Messianism – Rabbi Michael Abraham – Lesson 9
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
- Taleb, Warren Buffett, and the distribution of success
- Heter iska, interest, and formal evasion through stocks
- The appearance of interest, late-payment penalties, and rabbis’ attitude toward expanding the heter iska
- A formal prohibition versus a substantive prohibition, and the justification for workarounds
- Stringencies, disqualification from testimony, and the figure of the Rebbe of Zutshka
- The story of Rabbi Yitzhak of Vurke and the idea that a rebbe does not have just “one point”
- Summary of the discussion on messianism in Religious Zionism: meta-history and decision-making
- Rabbi Shach, Haredi pragmatism, and the challenge of economic policy
- Symbols of the state, holiness in the object itself, and Rabbi Tau’s letter to Katsav
- The Wagner boycott, the Holocaust, and hysteria around symbols and narratives
- Moving from the concept of messianism to the concept of a “cult,” and the connection between the two
- Har HaMor, Liba, the New Israel Fund, and the ethics of city rabbis as state employees
- Hasidism, Lithuanians, Rabbi Shach, and Chabad: cult and the continuation of the old tension
- Reasons for reluctance to discuss a “cult,” and the claim that those very reasons actually require discussion
- Examples of phenomena that are hard to eradicate: the shawl women and the hilltop youth
- Cult-like characteristics: an all-knowing leader, fundamentalism, closedness, and a “theory of everything”
- “Our people,” a life-bubble, and Chabad emissaries as contact without openness
Summary
General Overview
The text moves between an economic discussion of Nassim Taleb’s claim about the consistency of success in the investment market, a halakhic-moral discussion of the expansion of the heter iska and formal solutions to interest, and then continues to a critical summary of messianism in Religious Zionism through two central features: meta-historical thinking and the sanctification of symbols. The speaker argues that the lax attitude toward circumventing the prohibition of interest stems from the perception that, in modern circumstances, the prohibition is mainly formal, and therefore formal solutions are also legitimate. Against this he sets a distinction between substantive prohibitions, such as theft, where there is no room for legalistic trickery. Later he sharpens the point that messianism is expressed in judging events through “what stands behind them” and through a disproportionate attitude toward state symbols and toward people as representatives of holiness. He parallels this to phenomena of hysteria surrounding the Holocaust and symbols such as the Wagner boycott and the debate over the Polish law. Finally, he proposes sharpening the discussion through the concept of a “cult,” compares Chabad and Har HaMor, and lists cult-like characteristics such as leadership perceived as infallible, fundamentalism, closedness, and the bubble of “our people,” arguing that the reluctance to criticize such movements actually increases their power.
Taleb, Warren Buffett, and the Distribution of Success
The speaker presents Nassim Taleb’s claim in The Black Swan that Warren Buffett has no special wisdom, and that if a million people enter the investment market, the persistent success of one individual over decades will necessarily appear as part of the distribution of luck. The speaker replies that the matter is not binary and that there is consistency in the results, but Taleb argues that even consistency proves nothing unless one understands the distribution of success and the standard deviation. The speaker describes this as a challenge to common assumptions such as “luck goes with the good.”
Heter Iska, Interest, and Formal Evasion Through Stocks
The speaker argues that the heter iska has been stretched into territories for which it was never intended, neither by Terumat HaDeshen nor by Maharam of Ludmir from the Council of the Four Lands, and that today it is used both for explicit interest and for consumer borrowing. The speaker proposes a “trick” in which the bank sells the borrower stocks in a bilateral transaction, the borrower sells them on the stock exchange and receives cash, and under the agreement with the bank he must transfer the amount according to the market rate by the end of the day. If he does not transfer it, there is a one-time penalty, and the principal and penalty are repaid according to an amortization schedule. The speaker adds that one can also repay early according to a certain discount rate, which is effectively interest, and justifies this on the basis of the principle that one may increase wages but not the sale price.
The Appearance of Interest, Late-Payment Penalties, and Rabbis’ Attitude Toward Expanding the Heter Iska
The speaker asks why the “stock maneuver” is needed if one could simply set a penalty for late repayment of the loan itself, and raises a concern of something that looks like interest in both cases. The speaker argues that the stock solution remains in the realm of sale and therefore distances itself from the framework of a loan, and criticizes the current situation in which the heter iska is used for consumption based on a responsum of Shlomo Moshe, while the rabbis “remain silent” because “they have nothing to say” and “nothing they can do.” He adds that in the background there is also a lack of understanding of the heter iska, and doubt as to how far the prohibition of interest even applies to modern loans, since the purpose of such loans is business and not “if your brother becomes poor.” A bank itself also raises the question of how far it is bound by the prohibition of interest.
A Formal Prohibition Versus a Substantive Prohibition, and the Justification for Workarounds
The speaker defines the prohibition of interest in modern cases as more formal than substantive, and therefore formal evasions are accepted, whereas with a substantive prohibition like theft there is no room for trickery of the “with a change” variety. He argues that when there is no “substance of the prohibition,” but formally it still falls under the halakhic definition, then “if the problem is formal,” he is prepared to find a “formal solution.” He presents this as an explanation for the liberal attitude toward legal maneuvers in the realm of interest even when they go beyond the limits of the formal permit.
Stringencies, Disqualification from Testimony, and the Figure of the Rebbe of Zutshka
The speaker argues that even if a certain act is forbidden according to a stringency of the Rebbe of Zutshka, that does not disqualify a person from testimony, because there are Jewish law authorities who permit it. To be disqualified from testimony one must be an “offender,” not merely someone who does not follow a stringency. He describes a phenomenon in which rebbes have some “motto” that they carry to the very end, and gives as an example a pamphlet by the Rebbe of Zutshka about opening bottles on the Sabbath. The feeling, he says, was one of disproportion and an endless war over the issue.
The Story of Rabbi Yitzhak of Vurke and the Idea That a Rebbe Does Not Have Just “One Point”
The speaker tells a story about Rabbi Yitzhak of Vurke, a disciple-colleague of the Kotzker. When one of his disciples arrived at the Kotzker’s court after Rabbi Yitzhak’s death, and they asked him, “What was the most important thing about your rebbe?” he answered: “Whatever he was doing at that moment.” The speaker presents this as an answer that undermines the phenomenon according to which every rebbe is supposed to have some single central defining point, and gives the example that “in Slonim it’s education.”
Summary of the Discussion on Messianism in Zionism: Meta-History and Decision-Making
The speaker sums up that the discussion of messianism in Religious Zionism focused on two kinds of points, and the first is a meta-historical outlook in which decisions are based on assumptions about the “other side” or the “side of holiness,” and on what drives historical processes rather than on the events themselves. He argues that Religious Zionism generally does not make “crazy decisions,” but the mode of reasoning and deciding what to do often relies on meta-historical rather than historical-realistic considerations.
Rabbi Shach, Haredi Pragmatism, and the Challenge of Economic Policy
The speaker raises a difficulty with describing Rabbi Shach and the Haredi leadership as pragmatic, because their economic conduct—encouraging mass kollel study and dependence on donations and the state—seems irrational and leads to “a life of poverty.” He offers two answers: first, the policy rests on a realistic ability to obtain support from the state or from donors, and when that support is damaged, as happened around 2005 with the cut in child allowances during Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister, the public reacts and goes to work. The speaker argues that the second consideration is also realistic, because the alternative is “the breakdown of the Haredi social fabric.” He explains that integration into the army, higher education, and employment especially threatens the Lithuanian yeshiva world, which “will go to the university” and fall apart more quickly, and therefore Rabbi Shach saw this as a decree and a fence erected to prevent spiritual decline, not as a messianic or metaphysical calculation.
Symbols of the State, Holiness in the Object Itself, and Rabbi Tau’s Letter to Katsav
The speaker identifies the second feature of messianism as an attitude toward symbols in which one does not see a person but what he represents, such as “army uniforms are the garments of the High Priest,” or the president of the state as “the leg of God’s throne in the world.” As an example he mentions Rabbi Tau’s letter of support to Katsav after he was convicted of rape, and argues that the letter shows disregard for the person and the offense in favor of the symbol. He illustrates the need to distinguish between role and symbol on the one hand and the private individual on the other, and argues that placing a flag in a synagogue and turning the mundane into holiness creates for him a sense of dissonance, even without claiming that this is idolatry in any halakhic sense.
The Wagner Boycott, the Holocaust, and Hysteria Around Symbols and Narratives
The speaker presents the Wagner boycott, which began in 1938 after Kristallnacht, as a phenomenon of “German atonement,” and argues that Wagner was not necessarily a Nazi and that the scholarly view of his antisemitism is complex. In fact, he had Jewish friends, and the Jewish conductor who was not a convert and who led the opera house Wagner built is evidence of that. The speaker adds that there were plenty of composers more antisemitic than he was, and quotes something he heard in Los Angeles: that in such cases “the perceived value on the certificate” is more dominant than the historical truth. He expands by saying that the Holocaust creates sensitivities that lead to “irrational” behavior and to situations where “emotion takes over the intellect,” and gives as an example the hysteria around the Polish law and the discussion of freedom of speech, including his opposition to gagging even Holocaust deniers so long as there is no incitement.
