Mysticism – Lesson 8

Table of Contents

• Trust, authority, and halakhic autonomy
• Limited trust in Torah scholars and the permission to “hang oneself on a tall tree”
• Lying, “holy lies,” and the breakdown of discourse
• Tradition, testimony, and facts versus norms
• Trust in the sages, the Maharal, and the exception of “do not deviate”
• “Judge every person favorably” as interpretive rationality according to Maimonides
• Evidence, conviction, and rejecting “buts, maybes, and fabrications”
• Relatives as witnesses, a Scriptural decree, and distortions of perception
• “Tip the argument favorably” as the principle of charity and as an acquisition of Torah
• The culture of argument, “the heat of Torah,” and the opposite-sounding view
• Legal models: adversarial versus inquisitorial
• Combining the principles in the topic of “this one benefits and that one loses nothing,” and Rava
• Intuition versus reasons: alternative medicine as an example
• Defining mysticism as unchecked trust and distinguishing it from ordinary expertise
• Kabbalah, accessibility to review, and the difference from physics
• The question of who authored the Zohar

Summary

General overview

The speaker argues that in the halakhic context, claims accepted purely on the basis of trust in another person have no standing, even if that person is a great Torah scholar, because someone who is capable of doing so must form a halakhic position autonomously and critically, rather than adopting conclusions simply because they were stated in the name of an authority. He qualifies this by saying that someone who does not know Jewish law has to ask a halakhic decisor as an expert, and he distinguishes between trust in facts that cannot be directly accessed and trust in normative claims. He defines desirable trust as limited trust that leads one to reconsider the arguments, and warns that “holy lies” destroy the possibility of discourse. Later he interprets “Judge every person favorably” as a principle of reasonable interpretation based on what is known about the person, and distinguishes it from “tip it favorably,” which he presents as the principle of charity that requires one to present a position in its best form in order to reach the truth. Finally, he connects this to defining mysticism as accepting claims that are not open to public review, and explains why Kabbalah differs from disciplines like physics in that it is not accessible in the same way to criticism and shared discourse, and therefore even if it is true, it does not have binding halakhic standing.

Trust, authority, and halakhic autonomy

The speaker states that claims accepted only because someone said them “have no halakhic standing,” and he argues that “Da’at Torah” in a binding sense, even in the halakhic realm, contradicts the halakhic perspective. He qualifies this by saying that someone who does not know how to learn or does not know Jewish law should ask a halakhic decisor and receive guidance, just as one consults an expert in any field, and he is speaking about someone who is “capable of forming a halakhic position.” He presents a duty to form a halakhic position through independent thought, and connects this to the Maharal in Netivot Torah and to criticism of acting “like a magician” who does things without understanding.

Limited trust in Torah scholars and the permission to “hang oneself on a tall tree”

The speaker defines trust in Torah scholars as limited trust: a Torah scholar “probably isn’t talking nonsense,” and therefore one should seriously consider what he says and examine it, but not adopt it just because he said it. He brings the topic of “this one benefits and that one loses nothing,” in which Rami bar Hama asks Rav Hisda to let him serve him before answering, in order to explain how esteem for a person causes someone else to reconsider something that at first seemed absurd. He cites the Magen Avraham on “whoever wants to hang himself should hang himself on a tall tree,” and interprets the permission to attribute things to a great person as existing only in order to make one’s interlocutor consider the matter seriously, not in order for him to accept it as-is.

Lying, “holy lies,” and the breakdown of discourse

The speaker forbids attributing a halakhic ruling to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein when speaking to “an ordinary person” who is asking in order to act, because that exploits the person’s tendency to accept authority rather than criticize it, and he says one must state what “in my opinion the Jewish law is,” without lying. He permits using such attribution in a halakhic discussion between people who are “capable” in order to make the other side treat the arguments seriously, because in the end the decision will be made independently. He mentions “the well-known urban legend about Rabbi Shalom Schwadron” concerning saying in the name of the Chazon Ish that one may lie in the name of a great person so that people will listen, and explains that an approach that justifies lies leads to a situation where “you can’t believe anything he says,” and it dissolves the possibility of discourse. He notes that if this permission is used “a lot,” it wears out, and that “that’s the nature of lies—in the end they cut off the branch they themselves are sitting on,” and he says it is worth using this “sparingly.”

Tradition, testimony, and facts versus norms

The speaker distinguishes between the trust required for factual claims and trust in normative claims, and argues that with facts one has no choice but to rely on witnesses and tradition, because there is no other way to know what one did not see with one’s own eyes. He says that tradition does not mean “this is true because I said so,” but conveys a factual report that “the Holy One, blessed be He, said such-and-such to Moses at Sinai,” and the decision whether that is binding or how to interpret it does not derive from trust itself but from the judgment of the recipient. He emphasizes that the problem he is addressing is accepting halakhic norms on the basis of unchecked trust.

Trust in the sages, the Maharal, and the exception of “do not deviate”

The speaker defines “trust in the sages” as the stance that they “are not talking nonsense,” and therefore one should reconsider what they say, but he rejects a binding kind of faith that obligates one to accept their conclusion in the end. He says that “maybe you can do that if you want,” but “it certainly isn’t obligatory,” and he leans toward the position of the Maharal, even while noting that “the Shulchan Arukh and the Rema did not agree with him,” and that this is “a big controversy.” He notes that “do not deviate” is an exception in which, when there is a Sanhedrin, there is an obligation to accept their rulings, subject to discussions such as one who errs regarding the commandment to heed the words of the sages.

“Judge every person favorably” as interpretive rationality according to Maimonides

The speaker cites Maimonides’ explanation of “Judge every person favorably” and presents a rule of interpretation based on what one knows about the person: with someone of unknown character, one should interpret an ambiguous act favorably; with a well-known righteous person, one should interpret favorably even when that requires “very great strain,” so long as there is some possibility; and with a well-known wicked person, one should be cautious and not “believe good of him” even when there is a remote possibility for a bad interpretation. He argues that this guidance is not moral but “guidance for reasonable interpretation,” because probabilistically a certain interpretation is the correct one in light of the person’s known character. He says that someone who adopts an unreasonable interpretation is “not righteous—you’re foolish,” and he emphasizes that interpretation is judged by whether it is correct, not by whether it is pious, and that “judging favorably when there is evidence is stupidity.”

Evidence, conviction, and rejecting “buts, maybes, and fabrications”

The speaker rejects the claim that judging favorably prevents the conviction of righteous people, and clarifies that a religious court must examine evidence without favoritism, mentioning “do not favor the poor man in his dispute.” He uses an extreme example of a righteous man chasing a betrothed girl with a knife in order to show that favorable judgment is supposed to rest on logic and prior information, not on automatic denial of reality. He says that when there is evidence and the court has examined it, someone who claims otherwise without knowing is “just babbling.”

Relatives as witnesses, a Scriptural decree, and distortions of perception

The speaker discusses the disqualification of a “relative as a witness” and explains, based on the Talmud in Bava Batra, Maimonides, and the Shulchan Arukh, that the disqualification is a “Scriptural decree” and not a suspicion of lying, and he emphasizes this through the law that “it must be valid at the beginning and at the end.” He cites a claim in the name of Rabbi Yogel that this is about bias in perception rather than conscious lying, and raises a difficulty from the fact that relatives are disqualified even when testifying to their relative’s detriment and not only to his benefit. He presents this as an illustration that even when there is no moral accusation of lying, there can still be bias in interpretation or perception.

“Tip the argument favorably” as the principle of charity and as an acquisition of Torah

The speaker draws a distinction between “judge every person favorably” in chapter 1 and “tip it favorably” in the chapter on the acquisitions of Torah, and argues that the latter means the principle of charity: interpreting a position in its best form. He describes a case in which an interlocutor presents weak arguments for socialism as against capitalism, and argues that he himself must raise the best possible arguments for the opposing view in order to test the truth of his own position. He states that this is an “acquisition of Torah” because truth is not acquired by defeating a weak opponent but by grappling with the strongest argument, and he defines this as a shift from focusing on the person to focusing on the position.

