Messianism – Rabbi Michael Abraham – Lesson 10

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[0:01] The connection between messianic phenomena and sectarian movements
[1:28] The girls and the knitted kippot – a story of conflict
[2:40] The teaching of the rabbi in Yerucham
[4:24] The personal leader – Rabbi Tau and messianic movements
[5:50] Fundamentalism and examining principles
[7:21] The book “The Two Exiles” and Rabbi Barzilai’s reactions
[16:16] Shabbat Zakhor in Yerucham and the connection to the students
[25:01] The connection between Chabad and the New Israel Fund and its influence
[27:10] The definition of faith according to Rabbi Kook
[28:26] The difference between a university and a yeshiva in the study of faith
[30:12] The essence of studying faith as an integration of thinkers
[32:01] The dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in translating the Shema
[40:51] Using the title “the rabbi of blessed memory” without mentioning his name
[44:06] The censorship of Rabbi Kook’s writings and the notebooks
[47:10] Ideological stringency: everything in holy fire

Summary

General Overview

The speaker argues that messianic phenomena in the religious-Torah context connect to sectarian phenomena in the broader context, and he identifies in Har HaMor and its offshoots a collection of traits that resemble cults, even if he does not determine with certainty that they cross the threshold into being an actual “cult.” He describes the uproar surrounding Rabbi Kellner’s remarks about women and argues that the reactions to them illustrate an authoritarian culture and a spiritual aura, alongside ambivalence in the Hardali world, which distances itself from the statements but still attributes decisive weight to the figure himself. He lists traits such as a personal leader who cannot be challenged, a fundamentalism that does not allow critical examination of principles, closure to outside discourse, an internal esoteric language, translating all thinkers and reality into “faith” in the Har HaMor style, censorship of Rabbi Kook’s writings, and a “military” hierarchy of emissaries who go out to explain to the public the “deeper perspective” on events. He combines appreciation for the intensity of study and devotion in Har HaMor with criticism of megalomania, of neutralizing substantive criticism through labels of belonging, and of the categorical disqualification of the humanities and academia as a threatening alternative.

The Connection Between a Messianic Phenomenon and a Sectarian Phenomenon

The speaker says that the phenomenon called in the Jewish context a “messianic phenomenon” is called in the broader context more generally a “sectarian phenomenon,” and he suggests seeing Har HaMor and its offshoots as including elements that display traits reminiscent of cults. He notes that he is not sure what the exact threshold is for defining a cult, but insists that presenting the elements is, in his view, a factual description, even though people were outraged by a post he wrote titled “What does Har HaMor have to do with Chabad?”

The Rabbi Kellner Uproar and His Remarks About Women

The speaker describes an “interesting” week surrounding Rabbi Kellner and refers to a stenographic transcript of his remarks, including the claim that if a girl doesn’t knit a kippah, or doesn’t knit during class, “I don’t accept her,” and the statements that women do not understand spirituality, do not have the capacity for it, and even “don’t have intuition either” by the nature of their creation. He portrays Rabbi Kellner as a complex figure, intelligent and educated on the one hand, but with “very extreme outbursts” on the other, and describes him as holding significant status in the eyes of certain students. He uses the emotional reactions and the uproars around such statements to illustrate the authoritative weight granted to the figure even by those who distance themselves from him.

Sectarian Traits: A Personal Leader and Unchallengeable Charisma

The speaker presents Rabbi Tau as a personal leader to whom a “cosmic” understanding is attributed, and whose statements place him beyond criticism, in a way that creates a situation in which a member of the group cannot say, “It seems to me he was wrong here.” He compares this to an ideological image in the style of Lenin, in which “the person who understands everything” also understands what he never studied, and recounts the legends that form around an all-encompassing ability to understand every field. He emphasizes that spiritual charisma replaces the need for rational justification, and that precisely because the statements do not stand up to common sense, the mechanism arises of “grow up and you’ll understand.”

Fundamentalism and Principles That Are Not Subject to Testing

The speaker describes a fundamentalism in which the basic principles cannot be examined, and brings as an example Rabbi Kellner’s statement that if the State of Israel were destroyed, “he would take off his kippah,” because if “our master the rabbi” said “the first flowering of our redemption” and something from his words were to fall to the ground, “that means the Holy One, blessed be He, does not exist.” He presents this as a statement willing to put conclusions on the table, but also as testimony to a sectarian attitude in which Rabbi Kook or Rabbi Tau “cannot be wrong,” and he argues that it is possible to appreciate a great man and at the same time accept the possibility that he was mistaken.

Closure, a Bubble, and the Engineering of Study Schedules and Entry “into Holiness”

The speaker describes closure to other ideas and sensitivity regarding exposure to texts, and recounts Rabbi Yehuda Barzilai’s reaction to his book “The Two Exiles” with the question: “A holy book? A secular book?”—something he finds surprising in light of views attributed to Rabbi Kook about gathering sparks from every place. He describes a mechanism of adjusting Rabbi Kook’s statements to Rabbi Tau’s policy through excuses like “meant for the righteous,” “meant for other periods,” or “only after finishing yeshiva,” and adds that even the study of Rabbi Kook’s writings has “rules” in Har HaMor, graded according to years. He argues that this caution serves to create a sense of ritual and of entering something “larger than life,” along with dependence on the mediation of certain rabbis as those who mediate “the Torah of our master Rabbi Kook.”

Rabbi Kook’s Students and Three Schools of Study

The speaker cites a division he heard, that Rabbi Kook had three central students: the Nazir, Rabbi Charlap, and Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, and each established a different school of study. He identifies Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda’s school with Merkaz HaRav and later Har HaMor, Rabbi Charlap’s school with the Haredi world in certain senses, and the Nazir’s school with academia and Jewish thought. He argues that the students of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda and Rabbi Tau do not recognize other schools as legitimate students of Rabbi Kook, and in their discourse “all Rabbi Kook’s students sit in Har HaMor.”

A Closed System That Explains Everything and Ever-Multiplying Excuses

The speaker describes a conception in which “everything is there” inside the system, and the rabbis “know how to explain every single thing that happens in reality,” so there is no need to resort to anything else, while every outside statement is perceived as the sitra achra or as merely repeating what “our rebbes” already say. He describes Rabbi Tau’s writings as an orderly doctrine that explains “everything that moves,” and the phenomenon whereby, the farther reality drifts from the predictions, more and more excuses appear, until pamphlets are written explaining why the earlier ones were supposedly wrong. He gives an experiential example from Yerucham, where people “buy aliyot” by committing to study Emunat Iteinu, and presents this as the feeling that the system fills the place of “Torah” for them.

An Inferiority Complex, Powerful Learning, and Ambivalence Toward Authority

The speaker describes a contradiction in which there is reservation toward Rabbi Tau’s path alongside “a very deep inferiority complex” toward him and toward the Haredi world, and emphasizes that in part the feeling is justified because of the strength of learning, self-sacrifice, and high level of Torah scholarship among Har HaMor graduates. He argues that the social weight of Har HaMor graduates among Torah scholars in their thirties and forties is greater than their proportion in the population, and that one cannot take away what they genuinely have. He says these strengths create a split in relation to the authority figure, so that even those who do not identify with his statements still view him as an authority in the style of “our generation’s president,” in Chabad’s language.

Esoteric Language, a Private Terminology, and Collective Discourse

The speaker argues that the ideas are described in an esoteric language that belongs only to them, with a spiritual jargon built from Rabbi Kook’s expressions and turned into a “special language” that paints reality in its own “color system.” He cites Yehuda Yifrach’s remarks about Rabbi Kellner, that he has a “private terminology” and “invents his own terms,” and presents this as an indication of a closed language that requires mediation. He argues that their language is collective, in the style of “we believe” and “it has been received by us,” and that there is no place for “I think,” because the question is not one of opinion but of authoritative transmission.

Demonization of Outside Forces and Distorted Proportions

The speaker describes a situation in which the closure leads to presenting facts in a distorted and unbalanced way, and gives as an example an “obsession” with “the New Israel Fund” as a force through which almost every public event is explained. He argues that opposition to decisions is sometimes interpreted as derivative of a metaphysical affiliation of the force producing them, rather than as substantive criticism of the action itself, and he connects this to a pattern within Religious Zionism of discussing events through metaphysical forces rather than through the actions themselves.