Moving from the Concept of Messianism to the Concept of a “Cult,” and the Connection Between the Two
The speaker argues that the concept of “messianism” is not sharp and is not a halakhic concept, and therefore judgments based on it are “gray on top of gray.” He proposes sharpening the discussion through another modern and equally vague concept: “cult.” He says that a “messianic movement” in religious discourse resembles a “cult” in social-sociological discourse, and that here too one is dealing with a continuum in which it is hard to determine when a phenomenon becomes pathological. He describes having written a column about Har HaMor and Chabad, where he noticed that their discussion tends to focus on “the demons behind the events” rather than on the events themselves—for example, judging actions only according to whether they are associated with “the New Israel Fund” rather than by their actual content.
Har HaMor, Liba, the New Israel Fund, and the Ethics of City Rabbis as State Employees
The speaker describes a lecture tour and public activity around the Liba organization and struggles over legislation and educational initiatives, and criticizes Rabbi Mikha Halevi’s appearance in Lod on the grounds that a state employee should not go out publicly against legislation, but rather “resign and say whatever you want.” He formulates the position that city rabbis are “official rabbis” and “functionaries,” cites the principle “the king’s servant is the king’s servant,” and presents this as part of his broader outlook on the rabbinate, even while acknowledging that it is his own point of view.
Hasidism, Lithuanians, Rabbi Shach, and Chabad: Cult and the Continuation of the Old Tension
The speaker argues that Rabbi Shach’s war against Chabad was no joke, and that Chabad is “the cult closest to Judaism.” In his view, “Chabad is completely a cult,” both among the messianists and the non-messianists; the difference is only one of “dosage.” He explains that the tension between Hasidim and Lithuanians has always existed, but most Hasidic groups became bourgeois and institutionalized, so there is no longer much “to fight” there, whereas Chabad and Breslov retained religious ideas that are more boundary-breaking and therefore continue to arouse opposition. He describes a gap between the niceness and rationality of individuals and “something in the air” in the collective conduct that creates the feeling of a conceptual wall one cannot penetrate.
Reasons for Reluctance to Discuss a “Cult,” and the Claim That Those Very Reasons Actually Require Discussion
The speaker lists five reasons for reluctance to apply the label “cult”: the feeling that it is “a blow below the belt” and not substantive; the aspiration for unity and mutual respect; the existence of positive aspects and religious intensity worthy of appreciation; the feeling that such movements “go all the way” in ways others do not dare, which arouses both empathy and inferiority; and concern about speaking ill of Torah scholars and an important public. He argues that all of these are actually reasons to discuss the issue, because otherwise people will be captivated by “the white” and fail to see “the black within the white.” He insists that one must distinguish “between sky-blue and leek-green,” and give credit for the good while at the same time forcefully opposing what is problematic.
Examples of Phenomena That Are Hard to Eradicate: the Shawl Women and the Hilltop Youth
The speaker explains that the shawl women and the hilltop youth do not fade away despite broad rabbinic opposition, because the participants present themselves as those who carry out the will of the leaders “that they themselves don’t dare carry out,” and they feel they are “the spearhead.” He argues that the leadership has difficulty fighting this because there is sympathy for self-sacrifice and for intentions for the sake of Heaven, and that sometimes the participants are “also right” in the sense that they express the ideology more consistently than the pragmatists do.
Cult-Like Characteristics: an All-Knowing Leader, Fundamentalism, Closedness, and a “Theory of Everything”
The speaker states that the first characteristic is a leadership accompanied by mystification of a figure perceived as someone who “cannot make mistakes,” who deciphers every event and gives it meaning. He distinguishes between pragmatic Haredi leadership, which does not interpret everything, and Rabbi Tau, who presents a kind of “theory of everything” and all-encompassing interpretation. He argues that a second characteristic is fundamentalism, in which second- and third-order principles such as “the beginning of the flowering of our redemption” are not open to critical examination, and he gives as an example the statement that if the State of Israel were destroyed “I would take off my kippah,” which he sees as a problematic position. He defines another characteristic as closedness that prevents real encounter with external ideas, describes “equal” encounters only through carefully organized lecturers, and attributes the struggle against the internet and newspapers not to fear of pornography but to fear of exposure to other opinions.
“Our People,” a Life-Bubble, and Chabad Emissaries as Contact Without Openness
The speaker describes groups made up mainly of “our people,” creating a bubble that portrays the group as “the whole world,” and gives the example of a student who claimed “all the great rabbis of the generation,” only for it to turn out that he meant a few names from within the bubble. He argues that in Chabad there is deep closedness even among emissaries who are in contact with the public, because they maintain complete strictness regarding institutions, kashrut certifications, and exclusively Chabad education, including long travel and avoidance of compromise. He presents this as part of a cluster of characteristics that are not simply “black or white” and can also be found in other groups, but whose accumulation in intensity and quantity creates the cult-like feeling.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.
[Speaker B] I’m saying, suppose—well, suppose, fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Nassim Taleb, in his book The Black Swan—do you know it? Of course. So he explains there that there’s no special brilliance in Warren Buffett. Basically, the moment a million people enter the investment market, you have a pyramid here; one person at the end will succeed, even over a hundred years. That one person is Warren Buffett.
[Speaker C] I know the claim, and it has some place in many respects—this claim about a lot of these leaders. But here, basically—I mean, it’s not binary, that it goes here or there, but rather there’s some consistency here, some consistency in the results.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s exactly his claim—that the fact that there’s consistency changes nothing. The question is what the distribution of success is. Meaning, let’s say a million people enter the market—one of them will succeed consistently over seventy years.
[Speaker C] Yes, that’s a correct claim if you have a binary or ternary or multi-nary tree, right? Here it’s not that we have such a tree; rather, it’s a matter of standard deviation, right?
[Speaker D] Luck goes with the good. Huh? It seems that luck goes with—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, that’s the common way of thinking.
[Speaker D] Cause and effect, you know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His claim actually challenges the accepted assumptions.
[Speaker C] By the way, since we’ve already gotten to an economic topic, I want to ask something until people arrive. As is known, the issue of the heter iska has been stretched to places it wasn’t meant for. Not by Terumat HaDeshen in the first layer, and not by Maharam of Ludmir from the Council of the Four Lands. In practice, today they use it both for explicit interest and for consumption and so on. I found a very simple trick. A person needs a loan, comes to the bank, and the bank sells him stocks in a bilateral transaction. Of that bank or another bank. He buys the stocks in a bilateral transaction, Reuven in his own right, sells them on the exchange, and gets the money into his account. That way he has money. Now according to the agreement with the bank, he has to transfer to the account the bank gave him the amount according to the market rate, whatever the rate comes out to. He has to transfer the money by the end of the day, let’s say. If he doesn’t transfer it—if he fails to transfer it—there’s a penalty. A one-time penalty. The penalty and the principal he has to repay, either spread out according to an amortization schedule or some other schedule, spread out in installments. Basically, that’s the whole story. Everything that happens now—and if he doesn’t transfer the money, then basically he has to pay the penalty and the principal according to that amortization schedule. The only thing we asked was this: if he wants to repay earlier. With that we have no problem. There’s a clause that he can repay the penalty and principal according to a certain discount rate, which is interest. But with that we have no problem—why? After all, “one may increase wages but not increase the sale price,” as stated in the Mishnah, and that’s how it was arranged.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, I don’t understand what the difference is between that and just paying a penalty for delay in repaying the loan itself. Why do you need the whole stock trick?
[Speaker C] Yes, first of all, with this—if maybe there are claims that it looks like interest—then what’s the difference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here, look—
[Speaker C] Here in any case we’re in the realm of sale, so we’re no longer in the realm of explicit interest.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, explicit interest isn’t there in the first case either, but no—
[Speaker C] If it’s a loan, then maybe it could be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But not explicit interest; it’s a loan.
[Speaker C] We’ve moved very far away from—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know if I understand correctly—maybe I didn’t understand—but if I do understand correctly, I don’t see a big difference between this and a penalty for non-repayment of a loan.
[Speaker C] Maybe that could also work, but in any case, in my opinion, the current situation where they use this for consumption based on a responsum of Shlomo Moshe—come on, for heaven’s sake—the rabbis are simply staying silent. They don’t want to, because they have nothing to say, because they have nothing to do, and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think there are all sorts of other things in the background here.
[Speaker C] Yes—among them that, I don’t know, they don’t understand the heter iska, and that holds them back in many ways.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only that. From the outset, even the prohibition itself—the prohibition of interest—is not clear how far it really applies to the loans people take today.
[Speaker C] Because we don’t have—what, dependence?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No—because the purpose of the loan is different: it’s for business or things of that kind. I think that’s what stands in the background of the lax attitude toward it.
[Speaker D] Yes, that’s exactly a lot of things he says—
[Speaker C] It’s in the narrative, yes—there’s a difference when the loan is “if your brother becomes poor.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think again, it’s not a matter of relying on that. I think that since this is in the background, people stay silent even when you cross the boundaries of the formal halakhic permit, because the prohibition itself is formal. If the prohibition is formal, then you can also get around it formally.
[Speaker C] What do you mean, formal?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I mean that this isn’t really what the Torah wanted to forbid, but by definition it’s forbidden halakhically. Yet it’s clear that this isn’t really the spirit of what the Torah wanted to forbid. So because of that, in a matter where there is a prohibition—say, nobody would permit you to use trickery with the prohibition of theft, right? To steal with your left hand, with some alteration, I don’t know what. There’s no such thing. The Torah does not want you to steal. But with interest, it depends. If it really is “if your brother becomes poor,” then the Torah does not want you to take interest on a loan of “if your brother becomes poor.” But if it’s just a regular loan of the sort people take from banks, or whatever it may be—not to mention that with a bank itself there’s a question how far it’s obligated in the prohibition of interest—then the substance of the prohibition isn’t really there. Formally it falls under that heading, because we haven’t found an exposition or anything that succeeds in excluding it. So since the prohibition is only formal, formal evasions are also fine. Fine—so we use legal trickery. A legal fiction is a formal solution; if the problem is formal, I’m willing to find it a formal solution too. If the problem is substantive, then they won’t allow a formal solution, like with theft.