The culture of argument, “the heat of Torah,” and the opposite-sounding view

The speaker tells a story about a conference of yeshiva heads in which Rabbi Lichtenstein objected strongly to the notion that one attacks a study partner “whether he’s right or wrong” in the name of “the heat of Torah,” and argued that there is no point in arguing for argument’s sake, but only in order to clarify and reach the correct conclusion. He justifies trying to attack a position even when it seems correct as a testing tool, but not as a way of portraying the other person as stupid. He compares this to the lesson from the Yom Kippur War, to establish a framework of “the opposite-sounding view” that presents the contrary position in a reasoned way in order to break fixed conceptions and sharpen the decision.

Legal models: adversarial versus inquisitorial

The speaker describes two legal systems, “adversarial” and “inquisitorial,” and explains that in the adversarial system “let the boys play before us” and the judge decides on the basis of what was presented, whereas in the inquisitorial system the judge intervenes and helps when the sides are not operating optimally. He argues that on the principled level the inquisitorial system is “more correct,” because a court aims at truth and not at winning a game. He uses this as an example of the obligation to correct the presentation of positions in order to reach a true decision rather than a decision that results from the weakness of the advocates.

Combining the principles in the topic of “this one benefits and that one loses nothing,” and Rava

The speaker returns to the discussion of Rami bar Hama and Rava, and notes that Rami bar Hama’s position seemed like “complete nonsense,” to the point that “Rava died laughing,” but Rav Hisda remained silent because of his esteem for Rami bar Hama and thought it through again until he understood the explanation. He argues that even if one does not esteem the person, one should still apply to the position the principle of chapter 6 and try to formulate it in the best possible way before rejecting it. He suggests interpreting Rava either as someone who momentarily failed in this regard or as someone who remained unconvinced even after the explanation, but he says that the essential lesson is not to behave by dismissing and mocking without examination.

Intuition versus reasons: alternative medicine as an example

The speaker argues that a person can have good intuition even when the reasons he presents are “nonsense,” and he gives a personal example of turning to alternative medicine, where pseudoscientific explanations were presented about “meridians” and “energies.” He says that he asked, “Forget the reasons—just tell me what you think I have,” distinguishing between the possibility of intuition and a failure of justification. He adds that alternative medicine “doesn’t work,” and that the term itself is defined as medicine that has not been proven in studies, and he mentions the book Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh as a survey showing the lack of clear results.

Defining mysticism as unchecked trust and distinguishing it from ordinary expertise

The speaker sums up that proper trust is “checked trust” that leads one to consider, but the decision is reached only after personal conviction, whereas trust that cannot be reviewed is “what is called mysticism.” He again emphasizes that the exception of someone who does not know and asks an expert is not the problem; the problem is accepting binding normative claims without the ability of independent criticism. He says that mysticism is accepting a position “not because you were convinced, but because you trust him.”

Kabbalah, accessibility to review, and the difference from physics

The speaker says that Kabbalists themselves do not see this as mysticism, because they “live in that world” and can examine kabbalistic considerations, and therefore from their standpoint this has firm halakhic standing, but someone who is not a Kabbalist relies on trust and therefore should not adopt it when it contradicts the revealed tradition. He raises the question, “So how does one become a Kabbalist?” and answers, “You can study it,” and then sharpens the point by saying that even so, the feeling is that when studying Kabbalah “that isn’t enough” and one needs “spiritual aptitude” or “relevant receptivity” that not everyone has. He argues that Kabbalah is not a discipline like physics, because there are different schools that reach different conclusions without an experimental mechanism for deciding between them, and sometimes “discourse is not possible” because the language and interpretation are entirely different. He concludes that even if the kabbalistic theses are true, “it has no halakhic standing,” because Jewish law is what can be grasped and reviewed by anyone who enters into the topic.

The question of who authored the Zohar

The speaker says that “why is it not important who wrote the Zohar?” depends on the trust a person has in the author, and he raises the possibility of trusting Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai as opposed to trusting Rabbi Moshe de Leon. He states that if a person trusts one and not the other, then “of course it matters who wrote the Zohar.”

