Halakhic Thought – 5783 – Lecture 14 – Applying Halakha in Extreme Circumstances
This transcript 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
- Traditional learning, academic research, and a scribal error in Maimonides
- The context of discovery and the context of justification, and their implications for Jewish law
- Halakhic ruling, halakhic truth, and the status of tradition
- Context in halakhic ruling: choosing between options versus changing the law
- Responsa “From the Depths” in the Kovno Ghetto: cooking on the Sabbath and Sabbath-produced food
- “There are no monetary laws in the ghetto”: ownership, loans, and a dead man’s coat
- The “swept away by the sea” rule, a “falling elevator,” and the disappearance of legal categories
- Sha’arei Yosher by Rabbi Shimon Shkop: ownership that precedes the Torah
- A city of refuge, life-saving for the entire Jewish people, and the impossibility of ruling from the outside
- “Mary’s room,” “Rabbi Chaim took the frying pans out of the kitchen,” and the necessity of experience
- Who decides in each mechanism: the questioner or the halakhic decisor
- Modern examples: women’s singing, egalitarian communities, and the distance of the halakhic decisor from what’s happening on the ground
Summary
General Overview
The speaker presents a way of looking at Jewish law through its application in extreme circumstances such as the Holocaust, in order to learn something about Jewish law in general. He argues that traditional Torah study clings to texts and at times ignores the historical context in which the various approaches were formed, whereas academic research explains halakhic approaches מתוך the life circumstances of the halakhic decisors. He adopts the contextual explanation as a context of discovery, but insists that the central halakhic question is the context of justification: does the approach hold up against the sources, and what is its internal logic. From halakhic discussions conducted during the Holocaust, he distinguishes between a situation in which circumstances decide among existing options and a situation in which the circumstances themselves change the structure of the law, and he argues that in such situations only a halakhic decisor who actually experienced the situation can determine the law reliably.
Traditional Learning, Academic Research, and a Scribal Error in Maimonides
Traditional learning clings to sources and draws conclusions from them without necessarily trying to clarify what the author of the text intended, and therefore one gets the sense that sources are being used to build a position rather than being studied for their original meaning. The speaker gives an example from Maimonides in the laws of bailees, about a guardian who guarded properly, where the text we have appears to contradict the Talmud, and he shows how the Maggid Mishneh, Rabbi Chaim, and others build reconciliations with the Talmud. The Kesef Mishneh cites Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, who says this is a scribal error and that a missing word reverses the law, and the speaker asks why one should engage in reconciliations if it is known that the text is corrupt. He argues that even if the source of the discussion is an error, the very fact that a coherent approach was built by commentators creates a halakhic possibility that should be examined on its own terms according to its internal logic.
The Context of Discovery and the Context of Justification, and Their Implications for Jewish Law
The speaker uses the philosophical distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, and gives a scientific example of a theory that arose from a dream in order to show that the source of discovery does not determine whether it is correct; what matters is the test. He argues that the same is true in Jewish law: the question of how an approach came into being is not identical to the question of whether it is justified against the sources and passages. He presents a dispute between Tosafot and the sages of Spain, led by Maimonides, regarding the laws of sanctifying God’s name and self-sacrifice, where Tosafot are stringent and Maimonides is moderate and forbids self-sacrifice where there is no obligation. He accepts the scholarly claim that the circumstances of the Crusades influenced Tosafot and that different circumstances influenced Maimonides, but defines that as context of discovery alone, while traditional learning examines the justification through reading the sources, practical ramifications, and internal logic.
Halakhic Ruling, Halakhic Truth, and the Status of Tradition
The speaker argues that halakhic decisions are made according to a more reasonable reading of the texts, and not necessarily according to an attribution of sanctity that prevents one from saying that an early authority erred. He says that for him, “right” means whom to rule like, even if it may turn out in the heavenly court that he was mistaken, because the Torah was not given to ministering angels. He presents a view according to which Maimonides, for him, is “a book” and not “a person,” and emphasizes that within a traditional framework one may be committed to the received text and not necessarily to what the author personally practiced. He defines tradition as a tool for situations in which the law is weak in a person’s hands and he has no clear position, and he cites the Jerusalem Talmud: “If you do not know, O fairest among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flock and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ dwellings,” but says that when a person does have a position and judgment, he acts according to the best of his understanding.
Context in Halakhic Ruling: Choosing Between Options Versus Changing the Law
The speaker argues that traditional learning can be detached from context, but in halakhic ruling the circumstances enter on two levels. He defines a first level in which reality decides which option to choose among existing halakhic possibilities, such as a pressing circumstance that allows leniency. He defines a second level in which the circumstances themselves change the law and redefine the options, so that this is not a matter of choosing between paths, but rather that the Jewish law in that situation looks fundamentally different. He says he will demonstrate both levels through halakhic discussions from the period of the Holocaust.
Responsa “From the Depths” in the Kovno Ghetto: Cooking on the Sabbath and Sabbath-Produced Food
The speaker presents the responsa “From the Depths” by Rabbi Ephraim Oshry from the Kovno Ghetto and his activity around the “Dvar Avraham,” and describes a question from a Jew who could work in a kitchen and thereby save himself from life-threatening forced labor at the airport, but would have to cook on the Sabbath. The questioner asks whether he is permitted to work cooking on the Sabbath and whether he may eat on the Sabbath from the soup he cooks, in light of the laws governing food produced by Sabbath desecration. The responsum is built through sources on one who cooks on the Sabbath according to the three positions — Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, and Rabbi Yohanan the Sandal-maker — through Maimonides, the Tur, discussions of the amount of time “necessary for it to be done,” and statements of later authorities, and it also brings a consideration of a labor not needed for its own sake, when the cooking is done for rescue rather than for the purpose of cooking itself. The conclusion permits the cooking work and the eating of the soup by him and by others on the basis of coercion and life-saving, and the speaker argues that the learned expansion is meant to illustrate that even within hellish conditions people still act through halakhic reasoning and not through lawlessness, even when the practical outcome stems from the necessity of survival.
“There Are No Monetary Laws in the Ghetto”: Ownership, Loans, and a Dead Man’s Coat
The speaker brings testimony from a series of articles in Yated Ne’eman in the name of Rabbi Gibraltar about his father, who was in the Kovno Ghetto and held that in the ghetto there are no monetary laws and no ownership of property. According to the story, he refused to accept repayment of loans after the Holocaust on the grounds that “it wasn’t my money,” and permitted taking the coat of a person who had died, because there is no inheritance and no property passing to heirs, whereas taking a coat from a living person is defined not as theft but as murder. The speaker notes that a critic claimed this was an incorrect ruling but added that one should not judge it as though they had books and ordinary tools there, and he himself argued in an article that this was a correct position and that he has no way to criticize a halakhic decisor who lived inside the situation. He presents the words of the Chazon Ish about two people walking in the desert, according to which taking a jug of water from the other is not theft but murder and has no dispensation of life-saving, in order to distinguish between monetary law and the laws of life and death even within extreme conditions.
The “Swept Away by the Sea” Rule, a “Falling Elevator,” and the Disappearance of Legal Categories
The speaker proposes an analogy of two people in an elevator falling to their deaths, one of whom asks for a pen in order to write a will, and argues that a person inside such a situation can experience the categories of money and ownership as meaningless. He connects this to the law of something “swept away by the sea,” in which ownership ceases when there is no practical control over the object, and argues that where there is no effective legal system and all property is subject to violent arbitrariness, there are no monetary laws in the practical-halakhic sense. He emphasizes that this is a deeper extension than the “swept away by the sea” rule, because even the one who takes the item does not become a stable owner, since everyone is inside one huge “swept away by the sea” situation. He argues that the absence of a ready-made “halakhic category” does not prove error, because the Jewish law in a pathological situation may differ from what it looks like from the outside.
Sha’arei Yosher by Rabbi Shimon Shkop: Ownership That Precedes the Torah
The speaker describes the conceptual framework he proposed: a thesis of Rabbi Shimon Shkop in Sha’arei Yosher, Gate 5, that the laws of ownership are created in the legal sphere of society, and only after concepts of acquisition exist does the Torah command, “Do not steal.” According to this framework, when there is no society or effective system that recognizes ownership and enforces it, there are no property laws, and accordingly there is no “Do not steal” in its ordinary sense, nor are there laws built on ownership, such as loans. He says that this conceptualization is meant to explain the testimony of a halakhic decisor who experienced the reality, not to replace the testimony itself.
A City of Refuge, Life-Saving for the Entire Jewish People, and the Impossibility of Ruling from the Outside
The speaker cites the Mishnah in Makkot 11b, which rules that one who killed unintentionally may not leave the city of refuge even if “all Israel need him like Joab son of Zeruiah,” and presents this as a law that seems impossible to apply in a situation where, for example, there is a danger of general annihilation. He argues that no halakhic decisor would forbid leaving the city of refuge in order to save everyone from a bomb, because inside the situation one understands that the theoretical categories necessarily give way to practical necessity. He describes this as the difference between conceptual truth and practical necessity, similar to the statement that “an eye for an eye” is an idea that in practice translates into monetary compensation.
“Mary’s Room,” “Rabbi Chaim Took the Frying Pans Out of the Kitchen,” and the Necessity of Experience
The speaker cites the thought experiment “Mary’s room,” in which an expert in optics knows all the theory but has never experienced colors until she leaves the room, in order to argue that there is knowledge that cannot be attained without experience. He uses the expression about Rabbi Chaim that he “took the frying pans out of the kitchen” to describe theoretical learning that is detached from the reality of life, and argues that someone who does not know the reality cannot issue a halakhic ruling about it, because all of his theoretical categories may simply not fit. He concludes that regarding the ghetto, someone sitting outside with a theory of monetary law does not understand the reality and therefore may err in halakhic ruling, whereas a halakhic decisor who lived there can determine that the law itself changes.
