of our father Abraham, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called ‘My beloved,’ because he served only out of love. And this is the level which the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it says: ‘And you shall love the Lord your God.’ And when a person loves God with the proper love, he will immediately perform all the commandments out of love.” What is the definition of love here? To do the truth because it is truth. How is that connected to emotions? It’s the coldest thing in the world. To do the truth because it is truth, that’s all, not for any other reason. In other words, service out of fear means doing things for other reasons — reward, punishment, and so on. Service out of love means doing things because they are true. It has nothing to do with emotions in any way. The question is what your philosophical motivations are, why you do it. And now look at a nice thing in law 3.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] God gave me a wife — here, take a gift because they told me to love you — is that love? Nobody wants…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he loves you, not because they told him to.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, because as they say, because it is the truth and I love you. They need emotion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re talking about love of a woman, that’s something else. But you don’t need emotion — rather, there is emotion. Who said you need it? Who said emotion has value? In my view emotions have no value at all. Emotions are just something you have in you. What value is there in that? It grows in you — or say someone is detached from the emotional dimension, he doesn’t have it, he’s ill. He doesn’t have the emotional dimension. Is there something problematic about him? Yes. He’s simply built differently.
[Speaker D] A psychopath on every level.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s simply built differently.
[Speaker D] A psychopath, a psychopath
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s only a matter of definition. The question is whether, in principle, there is something problematic in him. The answer is no. Why would there be?
[Speaker D] I’m sure there is, because what connects you to the world, what connects you to other people… Those are words, words! I’m built… If I don’t feel compassion, I can never be a moral person because I don’t care about anyone.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, that’s not true. First of all, that’s not true. On the contrary: if you feel compassion, you will never be a moral person. Why? Because when you help someone, you do it in order to sustain a feeling that exists inside you and not for him. So my ability to identify with another person…
[Speaker D] Which I don’t know what…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s all empty slogans. So what?
[Speaker D] It’s like, say, a spoiled child, where they say that if you pamper a child and he doesn’t experience difficulties, doesn’t experience challenges and things like that, then you end up with a child with a warped mind. Why? Because often the difficulties and challenges build you as a person.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True, that can create problems, but that has nothing to do with the question of the value of the thing itself. You’re talking about it instrumentally. In other words, if this happens, there may be good consequences, and if it doesn’t exist… I’m not talking about consequences; I’m talking about the thing itself. No, the two don’t have to go together. Why not? Because there can be a person who does everything exactly right without emotion. He is built that way: he does the truth because it is truth. That’s it, without emotion.
[Speaker D] And if you do — a normal person, the moment he does…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what normal means. You have a person who is not normal, a healthy person, a sick person. He does it only because it is right. Is there something more problematic in him? Yes? Why would there be? On the contrary, he is much more complete. I was once at a school in Sde Boker, at the Midreshet Sde Boker there, an environmental high school. The principal there is a good friend of mine, and he asked me to come speak to them during the Ten Days of Repentance about seeking atonement, forgiveness, and so on — but without religious contexts, yes, it’s a secular school. Without religious contexts. Fine, I took on the challenge. I told them, look — I started like this. I said to them: suppose I hurt someone. And now I understand that I behaved wrongly. So I decide that I’m now going to reconcile with him, ask his forgiveness. Okay? But I don’t feel one millimeter of sorrow over what I did. Nothing. Zero. Okay? Emotionally I couldn’t care less. But I know I was wrong. I’m not going to ask his forgiveness in order to achieve something, but simply because I know I was wrong. That’s all. I go to ask forgiveness, supposedly just from the lips outward, but inside I feel nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the person to whom you are doing good…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second. I asked them: what do you think? Do you accept such a request for forgiveness or not? They said, what? That’s hypocrisy. He’s not really asking forgiveness; it’s just lip service. I said to them: that is the only kind of request for forgiveness I accept. Because if someone feels pangs of conscience and goes to ask my forgiveness, then that request for forgiveness is in order to sustain the distress inside him. He’s doing it for himself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not necessarily.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Of course it is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? I feel that I hurt you, and that isn’t right,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and in order to get rid of those difficult feelings, you go ask my forgiveness.
[Speaker D] Wait, wait, one second, one second. Now look.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I go and ask true forgiveness, not in order to get something, I don’t have a drop of guilt. Do you understand that this is the purest request for forgiveness there can be?
[Speaker D] And what if he does it again? A motive of both this and that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A pure motive.
[Speaker D] Fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, if someone does feel pangs of conscience, then you say, fine, but still it could be that he asks in a pure way. Excellent. But then it’s not because of the pangs of conscience; it’s despite the pangs of conscience.
[Speaker E] That
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] says: you’re saying that even though we have pangs of conscience, that won’t ruin the request for forgiveness. So do you understand what you just said here? That in fact, the purest request for forgiveness is the one that is made even though I don’t have pangs of conscience. The only thing is, we’re human beings. A normal person usually feels guilty when they’ve done something bad. So what, does that automatically mean I’m not okay? That I’m acting out of self-interest? No. Because if I’m doing it for genuine reasons, then even though I have pangs of conscience, that doesn’t necessarily ruin the act. But understand that the guilty conscience is at most a potential to ruin the value of the act. It’s not what gives the act its value. You can only say maybe it doesn’t ruin it, fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about
[Speaker C] Breslov?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea. The whole business…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s trying to split things apart, he’s trying to disconnect the intellect and connect the emotion; that’s kind of the character of Rabbi Nachman. Work with emotion, don’t work with the intellect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Come on, let’s just sum up one thing for what follows. I’m not, I’m not dealing with quotations. Bring me Rabbi Nachman, bring me Rabbi whoever, I don’t care. I’m looking at the logic with you, talking with you about logic. If Rabbi Nachman says otherwise, then he’s mistaken. Meaning, I’m saying there’s logic here. My logic comes from my reasoning. If my reasoning convinces you, good; and if not, then not. Why do I care about Rabbi Nachman right now? What difference does it make?
[Speaker D] Rabbi, regarding what you said, the example of that person—I think such a person doesn’t exist. You’re taking some imaginary creature. Why? Why? Because if there’s a person who from the beginning of time never felt any emotion at all, he doesn’t know—first of all he also doesn’t feel regret, and he also doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know at all. No, no. You’re mixing things up. A creature that doesn’t exist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I can—what you’re saying is mixing two things. Why? There are two things here. First is the question of what I feel, and second is the ability to empathize with someone else. Those are not the same thing.
[Speaker D] They’re connected in the most inseparable way. If I never felt pain, I won’t understand a person who feels pain. Wrong. No, there’s no such thing. There’s no such person either. I’ll explain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I understand that he feels bad; I understand intellectually that he feels bad, even if I don’t experience it myself. That’s enough. Because if I understand that he feels bad, I go and ask him for forgiveness.
[Speaker D] You won’t understand if you never felt pain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I understand that he feels bad. As for what the meaning of that bad feeling is, maybe I’ll understand it less if I don’t have that emotion—so what? You know, there was a movie once, and actually a book, A Beautiful Mind. Have you seen it? I saw it. Good. So in that movie—it’s a wonderful movie in this context—because the movie starts with all kinds of sensations that are pursuing him, right? Various paranoias. John Nash. He has paranoia, paranoid schizophrenia, and he basically feels that all kinds of Soviet agents and things like that are after him. Now, all of that is nothing, but from his point of view it’s just—he’s sure that he’s the only one who sees it, and everyone else is off in la-la land. Okay? Now, at some point he reaches the conclusion—I have no idea how one reaches that conclusion—but he reaches the conclusion that these are probably hallucinations. Now understand: from his point of view that can’t be, because this is as tangible as anything can be, and everyone else is simply blind to it, okay? But somehow now, what does he need to do? He basically has to treat all these things—which are the most tangible things in the world for him, and the movie illustrates this very well—as if they aren’t there. He has to train himself to ignore them. Even though there’s a threat hanging over him, and from his point of view it’s a completely real threat, he won’t run away. Meaning, he goes on working as if there’s no one there threatening him. What does that mean? It means that he is actually managing to detach completely from his feelings and act according to what his intellect tells him to do. Meaning, his intellect tells him there is no threat here. Now at the experiential level, what do you mean? I see the person standing in front of me threatening me, and everyone else is just living in a movie. They don’t get it. That’s on the experiential, emotional level. But if intellectually he reaches the conclusion that it’s not true, then he’ll act on the basis of intellect, detached from all his emotions.