Okay, in the previous lecture I opened with the conclusion we had reached up to that point: that in fact, the attitude toward mysticism or Kabbalah in the Jewish, religious, halakhic context is somewhat the opposite of what people usually think of as a religious or traditionally religious message. The claim is actually that we are not supposed to act on the basis of trust in human beings—human beings who may be as wise, good, and righteous as can be. In the end, a person is supposed to formulate a position and reach decisions by his own power, by himself, and not through trust in someone else. And the claim was that conclusions or claims that I accept only because someone said them have no halakhic status. Not only is one not obligated—not only is “da’at Torah,” I don’t know, or things like that, an invention. I’m claiming that even “da’at Torah” in the halakhic realm—not in extra-halakhic realms—actually contradicts the halakhic outlook. Now, here I do have to add a qualification: obviously, a person who doesn’t know how to learn, or doesn’t know Jewish law, who isn’t qualified, who isn’t a Torah scholar, has to ask a halakhic decisor and receive guidance from him on how to act. That doesn’t fall into this category. I’m talking right now about someone who is formulating a halakhic position, someone who is qualified to formulate a halakhic position. Meaning, not someone who doesn’t know, and so goes to ask the expert—that’s fine. Just like you go ask an expert in any other field. But I’m talking about a question where, in principle, you are relying on trust in someone else or acting based on trust in someone else, rather than forming a position yourself. That has no halakhic status. Jewish law is wary of esotericism, of something non-public, something inaccessible to the general public. Now, since this claim sounds a bit counterintuitive, a bit contrary to accepted thinking in the religious context, last time I spoke a bit about a more balanced picture. What I wanted to argue was that there is room for trust in Torah scholars or in people, but it is trust in a very limited sense. It is trust in the sense that I will seriously examine their claims. In that sense I’m talking about trust. And I brought the example of the Talmudic passage about “this one benefits and that one does not lose,” where Rami bar Hama asks Rav Chisda to attend on him before he answers him. Is he talking today about mysticism? Michael Abraham? What? Missing little onions? Shhh. Okay. The claim is that trust in human beings or trust in Torah scholars is of course something desirable, as long as it is taken in the right way. Meaning, as long as I say: this is a Torah scholar, he probably isn’t talking nonsense, and therefore I’ll reconsider if something in what he says doesn’t seem right to me. That, in essence, is the meaning of trust. But not trust in the sense that if he said it, then it’s true and therefore I adopt it. That is not the trust under discussion. Rather, the trust is that if he said it, it’s probably not nonsense and it’s worth thinking about again. I brought the Magen Avraham on the statement that “one who wants to be hanged should hang himself on a tall tree,” meaning that one may say things in the name of a great person so people will accept them from him. And there too I explained it the same way: you can say it in the name of a great person so that your interlocutor will seriously consider what you’re saying. But in places where your interlocutor will simply accept it as is, if you say it in the name of a great person, then of course it is forbidden to do that. Except that the Magen Avraham assumes there is no such thing—your interlocutor is not supposed to accept such things just because some great person said them. And precisely because of that, it is permitted to do it. Therefore, for example, to tell an ordinary person who asks me what the Jewish law is, and I tell him: the Jewish law is such-and-such, and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said this—it is forbidden. Because he is asking what the Jewish law is in order to accept what I say and carry it out. He is not a person at the level of being able to make a halakhic decision on his own, and that is why he came to ask. In such a situation it is certainly forbidden to lie; you have to tell him what you think the Jewish law is, and if he accepts it, he accepts it, and if not, not—but I cannot tell him “this is what Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said” and use a lie, because then I know he will simply accept it. But in a halakhic discussion, when someone is debating Jewish law with me, and I tell him, “Listen, the reasoning I offered and the claim I made was said by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein”—that can be done. Why? Because I know the other side is also qualified; he is discussing this topic, formulating a position in this area himself, and if I see that he is not taking my reasoning seriously, then I tell him, “Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said this,” so that he will take it seriously. But in the end, he will formulate a position on his own; he won’t accept it just because Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it, and therefore it is permitted. Do you actually say things like that in practice? What? Do you actually say things like that in practice? What do you mean? That Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said such-and-such and this rabbi said such-and-such. The well-known urban legend about Rabbi Shalom Shvadron—and I’m not even promising you that Rabbi Shalom Shvadron said it. But the urban legend about Rabbi Shalom Shvadron says that Rabbi Shalom, once—he was the famous Jerusalem preacher, right?—said that people quote the Chazon Ish as saying that it is permitted to say things in the name of a great person even if it isn’t true, so people will accept them. And I’m not going to tell you whether the Chazon Ish said that or not. And I’m telling you that I also don’t know whether Rabbi Shalom Shvadron said it or not. Okay, this is exactly the price of such an approach. The price of such an approach is that no one can believe anything you say. Meaning, in a place where there is justification for lies—“holy lies,” as it is called—you lose the possibility of discourse. Meaning, the problem here is not the transgression involved in lying, or the moral problem, or however you want to describe it. There is something here that erodes the very possibility of discourse. And therefore this approach is very, very dangerous. But in a place—that is exactly what I am saying—but in a place where I know that my interlocutor will consider the matter on its merits, then there is no problem. He doesn’t have to believe me that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it, but it is enough that he suspects Rabbi Moshe Feinstein may have said it, so that he will seriously weigh the reasoning and ultimately decide whether he agrees or not. Okay? Obviously, if I use this a lot, this permission of the Magen Avraham, then in the end he won’t even suspect that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it. That’s simply the nature of lies: in the end, they cut off the branch they themselves are sitting on. So even such permissions have to be used sparingly. But yes, it really is a problematic matter. Fine. So that’s what I said last time, and the claim is that what we learn from here, in essence—and maybe I’ll summarize for a moment and then continue, because I still have a bit more to say about this matter. First of all, the Torah is not supposed to be based on trust. And that is very surprising. Meaning, it is seemingly against conventional thinking. Now again, for example when we speak about tradition. We received a tradition from Sinai and we pass the tradition from generation to generation, right? So in principle we are nourished by trust in the person who transmits the tradition to us. How else would we know what was said to Moses at Sinai? And how would we know that the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai? We are nourished by the tradition that tells us this. Should I not trust there as well? Tradition depends on a great many people, on a very broad infrastructure. It’s not that somebody comes along with some tradition and they say, “Ah, we have a tradition.” A—that’s true. I completely agree. Meaning, first of all, this is something I have no way of arriving at without it, without trust in the transmitters of the tradition. And second, there really is a broad front here, so that in the end, just as you receive information about a certain event that happened—a religious court hears witnesses about an event that happened—the religious court too is nourished only by trust in witnesses. So is it not supposed to accept testimony? Of course it is. Because when you speak to me about events, about factual claims, then regarding factual claims you have no choice but to be nourished by the people who saw those facts, because you did not see them. How else will you know they happened? Right? So in a place where you are discussing factual questions, clearly you are nourished by trust in human beings. And again, you need to cross-check testimony, you need to examine it, interrogate and investigate witnesses, everything is fine. But in the end, yes, you do rely on trust that you place in people. And that is in factual questions. I am speaking right now about halakhic questions, not factual questions. Tradition does not tell us, “This is right because I said so.” Tradition reports a fact to us. The fact is that the Holy One, blessed be He, told Moses at Sinai such-and-such. Is it true or not? You decide. Is it binding or not? I am telling you what the fact was. The fact is that the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke with Moses and told him such-and-such. Therefore tradition, or trust in people when it deals with the transmission of facts, is not our topic here. That is why I say, beyond the fact that it rests on a broad front, which of course is important—there is another essential difference here. When I speak about trust in human beings, I mean trust in normative claims, not factual claims. Factual claims I always accept on the basis of trust in human beings, except for the facts I saw with my own eyes, of course. And what I did not see with my own eyes—and “the visible revelation at Sinai,” as was said—so what I did not see with my eyes, I need to receive from the testimony of other people, from trust in the testimony of other people. That is obvious. Yes, that is not what I’m discussing. And would the Rabbi also qualify this issue of hanging on a tall tree, and after we’ve actually clarified the matter together, to tell him: you know what, it really wasn’t true—should you say that, or just move on? That’s an interesting question. Apparently—I never thought about it—but apparently you’re right. Meaning, after he has already reconsidered the reasoning, and the fact that he thought Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it brought about the desired result—he reconsidered the reasoning—indeed I think it would be proper to tell him: you know what, I tricked you just so you’d take it seriously. Okay. Yes, as far as I can tell, yes. I really never thought about it, but that’s נכון. Okay. Now Eliav, now you’ll be able to check me. After I learned from Shlomo that after I use this tool I’m obligated to notify that I used it, now you can check whether I used this tool on the site, because I’m supposed to notify you. Before, I hadn’t thought of that, so you couldn’t