Who Decides in Each Mechanism: the Questioner or the Halakhic Decisor
The speaker determines that in the first mechanism, where the circumstances only decide among existing options, the halakhic decisor presents the questioner with the options and their halakhic and spiritual costs, and the actual choice is left to the questioner according to his situation and fear of Heaven. He determines that in the second mechanism, where the circumstances change the law itself, the decision must be made by a halakhic decisor who has experienced the situation, because an ordinary person may mix in “the desires of the heart” and confuse a feeling of need with Jewish law. He says that if such a halakhic decisor testifies that in a certain situation “there are no monetary laws,” that testimony is a datum that must be explained, not dismissed from the outside.
Modern Examples: Women’s Singing, Egalitarian Communities, and the Distance of the Halakhic Decisor from What’s Happening on the Ground
The speaker argues that the principle is not limited to the Holocaust, but applies to any situation that is so far from the world of the halakhic decisor that he does not understand the experience. He gives the example of ruling on hearing a female singer, where the argument depends on whether the prohibition is formal or related to illicit thoughts. He says that if the prohibition depends on the experiential effect, a halakhic decisor who has never experienced the situation may attribute the wrong motives and rule incorrectly, and therefore it is proper for him not to rule for others in a reality he does not know. He applies this as well to discussions about women being called up to the Torah or customs in an egalitarian community, and argues that a conservative halakhic decisor who does not live the atmosphere should not rule for another community, but should leave it to a rabbi who lives within it, even if he is younger and less of a Torah scholar. He cites Rabbi Beni Lau as saying that the problem in recent generations is the transfer of leadership from community rabbis to heads of yeshivot, because yeshiva heads tend to build theoretical towers and are less connected to the public’s real-life distress.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s a certain aspect or way of relating to Jewish law that comes up out of discussion of topics connected to Jewish law during the Holocaust. So simply because it’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, I’m going to use the opportunity to focus on that aspect.
[Speaker B] What’s our topic today, Rabbi?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying this is extra-territorial, meaning: a look at Jewish law through, say, its application in extreme circumstances. Okay? But it’ll teach us something about Jewish law in general; the extreme circumstances are just the starting point. In principle, traditional learning, traditional Torah study, clings to the sources. You know, sources — you draw conclusions from them — but in a somewhat paradoxical way, I’d even say, it doesn’t really strive to discover what the source meant. So very often you get criticism from the academic world about traditional learning: why aren’t you looking at the context? Why aren’t you comparing manuscripts, using philological considerations, checking what the author of the text actually meant? So on the one hand you cling to the sources, but on the other hand sometimes there’s a feeling that you’re using the sources, not studying the sources. And you’re using the sources in order to formulate your own position. Because if you were interested in what Maimonides meant, then check his responsa, work with manuscripts, see whether maybe there was a corruption in the printing, and then you’d discover more reliably what Maimonides meant. Instead, when you have a difficulty between Maimonides and the Talmud, you build an entire conceptual edifice to reconcile it, when it may just be a simple mistake, a scribal error.
[Speaker C] It’s like that story with the Kuzari, where there was some passage omitted from many versions in various countries because it was problematic — I think in Muslim countries, I’m not sure — there was some passage they left out, and then many, many rabbis who saw the Kuzari and received it from their teachers as it stood tried to explain why there was some difference between the Muslim and the Jew, or whatever it was.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In short, omissions like that can definitely lead to errors, and so there is something to this criticism — that traditional learning kind of ignores the context, ignores even the text in certain senses, or the meaning of the text. You cling to the text as it stands. That’s basically the… the best example of this is Maimonides in the laws of lender and borrower, I think — no, I don’t think it’s there, I don’t remember anymore. He says something… ah, no, it’s probably in the laws of hiring, somewhere in the laws of bailees. Maimonides says there that if the guardian guarded the animal entrusted to him properly, and therefore he’s exempt if the animal caused damage, then payment is collected from the owner. Now that’s against the Talmud. The Talmud says that for purposes of monetary damages, the “owner” is the guardian. If the guardian is exempt, then that’s it, he’s exempt; the owner handed it over to the guardian, and the guardian is now the one they sue for damages, and if he’s exempt then he’s exempt. So the Maggid Mishneh asks this, and other commentators too. The Maggid Mishneh gives some answer, and Rabbi Chaim gives answers, and all kinds of people give answers on this Maimonides against the Talmud. The Kesef Mishneh there says that Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides cites his father as saying that it’s a scribal error. It’s a mistake — the word “not” is missing there. It’s simply reversed, meaning they do not collect from the owner, not that they do. Something like that; I don’t remember the exact details, it just came to me now. So basically the claim is: the Maggid Mishneh is sixteenth century, Rabbi Chaim is late nineteenth to twentieth century — he knew the Kesef Mishneh. So why are you reconciling this Maimonides with the Talmud if you know the whole thing is just a scribal error? So the claim I once wanted to make in an article I wrote about the academic method versus the yeshiva or traditional method, the claim was that yes, a scribal error ultimately brought this text into being as what it is, but the fact is that when the Maggid Mishneh read this text he proposed a reconciliation of this text with the Talmud. Right? So from his standpoint such an approach can exist. Of course that would never have happened had this error not fallen into the manuscript of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. But the error did happen, and now the Maggid Mishneh offers a reconciliation, meaning that in his eyes this is a possible approach. I don’t know whether he rules that way or not; that’s another discussion. I’m not talking about practical Jewish law right now, just about whether there is any point in dealing with such an approach at all. So this is a possible approach, and therefore I study the approach of the Maggid Mishneh. What difference does it make whether it came to me, or was created, because of a printing error in a manuscript of Maimonides? Okay? It’s a possible approach, and we need to examine the Maggid Mishneh’s approach, whether this answer really holds water, whether this approach is possible or impossible. It has to be checked on its own terms. What do I care how it rolled into being? There’s a difference between how an approach is created and whether it has internal logic. You know, in philosophy of science they distinguish between the context of discovery and the context of justification. What’s the difference? When you come up with some theory — let’s say some person thought of a new scientific theory, and they ask him, “Wow, interesting idea, where did it come from?” “My grandmother appeared to me in a dream and told me that in her opinion gravity is GMM over r squared.” Okay, interesting — that’s the context of discovery. Should that interest me? Yes or no — you haven’t checked yet, you don’t know. But should it interest me? The claim of Hans Reichenbach and other philosophers of science is: no. What do I care? The question is whether it stands up in the context of justification. What do I care about the context of discovery? What do I care how he discovered the theory? What matters is whether the theory stands up to empirical testing. And if his grandmother appeared to him in a dream and revealed a correct theory, then why should I care that it came from his grandmother? And if the theory isn’t correct, then again I don’t care whether it was his grandmother or not. It’s not correct because it doesn’t pass the empirical test. Okay? So there’s a very big difference between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The context of discovery belongs to psychology, and the context of justification belongs to science or philosophy. There you need to check whether the theory is true or not. The source of the theory is irrelevant to the question of whether it’s true or false. You might say that if it came to him from his grandmother in a dream, then it’s not worth my investing effort to check whether it’s true or not, because chances are it’s nonsense. Fine, that’s a claim I’m willing to hear. But on the principled level there’s no reason a theory can’t be true even if it was revealed to you in a dream. That just doesn’t matter. There’s a difference between the context of discovery and the context of justification. My claim is that in Jewish law too it works the same way. Let’s say there’s a dispute between Tosafot and the sages of Spain, mainly Maimonides, regarding the laws of sanctifying God’s name and self-sacrifice. It’s known that Tosafot, the sages of France, right? the Ashkenazic sages — they were very stringent in this area regarding life-saving and desecration of God’s name: that one is obligated to give up one’s life, and allowed to do so even when it’s not one of the three cardinal sins, and they have a very extreme position toward self-sacrifice. And the sages of Spain, with Maimonides at their head, take the opposite position: that it is forbidden to sacrifice one’s life in any case where one is not obligated. Period. And systematically you see a more moderate position. Now when scholars look at this, they usually attribute it to the circumstances in which those sages operated. The sages of France functioned in the circumstances of the Crusades. In the context of the Crusades, there was a need to raise the walls high and tell people not to give in, not to compromise, to sacrifice themselves — because that’s how they thought one should deal with the challenges of the time. And the sages of Spain had better periods and worse periods, but not with the extremity of the Crusades, and therefore their position is more moderate. That’s the academic-research perspective; it’s a contextual perspective, right? You interpret the halakhic position out of the context in which it was formed. Okay? Now the traditional learning approach ignores this. There’s the approach of Tosafot and the approach of Maimonides, and you try to examine them through the Talmudic passages, reconcile the different topics, find practical ramifications, find the internal logic in each position. You ignore the fact that this one was born during the Crusades and that one in a calmer place and time. Okay? Does that mean the academic scholars are wrong? Usually when a traditional learner encounters this academic claim, he says: no, absolutely not — the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are fiery angels above, exalted beings; they aren’t influenced by their surroundings at all, only by their thoughts in the upper worlds; it’s just they and the ideas. The world around them is dead. Like Hershele — you remember Hershele? He goes into a bakery — not a restaurant, sorry — and asks to buy something, sits down to eat. Someone comes up to him and says, “Hershele, shalom aleichem.” Hershele had come from some other town. “How’s so-and-so?” “Dead.” “What?” “And how’s so-and-so?” “Dead.” He sits and eats. “What is this, everyone died? Tell me, did