“Faith” as a Substitute for Jewish Thought and as a Translation Mechanism

The speaker says that in their circles they do not study Jewish thought, Jewish philosophy, or “hashkafah,” but rather “faith,” and the meaning of “faith” is translating all thinkers and all reality into the language of Har HaMor. He argues that when they study Maimonides or the Kuzari, it is done “through the mediation of Rabbi Kellner,” so that Maimonides “says all of Rabbi Kook’s ideas in his own language,” and that disputes between thinkers are blurred into one framework in which there is “a Maimonidean shade” and “a Kuzari shade” within the same conceptual world. He presents this as the complete opposite of the academic method in Jewish thought, which seeks to study each thinker “from within himself” and to highlight disputes, and sets “the study of faith” as an antithesis that produces harmonization and a chain of transmission in which “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Rabbi Kook,” with intermediate translations.

The Great Figure of the Generation in Faith and Preference for Charisma Over Classical Scholarship

The speaker presents a conception in which Rabbi Tau is not necessarily recognized as the greatest authority in Jewish law in the classical sense, but is defined as “the greatest of the generation in faith,” and charisma is the center of leadership. He argues that legends then develop portraying the figure as also great in Jewish law, but that the priority begins with spiritual authority and an aura that prevents critical engagement.

Labels of Belonging Instead of Substantive Discussion and Battles Over “Who Is Whose Student”

The speaker recounts the story of criticism directed at Rabbi Sherlo on the grounds that he is not a legitimate “student,” or that he did not “serve real Torah scholars,” and presents this as a substitute for discussing the arguments themselves. He argues that this claim is intended to neutralize discourse with someone who is not “qualified” and push him outside the legitimate circle, because he studied not “faith” but “Jewish thought.” He adds the rhetorical example of using the phrase “the rabbi of blessed memory” without mentioning a name in an outside forum, in order to signal belonging to a closed group in which “if you don’t understand, there’s nothing to explain to you,” and presents this as a propaganda tool rather than natural internal discourse.

Censorship of Rabbi Kook’s Writings and the Nazir’s Writings

The speaker argues that Har HaMor people are “the greatest censors” of Rabbi Kook’s writings, and that there are major battles over publishing texts that did not pass censorship, including comparisons between censored editions and leaked manuscripts. He describes “underground” passages dealing with Christianity and other ideas, and argues that the censorship stems from the basic assumption that everything Rabbi Kook wrote is binding, and therefore one cannot simply say “I disagree.” He adds that there were also struggles around Shemonah Kevatzim, and expands on restrictions of access to the Nazir’s writings in institutes, where not “just anyone can approach them.”

Profound Seriousness, Rejection of Common Sense, and the “Deeper” Perspective

The speaker describes a culture in which everything receives cosmic significance and extreme seriousness, with a constant checking of ideological conformity and a feeling that there is no room for the prosaic. He argues that “common sense” is perceived as a dirty word and as the evil inclination, and that there is a constant need for a “deeper perspective” for which only a few are qualified, while a simple interpretation of reality is considered shallow and mistaken. He presents this as a mechanism that translates reality not into common sense but into the system’s “crooked intellect.”

A “Military” Hierarchy, Emissaries Sent Outward, and the Megalomania of “Saving the World”

The speaker describes a hierarchical structure in which the leaders of the group understand the “forces of darkness,” teach the inner circle, and those who sit and study for years then go out as explainers to the public through a ranking of yeshivot, hesder frameworks, pre-military academies, and educators in high-school yeshivot. He presents a joke about “Elisha, the military arm of Har HaMor” as reflecting a truth about the division of roles, and recounts a case in which Rabbi Hananel Etrog “got slapped down” after speaking against something Rabbi Tau had said and had to apologize in order not to be ostracized. He describes conferences in which authorized rabbis explain “the meaning of the events for our generation” in megalomaniacal terms, and argues that there is a conception that they are “the order of saving the world” because they alone study “redeeming Torah,” while others outside are perceived as “the Messiah’s donkey.”

The Attitude Toward the Outside: Academia, the Humanities, and Other Yeshivot

The speaker describes a categorical disqualification of university studies in the humanities, Talmud, and the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), while relatively permitting physics and mathematics for those who “cannot manage to study Torah,” and presents this as the opposite of what he attributes to Rabbi Kook, who wanted to bring in “everything” with criticism, not sweeping rejection. He argues that the disqualification stems from the fact that the outside offers an alternative and does not “know its place,” and therefore yeshivot that are not dependent on Har HaMor are also perceived as illegitimate. He describes an ambivalent attitude toward the Lithuanian Haredi world as “mistaken in outlook” but also as the heirs of Volozhin and a source of inferiority feelings, and adds that Merkaz HaRav is perceived among them as a “Haredi yeshiva,” while in his opinion there is in Merkaz a certain appreciation and self-effacement toward Har HaMor in different doses.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said that these phenomena—is this the same topic? Yes, no, it’s a continuation of the same topic. At first I didn’t think about it, but afterward I saw that it really does connect, because what we call in the Jewish, religious, Torah context—I don’t know what to call it—a messianic phenomenon, in the more general context is connected to what is called a sectarian phenomenon, meaning a cult, yes, cults. And then I said that there are certain parts—yes, Har HaMor and its offshoots—that have all kinds of characteristics that are reminiscent of that.

[Speaker C] It was quite a Har HaMor week. Well, what came out won’t be defined that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It was an interesting week.

[Speaker C] Kellner—you didn’t read this week? Wow, unbelievable, what he said about women. You’ve got to go online, you have to hear him, you have to read what he said. Didn’t your wife tell you?

[Speaker D] No, but he’s a teacher from Eli.

[Speaker C] Right, no, but he’s Har HaMor, he’s a big devotee of—yes, yes—Kellner. He’s in Eli now, a teacher in Eli, yes.

[Speaker E] So the Hardalim are distancing themselves from it.

[Speaker C] Listen, I heard it, I’m telling you. What did he say?

[Speaker E] He said it calmly, like that, not in some—

[Speaker C] That—

[Speaker D] In broad terms.

[Speaker E] Not—

[Speaker C] No, he says it, he didn’t get angry, he said it coolly.

[Speaker D] He’s completely full of it.

[Speaker C] No, I didn’t see the video, I didn’t see all of it, I read the transcript.

[Speaker B] So the girls knitted kippot for him, and they said to him, how can you say that girls should knit kippot? He said, that’s what they’re good at—understanding? They don’t understand.

[Speaker C] No, he said, a girl who doesn’t knit a kippah, I don’t accept her. A girl who doesn’t knit during class, I don’t accept her.

[Speaker B] But to understand? No chance. She doesn’t understand spirituality, she doesn’t understand any of that.

[Speaker C] Women can’t—he said things that were even worse. You can’t, you don’t have that capacity. No, you don’t—by the nature of their creation, they don’t even have intuition.

[Speaker E] Read it, listen to it, read it—

[Speaker C] It’s simply unbelievable.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The truth is, he’s quite a—well, I don’t know him personally, we met once but not really—he’s a complex type. Meaning, from various people whom I give credit to, I know that he’s an intelligent man, meaning he’s an intelligent man and he has a broad education.

[Speaker C] How cleverly he wrapped it—they said they threw him out of the yeshiva, what a shame.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And on the other hand, he very often has these very extreme outbursts, meaning something totally disconnected, some kind of unclear phenomenon. Eli just never leaves the headlines.

[Speaker E] It wasn’t in the yeshiva, it was outside the yeshiva.

[Speaker B] Doesn’t matter, he’s the big attraction there, he’s the serious one in Eli. Fine, fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He also taught in Yerucham. Sadan, yes, he also taught with us when I was in Yerucham.

[Speaker B] Eli Sadan, in terms of management, is the serious one, but in terms of—

[Speaker C] spirituality, he’s the serious one.

[Speaker B] He’s the spiritual one?