check me, but now that I’ve really learned this, now you can check me already. Right. Okay. Fine. So that’s one point. And a second point is that the trust I give—yes—so something based on trust is not Torah. The trust that I can give is either trust in facts, like the tradition of Mount Sinai, or trust in something that can be reviewed. Meaning, I tell you, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said this. I accept what you’re saying, I consider it, but I critically examine what you said so that in the end I reach my own conclusion. Meaning, in the end, after all the trust, my own critique still stands. Meaning, in the end I am supposed to formulate the position out of my own critical thinking. Something that cannot be reviewed—I am not supposed to place trust in it. Or again, I can place trust in it, but it has no halakhic status; maybe I really should be careful here. One may place trust even in something that cannot be reviewed. It’s not forbidden. But it has no halakhic status. Yes, notice: I am not claiming that anything someone tells me I am forbidden to accept from him. Maybe I can accept it from him, but it has no halakhic status, and he certainly cannot obligate me to accept it from him, even though he may be a very great Torah scholar and all that. So that is another point, again, another qualification, perhaps a very important one. A person formulating a halakhic position—here I claim that it may even be forbidden. Because there is an obligation to formulate a halakhic position autonomously. We spoke about this with the Maharal, which I read in Netivot Torah, because otherwise it is like a sorcerer, yes, a magician who basically does things mechanically, without understanding. So in the halakhic context, it seems to me that in a certain sense this may even be forbidden. I don’t know what “forbidden” means, I don’t know—it is not written anywhere—but there is some expectation that we conduct ourselves autonomously. Rabbi, what do you think “faith in the sages” means? I said: faith in the sages is faith that they are not talking nonsense. Meaning, one needs to seriously consider what they say. And if I hear something from a wise person, I say: listen, this doesn’t sound reasonable to me—well, is he a wise person? Then I need to think again. But if in the end I don’t accept it, then I don’t accept it. That is the point. There is no faith in the sages in the sense that I am also supposed to accept it; I don’t think there is such a thing, certainly not something binding. Maybe you can do that if you want, but I think it is also forbidden, like the Maharal says—but it certainly is not binding, so that is clear. Okay, regarding the Maharal: of course the Shulchan Arukh and the Rema did not agree with him. This is a major controversy, the whole issue around precedent-based ruling, what the Maharal wrote there. I tend toward the Maharal’s view, but here the majority of halakhic decisors of our day clearly do not go that way. Okay? So it is not a prohibition, but on the other hand nobody can tell me that I am obligated. I am not obligated to accept it. It has no binding halakhic status—except for “do not veer,” and I was asked about that last time too. “Do not veer” is an exception. Yes, there, when there is a Sanhedrin, there is an obligation to accept their rulings—again, within the limits of “if one erred in a commandment to obey the words of the sages” and those complicated Talmudic passages. Another point I want to make—perhaps in light of all this—is also connected to the last column I wrote; it just happened to fit well here, it wasn’t planned. Some commentators on Pirkei Avot explain the phrase “judge every person favorably.” I’ll share the… yes, Yehoshua ben Perachya says: “Make for yourself a rabbi, acquire for yourself a friend, and judge every person favorably.” What does it mean to judge favorably? So I once heard in the name of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk that they asked him: people say that nothing in the world was created for no reason, everything has a reason. Why, then, was crooked intellect created? That is what they asked him. So he said, what? Is there such a thing as crooked intellect? Intellect is straight intellect, found in abundance. Crooked intellect? People whose intellect is crooked—what does that mean? Everyone probably has some tendency to bend the intellect, cognitive biases. Why were they created? Intellect was not created crooked. Intellect wasn’t created crooked; the intellect that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us—intellect is straight. The fact that people bend it according to their desires or their wishes or whatever—that’s something else. No, no, intellect is crooked. Human intellect is crooked. The Holy One, blessed be He, created crooked intellect. That’s exactly the point. Intellect is the way I perceive the world—that is intellect. The world itself—there is no crookedness there. What exists, exists; what does not exist, does not exist; what is true is true; what is not true is not true. That is clear. But when I perceive the world, the fact that many times I perceive it incorrectly means my intellect is crooked. Never mind right now; we can talk about biases, we can talk about other things. We are built in such a way that our intellect sometimes works crookedly. So the question is why was that created? So it’s half a joke, not worth dwelling on too much; Rabbi Chaim said: in order to judge favorably. Why was crooked intellect created? In order to judge favorably. Because when you see someone doing something problematic, then in order to judge favorably you have to activate your crooked intellect—that is, make irrational interpretations of his actions so as to come out seeing him positively. Okay? That is the saying attributed to Rabbi Chaim. But the truth is that when you look at the commentators on this Mishnah, you see that this is not correct. Look, for example, at Maimonides. Wait, I got disconnected. Every now and then I disconnect because I can’t see you when I’m sharing. “And judge every person favorably,” says Maimonides—its meaning is that if there is a person unknown to you, and you do not know whether he is righteous or wicked, and you see him doing an act or saying something which, if interpreted one way, is good, and if interpreted another way, is bad—interpret it as good and do not think badly of him. But if he is a person known to you as righteous, famous for good deeds, and you see him doing something whose characteristics all indicate that it is a bad deed, and it can only be judged as a good deed with very great difficulty and by a very remote possibility—you must interpret it as good, since there is some possibility that it is good, and one may not suspect him. Of this they said: whoever suspects the innocent is physically afflicted. And likewise, if he is wicked and his deeds are notorious, and afterward we see him doing something whose indications all point to its being good, but there is a very remote possibility of evil, one must be cautious and not believe good of him, since there is a possibility for evil in it, as it says: “Though he speak graciously, do not trust him, for there are seven abominations in his heart.” And if he is unknown, and the act inclines toward either of the two extremes, then as a matter of virtue one should judge him favorably whichever of the two it may be. Maimonides says: when you come to judge favorably, it depends who the person before you is, or what you know about the person before you. If we are speaking of a person who is righteous, or a person whose nature you do not know. Don’t know. Or whom you know is average. I think there is no difference between those last two. Interesting—now I suddenly notice this—wait, let me bring Maimonides back, I hadn’t noticed this until now, but it seems to me that… look, he begins, “if there is a person unknown to you,” you see in the first line, “you do not know whether he is righteous or wicked.” At the end he writes, “and if he is unknown and the act inclines to one of two extremes, then as a matter of virtue one should judge him favorably.” Is that the same thing—he’s repeating the same thing he said above? Maybe yes, I don’t know. Suddenly I thought maybe there is a difference between a person who is average—you can’t classify him as righteous or wicked because he is average—and you know him, you know who he is, and a person you simply don’t know at all. Active doubt or doubt from ignorance, okay? If you don’t know who he is—never mind right now, this is pilpul—but assuming you don’t know whether he is righteous or wicked, either you know he is average, or you know nothing about him. What are you supposed to do? So if there are two ways to interpret his act or his statement, incline it in the positive direction. Okay? And if you are a person of higher virtue, then even if, say, there is a 60 percent tilt toward the bad interpretation, you should still choose the good interpretation. But what if it’s 80 percent? Then no. What if he is a righteous person? Then even if there is a 90 percent chance that the interpretation of this act is bad, you have to choose the good interpretation. And if he is wicked, then the opposite. Now why? Am I obligated in commandments between man and his fellow with respect to righteous people and not with respect to wicked people? It has nothing at all to do with commandments. This instruction has nothing at all to do with morality—contrary to what people mistakenly think. Think about it. What does it mean? When you see a great righteous person, yes, someone you know as righteous, who never does evil in his life, even at the highest price imaginable, and he is chasing an engaged girl with a knife in his hand. Okay? What do you say? You say what Rabbi Tau said, right? Nonsense and maybe’s and fabrications, all made up. What does that mean? You are basically saying: apparently she left the knife in his kitchen and he ran after her in order to return it to her. Is that reasonable? The answer is yes. Why? Because if you know him as a righteous person, then it really is reasonable to interpret it that way. It really is not likely that he is running after a girl in the public domain in order to rape her. It is not likely that a righteous person would do that. So rational judgment says to judge him favorably; it is not a moral judgment. If you do not judge him favorably, you will simply be mistaken, most likely. Maybe not, but in most cases you will be mistaken. Therefore in such a situation, even a far-fetched interpretation is one you should adopt in the positive direction. And the same is true with the wicked person. Why, with the wicked person, do I adopt even a remote interpretation in the negative direction? Because I know he generally does evil. When I see him suddenly doing something good, I interpret it negatively. Even if the negative interpretation is strained—it is strained if I were a tabula rasa, if I had no information—but if I have information about this person and I know he is wicked, then this is not a strained interpretation; it is the required interpretation. What happens when you do not know who is standing before you? When you do not know who is standing before you, then you work with the ordinary statistics. Then you say: he is neither righteous nor wicked; I have two ways to interpret what he said or did. I have no reason to adopt specifically the bad interpretation, so I adopt the good interpretation; he has a presumption of fitness. A person unknown to me has a presumption of fitness. So I interpret him positively even if