everybody die there?” He said to him, “When I eat, everything is dead.” So the claim is that… the apologetic claim of the traditional learner is that the research is mistaken; it’s not true; the medieval authorities weren’t influenced by their environment; their positions stem from spiritual conceptions, and these have one conception and those another. It’s some kind of Platonic dispute, you could say — not exactly Platonic in the earlier sense, but some kind of dispute in the world of ideas, unrelated to the practical world around them. But of course that’s nonsense. Obviously the world had an influence. And still that doesn’t mean I have to go with the scholars. Why? Not because they’re wrong — they may be right. It’s very plausible and logical to me that Tosafot’s approach was influenced by the fact that they lived during the Crusades, and that Maimonides’ approach was influenced by the environment in which he lived. That sounds very reasonable to me. But the question is what I am supposed to do with that statement — that’s the question under dispute. Understand that if I take the contextual explanation all the way, then it comes out that there are no disputes in Jewish law. No disputes in Jewish law. I ask myself now: what is the Jewish law? I’m in certain circumstances — what’s the law? Should I sacrifice my life or not? It depends. If these circumstances are like the Crusades, then I should go with Tosafot. If these circumstances are like Maimonides, then I should go with Maimonides. So in fact there is no dispute between Tosafot and Maimonides; they’re simply talking about different circumstances, and in each kind of circumstance the law is what suits those circumstances. So the dispute between Tosafot and Maimonides isn’t really a dispute at all; it’s just different halakhic rulings because the circumstances are different. Now of course I’m exaggerating, but if you take it all the way, that’s what it means: everything is a result of context; there really are no disputes. And then I’m not supposed to discuss Maimonides’ approach against Tosafot’s at all, to compare them with the Talmudic passages. That’s not interesting. The question is what context I’m in, and from that I derive my conclusions. But that’s not right. The claim is — my claim — that even though the scholars are right, or may be right, and it really is a product of the circumstances in which the sages acted, still that is only the context of discovery, not the context of justification. Meaning: the way Tosafot arrived at their approach was because it was a response to the Crusades. But once they set out that approach, now there is an approach in Jewish law here, with some internal logic that I need to examine, to see whether it fits the passages, to see what its implications are, and to decide what I think about it. Same with Maimonides’ approach. Therefore the fact that they arrived at it through circumstances does not mean that the circumstances are now the explanation of the approach. They are not the explanation of the approach. They are the context of discovery of the approach. But I ask: what is the context of justification? Is the approach correct — not how was it discovered. You understand that this is exactly the same distinction as in philosophy of science. So basically what I’m claiming is that the scholars offer the context of discovery, and the traditional learner deals with the context of justification. And therefore you don’t need to assume the scholars are wrong in order to ignore what they say. Not that you have to ignore it, but if you decide to ignore it, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to say they’re wrong. No — even if they’re right, I ignore it. I ignore it because I don’t care how Tosafot got to this approach. They got to it because the Crusades influenced them one way or another, but now there is an approach here. And this approach has to be checked: is it logical or not? Does it stand up against the passages or not? Just like with Maimonides and the Maggid Mishneh. What do I care how this approach was born? But once they set out this approach, does it hold water from their standpoint? If so, that means they had some reasoning on the matter, they had some—
[Speaker B] some conception in the context of sanctifying God’s name, and that’s an approach; it has to be examined.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And it’s a different approach from that of Maimonides, and I’m going to check who’s right, and according to the question of who’s right I’ll decide what I need to do — not according to whether my circumstances are like Maimonides’ or like Tosafot’s. But how can you say someone is right if in the end it’s based on some kind of intuition like that? So it’s an intuition, but I can check it against the sources, see whether it fits or doesn’t fit. It’s a kind of reading of the texts, this argument. And I can now decide which reading sounds more reasonable to me. That’s my decision. So if Maimonides’ reading sounds more reasonable, then I’ll rule like him; if Tosafot, then I’ll rule like them. It doesn’t have to be an explicit error against a Mishnah. There’s a reading here that seems more reasonable to me, so I probably think more like Tosafot than like Maimonides.
[Speaker F] And that doesn’t mean Maimonides isn’t right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right in my opinion — “right” is always in my opinion. I don’t know what the Holy One, blessed be He, thinks; you’d have to ask Him. When I say “right,” I mean for me — whom should I rule like in Jewish law.
[Speaker B] You understand better.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I use “right” because as far as I’m concerned he’s also right. Maybe I’m wrong too — ask the Holy One, blessed be He. When I talk about “right,” I’m talking about what I think. I’m not afraid to say that Maimonides was mistaken — and that’s what I’m trying to bring out. But sometimes people say, “I’m not saying I’m right, I’m saying that’s what I think.” No. In my opinion Maimonides was mistaken — in my opinion he was mistaken. It could be that I’m also mistaken about that, okay? But if in my opinion he was mistaken, then as far as I’m concerned Tosafot were right, and I rule like them. When I get to the heavenly court and Maimonides shows me what I missed — that could happen.
[Speaker B] But anyone with a bit of sense would never say something is absurd, and there are—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forced interpretations — no,
[Speaker B] that’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a mistake. Forced interpretations are a mistake. Because the text didn’t mean that; the fact is there are better interpretations. So that means the text didn’t mean that.
[Speaker B] You’re saying we want to know what the text meant. Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What the text means — not necessarily the context. What the text meant, yes. What’s written in the Talmud, what’s written in the Mishnah, whatever we’re learning — that’s what I want to know. Maimonides has an approach that arranges the passages this way, Tosafot has an approach that arranges the passages that way. I assume neither of them was talking nonsense. So that doesn’t mean both are right. If one gives a more plausible interpretation and the other a more forced interpretation — not absurd, not an explicit error against a Mishnah, but in my view a more forced interpretation — then the first one was right. I ask myself what the text says. It probably says that, because it’s less forced. It doesn’t matter that your interpretation can also fit into the text — lots of things can fit into a text. But if the text intended only one of the two, then I bet it intended the first interpretation and not the second. So—
[Speaker B] What I’m trying to say is, I want to understand what the text says, but not what the people who lived in that period wanted or thought. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For me, Maimonides is a book, not a person. I’m examining Maimonides, the Mishneh Torah. If they bring me witnesses that Maimonides told them what he meant — like Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, who brings in the name of Maimonides that Maimonides is telling us what he meant, namely that it was a scribal error. This is an extreme case, I’m saying again. Obviously I’m presenting it only as an extreme example; I don’t think it’s correct to ignore a scribal error. But, but, but I’m saying that on the principled level, this does represent the traditional learning approach. Traditional learning says: for me this book was accepted, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) dealt with it, so this is an approach in Jewish law. And this is the approach of Maimonides — Maimonides not the man, Maimonides the book. And this is an approach in Jewish law; Maimonides-the-book is an approach.
[Speaker B] Meaning there’s a kind of separation between Maimonides’ life-practice and his book? Between the person and the book. Between the person and the book. Yes. For example—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll give you an example — not an example but an argument. I wrote this in my article.
[Speaker B] In tradition there are a number of places — meaning, if I go and say, let’s say, I know what Maimonides used to do, right? and I see that the Mishneh Torah says something else, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As if between a responsum he wrote… Look, I can’t argue with tradition. I don’t know what your tradition says. If your tradition is to go with Maimonides-the-man, then go with Maimonides-the-man. If your tradition says to go with Maimonides-the-book, then go with Maimonides-the-book. If you don’t know, then you have no tradition. If you tell me you have a tradition—
[Speaker B] For example, so if I want to go both with Maimonides-the-book and with the man?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. Ask them — what do I care? If they don’t know whether to go with Maimonides-the-man or Maimonides-the-book, then you have no tradition about it. Let them do what they want. Think about it: either way, if they have a tradition to go… it’s not circular… why? How is it circular? If Maimonides-the-man and Maimonides-the-book come out… in the Mishneh Torah and in some responsa… no, in my interpretive judgment it comes out that the Mishneh Torah does not say that. Fine? I know Maimonides said such-and-such, but in the Mishneh Torah I see not like that; it says not like that. Now the question is: you say, to which tradition am I committed? That’s an oxymoronic question. I’m committed to whatever tradition I actually follow. Now check whether the tradition tells you to go with the man or with the book. And if it doesn’t tell you whether to go with the man or the book, then you have no tradition, so what’s the dilemma? I don’t think one needs to go with tradition, so I have no problem at all. You should go with what you think. As the Hagashash Hachiver say: I didn’t go with father or mother, I went with the gang. So you have to do what you think. What is tradition? Tradition is what you use when the law has become unclear to you. That’s where it has a place. “If the law is weak in your hands, follow the custom.” The Jerusalem Talmud says: “If you do not know, O fairest among women, go forth in the footsteps of the flock and pasture your kids by the shepherds’ dwellings.” If you don’t know how to decide, you have no position, then tradition has significance, custom has significance — of the community, whatever — because that’s basically the way out when you don’t know. But if you have your own position, do what you think. What do I care about this tradition or that tradition? We talked at the beginning about judgment — you missed it. You said that suppose—
[Speaker B] And you chose to go with this way because this way fits the text better for you; then you get to the heavenly court—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then they prove to you that it’s not correct. So I was mistaken. The Torah was not given to ministering angels. Maimonides too can make a mistake. When he gets to the heavenly court, what will he do if he was mistaken? He’ll say: this was the best I could think — what can I do? Could I have done better than that?