[Speaker C] Yes. Fine, then my grandchildren won’t be in Eli. If they ask you, then they’ll ask; if they don’t ask me, I’ll tell them even if they don’t ask.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Anyway, so the claim I was basically making is that there are certain sectarian phenomena—and I phrase this relatively cautiously—phenomena characteristic of cults. Again, I don’t know if it crosses the threshold, or what threshold it has to cross in order really to be considered a cult. People were very upset about that post I wrote. People came back to me afterward appalled, even friends of mine in the Bible department. Which post? “What does Har HaMor have to do with Chabad,” yes. And even friends of mine from the kollel at Bar-Ilan came to me all shaken up. But the truth is, in my view this is a completely factual description of the matter. All I did was gather elements, and I don’t even know enough—some people told me, you simply don’t know enough; if you knew, we have a lot more material. No, rabbis—meaning, people from the inside. Yes, exactly. So I really don’t know these people well enough, and they also don’t interest me enough for me to do research on them. But there’s a collection of characteristics here that—I don’t know—it seems problematic to me. So I spoke about the first few last time. I spoke about the personal leader, Rabbi Tau; in that context we talked a little about messianic movements, which usually have some leader there—or I don’t know if it has to be that way, but usually there is some leader whom you can’t challenge, and he has some kind of exalted cosmic understanding beyond our grasp in how he perceives things, some kind of statements that place him beyond criticism. Meaning, you can’t deal with what he says, because what he says comes straight from Elijah’s revelation. Now, they don’t say Elijah’s revelation, never mind, but some kind of understanding or spiritual charisma that it’s simply illegitimate to contend with. Meaning, you as one of the members of the cult—yes, one of the members of the group—can’t say, wait a second, who says? I don’t think like him, or it seems to me, it seems to me he was wrong here. It seems to me that’s not something you can say there. Again, I say this cautiously, because I don’t know the group well enough, but I know it a little. I spoke about how with Lenin they found all of modern physics and everything was supposedly embedded in the ideology and all those things. Meaning, these things where the person who understands everything—whether he studied it or not—understands everything. And of course there are all kinds of legends about how he understands every field and knows everything.

[Speaker C] They didn’t hit him on the head when he was born.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But yes, that’s part of it. A second thing, which is connected to this issue—the characteristics are of course interconnected, many of them—the fundamentalism that says you can’t examine the principles. Meaning, the principles are not subject to critical examination, the basic principles. I mentioned Rabbi Kellner in this context, because he said that if the State of Israel is destroyed, then he’ll take off his kippah. Meaning, it can’t be. Meaning, if our master the rabbi, of blessed memory—yes, Rabbi Kook, never mind who exactly—or Rabbi Tau, may he live a long life, said that the State of Israel is the first flowering of our redemption, then if anything from his words falls to the ground, that means the Holy One, blessed be He, does not exist. So there’s a statement here that on the one hand is straightforward—or at least he is willing to put the conclusions on the table, unlike many others. But on the other hand, it means that there is some kind of cult-like attitude here, a fundamentalist attitude. So what, Rabbi Tau can’t be wrong? Or even Rabbi Kook? He can’t be wrong? Fine, he was an intelligent, wise, righteous Jew, worthy of great appreciation. His understanding of reality, in my opinion, is very much an open question—both Rabbi Kook’s and Rabbi Tau’s. But fine, you can disagree. You think he understood reality—couldn’t he have been mistaken? What, he’s not a human being? There’s something problematic here. Closure—I spoke about that—about openness to other ideas, about reading other things. So yes, I mentioned that he taught in our yeshiva, Rabbi Kellner, in Yerucham. There was another one with him who has since passed away, Rabbi Barzilai, Yehuda Barzilai. He died young, it was a tragedy. The two of them taught in Mitzpe Ramon, a hesder yeshiva associated with the Kav line, so to speak. And on the way, since it was near Yerucham, they also gave classes for us. And when my book The Two Exiles came out, Rabbi Barzilai spoke with the guys in the yeshiva—they told me afterward—he said, what is this book, a holy book? A secular book? What kind of thing is that? Now, when that comes from someone who defines himself as a clear student of Rabbi Kook, that’s especially surprising. Rabbi Kook was the one who said that from every place you can gather sparks, and that there is truth in everything, and that you need to hear and learn everything. The curriculum he envisioned for the yeshiva he dreamt of was much broader than a standard yeshiva. And today they split hairs over the fact that they didn’t establish a teacher-training institute there. Again, there is some logic to it; I don’t reject that distinction, by the way. But when it comes from them, it’s strange, because I’ll explain this later, I’ll talk about it later. There is always a way to fit the statements of our master the rabbi of blessed memory, who never made a mistake, to the path of the current master the rabbi, may he live long, who also never makes mistakes. And therefore his policy always fits what the earlier one said. Oh, it doesn’t fit? We have excuses. So it was meant for the righteous, it was meant for other times, it was meant for those who already finished yeshiva, only afterward. There are all kinds of explanations. You need to enter holiness gradually—this isn’t academia—to enter gradually, not all at once, and not when you’re young. Even Rabbi Kook’s writings, by the way, have rules for how they are studied in Har HaMor. Meaning, in first year you don’t study Orot HaKodesh; you study only—I don’t remember what—something, Orot HaTechiyah, I don’t know, one of the Orot, I don’t remember which. And in second year, third year—meaning, before that it’s forbidden. You can’t, because these are things that… Again, with all due respect, fine, you can study it, there’s nothing there that isn’t—if someone explains it to you, you’ll understand. Meaning, it’s not… And if you sit in a group, you’ll also understand. What, a first-year student can’t understand it? What secrets are there? You can say these are interesting things, smart things, deep things. But what is this caution, that in first year you don’t study that but only this? In my view this has nothing to do with caution at all. It’s part of the attempt to create an atmosphere that you’re entering something larger than life. It’s a kind of tactic. So they chart it out for you: look, in first year this is forbidden, in second year this is permitted, in third year this is permitted, and when you reach fifth, sixth, seventh year, I don’t know which, then you can burst into holiness, yes, then you can enter the truly deep writings. I don’t think there are truly deep and not truly deep writings there. There are beautiful things; Rabbi Kook was a giant of a Jew. I’m not trying to diminish Rabbi Kook’s greatness. I’m only saying that there’s no need to turn it into some kind of mystical, inaccessible thing, and so on. On the contrary—open things up, study them. They won’t understand? They’ll ask again, explain it to them, then they will understand. What, are they stupid? First-year students—what’s the problem? There isn’t anything there that cannot be explained to eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds.

[Speaker B] There was once a guy here, Gabi, who was a first-year rabbi at Yeshivat Har Bracha, who told me that it’s no accident that no autobiography was written about Rabbi Kook, because no book can contain him. Since then, three or four have already been written.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Five, six. No, because they can’t contain him, so each one writes a book. No, listen, the truth is he really was a giant of a Jew. Meaning, I’m not one of his students, I don’t feel connected to him, he’s not my cup of tea in many respects. In many other respects, yes. Meaning, again, he was a giant of a Jew, without any doubt. Anyone who encountered him, from whatever direction—whether from the Haredi side, with the Gerrer Rebbe who met him during the delegation visit from Europe of Agudat Yisrael, or even Isaiah Leibowitz, and everyone who met him—came away deeply impressed by that personality. So apparently he was an extraordinary personality. I’m not far from digging into that. That’s clear. But fine—he was a flesh-and-blood human being who could also be wrong, and probably sometimes said foolish things and sometimes did foolish things. And that’s okay. You can criticize him, and you can study him also at age eighteen and also at age fifteen. Explain a little. Look, you don’t have to recommend it; you can say, look, there is an order to things. Fine, there are recommendations for how to do it better or less well—didactics. Didactics is fine. But there the feeling is that this is entering holiness, meaning once a year on Yom Kippur. You can’t—these are things beyond the reach of mere mortals. Only through the mediation of Rabbi Kellner and Rabbi so-and-so, all those distinguished students who mediate the Torah of our master Rabbi Kook. Now someone once told me that Rabbi Kook had three students. There was Rabbi—

[Speaker E] No—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the Nazir, Rabbi Charlap, and his son Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda. And each of them basically established a different kind of school of study. Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda—that’s Merkaz, and eventually Har HaMor, yes, that line. Rabbi Charlap—that’s Haredim. The old-style Haredim, because back then there wasn’t such a distinction. Rabbi Kook also defined himself as Haredi. Meaning, they were called Haredim, they also called themselves Haredim. It wasn’t differentiated the way it is today. There were the Haredim who were with Rabbi Kook, and the Haredim who were against Rabbi Kook, with Rabbi Sonnenfeld and so on. So that’s Rabbi Charlap, who was a Haredi rabbi, and I think that some of his family at least—and certainly his students—are part of today’s Haredi world. By the way, Rabbi Amital is a student of Rabbi Charlap. And the Nazir—that’s basically academia. Meaning, the people who study him, because he has all kinds of references to philosophical literature and things of that sort, he deals with subjects—

[Speaker B] No, sorry, his son-in-law Rabbi Goren.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Yes, yes, no, I’m talking about the school he established. Rabbi Goren has no students. Meaning, Rabbi Goren did not establish a school where these are Rabbi Goren’s students. Those who study the Nazir, those who deal with these matters, are usually in academia. Meaning, Dov Schwartz, Dov Schwartz deals with this quite a bit. And I’m considered half-academic too, never mind, I also dealt with it a little. Dov Elbaum?