there is a slight tilt toward evil—I still interpret him positively. Here perhaps you can see some moral dimension, but even there I’m not sure it’s a moral dimension. It is a legal presumption of fitness that a person possesses. You grant him that presumption not because you pity him, not because you have compassion for him, not because you are a good person. Rather because that is how one should relate to people. Meaning: if you don’t know he is wicked, why treat him as wicked? Treat him as righteous. Like a legal presumption; it is not a moral imperative. Okay. Therefore this instruction to judge favorably does not mean to use crooked intellect; it means to use straight intellect. Someone who uses crooked intellect in order to judge favorably is making a mistake. If you interpret a person’s act, when it is clear that he did something bad, in a positive direction, then you are not righteous—you are foolish. Since interpretation must be correct interpretation. What determines whether an interpretation is the proper interpretation is whether it is true, not whether it is righteous. Interpretation is not judged by whether it is the interpretation of righteous people. Interpretation is judged by whether it is correct or incorrect. It’s just that judging favorably is the correct interpretation—unless you know the person is wicked. Then indeed not; then do not judge him favorably. Do not judge him favorably not because there are no commandments between man and his fellow with respect to the wicked, but because judging favorably is not a commandment between man and his fellow. It is a rational rule of interpretation. That’s all. Okay? The tanna is talking about such simple things. Someone asked here in the chat: what is the novelty? So I also wrote this in my column. I think the reason is simply that people have some tendency to ignore this and to interpret things irrationally as though they can be justified rationally. You see someone chasing an engaged girl with a knife. What do you mean? Obviously he’s wicked, he’s going to rape her. He doesn’t understand that what he is saying is not irrational—not that it is unrighteous, but irrational. And we have some tendency to ignore this rational dimension, and therefore the tanna says it. Why does the tanna say one should be righteous and humble? What, is that not obvious? I also know one should be righteous and humble. Yes, but we have a tendency not to be righteous and humble. So the tanna says: pay attention, yes, one should indeed be that way. It’s like Mesillat Yesharim in the introduction, where he says: I did not come here to innovate novelties; I am telling you things everyone knows, but they are things a person tramples underfoot. You know it is true, but we have some impulse not to conduct ourselves in that way. And therefore the tanna finds it necessary to sharpen this point. But even so, in my view this is not a matter of character traits; it is not at all a moral question. It is a rational question to judge favorably. In a case where that interpretation is not rational, do not adopt it. So in Pirkei Avot it’s not all morality? What? So in Pirkei Avot it’s not all morality? There are several other things there that are not morality. Right. The claim—the claim about judging favorably—why am I getting into this whole issue of judging favorably? Because yes, Rabbenu Yonah also writes on this Mishnah, and other commentators on this Mishnah say the same thing. Meaning, contrary to what people usually think—that the interpretation must be crooked because you are obligated to make the person in front of you come out righteous—not true. You are obligated to understand him as he actually is. You are obligated to understand what really happened here if you are coming to interpret this case. And if this case is rationally interpreted in the negative direction, then you need to interpret it negatively and not be an idiot. So according to this, one should also judge Chaim Walder favorably, no? What? Of course. Of course every person should be judged favorably—where it is still reasonable. But after there is evidence, and there is a court that investigated, and you know nothing about it, then you are babbling. You are not judging favorably, you are babbling. He does not fall under the category of that righteous person who did something and there is one suspicion he is wicked. He falls into that category only as long as you have no evidence. So according to this, you can never convict righteous people? Witnesses come and say the righteous person committed an offense. So the judges should say: wait, but he is righteous, so apparently the witnesses are lying. And the witnesses—I don’t even know them. So how do you know? Maybe these witnesses are wicked or average or whatever. So I’ll judge them unfavorably and not the righteous person before me. Absolutely not. “Do not favor a poor man in his grievance”—and likewise not a great man. You may not do such a thing. Of course you need to check the evidence well. If he is righteous, check the evidence well. But once the evidence says what it says, then that is what it says. To judge favorably in the face of evidence is foolishness, not righteousness. In Rabbi Tau’s case it’s psychiatric, not foolishness. Meaning, in my view he is simply not with us. Meaning, it is a psychiatric issue. But I’m talking also about a sane person. Meaning, a sane person would think that one should do this in order to judge favorably. No, one should not do this in order to judge favorably. There are things that are not rational. If it is not rational, one should not do it. This lies in the realm of logic. In a place where things are balanced—fifty percent bad and fifty percent good—there you can say: look, rationally I could adopt either of the two interpretations; here they tell you: go with the positive interpretation. And again, even there, in my view, it’s not really morality. It is the presumption of fitness that applies to every person even on the legal level. It’s not because I am righteous, but because I have no evidence. He has the right to be considered righteous. You cannot treat him as wicked unless you have evidence that he is wicked. So once again, this is not righteousness; these are rational legal rules of interpretation. What? I’m saying it’s like a relative in testimony. Usually there is a presumption, but they say that if he comes to testify as a relative, then you can’t say, well, everyone is upright and everything is fine, and he too is a relative. The fact is that with a relative in testimony we understand there’s some issue, and no. But specifically regarding a relative in testimony, they say—and this is a Talmudic text in Bava Batra, and the commentators on the Shulchan Arukh and Maimonides bring it—that it is not because he is suspected of lying, but because it is a scriptural decree. The disqualification of relatives has practical ramifications. If he was a relative and then ceased to be one, would I accept his testimony? He was his son-in-law, he saw the case while he was his son-in-law, and now he divorced his daughter. So he is no longer his relative now. Is he permitted to testify about the murder? No, it has to apply at the beginning and at the end. Right, the Talmudic text in Bava Batra says that. The medieval authorities learn from here—Maimonides, the Shulchan Arukh, and all the medieval authorities—that the disqualification of relatives is a scriptural decree. Yes, yes. It is not suspicion of lying, because if it were suspicion of lying, then here there is no suspicion of lying. He is not his relative. And is that agreed upon by all the medieval authorities? I know there are those who say it is a scriptural decree, but is that agreed by everyone—was it ruled that way as Jewish law? I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that. Okay. Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh certainly state it explicitly; it’s a Talmudic text. I don’t see who could disagree with that. Again, the question is what the meaning of a scriptural decree is. I once saw in Rabbi Yogel—he wanted to argue, I had some debate with him when, before he published the book, he sent me sections to review. Rabbi Yogel from Midrasha? Yes. Okay. So he wanted to argue regarding disqualification of relatives that there really is no suspicion of lying, but there is bias in perception. When you are involved in a situation, you may perceive the situation in a biased way. Not objectively? Yes. Meaning, you have a presumption of fitness and we do not suspect that you will knowingly lie in court, but there will be some dimyon, some element where you think you really saw it that way—not that you came to lie, but you saw it in a biased way because you are related. So I had all kinds of proofs against him there, never mind, we had all kinds of debates about it. But that, for example, is an interesting argument because it can still say something close to what you said earlier. That it isn’t lying, but it does distort one’s view—that is what closeness does. The point is that relatives are disqualified even to the detriment of their relative, not only in his favor. And it is hard to accept that bias could lead to testifying against the relative. Closeness should lead the bias in the other direction. Well, who knows, it depends what kind of score he has to settle with that relative. Fine, that’s another discussion, okay? I’m not talking about mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, okay? Let’s talk about just two brothers who have a good relationship and everything is fine. Fine. Those who are about to get married shouldn’t take this too seriously, though there is something to it. Fine, to know the world—there’s no helping it. In any case, for our purposes, the claim is that to judge favorably means to conduct yourself rationally. That is also what Rabbenu Yonah says, and so on. Now, there is another Mishnah in Pirkei Avot—I said, you should understand why I am getting to all these Pirkei Avot passages, how did we start with this? Is this Shabbat Minchah now, studying Pirkei Avot? In the chapter “The Acquisition of Torah”—yes, that’s the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avot, you know that it is not an integral part of the tractate, it is called “The Acquisition of Torah”—and there it says as follows. Yes, there are forty-eight qualities, things through which Torah is acquired. So there is “bearing the yoke with his fellow, judging him favorably, setting him upon the truth, setting him upon peace, settling his heart in his study, asking and answering, listening and adding,” and so on. Yes, there are forty-eight things which are the qualities through which Torah is acquired. One of them is “judging him favorably.” And I argued in that column that this does not mean the same thing as “judge every person favorably.” “Judging him favorably” here means the principle called the principle of charity. What does that mean? The principle of charity is a common principle in interpretation and philosophy, in logic, whatever, whereby when you argue with a certain position or opinion, group, person, whatever it may be, you should always judge it favorably. And you interpret it in the best possible way. Okay? That is basically the claim. Now usually even the term, “principle of charity,” sounds like some kind of moral term. You are supposed to be nice to your interlocutor. It is not a moral principle. It has all kinds of justifications people offer—I turned to Wikipedia, which brings all kinds of justifications—none of them, in my view, holds water. Those justifications are not