[Speaker B] Seemingly, if a person comes absolutely convinced that one thing is correct and acts accordingly, then you can’t come with claims against him. Right, clearly. Even if he completely disagrees with an explicit Shulchan Arukh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not the Shulchan Arukh — the Torah. Right, obviously. If a person thinks this whole story isn’t true — really, he reached the conclusion that the whole story isn’t true: Mount Sinai, the Holy One, blessed be He, Torah — he doesn’t accept any of the whole business. You can’t come with claims against him.
[Speaker C] Isn’t that a rebellious elder?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not exactly. A rebellious elder is someone who accepts the whole story and argues with the Sanhedrin within the regular give-and-take of Jewish law.
[Speaker C] But if I remember correctly, the rebellious elder is forbidden to instruct others, but for himself he has to act according to what he thinks?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s another discussion, but a rebellious elder isn’t this. The law of the rebellious elder involves other passages. That’s not this case. This case is someone who denies the whole framework, not a rebellious elder. A rebellious elder is someone who is playing the game, but his halakhic conclusion contradicts what the Sanhedrin said.
[Speaker C] Yes, no, so I’m just strengthening the point — that he has to act according to what he thinks.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I’m talking about even more than that. I’m talking about someone who doesn’t accept the whole system of Jewish law at all — not just the Sanhedrin’s instruction. There is no God; be an agnostic, maybe an atheist. Then you can’t come with claims against him — what can you do? That’s what he thinks; he’s coerced by his opinions.
[Speaker B] I want to ask a few more questions because I’m just… what’s the theory here? I’m trying to think this through because it doesn’t quite sit right. If something has to be done, then it has to be done, and if it doesn’t have to be done, then it doesn’t have to be done.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so you’re assuming something — and we also talked about this last semester — you’re assuming that our goal is to do the halakhic truth.
[Speaker B] So I’ll try to sharpen it, because I also spoke with you about this earlier when we were sitting somewhere. I told you: look, most of the day when I find myself occupied with this, it’s “this is forbidden, that is forbidden, that is forbidden,” and now I have to come to prayer, wow, I prayed yesterday at about this time — I do a lot of things because I’m obligated. One hundred percent—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the problem?
[Speaker B] But the question is whether I’m really obligated in it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know — reach a conclusion. If you think you’re not obligated, then you’re not obligated. But doing things because you’re obligated — that’s excellent, that’s exactly what should be done. What’s the problem? You do things because you’re obligated, and that’s it, everything is fine.
[Speaker B] Again, the question is: am I obligated because someone wrote that I’m obligated, or because that’s what the Holy One, blessed be He, expects me to do? No, those aren’t two options, it’s the same option.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the Holy One, blessed be He, expects you to do what someone wrote, then do it. If the Holy One, blessed be He, does not expect you to do what he wrote, then don’t do it. You have to decide.
[Speaker B] That’s a bit hard — what does He expect from me?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. So make your best judgment and reach your own conclusions. And there are my conclusions, but each person has his own conclusions. My conclusions are that some things obligate and some don’t. The Talmud obligates; the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) do not obligate — including the Shulchan Arukh.
[Speaker B] Okay, so if the Talmud obligates, then I need to be very, very proficient in the Talmud in order to rule for myself? Right, okay. And in the context of discovery and the context of justification — what were the terms you used?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Context of discovery and the context of justification.
[Speaker B] And that doesn’t come from religion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s not religious — that’s philosophical terminology. Look it up on Google, I think, search for “context of discovery and context of justification,” and you’ll find it. I don’t remember the Hebrew translation right now. Okay, in any case, to our matter: what I basically want to argue is that there is a certain disconnection from context — in traditional learning there is a certain disconnection from context. But in halakhic ruling, the contextual circumstances still do enter in some sense. What do I mean? Obviously, if I have several halakhic options, then context can cause me to choose one of them. Right? Here context does enter. I’m detached from context when I ask the theoretical question, the conceptual one, right? What picture does Tosafot paint, what picture does Maimonides paint, which of them sounds more reasonable to me. By the way, in that decision of which sounds more reasonable to me, when the scholar comes and studies me, he’ll see that my decision about what sounds more reasonable is probably influenced by the context in which I operated. Good for him. That’s the scholar’s job; it has nothing to do with me. Not because he’s wrong, but because I’m not working on that plane. That’s what I want to say — not because he’s wrong. But there are places where the halakhic decisor himself does take context into account. And that happens in two senses, or on two levels.
[Speaker C] Wait — halakhic ruling? So when I issue a halakhic ruling, well, obviously it’s for a certain reality.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, and reality can also dictate the outcome. How? In two senses, or on two planes. One plane is assuming I have several possible ways to act in the given circumstances. Okay? Then reality—for example, a pressing situation—a pressing situation means you can choose the easier route. One may be lenient in a pressing situation. What does that mean? That the circumstances in which I’m acting are what caused me to choose one option out of the options before me. Okay? Fine, it’s not necessarily only a pressing situation—there are all kinds of considerations, and those considerations are of course considerations that depend on the factual situation, not only on analyzing the Talmudic passages. Right? You don’t ignore the practical situation. Okay? That’s one context: choosing one option from among several. The second context is that there are situations where circumstances change the law itself. When I’m in certain circumstances, it’s not that I have several options and the circumstances—a pressing situation or something like that—cause me to choose one of them; rather, the circumstances themselves determine what the law will be. They change the law. I’ll clarify this more when we get there and I show examples of it. I’ll bring two examples, both taken from halakhic discussions that were conducted around situations in the Holocaust. One example is about an act done on the Sabbath. It’s going to get dark here in the study hall. Why?
[Speaker B] Is it not good here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Didn’t that turn on there?
[Speaker B] That’s really a shame. Did that one turn on there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe that one will warm things up.
[Speaker B] One more moment, yes, everything will be fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There we go. Great. So this is a responsa work—do you know the responsa collection From the Depths? Rabbi Ephraim Oshry—he was in the Kovno Ghetto. In the Kovno Ghetto there was the author of Dvar Avraham, Rabbi Avraham Dov Kahana Shapira. And he—I think this was the uncle, the author of Dvar Avraham Shapira, I think—and he was basically the rabbi of the ghetto; he died there in the ghetto. And Rabbi Oshry accompanied him. He sent him to issue Jewish law rulings on various topics; there were several very prominent Torah scholars there. So Rabbi Oshry wrote—he answered various halakhic questions that people asked there, and afterward, everything had been on scraps of paper and things like that; he certainly didn’t have books, nor pages, nor means. He wrote it in some form, apparently just reminders, and after he came out of the Holocaust—if I remember correctly, he got to the United States—he published it as a book. Five volumes of From the Depths, that’s the name of this responsa collection, and it’s one of the best-known responsa works on halakhic issues that arose during the Holocaust. I want to discuss two cases here that represent the two possibilities I described earlier.
[Speaker B] Rabbi, could you just repeat the two kinds one more time?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One kind is that the circumstances—in this case, say, the Holocaust, extreme circumstances—we spoke about Jewish law in extreme circumstances. We want halakhic rulings in the Holocaust, in the ghetto, the Kovno Ghetto. That can affect things in two ways: one way is that the circumstances dictate which option I choose from among the halakhic options available to me.
[Speaker C] The circumstances dictate the choice, the halakhic ruling.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do I rule? I have five options, four options—which one do I choose as the law? If it’s a pressing situation, I can choose the lenient one. If it’s not a pressing situation, then I’ll be stringent, I don’t know. Various things. That’s an example of circumstances dictating which option I choose. The second possibility means the circumstances determine the options themselves. The law itself is determined by the circumstances. It’s not that there are options. The second possibility means the circumstances determine the options themselves. It’s not that the law itself is determined by the circumstances—rather, it’s not that there are options independent of circumstances and the circumstances cause me to choose one option or another. There is a possibility that the circumstances determine the options, not the choice between them. This will become clearer when I bring the example. Is that the second mechanism?