[Speaker F] Maybe him too, I don’t know, it could be.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Soloveitchik? It could be, but I don’t know whether on this map he occupies some fourth niche. I’m not sure. Maybe—I just don’t know enough. Someone once said this to me; it’s not my own idea. He told me that you really can see that there are three.

[Speaker E] I heard this division from Rabbi Amital.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, so maybe he even said it in someone else’s name. It seems to me Rabbi Sherlo once told me this, I think. Because Rabbi Sherlo claimed—I think once when I spoke with him he told me this—that Rabbi Amital is basically a student of Rabbi Charlap. So everyone says he’s not a student of Rabbi Kook, he’s something else, because he is of course connected to Rabbi Lichtenstein, who is Rabbi Soloveitchik—it’s a mixing of unlike with unlike, from their perspective. So he said, nonsense, he’s a student of Rabbi Kook exactly like you, just not through Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda but through Rabbi Charlap, who taught a different shade. And Rabbi Amital took it in a different direction. Okay, so there are basically three. Now the point is that Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda’s students—meaning Rabbi Tau and so on—don’t recognize that. Rabbi Charlap, fine, he was there and fine, obviously nobody doubts him; he was a close student of Rabbi Kook, a colleague-student of Rabbi Kook and so on. But they do not recognize another school as something like legitimate students of Rabbi Kook. There is no such thing. Meaning, all Rabbi Kook’s students sit in Har HaMor. That’s the accepted discourse there. There is nothing else. Meaning, they don’t recognize the existence of anything else. This is a kind of bubble-building. And I also spoke about that bubble: on the one hand they try to show that there is nothing outside them, and on the other hand everything is already inside. Our rebbes know how to explain everything that happens in reality; there’s no need to resort to anything else. Anything anyone else says is either from the sitra achra, or he is merely repeating what our rebbes are already saying. Meaning, there is no need to resort to anything else. Rabbi Tau’s writings contain explanations for everything that moves in reality. Everything is one orderly doctrine; he explains everything, exactly how it happens and the meaning of the processes. And that is fine on the theoretical level. One may propose theories of everything, yes? Some of the best physicists searched for such things. But the feeling is that they found it—they didn’t search. Meaning, it’s not that he is searching. He hands them the explanation for every phenomenon and where it belongs on the map. And the farther it gets from the explanation that should have been, then more and more excuses are produced. So they come out with Emunat Iteinu volume 518 explaining why in Emunat Iteinu volume 511 it seemed that there wouldn’t be disengagement—but there was. Ah, that’s obvious, because actually it was an explanation, never mind—all sorts of things like that. Again, I don’t know these books well enough, so I sometimes feel a little uncomfortable talking about them. Once in Yerucham too, when I taught there, there was some Shabbat Zakhor, and they arranged aliyot, and each person bought an aliyah with pages of Talmud or with commitments of what he would study in the coming year until the next Shabbat Zakhor. Then they started with this one committing to Emunat Iteinu 1 and that one to Emunat Iteinu 3. I said to them, tell me, does anyone here also want to study Torah? They were very offended, the guys there. All kinds of things… The feeling is that there’s some kind of—and I think I spoke about this once—in Yerucham, is that where it was? What? Yes, in Yerucham, of course. And I assume it’s still like that today, by the way, and in additional places that would surprise you, I think. Because there’s some kind of thing here, and it always amazed me. I always looked at it very strangely. Meaning, on the one hand they distance themselves from Rabbi Tau’s path, from his statements, never mind from various attitudes of his. You can—Rabbi Lubotzky is a very statesmanlike figure, very much that way, but statesmanlike not in the sense of opposing Rabbi Tau’s outbursts. He’s statesmanlike, so to speak, but very consensual.

[Speaker E] With the stress on the first syllable or the last?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, yes. That’s another one of the contradictions for which there are thousands of excuses, yes? How does it fit with statism, this move against statism? Where statism harms statism, that’s something else, and then it’s not statism. Statism is when they say what I say. Meaning, there are always all kinds of explanations like that. So the point is that together with this reservation, there is some kind of very deep inferiority complex. In many places—and in part it is justified, I have to say. Meaning, there are strengths in Har HaMor that exist nowhere else, I think, strengths of learning. I’m not talking now about the strengths of—

[Speaker C] Like an inferiority complex toward the Haredi world?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, exactly the same thing. There are extraordinary strengths there, people who devote themselves to study for many years. That doesn’t exist in many of the other yeshivot. Here they’re always looking to already do something and that’s it; there they remain sitting and learning for years. And naturally, if you look for example at the layer of Torah scholars in their thirties and forties who have already spent years in yeshiva, the weight of Har HaMor graduates is greater than their general proportion in the population. And the levels they often reach on average—again, there are always all kinds of places—but generally it is worthy of appreciation. These are people who devote themselves wholly, people from whom you cannot take away what they genuinely have. And that creates a kind of inferiority complex in which it is clear that everything Rabbi Tau says requires attention. Meaning, and even if he is really our leader—so true, we don’t agree, but basically that’s what… I mean, what did he say? So what? “He said it,” so to speak. What uproars there were in the yeshiva when he said something—I don’t know—about the Reform movement or whatever, never mind, every time there was a different outburst. I said to them, okay, so some Jew in Jerusalem said something—why is everyone in an uproar? Everyone is in an uproar because from their standpoint he really is their leader, or one of their leaders. Authority, authority. Yes, some kind of authority from their perspective. So people are a little torn. On the one hand they don’t identify with everything he says, but on the other hand it is clear to them that he is the president of our generation, yes, in Chabad language, some kind of attitude of that sort. There is an ambivalence here, and I also spoke about this last time, that stems from facts that are true. Meaning, there are strengths there, there is devotion there, there are people at a relatively high Torah level. Other yeshivot set a different standard, so they don’t try to compete on those standards. But on these standards they definitely stand out, and they have—one cannot take away what they have—and therefore it creates a kind of split feeling, almost a split personality, in how to relate to this phenomenon. Now maybe a few more characteristics that I haven’t yet discussed. I spoke about the excuses: every time they find something that doesn’t fit, there are explanations and all kinds of things. Yes, I mentioned that communist book about Lenin, how all physics was found in Lenin and all that. The principles come from some higher mystical source. It doesn’t have to be Elijah’s revelation—they don’t say Rabbi Tau has Elijah’s revelation—but some kind of spiritual charisma, that he has some special connection there, he understands things from the inner workings of the world that others don’t understand, and the things don’t have to stand the test of common sense, the test of critical thought. That’s the whole idea. If they did stand that test, there would be no need for spiritual charisma. Meaning, precisely because you are saying things that on the face of it seem unreasonable or illogical—just study, grow up, become like Rabbi Tau, and you too will understand. In other words, you prevent the real engagement, the intellectual criticism of the matter. The things are described in terminology and an esoteric language that belongs only to them. They have all kinds of expressions, some of which appear in Rabbi Kook; most of them, I think, appear in Rabbi Kook’s writings. But all sorts of Rabbi Kook expressions have become the building blocks of a language, a special language of their own. When they speak, they have their own language for how exactly they relate to various things, and it seems as though they have their own color system with which to paint reality. Everything is within that language, and when you try to translate it into regular language, I don’t know to what extent those concepts really have a distinct meaning.

[Speaker E] Yehuda Yifrach wrote, following Rabbi Kellner’s remarks this week, that he studied under him. He said that Rabbi Kellner really does have his own private terminology for concepts in studying Rabbi Kook, and that it took time—someone who’s just starting doesn’t know it—it took him time to get into it, that he literally invents his own terms.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Okay. Who said that?