[Speaker C] Right—specifically with consumer loans, that’s the case of “if your brother becomes poor,” even if it’s… what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You want to buy—
[Speaker D] A new car—is that called “if your brother becomes poor”? No, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you don’t ride the bus, that’s not “if your brother becomes poor.”
[Speaker C] I think—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What stands in the background is the liberal attitude toward all sorts of tricks and legal fictions in this area.
[Speaker C] Not everyone is like the Rebbe of Zutshka, whose stringency disqualifies—does he commit a transgression or not? If he has a stringency of the Rebbe of Zutshka, I don’t know what.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe he specializes in the stringency of—
[Speaker B] The Rebbe of Zutshka, I don’t know.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even if it’s true that it’s forbidden, that still doesn’t disqualify him from testimony. Because clearly he has an authority permitting him, and there are Jewish law authorities who permit it; that’s enough to validate him for testimony even if you don’t agree with them. To disqualify someone from testimony, he has to be an offender—not just someone ignoring a stringency. There’s no sense in that. Rebbes have this kind of trait that they have to have something that is their motto, and on that they go all the way. What? It’s that sort of thing—meaning that he was stringent or exacting on this specific issue, and then he runs with it, I don’t know, in this kind of way. There was once some pamphlet by the Rebbe of Zutshka—I remember, he’s already passed away—he was one of the activist rebbes back when I was in yeshiva in Bnei Brak. He put out a pamphlet about opening bottles on the Sabbath, caps.
[Speaker B] Really?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He was basically the one who pushed very hard the idea that there’s a prohibition here of tearing, building—various things like that.
[Speaker B] And again—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The feeling was: okay, there’s room to discuss it, it’s not absurd, but the feeling was that there was a lack of proportion. The man devoted inexhaustible energy to this war against opening bottles. Fine, okay—state your opinion and leave us alone. What? In any case… It was that kind of feeling. It reminds me of a story about Rabbi Yitzhak of Vurke. When he died—he was a disciple-colleague of the Kotzker—so when he died, one of his disciples came to the court of the Kotzker. They asked him, as they always ask the disciples of rebbes, the Hasidim of rebbes: what was the most important thing about your rebbe? Which is exactly this phenomenon, because every rebbe has to have something that is most important to him. In Slonim, for example, it’s education. There’s this kind of thing, I don’t know exactly what, but a rebbe has to have something that is his point. So they asked him: what was most important אצל your rebbe? And he said: whatever he was doing at that moment. And that’s a wonderful answer. Really, it’s a marvelous answer. Okay. All right, we—like I said, I wasn’t home so I didn’t have time to print out the pages for myself, so I’m using the computer. Maybe we should always do it this way, save the cutting down of forests in Brazil. Okay, basically we talked a bit—we got more or less to the end of the discussion of messianism in Zionism. I’ll just summarize the points that came up there, and there were mainly two points, or two types of points. One point was the relation to meta-history—or metaphysics, though really meta-history is more accurate than metaphysics. Meaning, you don’t look at history, at what happens in history, but at the meta-historical foundations that drive those processes. And in your estimate, of course, you can never really know, but you assume whether it advances redemption or, on the contrary, delays redemption—the side of impurity or the side of holiness, and things of that kind. And that is basically the plane on which you make decisions. Meaning, you don’t make decisions by thinking about the events as they are, but about what stands behind them. And here there is some dimension—and again, I distinguished this from the characteristics I spoke about earlier, of unrealistic, bizarre attitudes—because I’m not talking about decisions that fail the realistic test, meaning crazy decisions. I think, as I said, Religious Zionism generally doesn’t make crazy decisions. I don’t think it’s correct to put them under that category. But the way in which you make the decision is not on the real-political plane, not on the historical plane, but on the meta-historical plane. And the considerations, the type of considerations, that you use—it’s not that they’re going out to world war against superpowers, I’m not talking about decisions of that sort. But the decision about what to do is often justified on levels that are meta-historical and not historical.
[Speaker C] For example, the Rabbi presented Rabbi Shach as a counterexample, as a rational leader.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, as a rational leader.
[Speaker C] Pragmatic, rational, yes. Specifically on the most rational topic, like sustaining economics.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, well, that’s a famous difficulty.
[Speaker C] So basically that’s also on the plane of rational thought and also on the plane of rational halakhic thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I think this is a famous difficulty. I’ve been with it for many years. I understand the question. Basically, Rabbi Shach as a pragmatic Haredi leader—and not only Rabbi Shach, but the Haredi leadership of the last generations in general, whom I present as the pragmatic ones, yes, like the story with the rabbi of Brisk and Rabbi Herzog—there’s a phenomenon that challenges this description because their economic conduct is not rational. Meaning, how can you send the entire public to study in kollel and rely on donations, charity, support from the state, and things of that kind?
[Speaker C] And hope that it will continue forever.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And of course, really, per family, when you look per family, the sum is low. Meaning, you’re sending people into a life of poverty. It’s not only the question of there not being enough money for everyone, but each individual who is supported lives under very pressured conditions. So here there are two answers. One answer is that this is usually backed by actual possibilities of obtaining support from the state. If state support were to stop, they would stop this policy. Meaning, נכון, they’re not relying on themselves, but there were other factors they did rely on. They didn’t do this as a shot in the dark. Even the Satmar Rebbe, for example, when he sends his people to study, he takes care to—he doesn’t take from the state, but he certainly has a pool of people who will donate. In other words, he bases himself on something.
[Speaker C] Right, the policy of Satmar and even of Gur is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Very much that people work, clearly.
[Speaker C] Most go to work; a minority go to kollel.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying that the antithesis isn’t relying on miracles, but relying on the state. That’s not exactly a miracle.
[Speaker C] And one day some Lapid can come.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When a Lapid comes, then—
[Speaker B] Maybe they’ll change the policy. Meanwhile—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no Lapid.
[Speaker C] In one day, for people who don’t have—
[Speaker B] That one day happened—around 2005 or something like that, when Bibi was finance minister. He stopped those payments there, dramatically cut child allowances, and that saved the Israeli economy. Then it created a huge crisis, and you saw a phenomenon there of people beginning to go to work, to study—when it hit, it hit.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was no choice. Second, his consideration was an entirely realistic one, because what stood against this was the disintegration of the Haredi social fabric. Because once people stand on their own feet economically, Haredi society as we know it really cannot remain.
[Speaker C] Satmar doesn’t remain Satmar.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something else—that’s Hasidic, and it’s not the same thing.
[Speaker B] In the United States it’s completely different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the United States it’s Hasidic—that’s different. In the Lithuanian world, in my view—at least this is my assessment with very high probability—it can’t work.