[Speaker E] No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the circumstances change the options themselves, not the choice between the options. So the first example is of the first mechanism, the mechanism of choice. Here, in this responsum, section 5, it’s about cooking on the Sabbath in the ghetto. He says: “I remember these things and pour out my soul within me”—that’s the question, yes? “For in the days of the accursed evildoers we had no revival. Every single day they would take more than a thousand people out of the ghetto to work them brutally at the airport and torture them with hard labor. And one of my students, Mr. Yaakov—may God avenge his blood,” he was eventually killed in the Holocaust, “came before me deeply distressed with his question. Since he had a possibility of being assigned to work in the kitchen, in the place where the black soup was cooked, made of beans, which the Germans distributed to the Jews together with one hundred grams of bread per day. However, the problem is that there he would be compelled and forced to work at cooking even on the Sabbath. If he goes to work in the kitchen, then he’ll have to cook on the Sabbath. However, by means of this he will be saved from the hard forced labor at the airport, which consumes the soul and breaks the body”—it’s dangerous, yes, you can die from the physical labor—“so it is preferable to cook, because there you can survive; perhaps there is even an element of life-saving here. For since he will be saved from hard and exhausting labor, and he will also be able to eat and satisfy his hungry soul with the black soup as much as he desires,” because he’s actually in the kitchen, “and as a result his body will become stronger and he will be able to endure so that no harm comes to him from the general hunger prevailing in the ghetto. And furthermore he asks whether he himself may eat on the Sabbath from the black soup that he cooks on the Sabbath.” An act done on the Sabbath. So he is under coercion; he cannot simply refrain from cooking, they’ll kill him. Obviously it is permitted to cook. But the question is whether he may eat what he cooked—that is an act done on the Sabbath. Okay? Now the answer. I’m not going to read the whole answer now; it’s fairly long. I just want to show you how it is structured. “In Hullin 15a we read in the Mishnah: One who cooks on the Sabbath unintentionally may eat; intentionally may not eat—these are the words of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yehuda says: if unintentionally, he may eat after the Sabbath; if intentionally, he may never eat it. Rabbi Yochanan the Sandalmaker says: if unintentionally, others may eat it after the Sabbath, but not he himself; if intentionally, it may never be eaten, neither by him nor by others.” The well-known dispute: three tanna’im arguing about an act done on the Sabbath. Then he starts analyzing. Maimonides, in chapter 6 of the laws of the Sabbath, rules this way, but the Tur in section 318 rules that way, and all these great authorities do not mention the requirement of waiting after the Sabbath the amount of time needed to cook it—yes? I just want you to get the flavor; the details aren’t important to me, they’re not important for our purposes. And in Bava Kamma he brings the reasoning of Rabbi Yochanan the Sandalmaker—what’s the source for this? And the Ritva in tractate Ketubot writes that “he may not eat” means he himself may not eat, but for others it is permitted; only Rabbi Yochanan the Sandalmaker alone forbids it even to others. Then he brings the glosses of the Rosh, yes, who wrote that for the one for whom it was cooked, his status is as if he himself had cooked it. If I cooked for someone else, he has the status of the actual cook, not of “others.” Okay? But then “one may not nullify a prohibition from the outset,” and so on. In the book Rosh Yosef it is written: one whom they force to choose one thing—either desecrate the Sabbath or eat prohibited carrion food—should choose desecration of the Sabbath, because desecrating the Sabbath is under coercion, and it is a labor not needed for its own purpose. This is a fascinating argument. If you are cooking because they force you to cook, you are not cooking in order to eat; you are cooking in order to save yourself from being killed. That is a labor not needed for its own purpose. In essence, the cooking is not intended to produce food, but to prevent them from killing you. It somewhat resembles Tosafot in Bava Batra—very hair-splitting, but reminiscent of Tosafot in Bava Batra, which brings a midrash about the wood-gatherer. The wood-gatherer gathered wood for a good reason. He came to teach the Jewish people that although it had been decreed upon them to wander in the wilderness for forty years and not enter the land, all of Jewish law was still in force. They thought the law had already been canceled. No—it was still in force. He acted in order to show them that one is executed for desecrating the Sabbath. So he went and gathered wood in the presence of witnesses and warning, in order that they would kill him. That’s what the midrash says, and Tosafot brings it. And Tosafot asks: wait a second, but that’s a labor not needed for its own purpose, so why did they kill him? After all, he gathered not because he needed the wood, but to teach the Jewish people that one is liable to death for desecrating the Sabbath. So it’s a labor not needed for its own purpose. Why did they kill him? For a labor not needed for its own purpose, one should not be killed—at least according to Rabbi Shimon. Rabbi Yehuda says yes, but according to Rabbi Shimon. So fine, a question, of course—let’s say we’ve seen better questions.
[Speaker B] But here, let’s put it this way: if he doesn’t cook on the Sabbath, he won’t cook and he also won’t eat. Let’s say it raises his chances of survival. If he survives, he’ll be able to be saved and engage more in Torah. So isn’t it preferable that he cook and eat and that way he’ll live?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Did we really need to get to all this hair-splitting? It’s life-saving. That’s everything. Why are you starting to split hairs for me here about an act done on the Sabbath, not an act done on the Sabbath, for others, for himself, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Meir? It’s life-saving. Life-saving. “And you shall live by them.” Right. Rabbi Yosef, I’m getting to that in a second. The words of Rosh Yosef—behold, the Maharshal wrote in Orchot Chaim, doesn’t matter, Jerusalem Talmud, labor not needed for its own purpose, this whole story, Maharik, Chavat Ya’ir—all this issue of labor not needed for its own purpose, many later authorities discuss this story. “And according to this, in our case, where the accursed evildoers were forcing the Jews to do all kinds of hard labor on the Sabbath, and if they did not obey they would kill them with all kinds of deaths and torments, then certainly this coercion is coercion of death, and certainly one must permit these wretched people to desecrate the Sabbath, because the Merciful One exempts one who is coerced.” Coercion—simply a life-threatening danger. “And all the more so because here there is actual mortal danger. And more than that, I saw in the responsa Yad Shalom, who wrote that one who is coerced by the government to desecrate the Sabbath in a Torah-level prohibition, there is room to permit it to him by the power of the Maharik”—and this is the labor not needed for its own purpose, yes yes, all the more so, in short: it’s coercion, labor not needed for its own purpose, there’s no problem at all. Well, not “no problem at all”—it’s a rabbinic prohibition. “And therefore it certainly seems that one should permit the questioner to work at cooking on the Sabbath in the kitchen, for in any event the accursed evildoers were forcing him to work at hard labor at the airport. If so, what difference does it make in what kind of work he will be forced to desecrate the Sabbath? At the airport he wouldn’t be desecrating the Sabbath? What difference does it make if he cooks? They always forced him to work on the Sabbath, so what difference does it make where? And if the other work is cooking, in any case he will be violating a Torah prohibition, since he desecrates the Sabbath under coercion it is a labor not needed for its own purpose”—so really there is no problem at all, well, again, not no problem at all, a rabbinic issue—“and therefore it certainly seems permitted for him to work at cooking on the Sabbath, for by doing so he will also have a little food to restore his soul. And there is no prohibition at all upon him in eating the black soup that he cooks on the Sabbath, and we maintain that an act done on the Sabbath is not prohibited here, for there is an element of life-saving in this eating. And all the more so it is permitted for other Jews to eat this soup that he cooks on the Sabbath for the reason stated above, because life-saving is so great that it overrides the Sabbath. Because of the suffering of these poor people, who are already entirely broken and are now literally wasting away from hunger and deprivation, therefore certainly they are permitted to restore their hungry souls with this soup, even though it was cooked on the Sabbath.” This responsum is amazing. Why did you write everything you wrote until now? What are you asking? You’re asking whether he may cook and whether he may eat what he cooked? Fine—even if it’s not a labor not needed for its own purpose, even if it’s a severe Torah prohibition, Sabbath prohibition, life-saving—that’s it, finished, all in one line. Why are you bringing me Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehuda and the Ritva says this and Tosafot ruled that and Maimonides? In the end, what does it matter to me, this whole story? It’s life-saving.
[Speaker C] He wanted to give them both approaches.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there aren’t two approaches.
[Speaker C] Life-saving overrides the Sabbath according to all approaches. Yes, no, we said that the circumstances dictate the law, right? Or that the law is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, it’s not two; it’s only the first thing. I’ll get to that in just a moment. What I think, in fact—and you can also see this in his introduction to the book—is that he says he is publishing the book not only so that we should see practical responsa and study them the way one studies Torah, but to show that even in the ghetto people engaged in Torah, asked questions in Jewish law, lived according to Jewish law. That’s an astonishing thing. Now this whole responsum was written only for that. This entire responsum is basically one big absurdity from beginning to end. Not a halakhic absurdity—the discussions are discussions that need to be had; one can discuss them too, that’s fine—but still, you don’t need all of this. They asked you whether it’s permitted. The answer is: life-saving, it’s permitted. That’s all. What difference does it… All he came to say was: I’m going to permit everything for you, but I want you to see that there is a halakhic discussion underlying this permission. We are still attached to Jewish law, like the wood-gatherer. Yes, we are still bound by Jewish law. Because in principle one has to understand that in practice, in the Holocaust, there is no Jewish law. There is no Jewish law. In the end, the only consideration that should guide you is how you survive. There are no questions, no need to ask questions, no need to answer responsa, nothing. Everything you need in order to survive—do it. Right? That is basically what he wanted to say. There is no law. Now, people who are inside that situation understand that yes, that is the truth. That’s how one ought to behave. But it’s very problematic, very dangerous. In the end, this whole story also ends. What are we left with? If we are left with the notion that basically for six years—in hindsight it was six years, yes—for six years there was no Jewish law, there is no Jewish law, Jewish law is of no interest, do whatever you want—he was not willing to allow such a thing. He says: no, no, we’re going to do a whole pilpul here, with positions of medieval and later authorities and decisors and everything; in the end I’ll permit everything for you because it’s coercion. But understand that all of this is the result of halakhic reasoning. Now, it’s not convincing when we read it—when we read it from an armchair at home, not from inside the ghetto. But inside the ghetto, apparently, this was very significant. People still lived with that sense that even inside this inferno there is Jewish law and there are discussions, and we need to act according to Jewish law, and it’s not all ownerless chaos, the Torah did not disappear. It did not evaporate. Okay, but for our purposes, what I want to say is that in the end, after all these lessons, what matters for our purposes is: the circumstances dictated the outcome. Right? In the end—life-saving, that’s it, obviously it’s permitted, everything is fine.
[Speaker B] What is this book called? From the Depths. Which volume exactly is this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Volume 1, section 5.