[Speaker D] No, he’ll try to come and paint those emotions in a certain color, say, this one I ignore—but he’s not detached from the rest of the world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, detached from the other emotions. Meaning, if they tell him—not from all emotions, I don’t know—
[Speaker D] If from all emotions—I’m talking about these emotions. A mirage, there are many things we see—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What difference does it make? But right now, with these emotions?
[Speaker D] And even if I’m inside
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] this whole production—if he acts in relation to these emotions not out of emotion but out of intellect, then that means that a person can act on the basis of intellect and ignore his emotions. Exactly the same thing.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, that’s obvious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not obvious, because before you said the opposite.
[Speaker D] No, I said that a person who has no emotions—the whole conversation is altogether—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But a person who doesn’t have a certain emotion—then the discussion regarding that emotion is empty from your point of view, but that’s not true. Because that fellow doesn’t have emotion regarding those paranoias, yet he still acts correctly because of intellect, even though he doesn’t have those emotions.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, that’s exactly the opposite of what happens there. He has the emotions and he decides to ignore them. Exactly!
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So? Then it’s not the same thing.
[Speaker D] No, it’s exactly the same thing!
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He understands that those emotions are negative, but that’s not—what drives him to act is not anything he feels. It’s simply pure logic because of which he acts completely detached from what he feels.
[Speaker D] But it’s based on emotion; there are all kinds of things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No emotion at all! It’s not based on any emotion. Which emotion is it based on?
[Speaker D] Based on what emotion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His whole thinking is based on emotion? If I ask you now—someone comes up to him with a gun in his face and he doesn’t move. Which emotion moves him? Which emotion is moving him here?
[Speaker D] What do you mean, which emotion? The situation right now?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes—exactly, that same person from the movie, okay? Someone comes at him with a gun. Now experientially he is sure there is a man standing in front of him with a gun who is about to kill him. He stands there and doesn’t move. Doesn’t run away. What emotion drove him here?
[Speaker D] What do you mean, what emotion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all, every person doesn’t act unless some emotion motivates him, right? So tell me—which emotion moved him here? He has no emotion in this area; on the contrary, the emotion tells him that there is a threat to him right now. Right—but he acts the opposite way.
[Speaker D] He doesn’t move?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t move, yes, he doesn’t run away.
[Speaker D] That’s because he knows that this emotion isn’t real.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, he knows? Meaning—good. Meaning that this action goes according to—against what the emotion is trying to get him to do, while the intellect tells him that it is not correct to act that way but rather correct to act this way.
[Speaker D] Fine, that’s already a specific case where apparently there’s an emotion here that should have come and expressed itself. Now let’s go back—listen to what I’m saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not every person lacks empathy.
[Speaker D] You’re not listening to what I’m saying.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why do I care about other people’s emotions? Tell me, in the specific case I described to you, what other emotion caused him to act here?
[Speaker D] He didn’t act here on the basis of emotion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s all. A person can act not on the basis of emotion—to do the truth because it is true.
[Speaker D] That’s all. Even a person who experiences emotions—in the end, in the end, the action he performs is an intellectual action. The emotion generates some particular insight in you, and you choose whether to act on it. I don’t care what generated the insight; in the end, in the end, that’s not the point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because in the end, when I have an insight, I act on it. What generated the insight is another matter. Sometimes emotion can generate the insight—I don’t really agree with that, but let’s leave it aside for now—and sometimes I understand it intellectually. It doesn’t come from emotion. I see a person suffering, I feel nothing, that whole department in my brain is disconnected.
[Speaker D] That’s not what I meant. I meant that a person who from the day he was born has no—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] no emotions, has no—
[Speaker D] idea what suffering is, he doesn’t recognize it at all. There is no such thing as suffering.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then you’re mistaken. There are people who are disconnected, and these are documented cases.
[Speaker D] Partially?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not partially—disconnected from emotions, or from certain emotions, or from emotions altogether. But intellectually they understand that the person next to them is suffering—intellectually. They don’t experience his suffering because they don’t know what it is, but they understand that something is bad for him in some way, and therefore they refrain from it. That’s all. And a person can do that intellectually. Now, even in the case where the person experiences suffering and because of that takes another person into account—the emotion here is not the reason for the action. The emotion here is the datum that he takes into account, because that’s how he understands what suffering is, and now his mind tells him to avoid that action. But he does it because of the mind, not because of the emotion. So the emotion here has no value whatsoever. The emotion here at most gives you data. That’s all. Nothing beyond that. Emotion has no value at all. Emotion is something valueless. It has no value whatsoever. Emotion is something that pops up inside you or doesn’t pop up inside you, just according to how you’re built. Right. What matters is what you decide, not what you feel. Sometimes emotion will affect your decisions—which, by the way, is also problematic to a certain extent—but never mind. The point is, in the end, in the end, you are judged by what you decided, not by what you felt. Emotion is something that awakens in you; it doesn’t depend on you, so why should it have value? It has no value whatsoever. If someone is built in a very emotional way, he’ll experience lots of emotions. A person built differently won’t experience emotions. So what? Just because they’re built differently, does that mean this one is righteous and that one isn’t? What does that have to do with anything? They’re built differently.
[Speaker D] No, but emotions are ultimately a result of what you understand, what you experience. Emotion is often what connects me to this world. Meaning, when let’s say I feel that my body hurts, then it’s like some kind of alarm that the body is suffering, or if I look at—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else, because here the emotion gives you data. Again.
[Speaker D] But in the end those are emotions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying. Emotion, at most—even in the moral context—gives you data. But emotion in itself has no value; it’s just your information. Just as eyes have no value—moral value—they give you data according to which you make decisions, but that’s instrumental, it’s not value. It’s something that gives you data. In the end, the decision you make on the basis of the data—that’s the thing that has value. Good. Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s an approach that the Sages try to bend over backwards for, saying that everything God created is good. They say the evil inclination is “very good” because it’s like seasoning for food, and they even take this too, by the way—seasoning for food—that’s surely… So why, according to your view, do we need emotion at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, ask the Holy One, blessed be He; that’s an excellent question. I have no idea. And how do you pray without emotion?
[Speaker C] How do you pray without emotion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Easily. What’s the problem? On the contrary, in prayer I understand least of all why you need emotion. What’s the problem? There’s an obligation to pray, so I pray and go home. That’s all.
[Speaker C] Then it becomes something really not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] robotic, we’d say, right?
[Speaker C] I thank
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you—yes, just as I ask for atonement the way I described in that story. I thank you very much for what you gave me—why do I need to feel anything?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you say that it’s out of
[Speaker C] understanding, that I give thanks without feeling, it’s only out of—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you really are giving thanks. Gratitude is a cognitive matter, not an emotional one. Exactly like love, exactly like every other emotion—that’s precisely the point I’m trying to make to you. Emotions have no value in themselves. They may have various consequences, but emotion in itself has no value. That’s how we’re built, that’s all.
[Speaker D] Fine, so I’m saying: if that’s how we’re built, and there are certain things that generate emotion in me, then if that emotion isn’t generated, apparently in some place I’m not feeling the things I’m supposed to feel; maybe I don’t have the understandings I’m supposed to have.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem. So maybe you’re blind, but that has nothing to do with values. You’re not less good. Is a blind person less good? A blind person won’t see that there’s a poor man there to whom he can give money, right? So because of that—because of that, is the blind person less good than I am? No, he is exempt from the commandment. He simply doesn’t have the data, that’s all. A person who doesn’t have emotion in the sense you’re talking about—that emotion at most doesn’t give him data. So he’ll make decisions the way a blind person makes decisions. He’s not less good; he’s simply blind. So what? That’s how he’s built.
