Topics in Talmudic Logic, Lecture 12
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
Table of Contents
- End of the semester and administrative requests
- Maimonides in the sixth principle and duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment
- Rejecting the action-based definition and proposing a state-based definition of positive and negative commandments
- The righteous and the wicked, punishment and monetary cost as consequences of the distinction
- Coercion regarding a positive commandment versus coercion regarding a prohibition
- Making an effort to fulfill a positive commandment versus there being no point in “gaining” abstention from a prohibition
- It is better to perform a commandment oneself than through an agent, and the distinction between positive and negative commandments
- Logical negation versus deontic negation, and the “wall” between positive and negative commandments
- Maimonides in the eighth principle and the linguistic distinction between positive and negative commandments
- Nachmanides on Parashat Yitro: “Remember” and “Guard,” love and fear, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition
- Resolving the tangle: asymmetry between keeping a prohibition and neglecting a positive commandment
- A positive duty versus an existential positive commandment
- A prohibition that “supports” a positive commandment in the mitzvot of a parapet, returning lost property, and sending away the mother bird
- Applications brought by later authorities: charity and Yom Kippur for minors
- Leniency and stringency as expanding options and the absence of a norm
- Returning to positive action and passive omission in a substantive sense, and halakhic implications
Summary
General overview
The lecture opens with the clarification that this is the last lecture of the semester, together with a request to register early for next semester through Inbar and to notify the administration if one is not continuing, in order to reduce administrative confusion. The lecturer then completes his discussion of the relationship between positive commandments and prohibitions without entering into the formalism of deontic logic. He presents Maimonides’ innovations in counting the commandments and rejects the simple action-based distinction between doing and refraining. He proposes a principled definition according to which a positive commandment points to a positive state one ought to be in, while a prohibition points to a negative state one must avoid being in. From this he develops implications for coercion, agency, punishment and reward, leniency and stringency, and the negation of norms. Later he relies on Maimonides’ wording in the eighth principle and on Nachmanides in Parashat Yitro to show that positive commandments and prohibitions are different categories, and he raises questions and explanations regarding a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, a positive duty versus an existential positive commandment, and the relation between prohibition and positive commandment in mitzvot that include both.
End of the semester and administrative requests
The lecturer says that to his astonishment it turned out that this is the last lecture of the semester, and he will finish the topic without getting into deontic logic. He asks anyone planning to continue next semester to register as early as possible through Inbar or through the office, so they can know the student roster and avoid uncertainty until mid-semester. He also asks anyone not planning to continue to let him know, or notify the office or send an email, because there are students registered who do not attend and students attending who are not registered, which creates complications and reporting problems. He responds that the schedule is supposed to remain at the same time, and that in general the program at the institute stays the same, but he refers people to the website for any changes and for the topic of next semester.
Maimonides in the sixth principle and duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment
The lecturer returns to Maimonides in the sixth principle, according to which when there is duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment, this is not a duplication that cancels one count; rather, both the prohibition and the positive commandment are counted. He emphasizes two innovations: first, that even when the practical content is identical, as in Sabbath and resting, these are still two commandments; second, that the positive commandment is counted among the positive commandments and the prohibition among the prohibitions, rather than classifying both as either prohibitions or positive commandments. He explains that one might have said that if the distinction were action-based, then resting on the Sabbath is really a prohibition, because what is required is not to do. But Maimonides shows that the distinction is not action-based. He notes that according to Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla, Saadia Gaon does not accept Maimonides here, though he qualifies that this is not entirely simple because there are contradictions.
Rejecting the action-based definition and proposing a state-based definition of positive and negative commandments
The lecturer argues that the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition is not “commandments of doing” versus “commandments of refraining,” because there are prohibitions that require action, such as “Do not place blood in your house,” which requires building a parapet, and “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” which requires rescue; and there are positive commandments that require refraining, such as “You shall rest.” He cites Aharon Shemesh, who says this distinction underwent changes over the Talmudic period, and that at a later stage the distinction became linguistic, based on the Torah’s formulation. But he says that this is only a partial answer, because the principled question still remains: why does the Torah choose one formulation rather than another? He proposes a definition according to which positive commandments point to a positive state one should be in, and prohibitions point to a negative state one must avoid being in, while being in a state or avoiding it can be realized either through action or through inaction. He explains that this is why resting on the Sabbath is a positive commandment: resting is a positive state, even though practically it is achieved through refraining. By contrast, “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood” is a prohibition because the Torah will not accept our being in the negative state of someone who does not rescue, even if avoiding that state requires an act of rescue.
The righteous and the wicked, punishment and monetary cost as consequences of the distinction
The lecturer says that this state-based distinction translates into evaluative language: someone who violates a prohibition is wicked; someone who fulfills a positive commandment is righteous; someone who neglects a positive commandment is not wicked but “just not righteous”; and someone who refrains from violating a prohibition is “just not wicked,” not necessarily righteous. He explains that this makes clear why one is punished for a prohibition and not for a positive commandment: punishment is for wickedness, not for merely failing to be righteous. He also explains why one must spend all one’s money in order not to violate a prohibition, but only up to one-fifth in order to fulfill a positive commandment: avoiding being wicked is more fundamental than striving to be righteous. He argues that this explanation is better than an action-based account of doing versus not doing, because the essential question is whether a person is defined as wicked or merely not righteous.
Coercion regarding a positive commandment versus coercion regarding a prohibition
The lecturer distinguishes between someone who is coerced into neglecting a positive commandment and someone coerced into violating a prohibition. He illustrates this with a parapet: if there were only the positive commandment “You shall make a parapet for your roof,” and one was coerced and did not build it, one cannot say that he fulfilled the commandment, even though he is not blameworthy because he was coerced. But if we are dealing with “Do not place blood in your house” and someone forced him not to build, then he did not commit a transgression, because “coercion is as though he did not do [the act],” and the act is not attributed to him but to the coercion. He raises the question whether one needs repentance for a transgression done under coercion, and suggests that according to this understanding there is no transgression here at all, only lack of attribution. He mentions the dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish and the context of conditions in bills of divorce, and emphasizes that in practice the ruling is that “coercion is not as though one did the act” in the sense that if an act was not done because of coercion, then in fact it was not done, and so the condition is not fulfilled.
Making an effort to fulfill a positive commandment versus there being no point in “gaining” abstention from a prohibition
The lecturer says that with a positive commandment there is room to ask whether one should make an effort to create an opportunity to fulfill it, for example by buying a house in order to fulfill “And you shall make a parapet,” in order to “gain more positive commandments.” He argues that with a mere prohibition there is no such point, because there is no meaning to “buying a house in order not to violate a prohibition,” when one could simply avoid entering the situation in the first place. He presents this as another difference between an action defined as a positive commandment and the same action when defined as a prohibition, even though in both cases an act of building is required.
It is better to perform a commandment oneself than through an agent, and the distinction between positive and negative commandments
The lecturer cites the Pnei Yehoshua on Tosafot in tractate Kiddushin, that “it is better to perform a commandment oneself than through an agent” applies to positive commandments, and therefore with a parapet it is preferable that one do it personally. He argues that if the building is only to avoid stumbling into the prohibition of “Do not place blood in your house,” then it makes no difference whether it is done through an agent, as long as the result exists. He presents this too as an expression of the idea that with a positive commandment the person himself must be in the positive state, whereas with a prohibition it is enough that he not be in the negative state, even if his agent brings that about.
Logical negation versus deontic negation, and the “wall” between positive and negative commandments
The lecturer argues that a double negation does not turn a prohibition into a positive commandment, and that a prohibition is not “the negation” of a positive commandment, because that confuses logical negation with deontic negation. He explains that the negation of “there is an obligation to put on tefillin” is “it is not true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin,” meaning there is no binding norm, and not “it is forbidden to put on tefillin.” “Forbidden” means “there is an obligation not to,” not “there is no obligation.” He uses the example of the liar paradox to show that the negation of a general claim is not its intuitive opposite, and frames this in terms of “zero, one, and minus one,” where negation leads to zero, not to the opposite pole. He concludes that the world of positive commandments and the world of prohibitions are two different categories that cannot be converted into one another by a negation operator, and that there is a conceptual “wall” between them.
Maimonides in the eighth principle and the linguistic distinction between positive and negative commandments
The lecturer quotes Maimonides in the eighth principle: “Know that a negative commandment is one of the two parts of command… and in Arabic there is no term that includes both of these matters together.” He explains that according to Maimonides, Arabic has no inclusive term that groups together positive commandments and prohibitions, and therefore they had to call both by one name only metaphorically. He adds that Maimonides suggests that in Hebrew there is the term “decree” as an inclusive term, and that perhaps the phrase “negative commandments” is itself a figurative usage, because “commandment” in its essence means command rather than prohibition. He raises the possibility that habits of language create or reflect conceptual distinctions, and goes on at length with the example of the Pirahã tribe counting “one, two, and many,” and with the example of Eskimos and kinds of snow, to illustrate the connection between language and the ability to distinguish. He argues that from an “unbiased” point of view one can understand why, for someone not used to an inclusive term, it would be obvious that there is no connection between positive commandments and prohibitions, and therefore the question of duplication would never arise.
Nachmanides on Parashat Yitro: “Remember” and “Guard,” love and fear, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition
The lecturer cites Nachmanides on Parashat Yitro, who identifies “Remember” with positive commandments and “Guard” with prohibitions, and links the positive commandment to the attribute of love and mercy, and the prohibition to the attribute of justice and fear. He interprets this to mean that one who performs a positive commandment is beloved and his Master has mercy on him, while one who guards himself from evil is fearful and not beloved, only not hated. He notes that Nachmanides concludes from this, “and therefore they said that a positive commandment comes and overrides a prohibition,” and adds the distinction that “the punishment for prohibitions is greater,” involving lashes and death, whereas for positive commandments there is punishment only for rebels, whom they beat until they comply. The lecturer asks, though, that the love-fear explanation accounts for punishment and reward, but does not straightforwardly explain why a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. He then formulates the tension as a balancing between “a large positive and a large negative” versus “a small positive and a small negative” in cases like matzah versus the prohibition of new grain.
Resolving the tangle: asymmetry between keeping a prohibition and neglecting a positive commandment
The lecturer proposes that there is an asymmetry: fulfilling a positive commandment is a significant positive, but refraining from violating a prohibition is not a “small positive” but zero. On the other hand, violating a prohibition is a major negative, while neglecting a positive commandment is a small negative, not zero. He says that from this it follows that in a case of a positive commandment versus a prohibition, fulfilling the positive commandment together with violating the prohibition gives “zero” in the balancing, while not fulfilling the positive commandment together with avoiding the prohibition gives a “small negative.” Therefore it is preferable to fulfill the positive commandment even at the price of a prohibition, within the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. He defines neglect of a positive commandment as a minor transgression when we are dealing with a positive duty rather than an existential positive commandment, and from here moves to a further distinction within the category of positive commandments.