[Speaker B] The three severe transgressions—that could still apply even during the Holocaust.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. No, what I’m saying is, it’s not that there is no Jewish law at all. Obviously there are certain things where that remains true. But you know, even regarding the three severe transgressions, one can discuss that too. One can discuss it, because the question is whether these were decrees aimed at making people violate the religion, or not decrees aimed at making people violate the religion. There was no idolatry there. In most cases they did not force them to worship idols. Okay. Maybe sometimes murder, yes; adultery also generally not—it usually wasn’t that they forced them to commit adultery. So that’s not—the question is not that. The question is perhaps about even a shoelace, where in a situation of sanctification of God’s name and at a time of religious persecution, one must give up one’s life for anything. Not only for the three severe transgressions. That is more relevant—a time of persecution. There really are situations where, in a time of persecution, you are supposed to give yourself up over anything. Yes, but again, that is only where the non-Jew really intends to make you violate Jewish law. When they worked them on the Sabbath, they did not mean: we want you to work specifically on the Sabbath. They simply gave them no freedom because there is no freedom; people work all the time. These were not religious decrees. Therefore I think the common understanding regarding the Holocaust is that the law of a time of persecution does not apply there.
[Speaker B] But there were stories, because this—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The non-Jew for his own benefit—that’s what it says in Jewish law. When the non-Jew does it for his own benefit, it is not considered a time of persecution. Only if the non-Jew comes intentionally to make you violate your religion—that is a time of persecution. When they stood a person—
[Speaker B] with a religious appearance, with a beard and sidelocks, in front of a crowd and gave him that choice, there—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a place where it was for the purpose of making him violate the religion, where they wanted him to violate Jewish law irrespective of appearance—if they wanted him to violate Jewish law, then there indeed, seemingly, it is a time of persecution. And then the laws are far more severe, and one would have to give up one’s life for anything. Even about that people wrote: if everyone had given up their life, the Jewish people would not have remained. It may be that in such a situation perhaps the law changes. Fine, that’s a bit of discussion; I’m not getting into it now. But what matters for our purposes is that here we see an example—perhaps an extreme one—but still an example of there being various options, and in the end the circumstances dictate that here you go lenient. Out of all the possibilities, you choose the easiest path you can; but obviously in the end, what you need will be permitted. The circumstances dictate that you choose the route that enables you to survive. That’s simply the mode—therefore I said I partially accept your comment; it really lies somewhere between the two possibilities. But I want to bring it as an example of the first mechanism. I have several possible ways to act; I choose the easiest option if I am in distress. If I am in terrible distress, then of course whatever path it is, as long as it enables me to survive, I choose it. It’s a more extreme case, but it’s still the same idea. When you see the second mechanism it will become clearer. Okay. The point is that here it is only a choice of one possible path from among several. The circumstances dictate the choice. The second plane of the discussion is that the circumstances dictate the result. I’ll give another example, another case that happened in the ghetto, this time not from From the Depths. I saw it in a series of articles in the weekend supplement of Yated Ne’eman many years ago. It was written by a Jew named Rabbi Gibraltar. His father, also called Rabbi Gibraltar, had likewise been in the Kovno Ghetto, also one of those around the author of Dvar Avraham. He also answered responsa there for questioners and so on; he was one of the rabbis there. And he had a special approach—this is how his son describes it—that in the ghetto there are no monetary laws. There is no ownership of property. There is no such thing as ownership of property. For example, he lent people money in the ghetto; after the Holocaust they came to pay back the loan, and he said: “You don’t need to; that wasn’t my money.” There is no ownership of money or property. That’s what he claimed. All right? It’s not a halakhic composition; he described what he saw. He was a child there, or maybe he wasn’t even born then—I don’t remember right now whether he was even a child there or whether only his father told him later, I don’t remember at the moment. He described a story that happened with his father. By the way, this was not agreed to by all the rabbis there in the ghetto, but this was his approach. He followed it very consistently. Therefore, for example, he says: if there was a coat there belonging to some person who died—there, without a coat you die, it was very cold there—then you can take it. There are no inheritance laws, and it does not pass to the heirs or anything. Take the coat. It wasn’t his, and therefore it also does not pass to his heirs. There are no laws of ownership over property. By the way… taking a coat from a living person is forbidden. I think, if I remember correctly. It’s like the Chazon Ish on the case of two people walking in the desert. The Chazon Ish says: according to Jewish law we rule like Rabbi Akiva, that your life takes precedence. So if I have a jug of water, I drink it and I do not share it with the other person, and certainly do not give him the jug; if I have enough only for myself, then I drink. Yes? Now the question the Chazon Ish asks is: why shouldn’t the other person just jump on me and steal it? But in a life-saving situation, that overrides the prohibition of theft. He says that in such a situation the theft is murder; it’s not theft. Now, it’s not murder in the formal sense, because it is indirect causation. You would not violate the prohibition of murder in a way that makes you liable to execution; it is indirect causation of murder. But clearly there is murder here in the moral sense. You are taking his life, not his property, and the Chazon Ish argues that for such a thing there is no permission because of life-saving. Okay? Similarly here too. If you take a living person’s coat, it’s not because it belongs to him—if he is using it and you take it, then it’s not because of the laws of theft; it’s the laws of murder. Murder is forbidden; murder remains forbidden even in the ghetto. Now true, in that context, why is it murder? Because the coat is mine in some sense. So there is some concept of ownership here in the background, but not within the laws of theft, because laws of theft do not exist. That was his claim. Doesn’t matter, one could expand on this a lot. So in the end of that article series, someone who is a decisor in monetary law wrote about it that it is clearly not correct—but you don’t judge him as though he had books there and could really check it; still, it’s not correct. That’s what the critic argued, yes? There was an article after that series in which he claimed it was incorrect. And I wrote an article about it—not in Yated Ne’eman, of course, but in Tzohar—and there I argued that it is correct. And not only is it correct, but from my perspective—and this is the important point—from my perspective, I have no way at all to criticize the ruling of a rabbi who lived inside the ghetto. For me, what he says is testimony, not a ruling. That is, he tells me as a witness that in such a situation there are no monetary laws. I can try to understand why, to conceptualize it, to define it, to fit it into a halakhic framework—but there is no substitute for a person who is inside the situation. And I say: if a person inside the situation says, listen, this is a situation in which there are no laws of property, no laws of acquisition or ownership—then there simply aren’t. Now I can come and ask: okay, how do we define this? What is the halakhic justification for such a thing? And there I proposed the halakhic justification. I’m not getting into that now, but I proposed the halakhic justification for this matter. One can hang it, perhaps, on a lost object swept away by the sea, though I think it is much deeper than that. In any case, what do I want to say? My claim is—think, for example, take a case. Before all the conceptualization, first let’s see the claim itself. Think about two people in an elevator on, I don’t know, the fiftieth floor, okay? The elevator cable snaps. The elevator is falling down at full force. They know that in ten seconds there won’t be a trace left of them—they’ll be smashed. Okay? Now one person says to the other, both of them inside this elevator, “Listen, give me a pen for a second. I want to write a will, or I don’t know, a final message to my relatives that I loved them, to my children, to my wife, I don’t know.” And the other says: “No, I’m not willing. That’s theft, don’t take it.” So can I take it or not? On the face of it, no, right? There is no permission—this is theft. So what if you’re going to die? But it’s theft. Okay? But it may be—I raise this as a possibility—that a person who is inside such a situation basically says: listen, when you experience such a situation, you understand that there are no monetary laws here. It’s nonsense. All these categories that we are so used to are categories of sensible life, normal life. But this is a situation so pathological, so extreme, that all the categories you are used to simply do not exist there at all. They just do not exist. There is no ownership in such a situation. By the way, I mentioned earlier the case of a lost object swept away by the sea—that’s where that law comes from. Where did the Sages invent the law of a lost object swept away by the sea? Yes, that if a lost object is being carried away in a river, the person’s ownership lapses. The person says, “I am not despairing,” he shouts, stands on the fence, sees the lost object, says, “I’m not despairing.” I can go there, take the lost object, say goodbye to him, and go home with it. Where does that come from? It comes from the same reasoning that says: once you have no control over anything, your being an owner has no meaning, so you are not an owner. And my claim is: the same applies to the ghetto. In a place where any Ukrainian child—or whatever—can shoot you in the head, take all your property, and there is no one who will force him or punish him or take it back from him and return the money to you—there are no monetary laws. They do not exist in such a situation. In a place where there is no effective legal system, there are no monetary laws. They do not exist. Now, is there a verse for this? Where does this come from? What am I basing it on? Fine, maybe one can base it on a lost object swept away by the sea, but it’s more far-reaching than that, because there the claim is that if I save it, then it becomes mine. Here, even if I take it from you, afterward it still does not become mine. I too am inside this “swept away by the sea” situation. In other words, there is simply no ownership. It does not exist at any stage. Here it’s more far-reaching than the discussion of a lost object swept away by the sea.
[Speaker B] If you act not necessarily because that’s what’s correct or true, but because that’s what makes sense to you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and therefore it is correct. My claim is that therefore that is the correct thing.
[Speaker B] Precisely because that’s what sits well with you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right—not with you personally. It is correct in the pathological situation in which you find yourself, even though right now you don’t have a halakhic category that conceptualizes it. You don’t know how to explain it, but you feel very, very clearly that here, this is the law. It’s obvious. There are no monetary laws here. The concept of ownership does not exist here.
[Speaker B] But someone else too, in the same situation, it might have been different perhaps.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There were those who said it was different. I said there was a dispute.