[Speaker C] So they bring in elements of sitting—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, he can’t—there’s no social engineering. You can’t play with people; they don’t entirely dance to your flute. Rabbi Shach—I know, by the way, that this troubled him terribly. He didn’t sleep nights over it. We were a little close to the family there, of Rabbi Shach, and I know from personal information that he didn’t sleep nights over this. He wasn’t calm at all, and he struggled a lot with these things. But what stood against it was his fear that the whole thing would fall apart. Meaning, once people integrated into all systems of life—the army, higher education, employment, and so on—and Lithuanians won’t become merchants the way Hasidim become merchants, but will go to university—you know, it’s a different temperament, a different culture—there it will fall apart very quickly. If you go be a merchant, fine, you can remain a Haredi merchant; you don’t encounter intellectual challenges that threaten your outlook on the intellectual level, understand? And in the Lithuanian world, in my opinion, that works less. And I think his fear was justified. So he paid the price, but he paid it out of a halakhic consideration—or not halakhic, but totally realistic—a consideration that says this is a kind of decree, like the Sages make: I decree, I prohibit something, because I’m afraid such-and-such will happen. That’s a mode of conduct that was entirely accepted throughout the generations. In that sense, he was not departing from the tradition we know. True, he took a certain economic risk, but he took it for a reason that was completely realistic, not because of messiah and not because of abstract metaphysical things. He made the same kind of calculation leaders made in every generation: you close something off, you erect a fence where you fear that people will end up in places they shouldn’t reach. In that sense, it’s ordinary conduct. I’m not saying no risks are taken, but the risks are taken on the basis of halakhic or historical-realistic considerations—not metaphysical ones. He wouldn’t say this because that’s how you bring the messiah. That’s the point. I don’t think he would make this move in order to bring the messiah. He makes this move because he’s afraid people will deteriorate, people will stop observing commandments, stop being committed to commandments, or at least to the Haredi social character of commandment-observance. So I don’t think this refutes my thesis. At least that’s how it seems to me. In any case, as I said, there were two kinds of characteristics here that do border on a certain kind of messianism. One of them, as I said, is considerations that relate to the meta-historical plane, not the historical plane. And the second type of characteristic is the attitude toward symbols. I said that the attitude toward symbols of statehood, toward state officeholders, as something that is not—it’s connected to the first characteristic—you don’t see the person; you really see what he represents. Meaning, army uniforms are the garments of the High Priest, or the president of the state is like the foot of God’s throne in the world. He’s not a person, not a flesh-and-blood creature. I spoke about this—I think I mentioned that letter of Rabbi Tau to Katsav. After Katsav was convicted of rape, Rabbi Tau sent him a totally bizarre letter, really—even by Rabbi Tau’s standards it sounded absolutely inconceivable. He sent him some letter of support: don’t let your spirit fall because of the persecutions, and all sorts of things like that. It’s unbelievable. It was clear he simply did not see the man before his eyes at all. It’s not a person. What he saw before him was the one who holds God’s throne in the world. The symbol was blemished—yes, exactly. He wasn’t a person at all. There are attitudes like this. “I’m not sitting here as prime minister; I’m sitting here as a representative of the State of Israel”—there are statements like that. But I don’t know, there are limits. A judge who has the flag behind him says, I’m not Moishe Yankel the judge as an individual, I represent the state here—and in a certain sense that’s true, to relate to him that way. Fine. But don’t mix up the modes of relation. When he wears the judge’s hat, then yes, he’s not just an individual, he’s the judge—he represents the judiciary. But on the other hand, when he commits rape, I don’t relate to him as though the judiciary committed rape; Moishe Yankel committed rape. You can’t ignore that. A bit of complex thinking—understand that he is also a representative, but he is also a human being. And as an individual human being he should be judged as he is, with all due respect to the fact that he also represents various things. So that’s why I say: the flag, the anthem, the president, the chief of staff—all sorts of symbols, some of them people and some not—there’s some feeling that the attitude toward them is, I don’t know, disproportionate. They become some kind of holiness in the object itself—I already said that, I mentioned it. Again, this is a personal sensitivity. Of course I do not think that someone who brings a flag into a synagogue is committing idolatry, but still—I don’t know, I don’t get along with it. It grates on me. I don’t get along with it. With all due respect to the flag, and I can respect the fact that people are deeply moved by it—good for them. But symbols don’t speak to me all that much. No—I identify with what it symbolizes, but a symbol itself—I don’t know, symbols don’t speak to me. But what is it doing in the synagogue? Why color this in religious colors? The feeling is that they are turning the mundane into holiness. I talked about this when I discussed the mundane and holiness—we had a whole series on that issue. And here too, again, I say: not in the halakhic sense. The Haredim often use halakhic terms, and I think that cheapens the matter. It’s not idolatry, not even a trace of idolatry. But there is still something here that bothers me. I don’t know exactly how to define it.
[Speaker C] There’s a similar question in the opposite direction regarding Wagner—regarding the composer Richard Wagner. In practice, the boycott of him began in 1938 after Kristallnacht. Now in practice they portray him as though he were a Nazi. In fact, scholars discuss whether he was antisemitic or not—that itself is a question—and if he was, it was a complex kind of antisemitism. And now—he had many Jewish friends, and specifically more proud Jews than converts. Converts tended more to follow his rival, Johannes Brahms, and in fact the conductor who conducted the opera house he built was a non-converted Jew from a rabbinic family, who also refused, despite pressure, to convert. And basically, they were just looking for some German atonement in 1938. There’s no shortage of composers more antisemitic than he was: Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky. But they needed German atonement. And specifically among Germans there was a problem with composers because Schubert was—Schumann was anti-antisemitic, and threw Liszt out of his house when he spoke against Mendelssohn. And what I heard one person say, when this boycott was being debated in L.A., in Los Angeles, was that in such cases the perceived value on the certificate is more dominant than the historical truth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, in connection with the Holocaust there are sensitivities. That’s the issue today exactly with Poland—what’s happening now with Poland. This crazy hysteria—I don’t understand at all what people want.
[Speaker D] They’re not in the wrong?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I don’t understand this whole frenzy. I haven’t read the wording of the law—maybe there’s some Nazi stuff there—but they turned it into some kind of—
[Speaker D] Everybody, everybody here is fine, everybody—there’s no—wait, in the law it doesn’t apply to anything that is a scientific work or an artistic work. No—someone here read it scientifically and said, okay, they really were anti—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, beyond that, I’m saying—the claim is that one must not distort history, but the Polish state really was not a partner. There was no Polish state.
[Speaker B] So that’s all—what’s the problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the historical truth. Now, I’m in favor of not prohibiting any expression of opinion. I’m against Holocaust denial, and I don’t think Holocaust denial should be prohibited, because I think a person should be able to speak freely and raise arguments, and everyone should decide what he decides. No, in my view one must not gag people, however vile they may be—as long as I’m not talking about incitement, but about expressing an opinion. And in that sense I’m against this too. But those who agree here about Holocaust denial, yet object to gagging over there—I really don’t understand that. So around the Holocaust, I think you can see a great deal of hysteria. It’s very strong, and I don’t know how far one can bring examples connected to the Nazis and the Holocaust into other contexts. There people react in a very non-rational way.
[Speaker B] Emotion completely takes over the mind.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s just complete hysteria there. Here in Israel there wasn’t some prohibition against saying it—people wanted, I don’t know whether this law ultimately passed or not, that you’re not allowed to call someone a Nazi. There was such a bill in the Knesset; I think it went to a vote, that you’re not allowed to call someone “you’re a Nazi” or something like that. It would be a criminal offense, yes. There was some… I don’t know whether it passed in the end or not. There were all kinds of jokes about it. Never mind.
[Speaker G] Members of Knesset would be the first to fall because of that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but they have immunity. Anyway, what I’m saying is that if I summarize the move up to now, then these two characteristics—let’s say there’s some kind of messianic spirit blowing there. I don’t know. How far one can really determine something here—and as I said, the concept of messianism itself is not a sharp concept and not a halakhic / of Jewish law concept, so this determination is kind of gray on top of gray. But still, I don’t know, my feeling is that in these two aspects there really are aspects of a messianic movement here. Now I maybe want to sharpen this more through another concept, and this I wrote about on the site in one of the columns I wrote about Har HaMor and Chabad. A fairly charged column, one of the more charged ones, and there I turned to a more modern concept, but no less vague: the concept of a cult. What today is called a cult. And in the course of the discussion we had here about messianism, it suddenly occurred to me that the concept of a cult and the concept of a messianic movement are basically—if not brothers then at least cousins. Meaning, both are vague, both are not simple, even though the concept of a cult doesn’t really arise in a religious context. A messianic movement is perceived as a religious problem. The concept of a cult is perceived as a social, psychological, sociological problem. That’s in secular discourse; it doesn’t belong to religious discourse. But when you think about it a bit, it’s similar. Basically, the concept of a messianic movement is the translation into religious jargon of the concept of a cult, or of a certain kind of cult.
[Speaker C] Cults within religion usually have some theological or halakhic / of Jewish law behavioral split from the mother religion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand.
[Speaker C] Religious cults usually have some sort of ideological religious dispute.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Depends how you define it. I don’t know—the Mormons, you can call them a split from Christianity, you can call them a religion. I don’t know exactly how to relate to those Mormons; it depends how you look at it. But if I look at them now as a religion in itself, regardless of what Christianity’s attitude toward them is—what is my attitude toward them? Then a lot of people would say: that’s a cult. Now those people are secular people; they’re not accusing them of being a messianic movement. Meaning, that’s not an accusation coming from a religious point of view. Rather there’s some sociological, social problem here; it’s something irrational, I don’t know. There too the characteristics are not simple—how exactly to characterize this concept, the concept of a cult. And there the problem of characterization is not because there are no halakhic sources, but because this concept really lies on some continuum where it’s hard to draw the line as to when it becomes pathological, and to what extent each of us has a bit of withdrawal, meaning, none of us is—well, almost nobody is completely glatt, right? So the question is where you cross the line so that it’s already called a cult, that it’s already pathological. So that’s not a simple question. And when I wrote that, it was following some feeling that had also come up for me at that stage: Har HaMor and its daughter institutions had gone out on one of their crusades—I don’t even remember around what, maybe around various religious legislation issues that were around at the time, I don’t remember exactly, anti-religious legislation in their view that existed then—and they went on some lecture campaign, and the Liba organization there was really some sort of organization like that.
[Speaker G] With the pajamas, with that pajamas library they distributed in the Ministry of Education, books on behalf of the New Israel Fund for children.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I don’t remember that.
[Speaker G] Books for little children, and they opposed it because it was funded by the New Israel Fund.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, so the New Israel Fund is one of the big demons there for them. Again, there’s something to it, but the proportions and the attitude are completely crazy.
[Speaker H] They presented a family there with a father and a father.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. No, there was surrogacy there, there were a few laws there, I no longer remember exactly which ones, but I wrote about it, I can look it up. So all kinds of pamphlets came out and they went on this lecture campaign in various places, and even by us in Lod Rabbi Mikha Halevi came—the rabbi here, of Petah Tikva. He came to speak there and it really annoyed me. I wrote there in an email: he’s a state employee, meaning he can’t speak against the Knesset, against the government. You can express your position on various issues, perfectly fine; you can’t say to go out against a law legislated by the Knesset. Resign, and say whatever you want. Meaning, there are certain rules of discourse, there are—well, like Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu—and there’s some problem, in my view, with the statements of rabbis in this context, an ethical problem. I’m not talking now about the substance of the statements themselves; they feel that they are still rabbis in some sense. He can say whatever he wants. You can oppose what he says because you disagree, but there’s no ethical problem in his saying it.