[Speaker D] No, but in the context of prayer?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In every context. “Service of the heart”? The context of prayer has nothing to do with this at all. Here, in the moral context, emotion can still maybe—I don’t know what—convey to you the other person’s empathy, let you experience the suffering he experiences. But in prayer, what’s the problem? I say thank you to the Holy One, blessed be He, for what He gave; I don’t need to feel anything. I don’t need to feel anything. What’s the problem? After all, all the psalms of
[Speaker C] Psalms, where it seems as though—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, King David expressed emotions there; he had emotions. I’m not saying he didn’t. Did anyone say those emotions have value?
[Speaker C] That’s the whole idea of the Book of Psalms, isn’t it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Well.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, it just seems strange.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it seems strange. That’s why I’m saying it. This generation is a generation captive to emotion. People have despaired of intellect and fallen captive to emotion.
[Speaker D] Rabbi, don’t blame us for all this. We—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, not you—I’m speaking generally about the generation. I’m saying there’s a problem here, a problem in the outlook. This generation is an emotion freak. There is no value to emotions; it’s bullshit.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, don’t misunderstand—it’s a really difficult generation
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to straighten out, even before Talmud—Hasidism. Hasidism. Too bad you say Hasidism—quote Rabbi Nachman to me.
[Speaker C] No, Hasidism conquered all of Europe. Conquered all of Europe—so what? Do you know how many stupid things conquered all of Europe and the whole world? What does that prove? That’s just preaching.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are you saying it’s all nonsense?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did I say that about everyone? Did I say that about everyone?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Baal
[Speaker C] Shem Tov—nonsense?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say only Rabbi Nachman. I said don’t quote Rabbi Nachman to me; I didn’t say he’s the only one there. Fine, but that’s an example of Rabbi
[Speaker C] Nachman—I gave an example for all the Hasidim.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I mean, it seems to me that most rabbis today think this way too. Could be. Doesn’t matter. But I’m saying what I think. I’m not claiming that the majority thinks like me, and I don’t care what the majority says. I’m saying something that if it makes sense, you accept it; if
[Speaker E] it doesn’t make sense, you don’t accept it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not leaning on anyone. You gave a whole picture. A completely whole picture. The emotions are not clear. Right. Not clear, not clear. Why are emotions not clear? I didn’t understand. I don’t know—am I the Holy One, blessed be He?
[Speaker C] Why are you asking me? I’m raising an argument for why emotion has no value. Now if that argument is convincing, then it means it has no value. Now you ask: so why were emotions created? I don’t know, ask the Holy One, blessed be He. But what does that have to do with the question of whether emotion has value? If emotion has no value on the logical level, then it has no value, that’s all. Why isn’t it logical? I don’t know. Does sight have value? Why? What kind of value? Moral? No value whatsoever. But without it I won’t see the poor person in order to do kindness with him, to give charity. But is a blind person less good than I am? So why were sight and hearing and all the senses created? Value—why? Nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is moral value?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Value—I’m talking about moral value, not money in the bank.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Moral value—what value?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is a blind person less moral than you?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And contemplation. I didn’t say—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s what I’m asking: then why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create eyes? Eyes give you data, right? Emotion also gives you data. Fine—so what?
[Speaker C] Maybe He wanted you to see things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, and He also wants you to be emotionally moved by things, but that doesn’t mean emotion has value.
[Speaker C] Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, wants you to be moved by things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, no. Seeing things is not service of God—what does that have to do with anything? Seeing things and experiencing things emotionally give you data. On the basis of those data you make decisions. The decisions have value. The data—if you have the data, excellent; if you don’t have the data, then you’re blind. But that’s not the question; that doesn’t make the person more defective. You say he’s blind—what can you do? Defective morally, I mean. He’s blind—what can you do? So what happened? That’s how he’s built. There’s no problem with that on the moral level.
[Speaker C] He says there’s no problem with that, but he can still say that I have value and he doesn’t have it; in his case it’s something else.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you have value, then he lacks that value. There’s no way to whitewash that. Why? Because if you think that a person who sees is more moral, then a person who doesn’t see is less moral. That’s all. Simple logic. But it’s a tool for functioning in this world. Good—so it’s a tool, and the same is true of emotion. So it’s a tool for functioning; it’s not value. That’s exactly the point. That’s what I’m saying.
[Speaker C] It’s not emotion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a tool for functioning; it’s what gives me data. Those are the rules.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I had different senses, then what would be the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Would I be less good?
[Speaker C] No, I’d be different. That’s all. But if I don’t do a moral thing, or I act immorally, then I’m a less good person.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So having different tools isn’t called being less good on the moral level. You have different tools for functioning; you’re playing a different game. That’s all. Look at Maimonides here, Jewish law 3: “And what is the proper love? That one should love God with a very great, exceeding, and intense love, until his soul is bound up in the love of God, and he is continually obsessed with it, as though he were lovesick—whose mind is not free from love of that woman, and he is obsessed with her at all times, whether sitting or rising, even while eating and drinking. More than this should the love of God be in the hearts of those who love Him, continually obsessed with it, as He commanded us, ‘with all your heart and with all your soul.’ And this is what Solomon said metaphorically: ‘for I am sick with love,’ and the entire Song of Songs is a parable for this matter.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here it seems, on the face of it, one hundred eighty degrees opposite to what he said in the previous Jewish law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As emotional as it could possibly be, right? Right—that’s exactly what I thought, yes, right. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, did he forget what he wrote here? That love—serving out of love—is to do the truth because it is true, which is the coldest thing possible. This has already happened to him a few times, this has already happened to him a few times. I understand. It’s not that he suddenly changed his mind. Right, it’s clear to me, clear to me that he didn’t change his mind. The question is how do you reconcile Jewish law 2 with Jewish law 3? It’s simple: the moment this becomes your whole world, so to speak. Exactly, it’s the center of everything. Right. Earlier someone asked, and Maimonides is always right. I’m not saying—but I’m not Maimonides, I’m right; logically I’m right. Leave Maimonides aside, logically I’m right. Also from the way he formulates this paragraph, it’s clear he phrases it emotionally. No, that’s obvious. Lovesick, “I am sick with love,” crazed with love for a woman. Listen—come on—when you take a parable, the whole Song of Songs is a parable for this matter. What does that mean? When you take a parable, there’s always a problem when people take a parable and make a one-to-one comparison between the parable and what it stands for. You always end up with a wrong interpretation. The relation between a parable and what it stands for is meant to illustrate certain aspects, right? Other aspects are just a function of the parable, of the imagery of the parable, but they aren’t necessarily found in what it stands for; it depends on what they wanted to illustrate, right? And I want to argue, in light of Jewish law 2, that what Maimonides wants to say in Jewish law 3 is that Song of Songs is a parable for love of God. And love of God is to do the truth because it is true. That’s what he defined in Jewish law 2. Jewish law 3 says: and this is what you should be occupied with all the time, just as emotional love—for example, for a woman—accompanies you all the time. Not because love of God has to be emotional, because above he defined it as not being that way. Rather, the whole Song of Songs is a parable for this matter: that you—exactly against what you keep saying here all the time, that in order to engage with something seriously there has to be an emotional dimension. Maimonides says that’s not true. Just as with things that do have an emotional dimension we manage to devote ourselves to them and occupy ourselves with them all the time, and they occupy us 24/7, love of God—that is, doing the truth because it is true—should occupy us 24/7. Not that it has to be emotional. The parable is there to say how intense this has to be. But that doesn’t mean that just as that is emotional, this too has to be emotional. It doesn’t—it depends on