[Speaker E] Yehuda Yifrach wrote it about Rabbi Kellner. Yes. Yes. Okay. So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The language is an esoteric language—higher spiritual experiments, all kinds of sparks—and this is taken a bit from Rabbi Kook, but they turned it into a binding jargon. Meaning, they turned those expressions into something through which people actually speak. And by the way, it really does open the door to all kinds of excuses, because when all sorts of statements like that come out, the public kind of doesn’t understand what that’s doing there. Incidentally, sometimes it may even be true. Since I’m outside that study hall, I’m willing to give them credit that sometimes it really is true. Because sometimes you really don’t understand the context in which things were said, and the language and terminology in which they were said, and you immediately translate it into your own language, and then it comes out absurd or malicious or whatever, whereas originally maybe the intention really was a bit different. But it’s an indication—an indication that you’re speaking in some kind of closed language. It’s part of the attempt to create a bubble that says: all the explanations and all the meanings, you’ll get them here. Meaning, there is no outside—no, we’re not in interaction with the outside. If the outside—outside there are our emissaries who come to announce to people the message from within. I’ll get in a moment to the military hierarchy that characterizes their activity, but the outside will not come in. The inside will go out. And for them, clearly, the inside is this yeshiva, Har Hamor, and it nourishes the entire world, all the way to the Comanche tribes in who-knows-where—meaning, everybody lives because of the redemptive Torah studied at Har Hamor. And now all they need are their Chabad-style emissaries to go out and teach the holy Torah to the Indians. Many times this closedness—or this uniformity—leads to presenting facts in a distorted way. Meaning, you get a very unbalanced picture. So I already mentioned this obsession with the New Israel Fund, and I’m far from being one of its greatest admirers, but on the other hand the attitude there—the attitude there is simply insane. There is no action on earth that isn’t the New Israel Fund. Meaning, when the Minister of Education makes some decision about, I don’t know, teaching Tanakh this way or that way—it’s the New Israel Fund. When everything—meaning, so I say, okay, I understand, they have missions, they have European money, maybe there’s even some Christian involvement there, everything could be true. But fine, keep some proportion, okay? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and fight it, put it on the table—but these demons standing behind concrete events, that’s part of the attitude. And here it connects to Religious Zionism that I talked about, where people discuss events through the metaphysical forces that generate them, and not through what they actually do. You can oppose the Education Minister’s decision and say it’s harmful, it’s not okay, it’s very bad, I oppose it—but sometimes the impression is that you oppose it because it comes from the New Israel Fund, not because there’s something problematic in the activity itself. And leave it aside—why is that interesting? Just say what you think. For example, over there they don’t study Jewish thought, or Jewish philosophy, or worldview in the Haredi idiom, but rather faith. That too is some kind of expression. Now what is faith? Faith means translating everything that moves into the language of Har Hamor. That’s called faith—meaning, they study faith. Now, they don’t have Jewish thought. Meaning, when they study Maimonides, they study Maimonides through the mediation of Rabbi Kalner. Meaning, he explains to them how Maimonides is really saying all of Rabbi Kook’s ideas in his own language—it’s a translation. It’s a process of translation. And the Kuzari, and it doesn’t matter, everyone. And in the end, I mentioned that memorial book for Rabbi Ra’anan, where the ancient treasures there were Rabbi Charlap and Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, I think, I don’t remember who else. Meaning, from their perspective, Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it over to Rabbi Kook—that’s more or less the chain of transmission. And if there was someone in the middle whom you can’t ignore—Maimonides and the Jews who after all in the halakhic world, yes, they are the fathers, the pillars of the building—then you translate them. And that’s what’s called studying faith. Meaning, studying faith is first of all the writings of Rabbi Kook and Emunat Iteinu and so on, first of all. But if you study something else, you translate it into the language of Rabbi Kook or the language of Har Hamor, and you translate reality into that language.

[Speaker E] They also blur the fact that there’s a dispute between Maimonides and the Kuzari, or…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know them well enough to know that. But even if there were a dispute, it would be interpreted within the… It’s not a dispute where Maimonides thought like Rabbi Kook and the Kuzari was against Maimonides, or vice versa—it’s not like that. Rather, within Rabbi Kook’s approach there’s a Maimonidean shade and a Kuzari shade. I’ll say again: I’m not sufficiently expert to determine this with certainty, but that’s a very clear impression from what I do know. Meaning, that’s more or less what happens there. I don’t study faith or anything like that, so I can’t say it firsthand, but I hear it from people. Today, if you talk to people—not only in Har Hamor, go to Yeruham—they don’t study Jewish thought, they study faith. Now that’s not just an expression, not just wording. Meaning, there’s something here—I’m not saying they study like in Har Hamor—but there’s some expression here that colors things in that color, meaning some affinity to that style of thinking.

[Speaker G] Meaning it’s a semantic issue.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, absolutely not.

[Speaker G] When you study at a university you study Jewish thought and not Dutch thought, fine, but when you study in yeshiva you study faith because you’re Jewish—you study faith.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the expression faith, as it’s interpreted or used there, is aimed against the Jewish thought of the university, not against non-Jews and not against anything else. It’s an alternative to Jewish thought, not an alternative to, I don’t know, physics. Meaning that faith means not Jewish thought. Because what happens in academia? In academia—and again, sometimes I also have criticism of them, but fine—what do they do there? It’s the complete antithesis. In academia they try not to translate anything into anything else. I study Maimonides from within himself, I study the Kuzari from within itself, and on the contrary, many times they create disputes even where there is no dispute, because for them everything stands on its own. They don’t harmonize between things, unlike yeshiva conceptions, say also in Jewish law. Also in Jewish law, say, academic Talmudic research studies each passage on its own, and another passage they won’t reconcile with this passage. They’ll explain that it’s two periods, two people, two study halls, whatever, two editors, anonymous strata and non-anonymous strata, and all kinds of things of that sort. The same thing happens in Jewish thought. Now in Jewish thought, in my view it’s also more justified than in the Talmud, but never mind. The conception is that you study different thinkers, each one presents his own doctrine, and of course they have disputes and everything is fine—and of course that also presents things in such a way that it’s quite clear this is the invention of the thinkers themselves—Maimonides, the Kuzari, the Maharal, Rabbi Tzadok, doesn’t matter, all of them—because you see it: these are conceptual worlds. The alternative is to study faith. What does it mean to study faith? It means to take all these people, put them into one mold, inside one conceptual world, and then obviously Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it over to Rabbi Kook through Maimonides, through this one, fine, but basically this is one doctrine that descended from Sinai, and it’s all from Sinai, not innovations by anyone that arose in the middle. By the way, the whole flowering of the study of Jewish thought as part of Torah study—which wasn’t accepted until fifty years ago or even less—comes under the influence of Rabbi Kook and Mercaz HaRav. Even though today they oppose many things done in that context, that’s the source. Rabbi Tau is not known—though of course legends about him circulate—as one of the great Torah scholars in the classic sense, meaning in Jewish law. So how did he become such a leader? I don’t know. But there he’s the leading sage of the generation in faith. They even have an expression for that: the leading sage of the generation in faith. Meaning, once there was the leading sage of the generation; now it’s the leading sage of the generation in faith. You know, he usually—I don’t know him—

[Speaker C] I’ve never seen him in my life, usually it’s charisma.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, that’s the opposite mistake: the fact that someone is a Torah scholar still doesn’t mean he says sensible things in current affairs, in matters of thought, and there have been such things in the world. With them it works the other way around: he’s the leading sage of the generation in faith, he has some kind of spiritual charisma, and afterward legends develop that he’s actually one of the greatest Torah scholars also in Jewish law. You can see it also with Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, also with Rabbi Tau, I don’t know, I haven’t—

[Speaker D] checked them.

[Speaker C] Maybe that’s also…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but those legends are legends that develop afterward. Charisma is more important than anything. So the study of faith, that concept of faith, comes to serve as an antithesis to everything happening around it, including the study of the books we’re talking about—Maimonides and the Kuzari and the Maharal. Because faith means coloring all those books in our color, essentially converting them. That’s what’s called studying faith. Sometimes it’s translation, sometimes it’s… yes, translation—that’s the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in the laws of reciting the Shema, where Maimonides says you can recite the Shema in any language, provided you pronounce it carefully, something like that. So the Raavad asks: what does “in any language” mean? It’s a translation. All languages are translations, and who is there that can be exact about every translation—every translation is an interpretation, something like that. And who can be exact about an interpretation? What is there to be exact about in interpretations? Meaning, an interpretation is an interpretation, it’s not the text itself. The text itself you can be exact about—that’s what the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote. But interpretations, fine, what is there to be exact about in interpretations? Or to be exact about the letters when you recite the Shema in English—what holiness is there if you didn’t pronounce the G-H? Meaning, it’s a bit odd. So yes, Maimonides apparently held that even in Hebrew it’s like that. That’s what Rabbi HaNazir, by the way, talks about. Rabbi HaNazir was an academic. Rabbi HaNazir didn’t color everything in that color; he didn’t study faith, even though today they study him as one of the knights of faith. But Rabbi HaNazir studied Jewish thought. That’s why I say that the academics who study Jewish thought are in a certain sense the study hall of Rabbi HaNazir. He asked questions, he brought sources, he brought contexts, he didn’t—he showed that there are disputes here, he showed that Maimonides—what do you mean “showed”? It’s obvious—that Maimonides disagreed with Nachmanides and with some of the other medieval authorities (Rishonim) about the meaning of the holy tongue, which from the Mercaz-style perspective is almost heresy. He was the outstanding student—

[Speaker D] of Rabbi Kook.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda was also an outstanding student of Rabbi Kook.