[Speaker C] So in practice, what? We want city rabbis to be establishment rabbis?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They are establishment rabbis; even if we don’t want it, they are establishment rabbis. That’s why I said this is part of how I look at the rabbinate in general. I don’t know, maybe I’m biased on this too, because as far as I’m concerned they’re clerks, so let them take the salary and be quiet; let them fix the eruv. Figures of rabbinic leadership aren’t supposed to be playing on the field of the Chief Rabbinate, and I really do expect them as well to speak and say the things they think—but you’re a government official, be quiet and do what you’re supposed to do. The king’s servant is the king’s servant, as they say. In any case, okay, but that’s really already my own point of view. The point is that around this matter, suddenly the penny dropped for me, because the whole discourse was conducted around some demons behind the events and not around the events themselves. Meaning, more than the law bothered them, what bothered them was that this law came from the New Israel Fund. Meaning, not what the law says or what the phenomenon says or anything like that—it only served them, from their standpoint, because the New Israel Fund is intrinsically disqualified. Meaning, it’s not a question of what. And again, I don’t like the New Israel Fund any less than they do; I also think it’s a problematic institution.
[Speaker B] But ninety percent of the arguments today in every field are exactly like that—they’re about who brought the opinion itself
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And who
[Speaker B] made the law, and not what’s written in the law. They don’t even read what’s written in the law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, and there’s something here that really is a total ignoring of the actual thing. It fit in for me with this whole approach of ignoring what’s happening and relating to meta-history, meta-reality, and not to the things themselves. We talked about the pioneers, that you see the commandment of settling the Land of Israel within the faint sparks of their souls, subtlety of spirit—when none of them is even aware of it, the secular person who believes in nothing. Some kind of ignoring of what’s happening and relating to what’s behind what’s happening. So there I started asking myself, by the way—
[Speaker C] The idea that they’re not aware but the soul knows—you have that a lot in Hasidism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, definitely. It has Hasidic roots, and I say the same thing about Hasidism. Meaning, I said the title is “Movements and cults in Judaism—what do Har HaMor and Chabad have to do with it?” So Hasidism is here too. I think I once said that when Rabbi Shach started the war against Chabad, people kind of raised their eyebrows because overall the feeling was that the war between Hasidim and Lithuanians had calmed down for a few generations, and suddenly the feeling was that actually the coals were dim but they had always been there, and now suddenly it flared up again. Meaning, people thought there wasn’t any more of that, everything was fine, in Agudat Yisrael there are both Hasidim and Lithuanians and everything is fine. So why did the war against the Hasidim suddenly awaken? And I suddenly thought then, when Rabbi Shach came out with that war, that that isn’t correct. Meaning, they always opposed Hasidism, except that Hasidism is no longer Hasidism. Meaning, there are Hasidic groups that still remained Hasidic in the sense of the early Hasidic groups—meaning rebellious, truly innovative, with far-reaching theses. That’s Chabad, Breslov, I don’t know, maybe a bit more, and that’s it. And against them the Lithuanians really do continue to fight all the time. It’s just that Gur and Vizhnitz and all those groups stayed with the socks, but besides that what do you have to fight against them? They basically look the same, just dress differently.
[Speaker C] I think two claims are true: also most Hasidic groups became more institutionalized, more bourgeois.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And on the other hand, Rabbi Chaim
[Speaker C] of Volozhin reached the conclusion that the concern of heresy had dissipated, and we have disagreements but they’re not heretics, they observe Jewish law. I don’t know, I’m not familiar with that conclusion of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, but it seems to me the tension remained even long after him; it’s not that the tension ended with Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he said we have disagreements but they’re not heretics, they observe Jewish law. I don’t know, I think the tension definitely existed even after Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. I don’t know what Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin said, what decisions of his or what change of direction you’re referring to—it’s not familiar to me. But fine, maybe; I just don’t know. But I think the point is that it was always there; Hasidism simply stopped being Hasidism, that’s the point.
[Speaker C] There were Lithuanians who were close to Chabad, yes, and Chabad perhaps wasn’t like in the last generation, but it wasn’t really so institutionalized; rather it remained activist Hasidism in that sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Activist—there are lots of activists, but Satmar too, they’re—
[Speaker C] Activists, but they don’t have—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Their boundary-breaking religious ideas, their innovations, don’t really exist anymore.
[Speaker C] No, I told you: sleeping outside the sukkah, Tzemach Tzedek, the third generation—that’s basically the generation parallel to Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying—this exists in Chabad.
[Speaker C] And this exists in Chabad, and look—they lived with it; they didn’t go out with a ban in every generation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The more it sharpened, and with the last Rebbe things sharpened more in irrational directions, then that tension sharpened. And that’s why Rabbi Shach did say that Chabad is the cult closest to Judaism. And that really is so. Afterward I thought that in my opinion he wasn’t joking; he was speaking completely seriously. He claimed that it’s a cult—that’s what he claimed—and by the way I agree with him. I think Chabad is completely a cult—not even gray. In my opinion Chabad is completely a cult.
[Speaker D] Both the messianists and the non-messianists?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think there’s a very dramatic difference between the two parts. The differences are matters of dosage.
[Speaker C] And by and large there wasn’t a Lithuanian leader besides Rabbi Shach—like, among the number ones—we go to Rabbi Steinman, he met with the Rebbe.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. I didn’t say everyone agrees; I said I agree with what Rabbi Shach said.
[Speaker C] Yes, after all I think that in Lithuanian leadership among the number ones, Rabbi Shach was exceptional in this.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, and still I think there’s real substance to his words. Meaning, I think he also wasn’t joking; it’s not that people took it as a joke at their expense. I don’t think he was joking. In my opinion—and again, one of the problems, and I’ll talk about this more—one of the problems is that on the personal level these are nice people, smart people, who behave rationally in life, in their day-to-day conduct, economic life and commerce and human life, it doesn’t matter, everything is fine. But somehow there’s something in the air, in the collective conduct and sometimes also on the private level in the way you relate, that is completely cult-like. Meaning, you feel you’re not with him, you’re not talking to him—meaning, he’s not with you. Meaning, you have no way of penetrating the conceptual wall, the perceptual wall. Meaning, there’s something here—I’ll talk about it a bit more. But in my opinion it’s really a cult, and at a certain stage I thought that Har HaMor too has no small cult-like dimensions. Then I wrote that piece, and I want to go through some of what I wrote there, because it sheds stronger light on the somewhat vague conclusions I reached last time, or that I summarized now, regarding Religious Zionism. Because really Religious Zionism has all sorts of shades, but when you take these shades—the ideological Hardali shades, not only Hardali, Hardali isn’t exactly precise because Mercaz HaRav is also Hardali—but I’m speaking specifically about the Har HaMor side more than the Mercaz HaRav side, where I think the characteristics are stronger, the characteristics I talked about before. Therefore what I said earlier in a more vague way appears here more sharply. So I want to show you a few characteristics that I wrote there. Before I moved to those characteristics, I tried to show characteristics without defining the concept of a cult, because I don’t know how to define it exactly, and I searched a bit and saw that people don’t really define this concept, not that much material, by the way, I found on these things. It surprised me somewhat—but again, I didn’t do very comprehensive searches on the concept of cults in general, not specifically on these phenomena. But I prefaced it by saying that there’s reluctance to discuss these things, and this reluctance has five reasons, which at least I managed to think of, and in my opinion these five reasons are actually reasons to discuss the matter. First of all, the first reason is that it looks like a below-the-belt hit, that when you say about someone that he’s a cult, then you’re not dealing substantively with what he says. Something doesn’t look right to you? Give arguments why it doesn’t look right, explain why it doesn’t look right. What, you label him under a heading? Here, these five reasons are actually reasons to discuss this matter. First of all, the first reason is that it seems like a below-the-belt hit. When you say about someone that he’s a cult, then you’re not dealing substantively with what he says. Something doesn’t look right to you? Give reasons, what doesn’t look right to you, explain why it doesn’t look right. What, you label him under the heading of a cult? That’s not a substantive response. That’s one point. A second point: there’s some desire for unity, for mutual respect, for tolerance, and when you say “cult” then you’re putting someone down, you’re not… it’s somewhat connected to the first characteristic, the first reason. Meaning, dispute—yes, one should distance oneself from dispute, from this ethos that one who holds onto dispute violates a prohibition. A third phenomenon is that in these two movements, yes, Chabad and also the Kav yeshivot, there are considerable characteristics worthy of much appreciation. You can’t belittle these phenomena; they have amazing strengths, and in completely positive senses. Meaning, it’s not pitch-black, it’s not a black phenomenon; it’s a phenomenon with a lot of complexity. Meaning, it has strengths and it has problematic elements, and it’s hard for people to come out against phenomena that contain positive religious power. In a moment I’ll sharpen this more—yes, for example I maybe spoke about the shawl women. Why is it that, despite the fact that of course almost all the Haredi rabbis oppose this phenomenon, in practice they don’t manage to overcome it? And in my opinion this is very similar to the hilltop youth, which they also don’t manage to overcome, even though almost all the Religious Zionist national-religious leadership opposes this phenomenon.