[Speaker B] So therefore it isn’t right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I claim that for them too it is right. It’s a dispute, fine. But I’m saying: according to my approach, I claim that this is right for everyone. They don’t agree with me, like any dispute. No problem. I’m not claiming he is necessarily correct. I’m claiming that the fact that he doesn’t use the regular halakhic categories does not mean he is mistaken. Unlike that critical article, which said: wait, but this doesn’t fit my usual logic of monetary law. That is not an argument. To say that another rabbi who lived in the situation disagreed with him and did not accept it—fine, that’s a dispute. I claim he is correct. I claim that is not an argument against him. Why? Because there are situations where you are inside such a pathological circumstance that it is obvious to you that in such a state there is no ownership. Now, in the conceptualization I did there, I began with the thesis of Rabbi Shimon Shkop, who says that in essence concepts of ownership precede Jewish law. This is what is called the theory of legal systems in gate 5 of Sha’arei Yosher. And there he says that basically the concept of ownership is created in the legal sphere. Society decides on concepts of ownership. Once there are concepts of ownership, laws of acquisition—then the Torah says that one who violates them transgresses “do not steal.” But the Torah does not determine the laws of acquisition. The laws of acquisition precede the Torah. The Torah determines “do not steal” for one who violates the laws of acquisition. Consequently, if there is a society or a situation in which there is no effective legal system that enforces acquisition law, that recognizes acquisition law, then there are no acquisition laws. Consequently there will also be no “do not steal,” and no loans, and nothing. There are no acquisition laws. That is the conceptualization I gave. But I’m saying that before I gave the conceptualization, why did I look for one at all? Because I assumed that if he said it, then he is probably right. First of all, he is right because he is in the situation; he experiences the situation himself, so he probably knows what he is saying. And I, standing outside it, do not feel the situation; I do not really understand what it means to be in such a situation. Therefore it may be that all the halakhic structures I could present against him, showing that he is wrong—if I had lived there, I would have understood that they are nonsense. They are simply irrelevant in that situation; they were not said about such a situation. It is one huge case of a lost object swept away by the sea. The Sages arrived at that law precisely this way. When they understood that when the lost object is being tossed in the river and no one can save it, then don’t tell me stories that you’re the owner. There is no owner. Now, this is of course a major expansion of that law, but I’m saying that this is the line of thinking. You don’t need a verse for it. You need to experience the situation and understand that in this situation, pas nisht—it doesn’t fit, it’s not relevant—these categories do not exist.
[Speaker C] Rabbi, so in an extreme reality almost—I’m not saying that, but let’s say in an extreme reality almost anything can become acceptable and proper. If, for example, I’m walking and searching in the desert and there won’t be water, then why shouldn’t I kill him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’ll have to kill him, fine. If we think that when you live inside the situation you grasp something that people outside the situation did not grasp, then yes, indeed. Rabbi Akiva’s claim is that you are mistaken. Fine. But if you think otherwise, what can you do? Do what you think.
[Speaker B] And Rabbi Akiva wasn’t in that situation. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s exactly like something I wrote about today—about a military commander who was exiled. A Mishnah in Makkot 11b. The Mishnah says there: “He shall flee to one of these cities.” The Mishnah says that the accidental killer may not leave that city for purposes of capital law, for purposes of monetary law, for any purpose he does not leave. Even if someone’s life depends on him and he needs to be a witness, say, to prove that person exempt in some matter, he may not leave. And even if all Israel needs him like Yoav son of Tzeruyah, who is the chief of staff. The most outstanding officer, who can win the war for us—he does not leave the city of refuge. Fine, there are all sorts of questions: how? What do you mean? Life-saving overrides the whole Torah! And if it’s the life-saving of all Israel, then the prohibition against leaving the city of refuge is the one thing that does not get overridden? What’s the problem? What is this, one of the three severe transgressions? So there are all sorts of difficulties raised about this. I say: leave it—you have no answer. There is no answer. Okay? Now, you are inside the situation itself. We are in the study hall—no problem, don’t leave, it is forbidden to leave, we have a verse for it, we feel great. Everything is grounded, everything is excellent. Okay? Now we are in the actual situation, not in the study hall. Now we know: an atomic bomb is about to fall on us, killing everyone. There is one person who can fight against that atomic bomb; he is in a city of refuge, somewhere in Gilead, in the city of refuge because he killed accidentally. Show me one decisor in the universe who would say that he is forbidden to leave the city of refuge. There won’t be, there never was, and there never will be such a thing. And if there is such a thing, that person should be hospitalized. He is deranged; he is not fit to issue rulings. Because when you are inside the situation, you say: okay, this law is what it ought to have been—right, on the theoretical level, “an eye for an eye,” ideally one should have taken out his eye—but practically one takes money. Why does it say “an eye for an eye”? Because conceptually his eye should have been taken out. Yes, conceptually he should have remained in the city of refuge, but practically I need him here, because otherwise we’re all done for. I didn’t understand this mechanism. So I say—and now I’m getting to define my mechanism and the claim I want to make. I’ll perhaps bring one more example and then I’ll define it. Look, there is a very well-known example—also in Wikipedia—called Mary’s room. What is Mary’s room? Mary was a brilliant physicist. Curie? Yes. And she knows optics; she’s an expert in optics. She knows the entire field of optics backwards and forwards, but all her life she lived and worked in a black-and-white room. Everything is black and white—her computer is black and white, her books, everything, everything is black and white. All right? She sees only black and white; she is color-blind, she sees black and white. That’s it. Okay? Now she goes out—no, if she’s color-blind that’s a problem—she now goes outside the room. Suddenly she sees colors. Until now she talked in wavelengths and things like that, because she knows everything, she’s a genius in optics. Fine? When she went outside, did she learn something new? Certainly. What did she learn?
[Speaker C] Color—what it looks like. Right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In other words, in physics nothing new had been discovered for her. But what is the color red? She knew how to say that red is a wavelength of I-don’t-know-how-many angstroms. But what is red? She didn’t understand what red is. Meaning, there are situations in which you know the theory that deals with that situation perfectly, but you don’t understand the situation itself. People often say that Rabbi Chaim took the frying pans out of the kitchen. He talks about forbidden and permitted foods, for example absorption of prohibition and so on. From his perspective, a frying pan is a theoretical construct. He never saw a frying pan in his life, theoretically speaking. He never saw a frying pan in his life. A frying pan is some kind of thing where, when you cook, this happens, when you fry, that happens. And then the theoretical constructions say that a frying pan has this legal status, and a pot has that legal status. He never saw a frying pan in his life; he doesn’t know what a frying pan is. Now when he goes into the kitchen and suddenly his wife shows him: here, this is a frying pan, pleased to meet you. Rabbi Chaim, frying pan, pleased to meet you. Okay? Has he learned something new? The answer is yes. But I’d say more than that: not only has he learned something new, his ruling will also change. Because now he understands what a frying pan is. Forget all your abstract categories. Now you understand what a frying pan is. It may be that suddenly you’ll understand that all the categories that seem terribly logical on the theoretical level don’t really work. You don’t correctly understand the difference between frying and cooking. Look, smell what frying is, taste it—fried food and cooked food are not the same thing. Okay? Once you understand that, it could be that all your halakhic rulings will be different. Lithuanians are very proud of the fact that Rabbi Chaim took the frying pan out of the kitchen. That’s because Rabbi Chaim was a great Talmudic analyst. But if he had needed to be a halakhic decisor—in fact he was the rabbi of Brisk, but he sent all the questions to Rabbi Simcha Zelig, the judge. He didn’t answer Jewish law questions. So if he had needed to issue rulings, someone who doesn’t know what a frying pan is is forbidden to issue rulings. With all the constructions—he can know everything ever written about a frying pan, but he’s never seen one in his life. Just like Mary can’t answer whether red is aesthetic. She knows what its wavelength is compared to green. She’s never seen what red is. So how can she know what is aesthetic and what isn’t aesthetic? Fine. My claim is that the same thing happens with regard to the ghetto. That is, when I have constructions—monetary law, I’m an expert in monetary law—I can tell you that in such-and-such a situation, you are the owner, this is a loan, this is theft, this is damages, all the usual categories, and I can apply the circumstances. Circumstances, everything is fine. But as long as you haven’t felt those circumstances in your bones, you don’t understand what they really mean—not the theory of those things—and you cannot issue rulings about such circumstances. You can’t issue rulings; you’ll rule incorrectly. Now notice, this is a different mechanism from the one I mentioned earlier, because what I’m saying here is not that there is no monetary law in the ghetto because this is a terribly pressing situation, so I choose the easier route. No. It changed the law. It didn’t tell me: I have five options, so I choose the easy one. That was the previous mechanism. This mechanism says: when I suddenly grasp these circumstances, I understand that the law is different—not that I need to choose a different path. There is no different path; this is the path for these circumstances. Do you understand? It’s a different mechanism. Sometimes circumstances cause me to choose one path out of several, but sometimes the circumstances are what define the paths themselves. The path itself suddenly becomes different from the theoretical path. That can happen in extreme circumstances. In extreme circumstances—what does “extreme” mean? Circumstances that are very unfamiliar to me. So when I discuss them and use my abstract categories, it is entirely reasonable that I will make major mistakes. My next remark, my next remark, is: who is supposed to make that decision? Here there is a difference, I want to argue. The first type of decision—choosing one path from several possible paths—should be made by the person himself. The halakhic decisor says: look, you have five paths; the cost of this one is such-and-such, the cost of that one is such-and-such—a spiritual cost, not a halakhic one. On this you can rely, this is a pressing situation, this is the preferred course from the outset, and so on. Now you decide how God-fearing you are, how distressed you are, and accordingly decide which path to choose among the options. The decision belongs to the questioner, not to the halakhic decisor. But in the second type of decision, I think this is a decision for a halakhic decisor. Because the questioner who is inside the ghetto may understand logically from his experience that monetary law doesn’t apply here. But if he is not really proficient in Jewish law, then it could be that he is simply inserting the desires of his own heart. A halakhic decisor who lives in that situation can genuinely say to another halakhic decisor who