correct. Incidentally, I’ve written several methodological columns recently, and every time I enter one of these principles that appears in Wikipedia, which surveys all the justifications, I come to the conclusion that simply none of the justifications is correct. Those entries—the people summarizing in those entries—simply keep missing the point, time and again. It’s really quite amazing. So there are various justifications there: people see things differently, therefore you need to judge him favorably. Nonsense, in short. What? They see things differently—it’s true that people see things differently. And if you can understand how he sees differently, then you don’t need to judge him favorably. To judge him favorably is always to say: okay, I don’t understand what you’re saying, but what? But you are probably saying something sensible. But if he says something different from you, then he says something different from you. If he sees things differently from you, then he is not saying what you say but something else. There is the Shakh. The Shakh—my feeling whenever I study the Shakh is that if there is a Shakh the length of a football field—in Choshen Mishpat especially, the other Shakh works are shorter. In Choshen Mishpat there are gigantic Shakh sections. And those sections very often—almost all of them, I think—he takes a certain passage, goes through the views of the medieval authorities. When you study the views of the medieval authorities, you get the impression that most of them tend in a certain direction. And the Shakh says the opposite, and afterward he explains to you with signs and wonders that all the medieval authorities say what he says. Including most of the medieval authorities whom you thought went against it—he also explains, with signs and wonders, that they too really say what he says. Almost. There are cases where he gets stuck, but in most cases that is his policy. Now I judge the Shakh favorably in that he too judges the medieval authorities favorably. What does that mean? He reached a certain conclusion; he thinks the truth in the matter is X. Now whoever says Y—wow, mistaken. It is not likely that the great medieval authorities erred. Therefore he says: apparently they too meant to say Y—or X, I don’t remember how I said it—what he said. Okay? Apparently they meant to say it, because otherwise I am presenting them as fools, as people who erred. Great people do not err. So apparently they meant to say what I am saying. And in the yeshiva world it is accepted to say: better to force the language than to force the reasoning. Isn’t that worse? Meaning? If you try to force the words even though on the face of it they don’t say that—wouldn’t it be better simply to say you disagree? This is exactly the principle of judging favorably from earlier. After all, if the person is so wise, then he didn’t say something stupid. So if I have reached the conclusion that position Y is stupid, then I will try to interpret that Torah scholar as apparently meaning X, because I don’t believe he is foolish. And it is rational to do that. It is rational to do that. I prefer to say that he did not formulate himself precisely rather than that he thought incorrectly. Not morally preferable, rationally preferable. It is more rational to say that. Because in formulation a person can miss the mark; he is not necessarily a master of wording. But if he is a great Torah scholar, he did not say something foolish. So there is logic in adopting a strained interpretation. Just as if he is righteous, then the interpretation that his act is proper is a rational interpretation, even though if you were a tabula rasa the chance that this is the correct interpretation would be small. But if he is righteous, it is rational. The same thing here: if an ordinary person had written it, practical difference. Say the Shakh would not do that for someone who was not a Torah scholar. He would say: fine, he is talking nonsense. But if he sees Maimonides, the Rashba, the great medieval authorities—people like these do not talk nonsense. Now again, he has reached the conclusion that it is nonsense; maybe he is mistaken, but that is his conclusion. So it is very rational from his perspective to try to explain them too as saying what he says. There is no defect in that. One should check whether he is right, whether he is wrong, whether one can think otherwise. But the claim is that this really is a function of who the person standing before you is—that is judging favorably in the usual sense of chapter 1 of Pirkei Avot. But “judge him favorably” in chapter 6 speaks of “his fellow,” not of a Torah scholar, not of a rosh yeshiva. “Judge him favorably” there does speak of his fellow. His fellow does not have to be a great genius. So why do I need to interpret him in a favorable way—that is, present his position as a rational position even though there is no reason in it at all? He is probably foolish. Why judge him favorably? Incidentally, notice it says “judge him favorably,” not “judge every person favorably.” I claim it is something else. Because there is an option to explain him favorably—meaning, what does “judge” mean here? That it is fairly balanced and you tip the scales favorably. But the question again: is “judge him favorably” the same thing we discussed regarding “judge every person favorably” in chapter 1? Except that if I know nothing about him, then I judge him favorably. But if he is my friend, I probably know who he is. So why judge him favorably? It depends which category of person he falls into. And it also appears in the chapter “The Acquisition of Torah,” not in chapter 1. “The Acquisition of Torah” means the ways by which Torah is acquired. The ways by which Torah is acquired do not include interpreting the other person crookedly. Torah is not acquired with crooked intellect. I want to make the following claim, and in my view this is the meaning of the principle of charity—not everything written in Wikipedia. The meaning of the principle of charity is that when I confront a certain position, I need to present that position in the best way possible so that I can formulate my own position in the best way possible. Not because that is what my interlocutor meant. Suppose I have an argument with someone about capitalism versus socialism. Now he raises stupid arguments in favor of socialism, and I am a brilliant capitalist, all their arguments are simply absurd, okay? He isn’t intelligent enough. Now I need to judge him favorably. What does that mean? It means I have to raise arguments in his place in favor of socialism—the best arguments I can—then weigh them and examine whether I agree or disagree. Why? Because if I go with his arguments, then I will reject socialism as a straw man without there really being justification to reject it, because perhaps there are good arguments he didn’t think of because he isn’t smart enough. It turns into a conversation with yourself. Exactly. Meaning, if someone presents a position, then I am supposed to judge him favorably—in other words, I need to justify that position favorably, not because that is the interpretation of what he intended. That belongs to chapter 1: how to interpret a person’s intentions. And that depends on what I know about him—whether he is wise, foolish, average. Then I interpret him this way or that. What do I care whether I need to interpret a person as wise or foolish? What business is that of mine? I want to discuss the issue and reach a conclusion on the issue. In order to reach a conclusion on the issue I do not need to decide whether he is wise or foolish; I need to assess the position he is presenting. And if I can present that position better than he can, that is what I am obligated to do—and that is how Torah is acquired. This is acquisition of Torah. Because if you do not take the other side’s position seriously, you reject it because he is foolish, so you latch onto the arguments he raises—it is easiest to reject him because he is not a wise person. You can throw his arguments to the winds very easily. But that will not lead you to the correct conclusion of the discussion. How will you know whether capitalism is justified or socialism? Maybe there are excellent arguments for socialism; he just didn’t think of them because he is not smart enough. So you will be a capitalist because your interlocutor was stupid? Then volunteer in his place to present that position as well as possible, and only then start the discussion. Help him—if you are even speaking with him, say so. Even if you are speaking with him, tell him: listen, this argument is foolish. But look, you could have raised arguments A, B, and C, which are better arguments. And now start thinking together with him and try to reach a conclusion. That is how one should conduct a real debate. This reminds me now of some story I once heard. There was a conference of heads of yeshivot. I once heard from someone who was at that conference—there were heads of hesder yeshivot there. And there was some rosh yeshiva there—I think one inclined toward the Haredi world, I don’t remember, Yavneh or Sha’alvim or something like that—who said, “Oh, the boys today—it’s hard for me with the boys in yeshiva. When I was a yeshiva student, I would study with a chavruta,” he had studied in a Haredi yeshiva, “when I studied with a chavruta, if my chavruta said X, I immediately attacked him, regardless of whether he was right or wrong. There was Torah passion.” Rabbi Lichtenstein was horrified. Rabbi Lichtenstein was sitting there in the discussion and started shouting at him: “What do you mean? If you thought he was speaking reasonably, why attack him? Is there some commandment to attack? What kind of nonsense is that? You are supposed to try to clarify the issue in order to reach the best conclusion you can. But there is no value in arguing just for the sake of argument.” Now the truth is, there is something to both sides. Meaning, there is room for this too: even if he is right, I will try to argue with him—that is the other side of what I said before—because I will try to check whether he really is right; maybe I will look for arguments against him. But in the end, of course, I will weigh both sides and reach the conclusion that truly seems right to me. But sometimes in order to reach the conclusion that really seems right to me, I need to search high and low for all the arguments I can find for the other side. That was supposed to be the lesson of the Yom Kippur War in the Mossad, the Shin Bet, I don’t know, Military Intelligence, I don’t remember where it was—to establish a department of “the opposite may be true.” Meaning, in every discussion there should be someone who presents the establishment position, and someone who presents the opposing position in the most well-reasoned way possible, trying to convince them they are wrong. And that also helps me examine my own position. You hear? It also helps me really examine my own position. Yes, exactly. Therefore I say, there is something to this sentimental longing for arguments at any price. But one shouldn’t exaggerate it. Meaning, yes, one should try to think of every argument one can to attack a position even if it seems correct, but not just for the sake of arguing, and not in order to present the other person as foolish, but in order genuinely to examine all the arguments to the end and reach the correct conclusion. Okay. Okay, “I am too small,” Yossi is writing in the chat here the source for this idea, but here in Israel I remember that they concluded this practically after the Yom Kippur War—because of the conception, so