[Speaker E] Why don’t they manage to overcome it? What? Why don’t they manage?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I mean, the phenomenon doesn’t stop; it has its charm, and people join it, and it doesn’t fade. It doesn’t fade even though in both these places these are people who come out of commitment to religious values, and out of commitment also to halakhic decisors, also to rabbinic leadership. Meaning, ideologically they are not rebelling against rabbinic leadership. Rather what? They claim: we are actually doing what they would want to do, and they don’t dare. That’s really the point. And therefore you can’t cope with this phenomenon, because when you cope with this phenomenon and the person standing opposite you is sure that in the depths of your heart you’re actually praising him, you’re happy, you’d like to be like him, only you don’t dare. You don’t dare either because you’re just a coward, which is lower, or because you have influence and you can’t allow yourself to because you’re a public leader, and therefore maybe rightly you can’t do it, so I’ll act to discharge your obligation and I’ll do it—I’ll be the spearhead. Yes, exactly, I’m the spearhead, I’m some kind of avant-garde doing things that in fact you educated me to do. And in a certain sense it may be that at least in many cases they’re also right. They’re also right, and that’s one of the reasons that the reaction against these phenomena is not carried out in a very clear-cut and forceful way, and therefore people are allowed to understand that behind the opposition stands a very great deal of empathy. And I know, I spoke with people after I wrote sharply about these phenomena, and then I got rebukes from various rabbis who say, right, it’s not okay, but listen, the intention is for the sake of Heaven and there is self-sacrifice there—and I’m talking about the hilltop youth, not the shawl women, but I’m sure it’s the same there too. And they feel this very well. They feel this very well, and rightly so—it’s not a delusion, it’s not an incorrect diagnosis. And therefore the point is—and now I return to the characteristic I discussed here—the point is that they’re really taking the correct ideology and carrying it through to the end, while we are pragmatic and we have some guilty conscience about the fact that we’re pragmatic; we don’t dare go all the way with our truth. And here these young and brave guys are doing it. So this is basically some kind of inferiority feeling, a kind of ambivalence in how I relate to this phenomenon, and therefore they don’t manage to eradicate it. And in that sense it’s the same thing: people don’t come out against these phenomena because overall they do have very positive sides. Now I’m talking about Chabad and Har HaMor. Even those who oppose them don’t come out against them. Rabbi Lichtenstein didn’t come out against them. True, his temperament also wasn’t to wage wars, but I think there was more than that here. He didn’t come out against them because he truly also appreciated them and he truly understood that there is a phenomenon there worthy of appreciation; it has many positive aspects. You can’t wage total war against such a thing, because total war is always a package deal—you have to paint it as black, and there are shades there that are white. This is something that is both black and white. On the other hand, I think that’s not the right decision, because then you leave them white too, and that’s also not right. Meaning, you have to not be afraid of complexity—to wage war against a complex phenomenon. And that’s the third characteristic of why people don’t come out against this matter, or why there is reluctance to come out against it. So I said the third phenomenon is that they have positive sides. The fourth phenomenon is that not only do they have positive sides, but they… they’re doing what we should have done, only they’re doing it all the way. And there’s a kind of inferiority feeling or appreciation, yes, a kind of deference toward them. And the fifth reason is—and there’s a connection between them, yes—to speak evil about Torah scholars, about a dear and important public that carries out important enterprises and so on, so there’s some reluctance to do such things. But in my opinion all five of these reasons are good reasons for why one should do it. Because precisely for all these reasons people will be taken captive by these phenomena and won’t notice that there is also black inside the white. And the responsibility for that also lies with you. The prices go in both directions. The price is that if you come out against them, people will lose the white sides they have in them if you paint everything black. But on the other hand if you don’t come out, then you paint everything white—so everything is fine. Look, there is no conduct without costs. Therefore I think it is indeed right to distinguish between blue and greenish-blue—to say what is black and what is white, and to come out with full force against what is black, and to give credit for what is white. Meaning, fine, alongside that. But I don’t think it’s right to make sweeping decisions either this way or that.
[Speaker C] Rabbi Israel Salanter said that sometimes some dispute for the sake of Heaven—when people think it’s a dispute for the sake of Heaven, then it endures. That causes the dispute to endure.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning it gets more force because they’re going out to a commanded war, yes, to a jihad war, yes.
[Speaker C] So fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he comes to say—but I think that’s right.
[Speaker C] To increase dispute in Israel? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does it mean to increase dispute in Israel? Where it’s needed, then yes. The whole Talmud is disputes. To increase dispute—I don’t see anything bad in that as long as you relate substantively.
[Speaker C] That’s true, but dispute in the sense of disqualifying another person—that’s not a dispute about how, how, in a place—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] where—
[Speaker C] to recite a blessing on the head-tefillin according to every custom.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I’m saying: in a place where it’s a halakhic dispute about whether one recites a blessing on the head-tefillin, then no one will go into a dispute about the people themselves. But here there is indeed a problem with the people themselves, not only with the mode of conduct, and I think here one needs to point this out and not recoil from waging wars or disputes. Yes, true, so there isn’t—then you wage a war, yes, against what doesn’t seem right to me. So what? What happened? I’ll give respect where it’s due. In this sense it’s very important to be substantive precisely where you are going to war also with the people, not only with their opinions. The war is with people, unequivocally. Not only with the opinions. Because here you can’t separate it.
[Speaker D] The two cases you called right now, both Chabad and Har HaMor, involve two specific figures. In Chabad it’s the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and in Har HaMor it’s Rabbi Tau. Take Rabbi Tau out of the equation and you don’t have—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A messianic movement has only Shabbetai Tzvi, you know, only one figure.
[Speaker D] And all—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The thousands around him—that was a messianic movement.
[Speaker D] That could be the sixth reason, that people think, okay, fine, he’s eighty-something, and soon—like, who is Rabbi Tau’s successor in Har HaMor? Who will come?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I never took an interest, but there’ll be someone.
[Speaker D] But there aren’t people there who provoke antagonism there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think he has various successors. I have no idea, and I haven’t taken an interest in it, and it really doesn’t interest me. I’m not that interested in what goes on there. But there are some younger guys there too who are also going in those directions. Doesn’t Kellner go in those directions? The same directions, exactly the same thing. He’s not there there. Fine, not yet, because in the meantime there’s still someone else. When that someone else goes, then he’ll be—or I don’t know, never mind, not him, I’m not expert there.
[Speaker C] What can we infer from the history of such disputes, of disputes that disqualify others—what is the expected gain from them and what is the expected loss?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No Chabadnik will repent because I insult his Rebbe or his way of conduct, but it may be that others won’t join Chabad because of it. That’s all. I think that’s an important point. I think it’s not right to give up on things because of all these concerns, even though these concerns really do appear noble and correct and ethical and all is well—and in my opinion they’re mistaken. Meaning, I don’t think it’s right to do that. Especially since many times—not always, but many times—the symmetry is not maintained. Meaning, one side respects, and the other side doesn’t bother to respect the first side to the same degree—yes, meaning for some reason only one side is careful about the other side’s honor, many times, not always, that is careful about the other side’s honor. Okay, so I want to bring a few characteristics, and these characteristics—again, I’m not giving definitions, but it seems to me that the collection of characteristics already gives the general feel. Okay, I’ll start. First of all, leadership. There is some leader, some all-knowing figure who is of the sort that cannot err, who deciphers the mysteries of creation and conduct and so on, and his opinion is “Torah opinion,” all kinds of things of that sort. Among the Haredim too there is some “Torah opinion” and everything—I mean the classic Haredim—and that’s not a cultic phenomenon. Because anyone who knows the atmosphere there knows: there is a very realistic and pragmatic attitude there despite all the speeches about Torah opinion. Meaning, there isn’t something there—true, there are certain phenomena, I don’t know, wigs very… or all kinds of things of that sort, fine, there are a few points—but day-to-day conduct is very pragmatic and measured. Meaning, there isn’t some mystification of the leader there, some extreme conceptions, at least that’s how it seems to me. In contrast, in the contexts of Chabad too, where it’s much more prominent, but in certain senses also with Rabbi Tau, there is some conception that he doesn’t err, he deciphers the mysteries of creation better than all of us. Meaning, he explains everything that happens and he gives instructions from some kind of encompassing view of the world. I don’t know. I read the books, and the little I’ve read—not much, because it doesn’t interest me that much—but I’m really not impressed. My feeling is that here there really is some kind of cultic leadership. Meaning, they create some sort of mystification that builds itself up. Meaning, and now once you enter that framework, you can no longer even entertain some sort of critical thought that maybe Rabbi Tau missed something here in the analysis of this phenomenon or of—
[Speaker C] The issue of combining halakhic significance with “according to whatever they instruct you,” which is very common in the Haredi and Lithuanian sector.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what I meant earlier when I said that ostensibly there are similar phenomena there.
[Speaker C] It’s a combination, not—this is a symbolic thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a combination, and still I think the cultic atmosphere—I don’t think it exists there. Meaning, I don’t think so, if only because the Haredi leadership does not do, does not allow itself to do, what Rabbi Tau does. They don’t give concrete interpretations to concrete events—they don’t do it. Rabbi Shach didn’t do it, Rabbi Elyashiv, Rabbi Steinman—none of them did it. So people attributed Torah opinion to them, all true, but that’s a theoretical statement. They didn’t explain to everyone what the meaning of every process and everything that happens is, and whether it fits our ideology or doesn’t fit our ideology. They didn’t formulate a very detailed ideology at all, the way Rabbi Tau does. Meaning, it’s not—
[Speaker C] I think the story is maybe something more severe than that. In practice the management by some group of functionaries together with some loyalist—they determine who is the leading sage of the generation, and whoever goes—and whoever goes after another rabbi is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I grant all those things, and I have severe criticism of them. I’m asking whether this is a cultic phenomenon. That’s the question, not whether it deserves criticism.