A positive duty versus an existential positive commandment
The lecturer argues that on his map one would have expected every positive commandment to be existential, but Jewish law recognizes a positive duty in which there is such a thing as “neglecting a positive commandment.” He explains that in an existential positive commandment, if you do it you are righteous, and if you do not, nothing happened; whereas in a positive duty, the Torah expects everyone to be in the one proper state, and therefore not being in it creates a claim against the person and a light transgression, even though it does not make him wicked. He says that the difference between a positive duty and an existential positive commandment lies on the side of neglect, not on the side of fulfillment, and notes that interpretive considerations distinguish between them.
A prohibition that “supports” a positive commandment in the commandments of a parapet, returning lost property, and sending away the mother bird
The lecturer cites Tosafot in tractate Kiddushin, who ask why the Talmud counts “a parapet, lost property, and sending away the mother bird” as positive commandments not caused by time, when each also has an accompanying prohibition, so that even if they were time-bound, women would be obligated by virtue of the prohibition. He quotes Nachmanides, who explains that the prohibition “supports” the positive commandment, and its purpose is to ensure that whoever is obligated in the positive commandment will fulfill it. Therefore someone exempt from the positive commandment is not obligated in the supporting prohibition. He interprets this as a kind of “carrot and stick”: the positive commandment alone would allow a person to settle for merely being average, while the prohibition adds a baseline demand so that failure to fulfill it becomes a more serious problem. He asks why we should not say instead that the positive commandment supports the prohibition, and answers that such a thing does not exist, because abstaining from a prohibition is aimed at not being wicked, and that will not be reinforced by the “enticement” of becoming righteous.
Applications brought by later authorities: charity and Yom Kippur for minors
The lecturer cites the Maharil Diskin, who asks why with charity one spends only up to one-fifth, even though there is also the prohibition “you may not hide yourself,” which should require spending all one’s money. He answers, following Nachmanides, that the prohibition supports the positive commandment, and therefore where the positive commandment does not obligate beyond one-fifth, the prohibition too does not obligate beyond that. He also cites Divrei Yechezkel and the Magen Avraham, who say that it is permitted to feed minors directly on Yom Kippur, even though “adults are warned regarding minors.” He explains that the prohibition on Yom Kippur is understood as supporting the positive commandment of “you shall afflict yourselves,” and therefore where the positive commandment does not apply in a way that obligates the minor, the supporting prohibition does not operate in that way either.
Leniency and stringency as expanding options and the absence of a norm
The lecturer defines a halakhic leniency as opening up more legitimate options, and stringency as closing off options. He brings the story about Beit HaLevi, who presents “leniencies” such as permitting a two-day fast on Yom Kippur and permitting the recitation of Shema after midnight, to illustrate that leniency does not mean “what is easier” but rather “more options.” He explains that “when there is doubt regarding blessings, we are lenient” means that there is no obligation to recite the blessing; and once there is no obligation to bless, the prohibition of “You shall not take [God’s name in vain]” arises, and that is not in doubt, so in practice one refrains from making the blessing. But the leniency itself is the absence of the obligation. He argues that negating a prohibition and negating a positive commandment both bring one to the same state of “no norm,” just as negating holiness or negating impurity brings one to the ordinary state, and that this is further proof that prohibitions and positive commandments are not negations of one another but opposites above which stands a neutral state.
Returning to positive action and passive omission in a substantive sense, and halakhic implications
The lecturer concludes that the state-based distinction preserves the basic intuition of frontal conflict with God’s will: being in a negative state is frontal conflict, while failing to reach a positive state is passive avoidance. He argues that this is “passive omission” and “positive action” in a substantive, not action-based, sense, because the question is not whether a physical act was done but whether the person is in frontal confrontation or merely failing to realize the divine will. As examples he mentions later authorities’ discussions about human dignity and forbidden mixtures in the marketplace, in particular the question of a passive prohibition and whether human dignity overrides when the transgression is by omission, as well as discussions about intervening in another person’s garments of forbidden mixtures. He also cites Tosafot in tractate Shevuot 30 on testimony by an elder where it is beneath his dignity, and presents the disputes there as depending on whether the key issue is prohibition versus positive commandment or positive action versus passive omission. He concludes by referring the students to an article that was sent to them and with that ends the lecture.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, last time I started, and to my astonishment it turned out that this is the last lecture of this semester. I thought we had at least three more lectures. No, because I count the lectures, and usually there are fourteen lectures in a semester. Either we missed one time and I didn’t notice, I don’t know. In any case, it’s possible. I already don’t remember what happened there. Anyway, this is the last lecture. So I’m just going to finish now the relationship between a positive commandment and a prohibition without getting into the formalism of deontic logic. And next semester we’ll see—or maybe I’ll still do something and we’ll already go over it, we’ll see. Before I continue with that, two requests, and I already said this last time to the students who learn with me in writing. First, they’re asking that anyone planning to continue here next semester should register already now, as early as possible, through Inbar. Even if you don’t know your exact schedule, if there’s part of it that you already know, then register at least partially, because we simply need to know how many people we have. It creates a lot of mess here when we don’t know our student roster until, who knows, halfway through the semester. So whoever can, I’m really asking you to register. At the office—Inbar is only open at certain times, and for the second semester people also register at the university at the beginning of the year. So what you do is through the office. There’s someone sitting there at the computer, I forgot his name, Yair. You can register, and during the add-drop period you go in, like at the university, you go in and change whatever you want. So really we ask that as early as possible you go to the office and register in Inbar for the second semester. Whatever you already know, do now, and whatever not, at worst you can change during the add-drop period, so it’s really not such a big deal. Second thing: if there’s someone who is not planning to continue, we also really ask that you notify us. Again, for the same reasons, because we’re basically in a fog until about the middle of the semester, not to say until the end of it. Because sometimes we don’t know who is with us. There are people who are registered and don’t show up, and people who show up and aren’t registered. You can’t function like that; we just can’t manage the system this way. I don’t know what can be done here to save the situation, because it just takes many hours of work and endless complications to keep track of it and check what’s going on and provide reports, and it’s a huge mess. So as much as you can, I’d be very happy—or all of us would be very happy—about both things. First, register as early as possible for next semester. Second, whoever knows they’re not continuing should update us. Just say, I’m not continuing. You can notify me, you can notify the office, it doesn’t matter, however is convenient, by email too. Just so we know what we’re dealing with. Okay, back to our subject. It won’t be at the same hour next semester? Yes, same thing. The program in the institute generally stays the same, except there are some who aren’t part of the institute staff, one or two I think, who give a lecture only in one semester. I already don’t remember, but it should be written on the website.
[Speaker B] And the topic changes from semester to semester like we did last year—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last year? I don’t think so. I think not. I don’t even remember what was written. I need to look. But for some reason I have it in my head that not. Or maybe I’m mistaken. Look at what’s written on the website. For some reason I have it in my head that I’m continuing, but I don’t remember anymore. I’ll check. Okay, where were we? Last time I spoke about the relationship between positive commandments and prohibitions. We started with Maimonides in the sixth principle, where Maimonides says that when there is duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment, that is not considered duplication; you count both the prohibition and the positive commandment. And he adds that the positive commandment is counted among the positive commandments and the prohibition among the prohibitions. And I said there are two innovations here. One innovation is that duplication between a prohibition and a positive commandment—even though in terms of the practical content it is the same content, like resting on the Sabbath or the prohibition on doing labor on the Sabbath—is still counted as two commandments and not one. That’s the first innovation, unlike the ninth principle. The second innovation is that the positive commandment is counted among the positive commandments and the prohibition among the prohibitions. One could have said that both commandments should be counted as positive commandments, or both should be counted as prohibitions. Why? And here we got into the question of what defines the difference—what is the definition of the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. If the difference is an action-based difference, then when we have both a positive commandment and a prohibition concerning resting on the Sabbath, both are really prohibitions, right? Because in practical terms what is required… what comes out of it is not to do anything. Then even if Maimonides introduced the first innovation, that you need to count both the prohibition and the positive commandment and not just one commandment, one could still say: fine, then let’s count two prohibitions here. But because one is written in positive language and one in negative language, we count two and not one, unlike ordinary duplication. But still both of them are prohibitions; it’s not a prohibition and a positive commandment. Because essentially what this imposes on me at the practical level is a prohibition. If it imposes on me to do something… The Shulchan Arukh doesn’t enter into counting the commandments. The counting of the commandments? We aren’t in the counting of the commandments, it just counts commandments. I said that Saadia Gaon does not accept this, or Rabbi Yerucham Fishel Perla claims that Saadia Gaon does not accept it. To me it’s not so simple, because there are some deviations there on this issue. In any case, the second innovation of Maimonides is that that is not correct. The positive commandment is counted among the positive commandments and the prohibition is counted among the prohibitions, which is another innovation. Because that basically tells us—and not the first innovation, but rather the second innovation basically tells us—that according to Maimonides the definition, the difference according to Maimonides between a prohibition and a positive commandment is not practical. Because if there is a positive commandment that imposes on me an obligation to refrain, or a prohibition that imposes on me an obligation to act, then it means it is not correct to define positive commandments as commandments of action. There are also prohibitions that in effect impose on me a duty to do. Similarly, it is not correct to define the prohibition as a commandment that imposes refraining. Because there are prohibitions that impose on me to do an act, like “Do not place blood in your house,” which obligates me to build a parapet, or “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” which obligates me to save someone in trouble. Okay? And similarly with the positive commandment “you shall rest,” which is really a positive commandment to do nothing. Okay? So all these examples show that the definition is not an action-based definition. I brought what Aharon Shemesh wrote in an article, that this is probably a distinction that underwent changes over the generations in the Talmudic period. So in the earlier periods the distinction between prohibition and positive commandment was practical, and in the later periods the definition was what he calls linguistic. According to the Torah’s wording. If the Torah formulates it in positive language, to do something, it’s a positive commandment. If the Torah formulates it as a prohibition, it’s a prohibition. And then I asked and said that this only gives a partial answer to the problem. Because the question still remains: why does the Torah formulate this one in this way and that one in that way, if in principle there is no difference between the two? So based on what does the Torah choose? And I said that practical implications won’t be the explanation, because practical implications are a consequence of the difference. But I’m asking why there really are practical implications between these two things. Apparently there is some difference between them. The practical implications are indications that there is a difference. And I’m asking: what is that difference? So it doesn’t help me to say the Torah wanted punishment here, so it wrote it as a