[Speaker D] So for them—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They don’t receive him in one way or another, they don’t study what he wrote so much, but yes, he’s also part of the pantheon, Rabbi HaNazir, but without getting into details. Meaning, he’s not part of the canon that everybody has to study; I don’t think they study him there, it seems to me, certainly not in any systematic way. And if they do, then again it’s translated into the language of faith. Now the language, beyond that, is generally a collective language. Meaning: we believe such-and-such, it is accepted by us that such-and-such—not “I think.” There’s no such thing as “I think.” Meaning, if somebody there gives a lecture and says “I think such-and-such,” they’ll say to him: what do you mean, what do you think? Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it over to Rabbi Kalner. Meaning, the question is what the Holy One, blessed be He, said at Sinai, it’s not a question of what you think. So therefore it’s “we believe” or “we think,” yes, it fits what we think—it’s all this kind of collective language because there’s nothing else. Meaning, there’s what is true and what is not true. And this is so opposite to what Rabbi Kook talks about, but that too has conversions, because Rabbi Kook talks about there being truths even in far-off places, and in every place there’s a point one can learn from, and all kinds of things of that sort. So everything gets converted; no problem. In every place, after I convert it for you, I’ll reveal the true point. The true point is of course the point that I’m saying—I’ll just show you that it also appears in Kierkegaard, or in Maimonides, or in this one. That’s what they mean by “in every place there is a true point.” Not that I’m prepared to examine someone who isn’t saying what I say because there might be a certain aspect he does get right. No, no, it all goes through translations. Meaning, this translation called faith is very interesting, because they need to remain attached to Rabbi Kook, since he is their teacher and master and everything came from there. Now, on many things he said the exact opposite of what they do, think, say—the exact opposite, completely. And everything goes through translations. Meaning, in the study of faith, even that goes through translations. Meaning, everything gets straightened out, everything will go through translations, everything’s fine. By the way, Rabbi Tau of course is allowed to read everything, because he’s already like the Hasidic rebbe. Meaning, he knows how to make mystical repairs on everything. But ordinary people—first year, third year, ninth year—then for them it’s “do not ascend My altar by steps.”

[Speaker B] And general education. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes yes, of course, of course, that’s the discourse. Therefore—because for him it’s permitted. Meaning, he is in that position. It’s like the Hasidic rebbe who was allowed to do what the Hasidim were forbidden to do.

[Speaker E] And from Rabbi Kook only Rabbi Tau remains? No, what, everything?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, it’s by degrees. I assume Rabbi Kalner is also allowed.

[Speaker E] But you know, Rabbi Tau’s line is not the rabbi’s line, from their perspective.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From their perspective—no. If you’re a student of Rabbi Amital, that’s what Rabbi Sherlo told me. Meaning: I’m a student of Rabbi Kook exactly as much as they are. Now, I personally don’t care whether you’re students of Rabbi Kook, so I don’t really get into that argument. Do I care whether I’m a student of Rabbi Kook or not? I learned things from him and I learned things from others. What difference does it make whether I’m a student of Rabbi Kook or not? But never mind, there are people for whom it matters. So he says: I’m a student of Rabbi Kook no less than they are. Meaning, we once also talked about this, I think—there was a time they attacked him over a book he published, Rabbi Sherlo. He was attacked by other yeshivot because he wasn’t even—

[Speaker E] from their study hall, so how is he writing a book about him, what does he understand anyway?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only that, he also hadn’t apprenticed himself to real Torah scholars. Somebody in Shavei Hevron wrote—I think it was also against Rabbi Sherlo, years ago—that he hadn’t apprenticed himself to real Torah scholars, so what is he anyway, what kind of rabbi is he? He’s not a rabbi at all. That’s the approach of the little rabbis of Rabbi Avraham Shapira. He basically started this whole thing that everyone is little rabbis. But he spoke more in the halakhic context, I think, and they translated it into a matter of worldview. So he said to them: what do you mean? Rabbi Lichtenstein isn’t a real Torah scholar? And Rabbi Soloveitchik, whose son-in-law and student he was—isn’t he a real Torah scholar? So all kinds of discourse developed there, and in the end: yes, but besides that I’m also a student of Rabbi Kook through Rabbi Amital and not through Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda. So what’s the problem? Meaning, why? Or through Rabbi Charlap, yes, and not through Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda. So why am I not a student of Rabbi Kook? So again, the discourse there is that no—he’s not a student of Rabbi Kook, because there are no students of Rabbi Kook except for our bubble. And by the way, part of this problem reflects a problem—this itself is not the problem, it reflects a problem—because why do you care whether you’re a student of Rabbi Kook or not? In my view, that’s where the problem begins. So he’s not a student of Rabbi Kook—so what? So he’s a student of Rabbi Soloveitchik, or of nobody, he’s self-taught. Examine what he says on its own merits. Why do you care whose student he is? Again, that’s some kind of approach that is, once again, a kind of sectarian characteristic. Meaning that the question is where these pearls came from, from what womb these pearls emerged—not whether they are pearls or not, but from what womb they emerged.

[Speaker E] But there’s also this thing where even Maimonides says things in the style of apprenticing yourself, so that you understand the language, how things work, to make use of it. The claim here was that you don’t understand how this mindset works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in my view, I’m saying again, raise arguments. Say: this argument is wrong because of such-and-such. But instead of raising arguments, you say he didn’t apprentice himself to real Torah scholars. That’s not substantive. If you have arguments, show the arguments and we’ll talk. He does speak a different language from theirs, that’s obvious. But he says: fine, so what? I speak a different language, I don’t have teachers, I’m no one’s student, and I have a certain language, a different language. Okay, you disagree—say why you disagree. That labeling is a substitute for substantive discussion. And why? Deliberately. They’re not willing to discuss substantively with someone who isn’t one of the insiders. He’s not an equal partner in some round-table discourse. We’re not willing to sit with him. He’s not part of the matter; he simply doesn’t understand the redemptive Torah. Meaning, he didn’t study faith / belief, he studied Jewish thought, God save us. So he’s not really a partner in intimate discourse. Yes, there was once—maybe you heard—on Hoshana Rabbah at Noam, there are night lectures there. Yaakov Vinrot gives a lecture every—

[Speaker C] year there, a lecture in…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there’s also Avi. No no, his brother Yaakov. So he said there: but the late rabbi of blessed memory said such-and-such, without saying who the late rabbi of blessed memory was—so everybody whispered, “it’s Rabbi Shmuel.” So everyone whispered, who is the late rabbi of blessed memory, who is the late rabbi of blessed memory, and then I thought to myself: who is the late rabbi—

[Speaker D] of blessed memory in his mind?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes,

[Speaker C] yes, because someone who studied in Ponevezh, that’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but that’s a rhetorical trick. He knew no one knew who “the late rabbi of blessed memory” was. But it’s as if he’s saying: I belong to that closed group connected to “the late rabbi of blessed memory,” and someone who doesn’t understand what that means—there’s nothing even to explain to him, meaning, he’s just not in it at all. So that’s like “our master Rabbi of blessed memory” in Har Hamor; that’s why it reminded me of this issue. Meaning, you have to say the name by not saying the name—meaning, to say “the rabbi of blessed memory.” That’s terribly important. Now, if you’re in an internal forum, fine, because everyone knows whom you mean—“the rabbi of blessed memory” is Rabbi Kook—that I can understand. But no, they also have this thing outside, to say “our master Rabbi of blessed memory,” period. Now who is “the rabbi of blessed memory”? There are all kinds of rabbis of blessed memory you could think of—but no, it’s as if it’s supposed to convey to you the message that you’re not even supposed to have any doubt who “the rabbi of blessed memory” is when I use that term.

[Speaker C] I also heard various remarks about students from the school of Rabbi Soloveitchik, who also called him “the rabbi.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With Rabbi Lichtenstein there was often a difference between ho-rav and ha-rav. Ho-rav was Rabbi Soloveitchik and ha-rav was Rabbi Kook; I think that’s how it worked for him.