[Speaker C] I think that if anyone who disagrees is defined as a rebellious elder, functionaries really—not that I’m a fan of the Jerusalem faction—but anyone who disagrees with the leader, with the crowned leader, is defined as a rebellious elder. A rebellious elder—is that not a cultic phenomenon?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those who don’t disagree with the crowned leader, who are within the camp, not in the other camp, they too understand that overall the crowned leader doesn’t explain every phenomenon to them, what’s happening, and doesn’t really know about every single thing—
[Speaker C] But they believe that the leader—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I lived there, I know how people relate. Meaning, that’s not the attitude. I’m saying, even if theoretically they give him the scepter and say yes, yes, he has Torah opinion and he never errs—he never errs because he doesn’t say anything. Now, if you say about someone that he never errs, but he’s careful not to say too much, that’s perfectly fine. That’s still not a cult, at least not in the full sense. With Rabbi Tau, he never errs, but he also expresses his opinion on everything.
[Speaker C] But anyone who disagrees with him is a rebellious elder.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In the large leadership phenomena, on the question whether to enlist or not to enlist, on the big questions, there are fierce arguments. But that’s not—I don’t know. Again, I’m also not sufficiently immersed in the current arguments. Maybe now it’s already beginning to look like a cult. By now I’m no longer so much inside that world, so I don’t know.
[Speaker I] The leadership of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The leadership of Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky—with Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky it’s very different; it comes closer to the direction of mysticism, more. Yes, maybe. I don’t know, I’m not familiar enough, which is why I say this. But I’m saying: I lived at least in Bnei Brak. The feeling was, true, people talked about the fact that there is Torah opinion and whatever Rabbi Shach says one has to do, and according to whatever they instruct you, all true—and everyone, with a wink, did it and everything was fine. Meaning, they did what Rabbi Shach said, not that they didn’t. But fine, the attitude wasn’t that he knows everything and he never errs. Everyone understood the context in which this was said. And Rabbi Shach also didn’t give an interpretation for everything that happened, and he didn’t explain everything, and he didn’t build as detailed a theory as Rabbi Tau builds. Meaning, where everything is explained, a sort of theory of everything like that. Yes, a kind of figure who knows everything, explains everything, and every scrap of an event that happens here fits the theory, and it’s all—he deciphers the mystery. There’s a matter of quantity, of proportion. Meaning, it doesn’t—I think it doesn’t exist. I said, we talked about the fact that the Haredim are a very non-ideological group. And in Har HaMor this is an ideological group, and that’s part of the matter. So the leadership—even if the theory looks the same, the practice is different. And the practice is different. There is something here—when you read his books, he explains every single thing to you, everything that happens he gives meaning to, everything. It’s terribly presumptuous. It’s terribly presumptuous. Meaning, there’s something megalomaniacal here. Meaning, even on his own side, and certainly in the fact that the group receives all these things as some sort of sacred interpretation: Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Rabbi Tau. Meaning, something like that. I once spoke about the—I think I mentioned this once—there was a memorial book when Rabbi Ra’anan was murdered in Hebron. So a memorial book came out; that was still before the split between Har HaMor and Mercaz. A memorial book came out, and as is the custom with memorial books that come out in yeshivot, mainly Haredi ones but Mercaz is like Haredi, so a memorial book comes out with Torah articles, and there’s a section called “Hidden Treasures of the Ancients,” which is supposedly manuscripts or unpublished things that they publish. So that section in the book—various manuscripts of Rabbi Akiva Eiger or of medieval authorities (Rishonim) that weren’t published, all kinds of things of that sort. Now there, the “hidden treasures of the ancients” were not even Rabbi Kook; it was Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, Rabbi Charlap, and something else—that was the “hidden treasures of the ancients” there. So the feeling was that it really was Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Rabbi Kook. Meaning, there was no history in the 4,000 years that passed between one and the other. And with the Lubavitcher Rebbe it’s the same thing. With the Lubavitcher Rebbe it’s much more so. I think Moses received the Torah from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I think Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Among them, in my opinion, in certain parts there was something that really bordered on halakhic idolatry. Meaning, there were people who prayed to the Rebbe. Meaning, there were certain theologies there, certain expressions at least, that identified the Rebbe with the Holy One, blessed be He. It was on the table. Meaning, there were—again, I’m not sufficiently expert in the nuances and who said what and how accepted it was, but there definitely were such expressions. And I once brought an example from a Breslov book I saw in Netanya once—one Sabbath afternoon I read one of those vowelized Breslov books—where they told there how the Rebbe sits there, Rabbi Nachman, sits and sees the flock, and in the flock there it’s Abraham our father and Moses our teacher, and Rabbi Nachman supervises them all while they graze on grass down below. Yes, it’s a bit similar to this matter. And you see, it’s like with Lenin and Stalin, that all of modern physics is really latent in his words, and he really knows everything, he has very broad general knowledge. Which is quite possibly maybe true of Rabbi Tau—he has general knowledge—but this immediately expands into myths. In the Haredi world, by the way, this is very common, because anyone who can read and write is a professor. Meaning, anyone who knows a bit, read a few books in English, says “I know,” because I simply walked around there. They told me miracle stories and wonders about Yedidya Andel—there’s nothing he doesn’t know. Meaning, in every field of Torah and science and wisdom and everything. Fine, he read a few books, he knows some philosophers, all true, I spoke with him. Meaning, but they turned him into some kind of figure because he knew how to read and write. Meaning, and this is in a place where the background is problematic; you have no way to evaluate it. It’s like they say—he’s a well-known professor all over the world because he traveled to conferences abroad. Meaning, it’s obvious—after all, he’s a well-known professor all over the world. People don’t understand that professors travel to conferences all over the world, and that’s what a professor does. Meaning, he wrote international articles. Did anyone ever see a non-international article? Meaning, an academic article is always international. Meaning, are there non-international articles? Newspaper articles are not international—in Yedioth Ahronoth, in Ma’ariv—they are not international. Every article is… people don’t know the terminology, so it turns into… but fine, that’s just ignorance. But when some legend begins to develop that he knows everything—and a bit of such legends developed around the Chazon Ish too, yes, brain surgeries and all those kinds of things—
[Speaker F] What about the third part—leadership? What? Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and the Steipler. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and the Steipler, and to some extent the Chazon Ish, where it was less leadership—around them more stories developed. Also the Steipler, who was less of a leader; Rabbi Shach was alongside him. And Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, where Rabbi Steinman was alongside him—the one who crowns. Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky is not the one who crowns, the Steipler is not the one who crowns more than—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, he is the mystic who gives backing to the practical leadership.
[Speaker C] He’s the Ashkenazi Rabbi Kaduri. Yes. I think that this sort of deification—I don’t want to use the word—also exists in that world; it is different, it is through Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think so. I don’t think there was a feeling—I don’t know—when I lived in Bnei Brak, in my surroundings there was no feeling that Rabbi Shach and Rabbi Elyashiv were all-knowing. No, there really wasn’t such a feeling. There was a feeling that when they lead and make a leadership decision then they have heavenly assistance, they don’t err. That, yes.
[Speaker C] But between that and saying—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But everyone who disagrees with their decisions—not with their deciphering of history. Again I say, because the conception is that they have heavenly assistance because they are public leaders. Fine, these are things we’ve already heard about. I’m not sure I accept them, but these are not revolutionary things; we’ve heard them. And who crowned them?
[Speaker C] It doesn’t matter, they—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] were the leaders of the public; it has nothing to do with who crowned them. Yated Ne’eman crowned them. But in practice they really did make decisions for the public, so it doesn’t matter. Then you can’t argue. Okay, so if you believe in heavenly assistance for someone who makes decisions on behalf of the public, then here he is—he has heavenly assistance and he doesn’t err.