what. Fine. Again, this isn’t Maimonides, this is logic. But if you don’t accept what I’m saying on the logical level, then I’m not trying to convince you by the authority of Maimonides, just as I’m not convinced by Rabbi Nachman. I’m not quoting Maimonides so that you’ll accept it because Maimonides said it. I’m using Maimonides to clarify for you why it’s true. But if you only use logic, then it turns out that you’re the one deciding, and every tiny little thing you decide, and in the end you’re the one who determines it. Of course, of course. But then okay, I don’t know—what else is supposed to determine it? I don’t know—if you think there are other things in a person besides logic. A person is made up of intellect. A person is also made up of legs, so do you want to think with your legs? What does that have to do with anything? A person—his intellect is responsible for thinking, his legs are responsible for walking, his ears are responsible for hearing. Do you want to think with your ears and walk with your intellect? I don’t understand. If you’re thinking, you think with the intellect, not with something else. When you formulate a position, you have to think in order to reach that position. That’s all. We have no tool other than the intellect for thinking. We have other tools for doing other things. That’s all. Rabbi, regarding your interpretation of the second paragraph, someone could also come and argue about that. “To do because it is true” could mean as opposed to people who come and do it for some reward, and not because it is true. Obviously. But that doesn’t prevent emotion. What do you mean it doesn’t prevent emotion? But it means that the difference between fear and love has nothing to do with the emotional dimension, which is what I already said at the stage of fear. It has to do with motivation—why you act this way—not with what feelings are nesting inside you. The question is: what are your motivations? Are you doing it to gain something, reward or punishment, or are you doing the truth because it is true? It has no connection to the emotional dimension. Now, it could be that beyond that there is also an emotional dimension, and it could be that there isn’t. But in Jewish law 1 and Jewish law 2 he isn’t talking about emotional dimensions at all. So if the difference between love and fear has nothing to do with the emotional dimension, where does Jewish law 3 suddenly come in? Say no, that you have to do it with all your heart and so on, and that it should occupy you all the time. No—Jewish law 1 and 2 are a completely cold description of what your motivation is when you do it. Suddenly in Jewish law 3 it becomes like love for a woman. And I’m saying the simple explanation is no: in Jewish law 3 too it is not like love for a woman. It is like love for a woman only in the sense of the level of intensity—that it should accompany you, “in all your ways know Him,” “I set the Lord always before me,” I need to be occupied with it all the time—but that doesn’t mean it has to be in the emotional dimension. I’m not ruling out the emotional dimension. Let there be an emotional dimension, perfectly fine. I’m only claiming that that isn’t the value here. If you have it in the emotional dimension, fine, you’re not disqualified, it doesn’t make you worse. I’m only saying what is required of you: what is required of you is not an emotional dimension. What is required of you is an intellectual dimension, not an emotional one. If that is accompanied by an emotional element, very good, we’re all human beings, fine. We have emotions. Just as when I come to ask someone’s forgiveness, the fact that I have emotion doesn’t invalidate the apology. But if I do it because of the emotion, then it really isn’t a genuine apology. Okay, fine. So the claim in the end is that emotions are not—in my view they have no value at all—but even the commandments that deal with emotion, I can show you—I wrote articles about this—commandment after commandment, that the definition is that nothing emotional is required of you at all. At least there are commentators who say this, and I think logically it is certainly true. Not everyone says this; Hasidic commentators certainly do not go in this direction. I’ll tell you what most rabbis say. Most rabbis do not say this, and they are mistaken. Most of them think there is a place for emotion. Of course—what does that prove? Nothing. No, get away from the majority and the quotations and all of that—I’m going with you now on logic. If logic convinces you, good; if it doesn’t convince you, fine, that’s also fine. But just as you don’t need to accept Maimonides or Rabbi Nachman, of course you also don’t need to accept me. I’m raising arguments. I’m not telling you to accept this because this is what I think. There are arguments. Now if you agree, you agree, and if not, then not. This idea that someone can explain something like this to you and convince you of everything—like even arguing with a person about whether the Holocaust happened or not, because if he’s a professor in the field, every argument you think you have he has already thought of. I disagree with you completely, and I’ll tell you why. Advice—listen to advice from someone who’s a bit wise. There was once someone from Tel Aviv University, a student, who founded a journal called Status. We’re talking thirty years ago already, something like that. Status. And they tried to distribute it. In the first issue there was an article comparing yeshiva students to university students, and of course it came out against the yeshiva students, that they were parasites and so on and so on. A friend of his, completely secular but a good friend of mine, said to him: listen, I have a friend—come, take a response from him. Do you want to be fair? You have an article with a position? Take a response from someone who thinks differently. He came to me, interviewed me, and afterward I even wrote him a structured response to his article, and that was that. I forgot all about the matter. About half a year later someone comes to me and says: do you know, there’s some journal called Status, I saw a few sentences of yours there, I didn’t understand what you were saying. I said to him: do you have a photocopy or something? So he brought it to me—my eyes darkened. Meaning, they published his article, and he took a few sentences out of what I had written that had no connection to one another, wrote that as some sort of response, and that was it—he simply completely distorted the whole issue. I was very angry. I spoke to our mutual friend, so he asked him about it, and then came back to me and said: listen, he said, “Listen, his response didn’t leave one stone standing from the article. He slaughtered it in cold blood. But it’s not a fair fight—he’s a student and this and that—so you just don’t argue with a smart person.” And therefore he decided to censor the response. I said to him: listen, does that sound logical to you? Meaning, if you have a response that is good, send it to someone else who is also smart and let him answer with a counter-response—I understand that, fine. But you can’t say, let’s ignore a person’s position because he is too smart. It’s simply ridiculous. I didn’t say ignore a fact, exactly. So the conclusion—it’s hard to accept it. No problem, if it’s hard to accept, fine—get over it. I’m saying: what you can do, if you see a position that you feel very strongly is wrong, but you don’t have the tools to deal with it—that happens a lot—fine, that’s legitimate. Go to someone else, consult with him, work it through. But you cannot reject a position because you aren’t managing to cope with it. That’s absurd. If you aren’t managing to cope with it, apparently it’s true. If you think maybe not, fine—go to someone else, consult with whoever you want, all kinds of things like that, work it through, and in the end arrive at your own position. And that’s fine, that’s what really should be done. That’s fine. Okay. In the end we knew how to win. Fine. Now I want to move on. So basically we defined—we defined what a command is and what Jewish law is. Jewish law, basically, is what defines the—let’s call it—the Jewish obligation, Jewish faith / belief. Fine. Now I want to move on. So basically we defined what a command is and what Jewish law is. And Jewish law, basically, is what defines the—let’s call it—the Jewish obligation, even Jewish faith / belief in that sense. Maimonides writes—we may perhaps see this Maimonides later on—Maimonides writes that someone who fulfills commandments out of intellectual conviction, in Laws of Kings, so he is not—he’s talking about a resident alien—he is not among the pious of the nations of the world, but among their wise. If a non-Jew keeps the seven Noahide commandments, but he doesn’t do it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded Moses at Sinai, but because it seems right to him to behave that way, then in my translation that is not a commandment. It’s a good deed, but a commandment it is not. Why? Because a commandment is obligation to a command—to a mitzvah. If you don’t have that—if it’s not a commandment, if you are not doing it as a response to a command, as obligation to a command, then it’s not a commandment. It’s a right act, fine, you’re doing a good deed, a correct deed, whatever it may be—but there is no commandment here. But what about all our moral commandments that we talk about? Those too need to be done because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded them, not because they are right or fitting. They are also right and fitting, and in order for that to count as a commandment you need to do it by force of the command. That is what is written in Maimonides. That was the previous lesson. What? To do it by force of the command. No, that’s not yet the previous lesson. We’ll see the relation to the lesson. The previous lesson only defined what a command is. Now I’m asking why keep the commandments. That’s something else. There is a command—so what if there is a command? We said that this is exactly what we discussed with “one who is commanded and does”—that the dimension of command is added beyond the— No, now I’m asking. That’s the definition of what is called a command. And now I’m asking why keep commands. What is the value of that? Why keep commands? So look, when I ask why keep commands—what? Right, the answer is because it is the truth. The Holy One, blessed be