[Speaker B] Everyone calls as “the rabbi” whoever…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I understand, but that’s exactly why I say: if it’s internal discourse, no problem. But when Rabbi Lichtenstein spoke with students, he didn’t say “the rabbi of blessed memory,” I guarantee you he didn’t. He said Rabbi Soloveitchik, because he understood you need to explain whom you mean. It’s perfectly fine that he sees him as his rabbi and says “the rabbi,” no problem. And when you speak to your students, they all know where it comes from too. But there it became a kind of propaganda tool. Meaning, it’s not just internal discourse—fine, you speak in your own language, that’s fine. But when the language becomes holy, when everyone who hears you has to belong here, otherwise you have nothing to talk to him about if he doesn’t belong to the right milieu—then clearly you’re talking to him as if this were internal discourse. They don’t perceive it as internal discourse; it’s the Jewish discourse. I call it internal discourse because there are also other discourses—there’s this study hall and another study hall, each with its own language, it doesn’t matter. In most cases there isn’t really a language, but with them there is a language, never mind. But for them it’s not internal discourse, it’s the Jewish discourse—that is, the discourse of faith / belief; they study faith / belief. Yes, so the way to neutralize subversive messages is of course censorship. As for Rabbi Kook’s writings, the greatest censors are of course the people of Har Hamor, who censor at every turn. Here, we studied Nivuchei HaDor here one year, and I talked there about this a bit—that there was a world war. Now in the meantime the book has come out. Was that censored? No, no, the real book came out, because—

[Speaker C] when we studied it, it still hadn’t come out.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rahmani the traitor? No, with Erez Rahmani. No, because when we studied it, it wasn’t out yet; I got permission from him to study from the file. So they fought against him, and he’s from Mercaz HaRav—I don’t know exactly where he is located there on the map, but he’s close to the whole thing, he’s not some outsider. But he’s honest enough—he even did a doctorate in Jewish thought with us at the university. And yes, by the way, at the university you’re not allowed to study—not Jewish thought, not Talmud, not Tanakh, nothing. Physics yes, mathematics yes, for those who can’t manage to study Torah. But not things that compete—nothing. It’s all simply heresy, all invalid, there’s nothing there, in a completely categorical way. Whereas Rabbi Kook was exactly the opposite—he wanted to bring in academia too, he wanted everything, with criticism. You can be critical, that’s not a problem, but not sweeping criticism. So wait, where… ah yes, on the censorship they do on the books. There there is brutal censorship. I saw—I compared the published book with the one that came out from them after they realized the manuscript was leaking, so they put out some censored manuscript with various passages removed. Because it still isn’t fit for the tender flock; only Rabbi Tau can understand the lofty secrets in those censored passages. And there he talks about all kinds of things, doesn’t matter, about Christianity and all kinds of other things in a way that could sound sympathetic, and also various ideas—in short, rather subversive ideas. And likewise regarding all sorts of things—Orot HaKodesh versus the Shemonah Kevatzim, all kinds of world wars over censorship of the rabbi’s writings.

[Speaker E] They didn’t do that, Rabbi HaNazir did.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, Rabbi HaNazir himself was also an editor—

[Speaker E] But he did his own editing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Editing, not censorship, but there too apparently—at least those are the claims, I haven’t checked them—there were also censorship considerations. And when the Shemonah Kevatzim came out, there too there was a fight against publishing Rabbi Kook’s Shemonah Kevatzim. And why? Because there are all kinds of passages there that didn’t pass into the public domain through the censorship. They simply are not willing to let people access the writings, also Rabbi HaNazir’s writings by the way. They’re not willing—the writings are sealed, and there are big struggles to gain access to them, to get to them. The writings—

[Speaker E] Aren’t Rabbi HaNazir’s writings in the family’s possession?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re in the possession of, I think, the Harry Fischel Institute; most of them are there, and not just anyone can access them—not everyone—and even if you can, you can’t publish, you can’t, these are things… Today it’s a bit more open, someone told me, because once they asked me to do some work there, in the end I didn’t go, but I know there are all kinds of struggles over it. Now, why do you care? It’s written there. If it says nonsense there, then say you disagree. What? Or no—there’s no such thing, because with Rabbi Kook, if something is written, it immediately becomes binding. So what do you do? You censor. So then everything’s fine—what, “the rabbi of blessed memory” speaks through the mouth of our master rabbi, may he live long, and everything’s fine—meaning, everything gets straightened out. Everything in the world, seriousness for example—which may sound like a positive trait—they relate to everything in the world with abyssal seriousness. Meaning, there is nothing in the world that happens by chance, of course; all this is the result of cosmic processes. Meaning, there is nothing that happens simply because it happened, because someone did this or something else happened another way. But beyond that, everything is so serious, everything gets all these fine distinctions and interpretations, and they examine themselves whether it’s correct and whether it suits the ideology or doesn’t suit the ideology. Now, ostensibly this is something worthy of appreciation—you relate seriously to your life, to how you behave—but I don’t know, my feeling is that life also has elements that are just prosaic, ordinary, that you live through and everything is fine; you don’t have to explain why you chose this roll and not another roll for breakfast. Fine, maybe I’m exaggerating, but I mean on the principled level. Fine, this one says this, that one says that—what is this abyssal seriousness, where everything is in holy fire like this? That too is a characteristic, a sectarian characteristic. Very ideological conduct, where common sense is of course a dirty word, and the evil inclination; “Torah opinion” is the opposite of homeowners’ opinion. Wherever there is common sense, it’s immediately the evil inclination. Apparently that can’t be right, in terms of common sense, because just as Maimonides writes that there are those who dislike giving reasons for the commandments because then it makes the Holy One, blessed be He, human—that’s the same thing. Meaning, if you explain these things in the language of common sense, then what have we accomplished? The measure of holiness is supposed to show that the whole business is not as ordinary people see it, not as the regular person interprets it; we alone really understand what’s happening here, so it has to be against common sense. Meaning, in a certain sense, that’s the translation—not translation when they translate, it’s not a translation into common sense; the opposite. It’s a translation of common sense into their crooked sense—meaning, how to show that everything really fits the crooked sense. Those are the translations they make. Now, this is always, of course, a view of reality from a deep perspective, because if you look at reality just as it is, then you don’t understand it, and you always have to look from a deep perspective. Meaning, there are those who can understand it and those who can’t understand it, because they are ordinary householders. There’s the military structure—I mentioned the military structure, I see this is taking me a long time. The military structure basically is this: there are the leaders of the sect, who see all the forces of darkness around, because here I’ve already switched to the language of Harry Potter on this issue, because it really reminded me of that—and people were terribly offended by that in those passages. They see all the forces of darkness and they really understand what’s going on here. Now they explain to the guys around them, the inner circle—it’s built in a military hierarchy—they explain to the guys around them what the truth is, and those among them who have sufficiently filled their bellies with the Talmud and halakhic decisors—of course, the Talmud and halakhic decisors, the white Talmud, the Talmud and halakhic decisors—go out and explain it to the masses. That’s how it works. So for example the jokes are that Elisha is the military wing of Har Hamor, yes, that’s the joke—but it’s a joke with a lot of truth in it. What? Shavei Hevron, Shavei Hevron too, even though Shavei Hevron isn’t a women’s seminary, it’s a yeshiva, but Elisha is a seminary—it really is a military arm. But yes, Shavei Hevron is a more inner circle and still external, of course, and there are these circles where the truth bubbles outward from the inside. And then there are representatives who go out to explain to the public what Torah opinion says about everything happening here. So every so often there are all kinds of conferences where various rabbis come and explain what should be and how things should be. To read the reality around us—and that’s even the title: “What is the meaning of the events for our generation?” or titles like that, funny, megalomaniacal titles, which are explanations on behalf of the heads of the sect. Those certified by them go out through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, because as is well known only through there can one go out in a kosher way and not be defiled by the impurity of the lands of the nations according to the ‘flying tent and tower’ method, and then they are fit to give the true, authentic explanations, from the deep perspective, of what is really happening. Not what you actually think is happening—that’s nonsense, it’s all persecution by the New Israel Fund. And some kind of megalomania that we… It’s funny, but to me it’s really like Harry Potter. To me that’s not irony, that’s just what it is. I’d write Harry Potter about them. It’s terribly funny. People were terribly offended by that. I don’t know, I really do see it that way. I didn’t do it just for the joke; I did do it for the joke, but I really do see it that way. Meaning, there’s a megalomania here that we alone stand against the whole world. Meaning, the world rests on us. In a certain sense this is a bit of a general Jewish ethos too—that Torah is what the world stands on, yes? “If not for…” how does it go? “I would not have appointed the laws of heaven and earth.”