prohibition, because for a positive commandment there is no punishment by human courts. Okay? That doesn’t answer it. Why did the Torah want punishment here and not there? What characterizes this case such that here the Torah wanted punishment and there the Torah didn’t want punishment? In other words, I need to look for some principled explanation in the definition, in the logic of positive commandments and prohibitions, so that the practical implications are only expressions of it. To make it short, in the end the conclusion, the definition I proposed, was this: I argued that a positive commandment points to a positive state, and a prohibition points to a negative state that we are supposed not to be in, or to avoid being in. Okay? And being in a state or avoiding being in a state is not necessarily done by action or inaction. In other words, being in a state can involve action or inaction. Avoiding a negative state can also be done through action or through inaction. Therefore there is no overlap between the definition I’m now proposing and the original action-based definition. So why, for example, is resting on the Sabbath defined as a positive commandment? After all it imposes on me not to do labor. The answer is because the resting is a positive state. And what is required of me is to be in that positive state. To be in it, in this case, means to refrain from labor, to rest. Therefore, even though this is being in a state, at the practical level it imposes on me not to do something, or to refrain from something. Similarly with “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood”—the same, but in reverse. “Do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood,” because it is a prohibition, means that someone who does not save his fellow is in a negative state that the Torah is not willing for us to be in. Saving is not a positive state; saving is only not being in the negative state of someone who does not save. Therefore even though what is required of me here is to perform an act, it is defined as a prohibition. Because performing the act is not because the act itself has value, but because not doing it has a negative value. Okay? So basically what I do is not in order to be righteous, but in order not to be wicked; someone who does not do it is considered wicked. Okay? Therefore, someone who violates a prohibition is wicked; someone who fulfills a positive commandment is righteous; someone who neglects a positive commandment is not wicked, he is just not righteous; and someone who refrains from violating a prohibition is not righteous, he is just not wicked. Okay? That is basically the implication. And from this, I said, all the consequences, all the practical differences people always bring between prohibitions and positive commandments follow. The fact that one is punished for a prohibition and not punished for a positive commandment—that’s simple. You punish someone for being wicked; you don’t punish someone for not being righteous. It has nothing at all to do with action and inaction at the practical, physical level. Okay? That follows naturally. Why do you spend all your money in order not to violate a prohibition, but only a fifth in order not to neglect a positive commandment, in order to fulfill a positive commandment? Because avoiding a prohibition is something much more fundamental than fulfilling a positive commandment. If someone wants to be righteous, I say at most you won’t be righteous. To escape being merely average, you don’t need to spend all your money; spend up to one-fifth. But in order not to be wicked, you need to spend all your money, because being wicked is a problematic condition, and to avoid that I must spend all my money. In other words, all the consequences, all the differences, the halakhic practical implications, the consequences of the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment, can be easily explained on the basis of the distinction I made here, in my opinion—certainly better than the explanation according to the practical criterion. Why should I care whether I am doing or not doing? What really matters is whether I am wicked or merely not righteous; that is the important point. Otherwise, what difference does it make whether I transgress by inaction or by action—why should that matter? Okay, we’ll expand on this a bit more, but I want to continue with a few more points. Let me first bring another consequence. What happens when I am coerced and don’t do a commandment? Is there a difference between that and someone who is coerced into committing a transgression? Right? Those are two kinds of transgression under coercion: neglecting a positive commandment under coercion and violating a prohibition under coercion. For example, someone forces me to eat pork, or someone forced me to do labor on the Sabbath. Okay? There is a difference between the two situations. I’ll give the example of the parapet. We saw that in the case of the parapet there is a positive commandment, “And you shall make a parapet for your roof,” and there is a prohibition, “Do not place blood in your house.” Suppose there were only the positive commandment, okay? Only “And you shall make a parapet for your roof,” and I was coerced and did not fulfill the commandment. Then I have neglected a positive commandment, right? I have neglected a positive commandment, which of course I am not held accountable for because I was coerced, but it is neglect of a positive commandment. You can’t say that I fulfilled the commandment, right? But if someone forced me not to build the—sorry—if there is a prohibition “Do not place blood in your house,” and only a prohibition, okay? And someone forced me not to make a parapet, okay? In that case I did not violate the transgression. In the common understanding, coercion is as though he did not do it—or coercion, the other way around—coercion is as though he did not act. If you’re coerced, it’s as if you didn’t do it, right? In the views of many later authorities, the moment someone forced me, this is not just an exemption; I simply did not commit the transgression. I did not do the transgression; the coercer did the transgression. Okay? Therefore this is not merely exemption from punishment; there is no transgression here at all. Let’s say there could be a practical difference—although I don’t think it really is a practical difference. Does one need repentance for a transgression under coercion? Do you need repentance? According to what I’m saying now, no—not because you are exempt, but because you did not commit a transgression. It’s not a transgression. It’s not an argument of exemption. You didn’t commit a transgression at all, because the act of transgression is not attributed to you but to the one coercing you, the one who forced you is the one who really performed the act. What happens if I didn’t put on tefillin under coercion, or I didn’t build a parapet—“and you shall make a parapet for your roof”—under coercion? Clearly you can’t say that I fulfilled the commandment. Even if it was under coercion, you can say no one can complain to me, but you can’t say it counts as if I did the commandment, right? And that is what the Talmud says: coercion is not as though he acted. This is a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish—who says what; it’s a dispute between the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, the positions appear reversed. But it doesn’t matter. In practice, the overwhelming majority of decisors rule that coercion is not as though he acted. What does that mean? It’s in the context of conditions in bills of divorce and similar contexts. If a person was coerced and did not do the act, then maybe he is not guilty, but practically he did not do it. Okay? Therefore it is considered as though he did not do it—for example regarding conditions. If someone makes something conditional on his doing an act, and he was coerced and did not do it, then fine, he was coerced, no claims against him, but practically he did not do it. But if someone was coerced in a case where the condition was that he not do something, and he was coerced and did not do it, that is not considered as though he did not do it. It works in reverse. That is the difference between coercion being as though he did not act and coercion not being as though he acted. Okay? Now, an act that I did under coercion is considered as though I did not do it. But if I did not do some act under coercion, that is not considered as though I did it, right? In practice I didn’t do it. I’m not guilty, but I didn’t do it. In fact I didn’t do it. Someone who didn’t put on tefillin in the morning because of coercion—then noon arrives, the coercion ends—does he need to put on tefillin? Obviously yes. He didn’t put on tefillin. He’s not guilty, but he hasn’t put on tefillin yet today, right? Assuming one has to put on tefillin every day—there’s no source for that, but assuming one has to put on tefillin every day—then he has to put on tefillin at noon if he didn’t put them on in the morning, right? But if someone was coerced and ate pork in the morning, then it’s not that he didn’t—meaning, it’s not considered that he ate pork. He didn’t eat pork at all. It’s not that in the first case he committed the transgression, only he was coerced and won’t be punished, but a practical difference is, for example, that he will have to do the commandment, to fulfill that positive commandment when he can, right? He didn’t fulfill his obligation, despite being coerced. But with a prohibition, if he was coerced, then he simply didn’t violate the prohibition. It’s as if it didn’t happen. That is a difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. So now, if you define the commandment of the parapet as a positive commandment, then the moment I was coerced and didn’t make the parapet, practically I did not fulfill a commandment. But if it is a prohibition, I didn’t violate the prohibition if I was coerced. Coercion, right? So I didn’t violate the prohibition. The same thing—for example, I don’t have a house at all. Is there any point in trying to buy a house in order to fulfill the commandment of making a parapet? So in order to fulfill the commandment of making a parapet, perhaps yes, there is some value in that. I’m not talking right now about obligation. Okay, you gain another positive commandment. Fine. But if it were only a prohibition, would there be any point in buying a house so as not to violate the prohibition of “Do not place blood in your house”? Obviously not, right? A prohibition is: if you didn’t violate it, excellent. Why should I care how much effort you made? You don’t get reward for not violating the prohibition. The main thing is that you didn’t violate it. In practice you didn’t violate it. Why should I care? It’s the same difference I mentioned earlier regarding coercion. So here too, the question whether there is value in making an effort also depends on that. You see there is a difference between defining the action as a positive commandment and defining it as a prohibition, even though in both cases this is an action that has to be done, an act of doing—to build a parapet. Okay, there is a difference between defining it as a positive commandment and defining it as a prohibition. Okay?
[Speaker C] Maybe an example like a prohibition repaired by a positive commandment, or things like that—which category would you put that in?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, wait, don’t complicate things for us. Later on I hope I’ll comment on that. It’s complicated.
[Speaker C] You said that if someone is coerced into violating a prohibition, then it’s as if he didn’t commit the transgression. Does it work in the opposite direction too—that if someone is coerced into doing a positive commandment, then if he does it that also doesn’t count?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are those who want to argue that, yes. Many want to argue that. Plainly it seems to me that that’s so. The discussion is only about what happens if someone—later authorities discuss this in tractate Ketubot—what happens if someone forces me to do something that I would have done anyway?
[Speaker C] No, if you don’t want to.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, if I do want to. The later authorities discuss this: someone points a gun at my head—if you don’t put on tefillin I’ll shoot you. And beforehand I intended to put on tefillin. So now the question is whether I count as coerced, because practically I had no option not to put on tefillin. Did I fulfill a commandment or not? So that is what the later authorities discuss, and they bring proofs from tractate Ketubot. It sounds from there that if I really had not planned to do it, and only because someone pointed a gun at my head I did it, then everyone would agree that this is not a commandment.
[Speaker C] But that’s what he’s saying—if he says he doesn’t—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Want to. I brought that because it’s a discussion among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). I said: the later discussion is about what happens if I want to, and they force me to do what I would have done anyway. From here I infer—wait, wait, listen a second, okay?—I infer from here that if they force me to do something I otherwise would not want to do, then everyone agrees that this is coercion, that it’s not considered that I did it. Otherwise the whole discussion wouldn’t even begin. This reminds me of a question of Rabbi Akiva Eiger on a Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin. The Talmud says there, in the topic of “we require the verse as written,” that one has to carry out the verse as it is written. Then the Talmud says that regarding an idolatrous city, it says “and you shall take out all its spoil to the town square,” and one has to burn all the spoil of the city. What happens if there is a mezuzah in the city? It is forbidden to burn a mezuzah: “You shall not do so to the Lord your God.” Okay? So since you cannot do all its spoil of the city, you don’t carry out the law of the idolatrous city. In other words, if there is a mezuzah in one of the houses, there is no law of the idolatrous city, because we require the verse as written; you have to carry out the verse exactly as written. And what is written is all its spoil, and if you cannot carry it out as written, then don’t carry it out. Okay, and there are various examples there.