He—that one must do the truth. And what is the truth? To fulfill the truth. Why do the truth? What do you mean why do? Do what is right, end of story. Yes—why? Why do what is right? First of all, because if that is what is right, then of course it is grounded in reality, and therefore there are negative consequences to what is not right. So are you actually doing it because it will fix reality or not fix reality? Because it is a good act. So then you are not doing it because the Holy One, blessed be He, commands it, but because of intellectual conviction. No, because that’s why He commanded it. Fine. And now I’m asking why you do it, not why He commanded it. Why do you do it? When you go to do it, do you do it because of the results? So if you do it because of the results, that’s acting because of intellectual conviction. That’s not a commandment. But I don’t necessarily understand it. Right—there are many commandments that I believe are correct, but I do them and I don’t know how to explain them. Doesn’t matter—but you still do it because of the benefit it will bring, even though you don’t understand it, because you trust the Holy One, blessed be He. That is not a commandment. Why is that not a commandment? Because you are doing it for the sake of the benefit. But everything I do, I do for myself, for the world. Oy, but why did He command it? I don’t know why He commanded it—ask Him. But after He commanded it, you need to do it because He commanded it. If you don’t do it for that reason, then it’s not a commandment. But then why would I do what He commands if I didn’t think it was the truth, that it is what is right? Wait. “To do the truth”—before what Maimonides wrote here, I’ll sharpen it more. “This is the truth” can be interpreted in two ways: this is the truth because it brings the best results, or this is the truth because if God created us and He commanded, then one is obligated to do what He says. I would say that goes together, though. No, it doesn’t go together. Those are two different considerations. Both are true, but they are two different considerations. Which comes first? To do the good because it is good? Right, Euthyphro, the Euthyphro dilemma. Yes, so maybe we’ll touch on that later too. In any event, the question is why keep commandments, or why keep Jewish law. Look, on this question there is Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Shaarei Yosher. Do you know Rabbi Shimon Shkop? Have you heard of him? Yes. Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Shaarei Yosher—he was the head of the Grodno yeshiva—and he says there that there are legal principles that obligate us without a command of the Torah. Before the command of the Torah. For example, his claim is that the prohibition “do not steal” is a halakhic / of Jewish law prohibition. I talked about that a little last time too. But the obligation not to take someone else’s money exists even before the prohibition “do not steal.” By virtue of the fact that this money belongs to someone else. If it belongs to someone else, that means I am forbidden to take it. Independently of “do not steal.” That I know even before the Torah was given. Therefore, for example, there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) on the question whether robbing a non-Jew is prohibited at the Torah level or not—whether it is included in “do not steal” or not included in “do not steal.” He says that even according to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who say that robbing a non-Jew is not included in “do not steal”—meaning it is not prohibited at the Torah level—it is prohibited at the Torah level. It is prohibited at the Torah level not because of “do not steal,” but because of the pre-Torah legal principle that says you may not take property that belongs to someone else. Could it be that in the end the Rabbi here is referring to some system of moral norms that I’m not sure I accept? Why should I recognize that you have some right to a certain possession? I don’t recognize it. Right. So he answers that, like a good Jew, by answering a question with a question. And he says: why should I obey those things that the Torah did command? So it commanded—so what? Why should I obey? Because the intellect says that if the Torah commands, one should obey. Fine, so the intellect also says that if money belongs to someone else, it is forbidden to take it. No, not necessarily. Because it could be that I do not recognize that he has a right to that money. So I say: your intellect is mistaken. Just as someone else will say, fine, my intellect says one need not obey what the Holy One, blessed be He, says. There could be such a person, right? There are such people, many of them. Okay, so? No, but what is the claim against them? But no, I’m listening— Assuming I’m sure that this command is a divine command. No, no, leave the divine aside for now. I’m asking you about the logic, not the law. I’m relating to the logic. The very fact that I listen to the divine command is because it is divine, unlike a social command. But someone else says it’s a divine command and he does not feel any desire to obey it, he does not think it needs to be obeyed. What is your problem with him? That he is mistaken. This language—it’s you. That he is mistaken: a divine command has to be obeyed. You’re going to fight with God? Let’s see who wins. No, it’s not a question of who wins, the question is why he is not okay, not who wins. It’s not a power question. There is a claim against him. The Holy One, blessed be He, will not punish him if he isn’t guilty of something, if there is no claim against him. But he is guilty. Why is he guilty? Because he did not listen to the one he should have listened to. So he didn’t listen—to the one who said there was no need. I listened very well, I simply don’t think I need to fulfill what He said. No, but who are you not to agree? What do you mean who am I? I think I’m not obligated to agree. No—on what basis? Let’s say, on the same basis that you think one should, he thinks one should not. That’s what you asked me before, after all. No, but then I say—but this, let’s say, would be much easier to explain, I think. No, it’s not easier to explain. If the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world— I wish you success. There are a few million people here in this country—try explaining that to them, let’s see if you succeed. They are not convinced it is from God. No, a large part of them say it is from God and still do not think it needs to be fulfilled. I’ll bring it down from a few million to a few thousand. Then they probably don’t really think that. Who told you that? They think it and they tell you it does not need to be fulfilled. Exactly the same thing you say to me: I think I do not recognize ownership of property. Fine, so you are mistaken. That’s all. You’re not okay. So what if you think that? You think, but the intellect says yes, one should obey. Not true. Why? Why? Why obey the Holy One, blessed be He? So I— But it’s not the same thing. It is the same thing. Why? Just because. No, “just because” is not an answer. That’s what the intellect says, and that’s what the intellect says. That’s all. Not true. Why? Because you think your intellect says otherwise, but his intellect says the opposite. I’m explaining to you that you are assuming here that what you are saying is certainly correct. But someone else who thinks differently from you also thinks that what he is saying is certainly correct. Fine, so let’s set criteria and debate them. Okay, set them. Good luck. So there, now within the issue: why—what are inherent rights? Why does a person have inherent rights? In what sense why? Because he owns the money. Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, have the right to command you? Why does someone have something—why should I come and take it because I want to? That is the same question. Why should I obey what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands? Because He is the Holy One, blessed be He. So what? Fine, I know He is the Holy One, blessed be He—I said that. So I say: so what? Okay, why? Because the intellect says— No, but if He created the world—if He created the world, then what? Mazal tov to Him. I suffer enough here in this world even without His commandments. Now I also need to obey commandments, fulfill His commandments? Why? What do you mean? These two examples are not on the same level at all. It’s a completely different level. Different from what? What do you mean different from what? I mean in terms of your ability to come and clash with something like that. Just look—try to think for a moment, not from within your own glasses. Try for a moment to think of someone else who perceives reality differently, okay? Exactly like you, he says— What? That morality obligates and the divine command does not obligate. That’s all. No, it’s not the same thing. Who said it’s the same thing? I said this obligates and this obligates. It simply has to be the same thing. After all, what is the source of morality? Morality? My gut? Certainly not. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the source of morality. Who told you that? He created the world, everything comes from Him. No, he says no. The source of morality is his gut. He does not recognize God—that’s something else. Ah, so I’m saying: exactly for that reason the discussion is on a completely different level. About morality I say: morality—its entire source is God. Morality too. I’ll explain again, look. You say that if someone is mistaken or doesn’t accept your position, then you can’t make claims against him, right? That’s what you said. Me? Yes. Why? That’s not what I said. Of course. Because you say: I do not accept the—the right of a person over his property. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: then you are mistaken. No, what is property right? Fine, okay, wait, wait—so you’re only explaining to me why you don’t accept it, fine, I understand, you don’t accept it. And now Rabbi Shimon Shkop says you are wicked. Why? Just because. So I can say I’m not wicked. No problem—there, exactly, exactly the same thing, exactly what I’m showing you. Exactly the same as in relation to morality, exactly the same, in relation to commandments, exactly the same. No, it’s not the same thing. Yes, it is the same thing. It’s not the same thing whether the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it or did not command it. But the person comes and tells you the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it, and I couldn’t care less that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it. I do not recognize that as obligating me. No problem. That’s all. Right, the argument from the divine would be a different argument. No—it’s the same discussion! No, not true, it’s not the same discussion. It’s not like the discussion of someone who believes there is God and believes there is a divine command; there is right and wrong. Listen to what I’m saying to you. Go ahead. So it is exactly the same thing. Why? I’m explaining to you: it’s not the same argument, it’s the same logic of discussion. When you have a position, there is a reasoning that is correct from the standpoint of intellect, and there is someone else who does not accept it. Is there a claim against him or not? He doesn’t accept it, he thinks it’s not correct. Is there a claim against him or not? We said last week. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop claims yes. You also say yes. Only you say yes regarding commandments. So he says: why yes regarding commandments? Because your logic says that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, one must obey. But his logic says no. So you say right, then he is mistaken. Because obviously if the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, one must obey, right? Rabbi Shimon Shkop says the same thing. If there is a property right over something, you may not violate it. Do you think otherwise? Then you are mistaken. That’s all. Ah, what is this? It’s not— He decides—it’s not really a discussion. Ah, you decide too! No, I don’t decide. Yes, you do. You say that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded then it obligates, but he doesn’t think it obligates. We live in a reality that is not sweet—it’s not, let’s say, logical that a person can come and oppose God. In your eyes it isn’t logical. In your eyes it isn’t logical. No, that’s what happens. No, no, no! Again, you’re mixing in your own position. In your eyes it isn’t logical. Fine, because you have a reasoning that I happen to agree with—that if the Holy One, blessed be He, commands one should obey. But standing opposite you is someone else who does not accept that reasoning. No problem, so he is basically like, say, a person without God. So a person who does not recognize God— No, there is God and His commands do not obligate me. But there is no such thing. What do you mean there is no such thing? Good Lord, there are millions who say that! What do you mean there is no such thing? Then they don’t really recognize God. How do you know? They tell you they believe—what, you tell them they don’t? Because if they really recognized God, if they wanted— Not true! And your logic says that. A person who experiences the—let’s say, there is no person who meets God in an unmediated encounter, no such thing in general—but an encounter that is close to unmediated, and can oppose God. What are you saying? The Jewish people were at Mount Sinai, they heard the Holy One, blessed be He, speaking from the fire— and they backed away! They backed away and made the calf immediately afterward! So? So they met the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t they? And they fled from it—that’s exactly the point. So, and nevertheless they made the calf! So? But that encounter ceased. What do you mean it ceased? But they worshipped a calf afterward! No, there is a difference between your being in the encounter right now and there being some memory that no longer obligates you. They worshipped a calf within the encounter itself! What are you— No, what is this pilpul? It’s like someone gives you a slap, okay? So in the moment of the pain you can’t tell him it doesn’t hurt. You can tell him it doesn’t hurt if it doesn’t hurt—that’s all. What? There is no such thing as someone getting slapped and at the moment of impact it not hurting. Of course there is—if you disconnect his nerves, it won’t hurt. Fine, doesn’t matter. But I wasn’t speaking about the place of experience, a state of experience. You can’t deny an experience while it’s happening. You can’t deny an experience, but there are positions. You’re mixing things up here. A person has a different position from yours. He says: God created the world, God revealed Himself at Mount Sinai, God gave the Torah—and that doesn’t obligate me. That’s it. That’s what he thinks. Fine? That’s it. Now you, as a paternalist, tell him, what do you mean, it can’t be that you think that way, because after all I think differently. You think differently, but he thinks differently from you. That’s all. What are you saying? You’re basically saying— No, that’s something completely different. What do you mean something completely different? He believes in the God you believe in, and he says it does not obligate! No, then he does not believe in the same God. What do you mean he does not believe in the same God? He believes in a God whose commands do not obligate. What difference does it make whether it’s the same God or not the same God? Now you tell him that since your healthy logic says that if God commands then it obligates, the fact that he thinks not means he is mistaken. That’s all. That doesn’t mean what he says is legitimate—he is simply mistaken. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says the same thing to you. You do not recognize that a property right may not be violated? Then you are mistaken. So what if you don’t recognize it? Why? Why should I—why am I mistaken? Because you are mistaken because the intellect says yes. Not true. Okay, not true in your eyes—he also tells you not true. No, this matter of a property right—I’m asking you beyond that, where does the right come from? There is no such thing as “where does the right come from.” When you justify something in an argument, the argument is always based on a premise, right? There is no conclusion you can reach without a premise. Okay. Now a premise— This is not Maimonides, this is the truth. Now when you begin from a premise, how do you justify it? I take it as a premise and continue from there. Now I ask: how do you justify the premise? Of what I’m saying right now? No, in general. Okay. How do you justify it? You can’t justify it. You can’t justify it. So that means you can’t convince anyone even with arguments, right? If we don’t have the same premise, right. Okay. So now, do you conclude from that that there is no mistaken and no correct in any dispute? That you can’t come with claims against someone and say you are mistaken? Because he has different premises. What’s the problem? I can try to persuade him of my premises. Did you persuade him? You didn’t succeed. Now what? Is he mistaken or not mistaken? From his perspective he’s right. What do you mean from his perspective? Is he mistaken or not mistaken? From my perspective he is mistaken. What do you mean from your perspective? What is the truth? What is this? No—come on—is there an absolute truth? Yes, of course there is truth. Obviously one person is right and one person is mistaken. Exactly! That’s all. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: the absolute truth is—you may not accept it, but he says—the absolute truth is that there are property rights and we must respect them independently of “do not steal.” Where does he get that from? I would ask him—I ask you, Rabbi Shimon—where does he get that from? Wait, wait, ask him—he already passed away, you won’t be able to ask him. But he says it—that’s what he says. Now, you do not agree with him. Fine, legitimate. You are mistaken, but it’s legitimate. Fine. Now, he separates me from him. It’s exactly the same thing as that person you are arguing with who does not accept the authority of the Holy One, blessed be He. That doesn’t mean he has no claim against you. By the way, he proves it from Talmudic passages and so on and gives proofs. Jewish law assumes this. Not only Rabbi Shimon. That there are obligations not connected to the Torah. Without a command of the Torah, they obligate us. Now he asks about that. Yes. Rabbi, even if there is something that is prior to the Torah, it is connected in an immediate way to God. And by virtue of the fact that we received Torah and there is someone in it who obligates, then one can also see that as a command. No, no—and from that side which obligates, no. There is no command whatsoever that obligates this. There is no command whatsoever that obligates this. There is such a concept as an unwritten command. What is a command? An unwritten command. From where? You invent commands and then put it into “an unwritten command”? What is an unwritten command? No, like for example, if someone did not do it we would punish him, we would be angry with him. Why? Now you’re giving me the consequence; I’m asking you about the reason, not the consequence. Conscience is the source of all values. Okay, exactly. Excellent question. So I’m saying: if there is God who is the source of all these things, then obviously there are values that preceded the Torah and they obligate. But I’m saying: without a command in the Torah, without a command in the Torah, property rights have legal standing. Whether the source of that is the Holy One, blessed be He, or not—that’s another discussion; maybe yes. But without a command in the Torah, property rights have standing. That’s what he claims. Why maybe? Now he asks about that: why should one obey it if there is no command of the Torah? And to that he answers: because if the intellect obligates—if what grounds keeping the Torah is that the intellect obligates it—then if the intellect obligates something else, that too must be kept. Or in other words: what determines what should be kept is not the Torah at all, but the intellect. And even what the Torah commands, what I keep, is because the intellect says one should keep what the Torah commands. Meaning, you shouldn’t explain to me that one must keep what the intellect says because the Torah expects me to keep what the intellect says—it works the other way around. I must keep what the Torah says because the intellect says that one must keep what the Torah says. The intellect is the supreme standard, not the Torah. How does the intellect say what? It’s a primary intuition, let’s call it that. Fine? If your intellect does not say that, you won’t obey. But the reason people obey the