there always needs to be someone who attacks the conception in every discussion—and I definitely think this is a good prescription, that it is proper to do this when making decisions. In the government it didn’t work. I can’t hear? I’m saying in Netanyahu’s government this “the opposite may be true” didn’t work. Why? They said there was a “the opposite may be true” team there, and I don’t—well, that’s political. So there you go, I don’t know, I hadn’t heard about it, but if there was such a team there and they still decided as they did, then apparently they examined the opposite arguments and the conclusion still stood. Fine. That doesn’t mean it didn’t work. The “the opposite may be true” side does not have to be correct in order for it to work. It has to contribute its input so that we reach the correct conclusion, whatever it may be, with it or against it. So I think this is the principle of charity. The principle of charity means: when you confront a position, do not confront the holder of the position; confront the position. Even if the holder of the position is foolish, you should present the position better than he does in order to bring the discussion to more fruitful and effective places. Okay. So the claim in the end—and Yossi, soon you’ll produce a Wikipedia entry from here on “the opposite may be true”; you can see in the chat the sources Yossi is bringing. The claim, yes, is that in the legal world there are two methods; this is called adversarial and inquisitorial. Continental law, British law. An adversarial method basically says: let the contestants play before us. The judge sits in judgment and the defense attorney and prosecutor—or the prosecution and the defense—argue with each other, bring evidence, objections, debate, and the judge does not intervene. In the end the judge decides according to the evidence presented before him. In an inquisitorial system the judge… he is inquisitorial; he intervenes and helps the prosecution, helps the defense, where he sees they are not acting optimally. Yes? Now by simple logic it seems to me that, of course, the inquisitorial method is more correct. What do you mean—if you took a foolish lawyer, then because of that you are guilty? If the judge sees that the lawyer is acting incorrectly here and could have acted differently and acquitted the defendant, I would expect the judge to intervene. It may be that there are technical reasons not to do so. For example, if the judge becomes a party to the discussion, involved, maybe that will affect his rulings. One can discuss technical reasons, but on the principled level it is clear that the inquisitorial approach is a more correct method, because in the end you are striving for truth, so it is not a game where you have to judge who won. This is not basketball. In basketball the judge is not inquisitorial; he is adversarial. The two sides play, and the judge has to decide who won. But in a court of law you are convicting a person; you have to decide what the truth is. So if his defense attorney is not acting correctly, then I expect you to intervene and say to the prosecution: friends, you have not met the burden of proof. Here, there is this argument and this argument, even if the defense attorney does not know to think of them. Because in the end you truly need to be convinced that the defendant is guilty. Okay, so therefore I say the same thing here—it’s only an example, this legal matter. The same thing I claim regarding judging favorably, yes? In the end, when you encounter a learned position, a halakhic position, a scholarly position, whatever it may be, you need to judge it favorably—not in the sense of judging the person favorably, but of judging the position favorably. Why should I care about the position? I care, because I want to formulate my own position in the best possible way. That is the principle of charity. And I claim that “judge every person favorably” in chapter 1 means judging the person favorably. And “judge him favorably” in chapter 6 means judging the position favorably. Because in the end I want to determine what the Jewish law is, or what the correct halakhic conclusion is. But for that, I need to judge favorably—that is, I need to examine the favorable side as well before deciding against it or in its favor. Therefore it is a different principle. In chapter 6 appears the principle of charity. In chapter 1 appears the interpretation of the person, which is determined by—yes, the practical difference, for example, is if the person standing before me is a fool. He is not a Torah scholar, he is completely foolish. Then I do not need to judge him favorably in the sense of chapter 1. He is certainly talking nonsense. But when I want to examine my own position on the issue, then I need to judge the position he presented favorably, to check whether I need to reconsider what I think. Not because that is what he intended. That is the “judge him favorably” of chapter 6. And that exists even when the person is foolish. The chapter 1 version exists only if the person is wise. But the chapter 6 version exists even when the person is foolish, because I am talking about the position, not the person. You know, I don’t remember who once said this: what is the difference between a dispute and an argument? A dispute in the sense of Korach and his congregation, yes? In the negative connotation. A dispute is ad hominem, and an argument is about the matter itself. Yes? A dispute is basically a quarrel between people; the topic over which we are arguing is just the vehicle. I actually want to get at the person, so I show he is foolish through arguing with his position, or show he is wicked through interpreting his behavior, but really I am after the person. In an argument, as opposed to a dispute, I really want to clarify what the correct position is. I am not after the person, I have nothing against him, everything is fine. I just disagree with him. Now let’s see whether I agree or disagree, who is right in terms of the reasoning, and I will formulate a balanced position. Okay? Now why, why, why am I saying all this? Because what I said earlier, ultimately in the previous lecture, yes, about “this one benefits and that one does not lose.” I said there that basically, why is it permitted to say things in the name of a great person? Or why did Rav Chisda need to attend on Rami bar Hama before Rami bar Hama answered him? Because if you value the person, you will judge him favorably. And here there is a very interesting combination of the two principles we discussed. Because I showed there in the passage of “this one benefits and that one does not lose” that when Rami bar Hama said what he said, on the face of it it really does look like complete nonsense. And Rava died laughing when he heard it. Yes, complete nonsense. Okay? But Rav Chisda kept quiet, because Rav Chisda had attended on him, and I explained there—following Rabbi Shimon Shkop—that Rav Chisda had attended on him. And therefore he valued him, and because he valued him he thought again about what he had said, yes, and therefore he understood that in the end there was an explanation for it. The Talmudic text itself brings the explanation there. Now in this case, it was a wise person involved—this was the amora Rami bar Hama. So there too, in terms of chapter 1, you should have judged him favorably. Because a wise person does not talk nonsense. Okay, so Rava’s mockery was unjustified even just in terms of chapter 1. But I say, let’s leave that—maybe Rava did not think highly of Rami bar Hama. But there is chapter 6. And in terms of chapter 6, if his position seems foolish to you, invest more thought—perhaps there is something to the position. He may be completely foolish. But the position he raises may have substance, and you may find better arguments than the ones he presents. He is foolish, he does not know how to establish it. But positions are worth examining. If someone already raised a position, who knows. Sometimes he has good intuition even though he does not know how to justify and establish it. Think—maybe you will find better reasons. And therefore, in terms of chapter 6, you should have judged the position favorably even if in terms of the person you didn’t think much of him, or you did not judge him favorably. And in that sense I say—what? How does the Rabbi really explain Rava? If we now apply it to Rava—if Rava said something, then he isn’t foolish either, as the Rabbi says. So what, what, what? First of all, Rava was a human being like you and me, and he had impulses like you and me, and he had a foolish moment and laughed at him. Doesn’t that happen to all of us? Someone says something foolish and we laugh at him. That’s one possibility. Second, maybe Rava also did not agree with the explanation that Rami bar Hama ultimately gave. Maybe he considered that too and did not agree, and therefore in the end it still seemed foolish to him. I don’t know, maybe. But when I see that explanation, it is certainly one one can accept. It is not a foolish explanation. Simcha, now we need to judge Rava favorably. Yes, there are two possibilities here. Did Rava sin here, yes, was he hasty, or did Rava actually consider it and decide that even that was nonsense? I don’t know—now we need to judge Rava favorably. So we’ll judge him favorably too. Fine. In any case, for our purposes it doesn’t matter, because what matters is not what about Rava? What matters most is whether it is right to do this. And the answer is no. It is not right to do what Rava did, regardless of how I interpret Rava himself, Rava the person. Because for me, what matters is Rava’s position, the position Rava expressed. In terms of the position Rava expressed, the lesson for me is not to do as Rava did. And if I hear someone say something, then yes, think very carefully whether there is some reasoning here such that what he says is not complete nonsense, even if he himself does not know how to substantiate it. Okay, so all this is only a completion of what I did in the previous lecture in order to explain that in fact trust in people goes even farther. You could call it trust in a position, not trust in people. I am supposed to take the position seriously and therefore not dismiss it out of hand when someone says it. Certainly if a wise person says it, but even if just some person says it—if a person has some sort of intuition. Good intuitions are had by every person, and people do not always know how to substantiate the good intuition they have. And when they raise arguments, your ears ring. Yes, I’m reminded—and I mention my own sins today, we’ll get to this later, but I’ll insert it here already—there was a period when I had some not-simple illness, never mind. They couldn’t identify it, I went around among doctors, nothing helped. Somehow they managed to drag me into various forms of alternative medicine. To this day I don’t understand how, but after a long period they succeeded. I went to a few of these people—three of them or something like that—and the common denominator among all of them was that they started explaining to me with signs and wonders the mechanism of how this whole thing operated in me, and they based the diagnosis they gave me on all kinds of pseudo-scientific forms. I remember someone in Kiryat Ono who told me, I don’t know, something or other that I had, and he explained that there are meridians, energy lines—yes, Chinese medicine and all sorts of nonsense like that—and he explained all these alternative mechanisms, of course, that… lead him to his intuition. There are energies here and there. I said to him: tell me, do you know what energy is? I happened to have studied physics, so yes, that came naturally to me. You know what, he said, energies—it’s some kind of, I don’t know, cosmic force. So you know what? Spare me the arguments. Just tell me what you think I have and I’ll try what you prescribe. Maybe you have a good intuition, but your arguments are worth nothing. Don’t try to justify things to me that you yourself don’t know how to justify. If you have statistical success, I won’t argue with that. So give me the prescription. If you have good intuition, I’ll take the prescription and we’ll see if it works. We lose nothing. Spare me the arguments. And many times it’s like that: a person has good intuition and doesn’t know how to justify it. When you ask him what the basis is, what argument he has for this intuition, you hear nonsense from him. That does not mean what he says is not correct. It does not necessarily mean that. It didn’t work, it didn’t work, don’t worry. Alternative medicine doesn’t work, because alternative medicine by definition is medicine that doesn’t work. Because if it worked—what do you mean if it worked? Then there would be studies showing, with a control group and a sample group, that this thing works, right? So if there were studies showing that it works, it would be regular medicine. Alternative medicine is by definition medicine that doesn’t work—a synonym for medicine that doesn’t work. That is what the term “alternative medicine” means. So of course it couldn’t have worked, unless it is a treatment invented just now and not yet tested. That is the only way to accept alternative medicine that may nevertheless work. That could happen. But a person who offers some thesis that has been examined for years—if it works, then it is not alternative medicine. This is like the Simon Singh book, Trick or Treatment? In Hebrew the translation was “Healing or Seduction.” So Simon Singh, together with some professor of alternative medicine actually, wrote the book—I didn’t quite get that part. And they go through one alternative medical technique after another, and review the systematic studies that tested each such technique, and they show that no study found statistically significant results for any technique that is called alternative medicine. None. Not one. And they go chapter by chapter through all the techniques. It is quite an amazing phenomenon. So I’m saying this because someone asked me earlier how I recovered, and therefore I mentioned it, because I’ll come back to these matters later when I speak about mysticism and alternative medicine and all the charlatan parts of mysticism. There I’ll return to this issue, to what I once called the law of small numbers—not my own term, but following others, I don’t remember who coined the expression. In any case, the claim is that a person can have some intuition that is a good intuition, and it is worth considering it seriously, even if when you ask him what his reasons are, you hear nonsense. Now in the end, a person has to make decisions. Consider things well, think, and arrive at your own conclusions. Sometimes you don’t have time, so if there is a position some idiot is presenting, then you don’t consider it at all. A person divides his time and makes decisions; there’s no helping it. I am only saying that it is certainly worthwhile to listen to positions and ideas and people before formulating a position. And here I close the large parenthesis I opened in the previous lecture: that is the meaning that trust in human beings can have. It is critical trust. It is trust that says: I do not dismiss your words out of hand, but I will reconsider them—but in the end I accept them not because you said them; I accept them because I was convinced they are correct. That is basically the claim. What does not meet this criterion is what is called mysticism. When you place trust in human beings that is not critical trust—yes, something that cannot be reviewed—not because you were convinced, but because you believe him, that is what is called mysticism. And again, I am not talking right now about someone who is not a Torah scholar and asks a question of Jewish law, asks a halakhic decisor—it’s something else—or goes to an expert. I am talking about someone who formulates a halakhic position by himself, yes? Not someone who doesn’t know and wants to know how to act—that’s fine. So that is basically the completion of what I discussed before by way of defining mysticism. Now here I’ll make one more short completion. I said in one of the previous sessions that the mystics themselves, the kabbalists themselves, from their perspective this is not mysticism. Meaning, they do prefer Kabbalistic reasoning to halakhic reasoning, the revealed aspect. And I said there is no contradiction in that at all, that’s perfectly fine, because they live in that world, they can examine the considerations and reach a conclusion, and therefore from their perspective this is not mysticism, so it has firm halakhic status. That’s perfectly fine. I, as someone who is not a kabbalist—or people who are not kabbalists—for them they can accept it only because they believe someone. They are not supposed to accept it, at least not when it contradicts the revealed aspect, and we discussed the different views among the medieval authorities on this. Someone asked me a question on WhatsApp about this, and that is why I want to add this point. So how do you become a kabbalist? What is it, revelation of Elijah? I told him no. It can be learned. You can learn Kabbalah. Right, Kabbalah is learned. So he says: then what is the difference between that and physics? Why is Kabbalah mysticism and physics not mysticism? If you study, then you too will become a kabbalist and be able to examine these considerations. So in that way, just as in physics, when I accept something from a physicist and I am not a physicist, that’s perfectly fine—I go to an expert because I don’t understand the field. So how is Kabbalah different from physics? This is one discipline and that is another discipline. There are those who are experts and those who are not experts. But Kabbalah for the kabbalist is not mysticism. So I say: then why is it mysticism for me, and not for him? What is the difference? It is like an ignorant person asking a Jewish law scholar. He asks him a Jewish law question, so you say, fine, perfectly okay. I say—is it not open to review? It is open to review. If I study Kabbalah, I can check him and see that he is right. This does not mean everyone will check and everyone will become kabbalists, just as not everyone will become scholars of Jewish law. Being open to review means that in principle it is open to review—that if someone enters and studies the subject, or anyone who enters and studies the subject, can examine it. So in that sense this is a good question. In that sense, apparently there really is no principled difference between Kabbalah and physics or mathematics or any other professional field. There are people who are experts. As long as it is a field you can enter and study and become an expert in yourself, then it is not mysticism. It is a field that is not mysticism by my definition. Yes, it is a field accessible to anyone. The fact that not everyone decides to make the effort required to do the examination—fine. But if it is open before everyone, that does not fall under my definition of mysticism. So that really is a good question. But somehow I still feel that even if you study Kabbalah, you do not become a kabbalist. To be a kabbalist you need some kind of intuition or spiritual capacity that not all people possess. And I’m not talking right now about talent—not all people are equally talented in physics and mathematics either—but in principle, if a person with a human mind studies these things, then he knows them. Meaning, there is nothing else here. The feeling is that in mystical worlds it is not enough to study it. You need some sort of attunement to the matter. Meaning, if you do not have the relevant receptivity, the relevant capacity to grasp the things so that they speak to you and you understand how to work with them, then you won’t really be able to examine the person; in the end you will remain with belief. Therefore I claimed that Kabbalah is not a discipline. Therefore, for example, in Kabbalah there are different schools that also arrive at different conclusions. Because it is not—in physics there are no schools, at least not schools with practical ramifications. If there is a practical difference, you do an experiment and decide who is right. There can be different approaches regarding what is worth checking until the experiment comes that decides, but there is no place there for different schools. In Kabbalah there are different schools, there are different conclusions. That means this is some other kind of discourse, of spiritual intuition, that either you connect to or you do not connect to. Even the kabbalists do not always speak the same language to each other. There are different schools in Jewish law too. What? There are different schools in Jewish law too. Yes, but in Jewish law I think you can definitely understand what the other said and disagree. In Kabbalah you will not understand what the other is saying; it is not your language, he is not speaking to you—except that you may raise reasons why you disagree with him. I think in Jewish law there is not that kind of thing. In Jewish law, when someone sets up an opposing position—again, I’m presenting this very sharply, I don’t know whether it is that sharp, but I think it is true—when there is a dispute in Jewish law, even if we come from different and distant schools of thought, I will understand what he said. I understand his reasons, I understand what he said, and I disagree, and I can even raise reasons and argue with him. To me that means we are both in the same discipline; we have a disagreement. There, discourse is not possible. The interpretation given to these principles is completely different. Totally. It is a different type of discourse. They cannot speak to each other. Therefore I think it is incorrect to treat Kabbalah as a discipline. It is not a discipline. Again, that does not mean it is not true. And I will speak about that later. It does not mean it is not true. It means that adopting a thesis from that world depends on your trust in the person. It may be that your trust is justified and then the thesis is correct. But that thesis, even if correct, is not binding—like dreams. Not because it is not true. It is true, but it has no halakhic status. That is what I want to claim. Okay, I emphasize this again and again. I am not trying here to claim that it is not true. We will get to that later when we discuss charlatanism. Right now I am saying that even if it is true, it has no halakhic status. Jewish law is what can be grasped by anyone who enters the topic. Fine, that is basically the completion I wanted to make to the definition I gave. Okay, I’ll stop here. Any comments or questions? Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom, thank you very much. With pleasure, all the best. Why doesn’t it matter who wrote the Zohar? I don’t know—if you trust Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, or if you trust Rabbi Moshe de Leon, then what difference does it make? If you have decided that you do not trust Rabbi Moshe de Leon and you do trust Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, then of course it matters to know who wrote the Book of the Zohar. Anyone else? Okay, thank you, Shabbat shalom, goodbye. Shabbat shalom.