[Speaker D] How does that fit with “we compel people to fulfill commandments”? If he doesn’t fulfill anything—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So did he fulfill the commandment or not fulfill it? What does compelling have to do with this? No, no, what does that have to do? They compel him to give a bill of divorce.
[Speaker D] What does that have to do—what does that have to do with our discussion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that have to do with what I’m talking about now?
[Speaker D] Because you said that under coercion he doesn’t fulfill it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s what I was talking about before, the point you’re bringing up now. I already left that. I already left that, we’re no longer there. That’s a different discussion. They compel him because in the end he wants to—that’s the claim. What I’m talking about now is the question of the idolatrous city, that if they find a mezuzah in the city, then they don’t carry out the law of the idolatrous city. So Rabbi Akiva Eiger asks: the Talmud in tractate Shabbat, in the chapter “All Holy Writings,” says there that if you destroy the divine name indirectly, by causation, then you have not violated the prohibition. The prohibition of “You shall not do so to the Lord your God.” If you actually burn it—it’s not really burning the Name there, it’s called erasing in water, never mind—but you bring it in, God’s Name is written on you, and you immerse in a mikveh, and that can erase God’s Name. So it says there: if you erase God’s Name indirectly, by causation, you have not violated the prohibition of erasing the Name. So Rabbi Akiva Eiger asks: according to that, on the Talmud in Sanhedrin, if so then what’s the problem? Burn the mezuzah indirectly, by causation, and that is permitted; then you can do that with all its spoil. If so, why don’t we carry out the law of the idolatrous city when there is a mezuzah there? So I said—I don’t even know how I jumped to this—I once wanted to argue that this is not a question at all. Exactly. He does not fulfill the commandment of burning. After all, if he burns the mezuzah indirectly, by causation, then whichever way you look at it, you are saying that burning by causation is not an act of burning, and therefore there is no prohibition here—so there is also no commandment of burning the spoil of the idolatrous city. He doesn’t fulfill that either. So practically the question is whether he has to fulfill the commandment regarding all the spoil. “We require the verse as written”—he didn’t fulfill it. Right? Because regarding the mezuzah he did it by causation. Rabbi Akiva Eiger there apparently assumes—it needs examination—that apparently he assumes that a positive commandment he does fulfill even in that way. The prohibition of “You shall not do so to the Lord your God” he does not violate when it is by causation, but the positive commandment, if it is by causation, he fulfills even by causation. Interesting question why. True, this came to mind in this context. I need to think whether it’s really connected or not. My initial feeling is that it isn’t. No, because causation is done intentionally. Causation doesn’t contradict intention. Causation is something he does intentionally, only indirectly. If there were—
[Speaker E] A fire, just a regular blaze, and the mezuzah got burned—now can you carry out the law of the idolatrous city?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because now there’s no mezuzah there—what’s the problem? Obviously.
[Speaker E] Rabbi Akiva Eiger says: burn the mezuzah. It won’t count.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, because the moment it becomes binding, that’s the determining moment. Once it becomes binding, the question is whether the law of an idolatrous city applies to it or not. Okay, I need to think about that again. I think it’s not connected to the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. Maybe it’s connected to the difference between a result and an action. In any case, for our purposes, there’s another difference. The Pnei Yehoshua wants to argue this regarding Tosafot in tractate Kiddushin, which we’ll touch on in a moment. The Pnei Yehoshua wants to claim that there’s a difference with respect to the rule that it is better to perform a commandment oneself than through an agent. Suppose there’s a commandment to build a guardrail. There’s a rule at the beginning of the second chapter of Kiddushin: it is better to do the commandment yourself than through an agent. It’s preferable to do the commandment yourself and not by means of an agent. But if it’s a prohibition of “do not place blood in your house,” meaning you build the guardrail only so as not to stumble into a prohibition, then obviously it makes no difference whether you do it yourself or through an agent, right? The main thing is that your house is without—there is no bloodguilt in it, and that’s all. So here’s another implication. And again, all these implications are only expressions of the distinction I talked about earlier. Because if you need to be in a positive state, then you need to be in the positive state. What good does it do me that your agent is in the positive state? But if you only need not to be in the negative state, then why should I care if the agent saves you from being in the negative state? Bottom line, you weren’t in it. That’s all, right? This is a little connected to action and result after all; I take back what I said before, a bit. There is something here. Meaning, being in a positive state is an action; not being in a negative state is a result—it’s negating a result. In other words, don’t be in that result, where you are in a negative state. There is a connection. Okay, I need to think about that a bit.
In any case, those are the implications. Now I want to clarify one more point. After all, when I asked what the difference is between a prohibition and a positive commandment, among other things I presented it on the logical plane. Basically I said: what’s the difference, for example, between telling me to rest and telling me not to do labor? In terms of the content of the sentence, it’s the same content, right? What it imposes on me is the same thing. Maybe it can be formulated differently. Suppose they told me not to be without tefillin. Is that the same thing as the positive commandment to put on tefillin? Seemingly, a double negation. Right? Not to be without tefillin. According to what I’m saying now, that’s not true. According to what I’m saying now, they’re basically telling me: don’t be in the negative state of being without tefillin. That does not turn it into a positive commandment. Right? Meaning, double negation—and this is already a hint toward deontic logic, which we won’t have time to get into—double negation does not bring you back to the original state. Not to be in a state without tefillin is not the same thing as the positive commandment to be with tefillin.
But notice that even in simple logical formalization, that’s also not correct. Because a positive commandment is: put on tefillin. Okay? The negation of that is: do not put on tefillin. No, the negation of that is: do not put on tefillin. Yes. Sorry, it’s not even that. Not to… Do you know the liar paradox? The liar paradox—how does it go? It originates in the New Testament. And there it says that there is a Cretan speaker, and he says: all Cretans are liars.
[Speaker C] Meaning that he too is among them. That he too is a liar.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since he too is a liar, then he’s a liar, and if he’s a liar then he’s telling the truth, and if he’s telling the truth then they’re all liars, and it goes round and round. Why is that not a paradox?
[Speaker G] Because the negation of “all” is not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, because the negation of “all Cretans are liars” is not that they all tell the truth, but that there is at least one truth-teller. The negation of “all Cretans are liars” is that there is one truth-teller. It could be his cousin, not him. He’s a liar, his cousin tells the truth, and that’s it—and it stops there, the loop doesn’t continue. Right? So very often when we negate something, we have to be very careful. When we negate “put on tefillin,” you might say, “do not put on tefillin.” Wrong—that’s not the negation. “Do not put on tefillin” is a prohibition. “Put on tefillin” is a positive commandment. A prohibition is not the negation of a positive commandment. That’s a mistake. That is a deontic negation, not a logical negation. In other words, it is not true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin. That is the negation. There is an obligation to put on tefillin—let’s call that a descriptive statement. But “put on tefillin,” let’s formulate it this way: there is an obligation to put on tefillin. All right? That is the positive commandment. The negation says: it is not true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin. There is no obligation to put on tefillin. “There is no obligation to put on tefillin” does not mean “be without tefillin.” To be without tefillin is an obligation. It is a negative obligation. Right? Here I’m only—this is the zero state. Remember? We talked about zero, one, and minus one. The negation of minus one is zero. It’s not one. The opposite of minus one is one. The negation of minus one is zero. Okay.
Now if I do a double negation, then I say: it is not true that it is not true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin. That brings me back to the positive commandment. Right? That’s clear. But if I say: don’t be in a state without tefillin. Okay? “Don’t be in a state without tefillin” is a prohibition in the usual category. Right? The state of being without tefillin is a negative state. Don’t be in it. Now in order not to be in it, I need to put on tefillin; otherwise I’m in a state without tefillin. But putting on tefillin is not a positive state; it is only avoiding being in a negative state. And that truly is not equivalent—not equivalent to “put on tefillin” or “be in a state with tefillin.” Because really, notice, in order for it to be equivalent, what I need to do is reverse both of these; they’re both supposed to be commutative. They aren’t. Look: switch the order. Be not in a state without tefillin. “Not in a state without tefillin” is “in a state with tefillin,” right? Be in a state of tefillin. That is equivalent to it. In order to get equivalence, you need to reverse both. But you can’t reverse both—they are not commutative. And here I showed you why it’s not commutative. Because this state is a prohibition. When you switch both of them, it doesn’t begin with a prohibition; it’s a state of “be”—just be in some negative state. That’s a positive commandment. And that means that the world of positive commandments and the world of prohibitions don’t speak to one another at all; they are two worlds, completely different categorical spheres. You cannot move from one to the other through negation… There is some wall that separates prohibitions from positive commandments, and by no logical operation will you manage to get from here to there. Do you understand what I’m saying? When I say that the operation of negation takes me from one side to the other, that means they are in the same zone. Negation just tells me: not here but there. But if I say no, these are two different categories from one another—they do not speak to each other, you cannot formulate one in the terms of the other. Suppose the Torah had told me only positive commandments; I would never even be able to conceive that there is such a thing as a prohibition. No operation of negation on a positive commandment would succeed in carrying me over to the formulation of a prohibition. You can’t get there by means of logical operations. These are two conceptual worlds that do not speak to one another. It is not like negation, a positive fact, and a negative fact. A positive fact and a negative fact are facts of the same kind. They are both facts describing states in the world. A positive instruction and a negative instruction—in the sense of a prohibition, not in the sense of the absence of an instruction, but in the sense of a negative instruction, a prohibition—are simply not the same kind of thing at all. They are just two completely different things. We are used to calling both of these things a commandment, but that’s just terminology; really these are two categories that have nothing to do with one another.
Now I suddenly remember—I don’t have the wording here, maybe I’ll find it in… This is recording now, actually. Never mind, that won’t bother us, right? Does anyone have… maybe someone… Maimonides, eighth root. Can someone find it in Maimonides’ roots?
[Speaker C] Maybe by way of negation you can replace the word “obligatory” with “permitted”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly! That’s what’s needed. The negation of obligation is permission, and the negation of prohibition is also permission. “Permitted” means there is no norm. No norm means there is neither a prohibiting norm nor an obligating norm. No norm—the absence of a norm—is the negation of both sides. Therefore I say: these two sides are not the negation of one another. All right? This is zero as opposed to one and minus one. One and minus one are not the negation of one another; they are the opposite of one another. But negation only means reducing them to zero; in other words, the absence of this and the absence of that is the same thing. To say there is no positive commandment and to say there is no prohibition is to say the same thing. Right? If there is no positive commandment, that means there is nothing; if there is no prohibition, that also means there is nothing—there is no obligating norm in this situation. Okay.
This also takes me to another discussion. Maybe we’ll talk about that later in another context. But what is the difference between leniency and stringency?