Torah is that from their standpoint the intellect says that if the Torah commands, one should obey. And whoever does not accept that, of course does not obey. Ah, the intellect. Right, but that doesn’t—there is no difference—so what can you even argue about? I understand. Exactly the point. What I said earlier: when you talk about intellect, you always picture intellect to yourself as some argument. I raise an argument and the conclusion is proven on the basis of the argument, and that’s what is called that the intellect says it. But the argument itself is based on premises. I once asked students what is more correct in geometry, axioms or theorems? Theorems have proofs; axioms don’t. Which is more correct? What do you mean more correct? But the theorems rest on the axioms, don’t they? Right. So that means the theorems are obviously not more correct than the axioms. Because what is a proof? A proof is to establish the theorems on the axioms, right? Meaning that in the end all the things you think are true by force of argument, by force of proof, begin from things that you know are true intuitively, without proof. Or in other words: in the final analysis, everything you think is true begins from intuition. There is an intuition that it is true. That’s it. And someone who does not have that intuition—you will never succeed in convincing him. Because that intuition is the basis for the premises from which you derive the conclusion. If he does not accept the premises because he does not have that intuition, he also will not accept the conclusion. So every intellectual argument begins from principles that cannot be justified, from intuitions. That’s it. Now, when we say that the intellect obligates keeping what the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, that does not mean I have an argument that proves it. You ask on what basis? There is no “on what basis.” Like you said earlier: someone who understands what God is understands that if He commands, one must keep it. Why? I don’t know how to formulate it and prove it. It’s a premise, it’s something obvious. Whoever sees it is supposed to understand it. There are many people who don’t understand it, we know that—I told you earlier. Right, so they are mistaken, what can you do. But I would say they don’t understand at all what God is. Ah. Now I really want to say something stronger than that, actually, and that’s the next step. It seems to me where this comes from: after all, the concept of God in the Torah implies in many places— Why is a judge called “god”? Because what the judge says has to be done. “God” is a factor that has formal authority, such that if he says something I need to obey. That is called God. Okay, now when I say I believe in God, it is not enough to say I believe in God who created the world, or that there is such an entity that created the world, or gave the Torah, or something like that. That is not called believing in God. Who took the Jewish people out of Egypt—all that is not called God. God means that there is a factor whose word must be obeyed. That is called God. Now, someone who believes that there is a God who created the world, and gave the Torah, and took the Jewish people out of Egypt, and whatever else you want, but does not believe that what He commands must be kept—he really does not believe in God. He believes in something else; I don’t know exactly what, that created the world, gave the Torah, and took us out of Egypt. Belief in God—when you understand the concept God—built into that very thing is that this is a factor whose word must be obeyed. That is what is called believing in God. Someone who does not believe that—as you said earlier, and on this I completely agree—simply does not believe in God. He believes in some other factor that is not God, something else. Therefore when you ask me, when you tell me: I believe in God, but why do I need to obey Him? Then I answer: you do not believe in God. It’s like saying: I believe it is immoral to murder, but why really not murder? If you ask such a question, you simply do not understand what “immoral” means. “It is immoral to murder” means not to murder, that one must not murder. You can’t say: I know it’s immoral to murder, but why really not murder? That means you do not understand the concept of morality, you do not really accept the concept of morality. Maybe you don’t understand the definition of—it’s just that for some reason all those millions of people in the world do say, “I believe in God and I don’t accept what He says.” It’s not a question of understanding or not understanding; it’s semantics. Define it differently—don’t call Him God, call Him Kompoken, what do I care? But what I call God is a factor such that His commands must be kept. Someone who believes in a God who created the world but does not think that His commands must be kept simply does not believe in what I call God. Let him call it God, I don’t care; then I’ll call mine Moshe. But he does not believe in what I call God. That’s all. Fine? Meaning, therefore when someone asks me, comes to me and says, “You believe in God, but why keep His commandments?” then I tell him: you probably don’t understand what you mean when you use the phrase “you believe in God.” You simply don’t understand what that means. There is a well-known line: the God you imagine for yourself is not the God that—how do they say it? In that God I also do not believe. In that God I also do not believe. Meaning, the claim is that there are certain kinds of things—I don’t know—think about Abraham our forefather at the binding. The Holy One, blessed be He, appeared to him and said: “Take your son, your only one, whom you love, and offer him up on one of the mountains.” Fine? So people ask why he obeyed. What do you mean why he obeyed? Maybe it was a deceptive demon, maybe it wasn’t God but, I don’t know, some hallucination Abraham thought—there is excellent evidence that it was a hallucination, both logically and morally. Logically, the Holy One, blessed be He, told him “through Isaac shall your seed be called.” If I now kill Isaac, how will the divine promise be fulfilled? That is a logical contradiction. And morally, of course—how could it be that the Holy One, blessed be He, expects me to kill my son for nothing, with no wrong in his hand, just like that? So all the considerations point in the direction that the obvious conclusion is that it was a hallucination. So then why did Abraham obey? There are, by the way, commentators I once saw who claim that Abraham failed the test of the binding. He should have refused. The fact that he obeyed was a failure. Well, that may be a bit much—maybe in his own case he was annoying everyone. Give me the commentator—which commentator? Some Sephardi commentators; there’s an article by Avi Ravitzky that brings them, I don’t remember at the moment. I struggled with this question a lot. The only really satisfying answer I found is that this was a supra-conscious knowledge beyond the intellect, something that— Right, so I don’t call it supra-conscious perhaps, nor beyond the intellect, but the same idea. Think of an example I once heard from the Chabad repeater. He came—I studied— Yes, the one who repeated the Rebbe’s talks after the Sabbath before they were written down, Rabbi Yitzchak Kahan. He stayed with us in the yeshiva in Yeruham. I studied in the yeshiva in Yeruham, so he stayed with us there, I hosted him, and he gave a talk there to the guys. He told them: listen, take a parable. Two people, one sighted and one blind, enter a room. They see that it’s full of furniture, packed with furniture. The blind one feels around, and the other—and the other sees. Sighted not in the sense of smart, sighted in the sense that he sees. Now they sit outside, they go outside, lock the door, sit with a chair against the door. There’s no entrance, no exit, no windows, nothing, right? They sit on the door. After an hour the sighted one goes into the room and says: Yankele, you won’t believe it—a completely empty room, not a single piece of furniture. He says to him: that can’t be. I have a logical proof. After all, we went in earlier—the room was packed with furniture. There’s no entrance to the room except the door, and we ourselves were sitting on it. Nobody passed through there, certainly no one removed furniture. So clearly the room is full of furniture. What’s there to prove? There is a logical proof. Right. So what will the sighted man do with that? What will he do with it? After all, there is a logical proof; he also agrees there is a logical proof here, right? Will he think there is furniture in the room or that there isn’t? When he sees there isn’t—when he sees, he’ll first try to find a reason somehow, maybe why—he didn’t find one, there isn’t. So he—what would a reasonable person in that situation say? Is there furniture in the room or not? Obviously not—he sees there isn’t. What about the logical proof? I don’t know, something happened here, I have no idea, the furniture evaporated, someone made a tunnel, I don’t know—I see there isn’t furniture, don’t tell me stories. Okay? But what will the blind one do now with what the sighted one tells him? He won’t believe him. If he’s blind from birth, for example, then he doesn’t even know what seeing means. What is this sense you call sight? It probably confuses you, because I have a logical proof that it isn’t true—therefore he won’t believe, and it’s obvious to him that the room is full of furniture. Right? Meaning there is a knot here that cannot be bridged, because one cannot explain to the other why he is convinced he’s right. The sighted one cannot explain to the blind one, “Listen, if I see then it’s definitely true”—that’s not—you don’t understand what sight is, but if you did understand, you would understand that if I see then it is definitely true. Isn’t that a bit like a crazy person too? What? Along the same lines. A person who— Yes, it’s like Rabbi Nachman’s story, by the way, speaking of Rabbi Nachman, about writing on their hand with the crazy grain, yes? We are sane. The point is that with Abraham our forefather at the binding, Abraham heard the Holy One, blessed be He, speaking to him and saying, “Take your son, your only one, whom you love, and offer him up.” Now we have lots of logical proofs that this cannot be the Holy One, blessed be He, but he saw, he met Him. Now of course I have never experienced prophecy; the Holy One, blessed