is outside it: here, monetary law does not apply. But it has to be a halakhic decisor, not the average person, the ordinary person. It seems to me that it is much harder to rely on—if there is no halakhic decisor, I don’t know what to do, but in principle this is a decision for a halakhic decisor. Because otherwise you are just inserting the desires of your heart. The halakhic decisor says: this is what Jewish law says in this situation, not just what seems right to me. This is what Jewish law would tell me in this situation. Therefore, I think this is a decision for a halakhic decisor. So basically what I want to claim is that this whole discussion I’ve had here is a discussion that does not deal דווקא with extreme circumstances, but with circumstances that are very far from what is familiar to me. It can be something that is not as dramatic as the Holocaust. It can involve life-and-death law and be very dangerous and so on. It can also just be something far from my world, something I don’t know. I’ll give you a completely banal example. Suppose you ask a halakhic decisor whether it is permissible to go hear a female singer perform—women’s singing. Okay? Now, assuming that the usual halakhic decisor has never in his life heard women’s singing, because if it’s forbidden then he probably hasn’t heard it either, okay? Then I claim that he is forbidden to issue a ruling on such a question. He can’t. Because he doesn’t understand what people experience when they are at a performance. It doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad, but he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t understand the situation. In his mind, when you go to hear a woman sing, it means sinful erotic thoughts, and you’re going in order to permit sexual immorality to yourself. Very often he cannot even grasp the statement of a person who says: look, she sings beautifully, I’m going for the aesthetic enjoyment of her music. Not every prohibition—depends what. There are prohibitions where yes, but not every prohibition. In some cases, if the prohibition against hearing women’s singing were a formal prohibition, then it would have nothing to do with whether he understands it and what it does to me and what it doesn’t do to me and why I’m going. It’s forbidden, period. I’m forbidden to eat pork; it doesn’t matter whether I find it tasty or not, whether I’ve ever eaten it or not. The fact that I’ve never eaten it doesn’t mean I can’t issue a ruling on whether it is permitted or forbidden to eat pork. But with women’s singing, assuming this is not a formal prohibition but a prohibition that stems from what it is supposed to do to the listener—sinful erotic thoughts or things of that sort—then here you need to understand what it is really supposed to do to the listener. Or, you know, these questions—it’s not such an extreme situation like the Holocaust. But because it is so far from the world of a halakhic decisor, say, from the older generation, that it never occurs to him that people go there just for aesthetic enjoyment of music, he is sure that these are just excuses, that really you’re going because… That’s not true. Simply not true. He’s just mistaken. So if he is wise enough, he should understand that he is mistaken. He should understand that he might be mistaken, I mean. And therefore he says: leave it, I’m not issuing a ruling on this matter, ask someone who has actually experienced it. Unless, of course, it is a formal prohibition. Why? If a halakhic decisor says it’s permitted—there are halakhic decisors who say it’s permitted. Yes. No, but if—if it really is forbidden in principle. No, if it is formally forbidden, then it is forbidden. The Sages forbade it, so it has nothing to do with the reason or with what kinds of thoughts it
[Speaker B] arouses
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] in me and why I’m going; it’s simply forbidden, that’s all, like eating pork.
[Speaker B] Are you saying that here it’s only a safeguard, only a fence?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Basically what is forbidden is the thoughts. If I say that what is forbidden here is only the forbidden thoughts, not women’s singing in and of itself, then let’s see whether it arouses such thoughts or not. You need to understand what happens in that situation when a person goes there. If you’ve never heard a female singer, you don’t understand it. Or take an egalitarian community, what’s happening today. Right, so various conservative halakhic decisors always come out against women being called up to the Torah, women reciting blessings under the wedding canopy, and all sorts of things like that. Now, if you say it’s a formal prohibition, fine—then it really doesn’t depend on how much you experience the community and what it means. But if you understand that there are actually ways to permit it—yes, women being called up to the Torah is in the Mishnah, clearly it’s possible. So why do you think it’s forbidden? You think it’s forbidden because you live in a conservative community. If you lived the life of a community of that sort, you might think differently. Now, you can go on thinking as you do; I’m not saying you have to live in that community. Live in your own community. Just don’t issue halakhic rulings for them. Leave the Jewish law to the rabbi of that community, even if he is younger and less of a Torah scholar than you, but he is inside the situation. He is the one who should make the decisions, not you.
[Speaker D] And maybe if he were inside the situation, he would forbid it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then he would forbid it or permit it, whatever he decides. If he would forbid it—if I myself would forbid it from the outset, then what do I care who does it?
[Speaker D] No, he’ll never hear it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he’ll never hear it, but why? Because he thinks it’s a formal prohibition. If he thinks it’s a formal prohibition, he can issue rulings for others too. But if I say that it’s not a formal prohibition, but rather a result of erotic thoughts or concern about such thoughts, then it depends whether it causes such thoughts or not. And for that you have to know the experience. The one who permits will know the experience, and he too can say whether yes or no. Okay, so I’m saying, these are examples. You can argue about each one of them, the prohibition of secular courts, there are lots of examples I could bring in this context. The point is that there are situations in which, if you haven’t lived them, you won’t rule correctly—not because you won’t choose the right option, but because you don’t understand that in such a case Jewish law itself should be this and not that. The Jewish law changes—not that you can choose a more lenient option or make things easier for them. We’re not talking about making things easier for them. If you were to say: look, they’re under great pressure, women want equality, they want to be called up to the Torah, they’re in distress—can we be lenient for them? That’s one question, a question of choosing an option. Fine? I’m talking about something else. I’m saying that for such a community, women should be called up to the Torah altogether—not that we can be lenient for them. From the outset there is no prohibition—not only no prohibition, but on the contrary, they should be called up to the Torah just like men. This is not a question of choosing the easier path because of the circumstances; this is a situation in which Jewish law itself, the options themselves, change. It’s not that I choose one option from several because of the circumstances; the circumstances change the options themselves. And for that you have to live the situation in order to understand what this thing means and whether it is really happening. I’m not saying it always happens. A halakhic decisor who is inside the situation can tell me—and from my perspective that will be testimony—he is simply testifying that, as someone who experiences the situation, in this situation there is no ownership of property. That’s it. For me that is a given. I can now think how to conceptualize it, how to explain it, but it is a given. From your perspective it’s a given, but
[Speaker B] the greater a halakhic decisor is, the less close he is to the frying pan. Do you think, for example, that Rabbi Ovadia was closer to the frying pan than Rabbi Chaim, for example? I think
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] yes. Rabbi Ovadia was a halakhic decisor who was very close to the field. As opposed to Rabbi Chaim, obviously. I would say Rabbi Ovadia was the field. What does “close” mean? You don’t need to be cooking on frying pans day and night, but you do need to know what a frying pan is, to be in the kitchen, to understand what it means. Every normal person knows what it is. Fine, you don’t need deep familiarity. Look, my world and your world will never be identical. That’s why I’m talking about extreme situations, a situation with which I simply do not have even basic familiarity, I’m so far from it that I have no idea what it means. No, I don’t have to be a chef in order to understand what a frying pan is, okay? But I do need to see what a frying pan is, understand what fried means, what cooked means, more or less understand what that means. For that, five minutes is enough. Again, it could also be that Rabbi Chaim did know this; I’m talking here about an archetype of…
[Speaker B] They call those rulings from rabbis of the Haredi Novardok type, who were indifferent to some utterly alien world.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly, that’s what I’m talking about. They didn’t understand it. Right, right.
[Speaker B] But what’s paradoxical is that they’re considered the great halakhic decisors, say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that is a big mistake. A very big mistake.
[Speaker B] Even Orthodox people agree that they are great halakhic decisors.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then they’re mistaken. Does the fact that they’re more or less Orthodox mean they can’t be wrong?
[Speaker B] What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m claiming that this is not right. It is not right to come to them to decide matters of Jewish law. It is not right to come to such people for halakhic decisions. They can advise you. No, not even in their own community. They can advise you, they can lay out the options before you because they are great Torah scholars, they know. It is very worthwhile to consult them, but you must not give them the decision. You must not under any circumstances.
[Speaker C] Why is it not right that in their own community they should issue rulings?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because they don’t know their own community either. Doesn’t their community live in the street too? It also lives in the street. They live in their own four cubits of Jewish law, among their books; they don’t really live the street, not even their own street. The struggles of the ordinary person—you, you have to understand that from the inside, for real. Now sometimes maybe yes; it could be that a person who lives in his four cubits still understands, is empathetic, hears a great many people who speak with him, and he understands the dilemmas. Fine, let him issue rulings. I’m not saying categorically that the answer must be no. But very often you really see that this is what’s happening—you can see that they are detached.
[Speaker B] And do you think this is a new phenomenon? In the past, when community rabbis—you know that this
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] used to be the case. I heard from Rabbi Binyamin Lau—he said that one of the great troubles of the later generations is that religious leadership passed from rabbis to yeshiva heads. In the past, rabbis were the leaders, and rabbis were in touch with people, with the field. So they really could guide people, the communities, about what to do. But what is a yeshiva head? He builds theoretical towers there. The students challenge him on the logic of his ideas, but very few students at age fifteen or age twenty will say to you: this doesn’t make sense. Forget it—it’s not right. I don’t have an objection; it’s not that I found some bug, that it doesn’t fit with this. No—it’s the logic. Students are good, they’re sharp, they can challenge you on the logic of the structure you are building. But only ordinary householders know how to tell you: forget it, it’s not reasonable, what you’re saying is not right. Okay, we’ll stop here. May we all have what my father used to call a gutn khurban. A good destruction. What? Yes, it could be that yes.
[Speaker E] Okay, right, let’s go.