[Speaker B] In a case of doubt, be lenient; in a case of doubt…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not doubt. What is the difference between the definitions of leniency and stringency? Again, not doubt, not doubt. What is the difference between the concept of leniency and the concept of stringency? What counts as being lenient? “In case of doubt regarding blessings, be lenient.” What counts as being lenient? Thank you very much. What counts as being lenient? Being lenient means not reciting the blessing, right? If you’re in doubt whether you need to recite a blessing or not, then “in case of doubt regarding blessings, be lenient” means not to… Why? What if for me it’s easier specifically to recite the blessing? The Klausenburger Rebbe once said that he sits in the sukkah even when it’s raining, because he suffers when he has to leave the sukkah, not when he sits inside the sukkah. So he wants to sit inside the sukkah.
[Speaker I] Is he allowed to recite the blessing? On the second one, and if it’s that…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but then why does “in case of doubt regarding blessings, be lenient” mean not to recite the blessing?
[Speaker I] Because that is permitted, blessings are rabbinic. No, only that there is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not to say the Name. There is also a prohibition of “You shall not take [the Name in vain].” And it’s also not true that on the other side…
[Speaker I] No, no, I think there is a prohibition on the other side of “You shall not take [the Name in vain].”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so therefore? Therefore what? So let me formulate this a bit more explicitly. When I say, in cases of doubt about blessings we rule leniently, that does not mean you do whatever is easier. That’s a common mistake; it’s not true. Leniency means there are more legitimate options. For example, there’s a story in the Brisk Haggadah, at the end of the Brisk Haggadah, those Lithuanian tales of righteous men, so at the end of the Haggadah someone comes to the Beit HaLevi and says to him: why are you rabbis always so strict? Bring the public closer, make Torah beloved to the people, and so on. He said to him: you’ve made a mistake, you’ve broken through an open door. I’m one of the greatest lenient authorities. The Beit HaLevi, a well-known lenient authority. So he says to him: I’m one of the greatest lenient authorities; I have so many famous leniencies. Let me list just a few for you so you can get a taste of my famous leniencies. He says, for example, there are those who are strict and say you may not fast for two days on Yom Kippur even if you’re in doubt; I am lenient, meaning if you want you can fast for two days on Yom Kippur. There are those who are strict not to recite Shema if midnight has passed and you didn’t recite Shema; I am lenient, you can recite Shema even afterward, even if midnight has passed, and so on, leniencies along those lines. Okay, so everyone laughs a lot, but are these really leniencies or not? On the face of it, in that formulation they sound like leniencies, don’t they? He permits fasting for two days on Yom Kippur, which others do not permit—isn’t that a leniency? That same Rabbi Chaim, yes, who says: I’m not lenient in the laws of the Sabbath, I… I’m strict in the laws of saving a life. Do you know the story? A woman came to him whose son had been taken under the Cantonist decrees, and she asked him whether she could travel to St. Petersburg, the capital, on the Sabbath in order to try to rescue him from the army there. You know, in that army you entered at age five and got out at age fifty. Meaning the boy would grow up as a gentile. So he said to her: certainly, she should travel right now, as fast as possible, to St. Petersburg. So she said to him: what, you’re so lenient in the laws of the Sabbath? He said to her: what do you mean? I’m strict in the laws of saving a life, not lenient in the laws of the Sabbath. And in many, many things it’s like this. Every side of leniency has another side from whose perspective it’s a stringency, what you’re determining here. I think the point is this: halakhic leniency means that there are more—what does it mean the more lenient you are? It means that for you there are more legitimate options. In other words, the permission to fast two days on Yom Kippur is indeed a leniency. If there is someone who says you’re allowed to fast one day and forbidden to fast two days, and I say you’re allowed to fast either one day or two days, I am lenient. Because I open up another halakhic option that he did not open. The leniency is the number of options I open. That determines the degree of leniency in my ruling. If more options are open, even if they are options that are more stringent, still, if they are more options than someone else opens, then I am lenient. That’s what determines whether I am lenient or stringent. What happens with doubt concerning blessings? To rule leniently in cases of doubtful blessings means that one is not obligated to recite the blessing if one is in doubt. But then what? Since one is not obligated to recite the blessing, and there is an prohibition on an unnecessary blessing, now it is also forbidden to recite it. But the prohibition on reciting it is not the result of the leniency. The leniency is that you are not obligated to recite the blessing. But after we rule leniently that there is no obligation to recite the blessing, then the prohibition on uttering God’s name says: fine, if there is no obligation to recite the blessing, then it’s forbidden. That’s why people get so confused. The leniency really means that there is no obligation to recite the blessing. Or in other words, leniency means there is no norm. There is no prohibition on reciting the blessing and no obligation to recite the blessing; do whatever you want. That’s leniency: in cases of doubtful blessings we rule leniently. True, now that you can already do whatever you want, the prohibition of not taking God’s name in vain—which is not itself in doubt, and with respect to it we have to be strict—therefore that prohibition says nevertheless: don’t recite the blessing. From the standpoint of the laws of blessings, in such a case the leniency really means that you may recite the blessing and you may choose not to recite the blessing. There is no obligation to recite the blessing. That is called leniency. The absence of a norm is leniency. The absence of a prohibitive norm or the absence of a permissive norm—it doesn’t matter at all. The moment you say that there is no norm, you are being lenient. Whether you are negating a norm that is a prohibition, or negating a norm of a positive commandment. Leniency means there is no obligation to do this thing or that thing. The obligation can either forbid it or require it; it doesn’t matter at all. Both are restrictions. When you say there is a positive commandment, you are basically saying you must do this, and that you must not do, because that would be neglecting a positive commandment. Right? When you say there is a prohibition, you are saying this you must not do; that you may do, and presumably you will do it in order not to do the prohibited thing. So both a prohibition and a positive commandment are directives that tell us—or cancel options. They say there is an option that is not halakhically legitimate. When I rule leniently, I say there is no norm. No norm means two options are open; do whatever you want. There is no prohibition or there is no positive commandment—both are lenient rulings. Why are both lenient rulings? Because they say no norm applies here. Canceling a norm is essentially what a lenient ruling is. Stringency is narrowing options, and leniency—the degree of leniency of a halakhic decisor—is measured by how many options he opens; or the degree of stringency by how many options he closes. That is the definition of leniency and stringency, and it’s connected to what I said earlier. When I negate a prohibition or negate a positive commandment, it’s the same act. To negate a prohibition and to negate a positive commandment is to arrive at a state where there is no norm. No norm means do whatever you want. Do this way, do that way—it doesn’t matter. Therefore, the negation of a prohibition and the negation of a positive commandment bring me to the same state. It’s not that the negation of a prohibition is a positive commandment, and the negation of a positive commandment is a prohibition. No. The negation of a prohibition and the negation of a positive commandment mean a neutral state, a state without status, an ordinary state. Say there is holiness and impurity. If there is no holiness, what does that mean? That it is ordinary, non-sacred. Not impurity. Impurity is not the negation of holiness. And if there is no impurity—if there is no impurity, that too is just ordinary, non-sacred. That’s it, that’s all. Meaning, the negation of holiness and the negation of impurity are both just ordinary, regular non-sacred status. The negation of one and the negation of minus one are both zero. One and minus one are opposites; they are not negations. They are opposite in their properties to one another; when you negate one, it’s like with the liar paradox, right? It’s the same thing, or at least similar, the logic is similar. In short, I now need to use retroactive clarification that you didn’t work in vain. Wait, but I’ve lost it. Save me for a second. Internal screen. Yes. The eighth root-principle of Maimonides begins like this: Know that a prohibition is one of the two parts of a command, because you command the commanded person either to do one thing or not to do it. Yes, two kinds of commandments: positive commandments and prohibitions. Either you command him to do something or you command him not to do something. As you command him to eat and say to him, eat; or you command him to refrain from eating and say to him, do not eat. And in the Arabic language there is no term that includes both of these matters together. In Arabic there is no concept that places positive commandments and prohibitions into the same category—the concept of commandment itself. The concept of commandment includes both the prohibition and the positive commandment. In Arabic there is no such word. They have commandment—I don’t know what it’s called in Arabic—but they have a term for positive commandments and a different term for prohibitions. There is nothing that binds them together. Two things that have no connection whatsoever at the linguistic level. Okay? No, no, there is a positive commandment. There is a positive commandment and there is a prohibition, but these are two completely separate words. For us both are called commandments. There are positive commandments and prohibitions, so there is an umbrella term that places these two categories as two species within one genus, one family. But in Arabic there is no genus that includes both species. They are two genera. Is this only about the language, not about the religion of Islam? Who said it isn’t also about the religion of Islam? The language testifies to the meaning of the religion: that positive commandments and prohibitions are perceived as two different things that have no connection to one another. Therefore there is no word for it. It reminds me—I spoke about this, I don’t remember—there’s some language researcher named Whorf who talks a bit about the influence of language on thought. Doesn’t matter, actually it’s not mainly connected to him; I mean, he talked about it, but there was once an article in Nature that discussed a tribe in Brazil, the Pirahã tribe, whose number system includes three elements: one, two, and many. And many. One, two, and many. One, two, and many. Anything beyond two is many. Okay? Now they came—by the way there are others too, there are also groups in Asia whose system is like that. One, two, and many—those are the numbers they have. Fine? It’s basically base-three counting. So the claim is that there are a great many tasks that seem so simple to us that any child can do them, and they can’t do them. Say you put before them three batteries and four batteries and ask them where there are more; they don’t know how to answer. Is that connected to psychological development? Maybe, doesn’t matter, but they don’t know. But the computer works like that too, the computer has only two, zero and one. The computer builds three in binary language, but one, two, and three are different numbers. They don’t know how to make that connection? No. They don’t know how to say which is more, three or four. Put elements there, three objects and four objects, and ask them where there are more—they don’t know. By the way, three versus twenty they do know. So it’s not that they don’t understand what “more” means. They understand what “more” means, but three and four seem the same to them. Like with the Eskimos, you know? That’s the example people always bring, about how many words you have for snow. So when I see snow I say, that’s snow. An Eskimo would look at me the way an Eskimo looks at human beings—I mean, there are twenty kinds of snow. This one he’d call Yankele, this one Berale, this one Moishele. Meaning these are completely different things for him. I don’t see the difference. Very often language expresses some capacity for distinction, and sometimes it creates the capacity for distinction. It’s back and forth, a very interesting interplay between language and thought. I had a criticism of that Nature article, by the way; I think it didn’t distinguish between those two directions. By the way, after they taught them, of course they understood it; they were human beings with abilities like ours. They just had to be taught the language, and through it the distinction was explained to them, and then of course they grasped it and answered the questions well. It wasn’t that they had less ability than other people, but their language was limited and therefore their distinction-making was limited as well. Meaning it’s very interesting: language affects distinction-making. In any event, when we see this, it’s a very interesting point, because think about it now here: Maimonides says that in Arabic there is no connection between a