[Speaker E] “If not for My covenant day and night,”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly, “I would not have appointed the laws of heaven and earth.” Meaning, if they stop studying Torah—yes, the order of saving the world, you know, after the Shavuot watch? Then everyone goes to sleep. The world will be destroyed. No one is studying Torah. So in yeshivot there is—but there it’s clearly said as a joke. In yeshivot they say “the order of saving the world”—those who are really strong stay to learn after prayers and say psalms after prayers and study until noon, when other people wake up, in order to keep the world standing. Okay, so with them the conception is that all the time it’s like that—they are in the order of saving the world because they alone study redemptive Torah.

[Speaker C] You can explain to them that there’s Shavuot, there are yeshivot in New York—when they’re sleeping there, people are learning, there’s no problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s external wisdoms; they don’t deal with such things. They are gripped by tremendous fear of what happens in the world of the Muggles, yes, outside. Meaning, what kinds of things happen there—only people who are qualified and have undergone the proper vaccinations can go outside and not be harmed and, on the contrary, illuminate all the lights that need to be illuminated for all the Muggles outside. All the rest are of course the messiah’s donkey, or that book of Sefi Rachlevsky—which in my opinion unfairly pinned this on Rabbi Kook. The Messiah’s Donkey, yes, a book that stirred up a lot of commotion, but it describes the Har Hamor outlook very accurately. Meaning, that everyone is really the messiah’s donkey. I remember Rabbi Blumentzweig being so offended when a messenger once came from Rabbi Tau to go out to a demonstration against—I don’t remember—which one of the Torah decrees, I don’t remember which one, draft, Supreme Court, I don’t know, something like that, there was some storm. “Why aren’t you going out to demonstrate?” he asked Rabbi Blumentzweig. And he understood why not; he only asked it angrily, like that—I remember talking about it. Because they don’t—they sit and study Torah in order to uphold the world. The military wing is what should go out to demonstrate. Meaning, there are people who implement, who need to go out into the field and act according to the instructions of the leadership. There is a very, very hierarchical structure there. By the way, Rabbi Chananel Etrog, who is head of Shavei Hevron Yeshiva, once dared to speak against something—I don’t remember what—that Rabbi Tau said. He got slammed, went down on all fours and returned to the fold and apologized and all that, because otherwise they would have boycotted him and thrown him outside the fence and nothing—he dared to say something he thought differently about, I don’t even remember on what issue. There’s no such thing. Meaning, the military discipline—you immediately get a court-martial if you don’t know your place. You belong to the circle between the yeshivot—the yeshiva that is the world central yeshiva, yes, that megalomania of Har Hamor—and between… no, obviously, but I’m saying their adoption of this is a kind of megalomaniacal adoption. Rabbi Kook didn’t speak about it like that. Rabbi Kook spoke about it as a hope, as a utopia. They speak about it as metaphysics. Meaning, “this is the yeshiva”; if it won’t exist, from Rabbi Kook’s perspective that was the vision to establish this yeshiva. They see themselves as being that. That if they won’t be here, no one will be. Meaning—and so clearly there are circles: there are the surrounding yeshivot, the advanced yeshivot around, Beit El, I don’t know what, Shavei Hevron and so on, though Beit El is more central. But they see the surrounding advanced yeshivot as the first circle, after that the hesder yeshivot, after that the preparatory academies, at the end the guys who will become rebbeim in high-school yeshivot, all of whom are emissaries of the yeshiva. And there are quite a few such people, by the way. And therefore their influence in the high schools is far beyond their proportion in the population, because there are quite a few educators who come out of this study hall. So this hierarchical conception is also some kind of… They see themselves as a kind of army. A bit like Chabad, where Chabad speaks about the army of God and the commandment tank and so on—it’s not just expressions. There is something there that is their real conception. In that sense, very very similar. The recognition of obligation toward what is outside exists only as long as the outside knows its place. And therefore anywhere the outside threatens and constitutes an alternative—absolutely not. That would be forbidden. That’s why I said the humanities and all those things in the university, heaven forbid to mention them. No graduate of Har Hamor would dare go there. Meaning, unless he is risking excommunication. Going to university is something else—to study physics or mathematics or I don’t know, things of that sort. Now, I’m not suspected of being some great devotee of the humanities, but still this apocalyptic disqualification is problematic. And why? Because the outside does not know its place. Meaning, it offers an alternative. Other yeshivot too are illegitimate. Because other yeshivot that do not see themselves as satellites of Har Hamor are not yeshivot. Those are not real Torah scholars, they are toy Torah scholars. Meaning, they don’t really belong to the army.

[Speaker C] What is their attitude toward the whole Haredi yeshiva world, the Lithuanian one and so on? They’re mistaken in worldview?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Mistaken in worldview—and toward them there is also a very deep inferiority complex in certain contexts.

[Speaker C] Mistaken in worldview, but they are the continuation of the Volozhin Yeshiva, after all—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Kook studied in the Volozhin Yeshiva; they are the true heirs of Rabbi Kook. I explained—again, you’re missing Ethics of the Fathers. Meaning, you have an early version of Ethics of the Fathers.

[Speaker E] What’s their attitude toward Mercaz?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Toward Mercaz? I don’t know enough, but you know, it’s part of the issue. Mercaz has become a Haredi yeshiva from their perspective. And there’s a lot of truth in that, by the way. Mercaz is in many senses a Haredi yeshiva. Regular Haredi, Haredi in the Lithuanian sense.

[Speaker C] And how do people in Mercaz look at this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know enough to tell you, even though I have a son who studied there and is somewhat connected, but I don’t know enough. I think there is in Mercaz a great deal of appreciation for Har Hamor, and since they are still students of Rabbi Kook, and still a bit inside this world that only we are students of Rabbi Kook and not others—that exists in Mercaz too, just in different doses, a different megalomania—so there is a certain appreciation or some kind of partial self-nullification toward Har Hamor. There is something like that there. In Mercaz there is self-nullification toward Har Hamor? I’m talking about students now, yes. There may be rebbeim too, but I don’t know. But certainly this, I know—I spoke with guys. Okay, I’ll stop here; that’s more or less, we basically finished.

Messianism – Rabbi Michael Abraham – Lesson 10

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The Connection Between a Messianic Phenomenon and a Sectarian Phenomenon

The Rabbi Kellner Uproar and His Remarks About Women

Sectarian Traits: A Personal Leader and Unchallengeable Charisma

Fundamentalism and Principles That Are Not Subject to Testing

Closure, a Bubble, and the Engineering of Study Schedules and Entry “into Holiness”

Rabbi Kook’s Students and Three Schools of Study

A Closed System That Explains Everything and Ever-Multiplying Excuses

An Inferiority Complex, Powerful Learning, and Ambivalence Toward Authority

Esoteric Language, a Private Terminology, and Collective Discourse

Demonization of Outside Forces and Distorted Proportions

“Faith” as a Substitute for Jewish Thought and as a Translation Mechanism

The Great Figure of the Generation in Faith and Preference for Charisma Over Classical Scholarship

Labels of Belonging Instead of Substantive Discussion and Battles Over “Who Is Whose Student”

Censorship of Rabbi Kook’s Writings and the Nazir’s Writings

Profound Seriousness, Rejection of Common Sense, and the “Deeper” Perspective

A “Military” Hierarchy, Emissaries Sent Outward, and the Megalomania of “Saving the World”

The Attitude Toward the Outside: Academia, the Humanities, and Other Yeshivot

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The Connection Between a Messianic Phenomenon and a Sectarian Phenomenon

The Rabbi Kellner Uproar and His Remarks About Women

Sectarian Traits: A Personal Leader and Unchallengeable Charisma

Fundamentalism and Principles That Are Not Subject to Testing

Closure, a Bubble, and the Engineering of Study Schedules and Entry “into Holiness”

Rabbi Kook’s Students and Three Schools of Study

A Closed System That Explains Everything and Ever-Multiplying Excuses

An Inferiority Complex, Powerful Learning, and Ambivalence Toward Authority

Esoteric Language, a Private Terminology, and Collective Discourse

Demonization of Outside Forces and Distorted Proportions

“Faith” as a Substitute for Jewish Thought and as a Translation Mechanism

The Great Figure of the Generation in Faith and Preference for Charisma Over Classical Scholarship

Labels of Belonging Instead of Substantive Discussion and Battles Over “Who Is Whose Student”

Censorship of Rabbi Kook’s Writings and the Nazir’s Writings

Profound Seriousness, Rejection of Common Sense, and the “Deeper” Perspective

A “Military” Hierarchy, Emissaries Sent Outward, and the Megalomania of “Saving the World”

The Attitude Toward the Outside: Academia, the Humanities, and Other Yeshivot

Full Transcript

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