be He, has never revealed Himself to me, in my many sins. Okay? Since that is so, I have all sorts of difficulties—I’m the blind one in this game, yes? I have difficulties and logical proofs that this can’t be, and how did Abraham even listen to this, why didn’t he think it was just fantasy or a hallucination or something like that. But Abraham our forefather was not persuaded by all these arguments, because he met and heard the Holy One, blessed be He, and it was obvious to him that the Holy One, blessed be He, said this to him. Difficulties? Excellent. Wonderful difficulties. He has no answer, but he heard the Holy One, blessed be He, say it to him, and therefore he did it. Now in that sense it’s the same thing here too. You have lots of questions from the outside about why I keep commandments. Fine, so God commanded—you convinced me—there was the revelation at Mount Sinai, God created the world, took them out of Egypt, commanded, everything is fine, revealed Himself at Sinai—but why do you obey? Because He said. So what if He said? So He said—another decree—so what if He said? You can’t explain to a person who doesn’t understand what God is, who understands intellectually that there is someone who created the world and took them out of Egypt—it doesn’t matter whether he accepts it or not, but he understands my framework—but when I tell him there is such a factor, that what He says I must obey because He is God in the essential sense, he has no idea what I want from him. He is blind regarding that thing. He doesn’t grasp that concept. Rabbi, so what about us, who in fact have also never prophesied? Wait, one second, one second. So because of that, he doesn’t understand that when I tell him, “Listen, if God commands, one has to fulfill it,” that this is logical. Not just that it isn’t illogical; it is logic itself. You’re just blind. You’ve never encountered this concept, you’ve never experienced it, so you don’t know. That’s all. So I am not impressed by his proofs or disproofs, because for me God is someone whose commands one must fulfill. When I ask myself why keep the commands of God, the answer is: just because. That’s all. But “just because” in two different senses. There is “just because” in the arbitrary sense—because I feel like it, no reason, no logic, no reason, I felt like it, I decided. And there is “just because” in the sense that it is self-evident; it requires no further justification. It is “just because” of a different kind. Our axioms—if you ask why two parallel lines do not meet, an axiom of geometry—the answer is: that’s just how it is. What do you mean why? Because someone who sees, who looks and sees, understands that two parallels do not meet. But I have the ability to come and meet in the matter. What does “meet” mean? You can’t really, because you haven’t gone all the way with those two parallel lines and seen that they don’t meet. Yes, true, but I can understand the logic. Fine—understanding that logic, that’s exactly the unmediated encounter I’m speaking about. And when I ask why keep commandments, there is no answer. The answer is: that’s how it is. But that is not “that’s how it is” in the arbitrary sense, because I feel like it. What, I kill you because I feel like it? One second. Rather, it is “that’s how it is” in the sense that if you understand what the concept God is, then it is self-evident to you that if He commands, one must obey. It simply follows from the concept itself. It’s like someone who doesn’t have the moral sense—he doesn’t understand what morality is, that whole department in his brain is disconnected. Okay? Now you tell him: listen, murder is forbidden, it’s immoral, or stealing is forbidden, or one must help another. He doesn’t understand what you want from him. I understand that you have such a category called morality, and forbidden and permitted. Fine—but why do it? He doesn’t understand that the concept morality itself is not just a neutral category. Okay, morality says that murder is forbidden, that this is permitted, that this is forbidden—but why should I keep it? Morality is a loaded category. It is not neutral. If it says something, that also means that I need to act this way, or not act that way. The same is true of obedience to God. Obedience to God does not require justifications outside of it. Because if I bring a justification for it, then that justification—now I’ll ask why that one? After all, you can always ask why, right? I bring you a justification; I justify principle A by means of principle B. And you say, okay, and why is principle B correct? Ah, because of C. And why is C correct? Because of D. Where will you stop? So why did you say— One second. You stop at the same place that is self-evident, that does not require justification, right? You can’t keep going with this infinitely. So where do you stop? You stop at the same place that is self-evident, that does not require justification. But that “that’s how it is” is not “that’s how it is” in the arbitrary sense, but rather in the sense of self-evident, requiring no justification. Okay? Now it may be that someone else does not accept this. For me that is a kind of blindness. I may not be able to explain to him why I’m right, but it is a kind of blindness, just as the sighted person cannot explain to the blind person why he is right. What can you do? I can’t explain it—he doesn’t see what I see. Okay? So the search for the question why keep commandments will always end with the answer: that’s how it is. That’s how it is—because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded, and what He commanded must be kept. Therefore I say: this is commandment-observance not in the sense that it does good in the world, not in the sense that I love Him, fear Him, or all kinds of things. No—simply because that’s how it is. Because when God commands, one must keep it. Besides that, maybe it also does good things, everything is fine, all true—but that is not the fundamental reason why I keep them. The fundamental reason why I am supposed to keep them is that a divine command is binding by virtue of being a divine command. That’s it. There is no better answer than that; there is no other answer than that. Yes. So what would you say to someone who doesn’t have that primary intuition? I have nothing to say to him. There are ways—I would say literary, rhetorical ways—to try to bring him into that feeling, to try to show him things from my angle, and then sometimes I can convince him. But that’s like every argument. What do you do in an argument when people start from different premises? People think you throw up your hands, but that isn’t true. You can persuade even in that situation. Because people think that the only tool of persuasion is logic, but that isn’t true. There is a collection of tools called rhetoric. Rhetoric is not a synonym for demagoguery. Demagoguery is all the manipulations, no? Demagoguery is distortions. Rhetoric is means of persuasion that are closer to literature than to logic. Meaning, I try to get you to look at things from another angle, and suddenly maybe you’ll feel what I feel and understand that I’m right. It’s not a logical argument through which I can get you there, because our premises are different. I can’t persuade you through logic. But I can bring you to adopt premises that right now you think are incorrect. But why do you think that maybe just because for you it’s obvious—like someone who doesn’t understand, how does he sort of find— I won’t always manage to persuade; sometimes I won’t. Fine, then no. Okay. Through rhetoric maybe I can scratch something of what already exists, awaken it. Where does that come from? It’s a whole doctrine, but I’ll say it briefly. Where do I adopt my own axioms from? Leave others aside. How do I adopt my own axioms? An axiom is what you—something obvious and self-evident, no? Exactly. I have some kind of intuition. I simply contemplate the issue and understand that it is true. Okay? It’s not that I have a logical justification, because it’s an axiom. If I can get him to contemplate the issue in the same way that I contemplate it, then maybe I can persuade him of the axiom the way I myself am convinced. So it’s not by logical tools, just as I myself do not arrive at axioms by logical tools, but rather by some kind of contemplation. Say, I can write a book about it and describe to him what the meaning of faith / belief in God is, or what the meaning of lack of faith / belief in God is. It may be that I’ll succeed in persuading him of the axiom the way I myself am convinced. It’s not by logical tools, just as I myself do not arrive at axioms by logical tools, but by some sort of contemplation. Say, I can write a book about it and describe to him what the meaning of faith / belief in God is or what the meaning of lack of faith / belief in God is, and I’ll succeed in doing it so well that it will bring him into the atmosphere and he’ll suddenly understand that yes, he does accept that axiom. Maybe, I don’t know. Either I’ll succeed or I won’t. But with myself too, that’s how it is. Because if I myself adopt my axioms not through logical arguments, but through a kind of contemplation—intuition, if you like—okay? But ideally, I also heard this from Maimonides—what’s it called—that every commandment has a reason and an explanation and can be grasped by our minds. Meaning, from the very fact that we know God is not stupid—that’s again some paradigm—but they also say about Moses that Moses knew what it was. So in the end, because we will get there, we at least aspire to get there, no? I don’t know—ask yourself whether you aspire or not. I don’t. You don’t aspire to attain knowledge of God entirely? I don’t think it’s possible. In terms of understanding the whole meaning? What? To understand the whole meaning, to understand every commandment, that you can’t understand its whole meaning? Maimonides writes that, I heard the Rabbi here say that Maimonides writes that. Fine. I’m not convinced. No, I was just asking whether you know that. Of course. Maimonides has the reasons for the commandments in part 3 of Guide of the Perplexed; the whole thing is devoted to that. Right. It’s very unconvincing. Rabbi, a question that really interested me this week. We keep—this argument, I know, it’s surely happened a hundred times, a hundred thousand times—does it keep repeating itself or are there new arguments? What? This conversation right now?