prohibition and a positive commandment. In Hebrew there is. By the way, for him it’s not “commandment” but “decree.” Decree? He claims that the word “decree” in Hebrew is what is common to positive commandments and prohibitions. I think he meant to say that the concept “commandment” in its essence refers to positive commandments. When we speak about prohibitions as commandments, that is a borrowed usage; there is no such thing as a prohibitive commandment. So then there aren’t 613 commandments? It’s a prohibition. There is prohibition and commandment. Now in Arabic there is only the word for prohibition and the word for commandment; there is no word like decree, in which prohibition and commandment are species within that genus. That doesn’t exist in Arabic, and in Hebrew, he claims, it does. And that’s very interesting, because in principle, if we use the example I brought earlier with the Pirahã tribe, in principle it could be—I don’t know if it’s actually so, and I’m sure it’s not so everywhere—but it could be that if you ask a Muslim, or at least an Arabic-speaking Muslim, ask him: is there something common to positive commandments and prohibitions? What are you talking about? What’s the connection? That’s like asking me if there is something common between positive commandments and windows. What connection is there at all? We are so used to the fact that both are types of commandments, that they are really two species of the same genus. But understand that this may depend on habit; we are simply used to the fact that in our language there is some common word. And there, where there is no common word, from their perspective, what I just said would be obvious; you wouldn’t need to write for them the sixth root-principle at all. They would say, of course, what do you mean? When there is a prohibition and a positive commandment, what connection is there between them? Why should that be considered a redundancy that requires a special root-principle to explain that each one has to be counted separately? Obviously, these are two things that are nowhere near one another. Two entirely different things. We need justifications or explanations or reconciliations because we are so used to the fact that both are commandment. Fine, this one states the positive side, that one the negative side, but it’s the same thing. Negate this and you’ll get there. But it may be a function of our language, and maybe the language expresses some distinction that is naturally present in our culture. And then he says: it has already become clear to you. However, command and warning have no name in the Arabic language that gathers them together, and we needed to call both by one name, namely command. He claims that positive commandments and prohibitions are terms whose source is actually Arabic. In Arabic they have no word that links positive commandments and prohibitions, so both are called positive commandments and prohibitions. But the truth is that commandment means positive commandment. There is no such thing as a prohibitive commandment, because a commandment is a command; a prohibition is not a commandment, a prohibition forbids. Okay? So we use the word commandment by extension. In Hebrew you don’t need to get to that; it’s a decree. And I don’t know, really one has to think about this now—I suddenly don’t remember—whether in this thesis there are prohibitive commandments in earlier sources, say up to the tenth century, before the Islamic influence of Arabic? But there is a negative command: don’t go, you are commanded not to go. No, you are forbidden to go. You are captive to language. You are captive to language. You are not commanded not to go; you are forbidden to go. No, it’s not the same thing. Here it’s pointing to a positive state, and here it’s pointing to a negative state. And our language has somehow accustomed us to see these two things as different species of the same genus that we call commandment. There are positive commandments—in Maimonides’ Book of Commandments there are positive commandments and prohibitions. But really we should have said affirmatives and prohibitions. We think that affirmatives and prohibitions are just words, an abbreviation, meaning positive commandments and prohibitions. No, it’s not an abbreviation. Affirmatives and prohibitions means commandments and prohibitions. That’s all. And I don’t know, it’s interesting; one should check whether texts that preceded Maimonides, or preceded those influenced by Arabic, use the term prohibitive commandments. Is there such a thing? Does the Talmud have a concept of prohibitive commandments? I don’t think so. It seems to me not. In the Talmud, positive commandment—so that doesn’t mean that… Positive commandment, fine. No, there are commandments not to do. The 613 commandments? There are positive commandments that command me to refrain. The source of the expression 613 commandments doesn’t come from some source…? The 613 commandments? Yes, in Makkot there, the Talmud in Makkot. Six hundred and thirteen commandments were stated to Moses at Sinai. “Torah commanded us through Moses”—six hundred and eleven, plus two that we heard from the Almighty. Doesn’t it say there? Here it obligates. Maybe it does; we need to check, I don’t remember, maybe. Fine, in any event, that’s what Maimonides says, and I say that for our purposes this is enough for me for the moment; the continuation is less important for us. But the claim, basically, is that if you think about it this way, in an unbiased way, or not influenced by our language that we’ve already grown used to, in principle I can imagine some alien who arrives here and doesn’t understand at all what I want from him when I connect positive commandments and prohibitions into the same category. These are two entirely different things. But according to what I’ve defined here, the distinction is not between action and inaction. The distinction is between command and prohibition, or between a demand that you be in a positive state and a prohibition on being in a negative state. Not necessarily connected to the question of whether this is action or refraining. Good. So this logical description basically says—you could formalize it, but I don’t want to complicate things even more—that this logical claim basically says that you cannot, by means of a negation operator, move from the world of positive commandments or commandments into the world of prohibitions. It’s simply not the same category. The Maharal already writes that when there are two opposites, they have to be of the same kind. If they are not of the same kind, they are not opposites. You can move by negation from one thing to another if they are of the same kind. But a bird is not the negation of a table. They’re simply not the same kind. A bird with two wings might perhaps be the negation of a bird with one wing, or some other number of… you can talk about that in terms of negation because it’s the same kind. But two things of different kinds may perhaps be opposites, but not negations. Meaning, even opposites must in some sense be of the same kind. Isn’t it true that it isn’t true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin—is that erased or still on the board? What do you mean? The upper statement. Isn’t it true that it isn’t true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin? What does that mean? Don’t you see that it’s on the board? What do you mean? “It isn’t true that it isn’t true” means there is an obligation to put on tefillin. No, that’s not the second version. The upper statement is a positive commandment. “It isn’t true that it isn’t true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin” means there is an obligation to put on tefillin. That’s a double negation. A double negation returns me to… The “it isn’t true” is not a prohibitive negation. It is a logical negation. A prohibition is a prohibitive negation—it means forbidden. Not that “it isn’t true that there is an obligation,” but forbidden. Forbidden is something else. Okay? “It isn’t true that…” is a negation, a logical negation; however many negations you apply, no matter how you apply them, you remain in the world of positive commandments. Either there is a positive commandment or there isn’t a positive commandment; negate it again and there is a positive commandment. Irrelevant. You will never cross over to the side of the prohibitions. There is some wall separating positive commandments from prohibitions. Negations will not carry you across that wall. Okay? In this context it’s interesting to look at Nachmanides. Nachmanides in the portion of Yitro… if you remove one “it isn’t true,” then did you move into prohibition? No. “It isn’t true that there is a positive commandment” means there is no positive commandment. No norm. “It isn’t true that there is an obligation to put on tefillin” means there is no obligation to put on tefillin. Not that it is forbidden to put on tefillin. There is no norm. That still belongs to the world of positive commandments; it’s the empty set, there is no positive commandment. The empty set is also a set. But there are things that are on a completely different side; they don’t belong at all. It’s not the same category. Okay? Nachmanides in the portion of Yitro—the Torah there speaks in the Ten Commandments about the Sabbath, observe and remember, right? So Nachmanides says this: he speaks there about the relation between positive commandment and prohibition, because “observe”—”beware,” “lest,” and “do not”—that is a prohibition. A prohibition is very interesting. “Beware,” “lest,” and “do not” are a prohibition. The word “not” does not appear there. “Beware,” “lest,” and “do not”—even though in the Torah itself there are prohibitions formulated with “not.” Because “beware,” “lest,” and “do not” are not “not” in the sense of logical negation. “Beware,” “lest,” and “do not” are deontic negation. What is that? Forbidden. It’s not “not obligatory” but “obligatory not to.” Fine? That is an obligation not to; it’s not “not obligatory.” Okay? That’s something else. Therefore the word “not” is not the natural word for prohibitions, but rather “beware,” “lest,” and “do not,” or “forbidden.” Fine? Okay, so Nachmanides, when he speaks there about the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition, says this: “And it is also true that the aspect of remember is hinted at in the positive commandments, and it emerges from the aspect of love and belongs to the attribute of mercy, for one who performs the commandments of his Master is beloved to Him, and his Master has mercy upon him. And the aspect of observe is in the prohibitions, and it belongs to the attribute of judgment and emerges from the attribute of fear.” So he draws a distinction here between positive commandments and prohibitions: observe is prohibitions and remember is positive commandments. And what is the difference between them? Positive commandments belong to the world of love, mercy—yes, the right side in Kabbalah. And prohibitions belong to the attribute of judgment and fear, which is the left side of Kabbalah. And then he says that one who performs a positive commandment is beloved to his Master, and beloved by his Master, because he is doing His will. And one who refrains from violating prohibitions is not beloved to his Master; he is merely not hated. Right? Therefore this is the attribute of fear. You fear Him so that He will not hate you, so that He will not punish you. Okay? It’s not that you are beloved to your Master. I think that is exactly the distinction I was talking about earlier. If you are in a positive state, then the Holy One, blessed be He, loves you. If you are not in the negative state, then He does not hate you. Meaning, if you were to be in the negative state, then He would hate you. Okay? There is a difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment. And then he says this: “For one who guards himself from doing what is evil in the eyes of his Master fears Him, and therefore a positive commandment is greater than a prohibition.” Why? Because to do the commandments of the Holy One, blessed be He, is to be righteous; He loves me. If I refrain… To love the Holy One, blessed be He, is greater than to fear Him, for one who fulfills and does with his body and his money the will of his Master is greater than one who merely guards himself from doing what is evil in His eyes. “And therefore they said: a positive commandment comes and overrides a prohibition.” In a moment we’ll see. That’s true. In a moment we’ll see. So he says, therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. So I say, let’s see, let’s go step by step. First of all, he defined the difference between positive commandment and prohibition, it seems to me, the way I defined it earlier. And now he says that on this basis we can explain all kinds of other things. For example, up to one-fifth of your money you spend in order not to neglect a positive commandment; all of your money in order not to violate a prohibition. All that we understood, right? But that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition is exactly the conclusion that I would not expect to find here. Why? Because in fact the question—the Sdei Chemed, for example, continues afterward and says, “And for this reason the punishment for prohibitions is greater, and judgment is administered for them, such as lashes and death, whereas judgment is not administered at all for positive commandments. Except in cases of rebellion, as one who says, ‘I will not perform lulav and tzitzit, I will not perform sukkah,’ for the Sanhedrin would strike him until he accepted upon himself to perform it, even until his soul departed.” That is a correct distinction. Why they punish for a prohibition and not for a positive commandment—I understand that, right? That really follows from the distinction he made above. Okay? But that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition does not follow from there. The fact that they punish for a prohibition and not for a positive commandment, as I said earlier, follows exactly from that distinction. Okay? But that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition is something else. Why? Let’s try to define this as a kind of equation. Okay? Because