[Speaker C] So whoever disagrees with a leader crowned by Yated Ne’eman is a rebellious elder.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Why? Because in the end, who has always crowned the leadership? Functionaries. They’ve always crowned the leadership. Who crowns the leadership? The ethos says, “Follow in the footsteps of the flock,” meaning that the Jewish people supposedly have some kind of instinct, some kind of sense of smell, that they know. That’s nonsense. It’s always a bunch of operatives who anoint the leaders, and fine, that’s how it works in politics too. Who anoints leaders in politics? Propagandists, operatives, all kinds of propaganda. Fine, that’s the way human society works. You never have every member of society personally connected to the leader, so it always happens through intermediaries. There’s no way around that. And the intermediaries are always people who wedge themselves in there and run things as they see fit. Yes, there’s a book by the rabbinical pleader Tzvi Weinman—it’s called From Katowice to Jerusalem. From Katowice to Jerusalem. He has a book, and he has a very large archive of documents on the history of Agudat Yisrael, and throughout the book he explains that Agudat Yisrael has always been run by rowdy political fixers. Meaning, this is how it’s always been; it’s not some new invention. The great rabbis of the generation were always little decorations and ornaments to beautify things. In the end—and he says this is backed up by documents, he wrote an entire book about it—From Katowice to Jerusalem. Katowice is the Great Assembly. So it was always like that. But fine, I think that’s how human society is run. From my perspective I have a certain contempt for it, but I don’t see it as some unusual phenomenon. That’s how human society works. It’s politics. There’s no choice. Politics is not cultishness; it’s something else. With Rabbi Tau, I’m not talking about decisions he makes about what to do with the yeshiva. If they tell me that there he doesn’t err because he makes decisions for the generation, the president of the generation—these guys are always talking about the president of the generation. He’s the president of about thirty-two guys who believe in him—that’s the president of the generation? All the great rabbis of the generation believe in him? That too is a cult-like characteristic. So he makes decisions and he doesn’t err. Fine, that I’m willing to accept. But when he interprets history and he doesn’t err—then he’s a prophet. That’s not heavenly assistance. Then he’s a prophet. It’s not decision-making where the Holy One, blessed be He, helps him not make mistakes—though that too can be debated, I’m saying again—but that I’m at least willing to accept as a thesis, a possible thesis, a legitimate one at least, even if it’s not correct. That’s something else. A second characteristic is fundamentalism. They don’t subject principles to critical examination. There are things that are absolute truth. Everything is measured according to principles that we are completely locked into. Meaning, there is no willingness at all to weigh things, and I’m talking even about second- and third-order principles. I’m not talking about the existence of God and the giving of the Torah at Sinai. I’m talking about “the flowering of our redemption,” the beginning of the flowering of our redemption in the State of Israel. I’m talking about principles that are not—fine—with the giving of the Torah, where you tell me the Holy One, blessed be He, said it. If the Holy One, blessed be He, said it, who am I to cast doubt? Suppose so. You can cast doubt on whether the Holy One, blessed be He, actually said it; even that can be questioned. But suppose so. I’m talking about second-, third-, and fifth-order principles—things Rabbi Tau decided, or things the Mercaz HaRav tradition decided, however that took shape, that’s not the point right now. And even about that, it cannot be that if the State of Israel is destroyed then I take off my kippah. I quoted what Rabbi Kaner said. Yes, that’s a kind of fundamentalism that is very problematic, and it too is cult-like. A cult-like trait: you are not willing to subject your principles to critical examination, even though those principles don’t really have any actual source. I’m not willing to exempt anything from critical examination. There is no principle of mine that is not subjected to critical examination. Maybe except for that principle itself—that every principle has to be subjected to critical examination. But even what the Holy One, blessed be He, said—because the question is whether He said it. And who said so? Most of the things He supposedly said actually reached us through human mediation, not because He Himself said them, and therefore everything is open to critical examination. But all the more so values or ideologies or ways of thinking that developed in one period or another, by one set of people or another. That’s a clear cult characteristic. Another thing is closedness. Similar characteristics, but again, a kind of unwillingness really to encounter something different. They’re not truly willing to meet something else. They’ll send lecturers. By the way, that exists among the Haredim too. They send lecturers; there’s always this kind of dialogue, an equal encounter that everyone greatly enjoys because of its equality—Haredim and secular people meeting, and all kinds of things in Rabin Square and things like that. Three Arachim lecturers show up and sit there with the rest of the public because they’re open and resilient and have gone through preparation and all kinds of things like that, and they know what they’re supposed to recite about everything, and everything is fine. And there’s this meeting that everyone enjoys so much, eye-level and all that. But they would never let an ordinary person actually encounter other ideas. No such thing. That, by the way, really does exist in mainstream Haredi society too.
[Speaker C] It’s much stronger there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right. It really does exist in mainstream Haredi society too. Now I’m also talking about the internet and newspapers that aren’t from our camp, I’m not talking… What they claim bothers them about the internet and newspapers is pornography and violence—nonsense, pure nonsense. The last thing they actually care about is violence and pornography—I mean those who prohibit it. What bothers them is openness to other ways of thinking; from their perspective that is far worse than violence and pornography. Violence and pornography are human weaknesses. Fine, that may involve prohibitions, it’s a problem, all true—human weaknesses. Human weaknesses we always knew how to deal with. But where there are opinions you have to contend with, different modes of thought, that you don’t know how to deal with. That you have to ban. So in my view that’s part of the issue. Yes, I spoke about writings that contain an all-encompassing explanation for all the phenomena of life, theories of everything—and that’s Rabbi Tau, and to some degree Chabad. I think with Rabbi Tau it’s even more than in Chabad. Life, life… And this too is not a definitive characteristic, but there is something there. They are groups made up mainly of members of their own circle. Meaning, yes, because that’s part of the unwillingness to be genuinely exposed to something from the outside. So they often hang it on modesty: don’t go work in places that aren’t modest. In my view, maybe modesty is part of the problem too—but not only modesty. What bothers them is the encounter with other people, meaning the encounter with people who think differently. The same thing, by the way, with military conscription. The problem with conscription is not because we want them sitting in yeshiva because that protects us better than the army does. Nonsense.
[Speaker D] Well, with the Hasidim that’s actually the last thing—certainly Chabad, you can’t accuse them of not meeting other people; they’re constantly meeting people.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it depends who, depends who.
[Speaker D] All the emissaries, Chabad ninety—
[Speaker C] Percent of them, if not ninety-nine percent of them, are everywhere.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but you have to be careful. The emissaries are a special phenomenon because they really do go through indoctrination, preparation, and all those things. It’s like the Arachim lecturers on the Lithuanian side. How many emissaries are there? Right, it’s an exceptional phenomenon. How many emissaries are there? Thousands, no? Go look at someone who laughs—they’re isolated in the middle of nowhere, and look at how a Chabad emissary behaves in a place like that. His children won’t play with other children,
[Speaker B] That’s not an encounter.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And his children will study—they will never study even in a Haredi school in that same place, only in Chabad. He’ll fly them a hundred kilometers, he’ll put them on some internal flight—they’ll study only in Chabad, they’ll eat only food with Chabad supervision. Not one millimeter of compromise. Right. With all the emissaries, he can live in the Amazon, and they’ll fly him things with Chabad supervision and take the children by helicopter to the nearest Chabad school. In that sense, you have to understand, there is very deep closedness in Chabad, very deep. They are not willing to open up to anything, anything. Despite the fact that they live among the entire Jewish people and meet absolutely everyone. That’s true, but it is organized within this kind of envelope that is… It’s even more than the Arachim encounters I mentioned earlier, the organized lecturers. Yes, there’s something here—try actually meeting them. I know, because I met Chabad emissaries. There was a Chabad emissary in Yeruham, a very nice man by the way; we were friendly, everything was fine. But there was no encounter at all. He would never go anywhere, he wouldn’t taste anything anywhere under any supervision, even the most Haredi supervision—I’m not talking about with heretics like me. Nothing. He wouldn’t eat there, his children wouldn’t play there, his children wouldn’t study there, nothing, nothing, nothing.
[Speaker D] So where did he actually study? Where did his children study?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They traveled to Chabad in Kiryat Gat, transportation from Yeruham to Kiryat Gat. It’s unbelievable. No compromise whatsoever, only in Chabad. The children won’t study anywhere else—or at home.
[Speaker D] They bring a private tutor.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, or at home, that’s it. If you’re in the Amazon and there’s no helicopter available, then a private tutor or the father teaches them. They will not go anywhere else. That’s a very strong point.
[Speaker C] They also have a Chabad school online.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Yes, so the internet is a very significant solution for them. Now I’ll say again: these emissaries are people who devote themselves totally to connecting with the public; they do acts of kindness in all kinds of ways.
[Speaker B] I was once in Colorado Springs and went to eat at the home of the Chabad emissary there, who had little children. They travel every day two and a half hours each way to Denver to study.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course—to the nearest Chabad. That’s where they are, that’s it. These groups that live within themselves also create this sort of bubble that lets you see the group as if it were the entire world. I talked about this earlier—for example, my son was in Mercaz, and now he got to know other things. All in all he came from a home that wasn’t all that closed. He said to me, “But all the great rabbis of the generation say such-and-such.” I said to him, “What do you mean all the great rabbis of the generation? List for me all the great rabbis of the generation you’re talking about.” So it’s three guys from his yeshiva—that’s all the great rabbis of the generation. He’s not talking about guys from the yeshiva, not exactly—Rabbi Lior and Rabbi Tau and Rabbi whoever, not Tau, Rabbi Shapira.
[Speaker B] I took him to a completely different great rabbi of the generation—what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s Rabbi Fischer. No, he got out of it in the end too, but I’m saying: you live inside some bubble where from your point of view, what do you mean—after all, all the great rabbis of the generation say this. Meaning, this too is part of that same envelope that gives you some complete picture. In other words, you’re living inside a matrix.
[Speaker C] But that’s also—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A cult characteristic.
[Speaker C] That’s also true among others. Right. Tell her that some Hasidic halakhic decisor says such-and-such? It’s irrelevant; he’s outside the framework—not to mention someone Religious Zionist.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying these characteristics—
[Speaker C] They’re not black and white.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I said: these characteristics are not black and white. I can bring more; maybe I’ll also bring more later. I see I’ve taken a long time today. I’ll bring more characteristics, and you’ll see that overall these characteristics create a certain picture. Each one of them you can find in other groups too, in different doses. But you know—even diagnoses in medicine and psychiatry are often built this way: if you have four characteristics out of seven, then you have such-and-such disease. Because there are things you can’t define with litmus paper, yes or no. So you have to gather characteristics, and if there are enough of them, in sufficient quantity and sufficient quality, then it’s a cult. And if not, then not. Even without my giving an explicit definition—yes, a direct definition—of why this is a cult. So yes, it exists in other groups too. All right, we’ll have to finish this.