basically I would present it as a difficulty. On the one hand the positive commandment is greater, because a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, right? On the other hand the prohibition is more severe, because for it one gives up all his wealth and is punished, whereas for a positive commandment one gives up only up to one-fifth of his wealth and is not punished. So which is really more severe? So the Sdei Chemed indeed presents the difficulty this way, brings this Nachmanides, presents the difficulty this way, and says that on the side of fulfillment the positive commandment is greater. One who fulfills a positive commandment is much greater than one who merely refrains from violating a prohibition. But on the side of negation, one who violates a prohibition is far worse than one who neglects a positive commandment. And there is no contradiction. On the contrary, these are two sides of the same coin. Because the positive commandment is a higher level, therefore obviously one who fulfills it is on a higher level than one who merely does not violate a prohibition, who is just average, right? He is not righteous; he is average. But one who violates a prohibition is much more wicked than one who does not fulfill the positive commandment, who is average. To be wicked—that is, the negative value of violating a prohibition is of course more severe than the negative value of neglecting a positive commandment. The positive value of fulfilling a positive commandment is higher than the positive value of refraining from a prohibition. And there is no contradiction at all between them. Therefore, when you speak about punishment, it is certainly very logical why they punish for a prohibition and do not punish for a positive commandment. When you speak about reward, it is very logical why you receive reward for a positive commandment and do not receive reward for merely refraining from a prohibition. There is no contradiction, right? Because this is on the side of fulfillment and that is on the side of negation. But when a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, we are in a tangle. Because a positive commandment overriding a prohibition—say I have a positive commandment to eat matzah. Fine? On Passover. Now I have only grain from the new crop. It is forbidden to eat the new crop, right? There is a prohibition against eating grain from the new crop until the wave-offering day, which is the next day, right? Now the question is whether a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, right? So what do they say? Yes, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Meaning, eat matzah from the new crop if you have no other grain, because a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. But here we are in a tangle. Why? Because let’s see: I have two possibilities. One possibility is to eat the matzah made from the new crop. The second possibility is not to eat at all. Fine? Let’s measure the two possibilities. Wait, if I don’t eat matzah at all, then I refrained from violating the prohibition of the new crop, and I neglected the positive commandment of eating matzah, right? So I have, basically, a light transgression—neglecting a positive commandment—and a light commandment, namely refraining from a prohibition, right? If I choose to eat, then I have violated the serious transgression of a prohibition, but I have also fulfilled the more important positive commandment, a more important commandment—which is a positive commandment, not merely refraining from a prohibition. So it turns out there is cancellation. Because if I eat—eat the matzah—then I have a large positive bonus and a large negative. If I don’t eat the matzah, I have a small negative and a small positive. Okay, so still, why does a positive commandment override a prohibition? How did you prove to me that it’s preferable to eat the matzah even though that involves a prohibition, as opposed to eating nothing? In both cases it’s zero: large positive against large negative, whereas the other option has small positive and small negative. So how do you get from the explanation you gave here to the statement that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition? Now I can make arguments for why a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, and there are all sorts of explanations, but Nachmanides says therefore a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, which means it follows from his explanation. His explanation does not seem like a basis that gives me an explanation for why a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. If you have other explanations, fine—but why does he say it follows from here? A simple answer, in my opinion. There is nevertheless an asymmetry between the two sides. When you perform a positive commandment, you did a significant positive act, right? When you refrain from violating a prohibition, you did not do a small, minor positive act. It’s not positive at all. You merely refrained from a negative act, right? But in transgressions the opposite is true. That is one side—until now I was talking about the side of fulfillment. The fulfillment of a positive commandment is a major positive. The fulfillment of the prohibition, meaning the positive act related to the prohibition, is zero. It is not a small positive; it is zero. But on the side of negation it is not so. If you violate a prohibition, that is a large negative. If you neglect a positive commandment, that is not a neutral act. It is a small negative. Neglecting a positive commandment is a minor transgression, as opposed to—right? Neglecting a positive commandment is a transgression. We are talking about a true positive commandment, not an optional one. Okay? So he is basically saying that when you eat the matzah from the new crop, what happens? You have a large positive—a positive commandment—and a large negative. They cancel each other into zero. If you do not eat, then you refrained from a prohibition, which is nothing, that’s zero, but you neglected a positive commandment, which is a small negative. So practically speaking it really is preferable to eat, because it’s zero versus a small negative. How is neglecting a positive commandment a negative? How does neglecting a positive commandment become something negative? Ah, now that leads me to this question. Basically, first of all, it’s true—we know this, because after all there is a true positive commandment, and not doing a true positive commandment is a kind of transgression. Neglecting a positive commandment is a kind of transgression. An optional positive commandment is something else, but a true positive commandment, when you don’t do it, that’s a kind of transgression. The question is how to explain this according to the map I’m presenting now. Or in other words, I say as follows: what is the difference between a true positive commandment and an optional positive commandment on this map? Because ultimately, according to this map I would expect every positive commandment to be optional. If you did it, you are righteous, and if you didn’t do it, you are average, like someone who did not violate a prohibition; nothing happened. How can it be that in Jewish law there is a true positive commandment? What is a true positive commandment on this map? An optional positive commandment I actually understand; that seems to be the more natural concept. An optional positive commandment means: if you did it, you have a commandment, you are righteous; if you didn’t do it, you are not righteous, that’s all. Nothing happened. Coercion exempts, fine. But what is a true positive commandment? A true positive commandment really is a pathological concept. It’s a concept that should be explained like this: when you say a positive commandment, say, to put on tefillin, then not putting on tefillin is neglecting a positive commandment—that is a true positive commandment, right? What does it mean that putting on tefillin is a positive thing? After all, what does it mean that it is a positive commandment? That it is a positive thing to put on tefillin. But that is also true in an optional commandment; in an optional positive commandment that is also true. Okay. But the difference between a true positive commandment and an optional positive commandment is on the side of negation, not on the side of fulfillment. On the side of fulfillment, in both you have fulfillment of a commandment. On the side of negation there is a difference. In an optional positive commandment you can’t neglect it. There is no such thing as neglecting a positive commandment. In a true positive commandment there is such a thing as neglecting a positive commandment. The claim is that not being in the positive state is negative. It is not a negative state, but the Torah views this positive requirement as a basic requirement. Meaning, here we expect everyone not to be in the zero state but to be in the one state. One who is not in the one state—true, he is in the zero state—but since here the standard is one, the Torah sees even this as some kind of transgression. A minor transgression, because objectively you are still in the zero state. But in this respect, the Torah expects every person to be righteous, and therefore there is here some kind of transgression. But it is a transgression of neglecting a positive commandment; it is not a transgression of a prohibition, because the state is not negative. So how do you distinguish between a true positive commandment and an optional positive commandment? Interpretive considerations, never mind, that’s another question, and in fact it’s not a simple question. But in principle that’s the difference. Meaning it follows from this that the optional positive commandments are what I described until now. If you did it, you are righteous; if you didn’t do it, nothing happened, fine. True positive commandments—if you did it, you are righteous, but in this respect the Torah demands of every person that he be righteous. Meaning if you are not righteous, there is some sort of claim against you. You are not wicked, but there is some kind of claim here; this is elementary. This righteousness is what I expect from every person. And if you are not righteous, there is a claim against you. That’s it. I think that is the meaning of a true positive commandment. What we said earlier—so Nachmanides seems as though the reason that they do whatever he commands is because of the need to avoid neglecting a prohibition. According to what we said, it’s because the other side is somehow more problematic. Meaning, if I do not fulfill the positive commandment, right, in Nachmanides it doesn’t seem that way—it seems he says, why not? There is an explanation that the positive commandment is positive and love, and it looks… so he says therefore there is cancellation. And when you do not do it, then there is no cancellation because it’s a small minus with zero. There is nothing to cancel it. That’s what he says. Just think about this: why in the area of prohibitions is there no optional prohibition and true prohibition? We can now play around with many symmetries. In the area of positive commandments we know this, right? In the area of prohibitions there is no such thing. Why? A true prohibition? What? Every prohibition—sorry, a true prohibition. Why is there no optional prohibition? There is no such concept. What would an optional prohibition be supposed to mean? Let’s think for a second. What would a prohibition be, making symmetry from positive commandments? It would mean that refraining from this prohibition is a minor positive commandment, right? Meaning, violating the prohibition is always a prohibition. Whether true… But with a true prohibition, as opposed to an optional prohibition—sorry, all prohibitions are optional; there is no true prohibition. What doesn’t exist is a true prohibition. All prohibitions are optional. What does that mean, that they are optional? That if you violated the prohibition, of course that’s a transgression. If you didn’t violate the prohibition, nothing happened; it’s not a commandment. There are certain prohibitions where if you did not violate them, it would count a bit as a commandment, as it were. That ought to have existed—but it doesn’t, there aren’t any. Just interesting, I don’t know why, I have no answer to that. I’ll give you a similar question. There is a Tosafot in Kiddushin that I can already see I won’t have time to get to. The Talmud there in Kiddushin says as follows: Our Rabbis taught, what is a positive commandment dependent on time? Sukkah, lulav, shofar, tzitzit, and tefillin. And what is a positive commandment not dependent on time? Mezuzah, a parapet, lost property, and sending away the mother bird. Okay? Mezuzah, parapet, lost property, and sending away the mother bird. Now let’s put mezuzah aside for a moment. Parapet, lost property, and sending away the mother bird—these are three problematic examples. Did I mention this? Ah, okay. So what did I say? I said that the medieval authorities here ask: in these three examples there is no practical difference whether they are time-bound or not. Because in all three there is a prohibition alongside them. In all three things. Parapet—there is “do not place blood in your house.” Lost property—”you may not ignore it.” And what is the third? Sending away the mother bird—yes, again, “you shall surely send away the mother, and you shall not take the mother with the young,” right? So there is a prohibition in all three. So what is the point of saying that the positive commandment here is not time-bound? Even if it were time-bound, women would still be obligated, because there is a prohibition. So how can that be? They bring—and understand, these are three out of four examples, it’s not some incidental one. It’s strange; this is a much stronger difficulty. Why would the Talmud—if one had happened to slip in, say—but when almost all the examples are like that, it means that the Talmud chose them deliberately. Why is it so? So Tosafot offers various suggestions—interesting ones, actually—but apparently we won’t have time to get to them, so let’s leave that. Nachmanides here says—I mentioned this last time—that the prohibition here basically supports the positive commandment, in all these cases. The purpose of the prohibition is to make sure that you carry out the positive commandment. Therefore, one who is exempt from the positive commandment—say if it were time-bound and women were exempt from it—then the existence of the prohibition would not obligate them either. Because why is there a prohibition here? To make sure that one obligated in the positive commandment fulfills it. One who is not obligated in the positive commandment—there is no point imposing the prohibition on him, because the whole purpose of the prohibition is to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment. Therefore, says Nachmanides, if it were time-dependent, women would be exempt even though there is a prohibition alongside this commandment. Because the prohibition supports the positive commandment—so he claims. And then I asked there, why does the prohibition support the positive commandment? In what sense? So I said—since I already said it last time—I’ll say it briefly: in what sense does the prohibition support the positive commandment? Because it’s carrot and stick. The positive commandment tells you: put up a parapet. That is a positive state. If it were only a positive state, I’d say fine, I’m average, not righteous, so I won’t put up a parapet or won’t return lost property. I’m not wicked—not righteous, but not wicked. Then the Talmud says no, no, there is also a prohibition: you are wicked too. But again, you’re not really wicked; rather, they are telling you that here there is a basic demand to be righteous. Meaning, if you are not righteous, there is a claim against you. That is the meaning of the prohibition. But of course that applies only to someone for whom that righteousness is relevant. Someone for whom that righteousness is not relevant—the prohibition is not imposed on him. Fine? Now I want to ask another question: why does Nachmanides assume that the prohibition supports the positive commandment? Maybe the positive commandment supports the prohibition. Then it would follow that women would be obligated in any case. There is no such creature as a positive commandment that supports a prohibition. And this is again the asymmetry between positive commandment and prohibition. Because what does the prohibition say? It says: I want to make sure that you fulfill the positive commandment, right? Because the positive commandment tells you: be righteous. Then someone can come and say: average is enough for me; righteous I am not. The Talmud says: no, no, you. There is no state of average here. If you are average, that is wickedness. Therefore they tell you: I am putting a prohibition here to prod you, or to make sure that you fulfill the positive commandment, right? You can’t formulate it the other way around. To formulate it the other way around would mean what? Someone says: I will violate the prohibition. Why? Because I don’t want to be righteous, but I also don’t mind being wicked. What would a positive commandment help? The positive commandment says no—I am not refraining from the prohibition because refraining from the prohibition only turns me into average; if it turned me into righteous maybe I would refrain from the prohibition. A person refrains from a prohibition in order not to be wicked; it won’t help here to add a positive commandment that also makes him righteous. It is enough that it is defined as being wicked to ensure that he refrains from it. And if he won’t refrain from it, it won’t help to make him righteous. Therefore there is no situation in which the positive commandment supports the prohibition. Therefore when there is a prohibition and a positive commandment, Nachmanides will always say that the positive commandment is primary and the prohibition comes to support it. And indeed there are later authorities—I don’t remember whether I mentioned this—who make all sorts of stew out of this in various contexts. For example, they say regarding the commandment of charity—there the Maharil Diskin asks in his responsa: why for the commandment of charity does one need to spend only up to one-fifth, according to the enactment of Usha, that one who gives generously should not give more than one-fifth? After all there is also a prohibition: “you may not ignore.” And for a prohibition one must spend all his wealth. So he brings this Nachmanides and says: the purpose of the prohibition is to ensure that you support the positive commandment. So of course you don’t need to spend more than one-fifth even though there is a prohibition. Because once you are not required to spend more than one-fifth, the positive commandment no longer applies to you. And if the positive commandment does not apply to you, then neither will the prohibition, because the prohibition applies to you only in order to ensure that you fulfill the positive commandment. Or another example, regarding feeding minors on Yom Kippur—Divrei Yechezkel. So he says there, feeding minors on Yom Kippur, that one may feed minors directly by hand, the Magen Avraham says one may feed minors directly by hand on Yom Kippur. Why? There is a prohibition on feeding forbidden foods to minors directly by hand—”you shall not make them eat,” to warn adults concerning minors, from the Talmud in Yevamot. So how is it permitted to feed minors directly by hand on Yom Kippur? So he says because it is a positive commandment. And a positive commandment—no, that is not called a prohibition; that is called a positive commandment. Neglecting a positive commandment by hand may be given to a minor. But what do you mean? After all there is also a prohibition on Yom Kippur. Correct, but the prohibition of Yom Kippur is meant to support the positive commandment. We know that on Yom Kippur there is indeed a major question: what is the source of the prohibition on Yom Kippur? There is “and you shall afflict yourselves,” that is a positive commandment. Where does the prohibition come from? The Talmud discusses it there, and there are whole pilpulim about it. But basically, why doesn’t the Torah write a prohibition and only a positive commandment? Because the prohibition comes to support the positive commandment. Therefore one who is not obligated in the positive commandment is not obligated in the prohibition either. And if I did not violate the prohibition when I fed the minors, concerning the positive commandment, then I also did not violate the prohibition. Can you really say that a positive commandment supports a prohibition? No. And what gets added to it by being—tell him to improve it. But the decree is that human nature is not like that. Human nature is that if it doesn’t bother you to be wicked, then becoming righteous won’t entice you. But the reverse does exist. Meaning, someone who says: I’ll be average, not righteous—now if from your perspective you’ll actually be wicked, not average, that will prod him. I think that is human psychology; it seems right to me. Today this changes a bit, today it changes somewhat; today people really talk more about what it does, what the meaning of doing is, and punishment and hell and all those things don’t really speak to people today. Fine, so maybe today one has to explain it differently. I just want to end with one more comment. Look, I began with the practical distinction between a prohibition and a positive commandment: a positive commandment is an obligation placed on me to do something, and a prohibition is an obligation to refrain. Right? That is the practical distinction. And then I said: no, the practical distinction is not the relevant distinction. The question is what state the commandment points to. Does it point to a positive state that we want to be in, or does it point to a negative state that we do not want to be in? Now understand that in essence this is an expansion of the basic definition, of the practical definition. Because what is the difference—why, in the practical definition, is a positive commandment versus a prohibition, why is the positive commandment more important than the prohibition, and why is a prohibition more severe than a positive commandment according to the simple practical definition, what all of you would have answered before these classes, that this is the difference between prohibition and positive commandment? So why, according to your view, should violating a prohibition be more severe than neglecting a positive commandment? Because to do an act with one’s own hands that is against God’s will is a frontal violation of God’s will. Here I did not do what He wants, but I didn’t do what He doesn’t want—or what He forbids, right? That’s the insight. That insight remains also in my definition. Because when I am not in a positive state, I am not going head-on against God’s will. I am only not doing what He wanted me to do. But to be in a negative state is a frontal collision with God’s will. I don’t care whether that state came through action or inaction. The Holy One, blessed be He, told me: don’t be there, and I am there—so I went head-on against Him. If the Holy One, blessed be He, told me: be there, and I didn’t go there, then I am not colliding with Him head-on; I simply didn’t do what He wanted. But do you understand? It’s not a frontal collision. Therefore, in essence, the distinction between positive commandment and prohibition remains the same even after abstraction. It’s the same thing as the practical conception; only now I’ve moved it into a discussion of states rather than actions. But still, at the level of states this is a distinction between passive omission and positive action. A positive commandment is still fulfilled by positive action, and a prohibition is still fulfilled by passive omission. That is true, only this passive omission is essential, not practical. In a place where you are not colliding head-on against God’s will, you are merely sitting and not doing. Now translated: sitting and not colliding against God’s will, only passively. Or positive action means to go head-on against God’s will, or to do God’s will head-on. That is called positive action. Now it doesn’t matter whether we are talking here about action or omission. Understand? Therefore the level of collision with God’s will is what determines the severity of the prohibition as opposed to the severity of the positive commandment, or the greatness of the positive commandment as opposed to the greatness of refraining from a prohibition. And therefore this expansion is a kind of abstraction that preserves the basic insight, the basic conception, between positive commandment and prohibition. Now I can show halakhic implications of this, but I no longer have time for that. There are later authorities who discuss this in various places, for example regarding human dignity. There is Kehillot Yaakov, Noda B’Yehuda, and they all return to the same thing; there is some dispute there between the Rosh and Maimonides. What happens if I find mixed fibers in my garment in the marketplace? I have to take them off. “There is neither counsel nor understanding against the Lord”—it’s a prohibition, and human dignity does not override a prohibition. If I remain clothed in mixed fibers, that’s a prohibition. So true, if I take them off it’s degrading, because I remain without clothes in the marketplace, but there is neither counsel nor understanding against the Lord. A prohibition overrides human dignity. Human dignity does not override a prohibition, but it does override the neglect of a positive commandment. Fine? What happens when I violate a prohibition passively? I violate a prohibition not by an act, but by omission. What is the law there? So that is a dispute among later authorities. What is the law in such a case? Is what was said here about positive action and passive omission, or about prohibition versus positive commandment? Today we already know that it is not the same thing. Okay? That’s a dispute. And that dispute is related to what I talked about earlier. And the same thing also in the context, say, if my friend is wearing mixed fibers in the marketplace. Am I required to jump on him and remove the mixed fibers or not? His human dignity is at stake, but I am not violating through positive action; he is violating through positive action. Fine? Now the question is whether the positive action has to be my positive action, or whether it is enough that it is his positive action. There is also a Tosafot in Shevuot 30. Tosafot there talks about the obligation of an elder to testify when it involves some kind of loss, say regarding lost property—an elder and it is beneath his dignity. So what happens when some famous Torah scholar has to testify before three petty judges? It is beneath his dignity to stand there; he has to stand before them when he testifies and so on, it is beneath his dignity to stand before them. Does the obligation to testify override his dignity? He is coming to testify on behalf of someone else. Now does this obligation override his own dignity? Fine? The obligation to testify is a positive commandment, but the prohibition—after all, if he does not testify there will be theft, but the theft will not be committed by him, rather by someone else. So again the same question as with the Rosh and Maimonides, and on that too there are two answers in Tosafot there in Shevuot 30. And these differences depend exactly on this question. If you speak about a prohibition as something substantial, then what difference does it make whether it is someone else or me? A prohibition is a value that is not set aside in the face of human dignity; it doesn’t matter whether it’s mine or someone else’s. But if from my perspective it’s only passive omission—I’m violating here passively—then why should I care that he violates by positive action? Therefore I have no problem; my human dignity allows me to sit and do nothing. That he afterward will violate by positive action—he will violate by positive action, but that does not justify my suffering a blow to my human dignity. So the question is whether what matters is the significance of the prohibition, or the purely practical feature, the passive omission involved, or the positive action involved. But for that, see it in the article—I sent you the article—look there for a fuller treatment. We’ll stop here for a break.